authentic, literary men in all countries—as De Brosses, the French
Translator of Sallust, Ferguson, Saxius, in his _Onomasticon_, and
Rhunkenius—adopted the orations as genuine. Ernesti, in his edition of
Cicero, makes no mention of the existence of any doubts respecting them;
and, in his edition of Fabricius(342), alludes to the controversy
concerning them as a foolish and insignificant dispute. A change of
opinion, however, was produced by an edition of the four orations which
Wolfius published at Berlin in 1801, to which he prefixed an account of
the controversy, and a general view of the arguments of Markland and
Gesner. The observations of each, relating to particular words and
phrases, are placed below the passages as they occur, and are followed by
Wolf’s own remarks, refuting, to the utmost of his power, the opinions of
Gesner, and confirming those of Markland. Schütz, the late German editor
of Cicero, has completely adopted the notions of Wolf; and by printing
these four harangues, not in their order in the series, but separately,
and at the end of the whole, along with the discarded correspondence
between Cicero and Brutus, has thrown them without the classical pale as
effectually as Lambinus excluded the once recognized orations, _In pace_,
and _Antequam iret in Exilium_. In the fourth volume of his new edition of
the works of Cicero now proceeding in Germany, Beck has followed the
opinion of Wolf, after an impartial examination of the different arguments
in his notes, and in an _excursus criticus_ devoted to this subject.
Markland and Wolf believe, that these harangues were written as a
rhetorical exercise, by some declaimer, who lived not long after Cicero,
probably in the time of Tiberius, and who had before his eyes some
orations of Cicero now lost, (perhaps those which he delivered on his
return from exile,) from which the rhetorician occasionally borrowed ideas
or phrases, not altogether unworthy of the orator’s genius and eloquence.
But, though they may contain some insulated Ciceronian expressions, it is
utterly denied that these orations can be the continued composition of
Cicero. The arguments against their authenticity are deduced, _first_ from
their matter; and, _secondly_, from their style. These critics dwell much
on the numerous thoughts and ideas inconsistent with the known sentiments,
or unsuitable to the disposition of the author,—on the relation of events,
told in a different manner from that in which they have been recorded by
him in his undoubted works,—and, finally, on the gross ignorance shown of
the laws, institutions, and customs of Rome, and even of the events
passing at the time. Thus it is said, in one of these four orations, that,
on some political occasion, all the senators changed their garb, as also
the Prætors and Ædiles, which proves, that the author was ignorant that
all Ædiles and Prætors were necessarily senators, since, otherwise, the
special mention of them would be superfluous and absurd. What is still
stronger, the author, in the oration _Ad Quirites post reditum_, refers to
the speech in behalf of Gabinius, which was not pronounced till 699, three
years subsequently to Cæsar’s recall; whereas the real oration, _Ad
Quirites_, was delivered on the second or third day after his return. With
regard to the style of these harangues, it is argued, that the expressions
are affected, the sentences perplexed, and the transitions abrupt; and
that their languor and want of animation render them wholly unworthy of
Cicero. Markland particularly points out the absurd repetition of what the
declaimer had considered Ciceronian phrases,—as, “Aras, focos,
penates—Deos immortales—Res incredibiles—Esse videatur.” Of the orations
individually he remarks, and justly, that the one delivered by Cicero in
the Senate immediately after his return, was known to have been prepared
with the greatest possible care, and to have been committed to writing
before it was pronounced; while the fictitious harangue which we now have
in its place, is at all events, quite unlike anything that Cicero would
have produced with elaborate study. The second is a sort of compendium of
the first, and the same ideas and expressions are slavishly repeated;
which implies a barrenness of invention, and sterility of language, that
cannot be supposed in Cicero. Of the third oration he speaks, in his
letters to Atticus, as one of his happiest efforts(343); but nothing can
be more wretched than that which we now have in its stead,—the first
twelve chapters, indeed, being totally irrelevant to the question at
issue.
The oration for Marcellus, the genuineness of which has also been called
in question, is somewhat in a different style from the other harangues of
Cicero; for, though entitled _Pro Marcello_, it is not so much a speech in
his defence, as a panegyric on Cæsar, for having granted the pardon of
Marcellus at the intercession of the Senate. Marcellus had been one of the
most violent opponents of the views of Cæsar. He had recommended in the
Senate, that he should be deprived of the province of Gaul: he had
insulted the magistrates of one of Cæsar’s new-founded colonies; and had
been present at Pharsalia on the side of Pompey. After that battle he
retired to Mitylene, where he was obliged to remain, being one of the few
adversaries to whom the conqueror refused to be reconciled. The Senate,
however, one day when Cæsar was present, with an united voice, and in an
attitude of supplication, having implored his clemency in favour of
Marcellus, and their request having been granted, Cicero, though he had
resolved to preserve eternal silence, being moved by the occasion,
delivered one of the most strained encomiums that has ever been
pronounced.
In the first part he extols the military exploits of Cæsar; but shows,
that his clemency to Marcellus was more glorious than any of his other
actions, as it depended entirely on himself, while fortune and his army
had their share in the events of the war. In the second part he endeavours
to dispel the suspicions which it appears Cæsar still entertained of the
hostile intentions of Marcellus, and takes occasion to assure the Dictator
that his life was most dear and valuable to all, since on it depended the
tranquillity of the state, and the hopes of the restoration of the
commonwealth.
This oration, which Middleton declares to be superior to anything extant
of the kind in all antiquity, and which a celebrated French critic terms,
“Le discours le plus noble, le plus pathetique, et en meme tems le plus
patriotique, que la reconnaissance, l’amitié, et la vertu, puissent
inspirer à une ame elevée et sensible,” continued to be not only of
undisputed authenticity, but one of Cicero’s most admired productions,
till Wolf, in the preface and notes to a new edition of it, printed in
1802, attempted to show, that it was a spurious production, totally
unworthy of the orator whose name it bore, and that it was written by some
declaimer, soon after the Augustan age, not as an imposition upon the
public, but as an exercise,—according to the practice of the rhetoricians,
who were wont to choose, as a theme, some subject on which Cicero had
spoken. In his letters to Atticus, Cicero says, that he had returned
thanks to Cæsar _pluribus verbis_. This Middleton translates a _long
speech_; but Wolf alleges it can only mean a few words, and never can be
interpreted to denote a full oration, such as that which we now possess
for Marcellus. That Cicero did not deliver a long or formal speech, is
evident, he contends, from the testimony of Plutarch, who mentions, in his
life of Cicero, that, a short time afterwards, when the orator was about
to plead for Ligarius, Cæsar asked, how it happened that he had not heard
Cicero speak for so long a period,—which would have been absurd if he had
heard him, a few months before, pleading for Marcellus. Being an
extemporary effusion, called forth by an unforeseen occasion, it could not
(he continues to urge) have been prepared and written beforehand; nor is
it at all probable, that, like many other orations of Cicero, it was
revised and made public after being delivered. The causes which induced
the Roman orators to write out their speeches at leisure, were the
magnitude and public importance of the subject, or the wishes of those in
whose defence they were made, and who were anxious to possess a sort of
record of their vindication. But none of these motives existed in the
present case. The matter was of no importance or difficulty; and we know
that Marcellus, who was a stern republican, was not at all gratified by
the intervention of the senators, or conciliated by the clemency of Cæsar.
As to internal evidence, deduced from the oration, Wolf admits, that there
are interspersed in it some Ciceronian sentences; and how otherwise could
the learned have been so egregiously deceived? but the resemblance is more
in the varnish of the style than in the substance. We have the words
rather than the thoughts of Cicero; and the rounding of his periods,
without their energy and argumentative connection. He adduces, also, many
instances of phrases unusual among the classics, and of conceits which
betray the rhetorician or sophist. His extolling the act of that day on
which Cæsar pardoned Marcellus as higher than all his warlike exploits,
would but have raised a smile on the lips of the Dictator; and the
slighting way in which the cause of the republic and Pompey are mentioned,
is totally different from the manner in which Cicero expressed himself on
these delicate topics, even in presence of Cæsar, in his authentic
orations for Deiotarus and Ligarius.
It is evident, at first view, that many of Wolf’s observations are
hypercritical; and that in his argument concerning the encomiums on Cæsar,
and the overrated importance of his clemency to Marcellus, he does not
make sufficient allowance for Cicero’s habit of exaggeration, and the
momentary enthusiasm produced by one of those transactions,
—— “Quæ, dum geruntur,
Percellunt animos.” ——
Accordingly, in the year following that of Wolf’s edition, Olaus Wormius
published, at Copenhagen, a vindication of the authenticity of this
speech. To the argument adduced from Plutarch, he answers, that some
months had elapsed between the orations for Marcellus and Ligarius, which
might readily be called a long period, by one accustomed to hear Cicero
harangue almost daily in the Senate or Forum. Besides, the phrase of
Plutarch, λεγοντος may mean pleading for some one, which was not the
nature of the speech for Marcellus. As to the motive which led to write
and publish the oration, Cicero, above all men, was delighted with his own
productions, and nothing can be more probable than that he should have
wished to preserve the remembrance of that memorable day, which he calls
in his letters, _diem illam pulcherrimam_. It was natural to send the
oration to Marcellus, in order to hasten his return to Rome, and it must
have been an acceptable thing to Cæsar, thus to record his fearlessness
and benignity. With regard to the manner in which Pompey and the
republican party are talked of, it is evident, from his letters, that
Cicero was disgusted with the political measures of that faction, that he
wholly disapproved of their plan of the campaign, and foreseeing a renewal
of Sylla’s proscriptions in the triumph of the aristocratic power, he did
not exaggerate in so highly extolling the humanity of Cæsar.
The arguments of Wormius were expanded and illustrated by Weiske, _In
Commentario perpetuo et pleno in Orat. Ciceronis pro Marcello_, published
at Leipsic, in 1805(344), while, on the other hand, Spalding, in his _De
Oratione pro Marcello Disputatio_, published in 1808, supported the
opinions of Wolfius.
The controversy was in this state, and was considered as involved in much
doubt and obscurity, when Aug. Jacob, in an academical exercise, printed
at Halle and Berlin, in 1813, and entitled _De Oratione quæ inscribitur
pro Marcello, Ciceroni vel abjudicata vel adjudicata, Quæstio novaque
conjectura_, adopted a middle course. Finding such dissimilarity in the
different passages of the oration, some being most powerful, elegant, and
beautiful, while others were totally futile and frigid, he was led to
believe that part had actually flowed from the lips of Cicero, but that
much had been subsequently interpolated by some rhetorician or declaimer.
He divides his whole treatise into four heads, which comprehend all the
various points agitated on the subject of this oration: 1. The testimony
of different authors tending to prove the authenticity or spuriousness of
the production: 2. The history of the period, with which every genuine
oration must necessarily concur: 3. The genius and manner of Cicero, from
which no one of his orations could be entirely remote: 4. The style and
phraseology, which must be correct and classical. In the prosecution of
his inquiry in these different aspects of the subject, the author
successively reviews the opinions and judgments of his predecessors,
sometimes agreeing with Wolf and his followers, at other times, and more
frequently, with their opposers. He thinks that the much-contested phrase
_pluribus verbis_, may mean a long oration, as Cicero elsewhere talks of
having pleaded for Cluentius, _pluribus verbis_, though the speech in his
defence consists of 58 chapters. Besides, Cicero only says that he had
_returned thanks_ to Cæsar, _pluribus verbis_. Now, the whole speech does
not consist of thanks to Cæsar, being partly occupied in removing the
suspicions which he entertained of Marcellus. With regard to encomiums on
Cæsar, which Spalding has characterized as abject and fulsome, and totally
different from the delicate compliments addressed to him in the oration
for Deiotarus or Ligarius, Jacob reminds his readers that the harangues
could have no resemblance to each other, the latter being pleadings in
behalf of the accused, and the former a professed panegyric. Nor can any
one esteem the eulogies on Cæsar too extravagant for Cicero, when he
remembers the terms in which the orator had formerly spoken of Roscius,
Archias, and Pompey.
Schütz, the late German editor of Cicero, has subscribed to the opinion of
Wolf, and has published the speech for Marcellus, along with the other
four doubtful harangues at the end of the genuine orations.
But supposing that these five contested speeches are spurious, a
sufficient number of genuine orations remain to enable us to distinguish
the character of Cicero’s eloquence. Ambitious from his youth of the
honours attending a fine speaker, he early travelled to Greece, where he
accumulated all the stores of knowledge and rules of art, which could be
gathered from the rhetoricians, historians, and philosophers, of that
intellectual land. While he thus extracted and imbibed the copiousness of
Plato, the sweetness of Isocrates, and force of Demosthenes, he, at the
same time, imbued his mind with a thorough knowledge of the laws,
constitution, antiquities, and literature, of his native country. Nor did
he less study the peculiar temper, the jealousies, and enmities of the
Roman people, both as a nation and as individuals, without a knowledge of
which, his eloquence would have been unavailing in the Forum or Comitia,
where so much was decided by favouritism and cabal. By these means he
ruled the passions and deliberations of his countrymen with almost
resistless sway—upheld the power of the Senate—stayed the progress of
tyranny—drove the audacious Catiline from Rome—directed the feelings of
the state in favour of Pompey—shook the strong mind of Cæsar—and kindled a
flame by which Antony had been nearly consumed. But the main secret of his
success lay in the warmth and intensity of his feelings. His heart swelled
with patriotism, and was dilated with the most magnificent conceptions of
the glory of Rome. Though it throbbed with the fondest anticipations of
posthumous fame, the momentary acclaim of a multitude was a chord to which
it daily and most readily vibrated; while, at the same time, his high
conceptions of oratory counteracted the bad effect which this exuberant
vanity might otherwise have produced. Thus, when two speakers were
employed in the same cause, though Cicero was the junior, to him was
assigned the peroration, in which he surpassed all his contemporaries; and
he obtained this pre-eminence not so much on account of his superior
genius or knowledge of law, as because he was more moved and affected
himself, without which he would never have moved or affected his judges.
With such natural endowments, and such acquirements, he early took his
place as the refuge and support of his fellow-citizens in the Forum, as
the arbiter of the deliberations of the Senate, and as the most powerful
defender from the Rostrum of the political interests of the commonwealth.
Cicero and Demosthenes have been frequently compared. Suidas says, that
one Cicilus, a native of Sicily, whose works are now lost, was the first
to institute the parallel, and they have been subsequently compared, in
due form, by Plutarch and Quintilian, and, (as far as relates to
sublimity,) by Longinus, among the ancients; and among the moderns, by
Herder, in his _Philosophical History of Man_, and by Jenisch, in a German
work devoted to the subject(345). Rapin, and all other French critics,
with the exception of Fenelon, give the preference to Cicero.
From what has already been said, it is sufficiently evident that Cicero
had not to contend with any of those obstructions from nature which
Demosthenes encountered; and his youth, in place of being spent like that
of the Greek orator, in remedying and supplying defects, was unceasingly
employed in pursuit of the improvements auxiliary to his art. But if
Cicero derived superior advantages from nature, Demosthenes possessed
other advantages, in the more advanced progress of his country in
refinement and letters, at the era in which he appeared. Greek literature
had reached its full perfection before the birth of Demosthenes, but
Cicero was, in a great measure, himself the creator of the literature of
Rome, and no prose writer of eminence had yet existed, after whom he could
model his phraseology. In other external circumstances, they were placed
in situations not very dissimilar. But Cicero had a wider, and perhaps
more beautiful field, in which to expatiate and to exercise his powers.
The wide extent of the Roman empire, the striking vices and virtues of its
citizens, the memorable events of its history, supplied an endless variety
of great and interesting topics; whereas many of the orations of
Demosthenes are on subjects unworthy of his talents. Their genius and
capacity were in many respects the same. Their eloquence was of that great
and comprehensive kind, which dignifies every subject, and gives it all
the force and beauty it is capable of receiving. “I judge Cicero and
Demosthenes,” says Quintilian, “to be alike in most of the great qualities
they possessed. They were alike in design, in the manner of dividing their
subject, and preparing the minds of the audience; in short, in every thing
belonging to invention.” But while there was much similarity in their
talents, there was a wide difference in their tempers and characters.
Demosthenes was of an austere, harsh, melancholy disposition, obstinate
and resolute in all his undertakings: Cicero was of a lively, flexible,
and wavering humour. This seems the chief cause of the difference in their
eloquence; but the contrasts are too obvious, and have been too often
exhibited to be here displayed. No person wishes to be told, for the
twentieth time, that Demosthenes assumes a higher tone, and is more
serious, vehement, and impressive, than Cicero; while Cicero is more
insinuating, graceful, and affecting: That the Greek orator struck on the
soul by the force of his argument, and ardour of his expressions; while
the Roman made his way to the heart, alternately moving and allaying the
passions of his hearers, by all the arts of rhetoric, and by conforming to
their opinions and prejudices.
Cicero was not only a great orator, but has also left the fullest
instructions and the most complete historical details on the art which he
so gloriously practised. His precepts are contained in the dialogue _De
Oratore_ and the _Orator_; while the history of Roman eloquence is
comprehended in the dialogue entitled, _Brutus, sive De Claris
Oratoribus_.
In his youth, Cicero had written and published some undigested
observations on the subject of eloquence; but considering these as
unworthy of the character and experience he afterwards acquired, he
applied himself to write a treatise on the art which might be more
commensurate to his matured talents. He himself mentions several Sicilians
and Greeks, who had written on oratory(346). But the models he chiefly
followed, were Aristotle, in his books of rhetoric(347); and Isocrates,
the whole of whose theories and precepts he has comprehended in his
rhetorical works. He has thrown his ideas on the subject into the form of
dialogue or conference, a species of composition, which, however much
employed by the Greeks, had not hitherto been attempted at Rome. This mode
of writing presented many advantages: By adopting it he avoided that
dogmatical air, which a treatise from him on such a subject would
necessarily have worn, and was enabled to instruct without dictating
rules. Dialogue, too, relieved monotony of style, by affording opportunity
of varying it according to the characters of the different speakers—it
tempered the austerity of precept by the cheerfulness of conversation, and
developed each opinion with the vivacity and fulness naturally employed in
the oral discussion of a favourite topic. Add to this, the facility which
it presented of paying an acceptable compliment to the friends who were
introduced as interlocutors, and its susceptibility of agreeable
description of the scenes in which the persons of the dialogue were
placed—a species of embellishment, for which ample scope was afforded by
the numerous villas of Cicero, situated in the most beautiful spots of
Italy, and in every variety of landscape, from the Alban heights to the
shady banks of the Liris, or glittering shore of Baiæ. As a method of
communicating knowledge, however, (except in discussions which are
extremely simple, and susceptible of much delineation of character,) the
mode of dialogue is, in many respects, extremely inconvenient. “By the
interruptions which are given,” says the author of the life of Tasso, in
his remarks on the dialogues of that poet,—“By the interruptions which are
given, if a dialogue be at all dramatic—by the preparations and
transitions, order and precision must, in a great degree, be sacrificed.
In reasoning, as much brevity must be used as is consistent with
perspicuity; but in dialogue, so much verbiage must be employed, that the
scope of the argument is generally lost. The replies, too, to the
objections of the opponent, seem rather arguments _ad hominem_, than
possessed of the value of abstract truth; so that the reader is perplexed
and bewildered, and concludes the inquiry, beholding one of the characters
puzzled, indeed, and perhaps subdued, but not at all satisfied that the
battle might not have been better fought, and more victorious arguments
adduced.”