brother Quintus, who was some years younger than the orator. He attained
the dignity of Prætor in 693, and afterwards held a government in Asia as
Pro-prætor for four years. He returned to Rome at the moment in which his
brother was driven into exile; and for some time afterwards, was chiefly
employed in exerting himself to obtain his recall. As Cæsar’s lieutenant,
he served with credit in Gaul; but espoused the republican party at the
breaking out of the civil war. He was pardoned, however, by Cæsar, and was
slain by the blood-thirsty triumvirate established after his death.
Quintus was a man of warm affections, and of some military talents, but of
impatient and irritable temper. The orator had evidently a high opinion of
his qualifications, and has introduced him as an interlocutor in the
dialogues _De Legibus_ and _De Divinatione_.
The correspondence with Quintus is divided into three books. The first
letter in the collection, is one of the noblest productions of the kind
which has ever been penned. It is addressed to Quintus on occasion of his
government in Asia being prolonged for a third year. Availing himself of
the rights of an elder brother, as well as of the authority derived from
his superior dignity and talents, Cicero counsels and exhorts his brother
concerning the due administration of his province, particularly with
regard to the choice of his subordinate officers, and the degree of trust
to be reposed in them. He earnestly reproves him, but with much fraternal
tenderness and affection, for his proneness to resentment; and he
concludes with a beautiful exhortation, to strive in all respects to merit
the praise of his contemporaries, and bequeath to posterity an untainted
name. The second letter transmits to Quintus an account of some complaints
which Cicero had heard in Rome, with regard to his brother’s conduct in
the administration of his government. The two following epistles, which
conclude the first book, are written from Thessalonica, in the
commencement of his exile. The first of these, beginning, “Mi frater, mi
frater, mi frater,” written in a sad state of agitation and depression, is
a fine specimen of eloquent and pathetic expostulation. It is full of
strong and almost unbounded expressions of attachment, and exhibits much
of that exaggeration, both in sentiment and language, in which Cicero
indulged so frequently in his orations.
The second and third books of letters, addressed to his brother in
Sardinia and Gaul, give an interesting account of the state of public
affairs during the years 697, 698, and part of 699, as also of his
subsisting domestic relations during the same period.
Along with his letters to Quintus, there is usually printed an epistle or
memoir, which Quintus addressed to his brother when he stood candidate for
the consulship, and which is entitled _De Petitione Consulatûs_. It gives
advice with regard to the measures he should pursue to attain his object,
particularly inculcating the best means to gain private friends, and
acquire general popularity. But though professedly drawn up merely for the
use of his brother, it appears to have been intended by the author as a
guide, or manual, for all who might be placed in similar circumstances. It
is written with considerable elegance, and perfect purity of style, and
forms an important document for the history of the Roman republic, as it
affords us a clearer insight than we can derive from any other work now
extant, into the intrigues resorted to by the heads of parties to gain the
suffrages of the people.
The authenticity of the _Correspondence between Cicero and Brutus_, has
formed the subject of a literary controversy, perhaps the most celebrated
which has ever occurred, except that concerning the Epistles of Phalaris.
It is quite ascertained, that a correspondence had been carried on between
Cicero and Brutus; and a collection of the letters which had passed
between them, extending to not less than eight books, existed for several
ages after Cicero’s death. They were all written during the period which
elapsed from the assassination of Cæsar to the tragical end of the orator,
which comprehended about a year and a half; and it appears from the
fragments of them, cited by Plutarch and the grammarians, that they
chiefly related to the memorable political events of that important
interval, and to a literary controversy which subsisted between Cicero and
Brutus, with regard to the attributes of perfect eloquence(488).
This collection is mentioned, and passages cited from it, by Quintilian,
Plutarch, and even Nonius Marcellus(489), who lived about the year 400.
After this, all trace of it is lost, till, in the fourteenth century, we
find some of the disputed letters in the possession of Petrarch; and it
has been conjectured that Petrarch himself was the discoverer of
them(490). Eighteen of these letters, which were all that were then known,
were published at Rome in 1470. Many years afterwards, five more, but in a
mutilated state, were found in Germany, and these, in all subsequent
editions, were printed along with the original eighteen. All the letters
relate to the situation of public affairs after the death of Cæsar. They
contain a good deal of recrimination: Brutus blaming Cicero for his
dangerous elevation of Octavius, and conferring honours on him too
profusely; Cicero censuring Brutus for having spared the life of Antony at
the time of the conspiracy.
Now the point in dispute is, If these twenty-three letters be parts of the
original eight books of the genuine correspondence of Cicero and Brutus,
so often cited by Plutarch, Quintilian, and Nonius; or if they be the
forgery of some monk or sophist, during the dark ages which elapsed
between the time of Nonius and Petrarch.
From their very first appearance, the eighteen letters, which had come
into the possession of Petrarch, passed among the learned for original
epistles of Cicero and Brutus; and the five discovered in Germany, though
doubted for a while, were soon received into the same rank with the
others. Erasmus seems to have been the first who suspected the whole to be
the declamatory composition of some rhetorician or sophist. They
continued, however, to be cited by every other commentator, critic, and
historian, as the unquestionable remains of the great author to whom they
were ascribed. Middleton, in particular, in his Life of Cicero, freely
referred to them as biographical authorities, along with the Familiar
Epistles, and those to Atticus.
Matters were in this situation, when Tunstall, in 1741, addressed a Latin
Epistle to Middleton, written professedly to introduce a proposal for a
new edition of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, and his brother Quintus. In
the first part of this epistle, he attempted to retrieve the original
readings of these authentic treasures of Ciceronian history, and asserted
their genuine sense against the corruptions or false interpretations of
them, which had led to many erroneous conclusions in Middleton’s Life of
Cicero. In the second part, he denies the authenticity of the whole
correspondence between Cicero and Brutus, which he alleges is the
production of some sophist or scholiast of the middle ages, who probably
wrote them, according to the practice of those days, as an exercise for
his rhetorical talents, and with the view either of drawing up a
supplement to the Epistles to Atticus, so as to carry on the history from
the period at which they terminate, or to vindicate Cicero’s character
from the imputation of rashness, in throwing too much power into the hands
of Octavius. Tunstall farther thinks, that the leading subject of these
letters was suggested to the sophist by a passage in Plutarch’s Life of
Brutus, where it is mentioned that Brutus had remonstrated with Cicero,
and complained of him to their mutual friend Atticus, for the court he
paid to Octavius, which showed that his aim was not to procure liberty for
his country, but a kind master to himself.
Middleton soon afterwards published an English translation of the whole
correspondence between Brutus and Cicero, with notes; and, in a prefatory
dissertation, written with considerable and unprovoked asperity, he
attempted to vindicate the authority of the epistles, and to answer the
objections of Tunstall. His adversary replied in an immense English work,
of more than 400 pages, entitled, “Observations on the present Collection
of Epistles between Cicero and Brutus, representing several evident marks
of Forgery in those Epistles, in answer to the late pretences of Dr
Middleton: 1744.”
It is difficult to give any sketch of the argumentative part of this famed
controversy, as the merit of all such discussion consists in the extreme
accuracy and minuteness of investigation. The main scope, however, of the
objections, is thus generally exhibited by Tunstall in his Latin epistle.
He declares, “that as he came fresh from the perusal of Cicero’s genuine
letters, he perceived that those to Brutus wanted the beauty and
copiousness of the Ciceronian diction—that the epistles, both of Brutus
and Cicero, were drawn in the same style and manner of colouring, and
trimmed up with so much art and diligence, that they seemed to proceed
rather from scholastic subtlety and meditation, than from the genuine acts
and affairs of life—that when, both before and after the date of the
letters to Atticus, several epistles had been addressed from Brutus to
Cicero, and from Cicero to Brutus, it was strange that those which
preceded the letters to Atticus should have been lost, and those alone
remain which appear to have been industriously designed for an epilogue to
the Epistles to Atticus—that such reasons induced him to suspect, but on
looking farther into the letters themselves, he discovered many
absurdities in the sense, many improprieties in the language, many
remarkable predictions of future events, both on Brutus’s side and
Cicero’s; but what was most material, a great number of historical facts,
not only quite new, but wholly altered, and some even apparently false,
and contradictory to the genuine works of Cicero.”
Such was the state of the controversy, as it stood between Tunstall and
Middleton. In 1745, the year after Middleton had published his translation
of the epistles, Markland engaged in this literary contest, and came
forward in opposition to the authenticity of the letters, by publishing
his “Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero,
in a Letter to a Friend.” The arguments of Tunstall had chiefly turned on
historical inconsistencies—those of Markland principally hinge on phrases
to be found in the letters, which are not Ciceronian, or even of pure
Latinity.
I must here close this long account of the writings of Cicero—of Cicero,
distinguished as the Consul of the republic—as the father and saviour of
his country—but not less distinguished as the orator, philosopher, and
moralist of Rome.—“Salve primus omnium Parens Patriæ appellate,—primus in
togâ triumphum linguæque lauream merite, et facundiæ, Latiarumque
Literarum parens: atque (ut Dictator Cæsar, hostis quondam tuus, de te
scripsit,) omnium triumphorum lauream adopte majorem; quanto plus est,
ingenii Romani terminos in tantum promovisse, quàm imperii(491).”
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
In the former volume of this work, I had traced the progress of the
language of the Romans, and treated of the different poets by whom it was
adorned till the era of Augustus. I had chiefly occasion, in the course of
that part of my inquiry, to compare the poetical productions of Rome with
those of Greece, and to show that the Latin poetry of this early age,
being modelled on that of Athens or Alexandria, had acquired an air of
preparation and authorship, and appeared to have been written to obtain
the cold approbation of the public, or smiles of a Patrician patron, while
the native lines of the Grecian bards seem to be poured fourth like the
Delphic oracles, because the god which inspired them was too great to be
contained within the bosom. In the prose compositions of the Romans, which
have been considered in the present volume, though the _exemplaria Græca_
were still the models of style, we have not observed the same servility of
imitation. The agricultural writers of Latium treated of a subject in a
great measure foreign to the maritime feelings and commercial occupations
of the Greeks; while, in the Latin historians, orators, and philosophers,
we listen to a tone of practical utility, derived from the familiar
acquaintance which their authors exercised with the affairs of life. The
old Latin historians were for the most part themselves engaged in the
affairs they related, and almost every oration of Cicero was actually
delivered in the Senate or Forum. Among the Romans, philosophy was not, as
it had been with many of the Greeks, an academic dream or speculation,
which was substituted for the realities of life. In Rome, philosophic
inquiries were chiefly prosecuted as supplying arguments and illustrations
to the patron for his conflicts in the Forum, and as guiding the citizen
in the discharge of his duties to the commonwealth. Those studies, in
short, alone were valued, which, as it is beautifully expressed by Cicero,
in the person of Lælius—“Efficiant ut usui civitati simus: id enim esse
præclarissimum sapientiæ munus, maximumque virtutis documentum puto.”
APPENDIX.
“Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage:
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.”
POPE’S _Epistle to Addison_.
APPENDIX.
In order to be satisfied as to the authenticity of the works commonly
called Classical, it is important to ascertain in what manner they were
given to the public by their respective authors—to trace how they were
preserved during the long night of the dark ages—and to point out by whom
their perishing remains were first discovered at the return of light. Nor
will it be uninteresting to follow up this sketch by an enumeration of the
principal Editions of the Classics mentioned in the preceding pages, and
of the best Translations of them which, from time to time, have appeared
in the Italian, French, and English languages.
The manuscripts of the Latin Classics, during the existence of the Roman
republic and empire, may be divided into what have been called _notata_
and _perscripta_. The former were those written by the author himself, or
his learned slaves, in contractions or signs which stood for syllables and
words; the latter, those which were fully transcribed in the ordinary
characters by the _librarius_, who was employed by the _bibliopolæ_, or
booksellers, to prepare the productions of an author for public sale.
The books written in the hand of the authors were probably not very
legible, at least if we may judge of others by Cicero. His brother Quintus
had complained that he could not read his letters, and Cicero says in
reply: “Scribis te meas literas superiores vix legere potuisse; hoc facio
semper ut quicumque calamus in manus meas venerit, eo sic utar tamquam
bono(492).”
But the works,—at least the prose works,—of the Romans were seldom written
out in the hand of the author, and were generally dictated by him to some
slave or freedman instructed in penmanship. It is well known that many of
the orations of Cicero, Cato, and their great rhetorical contemporaries,
were taken down by short-hand writers stationed in the Senate or Forum.
But even the works most carefully prepared in the closet were _notata_, in
a similar manner, by slaves and freedmen. There was no part of his learned
compositions on which Cicero took more pains, or about which his thoughts
were more occupied(493), than the dedication of the _Academica_ to Varro,
and even this he _dictated_ to his slave Spintharus, though he did so
slowly, word by word, and not in whole sentences to Tiro, as was his
practice in his other productions. “Male mihi sit,” says he in a letter to
Atticus, “si umquam quidquam tam enitar. Ergo ne Tironi quidem dictavi,
qui totas _periochas_ persequi solet, sed Spintharo syllabatim(494).”
This practice of authors dictating their works created a necessity, or at
least a conveniency, of writing with rapidity, and of employing
contractions, or conventional marks, in almost every word.
Accordingly, from the earliest periods of Roman literature, words were
contracted, or were signified by notes, which sometimes stood for more
than one letter, sometimes for syllables, and at other times for whole
words. Funccius, who maintains that Adam was the first short-hand
writer(495), has asserted, with more truth, that the Romans contracted
their words from the remotest ages of the republic, and to a greater
degree than any other ancient nation. Sometimes the abbreviations
consisted merely in writing the initial letter instead of the whole word.
Thus P. C. stood for Patres Conscripti; C. R., for Civis Romanus; S. N.
L., for Socii Nominis Latini. This sort of contraction being employed in
words frequently recurring, and which in one sense might be termed public,
and being also universally recognized, would rarely produce any
misapprehension or mistake. But frequently the abbreviations were much
more complex, and the leading letters of words in less common use being
_notata_, the contractions became of much more difficult and dubious
interpretation. For example, _Meit._ expressed meminit; _Acus._, Acerbus;
_Quit._, quærit; _Ror._, Rhetor.
For the sake, however, of yet greater expedition in writing, and perhaps,
in some few instances for the purpose of secrecy, signs or marks, which
could be currently made with one dash or scratch with the _stylus_, and
without lifting or turning it, came to be employed, instead of those
letters which were themselves the abbreviations of words. Some writers
have supposed that these signs were entirely arbitrary(496), whilst others
have, with more probability, maintained that their forms can be resolved
or analysed into the figures, or parts of the figures, of the letters
themselves which they were intended to represent, though they have often
departed far from the shape of the original characters(497). Ennius is
said to have invented 1100 of these signs(498), which he no doubt employed
in his multifarious compositions. Others came into gradual use in the
manual operation of writing with rapidity to dictation. Tiro, the
favourite freedman of Cicero, greatly increased the number, and brought
this sort of tachygraphy to its greatest perfection among the Romans. In
consequence of this fashion of authors dictating their works, expedition
came to be considered of the utmost importance; it was regarded as the
chief accomplishment of an amanuensis; and he alone was considered as
perfect in his art, whose pen could equal the rapidity of utterance:
Hic et scriptor erit felix, cui litera verbum est,
Quique notis linguam superet, cursumque loquentis,
Excipiens longas per nova compendia voces(499).
These lines were written by a poet of the age of Augustus, and it appears
from Martial(500), Ausonius(501), and Prudentius, that this system of
dictation by the author, and rapid notation by his amanuensis, continued
in practice during the later ages of the empire.
Such was the mode in which most of the writings of the ancients came
originally from their authors, and were delivered to those friends who
were desirous to possess copies, or to the booksellers to be _perscripta_,
or transcribed, for publication.
There exists sufficient proof of the high estimation in which accurate
transcriptions of the works of their own writers were held by the Romans.
The correctness of printing, however, could not be expected. In the
original notation, some mistakes might probably be made from carelessness
of pronunciation in the author who dictated, and haste in his amanuensis;
but the great source of errors in MSS. was the blunders made by the
_librarius_ in copying out from the noted exemplar. There was the greatest
ambiguity and doubt in the interpretation, both of words contracted in the
ordinary character and in the artificial signs. Sometimes the same word
was expressed by different letters; thus MR. MT. MTR. all expressed
_Mater_. Sometimes, on the other hand, the same set of letters expressed
different words; for instance, ACT. signified _Actor_, _Auctoritas_, and
_Hactenus_. The collocation of the letters was often inverted from the
order in which they stood in the word when fully expressed; and frequently
one letter had not merely its own power, but that of several others. Thus
AMO. signified _animo_, because M had there not only its own force, but,
as its shape in some measure announces, the power of _ni_ also. Matters
were still worse, when not only abbreviations, but signs had been resorted
to. These were variously employed by different writers, and were also
differently interpreted by transcribers. Some of these signs were
extremely similar in form: it was scarcely possible to discriminate the
sign which denoted the syllable _ab_ from that which expressed the
syllable _um_; and the signs of the syllables _is_ and _it_ were nearly
undistinguishable; while _ad_ and _at_ were precisely the same. The mark
which expressed the word _talis_, being a little more sloped or inclined,
expressed _qualis_; and the difference in the Tironian signs which stood
for the complete words _Ager_ and _Amicus_, was scarcely perceptible(502).
The ancient Latin writers also employed a number of marks to denote the
accents of words, and the quantities of syllables. The oldest writers, as
Livius Andronicus and Nævius, always placed two vowels when a syllable was
to be pronounced long(503). Attius, the great tragic author, was the first
to relinquish this usage; and after his time, in conformity to the new
practice which he had adopted, a certain mark was placed over the long
vowels. When this custom also (which is stigmatised by Quintilian as
_ineptissimus_(504)) fell into disuse, the mark was frequently
misunderstood, and Funccius has given several examples of corruptions and
false readings from the mistake of transcribers, who supposed that it was
intended to express an _m_, an _n_, or other letters(505).
In addition to all this, little attention was paid to the separation of
words and sentences, and the art of punctuation was but imperfectly
understood.
Finally, and above all, the orthography of Latin was extremely fluctuating
and uncertain. We have seen, in an early part of this work, how it varied
in the time of the republic, and it, in fact, never became fixed. Mai
talks repeatedly, in his preface, of the strange inconsistencies of
spelling in the Codex, which contained Cicero’s work _De Republica_; and
Cassiodorus, who of all his contemporaries chiefly cultivated literature
during the reign of the barbarians in Italy, often regrets that the
ancient Romans had left their orthography encumbered with the utmost
difficulties. “Orthographia,” says he, “apud Græcos plerumque sine
ambiguitate probatur expressa; inter Latinos vero sub ardua difficultate
relicta monstratur; unde etiam modo studium magnum lectoris inquiret.”
In consequence of this dictation to short-hand, and this uncertain
orthography, we find that the corruption of the classics had begun at a
very early period. The ninth Satire of Lucilius was directed against the
ridiculous blunders of transcribers, and contained rules for greater
correctness. Cicero, in his letters to his brother Quintus, bitterly
complains of the errors of copyists,—“De Latinis vero, quo me vertam,
nescio; ita mendose et scribuntur, et veneunt(506).” Strabo says, that in
his time booksellers employed ignorant transcribers, who neglected to
compare what they wrote with the exemplar; which, he adds, has occurred in
many works, copied for the purpose of being sold, both at Rome and
Alexandria(507). Martial, too, thus cautions his reader against the
mistakes occasioned by the inaccuracy and haste of the venders of books,
and the transcribers whom they employed:
“Si qua videbuntur chartis tibi, lector, in istis,
Sive obscura nimis, sive Latina parum;
Non meus est error: nocuit Librarius illis,
Dum properat versus annumerare tibi(508).”