[Sidenote: March 16, B.C. 44.] The tyrannicides, as the murderers of
Caesar called themselves, had expected that the Roman mob would be
caught by the cry of liberty, and would hail them as the deliverers of
their country. They found that the people did not respond as they had
anticipated. The city was stunned. The Forum was empty. The gladiators,
whom they had secreted in the Temple, broke out and plundered the
unprotected booths. A dead and ominous silence prevailed everywhere. At
length a few citizens collected in knots. Brutus spoke, and Cassius
spoke. They extolled their old constitution. They said that Caesar had
overthrown it; that they had slain him, not from private hatred or
private interest, but to restore the liberties of Rome. The audience
was dead and cold. No answering shouts came back to reassure them. The
citizens could not forget that these men who spoke so fairly had a few
days before fawned on Caesar as the saviour of the Empire, and, as if
human honors were too little, had voted a temple to him as a god. The
fire would not kindle. Lepidus came in with troops, and occupied the
Forum. The conspirators withdrew into the Capitol, where Cicero and
others joined them, and the night was passed in earnest discussion what
next was to be done. They had intended to declare that Caesar had been
a tyrant, to throw his body into the Tiber, and to confiscate his
property to the State. They discovered to their consternation that, if
Caesar was a tyrant, all his acts would be invalidated. The praetors
and tribunes held their offices, the governors their provinces, under
Caesar's nomination. If Caesar's acts were set aside, Decimus Brutus
was not governor of North Italy, nor Marcus Brutus of Macedonia; nor
was Dolabella consul, as he had instantly claimed to be on Caesar's
death. Their names, and the names of many more whom Caesar had
promoted, would have to be laid before the Comitia, and in the doubtful
humor of the people they little liked the risk. That the dilemma should
have been totally unforeseen was characteristic of the men and their
capacity.
Nor was this the worst. Lands had been allotted to Caesar's troops.
Many thousands of colonists were waiting to depart for Carthage and
Corinth and other places where settlements had been provided for them.
These arrangements would equally fall through, and it was easy to know
what would follow. Antony and Lepidus, too, had to be reckoned with.
Antony, as the surviving consul, was the supreme lawful authority in
the city; and Lepidus and his soldiers might have a word to say if the
body of their great commander was flung into the river as the corpse of
a malefactor. Interest and fear suggested more moderate counsels. The
conspirators determined that Caesar's appointments must stand; his
acts, it seemed, must stand also; and his remains, therefore, must be
treated with respect. Imagination took another flight. Caesar's death
might be regarded as a sacrifice, an expiatory offering for the sins of
the nation; and the divided parties might embrace in virtue of the
atonement. They agreed to send for Antony, and invite him to assist in
saving society; and they asked Cicero to be their messenger. Cicero,
great and many as his faults might be, was not a fool. He declined to
go on so absurd a mission. He knew Antony too well to dream that he
could be imposed on by fantastic illusions. Antony, he said, would
promise anything, but if they trusted him, they would have reason to
repent.[1] Others, however, undertook the office. Antony agreed to meet
them, and the next morning the Senate was assembled in the Temple of
Terra.
Antony presided as consul, and after a few words from him Cicero rose.
He disapproved of the course which his friends were taking; he foresaw
what must come of it; but he had been overruled, and he made the best
of what he could not help. He gave a sketch of Roman political history.
He went back to the secession to Mount Aventine. He spoke of the
Gracchi, of Saturninus and Glaucia, of Marius and Sylla, of Sertorius
and Pompey, of Caesar and the still unforgotten Clodius. He described
the fate of Athens and of other Grecian states into which faction had
penetrated. If Rome continued divided, the conquerors would rule over
its ruins; therefore he appealed to the two factions to forget their
rivalries and to return to peace and concord. But they must decide at
once, for the signs were already visible of a fresh conflict.
"Caesar is slain," he said. "The Capitol is occupied by the optimates,
the Forum by soldiers, and the people are full of terror. Is violence
to be again answered by more violence? These many years we have lived
less like men than like wild beasts in cycles of recurring revenge. Let
us forget the past. Let us draw a veil over all that has been done, not
looking too curiously into the acts of any man. Much may be said to
show that Caesar deserved his death, and much against those who have
killed him. But to raise the question will breed fresh quarrels; and if
we are wise we shall regard the scene which we have witnessed as a
convulsion of nature which is now at an end. Let Caesar's ordinances,
let Caesar's appointments be maintained. None such must be heard of
again. But what is done cannot be undone." [2]
Admirable advice, were it as easy to act on good counsel as to give it.
The murder of such a man as Caesar was not to be so easily smoothed
over. But the delusive vision seemed for a moment to please. The Senate
passed an act of oblivion. The agitation in the army was quieted when
the men heard that their lands were secure. But there were two other
questions which required an answer, and an immediate one. Caesar's
body, after remaining till evening on the floor of the senate-house,
had been carried home in the dusk in a litter by three of his servants,
and was now lying in his palace. If it was not to be thrown into the
Tiber, what was to be done with it? Caesar had left a will, which was
safe with his other papers in the hands of Antony. Was the will to be
read and recognized? Though Cicero had advised in the Senate that the
discussion whether Caesar had deserved death should not be raised, yet
it was plain to him and to every one that, unless Caesar was held
guilty of conspiring against the Constitution, the murder was and would
be regarded as a most execrable crime. He dreaded the effect of a
public funeral. He feared that the will might contain provisions which
would rouse the passions of the people. Though Caesar was not for
various reasons to be pronounced a tyrant, Cicero advised that he
should be buried privately, as if his name was under a cloud, and that
his property should be escheated to the nation. But the humor of
conciliation and the theory of "the atoning sacrifice" had caught the
Senate. Caesar had done great things for his country. It would please
the army that he should have an honorable sepulture.
[Sidenote: March, B.C. 44.] If they had refused, the result would not
have been greatly different. Sooner or later, when the stunning effects
of the shock had passed off, the murder must have appeared to Rome and
Italy in its true colors. The optimates talked of the Constitution. The
Constitution in their hands had been a parody of liberty. Caesar's
political life had been spent in wresting from them the powers which
they had abused. Caesar had punished the oppressors of the provinces.
Caesar had forced the nobles to give the people a share of the public
lands. Caesar had opened the doors of citizenship to the libertini, the
distant colonists, and the provincials. It was for this that the Senate
hated him. For this they had fought against him; for this they murdered
him. No Roman had ever served his country better in peace or war, and
thus he had been rewarded.
Such thoughts were already working in tens of thousands of breasts. A
feeling of resentment was fast rising, with as yet no certain purpose
before it. In this mood the funeral could not fail to lead to some
fierce explosion. For this reason Antony had pressed for it, and the
Senate had given their consent.
The body was brought down to the Forum and placed upon the Rostra. The
dress had not been changed; the gown, gashed with daggers and soaked in
blood, was still wrapped about it. The will was read first. It reminded
the Romans that they had been always in Caesar's thoughts, for he had
left each citizen seventy-five drachmas (nearly £3 of English money),
and he had left them his gardens on the Tiber as a perpetual recreation
ground, a possession which Domitius Ahenobarbus had designed for
himself before Pharsalia. He had made Octavius his general heir; among
the second heirs, should Octavius fail, he had named Decimus Brutus,
who had betrayed him. A deep movement of emotion passed through the
crowd when, besides the consideration for themselves, they heard from
this record, which could not lie, a proof of the confidence which had
been so abused. Antony, after waiting for the passion to work, then
came forward.
Cicero had good reason for his fear of Antony. He was a loose soldier,
careless in his life, ambitious, extravagant, little more scrupulous
perhaps than any average Roman gentleman. But for Caesar his affection
was genuine. The people were in intense expectation. He produced the
body, all bloody as it had fallen, and he bade a herald first read the
votes which the Senate had freshly passed, heaping those extravagant
honors upon Caesar which he had not desired, and the oath which the
senators had each personally taken to defend him from violence. He then
spoke--spoke with the natural vehemence of a friend, yet saying nothing
which was not literally true. The services of Caesar neither needed nor
permitted the exaggeration of eloquence.
He began with the usual encomiums. He spoke of Caesar's family, his
birth, his early history, his personal characteristics, his thrifty
private habits, his public liberality; he described him as generous to
his friends, forbearing with his enemies, without evil in himself, and
reluctant to believe evil of others.
"Power in most men," he said, "has brought their faults to light. Power
in Caesar brought into prominence his excellences. Prosperity did not
make him insolent for it gave him a sphere which corresponded to his
nature. His first services in Spain a deserved triumph; of his laws I
could speak forever. His campaigns in Gaul are known to you all. That
land from which the Teutons and Cimbri poured over the Alps is now as
well ordered as Italy. Caesar would have added Germany and Britain to
your Empire, but his enemies would not have it so. They regarded the
Commonwealth as the patrimony of themselves. They brought him home.
They went on with their usurpations till you yourselves required his
help. He set you free. He set Spain free. He labored for peace with
Pompey, but Pompey preferred to go into Greece, to bring the powers of
the East upon you, and he perished in his obstinacy.
"Caesar took no honor to himself for this victory. He abhorred the
necessity of it. He took no revenge. He praised those who had been
faithful to Pompey, and he blamed Pharnaces for deserting him. He was
sorry for Pompey's death, and he treated his murderers as they
deserved. He settled Egypt and Armenia. He would have disposed of the
Parthians had not fresh seditions recalled him to Italy. He quelled
those seditions. He restored peace in Africa and Spain, and again his
one desire was to spare his fellow-citizens. There was in him an
'inbred goodness.'[3] He was always the same--never carried away by
anger, and never spoilt by success. He did not retaliate for the past;
he never tried by severity to secure himself for the future. His effort
throughout was to save all who would allow themselves to be saved. He
repaired old acts of injustice. He restored the families of those who
had been proscribed by Sylla, but he burnt unread the correspondence of
Pompey and Scipio, that those whom it compromised might neither suffer
injury nor fear injury. You honored him as your father; you loved him
as your benefactor; you made him chief of the State, not being curious
of titles, but regarding the most which you could give as less than he
had deserved at your hands. Toward the gods he was High Priest. To you
he was Consul; to the army he was Imperator; to the enemies of his
country, Dictator. In sum he was _Pater Patriae_. And this your father,
your Pontifex, this hero, whose person was declared inviolable, lies
dead--dead, not by disease or age, not by war or visitation of God, but
here at home, by conspiracy within your own walls, slain in the
Senate-house, the warrior unarmed, the peacemaker naked to his foes,
the righteous judge in the seat of judgment. He whom no foreign enemy
could hurt has been killed by his fellow-countrymen--he, who had so
often shown mercy, by those whom he had spared. Where, Caesar, is your
love for mankind? Where is the sacredness of your life? Where are your
laws? Here you lie murdered--here in the Forum, through which so often
you marched in triumph wreathed with garlands; here upon the Rostra
from which you were wont to address your people. Alas for your gray
hairs dabbled in blood! alas for this lacerated robe in which you were
dressed for the sacrifice!"[4]
Antony's words, as he well knew, were a declaration of irreconcilable
war against the murderers and their friends. As his impassioned
language did its work the multitude rose into fury. They cursed the
conspirators. They cursed the Senate who had sate by while the deed was
being done. They had been moved to fury by the murder of Clodius. Ten
thousand Clodiuses, had he been all which their imagination painted
him, could not equal one Caesar. They took on themselves the order of
the funeral. They surrounded the body, which was reverently raised by
the officers of the Forum. Part proposed to carry it to the Temple of
Jupiter, in the Capitol, and to burn it under the eyes of the
assassins; part to take it into the Senate-house and use the
meeting-place of the Optimates a second time as the pyre of the
people's friend. A few legionaries, perhaps to spare the city a general
conflagration, advised that it should be consumed where it lay. The
platform was torn up and the broken timbers piled into a heap. Chairs
and benches were thrown on to it, the whole crowd rushing wildly to add
a chip or splinter. Actors flung in their dresses, musicians their
instruments, soldiers their swords. Women added their necklaces and
scarves. Mothers brought up their children to contribute toys and
playthings. On the pile so composed the body of Caesar was reduced to
ashes. The remains were collected with affectionate care and deposited
in the tomb of the Caesars, in the Campus Martius. The crowd, it was
observed, was composed largely of libertini and of provincials whom
Caesar had enfranchised. The demonstrations of sorrow were most
remarkable among the Jews, crowds of whom continued for many nights to
collect and wail in the Forum at the scene of the singular ceremony.
When the people were in such a mood, Rome was no place for the
conspirators. They scattered over the Empire; Decimus Brutus, Marcus
Brutus, Cassius, Cimber, Trebonius retreated to the provinces which
Caesar had assigned them, the rest clinging to the shelter of their
friends. The legions--a striking tribute to Roman discipline--remained
by their eagles, faithful to their immediate duties, and obedient to
their officers, till it could be seen how events would turn. Lepidus
joined the army in Gaul; Antony continued in Rome, holding the
administration in his hands and watching the action of the Senate.
Caesar was dead. But Caesar still lived. "It was not possible that the
grave should hold him." The people said that he was a god, and had gone
back to heaven, where his star had been seen ascending;[5] his spirit
remained on earth, and the vain blows of the assassins had been but
"malicious mockery." "We have killed the king," exclaimed Cicero in the
bitterness of his disenchantment, "but the kingdom is with us still;"
"we have taken away the tyrant: the tyranny survives." Caesar had not
overthrown the oligarchy; their own incapacity, their own selfishness,
their own baseness had overthrown them. Caesar had been but the
reluctant instrument of the power which metes out to men the inevitable
penalties of their own misdeeds. They had dreamt that the Constitution
was a living force which would revive of itself as soon as its enemy
was gone. They did not know that it was dead already, and that they had
themselves destroyed it. The Constitution was but an agreement by which
the Roman people had consented to abide for their common good. It had
ceased to be for the common good. The experience of fifty miserable
years had proved that it meant the supremacy of the rich, maintained by
the bought votes of demoralized electors. The soil of Italy, the
industry and happiness of tens of millions of mankind, from the Rhine
to the Euphrates, had been the spoil of five hundred families and their
relatives and dependents, of men whose occupation was luxury, and whose
appetites were for monstrous pleasures. The self-respect of reasonable
men could no longer tolerate such a rule in Italy or out of it. In
killing Caesar the optimates had been as foolish as they were
treacherous; for Caesar's efforts had been to reform the Constitution,
not to abolish it. The civil war had risen from their dread of his
second consulship, which they had feared would make an end of their
corruptions; and that the Constitution should be purged of the poison
in its veins was the sole condition on which its continuance was
possible. The obstinacy, the ferocity, the treachery of the aristocracy
had compelled Caesar to crush them; and the more desperate their
struggles the more absolute the necessity became. But he alone could
have restored as much of popular liberty as was consistent with the
responsibilities of such a government as the Empire required. In Caesar
alone were combined the intellect and the power necessary for such a
work; and they had killed him, and in doing so had passed final
sentence on themselves. Not as realities any more, but as harmless
phantoms, the forms of the old Republic were henceforth to persist. In
the army only remained the imperial consciousness of the honor and duty
of Roman citizens. To the army, therefore, the rule was transferred.
The Roman nation had grown as the oak grows, self-developed in severe
morality, each citizen a law to himself, and therefore capable of
political freedom in an unexampled degree. All organizations destined
to endure spring from forces inherent in themselves, and must grow
freely, or they will not grow at all. When the tree reaches maturity,
decay sets in; if it be left standing, the disintegration of the fibre
goes swiftly forward; if the stem is severed from the root, the
destroying power is arrested, and the timber will endure a thousand
years. So it was with Rome. The Constitution under which the Empire had
sprung up was poisoned, and was brought to a violent end before it had
affected materially for evil the masses of the people. The solid
structure was preserved--not to grow any longer, not to produce a new
Camillus or a new Regulus, a new Scipio Africanus or a new Tiberius
Gracchus, but to form an endurable shelter for civilized mankind, until
a fresh spiritual life was developed out of Palestine to remodel the
conscience of humanity.
A gleam of hope opened to Cicero in the summer. Octavius, who was in
Greece at the time of the murder, came to Rome to claim his
inheritance. He was but eighteen, too young for the burden which was
thrown upon him; and being unknown, he had the confidence of the
legions to win. The army, dispersed over the provinces, had as yet no
collective purpose. Antony, it is possible, was jealous of him, and
looked on himself as Caesar's true representative and avenger.
Octavius, finding Antony hostile, or at least indifferent to his
claims, played with the Senate with cool foresight till he felt the
ground firm under his feet. Cicero boasted that he would use Octavius
to ruin Antony, and would throw him over when he had served his
purpose. "Cicero will learn," Octavius said, when the words were
reported to him, "that I shall not be played with so easily."
[Sidenote: B.C. 44-43.] [Sidenote: B.C. 43.] For a year the confusion
lasted; two of Caesar's officers, Hirtius and Pausa, were chosen
consuls by the senatorial party, to please the legions; and Antony
contended dubiously with them and Decimus Brutus for some months in the
North of Italy. But Antony joined Lepidus, and the Gallic legions with
judicial fitness brought Cicero's dreams to the ground. Cicero's
friend, Plancus, who commanded in Normandy and Belgium, attempted a
faint resistance, but was made to yield to the resolution of his
troops. Octavius and Antony came to an understanding; and Caesar's two
generals, who were true to his memory, and Octavius, who was the heir
of his name, crossed the Alps, at the head of the united army of Gaul,
to punish the murder and restore peace to the world. No resistance was
possible. Many of the senators, like Cicero, though they had borne no
part in the assassination, had taken the guilt of it upon themselves by
the enthusiasm of their approval. They were all men who had sworn
fidelity to Caesar, and had been ostentatious in their profession of
devotion to him. It had become too plain that from such persons no
repentance was to be looked for. They were impelled by a malice or a
fanaticism which clemency could not touch or reason influence. So long
as they lived they would still conspire; and any weapons, either of
open war or secret treachery, would seem justifiable to them in the
cause which they regarded as sacred. Caesar himself would, no doubt,
have again pardoned them. Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus were men of
more common mould. The murderers of Caesar, and those who had either
instigated them secretly or applauded them afterward, were included in
a proscription list, drawn by retributive justice on the model of
Sylla's. Such of them as were in Italy were immediately killed. Those
in the provinces, as if with the curse of Cain upon their heads, came
one by one to miserable ends. Brutus and Cassius fought hard and fell
at Philippi. In three years the tyrannicides of the ides of March, with
their aiders and abettors, were all dead, some killed in battle, some
in prison, some dying by their own hand--slain with the daggers with
which they had stabbed their master.
Out of the whole party the fate of one only deserves special notice, a
man whose splendid talents have bought forgiveness for his faults, and
have given him a place in the small circle of the really great whose
memory is not allowed to die.
[Sidenote: Dec. 7, B.C. 43.] After the dispersion of the conspirators
which followed Caesar's funeral, Cicero had remained in Rome. His
timidity seemed to have forsaken him, and he had striven, with an
energy which recalled his brightest days, to set the Constitution again
upon its feet. Antony charged him in the Senate with having been the
contriver of Caesar's death. He replied with invectives fierce and
scurrilous as those which he had heaped upon Catiline and Clodius. A
time had been when he had affected to look on Antony as his preserver.
Now there was no imaginable infamy in which he did not steep his name.
He spoke of the murder as the most splendid achievement recorded in
history, and he regretted only that he had not been taken into counsel
by the deliverers of their country. Antony would not then have been
alive to rekindle civil discord. When Antony left Rome, Cicero was for
a few months again the head of the State. He ruled the Senate,
controlled the Treasury, corresponded with the conspirators in the
provinces, and advised their movements. He continued sanguine himself,
and he poured spirit into others. No one can refuse admiration to the
last blaze of his expiring powers. But when he heard that Antony and
Lepidus and Octavius had united, and were coming into Italy with the
whole Western army, he saw that all was over. He was now
sixty-three--too old for hope. He could hardly have wished to live, and
this time he was well assured that there would be no mercy for him.
Caesar would have spared a man whom he esteemed in spite of his
infirmities. But there was no Caesar now, and fair speeches would serve
his turn no longer. He retired from the city with his brother Quintus,
and had some half-formed purpose of flying to Brutus, who was still in
arms in Macedonia. He even embarked, but without a settled resolution,
and he allowed himself to be driven back by a storm. Theatrical even in
extremities, he thought of returning to Rome and of killing himself in
Caesar's house, that he might bring the curse of his blood upon
Octavius. In these uncertainties he drifted into his own villa at
Formiae,[6] saying in weariness, and with a sad note of his old
self-importance, that he would die in the country which he had so often
saved. Here, on the 4th of December, B.C. 43, Popilius Loenas, an
officer of Antony's, came to find him. Peasants from the neighborhood
brought news to the villa that the soldiers were approaching. His
servants thrust him into a litter and carried him down through the
woods toward the sea. Loenas followed and overtook him. To his slaves
he had been always the gentlest of masters. They would have given their
lives in his defence if he would have allowed them; but he bade them
set the litter down and save themselves. He thrust out his head between
the curtains, and it was instantly struck off.
So ended Cicero, a tragic combination of magnificent talents, high
aspirations, and true desire to do right, with an infirmity of purpose
and a latent insincerity of character which neutralized and could
almost make us forget his nobler qualities. It cannot be said of Cicero
that he was blind to the faults of the party to which he attached
himself. To him we owe our knowledge of what the Roman aristocrats
really were, and of the hopelessness of expecting that they could have
been trusted any longer with the administration of the Empire, if the
Empire itself was to endure. Cicero's natural place was at Caesar's
side; but to Caesar alone of his contemporaries he was conscious of an
inferiority which was intolerable to him. In his own eyes he was always
the first person. He had been made unhappy by the thought that
posterity might rate Pompey above himself. Closer acquaintance had
reassured him about Pompey, but in Caesar he was conscious of a higher
presence, and he rebelled against the humiliating acknowledgment.
Supreme as an orator he could always be, and an order of things was,
therefore, most desirable where oratory held the highest place. Thus he
chose his part with the "_boni_," whom he despised while he supported
them, drifting on through vacillation into treachery, till "the
ingredients of the poisoned chalice" were "commended to his own lips."
In Cicero Nature half-made a great man and left him uncompleted. Our
characters are written in our forms, and the bust of Cicero is the key
to his history. The brow is broad and strong, the nose large, the lips
tightly compressed, the features lean and keen from restless
intellectual energy. The loose bending figure, the neck, too weak for
the weight of the head, explain the infirmity of will, the passion, the
cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and veracity. He was born
into an age of violence with which he was too feeble to contend. The
gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence will forever preserve
his memory from too harsh a judgment.
[1] _Philippic_ ii. 35.
[2] Abridged from Dion Cassius, who probably gives no more than the
traditionary version of Cicero's words.
[3] [Greek: emphutos chraestotaes] are Dion Cassius's words. Antony's
language was differently reported, and perhaps there was no literal
record of it. Dion Cassius, however, can hardly have himself composed
the version which he gives in his history, for he calls the speech as
ill-timed as it was brilliant.
[4] Abridged from Dion Cassius. xliv. 36.
[5] "In deorum numerum relatus est non ore modo decernentium sed et
persuasione vulgi."--_Suetonius_.
[6] Near Gaeta.