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 V 
 
Ancient Classics for English Readers 
 
 EDI'lED BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 CICERO 
 
The Voluines published of this Series contain 
 
 HOMER : THE ILIAD, by the Editor. 
 
 HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, by the Same. 
 
 HERODOTUS, by George C. Swayne, M.A. 
 
 C^SAR, by Anthony Trollope. 
 
 VIRGIL, BY THE Editor. 
 
 HORACE, BY Theodore Martin. 
 
 ^SCHYLUS, BY Reginald S. Copleston, M.A. 
 
 XENOPHON, BY Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 
 
 CICERO, BY the Editor. 
 
 SOPHOCLES, BY Clifton W. Collins, M.A. 
 
 PLINY, BY A. Church, M.A., and VV. J. 
 Brodribb, M.A. 
 
 EURIPIDES, BY William Bodham Donnk 
 
 JUVENAL, BY Edward Walford, M.A. 
 
 The following Authors, by various Contributors, are 
 in preparation : — 
 
 hesiod. ,. -;- 
 
 PLAUTUS. 
 TERENCE. 
 TACITUS. 
 LUCIAN. 
 
 Others will follow. 
 
 A Volume will be published Quarterly, price $i.oo. 
 
CICERO 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 author of 
 •ktoniana,' 'the public schools,' etc. 
 
 
 ^IPOR^ 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 I 8 73- 
 
n r^ ^1 1 
 
 3^^2^^ 
 
AG 
 
 13^3 
 M 1^ /a/ 
 
 r HAVE to acknowledge my obligations to Mr Forsyth's 
 well-known ' Life of Cicero,' especially as a guide to 
 the biographical materials which abound in his Orations 
 and Letters. Mr Long's scholarly volumes have also 
 been found useful. For the translations, such as they 
 are, I am responsible. If I could have met with any 
 which seemed to me more satisfactory, I would gladly 
 have adopted them, 
 
 W. L. C. 
 
CON T E N T S. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 CHAP. I. BIOGRAPHICAL— EARLY LIFK AND EDUCATION, 1 
 •• n. II PUBLIC CAREER — IMPEACH- 
 MENT OF VERUES, . . 13 
 « THE CONSULSHIP AND CATI- 
 
 I'l-'^E, .... 30 
 
 •• EXILE AND RETURN; . . 51 
 
 " CICERO AND CESAR, . . 69 
 
 » CICERO AND ANTONY, . . 75 
 
 M VII. CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR, . 89 
 
 II VIII. MINOR CHARACTERISTICS, .... 108 
 
 n IX. CICERO's CORRESPONDENCE, . . .116 
 
 n X. ESSAYS ON OLD AGE' AND 'FRIENDSHIP,* . 140 
 
 •I XL CICERo's PHILOSOPHY 153 
 
 ». XII. CICERO's RELIGION, 187 
 
 II III. 
 
 •I IV. 
 
 1. V. 
 
 II VI. 
 
CICERO. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 When we speak, in the language of our title-page, of 
 the * Ancient Classics,' we must remeralDer that the 
 word * ancient ' is to be taken with a considerable 
 difference, in one sense. Ancient all the Greek and 
 Roman authors are, as dated comparatively with our 
 modern era. Rut as to the antique character of 
 their writings, there is often a difference which is 
 not merely one of date. The poetry- of Homer and 
 Hesiod is ancient, as having been sung and ■written 
 when the society in which the authors lived, and to 
 which they addressed themselves, was in its compara- 
 tive infancy. The chronicles of Herodotus are ancient, 
 partly from their subject-matter and partly from their 
 primitive style. But in this sense there are ancient 
 authors belouging to every nation which has a litera- 
 ture of its own. Viewed in this light, the history 
 A. c. vol. ix. A 
 
Ij EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 of Thiicydides, the letters and orations of Cicero, are not 
 ancient at all, Bede, and Chaucer, and MattheAV of Paris, 
 and Froissart, are far more redolent of antiquity. The 
 several books which make up what we call the Bible are 
 all ancient, no doubt; but even between the Chronicles 
 of the Kings of Israel and the Epistles of St Paul there is 
 a far wider real interval than the mere lapse of centuries. 
 
 In one respect, the times of Cicero, in spite of their 
 complicated politics, should have more interest for a 
 modern reader than most of what is called Ancient 
 History. Forget the date but for a moment, and 
 there is scarcely anything ancient about them. The 
 scenes and actors are modern — terribly modern; far 
 more so than the middle ages of Christendom. Be- 
 tween the times of our own Plantagenets and Georges, 
 for instance, there is a far wider gap, in all but years, 
 than between the consulships of Cuesar and Kapoleon. 
 The habits of life, the ways of thinking, the family 
 affections, the tastes of the Eomans of Cicero's day, 
 were in many respects wonderfully like our own ; the 
 political jealousies and rivalries have repeated them- 
 selves again and again in the last two or three centuries 
 of Europe : their code of political honour and morality, 
 debased as it was, was not much lower than that Avhich 
 was held by some great statesmen a generation or two 
 before us. Let us be thankful if the most frightful of 
 their vices were the exclusive shame of paganism. 
 
 It was in an old but humble country-house, neai 
 the town of Arpinum, under the Volscian hills, that 
 Marcus TuUius Cicero was born, one hundred and six 
 years before the Christian era. The family was of an- 
 
BJii FATHER Ayn QRANDFATUER. 3 
 
 ciont 'equestrian'* dignity, but as none of its members 
 had hitherto borne any office of state, it did not rank 
 as ' noble.' His grandfather and his fatlier had borne 
 the same tliree names — the last an inheritance from 
 some forgotten ancestor, who had either been success- 
 fid in the cultivation of vetches {cicer), or, as less com- 
 plimentary traditions said, had a wart of that shape 
 upon his nose. The grandfather was still living when 
 the little Cicero was born ; a stout old conservative, 
 who had successfully^ resisted the attempt to introduce 
 vote by ballot into his native town, and hated the 
 Greeks (who were just then coming into fashion) as 
 heartily as his English representative, fifty years ago, 
 might have hated a Frenchman. " The more Greek a 
 man knew," he protested, " the gretiter rascal he turned 
 out." The father was a man of quiet habits, taking 
 no part even in local politics, given to books, and to 
 the enlargement and improvement of the old family 
 house, which, up to his time, seems not to have been 
 more than a modest grange. The situation (on a small 
 island formed by the little river Fibrenust) was beau- 
 tiful and romantic ; and the love for it, which grew up 
 with the young Cicero as a child, he never lost in the 
 
 * The Equitcs were originally those who served in the 
 Koman cavalry f but latterly all citizens came to be reckoned 
 in the class who had a certain property qualification, and who 
 could prove free descent up to their grandfather. 
 
 + Now known as li Fiume della Posta. Fragments of 
 Cicero's villa are thought to have been discovered built into 
 the walls of the deserted convent of San Dominico. The ruin 
 known as ' Cicero's Tower ' has probably no connection with 
 him. 
 
4 EARLY LIFE A^D EDUCATION. 
 
 busy days of his manhood. It was in his eyes, he 
 said, what Ithaca was to Ulysses, 
 
 " A rough, wild nurse-land, but whose crops are men." 
 
 There was an aptness in the quotation ; for at Arpinum, 
 a few years before, was born that Caius IMarius, seven 
 times consul of Rome, who had at least the virtue of 
 manhood in him, if he had few besides. 
 
 But the quiet country gentleman was ambitious for 
 his son. Cicero's father, like Horace's, determined to 
 give him the best education in his power; and of 
 course the best education was to be found in Rome, 
 and the best teachers there were Greeks. So to Rome 
 young Marcus was taken in due time, with his younger 
 brother Quintus. TJiey lodged with their uncle-in- 
 law, Aculeo, a lawyer of some distinction, who had a 
 house in rather a fashionable quarter of the city, and 
 moved in good society ; and the two boys attended the 
 Greek lectures Avith their town cousins. Greek was as 
 necessary a part of a Roman gentleman's education in 
 those days as Latin and French are with us now ; like 
 Latin, it was the key to literature (for the Romans 
 had as yet, it must be remembered, nothing worth 
 calling literature of their own); and, like French, it 
 was the language of refinement and the play of polished 
 society. Let us hope that by this time the good old 
 grandfather was gathered peacefully into his urn ; it 
 might have broken his heart to have seen how enthusias- 
 tically his grandson Marcus threw^ himself into this new- 
 fangled study ; and one of those letters of his riper 
 years, stuffed full of Greek terms and phrases even to 
 
TRAINING FOR THE BAR. 5 
 
 affectation, would have drawn anything but blessings 
 from the old gentleman if he had lived to hear them 
 read. 
 
 Young Cicero went through the regular curriculum 
 - — grammar, rhetoric, and the Greek poets and his- 
 torians. Like many other youthful geniuses, he wrote 
 a good deal of poetry of his own, which his friends, as 
 was natural, thought very highly of at the time, and 
 of which he himself retained the same good opinion 
 to the end of his life, as would have been natural to 
 few men except Cicero. But his more important 
 studies began after he had assumed the ' white gown ' 
 which marked the emergence of the young Eoman 
 from boyhood into more responsible life — at sixteen 
 years of age. He then entered on a special education for 
 the bar. It could scarcely be called a profession, for 
 an advocate's practice at Rome was gratuitous ; but it 
 was the best training for public life ; — it was the ready 
 means, to an able and eloquent man, of gaining that 
 popular influence which would secure his election in 
 due course to the great magistracies which formed the 
 successive steps to political power. The mode of 
 studying law at Eome bore a very considerable resem- 
 blance to the preparation for the English bar. Our 
 modern law-student purchases his admission to the 
 chambers of some special pleader or conveyancer, 
 where he is supposed to learn his future business by 
 copying precedents and answering cases, and he ako 
 attends the public lectures at the Inns of Court. So 
 at Rome the young aspirant was to be found (but 
 at a much earlier liour than would suit the Temple or 
 
6 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIOX. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn) in the open hall of some great jurist's 
 house, listening to his opinions given to tlie throng of 
 clients who crowded there every morning ; while his 
 more zealous pupils would accompany him in his stroll 
 in the Forum, and attend his pleadings in the courts 
 or his speeches on the Rostra, either taking down upon 
 their tablets, or storing in their memories, his dicta 
 upon legal questions.'^ In such wise Cicero became the 
 pupil of Mucins Scsevola, whose house was called " the 
 oracle of Eome " — scarcely ever leaving his side, as he 
 himself expresses it ; and after that great lawyer's 
 death, attaching himself in much the same way to a 
 younger cousin* of the same name and scarcely less 
 reputation. Besides this, to arm himself at all points 
 for his proposed career, he read logic with Diodotusthe 
 Stoic, studied the action of ^sop and Eoscius — then 
 the stars of the Roman stage — declaimed aloud like 
 Demosthenes in private, made copious notes, practised 
 translation in order to form a written style, and read 
 hard day and night. He trained severely as an intel- 
 lectual atlilete ; and if none of his contemporaries 
 attained such splendid success, perhaps none worked so 
 hard for it. He made use, too, of certain special advan- 
 tages which were open to him — little appreciated, or 
 at least seldom acknowledged, by the men of his day 
 — the society and conversation of elegant and accom- 
 plished w^omen. In Sca^vola's domestic circle, where 
 the mother, the daughters, and the grand -daughters 
 
 * These dicta, or 'opinions,' of the great jurists, acquired a 
 sort of legal validity in the Roman law-courts, like ' cases ' 
 with us. 
 
 -^ oj[. /0«c (^^^'■^'^^ • <^-^ • 
 
CAMPAIGN UNDER POMPEY. 7 
 
 successively seem to have been such charming talkers 
 that language found new graces from tlieir lips, the 
 young advocate learnt some of his not least valuable 
 lessons. "It makes no little difference," said he in 
 his riper years, " what style of expression one becomes 
 familiar with in the associations of daily life." It was 
 another point of resemblance between the age of Cicero 
 and the times in which we live — the influence of the 
 " queens of society," whether for good or evil. 
 
 But no man could be completely educated for a 
 public career at Rome until he had been a soldier. By 
 what must seem to us a mistake in the Republican 
 system — a mistake which we have seen made more 
 than once in the late American war — high political 
 offices were necessarily combined with uiiHtary com- 
 mand. The highest minister of state, consul or prsetor, 
 however hopelessly civilian in tastes and antecedents, 
 might be sent to conduct a campaign in Italy or 
 abroad at a few hours' notice. If a man was a heaven- 
 born general, all went well ; if not, he had usually a 
 chance of learning in the school of defeat. It was 
 desirable, at all events, that he should have seen what 
 war was in his youth. Young Cicero served his first 
 campaign, at the age of eighteen, under the father of 
 a man whom he was to know only too well in after 
 life — Pompey the Great — and in the division of the 
 army which was commanded by Sylla as lieutenant- 
 general. He bore arms only for a year or two, and 
 probably saw no very arduous service, or we should 
 certainly have heard of it from himself; and he never 
 was in camp again until he took the chief command, 
 
8 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 thirty-seven years afterwards, as pro-consul in Cilicia. 
 He was at Eome, leading a quiet student-life— happily 
 for himself, too young to be forced or tempted into an 
 active part — during the bloody feuds between Sylla 
 and the younger Marius. 
 
 He seems to have made his first appearance as an 
 
 advocate when he was about twenty-five, in some suit 
 
 of which we know nothing. Two years afterwards he 
 
 undertook his first defence of a prisoner on a capital 
 
 charge, and secured by his eloquence the acquittal of 
 
 Sextus Eoscius on an accusation of having murdered 
 
 his father. The charge appears to have been a mere 
 
 conspiracy, wholly unsupported by evidence ; but the 
 
 accuser was a favourite with Sylla, whose power was 
 
 all but absolute; and the innocence of the accused 
 
 was a very insufficient protection before a Roman jury 
 
 of those days. What kind of considerations, besides 
 
 the merits of the case and the rhetoric of counsel, did 
 
 usually sway these tribunals, we shall see hereafter. 
 
 In consequence of this decided success, briefs came in 
 
 upon the young pleader almost too quickly. Like 
 
 many other successful orators, he had to combat some 
 
 natural deficiencies ; he had inherited from his father 
 
 a somewhat delicate constitution ; his lungs were not 
 
 powerful, and his voice required careful management ; 
 
 and the loud declamation and vehement action which 
 
 he had adopted from his models — and Avhich were 
 
 necessary conditions of success in the large arena in 
 
 which a Roman advocate had to plead— he found very 
 
 hard work. He left Rome for a while, and retired for 
 
 rest and chanssje to Athens. 
 
STUDIES AT ATHENS. 9 
 
 The six months which he spent there, tliough busy 
 and studious, must have been very pleasant ones. To 
 one like Cicero, Athens was at once classic and holy 
 ground. It combined all those associations and attrac- 
 tions which we might now expect to find in a visit to 
 the capitals of Greece and of Italy, and a pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem. Poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, religion — all, 
 to his eyes, had their cradle there. It was the home 
 of all that was literature to him ; and there, too, were 
 the great Eleusinian mysteries — which are mysteries 
 still, but which contained under their veil wliatever faitli 
 in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an 
 enlightened pagan. There can be little doubt but 
 that Cicero took this opportunity of initiation. His 
 brother Quintus and one of his cousins were with him 
 at Athens ; and in that city he also renewed his 
 acquaintance with an old schoolfellow, Titus Pompon- 
 ius, who lived so long in the city, and became so 
 thoroughly Athenian in his tastes and habits, that he 
 is better known to us, as he was to his contemporaries, 
 by the surname of Atticus, wliich was given him half 
 in jest, than by his more sonorous Roman name. It 
 is to the accidental circumstance of Atticus remaining 
 so long a voluntary exile from Rome, and to the cor- 
 respondence which was maintained between the two 
 friends, with occasional intervals, for something like 
 four-and-twenty years, that we are indebted for a more 
 thorough insight into the character of Cicero than we 
 have as to any other of the great minds of antiquity ; 
 nearly four hundred of his letters to Atticus, written 
 in all the familiar confidence of private friendsliip by 
 
10 ^^-^A'^idr^^r^FE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 a man by no means reticent as to liis personal feel- 
 ings, having been preserved to us. Atticus's replies are 
 lost ; it is said that he was prudent enough, after his 
 friend's uidiappy death, to reclaim and destroy them. 
 They would perhaps have told us, in his case, not very 
 much that we care to know beyond what we know 
 already. Eich, luxurious, with eh^gant tastes and easy 
 morality — a true Epicurean, as he boasted himself to 
 be — Atticus had nevertheless a kind heart and an 
 open hand. He has generally been called selfish, 
 somewhat unfairly ; at least his selfishness never took 
 the form of indifterence or unkindness to others. In 
 one sense he was a truer philosopher than Cicero : for 
 he seems to have acted tlirough life on that maxim of 
 Socrates which his friend professed to approve, but 
 certainly never followed, — that "a wise man kept out 
 of public business." His vocation was certainly not 
 patriotism ; but the worldly wisdom which kept well 
 with men of all political colours, and eschewed the 
 wretched intrigues and bloody feuds of Rome, stands 
 out in no unfavourable contrast with the conduct of 
 many of her sol-dtsaiit patriots. If he declined to 
 take a side himself, men of all parties resorted to him 
 in their adversity ; and the man who befriended the 
 younger Marius in his exile, protected the widow of 
 Antony, gave shelter on his estates to the victims of 
 the triumvirate's proscription, and was always ready to 
 offer his friend Cicero both his liouse and his purse 
 whenever the political horizon clouded round him, — 
 this man was surely as good a citizen as the noisiest 
 clamourer for "liberty" in the Forum, or the readiest 
 
TK R E y TIAr ^^ ' I -"^^^ ^ 1 1 
 
 hand Avitli the dagger. He kept his life and liis pro- 
 perty safe through all those years of peril and proscrip- 
 tion, with less sacrifice of principle than many who 
 had made louder professions, and died — by a singular 
 act of voluntary starvation, to make short work with an 
 incurable disease — at a ripe old age ; a godless Epicur- 
 ean, no doubt, but not the worst of them, -nr 
 
 We must return to Cicero, and deal somewhat briefly 
 with the next few years of his life. He extended his 
 foreign tour for two years, visiting the chief cities of 
 Asia Minor, remaining for a short time at Rhodes to 
 take lessons once more from his old tutor Molo the 
 rhetorician, and everywhere availing himself of the 
 lectures of the most renowned Greek professors, to 
 correct and improve his own style of composition and 
 delivery. Soon after his return to Eome, he married. 
 Of the character of his wife Terentia very different 
 views have been taken. She appears to have written 
 to him very kindly during his long forced absences. 
 Her letters have not reached us ; but in all her hus- 
 band's rejDlies she is mentioned in terms of apparently 
 the most sincere affection. He calls her repfeatedly his 
 " darling"— " the delight of his eyes"— "the best of 
 mothers ;" yet he procured, a divorce from her, for no 
 distinctly assigned reason, after a married life of thirty 
 years, during which we find no trace of any serious 
 domestic unhappiness. The imputations on her honour 
 made by Plutarch, and repeated by others, seem 
 utterly without foundation ; and Cicero's owti share 
 in the transaction is not improved by the fact of his 
 taking another wife as soon as possible — a ward of his 
 
12 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 own, an almost girl, with whom he did not live a year 
 before a second divorce released him. Terentia is said 
 also to have had an imperious temper; but the only 
 iiroimd for this assertion seems to have been that she 
 quarrelled occasionally with her sister-in-law Pom- 
 ponia, sister of Atticus and wife of Quintus Cicero; 
 and since Pomponia, by her own brother's account, 
 showed her temper very disagreeably to lier hus- 
 band, the feud between the ladies was more likely to 
 have been her fault than Terentia's. But the very 
 low notion of the marriage relations entertained by 
 both the later Greeks and Eomans helps to throw some 
 light upon a proceeding which would otherwise seem 
 very mysterious. Terentia, as is pretty plain from the 
 hints in her husband's letters, was not a good manager 
 in money matters ; there is room for suspicion that 
 she was not even an honest one in his absence, and 
 was "making a purse" for herself: she had thus failed 
 in one of the onty two qualifications which, according 
 to Demosthenes — an authority who ranked very high 
 in Cicero's eyes — were essential in a wife, to be " a 
 faithful hotise-guardian" and " a fruitful mother." She 
 did not die of a broken heart ; she lived to be 104, 
 and, according to Dio Cassius, to have three more 
 husbands. Divorces were easy enough at Rome, and 
 had the lady been a rich widow, there might be 
 nothing so improbable in this latter part of the story, 
 though she was fifty years old at the date of this first 
 divorce.* 
 
 * Cato, who is the favourite impersonation of all the moral 
 virtues of his age, divorced his wife — to oblige a friend ! 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 PUBLIC CAREER. IMPEACHMENT OF VERREH. 
 
 Increasing reputation as a brilliant and successful 
 pleader, and the social influence which this brought 
 with it, secured the rapid succession of Cicero to the 
 highest public offices. Soon after his marriage he was 
 elected Quaestor — the first step on the official ladder — 
 which, as he already posstissed the necessary property 
 qualification, gave him a seat in the Senate for life. 
 The ^dileship and Praetorship followed subsequently, 
 each as early, in point of age, as it could legally be 
 lield.* His practice as an advocate suffered no interruj)- 
 
 * The Quaestors (of whom tliere were at this time twenty) 
 acted under the Senate as State treasurers. The Consul or other 
 officer who commanded in chief during a camjmign would be 
 accompanied by one of them as paymaster-general. 
 
 The ^diles, who were four in number, had the care of all 
 public buildings, markets, roads, and the State property gene- 
 rally. They had also the superintendence of the national festi- 
 vals and public games. 
 
 The duties of the Prsetors, of whom there were eight, were prin- 
 cipally judicial. The two seniors, called the * City ' and 
 'Foreign' respectively, coiTcsponded roughly to our Home and 
 Foreign Secretaries. These were all gradual steps to the office of 
 Consul. 
 
14 PUBLIC CAREER. 
 
 tion, except that his Qusestorship involved his spending 
 a year in Sicily. The Praetor who was appointed to 
 the government of that province* had nnder liirn two 
 quaestors, who were a kind of comptrollers of the 
 ^ exchequer ; and Cicero was appointed to the western 
 1 district, having his headquarters at Lilybseum. In 
 the administration of his office there he showed himself 
 a thorough man of business. Tliere was a dearth of 
 corn at Rome that year, and Sicily was the great 
 granary of the empire. The energetic measures which 
 the new Quaestor took fully met the emergency. He 
 was liberal to the tenants of the State, courteous and 
 accessible to all, upright in his administration, and, 
 above all, he kept his hands clean from bribes and 
 peculation. The provincials were as much astonished 
 as delighted : for Rome was not in the habit of send- 
 ing them such officers. They invented honours for him 
 3uch as had never been bestowed on any minister before. 
 
 * The provinces of Rome, in their relation to the mother-state 
 
 of Italy, may be best compared with our own government of 
 
 India, or such of our crown colonies as have no representative 
 
 assembly. They had each their governor or lieutenant-governor, 
 
 who must have been an ex-minister of Rome : a man who had 
 
 been Consul went out with the rank of "pro-consul," — one 
 
 who had been Praetor with the rank of " pro-praitor. " These 
 
 held office for one or two years, and had the power of life 
 
 and death within their respective jurisdictions. They had 
 
 under them one or more officers who bore the title of Quaestor, 
 
 who collecited the taxes and had the general management of 
 
 rthe revenues of the province. The provinces at this time were 
 
 ; Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica, S[)ain and Gaul (each in two divi- 
 
 i sions) ; Greece, divided into Macedonia and Aehaia (the Morea) ; 
 
 I Asia, Syria, Cilicia, Bithynia, Cyprus, and Africa in four divi- 
 
 ; sions. Others were added afterwards, under the Empire. 
 
QUjESTORSHIP in SICILY. 15 
 
 No wonder the young oJORcial's head (he was not much 
 over thirty) was somewhat turned. " I thought," he 
 said, in one of his speeches afterwards — introducing 
 with a quiet humour, and with all a practised orator's 
 skill, one of those personal anecdotes which relieve a 
 long speech — " I thought in my heart, at the time, 
 that the people at Eome must be talking of nothing 
 but my quaestorship." And he goes on to tell his 
 audience how he was undeceived. 
 
 "The people of Sicily had devised for me unpre- 
 cedented honours. So I left the island in a state of 
 great elation, thinking that the Roman people would at 
 once offer me everything without my seeking. But when 
 I was leaving my province, and on my road home, I 
 happened to land at Puteoli just at the time when a good 
 many of our most fashionable peojDle are accustomed 
 to resort to that neighbourhood. I very nearly collapsed, 
 gentlemen, when a man asked me what day I had left 
 Rome, and whether there was any news stirring? When 
 I made answer that I Avas returning from my province 
 — ' Oh ! yes, to be sure,' said he ; ' Africa, I believe 1 ' 
 ' No,' said I to him, considerably annoyed and dis- 
 gusted ; 'from Sicily.' Then somebody else, with the 
 air of a man who knew all about it, said to him — 
 ' What ! don't you know that he was Qusestor at Syra- 
 cuse? ' [It was at Lilybajum — quite a different district:] 
 No need to make a long story of it ; I swallowed my 
 indignation, and made as though I, like the rest, had 
 come there for the waters. But I am not sure, 
 gentlemen, whether that scene did not do me more 
 good than if everybody then and there had publicly 
 
16 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 congratulated me. For after I had thus found out that 
 the people of Rome have somewhat deaf ears, but very 
 keen and sharp eyes, I left olf cogitating what people 
 Avould hear about me ; I took care that thenceforth 
 they should see me before them every day : I lived in 
 their sight, I stuck close to the Forum ; the porter at 
 my gate refused no man admittance — my very sleep was 
 never allowed to be a plea against an audience." * 
 
 Did we not say that Cicero was modern, not 
 ancient^ Have we not here the original of that 
 Cambridge senior wrangler, who, happening to enter 
 a London theatre at the same moment with the king, 
 bowed all round with a gratified embarrassment, think- 
 ino- that the audience rose and cheered at him ? 
 
 It was while he held the office of yEdile that he made 
 his first appearance as public prosecutor, and brought 
 to justice the most important criminal of the day. 
 Verres, late Prcetor in Sicily, was charged with high 
 crimes and misdemeanours in his government. The 
 grand scale of his off'ences, and the absorbing interest 
 of the trial, have led to his case being quoted as an 
 obvious parallel to that of Warren Hastings, though 
 with much injustice to the latter, so far as it may seem 
 to imply any comparison of moral character. This 
 Yerres, the corrupt son of a corrupt father, had during 
 his three years' rule heaped on the unhappy province 
 every evil which tyranny and rapacity could inflict. 
 He had found it prosperous and contented : he left 
 it exhausted and smarting under its wrongs. He met 
 his impeachment now Avith considerable confidence. 
 * Defence of Plancius, c. 26, 27. 
 
THE ROMAN LAW-COURTS. 17 
 
 The gains of his first year of office were sufficient, 
 he said, for liimself ; the second had been for his 
 friends; the third produced more than enough to bribe 
 a jury. 
 
 The trials at Eome took place in the Forum — the 
 open space, of nearly five acres, lying between the 
 Capitoline and Palatine hills. It was the city mar- 
 ket-place, but it was also the place where the popula- 
 tion assembled for any public meeting, political 
 or other — where the idle citizen strolled to meet 
 his friends and hear the gossip of the day, and 
 where the man of business made his appointments. . 
 Courts for the administration of justice — magnificent 
 halls, called basilicce — had by this time been erected 
 on the north and south sides, and in these the ordinary 
 trials took place ; but for state trials the open Forum 
 was itself the court. One end of the wide area was 
 raised on a somewhat higher level — a kind of dais 
 on a large scale — and was separated from the rest by 
 the Rostra, a sort of stage from which the orators 
 spoke. It was here that the trials were held. A 
 temporary tribunal for the presiding officer, with ac- 
 commodation for counsel, witnesses, and jury, was 
 erected in the open air ; and the scene may perhaps 
 best be pictured by imagining the principal square 
 in some large town fitted up with oj^en hustings on a 
 large scale for an old-fashioned county election, by no 
 means omitting the intense popular excitement and 
 mob violence appropriate to such occasions. Temples 
 of the gods and other public buildings overlooked the 
 area, and the steps of these, on any occasion of great 
 .^. 0. vol. ix. B 
 
18 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 excitement, would be crowded by those who were 
 anxious to see at least, if they could not hear. 
 
 Verres, as a state criminal, would be tried before a 
 special commission, and by a jury composed at this 
 time entirely from the senatorial order, chosen by lot 
 (with a limited right of cliallenge reserved to both 
 parties) from a panel made out every year by the praetor. 
 This magistrate, who was a kind of minister of justice, 
 usually presided on such occasions, occupying the curule 
 chair, which was one of the well-known privileges of 
 high office at Eome. But his office was rather that of 
 the modern chairman who keeps order at a public 
 meeting than that of a judge. Judge, in our sense of 
 the word, there was none ; the jury were the judges 
 both of law and fact. They were, in short, the recog- 
 nised assessors of the praetor, in whose hands the 
 administration of justice Avas supposed to he. The 
 law, too, was of a higlily flexible character, and the 
 appeals of the advocates were rather to the passions 
 and feelings of the jurors than to the legal points of 
 the case. Cicero himself attached comparatively little 
 weight to this branch of his profession; — "Busy as 
 I am," he says in one of his speeches, " I could make 
 myself lawyer enough in three days." The jurors gave 
 each their vote by ballot, — ' guilty,' ' not guilty,' or (as 
 in the Scotch courts) * not proven,' — and the majority 
 carried the verdict. 
 
 But such trials as that of Verres were much more 
 like an impeachment before the House of Commons 
 than a calm judicial inquiry. The men who would 
 have to try a defendant of his class would be, in very 
 
A ROMAN JURY. 19 
 
 few cases, honest and impartial weighers of the evi- 
 dence. Their large number (varying from fifty to 
 seventy) weakened the sense of individual responsibi- 
 lity, and laid them more open to the appeal of the 
 advocates to their political passions. Most of them 
 would come into court prejudiced in some degree by 
 tlie interests of party ; many would be hot partisans. 
 Cicero, in his treatise on ' Oratory,' explains clearly 
 for the pleader's guidance the nature of the tribunals 
 to which he had to appeal. " Men are influenced in 
 their verdicts much more by prejudice or favour, or 
 greed of gain, or anger, or indignation, or pleasure, or 
 hope or fear, or by misapprehension, or by some excite- 
 ment of their feelings, than either by the facts of the 
 case, or by established precedents, or by any rules or 
 principles Avhatever either of law or equity." 
 
 Verres was supported by some of the most powerful 
 families at Eome. Peculation on the part of governors 
 of provinces had become almost a recognised principle : 
 many of those who held offices of state either had done, 
 or were waiting their turn to do, much the same as the 
 present defendant; and every effort had been made by 
 his friends either to put off the trial indefinitely, or to 
 turn it into a sham by procuring the appointment of a 
 private friend and creature of his own as public prosecu- 
 tor. On the other hand, the Sicilian families, whom hf 
 had wronged and outraged, had their share of influence 
 also at Rome, and there was a growing impatience of the 
 insolence and rapacity of the old governing houses, 
 of whose worst qualities the ex-governor of SicHy was 
 a fair type. There were many reasons which would 
 
20 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 lead Cicero to take up such a cause energetically. It 
 was a great openiug for him in what we may call his 
 profession : his former connection with the government 
 of Sicily gave him a personal interest in the cause of 
 the province ; and, above all, the prosecution of a state 
 offender of such importance was a lift at once into the 
 foremost ranks of political life. He spared no pains to 
 get up his case thoroughly. He went all over the 
 island collecting evidence; and his old popularity there 
 did him good service in the work. 
 
 There was, indeed, evidence enough against the late 
 governor. The reckless gratification of his avarice and 
 his passions had seldom satisfied him, without the addi- 
 tion of some hitter insult to the sufferers. But there 
 was even a more atrocious feature in the case, of which 
 Cicero did not fail to make good use in his appeal to 
 a Roman jury. Many of the unhappy victims had 
 the Koman franchise. The torture of an unfortunate 
 Sicilian might be turned into a jest by a clever advo- 
 cate for the defence, and regarded by a philosophic 
 jury with less tlian the cold compassion with which we 
 ren-ard the suffering's of the lower animals ; but " to 
 scourge a man that was a Roman and uncondemned," 
 even in tlie far-off province of Judea, was a thought 
 which, a century later, made the officers of the great 
 Empire, at its pitch of powder, tremble before a wan- 
 dering teacher who bore the despised name of Chris- 
 tian. No one can possibly tell the tale so well as 
 Cicero himself; and the passage from his speech for 
 the prosecution is an admirable specimen both of his 
 power of pathetic narrative and scatliiiig denunciation. 
 
CASE OF G A VI US. 21 
 
 " How shall I speak of Publiiis Gavins, a citizen of 
 Consa ? With what powers of voice, with what force of 
 language, with Avhat sufficient indignation of soul, can 
 T tell the tale 1 Indignation, at least, Avill not fail 
 me : the more must I strive that in this my pleading 
 tl)e other requisites may be made to meet the gravity 
 of the subject, the intensity of my feeling. For the 
 accusation is such that, when it was first laid before 
 me, I did not think to make use of it ; though I knew 
 it to be perfectly true, I did not think it would be 
 credible. — How shall I now proceed? — when I have 
 already been speaking for so many hours on one sub- 
 ject — his atrocious cruelty ; when I have exhausted 
 upon other points well-nigh all the powers of language 
 such as alone is suited to that man's crimes ; — when I 
 have taken no precaution to secure your attention by 
 any variety in my charges against him, — in what 
 fashion can I now speak on a charge of this import- 
 ance ] I think there is one way — one course, and only 
 one, left for me to take. I will place the facts before 
 you ; and they have in themselves such weight, that 
 no eloquence — I will not say of mine, for I have none 
 — but of any man's, is needed to excite your feelings. 
 
 " This Gavius of Consa, of whom I speak, had been 
 among tlie crowds of Eoman citizens who had been 
 thrown into prison under that man. Somehow he had 
 made his escape out of the Quarries,* and had got to 
 
 * This was one of the state prisons at S}Tacuse, so called, 
 said to have been constructed by the tyrant Dionysius. They 
 were the quarries from whicli the stone was dug for building the 
 city, and had been converted to their present purpose. Cicero, 
 
22 IMPEACIIMEyi OF VERRES. 
 
 Messana ; and when he saw Italy and the towers of 
 Rhegiimi now so close to him, and out of tlie horror 
 and shadow of death felt himself breathe with a new 
 life as he scented once more the fresh air of liberty and 
 the laws, he began to talk at Messana, and to complain 
 that he, a Eoman citizen, had been put in irons — 
 that he was going straight to Rome — that he would be 
 ready there for Verres on his arrival. 
 
 "The wretched man little knew that he might as well 
 liave talked in this fasliion in the governor's palace before 
 his very face, as at Messana. For, as I told you before, 
 this city he had selected for himself as the accomplice 
 in his crimes, the receiver of his stolen goods, the con- 
 fidant of all his wickedness. So Gavius is brought 
 at once before the city magistrates ; and, as it so 
 chanced, on that very day Yerres himself came to 
 Messana. The case is reported to him ; that there is a 
 certain Roman citizen who complained of having been 
 put into the Quarries at Syracuse ; that as he was just 
 going on board ship, and was uttering threats — really 
 too atrocious — against Verres, they had detained him, 
 and kept him in custody, that the governor himself 
 might decide about him as should seem to him good. 
 Verres thanks the gentlemen, and extols their goodwill 
 and zeal for his interests. He himself, burning with 
 rage and malice, comes down to the court. His eyes 
 
 wlio no doubt had seen the one in question, describes it as sunk 
 to an immense depth in the solid rock. There was no roof; and 
 the unhappy prisoners were exposed there "to tlie sun by day, 
 and to the rain and frosts by nif,dit." In these places the suiTi- 
 vors of the unfortunate Atlienian expedition against Syracuse 
 were confined, and died in great numbers. 
 
' 1 AM A ROMAN CITIZES: 23 
 
 flashed fire ; cruelty was written on every line of liia face. 
 All present watched anxiously to see to what lengths 
 he meant to go, or what steps he would take ; when 
 suddenly he ordered the prisoner to be dragged forth, 
 and to be stripped and bound in the open forum, and 
 the rods to be got ready at once. The unhappy man 
 cried out that he was a Eoman citizen — that he had 
 the municipal franchise of Consa — that he had served 
 in a campaign with Lucius Pretius, a distinguished 
 Roman knight, now engaged in business at Panormus, 
 from whom Verres might ascertain the truth of his 
 statement. Then that man replies that he has dis- 
 covered that he, Gavins, has been sent into Sicily as a 
 spy by the ringleaders of the runaway slaves ; of which 
 charge there was neither witness nor trace of any kind, 
 or even suspicion in any man's mind. Then he ordered 
 the man to be scourged severely all over his body. 
 Yes — a Roman citizen was cut to pieces with rods in 
 the open forum at Messana, gentlemen; and as the 
 punishment went on, no word, no groan of the wretched 
 man, in all his anguish, was heard amid the sound of 
 the lashes, but this cry, — ' I am a Roman citizen !' By 
 such protest of citizenship he thought he could at least 
 save himself from anything like blows — could escai)e 
 the indignity of personal torture. But not only did 
 he fail in thus deprecating the insult of the lash, but 
 when he redoubled his entreaties and his appeal to 
 the name of Rome, a cross — yes, I say, a cross — 'was 
 ordered for that most unfortunate and ill-fated man, 
 who had never yet beheld such an abuse of a governoi''8 
 power. 
 
24 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 " name of liberty, sweet to our ears ! rights of 
 citizenship, in which we glory ! laws of Porcius and 
 Sempronius ! privilege of the tribune, long and sorely 
 regretted, and at last restored to the people of Rome ! 
 Has it allcome to this, that a Eoman citizen in a province 
 of the Roman people — in a federal town — is to be bound 
 and beaten with rods in the forum by a man who only 
 holds those rods and axes — those awful emblems — by 
 grace of that same people of Rome*? What shall I 
 say of the fact that fire, and red-hot plates, and 
 other tortures were applied? Even if his agonised en- 
 treaties and pitiable cries did not check you, were 
 you not moved by the tears and groans which burst 
 from the Roman citizens who were present at the 
 scene 1 Did you dare to drag to the cross any man 
 who claimed to be a citizen of Rome 1 — I did not in- 
 tend, gentlemen, in my former pleading, to press this 
 case so strongly — I did not indeed ; for you saw your- 
 selves how the public feeling was already embittered 
 against the defendant by indignation, and hate, and 
 dread of a common peril." 
 
 He then proceeds to prove by witnesses the facts of 
 the case and the falsehood of the charge against Gavins 
 of having been a spy. " However," he goes on to say, 
 addressing himself now to Verres, " we will grant, if 
 you please, that your suspicions on this point, if false, 
 were honestly entertained." 
 
 *' You did not know who the man was ; you sus- 
 pected him of being a spy. I do not ask the 
 grounds of your suspicion. I impeach you on your 
 own evidence. He said he Avas a Roman citizen. 
 
*1 AM A ROMAN CITIZEN: , 25 
 
 Had you yourself, Yerres, been seized and led out 
 to execution, in Persia, say, or in the farthest In- 
 dies, what other cry or protest could you raise but 
 that you were a Eonian citizen 1 And if you, a 
 stranger there among strangers, in the hands of bar- 
 barians, amongst men who dwell in the farthest and 
 remotest regions of the earth, would have found pro- 
 tection in the name of your city, known and renowned 
 in every nation under heaven, could the victim whom 
 you were dragging to the cross, be he who he might — 
 and you did not know Avho he was — when he declared 
 he was a citizen of Kome, could he obtain from you, a 
 Eoman magistrate, by the mere mention and claim of 
 citizenship, not only no reprieve, but not eveu a brief 
 respite from death 1 
 
 " Men of neither rank nor wealth, of humble birth 
 and station, sail the seas ; they touch at some spot 
 they never saw before, where they are neither per- 
 sonally known to those whom they visit, nor can always 
 find any to vouch for their nationality. But in this 
 siugle fact of their citizenship they feel they shall be 
 safe, not only with our own governors, who are held in 
 check by the terror of the laws and of public opinion 
 — not only among those who share that citizenship of 
 Eome, and who are united with them by community of 
 language, of laws, and of many things besides — but go 
 where they may, this, they think, will be their safe- 
 guard. Take away this confidence, destroy this safe- 
 guard for our Eoman citizens — once establish the prin- 
 ciple that there is no protection in the words, ' I am a 
 citizen of Eome ' — that prsetor or other magistrate may 
 
26 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 with impunity sentence to what punishment he will a 
 man who says he is a Roman citizen, merely because 
 somebody does not know it for a fact ; and at once, by 
 admitting such a defence, you are shutting up against 
 our Eoman citizens all our provinces, all foreign states, 
 despotic or independent — all the whole world, in short, 
 which has ever lain open to our national enterprise 
 beyond all." 
 
 He turns again to Yerres. 
 
 " But why talk of Gavins ? as though it were 
 Gavins on whom you were wreaking a private ven- 
 geance, instead of rather waging w^ar against the 
 very name and rights of Eoman citizenship. You 
 showed yourself an enemy, I say, not to the indivi- 
 dual man, but to the common cause of liberty. For 
 what meant it that, when the authorities of Mes- 
 sana, according to their usual custom, would have 
 erected the cross behind their city on the Pompeian 
 road, you ordered it to be set up on the si(]e that looked 
 toward the Strait? ^"^ay, and added this — which you 
 cannot deny, which you said opeidy in the liearing of 
 all — that you chose that spot for tliis reason, that as 
 he had called himself a Eonian citizen, he might be 
 able, from his cross of punishment, to see in the dis- 
 tance his country and his home ! And so, gentlemen, 
 that cross was the only one, since Messana was a city, 
 that was ever erected on that spot. A point which 
 commanded a view of Italy was chosen by the defend- 
 ant for the express reason that the dying sufferer, in 
 his last agony and toi'ment, might see how^ the rights of 
 the slave and the freeman were sepai'ated by that 
 
RESULT OF THE TRIAL. 27 
 
 narrow streak of sea; that Italy might look upon a 
 son of hers suffering the capital penalty reserved for 
 slaves alone. 
 
 " It is a crime to put a citizen of Eome in bonds ; 
 it is an atrocity to scourge him ; to put him to death 
 is well-nigh parricide ; what shall I say it is to crucify 
 hini] — Language has no word by which I may desig- 
 nate such an enormity. Yet with all this yon man 
 was not content. ' Let him look,' said he, ' towards 
 his country ; let him die in full sight of freedom and 
 the laws.' It was not Gavins ; it was not a single 
 victim, unknown to fame, a mere individual Eoman 
 citizen ; it was the common cause of liberty, the com- 
 mon rights of citizenship, which you there outraged 
 and put to a shameful death." 
 
 But in order to judge of the thrilling effect of such 
 passages upon a Eoman jury, they must be read in the 
 grand periods of the oration itself, to which no trans- 
 lation into a language so different in idiom and rhythm 
 as English is from Latin can possibly do justice. 
 The fruitless appeal made by the unhapj^y citizen to 
 the outraged majesty of Eome, and the indignant de- 
 mand for vengeance which the great orator founds 
 upon it — proclaiming the recognised principle that, in 
 every quarter of the world, the humblest wanderer who 
 could say he was a Eoman citizen should find protec- 
 tion in the name — will be always remembered as hav- 
 ing supplied Lord Palmerston with one of his most 
 telUng illustrations. But this great speech of Cicero's 
 — perhaps the most magnificent piece of declamation 
 in any language — though written and preserved to us, 
 
28 IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES. 
 
 was never spoken. The whole of the pleadings in the 
 case, which extend to some length, were composed for 
 the occasion, no doubt, in substance, and we have to 
 thank Cicero for publisliiug them afterwards in full. 
 But Yerres only waited to hear the brief opening speech 
 of his prosecutor ; he did not dare to challenge a 
 verdict, but allowing judgment to go by default, with- 
 drew to Marseilles soon after the trial opened. He 
 lived there, undisturbed in the enjoyment of his 
 plunder, long enough to see the fall and assassination 
 of his great accuser, but only (as it is said) to share his 
 fate soon afterwards as one of the victims of Antony's 
 proscription. Of his guilt there can be no question ; 
 his fear to face a court in which he had many friends 
 is sufficient presumptive evidence of it ; but we must 
 hesitate in assuming the deepness of its dye from the 
 terrible invectives of Cicero, ^o sensible person will 
 form an opinion upon the real merits of a case, even in 
 an English court of justice now, entirely from the 
 speech of the counsel for the prosecution. And if we 
 were to go back a century or two, to the state trials of 
 those days, we know that to form our estimate of a 
 prisoner's guilt from such data only would be doing 
 him a gross injustice. We have onl}'- to remember the 
 exclamation of Warren Hastings himself, whose trial, 
 as has been said, has so many points of resemblance 
 with that of Verres, when Burke sat down after the 
 torrent of eloquence which he had hurled against the 
 accused in his opening speech for the prosecution ; — "I 
 thought myself for the moment," said Hastings, "the 
 guiltiest man in England." 
 
JIORTENSIUS. 29 
 
 The result of this trial was to raise Cicero at once to 
 the leadership — if so modern an expression may be 
 used — of the Roman bar. Up to this time the position 
 had been held by Hortensius, the counsel for Yerres, 
 whom Cicero himself calls " the king of the courts." 
 He was eight years the senior of Cicero in age, and 
 many more professionally, for he is said to have made 
 his first public speech at nineteen. He had the ad- 
 vantage of the most extraordinary memory, a musical 
 voice, and a rich flow of language : but Cicero more 
 than implies that he was not above bribing a jury. It 
 was not more disgraceful in those days than bribing a 
 voter in our own. The two men were very unlike in 
 one respect ; Hortensius was a fop and an exquisite 
 (he is said to have brought an action against a colleague 
 for disarranging the folds of his gown), while Cicero's 
 vanity was quite of another kind. After Yerres's trial, 
 the two advocates were frequently engaged together in 
 the same cause and on the same side : but Hortensius 
 seems quietly to have abdicated his forensic sovereignty 
 before the rising fame of his younger rival. They 
 became, ostensibly at least, personal friends. What 
 jealousy there was between them, strange to say, seems 
 always to have been on the side of Cicero, who could 
 not be convinced of the friendly feeling which, on 
 Hortensius's part, there seems no reason to doubt. 
 After his rival's death, however, Cicero did full justice 
 to his merits and his eloquence, and even inscribed to 
 his memory a treatise on ' Glory,' which has been lost. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 1'here was no check as yet in Cicero's career. It had 
 been a steady course of fame and success, honestly 
 earned and well deserved ; and it was soon to culmin- 
 ate in that great civil triumph which earned for him 
 the proud title of Pater Patrice — the Father of his 
 Country. It was a phrase which the orator himself had 
 invented ; and it is possible that, with all his natural 
 self-complacency, he might have felt a little uncomfort- 
 able under the compliment, when he remembered on 
 whom he had originally bestowed it — upon that Caius 
 Marius, whose death in his bed at a good old age, 
 after being seven times consul, he afterwards uses as 
 an argument, in the mouth of one of his imaginary 
 disputants, against the existence of an overruling Pro- 
 vidence. In the prime of his manhood he reached the 
 f^reat object of a Eoman's ambition — he became virtu- 
 ally Prime Minister of the rei)ul)lic : for he was elected, 
 by acclamation rather than by vote, the first of the two 
 consuls for the year, and his colleague, Caius Anlonius 
 (who had beaten the third candidate, the notorious 
 
CICERO'S CONSULSHIP. 31 
 
 Catiline, by a few votes only) was a man wlio valued 
 his office chiefly for its opportunities of peculation, 
 and whom Cicero knew how to manage. It is true 
 that this high dignity — so jealous were the old re- 
 publican principles of individual power — would last 
 only for a year ; but that year was to be a most eventful 
 one, both for Cicero and for Eome. The terrible days 
 of Marius and Sylla had passed, only to leave behind 
 a taste for blood and licence amongst the corrupt aris- 
 tocracy and turbulent commons. There were men 
 amongst the younger nobles quite ready to risk their 
 lives in the struggle for absolute power ; and the mob 
 was ready to follow whatever leader was bold enough 
 to bid highest for their support. 
 
 It is impossible here to do much more than glance 
 at the well-known story of Catiline's conspiracy. It 
 was the attempt of an able and desperate man to make 
 himself and his partisans masters of Eome by a bloody 
 revolution. Catiline was a member of a noble but im- 
 poverished family, who had borne arms under Sylla, and 
 had served an early apprenticeship in bloodshed under 
 that unscrupulous leader. Cicero has described his 
 character in terms which probably are not unfair, be- 
 cause the portrait was drawn by him, in the course of 
 his defence of a young friend who had been too much 
 connected with Catiline, for the distinct purpose of 
 showing the popular qualities wliich had dazzled and 
 attracted so many of the youth of Rome. 
 
 " He had about him very many of, I can hardly say 
 the visible tokens, but the adumbrations of the 
 highest qualities. There was in his character that 
 
32 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 whicli tempted him to indulge the worst passions, l)ut 
 also that which spurred him to energy and hard work. 
 Licentious appetites burnt fiercely within him. but there 
 was also a strong love of active military service. I be- 
 lieve that there never lived on earth such a monster of 
 inconsistency, — such a compound of opposite tastes and 
 passions brought into conflict with each other. Who 
 at one time was a greater favourite with our most 
 illustrious men 1 Who was a closer intimate with our 
 very basest ■? Who could be more greedy of money 
 than he was 1 Who could lavish it more profusely 1 
 There were these marvellous qualities in the man, — he 
 made friends so universally, he retained them by his 
 obliging ways, he was ready to share what he had with 
 them all, to help them at their need with his money, 
 his influence, his personal exertions — not stopping 
 short of the most audacious crime, if there was need of 
 it. He could change his very nature, and rule himself 
 by circumstances, and turn and bend in any direction. 
 He lived soberly with the serious, he was a boon com- 
 panion with the gay ; grave with the elders, merry with 
 the young ; reckless among the desperate, profligate 
 with the depraved. With a nature so complex and 
 many-sided, he not only collected round him wicked 
 and desperate characters from all quarters of the world, 
 but he also attracted many brave and good men by his 
 simulation of virtue. It would have been impossible for 
 him to have organised that atrocious attack upon the 
 Commonwealth, unless that fierce outgrowth of de- 
 praved passions had rested on some under-stratum of 
 agreeable qualities and powers of endurance." 
 
CATILINE. 33 
 
 Born in the same year with Cicero, his unsuccessful 
 rival for the consulship, and hating him with the im- 
 placable hatred with which a bad, ambitious, and able 
 man hates an opponent who is his superior in ability 
 and popularity as well as character, Catiline seems to 
 have felt, as his revolutionary plot ripened, that be- 
 tween the new consul and himself the fates of Rome 
 must choose. He had gathered round him a band of 
 profligate young nobles, deep in debt like himself, and 
 of needy and unscrupulous adventurers of all classes. 
 He had partisans who were collecting and drilling 
 troops for him in several parts of Italy. The pro- 
 gramme was assassination, abolition of debts, confisca- 
 tion of property : so little of novelty is there in re- 
 volutionary principles. The first plan had been to 
 murder the consuls of the year before, and seize the 
 government. It had failed through his own impatience. 
 He now hired assassins against Cicero, choosing the 
 opportunity of the election of the Incoming consuls, 
 which always took place some time before their en- 
 trance on office. But the plot was discovered, and the 
 election was put off. When it did take place, Cicero 
 appeared in the meeting, wearing somewhat ostenta- 
 tiously a corslet of bright steel, to show that he knew 
 his danger ; and Catiline's partisans found the place of 
 meeting already occupied by a strong force of the 
 younger citizens of the middle class, who had armed 
 themselves for the consul's protection. The election 
 passed off quietly, and Catiline was again rejected. A 
 second time he tried assassination, and it failed — so 
 watchful and well informed was the intended victim. 
 
 A. c. vol. ix. c 
 
34 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 And now Cicero, perhaps, was roused to a conscious- 
 ness that one or other must fall ; for in the unusually 
 determined measures which he took in the suppression 
 of the conspiracy, the mixture of personal alarm with 
 patriotic indignation is very perceptible. By a for- 
 tunate chance, the whole plan of the conspirators was 
 betrayed. Rebel camps had been formed not only in 
 Italy, but in Spain and Mauritania : Rome was to be 
 set on fire, the slaves to be armed, criminals let loose, 
 the friends of order to be put out of the way. The 
 consul called a meeting of the senate in the temple of 
 Jupiter Stator, a strong position on the Palatine Hill, 
 and denounced the plot in all its details, naming even 
 the very day fixed for the outbreak. The arch-conspir- 
 ator had the audacity to be present, and Cicero addressed 
 him personally in the eloquent invective which has 
 come to us as his " First Oration against Catiline." 
 His object was to drive his enemy from the city to the 
 camp of his partisans, and thus to bring matters at 
 once to a crisis for which he now felt himself prepared. 
 This daily state of public insecurity and personal danger 
 had lasted too long, he said : 
 
 " Therefore, let these conspirators at once take their 
 side; let them separate themselves from honest citizens, 
 and gather themselves together somewhere else ; let 
 them put a wall between us, as I have often said. Let 
 us have them no longer thus plotting the assassination 
 of a consul in his own house, overawing our courts of 
 justice with armed bands, besieging the senate-house 
 with drawn swords, collecting their incendiary stores to 
 burn our city. Let us at last be able to rearl plainly 
 
SPEECH AGAINST CATILINE. 35 
 
 in every Komau's face whether he he loyal to his 
 country or no. I may promise you this, gentlemen of 
 the Senate — there shall be no lack of diligence on the 
 part of your consuls ; there will he, I trust, no lack of 
 dignity and firmness on your own, of spirit amongst 
 the Roman knights, of unanimity amongst all honest 
 men, but that when Catiline has once gone from us, 
 everything will be not only discovered and brought 
 into the light of day, but also crushed, — ay, and 
 punished. Under such auspices, I bid you, Catiline, 
 go forth to wage your impious and unhallowed war,— 
 go, to the salvation of the state, to your own over- 
 throw and destruction, to the ruin of all who have joined 
 you in your great wickedness and treason. And thou, 
 great Jupiter, whose worship Eomulus founded here 
 coeval with our city ; — whom we call truly the 'Stay' * 
 of our capital and our empire ; — tliou wilt protect thine 
 own altars and the temples of thy kindred gods, the walls 
 and roof-trees of our homes, the lives and fortunes of 
 our citizens, from yon man and his accon)plices. These 
 enemies of all good men, invaders of their country, 
 plunderers of Italy, linked together in a mutual bond of 
 crime and an alliance of villany, thou wilt surely visit 
 with an everlasting punishment, living and dead ! " 
 
 Catiline's courage did not fail him. He had been 
 sitting alone — for all the other senators had shrunk 
 away from the bench of which he had taken possession. 
 He rose, and in reply to Cicero, in a forced tone of 
 humility protested his innocence. He tried also an- 
 other point. Was he, — a man of ancient and noble 
 
 * 'Stator.' 
 
36 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 fainil}'', — to be hastily condemned by bis fellow-nobles 
 on the word of this ' foreigner,' as he contemptuously 
 called Cicero — this -parvenu from Arpinum % But the 
 appeal failed ; his voice was drowned in the cries of 
 ' traitor' which arose on all sides, and with threats 
 and curses, vowing that si]ice he was driven to despera- 
 tion he would involve all Eome in his ruin, he rushed 
 out of the Senate-house. At dead of night he left the 
 city, and joined the insurgent camp at FfBsulae. 
 
 When the thunders of Cicero's eloquence had driven 
 Catiline from the Senate-house, and forced him to 
 join his fellow-traitors, and so put himself in the 
 position of levying open war against the state, it re- 
 mained to deal with those influential conspirators who 
 had been detected and seized within the city Myalls. 
 In three subsequent speeches in the Senate he justi- 
 fied the course he had taken in allowing Catiline to 
 escape, exposed further particulars of the conspiracy, 
 and urged the adoption of strong measures to crush 
 it out within the city. Even now, not all Cicero's 
 eloquence, nor all tlie efibrts of our imagination to 
 realise, as men realised it then, the imminence of 
 the public danger, can reconcile the summary pro- 
 cess adopted b}^ the consul with our English notions 
 of calm and deliberate justice. Of the guilt of the 
 men there was no doubt ; most of them even admitted 
 it. But there was no formal trial ; and a few hours 
 after a vote of death had been passed upon them in a 
 hesitating Senate, Lentulus and Cethegus, two niem- 
 bers of that august body, with three of their com- 
 panions in guilt, were brouglit from their separate 
 
EXECUTION OF THE CONSPIRATORS. 37 
 
 places of coiifinenient, with some degree of secrecy (as 
 appears from different writers), carried down into the 
 gloomy prison-vaults of the Tullianum,* and there 
 quietly strangled, by the sole authority of the consul. 
 Unquestionably they deserved death, if ever poli- 
 tical criminals deserved it : the lives and liberties of 
 good citizens were in danger; it was necessary to 
 strike deep and strike swiftly at a conspiracy which 
 extended no man knew how widely, and in which men 
 like Julius Caesar and Crassus were strongly suspected 
 of being engaged. The consuls had been armed with 
 extra-constitutional powers, conveyed by special reso- 
 lution of the Senate in the comprehensive formula 
 that they " were to look to it that the state suffered 
 no damage." Still, without going so far as to call this 
 unexampled proceeding, as the German critic Momm- 
 sen does, '• an act of the most brutal tyranny," it is 
 easy to understand how Mr Forsyth, bringing a calm 
 and dispassionate legal judgment to bear upon the 
 case, finds it impossible to reconcile it with our ideas 
 of dignified and even-handed justice, t It was the 
 hasty instinct of self-preservation, the act of a weak 
 government uncertain of its very friends, under the 
 influence of terror — a terror for which, no doubt, there 
 were abundant grounds. When Cicero stood on the 
 prison steps, where he had waited to receive the report 
 
 * A state dungeon, said to have been built in the reign of Ser- 
 vius Tullius. It was twelve feet under ground. Executions 
 often took place there, and the bodies of the criminals were 
 afterwards thrown dowai the Gemonian steps (which were close 
 at hand) into the Forum, for the people to see. 
 
 t Life of Cicero, p. 119. 
 
38 THE COXSULSIIIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 of those who were making sure work with the prisoners 
 within, and announced their fate to the assembled 
 crowd below in the single word " Vixerurd" (a 
 euphemism which we can only weakly translate into 
 "They have lived their life"), no doubt he felt that 
 he and^the republic held theirs from that moment by 
 a firmer tenure ; no doubt very many of those who 
 heard him felt that they could breathe again, now that 
 the grasp of Catiline's assassins was, for the moment at 
 all events, off their throats ; and the crowd who fol- 
 lowed the consul home were sincere enough when they 
 hailed such a vigorous avenger as the ' Father of his 
 Country,' But none the less it was that which poli- 
 ticians have called worse than a crime — it was a politi- 
 cal blunder ; and Cicero came to find it so in after 
 years ; though — partly from his immense self-apprecia- 
 tion, and partly from an honest determination to stand 
 by his act and deed in all its consequences — he never 
 suffered the shadow of such a confession to appear in 
 Ids most intimate correspondence. He claimed for 
 himself ever afterwards the sole glory of having saved 
 the state by such prompt and decided action ; and in 
 this he was fully borne out by the facts : justifiable 
 or unjustifiable, the act was his ; and there were 
 burning hearts at Rome which dared not speak out 
 against the j^opular consul, but set it down to his sole 
 account against the day of retribution. 
 
 For the present, however, all went successfully. 
 The boldness of the consul's measures cowed the dis- 
 affected, and confirmed the timid and wavering. His 
 colleague Antonius — himself by no means to be de- 
 
DEATH OF CATILINE. 39 
 
 pended on at this crisis, having but lately formed 
 a coalition with Catiline as against Cicero in the elec- 
 tion for consuls — had, by judicious management, been 
 got away from Rome to take the command against the 
 rebel army in Etruria. He did not, indeed, engage in 
 the campaign actively in person, having just now a 
 fit of the gout, either real or pretended ; but his 
 lieutenant-general was an old soldier who cared chiefly 
 for his duty, and Catiline's band — reckless and des- 
 perate men who had gathered to his camp from all 
 motives and from all quarters — were at length brought 
 to bay, and died fighting hard to the last. Scarcely a 
 man of them, except the slaves and robbers who had 
 swelled their ranks, either escaped or was made 
 prisoner. Catiline's body — easily recognised by his 
 remarkable height — was found, still breathing, lying 
 far in advance of his followers, surrounded by the dead 
 bodies of the Eoman legionaries — for the loss on the 
 side of the Republic had been very severe. The last 
 that remained to him of the many noble qualities which 
 had marked his earlier years was a desperate personal 
 courage. 
 
 For the month that yet remained of his consulship, 
 Cicero was the foremost man in Rome — and, as a 
 consequence, in the whole world. loobies and com- 
 mons vied in doing honour to the saviour of the state. 
 Catulus and Cato — men from whose lips words of 
 honour came with a double weight — saluted him pub- 
 licly by that memorable title oi .Pater Patrice; and 
 not only the capital, but most of the provincial towns 
 of Italy, voted him some public testimony of his un- 
 
40 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 rivalled services, ^o man had a more profound appre- 
 ciation of those services than the great orator himself. 
 It is possible that other men have felt quite as vain of 
 their own exploits, and on far less grounds ; but surely 
 no man ever paraded his self-complacency like Cicero. 
 His vanity was indeed a thing to marvel at rather 
 than to smile at, because it was the vanitv of so able 
 a man. Other great men have h^QVL either too really 
 great to entertain the feeling, or have been wise enough 
 to keep it to themselves. But to Cicero it must have 
 been one of the enjoyments of his life. He harped 
 upon his consulsliip in season and out of season, in his 
 letters, in his judicial pleadings, in his public speeches 
 (and we may be sure in his conversation), until one 
 would think his friends must have hated the subject 
 even more than his enemies. He wrote accounts of it 
 in prose and verse, in Latin and Greek — and, no doubt, 
 only limited them to those languages because they were 
 the only ones he knew. The well-known line which 
 provoked the ridicule of critics like Juvenal and Quin- 
 tilian, because of the unlucky jingle peculiarly unpleas- 
 ant to a Roman ear — 
 
 " fortunatam natam me consule Romam ! " 
 
 expresses the sentiment which — rhyme or no rhyme, 
 reason or no reason — he Avas continually repeating in 
 some form or other to himself and to every one who 
 would listen. 
 
 His consulship closed in glory ; but on his very last 
 day of office there was a warning voice raised amidst 
 the triumph, which might have opened his eyes — 
 
CLOSE OF HIS CONSULSHIP. 41 
 
 ]ieiliaps it did — to the troubles which were to come. 
 He stood up in the Rostra to make the usual address 
 to the people on laying down his authority. Metellus 
 Nepos had been newly elected one of the tribunes : 
 it was his office to guard jealously all the rights and 
 privileges of the Eoman commons. Influenced, it is 
 said, by Coesar — possibly himself an undiscovered parti- 
 san of Catiline — he dealt a blow at the retiring consul 
 under cover of a discharge of duty. As Cicero was 
 about to speak, he interposed a tribune's ' veto ' ; no 
 man should be heard, he said, who had put Roman 
 citizens to death without a trial. There was consterna- 
 tion in the Forum. Cicero could not dispute what 
 was a perfectly legal exercise of the tribune's power ; 
 only, in a few emphatic words which he seized tlie 
 opportunity of adding to the usual formal oath on quit- 
 ting office, he protested that his act had saved Eome. 
 The people shouted in answer, "Thou hast said true !" 
 and Cicero went home a private citizen, but with that 
 hearty tribute from his grateful countrymen ringing 
 pleasantly in his ears. But the bitter words of Metel- 
 lus were yet to be echoed by his enemies again and 
 again, until that fickle popular voice took them up, 
 and hoAvled them after the once popular consul. 
 
 Let us follow him for a while into private life ; a 
 pleasanter companionship for us, we confess, than the 
 unstable glories of the political arena at Rome. In 
 his family and social relations, the great orator wins 
 from us an amount of personal interest and sympathy 
 which he fails sometimes to command in his career 
 as a statesman. At forty-five years of age he has 
 
.SHIP ANh CATILINE. 
 
 become a very wealthy man — has bought for some- 
 thing like ,£30,000 a noble mansion on the Palatine 
 Hill ; and besides the old-fashioned family seat near 
 Arpinum — now become his own by his father's death — 
 he has built, or enlarged, or bought as they stood, villas 
 at Antium, at Formias, at Pompeii, at CuniiB, at Puteoli, 
 and at half-a-dozen other places, besides the one fav- 
 ourite spot of all, which was to him almost what Ab- 
 botsford was to Scott, the home which it was the 
 delight of his life to embellish — his country-house 
 among the pleasant hills of Tusculum.''' It had once 
 belonged to Sulla, and was about twelve miles from 
 Rome. In that beloved building and its arrangements 
 he indulged, as an ample purse allowed him, not only 
 a highly-cultivated taste, but in some respects almost a 
 whimsical fancy. " A mere cottage," he himself terms 
 it in one place ; but this was when he was deprecating 
 accusations of extravagance which were brought against 
 him, and we all understand something of the pride 
 which in such matters " apes humility." He would 
 have it on the plan of the Academia at Athens, with 
 its palcBstra and open colonnade, where, as he tells us, 
 he could walk and discuss jiolitics or philosophy with 
 his friends. Greek taste and design were as fashion- 
 able among the Romans of that day as the Louis 
 Quatorze style was with our grandfathers. But its 
 grand feature was a library, and its most valued furni- 
 ture was books. Without books, he said, a house was 
 but a body without a soul. He entertained for these 
 
 * Near the modern town of Frascati. But tliere is no cer- 
 tainty as to the site of Cicero's villa. 
 
CICERO'S VILLA AT 
 
 treasures not only the calm love of a reader, but the 
 passion of a bibliophile ; he was particular about his 
 bindings, and admired the gay colours of the covers in 
 which the precious manuscripts were kept as w^ell as 
 the more intellectual beauties within. He had clever 
 Greek slaves employed from time to time in making 
 copies of all such works as were not to be readily pur- 
 chased. He could walk across, too, as he tells us, to 
 his neighbour's, the young Luculkis, a kind of ward 
 of his, and borrow from the library of that splendid 
 mansion any book he wanted. His friend Atticus 
 collected for him everywhere — manuscripts, paintings, 
 statuary; though for sculpture he professes not to 
 care much, except for such subjects as might form ap- 
 ])ropriate decorations for his j^alcestra and his library. 
 Very pleasant must have been the days spent together 
 by the two friends — so alike in their private tastes and 
 liabits, so far apart in their chosen course of life — when 
 they met there in the brief holidays which Cicero stole 
 from the law-courts and the Forum, and sauntered in 
 the shady walks, or lounged in the cool library, in 
 that home of lettered ease, where the busy lawyer and 
 politician declared that he forgot for a while all the 
 toils and vexations of public life. 
 
 He had his little annoyances, however, even in these 
 happy hours of retirement. Morning calls were an 
 infliction to which a country gentleman was liable in 
 ancient Italy as in modern England. A man like 
 Cicero Avas very good company, and somewhat of a 
 lion besides ; and country neighbours, wherever he set 
 up his rest, insisted on bestowing their tediousness on 
 
44 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 liim. His villa at Formiae, his favourite residence 
 next to Tusculum, was, he protested, more like a public 
 hall. Most of his visitors, indeed, had the considera- 
 tion not to trouble him after ten or eleven in the fore- 
 noon (fashionable calls in those days began uncomfort- 
 ably early) ; but there v^^ere one or two, especially his 
 next-door neighbour, Arrius, and a friend's friend, 
 named Sebosus, who were in and out at all hours : the 
 former had an unfortunate taste for philosophical dis- 
 cussion, and was postponing his return to Eome (he 
 was good enough to say) from day to day in order to 
 enjoy these long mornings in Cicero's conversation. 
 Such are the doleful complaints in two or three of the 
 letters to Atticus ; but, like all sucli complaints, they 
 were probably only half in earnest : popularity, even 
 at a watering-place, was not very unpleasant, and the 
 writer doubtless knew how to practise the social philo- 
 sophy which he recommends to others, and took his 
 place cheerfully and pleasantly in the society which 
 he found about him — not despising his honest neigh- 
 bours because they had not all adorned a consulship 
 or saved a state. 
 
 There were times when Cicero fancied that this 
 rural life, with all its refinements of "wealth and taste 
 and literar}^ leisure, was better worth living than the 
 public life of the capital. His friends and his books, 
 he said, were the company most congenial to him ; 
 " politics might go to the dogs ; " to count the waves 
 as they rolled on the beach was happiness ; he " had 
 rather be mayor of Antium than consul at Rome " ; 
 " rather sit in his own library with Atticus in their 
 
LIFE IX THE COUNTRY. 45 
 
 favourite seat under the bust of Aristotle than in 
 tlie curule chair." It is true that these longings for 
 retirement usually followed some political defeat or 
 mortification ; that his natural sphere, the only life in 
 which he could be really happy, was in the keen ex- 
 citement of party warfare — the glorious battle-field of 
 the Senate and the Forum. The true key-note of his 
 mind is to be found in these words to his friend Coelius : 
 *' Cling to the city, my friend, and live in her light : 
 all employment abroad, as I have felt from my earliest 
 manhood, is obscure and petty for those who have 
 abilities to make them famous at Eome." Yet the 
 other strain had nothing in it of affectation or hypo- 
 crisy : it was the schoolboy escaped from work, thor- 
 oughly enjoying his holiday, and fancying that nothing 
 w^ould be so delightful as to have holidays always. 
 In this, again, there was a similarity between Cicero's 
 taste and that of Horace. The poet loved his Sabine 
 farm and all its rural delights — after his fashion ; and 
 perhaps thought honestly that he loved it more than 
 he really did. Above all, he loved to write about it. 
 With that fancy, half-real, perhaps, and half-affected, 
 for pastoral simplicity, wliich has always marked a 
 state of over-luxurious civilisation, he protests to him- 
 self that there is nothing like the country. But per- 
 haps Horace discharges a sly jest at himself, in a soit 
 of aside to his readers, in the person of Al]3hius, the 
 rich city money-lendei", who is made to utter that pretty 
 apostrophe to rural happiness : — 
 
46 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 " Happy the man, in busy scliemes unskilled, 
 Who, living simply, like our sires of old, 
 Tills the few acres which his father tilled, 
 Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold." 
 
 Martin's ' Horace.* 
 
 And who, after thus expatiating for some stanzas on 
 the charms of the country, calls in all his money one 
 week in order to settle there, and puts it all out again 
 (no doubt at higher interest) the week after, " riis, 
 quando ie aspiciam ! " has been the cry of public men 
 before and since Cicero's day, to whom, as to the great 
 Roman, banishment from political life, and condemna- 
 tion to perpetual leisure, would have been a sentence 
 that would have crushed their very souls. 
 
 He was very happy at this time in his family. His 
 Avife and he loved one another with an honest affection; 
 anything more would have been out of the natural course 
 of things in Eoman society at any date, and even so much 
 as this was become a notable exception in these later 
 days. It is paying a high honour to the character of 
 Cicero and his household — and from all evidence that 
 has come down to us it may be paid with truth — that 
 even in those evil times it might have presented the ori- 
 ginal of what Virgil drew as almost a fancy picture, or one 
 to be realised only in some happy retirement into which 
 the civilised vices of the capital had never penetrated — 
 
 " Where loving children climb to reach a kiss — 
 A home of chaste delights and wedded bliss." * 
 
 " Interia dulces pendent circnm oscnla nati ; 
 Casta pudicitiam scrvat domus." 
 
 — Georrr. ii. 524. 
 
TULLIA AND AlARCUS. 47 
 
 His little daughter, Tullia, or Tulliola, which was her 
 pet name (the Eoman diminutives being formed some- 
 what more elegantly than ours, by adding a syllable 
 instead of cutting short), was the delight of his heart ; 
 in his earlier letters to Atticus he is constantly making 
 some affectionate mention of her — sending her love, or 
 some playful message which his friend would under- 
 stand. She had been happily married (though she 
 was then but thirteen at the most) the year before his 
 consulship ; but the affectionate intercourse between 
 father and daughter was never interrujited until her 
 early death. His only son, Marcus, born after a consider 
 able interval, who succeeded to TuUia's place as a house 
 hold pet, is made also occasionally to send some child- 
 ish word of remembrance to his father's old friend : 
 " Cicero the Little sends his compliments to Titus the 
 Athenian " — " Cicero the Philosopher salutes Titus the 
 Politician."* These messages are written inGreekat the 
 end of the letters. Abeken thinks that in the originals 
 they might have been added in the little Cicero's own 
 hand, " to show that he had begun Greek ;" "a conjec- 
 ture," says ]Mr Merivale, " too pleasant not to be readily 
 admitted." The boy gave his father some trouble in 
 after life. He served with some credit as an officer 
 of cavalry under Pompey in Greece, or at least got 
 into no trouble there. Some years after, he wished 
 to take service in Spain, under Caesar, against the 
 sons of Pompey ; but tlie father did not approve of 
 this change of side. He persuaded him to go to 
 
 * See 'Letters to Atticus/ ii. 9, 12 ; Merivale's translation of 
 Abeken'.s 'Cicero in Seinen Briefen,' p. 114. 
 
48 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 Athens to study instead, allowing him what both At- 
 ticus and himself thought a very liberal income — not 
 sufficient, however, for him to keep a horse, which 
 Cicero held to be an unnecessary luxury. Probably 
 the young cavalry officer might not have been of the 
 same opinion ; at any rate, he got into more trouble 
 among the philosophers than he did in the army. He 
 spent a great deal more than his allowance, and one of 
 the professors, whose lectures he attended, had the 
 credit of helping him to spend it. The young man 
 must have shared the kindly disposition of his father. 
 He wrote a confidential letter to Tiro, the old family 
 servant, showing very good feeling, and promising re- 
 formation. It is doubtful how far the promise was 
 kept. He rose, however, subsequently to place and 
 power under Augustus, but died without issue ; and, 
 so far at least as history knows them, the line of the 
 Ciceros was extinct. It had flashed into fame with 
 the great orator, and died out with him. 
 
 AU Cicero's biographers have found considerable 
 difficulty in tracing, at all satisfactorily, the sources of 
 the magnificent fortune which must have been required 
 to keep up, and to embellish in accordance with so 
 luxurious a taste, so many , residences in all parts of 
 the country. True, these expenses often led Cicero 
 into debt and difficulties ; but what he borrowed from 
 his friends he seems always to have repaid, so that the 
 money must have come in from some quarter or other. 
 His patrimony at Arpinum would not appear to have 
 been large ; he got only some £3000 or £4000 dowry 
 with Terentia; and we find no hint of his making 
 
SOURCES OF INCOME. 49 
 
 money by any commercial speculations, as some Eoman 
 gentlemen did. On the other hand, it is the barest 
 justice to him to say that his hands were clean from 
 those ill-gotten gains which made the fortunes of many 
 of the wealthiest public men at Rome, who were crim- 
 inals in only a less degree than Yerres — peculation, 
 extortion, and downright robbery in the unfortunate 
 provinces which they were sent out to govern. Such 
 opportunities lay as ready to his grasp as to other 
 men's, but he steadily eschewed them. His declining 
 the tempting prize of a provincial government, which 
 was his right on the expiration of his pr?etorship, may 
 fairly be attributed to his having in view the higher 
 object of the consulship, to secure which, by an early 
 and persistent canvass, he felt it necessary to remain 
 in Eome. But he again waived the right when his 
 consulship w^as over ; and when, some years afterwards, 
 he went unwillingly as proconsul to Cilicia, his admin- 
 istration there, as before in his lower office in Sicily, 
 was marked by a probity and honesty quite excep- 
 tional in a Roman governor. His emoluments, con- 
 fined strictly within the legal bounds, would be only 
 moderate, and, whatever they were, came too late in 
 his life to be any explanation of his earlier expenditure. 
 He received many valuable legacies, at different times, 
 from personal friends or grateful clients who died 
 childless (be it remembered how" the barrenness of the 
 marriage union had become then, at Rome, as it is said 
 to be in some countries now, the reproach of a sensual 
 and effete aristocracy) ; he boasts himself, in one of his 
 * Philippics,' that he had received from this source 
 A. c. voL ix. D 
 
50 THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE. 
 
 above £170,000. Mr Forsyth also notices the large 
 presents that were made by foreign kings and states to 
 conciliate the support and advocacy of the leading men 
 at Borne — "we can hardly call them bribes, for in 
 many cases the relation of patron and client was avow- 
 edly established between a foreign state and some 
 influential Eoman : and it became his duty, as of 
 course it was his interest, to defend it in the Senate 
 and before the people." In this way, he thinks, Cicero 
 held " retainers " from Dyrrachium ; and, he might 
 have added, from Sicily. The great orator's own boast 
 was, that he never took anything for his services as an 
 advocate ; and, indeed, such payments were forbidden 
 by law.* But with all respect for Cicero's material 
 honesty, one learns from his letters, unfortunately, not 
 to put implicit confidence in him when he is in a 
 boasting vein ; and he might not look upon voluntary 
 gifts, after a cause was decided, in the light of pay- 
 ment. Psetus, one of his clients, gave him a valuable 
 library of books ; and one cannot believe that this was 
 a solitary instance of the quiet evasion of the Cincian 
 law, or that there were not other transactions of the 
 same nature which never found their way into any 
 letter of Cicero's that was likely to come down to us. 
 
 * The principle passed, like so many others, from the old 
 Roman law into our own, so that to this very day, a barrister's 
 fees, being considered in the nature of an honorarium, or vol- 
 untary present made to him for his services, are not recoverable 
 by law. 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 HIS EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 "We must return to Rome. Cicero had never left it 
 but for his short occasional holiday. Though no longer 
 in office, the ex-consul was still one of the foremost 
 public men, and his late dignity gave him important 
 precedence in the Senate. He was soon to be brought 
 into contact, and more or less into opposition, with 
 the two great chiefs of parties in whose feuds he be- 
 came at length so fatally involved. Pompey and 
 Caesar were both gradually becoming formidable, aiid 
 both had ambitious plans of their own, totally incon- 
 sistent with any remnant of republican liberty — plans 
 which Cicero more or less suspected, and of that sus- 
 picion they were probably both aware. Both, by their 
 successful campaigns, had not only acquired fame and 
 honours, but a far more dangerous influence — an 
 influence which was to overwhelm all others here- 
 after — in the affection of their legions. Pompey was 
 still absent in Spain, but soon to return from his 
 long war against Mithridates, to enjoy the most splen- 
 did triumph ever seen at Rome, and to take the 
 
52 EXILE AND RETURX. 
 
 lead of the oligarchical party just so long and so 
 far as they v/ould help him to the power he coveted. 
 The enemies -whom Cicero had made by his strong 
 measures in the matter of the Catilinarian conspiracy 
 now took advantage of Pompey's name and popularity 
 to make an attack upon him. The tribune Metellus, 
 constant to his old party watchword, moved in the 
 Senate that the successful general, upon whom all ex- 
 pectations were centred, should be recalled to Eome 
 with his army " to restore the violated constitution." 
 All knew against whom the motion was aimed, and 
 what the violation of the constitution meant ; it was 
 the putting citizens to death without a trial. The 
 measure was not passed, though Csesar, jealous of 
 Cicero even more than of Pompey, lent himself to the 
 attempt. 
 
 But the blow fell on Cicero at last from a very dif- 
 ferent quarter, and from the mere private grudge of a 
 determined and unprincif)led man. Publius Clodius, 
 a young man of noble family, once a friend and sup- 
 porter of Cicero against Catiline, but who had already 
 made himself notorious for the most abandoned profli- 
 gacy, was detected, in a woman's dress, at the celebra- 
 tion of the rites of the Bona Dea — a kind of religious 
 freemasonry amongst the Roman ladies, the mysteries 
 of which are very little known, and probably Avould in 
 any case be best left without explanation. But for a 
 man to have been present at them was a sacrilege 
 hitherto unheard of, and which was held to lay the 
 wliole city under the just wrath of the oflFended god- 
 dess. The celebration had been held in the house of 
 
CLODIUS. 53 
 
 Caesar, as praetor, under the presidency of his wife 
 Pompeia ; and it was said that the object of the young 
 profligate was an intrigue with that lady. The circum- 
 stances are not favourahle to the suspicion ; but Caesar 
 divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark 
 that •' Caesar's wife must not be even suspected." Tor 
 this crime — unpardonable even in that corrupt society, 
 when crimes of far deeper dye passed almost unre- 
 proved — Clodius was, after some delay, brought to 
 public trial. The defence set up was an alihi, and 
 Cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it : he 
 liad met and spoken with Clodius in Eome that very 
 evening. The evidence was clear enough, but the; 
 jury had been tampered with by Clodius and his friends ; 
 liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even 
 a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought 
 to bear upon the majority of them, and he escaped con- 
 viction by a few votes. But he never forgave the part 
 which Cicero had taken against him; and from that 
 time forth the latter found a new, unscrupulous, inde- 
 fatigable enemy, of whose services his old opponents 
 gladly availed themselves. Cicero himself for some 
 time underrated this new danger. He lost no oppor- 
 tunity of taunting the unconvicted criminal in the bit- 
 terest terms in the Senate, and of exchanging with him 
 — very much to the detriment of his own character 
 and dignity, in our modern eyes — the coarsest jests 
 when they met in the street. But the temptation to 
 a jest, of whatever kind, was always irresistible to 
 Cicero : it was a weakness for which he more than 
 once paid dearly, for they were remembered against 
 
54 EXILE AXD RETURN. 
 
 liim when lie had forgotten them. Meanwhile Clodius 
 — a sort of milder Catiline, not without many popular 
 qualities — ^liad got himself elected tribune ; degrading 
 himself formally from his own order of nobles for 
 that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the 
 commons. The powers of the office were formidable 
 for all purposes of obstruction and attack; Clodius had 
 taken pains to ingratiate himself with all classes ; and 
 the consuls of the year were men of infamous character, 
 for whom he had found a successful means of bribery 
 by the promise of getting a special law passed to secure 
 them the choice of the richest provincial governments 
 — those coveted fields of plunder — of which they would 
 otherwise have had to take their chance by lot. When 
 all was ripe for his revenge, he brought before the 
 people in full assembly the following bill of pains and 
 penalties : — " Be it enacted, that whoever has put to 
 death a Roman citizen uncondemned in due form of 
 trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water." Such 
 was the legal form of words which implied banishment 
 from Eome, outlawry, and social excommunication. 
 Every man knew against whom the motion was level- 
 led. It was carried — carried in spite of the indigna- 
 tion of all honest men in Rome, in spite of all Cicero's 
 humiliating efforts to obtain its rejection. 
 
 It was in vain that he put on mourning, as was the 
 custom with those who were impeached of public 
 crimes, and went about the streets thus silently im- 
 ploring the pity of his fellow-citizens. In vain the 
 Avhole of his own equestrian order, and in fact, as he 
 declares, *'all honest men" (it was his favourite term 
 
DEPARTURE FROM ROME. 55 
 
 for men of his o^vn party), adopted the same dress to 
 show their sympathy, and twenty thousand youths 
 of good family — all in mourning — accompanied him 
 through the city. The Senate even met and passed 
 a resolution that their whole house should put on 
 mourning too. But Gabinius, one of tlie consuls, at 
 once called a public meeting, and warned the people 
 not to make the mistake of thinking that the Senate 
 was Rome. 
 
 In vain, also, was any personal appeal which Cicero 
 could make to the only two men who might have had 
 influence enough to sway the popular vote. He was 
 ostensibly on good terms both with Pompey and Csesar; 
 in fact, he made it his policy so to be. He foresaw 
 that on their future course would probably depend 
 the fate of Rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps 
 honestly, that he could make them " better citizens." 
 But he trusted neither ; and both saw in him an ob- 
 stacle to their own ambition. Caesar now looked on 
 coldly, not altogetlier sorry at the turn which affairs 
 had taken, and faiutly suggested that perhaps some 
 " milder measure" might serve to meet the case. From 
 Pompey Cicero had a right to look for some active 
 support ) indeed, such had been promised in case of 
 need. He threw himself at his feet with prayers and 
 tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain ; and 
 he anticipated the execution of that disgraceful edict 
 by a voluntary withdrawal into exile. Piso, one of 
 the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he 
 might "save Rome" a second time. His property was 
 at once confiscated; his villas at Tusculum and at For- 
 
56 EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 miae were plundered and laid waste, the consuls claim- 
 ing the lion's share of the spoil; and Clodius, with his 
 armed mob, set fire to the noble house on the Palatine, 
 razed it to the ground, and erected on the site a temple 
 to — Liberty ! 
 
 Cicero had friends who strongly urged him to defy 
 the edict ; to remain at Rome, and call on all good 
 citizens to arm in his defence. Modern historians very 
 generally have assumed that, if he could have made up 
 his mind to such a course, it would probably have been 
 successful. He was to rely, we suppose, upon those 
 " twenty thousand Roman youths " — rather a broken 
 reed to trust ta (remembering what those young gal 
 lants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head 
 of his legions just outside the gates of Rome. He him- 
 self seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his 
 friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest 
 and most business-like manner; though, with our 
 modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has 
 more of tlie ludicrous than the sublime. The sensible 
 and practical Atticus convinced him that such a solu- 
 ' tion of his difficulties would be the greatest possible; 
 j mistake — a mistake, moreover, which could never bel 
 I rectified. ' 
 
 But almost any course would have become him better 
 than that whicli he chose. Had he remained and faced 
 Clodius and his bravos manfully — or had he turned his 
 back upon Rome for ever, and shaken the dust off his 
 feet against the ungrateful city, and become a noble 
 pensioner upon Atticus at Buthrotum — he would have 
 died a greater man. He wandered from place to place, 
 
B EH A VI OCR AV EXILE. 57 
 
 sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyalty marks their 
 names with honour in tliat false and evil generation — 
 Sica, and Flaccus, and Plancius — bemoaning himself 
 like a woman, — "too blinded with tears to write," 
 " loathing the light of day." Atticus thought he was 
 going mad. It is not jDleasant to dwell upon this 
 miserable weakness of a great mind, which Cicero's 
 most eager eulogists admit, and which his detractors 
 have not failed to make the most of. iSov is it easy to 
 find excuse for him, but we will give him all the 
 benefit of Mr Forsytli's defence : — 
 
 " Seldom has misfortune so crushed a noble spirit, and 
 never, perhaps, has the ' bitter bread of banishment ' seemed 
 more bitter to any one than to him. We nmst remember 
 that the love of country was a passion with the ancients to 
 a degree which it is now difficult to realise, and exile from 
 it even for a time was felt to be an intolerable evil. The 
 nearest approach to such a feeling was perhaps that of some 
 favourite under an European monarchy, when, frowned 
 upon by his sovereign, he was hurled from place and power, 
 and banished from ihe court. The change to Cicero was 
 indeed tremendous. Not only was he an exile from Eome, 
 the scene of all his hopes, his glories, his triumphs, but he 
 was under the Ijan of an outlaw. If found witliin a certain 
 distance from the capital, he must die, and it was death to 
 any one to give him footl or shelter. His propeity was 
 destroyed, his family was penniless, and the people whom 
 he had so faithfully served were the authors of his ruin. 
 All this may be urged in his behalf, but still it would 
 have been only consistent with Roman fortitude to have 
 shown tliat he possessed something of the spirit of the 
 fallen archan-^el." * 
 
 * Forsyth's Life of Cicoro, p. 190. 
 
58 EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 His exile lasted nearly a year and a half. Long be- 
 fore that time there had come a reaction in his favour. 
 The new consuls were well disposed towards him ; 
 Clodius's insolence had already disgusted Pompey; 
 Caesar was absent with his legions in Gaul ; his own 
 friends, who had all along been active in his favour 
 (though in his querulous mood he accused them of 
 apathy) took advantage of the change, his generous 
 rival liortensius being amongst the most active ; and 
 all the frantic violence of Clodius and his party served 
 only to delay for a while the return which they could 
 not prevent. A motion for liis recall was cai'ried at 
 last by an immense majority. 
 
 Cicero had one remarkable ally on that occasion. 
 On one of the days when the Senate was known to be 
 discussing his recall, the 'Andromache' of Ennius was 
 being played in the theatre. The popular actor .^sop, 
 whose name lias come down to us in conjunction with 
 that of Roscius, was playing the principal character. 
 The great orator had been his pupil, and was evidently 
 regarded by him as a personal friend. With all the 
 force of his consummate art, he threw into Andro- 
 mache's lament for her absent father his own feelings 
 for Cicero. The words in the part were strikingly ap- 
 propriate, and he did not hesitate to insert a phrase or 
 two of his own when he came to speak of the man 
 
 " Who with a constant mind upheld the state, 
 Stood oil the people's side in perilous times. 
 Ne'er recked of his own life, nor spared himself." 
 
 So significant and emphatic were his tone and ges- 
 
^SOP THE ACTOR. 59 
 
 ture as he addressed himself pointedly to his Eoman 
 audience, that they recalled him, and, amid a storm cf 
 plaudits, made him repeat the passage. He added to 
 it the words — which were not set down for him — 
 
 " Best of all friends in direst strait of war ! " 
 
 and the applause was redoubled. The actor drew 
 courage from liis success. When, as the play went on, 
 he came to speak the words — 
 
 " And you — you let hun live a banished man — \r 
 
 See him driven forth and hunted from your gates !" 
 
 he pointed to the nobles, knights, and commons, as 
 they sat in their respective seats in the crowded rows 
 before him, his own voice broke with grief, and the 
 tears even more than the applause of the whole audience 
 bore witness alike to their feelings towards the exile, 
 and the dramatic power of the actor. " He pleaded 
 my cause before the Eoman people," says Cicero (for 
 it is he that tells the story), " with far more weight of 
 eloquence than I could have pleaded for myself."* 
 
 He had been visited with a remarkable dream, while 
 staying with one of his friends in Italy, during the 
 earlier days of his exile, which he now recalled with 
 some interest. He tells us this story also himself, 
 though he puts it into the mouth of another speaker, 
 in his dialogue on " Divination." If few were so fond 
 of introducing personal anecdotes into every place 
 where he could find room for them, fewer stiU could 
 tell them so well. 
 
 * Defence of Sestins, c. 56, &c. 
 
60 EXILE AND RETUnX. 
 
 " I had lain awake a great part of the night, and at 
 last towards dawn had begun to sleep soundly and 
 heavily. I had given orders to my attendant that, 
 in this case, though we had to start that very morning, 
 strict silence should be kept, and that I was on no 
 account to be disturbed ; when about seven o'clock I 
 awoke, and told liini my dream. I thought I was w^an- 
 deriiig alone in some solitary place, when Caius Marius 
 appeared to me, with his fasces bound with laurel, and 
 asked why I was so sad? And when I answered that 
 I had been driven from my country, he caught my hand, 
 bade me be of good cheer, and put me under the guid- 
 ance of his own lictor to lead me to his monument; 
 there, he said, I shouid find my deliverance." 
 
 So indeed it had turned out. The temple dedicated 
 to Honour and Virtue, in which the Senate sat when 
 they passed the first resolution for Cicero's recall, was 
 known as the *' Monument of Marius." There is no 
 need to doubt the perfect good faith of the story 
 which he tells, and it may be set down as one of the 
 earliest authenticated instances of a dream cominc: true. 
 But if dreams are fashioned out of our waking imagi- 
 nations, it is easy to believe that the fortunes of his 
 great townsman Marius, and the scenes in the Senate 
 at Eome, were continually present to the exile's 
 thoughts. 
 
 His return was a triumphal progress. He landed at 
 Brundusium on his daughter's birthday. She had only 
 just lost her husband Piso, who had gallantly maintained 
 her father's cause throughout, but she Avas the first to 
 welcome him with tears of joy which overmastered her 
 
RETURN TO ROME. 61 
 
 sorrow. He was careful to lose no chance of making 
 his return impressive. He took his way to Rome with 
 the slow march of a conqueror. The journey which 
 Horace made easily in twelve days, occupied Cicero 
 twenty-four. But he chose not the shortest but the 
 most public route, through Naples, Capua, Minturnse, 
 Terracina, and Aricia. 
 
 Let him tell the story of his own reception. If he 
 tells it (as he does more than once) with an undis- 
 guised pride, it is a pride with wliich it is impossible 
 not to sympathise. He boasted afterwards that he had 
 been "carried back to Eome on the shoulders of Italy;" 
 a ad Plutarch says it was a boast he had good right to 
 
 make. 
 
 " Who does not know what my return home was 
 likel How the people of Brundusium held out to me, 
 as I might say, the right hand of welcome on behalf of 
 all my native land % From thence to Eome my progress 
 was like a march of all Italy. There was no district, no 
 town, corporation, or colony, from which a public de- 
 putation M^as not sent to congratulate me. Why need 
 I speak of my arrival at each place ? how the people 
 crowded the streets in the towns ; how they flocked 
 in from the country — fathers of families Avith wives 
 and children ? How can I describe those days, when 
 all kept holiday, as though it were some high festival 
 of the immortal gods, in joy for my safe return ? That 
 single day was to me like immortality; when I re- 
 turned to my own city, when I saw the Senate and 
 the population of all ranks come forth to greet me, 
 when Eome herself looked as though she had wrenched 
 
62 EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 herself from her foundations to rush to embrace her 
 preserver. For she received me in such sort, that not 
 only all sexes, ages, and callings, men and women, of 
 every rank and degree, but even the very walls, the 
 houses, the temples, seemed to share the universal joy." 
 
 The Senate in a body came out to receive him on 
 the Appian road; a gilded chariot waited for him at 
 the city gates ; the lower class of citizens crowded 
 the steps of the temples to see him as he passed; and so 
 he rode, escorted by troops of friends, more than a con- 
 queror, to the Capitol. 
 
 His exultation was naturally as intense as his de- 
 spair had been. He made two of his most florid 
 speeches (if indeed they be his, which is doubtful), 
 one in the Senate and another to the people assembled 
 in the Forum, in which he congratulated himself on 
 his return, and Kome on having regained her most 
 illustrious citizen. It is a curious note of the temper 
 and logical capacities of the mob, in all ages of the 
 world alike, that within a few hours of their applaud- 
 ing to the echo this speech of Cicero's, Clodius suc- 
 ceeded in exciting them to a serious riot by appealing 
 to the ruinous price, of corn as one of the results of the 
 exile's return. 
 
 For nearly four years more, though unable to shake 
 Cicero's recovered position in the state — for he was now 
 supported by Pompey — Clodius and his partisans, 
 backed by a strong force of trained gladiators in their 
 pay, kept Rome in a state of anarchy which is almost 
 inexplicable. It was more than suspected that Crassus, 
 now utterly estranged from Pompey, supplied out of 
 
DEATH OF CLOD I US. 63 
 
 his enormous wealtli the means of keeping on foot this 
 lawless agitation. Elections were overawed, meetings 
 of the Senate interrupted, assassinations threatened 
 and attempted. Already men began to look to mili- 
 tary rule, and to think a good cause none the worse 
 for being backed by "strong battalions." Things were 
 fast tending to the i)oint where Pompey and Ccesar, 
 trusty allies as yet in profession and appearance, deadly 
 rivals at heart, hoped to step in with their veteran le- 
 gions. Even Cicero, the man of peace and constitution- 
 al statesman, felt comfort in the thought that this final 
 argument could be resorted to by his own party. Eut 
 Clodius's mob-government, at any rate, w^as to be put 
 an end to somewhat suddenly. Milo, now one of the 
 candidates for the consulship, a man of determined and 
 unscrupulous character, had turned his own weapons 
 against him, and maintained an opposition patrol of 
 hired gladiators and wild-beast fighters. The Senate 
 quite approved, if they did not openly sanction, this 
 irregular championship of their order. The two par- 
 ties walked the streets of Eome like the Capulets and 
 Montagues at Yerona ; and it was said that Milo had 
 been heard to swear that he would rid the city of 
 Clodius if he ever got the chance. It came at last, in a 
 casual meeting on the Appian road, near Bovillae. A 
 scuffle began between their retainers, and Clodius was 
 killed — his friends said, murdered. The excitement at 
 Rome was intense : the dead body was carried and laid 
 publicly on the Eostra. Eiots ensued; Milo was obliged 
 to fly, and renounce his hopes of power ; and the Senate, 
 intimidated, named Pompey — not indeed ''Dictator," 
 
64 EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 for the name had become almost as hateful as that of 
 King — but sole consul, for the safety of the state. 
 
 Cicero had resumed his practice as an advocate, and 
 was now called upon to defend Milo. But Pompey, 
 either from some private grudge, or in order to win 
 favour with the populace, determined that Milo should 
 he convicted. The jury were overawed by his presence 
 in person at the trial, and by the occupation by armed 
 soldiers of all the avenues of the court under colour of 
 keeping order. It was really as great an outrage upon 
 the free administration of justice as the jiresence of a 
 regiment of soldiers at the entrance to Westminster 
 Hall would be at a modern trial for high treason or 
 sedition. Cicero affected to see in Pompey's legionaries 
 nothing more than the maintainors of the peace of the 
 city. But he knew better ; and the fine passage in the 
 opening of his speech for the defence, as it has come 
 down to us, is at once a magnificent piece of irony, and 
 a vindication of the rights of counsel. 
 
 "Although I am conscious, gentlemen, that it is a 
 disgrace to me to show fear when I stand here to plead 
 in behalf of one of the bravest of men ; — and espe- 
 cially does such weakness ill become me, that when 
 Milo himself is far more anxious about the safety of 
 the state than about his own, I should be unable to 
 bring to his defence the like magnanimous spirit; — 
 yet this strange scene and strangely constituted court 
 does terrify my eyes, for, turn them Avhere I will, I 
 look in vain for the ancient customs of the Forum, 
 and the old style of public trials. For your tribunal 
 to-day is girt with no such audience as was wont ; thip 
 
DEFENCE OF MILO, 65 
 
 is no ordinary crowd that hems us in. Yon guards 
 whom you see on duty in front of all the temples, 
 though set to prevent violence, yet still do a sort of 
 violence to the pleader ; since in the Forum and the 
 couj-t of justice, though the military force which sur- 
 rounds us be wholesome and needful, yet we cannot 
 even be thus freed from apprehension without looking 
 with some apprehension on the means. And if 1 
 thought tliey were set there in hostile array against 
 I\Iilo, I would yield to circumstances, gentlemen, an<l 
 feel there was no room for the pleader amidst such 
 a display of weapons. But T am encouraged by the 
 advice of a man of great wisdom and justice — of 
 Pompey, who surely would not think it compatible 
 with that justice, after committing a prisoner to the 
 verdict of a jury, then to hand him over to the swords 
 of his soldiers ; nor consonant with his wisdom to 
 arm the violent passions of a mob with the authority 
 of the state. Therefore those weapons, those officers 
 and men, proclaim to us not peril but protection ; they 
 encourage us to be not only undisturbed but confident ; 
 they promise me not only support in pleading for 
 the defence, but silence for it to be listened to. As 
 to the rest of the audience, so far as it is composed 
 of peaceful citizens, all, I know, are on our side; 
 nor is there any single man among all those crowds 
 whom you see occupying every point from which a 
 glimpse of this court can be gained, looking on in 
 anxious expectation of the result of this trial, who, 
 wliile he approves the boldness of the defendant, 
 does not also feel that the fate of himself, his chil- 
 A. (J. vol. ix. E 
 
66 EXILE AND RETURN. 
 
 dren, and his country, hangs upon the issue of to- 
 day." 
 
 After an elaborate argument to prove that the slay- 
 ing of Clodius by Milo was in self-defence, or, at the 
 worst, that it was a fate which he well deserved as a 
 public enemy, he closes his speech with a peroration, 
 the pathos of which has always been admired : — 
 
 " I would it had been the will of heaven — if I may 
 say so with all reverence for my country, for I fear lest 
 my duty to my client may make me say what is dis- 
 loyal towards her — I would tliat Publius Clodius were 
 not only alive, but that he were praetor, consul, dic- 
 tator even, before my eyes had seen this sight ! But 
 what says Milo % He speaks like a brave man, and a 
 man whom it is your duty to protect — ' Not so — by 
 no means,' says he. ' Clodius has met the doom he 
 well deserved : I am ready, if it must be so, to meet 
 that which I do not deserve.' . . . But I must 
 stop ; I can no longer speak for tears ; and tears are 
 an argument which he Avould scorn for his defence. I 
 entreat you, I adjure you, ye who sit here in judg- 
 ment, that in your verdict you dare to give utterance 
 to what I know you feel." 
 
 But the appeal Avas in vain, or rather, as far as we can 
 ascertain, was never made, — at least in such powerful 
 terms as those in which we read it. The great advo- 
 cate was wholly unmanned by the scene before him, 
 grew nervous, and broke down utterly in his speech 
 for the defence. This presence of a military force 
 under the orders of Ponipey- — the man in whom he 
 saw, as he hoped, the good genius of Rome — overawed 
 
GOVERNMENT OF CI LI CI A. 67 
 
 and disturbed him. The speech wliieh we read is 
 almost certainly not that which he delivered, but, as 
 in the previous case of Yerres, the finished and elabo- 
 rate composition of his calmer hours. Milo was con- 
 victed by a large majority ; in fact, tliere can be little 
 doubt but that he was legally guilty, however political 
 expediency might, in the eyes of Cicero and Ms party, 
 have justified his deed. Cato sat on the jury, and did 
 all he could to insure an acquittal, showing openly his 
 voting-paper to his fellow-jurors, with that scorn of the 
 " liberty of silence " which he shared with Cicero. 
 
 Milo escaped any worse penalty by at once going 
 into voluntary banishment at Martseiiles; — But he 
 showed more practical philosophy than his advocate; 
 for when he read the speech in his exile, he is said to 
 have declared that " it was fortunate for him it was 
 not spoken, or he should never have known the flavour 
 of the red mullet of Marseilles." 
 
 The removal of Clodius was a deliverance upon 
 Avhich Cicero never ceased to congTatulate himself. 
 That "battle of Bovillae," as he terms it, became an era 
 in his mental records of only less significance than his 
 consulship. His own public life continued to be hon- 
 ourable and successful. He was elected into the Col- 
 lege of Augurs, an honour which he had long coveted ; 
 and he was appointed to the government of Cilicia. 
 This latter was a greatness literally " thrust upon 
 him," and which he would gladly have declined, for it 
 took him away in these eventful days from his beloved 
 Eome ; and to these grand opportunities for enriching 
 himself he was, as has been said, honoural ly indiffe- 
 
68 EXILE AND RETURX. 
 
 rent. The appointment to a distant province was, in 
 fact, to a man like Cicero, little better than an honour- 
 able form of exile : it was like conferring on a man 
 who had been, and might hope one day to be again, 
 Prime Minister of England, the governor-generalship 
 of Bombay. 
 
 One consolation he found on reaching his new govern- 
 ment — that even in the farthest wilds of Cilicia there 
 were people who had heard of " the consul who saved 
 Eome." And again the astonished provincials marvelled 
 at a governor who looked upon them as having rights of 
 their own, and neither robbed nor ill-used them. He 
 made a little war, too, upon some troublesome hill-tribes 
 (intrusting the command chiefly to his brother Quintus, 
 who had served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul), 
 and gained a victory which his legions thought of suffi- 
 cient importance to salute him with the honoured title 
 of " imperator." Such military honours are especially 
 flattering to men who, like Cicero, are naturally and 
 essentially civilians ; and to Cicero's vanity they were 
 doubly delightful. Unluckily they led him to entertain 
 hopes of the further glory of a triumph; and this, but 
 for the revolution which followed, he might possibly 
 have obtained. As it was, the only result was his 
 parading about with him everywhere, from town to 
 town, for months after his return, the lictors with 
 laurelled fasces, which betokened that a triumph was 
 claimed — a pompous incumbrance, which became, as 
 he confessed, a grand subject for evil-disposed jesters, 
 and a considerable inconvenience to himself. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 CICERO AXD C^SAR. 
 
 The future master of Eome was now coming home, 
 after nearly ten years' absence, at the head of the victo- 
 rious legions with which lie had struck terror into the 
 Germans, overrun all Spain, left his mark upon Britain, 
 and " pacified" Gaul. But Cicero, in common with most 
 of the senatorial party, failed to see in Julius Csesar the 
 great man that he was. He hesitated a little — Ccesar 
 would gladly have had his support, and made him fair 
 offers ; but when the Rubicon was crossed, he threw in his 
 lot with Pompey. He was certainly influenced in part 
 by personal attachment : Pompey seems to have exer- 
 cised a degree of fascination over his weakness. He 
 knew Pompey's indecision of character, and confessed 
 that Coesar was "a prodigy of energy;" but though 
 the former showed little liking for him, he clung to 
 him nevertheless. He foreboded that, let the contest 
 end which way it would, " the result would certainly 
 be a despotism." He foresaw that Pompey's real 
 designs were as dangerous to the liberties of Rome as 
 any of which Ct^sar could be suspected. " Sullaiimt 
 
70 CICERO AND CJiSAR. 
 
 cmwius,^* he says of him in one of his letters, coining 
 a verb to put his idea strongly — "he wants to be lil<e 
 Sulla." And it was no more than the truth. He 
 found out afterwards, as he tells Atticus, that pro- 
 scription-lists of all C?esar's adherents had been pre- 
 pared by Pompey and his partisans, and that his old 
 friend's name figured as one of the victims. Only this 
 makes it possible to forgive him f( r the little feeling 
 that he showed Avhen he heard of Pompey's own 
 miserable end. 
 
 Cicero's conduct and motives at this eventful crisis 
 have been discussed over and over again. It may be 
 questioned whether at this date we are in any position 
 to pass more than a very cautious and general judg- 
 ment upon them. "We want all the "state papers" 
 and political correspondence of the day — not Cicero's 
 letters only, but those of C«3sar and Pompey and Len- 
 tulus, and much information besides that was never 
 trusted to pen or paper — in order to lay down 
 with any accuracy the course which a really unselfish 
 patriot could have taken. But there seems little 
 reason to accuse Cicero of double-dealing or trimming 
 in the worst sense. His policy was unquestionably, 
 from first to last, a policy of expedients. But exj^e- 
 diency is, and must be more or less, the watchword of 
 a statesman. If he would practically serve his country, 
 he must do to some extent what Cicero professed to 
 do — make friends with those in power. " Sic vwihw " 
 — " So goes the world ; " " TempoH serviendum est " — 
 " We must bend to circumstances " — these are not the 
 noblest mottoes, but they are acted upon continually 
 
PHARSALIA. 71 
 
 by the most respectable men in public and private life, 
 who do not open their hearts to their friends so un- 
 reservedly as Cicero does to his friend Atticus. It 
 seemed to him a choice between Pompey and Caesar ; 
 and he probably hoped to be able so far to influence 
 the former, as to preserve some shadow of a constitu- 
 tion for Eome. What he saw in those " dregs of a 
 Republic,"* as he himself calls it, tliat was worth pre- 
 serving ; — how any honest des2:)otism could seem to him 
 more to be dreaded than that prostituted liberty, — this 
 is harder to comprehend. The remark of Abeken 
 seems to go very near the truth — "His devotion to 
 the commonwealth Wiis grounded not so much upon 
 his conviction of its actual merits, as of its fitness for 
 the display of his own abilities." 
 
 But that commonwealth was past saving even in 
 name. Within two months of his having been de- 
 clared a public enemy, all Italy was at Caesar's feet. 
 Before another year was past, the battle of Pharsaliii 
 had been fought, and the great Pompey lay a headless 
 corpse on the sea-shore in Egypt. It was suggested 
 to Cicero, who had hitherto remained constant to the 
 fortunes of his party, and was then in their camp at 
 Dyrrachium, that he should take the chief command, 
 but he had the sense to decline ; and though men 
 called him "traitor," and drew their swords upon him, 
 he withdrew from a cause which he saw was lost, and 
 returned to Italy, though not to Rome. 
 
 The meeting between him and Caesar, which came 
 at last, set at rest any personal apprehensions from that 
 * ^'FffiK Eomiili." 
 
72 . . OICERO AND CESAR. 
 
 quarter. '"'Gfeero' does not ap[)ear to have made any 
 dishonourable submission, and the conqueror's beha- 
 viour was nobly forgetful of the past. They gradually 
 became on almost friendly terms. The orator paid the 
 Dictator compliments in the Senate, and found that, 
 in private society, his favourite jokes were repeated to 
 the great man, and were highly appreciated. With 
 such little successes he was obliged now to be content. 
 He had again taken up his residence in Rome ; but his 
 political occupation was gone, and his active mind had 
 leisure to employ itself in some of his literary works. 
 
 It was at this time that the blow fell upon him 
 which prostrated him for the time, as his exile had 
 done, and under which he claims our far more natural 
 sympathy. His dear daughter Tullia — again married, 
 but unhappily, and just divorced — died at his Tusculan 
 villa. Their loving intercourse had undergone no 
 change from her childhood, and his grief was for a 
 while inconsolable. He shut himself up for thirty 
 days. The letters of condolence from well-meaning 
 friends were to him — as they so often are — as the 
 speeches of the three comforters to Job. He turned 
 in vain, as he pathetically says, to philosophy for 
 consolation. 
 
 It was at this time that he wrote two of his philo- 
 sophical treatises, known to us as ' The True Ends of 
 Life,' * and the ' Tusculan Disputations,' of whic? 
 more will be said hereafter. In this latter, which he 
 named from his favourite country-house, he addressed 
 himself to the subjects which suited best with his own 
 
 • * De Finibus Bonoruin et ^lalorum ' — a title hard to translate. 
 
DEATH OF 
 
 sorrowful mood under his recent he??5^5reS?r''^ow 
 men might learn to shake off the terrors of death — nay, 
 to look upon it rather as a release from pain and evil ; 
 how pain, mental and bodily, may best be borne ; how 
 we may moderate our passions ; and, lastly, whether the 
 practice of virtue be not all-sufficient for our happiness. 
 
 A philosopher does not always find in himself a 
 ready pupil. It was hardly so in Cicero's case. His 
 arguments were incontrovertible ; but he found them 
 fail him sadly in their practical application to life. 
 He never could shake off from himself that dread of 
 death which he felt in a degree unusually vivid for a 
 Eoman. He sought his own happiness afterwards, as 
 he had done before, rather in the exciting struf^^le of 
 public life than in the special cultivation of any form 
 of virtue ; and he did not even find the remedy for 
 his present domestic sorrow in any of those general 
 moral reflections which philosophy, Christian as well 
 as pagan, is so ready to produce upon such occasions ; 
 which are all so undeniable, and all so utterly unen- 
 durable to the mourner. 
 
 Cicero found his consolation, or that diversion of 
 thought which so mercifully serves the purpose of con- 
 solation, where most men of active minds like his 
 seek for it and find it — in hard work. The literary 
 effort of writing and completing the works which have 
 been just mentioned probably did more to soothe his 
 mind than all the arguments which they contained. 
 He resumed his practice as an advocate so far as to 
 plead a cause before Caesar, now ruling as Dictator at 
 Rome — the last cause, as events happened, that he was 
 
74 CICERO AND C.^SAR. 
 
 ever to plead. It was a cause of no great importance 
 — a defence of Deiotarus, titulary king of Armenia, 
 who was accused of having entertained designs against 
 the life of Caesar while entertaining him as a guest in 
 his palace. The Dictator reserved his judgment until 
 he should have made his campaign against the Par- 
 thians. That more convenient season never came : for 
 before the spring campaign could open, the fatal " Ides 
 of March " cut short Caesar's triumphs and his life. 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 CICERO AND ANTONY, 
 
 It remained for Cicero yet to take a part in one 
 more great national struggle — the last for Kome and 
 for himself. Xo doubt there was some grandeur in 
 the cause which he once more so vigorously espoused 
 — the recovery of the liberties of Rome. But all the 
 thunders of Cicero's eloquence, and all the admiration 
 of modern historians and poets, fail to enHst our hearty 
 sympathies with the assassins of Caesar. That " con- 
 secration of the dagger" to the cause of liberty has 
 been the fruitful parent of too much evil ever since to 
 make its use anything but hateful. That Cicero was 
 among the actual conspirators is probably not true, 
 though his enemies strongly asserted it. But at least 
 he gloried in the deed when done, and was eager to 
 claim all the honours of a tyrannicide. Xay, he Avent 
 farther than the actual conspirators, in words at least ; 
 it is curious to find him so careful to disclaim com- 
 plicity in the act. " Would that you had invited me to 
 that banquet on the Ides of March ! there would then 
 have been no leavings from the feast,"- — he writes to 
 
re CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 Cassiiis. He would liave had their daggers turned on 
 Antony, at all events, as well as on Csesar. He wislies 
 that " the gods may damn Caesar after he is dead ;" 
 professing on this occasion a belief in a future retribu- 
 tion, on which at other times he was sceptical. It is 
 but right to remember all this, when the popular tide 
 turned, and he himself came to be denounced to polit- 
 ical vengeance. /The levity with which he continually 
 speaks of the assassination of Caesar — a man who had 
 never treated him, at any rate, with anything but a 
 noble forbearance — is a blot on Cicero's character 
 which his warmest apologists admit. 
 
 The bloody deed in the Capitol was done — a deed 
 which was to turn out almost wliat Goethe called it — 
 " the most absurd that ever was committed." The 
 great Dictator who lay there alone, a " bleeding piece 
 of earth," deserted by the very men who had sought of 
 late to crown him, was perhaps Eome's fittest master ; 
 certainly not the worst of the many with whom a per- 
 sonal ambition took the place of princif>le. Three 
 slaves took up the dead body of their master, and 
 carried it home to his house. Poor wretches ! they 
 knew nothing about liberty or the constitution ; they 
 had little to hope, and probably little to fear ; they 
 had only a humble duty to do, and did it. But when 
 we read of them, and of that freednian who, not long 
 before, sat by the dead body of Pompey till he could 
 scrape together wreck from the shore to light some sort 
 of poor funeral-pile, we return with a shudder of dis- 
 gust to those " noble Romans " who occupy at this 
 time tlie foreground of history. 
 
CICERO WITUDRA WS FROM ROME. 77 
 
 Caesar had been removed, but it is plain that Brutus 
 and Cassius and their party had neither the ability 
 nor the energy to make any real use of their bloody 
 triumph. Cicero soon lost all hope of seeing in them 
 the liberators of his countr}^, or of being able to guide 
 himself the revolution which he hoped he had seen 
 begun. " We have been freed," he writes to Atticus, 
 " but we are not free." " We have struck down the 
 tyrant, but the tyranny survives." Antony, in fact, had 
 taken the place of Cajsar as master of Eome — a change 
 in all respects for the worse. He had surrounded 
 himself with guards ; had obtained authority from the 
 Senate to carry out all decrees and orders left by the 
 late Dictator ; and when he could not find, amongst 
 Caesar's memoranda, materials to serve his purpose, he 
 did not hesitate to forge them. Cicero had no power, 
 and might be in personal danger, for Antony knew his 
 sentiments as to state matters generally, and more par- 
 ticularly towards himself. Rome was no longer any 
 place for him, and he soon left it — this time a volun- 
 tary exile. He wandered from place to place, and 
 ^ried as before to find interest and consolation in phil- 
 osophy. It was now that he wrote his charming 
 essays on ' Friendship ' and on ' Old A^q^^ and com- 
 pleted his work ' On the Xature of the Gods,' and 
 that on ' Divination.' His treatise ' De Officiis ' (a 
 kind of pagan 'Whole Duty of Man') is also of this 
 date, as well as some smaller philosophical works which 
 have been lost. He professed himself hopeless of his 
 country's future, and disgusted with political life, nnd 
 spoke of going to end liis days at Athens. 
 
 y 
 
78 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 But, as before and ahvays, his heart was in the 
 Forum at Eonie. Political life was really the only 
 atmosphere in which he felt himself breathe vigor- 
 ously. Unquestionably he had also an earnest patriot- 
 ism, which would have drawn him back to his country's 
 side at any time when he believed that she had need 
 of his help. He was told that he was needed there 
 now ; that there was a prospect of matters going better 
 for the cause of liberty ; that Antony was coming 
 to terms of some kind with the party of Brutus, — and 
 he returned. 
 
 For a short while these latter days brought with 
 them a gleam of triumph almost as bright as that 
 which had marked the overthrow of Catiline's con- 
 spiracy. Again, on his arrival at Eome, crowds rushed 
 to meet him with compliments and congratulations, as 
 they had done some thirteen years before. And in 
 so far as his last days were spent in resisting to the 
 utmost the basest of all Rome's bad men, they were to 
 him greater than any triumph. Thenceforth it was 
 a fight to the death between him and Antony ; so long 
 as Antony lived, there could be no liberty fo" Eome. 
 Cicero left it to his enemy to make the fir^t attack. 
 It soon came. Two days after his return, Antony 
 spoke vehemently in the Senate against him, on the 
 occasion of moving a resolution to the effect that 
 divine honours should be paid to Caesar. Cicero had 
 purposely stayed away, pleading fatigue after his 
 journey ; really, because such a proposition was odious 
 to him. Antony denounced him as a coward and a 
 traitor, and threatened to send men to pull down his 
 
THE FIRST PHILIPPIC. 79 
 
 house about his head — that house which had once 
 before been pulled down, and rebuilt for him by his 
 remorseful fellow-citizens. Cicero went down to the 
 Senate the following day, and there delivered a well- 
 prepared speech, the first of those fourteen which are 
 known to us as his ' Philippics ' — a name which he 
 seems first to have given to them in jest, in remem- 
 brance of those w^hich his favourite model Demosthenes 
 had delivered at Athens against Philip of Macedon. 
 He defended his own conduct, reviewed in strong but 
 moderate terms the w^hole policy of Antony, and 
 warned him — still ostensibly as a friend — against the 
 fate of Caesar. The speaker was not unconscious what 
 his own might possibly be. 
 
 " I have already, senators, reaped fruit enough from 
 my return home, in that I have had the opportunity 
 to sjDeak words which, whatever may betide, will re- 
 main in evidence of my constancy in my duty, and 
 you have listened to me with much kindness and 
 attention. And this privilege I will use so often as I 
 may without peril to you and to myself; when I can- 
 not, I will be careful of myself, not so much for my 
 own sake as for the sake of my country. For me, the 
 life that I have lived seems already wellnigh long 
 enough, whether I look at my years or my honours ; 
 what little span may yet be added to it should be your 
 gain and the state's far more than my own." 
 
 Antony was not in the house when Cicero spoke ; 
 he had gone down to his villa at Tibur. There he 
 remained for a fortnight, brooding over his rejjly — 
 taking lessons, it was said, from professors in the art 
 
80 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 of rhetorical self-defence. At last he came to Kome, 
 and answered his opponent. His speech has not 
 reached us ; but we know that it contained the old 
 charges of having put Eoman citizens to death without 
 trial in the case of the abettors of Catiline, and of 
 having instigated Milo to the assassination of Clodius. 
 Antony added a new charge — that of complicity with 
 the murderers of Caesar. Above all, he laughed at 
 Cicero's old attempts as a poet ; a mode of attack 
 which, if not so alarming, was at least as irritating as 
 the rest. Cicero was not present — ho dreaded per- 
 sonal violence ; for Antony, like Pompey at the trial 
 of Milo, had planted an armed guard of his own men 
 outside and inside the Senate-house. Before Cicero 
 had nerved himself to reply, Antony had left Rome 
 to put himself at the head of his legions, and the two 
 never met again. 
 
 The reply, when it came, was the terrible second 
 Philippic ; never spoken, however, but only handed 
 about in manuscript to admiring friends. There is 
 little doubt, as Mr Long observes, that Antony had 
 also some friend kind enough to send him a copy ; and 
 if we may trust the Eoman poet Juvenal, who is at 
 least as likely to have been well informed upon the 
 subject as any modern historian, this composition 
 eventually cost the orator his life. It is not difficult 
 to understand the bitter vindictiveness of Antony, 
 Cicero had been not merely a political opponent ; he 
 had attacked his ])rivate character (which presented 
 al)undant grounds for such attack) with all the venom 
 of his eloquence. He had said, indeed, in the first of 
 
THE SECOND PHILIPPIC. §1 
 
 these powerful orations, that he had never taken this 
 line. 
 
 " If I have abused his private life and character, I 
 have no right to complain if he is my enemy : but if T 
 have only followed my usual custom, which I have 
 ever maintained in public life, — I mean, if I have only 
 spoken my opinion on public questions freely, — then, 
 in the first place, I protest against his being angry 
 with me at all : or, if this be too much to expect, I 
 demand that he should be angry with me only as with 
 a fellow-citizen.*' 
 
 If there had been any sort of reticence on this point 
 hitherto on the part of Cicero, he made up for it in 
 this second speech. Nothing can equal its bitter 
 personality, except perhaps its rhetorical power. He 
 begins the attack by declaring that he Avill not tell all 
 he knows — "in order that, if we have to do battle 
 again hereafter, I may come always fresh-armed to the 
 attack ; an advantage which the multiplicity of that 
 man's crimes and vices gives me in large measure." 
 Then he proceeds : — 
 
 " Would you like us, then, to examine into your 
 course of life from boyhood ? I conclude you would. 
 Do you remember that before you put on the robe of 
 manhood, you were a bankrupt? That w^as my father's 
 fault, you will say. I grant it — it is a defence that 
 speaks volumes for your feelings as a son. It was 
 your own shamelessness, however, that made you take 
 your seat in the stalls of honourable knights, whereas 
 by law there is a fixed place for bankrupts, even when 
 they have become so by fortune's fault, and not their 
 
 A. c. vol. ix. F 
 
52 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 (jwn. You put on the robe which was to mark your 
 manhood, — on your person it became the flaunting 
 gear of a harlot." 
 
 It is not desirable to follow the orator through 
 some of his accusations ; when he had to lash a man 
 whom he held to be a criminal, he did not much care 
 where or how he struck. He even breaks off himself — 
 after saying a good deal. 
 
 " There are some things, which even a decent enemy 
 hesitates to speak of. . . . Mark, then, his subse- 
 quent course of life, which I will trace as rapidly as I 
 can. For though these things are better known to 
 you than even to me, yet I ask you to hear me with 
 attention — as indeed you do ; for it is right that in 
 such cases men's feelings should be roused not merely 
 by the knowledge of the facts, but by calling them 
 back to their remembrance ; though we must dash at 
 once, I believe, into the middle of his history, lest we 
 should be too long in getting to the end." 
 
 The peroration is noble and dignified, in the orator's 
 best style. He still supposes himself addressing his 
 enemy. He has warned Antony that Caesar's fate 
 may be his : and he is not unconscious of the peril in 
 which his own life may stand. 
 
 " But do you look to yourself — T will tell you how 
 it stands with me. I defended the Commonwealth 
 when I was young — I will not desert it now I am old. 
 I despised the swords of Catiline — I am not likely to 
 tremble before yours. Nay, I shall lay my life down 
 gladly, if the liberty of Rome can be secured by my 
 death, so that this suffering nation may at last bring to 
 
THE SIXTH PHILIPPIC. 83 
 
 the birth that which it has long been breeding.* If, 
 twenty years ago, I declared in this house that death 
 could never be said to have come before its time to 
 a man who had been consul of Eonie, with how much 
 more truth, at my age, may I say it now ! To me 
 indeed, gentlemen of the Senate, death may well be a 
 thing to be even desired, when I have done what I have 
 done and reaped the honours I have reaped. Only 
 two wishes I have,— the one, that at my death I may 
 leave the Eoman people free— the immortal gods can 
 give me no greater boon than this ; the other, that 
 every citizen may meet with such reward as his con- 
 duct towards the state may have deserved." 
 
 The publication of this unspoken speech raised for 
 the time an enthusiasm against Antony, whom Cicero 
 now openly declared to be an enemy to the state. He 
 hurled against him Philippic after Philippic. The 
 appeal at the end of that which comes the sixth in 
 order is eloquent enough. 
 
 "The time is come at last, fellow- citizens; some- 
 what too late, indeed, for the dignity of the people of 
 Eome, but at least the crisis is so ripe, that it cannot 
 now be deferred an instant longer. We have had one 
 calamity sent upon us, as I may say, by fate, which 
 we bore with— in such sort as it might be borne. If 
 another befalls us now, it will be one of our own 
 choosing. That this Eoman people should serve any 
 master, when the gods above have willed us to be the 
 masters of the world, is a crime in the sight of heaven. 
 The question hangs now on its last issue. The struggle 
 * J.g., the making away with Antony. 
 
84 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 is for our liberties. You must either conquer, 
 Komans, — and this, assuredly, with such patriotism 
 and such unanimity as I see here, you must do, — or 
 you must endure anything and everything rather than 
 be slaves. Other nations may endure the yoke of 
 slavery, but the birthright of the people of Eome is 
 liberty." 
 
 Antony had left Eome, and thrown himself, like 
 Catiline, into the arms of his soldiers, in his province 
 of Cisalpine Gaul. There he maintained himself in 
 defiance of the Senate, who at last, urged by Cicero, 
 declared him a public enemy. Csesar Octavianus (great- 
 nephew of Julius) offered his services to the state, and 
 with some hesitation they were accepted. The last 
 struggle was begun. Intelligence soon arrived that An- 
 tony had been defeated at Mutina by the two last con- 
 suls of the Republic, Hirtius and Pansa. The news was 
 dashed, indeed, afterwards by the further announce- 
 ment that both consuls had died of their wounds. 
 But it was in the height of the first exultation that 
 Cicero aiklressed to the Senate his fourteenth Philippic 
 — the last oration which he was ever to make. For 
 the moment, he found himself once more the fore- 
 most man at Rome. Crowds of roaring patriots had 
 surrounded his house that morning, escorted him in 
 triumph up to the Capitol, and back to his own house, 
 as they had done in the days of his early glory. 
 Young Cajsar, who had ])aid him much personal 
 deference, was professing himself a patriot ; the Com- 
 monwealth was safe again — and Cicero almost thought 
 that he asain himself had saved it. 
 
TEE TRIUMVIRATE. 85 
 
 But Rome now belonged to those who had the 
 legions. It had come to that : and when Antony 
 succeeded in joining interests with Octavianus (after- 
 wards miscalled Augustus)— "the boy," as both Cicero 
 and Antony called him — a boy in years as yet, but 
 premature in craft and falsehood — who had come " to 
 claim his inheritance," and succeeded in rousing in the 
 old veterans of his uncle the desire to take vengeance 
 on his murderers, the fate of the Eepublic and of 
 Cicero was sealed. 
 
 It was on a little eyot formed by the river Eeno, 
 near Bologna, that Antony, young Csesar, and Lepidus 
 (the nominal third in what is known as the Second 
 Triumvirate) met to arrange among themselves the 
 division of power, and what they held to be necessary 
 to the securing it for tlie future — the proscription 
 of their several enemies. ISTo private affections or 
 interests were to be allowed to interfere with this 
 merciless arrangement. If Lepidus would give up his 
 brother, Antony would surrender an obnoxious uncle. 
 Octavianus made a cheaper sacrifice in Cicero, whom 
 Antony, we may be sure, with those terrible Philip- 
 pics ringing in his ears, demanded with an eager ven- 
 geance. All was soon amicably settled ; the proscrip- 
 tion-lists were made out, and the Triumvirate occupied 
 Rome. 
 
 Cicero and his brother — whose name was known to 
 be also on the fatal roll— heard of it while they were 
 tof^ether at the Tusculan villa. Both took immediate 
 measures to escape. But Quintus had to return to 
 Rome to get money for their flight, and, as it would 
 
86 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 appear, to fetch his son. The emissaries of the Trium- 
 virate were sent to search the house : the father had 
 hid himself, but the son was seized, and refusing to 
 give any information, was put to tlie torture. His 
 father heard his cries of agony, came forth from his 
 hiding-place, and asked only to he put to death first. 
 The son in his turn made the same request, and the 
 assassins were so far merciful that they killed both at 
 once. 
 
 Cicero himself might yet have escaped, but for some- 
 thing of his old indecision. He had gone on board a 
 small vessel with the intention of joining Brutus in 
 Macedonia, when he suddenly changed his mind, and 
 insisted on being put on shore again. He wandered 
 about, half-resolving (for the third time) on suicide. 
 He would go to Eome, stab himself on the altar-hearth 
 in young Caesar's house, and call down the vengeance 
 of heaven upon the traitor. The accounts of these last 
 hours of his life are, unfortunately, somewhat con- 
 tradictory, and none of the authorities to be entirely 
 depended on ; Abeken has made a careful attempt 
 to harmonise them, which it will be best here to 
 follow. 
 
 Urged by the prayers of his slaves, the faithful 
 adherents of a kind master, he once more embarked, 
 and once more (Appian says, from sea-sickness, which 
 he never could endure) landed near Caieta, where he 
 had a seaside villa. Either there, or, as other accounts 
 say, at his house at Formiae, he laid himself down to 
 pass the night, and wait for death. " Let me die," 
 said he, " in my own country, which I have so often 
 
DEATH OF CICERO. 87 
 
 saved." But again the faithful slaAcs aroused him, 
 forced him into a litter, and hurried him down through 
 the woods to the sea-shore — for the assassins were in 
 hot pursuit of him. They found his house shut up ; 
 but some traitor showed them a short cut by which 
 to overtake the fugitive. As he lay reading (it is said), 
 even during these anxious moments, a play of his 
 favourite Euripides, every line of whom he used to 
 declare contained some maxim worth remember- 
 ing, he heard their steps approaching, and ordered 
 the litter to be set down. He looked out, and re- 
 cognised at the head of the party an officer named 
 J,<aeiiag^ wbom he had once successfully defended on 
 a capital charge ; but he saw no gratitude or mercy 
 in the face, though there were others of the baud 
 who covered their eyes for pity, when they saw the 
 dishevelled grey hair and pale worn features of the 
 great Eoman (he was within a month of sixty-four). 
 He turned from Lsenas to the centurion, one Heren- 
 nius, and said, " Strike, old soldier, if you understand 
 your trade !" At the third blow — by one or other of 
 those officers, for both claimed the evil honour — his 
 head was severed. They carried it straight to Antony, 
 where he sat on the seat of justice in the Forum, and 
 demanded the offered reward. The triumvir, in his 
 joy, paid it some ten times over. He sent the bloody 
 trophy to his wife ; and tlie Eoman Jezebel spat in the 
 dead face, and ran her bodkin through the tongue 
 which had spoken those bold and bitter truths against 
 her false husband. The great orator fulfilled, almost 
 in the very letter, the Avords which, treating of the 
 
88 CICERO AND ANTONY. 
 
 liberty of the pleader, he had put into the month of 
 Crassus — " You must cut out this tongue, if you would 
 check my free speech : nay, even then, my very breath- 
 ing should protest against your lust for power." The 
 head, by Antony's order, was then nailed upon the 
 Rostra, to speak there, more eloquently than ever 
 the living lips had spoken, of the dead liberty of 
 Rom& 
 
CHAPTER YII. 
 
 CII.VRACTER AS A POLITICIAN AND AN ORATOR. 
 
 Cicero shared very largely in the feeling which is 
 common to all men of amhition and energy,— a desire 
 to stand well not only with their own generation, hut 
 with posterity. It is a feeling natural to every man 
 who knows that his name and acts must necessarily 
 hecome historical. If it is more than usually patent 
 in Cicero's case, it is only because in his letters to 
 Atticus we have more than usual access to the inmost 
 heart of the writer ; for surely such a thoroughly con- 
 fidential correspondence has never been published be- 
 fore or since. "What will history say of me six 
 hundred years hence T' he asks, unbosoming himself 
 in this sort to his friend. More than thrice the six 
 hundred years have passed, and, in Cicero's case, his- 
 tory has hardly yet made up its mind. He has been 
 lauded and abused, from his own times down to the 
 present, in terms as extravagant as are to be found in 
 the most passionate of his own orations; both his 
 accusers and his champions have caught the trick of 
 his rhetorical exaggeration more easily than his elo- 
 
90 CHARACTER AS A POLITICIAN. 
 
 quence. Modern German critics like Drumann and 
 Mommsen have attacked him with hardly less bitter- 
 ness, though with more decency, than the historian 
 Dio Cassius, who lived so near his own times. Bishop 
 Middleton, on the other hand, in those pleasant and 
 comprehensive volumes which are still to this day the 
 great storehouse of materials for Cicero's biography, 
 is as blind to his faults as though he were himself de- 
 livering a panegyric in tlie Eostra at Rome. Perhaps 
 it is the partiality of the learned bishop's view which 
 has produced a reaction in the minds of sceptical 
 German scholars, and of some modern writers of our 
 own. It is impossible not to sympathise in some 
 degree with that Athenian who Avas tired of always 
 hearing Aristides extolled as " the Just ; " and there 
 was certainly a strong temptation to critics to pick 
 holes in a man's character who was perpetually, during 
 his lifetime and for eighteen centuries after his death, 
 having a trumpet sounded before him to announce 
 him as the prince of patriots as well as philosophers ; 
 worthy indeed, as Erasmus thought, to be canonised 
 as a saint of the Catholic Church, but for the single 
 drawback of his not having been a Christian. 
 
 On one point some of his eulogists seem manifestly 
 unfair. They say that the circumstances under which 
 we form our judgment of the man are exceptional in 
 this — that we happen to possess in his case all this 
 mass of private and confidential letters (there are 
 nearly eight hundred of his own which have come 
 down to us), giving us an insight into his private 
 motives, his secret jealousies, and hopes, and fears, and 
 
CHARACTER AS A POL I TIC! AY. 91 
 
 ambitions, of which in the case of other men we have 
 no such revelation. It is quite true ; but his advocates 
 forget that it is from the very same pages which reveal 
 his weaknesses, that the}^ draw their real knowledge of 
 many of those characteristics which they most admire — 
 his sincere love for his country, his kindness of heart, 
 his amiability in all his domestic relations. It is true 
 tliat we cannot look into the private letters of Caesar, 
 or Pompey, or Brutus, as we can into Cicero's ; but it is 
 not so certain that if we coidd, our estimate of their 
 characters would be lowered. We might discover, in 
 their cases as in his, many traces of what seems insin- 
 cerity, timidity, a desire to sail witli tlie stream ; we 
 might find that the views which they expressed in 
 public were not always those which they entertained 
 in private ; but we might also find an inner current of 
 kindness, and benevolence, and tenderness of heart, for 
 which the world gives them little credit. One enthu- 
 siastic advocate, Wieland, goes so far as to wish that 
 this kind of evidence could, in the case of such a 
 man as Cicero, have been " cooked," to use a modern 
 phrase : that we could have had only a judicious selec- 
 tion from this too truthful mass of correspondence ; 
 that his secretary. Tiro, or some judicious friend, had 
 destroyed the whole packet of letters in which the 
 great Roman bemoaned himself, during his exile from 
 Rome, to his wife, to his brother, and to Atticus. The 
 partisan method of writing history, though often prac- 
 tised, has seldom been so boldly professed. 
 
 But it cannot be denied, that if we know too much 
 of Cicero to judge him merely by his public life, as we 
 
92 CHARACTER AS A POLITICIAN. 
 
 are obliged to do with so many heroes of history, we 
 also know far too little of those stormy times in which 
 he lived, to pronounce too strongly upon his behaviour 
 in such difficult circumstances. The true relations 
 between the various parties at Rome, as we have tried 
 to sketch them, are confessedly puzzling even to the 
 careful student. And without a thorough understand- 
 ing of these, it is impossible to decide, with any hope 
 of fairness, upon Cicero's conduct as a patriot and a 
 politician. His character was full of conflicting ele- 
 ments, like the times in which he lived, and was 
 necessarily in a great degree moulded by them. The 
 egotism which shows itself so plainly alike in his 
 public speeches and in his private writings, more than 
 once made him personal enemies, and brought him 
 into trouble, though it was combined with great kind- 
 ness of heart and consideration for others. He saw 
 the right clearly, and desired to follow it, but his good 
 intentions were too often frustrated by a want of firm- 
 ness and decision. His desire to keep well with men 
 of all parties, so long as it seemed possible (and this 
 not so much from the desire of self-aggrandisement, as 
 from a hope through their aid to serve the common- 
 wealth) laid him open on more than one occasion to 
 the charge of insincerity. 
 
 There is one comprehensive quality which may be 
 said to have been wanting in his nature, which clouded 
 his many excellences, led him continually into false 
 positions, and even in his delightful letters excites in 
 the reader, from time to time, an impatient feeling of 
 contempt. He wanted manliness. It was a quality 
 
CHARACTER AS A POLITICIAN. 93 
 
 which was fast dying out, in his day, among even the 
 best of the luxurious and corrupt aristocracy of Rome. 
 It was perliaps but little missed in his character hy 
 those of his contemporaries who knew and loved him 
 best. But without that quality, to an English mind, 
 it is hard to recognise in any man, however brilliant 
 and amiable, the true philosopher or hero. 
 
 The views which this great Roman politician held 
 upon the vexed question of the ballot did not differ 
 materially from those of his worthy grandfather before- 
 mentioned.* The ballot was popular at Rome, — for 
 many reasons, some of them not the most creditable 
 to the characters of the voters ; and because it Avas 
 popular, Cicero speaks of it occasionally, in his forensic 
 speeches, with a cautious praise ; but of his real esti- 
 mate of it there can be no kind of doubt. " I am 
 of the same opinion now," he writes to his brother, 
 " that ever I was ; there is nothing like the open 
 suffrage of the lips." So in one of his speeches, he 
 uses even stronger language : '' The ballot," he says, 
 " enables men to open their faces, and to cover up 
 their thoughts ; it gives them licence to promise what- 
 ever they are asked, and at the same time to do what- 
 ever they please." Mr Grote once quoted a phrase of 
 Cicero's, applied to the voting-papers of his day, as a 
 testimony in favour of this mode of secret suffrage — 
 grand words, and wholly untranslatable into anything 
 like corresponding English — " Tahella, vinclex tacitce 
 Uhertatis" — " the tablet wliich secures the liberty of 
 silence." But knowing so well as Cicero did what was 
 
 * See p. 3. 
 
94 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 the ordinary character of Eoman jurors and Eoman 
 voters, and how often this "liberty of silence" was a 
 liberty to take a bribe and to vote the other way, one 
 can almost fancy that we see upon his lips, as he utters 
 the sounding phrase, that playful curve of irony which 
 is said to have been their characteristic expression.* 
 Mr Grote forgot, too, as was well pointed out by a 
 writer in the ' Quarterly Review,' t that in the very 
 next sentence the orator is proud to boast that he 
 himself was not so elected to office, but "by the living 
 voices" of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 The character of his eloquence may be understood 
 in some degree by tlie few extracts which have been 
 given from his public speeches ; always remembering 
 how many of its charms are necessarily lost by losing 
 the actual language in which his thoughts were clothed. 
 We have lost perhaps nearly as much in another way, 
 in that we can only read the great orator instead of 
 listening to him. Yet it is j^ossible, after all, that 
 tliis loss to us is not so great as it might seem. Some 
 of his best speeches, as Ave know — those, for instance, 
 against Verres and in defence of Milo — were written 
 in the closet, and never spoken at all ; and most of the 
 others were reshaped and polished for publication, 
 ^or is it certain that his declamation, which some of 
 his Roman rivals found fault with as savourinc: too 
 much of the florid Oriental type, would have been agree- 
 
 * No Lust, coin, or gem is known which bears any genuine 
 likeness of Cicero. There are several existing which purport to 
 be such, but all are more or less apocryphal. 
 
 t Quart. Rev., Ixi. 522. 
 
HIS ORATORY. 95 
 
 able to our colder English taste. He looked upon gesture 
 and action as essential elements of the orator's power, 
 and had studied them carefully from the artists of the 
 theatre. There can be no doubt that we have his own 
 views on this point in the words which he has put 
 into the mouth of his " Brutus," in the treatise on 
 oratory which bears that name. He protests against the 
 "Attic coldness" of style which, he says, would soon 
 empty the benches of their occupants. He would 
 have, the action and bearing of the speaker to be such 
 that even the distant spectator, too far off to hear, 
 should "know that there was a Roscius on the staire." 
 He would have found a French audience in this re- 
 spect more sympathetic than an English one.* His 
 own highly nervous temperament would certainly tend 
 to excited action. The speaker, who, as we are told, 
 " shuddered visibly over his whole body when he first 
 began to speak," was almost sure, as he warmed to his 
 work, to throw himself into it with a passionate 
 energy. 
 
 He has put on record his own ideas of the qualifica- 
 tions and the duties of the public speaker, whether in 
 the Senate or at the bar, in three continuous treatises 
 
 * Our speakers certainly fall into the other extreme. The 
 British orator's style of gesticulation may still be recognised, 
 mutatis mutandis, in Addison's humorous sketch of a century 
 ago : "You may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat 
 in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examin- 
 ing sometimes the lining and sometimes the button, during the 
 whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think that he 
 was cheapening a beaver, when he is talking perhaps of the 
 fate of the British nation." 
 
93 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 on the subject, entitled respectively, ' On Oratory,' 
 ' Brutus,' and ' The Orator,' as well as in some other 
 works of which we have only fragments remaining. 
 With the first of these works, whicli he inscribed to 
 his brother, he was himself exceedingly well satisfied, 
 and it perhaps remains still the ablest, as it was the 
 first, attempt to reduce eloquence to a science. The 
 second is a critical sketch of the great orators of Eome : 
 and in the third we have Cicero's view of what the 
 perfect orator should be. His ideal is a high one, and 
 a true one ; that he should not be the mere rhetorician, 
 any more than the mere technical lawyer or keen 
 partisan, but the man of perfect education and perfect 
 taste, who can speak on all subjects, out of the fulness 
 of his mind, " with variety and copiousness." 
 
 Although, as has been already said, he appears to 
 have attached but little value to a knowledge of the 
 technicalities of law, in other respects his preparation 
 for his work was of the most careful kind ; if we 
 may assume, as we probably may, that it is his own 
 experience which, in his treatise on Oratory, he puts 
 into the mouth of Marcus Antonius, one of his greatest 
 predecessors at the Roman bar. 
 
 " It is my habit to have every client explain to me 
 personally his own case ; to allow no one else to be 
 present, that so he may speak more freely. Then I 
 take the opponent's side, while I make him plead liis 
 own cause, and bring forward whatever arguments he 
 can think of. Then, when he is gone, I take upon 
 myself, with as much impartiality as I can, three dif- 
 ferent characters — my own, my opponent's, and that of 
 
RULES FOR THE PLEADER. 97 
 
 the jury. Whatever point seems likely to help the 
 case rather than injure it, this I decide must be brought 
 forward ; when I see that anything is likely to do 
 more harm than good, I reject and throw it aside alto- 
 gether. So I gain this, — that I think over first what 
 I mean to say, and speak afterwards ; while a good 
 many pleaders, relying on their abilities, try to do 
 both at once."* 
 
 He reads a useful lesson to young and zealous advo- 
 cates in the same treatise — that sometimes it may be 
 wise not to touch at all in reply upon a point which 
 makes against your client, and to which you have no 
 real answer; and that it is even more important to 
 say nothing which may injure your case, than to omit 
 something which might possilily serve it. A maxim 
 which some modern barristers (and some preachers 
 also) might do well to bear in mind. 
 
 Yet he did not scorn to use what may almost be called 
 the tricks of his art, if he thought tliey would help to 
 secure him a verdict. The outward and visible appeal 
 to the feelings seems to have been as effective in the 
 Roman forum as with a British jury. Cicero would 
 have his client stand by his side dressed in mourn- 
 ing, with hair dishevelled, and in tears, when he 
 meant to make a pathetic appeal to the compassion of 
 the jurors ; or a family group would be arranged, as 
 circumstances allowed, — the wife and children, the 
 mother and sisters, or the aged father, if present- 
 able, would be introduced in open court to create 
 a sensation at the right moment. He had tears ap- 
 * De Oratore, II. 24, 72. 
 
 iu C. voi. ix. O 
 
98 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 parently as ready at his command as an eloquent 
 and well-known English Attorney-General. Nay, the 
 tears seem to have been marked down, as it were, upon 
 his brief. " My feelings prevent my saying more," he 
 declares in his defence of Publius Sylla. " I weep 
 yhile I make the appeal " — " I cannot go on for tears " 
 — he repeats towards the close of that fine oration in 
 behalf of Milo — the speech that never was spoken. 
 Such phrases remind us of the story told of a French 
 preacher, whose manuscripts were found to have mar- 
 ginal stage directions : " Here take out your handker- 
 chief ;" — " here cry — if possible." But such were hfeld 
 to be the legitimate adjuncts of Roman oratory, and it 
 is quite possible to conceive that the advocate, like 
 more than one modern tragedian who could be named, 
 entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the part that 
 the tears flowed quite naturally. 
 
 A far less legitimate weapon of oratory — offensive 
 and not defensive — was the bitter and coarse person- 
 ality in which he so frequently indulged. Its use was 
 held perfectly lawful in the Roman forum, whether in 
 political debate or in judicial j^leadings, and it was 
 sure to be highly relished by a mixed nudience. There 
 is no reason to suppose that Cicero had recourse to it 
 in any unusual degree ; but employ it he did, and 
 most unscrupulously. It was not only jjrivate cliarac- 
 ter that he attacked, as in the case of Antony and 
 Clodius, but even personal defects or peculiarities were 
 made the subject of bitter ridicule. He did not hesi- 
 tate to season his harangue by a sarcasm on the cast 
 in the prosecutor's eye, or the wen on the defendant's 
 neck, and to direct the attention of the court to these 
 
U.'SE OF PERSONALITIES. 99 
 
 points, as though they were corroborative evidence of 
 a moral deformity. The most conspicuous instance 
 of this practice of his is in the invective which he 
 launched in the Senate against Piso, who had made a 
 speech reflecting upon him. Referring to Cicero's exile, 
 he had made that sore subject doubly sore by declaring' 
 that it was not Cicero's unpopularity, so much as his 
 unfortunate propensity to bad verse, which had been tlie 
 cause of it. A jingling line of his to the effect that 
 
 " The gown wins grander triumphs than the sword " * 
 
 had been thought to be pointed against the recent 
 victories of Pompey, and to have provoked him to use 
 his influence to get rid of the author. But this an- 
 notation of Cicero's poetry had not been Piso's only 
 offence. He had been consul at the time of the exile, 
 and had given vent, it may be remembered, to the 
 witticism that the "saviour of Eome" might save the 
 city a second time by his absence. Cicero was not 
 the man to forget it. The beginning of his attack 
 on Piso is lost, but there is quite enough remaining, 
 Piso was of a swarthy complexion, approaching pro- 
 bably to the negro type. " Beast " — is the term by 
 which Cicero addresses him. " Beast ! there is no 
 mistaking the evidence of that slave-like hue, those 
 bristly cheeks, those discoloured fangs. Your eyes, 
 your brows, your face, your whole aspect, are the tacit 
 index to your soul."t 
 
 * " Cedant arma togae, concedat laurea Hngiiae." 
 + Such flowers of eloquence are not encouraged at the modeni 
 bar. But they were common enough, even in the English law- 
 courts, in former times. Mr Attorney-Geueral Coke's language 
 
100 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 It is not possible, within the compass of these pages, 
 to give even the briefest account of more than a few of 
 the many causes (they are twenty -four in number) in 
 which the speeches made by Cicero, either for the 
 prosecution or the defence, have been preserved to us. 
 Some of them have more attraction for the English 
 reader than others, either from the facts of the case 
 being more interesting or more easily understood, or 
 from their affording more opportunity for the display 
 of the speaker's powers. 
 
 Mr Fox had an intense admiration for the speech 
 in defence of Cselius. The opinion of one who was 
 no mean orator himself, on his great Roman predeces- 
 sor, may be worth quoting : — 
 
 " Argumentative contention is not what he excels in ; 
 and he is never, I think, so happy as when he has an op- 
 portunity of exhibiting a mixture of philosophy and pleas- 
 antry, and especially when he can interpose anecdotes and 
 references to the authority of the eminent characters in the 
 history of his own country. No man appears, indeed, to 
 have had such a real respect for authority as he ; and there- 
 fore when he speaks on that subject he is always natural 
 and earnest." * 
 
 to Raleigh at his trial — '*Thou viper!" — comes quite np to 
 Cicero's. Perhaps the Irish House of Parliament, while it ex- 
 isted, furuislied the choicest modern specimens of tliis style of 
 oratory. Mr O'Flanagan, in his ' Lives of the Lord. Chancellors 
 of Ireland,' tells us that a member for Gal way, attacking an 
 opponent when he knew that his sister was present during tlie 
 debate, denounced the whole family — "from the toothless old 
 hag that is now grinning in the gallery, to the white-livered 
 scoundrel that is shivering on the floor." 
 
 * Letter to G. Wakefield— Correspondence, p, 35. 
 
DEFENCE OF CJSLIUS. 101 
 
 There is anecdote and pleasantry enough in this 
 particular oration ; but the scandals of Roman society 
 of that day, into which the defence of Caelius was 
 obliged to enter, are not the most edifying subject 
 for any readers. Cselius was a young man of " eques- 
 trian " rank, who liad been a kind of ward of Cicero's, 
 and must have given him a good deal of trouble by 
 his profligate habits, if the guardianship was anything 
 more than nominal. But in this particular case the 
 accusation brought against him — of trying to murder 
 an ambassador from Egypt by means of hired assassins, 
 and then to poison the lady who had lent him the 
 money to bribe them with — was probably nntrue. 
 Clodia, the lady in question, was the worthy sister of the 
 notorious Clodius, and bore as evil a re])utation as it 
 was possible for a woman to bear in the corrupt society 
 of Eome — which is saying a great deal. She is the 
 real mover in the case, though another enemy of 
 Cselius, the son of a man whom he had himself brought 
 to trial for bribery, was the ostensible prosecutor. 
 Cicero, therefore, throughout the whole of his speech, 
 aims the bitter shafts of his wit and eloquence at 
 Clodia. His brilliant invectives against this lady, who 
 was, as he pointedly said, " not only noble but notori- 
 ous," are not desirable to quote. But the opening of 
 the speech is in the advocate's best style. The trial, 
 it seems, took place on a public holiday, when it Avas 
 not usual to take any cause unless it were of pressing 
 importance. 
 
 " If any spectator be here present, gentlemen, who 
 knows nothing of our laws, our courts of justice, or 
 
102 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAy AXD O.RATOR. 
 
 our national customs, he will not fail to wonder what 
 can be the atrocious nature of this case, that on a day 
 of national festival and public holiday like this, when 
 all other business in the Forum is suspended, this 
 single trial should be going on ; and he will entertain 
 no doubt but that the accused is charged with a crime 
 of such enormity, that if it were not at once taken 
 cognisance of, the constitution itself would be in peril. 
 And if he heard that there was a law which enjoined 
 that in the case of seditious and disloyal citizens who 
 should take up arms to attack the Senate-house, or use 
 violence against the magistrates, or levy war against 
 the commonwealth, inquisition into the matter should 
 be made at once, on the very day ; — he would not find 
 fault with such a law : he would only ask the nature 
 of the charge. But when he heard that it M^as no such 
 atrocious crime, no treasonable attempt, no violent out- 
 rage, which formed the subject of this trial, but that a 
 young man of brilliant abilities, hard-working in pub- 
 lic life, and of popular character, was here accused by 
 the son of a man whom he had himself once prosecuted, 
 and was still prosecuting, and that all a bad woman's 
 wealth and influence was being used against him, — 
 he might take r.o exception to the filial zeal of Atra- 
 tinus ; but he ^►^ould surely say that woman's infamous 
 revenge shoulj be baffled and punished. ... I can 
 excuse Atrat)j>up ; as to the other parties, they deserve 
 neither exca^f© nor forbearance," 
 
 It was a .4^nnge story, the case for the prosecution, 
 especially av-i regarded the alleged attempt to poison 
 Clodia. The poison was given to a friend of Ctelius, 
 
DEFENCE OF COLICS. 103 
 
 he was to give it to some slaves of Clodia wliom he 
 was to meet at certain baths frequented by her, and 
 they were in some way to administer it. But the slaves 
 betrayed the secret ; and the lady employed certain 
 gay and profligate young men, who were hangers-on 
 of her own, to conceal themselves somewhere in the 
 baths, and pounce upon Cselius's emissary with, the 
 poison in his possession. But this scheme was said 
 to have failed. Clodia's detectives had rushed from 
 their place of concealment too soon, and the bearer of 
 the poison escaped. The counsel for the prisoner 
 makes a great point of this. 
 
 " Why, 'tis the catastrophe of a stage-play — nay, of 
 a burlesque ; when no more artistic solution of the 
 plot can be invented, the hero escapes, the bell rings, 
 and — the curtain falls ! For I ask why, when Licinius 
 was there trembling, hesitating, retreating, trying to 
 escape — why that lady's body-guard let him go out of 
 their hands 1 Were they afraid lest, so many against 
 one, such stout champions against a single helpless 
 man, frightened as he was and fierce as they were, 
 they could not master him ? I should like exceedingly 
 to see them, those curled and scented youths, the 
 bosom-friends of this rich and noble lady ; those stout 
 men-at-arms who were posted by their she- captain in 
 this ambuscade in the baths. And I should like to 
 ask them how they hid themselves, and where 1 A 
 bath^ — why, it must rather have been a Trojan horse, 
 which bore within its womb this band of invincible 
 heroes who went to war for a woman ! I would make 
 them answer this question, — why they, being so many 
 
104 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 and so brave, did not either seize this slight stripling, 
 whom you see before you, where he stood, or overtake 
 him when he fled 1 Tliey will hardly be able to ex- 
 plain themselves, I fancy, if they get into that witness- 
 box, however clever and witty they may be at the 
 banquet, — nay, even eloquent occasionally, no doubt, 
 over their wine. But the air of a court of justice is 
 somewhat different from that of the banquet-hall ; the 
 benches of this court are not like the couches of a 
 supper-table ; the array of this jury presents a differ- 
 ent spectacle from a company of revellers ; nay, the 
 broad glare of sunshine is harder to face than the 
 glitter of the lamps. If they venture into it, I shall 
 have to strip them of their pretty conceits and fools' 
 gear. But, if they will be ruled by me, they will be- 
 take themselves to another trade, win favour in another 
 quarter, flaunt themselves elsewhere than in this court. 
 Let them carry their brave looks to their lady there ; 
 let them lord it at her expense, cling to her, lie at her 
 feet, be her slaves ; only let them make no attempt 
 upon the life and honour of an innocent man." 
 
 The satellites of Clodia could scarcely have felt com- 
 fortable under this withering fire of sarcasm. The 
 speaker concluded with an apology — much required — 
 for his client's faults, as those of a young man, and a 
 promise on his behalf — on the faith of an advocate — 
 that he would behave better for the future. He 
 wound up the whole with a ])t)iut of sensational 
 rhetoric which was common, as has been said, to 
 the Roman bar as to our own — an appeal to the 
 jurymen as fathers. He pointed to the aged father of 
 
DEFENCE OF LIGARIUS. 105 
 
 tlie defendant, leaning in the most approved attitude 
 upon tlie shoulder of his son. Either this, or the want 
 of evidence, or the eloquence of the pleader, had its 
 due effect. Ca^lius was triumphantly acquitted ; and 
 it is a proof that the young man was not wholly grace- 
 less, that he rose afterwards to high public office, and 
 never forgot his obligations to his eloquent counsel, to 
 whom he continued a stanch friend. He must have 
 had good abilities, for he was honoured with frequent 
 letters from Cicero when the latter w^as governor of 
 Cilicia. He kept up some of his extravagapt tastes ; 
 for when he was ^dile (which involved the taking 
 upon him the expense of certain gladiatorial and wild- 
 beast exhibitions), he wrote to beg his friend to send 
 him out of his province some panthers for his show. 
 Cicero complied with the request, and took the oppor- 
 tunity, so characteristic of him, of lauding his own ad- 
 ministration of Cilicia, and making a kind of pun at 
 the same time. " I have given orders to the hunters 
 to see about the panthers ; but panthers are very scarce, 
 and the few there are complain, people say, that in the 
 whole province there are no traps laid for anybody but 
 for them." Catching and skinning the unfortunate 
 provincials, which had been a favourite sport with 
 governors like Yerres, had been quite done away with 
 in Cilicia, we are to understand, under Cicero's rule. 
 
 His defence of Ligarius, w^ho w^as impeached of trea- 
 son against the state in the person of Caesar, as having 
 borne arms against him in his African campaign, has 
 also been deservedly admired. There was some courage 
 in Cicero's undertaking his defence j as a known parti- 
 
106 CHARACTER AS POLITICIAN AND ORATOR. 
 
 san of Pompey, he was treading on dangerous and 
 delicate ground. Caesar was dictator at the time ; and 
 the case seems to have been tried before him as the 
 sole judicial authority, without pretence of the inter- 
 vention of anything like a jury. The defence — if de- 
 fence it may be called — is a remarkable instance of the 
 common appeal, not to the merits of the case, but to 
 the feelings of the court. After making out what case 
 he could for his client, the advocate as it were throws 
 up his brief, and rests upon the clemency of the judge. 
 Caesar himself, it must be remembered, had begun 
 public life, like Cicero, as a pleader : and, in the opin- 
 ion of some competent judges, such as Tacitus and 
 Quintilian, had bid fair to be a close rival. 
 
 " I have pleaded many causes, Cassar — some, in- 
 deed, in association with yourself, while your public 
 career spared you to the courts ; but surely I never 
 yet used language of this sort, — ' Pardon him, sirs, he 
 has offended : he has made a false step : he did not 
 think to do it ; he never will again.' This is language 
 Ave use to a father. To the court it must be, — ' He 
 did not do it : he never contemplated it : the evidence 
 is false ; the charge is fabricated.' If you tell me you 
 sit but as the judge of the foct in this case, Caesar, — if 
 you ask me where and when he served against you, — I 
 am silent ; I will not now dwell on the extenuating cir- 
 cumstances, which even before a judicial tribunal micrht 
 have their weight. We take this course before a judo-e, 
 but I am here pleading to a father. ' I have erred— I 
 have done wrong, I am sorry : I take refuge in your 
 clemency; I ask forgiveness for my fault ; I pray you, 
 
DEFENCE OF LIGARIUS. 107 
 
 pardon me.' . . . There is nothing so popular, believe 
 me, sir, as kindness ; of all your many virtues none 
 wins men's admiration and their love like mercy. In 
 nothing do men reach so near the gods, as when they 
 can give life and safety to mankind. Fortune has 
 given you nothing more glorious than the power, your 
 own nature can s'liply nothinq more noble than the 
 will, to spare and pardon wnerever you can. The case 
 perhaps demands a longer advocacy — your gracious 
 disposition feels it too long already. So I make an 
 end, preferring for my cause that you should argue 
 with your own heart, than that I or any other should 
 argue with you. I wdll urge nothing more than this, 
 — the grace which you shall extend to my client in his 
 absence, will be felt as a boon by all here present." 
 
 The great conqueror was, it is said, visibly affected 
 by the appeal, and Ligarius was pardoned. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 'Not content with his triumphs in prose, Cicero had 
 always an ambition to be a poet. Of his attempts in 
 this way we have only some imperfect fragments, 
 scattered here and there through his other works, 
 too scanty to form any judgment upon. His poetical 
 ability is apt to be unfairly measured by two lines 
 which his opponents were very fond of quoting and 
 laughing at, and which for that reason have become 
 the best known. But it is obvious that if Wordsworth 
 or Tennyson were to be judged solely by a line or two 
 picked out by an unfavourable reviewer — say from 
 ' Peter Bell' or from the early version of the * Miller's 
 Daughter ' — posterity would have a very mistaken 
 appreciation of their merits. Plutarch and the younger 
 Pliny, who had seen more of Cicero's poetry than we 
 have, thought highly of it. So he did himself; but 
 so it was his nature to tiling of most of his own per- 
 formances ; and such an estimate is common to other 
 authors besides Cicero, thougli few announce it so 
 openly. Montaigne takes him to task for this, with 
 
CICERO AS A POET. 109 
 
 more wit, perhaps, than fairness. "It is no great 
 fault to write poor verses ; but it is a fault not to be 
 able to see how unworthy such poor verses were of his 
 reputation." Voltaire, on the other hand, who was 
 perhaps as good a judge, thought there was "nothing 
 more beautiful" than some of the fragments of his 
 poem on ' Marius,' who was the ideal hero of his 
 youth. Perhaps the very fact, however, of none of his 
 poems having been preserved, is some argument that 
 such poetic gift as he had was rather facility than 
 genius. He wrote, besides this poem on ' Marius,' a 
 ' History of my Consulship,' and a ' History of my Own 
 Times,' in verse, and some translations from Homer. 
 
 He had no notion of what other men called relaxation : 
 he found his own relaxation in a change of Avork. He 
 excuses himself in one of his orations for this strange 
 taste, as it would seem to the indolent and luxurious 
 Eoman nobles with whom he was so unequally yoked. 
 
 " Who after all shall blame me, or who has any 
 right to be angry with me, if the time which is not 
 grudged to others for managing their private business, 
 for attending public games and festivals, for pleasures 
 of any other kind, — nay, even for very rest of mind 
 and body, — the time which others give to convivial 
 meetings, to the gaming-table, to the tennis-court, — 
 this much T take for myself, for the resumption of my 
 favourite studies ? " 
 
 In this indefatigable appetite for work of all kinds, 
 he reminds us of no modern politician so much as of 
 Sir George CorneAvall Lewis ; yet he would not have- 
 altogether agreed with him in thinking that life would 
 
110 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 be very tolerable if it were not for its ainiisemeuts. 
 He was, as we have seen, of a naturally social disposi- 
 tion. " I like a dinner-party," he says in a letter to 
 one of his friends, " where I can say just what comes 
 uppermost, and turn my sighs and sorrows into a hearty 
 laugh. I doubt whether you are much better yourself, 
 when you can laugh as you did even at a philosopher. 
 When the man asked — ' Whether anybody wanted to 
 know anything]' you said you had been wanting to 
 know all day when it would be dinner-time. The 
 fellow expected you to say you wanted to know 
 how many worlds there were, or something of that 
 kind."* 
 
 He is said to have been a great laugher. Indeed, he 
 confesses honestly that the sense of humour was very 
 powerful witli him — "I am wonderfully taken by 
 anything comic," he writes to one of his friends. He 
 reckons humour also as a useful ally to the orator. 
 " A happy jest or facetious turn is not only pleasant, 
 but also highly useful occasionally;" but he adds that 
 this is an accomplishment which must come naturally, 
 and cannot be taught under any possible system. t 
 There is at least sufficient evidence that he was much 
 given to making jokes, and some of them which have 
 come down to us would imply that a Boman audience 
 was not very critical on this point. There is an air 
 of gravity about all courts of justice which probably 
 
 * These professional philosophers, at literary dinner-parties, 
 offered to discuss and answer any question propounded by the 
 company. 
 
 t De Orat. 11. 54. 
 
ruivs. Ill 
 
 makes a very faint amount of jocularity hailed as a 
 relief. Even in an English law-court, a joke from the 
 bar, much more from the bench, does not need to be 
 of any remarkable brilliancy in order to be secure of 
 raising a laugh; and we may fairly suppose that the 
 same was the case at Eome. Cicero's jokes were fre- 
 quently nothing more than puns, which it would be 
 impossible, even if it were worth while, to reproduce 
 to an English ear. Perhaps the best, or at all events 
 the most intelligible, is his retort to Hortensius during 
 the trial of Yerres. The latter Avas said to have feed 
 his counsel out of his Sicilian spoils — especially, there 
 was a figure of a sphinx, of some artistic value, which 
 had found its way from the house of the ex-governor 
 into that of Hortensius. Cicero was putting a witness 
 through a cross-examination of which his opponent 
 could not see the bearing, " I do not understand all 
 this," said Hortensius ; "I am no hand at solving rid- 
 dles." "That is strange, too," rejoined Cicero, "when 
 you have a sphinx at home." In the same trial 
 he condescended, in the midst of that burning elo- 
 quence of which Ave have spoken, to make two puns on 
 the defendant's name. The word " Ven-es " had two 
 meanings in the old Latin tongue : it signified a " boar- 
 pig," and also a "broom" or "sweeping-brush." One 
 of Yerres's friends, who eitlier was or had the reputa- 
 tion of being a Jew, had tried to get the management 
 of the prosecution out of Cicero's hands. " What has 
 a Jew to do with j^ork ? " asked the orator. Speaking, 
 in the course of the same trial, of the Avay in which 
 the governor had made " requisitions " of all the most 
 
112 MINOR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 valuable works of art throiigliout the island, " the 
 broom,'' saiil he, " swept clean." He did not disdain 
 the comic element in poetry more than in prose; for 
 we find in Quintilian * a quotation from a punning 
 epigram in some collection of such trifles which in his 
 time bore Cicero's name. Tiro is said to have collected 
 and publislied three volumes of his master's good 
 tilings after his death ; but if they were not better than 
 those which have coaie down to us, as contained in his 
 other writings, there has been no great loss to literature 
 in Tiro's ' Cicerouiana.' He knew one secret at least 
 of a successful humourist in society : for it is to 
 him that we owe the first authoritative enunciation of 
 a rule which is universally admitted — " that a jest 
 never has so good an efiect as when it is uttered with 
 a serious countenance." 
 
 Cicero had a wonderful admiration for the Greeks. 
 " I am not ashamed to confess," he writes to his 
 brother, " especially since my life and career have been 
 such that no suspicion of indolence or want of energy 
 can rest uptm me, that all my own attainments are due 
 to those studies and those accomplishments which have 
 been handed down to us in the literary treasures and 
 the philosophical systems of the Greeks." It was no 
 mere rhetorical outburst, when in his defence of 
 Valerius Flaccus, accused like Verres, whether truly or 
 falsely, of corrupt administration in his province, he 
 thus introduced the deputation from Athens and Lace- 
 dsemon who aj^peared as witnesses to the character of 
 his client. 
 
 * ' Libellus Jocularis,' Quint, viii. 6. 
 
ESTIMATE OF THE GREEKS. 113 
 
 " Athenians are here to-day, amongst whom civilisa- 
 tion, learning, religion, agriculture, public law and jus- 
 tice, had their birth, and whence they have been dis- 
 seminated over all the world : for the possession of 
 whose city, on account of its exceeding beauty, even 
 gods are said to have contended : which is of such an- 
 tiquity, that she is said to have bred lier citizens within 
 hei-self, and the same soil is termed at once their mo- 
 ther, their nurse, and their country : whose importance 
 and influence is such that the name of Greece, though 
 it has lost much of its weight and power, still holds 
 its place by virtue of the renown of this single city." 
 
 He had forgotten, perhaps, as an orator is allowed to 
 forget, that in the very same speech, when his object was 
 to discredit the accusers of his client, he had said, what 
 was very commonly said of the Greeks at Eome, that 
 they were a nation of liars. There were excellent men 
 among them, he allowed — thinking at the moment of the 
 counter-evidence which he had ready for the defendant — 
 but he goes on to make this sweeping declaration : — 
 
 " I will say this of the whole race of the Greeks : I 
 grant them literary genius, I grant them skill in vari- 
 ous accomplishments, I do not deny them elegance in 
 conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory ; 
 to any other high qualities they may claim I make no 
 objection : but the sacred obligation that lies upon a 
 witness to speak the truth is what that nation has 
 never regarded." * 
 
 There was a certain proverb, he went on to say, 
 " Lend me your evidence," implying — " and you shall 
 * Defence of Yal. Fla:cns, c. 4. 
 A. C. vol. ix. H 
 
114 • . ■ Mi:f^*VHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 have mine when you want it ;" a Greek proverb, of 
 course, and men knew these three words of Greek who 
 knew no Greek besides. What he loved in the Greeks, 
 then, was rather the grandeur of their literature and 
 the charm of their social qualities (a strict regard for 
 truth is, unhappily, no indispensable ingredient in this 
 last) ; he had no respect whatever for their national 
 character. The orator was influenced, perhaps, most 
 of all by his intense reverence for the Athenian De- 
 mosthenes, whom, as a master in his art, he imitated 
 and wellnigh worshipped. The appreciation of his 
 own powers which every able man has, and of which 
 Cicero had at least his share, fades into humility when 
 he comes to speak of his great model. " Absolutely 
 perfect," he calls him in one place; and again in an- 
 other, "What I have attempted, Demosthenes has 
 achieved." Yet he felt also at times, when the fervour 
 of genius was strong within him, that there was an 
 ideal of eloquence enshrined in his own inmost mind, 
 " which I can feel," he says, " but which I never knew 
 to exist in any man." 
 
 He could not only write Greek as a scholar, but 
 seems to have spoken it with considerable ease and 
 fluency; for on one occasion he made a speech in that 
 language, a condescension which some of his friends 
 thought derogatory to the dignity of a Eoman. 
 
 From the Greeks he learnt to appreciate art. How 
 far his taste was really cultivated in this respect is 
 difficult for us to judge. Some passages in his letters 
 to Atticus might lead us to suspect that, as Disraeli 
 concludes, he was rather a collector than a real lover 
 

 LOV£ OF GREJ::i^3^T.. • i' 115 
 
 of art. His appeals to his friend to buy up for him 
 everything and anything, and his surrender of himself 
 entirely to Atticus's judgment in such purchases, do 
 not hespeak a highly critical taste. In a letter to an- 
 other friend, he seems to say that he only bought 
 statuary as " furniture " for the gymnasium at his 
 country-seat; and he complains that four figures of 
 Bacchanals, which this friend had just bought for him, 
 had cost more than he would care to give for all the 
 statues that ever were made. On the other hand, 
 when he comes to deal with Yerres's Avholesale plunder 
 of paintings and statues in Sicily, he talks about the 
 several works with considerable enthusiasm. Either 
 he reaUy understood his subject, or, like an able advo- 
 cate, he had thoroughly got up his brief. But the 
 art-notices which are scattered through his works show 
 a considerable acquaintance with the artist-world of 
 his day. He tells us, in his own admirable style, the 
 story of Zeuxis, and the selection which he made from 
 all the beauties of Crotona, in order to combine their 
 several points of perfection in his portrait of Helen ; 
 he refers more than once, and always in language 
 which im})lies an appreciation of the artist, to the 
 works of Phidias, especially that Avhich is said to have 
 cost him his life — the shield of Minerva ; and he dis- 
 cusses, though it is but by way of illustration, the 
 comparative points of merit in the statues of Calaniis, 
 and ]\Iyron, and Polycletus, and in the paintings of the 
 earlier schools of Zeuxis, Polygnotus, and Timanthes, 
 with their four primitive colours, as compared with 
 the more finished schools of Protogenes and Apelles. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CICERO S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. ATTICUS. 
 
 It seems wonderful how, in the midst of all his work, 
 Cicero found time to keep up such a voluminous 
 correspondence. Something like eight hundred of his 
 letters still remain to us, and there were whole volumes 
 of them long preserved which are now lost,* to say 
 nothing of the very many which may never have 
 "been thought worth preserving. The secret lay in his 
 wonderful energy and activity. "We find him writing 
 letters before day - break, during the service of his 
 meals, on his journeys, and dictating them to an 
 amanuensis as he walked up and down to take needful 
 exercise. 
 
 His correspondents were of almost all varieties of 
 position and character, from Cccsar and Pompey, the 
 great men of the day, down to his domestic servant 
 
 * Collections of his letters to Ctesar, Brutus, Cornelius Nepos 
 the historian, Hirtius, Pansa, and to his son, are known to have 
 existed. 
 
AT TIC us. 117 
 
 and secretary, Tiro. Amongst tliem. were rich and 
 ease-loving Epicureans like Atticus and Psetus, and 
 even men of pleasure like Cselius : grave Stoics like 
 Cato, eager patriots like Brutus and Cassius, authors 
 such as Cornelius Nepos and Lucceius the historians, 
 Viirro the grammarian, and jNIetius the poet ; men who 
 dabbled with literature in a gentleman-like way, like 
 Hirtius and Appius, and the accomplished literary 
 critic and patron of the day — himself of no mean 
 reputation as poet, orator, and historian — Caius Asinius 
 Pollio. Cicero's versatile powers found no difficulty 
 in suiting the contents of his own letters to the various 
 tastes and interests of his friends. Sometimes he 
 sends to his correspondent what was in fact a political 
 journal of the day — rather one-sided, it must be con- 
 fessed, as all political journals are, but furnishing us 
 with items of intelligence which throw hght, as nothing 
 else can, on the history of those latter days of the 
 Ee public. Sometimes he jots down the mere gossip 
 of his last dinner-party; sometimes he notices the 
 speculations of the last new theorist in philosophy, or 
 discusses with a literary friend some philological ques- 
 tion — the latter being a study in which he was very 
 fond of dabbUng, though with little success, for the 
 science of language was as yet unknoAvn. 
 
 His chief correspondent, as has been said, w^as his 
 old school-fellow and constant friend through life, 
 Pomponius Atticus. The letters addressed to him 
 which still remain to us cover a period of twenty-four 
 years, with a few occasional interruptions, and the 
 correspondence only ceased with Cicero's death. The 
 
118 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Athenianised Roman, though he had deliberately with- 
 drawn himself from the distracting factions of his 
 native city, which he seldom revisited, kept on the 
 best terms with the leaders of all parties, and seems 
 to have taken a very lively interest, though merely in 
 the character of a looker-on, in the political events 
 which crowded so fast upon each other during the fifty 
 years of his voluntary expatriation. Cicero's letters 
 were to him wliat an English newspaper would be 
 now to an English gentleman who for his own reasons 
 preferred to reside in Paris, without forswearing his 
 national interests and sympathies. At times, when 
 Cicero was more at leisure, and when messengers were 
 handy (for we have to remember that there was nothing 
 like our modern post), Cicero would despatch one of 
 these letters to Atticus daily. We have nearly four 
 hundred of them in all. They are continually gar- 
 nished, even to the point of affectation, with Greek 
 quotations and phrases, partly perhaps in compliment 
 to his friend's Athenian tastes, and partly from the 
 writer's own passion for the language. 
 
 So much reference has been made to them through- 
 out the previous biographical sketch, — for they supply 
 us with some of the most important materials for 
 Cicero's life and times, — that it may be sufficient to 
 give in this j)lace two or three of the shorter as speci- 
 mens of the collection. One wliich describes a visit 
 which he received from Julius Caesar, already dictator, 
 in his country-house near Puteoli, is interesting, as 
 affording a glimpse behind the scenes in those mo- 
 mentous days when no one knew exactly whether the 
 
ATTICUS, 119 
 
 great captain was to turn out a patriot or a conspirator 
 against the liberties of Rome, 
 
 " To think that I should have had such a tremen- 
 dous visitor ! But never mind ; for all went off very 
 pleasantly. But when he arrived at Philippus's house* 
 on the evening of the second day of the Saturnalia, 
 the place was so fuU of soldiers that they could hardly 
 find a spare table for Caesar himself to dine at. There 
 were two thousand men. Eeally I was in a state of 
 perplexity as to what was to be done next day : but 
 Barba Cassius came to my aid, — he supplied me with 
 a guard. They pitched their tents in the grounds, and 
 the house was protected. He stayed with Philippus 
 until one o'clock on the third day of the Saturnalia, 
 and would see no one. Going over accounts, I suppose, 
 with Balbus. Then he walked on the sea-shore. After 
 two he had a bath: then he listened to some verses on 
 Mamurra, without moving a muscle of his countenance : 
 then dressed,t and sat down to dinner. He had taken 
 a precautionary emetic, and therefore ate and drank 
 heartily and unrestrainedly. "We had, I assure you, a 
 very good dinner, and well served ; and not only that, 
 but 
 
 * The feast of reason and the flow of soul 'J 
 
 besides. His suite were abundantly supplied at three 
 other tables : the freedmen of lower rank, and even 
 
 * This was close to Cicero's villa, on the coast. 
 
 t Literally, "he got himself oiled." The emetic was a disgust- 
 ing practice of Roman hoii vivants who were afraid of indigestion. 
 
 X The verse which Cicero quotes from Lucilius is fairly equiva- 
 lent to this. 
 
120 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 the slaves, were well taken care of. The higher class 
 had really an elegant entertainment. Well, no need to 
 make a long story ; we found we were both ' flesh and 
 blood.' Still he is not the kind of guest to whom you 
 would say — ' Now do, pray, take us in your way on 
 your return.' Once is enough. We had no conversa- 
 tion on business, but a good deal of literary talk. In 
 short, he seemed to be much pleased, and to enjoy 
 himself. He said he should stay one day at Puteoli, 
 and another at Bai^e. So here you have an account of 
 this visit, or rather quartering of troops upon me, 
 which I disliked the thoughts of, but which really, as 
 I have said, gave me no annoyance. I shall stay here 
 a little longer, then go to my house at Tusculum. 
 When Csesar passed Dolabella's villa, all the troops 
 formed up on the right and left of his horse, which 
 they did nowhere else.* I heard that from Nicias." 
 
 In the following, he is anticipating a visit from his 
 friend, and from the lady to whom he is betrothed- 
 
 " I had a delightful visit from Cincius on the 30th 
 of January, before daylight. For he told me that you 
 were in Italy, and that he was going to send off some 
 me£*3engers to you, and would not let them go without 
 a letter from me. Not that I have much to write 
 about (especially when you are all but here), except 
 to assure you that I am anticipating your arrival with 
 the greatest delight. Therefore fly to me, to show your 
 own affection, and to see what affection I bear you. 
 Other matters when we meet. I have written this in 
 a hurry. As soon as ever you arrive, bring all your 
 
 * Probably by way of salute ; or possibly as a precaution. 
 
PJ^TUS, 121 
 
 people to my house. You will gratify me very much 
 by coming. You will see how AvonderfuUy well Tyr- 
 rannio has arranged my books, the remains of which 
 are much better than I had thought. And I should 
 be very glad if you could send me a couple of your 
 library clerks whom Tyrrannio could make use of as 
 binders, and to help him in other ways ; and tell them 
 to bring some parchment to make indices — syllabuses, 
 I believe you Greeks call them. But this only if quite 
 convenient to you. But, at any rate, be sure you come 
 yourself, if you can make any stay in our parts, and 
 bring Pilia with you, for that is but fair, and Tullia 
 wishes it much. Upon my word you have bought 
 a very fine place. I hear that your gladiators fight 
 capitally. If you had cared to hire them out, you 
 might have cleared your expenses at these two last 
 public shows. But we can talk about this hereafter. 
 Be sure to come : and do your best about the clerks, 
 if you love me." 
 
 The Eoman gentleman of elegant and accomplished 
 tastes, keeping a troop of private gladiators, and think- 
 ing of hiring them out, to our notions, is a curious 
 combination of character ; but the taste was not essen- 
 tially more brutal than the prize-ring and the cock- 
 fights of the last century. 
 
 II. PiETUS. 
 
 Another of Cicero's favourite correspondents was 
 Papirius Paetus^who seems to have lived at home at 
 ease, and taken Httle part in the political tumults of 
 
122 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 his day. Like Atticus, lie was an Epicurean, and 
 thought more of the pleasures of life than of its cares 
 and duties. Yet Cicero evidently took great pleasure 
 in his society, and his letters to him are written in the 
 same familiar and genial tone as those to his old school- 
 fellow. Some of them throw a pleasant light upon 
 the social habits of the day. Cicero had had some 
 friends staying with him at his country-seat at Tus- 
 culum, to whom, he says, he had been giving lessons 
 in oratory. Dolabella, his son-in-law, and Hirtius, the 
 future consul, were among them. •' They are my 
 scholars in declamation, and I am theirs in dinner- 
 eating ; for I conclude you have heard (you seem to 
 hear everything) that they come to me to declaim, and 
 I go to them for dinners. 'Tis all very well for you 
 to swear that you cannot entertain me in such grand 
 fashion as I am used to, but it is of use. . . . Better 
 be victimised by your friend than by your debtors, as 
 you have been. After all, I don't require such a ban- 
 quet as leaves a great waste behind it ; a little will do, 
 only handsomely served and well cooked. I remember 
 your telling me about a dinner of Phamea's — well, it 
 need not be such a late affair as that, nor so grand in 
 other res2:)ects ; nay, if you persist in giving me one of 
 your mother's old family dinners, I can stand even 
 that. My new reputation for good living has reached 
 you, I find, before my arrival, and you are alarmed at 
 it ; but, pray, put no trust in your ante-courses — I 
 have given up that altogether. I used to spoil my 
 appetite, I remember, upon your oil and sliced sausages. 
 . . . One expense I really shall put you to; I must 
 
P^TUS. 123 
 
 have my warm hath. IMy other hahits, I assure you, 
 are quite unaltered ; all the rest is joke." 
 
 Psetus seems to answer him with the same good- 
 humoured badinage. Balbus, the governor of Africa, 
 had been to see him, he says, and he had been content 
 with such humble fare as he feared Cicero might 
 despise. So much, at least, we may gather from 
 Cicero's answer. 
 
 " Satirical as ever, I see. You say Balbus was con- 
 tent with very modest fare. You seem to insinuate 
 that when i^randees are so moderate, much more ought 
 a poor ex-consul like myself so to be. You don't 
 know that I fished it all out of your visitor himself, 
 for he came straight to my house on his landing. The 
 very first words I said to him were, ' How did you 
 get on with our friend Psetus % ' He swore he had 
 never been better entertained. If this referred to the 
 charms of your conversation, remember, I shall be 
 quite as appreciative a listener as Balbus ; but if it 
 meant the good things on the table, I must beg you 
 will not treat us men of eloquence worse than you do 
 a * Lisper.' " * 
 
 They carry on this banter through several letters. 
 Cicero regrets that he has been unable as yet to pay 
 his threatened visit, when his friend would have seen 
 what advances he had made in gastronomic science. 
 He was able now to eat through the whole bill of fare 
 — " from the eggs to the roti.'^ 
 
 " I [Stoic that used to be] have gone over with my 
 whole forces into the camp of Epicurus. You will 
 
 * One of Cicero's puns. Balbus means ' Lisper.* 
 
124 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 have to do with a man who can eat, and who knows 
 what's what. You know how conceited we late 
 learners are, as the proverb says. You will have to 
 unlearn those little ' plain dinners ' and makeshifts of 
 yours. We have made such advances in the art, that 
 we have been venturing to invite, more than once, 
 your friends Verrius and Camillas (what elegant and 
 fastidious gentlemen they are !). But see how auda- 
 cious we are getting ! I have even given Hirtius a 
 dinner — but without a peacock. My cook could imi- 
 tate nothing in his entertainments except the hot 
 soup." 
 
 Then he hears that his friend is in bed with the 
 gout. 
 
 " I am extremely sorry to hear it, as in duty bound; 
 still, I am quite determined to come, that I may see 
 you, and pay my visit, — yes, and have my dinner : for 
 I suppose your cook has not got the gout as well." 
 
 Such were the playful epistles of a busy man. But 
 even in some of these lightest effusions we see the 
 cares of the statesman showing through. Here is a 
 portion of a later letter to the same friend. 
 
 " I am very much concerned to hear you have given 
 up going out to dinner ; for it is depriving yourself of 
 a great source of enjoyment and gratification. Then, 
 again, I am afraid — for it is as well to speak honestly 
 — lest you should unlearn certain old habits of yours, 
 and forget to give your own little dinners. For if for- 
 merly, when you had good examples to imitate, you 
 were still not much of a proficient in that way, how 
 can I supjDOse you will get on now 1 Spurina, indeed, 
 
HIS BROTHER QUINTUS. 125 
 
 when I mentioned the thing to him, and explained 
 your previous hahits, proved to demonstration tliat 
 there woukl be danger to the highest interests of the 
 state if you did not return to your old ways in the 
 spring. Eut indeed, my good Partus, I advise you, 
 joking apart, to associate with good fellows, and pleas- 
 ant fellows, and men who are fond of you. There is 
 nothing better worth having in life, nothing that makes 
 life more happy. . = . See how I employ philo- 
 sophy to reconcile you to dinner-parties, lake care 
 of your health ; and that you will best do by going 
 out to dinner. . . . But don't imagine, as you 
 love me, that because I write jestingly I have thro^vni 
 off all anxiety about public affairs. Be assured, my 
 dear Ptetus, that I seek nothing and care for nothing, | 
 night or day, but how my country may be kejit • 
 safe and free. I omit no opportunity of advising, ' 
 planning, or acting. I feel in my heart that if in 
 securing this I have to lay down my life, I shall have 
 ended it well and honourablv." 
 
 III. HIS BROTHER QUINTUS. 
 
 Between !Marcus Cicero and his younger brother 
 Quintus there existed a very sincere and cordial affec- 
 tion — somewhat warmer, perhaps, on the side of the 
 elder, inasmuch as his wealth and position enabled 
 him rather to confer than to receive kindnesses ; the 
 rule in such cases being (so cynical philosoi:)hers tell 
 us) that the affection is lessened rather than increased 
 by the feeling of obligation. He almost adopted the 
 
126 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 younger Quiutus, his nephew, and had him educated 
 with his own son ; and the two cousins received their 
 earlier training together in one or other of Marcus 
 Cicero's country-houses under a clever Greek freedman 
 of his, who was an excellent scholar, and — what was 
 less usual amongst his countrymen, unless Cicero's 
 estimate of them does them great injustice — a very 
 honest man, but, as the two boys complained, terribly 
 passionate. Cicero himself, however, was the head 
 tutor — an office for which, as he modestly writes, his 
 Greek studies fully qualified him. Quintus Cicero 
 behaved ill to his brother after the battle of Pharsalia, 
 making what seem to have been very unjust accusa- 
 tions against him in order to pay court to Caesar ; but 
 they soon became friends again. 
 
 Twenty-nine of the elder Cicero's letters to his 
 brother remain, written in terms of remarkable kind- 
 ness and affection, which go far to vindicate the Roman 
 character from a chai-ge which has sometimes been 
 brought against it of coldness in these family relation- 
 ships. Few modern brothers, probably, would write to 
 each other in such terms as these : — 
 
 " Afraid lest your letters bother me ? I wish you 
 would bother me, and re-bother me, and talk to me 
 and at me ; for what can give me more pleasure ? I 
 swear that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his 
 own last poem with more delight than I do what you 
 write to me about matters public or private, town or 
 country. Here now is a letter from you full of pleas- 
 ant matter, but with this dash of the disagreeable in 
 it, that you have been afraid — nay, are even now 
 
HIS BROTHER QUINTUS. 127 
 
 afraid — of being troublesome to me. I could quarrel 
 with you about it, if that were not a sin. But if I 
 have reason to suspect anything of that sort again, I 
 can only say that I shall always be afraid lest, when 
 we are together, I may be troublesome to you." 
 
 Or take, again, the pathetic apology which he makes 
 for having avoided an interview with Quintus in those 
 hrst days of his exile when he was so thoroughly 
 unmanned : — 
 
 " My brother, my brother, my brother ! Did you 
 really fear that I was angry, because I sent off the 
 slaves without any letter to you ? And did you even 
 think that I was unwilling to see you 1 I angry with 
 you ? Could I possibly be angry with you ? . . , 
 When I miss you, it is not a brother only that I miss. 
 To me you have always been the pleasantest of com- 
 panions, a son in dutiful affection, a father in counsel. 
 What pleasure ever had I without you, or you with- 
 out me?" 
 
 Quintus had accompanied Caesar on his expedition 
 into Britain as one of his lieutenants, and seems to 
 have written home to his brother some notices of the 
 country ; to which the latter, towards the end of his 
 reply, makes this allusion : — 
 
 "How delighted I was to get your letter from 
 Britain ! I had been afraid of the voyage across, 
 afraid of the rock-bound coast of the island. The 
 other dangers of such a campaign I do not mean to de- 
 spise, but in these there is more to hope than to fear, 
 and I have been rather anxiously expecting the result 
 than in any real alarm about it. I see vou have a 
 
128 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCJS. 
 
 capital subject to write about. What novel scenery, 
 what natural curiosities and remarkable places, what 
 strange tribes and strange customs, what a campaign, 
 and what a commander you have to describe ! I will 
 willingly help you in the points you request ; and I 
 will send you the verses you ask for — though it is 
 sending ' an owl to Athens,' * I know." 
 
 In another letter he says, " Only give me Britain to 
 paint with your colours and my own pencil." But 
 either the Britons of those days did not, after all, 
 seem to afford sufficient interest for poem or history, 
 or for some other reason this joint literary undertaking, 
 which seems once to have been contemplated, was 
 never carried out, and we have missed what would 
 beyond doubt have been a highly interesting volume 
 of Sketches in Britain by the brothers Cicero. 
 
 Quintus was a poet, as well as his brother — nay, a 
 better poet, in the latter's estimation, or at least he 
 was polite enough to say so more than once. In quan- 
 tity, at least, if not in quality, the younger must have 
 been a formidable rival, for he wrote, as appears from 
 one of these letters, four tragedies in fifteen days — 
 possibly translations only from the Greek. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of all Cicero's letters, 
 and perhaps that which does him most credit both as 
 a man and a statesman, is one which he wrote to his 
 brother, who was at the time governor of Asia. In- 
 deed, it is much more than a letter ; it is rather a gi^ave 
 and carefully weighed pajDer of instructions on the 
 duties of such a position. It is full of sound practical 
 
 * A Greek proverb, equivalent to our 'coals to Newcastle.' 
 
ON THE DUTIES OF A GOVERyOR. 129 
 
 sense, and lofty principles of statesmanship — very 
 different from the principles which too commonly ruled 
 the conduct of Roman governors abroad. The province 
 which had fallen to the lot of Quintus Cicero was one 
 of the richest belonging to the Empire, and which pre- 
 sented the greatest temptations and the greatest facil- 
 ities for the abuse of power to selfish purposes. Though 
 called Asia, it consisted only of the late kingdom of 
 Pergamus, and had come under the dominion of Rome, 
 not by conquest, as was the case with most of the 
 provinces, but by way of legacy from Attains, the last 
 of its kings ; w^ho, after murdering most of his 
 own relations, had named the Roman people as his 
 heirs. The seat of government was at Ephesus. The 
 population was of a very mixed character, consisting 
 partly of true Asiatics, and partly of Asiatic Greeks, 
 the descendants of the old colonists, and containing 
 also a large Roman element — merchants who were 
 there for purposes of trade, many of them bankers 
 and money-lenders, and speculators who farmed the 
 imperial taxes, and were by no means scrupulous in 
 the matter of fleecing the provincials. These latter 
 — the ' Publicani,' as they w^ere termed — might prove 
 very dangerous enemies to any too zealous reformer. 
 If the Roman governor there really wished to do his 
 duty, what with the combined servility and double- 
 dealing of the Orientals, the proverbial lying of the 
 Greeks, and the grasping injustice of the Roman 
 officials, he had a very difficult part to play. How 
 Quintus had been playing it is not quite clear. His 
 brother, in this admirable letter, assumes that he had 
 A. c. vol. ix. I 
 
130 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 done all that was right, and urges him to maintain the 
 same course. But the advice would hardly have heen 
 needed if all had gone well hitherto. 
 
 " You will find little trouble in holding your subor- 
 dinates in check, if you can but keep a check upon 
 yourself. So long as you resist gain, and pleasure, and 
 all other temptations, as I am sure you do, I cannot 
 fancy there will be any danger of your not being able 
 to check a dishonest merchant or an extortionate col- 
 le/ctor. For even the Greeks, when they see you living 
 thus, will look upon you as some hero from their old 
 annals, or some supernatural being from heaven, come 
 down into their province. 
 
 " I write thus, not to urge you so to act, but that you 
 may congratulate yourself upon having so acted, now 
 and heretofore. For it is a glorious thing for a man to 
 have held a government for three years in Asia, in such 
 sort that neither statue, nor painting, nor work of art 
 of any kind, nor any temptations of wealth or beauty 
 (in all which temptations your province abounds) could 
 draw you from the strictest integrity and self-control : 
 that your official progresses should have been no cause 
 of dread to the inhabitants, that none should be im- 
 poverished by your requisitions, none terrified at the 
 news of your approach ; — but that you should have 
 brought Avith you, wherever you came, the most hearty 
 rejoicings, public and private, inasmuch as every town 
 saw in you a protector and not a tyrant — every family 
 received you as a guest, not as a plunderer. 
 
 " But in these points, as experience has by this time 
 taught you, it is not enough for you to have these 
 
ON THE DUTIES OF A GOVERNOR. 131 
 
 virtues y.ourself, but you must look to it carefully, that 
 in this guardianship of the province not you alone, 
 but every officer under you, discharges his duty to our 
 subjects, to our fellow-citizens, and to the state. . . . 
 If any of your subordinates seem grasping for his 
 own interest, you may venture to be^r with him so 
 long as he merely neglects the rules by which he ought 
 to be personally bound ; never so far as to allow him to 
 abuse for his own gain the power with which you have 
 intrusted him to maintain the dignity of his office. 
 For I do not think it well, especially since the cus- 
 toms of official life incline so much of late to laxity 
 and corrupt influence, that you should scrutinise too 
 closely every abuse, or criticise too strictly every one 
 of your officers, but rather place trust in each in pro- 
 portion as you feel confidence in his integrity. 
 
 '* For those whom the state has assigned you as com- 
 panions and assistants in public business, you are answer- 
 able only within the limits I have just laid down ; but 
 for those whom you have chosen to associate with 
 yourself as members of your private establishment and 
 personal suite, you will be held responsible not only for 
 all they do, but for all they say. 
 
 " Your ears should be supposed to hear only what you 
 publicly listen to, not to be open to every secret and 
 false whisper for the sake of private gain. Your official 
 seal should be not as a mere common tool, but as 
 though it were yourself ; not the instrument of other 
 men's wills, but the evidence of your own. Your offi- 
 cers should be the agents of your clemency, not of their 
 own caprice j and the rods and axes which they bear 
 
132 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 sliould be the emblems of your dignity, not merely of 
 your power. In short, the whole province should feel 
 that the persons, the families, tlie reputation, and the 
 fortunes of all over whom you rule, are held by you 
 very precious. Let it be well understood that you will 
 hold that man as much your enemy who gives a bribe, 
 if it comes to your knowledge, as the man who receives 
 it. But no one will offer bribes, if this be once made 
 clear, that those who pretend to have influence of this 
 kind with you have no power, after all, to gain any 
 favour for others at your hands. 
 
 • • • • • • •• • 
 
 "Let such, then, be the foundations of your dignity; 
 — first, integrity and self-control on your own part ; a 
 becoming behaviour ou the part of all aljout you ; a 
 very careful and circumspect selection of your intimates, 
 whether Greeks or provincials ; a grave and firm disci- 
 pline maintained throughout your household. For if 
 such conduct befits us in our private and everyday 
 relations, it becomes wellnigh godlike in a govern- 
 ment of such extent, in a state of morals so depraved, 
 and in a province which presents so many temptations. 
 Such a line of conduct and such rules will alone enable 
 you to uphold that severity in your decisions and de- 
 crees which you have employed in some cases, and by 
 which we have incurred (and I cannot regret it) the jeal- 
 ousy of certain interested parties. . . . You may 
 safely use the utmost strictness in the administration 
 of justice, so long as it is not capricious or partial, but 
 maintained at the same level for all. Yet it will be of 
 little use that your own decisions be just and carefully 
 
TIRO. 133 
 
 weighed, unless tlie same course be pursued by all to 
 whom you delegate any portion of your judicial autho- 
 rity. Such firmness and dignity must be employed 
 as may not only be above partiality, but above the 
 suspicion of it. To this must be added readiness to 
 give audience, calmness in deciding, care in weighing 
 the merits of the case and in satisfying the claims of 
 the parties." 
 
 Yet he advises that justice should be tempered with 
 leniency. 
 
 "If such moderation be popular at Eome, where 
 there is so much self-assertion, such unbridled freedom, 
 so much licence allowed to all men ; — where there are 
 so many courts of appeal open, so many means of help, 
 where the people have so much power and the Senate 
 so much authority; how grateful beyond measure will 
 moderation be in the governor of Asia, a province 
 where all that vast number of our fellow-citizens and 
 subjects, all those numerous states and cities, hang upon 
 one man's nod ! where there is no appeal to the tri- 
 bune, no remedy at law, no Senate, no popular assembly. 
 Wherefore it should be the aim of a great man, and 
 one noble by nature and trained by education and 
 liberal studies, so to behave himself in the exercise of 
 that absolute power, as that they over whom he pre- 
 sides should never have cause to wish for any authority 
 other than his." 
 
 IV. TIRO. 
 
 Of all Cicero's coiTespondence, his letters to Tiro 
 supply the most convincing evidence of his natural 
 
134 CICERO'S CORRESPOXDENCE. 
 
 kindness of heart. Tiro was a slave ; but this must 
 he taken with some explanation. The slaves in a 
 household like Cicero's would vary in position from 
 the lowest menial to the important major-domo and 
 the confidential secretary. Tiro was of this higher 
 class. He had probably been born and brought up in 
 the service, like Eliezer in the household of Abraham, 
 and had become, like him, the trusted agent of his 
 master and the friend of the whole family. He was 
 evidently a person of considerable ability and accom- 
 plishments, acting as literary amanuensis, and indeed 
 in some sort as a domestic critic, to his busy master. 
 He had accompanied him to his government in Cilicia, 
 and on the return home had been taken ill, and obliged 
 to be left behind at Patrse. And this is Cicero's affec- 
 tionate letter to him, written from Leucas (Santa 
 Maura) the day afterwards : — 
 
 " I thought I could have borne the separation from 
 you better, but it is plainly impossible ; and although 
 it is of great importance to the honours which I am 
 expecting * that I should get to Rome as soon as pos- 
 sible, yet I feel I made a great mistake in leaving 
 you behind. But as it seemed to be your wish not 
 to make the voyage until your health was restored, 
 I approved your decision. Nor do I think otherwise 
 now, if you are still of the same opinion. But if here- 
 after, when you are able to eat as usual, you think 
 you can follow me here, it is for you to decide. I sent 
 
 * The triumph for the victory gained under his nominal com- 
 mand over the hill-tribes in Cilicia, during his governorship of 
 that province (p. 68). 
 
I 
 
 TIRO, 135 
 
 Mario to you, telling him either to join me with you 
 as soon as possible, or, if you are delayed, to come 
 back here at once. But be assured of this, that if it 
 can be so without risk to your health, there is nothing 
 I wish so much as to have you with me. Only, if you 
 feel it necessary for your recovery to stay a little 
 longer at Patrae, there is nothing I wish so much as 
 for you to get -well. If you sail at once, you will 
 catch us at Leucas. But if you want to get well first, 
 take care to secure pleasant companions, fine weather, 
 and a good ship. Mind this, my good Tiro, if you 
 love me — let neither Mario's visit nor this letter hurry 
 you. By doing what is best for your own health, you 
 will be best obeying my directions. Consider these 
 points with your usual good sense. I miss you very 
 much ; but then I love you, and my affection makes 
 me wish to see you well, just as my want of you 
 makes me long to see you as soon as possible. But 
 the first point is the most important. Above all, 
 therefore, take care to get well : of all your innumer- 
 able services to me, this will be the most acceptable." 
 Cicero writes to him continually during his own 
 journey homewards with the most thoughtful kind- 
 ness, begs that he will be cautious as to what vessel 
 he sails in, and recommends specially one very careful 
 captain. He has left a horse and a mule ready for 
 him when he lands at Brundusium. Then he hears 
 that Tiro had been foolish enough to go to a concert, 
 or something of the kind, before he was strong, for 
 which he mildly reproves him. He has written to the 
 physician to spar« no care or pains, and to charge, 
 
136 CICERO'S CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 apparently, what he pleases. Several of his letters to 
 his friend Atticus, at this date, speak in the most 
 anxious and affectionate terms of the serious illness of 
 this faithful servant. Just as he and his party are 
 starting from Leucas, they send a note " from Cicero 
 and his son, and Quintus the elder and younger, to 
 their best and kindest Tiro." Then from Rome comes 
 a letter in the name of the whole family, wife and 
 daughter included : — 
 
 " Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Cicero the younger, and 
 Terentia, and TuUia, and Brother Quintus, and 
 Quintus's Son, to Tiro send greeting. 
 
 " Although I miss your able and willing service 
 every moment, still it is not on my own account so much 
 as yours that I am sorry you are not well. But 
 as your illness has now taken the form of a quartan 
 fever (for so Curius writes), I hope, if you take care of 
 yourself, you will soon be stronger. Only be sure, if 
 you have any kindness for me, not to trouble yourself 
 about anything else just now, except how to get well 
 as soon as may be. I am quite aware how much you 
 regret not being with me ; but everything will go 
 right if you get well. I would not have you hurr}^, 
 or undergo the annoj^ance of sea-sickness while you 
 are weak, or risk a sea-voyage in winter." Then he 
 tells him all the news from Rome ; how there had 
 been quite an ovation on his arrival there ; how Caesar 
 was (he thought) growing dangerous to the state ; and 
 how his own coveted " triumph " was still postponed. 
 " All this," he says, " I thought you would like to 
 
TIRO AND SOSITHEUS. 137 
 
 know." Then he concludes: "Over and over again, 
 I beg you to take care to get well, and to send me a 
 letter whenever you have an opportunity. Farewell, 
 ac'ain and a^ain." 
 
 Tiro got well, and outlived his kind master, who, 
 very soon after this, presented him with his freedom. 
 It is to him that we are said to be indebted for the 
 preservation and publication of Cicero's correspond- 
 ence. He wrote, also, a biography of him, which 
 Plutarch had seen, and of which he probably made 
 use in his own ' Life of Cicero,' but which has not 
 come down to us. 
 
 There was another of his household for whom 
 Cicero had the same aifection. This was Sositheus, 
 also a slave, but a man, like Tiro, of some considerable 
 education, whom he employed as his reader. His 
 death aflPected Cicero quite as the loss of a friend. 
 Indeed, his anxiety is such, that his Eoman dignity 
 is almost ashamed of it. "I grieve," he says, " more 
 than I ought for a mere slave." Just as one might 
 now apologise for making too much fuss about a 
 favourite dog ; for the slave was looked upon in 
 scarcely a higher light in civilised Eome. They spoke 
 of him in the neuter gender, as a chattel ; and it was 
 gravely discussed, in case of danger in a storm at sea, 
 which it would be right first to cast overboard to 
 lighten the ship, a valuable horse or an indifferent 
 .slave. Hortensius, the rival advocate who has been 
 mentioned, a man of more luxurious habits and less 
 kindly spirit than Cicero, who was said to feed the 
 pet lampreys in his stews much better than he did his 
 
138 CICERO'S CORRESPOXDENCE. 
 
 slaves, and to liave shed tears at the death of one of 
 these ugly favourites, would have probably laughed at 
 Cicero's concern for Sositheus and Tiro. 
 
 But indeed every glimpse of this kind which Cicero's 
 correspondence affords us gives token of a kindly heart, 
 and makes us long to know something more. Some 
 have suspected him of a want of filial affection, owing 
 to a somewhat abrupt and curt announcement in a 
 letter to Atticus of his father's death ; and his stanch 
 defenders propose to adopt, with Madvig, the reading, 
 discessit — "left us," instead of decessit — "died." 
 There really seems no occasion. Unless Atticus knew 
 the father intimately, there was no need to dilate upon 
 the old man's death ; and Cicero mentions subsequently, 
 in terms quite as brief, the marriage of his daughter 
 and the birth of his son — events in which we are 
 assured he felt deeply interested. If any further ex- 
 planation of this seeming coldness be required, the fol- 
 lowing remarks of Mr Forsyth are apposite and true : — 
 
 " The truth is, that what we call sentiment was almost 
 unknown to the ancient Eomans, in whose writings it 
 would be as vain to look for it as to look for traces of 
 Gothic architecture amongst classic ruins. And this is 
 something more than a mere illustration. It suggests a 
 reason for the absence. Eomance and sentiment came 
 from the dark forests of the North, when Scandinavia and 
 Germany poured forth their hordes to subdue and people 
 the Roman Empire. The life of a citizen of the Republic 
 of Rome was essentially a public life. The love of country 
 was there carried to an extravagant length, and was para- 
 mount to, and almost swallowed up, the j)rivate and social 
 affections. The state was everything, the individual com- 
 
I 
 
 HIS FATHERS DEATH. 139 
 
 paratively nothing. In one of the letters of the Emperor 
 Marcus Aurelius to Fronto, there is a passage in which he 
 says that the Roman hmguage had no word corresponding 
 with the Greek ^iXoo-Topyia, — the affectionate love for 
 parents and children. Upon this Niebuhr remarks that the 
 feeling was * not a Roman one ; hut Cicero possessed it in 
 a degree which few Romans could comprehend, and hence 
 he was laughed at for the grief which he felt at the death 
 of his daughter TuJlia.' " 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ESSAYS ON ' OLD AGE ' AND ' FRIENDSHIP.' 
 
 The treatise on ' Old Age,' which is thrown into the 
 form of a dialogue, is said to have been suggested by 
 the opening of Plato's ' Republic,' in which Cephalus 
 touches so pleasantly on the enjoyments peculiar to 
 that time of life. So far as light and graceful treat- 
 ment of his subject goes, the Roman essayist at least 
 does not fall short of his model. Montaigne said of 
 it, that " it made one long to grow old;" * but Mon- 
 taigne was a Frenchman, and such sentiment was 
 quite in his way. The dialogue, whether it produce this 
 effect on many readers or not, is very pleasant read- 
 ing: and when we remember that the author wrote 
 it when he was exactly in his grand climacteric, and 
 addressed it to his friend Atticus, who was within a 
 year of the same age, we get that element of personal 
 interest which makes all writings of the kind more 
 attractive. The argument in defence of the paradox 
 tbat it is a good thing to grow old, proceeds upon the 
 only possible ground, the theory of compensations. It 
 * *' II donne I'appetit de vieiller." 
 
ESSAY ON 'OLD AGE.' 141 
 
 is put into the mouth of Cato the Censor, who had 
 died about a century before, and who is introduced as 
 giving a kind of lecture on the subject to his young 
 friends Scipio and Lselius, in his eighty-fourth year. 
 He was certainly a remarkable example in his own 
 case of its being possible to grow old gracefully and 
 usefully, if, as he tells us, he was at that age still able 
 to take part in the debates in the Senate, was busy 
 collecting materials for the early history of Eome, had 
 quite lately begun the study of Greek, could enjoy 
 a country dinner-partv, and had been thinking of 
 taking lessons in playing on the lyre. 
 
 He states four reasons why old age is so commonly 
 considered miserable. First, it unfits us for active em- 
 ployment; secondly, it weakens the bodily strength; 
 thirdly, it deprives us of nearly all pleasures ; fourthly 
 and lastly, it is drawing near death. As to the first, the 
 old senator argues very fairly that very much of the 
 more important business of life is not only transacted 
 by old men, but in point of fact, as is confessed by tlie 
 very name and composition of the Eoman Senate, it is 
 thought safest to intrust it to the elders in the state. 
 The pilot at the helm may not be able to climb the 
 mast and run up and down the deck like the younger 
 sailor, but he steers none the worse for being, old. He 
 quotes some well-known examples of this from Eoman 
 annals ; examples which might be matched by obvious 
 instances in modern English history. The defence 
 which he makes of old age against the second charge 
 — loss of muscular vigour — is rather more of the 
 nakire of special pleading. He says little more than 
 
142 USSAY ON 'OLD AGE.' 
 
 that mere muscular strength, after all, is not much 
 wanted for our happiness : that there are always com- 
 parative degrees of strength ; and that an old man 
 need no more make himself unhappy because he has 
 not the strength of a young man, than the latter does 
 because he has not the strength of a bull or an ele- 
 phant. It was very well for the great wrestler Milo 
 to be able to carry an ox round the arena on his 
 shoulders; but, on the whole, a man does not often 
 want to walk about with a bullock on his back. 
 The old are said, too, to lose their memory. Cato 
 thinks they can remember pretty well all that they 
 care to remember. They are not apt to forget Avho 
 owes them money ; and " I never knew an old man 
 forget," he says, " where he had buried his gold." 
 Then as to the pleasures of the senses, which age un- 
 doubtedly diminishes our power of enjoying. " This," 
 says Cato, " is really a privilege, not a deprivation ; 
 to be delivered from the yoke of such tyrants as our 
 passions — to feel that we have ' got our discharge ' 
 from such a warfare — is a blessing for which men ought 
 rather to be grateful to their advancing years." And 
 the respect and authority which is by general consent 
 conceded to old age, is a pleasure more than equivalent 
 to the vanished pleasures of youth. 
 
 There is one consideration which the author has not 
 placed amongst his four chief disadvantages of gTowing 
 old, — which, however, he did not forget, for he notices 
 it incidentally in the dialogue, — the feeling that we 
 are growing less agreeable to our friends, that our com- 
 pany is less sought after, and that we are, in short, 
 
ESSAY OX 'OLD AGE.' 143 
 
 becoming rather ciphers in .society. Tliis, in a con- 
 dition of high civilisation, is really perhaps felt by 
 most of us as the hardest to bear of all the ills to 
 which old age is liable. We should not care so much 
 about the younger generation rising up and making us 
 look old, if we did not feel that they are " pushing us 
 from our stools." Cato admits that he had heard some 
 old men complain that " they were now neglected by 
 those who had once courted their society," and he 
 quotes a passage from the comic poet Cfecilius : — 
 
 ** This is the bitterest pang in growing old, — 
 To feel that we grow hateful to our fellows." 
 
 But he dismisses the question briefly in his own case 
 by observing with some complacency that he does not 
 think his young friend^ find his company disagreeable 
 — an assertion which Scipio and Ltelius, who occa- 
 sionally take part in the dialogue, are far too well 
 bred to contradict. He remarks also, sensibly enough, 
 that though some old persons are no doubt considered 
 disagreeable company, this is in great measure their 
 own fault : that testiness and ill - nature (qualities 
 which, as he observes, do not usually improve with 
 age) are always disagreeable, and that such persons 
 attributed to their advancing years what was in truth 
 the consequence of their unamiable tempers. It is not 
 all wine which turns sour with age, nor yet all tem- 
 pers ; much depends on the original quality. The old 
 Censor lays down some maxims which, like the pre- 
 ceding, have served as texts for a good many modern 
 writers, and may be found expanded, diluted, or 
 
144 ESSAY ON 'OLD AGE. 
 
 strengthened, in the essays of Addison and Johnson, 
 and in many of their followers of less repute. " I 
 never could assent," says Cato, " to that ancient and 
 much-bepraised proverb, — that * you must become an 
 old man early, if you wish to be an old man long.' " 
 Yet it was a maxim which was very much acted upon 
 by modern Englishmen a generation or two back. 
 It was then thought almost a moral duty to retire 
 into old age, and to assume all its disabilities as well as 
 its privileges, after sixty years or even earlier. At 
 present the world sides with Cato, and rushes perhaps 
 into the other extreme ; for any line at which old age 
 now begins would be hard to trace either in dress or 
 deportment. " "We must resist old age, and fight 
 against it as a disease," Strong words from the old 
 Roman ; but, undoubtedly, so long as we stop short 
 of the attempt to affect juvenility, Cato is right. We 
 should keep ourselves as young as possible. He speaks 
 shrewd sense, again, when he says — " As I like to see 
 a young man who has something old about him, so I 
 like to see an old man in whom there remains some- 
 thing of the youth : and he who follows this maxim 
 may become an old man in body, but never in heart." 
 " What a blessing it is," says Southey, " to have a 
 boy's heart ! " Do we not all know these charming 
 old people, to whom the young take almost as heartily 
 as to their own equals in age, who are the favourite 
 consultees in all amusements, the confidants in all 
 troubles ? 
 
 Cato is made to place a great part of his own enjoy- 
 ment, in these latter years of his, in the cultivation of 
 
ESSAV ON 'OLD AGE: 145 
 
 his farm and garden (lie had written, we must remem- 
 ber, a treatise ^De Re Rustica,' — a kind of Roman 
 * Book of the Farm,' which we have still remaining). 
 He is enthusiastic in his description of the pleasures 
 of a country gentleman's Ufe, and, like a good farmer, 
 as no doubt he was, becomes eloquent upon the grand 
 subject of manures. Gardening is a pursuit which he 
 holds in equal honour — that " purest of human plea- 
 sures," as Bacon calls it. On the subject of the country 
 life generally he confesses an inclinaticm to become 
 garrulous — the one failing which he admits may be 
 fairly laid to the charge of old age. The jjicture of 
 the way of living of a Roman gentleman-farmer, as he 
 draws it, must have presented a strong contrast with 
 the artificial city-life of Rome. 
 
 " Where the master of the house is a good and care- 
 ful manager, his wine-cellar, his oil-stores, his larder, 
 are always well stocked ; there is a fulness throughout 
 the whole establishment; pigs, kids, lambs, poultry, 
 milk, cheese, honey, — all are in abundance. The pro- 
 duce of the garden is always eqaal, as our country-folk 
 say, to a double course. And all these good things 
 acquire a second relish from the voluntary labours of 
 fowling and the chase. What need to dwell upon 
 the charm of the green fields, the well-ordered planta- 
 tions, the beauty of the vineyards and olive-groves ? 
 In short, nothing can be more luxuriant in produce, 
 or more delightful to the eye, than a well-cultivated 
 estate ; and, to the enjoyment of this, old age is so far 
 from being any hindrance, that it rather invites and 
 allures us to such pursuits." 
 
 A. c. vol. ix. K 
 
146 USSAY ON 'OLD AGE: 
 
 He has no patience with what has been called the 
 despondency of old age — the feeling, natural enough at 
 that time of life, but not desirable to be encouraged, that 
 there is no longer any room for hope or promise in tho 
 future which gives so much of its interest to the present. 
 He will not listen to the poet when he says again — 
 
 " He plants the tree that shall not see the fruit." 
 
 The answer which he would make has been often put 
 into other and more elaborate language, but has a 
 simple grandeur of its own. " If any should ask the 
 aged cultivator for whom he plants, let him not hesi- 
 tate to make this reply, — ' For the immortal gods, who, 
 as they willed me to inherit these possessions from my 
 forefathers, so would have me hand them on to those 
 that shall come after.' " 
 
 The old Eoman had not the horror of country society 
 which so many civilised Englishmen either have or 
 affect. " 1 like a talk," he says, " over a cup of wine." 
 *Ev^en when I am down at my Sabine estate, I daily 
 ma\'e one at a party of my country neighbours, and 
 we prolong our conversation very frequently far into 
 the night." The words are put intoCato's mouth, but 
 the voice is the well-known voice of Cicero. We find 
 him here, as in his letters, persuading himself into the 
 belief that the secret of happiness is to be found in the 
 retirement of the country. And his genial and social 
 nature beams through it all. We are reminded of his 
 half-serious complaints to Atticus * of his importunate 
 visitors at Formise, the dinner-parties which he was, as 
 
 • See p. '44. 
 
i:SSAY ON 'OLD AGE.' 147 
 
 we say now, " obliged to go to," and which he so evi- 
 dently enjoyed.* 
 
 He is careful, however, to remind his readers that 
 old age, to be really either happy or venerable, must 
 not be the old age of the mere voluptuary or the de- 
 bauchee ; that the grey head, in order to be, even in 
 his pagan sense, "a crown of glory," must have been 
 "found in the Avay of righteousness." Shakespeare 
 might have learned froui Cicero in these points the 
 moral which he puts into the mouth of his Adam — 
 " Therefore mine age is as a lusty winter. 
 Frosty but kindly." 
 
 It is a miserable old age, says the Eoman, which is 
 obliged to appeal to its grey hairs as its only claim 
 to the respect of its juniors. " Neither hoar hairs nor 
 wrinkles can arrogate reverence as their right. It 
 is the hfe whose opening years have been honourably 
 spent which reaps the reward of reverence at its close." 
 In discussing the last of the evils which accompany 
 old age, the near approach of death, Cicero rises to 
 something higher than his usual level. His Cato will 
 not have death to be an evil at all ; it is to him the 
 escaping from " the prison of the body,"— the " getting 
 the sight of land at last after a long voyage, and com- 
 ing in'to port." Kay, he does not admit that death is 
 
 * " A cler^^yraaii was complaining of the want of society in 
 the countiy where he lived, and said, 'They talk of runts' 
 {ie., yomig cows). 'Sir,' said Mr Salnsbnry, 'Mr Johnson 
 would learn to talk of nints ; ' meaning that I was a man who 
 wonld make the most of my situation, whatever it was."— Bos- 
 well's Life. Cicero was like Dr Johnson. 
 
148 JESS AY ON 'OLD AGE.' 
 
 deatli. " I have never been able to persuade myself," 
 he says, quoting the words of Cyrus in Xenophon, "that 
 our spirits were alive while they were in these mortal 
 bodies, and died only when they departed out of them; 
 or that the spirit then only becomes void of sense 
 when it escapes from a senseless body ; but that rather 
 when freed from all admixture of corporality, it is pure 
 and uncontaminated, then it most truly has sense." 
 *' I am fully persuaded," he says to his young listeners, 
 " that your two fathers, my old and dearly - loved 
 friends, are living now, and living that life which 
 only is worthy to be so called." And he winds up the 
 dialogue with the very beautiful apostrophe, one of the 
 last utterances of the philosopher's heart, well known, 
 yet not too well known to be here quoted — 
 
 " It likes me not to mourn over departing life, as 
 many men, and men of learning, have done. I^orcan 
 I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I 
 may trust I was not born in vain ; and I dejDart out of 
 life as out of a temporary lodging, not as out of my 
 home. For nature has given it to us as an inn to 
 tarry at by the way, not as a place to abide in. 
 glorious day ! when I shall set out to join that blessed 
 company and assembly of disembodied sf)irits, and 
 quit this crowd and rabble of Hfe ! For I shall go my 
 way, not only to those great men of whom I spoke, 
 but to my own son Cato, than whom was never better 
 man born, nor more full of dutiful affection ; whose 
 body I laid on the funeral pile — an office he should 
 rather have done for me. '^ But his spirit has never left 
 
 * Burke touches the same key in speaking of his son: "I 
 
ass AY ON 'friendship: 149 
 
 me ; it still looks fondly back upon me, though it has 
 (Tone assuredly into those abodes where he knew that 
 I myself should follow. And this my great loss I 
 seemed to bear with calmness ; not that I bore it un- 
 disturbed, but that I still consoled myself with the 
 thought that the separation between us could not be 
 for long. And if I err in this — in that I believe the 
 spirits of men to be immortal — I err willingly ; nor 
 would I have this mistaken belief of mine uprooted so 
 loner as I shall live. But if, after I am dead, I shall 
 have no consciousness, as some curious philosophers 
 assert, then I am not afraid of dead philosophers 
 laughing at my mistake." 
 
 The essay on ' Friendship ' is dedicated by the author 
 to Atticus — an appropriate recognition, as he says, of 
 the long and intimate friendship which had existed 
 between themselves. It is thrown, like the other, into 
 the form of a dialogue. The principal speaker here is 
 one of the listeners in the former case— Lselius, sur- 
 named the Wise — who is introduced as receiving a visit 
 from his two sons-in-law, Fannius and Scaevola (the 
 great lawyer before mentioned*), soon after the sudden 
 death of his great friend, the younger Scipio Afri- 
 canus. Laelius takes the occasion, at the request of the 
 "young men, to give them his views and opinions on 
 the subject of Friendship generally. This essay is per- 
 
 live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded 
 me have gone before me : they who should have been to me as 
 posterity are in the place of ancestors." 
 * P. 6. 
 
150 ESSAY ON 'FRIENDSHIP.' 
 
 haps more original than that upon ' Old Age,' but cer- 
 tainly is not so attractive to a modern reader. Its 
 great merit is the grace and polish of the language ; 
 but tlie arguments brought forward to pr ove what an 
 excellent thing it is for a man to have good friends, 
 and plenty of them, in this world, and the rules for his 
 behaviour towards them, seem to us somewhat^ trite 
 and commonplace, whatever might have been their 
 effect upon a Roman reader. 
 
 Cicero is indebted to the Greek philosophers for the 
 main outlines of his theory of friendship, though his 
 acquaintance with the works of Plato and Aristotle was 
 probably exceedingly superficial. He holds, with them, 
 that man is a social animal ; that " we are so constituted 
 by nature that there must be some degree of association 
 between us all, growing closer in proportion as we are 
 brought into more intimate relations one with another." 
 So that the social bond is a matter of instinctj not of 
 
 I calculation ; not a cold commercial contract of_profit 
 and loss, of giving and receiving, but the fuJLfilment 
 of one of the yearnings of our nature. Here he is in 
 full accordance with the teaching of Aristotle, who, of 
 all the various kinds of friendship to which he allows 
 the common name, pronounces that which is founded 
 merely upon interest — upon mutual interchange, by 
 tacit agreement, of certain benefits — to be the least 
 worthy of such a designation. Friendship is defined 
 by Cicero to be "thej)erfect accord upon all questions, 
 religious and social, together with mutual goodwill and 
 
 ^.^fijtjution." This " perfect accord," it must be confessed, 
 is a very large requirement. He follows his Creek 
 
ESSAY ON 'friendship: 151 
 
 masters again in holding that true friendship can 
 exist only amongst the good ; that, in fact, all friendship 
 must assume that there is something good and lovable 
 in the person towards whom the feeling is entertained : 
 it may occasionally be a mistaken assumption; the 
 good quality we think we see in our friend may 
 have no existence save in our own partial imagination ; 
 but the existence of the counterfeit is an incontestable 
 evidence of the true original. And the greatest attrac- 
 tion, and therefore the truest friendships, wiU always 
 be of the good towards the good. 
 
 He admits, however, the notorious fact, that good 
 persons are sometimes disagreeable ; and he confesses 
 that we have a right to seek in our friends amiability 
 as well as moral excellence. " Sweetness," he says — 
 anticipating, as all these ancients so provokingly do, 
 some of our most modern popular philosophers — 
 " sweetness, both in language and in manner, is a very 
 powerful attraction in the formation of friendships." 
 He is by no means of the same opinion as Sisyphus in 
 Lord Lytton's ' Tale of Miletus ' — 
 
 " Now, then, I know thou really art my friend, — 
 None but true friends choose such unpleasant words." 
 
 He admits that it is the oflice of a friend to tell un- 
 pleasant truths sometimes ; but there should be a cer- 
 tain amount of this indispensable " sweetness " to 
 temper the bitterness of the advice. There are some 
 friends who are continually reminding you of what 
 they have done for you — " a disgusting set of people 
 verily they are," says our author. And there are others 
 
152 ESSAY ON 'FRIENDSHIP: 
 
 who are always thinking themselves slighted ; " in 
 which case there is generally something of which they 
 are conscious in themselves, as laying them open to 
 contemptuous treatment." 
 
 Cicero's own character displays itself in this short 
 treatise. Here, as everywhere, he is the politician. 
 He shows a true appreciation of the duties and the 
 qualifications of a true friend ; but his own thoughts 
 are running upon political friendships. Just as when, 
 in many of his letters, he talks about "all honest 
 men," he means "our party;" so here, when he talks 
 of friends, he cannot help sliowing that it was of the 
 essence of friendship, in his view, to hold the same 
 political opinions, and that one great use of friends was 
 that a man should not be isolated, as he had sometimes 
 feared he was, in his political course. When he puts 
 forward the old instances of Coriolanus and Gracchus, 
 and discusses the question whether their " friends" were 
 or were not bound to aid them in their treasonable 
 designs against the state, he was surely thinking of the 
 factions of his own times, and the troublesome brother- 
 hoods which had gathered round Catiline and Clodius. 
 Be this as it may, the advice which he makes Laelius 
 give to his younger relatives is good for all ages, modern 
 or ancient : " There is nothing in this world more valu- 
 able than friendship." " ISText to the immediate blessing 
 and providence of Almighty God," Lord Clarendon was 
 often heard to say, " I owe all the little I know, and 
 the little good that is in me, to the friendships and 
 conversation I have still been used to, of the most excel- 
 lent men in their several kinds that lived in that a^je." 
 
CnAITEPc XI 
 
 CTCERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 'the true exds of life.'* 
 
 Philosophy was to the Eoman -what religion is to us. 
 It professed to answer, so far as it might be answered, 
 Pilate's question, "What is truth 1" or to teach men, 
 as Cicero described it, " the knowledge of things 
 human and divine." Hence the philosopher invests 
 his subject with all attributes of dignity. To him 
 Philosophy brings all blessings in her train. She is 
 the guide of life, the medicine for his sorrows, " the 
 fountain-head of all perfect eloquence — the mother of 
 all good deeds and good words." He invokes with 
 affectionate reverence the great name of Socrates — the 
 sage who had " first drawn wisdom down from heaven." 
 ISTo man ever approached his subject more richly 
 laden with philosophic lore than Cicero. Snatcliiug 
 every leisure moment that he could from a busy life, 
 he devotes it to the study of the great minds of former 
 ages. Indeed, he held this study to be the duty of 
 
 * 'De Fiuibus Bonorum et i\Ialorum.' J> 
 
154 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tlie jjcrfect orator ; a knowledge of tlie human mind 
 was one of his essential qualifications. I*^or could he 
 conceive of real eloquence without it ; for his defini- 
 tion of eloquence is, " wisdom speaking fluently." * 
 But such studies were also suited to his own natural 
 tastes. And as years passed on, and he grew weary of 
 civil discords and was harassed by domestic troubles, 
 the great orator turns his back upon the noisy city, 
 and takes his parchments of Plato and Aristotle to be 
 the friends of his councils and the companions of his 
 solitude, seeking by their light to discover Truth, 
 which Demoeritus had declared to be buried in the 
 depths of the sea. 
 
 Yet, after all, he professes to do little more than 
 translate. So conscious is he that it is to Greece that 
 E,ome is indebted for all her literature, and so con- 
 scious, also, on the part of his countrymen, of what he 
 terms " an arrogant disdain for everything national," 
 that he apologises to his readers for writing for the 
 million in their motlier-tongue. Yet he is not content, 
 as he says, to be " a mere interpreter." He thought 
 that by an eclectic process — adopting and rearranging 
 such of the doctrines of his Greek masters as approved 
 themselves to his own judgment — he might make his 
 own work a substitute for theirs. His ambition is to 
 achieve what he might well regard as the hardest of 
 tasks — a popular treatise on philosophy ; and he has 
 certainly succeeded. He makes no pretence to origi- 
 nality; all he can do is, as he expresses it, "to ariay 
 Plato in a Latin dress," and " present this stranger 
 
 * "Copiose loquens sapientia," 
 
'THE TRUE ENDS OF LIFE: 155 
 
 from beyond the seas with the freedom of his native 
 city." And so this treatise on the Ends of Life — a 
 orave question even to the most careless thinker — is, 
 from the nature of the case, both dramatic and rhetor- 
 ical. Representatives of the two great schools of philo- 
 sophy—the Stoics and Epicureans — plead and counter- 
 plead in his pages, each in their turn; and their 
 arguments are based on principles broad and universal 
 enough to be valid even now. For now, as then, 
 men are inevitably separated into two classes — amiable 
 men of ease, who guide their conduct by the rudder- 
 strings of pleasure — who for the most part " leave the 
 world" (as has been finely said) "in the world's debt, 
 having consumed much and produced nothing;"* or, 
 on the other hand, zealous men of duty, — 
 
 " Who scorn delights and live laborious days," 
 
 and act according to the dictates of their honour or 
 their conscience. In practice, if not in theory, a man 
 must be either Stoic or Epicurean. 
 
 Each school, in this dialogue, is allowed to plead its 
 own cause. "Listen" (says the Epicurean) "to the 
 voice of nature that bids you pursue pleasure, and do 
 not be misled by that vulgar conception of pleasure as 
 mere sensual enjoyment ; our opponents misrepresent 
 us when they say that we advocate this as the highest 
 good ; we hold, on the contrary, that men often obtain 
 the greatest pleasure by neglecting this baser kind. 
 Your highest instances of martyrdom — of Decii 
 devoting themselves for their country, of consuls 
 * Lord Derby. 
 
156 CICERaS PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 l)utting their sons to death, to preserve discipline — 
 are not disinterested acts of sacrifice, hut the choice 
 of a present pain in order to procure a future pleasure. 
 Vice is hut ignorance of real enjoyment. Temperance 
 alone can hring peace of mind ; and the wicked, even 
 if they escape public censure, ' are racked night and 
 day by the anxieties sent upon them by the immortal 
 gods.' We do not, in this, contradict your Stoic ; we, 
 too, affirm that only the wise man is really happy. 
 Happiness is as impossible for a mind distracted by 
 passions, as for a city divided by contending fac- 
 tions. The terrors of death haunt the guilty wretch, 
 ' who finds out too late that he has devoted him- 
 self to money or power or glory to no purpose.' But 
 the wise man's life is unalloyed happiness. Eejoicing 
 in a clear conscience, ' he remembers the past with 
 gratitude, enjoys the blessings of the present, and 
 disregards the future.' Thus the moral to be drawn 
 is that which Horace (himself, as he expresses it, ' one 
 of the litter of Epicurus ') impresses on his fair friend 
 Leuconoe : — 
 
 ' Strain your wine, and prove your wisdom ; life is short ; 
 
 should hope he more ? 
 In the moment of our talking envious time has slipped 
 
 away. 
 Seize the present, trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may.' " 
 
 Passing on to the second book of the treatise, we 
 hear the advocate of the counter-doctrine. Why, ex- 
 claims the Stoic, introduce Pleasure to the councils of 
 Virtue 1 Why uphold a theory so dangerous in prac- 
 tice ? Your Epicurean soon turns Epicure, and a class 
 
'THE TRUE ENDS OF LIFE.' 157 
 
 of men start up who have never seen the sun rise or 
 set, who squander fortunes on cooks and perfumers, 
 on costly plate and gorgeous rooms, and ransack sea 
 and land for delicacies to supply their feasts. Epicurus 
 gives his disciples a dangerous discretion in their choice. 
 There is no harm in luxury (he tells us) provided it be 
 free from inordinate desires. But who is to fix the 
 limit to such vague concessions % 
 
 Kay, more, he degrades men to the level of the 
 brute creation. In his view% there is nothing admir- 
 able beyond this pleasure — no sensation or emotion of 
 the mind, no soundness or health of body. And what 
 is this pleasure which he makes of such high account 1 
 How short-lived wdiile it lasts ! how ignoble when we 
 recall it afterwards ! But even the common feeling 
 and sentiments of men condemn so selfish a doctrine. 
 "We are naturally led to uphold truth and abhor 
 deceit, to admare Begulus in his tortures, and to 
 despise a lifetime of inglorious ease. And then fol- 
 lows a passage which echoes the stirring lines of 
 Scott— 
 
 " Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! 
 To all the sensual world proclaim, 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name." 
 
 Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in 
 your mouth, and prate before apjilauding citizens of 
 honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your 
 private lives a mere selfish calculation of exj^ediency. 
 We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none 
 
158 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to 
 doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. 
 The heroes of old time won their immortality not by 
 weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, hut by 
 being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all 
 things for the sake of their fellow-men. 
 
 The opening scene in the third book is as lively and 
 dramatic as (what was no doubt the writer's model) 
 the introduction of a Platonic dialogue. Cicero has 
 walked across from his Tusculan villa to borrow^ some 
 manuscripts from the well - stocked library of his 
 young friend Lucullus "^ — a youth whose high promise 
 was sadly cut short, for he was killed at Philippi, 
 when he was not more than twenty-three. There, 
 "gorging himself with hooks," Cicero finds Marcus 
 Cato — a Stoic of the Stoics — who expounds in a high 
 tone the principles of his sect. 
 
 Honour he declares to he the rule, and " life accord- 
 ing to nature " the end of man's existence. And wrong 
 and injustice are more really contrary to this nature 
 than either death, or poverty, or bodily suffering, or 
 any other outward evil."t Stoics and Peripatetics 
 are agreed at least on one point — that bodily plea- 
 sures fade into nothing before the si)leudours of 
 virtue, and that to compare the two is like holding 
 a candle against the sunlight, or setting a drop of 
 
 * See p. 43. 
 
 t So Bisbo]) Butler, in the i)reface to his Sermons upon * Hu- 
 man Nature,' says they were " intended to explain what is 
 meant by the nature of man, when it is said that virtue con- 
 sists in following, and vice in deviating from it." 
 
'THE TRUE EXDS OF LIFE: 159 
 
 brine against the waves of the ocean. Yonr Epi- 
 curean would have each man live in selfish isolation, 
 engrossed in his private pleasures and pursuits. We, 
 on the other hand, maintain that " Divine Providence 
 has appointed the world to be a common city for men 
 and gods," and each one of us to be a part of this vast 
 social system. And thus every man has his lot and 
 place in life, and should take for his guidance those 
 golden rules of ancient times — " Obey God ; know 
 thyself; shun excess." Then, rising to enthusiasm, 
 the philosopher concludes : " Who cannot but admire 
 the incredible beauty of such a system of morality ? 
 What character in history or in fiction can be grander 
 or more consistent than the ' wise man ' of the Stoics 1 
 All the riches and glory of the world are his, for he 
 alone can make a right use of all things. He is ' free,' 
 though he be bound by chains , ' rich,' though in the 
 midst of poverty ; ' beautiful,' for the mind is fairer 
 than the body ; ' a king,' for, unlike the tyrants of 
 the world, he is lord of himself ; ' happy,' for he has 
 no need of Solon's warning to ' wait till the end,' since 
 a life virtuously spent is a perpetual happiness." 
 
 In the fourth book, Cicero himself proceeds to 
 vindicate the wasdom of the ancients — the old Aca- 
 demic school of Socrates and his pupils — against what 
 he considers the novelties of Stoicism. All that the 
 Stoics have said has been said a hundred times before 
 by Plato and Aristotle, but in nobler language. They 
 merely " pick out the thorns" and " lay bare the bones^^ 
 of previous systems, using newfangled terms and misty 
 arguments with a " vainglorious parade." Their fine 
 
160 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 talk about citizens of the world and the ideal wise 
 man is rather poetry than philosophy. They rightly 
 connect happiness with virtue, and virtue with wisdom; 
 hut so did Aristotle some centuries before them. 
 
 But their great fault (says Cicero) is, that they 
 ignore the practical side of life. So broad is the line 
 which they draw between the " wise " and " foolish," 
 that they would dei.y to l*lato himself the possession 
 of wisdom. They take no account of the thousand 
 circumstances which go to form our happiness. To a 
 spiritual being, virtue might be the chief good ; but 
 in actual life our physical is closely bound up with 
 our mental enjoyment, and pain is one of those stern 
 facts before which all theories are powerless. Again, 
 by their fondness for paradox, they reduce all offences 
 to the same dead level. It is, in their eyes, as impious 
 to beat a slave as to beat a parent : because, as they 
 say, " nothing can be more virtuous than virtue, — 
 nothing more vicious than vice." And lastly, this 
 stubbornness of opinion affects their personal char- 
 acter. They too often degenerate into austere critics 
 and bitter partisans, and go far to banish from among 
 us love, friendship, gratitude, and all the fair humani- 
 ties of life. 
 
 The fifth book carries us back some twenty years, 
 when we find Cicero once more at Athens, taking his 
 afternoon walk among the deserted groves of the 
 Academy. With him are his brotlier Quintus, his 
 cousin Lucius, and his friends Piso and Atticus. The 
 scene, with its historic associations, irresistibly carries 
 their minds back to those illustrious spirits who had 
 
h 
 
 'THE TRUE ENDS OF LIFE: 161 
 
 once made the place their own. Among these trees 
 Plato himself had walked ; under the shadow of that 
 Porch Zeno had lectured to his disciples ; * yonder 
 Quintus points out the " white peak of Colonus," de- 
 scribed by Sophocles in " those sweetest lines ; " while 
 crlistenino- on the horizon were the waves of the Phaleric 
 harbour, which Demosthenes, Cicero's own great proto- 
 type, had outvoiced with the thunder of his declama- 
 tion. So countless, indeed, are the memories of the 
 past called up by the genius of the place, that (as one 
 of the friends remarks) " wherever we plant our feet, 
 we tread upon some history." Then Piso, speaking 
 at Cicero's request, begs his friends to turn from the 
 degenerate thinkers of their own day to those giants 
 of philosophy, from whose writings all liberal learning, 
 all history, and aU elegance of language may be de- 
 rived. More than all, they should turn to the leader 
 of the Peripatetics, Aristotle, who seemed (like Lord 
 Bacon after him) to havcTtaken all knowledge as 
 his portion. From these, if from no other source, we 
 may learn the secret of a happy life. But first we must 
 settle what this ' chief good ' is— this end and object of 
 our efforts— and not be carried to and fro, lil^e ships 
 without a steersman, by every blast of doctrine. 
 
 * The Stoics took their name from the ' stoa,' or portico in." 
 the Academy, wliere they sat at lecture, as the Peripatetics (the 
 school of Aristotle) from the little knot of listeners who fol- 
 lowed their master as he waJked. Epiciirus's school were 
 known as the philosophers of 'the Garden,' from the place 
 where he taught. The ' Old Academy ' were the disciples of 
 Plato ; the ' New Academy ' (to whose tenets Cicero inclined) 
 re\'ived the gi-eat principle of Socrates— of afiirming nothing. 
 A. C. vol. ix. L 
 
162 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 If Epicurus was wrong in placing Happiness 
 " In corporal pleasure and in careless ease," 
 
 no less wrong are they who say that " honour" requires 
 pleasure to be added to it, since they thus make honour 
 itself dishonourable. And again, to say with others 
 that happiness is tranquillity of mind, is simply to beg 
 the question. 
 
 Putting, then, all such theories aside, we bring the 
 argument to a practical issue. Self-preservation is 
 tlie first great principle of nature ; and so strong is 
 this instinctive love of life both among men and 
 animals, that we see even tbe iron-hearted Stoic shrink 
 from the actual pangs of a voluntary death. Then 
 comes the question, What is this nature that is so 
 precious to each of us ? Clearly it is compounded of 
 body and mind, each with many virtues of its own ; 
 but as the mind should rule tlie body, so reason, as 
 the dominant faculty, should rule the mind. Virtue 
 itself is only " the perfection of this reason," and, call it 
 what you will, genius or intellect is something divine. 
 
 Furthermore, there is in man a gradual progress of 
 reason, growing with his growth until it has reached 
 perfection. Even in the infant there are " as it were 
 sparks_ofjartue " — half-unconscious principles of love 
 and gratitude ; and these germs bear fruit, as the child 
 develops into the man. AVe have also an instinct 
 which attracts us towards tlie pursuit of wisdom ; 
 such is the true meaning of the Sirens' voices in the 
 Odyssey, says the philosopher, quoting from the poet 
 of all tijiie : — 
 
'THE TRUE ESDS OF LIFE: 163 
 
 " Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay ; 
 Since never pil-rim to these re^dons came, 
 But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, 
 And in his joy passed on, with ampler mind." * 
 
 It is wisdom, not pleasure, which they offer. Hence 
 it is that men devote their days and nights to litera- 
 ture, without a thought of any gain that may accrue 
 from it ; and philosophers paint the serene delights of 
 a life of contemplation in the islands of the blest. 
 
 Again, our minds can never rest. "Desire for 
 action grows with us;" and in action of some sort, 
 be it politics or science, life (if it is to be life at all) 
 must be passed by each of us. Even the gambler 
 must ply the dice-box, and the man of pleasure seek 
 excitement in society. But in the true life of action, 
 still the ruling principle should be honour. 
 
 Such, in brief, is Piso's (or rather Cicero's) .vindica- 
 tion of' the old masters of philosophy. Before they 
 leave the place, Cicero Hres a parting shot at the Stoic 
 paradox that the ' wise man ' is always happy. How, 
 he pertinently asks, can one in sickness and poverty, 
 blind, or childless, in exile or in torture, be possibly 
 caUed happy, except by a monstrous perversion of 
 
 language % t 
 
 Here, somewhat abruptly, the dialogue closes; and 
 Cicero pronounces no judgment of his own, but leaves 
 the great question almost as perplexed as when he 
 
 * Odyss. xii. 185 (Worsley). 
 
 t In a little treatise called " Paradoxes," Cicero discusses six 
 of these scholastic quibbles of the Stoics. 
 
164 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 started the discussion. But, of the two antagonistic 
 theories, he leans rather to the Stoic than to the Epi- 
 curean. Self-sacrihce and honour seem, to his view, 
 to present a higher ideal tlian pleasure or expediency. 
 
 II. 'academic questions.* 
 
 Fragments of two editions of this work have come 
 down to us ; for almost before the first copy had 
 reached the hands of his friend Atticus, to whom it was 
 s^.nt, Cicero had rewritten the whole on an enlarged 
 scale. The first book (as we have it now) is dedicated 
 to Yarro, a noble patron of art and literature. In his 
 villa at CumiB were spacious porticoes and gardens, and 
 a library with galleries and cabinets open to all comers. 
 Here, on a terrace looking seawards, Cicero, Atticus, 
 and Varro himself pass a long afternoon in discussing 
 the relative merits of the old and new Academies ; and 
 hence we get the title of the work. Varro takes the 
 lion's share of the first dialogue, and shows how from 
 the " vast and varied genius of Plato" both Academics 
 and Peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it 
 related to morals, to nature, or to logic. Stoicism 
 receives a passing notice, as also does what Varro con- 
 siders the heresy of Theophrastus, who strips virtue 
 of all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends 
 upon it. 
 
 The second book is dedicated to another illustrious 
 name, the elder Lucullus, not long deceased — half- 
 statesman, half-dilettante, " witli almost as divine a 
 memory for facts," says Cicero, with something of envy 
 
'ACADEMIC QUEST loss. 1G5 
 
 " as Horteiisius had for words." This time it is at his 
 villa, near Tuseuhim, amidst scenery perhaps even now 
 tlie loveliest of all Italian landscapes, that the philo- 
 sophic dialogue takes place. Lucullus condemns the 
 scepticism of the Xew Academy — those reactionists 
 against the dogmatism of past times, who disbelieve 
 their very eyesight. If (he says) we reject the testi- 
 mony of the senses, there is neither body, nor truth, 
 nor argument, nor anything certain left us. These 
 perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our belief. 
 Cicero ingeniously defends this scepticism, which 
 was, in fact, the bent of his own mind. After 
 all, 'what is our eyesight worth? The ship sailing 
 across the bay yonder seems to move, but to the sailors 
 it is the shore that recedes from their view. Even the 
 sun, "which mathematicians affirm to be eighteen 
 times larger than the earth, looks but a foot in diame- 
 ter." And as it is with tliese things, so it is with 
 all knowledge. Eold indeed must be the man who 
 can define the point at which belief passes into cer- 
 tainty. Even the " fine frenzy " of the poet, his pic- 
 tures of gods and heroes, are as lifelike to himself ai.d 
 to his hearers as though he actually saw them ;— 
 
 " See how Apollo, fair-haired god. 
 Draws in and bends his golden bow. 
 While on the left fair Dian waves her torch." 
 
 Xo— we are sure of nothing ; and we are happy if, like 
 Socrates, we only know this— that we know nothing. 
 Then, as if in irony, or partly influenced perhaps by the 
 advocate's love of arguing the case both ways, Cicero 
 
1G6 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 demolislies that grand argument of design which else- 
 where he so carefully constructs,* and reasons in tlie 
 very language of materialism : " You assert that all the 
 universe could not have been so ingeniously made with- 
 out some godlike wisdom, the m^ajesty of which you 
 trace down even to the perfection of bees and ants. 
 Why, then, did the Deity, when he made everything 
 for the sake of man, make such a variety (for instance) 
 of venomous reptiles % Your divine soul is a fiction ; 
 it is better to imagine that creation is the result of the 
 laws of nature, and so release the Deity from a great 
 deal of hard work, and me from fear ; for which of us, 
 when he thinks that he is an object of divine care, 
 can help feeling an awe of the divine j^ower day and 
 nifrht % But we do not understand even our own 
 bodies ; how, then, can we have an eyesight so pierc- 
 ing as to penetrate the mysteries of heaven and earth 1" 
 The treatise, however, is but a disappointing frag- 
 ment, and the argument is incomplete. 
 
 Ill, THE 'TUSCULAN DTSPUTATTONS,' 
 
 The scene of this dialogue is Cicero's villa at Tuscu- 
 lum. There, in his long gallery, he walks and discus- 
 ses with his friends the vexed questions of morality. 
 Was death an evil 1 Was the soul immortal 1 Hovv 
 could a man best bear pain and the other miseries of 
 life? Was virtue any guarantee for happiness? 
 
 Then, as now, death was the great problem of hu- 
 manity--" to die and go we know nut where." The 
 
 * See ]). 168. 
 
I 
 
 'TUSCULAX Jj/SPrTATIOXS.' 167 
 
 old belief in Elysium and Tartarus liad died awct^' ; 
 as Cicero himself boldly puts it in another place, such 
 thin-^s were no Ioniser even old wives' fables. Either 
 death brought an absolute unconsciousness, or the soul 
 soared into space. "Lex no a poena mors'^ — "Death 
 is a law, not a penalty" — was the ancient saying. It 
 was, as it were, the close of a l>au(juet or the fall of 
 the curtain. " AVhile we are, de;,th is not ; when 
 death has come, we are not." 
 
 Cicero brings forward the testimony of past ages to 
 prove that death is not a mere annihilation. Man 
 cannot perish utterly. Heroes are deified ; and the 
 spirits of the dead return to us in visions of the night. 
 Somehow or other (he says) there clings to our minds 
 a certain presage of future ages ; and so we plant, that 
 our children may reap ; M'e toil, tliat others may enter 
 into our labours ; and it is this life after death, the 
 desire to live in men's mouths for ever, which, inspires 
 the patriot and the martyr. Fame to the Roman, 
 even more than to us, was " the last infirmity of noble 
 miuds." It was so in a special degree to Cicero. The 
 instinctive sense of immortal itv, he armies, is stroncr 
 within us ; and as, in the M'ords of the English poet, 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," 
 
 so also in death, the Roman said, though in other 
 words — 
 
 "Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither." 
 
 Believe not then, says Cicero, tliose old wives' tales, 
 those poetic legends, the terrors of a material hell, or 
 
IGS CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tli5 joys of a sensual paradise. Kather hold with 
 Plato that the soul is an eternal principle of life, which 
 lias neither heginning nor end of existence ; for if it 
 were not so, heaven and earth Avould be overset, and 
 all nature would stand at gaze. " INlen say tliey can- 
 not conceive or comprehend what the soul can he, dis- 
 tinct from tlie body. As if, forsooth, they could 
 comprehend what it is, when it is m the body, — its 
 conformation, its magnitude, or its position there. . . 
 To me, when I consider the nature of the soul, there 
 is far more difficulty iiud obscurity in forming a con- 
 ception of what the soul is while in the body, — in 
 a dwelling where it seems so little at home, — than 
 of what it will be when it has escaped into the 
 free atmus})here of heaven, Avhich seems its natural 
 abode." * And as the poet seems to us inspired, as the 
 gifts of memory and eloquence seem divine, so is the 
 soul itself, in its simple essence, a god dwelling in the 
 breast of each of us. What else can be this power 
 which enables us to recollect the past, to foresee the 
 future, to understand the present 1 
 
 There follows a passage on the argument from design 
 which anticipates that fine saying of Voltaire — " Si 
 Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait I'inveuter ; mais toute 
 la nature crie qu'il existe." " The heavens," says even 
 the heathen philosopher, " declare the glory of God." 
 Look on the sun and the stars ; look on the alternation 
 of the seasons, and the changes of day and night ; look 
 aijain at the earth bringing forth her fruits ibr the use 
 of men ; the multitude of cattle ; and man himself, 
 
 * I. c. 22. 
 
'TUSCULAX DISPUTATIONS.' 169 
 
 made as it were to contemplate and adore the heavens 
 and the gods. Look on all these things, and douht 
 not that there is some Being, though you see him not, 
 who has created and jDresides over the world. 
 
 " Imitate, therefore, the end of Socrates ; who, with 
 the fatal cup in his hands, spoke Avith the serenity of 
 one not forced to die, but, as it were, ascending into 
 heaven ; for he thought that the souls of men, when 
 they left the body, went by different roads ; those pol- 
 luted by vice and unclean living took a road wide 
 of that which led to the assembly of the gods ; while 
 those who had kept themselves pure, and on earth had 
 taken a divine life as their model, found it easy to 
 return to those beings from whence they came." Or 
 learn a lesson from the swans, who, with a prophetic 
 instinct, leave this world with joy and singing. Yet 
 do not anticipate the time of death, "■ for the Deity 
 forbids us to depart hence without his summons ; but, 
 on just cause given (as to Socrates and Cato), gladly 
 should we exchange our darkness for that light, aiid, 
 like men not breaking prison but released by the law, 
 leave our chains with joy, as having been discharged 
 by God." 
 
 The feeling of these ancients with regard to suicide, 
 we nmst here remember, was very different from our 
 own. There was no distinct idea of the sanctity of life ; 
 no social stigma and consequent suffering were brought 
 on the family of the suicide. Stoic and Epicurean phil- 
 osophers alike upheld it as a lawful remedy against the 
 pangs of disease, the dotage of old age, or the caprices 
 of a tyrant. Every man might, they contended, choose 
 
170 CICEPO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his own route on the last great journey, and sleep well, 
 when he grew wearied out with life's fitful fever. The 
 door w^as always open (said Epictetus) when the play 
 palled on the senses. You should quit the stage with 
 dignity, nor drain the flask to the dregs. Some phil- 
 osophers, it is true, protested against it as a mere de- 
 vice of cowardice to avoid pain, and as a failure in our 
 duties as good citizens. Cicero, in one of his latest 
 works, again quotes with approval the opinion of Py- 
 thagoras, that *'no man should abandon his post in 
 life without the orders of the Great Commander." But 
 at Rome suicide had been glorified bv a \o\\<x roll of 
 illustrious names, and the j^rotest was made in vain. 
 
 But why, continues Cicero, wdiy add to the miseries 
 of life by brooding over death? Is life to any of us 
 such unmixed pleasure even while it lasts'? Which of 
 us can tell whether he be taken away from good or 
 from evil? As our birth is but "a sleep and a forget- 
 ting," so our death may be but a second sleep, as last- 
 ing as Endjnnion's. Why then call it wretched, even 
 if we die before our natural time? Nature has lent us 
 life, without fixing the day of payment ; and uncer- 
 tainty is one of the conditions of its tenure. Compare 
 our longest life with eternity, and it is as short-lived 
 as that of those ephemeral insects whose life is meas- 
 ured by a summer day; and " who, when the sun sets, 
 have reached old age." 
 
 Let us, then, base our happiness on strength of 
 mind, on a contempt of earthly pleasures, and on the 
 strict observance of virtue. Let us recall the last noble 
 words of Socrates to his judges. "The death," said 
 
*TUSCULAX DISPUTATIOXS: 17 1 
 
 lie, "to which you condemn me, I count a gain rather 
 than a loss. Either it is a dreamless sleep that knows 
 no waking, or it carries me where I may converse with 
 the spirits of the illustrious dead. / go to death, you 
 to life ; but which of us is going the better way, God 
 only knows." 
 
 Xo man, then, dies too soon who has run a course 
 of perfect virtue ; for glory follows like a shadow in 
 the wake of such a life. AVelcome death, therefore, 
 as a blessed deliverance from evil, sent by the special 
 favour of the gods, who thus bring us safely across a 
 sea of troubles to an eternal haven. 
 
 The second topic which Cicero and. his friends dis- 
 cuss is, tlie endurance of pain. Is it an unmixed evil ? 
 Cau anything console the snfferer? Cicero at once 
 condemns the sophistry of Epicurus. The wise man 
 cannot pretend indilference to pain ; it is enough that 
 he endure it mth courage, since, beyond all question, 
 it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. And what is 
 this courage? Partly excitement, partly the impulse 
 of honour or of shame, i)artly the habituation which 
 steels the endurance of the gladiator. Keep, therefore 
 — this is the conclusion — stern restraint over the 
 feminine elements of your soul, and learn not only to 
 despise the attacks of pain, but also 
 
 « The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 
 
 From physical, the discussion naturally passes to 
 mental, suffering. Eor grief, as well as for pain, he 
 prescribes the remedy of the Stoics — ivquanimlUis — 
 " a calm serenity of mind." The wise man, ever serene 
 
172 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and composed, is moved neither by pain or sorrow, by 
 fear or desire. He is equally undisturbed by the malice 
 of enemies or the inconstancy of fortune. But what 
 consolation can we bring to ease the jjain of the 
 Epicurean ? " Pat a nosegay to his nostrils — burn 
 perfumes before him — crown him with roses and wood- 
 bine ! " But perfumes and garlands can do little in 
 such case ; pleasures may divert, but they can scarcely 
 console. 
 
 Again, the Cyrenaics bring at the best but Job's 
 comfort. No man will bear his misfortunes the more 
 lightly by bethinking himself that they are unavoid- 
 able — that others have suffered before him — that pain 
 is part and parcel of the ills which flesh is heir to. 
 Why grieve at all? Why feed your misfortune by 
 dwelling on if? Plunge rather into active life and 
 forget it, remembering that excessive lamentation over 
 the trivial accidents of humanity is alike unmanly and 
 unnecessary. And as it is with grief, so it is with 
 envy, lust, anger, and those other "perturbations of 
 the mind " which the Stoic Zeno rightly declares to 
 be "repugnant to reason and nature." From such 
 disquietudes it is the wise man who is free. 
 
 The fifth and last book discusses the great question. 
 Is virtue of itself suihcient to make life happy ? The 
 bold conclusion is, that it is sufficient. Cicero is not 
 content with the timid qualifications adopted by the 
 school of the Peripatetics, who say one moment tliat 
 external advantages and worldly prosperity are nothing, 
 and then again admit that, though man may be happy 
 without them, he is happier with them,— which is 
 
TREATISE 'OX MORAL DUTIES: 173 
 
 making the real happiness imperfect after alL INlen 
 dilfer in their views of life. As in the great 01,ympic 
 games, the throng are attracted, some by desire of gain, 
 some by the crown of wild olive, some merely by the 
 spectacle ; so, in the race of life, we are all slaves to 
 some ruling idea, it may be glory, or money, or Avis- 
 dom. But they alone can be pronounced happy whose 
 minds are like some tranquil sea — "alarmed by no 
 fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no lusts, ener- 
 vated by no relaxing pleasures, — and such serenity 
 virtue alone can }*'oduce." 
 
 These ' Disputations ' have always been highly ad- 
 mired. But their popularity was greater in times 
 when Cicero's Greek originals were less read or under- 
 stood. Erasmus carried his admiration of this treatise 
 to enthusiasm. "I cannot doubt," he says, "but that 
 the mind from which such teaching flowed was in- 
 spired in some sort by divinity." 
 
 IV. THE TREATISE ' OX MORAL DUTIES.* 
 
 The treatise 'De Ofliciis,' known as Cicero's ' Offices,' 
 to which we pass next, is addressed by the author to 
 his son, while studying at Athens under Cratippus ; 
 possibly in imitation of Aristotle, who inscribed his 
 Ethics to his son Nicomachus. It is a treatise on 
 the duties of a gentleman — "the noblest present," 
 says a modern writer, " ever made by parent to a 
 child." * Written in a far higher tone than Eord 
 Chesterfield's letters, though treating of the same sub- 
 
 ♦ Kelsall. 
 
174 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ject, it proposes and answers multifarious questions 
 which must occur continually to the modern Clnistian 
 as well as to the ancient philosopher. " What makes 
 an action right or wrong 1 What is a duty 1 What is 
 expediency 1 How shall I learn to choose between 
 my principles and my interests'? And lastly (a point 
 of casuistry which must sometimes perplex the strict- 
 est conscience), of two ' things honest,' '■' which is most 
 so?" 
 
 The key-note of his discourse throughout is Honour ; 
 and the word seems to carry with it tliat magic force 
 which Burke attributed to chivalry — ''the unbought 
 grace of life — the nurse of heroic sentiment and maidy 
 enterprise." NohJcfse oblige, — and there is no state of 
 life, says Cicero, without its obligations. In their due 
 discharge consists all the nobility, and in their neglect 
 all the disgrace, of character. There should be no 
 selfish devotion to private interests. We are born not 
 for ourselves only, Ijut for our kindred and fatherland. 
 We owe duties not only to those who have benefited 
 but to those who have wronged us. We should render 
 to all their due ; and justice is due even to the lowest 
 of mankind : wliat, for instance (he says Avith a hard- 
 ness Avhich jars upon our better feelings), can be lower 
 than a slave ? Honour is that *' unbought grace " Avhich 
 adds a lustre to every action. In society it produces 
 
 * The English "Honesty" and " Honour" alike fail to con- 
 vey the full force of the Latin honestus. The word expresses 
 a progress of thought trom comeliness and grace of person to 
 a noble and graceful character — all wliose works are done in 
 honesty and honour. 
 
TREATISE 'ON MORAL DUTIES: 175 
 
 courtesy of manners ; in business, under the form of 
 truth, it establishes public credit. Again, as equity, it 
 smooths the harsh features of the law. In war it pro- 
 duces that moderation and good faith between contend- 
 ing armies which are the surest basis of a lasting peace. 
 And so in honour are centred the elements of all the 
 virtues — wisdom and justice, fortitude and temperance; 
 and "if," he says, reproducing the noble words of 
 Plato, as applied by him to Wisdom, "this * Honour' 
 could but be seen in her full beauty by mortal eyes, 
 the whole world would fall in love with her." 
 
 Such is the general spirit of this treatise, of which 
 only the briefest sketch can be given in these pages. 
 
 Cicero bases honour on our inherent excellence of 
 nature, paying the same noble tribute to humanity as 
 Kant some centuries after : " On earth there is nothino- 
 
 o 
 
 great but man ; in man there is nothing great but * 
 mind." Truth is a law of our nature. Man is only 
 " lower than the angels ; " and to him belong prero- 
 gatives v/hich mark him off from the brute creation — 
 the fticulties of reason and discernment, the sense of 
 beauty, and the love of law and order. And from this • 
 arises that fellow-feeling which, in one sense, "makes \ 
 the whole world kin "—the spirit of Terence's famous 
 line, which Cicero notices (applauded on its recitation, 
 as Augustin tells us, by the cheers of the entire audi- 
 ence in the theatre) — 
 
 "Homo sum — humani nihil a me aliciiiiin pnto ;" * 
 
 * "I am a man— I hold that nothing which concerns man- 
 kind can be matter of unconcern to me." 
 

 4vl 
 
 -r f *. 
 
 176 " - ' '**■ ilC^BO'S PIllLOSOPH Y. 
 
 for (he continues) " all men by nature love one another, 
 and desire an intercourse of words and action." Hence 
 spring the family affections, friendship, and social ties; 
 hence also that general love of combination, which 
 forms a striking feature of the present age, resulting 
 iu clubs, trades -unions, companies, and generally in 
 what Mr Carlyle terms " swarmery." 
 
 ISText to trutli, justice is the great duty of mankind. 
 Cicero at once condemns " communism " in matters of 
 property. Ancient immemorial seizure, conquest, or 
 compact, may give a title ; but " no man can say that 
 he has anything his own by a right of nature." In- 
 justice springs from avarice or ambition, the thirst of 
 riches or of empire, and is the more dangerous as it 
 appears in the more exalted spirits, causing a dissolu- 
 tion of all ties and obligations. And here he takes oc- 
 casion to instance " that late most shameless attempt 
 of Ctesar's to make himself master of Eome." 
 
 There is, besides, an injustice of omission. You 
 may Avrong your neighbour by seeing liiui wronge<l 
 without interfering. Cicero takes the opportunity of 
 protesting strongly against the selhsh policy of those 
 lovers of ease and peace, who, " from a desire of 
 furthering their own interests, or else from a churlish 
 temper, profess that they mind nol)ody's business but 
 their own, in order that they may seem to be men of 
 strict integrity and to injure none," and thus shrink 
 from taking their part in "the fellowship of life." 
 He would have had small patience witli our modern 
 doctrine of non-intervention and neutrality in nations 
 any more than in men. Such conduct arises (he says) 
 

 TREATISE 'ON MOR: 
 
 from the false logic with which men cheat their con- 
 science ; arguing reversely, that whatever is the best 
 policy is — honesty. 
 
 There are two ways, it must be remembered, in 
 which one man may injure another — force and fraud ; 
 but as the lion is a nobler creature than the fox, so 
 open violence seems less odious than secret villany. 
 !No character is so justly hateful as 
 
 " A rogue in grain, 
 Veneered with sanctimonious theory." 
 
 I^ations have their obligations as well as individuals, 
 and war has its laws as well as peace. The struggle 
 should be carried on in a generous temper, and not in 
 the spirit of extermination, when " it has sometimes 
 seemed a questicjn between two hostile nations, not 
 which sliould remain a conqueror, but which should, 
 remain a nation at all." 
 
 No mean part of justice consists in liberality, and 
 this, too, has its duties. It is an important question, 
 how, and when, and to whom, we should give 1 It is 
 possible to be generous at another person's expense : 
 it is possible to injure the recipient by mistimed 
 liberality ; or to ruin one's fortune by open house and 
 prodigal hospitality. A great man's bounty (as he 
 says in another place) should be a common sanctuary 
 for the needy. " To ransom captives and enrich the 
 meaner folk is a nobler form of generosity than pro- 
 viding wild beasts or shows of gladiators to amuse the 
 mob." Charity should begin at home ; for relations 
 
 A. c. vol. ix. M 
 
178 CICERO'S PIIILO^OPLY. 
 
 and friends hold the first place in our affections ; hut 
 the circle of our good deeds is not to he narrowed 
 by the ties of blood, or sect, or party, and " our 
 country comprehends the endearments of all." We 
 should act in the spirit of the ancient law — " Thou 
 shalt keep no man from the running stream, or from 
 lighting his torch at thy hearth." Our liberality 
 shouhl be really liberal, — like that charity which 
 Jeremy Taylor describes as "friendship to all the 
 world." 
 
 Another component principle of this honour is cour- 
 age, or " greatness of soul," which (continues Cicero) 
 has been well defined by the Stoics as " a virtue con- 
 tending for justice and honesty;" and its noblest form 
 is a generous contempt for ordinary objects of ambi- 
 tion, not " from a vain or fantastic humour, but from 
 solid principles of reason." The lowest and commoner 
 form of courage is the mere animal virtue of the 
 fighting-cock. 
 
 But a character should not only be excellent,- — it 
 should be graceful. In gesture and de|)oitnient men 
 shwdd strive to acquire that dignified grace of manners 
 " which adds as it were a lustre to our lives." They 
 should avoid altectation ai]d eccentricity ; " not to care 
 a farthing what people think of us is a sign not so 
 much of pride as of immodesty." The want of tact — 
 the saying and doing things at the wrong time and 
 place — produces the same discord in society as a false 
 note in music ; and harmony of character is of more 
 consequence than harmony of sounds. There is a 
 grace in words as well as in conduct : we should 
 
TREATISE 'OX MORAL DUTIES: 179 
 
 avoid unseasonable jests, " and not lard our talk with 
 Greek quotations." '* 
 
 In the path of life, each should follow the bent of 
 his own genius, so far as it is innocent — 
 
 " Honour and shame from no condition rise ; 
 Act well your part — there all the honour lies." 
 
 Nothing is so difficult (says Cicero) as the choice of 
 a profession, inasmuch as " the choice has commonly 
 to be made when the judgment is weakest." Some 
 tread in their father's steps, others beat out a fresh 
 line of their own ; and (he adds, perhaps not without 
 a personal reference) this is generally the case with 
 those born of mean parents, who propose to carve 
 their own way in the world. But the iittrveim of 
 Arpinum — the ' new man,' as aristocratic jealousy 
 always loved to call him — is by no means insensible 
 to the true honours of ancestry. " The noblest inher- 
 itance," he says, " that can ever be left by a father to 
 his son, far excelling that of lands and houses, is the 
 fame of his virtues and glorious actions ; " and saddest 
 of all sights is that of a noble house dragged through 
 the mire by some degenerate descendant, so as to be a 
 by-word among the populace, — "which may" (he con- 
 cludes) " be justly said of but too many in our times." 
 The Eoman's view of the comparative dignity of 
 professions and occupations is interesting, because his 
 prejudices (if they be prejudices) have so long main- 
 
 * This last precept Cicero must have considered did not 
 apply to letter-writing, otherwise he was a notorious oliender 
 aiiaiust his own rule. 
 
180 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tained their ground amongst us moderns. Tax-gatlier- 
 ers and usurers are as unpopular now as ever — the 
 latter very deservedly so. Retail trade is despicable, 
 we are told, and " all mechanics are by their profes- 
 sion mean." Especially such trades as minister to 
 mere appetite or luxury — butchers, fishmongers, and 
 cooks ; perfumers, dancers, and suchlike. But medi- 
 cine, architecture, education, farming,* and even whole- 
 sale business, especially importation and exportation, 
 are the professions of a gentleman. " Eut if the mer- 
 chant, satisfied with his profits, shall leave the seas and 
 - from the harbour step into a landed estate, such a man 
 seems justly deserving of praise." We seem to be 
 reading the verdict of modern English society delivered 
 by anticipation two thousand years ago. 
 
 The section ends with earnest advice to all, that they 
 should put their principles into practice. " The deepest 
 knowledge of nature is but a poor and imperfect busi- 
 ness, unless it proceeds into action. As justice con- 
 sists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society 
 among men, — as " greatness of soul itself, if it be iso- 
 lated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of un- 
 couth churlishness," — so it is each citizen's duty to leave 
 his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place 
 in public life, if the times demand it, " though he be 
 able to number the stars and measure out the world." 
 
 The same practical vein is continued in the next 
 book. What, after all, are a man's real interests % wliat 
 line of conduct will best advance tlie main end of his 
 life % Generally, men make the fatal mistake of assum- 
 ing that honour must always clash with their interests ; 
 
TREATISE 'OX MORAL DUTIES.' 18! 
 
 while in reality, says Cicero, " they would obtain their 
 ends best, not by knavery and underhand dealing, but 
 by justice and integrity." The right is identical with 
 the expedient. " The way to secure the favour of the 
 gods is by upright dealing ; and next to the gods, no- 
 thing contributes so much to men's happiness as men 
 themselves." It is labour and co-operation which have 
 given us all the goods which we possess. 
 
 Since, then, man is the best friend to man, and 
 also his most formidable enemy, an important question 
 to be discussed is the secretof influence and popularity — 
 " the art of winning men's affections." For to govern 
 by bribes or by force is not really to govern at all ; and 
 no obedience based on fear can be lasting — " no force 
 of power can bear up long against a current of public 
 hate." Adventurers who ride rough-shod over law (he 
 is thinking again of Cifisar) have but a short-hved reign ; 
 and " liberty, when she has been chained up a while, 
 bites harder when let loose than if she had never been 
 chained at all." * Most happy was that just and moder- 
 ate government of Eome in earlier times, when she was 
 " the port anil refuge for princes and nations in their 
 hour of need." Three requisites go to form that popu- 
 lar character which has a just influence over others ; 
 we must win men's love, we must deserve theii' cunti- 
 
 * It is curious to note how, throughout the whole of this 
 argument, Cicero, whether consciously or unconsciously, works 
 upon the principle that the highest life is the political life, and 
 that the highest object a man can set before him is the obtain- 
 inc, by legitimate means, influence and authority amongst his 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
182 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 dence, and we must inspire them with an admiration 
 for our abilities. The shortest and most direct road to 
 real influence is that which Socrates recommends — " for 
 a man to be that which he wishes men to take him 
 for."* 
 
 Then follow some maxims which show how thor- 
 oughly conservative was the policy of our philosopher. 
 The security of property he holds to be the security 
 of the state. There must be no playing with vested 
 rights, no unequal taxation, no attempt to bring all 
 things to a level, no cancelling of debts and redistribu- 
 tion of land (he is thinking of the baits held out by 
 Catiline), none of those traditional devices for winning 
 favour Avith the jDeople, which tend to destroy that 
 social concord and unity which make a common- 
 wealth. " What reason is there," he asks, " why, 
 when I have bought, built, repaired, and laid out much 
 money, another shall come and enjoy the fruits of it % " 
 
 And as a man should be careful of the interests of the 
 social body, so he should be of his own. But Cicero 
 feels that in descending to such questions he is 
 somewhat losing sight of his dignity as a moralist. 
 " You will find all this thoroughly discussed," he says 
 to his son, "in Xenojjlion's Q^conomics — a book 
 which, when I was just your age, I translated from 
 the Greek into Latin." [One wonders whether young 
 Marcus took the hint.] " And if you want instruction 
 in money matters, there are gentlemen sitting on the 
 
 * " Not being less but more than all 
 The gentleness he seemed to be." 
 
 — Tennyson : ' In Memoriam.' 
 
TREATISE 'Oy MORAL DUTIES.' 183 
 
 Exchange who will teach you much better than the 
 philosophers." 
 
 The last book opens with a saying of the elder 
 Cato's, which Cicero much admires, though he says 
 modestly that he was never able in his own case quite 
 to realise it — " I am never less idle than w^hen I am 
 idle, and never less alone than when alone." lietire- 
 ment and solitude are excellent things, Cicero always . 
 declares ; generally contriving at the same time to 
 make it plain, as he does here, that his own heart is in 
 the world of public life. But at least it gives him time 
 for writing. He " has written more in this short time, 
 since the fall of the Commonwealth, than in all the 
 years during which it stood." 
 
 He here resolves the question, If honour and interest 
 seem to clash, which is to give way? Or rather, it has 
 been resolved abeady ; if the right be always the ex- 
 pedient, the opposition is seeming, not real. He puts 
 a great many questions of casuistry, but it all amounts 
 to^'this : the good man keeps his oath, '' though it were ^ 
 to his own hindrance." But it is never to his hin- 
 drance ; for a violation of his conscience would be the 
 greatest hindrance of all. 
 
 In this treatise, more than in any of his other phi- 
 losophical works, Cicero inclines to the teaching of the 
 Stoics. In the others, he is rather the seeker after 
 truth than the maintainer of a system. His is the 
 critical eclecticism of the ' Xew Academy '—the spirit 
 so prevalent in our own day, which fights against the 
 shackles of dogmatism. And with all his respect for 
 the nobler side of Stoicism, he is fully alive to its de- 
 
184 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fects ; though it was not given to him to see, as Mil- 
 ton saw after him, the point wherein that great system 
 really failed — tlie " philosophic pride " which was the 
 besetting sin of all disciples in the school, from Cato to 
 Seneca : — 
 
 " Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, 
 ****** 
 
 Much of the j(^ul they talk, but all anry ; 
 And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves 
 All glory arrogate, — to God give none ; 
 Rather accuse Him under usual names. 
 Fortune, or Fate, as one regardless quite 
 Of mortal things." * 
 
 Yet, in spite of this, such men were as the salt of the 
 earth in a corrupt age ; and as we find, throughout the 
 more modern pages of history, great preachers de- 
 nouncing wickedness in high places, — Bourdaloue and 
 Massillon pouring their eloquence into the heedless 
 ears of Louis XIV. and his courtiers — Sherlock and 
 Tillotson declaiming from the pulpit in such stirring 
 accents that " even the indolent Charles roused him- 
 self to listen, and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to 
 / sneer "t — so, too, do we find these ''moidvs of heathen- 
 Idom," as the Stoics have been not uufairly called, 
 protesting in their day agaiust that selfish profligacy 
 which was fast sapping all morality in the Roman 
 empire. No doubt (as Mr Lecky takes care to tell us), 
 their high principles were not always consistent with 
 their practice (alas ! whose are ?) ; Cato may have ill- 
 used his slaves, Sallust may have been rapacious, and 
 
 * Piiradiae Re;^;u'n('<l. \ Macanhiv. 
 
THE STOICS. 185 
 
 Seneca wanting in personal courage. " Yet it was surely 
 something to have set np a noble ideal, though they 
 might not attain to it themselves, and in " that liideous 
 carnival of vice" to have kept themstlves, so far as 
 they might, unspotted from the world. Certain it is 
 that no other ancient sect ever came so near the light 
 of revelation. Passages from Seneca, from Epictetus, 
 from Marcus Aurelius, sound even now like fragments 
 of the inspired writings. The Unknown God, whom 
 they iguorantly worshipped as the Soul or Eeason of 
 the World, is— in spite of Milton's strictures — the 
 beginning and the end of their pliilosophy. Let us 
 listen for a moment to their language. " Prayer should 
 be only for the good." " Men should act according to 
 the spirit, and not according to the letter of their 
 faith." "AVouldest thou propitiate the gods? Ee 
 good : he has worsliipped tliem sufficiently who has 
 imitated tliem." It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, 
 that St Paul quoted the great truth which was the 
 rational argument against idolatry — " For we are also 
 His offspring, and " (so the original passage concludes) 
 "we alone possess a voice, which is the image of 
 reason." It is in another poet of the same school that 
 we find what are perhaps the noblest lines in all Latin 
 poetry. Persius concludes his Satire on the common 
 hypocrisy of those prayers and offerings to the gods 
 which were but a service of the lips and hands, in 
 words of which an Enghsh rendering may give the 
 sense but not the beauty: — " ^ay, then, let us offer 
 to the gods that which the debauched sons oi great 
 Messala can never bring on their broad chargers. 
 
186 
 
 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 —a soul wherein the laws of God and man are 
 blended, — a heart pure to its inmost depths, — a 
 breast ingrained with a noble sense of honour. 
 Let me but bring these with nie to the altar, and I 
 care not though my offering be a handful of corn." 
 With these grand words, fit precursors of a purer 
 creed to come, we may take our leave of the Stoics, 
 remarking how thoroughly, even in their majestic 
 egotism, they represented the moral force of the nation 
 among whom they flourished ; a nation, says a modern 
 preacher, " whose legendary and historic heroes could 
 thrust their hand into the flame, and see it consumed 
 without a nerve shrinking ; or come from captivity on 
 parole, advise their countrymen against a peace, and 
 then go back to torture and certain death ; or devote 
 themselves by solemn self-sacrifice like the Decii. 
 The world must bow before such men ; for, uncon- 
 sciously, here was a form of the spirit of the Cross — 
 self-surrender, unconquerable fidelity to duty, sacrifice 
 for others." * 
 
 * F. W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 218. 
 
 Portions of three treatises by Cicero upon Political 
 Philosophy have come down to us : — 1. 'De Republica'; a 
 dialogue on Government, founded chiefly on the * Re- 
 public ' of Plato : 2. ' De Legibus ' ; a discussion on Law 
 in the abstract, and on national systems of legislation : 
 3. ' De Jure Civili'; of which last only a few fragments 
 exist. His historical works have all perished. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CICERO's RELIGION. 
 
 It is difficult to separate Cicero's religion from Ms 
 philosophy. In both he was a sceptic,^ hut in the 
 better sense of the word. His search after truth was 
 in no sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a 
 reverent inquirer. We must remember, in justice to 
 him, that an earnest -minded man in his day could 
 hardly take higher ground than that of the sceptic. 
 The old polytheism was dying out in everything but 
 in name, and there was notliing to take its place. 
 
 His religious belief, so far as we can gather it, 
 was rather negative than positive. In the speculative 
 treatise which he has left us, ' On the Mature of the 
 Gods/ he examines all the current creeds of the day, 
 but leaves his own quite undefined. 
 
 The treatise takes the form, like the rest, of an 
 imaginary conversation. This is supposed to have taken 
 place at the house of Aurehus Cotta, then Pontifex 
 Maximus — an office which answered nearly to that of 
 Minister of religion. The other speakers are Ealbus, 
 Velleius, and Cicero himself, — who acts, however, 
 
188 CICERO'S RELIGION. 
 
 rather in tlie character of moderator than of disputant. 
 The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical 
 dialogues, between the different schools. Velleius first 
 sets forth the doctrine of his master Epicurus ; speaking 
 about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much 
 apparent intimate knowledge " as if he had just come 
 straight down from heaven." All the speculations of 
 previous philosophers — which he reviews one after the 
 other — are, he assures the company, palpable errors. 
 The popular mythology is a mere collection of fables. 
 Plato and the Stoics, with their Soul of the woild and- 
 their pervading Providence, are entirely wroug ; the 
 \ disciples of Epicurus alone are right. There are gods ; 
 that much, the universal belief of mankind in all ages 
 sufficiently establishes. But that they should be the 
 laborious beings which the common systems of theology 
 would make them, — that they should employ them- 
 selves in the manufacture of worlds, — is manifestly 
 absurd. Some of this argument is ingenious. ""Wliat 
 should induce the Deity to perform the functions of 
 an ^dile, to light up and decorate the world 1 If it 
 was to supply better accommodation for himself, then 
 he must have dwelt of choice, up to that time, in the 
 darkness of a dungeon. If such improvements gave 
 him pleasure, why should he have chosen to be without 
 them so long?" 
 
 No — the gods are immortal and happy beings ; and 
 these very attributes imply that they should be wholly 
 free from the cares of business— exempt ffom labour, 
 as from pain and death. They are in human form, but 
 of an ethereal and subtile essence, incapable of our 
 
*0S TJIE XATCRE OF THE GODS. 189 
 
 passions or desires. Happy in their own perfect wisdom 
 and virtue, they 
 
 " Sit beside their nectar, careless of mankind." 
 
 Cotta — speaking in behalf of the New Academy — 
 controverts these views. Be these your gods, Epicurus? 
 as well say there are no gods at all. What reverence, 
 what love, or what fear can men have of beings who 
 neither wish them, nor can work them, good or ill? 
 Is idleness the divinest life ? " Why, 'tis the very 
 heaven of schoolboys ; yet the schoolboys, on their 
 holiday, employ themselves in games." Nay, he con- 
 cludes, what the Stoic Posidonius said of your master 
 Epicurus is true — " He believed there Avere no gods, 
 and what he said about their nature he said only to 
 avoid popular odium." He could not believe that the 
 Deity has the outward shape of a man, without any 
 solid essence ; that he has all the members of a man, 
 without the power to use them ; that he is a shadowy 
 transparent being, who shows no favour and confers no 
 benefits on any, cares for nothing and does nothing; 
 this is to allow his existence of the gods in word, but 
 to deny it in fact. 
 
 Velleius compliments his opponent on his clever 
 argument, but desires that Balbus would state his 
 views upon the question. The Stoic consents ; and, 
 at some length, proceeds to prove (what neither dis- 
 putant has at all denied) the existence of Divine 
 beings of some kind. Universal belief, well-authen- 
 ticated instances of their appearance to men, and of 
 the fulfilment of prophecies and omens, are all evi- 
 
190 CICERO'S RELIGION. 
 
 dences of tlieir existence. He dwells much, too, on 
 the argument from design, of which so much use has 
 been made by modern theoh)gians. He furnishes 
 Paley with the idea for his well-known illustration of 
 the man who finds a watch ; " when we see a dial or 
 a water-clock, we believe that the hour is shown 
 thereon by art, and not by chance." * He gives also 
 an illustration from the poet Attius, wdiich from a 
 poetical imagination has since become an historical 
 incident ; the shepherds who see the ship Argo ap- 
 ])roaching take the new monster for a thing of life, as 
 the Mexicans regarded the ships of Cortes. Much 
 more, he argues, does the harmonious order of the 
 world bespeak an intelligence within. But his con- 
 clusion is that the Universe itself is the Deity ; or that 
 the Deity is the animating Spirit of the Universe ; 
 and that the popular mythology, which gives one god to 
 the Earth, one to the Sea, one to Fire, and so on, is in 
 fact a distorted version of this truth. The very form 
 of the universe — the sphere — is the most perfect of all 
 forms, and therefore suited to embody the Divine. 
 
 Tlien Cotta — wlio though, as Pontifex, he is a 
 national priest by vocation, is of tbat sect in philo- 
 sophy which makes doubt its creed — resumes his ob- 
 jections. He is no better satisfied with the tenets of 
 the Stoics than with those of the Epicureans. He 
 believes that there are gods , but, coming to the dis- 
 cu>;sion as a dispassionate and philosophical observer, 
 he finds such proofs as are offered of their existence 
 insufficient. But this third book is fragmentary, and 
 * De Nat. Deor. ii. 34. Paley 's Kat. Theol. ch. i. 
 
'Oy THE NATURE OF THE GODS.' 191 
 
 the continuity of Cotta's argument is broken by con- 
 siderable gaps in all the manuscripts. There is a 
 curious tradition, that these portions Avere carefully 
 torn out by the early Christians, because they might 
 prove too formidable weapons in the hands of un- 
 believers. Cotta professes throughout only to raise 
 his objections in the hope that they may be refuted ; 
 but his whole reasoning is destructive of any belief 
 in an overruling Providence. He confesses himself 
 puzzled by that insoluble mystery — the existence of 
 Evil in a world created and ruled by a beneficent 
 Power. The gods have given man reason, it is said ; 
 but man abuses the gift to evil ends. " This is the 
 fault," you say, " of men, not of the gods. As though 
 the physician should complain of the virulence of the 
 disease, or the pilot of the fury of the tempest ! Though 
 these are but mortal men, even in them it would seem 
 ridiculous. Who would have asked your help, we 
 should answer, if these difficulties had not arisen ? May 
 we not argue still more strongly in the case of the 
 gods ? The fault, you say, lies in the vices of men. 
 But you should have given men such a rational 
 faculty as would exclude the possibility of such 
 crimes." He sees, as David did, " the ungodly in pros- 
 perity." The laws of Heaven are mocked, crimes aie 
 committed, and " the thunders of Olympian Jove are 
 silent." He quotes, as it would always be easy to 
 quote, examples of this from all history : the most 
 telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of Diagoras, 
 who was called the Atheist, when they showed him 
 in the temple at Samothrace the votive tablets (as they 
 
192 CICERO'S RELIGION. 
 
 may be seen in some foreign churches now) offered by 
 those shipwrecked seamen who had been saved from 
 drowning. " Lo, thou that deniest a Providence, be- 
 hold here how many liave been saved by prayer to 
 the gods ! " " Yea," was his reply ; " but where are 
 those commemorated who were drowned 1 " 
 
 The Dialogue ends with no resolution of the diffi- 
 culties, and no conclusion as to the points in question. 
 Cicero, who is the narrator of the imaginary confer- 
 Aence, gives it as his opinion that the arguments of the 
 ^Stoic seemed to him to have " the greater probability." 
 It was the great tenet of the school which he most 
 affected, that probability was the nearest approach 
 that man could make to speculative truth. " We are 
 not among those," he says, " to whom there seems to 
 be no such thing as truth ; but we say that all truths 
 have some falsehoods attached to them which have so 
 strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there 
 is no certain note of distinction which can determine 
 our judgment and assent. The consequence of which 
 is that there are many things probable ; and although 
 they are not subjects of actual perception to our 
 senses, yet they have so grand and glorious an 
 :ispect that a wise man governs liis life thereby." * 
 [t remained for one of our ablest and most philoso- 
 phical Christian writers to prove that in such matters 
 probability was practically equivalent to demonstra- 
 tion, f Cicero's own form of scepticism in religious 
 
 * De Nat. Deor. i. 5. 
 
 t "To us, prol)ability is tlie very guide of life." — Introd. 
 to Butler's Analoiiv. 
 
'Oy THE yATCRE UF THE GODS: 193 
 
 matters is perbaps very nearly expressed in the strik- 
 ing anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the 
 mouth of the Epicurean. 
 
 "If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his 
 nature and attributes are, I should follow the example 
 of Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero proposed 
 to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. 
 AVhen the king, on the next dpy, required from him 
 tlie answer, Simonides requested two days more ; and 
 when he went on continually asking double the time, 
 instead of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement 
 demanded of him the reason. ' iJecause,' replied he, 
 ' tlie longer I meditate on the question, the more 
 obscure does it appear.'"* 
 
 The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a 
 member of the College of Augurs, no doubt checked 
 any strong expression of opinion on his part as to the 
 Ibrms of popular worship and many particulars of 
 popular belief. In the treatise which he intended as 
 in some sort a sequel to this Dialogue on the ' Mature 
 of the Gods ' — that upon ' Divination ' — he states the 
 arguments for and against the national belief in omens, 
 auguries, dreams, and such intimations of the Divine 
 will.t He puts the defence of the system in the 
 mouth of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the 
 destructive side of the argument : but whether this 
 was meant to give his own real views on the subject, 
 
 * De Nat. Deor. i. 22. 
 
 ■\ There is a third treatise, ' De Fato,' apparently a continua- 
 tion of the series, of which only a portion has reached us. It 
 is a discussion of the difficult questions of Fate and Free-will. 
 A. C. voL ix. N 
 
194 CICERO'S RELIGION. 
 
 we cannot be so certain. The course of argninent 
 employed on botli sides would rather lead to the 
 conclusion that the Avriter's opinion was very much 
 that which Johnson delivered as to the reality of 
 ghosts — " All argument is against it, but all belief is 
 for it." 
 
 With regard to the great questions of the soul's im- 
 mortality, and a state of future rewards and punish- 
 ments, it would be quite jDossible to gather from Cicero's 
 writings passages expressive of entirely contradictory 
 views. The bent of his mind, as has been sufficiently 
 shown, was towards doubt, and still more towards dis- 
 cussion ; and possibly his opinions were not so entirely 
 in a state of flux as the remains of his writings seem 
 to show. In a future state of some kind he must cer- 
 tainly have believed — that is, with such belief as he 
 would have considered the subject-matter to admit of 
 — as a strong probability. In a speculative fragment 
 which has come down to us, known as ' Scipio's Dream,' 
 we seem to have the creed of the man rather than tlie 
 speculations of the philosoj)lier. Scipio Africanus the 
 elder appears in a dream to the younger who bore his 
 name (his grandson by adoption). He shows him a 
 vision of heaven -, bids him listen to the music of the 
 spheres, which, as they move in their order, " by a 
 modulation of high and low sounds," give forth that 
 harmony which men have in some poor sort reduced to 
 notation. He bids him look down upon the earth, 
 contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws 
 a lesson of the poverty of all mere eartldy fame 
 and glory. " I^'or all those who have preserved, or 
 
CICERO'S RELIGIOX. 195 
 
 aided, or benefited their country, there is a fixed and 
 definite place in heaven, where they shall be happy in 
 the enjoyment of everlasting life." But " the souls of 
 those who have given themselves up to the pleasures 
 of sense, and made themselves, as it were, the servants 
 of these, — who at the bidding of the lusts which wait 
 upon pleasure have violated the laws of gods and men, 
 — they, when they escape from the body, flit still 
 around the earth, and never attain to these abodes 
 but after many ages of wandering." We may gathei 
 that his creed admitted a Valhalla for the hero and 
 the patriot, and a long process of expiation for the 
 wicked. 
 
 There is a curious passage preserved by St Augustin 
 from that one of Cicero's works which he most admired 
 — the lost treatise on ' Glory ' * — which seems to show 
 that so far from being a materialist, he held the body 
 \o be a sort of purgatory for the soul. 
 
 " The mistakes and the sufferings of human life 
 nake me think sometimes that those ancient seers, or 
 interpreters of the secrets of heaven and the counsels 
 of the Divine mind, had some glimpse of the truth, 
 wlien they said that men are born in order to suffer 
 the penalty for some sins committed in a former life ; 
 and that the idea is true which we find in Aristotle, 
 that we are suffering some such punishment as theirs of 
 old, who fell into the hands of those Etruscan bandits, 
 and were put to death with a studied cruelty ; their 
 living bodies being tied to dead bodies, face to face, 
 in closest possible conjunction : that so our souls are 
 
 /* See p. 29. 
 
i9G CICERO'S religion: 
 
 coupled to our bodies, united like the liviug with the 
 dead." 
 
 But whatever miglit have been tlie theological side, 
 if one may so express it, of Cicero's religion, tlie moral 
 aphorisms Avhich meet us liere and there in his works 
 have often in them a teaching which comes near the 
 tone of Christian etliics. The words of Petrarch are 
 liardly too strong — " You would fancy sometimes it 
 was not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle 
 who was speaking " * These are but a few out of 
 many which might be quoted : — " Strive ever for the 
 truth, and so reckon as that not thou art mortal, but 
 only this thy body , for thou art not that which this 
 outward form of thine shows forth, but each man's 
 mind, that is the real man — not the shape which can 
 be traced with the finger." t "Yea, rather, they live 
 who have escaped from the bonds of their flesh 
 as from a prison-house." " Follow after justice and 
 duty; such a life is the jiath to heavem and into yon 
 assembly of those who have once lived, and now, re- 
 leased from the body, dwell in that place." V/here, 
 in any other heathen writer, shall we find such noble 
 words as those which close the apostrophe in the Tus- 
 culans? — " One single day well sj)cnt, and in accord- 
 ance with thy precepts, were better to be chosen than 
 an immortality of sin ! " % He is addressing himself, 
 it is true, to Philosophy , hut his Philosophy is here 
 little less than the Wisdom of Scripture : and the 
 
 * " Interdiiin non Paganum philosophum, sed apostolura lo(|ui 
 putes. " 
 
 + 'The Droam of Scipio.' X Tusc, v. 2. 
 
CICERO'S RELIGIOX. 1<J7 
 
 spiritual aspiration is the same — only uttered under 
 greater difficulties — as that of the Psalmist when lie 
 exclaims, " One day in thy courts is better than n 
 thousand ! " We may or may not adopt Erasmus's view 
 of his inspiration — or rather, inspiration is a word which 
 has more than one definition, and this would depend 
 upon which definition we take ; but we may well 
 sympathise with the old scholar when he says — " I 
 feel a better man for reading Cicero." 
 
 END OF CICRRO. 
 
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