its deliberations, that gave to Latin oratory a somewhat different
character from the eloquence of Greece, to which, in consequence of the
Roman spirit of imitation, it bore, in many respects, so close a
resemblance. The power of the Areopagus, which was originally the most
dignified assembly at Athens, had been retrenched amid the democratic
innovations of Pericles. From that period, everything, even the most
important affairs of state, depended entirely, in the pure democracy of
Athens, on the opinion, or rather the momentary caprice of an inconstant
people, who were fond of pleasure and repose, who were easily swayed by
novelty, and were confident in their power. As their precipitate decisions
thus often hung on an instant of enthusiasm, the orator required to dart
into their bosoms those electric sparks of eloquence which inflamed their
passions, and left no corner of the mind fitted for cool consideration. It
was the business of the speaker to allow them no time to recover from the
shock, for its force would have been spent had they been permitted to
occupy themselves with the beauties of style and diction. “Applaud not the
orator,” says Demosthenes, at the end of one of his Philippics, “but do
what I have recommended. I cannot save you by my words, you must save
yourselves by your actions.” When the people were persuaded, every thing
was accomplished, and their decision was embodied in a sort of decree by
the orator. The people of Rome, on the other hand, were more reflective
and moderate, and less vain than the Athenians; nor was the whole
authority of the state vested in them. There was, on the contrary, an
accumulation of powers, and a complication of different interests to be
managed. Theoretically, indeed, the sovereignty was in the people, but the
practical government was intrusted to the Senate. As we see from Cicero’s
third oration, _De Lege Agraria_, the same affairs were often treated at
the same time in the Senate and on the Rostrum. Hence, in the judicial and
legislative proceedings, in which, as we have seen, the feelings of the
judges and prejudices of the vulgar were so frequently appealed to, some
portion of the senatorial spirit pervaded and controlled the popular
assemblies, restrained the impetuosity of decision, and gave to those
orators of the Forum, or Comitia, who had just spoken, or were to speak
next day in the Senate, a more grave and temperate tone, than if their
tongues had never been employed but for the purpose of impelling a
headlong multitude.
But if the Greeks were a more impetuous and inconstant, they were also a
more intellectual people than the Romans. Literature and refinement were
more advanced in the age of Pericles than of Pompey. Now, in oratory, a
popular audience must be moved by what corresponds to the feelings and
taste of the age. With such an intelligent race as the Greeks, the orator
was obliged to employ the most accurate reasoning, and most methodical
arrangement of his arguments. The flowers of rhetoric, unless they grew
directly from the stem of his discourse, were little admired. The Romans,
on the other hand, required the excitation of fancy, of comparisons, and
metaphors, and rhetorical decoration. Hence, the Roman orator was more
anxious to seduce the imagination than convince the understanding; his
discourse was adorned with frequent digressions into the field of morals
and philosophy, and he was less studious of precision than of ornament.
On the whole, the circumstances in the Roman constitution and judicial
procedure, appear to have wonderfully conspired to render
CICERO
an accomplished orator. He was born and educated at a period when he must
have formed the most exalted idea of his country. She had reached the
height of power, and had not yet sunk into submission or servility. The
subjects to be discussed, and characters to be canvassed, were thus of the
most imposing magnitude, and could still be treated with freedom and
independence. The education, too, which Cicero had received, was highly
favourable to his improvement. He had the first philosophers of the age
for his teachers, and he studied the civil law under Scævola, the most
learned jurisconsult who had hitherto appeared in Rome. When he came to
attend the Forum, he enjoyed the advantage of daily hearing Hortensius,
unquestionably the most eloquent speaker who had yet shone in the Forum or
Senate. The harangues of this great pleader formed his taste, and raised
his emulation, and, till near the conclusion of his oratorical career,
acted as an incentive to exertions, which might have abated, had he been
left without a competitor in the Forum. The blaze of Hortensius’s rhetoric
would communicate to his rival a brighter flame of eloquence than if he
had been called on to refute a cold and inanimate adversary. Still,
however, the great secret of his distinguished oratorical eminence was,
that notwithstanding his vanity, he never fell into the apathy with regard
to farther improvement, by which self-complacency is so often attended. On
the contrary, Cicero, after he had delivered two celebrated orations,
which filled the Forum with his renown, so far from resting satisfied with
the acclamations of the capital, abandoned, for a time, the brilliant
career on which he had entered, and travelled, during two years, through
the cities of Greece, in quest of philosophical improvement and rhetorical
instruction.
With powers of speaking beyond what had yet been known in his own country,
and perhaps not inferior to those which had ever adorned any other, he
possessed, in a degree superior to all orators, of whatever age or nation,
a general and discursive acquaintance with philosophy and literature,
together with an admirable facility of communicating the fruits of his
labours, in a manner the most copious, perspicuous, and attractive. To
this extensive knowledge, by which his mind was enriched and supplied with
endless topics of illustration—to the lofty ideas of eloquence, which
perpetually revolved in his thoughts—to that image which ever haunted his
breast, of such infinite and superhuman perfection in oratory, that even
the periods of Demosthenes did not fill up the measure of his
conceptions(313), we are chiefly indebted for those emanations of genius,
which have given, as it were, an immortal tongue to the now desolate Forum
and ruined Senate of Rome.
The first oration which Cicero pronounced, at least of those which are
extant, was delivered in presence of four judges appointed by the Prætor,
and with Hortensius for his opponent. It was in the case of Quintius,
which was pleaded in the year 672, when Cicero was 26 years of age, at
which time he came to the bar much later than was usual, after having
studied civil law under Mucius Scævola, and having further qualified
himself for the exercise of his profession by the study of polite
literature under the poet Archias, as also of philosophy under the
principal teachers of each sect who had resorted to Rome. This case was
undertaken by Cicero, at the request of the celebrated comedian Roscius,
the brother-in-law of Quintius; but it was not of a nature well adapted to
call forth or display any of the higher powers of eloquence. It was a pure
question of civil right, and, in a great measure, a matter of form; the
dispute being whether his client had forfeited his recognisances, and
whether his opponent Nævius had got legal possession of his effects by an
edict which the Prætor had pronounced, in consequence of the supposed
forfeiture. But even here, where the point was more one of dry legal
discussion than in any other oration of Cicero, we meet with much
invective, calculated to excite the indignation of the judges against the
adverse party, and many pathetic supplications, interspersed with
high-wrought pictures of the distresses of his client, in order to raise
their sympathy in his favour.
_Pro Sext. Roscio_. In the year following that in which he pleaded the
case of Quintius, Cicero undertook the defence of Roscius of Ameria, which
was the first public or criminal trial in which he spoke. The father of
Roscius had two mortal enemies, of his own name and district. During the
proscriptions of Sylla, he was assassinated one evening at Rome, while
returning home from supper; and, on pretext that he was in the list
proscribed, his estate was purchased for a mere nominal price by
Chrysogonus, a favourite slave, to whom Sylla had given freedom, and whom
he had permitted to buy the property of Roscius as a forfeiture. Part of
the valuable lands thus acquired, were made over by Chrysogonus to the
Roscii. These new proprietors, in order to secure themselves in the
possession, hired Erucius, an informer and prosecutor by profession, to
charge the son with the murder of his father, and they, at the same time,
suborned witnesses, in order to convict him of the parricide. From dread
of the power of Sylla, the accused had difficulty in prevailing on any
patron to undertake his cause; but Cicero eagerly embraced this
opportunity to give a public testimony of his detestation of oppression
and tyranny. He exculpates his client, by enlarging on the improbability
of the accusation, whether with respect to the enormity of the crime
charged, or the blameless character and innocent life of young Roscius. He
shows, too, that his enemies had completely failed in proving that he
laboured under the displeasure of his father, or had been disinherited by
him; and, in particular, that his constant residence in the country was no
evidence of this displeasure—a topic which leads him to indulge in a
beautiful commendation of a rural life, and the ancient rustic simplicity
of the Romans. But while he thus vindicates the innocence of Roscius, the
orator has so managed his pleading, that it appears rather an artful
accusation of the two Roscii, than a defence of his own client. He tries
to fix on them the guilt of the murder, by showing that they, and not the
son, had reaped all the advantages of the death of old Roscius, and that,
availing themselves of the strict law, which forbade slaves to be examined
in evidence against their masters, they would not allow those who were
with Roscius at the time of his assassination, but had subsequently fallen
into their own possession, to be put to the torture. The whole case seems
to have been pleaded with much animation and spirit, but the oration was
rather too much in that florid Asiatic taste, which Cicero at this time
had probably adopted from imitation of Hortensius, who was considered as
the most perfect model of eloquence in the Forum; and hence the celebrated
passage on the punishment of parricide, (which consisted in throwing the
criminal, tied up in a sack, into a river,) was condemned by the severer
taste of his more advanced years. “Its intention,” he declares, “was to
strike the parricide at once out of the system of nature, by depriving him
of air, light, water, and earth, so that he who had destroyed the author
of his existence might be excluded from those elements whence all things
derived their being. He was not thrown to wild beasts, lest their ferocity
should be augmented by the contagion of such guilt—he was not committed
naked to the stream, lest he should contaminate that sea which washed away
all other pollutions. Everything in nature, however common, was accounted
too good for him to share in; for what is so common as air to the living,
earth to the dead, the sea to those who float, the shore to those who are
cast up. But the parricide lives so as not to breathe the air of heaven,
dies so that the earth cannot receive his bones, is tossed by the waves so
as not to be washed by them, so cast on the shore as to find no rest on
its rocks.” This declamation was received with shouts of applause by the
audience; yet Cicero, referring to it in subsequent works, calls it the
exuberance of a youthful fancy, which wanted the control of his sounder
judgment, and, like all the compositions of young men, was not applauded
so much on its own account, as for the promise it gave of more improved
and ripened talents(314). This pleading is also replete with severe and
sarcastic declamation on the audacity of the Roscii, as well as the
overgrown power and luxury of Chrysogonus; the orator has even hazarded an
insinuation against Sylla himself, which, however, he was careful to
palliate, by remarking, that through the multiplicity of affairs, he was
obliged to connive at many things which his favourites did against his
inclination.
Cicero’s courage in defending and obtaining the acquittal of Roscius,
under the circumstances in which the case was undertaken, was applauded by
the whole city. By this public opposition to the avarice of an agent of
Sylla, who was then in the plenitude of his power, and by the energy with
which he resisted an oppressive proceeding, he fixed his character for a
fearless and zealous patron of the injured, as much as for an accomplished
orator. The defence of Roscius, which acquired him so much reputation in
his youth, was remembered by him with such delight in his old age, that he
recommends to his son, as the surest path to true honour, to defend those
who are unjustly oppressed, as he himself had done in many causes, but
particularly in that of Roscius of Ameria, whom he had protected against
Sylla himself, in the height of his authority(315).
Immediately after the decision of this cause, Cicero, partly on account of
his health, and partly for improvement, travelled into Greece and Asia,
where he spent two years in the assiduous study of philosophy and
eloquence, under the ablest teachers of Athens and Asia Minor. Nor was his
style alone formed and improved by imitation of the Greek rhetoricians:
his pronunciation also was corrected, by practising under Greek masters,
from whom he learned the art of commanding his voice, and of giving it
greater compass and variety than it had hitherto attained(316). The first
cause which he pleaded after his return to Rome, was that of Roscius, the
celebrated comedian, in a dispute, which involved a mere matter of civil
right, and was of no peculiar interest or importance. All the orations
which he delivered during the five following years, are lost, of which
number were those for Marcus Tullius, and L. Varenus, mentioned by
Priscian as extant in his time. At the end of that period, however, and
when Cicero was now in the thirty-seventh year of his age, a glorious
opportunity was afforded for the display of his eloquence, in the
prosecution instituted against Verres, the Prætor of Sicily, a criminal
infinitely more hateful than Catiline or Clodius, and to whom the Roman
_republic_, at least, never produced an equal in turpitude and crime. He
was now accused by the Sicilians of many flagrant acts of injustice,
rapine, and cruelty, committed by him during his triennial government of
their island, which he had done more to ruin than all the arbitrary acts
of their native tyrants, or the devastating wars between the Carthaginians
and Romans.
In the advanced ages of the republic, extortion and violence almost
universally prevailed among those magistrates who were exalted abroad to
the temptations of regal power, and whose predecessors, by their
moderation, had called forth in earlier times the applause of the world.
Exhausted in fortune by excess of luxury, they now entered on their
governments only to enrich themselves with the spoils of the provinces
intrusted to their administration, and to plunder the inhabitants by every
species of exaction. The first laws against extortion were promulgated in
the beginning of the seventh century. But they afforded little relief to
the oppressed nations, who in vain sought redress at Rome; for the
decisions there depending on judges generally implicated in similar
crimes, were more calculated to afford impunity to the guilty, than
redress to the aggrieved. This undue influence received additional weight
in the case of Verres, from the high quality and connections of the
culprit.
Such were the difficulties with which Cicero had to struggle, in entering
on the accusation of this great public delinquent. This arduous task he
was earnestly solicited to undertake, by a petition from all the towns of
Sicily, except Syracuse and Messina, both which cities had been
occasionally allowed by the plunderer to share the spoils of the province.
Having accepted this trust, so important in his eyes to the honour of the
republic, neither the far distant evidence, nor irritating delays of all
those guards of guilt with which Verres was environed, could deter or
slacken his exertions. The first device on the part of the criminal, or
rather of his counsel, Hortensius, to defeat the ends of justice, was an
attempt to wrest the conduct of the trial from the hands of Cicero, by
placing it in those of Cæcilius(317), who was a creature of Verres, and
who now claimed a preference to Cicero, on the ground of personal injuries
received from the accused, and a particular knowledge of the crimes of his
pretended enemy. The judicial claims of these competitors had therefore to
be first decided in that kind of process called _Divinatio_, in which
Cicero delivered his oration, entitled _Contra Cæcilium_, and shewed, with
much power of argument and sarcasm, that he himself was in every way best
fitted to act as the impeacher of Verres.
Having succeeded in convincing the judges that Cæcilius only wished to get
the cause into his own hands, in order to betray it, Cicero was appointed
to conduct the prosecution, and was allowed 110 days to make a voyage to
Sicily, in order to collect information for supporting his charge. He
finished his progress through the island in less than half the time which
had been granted him. On his return he found that a plan had been laid by
the friends of Verres, to procrastinate the trial, at least till the
following season, when they expected to have magistrates and judges who
would prove favourable to his interests. In this design they so far
succeeded, that time was not left to go through the cause according to the
ordinary forms and practice of oratorical discussion in the course of the
year: Cicero, therefore, resolved to lose no time by enforcing or
aggravating the several articles of charge, but to produce at once all his
documents and witnesses, leaving the rhetorical part of the performance
till the whole evidence was concluded. The first oration, therefore,
against Verres, which is extremely short, was merely intended to explain
the motives which had induced him to adopt this unusual mode of procedure.
He accordingly exposes the devices by which the culprit and his cabal were
attempting to pervert the course of justice, and unfolds the eternal
disgrace that would attach to the Roman law, should their stratagems prove
successful. This oration was followed by the deposition of the witnesses,
and recital of the documents, which so clearly established the guilt of
Verres, that, driven to despair, he submitted, without awaiting his
sentence, to a voluntary exile(318). It therefore appears, that of the six
orations against Verres, only one was pronounced. The other five, forming
the series of harangues which he intended to deliver after the proof had
been completed, were subsequently published in the same shape as if the
delinquent had actually stood his trial, and was to have made a regular
defence.