LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO CICERO. FROM A BRONZE MEDAL STRUCK BY THE TOWN OF MAGNESIA IN LYDIA. LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M.A. Q.C. LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. AUTHOR OF ' HORTENSIUS,' 'NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA AND SIR HUDSON LOWE,' WITH 20 ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1869 Ttie right of Translation is reserved. C5T7 MY DEAR LORD BROUGHAM, I DEDICATE this work to you as a token of our friendship, and because a Life of Cicero cannot be more appropriately inscribed than with the name of one whose eloquence and other splendid intellectual gifts, so conspicuously displayed and uniformly em- ployed for the welfare of mankind, vividly recal to the minds of his countrymen the great Orator, Statesman, and Philosopher of ancient Rome. " Superest adhuc et exornat aetatis nostrse gloriam Vir saeculorum me- moria dignus, qui olim nominabitur nunc intelligitur." Believe me, Very sincerely yours, W. FORSYTH. THE FIRS, MORTIMER, Dec. 1863. PREFACE. MORE than a century has elapsed since Middleton first published his History of the Life of Marcus Tnllius Cicero, which has during that period ex- clusively occupied the field in this country as the Biography of Cicero. It occurred to me that the time had come when another Life might be acceptable to the public. The advanced state of scholarship, which has made the history and literature of Rome so much better understood than when Middleton wrote to say nothing of his defects as a biographer justifies the appearance of a new account of the great Roman. The faults of his work are not inconsiderable. It is disfigured by a blind and indiscriminating tone of panegyric, which is the language of flattery rather than of truth. It is almost entirely occupied with Cicero as a politician and an orator, and does not sufficiently enter into the details of his private and domestic life, which, in my opinion, form the chief charm of a bio- graphy. For as Madame Swetchine, in one of her letters alluding to the subject in the case of deceased friends happily remarks : " Tant que nous ne con- naissons rien de leur caractere, de leur vocation, des actions de leur vie, ils demeurent pour nous a 1'etat d'abstraction ; or, vous savez si ce sont les abstractions x PREFACE. qui parlent au cceur." Middleton's work is also over- laid and encumbered with too much of the history of the time, so that the character of individuality is often lost. It is, in fact, as the title seems to imply, an historical composition in which Cicero is the principal figure, but it is not the portrait of the man himself, with details properly subordinated as accessories so as to form the background of the picture. Besides, the style is heavy and tedious, and I think that De Quincey is not far from the truth when he says that " by weed- ing away from it all that is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic ; and if you should remove its slang vulgarisms, you would remove its whole prin- ciple of vitality." My object has been to exhibit Cicero not only as an orator and a politician, but as he was in private life surrounded by his family and friends speaking and acting like other men in the ordinary affairs of home. And the more we accustom ourselves to regard the ancients as persons of like passions as ourselves, and familiarise ourselves with the idea of them as fathers, husbands, friends, and gentlemen, the better we shall understand them. It would be ungrateful in me not to acknowledge how much I am indebted to Abeken's most interesting and able work, Cicero in Seinen Brief en an invaluable contribution to our right knowledge of his history and to the Onomasticon Tullianum of Orelli and Baiter. I have also made much use of Drumann's Geschichte ROMS nach GescMechtern, although I differ greatly from the estimate he has formed of the character of Cicero, and think him both prejudiced and unfair. I have PREFACE. xi derived most material assistance from the admirable edition of Cicero's letters by Schiitz, where the corre- spondence is arranged in chronological order, and the difficulties are explained by clear and excellent notes. But for the convenience of reference I have always quoted the letters as they are given most unmethodi- cally it is true in the popular edition of Ernesti. I have also referred to BrUckner's Leben Cicero, which has the merit of fulness and accuracy, but is a dull and unattractive book. It would, however, be mere pe- dantry in me to mention all the authorities of which I have made use. I believe that there is no author who has written on the subject whose work I have neglected. But after all, the great authority for the life of Cicero is Cicero himself, of whose works I have been, during a great period of my life, an assiduous student, attracted to them by the irresistible fascination of their contents and their style. I had written much more than is printed in the fol- lowing work, but as it would have swelled the volume to an inconvenient size, I have been obliged very con- siderably to reduce my manuscript. For this reason I have omitted many details and translations of many parts of the speeches which I had prepared, and which I should have been glad to insert in the text. For the same reason also I have omitted a number of refer- ences in support of the opinions I have advanced, but if necessary they can be readily produced. I mention this merely lest it should be supposed that I have shunned pains and labour in the completion of my task. I can truly say that it has been with me a labour of love, and the most agreeable relaxation I cared to find xii PREFACE. from the toils of my profession. It is, no doubt, perilous to the interests of lawyers to be supposed to occupy even their horcz subsecivtz with anything like literature. But although their profession has the first and foremost claims upon their attention, it need not monopolise the whole, and it can hardly be thought that they are less likely to be qualified for the discharge of its duties if they make themselves familiar with the models of ancient eloquence and the law of ancient times, than if they confine themselves wholly to the study of technical precedents and seek for inspiration only in the volumes of Reports. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. THE BOYHOOD II. THE STUDENT III. CICERO AT THE BAR . IV. QlLer/>t/M' qttestiones, or ordinary trials, as distinguished from the special commissions of former times. debtor and creditor, party walls, ancient lights, easements, the validity of wills, and in short almost everything con- nected with the rights and liabilities of parties. " But let us now turn to the more im- portant and interesting class of trials, those of a criminal nature. Although they are often confounded together under the name of judicia pnblica, this term in strictness applied only to a particular division of them. They consisted in fact of four different kinds : I. Actiones popularis ; 2. Actiones extraordinarioe ; 3. Judicia publica ; 4. Judicia populi. The ' actiones populares' were trials appointed at the instance of the praetor for the punishment of a lesser kind of misdemeanour, and chiefly such as were offences against municipal and sanitary regulations; as for instance sacrilegious disturbance of graves, impeding the streets or sewers, or doing anything whereby the public convenience was im- paired. Any person might be the prose- cutor in these cases, and the penalty of a fine was generally imposed. So far, we may compare them to qui tain actions amongst ourselves, but I am not aware that any portion of the fines went, in these actions at Rome, as in this coun- try, to the informer. There has been much controversy as to the exact differ- ence between the * actiones extraordin- ariae' (called sometimes judicia extra- ordinaria) and the 'judicia publica;' but the better opinion seems to be that the former embraced such crimes as were not specially provided against by any particular law, or to which no par- ticular punishment was affixed ; but it was left to the discretion of the tribunal. And the tribunal was of itself of a special nature and appointed for the occasion, consisting sometimes of the whole senate, sometimes of the consuls or other magis- trates as the case might be. * For when crime occurred the Romans dealt with * Heinecc. Synttig. iv. 18 ; Polleti, Hist. /'/>i'i. Rom. iv. i. 28 CICERO AT THE BAR. CHAP. III. of his inheritance, and they induced Chrysogonus, one of Sylla's freedmen and high in his favour, to assert that Sextus had died in debt to him. Under pretence of liquidating this the property was seized and sold at a price miserably below its value, and Capito and Chrysogonus became the pur- chasers. The former bought for himself three of the most flourishing farms, and took possession of the rest of the estate and effects, under pretence of holding them for Chrysogonus. Not content with this, the two Roscii insti- gated Erucius to accuse the destitute son of having been the assassin of his father, and Cicero had to defend him against the charge. The trial is a proof of the corrupt state of society at Rome. There is no doubt that young Roscius was in the most imminent danger of a conviction, and that Cicero trembled during the ensuing twelve months. Thus Jndiciun, which is supposed to have Cicero assigns as one of the reasons why Sulpicius was beaten by Murena in the contest for the consulship, that the former had, as praetor, obtained the unpopular office of qucestor pcculatiis, or ' commis- sioner of embezzlement,' which he calls ' stern and odious, threatening on the one hand tears and misery, and on the other trials and imprisonment.'* " But the prretor did not sit as a judge in our sense of the word at these trials. He acted as the president of the court, under whose auspices and authority the proceedings were conducted ; but he seems to have had no voice in the sen- tence pronounced. He had the im- peritim but not the jurisdictio. This belonged to the Judices who were sum- moned by him to sit upon the trial, and of whom we find such constant mention made in the speeches and other writings of Cicero. It was their province to de- termine the question of guilt or innocence, and they were taken out of a particu- lar class of citizens, which varied at dif- ferent times. The importance of the functions which they had to discharge made it a matter of vital interest that they should be men of pure and upright character ; but nothing was more com- mon at Rome than to hear them charged with every kind of corruption and venality. Their names were inscribed on a list or jury-panel called Album * Pro Murena, 20. been first brought into use by the Cal- purnian law. There is much doubt as to their number, which, however, varied at different times. Some imagine that ten were originally chosen from each tribe, which would make them amount to about 300, and hence they explain the term Decuria Judicum. At first they seem to have been confined exclusively to the senatorian body ; but by the Sempronian law, B.C. 123, of which Tiberius Gracchus was the author, this right or privilege was transferred from the senators to the equestrian order ; and the latter enjoyed it for nearly fifty years, until Sylla, B.C. 80, deprived them of it, and restored it to the sena- tors. By a later law, the Aurelia Lex, passed B.C. 70, it was enacted that the judices should be chosen from the sena- tors, the knights, and the tribuni zerarii ; the last of whom were taken from the body of the people. These form the three decuriDe of judges which existed, until Julius Caesar reduced them to two, by removing the decurise of the tribuni aerarii. The number that sat at a trial is uncertain ; but it seems to have varied from fifty to seventy. After the reign of Augustus, the Album Jndi- ctnn contained the names of all who were qualified to serve either on civil or criminal trials, and these amounted to not less than 4000." B.C. 81-77. DEFENDS SEXTUS ROSCIUS. 29 for the result. And yet no charge was ever more ground- less, or supported in a court of justice by more feeble evi- dence. This consisted almost entirely in an attempt to show that the father disliked his son, of which the only proof was that he kept him in the country, and that he once had the intention of disinheriting him. That such a case, so bare of even a presumption against the accused, should have occu- pied a criminal tribunal for a considerable time with a doubtful result, was an outrage against common-sense, and can only be explained by considering the deplorable condi- tion of the Republic, when causes were decided, not accord- ing to their merits, but under the influence of bribery or fear. Sylla was all-powerful in the state Chrysogonus was his favourite ; and Cicero knew that these were arguments against his client which would go far to supply the want of facts. He made a masterly and conclusive speech ; but much more elaborate than, according to our notions of criminal jurisprudence, the case seemed to require, for not a tittle of evidence was adduced to connect the son with the murder. He was at Ameria at the time ; he had neither friends nor influence at Rome ; not a shadow of proof was given that he had ever seen or communicated with the assassins ; nay ; it was unknown who the actual assassins were. All the presumptions of guilt pointed towards the Roscii, Capito and Magnus, especially the latter, whose freedman had brought the first intelligence so rapidly to Ameria, and whose previous character and conduct sub- sequently to the murder justified the darkest suspicions. Under these circumstances we should imagine that the duty of the counsel for the accused would be simply to stand on the defensive, and challenge the other side to the proof of the indictment. Unless it could be shown that young Roscius was present at or privy to the murder, there was an end of the case, and he might at once demand an ac- quittal. But Cicero did not venture upon such a course before the tribunal which he was addressing. He enters most minutely into the whole case ; examines every pos- sible view in which it can be presented ; carefully balances the presumptions of guilt as they apply to the one party or the other ; deprecates the idea of giving offence to Erucius 30 CICERO AT THE BAR. CHAP. HI. or Chrysogonus ; and artfully appeals to the compassion, and fears, and justice of the court. Niebuhr says of his conduct on this occasion : " His de- fence of Roscius of Ameria, whom Chrysoganus wanted to get rid of, excited the greatest admiration of his talents, together with the highest esteem for his own personal char- acter. It was an act of true heroism for a young man like Cicero, and still more so if we consider his family connec- tion with Marius." 1 About the same time Cicero seems to have defended Varenus, who was charged with the crime of murder, and convicted ; but we possess only a few fragments of the speech. Although he was now fairly launched in his profession, and notwithstanding the reputation which he had gained by his efforts as an advocate, he still did not consider his education for his profession as complete. And when his former preceptor Molo came, in the year B.C. 80, as ambassador from Rhodes to Rome, he placed himself again under his care, and took lessons from the accomplished rhetorician. It is an interesting fact, and shows how familiar had become the knowledge of Greek amongst the educated classes at Rome, that Molo addressed the Senate in that language to thank them for the friendship they had shown to his native state. The next cause in which Cicero was engaged, at least the next of which we have any notice, although his speech is lost, was one in which he was opposed to Cotta, one of the most celebrated advocates of his day. He appeared against him on behalf of a lady of Arretium, whose right to main- tain her suit was contested on the ground that she was not a Roman citizen. And the trial had something of a poli- tical character in it, and exposed Cicero to the risk of offending the all-powerful dictator. For Sylla had deprived the citizens of Arretium of the Roman franchise, which was so much coveted by the Italian towns ; and the refusal to recognise their right to it had led to the deplorable conflict of the Social War. 1 Cicero says himself, De Off. ii. 14 : potentis alicujus opibus circumveniri ur- " Maxime autem et gloria paritur et gerique videtur : ut nos et saepe alias et gratia defensionibus ; eoque major, si adolescente? contra L. Sullae tlominantis quando accidit ut et subveniatur, qui opes pro Sex. Roscio Amerino fecimus. JET. 26-30. FAILURE OF HIS HEALTH. 31 But the incessant labours of the young advocate had now begun to tell seriously upon his health. He had inherited a feeble constitution, and symptoms of consumption began to show themselves. We have described his personal appear- ance, and his thin frame was hardly equal to the wear and tear of his profession, which demanded much more bodily exertion than we, with our colder and less impassioned manners, can easily form an idea of. With us a speaker, whether in parliament or at the bar, knows little or nothing of the action and delivery of a Roman orator. The only motion we make is with the hand, and too often that is con- fined to a see-saw monotony of perpendicular action which justifies the satirical comparison by Moore of the speaker to a pump " That up and down its awkward arm doth sway, And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away." Very different, however, was it with the orator of Rome^v His whole body was instinct with the fire that burned upon / his lips, and the accents that trembled upon his tongue ) found a corresponding expression in the movement of his / limbs. Cicero's gestures partook of the excitement of his/ mind, and the meaning of his words was enforced by the\ sympathetic action of his frame. He tells us that he threw \ himself, heart and soul, into action when he spoke, and 1 spared no exertion of his limbs, while he strained his voice J to the utmost of its pitch in the open air. Can we then wonder at the consequences which followed ? and that, as Dryden says of Shaftesbury, " A fiery soul, which worketh out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay." 1 He was obliged for a time to retire from the Forum and the Courts, and quitted Rome for Athens, not, as Plutarch says, through fear of Sylla whose displeasure he had, as we have seen, not shrunk from braving in the discharge of his duty but to seek, by change of air and scene, and cessation from work, the restoration of his health. A visit to Athens 1 Old Fuller had anticipated Dryden if his eager soul, biting for anger at the in these lines ; for in his Profane State clog of his body, desired to fret a pas- he thus describes the Duke of Alva : sage through it." ' ' He was of a lean body and visage, as 32 CICERO AT THE BAR. CHAP. in. " mother of arts and eloquence" must have had peculiar charms for Cicero. He was quite at home in the language, and passionately fond of philosophy, which still lingered in the groves of Academus, although oratory had for ever fled from a city which was now nothing more than the chief town of a Roman province, and filled with busy idlers, as was the case a century later, when, as they are described by St. Paul, " all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." The pleasure of Cicero's residence at Athens was enhanced by the society of relatives and friends. His brother Quintus, his cousin Lucius, and his dear friend and life-long corre- spondent, Titus Pomponius Atticus, were with him there ; and for six months they studied together and enjoyed the recreations of the place. 1 Antiochus of Ascalon instructed them in the philosophy of the Academy, while from Zeno and Phaedrus they learnt the tenets of the school of Epicurus, to which Atticus, whose habits were those of a refined and self-indulgent man, especially attached himself. Nor did Cicero, even at Athens, neglect his darling pursuit the art of oratory which, like every other acquisition and accom- plishment, he knew could only be obtained by pains and labour, although in his case it was the labour of love, and eloquence seemed to have settled on his lips in the cradle, as the bees were said to have swarmed on the lips of the infant Pericles. As formerly he had studied under Molo, so now he took lessons in rhetoric and elocution from Demetrius, a native of Syria. Leaving Athens, Cicero travelled in Asia Minor, and sought every opportunity of improving himself as a speaker by soliciting instruction from the most celebrated masters of rhetoric whom he met with on his journey. ' He mentions the names of Menippus of Stratonice, Dionysius of Magnesia, ^Eschylus of Cnidus, and Xenocles of Adramyttium, who contributed to the formation of his style. And as he passed through Rhodes, on his return to Rome, M6lo had the plea- sure of welcoming his old pupil, who did not disdain for the 1 Drumann thinks it is probable that into the Eleusinian mysteries. See the Cicero while at Athens was initiated subject alluded to dc Legg. ii. 14. B.C. 8i-77- RESIDENCE AT ATHENS. 33 third time to place himself under his tuition, and receive from him some kindly corrections of what he himself de- scribed as the too redundant and florid oratory of his youthful years. The metaphor by which he characterised it was that of a river that overflowed its banks ; and to this his elo- quence may be compared to the latest period of his life. It arose, no doubt, from his astonishing command of lan- guage, which came pouring forth from his lips in a full and inexhaustible torrent, and spread over his subject like an inundation of the Nile. At the end of two years Cicero returned to Rome. He was now thirty years old. His health was completely re- established, and, as he himself expresses it, he came back almost a changed man. Sylla had died the year before, and the leading advocates at this time in Rome were Cotta and Hortensius, the latter of whom was eight years Cicero's senior. He was par excellence an advocate ; confining himself chiefly to the courts of law and public trials, and taking little part in the politics of the day. But he rose through the usual gradation of offices to the consulship, to obtain which it was almost essential to be a popular orator, and to address the multitude from the Rostra ; unless, indeed, the candidate were wealthy enough to bribe the suffrages of the people on an enormous scale, and trust to the influence of gold rather than the influence of eloquence. Corruption was now fast eating its way into the heart of Roman institu- tions. . Bribery was shamelessly resorted to, not only for political objects, but to secure verdicts in the courts, where the judiccs, or, as we may almost without inaccuracy call them, jurymen, prostituted their consciences and sold them- selves to the highest bidder. I am not now speaking of the praetorian or centumviral courts, where civil causes were tried, but the public or state trials before judices, who at this time were taken exclusively from the class of senators. It was a long struggle between them and the knights as to which body should have this important jurisdiction. Each accused the other of corruption, and of selling verdicts for a bribe, and each was, beyond all doubt, right in the charge it made. It was probably about this time that Cicero appeared as the advocate of Roscius, the comic actor, in a civil suit, and T) 34 CICERO AT THE BAR. CHAP. in. delivered a speech which, although it has come down to us in an imperfect state, enables us to understand the subject- matter of the action and the argument. Fannius Chserea had given up one of his slaves, named Panurgus, to Roscius, on the terms that the latter was to instruct him in acting, and they were afterwards to share between them whatever he gained by his art. Panurgus received the requisite instruction and went upon the stage, but was not long afterwards killed how, does not appear by a man named O. Flavius. Roscius brought an action for this against the latter, and the management of the case was committed to Fannius. Before, however, it was tried, Roscius compromised the matter, but only so far as regarded his own moiety, as he alleged, and Flavius gave up a farm to him in satisfaction of damages. Several years had elapsed, when Fannius applied to the Praetor for an order that the accounts between him and Roscius might be settled by arbi- tration. Calpurnius Piso was appointed arbitrator. He did not make a formal award, but recommended that Roscius should pay to Fannius 10,000 sesterces (about 90) for the trouble and expense which the latter had incurred in conducting the action against Flavius, and that Fannius should enter into an engagement to pay over to Roscius the half of whatever he recovered from Flavius. Fannius agreed to this, and then brought an action on his own account against Flavius for the loss he had sustained by the death of Panurgus, and got a verdict for 100,000 sesterces ^(about 900). Half of this, according to agreement, ought to have been paid over to Roscius, but Fannius not only retained it, but commenced an action against Roscius for a moiety of the value of the farm which the latter had obtained from Flavius, on the pretext that Roscius had settled the former action and obtained the farm on the partnership account. Cicero maintained that his client owed Fannius nothing. So confident was he of the strength of his case that he offered to consent to a verdict against him, provided the plaintiff could show that the debt now claimed was entered in his ledger. He was willing to allow the entries of the plaintiff to be evidence in his own favour ; and in tendering such an issue we may be very sure that he had good infor- JET. 26-30. ADVOCATE FOR ROSCIUS, COMEDIAN. 35 mation that he might do so with safety. But he made a distinction between the ledger (tabula or codex) and the day- book, or mere memorandum of account (adversaria). Fan- nius wished to put the latter in evidence, but Cicero objected, and said that he could not admit loose papers, full of erasures and interlineations, in which, no doubt, Fannius had inserted the debt when he determined to make his unjust claim. He seized the opportunity of praising the skill and virtue of his client, whose name as an actor has become so famous. " Has Roscius defrauded his partner? Can such an imputation rest upon one who has in him I say it boldly more honesty than he has art ; more truth than accomplishments ; whom the Roman people consider to be a better man than he is an actor ; who, though admirably fitted for the stage on account of his skill in his profession, yet is most worthy of being a senator on account of his modesty and decorum ?" The exact date of Cicero's marriage is not known, but it is generally supposed to have taken place when he was in his thirty-first year. 1 His wife was Terentia, a lady of re- spectable family, whose sister Fabia was a Vestal virgin. With her he lived many years happily, and, apparently, with warm affection on both sides, until he quarrelled with her for some mysterious reason, and the marriage was terminated by a divorce. Plutarch asserts that Terentia was a woman of violent temper ; and Niebuhr goes so far as to say that, " in his marriage Cicero was not happy. His wife was a domineer- ing and disagreeable woman ; and as, owing to his great sen- sibility, he allowed himself to be very much influenced by those who surrounded him, his wife also exercised great power over him, which is the more remarkable because he had no real love for her. It was she who, unfortunately for him, led him to do things which drew upon him the enmity of others." 2 I believe the description here given of Terentia to be most unjust, and, unless I deceive myself, the sequel of the biography will show that she was an amiable woman and a most loving devoted wife, 1 Drumann places the marriage ear- text, it would follow that Cicero's lier, and thinks it took place before daughter was betrothed at the age of Cicero went to Greece. He is in- nine and married at the age of thirteen, fluenced chiefly by the consideration that if it was the year assumed in the 2 Hist, oj Rome, \. 20. SITE OF LILYB^iUM, NOW MARSALA. CHAPTER IV. QU/ESTOR AND CURULE JEi. 31-38. B.C. 76-69. ClCERO had now attained the age of thirty-one years ; when, according to the Roman law, he was eligible for the first and lowest of the public employments of the state the office of Quaestor. The ascending steps in the ladder of advancement were those of Quaestor, ^Edile, Praetor until they culminated in the Consulship, the highest object of ambition to a Roman citizen. Cicero was elected one of the quaestors, and Horten- sius one of the aediles, for the following year; and the province of Sicily was allotted to him, his immediate superior in the government of it being the praetor, Sextus Peducseus. He left Rome at the age of thirty-two, and spent a year in Sicily. That island was then, and continued for many years to be, one of the most fertile of the dominions subject to the Republic. It was, in fact, called the granary of Rome, and B.C. 76-69. OFFICIAL RESIDENCE IN SICILY. 37 the greatest part of the corn consumed in the metropolis was imported from Sicily and Egypt. It was divided into two provincial governments ; one called Lilybaeum, from the chief town in the district of that name the modern Marsala and the other Syracuse. The Romans were accustomed to de- termine the choice of almost all public employments by lot, and the chance of fortune gave Cicero Lilybaeum as his province. We possess few details of his quaestorship, but we know that he discharged the duties of his office with scrupulous honesty and disinterestedness, and conciliated in a remarkable degree the good-will and attachment of the Sicilians. During his year of office there was a severe scarcity at Rome, but Cicero, whose especial duty it was to attend to the exporta- tion of grain from the island, was able, by the measures he took, to alleviate the distress in the capital without inflicting any serious burden on the inhabitants. And he had an op- portunity of exercising his profession as an advocate, for he successfully defended before his praetor some young Romans of good family who were accused of breach of military dis- cipline, if not desertion from the service. During a visit to Syracuse he had the good fortune, while exploring the anti- quities, to discover, near the gate that led to Agrigentum, the tomb of Archimedes. It had been half-buried amidst rubbish, and overgrown with brambles, so that the fellow-citizens of the great mathematician had forgotten its existence - " When Tully paused amidst the wreck of time On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime ; Where at his feet, in honoured dust disclosed, The immortal sage of Syracuse reposed." He knew that on the stone which marked the grave were sculptured the figures of a sphere and a cylinder, and ob- serving these on a small pillar, the top of which peered out amongst the bushes with which the spot was overgrown, he at once discovered the tomb of which he was in search. On leaving the island every mark of respect which it was in the power of the inhabitants to bestow was shown him by the grateful Sicilians. He tells us that extraordinary and unheard-of honours were invented for him, but he does not specify their nature. He quitted the shores of Sicily, leaving behind him the reputation of a disinterested and upright 38 QUAESTOR AND CURULE ^EDILE. CHAP, iv public servant, and carrying with him the good-will and con- fidence of the inhabitants, of which a striking proof was soon to be afforded. l It was characteristic of Cicero's mind to dwell with self- complacency on his own merits. His foible was vanity, and he seldom lost an opportunity of praising himself where he thought that praise had been deserved. He' was pleased with his own conduct as quaestor, and was in hopes that the fame of his administration had extended to Italy, and even gained him a reputation at Rome. But he good-humouredly tells us an anecdote to show how fallacious his expectations were, and how, like many others since his time, he mistook the small pipe of praise in a limited sphere for the trumpet of fame in the great world. In order to understand the point of the story we must bear in mind that there were two pro- vinces in Sicily, the province of Lilybseum and the province of Syracuse, and the quaestor of the one was a distinct person from the quaestor of the other. On landing at Puteoli, near Baiae, which was then a fashion- able watering-place, and crowded with visitors, he met a person, apparently an acquaintance, who asked him on what day he had left Rome, and what the news there was. " I have just come from my province," replied Cicero. " Oh ! to be sure," said the other, " from Africa, I believe?" This was too much, and Cicero answered angrily, " No ; from Sicily." Upon which a bystander interposed, and turning to the questioner, said, " What ! don't you know that this gentleman has been quaestor in Syracuse ?" This little incident opened Cicero's eyes to the true state of the case. It was no use to be angry ; and so, putting his dignity in his pocket not that the Romans really wore pockets, which is an invention of modern civilisation he mingled quietly with the crowd. But he also derived a 1 In his Last Two Pleadings of Cicero " Questi, signor" said the honest Sici- against Verres (London 1812), Kelsall lian, ll fu lacasadove dimoravail Signor mentions that when he visited Marsala Cicerone quand il fu in Marsala" It (the ancient Lilybaeum) he was told by turned out that this was the house where his guide that he could show him the the guide's father had lived, who, like house in which Cicero lived when he his son, was cicerone of Marsala. It is was at Lilybseum. On arriving there curious that Cicero's name should have he found it a white-washed house of a come to signify "lioniser." date not earlier than the sixteenth century. *r. 31-38. HIS VANITY MORTIFIED. 39 useful lesson from the affront to his vanity. He saw the danger of absence if he wished for popularity, and deter- mined from henceforth to keep himself before the people by actual presence amongst them ; and from that time, to use his own words, he stuck close to the Forum never allow- ing his hall-porter {janitor} to deny him to a visitor, even when he had retired to rest. On his return to Rome he betook himself afresh to the duties of an advocate, and was busily engaged in the Forum while the Servile War raged in Italy the insurrection being headed by the bold and desperate leader Spartacus. He \vas killed in battle B.C. 71, and the revolt was finally ex- tinguished by Pompey when he came back from Spain. Five years must now elapse before Cicero would be of the requisite age thirty-eight to hold the office of sedile, the next public dignity open to his ambition. But having been quaestor, and possessing a sufficient qualification in point of fortune, he was eligible for admission into the Senate, and was accordingly placed by the censors on the list or roll of senators. That during the next three or four years he was busily engaged in forensic labours we know from his own account of himself, but we do not possess a single speech, or even fragment of a speech, until B.C.- 70, when, at the age of thirty-seven, he became a candidate for the aedileship. I know not to what cause to attribute this blank in the records of his life. The very names of nearly all the speeches he delivered during this period have perished ; but one of them, Pro M. Ttillio, is mentioned by Quintilian as extant in his time. Drumann thinks it belongs to the year B.C. 71. It seems that there was a quarrel between Tullius and Fabius as to the right to a certain house in Lucania ; and the slaves of Fabius had attacked the slaves of Tullius, killed some of them, and pulled down the house. It was Cicero's proud boast in after years that he had filled every public office at the earliest age at which it could legally be held (anno sud). His splendid reputation as an advocate made him at this time one of the most popular men at Rome, and he was unanimously elected Curule ^Edile for the following year, coming in first of all the competitors, 40 QU^STOR AND CURULE ,DILE. CHAP. iv. or, as we should say, at the head of the poll. But he did not rely merely upon reputation. He took care not to neglect any of the means whereby the favour of his fellow- citizens might be conciliated and their votes secured at future elections. At no time, and in no part of the world, not even in the United States, has canvassing been reduced to such a system, and carried on with 'such persevering assiduity, as at Rome in the days of Cicero. The aspirant to office had to practise on a large scale, and for a long period beforehand, all the arts which are resorted to in this country by the candidate for a borough or county on the eve of a contested election ; and as the number of electors at Rome and in the provinces was enormous, and yet each elector expected some personal attention to himself, the neglect of which he could punish by refusing to vote, or by giving his vote to a rival, the candidates endeavoured, as far as possible, to become acquainted with the names and faces of the electors, and flattered them by civilities when they met them in the streets, the Forum, or the markets. For this purpose it was usual to employ intelligent slaves, whose duty it was to become familiar with the persons of the voters, ferret out information respecting them, and act in some respects like the ear-flappers in Swift's Laputa by directing the candidate's attention, as he walked along, to the different electors, and telling him their names. These useful attend- ants were called nomenclatores, and many amusing passages occur in the Latin writers about them. Of course one of the first acts of courtesy on the part of a candidate is to shake hands with the voter, and this was so universally the custom at Rome on such occasions that the expression " to shake hands " (manu prensare] came to be synonymous with beginning to canvass. But, as may well be supposed, all the arts employed were not so innocent as this. Bribery and corruption were resorted to on an enormous scale, and the venal voters found the exercise of their franchise a profitable trade, notwithstanding that law after law was passed to for- bid and punish bribery. It was so sytematically practised that particular names, such as divisores and sequestres, were given to the agents who distributed the money. 1 1 When Julius Caesar was dictator, he used to furnish the candidates whom B.C. 76-69. CHARACTER OF VERRES. 41 It was during this year and as aedile elect that Cicero undertook one of the most celebrated cases in which he ever was engaged, and one of the very few in which he appeared as public prosecutor. This was the great Verres cause, which of all the trials of antiquity bears in many of its circumstances the nearest resemblance to the impeachment of Warren Hastings at the latter end of the eighteenth century. Caius Verres, whose name has become a byeword for oppression and misrule, had, at the expiration of his year of office as praetor, B.C. 73, the island of Sicily allotted to him as his province, and he held the government for three years. Sicily at that time was a flourishing and prosperous country. The soil was fertile and well cultivated, and as we have seen, large quantities of corn were exported yearly from the island to Rome. The cities were adorned with splendid palaces and temples, the monuments of Grecian taste and magnifi- cence ; and costly treasures of art in the shape of statues, pictures, and ornamental furniture, attested the wealth and luxury of the inhabitants. The government of such a pro- vince afforded a tempting opportunity for plunder, and Verres was not the man to neglect the opportunity which fortune had thrown in his way. It is difficult to credit the tales that are told of his rapacity, and we must search the dark annals of Oriental iniquity to find satraps like him. We might admire his passion for works of art, which amounted almost to insanity, were it not for the means he took to gratify it. But these were a series of cruel robberies. He held the government for three years, and seems to have combined every quality of a bad man and unjust ruler. During that long period the wretched inhabitants were the victims of his rapacity, cruelty, and lust. He imposed heavy and unheard-of duties upon the produce of land and exports of commerce, and put the money into his own pocket. By violent interference with their contracts he reduced to beg- gary the farmers of the revenue. He plundered the towns of their works of art, sparing neither the temples of the gods nor the private dwellings of men. Statues and pictures and he favoured with tickets on which was recommend to you such a one, and hope written " Caesar to such a tribe. I you will vote for him." See Sueton. Ccesar. 42 QUAESTOR AND CURULE &DILE. CHAP. iv. jewelled cups were torn from their owners and appropriated to himself. To take one instance alone : he robbed the oratory of Heius, the Messanian, of a marble Cupid by Praxiteles, two basket-bearers (Canephori) by Polycletus, and a Hercules by Myron, and then pretended that he had bought them. It was not safe to seal a letter with a ring on which there was a well-cut engraving, for if Verres saw the impression he made the owner give him the ring. But he was as cruel as he was rapacious. There was a deep and dreadful dungeon at Syracuse, called Latomiae, formed out of a stone quarry by the tyrant Dionysius, and used as a prison for malefactors. Into this Roman citizens were thrown by Verres, and kept in chains until they were strangled by his orders. One unhappy man amongst them, named Gavius, contrived to escape from the horrible place and fled to Messana. Here he made no secret of his inten- tion to embark for Rome and impeach Verres there. But he was seized by the magistrates, who at Messana were the obse- quious creatures of the governor, and Verres, happening to arrive the same day, condemned him to be first stripped and flogged naked in the market-place and then crucified. While the poor wretch was being scourged no sound escaped his lips except the oft-repeated cry, Civis Romanus stern ! as if, says Cicero, he thought those magic words would have power to save him. But in vain. Verres ordered a cross to be erected on a headland that commanded a view of Italy across the strait, saying in savage mockery, that as Gavius called himself a Roman citizen, he might have the oppor- tunity of looking towards his land. And there he was crucified and died. This may serve as a specimen of the terrible charges which Verres had to meet ; but to go through the long list would be to transcribe whole pages of the orations which Cicero had prepared, but which, owing to the sudden and unexpected collapse of the defence, he had no occasion to deliver. A modern writer has indeed said that he will " venture to raise a doubt whether Verres ought really to be considered that exorbitant criminal whose guilt has been so profoundly im- pressed upon us by the forensic artifices of Cicero;" 1 but 1 De Quincey. See his collected works, article ''Cicero." ^ET. 3 i-3 8 - CONTEST WITH C^ECILIUS. 43 making every allowance for rhetorical exaggeration as to the mode in which the charges were " impressed " by the orator, there can be no doubt that they were substantially true. An attempt has been made of late years to vindicate the character of Robespierre, and when that has been successful but not till then we may expect to see the memory of Verres rescued from the execration of mankind. To drag this great criminal to justice, a deputation from all the principal cities of Sicily, except Syracuse, was sent to Rome, and to whom would they so naturally turn for help as to the man who lived in their memories as the first quaestor of Sicily, and who was then in the zenith of his fame as the most eloquent advocate of his day ? By the Calpurnian law so called from the name of its author, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, a tribune of the people a tribunal, consisting of a body of jurors presided over by a praetor, had been appointed some years before to try offences committed by ex-governors ; and the necessity for this shows how profoundly convinced the Romans were of the corrupt administration of the provinces of the republic. The Sicilians availed themselves of this law, and they applied to Cicero to come forward as the accuser of Verres. He readily consented to conduct the prosecution ; but there was a preliminary difficulty to be got over. Verres had influential friends and connections, and was backed by the sup- port of the powerful families of the Scipios and Metelli. As it was impossible for him altogether to avoid a trial, the best plan for averting the danger seemed to be to make the prose- cution a sham, by employing a friend to conduct it, or at all events some one who would betray the cause he undertook. This was a practice well known at Rome, and called prcevari- catio that is, collusion with an adversary at a trial. A crea- ture of Verres, named Quintus Caecilius Niger, who had been his quaestor in Sicily, was put forward to assert the right to be prosecutor, and Cicero had to contest this all-important point with him at the first stage of the proceedings, when he delivered his famous speech In Cacilium or De Divinatione, and triumphantly vindicated his claim. The preliminary question was called divinatio, because the court decided it on argument alone without any evidence. The speech of Cicero on this occasion is a masterpiece of 44 QUAESTOR AND CURULE .&DILE. CHAP. iv. art. For cutting sarcasm and irony it has never been sur- passed. It suited his purpose to exaggerate the merits of Hortensius as an advocate, in order to contrast them with the deficiencies of Caecilius. It would, he said, be an impar congressus ; and what more ludicrous effect of the disparity between two opposing counsel can be imagined than an un- easy suspicion produced in the mind of the prosecuting counsel by the speech of his antagonist that the client whom that antagonist defends is innocent ? Yet this is what Cicero suggests. Addressing Csecilius he said : " You yourself would begin to be afraid that you were prosecuting an innocent man." He showed that the pretended enmity of Csecilius towards Verres was a sham. If they had quarrelled, they had been reconciled. Besides, he had been mixed up with the frauds and oppressions of Verres, and how could he accuse another of that of which he had been guilty himself? The character of his intel- lect unfitted him to conduct so great and difficult a case. It required a man who could not only speak but attract the attention of his audience. If he had learnt Greek at Athens and not at Lilybseum, and Latin at Rome and not in Sicily, it would still be difficult for him to undertake such an important cause. He had neither the industry, nor the memory, nor the eloquence which it required. And then, with well-affected modesty, he alluded to himself. "You will say perhaps, ' Do you then possess all these qualifications?' I wish indeed I did ! but at all events it has been my constant study from my earliest youth to endeavour to possess them. . . . Even I, who, as everybody knows, have had such practice in the Forum and the courts, that none or few even of the same age have undertaken more causes and who have devoted all the time I could spare from the cases of friends committed to my care to make myself more apt and ready for forensic business I, I say, so help me Heaven ! when the day approaches on which I shall be called upon to defend a client, am not only disturbed in mind, but tremble in every limb." He went on to say that he was not afraid of Hortensius as an opponent. He knew all his arts and style of speaking, for he had often encountered him as an antagonist. But what would become of Caecilius ? Hortensius would so puzzle him and perplex him with dilemmas, that whichever way he turned he would be caught. His mind would get into a pitiable state of confusion, and the very gestures and action of the great orator, to say nothing of his eloquence, would so confound him that his wits would desert him. But there was an easy mode of testing his capacity : " If you, Caecilius, to-day," said Cicero, " can answer me ; if you can venture to change a word of that written speech which some schoolmaster has composed for you, made up of scraps of other men's orations, I shall think you not unfit for the conduct of the prosecution, and able to do your duty in the cause. But if in this rehearsal you cannot cope with me, what must we think will become of you in the real combat with your fierce and eager adversary ?" B.C. 76-69. TRIAL OF VERRES. 45 But Csecilius, conscious of his own incompetency, would rely upon the counsel who were with him in the case. Apuleius, said Cicero, was old enough indeed, but a mere tyro as regarded practice at the bar ; and then there was Allienus in the back rows. " I never paid sufficient attention to him," Cicero contemptuously added, " to know what sort of a speaker he is ; but I see that he is strong, and an adept in the art of making a noise." But there was another reason, he added, for rejecting Caecilius : he had been the quaestor of Verres, and it was an unseemly and ungracious thing for a quaestor to prosecute his praetor. Addressing the court in conclusion he said : " You must determine which of us two you think is most fitted to undertake a case of this magnitude with good faith, with industry, with skill, and with author- ity. If you prefer Caecilius to me, I shall not deem myself lowered in estimation ; but take care that the people of Rome do not suspect that so honest, sincere, and thorough a prosecution as I should conduct, was not to your liking nor agreeable to your order." The point being settled in his favour, Cicero was allowed one hundred and ten days to collect the evidence and pre- pare the case. Accompanied by his cousin Lucius, who afterwards assisted him at the trial, he went to Sicily, and worked so assiduously, that in fifty days he was ready to open the impeachment. At Syracuse and Messana alone did he meet with any difficulty in procuring evidence. But he soon overcame the opposition of the Syracusans, and was able to induce them to erase from the city records a compli- mentary decree which Verres had extorted from their fears. He was invited to meet the Senate in the town-hall, and addressed them in Greek. They asked him why he had been shy in coming to Syracuse to prosecute his inquiries, and he told them that he had expected little assistance from a city which had sent a deputation to Rome to support Verres, and which had a gilt statue of him in its public hall. At Messana he was thwarted by the new praetor Metellus, the successor and friend perhaps relative of Verres, and the inhabitants were forbidden to afford him any assistance. But Cicero had evidence enough, and armed with a mass of documents, and attended by a crowd of witnesses, he crossed over to Velia, on the Bruttian coast, and there, to avoid the brigands who then as now infested that part of Italy, took 46 QUAESTOR AND CURULE ^EDILE. CHAP. iv. ship for Rome, where he arrived nearly two months before he was expected. The great object of Verres and his friends now was delay. If the trial could be put off, or rather spun out, until the fol- lowing year, the chances were that he would escape. Hor- tensius was already consul-elect. He would enter upon office in January. The Metelli were fast friends of Verres, and instead of Glabrio Marcus, Metellus would be praetor at Rome, and Lucius Metellus praetorian governor of Sicily. Many of the members of the court (judices\ as now constituted, would be disqualified from sitting by becoming tribunes or holding other offices ; and by repeated challenges Cicero had at last obtained a jury on whose honesty he thought he could rely. The witnesses would be tampered with by bribes or terrified by threats. The impeachment would drag its slow length along, and men would begin to get tired of it, as was the case with the trial of Warren Hastings. The business days during the remainder of the present year were few, owing to the frequent interruptions caused by festivals and games. If then the prosecution were conducted in the usual manner, with long speeches continued from day to day, it would be easy for Hortensius to prevent the case from being finished within the year. But Cicero was determined not to be so baffled. He was thoroughly in earnest, and cared less to distinguish himself as an orator than to convict the criminal. He therefore abandoned the idea of opening the case in the usual manner, and resolved to bring forward his witnesses at once and let the evidence tell its own tale. The judices were at this period taken exclusively from the senators. This jurisdiction had been restored to them after a cessation of fifty years, during which it had been transferred to the knights. The court met in the temple of Castor, and Glabrio, the city praetor, a just and honest man, was president. It was an exciting and memorable scene. " From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many islands of the ^Egean, from every city or market-town of Sicily, depu- tations thronged to Rome. In the porticoes and on the steps of the temple, in the area of the forum, in the colon- nades that surrounded it, on the house-tops and on the over- ;ET. 31-38. TRIAL OF VERRES. 47 looking declivities, were stationed dense and eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians, bankrupt publicans and corn-merchants, fathers bewailing their children carried off to the praetor's harem, children mourning for their parents dead in the praetor's dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes, or to the great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoenicians whose ancestors had been priests of the Tyrian Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the Zidonian lah ; ' all these and more came flocking,' and the casual multitude was swelled by thousands of spectators from Italy, partly attracted by the approaching games, and partly by curiosity to behold a criminal who had scourged and crucified Roman citizens, who had respected neither local nor national shrines, and who boasted that wealth v/ould yet rescue the murderer, the violater, and the temple-robber from the hand of man and from the Nemesis of the Gods." 1 The trial began on the 7th of August, and the speech with which Cicero opened the case is known by the name of Interrogatio Testium, because it was in fact merely a short introduction to the appearance of the witnesses on whose evidence he relied. 2 In it he complained bitterly of the attempts made by Verres to compel the jury to stifle the prosecution. He hinted intelligibly enough that a bribe had been offered to himself. He spoke boldly and openly of the shameful ex- tent to which judicial bribery was carried, mentioning cases that were notorious, and amongst others that of a senator who had taken money from the accused to be distributed amongst his fellow-jurors for a verdict of acquittal, and money from the prosecutor to give, himself, a verdict of guilty. Well then might he exclaim, Nulla in judiciis severitas, nulla religio, nulla jam existimantiir esse judicia. He warned the court that on the issue depended whether the senators should retain their judicial jurisdiction, and con- trasted the state of things when the knights had that juris- diction with what it was now, declaring that then for fifty years there was not even a suspicion of a bribed verdict. 1 Art. "Verres" in Smith's Gr. and delivered by Cicero. They were pub- Rom. Biography. lished after the condemnation, and re- 2 The other five Verrine orations main an imperishable monument of his which we possess were written but not industry, ability, and eloquence. 48 QUAESTOR AND CURULE ^.DILE. CHAP. iv. He told them that so confident were Verres's friends that he would get off if the trial could only be procrastinated until the following year, that when Hortensius was declared consul - elect, and was returning from the Campus Martius escorted by his supporters, Curio ran up to Verres and embraced him, crying out, " I congratulate you, fear nothing ; to-day's election has secured you an acquittal." There never was, he said, a tribunal since courts existed in Rome composed of such august and illustrious members as the present. If it failed in its duty, as it would be impossible to find in the whole body of senators men more fit for the office, the con- clusion would be that the jurisdiction must be transferred to some other class. The usual course in a prosecution was, he admitted, to have all the speeches first, and hear the witnesses afterwards, but he intended now to produce the evidence on each article of charge separately, and he concluded by for- mally stating that which he brought forward first. " We say that Caius Verres, whilst he has in many things acted rapaciously and cruelly towards Roman citizens and cm- allies, and nefariously towards gods and men, has besides car- ried off from Sicily forty millions of sesterces contrary to law." The examination of the witnesses lasted nine days, but the defence broke down at once. Hortensius seems to have been a bad hand at cross-examination, and lost his temper. He put only a few questions and then abandoned the case. It was during the contest that Cicero made one of his sar- castic jokes. Hortensius (in violation of the Cincian law which required the services of advocates at Rome to be gratui- tous) accepted as a present from Verres a valuable image of the Sphinx, one of the spoils he had brought from Sicily, and while cross-examining a witness he said, " You speak in riddles ; I cannot understand you!" "Well!" interrupted Cicero, " that's odd, for you have a Sphinx at home to solve them." Verres soon saw that the evidence was too strong for him to get over, and he slunk away from Rome on the third day after the trial began. He was condemned to banishment, and a heavy fine was also imposed upon him. He retired to Marseilles with a large portion of his ill-gotten wealth, and the works of art he had carried off from Sicily ; and we are told that Antony afterwards placed his name in the pro- B.C. 76-69. DUTIES OF CURULE ^EDILE. 49 scription list because he would not part with some Corinthian vases which the Triumvir coveted. In the following year Cicero entered on the office of Curule ^Edile, which gave him the right to the curule chair (sella curulis 1 ), a seat of ivory like the Lord Chancellor's marble chair in Westminster Hall in former times ; and also to the jus imaginum, or privilege of placing his waxen mask in his hall, which was the heraldic emblazonment of ancient Rome, and in fact ennobled the family of the magistrate who was entitled to the honour. A Roman family was as proud of the number of masks of ancestors some of them blackened by age which it could show in the atrium or hall of the house, as in modern days an English family is of the quarter- ings on its shield. These portraits were painted masks of wax, enclosed generally in wooden cases, and on the occasion of funerals of members of the same family they were worn by persons who represented the deceased ancestors, and were decorated with all the ornaments and insignia of the proper offices. They sat in curule chairs round the rostra when the funeral oration was delivered. Both Polybius and Pliny mention the striking resemblance of these masks to the originals ; but we cannot but think that they must have presented a hideous show, and seemed like a set of gibbering ghosts summoned from the shades to witness in silent solemnity the obsequies of their descendants. In Pliny's time the masks appear to have been discontinued, and were replaced by busts and statues of more durable and costly materials. 2 The duties of Curule ^Edile are detailed by Cicero in one of his orations against Verres. The nearest equivalent to such an office in this country is that of First Commissioner of Public Works, and in some points the functions are analo- gous. They were two in number, besides two " plebeian" sediles, whose duties were so nearly the same that it is hardly worth while to point out the difference. They had the care of the public buildings (cedes) and especially the temples, also 1 Aulus Gell. (Noct. Att. iii.) derives senate-house in a carriage (curnis] in the word curiilis from currus, because, which was a seat called curulis. as he says, certain magistrates in the 2 See Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's Credi- early times of the republic used as a bility of Early Roman History, vol. i. mark of honour to be carried to the 183. 50 QUAESTOR AND CURULE AEDILE. CHAP. iv. of the streets and markets, and superintended the police of the city. They also provided for the celebration of the great religious festivals at Rome, and exhibited the annual games in honour of different deities of which the Romans were so passionately fond. This of course entailed consider- able expense, and it does not appear that there was any salary attached to the office, or any fund upon which the aedile could draw except his own resources. But just as mayors in corporate towns in England differ in the frequency and cost of their entertainments during their year of office, so the aediles of Rome differed in the outlay they lavished upon the public shows. It gave those who were ambitious an admirable opportunity of buying popular favour, with a view to the higher honours of the state. Many men ruined themselves by the profusion and extravagance of the spec- tacles and games they exhibited, incurring an expense of which it is hardly possible in these times to form an ade- quate conception. Amongst those whose names have been handed down to us as conspicuous for the magnificence of their shows while filling the office of aedile are Atticus, 1 Julius Caesar, Lentulus Spinther, and yEmilius Scaurus. It was customary, during the festivals of the year, for the aediles to adorn the Forum with all possible splendour, and for this purpose they borrowed from friends and others works of art, such as pictures and statues. Thus Cicero mentions that Caius Claudius borrowed a famous Cupid in marble by Praxiteles, from Heius, a wealthy native of Messina in Sicily, and contrasts his conduct in borrowing and restoring it with the conduct of Verres, who plundered Heius's sacristy or chapel of the same Cupid. Verres lent to Hortensius and Metellus, when they filled the office of aedile, the statues which he had carried off from Sicily, and a magnificent dis- play they must have made. Plutareh tells us that the Sicilians assisted Cicero in many ways during his sedileship, out of gratitude for his services, and in memory of his con- duct as their quaestor at Rome. He exhibited the usual shows and games, but could rely upon other sources of popularity, and avoided unnecessary 1 Cicero says that Atticus ransacked works of art to give eclat to his sedile- aU Greece and the Greek islands for ship. Pro Domo, 43. ,ET. 31-38. DEFENDS FONTEIUS. 5 1 expense. He says himself that his aedileship did not cost him much. At the same time it was necessary to do the thing on a liberal scale. 1 The people did not like to be balked of their spectacles, and a stingy aedile would have a poor chance of the consulship. In the meantime Cicero did not neglect his profession as an advocate. He defended Fonteius in a criminal case, and Caecina in a civil action, and we possess both the speeches he delivered, but the former only in an imperfect shape. Fonteius had held the praetorian government of Gaul for three years, and was accused of extortion and corruption by the inhabitants of the province. Cicero challenged the other side to produce a single trustworthy witness or piece of evi- dence to substantiate the charge. Gallic witnesses were not to be believed upon their oaths. Could they give credit to the testimony of men who belonged to a nation which re- tained to that day the horrid and barbarous custom of human sacrifices ? Were they to be frightened by the threats of those " cloaked and trousered-" (sagatos et braccatos) foreigners who swaggered in the Forum, declaring that there would be a fresh Gallic war if Fonteius were acquitted ? These were the men whose ancestors had pillaged the Oracle of Delphi, and besieged the Capitol of Rome. It would be a disgrace and shame if the news reached Gaul that Roman senators and knights gave their verdict, not because they believed the evidence of Gallic witnesses, but because they were terrified by their threats. One of the charges against Fonteius was, that he had accepted bribes to relieve some of the provincials from the burden of making roads, or to take no notice if they were badly made ; but this Cicero disposed of by showing the orders which Fonteius had given to his lieutenants on the subject, and the way in which those orders had been obeyed. Another charge was, that he had exacted illegal duties upon wine ; but that part of the speech in which his advocate dealt with this is lost. He quoted numerous in- stances in which the testimony of Roman nobles of the highest character had been discredited, because they were supposed to be influenced by personal enmity against the 1 Quanquam intelligo in nostra civi- ut splendor seclilitatum ab optimis viris tate inveterasse et jam bonis temporibus postuletur. De Off, ii. 16. 5 2 AND CURULE ALDILE. CHAP. iv. accused, and argued that, a fortiori, the evidence of men such as the Gauls, who hated Fonteius, ought to be disbelieved. These were not times when Rome could afford to lose a man like him. He pointed to him as he stood before them, with his mother and vestal sister clinging to his embrace. Other women might become wives and mothers, but to Fonteia, a vestal virgin, her brother was the only being on whom she could lavish her affections. Let them take care that the everlasting fire that burnt upon the altar, kept up by her nightly vigils, was not extinguished by her tears. It con- cerned the honour of the Roman people that it should not be said that the threats of Gauls had more influence with them than a Vestal's prayers. It would be impossible to make the next case, in which he appeared for Caecina, interesting. The question turned upon the point, whether illegal force had been used in ejecting Caecina from some landed property which he claimed in right of his deceased wife, who had left him her heir. 1 During Cicero's year of office as curule aedile the newly- built temple of Jupiter Maximus on the Capitol was solemnly consecrated. The old one had been struck by lightning, and burnt in the time of Sylla, B.C. 83, fourteen years before. The new one was also destined to be consumed by fire, not, however, from the lightning of heaven, but the hand of man, in the rage of civil war. It was set on fire and de- stroyed in the struggle for empire between Vitellius and Vespasian. 1 To this period most probably may be referred the speeches Pro Matridio and Pro Oppio. The latter is chiefly known from a few fragments found in Quintilian. Oppius was quaestor of Aurelius Cotta, governor of Asia Minor, and seems to have drawn his sword upon the proconsul. CHAPTER V. CORRESPONDENCE AND DOMESTIC LIFE. JET. 39. B.C. 68. THE year following his aedileship, B.C. 68, is that in which Cicero's extant correspondence first begins. It is a rich mine of information, and furnishes the best materials, not only for his own biography, but a great part of the history of the time. Nowhere else do we find such a vivid picture of contemporary events. We seem to be present at the shifting scenes of the drama, as the plot unfolds itself which involves the destinies of Rome. We hear the groans of the expiring Republic, which had been mortally wounded during the long civil wars of Marius and Sylla, and was fast sinking under the flood of social and political corruption which is sure to follow in the train of civil war. At one time we watch with eager impatience the arrival of a courier at Tusculum, with a letter from Atticus telling his friend the news of the day, and in Cicero's reply we read all the fluctuations of hope and fear which agitated him during the momentous crisis of his country's fate. At another we contemplate the great orator and statesman in the seclusion of his villa, as a plain country gentleman, busying himself with improvements on his estate, building farm-houses, laying out and planting shrubberies, and turning watercourses, or amusing himself with pictures and statues, and the various objects which inter- est a man of refined and cultivated taste. At another we find him at Rome sick, weary, and disgusted with the din of strife, mistrusting everybody where no one seems worthy of trust, and happing ever on the vanity of ambition and the worth- lessness of popular applause. We see him at one moment exalted to the summit of human glory when saluted in the 54 CORRESPONDENCE 6- DOMESTIC LIFE. CHAP. v. Senate by the proud title of Pater Patrice, and at another sunk in the lowest depths of despair when he is a wandering fugitive exile from Rome, and tells his wife that while he writes he is blinded by his tears. There is a charm in these letters to which we have nothing comparable in all that antiquity has spared us. To say nothing of their exquisite latinity, and not unfrequently their playful wit, they have a freshness and reality which no nar- rative of bygone events can ever hope to attain. We see in them Cicero as he was. We behold him in his strength and in his weakness the bold advocate, and yet timid and vacil- lating statesman the fond husband the affectionate father the kind master the warm-hearted friend. I speak not now of his political correspondence, written with an object in view, and with a consciousness that it might one day be made public, but his private letters to his relatives and friends, in which he poured out the whole secret of his soul, and laid bare his innermost thoughts, yearning for sympathy and clinging for support. To quote the words of De Quin- cey: 1 "In them we come suddenly into deep lulls of angry passion here upon a scheme for the extension of literature by a domestic history, or by a comparison of Greek with Roman jurisprudence; there again upon some ancient prob- lem from the quiet fields of philosophy." They show that he was a man of genial soul, and of a most kind and amiable disposition what Dr. Johnson would have called a thoroughly " clubable" person. He is never more at home than when he is indulging in a little pleasant banter and irony, as when he makes fun of Trebatius the lawyer, who had left the atmosphere of the courts, to turn soldier and serve under Caesar in Gaul. But he is always the scholar and the gentle- man ; and no one had more of that refined polish which the Romans described by the expressive word urbanitas. I do not think that in the whole of his correspondence a single coarse word or vulgar idea occurs. It is not so in his speeches. There he often indulged in language which is, according to modern notions, offensive to good taste and even decency, as when he attacked Piso and Gabinius and Antony. But that was the fault of the plain-speaking time in which he lived, 1 Collected Works, article " Cicero." ,*:T. 39. CHARACTER OF HIS LETTERS. 55 rather than of the man ; just as the occasional coarseness of Shakespeare must be attributed to the age in which he was born, and not to his own gentle nature. How pleasant" it is to hear him giving his friend Atticus a message from the little Tullia, or Tulliola, as he often calls her making use of the endearing diminutive so significant in the ancient Latin and modern Italian to remind him of his promise to make her a present, and afterwards telling him that Tullia had brought an action against him for breach of contract ; or to find him speaking of his* only son, " the honey-sweet Cicero," that " most aristocratic child," as he playfully styles him, who was with his sister in his youthful days the pride and delight of his life. We see him lounging on the shore at his villa near Antium, and there penning a letter to confess that he is in no humour to work, and amuses himself with counting the waves as they roll upon the beach. We would not willingly exchange that letter to Atticus, in which he says of himself that he knows he has acted like a "genuine donkey" (me asinum germanum fuisse), for the stiffest and most elaborate of his political epistles. From his villa at Formiae he writes to complain of the visits of troublesome country neighbours, and says he is so bored by them that he is tempted to sell the place ; and therefore, while they annoy him, there is a capital oppor- tunity for a purchaser. His fondness for books amounted to a passion. He tells Atticus, that when his librarian Tyrannic had arranged his books it seemed as if his house had got a soul ; and he is in raptures with a book-case when ornamented with the gay colours of the parchment-covers (sittyba?) in which the precious rolls were kept. We find him at one time begging his friend to send him two of his assistant librarians to help Tyrannic to glue the parchments, and to bring with them a thin skin of parchment to make indexes. He tells Atticus on no account to part with his library, as he is putting by his sav- ings (vindemiolas) to be able to purchase it as a resource in his old age. By " library" Cicero means the copies of manu- scripts which Atticus was having made at Athens by some of his clever slaves ; and what would we not now give to possess one such set of manuscripts as were put on board a 56 CORRESPONDENCE & DOMESTIC LIFE. CHAP. v. trireme at the Piraeus and consigned to Cicero in his Tus- culan villa . ?1 In the midst of all his anxiety and disgust at the state of public affairs, when it was evident that the old Republic was tottering to ruin, he says that he supports and refreshes himself with literature, and would rather sit in a well-known seat at his friend's country house, with the bust of Aristotle over his head, than in a curule chair. At another time he says that he does not envy Crassus his wealth, and can despise the broad acres (vices et prata) of others, if he has it only in his power to purchase books. In one of his letters he playfully finds fault with his freed- man Tiro for an inaccurate use of a Latin adverb fideliter. In another he defends himself against criticism of Atticus, and maintains that he was right in putting the preposition in before Pir