has happened. Clodius entered upon his tribuneship on the 10th of
December, B.C. 59, and lost little time in proposing a law to the
_comitia_ for the trial of any magistrate guilty of putting citizens to
death without trial (_qui cives indemnatos necavisset_). The wording of
the law thus left it open to plead that it applied only to such act as
occurred after its enactment, for the pluperfect _necavisset_ in the
dependent clause answers to the future perfect in a direct one. And this
was the interpretation that Cæsar, while approving the law itself,
desired to put upon it.[8] He again offered Cicero a legation in Gaul,
but would do nothing for him if he stayed in Rome; while Pompey, who had
been profuse in promises of protection, either avoided seeing Cicero, or
treated his abject entreaties with cold disdain.[9] Every citizen, by a
humane custom at Rome, had the right of avoiding a prosecution by
quitting the city and residing in some town which had the _ius exilii_.
It is this course that we find Cicero already entered upon when the
correspondence of the year begins. In the letters of this year of exile
he continually reproaches himself with not having stayed and even
supported the law, in full confidence that it could not be applied to
himself. He attributes his having taken the less courageous course to
the advice of his friends, who were actuated by jealousy and a desire
to get rid of him. Even Atticus he thinks was timid, at the best, in
advising his retirement. It is the only occasion in all the
correspondence in which the least cloud seems to have rested on the
perfect friendship of the two men. Atticus does not appear to have shewn
any annoyance at the querulous remarks of his friend. He steadily
continued to write, giving information and advice, and made no
difficulty in supplying his friend with money. During Cicero's absence
Atticus became still more wealthy than before by inheriting the estates
of his cross-grained uncle Cæcilius. But he was always careful as to the
investment of his money and he would not, perhaps, have been so ready to
trust Cicero, had he not felt confidence in the ultimate recovery of his
civil status. Still his confidence was peculiarly welcome at a time
which would have been otherwise one of great pressure. For Clodius had
followed up Cicero's retirement with the usual _lex_ in regard to
persons leaving Rome to avoid a trial--a prohibition "of fire and water"
within a fixed distance from Italy, which involved the confiscation of
all his property in Italy. His villas were dismantled, his town house
pulled down, and a vote of the people obtained by Clodius for the
consecration of its site as a _templum_ dedicated to Liberty, and a
scheme was formed and the work actually commenced for occupying part of
it by an extension of an existing porticus or colonnade (the _porticus
Catuli_) to contain a statue of Liberty. That this consecration was
regular is shewn by the pleas by which it was afterwards sought to
reverse it.[10] When Cicero was recalled the question came before the
pontifices, who decided that the consecration was not valid unless it
had been done by the "order of the people." It could not be denied on
the face of it that there had been such an order. Cicero was obliged to
resort to the plea that Clodius's adoption had been irregular and
invalid, that therefore he was not legally a tribune, and could not take
an order of the people. Finally, the senate seems to have decided that
its restoration to Cicero was part of the general _restitutio in
integrum_ voted by the _comitia centuriata_; and a sum of money was
assigned to him for the rebuilding of the house. Clodius refused to
recognize the validity of this decree of the senate, and attempted by
violence to interrupt the workmen engaged on the house. We have a lively
picture of this in Letter XCI (vol. i., pp. 194-196).
[Sidenote: Letters of the Exile (Letters LV-LXXXVIII).]
The letters from Cicero as an exile are painful reading for those who
entertain a regard for his character. It was not unnatural, indeed, that
he should feel it grievously. He had so completely convinced himself of
the extraordinary value of his services to the state, of the importance
of his position in Roman politics, and of the view that the Optimates
would take of the necessity of retaining him, that to see himself
treated like a fraudulent or unsuccessful provincial governor, of no
importance to anyone but himself, was a bitter blow to his self-esteem.
The actual loss was immense. His only means were now the amount of money
he had been able to take with him, or was able to borrow. All was gone
except such property as his wife retained in her own right. He was a
dependent upon her, instead of being her support and the master of his
own household. The services of freedmen--readily rendered when he was
prosperous--would now be a matter of favour and personal attachment,
which was not always sufficient to retain them. The "life and light" of
the city, in which no man ever took a more eager interest and delight,
were closed to him. He was cut off from his family, and from familiar
intercourse with friends, on both of which he was much dependent for
personal happiness. Lastly, wherever he lived, he lived, as it were, on
sufferance, no longer an object of respect as a statesman, or the source
of help to others by his eloquence. But, disagreeable as all this was to
a man of Cicero's sensitive vanity, there was something still worse.
Even in towns which were the legal distance from Italy he could not
safely stay, if they were within the jurisdiction of one of his personal
enemies, or contained other exiles, who owed him an ill turn. He was
protected by no law, and more than one instance of such a man's falling
a victim to an enemy's dagger is recorded. Cicero's first idea was to go
to Malta: but Malta was for some purposes in the jurisdiction of the
governor of Sicily, and the governor of Sicily (C. Vergilius[11])
objected to his passing through Sicily or staying at Malta. We have no
reason for supposing Vergilius personally hostile to Cicero, but he may
have thought that Cicero's services to the Sicilians in the case of
Verres would have called out some expression of feeling on their part in
his favour, which would have been awkward for a Roman governor. Cicero
therefore crossed to Epirus, and travelled down the Egnatian road to
Thessalonica. This was the official capital of the province of
Macedonia, and the quæstor in Macedonia, Gnæus Plancius, met Cicero at
Dyrrachium, invited him to fix his residence there with him, and
accompanied him on his journey. Here he stayed till November in a state
of anxiety and distress, faithfully reflected in his letters, waiting to
hear how far the elections for B.C. 57 would result in putting his
friends in office, and watching for any political changes that would
favour his recall: but prepared to go still farther to Cyzicus, if the
incoming governor, L. Calpurnius Piso, who, as consul in B.C. 58 with
Gabinius, had shewn decided animus against him, should still retain that
feeling in Macedonia. Events, however, in Rome during the summer and
autumn of B.C. 58 gave him better hopes. Clodius, by his violent
proceedings, as well as by his legislation, had alienated Pompey, and
caused him to favour Cicero's recall. Of the new consuls Lentulus was
his friend, and Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos (who as tribune in B.C. 63-62
had prevented his speech when laying down his consulship) consented to
waive all opposition. A majority of the new tribunes were also
favourable to him, especially P. Sestius and T. Annius Milo; and in
spite of constant ups and downs in his feelings of confidence, he had on
the whole concluded that his recall was certain to take place. Towards
the end of November he therefore travelled back to Dyrrachium, a _libera
civitas_ in which he had many friends, and where he thought he might be
safe, and from which he could cross to Italy as soon as he heard of the
law for his recall having been passed. Here, however, he was kept
waiting through many months of anxiety. Clodius had managed to make his
recall as difficult as possible. He had, while tribune, obtained an
order from the people forbidding the consuls to bring the subject before
the senate, and Piso and Gabinius had during their year of office
pleaded that law as a bar to introducing the question.
[Sidenote: The Recall, August, B.C. 57.]
The new consuls were not, or did not consider themselves, so bound, and
Lentulus having brought the subject forward, the senate early passed a
resolution that Cicero's recall was to take precedence of all other
business. In accordance with the resolution of the senate, a law was
proposed by the consul Lentulus in the _comitia centuriata_, and
probably one by Milo to the _tributa_. But Clodius, though no longer
armed with the tribuneship, was not yet beaten. He obtained the aid of
some gladiators belonging to his brother Appius, and more than once
interrupted and dispersed an assembly of the _comitia_. In the riots
thus occasioned blood was shed on both sides, and Cicero's brother
Quintus on one occasion nearly lost his life. This was the beginning of
the series of violent contests between Clodius and Milo, only ended by
the murder of the former on the Appian road in B.C. 52. But Clodius was
a candidate for the ædileship in this year (B.C. 57), and could be
barred from that office legally by a prosecution for _vis_, of which
Milo gave notice against him. It was, perhaps, a desire to avoid this,
as much as fear of Milo's counter exhibition of violence, that at length
caused him to relax in his opposition, or at any rate to abstain from
violently interrupting the _comitia_. Accordingly, on the 4th of August,
the law proposed by both consuls, and supported by Pompey, was passed
unanimously by the centuries. Cicero, we must presume, had received
trustworthy information that this was to be the case (shewing that some
understanding had been come to with Clodius, or there would have been no
certainty of his not violently dispersing the _comitia_ again), for on
that same day he set sail from Dyrrachium and landed at Brundisium on
the 5th. His triumphant return to Rome is described in the eighty-ninth
letter of this collection. For Pompey's share in securing it he
expressed, and seems really to have felt, an exaggerated gratitude,
which still influenced him in the unhappy months of B.C. 49, when he was
hesitating as to joining him beyond seas in the civil war.
But though Clodius had somehow been prevented from hindering his recall,
he by no means relaxed his hostility. He not only tried to excite the
populace against him by arguing that the scarcity and consequent high
price of corn, from which the people were at that time suffering, was in
some way attributable to Cicero's policy, but he also opposed the
restoration of his house; and when a decree of the senate was passed in
Cicero's favour on that point, brought his armed ruffians to prevent the
workmen from going on with the rebuilding, as well as to molest Cicero
himself (vol. i., p. 195). This was followed by a determined opposition
by Milo to the holding of the elections for B.C. 56, until his
prosecution of Clodius _de vi_ should have been tried. Clodius, however,
was acquitted,[12] and, being elected ædile, immediately commenced a
counter accusation against Milo for _vis_. He impeached him before the
_comitia_ in February (B.C. 56), on which occasion Pompey spoke in
Milo's defence in the midst of a storm of interruptions got up by the
friends of Clodius (vol. i., pp. 214, 217). Milo was also acquitted, and
the rest of Clodius's ædileship seems to have passed without farther
acts of open violence.
[Sidenote: Cicero and the Triumvirs.]
But Cicero had now other causes of anxiety. He had spoken in favour of
the commission offered to Pompey in B.C. 57 for superintending the
corn-supply of Rome (_cura annonæ_). Pompey was to have fifteen legates,
a good supply of ships and men, and considerable powers in all
corn-growing countries in the Mediterranean. Cicero supported this,
partly from gratitude to Pompey, but partly also from a wish to promote
his power and influence against the ever-increasing influence and fame
of Cæsar. He secretly hoped that a jealousy might grow up between them;
that Pompey would be drawn closer to the Optimates; and that the union
of the triumvirate might be gradually weakened and finally disappear.
Pompey was thoroughly offended and alarmed by the insults offered him by
the Clodian mob, and by Clodius's own denunciations of him; and if he
could be convinced that these were suggested or approved by Cæsar or
Crassus, it would go far to withdraw him from friendship with either of
them. With Crassus, indeed, he had never been on cordial terms: it was
only Cæsar's influence that had caused him to form any union with him.
Cæsar, on the other hand, was likely to be uneasy at the great powers
which the _cura annonæ_ put into Pompey's hands; and at the possible
suggestion of offering him the dictatorship, if the Clodian riots became
quite intolerable. On the whole, Cicero thought that he saw the element
of a very pretty quarrel, from which he hoped that the result might be
"liberty"--the orderly working of the constitution, that is, without the
irregular supremacy of anyone, at any rate of anyone of the popular
party. He had, however, a delicate part to play. He did not wish or dare
to break openly with Cæsar, or to speak too openly to Pompey; and he was
conscious that the intemperance, folly, or indifference of many of the
Optimates made it difficult to reckon on their support, and made that
support a very questionable benefit if accorded. But though his letters
of this period are full of expressions indicating doubt of Pompey and
irritation with him, yet he seems still to have spoken of him with
warmth on public occasions, while he avoided mentioning Cæsar, or spoke
of him only in cold terms.
[Sidenote: Renewal of the Triumvirate at Luca, April, B.C. 56, and
Cicero's change of policy.]
[Sidenote: Quintus Cicero in Gaul.]
The hope, however, of detaching Pompey from Cæsar was dashed by the
meeting at Luca in April, B.C. 56, at which a fresh arrangement was made
for the mutual advantage of the triumvirs. Cæsar got the promise of the
introduction of a law giving him an additional five years of command in
Gaul, with special privileges as to his candidature for the consulship
of B.C. 48; while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second consulship
in B.C. 55, and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a single
province) and Syria respectively, each for five years. The care taken
that none of the three should have _imperium_ overlapping that of the
others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and jealousy. But the
bargain was made with sufficient approval of the members of the party
crowding Luca to secure its being carried out by the _comitia_. The
union seemed stronger than ever; and Cicero at length resolved on a
great change of attitude. Opposition to the triumvirs had been
abandoned, he saw, by the very party for whom he had been incurring the
enmity of Pompey and Cæsar. Why should he hold out any longer? "Since
those who have no power," he writes to Atticus in April, "refuse me
their affection, let me take care to secure the affection of those who
have power. You will say, 'I could have wished that you had done so
before.' I know you did wish it, and that I have made a real ass of
myself."[13] This is the first indication in the letters of the change.
But it was soon to be publicly avowed. The opposition to the consulship
of Pompey and Crassus was so violent that no election took place during
B.C. 56, and they were only elected under the presidency of _interreges_
at the beginning of February, B.C. 55. But by the _lex Sempronia_ the
senate was bound to name the consular provinces--_i.e._, the provinces
to be governed by the incoming consuls after their year of
office--before the elections, and in his speech on the subject (_de
Provinciis Consularibus_), delivered apparently in July, B.C. 56,
Cicero, while urging that Piso and Gabinius should have successors
appointed to them in Macedonia and Syria, took occasion to announce and
defend his own reconciliation with Cæsar, and to support his continuance
in the governorship of Gaul. Shortly afterwards, when defending the
citizenship of L. Cornelius Balbus, he delivered a glowing panegyric on
Pompey's character and services to the state. This was followed by a
complete abstention from any farther opposition to the carrying out of
Cæsar's law for the allotment of the Campanian land--a subject which he
had himself brought before the senate only a short time before, and on
which he really continued to feel strongly.[14] Cicero's most elaborate
defence of his change of front is contained in a long letter to P.
Lentulus Spinther, written two years afterwards.[15] The gist of it is
much the same as the remark to Atticus already quoted. "Pompey and
Cæsar were all-powerful, and could not be resisted without civil
violence, if not downright civil war. The Optimates were feeble and
shifty, had shewn ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had openly favoured
his enemy Clodius. Public peace and safety must be the statesman's chief
object, and almost any concession was to be preferred to endangering
these." Nevertheless, we cannot think that Cicero was ever heartily
reconciled to the policy, or the unconstitutional preponderance of the
triumvirs. He patched up some sort of reconciliation with Crassus, and
his personal affection for Pompey made it comparatively easy for him to
give him a kind of support. Cæsar was away, and a correspondence filled
on both sides with courteous expressions could be maintained without
seriously compromising his convictions. But Cicero was never easy under
the yoke. From B.C. 55 to B.C. 52 he sought several opportunities for a
prolonged stay in the country, devoting himself--in default of
politics--to literature. The fruits of this were the _de Oratore_ and
the _de Republica_, besides poems on his own times and on his
consulship. Still he was obliged from time to time to appear in the
forum and senate-house, and in various ways to gratify Pompey and Cæsar.
It must have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this new political
friendship when, in B.C. 54, Pompey called upon him to undertake the
defence of P. Vatinius, whom he had not long before attacked so fiercely
while defending Sestius. Vatinius had been a tribune in B.C. 59, acting
entirely in Cæsar's interests, and Cicero believed him to have been his
enemy both in the matter of his exile and in the opposition to his
recall. He had denounced him in terms that would have made it almost
impossible, one would think, to have spoken in his defence in any cause
whatever. At best he represented all that Cicero most disliked in
politics; and on this very election, to the prætorship, for which he was
charged with bribery (_de sodalitiis_), Cicero had already spoken in
strongly hostile terms in the senate. For now undertaking his defence he
has, in fact, no explanation to give to Lentulus (vol. i., p. 319), and
he was long sore at having been forced to do it. Through B.C. 54 and 53
he was busied with his _de Republica_, and was kept more in touch with
Cæsar by the fact that his brother Quintus was serving as _legatus_ to
the latter in Britain and Gaul, and that his friend Trebatius
(introduced by himself) was seeking for promotion and profit in Cæsar's
camp. But even his brother's service with Cæsar did not eventually
contribute to the formation of cordial feeling on his part towards
Cæsar, whom he could not help admiring, but never really liked. For
Quintus, though he distinguished himself by his defence of his camp in
the autumn of B.C. 54, lost credit and subjected himself to grave rebuke
by the disaster incurred in B.C. 53, near Aduatuca (_Tongres_), brought
about by disregarding an express order of Cæsar's. There is no allusion
to this in the extant correspondence, but a fragment of letter from
Cæsar to Cicero (_neque pro cauto ac diligente se castris
continuit_[16]), seems to shew that Cæsar had written sharply to Cicero
on his brother's _faux pas_, and after this time, though Cicero met
Cæsar at Ravenna in B.C. 52, and consented to support the bill allowing
him to stand for the consulship in his absence,[17] there is apparent in
his references to him a return to the cold or critical tone of former
times. But of course there were other reasons.
[Sidenote: Pompey's third Consulship and the trial of Milo, B.C. 52.]
Pompey's six months' sole consulship of B.C. 52 ("that divine third
consulship"), the rumour of his dictatorship, and the growing
determination of the Optimates to play off Pompey against Cæsar (Crassus
having disappeared) and to insist on Cæsar resigning his province and
army before the end of his ten years' tenure, and before standing for a
second consulship, caused Cicero's hope of a final dissolution of the
unconstitutional compact to revive again; and made him draw more and
more closely to Pompey as the chief hope of the _boni_. In the beginning
of the year he had found himself in opposition, or quasi-opposition, to
Pompey in regard to the prosecution of Milo for the murder of Clodius.
But though in the previous year he had declared that the election of
Milo to the consulship was of the utmost importance to his own position
and the safety of the state,[18] now that it was rendered impossible by
Milo's condemnation, he seems to have placed all his hopes on Pompey.
Unfortunately, there is here a break in the correspondence. There is no
letter of the last six months of B.C. 53, and only four (perhaps only
three) of B.C. 52.[19] So that the riots which prevented Milo's
election, the death of Clodius and the riots following it, and the
consequent sole consulship of Pompey, with the latter's new legislation
and the trial of Milo--all have to be sought for elsewhere. The last
letter of this volume and of this year, addressed to M. Marius in
December, B.C. 52, alludes to the condemnation of Milo, and to the
numerous prosecutions following it. "Here, in Rome, I am so distracted
by the number of trials, the crowded courts, and the new legislation,
that I daily offer prayers that there may be no intercalation."[20]
[Sidenote: Cicero appointed Proconsul of Cilicia, B.C. 51-50.]
When the correspondence opens again in the spring of B.C. 51 an event
has happened, of no particular importance in itself, but of supreme
interest to Cicero, and very fortunate for the readers of the
correspondence. One of Pompey's new laws ordained that no one was to
take a province till the fifth year after laying down his consulship or
prætorship. Pompey broke his own law by keeping his province, the
Spains--his position in regard to them was altogether exceptional--but,
in order to carry out the law in other cases, the senate arranged that
ex-consuls and ex-prætors who had not been to provinces should in turn
draw lots for vacant governorships. Cicero and Bibulus appear to have
been the senior _consulares_ in that position, and with much reluctance
Cicero allowed his name to be cast into the urn. He drew Cilicia and
Bibulus Syria. He says that his motive was a desire to obey the wishes
of the senate. Another motive may have been a desire to be away from
Rome while the controversy as to Cæsar's retirement from his province
was settled, and to retrieve a position of some political importance,
which he had certainly not increased during the last few years. When it
came to the actual start, however, he felt all the _gêne_ of the
business--the formation and control of his staff, the separation from
friends, and the residence far from the "light and life" of Rome, among
officials who were certainly commonplace and probably corrupt, and
amidst a population, perhaps acute and accomplished, but certainly
servile and ill content, and in some parts predatory and barbarous. At
the best, they would be emphatically provincial, in a dreary sense of
the word. He felt unequal to the worry and bore of the whole business,
and reproached himself with the folly of the undertaking. Of course,
this regret is mingled with his usual self-congratulation on the purity
with which he means to manage his province. But even that feeling is not
strong enough to prevent his longing earnestly to have the period of
banishment as short as possible, or to prevent the alarm with which he
hears of a probable invasion by the Parthians. One effect of his almost
two years' absence from Rome was, I think, to deprive him of the power
of judging clearly of the course of events. He had constant intelligence
and excellent correspondents--especially Cælius--still he could not
really grasp what was going on under the surface: and when he returned
to find the civil war on the point of breaking out, he was, after all,
taken by surprise, and had no plan of action ready. This, as well as his
government of the province, will be fully illustrated in the next volume
of the correspondence.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Cicero's Correspondents.]