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THE LETTERS OF
CICERO
THE WHOLE EXTANT CORRESPONDENCE
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
BY
EVELYN S. SHUCKBURGH, M.A.
LATE FELLOW OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF A TRANSLATION OF POLYBIUS, A HISTORY OF ROME, ETC
IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOL. I. B.C. 68-52
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1899
CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
The object of this book is to give the English-speaking public, in a
convenient form, as faithful and readable a copy as the translator was
capable of making of a document unique in the literature of antiquity.
Whether we regard the correspondence of Cicero from the point of view of
the biographer and observer of character, the historian, or the lover of
_belles lettres_, it is equally worthy of study. It seems needless to
dwell on the immense historical importance of letters written by
prominent actors in one of the decisive periods of the world's history,
when the great Republic, that had spread its victorious arms, and its
law and discipline, over the greater part of the known world, was in the
throes of its change from the old order to the new. If we would
understand--as who would not?--the motives and aims of the men who acted
in that great drama, there is nowhere that we can go with better hope of
doing so than to these letters. To the student of character also the
personality of Cicero must always have a great fascination. Statesman,
orator, man of letters, father, husband, brother, and friend--in all
these capacities he comes before us with singular vividness. In every
one of them he will doubtless rouse different feelings in different
minds. But though he will still, as he did in his lifetime, excite
vehement disapproval as well as strong admiration, he will never, I
think, appear to anyone dull or uninteresting. In the greater part of
his letters he is not posing or assuming a character; he lets us only
too frankly into his weaknesses and his vanities, as well as his
generous admirations and warm affections. Whether he is weeping, or
angry, or exulting, or eager for compliments, or vain of his abilities
and achievements, he is not a phantasm or a farceur, but a human being
with fiercely-beating pulse and hot blood.
The difficulty of the task which I have been bold enough to undertake
is well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse,
the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of
antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has
no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate.
So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder
of Latin style--his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and
trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in
such common words as _officium_, _fides_, _studium_, _humanitas_,
_dignitas_, and the like--all these the translator has to take in the
day's work. Finally, there are the hard nuts to crack--often very
hard--presented by corruption of the text. Such problems, though,
relatively with other ancient works, not perhaps excessively numerous,
are yet sufficiently numerous and sufficiently difficult. But besides
these, which are the natural incidents of such work, there is the
special difficulty that the letters are frequently answers to others
which we do not possess, and which alone can fully explain the meaning
of sentences which must remain enigmatical to us; or they refer to
matters by a word or phrase of almost telegraphic abruptness, with which
the recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we are reduced to
guessing. When, however, all such insoluble difficulties are allowed
for, which after all in absolute bulk are very small, there should (if
the present version is at all worthy) be enough that is perfectly plain
to everyone, and generally of the highest interest.
I had no intention of writing a commentary on the language of Cicero or
his correspondents, and my translation must, as a rule, be taken for the
only expression of my judgment formed after reading and weighing the
arguments of commentators. I meant only to add notes on persons and
things enabling the reader to use the letters for biographical, social,
and historical study. I should have liked to dedicate it by the words
_Boswellianus Boswellianis_. But I found that the difficulties of the
text compelled me to add a word here and there as to the solution of
them which I preferred, or had myself to suggest. Such notes are very
rare, and rather meant as danger signals than critical discussions. I
have followed in the main the chronological arrangement of the letters
adopted by Messrs. Tyrrell and Purser, to whose great work my
obligations are extremely numerous. If, as is the case, I have not
always been able to accept their conclusions, it is none the less true
that their brilliant labours have infinitely lightened my task, and
perhaps made it even possible.
I ought to mention that I have adopted the English mode of dating,
writing, for instance, July and August, though Cicero repudiated the
former and, of course, never heard of the latter. I have also refrained
generally from attempting to represent his Greek by French, partly
because I fear I should have done it ill, and partly because it is not
in him as in an English writer who lards his sentences with French. It
is almost confined to the letters to Atticus, to whom Greek was a second
mother-tongue, and often, I think, is a quotation from him. It does not
really represent Cicero's ordinary style.
One excuse for my boldness in venturing upon the work is the fact that
no complete translation exists in English. Mr. Jeans has published a
brilliant translation of a selection of some of the best of the letters.
But still it is not the whole. The last century versions of Melmoth and
Herbenden have many excellences; but they are not complete either (the
letters to Brutus, for instance, having been discovered since), and
need, at any rate, a somewhat searching revision. Besides, with many
graces of style, they may perhaps prove less attractive now than they
did a century ago. At any rate it is done, and I must bear with what
equanimity nature has given me the strictures of critics, who doubtless
will find, if so minded, many blemishes to set off against, and perhaps
outweigh, any merit my translation may have. I must bear that as well as
I may. But no critic can take from me the days and nights spent in close
communion with Rome's greatest intellect, or the endless pleasure of
solving the perpetually recurring problem of how best to transfer a
great writer's thoughts and feelings from one language to another:
"Cæsar in hoc potuit iuris habere nihil."
LETTERS IN VOLUME I
Number
in this
Translation
Fam. I. 1 94
" 2 95
" 3 96
" 4 97
" 5 98
" 5b 102
" 6 103
" 7 113
" 8 118
" 9 152
" 10 161
Fam. II. 1 165
" 2 167
" 3 168
" 4 174
" 5 175
" 6 176
Fam. III. 1 180
Fam. V. 1 13
" 2 14
" 3 112
" 4 88
" 5 17
" 6 15
" 7 12
" 8 130
" 12 108
" 17 178
" 18 179
Fam. VII. 1 126
" 2 181
" 5 133
" 6 135
" 7 136
" 8 139
" 9 144
" 10 160
" 11 166
" 12 169
" 13 170
" 14 171
" 15 173
" 16 156
" 17 145
" 18 172
" 23 125
" 26 93
Fam. XIII. 6a 114
" 6b 115
" 40 128
" 41 54
" 42 53
" 49 162
" 60 163
" 73 164
" 74 127
" 75 177
Fam. XIV. 1 81
" 2 78
" 3 83
" 4 61
Fam. XVI. 10 p. 386
" 13 p. 384
" 14 p. 385
" 16 p. 387
Q. Fr. I. 1 29
" 2 52
" 3 65
" 4 71
Q. Fr. II. 1 92
" 2 99
" 3 101
" 4 104
" 5 105
" 6 116
" 7 119
" 8 122
" 9 131
" 10 132
" 11 134
" 12 138
" 13 140
" 14 141
" 15 146
Q. Fr III. 1 147
" 2 149
" 3 150
" 4 151
" 5} 154
" 6}
" 7 155
" 8 158
" 9 159
Petit. Cons. p. 367
Att. I. 1 10
" 2 11
" 3 8
" 4 9
" 5 1
" 6 2
" 7 3
" 8 5
" 9 4
" 10 6
" 11 7
" 12 16
" 13 18
" 14 19
" 15 20
" 16 21
" 17 22
" 18 23
" 19 24
" 20 25
Att. II. 1 26
" 2 27
" 3 28
" 4 30
" 5 31
" 6 32
" 7 33
" 8 34
" 9 35
" 10 37
" 11 38
" 12 36
" 13 39
" 14 40
" 15 41
" 16 42
" 17 43
" 18 44
" 19 45
" 20 46
" 21 47
" 22 48
" 23 49
" 24 50
" 25 51
Att. III. 1 58
" 2 56
" 3 55
" 4 57
" 5 59
" 6 60
" 7 62
" 8 63
" 9 64
" 10 66
" 11 67
" 12 68
" 13 70
" 14 69
" 15 72
" 16 73
" 17 74
" 18 75
" 19 76
" 20 77
" 21 79
" 22 80
" 23 82
" 24 84
" 25 85
" 26 86
" 27 87
Att. IV. 1 89
" 2 90
" 3 91
" 4a 100
" 4b 106
" 5 107
" 6 109
" 7 110
" 8a 111
" 8b 117
" 9 121
" 10 120
" 11 123
" 12 124
" 13 129
" 14 137
" 15 143
" 16} 142, 148, 157
" 17}
" 18 153
INTRODUCTION
[Sidenote: Ground covered by the Correspondence.]
The correspondence of Cicero, as preserved for us by his freedman Tiro,
does not open till the thirty-ninth year of the orator's life, and is so
strictly contemporary, dealing so exclusively with the affairs of the
moment, that little light is thrown by it on his previous life. It does
not become continuous till the year after his consulship (B.C. 62).
There are no letters in the year of the consulship itself or the year of
his canvass for the consulship (B.C. 64 and 63). It begins in B.C. 68,
and between that date and B.C. 65 there are only eleven letters. We
have, therefore, nothing exactly contemporaneous to help us to form a
judgment on the great event which coloured so much of his after life,
the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy and the execution of the
conspirators, in the last month of his consulship. But setting aside the
first eleven letters, we have from that time forward a correspondence
illustrating, as no other document in antiquity does, the hopes and
fears, the doubts and difficulties, of a keen politician living through
the most momentous period of Roman history, the period of the fall of
the Republic, beginning with Pompey's return from the East in B.C. 62,
and ending with the appearance of the young Octavian on the scene and
the formation of the Triumvirate in B.C. 43, of whose victims Cicero was
one of the first and most illustrious. It is by his conduct and speeches
during this period that Cicero's claim to be a statesman and a patriot
must be judged, and by his writings in the same period that his place in
literature must chiefly be assigned. Before B.C. 63 his biography, if we
had it, would be that of the advocate and the official, no doubt with
certain general views on political questions as they occurred, but not
yet committed definitely to a party, or inclined to regard politics as
the absorbing interest of his life. In his early youth his hero had
been his fellow townsman Marius, in whose honour he composed a poem
about the time of taking the _toga virilis_. But it was as the
successful general, and before the days of the civil war. And though he
served in the army of Sulla in the Marsic war (B.C. 90-88), he always
regarded his cruelties with horror, however much he may have afterwards
approved of certain points of his legislation. It was not till the
consulship that he became definitely a party man[1] and an Optimate, and
even then his feelings were much distracted by a strong
belief--strangely ill-founded--that Pompey would be as successful as a
statesman as he had been fortunate as a general. For him he had also a
warm personal attachment, which never seems to have wholly died out, in
spite of much petulance of language. This partly accounts for the
surrender of B.C. 56, and his acquiescence in the policy of the
triumvirs, an acquiescence never hearty indeed, as far as Cæsar and
Crassus were concerned, but in which he consoled himself with the belief
that nothing very unconstitutional could be done while Pompey was
practically directing affairs at Rome.
[Sidenote: The various nature of the Correspondence.]
It is through this period of political change and excitement that the
correspondence will take us, with some important gaps indeed, but on the
whole fullest when it is most wanted to shew the feelings and motives
guiding the active politicians of the day, or at any rate the effect
which events had upon one eager and acute intellect and sensitive heart.
One charm of the correspondence is variety. There is almost every sort
of letter. Those to Atticus are unstudied, spontaneous, and reflect the
varying moods of the writer. At times of special excitement they follow
each other day by day, and sometimes more than once in the same day; and
the writer seems to conceal nothing, however much it might expose him to
ridicule, and to the charge of fickleness, weakness, or even cowardice.
Those addressed to other friends are sometimes familiar and playful,
sometimes angry and indignant. Some of them are careful and elaborate
state papers, others mere formal introductions and recommendations.
Business, literature, and philosophy all have their share in them; and,
what is so rare in ancient literature, the family relations of the
writer, his dealings with wife, son, and daughter, brother and nephew,
and sons-in-law, are all depicted for us, often with the utmost
frankness. After reading them we seem to know Cicero the man, as well as
Cicero the statesman and orator. The eleven letters which precede the
consulship are happily, from this point of view, addressed to Atticus.
For it was to Atticus that he wrote with the least concealment, and with
the confidence that any detail, however small, which concerned himself
would be interesting to his correspondent. It is well, therefore, that,
though we thus come into his life when it was more than half over, we
should at once hear his genuine sentiments on whatever subjects he may
be speaking. Besides his own, we have about ninety letters to Cicero
from some of the chief men of the day--Pompey, Cæsar, Cato, Brutus,
Antony, and many others. They are of very various excellence. The best
of them are by much less known men. Neither Pompey nor Cæsar were good
letter-writers, or, if the latter was so, he was too busy to use his
powers.
[Sidenote: Cicero's position previous to the beginning of the
Correspondence in B.C. 68.]
[Sidenote: Quæstor, B.C. 75.]
The letters begin, then, in B.C. 68, when Cicero was in his
thirty-seventh year. He was already a man of established reputation both
as a pleader and a writer. Rhetorical treatises (B.C. 86), translations
from Xenophon and Plato (B.C. 84), and from the poems of Aratus (B.C.
81), had given evidence of a varied literary interest and a promise of
future eminence, while his success as an advocate had led to the first
step in the official _cursus honorum_ by his becoming a quæstor in B.C.
75. The lot assigned Lilybæum as his sphere of work, and though the
duties of a quæstor in Sicily were not such as to bring a man's name
much before the Roman public, Cicero plumes himself, as was not unusual
with him, on the integrity and energy which he displayed in his
administration. He has indeed the honesty to tell against himself the
story of the acquaintance who, meeting him at Puteoli on his return
journey, asked him what day he had left Rome and what was the news
there. When he answered rather crossly that he had just come from
Sicily, another acquaintance put in with "Why, of course. Didn't you
know he has just been quæstor _at Syracuse_!" At any rate he had done
sufficiently well in Lilybæum to give him his next step, the ædileship
to which he was elected B.C. 70, and to induce the Sicilians to apply to
him, when in that year they desired the prosecution of the extortionate
Verres. His energy and success in this business raised him, without
question, to the first rank of advocates, and pledged him to a righteous
policy in regard to the government of the provinces.
[Sidenote: Cicero's Boyhood and Education.]
Still Cicero was a _novus homo_, and the jealous exclusiveness of the
great families at Rome might yet prevent his attainment of the highest
office of all. When the correspondence opens he is a candidate for the
prætorship, which he obtained without difficulty, at the head of the
poll. But his birth might still be a bar to the consulship. His father,
M. Tullius, lived at Arpinum, an ancient city of the Volscians and
afterwards of the Samnites, which had long enjoyed a partial, and from
B.C. 188 a complete, Roman franchise, and was included in the Cornelian
tribe. Cicero's mother's name was Helvia, of whom we know nothing but
the one anecdote told by Quintus (_Fam._ xvi. 26), who says that she
used to seal the wine jars when they were emptied, so that none might be
drained without her knowing it--a testimony to her economy and careful
housewifery. His father had weak health and resided almost entirely in
his villa at Arpinum, which he had considerably enlarged, much devoted
to study and literature (_de Leg._ ii. 1). But though he apparently
possessed considerable property, giving him equestrian rank, and though
Cicero says that his family was very ancient, yet neither he nor any of
his ancestors had held Roman magistracies. Marcus and his brother
Quintus were the first of their family to do so, and both had to depend
on character and ability to secure their elections. But though the
father did nothing for his sons by holding curule office himself, he did
the best for their education that was possible. Cicero calls him
_optimus et prudentissimus_, and speaks with gratitude of what he had
done for his sons in this respect. They were sent early to Rome to the
house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of
Helvia; and attended--with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo--the best
schools in the city.[2] The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability
from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never
forsook him. As a young man he diligently attended the chambers of
renowned jurisconsults, especially those of the elder and younger
Scævola, Crassus, and Antonius, and soon found that his calling in life
was oratory. It was not till he was twenty-eight years old,
however--when he had already written much and pleaded many cases--that
he went on a visit of between two and three years to Greece, Asia, and
Rhodes, to study in the various schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and
to view their famous cities (B.C. 79-77). It was after his return from
this tour that his age (he was now thirty-one) made the seeking of
office at Rome possible. From that time his election to the several
offices--quæstorship, ædileship, prætorship, consulship--followed
without any repulse, each in the first year of his age at which he was
legally capable of being elected.
He had doubtless made the acquaintance of Titus Pomponius, afterwards
called Atticus, early in life. But it seems that it was their intimacy
at Athens (B.C. 79), where Atticus, who was three years his senior, had
been residing for several years, that began the very close and warm
friendship which lasted with nothing but the slightest and most passing
of clouds till his death. His brother Quintus was married to Pomponia, a
sister of Atticus; but the marriage turned out unfortunately, and was a
strain upon the friendship of Cicero and Atticus rather than an
additional bond. This source of uneasiness meets us in the very first
letter of the correspondence, and crops up again and again till the
final rupture of the ill-assorted union by divorce in B.C. 44. Nothing,
however, had apparently interrupted the correspondence of the two
friends, which had been going on for a long time before the first letter
which has been preserved.
[Sidenote: Cicero the successful Advocate.]
[Sidenote: Death of Cicero's Father.]
The eleven letters, then, which date before the consulship, shew us
Cicero in full career of success as an advocate and rising official,
not as yet apparently much interested in party politics, but with his
mind, in the intervals of forensic business, engaged on the adornment of
the new villa at Tusculum, the first of the numerous country residences
which his growing wealth or his heightened ideas of the dignity of his
position prompted him to purchase. Atticus is commissioned to search in
Athens and elsewhere for objects of art suitable for the residence of a
wealthy Roman, who at the same time was a scholar and man of letters. He
is beginning to feel the charm of at any rate a temporary retreat from
the constant bustle and occupations of the city. Though Cicero loved
Rome, and could hardly conceive of life unconnected with its business
and excitements,[3] and eagerly looked for news of the city in his
absence, yet there was another side to his character. His interest in
literature and philosophy was quite as genuine as his interest in the
forum and senate-house. When the season came for temporarily withdrawing
from the latter, he returned to the former with eager passion. But
Tusculum was too near Rome to secure him the quiet and solitude
necessary for study and composition. Thus, though he says (vol. i., p.
4), "I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really
happy till I get there," he often found it necessary, when engaged in
any serious literary work, to seek the more complete retirement of
Formiæ, Cumæ, or Pompeii, near all of which he acquired properties,
besides an inheritance at Arpinum.[4] But the important achievements in
literature were still in the future. The few letters of B.C. 68-67 are
full of directions to Atticus for the collection of books or works of
art suitable to his house, and of matters of private interest. They are
also short and sometimes abrupt. The famous allusion to his father's
death in the second letter of this collection, contained in a single
line--_pater nobis decessit a.d. 111 Kal. Decembris_--followed by
directions to Atticus as to articles of _vertu_ for his villa, has much
exercised the minds of admirers, who do not like to think Cicero capable
of such a cold-hearted sentence. It is certainly very unlike his usual
manner.[5] He is more apt to exaggerate than understate his emotions;
and in the first letter extant he speaks with real feeling of the death
of a cousin. Elsewhere--as we have seen--he refers to his father with
respect and gratitude. How then are we to account for such a cold
announcement? Several expedients have been hit upon. First, to change
_decessit_ to _discessit_, and to refer the sentence to the father's
quitting Rome, and not life; in which case it is not easy to see why the
information is given at all. Second, to suppose it to be a mere answer
to a request for the information on the part of Atticus; in which case
the date must refer to some previous year, or the letter must be placed
considerably later, to allow of time for Atticus to hear of the death
and to write his question. In favour of the first is the fact that
Asconius (§ 82) says that Cicero lost his father when he was a candidate
for the consulship (B.C. 64). Some doubt has been thrown upon the
genuineness of the passage in Asconius; and, if that is not trustworthy,
we have nothing else to help us. On the whole I think we must leave the
announcement as it stands in all its baldness. Cicero's father had long
been an invalid, and Atticus may have been well aware that the end was
expected. He would also be acquainted with the son's feelings towards
his father, and Cicero may have held it unnecessary to enlarge upon
them. It is possible, too, that he had already written to tell Atticus
of the death and of his own feelings, but had omitted the date, which he
here supplies. Whatever may be the true explanation--impossible now to
recover--everything we know of Cicero forbids us to reckon insensibility
among his faults, or reserve in expressing his feelings among his
characteristics.
[Sidenote: The Prætorship, B.C. 66.]
In the next year (B.C. 67) we find Cicero elected to the prætorship,
after at least two interruptions to the _comitia_, which, though not
aimed at himself, gave him a foretaste of the political troubles to come
a few years later. He is, however, at present simply annoyed at the
inconvenience, not yet apprehensive of any harm to the constitution. The
double postponement, indeed, had the effect of gratifying his vanity:
for his own name was returned three times first of the list of eight.
His prætorship (B.C. 66) passed without any startling event. The two
somewhat meagre letters which remain belonging to this year tell us
hardly anything. Still he began more or less to define his political
position by advocating the _lex Manilia_, for putting the Mithridatic
war into the hands of Pompey; and one of his most elaborate forensic
speeches--that for Cluentius--was delivered in the course of the year:
in which also his brother Quintus was elected to the ædileship.
[Sidenote: B.C. 65-64. Preparations for the Consulship.]
So far Cicero had risen steadily and without serious difficulty up the
official ladder. But the stress was now to come. The old families seem
not to have been so ready to oppose the rise of the _novus homo_ to the
prætorship. It was the consulship on which they tried to keep a tight
hand. Accordingly, immediately after the year of his prætorship, we find
him anxiously looking out for support and inquiring who are likely to be
his competitors. The interesting point in regard to this is his
connexion with Catiline. In his speech in the senate delivered in the
following year (_in toga candida_, B.C. 64) he denounced Catiline in the
most violent language, accusing him of every conceivable crime; yet in
B.C. 65 he not only contemplated being elected with him without any
expression of disgust, but even considered whether he should not
undertake his defence on some charge that was being brought against
him--perhaps for his conduct during the Sullan proscriptions. To
whitewash Catiline is a hopeless task; and it throws a lurid light upon
the political and moral sentiments of the time to find Cicero even
contemplating such a conjunction.
After this, for two years, there is a break in the correspondence.
Atticus had probably returned to Rome, and if there were letters to
others (as no doubt there were) they have been lost. A certain light is
thrown on the proceedings of the year of candidature (B.C. 64) by the
essay "On the duties of a candidate," ascribed to his brother Quintus,
who was himself to be a candidate for the prætorship in the next year
(B.C. 63). We may see from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as
the greatest and most influential man at Rome; that Catiline's character
was so atrocious in the eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be
feared; that Cicero's "newness" was a really formidable bar to his
election, and that his chief support was to be looked for from the
individuals and companies for whom he had acted as counsel, and who
hoped to secure his services in the future. The support of the nobles
was not a certainty. There had been a taint of _popularity_ in some of
Cicero's utterances, and the writer urges him to convince the consulars
that he was at one with the Optimates, while at the same time aiming at
the conciliation of the equestrian order. This was, in fact, to be
Cicero's political position in the future. The party of the
Optimates--in spite of his disgust at the indifference and frivolity of
many of them--was to be his party: his favourite constitutional object
was to be to keep the equites and the senate on good terms: and his
greatest embarrassment was how to reconcile this position with his
personal loyalty to Pompey, and his views as to the reforms necessary in
the government of the provinces.
[Sidenote: The Consulship, B.C. 63.]
For the momentous year of the consulship we have no letters. His brother
Quintus was in Rome as candidate and then prætor-designate; Atticus was
also in Rome; and the business, as well as the dignity of a consul, were
against anything like ordinary correspondence. Of the earlier part of
the consulship we have little record. The speeches against Rullus were
delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty
definitely to a policy as to the _ager publicus_--which was, to his
disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in B.C. 59--but they do not
shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his
consulship took a very definite line against the _populares_. Not only
did he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by Cæsar of the
assassination of Saturninus, and address the people against offering
violence to L. Roscius on account of the unpopular _lex theatralis_,[6]
but he even resisted the restoration to their civil rights of the sons
of the men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly on the ground of the necessity
of maintaining the established order, though he knew and confessed the
justice of the proposal.[6]
[Sidenote: The Conspiracy of Catiline.]
Any movement, therefore, on the side of the popular party had now his
opposition with which to reckon. He professes to have known very early
in his year of office that some more than usually dangerous movement was
in contemplation. We cannot well decide from the violent denunciation of
Catiline contained--to judge from extant fragments--in the speech _in
toga candida_, how far Cicero was really acquainted with any definite
designs of his. Roman orators indulged in a violence of language so
alien from modern ideas and habits, that it is difficult to draw
definite conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that Catiline had in a
secret meeting before the elections of B.C. 64, professed an intention
of going all lengths in a revolutionary programme and, if that was the
case, Cicero would be sure to have had some secret information on the
subject. But his hands were partly tied by the fact that the _comitia_
had given him a colleague--C. Antonius--deeply implicated in Catiline's
policy, whatever it was. Pompey, whom he regarded as the champion of law
and order, was in the East: and Catiline's candidature--and it was
supposed his policy also--had had the almost open support of the richest
man in Rome, M. Licinius Crassus, and of the most influential man of the
_populares_, C. Iulius Cæsar. In the house of one or the other of them,
indeed, the meeting at which Catiline first unfolded his purposes was
believed to have been held. Still Catiline had not been guilty of any
overt act which enabled Cicero to attack him. He had, indeed, been
informed, on very questionable authority, that Catiline had made a plot
to assassinate him while holding the elections, and he made a
considerable parade of taking precautions for his safety--letting it be
seen that he wore a cuirass under his toga, and causing his house to be
guarded by the younger members of his party. The elections, according
to Plutarch, had at least been once postponed from the ordinary time in
July, though this has been denied.[7] At any rate it was not till they
had taken place and Catiline had been once more rejected, that any
definite step is alleged to have been taken by him, such as Cicero could
lay hold of to attack him. On the 20th of October, in the senate, Cicero
made a speech warning the Fathers of the impending danger, and on the
21st called upon Catiline for an explanation in their presence. But,
after all, even the famous meeting of the 5th of November, in the house
of M. Porcius Læca, betrayed to Cicero by Fulvia, the mistress of Q.
Curius, would not have sufficed as grounds for the denunciation of the
first extant speech against Catiline (7th of November), if it had not
been for something else. For some months past there had been rumours of
risings in various parts of Italy; but by the beginning of November it
was known that C. Manlius (or Mallius) had collected a band of
desperadoes near Fæsulæ, and, having established there a camp on the
27th of October, meant to advance on Rome. Manlius had been a centurion
in Sulla's army, and had received an allotment of confiscated land in
Etruria; but, like others, had failed to prosper. The movement was one
born of discontent with embarrassments which were mostly brought about
by extravagance or incompetence. But the rapidity with which Manlius was
able to gather a formidable force round him seems to shew that there
were genuine grievances also affecting the agricultural classes in
Etruria generally. At any rate there was now no doubt that a formidable
disturbance was brewing; the senate voted that there was a _tumultus_,
authorized the raising of troops, and named commanders in the several
districts affected. It was complicity in this rising that Cicero now
sought to establish against Catiline and his partisans in Rome. The
report of the meeting in the house of Læca gave him the pretext for his
first step--a fiery denunciation of Catiline in the senate on the 7th of
November. Catiline left Rome, joined the camp of Manlius, and assumed
the ensigns of _imperium_. That he was allowed thus to leave the city
is a proof that Cicero had as yet no information enabling him to act at
once. It was the right of every citizen to avoid standing a trial by
going into exile. Catiline was now under notice of prosecution for
_vis_, and when leaving Rome he professed to be going to Marseilles,
which had the _ius exilii_. But when it was known that he had stopped
short at Fæsulæ, the senate at once declared both him and Manlius
_hostes_, and authorized the consuls to proceed against them. The
expedition was intrusted to Antonius, in spite of his known sympathy
with Catiline, while Cicero was retained with special powers to protect
the city. The result is too well known to be more than glanced at here.
Catiline's partisans were detected by letters confided to certain envoys
of the Allobroges, which were held to convict them of the guilt of
treason, as instigating Catiline to march on Rome, and the senate of the
Allobroges to assist the invasion by sending cavalry to Fæsulæ.
[Sidenote: Execution of the conspirators, December, B.C. 63. Its legal
grounds and consequences.]
The decree of the senate, _videant consules, etc._, had come to be
considered as reviving the full _imperium_ of the consul, and investing
him with the power of life and death over all citizens. Cicero acted on
this (questionable) constitutional doctrine. He endeavoured, indeed, to
shelter himself under the authority of a senatorial vote. But the senate
never had the power to try or condemn a citizen. It could only record
its advice to the consul. The whole legal responsibility for the
condemnation and death of the conspirators, arrested in consequence of
these letters, rested on the consul. To our moral judgment as to
Cicero's conduct it is of primary importance to determine whether or not
these men were guilty: to his legal and constitutional position it
matters not at all. Nor was that point ever raised against him. The
whole question turns on whether the doctrine was true that the _senatus
consultum ultimum_ gave the consul the right of inflicting death upon
citizens without trial, _i.e._, without appeal to the people, on the
analogy of the dictator _seditionis sedandæ causa_, thus practically
defeating that most ancient and cherished safeguard of Roman liberty,
the _ius provocationis_. The precedents were few, and scarcely such as
would appeal to popular approval. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus had
been _ex post facto_ approved by the senate in B.C. 133-2. In the case
of Gaius Gracchus, in B.C. 121, the senate had voted _uti consul Opimius
rempublicam defenderet_, and in virtue of that the consul had authorized
the killing of Gaius and his friends: thus for the first time exercising
_imperium sine provocatione_. Opimius had been impeached after his year
of office, but acquitted, which the senate might claim as a confirmation
of the right, in spite of the _lex_ of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed
the right of _provocatio_ in all cases. In B.C. 100 the tribune
Saturninus and the prætor Glaucia were arrested in consequence of a
similar decree, which this time joined the other magistrates to the
consuls as authorized to protect the Republic: their death, however, was
an act of violence on the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned
by Cæsar's condemnation of Rabirius, as _duovir capitalis_, but to a
certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the
trial of his appeal to the people. In B.C. 88 and 83 this decree of the
senate was again passed, in the first case in favour of Sulla against
the tribune Sulpicius, who was in consequence put to death; and in the
second case in favour of the consuls (partisans of Marius) against the
followers of Sulla. Again in B.C. 77 the decree was passed in
consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however,
escaped to Sardinia and died there.
In every case but one this decree had been passed against the popular
party. The only legal sanction given to the exercise of the _imperium
sine provocatione_ was the acquittal of the consul Opimius in B.C. 120.
But the jury which tried that case probably consisted entirely of
senators, who would not stultify their own proceedings by condemning
him. To rely upon such precedents required either great boldness (never
a characteristic of Cicero), or the most profound conviction of the
essential righteousness of the measure, and the clearest assurance that
the safety of the state--the supreme law--justified the breach of every
constitutional principle. Cicero was not left long in doubt as to
whether there would be any to question his proceeding. On the last day
of the year, when about to address the people, as was customary, on
laying down his consulship, the tribune Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos
forbade him to speak, on the express ground that he "had put citizens to
death uncondemned"--_quod cives indemnatos necavisset_. Cicero consoled
himself with taking the required oath as to having observed the laws,
with an additional declaration that he had "saved the state."
Nevertheless, he must have felt deeply annoyed and alarmed at the action
of Metellus, for he had been a _legatus_ of Pompey, and was supposed to
represent his views, and it was upon the approbation and support of
Pompey, now on the eve of his return from the East, that Cicero
particularly reckoned.
[Sidenote: Letters after B.C. 63.]
The letters in our collection now recommence. The first of the year
(B.C. 62) is one addressed to Pompey, expressing some discontent at the
qualified manner in which he had written on recent events, and affirming
his own conviction that he had acted in the best interests of the state
and with universal approval. But indeed the whole correspondence to the
end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this subject directly or
indirectly. His quarrel with Metellus Nepos brought upon him a
remonstrance from the latter's brother (or cousin), Metellus Celer
(Letters XIII, XIV), and when the correspondence for B.C. 61 opens, we
find him already on the eve of the quarrel with Publius Clodius which
was to bring upon him the exile of B.C. 58.
[Sidenote: Publius Clodius Pulcher.]
P. CLODIUS PULCHER was an extreme instance of a character not uncommon
among the nobility in the last age of the Republic. Of high birth, and
possessed of no small amount of ability and energy, he belonged by
origin and connexion to the Optimates; but he regarded politics as a
game to be played for his personal aggrandizement, and public office as
a means of replenishing a purse drained by boundless extravagance and
self-indulgence. His record had been bad. He had accompanied his
brother-in-law Lucullus, or had joined his staff, in the war with
Mithridates, and had helped to excite a mutiny in his army in revenge
for some fancied slight. He had then gone to Cilicia, where another
brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was proprætor, and while commanding a
fleet under him had fallen into the hands of pirates, and when freed
from them had gone--apparently in a private capacity--to Antioch, where
he again excited a mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against the
Arabians (B.C. 70-65). On his return to Rome he attempted to make
himself conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted a bribe to
withdraw. In B.C. 64, on the staff of the governor of Gallia
Narbonensis, he is accused of having enriched himself with plunder. For
a time after that he was still acting as a member of the party of the
Optimates; seems to have supported Cicero during the Catiline
conspiracy; and in B.C. 62 stood for the quæstorship and was elected.
His violation of the mysteries was alleged to have been committed in
December of that year, and before he could go to the province allotted
to him as quæstor in Sicily he had to stand a trial for sacrilege. Such
an offence--penetrating in disguise into the house of the Pontifex
Maximus, when his wife was engaged in the secret rites of the Bona
Dea--would place him under a curse, and not only prevent his entering
upon his quæstorship, but would disfranchise and politically ruin him.
Clodius would seem not to have been a person of sufficient character or
importance to make this trial a political event. But not only had he
powerful backers, but his opponents also, by proposing an innovation in
the manner of selecting the jurors for trying him, had managed to give a
spurious political importance to the case. One of the most brilliant of
the early letters (XV, p. 37) gives us a graphic picture of the trial.
Clodius was acquitted and went to his province, but returned in B.C. 60,
apparently prepared for a change of parties. Cicero and he had
quarrelled over the trial. He had said sarcastic things about the sacred
consulship, and Cicero had retaliated by bitter speeches in the senate,
and by giving evidence at the trial of having seen Clodius in Rome three
hours before he professed to have been at Interamna, on the day of the
alleged sacrilege. It is perhaps possible that his alibi may have been
true in substance, for he may have been well out of Rome on his way to
Interamna after seeing Cicero. But, however that may be, he nourished a
grudge against Cicero, which he presently had an opportunity of
satisfying. The year of his return to Rome from Sicily (B.C. 60) was the
same as that of Cæsar's return from Spain. Pompey--who had returned the
year before--was at enmity with the senate on account of the
difficulties raised to the confirmation of his _acta_ and the allotments
for his veterans. Cæsar had a grievance because of the difficulties put
in the way of his triumph. The two coalesced, taking in the millionaire
Crassus, to form a triumvirate or coalition of three, with a view to
getting measures they desired passed, and offices for themselves or
their partisans. This was a great blow to Cicero, who clung feverously
to Pompey as a political leader, but could not follow him in a coalition
with Cæsar: for he knew that the object of it was a series of measures
of which he heartily disapproved. His hope of seeing Pompey coming to
act as acknowledged leader of the Optimates was dashed to the ground. He
could not make up his mind wholly to abandon him, or, on the other hand,
to cut himself adrift from the party of Optimates, to whose policy he
had so deeply committed himself. Clodius was troubled by no such
scruples. Perhaps Cæsar had given him substantial reasons for his change
of policy. At any rate, from this time forward he acts as an extreme
_popularis_--much too extreme, as it turned out, for Pompey's taste. As
a patrician his next step in the official ladder would naturally have
been the ædileship. But that peaceful office did not suit his present
purpose. The tribuneship would give him the right to bring forward
measures in the _comitia tributa_, such as he desired to pass, and would
in particular give him the opportunity of attacking Cicero. The
difficulty was that to become tribune he must cease to be a patrician.
He could only do that by being adopted into a plebeian gens. He had a
plebeian ready to do it in B.C. 59. But for a man who was _sui iuris_ to
be adopted required a formal meeting of the old _comitia curiata_, and
such a meeting required the presence of an augur, as well as some kind
of sanction of the pontifices. Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, and Pompey
was a member of the college of augurs. Their influence would be
sufficient to secure or prevent this being done. Their consent was, it
appears, for a time withheld. But Cæsar was going to Gaul at the end of
his consulship, and desired to have as few powerful enemies at Rome
during his absence as possible. Still he had a personal feeling for
Cicero, and when it was known that one of Clodius's objects in seeking
to become a plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Cæsar offered him
two chances of honourable retreat--first as one of the commissioners to
administer his land law, and again as one of his _legati_ in Gaul. But
Cicero would not accept the first, because he was vehemently opposed to
the law itself: nor the second, because he had no taste for provincial
business, even supposing the proconsul to be to his liking; and because
he could not believe that P. Clodius would venture to attack him, or
would succeed if he did. Cæsar's consulship of B.C. 59 roused his worst
fears for the Republic; and, though he thought little of the
statesmanship or good sense of Cæsar's hostile colleague Bibulus, he was
thoroughly disgusted with the policy of the triumvirs, with the
contemptuous treatment of the senate, with the high-handed disregard of
the auspices--by means of which Bibulus tried to invalidate the laws and
other _acta_ of Cæsar--and with the armed forces which Pompey brought
into the _campus_, nominally to keep order, but really to overawe the
_comitia_, and secure the passing of Cæsar's laws. Nor was it in his
nature to conceal his feelings. Speaking early in the year in defence of
his former colleague, C. Antonius, accused of _maiestas_ for his conduct
in Macedonia, he expressed in no doubtful terms his view of the
political situation. Within a few hours the words were reported to the
triumvirs, and all formalities were promptly gone through for the
adoption of Clodius. Cæsar himself presided at the _comitia curiata_,
Pompey attended as augur, and the thing was done in a few minutes. Even
then Cicero does not appear to have been alarmed, or to have been fully
aware of what the object of Publius was. While on his usual spring visit
to his seaside villas in April (B.C. 59), he expressed surprise at
hearing from the young Curio that Clodius was a candidate for the
tribuneship (vol. i., p. 99). His surprise no doubt was more or less
assumed: he must have understood that Clodius's object in the adoption
was the tribunate, and must have had many uneasy reflexions as to the
use which he would make of the office when he got it. Indeed there was
not very much doubt about it, for Publius openly avowed his intentions.
We have accordingly numerous references, in the letters to Atticus, to
Cicero's doubts about the course he ought to adopt. Should he accept
Cæsar's offer of a legation in Gaul, or a free and votive legation?
Should he stay in Rome and fight it out? The latter course was the one
on which he was still resolved in July, when Clodius had been, or was on
the point of being, elected tribune (p. 110). He afterwards wavered (p.
113), but was encouraged by the belief that all the "orders" were
favourable to him, and were becoming alienated from the triumvirs (pp.
117, 119), especially after the affair of Vettius (pp. 122-124), and by
the friendly disposition of many of the colleagues of Clodius in the
tribuneship. With such feelings of confidence and courage the letters of
B.C. 59 come to an end.
[Sidenote: The Exile, April, B.C. 58--August, B.C. 57.]