CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 University of 
 California 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DG 260.C5P48 
 
 Cicero : 
 
 3 1924 028 298 937 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028298937 
 
SEMICENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 1868-1918 
 
CICERO: A BIOGRAPHY 
 
CICERO 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 TORSTEN PETERSSON 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 
 BERKELEY 
 
 1920 
 
 u 
 
 C U \< Kill 
 i'UNIVEKMl Y 
 
TO 
 
 IVAN MORTIMER LINFORTH 
 
 Quid dulcius quam habere quicum omnia 
 audeas sic loqui ut tecum ? 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE POINT OF VIEW 14 
 
 CHAPTER III. ARPINUM 22 
 
 CHAPTER IV. ROME 33 
 
 CHAPTER V. IN THE COURTS 68 
 
 1. Importance of Oratory 68 
 
 2. Beginnings 75 
 
 3. Publishing 87 
 
 4. Vacation 96 
 
 5. Manner of Pleading 102 
 
 6. Law 110 
 
 7. Professional Standard 117 
 
 CHAPTER VI. THE PROSECUTION OF VERRES 123 
 
 1. The Trial _ 123 
 
 2. The Facts 141 
 
 CHAPTER VII. IN POLITICS 171 
 
 1. Magistracies 171 
 
 2. Pompet 176 
 
 3. Consular Canvass 191 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. IN PRIVATE LIFE 203 
 
 CHAPTER IX. THE CONSULSHIP 222 
 
 1. Caesar's Scheme 222 
 
 2. Against Rullus - 228 
 
 3. Constant Activity 233 
 
 4. Beginning of the Conspiracy 240 
 
 5. The First and Second Catilinarians 249 
 
 6. Murena 257 
 
 7. The Third Catilinarian _ 262 
 
 8. The Fourth Catilinarian 275 
 
 CHAPTER X. THE TRIUMVIRATE - 286 
 
 1. Eminence and Political Ideal 286 
 
 2. Ideal Fails 294 
 
 3. Driven into Exile 306 
 
 4. Exile - 315 
 
 5. Return to Rome 323 
 
 6. Cicero Submits 330 
 
PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XI. AUTHORSHIP 343 
 
 1. The Scipionic Circle and Literary Enthusiasms 343 
 
 2. Foe Glory 352 
 
 3. For Rome 360 
 
 CHAPTER XII. RHETORIC 366 
 
 1. The Works 366 
 
 2. Theory 373 
 
 3. Practise 406 
 
 4. De Oratore 412 
 
 5. Brutus and Orator - 433 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. ON THE STATE - 443- 
 
 1. De Re Publica 443 
 
 2. Scipio's Dream 451 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. IN OILICTA 462 
 
 1. Civil War Impending - 462 
 
 2. Cicero Imperator 467 
 
 3. Between Scylla and Charybdis 471 
 
 4. Going and Coming 476 
 
 CHAPTER XV. UNDER CAESAR 480 
 
 1. Civil War 480 
 
 2. The Dictatorship 495 
 
 3. Death or Tullia . 515 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. PHILOSOPHY 537 
 
 1. Hortensius 537 
 
 2. Academica 540 
 
 3. De Finibus 547 
 
 4. Tusculan Disputations 554 
 
 5. Metaphysics 565 
 
 6. Old Age and Friendship 571 
 
 7. Duty 575 
 
 8. Cicero's Originality 580 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST BATTLE 592 
 
 1. After the Ides 592 
 
 2. Philippics 615 
 
 3. The End 679 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY , 686 
 
 INDEX 690 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of this book is to give as comprehensive an 
 account of Cicero as a single volume will permit. It endeavors 
 to keep a proper proportion between his political activities and 
 his accomplishments as an orator and a writer of essays and 
 letters. It aims to present the Roman background, which alone 
 can make the narrative intelligible to any but the special student ; 
 to determine and to make clear the Roman attitude toward a 
 man's work in the world, the political atmosphere of Rome, the 
 spirit in which the orators spoke, and the Roman view of rhetoric, 
 philosophy, and authorship. Above all, it seeks to give a nar- 
 rative of Cicero's life as it unfolded from one period to another, 
 and to convey a little of the spirit that animated him. 
 
 The manuscript of this book has been read, completely or in 
 part, and assistance of various kinds has been given me by several 
 of my colleagues. Professor J. T. Allen and Professor A. W. 
 Ryder have offered many helpful suggestions; Professor M. E. 
 Deutsch has placed a number of lecture notes at my disposal ; 
 Professor 0. M. Washburn, who as Manager of the University 
 Press has skillfully supervised the printing of the book, has sug- 
 gested numerous improvements ; and Professor R. F. Scholz, now 
 at the University of "Washington, has given me the benefit of his 
 knowledge of Roman history and politics. Professor I. M. Lin- 
 forth has practically acted as editor, and has read the entire 
 manuscript with great care ; there is scarcely a page in the book 
 which has not profited by his keen and sympathetic criticism. 
 To Professor G. R. Noyes, finally, I owe perhaps most. His 
 thorough scholarship, his eminent literary gifts, and, more than 
 all else, his generous appreciation and encouragement, have been 
 of priceless value to me in more ways than can readily be de- 
 scribed. It gives me great pleasure to express here my heartfelt 
 gratitude to these gentlemen. 
 
 TORSTEN PETERSSON. 
 February, 1919. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in Arpinum, a small town 
 about sixty miles from Rome, on the third of January, 106 b.c. 
 While still a boy, he was taken to Rome, where he lived almost 
 continuously for the rest of his life. He began to plead cases 
 in the forum when he was about twenty-five, rose to considerable 
 prominence within a year or two, and at the age of thirty-six 
 was recognized as the most eminent pleader at the Roman 
 bar. Meanwhile he had entered upon his career as a magistrate, 
 and at forty-two was elected to the consulship, the highest office 
 in Rome. As consul he suppressed the Catilinarian conspiracy, 
 and was thus led to take a leading part in Roman politics. The 
 formation of the first triumvirate caused his exile, in 58 B.C. ; 
 but he was recalled the following year. During the rest of his 
 life he gave much of his time to study and writing, though he 
 continued to be active in politics and, especially, in the courts. 
 After the assassination of Caesar he directed the opposition 
 against Antony in an effort to save the republican government. 
 He was murdered in the proscriptions of the second triumvirate 
 on the seventh of December, 43 b.c. 
 
 More is known about Cicero than about any other person of 
 the ancient world. His prominence in his own day as an orator, 
 statesman, and writer, and, above all, the great popularity of 
 his numerous works, made him loom large in the Roman con- 
 sciousness. He was one of the great Romans, and was much 
 imitated and discussed. Quintilian, in his work on oratory, 
 frequently refers to him, and advises his readers that they can 
 measure their own progress by their appreciation of Cicero. 
 Pliny the Younger, who like Cicero was an orator and a man of 
 letters, set about consciously fashioning his life after that of 
 
2 INTBODUCTOEY 
 
 Cicero. He made no secret of his ambition to emulate his 
 great predecessor, frequently instituting modest comparisons 
 between Cicero and himself, and publishing a collection of letters 
 addressed to his friends, the contents and phraseology of which 
 are largely due to Cicero. The orations of Cicero were early 
 used as text books for the teaching of oratory, and the events of 
 his life became the subject of declamations in the rhetorical 
 schools. The historians of the empire discuss him as a statesman. 
 Other writers of almost every kind refer to him, and commen- 
 taries were written on several of his works. In addition to this, 
 Cicero's own freedman, Tiro, wrote a biography of his patron, 
 which undoubtedly contained much information of an intimate 
 and gossipy nature. This biography has been lost. Finally, 
 Plutarch wrote a life of Cicero, .still extant, in which he gathered 
 together much of this information. He fused the true and the 
 false without critical judgment, but his account contains many 
 things which would not otherwise have been known to us, and 
 his view of Cicero is substantially correct. 1 
 
 All this writing about Cicero, however, which culminated as 
 it were in Plutarch's life of him, as well as the scattered refer- 
 ences and opinions in the following few centuries, gives scarcely 
 more than is known about any one of several prominent Romans. 
 Our unique knowledge of Cicero comes from his own extant 
 writings, which have an aggregate extent materially greater than 
 that of Gibbon's History of the Roman Empire. In addition to 
 numerous fragments of various kinds, both in prose and in verse, 
 and sometimes of considerable length, the extant works of Cicero 
 consist of fifty-eight speeches, about two thousand pages of 
 philosophy and rhetoric, and some eight hundred letters. Much 
 of this would naturally be impersonal, since it is concerned with 
 other people's affairs or with the discussion of abstract subjects, 
 but in the case of Cicero even the most impersonal of his works 
 are largely autobiographical. This is due in some degree to 
 Cicero's personality, but far more to the . character of the times. 
 
 i See Gudeman. 
 
THE SPEECHES 3 
 
 The speeches, delivered either in the courts, before the senate, 
 or in the forum, are not confined to impersonal arguments or 
 discussions. Public life in republican Rome had a man-to-man 
 attitude. The personal character and influence of a pleader in 
 a lawsuit, for instance, was of immense importance, and' was 
 looked upon as one of the strongest arguments for the client. 
 If the upright Cato was willing to vouch for a man by taking 
 his case, much was gained even before the trial began. As a 
 result, Cicero in his legal speeches frequently explains how he 
 came to take the case and what his relations were both to his 
 client and to the latter 's opponent. Often a speech for another 
 man becomes a defense of Cicero's own political activity, since 
 the opposing speaker tried to weaken Cicero's side by attack- 
 ing Cicero himself ; all of which was quite according to accepted 
 standards. The personal element in the orations delivered before 
 the senate or the people would naturally be even greater, as the 
 character and position of the speaker were often of as much 
 importance as the subject under discussion. The orator said 
 not merely that such or such a line of action was preferable ; he 
 dilated on his own unselfish motives and on the wisdom and 
 honesty of his past career, incidentally showing little consider- 
 ation for his opponent's. 
 
 There was, however, still another circumstance that makes for 
 self -revelation in these speeches. When published, they took the 
 place of modern newspaper reports and interviews. They were 
 intended not merely to spread the author's professional reputa- 
 tion and to give to the public his view of an important case or 
 public question, but also to set before the Romans the kind of 
 picture of himself that he wished them to have. Cicero often 
 describes the manner in which his words and those of his 
 opponents were received; he gives expression to his hopes and 
 his fears about the future, and his opinions about the past and 
 the present; he even talks about his friends and his family. 
 
4 INTBODUCTOBT 
 
 Nothing seems too personal for inclusion. The speeches suggest 
 at times the orations, after-dinner talks, personal reminiscences, 
 and revelations of family intimacies that are poured out during 
 an American presidential campaign. And they are scarcely more 
 trustworthy. It was recognized that an orator was pleading for 
 his client or for himself. Some speakers did not publish their 
 orations, in order to escape the charge of inconsistency. Cicero, 
 like most of the orators, published; and laughingly admits that 
 he may have changed his mind, or that the opinions expressed in 
 a former speech may have been colored by circumstances. 
 
 Of Cicero's writings on rhetoric and philosophy, the essays, 
 six are concerned with the art of pleading and public speaking; 
 the others are philosophical. Amonj? the latter are two on politi- 
 cal science, which the ancients classed as a branch of philosophy. 
 In the three most important rhetorical essays Cicero sets forth his 
 view of oratory. One discusses the aims of an orator and his 
 training; another contains a history of oratory, including some- 
 thing about Cicero himself ; the third gives a picture of the ideal 
 orator. All this, though containing much of the rhetorical science 
 of the time, is based on Cicero 's own thought and experience, and 
 is permeated with his personality. The philosophical essays — 
 except the De Officiis, on Duty — are less personal. Their chief 
 aim is to introduce the Romans to Greek philosophy and Greek 
 political thinking; they are, therefore, largely in the nature of 
 adaptations from Greek works; but all of them nevertheless 
 reveal something, now more and now less, of Cicero's own opin- 
 ions. He had read about matters philosophical and political, 
 but he had also thought about them and lived with them. 
 
 These essays were intended for a smaller, more select public 
 than the orations, and therefore contain the private opinions 
 of Cicero even when these ran contrary to the current beliefs that 
 governed Roman public life. Thus, in the matter of religion, 
 the educated Romans, whether pious or not, usually did not 
 believe in Jupiter, Minerva, and the other gods of the Roman 
 
TEE ESSAYS 5 
 
 pantheon, but as state officials they observed a decent regard 
 for them, and were glad to hold priesthoods. Caesar, though 
 a thoroughgoing sceptic, was for a large part of his life pontifex 
 maximus, the head of the Roman state religion; the office was 
 important politically. Cicero was on the board of augurs, whose 
 duty it was to practise divination, but he did not believe that 
 the gods vouchsafed to mortals a view into the future. This 
 belief of his is set forth in the De Divmatione, where he not 
 only makes his attitude perfectly clear, but represents his brother 
 Quintus as calling attention to the discrepancy between his public 
 utterances and his private opinions. "Why did you make such 
 a moving appeal to Jupiter while you were speaking in the 
 forum, when you don't believe that Jupiter helps us?" And 
 Cicero's reply makes it obvious that the father of the gods had 
 his statues about the city for the sake of the dear public. 
 
 The essays have various external characteristics that offer an 
 opportunity for personal revelations. The manner in which the 
 dialogue form is used in the De Divinatione has just been indi- 
 cated. It was used in the same way in the other dialogues ; and 
 most of the essays are dialogues. Sometimes Cicero himself is the 
 chief speaker; at other times the conversation is carried on by 
 personal friends of his, many of whom clamored for this kind 
 of publicity; at still other times the speakers are men of past 
 ages, but in these cases Cicero usually makes one of them his 
 mouthpiece. The dialogues have ordinarily somewhat extended 
 introductory scenes, undoubtedly founded on reality. Not that 
 any particular conversation need be supposed to have taken 
 place under the exact circumstances described, but something 
 similar had happened. They are Dichtung, but also Wahrheit; 
 and often reveal matters otherwise unknown. The only extant 
 description of his childhood home is such a scene. And finally, 
 whether dialogues or not, the essays are addressed to a definite 
 individual, purporting to answer some special need or request 
 of his. Although this does not always have any influence, its 
 
6 INTBODUCTOB¥ 
 
 effect is sometimes very marked, as in the work on Duty, 
 addressed to Cicero's son. In this essay, and in some others, 
 it gives to the writing a definite point of view, which makes 
 for clarity and power, and imparts to it a warmth rarely if 
 ever found in modern essays, which are addressed to nobody 
 in particular. But the most direct, and perhaps the most valu- 
 able and interesting, personal revelations in the essays are 
 found in the prefaces that introduce several of them. These are 
 occasionally of considerable length. They resemble the old- 
 fashioned epistles to the gentle readers of a century or two ago, 
 in explaining Cicero's aim and attitude as a writer; but they 
 also contain singularly frank comments on persons and events 
 that had particularly influenced him. They are his meditations ; 
 the only avowedly, and at the same time intimately, autobio- 
 graphical parts of his writings. There is nothing quite like them 
 in the rest of ancient literature. 
 
 The third large group of Cicero's extant writings consists 
 of his correspondence. There are about eight hundred letters 
 written by him, and one hundred addressed to him by various 
 people. They were published posthumously, some of them long 
 after his death. He had had an intention, never carried out, of 
 publishing a selection from his correspondence ; if he had done 
 so, he would certainly have held back many of the letters that 
 we now have. He wrote a great many more than are extant. 
 Twice as many are supposed to have been actually published, 
 and some may have been suppressed, to shield certain persons, 
 such as Emperor Augustus. The suppression was not made for 
 the benefit of Cicero, as is clear from the most casual reading; 
 nor is it at all likely that there was any revision. The letters 
 come as unchanged from the hands of Cicero and his correspon- 
 dents as copying would allow. 
 
 The correspondence of an ancient Roman was naturally 
 different from ours. He had no newspapers, no telegraph, and 
 no telephone. When away from the city, he would receive all 
 
THE LETTEMS 7 
 
 Iris political and financial news through letters. His own reports 
 would be in the form of letters to the senate, in character much 
 like the reports of a modern representative in a foreign country ; 
 but if he wished to advertise his doings for political purposes, 
 this had to be done in letters to friends, who would read these 
 in the senate, or in other ways let them be known. When in or 
 near the city, a Roman would also make more extensive use of 
 letter writing than is the case with us. Cicero in a suburb and 
 Atticus in Rome exchanged frequent notes, whereas, under 
 modern conditions, they would have used the telephone. 
 
 Since letter writing filled a larger place in ancient than in 
 modern life, 2 it received unusual attention. The Greek rheto- 
 ricians, always prompt to make any current practise a subject 
 for instruction, and always thorough and systematic, taught the 
 art of correspondence under various subdivisions. The Roman 
 boys learned to write letters of news, letters of exhortation, let- 
 ters of a pleasant, chatty character, in which, according to 
 proper teaching, wit was the important ingredient. And the 
 Romans in after life did not forget the teaching. Good letter 
 writing was a sign of good breeding. In the early empire letters 
 had become a recognized form of literature, so that Pliny the 
 Younger published a voluminous correspondence about his own 
 thoughts and experiences, just as he might have published a 
 collection of lyric poems. Letters were by that time a sort of 
 inoffensive autobiography. But even Cicero and his friends 
 wrote many letters that would not have been written today, 
 which were solely the expression of their cultivated tastes. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that all Romans were good letter 
 writers — some of the epistles sent to Cicero indicate the contrary 
 — but Cicero himself possessed the necessary qualities in a very 
 unusual degree. 3 He had wit, grace, a vivid imagination, and 
 an open eye. He had the artist's vanity of wishing to please, 
 
 2 See especially Peter, Der Brief etc. 
 
 3 On Cieero in his letters, see particularly Boissier, pp. 1-23. 
 
8 INTRODUCTOBT 
 
 and he understood his correspondents. He wrote briefly to those 
 who were chary of words ; he was serious with the serious and 
 jocose with the wits. The great majority of his letters are so 
 perfectly adjusted to the addressees that these can be recognized 
 without the superscription. Cicero is infinitely varied and 
 adaptable. His replies to letters of criticism or enmity, in the 
 few cases where they can be put side by side with the latter, are 
 veritable object lessons in diplomacy and good manners. The 
 compliments he addresses to his friends seem to be of the very 
 kind that they would have liked. His letters of recommendation, 
 of which there are many, are varied and graceful, even when 
 they necessarily contain but little. Cicero had the gift of saying 
 nothing or next to nothing with urbanity and charm; but he 
 also had an even greater ability of giving expression to deep 
 feeling. He was a man of strong emotions. He hated whole- 
 heartedly, though rarely, and could express his hatred with a 
 concentrated fury or a malicious sarcasm that would be difficult 
 to parallel. But his love for people was greater than his hatred. 
 His affection and admiration for his brother Quintus and for 
 Atticus was profound and unwavering. It is only on rare 
 occasions 4 that these feelings would find direct expression in the 
 course of a frequent correspondence, but when this happens, 
 Cicero writes with such ardor, self-abandonment, and gratitude 
 for the gift of these men's love that the reader feels himself 
 blessed as with a benediction. It is a source of gladness to know 
 that such friendships have existed. 
 
 The letters to Quintus and to Atticus contain the most intimate 
 revelation of Cicero. Of these the letters to Atticus are by far 
 the more important, for those to Quintus are much less numerous 
 and were written within a period of seven consecutive years. 
 During that time, furthermore, Quintus was far away from his 
 brother, so that the interchange of letters took considerable time ; 
 consequently Cicero did not write almost daily, as he did at 
 
 * Att. 1, 17, is the best example. 
 
ATTICVS 9 
 
 times to Atticus, and the letters do not give a picture of his 
 moods as they changed from day to day. Quintus was during a 
 part of this period with Caesar in Gaul, and it is clear that some 
 of the letters were intended to be shown, at least in part, to 
 Caesar. The letters to Atticus, on the other hand, extend over 
 a period of twenty-five years, and were not intended for a second 
 reader. 
 
 The character of Atticus has been debated, but one thing is 
 certain: Cicero loved him sincerely, and never had any doubts 
 about his loyalty.. No letters from Atticus have been preserved, 
 so that only one side of their relations is revealed to us. The 
 letters from Cicero to Atticus constitute about one half of his 
 whole correspondence. Their frankness is unparalleled. He 
 reveals his every weakness and fear as well as his every source 
 of strength and hope. Everything that gives him pleasure, 
 everything that flatters his vanity, is put down. He writes when 
 he has something to say and when he has not. He urges, cajoles, 
 scolds, in order to get more letters from Atticus, though obviously 
 he received a great many — if Atticus has nothing to write about, 
 he might at least write to tell Cicero of his lack of news. 
 
 Cicero is constantly deferring to his friend and asking his 
 advice. Sometimes Atticus fails to offer suggestions, and Cicero 
 complains of this; at other times Atticus does advise, and if 
 things turn out badly, Cicero complains of the advice. Atticus 
 has been stupid, but no more so — and that is the keynote of 
 their friendship — than Cicero himself. The two are like parts 
 of the same body. It is inconceivable to Cicero that one could 
 ever wilfully hurt or even neglect the other. Cicero's letters 
 have the character of an intimate conversation far more than 
 that of ordinary letters. His need of writing to Atticus was 
 great. He sits down, pen in hand, and rambles on as if he were 
 actually talking. Even when he is to see Atticus in a few hours, 
 he writes a hurried note to express his joyful expectation. 
 
10 INTEOVUCTORT 
 
 The very impulsiveness and frankness of these letters, how- 
 ever — as has of late been noted, though frequently ignored — may 
 easily lead to misunderstanding on the part of the reader. 
 They give the thoughts and emotions of a moment ; things that 
 most persons would keep within their own breasts, and certainly 
 never write. The fact that Cicero did write them is in danger 
 of endowing them with an importance altogether unwarranted. 
 Cicero wrote as a modern person might possibly talk, but then 
 only to a very trusted friend or to a wife. He was thinking 
 aloud. His judgments of people and events, his expressions of 
 joy or pride, of sorrow or chagrin, are not the result of deliberate 
 thought or well-settled convictions ; they are in their very essence 
 evanescent, real while lasting, but often as unsubstantial as the 
 shadow of a cloud on a hillside. 
 
 The beliefs and ideals by which Cicero governed his life are 
 not expressed. They were known to Atticus. They formed, in 
 Atticus' mind, a background against which he read aright every 
 word that came from Cicero 's pen. He knew what Cicero would 
 do and what he would not do. When Cicero discussed a 
 proposed course of action, balancing, perhaps, one selfish con- 
 sideration against another, Atticus attributed this to a clearness 
 of vision that saw all sides of a question, and he was not misled 
 into supposing that Cicero's final decision would run counter to 
 his patriotism or his loyalty to friends. In fact, the complaints 
 of Atticus, when he made any, were invariably to the effect that 
 Cicero had acted with too little thought of himself, often pur- 
 suing an ideal that seemed, to Atticus unnecessary and visionary. 
 When Cicero does decide to think of his own advantage or safety, 
 Atticus, we learn, has for a long time been urging him to do so. 
 
 The letters of Cicero thus fill out and give living warmth to 
 the picture that we have of him in the other writings. The 
 orations were intended for the public at large. In them Cicero 
 records the words he had uttered and draws his own portrait 
 as a man of affairs, revising and adding according to the prac- 
 
EARLY YEARS LITTLE KNOWN 11 
 
 tise of his time. The essays are the result, as it were, of his 
 intellectual life, and also afford to a smaller circle of contempo- 
 raries a view of his private beliefs and his inmost yearnings. 
 They are frank, but not spontaneous ; they contain nothing that 
 Cicero wished to hide. In the letters there is no thought of 
 an audience, whether large or small. Cicero merely lives his 
 life as it comes into relation with others, and we watch him. 
 
 There is one circumstance of vast importance, however, that 
 should be noted in connection with this large amount of infor- 
 mation. Our knowledge of Cicero is confined almost exclusively 
 to the last twenty years of his life, the period subsequent to 
 his consulship ; even the parts of his writings that have reference 
 to the earlier years were written after 63 b.c. 
 
 The exceptions to this statement are only apparent. One of 
 the essays was composed in his youth ; but it is a treatise on 
 Invention, a division of rhetoric, and as impersonal as a graduate 
 student's thesis, which, indeed, it very much resembles. There 
 are only twelve letters, out of the nine hundred and more, which 
 belong to the years 68-64 b.c. Of these, eleven were written by 
 Cicero, and one — really a treatise on electioneering — by his 
 brother. Apparently it was not until Cicero had attained a 
 prominent position that it occurred either to him or to his friends 
 to keep his letters. Nor is the correspondence large for some 
 years after 63 B.C. ; due in part, very likely, to the burning of 
 Cicero's house in 58, which doubtless caused the destruction 
 of any copies he may have had, for we know that he made copies 
 of important letters. There are no letters from the year of his 
 consulship; about fifty from the year 51 b.c; after that they 
 increase rapidly. Half the correspondence belongs to the last 
 four years of his life, after Caesar had overthrown the republic 
 and established himself as dictator. 
 
 "With the orations the case is somewhat different. Fifteen, 
 of the total of fifty-eight, come from the years 81-66 b.c, and 
 some of these are both long and important. They give a pretty 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 complete idea of Cicero as an orator during this period; or at. 
 least as a pleader, for all but one were delivered, or written as 
 if delivered, in the courts. Though containing much self- 
 revelation that would not be found in modern speeches of the 
 same kind, they are, nevertheless, very deficient in this feature 
 when compared with the orations of the later period. Cicero 
 was as yet only making his way, politically. He had not yet 
 attained a prominence that could be used, in typically Roman 
 fashion, as an argument in the courts. Neither directly nor 
 indirectly were the cases his own. All this was changed with 
 the year 63. As a consular, and still more as the one who had 
 suppressed the Catilinarian conspiracy, Cicero was one of the 
 chief men in Rome. Everything that has already been said 
 about the personal element in legal and forensic oratory applies 
 now with full force. In addition, he often spoke directly in his 
 own behalf, justifying his past actions, explaining or eulogizing 
 them, attacking his enemies, and defending his friends, or 
 proposing measures for which he alone was the sponsor. 
 
 It is, therefore, true that Cicero is known to us very inti- 
 mately, from strictly contemporary sources, only after he had 
 attained the consulship, the goal of Roman ambition. Such late 
 knowledge in the case of any man would tend to distort our 
 view of him; in the case of Cicero there is an especial danger 
 that this may happen. Under normal Roman conditions the 
 attainment of the consulship would have ended the strenuous 
 part of his career; an ex-consul pleaded in the courts when he 
 so desired, took a grave and influential part in senatorial debate, 
 was honored by all, and, for the rest, with the full approval of 
 everybody, devoted his time to his own private pursuits. He was 
 entitled to a dignfied leisure, otium cum digwitate. Cicero had 
 earned these privileges, but suddenly, through no fault of his 
 own, he found himself face to face with political anarchy. Partly 
 from choice and partly from necessity he entered the strife. He 
 had personal triumphs and momentary successes, but he was on 
 
LAST YEASS FILLED WITH STRUGGLE 13 
 
 the losing side. He fought for the retention of the existing gov- 
 ernment ; for his country, as he saw it ; wisely or not, according 
 as men will judge ; without selfishness ; and the government wks 
 doomed. He was also growing old; nearly all his friends died, 
 most of them by violence ; his daughter died ; and he had other 
 domestic afflictions. The manner in which he conducted himself 
 in the midst of all these troubles fills nearly our whole record of 
 his life ; he was being weighed in the balance, and, it seems, noit 
 found wanting, but he had little reason for being either hopeful 
 or happy, though even in these respects he can still be an inspira- 
 tion. He was living through the tragic ending, long drawn oul 
 of a long drama. 
 
 It thus becomes needful to remember the forty years during 
 which he grew into the personality that is later revealed to us 
 in the unequal struggle. During these years he won his position 
 as the leader of the Roman bar ; acquired immense influence both 
 in Rome and in many other cities in Italy and elsewhere ; gained 
 the friendship and admiration of statesmen, financiers, literary 
 men, and philosophers; became the idol of the young men of 
 ambition ; and attained the consulship — all in spite of his eques- 
 trian birth. During this time, too, he married, and his two 
 children were born, one of whom, Tullia, was dearer to him than 
 any other person in the world. These were years of very hard 
 work, but of great hopes and uninterrupted success, and, 
 undoubtedly, of a large amount of happiness. They are by no 
 means entirely unknown to us; but there are, after all, only 
 eleven letters from this period. Though these are filled with 
 matters of business, plans for the future, and happy references 
 to Tullia, they are, nevertheless, a very insignificant part of the 
 whole correspondence. 
 
CHAPTBE II 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 When Cicero was a candidate for the consulship, in the year 
 64 b.c, his brother Quintus addressed to him an essay, in the 
 form of a letter, on the proper behavior of a man seeking the 
 highest office in Rome. The essay takes note of the circumstances 
 peculiar to Cicero's candidacy, so much so, indeed, that it may 
 have been helpful as a political pamphlet, but Quintus hopes 
 that with a few changes it may be useful to others as well. He 
 wants it to be a handbook of electioneering, commentariolum 
 petitionis. Brother Quintus was not a great politician, for he 
 was too hot-tempered and made enemies ; and he was not a great 
 orator, thinking that one orator was glory enough for one family. 
 He fought well under Caesar in Gaul ; he wrote poetry — four 
 tragedies, once, in sixteen days; despite his irascibility he was 
 ■rather submissive to his wife; and altogether he seems to have 
 been an easy-going, lovable gentleman. He had a great admira- 
 tion for brother Marcus' talents and successes, but twitted him 
 with working too hard, and liked to give him advice. On this 
 occasion, among various other things, both shrewd and impudent, 
 he cautions his older brother — four years older — not to forget 
 that he is a New man, that he is seeking the consulship, and that 
 the place of his canvass is Rome. As Marcus went down into the 
 forum, which would happen almost daily, he was to turn these 
 thoughts over in his mind : novus sum, consulatum peto, Roma est. 
 
 Perhaps Marcus needed this advice, although he had for 
 seventeen years been a speaker in the forum and had already 
 held the three offices that usually preceded the consulship. The 
 modern student who follows his life in his extant works needs 
 the advice much more. Every time he reads a page, he may 
 profitably murmur to himself that this is Rome, the republican 
 
CONTEMPOBASIMS LIKE PHANTOMS 15 
 
 Rome of Cicero, Caesar, and Pompey, which came to an end 
 nearly two thousand years ago, and was in many ways very 
 different from anything that has existed since. 
 
 Montaigne has a story that is applicable in this connection. 
 There was once a country woman, according to him, who was 
 very fond of a little calf and carried it constantly in her arms ; 
 when the calf "grew to be a great ox, she still carried him in 
 her arms. It had become a habit. In the same way the Romans 
 of this period had their habits. They all carried their oxen ; but 
 we see only Cicero and his burden clearly. Compared with him, 
 his great contemporaries are like phantoms. We get a glimpse 
 here and a glimpse there ; we see one side of a man 's character, 
 but the rest is hidden; we follow him — never from day to day, 
 and never very closely, as we follow Cicero — but we nevertheless 
 follow him, for a few months or even for a few years ; and then 
 he is swallowed up in the darkness, perhaps to reappear later, 
 perhaps not. The details known about men like Caesar and 
 Pompey are numerous, and often extremely important, and yet 
 they are not sufficient to enable us ever to recreate a living and 
 abiding figure. We see only the barest outline of their Roman 
 oxen ; and, as a result, we are in constant danger of forgetting 
 them, and of imagining that Cicero, like Montaigne's woman, 
 was the only one who carried an ox. 
 
 This failure to take Cicero's contemporaries into account in 
 our judgments of Cicero himself can readily be illustrated. 
 Suetonius gives a long list of Caesar's mistresses, ranging from 
 the wives of political friends or opponents to foreign queens and 
 barbarian ladies in Gaul. Cato, the Stoic of the time, and per- 
 haps of all times, allowed his wife Marcia to live with the wealthy 
 orator Hortensius, and took her back after the latter 's death. 
 Pompey, at the urging of Sulla, put away one wife and married 
 another, although the latter, already married, was expecting soon 
 to become a mother. The reasons for such marriages, divorces, 
 and illegitimate relations, which could easily be cited in great 
 
16 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 numbers, were love, lust, ambition, and greed. Cicero, after a 
 married life of thirty years, divorced Terentia. We do not know 
 very much about Terentia. It is clear, however, that she had 
 a very decided mind of her own, and that Cicero, after the 
 divorce, had doubts about her honest intentions even when she 
 promised to remember their son in her will. She had rheumatism, 
 which probably did not improve her temper, and her general 
 health seems to have been rather poor, in spite of the fact that 
 she managed to continue her precarious existence for one hun- 
 dred and three years, possibly contracting a second marriage, 
 and even a third or fourth. After the divorce, Cicero, being in 
 need of money, married a young lady of wealth, his own ward, 
 whom he presently sent back to her mother. Tullia, his beloved 
 daughter, had died, and he wished to be alone. Incidentally, 
 the departure of the young wife involved the repayment of 
 the dowry she had brought, so that Cicero relinquished the 
 pecuniary advantages of the marriage. Whether or not his 
 behavior toward his two wives is defensible according to modern 
 standards, it can be judged by them, and is by that much 
 superior to the actions of Caesar, Cato, and Pompey. Cicero 
 partly explained the reasons for his divorce from Terentia in a 
 letter to a friend; Caesar, according to report, divorced one of 
 his wives with the proud statement that Caesar's wife must be 
 above suspicion, and he remained the political associate of 
 Clodius, her alleged seducer. Clodius was useful to him politi- 
 cally. And yet the marital delinquencies of Cicero, if such they 
 were, have been much argued about; admirers of his character 
 have grieved over them and enemies have sneered. Those of his 
 three great contemporaries, on the other hand, might as well have 
 happened in Mars; they form no real part of our estimate of 
 the men. 
 
 Similarly, we are informed — and have no reason to doubt 
 the information — that Caesar more than once in his campaigns 
 refused to accept the surrender of hostile towns in order that 
 
TEEENTIA 17 
 
 he might capture them by arms, and thereby be able to apply the 
 laws of war in all their rigor, pillaging the temples and private 
 homes, and selling the inhabitants into slavery. His cruelty and 
 greed make no emotional appeal to us. We know nothing of 
 the subsequent fate of the enslaved townspeople; there is no 
 description of the Roman legionaries breaking into private 
 dwellings; and Caesar has not debated the right and the wrong 
 of his act with a trusted friend. The whole thing is a mere 
 matter of record, another detail to be filed with the rest of our 
 information. Caesar is still the great general, and rightly. 
 
 With Cicero the case is again different. On an occasion of 
 great stress, moved by a suspicion that proved only too true, he 
 opened some letters not addressed to him. A packet of letters 
 from Quintus to various friends had accidentally come into his 
 hands. After he had forwarded some of them, he learned from 
 the recipients that the letters were filled with bitter attacks on 
 himself. He therefore opened the letters still in his possession, 
 and, writing to Attieus about the whole matter, wondered 
 whether they should be forwarded. They could easily be resealed, 
 he said, as Quintus' wife no doubt had a seal ring belonging 
 to her husband. All this happened in the midst of the civil war 
 between Caesar and the Pompeians. Cicero 's sin against morality 
 and good manners, if a sin it was, has sunk far more deeply into 
 the modern consciousness than Caesar's looting of towns, and 
 enslaving of whole populations. The personality of Cicero is 
 so vivid in our minds that this new bit of information becomes 
 a living fact, to be remembered and pondered. Hearing it about 
 Cicero is like hearing it about a neighbor. 
 
 It is by no means on every occasion, however, that parallel 
 words and acts among Cicero's contemporaries can be cited as 
 criteria for judging him. The intimacy of our knowledge raises 
 many questions that can be answered only indirectly. Some- 
 times he received praise or blame, which indicates the contempo- 
 rary point of view; but far oftener there is no hint to guide 
 
18 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 us, beyond the manner in which he mentions a thing to a 
 correspondent, particularly to Atticus. The moral attitude and 
 the numerous conventions of the times, in great matters and 
 small, have to be reconstructed almost entirely from Cicero's 
 works. It is a delicate task, and can not always be solved with 
 absolute certainty. 1 
 
 We are also especially tempted to neglect both the obvious 
 parallels and the hidden indications. The Romans were not like 
 the Fiji Islanders, who are supposed to eat their own wives 
 and children. On the contrary, they had countless resemblances 
 to us. They had jury trials and parliamentary debates, knowing 
 something of filibustering; they dined with discrimination and 
 knew all about the luxuries of hot baths ; they often married for 
 love and they educated their children; they meditated on the 
 immortality of the soul, free will, and providence; and they 
 cremated their dead. Spiritually, indeed, they are a link in the 
 long chain that stretches from the Greeks to modern Europe and 
 America; materially, they laid in many places the foundations 
 on which we are still building. And so, since most of their words 
 and thoughts and actions are like ours, we take for granted, 
 unconsciously as a rule, that we can understand them, or Cicero, 
 rather, without effort ; and we apply to him our own standards 
 of morality or convention. But this leads to frequent mis- 
 apprehension. 
 
 Cicero, as we have seen, was an augur, one of whose duties 
 it was to observe the omens; but he did not believe in omens, 
 and said so. He governed a province once, and thought he 
 did well because he was personally honorable and tried to curb 
 the rapacity of others; and yet he instituted no permanent 
 reforms, and took no great interest in the provincials. In his 
 speeches he was often violent, egotistical, and irrelevant. He 
 frequently won cases by his wit or his pathos, ignoring the law. 
 
 i This has been attempted on a large scale by Schneidewin. See also 
 Fowler, Social Life etc. 
 
FAULTS 19 
 
 He published speeches that had not been delivered, giving them 
 the appearance of verbatim reports. He wished that his author- 
 ship of a certain troublesome speech might be denied. 2 He wrote 
 an epic poem about his consulship, quoted it in later writings, 
 and followed it up with another epic on his further political 
 vicissitudes. In these poems the muses appeared, giving him 
 sage counsel, and approving his deeds. He asked Lucceius, a 
 friend, not only to write about his political career but to do it 
 in a spirit of enthusiasm rather than of truth. He dictated to 
 the copyist of Atticus a letter in praise of their good friend 
 Caelius, which he thereupon read to the latter as' having come 
 from Atticus. He asked Atticus to write letters of thanks for 
 him to various people. He wrote countless letters of recom- 
 mendation, and sometimes marked those that were to be taken 
 seriously. He seems to have taken a more lenient view of 
 gladiatorial combats than we do of prize fights ; on one occasion, 
 at any rate, planning to go to them, to please his daughter Tullia ; 
 and yet he could write a fine letter about the inhumanity of 
 such amusements. He was always buying things with borrowed 
 money. Once he returned home from dinner in a suspiciously 
 genial mood — bene potus, he calls it — though he was able to 
 verify an intricate matter of law, which he and a friend had 
 discussed over their cups. He was much given to jesting ; some- 
 times untranslatably and sometimes out of season, by our 
 standards. The grandmother of Atticus died after a life of 
 piety. Cicero, who knew that his Epicurean friend would not 
 be overwhelmed by the news, announces the poor lady's demise 
 without a word of solemnity, and apparently attributes it to 
 her fear lest the next Latin festival fall below its oldtime 
 grandeur. He not only came near committing suicide before 
 deciding to go into exile, but he also wrote later, both to Atticus 
 and to his family, that he wished he had not clung to life. And 
 
 2 See Att. 3, 12. Tyrrell (I 2 , 42) discusses this letter. 
 
20 TEE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 he did other things that would shock Mrs. Grundy, and better 
 people than she. ' 
 
 Nevertheless, Cicero was the admired friend of the most 
 cultured and the most powerful men of Rome. From the Roman 
 point of view his standard of personal morality was unimpeach- 
 able. He was not affected by the widespread licentiousness of 
 his age, but filled his life with hard work, laboring when others 
 played. He borrowed money, but lent it with the same readiness. 
 He did not practise usury, as did many of the great and lesser 
 Romans; and he did not take his money from the provinces, 
 which was an almost universal practise. In an age of system- 
 atized bribery, he did not bribe. He wrote better letters than 
 his correspondents. He was a good conversationalist; his wit 
 was renowned. He was affectionate and sensitive. He could 
 hate well, as could other Romans ; but he loved more, and was 
 ready to forgive even friends. He was generous, not only 
 with his means but in his recognition of other men's deserts. 
 Young men imitated and loved him ; his servants were devoted 
 to him. Those who knew him best loved him most, and they 
 remained his friends for life. He was intensely ambitious; but 
 his love of Rome was greater than his ambition, for he refused 
 to join the triumvirate ; it was also greater than his human fears, 
 for he died for her. He was by no means a paragon of all the 
 virtues; he had faults; but he had also the saving grace of a 
 sense of humor that embraced himself. 
 
 It can probably be maintained with an exceptionally high 
 degree of likelihood that if the great Romans of his day had 
 taken a vote to decide which one among them stood highest as 
 a representative of unselfishness in public service, of culture, 
 and of good breeding, the outcome would have been the same as 
 at the time when the colleagues of Themistocles took their famous 
 vote. Each one, like a true son of Romulus, might have put 
 himself in the first place, but he would have given the second 
 place to Cicero. 
 
VIRTUES 21 
 
 If such a committee of Romans had cast this vote and had 
 thereupon announced the result in the senate, probably Cicero 
 would have conducted himself very much as he did on a notable 
 occasion in the year 61 b.c. 3 Crassus had made an extremely 
 laudatory speech about Cicero, explaining with great emotion 
 how it was to Cicero's consulship that he owed his position as 
 senator and citizen, even his freedom and life, and how the 
 sight of his wife, his home, and his country never failed to make 
 him gratefully conscious of his debt to the great consular. Cicero, 
 in the course of the further proceedings, made a fiery speech of 
 his own; and later he wrote an account of the happenings to 
 Atticus. " ye gods, ' ' he wrote, ' ' how I exulted before my new 
 auditor Pompey ! Then, if ever, did I make use of well-rounded 
 periods and other rhetorical devices. There was great applause. 
 I talked about the dignity of the senate, the favorable attitude 
 of the knights, the unanimous spirit of all Italy, the dying 
 remains of the Catilinarian conspiracy, the present low cost of 
 living, and peace. You know what a noise I can make on 
 subjects like these. But I can be brief in my description, for 
 you must have heard my thunders even in Epirus. ' ' 
 
 a Att. 1, 14. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 ARPINUM 
 
 Though it was in Rome that Cicero won his triumphs, he . 
 was not a genuine Roman, in that he came from the little town 
 of Arpinum among the Volscian mountains. He has given a 
 sketch of his home, with a few hints about his family, in the 
 introductory scenes to his dialogue on the Laws. This treatise 
 was begun some ten years after his consulship, and was well 
 under way in 52 b.c. The conversations of which it consists are 
 also supposed to have taken place after the consulship, though 
 no exact date is indicated. Cicero, therefore, had reached his 
 high place in Roman life, and was outlining for his Roman 
 readers the background against which he wished to appear. 
 
 The speakers of the dialogue are Marcus Cicero himself, his 
 brother Quintus, and his dearest friend Atticus, the brother-in- 
 law of Quintus. As Cicero was three years younger than Atticus 
 and four years older than Quintus, they may be thought of as 
 in their forties, or early fifties. Atticus, obviously by poetical 
 license, is represented as visiting the home of the Ciceros for 
 the first time; his knowledge of it is derived from Cicero's writ- 
 ings, particularly a youthful poem entitled MaHus, known to 
 us only by fragments. Marius, also an Arpinate, was one of 
 Cicero's earliest inspirations; he had brought the war against 
 Jugurtha to a successful close in the year of Cicero's birth, 
 and had conquered the Cimbri and Teutones within the next five 
 years. His fame, great in Rome, could not have been less in 
 Arpinum. 
 
 The three friends are sauntering along the wooded banks 
 of the river Liris. According to the custom of Ciceronian 
 interlocutors, they keep an eye open for a shady nook. In the 
 meantime the conversation is desultory. 
 
THE OAK OF MABIUS 23 
 
 "Ah," says Attieus, "this must be the grove and that famous 
 oak of which I have read so often in Marcus' poem. If that oak 
 is still in existence, this is surely the one. It is certainly old 
 enough. ' ' 
 
 This was the oak near which Marius had had some vision or' 
 other of an eagle, "the tawny messenger of Jove, a wonderful 
 sight," as young Marcus had expressed it. 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, ' ' says Quintus, the poet ; ' ' that oak will never die. 
 Trees planted by poets have longer lives than those set out by 
 farmers. ' ' 
 
 "What do you mean, Quintus? Poets planting trees? 
 Aren't you thinking a little of yourself, though you seem to be 
 singing your brother's praises?" 
 
 "Possibly." 
 
 And Quintus explains that the sacred olive in Athens will 
 always flourish. The palm tree in Delos, which Ulysses in the 
 Odyssey saw, is still pointed out to visitors. So, naturally, the 
 oak of Marius will be green long after it has fallen a prey to 
 wind and weather. 
 
 Attieus thinks this possible, but, banker and level-headed man 
 that he is, wants to know the facts. He turns to Marcus. 
 
 ' ' "Was there really such an oak ? Or are you alone responsible 
 for it?" 
 
 Marcus evades the question. "Is it true," he asks, "that 
 after Eomulus had disappeared, he was found walking near your 
 house in Rome, and told Proculus that he had become a god and 
 wanted a temple built in his honor in the neighborhood?" 
 
 "What are you talking about?" 
 
 "Well, such things are merely matters of tradition." 
 
 "Yes, but there are a good many stories about Marius, and 
 you ought to know the truth." 
 
 Marcus confesses that he does not wish to be considered 
 lacking in veracity; but what about Numa and Bgeria? Did 
 they really enjoy their reputed rendezvous ? Did an eagle pick 
 the cap from the head of Tarquin? 
 
24 ABPINVM 
 
 "I understand," says Quintus. "The laws of history and 
 of poetry are not the same. ' ' 
 
 Marcus concurs, reminding his companions that even Herodo- 
 tus, the father of history, did not disdain to introduce improbable 
 stories in his work. 
 
 This conversation introduces the first dialogue, which fills 
 the first book of the Laws and extends over about fifty pages. 
 
 At the beginning of the second book, Atticus thinks it would 
 be pleasant to find another place for the continuation of their 
 conversation. Marcus has been practically the sole speaker and 
 needs new inspiration. 
 
 "Let us go and find seats on the little isle in the Pibrenus. 
 I suppose that is Fibrenus over there." 
 
 The Fibrenus was a tributary to the river Liris, The friends 
 apparently crossed the Liris and followed the Fibrenus toward 
 the isle. 
 
 "Yes," said Marcus, "I am very fond of the place. I go 
 there often, when I wish to read or write or think. ' ' 
 
 Atticus is charmed with the scenery, and begins to speak 
 slightingly of costly villas with marble floors and paneled 
 ceilings. 
 
 He is particularly impressed by the masses of rushing water 
 in the Fibrenus. 
 
 "Those fellows," he says, "dig little ditches and call them 
 the Nile or the Buripus. It is laughable to any one who has 
 seen this place." 
 
 From the orations and poems of Cicero he had received the 
 idea that Arpinum was nothing but rocks and hills, and he had 
 been in the habit of wondering why Cicero ever went there. 
 Now, with the hills in the distance, with one stream behind him 
 and another on his left, with greensward under foot, and trees 
 all about, he wonders how Cicero can ever go anywhere else when 
 he is away from Rome. 
 
THE FARMHOUSE 25 
 
 Cicero explains that it is hard to get leisure for many days 
 at a time. He -comes to Arpinum whenever possible, especially 
 in the hottest part of summer, for Arpinum then is a cool and 
 pleasant refuge. 
 
 He calls Atticus ' attention to a farmhouse, probably on their 
 left, and situated between two of the arms into which the 
 Fibrenus divides before it empties into the Liris. This is the 
 house in which Marcus and his brother were born. It has been 
 the home of the family for generations. Cicero's father, who 
 was somewhat of an invalid and fond of books, lived there nearly 
 all his life. He enlarged the house and gave it a smarter appear- 
 ance. At the time of Cicero's birth, when his grandfather was 
 still living, it was an old-fashioned farmhouse, just like the well- 
 known Curiana, in the Sabine country, from which, as the 
 reader of the Laws knew, M. Curius Dentatus, like Cicero the 
 first consul of his family, issued forth to defeat Pyrrhus, two 
 centuries and a half earlier. 
 
 Atticus gracefully expresses his delight at becoming 
 acquainted with Cicero's native heath. He is always peculiarly 
 fascinated, he says, by places that remind him of people he likes 
 or admires. Atticus, as we know, had lived a large part of his 
 life in Athens, was extremely fond of the city, and even derived 
 from it his name Atticus, the Athenian. His real Roman name 
 had been Titus Pomponius until the year 58 B.C., when he was 
 adopted by a millionaire uncle, and became Quintus Caecilius 
 Pomponianus. He admired the splendid works of art in Athens, 
 he now said, but he took an even keener delight in the memories 
 that haunt the former homes and lecture halls of departed great 
 men. He liked even to search for their gravestones and read 
 their epitaphs. He will grow very fond of Arpinum, now that 
 he can think of it as Cicero 's birthplace. 
 
 In the course of the further conversation, he recalls a public 
 utterance of Pompey the Great to the effect that Rome had 
 
26 ABPINUM 
 
 special reasons for gratitude to the little town because it was 
 the home of two of its saviors, Marius, who had defeated the 
 barbarians, and Cicero, who in his consulship had withstood 
 Catiline and his fellow-conspirators. And presently the friends 
 arrive at the isle in the Fibrenus. 
 
 Nothing could be prettier. It lies in midstream, cutting the 
 current as with the beak of a trireme. The waters rush past on 
 either side, leaving a place just big enough for comfortable rest 
 and conversation, and then, coming together with a swirl, they 
 dash madly forward on their way to the Liris. The water is 
 cool and pleasant. Atticus, however, thinks it is the coldest he 
 ever saw, though he has looked upon many streams. He would 
 rather not dip his foot in it, despite the classic precedent of 
 Socrates and Phaedrus, who, some three hundred and fifty years 
 earlier, had taken pleasure in wading through a shallow pool in 
 their inevitable search for a shady nook. 
 
 Marcus acknowledges the beauty of the place, but he has heard 
 enough from brother Quintus to know that nothing can excel the 
 stream Thyamis in Epirus, where Atticus has a villa. Quintus 
 agrees with this, mentioning the plane trees and the amaltheum 
 on his brother-in-law's estate. 
 
 At the suggestion of Quintus, the three friends, like Socrates, 
 find seats in the shade, so that they may continue their discussion, 
 which again is mainly a monologue on the part of Marcus. 
 
 ' ' I thought I had escaped, ' ' he says ; but Quintus orders him 
 to begin. 
 
 "We'll consecrate the whole day to you." 
 
 The discussion lasted through that summer's day, and is 
 supposed to have filled six books. Only the first three of these 
 have been preserved. The speakers seem to have moved from 
 place to place on the estate, for a sentence is quoted from the 
 fifth book which shows that they had been sitting under some 
 trees of recent growth until the early afternoon sun drove them 
 to the alders on the bank of the Liris. 
 
TSE AMALTHEUM 27 
 
 There is not much to add to this account of Cicero's home. 
 Like his father before him, he made additions to the villa. 1 As 
 early as the year 61 B.C., less than two years after his consulship, 
 he is writing to Atticus about an amaltheum that he wishes to 
 build in Arpinum, somewhat after the model of the one on his 
 friend's estate in Epirus. Atticus is to inform him about fur- 
 nishings and wall paintings. An amaltheum was probably a 
 shrine in honor of Amalthea, with which was connected a garden 
 house. The mythological Amalthea herself was either the goat 
 that suckled the infant Jupiter, or else a nymph that took care 
 of both Jupiter and the famous goat. As a nymph she was 
 symbolic of the creative forces in nature, and had her shrine 
 by running water. The wall paintings of Atticus' garden house 
 represented various incidents connected with the Amalthea myth, 
 and also had descriptive verses. Of all these things Cicero wants 
 an account from Atticus. Since the place was intended for 
 reading, a sort of modern library, it contained statues of famous 
 men, with inscriptions. Atticus had such a statue of Cicero, 
 but this was perhaps not so very surprising, since statues seem 
 to have been nearly as common as modern portraits. 
 
 At the end of the next year Atticus inspects Cicero's 
 amaltheum, while the latter is himself in Rome. Atticus finds 
 the windows too small. Cicero replies that the architect had 
 explained that a view through small windows is particularly 
 pleasant. Evidently the architect did not agree, he says, with 
 the Epicurean philosophers — and Atticus was an Epicurean — 
 who believed that sight is caused by very thin, film-like images 
 that are constantly traveling from the object seen to the eyes of 
 the observer, for in that case the poor images would find it 
 difficult to get through the narrow windows. As for any other 
 criticisms Atticus may feel inclined to make, Cicero will be glad 
 to hear them, provided they involve no expense. 
 
 i On Cicero 's home and villas, see Schmidt, Ciceros Villen. Schmidt 
 gives complete references. 
 
28 AMPINUM 
 
 The villa was probably both commodious and costly, as a 
 result of the additions and alterations made by Cicero and his 
 father. In the year 54 B.C., when Quintus was with Caesar in 
 Gaul, Marcus visited his brother's estates in Arpinum, where 
 alterations were in progress. As it is likely that Marcus and 
 Quintus built in very much the same way, the things mentioned 
 in his letter to Quintus may well have had a counterpart in his 
 own villa. There were big rooms with pools of water; rooms 
 for summer and for winter use ; a suite of bathrooms heated 
 from below; vaulted ceilings; fresco paintings; and columns of 
 polished marble, which, by the way, it was difficult to place 
 absolutely perpendicularly and at equal distances from each 
 other. There were graveled paths and pillared walks. Water and 
 trees were plentiful on the grounds. There seems to have been a 
 formal garden with trees cut in geometrical figures. Ivy added 
 grace and softness, climbing over the walls and pillars, and even 
 covering the statues as with a mantle. The latter, Cicero says, 
 looked as if they had become addicted to fancy gardening and 
 were advertising the merits of ivy. 
 
 The estate itself was, nevertheless, a real farm, not one of 
 those suburban country houses of the Romans to which vegetables 
 were brought from, the city, as Martial laments. The land was 
 divided into sections and rented to tenants, so that at least a 
 part of the family income was derived from it. This arrange- 
 ment is mentioned by Cicero in a letter of the year 45 B.C., and 
 may have been introduced by his invalid father ; the grandfather 
 would have scorned both vicarious farming and ivy-clad statues. 
 
 This grandfather is the first member of the family about 
 whom anything is known. The Ciceros, however, though not 
 descended from the ancient Volscian king Tullus Attius — as 
 some would have it, according to Plutarch — were autochthonous 
 in Arpinum and had a good position. They were rich enough 
 to be counted among the knights, who possessed at least 400,000 
 sesterces, from $16,000 to $20,000; but they are not known to 
 
CICEMO'S FAMILY 29 
 
 have engaged in provincial business, as did the more prominent 
 among the knights. Apparently they had farmed until Cicero's 
 father broke the family tradition. 
 
 The grandfather was a man of strong personality, conserva- 
 tive and outspoken. Living at the time of Scipio the Younger 
 and Laelius, when the Greek influence was establishing itself in 
 Rome, he set his face against the new ideas. The Romans, he 
 was in the habit of saying, were like Syrian slaves; the more 
 Greek they knew, the worse they were. He was opposed to 
 changes of any kind. "When his brother-in-law Gratidius 
 attempted to introduce a new election law in Arpinum, the old 
 Marcus fought him, and even carried the fight to Rome. The 
 matter came before the Roman consul, who gracefully lamented 
 because a man of Marcus' ability and courage confined his 
 activities to a small municipality like Arpinum, instead of taking 
 part in the central government. 
 
 Cicero's father was cast in a different mould; indeed, Cicero 
 himself seems to be a combination of the two. The father was 
 an invalid and a student. But he was not indifferent to the great 
 world. He had a house in Rome, where he must have lived part 
 of the time, and he was on friendly terms with several of the 
 most prominent public men. He was interested in politics, 
 discussing with his son the doings of former statesmen. Cicero 
 quotes him to this effect both in an oration and in one of his 
 philosophical essays. It was evidently he who decided that the 
 two boys, Marcus and Quintus, should be educated in Rome, 
 and so be given the opportunity of making a career in the capital. 
 He lived long enough to see Marcus as one of the leaders at the 
 Roman bar, and possibly, though probably not, as a candidate 
 for the consulship. He seems to have died in the year 67 b.c. 2 
 
 Cicero's mother, on the other hand, must have died in his 
 youth. She is not mentioned in his writings. Even her name, 
 Helvia, comes to us from Plutarch. Only one trait of her char- 
 
 2 Att. 1, 6, 2, and Tyrrell's note. See below, p. 204. 
 
30 ARPINUM 
 
 acter has been recorded, and this one was not inherited by her 
 famous son. She was thrifty. Quintus, in a letter to Marcus' 
 favorite freedman, Tiro, written as late as 44 B.C., mentions a 
 practise of hers that he himself remembered. When bottling 
 wine, she sealed not only the jars that had been filled but also 
 those that were empty. This was to prevent thievish slaves from 
 emptying a full jar, and then pretending that it had never 
 been filled. Perhaps she needed to have an eye for details, since 
 her husband read books and modernized the farmhouse. She, 
 too, was well connected, for a sister of hers was married to the 
 famous jurist Aculeo, an intimate friend of the great orator 
 L. Crassus. 
 
 Cicero's family, despite its aristocratic connections, was 
 humble in the eyes of the Roman world, but he was never inclined 
 to make any excuses for it. The grandfather, the father, the 
 home in Arpinum, occur frequently, both in his orations and in 
 his other writings. Plutarch says that, when Cicero was on the 
 point of entering public life, he was advised to change his name, 
 but he replied that he would endeavor to make his name even 
 more glorious than that of the Scauri and the Catuli. Perhaps 
 Plutarch has only invented an appropriate story, though his 
 information may have come ultimately from Tiro's biography. 
 Cicero was called a foreigner by the people who considered that 
 all genuine Romans came from the city or its immediate 
 environs ; but he laughingly reminded his detractors that it was 
 a favorable circumstance to be such a foreigner, for the men 
 from small towns like Arpinum had votes, which they gave to 
 their fellow townsmen. It was of no assistance, he said, to come 
 from Tusculum, where consuls were numerous. He more than 
 once publicly instituted comparisons between the simplicity of 
 country life and the luxury that flourished in the city, not to 
 the advantage of the latter. One of these occasions was the 
 trial of Plancius, in the year 54 B.C., and as Cicero seems to have 
 begun his treatise on the Laws shortly after this date, his praise 
 
ARPINUM AND SOME 3J 
 
 of the country districts during this trial may well have led him 
 to place the scenes of the Laws near his own home. 
 
 These scenes contain the whole story. He has two countries, 
 he says, Arpinum and Rome. He gives the greater loyalty to 
 Rome, but he is proud of the long and honorable tradition of 
 his farming ancestors, and of the little town, whose inhabitants 
 classed him with Marius. The Arpinates, as he says elsewhere, 
 were certain to tell any chance visitor among them of Marius, 
 and probably also of Cicero. Arpinum, according to the Laws, 
 was a place richly blessed with beauty of scenery, in which 
 dreams could be dreamed and noble aspirations fostered. Great 
 men of the past had come from just such places. Here Cicero 
 could meditate, read, and write, and also entertain his dearest 
 friends. 
 
 Cicero's letters indicate that although he could not often 
 find time to leave Rome long enough to go to Arpinum, where 
 he was cut off from direct connection with politics, he always 
 retained a peculiar affection for his paternal estate. He also 
 kept in touch with the Arpinates. The town of Arpinum owned 
 land in Gaul, from which it derived its only income as a munici- 
 pality. As the collecting of the rent from this land could be 
 facilitated or made difficult by the governor of the province, 
 Cicero's influence with men of power was of material assistance. 
 Two letters are extant in which he recommended the interests of 
 Arpinum to the good will of the governor; and inasmuch as this 
 governor was M. Iunius Brutus, the pupil and admirer of Cicero, 
 the recommendation was undoubtedly heeded. On another occa- 
 sion he caused his. own son and the son of his brother Quintus 
 to be chosen chief magistrates of Arpinum, which not only was 
 a compliment to the Arpinates, but also seems to have been a 
 means of bringing order into their tangled affairs. 
 
 But the most inspiring thing to Cicero about Arpinum was 
 the fact that it was the home of Marius. The families of Cicero 
 and Marius were not related, and yet there was a sort of con- 
 
32 ABPINVM 
 
 neetion. Marius had adopted a distant relative of Cicero's, to 
 be scrupulously exact, the son of the brother-in-law of Cicero's 
 paternal grandfather. Though this remote connection may have 
 meant nothing, Cicero had grown up in an atmosphere filled 
 with the praise of Marius; he was also the fellow student of 
 Marius' son; and, as he was twenty years old when Marius died, 
 he had seen the old warrior often and had very likely heard him 
 speak in the forum. Cicero's thoughts about him were not 
 exhausted with the youthful poem. In agreement with the other 
 Arpinates, Cicero naturally looked upon himself as the com- 
 panion in fame of Marius. 
 
 Two men could scarcely be more unlike. "Marius was rough, 
 uneducated, opposed to the patricians, and careless of human 
 life. Cicero was always striving for spiritual growth, he was 
 devoted to Greek culture, he became in time the leader of the 
 patricians, and he abhorred war. But they were alike in their 
 ambition and their will power, and they had both to make their 
 own way politically. Throughout his career Cicero frequently 
 refers in public to Marius; and when he is driven into exile, he 
 again thinks of him as one who had suffered a similar fate. At 
 that time he even had a dream about the old Arpinate. 3 Having 
 fallen asleep toward morning, after a restless night, he dreamed 
 that he had lost his way in a solitary place and was roaming 
 about dejectedly. Marius, in the garb of a triumphator and 
 accompanied by his lictors, met him, and inquired about the 
 reason for Cicero's condition. When told that Cicero had been 
 expelled from Rome, Marius took him by the right hand, asked 
 him to be of good cheer, and directed one of his lictors to accom- 
 pany him to a certain temple erected by Marius himself. There 
 Cicero would find help. 
 
 Cicero was not superstitious, but he accepted the dream as 
 a good omen. 
 
 3De Dwin. 1, 59; 2, 140. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 ROME 
 
 Not much is known about Cicero before his twenty-sixth or 
 twenty-seventh year, when he pleaded his first case. Coming 
 early to the capital, he received his education 1 there, with the 
 exception of some elementary instruction in Arpinum, and it 
 was likewise in Rome that he was from boyhood affected by the 
 influences that shaped his whole life. 
 
 Cicero had ambition, talents, and self-confidence; he wished 
 from the beginning to make a mark in the world, he knew that 
 he could do it, and he was willing to pay the full price of cease- 
 less industry. His conscience was that of the true artist, for he 
 scorned shoddy work. This may be a kind of pride, but it is 
 not the pride that goes before a fall. Standing, like Hercules, 
 at the parting of the ways of Pleasure and of Virtue, it chooses 
 that of Virtue. It is a better preservative of character than a 
 host of negative excellences, which are always battling against 
 temptation, and must yield occasionally, if only to get a little 
 rest. Cicero never needed to fight against the ordinary tempta- 
 tions of pleasure, or greed, or envy, or idleness ; he was so filled 
 with his ambition and his devotion to good work that -nothing 
 antagonistic to these made any appeal to him. 
 
 Talents and a disposition like Cicero's usually lead to success, 
 and it may not be necessary to inquire whether a man is to be 
 praised for the possession of them. They are a gift of the 
 gods, and the gods are partial. In Cicero's case, according to 
 Plutarch, the good gods even went to the trouble of sending a 
 vision to his nurse, in which it was foretold that the child in 
 her arms would be of great benefit to Rome. And as a boy in 
 school, still according to the veracious Plutarch, he acquired such 
 
 iFor Cicero's training, see below, pp. 343-351, 373-412. 
 
34 HOME 
 
 a reputation that the fathers of his schoolmates came to see the 
 prodigy. Like modern fathers, however, some of them were too 
 enamored of their own offspring to enjoy the sight; they became 
 angry when their children received young Cicero "with respect 
 into the middle place." Perhaps the boys were not conscious 
 that they were doing Cicero an honor. Plutarch's fine phrase 
 seems to be borrowed from the habits of mature men; but 
 probably it only indicates that Cicero was already a good talker. 
 
 What Cicero might have become in an age like ours is a 
 matter for speculation. Nothing now seems quite to require or 
 reward the particular combination of gifts that he possessed. 
 He was a student of law, political science, philosophy, and 
 literature, as well as of the art of speaking, which we no longer 
 cultivate; he was one of the foremost stylists that the world 
 has ever seen, combining the minor delicacies of language, 
 ordinarily supposed by literary critics to be the qualities of a 
 good style, with the forcefulness and the humor that constitute 
 the far greater quality of genuine popularity, for he was a man 
 first, and only secondly a writer; he spoke at least as well as 
 he wrote ; he desired and knew how to mingle with busy men. 
 Among us, it seems, he would have cultivated one or another 
 talent to a higher degree than he actually did, but to the exclu- 
 sion of the others. In Rome they could all be used for the one 
 thing that the most ambitious Eomans cared about, namely, a 
 political career. 
 
 Rome was a city entirely devoted to politics. In former 
 times, as Cicero read in his books, the Roman people had been 
 a nation of farmers, who were always ready to leave the plough 
 to go to public meetings or to war. Their first duty had been 
 to their country. They had been lawmakers and soldiers, earn- 
 ing their living by farming. They had been free men, selling 
 their personal services to no man. And now, in the time of 
 Cicero, when farming had almost disappeared, and the land of 
 Italy was largely in the hands of the rich, who used it for 
 
POLITICS 35 
 
 cattle raising, the tradition still remained that a Roman could 
 be honorably employed — gloriously and profitably, one fears, is 
 more exact — only in connection with service to his country. He 
 must be a soldier — a general, that is, and not a private — or an 
 officeholder, preferably both. Money-making, except on a large 
 scale, is not for him. The question of earning a living does not 
 exist for him. He either has sufficient inherited wealth to live 
 on, as Cicero had, or else his problems in life are of too humble 
 a nature to come under the consideration of those who think and 
 philosophize about life. 
 
 To them the situation is clear, and capable of easy demon- 
 stration. Cicero expresses it in his essay on Duty, 2 which is 
 addressed to his son Marcus. Gainful occupations, he says, are 
 almost always debasing to the character. Collectors of harbor 
 duties — who belonged to the publicans of the New Testament — 
 usurers, and others whose business naturally attracts the hatred 
 of their fellow-men, are most to be despised. It is unsuitable 
 for a free man to engage in work where he is paid for his manual 
 labor rather than for his skill, for his wages are a contract by 
 which he binds himself to the activities of a slave. Retail dealers 
 are sordid. They buy only to sell, and can not prosper without 
 lying. Mechanics and handicraftsmen are base; there can be 
 nothing noble in a workshop. Dealers in salt fish or fresh, 
 butchers, cooks, and sausage-makers; those who sell perfumes; 
 dancers and vaudeville players; and all others who minister 
 to the pleasures of men — are not to be approved. "Work that 
 requires more than ordinary skill or that is useful, such as 
 medicine, architecture, and teaching, is honorable enough for 
 certain classes of society. Merchants who traffic from port to 
 port are a base lot if their business is on a small scale. If they 
 carry large cargoes and supply many people, without cheating, 
 their activity is not so very discreditable ; and they are even to 
 be highly respected if they give up their business after they 
 
 2Be Off. 1, 150-151. 
 
36 HOME 
 
 have made a competency, and retire to the life of a farmer. 
 Farming, indeed, is of all occupations the one most suitable to 
 a free man — like Cicero's sturdy old grandfather, for instance. 
 
 The passage contains a line from Terence, about the dealers 
 in fish and their like, but it is, nevertheless, serious. Cicero 
 never wrote a more serious work than this one on Duty, nor one 
 into which he put more of his own thought about life. The 
 attitude is given as traditional; it still prevailed in Cicero's 
 time, and was shared by him. The ethical charge is not to be 
 pressed. Cicero was capable of recognizing virtue among his 
 slaves and freedmen, and treated them with consideration, at 
 times even with respect and affection. But slaves and even 
 freedmen — doctors, architects, and teachers were usually Greek 
 freedmen — had other problems than those of the prominent 
 Roman; they and the Roman citizens of their social position 
 were not the ones for whom Cicero was writing. The philoso- 
 phers, Greeks themselves, were in accord with him; and no 
 doubt found an ethical reason for the worldly attitude. The 
 Stoics — and Cicero based this work principally on Panaetius, 
 the great Stoic of the preceding generation — said that all men 
 are citizens of a world state, and so, presumably, equal. The 
 Stoics preached about providence ; but they preached to the 
 Romans who sat, or expected to sit, on curule chairs, and not 
 to those who brawled in the forum. And the latter, most likely, 
 would have taken a very cheerful attitude toward this disparage- 
 ment of gainful occupations, if by any chance it had reached 
 them. An overwhelming majority among them had only one 
 gainful occupation, that of selling their votes, and this was 
 not mentioned by Cicero ; they also had only one demand, or 
 perhaps two, free food and free amusements. 
 
 It was not that the great Romans were expected to refrain 
 from money-getting. Though the mere amassing of wealth was 
 never in Rome an Open Sesame to the high places, and was 
 indeed held in contempt if pursued as an end in itself, still, 
 
MONET GETTING AND PATRIOTISM 37 
 
 even men of the greatest renown engaged in activities which 
 were fabulously lucrative. But they did this as stockholders in 
 the large, companies that farmed the taxes in the provinces, as 
 lordly lenders of gold to foreign princes, who spent the money 
 in Rome to gain political advantages, or as employers of their 
 own or other people's slaves, whose work ranged all the way 
 from the copying of books to fighting as gladiators. But these 
 activities were not under the necessity of petty cheating and 
 lying, and above all they did not involve a slavish dependence 
 on some one else. The physician must come at a moment's 
 notice; the architect must humor his customer, and the teacher 
 his pupils, or their fathers. These Romans humored no one. 
 They no longer farmed, but their forefathers had done so; and 
 it is no disgrace to be dependent on wind and weather. 
 
 Preserving their personal freedom, the Roman politicians 
 must not use it selfishly; they must be inspired by a lofty 
 patriotism. 3 Love of one's country, says Cicero, voicing the 
 ideal, includes and transcends that for parents, children, rela- 
 tives, and friends. Every man should be willing to die for his 
 country. There are many who will sacrifice their lives as well 
 as their possessions for her, though they will not give up their 
 own personal glory, as they should do. A friend is the greatest 
 blessing that can come to a man, greater than political honors, 
 wealth, or pleasures, but even a friend must not be cherished 
 to the detriment of the state. It is the duty of every one who 
 can to seek public office. And — with a glance at the plebeians — 
 though there are some who should govern and others who should 
 obey, it is the duty of all to live for their country. 
 
 A few men in Rome challenged this exalted view of civic 
 duty, and insisted on a man's right to devote his energies to 
 study and meditation, provided he did not debase this occupation 
 by selling his services. If a man had the means, inherited or 
 otherwise honorably procured, of obtaining leisure, he would not 
 
 s See esp. Be Eep. 1, ehaps. 1-8 ; and Be Off., passim, esp. 1, 70-73. 
 
38 ROME 
 
 serve his reputation by indulging in banquets and depraving 
 pleasures ; but why should he not devote himself to intellectual 
 interests? He ennobled his character, which might not always 
 be maintained of the politician, and, if he meditated and wrote 
 on the management of the state, he also did a real service to his 
 country. 
 
 This ideal of scholarly leisure, though unintelligible to the 
 nation as a whole, and, in its real essence, even to the average 
 aristocrat, had a peculiar fascination for Cicero. It was due to 
 the influence of things Greek, intellectual as well as artistic; 
 and Cicero would be the last man to deny his debt to the Greeks. 
 It was adopted, furthermore, by men of great personal charm, 
 some of them the most intimate friends of Cicero, as, for example, 
 Atticus ; and Cicero could not have loved Atticus if he had not 
 sympathized strongly with his tastes. Friendship, as Cicero 
 himself wrote,* consists in a complete agreement about all things, 
 human and divine, to which are added good will and affection. 
 At times, in moments of speculative and moral enthusiasm, 
 Cicero sets philosophical studies above all things else ; most strik- 
 ingly, perhaps, when he quotes 5 the opinion of Pythagoras to 
 the effect that life is like a great public festival. Some come to 
 win glory in the athletic contests, others to make money by buy- 
 ing and selling, but a third group, and this the most talented, 
 come merely to observe and to meditate. So, too, in life: some 
 struggle for glory, others for wealth, but those who have wisdom 
 scorn these lesser pursuits and give themselves up to thought 
 and study. In Cicero's whole life, however, and in nearly all 
 of his writings, he opposes the ideal of Atticus. Cicero was 
 neither pugnacious nor given to propaganda in his personal 
 relations. ' ' The only difference between you and me, ' ' he writes 
 to Atticus, "is that we have chosen different roads in life." 
 He was, nevertheless, very clear in his own mind, and could 
 
 *De Amic. 20. 
 5 Tusc. 5, 9. 
 
THE 0T10S1 39 
 
 draw arguments from the very philosophy to which his studious 
 friends were devoted. Man, he says, is naturally gregarious 
 and finds his highest activity in his relations with his fellow- 
 men. His intellectual life, if divorced from action, is a maimed 
 and incomplete thing. The man who shrinks into solitude might 
 as well be dead. He is like one wandering in desert places. His 
 greatness of soul is almost brutish and inhuman. 
 
 Some men may have an excuse for not engaging in public 
 life. They may be weak in health, as was Cicero's father, or 
 they may have very unusual gifts for intellectual pursuits, which 
 was scarcely true of Atticus; and each person should of course 
 heed his natural bent in choosing his life work. They may have 
 other cogent reasons. But let these men of leisure, these otiosi, 
 remember that the life of a student is easier and safer than that 
 of a public servant, and that it is less exposed to envy. Philoso- 
 phers are wrong if they profess to look down upon political 
 activity and the fame it brings. Though their contempt for fame 
 may be praiseworthy, they may find, if they look into their own 
 hearts, that they are not actuated by this lofty feeling but by 
 a desire to avoid hard work and the ignominy of possible failure. 
 Even the philosophers who write in favor of despising glory do 
 not forget to put their names on their books. 6 Those, therefore, 
 who can should seek magistracies, for thus they will assist in 
 managing the state properly, and will also have an opportunity 
 to show their greatness of soul. 
 
 A politician, far more than a philosopher, needs largeness of 
 vision and philosophic calm, if he is not to be forever worried 
 and inconsistent. Nor should a man engage in politics only 
 when the state is in special need of honest endeavor. Such 
 impromptu saviors of the state are like men who refuse to learn 
 navigation when the weather is calm, but wish to stand at the 
 helm when the storm is raging. It is well to write about the 
 government of states, but even the seven wise men of Greece 
 performed their civic duties. 
 
 vPro Arch. 26. 
 
40 SOME 
 
 Nevertheless, when Crassus bought elections, he had not lain 
 awake nights planning for the welfare of his country. Cicero 
 himself was as nobly devoted to Rome as any one, but his life 
 was not governed merely by unselfish devotion. The objectors 
 to politics had some truth in them ; they were doubtless lazy and 
 timid, but they saw that men rushed into political life, talked, 
 bought, or fought their way into it, because it offered not only 
 an opportunity for service but also for personal prominence, 
 great wealth, and excitement. 
 
 Rome was at this time the most powerful country on the 
 Mediterranean. The larger and richer part of this region was 
 directly under Roman rule, while in the rest her influence was 
 paramount. Where two countries bordered upon one another, 
 and thus were natural rivals, Roman diplomacy, aided by 
 Roman arms, had ordinarily established her in the position of 
 an arbiter. "When a people was divided into warring parties, 
 Rome usually stepped in, usually to her own advantage. 
 
 Moreover, she had no rivals, scarcely even a serious enemy. 
 The half -civilized tribes to the north were frequently a source 
 of uneasiness and trouble, occasionally defeating Roman armies 
 and threatening to break into Roman territory. But the effect 
 of their attacks was temporal, and confined to a small portion 
 of the Roman dominion. As yet they did not constitute a very 
 serious menace. The same was, on the whole, true of the nations 
 in the Bast. The Parthians, in the old country of the Medes 
 and Persians, were a vigorous and warlike people, but their 
 interests did not often bring them into collision with Rome. 
 They lived in a world of their own, satisfied, on the whole, to 
 keep their territory intact. Though the Romans in their 
 proximity suffered from inroads, Rome as a nation paid slight 
 heed to the Parthians, and looked upon them as a people to be 
 conquered in the course of future expansion. The kingdoms east 
 of the Roman possessions in Asia Minor were more troublesome. 
 At least one great ruler, Mithradates, arose among them, who 
 
WORLD EVLE 41 
 
 in his ceaseless hatred of Rome waged a long and at times a 
 successful war ; but Mithradates was conquered and his country 
 became part of a Roman province. 
 
 The Romans and the peoples among whom they were dom- 
 inant looked upon themselves as practically constituting all of 
 the world that really mattered. They worked out their own 
 problems and took little cognizance of any country not con- 
 tiguous to the lands around the Mediterranean. Alexander the 
 Great had gone to the borders of India, to be sure; but India 
 and China, the other two great centers of civilization in ancient 
 times, were known only through the picturesque accounts of 
 chance travelers. To a Roman statesman they were as unreal 
 as the country of the Amazons or of the Lotus-Baters. The 
 Romans, therefore, rightly considered themselves the rulers of 
 the world. A Roman citizen was a privileged person wherever 
 he happened to be ; foreign monarchs were the clients of Roman 
 senators. 
 
 It was not by meekness that the Romans had inherited most 
 of the earth, and were taking the rest. They did not set them- 
 selves off from all others as a different people, whether intellect- 
 ually and artistically, as the Greeks had done, or with reference 
 to religion, as did the Jews. The Roman state did not readily 
 interfere with the religion or the institutions of a dependent 
 people. Admitting in practise that others were like themselves, 
 they employed their services and rewarded them with Roman 
 citizenship. 
 
 But the Romans did feel, and made no effort to hide their 
 feeling, that they were incomparably superior in those qualities 
 that make for political supremacy. The Carthaginians, in their 
 eyes, were treacherous, or had been, for the Carthaginians were 
 no more. The Gauls, though good fighters, were boastful, and 
 had no reverence for religion. The Jews were abjectly super- 
 stitious. The Greeks — and to them the Romans yielded prece- 
 dence in many things — the Greeks lied, they talked too much, 
 
42 HOME 
 
 they flattered, they had no gift for self-government. No one 
 of these peoples had at the same time as good soldiers and as good 
 statesmen as the Romans. As a physician or a philosopher a 
 Roman might not be able to rival a Greek, nor did he seriously 
 attempt to do so; but as a commander of armies or a director 
 of states he could have no peers outside of Rome. 
 
 And other nations — some of them in subjection to, or alliance 
 with, Rome ; others fearing or desiring one or the other of these 
 alternatives — tumbled over each other in their eagerness to pay 
 court. Barbarian kings schemed against one another for the 
 favor of influential Romans, sending gifts to senators, and enter- 
 taining generals with the obsequiousness of humble subjects, who, 
 nevertheless, ventured to present their Roman majesties with 
 jewelry, money, tables, chairs, and bedsteads of gold, and beauti- 
 ful slaves. Especially did the Greeks practise this adulation; 
 and there were Greeks, or people educated in the Greek manner, 
 in all the Mediterranean countries. They were found at great 
 distances from its coasts, for King Artavasdes in far-off Armenia 
 wrote Greek tragedies, histories, and orations, and celebrated the 
 marriage of his daughter with recitations from the Bacchae of 
 Euripides. Most of the Greeks themselves were poor in gifts, 
 preferring to receive them ; but they could write epics and shout 
 in processions. And the Romans, sauntering through Greek 
 lands, on their way home from foreign conquests or on their 
 way from Rome when the political situation had made a tempo- 
 rary absence desirable, even while they were in exile, basked in 
 the sunshine of popular and scholarly fawning. Indeed, it was 
 the Greeks who made supremacy especially sweet to the Romans 
 in the matter of world fame, for, as Cicero said, 7 Greek was read 
 in almost all countries, whereas Latin was confined within its 
 natural narrow boundaries. In Rome, even the scholars and 
 poets of Greece, at times, were little better than private tutors 
 to the children of the aristocrats, although they were treated with 
 ? Pro Arch. 23. 
 
GBEEK ADULATION 43 
 
 consideration and outward deference, as are private tutors. In 
 their own cities, the Greeks gave what they had to the visiting 
 masters ; Romans of high rank were entertained by the wealthiest, 
 for some were still wealthy ; those of low rank or no rank at all 
 became the guests of ordinary citizens. 8 
 
 It is not necessary to cite many illustrations of this attitude ; 
 the life of every prominent Roman abounds in them. Cicero had 
 his share of adulation in the city, and even out of it, though he 
 never left Rome except under compulsion, and added no prov- 
 inces to the empire. In Sicily as quaestor and in Cilicia as 
 governor, he lacked nothing that the provinces could give. Even 
 as a young man, when traveling in Greece and Asia Minor for 
 his health, and also for instruction, he was escorted from place 
 to place by the most prominent rhetoricians. These were among 
 the leaders of thought, so that a modern parallel could be found 
 only if the professors of Oxford and Cambridge should journey 
 about England with a young stranger from America, giving him 
 instruction in the things he wished to know. And yet Cicero 
 was at that time of no great consequence ; he had pleaded for 
 two years in the forum, in only one case of importance, and he 
 had held no office. Nor was he a born aristocrat, through whom 
 the Greek professors might pay reverence to an influential 
 family. 
 
 Cicero's experiences, however, scarcely contain a hint of the 
 real circumstances. A better indication is found in a story that 
 Cato used to tell. Once, during the time that Pompey was fight- 
 ing in the East, Cato was traveling in Syria and came to Antioch. 
 As he and his companions were approaching the city, they saw 
 a large throng outside the city gates. There were young men 
 on one side of the road and children on the other, all in holiday 
 attire; there were also magistrates and priests, dressed in white 
 and wearing garlands. Cato thought they had come out to meet 
 him. He had sent some servants to the city, evidently to make 
 
 s In Verr. II, 1, 65. See below, p. 145. 
 
44 BOME 
 
 preparations, and was angry because they had not prevented 
 this outburst of civic enthusiasm. For the greater honor of the 
 foolish Antiochians, he made his companions dismount from 
 their horses — he was walking himself — and so proceeded toward 
 the throng. The leader of the latter, an old man, with a staff 
 and a garland in his hand, approached Cato and asked where 
 he had left Demetrius, and when the latter could be expected. 
 Now, Demetrius was only a freedman of Pompey's. The philo- 
 sophical Cato murmured something about the unfortunate city, 
 while his companions laughed. In later years Cato, too, could 
 laugh at the people of Antioch awaiting the great general's 
 favorite. 
 
 The Greeks of Antioch no doubt had their reward. It is, at 
 all events, told of the victorious Pompey, who soon afterward 
 wended his slow way toward Rome, that he made Mytilene a free 
 city, in honor of the Greek Theophanes, who was singing his ex- 
 ploits. The poets of this city, it may be pertinent to note, were 
 holding one of their regular contests during Pompey's presence, 
 and made him the theme of all their warbling. In Rhodes, Pom- 
 pey attended the lectures of all the philosophers, giving each of 
 them a talent, or about one thousand dollars. Posidonius, the 
 most famous Greek scholar of the period, here held a discussion 
 with the rhetorician Hermagoras on the rhetorical subject of 
 Invention for the amusement and instruction of Pompey, later 
 publishing the disputation; but we are not informed how the 
 disputants were rewarded. At Athens, Pompey encouraged the 
 local philosophers with the generosity he had shown at Rhodes, 
 and also gave the city fifty talents for repairs and beautification. 
 Young Demetrius, incidentally, did not suffer because of Pom- 
 pey's generosity to others; he is said to have left an estate of 
 four thousand talents, about four million dollars. And yet the 
 services of an untrained slave could be had for twelve asses a 
 day, about ten cents. 
 
CENTER OF POWER 45 
 
 It is in Rome, however, and not in the provinces, that we are 
 to look for the influences that moulded Cicero and his prominent 
 contemporaries. Even a great general like Pompey lived most 
 of his life in Rome; neither he nor any one else who had 
 ambitions would ever have thought of making his home at any 
 considerable distance from the city, provided he could stay there 
 in safety. 
 
 The whole power of the Roman people, and consequently of 
 the Roman world, was centered in Rome. 9 The senators lived 
 in the city or its vicinity. The people, who in their assemblies 
 made the laws and elected the magistrates, and who filled the 
 forum, consisted almost entirely of the Roman populace. Shortly 
 before the time that Cicero entered public life the Roman fran- 
 chise had been obtained by the Italians, who thus with the 
 inhabitants of the city and the Roman citizens living outside 
 of Italy, especially in favored communities, constituted the 
 Roman nation; but the seat of government was in Rome, and 
 there was no system of representation. In order to vote, a 
 citizen must be in the capital. The enfranchised Italians fre- 
 quently came to Rome for important elections. Cicero could 
 count upon the support of his admiring fellow-townsmen of 
 Arpinum, and indeed his political success, in so far as it was 
 not due to the knights, depended mostly on his influence among 
 the Italians. As a statesman he also had them constantly in 
 mind. It. seems, nevertheless, that although the Italians occa- 
 sionally had a steadying influence on the Roman populace, they 
 did not materially affect the character of public life in Rome. 
 An influence by no means steadying was exerted by the veterans, 
 who lived away from Rome on land given them by the state. 
 They, too, gathered to the polls in large numbers to give their 
 vote for a former commander, and they were occasionally 
 
 s No attempt is here made to give an account of Boman political institu- 
 tions. See Greenidge, Soman Public Life, Botsford, The Roman Assemblies 
 etc., and Abbott. 
 
46 ROME 
 
 responsible for the lawlessness in the city; but, though their 
 influence was sometimes paramount, they did not form a con- 
 stant part of the people. Under normal conditions the populace 
 of Rome ruled the assemblies. 
 
 Rome, in the time of Cicero, was a city of small extent, 
 covering a little less than five square miles, which is not quite 
 one quarter of the Borough of Manhattan of New York City. 
 It was also a hilly city. But the population was large. Esti- 
 mates necessarily differ considerably, but one million two or 
 three hundred thousand seems a reasonable supposition. While 
 this makes the density of population more than twice that of 
 Manhattan, and considerably greater than in the most crowded 
 parts of London, it is by no means impossible, for perhaps a 
 third of the population consisted of slaves, whose quarters were 
 at best very small ; and almost all of the people comprising the 
 other two thirds were exceedingly poor and crowded together 
 in large tenement houses on very narrow streets. The climate 
 of Italy, furthermore, allows of much outdoor living, so that 
 the dwellings of many were probably little more than places 
 in which to eat and sleep. 
 
 The people of Rome, exclusive of the slaves and some 
 seventy thousand foreign residents, who did not possess the 
 franchise, were sharply divided into three classes. The first 
 class was the nobles, a small group of families, the founders of 
 whom had held high office. Below them were the knights, wbo 
 possessed a minimum of four hundred thousand sesterces, 
 between sixteen and twenty thousand dollars. These two classes, 
 the political and the financial aristocracy, had a unity of 
 education and financial means that set them off at an almost 
 immeasurable distance from the rest of the people. Numbering 
 only about ten thousand altogether in a city of a million, which 
 itself was the center not only of Italy but of the world, the nobles 
 and the knights formed a very small minority, but they are the 
 only ones about whom much is known. They wrote the books, 
 
SIZE AND POPULATION 47 
 
 the orations, and the letters of the period. In the big spectacle 
 of the last century of the republic every great individual who 
 moves across the stage is a noble or a knight, while the immense 
 third class, the plebs urbcmu, performs the necessary office of 
 the mob, indifferent or threatening as the case may be, but 
 always present. They are like an indistinct background against 
 which are seen the figures of generals, orators, financiers, and 
 students. 
 
 Though the plebs urbana liked to think of themselves as the 
 Roman people, large numbers were foreign slaves who had been 
 manumitted, and a still larger number had none of the qualities 
 that had made Eome the mistress of the world. There must 
 have been among them a great many who earned an honest 
 living as artisans, small tradesmen, and laborers of various 
 kinds ; but there were many circumstances that made them as a 
 class no better than an ordinary city rabble. Much of the work 
 that they might have done was performed by the thousands of 
 slaves in the city. It is not likely that the nobles or the knights 
 made extensive use of the services of free citizens. Slave labor 
 was cheap, and in many ways more efficient, for the slaves could 
 be given a training not accessible to the poor free man. Slaves 
 performed not only the ordinary menial tasks; many of them 
 were educated and acted in such capacities as copyists and 
 binders of books, private secretaries, and physicians. Though 
 many of them were manumitted, they remained in the service 
 of their former masters, precluding the employment of free citi- 
 zens. Foreigners, too, especially Greeks, were largely employed 
 in positions requiring unusual skill or education. Nor did the 
 free citizens perform all the tasks that pertained to their own 
 lives. They did not, for example, always build their own houses. 
 The big tenement houses in which they lived were erected by 
 slaves. Crassus, we are told, had five hundred slaves so employed. 
 As early as 103 B.C., three years after the birth of Cicero, there 
 were only two thousand people in Rome who owned property. 
 
48 HOME 
 
 It is not probable that the great majority of the populace 
 wished to work. As the sovereign people of the world they 
 expected the world to feed them. And the world did feed them ; 
 or rather the Roman state, which in its turn drew its income 
 almost exclusively from conquered territory. In 5 B.C., thirty- 
 eight years after Cicero's death, there were in Rome three hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand people who received from the state a 
 gratuity of sixty denarii, about ten dollars. This number prob- 
 ably included all the free citizens and their sons. During the 
 lifetime of Cicero the state sold bread to the free citizens at a 
 reduced rate, or gave it to them for nothing ; one result of which 
 was that a large number of bankrupts, loafers, and adventurers 
 nocked to Rome, who further increased the poverty and unruli- 
 ness of the plebs. 
 
 This class, however, was not a serious problem merely because 
 of their presence in the city; they had considerable political 
 power. Theoretically they were almost supreme. Organized 
 into assemblies, with different rules of procedure and under 
 different presidencies, they were the law-making and electoral 
 body. In regard to law-making, however, they were strangely 
 hampered both by the senate and the magistrates, and neither 
 they nor their leaders made any real effort to assert the rights 
 of the people as the seat of power in the republic. The struggle 
 between the people and the aristocracy belonged almost entirely 
 to the past. In the time of Cicero the leaders of the so-called 
 democratic party were nearly all generals, or supporters of gen- 
 erals, who rebelled against the domination of the senate in their 
 efforts to secure power for themselves, not men who tried to 
 establish a democratic republic. 
 
 These ostensible leaders of the plebs, as well as other 
 politicians seeking office, needed the support of the populace as 
 electors, and the latter, in consequence, received from the state 
 not only most of their livelihood but also their amusements. The 
 public games, with circus and theatrical performances, were 
 
TEE POPULACE 49 
 
 given for their benefit, normally occupying some seventy-six 
 days of the year. These were in charge of public officials, who 
 found it advisable to spend large sums of their own or their 
 supporters' money in addition to the state allowance. The 
 demand for these amusements on the part of the plebs was so 
 great that a magistrate who had treated the public shabbily was 
 very likely to fail of election to higher offices. The spending of 
 money in this way was well established by tradition, and was 
 recognized by thinkers as one of the duties of public life, pro- 
 vided it did not deteriorate to ruinous extravagance. It was 
 also traditional to feast the people and give them gifts of money 
 in connection with triumphs, funerals of prominent men, and 
 any other extraordinary occasions. 
 
 But the demands of the plebs resulted in a still graver 
 situation. Bribery at elections became almost universal. Laws 
 were passed to check the evil, but there was no real public senti- 
 ment behind them. Though charges of bribery were frequently 
 brought before the courts, they rarely aimed at raising the moral 
 level of elections, but were merely political weapons in the hands 
 of defeated candidates. And as the political disintegration pro- 
 gressed, the plebs were ready to be organized into gangs that 
 obstructed or carried through elections and legal action, filling 
 the streets, the Campus Martius, and the forum Math shouting, 
 spitting, stone-throwing, and bloodshed. Indeed, the situation 
 seems to have been this, that the plebs urbaiut as a class was a 
 thoroughly unworthy wielder of large political power, demand- 
 ing flattery and concessions of every kind, and contributing 
 consciously and unconsciously to the destruction of the Roman 
 social order ; while there were numerous political leaders, belong- 
 ing to the aristocracy and not to the plebs, who were ready to 
 make full use of the opportunities thus offered. 
 
 Above the populace was the order of the equites, or knights, 
 to whom Cicero belonged. They were the well-to-do people of 
 Eome. Some of them cultivated their farms, as Cicero's grand- 
 
50 ROME 
 
 father had done; others, like his father, lived a life of studious 
 leisure; still others, like Atticus, were bankers and private 
 business men. Above all, however, they were the financiers of 
 Rome, who directed the big enterprises. The common people 
 did not have money enough for this, and the aristocracy were 
 forbidden to engage in business, at least outside of Italy. The 
 knights formed large stock companies, in which aristocrats often 
 owned shares, and these companies farmed many of the taxes of 
 the provinces. In return for a fixed sum to be paid into the 
 state treasury, which thus constituted the tax in question so far 
 as the government was concerned, the knights received the right 
 to collect from the provincials as much as the legal conditions 
 of taxation allowed them. These companies became in this way 
 an important, though unofficial, part of the government. Much 
 of the money that poured into Rome was in the form of booty, 
 and with this the companies of the knights had nothing to do; 
 but as practically the entire regular income of Rome was derived 
 from the provinces, the knights were justly called by Cicero 
 the mainstay of the whole social fabric. Their influence was 
 enormous. Since the aristocracy, through the senate and the . 
 magistracies, had almost complete charge of the provinces, so 
 that the letting of the contracts for taxation as well as the 
 facilities for actually collecting the taxes depended on them, 
 the knights were brought into very close contact with them, often 
 in a spirit of cooperation, but still more often by way of oppo- 
 sition. Between them, these two classes controlled the revenues 
 of the state. 
 
 Socially the knights held a high place. In matters of 
 education and personal friendships the son of a knight seems 
 often to have had the same advantages as the son of a consul. 
 This was true to a very remarkable degree of Atticus; and it 
 was almost equally the case with Cicero. Lucius Crassus, the 
 greatest orator during Cicero's youth, guided the education of 
 young Cicero and his brother, and even admitted them to his 
 
THE KNIGHTS 51 
 
 home. Marcus Antonius, the other great orator of the period, 
 was another friend. An uncle of Cicero's had accompanied him 
 to Cilicia — which Cicero himself later governed — where Antonius 
 had fought against the pirates ; and later the uncle and Antonius 
 had together attended philosophical and rhetorical lectures in 
 Athens. The uncle often spoke of his experiences during this 
 time. Besides the two eminent orators, the great family of the 
 Seaevolas were friends of the Ciceros. "When Marcus, probably 
 at sixteen, had assumed the toga virilis, the external sign of 
 maturity, he became one of the young men who were initiated 
 into public life by Scaevola, the augur. The latter,, who was 
 about seventy-one years old at the time, was one of the greatest 
 of the Romans, and his home was crowded with prominent men. 
 Despite his advanced age, he was the first to arrive in the senate- 
 house for the meetings. Like other members of his family, he 
 was a great jurist, and Cicero was allowed to be present in his 
 house when he gave legal advice to his numerous consultants. 10 
 This was his way, a common one, of giving instruction in law 
 to his young proteges ; he did not teach formally. At the death 
 of the augur Cicero attached himself to the latter 's kinsman, 
 Scaevola, the pontifex maximus, also an old man. The pontiff 
 was said by Lucius Crassus to be the best orator among the 
 jurists and the best jurist among the orators. 
 
 Cicero's connection with the Seaevolas was not limited to an 
 apprenticeship for public life. One of the Seaevolas seems to 
 have taken sufficient interest in his early literary efforts to have 
 praised his poem on Marius. Cicero was also received in the 
 family, and speaks of the ladies, who were women of uncommon 
 accomplishments and character. The augur's wife, Laelia, was 
 the daughter of Laelius, the friend of Scipio Africanus. Cicero 
 was thus brought into close spiritual connection with the so-called 
 Seipionic Circle and the period of the Roman republic which was 
 considered, both by him and by later writers, as its culmination. 
 
 10 De Amic. 2. A very attractive scene. 
 
52 HOME 
 
 ~ The influence on Cicero of these great nobles was deep and 
 lasting, and can be traced at all periods of his life. They are 
 often speakers in his dialogues; their opinions are frequently 
 quoted, always with reverence and approval; anecdotes about 
 them are scattered through his writings; and their ideals, both 
 political and spiritual, were largely his, though in politics he 
 remained at heart a knight, with a broader view than that of the 
 typical aristocrat. Above all, these nobles, as friends of his 
 family, introduced him at an early date to the throbbing, brilliant 
 political life of Rome, in which they themselves were leaders, 
 and so guided his ambition, if indeed it needed guidance after he 
 had once come to the capital. 
 
 But the opportunities of Cicero, or of any other young knight, 
 were merely social and financial; they were not political. A 
 member of the equestrian rank might be elected to the lower 
 magistracies, though even that, as Cicero more than hints, was 
 not accomplished without opposition; if he became a candidate 
 for high office, he was certain to have arrayed against him the 
 concerted influence of the aristocracy, strengthened by the envy 
 of less successful knights and by the conviction of the common 
 people that the highest magistracies were the prerogatives of the 
 nobles. 
 
 The nobles, nobilcs, constituted the highest social order. 
 They consisted almost exclusively of a comparatively few 
 families, who either belonged to the patricians of early Roman 
 history or had become members of the aristocracy because an 
 ancestor had held at least the curule aedileship, the second lowest 
 office. Election to the curule aedileship would admit a person 
 to the nobility, and as election was dependent upon the will of 
 the whole people, almost any politician could become a noble. 
 But within the nobility he held no position of consequence unless 
 he attained the highest offices, and, as a matter of actual practise, 
 the nobility exercised so great an influence in elections that it 
 was extremely difficult for any one but a noble by inheritance to 
 
THE NOBLES 53 
 
 attain these offices. Even when these New men, as they were 
 called, had reached the pinnacle of the magisterial career, they 
 were not full-fledged nobles, and were readily looked down upon 
 and antagonized by the genuine aristocrats. The sons of these, 
 on the other hand, were destined for the consulship while they 
 still lay in their cradles, Cicero says, truthfully enough, though 
 with bitterness, for he was then struggling toward the high 
 places himself. A defeated candidate could claim superiority 
 over his successful rival on the ground that his own family 
 was the nobler of the two, and do this without exciting surprise. 
 In the atrium, the chief room or reception hall, of a noble were 
 kept the portrait masks of his ancestors, and these were carried 
 in the funeral processions of the family. Only noble ancestors 
 received this curious canonization. The funeral ceremonies were 
 held in the forum, where an oration, a eulogy — laudatw fun&bris 
 — was delivered, setting forth the virtues of the deceased and 
 calling attention to the services to Rome of his whole family. 
 These eulogies thus constituted a history of the family; and 
 these family archives, taken together, contained nearly all that 
 was known of early Roman history. 
 
 Belonging to a hereditary nobility, the individual aristocrat 
 was not always rich ; and even if he possessed considerable means, 
 the lawful expenses connected with elections and public games, 
 and the practise of bribery, which at times assumed incredible 
 proportions, frequently impoverished him before he reached the 
 highest offices. But these offices, though no salaries were con- 
 nected with them, more than made good his losses. There were 
 many ways in which this was accomplished. Foreign kings sent 
 gifts to influential politicians to secure favorable senatorial 
 action ; individuals and communities outside Rome did not prac- 
 tise parsimony in their relations to the senator who was their 
 representative; rich clients in Rome seem to have paid their 
 advocates well, despite the law that there should be no legal fees ; 
 and wealthy men, whether Romans or foreigners, were in the 
 
54 ROME 
 
 habit of willing moneys to well-known political leaders, thus 
 honoring themselves and their families by association with 
 greatness. But the two great avenues to wealth were war and 
 the government of the provinces. It was through war that such 
 men as Caesar, Pompey, and Lucullus amassed their huge for- 
 tunes; but great and successful generals were necessarily few. 
 The ordinary aristocrats relied on the less martial feat of despoil- 
 ing the provinces. Even the honest propraetor or proconsul 
 made large sums. Cicero, after his one year in Cilicia, found 
 himself the possessor of 2,200,000 sesterces, from 88,000 to 
 110,000 dollars ; and yet he was scrupulously honest, not taking 
 even what the law allowed him, and restraining his subordinates 
 to the point of causing complaint. But the great majority of 
 provincial governors were not honest. Innocentia — innocence, 
 but interpreted as referring to self-restraint in reference to 
 other people's property — was in the eyes of honest men one 
 of the greatest virtues that a governor could have, but few of 
 them had it. The provinces were on the whole fair game. It 
 is not likely that every governor practised extortion with the 
 skillful thoroughness of Verres in the rich island of Sicily, who 
 stole silver from the tables of hosts who entertained him, and 
 carried off marble pillars from the temples, employing artists 
 to help him decide what was worth stealing; but extortion was, 
 nevertheless, prevalent. Trials of home-coming governors— 
 de repetundis rebus, for the recovery of property, as the Romans, 
 frankly put it — were so common that the returning official nearly 
 always faced the unpleasant possibility of having his record 
 investigated. Convictions, however, were rare. The trials, like 
 those for bribery, became weapons to be wielded by one politician 
 against another; honesty and the just claims of the provincials 
 were scarcely considered. Argument in their favor scarcely 
 went further than this, that they should not be made so hostile 
 to Rome that they would cause trouble, nor so poor that they 
 could not pay the taxes. 
 
THE SENATE 55 
 
 Politically, the nobles were identical with the senate, and so 
 constituted the so-called senatorial order, even though not every 
 noble actually entered politics and had a seat in the senate. 
 Through a law of Sulla, whose great changes took place im- 
 mediately before Cicero's entrance upon a public career, the 
 quaestorship had become the stepping-stone to the senate. After 
 this time the senate consisted normally of six hundred members, 
 but it was dominated by the old noble families both because of 
 the large number of senators that belonged to them and because 
 the leaders of the senate were the men who had held the 
 consulship, and these were almost without exception nobles by 
 inheritance. 
 
 The senate was the sovereign power in the Roman state. This 
 had come about through a long series of events and had reached 
 completion a century before Cicero's birth. It was legally 
 recognized, as well as extended, by the legislation of Sulla. 
 Theoretically the senate lacked many powers which belonged to 
 the assemblies and to the magistrates, but in practise the influ- 
 ence of the senate was felt everywhere. The great nobles in the 
 senate dominated the elections to the magistracies, as has already 
 been mentioned. The assemblies, and not the senate, made the 
 laws; but the assemblies could vote only on a motion put before 
 them by their presiding officers, and these were magistrates. The 
 two assemblies of the greatest importance in Cicero's time were 
 the comitia centuriata and the eomitia tributa,. The consuls 
 presided in the former; and the consuls were almost always 
 members of the aristocracy, and therefore devoted to the interests 
 of the senate. The comitia tributa was presided over by the 
 tribunes of the plebs, and since these, whether nobles or not, 
 were often opposed to the aristocracy, it was in this assembly, 
 and practically in this only, that the senate did not exercise their 
 domination. But although the senate did not make the laws, 
 and although the decrees of the senate had to be approved by 
 the people before they became laws, these decrees were often 
 
56 ROME 
 
 carried out before the assembly had an opportunity to vote on 
 them, so immediate was the senate's hold on the executive 
 power ; and many decrees were binding without the approval of 
 the people. The magistrates, furthermore, on taking office, 
 issued so-called edicts, in which they set forth the rules by which 
 they intended to govern themselves during their year of office. 
 The edicts of the praetors, who presided in the courts, had a 
 far-reaching influence; taken together, they practically formed 
 a code of laws, and the praetors were thus, in practise if not in 
 theory, lawmakers. A governor of a province issued a similar 
 edict; he was either an ex-praetor or an ex-eonsul. The people 
 had the power of declaring war and making peace. But since 
 the foreign relations of Home were practically in the hands of 
 the senate and since the generals of the Roman armies were 
 ex-magistrates, assigned to their positions by the senate, wars 
 were made and peace terms were settled very much according 
 to the wishes of the senate. The finances of Rome were controlled 
 by the senate; the people, who were not taxed, had nothing to 
 say about the expenditure of money. The senate, as a body, 
 had no part in jurisdiction. The assemblies and some of the 
 individual magistrates had certain powers, which need not be 
 described, but all cases of importance came before the standing 
 courts. These, however, were presided over by the praetors, 
 who possessed discretionary powers that often determined the 
 outcome of a lawsuit. The jurors had been knights in the period 
 before Sulla, but he gave the courts to the senators, and when 
 this was changed, some ten years later, the senate retained one 
 third of the jury, while the other two thirds went to the 
 knights and to a certain high class of plebeians. The influential 
 advocates in the courts, finally, were almost without exception 
 magistrates or ex-magistrates. 
 
 It was through the magistrates that the senate exercised 
 much of its authority; and this was possible because the magis- 
 trates themselves were often little else than the servants of the 
 
THE MAGISTRATES 57 
 
 senate. Though their legal and executive powers were consider- 
 able, they were used under normal conditions for the interests 
 of the nobility that composed the senate. This state of things 
 had been brought about by a variety of circumstances, only one 
 or two of which it is necessary to mention. The powers of the 
 individual magistrates conflicted. Two consuls, eight praetors, 
 and ten plebeian tribunes held office at the same time, and each 
 one of these not only exercised the same powers as his respective 
 colleagues but he had the same rights of intercession or veto, 
 by which he could nullify the action of a colleague ; yet such a 
 veto could not itself be vetoed. Out of the inevitable conflict 
 and confusion which resulted from the rival position of the 
 magistrates there had arisen the need of some central authority, 
 and the senate had supplied this need. The interests of the 
 individual magistrates, furthermore, were bound up with the 
 senate. All the magistrates had seats in the senate, and here the 
 new magistrate came under the influence of the experience and 
 greater age of his senatorial colleagues. He held office for only 
 one year, whereas he remained a senator for life. If he desired 
 the usual political reward of a province, his appointment de- 
 pended on the senate. He would, therefore, have to be an 
 extraordinarily original and brave man to strike out on a course 
 opposed to the desires of the senate; in most cases he had not 
 even the wish to do so. 
 
 The senate thus practically ruled Rome during the later 
 republic, and Rome ruled the world. In the senate itself the 
 greatest influence was wielded by the ex-consuls, or consulars. 
 They had the highest rank and the most varied experience, and 
 they were also aided by the rules of procedure. They were first 
 called upon to express their opinion in debate. After them, 
 the praetors and ex-praetors were invited to speak, and then 
 the word was given, in proper order, to the holders or ex-holders 
 of the other offices. But since all things were decided by open 
 debate and since the senate was a large body, the right of the 
 
58 SOME 
 
 eonsulars always to speak first made them the leaders of the sen- 
 ate. A Roman, therefore, who had filled the various magistracies 
 through the consulship and had thereupon become one of the 
 leaders of the senate, thus enjoyed a position to which the modern 
 world offers no parallel. He was the very incarnation of worldly 
 success, having attained the only thing worth striving for. In 
 modern society there are many roads that lead to wealth or to 
 fame, and no one would maintain the superiority of one kind 
 of activity over all others, though popular applause may be 
 given in one country to men of wealth, in another to soldiers, 
 and in still another to artists or writers. A man chooses his 
 work, or drifts into it, allowed, on the whole, to follow his own 
 particular bent; and he may achieve success in one field though 
 he would have failed in another. In Rome the way to success 
 was the same for all ; only one kind of talent was richly rewarded. 
 But for that reason the reward was the greater. 
 
 As an influential statesman, furthermore, the Roman sur- 
 passed his modern counterpart in the variety and range of his 
 activities. He was, or had been, a lawgiver, a soldier, an 
 executive; he often pleaded in the courts, and he had presided 
 in them. Very few could attain eminence in all of these activ- 
 ities, but an ex-consul had engaged in all of them at one time 
 or another, and was therefore in touch with every branch of 
 public life. He was the shaper of large commercial undertak- 
 ings inasmuch as most Roman business had to do with the prov- 
 inces, and consequently depended ultimately on the attitude of 
 the senate. He was the honored representative at Rome of whole 
 communities, whose material well-being might depend entirely 
 on his ability. And, finally, he and his peers were the rulers of 
 the world. 
 
 This unique eminence was greatly enhanced by the manner 
 of life in Rome. The prominent statesman was in daily contact 
 with the people. In the morning he held a reception, salutatio, 
 at his home ; then he went, or descended, as the Romans said, for 
 
LIFE IN TEE FOBVM 59 
 
 his residence was probably on the Palatine Hill, to the forum, 
 accompanied by a large crowd of clients and supporters of every 
 kind. In the year of his magistracy he also had with him a 
 bodyguard of lictors, twelve if he was a consul, two if a praetor ; 
 and he wore a toga with a purple border. If he was a candidate 
 for office, his toga was chalked ; and the crowd about him was as 
 large as he could muster, in order to make display of his influ- 
 ence. Even after he had retired from office, his dress as a senator 
 differed from that of an ordinary citizen, and his followers were 
 numerous. 
 
 The forum, not a very large place, was filled with slaves, 
 freedmen, foreigners, ordinary citizens, knights, senators, and 
 magistrates. It was a busy, swirling place, alive with applause 
 and condemnation. Nearly all public business was conducted 
 there. The courts were held in plain view, so that the crowd 
 surged around to listen. They did not listen silently, but shouted 
 approval in the midst of a cross-examination, loudly ridiculed 
 discomfited speakers or witnesses, and if a speaker failed to 
 interest them, they went elsewhere in search of better entertain- 
 ment. The different points of a case were discussed before and 
 after ti'ials, and the persons concerned were freely congratulated, 
 sneered at, or condoled with. 
 
 The meetings of the senate were not open to the people, but 
 the latter were always outside the senate-house or the temple 
 in which the meeting was held; and they did not conceal their 
 presence, often being noisy enough to disturb the debates. 
 Immediately after the meeting, if anything of unusual interest 
 had been under discussion, the consul, or a prominent senator, 
 frequently addressed the people, informing them of the senate's 
 action. 
 
 The people were always being addressed. Public meetings, 
 contiones, presided over by magistrates but extremely informal 
 nevertheless, preceded the sessions of the assemblies and were 
 also called in reference to everything of importance. They were 
 
60 SOME 
 
 most often held in the forum. It is on record that a magistrate 
 might address the people every day during his whole year of 
 office. On holidays the people also had the Circus and the plays, 
 where popular favorites were applauded and popular scape- 
 goats hissed. If a verse in an old tragedy could be interpreted 
 as referring to political conditions, the actor might be called upon 
 to repeat it interminably for the glory or discomfiture of the 
 person concerned. These expressions of popular opinion were 
 so noisy and carried so much weight that the politician who was 
 for the moment unpopular rarely ventured into their presence. 
 
 It was an intimate, vociferous life, this life in Rome, which 
 tried a man severely, and then rewarded or punished him. 
 Probably every senator of prominence was known to the whole 
 people; they had all heard him speak. If he was unsuccessful 
 and Stayed away from the forum, his absence was remarked. 
 If he was successful, the crowd surged around him. He was 
 always meeting friends or foes. During the time of elections 
 or important events, the prominent politicians would be con- 
 stantly among the people, speaking with individuals or address- 
 ing crowds, arguing and persuading; but even when there was 
 no unusual excitement, the well-known senators, each accom- 
 panied by his large retinue, sauntered back and forth, exchang- 
 ing greeting or repartee, for which there was always an audience ; 
 and the repartee was sometimes of a kind not suitable for 
 repetition before modern readers. 11 
 
 But life in the forum did not consist merely of oratory and 
 repartee at the time Cicero was growing up. In 107 B.C., the 
 year before Cicero was born, his townsman Marius attained the 
 consulship. His election broke the aristocratic tradition. He 
 was a plebeian, and had been put into office to carry on the war 
 against Jugurtha. In the following year he brought the Jugur- 
 thine war to a successful conclusion, and for several years after 
 that he was kept almost constantly in office as a general, so that 
 
 11 See Att. 2, 1. 5. 
 
POLITICAL STRUGGLES 61 
 
 he was holding his sixth consulship at the time Cicero was six 
 years old. Marius, who was a poor politician, became involved 
 in trouble with his own party and was out of politics for about 
 ten years, returning in 90 B.C., in the early part of which year 
 Cicero probably assumed the toga virilis. During these years 
 conditions in Rome had been comparatively quiet, though acts of 
 violence had not been lacking and the knights had made extensive 
 and scandalous use of their power in the extortion courts. Late in 
 the year 91 b.c. Lucius Crassus had died, and Cicero had shortly 
 thereupon begun to attend Scaevola, the aged augur. From ^his 
 time on, Cicero, who now, in the man's toga, could go about 
 unattended and also seek instruction wherever he chose, was 
 constantly in the forum. In the year 89 b.c, however, probably 
 from the spring to the fall, he was in the army doing his military 
 service. The Social War, waged by the Italian allies against 
 Rome, to secure Roman citizenship, had begun in 90 B.C., and 
 lasted two years. Nothing is known of Cicero as a recruit ; 
 not even as to whether or not he took part in any fighting. The 
 only incident recorded is that he was present at a conference 
 between his general and one of the rebel leaders. The former 
 was Pompeius Strabo, the father of the Pompey who was soon 
 to be called the Great; and Cicero may have met the latter in 
 camp. Pompey was nearly eight months younger than Cicero. 
 The end of the Social "War did not bring peace to Rome. 
 The next years were filled with anarchy by Marius, Sulla, and 
 their factions. In 88 B.C., while Sulla was consul, a tribune of 
 the plebs, P. Sulpicius Rufus, brought forward various laws in 
 favor of the people, one of which assigned to Marius the com- 
 mand against Mithradates, although this had already been given 
 to Sulla by the senate. In order to prevent legislation, the con- 
 suls proclaimed a public holiday, during which no public business 
 could be transacted ; but Sulpicius armed his followers and drove 
 the consuls from the forum. The holiday proclamation was 
 withdrawn and the laws were passed. Sulla thereupon marched 
 
62 ROME 
 
 upon the city with an army; all democratic resistance yielded; 
 Marius and Sulpicius fled, the former, after picturesque adven- 
 tures, to Africa and the ruins of Carthage; and Sulla carried 
 some laws that increased the aristocratic power. He also 
 secured the Mithradatic command, and departed for the East 
 the following year. 
 
 After Sulla's departure, Cinna, one of the consuls, revived 
 the proposals of Sulpicius. His aristocratic colleague fell upon 
 the voters with an armed force, and the forum was heaped high 
 with the bodies of the slain. Cinna fled, but to the legions. 
 Partisans joined him from many directions, and Marius returned 
 from Africa. The senate prepared to defend themselves, but 
 were forced to yield, after a short resistance. Cinna and Marius 
 entered Eome with their army; terrible massacres followed. 
 Marius' desire for vengeance was insatiable. Men were cut 
 down, says Plutarch, if Marius neglected to return their greet- 
 ing ; maimed and headless corpses were thrown about and 
 trampled upon in the streets. Among the numerous nobles who 
 lost their lives in this reign of terror was Marcus Antonius, .the 
 great orator who had befriended Cicero. Many circumstances 
 connected with his death are reported. After he had been mur- 
 dered, his head was brought to Marius, who was banqueting 
 with friends, and later it was fastened to the rostra in the forum. 
 Marius and Cinna had had themselves elected consuls for the 
 next year, 86 b.c. ; it was Marius' seventh consulship, but he 
 died a few weeks after entering upon office. Thereupon Cinna 
 ruled Rome for three years, 86-83 B.C., during which time con- 
 stitutional government was practically suspended. 
 
 In the year 83 B.C., however, Sulla landed in Italy with an 
 army of 40,000 men and a large number of nobles who had fled 
 to him. Civil war blazed up anew and lasted for two years. 
 Among those slain by the popular faction was Scaevola, the 
 pontifex maximus, who was butchered before the image of the 
 goddess Vesta. In 82 b.c. Sulla entered Rome, and presently 
 
MARIUS AND SULLA fj3 
 
 proclaimed himself dictator. Sulla's victor y was signalized by 
 proscriptions and massacres, which were not limited to the city 
 of Rome. The conditions in Rome and Italy were more terrible, 
 if possible, than under Marius and Cinna, for system was added 
 to cruelty. The proscribed are said to have numbered 4700, 
 including 2600 members of the equestrian order, who had sided 
 with Marius. Cicero's kinsman, the adopted son of Marius, was 
 among those killed. His murderer was Catiline. Quintus 
 Cicero, in his pamphlet on electioneering, written in 64 B.C., 
 described the circumstances, for Catiline was running against 
 Marcus Cicero for the consulship. According to Quintus, 
 Catiline flogged Gratidianus, the kinsman of Cicero, through the 
 streets of Rome, tortured him horribly, and finally cut off his 
 head ; the blood flowed in streams between the fingers of his left 
 hand, with which he had seized the hair of his victim. 
 
 The assassinations and proscriptions nevertheless came to 
 an end, and Sulla restored order. Everything was done to 
 insure the predominance of the aristocrats. Two measures were 
 especially important. One of these related to the plebs. The 
 power of the plebeian tribunes was limited. As champions of 
 the people, they had the right of vetoing any proposal whatso- 
 ever, and of putting a stop to parliamentary discussion. This 
 immensely powerful weapon was taken away, and, although the 
 tribunate had thus been shorn of all real power, election to this 
 office was also made a disqualification for further officeholding. 
 The other measure was directed against the knights. The extor- 
 tion courts were taken from the latter and given to the senators. 
 "While remaining a democracy, Rome was thus made definitely 
 a democracy in which one class was endowed with so much power 
 that the other classes were certain to rebel. But even more 
 important than this was the fact that Sulla, partly following 
 the example of Marius, had taught the Roman politicians to 
 rely on the army. Rome was a military power; her whole life 
 depended on the success of her armies. While the nation was 
 
64 MOME 
 
 inspired by patriotism and a feeling of unity, the power of Rome 
 could be wielded by the civil government, wherever the armies 
 were and by whomsoever commanded; but with the nation 
 divided, each party fighting for supremacy, the armies would 
 unavoidably be brought into the conflict by some individual, or 
 individuals, who could command their loyalty. And it was 
 inevitable that the soldiers, who sometimes served for long 
 periods in foreign countries or in the provinces, should become 
 exceptionally devoted to their general. His success was their 
 success; complacency on his part meant license to plunder for 
 them; and when they returned to Rome, it was he who had to 
 secure for them their reward from the state, which usually 
 consisted of free land. For more than half a century generals, 
 when away from Rome, had been growing less and less amenable 
 to senatorial dictation. Now Marius and Sulla had introduced 
 the soldier into politics. 
 
 The reason for these momentous changes is not to be sought 
 in the character of any particular persons. Everything was 
 wrong in Rome. The nobles and the knights had too much 
 money, as is indicated by Pompey's gifts to Athens and to 
 Demetrius; the majority of the plebs had no money at all, and 
 lacked both the desire and the opportunity to earn any. The 
 three social classes were constantly in collision, their weapons 
 being bribery, violence, and even murder. Below them were the 
 innumerable slaves, drawn from many nationalities, who per- 
 formed the menial labor of Italy, and so might be looked upon 
 as the basis of society. They were treated fairly well in the city 
 and on the small farms and in the vineyards ; but on the great 
 estates of the nobles, which were scattered over nearly the whole 
 country, they were no better than beasts of burden, held in 
 check by armed overseers. They often revolted. In no depart- 
 ment of life was there a sound public opinion to serve as a check. 
 The rich indulged in almost incredible extravagances, and were 
 often immoral; they had lost their old religion and in its stead 
 
NATIONAL DETERIORATION 65 
 
 had substituted Greek philosophy, many carrying their philoso- 
 phic speculations just far enough to prove that morality was a 
 matter for clever debate. The poor, on the other hand, earning 
 little and having no responsibility, lived for the day, constantly 
 making impudent demands for support and entertainment. 
 Religion and morality can scarcely be discussed at all in con- 
 nection with the Roman populace, for they had little of either. 
 And even in the other cities of Italy and in the country districts, 
 where the Roman people was at its best, falsification of wills, 
 ruinous extravagance, divorce, and murder frequently failed 
 to call forth the right kind of public censure, and, when legally 
 punishable, escaped in the courts. 12 This whole social fabric, 
 finally, was supported by money stolen or extorted from hostile 
 countries or from the provinces; both enemies and provincials, 
 despite their fawning, hated Rome with unceasing hatred, and 
 with good reason. 
 
 This national deterioration, due to Rome's world-power, had 
 been going on for a century before the birth of Cicero. It can 
 be traced most readily in the numerous laws passed during these 
 hundred years. There were laws in favor of the different social 
 orders, and in their disfavor, all tending to break up the nation. 
 There were laws to check bribery, to drive out the Greek philoso- 
 phers, to establish courts for the trial of provincial governors, 
 to restrain private expenditure. These laws were passed, but 
 they were not obeyed. Things went continually from bad to 
 worse. And yet Rome not only retained her rule over the Medi- 
 terranean world, but she was destined to retain it for centuries, 
 even extending her boundaries beyond those set by Pompey and 
 Caesar. Her foreign enemies and her discontented provincials 
 did not break her power ; in fact, they scarcely even tried to do so. 
 In Italy she had civil wars of many kinds, some of which brought 
 her to the very edge of the precipice, but she was not hurled 
 into the abyss. By victory or by wise yielding, she constantly 
 
 12 This appears most glaringly in Cicero's defense of Cluentius. See 
 below, p. 120. 
 
66 SOME 
 
 emerged from her throng of difficulties, strong as before, or even 
 stronger. She was like another Antaeus who, when thrown, 
 bounded from the ground with renewed strength. 
 
 This inexhaustible resilience was due to the one quality that 
 the Romans had not lost, the will to rule. They spent their 
 ill-gotten money basely, or at least foolishly, and they disobeyed 
 every law that they made for themselves; but in the face of 
 danger, whether from within or without, they always rallied in 
 some inscrutible way, so as to remain masters both of them- 
 selves and of others. The less difficult mastery to retain was 
 that over others, the provincials and the foreign nations. These 
 were morally no better than the Romans ; in some ways, far worse. 
 Indeed, Rome's deterioration was largely due to contact with 
 the decadent Hellenized world; and she had not yet allowed 
 the bad influences to destroy her ability to make her commands 
 effective. In her dealings with others, she resembled an un- 
 scrupulous but successful business man, doing much that was 
 cruel and illegal, but always seeing to it that the business con- 
 tinued. The greater difficulty, consisted in retaining her mastery 
 over herself. There was enough strength left in the nation to 
 accomplish this. There were unselfish lovers of Rome among 
 the upper classes; and there must have been, though rarely 
 visible to us, a large body of decent and strong men in the cities 
 of Italy, the real Roman nation, from which the armies came, 
 and men like Cicero. The government, however, was beyond 
 redemption, and had to be overturned. 
 
 The revolution which changed Rome from a republic to a 
 monarchy was not accomplished in a generation, nor was it due 
 to the foresight or agitation of any individual or any class of 
 citizens. Perhaps the change was too gradual and too aimless 
 to be called a revolution. It may be said to have lasted from 
 the attack leveled against the aristocracy by Tiberius Gracchus 
 in 133 b.c. until the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., and was a period 
 of constant unrest, of almost continuous law-breaking, and of 
 frequent bloodshed. It was a Hundred Years' War with the 
 
A HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 67 
 
 characteristics of the French Revolution. There was no time 
 for extended efforts to. improve Rome ; only temporary measures 
 to meet pressing difficulties could be attempted. While perhaps 
 no one, with the exception of Mark Antony toward the end of 
 the period, strove consciously to make himself sole ruler, men 
 of ambition got themselves into positions where they must secure 
 supreme power in order to make themselves safe. 
 
 Cicero's whole life fell within the limits of this protracted 
 anarchy, and was conditioned by it. Born in the year of Marius * 
 second consulship, he was twenty-four years old when Sulla 
 became dictator and twenty-seven when Sulla resigned, and he 
 died twelve years before the battle of Actium. The constitution 
 of Sulla had legalized and extended the power of the aristocrats. 
 The goal of Cicero's ambition might, therefore, be a position 
 of eminence like that of Lucius Crassus -or the Scaevolas, but 
 even if he could overcome the disadvantages inevitably connected 
 with his equestrian birth, he could not hope to rise in Rome 
 even under such comparatively peaceful conditions as had sur- 
 rounded the early life of his great inspirers. The outlook was 
 one of peril. Atticus left Rome in the year 86 b.c, or about 
 that time, while Cinna was master, and did not return until 
 twenty years later. But while Atticus was in Greece, evolving 
 his philosophy of a meditative and safe abstention from politics, 
 Cicero turned all his energies to the winning of public distinc- 
 tions. The republic was tottering, but it had not yet fallen. 
 Cicero could hope to gain glory from the grandeur of Rome 
 as Themistocles had gained glory from the grandeur of Athens. 
 Once, as Cicero tells us in his essay on Old Age, 13 a man from 
 the little island of Seriphus insisted that Themistocles owed 
 his great reputation to the fame of Athens and not to his own 
 deserts. Themistocles admitted part of the charge. "I should 
 not have been famous if I had been a Seriphian, but you would 
 not have attained fame even if you had been an Athenian." 
 Rome was like the Athens of old, and Cicero was a Roman. 
 is De Sen. 8. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 IN THE COURTS 
 
 I 
 Importance of Oratory 
 
 The means of entrance into public life, fortunately for 
 Cicero, who never thought of becoming a soldier, was not military 
 ability; and this in spite of the fact that the Romans lived by 
 war. Nor was a soldier's reputation necessary for advancement 
 to the highest honors. In the case of Marius, ability as a soldier 
 had won for him the public support that put him into high office ; 
 he had begun life in the army and had come from it to public 
 life. But Marius was an exception, favored by very unusual 
 circumstances and equally unusual military ability. To many 
 other men who sought high office, a good record in the army 
 was an exceedingly strong recommendation, but they did not 
 make their first appeal to the electors as soldiers. The only 
 person who secured the consulship not only as a military leader 
 but also without holding the other offices, was Pompey; and he 
 did so by means of intimidation. He had made his start as a 
 lieutenant of Sulla during the civil wars; his election to the 
 consulship was revolutionary. Political life was civil ; the means 
 of success consisted presumably of the activities of a peaceful 
 citizen. 
 
 To have slept in an aristocratic cradle, however, was far and 
 away the most useful qualification for official honors ; in practise, 
 almost the only one; but Cicero's first bed had been less soft. 
 He had no smoke-begrimed busts, as he calls them, of noble 
 ancestors, which could be paraded through the streets; and he 
 had not an inherited body of clients and friends, who would 
 shout and vote for him as the flourishing scion of ancient 
 worthies. Neither did he possess a large fortune, to be judiciously 
 
MEANS OF SUCCESS 69 
 
 expended among the proud sons of Romulus ; if he had possessed 
 one, he would have used if for better purposes. Nor does he 
 seem to have busied himself as a political retainer, although 
 there must have been many little ways, scarcely to be more than 
 surmised by us, in which an ambitious Roman of non-aristocratic 
 birth and of no great wealth could make himself useful and 
 pleasing to the ordinary electors or to men of influence. Political 
 life was a busy, intriguing thing. Voters had to be persuaded ; 
 bribery required men of caution, with a kind of thieves ' honor ; 
 there was need of shouting and enthusiasm ; clubs and societies 
 of many complexions had to be won over; and country districts 
 had to be visited. Indeed, there were agents and organizers of 
 every conceivable sort, not to mention breeders of violence and 
 perpetrators of crime, when the occasion so required. The' 
 account of electioneering by brother Quintus indicates this, as 
 do the letters of Cicero, which describe the political doings of 
 later years. As ambitious youths began to take part in the life 
 of the forum at the age of twenty, although they could not be 
 elected to the quaestorship until they were thirty, there was a 
 long period that could be devoted to these activities, if it was 
 not spent in the army. And it must have been used in this way, 
 for other men of humble birth besides Cicero attained official 
 honors, and these men must have gained personal influence in 
 some way. They were not all orators, like Cicero, or at least 
 their oratorical ability was of an indifferent kind. Quintus ■ 
 climbed high on the official ladder, without any considerable 
 oratorical gift. He was probably assisted by his elder brother ; 
 but every one did not have an elder brother. 
 
 It was through oratory that Cicero expected from the begin- 
 ning to succeed. Ability to speak was the greatest weapon in 
 public life, dwarfing into insignificance every minor activity. 
 Everything in Rome was decided by debate in the senate and 
 in the forum. The gift of swaying the excitable populace was 
 the most valuable asset of a politician, even in times of threat- 
 
70 IN THE COURTS 
 
 ened violence. But the man who had not held office did not 
 belong to the senate and he had no opportunity to address the 
 people, for the contiones were presided over by the magistrates, 
 and only magistrates or prominent men were invited to speak. 
 In another sphere, however, the beginner could speak, often to 
 a large audience. The courts, as has already been noted, were 
 open to the public. In them a speaker, when pleading, could 
 not only demonstrate his potential ability as a debater on public 
 questions, but he could also entertain the speech-loving citizens, 
 and even take a direct part in matters political, since the majority 
 of the important cases were connected with politics. And if he 
 published his orations, he could influence public opinion in many 
 directions, or at least express it, and so wield the power of the 
 modern newspaper man. 
 
 The aristocrats and the knights recognized the necessity of 
 oratorical ability, for nearly all education at Rome — and, in 
 general, only these two classes educated their children beyond 
 the elements — had for its aim to make speakers. In the earlier 
 stages, where literature was taught, the instruction was directed 
 largely toward the formation of a good style, fit for oratory. 
 The boys thereupon were taken in hand by the rhetoricians, the 
 professional teachers of speaking. And even the philosophers, 
 who completed the education if it were not already considered 
 complete, gave much of their time to oratory, being, indeed, 
 determined rivals of the rhetoricians and claiming to do the 
 work better. Young men, scarcely more than boys, were taken 
 to the forum, as was Cicero, and there they were constantly 
 listening to speeches. "When the young aristocrat was considered 
 old enough to begin life seriously, at about twenty, he often made 
 his bow before the people by prosecuting some prominent poli- 
 tician. The charge was usually maladministration in a province, 
 bribery at an election, or some other law-breaking on a large 
 scale. In such a case the ardent beginner, fresh from the decla- 
 mations of his teachers, could talk about momentous questions 
 
ORATORICAL TRAINING 71 
 
 in a fine moral way ; and that seems to have been nearly all that 
 was expected of him. One is almost tempted to imagine that 
 such prosecutions were looked upon as the peculiar training 
 ground for young talent. The young orator rarely secured a 
 conviction ; but he had an opportunity to show his mettle and to 
 give an earnest of future usefulness in political strife. 
 
 Cicero had received as careful a training in oratory as any 
 aristocrat ; and he had added to this, perhaps in a higher measure 
 than any one else, constant practise in declamation, both by him- 
 self and with his friends, as well as an almost daily attendance 
 in the forum, where he observed the various speakers with a view 
 to improving his own method. In the Brutics, written some 
 seventeen years after his consulship, he has given a list of all 
 those who spoke in the forum during the long years of the 
 Marian and Sullan struggle, and has characterized these speakers. 
 Nothing was neglected by him that could contribute to masterful 
 speaking. One reason for this was his early realization, doubtless 
 due in part to the influence of Crassus and his other aristocratic 
 exemplars, that oratory would be his one means of success. Ife 
 also had a shrinking from appearing in public with insufficient 
 preparation. In later years he was not a comfortable opponent 
 to the ambitious youths who gave loud voice to their ill-digested 
 thoughts in the phraseology, as he puts it, that they had copied 
 from their rhetorical textbooks. Speaking with the experience 
 of over thirty years in the forum, he says that when he began 
 to plead, he was fully prepared, both because of his age and 
 because of his long studies, and had no need to learn his art by 
 actual practise. 
 
 It was not due solely to forethought that his preparation had 
 been long and many-sided. Conditions in Rome had made it 
 impossible or distasteful for him to begin his oratorical career 
 in his early youth. At times no courts were held ; at other times 
 public speaking centered entirely around violent party politics. 
 Plutarch has it that he thought during this period of devoting 
 
72 IN THE COVETS 
 
 himself to less practical studies ; and Cicero tells us himself that 
 in the year 88 B.C., after the tribune Sulpicius had been mur- 
 dered and Sulla had taken Rome, he devoted himself entirely 
 to philosophy. These philosophical studies, his omnivorous read- 
 ing, much of which was in history, and his interest in poetry, of 
 which he wrote a considerable amount in these years, all these 
 became of great assistance to him in speaking. Pleading in 
 court was not very different from public speaking; it was part 
 of the same uproarious life; and such speaking would gain by 
 anything that widened his vision, clarified, his thoughts, and 
 increased his vocabulary. He could have begun pleading during 
 the years 86-84 B.C., when there was peace in Rome under Cinna, 
 so that the outward circumstances were not the only reason for 
 his complete preparation. It was complete, however, when Sulla 
 became dictator. 
 
 Cicero did not begin his pleading like a young aristocrat, by 
 prosecuting some prominent politician. A knight by birth, he 
 had no tradition to serve ; and his main aristocratic supporters, 
 the four who have been mentioned, were dead. Crassus died 
 before Cicero had assumed the toga virilis; Scaevola the augur 
 seems to have died in 87 B.C., some three years after Cicero began 
 to frequent his house ; Antonius and Scaevola the pontif ex had 
 been murdered. Cicero was therefore alone. He had received 
 aristocratic inspiration and educational assistance, but he had 
 no powerful friend under whom he could enter public life. A 
 prosecution of the usual kind would at the least have been a 
 useless display ; it might have attracted enmities, which he could 
 ill afford. Cicero, furthermore, was about twenty-five when he 
 ttiok his first case. In view of the fact that these prosecutions 
 were considered suitable training for the young, he had in this 
 ail additional reason for avoiding them. 
 
 'His first cases would necessarily be concerned with unim- 
 portant matters of business and with private disagreements, 
 which could attract no very great attention. By means of them, 
 
A LARGE FOLLOWING 73 
 
 however, Cicero built tip a following among the people, bound 
 to him by actual services. That this was important can be seen 
 in the case of a man like Crassus, who later became one of the 
 triumvirs. Crassus was an aristocrat by birth, he had won a 
 great reputation as a general, and he had the means and the 
 willingness to bribe profusely, and yet he always held himself 
 ready to take the cases of insignificant clients. Cicero, indeed, 
 established for himself the reputation of being a protector of the 
 humble ; he often claimed this position in his speeches ; and he 
 no doubt found it serviceable. 
 
 With success, his horizon widened. During his second year 
 in the courts he pleaded in a criminal case of considerable im- 
 portance and won it. After that he could have any case that 
 he chose to accept. His task was to make himself useful to the 
 greatest number of people, belonging as far as possible to the 
 various social classes, and to establish himself as one of the great 
 entertainers and potential political speakers in the forum. How 
 well he succeeded in this, may be gathered from the description 
 given by Quintus of his position during his consular candi- 
 dacy. He then had the favor of all the farmers of the public 
 revenue, or publicans, of nearly the whole equestrian order, 
 of many individuals defended by him in court, of men of every 
 order, of some clubs or colleges, political or otherwise, of very 
 many young men bound to him by their love of oratory, and of 
 a large crowd of friends, who gathered about him daily in the 
 forum. 
 
 There was nothing original in Cicero's recognition of the 
 importance of oratory, though his devotion to it was probably 
 as unique as was his success. In one respect, however, he took 
 an attitude, which, if not new, he nevertheless maintained with 
 a persistence that was novel. Throughout his career, except in 
 one case, he pleaded only for the defense ; and the exception, the 
 prosecution of Verres, was of such a nature that it proves the 
 rule. There was no public prosecutor in the city of Rome. The 
 
74 IN THE COVSTS 
 
 tribunes of the plebs often undertook prosecutions, but, on the 
 whole, the righting of wrong was left to individual citizens. 
 But an individual will be readier to avenge an outrage on the. 
 public conscience if the perpetrator is his own enemy; and he 
 may even profess to have discovered moral obliquity where none 
 exists. Prosecution in large matters was recognized as a political 
 weapon, provided a man had a good reason, and a personal one 
 was sufficient. In much unimportant litigation, on the other 
 hand, spite and personal enmities were apparently often at work ; 
 and even greed, for the state offered rewards for the detection of 
 crime. Apparently prosecution in such cases was looked down 
 upon, or at least raised the suspicion that an orator was actuated 
 by improper motives. There seems, indeed, to have been a class 
 of pettifoggers, of no political and very little social standing, 
 who made almost a profession of minor prosecutions. 
 
 Cicero avoided both kinds of prosecution. He may thus have 
 foregone some opportunities for personal influence and aggran- 
 dizement, but his decision was nevertheless wise. Defense was 
 safer than prosecution, as he himself says ; and it secured a 
 more devoted following, for the person who had been protected 
 would be more grateful than the man who had used Cicero as 
 a means of attack on somebody else. Defense was also praise- 
 worthy. At a time when personal enmities were violent aDd 
 litigation was endless, it was undoubtedly a noble office to pro- 
 tect those who were in peril. In his treatise on Duty* he gives 
 this as- one of the most glorious services of oratory ; and in his 
 earliest extant speech 2 he attacks the prominent orator Hor- 
 tensius for "using his great talents to injure men and not, as 
 formerly, to save them. ' ' 
 
 iDe Off. 2, 49-51. 
 
 2 Pro Quinc 33. It is interesting 1 to find Polybius saying of the young 
 Roman politicians of his time that "they could not win praise unless they 
 brought harm to some one of the citizens, for this is the natural result of 
 forensic activity" (Polyl). 32, 15). 
 
TWO KINDS OF PLEADING 75 
 
 II 
 
 Beginnings 
 
 Cicero began pleading in the courts after order had been 
 restored with the establishment of Sulla's dictatorship. Prob- 
 ably his first case was tried in the year 81 b.c. Though he 
 accepted clients throughout his public career, his legal activity, 
 like the rest of his life, was sharply cut into two periods by the 
 consulship. During the earlier period his chief aim was to 
 gain personal influence for the sake of political advancement. 
 Later he pleaded either from political necessity or from choice. 
 Having attained the consulship, he would have been allowed by 
 public opinion to retire from the courts, to a considerable extent 
 at least ; but he had established so large a reputation that it was 
 difficult to withdraw. Many of the cases belonging to the later 
 years were connected with politics, and were consequently neces- 
 sary; others were private, but he took them-, as he says himself, 
 to preserve his influence by the same means by which he had 
 gained it. His oratorical manner changed from one period to 
 the other. After the consulship he possessed that typically 
 Roman auctoritas, or personal influence due to public position, 
 which was of all perhaps the most powerful argument in favor 
 of a client. Before the year 63 b.c, on the other hand, he argued 
 entirely from the merits of the case, as these were understood 
 by the Romans. To Cicero himself, therefore, the early period 
 was his time of pleading ; in the later years the courts yielded to 
 the forum. He has indicated this in the Brutus by limiting the 
 account of his activity at the bar to the years before 63 b.c. 
 
 The cases of these years were very numerous and varied. 
 Cicero was undoubtedly the busiest pleader in Rome, and 
 published a larger number of orations than any one else. 3 Never- 
 theless, the extant speeches, complete or nearly complete, repre- 
 
 3 Or. 108. 
 
76 IN THE COVETS 
 
 sent only eight cases. Several others are known by name, or 
 even from fragments and comments, but many of them have 
 been entirely forgotten. For instance, Cicero won the support 
 of all the farmers of public revenue, as Quintus phrases it, and 
 yet there is not a single case, with the possible exception of the 
 prosecution of Verres in 70 B.C., in which he can be said even 
 indirectly to have defended the interests of the equestrian order. 
 The range of his activity can, therefore, only be inferred from 
 the following that he won. His manner, 4 on the other hand, is 
 amply illustrated in the seven hundred pages of legal oratory 
 belonging to this period. 
 
 Cicero 's beginnings, as has already been observed, were neces- 
 sarily small. We know nothing about his first lawsuit. The 
 earliest extant speech, delivered in the year 81 B.C., is his defense 
 of Quinctius, Pro P. Quinctio. The case was trivial, and came 
 to Cicero only because the orator who had until then had charge 
 of it was absent from Rome. Cicero describes the occasion. The 
 famous actor Roscius, who had assisted Cicero in his oratorical 
 training, asked him to take the case; the defendant Quinctius 
 being the brother-in-law of Roscius. Cicero refused, on the 
 ground that the opposing lawyer was Hortensius, already a 
 leader of the bar. It would be as impudent for a beginner, said 
 he, to appear against Hortensius, as for an ordinary actor to 
 rival Roscius. When Roscius is on the stage, nobody else seems 
 worthy of attention. Roscius, in reply, gave several reasons 
 why Cicero should defend Quinctius, explaining finally that all 
 Cicero would have to prove was that no man can walk seven 
 hundred miles in two or three days. "You surely are not too 
 bashful to say that much, even against Hortensius?" asked 
 Roscius ; and when Cicero admitted his possession of that amount 
 of temerity, Roscius made clear how the case hinged upon the 
 improbable walk. 
 
 i For analysis and criticism of Cicero 's orations, see esp. Cucheval, 
 Ciceron orateur etc. 
 
PRO QV1NCTI0 77 
 
 The matter was not quite so simple as that. Two praetors 
 had already given decisions in the case adverse to Quinctius. 
 An investigation of the whole situation, however, would be long 
 and unprofitable, nor would it lead to any great certainty, for 
 the points in dispute had been manipulated by various lawyers, 
 and the speech, furthermore, has suffered in transmission. It 
 seems more than likely, however, that Cicero managed his side 
 of the case with skill and with a thorough grasp of the law. 
 
 On the face of it, justice should have been on the side of 
 Quinctius. Pour years before this trial he had inherited the 
 property of his brother, who had been the partner of the present 
 plaintiff, Naevius. Quinctius had attempted to dissolve the 
 partnership which had thus devolved upon him, but Naevius so 
 juggled matters that he now laid claim to Quinctius' property. 
 
 Naevius was a business man and had influence; Quinctius, 
 unskilled in business, was without influence and already about 
 sixty years old. This situation is seized upon by Cicero. Again 
 and again he pits the old, friendless Quinctius against the rich 
 and influential Naevius. And he does not spare the latter. 
 Naevius was an auctioneer. Cicero sneers at the bawling pro- 
 fession, and, recalling Naevius' claim that he had shown con- 
 sideration for the old Quinctius, he gives an impressive picture 
 of the timidity and retiring disposition ordinarily found in people 
 who manage public auctions; their modesty is like that of inno- 
 cent young girls. It is therefore perfectly credible, suggests the 
 sarcastic orator, that the vocal Naevius could not bring himself 
 to wound even the ears of his old partner. And yet he is now 
 trying to deprive him of his civic status ! 
 
 As for poor Quinctius, he was a man of serious mind, taking 
 no part in the gay life of the city. He had no wealth, and did 
 not imagine that he was eloquent — as auctioneers might do. He 
 lacked the finer graces, he did not saunter about the forum, he 
 neither gave nor received invitations to fine dinners. But he 
 was an honest man, fond of his wife and children, loyal to his 
 
78 IN TEE COURTS 
 
 friends, thrifty in the management of his property. And this 
 poor old man, so unlike the brilliant, successful Naevius, had 
 been driven from pillar to. post; he had with tears entreated his 
 assailant for mercy ; and now, in his sixtieth year, too poor even 
 to give his marriageable daughter a suitable dowry, he had been 
 hailed to court, where an attempt was made to strip him of that 
 reputation for honesty which he had maintained throughout his 
 long life. 
 
 The peroration, only a part of which has just been suggested, 
 is long and ecstatic. Cicero was young, enthusiastic, and impas- 
 sionable; his twenty-five years may very possibly have looked 
 upon the advanced age of Quinctius as something very piteous. 
 But he might also have been vividly conscious of the rhetorical 
 rules that counseled emotional perorations; there is a certain 
 obviousness in the last chapters which can not be reproduced 
 without quoting rather fully; the rhetorical machinery peeps 
 through, as it were. Two pages from the end, Cicero says: 
 "Now that I have given the peroration" — although he is still in 
 the midst of it — "it seems to me that the very circumstances of 
 the case and the magnitude of the threatening danger will force 
 Quinctius to address j^ou, judge, and the men who sit with 
 you in judgment, praying and entreating you by his old age and 
 his desolate condition for this one service, that you obey the 
 promptings of your kind hearts. Thus, since justice is on his 
 side, his helplessness will more readily move you to pity than 
 the resources of Naevius will tempt you to cruelty. ' ' 
 
 The juxtaposition of pity and cruelty — that is, anger toward 
 the defendant, which would lead to cruelty — as well as other 
 things in this passage, short as it is, recall the admonitions of the 
 rhetorician. And yet, there is also underneath it the impres- 
 sionable personality of the speaker, laboring toward expression. 
 It is the first appearance, and in Cicero's first oration, of that 
 element of pathos which was at all times one of his chief char- 
 acteristics, contributing most powerfully to his immense success 
 
RHETORIC AND EMOTION 79 
 
 at the bar. A public expression of emotion, especially when 
 prepared beforehand, as a lawyer's plea must be, is a mixture 
 of sincerity and artistry, and in Rome this was especially likely 
 to be the case because of the long rhetorical training of the 
 orators. The listener, and even more, the reader, must give 
 his sympathies free rein, allowing the orator, as he would allow 
 a poet, to take him whither he wills. It is proper to forget, and 
 Cicero's Roman audience was very ready to forget, that the 
 quarrel between Quinctius and Naevius was merely one of busi- 
 ness, after all — the inability of two partners to dissolve their 
 partnership amicably. 
 
 We do not know whether Cicero won the case. His speech 
 was undoubtedly well received, otherwise he would not have 
 published it. But perhaps he had also another reason for pub- 
 lication. This was the first time that he had opposed Hortensius, 
 and we know from later utterances that Cicero formed an- early 
 ambition to emulate him. Probably the great Hortensius was 
 loftily unconscious of the rivalry, but to Cicero this first encoun- 
 ter was a real adventure. He hints at it in the brief dialogue 
 with Roscius, and he takes care, there and elsewhere in the 
 speech, to compliment his great opponent. But he is not entirely 
 overawed. He criticises Hortensius for engaging in prosecution, 
 and once he turns directly to him with the statement that he, like 
 Hortensius, will distribute his argumentation under proper 
 headings. "You always do this, for you have always the ability 
 to do it ; I shall do it in this case, for here I think I shall be able 
 to do it ' ' — and Cicero very likely held up his hand and counted 
 off the points on his fingers, not altogether to the glory of the 
 systematic Hortensius. But despite the contest with Hortensius, 
 the case was unimportant, and is interesting to us mainly because 
 it is the first. 
 
 In the following year, however, Cicero had a real oppor- 
 tunity. A certain old man, Roscius, had been murdered one 
 evening on the streets of Rome as he Was returning home from 
 
80 IN THE COVETS 
 
 a dinner party. Though living in the capital, he was a citizen 
 of Ameria, some fifty-six miles away, where he possessed con- 
 siderable property. At Ameria lived his wife, his son— a man 
 past forty, who managed the family estate — and numerous rela- 
 tives. Among the latter were two nephews, with whom the 
 murdered man had for a long time been on hostile terms. On 
 the morning after the murder, news of it was brought to Ameria ; 
 not, however, to the widow or the son, nor to any of the friendly 
 relatives, but to one of the nephews. The messenger, an intimate 
 friend of his, had driven the fifty-six Roman miles — about fifty- 
 two English miles — in ten hours, and at night. Four days later 
 the murder was reported to Sulla's young Greek freedman and 
 favorite, Chrysogonus, together with a word about the wealth 
 left by the late Roscius. All this happened in the year 81 b.c. 
 Though it was after the time allowed for posting names on the 
 Sullan proscription lists, the name of Roscius was posted, which 
 made his property forfeit to the state. It was thereupon sold 
 at public auction for 2000 sesterces — somewhat less than one 
 hundred dollars — though its value was estimated at three hun- 
 dred times that amount. There were thirteen farms, of which 
 one of the nephews took three, while the other, acting in the 
 name of Chrysogonus, took the rest. Obviously the influential 
 freedman had seen to an early auction, and had also done the 
 bidding, in person or by proxy, inevitably without a rival. 
 
 But this was not all. The nephew of the ten farms carried 
 things in a very high-handed manner. He ejected the son of 
 the murdered man before the latter had completed arrangements 
 for his father's funeral. He transferred to his own house, openly 
 or secretly, as suited his convenience, every movable thing that 
 took his fancy; the rest he gave away or sold. The treatment 
 of the son caused such a scandal that the townsmen of Ameria 
 sent a deputation of ten men to Sulla; but when these arrived 
 in Sulla's camp, they were met by the plausible Chrysogonus, 
 who urged them not to bother the great man with the matter, 
 
PRO BOSCIO AMEBINO 81 
 
 and promised to do anything about it that they wished. The 
 ambassadors, persuaded that the dead Roscius' name would be 
 taken from the proscription lists and his son restored to his 
 property, returned home. 
 
 Restitution was delayed on one pretext or another, and traps 
 were in the meantime set for the son. At last the latter 's position 
 became so dangerous that he fled to Rome, where he was received 
 and protected by a woman of noble birth, an old friend of his 
 father. "When the destitute son had in this way escaped the 
 danger of direct physical violence, he was suddenly accused of 
 being his father's murderer. 
 
 The accuser was a certain Brucius, one of the orators who 
 made a business of prosecutions. The trial attracted a large 
 crowd, many of them able and famous orators, for the Roscii 
 were connected with some of the most prominent aristocratic 
 families in Rome. It was the first time a man had been tried for 
 murder since the bloody days of the proscriptions, and it was felt 
 that the jury would be likely to return a verdict of guilty, if 
 only to check the prevalent lawlessness. 
 
 Before the proceedings, it was observed that Erucius, looking 
 over the notable assembly, inquired of his friends whether this 
 or that famous and influential speaker was going to argue for 
 the defense, but none of the notabilities had avowed any such 
 intention. Evidently they were held back by the universal 
 recognition that Chrysogonus was behind the prosecution, de- 
 sirous to get the son, Roscius, out of the way, so that his posses- 
 sion of the Roscian estate might never be called into question. 
 Among the men present was also Cicero, now twenty-six years 
 old and with one year of pleading to his credit, but Erucius did 
 not take the trouble to ask questions about him; the young 
 Arpinate had pleaded only in unimportant cases of a private 
 character. 
 
 Relieved at having no opponent of consequence, Erucius 
 launched jauntily into his speech for the prosecution. His case 
 
82 IN TEE COVETS 
 
 was not a good one. Roscius, the accused, had lived all his life 
 in the country. He had none of the graces of city dwellers, but 
 also none of their vices. He had been in Ameria at the time of 
 the murder. Professional assassins were plentiful in Rome, but 
 ■Erucius could not produce, did not even try to produce, the 
 name of any one of these, or of anybody else, hired by Roscius to 
 commit the murder ; he made no attempt to fix the deed on any 
 individual. His contention that Roscius the son was ultimately 
 responsible was founded on the fact that he had lived in the 
 country while his father stayed in Rome. If there had been the 
 proper relation between them, they would have lived together. 
 As the father had chosen not to have his son with him, they 
 must have been enemies. The father had had another son, who 
 had lived with him in Rome. When this son died, why did not 
 the father have his other son come to the city? The latter had 
 not been in Rome for years, and never for more than three days 
 at a time ; he never received any invitations. Therefore the 
 father disliked this son, and the latter had caused the murder. 
 
 In spite of the weak argument, Erucius was completely at his 
 ease. He acted with the casualness of a man alone in his own 
 house. He sat down in the middle of his speech ; he walked back 
 and forth ; he stopped and summoned his slave for a silent con- 
 sultation as though he were giving orders for dinner. At last 
 he arrived somehow at his peroration, and then, certain of success, 
 he took his seat. His case was clear ; there was no orator for the 
 defense. 
 
 Cicero arose. Erucius took a breath of relief; 5 he had been 
 correct in his surmise that nobody — that is, no one of conse- 
 quence — would oppose him. He turned to his friends and whis- 
 pered something humorous. Cicero mentioned the name of 
 Chrysogonus, and Erucius sat up to listen. Cicero mentioned 
 Chrysogonus a second time, and a third time; and presently 
 'messengers were hurrying back and forth, no doubt, as Cicero 
 
 5 These details come from the oration. See below, p. 95. 
 
A PROFESSIONAL PSOSECUTOB 83 
 
 conjectures, to inform Chrysogonus that there was a man who 
 dared to speak against him, that the trial was not being con- 
 ducted as had been expected, that the sale of Roscius' property 
 was revealed, that the conspiracy was brought to light, that no 
 thought was given to Chrysogonus' great power, that the jurors 
 were listening attentively, and that the people seemed to think 
 that a great crime had been committed. 
 
 There was no difficulty in disproving the charge against 
 Roscius; a mere relation of 'the facts would accomplish this. To 
 strengthen his position, Cicero amplifies, as the rhetoricians 
 would say, on the high state of morality prevailing in the country 
 as opposed to the city, since Roscius lived in the country, whence 
 Cicero also had come ; and he indulges in commonplaces about 
 parricide. A man like Roscius could not conceivably be guilty 
 of such a crime. Cicero also hints that it was a compliment to 
 Roscius to be left in the country as manager, and this may be 
 so ; but the truth is obviously that the elder Roscius liked dinner 
 parties and the son did not, which could not have increased their 
 mutual admiration. No enmity between them, however, had been 
 demonstrated. Erucius had asserted that the father intended to 
 disinherit his joyless son, but of that there was no proof. The 
 questionable nephews, on the other hand — and Cicero shows that 
 their reputations might easily have been better — had gained 
 immensely by the murder, so that if any one was interested in 
 finding the assassin, he would know where to look. 
 
 But Cicero's main task was not to prove Roscius innocent. 
 He had to persuade the jury that it would be safe to acquit the 
 defendant, and that it was their duty to do it. Chrysogonus was 
 behind the prosecution ; behind Chrysogonus was Sulla, who was 
 all-powerful, and not gentle. The wounds which he had inflicted 
 on the state were still bleeding. It was not surprising that men 
 of prominence had refused to plead, says Cicero ; and he explains 
 his own willingness to do so by calling attention to his humble 
 position in the world. The other men were eloquent and 
 
84 IN THE COURTS 
 
 courageous, but their eminence would have endowed their words 
 with a significance beyond the trial. On the other hand, Cicero 
 had no eloquence ; he was young and obscure. He could safely 
 say anything he pleased, and nobody would pay much attention 
 to it. And he had been urged to plead by men whose requests 
 he could not ignore. 
 
 Having cleared his way, he attacks the principal difficulty 
 by separating Chrysogonus from Sulla, insisting that the latter 
 knows nothing, and could not be expected to know anything, 
 about the matter. Sulla takes thought for the past and for the 
 future, for peace and for war ; all look to him, and he rules 
 everything. He is so busy that he scarcely has time to breathe 
 — Cicero's own expression, despite its modernness. But there 
 are many men watching Sulla, ready to go about their evil deeds 
 as soon as he looks away. He is truly fortunate, felix, but no 
 one can be so fortunate as not to have among his numerous slaves 
 at least one who is a rascal. Cicero, further, professes approval 
 of Sulla's rule, on the ground that it had led to aristocratic, 
 supremacy, and he even claims that he himself, though not with 
 arms, had in his small way assisted the Sullan aristocrats in their 
 struggle with the plebeians. 
 
 These sentiments about Sulla are of course due to the 
 occasion. Cicero hated the dictator, just as he hated Cinna and 
 the Marians, who had murdered his aristocratic supporters. Nor 
 could his partisanship in the factional struggle have gone much 
 beyond a silent prayer ; and the Romans — least of all, a man 
 like Cicero — did not have recourse to silent praying. It almost 
 seems as if this assertion about giving aid to the Sullans is 
 introduced in sarcastic bravado. Sarcasm seems also to be grin- 
 ning at the all-powerful ruler when Cicero reverts to his state- 
 ment about Sulla's inability to know everything, and compares 
 him to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The latter rules the world 
 by his nod. He gives us all our blessings ; from him come the 
 light of day and the air we breathe. But Jupiter has too much 
 
CEBYSOGONUS AND SULLA 85 
 
 to look after. Harm is frequently done to men, to cities, to the 
 crops, by violent storms, by excessive heat or cold. This is not 
 a part of Jupiter's intention; it is due to an unavoidable inad- 
 vertence. So it is with Sulla. It is not strange that he is unable 
 to watch everything and everybody, unless it be strange that 
 human power fails to accomplish that which is beyond the power 
 of the gods. 
 
 The sarcasm may have existed only in Cicero's soul. Sulla 
 was an intensely superstitious man, and was endowed with a 
 firm belief in his divinely directed career ; and the Romans them- 
 selves were not strangers to deifications and had none too high 
 an opinion of their fallible gods. In any case, after Cicero had 
 proclaimed that a crime had been committed through govern- 
 mental influence, and that Sulla could have known nothing about 
 it, it did not seem likely that Sulla would assert omniscience in 
 order to exculpate his guilty freedman. Chrysogonus was left 
 alone, facing the senatorial jurymen and the Roman audience, 
 who could have nothing but the strongest aversion for the subtle 
 young Greek. Favorites like him were a constant and irritating 
 reminder to the Romans that Sulla was king and they were his 
 subjects. Chrysogonus is the forerunner of the Greek freedmen 
 who wielded power during the Roman empire ; versatile, unprin- 
 cipled, and thoroughly hated. The more contemptuous and 
 scathing Cicero could make his attack, the more likely were the 
 jurors to free Roscius. And Cicero, who no doubt shared the 
 general feeling, was perfectly capable of giving it suitable 
 expression. 
 
 He refers to Chrysogonus' residence on the Palatine, where 
 the nobility lived, and to his villas and farms, all excellent, and 
 situated near the city so that they may give him the needed 
 mental relaxation. His house in Rome is filled with works of art, 
 some of which are alone worth the price of a farm. He has 
 silverware, tapestries, paintings, statues, and things of marble. 
 His house is crammed with costly possessions, stolen from great 
 
86 IN THE COURTS 
 
 families during the present reign of terror. His slaves are 
 innumerable; not only ordinary ones, like cooks, bakers, and 
 litter-bearers, but also men of parts, of musical training; the 
 neighborhood resounds both night and day with their voices, 
 their stringed instruments, and their flutes. The daily expense 
 of all this is incredible. The house of Chrysogonus, with its 
 nightly banquets, is not properly a house ; it is a laboratory of 
 vice and a caravansary for evil. And when the young beau him- 
 self, frizzled and pomaded, flits through the forum, he is accom-- 
 panied by a large retinue of Roman citizens. He looks down on 
 everybody, he thinks no one else- has elegance and refinement, he 
 considers himself alone a man of wealth and power. 
 
 And this charming gentleman of golden name — Chrysogonus 
 is derived from the Greek word for gold — now comes before the 
 jury, says Cicero, with a very unimportant little request, that 
 they convict Roscius. While the latter is alive, Chrysogonus is 
 troubled and does not sleep of nights. Let the jurymen free him 
 from this annoyance ; he can then fully enjoy his ill-gotten gains. 
 But, Cicero concludes, let the jurymen remember that the grant- 
 ing of Chrysogonus' request, small as it may seem to him, is 
 fraught with the gravest danger; it will lead to slavery and 
 oppression of the worst kind. 
 
 Cicero won the case. The result of the trial may not indicate 
 a very material i victory, for, though the life of Roscius was saved, 
 his property remained in the hands of Chrysogonus and the 
 nephews, so far as we know, and no attempt was made to punish 
 the assassins or to clear the reputation of the elder Roscius by 
 removing his name from the proscription list. But in the light 
 of contemporary conditions the victory was considerable. Cicero 
 had won it by his skill, and, above all, by his courage. After 
 that, as he wrote in the Brutus some thirty-five years later, he 
 was chosen to plead in the most important cases. He had become 
 one of the leading Roman orators, and he was only twenty-six 
 years old. 
 
NOT A UNIVERSAL PRACTISE 87 
 
 III 
 Publishing 
 
 In addition to pleading, Cicero published the more important 
 of his orations, and, to judge from those extant, some that were 
 not important. The practise seems to have been rather common, 
 though not universal. Some orators found the editing of speeches 
 for publication too irksome ; others, who spoke better than they 
 wrote, preferred not to diminish their oratorical glory by inferior 
 writing ; and still others were averse to recording their opinions, 
 lest these be quoted against them in case they changed their 
 minds. 6 M. Antonius, one of Cicero's greatest models, had 
 refrained from publication; Crassus, perhaps the greatest of 
 them, had published speeches in his youth. Cicero, according 
 to his own statement, published more orations than any one 
 else. Having no powerful supporters, he needed to avail himself 
 of every means for success ; and he had the ability to write as 
 well as he spoke. 
 
 The reasons for publication were manifold. The professional 
 value of it, which was the most important, has already been 
 indicated; 7 the published speeches, like modern newspaper re- 
 ports, advertised the orator and give publicity to the case. 3 The 
 demand for such reports was apparently considerable. Speeches 
 connected with noteworthy cases were occasionally taken down 
 in shorthand by persons in the audience, and then circulated, but 
 such publication could rarely satisfy the orator. Both the 
 rhetorical form and the content might suffer. To obviate this, 
 the speaker did his own publishing ; and there was no convention 
 that caused this to seem egotistical. 
 
 The published speeches had also another use ; they served as 
 patterns for the young. Cicero himself, having studied exclu- 
 
 eBrut. 91-93; Pro Clu. 140. 
 ^ See above, pp. 3-4. 
 
 s Cicero seems to have published the speech in defense of King Deiotarus 
 to please the old king (Fam. 9, 12, 2). 
 
88 IN THE COVETS 
 
 sively under Greek rhetoricians, had been trained on Greek 
 oratory, but he had also read Roman speeches privately, some of 
 which were quite neglected by his less ambitious contemporaries. 
 His own speeches, in their turn, were actually used in the 
 rhetorical schools. It was considered creditable for an orator in 
 this way to assist his younger contemporaries. He was doing 
 practical service. Indeed, he might even write a little about 
 oratory in a technical way, as M. Antonius had done and as 
 Cicero later did, without derogating from his position, however 
 eminent this might be. It is obvious that Cicero did not publish 
 his earlier speeches for this didactic purpose, but as his fame 
 increased, this would become the case. Probably he had not 
 pleaded many years before the young men who came to listen 
 wished also to read and learn what he wrote. 
 
 In a certain sense, finally, the publication of orations might 
 be looked upon as a literary activity. The Greek orators had 
 published voluminously. In the field of oratory, therefore, the 
 Romans could rival the Greeks without departing from their 
 own practical concerns. This was a motive with Cicero. He 
 thinks of his orations as literary monuments, as for instance 
 when he decides to publish the orations of his consulship together, 
 in a sort of series; he compares the oratory of Rome with that 
 of Greece, to the advantage of Rome, and such comparison was 
 necessarily based mainly on published orations ; and he actually 
 called his speeches connected with his struggle against Antony, 
 Philippics, in this way setting them side by side with those of 
 Demosthenes directed against Philip of Macedon. The great 
 attention paid to the rhetorical form of published orations also 
 made them very much like literature ; they gave pleasure to older 
 readers, of whom Cicero had many, for these had been trained 
 in oratory. It would nevertheless be a mistake, it seems, to 
 consider oratorical publication as primarily literary. It involved 
 art, but it was not art for art's sake. That had not yet come into 
 being among the Romans of position. They wrote poems, descrip- 
 
SEASONS FOE PUBLISHING 89 
 
 tive and otherwise, and also other things, for their cultured 
 friends, to show that they had taste and culture ; but such writing 
 was an avocation. The Roman of Roman ambitions would have 
 scorned to give his best powers to writing for the amusement, 
 or even for the instruction, of any public, small or great ; and 
 he had not yet arrived at the psychological complexity which 
 prompts vain self-revelations. In publishing his orations, never- 
 theless, Cicero was unconsciously fitting himself for his later 
 authorship in less practical fields. 
 
 All these motives, working together, led to the publication 
 of speeches that had never been delivered. Five of Cicero's 
 orations against Verres are of this kind. The defendant threw 
 up the case before the proceedings had been concluded, where- 
 upon Cicero, both for glory's sake and no doubt for professional 
 and political reasons, worked his material into five long orations. 
 These have in every way the form of his other speeches; there is 
 no suggestion that they had not been delivered. The exordia 
 and perorations are managed with the same care that was 
 observed in the forum. Verres is pictured as present in the 
 court ; even his impudence in appearing there is attacked, and 
 the effect on him of Cicero's words is described. And yet every 
 Roman reader knew that the situation depicted was the result 
 of Cicero's imagination and literary skill. 
 
 There was only one further convention possible, and the 
 Roman 's adopted it : to publish political pamphlets in the form 
 of speeches. Cicero's so-called Second Philippic, perhaps his 
 best "oration," is of this character. The Romans were so fond 
 of the oratorical form, with its aesthetic appeal and its sugges- 
 tion of public life, that such a fictitious speech must have seemed 
 perfectly natural to them. 
 
 This cheerful convention of throwing political pamphlets 
 into the form of speeches, with a complete reproduction of the 
 rhetorical manner characteristic of actual speaking, will naturally 
 raise the supposition that the published form of a real oration 
 
90 IN THE COURTS 
 
 was a thing by itself, possibly differing widely from its pro- 
 fessed original. 9 Under the assumption that Cicero, at the time 
 of publication, introduced changes at will, his occasional defiance 
 of men in power, his praise and attack, his political forecasts, 
 all his important expressions of opinion, can be relegated to a 
 later period, and so lose their force. As a revelation of Cicero's 
 attitude toward men and things, the orations will thus become 
 very untrustworthy. And it will also be impossible to ascertain 
 the manner in which he spoke. The rhythm, the imagery, the 
 verbal details of style, and the flights of eloquence may be later 
 additions. The question of the relation between the spoken and 
 the published oration is not a moral one ; there is no reason for 
 thinking that Cicero's changes, whether great or small, were 
 different from those of other orators. It is, however, important; 
 and some attempt should be made to answer it. Unfortunately, 
 no answer can be given that is absolutely certain or absolutely 
 complete. 
 
 Two orations of Cicero are particularly noteworthy. On his 
 return from exile, in the year 57 b.c, he addressed the senate. 
 The occasion was of extreme importance ; his speech was prac- 
 tically a political manifesto. He therefore not only wrote it 
 beforehand, but resorted to the very unusual practise of reading 
 from his manuscript, whereupon he published the speech, prob- 
 ably at once. He did all this in order that he might later refer 
 to particular statements in the oration without any one raising 
 a question as to whether the published version recorded exactly 
 what he had said. This speech was one of the very few that 
 could be completely prepared beforehand. The visible precau- 
 tions with which Cicero, even in the case of such a speech as this, 
 secured literal accuracy in the published copy and guarded 
 against suspicions to the contrary, are in themselves a sufficient 
 indication that the Romans did not expect complete identity 
 between the spoken and the written word even in the rare cases 
 where this was easily attainable. 
 
 9 Laurand, Htudes etc., pp. 1-17. 
 
SPOKEN AND PUBLISHED ORATIONS 91 
 
 This attitude is also illustrated in the history of the speech 
 delivered in defense of Milo, in the year 52 b.c. During the 
 trial Cicero was interrupted and intimidated by the gangs of 
 Clodius, and was unable to speak as he had wished. His words 
 were taken down in shorthand by one of the auditors, and put 
 into circulation. Cicero also- issued the customary edited version. 
 There were thus two speeches professing to represent the same 
 oratorical effort ; and the Romans read both without moral com- 
 ments on the orator. Their comments, however, do indicate that 
 the differences between the two versions were considerable, and 
 had to do mainly, if not entirely, with the form. Cicero's broken 
 delivery, as reproduced in the reported version, neither satisfied 
 his own aesthetic sense and that of his readers, nor, perhaps, 
 did it give proper force to the arguments he. had used. The case, 
 however, was highly exceptional, for the trial had been turbulent 
 even beyond the usual wide limits. This, moreover, is the only 
 recorded instance of two such versions. They existed side by 
 side for a very long time; but, and this is worth noting, the 
 version finally 'preserved is the one edited by Cicero. 
 
 The published version was thus ordinarily a thing by itself. 
 From Cicero's letters, which belong to the later period of his 
 life, we learn that he took great care with these versions; and 
 this must have been the case in the early part of his career as 
 well. After writing a speech, he made all the minor corrections 
 of detail and little improvements in style that a modern speaker 
 would make before publication; he even submitted his draft to 
 his friends for criticism. The exact nature of several of these 
 alterations - are known; they aim at making the published version 
 neither more nor less like the spoken original, but are made as 
 if on an entirely new work. It has furthermore been shown, 
 by careful analysis of the speeches, 10 that they contain parallel 
 passages. Evidently Cicero experimented to find the most suit- 
 able expression, just as he did, or any other careful writer might 
 10 Norden, Aus Ciceros Werlcstatt, pp. 6-12. 
 
92 IN THE COURTS 
 
 do, in other literary works; and these experiments found their 
 way into the published form. Not all the extant speeches would 
 have the same finish; neither, of course, had all the delivered 
 speeches. But it is not certain that the roughnesses discernible 
 in the published versions correspond to those heard by his 
 listeners in the forum. Cicero was often pressed for time. The 
 weaknesses of the published versions may be due to rapid compo- 
 sition quite as much as to an unpolished original. Speaking 
 extemporaneously, he might have attained a very high degree 
 of stylistic finish; writing the oration later, in haste, he may 
 have been quite unable to reproduce it. The conclusion of the 
 whole matter seems to be, provided the oration was not pre- 
 pared entirely beforehand, which could not happen often, that 
 the spoken and the written speech were two different things; 
 and yet there are many indications that it was possible for Cicero 
 to make the printed version a close reproduction of the speech 
 he had delivered, and that he actually did this. 
 
 The manner in which he prepared himself before speaking 
 enabled him later to reproduce his spoken words with consider- 
 able accuracy. Always an ardent believer in writing as an aid 
 to speaking, Cicero seems to have composed and memorized any 
 passages that he would be likely to use. Since much of an 
 oration, even in an intricate matter of law, consisted of gen- 
 eralizations and emotional appeals, much could be foreseen. 11 
 Patriotism, the sanctity of human life, personal attack and 
 defense, these and many other matters could be written before- 
 hand ; Cicero might not know exactly in what part of his speech 
 they could best be introduced ; but, having them ready, he would 
 use them, with slight alterations, as occasion offered. The char- 
 acter of the exordium and the peroration could also be foreseen 
 with considerable detail. As a result, much of a speech even 
 in court, and still more in the forum and the senate, was com- 
 
 11 Norden, op. cit., pp. 12-32. 
 
CLOSE RESEMBLANCE 93 
 
 posed beforehand ; and Cicero could use all this in the published 
 oration. As for the rest of the speech, Cicero made all sorts of 
 notes before the trial, and doubtless during it. Tiro published 
 at least thirteen books of them. These notes, any assistance he 
 cared to make use of from the stenographic reports, and his own 
 very excellent memory could give him at least the thought of the 
 passages not prepared beforehand; and probably not a little of 
 their style. 
 
 The degree of exactness attainable depended very much on 
 the time at which Cicero published his speeches. It has been 
 thought, but never proved, that his speeches against Catiline 
 were written three years after their delivery; the question can 
 not be settled from the available evidence. Some of the other 
 speeches, on the other hand, are known to have been in circulation 
 within a short time after they were spoken, so that Cicero must 
 have prepared them for publication almost at once. In general, 
 it is probably beyond doubt that the speeches were published as 
 soon as possible after they had been delivered ; only the circum- 
 stances that produced the speech would make publication worth 
 while. An oration published long after its delivery would have 
 only a historical or literary interest ; to many Roman readers it 
 would be as dull as a campaign speech after the election. 
 
 Prompt publication would also necessitate the highest degree 
 of exactness attainable. Many of the readers, perhaps the 
 majority of them, had heard the speech ; and the political circum- 
 stances at the time of publication and delivery would be the same. 
 The orator would therefore find it neither possible nor desirable 
 to make important changes. The extant orations bear this out. 
 They have many characteristics that must have come from the 
 spoken originals. Only one of them, perhaps the most significant, 
 need be mentioned : the difference between orations on the same 
 subject addressed to the senate and to the people respectively. 
 Cicero said to either audience things that he could not very well 
 say to the other, and it might be expected that the published 
 
94 72V THE COURTS 
 
 versions, accessible to all, would not show these differences; but 
 such is nevertheless the case. As this extends even to very small 
 matters of expression, it becomes an argument not only in refer- 
 ence to the content but also to the style. It may, therefore, be 
 assumed that the extant orations reproduced the opinions Cicero 
 had actually uttered, alterations being rare and unimportant, 
 and that even the style preserved its distinctive qualities. 
 
 Something more may be said as to the question of style. Some 
 whole speeches, and at least long passages in most of the others, 
 were extemporized. Cicero's own notes and memory, even when 
 aided by promptness of publication and stenographic reports, 
 could scarcely have availed to procure an absolute reproduction 
 of his extemporization, and it is clear that his editing aimed at 
 good writing and not at reproducing his delivered speech. And 
 yet the result must have contained few deviations. For this 
 belief there are many reasons. The style of any extant oration 
 is on the whole uniform, so that the characteristics of rhythm 
 and expression found in the portions prepared beforehand are 
 also found in the rest of the speech. The written orations were 
 used by students in oratory. Rhetorical science, which under- 
 took to teach actual oratory, gave rules that are observed by the 
 published orations. Cicero was in later life criticised by rival 
 orators for some of the very stylistic qualities that are found in 
 these speeches, even as to matters of rhythm, and it is incon- 
 ceivable that the critics were attacking his publication and not 
 his actual performance. But it is not necessary to give further 
 reasons for thinking that the style of the orations represents the 
 actual delivery; the Romans could scarcely have arrived at a 
 convention which sanctioned in published speeches a style not 
 actually found in the forum. 
 
 And it is very likely, finally, that Cicero had the ability to 
 extemporize on the same high level as he wrote. He, like other 
 Roman orators, had received much training in extemporaneous 
 speaking — speaking suddenly, as he calls it — and he declaimed 
 
OBVIOUS CHANGES 9o 
 
 constantly, long after he had made his mark in the forum. In 
 •discussing writing as a means of oratorical training, he makes 
 a remark that perhaps throws some light on the matter. He 
 says 12 that if the orator has prepared himself by writing, he will 
 go on in the same manner when he has to depart from that which 
 he has prepared ; he will go on from his own impetus, as a boat 
 does after the rowers stop rowing. His own extemporizations, 
 therefore, were probably finished enough in expression to leave 
 upon the audience the same impression that was later received 
 from the published form, which he had carefully revised. 
 
 Certain obvious changes, however, were made, with a view to 
 making the speeches interesting and self-explanatory. The pub- 
 lished form was the shorter, as is expressly stated by Cicero in 
 several places, especially in the Brutus. This was accomplished 
 by the abbreviation or omission of lengthy arguments. The 
 readers apparently cared less for a complete statement of the 
 proofs, provided these were indicated, than for the oratorical 
 form, as, indeed, the judges often did. Cicero mentions it as 
 extraordinary that an orator once published a verbatim report 
 of a speech ; doubtless referring to a failure to make these 
 omissions. In the speeches of Cicero there are frequent headings 
 to indicate what has thus been omitted. 
 
 The orator also made certain additions. He introduced 
 descriptions of his opponent 's behavior, such as the very detailed 
 account of Erucius in the speech for Roscius, and references to 
 the number and the character of the audience, and to their 
 expressions of approval or disapproval. Bits of repartee are 
 also found in Cicero's speeches, which very likely had not been 
 a part of his set plea, but of his cross-examination of witnesses, 
 for which he was famous. One of his orations, In Vatiwium, is 
 entirely directed against a witness, and was probably based on 
 an altercation between Vatinius and Cicero himself. It is also 
 possible, though by no means certain, that two of his Catilinarian 
 
 12 De Or. 1, 152-153. 
 
96 IN THE COVETS 
 
 speeches, the first and the fourth, contain what he said both when 
 laying the subject of debate before the senate and when he later 
 took part in the discussion. But all these additions and altera- 
 tions were woven so skillfully into the texture of the published 
 oration that it is rarely possible to say with much confidence 
 that any particular passage was not a part of the set speech; 
 the detailed character and the large number of such passages are 
 the main reasons for supposing that they were introduced later. 
 The reader's impression is that the orator intended not only to 
 reproduce his actual speech, omitting dull portions, but also to 
 include anything else of interest that he uttered during the pro- 
 ceedings, as well as to give at least a hint of the proceedings 
 themselves. The Roman, listening at his ease to a trained slave 
 reading from the manuscript, during dinner, perhaps, would in 
 this way experience anew the pleasures of the forum ; the little 
 volume performed the office both of literature and of a news- 
 paper. 
 
 IV 
 
 Vacation 
 Cicero's frequent pleading in the courts, the labor of pub- 
 lishing, and his constant study and oratorical practise were 
 gradually enfeebling his health. 13 For a year after his victory 
 over Chrysogonus he pleaded in various cases, none of which 
 are represented by extant orations, and then he found it neces- 
 sary to take a vacation. He had had two unusually successful 
 years in the courts, and was very unwilling to go away. Having 
 begun his career late, five years or more later than was custom- 
 ary, he had no time to lose. But his friends and his physicians, 
 as he wrote more than thirty years afterward, in the Brutus, 
 even feared for his life, and insisted that he take a rest. Cicero, 
 yielding to them, found some consolation in the thought that a 
 
 13 For this section, see particularly Brut. 301-324. 
 
CICEBO'S HEALTH 97 
 
 prolonged stay in Greece would not only restore him to health 
 but might also improve his way of speaking, for he would of 
 course study oratory and practise declamation under the famous 
 Greek rhetoricians. A vacation without work would have seemed 
 inconceivable to him. And he had never visited Greece, although 
 his whole intellectual life, like that of other Romans, had been 
 derived very largely from Greek books and Greek teachers. 
 
 Cicero was not robust in his youth, as we learn from 
 Plutarch, who no doubt relied directly or indirectly on Tiro's 
 biography. His inheritance from his father was not good. 
 Cicero 's digestion troubled him ; he had to be careful about his 
 food, and rarely had anything to eat before the day's work was 
 done. By means of regular walks, however, and rubbings, as 
 Plutarch calls them, he not only kept out of sickness, but even 
 hardened himself to endure every kind of exertion. He was 
 not an invalid, and we are not to think of him as anxiously 
 tinkering with his health; he was too normal a person for that. 
 His correspondence rarely refers to his physical condition. It 
 indicates that he had a regular time for walks, though it is 
 impossible to imagine Cicero as a devoted pedestrian. In some 
 letters he excuses himself from one thing or another by pleading 
 indisposition; and at times during the later part of his life he 
 was ill, once from overeating at a vegetarian dinner. He was a 
 temperate man. If his attitude can be inferred from his occa- 
 sional references in his philosophical works and in his letters, 14 
 he cared but little for food and drink, preferring good conversa- 
 tion. Apparently his unceasing mental activity, aided by 
 common sense, overcame any inherited weakness with which he 
 was affected. He needed little sleep, often writing at night; 
 when past sixty, at a time when there was little to do in the 
 forum, he stopped working at night, and even began to take 
 naps at noon. Much study had weakened his eyes; they were 
 sometimes inflamed, and troubled him so that he had to dictate 
 
 « See below, p. 615, note 13 ; p. 664, note 36. 
 
98 IN THE COVETS 
 
 his letters. But we have it on the authority of the acrimonious 
 Asinius Pollio, 15 that both nature and good fortune had favored 
 Cicero ; even in old age — after sixty, perhaps, for he died at sixty- 
 three — he was handsome 16 and enjoyed excellent health. 
 
 Before leaving Rome, he was very lean and frail, with a long, 
 thin neck. He was nervous and excitable, shouting his speeches 
 in a high monotone and making violent gestures. He was away 
 for two years, 79-77 b.c. When he returned, he was a changed 
 man. He had studied with several rhetoricians; chief among 
 them Molo, who had previously given him instruction in Rome. 
 Now Molo was at Rhodes. He exerted himself particularly in 
 restraining Cicero's youthful exuberance; with the result that 
 Cicero learned to manage his voice; his oratory, in his own 
 phrase, no longer effervesced; he became strong, and his frame 
 filled out. 
 
 Cicero speaks of the instruction under Molo as marking an 
 epoch in his development. Previously his oratory had been like 
 an untamed river overflowing its banks; Molo checked it, or 
 rather, he endeavored to check it. But it was not to be done. 
 Fullness of expression and an impassioned rush had been, and 
 remained, one of Cicero's characteristics as a successful orator. 
 Readers of Cicero can discover a difference in style between the 
 two earlier and his later orations only by a minute attention to 
 rhetorical figures or other matters of detail. 17 As Cicero con- 
 tinued speaking or writing, he changed as other men change, 
 but his style remained essentially the same. 
 
 Of course, he became a more finished artist. The speech in 
 defense of Quinctius seems to contain traces of a somewhat 
 mechanical obedience to rhetorical rules, as has been pointed out. 
 And Cicero himself quotes 18 a high-flown commonplace about the 
 
 is Sen. Sua$. 6, 24. 
 
 is For ancient busts of Cicero, Bernouilli, pp. 132 ff. 
 it The development of Cicero 's style is discussed in Norden, Die Antilce 
 Kunstprosa, 1, 225-234. 
 is Or. 107. 
 
MOLO 99 
 
 punishments of parricides from the speech for Eoscius. ' ' "What 
 is so common," Cicero had declaimed, "as breath to the living, 
 the earth to the dead, the sea to those who are on the waves, and 
 the shore to the shipwrecked? They" — parricides — "live while 
 they can, but in such a way that they do not breathe the air of 
 heaven; they die, but so that the earth does not touch their 
 bones; they are tossed about by the waves, but so that these do 
 not wash them; they are finally thrown forth, but so that in 
 death they find no rest even on the rocks." "And the rest of 
 it," he adds, for there was more. He says, truly enough, that 
 the passage is youthfully innocent of experience, but he does 
 not seem altogether displeased with it. He recalls the applause 
 it evoked, hints that it contained promises for the future, and 
 immediately after the quotation, he refers to a passage from a 
 speech written fourteen years later, which is very much of the 
 same kind. And similar passages could be quoted from nearly 
 every one of his speeches, whenever written. The speech for 
 Eoscius, furthermore, as Cicero goes on to say, was not all in 
 one strain any more than were his later speeches ; it showed the 
 variety of tone that he later claimed as his peculiar merit. 
 
 Passion had been rather lacking in the orators who pleaded 
 during the early part of Cicero's career. 19 Cicero, seeing the 
 value of passion, made much use of it from the very beginning ; 
 he took incredible pains with its management, to use his own 
 words, and he never deserted it. He was in this guided by a 
 true appreciation of the character of Eoman jurors. The 
 passage in the speech for Eoscius has more fire than real mean- 
 ing, and it does not add much to the argument, for nobody 
 needed reminders of the heinousness of parricide in order to look 
 upon Eoscius as innocent; in later orations, Cicero's passionate 
 outbursts have more intrinsic meaning and they are used as real 
 arguments. It is probably this increased adroitness in manag- 
 ing a weapon that might easily turn to bombast which Cicero 
 
 19 Or. 106. On Eoman oratory before Cicero, Cucheval, Bistoire etc. 
 
100 IN THE COVETS 
 
 wishes to attribute to the teaching of Molo. The latter ha 
 opened his eyes, and he was thereafter a more conscious artis' 
 It is also to be remembered that a change of style will seem fa 
 greater to the writer himself than to the listener or the reader 
 the author's consciousness that he is working with a new vie} 
 of his art will not always lead to easily discernible changes h 
 his writing. 
 
 It is very likely that the main improvement due to Molo wa 
 in Cicero's manner of delivery. It became better adapted t 
 the varying moods of his words. Cicero looked upon a prope 
 delivery as the most important part of oratory. He is said b; 
 Plutarch to have received instruction from Aesop and Boscius 
 the two most eminent actors of the time. He took considerable 
 pains with his voice. He praises the grace of Crassus' deliver; 
 with so much ardor that he must himself have had a reputatioi 
 for the same quality. The change from the monotonous, high 
 pitched enunciation and the violent gestures of his early yean 
 probably transformed his oratory. Plutarch has it that Cicero': 
 delivery contributed not a little to render his eloquence per 
 suasive, and remarks that Cicero was in the habit of ridiculing 
 loud speakers, saying that they shouted because they could no 
 speak, just as lame men go on horseback because they can no' 
 walk. Cicero seems to have had an expressive face, whicl 
 reflected his thoughts faithfully. His voice, his face, and hii 
 gestures doubtless were a mirror of the style of his orations 
 and this is conversational, sarcastic, witty, declamatory, soothing 
 irate, or trembling with lofty passion. 
 
 Cicero came to have a great power over his audiences, sway 
 ing them in one direction or another according to his wish 
 playing upon them as a great musician plays on an organ; and 
 he could do this because, whenever speaking, he had himself tht 
 feelings with which he wished to inspire others. It is not sur- 
 prising, he says in this connection, 20 that an orator feels anger. 
 
 20 Be Or. 2, 190 ff.; Or. 132. 
 
ACTOSS, POETS, AND OBATOBS 101 
 
 sorrow, or any other emotion natural to his subject even though 
 he be speaking in behalf of another person ; he need not resort 
 to trickery and feigning; his own words, though addressed to 
 others, move the speaker himself ; he is stirred both by thoughts 
 about his own success and by the eventual risk to his client. 
 Actors often feel the emotions which they are expressing, and 
 yet their business is with something unreal and imagined. Poets 
 can not write unless they are moved by a divine frenzy. It is 
 likewise with orators. 
 
 In a passage of the Tusculan Disputations 2 ' 1 Cicero seems to 
 contradict this opinion. Orators should neither feel nor simulate 
 anger, he says ; will they write out their orations, after the trial 
 is finished, under the impulse of anger? Is Aesop angry on the 
 stage, or Accius when he writes his tragedies? Emotions are 
 well enough for those who lack reason, but not for the wise. 
 And Cicero himself utters these words in the dialogue. But he 
 is speaking in a philosophical sense; Pickwickian, it might be 
 called. The wise man referred to is that Stoic paragon, 
 studiously apathetic, who never existed in the body. It may be 
 that the depths below the depths in an orator's or actor's soul 
 are not stirred; his attitude, as he confronts the great verities, 
 may be Olympian ; but Cicero had nothing of that when he was 
 pleading. In the De Dwinati&ne, 22 to quote a single passage, 
 Quintus is allowed to say that both Cicero and Aesop, the actor, 
 who had given him lessons in delivery, were often so excited as 
 to seem quite beside themselves; and as for Aesop, it is related 
 that once, while taking the part of King Thyestes, he struck 
 a slave so hard with his sceptre that the blow; proved fatal; 
 realism could scarcely go farther. The passages previously 
 referred to about these sympathetic emotions, furthermore, come 
 from his rhetorical works, in which he gives his own opinions and 
 not those of Greek writers. 
 
 21 Tuse. 4, 55. 
 
 22 Be Divin. 1, 80. 
 
102 IN TEE COUBTS 
 
 But Cicero, according to his own repeated confession, did not 
 slip at once into this excited state; he was always embarrassed 
 when he began to speak ; seized with a great fear, as he expresses 
 it. 23 This embarrassment, which followed him through life, 
 throws perhaps the strongest light on his manner of delivery. 
 In spite of his success, he never became the pompous popular 
 favorite that thinks it necessary only to open his mouth in order 
 that people shall listen with all their ears; nor did he acquire 
 an inartistic uniformity of manner which could be used at all 
 times because it had once proved successful. Each occasion for 
 speaking presented to Cicero a new problem; he was always 
 apprehensive that he might not do justice to his subject. 
 
 v 
 Manner of Pleading 
 
 Cicero's manner of pleading has perhaps been sufficiently 
 indicated already, and yet something should be added. He has 
 been accused of praising himself, of declaiming, and of talking 
 beside the point — serious charges, indeed, were it not for the fact 
 that he won his cases. The critics have forgotten that they were 
 not criticising an aesthetic performance, which may be bad art, 
 though popular, but a practical profession, the only test of 
 which is practical success. And Cicero had success ; greater than 
 that of any other pleader in Borne. It is not necessary to defend 
 him ; but it may be worth while to show briefly how he pleaded 
 very much like other lawyers, differing from them only in degree. 
 His weapons were like theirs, but sharper and wielded with 
 more skill. 
 
 The difference between him and his colleagues, too tame a 
 term for Roman pleaders, has been stated by Cicero himself in 
 the Brutus. 2 * He has been giving a brief account of his rhetorical 
 
 23 Examples are found in In Caec. 41-42, Pro Clu. 51, Pro Bege Deiot. 1. 
 2* Brut. 322. 
 
A NEW STYLE OF OB ATOMY 103 
 
 studies and of his professional career, and then, coming to the 
 time of his consulship, he says that he had earned this by his 
 constant care and industry in pleading and by the fact that men 
 were attracted by his new style of oratory. It seemed, he con- 
 tinues by way of explanation, that, except for Cicero himself, 
 no orator had more than an ordinary acquaintance with litera- 
 ture, which is the very fountain-head of perfect eloquence ; that 
 no one devoted himself to philosophy, the mother of good deeds 
 and good speaking; that no one had acquired a knowledge of 
 civil law, which is an essential to a pleader in private cases, 
 giving him the necessary grasp of his subject; and that no one 
 knew Roman history, from which, at need, most reliable wit- 
 nesses may be raised, as it were, from the very dead. Nor, to 
 take up more personal characteristics, did there seem to be any 
 one who could entangle his opponent in a mesh of terse and exact 
 reasoning, and then relieve the strain on the jurors ' attention by 
 lapsing into fun and laughter; no one who could rise from the 
 narrow bounds of the immediate subject in hand to a larger 
 vision ; in other words, no one who knew the full value of gen- 
 eralization ; no one who gave pleasure by timely digression, who 
 stirred the judge to exceeding wrath against the other side, who 
 could draw tears from his audience, or who attained the one 
 great aim of all pleading, to force the judge into agreement with 
 the arguments set forth. 
 
 Cicero did not intend to claim that he was the sole possessor 
 of each one of the qualities mentioned. His characterizations 
 of other orators, 'in the earlier parts of the book, contain every 
 single characteristic here claimed for himself, often assigned to 
 them in a very high degree; and Cicero furthermore- qualifies 
 his whole statement by representing it as the popular opinion — 
 videretur. His intention was to point out the things which, as 
 the source of his success, seemed worthy to be striven for. 
 
 It is not possible to test Cicero's statement by actual com- 
 parison, for the orations of every other orator have been lost. 
 
104 IN TEE COUSTS 
 
 The rhetorical declamations of later times as well as the speeches 
 in Koman historians, written by the latter in accordance with 
 definite literary conventions, would not be useful in this con- 
 nection. His claim to the creation of a new style must therefore 
 be taken on faith, externally supported only by his phenomenal 
 success. It is possible, however, to discover that his manner was 
 of the same kind as that of the other pleaders. The rhetorical 
 declamations and the rules of rhetoric point to this ; so also do 
 the speeches in Roman histories, the indications in Cicero's own 
 orations of the arguments used by his opponents — and these 
 indications are very numerous — and, above all, the reports of 
 many famous cases that have come down to us. 
 
 These reports contain perhaps the most instructive as well 
 as the most interesting evidence ; they read like accounts of 
 Cicero 's own cases. One of the trials most fully described is that 
 of Norbanus, which took place in the year 95 B.C., when Cicero 
 was eleven years old. During the war with the Cimbri a pro- 
 consul, Caepio, had by his insubordination brought a serious 
 defeat upon the Romans. On returning to Rome, he was deprived 
 of his proconsulship, expelled from the senate, and, finally, 
 Norbanus and another tribune of the people proposed a special 
 commission to inquire into his behavior in Gaul. Caepio was 
 condemned to death, but the intervention of another tribune 
 succeeded in commuting the sentence to exile. In connection 
 with the struggle between the tribunes a riot took place, in 
 which Norbanus was involved. This happened in 103 b.c. Eight 
 years later Norbanus was accused of high treason for having 
 taken part in the riot; and M. Antonius, Cicero's older friend, 
 defended him. 
 
 It was a famous case. Cicero frequently refers to it, giving 
 in one place a pretty complete account of Antonius' speech. 25 
 Antonius is represented as describing the trial; he addresses 
 himself particularly to Sulpicius, who had conducted the prose- 
 cution. 
 
 25 Be Or. 2, 197 ff. 
 
TRIAL OF NOBBANUS 105 
 
 "You had stirred up the people,' says Antony, "not only 
 by your words, but by the vehement sorrow and excitement you 
 displayed, so that I scarcely knew how to begin. Everything 
 was on your side. You had spoken of violence, stone-throwing, 
 and the cruelty of the tribunes toward Caepio. It was well 
 established that stones had been hurled at the leader of the 
 senate; nobody could deny that a consul and a tribune of the 
 people had been driven from the temple when they tried to 
 interfere; and you yourself were a young man speaking with 
 great dignity against these disorders in the state, whereas I, 
 already a censor, could scarcely with honor, it seemed, undertake 
 to defend such doings. The jurors were prominent men and the 
 forum was filled with honorable citizens. My only excuse for 
 appearing in the case, and that a feeble one, was that Norbanus 
 had been my quaestor, so that I might well look upon him as 
 my son. 
 
 "I spoke of all kinds of civil discord, gathering them from 
 our whole history, to show that, although riots had always been 
 a source of trouble, some of them had nevertheles been justified, 
 and almost necessary. The expulsion of the kings, the creation 
 of the tribune's office, the frequent limitations imposed on the 
 consular power, the right of appeal to the people, which is the 
 very bulwark of our liberty — all these were due to dissensions 
 among the nobles. And if these dissensions and riots had bene- 
 fited the state, it would be unjust to conclude offhand that 
 Norbanus' participation in a riot made him punishable for high 
 treason. If the Roman people had ever been justified in resorting 
 to violence — and they had been so justified — then never had there 
 been a better reason for violence than in this riot of Norbanus 
 and his friends. 
 
 "Thereupon I approached my task from another side. I 
 inveighed against Caepio 's flight in Gaul and I bewailed the 
 destruction of our army, thus stirring up the old sorrow of those 
 whose friends and relatives had been slain. I also aroused anew 
 
106 IN TEE COURTS 
 
 the anger of the knights against Caepio by reminding them how 
 he had been instrumental in taking the courts out of their hands. 
 "Having in this way won the favor of the people, by talking 
 about calamities to the state, private grief, and political hatred, 
 I lowered my tone to one of great gentleness. I reminded the 
 jurors that from time immemorial a quaestor had been looked 
 upon as the son of his superior magistrate, and that therefore 
 they must decide with a thought of me and my reputation. 
 Nothing could harm my standing more nor cause me greater 
 sorrow than that I, who had often helped strangers, should be 
 unable to help my own friend. I asked the jurors to consider 
 my great age, the offices I had held, my honorable record; they 
 could see that my sorrow on behalf of Norbanus was just, and 
 they knew also that I had always pleaded in behalf of my friends, 
 and never for myself. 
 
 "In such a case as this," Antony continues, "the theorists 
 would have had me define the crime of high treason and discuss 
 the law under which Norbanus was accused; but I merely 
 touched upon this point. Instead, I was very severe in attack- 
 ing Caepio and very gentle in preferring my own claims, with 
 the result that the jurors were greatly excited, though I had 
 not told them much about the case itself; and my client was 
 acquitted. ' ' 
 
 This case was won by Antony's appeal to the civic and private 
 emotions of his auditors and by the use of his own auctoritas. 
 Another famous trial reported by Cicero 26 illustrates how the 
 people were amused and stirred by a mingling of comedy and 
 pathos, all of it entirely irrelevant to the facts before the court. 
 The successful pleader in this case was L. Crassus, Cicero's 
 second great exemplar; his opponent was a certain Marcus 
 Brutus. 
 
 Brutus, in speaking against Crassus, had two secretaries 
 beside him, who read alternately at his bidding, one from a 
 26 De Or. 2, 223 ff. 
 
CSASSUS AND BRUTUS 107 
 
 speech in which Crassus had attacked the senate, the other from 
 a speech in which he had defended the senate and attacked the 
 knights. Crassus, speaking later, had three secretaries beside 
 him, to each of whom he handed one of the three books on civil 
 law written by Brutus' father. Brutus, incidentally, was a 
 notorious spendthrift and had wasted his large patrimony. Evi- 
 dently the law books were in the nature of a dialogue between 
 Brutus the father and Brutus the son. 
 
 Crassus' first secretary, therefore, read from book one: "It 
 so happened that my son Marcus and I were at my estate in 
 Privernum. " "You see, Brutus," said Crassus, "that your 
 father has given proof that he left you an estate in Privernum. ' ' 
 The second secretary read : ' ' We were in my estate at Alba, my 
 son Marcus and I. ' ' After which Crassus observed : ' ' Evidently 
 the wise man realized the character of his spendthrift son, and 
 was afraid people might think he had not left him anything, 
 since Marcus has nothing." The third secretary read from the 
 end of the third and last book: "We happened to be sitting in 
 my place at Tibur, my son Marcus and I." And Crassus: 
 "Where are the estates which your father left you, as he indi- 
 cates by these public documents?" As Brutus had also sold 
 some baths inherited from his father, Crassus goes on to remark 
 that if Brutus had not then been too old to bathe in company 
 with his father, Brutus senior would have composed a fourth 
 book, representing himself and his son as having just bathed, in 
 order to show that the son had also inherited these baths. 
 
 It happened, while the trial was in progress, that the funeral 
 procession of the aged Iunia, a relative of Brutus, was passing 
 through the forum. Crassus seized the opportunity. Fixing his 
 eyes on the luckless Brutus and threatening him with violent 
 gestures, he launched into a new attack. His utterance, says 
 Cicero, was rapid; his words grave. "Why are you sitting here, 
 Brutus? What message do you wish this old lady to take to 
 your father? To all those ancestors of yours whose images you 
 
108 IN THE COURTS 
 
 see in the procession? What shall she say to L. Brutus, who 
 freed this nation from the tyranny of the kings ? What shall she 
 report that you are doing? To what business, to what ambition, 
 to what manly virtue shall she say you are devoted? Are you 
 engaged in increasing your inherited wealth? But business is 
 not worthy of an aristocrat, so I will let that go. Still, you have 
 nothing left of your property; it has been wasted in vicious 
 living. Are you a student of civil law? Such was your father. 
 But she will say that you have sold your houses and have not 
 reserved even a place for your father 's chair. Are you a soldier ? 
 You who have never seen a camp ! Are you an orator ? You 
 lack the ability ; the little natural equipment of voice and speech 
 that is yours you prostitute in making a base trade of prosecu- 
 tions. How can you dare to appear in public? To face these 
 men ? To be seen in the forum, among your fellow-citizens ? Do 
 you not tremble before the corpse that is being taken to burial, 
 before the very images of your ancestors? You have not left 
 yourself an opportunity for imitating them; no, not even an 
 atrium in which you can set them up." 
 
 The cases of Norbanus and Brutus are only two of the many 
 that could be cited to show that pleading partook to an astound- 
 ing degree of the intensely personal, man-to-man attitude of 
 public life. This situation, particularly as it concerns Cicero, 
 has been referred to in previous chapters. One or two features, 
 however, may be added. 
 
 Both the plaintiff and the defendant, but especially the latter, 
 brought their friends and supporters, whether of high degree or 
 low, to the courts, to lend moral and often verbal support. Depu- 
 tations, to testify to the defendant's noble character, would 
 arrive from his home town, if he lived out of Rome; from clubs 
 and societies to which he belonged ; and from provinces that he 
 had governed. Parents, brothers and sisters, often little children 
 were present, rarely to testify, but always to enhance the pathos 
 of the situation ; and these as well as the defendant himself, at 
 
EULOGY AND INSULTS 109 
 
 times even large bodies of citizens, dressed in mourning. The 
 juries, and important trials were by jury, were large; varying, 
 however, with different eases. And around this concourse of 
 people, more or less directly interested in the proceedings, was 
 the inevitable crowd of loungers and sight-seers, who rarely felt 
 constrained to observe silence. 
 
 The trial itself, whenever possible, reached beyond the point 
 at issue. It became an investigation not merely of a definite 
 alleged act but of the whole life of the accused. His behavior 
 as son, brother, and father ; his public acts long before the period 
 immediately under discussion ; his past and even his probable 
 future value to the state, in case he should be spared — all these 
 matters were suitable for discussion. So also were the deeds and 
 character of the members of his family, whether still living or 
 long dead. 
 
 The general scrutiny, as has been stated, included the plaintiff 
 and the lawyers on either side; even the witnesses were not 
 exempt. No free man was obliged to give testimony. Witnesses, 
 therefore, were naturally looked upon as friends or foes accord- 
 ing to the nature of their depositions ; and were treated as such. 
 What reason had a certain witness for giving condemnatory 
 evidence? The defendant had never injured him or any friend 
 of his. The witness was known to be a liar; how could he be 
 telling the truth now ? And the offending witness was at times 
 put through a cross-examination only less comprehensive than 
 the trial of the defendant. 
 
 The spirit of these proceedings was, indeed, that of Roman 
 public life, intensely, almost elementally, human. Exaggeration 
 and outspokenness were the dominant notes. Superlatives of 
 eulogy and superlatives of insult crowded each other. Men did 
 not hide their lights under bushels, nor those of their friends ; 
 and they did not draw a discreet veil of forgiveness over the 
 shortcomings of their enemies. Insults were hurled at a man 
 because of his parents, his low station, his poverty, his personal 
 
110 IN THE COURTS 
 
 appearance, and his private habits. Crassus was considered a 
 model of propriety as a speaker, and yet he dragged the aged 
 Iunia's funeral into his abuse of Brutus. It was a medley of 
 tragedy and comedy. The air was filled with shouts, jeers, 
 laughter, and tears. The defendant, his children and his rela- 
 tives, wept ; if he remained unmoved, his behavior might be noted 
 as remarkable. The counsel of course wept; the old warrior 
 Marius, we are told, wept at the trial of a friend, and thus 
 moved the jurors to an acquittal; even the presiding magistrate 
 and the jurors wept, when they did not laugh. 
 
 But it was not all personal. Like Antony, other orators 
 discoursed about the grandeur of Rome and about her troubles. 
 General truths about life and death, virtue and vice, were con- 
 stantly given utterance, for the pleasure or agitation of the 
 people present. Even the gods had their share in this excited 
 performance. It was not that many of the orators or perhaps 
 the majority of the ordinary citizens believed in the gods as 
 very real or personal divinities ; but the gods and goddesses were 
 the outward symbols of Roman religious consciousness ; they were 
 the most important part of the state religion; and they had 
 temples and statues in the forum. They were, therefore, con- 
 stantly apostrophized in glowing terms, and oratorical hands 
 were raised to them. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the guardian 
 of the city, must have been a very patient god indeed, and a 
 very busy one, if he listened attentively whenever a Roman 
 orator called upon him for help or vengeance. 
 
 VI 
 Law 
 
 All this impassioned commotion left but small room for law 
 and its precise interpretations. Cicero noted it as exceptional 
 that he knew law, and obviously the general feeling among 
 
OSATOSS AND JURISCONSULTS 111 
 
 pleaders was to the effect that such knowledge was not essential 
 to success. Antony, speaking for them in the De Oratore, 27 says 
 that wit is more important than the most minute acquaintance 
 with statutes and senatorial decrees, and that the orator can make 
 the stones weep by raising a dead father from the grave and 
 giving a picture of him as he with tears embraces his son; so 
 that quotations from the Twelve Tables, the very essence of 
 Eoman law, would seem like meaningless formulae learned from 
 an inexperienced teacher. Antony himself professes never to 
 have needed law. He admits that it may be useful, but other 
 things, such as the proper management of voice and gesture, are 
 of far greater absistance. And this he had shown to be true in 
 the trial of Norbanus. 
 
 The interpreters of law, he says, frequently disagree, and 
 in those cases eloquence wins the day. An orator has so much 
 else to learn that he can never know enough law to settle difficult 
 points; let him consult a jurisconsult. The latter will supply 
 the spear, as it were, and the orator's mighty hand will hurl it. 
 And yet it is not proper to consider the knowledge of law as 
 merely the handmaiden, the servant, of eloquence, he adds, thus 
 distinguishing between the professions of the jurisconsult and of 
 the orator, with the implication that it is not possible, and would 
 not be desirable, for a man to excel in both. 
 
 Cicero was in direct opposition to the opinion he voices 
 through Antony. In his various works on oratory he argues 
 frequently for legal knowledge as essential to a well-equipped 
 orator. In the De Oratore, particularly, he discusses the question 
 from both sides. Antony's arguments, representing the oppo- 
 sition, have already been given. Cicero 's side is voiced through 
 Crassus. 28 
 
 The latter refers to several cases in which the decision turned 
 on a question of civil law. He recalls how on one occasion two 
 
 27 De Or. 1, 234-262. 
 
 28 De Or. 1, 166-203. See also Brut. 214, 322 ; Or. 120. 
 
112 IN THE COVETS 
 
 orators, eloquent enough, too, bawled against each other in court, 
 each clamoring for something which he erroneously conceived to 
 be advantageous to his side of the case. Crassus speaks of the 
 ridicule such performances drew from men who knew law, and 
 says that legal ignorance is due to nothing but laziness, as the 
 facts are easily accessible, which they had not always been, and 
 that it is the height of impudence to plead without knowing the 
 technical basis of the discussion. He gives a list of legal terms 
 evidently of frequent occurrence in the courts, and while admit- 
 ting that cases turning on them are usually of comparative insig- 
 nificance, he expresses his firm opinion that men who cannot 
 manage small matters should not be entrusted with great ones; 
 the man who is lost in a rowboat would be quite at sea in the 
 Argo. Cases of wills, of the sale of houses, and of questions 
 relating to a man's civic status, according to Crassus, were also 
 common, and some of these were of considerable importance. 
 Turning from the mere necessity of knowing civil law, Crassus 
 speaks of the honorable character of the study, and finally 
 remarks that public law, publico, iura, relating to the state as a 
 whole, is useful in many public cases as well as in political 
 discussions in the forum. 
 
 The indifference to law on the part of the pleaders, as shown 
 in the discussion between Antony and Crassus, is the more 
 remarkable as the Romans were the best lawmakers of the ancient 
 world, and took pride in their achievement. Their civil law seems 
 to have been the direct outgrowth of their own administrative 
 genius; they asserted that very little had been borrowed from 
 others, and they held the laws of other nations in contempt, 
 singling out the Greeks for especial derision. The study of law, 
 furthermore, had been ardently pursued for generations before 
 the time of Cicero, and was considered worthy of a place of 
 honor beside the activities of the soldier and the orator. In 
 Greece those who knew law were called pmgmatici, men versed 
 
CICERO DRAWN TO LAW 113 
 
 in business ; they had no social standing, and sold their knowledge 
 to orators for small pay. 29 In Rome the legal scholar, juriscon- 
 sultus, jurisconsult, was consulted like an oracle, or even more 
 reverently, for oracles were by this time of doubtful inspiration; 
 his house was crowded with people seeking advice; he was 
 admired and revered by the young. He gave advice about cases 
 submitted to him, conducted legal actions, and drew up legal 
 instruments of various kinds. He also wrote on law, and much 
 had already been written, though the law had not yet been 
 completely systematized nor brought into, a form suitable for 
 instruction. 
 
 There were many circumstances that drew Cicero to legal 
 studies. The importance of law, just indicated, in the structure 
 of Roman society, stronger in the past than in Cicero's own 
 anarchic times, was one motive, for Cicero was at all times 
 zealously devoted to everything thoroughly Roman, with the 
 exception of war. The Scaevolas and other legal students among 
 those who had befriended him in his youth, like his uncle Aculeo; 
 but particularly the Scaevolas, offered him an early opportunity 
 for learning, and doubtless fostered in him a realization that law 
 was the basis of society. It was only through law that any 
 orderliness could still be attained in Rome ; and Cicero, naturally 
 just and a man of peace, was ever a champion of orderliness and 
 justice. He was an inquiring spirit, furthermore, reaching out 
 in all directions ; desiring to know not only that a thing was so, 
 but also the why of it. A categorical reply from a jurisconsult 
 would not have satisfied him. Professionally, too, a knowledge of 
 law was very helpful, according to his own well-considered opin* 
 ion, though not an absolute essential; and Cicero's ambition was 
 not likely to neglect anything of possible use. He had had time 
 both for thought about these things and for actual study during 
 his long period of preparation. 
 
 20 De Or. 1, 198 ff. 
 
114 IN THE COUBTS 
 
 The extent of Cicero's legal information is not ascertainable, 
 whether as an absolute or a relative quantity. Many of his 
 orations have been lost; those concerned primarily with legal 
 matters were least likely to be published ; and even in the extant 
 speeches arguments have been omitted. As for his relative 
 knowledge, the use of law made by his opponents can only be 
 inferred, and with much uncertainty, from Cicero's orations, so 
 that we must on the whole fall back on his statement that he, 
 and not his rivals, knew law. It is inconceivable that toward the 
 end of his career he should have insisted on legal studies unless 
 he had been known as an exponent of them. His letters, fur- 
 thermore, are filled with legal puns and allusions, especially 
 when addressed to his legal friends. Cicero wrote on law. 
 Although the treatise entitled the Laws is largely philosophical, 
 being a continuation of the work on the State, it contains much 
 detail, wielded with the ease that comes from mastery. He 
 thought of writing more ; not collections of statutes with notes, 
 for many were doing this, but a short systematic treatise, which 
 would give the prospective pleader a grasp of the field, by divid- 
 ing the laws into well-defined groups. Such a treatise is outlined 
 in the De Oratore by Crassus, who speaks for Cicero; and 
 Cicero may have carried out the intention, for there are refer- 
 ences in later writers to a work of his entitled de hire civili in 
 artem redigendo, a Systematic Treatise on Civil Law. In later 
 life the suggestion was made to him that he give consultations as 
 a jurisconsult, a suggestion that he laughingly rejected. And he 
 prepared his cases with great care ; even making a public claim 
 to it in so early a speech as the Pro Quinctio. He had been called 
 to speak at such short notice, he says regretfully, that he had 
 not had sufficient time for mastering the details according to 
 his usual wont. 
 
 A belief in the completeness of Cicero 's legal equipment need 
 not rest entirely on general grounds. Pour of his orations have 
 been exhaustively studied from this point of view, and the 
 
CICERO'S LEGAL KNOWLEDGE 115 
 
 investigator 30 has been led to declare that Cieero was a consum- 
 mate jurisconsult, who, without ever losing sight of practical 
 details, had the ability to grasp underlying principles, as well 
 as to foresee and favor legal reforms that had become necessary 
 and were later carried out, as evidenced by the Digest; that, in 
 short, he was in every way a worthy successor of the Scaevolas 
 themselves, at all periods of life giving of his time to juris- 
 prudence as he gave to philosophy. This statement is probably 
 somewhat extravagant. The augur Scaevola wrote a work on 
 civil law in eighteen books, and is often quoted, with honor, in 
 Justinian's Digest. Sulpicius, most prolific of jurisconsults, is 
 said to have written some 180 books on his subject; he wrote 
 critical notes to Scaevola 's systematic work and a commentary 
 on the Twelve Tables, and was the founder of a juristic school. 
 ■Cicero did not rival these men. But he certainly knew law well ; 
 he had studied it more than was necessary for his pleading, which 
 itself was of a kind to make more than an ordinary use of law. 
 This greater reliance on law was necessitated by Cicero's 
 • aims as a pleader. He was the lawyer of the knights, the business 
 men of Rome, and has even been called a corporation lawyer ; he 
 also constituted himself at an early date the defender of ordinary 
 men. In both of these last capacities he needed law to a far 
 greater extent than in the more spectacular cases with political 
 connections. That he pleaded often in the more technical trials 
 is shown, among other things, by the fact that the four cases 
 referred to constitute just one half of those extant from the years 
 
 so Gasquy : Pro Quino., Pro Eoso. Com., Pro Caec, Pro Tull. 
 
 Greenidge, The Legal Procedure etc., treats fully of the law involved in 
 Cicero's orations. The four cases mentioned are discussed by him, pp. 
 530-568. It is usually said, though no attempt is made to prove it, that 
 Cicero was not well versed in law. This opinion seems to be based on his 
 "human" arguments, which have already been shown to be necessary, and 
 on the fact that he often ridicules legal knowledge. The best instance of 
 such ridicule is found in the Pro Murena; for which see below, pp. 257 ff. 
 Cicero, though at bottom a, very earnest man, was never blind to the human 
 eomedy; he made merry with his own love of fame, his political eminence 
 and accomplishment, his sincere interest in philosophy, and his oratorical 
 
116 IN THE COURTS 
 
 before his consulship. Two of them, those for M. Tullius and 
 Caeeina, have to do with real estate transactions; the Pro 
 Quinctio, already discussed, was concerned with a business con- 
 tract; the fourth, in defense of the actor Roscius, was the result 
 of an old quarrel about an alleged debt. It would be a lengthy 
 matter, longum as Cicero says, to attempt an explanation of the 
 details involved in these trials. Like the case of Quinctius, they 
 had been tried before ; lawyers had made them intricate, however 
 simple they may have been in the beginning. And as the speech 
 for Tullius is very fragmentary, while the beginning and the end 
 of the defense of Roscius have been lost, these two cases can not 
 be made out with much completeness. 
 
 The speech for Caeeina is noteworthy. More than twenty 
 years after its publication, Cicero in the Orator refers to it, 
 with the true observation that it is concerned entirely with 
 defining a legal formula. It was obviously intended as an 
 advertisement of Cicero 's legal ability, with little thought of the 
 young men who wished to learn oratory or of the older men who 
 read for amusement. One passage in it generalizes about the 
 value of civil law as the great stabilizer of the social order, the 
 only thing that can put a stop to the misuse of irresponsible 
 power. This is Cicero 's proclamation of attitude and of his claim 
 to legal knowledge, but it is also a reply to his opponent. The 
 latter, evidently in fear of Cicero's greater skill, had voiced the 
 complaint, common enough in Rome, it would seem, as among 
 us, that legal technicalities lead to injustice. After eulogizing 
 the civil law, Cicero shows that in this particular case it is his 
 opponent, and not he, who is trying to hide behind a harmful 
 literalness of interpretation. Cicero, with the claim that he is 
 pleading on the side of equity, insists thai' the court must try to 
 arrive at the obvious intention of the lawgivers and not be 
 bound by any failure on their part to attain exactness of expres- 
 sion. He thereupon turns suddenly on his opponent with the 
 assertion that the law, even when literally interpreted, is in 
 
WOBDS AND TEEIB MEANINGS 117 
 
 Cicero's favor; and then follows a rather long argument as to 
 whether the word whence, unde, means only out of a place, as 
 Cicero 's opponent would have it, or also from a place, as Cicero 
 contended. 
 
 But Cicero has not forgotten the wisdom of Antony. The 
 auditors must not be wearied; or, as he himself put it in the 
 Bruhis, it is necessary to entangle the opponent in a mesh of 
 terse and exact reasoning, and then to relieve the strain on the 
 jurors' attention by lapsing into fun and laughter. Latin, he 
 says, though less briefly, is a poverty-stricken language; it has 
 not enough words to express everything. But neither has any 
 other language. And words are not necessary when we have 
 once comprehended the meaning for the sake of which the words 
 exist. No law, no senatorial decree, no public document of any 
 kind, and no private document, can be made to yield an in- 
 dubitable meaning if we look only at the words. Everyday 
 speech will fall to pieces if we go fowling for vocables. The 
 discipline in a house would collapse if every slave were allowed 
 to obey our words only, with a disregard for the sense behind 
 them. So it is in law. There is a legal formula beginning with 
 the words, "when I see you here in court." Would the honor- 
 able opponent maintain that this formula could not be used by 
 Appius Claudius the Blind? No, words have been invented to 
 reveal our wishes, not to hide them. 
 
 VII 
 
 Professional Standard 
 
 Cicero's professional standard can not be absolutely deter- 
 mined. Many of his cases have been completely forgotten, 
 leaving no trace, and many others are known to us only by 
 name, by references which contain little information, or by 
 equally insufficient fragments. Even in connection with the 
 cases which are represented by extant orations it is not infre- 
 
118 IN THE COVETS 
 
 quently difficult to decide whether he had justice on his side. 
 The speeches of his opponents have all been lost ; their arguments 
 can be inferred only from Cicero 's manner of meeting them, and 
 he gives it as his opinion that an orator should say nothing, or 
 as little as possible, about the strong points of the opposition. 
 His own statement of the case, one-sided at best, .as it should be, 
 is not always clear to us. The laws to which he refers are 
 frequently unknown; the text of his speeches has suffered; 
 arguments have been omitted. After he had reached eminence, 
 furthermore, he was at times only one of several orators on his 
 side, always pleading last, because of his unusual ability in 
 influencing the jury. He therefore touches only the main points 
 of the evidence, sometimes not even all of these. And, finally, 
 his arguments are Roman, seeming weak from the modern point 
 of view, although they were strong in the forum. 
 
 Something can nevertheless be known in reference to Cicero 's 
 professional attitude. His projected defense of Catiline, which 
 apparently did not take place, is perhaps most to be condemned. 
 In the year 65 B.C. he writes 31 to Atticus that he is thinking of 
 defending Catiline, that the jurors are the kind of men he wants, 
 and that the prosecutor is well-disposed, meaning, of course, that 
 he will not press the prosecution. Both Catiline and Cicero were 
 at that time intending to run for the consulship ; and Cicero adds 
 the hope, that, if acquitted, Catiline will not work against him; 
 if Catiline is condemned, Cicero will have to bear it as a man. 
 The matter is referred to incidentally, in a few very brief sen- 
 tences; it is treated as a thing in which Atticus might possibly 
 be interested, and there is no attempt made either to excuse or 
 to explain it. Though the trial did not take place, Cicero was 
 ready to undertake the defense, having made all the arrange- 
 ments mentioned, and it is not likely that he supposed Catiline 
 innocent. 
 
 Another trial of unusual interest is Cicero's defense of 
 Cluentius, which occurred in the year 66 b.c. Bight years 
 
 si An. l, 2, l. 
 
DEFENSE OF CLUENTIUS 119 
 
 earlier Cluentius had accused his stepfather Oppianicus of 
 attempted murder. Cluentius' first legal step had been the 
 prosecution of a freedman, Scamander, who, it was alleged, had 
 brought both the bribe and the poison to the slave of Cluentius' 
 physician, who was to commit the crime. Scamander was easily 
 proved guilty, but Oppianicus escaped. The trial of Oppianicus, 
 who was as consummate a rascal as even Borne in the time of 
 Sulla could produce, caused a great scandal; Cluentius, it was 
 said, had attempted to secure his stepfather's conviction by the 
 most shameless use of bribery. Cicero had defended Scamander. 
 In the year 66 B.C., after Oppianicus was dead, Cluentius was 
 accused of having murdered him. Cicero now defended Cluen- 
 tius. "When the earlier trial was cited against him, he replied 
 that he had not known the facts in connection with Scamander, 
 a statement that may have been true ; but since he himself had in 
 the meantime referred to some of the jurors in the trial of 
 Oppianicus as having taken bribes, one of them indeed from both 
 sides, and had published the animadversion, the .prosecutor of 
 Cluentius also quoted from Cicero's published speeches. "It is 
 a weighty authority you are appealing to," rejoined Cicero 
 with mock pomposity. 32 "I don't remember the oration in 
 question, but I still admit that it was a disgraceful trial, because 
 of Oppianicus, however. It would be a mistake, nevertheless, to 
 quote from an oration as if it were the deposition of a witness; 
 I was echoing the general opinion. An orator speaks with an 
 eye to his case, not for the purpose of revealing his own real 
 opinions or those of his client. If lawsuits could speak for them- 
 selves, there would be no need of lawyers." And then he men- 
 tioned how Antony did not publish his speeches, so as not to 
 be confronted with them later; and told the humorous story of 
 Crassus and Brutus with their secretaries. In reference to the 
 trial of Cluentius, Cicero is also said to have boasted that he 
 threw dust in the eyes of the jurors, poured darkness over the 
 case, as the Latin expresses it. 
 32 Pro Clu. 138-142. 
 
120 IN THE COVETS 
 
 It should be added that the speech for Cluentius makes it 
 practically certain that he was not guilty. The accusation was 
 the last act in an interminable family feud, which had been 
 characterized by divorces, murders of grown people and children, 
 falsification of wills, robbery, and almost every other conceivable 
 crime. Cluentius' mother, who was the sixth wife of her foul 
 husband and a very fit partner for him, had caused her son 
 to be accused, and although in her attempt to secure evidence 
 she had tortured her slaves with extreme cruelty, she had not 
 been able to produce any convincing proofs. Cicero was thus 
 justified in defending Cluentius, and his courage in doing so, after 
 opposing Cluentius in the earlier trial, is greatly to his credit. 
 When Cicero said that he had thrown dust in the eyes of the 
 jurors, he could not have been referring to the main accusation, 
 but was speaking only of one phase of the trial. Cluentius' 
 alleged bribery in the earlier trial had at that time made him 
 very unpopular. His mother now attempted to revive this 
 unpopularity in order to turn the jury against him. Cicero's 
 discussion of this phase of the question is so long and so involved 
 and so contradictory that he very likely succeeded in confusing 
 the jurors. In all probability both Cluentius and his stepfather 
 had bribed at the earlier trial. The stepfather could not have 
 escaped without using bribes; and if his character was what 
 Cicero represented it to be, Cluentius could have had no hope of 
 winning the case unless he resorted to the same means. 
 
 Cicero's statements about his professional attitude, however, 
 his defense of Scamander, which displayed carelessness even if 
 it was not a conscious attempt to pervert justice, his willingness 
 to defend the guilty Catiline, and the further fact that in later 
 years, for political or personal reasons, he defended men who 
 were guilty, do not seem to indicate a very high sense of moral 
 responsibility. But human morality is not a perfect, unchange- 
 able Platonic idea. Cicero was not a» impossible Sir Galahad 
 in search of a Holy Grail ; he was a vef y successful Koman advo- 
 
NOT A SIB GALAHAD 121 
 
 eate, who sought political advancement or victory, or defended 
 his political or personal friends. The question in reference to 
 his professional standard should perhaps be, not whether his 
 clients were always in the right, but whether Cicero as an advo- 
 cate stood on as high a level as his contemporaries, or possibly 
 on an even higher level. 
 
 The fact that Cicero published so large a number of orations 
 would seem to prove that he was at least not desirous of making 
 a secret of his professional methods. Not all orators had the 
 frankness to publish, as Cicero himself observed. Neither does 
 he seem ever to have shocked the moral sensibilities of his con- 
 temporaries. While a rival lawyer might effectively point out 
 that Cicero was not always consistent, we find that this very 
 speech for Cluentius was not only published by Cicero but that 
 the Romans of the next generation studied and admired it. The 
 honest Quintilian, who mentions the confusion of the jurors, 
 quoted the speech more than forty-five times, as some one has 
 counted, and he has many complimentary things to say about it. 
 Indeed, a modern lawyer of the best standing might well plead 
 in a case similar to that of Cluentius. He would not have under- 
 taken the defense of Catiline, however, nor would he have 
 resorted to Cicero's measures to insure success. But Cicero, 
 who had no pressing reason for revealing his conduct to Atticus, 
 reveals it, and this revelation, as well as his gossipy manner, pre- 
 cludes the supposition that either Atticus or Cicero himself saw 
 anything in the matter which deserved criticism. The threatened 
 prosecution of Catiline, no less than the later trials in which 
 Cicero's clients were guilty, belonged to political life. The prose- 
 cutor in trials like these was not desirous of punishing wicked- 
 ness, but to undo the defendant for personal or political reasons ; 
 and the moral question involved for the defending lawyer was 
 not concerned with the innocence or guilt of his client but with 
 his own political or personal relations with him. It became, 
 broadly speaking, a question of prudence or wisdom. 
 
122 IN THE COVETS 
 
 A Roman advocate's professional standard is thus, in the 
 great majority of his cases, to be judged as a part of his political 
 life ; and as a politician Cicero had a reputation for unimpeach- 
 able honesty, which indeed was one- of the chief reasons for his 
 success. The charges that could be brought against him as a 
 pleader could be brought against such men as his great exem- 
 plars, Crassus and Antony, who were among the noblest of their 
 generation. There can be no doubt that Cicero lived on a far 
 higher moral level than the great majority of his contemporaries ; 
 when he made frank admission of employing a legal trick, the 
 Romans might have thought him boastful, but scarcely iniquitous. 
 And in one respect he set his professional standard above that 
 of his fellows, in refusing to prosecute. This was good policy 
 no less than honesty, as has already been pointed out ; but it was 
 moral elevation nevertheless, and made him even as a pleader a 
 power for betterment. That he showed courage in his efforts to 
 stem malicious prosecutions, is attested by his defense of Roscius 
 of Ameria. His appearance in behalf of Cluentius required not 
 a little moral courage ; and his only prosecution, that of Verres, 
 was undertaken largely to bring justice to the Sicilians. In this 
 trial the prize of success was great, but the likelihood of defeat, 
 as will be presently shown, was equally great. 
 
 But whether Cicero pleaded in a case with political rami- 
 fications, as usually happened, or in as strictly private a case 
 as could occur in Rome, like the trial of Cluentius, his standard 
 was very much what it would have been if he had. pleaded in an 
 ideal state of the Stoics, the most severe moralists of his time. 
 ' ' To defend a man, provided he is not personally immoral, even 
 when guilty, ' ' Cicero wrote in his work on Duty, 33 ' ' accords with 
 the laws of society, with tradition, and with the dictates of 
 humanity. It is for the judge to decide about the truth; the 
 pleader can be satisfied with something less. And this I should 
 not dare to write in a book on philosophy, if it were not also 
 the opinion of Panaetius, the strictest of the Stoics." 
 
 33 De Of. 2, 51. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PROSECUTION OF VERRES 
 
 I 
 
 The Trial 
 
 The prosecution of Verres, which took place in the year 
 70 b.c, when Cicero had held only one office, the quaestorship, 
 has already been mentioned in various connections. There are 
 several reasons why it deserves a somewhat extended treatment. 1 
 It was Cicero 's most important legal victory, establishing him as 
 the undisputed leader of the Roman bar ; indeed, it was, if not 
 the most important, certainly the best known case of antiquity. 
 It was Cicero's only prosecution. Five of the seven orations 
 published as an account of it had not been delivered ; and these 
 five contain a picture of Roman public morals, particularly as 
 displayed in the long-suffering provinces, that has no parallel 
 either for wealth of material or vividness of treatment. 
 
 Verres had governed Sicily as propraetor in the years 
 73-71 B.C. His original appointment had been for a single year, 
 according to the prevailing custom, and his successor had been 
 chosen in due time, but the latter had been needed for command 
 against the rebelling Spartacus. Verres, therefore, remained 
 undisturbed. His deeds, however, were becoming known. Sici- 
 lians, impoverished and ill-treated, fled to Rome for protection; 
 Romans doing business in the rich island lodged complaints ; the 
 behavior of Verres was discussed in the senate ; the consuls took 
 a hand, and the tribunes of the plebs, Cicero speaking before the 
 latter on one occasion. Finally, in the year 70 b.c, a successor 
 to Verres was sent to Sicily, and immediately afterwards ambas- 
 sadors representing all the Sicilian communities, except Syracuse 
 and Messana, came to the city to accuse him of extortion. 
 
 i See Cowles, in bibliography. 
 
124 THE PBOSECUTION OF VERSES 
 
 Sicily was the oldest of the Roman provinces; it was also 
 one of the two richest, the other being Asia. The Sicilians, 
 therefore, had patrons among several of the noblest families in 
 Rome, but they entrusted their case to Cicero, now thirty-six 
 years old. Cicero had been quaestor in Sicily in 75 B.C. ; he had 
 been honest and courageous ; when leaving the province, he had 
 promised to give assistance if the need should arise. Though he 
 was their youngest patron, he was an orator of the first rank; 
 and he had no aristocratic connections that might tempt him to 
 neglect his clients for the sake of the old prerogative of extor- 
 tion. 
 
 The Sicilians needed a prosecutor who was both absolutely 
 honest and possessed of great ability. Verres was well connected. 
 He secured Hortensius, still the first orator of Rome, and at this 
 time a candidate for the consulship, to manage the defense ; and 
 he had among his advocati, or moral sponsors, various men of 
 high standing. Noticeable among the latter were the family of 
 the Metelli, relatives of Verres, three brothers, one of whom was 
 a candidate for the consulship, another for the praetorship, while 
 the third was the very man who had succeeded Verres in Sicily. 
 Verres was also extremely generous with his money, attempting 
 to bribe even Cicero. The money, the skill, the influence on the 
 side of Verres were able to wage a long and energetic battle, 
 which very nearly thwarted the prosecution. 
 
 The first step was an attempt to eliminate Cicero from the 
 case. Provincials, seeking redress in Rome, could not choose 
 their own lawyer; the latter had to be appointed by the court. 
 Cicero, supported by the wishes of the Sicilians, applied for such 
 appointment. Under normal circumstances this would probably 
 have been granted at once ; it was the obvious and the fair thing 
 to do ; but in this case a rival aspirant appeared, and the matter 
 was argued before a jury. This part of a trial was called a 
 divinatio, divination, because the jurors were not called upon to 
 
DIV1NATI0 IN CAECILIUM 125 
 
 decide about submitted facts but to look forward into the future, 
 as it were; so, at least, the ancients themselves explained the 
 name. 2 Cicero's speech on this occasion, also called a divination, 
 is extant, the first of the seven ; and is directed against Caecilius, 
 who would gladly manage the prosecution for the Sicilians, 
 although the latter did not want him. He was a Sicilian by 
 birth, and thought it suitable that they should be defended by a 
 fellow-islander; he had been quaestor under Verres, and con- 
 sequently was in a position to know the facts; he also claimed, 
 a wonderful claim but characteristically Roman, to be the per- 
 sonal enemy of Verres, who had insulted him; and he was of 
 course too honorable to take bribes, intending to push the prose- 
 cution with the utmost vigor. The only flaw in his assertions 
 was that Verres wished him to prosecute. 
 
 Cicero's speech, the only divination extant, made short work 
 of Caecilius. One of Cicero's arguments related to the desires 
 of Verres in the matter ; another made the inevitable comparison 
 between Caecilius and himself. This, however, was done cleverly. 
 Though Cicero's speech, as published at any rate, and probably 
 at the delivery, hints at his own successful career and his devo- 
 tion to oratory, he says far less about his own ability than about 
 Caecilius' shortcomings. Caecilius, he indicates, would have a 
 very uncomfortable time with the great Hortensius. Cicero has 
 pleaded both against the latter and on the same side several 
 times, and knows what he is talking about; Caecilius, on the 
 other hand, though older than Cicero, has had no forensic 
 experience. There is much more in the oration, most of it to 
 the undoing of Caecilius, so that one may surmise that Caecilius 
 would gladly have faced Hortensius in order to escape the sar- 
 castic Arpinate. But Verres would not have been convicted. 
 The jury decided for Cicero, not even allowing Caecilius to 
 appear as an assistant prosecutor, though he had asked for that. 
 
 2Aul. Gellius, 2, 4, 3. 
 
126 THE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 The divinatio took place early in the year, almost certainly 
 in January. 3 Cicero now handed his charge against Verres to 
 the praetor and asked for one hundred and ten days in which 
 to gather evidence. The case would thus be called, probably, 
 at the end of April. Suddenly, however, an accusation for 
 extortion in Achaia was lodged against a former governor of 
 Macedonia; the prosecutor desired one hundred and eight days 
 for the gathering of evidence. 
 
 The whole question of this Achaian trial is somewhat obscure. 
 Cicero charged that it was a trick of the defense, to gain time. 
 Any postponement would be an advantage to Verres, giving him 
 new opportunities for bribery; and if the trial were postponed 
 until the following year, Verres would undoubtedly be acquitted. 
 In that year Hortensius and one of the Metelli would probably 
 be consuls, as actually did happen; the other Metellus would 
 be praetor ; several of the present incorruptible jurors, now can- 
 didates for office, would in case of election be by law incapaci- 
 tated from serving on the jury, and their places would be taken 
 by other men, who might prove more amenable. It certainly 
 appeared as if the Achaian trial was intended to cause a delay. 
 The one hundred and eight days, two less than Cicero's, would 
 just give it precedence; with careful management it might be 
 made to last a considerable time. And there was another reason 
 for suspecting it; the prosecutor did not go to Achaia for his 
 evidence. In this he resembled some other prosecutors, but his 
 laxness showed a lack of interest in his case, and made the one 
 hundred and eight days seem very suspicious. 
 
 It is not known whether the Achaian trial ever took place; 
 but the trick, if a trick it was, succeeded, partially at least. 
 Verres' case was not called until August, and Cicero makes the 
 statement that three months had been stolen from him. He 
 may, however, have thwarted his opponents ' plans to some extent, 
 
 3 The chronology of this trial can not be determined with certainty. The 
 latest and clearest discussion of it is given by Cowles, pp. 192-204, who 
 summarizes the theories of previous scholars. 
 
FIFTY DAYS IN SICILY 127 
 
 for he gathered his evidence in Sicily in fifty days, and he refers 
 to his celerity in the matter as though it had enabled him to 
 present the case in time. Whether or not the trial against the 
 governor of Macedonia was a trick, and whether or not the trial 
 took place, May, June, and July were somehow lost to Cicero; 
 July was probably given to the elections, but the loss of May 
 and June seems to have been due to the Achaian prosecution. 
 
 The fifty days in Sicily are noteworthy. Cicero and his 
 cousin, Lucius Cicero, traveled over the whole island, visiting 
 towns and villages, and even talking with individuals in "their 
 huts and by the plough." 4 Though Cicero might have enjoyed 
 the public hospitality of the various communities as a Roman 
 senator and a former quaestor of the island, he preferred to stay 
 with friends; complaining, however, that the Mamertini did not 
 give him a public invitation, an unprecedented insult to a Roman 
 senator. He secured a very large number of letters, both from 
 cities and from individuals, numerous public records and decrees, 
 and very many witnesses. Finally, in his need of a prompt 
 return to Italy, he left Sicily in a small boat, though it was in 
 the winter, when the sea was rough ; his safety being threatened, 
 besides, by fugitive slaves, the remnants of the war with Sparta- 
 cus, by pirates, and by the emissaries of Verres. 
 
 Most of the Sicilian communities received him as their savior. 
 At Henna, so he tells us, he was met by the priests of Ceres with 
 chaplets and sacred boughs. A meeting of citizens was held, as 
 happened in the other cities as well. While Cicero was speaking, 
 there was so much weeping and groaning that the whole city 
 seemed to be filled with the most bitter grief. Henna was entirely 
 devoted to the worship of Ceres; the city was like a shrine, 
 its inhabitants like priests and temple attendants. Now they 
 exclaimed that they would utter no complaint about unjust taxes 
 and injuries of every other kind inflicted by Verres ; only one 
 thing they could not forgive : Verres had desecrated the temple 
 
 * Fro Scauro 23-26. Other details are given in the Verrine orations. 
 
128 THE PEOSECUTION OF VEEBES 
 
 of Ceres, sacred to all Sicily, and had carried off the statue of 
 the goddess herself. He had come like another Pluto ; for, 
 as the god of the infernal regions had stolen Proserpina, the 
 daughter, so Verres had stolen Ceres, the mother. 
 
 Everywhere there were bereaved mothers, sisters, and wives. 
 Cicero arrived at Heraclea in the night. All the matrons of the 
 town, carrying torches, came to meet him. Their leader, calling 
 Cicero her savior and Verres her destroyer, fell at Cicero's feet; 
 uttering the name of her murdered son, as though Cicero could 
 raise him from the dead. And this scene was repeated, Cicero 
 continues, in other cities; by aged mothers, and even by small 
 children, who had suffered. 
 
 But Cicero also encountered obstacles. Verres had friends, 
 both individuals and a few communities, who, according to 
 Cicero, had prospered by unworthy means, or at least had not 
 suffered as much as others, under Verres. The new governor 
 also tried to prevent Cicero from securing evidence. On first 
 arriving in Sicily, Metellus had abolished many of' the evil 
 practises instituted by his predecessor, had righted many wrongs, 
 and had sent damaging reports to Rome. It seemed, in Cicero's 
 words, as if he were less intent upon performing his own duties 
 as praetor than upon undoing the deeds of Verres. But when 
 Cicero reached Sicily, all this had changed. Two days previously 
 a certain messenger had arrived from Rome, with letters; after 
 that, Metellus had proclaimed himself the friend and relative 
 of Verres. "When possible, he forbade the delivery to Cicero of 
 public documents; he dissuaded, even forcibly prevented, wit- 
 nesses from going to Rome ; and he commanded communities to 
 send embassies to support Verres at the trial. 
 
 Cicero's experiences at Syracuse are the most instructive; 
 they are also related with most detail. The people of Syracuse 
 had many reasons, so Cicero had been led to believe, for being 
 friendly to Verres ; they had not joined in the prosecution and 
 had even sent a laudatory embassy. Cicero, therefore, expected 
 
AT SYRACUSE 129 
 
 nothing from them and did not ask for permission to examine 
 their public records. Instead, he had recourse to the Roman 
 citizens resident in Syracuse ; examining their books and getting 
 evidence about the injuries they had sustained. When he had 
 been in the city for some time, often busy in the forum, Hera- 
 clius, a leading Syracusan, approached him with a request that 
 he and Lucius attend a meeting of the local senate ; he had come, 
 he said, at the bidding of the senators who were gathered together 
 in large numbers. After some hesitation, Cicero and Lucius 
 followed Heraclius. As they entered the senate-house, the sen- 
 ators arose, to do them honor ; the presiding magistrate thereupon 
 asked them to be seated. 
 
 The first speaker was a certain Diodorus, foremost in 
 "authority, age, and experience." The Syracusans, he said, 
 were grieved and disappointed because .Cicero had neglected 
 them, whereas he had offered his services to all the other Sicilian 
 communities, receiving from them letters and other kinds of 
 evidence. Cicero replied that when the Sicilian embassies met 
 in a body at Rome to ask him to undertake the prosecution, the 
 ambassadors from Syracuse had not been present. He added 
 that he was not asking that any decree be passed against Verres 
 in a senate-house which was adorned with a gilt statue of the 
 former propraetor. The assembly cried out as they looked 
 toward the statue. Many stood up, one after the other, and 
 described how the city and the shrines had been despoiled. The 
 statue, they said, had not been set up by the city; it was the 
 work of a few individuals, accomplices of Verres, who were now 
 in Rome as the representatives of Syracuse. It was not sur- 
 prising that these men had failed to join the other embassies. 
 
 "When it had become clear from numerous speeches that 
 Syracuse had suffered more, and not less, than the other cities of 
 Sicily, Cicero promised help. He referred to a public commen- 
 dation of Verres that had come from Syracuse; the senators 
 explained that it had been passed within the last few days, under 
 
130 THE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 coercion; at Cicero's suggestion, they expressed their desire to 
 rescind it. First, however, they brought out the public records, 
 which had been kept hidden in the public treasury, a sacred 
 place. In these were told the misdeeds of Verres ; more numerous 
 than Cicero could make use of in the trial. Verres' thefts were 
 classified in this way : things stolen from the temple of Minerva ; 
 of Jupiter; of Bacchus. Cicero arranged to have the records 
 sealed with the seal of the city and taken to Rome. 
 
 The Syracusan commendation of Verres had come about in 
 this manner. Shortly before Cicero's arrival, letters had been 
 received from Verres, asking for it ; but nothing had been done. 
 Later, when some of Verres' friends urged the matter, there had 
 been shouting and disorder in the senate, but no decree was 
 passed. Still later, immediately before Cicero reached Syracuse, 
 Metellus ordered that a commendation be passed. In the debate 
 that ensued every device was used to avoid passing the laudatory 
 decree ; no one was willing to move it ; in spite of the fact, as 
 Cicero recalls, that the senate-house contained a statue of Verres 
 and a statue of his little son, in the nude. At last, by coercion, 
 the commendation was decreed. But its wording was satirical. 
 Verres was praised because he had had nobody flogged, "struck 
 with the rods, ' ' implying that he had caused men to be executed, 
 "struck with the ax;" he had administered the province with 
 watchful care, but the watchfulness, or wakefulness rather, had 
 been due to riotous nights; and he was commended for keeping 
 the pirates from the island, though everybody knew that they 
 had been received by him into the island. 
 
 When Cicero had learned all these things, he and Lucius left 
 the senate-house, so that the senators might pass whatever 
 decrees they wished. First they made Lucius the guest-friend 
 of the city, because he had evinced the same spirit toward it as 
 Cicero; this decree they not only wrote out, but they had it 
 inscribed on a bronze tablet, which was given to the Ciceros. 
 Thereupon it was voted to rescind the commendation of Verres. 
 
THEOMNASTUS , 131 
 
 This vote had already been set down in the minutes when a 
 former quaestor of Verres hurried off to summon Metellus ; and 
 the latter ordered the senate to adjourn. 
 
 As a result, a large crowd, senators first and then ordinary 
 citizens, made their way to Cicero, exclaiming that their rights 
 were being destroyed; and the Roman citizens of Syracuse 
 gathered around him, evidently as a protection against any 
 attempt of violence on the part of the praetor. The excitement 
 was intense, directed especially at the quaestor who had called 
 in Metellus; and it was only with great difficulty that Cicero 
 succeeded in restraining the crowd from inflicting summary 
 punishment on the offending quaestor. After this disturbance 
 Cicero went before the praetor, who was sitting in judgment; 
 but the latter rose hurriedly from his curule chair and departed, 
 giving Cicero no opportunity to state his business. As evening 
 was by this time coming on, the crowd left the forum. 
 
 On the following day, in the morning, Cicero again appeared 
 before the praetor, requesting that the decree against Verres be 
 given to him. Metellus said no, adding that on the previous day 
 Cicero had acted without the proper Roman dignity, in that he 
 had addressed the Syracusan senate in Greek. At the advice 
 of the townspeople, Cicero tried to get the decree by force. A 
 riot ensued, for, as Cicero remarks, Verres had friends in Syra- 
 cuse. One of these was a certain Theomnastus, nicknamed 
 Theoractus, which means ' ' smitten by god ; " "the kind of man 
 that children follow on the street;" mad, Cicero says, though 
 perhaps he was not so mad after all, having once been elected 
 to the priesthood of Jupiter, by the grace of Verres. 5 Theorac- 
 tus, mad or not, laid hold of the tablets that Cicero was trying 
 to carry off; foaming at the mouth and glaring insanely, he 
 shouted that Cicero was hurting him. Neither let go his hold 
 of the documents; and thus "chained together," they went to 
 the praetor. Cicero demanded that the tablets be sealed and 
 
 5 See below, pp. 152-153. 
 
132 TEE PBOSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 given to him. The praetor said no. They quarreled. Cicero 
 quoted the Roman law that entitled him to gather evidence. 
 Metellus, getting angry, said that he had nothing to do with 
 such laws. Cicero threatened, pointing out the penalty of the 
 praetor's disobedience. Finally he secured the decree. After 
 that, Theoractus — or Theomnastus, on this occasion, for he no 
 longer acted like a madman — produced a book that he gave to 
 Cicero; it contained a list of the Syracusan thefts of Verres. 
 Cicero, however, had already secured information about these. 
 
 After the fifty days had thus elapsed, whether they came at 
 the beginning or at the end of the one hundred and ten, which 
 is uncertain, Cicero returned to Rome. It was time for selecting 
 the jury. A rumor had been spread abroad, for the discourage- 
 ment of the Sicilian witnesses, that Cicero had accepted a bribe, 
 and consequently would be but an indifferent prosecutor. He 
 proved his honesty, however, by the manner in which he objected 
 to the doubtful members of the jury panel ; and an honest jury 
 was secured. 
 
 The elections for the next year presently took place. The 
 higher magistrates were chosen first; Hortensius and Metellus 
 were made consuls-elect ; the other Metellus secured the praetor- 
 ship, also receiving in the allotment charge of the extortion 
 court. Some of the present jurors were also elected to office, so 
 that they would be unable to serve if the trial should go over to 
 69 b.c. The hopes of the supporters of Verres had been justified, 
 and there was open rejoicing. "When Hortensius, after his elec- 
 tion, was returning with a great multitude from the Campus 
 Martius, a certain C. Curio happened to meet the throng ; seeing 
 also Verres, he greeted him with a loud shout, embraced him, 
 and told him to lay aside all worry. ' ' You have been acquitted 
 by this election, ' ' he cried, loudly enough for many to hear. And 
 the praetor-elect Metellus, when allotted charge of the extortion 
 court, was so delighted that he sent slaves ahead to his house to 
 announce the good news to his wife. 
 
CICERO ELECTED AEDILE 133 
 
 The election of aediles was fast approaching, at which Cicero 
 would be a candidate. Moneys arrived from Sicily, as Cicero 
 learned from friends ; and Verres one night called together the 
 agents of electoral bribery, divisores, of all the tribes. One of 
 them came that very night to Cicero and reported what had taken 
 place. Verres reminded the agents how generously he had 
 treated them during his own canvass for the praetorship, as well 
 as during the recent elections when Hortensius and the Metelli 
 had secured their offices; and he promised to pay any sum for 
 the defeat of Cicero. Some said they did not dare to attempt it ; 
 others thought it impossible; but one of them promised to do 
 it for 500,000 sesterces. After that, a few others agreed to assist 
 him. But it all came to nothing. Cicero was elected, and 
 unanimously. 
 
 The magistrates on Verres' side were not wearied. Just 
 before Cicero's election, Hortensius had summoned the Sicilian 
 envoys to his house, but, on learning what he desired, they had 
 refused to come. Later the other consul-elect, Q. Metellus, sum- 
 moned the ambassadores ; a few obeyed the summons, inasmuch 
 as L. Metellus, his brother, was governor of Sicily. Q. Metellus 
 pointed out to the envoys that measures had been taken for the 
 acquittal of Verres; the Sicilians could not hope to accomplish 
 anything against the three brothers Metelli, a consul, a praetor, 
 and a propraetor. 
 
 Metellus took for granted that the trial would not be con- 
 cluded until the next year; and there was every likelihood that 
 this would happen. The case was called on August fifth. The 
 ordinary procedure would be for Cicero to make a complete 
 exposition of Verres 7 crimes in a set speech, which probably 
 would last some days; the defense would reply; and not until 
 later would the witnesses be introduced for examination by 
 Cicero as well as by Hortensius. This set speech would be 
 Cicero 's great oratorical triumph ; he had prepared for it during 
 
134 THE PROSECUTION OF VERSES 
 
 months of labor, in the midst of intrigues and opposition of 
 every kind; it would be the utter undoing of Hortensius, his 
 only rival. But such a speech at this time would mean the 
 acquittal of Verres. Ten days after the opening of the case 
 the so-called votive games would begin ; and other games would 
 follow, so that the opposition would not make its retort Until 
 after a holiday of some forty days, in itself an inauspicious cir- 
 cumstance. Other games and holidays nearly filled the rest of 
 the year; it would not be difficult for the defense to waste 
 the few remaining days; and once the tenth of December had 
 arrived, when the new tribunes of the plebs took office, two of 
 whom were jurors, Verres' acquittal would be a certainty. 
 
 Cicero, therefore, reversed the ordinary procedure, not 
 entirely without precedent, thus relinquishing, for the moment 
 at least, his own desire for oratorical fame and the confusion 
 of Hortensius. The trial began at the eighth hour, about two 
 o'clock in the afternoon. Cicero made a short speech, setting 
 forth the intrigues of the opposition, and then made his charges 
 very briefly, introducing the witnesses at once to substantiate 
 them. His only hope of success was to make so strong an impres- 
 sion on the jury, before Hortensius could launch into dilatory 
 oratory, that a verdict would be practically assured. 
 
 For nine days the stream of witnesses passed before the 
 jurors, and documents were read. The first hour, as Cicero later 
 describes it, cut off Verres' hope of bribing the jury; on the 
 first day it became clear to the Roman people — and there were 
 unusually large crowds in Rome at the time because of the recent 
 elections, the census which was being taken, and the impending 
 games — that an acquittal would mean the overturning of all 
 order in the state ; on the second day the friends and supporters 
 of Verres relinquished all hope of victory and even lost their 
 willingness to argue in defense; on the third, Verres pretended 
 to be sick, so that he might not have to make reply to his prose- 
 
NINE DATS OF TESTIMONY 135 
 
 cutor. Hortensius sat speechless during most of the proceedings, 
 rarely questioning a witness, though that was his right. Prob- 
 ably it was during these days that he made an impatient remark 
 about one of Cicero's allusions, which is quoted by Plutarch. 
 "I cannot guess riddles," said Hortensius; and Cicero: "You 
 nevertheless have a sphinx in your house," referring to a gift 
 the orator had accepted from Verres. Sometimes Hortensius 
 objected to the violence of the witnesses, maintaining that they 
 were behaving like accusers and not like witnesses. The popular 
 excitement was intense ; the praetor more than once had to close 
 the proceedings, fearing, according to Cicero, that the people, 
 driven to fury by the revelations of Verres' cruelty, would take 
 vengeance then and there; and Cicero claims to have withheld 
 testimony for the same reason. 
 
 The trial, according to law, was to consist of two parts, 
 actiones, separated by a period of two days. Verres, however, 
 went into voluntary exile, not waiting for the second part of the 
 trial; and Hortensius threw up the case. The court confirmed 
 Verres' voluntary exile, and ordered that his possessions should 
 be sold publicly, to secure restitution to the Sicilians. This would 
 be either the actual amount alleged to have been stolen, or two 
 and one half times as much. 
 
 Before going to Sicily, Cicero had estimated Verres' thefts 
 at 100,000,000 sesterces ; now, after a careful evaluation, he gave 
 40,000,000 as the sum. 6 Verres, however, had succeeded in taking 
 away much of his wealth ; indeed, he was proscribed in the year 
 43 B.C. by Antony, who desired some of his Corinthian bronzes. 7 
 
 Cicero, as Plutarch cleverly observes of the great speaker, 
 had won his case by refusing to speak ; and it may be added that 
 Cicero made the same statement in introducing his undelivered 
 
 s This is a disputed matter. For a brief statement of the facts, see 
 Cowles, pp. 177-8. 
 
 i Pliny, Natural History, 34, 6 ; Sen. Suas., 6, 24. 
 
136 THE PROSECUTION OF VERMES 
 
 orations: "I do not wish Hortensius to say that the defendant 
 has been overwhelmed because the prosecutor said nothing about 
 him, and that nothing is so dangerous to an innocent defendant 
 as silence on the part of his opponents ; nor do I wish that Hor- 
 tensius should damn me with faint praise, saying that if I had 
 made a speech, he would have defended his client, but that he lost 
 his case because I kept quiet." 
 
 The discomfiture of Hortensius, Cicero's ancient rival, was a 
 large part of Cicero's success, and meant the primacy of the 
 Roman bar. For some years subsequently Hortensius very 
 nearly abandoned pleading. Cicero refers to this situation some 
 twenty-four years later in a passage of the Brutus," which has 
 already been quoted in part. Cicero 's explanation is character- 
 istically polite. Hortensius, he says, was consul in 69 b.c. ; after 
 attaining this honor, he felt justly that he could ignore the 
 claims of orators below him in rank, while among the consulars 
 nobody rivaled him. He grew indifferent to the passionate 
 ambition that had inspired him from very boyhood; he became 
 lax, imagining that he was leading a more enjoyable life. The 
 first year, the second, and the third, each took away something 
 from his former splendor ; it was like the fading of the colors in 
 an old picture ; so that finally he became utterly unlike his old 
 self.. Neither an ordinary listener nor a trained and critical 
 observer could have recognized him. Every day diminished Hor- 
 tensius' ability. All his oratorical qualities suffered, especially 
 the rapidity of his delivery and his grace of style, for which he 
 had been famous. Cicero, on the other hand, continued his 
 practise in the forum and his oratorical exercises. When he, 
 too, had attained the consulship, Hortensius bestirred himself; 
 after which they often pleaded together, each professing to con- 
 sider the other the greater orator. But Hortensius did not 
 recover his old excellence. He had been greater in his youth. 
 One reason for this was that he had relaxed his training; the 
 
 « Brut. 320 ff. 
 
HORTENSIUS 137 
 
 other, that his peculiar gifts, fluency and the refinements of 
 style, were less suited to a more advanced age than to youth. 9 
 
 Cicero's praise of Hortensius, and Cicero always praises him 
 in his oratorical works, scarcely conceals the fact that even in the 
 later period Cicero was popularly held to be the greater orator ; 
 a thing easily proved from other circumstances; and it shows 
 very clearly that the first recognition of his superiority was 
 due to the prosecution of Verres. Hortensius may have been 
 conscious of a hidden struggle with a rival even during the trial, 
 when he observed that he could not guess riddles. Cicero, cer- 
 tainly, had it very definitely in mind. There is much about 
 Hortensius in the divinaUo, as there is also in the later Verrine 
 orations. Cicero speaks of Hortensius' great influence in the 
 courts, calling him an autocrat, and of his practise of dividing 
 his speeches systematically, matters that Cicero had mentioned 
 in earlier orations as well, but he also more than hints that he 
 has no fears. Much of Hortensius ' previous success, Cicero says, 
 has been due to the inferiority of his opponents; he has played 
 with them; he would play with Caecilius; but not with Cicero, 
 and Cicero indicates how he can use the very devices on which 
 Hortensius is accustomed to rely. 
 
 The juxtaposition of Cicero and Hortensius was to some 
 extent inevitable in the divinaUo, and Cicero took care to empha- 
 size it ; equally inevitable, or even more so, was praise of himself 
 as an orator. A divinaUo was by its very nature a self -laudation. 
 Cicero, as has been indicated, managed the matter well; rather 
 pointing out what Caecilius lacked than what he himself pos- 
 sessed; but the inference to be drawn was not hidden. The 
 speech became thus not merely a defiance of Verres, but also a 
 statement of Cicero's claims as an orator. His own honesty, his 
 
 o The passage from the Brutus (320 ff.) contains much of our knowledge 
 about the Asiatic style. See Wilkins, pp. 45-46, for a brief statement ; also 
 Schanz, 207 ff . This oratorical tendency, however, is of less importance 
 for our appreciation of Cicero than for a knowledge of the history of 
 ancient oratory. But see Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, 1, 229 ff. See 
 also below, pp. 438 ff. 
 
138 TEE PKOSECVTION OF VEBMES 
 
 long training, his past career are set forth, directly or indirectly ; 
 and are set forth with a view not merely to the case itself but 
 to the more distant future. Cicero was well aware that this was 
 his one great opportunity at the bar; that it was, indeed, the 
 final test of his fitness for the highest offices. 
 
 Professionally, a prosecution was a departure from his pre- 
 vious record; but it might not have been entirely unsuitable to 
 indicate to the Romans that Cicero could attack as well as defend. 
 Brother Quintus, in the much quoted electioneering pamphlet, 
 counsels Cicero to threaten with prosecution any competitor who 
 resorts to bribery; attack was a strong political weapon, and 
 Cicero was approaching the political heights. In 67 B.C., three 
 years hence, he might stand for the praetorship ; and the pre- 
 liminaries for the canvass would begin much earlier. On the 
 other hand, this prosecution, as Cicero repeatedly asserts, was 
 not of the ordinary kind. He was not, at least when first under- 
 taking the case, a personal enemy of Verres ; he was acting as a 
 patron of the Sicilians ; as their defender, in fact. He had 
 already appeared before the tribunes in behalf of one of these 
 very Sicilians; and at that time he could have had no thought 
 of launching a prosecution against Verres. The enormity of 
 Verres' crimes, too, gave this prosecution a nobler character, 
 made it a defense, as Cicero claims, not merely of the plaintiffs 
 but also of the dignity and welfare of Rome. Cicero insists on 
 these thoughts, eager to make clear that his professional attitude 
 has not changed; and he returns to the question at the very 
 end of the seventh oration. His last words are to the effect that 
 he may be allowed in the future to defend the good rather than 
 to punish the wicked; and this wish is introduced after a long 
 apostrophe to the gods, which, in calling down vengeance on 
 Verres, might with much more oratorical propriety have ended 
 the oration. 
 
 Cicero was, indeed, maintaining the highest level of his 
 professional standard, that of protecting the weak. The progress 
 
PROTECTING THE WEAK 139 
 
 of the case through its many weary months is sufficient proof 
 that the Sicilians could not have secured any redress without 
 his assistance. Cicero might not have taken the case if he had 
 had no hope of winning it, and if victory had not meant great 
 professional advancement, which latter is inconceivable; but 
 he did run a very grave risk. Defeat was never far off; his 
 opponents as well as outsiders expected it. It is not too severe 
 a strain on the imagination, therefore, in view of Cicero's own 
 considerate and upright behavior toward provincials at the time 
 when he himself became a governor, to suppose that he was 
 genuinely stirred by the atrocities of Verres. He had been in 
 Sicily, and he knew many of the men who had suffered under 
 Verres. When he breaks into eloquent appeals to the humane 
 feelings of the jurors, he voices a real emotion. As provincials, 
 the Sicilians mattered to the Romans only in so far as they might 
 be useful; and Cicero's arguments, if carefully scrutinized, will 
 be seen not to rise much higher. He also puts far greater empha- 
 sis, too great, it seems, on the sufferings of the comparatively few 
 Romans who had encountered Verres, for he was addressing a 
 Roman jury. But as human beings, the Sicilians mattered to 
 Cicero much more, probably, than to the majority of his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 Much is said in these speeches, or at least written, which 
 might indicate that Cicero was not only building up his oratorical 
 reputation but also more or less definitely allying himself with 
 the knights and the people in their fight against the aristocrats. 
 This was the important year, 70 B.C., when the popular tribunes 
 regained the power of which Sulla had deprived them, and when 
 the public courts, at the end of the year, after the Verrine trial, 
 were taken from the nobles; the jurors were henceforth equally 
 divided between them, the knights, and the so-called tribuni 
 aerarii, who seem to have been plebeians rich enough, or almost 
 rich enough, to belong to the knights. Cicero inveighs against 
 senatorial corruption' in the courts ; he attacks the aristocratic 
 
140 TEE PEOSECT7TION OF VEBBES 
 
 exelusiveness, which would keep all others from high office. The 
 whole case was a blow at the nobility, and may have been of 
 considerable assistance in bringing about the reform of the 
 courts ; the fact that the jury decided justly did not weaken the 
 argument against the nobles, for everybody was acquainted with 
 Cicero's long fight before he could even get the case tried. 
 
 But Cicero was not allying himself with the opponents of 
 the aristocracy. 10 His professional and humanitarian reasons for 
 taking the case were quite sufficient. His attacks on the aristo- 
 crats in the course of the trial are to be interpreted, not as the 
 expression of his political opinions, but as an effort to win a 
 verdict, an interpretation which Cicero himself four years later, 
 in his defense of Cluentius, frankly suggested for anything he 
 might say in court. Nor is it likely that his prosecution of an 
 extortionate governor could have marked him as a foe to the 
 nobles, for in the very next year he defended a certain Ponteius, 
 who was accused of malversation in Gaul. The trial of Verres 
 was in one respect a bid for popular favor, but it appealed to the 
 people as a demonstration of Cicero 's oratorical and legal ability, 
 and to the provincials as a blow struck in their behalf. 
 
 It would be interesting to know whether Verres was, after 
 all, an exception among Roman governors. Cicero would natur- 
 ally try to make his listeners and readers believe it; he cites 
 many of his deeds, quite cruel enough for any age or cir- 
 cumstances, as similar to those of others, and then invariably 
 describes something worse as peculiar to Verres; but it may 
 nevertheless be doubted whether Verres was either more cruel or 
 more greedy than very many of his contemporaries. 11 He was 
 condemned, and they were not; but the condemnation was en- 
 
 i" Cf . Heinze. Heinze discusses Cicero 's cases before the consulship, and 
 briefly those of the consulship. His view, shared by others, that Cicero 
 must be looked upon mainly as an orator before the year 63 B.C. seems to 
 me indubitable, but I can not agree with his contention that in these years 
 Cicero was at heart an aristocrat, opposed only to the excessively conserva- 
 tive few. 
 
 ii For Sulla in Asia, see below, p. 184. 
 
VERRES AN EXCEPTION ? 141 
 
 tirely due to Cicero's skill; several of Verres' worst crimes had 
 been perpetrated before he went to Sicily, and had not been 
 punished. It is also very unlikely, and no further arguments 
 need be given, that the aristocrats, including Hortensius, a man 
 of good reputation, would have defended Verres so persistently, 
 even recklessly, if his actions had really seemed monstrous to 
 them; aside from other considerations, they could have served 
 their aristocratic cause better by refusing to protect him. The 
 question is important for our view of Rome; but, like many 
 others ; it can not be settled definitely. The scant evidence seems 
 to point to this : that Verres ' character and methods were not 
 revoltingly low in Roman eyes, but his opportunities and his 
 skill had been unusual. The career of Verres becomes thus one 
 of the most serious indictments against republican Rome. 
 
 II 
 
 The Facts 
 
 The account of Verres' crimes is given in the five unspoken 
 orations. The two speeches that Cicero delivered had not con- 
 tained it. As published, the Mvinatio has almost nothing 
 about Verres; and the oration of August fifth, which was 
 called actio prima after the name of this part of the trial, is 
 merely an introduction, devoted almost entirely to the ineffectual 
 chicanery, tergiversations, and knavery of the defense. The 
 witnesses, the documents, and some of the sufferers, for even 
 bereaved children were brought into court, had told the story 
 effectively enough in the course of their nine days; but of all 
 this there was no impressive record. In publishing the facts, 
 Cicero creates a picture of a second session, actio secunda; such 
 as would have taken place if Hortensius had not abandoned the 
 case. He represents himself as delivering a long speech; the 
 very speech, in fact, which Hortensius had hoped Cicero would 
 
142 THE PROSECUTION OF VERRES 
 
 begin with on the fifth of August and which, at that time, would 
 have spoiled the prosecution. It is divided into five books, called 
 the five orations of the actio secunda. 
 
 All the motives for the publication of orations, professional, 
 literary, and pedagogical, were active in this case ; increased by 
 the fact that this was Cicero 's only prosecution, and that during 
 the trial he had had no opportunity for eclipsing Hortensius as 
 an orator. Cicero had won the case by every kind of skillful 
 and courageous activity that could be employed by a Roman 
 lawyer, but he had missed the purely oratorical part of it, by 
 far the best part both to the pleader and to his public. The 
 published orations supplied this want. Apparently their effect 
 was as great as if they had been actually delivered ; Cicero and 
 students of oratory used them for illustrations in matters 
 oratorical exactly as they used the other orations, Cicero saying 12 
 that they contained every kind of oratory useful in prosecution. 
 They are scarcely too long to seem the report of actual speeches ; 
 a Roman orator, like a modern lawyer, might speak for several 
 successive days. Thus, in the trial of the tribune Cornelius, in 
 65 B.C., Cicero spoke for four entire days, and then published 
 his plea in two books, now lost except for fragments,; and yet 
 the Cornelian case was one of high treason, where the facts were 
 relatively few, whereas the facts in the Verrine trial were almost 
 innumerable. 
 
 Verres gave early proof of his criminal inclinations, according 
 to Cicero, but the speeches have no account of his boyhood and 
 youth. This is to save time, a true reason ; and also for the sake 
 of decency, a consideration that the orator seems to have for- 
 gotten as he proceeded. It is hinted, however, that Verres, even 
 in his early years, was not a stranger to late hours, procurers, 
 and gamblers. 
 
 The review of his life begins with his quaestorship under 
 Carbo, at the time of the civil war between Sulla and Marius. 
 Verres would not ally himself openly with either party, though 
 
 12 Or. 131. 
 
ACTIO SECUNDA 143 
 
 lie is said to have been a Marian. He went to Gaul, Carbo's 
 province, with the money . sent by the state ; but at the first 
 opportunity he absconded. His report of his stewardship was 
 remarkable. He stated, without items, but down to seventeen 
 sesterces, what he as quaestor had been called upon to spend, 
 and then added that six hundred thousand sesterces, not 
 accounted for, had been deposited for safekeeping in Ariminum, 
 a very safe place for Verres since Ariminum had been destroyed 
 in the civil war, before anybody had an opportunity to count 
 Verres' deposit. Thereupon he suddenly joined theSullan 
 party. Sulla, who ought to have been delighted with this new 
 partisan, did not send him to the army, where, if loyal, he might 
 possibly have been of some use, but ordered him to stay at 
 Beneventum ; the men in power there, thoroughly devoted to 
 Sulla, would see that Verres did no harm to the aristocratic 
 cause. At the end of the civil war Verres was liberally rewarded, 
 for leaving the Marian side, with property confiscated at Bene- 
 ventum. 
 
 Afterwards he became quaestor to Dolabella, the governor of 
 Cilicia. On his way to the province with Dolabella, to mention, 
 says Cicero, only the crimes that would seem incredible if charged 
 against some one else, Verres demanded money from the magis- 
 trate of Sicyon ; this sort of thing others had done, but Verres, 
 when the magistrate refused to pay, shut him in a small room 
 where a fire was made of green wood.' The magistrate was almost 
 choked to death. In Achaia Verres stole pictures, which are 
 not specified ; in Athens, a large amount of gold from the temple 
 of Minerva. Proceeding on his way, he came to Delos. Here, 
 at night, he removed from the temple of Apollo several exquisite 
 and ancient pieces of sculpture, and had them loaded on a trans- 
 port. A storm arose, doubtless through the influence of the 
 outraged Apollo; Dolabella could not depart from the island; 
 it was dangerous even to stay in the city. Verres' transport was 
 stranded, and broken up ; and Apollo 's art treasures were scat- 
 
144 TEE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 tered over the beach. Here they were found, and Dolabella had 
 them replaced in the temple ; after which the storm ceased, and 
 Dolabella left the island. 
 
 At Chios Verres forcibly carried off a number of art treas- 
 ures ; so at Erythrae and Halicarnassus. In Tenedos, in addition 
 to extorting money, he stole the statue of the patron god of the 
 town; in Samos he pillaged the famous temple of Juno. Cicero 
 had seen these spoils when he came to seal Verres' house as part 
 of the legal proceedings ; these art works were found in all parts 
 of Verres ' residence, even in the gardens ; but, Cicero asks, where 
 are they now ? Verres was saving them for Antony. 
 
 Aspendos was a famous old city in Pamphylia, filled with 
 works of art. Here Verres did not steal only this statue or that ; 
 he did not leave a single one in the whole town. Prom temples 
 and public places, with the townspeople looking on, everything 
 was carted away in vans. Among the things stolen here, for 
 Cicero stops to specify, was the well-known lyre-player of Aspen- 
 dos ; famous enough to be the source of a Greek proverb, of which 
 scholars give varying interpretations. This statue was with 
 Verres in Rome; very suitably, for the proverb, 13 in some way 
 or other, had reference to doing things for one's own sake, 
 whether it be playing or stealing. At Perga, too, Verres con- 
 tinued his robberies ; despoiling the ancient shrine of Diana and 
 seizing the temple treasure. 
 
 Other Romans, Cicero remarks, carried away treasures and 
 works of art from conquered cities ; but surrendered them to the 
 Roman state, carefully listing them in their reports; such 
 statues may now be seen throughout the city of Rome and its 
 temples, as well as in all parts of Italy. Verres, on the other 
 hand, stole things from friends and allies of the Roman people, 
 and kept them for himself and his friends. On one occasion, 
 as Verres boasted, he adorned the forum and the rest of the city. 
 Cicero admits remembering it, but he also remembers that am- 
 
 13 In Verr. II, 1, 53 : quern omnia intus canere dicebant. 
 
STOLEN AST TREASURES 145 
 
 bassadors from Asia and Achaia had wept at the sight of their 
 stolen treasures. "Sometimes I bought these things," says 
 Verres. Cicero has examined all of Verres' books, and those of' 
 his father, but finds no record to that effect. 
 
 Theft and robbery were not Verres' sole occupation. He 
 was also lascivious. In every town that Verres visited were 
 girls and married women who had been wronged by him. But 
 crimes of lust are often little known, says Cicero, and can be 
 denied. He therefore singles out from the many one that was 
 notorious, and gave indication of Verres' cruelty as well. 
 
 On the Hellespont, opposite modern Gallipoli, was the city of 
 Lampsacus, rich and famous, devoted to the arts of peace, and 
 entirely friendly to the Roman people. Verres, in his many 
 journeyings back and forth, had occasion to pass through Lamp- 
 sacus. Here he stayed at the house of a certain Ianitor, a guest- 
 friend, while his retinue were entertained by various people. As 
 soon as he had arrived, he ordered his men to find out if there 
 was in Lampsacus any girl or woman for the sake of whom it 
 might be worth his while to tarry a little in the city. Rubrius, 
 the worst of his companions, presently made report. Philo- 
 damus, so Rubrius had learned, a man of high station and great' 
 wealth, the foremost citizen of Lampsacus, had a very beautiful 
 daughter; she was unmarried and lived with her father; her 
 character and reputation, unfortunately, were unblemished. 
 Verres immediately announced that he would move to the house 
 of Philodamus. Ianitor, his host, was alarmed, thinking some- 
 thing in the entertainment had been amiss, and urged Verres not 
 to leave him. Verres yielded, but decided to send Rubrius to 
 Philodamus. * The latter, informed of the impending visit, called 
 on Verres, to object; he often entertained traveling Romans, he 
 said, but only those of praetorian or consular rank ; it was not his 
 duty to receive the servants of a praetor's legate. Verres, for 
 reply, gave orders that Rubrius should be installed in Philo- 
 damus' house, by force, if necessary. 
 
146 THE PBOSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 Philodamus had a reputation for hospitality and friendship 
 toward the Romans. When he saw that he must open his house 
 to Rubrius, he resolved to do it with an appearance of willing- 
 ness. He prepared a costly banquet to celebrate Rubrius' 
 arrival ; and asked the latter to choose his own guests. If agree- 
 able, Philodamus would keep a place for himself, but for no one 
 else. He sends his son, a young man, to dine with a relative. 
 
 The guests come early; which means that the dinner will 
 be long. There is talk ; and toasts are given in the Greek manner. 
 Philodamus is a pleasant and generous host; the guests call for 
 larger goblets, and the drinking proceeds gaily; every one joins 
 in the conversation. Presently Rubrius inquires of his host why 
 he does not summon his daughter. The old man is struck speech- 
 less by the Roman's impudence, and when the latter insists, he 
 replies that it is not the custom for Greek women to join in the 
 revels of men. The Romans begin to shout ; such an explanation 
 is intolerable; let the girl be called. And at the same time 
 Rubrius orders his slaves to shut the door and take their stand 
 by it. Philodamus orders his slaves to pay no attention to 
 him, but to protect his daughter if the Romans should resort to 
 violence; he also sends one of his slaves to find the son. The 
 slaves of Rubrius and of Philodamus come to blows ; the others 
 presently take part. Philodamus is jostled; Rubrius pours a 
 pitcher of hot water over him. In the meantime the son arrives, 
 to do what he can ; it is already getting dark ; a crowd of towns- 
 people gather at the house. In the fight that ensues, Cornelius, 
 one of Verres' lictors, is killed; he had been present, ostensibly 
 as a guard, but in reality to carry off the girl. Some slaves are 
 wounded; Rubrius himself gets a scratch or two. And Verres, 
 when all this is reported to him, thinks that he had better leave 
 Lampsacus, if he can get away. 
 
 In the morning the citizens of Lampsacus hold a public 
 meeting, all agreeing that the Roman people will not make them 
 suffer if they take justice into their own hands; in any case, 
 
AT LAMPSACUS 147 
 
 actions like those of Verres can not be endured. The crowd 
 surges to the house of Ianitor, where Verres is staying. They 
 batter down the door with rocks, put armed men around the 
 place, and prepare to burn the house, with Verres in it. The 
 Roman residents of Lampsacus now intervene; Verres is bad, 
 they say, but, after all, he has failed in his design, and he will 
 never come back; the people of Lampsacus had better respect 
 his position as a Roman legate. And the provincials, in fear of 
 distant but powerful Rome, allowed themselves to be persuaded, 
 and Verres escaped. 
 
 He returned presently, however; though the long story need 
 not be retold. The end of it was that Philodamus and his son 
 were executed for the murder of the lictor Cornelius; so that 
 Verres continued his official career without the regret that pro- 
 vincials had balked him with impunity. 
 
 But it would be utterly impossible, and perhaps not desirable, 
 to recite even briefly the numerous deeds chronicled by Cicero. 
 The account already given is a summary of twenty-one chapters 
 of the first undelivered oration. This oration has sixty-one 
 chapters; the five together have three hundred and seventy -six, 
 nearly eighteen times the twenty-one that take Verres through 
 the execution of Philodamus. The five orations are by them- 
 selves a big book, crammed with grim information. 
 
 Cicero's manner of narrating the facts has been indicated 
 in the brief summary. Sometimes he gives a long series of crimes, 
 one after the other, almost without vivifying details, though to 
 the Roman reader the mere mention of cities, large or small, of 
 famous temples, of works of art known throughout the world, 
 might be vivid enough. At other times he stops to give a pic- 
 ture ; there is a wealth of concrete detail ; the scene of the action 
 is sketched, often minutely, and the actors themselves are 
 described in such a way that we can almost see and hear them. 
 He is usually in terrible earnest, for the things reported are not 
 amusing ; but occasionally there is an opportunity for a different 
 
148 THE PROSECUTION OF VEEEES 
 
 treatment. Verres was vain and pretentious ; his • satellites, 
 Greeks as well as Romans, were a mean lot, and quarreled among 
 themselves; a few of the crimes were so petty, relatively at 
 least, or so ingenious that they are entertaining ; and Verres was 
 himself tricked once in a hundred times. 
 
 Cicero also interrupts his narrative with digressions. He 
 describes places and things ; he recalls historical events ; he defies 
 Hortensius, exults over the cringing Verres, exhorts and praises 
 the jurymen; he moralizes about virtue and vice; and he turns 
 in apostrophe to many dead worthies and to nearly all the gods 
 and goddesses. These digressions, paralleled in other orations, 
 are a necessary part of forensic oratory, even when published; 
 the Roman reader expected them and was moved by them. The 
 less excitable modern reader, particularly if he be in search of 
 facts, might find them uninteresting, and certainly irrelevant, 
 in these speeches as in others; but here they have, after all, a 
 value even for him. The sight of much cruelty, Cicero says 
 elsewhere, makes men callous. The deeds of Verres are so 
 numerous that no amount of variation in the narrative could 
 prevent the reader from becoming a little indifferent; even as 
 it is, he is tempted to check off one crime after another in a 
 rather impassive way. This is prevented, at least to some extent, 
 by the digressions. They do not stir him, perhaps, as they 
 stirred the ancient Roman ; but, like some of the Greek choruses, 
 they give him time to think, keeping his mind for a moment on 
 the thoughts engendered by some impressive bit of narrative, 
 before he passes on to something else. 
 
 Verres had many adventures after leaving Lampsacus. He 
 had secured the conviction and execution of Philodamus through 
 the assistance of his chief, Dolabella ; the latter also screened him, 
 not entirely for unselfish reasons, one may guess, on many sub- 
 sequent occasions; and afterwards, when Dolabella was in due 
 time accused of extortion, Verres turned against him and gave 
 damaging evidence. The relation of a loving son and father, 
 
IN SOME 149 
 
 supposed to exist between a quaestor and his superior, had no 
 weight with Verres ; and this was bad, says Cieero ; but, he adds, 
 there was a certain appropriateness in one villain turning against 
 another. 
 
 And so Verres became praetor in Rome. His actions during 
 his year of office, 74 B.C., were what might have been expected, 
 dictated by cruelty, lust, and greed. He could not treat the 
 Romans like provincials, but he was contemptuous of ordinary 
 people and had at least one person flogged, a man who had been 
 introduced at a contio by a tribune of the plebs. In presiding 
 in court, he issued various edicts, or rules of procedure tanta- 
 mount to laws, which were different from anything used before 
 in Rome, and were not applied even by Verres himself in Sicily. 
 Nor did he obey them in Rome, except when convenient. Some 
 of them were retroactive. All this was for the purpose of insti- 
 gating litigation, particularly in reference to wills, which would 
 bring profit to the praetor. His injustice caused his colleague 
 Piso to nullify many of his decrees, and became so notorious 
 that people made malicious puns on the name Verres. Verres, 
 with a small letter, means pig; ius Verrinum is justice as prac- 
 tised by Verres, but it is also pork-broth. Poor puns, says Cicero, 
 finding an excuse for his repetition of them in the fact that they 
 indicated Verres' reputation, which followed him to Sicily. 
 
 The person who had most influence with Verres during this 
 year was a courtezan, called Chelidon, which is Greek for swallow. 
 The Swallow was faithful to Verres, after her kind, for she made 
 him her heir. Her sway over him was considerable. Litigants 
 in his court, according to Cicero, found her advice far more 
 helpful than that of jurisconsults; her house was crowded with 
 people counting out bribes and signing papers. Sometimes, when 
 Verres had decided between two litigants, the Swallow would 
 whisper in his ear, and he would forthwith recall the departing 
 consultants and change his decision. The strange sounds of 
 barbarous tongues, incidentally, was by the Greeks likened to 
 the twitter of swallows. 
 
150 THE PROSECUTION OF VESBES 
 
 But Chelidon was not always successful, as was seen in a case 
 which had to do with some temple repairs. Verres, whether or 
 not by special appointment, had charge of the maintenance of 
 temples and other public buildings. This he made a second 
 important source of income, the other being his management 
 of cases of inheritance. On this occasion a certain P. Iunius 
 had by contract had charge of the large temple of Castor, but 
 bad died before his work had been approved by the magistrates. 
 As the son of Iunius was a minor, the situation seemed to offer 
 an opportunity to Verres ; he was always enriching himself, says 
 Cicero, at the expense of wards. The temple, however, was in 
 good condition ; the contract of Iunius had been fulfilled. Verres 
 goes to inspect the building, and can find nothing amiss. One 
 of his men suggests that the pillars are not absolutely true to 
 plumb, carefully explaining the point to Verres, who at first did 
 not understand. If we are to believe Cicero, pillars in ancient 
 times were rarely perfectly vertical ; nor was the matter men- 
 tioned in Iunius' contract. Verres, however, decides that the 
 building is not in a fit condition for acceptance by the state. 
 
 The guardians of young Iunius go to Chelidon. She receives 
 them very affably, as was to be expected of a courtezan, Cicero 
 remarks, and promises to speak to Verres. The guardians, 
 worthy Roman citizens, a little ashamed of having recourse to 
 her, return on the next day, and are informed that Verres will 
 not yield. There is too much money involved, Chelidon explains. 
 Verres thereupon manages, through a series of devices which 
 need not be recounted, to give a contract for alterations to one 
 of his own henchmen, Habonius, for the sum of 560,000 sesterces, 
 though the guardian of Iunius had offered to do the unnecessary 
 work for 80,000. Habonius takes down some of the pillars, and 
 puts them up again, using the same drums; the rest he leaves- 
 as they were. Verres had frightened off other bidders for the 
 contract by requiring the work to be done in two and one half 
 
IN SICILY 151 
 
 months ; but Habonius, once the contract had been awarded, was 
 allowed to let the matter drift. His work was not finished and 
 approved until four years later. 
 
 It was this young Iunius whom Cicero brought into court at 
 the Verrine trial. Hortensius objected to the presence of the 
 child, and it is interesting to find that Cicero justifies it on the 
 ground that the boy was not the son of a prominent man. 
 
 The praetorship and the events preceding it are described 
 in the first of the five orations, which is named from its most 
 important part, de praetum urbtma. The arrangement is chro- 
 nological, except in the account of the praetorship, which treats 
 first of Verres' administration of justice and then of his inspec- 
 tion of public buildings. The other four orations are devoted to 
 his rule in Sicily. Here a chronological arrangement would have 
 resulted in chaos, for Verres made one journey a year through 
 various parts of the island and his misdeeds did not change 
 their character from year to year. Cicero, therefore, divides the 
 immense material into groups, as he had done in describing the 
 praetorship in Rome ; there are four large divisions, though each 
 is not concerned exclusively with one subject. Verres' admin- 
 istration of justice, his supervision of Sicilian elections, and his 
 demand for statues as a testimony to his upright character, are 
 treated in the first of these orations, the second of the actio 
 secunda. This is called de praetura Siciliensi, a praetor's or 
 propraetor's main function being that of a judge; or, more 
 explicitly, de iudiciis. The next oration is devoted to Verres' 
 management of the tithes and other matters connected with 
 grain, ora-tio frumentaria. Thereupon, in the fourth oration of 
 the five, follows an account of his thefts of works of art, de sigwis. 
 And finally, in the last oration, Cicero describes Verres' meas- 
 ures, or lack of them, for the military protection of the province, 
 and the cases in which he inflicted capital punishment upon 
 Roman citizens. The importance of the last section gives the 
 name to the oration, de suppliciis. 
 
152 TSE PEOSECUTION OF VERRES 
 
 Everything that Verres had done before, he now repeated, 
 but on a far larger scale and without the slight restraint which 
 previous conditions had imposed on him; he was now the sole 
 ruler of a rich province, while Roman courts were far off and 
 probably for sale. As he said himself, he would use the pro- 
 ceeds of one year to pay his lawyers and defenders, and of 
 another, the third and most profitable, to buy the jury; the 
 remaining year would yield quite enough for his own needs. 
 Cicero finally estimated his thefts, "the money that he had 
 taken out of Sicily contrary to the laws," at forty million ses- 
 terces, between two million and one million six hundred thousand 
 dollars ; but even that sum seems too small. It is not likely that 
 Cicero appraised all the statues, rugs, table silver, and other 
 household articles that Verres stole; some of them were too 
 precious to have any market value at all ; nor could Cicero have 
 established the value of the others in court by means of witnesses 
 and documents, and it is with such evidence that he undertakes 
 to prove the amount stolen. Forty million sesterces is a huge 
 sum, and may be all that Verres acquired; but Cicero himself 
 made two million two hundred thousand in a single year in 
 Cilicia, a very poor province when compared with Sicily; and 
 Cicero did not steal. 
 
 As a dispenser and supervisor of justice, Verres reversed 
 previous judgments, expressed publicly his willingness to enter- 
 tain any accusation against those who had opposed him, changed 
 the old Sicilian laws and those made for the province by the 
 Romans themselves, sold magistracies and priesthoods. One man 
 1 he, -deprived of an inheritance of three million sesterces, keeping 
 most of it himself; from two brothers whose father had died 
 twenty-two years before, he secured four hundred thousand 
 sesterces in connection with the father's will. And he had a 
 sense of humor. There was a law relating to the election of the 
 priest of Jupiter in Syracuse which required that as many lots 
 be placed in an urn as there were candidates, the lot drawn to 
 
««««««*. 
 
 STBENIUS 153 
 
 determine the election. At this time there were three candidates. 
 Verres had three lots put in the urn, and the lot drawn proved 
 to contain the name of Verres' candidate : he had put the latter 's 
 name on all three. The new priest was Theomnastus, the Theo- 
 ractus, smitten by god, who later fought with Cicero. Another 
 occasion, also an election to a priesthood, was managed with 
 almost greater cleverness. It was to take place on the first of 
 March. The candidate, who had not secured Verres' support, 
 arrived for the election by the middle of February; in ample 
 time, as he thought ; but he found that his rival had been elected 
 a whole month before. Verres had consulted the stars, and 
 discovered that the calendar needed adjustment; a matter of 
 six weeks. 
 
 Several cases are described with considerable detail. A few 
 words may be said about that of a certain Sthenius of Thermae, 
 to illustrate how information about Verres was sometimes 
 brought to Rome. A charge of having falsified the town records 
 had been trumped up against Sthenius, who had a right to be 
 tried by his fellow-citizens. When Verres insisted on hearing 
 the case himself, Sthenius fled to Rome. Verres, who was ignor- 
 ant of the flight, took his seat on the curule chair at three in 
 the afternoon, and when the defendant did not appear he sent 
 men to find him, his presence being necessary for the trying of 
 the case. Verres' messenger searched the house of Sthenius and 
 then, on horseback, visited his farms and scoured the surrounding 
 country, but in vain. Verres in the meantime shivered on his 
 official chair, for it was winter. For six hours he stayed there, 
 till nine in the evening, and then he dismissed the court. 
 
 On the next day, contrary to legal procedure, he pronounced 
 Sthenius guilty, imposing a large fine; and shortly afterwards 
 he found a man to bring a capital charge against him. Such a 
 charge involved the loss either of life or of civic status. This 
 trial was set for the first of December. Verres summoned 
 Sthenius from Rome, at the least a doubtful procedure ; and the 
 
154 TEE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 consuls brought the matter before the senate, at the same time 
 revealing a long list of persecutions to which Sthenius had been 
 subjected by Verres. The sentiment was strongly in favor of 
 Sthenius, but Verres' father succeeded in getting a filibuster 
 under way, so that the matter did not come to a vote. Before 
 the next session of the senate he had persuaded the friends of 
 Sthenius not to press the matter ; he would write to his son, he 
 said, and all would be well. Letters were sent to Verres both 
 by his father and by others, but Verres would not listen. The 
 trial took place as scheduled, in the absence of the defendant, 
 and of the accuser, too, as it happened. Sthenius was pronounced 
 guilty. 
 
 Again the matter was agitated in Rome. The tribunes- of 
 the people took it up, this being the occasion when Cicero 
 appeared before them. Verres was informed of the indignation 
 at the capital, and, in fear, had the minutes of the trial altered 
 in the records. 
 
 How some of Verres' trials were conducted is indicated by 
 the experiences of Sopator of Halicyae. He had been tried on 
 a capital charge before Verres' predecessor, and had had no 
 difficulty, according to Cicero's claim, in securing an acquittal. 
 The charge was revived when Verres came to Sicily, and Sopator 
 was cited to appear in court. Sopator had good reasons for con- 
 fidence. The trial would take place in Syracuse, as before ; the 
 praetor 's assessors, consilium,, would be the same ; no new evi- 
 dence had been secured; and Sopator 's lawyer was a well-known 
 Roman knight. Timarchides, however, a Greek who managed 
 such things for Verres, came to Sopator: the latter had better 
 not trust overmuch to the merits of his case or to the previous 
 decision; his enemies intended to give money to the praetor. 
 But Verres, Timarchides knew, would prefer not to reverse the 
 former judgment, if properly induced. Sopator decided to think 
 the matter over. He consulted his friends and at their advice 
 he paid Timarchides the bribe ; only 80,000 sesterces, as he was 
 then in serious financial difficulties. 
 
SOPATOB 155 
 
 The case came to trial, but the proceedings were not finished 
 at that time. Again Timarchides called on Sopator. The 
 accusers had promised a handsome bribe ; much more than Sopa- 
 tor had given ; what would he do ? Sopator was incensed. ' ' Do 
 what you like, ' ' he exclaimed, ' ' I shall not pay any more. ' ' This 
 reply seemed proper to Sopator 's friends as well. After all, 
 Verres would be unable to find a pretext for reversing the 
 judgment. 
 
 "When the trial was about to begin, Verres announced that, 
 inasmuch as Petilius, one of his assessors and a Roman knight, 
 was at that time in charge of a private case, Verres would be 
 willing to dispense with Petilius' services, so that he might 
 attend to the case in question ; nor would Verres retain any other 
 members of his consilium who might wish to accompany Petilius. 
 They all left the court, so that Verres had only his own friends 
 about him. This would seem a sufficient reason for postponing 
 the trial; and so thought Minucius, Sopator 's lawyer. Verres, 
 however, ordered him to make his plea. "To whom?" said 
 Minucius. "To me," Verres replied, "if I seem fit to sit in 
 judgment over a Sicilian and a Greekling. " "You are fit 
 enough, but I wish those men were here who have been present 
 before and who are familiar with the facts of the case. " " They 
 can not be present," said Verres; "speak!" "By Jove," ex- 
 claimed Servilius, "neither can I be present. Petilius wants 
 me, too, to help him. ' ' And he started to leave the court. 
 
 Verres threatened, but Minucius answered that he would not 
 plead without a consilium; and departed. For some time Verres 
 seemed uncertain what to do. He turned this way and that. 
 There was a large crowd present, waiting in silence for the out- 
 come of the proceedings. Timarchides, it was observed, bent 
 forward several times and whispered to Verres. At last Verres 
 ordered Sopator to state his case. The latter begged for a trial 
 with a regular consilium. Verres, ignoring him, ordered the 
 witnesses to be called; one or two of them spoke briefly, and 
 
156 THE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 there was no cross-examination. The herald announced that the 
 pleadings were at an end. Verres, hurriedly, lest Petilius and 
 the other assessors should return, took the votes of his friends, 
 a secretary, a physician, and a soothsayer, and thereupon pro- 
 nounced Sopator guilty. 
 
 As a testimony to such proceedings as this, holidays in Verres' 
 honor had been established in Syracuse and Messana, and statues 
 had been erected both there and in other places; not entirely 
 without suggestion from Verres himself. The statues in Syra- 
 cuse have already been mentioned. Here not only Verres and 
 his son were commemorated, but also his father, a touching sign 
 of filial affection, Cicero observes. Statues were set up in public 
 buildings, in market places, even in alleyways ; all over Sicily 
 and in Kome; and most of those in the island, by the way, were 
 thrown down as soon as Verres had left the province. 
 
 But Verres had not thought merely of praise. Contrary to 
 all custom, he had himself extorted the money for the statues 
 from the Sicilians; a large sum, possibly three million sesterces; 
 and had of course not used all the money for statues. It was 
 an innovation, says Cicero, not to allow admiring provincials to 
 place their own contracts for the making of statues. 
 
 As Verres had secured the friendship of some Sicilians by 
 unfair means, so he had won the favor of the publicani; and these 
 had voted in formal meeting to remove from their books any 
 statement which might reflect upon Verres. In some of their 
 books, consequently, there figured a large creditor by the name of 
 C. Verr-ucius. The last letters had been written on an erasure ; 
 there was no such person as Verr-ucius, and the propraetor's 
 name was C. Verr-es. 
 
 The fabulous Verrucius is the climax of the second oration. 
 The third oration, concerned with Verres' management of the 
 tithes on the produce of the soil, and his buying and valuation 
 of the grain, is far less spectacular than his performances in the 
 
THE TITHES 157 
 
 open courts, but it contains, on the whole, the most serious part 
 of the entire accusation. Cicero himself recognized this, but 
 placed his account in the middle of his charge; it was of neces- 
 sity filled with numerous exact statements about measures and 
 values and would not serve either as a pleasant introduction or 
 as a stirring conclusion. 
 
 Tithes were levied by the Roman government on all the 
 produce of Sicilian soil; on wine, oil, and fruits, as well as on 
 grain ; but the latter was the most important. The state was also 
 in the habit of buying grain from Sicily at a price fixed by the 
 Roman government; some twelve million sesterces were appro- 
 priated for this purpose during the three years of Verres' prae- 
 torship. And, finally, grain was allowed for the maintenance 
 of the governor's household; usually not paid in kind, but by 
 commutation of its value in money. It would require altogether 
 too long an account of Roman provincial administration to 
 explain the numerous devices employed by Verres for the pur- 
 pose of extortion. Old laws were abrogated and new laws were 
 passed. Two or three times the lawful amount was exacted; 
 sometimes even more was demanded than had actually been pro- 
 duced during the year. When money was to be paid instead 
 of grain, Verres valued the grain at four times the price that 
 obtained in any other part of the island. Money sent him from 
 Rome for the purchase of grain he invested for his own gain, 
 at twenty-four per cent. And ali his new rules and demands 
 were enforced by violence or threats of violence. 
 
 The exploitation extended to every part of Sicily. Farmers 
 had to leave their farms ; others, who could have stayed, refused 
 to till the soil. Both individuals and whole communities were made 
 to suffer. One man, at the bidding of Verres' agent, was hung 
 on an olive tree in the market place of Aetna, where he was left 
 until the agent, Apronius by name, thought he had been chas- 
 tised sufficiently. Many Sicilians went into exile ; others hanged 
 
158 THE PSOSECUTION OF VERSES 
 
 themselves. Regions that had been extraordinarily fertile at the 
 time of Cicero's quaestorship, were deserted when he returned 
 four years later to gather evidence. Sicily was one of the chief 
 granaries of Rome, but the exploitations of Verres had brought 
 things to such a dangerous pass that Metellus, Verres ' successor, 
 sent letters to Sicily, before he himself went there, entreating the 
 farmers to cultivate their land and promising that the old laws 
 would again be enforced. These letters Cicero produced in court. 
 
 Nor did Verres' agent make a secret of the fact that the 
 praetor himself was the spoiler behind the new regulations. 
 Apronius, chief among the agents, said openly that the smallest 
 part of the gains went to him, and called Verres his partner, 
 socius. A certain Rubrius, therefore, maintained in the market 
 place of Syracuse, in the presence of Verres, that Apronius had 
 called the praetor his partner ; and offered a wager on the truth 
 of his assertion, the question to be settled in court. But Verres, 
 without denying the charge, smoothed the matter over. Later 
 a Roman knight, Scandilius, offered a similar wager, to the 
 amount of five thousand sesterces, and the proper legal steps 
 were taken. Verres, however, said that he could not entrust a 
 question relating to his own honor to any but his friends; 
 instead of taking the judges from the usual panel, he appointed 
 them from his own retinue. Scandilius then suggested that the 
 question be taken to Rome, but Verres would not allow this; 
 and when Scandilius finally offered to let the whole matter rest 
 for the present, he was ordered forthwith to pay the five thousand 
 to Apronius. 
 
 Apronius and Timarchides were the most notorious of Verres' 
 numerous canes venatici, dogs of the chase, as Cicero calls them; 
 with the qualifies of pointers as well as retrievers. Members of 
 the same pack, these two seem to have given each other assistance 
 or advice as the occasion demanded. Timarchides, the wily 
 Greek, sent a letter in his own hand to Apronius, suggesting how 
 
APEONIUS AND TIMAECHIDES 159 
 
 the latter might gain the good will of the new governor, Metellus, 
 when Verres had passed from the scene; and Cicero found the 
 letter in Apronius' house in Syracuse, and read it later, witli 
 appropriate comments, to the jurymen in Rome. 
 
 The insertion of such letters as this one from Timarchides 
 varies the monotony of the oratio frwmentaria, but this speech, 
 the longest of them all, is nevertheless rather heavy. By way 
 of relief, Cicero proceeds in the next oration, the fourth, to 
 Verres ' passion for works of art. In this, Verres the connoisseur 
 is always in evidence, and his methods of acquisition are often 
 amusing. From individuals who entertained him, Verres asked 
 for gifts, or borrowed without returning. Prom cities he made 
 frank demands, and if the local senate proved obstinate, he 
 sometimes raised the taxes, at other times punished the leading 
 citizens. Sopator, noted for other misfortunes as well, was thus 
 tied naked to the equestrian statue of Marcellus, which stood in 
 the market place; and here he was left, although it was in the 
 middle of winter, very cold, and raining heavily, until Verres' 
 request was granted. His requests were always granted ulti- 
 mately. He also sent slaves in the night to steal things from 
 temples. According to his own assertion, he bought his works 
 of art, though a governor was by • law forbidden to purchase 
 anything but necessaries in a province. 
 
 Verres' tastes were catholic, embracing everything made for 
 use or ornament; for homes, temples, and public places. He 
 gathered articles of silver, gold, and other metals ; jewels, paint- 
 ings, tapestries, and statues; goblets, mixing bowls, and vases. 
 Some things were too cumbersome to carry away, and it is on 
 record that he left a certain large statue; but he removed the 
 ornaments from temple gates and carried off pillars. He over- 
 looked nothing because it was small. A certain man wrote him 
 a letter and had the misfortune of using a beautiful seal ring ; 
 Verres at once sent for it. 
 
160 THE PROSECUTION OF VERRES 
 
 In Messana the citizens built a ship to carry his treasures to 
 Rome, and were rewarded in various ways. In Syracuse he had 
 a factory in which for eight months skilled workmen were busy 
 remaking or remodeling things; all vases made there were of 
 gold. Verres, in an easy dishabille, passed considerable time in 
 this factory, at which Cicero cries, "0 tempora, o mores," the 
 famous phrase used later by him in the first Catilinarian. 
 
 Verres also had with him two brothers, Greeks from Cibyra 
 and temple robbers, a painter and a sculptor, who supplied pro- 
 fessional guidance. Sometimes they deceived him. A citizen of 
 Libybaeum, already robbed of a precious ewer of silver, an heir- 
 loom, had been ordered to bring Verres two goblets which he was 
 known to possess. He arrived when the praetor was taking a 
 nap, but the two brothers were in attendance. They asked to see 
 the goblets, which were ornamented with beautiful figures. 
 When the owner complained that he was being robbed of every- 
 thing, they suggested that he pay them one thousand sesterces, 
 a small sum considering the value of the goblets, and this he 
 promised to do. Verres presently awoke. While he was exam- 
 ining the drinking vessels, the brothers remarked that they had 
 been misinformed about the artistic workmanship; in fact, the 
 goblets were very ordinary, quite unworthy of being added to 
 the praetor's collection. Verres said that he thought so too; 
 and the man from Lilybaeum returned home with his precious 
 silverware. 
 
 In this incident and elsewhere, Cicero represents Verres as 
 quite ignorant of art, his passion for collecting being merely 
 greed and a desire for display. Verres, however, did not sell his 
 statues and bronzes ; he gave some of them to his friends, but the 
 large majority he kept with him, clinging to them through every 
 adversity, until they caused his death. Similarly, Cicero himself 
 affects considerable lack of knowledge at the very time when he 
 gives much minute information. He professes to have learned 
 the names of the most famous artists of antiquity as part of his 
 
TWO BROTHERS 161 
 
 preparation of the ease. He hesitates as if in doubt before 
 giving a name. And this, it has been thought, was due to his 
 desire of seeming indifferent to art as the old-fashioned Romans 
 had been and as no doubt many Romans still were, especially 
 the uneducated. But if ignorance was to Cicero 's eredit; it could 
 scarcely be much to Verres * discredit. Cicero, as revealed in his 
 letters, was an intelligent lover of art ; and Verres may have been 
 like him. But Verres as a pretender and Cicero as an ignoramus 
 were amusing, especially to the reader who knew them both ; and 
 that would be sufficient reason for Cicero 's attitude. The reader, 
 like the auditor, must be entertained ; a rule that Cicero observes 
 whenever possible. 
 
 The most conspicuous of Verres' victims in the matter of art 
 was the young prince Antiochus of Syria. Antiochus, who had 
 been in Rome on political business, was returning by way of 
 Sicily. Verres immediately sent him generous gifts of wine, oil, 
 and wheat; and invited him to dinner. The decorations at the 
 banquet were exquisite ; there was a large display of silver dishes. 
 The young prince was pleased, and gave a dinner in return, no 
 less magnificent. There were many things of silver; not a few 
 goblets of gold, set with previous stones, "as is the habit of 
 kings, ' ' Cicero says, ' ' especially in. Syria ; ' ' and, most remarkable 
 of all, a wine ladle made from a single gem, with a handle of 
 gold. Verres is deeply impressed. He takes each dish and cup 
 in his hand, admires and praises it; and the boyish prince is 
 well satisfied with his entertainment. 
 
 A little later Verres asks to borrow the most beautiful pieces, 
 wishing to show them to his engravers; and the unsuspecting 
 Antiochus is glad to send them ; even the cup made of the single 
 gem, which Verres asked for particularly, as it had not been sent 
 at first. But Antiochus had in his possession something still 
 more valuable; a large golden candlestick of wonderful work- 
 manship, set with precious stones. He and his brother had 
 brought it to Rome as a gift for Jupiter Optimus Maximus ; but 
 
162 THE PROSECUTION OF VEBBES 
 
 as the latter 's temple had not been completed, Antioehus was 
 taking back the candlestick, intending to send it later. Verres 
 had heard of the candlestick. Might, he not see it ? He would 
 show it to nobody. And Antioehus sends this too. His men 
 uncover it in Verres' presence; and the latter exclaims that it 
 is indeed worthy of the Syrian kingdom and of the great Jupiter. 
 When Verres has admired it for some time, the servants of 
 Antioehus prepare to take it away ; but Verres has not yet looked 
 his fill. They must leave it, so that he may enjoy it at his leisure. 
 
 Antioehus suspected nothing at first. One day passed, 
 another, several days, and still the candlestick is not returned. 
 The prince sends a message that the praetor would please return 
 it, and Verres tells the messengers to come back later. This seems 
 strange, and Antioehus sends word a second time. Finally he 
 goes himself to Verres. The latter asks for the candlestick as a 
 gift. Antioehus replies that it is a sacred object ; many nations 
 know about it ; it can not be given to any one but Jupiter. Verres 
 begins to threaten, and when Antioehus refuses to yield, Verres 
 orders him to leave Sicily before nightfall. There has come 
 report, he says, that pirates are on their way to the province 
 from Syria; which, presumably, would prove Antioehus hostile 
 to the Romans, as possibly in league with the pirates, and so 
 unfit to remain in Roman territory. 
 
 Antioehus leaves the praetor, but goes to the forum. Here — 
 and the matter was well known, for it happened in Syracuse, 
 amid a large crowd — Antioehus, with tears and with entreaties 
 to gods and men, describes how he has been robbed, and publicly 
 dedicates the candlestick to Jupiter. But that this prevented 
 Verres from retaining it is very doubtful, for Cicero asks in 
 another oration whether a gift intended for the Capitol should 
 be placed side by side with things inherited from Chelidon. 
 
 In the fifth oration, the last, Cicero takes up Verres ' behavior 
 as the military protector of Sicily and his cruelty toward Roman 
 citizens. These topics, except insofar as they involved the execu- 
 
ANTIOCSUS OF SYRIA 163 
 
 tion of certain Sicilians, were not part of the Sicilian accusation, 
 for, on the one hand, the province had not suffered to any con- 
 siderable extent because of Verres' laxness in managing the 
 navy, and, on the other, the fate of Roman citizens and Roman 
 knights was no concern of the Sicilians. They were important 
 accusations in the eyes of a Roman jury, nevertheless; the most 
 important, in fact. In introducing the first oration of the five, 
 Cicero had divided his accusation into three parts; or rather, 
 he had said that he would accuse Verres of extortion, cruelty, 
 and sacrilege as governor of Sicily, and of peculation as a 
 quaestor. If that accusation should fail, Cicero would accuse 
 Verres of having freed the enemies of the Roman people, even 
 keeping a pirate chief in his own house in Rome ; and these were 
 matters connected with Verres' activity as commander of the 
 Roman navy in Sicily ; in reality a charge of high treason. And 
 if this accusation, too, should prove unavailing, Cicero would 
 maintain that Verres had imprisoned, tortured, and executed 
 Roman citizens; questions connected with liberty and the rights 
 of citizenship; and from this charge the Roman people would 
 not let him escape. 
 
 Hortensius had intended, Cicero says, to found the defense 
 mainly on Verres ' services as a military man. This intention had 
 doubtless been given wide circulation in the forum both by Hor- 
 tensius and by the other supporters of Verres ; nothing else would 
 make so strong an appeal to the imperialistic Romans. Horten- 
 sius did not use his opportunity at the trial to give a picture of 
 Verres the great general, and he did not afterwards publish a 
 speech for this purpose; probably there was little to Verres' 
 credit that Hortensius could tell ; but Cicero takes up this chief 
 weapon of the defense, and turns it against Verres. 
 
 The latter was supposed to have kept Sicily free from harm 
 in connection with the Slave War in Italy, recently ended. To 
 this Cicero devotes very little time, only pointing out that the 
 slaves in Italy had no boats with which to go to Sicily and that 
 
164 THE PBOSECUTION OF VERMES 
 
 the slaves in Sicily itself were in no condition to start a revolt. 
 Instead of dwelling on this point, which was unimportant, Cicero 
 gives a picture of Verres' personal habits, and these were cer- 
 tainly not those of a vigilant commander. 
 
 Verres spent the winters in Syracuse, for there, as the saying 
 went, the sun shone every day even in the worst of seasons. He 
 lay on his couch. The short days were given to banquets; the 
 long nights to worse things. At the coming of spring, which 
 Verres dated, not from the first blowing of the west wind or from 
 the position of the stars, but from the blooming of the rose, 
 Verres made ready for the labor of official travel. He never 
 mounted a horse, but reclined in a litter, like a king of Bithynia ; 
 the bearers were eight ; there was an exquisite pillow filled with 
 rose leaves; Verres had one wreath on his head and another 
 around his neck, though even banqueting Romans were satisfied 
 with the wreath on the head; and, as he was carried along, he 
 occasionally raised to his face a fine-meshed linen bag filled with 
 rose leaves. Arriving at the end of his journey, in some city, he 
 was taken, still in the litter, directly to a bedroom, and here the 
 Sicilian magistrates as well as the Roman knights of the com- 
 munity were allowed to consult him. He listened, without wit- 
 nesses, to their errands; his decisions were later announced in 
 public. After giving some time to the official business, at which 
 decisions were always for sale, he considered himself entitled 
 to devote the rest of his sojourn in the city to the worship of 
 Bacchus and of Venus. In every Sicilian community where he 
 held court some woman had been chosen to make him welcome. 
 Some of these joined openly in his banquets; others avoided 
 publicity. The banquets themselves were not characterized by 
 the usual decorum of Roman state affairs; there was shouting, 
 quarreling, and even fighting; after all was ended, men lay 
 fallen as after the battle of Cannae. 
 
 The summers were ordinarily used by governors in Sicily. for 
 official, trips through the province; but not by Verres. He 
 
DEPBAVIT1 165 
 
 pitched his camp in Syracuse, with tents and awnings of the 
 finest linen ; near the beach, at the entrance to the harbor. Here 
 he stayed. Nobody was admitted except his companions and 
 ministers in lust; Timarchides chiefly, and his own son, who 
 was beginning to imitate his father, though nature had intended 
 differently. But if there were no men present except Verres 
 and his son and an occasional boon companion, the ladies of 
 Syracuse were not excluded. Cicero mentions several by name. 
 There was the daughter of a mime, whom Verres had stolen from 
 a flute-player. She caused a disturbance one day because objec- 
 tion to her presence had been made by the other ladies, all of 
 noble birth. One of the latter was Pipa, wife of a certain 
 Aeschrion; verses had been composed about her, which were 
 known, sung perhaps, in all parts of Sicily. Another was Nice, 
 a famous beauty, the wife of Cleomenes ; the latter loved his wife, 
 but dared not oppose the wishes of Verres. And the praetor 
 himself, most often without male companion, lolled about in a 
 flowing robe of purple and a tunic that reached to his heels. He 
 rarely went to the forum to sit in judgment, and of this men 
 were glad; his absence was like the absence of cruelty and vio- 
 lence. 
 
 Verres, in purple robe and slippers, was a new kind of 
 military man, says Cicero. The revolting slaves had given this 
 fine general no opportunity to show his prowess ; but such was 
 not the case with the pirates. These had for years infested the 
 whole Mediterranean, cutting off Roman grain ships, making 
 travel insecure, and practically paralyzing commerce. They 
 frequently raided the coasts, and made prisoners of prominent 
 Romans or their sons, whom they held for ransom. They were 
 foes worthy of Verres' steel. 
 
 And he did capture one of their ships. It had run aground 
 near Syracuse, and there his men found it, crew and all, and 
 brought it to the famous camp by the Syracusan harbor. Verres 
 and his friends spent a whole night superintending its unloading ; 
 
166 THE PROSECUTION OF VERRES 
 
 which must have been a picturesque sight. The ship was filled 
 with beautiful young slaves, with silver vessels and silver coin, 
 and with costly tapestries. The pirates, as outlaws, should have 
 been executed. Verres executed the old among them ; he spared 
 those who were young and those who had any unusual accom- 
 plishments, so that they would be valuable as slaves. Most of 
 these he kept for himself; others he gave to his son, his secre- 
 taries, and his friends; six musicians he sent to a friend in 
 Rome. 
 
 Crowds gathered both from the city of Syracuse and from 
 other places to see the pirates punished; they were public 
 enemies, their captain especially being greatly feared by the 
 Syracusans. To satisfy the public desire for revenge, Verres 
 caused the execution, as already mentioned, of those pirates 
 whom he could not use; and when their number was too small 
 to give perfect satisfaction, he substituted Eoman citizens whom 
 he had had imprisoned. These were led to execution with their 
 heads covered. "When some of them nevertheless were recognized, 
 Verres explained that they had been partisans of the revolting 
 Sertorius in Spain, or that, after being captured by the pirates, 
 they had made common cause with the latter. Nobody in Syracuse 
 saw the pirate captain. Verres had sent him to another city, 
 where he was guarded, though well supplied with everything. 
 Later Verres sent him to Rome, with one other captain. The 
 popular suspicion, that Verres had been bribed to spare the life 
 of the captain, was obviously true. "When, during the trial, 
 Verres was asked why he had a pirate living in his house, he 
 explained that he had not executed him in Sicily, because the 
 people, in their enmity, would have claimed that Verres had 
 taken bribes and then executed some one else ; now, on the other 
 hand, the pirate was still available — a wonderful explanation, 
 both in what it proved and in what it failed to prove. The 
 two pirate captains had been in Verres' house for a year; at 
 the request of Cicero they were taken into custody. 
 
THE PIRATES 167 
 
 But the pirates did not always run aground. The Roman 
 fleet in Sicily consisted of seven ships, contributed by the island 
 communities. Cleomenes, the cuckold husband of the beautiful 
 Nice, had been appointed admiral by Verres ; a thing contrary to 
 all precedent, for Verres had legates and other Eomans from 
 whom to choose ; but it was convenient both to reward Cleomenes 
 and to have him out of the way. The seven ships made a brave 
 showing as they sailed out of the harbor of Syracuse ; past Verres, 
 who, slippered and in his purple robe and long tunic, was stand- 
 ing on the shore, leaning on one of his mistresses. But the ships 
 lacked equipment, had an insufficient number of rowers, and 
 were not even supplied with food for the scanty crews; Verres 
 having taken money from the Sicilians instead of men and 
 material. 
 
 Presently it was rumored that a pirate vessel was in the 
 neighborhood. Cleomenes, who had the swiftest boat and the 
 largest number of rowers, flees; the other ships follow, each as 
 it is best able. The pirates take two of them; but the others 
 reach shore, where they are deserted by their crews. The pirates, 
 coming up shortly afterwards, set the ships on fire, and then sail 
 for Syracuse. 
 
 A messenger had reached the city in the dead of night ; the 
 people had also seen the glare of the burning ships, a new kind 
 of beacon, says Cicero, for it was customary to announce the 
 presence of pirates by beacons along the coast. The people of 
 Syracuse go to Verres, and he comes forth to meet them as the 
 day is dawning ; but he is not sober enough to take charge. The 
 citizens, therefore, arm themselves, and occupy the market place, 
 and also the island, a part of the city reserved for the dwellings 
 of the resident Romans, since it dominated the rest of Syracuse 
 and could easily be defended. 
 
 The pirates, on arriving, first visit Verres' wonderful camp 
 on the beach, which they find deserted; thereupon, with their 
 four small boats, they sail into the harbor. The city was built 
 
168 THE PROSECUTION OF VERSES 
 
 around this, so that the pirates, as they sail back and forth, come 
 very close to the market place. They make no attempt to land, 
 but fling to the shore some roots of the edible dwarf palm, which 
 they had found in the Sicilian ships, gathered for food by the 
 ill-supplied sailors. After a while they depart, unmolested, as 
 they had entered; and yet, Cicero exclaims, it was in this very 
 place that the three hundred ships of Athens had come to grief. 
 
 As the captains of the ships, sons of prominent Sicilian 
 families, say everywhere that the disgrace was due to lack of 
 food and equipment and to the flight of Cleomenes, their admiral, 
 Verres, in self-defense, decides that the captains must be 
 executed. Only Cleomenes is to be saved and, for the sake of 
 appearances, though only for the present, the captain who had 
 been in command of Cleomenes' ship. The trial is held in the 
 forum of Syracuse; Cleomenes sits by the side of Verres; the 
 jury consists of the friends of the praetor. The parents and 
 relatives of the youthful defendants are present, begging for 
 mercy; the trial itself, foreshadowing its outcome, is one of 
 noise and violence. One of the speakers for the defense dares to 
 attack Cleomenes, and the lictors almost tear the clothing from 
 his back; one of the defendants, realizing that the verdict has 
 already been settled, accuses Verres himself in a speech, which 
 he later, in prison, committed to writing. It was read every- 
 where in Sicily. 
 
 The defendants are condemned, including a captain who 
 because of eye trouble had been on leave at the very time of the 
 flight from the pirates. The punishment is to be death. 
 
 While the condemned are in prison, nobody can secure 
 permission to see them except by bribing the jailor. Timarchides, 
 too, is on hand, selling favors and promises. He suggests to the 
 captain of Cleomenes' ship that he must not trust overmuch in 
 the fact that he has not been arraigned ; he is in danger of being 
 flogged to death, and should know how best to protect himself. 
 The parents of the young men pass the night outside the prison. 
 
ROMANS EXECUTED 169 
 
 Only through Timarchides can they send food to their sons, or 
 be sure that the executioner will despatch his victims with a 
 single blow of the ax, or that the corpses will be given decent 
 burial and not be thrown to the wild beasts. Everybody in Syra- 
 cuse, says Cicero, heard of Timarchides' bargains about the 
 burials while the condemned were still living. 
 
 On the following day the young captains were led forth, in 
 chains, and beheaded. 
 
 The execution of the Sicilians at Syracuse closes the list of 
 Verres' crimes against the provincials. Cicero thereupon turns 
 to Verres' treatment of Roman citizens, the climax of his whole 
 charge. 
 
 One old man, a trader, was beaten by six lictors before the 
 very tribunal of the praetor; his eyes and his face were struck 
 with a cane, and when he had fallen to the ground,, blows were 
 still showered upon him. He died shortly after he had been 
 carried away. Many Roman traders who touched at Sicily with 
 rich cargoes, were arrested and their property confiscated; they 
 were accused of being in league with the pirates, or with the 
 slaves of Spartacus, or of sympathizing with Sertorius. These 
 Romans were huddled together in the quarries of Syracuse, which 
 were known throughout the world and which were used for crim- 
 inals from all parts of Sicily. When the quarries could hold no 
 more, the prisoners were executed, in batches. Among the 
 Romans confined here bad been the men who were beheaded in 
 place of the pirates. 
 
 A certain P. Gavius had escaped from the quarries, and 
 reached Messana, the modern Messina, on his way to Rome. 
 When he was actually embarking on the ship that was to take 
 him to Italy, he uttered threats against Verres ; he would be in 
 Rome, he said, to meet the praetor when the latter returned from 
 his province. The people of Messana, friends of Verres, arrested 
 Gavius, and as the governor on that very day happened to come 
 to Messana, Gavius was brought before him. Verres at once takes 
 
170 THE PROSECUTION OF VEBEES 
 
 his seat on the tribunal and orders the lictors to get ready their 
 rods. Gavius cries that he is a Roman citizen, civis Romanus 
 sum, which would entitle him to a trial in Rome. Roman citizen- 
 ship, says Cicero, was a protection in every country; a man 
 threatened with violence among the Persians or even in distant 
 India would have appealed for protection to nothing else, for the 
 rights of a Roman citizen lay at the very basis of Roman world 
 rule. But Verres pays no heed. It has been discovered, he 
 replies, that Gavius is a spy from the revolted slaves; let the 
 lictors flog him; after that, he is to die on the cross. 
 
 In Messana the place for crucifixions was behind the city. 
 Verres decides to have the cross erected on the shore, in sight of 
 the mainland ; Gavius will thus be able to look toward Italy and 
 his home, since he claims to be a citizen. And the cross was 
 erected, Cicero concludes, as Verres had ordered; in sight of all 
 the ships that pass back and forth through the strait; a monu- 
 ment to Verres crimes. 
 
 With the picture of the Roman citizen hanging on the cross 
 at the straits of Messina, Cicero comes to the end of the long list 
 of Verres' crimes. Cicero then turns to the gods in solemn 
 invocation, and, as a last word, he expresses the hope that it 
 may be his fortune never again to have to engage in a prose- 
 cution, but that he may be enabled to devote his energies to the 
 defense of the oppressed. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 IN POLITICS 
 
 I 
 Magistracies 
 
 The account of Cicero as a pleader has been long, though 
 by no means exhaustive. Oratory was Cicero 's main, almost his 
 exclusive, business during the years before his consulship; and 
 even after 63 B.C., when he was caught in the political whirlwind 
 and directed his thwarted energies either toward saving the 
 state or toward making conditions better, oratory was his chief 
 weapon. The Romans of later generations called him Cicero 
 the Orator even when they did not forget his political and 
 literary activities. 
 
 The ultimate goal of his pleading was the consulship, the 
 road to which lay through the minor offices. This had always 
 been the custom ; Sulla had made the custom a law in so far as 
 it applied to the quaestorship and the praetorship. The aedile- 
 ship, while not required legally, was extremely useful, since the 
 aediles, as supervisors and practically givers of public games, 
 had an extraordinary opportunity for winning popular favor. 
 One other office there was, the plebeian tribunate, but the latter 
 had by Sulla been made a disqualification for further office- 
 holding; and although this limitation was removed in the year 
 75 b.c, the tribunes had been shorn of so much of their power, 
 not restored until 70 b.c, that the office did not during these 
 years attract really able men. Tribunician activity, moreover, 
 was distinctly political, the very thing eschewed by Cicero. He, 
 therefore, did not stand for the tribunate. He held the other 
 offices, each at the earliest age allowed by law; but his official 
 doings, like everything else during these years not connected 
 with his oratory, are very imperfectly known. 
 
172 IN POLITICS 
 
 He was quaestor in 75 b.c. His election attested his early 
 popularity, for the vote in his favor was one of the largest 
 secured by the twenty successful candidates. Of these twenty- 
 quaestors, the regular number since Sulla, eight were employed 
 in Rome, while twelve were sent to the provinces. Cicero was one 
 of the two assigned to Sicily, where he seems to have spent prac- 
 tically the whole year. He was stationed at Lilybaeum, in the 
 western part of the island ; the propraetor and the other quaestor 
 were in Syracuse. He had charge of the public funds and rev- 
 enues, which included the buying of grain. This was a year 
 of dearth; food was high in Rome; but Cicero showed himself 
 a good provider, sending large cargoes of grain to the city. 
 Though the provincials groaned at first under the unusual bur- 
 dens, Cicero won their confidence by his fairness and integrity; 
 he even cut off the customary perquisites of the clerks and other 
 subordinates of his office. The Sicilians, in return, paid him 
 extraordinary honors, so that he could say in court, 1 twenty-one 
 years later, that no quaestor in Sicily had reaped more glory 
 from his office than had he. When leaving Lilybaeum, he spoke 
 to the citizens, promising them his support, a promise that the 
 Sicilians were glad to remember when desirous of prosecuting 
 Verres. They had had an opportunity of observing Cicero as 
 an orator, for he had appeared before the propraetor as counsel 
 for some young Romans who had been accused of misconduct in 
 military service, and had secured their acquittal. 
 
 His return from Sicily is better known than his whole year 
 of residence; at least, two events are later described by him in 
 considerable detail. The first of these took place in Syracuse. 
 As a center of Greek life in the west, and Cicero says that it 
 was the most famous and formerly the most learned of Greek 
 cities, Syracuse offered much of interest to Cicero. He doubtless 
 saw everything, including the notorious quarries, which dated 
 back some three centuries to Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, 
 
 iPro Piano. 64. 
 
QAESTOSSEIP 173 
 
 for he has much to say about the latter in a passage of the 
 Ttisculcms, 2 obviously reminiscent of this time. The reminis- 
 cence, however, is concerned with an archaeological discovery, 
 the first notable event of his return, in which he took consider- 
 able satisfaction to the very end of his life, the Tusculans being 
 written about two years before his death. 
 
 The grave of the great mathematician Archimedes was. sup- 
 posed to be in Syracuse, but the Syracusans had neglected it, did 
 not know where it was, and even denied its existence. Cicero 
 was familiar with a description in verse of the tomb, to the effect 
 that it contained a globe and a cylinder. In company with some 
 prominent citizens of Syracuse, he went to a burial place by 
 one of the gates, and there, after some search, he found a small 
 column with a globe and a cylinder. It was almost covered with 
 weeds. "When these had been removed, the verses remembered 
 by Cicero were found on the front of the pedestal, but only the 
 beginnings of the lines were still legible. ' ' To think, ' ' exclaims 
 Cicero, with the amateur's delight, "that I, an Arpinate, should 
 find the grave of Archimedes, the most famous citizen of Syra- 
 cuse, when his fellow-citizens knew nothing about it ! " In a 
 small way, the incident is indicative of a greater movement ; the 
 Greeks were yielding their places to the Romans in nearly every 
 sphere; in the next generation, largely as a result of Cicero's 
 literary activity, Rome would produce authors far superior to 
 their Greek contemporaries. As for Archimedes, Cicero seems 
 to have studied mathematics and may have had some faint 
 understanding of his greatness. 
 
 The other event is even better known. Cicero stopped at 
 Puteoli, the fashionable watering place on the bay of Naples. 
 He was thirty-two and enthusiastic. Having sent large grain 
 supplies to hungering Rome, he was convinced that the busy 
 capital was resounding with his praises ; the Roman people would 
 be ready to do him all kinds of honor. Some acquaintances met 
 
 2 Tuso. 5, 57 ff. 
 
174 IN POLITICS 
 
 him at Puteoli. "What is the news from Rome?" they asked. 
 Rome ! As if Cicero had just come from Rome ! The question 
 almost prostrated him. "lam on my way from my province, ' ' 
 he said. "Oh, I remember. Prom Africa?''' "No, from 
 Sicily," corrected Cicero rather scornfully, for he was getting 
 irritated. A third person intervened. "Why, don't you know 
 that M. Tullius has been quaestor in Syracuse?" He thought 
 himself well informed! And Cicero had sent grain ships from 
 Lilybaeum! There was nothing further to do. Cicero forgot 
 his irritation, and joined the crowds that "had come to the 
 waters. ' ' 
 
 There was a moral to this little scene. Cicero tells the story 
 in the Pro Plancio, 3 in the year 54 b.c. He is addressing a young 
 prosecutor, Laterensis, who found it unjust that the electors had 
 passed him by in favor of Plancius. The latter had spent his life 
 in the forum, whereas Laterensis had been much away, doing 
 good service in the East. But service abroad, Cicero explains 
 to his youthful opponent, is not the way to win popular favor. 
 Cicero had discovered as much at Puteoli ; a discovery that was 
 far more useful to him than any praise could have been. The 
 Romans, he continues, are dull of hearing, but they have very 
 sharp eyes. Cicero had therefore been daily in the forum; and 
 Laterensis ought also to have been there. The Romans do not 
 often hear about events in the provinces — unless, he might have 
 added, Cicero is a prosecutor and Verres the defendant. 
 
 While Cicero was exerting himself to bring Verres to trial, 
 he was also a candidate for the curule aedileship. He was 
 elected, as has been mentioned, despite the opposition of Verres 
 and his supporters; and even secured more votes than the other 
 successful candidate, two curule aediles being elected every year. 
 This office made him a member of the nobility, with the right of 
 transmitting his portrait bust to his descendants. His duties 
 were manifold, all connected with the external life of Rome ; lie 
 had charge of the temples, public buildings, markets, and streets, 
 s Pro Plane. 64-67. 
 
PBAETOBSHIP 175 
 
 He also gave public games on three different occasions. In later 
 years he speaks 4 with approval of a decent outlay in connection 
 with the games, to secure popular favor; but he adds that he 
 spent little himself. Cicero's success depended upon service to 
 the people and not on sumptuous entertainments. The Sicilians, 
 grateful for Verres, sent him gifts of all kinds, and Plutarch, 
 who mentions it, says that Cicero used them to reduce the price 
 of food. But this year, 69 B.C., is after all even more of a blank 
 than that of the quaestorship, at least so far as Cicero's official 
 deeds are concerned. It was in 69 B.C., probably, that he 
 defended Fonteius. 
 
 The praetorship, in 66 B.C., is somewhat better known. The 
 magisterial elections in 67 had been turbulent and were twice 
 interrupted; and there seems to have been unusual bribery, for 
 Cicero in a letter to Atticus says that the candidates for office 
 were harassed more than ever by all manner of unreasonable 
 demands, and these demands must have come from electioneering 
 agents. He was not troubled about his own prospects. There 
 had been some thought, it seems, of Atticus coming to Home to 
 assist in the canvass, but Cicero writes to him not to come; he 
 also adds that, since their friends might naturally expect Atticus 
 to be present in the capital, he has himself warded off criticism 
 by explaining to them that it is more important for Atticus to 
 attend to his own business and that he is consequently staying 
 away at Cicero's own urgent request. And Cicero's confidence 
 proved well founded. Though the praetorian elections were 
 twice interrupted, they were carried far enough to indicate that 
 Cicero was in the lead; and this lead he maintained when the 
 elections were finally brought to a valid conclusion. 
 
 As praetor, Cicero was allotted charge of the extortion court ; 
 the very court in which he had secured the conviction of Verres. 
 Only one of the cases that came before him is mentioned, that 
 of Licinius Macer, who is better known as an annalist than as 
 
 * Pro Mur. 39, and esp. De Off. 2, 57-59. 
 
176 IN POLITICS 
 
 a robber of provincials. His province is not named. Macer, 
 who was supported by Crassus, later one of the triumvirs, had 
 expected an easy acquittal, but he was unanimously pronounced 
 guilty; a matter, says Plutarch, which brought much credit to 
 Cicero. The latter, refers to this trial in a letter to Atticus. 5 
 Though the interpretation of his words is somewhat doubtful, 
 it seems clear either that he had been unfair to Macer or that 
 he might have favored him in such a way as to save him. The 
 people, he continues, had very markedly approved of his man- 
 agement of the case, so that he had gained far more from this 
 approval than anything that could have come to him from 
 Macer, if acquitted. Cicero, in spite of his truly Roman coolness 
 in estimating the result of the trial, had probably acted justly: 
 the people approved, and yet Macer was one of the people's 
 party. 
 
 It was not Cicero's triumphant election, however, nor even 
 the trial of Macer that makes his praetorship noteworthy, but 
 the fact that during this year for the first time he took a direct 
 part in the shaping of public policy. In the past he had kept 
 himself free from political entanglements, winning his way 
 entirely as an orator. He had made use of political conditions 
 when favorable to his cases, as was inevitable, but he had 
 remained independent, accepting cases from people of very dif- 
 ferent political complexions. Now, however, he supported the 
 bill of the tribune Manilius, which proposed that the command 
 against Mithradates be given to Pompey. 
 
 II 
 Pompey 
 
 The years since Sulla's death in 78 B.C. had witnessed the 
 gradual but certain rise of Pompey to a position of dominance 
 that, while not a dictatorship, had nevertheless not been par- 
 
 sAtt. 1, 4, 2. 
 
NEED OF A GENERAL 177 
 
 alleled even by Sulla himself. Pompey's emergence -or, at least, 
 the emergence of some powerful general, was natural. Sulla 
 had through arms established the nobles as a ruling caste, but 
 these did not have the arms to maintain their preeminence. They 
 had their wealth, tradition, and capacity, the latter largely 
 military and still considerable, but their rule depended on the 
 laws of Sulla, and laws at this time were made to be broken quite 
 as much as to be obeyed. The nobles did not have a standing 
 army, but were a civil and not a military aristocracy. If trouble 
 should arise, whether within the state or without, some military 
 leader would have to be found, and the latter, whether a noble 
 or not, would be very unlikely to forget the lessons of Marius 
 and Sulla. 
 
 There were troubles everywhere, calling for military inter- 
 ference. Spain was in the possession of the Marians, headed 
 by Sertorius, who had gone thither in $3 B.C. The rebel power 
 in Spain was like that of a hostile nation. Macedonia was con- 
 stantly raided by the barbarians; Egypt teemed with endless 
 possibilities of complications ; the pirates lorded it in every nook 
 of the Mediterranean ; and Mithradates, in spite of triumphs 
 celebrated in Rome to commemorate victories over him, was as 
 determined and ready an enemy as ever. Within Italy as well 
 there was imminent danger. Sullan veterans, settled on other 
 people's lands, were attacked by former owners, as at Faesulae 
 in Etruria, later famous as a Catilinarian center ; and this attack 
 at Faesulae is only one little bubble in the whole seething sea of 
 Italy, where such careers as that of Oppianicus were possible. 
 Rome itself was like an overcharged engine, ready to explode 
 whenever Sulla should be gone. He died in 78 B.C., and the 
 trouble began at once. The consuls quarreled about his funeral, 
 continuing their disagreements through the year, and in the 
 following year one of them, at the head of an army, began what 
 was virtually a civil war. 
 
178 IN POLITICS 
 
 All this gave Pompey his opportunity. There was no noble 
 who could be sent against the rebellious ex-consul. Pompey had 
 even as a stripling been praised by Sulla for his great military 
 gifts ; he was only a knight and still young, born the same year 
 as Cicero, but he was sent to stop the civil war. This he accom- 
 plished, and then, since the danger of Sertorius was growing 
 greater, he was entrusted with a command in Spain. The fight- 
 ing here was not all to the glory of Pompey, for Sertorius had 
 ability and good soldiers, but Pompey was ultimately successful, 
 largely through treachery in Sertorius' camp, which led to his 
 murder in 72 b.c. When Pompey returned to Italy, he was the 
 most popular and successful general in Rome. 
 
 He was not the only military leader, however, who rose to 
 distinction during the first years after Sulla's death. Crassus 
 became prominent through the Slave War, which began in 73 B.C. 
 Spartacus, said to haves, served in the Roman army, was the 
 leader of the revolting slaves; the band numbered seventy at 
 first, but had reached seventy thousand at the end of the year; 
 a formidable army, for many of the slaves were trained gladi- 
 ators. The government levied armies, one after another, but 
 they were defeated until Crassus, while praetor in 71 B.C., finally 
 put an end to the war. The devastation of Italy, carried to an 
 almost incredible extent during the Social and civil wars of 
 Cicero's youth, became even greater; when the struggle was 
 finished, crosses with the rotting corpses of slaves could be seen 
 along the roads. 
 
 The wars against the Marians in Spain and the slaves in 
 Italy came to an end about the same time, 71 B.C., Verres' 
 last year in Sicily. Crassus had not conquered unaided, for 
 M. Lucullus, returning from Macedonia, gave him real assist- 
 ance; and Pompey, on his way from Spain, had the good for- 
 tune to fall in with a band of slaves who were fleeing to the 
 north. He cut them to pieces and could later claim that he, and 
 not Crassus, had really stamped out the rebellion. Pompey, no 
 
POMPEY AND CRASSUS 179 
 
 less than Sulla, ought to have been called Felix, the lucky one, 
 for he was always reaping where others had sowed. This had 
 been true in Spain as it was now in Italy, and as it would be 
 again in the East. He was undoubtedly a great general, but 
 his reputation was even greater; and at this time, when he was 
 pitted in popular estimation against Crassus, he easily got the 
 lion's share of applause. Crassus was not a popular favorite. 
 He had made his money through the Sullan' proscriptions; he 
 was hard-hearted and grasping; and although he gave much 
 of his time to pleading in the courts in behalf of ordinary people, 
 he was not a great orator like Cicero. Nevertheless he was a 
 capable pleader, as well as the richest man in Rome, and, after 
 defeating the slaves, the leader of a victorious army. 
 
 Matters came to a head toward the end of 71 b.c. Crassus 
 and Pompey, each in command of an army, were among four 
 generals encamped before Rome demanding triumphs. Crassus, 
 at this time as well as always later, envious of his great rival, 
 nevertheless made overtures to him; and they joined in de- 
 manding the consulship for the next year. This demand was 
 illegal. Crassus had held the offices prescribed by Sulla, but 
 he was still praetor, and the law required two years to elapse 
 before he could hold the consulship. This, however, was not a 
 very serious objection. Pompey, on the other hand, was still a 
 knight; he had held no offices, and, at thirty-five, was far below 
 the legal age for the consulship. Not having been praetor, he 
 also lacked the official requirement for celebrating a triumph, 
 though he had already, under Sulla, celebrated one triumph. 
 The senate refused the joint demand, imagining that their bul- 
 wark of Sullan laws was stronger than the army of the two 
 generals. 
 
 Pompey 's reputation as a general and the opposition of the 
 aristocrats would have been enough, perhaps, to enlist popular 
 support. He made this support whole-hearted by promising 
 that if he was elected he would restore the tribunician power. 
 
180 IN POLITICS 
 
 Agitation for its restoration had begun in the very year of 
 Sulla's death and had been going on ever since. Macer, later 
 convicted in Cicero's court, had been much occupied with it; 
 and Caesar, who had begun his political career by two unsuccess- 
 ful prosecutions of extortionate nobles, had made himself some- 
 thing of a popular leader by agitating in favor of a reestablished 
 tribunate. In making his promise, therefore, Pompey allowed 
 himself to be identified with the popular party, as its leader, of 
 course; but he was not interested in city polities. His only 
 connection with the people's party consisted in the fact that he 
 was for the moment opposed to the nobility. 
 
 He also made an alliance with the knights. These had for 
 years been clamoring against the senatorial juries, wishing for 
 a return of the happy days when they themselves sat in judg- 
 ment over ex-governors and could consequently expect favorable 
 treatment in the provinces at the hands of governors still in 
 office. The knights had nothing in common with the plebs except 
 that they were all in opposition to the nobles. For the time 
 being these two orders formed one party, and the tribunes 
 ranted against senatorial jurors just as they shouted for more 
 power. It is not likely that Pompey made any definite promise 
 about the courts, but his election would weaken the aristocrats 
 and might lead to the desired reconstruction of the juries. 
 
 Pompey and Crassus were elected. The people's party had 
 helped, and also the knights, but the armies had been the great 
 argument. It was also in the shadow of the army that the 
 proposed measures were carried. The tribunate was restored 
 in all its power for good and evil, mostly evil. The knights did 
 not get back the courts, but they secured one third of the jury, 
 as has been shown earlier; the nobles retained one third; and 
 the rest was given to the plebs, though to the richest of them, 
 who stood closest to the knights. The struggle about the courts 
 was long, and was doubtless influenced by the Verrine trial. 
 This year, 70 B.C., completed the destruction of the Sullan con- 
 
SULLAN CONSTITUTION DESTROYED 181 
 
 stitution, but the nobles were scarcely in a worse position than 
 they had been before the time of Marius and Sulla. They were, 
 in fact, in a better position, because they retained part of the 
 courts. The violent rivalry between the orders would continue. 
 
 Pompey, however, now dominated Rome. He could have 
 made himself an absolute ruler, had he so chosen, but that was 
 not what he desired. His wish was to be recognized as Rome's 
 most eminent citizen; to be applauded when he appeared in 
 public — and his favors toward the plebeians had contributed 
 toward this ; to be in Rome, as it were, or above it, but not of it. 
 He therefore served his year as consul, and then, scorning the 
 usual reward of a province, retired ostentatiously to private life. 
 His relation to Roman politics was not unlike that of a modern 
 money king to the stockmarket: others might gamble for small 
 gains, not so small perhaps if we recall Verres, but Pompey 
 would bestir himself only in larger matters, such as great wars, 
 which by adding new provinces to the empire actually opened 
 virgin fields in which the little politicians might show their 
 greed and cleverness. He was waiting for some such great oppor- 
 tunity, and Crassus followed his example ; but Crassus had to 
 wait so long that he found it advisable to ally himself closely 
 with the plebeians and finance their -most promising politician, 
 Caesar. Caesar had genius; he also had great need of money 
 to win popular support; he was quaestor in 69 B.C., when Hor- 
 tensius was consul and Cicero aedile. 
 
 Pompey 's golden hour presently arrived. The pirates were 
 becoming daily more insolent and more of a public danger. They 
 had no close union, each captain scouring the sea independently, 
 but still they formed a sort of brotherhood, acting together when 
 necessary. They also had strongholds and fortified cities on the 
 southern coast of Asia Minor and elsewhere in the eastern Medi- 
 terranean. Their ships were swift and well manned, many of 
 the crews being composed of Romans who had been driven from 
 Italy during the civil wars or who had left Spain after the 
 
182 IN POLITICS 
 
 defeat of the Marians. They terrorized the whole Mediterranean, 
 kidnapping children and adults to be sold into slavery or held 
 for ransom, attacking and looting cities, and, most important 
 of all, waylaying the grain ships that fed Rome. It was the 
 Romans who suffered most, for although the pirates favored 
 nobody — they made a bargain with Spartacus, the enemy of 
 Rome, and then cheated him — their depredations brought the 
 greatest injuries to Rome, who ruled the world. Pood prices 
 soared aloft in the city; the knights and other investors in the 
 provinces lost their money; even Roman armies, so Cicero says, 
 possibly with some exaggeration, could not be transported from 
 Brundisium across the narrow Adriatic except in the middle of 
 winter. The constant menace of the pirates is shown by the 
 practise in Sicily, doubtless followed elsewhere, of lighting 
 beacons along the coast at their approach. 
 
 Their insolence was monumental. It has already been men- 
 tioned how they sailed into the landlocked harbor of Syracuse 
 and jeered at the armed citizens gathered together in the forum. 
 But they came even nearer to Rome. The naval station at Caieta, 
 near Formiae, not many miles from the capital, was laid waste 
 before the very eyes of a Roman praetor. Ostia, the seaport 
 of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber, was surprised, the ships 
 burned, and everything stolen or destroyed. Roman ambassadors 
 were captured and held for ransom; two praetors were cap- 
 tured ; so were the children of the very man in command against 
 the pirates, says Cicero, perhaps referring to the daughter of 
 M. Antonius, to be mentioned presently ; even the Appian Way, 
 one of the great Roman thoroughfares, was unsafe. Among the 
 most notable captives were Clodius, later the most unruly tribune 
 of these unruly times, and Caesar, who had been fighting a 
 little and studying rhetoric in the East. Plutarch's account of 
 Caesar's captivity describes how he stayed with the pirates for 
 thirty-eight days, joining in their games and even reciting verses 
 and speeches to them, with taunts at their illiteracy when they 
 
BILL OF GABINIVS 183 
 
 failed of the proper enthusiasm. He also threatened to come 
 back to hang them after he had been ransomed, and this he did. 
 
 The piratical nuisance had lasted for generations, dating 
 much farther back than the Roman claim to world rule. It had 
 been growing constantly worse; many Romans had been sent 
 against them, two commanders especially having within the last 
 few years received large powers for this purpose. One of these 
 was Servilius, a consul in 79 B.C., who opposed them very suc- 
 cessfully for three years, successfully enough at any rate to 
 celebrate a triumph in 75 B.C., but without really doing much 
 good. After him the war against them was entrusted to M. 
 Antonius, noteworthy mainly as the son of the great orator 
 who befriended Cicero. Antony was given general command 
 of the sea and the coasts, to be effective in the provinces wher- 
 ever necessary, but he was a miserable failure. He attacked the 
 pirates in Crete and was apparently defeated; the Romans in 
 consequence dubbed him Creticus. 
 
 It was therefore an immensely popular bill that Aulus 
 Gabinius, the tribune of the plebs, brought forward in the year 
 67 b.c, namely, to appoint an ex-consul — by which was meant 
 Pompey — for a period of three years, with supreme power on 
 the waters of the whole Mediteranean and on a coast strip all 
 around it to a depth of fifty miles. In Crete, at this time, one 
 of the family of the Metelli was doing good work against the 
 pirates, but everywhere else they were unchecked. The bill, an 
 extension of the powers of Antony, was favored by the people, 
 who wanted food; by the knights, who wanted safety for their 
 extensive provincial business; and apparently by many nobles, 
 who were not insensible to pecuniary opportunities. Aside from 
 any selfish considerations actuating this class or that, the pro- 
 posed measure was a necessity of the times. The bill was opposed 
 by the staunch aristocrats, among whom Catulus, the leader of 
 the senatorial party, and Hortensius, its greatest orator, were 
 conspicuous. But these could accomplish nothing. 
 
184 IN POLITICS 
 
 Pompey's appointment caused an immediate lowering of 
 prices in Rome ; his success was almost instantaneous. In forty 
 days, during the first half-year, he cleared the western seas; 
 after which he made a short visit to the capital, to bask in his 
 new popularity. In another forty-nine days he completed the 
 even greater task of driving the pirates from the sea in the 
 eastern Mediterranean and of conquering their strongholds on 
 the coast of Asia Minor. 
 
 But Pompey's good fortune was preparing even greater 
 things for him. Mithdradates, the consistent enemy of Rome, 
 had fought the so-called First Mithradatic "War in 88-84 B.C., 
 and had been defeated by Sulla; he had fought the Second 
 Mithradatic War in 83-82 b.c. successfully, against a lieutenant 
 of Sulla ; finally, in 75 B.C., he began new hostilities. L. Licinius 
 Lucullus, who stood very high in the nobility and who was 
 consul in 74, took the field against him. He was eminently 
 successful ; by the middle of 70 B.C. he had brought all of Mith- 
 radates' ancestral kingdom, Pontus, under Roman rule. The 
 king sought and obtained assistance from his son-in-law, the king 
 of Armenia, whereupon Lucullus invaded Armenia. But in 
 Rome the tide was going against the aristocrats; one result of 
 which were machinations for Lucullus' recall. The popular 
 agitators were joined by the knights. Sulla had oppressed 
 the province of Asia in a manner worthy of Verres in Sicily. 
 Though Asia was, with Sicily, the richest province in the 
 Roman realm, cities had had to sell their property in order to 
 satisfy Sulla, and citizens had been forced to give their sons 
 and daughters into slavery. Lucullus put an end to this fearful 
 condition, by various arrangements, and actually cleared the 
 province of debt in four years. But this meant great loss to 
 the knights. Lucullus was a very strict disciplinarian, which 
 did not endear him to his soldiers. Some of these, moreover, had 
 been in foreign service for eighteen years, and wished to return 
 home. In the winter of 69-68 b.c, therefore, there was a mutiny. 
 
BILL OF MANILWS 185 
 
 When news of the political movement in Rome for Lucullus' 
 recall reached the army, enhanced by agitators, of whom Clodius 
 was one, discipline went entirely to pieces ; not only the ordinary 
 soldiers, but even the officers, refused to obey the general. Mith- 
 radates, aided by his Armenian ally, regained nearly all he had 
 lost ; and in 67 B.C. one of the consuls of that year was appointed 
 to a governorship in the Bast, practically to supersede Lucullus. 
 He went to his province, but did not take the field against 
 Mithradates ; the latter was not an enemy to be lightly opposed, 
 but it may be that the ex-consul was in the East mainly to 
 prepare the way for Pompey by his own obvious incapacity. 
 
 In 66 B.C., while Pompey was still in the Bast making final 
 disposition of the pirates, many of whom he settled in widely 
 scattered communities, Manilius, also a tribune, brought forward 
 a bill. Pompey, without surrendering any of the powers granted 
 him the year before, was to be entrusted with the war against 
 Mithradates, having absolute authority to conclude alliances and 
 to make peace ; in short, while he already commanded the whole 
 Roman navy and the more important parts of the provinces, he 
 was now also to be made the irresponsible head of Rome 's largest 
 army. No power like this had ever before been entrusted to a 
 Roman. 
 
 The bill was as usual discussed in a contio. Cicero's speech, 
 still extant under the title De Imperio Cn. Pompei, is an enthusi- 
 astic and eloquent statement of what was obviously the general 
 opinion in Rome. After dwelling for a moment on the fact that 
 this was his first appearance in a discussion of public policy, a 
 situation which he had avoided until now when he was a praetor 
 and forty years old, he introduces his plea by exclaiming that it 
 will be easier to begin than to end a speech about Pompey. 
 
 He discusses first the character and importance of the war 
 against Mithradates; how it involves the glory of Rome, the 
 safety of her allies, the revenues from the provinces, and the 
 possessions of numerous citizens, reminding his auditors, among 
 
186 IN POLITICS 
 
 many other things, how twenty-three years earlier Italian men, 
 women, and children to the number of eighty thousand had in 
 one day been massacred at the command of Mithradates, who 
 still remained unpunished. Mithradates, moreover, had sent 
 legates and letters to the Marians in Spain, thus planning to 
 attack Rome from two sides; he had allied himself with the 
 pirates; and, when forced to flee from his kingdom, he had 
 scattered his treasures in many places, in this way causing his 
 greedy Roman pursuers to delay while they gathered his gold, 
 just as Medea had scattered on the sea the limbs of her murdered 
 brother, so that her father might stop his pursuit in order to 
 collect the fragments of his son for burial. 
 
 Cicero thereupon eulogizes Pompey; his military ability, his 
 courage, his reputation at Rome and abroad, and last of all his 
 good luck, for Pompey, like many military men, was a man of 
 destiny. Cicero's praise, though excessively high, was very 
 likely the sort of thing often heard in the forum during these 
 years; and Cicero does not fail to pay fine compliments to the 
 ability of Lucullus, who, however, had been unable to finish the 
 war. In reviewing Pompey 's record, Cicero makes much of the 
 war against the pirates, already won though not yet fully com- 
 pleted; and adduces, as a further argument in Pompey 's favor, 
 that he is already in the Bast and that Mithradates has shown 
 fear at his approach. 
 
 Catulus and Hortensius, speaking for the unyielding aristo- 
 crats, as they had also done the year before, had dragged forward 
 their old idol of precedent. No man had ever been given so 
 much power as was now proposed for Pompey, they had argued ; 
 it was contrary to every tradition. So it was, but their idol had 
 been much battered of late. Many men, Cicero reminded them, 
 had been allowed privileges never heard of before; especially 
 had this been the case with Pompey throughout his career ; even 
 the sturdiest aristocrats themselves had voted for unprecedented 
 honors in his behalf. And as for this particular situation, 
 
CICERO SUPPORTS POMPEY 187 
 
 Catulus and Hortensius had voted against the Gabinian law; 
 what would have become of Roman power if Pompey had not 
 conquered the pirates? The opponents of Pompey 's command 
 have been wrong once, and are wrong- again ; and even they admit 
 that if such sweeping legislation is to be passed in favor of any 
 man, that man should be Pompey. Cicero, however, does not 
 antagonize Catulus and Hortensius, but praises them highly, as 
 he had praised Lucullus, pointing out in the meantime that other 
 great nobles support the new bill. 
 
 The argument against Catulus and Hortensius was an excel- 
 lent one, and it is still a reply to the modern critics of the speech. 
 These remember that great military commands brought about 
 the destruction of the republican form of government and that 
 Cicero's political aim from the year 63 onward was to maintain 
 this very government ; consequently, according to them, he shows 
 an utter lack of political insight in supporting the Manilian law. 
 This criticism would be valid if Manilius had been the originator 
 of such commands, but he was not. Marius and Sulla had begun 
 the tradition, and this tradition itself was the result of numerous 
 conditions which no single individual could modify. If the com- 
 mand against Mithradates had not been given to Pompey, it would 
 have been given to somebody else ; and that somebody else would 
 either have lost the war, to the undoing of Rome's power, or 
 else, winning it, he would have returned to Rome with an army 
 that could either have made him dictator and king if he so chose, 
 or under any circumstances a serious enough rival to Pompey, 
 returning from the vanquished pirates, to render civil war pos- 
 sible. The question resolves itself, therefore, into a choice 
 between Pompey and somebody else ; and Pompey was obviously 
 the most suitable man of the times. He did win the Mithradatic 
 war, and after winning it he did not use his immense power to 
 erect an autocracy. Pompey never had the ambition to rule ; 
 he wished merely to be the idol of Rome. 
 
188 IN POLITICS 
 
 '"' But speculations as to the ultimate result to Eome of great 
 military commands are natural only to the modern student, who 
 can see the whole course of Roman history; they could scarcely 
 have occurred to Cicero and his contemporaries. Even Catulus 
 and Hortensius, in maintaining that so great a command should 
 be given to no man, were arguing speciously and only with an 
 apparent largeness of vision ; their objection was directed against 
 Pompey because he was not a supporter of the nobility; the 
 staunchest nobles themselves had found nothing amiss in Sulla's 
 great military power. If it is conceivable that any one in Rome 
 could have looked forward, as the modern student can look 
 backward, then it is equally conceivable that Cicero foresaw the 
 real harmlessness of Pompey. In the year 71 B.C. Pompey had 
 been satisfied with election to the consulship, and after the 
 consulship he had voluntarily retired to private life; he had 
 made no effort to rule Rome. It may be that Cicero had drawn 
 the correct inference from these years ; at a later period Pom- 
 pey 's essential harmlessness was understood not only by Cicero 
 but also by the nobles when they had to choose between Pompey 
 and Caesar. 
 
 _ The bill became a law, but it can not be supposed that this 
 was due in any considerable degree to Cicero's speech. The 
 supporters of Pompey, including Caesar as spokesman of the 
 plebs, comprised nearly all the voters in Rome: the plebeians, 
 the knights, and even some of the aristocrats. These had passed 
 the bill of Gabinius without the aid of Cicero ; they would even 
 more easily have passed that of Manilius, for Pompey had in 
 the meantime conquered the pirates. He could well be expected 
 also to conquer Mithradates, and this was needful if the Romans 
 were really to profit by the victory over the pirates ; it would be 
 of little avail to have an open sea if the rich province of Asia as 
 well as the rest of Asia Minor were taken by the king of Pontus ; 
 the open sea was useful only for bringing food and money from 
 the provinces. The bill would therefore have passed under any 
 
FIRST POLITICAL DEBATE 189 
 
 circumstances. Cicero, to be sure, had a large following, but it 
 was personal, and useful only for election to offices. He had 
 not taken part in politics, and could not have effectively opposed 
 Manilius, had he tried. His speech was an eloquent expression 
 of the prevailing mood, and as such added no doubt to the 
 enthusiasm in the forum. It was, however, a little more. Poli- 
 ties were carried on largely by lawsuits, and Cicero was the 
 leading pleader. Manilius would certainly be. accused of some- 
 thing or other by the defeated aristocrats. Cicero, therefore, 
 promises him his aid, and we learn that Manilius was actually 
 indicted and that Cicero was ready, to take his case. Other 
 matters intervened, however, so that the trial never took place. 
 Cicero's canvass for the consulship, if he became a candidate 
 at the earliest possible moment, would begin the following year. 
 The electors had therefore a good reason for expecting him to 
 take sides in the great political questions of the day, or at least 
 to show what he could do as a deliberative orator ; and this was 
 probably his chief motive for appearing at this particular time. 
 Otherwise he might have supported the bill of Gabinius. He 
 enrolled himself among those who believed in Pompey. This 
 might be useful, but not to any great extent. The supporters 
 of Pompey were so numerous that the individual would be lost 
 in the crowd; they were also of very different political persua- 
 sions. Cicero could not expect any real assistance from Pom- 
 pey, who would be in the East during Cicero's candidacy; nor 
 did he get any assistance, except the very negative one of being 
 known as a candidate whom Pompey did not oppose. 6 The 
 speech, however, is the first public expression of Cicero 's admira- 
 tion for the successful general; an admiration which was to 
 continue for the rest of Pompey 's life, though at times it was 
 dimmed by Pompey 's faithlessness and political incapacity. It 
 was, on the whole, an unprofitable admiration, bringing Cicero 
 much disappointment, though it also did him and Rome some 
 
 e Comment. Petit. 5. 
 
190 IN POLITICS 
 
 good. Cicero was a man of peace ; in later years he insists 7 that 
 the victories of peace are as great as those of war, perhaps 
 greater ; but he was enough of a Roman to think very highly of 
 military gifts and of foreign conquests. Perhaps his infatuation 
 for Pompey, for such it really was, had begun when he himself 
 was a recruit in the camp of Pompey 's father. It was certainly 
 nourished by Pompey 's unparalleled military career. 
 
 Advocacy of Pompey, who stood above political parties, did 
 not commit Cicero to the program of the selfishly progressive 
 plebeian party or to opposition to the equally selfish aristocratic 
 conservatives. At the end of the speech he announces that he 
 will try to earn further preferment by the means by which he 
 had so far succeeded, his pleading. In this statement he voices 
 his political detachment, and he maintained it. He opposed 
 the most conservative aristocrats by supporting Pompey. In the 
 next year he pleaded for the tribune Cornelius, whom the nobles 
 attacked ; but Cornelius from all reports was a good citizen ; and 
 it is in the very year of the Manilian law that, as praetor, he 
 allowed Macer, with Caesar the leader of the plebeians, to be 
 found guilty. It is also in this year, while speaking for Cluentius, 
 that Cicero makes the remarkable statement that his references 
 to politics in his orations are to be taken in a Pickwickian sense. 
 The only class that he avowedly supported in urging Pompey 's 
 command was the knights. As he says, they were receiving daily 
 letters from Asia about the critical situation ; his close connection 
 with their order had led them to remind him of the condition of 
 the Roman state and of the danger that threatened their own 
 possessions. This avowal is almost tantamount to a declaration 
 that Cicero is pleading for the knights; but the knights repre- 
 sented the business interests of Rome and so, in Cicero 's eyes, its 
 prosperity. 
 
 7 Be Off. 1, 74^79. 
 
ATTICUS' UNCLE 191 
 
 III 
 Consular Canvass 
 
 Cicero began his canvass for the consulship on the sixteenth 
 day before the Kalends of August, or July 17, in the year 
 65 b.c; at least, writing to Atticus 8 earlier in the year, he gives 
 it as his intention to begin then. It was the time of the tribuni- 
 cian elections and there would be great crowds in the Campus 
 Martius. This was not to be the heavy part of the canvass, only 
 the insinuating preliminaries, the so-called prensatio, in which 
 prospective supporters were "laid hold of." Six other candi- 
 dates appeared on the horizon at the time of Cicero's writing; 
 and Catiline would be a seventh, if he could weather a prose- 
 cution which was hanging over him. One of the candidates had 
 begun his prensatio too early, the result of which was to show 
 that the men approached were in favor of Cicero. 
 
 From September to the end of the year, because of the numer- 
 ous holidays, which had already played their part in the trial 
 of Verres, there would be little to do in the courts. Cicero there- 
 fore intended to go to Cispadane Gaul, to stay until the following 
 January, for the purpose of enlisting the municipalities and 
 country districts. It is not known whether or not he carried 
 out this plan, but he was very active during these days and 
 took every precaution. One incident is reported. Atticus' 
 wealthy uncle Caecilius, who later left his nephew ten million 
 sesterces, had a business quarrel with a certain Satyrus, and 
 asked Cicero to take the case. Satyrus, however, had been useful 
 politically both to Cicero himself and to Quintus, and might still 
 prove helpful. Cicero explained to the uncle that he would have 
 taken the case if Caecilius had been the only accuser, but there 
 were several of them, including two very blue-blooded aristocrats, 
 so that Caecilius could easily get justice without Cicero's aid; 
 
 sAtt. l, l. 
 
192 IN POLITICS 
 
 this was no time for Cicero to jeopardize the friendship of 
 trusted supporters, a thing Caecilius ought to consider. The 
 uncle refused to consider the point, and ceased coming to Cicero 'a 
 house ; his visits, Cicero adds, had begun only a few days earlier 
 and so, by implication, had been due to the disagreement with 
 Satyrus. Cicero hopes Atticus will see the matter in the right 
 light, for adverse judgment against Satyrus would have led to 
 infant ia, a serious matter; he certainly wishes Atticus to be con- 
 siderate, but if he be inclined to grumble, why, then Cicero can 
 only reply with a line of Homer about Achilles and Hector :° 
 
 No vulgar prize they play, 
 No vulgar victim must reward the day; 
 Such as in races crown the speedy strife: 
 The prize contended was great Hector's life. 
 
 Atticus had been expected in Rome in July of the preceding 
 year, and had even promised to come earlier to assist in Quin- 
 tus' canvass for the aedileship, to which Quintus was elected 
 that year, 66 B.C. But Atticus did not allow anything to inter- 
 fere with his numerous business engagements. Now, in 65 B.C., 
 Cicero tells him to be in Rome without fail in January of 64 B.C., 
 the time when Cicero would return from his campaign in Cis- 
 padane Gaul, and it is likely that Atticus arrived shortly before 
 this time. 
 
 Atticus could win the interest of Pompey's followers; he 
 might even do something with them while still in Greece. Inci- 
 dentally, Cicero gives him permission to inform them, or the 
 great general himself, who was busy with his wars in the East, 
 that Cicero will not feel affronted if Pompey does not appear at 
 the election; an innocent little joke that has been interpreted 
 as a sign of monumental conceit; as if Cicero could ever have 
 thought that Pompey would leave his campaigns and travel across 
 the Roman empire to solicit votes in the forum. Atticus was 
 
 a Iliad 22, 159. Pope 's translation. 
 
AN EFFICIENT CANVASSER 193 
 
 also, and more importantly, to help in securing the support of 
 the nobles, with whom as a class he seems always to have had 
 intimate relations. At the beginning of the canvass their 
 attitude had been somewhat doubtful, but with the passing of 
 the months it had become clear, in 65 B.C., that they would oppose 
 Cicero's candidacy; nearly every one thought so, Cicero says. 
 
 There is good reason for believing that Cicero was an efficient 
 canvasser, quite at his ease in the babbling, intriguing Campus 
 and forum. He made enemies occasionally, for he lived up to 
 his reputation for saying sharp things. Thus, during this can- 
 vass, as Plutarch tells us, he once became thirsty, from talking 
 doubtless, and stopped at a fountain. There was a crowd around 
 him. "You have reason to fear the displeasure of the censor," 
 he observed, "since I drink water." The censor, as every one 
 knew, was a great lover of wine. But Cicero also made numerous 
 friends, who kept him informed of the tricks of the other candi- 
 dates. This was the case even as far back as the year 70 B.C., 
 when he was a candidate for the aedileship. Verres at that time, 
 it will be remembered, called together the professional electioneer- 
 ing agents to see if bribery might not keep Cicero out, and 
 Cicero learned about the meeting in detail. 
 
 He had set about equipping himself for ■ practical polities 
 early in his career. 10 Ordinarily a Roman politician had a' slave, 
 the nomenclator, whose business it was to know the names of as 
 many people as possible; an excellent arrangement no doubt, 
 and not limited to ancient politics, but nevertheless not the best. 
 Cicero, who had a prodigious memory, decided to acquire this 
 knowledge himself, and to increase it. He learned the names of 
 all the prominent citizens, where they lived, what lands they 
 possessed, what people they employed in their political life, and 
 with whom in their neighborhood they were on a friendly foot- 
 ing. When he traveled on any road in Italy, he could point 
 
 io Plut. Cio. 7. Eef erences to Plutarch will ordinarily be omitted. The 
 passages can easily be found, since Plutarch's Life of Cioero is chronological 
 in arrangement. 
 
194 IN POLITICS 
 
 out the houses and estates of any one of his acquaintances. He 
 was well prepared, therefore, to carry on a successful canvass. 
 What was actually expected of him as a candidate may be 
 gathered from his reported doings and from much that has 
 already been said about the forum and the courts, but only in 
 its ruder aspects, after all; the finer touches are supplied by 
 Quintus in his excellent Handbook of Electioneering. 
 
 The winning of friends and supporters, says Quintus, is of 
 course the main object. Every one under obligation to the can- 
 didate must be strongly impressed with the fact that this is the 
 time for adequate acknowledgment; now or never. The candi- 
 date must not be narrow in his interpretation of the term friend- 
 ship ; he must take a generoxis view of it, for it is quite proper 
 during a canvass to give the name of friend to persons of whose 
 friendship at any other time in life he would be ashamed. He 
 must discover what men are of importance in their various 
 neighborhoods, and cultivate these, not wasting his time on the 
 rest. Men from the country are flattered to find themselves 
 known by name to a candidate for high office, but the latter must 
 not be a mere nomenelator; he should endeavor to seem a real 
 friend; Cicero, says Brother Quintus, was naturally affable, and 
 had therefore a distinct advantage over his rivals; but a little 
 simulation would not be out of place, nor even a little flattery, 
 though disgraceful at other times. People in any way connected 
 with the candidate's household and likely to have intimate 
 knowledge about him, men of the same tribe, neighbors, clients, 
 freedmen, and slaves, would be particularly useful, for they give 
 the tone to the gossip in the forum ; and it is of course desirable 
 that the ears of as many as possible be filled with good reports 
 about the candidate. Young men are excellent partisans; they 
 are naturally given to enthusiasm and know how to bestir them- 
 selves. 
 
 A canvass must be a period of display, tempered with the 
 proper dignity. The candidate should always have a large 
 
A HANDBOOK OF ELECTIONEERING 195 
 
 crowd about him. There are three kinds of adherents, of vary- 
 ing degrees of devotion. Very many come to the salutatio, or 
 reception, in the morning ; these are the most numerous, for some 
 of them go from one politician 's house to another. Their service 
 is not very great, but the alert candidate will not fail to take 
 note even of this amount of attention; he will never ignore a 
 caller, but will express gratitude for the call both to the man 
 himself and to the latter 's friends. These salutatores, in the 
 course of their migrations, will observe what candidate is most 
 appreciative, and reward him with their vote. Even when such 
 a caller is not to be relied upon, the candidate will do well to 
 have the appearance of believing in his sincere intentions. More 
 valuable than the ordinary morning visitors, however, are those 
 who stay to escort the candidate to the forum. He must, there- 
 fore, be additionally grateful to them, for it is important to enter 
 the forum with a large retinue; and he will wisely assist their 
 devotion by making it a point to start from his house at the same 
 time every morning. Bxit not all of these deductores remained 
 with the candidate after he had reached the forum ; some drifted 
 away in the crowd. There was a third class, the adsectatores, 
 who formed a permanent retinue. Some of these act entirely 
 from friendliness, and should be correspondingly encouraged; 
 others, whose duty it is always to be near the candidate because 
 of benefits they have received, should have it pointed out to them 
 that either they must come themselves, or, if they are prevented 
 by business or old age, they must make their friends come. Most 
 helpful of all adsectatores are those who have been successfully 
 defended by the candidate. 
 
 Banquets should be given both by the candidate and by 
 his friends, in the tribe and everywhere. The candidate must 
 keep open house; he must be accessible at all times, day and 
 night. He must have a friendly, open countenance ; open as his 
 doors, otherwise he might as well close the latter. Men will exact 
 promises of future service. The adroit candidate will give his 
 
196 IN POLITICS 
 
 promise in a spirit of willingness, never grudgingly ; if he has to 
 refuse, he will make clear his grounds and express sorrow at his 
 inability, so as to win the petitioner's good will, if possible. 
 Some orators have been known to gain more favor by their 
 manner of refusing to take a ease than others by actually under- 
 taking it. For a philosopher, a reader of Plato, like Cicero, 
 Quintus observes, it may be unseemly to make a promise he 
 thinks himself unable to fulfill; but C. Cotta, consul in 75 B.C., 
 a master in the art of canvassing, used to say that he promised 
 everything. He had observed that when the occasion arrived for 
 fulfilling his promise, he often had more time than he had 
 expected, or that the petitioner frequently had no need of his 
 services; indeed, many people make requests merely for the 
 satisfaction of receiving a promise of future assistance, with no 
 thought of ever using it. In any case, it is better to disappoint 
 the few who eventually require the service that you cannot 
 render than to disappoint the many. People are more irritated 
 by a refusal that refers to the future than by the later breaking 
 of a promise, provided the orator's inability to serve at that 
 time is satisfactorily explained. 
 
 The canvass must be carried on systematically; each friend 
 must be shown exactly what he has to do. All the electors are 
 to be approached; nobody is to be given a chance to say after- 
 wards that he was not asked for his vote. The canvass must 
 embrace the senators, the knights, who are very numerous, the 
 other orders, the whole city, and all of Italy. The same argument 
 is not to be used everywhere. The nobles should be told that 
 Cicero 's previous advocacy of Pompey is not a sign that he advo- 
 cates the people's side; since Pompey is all powerful, Cicero 
 spoke in his behalf merely to win his support, or at least to avert 
 opposition. The. people, on the other hand, must be reminded 
 that Pompey is Cicero's friend. In fine, the senate should be 
 impressed with the idea that Cicero will uphold their power; 
 the knights and the men of wealth, with a belief in him as a 
 
ALL ELECTORS TO BE APPROACHED 197 
 
 man of peace; and the people, with a conviction that he will 
 do nothing contrary to their interests. Evidence for all these 
 assertions can be found in Cicero's past record, and should be 
 sought there, for a canvass is the proper occasion for calling 
 attention to the candidate 's past acts. 
 
 Marcus is to remember, every day as he goes down into the 
 forum, that he is a New man, that he is seeking the consulship, 
 and that the place of his canvass is Rome. In reference to 
 Cicero 's ' ' newness ' ' and his consular ambition, the electors must 
 be reminded that an orator who has been held worthy to defend 
 men of consular rank, is not himself unworthy of consular 
 honors. Cicero 's chief claim to election is his record as a pleader, 
 his eloquence, says Quintus, who thereupon gives an impressive 
 list, which has already been quoted, of his brother's numerous 
 and varied supporters. But Cicero also has opponents. There 
 are three kinds of these. Some have been injured by Cicero, 
 who has pleaded against them ; they are to be told that circum- 
 stances made Cicero's course necessary, but that he will assist 
 them in the future. Others merely happen not to approve of 
 Cicero, and they are to be won over. The third class are devoted 
 to the rival candidates. If their support can not be gained, 
 Cicero can intimate to them that he is well disposed to his rivals. 
 It is useful, however, to cause the circulation of bad rumors 
 about them ; and Quintus immediately launches into vituperation 
 of Antony and Catiline, who were Cicero's chief competitors. 
 
 Home is a wicked city, says Quintus at last; men are tricky, 
 deceitful, vicious, arrogant, stubborn, malevolent, proud, tire- 
 some, and vexatious. Marcus is to make it clear that he will 
 prosecute those who resort to bribery ; not that he is to go about 
 nourishing this threat, but only to let them know that they are 
 being watched. They will thus, fear Cicero's diligence and his 
 power as a speaker as well as the evident support given him by 
 the knights. After all, no election is so corrupt but that some 
 
198 IN POLITICS 
 
 tribes vote in all honesty, free from bribery; vigilance can 
 therefore put a stop to the corruption arrayed against Cicero. 11 
 As the time of the election approached, it became clear that 
 Catiline and Antony were Cicero's only serious rivals. Their 
 position was peculiar, and can be understood only in the light 
 of the political movements of the years that immediately pre- 
 ceded. With the departure from Rome of Pompey less important 
 politicians, particularly Caesar and Crassus, began to maneuver 
 for position. Pompey was certain to return in a few years, 
 probably at the head of a victorious army. Before that hap- 
 pened, Caesar and Crassus must have established themselves as 
 leaders of the plebeian party, if they were to remain promi- 
 nently in the political arena; otherwise the people would imme- 
 diately fall into line behind the great general. There was need 
 for a sort of balance of power, something to hold the military- 
 argument in check; and, as this was desired by the nobles no 
 less than by the democratic leaders, we find the two parties acting 
 together on occasion, though never with very great concord. 
 They were after all natural enemies. The events of these years 
 are not very clear, but it cannot be far from the truth that 
 Caesar and Crassus were always in the background of political 
 events. Bach schemed for himself, though he also assisted the 
 other, Caesar with political capacity and Crassus with money. 
 Smaller men were put forward to do violence or to gain office; 
 but Caesar and Pompey were the plebeian bosses. 
 
 11 For Quintus' authorship of this letter, see Tyrrell 12, pp. 110-121. 
 Quintus' purpose in writing it has been much discussed. It seems on the 
 whole most likely that he wrote in the spirit of a literary man, expecting the 
 letter to be circulated mainly among the intellectuals of Rome. The 
 pamphlet also has certain qualities which must have been well suited to 
 further Cicero's canvass. The attack on Catiline and Antony is in line 
 with the usual practise. The cynical account of electioneering morals would 
 indirectly call attention to Cicero's personal honesty; Quintus suggests the 
 use of flattery, but says that he hesitates to offer such counsel to his brother, 
 a pupil of Plato. The various interpretations of Cicero's relation to Pom- 
 pey, which have led to the assertion that publication of the letter at this 
 time is ' ' quite unthinkable, ' ' would serve a purpose : they pointed out that 
 advocacy of Pompey meant nothing in city politics, for many politicians 
 hitched their little wagons to Pompey 's star, and that Cicero was an inde- 
 pendent candidate, whose real merit was to be sought in his oratory. 
 
CATILINE 199 
 
 Violence and corruption flourished during this period even 
 more than before. The eat was away and the mice played. 
 In addition to the traditional bribery and riots, against which 
 laws were passed in increasing numbers, there was introduced 
 the use of hired gangs to enforce party desires ; violence became 
 systematized, and was to remain so until the fall of the republic. 
 In the year 67 B.C., when Cicero was elected praetor, many meet- 
 ings were broken up and one of the consuls was mobbed. Things 
 were no better in 66 b.c. The consults elected in that year, for 
 
 65 b.c, had made such notorious use of bribery that they were 
 prosecuted and unseated; whereupon a new election was held 
 and their defeated rivals were successful. This led to a con- 
 spiracy, which gave a promise of assistance to Catiline. 
 
 The -details of this conspiracy, the First Catilinarian, are by 
 no means certain. The plan was to murder the consuls of 65 b.c. 
 on the first of January, when they took office. After this plan 
 had miscarried, the attack on the consuls was set for the early 
 part of February, but in this plan, too, the conspirators failed. 
 The intention had been to get the rejected consuls-elect rein- 
 stated, and as these were the creatures of Caesar and Crassus, 
 these two seemed to have been behind the whole project; if it 
 succeeded, they would be the rulers of Rome. Catiline has been 
 given as the leader in this conspiracy, which can scarcely be true, 
 but he must have played a prominent part. He had been praetor 
 in 68, had governed Africa in 67, and had returned to Rome in 
 
 66 b.c, to stand for the consulship. A threat of prosecution 
 for provincial extortion had prevented his candidature ; this and 
 his naturally unscrupulous character would be incentive enough 
 for his participation, in the hope that something would come of it. 
 
 Catiline is known to us mainly from Cicero's orations of the 
 year 63. There can be no doubt of Catiline's very great guilt 
 during this year; Cicero, though speaking against him, is not 
 more severe than Sallust, who wrote some twenty years later 
 and could have had no reason for making Catiline the wicked 
 
200 IN POLITICS 
 
 hero of his historical monograph if this had not been warranted 
 by Catiline's reputation. This reputation he also kept in later 
 Eoman histories. But it is founded on the year 63 B.C., which 
 has given its color also to the preceding years, notably in Sallust. 
 Catiline 's record during the earlier years was by no means good. 
 He had been greedy and cruel during the Sullan proscriptions, 
 one of his victims being Cicero's kinsman Marius Gratidianus. 
 He was not impeccable in his private life ; in 73, Fabia, a Vestal 
 Virgin and the half-sister of Cicero's wife, had been brought 
 to trial for accepting Catiline as her lover. Fabia had been 
 acquitted, but the trial indicates Catiline's reputation. Popu- 
 larly he was charged with various immoralities that need not be 
 repeated. As governor of Africa, finally, he seems to have 
 practised unusual extortion. 
 
 But all these blots on his character can be paralleled in the 
 case of many of his contemporaries. He probably was very much 
 of the typical politician and man about town. It has already 
 been noted that Cicero in 65 b.c. thought of defending him. 
 Cicero did not do this, but his mere intention is important, for 
 he could scarcely have planned to associate himself with a 
 notorious criminal. Many years later, in 56 B.C., Cicero gives 
 a picture of Catiline. "Without contradicting his earlier state- 
 ments about Catiline's crimes, he describes how Catiline was a 
 man of many gifts, both for good and evil, how he gathered 
 young men about him, how he associated not merely with bad 
 but also with upright citizens, and how, before the conspiracy 
 of 63 B.C., he even tempted Cicero to think well of him. Cicero 
 was speaking in defense of his friend Caelius, 12 who had been 
 one of the supporters of Catiline's candidacy in 63 B.C.; but 
 he was probably giving a fair estimate of Catiline as he had 
 appeared during the period of Cicero's canvass. 
 
 Catiline's partner was C. Antonius, whose chief recommen- 
 dation to the people of Kome was the fact of his being the son 
 
 12 Pro Cael. 10-16. 
 
IN TOGA CANDIDA 201 
 
 of the great orator, who had befriended Cicero. He was a dis- 
 solute man, deeply in debt, unprincipled, and ready to take any 
 road that might lead to success. If elected, he would be a very 
 amenable colleague to Catiline. The canvass was financiered 
 by Crassus, and the candidates gave themselves the appearance 
 of representatives of the people, though their support was not 
 limited to the plebs. If they succeeded, Crassus and Caesar, or, 
 better still, Caesar and Crassus, would be the real masters. But 
 both Antony and Catiline were patricians, whereas Cicero, their 
 only opponent, was equestrian by birth. Cicero's letter to 
 Atticus has already shown that the nobles were unwilling to vote 
 for him. In the meantime they had small ground for confidence 
 in the other two candidates. Catiline seems to have been raising 
 a body of gladiators, for a friend, it was reported, but not very 
 convincingly. Antony, more openly, was boasting that although 
 poor he had enough slave-herdsmen to seek redress if defeated 
 at the polls. 
 
 The situation came to a sudden head a few days before the 
 election. The bribery in favor of the two partners had been 
 carried to such an extent that more law-making seemed desirable. 
 The bill was being debated in the senate when one of the tribunes 
 interfered. Cicero saw his advantage. He sprang to his feet 
 and delivered a crushing invective against the two rascals. The 
 speech, later known as In Toga Candidk, because Cicero wore the 
 white toga of a candidate for office, has come down only in frag- 
 ments, together with an ancient commentary; but these show 
 that Cicero not only attacked the private and public life of his 
 rivals, as was natural, even hinting at Catiline's alleged connec- 
 tion with Fabia, but also struck at the adroit manipulation of 
 the canvass. During the preceding night, he said, Antony and 
 Catiline had had a meeting with their corrupt agents at the 
 house of a certain noble, well known in the "profession of 
 bribery," which noble, as the old commentator observes, was 
 either Crassus or Caesar. Antony and Catiline replied to Cicero, 
 
202 IN POLITICS 
 
 but their retort amounted in the main to this, that Cicero was 
 a New man; nothing very novel, for others had reminded the 
 electorate of that, calling him a mere sojourner in the imperial 
 city. The nobles were won for the side of Cicero. His triumph 
 at the election was complete. ' Antony came in a bad second, and 
 Catiline fell a few votes behind his partner. 
 
 "Whether the sudden change on the part of the nobles deter- 
 mined the election can not be ascertained. Perhaps Cicero's 
 natural following would have been large enough even without the 
 aristocrats, for he proved so popular when the time came for 
 voting that the electors did not cast their ballots, each in his 
 own century, according to the usual procedure, but proclaimed 
 him consul by acclamation. He carried every one of the thirty- 
 five tribes. "With a very doubtful exception, in the year 72 B.C., 
 Cicero was the first New man to attain the consulship since the 
 time of Marius; and he was the only New man who had ever 
 secured the various offices, one after the other, at the earliest 
 age allowed by law. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 It is hardly more than a glimpse that we get of Cicero as a 
 private citizen during the twenty odd years of his activity in 
 the courts and his official rise. There are for our information 
 only eleven letters, and a bit of narrative written in the year 
 44 b.c, which describes one of his early days in Athens. This 
 second stage of his life, however, ended with his election to the 
 consulship, and it is perhaps desirable to stop a moment for the 
 little knowledge that is attainable. 
 
 The eleven letters are all addressed to Atticus, who was still 
 in Greece, traveling back and forth in his pursuit of wealth, but 
 staying a good deal in Athens. The first letter belongs to the 
 year 68 b.c, but many letters had preceded it and a great 
 many followed. In the very first, Cicero is giving excuses for 
 his delay in writing, which are repeated in some of the other 
 letters, and in this, too, he signs himself "with brotherly affec- 
 tion": "be persuaded," as the Latin has it with only apparent 
 formality, "that I love you as a brother." They had not met 
 since Cicero was in Greece, ten years before. The eleven letters 
 obviously owed their preservation to chance, but some reason for 
 it may be found in their content, since each one mentions some 
 commission entrusted to Cicero or asked for by him, so that 
 Atticus may have kept his friend's papyrus sheets for reference. 
 
 That these are only a few of many letters exchanged is shown 
 by their whole spirit, and also perhaps by their occasional brevity 
 of detail. In three lines of the first letter, for example, Atticus 
 is informed that Cicero is expecting Quintus to arrive in Rome 
 any day, that Terentia, Cicero's wife, has had a bad attack of 
 rheumatism, that she is much devoted to Atticus, as well as to 
 Atticus' sister and mother, and that both Terentia and Cicero's 
 
204 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 little daughter Tullia are adding hearty greetings at the end of 
 the letter. This brevity has at times scandalized modern readers ; 
 particularly when Cicero, in the same year, says that his poor 
 father died on the 28th of November, enclosing this announce- 
 ment between a surmise about Quintus' relation to his wife 
 and a statement that this is all Cicero has to write about. The 
 brevity is easily explained if we realize that Cicero wrote 
 frequently to Atticus, so that the latter was kept constantly 
 informed of the daily events in Cicero's home. It may easily 
 be, too, that in this particular case Atticus had inquired about 
 the date. 1 
 
 Cicero is less brief in apprizing Atticus of the death of 
 Lucius Cicero, the writer's cousin; and naturally, for Lucius 
 would not be mentioned often in a frequent correspondence. 
 This cousin was the son of Cicero's paternal uncle, the friend 
 of the great orator M. Antonius. Being younger than Marcus, 
 he looked upon the latter as his model. He accompanied Cicero 
 to the East, and also assisted him in gathering evidence against 
 Verres in Sicily. The two men were bound together by ties of 
 very close affection. In this letter 2 Cicero mentions the simi- 
 larity of their tastes, and refers to Lucius' sterling character 
 and professional usefulness; the younger man had been to 
 Cicero all that a friend could be, and his death, Atticus therefore 
 would understand, was a great blow. 
 
 Cicero 's love for Lucius, as it happens, received more explicit 
 mention than his relations to the rest of his family. Tullia, 
 however, is referred to, and with the affection that never 
 wavered. We do not know when she was born. If Cicero's 
 marriage, as seems likely, took place shortly after his journey 
 
 1 Asconius says that Cicero 's father died at the time of his son 's canvass 
 for the consulship, but this statement is open to suspicion. Cicero 's expres- 
 sion has been interpreted to mean, not that the elder Tullius had departed 
 this life, but that he had departed from Rome.. See Tyrrell, 12, 130 (note 
 onAtt. 1, 6). 
 
 2 Att. 1, 5. 
 
THE LITTLE TULLIA 205 
 
 to Greece, the year of her birth may have been as early as 76 b.c. 
 In 70 b.c, while speaking against Verres, whose novel edicts 
 made inheritances uncertain, Cicero says that his abhorrence of 
 Verres' behaviour was natural since he himself had a daughter 
 of whom he was very fond. It is in his first extant letter, two 
 years later, that Tullia adds her greetings to Atticus; probably 
 scrawling her little message at the bottom of the page, the Latin 
 word about it being ascribit. Atticus could not have seen her 
 at this time, unless he had made an unrecorded visit to Rome, 
 but he is sending gifts to her, or at least promising to send 
 them. He was still a bachelor, and perhaps forgetful. Tullia 
 has her father remind him, in 67 b.c, and the reminder is later 
 repeated. She thinks her father ought to make good his friend 's 
 negligence, but Cicero says he will repudiate the debt rather than 
 pay for Atticus. Cicero calls her his little Tullia and his sweet- 
 heart, Tulliola,, deUciae meae, and is already making plans for 
 her future. In 67 B.C. he betrothed her to Calpurnius Piso 
 Frugi, a member of a prominent patrician family. Tullia would 
 then be somewhat less than ten. The marriage took place during 
 Cicero's consulship or shortly before, 3 and brought happiness 
 both to Tullia and to her father. Piso, at any rate, stood 
 staunchly by his father-in-law during the years of trouble, even 
 to opposing some other Pisos; he died during Cicero's exile. 
 Whether Tullia at the time of her early betrothal had already 
 begun to resemble her father, we cannot say; in later years she 
 was his very image, she talked like him and shared his tastes. 4 
 She also, in her fond father 's eyes, was affectionate, modest, and 
 talented. It has been thought, because of her resemblance to 
 her intellectual father, that she was something of a bluestocking. 
 Of that we have no means of judging ; but it should be recalled 
 that as a widow she fell deeply in love with Dolabella, who was 
 younger than she, and fascinating, but very little else. 
 
 s/ji Cat. 4, 3. 
 *Ad Q. Fr. 1, 3, 3. 
 
206 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 About Cicero's relations to Terentia 5 during these years the 
 letters contain no enlightenment. Her unfortunate rheumatism 
 — pain in the joints, in Latin phrase — had become severe even in 
 68 B.C.; in the same year she is reported as fond of Atticus' 
 sister and mother; and two years later the son Marcus is 
 born, Terentia doing well, as the father laconically puts it. The 
 marriage came to a sad end many years later, after much had 
 intervened. But that is no reason for supposing that in the 
 beginning it was unhappy, or even merely decorous, as has been 
 maintained. Terentia possessed certain worldly advantages, to 
 be sure, which may have appealed to Cicero as a young advocate; 
 she belonged to a patrician family, quite unknown except for 
 her half-sister, the Vestal of undeserved ill repute ; and she had 
 some money. The dowry she brought her husband is estimated 
 by Plutarch at one hundred thousand drachmae, about eighteen 
 thousand dollars; she also owned a piece of wooded land and 
 several houses in Rome. It is not known, on the other hand, that 
 her family was of any assistance to Cicero, who already had 
 patrician friends ; nor does her wealth seem to have been con- 
 siderable when compared with Cicero's expenditures and prob- 
 able income; the house he bought on the Palatine in 62 b.c. cost 
 nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is more 
 than eight times Terentia 's dowry. 
 
 Cicero could not have been an ardent lover. He was not 
 altogether lacking in appreciation of female beauty, for at the 
 age of sixty-one, when various ladies had been suggested to him 
 for matrimonial consideration, he writes to Atticus 6 about one 
 of them that he had never seen anything homelier; and there 
 was a rumor, no longer verifiable, that Terentia was jealous of 
 Clodia, who had designs on her husband. A certain Caerellia, 
 moreover, is mentioned by him as a great friend. She was rich 
 and cultivated; apparently lent Cicero money on one occasion; 
 
 5 See Schmidt, Cicero u. Terentia. 
 « Att. 12, 11. 
 
NOT AN ASSENT LOVER 207 
 
 interested herself in his second marriage ; and carried on a corre- 
 spondence with him, now lost. Their relation, however, could 
 scarcely have been romantic; Caerellia was apparently several 
 years older. The only fact known about her, except those men- 
 tioned, is that she made a copy for herself of Cicero 's De Finibus, 
 having borrowed the work from Atticus' copyists without 
 Cicero's knowledge. But neither Caerellia 's admiration nor 
 Cicero's fastidiousness at sixty-one indicates that Cicero ever 
 uttered the sharp cries of passion of a Catullus, or that he 
 charmed the aristocratic ladies of Kome as did Caesar. Women 
 seem, on the whole, to have played a very small part in his life ; 
 both in his youth, as he tells us, and later he was always busy, 
 engaged with his public affairs, his books, or his political and 
 literary friends. In 56 B.C., while defending the gay youth of 
 his friend Caelius, he has some clever and considerate things to 
 say about the necessity of sowing wild oats; but he had sowed 
 none himself. When he stopped at Puteoli, on his return from 
 Sicily, he was thinking of his ambition, and not of the gaieties 
 by the seashore. He was essentially a man 's man. His probable 
 lack of intense interest in the other sex and his certain indiffer- 
 ence to ordinary amusements are, indeed, the only respects in 
 which his widely appreciative and enthusiastic personality can 
 be said to have failed of completeness. 
 
 But Cicero was very affectionate and sympathetic; he found 
 it easy to get along with people; and he was communicative. 
 Terentia's nature is largely unknown, as has already been men- 
 tioned; very probably it can be summed up in the reputed 
 remark 7 of Cicero that she was more likely to interfere with 
 his political life than to allow him an opinion about the man- 
 agement of the house. She was ambitious, however, taking a 
 keen interest in her husband's success; and she seems to have 
 been a good manager, which Cicero was not. In their early years, 
 for a great many years, indeed, they may well have had a very 
 
 fPlut. Cic. 20. 
 
208 IN PSIVATE LIFE 
 
 happy and affectionate home life. His first extant letters to 
 Terentia, written during the exile, are aglow with love and 
 appreciation, only part of which could have been due to his 
 desolate condition; and he writes at the same time to Quintus 8 
 that he has been singularly fortunate in his brother, his children, 
 and his wife. 
 
 Besides mentioning events in his own household in these 
 letters, Cicero also sends an occasional word about the members 
 of Atticus' family, who were living in Rome. Here was Caecilius, 
 the uncle, an irritable gentleman whom nobody could endure 
 except Atticus. 9 The latter 's complaisance, so comprehensive as 
 scarcely to be admirable, was rewarded with an inheritance of 
 ten million sesterces. In Rome lived also Atticus' mother, not 
 known to us; and the grandmother, who died of pious worry 
 about the Latin festival. 
 
 And here, above all, was Pomponia, the sister of Atticus, 
 whom Quintus is said to have married at the advice of Marcus. 
 Whether or not responsible for the unfortunate union, Cicero 
 both now and later sent bulletins to Atticus about Pomponia 
 and Quintus. The date of the marriage is not known, but things 
 had already begun to go wrong. Cicero finds it encouraging, 
 on one occasion, that they are actually together on one of 
 Quintus ' estates in Arpinum ; at another time, future agreement 
 seems to be heralded by the expectation of a child in the family. 
 ■Quintus, however, was hot-headed, though good at heart, if we 
 may believe his brother, and with very winning ways; and 
 Pomponia did not possess her brother's easy disposition. She 
 was of as strong a mind as Terentia herself, and no great love 
 seems to have been lost between these two ladies; it is at least 
 suspicious, considering the temperaments of the sisters-in-law, 
 that Cicero should go out of his way to mention Terentia 's 
 affection for Pomponia. Nor does Pomponia seem to have been 
 
 s Ad Q. Fr. 1, 3, 6. 
 8 Nepoa, Atticus 5. 
 
QVINTVS AND POMPONIA 209 
 
 very obliging to Cicero himself. She did not always inform 
 him when a messenger was starting for Atticus in Greece, a 
 kind of service extended in Rome even to friends of no great 
 intimacy; so that her neglect, coupled with the uncertainty of 
 Atticus 1 movements, was partly responsible for Cicero's failure 
 to write as often as Atticus expected. And once, perhaps from 
 design, she forwarded to Cicero at Tusculum a letter from her 
 brother, sending word at the same time that a messenger would 
 leave for Greece in the afternoon. Cicero gives this as his 
 reason for brevity, though, if we look closely, the letter of that 
 day is one of the three longest among the eleven. 
 
 Pomponia and Quintus found no harmony through the son 
 that came to them. In the following years Cicero often has to 
 explain to Atticus that Quintus is not the only one at fault ; and 
 to Quintus he gives some brotherly advice. Quintus and Atticus, 
 too, had disagreements, which Pomponia apparently made no 
 efforts to adjust, and may have caused. The marriage ended 
 in divorce ; a very clear case of incompatibility, a plea which was 
 not invoked in Eome as often as in modern society. 
 
 One little scene, occurring as late as the year 51 B.C., may 
 be worth recalling. It is described by Cicero, 10 Atticus having 
 raised the old question about his brother-in-law's behavior. 
 Cicero was visiting his brother at Arpinum, and, taking occasion 
 to speak of Atticus, found Quintus' feelings perfectly satisfac- 
 tory both toward Atticus himself and Pomponia. He also, 
 behaved in a very kindly way toward his wife; if he was pro- 
 voked about expenses, a matter referred to only in this letter, 
 he did not show it. Thus the day passed. On the following 
 day, at Arcanum, another estate belonging to Quintus, the lat- 
 ter 's tenants were to be entertained. He therefore said to 
 Pomponia that he would invite the men if she would ask the 
 women. Quintus' request seemed to Cicero in no way unusual, 
 and both his words and his expression had been eminently gentle. 
 
 10 Att. 5, l, 3-4. 
 
210 IN PM1VATE LIFE 
 
 But Pomponia flared up, in the presence of her brother-in-law. 
 ' ' I am a stranger in my own house, ' ' she cried. The reason for 
 her irritation, as Cicero could gather, was that Quintus ' favorite 
 freedman had made the preparations for the meal. Quintus 
 turned to Marcus. "This is what I have to put up with every 
 day," he said. "You will say," Cicero interjects to Atticus, 
 "that it was no great matter. But you should have seen and 
 heard your sister." Cicero, however, gave his sister-in-law no 
 sign of his annoyance. Pomponia, in the meanwhile, stayed 
 away from the table, and when Quintus sent food to her room, 
 she refused it. There were also various other happenings, which 
 Cicero forbears to relate, things that vexed Cicero himself even 
 more than Quintus, who through it all behaved most exemplarily. 
 ' ' So you may tell Pomponia from me, ' ' Cicero ends his account, 
 "that on that day she did not act like a lady" — was lacking in 
 humtanitas, he writes. "I have written in greater detail than 
 is perhaps necessary, but you will understand that you, too, 
 might profitably offer a little advice." 
 
 Cicero was not merely observing the deportment of Quintus 
 for the information of Atticus ; he was also attending to numerous 
 matters of business, some of which required considerable patience 
 and delicacy. Not everybody loved Atticus despite his pleasant 
 ways. Cicero is also entrusting errands to Atticus. Between 
 friends, as Cicero observes in his essay on Friendship, dedicated 
 to Atticus, there should be no weighing of services. Atticus was 
 useful to Cicero in many ways. He was an excellent literary 
 critic and an equally excellent man of business. He revised 
 Cicero's manuscripts, after coming to Rome; and he rarely 
 failed to attend to the numerous and often confused money 
 matters with which Cicero entrusted him, for Cicero was careless 
 in this respect, though always honorable. He was also helpful 
 in Cicero's connection with the aristocrats. Altogether, it may 
 seem that Atticus gave more than he received; but Cicero must 
 have been very, useful to him, in matters of real importance, 
 
WORKS OF ART 211 
 
 because of his relations with provincial governors and large 
 business corporations. Atticus must also have derived some 
 profit from the publication of Cicero's orations and essays, which 
 was usually entrusted to him. 11 Nor did Cicero ask for services 
 that interfered with his friend's plans; he did not insist on 
 Atticus' presence in Rome during the canvass for the praetor- 
 ship, as has been mentioned, and there were many later occasions 
 when Atticus seems to have forgotten promises, or half promises, 
 to Cicero, in order to attend to his own affairs. 
 
 In the year 68 B.C., it seems, Cicero had recently acquired his 
 Tusculan villa, to the annoyance of his aristocratic neighbors, 
 on which he later commented ; 12 and is enthusiastically planning 
 for its adornment. Atticus is to buy works of art for it ; statues 
 of one kind and another, some of Pentelican marble with bronze 
 heads; he is to follow his own taste, and Cicero, we read, is 
 always pleased with the purchases. The position of art in Greek 
 life and the Roman interest in it have been amply illustrated in 
 the orations against Verres. Many Greek artists were settled 
 in Rome; there were dealers in art and curios. As with us, the 
 old masters quite outdistanced their later rivals in their appeal 
 to the connoisseurs. Cicero shared this artistic enthusiasm, and 
 seems to have had an intelligent appreciation. 13 Aside from 
 the knowledge of art displayed in his prosecution of Verres, he 
 constantly refers to pieces of sculpture and to paintings in his 
 other works, especially in his oratorical writings. He wishes 
 to have beautiful things about him, caring on the whole most 
 for painting, 14 which at this time was largely devoted to por- 
 traiture. 
 
 11 Exclusively, it would seem, from the middle of the year 45 B.C. ; see 
 Att. -13, 12, 2. On the interpretation of this passage, as to whether it refers 
 to publishing or advertising, see Tyrrell's note on the passage, and Birt, 
 p. 310, and esp. p. 320. 
 
 12 Att.. 4, 5,-2. 
 
 is Bertrand, Ciceron artiste. An interesting companion volume is Bert- 
 rand's Cioiron au theatre. 
 i*Fam. 7, 23, 3. 
 
212 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 He also was eager to own a library, but books, like works of 
 art, were expensive. In the year 68 B.C. Atticus had a collection 
 of books that he was willing to sell, and Cicero begs him not to 
 let any one else have it; in the following year he is "hoarding 
 his savings" for the purchase; the books are to be the comfort 
 of his old age. We do not know whether Cicero secured this 
 collection; while hoping to do so, he says that books are his 
 greatest joy, and that he hates everything else — which seems to 
 have been written in the midst of the political disturbances in 
 67 b.c. If he obtains the books, he will consider himself richer 
 than Crassus; he will care nothing for the latter 's houses and 
 lands. 
 
 Cicero did not often hoard his savings, nor, for that matter, 
 did he pay close attention to his finances. Like his contempo- 
 raries, he borrowed and lent money extensively ; 15 differing from 
 some of them in that he never charged usurious interest, if any 
 at all. All his transactions were for purposes other than increas- 
 ing his income. He frequently lent money to friends and 
 acquaintances about whose solvency he knew next to nothing. 
 When they did not or could not pay, and he needed money either 
 for an old debt or for some purchase, he borrowed from some 
 one else. He frequently had no conception of his own situation, 
 leaving his business affairs in the hands of slaves, freedmen, 
 and clients, as did others, and particularly of Atticus, who took 
 infinite pains. 
 
 Once, to quote a single example of Cicero's carelessness, he 
 had become guarantor for a debt of a certain Cornificius. 16 The 
 creditor, Iunius, applied to Atticus, and the latter wrote to 
 Cicero. This was in the year 45 B.C. Cicero replied that Corni- 
 ficius himself was rich, but he wished Atticus to find out about 
 the matter from some agents ; there were two Cornificii, father 
 and son, and Cicero did not know for which one he had become 
 
 15 See esp. Boissier, pp. 83-93; Tyrrell, I*, 34, 38; and Fruechtl. 
 
 16 Att. 12, 14, 2; 12, 17; 12, 19, 2. 
 
CARELESSNESS IN MONEY MATTERS 213 
 
 involved. "When informed that the guaranty reached back more 
 than twenty-five years, he wrote to Atticus that he had had no 
 business dealings with Cornificius before his own aedileship, 
 twenty-four years previously, but that of course he might be mis- 
 taken. It is not known how the matter was finally adjusted. 
 
 Cicero was not wealthy by Eoman standards. Pompey 
 enriched the Greek philosophers and made one of his freedmen 
 a millionaire. Lucullus, after his campaigns against Mithra- 
 dates, had retired to private life- ; he had several dining rooms, 
 the cost of dinner varying with the room; in the "Apollo" it 
 was fifty thousand drachmae, some nine thousand dollars. Cicero 
 was not a rival of these men and many others like them, some 
 of whom were of no great prominence in Rome. He did not 
 build or entertain as they did, and, more important still, he did 
 not win his way politically or try to influence legislation by the 
 enormous legal and illegal expenditures of a Crassus or a Caesar. 
 But he was nevertheless by no means a poor man, even for a 
 prominent Roman. His carelessness in matters of detail fre- 
 quently involved him in temporary embarrassment, and the exile 
 caused him very serious difficulties, which very probably were 
 never quite cleared away; but even toward the end of his life, 
 when he was least prosperous, he was able to give his son Marcus 
 as large an allowance for his stay in Athens as that of the noblest 
 aristocrats. 
 
 During the time before his exile he spent a good deal of 
 money. Some of his expenditures are known. His tour to 
 Greece, Asia, and the Aegean islands lasted two years, and must 
 have involved considerable expense even if he did not reward 
 his Greek instructors after the manner of Pompey. Before the 
 consulship he acquired two villas, at Formiae and at Tusculum ; 
 both are mentioned in the eleven letters; and later he made 
 further purchases, so that he owned eight villas, including the 
 paternal estate at Arpinum, and four lodges, in which he could 
 
214 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 stop over night while traveling from one place to another. The 
 value of these villas and the expenditures connected with them 
 are a matter of surmise. We do know, however, that when the 1 
 villas at Formiae and Tusculum had been destroyed, a result 
 of his exile, and he was later to be reimbursed, the senate allowed 
 half a million sesterces for the Tusculanum and a quarter of a 
 million for the Pormianum, and that Cicero considered these 
 amounts too small. Mosaics, marble columns, and ornamental 
 gardens were costly, and so were paintings and other works of 
 art. In the year 67 B.C. he paid 20,400 sesterces, about 1000 
 dollars, for marble statues for the Tusculan villa ; ' ' trust in my 
 strongbox," he writes to Atticus about that time. But the 
 largest sum mentioned in this connection is the three million and 
 a half of sesterces, approximately one hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars, which he paid for his residence on the Palatine. As 
 things went, this was not a very big price; we are told, for 
 instance, that the mansion of Scaurus was sold to Clodius for 
 14,800,000 sesterces. The Palatine, none the less, was the most 
 expensive residence section in the capital, the Olympus of the 
 blue blooded Romans; so that Cicero caused many worthy heads 
 to shake in condemnation of his extravagance, and doubtless also 
 of his temerity in intruding among the great. 
 
 He had at all times a very lively appreciation of what was 
 becoming to a man in high office, even discussing this with 
 philosophical gravity in his work on Duty. 17 Young Marcus, to 
 whom this treatise is dedicated, needed no urging in this direc- 
 tion; Cicero's remarks, as often, are addressed to the larger 
 public. A man of prominence, he says, should live in a house 
 befitting his position. Though his digmtus, a conception very- 
 dear to the Romans, should not be derived from his dwelling, it 
 should be properly supported by it; there must be room for 
 the various clients and other callers. On the other hand, nothing 
 is more ridiculous than a huge mansion to which no crowds come, 
 " Be Off. 1, 138-140. 
 
EXPENDITUEES 215 
 
 particularly if it has been the resort of admiring multitudes 
 under its former owner; in such a case, passers-by may well 
 address the empty house in the words of the poet : 
 
 a/ntiqua domus, lieu quam di&pwi 
 dominare domino .'18 
 
 People frequently have occasion to speak thus at this time, Cicero 
 continues, and then he goes on to say that magnificence in build- 
 ing, for those who are justified in owning palaces, must not 
 become ruinous extravagance — a bit of advice that apparently 
 was not allowed to interfere in an undue degree with his own 
 undertakings. 
 
 The sources of Cicero's wealth are not very well known. He 
 certainly made most of his money himself. His patrimony, 
 though large enough to start him in life and no doubt sufficient 
 for the expenses of an ordinary citizen, must have been com- 
 paratively small. Besides any ready money he may have inher- 
 ited, of which we have no knowledge, he received from his father 
 only the estate at Arpinum and a house in Rome ; and the house 
 he seems to have given Quintus at the time he bought the 
 residence on the Palatine. And Terentia's eighteen thousand 
 dollars, with her timber land and her houses in Rome, could not 
 have enabled him to live as one of the great Romans. 
 
 Writing to Quintus during his exile, when he says that he 
 had been fortunate in his family relations, Cicero says also that 
 he had been fortunate in the very nature of his possessions. This 
 is a reference to the honorable means by which he secured his 
 large income. He did not lend money for gain, whether to 
 Romans or to foreign kings and states, and he did not enrich 
 himself as the governor of a province. In fact, he did not under- 
 take a governorship until the year 51 B.C., when, contrary to his 
 
 is "O good old house, alas! how different 
 
 The owner who now owneth thee!" 
 The translation is by Walter Miller, in the Loeb series; the Latin poet 
 is unknown. 
 
216 IN PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 own desires, he was assigned to Cilieia. His perquisites there 
 were large, despite his rigid honesty, but the 2,200,000 sesterces 
 from Cilieia, deposited in Ephesus, may have been taken by 
 Pompey during the Civil War; 19 in any case, they came late in 
 Cicero's life and did not affect the period of his prosperity. 
 Only at one time is there a hint that he may have received part 
 of the proceeds of provincial government. 20 
 
 An important source of Cicero's income must have been his 
 fees as a pleader. Gifts they should be called, for there was a 
 law a century and a half old prohibiting orators from charging 
 fees, a measure ostensibly democratic in that it secured equal 
 legal assistance for all, but really aristocratic because it made the 
 profession of an advocate possible only for those who had inde- 
 pendent means. This ancient law, like other restrictions of 
 recent date, spoke doubtless with a very small voice in the Eoman 
 forum, for Quintus in his electioneering pamphlet can say that 
 the people defended by Cicero ought to be especially eager to 
 assist him since their defense had cost them nothing. Cicero, 
 and in all probability many others, refrained from charging fees, 
 but that did not prevent the acceptance of grateful gifts. The 
 Sicilians showed their gratitude after the conviction of Verres, 
 and others — foreign states and individuals perhaps even more 
 than Romans, but Romans too — must have done the same. Thus 
 a loan, which perhaps Cicero was not expected to repay, is men- 
 tioned in connection with the purchase of his house on the Pala- 
 
 is See Tyrrell IV, p. xlii, note, and 12, p. 36, note. 
 
 20 Att. 1, 12, 1-2; Fam. 5, 5; AU. 1, 13, 6. For political reasons he 
 yielded his consular province to his colleague Antony, and when the latter 
 was busy collecting the sesterces, he let it be known that part of them were 
 going to Cicero. The whole matter is very obscure, involving the identity 
 of a certain Teucris, who may have been the agent of Antony and who 
 certainly paid Cicero some money. If anything came from Antony to 
 Cicero, it may, however, have been in consideration for political assistance 
 in Eome, but even that is far from certain; Cicero did defend Antony when 
 charged with maladministration, but there were political reasons for doing 
 this, and he had previously had considerable hesitation about assisting his 
 worthless colleague. The whole situation is further involved by a letter 
 from Cicero to Antony in which the orator speaks as one who would neither 
 ask for nor accept favors. 
 
SOURCES OF INCOME 217 
 
 tine. He borrowed two million sesterces from Sulla, and in the 
 same year defended him against a charge of conspiring with 
 Catiline. It is inconceivable, finally, that Cicero's intimate rela- 
 tions with large business corporations were entirely unprofitable. 
 Large sums of money seem to have come to Cicero through 
 bequests. The testamentary eccentricity of the Romans has 
 already been mentioned; it contributed directly to the glory of 
 the politically great, and was certainly in Cicero's mind when 
 he told Quintus that he had made his money in an admirable 
 way. In the year 44 B.C., Antony, the triumvir, taunted Cicero 
 with having received no bequests. Cicero replies 21 that he wished 
 he could say the same of Antony, for then some of Cicero's 
 dearest friends would still be alive, and he asserts that he has 
 inherited more than twenty million sesterces, nearly one million 
 dollars. It is not possible to decide whether this statement is 
 exaggerated; it would surely not fall below the truth; but it 
 may be substantially correct inasmuch as the gifts from people 
 defended seem often to have taken the form of bequests. 
 Plutarch 22 tells us that early in his life Cicero had been willed 
 ninety thousand drachmae, which would equal nine tenths of 
 Terentia's dowry. A bequest from a banker Cluvius yielded 
 Cicero at first eighty thousand and later one hundred thousand 
 sesterces a year, which would approximate four and five thousand 
 dollars respectively. 23 
 
 2iPM. 2, 40. 
 
 22Plut. Cio. 8. 
 
 2 3 There is necessarily much uncertainty in all references to money ; a 
 slight change in a Latin statement as it has come down to us may decrease 
 the sum one hundred times. Thus the Stoic philosopher Diodotus, who had 
 lived for many years in Cicero's house, died in 59 B.C., and made Cicero 
 his heir. Cicero writes to Attieus that Diodotus had left him "perhaps ten 
 million sesterces, ' ' nearly half a million dollars. The words are ES fortasse 
 centiens. If centiens be changed to centum, the sum is one hundred thousand 
 sesterces, about five thousand dollars; and this sum seems by far the more 
 likely. Philosophers resident in Roman families could not have been ex- 
 tremely rich, nor would Cicero have made merely a passing reference to an 
 inheritance of half a million. See Att. 2, 20, 6, and Tyrrell, 12, p. 35. 
 
218 IN PEIVATE LIFE 
 
 But Cicero as well as most of his contemporaries, Atticus 
 and Crassus excepted, would have been greatly astonished at 
 these minute guesses about his expenditures and his income. 
 These estimates are far removed from the spirit of his life, 
 whether he happened to be in Rome or in one of his villas. The 
 forum is typical of his public activities ; his private occupations, 
 on the other hand, are suggested by the villas, with their works 
 of art, their books, and their shaded walks and amaltheums. 
 Cicero was too ambitious and temperamentally too active a man 
 to give much of his time even to mental pleasures; but when 
 his Roman conscience allowed it — when others were noisily 
 celebrating public holidays, giving dinners of many courses, 
 gambling, or playing ball 24 — he sought a change in Arpinum, 
 if he had time for the journey, or else in Tusculum or Formiae. 
 He was not always alone ; the introductory scenes to his dialogues 
 are a reflection of conversations with congenial friends, and we 
 are told, and can also readily infer, that he had many such 
 friends, both Greeks and Romans. Nor were these talks and 
 Cicero's private reading entirely divorced from practical life, 
 for there was much declaiming and study of oratory; but the 
 spirit of it all was that of the student and the artist. 
 
 It was during his two years in Greece and Asia that he 
 enjoyed without distraction the leisure for things intellectual 
 and spiritual which he hoped to make later an otium cum 
 dignitate. He studied rhetoric, declaimed, listened to philo- 
 sophical lectures, and strolled with his friends in the sunshine 
 of Attica. He stayed six months in Athens and then went to 
 Rhodes. He visited Delphi, and asked what he should do to 
 become famous, the Pythia answering that he must guide his life 
 by his own genius and not by the opinion of the many. It was 
 a strange advice to a prospective candidate for office, and the 
 naive Plutarch remarks that it dampened Cicero's enthusiasm. 
 He was also with Atticus initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, 
 
 24 Pro Arch. 13. 
 
IN GREECE AND ASIA 219 
 
 which for centuries had given at least an indirect answer to the 
 question, what shall I do to be saved? It was not as if either 
 Delphi or Eleusis were of any practical value to him. Apollo 
 had lost much of his reputation for veracity; he had been 
 prophesying too long and frequently with too keen an eye to 
 worldly conditions, and the frenzied Pythia had on one occasion 
 made the mistake of raving in a Latin hexameter, though she was 
 Greek, and had even spoken in acrostics. 25 Nor was the Eleusin- 
 ian salvation a matter of great concern to Cicero and his friend. 
 Atticus was an Epicurean and did not believe in a future life, 
 and Cicero, though more spiritual, had no anxiety about Charon 
 and Tartarus. But Delphi and Eleusis, no less than Athens, 
 were holy ground to lovers of the Greek past ; there they could 
 dream. The journey in the East was the only vacation that 
 Cicero ever had ; it gave him in full draughts the things that he 
 could find in Rome only during his rare hours of leisure. 
 
 In the beautiful pages that introduce the fifth book of the 
 De Fvmbus, Cicero, Quintus, their cousin Lucius, Atticus, and 
 M. Pupius Piso Calpurnianus, a Roman noble, are represented 
 as being together in Athens during Cicero's six months there in 
 the years 79-78 B.C. The essay was written in 45 b.c. and many 
 things had happened in the interval. Lucius had died. Piso, 
 with whom Cicero in his youth had practised declamation, had 
 become a strong supporter of Pompey, and as such had antagon- 
 ized Cicero. To Atticus, in 51 B.C., Cicero had written many 
 bitter things of him ; among them, that no good could come to the 
 state from Piso because he was unwilling to do anything, and 
 no harm because he was afraid. But in 45 b.c, after the death 
 of Pompey and probably of Piso as well, Cicero recalls the old 
 times before political enmities had set in. To the Roman reader 
 the thoughts of the past with its bitter struggles and its deaths 
 lay like a thin veil of sadness over scenes like this, and the 
 modern reader can still discern it; but Cicero's actual words are 
 
 25 De Divin. 1, 38; 1, 79; 2, 115^118; 2, 111. 
 
220 IN PBIVATE LIFE 
 
 instinct with the joyousness of the occasion he describes. A brief 
 account of the passage will therefore most fittingly conclude this 
 incomplete account of Cicero in his private life. 
 
 In the forenoon the friends had attended a lecture by the 
 philosopher Antiochus. The young Romans agreed to walk to 
 the Academy in the afternoon, for the gardens would at that 
 time be deserted by the crowds. They meet at Piso 's house, and 
 walk the six stadia, about two thirds of a mile, from the Dipylon 
 gate to Plato's old school. First they discuss the wondrous 
 quickening of the imagination which comes from visiting places 
 where great men have lived and worked. Piso speaks of Plato 
 and other philosophers connected with his school, adding, for he 
 was a politician, that the old senate-house in Rome always made 
 him think of Scipio, the Elder Cato, Laelius, and his own grand- 
 father, who was called Prugi. Being a student of oratory, like 
 Cicero, he says that the rhetorical system of mnemonics is correct 
 in aiming to develop the student's ability to visualize; an inno- 
 cent little remark that must have reminded Cicero 's first readers 
 of many wearisome hours spent in making mental pictures of 
 their own and other people's orations. 26 Quintus agrees with 
 Piso's observation, but, poet here as in the Lams, he has been 
 thinking of Sophocles. The sight of Colonus has recalled to 
 him the opening lines of Oedipus Coloneus, in which the blind 
 old king addresses his daughter : 27 
 
 Antigone, child of a blind old man, 
 What lands are these, or what the folk whose gates 
 We have attained? Who shall receive today 
 With stinted alms the wanderer Oedipus? 
 
 Atticus is reminded of his abused idol Epicurus, both by the 
 latter 's garden and by the pictures of the philosopher which the 
 Epicureans have in their homes and even on their drinking cups 
 and their signet rings ; but he prefers to obey the old saying that 
 
 26 See Ad, Herennium, 3, chaps. 16-24. 
 
 27 Young's translation. 
 
AT TSE ACADEMY 221 
 
 one should think of the living. To him, in modern phrase, a live 
 dog is better than a dead lion. He was to speak differently when 
 visiting Arpinum; and Cicero surmises that his friend Pom- 
 ponius, obviously destined to be called the Athenian, has been so 
 long in Athens that his flippancy can be excused. Atticus, to 
 whom the local appeal was an old story, was playing host. As 
 for Cicero himself, he has been thinking of Carneades, whom he 
 can almost picture to himself as actually speaking in his lecture 
 room, the more as the features of the old sceptic were still 
 known. 
 
 Young Lucius, modest, as a Roman student should be, has 
 so far contributed nothing. He was an aspirant in oratory. 
 When questioned by Piso about his impressions, he blushes most 
 becomingly, and then replies that he has been to the beach where 
 Demosthenes of old declaimed to the waves; he has also visited 
 the tomb of Pericles, on whose lips persuasion dwelt, as old 
 Eupolis said ; but every place, so it seems to him, is historic 
 ground. The suggestion is presently made that Piso set forth 
 the teaching of Antiochus in reference to the supreme good, 
 for the benefit of their young companion, and Lucius "timidly, 
 or modestly rather" expresses his eagerness to learn; he has 
 been unable to reach a decision by himself. Piso at last begins, 
 prefacing his discourse by the remark that he would never have 
 believed that he would one day talk philosophy in the Academy ; 
 no, not even if a god had prophesied it. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 I 
 
 Caesae's Scheme 
 
 Cicero's year as consul was not like a quiet afternoon in the 
 gardens of the Academy, but a time of almost continual battle. 
 As things turned out, he had to fight first against the leaders 
 of the plebs, mainly Caesar, and later against Catiline ; the two 
 very dissimilar encounters dividing the year into practically 
 equal portions. That a struggle of some sort was before him had 
 been evident even before his election. As a candidate, he had 
 not been the representative of any political party, but had stood 
 clearly for the peaceful desires of the knights and of the citizens 
 of Italy ; he had once given his open support to Pompey, and he 
 was also popular, through his oratory, with the less orderly 
 elements of the city. Though not a political partisan, he was 
 known as an opponent of violent measures; and as such he had 
 secured the support of the nobles. His election as well as his 
 own character and reputation thus made him the champion of 
 the existing order; it was his duty to wage defensive warfare 
 against threatening attacks, whether they should prove to be 
 along the lines of revolutionary legislation or of brute violence. 
 
 The proposals for new legislation came first ; as usual, casting 
 their shadows across Rome long before it was time to act. Cicero 
 has described the situation briefly, but at sufficient length to 
 suggest the mixture of mystery, pompousness, and theatricality 
 that characterized the performance. 1 After the elections in 
 64 B.C., hints began to be heard that the tribunes were pre- 
 paring an agrarian law. This was in itself a reason for great 
 excitement; it would mean gifts of land to the poor of Rome, 
 
 - In the speeches Against Bullus. 
 
AGBABIAN LEGISLATION 223 
 
 and there had been no such law proposed since that of Livius 
 Drusus, twenty-eight years before, in the stormy days that pre- 
 ceded the Social War. Cicero, now consul-elect, made advances 
 to the tribunes ; he and they were to be magistrates in the same 
 year, he said, and ought to work together for the state; if the 
 law was a good one, really advantageous to the plebs, he would 
 support it, even sponsor it. The reply to his representations was 
 that he was not the kind of man who would favor any gifts to the 
 people ; and Cicero desisted from further offers of cooperation. 
 The tribunes continued their legislative confabulations ; they held 
 conferences with private citizens ; they met mysteriously at night 
 and in out-of-the-way places; all of which greatly increased the 
 anxiety and suspense in Rome. 
 
 On the tenth of December the tribunes took office, three weeks 
 before the other magistrates; this gave them an opportunity to 
 propose legislation to be acted on during the coming year and to 
 prepare the public mind. P. Servilius Rullus now came into 
 prominence as the proponent of the new law; it was announced 
 that he would address the people at a contio. "While the whole 
 city was eagerly looking forward to the meeting, Rullus assumed 
 a behavior suited to the seriousness of the situation. The expres- 
 sion of his face changed, the tone of his voice, his manner of 
 walking; he dressed in old clothes, did not wash, did not trim 
 his hair and beard. He was more stern than the other tribunes ; 
 his unkempt condition, seemed to bid the Romans beware of the 
 tribunieian power, to utter threats against the state. At last 
 the meeting was held, attended by multitudes. Rullus made a 
 long speech, with a great many fine words, but nobody in the 
 large crowd could make out what he was talking about, says 
 Cicero, adding, however, that the more acute among the auditors 
 did surmise that Rullus was saying something or other about an 
 agrarian law. Whether from design or oratorical incapability, 
 Rullus gave no information about his intentions ; but some time 
 later, probably at the end of the year, the bill was finally pub- 
 lished. Cicero at once sent several men to copy it. 
 
224 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 The elaborate mummery of Rullus had been commensurate 
 with the far-reaching provisions of his bill. The poor citizens 
 were to be settled on land in Italy; each to have his own farm, 
 which was to remain the inalienable possession of his family. 
 As the public land in Italy was utterly inadequate for such 
 extensive colonization, a huge sum for the purchase of additional 
 land was to be raised by the sale of state property. This would 
 include many of the state's possessions in Italy, particularly the 
 land acquired by Sulla during his consulship in 88 B.C., after 
 the Social War; and nearly everything in the provinces, even 
 in those recently conquered by Pompey. The power of sale 
 embraced farms, vineyards, forests, meadows, roads, buildings, 
 and everything movable and immovable; it made specific men- 
 tion of almost countless communities and tracts in every portion 
 of the Roman empire, and had general expressions that could 
 be made to embrace still more. As there would not be purchasers 
 enough for all this property, the bill provided for taxes on what 
 was not disposed of by sale, the money to be added to the 
 colonization fund. Money and booty, finally, which had been 
 obtained in the recent conquests, or would so be obtained in the 
 future, Pompey 's excepted, were also to be used for the same 
 purpose. The execution of this gigantic plan was to be in the 
 hands of ten commissioners, who were to be elected by a majority 
 of seventeen tribes, chosen by lot. The commissioners would 
 decide what was state property and what was not, make all the 
 arrangements for the sales, choose the land to be purchased in 
 Italy, and have an armed force to make their decisions effective. 
 They would have the rank of propraetors and hold office for five 
 years. All candidates for the commission were to apply in 
 person. 
 
 Cicero was opposed to the bill. He was opposed to agrarian 
 legislation of any kind. 2 The city of Rome would undoubtedly 
 
 2 The most complete examination of Cicero 's political attitude is found 
 in Cauer. Cauer reviews the opinions of previous scholars. To Cauer should 
 be added Heinze. See also below, pp. 290 fE., 454 ff. 
 
BILL OF RULLUS 225 
 
 have profited if the pauper population could have been made 
 to leave for the country; such an exodus would have puri- 
 fied politics and relieved the treasury. Italy, too, would have 
 been changed for the better by the cultivation of deserted land 
 and by the transformation of the large grazing districts into real 
 farms. The advantages of the proposed colonization seem so 
 great that the bill of Kullus might almost be looked upon as 
 dictated by very farsighted statesmanship. But the prospective 
 farmers consisted unfortunately of the Roman populace. It 
 can not be known whether they would have adapted themselves 
 to their new conditions, for no agrarian legislation intended to 
 benefit them was carried out during Cicero's life except the two 
 laws passed by Caesar in the year 59 B.C., and these seem to have 
 affected Pompey's veterans to a far greater extent than the 
 common people of Rome. We learn, however, of no improvement 
 either in the city or in Italy as a result of Caesar's laws. But 
 it is not likely that Rullus could have made even passable farmers 
 of the plebs. The veterans of Sulla who had been settled on free 
 land had not improved Italian farming. 3 They had lived like 
 little lords on their new estates while their money lasted, and 
 then, impoverished and unwilling to work, they were ready to 
 take up the sword again, either in foreign or civil war. They 
 had added to Roman politics a new group of malcontents and 
 dangerous trouble-makers, and had even spoiled the character of 
 the farmers among whom they lived. The idlers of Rome would 
 scarcely have done better. The veterans had at least been accus- 
 tomed to work and discipline of a kind, whereas many of the 
 paupers in the city had never worked regularly, had been largely 
 supported by the state, and had been kept amused into the 
 bargain. The lazzaroni would have found farming very exact- 
 ing and very lonesome when they thought of the idleness, the 
 pleasures, and the excitement of the capital. 4 
 
 3 In Cat. 2, 20. See below, pp. 240-241. 
 * See below, pp. 229-230. 
 
226 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 But Cicero did not object to the bill of Rullus chiefly on 
 general grounds, however sufficient these may have been. The 
 tribune's proposal was, after all, only a bait dangled before the 
 plebs to win their support in carrying out the real purpose of 
 the bill; and this purpose was revealed in the provisions for 
 collecting the huge sum which was to be expended for farms. 
 These provisions are known only from the orations of Cicero, 
 who quotes or professes to quote directly from the bill, which 
 of course every one had an opportunity to read. Cicero would 
 not be inclined to present the provisions favorably, but he could 
 not have misstated them to any considerable extent; when all 
 possible deductions and adverse interpretations have been made, 
 the chief facts still remain. And they show that the aim of the 
 bill was to create a new power in the state, opposed both 
 to the existing government and to Pompey ; in fact, to all stable 
 elements of the social order. The board of ten was to be 
 entrusted with practically the entire wealth o5 the Roman people ; 
 they were to sell anything in the provinces and buy anything in 
 Italy that they chose, entirely without responsibility, thus having 
 infinite opportunities for indulging in favoritism, persecutions, 
 and political jobbery of every conceivable kind. This unlimited 
 legal power was to be supported by arms ; the commissioners, as 
 propraetors, would resemble provincial governors in command- 
 ing armies, and a door was opened even for the creation of 
 a large army, for Egypt was indirectly included among the 
 countries to be disposed of. 
 
 The matter of Egypt is important. This country was still 
 independent, but it was ruled by a worthless monarch, not a 
 legitimate member of the royal house and not recognized by 
 Rome, and the Romans made a claim that the kingdom had been 
 willed to them by the previous ruler. If Egypt, for the purpose 
 of the proposed sales, was declared a province, some one of the 
 commissioners would have to take it with an army, and this would 
 create a military power in the East, to balance that of Pompey, 
 
A NEW POWEE IN THE STATE 227 
 
 who was excluded from the commission by the requirement that 
 all candidates must apply in person. Crassus, as censor in 
 65 B.C., two years previously, had actually proposed to declare 
 Egypt a province and a bill had been prepared to send Caesar 
 there, but this attempt had come to nothing. Now it was revived, 
 though less openly. The powers of the commission, legal as well 
 as military, were to last for five years; before the termination 
 of which Pompey could have finished his campaign in the Bast 
 and his army would have been disbanded — if he acquiesced. 
 .The bill, therefore, so Cicero understood, and rightly, did not 
 aim to improve the condition of the plebs ; it was an all-embracing 
 bid for power, along legal lines, and, inasmuch as the commis- 
 sioners were to be chosen by the tribes of the people, the choice 
 would inevitably favor the leaders of the so-called popular party, 
 and these were above all others Caesar and Crassus. 
 
 The obscure and unkempt Rullus with his veiled threats and 
 his disquieting lack of intelligibility thus drops . out of sight, 
 and his place is taken by Caesar and Crassus, really by Caesar, 
 for he was obviously the strategist behind the daring attack. 
 Crassus stood to gain something, of course ; but he does not seem 
 to have had the brains to conceive so insidious and vast a project, 
 and he had not the popular following that might give promise 
 of success, nor was he in such a position of political desperation 
 as Caesar. Crassus was a consular and the wealthiest man in 
 Rome; Caesar had so far held only the aedileship and he had 
 no money. 
 
 Though Caesar must have known that the proposed measure 
 could bring no good to Rome, and might bring very serious 
 trouble, he is scarcely to be criticised for playing the game of 
 the selfish, hand-to-mouth politics that had prevailed since the 
 days of the Gracchi. Cato did not play it, nor did Cicero, each 
 one of these seeking the good of Rome in his own way ; and there 
 were other men of less prominence whose ambition was moderate ; 
 but the great majority of politicians were as reckless as Caesar. 
 
228 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 He was in the opposition, furthermore, and had a very special 
 reason for his daring attempt in that Pompey was nearing the 
 end of the Eastern war and would soon be in Rome. Pompey 's 
 absence had made possible the extravagant politics of the last 
 few years ; his return would place Rome in his hands, if he chose 
 to take it. Most likely he would not seize all the power ; he had 
 not done so in the year 70 B.C. ; but he would be the dominating 
 figure. If Caesar was to gain an independent political position, 
 he must gain it at once ; otherwise he could do no better than to 
 conciliate Pompey, and for many weary years play second fiddle, 
 — secundas partis agere, as the Romans said, very much with 
 the modern turn of phrase. 
 
 II 
 
 Against Rullus 
 
 Cicero delivered four orations against the bill, the last of 
 which has been lost. The first of them is addressed to the senate. 
 The Rullan proposal had been so cleverly designed to win popu- 
 lar support that the senate might well have doubts as to Cicero's 
 courage and ability to oppose it. Cicero took his first oppor- 
 tunity to calm their anxiety. It was customary for a consul' on 
 the very day of his accession to office, the first of January, to 
 address the senate on the policies according to which he intended 
 to be governed. Cicero, in his inaugural address, expressed his 
 determination to oppose the bill by every means in his power. 
 He discussed its objectionable and dangerous features, the chief 
 of which have already been given ; less it seems, for the purpose 
 of proving the undesirability of the bill, a matter the senate 
 would have taken on faith, than to show how he would fight the 
 measure. Cicero's display of his mastery of offensive weapons 
 was also intended to discourage the supporters of the bill; and 
 he actually turned directly to the tribunes, urging them not to 
 follow the lead of Rullus and his declared supporters. As for 
 
A DIFFICULT POSITION 229 
 
 the latter, Cicero asserted that he, and not they, was truly- 
 devoted to the interests of the people; and that if the bill was 
 not dropped, he would call a public meeting, and there show the 
 people themselves what the proposed law really meant. Fur- 
 ther to indicate his lack of fear of the tribunes, he revealed that 
 he did not intend to take a province after his consular year, nor 
 seek any other reward, and would thus deprive the tribunes of 
 every opportunity of agitating against him. 
 
 Rullus and the far more important men behind him did not 
 abandon the fight, and Cicero carried out his threat of holding a 
 contio. Here his real difficulty appeared. He had to persuade 
 the plebs that distribution of land to them, traditionally their 
 chief desire, the one unanswerable argument on which popular 
 leaders could always rely, that this distribution was not for their 
 good. To do this, Cicero needed all his skill as the foremost 
 pleader in Rome, and also the moral courage of jeopardizing his 
 popularity and appearing as a mere tool of the prosperous 
 members of the community, with whom the plebs were always 
 at war. 
 
 Cicero was well aware that he was addressing a gathering 
 the large majority of whom had no interests beyond their own 
 unearned food and amusements, but he cleverly takes for granted 
 that his auditors are the true Roman people, unselfishly eager 
 for the grandeur and safety of the state. His arguments are 
 therefore the very ones that he had used to the senate. The 
 state treasury would be depleted, for all moneys would come 
 into the hands of the commissioners. If the latter failed to find 
 sufficient available land for purchase, they would have to force 
 people to sell, and this would mean ruinous prices; and if the 
 commissioners did not buy, they would retain the money for 
 their own uses, since no provision had been made for its return 
 to the treasury. Their power would be unlimited, and Cicero 
 names the places in which they were directed by the bill to 
 operate; a dazzling list, covering the Roman empire from Spain 
 
230 TEE CONSULSHIP 
 
 to the Black Sea. The commissioners could hold their auctions 
 anywhere, so that the Roman people would have no opportunity 
 to watch them; nor would watching do much good, for they 
 could not be brought to trial during their five years of office, 
 and these five years would be sufficient to establish them firmly 
 in power. They would indeed be, not benefactors of the people, 
 but kings. No such power had been entrusted to Cato, Philus, 
 Laelius; and Cicero's auditors are invited to consider whether 
 the men who would probably be chosen equaled those he had 
 named. 
 
 Cicero does not forget that he is pleading before the idlers 
 of Rome. The irresponsible commission, he suggests, may for 
 private reasons buy land that is arid or pestilential. How would 
 the free citizens of Rome like to have Rullus lead them off to 
 such places? If they are wise, they will retain their freedom, 
 their votes, the forum, the games, the festal days, and all the 
 other blessings of the city. The thought is not pressed, for it 
 was scarcely complimentary to Cicero's auditors, but, once men- 
 tioned, it would linger in the minds of these free electors, who 
 listened to Cicero's real arguments with the solemnity of con- 
 scious patriots. 
 
 Cicero also pointed out that the creation of the powerful 
 commisison might lead to opposition on the part of Pompey, 
 particularly if a commissioner were established in Egypt at the 
 head of an army. This would mean civil war. But Cicero did 
 not make the mistake of naming the popular leader, Caesar, as 
 the one who would go to Egypt, uor did he charge Pompey with 
 reprehensible ambitions. Pompey was the idol of the people; 
 he had restored the tribunician power and he was now winning 
 great wars. Cicero therefore merely assured his worthy audience 
 that Pompey would do anything the people desired, but if any 
 one should attempt to force them to endure the unendurable, he 
 would defend their rights. And the people, in their turn, should 
 protect Pompey. His rights as general in the East would be 
 
POMPEY INVOLVED 231 
 
 infringed upon if some one else were sent to Egypt, Cicero said. 
 Rullus, to be sure, had proposed that the booty of Pompey's 
 present campaigns should not go into the colonization fund, but 
 he had not made this provision out of friendship for the great 
 general, for the customs of the Eastern conquests would be 
 swallowed up, which Pompey had the right to make arrange- 
 ments for ; and, most important of all, the new possessions would 
 be sold, and by such men as Rullus. This insignificant fellow 
 will write a letter to the great general. He will neglect to give 
 Pompey his name Magnus, the Great, and will say curtly : ' ' Meet 
 me at Sinopa and give assistance while I, in accordance with 
 my law, sell the land which you have won by your labors." 
 And thereupon he will set up his spear, the sign of a public 
 auction, between the camps of Pompey and the enemy, and 
 knock down the immense territories of Mithradates to the highest 
 bidder. 
 
 Rullus, however, was a tribune, and the tribunes had always 
 been the champions of the plebs; whereas Cicero, who opposed 
 his bill, was a consul, the natural spokesman of the senate. For- 
 tunately for Cicero, Rullus had overdone his acting while the 
 bill was under preparation; and Cicero can make his audience 
 laugh at the long-haired, glowering tribune ; and laugh or shout 
 with anger at the thought of his impudent letter to Pompey. 
 Rullus' father-in-law owned some undesirable land he wished 
 to dispose of. The indefatigable and lynx-eyed consul had dis- 
 covered this, and informed his audience. In some haughty 
 moment, furthermore, Rullus had said, at least so Cicero repre- 
 sents, that the plebs urbana had too much power, and ought to be 
 drained out of the city; expressing himself, Cicero observes, as 
 though he were speaking of bilge water and not of honorable 
 citizens. Such words could not come from a true friend of the 
 people ! 
 
 And as for Cicero himself — but it would.be a misrepresenta- 
 tion of Cicero's attitude to mention his references to himself in 
 
232 TEE CONSULSHIP 
 
 the same breath as his malicious thrusts at Bullus. There is 
 much of a specious character in this great oration, for Cicero 
 was fighting fire with fire; he was in Eome, and had to do as 
 the Romans did; but the speciousness is only on the surface; 
 it is the honey on the edge of the cup of bitter medicine, as the 
 Romans were fond of saying. The arguments that he uses are 
 in their essence both honest and true, though they have to be 
 presented at times in a manner to appeal to his auditors, and of 
 these arguments perhaps the strongest was his own personality. 
 He is not speaking with strict truthfulness when he claims not 
 to be opposed to agrarian legislation as such; though his oppo- 
 sition was justified; or, perhaps, when asserting that, though a 
 consul, he is not unwilling to praise the Gracchi, "for they had 
 accomplished much" — and yet in this very year he said 5 frankly 
 that the Gracchi had deserved death for their agitation. But 
 he is not feigning when he says that he is not an aristocrat; 
 and he quotes himself correctly to the effect that he had pro- 
 claimed in the senate — not the most suitable place for such an 
 announcement — that he would be truly a papillaris, devoted to 
 the interests of the whole people. 
 
 He reminds his auditors that it was the Roman people who 
 had advanced him from one office to another, until finally they 
 had elected him consul with acclamation; and he recalls the 
 condition of Rome at the time he assumed the consular insignia. 
 Rome then, he says, had been full of fear and anxiety ; there was 
 no evil that the law-abiding citizens, the bowi, did not dread 
 and the wicked did not hope for ;' plans had been formed to injure 
 the state and to put an end to peace ; commercial credit was no 
 longer to be found in the forum, having been driven away, not 
 by any sudden calamity, but by suspicion and disturbances in the 
 courts; and it was becoming clear that men were aiming at 
 new powers, at the sway of monarchs and not the authority 
 of magistrates. It was to check such things that he had been 
 elected. 
 
 5 De Lege Agr. (Contra Bull.) 2, 10; In Cat. 1, 29. 
 
BILL IS DROPPED 233 
 
 These remarks open the speech. Nothing, says Cicero, is so 
 much for the benefit of the people as peace, at home and abroad, 
 and liberty; these he will give them. And at the end of the 
 speech he returns to the same thought, announcing finally that 
 he and Antony, his colleague, are acting in unison; they are not 
 pursuing different aims, as his enemies had hoped they would do. 
 
 Though Cicero was arguing against the ostensible advantages 
 of the plebs, his words were received with more enthusiasm than 
 had been given to the arguments of any orator who favored an 
 agrarian law; he had accomplished the impossible. Perhaps it 
 was, as some would have it, his greatest oratorical triumph. 
 Rullus, however, did not yield at once. He was too wise to 
 argue against Cicero', but at a later emtio he discussed certain 
 minor points in the law, and secured some following. Cicero 
 answered him in the Third Agrarian Oration; and may have 
 been called upon to answer him again, for there was a fourth 
 speech, also short, the content of which is unknown. The people 
 finally sided with Cicero, and the bill was dropped. Cicero had 
 secured one of the tribunes to veto the bill if it should come 
 to a vote, but there was no need of this common but questionable 
 maneuver. 
 
 Ill 
 Constant Activity 
 
 The defeat of the bill of Rullus was, next to Cicero's sup- 
 pression of the Catilinarian conspiracy, the most important event 
 of his consulship ; but there were other difficulties that he had 
 to meet. Most of them are not important. Together, they show 
 how he successfully pursued his aim of safeguarding the state 
 and of performing his duties for the benefit of all classes. Three 
 bills, all of which might have led to trouble or to further agita- 
 tion, were abandoned by their sponsors at the intercession of 
 Cicero. One of them proposed the remission or reduction of 
 
234 TBE CONSULSHIP 
 
 debts ; the details are not known, but Cicero could later say with 
 satisfaction that he had maintained the credit of Rome unim- 
 paired. Another bill was for the restoration to the senate of 
 the two consuls-elect for 65 B.C. who had been unseated for the 
 use of bribery ; and we are told that one of the two men himself 
 acquiesced in the withdrawal of the bill. The third bill would 
 restore to full citizenship the sons -of those proscribed by Sulla, 
 who had disqualified them for public office. In itself this demand 
 was just; there was no reason why these men should suffer; but 
 as the bill was an attack on the Sullan constitution, and conse- 
 quently threatened the unstable equilibrium of the state, it 
 might lead to mischief, and Cicero found it necessary to oppose 
 it. He delivered a speech about it, now lost. Quintilian, how- 
 ever, speaks of this speech, marveling at Cicero's ability in 
 winning approval for his course of action even from those 
 who were to be benefited by the bill. By explaining that the 
 state could not endure if the Sullan laws were broken, Cicero 
 made his opposition to the bill seem to be a service even to 
 the disfranchised. 
 
 In this passage 6 Quintilian calls Cicero Me tractandorum 
 animorum artifex, an artist in his ability to sway the souls of 
 men; an appellation that Cicero earned more than once during 
 this difficult year. One further occasion is worth recording. In 
 the year 67 b.c. a certain Otho had carried a law that assigned 
 the first fourteen rows in the theater behind the seats of the 
 senators to the knights. At one performance, when the great 
 Roscius was acting, the people hissed Otho when he entered the 
 theatre ; the knights applauded him ; words of insult were hurled 
 back and forth, and the theater was in a tumult. Cicero was 
 informed. He came to the theater and asked the people to go 
 with him to the temple of Bellona. Here he scolded them roundly 
 for their behavior, and thereupon sent them back to the play 
 in such good humor that they vied with the knights themselves 
 
 e Quintil. 11, 1, 85. 
 
NON-PARTISAN ADMINISTRATION 235 
 
 in doing honor to Otho. The speech was published, but has been 
 lost; even if extant, it would probably have given us only a 
 very dim reflection of Cicero's marvelous mastery over the 
 people. 
 
 The non-partisan character of Cicero's official acts appears 
 with almost arithmetical distinctness. In opposing Rullus 
 Cicero had rendered a very great service to Pompey; he had 
 shown how the proposed law would harm the absent general and 
 had used the latter 's claims as an argument against the bill. 
 This, coupled with Cicero 's earlier support of the Manilian law, 
 might stamp him as a Pompeian. And yet it was mainly through 
 Cicero's instrumentality that Lucullus was enabled this year 
 to celebrate his triumph over Mithradates. But Lucullus was 
 the most pronounced rival in Rome of Pompey, whose adherents 
 had succeeded in preventing the triumph for three long years. 
 Cicero's support of the noble Lucullus was a service to the 
 aristocracy. He also defended Piso, another noble, when the 
 latter was accused of extortion as governor of Narbonensian Gaul 
 and of the unjust execution of a man from beyond the Po. The 
 trial had been due to Caesar. In the meantime, Caesar had 
 earned the enmity of Catulus as well, the leader of the senatorial 
 party, by successfully rivaling him for the position of chief 
 pontiff. But when Piso and Catulus, during the Catilinarian 
 conspiracy, tried to induce Cicero to accuse Caesar of complicity, 
 he refused to do so, in spite of the money and influence of 
 Caesar's two enemies. 7 Cicero also acted in opposition to the 
 interests of the senators' when he attempted to abolish the so- 
 called free embassies, l&gationes liberae. If a senator had busi- 
 ness in the provinces, it was customary to appoint him a "free 
 legate " ; he had no duties, but traveled at public expense, borne 
 mostly by the long-suffering provincials. Cicero drew up a bill 
 to put a stop to this practise, but a tribune was found to veto it ; 
 a law was passed, however, limiting ' ' free ' ' embassies to a single 
 
 i See below, p. 278, note 25. 
 
236 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 year. They had formerly extended for an unlimited time. 
 The marvelous thing about Cicero 's proposal, if we are to believe 
 his own statement in the Laws, written some ten years later, was 
 that he secured the support of the senate at a meeting which was 
 extremely well attended — senatu frequentissimw. 
 
 In the early part of the year Cicero also defended Rabirius; 
 a trial of no great intrinsic importance, but significant because 
 it brought Cicero into almost direct opposition to Caesar, and 
 still more because the question really at issue was later to be 
 raised in Cicero's own case. During the sixth consulship of 
 Marius, in 100 b.c, riots and violence on the part of the tribune 
 Saturninus had led the senate to place the city under what might 
 be called martial law. In the fighting that ensued Saturninus 
 had been killed. Now, thirty-seven years later, Caesar had one 
 of his. adherents, the tribune Labienus, later famous in the Gallic 
 wars, accuse Rabirius of the murder of Saturninus, and, with 
 Roman thoroughness, of some other things as well. Rabirius 
 was an old senator of no political consequence, nor did Caesar 
 care about him; and there had been so much violence in Rome 
 during the last seventy years that to single out a comparatively 
 innocent man nearly forty years after the alleged crime had 
 been committed, while notorious criminals like Catiline were 
 aiming at the consulship, was scarcely an attempt to have jus- 
 tice done. The real question at issue was not one of murder. 
 Rabirius had acted, as it were, within the terms of the martial 
 law which had been proclaimed, and the death of Saturninus 
 might therefore be interpreted as an execution. But a Roman 
 citizen who had been condemned to death had the right of appeal 
 to the assembly of the people ; the people alone could legally take 
 away a man's life. Caesar, in prosecuting Rabirius, was there- 
 fore pleasing the people and worrying the senate by upholding 
 the right of appeal ; and, since this right had been ignored, and 
 always was ignored, by the proclamation of martial law, Caesar 
 was attacking the senate for declaring martial law. 
 
PBO BABIBIO 237 
 
 The accusation was for high treason, perduelUo, the accused 
 was tried before two judges chosen by lot, and, as the gods were 
 favorable, Caesar and a kinsman of his were chosen. Rabirius 
 was condemned, and appealed to the people. His strongest 
 argument, according to Suetonius, was the open hostility with 
 which Caesar had conducted the previous trial. It was in con- 
 nection with Rabirius' appeal that Cicero spoke; he and Hor- 
 tensius. Cicero's speech is extant, though fragmentary; when 
 published, it was obviously enlarged, for at the appeal the 
 tribune had so arranged it that Cicero had only half an hour 
 for his plea. The proceedings came to an abrupt end, for which 
 Cicero was probabty responsible. In former times it had been 
 a custom to keep a red flag on the Janiculum, which was pulled 
 down whenever the hostile Etruscans approached the city gates, 
 as a sign for the popular assembly to disperse and take up arms. 
 The lowering of this flag had remained as a signal for ending 
 the deliberations of the people; and on this occasion it was 
 lowered by the augur Metellus Celer, a friend and supporter 
 of Cicero. Labienus, that is Caesar, could have taken up the 
 appeal at a later meeting, but he did not do so. Apparently 
 Rabirius was not further molested. 
 
 To call the senate's action a proclamation of martial law is 
 not strictly accurate. The senate had passed the so-called "last 
 decree, ' ' s emit us consultum ultimum, which called upon the con- 
 suls, or the consuls and other magistrates, or, indeed, upon any 
 magistrate who for the time being was exercising the consular 
 power, if the consuls were not in Rome, ' ' to defend the state and 
 see that it suffered no harm." In other words, the consuls, or 
 persons acting in their stead, were requested by the senate to 
 assume practically the powers of a dictator. But the senate 
 had no legal right to make this request, and the consuls had no 
 right to obey it. The "last decree ' ' had nevertheless been passed, 
 though not acted upon, in the year 133 B.C., and it had been 
 passed and acted upon in 121 B.C., in 100 B.C., in 83 B.C., and 
 
238 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 perhaps on one or two other occasions ; always at a time of immi- 
 nent danger, for it had become the senate's way of meeting an 
 extraordinary revolutionary crisis. 8 Like many other preroga- 
 tives assumed by the senate, it might therefore be considered, not 
 legal, but constitutional, for the Roman method of government, 
 like English common law, was the result of precedents. The 
 opponents of the senate seem practically to have admitted the 
 senate's right to pass the decree. Caesar was at this time 
 worrying the senate by his attack, but a few years later he wrote 
 in the Civil War, 9 in reference to the "last decree" which had 
 been passed against him, that the senate had not formerly had 
 recourse to it except when the city was almost in flames or when 
 everybody despaired of safety; thus indirectly admitting the 
 senate's right to pass the decree, by his complaint that they had 
 "rushed" to it when he had given them no proper cause. And 
 Sallust, who was never a friend of the senate, though perhaps 
 not much of a friend to anybody, states explicitly that according 
 to tradition, more Romano, which governed all things, the senate 
 had the power to pass this decree ; to direct the consul to levy an 
 army, to carry on war, to check allies and citizens by every 
 means, and to exercise at home and abroad absolute military and 
 judicial powers; and that except for this decree the consul 
 possesses none of these powers unless they be given him by the 
 people. 10 Sallust is speaking of the occasion in the year 63 B.C. 
 when the senate entrusted this power to Cicero for the purpose 
 of resisting Catiline. Though Cicero, in defending Rabirius, 
 made the ordinary plea for his client on the ground of his piteous 
 old age, and though he also shocked the people by asserting that 
 
 s The moat complete account of the ' ' last decree ' ' is Plaumann 's Das 
 sogenannte senatus consultum ultimum etc. (Klio, 1913, pp. 321-386). 
 Plaumann seems on the whole to ignore the extraordinary character of the 
 decree, the very thing on which Caesar based his complaint. 
 
 9 Caesar, Bell. Cw., 1, 5. 
 
 io Sail., Cat., 29. As Sallust 's brief account of the conspiracy is 
 arranged chronologically, it 'will not be necessary to refer his various state- 
 ments to their respective sections. 
 
THE "LAST DECREE" 239 
 
 Rabirius would have been justified in killing Saturninus, which 
 he had not done, as had been proved by Hortensius, Cicero never- 
 theless insisted that the question of the "last decree" was the 
 matter really to be decided; he asserted that Marius was right 
 and that he himself under similar conditions would have acted 
 in exactly the same way. 
 
 Cicero's words were prophetic of the future, and may even 
 have contained a warning to Catiline. The exact date of the 
 speech for Rabirius is not known, but the publication could not 
 have occurred until after the outbreak of the conspiracy. It 
 may therefore be supposed that Cicero never uttered these 
 words, but added them later as an assertion of his own attitude 
 toward the ' ' last decree. ' ' The point can not be settled. If the 
 supposition of a later addition be true, the effect of it has no 
 bearing on the constitutionality of the decree, which is indicated 
 by Caesar and Sallust; it only shows that Cicero had not- 
 expressed himself on the question and that he was not a prophet. 
 
 The same spuriousness of prophecy, and for the same reason, 
 may be imputed to another statement in this oration. Cicero 
 says that no one acts praiseworthily and with courage in the 
 midst of dangers to the state unless he be moved by thoughts 
 of future fame. The human soul, he continues, is of divine 
 origin ; there are many reasons for believing this, but none more 
 convincing than the fact that good men always look beyond the 
 time of their own lives, their eyes fixed on eternity. 
 
 This was the thought that guided Cicero in the troublesome 
 years that followed; it is his expression for unselfish service, 
 found more than once in his later writings. If he uttered the 
 words while speaking for Rabirius, he was already conscious of 
 the approaching struggle with Catiline and knew how he would 
 meet it. 
 
240 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 IV 
 Beginning of the Conspiracy 
 
 The conspiracy of Catiline filled the last months of Ci« 
 consulship. It was a natural result of the conditions which 
 three quarters of a century had brought upon Kome civil v 
 proscriptions, and personal violence of every conceivable k 
 There had been men like Marius, Cinna, Sulla, Chrysogo 
 and Verres; the conspiracy against the consuls of 65 b.c. 
 remained unpunished. Personal ambition was a fruitful so 
 of crime, but money, the possession of it or the lack of it, 
 even more pernicious. Immense wealth had flowed into 
 country, but it was very unevenly distributed; the rich i 
 extravagant and the poor were idle ; toe were poor bees 
 they had no financial opportunities, and others because they 
 spent their patrimony or thejr,, gains ; and finally^, all sc 
 classes, though not all individuals, had acquired the habii 
 making illicit demands. 
 
 That greed or culpable poverty lay at the bottom of Catili 
 attempt to overturn the state is indicated by Cicero's descrip 
 of the conspirators. Addressing the people after the conspn 
 was well under way, Cicero divided the malcontents into 
 classes. 11 First there were men of wealth, possessed of ii 
 honors, silverware, slaves, and everything else; but they \ 
 greatly in debt and refused to pay. While respectable in app 
 ance, because of their money, they hoped that a revolution w( 
 free them from their creditors and yet enable them to re 
 their possessions unimpaired. Then there were the polit 
 failures, also tottering under debt, who thought that some 
 they might emerge into prominence through a state of anan 
 The third class consisted of the old soldiers settled in colo 
 all over Italy by Sulla. Coming into sudden riches, they 
 
 11 In Cat. 2, 17-23. 
 
SIX CLASSES OF MALCONTENTS 241 
 
 lived riotously for a while, imitating the great ; and now, unwill- 
 ing and perhaps unable to farm, they wished to get rid of their 
 huge debts and to acquire new wealth. Living in the country, 
 though many of them came to Rome, these veterans had 
 acquired influence among their poor neighbors, who were now 
 ready to follow their lead. Fourthly, there was both in Rome 
 and in the rest of Italy a motley crowd of debtors, who were 
 very numerous, lazy, bad managers, and extravagant. After 
 them came the murderers, cutthroats, and criminals of every 
 description, whom no prison was large enough to hold. And 
 finally, in the sixth place, were the special favorites of Catiline; 
 young men, who took great care with their hair and understood 
 the use of cosmetics. They either shaved carefully or had well- 
 trimmed beards; their tunics, like that of Verres on the Syra- 
 cusan beach, had long sleeves and reached to the heels ; they were 
 draped in filmy stuffs instead of wearing togas. Banqueting, 
 gambling, adultery, dancing, and singing were their occupa- 
 tions, but they could also brandish daggers and administer 
 .poison. 
 
 Sallust, who was a young man of twenty-three at the time 
 of the conspiracy, and who wrote a dramatic account of it twenty 
 years later, describes the conspirators in the same terms, but 
 he adds another class, the women, and thus throws a further 
 light on the moral depravity of Rome. ■ Some of the women, he 
 says, had been won over by Catiline ; they would be useful for 
 stirring up the slaves in the city and for setting fire to houses ; 
 they would gain their husbands for Catiline, or kill them. Their 
 reason for joining the conspiracy was the same as that of nearly 
 all the others — namely, debt. Among them was a certain Sem- 
 pronia. She was of noble birth, with an assured position in 
 Roman society ; her husband had been consul in 77 B.C. and her 
 son was the Decimus Brutus who afterwards conspired against 
 Caesar. She had beauty, grace, and wit. She knew Greek as 
 well as Latin ; wrote verse, sang and danced better than befitted 
 
242 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 a good woman. She was versatile, and could appear modest or 
 gentle or saucy, as the occasion demanded. But she had an evil 
 reputation; extravagance, debt, immorality, even murder were 
 mentioned in connection with her name. In fact, there was 
 nothing to which she gave less thought than to what people 
 said about her. 
 
 Catiline had made himself the leader of all these malcontents. 
 He had the ability to attract men of every kind and of every 
 age, by ministering to their vices, and involving them in crime. 
 He was brave to recklessness, had great physical strength, and 
 was as crafty as he was unprincipled. He was ruined, and had 
 been disappointed in his political ambition. After taking part 
 in the plot against the consuls of 65 B.C., he had himself sought 
 the consulship. First he had been prevented from becoming a 
 candidate, then he had been defeated by Cicero, and finally, 
 in 63 B.C., he again became a candidate. 
 
 The canvass was unusually disorderly and corrupt. Laws 
 were passed both against the hiring of gangs to escort a candi- 
 date and against bribery. Cicero himself drew up the latter 
 law, thus giving it his own name. Exile for ten years was added 
 to the former penalty. As Catiline was the only candidate 
 not of the conservative party, these laws were largely directed 
 against him, but he took no notice. He was constantly accom- 
 panied by large crowds of voters, many of whom had come 
 from the country districts, especially from Faesulae, where the 
 Sullan veteran Manlius was reported to be preparing a revolu- 
 tion; and he came freely to the meetings of the senate. Cato 
 once attacked him and threatened prosecution, to which Catiline 
 replied that if any conflagration was started against him, he 
 would put it out, not by water but by rwma — the tearing down 
 of houses. 12 There were many reports of Catiline's sayings 
 bruited about in the city at that time. At a meeting of his 
 accomplices he was supposed to have said that the only protector 
 
 12 Pro Mur. 50-52. 
 
THREATS OF VIOLENCE 243 
 
 of those who were wretched was the man who was himself 
 wretched; let them hope for nothing from the promises of those 
 who were unhurt and fortunate; their leader and standard- 
 bearer must needs be a man entirely without fear and deeply- 
 unfortunate. 
 
 While such rumors were being circulated, Cicero, on the day 
 before the date set for the consular election, persuaded the senate 
 to postpone the election in order that these matters might be 
 discussed ; and on the following day, at a large meeting, he called 
 upon Catiline for an explanation. Catiline, according to his 
 wont, made no excuses. He said there were two bodies in the 
 state ; one weak, with a shaky head ; the other strong, but without 
 a head ; and that as long as he lived, this strong body would not 
 lack a head, if it acted as it should. It was an obvious reference 
 to the conservative minority with Cicero or the consuls, but 
 really only Cicero, at their head, and the large indefinite host 
 of poor citizens, ready for a revolution, the number of whom 
 Catiline was glad to exaggerate. The senate groaned, says 
 Cicero, but took no adequate measure; some of them fearing 
 nothing and others fearing too much; and Catiline strode 
 triumphantly from the senate-house. Shortly after, the election 
 was held, 13 Cicero presiding. He was surrounded by an armed 
 guard and wore a cuirass, "broad and conspicuous;" the shining 
 cuirass was intended to inform the law-abiding citizens of the 
 dangers that threatened the consul. Catiline had plotted against 
 Cicero's life both before and after Cicero entered upon office. 
 Whether or not Catiline had planned to use violence in the 
 Campus Martius in this year, he made no attempt against Cicero ; 
 and the election was conducted without interference, to the 
 defeat of Catiline. 
 
 is The date of the postponed election is not known. The usual time 
 would have been in July, and the election may have taken place late in that 
 month. It has been put as far back as the twenty-eighth of October. If 
 that is correct, though it does not seem very likely, then Catiline had before 
 that date come to realize that he would fail at the polls and had by his 
 actions caused the senate to pass the "last decree." 
 
244 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 Catiline and his adherents were now reduced to desperation, 
 and turned definitely to violence. Since Eome had no garrison, 
 she always offered an opportunity for revolutionary measures, 
 but in this year the likelihood of a successful attack on the gov- 
 ernment seemed especially great. One of the consuls, Antony, 
 was Catiline's old friend; Cicero, on the other hand, was a 
 New man, and it could scarcely be expected that he would be 
 able to marshal against Catiline, who was an aristocrat, the united 
 support of the citizens. Nor did Catiline have any time to lose. 
 Pompey and his victorious army would soon return from the 
 East, and after that Catiline could have no hope either of becom- 
 ing consul or of succeeding as a conspirator. Caesar and Crassus, 
 who had supported Catiline as a candidate in 64 B.C., and pos- 
 sibly even in this year, 14 would no longer lend their assistance 
 to a man who could not be useful in a city dominated by the 
 presence of Pompey; and as Catiline had already failed of 
 election despite their support, he was now doomed never to reach 
 the consulship. Pompey 's army would prevent Catiline from 
 using violence. While Pompey was still away, however, Catiline 
 could at least make an attempt to overturn the government. If 
 he succeeded, there would be a few months of pandemonium in 
 Eome, during which he and his accomplices might enrich them- 
 selves; after that, they would have to leave Rome or submit 
 to Pompey. That a possible bargain with Pompey may have 
 flitted through the mind of Catiline is suggested by the report 
 that Lentulus, who later guided the conspiracy in the city, 
 planned to except Pompey 's children from the universal 
 massacre, and hold them as hostages against the great general's 
 arrival. 
 
 The burden of watching over the state fell entirely upon 
 Cicero; this year might indeed have been called the consulship 
 of Tullius and Cicero, just as 59 B.C. was called the consulship 
 
 14 Since Catiline spent a great deal of money before the election, it is 
 not impossible that Crassus was assisting him. 
 
CLOSE WATCH ON CATILINE 245 
 
 of Julius and Caesar, for Cicero's colleague did nothing. He 
 was quiescent ; perhaps all that could be expected of him. Cicero 
 had won him to inactivity, probably before the year began, by 
 yielding to him the province of Macedonia, which had been 
 assigned to Cicero for the year 62 b.c. Antony wished for 
 nothing but money, and this could be secured in Macedonia. 
 But he had been known as an intimate of Catiline. Cicero 
 therefore had announced to the senate on the first of January 
 that he himself would not go to a province; an announcement 
 that some senators may have interpreted as a sign of agreement 
 between the consuls; and he told the people a few days later 
 that he and Antony were acting together, contrary to the expec- 
 tation's of Cicero's enemies. Still later in the year Cicero 
 informed the people at a contio that he would not take a 
 province ; afterwards publishing the speech, which has been lost. 
 In the list of his consular orations it immediately precedes those 
 against Catiline, and may therefore have been delivered at a 
 time when the fear of Catiline was already abroad in Rome; 
 virtually it may have been an assertion not merely that Cicero 's 
 administration had no taint of self-seeking, but that Antony 
 no longer supported his former political associate. 
 
 Cicero's long experience in the intriguing political life of 
 Rome enabled him to keep a close watch on Catiline. In Sicily 
 Cicero had himself tracked Verres on every devious path, 
 unearthing letters, accounts, conversations, and the minutest 
 details of the governor 's private life. In Rome, during the same 
 year, his influence among the electioneering agents, though he 
 himself did not bribe, kept him informed even of the sums 
 offered by his opponents to keep him out of the aedileship. 
 Cicero had countless political and personal friends both in Rome 
 and in the rest of Italy, who at this time undoubtedly brought 
 him every bit of news that they could gather. Folly and 
 treachery among Catiline's following also played their part. A 
 certain Curius, formerly expelled from the senate, had joined 
 
246 TEE CONSULSHIP 
 
 the conspirators. He had had an old intrigue with Fulvia, 
 a woman of noble birth, but when his money was spent, Fulvia 
 lost her interest in him. Suddenly he began to boast, promising 
 "seas and mountains," and finally he revealed that a conspiracy 
 was on foot, which would enrich him. Fulvia could not keep 
 the secret ; and a little later both she and Curius were in the pay 
 of Cicero, who thus had at least one spy within the conspiracy 
 itself. Fulvia and Curius are the only persons mentioned as 
 Cicero's informants, but it does not seem improbable that there 
 were others, considering the large number of the Catilinarians 
 and the many places in which they were active. 
 
 Catiline realized that Cicero was his chief opponent, and 
 set all manner of traps for him, but Cicero was not lacking in 
 astuteness. To ward off violence, he surrounded himself with a 
 bodyguard of friends and clients; men came secretly from the 
 country districts to protect him; a group of young men from 
 Reate is mentioned by Cicero himself, though it is not certain 
 when Cicero summoned them. He was using them for various 
 purposes later in the year. His own consular lictors would have 
 been quite insufficient for protection if a riot had been started. 
 "We hear of no attack on Cicero during these months, but his 
 fears of it were doubtless well grounded. Catiline was equal to 
 the attempt and Roman politics offered countless precedents. 
 It was also part of Cicero 's aim to rouse the population of Rome 
 to a realization of the danger to the city, and this could be done 
 by his own obvious precautions against violence, as was seen 
 at the election. 
 
 Cicero's information about Catiline, however, and his 
 measures for his own safety could do nothing to prevent the 
 threatened outbreak unless he could persuade the senate to pass 
 the "last decree." Only thus would he be able to levy an army. 
 There was no military force in Rome. Meanwhile, the people 
 were being agitated by strange omens, which always appeared 
 at critical times ; and horrifying rumors were circulated. It was 
 
MASSACRE PLANNED 247 
 
 said that Catiline and his accomplices had pledged themselves 
 to crimes by drinking wine mixed with human blood, that 
 Manlius was collecting armed men in Etruria, and that other 
 emissaries of Catiline were busy in other parts of Italy. In 
 addition to an uprising of hostile citizens, there might be a repe- 
 tition of the horrors under Spartacus, though we are -told that 
 Catiline was unwilling, from first to last, to have rural slaves 
 enlisted. Nevertheless the senate refused to act, from blindness, 
 cowardice, and treachery. It would seem that such threats as 
 those already reported about Catiline would have stirred the 
 senate, but they were too familiar with invectives and alterca- 
 tions to heed the warning ; Cato 's denunciation of Catiline meant 
 little, for Cato denounced everybody who was not as pure as a 
 Stoic. The senators, furthermore, were unwilling to choose 
 Cicero for their leader; he was probably the first New man who 
 had presided over them for nearly forty years ; very few of them 
 had had so humiliating an experience before. Let him take care 
 of himself. As for Catiline, he was after all an aristocrat; he, 
 and Antony too, had been lavish in threats the year before, and 
 nothing had happened. 
 
 On the twenty-first of October Cicero stated in the senate 
 that Manlius would raise the standard of revolt on the twenty- 
 seventh and that on the following day there would be a massacre 
 of the optimates in the city. An ex-praetor also reported that 
 soldiers were collecting in Etruria and that Manlius, with a 
 large force, was going from city to city. Still another event 
 may have occurred on this day. After the senate had convened 
 that morning, at the summons of Cicero, the latter informed 
 them that he had been wakened about midnight by Crassus and 
 two other very prominent nobles, and had been told how after 
 dinner Crassus had received from his porter a packet of letters, 
 which had been left at the house by a stranger. One of the 
 letters was addressed to Crassus; the others to various men. 
 Crassus opened his, which he found to be anonymous ; it warned 
 
248 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 him of a terrible massacre to be started by Catiline, and advised 
 him to leave the city. Crassus went at once to Cicero with the 
 letters; he was overcome by the danger to the state and also 
 desirous to free himself of any suspicion that he was acting with 
 Catiline. Cicero now, in the senate, produced the unopened 
 letters and handed them to the addressees, requesting them to 
 read the missives aloud. All the letters contained the same 
 warning. 15 
 
 The senate now passed the "last decree." Two generals, 
 who had returned from foreign service, were at that time outside 
 the city waiting for triumphs; evidently they had some troops 
 with them. These two, as well as two praetors, were sent to 
 various parts of Italy to quell disturbances ; with orders to levy 
 soldiers for their need. A good beginning was thus made towards 
 checking any rising outside the city; and we are informed that 
 Manlius did declare against the government on the twenty- 
 seventh, as Cicero had foretold. Rome itself was patrolled both 
 night and day; the Palatine was amply protected; the knights 
 and others, either at once or presently, guarded the meetings 
 of the senate ; and Cicero 's own armed followers seem to have 
 been increased, for it is reported that after the declaration of 
 martial law they almost filled the forum. The gladiators in the 
 city, trained fighters and therefore most likely to become danger- 
 ous allies of Catiline, were sent to Capua and other municipalities. 
 Rewards were offered for information about the conspiracy. 
 Slaves were to receive their freedom and one hundred sestertia, 
 about five thousand dollars ; free men, impunity and double that 
 sum. Many prominent men left Rome either as soon as the 
 ' ' last decree ' ' had been passed, or, at any rate, before the twenty- 
 eighth, the date set for the massacre — "not so much to save 
 their own lives as to thwart Catiline's plans," as Cicero dis- 
 
 1 5 It has been surmised, apparently with reason, that Cieero sent these 
 letters in order to influence the senate and to force Crassus to choose between 
 the state and Catiline. Crassus was suspected of being one of the con- 
 spirators. See below, p. 278. 
 
"LAST DECREE' • PASSED 249 
 
 ereetly put it. The effect on the city was profound. The old 
 happy life ceased; people no longer dared to loiter in public 
 places; everywhere there was distrust and apprehension; the 
 women were terror-stricken ; and private citizens protected their 
 houses with guards. The law-abiding members of the community 
 now recognized Cicero as their champion, whether they were 
 senators, knights, or ordinary citizens ; and it may be said that 
 a beginning had been made of a new party, as it were, which 
 included men from every class. There was what Cicero called a 
 great consensio among all good men, boni; the senate had at last 
 bestirred itself, acting through the consul. 
 
 V 
 The First and Second Catilinaeians 
 
 Very much had thus been gained, but not everything. 
 Though Manlius raised the standard of revolt and even wrote a 
 long letter of defiant explanation to the Roman general sent to 
 Etruria, Catiline and his fellow-conspirators had not been caught 
 in an overt act. The day set for the massacre in the city passed 
 without accident ; Cicero had obviously succeeded in averting the 
 slaughter, but Catiline was also enabled to retain his appearance 
 of innocence. A similar situation arose in connection with 
 Praeneste, a town twenty miles from Rome, strategically one 
 of the most important places in Latium. Catiline had planned 
 to seize it on the first of November; he abandoned his attempt 
 when he found that Cicero's men already held the town in suf- 
 ficient force; and, as a result, no new evidence was furnished. 
 At this time, a certain L. Paulus threatened to prosecute Catiline 
 for public violence, and Catiline at once made use of this oppor- 
 tunity to pose as a harmless citizen suffering from unjust perse- 
 cution. He offered himself for voluntary arrest, first to an 
 ex-consul, then to Cicero, then to one of the praetors, all of whom 
 
250 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 refused to take him into their houses ; and at last, successfully, 
 to a certain Q. Metellus, whom Cicero calls Catiline's boon 
 companion. 
 
 Cicero 's position was one of great difficulty. There were 
 still men in the senate who supported Catiline, as Cicero himself 
 told that body in his First Catilinarum, a few days later; and 
 nobody could know, not even Cicero, how many of the people 
 were ready to join a sudden outbreak. By virtue of the "last 
 decree" Cicero might have punished Catiline by exile or by 
 death, and some demanded this; but such a course of action 
 would have been perilous in a city honeycombed with treachery, 
 the more because of Catiline's adroit voluntary detention, which 
 in effect proclaimed that he was innocent and ready to stand 
 trial. A trial, however, was out of the question; the city was 
 seething, and Cicero could not have produced witnesses of a 
 reputation much above that of Curius, the expelled senator, and 
 Fulvia, his notorious mistress. Nor was Catiline the only prob- 
 lem in the city. As subsequent events showed, there were enough 
 desperate men in Rome to attempt murder and arson even if Cati- 
 line were eliminated. Nothing, therefore, was left for Cicero to 
 do except to keep a close watch and to prevent actual violence: 
 either Catiline and the other conspirators would grow weary and 
 perhaps leave the city, after which they could readily be disposed 
 of in the open field, or else they would commit some act that 
 would brand them as public enemies. 
 
 To Catiline the situation was becoming unbearable ; he decided 
 to leave the city and join Manlius. It is conceivable that he 
 thought he might best advance his cause by taking command of 
 the forces in Etruria, though Manlius was an old fighter ; but it 
 seems more likely that he found himself so watched and ham- 
 pered by Cicero that he despaired of accomplishing anything in 
 Rome. His plan included an attempt to set the city on fire, and 
 it is at least very suggestive that Catiline, who had thus far 
 directed the conspiracy within the capital, should suddenly 
 
CATILINE TO LEAVE BOME 251 
 
 decide to go away at the very moment when the great blow was 
 to be struck. Though under arrest, he moved about according to 
 his needs. He held a meeting of some of his accomplices on the 
 night between the sixth and seventh of November, at the house 
 of a certain Laeca in the scythemakers ' street. He explained 
 that he intended to join Manlius at once, and chose the men he 
 would take with him ; he indicated to what other places in Italy 
 certain other conspirators were to go; and he made final plans 
 for burning the city. All this could be made effective if the 
 state was first thrown into confusion by the murder of Cicero; 
 Catiline therefore said he would leave Rome as soon as Cicero 
 was out of the way. The conspirators were staggered by the 
 difficulty of the proposed assassination ; fear was expressed, and 
 hesitation. Two men, however, volunteered to go to Cicero's 
 house before daybreak on that very morning, accompanied by 
 armed associates, and, joining in the crowd of early callers, at 
 the salutatio, to fall upon the consul; "to despatch me in my 
 bed," says Cicero dramatically, "before the very eyes of my 
 wife and children. ' ' , 
 
 Cicero learned of the plan, through Fulvia, almost before the 
 meeting at Laeca 's came to an end. He increased the guards 
 at his house and even had time to inform some prominent men 
 of the plot against his life. "When the assassins arrived, they 
 were refused admittance; and it seems probable that Cicero's 
 prominent friends were present to witness their discomfiture. 
 
 The senate met on the eighth, though there is some reason 
 for thinking it was on the seventh, possibly in the afternoon. 
 The results of this meeting were such as nobody could have 
 foreseen. There had been many meetings for the purpose of 
 discussing Catiline ; serious accusations had been hurled at the 
 conspirator, and he still went about unmolested. The senate 
 were gathered in the temple of Jupiter Stator; outside were 
 knights and other citizens, some of whom, at least, served as a 
 guard. Shouts were heard from these, and presently Catiline 
 
252 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 and some of his friends entered the senate. It is not knowr 
 whether the proceedings had already begun, nor exactly whal 
 took place throughout the meeting. There was a hush when 
 Catiline entered; his colleagues did not greet him; and aftei 
 he had taken his seat, those in his vicinity drew away, noticeably 
 all the men of consular rank. It would seem that his presence 
 had not been expected; possibly he had avoided the senatorial 
 meetings of late. Perhaps, too, Cicero had already had time to 
 describe the meeting at Laeca 's house and its results. Something, 
 whatever it may have been, had changed the attitude of the 
 senate, at least for the moment. Sallust informs us that Cati- 
 line 's appearance filled Cicero with fear or with anger ; he does 
 not know which; and that Cicero then "delivered that oration, 
 an excellent one and useful to the state, which he later wrote 
 out and published" — the First Oration against Catiline. Sallust 
 also describes the reply that Catiline made, interrupted by the 
 senators; whereas Plutarch makes it appear that Catiline 
 attempted to defend himself before Cicero spoke, but was 
 silenced with shouts. Cicero's own speech refers to certain 
 demands of Catiline, as though the latter interrupted the con- 
 sul, but such references are sometimes found in Cicero 's orations 
 without a foundation in actual fact; they may have been added 
 at the time of publication. In all probability, the meeting was 
 one of much confusion. Catiline more than once interrupted 
 Cicero in an attempt to clear himself, but Cicero finally secured 
 the attention of the assembly and delivered an attack on Catiline. 
 Cicero spoke under the impulse of a sudden and very strong 
 emotion. It could not have been fear, for there was nothing 
 about Catiline's presence in the senate to inspire fear; it was 
 anger, a wrathful consternation at Catiline's impudence and 
 an angry impatience with the stupidity and the treachery among 
 the senators that had for so long made Catiline 's brazen specious- 
 ness possible. Cicero turns first against Catiline, passionately 
 demanding to what lengths he thinks he can go and declaring 
 
ATTACK ON CATILINE 253 
 
 that both precedent and the existing circumstances justify his 
 death, for which many have long clamored. Then he begins to 
 review Catiline's various revolutionary attempts; but suddenly 
 he breaks off to exclaim against the traitors sitting before his 
 very eyes, whom he knows to be worthy of death, and against 
 whom nevertheless he has not until the present moment uttered 
 even an angry word. 
 
 When Cicero began to speak, he probably did not know 
 exactly what he would say; but as he proceeded, the resolve 
 grew within him that he would make a supreme attempt to dispel 
 the atmosphere of mystery, treachery, and threats under which 
 the city had so long labored, that he would present the issue 
 with such clearness and such force that it would admit of no 
 further evasions. He declares open war against Catiline and 
 his secret supporters; and he does not even give the latter an 
 opportunity for debate. • ' ' Lay the matter before the senate, ' ' 
 Catiline had said; but Cicero replies that he will not lay the 
 matter before the senate. Without a formal reference to them, 
 he will make clear to Catiline what the senate thinks; and he 
 orders Catiline to leave the city, thus forcing the treacherous 
 senators either to interrupt him for the purpose of defending 
 Catiline, which they did not have the courage to do, or else for- 
 ever after to say nothing in his favor. Cicero does not, as consul, 
 formally send Catiline into exile, as he might have done, for that 
 would have given Catiline's supporters an opportunity to repre- 
 sent the latter as a victim of persecution. But he tells Catiline 
 that there is no room for him in Rome. Let him go into exile, if 
 he wishes to rouse the people against Cicero ; or let him go to 
 Manlius, as he had prepared to do — and Cicero gives a minute 
 account of Catiline's plans that must have astounded and terri- 
 fied both Catiline and his friends. If Catiline had gone into 
 voluntary exile, that would have been an admission of defeat, 
 and the conspiracy would probably have melted away; but 
 Cicero did not expect this. If Catiline should leave to join Man- 
 
254 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 lius, Cicero's revelations of the completeness with which the 
 conspirators were watched would perhaps lead them to accom- 
 pany Catiline, and the city would be free ; in the field, they would 
 not be nearly so dangerous. This was what Cicero aimed at: 
 to force the senate into uncompromising opposition to Catiline, 
 and to get the conspirators to leave the city and openly declare 
 themselves to be enemies of the state. 
 
 One of these aims was accomplished at once, the unification 
 of the senate. Sallust says that Catiline, rising to reply, spoke 
 first like one unjustly accused: he was of a noble family and 
 had always looked forward to a career worthy of a patrician; 
 both he and his family had served the nation well; let no one 
 think that he, a man of high birth, had need for the sake of 
 advancement to bring destruction upon the state and that its 
 defense must be undertaken by M. Tullius, a sojourner in the 
 city. This was the old rag of an argument which had been used 
 against Cicero at the consular election and which had doubtless 
 served many times since then to make the senate hesitate. But 
 for the moment it had lost its appeal; when Catiline tried to 
 add further insults, the senators drowned his voice with their 
 shouts, calling him a public enemy and the assassin, of his 
 country. Then, still according to Sallust, he became enraged 
 and, rushing out of the temple, shouted that since his enemies 
 were recklessly pushing him on, he would extinguish the con- 
 flagration started against him by tearing down the houses about 
 their ears — ruina. Though these words have already been quoted 
 from Catiline 's altercation with Cato, he may well have uttered 
 them again; they expressed the attitude he was assuming, that 
 he was forced into conspiring; and a violent parting threat was 
 in accordance with his character. Cicero wrote in the Oraior, 
 some seventeen years later, that Catiline was struck dumb by his 
 attack, but the word used by Cicero, obmutuit, is too vague to be 
 pressed ; Catiline argued no further. Whatever may have been 
 the nature of Catiline's departure from the senate, the senators 
 
CONSPIBATOBS BEMAIN 255 
 
 were now as unanimously behind Cicero as this captious body 
 ever could be behind any one. There was now in Rome a union 
 of the orders — concordia ordinnm. 
 
 One thing else was accomplished. Late that night Catiline 
 left Rome with a few followers, still watched by Cicero's men, 
 who saw him take the Aurelian road, which led to Etruria; he 
 had sent soldiers ahead to wait for him at Porum Aurelium, 
 fifty miles out of Rome. 16 The conspirator did not go as he 
 had planned, at his own volition and with the government thrown 
 into confusion by the murder of the consul. To the people of 
 Rome it was evident that Catiline had been outmaneuvered ; they 
 might hope that Cicero had the conspiracy well in hand. 
 
 But the large body of conspirators were still in Rome, left 
 by Catiline to do what they could. This was the thought upper- 
 most in Cicero's mind when he addressed the people on the fol- 
 lowing day; in the Second Oration against Catiline. He gives 
 an extremely vivid picture of the expelled criminal : he now lies 
 prostrate ; he knows that he has been overwhelmed and is undone ; 
 often he turns his eyes toward Rome, grieving because it has 
 been torn from his jaws. It is the description of a baffled wild 
 beast, suggestive to the English reader of Milton's lines about 
 Satan : 
 
 ... lie with his horrid crew 
 
 Lay vanquished. . . . 
 
 . . . round he throws his baleful eyes, 
 
 That witnessed huge affliction and dismay 
 
 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
 
 Cicero also describes, briefly, the meeting in the senate on the 
 previous day ; justifies his seeming leniency toward Catiline and 
 reveals his knowledge of the conspiracy ^ as he had done to the 
 senators, pointing out that Catiline is now an open enemy — 
 
 is Three hundred men accompanied Catiline when he left Borne, accord- 
 ing to Plutarch, who may have been thinking of the soldiers at Forum 
 Aurelium. 
 
256 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 unless he should go into exile, as his friends still maintained, but 
 which Cicero declares to be inconceivable. The conspirators 
 still in Rome, however, are his chief topic. He divides all the 
 followers of Catiline into the six classes already mentioned, 
 characterizing each, and shows how they are all bankrupts or 
 criminals, not to be compared to the might of Rome; but he 
 nevertheless asks the people to remember that those who have not 
 gone with Catiline are very dangerous, more so than his army. 
 They still flit about the forma; surround the senate-house, and 
 even enter it ; they shine with ointments and are brilliant in their 
 purple cloaks. They are not a match for the law-abiding Romans 
 — and yet let them go out! The gates are open, and no one 
 will hinder their departure. Catiline has gone by the Aurelian 
 road and is only a little way ahead; they can overtake him 
 before evening if they hasten. If they remain, let them beware; 
 for the city has patriots to apprehend them and a prison to 
 hold them. As for the peaceful citizens, they must still guard 
 their houses. But the conspirators remained. 
 
 Catiline, in the meantime, was traveling northward. He 
 sent letters to most of the consulars, in which he complained that 
 he had been falsely accused and was going to Massilia as an exile. 
 Catulus, however, the leader of the senate, read to that body 
 another kind of a missive, which he claimed to have received 
 from him. In that, Catiline expressed his determination to 
 champion the cause of the many, inasmuch as he himself had been 
 cheated out of his well-earned honors by the election of unworthy 
 men — the old cry about the sojourner in Rome! After a few 
 days, Catiline surrounded himself with the lictors of a consul and 
 assumed the other consular insignia; with them he entered the 
 camp of Manlius. This meant war. The senate declared Cati- 
 line and Manlius public enemies, and directed the consuls to levy 
 an army; Cicero was to stay in Rome, while Antony set out 
 to meet the rebels. The state's pardon was offered to those who 
 would lay down their arms by a certain day, unless they had 
 
SULPICWS 257 
 
 already been condemned for a capital crime; but no one left 
 Catiline's camp. Some joined it, who had not previously been 
 in the conspiracy; the son of a senator, who attempted to reach 
 Catiline, was brought back and executed at the bidding of his 
 father. But possibly the proclamation of amnesty was not 
 entirely fruitless. In the Be Fvwibus 17 Cicero says that many 
 came and confessed voluntarily during his consulship ; they must 
 have been Catilinarians. 
 
 VI 
 MUEENA 
 
 The first real encounter with the conspirators had thus come 
 to an end; Catiline was out of the city; he and Manlius had 
 been declared public enemies, and armies had been despatched 
 against them. It was a substantial victory for Cicero and the 
 government. The importance of it is indicated by the publica- 
 tion of the first two orations against Catiline, for it is worth 
 noting that Cicero published none of the many speeches against 
 Catiline that he must have delivered during the preceding 
 months ; not even the one which led to the declaration of martial 
 law. Cicero obviously felt that the first real blow was struck 
 when he drove Catiline into open warfare; the "last decree," 
 as he said, had until then been like a sword in its scabbard. But 
 the victory was not decisive. There was little fear in Rome of 
 the rebel army, at least so Cicero represents, but there was much 
 fear of the conspirators who were still in the city. In the mean- 
 time Cicero had to meet a new danger. 
 —-^Sulpicius, the jurisconsult, who has been mentioned as one of 
 the gretest lawyers of Rome, had been a candidate for the con- 
 sulship during the recent campaign. He was an honorable man. 
 Finding that things were going against him, largely because of 
 bribery, he announced even before the election that he would 
 
 « De Fin. 1, 50. 
 
258 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 prosecute his successful rival, Murena; and Cato, ever just, 
 seconded him. Now, in November, the case came to trial. The 
 situation was extremely serious, for a verdict of guilty would 
 mean a new election with all that that implied of campaign 
 oratory, the activities of clubs, and possibly of armed gangs, and 
 every other kind of excitement, all of which would have given 
 an excellent opportunity to the lurking conspirators. Sulpicius 
 and Cato should have seen this, but the honest Sulpicius was 
 smarting under his defeat and was, indeed, at no time a very 
 forceful or clear-sighted public servant, as later years showed, 
 and Cato, in his virtuous rigidity, was always stalking in where 
 angels feared to tread. Crassus, perhaps anxious to prove him- 
 self a champion of order and stability, was one of the speakers 
 for the defense; the others were Hortensius, naturally enough 
 as an aristocrat, and Cicero, who again, as in the early months 
 of his consulship, had to fight the legal battles of the state 
 while he was also its executive and guardian against violence. 
 
 Cicero's position was disagreeable. He was a friend of 
 Sulpicius and had supported his candidacy, while he was on 
 no terms of intimacy with Murena ; he had framed the latest law 
 against electoral corruption; and he had himself won advance- 
 ment honorably, as Sulpicius and Cato insisted that it should 
 be won, pointing out, in the manner of Roman litigants, that 
 this was no case for Cicero. It is also practically certain that 
 Murena had bribed, though this can only be inferred from the 
 honesty of the prosecutors; Cicero spoke last and did not go 
 deeply into the facts of the bribery, which had been discussed 
 by the other speakers, nor does Cicero's oration contain even 
 the little that he said. That part of the speech is represented 
 by headings. 
 
 It is not possible to go into the details of this wonderful 
 oration. The trial was not one of the most important or most 
 difficult in which Cicero pleaded, and the speech is therefore 
 not one of his greatest; but it is one of his best. It is witty, 
 
JUBIST VERSUS SOLDIER 259 
 
 sarcastic, serious, and impassioned ; it exemplifies, perhaps, every 
 one of his purely oratorical qualities except those of burning 
 denunciation, dramatic narrative, and great pathos; and it con- 
 tains numerous observations that throw light both on the persons 
 concerned in the trial and on Roman circumstances and conven- 
 tions. One of the latter should be mentioned. The prosecutors 
 had attacked the private life of Murena, as was incumbent on 
 them, but, finding little to criticise, they had said that he 
 danced. It is a grave accusation, Cicero observes, to say that a 
 Eoman consul dances; nobody dances if he is sober unless he 
 be insane, and nobody dances when he is by himself or at an 
 inoffensive gathering. And more to the same purpose. 
 
 Cicero's sarcasm is never better than when it is directed 
 against his friends; it then seems to suggest what his daily 
 conversation may have been. He was fond of Sulpicius and 
 he remained fond of him till the end, but he had good reason 
 for annoyance with his friend's inopportune honesty, which was 
 willing, when prompted by personal disappointment, to expose 
 the state to confusion and anarchy. 
 
 Sulpicius was a great jurist and Murena was a soldier. 
 
 Cicero therefore informs his friend that nobody is so popular 
 
 with the people as a military man ; a jurist is nowhere. He gets 
 
 up early to give replies to clients, the general to set out with 
 
 his army; he is wakened by the roosters, and the soldier by 
 
 the trumpet ; Sulpicius draws up documents, and Murena draws 
 
 up battle lines. And in many other ways they differ. Now, 
 
 the only one that can be compared with a soldier is an orator, 
 
 but by no means a jurisconsult. Indeed, it is well known that 
 
 in Rome some people who have failed in oratory are actually 
 
 devoting themselves to the study of law. 
 
 ' Nor is law a difficult subject to master; Cicero himself, if 
 
 i hard pressed, might do it in a day or two. There is not much 
 
 -: to it; it is a thin sort of science, mostly words and punctuation. 
 
 i For a long time the chosen few kept it to themselves, and were 
 
260 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 consulted by the people as if they were wise men from the East, 
 Chaldaeans, interpreters of dreams, and that sort of thing. Then 
 an ordinary scribbler- — Cn. Flavius was his name, a sharp fellow 
 — told the people on what days it was right to go to the courts, 
 and he also made some notes from observation of actual trials; 
 so he stole the whole legal science and made it accessible to 
 everybody. And what did the jurists do? They set to work 
 to make things intricate, so that nobody should undertake cases 
 without their aid. For instance, if two men should lay claim 
 to the same Sabine farm, one might say plainly: It-is mine; and 
 the other might retort: No, it is mine; and then they could go 
 before a judge. Now, however, after the jurists have been at it, 
 one must say : This farm, which is in the country which is called 
 Sabine, I, in accordance with the legal rights of a Roman citizen, 
 claim to be mine, and for that reason I call you from the praetor's 
 tribunal to join hands with me on the said farm; to which the 
 other, prompted by the jurisconsult as if he were a singer in 
 the theater accompanied by a flute-player, must reply: For the 
 same reason as you called me .from the praetor's tribunal to 
 join hands with you, for that same reason I call you in turn. 
 And the poor praetor has no chance for a little eloquence, if he 
 should happen to think of something clever; he must say — but 
 it is not necessary to go through the whole scene, which Cicero 
 doubtless acted with flawless skill. 
 
 Sulpicius might object that he had at least stayed in the 
 forum, whereas Murena had been away; but Cicero, though 
 admitting the value of keeping within the vision of the electors, 
 confesses that people get tired of looking at a man ; Cicero him- 
 self has overcome their weariness by working hard for them, and 
 so perhaps has Sulpicius; but it is none the less true that it 
 would not have hurt either of them to be missed a little— a 
 remark that should be put side by side with Cicero 's account of 
 the lesson he learned at Puteoli, which has been made the subject 
 of many solemn observations. 
 
CATO THE STOIC 261 
 
 Murena had fought under Lucullus in the East, and Cato 
 had said that fighting against Mithradates was like fighting 
 against women; which gave Cicero the opportunity for a few 
 remarks about the services of Lucullus, who was present in 
 court, and about Pompey. Thereupon Cicero turns to Cato, 
 prefacing his remarks with the statement that he is less afraid 
 of Cato's charges than of his reputation for honesty. He does 
 not dare, he says, to find fault with his adversary, but there is 
 perhaps one respect in which Cato could be improved. Since he 
 is not speaking before the untutored many, or before a gathering 
 of farmers, he will say a few words, somewhat rashly, about the 
 studies to which both Cato and Cicero himself have devoted 
 themselves. There are people called Stoics, he then explains. 
 They say that a wise man is never influenced by gratitude or a 
 desire to please, gratia, and that he never pardons a wrong; 
 that pity is found only in those who are stupid or of no great 
 account ; that a real man can not be bent from his purpose ; that 
 only wise men, however distorted, are beautiful; however poor, 
 rich; if they are in slavery, still they are kings; that the rest 
 of us, who are not wise, are no better than runaway slaves, exiles, 
 enemies, and madmen; that all wrongs are alike, every little 
 peccadillo a heinous crime, so that he who kills a chicken, when 
 there is no need of it, is as guilty as the man who chokes his 
 own father to death; and 'finally that the wise man, since he 
 knows, does not opine, regrets nothing, makes no mistake, never 
 changes his mind. 
 
 After this account of the Stoic wise man, Cicero observes 
 that Cato has not learned their doctrines for the purposes of 
 debate, but to live by. Cicero admits that he, too, turned in 
 his youth to philosophy, distrusting his intuitions, but that his 
 teachers, the followers of Plato and Aristotle, are moderate men ; 
 Cato might have listened to them, and yet have been brave and 
 just. But it is to be hoped, Cicero concludes, that experience. 
 
262 TEE CONSULSHIP 
 
 and added years will have a mellowing influence. Cato was 
 eleven years younger than Cicero, thirty- two at this time; but 
 he never changed. 
 
 Sulpicius lost his case, but not solely because of the consul's 
 pleasantries. These had served to remind the jurors that the 
 prosecutors, though honorable men, were too fond of moral hair- 
 splitting, a thing that had no place in the excited forum. While 
 the jurymen were still merry, Cicero suddenly sobered them 
 by turning to the dangers they had just escaped, through the 
 expulsion of Catiline, and the dangers that were still threatening 
 from the conspirators in the city. The thought had never been 
 far away during the earlier parts of the oration, giving substance 
 to Cicero's jests, but now it rises to ringing eloquence. Cicero's 
 year of service is nearly ended; let them not throw the state 
 into the anarchy of a new election. The opposition to law and 
 order, while mostly crouching in the dark, has the effrontery 
 even to utter its shouts of subversion in the forum. On the very 
 day before Murena's trial, Cicero recalls to his hearers, a tribune 
 of the people had dared to preach sedition at a public meeting, 
 and had been opposed by several champions of order, among 
 them Cato himself. 
 
 VII 
 The Third Catilinarian 
 
 Meanwhile the conspirators in the city were making detailed 
 plans. One of the tribunes was to hold a contio, in which he 
 would attack Cicero as the cause of the terrible war impending 
 between Catiline and the state. Indeed, it had already begun, 
 for conspirators in various parts of Italy, "acting individually 
 and in madness," had already resorted to hostilities and had 
 been checked by Metellus Celer and the consul-elect's namesake 
 C. Murena; but these uprisings were a source of terror rather 
 
A NEW PLOT 263 
 
 than of real danger. The meeting called by the tribune was 
 probably to be prolonged until evening, and was to be the sign 
 for concerted action. In the night two of the conspirators, with 
 a great band of helpers, were to set the city on fire in twelve 
 places. There were one hundred men assigned to this, each with 
 his definite sphere of action, and others had been detailed to 
 stop up the aqueducts and to kill those who should bring water 
 to extinguish the flames. With the city in the chaos of universal 
 conflagration, access would be easier, it was thought, to Cicero 
 and the other leading men marked for death. Cethegus him- 
 self, the most dangerous and impetuous of the conspirators, was 
 to be with his men at Cicero's door; other assassins had been 
 appointed each for his man; the young patricians in the con- 
 spiracy, of whom there were many, were to despatch their 
 fathers. Nobody was to be spared, says Plutarch, except the sons 
 of Pompey. When the systematic murders had been perpe- 
 trated and while Rome was still burning, the conspirators were 
 to break forth from the city and join Catiline, who would be 
 near with his army, ready to follow up the bloody advantage. 
 All this was to occur during the Saturnalia, the time of the great 
 annual carnival, when the doors were usually left unguarded 
 and the slaves, free for the short season, made up in license and 
 holiday-making for the long year of servitude. 
 
 It was an excellent plan, worked out to the last detail, but it 
 had one fatal flaw; and this reveals the absence of Catiline's 
 guiding hand. While he was in Rome, as Cicero puts it, all the 
 threads of the conspiracy were held by him ; he knew everybody 
 and directed everything; he not only delegated work to others, 
 but he saw that it was done, always ready himself to step in. 
 With Catiline gone, there was no one leader. Chief among the 
 conspirators was Lentulus, who was of advanced age. He had 
 been consul in 71 B.C., and, having later been expelled from 
 the senate, he was now praetor ; he was slothful and superstitious. 
 But he was a Cornelius, and it had been prophesied by the 
 
264 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 Sibylline books, which prophesied anything, that there would 
 be three Cornelii who would rule Rome. Cinna and Sulla had 
 been Cornelii; Lentulus was obviously the third. It was twenty 
 years, moreover, since the Capitol had been burned, in 83 B.C., 
 whether by the Marians under Carbo or by emissaries of Sulla; 
 and it was ten years since the acquittal of the Vestal Virgins, in 
 73 B.C., perhaps when Cicero's sister-in-law was involved with 
 Catiline; both of which events indicated, by Etruscan reliance 
 on decimals, that 63 b.c. was the fated year for Cornelius Lentu- 
 lus. Lentulus prevailed upon the conspirators to have the 
 massacre and burning take place at the Saturnalia, a very suit- 
 able time except that it was three weeks off, and much might 
 happen in the meantime, considering Cicero's vigilance. Cethe- 
 gus, on the other hand, insisted that the situation required 
 ' ' deeds and not plans ; " if only a few would assist him, he would 
 make an attack on the senate-house; but Cethegus could not 
 secure a following. 
 
 The conspirators made one other mistake. Not satisfied with 
 managing matters in the city, they thought themselves capable 
 of looking after things on the outside as well ; of assisting Cati- 
 line, indeed, as if he needed their blundering help. Some envoys 
 from the Gallic Allobroges happened to be in Rome ; two of them, 
 we are told, but these obviously had large retinues, as is seen 
 in the account of their later departure from Rome. They had 
 come to see about debts, public as well as private, and were not 
 in a very friendly mood to the Roman government. The Gauls, 
 furthermore, were constitutionally bellicose; they had often 
 given Rome trouble and at this time, says Cicero, were the only 
 people who could make war on the Romans and who were not 
 unwilling to do so. To Lentulus and his accomplices, debating 
 over their wine and with their women beside them, the presence 
 of the Allobroges seemed providential. A war might be stirred 
 up in Gaul, which would ease the pressure on Catiline and Man- 
 lius, and cavalry might actually be sent as an auxiliary to the 
 
,, THE ALLOBROGES 265 
 
 Catilinarian army. The conspirators therefore approached the 
 envoys, through a certain freedman, Umbrenus, who had done 
 business among the Gauls and who knew their prominent men. 
 Umbrenus succeeded in bringing the envoys to the house of the 
 clever Sempronia, whose husband was away, and there they were 
 met by Gabinius, a conspirator. The latter talked about the 
 wide extent of the conspiracy, claiming allegiance from many 
 who had nothing to do with it ; he set forth his plans for Gallic 
 interference, and he made great promises. 
 
 At this juncture — according to Sallust, and also to Cicero, 
 whom the historian is probably copying here as in many other 
 places — Rome was saved by providence. The Gauls decided to 
 refer the matter to their patron, Sanga; and the latter immedi- 
 ately communicated with Cicero. The Gauls, therefore, put 
 themselves at the consul's disposal. Acting in accordance with 
 his orders, they made a fine pretence of enthusiasm to the con- 
 spirators, but insisted that their compatriots at home could be 
 persuaded only if the envoys brought them letters, that is, prom- 
 ises confirmed by oath, from Rome. The day of their departure 
 homeward was set for the second of December. Letters to the 
 men at home were given by Lentulus, Cethegus, and a third 
 conspirator; a fourth, Cassius, when approached, said he would 
 give them his letter shortly, and he then left Rome. Lentulus 
 appointed a certain Volturcius to accompany the Gauls, and to 
 take them to Catiline for further confirmation of the excellent 
 pact. Lentulus also gave Volturcius an oral message for Cati- 
 line — everything was ready in the city ; let Catiline come quickly ; 
 since he had been proclaimed a public enemy, why did he hesitate 
 to enroll the slaves in the country districts? — and he added to 
 the oral message a letter of much the same purport : ' ' Who I am 
 you will learn from him whom I have sent to you. See that you 
 be a man ; consider how far you have gone already. Make plans 
 for everything that is necessary, and get help from all sources, 
 even the slaves." 
 
266 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 On the second of December Cicero summoned two praetors 
 to his house, L. Flaccus and C. Pomptinus; 18 brave men, says 
 Cieero, and devoted to the state. Cicero explained the whole 
 situation, apparently knowing exactly when the Gauls would 
 depart, and ordered the praetors to arrest them at the Mulvian 
 bridge, which was a little less than two miles north of Rome, on 
 the Flaminian Way. The praetors took armed men with them, 
 none of whom knew the real nature of the undertaking; they 
 were also assisted by several picked men from Reate, sent by 
 Cicero. They arrived at the bridge toward nightfall, and hid 
 themselves in the farmhouses on either side of the river. Toward 
 three in the morning the Allobroges, with Volturcius and a large 
 retinue, began to cross the bridge. Cicero's men rushed from 
 their hiding places with loud shouts; swords were drawn, and 
 used. Apparently the envoys had not been informed as to what 
 would happen, another indication of Cicero "s marvellous mastery 
 of detail, but now they quickly realized the situation and sur- 
 rendered to the praetors. Volturcius defended himself for a 
 while and urged the others to resist, but, finding that the Gauls 
 had deserted him, he too gave up his sword. 
 
 The praetors took both the arrested men and the letters 
 directly to Cicero's house, arriving by daybreak. The latter 
 sent for Gabinius, who had made the arrangement with the 
 Gauls, and he came at once, suspecting nothing; the writers 
 of the letters were thereupon summoned one after the other, 
 and they obeyed the summons, the indolent Lentulus arriving 
 last. One of the conspirators, Caeparius, who was not at home 
 when Cicero's messenger arrived, fled from the city. Many 
 prominent men in the meantime had gathered at Cicero 's house ; 
 perhaps they had been notified by him, as on the morning after 
 the meeting at Laeca's; perhaps the city was already stirred 
 by the news that the consul had sent for certain men suspected 
 of conspiring. Cicero's advisers urged him to open the letters; 
 
 is Flaccus was later defended by Cicero in a lawsuit. Pomptinus accom- 
 panied Cicero to Cilicia; see below, pp. 309, 467-468. 
 
THE ABMEST 267 
 
 it might seem overanxious, they thought, to bring them to the 
 senate in case they should prove to contain nothing of impor- 
 tance; but Cicero decided for full publicity. The senate was 
 called to meet in the temple of Concord, and they came together 
 in large numbers, watched by the people in the forum. A praetor 
 was sent to the house of Cethegus, where he found a large supply 
 of swords and daggers, newly sharpened. The conspirators were 
 taken to the senatorial meeting under a heavy guard; Cicero 
 "leading by the hand" Lentulus, who was still a praetor. As 
 the conspirators and the witnesses against them crossed the 
 forum, the people who had gathered saw also that workmen were 
 setting up a statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the guardian 
 of the city. 
 
 The investigation in the senate was begun with Volturcius, 
 who was brought in alone. He was so overcome by fright that 
 he could scarcely speak. At first he tried to lie, pretending 
 ignorance of the conspiracy and giving a fanciful account of his 
 connection with the Gallic envoys. When the senate promised 
 him immunity, he revealed everything he knew, with the expla- 
 nation, however, that he had been employed by the conspirators 
 only a few days ago and really was no better informed than 
 the Gauls themselves. The latter were then called, and described 
 their relations with the conspirtaors ; even mentioning Lentulus ' 
 prophesies, which may have strongly influenced the superstitious 
 barbarians. The reckless folly of the conspirators was shown 
 by the fact that the envoys had knowledge about the disagree- 
 ment between Cethegus and the other conspirators; apparently 
 the Gauls had been admitted to the meetings of the plotters. 
 
 The conspirators were then summoned ; one at a time, it seems, 
 but all those who had already been examined remaining. The 
 letters, still sealed, were brought out. Cethegus, the first to be 
 questioned, acknowledged his seal; the letter was opened — the 
 string was cut, as Cicero more explicitly expresses it — and the 
 letter was read aloud. It was addressed to the senate of the 
 
268 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 Allobroges, and was in Cethegus' handwriting; he promised in 
 it that he would fulfill his part of the bargain and he urged the 
 Allobroges to do the same. Before the letter was read, Cethegus 
 had explained, in reference to the arms found in his house, that 
 he had always been a collector of choice weapons; now he no 
 longer insisted on this. Statilius came next; he acknowledged 
 his seal and his handwriting, and when the letter had been read 
 made a full confession. "With Lentulus, the ex-consul and 
 praetor, whose examination followed, .more ceremony was 
 observed. After he had acknowledged his seal, which was the 
 image of his grandfather, Cicero said a solemn word about the 
 latter; he had been a great patriot, first as consul and then as 
 leader of the senate. Cicero 's backward glance may seem a little 
 strange to a modern reader; but it could not fail of effect 
 with the senate, who were always living in the presence of their 
 great ancestors. "This image, though mute," said Cicero, 
 "ought to have held you back from this great crime." When 
 Lentulus' letter had been read, he was given an opportunity to 
 speak. At first he denied everything; presently he rose and 
 began to question the Gauls, and then Volturcius. He was gifted 
 as a speaker, says Cicero, and had had much experience. But 
 he could not shake the testimony either of the envoys or of Vol- 
 turcius. Suddenly, to the surprise of all present, he confessed. 
 Volturcius then asked for the reading of the letter that Lentulus 
 had given him for Catiline, and the anonymous missive was read. 
 Finally, Gabinius was summoned. It was he who had made 
 arrangements with the Gauls. He answered brazenly at first, but 
 after a while he too confessed. 
 
 When the examination had been finished, says Cicero, the 
 conspirators remained silent and dazed; they kept their eyes on 
 the ground, only occasionally looking up and exchanging furtive 
 glances; their manner was in itself a confession of guilt. 
 
 The senate, without a dissenting vote, passed various meas- 
 ures proposed by its leading members. Formal thanks, in most 
 
THE EXAMINATION 269 
 
 laudatory terms, amplissimis verbis, were voted to Cicero, because 
 his courage, wisdom, and foresight had saved the state from the 
 greatest dangers. Flaccus and Pomptinus, the praetors who 
 had made the arrests, were praised ; so also was Cicero 's colleague 
 Antony, because he had "kept the conspirators from his own 
 and the state's counsels" — whatever the senate intended that 
 to mean. Probably it was only a formal recognition of the fact 
 that Antony had given up his old associations. Arrest was 
 decreed against the four conspirators that had been examined 
 and against five others, including the freedman Umbrenus, who 
 had brought the Gauls to Sempronia 's house ; nine in all. Lentu- 
 lus was first to resign his praetorship; and it seems that he 
 tendered a formal resignation in the senate and exchanged his 
 purple-edged magistrate's toga for that of an ordinary citizen. 
 The four conspirators were entrusted for safe-keeping- to men 
 of prominence ; one was given to Caesar, and another to Crassus. 
 To the four men under arrest was presently added Caeparius, 
 who had been caught in the meantime. 
 
 The senate also decreed a thanksgiving to the gods, in the 
 name of Cicero, "because he had saved the city from fire, the 
 citizens from murder, and Italy from war." Such a thanks- 
 giving, supplioatia, was a military honor, frequently given to 
 successful generals in the midst of their campaigns as an earnest 
 that a triumph would later be granted ; it had never before been 
 given to any one except a general, never to a man in the civil 
 garb, togaius. Previously it had been the reward for slaughter- 
 ing the enemy in the field, and so for serving the state well ; now, 
 for the first time, Cicero says, it was the reward for saving the 
 state. 
 
 . Ordinarily the minutes of the senate, kept by clerks, seem to 
 have been of doubtful reliability, and as for the actual decrees, 
 these were written out after the meeting, by or in the presence 
 of the senators particularly interested in the measure. Cicero 
 took extraordinary precautions that a full, exact, and trust- 
 
270 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 worthy record should be made of everything that took place 
 on this day, including the examination of the witnesses. He 
 entrusted this task to four senators of unquestioned reputation, 
 who also, as he says later, 19 found it very easy to follow the 
 transactions because of their good memory, their learning, and 
 their habit of writing rapidly. One of them, it is interesting 
 to notice, was the scholarly Nigidius Figulus, considered the 
 most learned man in Rome next to Varro; or the third most 
 learned man, by those who assign the second place to Cicero. 
 Usually, furthermore, the senatorial minutes, exclusive of the 
 actual decrees, seem to have remained in the hands of the 
 presiding consul, at least until the end of his year of office ; but 
 Cicero had copies made at once of the record kept by the four 
 senators, and these copies were sent to all parts of Italy and 
 the provinces. The whole Roman people were thus informed of 
 the events that led to the arrest of the chief conspirators, and 
 of the names of any others involved in the testimony of the 
 Gauls ; and this information was made as reliable as was possible. 
 That Cicero's precautions were wise, was seen the very next 
 year, when he was actually accused of having altered the records. 
 The charge was advanced as an argument in court by a young 
 man, Torquatus. Cicero, who was a friend both of Torquatus 
 and of his father, treated the youth with much consideration, 
 but the fact that a beginner in politics, personally on friendly 
 terms with the ex-consul, could accuse him of forgery, and at 
 the very time when Cicero was the most influential man in Rome, 
 with an unsurpassed record for personal honesty, reveals the 
 loose morality that governed public acts and public utterances; 
 C. Verr-ucius was not a solitary phenomenon. 
 
 The meeting on the third lasted until late in the afternoon. 
 When it was ended, Cicero went before the people in the forum 
 and informed them of the recent events and of the senatorial 
 decrees ; in the Third Oration against Catiline. Sallust tells 
 
 is> Pro Sulla 42. 
 
CONSPIRACY ENDED 271 
 
 us— perhaps from personal observation— that until this moment 
 the plebs urbana had been only too eager for revolution and 
 war, but that, when the full plans of the conspiracy were 
 revealed, they veered about ; they shouted curses against Catiline 
 and praised Cicero to the sky. They were like men suddenly 
 snatched from slavery; the greatest happiness a Roman could 
 imagine. The ordinary deeds of war — and by these Sallust 
 means the murder of the wealthy and the confiscation of their 
 property — were prompted by a desire for booty, for the enrich- 
 ment of those who have nothing, and were, by implication, in 
 accord with the morals of the plebs ; but the burning of the city 
 planned by the conspirators was vandalism, striking at the 
 plebs themselves, for where would the loafer find food and 
 entertainment after Rome was in ashes? 
 
 The loud relief and enthusiasm of the people, as they listened 
 to Cicero, is reflected in his speech. He was their hero, for the 
 time being ; their savior ; and could, or must indeed, speak in this 
 character. It was felt that the conspiracy was at an end, or 
 very nearly so ; and the end had come without bloodshed. There 
 were only nine men to be punished out of the whole number of 
 actual and potential conspirators, a situation that had no resem- 
 blance to the days of Marius, Cinna, and Sulla, as Cicero could 
 not but point out. The day of a man's birth is the beginning 
 of very uncertain fortunes, he said, and even if the newborn 
 child' is destined for happiness, he can have no realization of it ; 
 but the day on which a man is saved from danger gives him a 
 gladness that is both certain and consciously enjoyed. Romulus 
 had founded Rome and had been placed among the gods ; Cicero 
 has saved Rome after she had grown great and powerful, and 
 asks only to be held in grateful remembrance. The juxtaposition 
 seems extravagant at first, until we remember that Romulus' was 
 more than half a myth and that the Romans, Caesar among them, 
 frequently made public boasts of their descent from the im- 
 mortals. Far more is claimed when the speaker looks into the 
 
272 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 future and says men will remember that Rome had at one time 
 two citizens, one of whom extended the empire to the very- 
 regions of the sky, while the other preserved the seat of this 
 empire. That Cicero ranged himself even momentarily with 
 Pompey, perhaps the greatest popular idol Rome ever had — and 
 the victorious general's home-coming was near — indicates more 
 than anything else the hilarious acclaim with which he was 
 greeted. Cicero also appealed to the people for protection in 
 the future, when he would have to live side by side with his 
 vanquished enemies, but, compared with his references to Pom- 
 pey, this appeal seems hardly more than a gracious reliance on 
 the people's good will, an insinuating flattery of their power; 
 but it was no doubt already serious in Cicero's mind, and was 
 to be repeated. Nor was it anything but unselfishness that caused 
 him to ask only for a grateful recollection; Roman politicians 
 were rarely satisfied with such an unsubstantial reward. Cicero, 
 however, told his audience that in attaining the consulship and 
 in saving the state he had reached the goal of his ambition ; his 
 only concern would be so to conduct himself after he had 
 returned to private life that men would attribute the present 
 victory, not to chance, but to successful endeavor — virtus. 
 
 A tone of lofty solemnity, which lifts the speech above self- 
 glorification, is imparted when Cicero, at considerable length 
 and with fervid eloquence, attributes the saving of Rome to 
 Jupiter, the guardian of the city. The populace of Rome lived 
 beneath the eyes of their gods; Roman public and private life 
 was filled with sacrifices, sacred games, and thanksgivings. 
 There was no crisis in Roman history which was not foretold by 
 strange omens, no victory and no defeat passed without religious 
 observances. There had been many prodigies of late, which had 
 stirred up the people. Lentulus had added his share by means 
 of Sibylline responses and Etruscan computations. And this 
 had not been confined to the last few months. Nearly three 
 years before, in 65 B.C., at the time of the so-called First Con- 
 
HOME SAVED BY JUPITER 273 
 
 spiraey of Catiline, other prodigies had occurred ; the lightning 
 had descended on the Capitol; images of gods and statues of 
 famous men 'had been thrown down, the bronze tablets that 
 contained the laws had been melted, even the gilded group of 
 the infant Romulus suckled by the wolf had been struck. The 
 sooth-sayers, summoned from all Btruria, had prophesied 
 slaughter and fire and civil war, even the destruction of the 
 empire, unless the gods were placated; and, as a result, there 
 had been games for ten days and a large statue had been vowed 
 to Jupiter. This statue had at last been finished ; it was the one 
 that the workmen had been setting up at the very moment 
 when the conspirators were being led to the senate. The syn- 
 chronism was a palpable proof that Jupiter and no one else 
 had saved the city, says Cicero; no man would be so rash or so 
 insane as to deny it; if Cicero himself should claim the credit, 
 he was not to be tolerated. It was the gods who had inspired 
 Lentalus and his accomplices with the stupendous folly of 
 entrusting their affairs to strangers and foreigners, and writing 
 incriminating letters; and it was the gods who had turned. the 
 naturally hostile and warlike Gauls to a course of peace; the 
 envoys might have destroyed Rome merely by keeping silent. 
 The Romans, with their wives and children, had therefore good 
 reason — they had never had a better one — for giving thanks to 
 the gods. A thanksgiving of several days had just been decreed 
 by the senate. The new statue of Jupiter was in sight of the 
 people while Cicero spoke. Accordingly, almost his last word, as 
 he dismissed the assembly, when night had already begun, was 
 a request that they turn in worship to Jupiter before they depart 
 for their homes. 
 
 The providential erection of Jupiter's statue was later 
 described by Cicero in his poem on his consulship, and the 
 description is quoted by Quintus in Cicero's essay on Divina- 
 tion. 20 Quintus is represented as endeavoring to convince the 
 
 20 De Divin. 1, 17-22. 
 
274 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 orator of the truth of such miraculous events by quoting from 
 the latter 's own writings; but Cicero remains sceptical. As a 
 philosophical thinker, Cicero did not believe in prodigies and 
 omens ; an attitude that, as previously indicated, was shared by 
 most educated Romans. And yet, when they spoke of or to the 
 gods in public, they were perhaps less insincere than seems at 
 first to have been the case. Intellectually they did not believe; 
 emotionally, however, they can not have been entirely beyond 
 the reach of the popular faith. Cicero seems to have been as 
 little affected by it as any one ; certainly less so than many that 
 could be named; but in the presence of the people, who were 
 superstitious even if their feeling can not be called faith, he was 
 not consciously fabricating emotion. 
 
 In his private life, he was not much given to prayers; he 
 wrote to his wife that he had served men and she had worshipped 
 the gods. 21 But he believed in some kind of divine power in 
 the world, though it was not to be called by the names of the 
 ordinary gods; and in reference to the hurried events of his 
 consulship he seems in retrospect to have thought of himself as 
 having acted under a kind of divine inspiration. This thought 
 is expressed not only in this oration but also in some orations of 
 later . date, and with considerable conviction. 22 In the year 
 61 B.C. Cicero, writing to Atticus, 23 refers to the state which 
 "you think was saved by my wisdom, though I think it was 
 saved by that of God." And yet this passage, apparently an 
 incontrovertible proof of Cicero's attitude, may after all be 
 nothing more than a playful reference to a previous conversation 
 or letter; Atticus, frankly an atheist and often twitted by 
 Cicero for his Epicureanism, may well have waxed humorous 
 about Cicero's public utterances about providence; the more so 
 as Atticus frequently edited his orations. It would be interest- 
 ing to know what Cicero felt, but possibly he did not quite know 
 
 21 Fam. 14, 4, 1. 
 
 22 See, for example, Pro Sulla 40. 
 
 23 Att.. 1, 16, 6. 
 
TRIAL OF TEE CONSPIRATORS 275 
 
 himself; all men, as they look back, find crises in their lives 
 during which they acted without conscious foresight — under 
 some mysterious guidance from the outside, as it were. 
 
 VIII 
 The Fourth Cathjnabian 
 
 The disposition of the prisoners was now the paramount 
 question. After addressing the people, Cicero did not return to 
 his own house, for during the night the consul's residence was 
 used for the annual sacrifice to Bona Dea, under the superin- 
 tendence of Terentia, as wife of the consul, and the Vestal Vir- 
 gins. Cicero, therefore, accompanied by the enthusiastic crowd 
 from the forum, went to the house of a friend and neighbor; 
 and there he and a few intimates anxiously discussed the future 
 punishment of the conspirators. 
 
 The decision did not rest exclusively with Cicero. By passing 
 the "last decree," the senate had placed all the government's 
 resources in Cicero's hands, but he looked upon himself as their 
 executive; as such, he had succeeded in saving the city and 
 apprehending the chief conspirators, and he had throughout 
 acted with the approval of the senate, though he had himself 
 seen to all the details of execution. As he had said in the speech 
 for Kabirius, it was the consul's duty to refer to the senate. 
 Nevertheless this body, though ultimately the possessors of 
 supreme power, would be strongly influenced by Cicero's recom- 
 mendation, should he make any, or by his inclination, if as 
 presiding officer he thought it his duty not actually to make a 
 recommendation. Above all, the decision of the senate would 
 have to be executed by Cicero, and he would be held responsible 
 by the people. 
 
 Personal considerations obviously favored clemency. Cicero 
 had already made numerous enemies, not only the secret sympa- 
 thizers with the cause of Catiline, but also the men whom he 
 
276 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 had opposed in connection with the bill of Rullus and other 
 matters during the past year. At present the senate was behind 
 him, but he was a New man; the aristocrats would be very- 
 willing to throw him over if trouble should arise in the future. 
 All these difficulties would be immeasurably increased if he 
 allowed himself to become responsible for the execution of the 
 conspirators, some of whom were nobles ; and any agitator would 
 always find it possible to raise the question of legality in refer- 
 ence to the ' ' last decree, ' ' and the death-penalty, if it were 
 inflicted. Cicero was naturally averse to harshness ; all his writ- 
 ings show this. At this time, furthermore, there was a great 
 temptation to act leniently, and so follow his natural inclination 
 and stave off future trouble: his consulship was nearly at an 
 end. In less than a week the new tribunes would take office, an 
 event which virtually began the next official year; and in less 
 than four weeks Silanus and Murena would be consuls. Failure 
 to punish severely would probably lead to an ultimate renewal 
 of the conspiracy; this had been the result of the laxness in 
 65 B.C. ; but just as it had taken two years for the conspirators 
 again to become dangerous, so it is not likely that the leading 
 conspirators of 63 B.C., even if set free, could have gathered their 
 scattered adherents so as to do anything during the next few 
 weeks. The city, as Caesar pointed out on the fifth, was com- 
 pletely in the hands of the consul. Cicero could have continued 
 his watch, and handed over the state to his successors on the 
 thirty-first of December; he would have won the praise of the 
 law-abiding citizens, and his enemies, neither so many nor 
 so bitter, would have had no legal means of attacking him. 
 Plutarch says that the multitude thought Cicero lacking in 
 courage — naturally enough, perhaps, since he had for months 
 found it necessary to utter accusations against the conspirators, 
 in order to win the whole-hearted support of the people, and had 
 been forced to act in the dark — but when Plutarch adds that 
 
CLEMENCY OB SEVERITY? 277 
 
 Cicero would have seemed cowardly and unmanly in case he had 
 acted leniently, he can scarcely be describing the real situation. 
 Caesar, when the question was finally discussed in the senate, 
 moved for clemency ; Cicero could have followed his lead without 
 apprehensions about the attitude of the plebs. 
 
 But there were very grave reasons why Cicero should not 
 consult his personal safety. Lack of severity would give danger- 
 ous encouragement to the army of Catiline, whereas the death 
 penalty would have the opposite effect; Cato expressed this 
 opinion on the fifth, and later events proved the second alterna- 
 tive correct. In the city, the situation was similar, but fraught 
 with even greater danger, as was presently shown by the attempts 
 made to liberate the arrested conspirators. 
 
 And now the gods again intervened. When the fire on the 
 altar, at the sacrifice in Cicero's house, seemed to have died down, 
 a bright flame suddenly shot forth. The Vestals interpreted 
 this as a sign that Cicero ought to proceed bravely in whatever 
 course he had decided upon; and Terentia at once carried the 
 message to Cicero, urging severity against the conspirators. She 
 was by nature neither gentle nor lacking in courage, adds 
 Plutarch. Quintus and Nigidius Figulus seconded Terentia 's 
 advice ; from what is known of them it seems probable that the 
 sudden flame on the altar had more influence with them than it 
 could have had with Cicero. 24 
 
 There was need of immediate action. On the fourth, ireed- 
 men and a few clients of Lentulus tried to stir up artisans and 
 slaves, and even applied to the recognized mob leaders in the 
 city, who "were in the habit of disturbing the state for pay"; 
 and Cethegus, though under arrest, was able to send messengers 
 
 2* This story is told by Plutarch, who never omits the supernatural, and 
 who attributes to Terentia an influence over Cicero which is not even hinted 
 at in his large correspondence. Plutarch places the miracle on the night 
 after the third, but assumes that the.important debate about the punishment 
 of the conspirators occurred on the next day, thus dropping the fourth of 
 December from his narrative. 
 
278 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 to his slaves and freedmen, trained fighters, to come in full force 
 and free him. Cicero, learning of these plans, increased the 
 guards. 
 
 The senate also met on the fourth, but mainly to hear new- 
 evidence. A certain Tarquinius had been arrested while on his 
 way to Catiline. Brought into the senate, he turned state's 
 evidence, and gave very much the same testimony as had been 
 given by Volturcius. In addition, he asserted that he had been 
 sent by Crassus to tell Catiline not to be discouraged by the 
 arrest of Lentulus and the others, but to hasten with his army 
 to the city. The senate would not listen to the charge against 
 Crassus ; it was voted ' ' that Tarquinius ' testimony was false, that 
 he be kept in chains, and that he be allowed to' give no further 
 evidence unless he wished to reveal the name of the person at 
 whose advice he had told such a falsehood." An attempt was 
 also made to implicate Caesar. His enemies, Catulus and Piso, 
 tried to induce Cicero to have testimony brought against him 
 either through the Gauls or through some other witnesses, but 
 Cicero refused. Whether or not he believed Caesar innocent, 25 
 he acted wisely, for the government was not in a position safely 
 to antagonize the leader of the people. Cicero had prudently 
 given a public proof of his belief in the loyalty of both Caesar 
 and Crassus, by entrusting two conspirators to them for safe- 
 keeping. Catulus and Piso, however, succeeded in stirring up 
 the knights against Caesar, so that some of them threatened him 
 with their swords as he was leaving the meeting. 
 
 25 What Cicero actually believed in regard to Crassus and Caesar can 
 not be determined. Crassus later asserted that Cieero had trumped up the 
 charge on the fourth in order to humiliate him, but Crassus was not a 
 friend or admirer of Cicero, and he was eager to clear himself of suspicion. 
 Many interpretations were suggested of Tarquinius' appearance, but they 
 need not be discussed. Neither do we know whether Crassus or Caesar 
 secretly supported Catiline. There were many suspicious circumstances. 
 Nevertheless it is hardly probable that either of the men had allied himself 
 with Catiline. Since Pompey was soon to return, even success on the part 
 of the conspirators would not have furthered Caesar 's or Crassus ' ambitions 
 (see p. 244). Caesar, furthermore, if not Crassus, was probably too gen- 
 uine a patriot to stoop to wholesale murder and destruction of property. 
 
TWO PROPOSITIONS 279 
 
 Kewards were decreed to the Allobroges and Voltureius, but 
 nothing else seems to have been accomplished on the fourth. 
 
 On the fifth, at last, the senate met in the temple of Con- 
 cord, which was well guarded, to decide the fate of the five 
 conspirators under arrest as well as to pronounce judgment 
 on the four who had not yet been apprehended. The reports of 
 this momentous debate are conflicting; there were rival claims 
 about the relative influence of some of the speakers even in the 
 lifetime of Cicero, for Brutus, writing about Cato, his uncle, 
 after the latter 's death, assigned to him a larger share than 
 Cicero considered proper. 26 It is certain that there were two 
 main propositions before the house. One favored the death- 
 penalty, chiefly advocated by Cato, though not originally pro- 
 posed by him; the other, that of Caesar, would save the lives 
 of the conspirators, but commit them to life imprisonment in 
 suitable Italian municipalities, confiscate their property, and 
 make it high treason ever to attempt to alleviate their punish- 
 ment. Both these motions were of a degree of severity that the 
 senate under normal conditions had no right to inflict, and con- 
 sequently admitted, at least by implication, that the senate had 
 a moral right to act at its discretion under the existing circum- 
 stances; but Caesar's motion took cognizance of the law that a 
 citizen must not be put to death without an opportunity of 
 appealing to the people — a right of appeal that he had indirectly 
 championed in his prosecution of Rabirius. Cato, certainly a 
 more law-abiding man than Caesar, said frankly that the occasion 
 was extraordinary and required an extraordinary remedy. 
 
 Probably the debate proceeded somewhat as follows. Silanus, 
 the consul-elect, was asked for his opinion first, and moved that 
 the usual punishment be inflicted. This was universally under- 
 stood to mean death, although this word was not mentioned. The 
 next few speakers expressed their agreement, until Caesar, a 
 praetor-elect, made his motion. This at once caused confusion. 
 
 wAtt. 12, 21, l. 
 
280 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 Some of the previous speakers withdrew their agreement with 
 Silaims, in favor of Caesar; and perhaps others, who had not 
 spoken before, also sided with Caesar, for Quintus Cicero is 
 reported to have done so, and we can scarcely suppose that he, 
 though a praetor-elect like Caesar, would be called upon for his 
 opinion before the influential leader of the popular party. 
 Quintus, the night Terentia brought her message about the flame, 
 had urged severity; now he probably thought Caesar's motion 
 less dangerous to his brother, as several other senators seem to 
 have done. In the confusion that followed Caesar's speech, 
 Silanus made some retraction of his initial motion; perhaps 
 explained that by the usual punishment he had not meant death 
 but imprisonment, which was ludicrous. Another speaker had 
 proposed to postpone the decision to a later meeting, and Silanus 
 expressed his agreement with this. There was now a general 
 trend in favor of Caesar 's motion. 
 
 At this time, either before or after Silanus ' retraction, Cicero 
 took part in the debate. His speech is the Fourth Oration 
 against Catiline, which may also contain the remarks about the 
 general situation which he made at the beginning of the session, 
 when formally laying the matter before the senate. The main 
 thoughts in this speech are that the senators must not allow any 
 consideration for Cicero 's safety to interfere with their decision ; 
 that the conspirators have deserved the most severe punishment ; 
 that they have forfeited the rights of citizens ; that action must 
 be taken at once, because of the dangerous condition of Eome; 
 that the senate has the whole populace behind them and therefore 
 should act with courage ; that Cicero entrusts his family to their 
 protection, in case of danger to himself; and finally, that he is 
 ready to execute their orders. Cicero, it would seem,' had decided 
 for the death-penalty as the necessary course, and was willing 
 to take the consequences. As presiding officer, he did not openly 
 advocate one course to the exclusion of .the other. Taken by 
 itself, the speech is inconclusive, and has led to various opinions ; 
 
CICERO INTERVENES 281 
 
 but it could scarcely have been interpreted in more than one 
 way by those who had listened to Caesar and had heard senators 
 change their former opinions. 
 
 "I see," said Cicero, "that your faces and your eyes are 
 turned toward me. I see that you are anxious not only because 
 of your' own danger and that of the state, but also because 
 of mine. This is pleasant to me; but I entreat you by the 
 gods to lay aside all thought of me. Give no heed to my safety ; 
 plan for yourselves and for your children. If my consulship 
 is destined to bring me every kind of bitterness, and sorrow, 
 and suffering, I shall bear all these not only bravely but willingly, 
 provided my suffering may bring safety to you and to the 
 Roman people. As consul, I have at no time been free from 
 the fear of sudden death. I have been silent about much, I have 
 endured much, I have yielded in many things. If the gods have 
 willed that my consulship should rescue you and the Roman 
 people from slaughter, let come whatever fate awaits me. There- 
 fore take thought for yourselves and our country. Cease con- 
 sidering me. I ought to hope that the gods who protect this 
 city will protect me; but should death come, I shall die with 
 readiness and calmness. Yet my heart is not of iron. I am 
 moved by the grief of my brother, who is present here, and by 
 the tears of all these men who surround me. I am moved by 
 the thought of my wife, my daughter, my little son ; and of my 
 son-in-law, who outside is awaiting the outcome of this day. But 
 I wish them to be saved together with you, even though violence 
 overtake me, rather than that we should all be desiroyed with 
 the state." 
 
 This, roughly, is the beginning of Cicero's speech; the rest, 
 already indicated, and often resembling the Third Oration, could 
 not have caused any one to believe that Cicero agreed with 
 Caesar. 27 
 
 27 Cicero later (PMl. 8, 15) said: Ego Catilinam perire volm. 
 
282 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 Cato, speaking shortly after Cicero, interpreted the latter as 
 in favor of the death-penalty, praising the consul's words and 
 proposing that they be spread on the minutes. Possibly other 
 speakers between Caesar and Cato had favored the severer pen- 
 alty; at any rate, some must have failed to withdraw their 
 agreement with Silanus' motion, for Cicero makes it a point in 
 his criticism of Brutus' account that many had urged capital 
 punishment ; a statement that would be meaningless if they had 
 all retracted. The general opinion, nevertheless, was decisively 
 in agreement with Caesar, until Cato made his speech. 
 
 It is not necessary to say much about the speech of Cato 
 or that of Caesar; they are the only two reported by Sallust, 
 but reported in the ordinary maner of an ancient historian. 
 Each is a summary of the character of the speaker. Caesar's is 
 extremely adroit. No punishment is too severe, but death is 
 not the greatest evil, it is the end of trouble — a beautifully 
 Epicurean thought. Don 't act cruelly lest it lead to still greater 
 cruelty, as in times past, though nothing of this kind need be 
 feared while Cicero is consul. Don't act in excitement, but obey 
 the laws 28 — meaning the right of appeal. To all of which Cato 
 answers bluntly that Caesar evidently does not believe in a 
 place of torment after death ; that he seems to be the only one 
 not afraid of the conspirators ; that the death-penalty will break 
 up the conspiracy; that the gods help those who help themselves; 
 and that this help can be secured by acting in accordance with 
 tradition, which bids that the criminals be put to death. 
 
 It was a stormy session, as some had foreseen it would be, 
 for several men prominent in the popular party did not attend. 
 When Cato had taken his seat, all the consulars, and a large part 
 of the senate as well, expressed a boisterous admiration of Cato's 
 courage; and charges of cowardice were hurled back and forth. 
 Cato's motion was passed. Many also insisted on confiscation 
 of the conspirators' property, which Caesar himself had pro- 
 
 as For a, clear and brief statement of the legal situation, see Botsford, 
 On the legality etc. 
 
TSE EXECUTION 283 
 
 posed, but the latter was of the opinion that, since the senate had 
 not adopted the milder part of his motion, they ought not to 
 avail themselves of the rest of it. He appealed to the tribunes, 
 the popular champions, some of whom at least were his strong 
 adherents, but the tribunes refused to interfere. At last Cicero 
 sided with Caesar, and the confiscation did not become part of 
 the decree. It is said that the knights threatened Caesar at this 
 meeting, actually brandishing their swords over him while he 
 was still seated, so that some senators had to throw their togas 
 around him for protection; and that Caesar was so frightened 
 by the threat that he left the meeting and kept away from the 
 senate-house for the rest of the year. 29 Cato was the hero of 
 the meeting ; at the end of it the majority of the senators escorted 
 him to his house. 
 
 Again it was nearly evening. In view of the likelihood that 
 an attempt to free the ' condemned conspirators would be made 
 during the night, Cicero decided to carry out the verdict at once. 
 Accompanied by the senate, 30 he first went to the house on the 
 Palatine where Lentulus was held prisoner, and conducted him 
 across the forum to the Tullianum, the state prison ; and ordered 
 the public executioners to do their duty. Similarly he brought 
 the others, four of them, one after the other. Sallust, however, 
 has it that Cicero conducted Lentulus only, and that the praetors 
 brought the other four; which seems more likely, since this is 
 what happened when the conspirators were brought to the senate 
 on the third. In the Tullianum was a filthy, noisesome dungeon, 
 into which the condemned men were taken, and there strangled. 
 
 The crowds in the forum were large. "When Lentulus and 
 the others were taken to the prison, the people had followed the 
 guards in silence ; they were overcome with the solemnity of the 
 
 2 9 So Suetonius (Div. Iul. 14) ; but see the account given by Sallust 
 (Cat. 49), which is followed on p. 278 above. 
 
 so This is Plutarch's description (Cic. 22). The senators must have 
 hurried to join Cicero if it is true that they had first seen Cato home, as 
 Velleius reports (2, 35). 
 
284 THE CONSULSHIP 
 
 proceedings, especially the young men among them; it seemed 
 to them, says Plutarch, that they were taking part in some 
 ancient aristocratic rites. After the execution, as Cicero 
 recrossed the forum, he saw groups of conspirators scattered 
 among the huge throng ; they did not know what had taken place 
 in the Tullianum and were waiting for the dark. Cicero turned 
 to them and spoke in a loud voice: "They have lived." For, 
 observes Plutarch, this is the way in which the Romans refer to 
 death ; desirous of avoiding inauspicious language. 
 
 Plutarch thereupon describes Cicero's return to his own 
 house; relying no doubt on Cicero's later account of his con- 
 sulship or on Tiro's biography. Evening had now come. The 
 citizens were no longer silent nor did Cicero's guards encircle 
 him in military array ; men shouted and applauded, calling him 
 the savior and the founder of his country. As he entered the 
 narrow streets, which were usually dark, there were lights every- 
 where, and lamps and torches by the doors. The women were 
 on the roofs of the houses, to see him and to do him honor as he 
 passed. Around him were the chief men of the state, accom- 
 panying him in solemn procession. Most of these had won great 
 wars and had entered the city in triumphal chariots; and they 
 had carried the Roman sway to many new lands and seas. As 
 they accompanied Cicero, they said to one another that the 
 Roman people owed wealth, booty, and power to many com- 
 manders and generals, but to Cicero alone did they owe their 
 security and salvation, for the danger from which he had freed 
 them had been great and had lasted long. And the wonderful 
 thing was not merely that he had held the conspirators in check, 
 but that he had suppressed this the greatest conspiracy that had 
 ever been attempted with the least amount of evil to the state, 
 without riot or disorder. 
 
 Cicero appreciated the instability of popular enthusiasm. 
 A few weeks earlier at the trial of Murena,- he had reminded his 
 friend Sulpicius that the populace is like the weather; a storm 
 
END OF CATILINE 285 
 
 may arise at any moment, and it is only occasionally — as with' a 
 storm in nature — that the observer can discover its cause. Cicero 
 knew well that some day the people might change their applause 
 into shouts of hostility ; but for the time being he was free from 
 personal danger, which had not been the case for over a year, 
 and he had indeed saved his country. 
 
 The fifth of December, the Nones, was always to Cicero the 
 day when the conspiracy came to an end. After the execution, 
 the malcontents in the city gave up all thought of violence ; they 
 disappeared in the crowd, from which a large number of them 
 had never quite emerged. In the field, there were many deser- 
 tions from Catiline's army; the majority of his men left him; of 
 those who remained only a quarter had the arms of soldiers. 
 The battle between Catiline and the government forces took 
 place the next year, probably in January. The rebels fought 
 bravely, and fell to the last man, most of them exactly where 
 they had first been drawn up. Catiline himself, still breathing 
 and undaunted, was found under a heap of corpses; he had 
 rushed far ahead of his own battle line, and so met his death. 
 Antony, Cicero's recent colleague, was the commander-in-chief 
 for the state. Earlier, while acting as general, he had been 
 watched by.Sestius, a quaestor, for his loyalty was not above 
 suspicion ; now, facing Catiline, his old friend, he had an attack 
 of podagra — trouble with his feet, says Sallust, without inform- 
 ing us how severe it was — and the command was taken by some 
 one else. 
 
 It was fortunate for Rome in the year 63 b.c. that Cicero 
 did not suffer from any indisposition, physical or moral. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 THE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 I 
 Eminence and Political Ideal 
 
 The consulship, as was pointed out at the beginning of this 
 account of Cicero's life, was the turning point in his career. 
 Having attained the highest office in Rome, he had no further 
 political advancement to strive for; he was one of Rome's con- 
 sulars. And since it had been his fortune during the consulship 
 to champion the political stability of Rome, particularly by his 
 successful opposition to the far-reaching scheme of Caesar pro- 
 posed in the bill of Rullus, and since he had also saved the city 
 from destruction and the country from civil war by suppressing 
 the Catilinarian conspiracy, he was led to face political problems 
 in which he would have played a very insignificant part if his 
 consulship had consisted of the usual magisterial routine. 
 
 To the modern student of Cicero's life, there is also a peculiar 
 contrast between the two periods separated by the consulship. 
 Our intimate knowledge of Cicero is confined almost exclusively 
 to the later years. All the letters except twelve were written 
 then, all the essays except the autobiographically unimportant 
 treatise on Invention, and thirty-four orations. Much of this 
 information, however, has already been utilized to give a picture 
 of Cicero's character, of his oratory, and of the Rome in which 
 he lived. It would be interesting, perhaps, to observe Cicero's 
 every little reaction to the shifting events of the last twenty years 
 of his life, but a minute account would emphasize the later 
 period far beyond its relative importance ; it would involve much 
 repetition, with new names and dates added, to no useful pur- 
 pose ; and it would often be less concerned with Cicero than with 
 
THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY 287 
 
 the disintegration of Kome, for he was the unconscious Boswell 
 both of himself and of his contemporaries. A large number of 
 these happenings, moreover, are of no individual importance. 
 To describe them in detail would be like following the coils in 
 a nest of. snakes or the shifting currents and shadows in a dark 
 whirlpool. 
 
 The consulship raised Cicero to a position of eminence that 
 had not been attained by any Eoman of his time who was not 
 a general. He had defeated Caesar at his own game of politics, 
 and he had saved the city. Catulus, the dignified and honorable 
 leader of the aristocrats, and many others, among them Cato, 
 who was not usually lavish of compliments, publicly hailed him 
 as the father of his country. Plutarch thinks that Cicero was 
 the first man so honored, and this was probably so, although 
 Cicero himself had applied the title to Marius in his speech for 
 Rabirius, and Livy later applied the term to Romulus and to 
 Camillus. The title as an honor to Cicero lingered for genera- 
 tions in the minds of the Romans. When the emperors had 
 arrogated it to themselves, the splenetic Juvenal recalled that 
 it had been given to the consul of the year 63 b.c. by a Rome 
 that was still free. 1 
 
 Cicero's prominence is revealed to us in the two orations 
 extant from the year 62 b.c. One of these was in defense of 
 Sulla — P. Cornelius, one of the deposed consuls-elect for the 
 year 65 B.C. — who was accused of complicity in the Catilinarian 
 conspiracies. The defeat of Catiline had been followed by sev- 
 eral trials of this kind, ending in verdicts of guilty. Cicero, with 
 Hortensius, undertook the defense of Sulla and secured his 
 acquittal. It is no longer possible to pronounce on the merits 
 of the case; Cicero's main argument was that in 63 B.C. he had 
 found no evidence against Sulla, and beyond this argument 
 we can scarcely go. Hortensius spoke of the earlier conspiracy. 
 The situation is involved, in a characteristically Roman fashion, 
 
 i Juv. 8, 246. 
 
288 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 by the fact that at this time Cicero borrowed two million ses- 
 terces from Sulla, toward his purchase of the house on the 
 Palatine. The transaction became known, and Cicero promised 
 to admit it in case he should later buy the house. He bought 
 the house, after Sulla's acquittal, and turned off criticism as 
 well as he could by a jest: a man, he said, who wishes to buy 
 property must keep it secret for fear of competitors. And it 
 may be remarked that real estate deals, as appeared when Cicero 
 later wished to buy a place for his monument to Tullia, then as 
 now required shrewdness. But the loan was no indication of 
 Sulla's guilt. 
 
 Cicero's high station in Rome is shown by the opponent's 
 assertion that, unless Cicero had undertaken the defense, Sulla 
 would have been forced to go into exile. He also calls Cicero 
 a tyrant, rex, of the courts, as Cicero many years earlier had 
 called Hortensius. Cicero's whole speech is filled with the con- 
 sciousness that, although he has enemies, Catilinarian sympa- 
 thizers, he is now one of the leaders in Rome. Referring to the 
 conspiracy of 65 B.C., he remarks that at that time he had not 
 yet come to know the inner workings of the state; he had been 
 on the outside, as it were, which, by implication, was now no 
 longer the case. Much is said about the consulship, for Cicero's 
 honesty in reference to the senatorial records was questioned, 
 as has already been set forth, 2 and the case itself was concerned 
 with the year 63 B.C. Cicero claims no unusual honors, but he 
 reiterates that he has saved the state and that while he is alive 
 the wicked shall be powerless. He has earned his honorable 
 leisure, but is willing to exert himself in the courts for others. 
 He has not even time, he says, for recording his consular deeds 
 ■ — an indication of his new eminence as well as a sign that it 
 would be proper for him to write about the consulship. 
 
 Even a stronger testimony to Cicero's new station is found 
 in the second speech extant from this year. It was in defense 
 
 2 See above, p. 270. 
 
ABCSIAS 289 
 
 of Archias, the Greek poet, whose citizenship had been ques- 
 tioned, probably to cause annoyance to the Luculli, the poet's 
 patrons, who were rivals and persistent opponents of Pompey. 
 Archias had been one of Cicero's earliest teachers, and had 
 inspired him with a love of reading. Cicero says very little 
 about the legal points involved, though evidently enough, since 
 he seems to have won the case. The presiding praetor was 
 Quintus, Cicero's brother; Archias' noble friends were also 
 present in court. Cicero, therefore, announces that he will plead 
 in a novel manner. He gives much high praise to the poet, who, 
 very likely, was the ordinary Greek chronicler of Roman great- 
 ness, but the speech as a whole is a eulogy of literature. Letters, 
 says Cicero, give inspiration and zest to men of affairs; they 
 contain the highest moral teachings, so that the greatest char- 
 acters are those whose unusual talents have been fostered by 
 study ; and, finally, literature, and nothing else, can give undying 
 fame, a thing which both individuals and whole nations rightly 
 desire. ,This eloquent eulogy, new among the Romans, though 
 perhaps trite to modern readers, is made to find its justification, 
 in a measure, in Cicero. He himself has enjoyed and profited 
 by literature, he says, never allowing it to take him from graver 
 duties, but finding in books both substance and inspiration for 
 his oratory. He has been moved by the desire for fame. Archias, 
 indeed, has already begun a poem on the consulship of 63 b.c. 
 It is this personal application, more often implied than expressed, 
 that reveals Cicero's consciousness of being one of the greatest 
 Romans : the Greeks, who wrote of Pompey and of the, nobles 
 belonging to the old families, will now write about Cicero as 
 well; and Cicero, further, deems it proper to speak of his own 
 intellectual ideals as if these were now of interest to the Roman 
 people. 
 
 It should be added that the poet apparently failed to com- 
 plete his account of Cicero 's consulship. In 61 B.C., at any rate, 
 Cicero writes to Atticus that Archias, after finishing a poem 
 
290 TEE TBIUMVIRATE 
 
 about the Luculli, will probably turn to the Metelli; as yet he 
 has written nothing about Cicero. The reference to Archias, 
 however, is purely incidental; very much as if a prominent 
 statesman of today should say that a certain man was to have 
 introduced him at a meeting, but had failed to appear. Archias' 
 delinquency is coupled with that of another Greek, Thyillus, 
 who is as little known as Archias would have been except for 
 Cicero's oration. 
 
 Cicero was eager to have his serviecs of the year 63 b.c. 
 commemorated in true Roman fashion, but he was not resting 
 lazily on his prospective laurels. He was looking into the 
 future. During the consulship he had succeeded in uniting the 
 widely different elements of the nation in opposition to the revo- 
 lutionaries; and that seemed to him significant. There had 
 been no such union before. 3 If it could be perpetuated, Rome 
 might have peace, and there was reason for thinking this possible 
 in that this union had successfully withstood the accumulated 
 shock of years of misrule. Out of his experiences in the consul- 
 ship Cicero had thus been led to form a definite political ideal.* 
 
 This ideal is embraced in two phrases often used by Cicero. 
 One, the harmony of the orders, concordia ordinum, refers to 
 the union of opposing parties, particularly the senate and the 
 knights ; the other, the influence of the senate, senatus auctoritas, 
 indicates that the senate was the traditional and rightful center 
 of power. The influence of the senate recalls the great days when 
 Carthage was defeated and the republic grew constantly stronger, 
 but the ideal as a whole, while aiming at the grandeur and happi- 
 ness of former times, was no blind reaching toward fallen gods. 
 The knights, unknown in those days as a political party, were 
 to be one of the pillars of the new order of things, and, far more 
 important, so important as to make the ideal entirely different 
 from anything that had preceded, there was to be large and 
 
 3 In Cat. 4, 19. 
 
 4 See above, p. 224, note 2. 
 
IDEAL DUE TO CONSULSHIP 291 
 
 honorable room for the representatives of the military power. 
 Cicero had not failed to see that circumstances had changed. 
 Rome was a military nation; the soldiers through their general, 
 or rather the general through the soldiers, should have the first 
 place, above the others, and yet acting with them. The general 
 in question was Pompey. If the united orders would yield him 
 this position of eminence, his character and his previous record 
 gave ample hope that he would neither take too much power for 
 himself nor endanger the new peace. By the side of Pompey 
 would stand the leaders of the senate; not equal to him, but 
 nevertheless with him the virtual rulers of Rome, through the 
 influence which they had gained by honorable means. One of 
 these leaders would be Cicero; he was already one of them. 
 Harking back to the glorious days of Scipio Africanus the 
 Younger, before the beginning of the internal troubles that 
 seemed to have culminated in the conspiracy of Catiline, Cicero 
 offered in a letter 5 to Pompey to become a minor Laelius, as it 
 were, while Pompey would be even more than Scipio himself. 
 
 The new arrangement would give Cicero great prominence, 
 but his hopes had no more personal ambition than those of a 
 man who seeks the presidency of a republic or the premiership 
 of a democratic monarchy, thinking that his own policies are 
 the best for his country. He had indeed less personal ambition 
 than the prospective president or prime minister, for there would 
 be several men with influence like his own — a Catulus, a Hor- 
 tensius, a Cato — each directing the affairs of state according to 
 his ability and wisdom; and above them all would be Pompey. 
 Prom the Roman point of view it was a singularly unselfish ambi- 
 tion, asking for none of the usual concrete rewards of immense 
 wealth and the irresponsible rule over provincials. Cicero, for 
 himself, thought only of the atium cum digwitate, which he would 
 devote to intellectual pursuits and the cultivation of congenial 
 
 s Fam. 5, 7. 
 
292 THE TM1VMVIBATE 
 
 friendships, and of fame, contemporary and posthumous, which, 
 as he said, had always been given in return for unselfish service. 
 
 The matter of fame is the point that offends modern modesty, 
 whether real or assumed ; the outspoken claim to fame in Cicero's 
 writings also drew many wise comments from the Romans of 
 the empire, who had lost the frank liberty of the republic, 
 smugly flattering and deifying their emperors, many of whom 
 were worthless. The Romans of Cicero's time, Caesar and 
 Pompey no less than the Metelli and the Luculli, had their Greek 
 poets and historians constantly in admiring and vocal attendance ; 
 and they sounded their own praises in 'the courts, the senate, at 
 public meetings, and at aristocratic funerals. Even in the next 
 generation the sensible Horace, the son of a freedman, sang that 
 he had erected a monument more lasting than brass and higher 
 than the pyramids., something that could withstand the corroding 
 rains, the blasts of the winds, and the passing of innumerable 
 years. 
 
 Cicero's ideal offered no remedy for some of the crying needs 
 of Rome, such as the uneven distribution of wealth and the 
 wretched condition of the provinces. This lack has been weari- 
 somely insisted upon, in an attempt to prove that Cicero was 
 not a statesman; and students have been reminded that the 
 amelioration, for it was scarcely a complete change, came through 
 autocracy. But no one in Rome was at this time thinking of 
 helping the world by overturning the government. The destruc- 
 tion of the republic was the result of a series of unguided events ; 
 the work of fate, if you like. In the years that followed 63 B.C. 
 many acts were done with an unselfish purpose, particularly 
 by Cato, but they looked only to the temporary checking of 
 nuisances ; there was no thought of a larger reform. Men fought 
 for their party or for themselves. Cicero alone aimed at some- 
 thing beyond this; the reestablishment of peace to the state 
 through a balance of its various powers. The question as to what 
 
SOME COULD NOT BE BEFOSMED 293 
 
 he would have proposed had this harmony prevailed was never 
 asked, for the harmony did not prevail. He had given a partial 
 answer in his unselfish public service; the same answer would 
 have been given by the Eomans as a whole if they had adopted 
 his ideal, for it demanded the sinking of personal ambition in 
 an ambition for Rome, and so the regeneration of Roman public 
 life. 
 
 But the powerful Romans of Cicero's time were not to be 
 reformed. Better conditions came only after many years of 
 civil war, which also brought violent death to all the leading 
 statesmen of the period immediately after 63 B.C., except the 
 few who had. found their way to Charon by a kindlier road. 
 Cicero, in imagining that Rome could be reformed, was thus 
 more blind than those who did not see. He had been misled by 
 the events of his consulship. Having succeeded in uniting the 
 nation against Catiline, he supposed the union could be made 
 permanent, and failed to understand that the conspiracy, despite 
 its very real terrors, was the affair of a single year. The Romans 
 were fond of comparisons drawn from the sea; they were poor 
 sailors, but they all lived near the Mediterranean. One of their 
 figures, coming from the Greeks, was that of the ship of state. 
 Perhaps it can be used here. The Roman republic was a very 
 leaky vessel, and the leaks were growing larger because the sailors 
 were fighting among themselves, paying no attention to the 
 danger of foundering. A storm had arisen, and the wrangling 
 sailors, ' directed by Cicero, had forgotten their jealousies and 
 with his aid had saved the old vessel from immediate destruction. 
 But when the storm had passed, they immediately returned to 
 their old quarrels, though not entirely forgetful of Cicero's 
 recent leadership. It is not a very noble picture, that of a leaky 
 old boat, but no comparison can do an indignity to the perform- 
 ances that had begun in Rome even before Cicero had laid down 
 the consulship. 
 
294 TEE TM1VMVIEATM 
 
 II 
 Ideal Fails 
 
 The ultimate power in Rome was still in the hands of the 
 commander of her armies, provided he cared to use it. Porapey 
 and Crassus had shown this by forcing themselves into the con- 
 sulship of the year 70 B.C. Now Pompey had been away from 
 the city for about four years, and city politics had run their 
 own muddy course, but the thought of Pompey had been con- 
 stantly present in men 's minds, becoming more and more insistent 
 as the day drew nearer when he and his army .would return. 
 And Pompey .himself, a whole year before his arrival home, 
 began to make plans for securing the kind of reception to which 
 his power entitled him, and therefore sent an emissary to pre- 
 pare the way. This emissary was Metellus Nepos, a member 
 of one of the great Roman families. He arrived in Rome, from 
 Pompey 's army, toward the end of 63 B.C., and became a candi- 
 date for the tribuneship, the office which because of its close 
 connection with the populace and its extensive powers would 
 give its holder the best opportunity for political activity. Nepos' 
 character as the tool of Pompey had from the first been so clearly 
 understood in Rome that Cato, who had been on his way from 
 the city at the time of Nepos ' arrival, had turned back and also 
 stood for the same office, in order to counteract the new Pom- 
 peian influence. Both Cato and Nepos were elected tribunes for 
 the year 62 b.c. 
 
 Nepos' task was to make certain that Pompey had not been 
 forgotten in the course of recent events in the city, and, if pos- 
 sible, to add fresh laurels to Pompey 's fame. This could best 
 be accomplished by rallying the voters to Pompey 'a support, 
 a thing that was not difficult since the great general's achieve- 
 ments had long ago made him a popular idol; by antagoniz- 
 ing the senate, who claimed the right to guide Rome's fortunes 
 
NEPOS ATTACKS CICERO 295 
 
 and would therefore be opposed to the paramount influence of 
 any single individual; and, finally, by humbling any one who 
 was for the moment prominent in the city. One means of serving 
 Pompey was therefore to attack Cicero, and this was the more 
 easy because Catiline had always posed as the champion of the 
 populace, whereas Cicero was naturally the representative of the 
 more conservative elements of the population. After the execu- 
 tion of the conspirators, therefore, Nepos, as tribune, held violent 
 public meetings at which he denounced the punishment as illegal, 
 and uttered threats against Cicero; and, on the thirty-first of 
 December, the last day of Cicero's term of office, when, according 
 to custom, the latter was on the point of addressing the people 
 at a public meeting, and would of course have given an account 
 of his consulship, Nepos, by virtue of his tribunician power, 
 prevented him from speaking. Cicero, however, took a solemn 
 oath that he had saved the state, and was greeted with much 
 enthusiasm; but this enthusiasm was not strong enough to 
 prevent the hostile tribune from interfering with the retiring 
 consul. 
 
 Nepos, aiming at the humiliation of the aristocracy and of 
 any possible rivals to Pompey, and exerting himself for the 
 glorification of the absent general, was joined in his endeavors 
 by Caesar. The popular party had in a way been smothered by 
 the events of the conspiracy. Caesar was now reestablishing 
 it, and he offered the chief place to Pompey. Caesar, after his 
 rebuff in connection with the bill of Rullus, had decided to play 
 second fiddle to Rome's military hero. Nepos proposed first to 
 have Pompey called home to take the field against Catiline; he 
 would thus appear as the true deliverer of Rome, filching other 
 people's glory as he had done in the Servile "War and in the 
 war of Mithradates. But the armies already opposed to Cati- 
 line had the situation well in hand; and nothing came of Nepos' 
 project. Caesar, as chief pontiff, also came forward with a 
 proposal. The Capitoline temple had been rebuilt and dedicated 
 
296 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 by Catulus, the leading aristocrat, but it had not been quite 
 finished. Caesar proposed that Pompey be entrusted with the 
 completion of the work, but this measure also failed. There were 
 public meetings addressed by Nepos, the tribune, and by Caesar, 
 who had been praetor since the beginning of 62 b.c. Rioting 
 ensued, led by the fearless Cato, and blood was shed. Nepos 
 and Caesar were deprived of their offices; the tribune fled to 
 Pompey, and Caesar retired to his house, but was presently 
 reinstated in his magistracy. 6 
 
 In the meantime Cicero was also making preparations for 
 the all-important arrival of Pompey. He sent the victorious 
 general a long letter, now lost, about the consulship of 63 B.C. 
 The fact that Cicero published this letter at once, so that it was 
 actually quoted at the trial of Sulla, reveals its real purpose. 
 Cicero wished to win Pompey 's approval of his position as the 
 leader of the reformed state. As Caesar had made repeated 
 bids for Pompey 's favor, so Cicero bid for it; not, however, in 
 the manner of a man willing to take the position of a mere 
 political retainer, as Caesar had cleverly done, but as the savior 
 of the state, who, now at the head of it, offered Pompey the plaee 
 of honor. If Pompey had expressed his recognition of Cicero's 
 services in his public letters to Rome, he would practically have 
 sanctioned Cicero's political ideal, and this he was unwilling to 
 do. He wished to be received in Rome as its one great man. 
 He therefore said very little about the matter even in his private 
 letter to Cicero, and the latter, in a reply still extant, 7 smooths 
 over the situation, still hopeful, it would seem, of Pompey 's 
 support: your neglect, he suggests, was dictated by your wish 
 not to offend any one — the reference probably being to Caesar 
 
 6 The relations between Nepos and Cicero led Nepos ' brother, who was a 
 friend of Cicero, to write him a blunt and pompous letter, to which Cicero 
 made an exceedingly adroit and dignified reply. The two letters (Fam. 
 5, 1; 5, 2) illustrate Cicero's superiority to the average aristocrat, and also 
 show that his difficulties as a New man were by no means ended with the 
 consulship. 
 
 ''Fam. 5, 7. 
 
POMPEY RETURNS 297 
 
 and the popular party, Pompey's "old enemies and new 
 friends," as Cicero calls them. It is in this letter that Cicero 
 offers himself as a Laelius to Pompey's Africanus. 
 
 Pompey landed at Brundisrani in December of the year 
 62 b.c. He disbanded his army, thus indicating to all that he 
 had no intention of seizing supreme power through a direct use 
 of the soldiers, and then he journeyed toward the city, where 
 he arrived in January of the next year, 61 b.c. But in the very 
 month of his landing an event had occurred which was to become 
 of great importance to Cicero. Clodius, a young aristocrat of 
 about thirty, had entered Caesar's house during the celebration 
 of a festival in honor of the Good Goddess, Bona Dea. The 
 ceremony was performed by women, and no men were admitted, 
 but Clodius had gained access in the dress of a woman. He 
 may have had an intrigue with Caesar's wife, though the 
 religious festival scarcely seems to have been a favorable oppor- 
 tunity for a clandestine meeting; or he may have gone merely 
 out of impudent curiosity. "Whatever his motive, he was dis- 
 covered, and the scandal was great. The senatorial leaders 
 insisted on bringing the offender to trial; and Caesar divorced 
 his wife, with the famous saying that Caesar's wife must be above 
 suspicion, but he refused to urge punishment for Clodius, who 
 was becoming a power among the common people. 
 
 In the midst of this confusion Pompey arrived at Eome, and 
 was questioned in public as to his opinion about the sacrilege. 
 ' He did not know what to reply. He had been too long with the 
 army to feel at his ease amid the wrangling of Rome, particularly 
 as he had no gifts as a politician. He praised the senate in gen- 
 eral terms, but would express no definite opinion. "There is 
 nothing straightforward, nothing courteous, nothing brave, 
 nothing generous about this friend of yours," exclaims 8 the dis- 
 gusted Cicero to Atticus. Nor did Cicero himself take an active 
 
 s Att. l, 13, 4. 
 
298 TEE TMIUMVIEATE 
 
 part in bringing Clodius to trial. This was done by Hortensius 
 and Cato. But Clodius made his own preparations. He raved 
 in public meetings against Lueullus, Hortensius, the consuls, 
 everybody, incidentally taunting Cicero with the expression, 
 ' ' I have discovered, ' ' which Cicero had used in connection with 
 the Catilinarian investigations frequently enough for his enemies 
 to make it a byword. He also assembled street gangs, partly 
 consisting of old Catilinarians, "the men of little beards." The 
 case was at last tried; Clodius' gangs were in evidence; the 
 parsimonious Crassus opened his money bags, as Cicero says, for 
 the benefit of the poverty-stricken jurors; and Clodius was 
 acquitted by thirty-one votes to twenty-five. The Roman 
 worthies had to content themselves with leveling harmless gibes 
 at the bribed jurymen; but Clodius, through his street gangs, 
 had become a real menace to the state. 
 
 Though Cicero had not urged the trial, he had testified 
 against Clodius' claim of an alibi; and as testimony was volun- 
 tary, this was a cause for hostility. The history of Clodius' 
 hostile relations to Cicero can not be perfectly written. Plutarch 
 says that Clodius' notorious sister Clodia, wife of Celer and 
 the Lesbia of Catullus, had at one time desired to marry Cicero. 
 The story is not accepted by some scholars. The proposed mar- 
 riage may have been of a political nature, fostered perhaps by- 
 some admiration on the part of Clodia. If Cicero remained 
 unresponsive, the situation would be made only more difficult. 
 Plutarch assigns Terentia's jealousy as the reason for Cicero's 
 testimony, but, whatever the reason may have been, Clodius was 
 from that time Cicero's enemy. The two men waged frequent 
 battles of words. The young aristocrat, • though by no means 
 lacking in gifts, was not quite a match for the satirical ex-consul, 
 and it seems very likely that Clodius' enmity was due less to 
 Cicero's testimony and the reported rejection of an alliance with 
 Clodia than to Cicero's repartee. Some of this, by the way, was 
 
CLODWS 299 
 
 of truly Eoman coarseness; scarcely befitting a consul, as 
 Cicero himself writes to Atticus. Clodius called Cicero cywicus 
 consulwris, Tear-em the ex-consul. 9 
 
 Cicero's position in the state was still excellent. During the 
 trial of Clodius he received an ovation which he considered no 
 less flattering than the one tendered him when he laid down his 
 consulship ; and after the trial, when the senate grew hopeless, 
 he was the one to encourage them and to point out that the 
 acquittal of Clodius served, after all, only to separate the sheep 
 from the goats. Cicero's relations with the knights were satis- 
 factory, as usual ; and he tells Atticus that his partial defeat, in 
 that his testimony failed to convince the jury, had won the com- 
 mon people to his side. They had been disgusted with his 
 swelling popularity, he continues, but now that the swelling has 
 been reduced by this little operation, he is received at the gladia- 
 torial shows and the public games with remarkable signs of 
 favor, unmarred by hisses and catcalls. 
 
 Pompey, though at first solemnly indifferent, was impressed 
 by Cicero's popularity in the forum and among the talkative 
 senators. Scenes were acted out like the one previously de- 
 scribed, 10 in which Crassus — Pompey 's enemy far more than 
 anybody else's friend — orated tearfully about his gratitude to 
 Cicero for saving Rome in the year 63 B.C., and Cicero him- 
 self, speaking for the first time in Pompey 's presence, took up 
 the subject with great fervor, as he later reported to Atticus. 
 G-naeus Pompey, not to be outdone by Crassus, came gradually 
 to be so consistent and enthusiastic a herald of Cicero's virtues 
 that the Catilinarians with the little beards called him Gnaeus 
 Cicero. 
 
 By disbanding his army, Pompey had put aside his one 
 means of coercion, and had descended to the ordinary level of 
 the politicians. Among them he was helpless; he was like a 
 
 s Tyrrell's translation. See Tyrrell 12, p. 23, note. 
 10 See above, p. 21. 
 
300 THE TBIUMVISATE 
 
 sleeping Gulliver ensnared by the Lilliputians. "When he tried 
 to be politic, he was clumsily non-committal, satisfying nobody ; 
 when he made flat statements, people suspected that he was lying. 
 His wish was, as of old, to be applauded as the first citizen of 
 Rome. He had no desire for supreme power, but he wished his 
 veterans to be rewarded and his arrangements in the East to be 
 ratified. If the senate had yielded in these respects, they could 
 very probably have won his good will, and there might have 
 been, not Cicero 's harmony of the orders, perhaps, but a harmony 
 between Pompey and the senate, which would have been nearly 
 as effective. Instead of that, the usual political intrigues pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 The senate, fighting blindly as always for supreme power, 
 opposed everybody. They antagonized the knights, who them- 
 selves were making shameless demands; they continued their 
 hostility to Caesar, Crassus, and the popular party; and they 
 put every conceivable obstacle in the way of Pompey. He 
 celebrated his triumph, to be sure, in September of 61 B.C.; it 
 was a splendid performance and lasted two days; but he was 
 unable to secure his two important demands. 
 
 Cicero's concordia ordinwm was being shattered. He tried 
 to heal it by urging concessions to the knights, which he himself 
 considered shameful, but the .senate remained obstinate. During 
 this year, 61 B.C., Cicero did not take much part in public affairs, 
 but he was exceedingly busy in the courts, in an attempt, as he 
 says, to retain his position by the same means by which he had 
 gained it. He wrote a little, but not much, revising some orations 
 and promising Atticus to write other things. In December he 
 wrote to Atticus that the state was in a miserable condition, 
 but that he himself managed to keep on the safe public road, 
 and was on intimate terms with Pompey, though not forgetting 
 the caution Atticus was urging upon him. 
 
 The next year, 60 B.C., was for Cicero very much like 61. 
 The friendship between him and Pompey seems to have grown 
 
THE STATE IS DOOMED 301 
 
 morn intimate. Cicero frequently mentions it in his letters to 
 Atticus, adding that he is proceeding warily and will not allow 
 himself to be drawn from the honorable political path that 
 alone can form a consistent continuation of his previous activity. 
 He says that even though he himself may gain nothing by his 
 intimacy with the vain general, the latter may be led into better 
 ways of thinking and cease his hunt for popularity. But Cicero 
 is not satisfied either with Pompey or with any one else. The 
 state is doomed. The senators are amusing themselves with the 
 tame fish in their ponds; piscinarii Cicero calls them. Crassus 
 is friendly to no one. Pompey, who had received the right to 
 wear triumphal insignia at the games, is "silently contemplat- 
 ing" — or "guarding," according to the interpretation — "his 
 painted little toga;" a picture of the pompous dullard further 
 hinted at by Cicero's frequent references to him under out- 
 landish names suggestive of the Eastern conquest: Sampsicera- 
 mus, which has been rendered 11 Mikado; Hierosolymarius, the 
 Jerusalemite ; Alabarches, the Sheikh. 
 
 Only Cato is upright and courageous, says Cicero, but he 
 spoils everything by his stubbornness; I am no fonder of him 
 than you are, Cicero writes to Atticus ; Cato the hero, who talks 
 as if he were a character in Plato's Republic. Clodius, who has 
 been in Sicily as quaestor since the time of his trial, has come 
 back and is stirring up trouble. He is trying to secure adoption 
 into a plebeian family, so that he may run for the tribuneship. 
 Cicero meets him often and bandies words with him, usually 
 getting the better of the argument. 
 
 Cicero 's popularity, at least with the conservatives, remained 
 undiminished. Catulus, the leader of the senatorial party, had 
 died in the latter part of 61, and Cicero had succeeded him. 
 The morning crowd at Cicero's house was great, and large 
 escorts accompanied him to the forum. At the beginning of 
 the year he received a singular tribute to his prominence. 
 Trouble was threatening from Gaul, and lots were drawn in 
 
 11 By Tyrrell. 
 
302 THE TEIUMVIBATE 
 
 the senate for consulars to go and settle it. Cicero's lot fell out 
 first, at which there was a universal demand that he remain in 
 Eome, a demand which was presently repeated in reference to 
 Pompey, so that the two were recognized as pillars of the state. 
 
 Nevertheless Cicero was heartbroken at the turn affairs were 
 taking. He left the city on a short trip early in the year, and 
 for a longer time on the first of June. When away from Rome, 
 he devoted himself to reading and writing ; when in the city, he 
 busied himself in the courts and, as before, took as small a share 
 in the government as possible. His personal eminence gave him 
 no satisfaction. It was only in his family that he found any 
 contentment; in Rome he had no one with whom to joke or to 
 talk seriously, and he repeatedly expressed his longing for the 
 companionship of Atticus. 
 
 While the wretched politics in Rome were thus at a dead-lock, 
 in 60 B.C., neither the senate nor Pompey accomplishing any- 
 thing, Caesar returned from his province of Further Spain, 
 which he had governed after his praetorship in 62 b.c. He 
 relinquished his claims to a triumph and became a candidate for 
 the consulship of 59 b.c. At this the senate gave one further 
 proof of the wretched condition of the state; with the incor- 
 ruptible Cato at their head, they condescended to use bribery 
 in order to elect one of their staunchest men to hold office with 
 Caesar, and these two, Caesar and Bibulus, were elected. 
 
 But Caesar was not looking forward to an ordinary consul- 
 ship. Pompey 's ridiculous helplessness in the face of aristocratic 
 intrigues had opened the way to greater things. Shortly after 
 the election, therefore, acting with an adroitness that can only 
 be imagined, for there is no record, he succeeded in making a 
 private arrangement between Pompey, Crassus, and himself, 
 by which they agreed to work together. This was the so-called 
 First Triumvirate. Varro, in a Menippean satire of which only 
 the title remains, called it the Three-headed Thing, but there was 
 only one head, Caesar. Pompey was the body and Crassus was 
 
A QUATTUOBVIBATE PSOPOSMD 303 
 
 the pocketbook. To their contemporaries, Pompey was the 
 important member ; the coalition, as it became gradually known, 
 could have seemed only a union between the greatness of Pompey 
 and the schemes of Caesar and Crassus. 
 
 Caesar asked Cicero to join the coalition. The three could 
 prosper without the aid of Cicero, for they had the power ; but 
 their road would be much smoother if Cicero would level it. 
 Next to them he was the most influential citizen. Caesar himself 
 had had an unpleasant proof of Cicero's power in connection 
 with the Rullan bill, and he could readily see that if there really 
 was any leader among the conservative elements, that leader was 
 Cicero. The latter 's mere reputation for unselfishness in public 
 life would have done much to put a fair face on the measures 
 of the coalition; his ability as an orator would have been a 
 shield against Cato and Hortensius, both uncompromising aristo- 
 crats. As a quattuorvirate, the coalition would have united in 
 itself nearly all the elements of the state: the military power, 
 through Pompey; the knights and many of the conservatives, 
 through Cicero; much wealth and also a further hold on the 
 knights, through Crassus; and the common people, through 
 Caesar. 
 
 Caesar, the great political strategist, did not himself go to 
 Cicero, but sent his trusted political agent, Cornelius Balbus. 
 The latter was a Spaniard, who had been for many years a close 
 friend of Pompey, having obtained the Roman citizenship 
 through his assistance as early as 72 B.C., and who of late had 
 been closely connected with Caesar as well. He was versed in 
 the ways of the world; and it seems by no means improbable 
 that Caesar had found him useful in first approaching Pompey. 
 With Cicero, however, Balbus seems to have had no previous 
 connection. He now called on the great consular to inform him 
 that it was Caesar's desire to follow the advice of Cicero and of 
 Pompey in all things and that he intended to bring Pompey 
 and Crassus together. The letter to Atticus in which Cicero 
 
304 THE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 describes the interview was written at the end of the .year 60 B.C., 
 probably in December. 12 If the visit of Balbus occurred shortly 
 before this time, as seems unquestionable, Caesar did not reveal 
 the whole situation to Cicero, for he had already brought Pompey 
 and Crassus together. The offer of partnership, however, was 
 none the less genuine. Caesar had not needed Cicero for con- 
 ciliating Pompey and Crassus; but he would need him when 
 the plans of the triumvirs grew into overt acts. In fact, the 
 particular reason for Balbus' visit was to win Cicero's support 
 for the agrarian law which Caesar would propose on assuming 
 office. 
 
 Cicero did not accept Caesar's offer, for he could not acqui- 
 esce in personal rule. He announces his momentous decision, 
 one of his bravest and most high-minded acts, in a manner that 
 is thoroughly characteristic. Atticus was always urging caution 
 and prudence. Cicero, therefore, as was his wont, makes clear 
 that he understands the situation: acceptance, he says, would 
 give him the closest friendship with Pompey, and also with 
 Caesar, if he should wish it. Cicero, furthermore, would be recon- 
 ciled with his enemies, the Catilinarians ; he would have peace 
 with the multitude, and leisure in his old age. But he throws 
 all this away, though realizing his personal danger. He had 
 recently completed a poem on his consulship, with which Atticus 
 was familiar. He therefore says that he will obey the advice 
 that Calliope there gives him, that he increase the fame won 
 in 63 B.C. and continue to earn the praise of good men. He also 
 quotes a Homeric line to the effect that the best omen is to fight 
 for one's country, and adds that he and Atticus will talk the 
 matter over when they meet. And thereupon he promises to 
 have the hot bath ready when Atticus comes to see him — as 
 though he had been recounting some trifling experience instead 
 of one of the most serious interviews of his life. 
 
 But the success of the triumvirs was not dependent upon 
 Cicero. Their aims were carried out during the year 59 B.C., 
 
 12 Att, 2, 3, 3. 
 
CONSULSHIP OF JULIUS AND CAESAE 305 
 
 the consulship of Julius and Caesar, as the wits termed it. Under 
 Caesar's management, which drew its strength from Pompey's 
 military prestige and consequently swept aside all effective 
 opposition, Bibulus was forced to retire from public business. 
 He shut himself up in his house, and from there issued edicts 
 condemning as illegal all of Caesar's propositions, which never- 
 theless became laws. On the surface, the year 59 B.C. ministered 
 entirely to Pompey's desires; Caesar secured for him the legis- 
 lation that the nobles had opposed. But when the results of 
 the year are analysed, it becomes clear that only Caesar gained 
 anything of real importance. He was appointed governor, for 
 five years, of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, to which was added 
 Transalpine Gaul, at first only for one year. He thus had the 
 opportunity of securing great wealth, to be expended mostly in 
 politics, and of creating a large army, which was the one political 
 weapon. In his ostensible service to Pompey, which very much 
 resembled that of an intriguing minister to an indolent and short- 
 sighted master, whom he is preparing to overthrow, Caesar 
 earried out Pompey's harmless wishes by means of the latter 's 
 own military position, and, in return, received from him, poten- 
 tially, a power that would in a few years rival his own. Crassus 
 did not play an important part in the triumvirate. He obtained 
 certain advantages for the knights, whose business interests were 
 his own; but the reward for his willingness to support his old 
 and hated rival Pompey consisted mainly in the discomfiture of 
 the nobles, for whom his hatred was even greater than for Pom- 
 pey. Crassus was little more than the supporter of Caesar, and 
 still had his eyes on an indefinite future. 
 
 The military power had thus again made itself master of 
 Rome, and this had come about because the senate had stub- 
 bornly insisted upon their traditional position of supremacy, 
 unwilling to yield to the knights and to Pompey. There was no 
 concordia ordinum and no senatus auctoritas; Cicero's ideal had 
 proved impracticable. 
 
306 TKE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 III 
 
 Driven Into Exile 
 
 When Cieero informed Atticus about his interview with 
 Balbus, he wrote that by accepting Caesar's invitation to join 
 the triumvirate he would have become reconciled to his enemies 
 and secured leisure for his old age. The enemies were the 
 Catilinarians and Clodius. As yet they were only annoying. 
 Clodius, however, with his gangs was already a power in the 
 streets, so that there might presently be real danger to Cicero's 
 life. And Cicero was vulnerable in another way. By executing 
 the conspirators in 63 B.C. without allowing an appeal to the 
 people, he had exposed himself to attack. Metellus Nepos, the 
 tribune, had inveighed against him for the execution even in 
 the year 63, but had not carried the matter farther, being intent, 
 not upon Cicero's ruin, but Pompey's glory. Another tribune, 
 however, might arise who would make full use of Cicero's pre- 
 carious position. Clodius was an aristocrat and therefore could 
 not stand for the tribuneship, but aristocrats had before this 
 secured adoption into plebeian families. If Clodius should 
 succeed in doing this and then become tribune, he would have 
 an almost certain means of bringing about Cicero's ruin. Pom- 
 pey as consul, and, still more, Caesar as the chief pontiff, could 
 scarcely fail to prevent Clodius from becoming a plebeian, and 
 they could certainly protect Cicero whether or not Clodius ulti- 
 mately attained the tribuneship, provided they would exert 
 themselves, but Cicero's rejection of Caesar's overtures had 
 made such exertion unlikely. 
 
 The state, in the meantime, was completely in the hands of 
 the triumvirs, but this had not been accomplished without caus- 
 ing a disturbance. The change had been so rapid that men's 
 fears were banished by their indignation. Outcries were raised 
 in all quarters, even from the common people, who had been 
 
CICEBO AVOIDS POLITICS 307 
 
 glad to see Caesar get office in opposition to the hated aristocrats. 
 People showed their hatred in the theater, at banquets, and at 
 gatherings of every kind. Actors were applauded when they 
 repeated lines of old plays that could be interpreted as refer- 
 ring to the undoing of the state by Pompey. When Curio, an 
 opponent of the triumvirs, entered the theater, the audience 
 applauded ; when Caesar entered, a moment later, he was received 
 in absolute silence. 
 
 Most of this unpopularity was directed against Pompey, for 
 he was the most picturesque figure of the three and it was 
 apparently for his sake that the majority of Caesar's measures 
 were carried. Pompey was profoundly unhappy. At first he 
 tried to explain and justify the novel proceedings; then he tried 
 to excuse them. There were rumors that the triumvirs were 
 not in perfect agreement, and Pompey himself certainly spoke 
 to Cicero as though he wished himself well out of the whole 
 thing. Cato called him a private dictator, and Cicero wrote in 
 a letter with his usual whimsicality that he had formerly been 
 uneasy about his future fame, lest Pompey should seem the 
 greater man, but that he is uneasy no longer. 
 
 Again Cicero left the city, and he wrote to Atticus that he 
 had abjured politics forever and that he would now devote him- 
 self to reading and philosophy. He tried to find comfort in 
 the writing of a geographical work suggested by Atticus, but 
 geography failed to interest him. He called himself the laziest 
 man alive. He traveled from one place to another, struggling 
 with himself to forget matters of state and to acquire a philo- 
 sophic indifference, but he did not succeed. "Tell me all about 
 events in Rome, ' ' he wrote repeatedly to Atticus, ' ' and especially 
 about Clodius." And presently he was back in Rome, Atticus 
 went to Bpirus, and the correspondence was taken up again. 
 
 Cicero turned for occupation to the courts, as of old, and 
 avoided politics. He was evidently willing to live according to 
 the desire of the triumvirs, for even while away from the city 
 
308 THE TMIUMVIBATE 
 
 he had asked Atticus to procure for him a detailed statement 
 of how Pompey wished him to act. But he could not consistently 
 refrain from giving expression to his grief for the fallen state. 
 Encouraged to opposition perhaps by the unpopularity of the 
 triumvirs and the reputed likelihood of dissension among them, 
 he uttered some incautious words in reference to the political 
 situation during his defense of his former colleague Antony, 
 who was tried and convicted for extortion; his words were 
 reported to the triumvirs, and on the same day, only three hours 
 later, Clodius became a plebeian. Pompey acted as auspex at 
 the adoption, which was obviously carried out with the permis- 
 sion of Caesar, who, as pontifex maximus and all-powerful 
 consul, could easily have prevented it. 
 
 As the months went by, Clodius threatened to use violence 
 and to bring Cicero to trial for the execution of the Catilinarian 
 conspirators. At times, it seems, Cicero thought of avoiding the 
 impending struggle, but on other occasions he even longed for 
 it, convinced that he would emerge with enhanced glory. He 
 asked Atticus to come from Bpirus. Atticus, he wrote, could 
 win friends for him; he could discover Clodius' real intentions 
 from Clodia, the demagogue's sister, with whom he was on 
 friendly terms ; and if the blow should fall, he could help Cicero 
 with his sympathy. Clodius became a candidate for the tribune- 
 ship, giving it as his intention to undo the laws of Caesar. He 
 must have been sincere in his opposition to the powerful consul; 
 at any rate, it can scarcely have been merely a ruse to deceive 
 Cicero, as has been suggested, for Clodius had greater plans than 
 the undoing of Cicero. The truth seems to be that Clodius 
 tried to get himself into power by taking advantage of the 
 unpopularity of the triumvirs. 
 
 The adoption of Clodius had been a warning. Caesar, who 
 in a few months would set out for Gaul, was determined that 
 Cicero should not cause any trouble during his absence. At 
 the trial of Flaccus, nevertheless, which seems to have taken 
 
CL0DIU8 THREATENS 309 
 
 place in August, Cicero gave another indication of what his 
 future actions might be. Flaccus was accused of misgovernment 
 in Asia. He had been praetor in 63 B.C., giving good service to 
 Cicero against the Catilinarians ; the accusation, probably ulti- 
 mately due to Caesar, was in all likelihood one of the latter 's 
 numerous attacks on the man who had checked Catiline. Caesar 
 was in this way giving proof of his popular attitude. Probably 
 Flaccus had been guilty of extortion ; but that was scarcely the 
 question at issue. In his defense, which was successful, Cicero 
 attempted to discredit the witnesses, and the audience was 
 treated to much excellent fun at the expense of Greek popular 
 assemblies and other Greek weaknesses. 13 Flaccus had also had 
 dealings with Palestine, and the Jews are mentioned, not honoris 
 causa, but as devoted to outlandish superstitions. Besides dis- 
 crediting the witnesses, Cicero boldly declares that the prose- 
 cution is an attack on those who had suppressed Catiline and his 
 accomplices ; the attacks will mount higher until they reach Cicero 
 himself, but he will know how to protect himself. Is it fitting, 
 he asks, that the Catilinarian exiles be recalled and that pun- 
 ishment be inflicted on those who have saved the state? 
 
 Caesar was not yet ready to use extreme measures against 
 Cicero. He undoubtedly liked the orator, and, realizing his 
 influence, may have cherished a hope of winning him for the 
 triumvirate cause. He offered him a legateship in Gaul, a free 
 embassy, a place on the board of twenty who were to carry out 
 the agrarian law. Though the acceptance of any one of these 
 offers would have given Cicero security against his enemies, he 
 refused them all, unwilling to be in any way bound to the 
 triumvirs. Even at the end of the year Caesar promised that 
 Clodius should not be allowed to indulge his desire for vengeance. 
 
 The same promise was made by Pompey, oftener, and in more 
 detail. Pompey was neither gracious nor intellectual, so that 
 
 13 In defending Fonteius, in the year 69 B.C., Cicero had used a similar 
 argument against the Gauls. The account of the Gauls in this oration is one 
 of Cicero's most vivid bits of description (Pro Font, chaps. 10 f£.). See also 
 below, p. 335. 
 
310 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 there could be no real intimacy between him and Cicero, but 
 the latter admired Pompey as a general and as a man, and even 
 had a personal liking for him. When Pompey had tried at a 
 contio to discuss the edicts of Bibulus, Caesar's sequestered col- 
 league, and had made a wretched failure of it, Cicero wrote 
 that he could not restrain his tears at the pitiful sight ; Pompey, 
 he adds, who used to be received with the greatest popular 
 enthusiasm, is now like one fallen from the stars. This was a 
 spectacle that could have given pleasure only to Crassus. As 
 Pompey had at that time been a party to Clodius' plebeian 
 adoption, Cicero had no reason for friendliness, so every one 
 thought, and yet he says : " so great was my love that no wrong 
 could destroy it. ' ' 
 
 Cicero believed Pompey sincere in his repeated promises that 
 he would hold Clodius in check, and he was not mistaken. 
 Pompey undoubtedly meant well. He even had a violent scene 
 with Clodius, in which 14 he insisted that he would be dis- 
 graced if harm should come to Cicero through Clodius, whom 
 Pompey himself had "armed" by allowing him to become a 
 plebeian; if Clodius would not give the required promise, Pom- 
 pey would make it clear to everybody that nothing was so 
 important to him as Cicero's friendship. Clodius for a long 
 time refused to be moved ; finally, however, he offered his hand 
 with the promise that he would do nothing against the wishes 
 of Pompey. Cicero's later comment on Pompey in this con- 
 nection is that Pompey did not try to deceive Cicero, but was 
 himself deceived by Clodius. 
 
 Clodius, in the meantime, was elected to the tribuneship, but 
 Cicero remained in Pome. Both friends and strangers, so he 
 wrote to Quintus toward the end of the year, were offering to 
 defend him with everything they owned, even with their lives. 
 In December Clodius became a tribune. After he had passed 
 various bills destined to win popular support, he began to 
 
 « Alt. 2, 22. 
 
CLODIUS ATTACKS 311 
 
 declaim against Cicero, loudly boasting at the same time that 
 he was doing it with the approval, even at the suggestion, of 
 Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. Finally he passed a law provid- 
 ing that ' ' whoever had caused the death of Eoman citizens with- 
 out a regular trial should be forbidden fire and water. ' ' Cicero 's 
 name was not mentioned, but the law was obviously intended 
 to send him into exile. At a emtio, held by Clodius outside the 
 city walls so that Caesar might attend, though already in com- 
 mand of the army he was to lead to Gaul, Caesar condemned the 
 punishment of the Catilinarian conspirators as illegal, but said 
 he did not approve of retroactive legislation. Perhaps he 
 thought enough had already been done to muzzle Cicero. 
 
 The excitement in Rome became intense. Cicero, as was 
 customary for a person under accusation, and he was really 
 accused though not formally, put on mourning, left his hair 
 untrimmed, and went about the streets to ask for the protection 
 of the citizens. Clodius and his gang often met him and inter- 
 rupted his appeal to the people by shouts of derision, says 
 Plutarch; and even by throwing dirt and stones. Clodius also 
 made preparations as for a serious riot or civil war. Free men 
 and even slaves from all sections were openly enrolled in the 
 forum and divided into military units; the shops were closed; 
 the temple of Castor was filled with arms, and, to protect this 
 "sacred arsenal," the very temple steps were torn away; 
 
 The whole equestrian order changed their dress; a crowd 
 of twenty thousand accompanied Cicero on his round of entreaty. 
 A large part of the senate also dressed in mourning ; they tried 
 to pass a decree that the whole people should wear mourning 
 as at a time of public calamity; but the consuls forbade it. 
 One of these was Gabinius, whose law in 67 b.c. had secured for 
 Pompey the command against the pirates; the other was Cal- 
 purnius Piso, one of Caesar's fathers-in-law and a relative of 
 the young Piso who had married Cicero's daughter. M. Lucul- 
 lus, with a large number of others, waited on Pompey, but the 
 
312 THE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 latter said that without a public decree he could do nothing 
 against a tribune in arms; if the consuls should undertake the 
 defense of the state, Pompey would take up arms. The medi- 
 ators, at Pompej^'s request, went to the consuls, to whom they 
 had already appealed. The interview with Piso was stormy. He 
 replied that there was no need of arms and strife; by yielding, 
 Cicero could again save the state ; if he resisted, endless slaughter 
 would ensue ; and Piso himself would support Clodius. 
 
 Cicero also made some appeal to Pompey. Plutarch has it 
 that Pompey had gone to his Alban villa in order to avoid the 
 man he was betraying. Piso, Cicero's son-in-law, first appealed 
 to the shifty triumvir; Cicero later went to seek him, and Pom- 
 pey is said to have escaped from the interview by a back door. 
 At the time of the outbreak of the Civil "War, when Cicero 
 was on the point of throwing in his fortunes with his battered 
 idol, he writes to Atticus that Pompey woxild not take him up 
 when he lay at his feet, but said that he could do nothing against 
 the wishes of Caesar. Perhaps Cicero did not literally lie at 
 Pompey 's feet ; the expression may be figurative ; but his appeal, 
 in whatever form, was rejected. Pompey, in all likelihood, had 
 no choice. By accepting Caesar's services he had placed him- 
 self in a position in which he must also yield to his wishes. 
 
 Caesar with his army was outside of Rome during these 
 days; he was ready to start for Gaul, but waited, evidently to 
 see that Cicero was sent away. ' ' I will not call him my enemy, ' ' 
 said 15 Cicero in public a year and a half later; "but he was 
 silent when others called him my enemy." The "others" were 
 Clodius and his partisans. But Caesar had managed things so 
 well, having failed to win Cicero's support by peaceful means, 
 that the danger threatening the orator seemed to come from 
 Clodius. 
 
 Cicero decided to leave Rome. It can not be determined 
 whether he could have remained. If he had submitted to a 
 
 15 Post Bed. In Senat. 32. 
 
CICERO LEAVES ROME 313 
 
 trial, Clodius' power in the city would undoubtedly have secured 
 a conviction. The only other way was to oppose force to the 
 gangs of Clodius, and that was probably impracticable. As the 
 next few months proved, Eome was in the hands of Clodius and 
 his men; and behind Clodius was Caesar's army, one of the 
 lieutenants of which was Clodius' brother. 
 
 Nor do we know whether Cicero ever thought seriously of 
 making an appeal to arms. No such intention is found in his 
 letters before the exile, as students have noted, but the last 
 letter was written in October, so that the correspondence con- 
 tains no evidence relative to the final crisis. It should be 
 observed, however, both that Cicero mentioned the fact that 
 men were ready to defend him "even with their lives," and 
 that the incidents already described indicate that some sort 
 of struggle was expected. Lucullus and some others, we are 
 told, advised Cicero to remain in Rome; but many urged him 
 to yield, as the people would soon demand his recall. 
 
 Among the latter was Atticus, whom Cicero later accused 
 of weakness, as he also accused himself. Cicero's one great 
 regret during the exile was that he had left Rome. "Whether 
 correctly or not, he thought it would have been less difficult to 
 remain than to get back, once he had gone away. He also writes 
 repeatedly of aristocratic envy and bad advice, especially on 
 the part of Hortensius, his oratorical rival of many years. It 
 may be that Cicero's view of things during the exile was dis- 
 torted, but it is equally probable that Cicero's charges against 
 Hortensius and others mirror his difficult relations as a New 
 man with the haughty aristocrats, and that these, in their envy, 
 urged Cicero to depart into exile even though he might have 
 remained. In his speeches after his return, finally, Cicero con- 
 sistently expresses the view that in withdrawing he had saved 
 the city from bloodshed. This is no proof that Cicero had at 
 any time thought of appealing to arms and still less that such an 
 appeal would have been successful, but the fact that he continued 
 
314 THE TEIUMVIBATE 
 
 making the claim may indicate that at least some men were 
 ready to believe it. Cicero's going did save Rome from blood- 
 shed, but he probably acted less from conscious patriotism 
 than from his natural objection to violence, coupled with. a feel- 
 ing that resistance was neither advisable nor proper when men 
 like Atticus and Hortensius advised against it. Clodius and 
 Cicero's other opponents later said that he had fled because 
 he was afraid. 
 
 Before leaving Rome, Cicero took a statuette of Minerva from 
 his house to the Capitol, where he dedi|ag!ted it to "Minerva, the 
 guardian of the city " ; it was a symbolic act, doubtless observed 
 with solemnity on the part of his friends and supporters. He 
 departed from the city at night, with an escort of friends. It 
 was toward the end of March, 58 b.c. 
 
 Clodius at once brought in a second bill, which formally 
 exiled Cicero to a distance of at least four hundred 16 miles from 
 Italy. The house on the Palatine was sacked and then burned; 
 and its site was dedicated to Liberty. The villas at Tusculum 
 and Formiae were also destroyed. Cicero stated later that the 
 marble columns of his Palatine residence were taken to the house 
 of Piso, the consul, in the very sight of the citizens ; and that at 
 Tusculum not only the furnishings of the villa were removed 
 but even the trees were torn up and transplanted in the garden 
 of the other consul, Gabinius, Cicero's neighbor. In order to 
 prove Cicero's execution of the Catilinarian conspirators illegal 
 in the view of his contemporaries, Clodius had a decree passed 
 declaring that the senatorial decree of the fifth of December, 
 which had ordered the execution, had been forged by Cicero. 
 No admission of the recognized constitutionality of Cicero's act 
 could have been plainer. Caesar departed for Gaul. Cato, 
 like Cicero an unmanageable patriot, was entrusted with a 
 mission to Cypress; Clodius had insisted on a commissioner of 
 indubitable integrity, and the grumbling Cato had to go. 
 
 16 Plutarch says five hundred. 
 
WHERE TO GO? 315 
 
 IV 
 
 Exile 
 
 Cicero went south, intending to go to Sicily, where he had 
 many friends. He stayed for a while at the house of a certain 
 Sica, near Vibo in Bruttium, which is in the toe of Italy; but, 
 learning of Clodius' second law, with its four hundred miles, 
 he decided to go east. The law could not have prevented resi- 
 dence in Sicily, provided the governor there had chosen to 
 ignore it; the latter, however, though an old friend and twice a 
 colleague of Quintus, wrote briefly that Cicero must not come. 
 Cicero thought of Malta as possible, but this, too, was within 
 the four hundred miles. He therefore set out for Brundisium, 
 often threatened by enemies but protected by the towns along 
 the way. Though Brundisium, thoroughly devoted to him, 
 would gladly have received him, as he says, he did not enter 
 the city, but stayed in its outskirts at the home of two Flacci, 
 father and son ; neither of them the Flaceus he had defended the 
 year before. He was with them a fortnight, and then sailed for 
 Greece, on the last day of April. 
 
 Atticus, writing from Rome, had suggested that Cicero go 
 to his estate in Epirus; it was fortified and would be safe — 
 reminding us -that private gentlemen found it necessary, because 
 of the prevailing violence, to protect themselves like mediaeval 
 barons. Since Buthrotum, Atticus' estate, was within the four 
 hundred miles, Cicero refused the invitation. Greece, after all, 
 was full of Catilinarians, ready to even scores with their former 
 conqueror. Cicero also gave up his desire to spend his exile in 
 Athens; there, among others, was Autronius, whom Cicero had 
 refused to defend in 62 b.c. and who, consequently, had been 
 exiled as an accomplice of Catiline. 
 
 When Cicero landed in Dyrrhachium, coming from Brun- 
 disium, the quaestor of Macedonia, Gnaeus Plancius, immediately 
 
316 THE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 set out to meet him; dismissing his lictors and discarding the 
 insigna of his office, as a sign of grief, and also changing his 
 garb to one of mourning. Meeting Cicero, the quaestor wept and 
 embraced the exiled consular, but in his grief he was unable to 
 utter a word. Plancius escorted Cicero toward his province, 
 Macedonia. On the way news was received about plots against 
 Cicero's life, and he wished to go to Asia. This province was 
 well disposed toward him; his brother Quintus had just been 
 governor there, after the praetorship, and was now on his way 
 homeward. Plancius, however, urged Cicero — practically forced 
 him, Cicero says — to stay in Macedonia. The governor, though 
 friendly, was too timid to take Cicero under his protection, but 
 Plancius, resigning from his official duties, constituted himself 
 Cicero's bodyguard. Cicero remained with him at Thessalonica 
 from the first of June .until the beginning of November. The 
 months in Thessalonica seem to have been a period of real dan- 
 ger, for Cicero in his defense of Plancius four years later 
 speaks of tearful vigils and sad nights, when Plancius stayed 
 by his side to protect him. One occasion 17 was especially memor- 
 able, though for us the details are hidden. Plancius, as usual, 
 was with Cicero ; it was night ; the quaestor was overcome with 
 grief. Cicero, having some hope of being recalled, promised 
 solemnly that he would repay Plancius for his friendship and 
 protection ; if death should intervene, he trusted confidently that 
 others, in Rome, would not permit Plancius to remain unre- 
 warded. The quaestor had hoped to accompany Cicero when 
 the latter should leave Macedonia, but this proved impossible. 
 Cicero left Thessalonica in November, to be nearer Italy, 
 in case the efforts for his recall should be successful, and to avoid 
 Piso, one of the hostile consuls of 58 B.C., who had been appointed 
 governor of Macedonia. Cicero went to Dyrrhachium, a letter 
 to his family being written partly in Thessalonica and partly in 
 
 it Pro Plan. 101. For Plancius ' relations to Cicero during the exile, see 
 esp. Pro Plan. 95-100. 
 
PLANCIVS 317 
 
 Dyrrhachium. In this city he stayed from the end of November, i w, 
 58 B.C., until the fourth of August, 57 B.C., when he set sail for ' 
 Italy. 
 
 Atticus remained in Rome, whence he wrote frequent reports 
 to Cicero about the political outlook, sometimes chiding him for 
 taking too hopeless a view. Atticus had put his resources at 
 Cicero's disposal — according to Cornelius Nepos he gave him 
 a gift of 250,000 sesterces, some 12,500 dollars — and he seems to 
 have exerted himself in Cicero 's behalf in many ways. And yet 
 we can hardly determine whether his actions during this crisis 
 were entirely admirable. Cicero, while journeying anxiously 
 from one place to another in southern Italy, before sailing from 
 Brundisium, had a great longing to see Atticus, and apparently 
 really expected to do so, perhaps because of some half promise ; 
 he sent minute directions so that Atticus might find him, but 
 Atticus did not come. Probably Atticus' business interests had 
 interfered. And as Atticus left Rome at the end of 58 B.C., 
 several months before Cicero's recall, he does not seem to have 
 actually accomplished much, or even to have attempted very 
 much, in the way of a termination of the exile. Cicero, regret- 
 ting Atticus' failure to join him, calls it another sorrow added 
 to the others, and entreats his rather self-centered friend not 
 to be forgetful of their old affection ; Cicero being still the same, 
 as he writes, though his enemies have ruined him. Cicero shows 
 no. trace of ill feeling. Though he charges Atticus with being 
 too hopeful of things in Rome, as others also seemed to him to 
 be, he longs for no one else so much as for Atticus when he has 
 finally returned to the city. 
 
 Terentia also stayed in Rome, partly because of poor 
 health and partly to do what could be done. When the house 
 on the Palatine was burned, she seems to have fled to the temple 
 of Vesta; and from there Clodius forced her to come forth in 
 public and make certain statements at a banker's in reference 
 to the proscribed property of her husband — not a pleasant occa- 
 
318 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 sion if Clodius and his gangs were her escort. In spite of the 
 serious situation there was apparently some quarrel between 
 her and Quintus, for Cicero entreats her to preserve harmony 
 in the family, "particularly since you are so few." Quintus, 
 who had been governor of Asia, had gone to Rome without seeing 
 his brother, at Cicero's own request. Cicero shrank from a 
 sad meeting, which would have had to be followed by an even 
 sadder parting; and it was unsafe for Quintus to remain with 
 Marcus inasmuch as he was threatened at Rome with a prose- 
 cution for maladministration in the province — entirely a political 
 act, for Quintus had been honest. 
 
 Cicero's correspondence during the exile consists of four 
 letters to Terentia and his children, two to Quintus, and twenty- 
 seven to Atticus. There is also one addressed to Metellus Nepos, 
 who as consul in 57 B.C. favored Cicero's recall, but this letter 
 is of the ordinary formal kind and does not reveal Cicero's 
 feelings. The other letters show us Cicero in his dark hour. 18 
 His manner of expression is changed; the fluency and the finish 
 of his other writings are lacking — a thing he himself sadly 
 noticed and commented on to Atticus. His tears often inter- 
 rupted his writing, whether the letter was to Atticus, or Quintus, 
 or Terentia. Friends, who had seen him, reported to Atticus 
 that there seemed to be danger of Cicero's mind giving way; 
 in reference to which, however, Cicero writes that his thoughts 
 are perfectly clear; he wishes they had been as clear when 
 he made the mistake of leaving Rome instead of staying to fight 
 it out. Nevertheless he did not know what to do with himself, 
 he could find no distraction for his thoughts. He grew thin, 
 and his health was not good. "While still in Rome, he had come 
 near taking his own life. Atticus in some way had prevented 
 it; he had urged the claims of Cicero's family, and these had 
 prevailed. Now, in exile, Cicero speaks of his former thoughts 
 of suicide. Even in a letter 19 to Terentia he expresses the wish 
 
 is See esp. Ad Q. Fr. 1, 3. 
 ™Fam. 14, 4. 
 
CICEEO'S DAZK HOUR 319 
 
 that he had not clung to life, and adds that if there is no change 
 for the better, his only desire is to see her again and to die in 
 her arms. 
 
 Perhaps the grief and disappointment expressed in these 
 letters are too great. Livy, according to Seneca the Elder, 20 
 said that Cicero bore none of his misfortunes as a man should, 
 except his death, and Livy's judgment may be correct. To the 
 calm reader who scans these letters for indications of Cicero's 
 character, it will readily seem that Cicero was weak. But it 
 should perhaps be remembered that the collapse of his fortunes 
 was complete and apparently irremediable; it had been caused 
 by the violence of a demagogue who had done nothing for the 
 state and from whom the state could expect nothing ; Cicero him- 
 self had saved Rome from Catiline, and now the only charge 
 against him was connected with the conspiracy ; and, finally, his 
 exile had been due, or so it seemed, to weakness on his own part 
 and the part of some of his friends, and to the envy and treachery 
 of others. 
 
 Cicero's regret that he had failed to take his own life was 
 probably not unseemly in the eyes of the Romans. Death was 
 not for them surrounded with religious mysticism, even though 
 they publicly avoided the word death itself as an ill omen. To 
 die was a natural act ; to take one 's own life — to desert the post 
 in which God had placed a man, as they expressed it — was not 
 a normal or a proper thing to do ; but there were occasions when 
 nothing else seemed so thoroughly fitting. Suicide, in the next 
 few generations, became common; men under the displeasure 
 of the emperors were not executed, but were requested to take 
 their own lives. And it is significant that Cato's great fame was 
 very largely, perhaps almost entirely, due to his suicide at Utica : 
 his name became Cato of Utica. And as for tears, they were not 
 Cicero's alone. The whole senate had wept when the consuls 
 refused to allow public mourning for Cicero ; various individuals. 
 
 20 Sen. Suas. 6, 22. 
 
320 TEE TBIUMVIBATJS 
 
 among them even Balbus, are said to have shed tears. Much 
 of this was doubtless part of the usual public excitability; but 
 it was not confined to the forum and the streets. Plancius' 
 emotion was private ; and Cicero writes to Atticus that the latter, 
 at their parting, had broken down quite as much as had Cicero 
 himself. And Atticus is scarcely to be thought of as much given 
 to tears. 
 
 In the meantime the political situation in Rome was grad- 
 ually preparing the way for Cicero's return. Clodius was mob 
 king, and defied every one. The motives of his actions, in so far 
 as they were not merely the headlong impulses of a leader of 
 riots, were financial ; he sold privileges right and left, even inter- 
 fering with the measures of Caesar and Pompey. He fell out 
 with Gabinius, and they had a clash in the street ; with followers, 
 of course. Pompey, finding the city unsafe, retired to his house, 
 avoiding public affairs for a time. He was often out of Rome. 
 Of Crassus we hear nothing; but of Pompey it seems true that 
 he drew somewhat away from the absent Caesar and nearer to 
 the senate, the logical opponents of Clodius. A coalition between 
 the nobles and Pompey, it gradually appeared, was the only 
 means of checking Clodius ; and the battle cry of this movement 
 was the recall of Cicero. 
 
 In August of 58 b.c. Cicero for the first time writes of his 
 return as possible, but nothing was accomplished during that 
 year. Pompey corresponded with Caesar, and the latter was 
 found to have no objection to the ex-consul's recall. "When the 
 tribunes for 57 B.C. had been elected, one of them, Sestius, act- 
 ually went to Gaul and had an interview with Caesar about 
 the matter; and with the beginning of the new year there was 
 constant speech making and other preparations for the return 
 of Cicero. Metellus Nepos, now consul, but after all little else 
 than the servitor of Pompey, forgot his enmity toward Cicero. 
 Sestius and another tribune, Milo, formed gangs to oppose those 
 
SITUATION IN ROME 321 
 
 of Clodius, who, though no longer a tribune, was by no means 
 to be ignored. Some senators claimed that Cicero had never 
 been legally exiled, and consequently did not need to be formally 
 recalled, but only invited to return; others favored an explicit 
 recall. The senate gave formal thanks to the states — that is, the 
 cities and states — that had assisted Cicero, who "had deserved 
 well of the state." Sentiment in all the orders was growing in 
 favor of Cicero; his staunch supporters throughout Italy were 
 bidden to come to Rome to assist, even Pompey making speeches 
 outside of Rome in behalf of the friend he had deserted. It was 
 all a tribute to Cicero 's personal and political influence. In the 
 next year a certain Vatinius, thinking to insult Cicero, said that 
 the recall had been due not to Cicero's personal popularity but 
 to his position in the state — now, mm sed rei pubKoae oausw, says 
 Cicero; a curious indication of the man-to-man attitude in 
 politics and also an unexpected revelation of the fact that 
 Cicero's name was made the rallying cry against the anarchy 
 of Clodius. 
 
 But all this agitation and enthusiasm would have accom- 
 plished nothing, had it not been for the new gangs of Sestius 
 and Milo. Meetings of the senate were broken up, and there were 
 frequent encounters, Clodius at first retaining the upper hand. 
 The twenty-fifth of January was one of the noteworthy days. 21 
 A bill concerning Cicero was to be proposed. Fabricius, the 
 mover of the bill, had arrived in the forum before daybreak, 
 so as not to be excluded by Clodius and his followers. These, 
 however, free men and slaves, were already encamped in the 
 forum and around the public buildings ; they made an attack 
 on Fabricius, in which some men were killed and many were 
 wounded. One of the tribunes arrived, and was driven off by 
 force. The forum was now filled with slaughter; men, their 
 swords dripping with blood, rushed about in all directions in 
 search of Quintus Cicero, loudly shouting his name. He was 
 
 21 Pro Sest. 75-76. 
 
322 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 there, on the rostra. They pulled him down, wounded him, and 
 left him for dead, but he was miraculously saved by the fact 
 that he lay under a pile of corpses. 
 
 While in Asia, he had had a dream in which he seemed to see 
 his brother crossing a broad river on horseback ; 22 suddenly both 
 Cicero and his horse disappeared in the water, and poor Quintus 
 shuddered with terror; but presently Marcus and his horse 
 reappeared, crossed the river, and the brothers embraced. 
 Quintus had applied to ' ' those who knew, ' ' and had learned that 
 Cicero would be exiled and then recalled. Quintus had also 
 heard of Marcus' strange dream about Marius, 23 in which the 
 latter met the exiled Cicero and promised him aid. It was 
 Cicero's only prophetic dream, as he tells us; he used to speak 
 of it, and his freedman Sallustius often had its wonders on his 
 lips. The interpretation, as in the case of Quintus' dream, fore- 
 told a recall. If Quintus, as he lay wounded on the street, 
 thought of these cheerful prophesies, he must have had serious 
 doubts about the efficacy of divination. He remained where he 
 had been struck down until it was dark and then made his 
 escape. The Tiber was strewn with the corpses of citizens, the 
 sewers were choked up with them, and the blood was wiped from 
 the forum with sponges. 
 
 Finally the gangs of Sestius and Milo prevailed. It was a 
 tumultous time. Cicero 's honorable popularity among the peace- 
 able citizens in the districts of Italy and the justice of his cause 
 would have been unavailing if they had not been enforced, at 
 the capital, by armed bands, which were morally superior to 
 those of Clodius only in that they fought, for the moment at 
 least, for the restoration of some sort of government and order. 
 The law that finally recalled Cicero was passed on the fourth 
 of August. It was the triumvirs, particularly Caesar, who had 
 caused Cicero's exile, and it was Caesar's permission and Pom- 
 
 22 De Divin. 1, 58-59. 
 
 23 See above, p. 32. 
 
TVLLIA'S BIBTHDAY 323 
 
 pey's exertions that made the return possible; but just as Cicero 
 had been actually driven from Rome by the violence of Clodius, 
 so he was restored by the superior violence of Sestius and Milo. 
 Both the exile and the recall testify to Cicero's political and 
 personal influence. 
 
 v 
 Return to Rome 
 
 Cicero's return — the reception in Brundisium, the leisurely, 
 stately journey northward, and the entry into the capital — 
 was all that could be accomplished by the natural festive enthusi- 
 asm of the Italians and Romans, who were both southerners and 
 ancients ; and this enthusiasm was raised to its highest pitch by 
 Cicero's own popularity and the thought of his undeserved 
 misfortunes as well as by the systematic and widespread canvass 
 in his behalf, which had been one of the chief means of his recall. 
 
 He had left Dyrrhachium on the very day when the law 
 that reinstated him was passed; at a time when the law might 
 yet be blocked by Clodius, as other similar measures had fre- 
 quently been blocked. The reason for the particular date of 
 Cicero's sailing must therefore be sought outside of the political 
 situation. He landed on the fifth, the birthday of his dear 
 daughter, who was awaiting him in the port ; no day could have 
 been more auspicious as marking the glorious ending if his 
 long tribulations. This day was also, by a divinely ordered 
 coincidence, the anniversary of the founding, of the colony at 
 Brundisium as well as of the dedication of the temple of Safety 
 near Atticus' house. The details of the welcome in Brundisium, 
 of old devoted to Cicero, are not told ; but Cicero informs Atticus 
 that the townspeople made Tullia's birthday the special occasion 
 of their celebration — and Atticus needed nothing further to 
 
324 TEE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 stimulate his imagination. Cicero, staying at the house of the 
 faithful Flacci, who had harbored him when leaving Italy, 
 remained in Brundisium some five days, on the third of which 
 a messenger from Quintus brought word about the important 
 law. 
 
 Of the journey to Rome Cicero later wrote that the people 
 had brought him back on their shoulders, and, with more dignity, 
 that he had come as in the golden chariot of a triumphator. 
 And he did not hasten. The messenger from Quintus, undoubt- 
 edly traveling at his fastest, had needed four days. Horace in 
 the next generation — he was born in the same year as Cicero's 
 son — made a journey from Rome to Brundisium, as all the world 
 knows. It was a very slow journey, and much delay was caused 
 by muddy roads, so that even the never-hurrying poet found it 
 long ; and it took a fortnight. Cicero 's progress consumed nearly 
 a month. Congratulatory deputations retarded him on the road, 
 and the cities along the way kept holiday because he was back 
 among them. 
 
 The climax came in Rome. 24 People of all classes streamed 
 out of the gates to welcome him. The nomenclator found his 
 skill taxed to the utmost. All were there except those who could 
 not even pretend to be friends of the returning statesman. 
 Cicero entered Rome by the Capena gate, so that he had to pass 
 through several streets to reach the Capitol, where, according to 
 custom, he would offer thanks to the gods for his safe home- 
 coming. The steps of the temples were filled with citizens, who 
 wished to see him pass; and they shouted their welcome. A 
 large crowd, large_ even by Roman standards, followed him to the 
 Capitol ; and in the forum the crowd was stupendous. It was a 
 unique reception, and could be referred to as such several months 
 later, though a few months in Rome at this excited period was a 
 long time, when Cicero spoke for Sestius, prefacing his brief 
 account with the statement that everybody knew about it. "In 
 24 Att. 4, 1. 
 
ARRIVAL IN ROME 325 
 
 the midst of this great joy," he exclaims, "I had only one source 
 of grief, that so grateful a city had once been so wretched and 
 in such straits" — as during the domination of Clodius. 
 
 Cicero arrived in Kome on the fourth of September; on the 
 next day he addressed the senate. The speech 25 is not a long 
 one, comprising only fifteen chapters. Writing to Atticus, he 
 speaks of it as the oration in which he returned thanks to the 
 senate, for his recall, of course — s&natm gratias eigimus — and this 
 phrase, variously worded, is the title by which the speech is 
 known. It also reveals the keynote of Cicero's address. He 
 begins with the thought that no speaker can do justice to the 
 situation ; and thereupon he soars into, a long, balanced sentence 
 that must have given intense pleasure to his eloquence-loving 
 audience. " If I am grateful to our ancestors, ' ' he says in effect, 
 though a paraphrase can not preserve the grandeur of the utter- 
 ance — "if I am grateful to my ancestors, because they have given 
 me life, liberty, and a country ; if to the immortal gods, by whose 
 kindness I retain these blessings and am increased in them; if 
 to the Roman people, who have raised me to my position of 
 dignity in the state ; if to this senatorial order, who have passed 
 the most flattering decrees in my honor: then great and almost 
 infinite is the debt of gratitude I owe to you, whose friendship 
 and agreement have in one single moment restored to me the 
 gifts of my ancestors, the blessings of the immortal gods, the 
 dignity received at the hands of the Roman people, and your 
 own laudatory decrees; so that all the blessings due to you, to 
 the Roman people, to my ancestors, and to the immortal gods — 
 all these, which I formerly owed to these several benefactors, I 
 have now recovered through you alone." 
 
 This is only the beginning, but, in the main, it will have to 
 suffice. As Cicero proceeded, he singled out a few men — Pompey 
 
 25 The genuineness of the four orations delivered immediately after 
 Cicero's return from exile, and of some others, for that matter, has been 
 questioned, but scholars no longer have serious doubts about any of the 
 orations traditionally attributed to Cieero. See Schanz. 
 
326 TEE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 first of all, and some magistrates, who had been particularly- 
 active in securing his recall. The praise lavished upon them 
 has a variety, a grace, and a sonorousness of language scarcely 
 paralleled in any of his other orations. He utters the doubt that 
 he will never be able properly to show his gratitude to Pompey, 
 who has traveled to the municipia and the colonies in his behalf; 
 and he calls Lentulus, the consul of the year, his parent and his 
 god. He does not forget the other consul, Metellus Nepos, his 
 old enemy, who has now laid aside his hostility and has not 
 allowed himself to be influenced by his relatives — the Clodian 
 family, of course. Cicero knew as well as any one that Nepos 
 followed Pompey, though he also might have had a change of 
 heart; but no such reflections could have a place on the present 
 occasion. Cicero's language has the exaltation of Roman politi- 
 cal life, as we have frequently met it; and it may be worth 
 recalling, for our modern comfort, that the divinity assigned 
 oratorically to Lentulus was not such a transcending encomium 
 after all. The thought is found elsewhere among the orations, 
 the disagreeable Sestius being said to have revered his father as 
 if he were a god; and the word divine is applied to the study 
 of literature and philosophy to distinguish it, without emphasis, 
 from the pursuits of agriculture. 
 
 The speech has some expressions, not of gratitude, directed 
 against Clodius and the two consuls of the preceding year. The 
 attacks on these, very brief as compared with the rest of the 
 oration, had no importance in Cicero's mind, for in describing 
 the situation to Atticus he does not even refer to his enemies; 
 and to his audience these attacks, preceded and followed as they 
 were by Cicero 's high expressions of gratitude, doubtless seemed 
 little else than the natural incidental thrusts at his political 
 opponents. Their virulence, however, has led some students to 
 the erroneous belief that the main object of Cicero's speech was 
 to empty the brimming vials of his wrath, and they have main- 
 
ADDBESSES TKE SENATE 327 
 
 tained that- Cicero on this occasion revealed himself as a man of 
 coarse mind and an unforgiving disposition. The point needs 
 no argument if the amenities of Eoman politics be kept in mind ; 
 one little matter, however, may be mentioned. The attack on 
 Piso, one of the consuls, was repeated with much effective ampli- 
 fication in a later speech, In Pisonem. The speech is extant, 
 and no modern can find it in his cultivated sensibilities to utter 
 an exculpatory word in extenuation of its abuse. But the 
 Romans thought differently. The speech was published, and a 
 year after its delivery Cicero writes to Quintus that the school 
 boys were learning it as a regular exercise. And yet the Romans 
 guarded the virtue of their sons with an anxiety that we mod- 
 erns reserve for our daughters; the Roman boy, to quote an 
 example, passing through the street under the care of his paedo- 
 gogus, was expected to keep his eyes duly lowered so as not to 
 glance at the passers-by. 
 
 Clodius came off rather easily in the first speech to the 
 senate, for Cicero's quarrel was not with him at this particular 
 moment. The former tribune had, after all, only lived up to 
 his previous reputation. He is frequently referred to, however, 
 always with an opprobrious epithet ; and a modern reader might 
 compile a very comprehensive and impressive list of abusive 
 nouns and adjectives from these incidental references. But 
 Cicero's real vituperation is aimed at the former consuls, who 
 had acted in a manner contrary to what "could reasonably be 
 expected from their high office',' and who had not had the excuse 
 of political enmity. Before the main thunderous attack, there 
 are little lightning flashes to indicate its approach. They have 
 sold Cicero's safety; their minds are filled with murk and 
 squalor; they are traders in provinces and vendors of the sena- 
 torial dignity; not consuls, but robbers. Cicero has been class- 
 ing them together, but suddenly he launches into a description 
 of them individually. 
 
328 THE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 Gabinius, who had proposed the law which gave Pompey the 
 command against the pirates, is himself an archpirate; he is a 
 frizzly-haired frequenter of low resorts; he is besmeared with 
 ointments. And this dignified gentleman addressed the people 
 in the Circus though he was heavy with wine, sleep, and debauch- 
 ery. His hair glistened with pomade; his locks were carefully 
 arranged; his eyes were dull; his cheeks hung in pouches; and 
 his voice trembled and was scarcely audible when he announced 
 that he was much displeased that citizens had been punished 
 without due process of law. Unsuspected and hidden for a long 
 time, indeed, has ibeen the worth and dignity of this dancing 
 gentleman, whose forehead is scarred with the curling iron. 
 
 And Piso ! He has frequented the forum since boyhood, 
 remarkable only for his assumed seriousness of mien, and 
 never displaying any wisdom, eloquence, knowledge of military 
 affairs, friendliness, or liberality. Passing by this unmannered, 
 bristling, long-faced individual, you might have thought him a 
 boor, but not a debauchee. But you should see him indoors! 
 He is the kind of man who is admitted by the back entrance. 
 And this unwieldy brute philosophizes with Greeklings ! He is 
 an Epicurean; not a real one, whatever that may be, but one 
 that is interested only in the one word, pleasure. His teachers 
 are not the silly fellows who talk about virtue, hard work, and 
 the facing of dangers for one's country — Cato knew these 
 philosophers when he argued against Murena — but those who 
 teach that no hour should be without pleasure, that every part 
 of a man's body should at all times experience some delightful 
 sensation. This philosopher, Piso, has deceived his senatorial 
 colleagues and the Roman people, not by cleverness and eloquence, 
 as will occasionally happen, but by his wise wrinkles and his 
 eloquent eyebrows. And yet, despite those eyes of his, though 
 there is no mind behind them ; despite that fine forehead, though 
 it is not a sign of noble living ; despite those wonderful eyebrows, 
 
A POLITICAL MANIFESTO 329 
 
 though Piso has never accomplished anything— despite all these, 
 he could bring himself to make an alliance with Gabinius, and 
 was not repelled by that fellow's redolence of ointments, his 
 vinous breath, and his scarred forehead. 
 
 Such invective as this grew out of. the same Roman soil of 
 unrestrained license as that which nourished the political verses 
 of Catullus, but the poet's feeble meannesses, though personally 
 as insulting, are like pin pricks beside Cicero's demolishing artil- 
 lery. And yet Cicero says, within the few minutes that the 
 speech lasted, that this is not the occasion for personal strife and 
 that he willingly forgives his enemies. Nor was his vituperation 
 a matter of impulse, for he had not only written the speech 
 beforehand but he even read it from the manuscript. 
 
 Indeed, the oration was a political manifesto. Pompey and 
 the orderly elements — relatively orderly, it must be confessed, 
 in view of the gangs of Sestius and Milo — had united in bringing 
 Cicero back; law and order had been in abeyance during his 
 absence; the union just formed, therefore, must be continued if 
 Rome was to have peace. Cicero was well aware that ultimately 
 his exile had been due to Caesar ; Pompey 's treachery had been, 
 in a way, an enforced yielding. Cicero does not mention Caesar 
 by name, but he refers to him in words that have already been 
 quoted : " I will not call him my enemy, but I know that he was 
 silent when others called him my enemy." Cicero, in this 
 remark, daringly thrusts a wedge between the two chief trium- 
 virs; his hope being, as before the exile, that disagreement in 
 the triumvirate will lead to constitutional government, Pompey 
 siding with the conservatives. And Pompey is reminded that he 
 can not get along without support, for, acting alone, that is, 
 in the interests of the triumvirate, he had been forced to take 
 refuge in his house in order to escape the violence of Clodius. 
 This was not a pleasant reminder to the great man. Critics have 
 wondered at Cicero's lack of adroitness, and some have con- 
 
330 THE TRIUMVIRATE 
 
 sidered the statement an indication of the alleged spuriousness 
 of the oration. But Cicero had observed Pompey's irresolute, 
 fumbling city ways, and there is more than enough eulogy of 
 Pompey in the speech to counteract any little chagrin the 
 reminder of his weakness may have caused him. 
 
 VI 
 Cicero Submits 
 
 Cicero did not have such high hopes for the future as this 
 speech and some later ones indicate. This is shown even by his 
 first letter to Atticus, written within a few days of his arrival. 
 Nothing, however, could be accomplished without a publicly 
 expressed confidence. But the situation was hopelessly like the 
 one that followed the consulship of 63 B.C. The union that 
 had restored Cicero was as weak as the one that had checked 
 Catiline, and of the same kind. The nobles were no more devoted 
 to Pompey than before. On the seventh of September, to be 
 sure, Cicero, prompted by the situation in Rome, made a motion 
 to place Pompey in charge of the grain supply, for the scarcity 
 of food was causing riots; and a law to this effect was passed. 
 Pompey received full proconsular powers for five years through- 
 out the Roman realm, thus becoming virtual ruler, as he had 
 been before. But the nobles presently began to oppose him at 
 every turn. Nor were they for long inclined to follow the leader- 
 ship of Cicero, the New man. The old envies quickly revived. 
 He was taunted with his present friendship for Pompey, toward 
 whom it was said he ought to feel nothing but enmity because 
 of the exile ; and when he proposed any measures at all opposed 
 to the interests of the triumvirs, the aristocrats openly rejoiced. 
 Some of them, in their eagerness to thwart Pompey and make 
 Cicero 's position even more disagreeable, openly favored Clodius, 
 who had quite revived from his defeat in Cicero's return. Of 
 
CONFERENCE AT LUCA 331 
 
 the knights we hear nothing at this time; but Crassus, though 
 he had been one of the many that welcomed Cicero on the fourth 
 of September, showed friendship neither for Cicero nor for 
 Pompey. The former situation was thus accurately reproduced, 
 and Cicero, working for a coalition that involved mutual 
 concessions, was like a neutral between belligerents, heartily 
 supported by no one. 
 
 But there was still another difficulty. A return to consti- 
 tutional government would be possible only in case the triumvirs 
 disagreed. Of this there seemed for a little while to be some 
 likelihood. Not only were Crassus and Pompey openly jealous 
 of each other, but Pompey seemed to be drawing away from 
 Caesar. On the fifth of April, in 56 B.C., Cicero proposed that 
 Caesar's agrarian law be made a subject for discussion at a 
 meeting to be held on May fifteenth. In some way the law had 
 proved unsuccessful, and a speaker at a previous meeting had 
 used against it the arguments formerly employed by Cicero 
 against the bill of Eullus. Cicero 's proposal, as he himself later 
 phrased it, was an attack on the very citadel of the triumvirate, 
 and yet Pompey made no objection. But the agrarian law was 
 not discussed on the fifteenth of May. Caesar had created the 
 triumvirate in the year 60 b.c. It had proved wondrously 
 efficient, and now needed only to be restored. This was done 
 at the famous conference at Luca, a small town in northern 
 Etruria. Here, in April, Caesar succeeded in reconciling Pom- 
 pey and Crassus, and new arrangements were made for the 
 future. Pompey and Crassus were to become consuls for 55 b.c, 
 each thereupon to receive an important provincial governorship, 
 and Caesar's command in Gaul was prolonged so as to last ten 
 years in all. Borne was in the hands of the reunited triumvirs, 
 and their plans were carried out. After the consulship of 55 B.C., 
 to anticipate, Crassus went to the Bast to fight against the Par- 
 thians, and was killed. Pompey received the two Spains as his 
 provinces, and, remaining in Borne, governed them by lieutenants. 
 
332 THE TEWMVIBATE 
 
 Pompey had shown no resentment, and probably had felt 
 none, at Cicero's proposed attack on Caesar's land law, but after 
 the conference with Caesar he expressed so strong a disapproval 
 of Cicero 's action that various men reported his words to Cicero. 
 Pompey himself went to Sardinia. Meeting Quintus, who was 
 one of his lieutenants, he severely criticised Cicero, recalling his 
 own past services to the latter, such as they were, and said that 
 in helping Cicero he had acted with the approval of Caesar. 
 He reminded Quintus of conversations they had previously had 
 in reference to Cicero's relations to Caesar, and told him that 
 if Cicero could not be restrained, Quintus would be made to 
 pay for his brother's behavior in accordance with promises he 
 had given Pompey. These promises, evidently, had been to 
 the effect that Cicero would not oppose Caesar's interests, but 
 we know nothing further about them. Pompey also directed 
 Quintus to request Cicero to show consideration for Caesar, or, 
 at any rate, not to work against him if he was unwilling or unable 
 to work for him. And finally, to make his altered view doubly 
 clear, Pompey sent a friend to Cicero with the message that 
 Cicero should refrain from committing himself in the matter of 
 Caesar's land legislation until Pompey himself should come to 
 Rome. 
 
 Pompey, again acting the part of a traitor to Cicero, had 
 thus sent an ultimatum, and Cicero yielded. He was without a 
 party and he was constantly opposed and insulted by those who 
 were still inclined to offer a hopeless resistance to the triumvirs. 
 The choice between Caesar and Pompey on the one hand and 
 their powerless opponents on the other, who were friendly with 
 Clodius, was a choice of evils, but the triumvirate offered him 
 safety and some small chance to accomplish something, if not 
 for the state, at least for his friends. Cicero's most dignified 
 course would have been to retire from public life. This, however, 
 seems to have been next to impossible. His prominence was 
 too great ; moreover, he had promised, in the first speech to the 
 
THE PALINODE 333 
 
 senate after his return from exile, not to forget the services of 
 those who had aided his recall, and gratitude for such services 
 was inevitably connected with public life. 26 
 
 Cicero, having once decided to submit to the triumvirs, did 
 so with frankness. Contrary to the advice of Atticus, he sent 
 something written to Caesar which he called his recantation, his 
 palinode. He had found the writing difficult, and "had nibbled 
 around it for a long time," but he sent it. Just what it was, 
 can not be determined with certainty ; most probably it was the 
 oration called De Provmciis Consularibiis, though it may have 
 been some other oration, or even a letter. In the speech men- 
 tioned, which was delivered at the end of May in 56 B.C., Cicero 
 at any rate openly spoke for the necessity of retaining Caesar 
 in Gaul, the very thing the triumvir 's enemies wished to prevent ; 
 and reviewed his past relations to Caesar, concluding somewhat 
 pathetically with the thought that he is no longer hostile to 
 Caesar. They had been old friends, he says ; Caesar had offered 
 him a place in the coalition with Pompey and Crassus, and 
 Caesar, though he had allowed Clodius to become a plebeian, 
 had also favored Cicero's recall from exile. "Even if I were 
 Caesar 's enemy, ' ' he continues, ' ' I would favor him, since he is 
 a good servant of the state. ' ' Adroitly Cicero mentions how the 
 senate had bowed to Caesar and voted him honors; but the 
 public recantation was not easy. ' ' I will say what I feel, ' ' Cicero 
 says; "I will explain the whole situation." 
 
 The same necessity for explanation is present in nearly all 
 Cicero's orations of this time; and we should undoubtedly find 
 it, to the same degree, in the orations of other speakers, were they 
 extant. These years were so full of new political combinations 
 and recombinations that nobody can be said to have remained 
 faithful to any one but himself. 
 
 Cicero delivered many orations after his return from exile 
 besides those alreadv mentioned. Fourteen altogether are extant 
 
 2eFam. 1, 9. contains a long account of Cicero's political attitude at 
 this time. It is a very remarkable letter. 
 
334 TEE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 from the years 57-52 B.C. His first speech, to the senate was 
 followed by a speech to the people of the same tenor and much 
 the same phraseology. 27 A little later, though still in 57 B.C., 
 he spoke before the pontifices in a successful effort to regain his 
 house lot on the Palatine. Soon after that strange sounds and 
 the clash of arms were heard underground, and the soothsayers 
 averred that sacred places had been desecrated. Clodius con- 
 ceived this to refer to the rebuilding of Cicero's house on the 
 Palatine, for the land, it will be recalled, had been dedicated by 
 Clodius to Liberty. The matter was argued jn^ court the next 
 year. Cicero's speech 28 on this occasion sets before us the 
 grotesque uses to which the national religion was put in partisan 
 politics. 
 
 During the following years Cicero pleaded in numerous cases, 
 all connnected with politics, whatever the occasion that prompted 
 them. Attack on enemies and defense of himself and of his 
 friends or political associates, therefore, form their main theme, 
 the tone being that of his first speech to the senate. The consul- 
 ship of 63 B.C. and the exile, with the events that preceded and 
 followed it, were constantly brought up for criticism by Clodius 
 and Cicero's other opponents, and Cicero replied. The same 
 thoughts occur repeatedly, much to the wonder of the reader, 
 until he remembers that the speeches are but echoes of the 
 ceaseless talk and argumentation in the forum. 
 
 These orations contain passages of every kind. Cicero 
 describes the circumstances of his exile with infinite pathos; 29 
 he gives an exalted definition of his ideal citizens, the bom, which 
 is like a piece of noble music, leading the thoughts to distant 
 places and half -forgotten resolves; 30 and on the occasion when 
 he delivered this passage, which is one of his greatest, he 
 
 27 Oratio own populo gratias egit. The next speech mentioned is De 
 domo sita ad pontifices. 
 
 28 De haruspicum responsis. 
 
 29 Pro Sestio 36-52, Pro Planoio 72-100. 
 so Pro Sestio 96-132. 
 
BUSY IN TEE COUSTS 335 
 
 descended to unrestrained vituperation of one of the witnesses, 
 hurling insults at the man because of his personal appearance. 31 
 The step from grandeur to scurrility was not a long one in the 
 Roman forum. An equally unrestrained attack was also leveled 
 by Cicero at Piso, 32 one of the consuls in 58 B.C., in a speech that 
 is scarcely more than an elaboration of the invective against the 
 same man contained in Cicero's speech to the senate after his 
 return to the city. The gaieties and gallantry of Roman society, 
 with sordid financial transactions, disagreements, and poison 
 charges in the background ; 33 the propriety of sowing wild oats ; 34 
 humor and seriousness mixed as effectively as in the speech for 
 Murena; 35 the successful foreigner Balbus, 36 who finally secured 
 the consulship; one Roman politician who demanded ten thou- 
 sand talents from the king of Egypt to restore him to his throne, 
 and another politician who lent the king the money and in return 
 was put in charge of the taxes of the kingdom and scoured the 
 country with Roman soldiers in the course of ruthless extor- 
 tion; 37 and, of course, malversation in a province, with Cicero's 
 assertion 38 in court that the foreign witnesses, who were Sar- 
 dinians, could not be believed, just as previously Cicero had told 
 the courts that no credence should be placed in the Gauls who 
 testified against Fonteius and in the Greeks who appeared against 
 Placcus — all these persons and circumstances and opinions, and 
 a great many more, are found in these speeches. 
 
 Taken together, these orations give perhaps the most vivid 
 picture that we have of public life in Rome, its occasional nobil- 
 ity, its eloquence, its recklessness, violence, and selfishness. The 
 
 3i In Vatinium. 
 
 3 2 In Pisonem. 
 
 33 Pro Caelio. 
 3* Pro Caelio. 
 35 Pro Plancio. 
 3e Pro Balbo. 
 
 37 Pro Rabirio Postumo. 
 ss Pro Soauro. 
 
336 THE TBWMVIBATE 
 
 real power was in the hands of Caesar and Pompey, but Caesar 
 was in Gaul and Pompey made no real effort to keep order in 
 Rome. The city was in a state of anarchy. The gangs of Clodius 
 and of his opponents, particularly Milo, filled the streets with 
 constant riots, and it was often impossible to elect the magis- 
 trates at the proper time. At last Clodius and his desperadoes 
 met Milo and his cutthroats near Bovillae, on the Appian "Way, 
 on the eighteenth of January, 52 B.C., and in the fight that ensued 
 Clodius was slain. The events that followed were like those that 
 had been going on in Rome for years. The corpse was brought 
 to Rome and. burned by the mob in the senate-house, which itself 
 was consumed by the fire, and all the evil passions of the mob 
 were let loose. Then at last the least disorderly elements in the 
 city elected Pompey sole consul. The motion for this unprece- 
 dented consulship was made by Bibulus, Caesar's former col- 
 league and opponent in the year 59 B.C., and it was seconded by 
 Cato, though neither Cato nor Bibulus had any reason for favor- 
 ing Pompey. 
 
 One hundred days after the murder of Clodius, Milo was 
 brought to trial. Cicero was in duty bound to defend the man 
 who had been among those most active in bringing about his 
 return and who also had been the mortal enemy of Clodius; 
 and he showed both independence and courage in persisting in 
 his course despite the violence of the Clodian mob and the evident 
 desire of Pompey to have Milo convicted. Milo, as has been 
 intimated before,, was little better than Clodius; but it seems 
 probable that even Cato, when the trial finally took place, voted 
 for acquittal. Though Cicero had the courage to appear as the 
 only speaker for the defense, the sight of the soldiers with 
 whom Pompey had filled the forum and the angry shouts of the 
 Clodians so unnerved him that his speech was a failure. 
 
 Cicero's words were taken down, and published; but the 
 speech that he later wrote out and sent to Milo, which has won 
 praise even from Cicero 's severest critics, is the one that we have. 
 
TRIAL OF MILO 337 
 
 Cicero argues that Milo had acted in self-defense, which may 
 have been true, although it is of no consequence; and he also 
 maintains that Clodius had amply deserved death. Only one 
 little passage will be reproduced — a fitting commentary on the 
 oratory of the times. Milo, like Clodius, was a typical leader of 
 ruffians; he was absolutely without fear and at the trial had 
 acted contrary to all Roman court propriety, for he had refused 
 to dress in mourning, to let his hair and beard grow long, and 
 even to shed tears. Cicero's description of him on the fateful 
 day, however, is almost lyrical, and recalls Terence's account of 
 the sensitive old gentleman in the Self -Tormentor. Milo, accord- 
 ing to Cicero, attended the meeting of the senate and stayed until 
 the end. Thereupon he went home, changed his shoes and clothes, 
 waited a little for his wife to get ready, "as husbands do," and 
 finally set out from Rome, having sacerdotal business in Lanu- 
 vium, which was beyond Bovillae. He traveled in a carriage, 
 wrapped in a big cloak and sitting beside his wife. Many maid 
 servants and slaves accompanied the peaceful couple. Then 
 they were met by Clodius, on horseback, with his armed band, 
 the famous struggle took place, and Clodius was killed. 
 
 But Milo was not saved by this touching description of his 
 peaceable frame of mind, or, rather, by the part of this descrip- 
 tion which the orator was able to utter at the trial. He was sent 
 into exile, and Rome, under Pompey as sole consul, enjoyed a 
 brief period of comparative calm. 
 
 Cicero 's own position throughout these years of frequent plead- 
 ing was excellent. The lot on which his Palatine residence had 
 stood was restored to him by senatorial decree in 57 B.C., despite 
 Clodius' pious dedication of it to Liberty; and money was voted 
 to Cicero both for the house and for the destroyed villas, though 
 for the villas not quite as much as he had expected. In March 
 of 56 B.C., he writes to Quintus that he is living rather more 
 expensively than had been his custom, finding this necessary 
 because his house had never been more crowded by visitors. At 
 
338 THE TBIUMVIBATE 
 
 that time he was building in three places ; and shortly before, he 
 had been thinking of buying an estate at Tusculum, probably 
 next to his own property and so intended for an enlargement. 
 The senate, who had clipped his wings by exile, is not willing 
 to let them grow again, he says; but even as late as October, 
 54 B.C., when Cicero's espousal of the triumvirate cause had taken 
 open form in the courts, the senate rose with loud shouts when 
 Gabinius dared to call him an exile. A highborn nobody, just 
 previously to this, kept pressing dinner invitations upon him; 
 this pleased Cicero, though he persisted in refusing them. 
 
 He had his troubles, to be sure. It became necessary more 
 than once to defend political enemies who were the friends of 
 the triumvirs. Sometimes the shifting political conditions made 
 this easy, as in the case of Vatinius, a worthless Caesarian, whom 
 Cicero had bitterly attacked in the oration that has already been 
 mentioned. Unfortunately the defending oration is lost.. At 
 other times it was more difficult, as in the case of the ex-consul 
 Gabinius, the man with the scarred forehead. Cicero reveals 
 his annoyance to Atticus; but in public he has to pretend that 
 Gabinius and he have been reconciled, explaining that Pompey 
 is too noble a man to have required Cicero to act in behalf of 
 an enemy. Occasionally Cicero, like every one else in Rome, was 
 exposed to physical danger. He kept a body of armed men 
 about him. Once, on the third of November, 57 B.C., Clodius and 
 his followers drove away the workmen who were rebuilding 
 Cicero's house; they also committed other outrages, and even set 
 Quintus' house on fire. On the eleventh of the same month 
 they attacked Cicero as he, with guards, was coming down the 
 Sacred Way. Shouting ensued, stone-throwing, the use of clubs 
 and swords; all unforeseen. Cicero retreated into the vestibule 
 of a house nearby. In the melee Cicero's men seem to have had 
 an opportunity of despatching Clodius, but, as Cicero writes to 
 Atticus, he was opposed to violent methods : "I am dieting and 
 
CAESAR AND CICERO 339 
 
 object to surgery." But even in the midst of the daily uproar 
 in Kome he was later held to be safe because of his friendship 
 with Caesar and Pompey. 
 
 Many letters passed between Caesar in Gaul and Cicero; 
 but only one is extant, 39 in which Cicero recommends Trebatius. 
 "You have indeed succeeded in persuading me," he begins, 
 "that you are my other self both in matters relating to me and 
 to my friends." That Caesar has power is implied, but not 
 expressed. Caesar had asked Cicero to send some one to whom 
 he might show favors, and Cicero sends Trebatius, expressing his 
 full conviction that Caesar will treat the young man as he him- 
 self would have done. And he does not forget to make graceful 
 reference to a witticism in -Caesar's letter. The letter is written 
 "as to a friend and- yet with dignity" — the phrase employed by 
 Cicero in characterizing, for his brother, his correspondence with 
 Caesar. 
 
 Quintus had joined Caesar in Gaul as one of his lieutenants, 
 and an able one, as every reader of the Commentaries is aware. 
 Quintus' going to Gaul was an outward sign of the reconcilia- 
 tion between Caesar and the Cieeros. Caesar had welcomed it 
 warmly. The letter in which Cicero announced Quintus ' decision 
 had fallen into the water and become almost illegible; Caesar, 
 replying to it, writes that what it seems to mean is too good to 
 be true. And that is the spirit in which he and Cicero met. 
 Caesar expressed his prospective joy at renewing his old affection 
 for the Cieeros through direct intercourse with Quintus ; and he 
 did Cicero various substantial services, even lending him eight 
 hundred thousand sesterces. Cicero, on the other hand, writes 
 to Quintus that, whatever Caesar's kind offices, his love is far 
 more valuable. We know nothing of the early personal relations 
 between Caesar and Cicero, but Caesar's words indicate that 
 they had been intimate. The two great Romans, though different 
 in many ways, were perhaps more alike than any other two ; they 
 
 39 Earn. 7, 5. 
 
340 TEE TZIVMVISATE 
 
 both had real culture, tact, kindliness, and, above all, genius. 
 Probably their political differences in the past, radical though 
 they were, had not seriously disturbed their mutual personal 
 esteem. 
 
 Cicero 's personal security and eminence is reflected in numer- 
 ous letters of this period. To M. Fadius Gallus, an Epicurean 
 friend, he writes at the end of 57 B.C. a numerous letter about 
 having overeaten at a vegetarian dinner; Cicero, the vigilant 
 politician, had been "entrapped by Mr. Beet and Mr. Mallow," 
 and he moralizes about various sicknesses, of all of which he is 
 afraid. 40 To Marius, another friend, he writes a beautiful letter, 
 though it was doubtless very much of a rhetorical exercise, about 
 the superiority of mental occupation to attendance at public 
 games; 41 and he sends his brother an amusing account 42 of how 
 this same Marius had once traveled with him toward Baiae. A 
 friend had lent them a litter with eight bearers. As they were 
 being borne along, Marius looked out and saw a troop of a 
 hundred armed men behind them. "He almost collapsed with 
 fear," writes Cicero, "and I with laughter, for the men were 
 our bodyguard." And to the young lawyer Trebatius, finally, 
 who had gone to Caesar in Gaul at Cicero's recommendation, he 
 writes a whole series of letters, 43 full of legal puns, which at 
 times call for elaborate exposition and are infinitely amusing. 
 The basis of them all is that Trebatius, being a student, did not 
 enjoy his stay in Gaul, but remained in order, to make his for- 
 tune ; often complaining, now of one thing and now of another. 
 Thus Caesar, busy with fighting, did not always have sufficient 
 time for social intercourse, though there seems to have been a 
 good deal of this. Cicero attempts to cheer his depressed pro- 
 tege, evidently to some purpose, for Trebatius apparently became 
 
 40 Fam. 7, 26. Translations by Tyrrell. 
 
 «.Fam. 7, 1. 
 
 « Ad Q. Fr. 2, 8 (10), 2. 
 
 « Fam. Book 7. 
 
OUTWARDLY CHEERFUL 341 
 
 rich, through Caesar's bounty, before he returned to Home. 
 Trebatius, as a man of peace, did not go to Britain, at which 
 Cicero expresses his joy : Trebatius has been spared much trouble 
 by staying in Gaul and Cicero has escaped Trebatius' descrip- 
 tions of the expedition. Trebatius lived long; and gave laconic 
 answers to Horace when the latter had doubts about his own 
 satirical manner. 44 
 
 All of Cicero's cheerfulness, however, was no more real than 
 had been his unconcern when he wittily defended Murena while 
 the Catilinarians still infested the city. At the bottom of his 
 heart lay a deadweight of inexpressible sorrow because the state 
 had gone to ruin. Whether pleading in the courts or writing to 
 his friends, he wore a mask. As every one could see, he had 
 regained his lost position and he had become the honored and 
 influential friend of the triumvirs; the house on the Palatine 
 was restored and throngs filled it; such a man had every reason 
 for happiness — and Cicero acted the part. But in this lay his 
 dumb tragedy. He wore his mask even in his relations with 
 Atticus and Quintus. To them, he could not pretend that the 
 old republican god was in his heaven and that all was well with 
 the political world; but he could profess no longer to care. 
 
 "With Atticus this was easier. The latter had always given 
 less thought to Cicero's principles than to his safety, and Cicero 
 was now safe. Atticus, moreover, had never cared much what 
 became of Rome, provided he himself and his friends could 
 live a sheltered, comfortable life; if he had any passion beyond 
 that of amassing wealth, it was for books and art. Cicero gave 
 much of his time to writing, and he found much consolation in 
 it. To Atticus, therefore, he could pretend, and successfully, 
 that he found more than mere consolation, a happiness that 
 satisfied the most intimate needs of his nature. "The state is 
 lost," he writes. 45 "You ask if I take it easily? Certainly. I 
 
 "Horace Sat. 2, 1. 
 *b Att. 4, 18. 
 
342 THE TJHTJMVIBATE 
 
 am going back to my books — the life for which I am best fitted. ' ' 
 And he also refers to the joy he takes in his private relations; 
 with Atticus, Quintus, and Tullia — Terentia being ominously 
 omitted, even just after Cicero's return, as though things were 
 not quite what they should have been. 
 
 "With Quintus, to whom Cicero seems to have been even better 
 known than to Atticus, it was more difficult to wear the mask. 
 He does it bravely for a while. He counsels Quintus to be as 
 philosophical as Philoctetes, who, when wronged, could take 
 pleasure in the sufferings of his own country; and he writes 
 daily for a time, though most of the letters are lost, and enjoys 
 ' ' rambling on as if conversing. ' ' But the letter in which he most 
 convincingly paraded before Atticus as happy, is followed in 
 the extant correspondence by one to Quintus 46 — both in 54 B.C., 
 probably in October — in which he. suddenly throws away aU 
 torturing pretense. "I keep away from public business and 
 devote myself to literature, but I will confess something that 
 I have wished to keep hidden, most of all from you. I am tor- 
 mented, my dearest brother, I am tormented, for there is no 
 state, no law. This ought to be my happiest time, my otiwm 
 cum dignitate, but I am distracted by cases in court, often having 
 to defend my enemies; or else I have recourse to study. Only 
 Caesar, out of all men, has been found to give me the love I want, 
 or rather, to desire to love me. I have from day to day many 
 circumstances to cheer me; the greatest would be our being 
 together, but you are away." This confession — it is slightly 
 longer in the original — is not repeated afterwards ; Cicero writes 
 later as he had written earlier, but no preoccupation with trifles 
 and no wit, after that, could deceive Quintus. 
 
 ^Ad Q. Fr., 3, 5 and 6. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 I 
 The Scipionic Circle and Literary Enthusiasms 
 
 The conference at Luca put an end to Cicero's independent 
 political activity, and there was no prospect that it could 
 ever be resumed. Immediately after the conference Cicero had 
 considerable leisure; in the next few years he was at times 
 distractedly busy in the courts, but he nevertheless seems to 
 have had not a little spare time, certainly more than when he 
 was working his way toward the consulship. He thus had his 
 otium, and it preserved much of its outward cbignitas, but the 
 latter, now that the government was in the hands of individuals, 
 was to Cicero only an empty shell. He would have used any 
 leisure for continuing his reading and his ' studies ; whether, 
 under happier circumstances, he would also have written, is 
 not certain. Now, however, seeking distraction even more than 
 pleasure or improvement, he turned to the writing of long essays, 
 and may be said to have become an author. 
 
 This step did not involve so great a change in his habits as 
 would at first appear, for he had already written- a great deal ; 
 but it did involve a new point of view. Beginning with his work 
 on oratory in three books, the De Oratore, he turned his previous 
 reading and experience into literature; he utilized his own past 
 in a kind of writing that did not enhance his high position in 
 Rome, but even detracted somewhat from it. The situation, 
 however, can not be stated in modern terms; the position of 
 Cicero or of any other Roman in reference to literary matters 
 was wholly different from anything found in modern civilization. 
 
344 AUTHOBSHIP 
 
 Roman thought, when not concerned with the practical things 
 in life, and sometimes even then, was largely borrowed from 
 the Greeks, and the forms of Roman writing were almost entirely t 
 Greek. Rome during its period of great conquests, the third and 
 the second centuries B.C., had become the mistress of a Heflenized 
 world, and the Romans themselves had frequently come into 
 close personal contact with individual Greeks. The Romans at 
 that time had no literature of their own, no philosophy, and no 
 system of education beyond a very efficient but unintellectual 
 home training; they were soldiers and administrators, 'some of 
 them also farming or engaging in business. The contact with 
 Greece forced a new point of view upon them. They came out 
 into the sun, as it were, into a wider, richer life. Not everything 
 new was good, but much was pleasant and much appealed to the 
 serious side of Roman character. Rhetoric especially was offered 
 as something useful ; philosophy, though suspiciously speculative 
 and not so trustworthy a moral guide as the old Roman tradi- 
 tions, also made some headway. The Greek scholars discovered 
 in Rome a large field for their activity, more glorious and more 
 remunerative than Greece itself or the rest of the world; and 
 they set about preparing their wares for the new market. 
 
 The beginning of this, in a definitely personal way, came with 
 Scipio Africanus the Younger, the conqueror and unwilling 
 destroyer of Carthage. Long before his time Greek influence, 
 both for good and for evil, had been slipping into Rome. As 
 early as 240 B.C. it had brought about what was later looked 
 upon as the beginning of Roman literature, through the trans- 
 lation and acting in Rome of a Greek comedy and a Greek 
 tragedy; a humble enough beginning, for the translator was a 
 Greek slave. Africanus, however, was the first Roman noble 
 who put himself under the tuition of a Greek. 1 During Scipio 's 
 
 i See particularly Reitzenstein, and Schwartz (vol. 1, chap. 4). On the 
 Greeks in Rome, see also Besangon, Eeure, Buettner, Schneidewin, and 
 Zielinski (both titles). 
 
POLYBWS AND PANAETIVS 345 
 
 youth Polybius was living in Home as a prisoner of war, free 
 in every respect except for his enforced residence in the imperial 
 city. He was an Achaean nobleman, long experienced in politics 
 and war, a Stoic though not a professional philosopher, and 
 thoroughly educated in the Greek way; he had traveled much 
 and had a mind open to the political greatness of Rome, which in 
 his large history he attributes mainly to the Roman aristocracy. 
 In the year 166 B.C. Scipio, then slightly under twenty, appealed 
 to Polybius for guidance, so that he might become a worthy 
 member of the Roman nobility, fit to take the place of eminent 
 predecessors. The Roman world was changing. The old nobles 
 had led very narrow lives ; they had looked in only one direction, 
 toward politics; speaking broadly, they had been members of 
 the Roman state and nothing further. To maintain in the new 
 world a position equal to theirs in the old, Scipio had need of a 
 wider training; and Polybius was ready to instruct him. The 
 relation between the two became one of sincere personal affection, 
 a source of pride to them both, and is nobly commemorated in 
 Polybius' history. 2 
 
 In later years, when Scipio had attained fame and power, he 
 put himself under the tuition of the philosopher Panaetius. The 
 latter, a Greek noble like Polybius, was a professional philoso- 
 pher, a Stoic ; but he was free from the typical Stoic dogmatism 
 and contempt for beauty. The Stoics, to be sure, being Greeks, 
 had heard of beauty, and proclaimed that goodness is beauty, 
 but they were merely aiming at philosophical comprehensiveness ; 
 having made room in their scheme for beauty by calling it good- 
 ness, they quickly forgot its meaning. Such, at least, was their 
 attitude as sectarians ; but at this time orthodoxy had fallen on 
 evil days ; neither Stoics nor Epicureans nor even Sceptics were 
 any longer of limpid purity. Panaetius was versatile, sensitive 
 to social amenities, and inspired with the Greek joyousness and 
 delight in art and literature. He was a lover of Plato, who said 
 
 2 Polyb. 32, 9 ff. 
 
346 AUTEOBSHIP 
 
 that beauty is goodness, which has an emphasis opposite to that 
 of the Stoic dictum. Both by training and personality Panaetius 
 was a capable and winning interpreter to his enthusiastic Roman 
 pupils and patrons of all that was best in Greek life ; and these, 
 Scipio and his friends, the so-called Scipionic Circle, became the 
 definite nucleus of things Greek in Rome. 
 
 Though the Scipionic Circle flourished in the second half of 
 the second century B.C., it was not distant in the eyes of Cicero 
 and his contemporaries. Cicero himself, and those who with him 
 frequented the house of Scaevola the augur, had almost a direct 
 connection with it, for Scaevola was the son-in-law of Laelius, 
 Scipio 's bosom friend. Scipio and Laelius, as well as the other 
 members of the Circle, were as intensely alive to Cicero as if 
 they had belonged to his own time. He constantly mentions 
 them. One bit of gossip may be repeated, for the light it sheds 
 not only on Cicero's lively realization of these men but also on 
 the character of these old nobles themselves. Scipio, according 
 to Cicero, was of a less joyous, effervescent temperament than 
 Laelius, but, though the conqueror of a third of the world, he 
 could relax. Crassus, the great orator, the son-in-law of the 
 augur, is represented by Cicero in the Be Oratore 3 as repeating 
 the remarks of Scaevola himself. Scipio and Laelius, so the old 
 augur used to say, often went to the country, and, once away 
 from the city, they became' as hilarious as boys. Crassus is loath 
 to gossip about great men, but Scaevola did say that Scipio 
 and Laelius were in the habit of gathering shells and pebbles 
 on the beach and that they, in Scaevola 's dignified phrase, 
 "stooped to all manner of games and mental relaxation." 
 
 Conquerors of the world who could stoop to games were 
 ready to embrace the lighter side of Greek life, to become indi- 
 viduals as well as Roman citizens. Their ideal of a Roman noble 
 was thus, first, a patriot thoroughly devoted to Rome and made 
 more effective by the lessons of oratory and other things that the 
 
 3 De Or. 2, 21-22. 
 
IDEAL OF A SOMAN NOBLE 347 
 
 Greeks could give, and secondly, an individual who was open 
 to the finer side of life, especially art and literature. These 
 nobles led, as it were, a double existence; they were Romans 
 — always Romans — but also Greeks, their latter character being 
 hidden from the nation as a whole, a private luxury to be culti- 
 vated when the business of the workaday political world of Rome 
 allowed it. 
 
 Some men at the time of Cicero claimed to adopt only one 
 half of this ideal, that of the Greek individualist ; and we have 
 already seen 4 how their claims were rejected, arguments against 
 them being supplied even by the Greek philosophers, though 
 these could themselves never realize more than one half of the 
 ideal. Seipio's conception was thoroughly Roman, with the 
 Greek qualities added, and had become the norm by the time 
 of Cicero. The Roman nobles were Stoics, Epicureans, or 
 Academics ; and the books in which they studied philosophy were 
 Greek. Their physicians were Greek, and consequently also their 
 diseases, in name. Greek words and proverbs were introduced 
 in their conversation and their correspondence, though this 
 habit did not always meet with full approval. All educated 
 Romans knew Greek, after a fashion; many took considerable 
 pains to master the Greek idiom and accent, and were inordi- 
 nately pleased with compliments on their success, nor were the 
 subtle Greeks chary of compliments. It was the fashion, the 
 one mark of good breeding, to be interested in things Greek ; but, 
 as with other intellectual fashions, submission to it was occasion- 
 ally mostly external. The lazy or dull or pleasure-loving Roman 
 noble would content himself with collecting Greek works of art 
 and Greek books, with having clever Greeks about him, and with 
 giving dinners of exquisite Greek cookery, enlivened by the talk 
 and the poems of Greek celebrities. 5 But even a pretended 
 obedience to an intellectual fashion has its uses. 
 
 * See above, pp. 37 ff. 
 
 s An example is Piso, as described by Cicero, In Pison. 64-75. 
 
348 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 The Roman boy of good social position now grew up in an 
 intellectual atmosphere that was Greek. The cleverest of his 
 father's slaves and freedmen were Greeks. Often highly- 
 educated, they were their master's business agents and private 
 secretaries. In many cases they were among his closest friends, 
 though not his social equals. Greek tutors gave the young Roman 
 noble or knight almost his earliest instruction; or, if they were 
 not Greek, the material of instruction was overwhelmingly 
 Greek ; ' and when the boy advanced to the higher and more 
 specialized training of rhetoricians and philosophers, his instruc- 
 tors were Greek almost to a man. A Greek philosopher was a 
 permanent member of many Roman households — Diodotus, the 
 Stoic, was the one in Cicero's home — and performed very much 
 the same duties as a spiritual father confessor; thus holding a 
 position like that of Panaetius in the home of Scipio. Many 
 Greeks of artistic and intellectual eminence, such as Archias, lived 
 in Rome on intimate terms with the great ; others, like Molo, came 
 to the world's capital occasionally and were entertained at the 
 city houses or the suburban villas of leading Romans. These 
 visitors, as well as those living constantly in Rome, gave lectures, 
 readings, and private instruction, and conversed with the young 
 Romans and with their fathers on the meaning and the beauty 
 of life. 
 
 One result of these close relations between the Greeks and 
 the Romans was literary. Scipio and Laelius were said to have 
 aided Terence in his reworking of Greek comedies for the Roman 
 stage; a statement that gave rise to much scholarly argument, 
 in which, however, it was always taken for granted, that Roman 
 nobles could not with propriety have put their names to a literary 
 product intended for public performance. The interest in 
 literary creation displayed by Scipio and Laelius had by the 
 time of Cicero become almost an obsessidn. The nobles, however 
 busy with practical affairs, whether in the forum or on foreign 
 battlefields, were always scribbling. There was literary letter 
 
SCRIBBLING 349 
 
 writing, as has already been mentioned; and dialogues, descrip- 
 tions of travel, epigrams, tragedies, discussions of grammar, and 
 translations were also written. To do these things was a sign 
 of culture; it was also frequently a means of training; but, 
 above all, it was the blind groping of the Roman upper classes 
 to become citizens of the Greek intellectual world. To these 
 literary performances belong such things as Caesar's tragedy 
 Oedipus, which Augustus later considered unworthy of pub- 
 lication; and also Caesar's work on grammar, his so-called Praise 
 of Hercules, his collection of noteworthy sayings, his epigrams, 
 one of which is addressed to Terence, and his poetical account of 
 his journey from Rome to Spain, in 46 b.c, when he went to 
 fight against the sons of Pompey. Here, too, belong the four 
 tragedies of Quintus Cicero,, written in sixteen days while he 
 was Caesar 's lieutenant in Gaul ; as well as a number of things 
 by Marcus Cicero himself. 
 
 These literary exercises of Cicero, which belonged mostly 
 to his youth, are of little importance; the more so as only 
 fragments of them are now extant, and in some cases not even 
 fragments. There was a youthful poem in tetrameters called 
 Glaucus, known to Plutarch; Glaucus was a divinity of the sea. 
 which may suggest the content of the poem. Alcyone, in hexa- 
 meters, was probably an account of a metamorphosis ; Nilus, the 
 Nile, was obviously descriptive ; TJxorius, the Uxorious Husband, 
 may have been satirical; Lirnon, the Meadow, had to do, partly 
 at least, with literary criticism, for four hexameters, still extant, 
 praise Terence as an excellent translator of Menander ; an elegy, 
 finally, seems to have been entitled Thalia Mwesta, the Sad Thalia, 
 and it is known that the nymph Thalia, beloved by Jupiter, was 
 not in favor with Juno. Cicero also wrote epigrams; rather 
 naughtily, it would seem, for they lured the middle-aged Pliny 
 the Younger to descant in verse on his mild passions, which he 
 had until then kept hidden. But most interesting of all these 
 
350 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 poetical essays must have been Cicero's poem on Marius, for in 
 this he could draw from his knowledge of Arpinum and his 
 enthusiasm for his famous fellow-townsman. 
 
 Cicero also made a good many translations. The essays con- 
 tain numerous passages from Greek poets, particularly from the 
 tragedians; and there are long fragments from Cicero's trans- 
 lation of Aratus' astronomical poem the Fhaetiomerm and his 
 meteorological Prognostica. Aratus was a didactic singer who 
 was popular both in Rome and elsewhere; St. Paul quoted him 
 in Athens, as we learn from the Acts. 
 
 Cicero as a poet was probably neither better nor worse than 
 his literary contemporaries. Perhaps the most interesting later 
 comment on this subject comes from Tacitus. "Caesar and 
 Brutus wrote poems," he says, 6 "not better than Cicero, but 
 more fortunately, for fewer people know that they did it." 
 Cicero did not think of himself as divinely inspired; in his let- 
 ters, he always takes for granted that Quintus was the poet of 
 the family, though it should be stated that the fragments of 
 Quintus' verse are not superior to those of his brother's. Verse 
 writing was one of the things the Romans learned in school, under 
 Greek influence; as practised, it did not differ essentially from 
 prose. Lucretius, however, who was a real poet, borrowed several 
 turns of phrase from Cicero; the great orator's poems were 
 known for centuries after his death; and Plutarch says that at 
 one time he was considered not only the best orator but also the 
 best poet of Rome. At that time, however, whenever it was, the 
 Roman poets must have been as uninspired as their Greek con- 
 temporaries, of whom Archias is an example. The latter gained 
 great literary fame, according to Cicero's speech in his defense, 
 even when he was hardly more than a boy ; and Cicero had him- 
 self heard him deliver "a large number of very excellent verses" 
 on the things that were happening at the very time of Archias' 
 declamation, and thereupon Archias had started all over again 
 
 « Tae. Dial. 21. 
 
CICESO AS A POET 351 
 
 and treated the same subject "in new phraseology and new- 
 thoughts ' ' — all, of necessity, extemporaneously. Cicero could do 
 almost as well ; according to Plutarch, 7 when he really tried he 
 made five hundred verses in a night. 
 
 But these literary enthusiasms were not limited to verse. 
 In 44 b.c. Cicero wrote to Atticus that there was not yet a col- 
 lection of his letters, but that Tiro had gathered together seventy 
 and that probably Atticus also had some. Cicero ought first to 
 look them over and make corrections, whereupon they would be 
 published. It has been well conjectured that these letters were 
 intended as models of letter writing; that is, they would be 
 another contribution to the purely literary productions of the 
 period. Their small number alone indicates that the aim could 
 have been neither political nor autobiographical. There is no 
 evidence, however, that such a collection as this, or any collection 
 of Cicero 's letters, whether revised or not, was published during 
 his lifetime. Cicero also wrote a work called Admvranda, Things 
 to "Wonder At, of uncertain date and now lost; and in 59 B.C., 
 while casting about for a literary distraction, he was for a time 
 at work on a book on geography. He found the subject difficult 
 and uninteresting ; but he seems to have accomplished something, 
 then or later, for there is a quotation from a work of his probably 
 entitled Choragraphia, Geography. Still extant, finally, are the 
 first two books, probably all that were ever completed, of a sys- 
 tematic work on rhetoric. They are called either Liiri Ehetorici, 
 Books on Rhetoric, or De Inventione, Invention, which is a 
 rhetorical term and describes the content of the books. Cicero 
 wrote them while still a student, when about twenty years old ; 
 as has. already been mentioned, the character of the work is that 
 of a student 's thesis. 
 
 ?Plut. Cic. 40. 
 
352 AUTH0BSE1P 
 
 II 
 
 Fob Glory 
 
 But the endless scribbling practised by the leading men of 
 Rome was not entirely for the purposes of training, giving 
 pleasure to friends, or testifying to the personal culture of the 
 authors; it also found a very frequent, though a very modest, 
 use in the political world. This was an age of pamphleteering, 
 as has already been explained in connection with the publication 
 of Cicero's orations. Not only orations, however, whether or 
 not originally delivered, were written and given circulation; 
 all the forms of literature were employed, in verse as well as 
 in prose. 8 There were letters, dialogues, epigrams, historical 
 accounts, long poems, biographies, and even autobiographies; 
 anything in writing might be a political argument, an apology, 
 or a glorification ; the glorifications, because of the intense fac- 
 tional strifes, being at times little else than either argument or 
 apology. The line between the distinctly ephemeral and that 
 which had hopes of a longer existence can not always be drawn. 
 Cato, after his suicide, became the subject of a veritable literary 
 warfare, in which Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, and many lesser lights 
 took a hand. The writers may be divided into eulogists and 
 detractors of the departed Stoic, or, more specifically, of the 
 aristocratic republic that he had championed; and yet some of 
 these numerous effusions, being biographies, could lay claim to 
 the character of history. Caesar's own Commentaries on the 
 Gallic War, apparently a most sober history though not conceal- 
 ing the fact that the author was a great general, was probably 
 a strong argument in Rome ; and this is true to an even greater 
 extent of his Civil War. In the latter, after winning the battles, 
 he was proving to the Roman world that all blame for the war 
 belonged to his opponents. And eulogistic autobiography was 
 
 s See Peter, Geschichtl. Litt. etc., pp. 163 ff. 
 
BWGBAPSY 353 
 
 not limited to men of real eminence; even Varro, the petulant 
 scholar, seems to have celebrated his modest military perform- 
 ances in the so-called Legitimes; not to mention his Auto- 
 biography, De Sua Vita, which was probably concerned with 
 his literary activity. Nor was this writing confined to Latin. 
 Rutilius Rufus, consul in 105 B.C., wrote about himself and his 
 times both in Greek and in Latin. 
 
 In this field of literary production the Greeks found a very 
 suitable and remunerative occupation, particularly as eulogists 
 who claimed to write for posterity. The poets of Mytilene who 
 warbled about Pompey have already been mentioned; Pompey's 
 Greek historian, Theophanes, became for a time one -of the influ- 
 ential men in Rome, acting as his patron 's mouthpiece. Archias 
 belonged to this class, though he sang of Pompey's rivals. And 
 a long list of these prose and verse writers could easily be drawn 
 up. They clamored for an opportunity to do this work, knowing 
 that it would not go unrewarded. They, and their Roman or 
 Italian rivals, pressed their services upon the great. On one 
 occasion, 9 when Sulla was superintending a public sale, probably 
 of confiscated property, he ordered that some of it be given to 
 a poet who had written an epigram in his honor; but, as the 
 epigram was poor, Sulla added the condition, that the bard should 
 not write in the dictator's honor in the future. When Caesar 
 was fighting in Spain, to mention only one other instance, 10 
 Cicero sent him a f reedman • with a commendatory letter; the 
 freedman, it appears, possessed literary ability and had pre- 
 viously written about Crassus; now that Crassus was dead, he 
 had been fired with enthusiasm for Caesar and was "wonder- 
 fully, eager to do justice to the undying fame of Caesar's 
 exploits. ' ' 
 
 Sometimes the deathlessness of fame might be secured when 
 a man of literary ability gave finish and rhetorical ornament to 
 
 s Pro Arch. 25. 
 io Fam. 13, 16. 
 
354 AUTHOBSHIP 
 
 the recital of facts executed by the great man himself. For this 
 purpose Sulla may have dedicated his Memoirs to L. Lucinius 
 Lucullus ; and Q. Lutatius Catulus, who with Marius had fought 
 against the Cimbri, wrote an account of his consulship, the 
 glories of which had been absorbed by Marius, and sent it to a 
 certain A. Furius, who was writing an annalistic poem on Eoman 
 history. Caesar's Gallic War, because of its lack of rhetorical, 
 that is literary, ornament, was in danger of being mistaken for 
 such a recital of facts ; but Hirtius, who continued the account 
 of the war in Gaul, intimates that historians had better refrain 
 from attempts to improve on Caesar's work; and Cicero was of 
 the same opinion. The very title of Caesar's account, however, 
 lent some color to the theory that he was supplying material 
 for more ornate historians, for Commentaries, the Latin equiva- 
 lent of the Greek hypomnemata, was the name given to such 
 historical material. 
 
 The three men of this period who most frequently became the 
 subjects of biographies were Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero. When 
 the Catilinarian conspiracy had been suppressed, the Greeks, as 
 Cicero wrote to Atticus, were annoyingly insistent about getting 
 something that they could convert into fine history. One of 
 them seems to have been Posidonius, who was a sort of scholarly 
 and literary dictator of the times ; at any rate, Cicero sent him 
 a hypomnema- in Greek about the consulship of 63 B.C., and he 
 could scarcely have done so without solicitation from the Greek 
 literary man. But Cicero, with his long experience in publish- 
 ing oratory of a high literary finish, made his account as brilliant 
 as was within his power ; and Posidonius wrote back that he had 
 no stomach for an elaboration. This, Cicero observes, 11 put an 
 end to the Greek insistence. It may be supposed that Posidonius 
 was unwilling to glorify Cicero and that his excuse was a pretext, 
 but this presupposes that Cicero had made the first advance, and 
 it ignores the fact that Cicero as a great Roman statesman was 
 
 iiAtt. 2, l, 1-2. 
 
GREEK ENTHUSIASTS 355 
 
 infinitely higher in the social scale than any Greek, however 
 learned, and that Cicero himself was one of the greatest literary 
 men of all times; the works of Posidonius, despite all his con- 
 temporary reputation, were allowed to perish, whereas Cicero's 
 extant works are voluminous. Cicero's Greek account of the 
 consulship was published; he tells Atticus, in case he should 
 approve of the book, to see that it is put on sale in Athens and 
 other Greek cities. The account is lost, but it was probably 
 used, at least indirectly, by Plutarch. 
 
 Of other Greek enthusiasts, Archias and Thyillus have 
 already been mentioned. There was also a certain Herodes, 
 who apparently wrote a letter to Cicero, and applied directly 
 to Atticus in connection with an account that he had made, 
 evidently wishing to read it to Cicero; and the latter informs 
 Atticus that he would rather have been a conspirator himself 
 than to have had to listen to Herodes. Probably the eager 
 Herodes was no great literary light. Atticus, too, wrote an 
 account. As a compliment from his friend, it pleased Cicero, 
 hut he found that it was an unadorned performance compared 
 with his own. Atticus, indeed, had an excellent critical judg- 
 ment, but his writings seem to have been concerned with the bare 
 collection and recital of facts; he was timid, as Cicero wrote to 
 Tiro, 12 and as his frequent political advice to Cicero indicates. 
 
 The account sent to Posidonius was written in 61 b.c. Before 
 that time Cicero had despatched to Pompey the long letter about 
 the year 63 b.c, which, as has already been remarked, was 
 strongly in the nature of a political pamphlet. It is possible 
 that this letter is referred to in a statement to Atticus, 13 in which 
 Cicero promises to let him have an account of the consulship 
 in Latin. If anything else is referred to, it has been lost, leaving 
 no traces. In December of the year 60 B.C., however, Cicero had 
 completed a Latin poem in three books on the same topic; and 
 
 12 Fam. 16, 23, 2. 
 is^irt. 1, 19, 10. 
 
356 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 in 54 B.C. he completed another, also in three books, on whicl 
 he had been at work, off and on, since 56 B.C. It was concernec 
 with the period surrounding his exile, and seems to have beer 
 entitled Be Temporibus Sins, On His Times. As early as 59 b.c 
 he had begun a historical work, which he refers to as Anecdota 
 Secret Memoirs. Apparently he was still at work on it fifteer 
 years later; it was strongly polemical, after the fashion of th( 
 Greek historian Theopompus, and revealed the inner machina- 
 tions of the time. Atticus seems to have liked it, probably refer- 
 ring to it in 44 b.c, after Caesar's death, when he urged Cicerc 
 to "collect all the crimes of his enemies" in a history. It was 
 not published during Cicero's lifetime; Dio informing us thai 
 Cicero gave the book, sealed, to his son, with orders neither tc 
 read it nor to publish it until after Cicero's death; it was too 
 outspoken in its criticisms of Crassus and Caesar. When pub- 
 lished posthumously, very likely under the title De ConsiUis Suis, 
 On Cicero's Plans or Political Attitude, it made a great stir. 
 
 This is a formidable list of autobiographical writings," 
 though in the number of books, and probably in actual extent, 
 far from rivaling the twenty-two books of Sulla's autobiography, 
 and has caused many modern exclamations about vanity and 
 babblements. Cicero had of course the confidence in his own 
 powers that invariably accompanies genius, and he took the 
 delight in applause and praise that is equally inseparable from 
 the ability to sway great multitudes, whether it be by word or 
 by song or by acting. He knew this, and laughed about it with 
 Atticus. But his so-called vanity went no further. He had 
 done a great service to Rome; he had been made to suffer 
 through political terrorism and had been gloriously vindicated; 
 he was one of Rome's greatest men, and owed this to his own 
 ability and tireless efforts; and he was conscious of having per- 
 formed unselfish public service. His contemporaries, except 
 
 i* On ancient autobiographies, see the excellent work of Misch. He has 
 a great deal about Cicero, for which see his Namenregister. 
 
VANITY 357 
 
 those who were his pronounced enemies, admitted this, and there 
 is no sign that any one of them thought that he wrote or spoke 
 too much about himself. 
 
 It is all a question of the Roman point of view. If the literary 
 situation in Rome has been adequately presented; with its 
 immense amount of eulogy, as well as of detraction, and with 
 the profound insignificance of the written word as compared with 
 the practical Roman life of battles, triumphs, public meetings, 
 money-getting, quarrels in the forum, hisses and applause in the 
 theatre, bribery, proscriptions, and bloodshed; then it will 
 scarcely be necessary to insist that Cicero's writings did not 
 shock his contemporaries. Atticus read these things, one after 
 the other, as they were finished, but even Atticus' caution and 
 sense of propriety found nothing to remark; rather he urged 
 Cicero on, both by writing an account of the consulship himself 
 and by his expectations in reference to the Anecdote. Cicero 
 sent his second poem, the one that embraced his exile, to Caesar 
 for criticism, while Caesar was fighting in Gaul; but he could 
 not conceivably have submitted to Caesar a piece of inordinate 
 self-assertion after openly admitting, in the palinode, that he 
 was now in the latter 's political camp. Caesar, we find, criticised 
 it without comments on its propriety. And ten years after the 
 publication of the second poem, Cicero quoted poetical extracts 
 in his essay on Divination ; a thing that he could not have done 
 if the poems, when published, had aroused hostile criticism from 
 any except those who would attack everything that Cicero did 
 and whom Cicero attacked similarly in his turn. 
 
 Indeed, these poems were to a considerable extent a part 
 of political life. "When Cicero asked Quintus for Caesar's criti- 
 cism, he wished to know not merely what Caesar, as a literary 
 friend, thought of the execution, but also what he thought of 
 the content ; the latter request obviously referring to the political 
 attitude. Writing 15 in 54 B.C. to Lentulus, the consul of 57 B.C., 
 
 isFam., 1, 9, 23. 
 
358 AUTBOBSEIP 
 
 who had made great exertions for Cicero 's recall, Cicero mentions 
 the poem On His Times, hesitating about publishing it, less 
 because he has attacked his enemies, which he has done sparingly, 
 than because he may have failed to name all those to whom 
 he owes gratitude in the matter of his recall ; considerations that 
 occur frequently in the orations after the exile. It is not neces- 
 sary to gather further indications of the political character of 
 the poems. The manner in which they were viewed, however, 
 is indicated by another incident. Piso, the consul of 58 B.C. and 
 the one with the eloquent eyebrows, maintained 16 that Pompey 
 had been alienated from Cicero by the latter's statement, in the 
 poem on the consulship, that "arms had yielded to the toga"; 
 a reference to the bloodless suppression of Catiline, which 
 Cicero's opponents tried to interpret as an assertion that Cicero 
 was greater than Pompey. Such attempts at creating ill feeling 
 between Cicero and Pompey, as has already been shown, were 
 common during these years. 
 
 If Cicero's friends meditated on his autobiographical writ- 
 ings they probably felt, not that he was indulging in too much 
 self-laudation, but that he as a consular lowered himself some- 
 what in thus putting himself on the level of scribbling Greeks 
 and self-confessed Roman devotees of a literary otium. 
 
 The mythological machinery, with gods in council and gods 
 as well as muses addressing Cicero, was used in these poems; 
 which recalls the Awieid and several of the epics of the empire, 
 and would probably be found in the epics of such poets as 
 Archias, were they extant. Omens and supernatural events, such 
 as filled Roman public life and are found throughout Livy, were 
 also introduced ; and, for a parallel, we know from Plutarch that 
 Sulla's Memoirs teemed with these things. They, like the kindly 
 muses, were obviously a part of the customary paraphernalia. 
 Nevertheless, Cicero looked upon these poems as historical in 
 character, and not eulogistic. And this was doubtless equally 
 
 is In Pison. 72 ff. 
 
LETTER TO LUCCEIUS 359 
 
 the case with the works in prose. But it was the kind of history 
 exemplified in Xenophon's account of Cyrus, which has less 
 resemblance to a modern biography than to a historical novel. 
 The Cyropaedeia of Xenophon is, indeed, compared by Cicero, 17 
 though not to its advantage, with the autobiography of Scaurus, 
 consul in 115 B.C., who like Cicero had risen from humble begin- 
 nings ; Scaurus ' work was rather neglected in Cicero 's day, but 
 he considered it worthy of more attention. 
 
 A very full characterization of this kind of historical mono- 
 graph is given by Cicero in a letter 18 to Lucceius, written in the 
 year 56 b.c. Lucceius, an intimate friend, was at that time 
 just finishing a history of the Social and civil wars, and had 
 intentions of going on. Cicero, however, wished him to treat 
 of the period from the year 63 b.c. through the return from 
 exile in a separate monograph ; there was no certainty, other- 
 wise, when Lucceius would get to these years. The request is 
 couched in the most formal and polite language, with references 
 to poets, historians, and painters, and with numerous general 
 observations; all of which, when we remember the friendship 
 between the two men, marks it as largely a rhetorical exercise, 
 not unlike a letter of the next year to another friend, Marius, 
 on the subject of gladiatorial shows. Cicero was writing a 
 composition on the customary historical monograph, though his 
 desire for Lucceius' services was very genuine. The most perti- 
 nent statement is to the effect that Lucceius had said in his 
 history, just as Livy later said, that he would not be influenced 
 by favoritism, "no more, indeed, than Hercules had been influ- 
 enced by Pleasure, ' ' but Cicero urges him not to scorn the voice 
 of Friendship, if she should commend Cicero, and to yield some- 
 what more to affection than was in strict accord with truth. It 
 might seem as if Cicero were asking Lucceius to manufacture 
 historical fame ; but it did not appear in that light to Lucceius 
 
 i? Brut. 112. 
 
 isfam. 5, 12. See Misch, 147 ff. 
 
360 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 or to Cicero ; 19 certainly not in a way to cause the latter to feel 
 ashamed. Cicero thought that he had written a very excellent 
 letter ; wide bella est, he writes a few days later to Atticus, advis- 
 ing him to get it from Lucceius and read it. As for the historian 
 himself, he promised to comply with Cicero's request; he had 
 once appeared as the prosecutor of Catiline; but there is no 
 evidence to show that the monograph was written. Probably it 
 was not, but this in no way disturbed the friendship between the 
 two men. 
 
 Ill 
 For Rome 
 
 There were, however, other literary possibilities than the 
 dilettante scribblings and the glorifications and apologies con- 
 nected with the workaday world. These, from the larger point 
 of view, were ephemeral, and have perished almost entirely ; and 
 the student of ancient times may feel with justice that he has 
 escaped at least as much as he has lost. The scribbling, once it 
 came into the hands of a master, produced real literature, and 
 we have Catullus; later still we have Horace and Vergil, and 
 a host of others, both small and great; but that happened when 
 Rome had become an empire and the attitude toward literary 
 creation had changed. The prose and poetry of this period more 
 or less directly subordinated to political needs — the biographies, 
 autobiographies, dialogues, or whatever they were — did not 
 deserve to live, and their place has been taken, for us, by the 
 letters and orations of Cicero, which were the direct expression 
 of his private and public life and had little or no connection 
 with literature. If the former productions had survived, we 
 should probably know very little more of any real value, but we 
 should possess countless products of a literary convention that 
 was on the whole perverted. All of which is true, of course, only 
 
 19 A similar request is addressed to Cicero by Trebonius {Fam. 12, 16). 
 
GSEEKS LIVED ON THEIR INHERITANCE 361 
 
 in its broader application. Caesar's Commentaries, for example, 
 have survived, because of their intrinsic merit and the political 
 and martial greatness of their author; some good things have 
 undoubtedly been lost, and others, not very good, are still with us. 
 
 The same fate has overtaken the Greek productions of this 
 period, and for the same reason. The Eomans, in these works, 
 largely imitated or emulated their Greek contemporaries, and 
 these may have done better work, or it was at least easier for 
 them to do so, particularly because they had a highly developed 
 language; but the Greeks of this time, and for a considerable 
 period preceding it, were pygmies, when placed side by side 
 with their own early giants. They lived on their inheritance. 
 They studied, explained, and taught, to each other and to the 
 Romans, the great books that had come down to them; they 
 combined, elaborated, twisted and straightened out again, the 
 ideas of the great authors and thinkers of the fourth and the 
 preceding centuries; but they added very 'little that was new, 
 and they wrote no books comparable for originality or charm to 
 the early literature. Their task in their relation to Rome was 
 that of teaching, and they were good teachers, but the subject 
 of their teaching was mainly the Greek past. The Romans were 
 becoming coheirs with them, as it were ; but, being Romans and 
 not Greeks, they could not rest satisfied merely with this. 
 
 As scholars or investigators, the Romans turned to their own 
 language and to their own past, trying to do for these what the 
 Greeks had done and were still doing for theirs ; in these efforts 
 they often worked side by side with the Greeks, who indeed did 
 nearly as much for Rome in this respect as the Romans them- 
 selves. The Romans also gave expression to one of their own 
 peculiar gifts, in their writings on jurisprudence ; and, as purely 
 literary men, they added a new type, that of satire. But these 
 productions, except the satire, were concerned with material 
 things, and had no literary value ; the great books of literature, 
 no less for the Roman than for his Greek contemporary, were 
 
362 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 still Greek, and the Latin language remained inadequate for 
 expressing many of the thoughts that fashioned the lives of the 
 educated Romans. If they had gone no farther, they would not 
 have created anything much worth while, and they would not 
 have become an essential link in the spiritual evolution that 
 reaches from the great Greek period to modern times. 
 
 Roman patriotism, impatient of vassalage to Greece, here 
 stepped in; and the Romans strove to emulate the early Greeks. 
 In poetry and history this was not done until the age of Augus- 
 tus. In oratory, however, it was accomplished by Cicero, for no 
 one would even think of comparing him with a contemporary 
 Greek orator; his Greek rival — some would say his superior, 
 though that is debatable — was Demosthenes. In his writings on 
 rhetoric Cicero surpassed his Greek predecessors, at least in so 
 Ear as literary form is concerned ; and in the field of political 
 science, naturally an important subject in Rome, he created a 
 body of literature that did for the Romans very much what 
 Plato had done for the Greeks. His greatest service, from 
 the historical point of view, however, was his contribution to 
 philosophy. Varro said 20 that if the Romans wished to read 
 philosophy, they could go to the Greek books, and that was true ; 
 3ut contentment with Varro 's attitude would have meant a con- 
 ;inuance of intellectual dependence. Philosophy, even if politi- 
 cal science be excluded, though the philosophers claimed it for 
 ;heir own, formed, after all, the very texture of ancient thought. 
 Jicero, with the originality and robustness of character that 
 lad already made him a leader in public life, rejected Varro 's 
 lictum; he transferred to Latin, and interpreted, the Greek 
 milosophy of his time, which meant the philosophy since Aris- 
 ;otle ; and he did it so well that the Greek philosophical writings 
 >f this period were allowed to drop into oblivion. In doing this, 
 le made Latin into a new language; not single-handed, to be 
 
 20 Ac. Post. 4. 
 
ROMANS EMULATED EARLY GREEKS 363 
 
 sure, for we need only remember Lucretius; but it was never- 
 theless Cicero who created the instrument which Seneca and 
 later writers used. 
 
 These statements need modification for perfect exactness; 
 he did both more and less than has been indicated; but they 
 define the spirit in which he worked and roughly describe his 
 accomplishment. He by no means began with a complete plan ; 
 he moved from one thing to another, yielding to various influ- 
 ences; and he also made plans that were never carried out. He 
 thought of writing a Roman history; and some students, with 
 the letter to Lucceius in mind and other similar expressions 
 referring to historical writing, have dismissed him as incapable. 
 Cornelius Nepos regretted that Cicero did not become a historian. 
 It may be said that Cicero's view of history was that of nearly 
 all ancient historians. To them it was a part of literature; its 
 chief aim was to give aesthetic pleasure and moral teaching. 
 This is the ideal that inspired Livy, who himself chose Cicero 
 for his model in many things ; and it is worth remembering that 
 Livy had no experience in public life, whereas Cicero had had 
 more experience than perhaps any Greek or Roman historian. 
 But all this is speculation, useful only as indicating Cicero's 
 energy and wide interests. 
 
 Given Cicero 's genius and capacity for hard work, the extent 
 and variety of his results should cause no surprise. If rhetorical 
 training and practise in the forum accomplished nothing else, it 
 gave fluency in speaking and writing; and Cicero had this to 
 an extraordinary degree. He was a complete master of the 
 Latin language before he began his first long essay. As for the 
 content, it was already very largely a part of his acquisition; 
 he made some investigations about details and he applied his 
 own mature point of view, most extensively in connection with 
 rhetoric and least with certain parts of philosophy, but his task 
 was in the main that of the literary worker: what he did not 
 know already, he found in books. 
 
364 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 Cicero did not turn to this kind of writing quickly. In 
 59 b.c, during the detested consulship of Julius and Caesar, he 
 was still fumbling about for a literary distraction, and found 
 little comfort in geography. The change came after Luca, when 
 he was fifty years old. He began with rhetoric, in the Be 
 Oratore; perhaps prompted by Quintus, as he tells us in the 
 preface. But he did not give all his leisure time to such author- 
 ship even after he had begun it. In 54 B.C., the year after the 
 De Oratore was finished, he wrote an epic poem about Caesar's 
 expedition to Britain; it was one of the courteuos acts between 
 two literary friends as well as a public sign of their friendship. 
 This poem is lost ; not a fragment remains ; but the loss can 
 not have been serious, for Quintus supplied the local color, 
 and Marcus was often interrupted, which was unfavorable to 
 the inspired mood. In later years, too, Cicero took part in 
 pamphleteering activities, and he continued publishing his 
 orations. 
 
 But while engaged on the essays — and he gave more and 
 more of his leisure to them as the years went by — he experienced 
 a greater satisfaction than he could procure from anything else. 
 They were of a more permanent nature and could seem like a 
 real service to Rome, and at the same time they were far removed 
 in spirit from the toppling republic. Cicero returned, in them, 
 to the studies and enthusiasms of his hopeful youth and early 
 manhood, and carried these studies farther; he was concerned 
 with greater questions than personal success or failure, and 
 at times, chiefly in the later years, he was able to view his whole 
 life from a larger point of view than that of a Roman. 
 
 Nevertheless Rome was always near. His literary occupation, 
 however congenial and inspiring, did not satisfy his most insis- 
 tent craving for honorable public activity, and it offered no 
 remedy for the fallen republic. It was only an anodyne. During 
 the first years he disguised this fact and pretended to be satis- 
 fied, revealing the truth only to Quintus, and not even to him 
 
ONLY AN ANODYNE 365 
 
 except for a moment ; but later, when private sorrows as well as 
 public disappointment drove him to writing, he says to Atticus 
 that he was the first to write for his own consolation. Though 
 this statement 21 refers to a little book technically styled Consola- 
 tion, it is applicable in a wider sense. 
 
 Cicero's Roman friends were surprised, as time went on, at 
 his preoccupation with rhetoric and philosophy. Others had 
 written a little on either subject, but neither should be the 
 serious occupation of a consular. Cicero answers their criticisms. 
 In the Orator, 22 published in 46 b.c. and addressed to Brutus, 
 he proclaims it as proper for a man in his position to write a 
 good deal on the art of oratory, provided he does not do it in 
 the spirit of an ordinary teacher, but in the way of friendly 
 advice and encouragement. After giving this and various other 
 good reasons for authorship, he concludes by urging that, since 
 he has nothing to do in the forum, he ought not to be criticised 
 for writing. In the next year, when he was busy with philosophy, 
 he answered his friends again, in the preface to the Academical 
 Here, too, he gives several reasons for his activity, sufficient, 
 and indeed quite superfluous, from the modern point of view; 
 but his last words are these : " I see nothing else that I can do. ' ' 
 
 21 Att. 12, 14, 3. 
 
 22 Or. 140-148. 
 
 23 Ac. Post. 11. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 RHETORIC 
 
 I 
 The Works 
 
 It was natural that Cicero should begin his more ambitious 
 literary productions with a treatise on rhetoric. He had long 
 been recognized as the leading orator of Rome. Like all con- 
 scious artists, he was interested in the theory of his art as well 
 as in its practise ; an interest, however, that was shared to an 
 almost incredible degree by his contemporaries. Oratory, having 
 been his chief political weapon, had received his most constant 
 and passionate attention ; throughout his intellectual develop- 
 ment, except for a little while in his youth when it seemed that 
 there would be no opportunity in Rome for a political career, 
 it had been, as it were, ;he subject toward which all his other 
 studies were made to contribute, so that an exposition of his 
 oratorical ideal would be almost a statement of his intellectual 
 ideal, and his own work on the subject would take him back 
 through all his former thoughts and plans. He would live his 
 life again. Rhetorical writing was also in a measure a practical 
 thing, something in which he could feel that he was serving Rome. 
 His third treatise, the Orator, was not intended for young men, 
 so he wrote to a friend, 1 but even so it might be useful to the 
 latter 's son, if only to accustom his ears to good Latin. Rheto- 
 rical authorship, if not carried to excess, was not altogether 
 unworthy of a consular; M. Antonius, Cicero's great exemplar, 
 had set a precedent. The teaching of oratory, furthermore, was 
 the means by which the Greeks, whether rhetoricians or philoso- 
 phers, contributed most directly to Roman practical ends ; to do 
 
 iFam. 6, 18, 4. 
 
GREEK AND SOMAN INSTRUCTION 367 
 
 in Latin what the Greeks had for centuries been doing in Greek, 
 and had thereupon sold to the Romans, would be a step toward 
 the intellectual emancipation of Rome. Cicero might hope to 
 do it better, 2 or at least from a saner point of view, because of 
 his practical experience; few of the Greek writers or teachers 
 of rhetoric were orators, none of them rivaling Cicero. 
 
 Whether oratory, with its obvious dependence on native 
 talent, could be taught at all, was to be sure a matter for philo- 
 sophical discussion; but while the question was being debated 
 by students, and perhaps by a few somewhat indolent gentlemen 
 like Quintus, 3 the teaching continued without interruption. It 
 was almost entirely in the hands of the Greeks. Some Romans 
 were beginning to offer instruction in Latin, and naturally 
 received many pupils, for it was, after all, ridiculous that young 
 men who expected to speak in the forum should receive all 
 their theory and practise of oratory in Greek, but the Latin 
 rhetoricians were not highly favored by men of prominence. 
 Crassus, in his censorship in 92 b.c, closed the Latin rhetorical 
 schools, his reason being that the Latin teachers did not know 
 their subject. 
 
 Their schools were schools of impudence, Crassus is repre- 
 sented as saying in the De Oratore* This may indicate, as has 
 been conjectured, that the Roman rhetoricians, though incompe- 
 tent, made large claims as to practical usefulness. Possibly the 
 subjects of their declamations were taken from the forum, thus 
 arousing in the pupils a feeling that they were doing real things, 
 declaiming in a way that was significant as a contribution to 
 political questions. This is by no means certain. The oratorical 
 exercises contained in the Latin books of the next century are 
 as remote from actual political life as the Greek; nor does the 
 work dedicated to Herennius, presently to be mentioned, indicate 
 such a procedure. Whatever the methods of instruction, the 
 
 2 Z>e Or. 1, 23. 
 3De Or. 1, 5. 
 * De Or. 3, 93-95. 
 
368 BHETOMIC 
 
 Roman rhetorician was not as yet nearly so prosperous as his 
 Greek rival, though his time was coming. The theory of rhetoric, 
 however, was already being set forth in Latin. The extant 
 example of this is the treatise in four books addressed to a certain 
 Herennius, which was certainly composed during Cicero's youth. 
 
 Cicero had wanted to attend rhetorical instruction in Latin 
 as well as in Greek, but was deterred by Crassus, so that all 
 Cicero's training under teachers of rhetoric was in Greek. 
 Despite its obvious drawbacks, this method had substantial 
 advantages : the teachers knew more and were pedagogically more 
 capable, and the literature of Greece, oratorical and otherwise, 
 as well as the Greek language itself, had reached a far higher 
 state of excellence than the Latin. "By declaiming in Greek," 
 Cicero said, "the student acquires many things that can be 
 ' transferred to Latin. ' ' 
 
 Cicero was throughout life interested in rhetoric. He prac- 
 tised declamation, for his own benefit, until he was forty, and 
 late in life he directed his young friends in it. As for the 
 theory, parts of which he considered too abstruse for practical 
 application, he found it pleasant to know; it was, after all, 
 a whole system of education, hallowed by centuries, and he 
 thought the learning of it a good discipline for the young. 
 Indeed, as regards the young, he approved sufficiently of the 
 whole rhetorical system, theory as well as practise, to have his 
 own son and his brother 's son receive the traditional instruction, 
 explaining to Quintus that this was what he himself had received 
 and that its objectionable effects could be eliminated by Cicero 
 himself when he should find leisure to take the boys in hand. 
 
 He also wrote on rhetoric. His works are of two kinds, 
 entirely different both in form and in content. One group sets 
 forth rhetorical theory, and contains three works. The first of 
 these is the early Libri Rhetorici, Books on Ehetoric, or De Inven- 
 tions, Invention. It was the direct outcome of his interest as a 
 student. His intention, never carried out, seems to have been 
 
ON THEORY 369 
 
 to give a complete account of rhetoric like that in the work 
 addressed to Herennius. In character it is of a piece with the 
 ordinary works on rhetoric, setting forth the theory with its 
 almost innumerable classifications, carefully defining and illus- 
 trating everything. Cicero's avowed claim to originality is that 
 he is not following any other rhetorician, meaning of course that 
 he is not translating or adapting a Greek author, but that he 
 has read the authorities, and is giving the essence of the whole 
 matter. He modestly compares his method to that of the painter 
 Zeuxis when the latter was making a picture, necessarily imag- 
 inary, of Helen. The painter asked the people of Crotona, his 
 employers, to bring him their most beautiful girls for models. 
 The Crotonians, moral beyond all others, brought their most 
 beautiful boys, at which Zeuxis said: "But these boys surely 
 have sisters." The handsome sisters were thereupon brought, 
 after the authorities had taken a vote on the question; and 
 Zeuxis chose five of them, from whose combined charms he 
 created his famous picture. 
 
 Cicero's work has no other resemblance to Zeuxis' Helen 
 than the asserted variety of its sources. What use he made of 
 these can not be determined, since they are lost. Probably he 
 worked very much according to the method of a modern student 
 writing an expository account of an intricate subject that has 
 been much discussed. The work is clear and systematic, but 
 hardly attractive except to students interested in rhetorical 
 theory. As such, it was much read and praised by later genera- 
 tions. It contains a discussion of the importance of oratory, and 
 thereiipon takes up the subject in detail. But the two books of 
 which it consists do not get beyond inventio, the first division 
 of rhetoric. If the work had been completed, it would have 
 been a very illuminating exposition of rhetoric as taught during 
 Cicero 's youth. Probably Cicero never finished it. In later life, 
 as has already been mentioned, he regretted that he had allowed 
 its publication; it seemed too youthful. 
 
370 RHETORIC 
 
 The other two works of the same group as the De Inventione . 
 are very short, and were written many years later. One, the 
 Topica, treats of the theory of Topics so-called, an intricate and 
 difficult part of rhetoric. Its difficulty was the reason for Cicero's 
 exposition. "While visiting Cicero, Trebatius, a friend, had hap- 
 pened upon a work on the subject by Aristotle. He borrowed the 
 book, but was unable to understand it. He then applied to a 
 famous rhetorician, but the latter knew nothing about the mat- 
 ter ; a circumstance by no means surprising to Cicero, who said 
 that even the philosophers, with few exceptions, were equally 
 ignorant. At Trebatius' request, therefore, Cicero undertook 
 to write a brief account of Aristotelian Topics whenever he had 
 leisure, and he actually did this, according to his preface to 
 the book, while traveling by boat. Being away from his books, 
 he wrote from memory. The exposition is not much like the 
 theory as found in Aristotle; probably it represents the eon- 
 temporary teaching that went under Aristotle's name. 5 Like 
 the former rhetorical work, it consists entirely of classifications 
 and definitions. The Topioa was written in 44 b.c. 
 
 The third work, of uncertain date, but probably written 
 shortly after 54 B.C., is the Bartitiones Oratoriae, Oratorical 
 Divisions. In 54 Cicero's son Marcus and his nephew Quintus 
 were receiving instruction from a Greek rhetorician, whom the 
 boys liked but of whom Cicero did not quite approve. He there- 
 fore writes to the elder Quintus that he will try to do something 
 for them ; and this work may be one result of Cicero 's promise. 
 
 It is a complete account, brief and with extremely few illus- 
 trations, of rhetorical theory. The form is that of a dialogue 
 between Cicero and his son, the former answering the latter 's 
 questions. It is thus a rhetorical catechism, obviously intended 
 to teach young Marcus, and probably his cousin, the theory and 
 technical language of rhetoric. In the preface Cicero says that 
 
 s See Laurand, De M. Tulli etc., pp. 35 ff. and notes. See also below, 
 pp. 377-378. 
 
NEW VIEWS 371 
 
 he had been in the habit of questioning his son in this way in 
 Greek ; now Marcus may question him in Latin. Marcus shows 
 a very commendable eagerness to profit by his opportunity, but 
 our knowledge of the young man makes this eagerness seem at 
 least doubtful, particularly in the light of the difficulty and 
 intricacy of the subject. The little book was apparently intended 
 merely as a help to Marcus and perhaps to a few young friends, 
 the old Romans often having written their children's textbooks. 
 It is not mentioned by Cicero in his other works and may not 
 have been published by him. Though possibly founded directly 
 on an Academic work on rhetoric, it may be more independent, 
 being the result of Cicero 's own knowledge of rhetorical theory ; 
 but it certainly is not intended to set forth any new views. 
 
 The other group of Cicero's rhetorical works does set forth 
 new views, or rather expresses Cicero's mature opinions about 
 oratory without any intention of making additions to rhetorical 
 theory. Taking for granted that the reader knows this theory 
 and has received the customary training, Cicero discusses the 
 subject from the point of view of the successful orator, as 
 distinguished from that of the teacher of rhetoric. 
 
 In the De Omtore, the first and most important of these 
 works, he describes the education that he considers necessary 
 for the orator, and also discusses the theory and the declamatory 
 exercises of rhetorical teaching. The work is therefore not a 
 textbook, to take the place of those already in use ; it is critical 
 in intent, condemning some practises of the schools and praising 
 others, and it is above all constructive, in that it puts before 
 the reader the ideal toward which he ought to aim after he 
 has gone through the regular training. Being the outcome of 
 Cicero's own experience and of his thinking about the subject, 
 it contains numerous suggestions that might help the reader 
 both in his further study of rhetoric and in his actual practise 
 of oratory. 
 
372 BHETOMIC 
 
 The Brutus, the second of these works, is a history of Eoman 
 oratory. It discusses the individual orators, taking them in 
 chronological order and grouping them into oratorical periods; 
 and shows how public speaking in Rome had developed gradu- 
 ally until it reached its climax at the time of Cicero — indeed, in 
 Cicero himself. As the criterion used in criticising the indi- 
 vidual orators is the ideal set forth in the De Oratore, this 
 treatise, aside from its historical character, becomes an attempt 
 to justify Cicero's own views by showing how the historical 
 development of oratory had constantly tended toward Cicero's 
 ideal. 
 
 In the Orator, the third work in this group, Cicero portrays 
 the ideal orator. In the De Orator e he had described the orator's 
 ideal education and training; in the Brutus he had criticised 
 the whole list of orators in the light of his ideal requirements; 
 in the Orator he gives a picture of his ideal orator, what he is 
 and what he can do. This work has therefore mainly the same 
 content as the De Oratore, but differently expressed. Both the 
 Brutus and the Orator, furthermore, contain a polemical element, 
 which need not be discussed here, but which adds something to 
 the previous theory and introduces a new emphasis. 
 
 In addition to these two well-defined groups there are extant 
 two bits of rhetorical writing, very brief and in themselves very 
 unimportant. They illustrate, however, Cicero 's continued inter- 
 est in the subject and are rather pleasant reading. Cicero had 
 intended to publish a translation of Demosthenes ' oration On the 
 Crown and Aeschines' oration Against Ctesipho, which would 
 indicate what the best Attic oratory had been, and, consequently, 
 what Roman oratory should be. It is uncertain whether he made 
 the translation; he almost certainly never published it. But 
 he wrote a brief preface for the intended translation, and this 
 is extant under the name De Optimo Oemere Oratorum, On the 
 Best Kind of Oratory. Being a part of the polemic already 
 mentioned, it need not be further discussed here. It indicates, 
 
PABAD0XE8 373 
 
 however, another way — that of comparison with recognized ora- 
 torical classics — in which Cicero defended his oratorical ideal. 
 Apparently it belongs in or near the year 46 B.C., when the 
 Brutus and the Orator were published. 
 
 In 46 B.C. the other work, the Rwradoom, Paradoxes, was also 
 composed. It is merely an incidental result of Cicero's pre- 
 occupation with oratory. Generalizations of various kinds were 
 constantly introduced into all sorts of speeches. Cato, whose 
 correct Stoicism met with scant popular favor, was in the habit 
 of enlivening his orations, or weighting them, with meditations 
 on such subjects as death, morality, and patriotism. Now Cicero, 
 as he says in his preface addressed to Cato's nephew, Brutus, 
 had in mind to discover just how far this sort of thing was pos- 
 sible. It was merely a playful exercise, the result of oratorical 
 inquisitiveness, so to speak, and was not intended to furnish 
 matter for the forum. Cato had confined himself to thoughts of 
 a general application. Cicero, on the other hand, puts into 
 oratorical form six of the famous Stoic paradoxes : that which 
 is honorable is alone good for a man; virtue is sufficient for a 
 happy life; every fool is insane — and others. The very per- 
 versity of these assertions offered excellent practise to the 
 orator, for the latter "s business is, among other things, to make 
 the incredible seem credible and to express interestingly that 
 which is dry. 
 
 II 
 Theory 
 
 Ehetorical theory, 6 as it can be gathered from the first group 
 of Cicero's rhetorical works and from similar expositions, is 
 dry almost beyond alleviation; much of it is incredible as a 
 means for creating actual oratory fit for the forum; and it is 
 
 e For this and the following section I have made use of the books and 
 articles on rhetoric mentioned in the bibliography, but my account is 
 founded directly on the ancient authorities, particularly Cicero's Partttiones 
 and Be Oratore. 
 
374 EEETOMIC 
 
 not always easy to understand. The books in which it is set 
 forth, as has already been indicated, contain little else than 
 classifications, definitions, and illustrations. The whole theory 
 is the result of centuries of study, during which many scholars, 
 whether philosophers or rhetoricians, seem often to have lost 
 sight of their only proper aim — oratory — and to have expended 
 an almost tireless ingenuity in redistributing and redefining the 
 old material, sometimes improving, no doubt, on the logic of 
 the system, but quite as often making the confusion only more 
 pronounced. 
 
 It will nevertheless be necessary to attempt to give some sort 
 of an idea of it. It is not merely that Cicero was trained in it 
 for years, kept his interest in it, and wrote about it; nearly all 
 the educated Romans of his time received a similar training and 
 shared his interest. Indeed, the method pursued by the rheto- 
 ricians was largely adopted in the lower grades of instruction 
 and it also reached up into the sphere of the philosophers, so 
 that it contains within it practically the whole pedagogical theory 
 followed by the ancient Greeks and Romans; the aim being 
 always to give the student an oratorical style, literary, we might 
 say, and the ability to make the most of his case. Furthermore, 
 as has just been indicated, the rhetorical works of the second 
 group, interesting, significant, and frequently read, take a 
 knowledge of the theory for granted; without such knowledge 
 they can be only half comprehended, nor can the reader appre- 
 ciate the wonderful skill with which Cicero managed to treat 
 this intractable subject. 
 
 The system is not entirely devoid of interest. Being avowedly 
 founded on public speaking, it contains many shrewd comments, 
 naively enough expressed, on human nature as it had been 
 observed among ancient jurors and audiences; and it furnishes 
 a useful commentary on Cicero's orations. Students are con- 
 stantly told to do the very things for which he has frequently 
 been criticised. 
 
THREE MAIN DIVISIONS 375 
 
 But it is a monstrously difficult theory, as involved as 
 mediaeval theology. Poor Marcus and the other little Romans 
 probably never understood why the word for game, ludus, also 
 meant school. 
 
 Roughly stated, there are two things to which the orator must 
 attend in preparing his speech, namely, the thought and the 
 expression. These, though theoretically distinct, are frequently 
 fused in practise. Certain thoughts are included in an oration 
 merely because they offer an opportunity for effective expression ; 
 and it is true, generally, that we think in words. The distinction 
 nevertheless remains. In the Be Oratore, which is not arranged 
 with an uninspired observance of rhetorical system, Cicero 
 groups his material with a regard for this distinction ; and it. is 
 the basis of the Oratorical Divisions. All matters of expression 
 were grouped by the rhetoricians under elocutio, Style ; the rest 
 belonged to the so-called inventio and collocatio. 
 
 Inventio means discovery or finding. As the word might 
 apply to the finding of the proper vocabulary quite as readily 
 as to the finding of the proper thoughts, the rhetorician said 
 that it was concerned with words and things, verba and res; but 
 it was in practise restricted to the latter. The term itself 
 is significant. The student, having received from his instructor 
 the subject of a discourse, must decide what effect he should 
 aim at, and thereupon choose or find his material accordingly. 
 Inventio taught him how to do this. 
 
 Besides finding his material, the student must know how 
 to arrange it effectively. This is taught in collooatio, Arrange- 
 ment. Like the term inventio, the word collooatio may refer to 
 words as well as things, but as a technical part of rhetoric it is 
 limited to the content of a speech. A speech naturally has a 
 beginning, a middle, and an end. The middle, which is by far 
 the most important part of a speech, was divided into two or 
 more parts. If two, these were called the Narrative and the 
 Argumentation. 
 
376 EHETOBIC 
 
 Rhetorical theory in reference to the composition of an 
 oration thus consists of three divisions: invmtio, collocatio, and 
 elocutio. But as the student was instructed in delivery as well, 
 there is a fourth part, actio or pronuntiatio, Delivery, which had 
 to do with the management of the voice, facial expression, and 
 gesture. But since these matters could be taught only orally, 
 very little was written about them. As students, furthermore, 
 were trained in memorizing 7 as well as in a science of mnemonics, 
 memoria, Memory, was sometimes added as a fifth part of 
 rhetoric. Real rhetoric, however, in so far as it was a scientific 
 subject, consisted of the three divisions first mentioned. 
 
 But theory without practise is much like faith without works, 
 a truth thoroughly grasped by the teachers of rhetoric despite 
 occasional lapses into pedantry. A large part of their teaching, 
 possibly the greater part when the student had attained a fair 
 amount of adroitness, consisted in the writing and reciting of 
 speeches, and even in extemporaneous speaking. It will there- 
 fore accord tolerably well with the ancient pedagogical method 
 and it will also be least obscure, first to give some general con- 
 ception of rhetorical theory as it falls under its three large 
 divisions, and then to indicate briefly how this doctrine was 
 applied to actual speech making. There is no order of presen- 
 tation possible which will keep together all the details that 
 belong together. The fields themselves overlap even when viewed 
 merely from a theoretical point of view, and when the actual 
 composition of a speech is considered, all the fields work together. 
 The order proposed is to a considerable extent the one used by 
 Cicero in outlining rhetoric for his son Marcus in the Oratorical 
 Divisions, and even slight experimentation will show that 
 Cicero's arrangement of an expostion is usually the best. But 
 as he wrote for Marcus, who already had a Greek acquaintance 
 with rhetoric, some changes will be necessary. 
 
 ' See Ad Herennium, 3, chaps. 16-24, for an interesting account. 
 
INVENTION 377 
 
 Invention, being concerned with the subject matter of a 
 speech, undertook to give the student both general and detailed 
 guidance. Like the rest of rhetoric, it had to do mainly with 
 oratory in the courts, which was considered the most difficult. 
 It showed him how to determine the main issue in the case pre- 
 sented to him ; guided him toward a clear understanding of the 
 aim he must pursue in order to secure a favorable verdict ; gave 
 rules as to the proper appraisal of the known facts by pointing 
 out, among other things, their relative importance for the prose- 
 cution and for the defense ; it informed him how to make use of 
 testimony and how to treat the witnesses; and, in addition, it 
 trained him generally in adroitness of presentation. 
 
 Adroitness of presentation, which is not a phrase from 
 ancient rhetoric, is intended to cover a multitude of devices. 
 Thus, in the famous case of Norbanus, which has already been 
 cited, Norbanus was accused of high treason for taking part in a 
 riot. The riot had occurred in connection with the trial of 
 Caepio, who by insubordination had caused the Roman army to 
 suffer a defeat in Gaul, and who had been brought to trial by 
 Norbanus. Now, to commit high treason is, according to Latin 
 phraseology, to diminish the majesty of the Roman people. The 
 orator for the defense might therefore say that if the majesty of 
 the Roman people is its grandeur and dignity, he diminishes it 
 who surrenders a Roman army to the enemy, as Caepio had done, 
 and not he who hands over to the Romans for trial the man who 
 has so surrendered a Roman army — as Norbanus had done when 
 he took part in the riot. In other words, a proper definition of 
 the term high treason shows that Caepio was guilty of this 
 offence, but not Norbanus. In speaking like this, the orator, as 
 the rhetoricians put it, argued from the definition of a word. 
 
 In the same way, an orator was said to argue from things 
 similar if he said that, inasmuch as wild beasts love their young, 
 human beings ought to be even more devoted to their children; 
 and from things dissimilar: while barbarians live with no 
 
378 BHETOEIC 
 
 thought of the morrow, civilized man ought to lay his plans with 
 a view to eternity ; and from a comparison, thus : if good repute 
 is better than riches, and if riches are considered highly desirable, 
 then fame is even more to be desired. 
 
 In these examples the orator's arguments were drawn from 
 a definition, from similars, and dissimilars. Other considerations 
 from which they might be drawn are genus, species, whole, part, 
 cause, effect, disparates, contraries, relates, privatives, contra- 
 dictories, greater, less, and equals. These considerations were 
 called loci, Places, or Topics, from the Greek word for place; 
 the doctrine concerned with them was named Topica. The list 
 of Topics varies not only with different writers on rhetoric, but 
 even within the works of Cicero. The whole subject was exceed- 
 ingly obscure, and it was for this reason that Cicero wrote his 
 short Topica for Trebatius. The list of Topics there expounded, 
 called Aristotelian, includes those given above and a few others, 
 and is practically the one that Cicero gives in the Oratorical 
 Divisimis and in other works. But there are slight variations, 
 doubtless due to the fact that these topical lists were frequently 
 modified by teachers of rhetoric. Cicero had no ambition to 
 add to rhetorical theory, but the professional teacher had, 8 and 
 Cicero, as a student, probably became familiar with more than 
 one list. Whatever the details, these lists gave logical training 
 to the student. Cicero considered them very helpful to an orator, 
 provided he had mastered them thoroughly, by means of constant 
 practise, and displayed good sense in applying them. 
 
 The above Topics were perhaps called Aristotelian because, 
 like those still found in Aristotle's works, they had to do with 
 the consideration of a case in the abstract. They might be used 
 anywhere. 
 
 But the rhetoricians, in their eagerness to supply their pupils 
 with more detailed help, drew up lists of Topics that applied to 
 the concrete phases of a case as well. They might be something 
 like this : as to the persons concerned — his name, sex, nationality, 
 
 8 .4d! Herennium, passim. 
 
TOPICS 379 
 
 age, education, teachers, friends, property, social position, and 
 numerous other kindred matters ; and as to the deed under con- 
 sideration — the place where it was alleged to have happened, 
 the time, the means by which it was accomplished, its motive, 
 and a great deal more. These Topics, concrete as distinguished 
 from the abstract, are mentioned by Cicero in his early work on 
 Invention, but he thought poorly of them in later life. He found 
 them too numerous for easy memorizing, and, in any case, too 
 obvious to be of much help. Cicero's attitude, though doubtless 
 founded largely on his own experience, was the attitude of the 
 philosophers who taught rhetoric, while the opposite view was 
 held by the professional rhetoricians. 
 
 The word Topic — or rather, locus, its Latin equivalent — is 
 constantly used by Cicero in his rhetorical works. Topic is the 
 seat of an argument, the place in which the student can find a 
 proof or a thought. If there are fifteen ways of arousing anger, 
 these fifteen ways might be called the Topics of anger; and are 
 so called in Cicero's Invention. In the same way almost any 
 suggestion contained in the theory of Invention was a Topic, so 
 that Invention, which shows the pupil where he can find his 
 material, does so by indicating Topics. Topica, the theory of 
 Topics, is thus, largely speaking, the same as inventio; tech- 
 nically, however, and as used by Cicero, it has to do with the 
 abstract Aristotelian Topics. 
 
 This brief and incomplete discussion of Topics has been intro- 
 duced here because it is so thoroughly characteristic of the whole 
 ancient rhetorical attitude, indicating exactly the manner in 
 which the teacher attempted, in Invention, to assist his student 
 in thinking. It is, furthermore, of so general an application 
 that it can not be readily considered in connection with the 
 actual composition of speeches. The other parts of Invention 
 can, however, he treated there most profitably. 
 
 The question of Style, elocutio, is so largely a matter of 
 language that only a few general observations can me made 
 
380 BEETOBIC 
 
 without detailed reference to Latin. The acquisition of a good 
 style was considered of supreme importance. It was the object 
 of nearly all the instruction that the Roman boy received before 
 he came under the teachers of rhetoric, and these, in their turn, 
 gave much attention to it. A large part of rhetorical theory, as 
 seen in the extant textbooks, \jas concerned with stylistic matters 
 of many kinds. The rules given, like those of modern rhetoric, 
 though to an even higher degree, may seem pedantic and useless ; 
 they contain, however, some hints about the method pursued. 
 
 Instruction in Style consisted in the critical study of classical 
 authors — orators and historians under the rhetoricians, and 
 poets under the teachers that preceded the rhetoricians — and in 
 composition. It was therefore much like our instruction in 
 rhetoric and composition, including training in the ordinary 
 stylistic devices, such as the use of figurative language, in numer- 
 ous subdivisions, the repetition of words, and the proper use of 
 conjunctions. Considerable attention was given to word order, 
 an extremely important matter to the Roman boy, since Latin 
 allows almost' any arrangement; and to the acquisition of a 
 vocabulary. 
 
 In connection with the latter there is one circumstance par- 
 ticularly noteworthy. Latin words, the Roman boy was told, are 
 the result either of natural growth or of conscious formation. 
 This distinction, of no practical stylistic importance in such 
 a language as English, is a reflection of the fact that Latin was 
 still largely in the making, so that it was no doubt a frequent 
 duty of the orator, as of the literary artist in other fields, actually 
 to coin his own words. Such words, as Cicero tells Marcus in 
 the Oratorical Divisions, may be formed according to the laws 
 operative in Latin, that is, a new abstract noun may be made 
 from an old adjective in the way that similar nouns had already 
 come into existence ; they may be imitated from the Greek ; they 
 may be Greek words inflected according to Latin accidence; or 
 they may be compounds of two Latin words. All of these 
 
STYLE 381 
 
 methods, except the first, show the influence of Greek, for even 
 the formation of compounds was often in direct imitation of a 
 process natural to the Greeks, but never fully accepted by the 
 Romans. The Latin vocabulary was thus being constantly 
 increased, more or less according to methods characteristic of the 
 Greek, and the question of old words and new had a peculiar 
 significance. 
 
 Perhaps it is not unreasonable to imagine that the Roman boy 
 received instruction in the formation of new words. Most of 
 the rhetorical teaching in Rome — all that Cicero received — was 
 in the hands of Greek teachers, but, though these knew little 
 or no Latin, they may well have suggested methods of word 
 formation. As they apparently were none too modest, their 
 very ignorance of Latin may have made them only the more 
 willing to formulate rules; to them, Latin could always be 
 improved by imitating Greek. 
 
 However that may be, Latin was at this time growing very 
 fast; whole fields of thought, like rhetoric and philosophy, were 
 for the first time finding expression in Latin ; so that the question 
 of vocabulary was far more important to the Roman orator 
 than it would be to a modern writer. Cicero himself did perhaps 
 more than any other one man to enrich Latin in this very respect. 
 
 The study of vocabulary as well as of everything else 
 connected with style aimed not merely at correctness, clearness, 
 precision, and similar matters, with which the modern prose 
 writer is mainly concerned, but also at rhythm and musical 
 effects. This was not a casual search for grace, a thing to be 
 decided by an uninstructed feeling for sound ; it was as complex 
 as the question of sound and rhythm in verse. Prose, according 
 to the current teaching, must be like verse, and yet unlike it. 
 The balance of phrases and clauses; their just length; the 
 making of the long period, ending with suitable metrical com- 
 binations and divided by pauses that would contribute to the 
 clearness of its contents and also enable the speaker's voice to 
 
382 RHETORIC 
 
 have its full effect without danger of straining or breathlessness ; 
 the avoidance of hiatus and other harsh combinations — all these 
 were matters for careful training. 
 
 It is probably no overstatement to say that rhythmical and 
 musical effects were as important, or nearly as important, to 
 the ancient orator as they are to the musician. 9 Latin, like 
 Greek, was not a language of sharp accents, but of well regulated 
 long and short syllables rigidly observed. The Romans were 
 exceedingly sensitive on this point. If an actor dragged or 
 clipped a syllable, the whole audience shouted with disgust; 
 and yet the theatrical audiences in Rome were very large and 
 consisted almost exclusively of uneducated citizens. They did 
 not know, as Cicero said, 10 what was wrong, or why; they had 
 no knowledge of rhythm ; but they were offended by the slightest 
 failure to observe the proper quantity. And it was the same 
 with the actual sounds of the words and the inflection of the 
 voice. 
 
 The whole subject, however, is rather foreign to modern 
 English; it is certainly not conscious enough with us to be 
 reduced to stylistic rules. Our use of alliteration, anaphora, 
 and other musical means, which were employed and much dis- 
 cussed by the ancients, scarcely touches the matter. The reader 
 of English can perhaps most easily get some impression of it 
 from the renderings of the Psalms and similar works in the Old 
 Testament; the Hebrew parallelism and the delicate sense for 
 sound on the part of the English translators have produced a 
 similar effect. But Latin oratorical prose, as seen in Cicero, 
 is far more varied and subtle than this English. 
 
 The attention to sound and rhythm is indicative of the care 
 with which the orator endeavored, and was taught to endeavor, 
 to please his audience. Another indication is the surprising 
 
 9 Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, 1, 212 ff. ; Laurand, Mudes etc., pp. 
 107-213; Clark. 
 
 io Be Or. 3, 196. 
 
TWO POINTS OF VIEW 383 
 
 statement in the Oratorical Divisions about the stylistic quality 
 of clearness. It is divided into two kinds. There is the ordinary 
 clearness, addressed to the intellect, the thing that any person 
 would aim at merely for the sake of being understood ; and there 
 is a heightened degree of it, brilliance or lustrousness, which, in 
 Cicero's words, puts the thing spoken of before the very eyes 
 of the listener. These two kinds of clearness are given as sep- 
 arate stylistic qualities, but Cicero remarks that all the character- 
 istics of the former are to be found in the latter. 
 
 This appeal to the aesthetic or emotional side of the audience 
 was considered highly important. It is reflected in the cus- 
 tomary list of qualities that a good style should possess. As given 
 in the De Oratore, this list contains c orrectn ess and clearness, 
 which are to be acquired in boyhood, and which are neces- 
 sary, though of no positive value ; and literaryjistinction, and 
 appropriateness. The last quality is of varied application, but 
 has always for aim the proper impression on the audience. 
 Literary distinction, an approximate rendering of the untrans- 
 latable adverb ornate, is called sweetness or grace in the 
 Oratorical Divisions. It has nothing, or should have nothing, 
 to do with purple patches — the quality of appropriateness would 
 guard against them — but indicates everything that gives aesthetic 
 pleasure or appeals to the emotions. And so, going beyond the 
 sphere of mere language as opposed to thought, the rhetorician 
 can say that this quality is also to be attained by the mention 
 of things strange and remarkable. Drawing his method from 
 public life, he frankly recognized that the aim of oratory is 
 twofold: it must convince the audience, but it must also please 
 them and move them. And throughout his system he kept 
 these two points of view before his pupils. 11 
 
 Arrangement — collocatio, dispositio — teaches the orator how 
 to distribute his material, and to that end divides the oration 
 
 11 They were sometimes expressed as three; see below, p. 440, note 51. 
 
384 RHETORIC 
 
 into four or more parts. Like Invention, it is concerned mainly 
 with speeches in court. These, according to the theory of 
 Arrangement, must have at least four parts : the Introduction or 
 Exordium, initium, principium, exordium; the Narration, n-ar- 
 ratio; the Argumentation, confirmatioj and the Conclusion or 
 Peroration, conclusio or peroratio. The twofold appeal that the 
 orator must make to his audience serves as the basis for char- 
 acterizing these divisions. The Argumentation is, of course, 
 directed primarily to the intellect. The Narrative, which pre- 
 cedes this and supplies the facts from which the arguments are 
 to be drawn, is thus also addressed to the intellect. The other 
 two parts have to do with the emotions of the audience. By 
 means of the Exordium the orator must secure a favorable 
 hearing for his speech, must get into proper relations with his 
 audience; whereas in the Peroration he must so stir them that 
 they give the desired verdict. Obviously the emotions may be 
 appealed to in the course of the Narrative and the Argumenta- 
 tion, and the listener's judgment must not be ignored in the 
 course of the Exordium or the Peroration, but the distinction 
 nevertheless is true in the main. 
 
 The fourfold division of the speech suggests everything 
 essential and really helpful, and is the one most frequently used 
 by Cicero. But he was no doctrinaire on the subject, and con- 
 sidered the addition or omission of other parts a matter for 
 personal preference. Thus the Argumentation is called con- 
 firmatio, which means merely confirmation or the proving of 
 your own view. Another part of the Argumentation consists 
 in refuting the opponent's arguments, and was therefore called 
 refutatio or reprehensio; and the two might be considered inde- 
 pendent parts of the speech. A sixth part was created by giving 
 a name, pwrtitio, to a passage frequently beginning the argu- 
 mentation, which enumerated the proofs that were to follow, 
 and so indicated the parts, as it were, of the most important 
 sections of the speech. As a seventh part, finally, was often 
 
ABBANGEMENT 385 
 
 counted a digression of almost any kind ; and as these frequently 
 occurred at the end of the Narrative, Digression as a division, 
 if counted at all, was placed here. 
 
 In connection with the study of Arrangement, the teacher 
 could suggest both the thoughts and the style suitable for the 
 different parts of a speech, thus borrowing from Invention and 
 Style. Cicero does this in the Oratorical Divisions, but, before 
 discussing the different parts of the speech, he. mentions the 
 so-called Amplification, amplifiaaitio. As the name indicates, 
 this was a device by which the orator dwelt on a certain thought, 
 enforcing it, and so bringing it home to the audience. It is very 
 efficient in the way of persuasion, Cicero says, and may be called 
 a kind of vehement proof. An Amplification is most natural 
 in the Peroration, when the orator makes his final appeal, but it 
 may also be used in any other part of the oration. From the 
 point of view of rhetorical theory as a whole, the elaboration of 
 such a device is another, and a very significant, recognition of 
 the fact that the orator must endeavor to stir the emotions. 
 
 These Amplifications would most naturally be generalizations 
 on a well-known subject, such as patriotism, the love of kindred, 
 the wickedness of murder, and the wretchedness of exile. In the 
 language of Invention, patriotism would be a Topic or Place, 
 since it contained a thought or argument; and as thoughts of 
 the kind indicated might be used in connection with any trial, 
 these generalizations were called Commonplaces, loci communes. 
 Perhaps nothing is better known in the whole field of rhetoric, 
 and certainly nothing is more characteristic of the literary man- 
 ner of the ancients, both in and out of rhetoric, than these 
 Commonplaces. They are found everywhere, not merely in 
 oratory but in history, poetry, and philosophy. Students were 
 trained in composing them, and seem to have carried their train- 
 ing into every field of literary activity. 
 
 Commonplaces suitable for various purposes and the advice 
 as to the style to be employed in them will be given later, but 
 
386 RHETORIC 
 
 it may be useful here to note the brief classification of them 
 that Cicero inserts in the Be Oratore. 12 Some, he says, contain 
 an attack against a clearly recognized vice, such as theft, treach- 
 ery, and parricide; others contain a plea for mercy, and move 
 the audience to pity; and still others are arguments on one side 
 or another of some abstract question, as : Is rumor to be believed 
 or not? It is obvious that Commonplaces would be much prac- 
 tised by the philosophers who taught rhetoric, for they were 
 concerned with the interpretation of life, with which all these 
 things would be connected. Especially was that the case 
 with the arguments about abstract truths, since philosophical 
 efficiency, in the eyes of the Academics and Peripatetics, may 
 be said to have consisted largely in the ability to argue on both 
 sides of a question. 
 
 As for the rhetorical directions in reference to the different 
 parts of the speech, they are stated most briefly in the Oratorical 
 Divisions. The account of Argumentation, however, will be 
 treated later. It contains an elaborate theory about the methods 
 to be employed in different sorts of cases, and is really a subject 
 by itself. 
 
 The Exordium, as already defined, is intended to secure a 
 hearing for the rest of the speech. Such a hearing, according 
 to the exposition in the Oratorical Divisions, must be friendly, 
 intelligent, and attentive. Friendliness can be attained by 
 proper attention to the persons concerned in the trial. The 
 orator should speak of his own past deeds, of his position in the 
 state, and of any virtues be may possess, particularly those that 
 have a public usefulness, such as liberality, devotion to duty, 
 justice, and reliability. He should attribute the corresponding 
 failings to his opponents, at the same time denying, or as much 
 as possible minimizing, any charges they may have made. And, 
 finally, he should convince the jurors either that he is already 
 
 12 Be Or. 3, 106-107. 
 
EXORDIUM— NABEATION 387 
 
 of their way of thinking or that such may readily become the case 
 in the future. In other words, the orator should from the start 
 make the trial a personal matter between himself and the oppos- 
 ing counsel on the one hand, and between himself and the jurors 
 on the other — a thoroughly Roman method of procedure. 
 
 A proper understanding of the case on the part of the jurors, 
 and consequently an interested attention, will result, the student 
 is told, if the orator begins his Exordium with a clear presenta- 
 tion of the facts, making careful use of definitions and divisions. 
 But he must avoid confusing his listeners or overburdening their 
 memories with minute recitals of things which will later be set 
 forth in the Narration. 
 
 The jurors can further be made attentive, the rhetorician 
 goes on to say, by showing that this case is important, or neces- 
 sary, or in some way of intimate concern to the jurymen them- 
 selves — another method of arguing beside the point ! In con- 
 clusion, the student is advised to profit by every adventitious 
 aid: the time of the trial, the political situation in Rome, the 
 place of the trial, the accidental arrival in the court of some 
 prominent man, and any other interruption. He must be alert 
 to take advantage in the Exordium of anything said by the 
 opposing counsel, particularly if it occurred at the end of his 
 speech. All these matters make the jurors attentive and inter- 
 ested. 
 
 The Narration, which comes next, sets forth the facts of 
 the case, and is thus, as it were, the foundation on which the 
 orator will later build to convince his audience. All the stylistic 
 qualities previously mentioned are useful here, but two of them 
 are absolutely necessary. The Narrative must be clear and bril- 
 liant, using the latter term in its technical meaning; and it 
 must be appropriate, that is, .convincing, inasmuch as appro- 
 priateness involves the adaptation of style to the audience. 
 Clearness is greatly aided by brevity; and, indeed, brevity is 
 especially to be recommended in the Narration. To\a^ry con- 
 
388 BHETOBIC 
 
 viction, the Narrative must be inherently probable — a character- 
 istically naive bit of advice ! — as regards the persons, times, and 
 places mentioned; the motives as well as the results of an action 
 must be given; the account must be substantiated by witnesses 
 and be in accord with the opinions and convictions held by men 
 in general; and the narrator must give the impression of being 
 a man of honor, of good standing in the community, truthful in 
 speech, and reliable in action. The quality of charm, though 
 not absolutely necessary, is desirable. This is attained by excla- 
 mations of astonishment and expectation on the part of the 
 narrator, by unexpected happenings in the course of the narra- 
 tive, by emotional passages, and by the introduction of dialogue. 
 The emotions advised for special cultivation are sorrow, anger, 
 fear, joy, and, without particularization, the instinctive human 
 desires, cupiditates ; and thus a field is opened for various 
 Commonplaces. 
 
 The Peroration concludes the speech, and must therefore 
 endeavor to impress the audience as strongly as possible in favor 
 of the speaker's view. One part of the Peroration is therefore 
 the so-called enumerutio, or Recapitulation, of the facts and 
 thoughts already set forth. This serves either to remind the- 
 audience of things they are in danger of forgetting or to 
 strengthen the final appeal by marshaling all the arguments in 
 one place. Recapitulation is obviously of frequent service to 
 the accuser; but not to the defendant. The latter has been 
 repelling specific charges, but as he would not have time to repeat 
 his defense in detail, he would only hurt his own cause by restat- 
 ing the charges and so bringing them again before the minds 
 of the jurors. The student is advised that in recapitulating 
 he must avoid the appearance of pride in his own powers of 
 memory; he must not go into much detail, but confine himself 
 to the main points. 
 
 The chief part of the Peroration, so the theory continues, 
 is in the nature of an Amplification, and is actually called by 
 
PEBOEATION 389 
 
 that name. The character of Amplifications, which usually 
 contained Commonplaces, had already been described ; but a few 
 observations are added. In the matter of language, the orator, 
 while avoiding everything offensively unusual, must make his 
 style brilliant and graceful. He must pay great heed to the 
 musical and rhythmical side of his expression, along the various 
 lines previously indicated. He must be ready to use figurative 
 expressions, and he will find it profitable to omit conjunctions, 
 it is said, for his words will then seem more numerous, since they 
 press one upon the other. But, in this whole connection, he 
 must carefully consider whether his case is important enough 
 to admit of this lofty treatment, for Amplification misplaced is 
 the extreme of absurdity. 
 
 As for the thoughts, they will naturally be suggested by 
 the Argumentation that preceded. The student is told that he 
 may well assign speech to fictitious characters and to mute 
 objects in nature — a reference to such frequent oratorical prac- 
 tises as the introduction of deceased ancestors pleading with 
 degenerate descendants and of a personified Rome exhorting, 
 encouraging, or reproaching the Romans. If the case permits, 
 the orator should make use of things that are in any way remark- 
 able or noteworthy, magna. These, briefly mentioned under 
 Style, are now divided into two groups. One of these groups 
 consists of things that are naturally or essentially remarkable, 
 and embraces the heavenly bodies and their courses; things 
 divine, such as omens, prophecies, and oracles; and any mar- 
 velous or inexplicable occurrences in nature. The objects in 
 the other group are noteworthy as a result of experience. They 
 are the circumstances or relations of life that greatly assist or 
 harm a man, and can be classified in their relation to the loving 
 reverence, caritas, men feel toward the gods, the state, and their 
 parents ; the love, amor, they have for husband or wife, children, 
 and friends ; and the sense of honor, Jumestas, shown in human 
 intercourse. In this systematizing the philosophic rhetorician 
 
390 BHETOE1C 
 
 made Topics out of his ethical meditations. The orator there- 
 upon is told to exhort his audience, by means of Commonplaces, 
 to retain the happiness resulting from these three virtues, and 
 to inveigh against those who destroy it. He is also to express 
 pity for the man who has lost it or is in danger of losing it, for 
 nobody is more pitiful than the man who has once been happy. 
 The arousing of pity was, indeed, important enough to have a 
 name of its own: miseratio, Commiseration, or conquestio, Com- 
 plaint; it would give an excellent opportunity for Common- 
 places. The Topics of pity, as given in Cicero's Invention, are 
 sixteen. But the student is counseled not to indulge in minute 
 details, for the tears shed for other people's misfortunes are 
 soon dried. 
 
 As a last suggestion in reference to the Peroration, the 
 rhetorician repeats his caution that the amount of Amplification 
 must be carefully adjusted to the character of the case ; and we 
 surmise here, as often elsewhere when similar warnings are given, 
 that the students trained in rhetoric might readily be led to 
 make mountains out of molehills, or, in Horace's phrase, they 
 would be like mountains in travail that bring forth a mouse. 
 
 Turning from the exposition of theory to its application in 
 the preparation of speeches, the Greek rhetoricians said that the 
 latter were of three kinds. This classification is due to Greek 
 public life. If the orator pleaded in court, his speech belonged 
 to the Judicial class — genus iuddciale; if he discussed a question 
 of public policy, his speech was of the Deliberative kind — genus 
 delibemtivum; if he spoke merely for purposes of display, with- 
 out a practical aim, his oration was Epideictic or Demonstrative 
 in kind — genus demonstratiini/m. In their search for complete- 
 ness of description, the rhetoricians further pointed out that the 
 listener is a judge in the first two cases; he gives a verdict as 
 to the past in the Judicial class, when he serves in the courts, 
 and he decides about the future in the Deliberative class, when 
 
TBMEE KINDS OF SPEECHES 391 
 
 he listens in the forum or in the senate-house ; whereas his only 
 concern with an Bpideictie speech is aesthetic — he is expected 
 merely to enjoy it. The speaker, therefore, has merely to please 
 his audience, and nothing more, in an Epideictic speech, but in 
 the other two kinds he must both convince them, by proving his 
 assertions, and please them or win their favor, and move them, 
 so that they will give the desired verdict. 
 
 Teaching in Rome, the Greek rhetoricians preserved this 
 classification, and the Roman rhetoricians followed them, 
 although it is not quite in accord with ' Roman conditions. 
 Judicial oratory there was the same as in Greece, and Delibera- 
 tive oratory was practised both in the senate and in the forum ; 
 but there was no real Demonstrative speaking. The Romans of 
 the republic were too practical and too busy — or too inartistic, 
 according to the point of view — to tolerate purposeless harangues, 
 however perfect in form. 
 
 They had, however, one kind of oratory that avowed no prac- 
 tical aim and was very much in the nature of display — the 
 Eulogy, laudatio, delivered at aristocratic funerals. The dis- 
 play was one of family pride rather than of oratorical skill, but 
 the speech was Epideictic enough to be classed as Demonstrative 
 oratory; and the rhetoricians could say that the speaker's sole 
 aim was to give pleasure, even though the pleasure of the ordi- 
 nary listener might be less than that of the mourning relatives 
 and the bereaved speaker himself. It was perfectly true, how- 
 ever, that the orator did not need to prove his assertions — as is 
 amply indicated by the early records of Roman history. Neither 
 did a speaker prove his assertions when, in the course of a trial 
 or a debate, he launched into eulogy or denunciation; and, as a 
 result, such laudatory or invective passages were looked upon as 
 examples of Epideictic oratory. This class of speaking was 
 therefore said to be concerned with praise or blame, but actually 
 it included only funeral eulogies, and was often called merely 
 laudatio. 
 
392 RHETORIC 
 
 Obviously Demonstrative oratory, requiring no proofs, was 
 the least difficult; and may therefore be treated first. The 
 rhetoricians paid scant attention to it. It was easy; it was not 
 very important, especially in Rome ; and it was, after all, nothing 
 but an emotional Narrative. The student, in his study of Style, 
 was first trained in Narration. The theory of style, therefore, 
 has nothing particular to add in reference to Laudations. What 
 has been said about Narrative in general and about Amplification 
 and Commonplaces, is applicable here. The aim of a Eulogy, so 
 far as the audience was concerned, was to give pleasure. The 
 student, consequently, should profit by stylistic advice toward 
 making his speech aesthetically pleasing, the ornate of Cicero's 
 list of stylistic qualities; he should also attempt to inspire his 
 audience with the emotions of expectation and wonder — to use 
 the rhetorical phraseology — according to the rules already laid 
 down. 
 
 In the matter of Arrangement, rhetorical theory has but 
 little to offer. The division into four parts of a Judicial speech 
 is of little value here. There is no need of an Exordium to 
 secure a favorable hearing, for the mere presence of the audi- 
 ence, we are told, indicates a receptive mood; there is no call 
 for Argumentation; and there is no necessity for a Peroration, 
 as defined by the standards of legal oratory, inasmuch as the 
 orator does not endeavor to secure an agreement with his views 
 that will result in action. It is all Narration, and has a begin- 
 ning and an end merely in the sense that all things must begin 
 somewhere and end somewhere. Some general, and rather 
 obvious, observations were nevertheless made. The speaker may 
 proceed chronologically, it was said; or he may arrange the 
 deeds narrated according to subjects, suggested by the virtues 
 from which they spring, as will be shown later, or he may go 
 from lesser to greater things, or from the greater to the lesser, 
 or, finally, he may weave together great things and small, simple 
 and complex, clear things and obscure, joyful and sad, incredible 
 and probable. 
 
DEMONSTRATIVE OBATOBY 393 
 
 It is only in the field of Invention that more definite sug- 
 gestions are given. Starting with the initial observation that 
 Demonstrative oratory relates to matters deserving of praise 
 or of blame, the teacher divided these matters into three groups, 
 naturally thinking of Laudations and therefore putting the 
 emphasis on things praiseworthy. 
 
 First, there are the man 's external circumstances, those which 
 relate to the position of his family. If they are deserving of 
 commendation, they should be mentioned with brevity and mod- 
 eration ; if base, they should be passed by ; if humble, the orator 
 should either pass them by or indicate how the subject of his 
 Eulogy rose above them. Something may also be said, in this 
 connection, about his wealth and other worldly advantages. 
 Secondly, the eulogy may take up his appearance. In discussing 
 this, it is well to speak particularly of his facial expression, in 
 case it mirrors excellent mental or moral qualities. Lastly, there 
 are his good deeds, which result from his virtues. It is here 
 that the speaker must look for most of his thoughts ; and Inven- 
 tion endeavored to assist him by a classification of the virtues. 
 The philosophers who taught rhetoric, connoisseurs in virtue, 
 here stepped in with a long list of moral excellencies, carefully 
 subdivided and defined, thus drawing up a veritable Topica 
 of praise. 
 
 Virtue — as Cicero tells Marcus in the Omtoriaal Divisions, 
 and Marcus was probably in need of the information — virtue is 
 a large subject, much debated. Briefly it comes to this : virtues 
 have to do either with knowledge, knowing what is right, or 
 with action, doing it. Virtues of knowledge are concerned with 
 a man's private affairs or with the state. Great aids toward them 
 are the sciences of dialectic and rhetoric, the former teaching 
 a man how to judge, and the latter, how to express himself. 
 Evidently a Eulogy might well be based partly on a man's 
 dialectic or oratorical efficiency. As for the virtues of action, 
 they, too, relate either to a man's private affairs or to the state. 
 
394 EHETOMIC 
 
 They are summed up in the one word temperaiitia, which causes 
 a man to be moderate in using the advantages within his reach 
 and to refrain from demanding others, and which gives him 
 courage to oppose evil, and patience to endure it. It is in fact 
 spiritual greatness, animi magnitude, the source of all good 
 qualities. In matters of the state, it leads to justice, piety, kind- 
 ness, reliability, and everything else of good repute. 
 
 There are many more virtues, which need not be given, and 
 there are equally many vices, opposed to them. The vices are 
 not treated in the same detail, but the student is warned against 
 misapprehending vices that parade as virtues. A list of parallels 
 then follows, such as generosity and extravagance, courage and 
 rashness, moderation in the enjoyment of pleasure and rigid 
 abstemiousness, which is called brutishness or enormity, im- 
 manitas, and, finally, eloquence, as opposed to an empty flow 
 of words ! 
 
 In praising a man, therefore, and this is the summing up 
 of the whole matter, it is proper to speak of his family, his 
 education, and the influences that formed him; to mention any- 
 thing strange or incredible that happened to him, especially if 
 it came from the gods ; to describe his praiseworthy thoughts, 
 sayings, or deeds, referring them to their several virtues; and 
 also to speak of his death, provided it was in any way noteworthy 
 or was followed by remarkable events. 
 
 A Deliberative speech urged the acceptance or the rejection 
 of a proposal, and was also called suasio, Urging, which is 
 primarily applicable to a speech that favors acceptance. Such 
 speeches were delivered at the meetings of the senate or of the 
 people. In the matters of Style and Arrangement, ordinary 
 rhetorical theory contained very little specific advice about 
 Deliberative speaking, as it did about Demonstrative speaking; 
 the reason being that he who had learned, in Judicial oratory, 
 how to present his own side of a case would need no instruction 
 
DELIBERATIVE ORATORY 395 
 
 in presenting his view of a proposed action. It was observed, 
 however, that the style should be simple and weighty, deriving 
 its distinction rather from the thoughts than from the expression. 
 
 As to the four ordinary divisions of a speech, the rhetoricians 
 said that here, as in the case of Demonstrative oratory, there was 
 no need of an extended Exordium : the presence of the audience 
 indicated a willingness to listen. The speaker should, therefore, 
 state his subject and his attitude briefly, and also promise to 
 observe brevity in his discussion. The Narrative, too, should be 
 brief, since Deliberative oratory has to do with the future and 
 not with the past or the present. The Argumentation, on the 
 other hand, and the Peroration, both of them important, received 
 considerable attention, but only from the philosophers. 
 
 The method of treatment employed by the philosophers was 
 analogous to that used by them in Demonstrative oratory. The 
 philosophical rhetorician had there drawn up a list of virtues 
 and vices, practically giving a Topica of praise and of blame; 
 here he informs the student that all deliberations are concerned 
 with the question of utility. Invention as applied to this 
 kind of oratory therefore consisted, in the first place, of a 
 philosophical discussion of this term. 
 
 Before really arriving at a discussion of the usefulness of a 
 proposal, the orator was taught that he must consider its prac- 
 ticability and its necessity. If the proposal is impossible of 
 execution, the discussion ceases, however useful the proposed 
 action may be. And if it is absolutely necessary, then, too, all 
 discussion ceases, and questions of utility as well as of morality 
 are not in place. In the matter of practicability, the. orator 
 should discuss the relative difficulties involved, for very difficult 
 things are often to be treated as impossible. Similarly, as to 
 necessity, the importance of the proposed action must be investi- 
 gated, for supreme importance is equivalent to necessity. The 
 mode of procedure is therefore simple : if a thing is useful and 
 practicable, let it be done; if useless or if impracticable, let it 
 
396 RHETORIC 
 
 not be done. The man who favors a proposal must thus prove 
 two things, the utility and the practicability of it; his opponent 
 need disprove only one of the two. 
 
 Utility has to do with the good and the bad things in life. 
 Of the former, some are essential, such as the preservation of 
 life, a good character, liberty, children, husbands or wives, rela- 
 tives, and parents; others are desirable. Those desirable are so 
 either because of their ethical excellence or because they are 
 advantageous. The different kinds of advantages have to do with 
 a man 's physical well-being or with his worldly position ; some of 
 them are connected with morality, such as glory and friendship ; 
 others are not, as, for instance, bodily strength, health, good 
 birth, wealth, and political influence. The student is further 
 informed that it is easy, knowing the good things, to discover 
 what is bad, and that he must possess a knowledge about these 
 matters because in this kind of speaking there is often a conflict 
 between utility and honesty. This conflict was much debated 
 by the philosophers, as appears in Cicero's own work on Duty, 
 and would supply the orator with numerous Commonplaces. 
 
 The speaker, however, must take into account, here as else- 
 where, not merely his subject but also his audience. Men are 
 of two kinds : some are high-minded and unselfish, others are 
 base and selfish. The speaker must suit his reasons to both 
 classes, at times even praising pleasure, though nothing is more 
 hostile to virtue. In this connection it is profitable to remember 
 that those who are base are eager to avoid disgrace even though 
 they care but little for virtue. 
 
 As to the question of practicability, the orator will consider 
 the means for accomplishing the proposed action, some of which 
 are direct and some indirect, and also the obstacles in its way, 
 striving to show that it is not merely possible of execution but 
 also easy and pleasant. His opponent will argue in the opposite 
 direction. Both should cite precedents, recent ones because they 
 are best known, those more distant because they are hallowed 
 by tradition and therefore have more weight. 
 
JVDIC1AL OBATOST 397 
 
 All these matters are intended primarily to prove the 
 speaker's point of view. He must also, especially in the Per- 
 oration, appeal to the emotions of the audience. His purpose 
 here may be to inspire them with hope, and thus stir them to 
 action by showing them that they will be able to attain their 
 wishes, satisfy their hatred, or wreak vengeance; or it may be 
 to rouse their fears, and then calm them so that they will refrain 
 from action, by pointing out that the present is at best uncertain 
 and the future doubtful; if they are prosperous, they should 
 not imperil their prosperity by rash action, and if they are in 
 misfortune, they should not court needless dangers. All of 
 which could be enforced by the introduction of Commonplaces 
 and other forms of Amplification. 
 
 But it was on Judicial oratory that the teachers of rhetoric 
 expended most of their efforts. The theory of Arrangement was 
 elaborated entirely with reference to legal speeches, and every- 
 thing that was taught in Invention and Style was applicable 
 to them. The writing and declamation of orations intended to 
 teach this kind of oratory were the final and most difficult parts 
 of the training. 
 
 The first step toward the mastery of a case is to reduce it 
 to its lowest terms, by the omission of all personal and circum- 
 stantial details. The main issue will then appear as an abstract 
 question. Thus, in the case of Norbanus, the question will be : 
 Did he commit high treason who, in accordance with the wishes 
 of the Roman people, by violence performed a deed which was 
 pleasing and just? All cases can be reduced in this way, and it 
 will be found that the main issue is a question of fact: Is this 
 so or not? Did this happen? Or, if the deed is admitted, a 
 question of definition : Norbanus took part in a riot ; did he 
 commit high treason? Or, thirdly, if the deed is admitted and 
 has been correctly named, a question as to its morality : Was the 
 defendant justified in committing the deed which he admits? 
 
398 RHETOKIC 
 
 As the form of question which the main issue assumes will deter- 
 mine the orator's attitude, status, every judicial case can be 
 referred to one of three status: coniectumlis, Conjectural, where 
 the fact has to be ascertained; defiwitivus, concerned with defin- 
 ing the admitted deed; and rationis or quaUtatis, a question of 
 reason or character, which has to do with- the justification of 
 the deed. 
 
 This, very briefly, is the theory of status, which was much 
 elaborated by the teachers of rhetoric. Thus the status quaU- 
 tatis had thirteen divisions, and these were further subdivided. 
 The three status mentioned are those most often used by Cicero ; 
 a fourth may be referred to. The orator might claim that the 
 case did not belong to the court before which the prosecutor had 
 brought it, and so try to have it transferred. But this status 
 does not apply when the case is actually being tried, and need 
 not be further examined. It was of course possible for an orator 
 to assume more than one attitude toward a case ; he might argue 
 that Milo did not murder Clodius — status coniecturalis — and at 
 the same time maintain that, if he had done it, he would have 
 been justified — status quaUtatis. At least one position, however, 
 had to be assumed. Most cases in the Roman courts, as in ours, 
 belonged naturally to the Conjectural class, in which the accused 
 pleaded not guilty. 
 
 The essential part of a Conjectural speech is the Argumen- 
 tation. The theory of Invention, therefore, endeavored first of 
 all to supply the student with the means of proving or disproving 
 the question at issue. By means of the abstract Topics, which 
 consist of such considerations as definition and comparison, • 
 he had received logical training and had learned how to present 
 his side of the case with adroitness. The concrete Topics, on 
 the other hand, directed his attention to the various phases of 
 the case, whether personal or circumstantial. 
 
ARGUMENTATION 399 
 
 The subdividing and denning of these Topics were carried 
 to a degree of minuteness that could not have been very helpful. 
 It will be sufficient to cite a single example; taken from the 
 Oratorical Divisions, a work that, on the whole, is relatively 
 concise. As to the question of time, one of the concrete Topics, 
 the student was informed that there are two kinds of time : that 
 due to nature and that due to chance. Natural time comprises 
 the conceptions of present, past, and future, and the two latter 
 may of course be more or less distant ; also the four seasons of 
 the year; the different time measurements of year, month, day, 
 night, and hour ; and finally the weather. The time that results 
 from chance has to do with special occasions such as sacri- 
 fices, festal days, and weddings. 
 
 A word should be added about the motives and the traces 
 of an alleged crime, both of them concrete Topics. A man's 
 motives are due to considerations of utility; a statement that 
 directs the student to the philosophical exposition of that term, 
 already given in connection with Deliberative oratory. As the 
 audience of a Deliberative speech was to be inspired with hope 
 or with fear, so the defendant here is alleged to have committed 
 his crime either with the hope of attaining something desirable 
 or because of his fear of something undesirable. There are many 
 things that may have influenced him; such as recent anger, an 
 old hatred, a desire for vengeance, ambition, love of money, debt. 
 He may have expected to keep his crime hidden, or, if found out, 
 to defend it successfully in court. He may have decided that 
 the eventual punishment was of less account than the benefits 
 his crime would secure. 
 
 A discussion of the motives, the theory continues, is of less 
 importance than the unearthing of traces of the alleged crime. 
 Several kinds of damaging evidence of this nature are given; 
 and it is thereupon observed that, if the accuser can find none 
 of these, he should resort to a Commonplace, declaring that the 
 
400 MMMTORIC 
 
 culprit was not so foolish as to leaye any traces. The defendant 
 will rejoin with another Commonplace, to the effect that a man 
 who was bold enough to commit the alleged deed could not have 
 been prudent enough to hide all traces of it, for criminal bold- 
 ness is usually coupled with carelessness and rashness, and not 
 with prudence. Other Commonplaces may also be used : you can 
 not expect a man to confess; wrongs must be proven and not 
 merely argued about as likely — and the student is advised to 
 strengthen these generalizations by the citation of analogous 
 cases. 
 
 All these arguments, whether abstract or concrete, are to 
 be evolved, as it were, from the case itself. They require 
 ingenuity, rhetorical skill, for their discovery. There are also 
 other kinds of arguments, which are supplied, as it were, from 
 the outside. They consist of laws, contracts of all kinds, and 
 testimony. These can be discovered without rhetorical ability, 
 it is said, but they can be best managed by the man who knows 
 rhetorical theory. 
 
 The most important of these is testimony, and the Oratorical 
 Divisions has something to say about the way to treat witnesses — 
 a reflection of the treatment actually accorded them in the 
 Roman courts. "Witnesses, it will be recalled, were of two kinds, 
 free men and slaves. The former gave testimony if they chose. 
 Their connection with a case was like that of the orator and of 
 the friendly supporter, and their testimony was in the nature 
 of help given to a friend or of attack directed against an enemy. 
 Slaves, on the other hand, were offered to the courts by their 
 owners, and gave testimony only under torture. 
 
 Since a free man gave testimony voluntarily, he might readily 
 be looked upon as partisan, and was treated accordingly. Every 
 suggestion, therefore, that has been given in connection with 
 praise or. blame as the subjects of Demonstrative oratory, may 
 be used in reference to the character of the individual witness. 
 According to the needs of the case, the orator will mention pre- 
 
WITNESSES 401 
 
 vious occasions on which such and such a witness has failed to 
 secure credence for his testimony; or, on the other hand, the 
 orator may claim belief for a bit of testimony because of the 
 prominence of the witness. If the witness be of humble station, 
 the orator should say that his words are reliable, not in propor- 
 tion to his worldly position, but in proportion to his opportunity 
 for knowing the truth. 
 
 The speaker is also advised to speak of witnesses as a class. 
 The defendant, the prosecutor may say, has succeeded in obliter- 
 ating the traces of his crime, but he has not succeeded in escaping 
 the observation of true and good, men; material proofs are 
 obscure, but not so the spoken word. To which the opponent 
 may rejoin that material proofs are incontrovertible, whereas 
 testimony is conditioned by personal predilections or antipathies, 
 and, in any case, depend on human powers of observation. 
 
 If the testimony be that of slaves, the individual characters 
 of whom were scarcely considered, the orator may, according to 
 his need, defend or attack the whole system of to'rture. The 
 desire to avoid the momentary pain of torture, he may say, has 
 very often caused slaves to lie and even to court death. Many 
 slaves have imperiled their own lives in order to free their 
 masters, whose lives they prized more highly than their own; 
 others, naturally insensible to pain or inured to it by previous 
 experiences, or fearful of punishment and death, have borne up 
 under torture, refusing to give damaging testimony; and still 
 others have lied against their enemies. Torture may be defended 
 as a traditional practise. "It may be observed that the Greeks 
 allow even children and free men to be tortured, whereas the 
 wiser Romans employ torture merely as a means for getting 
 the truth from slaves, who are naturally unreliable, and, fur- 
 thermore, do not admit a slave's testimony against his master 
 except in cases of incest and conspiracy. Examples should be 
 cited to prove the truth of all these generalizations, but the 
 orator should be careful, for they point in either direction. 
 
402 RHETORIC 
 
 Finally, in his treatment of all witnesses, the speaker should 
 avail himself of any ambiguity, inconsistency, or improbability 
 inherent in the testimony, as well as of contradictory depositions. 
 
 In presenting evidence, the orator may pursue one of two 
 courses. Since he aims at establishing something doubtful by 
 means of that which is certain or likely, he can proceed either 
 analytically, stating his desired conclusion first and then giving 
 the proofs, or synthetically, stating the proofs first and then 
 drawing his inference. He must be clear and he must vary his 
 manner. He can do the latter by addressing questions to himself 
 or to his opponent — a very frequent trick — or by using any other 
 rhetorical device. Obvious matters may be stated briefly, with- 
 out proof; nor is it necessary always to draw the inference, 
 provided it be evident. 
 
 The problem of the prosecutor, it is needlessly observed, is 
 different from that of the defendant. This appears in connec- 
 tion with the four main parts of the speech. The prosecutor 
 aims, in his Exordium, to rouse suspicions against the defendant 
 and generalizes on the danger threatening everybody if crimes 
 go unpunished; whereas the orator for the defense tries to gain 
 the good-will of the jurors and generalizes on the danger to the 
 state from trumped up charges. In the Narrative, the prosecutor 
 sets forth the facts step by step, taking care to hint a suspicion 
 wherever possible, and mingling his own proofs with rebuttal of 
 the points of the defense. The opposing lawyer makes his Narra- 
 tive brief, omitting it entirely if it is likely to damage his case; 
 and he tries to minimize the suspicious character of the events 
 narrated. In the Argumentation proper the prosecutor states 
 his case clearly, drawing his conclusions with certainty ; he shows 
 how his statements are supported by proper evidence and takes 
 care to elaborate the individual points. The speaker for the 
 defense denies everything, if possible; if this is impossible, he 
 argues that the prosecutor has relied on that which is uncertain 
 or even false, and that his premises do not warrant his conclu- 
 
PROSECUTION VERSUS DEFENSE 403 
 
 sions; he attacks a single link in the prosecutor's argumentation, 
 thus breaking the whole chain. If he can not meet the latter 's 
 arguments, he tries to obscure and overwhelm them by Digres- 
 sions. In the Peroration, finally, the prosecutor sums up his 
 whole case, and then, by means of Amplifications, endeavors to 
 rouse the audience to anger. The orator for the defense, as has 
 already been noted, omits the Recapitulation, unless he has met 
 the charges convincingly; in any case, he concludes with a 
 miseratio — an appeal to the sense of pity. 
 
 In general, the prosecutor is advised to use little Digression, 
 but to advance step by step, piling proof on proof, until he 
 reaches the Peroration, in which he will exert all his emotional 
 powers to enhance the horror of the deed he has attempted to 
 prove. The defendant's lawyer, on the contrary, is told to 
 obscure and mitigate the situation by means of generalizations 
 of every kind, causing the jurors to forget their righteous indig- 
 nation, and leading them gradually to a pitying view of the 
 whole matter. 
 
 The cases that belong to the other two classes, being concerned 
 with the definition or with the justice of a confessed deed, were 
 necessarily rare, nor is the distinction between them of any real 
 importance. Theoretically, it is satisfactory to the student's 
 conscience, and it is also clear, to say that in the cases of Defini- 
 tion the orator maintained or denied that a certain deed, for 
 instance, was treason, while in the cases involving a question 
 of justice he admitted the treasonable character of the deed 
 and merely maintained or denied that the treasonable conduct 
 was justifiable. 
 
 In practise, however, the two fused. When Antony defended 
 Norbanus, he asserted that his client's actions were not treason- 
 able, inasmuch as they were for the glory of Rome; in other 
 words, they were justifiable. He could not have argued other- 
 wise if his avowed aim had been to justify Norbanus' confessed 
 
404 BHMTOMIC 
 
 acfions. Under the former conception of the case, he argued 
 that, inasmuch as Norbanus was justified, he did not commit 
 treason, and consequently should not be punished; under the 
 latter conception of the case, his conclusion would have been 
 that, inasmuch as Norbanus was justified, he should not be pun- 
 ished. The distinction between the two, therefore, seems to exist 
 mainly for the sake of logical precision and also, no doubt, 
 for pedagogical reasons. The student could be trained first in 
 one view of the case and then in the other, and the aids offered 
 by rhetorical theory could be grouped under one or the other 
 view. 
 
 Cicero, when describing this case in the De Oratore, repre- 
 sents Antony as saying that he gave little attention to defining 
 high treason, this being a matter for the theoretic rhetorician, 
 but directed his efforts toward proving that Norbanus' actions 
 did not lead to such results as would come from treasonable 
 conduct; in short, that they were justifiable. In the technical 
 treatment of the statics definitive, as set forth in the Oratorical 
 Divisions, this procedure is also one of those suggested. 
 
 Stated technically, the problem of the prosecution and of the 
 defense is the same in cases of Definition: to define the term in 
 such a way as to satisfy the jurors. There is no room for evi- 
 dence. The orator will most easily arrive at such a definition, 
 theory says, by classifying the term under discussion as a sub- 
 division of a larger conception. He may also argue about the 
 essential qualities of the term, drawing his arguments from 
 definitions of terms that are contrary, similar, or of equal impor- 
 tance. He will use description; he will enumerate the results 
 that should have come from a certain deed if it was really that 
 which it is alleged to be, as Antony did, and he will especially 
 rely on etymology — a favorite device of the pedantic Stoics in all 
 philosophizing — in order to arrive at the real meaning of the 
 term. 
 
LAWS 405 
 
 The discussion will of course readily center about the inter- 
 pretation of the law against the crime which is defined. One 
 side will maintain a literal interpretation, and the other an 
 interpretation according to the intent of the lawmakers. Both 
 will use Commonplaces. If the prosecutor maintains that the 
 confessed deed is punishable according to the law in question, 
 while the defense relies on a literal interpretation to exclude 
 the deed, the prosecutor will say that a confessed criminal should 
 not be protected by technicalities. He will declaim about the 
 real aims of justice, for which, as Cicero says, there are many 
 Topics. The defense will insist on literalness of interpretation 
 as the only means of securing reliable verdicts, and he will also 
 take the larger view, that lawless prosecutions are dangerous to 
 the people as a whole and must be stopped. Or the situation 
 may be reversed, in which case the rhetorician merely reverses 
 his advice. Whatever the line of argument, the prosecuting 
 orator is counseled to arouse the indignation of the jurors, and 
 the orator for the defense, to stir their sense of pity. But here, 
 as elsewhere, the case must be important enough — the old advice 
 — if glowing Amplifications are to be used. 
 
 In the status qualitatis, the fact that the issue is concerned 
 with a question of justice, suggests as Topics for arguments the 
 whole field of moral philosophy. Use the Topics, says theory, 
 that have to do with nature, laws, tradition, the repelling of 
 injury, and vengeance. If it can not be shown that the deed is 
 in itself a just one, then show that it was committed to avert or 
 avenge a wrong, or that it was dictated by a feeling of reverence 
 or modesty, by religion or by patriotism. If this is not possible, 
 defend it as unavoidable, as due to lack of knowledge or to 
 chance. In the latter group belong actions due to temporary 
 excitement, which, without being technically the same, is very 
 much like the modern plea of temporary insanity. 
 
406 RHETORIC 
 
 Since justice is often concerned with law, the Oratorical 
 Divisions contains here a discussion of legal interpretation. It is 
 pointed out distinctly that this discussion has nothing to do with 
 cases of Definition, since there the issue centers on a word and 
 not on a law; but we have already seen that the distinction is 
 arbitrary. The mere insistence on it shows that the rhetoricians 
 used emphasis because they were not very certain of their 
 ground. 
 
 There are three kinds of doubt that may arise in reference 
 to a law; and these were called status legates — another use of 
 the protean term status. The wording of a law may be actually 
 ambiguous ; it may be faulty, so that the speaker can claim that 
 one thing is said and another intended; or one law may be in 
 disagreement with another law. The discussion of these legal 
 tangles given by Cicero, though long, has nothing to say about 
 actual laws; it merely suggests, in many words, the obvious 
 remarks available to the orator. He may say, of his own inter- 
 pretation, that any sane and just man will agree with it; he 
 may amplify praises of law in general, attacking those who 
 undermine law by perverse interpretations. In case he is 
 supporting a literal interpretation, he will ask if the opponent 
 dares maintain that the lawgivers, wise men of old, were so 
 stupid that they said one thing and meant another; while the 
 opponent will wonder whether criminals ought to go free because 
 lawgivers were careless. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Practise 
 
 This huge and complex theory was not allowed to slumber 
 ingloriously in the rolls of the rhetoricians and philosophers. 
 It was very much in evidence, as the strong backbone of the 
 whole educational system, and it is easy to comprehend how 
 years would be needed for its mastery. Some ways in which 
 it was imparted to the student have been suggested in connec- 
 
THEOBY LEARNED 407 
 
 tion with the account of the theory. Our information in this 
 regard is somewhat incomplete, in so far as it applies to this 
 period, but it is very full for the middle and the latter half of 
 the next century, and the method is not very likely to have 
 undergone considerable changes. Much, however, perhaps all 
 that is significant, can be gathered from the theory itself; and 
 further light is thrown on the subject by various references and 
 especially by Cicero's incidental criticisms in the De Orator e. 
 
 In the first place, the student was undoubtedly expected to 
 know and understand the theory as a matter of mere knowledge. 
 Marcus asks: "Are we to use all the arguments that can be 
 found in these Topics?" And Cicero replies: "No. We must 
 discover all, and then with judgment choose the best." This 
 particular question, with its answer, suggests indeed that there 
 was a good deal of meaningless recitation, all for the purpose 
 of learning the theory, and Cicero tells 13 us elsewhere that there 
 was much singsong delivery of rules. Apparently the theory 
 was committed to memory very much in the manner formerly 
 used in connection with Latin grammar; but even Latin gram- 
 mar was easier. 
 
 The theory was explained by means of lectures. The com- 
 fort-loving young Marcus, while studying rhetoric in Athens, 
 wrote to Tiro for a trained slave to copy out his lecture notes, 
 adding that a Greek slave would be preferred. The ambitious 
 student was possibly encouraged to study and compare disagree- 
 ments in detail as they could be gathered from the lectures or 
 textbooks of different rhetoricians. At least, Cicero's own work, 
 the De Inventione, treats the subject with an eye to various 
 rhetoricians, and takes sides for or against them. Cicero was 
 doubtless more ambitious in this matter than his son Marcus 
 or the average student; but it is very likely that the lecturing 
 rhetorician had something to say about the erroneous teaching 
 of his brother-lecturers; certainly if they happened to be 
 philosophers. 
 
 13 De Or. 1, 105. See also above, p. 370. 
 
408 BHETOSIC 
 
 Composition and declamation, however, constituted the main 
 part of the instruction. Here the rules could be applied. Train- 
 ing in writing seems to have followed very much the different 
 types of writing indicated by the main parts of the speech, and 
 the rules for each part were here made effective. Thus the 
 student wrote Narratives, and no doubt, Exordia, Arguments, 
 and Perorations. This method, similar to modern training in 
 narrative, exposition, and argumentation, had its drawbacks. 
 Brevity was, according to the rule, very desirable in Narration; 
 and here attention was paid to it, but not elsewhere, as Cicero 
 hints. Emotional language belonged particularly in the Per- 
 oration, and it was forgotten that the orator must appeal to 
 his audience throughout his speech. Exordia had a character 
 of their own ; and, as a result, orators wrote and delivered 
 Exordia which had little to do with the rest of the speech. They 
 were equally suitable, or unsuitable, to several speeches. This 
 way of insisting for a time on one thing, and then neglecting 
 it as if it had been mastered, is well enough in learning a sub- 
 ject like law, Cicero says, thinking no doubt of a mastery of the 
 various statutes; in rhetoric, it is pernicious. 
 
 ' "Writing is onerous, whereas extemporaneous speaking, with 
 a little practise, becomes easy. Students spoke extemporaneously, 
 to get fluency and presence of mind; but Cicero thinks there 
 was too much of it. Speaking is not like swimming. Students 
 do not learn to speak well merely by speaking, said Cicero, for 
 bad speaking, as extemporaneous speaking often is, leads to more 
 bad speaking. He would have the learner take time for thinking 
 before he speaks, and especially for writing. Silent thought, to 
 Cicero, is better than speaking; writing is better than either. 
 If an orator has written with care in preparing a case, he will 
 speak well, using as far as possible what he has written and then 
 being able to go on, extemporaneously, in the same manner. 
 
 But most of the practise consisted in the writing and declaim- 
 ing of whole speeches. These were of two kinds. In some, the 
 
THESES 409 
 
 question at issue was stated without personal or circumstantial 
 details : What shall be done about captives ? In the other kind, 
 the details were added. An abstract question was thus like 
 the main issue of a real case, which the student discovers by the 
 elimination of all details ; whereas the concrete question was like 
 the whole case. But the resemblance between actual oratory and 
 these declamations was very slight. 
 
 The abstract propositions, called by the Greek word theses, 
 had not been evolved from real cases. They were almost 
 exclusively concerned with philosophical questions. According 
 to the Onatorioal Divisions, they had to do either with questions 
 of knowledge or with questions of action — a division that was 
 also applied to the human virtues. The questions of knowledge, 
 like Judicial cases, belong to the three status of Conjecture, 
 Definition, and Morality. Thus, under Conjecture, it is asked 
 whether justice is derived from nature or from tradition ; under 
 Definition, whether justice is that which is useful for the major- 
 ity of men; and under Morality, whether or not it is useful to 
 live justly. The questions of action bear the same general 
 resemblance to Deliberative oratory that the questions of knowl- 
 edge do to Judicial oratory. They either discuss in a general 
 way how to attain or avoid something — How can glory be 
 attained? How can unpopularity be avoided? — or else they 
 point out what men should do or how they should behave under 
 certain conditions: How is the state to be governed? How is a 
 man to live in poverty ? There are further definitions and classi- 
 fications, which need not be repeated. All the subjects quoted 
 as examples are of a very general nature; they are the very 
 subjects about which the philosophers, as philosophers, argued 
 for and against. 
 
 The value of these abstract declamations consisted in the 
 training they gave in Amplifications, Commonplaces, and the 
 stirring or allaying of emotions, which form so large a part of 
 ancient oratory. Cicero says, to be sure, that their aim is to 
 
410 SHETOBIC 
 
 establish an abstract truth, and that consequently they are 
 addressed to the intellect and have none of that emotional quality 
 which is used for persuading an audience; but their whole 
 content was of a general, usually philosophical, nature, and gen- 
 eral and philosophical meditations were the very material out 
 of which the orator wove his Amplifications. 
 
 Cicero, who was no 'doubt partly attracted to these declama- 
 tions by their philosophical content, found them useful, and 
 engaged in them long after he had made his reputation. 14 They 
 are also the ones he recommends to the orator who has been 
 through the regular drill and has had some actual experience 
 in the forum. If we remember that the orator's effects, and 
 consequently his success, depended to a very great extent upon 
 his ability to please and to move his audience, to impart to his 
 speech a largeness of view that touched upon life in all its 
 multifarious complexities, and to stir the audience with winged 
 words about patriotism and morality, it is easy to see how 
 these declamations would keep his hand in, as it were. They 
 had very much the same relation to actual oratory as the singing 
 of scales has to the public performances of a concert singer. 
 
 The declamations about concrete questions — hypotheses, in 
 the Greek — were different. The abstract questions, as has been 
 shown, had rarely any real resemblance to actual cases, despite 
 the fact that every real case can be reduced to an abstract ques- 
 tion. The resemblance was even less in the case of the concrete 
 declamations. 
 
 Theoretically, the concrete declamations were real cases. A 
 situation was given with its attendant circumstances, and the 
 students argued for the defense and for the prosecution. If 
 the teachers had taken cases that had actually been argued in 
 the Roman courts and if the students had been required first to 
 study the orations concerned with these cases — there were appar- 
 ently enough orations available for this purpose — and then to 
 write and declaim speeches on the subject, the result would have 
 
 I* Sihler, Amer. Journ. Phil., 1902, 283 ff. 
 
HYPOTHESES 411 
 
 resembled the ease method of modern law schools. But the 
 teachers of rhetoric did not do this. They invented their own 
 cases or used those that had already been invented. The sit- 
 uations put before the students were unreal. Cicero gives an 
 example, probably typical, in the De Omtore: 15 there is a law 
 to the effect that foreign residents in Rome must not mount to 
 the top of the city wall; a foreign resident does this, however, 
 during a siege, and repels the enemy ; he is thereupon prosecuted 
 for having disobeyed the law. This kind of a subject is not 
 only entirely foreign to the cases actually tried in court, but it 
 is also too easy; and the students, according to Cicero, did not 
 acquire the habit of mastering the details of a real case. 
 
 Such a subject as this might presumably give the student the 
 same opportunity for generalization as the abstract declamations, 
 and so it undoubtedly did, to some extent. The objection to it, 
 from this point of view, seems to have been that the student 
 was kept in an atmosphere where laws and conditions prevailed 
 that had never been heard of on either land or sea. The subjects 
 were chosen from history, distorted and simplified, and also from 
 mythology and the imaginings of comic poets. Did Ulysses kill 
 Ajax? Can the Fregellani be friendly to the Roman people? 
 If the Romans had not destroyed Carthage, would she now cause 
 trouble to Rome? These three examples, taken from Cicero's 
 De Inventione, have been supposed not really to represent these 
 concrete declamations; being opposed to the use of hypotheses, 
 he is said to have manufactured ridiculous examples. But the 
 later development indicates that the hand of pedantry and 
 tradition lay heavy upon these exercises. And to pedantry was 
 added a perverse ingenuity. The exercises preserved from the 
 next century show what these concrete declamations became, and 
 so indicate, at least in part, what they were. 
 
 To take a single example, that of the Ailing Twins. 16 Two 
 little brothers who were twins fell sick. The physician said 
 
 is De Or. 2, 100. 
 
 18 Quintil. Bedlam. 8. 
 
412 BEETOBIC 
 
 they had the same illness. When they grew worse and everybody 
 had relinquished hope of their recovery, the physician said that 
 he could cure one of the twins if he were allowed to examine the 
 vital organs of the other. The father gave his permission. The 
 physician killed one of the infants and performed an autopsy. 
 When the other boy had been cured, the mother of the twins 
 prosecuted the father for allowing the murder of his son. 
 
 These concrete questions were used mostly by the rhetoricians, 
 while the philosophers favored the abstract questions ; but they 
 borrowed from each other, incidentally making charges of pro- 
 fessional theft. Prom the modern point of view, there are 
 objections to both kinds of declamation; neither makes a real 
 attempt to instruct the student in a legal mastery of actual cases. 
 But that was to be learned by observation in the forum, by 
 consulting older advisers, and by actual experience. The 
 emotional side of speaking, in most cases more important by 
 far than legal knowledge, could probably be best acquired by 
 means of the abstract declamations. It is, at any rate, not 
 difficult to see why Cicero objected to a mature man declaiming 
 about sick twins. 
 
 IV 
 De Oeatore 
 
 The first of Cicero's three chief treatises on rhetoric, the 
 De Oratore,™ literally, On the Orator, was finished toward the 
 end of the year 55 b.c. In a letter to Atticus written in Novem- 
 ber Cicero mentions its completion, and also says that he has 
 been at work on it for a long time. The long time can not have 
 been more than about one year and a half, the period since the 
 conference at Luca; for he had certainly not begun the work 
 before the exile, or, at least, there is not the slightest indication 
 that he had. He wrote nothing during the exile, and the few 
 troubled months between his return to Eome and the conference 
 
 " On the De Oratore, see esp. Kroll, Neue Jahrb., and Bheiru Mus. 
 
 t 
 
ALL WRITTEN DIALOGUE ARTIFICIAL 413 
 
 at Luca were filled with public activities. But eighteen months, 
 even though not given exclusively to writing, was a long 
 time for any work of Cicero's; and yet the Be Oratore contains 
 about two hundred and fifty ordinary pages. Ten years later, 
 after many had read the work, Cicero was still pleased with it, 
 as appears from another letter to Atticus; and he had good 
 reason for his satisfaction. 
 
 It is not easy to give a conception of the infinite variety, the 
 sanity, the charm, and the enthusiasm of this work. In the 
 Rhetorici Libri Cicero had written, or begun to write, a pains- 
 taking, orderly account of rhetorical theory; in the Be Oratore, 
 taking for granted that his readers have received the ordinary 
 training and are familiar with the technical terms and the 
 details of the theory, he throws system to the winds, chooses the 
 dialogue for his artistic form, and lets the talk of his characters 
 wander back and forth over the whole field. The conversation, 
 as in all of Cicero 's dialogues, begins with a general discussion ; 
 the speakers are, as it were, gradually drifting into their subject, 
 and make broad statements of their opinions. The whole content 
 of the work is thus indicated at the beginning, as would happen 
 in a real conversation, and it is only later, when criticisms have 
 been suggested, that each speaker settles down, one might say, 
 to his own particular part of the subject, enlarging and sup- 
 porting the views he has previously expressed. 
 
 No conversation can be accurately produced in writing and 
 at the same time convey to the reader exactly what was said as 
 well as what was meant. Some degree of artificiality must be 
 employed. The writer must add something, by way of comment 
 or explanation, in order to suggest the things that in real life 
 remain unspoken ; and as for the actual conversation, if he makes 
 the attempt to reproduce it in dialogue, he must make his char- 
 acters more logical and more articulate than ordinary human 
 beings. Perhaps written dialogues can be divided into two 
 classes; some proceed by means of comparatively brief utter- 
 
414 SHETOBIC 
 
 ances on the part of the speakers, while others consist largely 
 of monologues. Both methods may give the reader a vivid im- 
 pression of conversation, for both, the former no more than 
 the latter, contain the elements of real talk. 
 
 The dialogue of brief utterances, made precise and carefully 
 articulated, is found in Plato's early treatises, and is supposed 
 to have developed from an attempt to reproduce Socrates' 
 dialectic talks with young men. 18 An assertion was to be over- 
 thrown; a bit of truth was to be arrived at; and the young 
 follower of Socrates was to be taught clear thinking, by a careful 
 watching of every statement that he made. When the aim of 
 a dialogue is like that of Socrates with his young interlocutors, 
 the brief utterances, the rapid give and take, will best suit the 
 writer's purpose. But as Plato came gradually to use his 
 dialogues as vehicles for the setting forth of a theory or 
 the conveying of information, the short utterances necessarily 
 yielded to the monologue, until a monologue might fill the 
 greater part of ten books, as in the Republic, and be more like 
 a lecture or a series of lectures than a part of a conversation. 
 Quite as often one monologue might follow another, for the 
 sake of introducing different points of view. 
 
 It seems likely that Aristotle, who had no such dialectic aim 
 as Socrates, used the latter form of dialogue in his popular 
 treatises, which have been lost. Cicero, in the Be Oratore as 
 well as in his other dialogues, uses this method. He calls his 
 own manner the Aristotelian. 
 
 The meaning of the term has been much discussed. 19 In one 
 place, writing to Atticus, 20 Cicero characterizes it as introducing 
 several speakers but leaving the main discussion in the hands of 
 the author himself. This does not apply literally to the De 
 Oratore, for Cicero is not one of the speakers; but it is never- 
 
 18 On the whole question of the dialogue, see Hirzel. Cicero 's dialogues 
 are fully discussed, pp. 457-552. 
 
 is Hirzel, p. 276, note 3; Watson, p. 219, note on "Aristotelio more;" 
 Eeid, p. 25. 
 
 20 Att. 13, 19, 4. 
 
PLATONIC AND ARISTOTELIAN DIALOGUES 415 
 
 theless true that in this work, as in his other dialogues, the reader 
 is rarely left in doubt as to Cicero's own opinion, even though 
 Cicero himself is not an interlocutor. The use of long mono- 
 logues, however, particularly if they set forth opposing views, 
 may be the decisive characteristic of the Aristotelian method. 
 In the De Oratore 21 Cicero, at all events, uses the term in refer- 
 ence to the ability to speak at length — make orations, are his 
 words — both for and against a proposition. Plato having also 
 the dialogue of rapid give and take, Aristotle's name may well 
 have been applied to the other method although Plato used this 
 also. 22 
 
 The name is of relatively small importance. Its mention, 
 however, recalls the fact that Cicero, in choosing this dialogue 
 form, was consciously rivaling the ancient Greeks. It is not as 
 if dialogues had not been used recently even in Latin for the 
 discussion of rhetorical questions. Lucilius and Varro, in their 
 satires, wrote of rhetoric, but these satires were very brief. It 
 has also been surmised, though not proved, that the work on 
 oratory by M. Antonius was a dialogue. But neither in Latin 
 nor in the Greek that was either contemporary with Cicero or 
 somewhat earlier, is there any sure trace of an extended literary 
 treatment of rhetoric in' dialogue form such as that of the De 
 Oratore. 
 
 The Aristotelian dialogue was adapted to Cicero's aim of 
 giving a critical exposition of a large subject. The Socratic 
 manner of rapid give and take, being more realistic, made an 
 increasing appeal to him, but it was not suitable except in short 
 passages introduced here and there 23 for the sake of variety. 
 These show that Cicero was well able to manage this kind of 
 dialogue ; a statement of which there are further proofs in his 
 orations and in the introductory scenes of his treatises. 
 
 21 De Or. 3, 80. 
 
 22 Cieero imitated Heraclides Ponticus. Beid, p. 25, and Hirzel, esp. 
 pp. 321 S. and 464. 
 
 23 A good example in De Fin. 2, chaps. 1 fif. ; see below, p. 550. Hirzel, 
 p. 317. 
 
416 EHETOBIC 
 
 In a few works Cicero uses the essay form, addressing 
 himself to some definite person, his son or Brutus; but the 
 Aristotelian dialogue, the long monologue, had all the advantages 
 of the essay and several others peculiar to itself. It removed 
 the appearance of dogmatizing, enabled Cicero to shift readily 
 from one phase of the subject to another, to omit insignificant 
 details, to introduce criticisms freely and naturally through the 
 different points of view of the speakers, and to relieve the strain 
 on the reader's attention — a thing Cicero, the accomplished 
 pleader, always remembered to do — by the use of small bits of 
 conversation, usually humorous. 
 
 But there was still another reason for Cicero's choice of the 
 dialogue. By means of it he could place his treatise in whatever 
 historical atmosphere he chose. The principal speakers in the 
 De Omtore are thus Crassus and Antony, the two orators who 
 had inspired him and directed his early studies. The spirit of 
 the work is therefore that of Cicero's youth, the time when he 
 formed the ideal which he had later realized and is now setting 
 forth. The discussion is supposed to have taken place in the 
 year 91 B.C., shortly before the death of Crassus; Cotta, one 
 of the less prominent interlocutors, is represented as having 
 reported the conversation to Cicero. 
 
 Through Cicero's historical imagination and his vivid con- 
 sciousness of personality the old orators are made to live again, 
 and their talk is filled with references to their own time and 
 reminiscences of men and events. Cicero poured into the dia- 
 logue both what he had heard and what he had read. 24 Scaevola's 
 recollection of Scipio and Laelius, and the cases of Norbanus, 
 and of Brutus against Crassus, have already been mentioned; 
 they are only a few of the many passages that give vividness to 
 the presentation. To the modeiai reader the treatise gives a 
 glimpse into the Roman world, seen through the eyes of the 
 great nobles, who are the speakers. And this is what perhaps 
 constitutes the main charm and the main value of the treatise. 
 
 2i See Hendrickson. 
 
BISTOBICAL SETTING 417 
 
 In the matter of the accuracy of Cicero's historical picture, 
 in this treatise as well as in others, it is known from his letters 
 that he took considerable pains to inform himself ; he frequently 
 made inquiries about details from Atticus, who was a searcher 
 after facts. Occasionally there is a lapse from historical truth, 
 but it is slight; the atmosphere seems to be extraordinarily 
 correct even to minute details, and it is always vivid. 
 
 The' persons in the De Oratore, especially Crassus and Antony, 
 are made into living personalities. "Whether these are portraits 
 or fictions can not be determined. Crassus is suspiciously like 
 Cicero, and Antony, though perhaps not changing from Book 
 One to Book Two, at least adopts a new attitude. Cicero's aim 
 in this connection resembled that of Shakespeare or of a writer 
 of historical novels. He tried to make his characters consistent 
 and convincing. In order to accomplish the latter, since his 
 Eoman readers already had a conception of the historical per- 
 sonages he introduced, he explains how Antony and Crassus were 
 better educated than was popularly supposed, or how Cato the 
 Elder, when speaking of old age, had profited so much by his 
 Greek studies that he could speak as a philosopher. Sometimes 
 the character Cicero had created, or recreated, became extra- 
 ordinarily real to him, so that he could say that in rereading 
 the essay on Old Age he seemed to be listening to Cato himself. 
 On other occasions, however, he felt that he had made his inter- 
 locutors too accomplished. This would most naturally occur in 
 the case of contemporaries, who were known to Cicero's readers, 
 and he actually changed the interlocutors in the Academica after 
 the treatise had been published. Lucullus was one of the speakers 
 in the earlier edition; the book 25 in which he appears is still 
 extant, and contains in the introduction a long account of 
 Lucullus ' supposed training in philosophy ; an account that seems 
 to have misled Plutarch. 26 But Cicero, writing to Atticus, 27 says 
 
 25.4o. Prior. 2 ff. 
 
 2 e Plutarch 's Life of Lucullus, ehap. 42. 
 
 27 Att. 13, 16, 1. 
 
418 BEETOEIC 
 
 that Lucullus no less than Catulus and Hortensius, the other 
 speakers, was, if not illiterate, at least not sufficiently versed in 
 philosophy to carry on the discussion in the Aoademica, and 
 that he has therefore assigned the parts of these three men to 
 Cato and Brutus. 
 
 "Whether or not Cicero has represented Crassus and Antony 
 as more learned and more conscious of their art than they were 
 in reality, they had certainly been the two foremost orators of , 
 their generation; no speakers could therefore be more suitable 
 for a dialogue on oratory. 
 
 The thought with which they begin their conversation and 
 which inspires the whole work, binding all its parts together and 
 constantly lifting it above the plane of an ordinary technical 
 discussion, is that eloquence is a noble thing, extremely difficult 
 of attainment and consequently requiring the most comprehen- 
 sive training. Oratory being the chief visible activity of men 
 engaged in public life, whether they were petty politicians or real 
 statesmen, the orator is made equivalent to the statesman as well 
 as to the advocate, with the result that education for oratory 
 becomes the education for public life in its widest sense. Cicero 
 does not put forward this claim without taking note of the 
 narrower view that the business of an orator is speaking and 
 nothing further, but inasmuch as the entire training of the 
 Romans aimed at speaking, the larger conception of the orator 
 is not invalidated. 
 
 Our rapid survey of the intricacies of rhetorical theory and 
 of its application has shown at least one thing, that the ordinary 
 training aimed only at the ability to extract from a subject all 
 its possibilities of treatment and to make use of these possibilities 
 in speech. The training gave ingenuity and stylistic ability. 
 This narrow view is enlarged by Cicero in two directions. "Wish- 
 ing the orator' to be better acquainted with the facts that he 
 uses, Cicero would have him learn law, political science, and 
 history. The two latter, however, had a far less technical nature 
 
NEED OF EDUCATION 419 
 
 than with us, for political science was a branch of philosophy, 
 indulging almost exclusively in ethical meditations and in 
 Utopias, and history, distinctly a part of belles-lettres, scarcely 
 professed to serve any utilitarian purpose beyond that of giving 
 inspiration by means of noble examples. The knowledge of law, 
 on the other hand, was a professional matter ; but the advocate 's 
 attitude toward it and Cicero's insistence on it have already been 
 set forth in considerable detail, and need not be repeated. The 
 other way in which Cicero wishes to enlarge the training of the 
 orator is in the direction of a liberal education. Political science 
 and history belong here, at least in part; more clearly general 
 are literature and philosophy, though, as we have seen, the 
 philosophers made their subject partly professional for the orator 
 by manufacturing rhetorical Topics out of their ethics, and the 
 Stoics also put forth large practical claims for their instruction 
 in dialectic. Cicero had received such training from the Stoic 
 Diodotus, who lived in his home. 
 
 Cicero was not blind to the fact that many men have reached 
 great heights without any formal education whatever. The boast 
 of the self-educated man has probably been heard as long as there 
 have been teachers; in Rome it was even more natural than 
 elsewhere, since education, as a Greek thing, was readily brought 
 into contrast with the old Roman traditions and the old Roman 
 virtues. In speaking for Archias, 28 Cicero had tempered his 
 eulogy of literature and reading by the admission that great men 
 without training had been numerous, and he had added that 
 natural- endowment is far more important than education, but 
 he had also insisted that education brings natural talents to their 
 highest fruition. The last statement, incidentally, was less open 
 to attack among the Romans than among us, since formal educa- 
 tion had not yet been widely enough accepted to lay a paralyzing 
 hand on men's originality. 
 
 28 Pro Arch. 15. 
 
420 MHETOBW 
 
 But oratory, like the writing of poetry, is so obviously a 
 matter of inspiration that it can not be taught ; at least so a man 
 could urge, even if he believed in education. Cicero's reply to 
 this is dictated by sanity and experience. Law needs no defense 
 in this connection ; it has to do with facts, and a pleader either 
 knows the facts or he does not. As for the training in rhetoric, 
 though it has never made an orator, as he expresses it, declama- 
 tion nevertheless gives a helpful fluency, and the theoretical 
 instruction is suggestive and serves as a useful check ; the orator 
 who, for example, has made the theory of Topics his second 
 nature sees the possibilities of a case more quickly and more 
 clearly, and if he can extract the main issue from a mass of 
 material, as he has been trained to do in connection with the 
 status of Conjecture, Definition, and Morality, he is likely to 
 avoid pitfalls. Inborn common sense, experience, and constant 
 vigilance, however, Cicero observes, are of course far more potent 
 for success than any training. 
 f In the matter of a liberal education, Cicero makes no extrava- 
 gant claims. Its effect is general ; without it the orator is likely 
 to be a tinkling cymbal — to have only empty sounds, is the phrase. 
 A general education puts substance behind his words, which was 
 true in Rome where orators spoke in a human way to exceed- 
 ingly human jurors ; it also gives tone, a charm that seasons the 
 whole oration, as salt seasons food. An orator, often choosing 
 to introduce scientific matters, will also derive benefit from 
 a knowledge of technical science; and in general it is true 
 that knowledge of. anything increases his vocabulary, his copia 
 verborum, and it is to be remembered that the orator's business 
 is mainly with words. 
 
 Mere knowledge does not give the ability to speak. Socrates, 
 Cicero recalls, said that a man could speak well if he was 
 thoroughly informed; but that, according to Cicero, is only a 
 half-truth. The rhetorical philosophers, on the other hand, made 
 pompous assertions. They contended that, since the orator's aim 
 
NATUBAL ENDOWMENT AND TRAINING 421 
 
 is to influence the emotions of his auditors, he should have the 
 philosopher's knowledge of human emotions — an assertion that 
 recalls the study of child psychology foir teachers. Cicero's 
 observation on this point is that the study of philosophy, especi- 
 ally of ethics, is useful in many ways, but that, as Antony is 
 allowed to say, an orator can move his auditors if he is instinc- 
 tively in sympathy with them, is en rapport, and this is not a 
 matter of training in ethics. 
 
 The informing thought of the whole discussion, then, is this : 
 natural endowment, both mental and physical, is essential ; with- 
 out it nothing can be done; but the orator, to reach his highest 
 development, must be inspired with a noble enthusiasm for his 
 profession and be always willing to work; and in this work he 
 must not be narrowly preoccupied with mere rhetoric, but he 
 must reach out far, remembering at all times to observe real 
 life and to use common sense in applying his knowledge. To 
 this ideal one objection is inevitable : there is not time. Antony 
 expresses this thought, and Cicero's answer is that the orator 
 can not be expected to know a subject as well as the professional 
 student of it. This is not even desirable ; some Greek students 
 have so buried themselves in the details of a science that they 
 have made it unprofitable. Nor is it for the orator's advantage 
 to make a display of knowledge; he must not talk like a 
 philosopher. If he has a good memory, he must not indulge in 
 mnemonic pyrotechnics. 
 
 The ideal of a liberal education as opposed to vocational 
 training is not a thing of recent growth. At present the apostles 
 of vocational training, with their eyes on the busy world, rejoice 
 in the novelty of their message and lead the attack on the 
 old stronghold of liberal studies. The sophists in the time of 
 Plato did the same ; they would prepare young men for practical 
 life, since the philosophers, according to them, taught but useless 
 prattle. As time went on, the place of the practical sophist was 
 taken by the rhetorician, who taught eloquence, the most prac- 
 
422 BHETOBIC 
 
 tical of accomplishments, whereas the philosophers professed to 
 teach wisdom ; it was dicere opposed to sapere. 
 
 With the collapse of Greece as a great democratic nation, 
 oratorical eloquence wandered into lean pastures, and the philo- 
 sophers had very much their own way. Then Rome was dis- 
 covered by the Greeks. The rhetoricians polished and sharpened 
 their old weapons and brought them for sale to Rome; Herma- 
 goras of Temnos, the founder of the rhetoric current during 
 Cicero's time, lived in the second century b.c. But the philo- 
 sophers, who had even formerly attended to rhetoric, now 
 appeared as rival teachers ; presently they began to teach rheto- 
 ric, but, keeping also their old subjects of philosophy and allied 
 studies, they asserted that they, and not the narrow rhetoricians, 
 gave the most suitable preparation for life. The situation was 
 thus the reverse of that which exists today : the champions of a 
 liberal education were the aggressors. 
 
 The battle was carried on with much lecturing and much 
 writing, of which we still have traces. The two sides stole from 
 each other, each accusing the other of theft. The philosophers 
 had an inalienable right to the discussions of abstract questions, 
 theses, and the rhetoricians to the concrete questions, hypotheses; 
 but now both sides gave training in both, or at least asserted 
 their profesional right to do so. 
 
 The arguments employed must have been familiar to Cicero ; 
 and very likely he reproduced some of them. This does not 
 make it necessary to imagine that he borrowed all of his argu- 
 ments or that he took them from books ; the thoughts must have 
 been in the air; but it seems almost certain that he did follow 
 some book in certain places, as, for example, when he supports 
 his advocacy of a liberal training by a minute historical account, 
 studded with Greek names, of the growth through the centuries 
 of this ideal. 29 What book he used, or what philosopher, rather, 
 
 29 On the pedagogical struggle between the rhetoricians and the philoso- 
 phers, see von Arnim, pp. 4-114; also Kroll's two articles. 
 
CICEBO'S SOURCES 423 
 
 he followed, can not be determined. 30 The two most learned 
 modern investigators give different names, Philo and Antiochus, 
 two Academic philosophers under whom Cicero studied and 
 whom he frequently mentions. They are, indeed, among the 
 four Greek philosophers that, according to Cicero himself, had 
 the greatest influence on him, the others being Diodotus and 
 Posidonius. 
 
 But the identity of Cicero's source for such passages as the 
 one referred to is not important for our knowledge of Cicero. 
 He often mentions the authors from whom he draws ; as will be 
 explained later, his aim as a writer made such mention natural. 
 Where no name is given, it may be said in general that the 
 inevitable procedure for identifying his sources is to arrive, 
 by careful piecing together of innumerable references, at an 
 opinion about the attitude or actual teaching of some Greek 
 from whom Cicero might have borrowed, and then to declare 
 that a certain thought or passage in Cicero comes from the 
 Greek who has been thus uncertainly characterized. The main 
 result of source study in Cicero is, indeed, as one prominent 
 investigator 31 has admitted, the reconstruction of the intellectual 
 Greek atmosphere in which he lived. If Philo said some of the 
 things found in the De Oratore, then Philo is the source; if 
 Antiochus said them, he and not Philo is the source. Cicero 
 obtained his information somewhere, from somebody, and he was 
 undoubtedly familiar, in considerable detail, with the pedagogical 
 arguments of rhetoricians and philosophers; everything else is 
 of relative insignificance. 
 
 But Cicero 's incidental use of these arguments does not make 
 his work a contribution to pedagogical controversy. 32 It might 
 
 so Von Amim says Philo ; Kroll, Antiochus. 
 
 si Kroll, Neue Jahrb., p. 685. 
 
 32 Kroll, op. cit., p. 682, criticises Cicero for his inability to withstand 
 the strong tradition of Greek rhetoric; as though Cicero had ever thought 
 •if initiating a new system of pedagogy. See above, p. 371, and below, 
 pp. 425-426. 
 
424: BHETOBIC 
 
 turn some noble Romans to the lecture halls of the rhetorical 
 philosophers, and the latter would have reason for rejoicing, but 
 it might also turn them to the study of law or to the reading 
 of history, with which the philosophers had little to do. Neither 
 is the treatise directed against the Latin rhetoricians, as has been 
 suggested, for the latter are barely mentioned ; nor is it intended 
 to prove, as has also been imagined, that Greek rhetorical instruc- 
 tion was superior to Latin — a thing that in Cicero's time needed 
 no proof. The work is on too large a scale for controversy; 
 Cicero is writing for men who have received their training and 
 have already had some experience in actual pleading, intending, 
 in so far as his purpose is didactic, to suggest along what lines 
 they may go farther ; and, above all, besides various other matters 
 that could be suggested, it is unthinkable that he, one of the 
 two or three most famous ex-consuls of his time, should stoop to 
 participation in the jealous squabbles of dependent Greeks. His 
 aim, now that he had nothing better to do than to write, was to 
 create a literary work; as the recognized leader among orators, 
 he had also a strong autobiographical tendency, the stronger 
 because his political influence had been greatly diminished; and 
 he was interested, as a student, in the theory of his art. 
 
 Perhaps it does not greatly matter whether any one — Crassus, 
 if he was such as he appears in the De Oratore, or Philo, or 
 Antiochus — suggested this ideal to Cicero, or whether he evolved 
 it himself. Every man is, after all, self-educated; and this is 
 true particularly of a literary artist. It is not difficult to suggest 
 ways of development; the difficulty consists in traveling along 
 those ways and reaching the goal. Of some importance in this 
 connection is Cicero's account of his training in the Brutus, a 
 passage that has already been quoted. He says that he was 
 constantly in the forum observing the various orators; and he 
 attributes his success very definitely to the fact that his was a 
 new kind of oratory, the result of observation and of studies 
 that no other orator had pursued. One might say, therefore, not 
 
GREEK SCHOLABS 425 
 
 too seriously, that if the philosophers explained to him the ideal 
 that he later realized, either they explained it to him alone or 
 else they had no success with their other pupils. In the Brutus, 
 moreover, Cicero mentions both Philo and Antiochus among his 
 teachers, but only as teachers of philosophy, not of rhetoric. 
 
 Crassus and Antony, reflecting the Roman unwillingness to 
 be confused with the Greeks, are at considerable pains to make it 
 clear that they speak as Roman gentlemen and not as Greeks. 
 The latter are said to care more for an argument than for truth. 
 They have no tact; 33 indeed, their language has no word for 
 the Latin ineptus; which, as it happens, is not always easy to 
 translate into English either ; it means wanting in tact, imperti- 
 nent, and includes awkwardness and officiousness. The Greeks, 
 so Crassus maintains, do not even give a thought to their short- 
 comings; wherever these Greek scholars happen to be and in 
 whatever company, they always start some subtle argument about 
 things that are exceedingly difficult or at least quite unnecessary. 
 
 They are never troubled by doubts about their own knowl- 
 edge. Catulus, one of the speakers, recalls the story 34 of 
 Phormio, a Peripatetic philosopher who is otherwise unknown, 
 and Hannibal. The great soldier had been exiled from Carthage 
 and was staying at Bphesus. Here Phormio, invited to speak 
 before the assembled company, discussed the duties of a com- 
 mander and, for that matter, military affairs in general. Every- 
 body applauded except Hannibal. "When the latter was asked 
 how he liked it, he replied, in imperfect but very frank Greek, 
 that he had seen many foolish old men in his day, but nobody 
 quite equaling Phormio. Antony remarks by the way that 
 he has seen many Phormios. The Greeks show their self- 
 complacency not merely in their intercourse with young pupils, 
 he says ; not one of them thinks a Roman knows anything. But 
 Antony is not ruffled by their behavior ; either they have some- 
 
 33 Be Or. 2, 17 ff. 
 
 34 De Or. 2, 75 S. 
 
426 RHETORIC 
 
 thing worth learning, he observes, or else they are such persons 
 that the mere sight of them makes Antony glad that he has not 
 spent very much time in study. 
 
 Cicero's Roman speakers, however, find much that is useful 
 in rhetoric, while they also have some things to criticise; as has 
 already been pointed out. Eager not to be didactic, they intro- 
 duce their references to rhetorical theory in a casual way, often 
 summing up a long and abstruse part of the science in two or 
 three sentences. The work consists of three books; the first of 
 which contains a general discussion of Cicero's oratorical ideal, 
 the second an account of inventio, everything in fact that is not 
 purely stylistic, and the third the treatment of style; but it is 
 impossible to say beforehand in just what book any particular 
 topic may be found, because of the conversational and carefree 
 method of the speakers. A rhetorical subject is sometimes 
 referred to more than once, a later speaker indifferently remark- 
 ing that he happens to state it in a new way ; which reminds the 
 reader how the complex theory varied infinitely in matters of 
 detail. 
 
 The two qualities most needful to an orator, which could have 
 been inferred from Cicero's orations as well as from the per- 
 formances in the courts, are wit and pathos. The forms which 
 they took have already been amply illustrated. The laughable 
 receives an exhaustive technical treatment. 35 "Wit, it is explained, 
 originates in that which is disgraceful, pointed out in a manner 
 not disgraceful. It turns either on the form of the expression 
 or on the substance of the thought ; and there are seven types of 
 the former kind and six of the latter. Personal defects are men- 
 tioned as proper subjects for jokes, if these avoid scurrility, a 
 term the Romans did not understand in the modern Anglo-Saxon 
 sense, though they would have agreed with our forbears. The 
 expounder of wit almost saves the pedantry of his long exposition 
 by observing, in his first remarks, that wit, being a natural gift, 
 
 35 Be Or. 2, 217-290. 
 
WIT 427 
 
 can not be taught and that the systematizers of jests have invari- 
 ably made him laugh at their own lack of humor ; but the reader 
 can scarcely follow him when he says that he intends merely to 
 give some rules derived from observation. 
 
 The account must have been inserted in deference to current 
 handbooks. Besides these, the ancients made collections of witty 
 sayings; Cicero's were thus collected — a matter not to be taken 
 too solemnly, in the light of the scribbling propensities of his 
 age. Many jokes he had never heard of were fathered on him, 
 and he makes it known in one of his orations 36 that he has no 
 objection to this, provided the jokes are good. Caesar had so 
 keen a sense for Cicero's manner that he could infallibly distin- 
 guish between the genuine and the spurious. 
 
 The disquisition in the Be Omtore abounds in examples, 
 which almost make the reader charitable toward the system. 
 Most of them come from public life. One little story worth recall- 
 ing, not from the forum, is connected with the poet Bnnius and 
 his noble friend Nasica. It might have happened today. Nasica, 
 calling at Ennius' house, was told by the maid that the poet 
 was not at home. The caller, however, suspected that his friend's 
 absence was purely social. A few days later Ennius called at 
 Nasica 's residence, and heard a voice shouting that Nasica was 
 not at home. "Don't you think I know your voice, Nasica?" 
 the poet called. To which, Nasica : "You are an impudent fellow, 
 my friend. You expect me to believe your maid, and yet you 
 won't believe me." 
 
 Stories like this one, and observations of many kinds, are 
 numerous throughout the treatise, revealing the sanity and wis- 
 dom of the author or flashing a sudden light on the thoughts 
 and actions of the Romans. We learn that the best Latin accent 
 was to be found in Rome, as the best Greek accent was found 
 in Athens; and this despite the fact that the residents in the 
 country districts and the towns were more given to study than 
 
 se Pro Plan. 35. 
 
428 BHETOBIC 
 
 the city dwellers. Good habits of speaking are best learned in 
 youth. The ladies speak the purest Latin, for they do not go 
 to the forum and listen to careless speech — an observation that 
 de Quincey read. Laelia, the daughter of Scipio's friend Laelius 
 and the mother-in-law of Crassus, spoke such wonderful Latin 
 that her son-in-law might think he was listening to Plautus or 
 Naevius ; though one must hope the worthy Laelia did not indulge 
 in Plautine jokes. Orators are counseled to avoid affectation in 
 speech; and various affectations are named, one of them being 
 the assumption of a brusque, churlish manner in order to seem 
 honest and rugged — a trick not unknown in modern times. 
 
 The manner of delivery, as has been indicated before, is said 
 to be of very great importance, and it is recalled how Demos- 
 thenes declared it to be the first requisite of good oratory s and 
 the second, and the third; his preference for it resembling old 
 Cato's preference for grazing. Aeschines, Demosthenes' rival, 
 when in exile, aroused great enthusiasm among his hearers by 
 reading Demosthenes' speech On the Crown; but his comment 
 on their applause was that they should have heard Demosthenes 
 himself deliver it. Excessive violence of delivery is deprecated 
 by Cicero ; it must be reserved for the great moments. The eyes 
 are important ; but the voice most of all. It is absolutely essential 
 for an orator to take care of his voice ; he must not strain it. And 
 the reader is informed that C. Gracchus, when speaking in public, 
 had in the vicinity a slave with an ivory pipe, who gave the 
 proper pitch when his master let his voice rise or fall more than 
 was desirable. 
 
 Exuberance in young men is, on the whole, a good sign; it 
 can be pruned down. But the orator must endeavor to observe 
 a measure in all things. Strong effects pall quickly, for they 
 produce satiety; so the old paintings, free from the modern 
 extravagance in color, Cicero says, retain their hold on us when 
 the new favorites are forgotten. This does not mean that orators 
 should aim to be all alike. Orators, like artists, are of many 
 
CICERO'S STYLE 429 
 
 kinds ; each should develop his own possibilities, and so Crassus, 
 speaking for Cicero, says that he will mention the things that 
 have been useful to him; they may not be useful to every one 
 else. And even in doing this, he is modest, confessing that every 
 man knows himself least. 
 
 Crassus discusses style, and describes his own early exercises, 
 which obviously are to be taken as Cicero's. 37 He used to read 
 a bit of verse or a part of an oration, just long enough for him 
 to remember the thought in detail, and then he would write it 
 out in his own best form. But there was one objection to this 
 method; Ennius or Gracchus, his models, had already used the 
 best expressions, so that Cicero 's language either fell below theirs 
 or was identical, neither of which seemed very profitable to him. 
 Thereupon he turned to free translation from the Greek orators, 
 taking care with his language and using familiar words, but also 
 coining words on the analogy of the Greek. He also translated 
 from other Greek writers, though they are not mentioned in this 
 connection. Imitation, in matters of style and in other things, 
 is recommended, but the reader is warned not to imitate faults 
 or non-essentials ; it is easy to walk or to wear the toga as some- 
 body else. Nor does every one need to practise imitation in order 
 to make progress. 
 
 Crassus gives many technical rules about writing, and Cicero, 
 both through Crassus and other speakers, lays strong emphasis 
 on the orator's need of constant writing; but much of this is 
 for the clarification of thought, and it is never forgotten that 
 substance and expression can not be separated. Indeed, it can 
 not be stated too strongly that in the case of Cicero the style was 
 the man. He worked hard to acquire his style, but his work 
 looked toward greater powers of self-expression, the releasing of 
 his natural gift, as it were, and not to the acquisition of stylistic 
 ornaments or peculiar turns of phrase. No style could be clearer 
 than Cicero's, or more natural. The musical element is observed, 
 
 37 Ve Or. 1, 154 ff. 
 
430 RHETORIC 
 
 but it is not obtrusive. In his arrangement or in his choice of 
 words, he never visibly strives for effect; everything is there 
 merely for the greater clearness. Macaulay resembles Cicero in 
 the unimpeded flow of his language, but he is more formal and 
 lacks Cicero's humor. Perhaps Thackeray bears a closer resem- 
 blance to Cicero than does any other English writer ; but Cicero 
 has more power and a wider sweep. 
 
 The discussion of style is in the mouth of Crassus; Antony, 
 speaking technically of Invention, gives 38 several hints of a 
 broader nature, some of which were apparently more necessary to 
 Roman orators, who often ranted senselessly in the forum, than 
 to modern lawyers. Antony — Cicero, that is — took very great 
 pains to master the facts of a case. He interviewed each litigant 
 privately, letting him tell his story in his own way. Thereupon 
 he thought out the various points of the case, and did not consider 
 how to present them until later. He tried to put himself in the 
 position of his adversary, to see the case with his eyes ; and when 
 he came to arguing, he tried as much as possible to omit the 
 latter 's strong points, covering up his retreat with pompous and 
 fine talk, so as to seem not to be running away but to be yielding 
 in order to take up a better position ; making a strategic retreat, 
 in other words. Some orators placed their weakest argument at 
 the beginning of their speech ; not so Antony. He placed his best 
 arguments first, put the weaker points in the middle, and then 
 he concluded with a repetition of his best arguments. 
 
 He always aimed at variety. If he attacked an opponent, he 
 gave himself the appearance of doing it against his will ; and he 
 resisted all advice to inveigh against an angry witness, if the 
 latter was a man of sense and influence. When speaking of 
 the fame of a client, he tried to show that the latter took no 
 proud delight in it, and he enlarged on the client's hard work, 
 which had earned his fame. Antony did not hurry into emotional 
 language, and, once there, he did not hasten past, for it takes 
 as Be Or. 2, 99 ff. 
 
GOOD-NATURED RAILLERY 431 
 
 time to stir an audience. He felt the emotion he expressed, for 
 a man can not rouse others to anger if he seems calm himself. 
 On the other hand, he tried to have the appearance of one who 
 with difficulty restrained his feelings. And, finally — a bit of 
 advice sorely needed in Rome — in preparing his speech he wrote 
 his Exordium last of all, having it grow out of the thoughts of 
 the speech as a whole; for an introduction must not be like a 
 musical prelude, lacking connection with that which is to follow. 
 He wondered at the method of Philippus, his contemporary, who, 
 when rising to speak, never seemed to know how to begin, but 
 trusted somehow that he would presently warm to his subject. 
 
 Philippus is not one of the interlocutors in the dialogue, but 
 the harmless fun at his expense is frequently paralleled in the 
 remarks exchanged by the speakers themselves. Antony had 
 urged frequent writing as an exercise, observing at the same time 
 that Sulpicius would have been a better orator if he had written 
 more. Sulpicius, while admitting the truth of the criticism, 
 retorts that Antony was not known to have practised writing 
 very extensively; to which Antony replies that they must do 
 what he says and not what he does. Crassus is praised both for 
 his charm and for his power, and Antony finds such ample praise 
 intolerable. As for Crassus' power, he remarks that he shivers 
 when his friend mounts to the high altitudes. Crassus, speaking 
 of careful pronunciation, says that Cotta drops his i's and 
 enunciates his e's too carefully, and is imitated in this by Sul- 
 picius; "for," he adds to the latter, "if you insist on my speak- 
 ing, you will hear something about your own failings. ' ' Crassus 
 had wandered into a discussion of the political attitude of the 
 Gracchi, and is interrupted by one of the speakers : "Never mind 
 that, Crassus ; come back to the ivory pipe. ' ' 
 
 The speakers are also very modest and much given to self- 
 depreciation. Crassus recalls how he never wanted the grave 
 Scaevola to be near while he was canvassing in the forum; 
 Scaevola's presence would have made it difficult for him to act 
 
432 SEETOSIC 
 
 the fool. And they pay each other extravagant compliments. 
 The work itself ends with such a compliment, neatly addressed 
 by Cicero to Hortensius. One of the speakers expresses the regret 
 that young Hortensius, young in 91 B.C., is not present, and 
 prophesies that in time Hortensius will excel in all the good 
 qualities that have been described, very much as Plato in the 
 Phaedrus represented Socrates as prophesying about the young 
 Isocrates. 39 
 
 And yet it is not all jest or compliment; the tragedies of 
 political life also are present. In the preface to the work, Cicero 
 recalls in a few eloquent sentences how his own life had been 
 passed amid almost constant turmoil. His youth had come in the 
 bloodstained days of Marius and Sulla. During his consulship, 
 when everything hung in the balance, he had voluntarily entered 
 the strife. Ever since that time he had battled against the waves 
 that threatened to overwhelm him, as he expresses it; he had 
 turned them from the state, and they had recoiled upon him. 
 
 At the beginning of the third book Cicero describes Crassus' 
 last speech, which in every one's opinion had surpassed all his 
 previous efforts, though people always thought that Crassus' 
 latest oration was his best. Even while speaking, Crassus had 
 been seized with a pain in his side ; he was taken home, and fever 
 set in ; a week later he died from pleurisy. Cicero, sixteen years 
 old at that time, and his brother had often gone to the senate- 
 house as if still expecting to hear the voice of the great orator, 
 who had been their friend. His death was a serious loss to his 
 country and to those who loved him, says Cicero, but death was, 
 after all, a kindly gift, since Crassus was thus spared the sight 
 of Italy in flames. Antony was murdered, and his head nailed 
 to the rostra; and one of the other speakers in the dialogue, 
 Catulus, took his own life, to avoid the cruelty of Marius. 
 
 The thought of what Crassus had escaped is suggested again 
 at the beginning of the Brutus. Hortensius had died in 50 B.C. 
 
 so See Or. 41. 
 
AMPLIFICATIONS OF THE DE OBATOBE 433 
 
 Cicero, who had ended the Be Omtore with a compliment to 
 Hortensius, begins the later work with a sad reference to his 
 death; but this death, too, had been merciful, for Hortensius 
 did not live to see the Caesarians warring with the Pompeians. 
 It will be remembered that some three years before Cicero pub- 
 lished the Be Omtore he had come very near following the 
 example of Catulus, the father of the Catulus whom he had 
 succeeded as the leader of the senate. 
 
 v 
 Brutus and Orator 
 
 The Brutus and the Orator can be looked upon as amplifica- 
 tions of certain parts or characteristics of the De Oratore. They 
 were written nine years later; the former in the early months 
 of 46 b.c. and the latter in the second half of the year, after the 
 practical establishment of Caesar as the ruler of Rome. Despite 
 the long interval between the composition of the Be Oratore and 
 these two works, Cicero looked upon them all as forming one 
 whole; in the essay on Divination, 40 after mentioning the three 
 books of the Be Oratore, he lists the other treatises as books four 
 and five. 
 
 These do not possess the literary charm of the earlier work. 
 There is less humor in the Brutus than in its predecessor, and 
 almost none in the Orator; there are also fewer winged words 
 of wisdom and not so much of the lofty inspiration that illumines 
 the De Oratore. These things are not lacking, to be sure, but 
 the purpose of the later books was somewhat different ; they are 
 more didactic and expository; and it would not be profitable to 
 compare them with the earlier work as a whole. The Brutus is 
 read more, and certainly more edited, than the Be Oratore, but 
 this is due to its shorter compass and its highly systematized 
 historical content; it is decidedly a bird of a smaller spread of 
 wing. 
 
 40 De Divin. 2, 4. 
 
434 BEETOEIC 
 
 The composition of the Brutus was largely suggested to Cicero 
 by a little book written by Atticus. In 51 B.C. Cicero had pub- 
 lished his large work on the State, and Atticus had discovered 
 in it certain slight inaccuracies of historical statement. These 
 led to a discussion between the friends, some traces of which 
 can still be seen in the correspondence ; and finally Atticus, 
 always a patient delver for facts and already something of an 
 authority in Roman antiquities and genealogy, drew up what 
 might be called a chronological outline of Roman history. It was 
 brief, covering seven hundred years in one book, but it con- 
 tained a large amount of information about magistrates, laws, 
 wars, and political events, and it also had references to other 
 nations. This book, called Liber Annalis, in its turn gave Cicero 
 the thought of his history of Roman oratory; and it supplied a 
 backbone, as it were, around which Cicero could put his extensive 
 knowledge about the Roman orators. Its main service, however, 
 seems to have consisted in its inspiration to write the Brutus 
 rather than in any actual help toward doing so, for if the Bruhis 
 be compared with the De Oratore, it will be seen that the later 
 work does not contain very much, and nothing of any real 
 importance, that is is not found in the De Oratore and yet could 
 have come from Atticus. Many statements about dates and other 
 historical matters are introduced, but they are irrelevant, and 
 were felt to be such by Cicero, who explains their presence by 
 his interest in Atticus' work; in other words, they were taken 
 from the Liber AnnaUs in compliment to Atticus. 
 
 Being a history of Roman oratory, the Brutus* 1 is Cicero's 
 most original treatise in so far as the content is concerned. He 
 was unusually well equipped for the task; probably better 
 equipped than any other man in Rome. Aside from his experi- 
 ence and his knowledge of rhetorical theory, his own preparation 
 for his profession, coupled with his love of Rome and his inquir- 
 ing spirit, had given him an extraordinary command of the facts 
 4i On the Brutus, see particularly the introduction to Martha 's edition. 
 
MISTOBY OF SOMAN ORATORY 435 
 
 to be employed. He had always been a close observer of his 
 own contemporaries; and he had heard, and remembered, as is 
 shown by the De Oratore, what his older friends had to tell about 
 the men who had gone before, as far back as the time of the 
 Scipionic Circle. In addition to this, he had collected and read 
 all the speeches of these and of earlier orators that he could 
 procure, even making investigations as to their authenticity. 
 Thus he was familiar with one hundred and fifty orations of 
 Cato the Elder. Cato's were the earliest orations extant, he 
 tells us, with the exception of the speech delivered by Appius 
 Claudius the Blind against Pyrrhus, and some early eulogies. 
 For the earliest orators, whose speeches had been lost, he had 
 recourse to historical annals and similar works. Of the orators 
 of his own time and for a generation or two before, he therefore 
 can write fully, not merely criticising their speeches but also 
 describing their manner of delivery; in the case of the orators 
 just preceding these, he formed his judgment from their orations, 
 and has rarely anything to say of their delivery; of the earliest 
 orators, he can say only what he could infer from history. 
 
 To write a history of Roman oratory was in itself highly 
 congenial to Cicero; it was a patriotic act, like the writing of 
 political history, and tended to show that Rome, no less than 
 Greece, with its long list of orators, had to its credit a solid 
 accomplishment in this, the most difficult of arts. The whole 
 character of the Brutus indicates that the main purpose of the 
 treatise is that of history — literary history and criticism. But 
 it had also another purpose, already noted, which binds it to 
 the De Oratore. In discussing the orators in chronological order, 
 — both the famous ones and others, though the sub-title later 
 invented for the work is De Oratoribus Claris — it shows how 
 Roman eloquence gradually improved,, many men contributing, 
 until it reached its climax at the time of Cicero, and practically 
 in Cicero himself. It becomes thus a restatement and a justifica- 
 tion of the ideal expressed in the De Oratore. This historical 
 
436 BEET0M1C 
 
 justification had already been put forward in the earlier work; 
 now, however, it is given with greater clearness and much greater 
 detail. 
 
 The criterion for judging the orators is therefore the ideal 
 expounded in the De Omtore: Did the orator in question have 
 native talent, a broad education, experience 1 For detailed criti- 
 cism, the orator is brought to the bar of rhetorical theory; 
 Cicero's language, whether informal or actually technical, 
 derives its meaning from the theory, so that the full force of 
 Cicero's criticisms can not be understood without a knowledge 
 of Greek rhetoric. He asks in how far an orator fulfilled the 
 requirements of the five parts of rhetoric, Invention, Arrange- 
 ment, Style, Delivery, and Memory; whether he accomplished 
 an orator's three aims, to teach or convince, to please, and to 
 move; and as the style of a speaker had of old been classed as 
 simple, temperate, or grand— -tfenwe, medium, grande — for which 
 also other terms occur, Cicero uses this classification in his 
 characterizations. 
 
 These characterizations, however, are not lacking in insight 
 and fine distinctions, though these are found only in the more 
 detailed criticisms. Cicero discusses the early life of an orator, 
 whether, for instance, he had the opportunity of learning good 
 Latin in his youth; he also takes into account the political con- 
 ditions of his time, the stage of development reached by the 
 Latin language when he spoke, the kind of education then acces- 
 sible. The criticisms thus become personal evaluations, and are 
 made from the two points of view of an absolute standard, that 
 of the De Orator e, and of a relative standard, that of an orator's 
 own time. The recognition that the times were changing is an 
 important part of Cicero's attitude. He divides the history of 
 Roman eloquence into seven periods, and shows how the con- 
 ditions for good oratory improved from one to another; and 
 this, in its turn, becomes an argument for his thesis that the 
 best oratory belonged to his own time, as had been set forth in 
 his earlier work. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PASSAGE 437 
 
 Cicero himself is the main speaker, Atticus and Brutus being 
 his auditors. In order to bring the account down to Cicero's 
 own time, which was necessary, the expounder had to belong 
 to this time ; and nobody was as suitable as Cicero himself. He 
 is, after all, giving his own frank opinions. 
 
 He excludes living orators, on the alleged ground that Brutus 
 had heard them. There are only two real exceptions, 42 namely, 
 Caesar and Cicero himself. As for the dramatic propriety of 
 including Caesar, Brutus remarks that he has not had an oppor- 
 tunity to hear him speak; but the real reason is obviously a 
 desire to compliment the dictator. And it was largely a literary 
 compliment. Caesar had written his work on grammar, con- 
 cerned with the choice of words, and he had dedicated the work 
 to Cicero, with high praise of Cicero's services to Rome because 
 of his oratory. Atticus is represented as recalling Caesar's 
 eulogy of Cicero, and thereupon he gives a very laudatory 
 account of Caesar's oratory. 
 
 The book, though devoted to exposition and criticism, was 
 indirectly didactic, for the recognition of former orators' failures 
 was intended as advice to Brutus, who still had to win his spurs. 
 Cicero can therefore rather naturally end the book, or very 
 nearly end it, with an account of his own training and the 
 description of his own new style of oratory. Cicero traces his 
 growth through the ten years before the journey in Greece ; the 
 journey, with the description of his physical condition and the 
 changes wrought by the teaching of Molo ; and, finally, the period 
 prior to his consulship. He mentions his teachers and the con- 
 ditions in Rome that influenced him, and also the speakers whom 
 he observed or emulated. It is not a long passage, only some 
 three or four pages, but it is probably better known than any 
 other in all his treatises. Its analytic insight has been highly 
 praised 43 as marking a distinct step in the gradual evolution of 
 
 42 A few lines are also given to Marcellus (248-251). 
 
 43 Misch., pp. 196 ff. 
 
438 BHETOBIC 
 
 autobiographical writing toward the complete psychological self- 
 expression found in St. Augustine. An important part of it is 
 Cicero's account of his friendly rivalry with Hortensius. The 
 passage therefore merges into a criticism of Hortensius, which 
 both closes the book, except for some concluding conversational 
 remarks, and is also Cicero's final jugdment of his great con- 
 temporary. 
 
 One of the orators discussed in the Brutus is Calvus, who had 
 died in 47 B.C., the year before the Brutus was composed. Calvus 
 had been a prominent member, probably the most prominent, of 
 a group of young orators and poets, which included Brutus and 
 Catullus. In poetry they sought their models among the Alex- 
 andrine writers; in oratory they harked back to Lysias, and 
 even to Thucydides and Xenophon. Their ideal in oratory, put 
 briefly, was clearness and simplicity, the avoidance of emotion 
 and of literary artistry, especially the use of rhythm. As a sign 
 of the purity of their tastes, they called themselves Attic orators. 
 These new Atticists, Novi Attici, were opposed to the verbosity 
 and euphuism that had flourished in Asia Minor, represented 
 conspicuously in Rome by Hortensius, as well as to the less 
 extravagant manner taught at Rhodes, of which Cicero can be 
 said to have been the representative. 
 
 It is no longer possible to decide upon the relative merits of 
 Cicero and the New Atticists, for no orations of the latter are 
 extant. Quintilian, Seneca in the Controversies, and Tacitus, all 
 decided in favor of Cicero, though there were some men who held 
 Calvus to have been the greatest of Roman orators. A thought 
 perhaps worthy of consideration is this, that Cicero looked at 
 oratory from its practical application, making the people, the 
 listeners, the final judge; whereas Calvus and his associates set 
 up a theoretic ideal — always a deadening thing to do in any art. 44 
 Calvus, says Cicero in the Brutus, i5 watched himself too closely ; 
 in his anxiety to avoid everything faulty, he lost all real strength. 
 
 a See Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, 1, 221. 
 « Brut. 283. 
 
NOVI ATTICI 439 
 
 Cicero, in his characterization, takes no note of Calvus' 
 vehement power as it had been displayed, and later became 
 known to the Roman critics, in his speeches against Vatinius, the 
 Caesarian whom Cicero attacked and later defended; but the 
 vehemence in these orations was not a part of Calvus' expressed 
 oratorical ideal, and one may conjecture that he was more 
 sensible as an orator than as a theorist. Cicero's quarrel, how- 
 ever, was with the theorist. It should be added that, according 
 to Tacitus, 46 the second speech against Vatinius, the best known, 
 had the usual rhetorical ornaments of style and rhythm. 
 
 The differences between Cicero, on the one hand, and Calvus 
 and Brutus, on the other, had been discussed in private letters, 
 and these letters were still read in the time of Tacitus. To 
 students of the empire, the more as they lived in an age when 
 real oratory was dead, these epistolary discussions assumed an 
 importance which they very probably did not have in the eyes 
 of the original correspondents. The intellectualists of Cicero's 
 time disagreed about all sorts of things, rhetorical as well as 
 philosophical; but these disagreements were of slight contempo- 
 rary significance. Calvus, furthermore, was dead when Cicero 
 wrote the Brutus; and neither Brutus nor any other adherent 
 of the New Atticism could rival Cicero either as an actual orator 
 or as a writer about the theory. At this time, too, the domination 
 of Caesar had banished real oratory from Rome, as Cicero feared 
 and regretfully expressed when he thought of Brutus ' future, so 
 that the surviving New Atticists would have slight opportunity 
 for practising their theories. It may safely be conjectured that 
 Hortensius had caused Cicero much more worry than Calvus 
 and Brutus. 
 
 As a theoretical quarrel, however, it led Cicero to insert in 
 the Brutus a brief controversial passage in connection with 
 Calvus, and very likely to write the Orator. In the preface to 
 this treatise, he represents Brutus as having urged him to give 
 a picture of the ideal orator ; and at the end of the book he says 
 
 « Tac. Dial. 21, 6. 
 
440 BBETOBIC 
 
 that Brutus may follow the ideal just described if he should 
 approve of it ; if not, he may retain his own opinion, and Cicero 
 will not undertake to decide between them. 
 
 Cicero in this literary controversy displays all his cleverness 
 as the foremost pleader of Rome. 47 The New Atticists, he says, 
 might win the favor of students and those who take care to listen, 
 but they make no appeal to the people ; why, not only ordinary 
 loiterers about the tribunal but even the advocati leave them; 48 
 and this had at least a measure of truth, despite Calvus' speeches 
 against Vatinius. Cicero repeats it later, and Tacitus 49 says 
 that almost no one read the other orations of Calvus, and as for 
 Brutus, all testimony seems to show that he aroused no enthusi- 
 asm. 50 The New Atticists, Cicero continues, imitate what seems 
 easy of imitation, clearness, but wisely deprecate the higher 
 flights. They also choose for their models not merely Lysias, but ' 
 also Thucydides and Xenophon, who were not orators at all. 
 And, altogether, they make an erroneous claim to Atticism, for 
 though Lysias is truly Attic, no less so are others, especially 
 Demosthenes, the greatest of them all, and Demosthenes uses the 
 grand manner and pays much attention to rhythm. It was 
 in connection with the last argument that Cicero projected a 
 translation of Demosthenes ' oration On the Crown and Aeschines' 
 oration Against Ctesipho, of which only the preface seems to 
 have been written. 
 
 But Cicero goes farther in the Orator. As has already been 
 remarked, scholars recognized three kinds of style: the simple, 
 the temperate, and the grand. The rhetoricians, furthermore, 
 gave it as the duty of an orator to prove or teach, to please, 
 and to move. 51 These two concepts are brought together by 
 
 i7 See Kroll's edition of the Orator, Einleitung. 
 is Brut. 283, 289. 
 
 49 Tae. Dial. 21, 10. 
 
 50 See below, p. 599 and note 4. 
 
 si These three tasks are often stated as two: (1) to prove or to teach, 
 which is addressed to the intellect; (2) to please and to move, which are 
 addressed to the emotions. See above, p. 383, note 11. 
 
THE IDEAL OBATOB 441 
 
 Cicero, and as the New Atticists cultivated only the simple 
 style, they fulfilled, according to him, only one of the duties of 
 an orator, that of giving information or proving their point, and 
 neglected the other two, which were far more important in real 
 life, to win the favor of the hearers and to stir them to the desired 
 action. 
 
 Though the controversial purpose influences both the arrange- 
 ment and the content in the Orator, this work reaches far beyond 
 controversy. Cicero, at Brutus' request, had undertaken to give 
 a picture of the ideal orator, and he professes to undertake the 
 task with much misgiving, hinting, as Crassus had done in the 
 Be Oratore, that perhaps he has never seen the perfect orator, 
 who, indeed, may be like one of the incorporeal ideas of Plato, 
 something to be aimed at, though not quite attainable. Never- 
 theless the Orator is virtually a description of Cicero himself; 
 he writes in the first person, and draws numerous illustrations 
 from his own orations. He states again the oratorical ideal of 
 the Be Oratore, his own attainment of which had at least been 
 implied in the autobiographical passage in the Brutus; and as 
 the style of an orator is his most important quality, at least from 
 a literary point of view, his manner of delivery and his grasp 
 of argument being concerned exclusively with practical success, 
 he devotes nearly one half of the book to questions of the choice 
 of words and rhythm. 
 
 The treatment of style, indirectly, is an argument against 
 the New Atticists, but it is much more an exposition of Cicero's 
 own stylistic theories ; it repeats and enlarges the account in the 
 third book of the Be Oratore, and is indeed almost the only 
 source from which modern scholars derive their knowledge of 
 Cicero's theoretical attitude toward these matters. Cicero him- 
 self said that this book contained a fuller treatment of style 
 than had previously been attempted; a statement that perhaps 
 should be interpreted, though by no means certainly, as referring 
 to writers in Latin. 
 
442 EHETOSIC 
 
 The Orator, therefore, becomes Cicero's final statement not 
 tmly of his oratorical ideal but also of what he conceived himself 
 to have attained. It is as if the discussion begun by Antony, 
 Crassus, and their friends, in the De Omtore, had been carried 
 farther, first by Cicero in the presence of Atticus and Brutus, 
 in the Brutus, and then by Cicero alone, speaking no longer as 
 a character in a fictitious conversation but in his own person. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ON THE STATE 
 
 I 
 
 De Re Publica 
 
 The De Oratore was followed by Cicero 's second large treatise, 
 the De Re Publica, On the State. He began actual work on 
 it in May, 54 B.C., as is indicated by two letters 1 to his brother 
 Quintus, who was then in Gaul. In May he speaks of being 
 engaged in writing on politics, which he finds slow and laborious, 
 adding that if he succeeds, it will be labor well expended ; if not, 
 he will throw the book into the sea that he is looking upon while 
 writing. He was then at Cumae. "I shall in that case go on to 
 something else, ' ' he continues, ' ' for I can not rest. ' ' In October 
 or November he refers again to the work, stating definitely that 
 it was begun in his villa at Cumae. The task had proved 
 difficult. 
 
 It was an Aristotelian dialogue, the speakers being Scipio and 
 some members of his Circle, and consisted of nine books, the 
 conversation of each book filling one day. Cicero had read his 
 manuscript to a friend, Sallustius, who suggested that Cicero 
 should himself be the main speaker. This would be fitting, Sal- 
 lustius thought, inasmuch as Cicero was not a theorist, but a 
 man of consular rank, who had been much engaged in politics. 
 Assigning the discussion to people long dead, men whom Cicero 
 had never seen, would make the work seem too much like fiction, 
 mere imaginings. Aristotle, too, had made himself the chief 
 speaker. The change in plan proposed by Sallustius seemed 
 attractive, Cicero adds, particularly because it would enable him 
 to treat of events that had happened since the time of Scipio. 
 He had previously chosen the early dramatic date, he explains, 
 
 lAd Q. Fr. 2, 12 (14); 3, 5. 
 
444 ON THE STATE 
 
 for the very purpose of avoiding giving offense to any one by 
 comments on contemporary matters, but now he thinks he will 
 be able to avoid the offense and yet be the main speaker himself. 
 He promises that when he gets to Rome he will send Quintus the 
 first draft, of which he himself is still rather fond. 
 
 The work progressed slowly. Probably the treatise was not 
 published until just before Cicero's departure for his province, 
 in the year 51 b.c. On his way thither, after leaving Athens, 
 he writes to Atticus that the latter must, by Hercules, send full 
 news of the political situation, the more as he is now turning over 
 Cicero's own books on a similar subject. Atticus had evidently 
 been attending to the publication of the treatise, for in May, 
 immediately after Cicero's departure, Caelius had written to 
 Cicero that the work was having great success with everybody. 
 
 As finally published, the work consisted of six books, and not 
 of nine, as in the first draft ; but the early speakers were retained. 
 The conversation is supposed to have lasted three days, instead 
 of nine, two books being assigned to each day. But the treatise 
 has not come down to us in complete form. The first three books 
 have been fairly well preserved, though much has been lost ; thus 
 the preface and the introductory scene contain two thirds of all 
 that remains of the first book. The three remaining books- are 
 represented only by fragments, which are disconnected and, with 
 one exception, very short, not one of them filling one page. The 
 exception, from the sixth book, is the Dream of Scipio, S omnium 
 Scipionis, which, because of its beauty, was chosen for a special 
 commentary by Macrobius in the fifth century, and so preserved. 
 References to the last three books by later authors, however, 
 especially by St. Augustine and Laetantius, as well as the con- 
 tents of the first three books, enable us to understand the general 
 trend of thought in the latter half of the work, but practically 
 all details are lacking. Even the general thought is at times 
 beyond sure inference. The fragments of the whole treatise 
 cover about one hundred pages. 
 
TWO TREATISES 445 
 
 As a companion work to the Republic, Cicero began a treatise 
 on the Laws, De Legibus, which, however, as has been noted 
 before, was almost certainly not published in Cicero's lifetime, 
 and possibly had not received the last touches when he died. 
 There are three books extant, with gaps in them ; but a fifth book 
 is quoted. "While the Republic describes the ideal state, the Laws 
 discusses its statutes, so that the later work sometimes repeats 
 the thought of the former. Thus the first book of the Laws la ys 
 as a foundation for the whole treatment of la ws the thesis that 
 alH aw is derived from God, thro ugh our inborn sense of justice ; 
 a nd this is also the subject of the thir d book of the Republic. 
 The second and third books of the Laws are concerned with 
 religion and with magistracies ; two topics that in some form 
 or other were touched upon in the latter half of the De Re 
 Republica. 
 
 As the laws proposed and discussed are very much those 
 actually found in Rome, the Be Legibus was less dependent on 
 Greek sources than its companion treatise. The relation between 
 the two works is thus much the same as that between the De 
 Oratdre and the Brutus; Cicero's discussion of the laws corre- 
 sponding to his former account of the Roman orators. This simi- 
 larity is further borne out by the fact that in the Republic, as 
 in the De Oratore, the speakers belong to a past age, whereas in 
 the Laws, as in the Brutus, Cicero himself is the chief speaker. 
 He has two interlocutors in both treatises ; Atticus occurs in 
 both, whereas Quintus in the Lams corresponds to Brutus in 
 the work named for him. Cicero had almost certainly made con- 
 siderable progress with the Laws before he went to Cilicia, 
 prompted in his researches by his election to the board of augurs 
 in 53 B.C.; when he again turned to composition, after the Civil 
 War, his first work was the Brutus. 
 
 Scipio, in the Republic, begins his discussion with a formal 
 definition of the term state. A state, he says, is its people, and 
 a people, or nation, is not any fortuitous aggregation of human 
 beings, but a body of men joined together by a common recog- 
 
446 ON THE STATE 
 
 nition of what is right and by a community of interests. The 
 reason why men have thus come together is not their sense of 
 weakness, and so a desire for mutual help and protection, but 
 rather an innate human instinct which urges the individual to 
 seek fellowship with other men. 
 
 A state, Scipio continues, must have a governing power, just 
 as a human being is governed, or should be governed, by his 
 mind. As this governing power may be in the hands of an indi- 
 vidual, an aristocratic minority, or the people as a whole, there 
 are three kinds of government: monarchic, aristocratic, and 
 democratic. Of these the monarchic is most to be preferred; 
 it might indeed be considered as fashioned after the divine rule 
 in the world, the king corresponding in his love and care for his 
 subjects to Jupiter, the divine father. 
 
 But no one of these three forms of government is the best. 
 The basis of all rule must be justice, and justice is not humanly 
 attainable in an individual or in any group of individuals, 
 however large. Human beings tend to deteriorate. The king 
 becomes a tyrant ; the rule of the aristocracy becomes a rule by 
 factions, f 'actio; and the rule of the people becomes mob rule. 
 The three simple forms of government, therefore, can not make 
 a good state; but their advantages may be retained in a mixed 
 form, as in Rome, where the consuls, the senate, and the popular 
 assemblies together wield all power, supplementing and checking 
 one another. This kind of a government is therefore the best, 
 and, since it makes the most adequate provision for the rule of 
 reason and justice, it contains an element of perpetuity. Its 
 foundation is as stable as that of the universe itself; they are 
 both governed according to the same principle. 
 
 A government is evolved by the people themselves after they 
 have come together in accordance with their instinct; it is a 
 natural growth; but, being the work of human beings, it is 
 exposed to changes, both good and bad. There is thus a natural 
 evolution. Polybius in his history, and he was Scipio 's teacher, 
 
GOVERNMENTS CHANGE 447 
 
 has a complete series, 2 which illustrates the transformations of 
 the simple forms of government and shows how they make a 
 circle. First arises the single ruler, who most completely repre- 
 sents the human need of a ruling power. "While good, he is a 
 king ; when deteriorating, he becomes a tyrant. He is driven out 
 by the revolt of an aristocracy, which in its turn changes into a 
 wicked oligarchy. The latter is expelled by the people, who set 
 up a democracy. The democracy, having become mob rule, gives 
 rise to a single ruler. And thereupon the evolution begins again. 
 
 Polybius had not made this theoretical account tally with the 
 development of Rome. Cicero, therefore, while including Poly- 
 bius' series as scientifically satisfactory, and no doubt humanly 
 possible, or even likely, tries also to show other forms of devel- 
 opment more nearly in accord with Roman history. But the 
 fragmentary condition of the book makes it impossible to follow 
 his treatment in detail. He recognizes, however, that changes 
 are inevitable, and gives it as the highest achievement of a states- 
 man to be able to foresee them, so that he may check or anticipate 
 them as the case may require. 
 
 Of all the states that have ever existed or been imagined, 
 so Scipio concludes at the end of the first book, Rome is most 
 nearly perfect ; humanly speaking, it is the perfect state. In the 
 second book, therefore, Scipio traces the evolution of the Roman 
 government, which serves both as an illustration of the theory 
 and as a picture of the ideal state. 
 
 He begins with a statement of Cato the Elder, whom he 
 greatly admired, to the effect that the constitution of Rome has 
 not been given by one person but is a natural growth, the work 
 of many men. This growth is thereupon shown in detail by a 
 rapid review of Roman history, in the course of which Scipio 
 frequently stops to point out how political theory agrees with 
 actual facts. But, as Laelius observes, the facts of Roman history 
 are difficult to ascertain; and this difficulty is even greater for 
 
 2 See Schmekel, pp. 75 ff. 
 
448 ON TEE STATE 
 
 us because of the gaps in the book. Cicero 's account, as we have 
 it, ends about the time of the Decemviri and the writing of the 
 Twelve Tables. 
 
 There are, however, many passages of considerable interest, 
 which can only be touched upon. The site of Rome, to begin 
 with, was chosen with much wisdom. Placed on a river but 
 away from the coast, Rome has the advantages, Scipio says, 
 without the disadvantages, of a seaport. It can not be so readity 
 attacked by sea-roving enemies, and it is less exposed to the 
 deleterious moral influences at work wherever sailors congregate. 
 Its hills are healthful and afford protection in war. The kings 
 of Rome were usually elected. This is the preferable way, for 
 only thus the best men become kings. Rome, though developing 
 naturally within itself, acquired much from other peoples, and 
 improved upon these acquisitions. It was in the time of the 
 Tarquins that the Greek influence became a mighty river; for- 
 merly it had been but a trickling brook. Servius Sulpicius saw 
 to it that the greatest power in the state was given not to the 
 majority but to those who owned property ; and this should always 
 be done, for the people of means have naturally the greatest 
 interest in the prosperity of the state. When the republic had 
 been established, the political wisdom of the Romans became 
 increasingly apparent. The right of appeal was granted to the 
 ordinary citizen, so that he might not be flogged or executed at 
 the mere bidding of a magistrate, and the tribunes of the plebs 
 were created to give still further protection to the common 
 people. But a proper moderation was observed; only a little 
 power was given to the ordinary citizens, most of it being in' 
 the hands of the aristocracy, and the old regal power was per- 
 petuated in the consuls, who, however, are two in number and 
 hold office for only one year. 
 
 There is a lofty enthusiasm in Scipio 's account of Rome; 
 he finds it very congenial to prove that Rome is the best state 
 that ever existed; but suddenly he is interrupted by Tubero. 
 
JUSTICE VEBSUS UTILITY 449 
 
 "You are talking about Eome," says the latter, "and not about 
 the perfect state." Scipio admits that Rome, though best, is 
 not perfect ; and Philus suggests that they discuss justice in its 
 relation to the state, which forms the subject of the third book. 
 
 Justice, according to the Stoics, is inborn in man and derived 
 from God ; it is one and unchangeable ; laws and morality come 
 ultimately from it. This subject, as has just been mentioned, 
 is also treated in the first book of the Laws, and it is no longer 
 possible to determine the amount of repetition. In the Laws 
 Cicero meets one criticism of this theory, based on the differences 
 in morality and convention that can be observed among different 
 peoples; and we do not know in how far this criticism was met 
 in the Republic. The Stoic answer is that the differences are 
 due to external circumstances; the motive impelling good men 
 is invariably their innate sense of justice. 
 
 There was another criticism, that of the sceptic Carneades, 
 who said that states can not be governed without injustice ; that 
 utility, or selfishness, is the impelling motive. According to 
 St. Augustine, who gives an outline of this book, this question 
 of utility as opposed to justice was the chief topic of the book. 
 The reply to Carneades must have been that nothing is useful 
 if it is not just, that it is better for a man to suffer losses, even 
 to die, than to depart from the dictates of his soul. At least, 
 this is the Stoic answer given by Cicero in his later work, the 
 Be Officiis, where the same subject is discussed, though from the 
 general point of view of a man 's whole duty. 
 
 Perhaps Carneades was not to be taken very seriously. His 
 aim seems to have been merely to show the Stoics that dogmatiz- 
 ing is dangerous. When in Rome as an ambassador from Athens, 
 he is said to have discoursed one day with much fulness on 
 justice, and on the following day he disproved everything he had 
 previously maintained. Carneades, nevertheless, had the unre- 
 generate world with him. Justice is folly, he said. If a man 
 has a slave who is inclined to run away or a house that is 
 
450 ON THE STATE 
 
 unhealthful, he naturally wishes to get rid of them; but shall 
 he tell the truth to a prospective buyer? If a ship has been 
 wrecked and a man has found a plank to float on, shall he sur- 
 render it to some one who is weaker? 
 
 Lactantius, who reports these and other questions of Car- 
 neades, says that when Cicero championed justice, he was unable 
 to answer them and passed them by as pitfalls. Cicero 's answer, 
 however, has already been indicated ; but the Stoics did not quite 
 agree about such cases as that of a man trying to sell a house. 
 The whole matter is put briefly, though not altogether convinc- 
 ingly, in a fragment of this book: that only a madman would 
 fail to prefer justice to personal advantage. Or, as in a frag- 
 ment of the next book: a man would rather die than have his 
 body transformed to that of a beast, even though he be allowed 
 to retain his human soul. How much worse it is to retain the 
 human form and get the soul of a beast! 
 
 But this discussion is a part of ethics and not of political 
 science, as Cicero himself observed in the Laws. 
 
 The contents of the last three books can not be made out with 
 < any fulness. In the fourth, Cicero seems to have discussed 
 various topics connected with morality in the state. Speaking 
 of education, he says that Rome had pursued the correct policy 
 in leaving the training of the young to the family, instead of 
 making it a concern of the state. In this view he opposed Poly- 
 bius and the practise generally current among the Greeks. Cicero 
 also disapproved of the socialism advocated by Plato, and, in a 
 less advanced form, by Lycurgus. He believed it the duty of 
 the state, indeed one of its main purposes, to protect each citizen 
 in the possession of his property. A man should prosper or 
 suffer according to his own deserts. And socialism, if extended 
 to a community of wives and children, is utterly subversive of 
 morality, the basis of which is the home. The drama, too, seems 
 to have been discussed in some detail. In the extant fragments, 
 Cicero says that it is a mirror of life, so that the Greek comedy 
 
TBE TRUE STATESMAN 451 
 
 is indecent because of the indecency of the Greeks themselves. 
 The Greeks had also allowed political criticism in their plays. 
 Cicero maintains that lapses from morality should be punished 
 by the censors and not by the poets. Naevius, as we know from 
 report, had leveled his verses against the powerful family of the 
 Metelli, and had been sent into exile for his pains. 
 
 The fifth book, and probably to some extent the sixth as well, 
 gave a picture of the true statesman, the man who guides, 
 moderates, steers the state — the rector, moderator, gubemator. 
 He is the very opposite of the tyrant. There is nothing baser in 
 the sight of gods and men than the tyrant, whether he be a king 
 who has become tyrannical or a citizen who has sought to over- 
 throw the republic after it had been established in freedom. 
 The good statesman, on the other hand, is honorable and wise ; 
 he protects the state ; his aim is the happiness of the citizens, the 
 strength, prosperity, glory, and virtuous character of the state; 
 he trains himself by experience and reading, rouses others to 
 imitate him, and is by the nobility of his character and his life 
 a mirror to his fellow-citizens. He needs training no less than 
 men in other walks of life, but the kind of training that Cicero 
 set forth is not known to us. Perhaps we get more than a 
 glimpse of it in the De Oratore, for the orator should be a states- 
 man as well as a speaker, and in the De Officiis, which, though 
 treating of Duty in general, never loses sight of the citizen. 
 
 II 
 Scipio's Dream 
 
 A somewhat complete account of the extant fragments of the 
 Bepublic has been given because this work and the De Oratore 
 were probably Cicero's most important literary undertakings. 
 He spent more time on them than on any others; with their 
 sequels, they certainly contained far more of his Roman spirit 
 and his thoughts about practical matters than was the case with 
 the philosophical treatises, the De Officiis excepted. An indica- 
 
452 ON THE STATE 
 
 tion of the care and imagination that went into the making of 
 the Republic is contained in the introductory scene, which pro- 
 fesses to reproduce a conversation between several members 
 of the Scipionic Circle. There is nothing more vivid or more 
 pleasing in the De Oratore. For this scene, and undoubtedly for 
 the artistic side of the whole work, Cicero drew upon his reading 
 about these men, and even more, one may conjecture, on his 
 recollections of Scaevola's and Crassus' reminiscences. 
 
 The artistic care expended upon the work and its wide scope, 
 together with its philosophical substructure and its large his- 
 torical view, mark the treatise as a comprehensive treatment of 
 government and at the same time an ambitious contribution to 
 literature, such as had not been previously attempted in Latin. 
 Cicero frankly puts it side by side with Plato's Republic. This 
 is indicated not merely by its sequel, the Laws, which parallels 
 Plato's work of the same name, but by numerous resemblances 
 to Plato in the fragments and by frequent references to him 
 both in them and in the Laws. The Dream of Scipio recalls 
 Plato most of all, perhaps, for it is clearly suggested by Plato's 
 account of Er, even though the content of Scipio' s Dream is 
 different. 
 
 Plato had described a utopia. Cicero, on the other hand, 
 makes Rome his ideal state; a difference that he insists upon both 
 in the Laws and in the Republic itself. Scipio, in the second 
 book, explains that he can more easily attain his object if he 
 shows how the Roman state came into being and grew to fulness 
 of strength than if he discoursed on an imaginary republic, as 
 did Socrates in Plato's work; he will not deal with a shadowy 
 image, he remarks later, but with a real state. Socrates was a 
 philosopher, whereas Scipio was a statesman. It is of course 
 unthinkable that Cicero should express any contempt for Soc- 
 rates or Plato, such as he often puts in the mouth of Crassus 
 and Antony in reference to the presumptuous and inexperienced 
 Greek rhetoricians, but the contrast between the attitude of 
 
ROME TEE IDEAL STATE 453 
 
 Cicero's speakers in the Republic, who are practical men of 
 affairs, and that of Socrates or Plato is nevertheless very much 
 the same. 
 
 But however thoroughly Cicero believed in a practical way 
 that Rome was the best of all states, it was not he who discovered 
 that Rome fulfilled the theoretical requirements of the philoso- 
 phers. When the Greek commonwealths had lost their political 
 importance, and in many cases also their independence, the 
 Stoics turned their eyes from individual governments, whether 
 real or imaginary, and began to think of men as citizens of a 
 world-embracing community. Men were no longer Spartans, 
 or Athenians, or even Carthaginians, but human beings, all 
 brothers ; they could find their duties in their relations to indi- 
 vidual men and not to a government. But when these Stoics 
 came into close contact with the Romans, who were conquering 
 the world, Rome became in their eyes this world state of which 
 they had been dreaming, and men were again citizens under a 
 definite government. 
 
 Polybius almost certainly initiated this view. Rome is repre- 
 sented in his history as deservedly the ruler of the world; he 
 explains how this had come about, and he never tires of praising 
 Rome as he knew it. But Polybius was a politician and a soldier 
 rather than a philosopher; his work is a political history and 
 not a philosophical treatise on government. In describing the 
 Roman constitution, he is much more concerned with its prac- 
 tical excellencies than with its correspondence to a Stoic ideal. 
 But others must have treated of this; particularly Panaetius, 
 who, as Cicero says in the Republic, was in the habit of discuss- 
 ing political questions with Polybius and Scipio. Both the 
 purely philosophic parts of the book, therefore, and the concep- 
 tion of Rome as the philosopher's ideal state come from the 
 Stoics. We do not know, however, whether any book had been 
 written by Panaetius or by any one else from which Cicero 
 derived the plan of his work; very likely it was original with 
 
454 ON TEE STATE 
 
 him. He does not succeed in the Laws, and probably did not in 
 the Republic, in connecting the philosophical meditations very 
 intimately with the real Rome; a fault that is inherent in all 
 speculation; but, as shown above, he seems to have done better 
 in this respect than Polybius. 
 
 In spite of Cicero's dependence on Polybius, Panaetius, and 
 other Greeks, there must have been a great deal in the Republic 
 which came from Roman thought, largely from Cicero himself. 
 His very intention at one time of appearing in the dialogue 
 indicates this. Some differences of opinion between him and the 
 Greeks have already been pointed out. In the Laws — the first 
 book of which is dependent on Panaetius or Antiochus, a dis- 
 puted matter — Cicero is constantly expressing his own political 
 opinions; he dwells particularly on such matters as the tribune- 
 ship and the free embassies, in which he was interested, and 
 he refers to political events that he had himself observed or in 
 which he had taken part. 
 
 Cicero's borrowings from the Greeks supply, nevertheless, the 
 leading thoughts in the work ; its aim is largely to transfer, with 
 criticisms, Greek philosophical meditation. This aim makes the 
 treatise only incidentally, as it were, a statement of Cicero's 
 political ideal. That had been expressed in his own life, in the 
 orations after his consulship, particularly after the exile, and in 
 his autobiographical writings. This is a very important con- 
 sideration. Students have been inclined to take for granted that 
 Cicero lived in an atmosphere of books, that his eyes looked upon 
 real life without seeing it. 3 His political ideal is supposed to 
 have been Scipionic Rome, 4 toward which he was always reaching 
 
 3 How far this belief has led scholars is seen in Zielinski, Cicero m 
 Wandel etc., pp. 186-188, where Cicero's difference in attitude toward 
 Caesar and Pompey is attributed to his psychological idiosyneracies, with 
 very little thought of the difference between the two triumvirs. Zielinski, 
 189 ff., finds a reason for Cicero's alleged inability to see things as they are 
 in his rhetorical training, as though nearly all other prominent Eomans were 
 not similarly trained. 
 
 * Cauer maintains that Cicero 's political ideal was Scipionic Eome and 
 then he seems to criticise him for not upholding this ideal in practical 
 politics. 
 
SCIPI0N1C SOME NOT CICERO'S IDEAL 455 
 
 back. He had striven, and was later to strive, for the retention 
 of the republican form of government; but it has already been 
 shown that nobody, not even Caesar, was consciously planning 
 to destroy it. The march of history destroyed it. And it has 
 also been indicated how Cicero, in making a place in his ideal 
 for Pompey, took cognizance of the changing times, in a way 
 that the aristocrats did not — and the aristocrats included most 
 of the prominent politicians of the day. They wished to retain 
 the old oligarchical government as it had been legalized by 
 Sulla. 
 
 As for Scipio himself and the other representatives of 
 Scipionic Rome, though it is true that Cicero mentions them very 
 frequently, he refers quite as often to other Romans. Cato the 
 Elder was constantly on his lips; Cicero indeed makes Cato of 
 Utica notice this ; and the old Cato was no friend to the Hellen- 
 ized Rome of Scipio. Marius occurs in Cicero's writings at all 
 periods, and Marius was the least bookish of all Romans. 
 
 Indeed, Rome was much governed by tradition; the mos 
 maiorum was the strongest argument on every occasion. If we 
 still had the orations and other writings of Cicero's contempo- 
 raries, we should undoubtedly find as frequent references to the 
 old worthies in them as in Cicero. Cato, for one, was unceasingly 
 giving an impersonation of his ancient relative the Censor. In 
 his private letters, to be sure, especially to Atticus, Cicero very 
 often comments on current events, with references to ideas con- 
 tained in books he was reading or had himself written. But this 
 is no proof of a bookish blindness to actual life. As Atticus 
 was intimately conversant with Cicero's literary occupations, 
 nothing was more natural than a literary reference. 
 
 In publishing the Republic, therefore, Cicero did not utter a 
 vain cry for the return of Scipionic Rome, nor does it seem 
 likely that he tried in any way specifically either to influence or 
 to justify the political situation. The work made an appeal to 
 readers of different political persuasions. ' ' Everybody likes it, ' ' 
 
456 ON TEE STATE 
 
 wrote Caelius. In the years 54-51 B.C., when the work was 
 written, Cicero had no hope of a change to a more constitutional 
 government; and he had himself openly sided with Caesar and 
 Pompey. On the other hand, it seems very unlikely that by an 
 anachronism or by prophecy he made room for their new power 
 in his ideal state. If he had done so, it must have been in 
 connection with his account of those who guide the state, the 
 rectores. This account is extant only in fragments. In the year 
 49 b.c. Cicero writes to Atticus that Pompey is not acting in 
 accordance with the advice given by Scipio to such directors 
 of the state; and this might indicate that Scipio 's statements 
 were prophetic of the two surviving triumvirs. But the reference 
 is probably one of that general kind just mentioned. Indeed, 
 the rector or moderator of the state was any statesman who had 
 risen to great influence. Even in the Be Oratore the term is 
 used of several men, and in the Republic itself Scipio, Laelius, 
 and Philus are mentioned as unequaled examples of such states- 
 men. 
 
 In so far as the Republic contained an expression of Cicero's 
 
 practical ideal of politics, which is not the same as incidental 
 
 » 
 
 opinions about details, and in so far as Cicero did at all expect 
 it to influence actual conditions, this is to be sought in its enthusi- 
 asm for public service and in the high ideal of unselfishness that 
 is set before his fellow-citizens. This was the very thought that 
 had governed Cicero's political life. In the preface to the 
 Republic, speaking in the first person, he proclaims it the duty 
 of all who can to take part in political life — some of his words 
 have been quoted before — and at the end of the last book he gives 
 in the Dream of Scipio a lofty, though somewhat transcendental, 
 expression to the thought that not only is public service the 
 highest of human activities but it must be guided by virtue ; fame 
 and other earthly rewards are of little value. 
 
 Laelius had asked what were the rewards of unselfish states- 
 men if statues and triumphs were not to be considered, and Scipio 
 
EB DIED—SCIFIO DREAMED 457 
 
 replied by narrating his dream. Br of Pamphylia, incidentally, 
 had been represented by Plato as coming to life again after death, 
 a literary device much ridiculed by the materialistic Epicureans ; 
 Cicero, to avoid criticism, makes Scipio dream. The philosophic 
 thoughts in the dream are Greek; Stoicism combined with the 
 mystic attitude of Pythagoras and Plato; but through it all 
 shines Cicero's own character and his striving for philosophic 
 calm. 
 
 At the beginning of the Third Punic War, so Scipio tells, he 
 had come to Africa as a military tribune. He was about thirty- 
 six years old at that time. He was eager to visit Masinissa, the 
 aged king of Numidia, now eighty-nine, who had been a staunch 
 ally of the Roman people and a friend of Scipio 's family. The 
 old king embraced his Roman visitor, shed tears, and, raising 
 his eyes to heaven, gave thanks because he was still alive to 
 receive P. Cornelius Scipio. The very name of Scipio, he said, 
 seemed to inspire him with new life; never for a moment did 
 he forget the Elder Scipio, the adoptive grandfather of the 
 Younger. 
 
 During the day the two men conversed much, Masinissa 
 asking about Rome, and Scipio inquiring about Numidia. In the 
 evening, too, they talked, when the old king would speak of 
 nothing but the Elder Africanus, his deeds, and his conversation. 
 
 It was late when Scipio retired. The talk about the Elder 
 Scipio still filled his thoughts, so that, when he had fallen asleep, 
 he seemed to see his grandfather. His face was such as it was 
 represented in the portrait bust in the family atrium rather than 
 as Scipio himself remembered it. The dreamer recognized his 
 grandfather, but trembled with awe, at which the latter bade 
 him not to fear but to listen to his words. 
 
 From some high place in heaven, it seemed, the Elder Scipio 
 pointed to Carthage, visible below, and foretold that the grand- 
 son would conquer and destroy it. He would carry on other 
 great wars, but, returning to Rome, he would find the city 
 
458 ON THE STATE 
 
 plunged in civil strife because of Gracchus, the speaker's own 
 grandson. The Younger Scipio, the Elder continued, would 
 have been chosen dictator, had it not been his fate to die at 
 the hands of his own relatives. 
 
 At this moment in Scipio 's narrative Laelius uttered an 
 exclamation and the other friends groaned, but Scipio said: 
 ' ' Hush ! don 't wake me!" 
 
 ' ' Those who have struggled well for their country, ' ' pursued 
 the Elder Af ricanus, ' ' have a place reserved for them in heaven, 
 where they will enjoy unbroken happiness." 
 
 The young Africanus, terrified less by the thought of his own 
 death than by the treachery foretold about his relatives, asked 
 whether. his grandfather, his father, and others considered dead 
 were really alive, and Africanus replied that they were. True 
 life comes after the soul has shaken off the trammels of the body. 
 The existence on earth, though called life, is death. 
 
 And at the same moment Scipio 's own father, Paulus, was 
 seen to approach. Scipio burst into tears, but Paulus embraced 
 him and kissed him, telling him not to weep. 
 
 Exalted by the thought that real life was to be attained 
 through so-called death, Scipio expressed his desire to leave the 
 earth, but his father corrected him. Until God should free him 
 from his bodily chains, he could not proceed to the other life. 
 Men are placed on earth to care for it. Their souls are sparks 
 from heaven, but these can come to the abode of happiness only 
 after performing their mortal duties, the greatest of which is 
 service to their country. The final home of the souls is the 
 Milky Way ; and as Paulus said this, Scipio seemed to be among 
 the stars. He could see many great stars, the very existence of 
 which he had never suspected. The earth was farthest away, 
 deep down, and around it revolved the moon. The other stars 
 were far greater than the earth, so that when Scipio considered 
 its small size, he was grieved at the thought of the still smaller 
 extent of the Roman empire. 
 
FAME IS LIMITED 459 
 
 The grandfather urged him not to turn his eyes in regret 
 to the insignificant planet, but to contemplate the nine spheres, 
 one within the other. On the outside was the sphere of the 
 ether, the supreme god that encloses all. "Within it were the 
 spheres of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and 
 the Moon. Within the sphere of the Moon, so the Elder Scipio 
 explained, all things are mortal except the human soul. The 
 earth itself, the ninth sphere, lies immovable at the center; at 
 the bottom, as Scipio and his guides looked down. 
 
 Scipio then heard a sound of music, loud and yet sweet, more 
 harmonious than anything that had ever come to his ears before. 
 Afrieanus explained that it was caused by the movement of the 
 heavenly bodies he had named; it was the music of the spheres. 
 There are seven tones, for Mercury and Venus move with the 
 same note. These are the seven that earthly musicians have 
 copied, and have thus opened a way, as it were, by which they 
 can return to heaven. But it is so powerful that it overwhelms 
 the human sense of hearing, just as does the sound of the cat- 
 aracts of the Nile, or just as the sun is too strong for human eyes 
 to look upon. 
 
 Still the young Scipio turned his eyes toward the earth, and 
 the Elder Afrieanus asked him to consider its insignificance 
 when compared with the heavens. Reputation and fame among 
 men, he said, were not worthy of much struggle. Even on the 
 small earth men lived in widely distant places, with great 
 stretches of desert between them, these different sections having 
 no intercourse with one another. How could fame be gained by 
 them? And he directed his grandson's attention to the five 
 zones, of which only two are inhabited, and these two widely 
 separated. "The earth as the Romans know it," he said, "is 
 but a small island surrounded by the ocean, which men call 
 great, but which is very small. Roman fame can not go beyond 
 this little section of the earth." 
 
460 ON THE STATE 
 
 And how long do men speak of one of their great heroes? 
 The earth is periodically ravaged and life destroyed by floods 
 and conflagrations, so that human fame, far from being ever- 
 lasting, does not even endure for a long time. In earlier ages 
 better men lived than those now living, and yet they have been 
 forgotten. How can Scipio expect to be remembered among the 
 generations to come? Human memory is, indeed, even briefer 
 than a year, a real year. Men count a year by one revolution 
 of one single heavenly body, the sun, but a real year is counted 
 by the revolutions of all the heavenly bodies ; when these return 
 to the relative positions they have previously occupied, then 
 one year is completed. It can scarcely be stated how many 
 human generations such a year embraces. The time from the 
 death of Romulus to the moment when the Elder Africanus is 
 addressing his grandson, is not even a twentieth part of a great 
 year. 
 
 Remembering all this, Scipio should fix his eyes on the eternal 
 home and neither heed the talk of men nor place in them his 
 hope of reward. Virtue alone should be his guide ; let men talk 
 as they choose, for talk they will. But all their talk is limited 
 to a small region and is soon forgotten. 
 
 As the dreamer heard this, he avowed his purpose to strive 
 for the eternal reward, and the speaker encouraged him. "Re- 
 member that only your body is mortal. Your soul moves of 
 its own accord ; nothing from the outside gives it motion ; but as 
 movement is life, that which is in its very essence movement has 
 never been born and can never die. Your soul, being eternal, 
 is therefore a god; as God rules the world, so your soul rules 
 your body." 
 
 By good deeds, therefore, Scipio should hasten his way to 
 the heavenly regions ; and the best deeds are those done for one's 
 country. His time of waiting will be the shorter, the more his 
 soul can, as it were, rise above the body. The souls of those 
 who have been slaves to the body are destined after death to 
 
NO YEARNING FOR EARTHLY REWARDS 461 
 
 flit restlessly about the confines of the earth, and it is not until 
 after they have been tossed about for aeons that they at last 
 find their way to heaven. 
 
 The Elder Afrieanus then departed, and Scipio awoke. 
 
 Such was the Dream of Scipio, with which Cicero concluded 
 his chief political work. Knowing Cicero, we can easily imagine 
 that he had often gazed toward the stars in heaven during the 
 years when his beloved Rome was drifting into anarchy and 
 autocracy, and that he had tried to comfort himself, now that 
 his own unselfish attempts to restore peace and harmony had come 
 to nothing, with the thought that the greatest thing in the world 
 is love of one's country and a high-minded striving for its 
 happiness, with no yearning for fame, power, or other earthly 
 rewards. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IN CILICIA 
 I 
 
 Civil War Impending 
 
 Cicero was governor of Cilicia for a twelvemonth, beginning 
 on the last day of July in 51 b.c. He left Rome for his province 
 in May of that year and returned to Italy on the twenty-fifth 
 of November in the year 50 B.C. A law had been passed to 
 the effect that ex-praetors and ex-consuls should no longer 
 administer a province immediately after their year of office, but 
 after an interval of five years; and, in order that there might 
 be the necessary number of magistrates available for the prov- 
 inces, it was further ordered that ex-magistrates who had not 
 already held provincial governorships should do so now. This 
 law sent Cicero to Cicila. 
 
 As the provinces in Roman eyes existed for the sake of Rome 
 — a view that dominates even the Verrine orations, in which the 
 provincials had a more capable and a more devoted protector 
 than at any other trial in Rome known to us — the Romans went 
 to administer these dependencies for one or both of two reasons. 
 They sought wealth, by legal means or by extortion; or they 
 sought military renown, with which, in the case of a few, was 
 coupled military power to be used in the city. Neither of these 
 motives appealed to Cicero. Like several other political leaders 
 of praetorian or consular rank, he had not taken a province as 
 a reward after a year of office in Rome, and he had no desire 
 to do so now. His joys as well as his sorrows were centered in 
 the city; he gave it very much the same preference as French- 
 men give to Paris, and such seems to have been the attitude of 
 the great majority of Romans. 
 
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT A DUTY 463 
 
 At best, to the Romans who had no personal needs or 
 ambitions to be served, the government of a province was a duty 
 to be performed. It was an exacting duty, as Cicero knew, and 
 one not altogether easy for an honest man, since the conception 
 of the provinces as providential bonanzas both for those who 
 went to them and those who stayed at home placed the upright 
 governor between a Scylla and a Charybdis. All political 
 activity is a compromise, but the compromise thrust upon an 
 honest provincial administrator was exceptionally harassing ; the 
 provincials, whom he would protect, were strangers as a rule and 
 not supposed to have any rights, whereas the bloodhounds he 
 felt it his duty to keep away were Romans, usually his own 
 political associates and even personal friends. "Don't promise 
 any one anything from me," Cicero wrote to Atticus after he 
 had been in his province about half a year, "unless you are 
 certain that I can with good conscience grant the request. ' ' In 
 this little sentence lies the kernel of many of Cicero's provincial 
 tribulations, the greater because even Atticus, whom Cicero calls 
 his conscience, failed to take the lofty view that Cicero attributed 
 to him. 
 
 Cicero's natural disinclination to be away from Rome was 
 greatly strengthened by his desire to watch the political situation 
 in the city. The eve of the Civil "War had set in before he 
 departed; while he was away, the air grew darker and ever 
 darker. The future of Rome hung visibly in the balance as it 
 had not done since the year 63 B.C., perhaps not since the time 
 of Marius and Sulla. Cicero 's part in the turmoil, had he been 
 present, would probably have been largely that of a very anxious 
 spectator, anxious for peace in Rome, which had always been 
 his one object; but there might have been some opportunity 
 for counsels of moderation, for mediation even, between the con- 
 tending parties. It is well enough to say, as has been said, that 
 Cicero should have gone to his province with the eager desire 
 of a modern philanthropic statesman, bent on instituting reforms 
 
464 IN CILICIA 
 
 and ready to take a student's and investigator's interest in the 
 antiquities of his large province, but a far more important 
 matter was under way in Rome, the question of world war or 
 world peace, and Cicero was keenly aware of it. He was like 
 a general sent from the battle front to some insignificant locality 
 far behind the lines, where he had certain work to do that nor- 
 mally might have seemed rather interesting and important but 
 that had no connection with the issues at stake. 
 
 Caesar was now at the head of a powerful army in Gaul; 
 by princely gifts of many kinds to the people in the city and 
 by bribery of individuals on a larger scale than had perhaps 
 ever before been known, even in the forum, he was weaving a 
 net of exceedingly strong and fine threads around the blind, 
 buzzing politicians of Rome; he was also recognized as a man 
 of unbounded ambition ; and he had throughout his career been 
 an adversary of the traditional senatorial government. Now 
 that his term in Gaul was drawing to a close, it was clear to 
 the senate that either he must be checked once for all or 
 else supreme power would in no distant future be in his hands. 
 Some of the aristocrats were unselfishly patriotic, and Caesar 
 had no doubt already conceived some of the thoughts for Rome's 
 betterment that he later tried to carry out, or actually did carry 
 out, but both Caesar and the aristocrats were in the main fighting 
 a selfish battle for their political existence and for everything 
 of a social and financial nature dependent upon it. In the 
 means that they employed both sides were equally immoral. 
 
 The natural and only available champion of the senate was 
 Pompey. He was in Rome, he had an army in Spain, and in 
 the view of the aristocrats he was not only less dangerous than 
 Caesar but scarcely dangerous at all. A victory won through 
 Pompey would be a senatorial victory. There had been several 
 indications that Pompey was no longer in harmony with Caesar. 
 In 54 b.c. Julia had died. The daughter of Caesar and the wife 
 of Pompey, and devoted to them both, she had been a strong 
 
CAESAR THREATENED 465 
 
 bond between them, immeasurably stronger than could have been 
 expected from a political marriage. After her death Caesar 
 had proposed new family connections to Pompey. Caesar would 
 marry Pompey 's daughter — she was already betrothed to some 
 one else, but this was no obstacle — and Pompey was to take for 
 wife Caesar's grandnieee. Pompey had refused both connec- 
 tions, and in 52 b.c. had contracted another marriage. In 
 53 b.c, furthermore, Crassus had been killed; he had never 
 done anything to cement the friendship between Caesar and 
 Pompey, quite the contrary, but his death reduced the trium- 
 virate to a union of two, making discord more likely. And in 
 the year 52 b.c. Pompey as sole consul had not always taken 
 thought for Caesar, one instance of which will presently be 
 mentioned. 
 
 As always in Rome, the skirmishing that preceded the resort 
 to arms was carried on along supposedly constitutional lines, 
 each party claiming to demand only what was legal and pro- 
 fessing to be acting in defense of the republican form of gov- 
 ernment. Rome was filled with oratory, bribery, the making and 
 disregarding of laws, and with pretense of every kind. 
 
 Most probably, though the question can not be settled defi- 
 nitely, Caesar's government of Gaul would come to an end on 
 March 1, 49 b.c. As he had held the consulship in 59 b.c, he 
 could not hold it again until the year 48 B.C., an interval of ten 
 years between two similar magistracies being required by law. 
 Caesar's desire was to secure the consulship of 48 b.c. By re- 
 maining governor of Gaul until he became a consul, and then by 
 receiving a consular province at the end of his year in Rome, 
 he would be in office continuously. This was necessary, for if 
 he once became a private citizen, the aristocrats would immedi- 
 ately institute proceedings against him — for maladministration, 
 obviously — and would put an end to his political career, there 
 being no doubt that their influence in the city would procure a 
 verdict of guilty. His fate would thus be exile or worse. 
 
466 IN CILIC1A 
 
 His projected canvass for the consulship would take place in 
 49 B.C. If he could be a candidate while absent in Gaul, every- 
 thing would be well; if he should relinquish his command in 
 order to become a candidate, he would be a private citizen, and 
 his aristocratic opponents would see to it that he was not elected. 
 A prosecution, and Cato was ready with one, would debar Caesar 
 from candidacy. It was about this question of candidacy that 
 the political maneuvers turned. Sometimes the question was 
 directly in debate, at other times it took the form of recalling 
 Caesar from Gaul; Caesar was asked to give up his army and 
 Pompey was asked to give up his; but all through the eighteen 
 months of Cicero's absence from Rome the aim of the senate 
 and Pompey was to make Caesar a private citizen just long 
 enough to be able to undo him, while Caesar, seeing his danger 
 and unwilling to recede from his ambitions, intrigued to keep 
 his army and at the same to secure the consulship. 
 
 Though the factional game was played mostly during Cicero's 
 absence, it had begun before his departure. In 52 b.c. Pompey 
 had had a law passed requiring candidates for any magistracy 
 to present their names in person; a thing that had not always 
 been done, and it will be recalled that this very requirement had 
 been a part of the Rullan bill in 63 B.C., to exclude Pompey from 
 the proposed commission. Under pressure from Caesar's sup- 
 porters, Pompey later resorted to his usual tergiversation, and 
 is said to have inserted in the law a clause to the effect that 
 the requirement should not be valid in the case of those already 
 specifically exempted by the people, and such exemption had 
 actually been secured by Caesar shortly before Pompey 's con- 
 sulship; but the law, though thus crippled in reference to the 
 very man against whom it was aimed, nevertheless gave more 
 than a hint of the approaching struggle. 
 
 The very law that sent Cicero to Cicilia, also passed in 52 B.C., 
 may have been partly directed against Caesar, though its avowed 
 aim was to curb reckless politicians. It decreed that provinces 
 
QUINTUS AND POMPTINUS 467 
 
 should not be administered, as before, immediately after the 
 holding of the consulship or praetorship, but after an interval 
 of five years. Pompey himself was not bound by this law, for 
 at the end of 52 b.c. he became governor of the two Spains ; but 
 the law, if carried out so as to compel ex-magistrates to take 
 provinces if they had not done so before, might be made to work 
 against Caesar. A governor remained in his province until the 
 arrival of his successor; this law would find a successor to Caesar 
 in March of 49 b.c. or shortly thereafter. The law might have 
 looked farther still. If Caesar should succeed in obtaining the 
 consulship for 48 B.C., the end of this year would find him a 
 private citizen. All this did no harm to Caesar, but Cicero, as 
 one of the available ex-consuls, was chosen for Cilicia. 
 
 He took care to have the news of the city sent him regularly, 
 his chief correspondent being the young Caelius whom he had 
 defended against the onslaught of Clodia. Caelius wrote some 
 letters himself, and he had others written for Cicero's informa- 
 tion; he was a shrewd observer and not averse to' expressing his 
 opinion. As a large part of his correspondence is extant and as 
 Cicero himself wrote frequently, both to Atticus and to others, 
 including Caelius, our knowledge of Cicero's administration and 
 of contemporaneous events in the city is very considerable. 
 
 II 
 
 Cicero Impeeator 
 
 As governor of a province, Cicero was the commander in chief 
 of the forces detailed for its protection. His lieutenants of mili- 
 tary experience were his brother Quintus, who had fought with 
 great bravery and resourcefulness under Caesar in Gaul, and 
 C. Pomptinus. The latter had been one of the two praetors 
 in 63 b.c. who made the arrest at the Mulvian bridge. His 
 delay in leaving Rome on this occasion — apparently there was a 
 lady of charm in the capital — made Cicero's slow journey to 
 
468 IN CILICIA 
 
 the province even slower. How much Cicero owed to Quintus 
 and Pomptinus is only a matter of surmise, but his military 
 record, with or without them, as the case may be, seems to have 
 been distinctly good. He carried out successfully what had to 
 be done, and he took all possible precautions to ward off a danger 
 that threatened but did not materialize. 
 
 The threat came from the Parthians, who since their victory 
 over Crassus were hovering on the edge of the Roman empire. 
 In the year before Cicero's arrival, Cassius, formerly the lieu- 
 tenant of Crassus, had driven them out of Syria. Syria lay 
 between the Parthians and Cilicia, but even the latter was not 
 considered safe. There was every likelihood that the Parthians 
 would make another attempt in 51 B.C. Cicero's troops were 
 insufficient in number for extensive fighting, though he hoped 
 they would prove loyal. He saw to it that they were properly 
 equipped, and marched toward the eastern frontier, having made 
 arrangements for auxiliaries from client kings, especially his 
 personal friend Deiotarus, king of Galatia. The Parthians were 
 reported to have crossed the Euphrates, and it was known that 
 Cassius; acting for the governor of Syria, who had not arrived 
 in his province, was at Antioch with all his forces, awaiting the 
 enemy. Cicero moved farther toward the enemy, but learned 
 presently that Cassius had beaten them back. 
 
 It is probable that Cicero depreciated Cassius' services, and 
 we do not know whether his own preparations would have been 
 sufficient to protect his province. To Atticus he wrote that 
 Cassius took heart and the Parthians were frightened at Cicero's 
 approach, and that his name was great in Syria. 
 
 The danger, however, was not past. Most likely the Parthians 
 would return in 50 B.C., for an annual incursion was to be 
 expected. Cicero wrote officially to Rome for more troops, and 
 the situation seemed so serious that the question was raised of 
 sending either Caesar or Pompey against the enemy. Pompey 
 himself wrote to Cicero that he might take charge of the cam- 
 
PINDENISSUS 469 
 
 paign. But nothing was done ; the intrigues against Caesar were 
 too engrossing; and Rome was saved by the gods, for the Par- 
 thians were prevented by internal dissensions from making an 
 attack the following year. Bibulus, the governor of Syria, 
 received a thanksgiving, and asked for a triumph, on the strength 
 of the success of his lieutenant Cassius; and Cicero says that 
 Bibulus no more left his camp during his pretended military 
 activity in Syria than he had left his house in the year 59 B.C. ; 
 Bibulus having been Caesar's sequestered colleague of that year. 
 Cicero's anxiety about the Parthians was not relieved until the 
 summer of 50 B.C. was well advanced. Some conception of his 
 army may be gathered from his statement that in the year 50 b.c. 
 he expected 12,000 infantry and 2,000 horse from Deiotarus. 
 
 There was, however, some real fighting, though not of a very 
 serious or spectacular kind. It took place in the fall of 51 b.c, 
 and was directed against the rebellious mountaineers on the 
 border. Several fortified places were taken and many rebels 
 were captured or slain. Finally, after a siege of fifty-seven days, 
 the fortress of Pindenissus surrendered. Cicero sold the pris- 
 oners into slavery and took care that the proceeds were properly 
 recorded, the money being destined for Rome; the rest of the 
 booty he gave to his soldiers — all according to the accepted 
 traditions of Roman warfare. The soldiers hailed Cicero as 
 imperator. Pindenissus fell about the eighteenth of December, 
 and the army was thereupon placed in winter quarters, under 
 the command of Quintus. Cicero himself went away to attend 
 to his duties as a judge. 
 
 Prom a letter* to Atticus describing these and other events, 
 we learn that Cicero on one occasion made his camp at Issus, 
 where Darius had been defeated by Alexander, "quite a better 
 general than either you or I." "Who in the world are those 
 Pindenissitae of yours? I never heard their name," Atticus 
 is supposed to exclaim ; and Cicero admits that they are not on 
 
 lAtt. 5, 20. 
 
470 IN CILICIA 
 
 Atticus' map. And yet, adds Cicero, Pindenissus is the best 
 fortified town of the Eleutherocilices — which, possibly, may not 
 have enlightened Atticus. 
 
 Cicero's witty friend Paetus had written, 2 with much display 
 of military knowledge and with some advice. Replying, the 
 conqueror of the Eleutherocilices promises to follow his coun- 
 selor's directions, noting that Paetus has given much time to 
 the writings of Pyrrhus and Cineas on the military art. As for 
 himself, Cicero intends to have a little fleet near his coast, ships 
 being admittedly the best weapon against the Parthian cavalry; 
 he has also read Xenophon's Cyrapaedeia "to pieces," and is 
 following its precepts in every department of his administration. 
 
 But the victory over the rebels had also a political or orna- 
 mental side. Cicero was granted a thanksgiving, and expected 
 a triumph, which he probably would have obtained if the Civil 
 War had not filled Rome with other thoughts, for Caesar was 
 favorable. Cicero had not shaped his career toward riding to 
 the capitol in a golden chariot, but he seems to have deserved 
 such an honor as much as some others who secured it, or at least 
 claimed it; certainly more than Bibulus. 
 
 The thanksgiving was opposed by Cato, who had adopted the 
 singular view, and also expressed it in the senate, that Cicero 
 both as an administrator and as a military leader merited the 
 highest praise, but that there was no propriety in thanking the 
 gods for services to the state which were entirely due to Cicero. 
 Cato, incidentally, was a Stoic, and the Stoics believed in a 
 providence. The letter 3 in which Cato sets forth his views to 
 Cicero is a model in many respects ; even in its stiffness of style, 
 for every sentence ends most properly with a verb. A thanks- 
 giving, supplimtio, was usually the forerunner of a triumph; 
 but Cato expresses an opinion to the contrary, and observes, by 
 the way, that it is a much more glorious thing to have the senate 
 
 2 Fam. 9, 25. 
 s Fam. 15, 5. 
 
CATO ON A THANKSGIVING 471 
 
 praise a governor 's gentleness and unselfishness than to celebrate 
 & triumph because of military success. This also Cato had said 
 in the senate. He concludes with an explanation that his desire 
 to persuade Cicero of his good intentions toward the latter 
 has led him to write at great length — though the prim epistle 
 scarcely covers a small page, 
 
 Cicero's reply 4 to this remarkable missive is as clever as his 
 reply to Metellus Celer in 62 b.c. He begins with quoting a poet 
 to the effect that it is a joy to be praised by a man himself worthy 
 of praise, and he thereupon assures Cato of his appreciation. 
 But he did not write everything that was in his mind, as other 
 letters inform us. Cato voted for the thanksgiving decreed to 
 Bibulus, but that great warrior was an unswerving aristocrat and 
 Cato's son-in-law. It should not be forgotten, however, that 
 after the thanksgiving had been granted to Cicero, Cato showed 
 his personal interest in it by being one of the men who attended 
 when the resolution was drawn up formally. Caesar rejoiced 
 at Cato's clumsiness; the sight of conservatives at loggerheads 
 gave him no pain. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Between Scylla and Charybdis 
 
 Though Cicero made no attempt to hide his martial glories 
 under a bushel, he did conceal several measures which he took 
 for the alleviation of the provincials — a more damaging bit of 
 evidence against the usual Roman treatment of the provincials 
 than long lists of actual crimes. But the morality of his time 
 made it impossible for him invariably to follow his good impulses. 
 
 Appius Claudius, his predecessor in office, was the brother 
 of the tribune Clodius who had caused Cicero's exile. Appius 
 had behaved like a wild beast in the province, Cicero writes to 
 Atticus ; but Appius was a fellow augur of Cicero, his daughter 
 was married to the son of Pompey, and Pompey himself was 
 
 *Fam. 15, 6. 
 
472 IN CILICIA 
 
 expected to come out to Cilicia to fight against the Parthians. 
 Consideration on Cicero's part was therefore dictated both by 
 personal and political reasons and by thought for the provincials, 
 who were eager to stand well with Appius in case Pompey should 
 come to rule them. They sent embassies to Rome to praise 
 Appius. Cicero, also, though finding almost everything in 
 Appius' administration deserving of criticism when he writes 
 to Atticus, praised him publicly, and even in letters to Appius 
 himself he is not very outspoken, though at times he does not 
 conceal his opinion. Probably Appius was no worse than the 
 average governor. 
 
 It is not possible to give in detail very much of that which 
 Cicero did or failed to do for the provincials. In everything that 
 related to his own person, he was scurupulously unselfish, not 
 merely refraining from enriching himself in the ways thoroughlj' 
 approved by honest men, but also forbidding the grateful 
 provincials to spend money in his honor. He insisted that his 
 subordinates should follow his example ; they know, he wrote 
 to Atticus, on what conditions I have taken them with me; and 
 he took what care he could to prevent overbearing behavior 
 toward the provincials ; a moderation of temper he had strongly 
 urged upon Quintus when the latter governed Asia. The home 
 government allowed certain moneys for a governor's administra- 
 tion. Cicero did not use it all, and returned the remainder. 
 This was demanded by no code of honor, and his staff did not 
 approve of it, but they could not change his resolution. Never- 
 theless, he found himself at the end of the year richer by two 
 million two hundred thousand sesterces, which he deposited in 
 Ephesus, and lost during the Civil War. 5 
 
 He allowed the provincials to settle their controversies in 
 their own courts, which seemed to them like a gift of indepen- 
 dence. Scaevola, the former pontiff, had governed Asia forty- 
 two years before. Cicero followed his edict in several respects; 
 
 5 See above, p. 216, note 19. 
 
CAELIUS' PANTSEBS 473 
 
 in others he used the rules that guided the praetors in Rome. 
 He discovered, among many other sources of trouble, that even 
 the Greek magistrates had been robbing the communities. He 
 forced them to pay back their peculations of the last ten years, 
 promising immunity from further proceedings ; and in this way 
 he helped both the provincials and the farmers of taxes, for the 
 latter had begun to despair of getting back the money they had 
 invested. As he himself wrote, he took care that the Romans 
 doing business in the province should not practise extortion; 
 when the publicans made less money than they had expected, 
 Cicero consoled them with courtesies, so that "each one thought 
 he was Cicero's particular friend." 
 
 He was indeed steering between Scylla and Charybdis. 
 Caelius, his correspondent, was an aedile, and asked Cicero to 
 send him some panthers for his games in the city. The matter 
 is mentioned in several letters, and Caelius himself writes that 
 he had spoken of it almost every time he wrote. A Roman 
 knight, doing business in Cilicia, had sent ten panthers to Curio, 
 a brother politician, and Caelius thinks Cicero ought to be 
 ashamed if he can not do better than that. Obviously, Cicero 
 was unwilling to put unnecessary burdens on the provincials 
 and considered Caelius' request impudent. He promised to 
 employ the ordinary hunters for the purpose, if they could be 
 engaged ; Caelius thought a more general hunt should be made ; 
 and many months after the request was first made Cicero 
 explained that the scarcity of panthers in his province was 
 remarkable, and that, according to report, the few remaining 
 panthers, with very loud complaints to the effect that snares 
 were laid for nobody but them in Cicero's whole province, had 
 decided to migrate to Caria. Caelius also asked Cicero to impose 
 a tax on the provincials for the purpose of defraying the expenses 
 of Caelius' games, but to this Cicero replied that it was fitting 
 neither for him to comply with the request nor for Caelius to 
 make it. 
 
474 IN CILICIA 
 
 Cicero's province was large — nearly forty thousand square 
 miles on the mainland, it has been estimated, 6 and also the island 
 of Cyprus — so that he was much occupied in refusing impudent 
 demands and in checking attempts at extortion. Only one more 
 of his predicaments, the most famous, need be described ; but it 
 throws light in many directions. 
 
 When Cicero reached Bphesus, just before entering his 
 province, he was informed by ambassadors from Cyprus that a 
 certain Scaptius had been prefect in Cyprus under Appius, 
 Cicero 's predecessor, and in this capacity had commanded a troop 
 of horse, with which he had shut the senate of the town of 
 Salamis in the senate-house, because of debt, and had kept them 
 there until five died. Probably, though this is not stated, the 
 rest of the senate had complied with Scaptius ' demands. Cicero 
 at once ordered the horsemen out of the island. 
 
 Later Scaptius came to Cicero, who was then in camp, and, 
 introducing himself as the friend of Brutus, explained that 
 the people of Salamis owed him money. Cicero promised, for 
 Brutus' sake, that the debt should be paid. Scaptius expressed 
 his gratitude, and then asked to be made prefect. Cicero said 
 no ; he would not give a prefecture to any one doing business in 
 the province. He had already refused a similar request to repre- 
 sentatives both of Pompey and of others, even to his own friends, 
 and had secured approval of his action ; though apparently such 
 appointments were not unusual. Scaptius went away, ostensibly 
 satisfied with Cicero's promise that the debt should be collected. 
 
 Not long afterwards representatives from Salamis and also 
 Scaptius came to see Cicero, and he asked the islanders to pay 
 the debt. The Salaminians began to complain both about the 
 bond and about Scaptius ' harshness toward them. Cicero refused 
 to listen; he begged and urged the debtors, in consideration of 
 his kind rule over them, to settle the matter ; and finally he even 
 threatened. They said they were willing to pay, and that in 
 
 6 Tyrrell III, p. xv. 
 
SCAPTIUS 475 
 
 fact they were paying out of Cicero's pocket, for their usual 
 contribution to the governor was larger than their debt to 
 Scaptius. The amount was thereupon to be fixed. Cicero's edict 
 for the island had limited the interest on debt to twelve per 
 cent, which seems to have been considered very reasonable; 
 Scaptius wanted forty-eight. 
 
 The situation was this. The people of Salamis, who had been 
 made destitute by taxes and requisitions, had sent an embassy 
 to Rome in 56 b.c. to raise a loan. Foreigners were by law, 
 and for their own protection, forbidden to borrow money in 
 the capital, but the loan was nevertheless made by Scaptius 
 and another man. As the transaction was illegal, the lenders 
 insisted on forty-eight per cent. Decrees of the senate were 
 passed, at the instance of Brutus, the friend of the money-lenders, 
 which not only exempted the latter from punishment for their 
 illegal transaction but also made the debt recoverable by law. 
 
 Cicero, however, refused to let the forty-eight per cent stand. 
 Scaptius took him aside, expressed his willingness to comply, 
 but added that the Salaminians thought they owed two hundred 
 talents — roughly two hundred thousand dollars. They really 
 owed a little less, said Scaptius. Cicero then spoke to the 
 Salaminians, who said the debt was one hundred and six talents. 
 At this Scaptius began to shout, but when the papers were 
 produced, the sum was found to be one hundred and six. Scap- 
 tius then asked that the matter be dropped, thinking he would 
 have better success with the next governor of Cilicia. Cicero, 
 to please Brutus, granted this. The Salaminians then offered to 
 deposit their payment in a temple, an act that would cut off 
 further interest, being like depositing the money in a bank to 
 Scaptius' credit. This Cicero also did not allow; but he issued 
 a decree that the Salaminians had made a legal tender — in other 
 words, that their payment to Scaptius was good at law. Cicero 
 knew, however, that his decision might be reversed by his 
 successor. 
 
476 IN CILICIA 
 
 Then came the revelation. Brutus, and not Scaptius, was 
 the creditor. He wrote many letters to Cicero about the matter, 
 insistent to the point of insolence, but Cicero would make no 
 further concessions. Atticus took a hand, begging that Cicero 
 would give Scaptius a little troop, some fifty ; and at this Cicero 
 exclaims against his friend, who had constantly been praising 
 Cicero's honest administration. Cicero is ready to wash his 
 hands of the whole business ; but many letters were written about 
 it. To the modern reader it would seem that Cicero had favored 
 Brutus altogether too much, but his long explanations are to the 
 effect that if he has been too inconsiderate of Brutus' demands, 
 he can not help it. He is willing to submit the whole situation 
 to Cato, hopeful that the great Stoic, Brutus' uncle, will find 
 that he has not acted with harshness toward Brutus. 
 
 This was not the only financial transaction in which Brutus 
 insisted on his Roman rights. And yet Cicero can write to 
 Appius Claudius, his predecessor in office, that Brutus has for a 
 long time been the chief light among the Roman youth and 
 will soon, Cicero hopes, be the chief man in the state. Atticus 
 had written, and Cicero recalls his words in connection with the 
 activity of Scaptius, that if Cicero should gain nothing by his 
 administration beyond the good will of Brutus, he ought to con- 
 sider himself rewarded. "When Cicero left Rome, Atticus had 
 also, with tears of emotion, urged him to take care of his good 
 reputation. 
 
 IV 
 
 Going and Coming 
 
 A governor could not in his one year of office change the 
 provincial policy of the Romans; at most, he could only give 
 some relief, leaving many matters undecided. Cicero, at the 
 end of his twelvemonth, was glad to set out for Rome. He felt 
 that his administration had been unique in its honesty; he had 
 pleased his own conscience, as he writes to Atticus, even more 
 
HOUSE OF EPICUBUS 477 
 
 than he had ministered to his reputation for uprightness, though 
 the good reputation was also pleasant to contemplate. As he 
 turned toward the city, his spirits rose with the thought of soon 
 being back, and even after his arrival, though the hopelessness 
 of the political situation made him deeply anxious, his letters 
 reveal a surprising buoyancy. 
 
 His journey to Cilicia had taken between two and three 
 months, delayed mostly by the dilatoriness of his military aid 
 Pomptinus. Cicero and Quintus had stayed in Athens nearly 
 two weeks, giving much of their time to conversations with 
 philosophers. While there, he wrote one 7 of his best known 
 letters, addressed to the exiled politician C. Memmius, then at 
 Mitylene. The latter, it seems, had possession of a ruined house 
 that had belonged to Epicurus, which the head of the Epicureans 
 at Athens wished to acquire. Cicero therefore intercedes with 
 Memmius, prompted by his respect for Patro, the Epicurean 
 leader, and above all by his affection for Atticus, who belonged 
 to the sect. The remarkable circumstance about Cicero's letter, 
 carefully written, he said later, as he had also said about the 
 letter to Lucceius, is that he takes for granted that Memmius 
 can have no patience with the Epicureans as a sect, a sentiment 
 with which Cicero stands ready to agree, but that nevertheless 
 Memmius is in all probability the man to whom Lucretius, the 
 great poet of Epicureanism, dedicated his poem. 
 
 Cicero's journey home seems to have taken about one half 
 the time he had needed to reach Cilicia. While in Rhodes, he 
 learned of the death of Hortensius; the great orator had been 
 seriously ill for a considerable period. The news was a serious 
 blow to Cicero, as he wrote to Atticus; he had intended on his 
 return to Rome to live on the closest possible terms of intimacy 
 with his old rival. In 55 B.C., it will be recalled, he had written 
 in the Be Orator -e of Hortensius' greatness; in 46 B.C., in the 
 Brutus, he was to refer to the news about his death that he had 
 
 ■* Fam. 13, 1. 
 
478 IN CILICIA 
 
 just received. During the exile, Cicero had been bitterly con- 
 scious of Hortensius' artistocratic jealousy; but he had forgotten 
 his bitterness. The death of Hortensius was the first among those 
 of Cicero 's famous friends who were very nearly of his own age. 
 Cicero was then fifty-six years old. 
 
 Tiro, Cicero's secretary and favorite freedman, fell sick 
 during the journey home, and had to be left behind. Cicero 
 wrote letters to him at almost every place where he stopped and 
 later when he had landed in Italy. They are full of anxiety 
 about Tiro's health, overflowing with appreciation and affection. 
 Everything will be done for Tiro's comfort. The doctor shall 
 be paid, whatever his charges, so that Tiro is not to worry ; gifts 
 will be given to the doctor to secure greater care; no expense is 
 to be spared; a faithful slave is sent to wait on the sick man; 
 arrangements are made for his journey to Italy, though he must 
 not hurry; when he arrives in Brundisium, a horse and a mule 
 will be at his disposal. Lyso, at whose house Tiro was staying, 
 had given a large musical party, and Tiro had been present, 
 to the injury of his health; he must not again neglect himself 
 in order to be polite. Everybody in Cicero's family and among 
 his friends is looking forward to Tiro's arrival. When a messen- 
 ger came that might have brought word from Tiro and brought 
 none, Cicero was much troubled; presently another messenger 
 brought at note from Tiro, and Cicero was delighted that he was 
 well enough to write, but Tiro 's hand had trembled. 
 
 Cicero's son Marcus, now about fifteen, and Quintus' son, 
 a trifle older, had accompanied Cicero to the province, attended 
 by a Greek teacher, of whose instruction Cicero approved, while 
 the boys found him very short of temper. The two young 
 Ciceros visited king Deiotarus, and later, during the winter, they 
 studied under the supervision of Cicero. Tullia was at home. 
 She had been divorced from her second husband, if the marriage 
 had really taken place, 8 and now, during Cicero's absence, she 
 
 s See below, p. 524. 
 
ONE LETTER TO TERENTIA 479 
 
 married Dolabella, younger than herself. Cicero disapproved 
 of the marriage, for Dolabella was not noted for stability of 
 character, and at this particular time he was bringing proceed- 
 ings against Appius Claudius, Cicero's predecessor in Cilicia, 
 and Cicero did not wish to have the appearance of countenancing 
 such a lawsuit. 
 
 Terentia also was at home. There is one letter 9 addressed 
 to her extant from all the eighteen months, written in Athens 
 when Cicero was returning home. Apparently she had written 
 often, with reports about many things. Cicero is grateful, but 
 as Terentia feared that he had not received all her letters, it is 
 to be feared by us that he had not been careful about replying. 
 His one letter, however, is very affectionate and contains many 
 terms of endearment. He hopes that she will come as far on the 
 road to meet him as her uncertain health will allow ; and we 
 know that she was at Brundisium when he landed, on the twenty- 
 fifth day of November. She reached the city gate at the same 
 time as Cicero's ship came into the harbor, as he informed 
 Atticus, and they met in the market place; her first news was 
 political. 
 
 sFam. 14, 5. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 I 
 
 Civil War 
 
 The Civil War began on the twelfth or thirteenth of January, 
 49 b.c, when Caesar at the head of one legion crossed the Rubi- 
 con, which formed the boundary between his province and Italy. 
 It was illegal for a provincial governor to retain command of 
 his troops on Italian territory. War against Caesar, however, 
 had been declared by the senate, when, on the seventh of January, 
 they passed the ' ' last decree. ' ' 
 
 A few events preceding these two should be mentioned, since 
 they lead rather directly to the final action through a long period 
 filled with illegalities, mutual recrimination, and specious pro- 
 posals. In May, 50 b.c, during a debate about the threatened 
 invasion of Syria by the Parthians, the senate decreed that Caesar 
 and Pompey should each give a legion for service in the East. 
 Pompey had previously lent Caesar one of his legions; this he 
 now asked back. Caesar returned it, and also, in obedience to 
 the senatorial decree, sent one of his own. Both legions had thus 
 been taken actually from Caesar's army, and both were stationed 
 at Capua and were never sent to Syria; but Caesar had wisely 
 given generous gifts to the officers and soldiers. 
 
 In September of the same year, after the complete conquest 
 of Gaul, Caesar held a military review in the northwestern part 
 of his province. Here he determined to send one of his legions, 
 the thirteenth, to Cisalpine Gaul to take the place of the one 
 released for service in Syria. This was a proper and natural 
 arrangement, though also wise'. By the time the report had 
 reached Rome, rumor had increased the single legion to four. 
 
WAS BEGUN 481 
 
 This would be practically equivalent to a march across the Alps 
 with a large army, and would contain a serious threat of war. 
 In October, therefore, the consul Marcellus, who was a deter- 
 mined opponent of Caesar, moved in the senate to have Caesar 
 declared a public enemy. It was a violent meeting. The out- 
 come, since the senate did not pass Marcellus' motion, was that 
 the latter, sword in hand, rushed out of the city to Pompey, and, 
 on his own authority and that of the two consuls-elect, ordered 
 the former triumvir to take command of the two legions at 
 Capua and also to levy more troops. Pompey, though without 
 enthusiasm, accepted the task, and began to make arrangements 
 for the new levy. 
 
 "War had thus almost begun before the end of the year. On 
 the first of January the senate, according to custom, met to con- 
 sider matters of general policy. This meeting lasted until the 
 seventh; suspended, however, on the third and fourth, which 
 were comitial days. Caesar's latest offer, presented during the 
 meeting, was to the effect that he would lay down his command 
 if Pompey would do the same; otherwise, he would come at 
 once and defend his country and himself. This was a declaration 
 of war; and the senate, as noted above, passed the "last decree." 
 The tribunes Marcus Antonius — Mark Antony — and Cassius, who 
 had been working for Caesar, fled to their leader; thus inci- 
 dentally giving him an opportunity of maintaining that he was 
 defending the constitution in defending them, for they, it seems, 
 had been declared public enemies. With the tribunes went 
 Caelius and also Curio, a young friend of Cicero, who as tribune 
 of the preceding year had been extraordinarily active. Caesar 
 had bought his services. 
 
 After crossing the Rubicon, Caesar on the thirteenth of 
 January seized Ariminum, an important town on the road along 
 the eastern coast of Italy. Within the next few days he occupied 
 three other towns, all on the coast, and also despatched Mark 
 Antony westward across the mountains to Arretium, a strong 
 
482 UNDEB CAESAB 
 
 fortress in eastern Etruria, and Curio to Ignuvium, in central 
 Umbria. His success in these undertakings gave him a strong 
 foothold in northern Italy and also put him in possession of 
 roads leading to Rome. 
 
 When the news of these movements reached the city, the 
 senate met in consternation. A ttirrndtus, or state of war in 
 Italy, was declared; and Pompey, announcing that he would be 
 unable to hold Rome, called upon the magistrates and the senators 
 to follow him southward. This was on the seventeenth of Janu- 
 ary. The consuls, many of the other magistrates, a majority of 
 the senators, and numerous rich knights followed Pompey 's 
 advice. 
 
 Pompey sent two ambassadors to Caesar, mainly, it seems, to 
 inform him of the declaration of the tumultiis and to explain that 
 Pompey was acting for the good of the country and not from 
 personal enmity against Caesar. Apparently the embassy was 
 entrusted with no definite terms; their mission was to indulge 
 in moral suasion. Caesar sent back the ambassadors with a pro- 
 posal. Pompey should go to Spain, where of course he belonged 
 as governor ; the armies on both sides were to be disbanded, and 
 the levies in Italy to be discontinued; Caesar would then give 
 up his two Gallic provinces and come to Rome to stand for the 
 consulship. Most important of all, Caesar wished all these mat- 
 ters to be arranged in detail at a conference with Pompey. Both 
 Caesar and the aristocrats knew from long experience how such 
 a conference would result. On the twenty-fourth of January 
 the ambassadors reached Pompey, and a written message was at 
 once sent back to Caesar. His terms would be accepted if he 
 would first evacuate the towns in Italy and return to his province. 
 This would have left things very much as they had been before 
 the outbreak of hostilities. Pompey 's proposal was delivered to 
 Caesar on the twenty-eighth, but he was unwilling to relinquish 
 his military advantages in return for such an indefinite promise. 
 The terms were rejected, and the war went on. 
 
CICESO LEAVES HOME 483 
 
 During the days consumed in these fruitless negotiations 
 Caesar had further strengthened his position in the north ; more 
 towns had been taken and men had deserted to him. Presently 
 he left the coast, and on the fourteenth of February he was 
 before Corfinium. Here, almost due east from Rome but two- 
 thirds of the distance toward the eastern coast, nearly all of 
 Pompey's forces in this part of Italy were gathered under 
 Domitius, a determined opponent to Caesar and the man who 
 had been appointed to succeed him in Gaul. Pompey was at 
 Luceria, in northern Apulia. Domitius wrote to Pompey to come 
 north, to assist him against Caesar ; Pompey wrote for Domitius 
 to leave Corfinium, and on the seventeenth he ordered his own 
 troops to retreat to Brundisium, for an eventual embarking for 
 Greece. Corfinium surrendered on the twentieth. Caesar dis- 
 missed Domitius and the other senators, and the soldiers enlisted 
 in his army. 
 
 Cicero's letters are almost daily from the eighteenth of 
 January. He had landed at Brundisium on the twenty-fifth of 
 November the preceding year; on the fourth of January he 
 arrived in the vicinity of Rome. As he retained his imperium, 
 in expectation of a triumph, he was able to avoid taking part in 
 the momentous meeting of the senate that declared martial law. 
 In connection with this decree Italy had been divided into mili- 
 tary districts, for the prosecution of the war, and Cicero had 
 been assigned to Capua. He soon offered his resignation; the 
 garrison was quite insufficient for defending so important a 
 place, and if Cicero once took part in the war, he would be unable 
 afterwards to mediate for peace. Apparently the senate accepted 
 his resignation, but Pompey asked Cicero to have general charge 
 of Campania and the coast. 
 
 On January the seventeenth Pompey left Rome. On the next 
 day, before it was light, Cicero went away, secretly so as to 
 cause no talk; his lictors would be conspicuous, as he writes to 
 Atticus. He had no plans; everything seemed uncertain. If 
 
484 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 Pompey should decide to remain in Italy, all his partisans would 
 join him ; if not, then the future would have to decide. On the 
 nineteenth, going south, Cicero again writes to Atticus. Cicero 
 has learned that Labienus has abandoned Caesar. Is Caesar to 
 be considered a Roman general or a foreign invader like Han- 
 nibal? Again, no plans and no certainty about Pompey. 
 
 Atticus, in Rome, fears that Caesar will prove to be a tyrant 
 of the worst sort, a Phalaris. 
 
 Cicero reached his villa at Pormiae about the twentieth. On 
 the following day he had an interview with Lentulus, one of 
 the consuls, and also with another man, and on the twenty-second 
 he writes to Atticus. Cicero fears that Caesar will be a Phalaris ; 
 the lictors are a nuisance. What ought Cicero to do? Shall he 
 join the Pompeian side openly? He is not afraid of the danger, 
 but he is overcome with grief, for everything is being misman- 
 aged and Pompey 's plans are uncertain. Ought Cicero to put 
 off a decision and try to remain on good terms with both sides? 
 Even if his duty as a citizen did not deter him from this, his 
 duty as a friend to Pompey would do so. But the thought of 
 his children makes him hesitate. On the same day he wrote 
 to his family to leave Rome while they could. 
 
 He arrived in Minturnae that evening, and on the next day 
 he writes to Atticus. Labienus is a hero; his desertion, if good 
 for nothing else, will give Caesar pain; there is fear and con- 
 fusion everywhere ; men are unwilling to enlist. Should the two 
 young Ciceros be sent to Greece for safety ? Tullia and Terentia, 
 at Rome, will be in danger if the barbarians, Caesar's Gallic 
 soldiers, come to the city. And on the same day, also to Atticus: 
 Cicero has heard of Caesar's terms, and finds them absurd. To 
 Terentia and Tullia, also on the twenty-third : let them determine 
 their future action by conditions in Rome ; find out what other 
 ladies will do ; there is fear that if they stay too long they may 
 be unable to get away. 
 
CAESAS A PHALAEIS? 485 
 
 On the twenty-sixth and the twenty-seventh Cicero was in 
 Capua, and wrote to Atticus and to Tiro. There was a general 
 desire, so Cicero wrote to Atticus, that Caesar might be serious 
 in the terms he had offered ; even Cato was ready to accept them, 
 only the irreconcilable Pavonius opposing. Cato was unwilling 
 to go to Sicily, which was to be held against Caesar, and wanted 
 to tte in Eome when the discussion of Caesar's terms should take 
 place. Cicero feared that Cato might obstruct action. Most of 
 the senators are afraid that Caesar is negotiating merely to gain 
 time and to induce the Pompeians to discontinue their prepara- 
 tions for war. 
 
 To Tiro Cicero explains the political situation, and urges him 
 to take good care of his health; Cicero has recommended Tiro's 
 comfort to a certain Varro, not the great scholar, who is devoted 
 both to Cicero and to Tiro himself. 
 
 On the twenty-eighth of January Cicero started back toward 
 Formiae, reaching Cales in the evening, when he wrote to Atticus. 
 Pompey, we learn, is saying that in a few days he will have 
 a strong army, and that if Caesar goes into Picenum, the Pom- 
 peians may all return to Rome soon. Labienus has raised 
 Pompey 's courage by his report that Caesar's forces are very 
 weak. 
 
 On the second of February Cicero writes to Atticus that he 
 is still waiting to hear about Caesar's reply to Pompey 's terms; 
 Caesar "is a madman if he does not accept, but Caesar is going 
 on with his preparations. Trebatius has asked Cicero, from 
 Caesar, to be in Rome when Caesar arrives, but Cicero replied 
 that he did not think he could do it. Cicero fears that there 
 will be war throughout Italy. 
 
 On the same day Cicero's family and also Quintus with his 
 family arrived in Formiae, so that Cicero is in good spirits when 
 he next writes to Atticus, before daybreak on the following morn- 
 ing. He is pleased that people in Rome have approved of Pom- 
 pey's terms to Caesar; Caesar will be ruined if he rejects them. 
 
486 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 Which would Cicero prefer? He could tell Atticus if he knew 
 what forces the Pompeians really have at their command. Caesar 
 is desperate to go on with military preparations while actually 
 engaged in negotiations. Cicero is willing to yield to circum- 
 stances and accompany Pompey to Spain; that would be the 
 lesser evil, considering that Caesar was so foolishly prevented 
 from becoming a consular candidate. But on the same day Cicero 
 inferred from a letter from Curio that Caesar would not accept 
 Pompey 's terms, and he was persuaded that the war would con- 
 tinue, with no hope of success for the aristocrats. Cicero will 
 start for Capua to learn something about Pompey 's plans. 
 
 In this way the letters continue day after day, and week after 
 week. "When the Pompeians forced matters with Caesar to a 
 serious issue, they had not been prepared for war and they had 
 utterly misjudged the situation. The inhabitants of Italy had 
 no interest in maintaining the senatorial power against Caesar, 
 who had always, though perhaps mostly for personal reasons, 
 been a champion of the so-called popular party. Eecruiting was 
 not enthusiastic, and the officers in charge of it were often in fear 
 that their active opponent, with his forced marches, would be 
 upon them while they were actually enrolling their lukewarm 
 soldiers. The two legions that had been niched from Caesar, 
 who were the only trained soldiers on the aristocratic side, were 
 not to be depended upon. If placed face to face with their old 
 comrades in Gaul, they might decide, it was feared, that there 
 was no good reason for bloodshed. 
 
 Caesar's power was underestimated. Labienus, by his deser- 
 tion, did no good, and possibly considerable harm, to his new 
 allies. He talked about Caesar's weakness, and yet he ought to 
 have known, and perhaps did know, that Caesar's legions, of 
 which more presently arrived from Gaul, were thoroughly de- 
 voted to their considerate and brave commander. And Caesar, 
 perhaps the most important circumstance of all, was the sole 
 leader on his side; it was his war; all who had been with him 
 
POMPEY FLEES 487 
 
 from the beginning or who had joined him since his arrival 
 in Italy were his subordinates. 
 
 On the aristocratic side it was different. It was not Pompey 's 
 war. The several aristocrats considered themselves free to act 
 according to their own judgment. Domitius in Corfinium had 
 ordered Pompey about and had refused to obey the latter 's 
 command, although Pompey was the military leader; and this 
 division of authority was to last until the end of the war. No 
 doubt Pompey did the best he could. He had been sickly of 
 late and perhaps he was not as good a general as of old, for it 
 was now a long time since he had been in a campaign, but his 
 difficulties were insuperable. He had to retreat. Perhaps 
 Cicero's criticisms should be forgiven, for his information was 
 often both late and unreliable, as has been seen; it was natural 
 that discouragement and then almost contempt for Pompe}' 
 should lay hold of Cicero, who had not wanted the war and who 
 saw that the aristocrats were not prepared. But Pompey, so 
 far as can be judged, could not have acted differently. 
 
 He fell back on Brundisium. He had a fleet, which Caesar 
 lacked, and he was strong, presumably, in the eastern part of 
 the empire, in which he had won his great victories and created 
 new province's. Caesar, having taken Corfinium, hastened 
 toward Brundisium. He arrived on the ninth of March, and 
 immediately began negotiations, renewing his request for a 
 personal interview. The negotiations lasted in vain until the 
 thirteenth, and on that day Caesar began the siege. Pompey 
 had replied that he could not negotiate because the consuls had 
 already gone to Greece; indeed, they and the bulk of the army 
 had sailed. Caesar tried to block the harbor mouth, but was 
 unsuccessful. Pompey went away on the fifteenth of March, 
 having burned the ships he did not need, and Caesar entered 
 Brundisium on the next day. He had mastered Italy in five 
 weeks, but Pompey and a republican army were in Greece, and 
 there was also a Pompeian army in Spain. The war, after all, 
 had only begun. 
 
488 UNDEB CAESAS 
 
 With Pompey's departure from Italy the war might well seem 
 desperate to Cicero. Up to this time Caesar's frequent attempts 
 at negotiation had given good hope of a peaceful settlement. 
 No doubt Caesar wanted peace, provided he could have it with 
 safety to himself and with the practical certainty of election 
 to the consulship. Pew men could have been more suitable for 
 mediation than Cicero, and the latter had acted from a true 
 instinct when he abstained from seriously committing himself 
 to the Pompeian side. With the going of Pompey and the 
 consuls, the hopes for peace became more distant, but they did 
 not altogether fade. 
 
 Even before returning from Cilicia, Cicero had been con- 
 vinced that in case of war his duty lay with Pompey, and in his 
 letters of that period he often speaks of his desire to repay his 
 debt to Caesar, since it would be unbecoming to owe money to a 
 political opponent. Caesar was a more charming and far more 
 considerate man than his rival, and his personality had a great 
 many more points of pleasant contact with that of Cicero than 
 had Pompey's unintellectual and unappreciative ponderosity; 
 but, as Cicero himself wrote to Attieus, he had become the friend 
 of Caesar for Pompey's sake — though possibly also for his own 
 sake, as we have seen. Pompey, however, had been Cicero's 
 hero, somewhat clouded on occasion, since the year 66 B.C., at 
 the time of the Manilian law, and it was Pompey who, though 
 responsible for the exile, had made possible the return. Eoman 
 politics being intensely personal, Cicero was required both by 
 his own conscience and by popular opinion to side with his old 
 idol. 
 
 The idol and his supporters had of late given little reason for 
 eager adherence. Before their departure, many aristocrats had 
 talked loudly about bloody reprisals and conscriptions after they 
 should have conquered; they had deserted Italy in five weeks; 
 and now, when they were abroad but had the fleet at their dis- 
 
CAESAR APPEALS TO CICERO 489 
 
 posal, there was a fear in Italy that they would cut off the grain 
 ships and starve their own country into submission. Caesar, on 
 the other hand, had throughout acted with surprising leniency 
 and gentleness. He did not say that those who were not with 
 him were against him, as did the aristocrats; he was satisfied 
 with a benevolent neutrality on the part of those who could not 
 whole-heartedly support him. And he was victorious. 
 
 Though the war was at bottom a personal contest and though 
 politics had an avowedly personal complexion, it was nevertheless 
 true that Caesar could readily be looked upon as the aggressor. 
 The constitutional government of Rome centered in the senate; 
 opposition to the senate was rebellion. Cicero, four years later, 
 in speaking for king Deiotarus, could say openly that the Gala- 
 tian king 's championship of the Pompeian cause was pardonable ; 
 to him, justice had properly appeared to be on the side of Pom- 
 pey. Cicero could say this before Caesar, who had for a long 
 time been the ruler of Rome, and he could also publish the 
 oration. In March of 49 B.C., after the flight of the aristocrats, 
 Caesar's position was even more than later in need of moral 
 sanction. Most men of the great names were opposed to him; 
 even the consuls were among the fugitives. 
 
 This situation caused Caesar to make repeated efforts to win 
 Cicero, if not to active approval, at least to neutrality. Not 
 merely Trebatius but other Caesarians had interviews with 
 Cicero for this purpose, or wrote letters, and Caesar himself 
 communicated directly with him. Personal liking for Cicero 
 may now, as before, have contributed to Caesar's attitude, but 
 this was no time for a yielding to personal feelings. Caesar was 
 fighting the great battle of his life, diplomatically as well as with 
 the sword. What Cicero had said of himself in connection with 
 the Catilinarians was now true of Caesar: as victor, he would 
 have to live with the conquered. He was therefore gentle by 
 policy and not merely by nature, and he saw that the approval 
 of Cicero would be a great moral asset. 
 
490 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 Of Cicero during this period of daily anxiety and daily letters 
 only a brief glimpse need be given. On the eleventh of March 
 Atticus seems to have suggested, or Cicero himself had come to 
 the conclusion, that he should have an interview with Caesar. 
 The time was near for putting the man 's toga on his son Marcus, 
 and Cicero had thought of hiding himself, as he expresses it, 
 in Arpinum, the ceremony of the toga virilis serving as an excuse ; 
 but he now decided, at Atticus' advice, to remain at Formiae. 
 That place would be the most suitable for an interview with 
 Caesar. On the same day he had word to the effect that Pompey 
 had left Italy. The rumor was false, but Cicero, believing it, 
 writes : ' ; I have been anxious before, now I am distraught with 
 grief." 
 
 On the next day, and that is the more significant letter, 1 
 he writes to Atticus that, in order not entirely to yield to his 
 grief, he is practising declamation; his subjects are general 
 propositions, theses, and he is speaking "both for and against," 
 in Greek and in Latin; and he finds some consolation in it. He 
 gives in Greek several subjects that he is thus debating ; they are 
 connected with the thoughts constantly in his mind, he says, so 
 that, while they relieve his anxiety, they yet do not take him 
 entirely away from the political situation. Should a man remain 
 in his country when it is governed by an autocrat? While it 
 is governed by an autocrat, should we strive in every way to 
 destroy the autocracy, even if this should bring great danger to 
 the state, or should we be on our guard against him who is trying 
 to overthrow the autocrat, lest this second man in his turn gain 
 supreme power? And other questions of the same kind; the 
 last one referring directly to Cicero himself : If a man has done 
 great services to his country, which have been repaid with intoler- 
 able evils and with envy, ought he again to expose himself to 
 danger for his country, or should he be permitted to think of 
 himself and his dear ones, ceasing to struggle against those in 
 power ? 
 
 iAtt. 9, 4. 
 
INTERVIEW WITH CAESAM 491 
 
 There is something infinitely sad, and to modern feelings also 
 strange, in the picture of Cicero at fifty-seven loudly declaiming 
 in order to silence his harassing thoughts. But he was, after 
 all, somewhat like the man who seeks relief in the routine of a 
 busy office, and still more like the musician who plays his old 
 pieces, noisily and restlessly, to avoid thought. 
 
 After taking Brundisium, Caesar had set out for Rome, and 
 on the twenty-eighth of March he saw Cicero at Formiae. This 
 was the third of Cicero's four great days, though like other 
 great days it was by no means free from pain. The first had 
 been the fifth of December in 63 B.C., when he took the responsi- 
 bility for the execution of the Catilinarians ; on the next, 2 in 
 the year 60 B.C., had occurred his interview with Balbus, when 
 Cicero refused to join the triumvirate. The fourth was to come 
 five years later. 
 
 Cicero describes his interview with Caesar in a letter of the 
 next day to Atticus. 3 He had been anxious during the preceding 
 weeks, as his letters indicate, but now he is firm. "I followed 
 your advice in both respects, ' ' he writes. ' ' My words were such 
 as to gain Caesar's respect rather than his gratitude, and I 
 persevered in my refusal to go to Rome. You and I had made 
 a mistake in thinking he would be easy to deal with ; he was quite 
 the contrary. He said that my resolve involved a condemnation 
 of him, that others would be less willing to attend the senate if 
 I did not come. I replied that their situation was different from 
 mine." 
 
 "We talked for a long time, and then he said: 'Come then 
 and urge peace.' 'According to my own conviction?' To which, 
 Caesar: 'Should I prescribe to you?' And I: 'Then I shall 
 move in the senate that they disapprove of your going to Spain ' 
 — to fight the Pompeians — 'and of taking an army to Greece, 
 
 2 Tyrrell IV", p. xxxv, hints at Sept. 4, 57 B.C., when Cicero arrived in 
 Bome from exile, as Cicero 's second great day. 
 3Att. 9, 18. 
 
492 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 and I shall express great sympathy with Pompey. ' 'I do not 
 want you to say that.' 'I thought so,' I returned, 'and that 
 is my reason for not wishing to attend the meeting. I must 
 either speak in this way, and utter many things about which I 
 could not keep silent, or else I cannot be present. ' 
 
 "The upshot was that Caesar, as if trying to find a way of 
 ending the interview, asked me to think the matter over. To this 
 I could not say no. And so we parted. His last remark was 
 to the effect that if he were not to avail himself of my counsels, 
 he would use the counsels of those he could, and that he would 
 stoop to anything. I am afraid he is not pleased with me, but 
 I am pleased with myself, a thing I have not been for many 
 a day." 
 
 Cicero did not go to Rome, and Caesar himself stayed there 
 only a few days. He held a meeting of the senate, asking them 
 to cooperate with him, and when they showed a recalcitrant 
 spirit, he exclaimed that if he could not manage things with 
 them, he would do so without them. He proposed to enter on 
 negotiations with Pompey, but no envoys could be found. The 
 senate did grant him the reserve fund in the treasury ; a tribune, 
 however, offered resistance, and Caesar had to take the money 
 by force. Thereupon he hastened away, by land, to meet the 
 Pompeian army in Spain. 
 
 Every possible effort was made, from friendly as well as 
 political motives, to restrain Cicero from joining Pompey. Caesar 
 himself wrote to Cicero that he appreciated his reasons for not 
 coming to the city; hinting, however, that he was acting more 
 generously toward Cicero than toward certain others ; and when 
 he was on his way to Spain, he wrote again to Cicero, asking 
 him to stay in Italy. Antony, not a friend to Cicero but a 
 devoted Caesarian, and during Caesar's absence in general 
 charge of Italy, asked Cicero by letter not to go away ; he ought 
 to think of his daughter and his son-in-law. And later, on the 
 third of May, he informed Trebatius, who already had attempted 
 
CICEBO GOES TO DYRBHACHIUM 493 
 
 to win Cicero for Caesar's cause, that Caesar had left orders 
 about Cicero. This meant that Cicero was to be prevented from 
 going away. 
 
 Curio, to show Cicero the hopeless position of the Pompeians, 
 wrote that Cato, who had been holding Sicily, or intending to 
 hold it, had sailed from Syracuse on the last of April. Caelius 
 had formerly advised Cicero to adopt the cause of Caesar, as 
 the safest; and he had done so himself. Now he urged Cicero 
 at least to put off a decision until news came of the fighting in 
 Spain. Young Caesarians, like the son of Hortensius, visited 
 Cicero, ostensibly to pay their respects, in reality perhaps to 
 spy on him. 
 
 Atticus had been charmed with Cicero 's firmness at the inter- 
 view of March twenty-eighth, but he had also made a formal 
 call on Caesar during the latter 's brief stay in Rome ; for Atticus 
 was a consummate neutral. Now he inquired of Balbus whether 
 Cicero might retire to Malta, but Balbus did not think this 
 proper. Quintus, Cicero's nephew, had displayed Caesarian 
 sympathies by having an interview with Caesar in Rome, which 
 prostrated his father with grief and caused Cicero himself to 
 give the young man a piece of his mind. Tullia begged her 
 father to wait until the end of the Spanish campaign; and so 
 did Terentia, weeping. 
 
 Cicero, however, remained firm to what he considered his 
 duty both to Pompey and to his country ; and on the seventh of 
 June he sailed from the harbor of Caieta, near Pormiae, accom- 
 panied by Quintus and the two boys. 
 
 But there had been no need for Cicero to give anxious thought 
 to his duty or to imperil his position, and perhaps even his life, 
 in the fulfilment of it. Though the Pompeians had a kind of 
 abstract justice on their side, they were chiefly concerned with 
 the details of the war and their own prospects after it. One of 
 the most patriotic and unselfish among them was Cato, and yet, 
 when Cicero arrived in Dyrrhachium, it was Cato who took him 
 
494 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 aside to explain, with his usual candor, that Cicero would have 
 done better to remain in Italy, so that he could have mediated 
 between Caesar and the Pompeians. Plutarch, who tells the 
 story, says that Cicero was welcomed by the rest, but that Pom- 
 pey had no task for him — a statement that is amply borne out 
 by Cicero's letters. 
 
 It was not a happy time. Except for Pompey and a few 
 others, Cicero says two years later, the leaders indulged mostly 
 in threats against the Caesarians, and the forces were neither 
 numerous nor eager for war. Cicero found relief in witticisms, 
 but they were not well received. "Where is your son-in-law?" 
 asked Pompey, referring to the Caesarian Dolabella. "With 
 your father-in-law," replied Cicero. Pompey wished Cicero 
 might go over to the enemy. Cicero was not well; he worried 
 about the financial position of his family in Rome, and had 
 fears that his house on the Palatine might be confiscated. 
 
 He had arrived in Dyrrhachium in the autumn or early 
 winter of 49 B.C., having first spent some time on Atticus' estate 
 in Bpirus; on the ninth of August in the following year was 
 fought the battle af Pharsalia. Cicero, Varro, Cato, and a 
 number of others had been left at Dyrrhachium; Plutarch 
 explaining that Cicero was prevented by sickness from fighting 
 at Pharsalus, an explanation that carries little conviction. After 
 the battle, Pompey fled to the Bast ; and the Pompeians went to 
 Corcyra, where they held a general council. At this Gnaeus 
 Pompey, the son of the triumvir, threatened Cicero because the 
 latter proposed surrender; he even came near killing him, it 
 seems, but was prevented by Cato. Cicero, as highest in rank, 
 had been asked by Cato to take the chief command, but had 
 refused. Ultimately most of the Pompeians went to Africa. 
 Cicero and Quintus went first to Patrae, whereupon Quintus 
 and his son set out for the Bast, to make their peace with Caesar; 
 and Cicero himself returned to Brundisium, where he staid about 
 eleven months, until Caesar returned from the Bast. 
 
CAESAR THE DOMINANT FIGURE 495 
 
 II 
 
 The Dictatorship 
 
 Neither the eleven months of Cicero's dreary waiting at 
 Brundisium nor the subsequent years in Rome and its vicinity 
 until the assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., 
 are significant in Cicero's life except for the domestic tragedies 
 that befell him during this time and the essays that he produced 
 as a result of his political inactivity and disappointment. Our 
 information about this period, as well as about the months of 
 indecision after the outbreak of the Civil "War and the fruitless 
 tarrying in Dyrrhachium, is immense. There are only three 
 orations, to be sure, delivered in 46 and 45 B.C., but the corre- 
 spondence for the five years contains about four hundred letters 
 as against the one hundred and seventy odd of the eleven years 
 between the consulship and the administration of Cilieia. This 
 large correspondence includes letters to and from many people, 
 and it has sometimes daily letters to Atticus for considerable 
 stretches of time. It is possible to observe Cicero 's thoughts and 
 plans and activities in considerable detail; many of the letters 
 are of great charm and, taken together, they are of wide diver- 
 sity; new friends come into view, or old friends of whom the 
 previous correspondence has given little or no information; and 
 yet we learn almost nothing new about Cicero's personality and 
 manner of life, and as for historical information of importance, 
 the letters, broadly speaking, do little more than supply a back- 
 ground for the great figure of Caesar. 
 
 To the student of Roman history these years belong to Caesar. 
 In the matter of the fighting, and it continued until well into 
 45 b.c, he obviously dominates the time, for he was not only 
 ultimately victorious but he was present in nearly every cam- 
 paign. His notable opponents came to a quick end. Nor is the 
 fighting seen in Cicero's correspondence except by way of brief 
 
4:96 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 comments, which reflect the manner in which the news was 
 received in Rome. And in the city itself Caesar 's preponderance 
 was even greater. It was often exercised through his adherents, 
 for Caesar was in Rome only about one year and a half during 
 this whole time, but his adherents were his subordinates, only 
 executing his commands. Neither Cicero nor any one else of 
 the many who had submitted to the new power accomplished 
 anything politically, or even tried to do so; they lived in the 
 shadow of the conqueror. Caesar's great work — his numerous 
 measures to meet pressing needs and the initiation of his large 
 plans for a new kind of state — was carried out without their 
 participation, without their approval, usually, though also with- 
 out their opposition, for they were helpless ; but it is only these 
 measures, whether put into effect or only planned, that have 
 a permanent interest. They are the kernel of the later develop- 
 ments during the empire, both for good and for evil. 
 
 Caesar's struggle for complete power was long, but his hold 
 on Italy was never questioned after Pompey's flight in 49 B.C. 
 In Rome, therefore, the situation was a repetition of the con- 
 ditions under the triumvirate, except that there was now only 
 one ruler and that he faced no opposition. Cicero's experiences 
 were also a repetition; he reacted as he had done formerly. 
 Indeed, this whole period was for him even externally like that 
 of the earlier years: first, a time of indecision, followed by a 
 hopeless attempt at opposition, if his espousal of Pompey's 
 tottering cause can be called an attempt ; then, a period of virtual 
 exile, much like the real exile in Greece; and after that, some 
 years of submission to a personally favorable ruler, during which 
 Cicero again turned to authorship. It is because of this similar- 
 ity in Cicero's outward fortunes and because of his enforced 
 submission that the large correspondence of these years contains' 
 but few new revelations about Cicero ; it only heaps up further 
 incident and illustration. 
 
CAESAR'S CABEEE 497 
 
 Since everything at Rome revolved around Caesar, his move- 
 ments should be rapidly traced. He had crossed the Rubicon 
 in January of" 49 B.C. In April of the same year, after Pompey 's 
 flight, he had spent a few days in the city, and had then set out 
 for Spam, whence he had returned victorious at the end of the 
 year. For eleven days he remained in Rome, and again he 
 departed for the war, this time to go east. Cicero in the mean- 
 time had joined Pompey at Dyrrhachium. On the fourth of 
 January, 48 B.C., Caesar sailed from Brundisium. The battle 
 of Pharsalus was fought on the ninth of August, and thereupon 
 Caesar followed Pompey to Egypt, learning on his arrival that 
 his great rival had been murdered. Egypt and Cleopatra occu- 
 pied him for nine months, and these were followed, from June, 
 47 b.c, by more fighting in the East and in Asia Minor. Phar- 
 naces, the son of Mithradates, was conquered, and Caesar wrote 
 briefly veni, vidi, vici about him, though his father had been 
 one of Rome's most dangerous enemies. About the twenty- 
 fourth of September Caesar landed at Tarentum. For some 
 three months he remained in Italy, almost entirely in Rome, and 
 then he set out for Africa. Here the Pompeians were defeated 
 at Thapsus, on April the sixth, 46 B.C. ; and Cato, a few days 
 later, took his own life. In July of the same year Caesar was 
 back in Rome, to remain about five months; and again he went 
 to Spain, to meet the sons of Pompey. The battle of Munda, 
 on the seventeenth of March, 45 B.C., decided this campaign. 
 For the last time, in September, Caesar returned to Rome. 
 Measures for the present and the future, now as before, and 
 preparations for a new campaign — this time against the Par- 
 tisans — filled his days, but at the end of six months he was 
 murdered. 
 
 Cicero 's greatest anxiety during his long stay in Brundisium, 
 while Caesar was fighting and dallying in Egypt and conquering 
 Pharnaces, was concerned with the treatment he would ultimately 
 receive at the hands of Caesar. Young Caesarians in Italy, 
 
498 VNDEM CAESAR 
 
 devoted to the old ex-consul now as they had been before he 
 decided for Pompey, not only showed their devotion in their 
 ordinary relations with him but also communicated to him their 
 conjectures and their rare words from Caesar ; they were asked 
 by Cicero to write in his behalf to Caesar, and no doubt did so. 
 Word from Caesar, who was busy with other things, did not 
 reach Italy often, but messages did come, and even a letter to 
 Cicero himself, allowing him to keep his imperator's trappings. 
 This was an unequivocal sign that Cicero's high position in the 
 state would not be altered. He never celebrated a triumph. We 
 do not know exactly when he abandoned the thought. Probably 
 he had kept his prospective hold on a triumph during the early 
 part of the war as a sign that he still claimed to be one of the 
 prominent statesmen of Rome, ready to act with independence 
 in favor of peace ; but he could have no pleasure in celebrating 
 a triumph under the auspices of a conqueror. The honor would 
 clearly have been a personal gift, and, as we shall see, Cicero, 
 though he submitted, never gave either public or private approval 
 ' to the new regime except in so far as it held promise of a return 
 to constitutional government. 
 
 Perhaps Cicero had no very great reason for concern about 
 Caesar's attitude to him. The war was largely a personal matter ; 
 many men had transferred their allegiance to Caesar both imme- 
 diately after Pharsalus and at other stages of the struggle. 
 Caesar always forgave. Nevertheless he had made unusual 
 efforts to win Cicero, at least for neutrality, and his failure in 
 these attempts had involved almost a public condemnation of 
 his actions. In his interview with Cicero he had admitted this. 
 And the matter was the worse because Cicero had formerly, 
 after Luca, given his open approval to Caesar's policies and he 
 had been known as Caesar's personal friend. 
 
 All doubts in Cicero's mind as to Caesar were solved at the 
 interview near Tarentum. Plutarch 's picturesque pen, prompted 
 perhaps by Tiro, records that Cicero was a little in advance of 
 
CICEMO BETUENS TO SOME 499 
 
 his companions, and that Caesar went forward to meet him, and 
 saluted him, whereupon the two, conversing, walked along the 
 road, side by side, for some stadia. 
 
 Cicero at once returned to Rome. During the rest of this 
 year and during the next he wrote numerous letters, sparkling 
 with wit and filled with light-heartedness. The vagaries of 
 Epicureanism, pen pictures of people and events, quips and 
 quirks are there. To one of his friends, Paetus, he is always 
 threatening to arrive for dinner. Poor Paetus had gout, as 
 many Romans seem to have had, and Cicero hopes that Paetus' 
 cook is not suffering from the same complaint. Cicero even 
 pretended now at last to have become a devotee to high living; 
 some young Caesarians, who declaimed under him in the morn- 
 ing, in the evening taught him how to dine. "I have already 
 mourned for my country more deeply and for a longer time than 
 any mother ever mourned for her only child," he writes to a 
 friend;* and this sentence, with its implication of gaiety, char- 
 acterizes well his attitude during these years. 
 
 These letters, though- about new things, are of a kind with 
 those written after Luca. Now, as at that time, Cicero pretends 
 to have found happiness at last in writing and study. ■ Particu- 
 larly is this the case in his correspondence with Varro, the aged 
 scholar, who was ten years older than Cicero. On his return to 
 Rome, Cicero had made distinct advances to the old student; 
 evidently determined on a closer relation, as he had been in 
 reference to Hortensius when setting out from Cilicia. The two 
 men, however, do not seem ever to have become intimate; they 
 were too different. Thus in July, 45 B.C., Cicero wrote to Atti- 
 cus: "We were talking about Varro. Talk of the devil," or, as 
 the Latin puts it, "the wolf in the story! He arrived, and it 
 was so late that he had to be kept over night. Well, I kept him, 
 but I did not quite tear his cloak off his back in my efforts to 
 retain him." Nevertheless there grew up between them a sort 
 
 *Fam. 9, 20, 3. 
 
500 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 of literary friendship, signalised by the dedication 5 to Varro of 
 the second edition of the Academim, in which Varro was him- 
 self an interlocutor, and by numerous compliments in the later 
 treatises. 
 
 Many prominent men of Cicero 's own age had now died ; Hor- 
 tensius by a natural death, Pompey by murder, Cato by suicide ; 
 and there were others. Cicero was fifty-nine when he met Caesar 
 near Tarentum. A new generation was coming to the front. 
 These were largely on Caesar's side, worshipers of the new sun, 
 but they admired Cicero. Many of them had acquired their 
 oratorical ability from him, mostly by imitation no doubt, but 
 some of them, as just mentioned, by direct teaching. And one 
 at least, Brutus, shared Cicero's interest in philosophy. A pic- 
 ture of Cicero's daily life is contained in a letter to Paetus, 
 dated August, 46 b.c. He holds a reception in the morning, to 
 which come many conservatives, who are sad, and many Caesar - 
 ians, cheerful victors and yet very courteous and devoted to 
 Cicero. After the reception, he buries himself in his books, 
 writing or reading. Some men later drop in to hear him talk, 
 listening to him as though he were a learned man ; the real situa- 
 tion being merely, as Cicero explains, that he is a little better 
 informed than they. Thereupon he takes his exercise. 
 
 Though Cicero's outward position was excellent and the 
 young Caesarians honored themselves in honoring him, there 
 must have been many moments when men on the victorious side 
 flaunted their new glories. In 46 b.c, while Caesar was con- 
 quering in Spain, Cicero writes to Varro that the Caesarians 
 look upon others as upon enemies in defeat, and that it is 
 impossible even for a man of the sharpest sight to avoid 
 stumbling upon disagreeable experiences. There were always 
 men about Caesar ready to slander Cicero and present him as 
 dangerous, though, as he said himself, he had no fight in him. 
 
 s The dedicatory letter is Earn. 9, 8. 
 a Earn. 9, 20. 3. 
 
INSULTS AND DANGER 501 
 
 When he was out of Rome, the friendly Attieus, more friendly 
 than tactful, reported Caesarian talk about Cicero that was not 
 pleasant to hear. Such talk was at one time concerned with a 
 certain Tigellius, who imagined that he had a private grievance 
 against Cicero. Tigellius was a Sardinian and a musician, ord- 
 narily quite beneath the notice of a Roman consular. Attieus, 
 however, and also another friend of Cicero's, thought differently, 
 and even tried to mollify the irascible Caesarian. Cicero became 
 impatient with their efforts. "I am receiving as much honor 
 from all the Caesarians but Tigellus," he writes, "as I ever 
 received when I was considered to be at the head of the state. 
 It is a clear gain to be free from the society of this fellow. I 
 won't be a slave to everybody any more than Cipius would shut 
 his eyes for everybody." And Cipius had become proverbial. 
 Having a frail wife, he was supposed to have pretended sleep for 
 her greater liberty, but when a slave saw his master 's eyes closed 
 and started away with a stolen cup, Cipius looked up, with the 
 remark that he did not sleep for everybody. 
 
 Sometimes, during Caesar's frequent absences from Rome, 
 there was even danger to Cicero, or at least a threat of it. Two 
 days after Cicero had retired from Rome in the spring of 45 B.C., 
 after the death of Tullia, Antony arrived unexpectedly in the 
 city, and immediately the prominent Caesarians, Oppius and 
 Balbus, who were always devoted to Cicero, wrote that he need 
 have no fear in connection with Antony. Attieus wrote the 
 same, and would not believe Cicero's reply, to the effect that he 
 was giving no thought to Antony. At this time, indeed, Cicero 
 was overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his daughter and 
 he was meditating and writing on death, as will presently be 
 seen, so that he probably held his own life as valueless ; but the 
 letters of assurance addressed to him give a clear indication of 
 what might have happened. It would have been easy for Antony 
 to send a detachment of soldiers to Cicero's house. The violent 
 Caesarian, however, had at this time come to Rome for other 
 
502 UNDEM CAESAR 
 
 purposes than to cause mischief ; he was in debt and also wished 
 to visit his wife. 7 
 
 No such stir could have been caused when Caesar was in 
 Rome. Cicero was credited with considerable influence with the 
 dictator. Vatinius, for example, whom Cicero had once bitterly 
 attacked and later defended, was one of Caesar's most ardent 
 supporters, and apparently very able. He had received a sup- 
 plicatio for his military services in Dalmatia, and had thereupon 
 continued his successful career, capturing six towns, one of 
 which he had been forced to retake three times. Finally the 
 snows, the cold, and the rains had caused him to abandon it. 
 Caesar was a hard taskmaster, and Vatinius knew he would have 
 to render an account. He therefore writes 8 to Cicero to explain 
 the situation, in December of 45 B.C., a little over three months 
 before Caesar's death, and asks Cicero to intercede in his behalf 
 if the need should arise. Earlier, Cicero's influence with Caesar 
 had been of considerable service to several exiled Pompeians. 
 He recommended them to Caesar's mercy, just as in the years 
 after Luca he had recommended friends to Caesar's generosity. 
 Many letters from Cicero to such exiles are extant, of infinite 
 variety, although the contents are necessarily limited to conso- 
 lation, hopes for the future, and assurances that Caesar would 
 not be cruel. 
 
 One of Cicero's speeches, Pro Ligario, was delivered in behalf 
 of such a Pompeian in exile, perhaps the only one to be regu- 
 larly tried. It was considered one of Cicero's notable orations, 
 but the case is scarcely important enough to call for much con- 
 sideration. The main plea is frankly for forgiveness; not such 
 a weak plea, after all, inasmuch as the crime was merely that of 
 having taken the opposite side in politics and as Caesar 's desire 
 was to be known as a gentle ruler. The external circumstances 
 of the trial are more noteworthy. It took place in the official 
 
 7 For Cicero 's later account of this visit, see below, p. 640. 
 &Fam. 5, 10a. 
 
PEO LIGABIO 503 
 
 residence of Caesar, and only a few persons were present, so 
 that the trial resembled a private interview; indeed, as Cicero 
 writes to IJigarius himself, he had had some difficulty and had 
 suffered some humiliation in securing access to Caesar. In the 
 same letter Cicero describes the favorable acceptance of his 
 plea, a matter further described by Plutarch. According to him, 
 Caesar's color came and went during the progress of the speech, 
 and when Cicero spoke of the battle at Pharsalus, Caesar shook 
 with emotion, even dropping from his hand some papers that he 
 held. Caesar, says Plutarch, had observed previously that he 
 knew Ligarius to be a wicked man and an enemy, but he would 
 grant the trial for the pleasure of hearing another speech by 
 Cicero; and now Caesar acquitted the defendant. 
 
 But intercessions like those in favor of Vatinius and of exiles 
 were largely private matters; they had nothing to do with the 
 government. In his management of the state Caesar neither 
 asked for nor listened to advice. Cicero and every one else were 
 subjects. Thus, when Cato had committed suicide, Cicero wrote 
 one of several eulogies, but he found the task as difficult as a 
 mathematical problem worthy of Archimedes; praise of the late 
 Stoic necessarily involved praise of his political attitude, and 
 such would not readily appeal to Caesar. As has already been 
 mentioned, Cato became the subject of a literary warfare ; Caesar 
 praised Cicero's work, for its style, but said nothing about the 
 content. 
 
 At one time, in 45 B.C., Cicero cherished the hope of actually 
 influencing Caesar, and wrote a formal letter of advice, such as 
 Aristotle had addressed to Alexander. Atticus had suggested 
 that the letter be submitted to Oppius and Balbus for approval 
 before it was sent to Caesar, so doubtful a procedure was it even 
 for Cicero to address the dictator, and this was done ; but when 
 these, after a considerable correspondence, had finally made all 
 the necessary alterations, Cicero found the letter so changed that 
 he decided not to send it. If he could not give the kind of advice 
 
504 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 he considered good for Rome, he said, he had no intention of 
 sending eulogies. or meaningless verbiage to a man who would 
 brook no interference. 
 
 The relations between the two great Romans were very cordial, 
 Cicero himself writes in 46 B.C., but that they were of a strictly 
 social nature, divorced from politics, Cicero reveals in a letter 
 to Atticus of the following year; the very next, indeed, in the 
 correspondence after the note from Vatinius. When refusing in 
 49 b.c. to eome to Rome, Cicero had assumed a position of non- 
 participation in Caesar's rule, and Caesar had taken him at his 
 word. The letter to Atticus was written in December, the day 
 after Caesar had paid Cicero a visit at his estate at Puteoli. 
 
 Caesar was a formidable guest, Cicero wrote, 9 and yet Cicero 
 had no reason to regret the visit. Caesar had been very pleasant. 
 On the evening of the eighteenth he had stayed with Philip, 
 Cicero's neighbor. The latter 's house had been filled with the 
 soldiers that escorted the dictator, two thousand of them, so that 
 Philip 's house had scarcely had a room in which Caesar himself 
 could dine. Cicero was anxious as to what would happen on the 
 following day, when Caesar would visit him, but Barba Cassius, 
 one of Caesar's friends, came to Cicero's assistance by placing 
 guards around the villa and making the soldiers encamp in the 
 fields. Caesar stayed with Philip until about twelve on the nine- 
 teenth, and would see no one, probably going over his accounts 
 with Balbus. Then he took a walk on the beach, and afterwards 
 had his bath. Some news was brought about Mamurra, his 
 notorious adherent of Catullan fame. Perhaps it had to do with 
 Mamurra 's death, but he received it without comment, or without 
 a change of expression, according to the reading of the text. 
 He was rubbed down, and then took his place at Cicero's table, 
 eating and drinking heartily and with enjoyment. It was a 
 good dinner and a pleasant one. Caesar's retinue were well 
 entertained in three dining-rooms, even the less refined freedmen 
 
 »4«. 13, 52. 
 
D1NNEB TO CAESAB 505 
 
 and slaves wanting for nothing. Caesar seemed to enjoy him- 
 self ; his attitude was free and natural. But he was not the kind 
 of man to whom you might say : ' ' Look in again when you come 
 this way. ' ' Once was enough ! There was a good deal of literary 
 talk, but not a single serious word, nothing, that is, about matters 
 of public policy. In this remark Cicero reveals the sting of the 
 visit. 
 
 A little more than a year earlier than the dinner at Puteoli, 
 Cicero, and doubtless others, had hoped that Caesar would restore 
 the constitutional government. He had not been much in Rome, 
 so that his autocratic measures might well have seemed tempo- 
 rary, intended to keep the power in his hands until he should 
 have an opportunity to make permanent arrangements ; and he 
 had been consistently lenient toward his defeated opponents. 
 One of these was Marcellus, the consul of 51 B.C., a staunch and 
 active aristocrat, who after Pharsalia had retired to exile in 
 Mitylene; he was too proud to make formal submission and 
 beg for restoration, but had been prevailed upon by Cicero's 
 entreaties to return to Rome, thus virtually acknowledging 
 Caesar's right to power, if pardon were extended to him. At 
 the intercession of the exile's relatives Caesar granted the par- 
 don. This happened at an excited meeting of the senate; the 
 brother of Marcellus fell on his knees before Caesar and all the 
 other senators rose to enforce the supplication of the kneeling 
 ex-consul. Caesar at first replied with a recital of the exile's 
 numerous acts of hostility, but concluded by leaving the matter 
 to the senators. They all voted in the affirmative, one after the 
 other expressing his opinion and at the same time giving thanks 
 to Caesar. 
 
 One of the senators was Cicero. During Caesar's absences 
 from Rome Cicero ordinarily stayed away from the city, but 
 when the dictator was personally at the head of affairs, Cicero 
 could not avoid an ostensible participation in public business. 
 He attended the meetings of the senate; his only concession, 
 
506 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 however, for he took no part in the deliberations. In his letters 
 he does not disguise the fact that the decrees of the senate were 
 mere forms, and mentions how he himself was stated both to have 
 witnessed the formal writing down of decrees and actually to 
 have made motions about which he had not even expressed an 
 opinion ; in return for which he received grateful letters from 
 favored monarehs of whose very existence he had until then 
 been unaware. But in the matter of Marcellus Caesar really 
 left the decision to the senate; and this seemed to Cicero an 
 indication that Caesar would in the future allow himself to be 
 governed by their opinions — that he was assuming for himself 
 such a position of eminence and yet of obedience to the consti- 
 tution as Cicero had once intended for Pompey. In the midst 
 of the enthusiasm Cicero's thanks took the form of a glowing 
 eulogy, later published under the name Pro Marc-ello. 
 
 The eulogy is extravagant, as has been pointed out to satiety, 
 especially by critics who accuse Cicero of insincerity in his utter- 
 ances, but, as others have observed, Cicero was perfectly sincere, 
 for he expected a return to constitutionalism. Nor was his praise 
 of Caesar considered extravagant at the time. Indeed, it attains 
 no higher nights than Cicero's repeated laudations of Pompey; 
 not so high, it would seem, as his words to Pompey and even to 
 the consuls of 57 B.C., in the first address after the-exile. More 
 significant still is the fact that the main emphasis of the speech 
 is laid on the things that are still to be accomplished by Caesar 
 for the good of the state. 
 
 His life, Cicero exclaims, is more precious than that of any 
 other man, and he must not say, as report has it, that he has had 
 enough of years and glory. Nobody would be so mad as to make 
 an attempt on his life, and yet he should not expose it recklessly, 
 for the state needs him. His martial glory is great, but his 
 clemency is greater. He must live with a thought of future ages; 
 otherwise, there will be much disagreement among men, as there 
 already is, some lauding his martial success to the sky, while 
 
PRO MABCELLO 507 
 
 others perhaps want something more, and that something is the 
 restoration of peace and safety to his country. The Latin phrase 
 used by Cicero, salus patriae, meant the return to a stable, 
 constitutional government. 
 
 The words of Cicero were a true prophecy of the contrary 
 opinions about Caesar pronounced by history, but his hope was 
 quickly shattered. Caesar was determined to retain absolute 
 power, and he made this clear within a few weeks of the pardon 
 of Marcellus, for, on setting out for Spain, he left the government 
 in the hands of his subordinates, who thus took the places of the 
 ordinary republican magistrates. Side by side with the speech 
 in recognition of Marcellus' pardon, therefore, should be placed 
 Cicero's defense of Deiotarus, which was delivered a year later, 
 after many things had occurred to render Caesar's intentions 
 unmistakable. It was Cicero's third and last speech under 
 Caesar, and it was also his last plea for a defendant, spoken, like 
 that for Ligarius, in Caesar 's own house. Once when Cicero was 
 waiting for an audience in one of Caesar's anterooms, the latter 
 is reported 10 to have said: "I have no doubt that people hate 
 me cordially when Marcus Cicero has to sit and wait, unable 
 to see me at his own convenience. If any man is good-natured, 
 it is Cicero, and yet I have no doubt that he hates me thor- 
 oughly." The speech for Deiotarus expresses no hatred, but 
 many passages read like an indictment of the great dictator, 
 and answer the question whether Cicero's speech for Marcellus 
 was dictated by sincere hopes for the future or by cringing 
 flattery. 
 
 Deiotarus at this time was an old man, so weak that he could 
 not mount a horse unassisted. He had fought on the Eoman side 
 against Mithradates, and had throughout his life done many 
 services to Rome, in return for which he had been honored by 
 several Roman generals, particularly Pompey. During Caesar's 
 consulship in 59 B.C. he had received the title of king. He had 
 
 ioAtt. 14, l, 2. • 
 
508 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 joined Pompey before the battle of Pharsalus, bringing him a 
 troop of six hundred horsemen. After the defeat, he had accom- 
 panied Pompey as far as Lesbos, and had then returned to his 
 own country, Galatia. When Pompey had been murdered and 
 Caesar had come to the East, Deiotarus had submitted to the 
 conqueror, assisting him with money and other things in the 
 Alexandrine war, and later with troops against Pharnaces. 
 Caesar had allowed Deiotarus to retain his royal title, but he 
 had deprived him of part of his territory. While in Deiotarus' 
 kingdom, Caesar had been sumptuously entertained and had 
 received numerous costly presents — as was in accord with the 
 usual ruinous generosity of dependent potentates. 
 
 Now, two years later, Caesar's visit supplied the enemies of 
 Deiotarus with the means for accusing the old king. There was 
 strife, both private and political, in the family of Deiotarus. A 
 grandson, Castor, was in Rome with an embassy; ambassadors 
 were also present from Deiotarus. In order to ruin the grand- 
 father, Castor accused him of having planned to assassinate 
 Caesar during the latter 's visit in Galatia, and asserted that only 
 chance had saved him. The charge itself could be readily dis- 
 posed of, and need not be discussed; the real difficulty for the 
 defense consisted in Caesar's well-known hostility to the old 
 Pompeian and in the fact that Deiotarus could hardly have been 
 expected to love the man who had shorn him of power. Cicero, 
 however, took the case. Deiotarus was an old friend; he had 
 entertained Cicero's son and nephew during Cicero's governor- 
 ship of Cilicia, and at that time he had also brought troops to 
 Cicero himself. 
 
 "Despite my advanced age and my long experience in the 
 courts, ' ' says Cicero, "lam always agitated at the beginning of 
 an important plea, but in this case I have special reasons for 
 agitation. In the first place, I am speaking in behalf of a king. 
 It is not injustice on your part to try him, particularly since the 
 case involves danger to yourself ; nevertheless the trial of a king 
 
PRO DEIOTABO 509 
 
 on a capital charge has never been heard of before. Formerly, 
 in the senate, I have often had occasion to praise Deiotarus for 
 his great services to our state ; now 1 must defend him against 
 the most impudent charges, which proceed from a cruel grand- 
 son and from a man who belongs merely to the retinue of an 
 embassy and who, as a slave, should not give testimony except 
 under torture, and then never against his master. It is a difficult 
 matter, furthermore, to plead before you, against whom Deio- 
 tarus is accused of having plotted, for almost every man will 
 believe such an accusation. Only your own noble character 
 can insure justice, and I am glad to forget what your opinion 
 of Deiotarus may be, while I remember what you wish others 
 to think of you. And finally, I am speaking within the walls 
 of a private house. I have to turn to you alone, address you 
 alone. Though this may make it easier to establish the truth 
 of my plea, it nevertheless takes away the support that a speaker 
 always finds in a large audience. If you were trying this case in 
 the forum, I should be hearteend by the large gathering of 
 Roman citizens, all of whom are in favor of this king, who has 
 spent his life fighting for them in their wars. I should turn to 
 the senate-house, the forum, even to the sky. In recalling the 
 benefits heaped upon Deiotarus by the immortal gods, by the 
 Roman people, and by the senate, I should find it easy to plead 
 in his defense. But these walls cramp me. You, who have 
 spoken in behalf of many defendants, can "appreciate my diffi- 
 culty, and should lessen it by impartiality toward my client 
 and a willingness to hear the arguments." 
 
 After this earnest introduction, which by implication con- 
 demns Caesar both for conducting the trial under the circum- 
 stances described and for holding the trial at all, Cicero turns, 
 not to the charges against Deiotarus, but to Caesar's supposed 
 hostility toward him and the grounds for it. And in this passage 
 Cicero's criticism of the dictator's rule is again visible through 
 the compliments of the pleader. 
 
510 UNDER CAESAK 
 
 "The accusers are relying on your well-known dislike of 
 Deiotarus. But you have partaken of his hospitality. You have 
 pardoned him, and you have never been known to harbor ill 
 feeling against a man whom you have forgiven. Nor was Deio- 
 tarus guilty of any crime. He sided with Pompey, as many of 
 us did, and with even more excuse. He heard that the senate 
 had issued a call to arms, that the magistrates had been ordered 
 to defend the state, that the consuls and all the ex-consuls, for 
 such was the report that went to the East, had left Italy. He 
 knew nothing of your situation, of the opposition to you, and of 
 your attempts at conciliation. He thought Rome was in danger. 
 What was he to do, especially after he had been summoned by- 
 letter from Pompey? "We all followed Pompey, on whom gods 
 and men had heaped honors, you yourself most of all. Deiotarus 
 was a personal friend of Pompey as well as an old comrade in 
 arms. He is to be forgiven for obeying Pompey 's command. 
 Even if your great deeds have thrown those of all others into 
 obscurity, we have not forgotten Pompey. He had reputation, 
 wealth, military renown, and every kind of honor, given him by 
 the people, the senate, and by you yourself. He was as much 
 superior to all that preceded him as you are to every one. We 
 used in wonder to count his wars, victories, triumphs, and con- 
 sulships ; yours we can not count. ' ' 
 
 After discussing various charges against Deiotarus, Cicero 
 comes to ■ the assertion of the prosecutor that Blesamius, the 
 head of Deiotarus' embassy, was in the habit of sending his 
 master reports about the state of things in Rome — a sign of 
 hostile interest in Caesar's fortunes, according to Castor, who 
 may have been right. The contents of these reports, however, 
 could not be charged to Deiotarus, and might readily have been 
 omitted by Cicero. They contain in a few lines a description of 
 the very circumstances that caused the assassination of Caesar. 
 And yet Cicero not only repeats the reports but professes, in an 
 exceedingly weak manner, to explain away their disparaging 
 character. 
 
CAESAB A TYRANT 511 
 
 "Blesamius writes," says Cicero, "that you, Caesar, are 
 unpopular, that you are considered a tyrant, that men are 
 offended because your statue has been placed among those of the 
 old kings, and that people do not applaud you in public. But 
 that is clearly only the low talk of enemies about the city. How 
 can Blesamius call you a tyrant? You have not acted like all 
 other victors in civil strife. No heads of citizens have been set 
 up on the rostra, people have not been worried, beaten, and 
 killed, houses have not been robbed or destroyed, the forum is 
 not filled with armed men. You are the only conqueror in whose 
 victory nobody has been killed except with arms in his hand. 
 If we who have been born free do not consider you a tyrant, how 
 can Blesamius do it, he who is the subject of a king? And your 
 statue? Do we not see statues of generals all about us? Your 
 trophies of various kinds are not unpopular ; why should your 
 statues be? Is it because of the place they occupy? But can 
 there be a more honorable place for statues than the rostra? 
 And what about the lack of applause ? The need of it has never 
 been felt in your case ; men have remained silent because over- 
 come with admiration of your greatness, and perhaps they have 
 felt that nothing ordinary was worthy of you." 
 
 Coming to the end, Cicero makes no peroration. ' ' The usual 
 impassioned appeal," so he concludes, "is not necessary; your 
 own sense of justice must decide. Your clemency will be your 
 greatest monument in the years to come, especially clemency 
 toward a king." 
 
 King! The word permeates the speech, contrasting Caesar 
 and Deiotarus, to be sure, and yet Caesar was publicly addressed 
 as king, regal intentions were attributed to him, and it was 
 because of them, whether genuine or not, that he was to die. 
 On August the second Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, had spoken 
 of him as king. Honors of every kind were showered on him 
 when no new powers could be given. The question of Caesar's 
 assumption of royalty was in the air ; his supporters favored it, 
 
512 VNDEB CAESAS 
 
 to please him, and his secret enemies were active for it, to stir 
 up the unpopularity which Cicero mentioned in his speech, and 
 had the temerity to publish. Many incidents pointed toward 
 kingship, culminating in the famous scene at the Lupercalia, in 
 February of 44 B.C., when Antony offered Caesar the crown; 
 but nothing could so arouse hatred in Rome, among aristocrats 
 as well as among common citizens, as the name of king — the name 
 far more than the power. 
 
 The governmental changes initiated or contemplated by 
 Caesar were dictated by the wide vision of a statesman. They 
 have been held responsible for many of the evils of the empire, 
 and it is perhaps possible that better things could have been done, 
 but the possibility is debatable even in the minds of academic 
 critics, though to them nearly all things, in the past, seem pos- 
 sible. It is certain that no one else in Rome looked so far into 
 the future or saw the present so clearly as did Caesar. But the 
 aristocrats were not ready for a king. 
 
 Caesar knew that there was bitter discontent, and he allowed 
 his knowledge to become known, but he took no measures to insure 
 his safety. Perhaps he thought that his compatriots, finding him 
 a gentle ruler, would acquiesce in the rule since it was for the 
 betterment of Rome. He dismissed his Spanish bodyguard and 
 refused to accept the senatorial offer of a bodyguard consisting 
 of senators and knights. He was never afraid. He may also 
 have felt a contempt for the men who had submitted, and 
 accepted his pardon. Possibly he did not much care whether his 
 life was to be long or short; his remark that he had lived long 
 enough indicates weariness. His life had been exceedingly ardu- 
 ous, and he had but lately come to a position of power, only to 
 find himself confronted with a new and more difficult task, that 
 of remaking a world empire and persuading its people that the 
 changes were for their good. It has been said, and probably 
 with truth, that the wonderful balance of his great nature was 
 breaking down from ill health or from too much work. Cer- 
 
TEE CONSPIRACY 513 
 
 tainly, during the last months of his- life, he committed many acts 
 of deliberate insult, or of equally insulting indifference, to the 
 aristocrats. Whatever his feelings, and they can never be known, 
 he misunderstood the Koman aristocrats, for it can scarcely be 
 supposed that he clearly foresaw and desired his own death. 
 Cicero had imagined that these aristocrats could be made like 
 the Eomans of old, which had proved impossible ; Caesar thought 
 that they could forget their former freedom and acquiesce in 
 the rule of an individual, but this was equally impossible. 
 
 Though it was the Roman hatred of an autocrat that made 
 the conspiracy possible, this feeling was more a matter of per- 
 sonal opposition than of patriotism. Love of Rome there doubt- 
 less was, as in the case of Brutus; but even Brutus' patriotism 
 was sadly adulterated with personal vanity and pompousness. 
 Some conspirators were malcontents; their rewards, at the 
 hands of Caesar, seemed to them too small. Others were his 
 enemies, personally as well as politically. And it must not be 
 forgotten that political assassination had been by no means rare 
 in Rome ever since the days of Scipio. The murder of Caesar 
 was one of the great tragedies of history, but not even his most 
 ardent admirers could have seen in him the towering figure that 
 he appears to us. To his contemporaries he was a great soldier 
 and a very able but also a very unprincipled politician ; he was 
 not allowed to live long enough for his reforms to become really 
 fruitful. 
 
 Cicero's utterances, both public and private, and his whole 
 political attitude can be looked upon as part of the ground out 
 of which the conspiracy grew ; and he would have considered the 
 death of an individual as no great price for the liberty of his 
 country. He had himself walked in the valley of death, when 
 in exile; he had recently lost Tullia, and he had been living in 
 the contemplation of the brevity of human life, as his essays 
 of this time indicate. Many of the conspirators were his personal 
 friends. Nevertheless there is no indication that he knew of the 
 
514 UNDER CAESAE 
 
 conspiracy. Indeed, after the assassination, his political ardor 
 led him to wish that he might have had a share in it ; so that he 
 certainly would not have thought of denying complicity, had it 
 existed. But Cicero could not have aided the conspiracy. The 
 latter was not a popular revolution, in which his well-known 
 patriotism could have been of avail, but a secret banding together 
 of individuals. Cicero, furthermore, was a personal friend and 
 in many respects an admirer of Caesar, and he was sixty-two 
 years old. 
 
 Of Cicero's movements and thoughts during the last months 
 of Caesar's life we have no detailed knowledge, though it is 
 known that he was busy with his philosophical writings. The 
 last letter to Atticus of this period was written at the end of 
 December, 45 b.c. There are later letters to others, but they are 
 few in number and of insignificant content. 
 
 To Curius, a banker of Patrae, he writes 11 in January of 
 44 b.c. that he is not urging the latter to come to Rome. He 
 would like to go away himself. Nor can Curius appreciai'.' 
 Cicero 's feelings of mortification at the doings in the city. They 
 are bad enough to hear about, but worse to witness. Curius, says 
 Cicero, was not present in the Campus Martius when the follow- 
 ing incident occurred. The election of quaestors was being held. 
 At the second hour, in the early morning, the chair of Maximus 
 the consul had been brought, when word came that he was dead, 
 and the chair was taken away. Caesar presided. At the seventh 
 hour he announced the election of a new consul, who, as Curius 
 might see, would hold office until the first of January, or, in 
 other words, until the morning of the next day. And so nobody 
 took lunch during the consulship of Caninius. No evil was. done 
 during his term of office, for he was a man of such wonderful 
 vigilance that he never closed his eyes while consul. "All this 
 may seem laughable to you, ' ' Cicero concludes, ' ' for you are not 
 here ; but if you saw these things yourself, you would not be able 
 to restrain your tears. ' ' 
 nfam. 7, 30. 
 
CONGE A T. VLA TWNS ! 515 
 
 Possibly Caesar had formal reasons for seeing to it that the 
 year did not end without a consul ; but it could only give offense 
 to the Romans, who looked upon their high office as something 
 more than a distinction to be thrown at a nobody for the space 
 of a few hours. Epigrams and jokes were made about the event, 
 and other sayings of Cicero are quoted in this connection. The 
 election, or appointmnet, rather, of Caninius was one of the many 
 reminders that Caesar was king. 
 
 In another letter to Curius, written in February, Cicero 
 urges him to return to Rome. The fountain of wit has run 
 quite dry, Cicero says, and Curius must come back. Otherwise 
 the very seed of wit will perish as has perished the freedom of 
 the state. 
 
 This is the last datable letter before the assassination of 
 Caesar. On the fifteenth of February the crown was offered to 
 him at the Lupercalia; on the fifteenth of March, the Ides, he 
 was struck down. It is practically certain that Cicero did not 
 witness the assassination. Later in the day he despatched a 
 note, the shortest in the correspondence, to Basilus, one of the 
 assassins. "Congratulations!" — so it runs 12 — "I am happy. I 
 love you and watch over your interests. Send me your love, and 
 let me know what you are doing and what is happening. ' ' 
 
 III 
 Death of Tullia 
 
 The Civil "War and the autocracy of Caesar wrought a great 
 change in Cicero's life, but their effect was politically only an 
 intensified repetition of the situation that had resulted from the 
 formation of the triumvirate, as has already been shown, and 
 they did not cause him any personal humiliation equal to that 
 of the exile. Nevertheless this time tested him with greater trials. 
 In the earlier period he had been upheld by the affection of his 
 
 ™Fam. 6, 15. 
 
516 UNDER CAESAX 
 
 family, though also saddened by the realization that he had 
 brought ill fortune upon them as well as upon himself. During 
 the three years subsequent to Pharsalia his family life was 
 shattered; there was treachery, divorce, and death. 
 
 The treachery came from Quintus. Together they had joined 
 the Pompeian side in the Civil War, and after the battle of Phar- 
 salia they had gone to Patrae. Here, after about a month, they 
 had a quarrel, and separated ; Marcus departed for Brundisium, 
 and Quintus accompanied the Pompeian fleet eastward, soon, 
 however, repairing to Caesar and obtaining pardon for his 
 opposition in the war. People had expected that he would also 
 intercede for Marcus, but, quite on the contrary, he seems to 
 have done everything to make Cicero's relations with Caesar 
 difficult, and, indeed, to blacken his character in the eyes of 
 others as well. He almost carried on a campaign of vilification 
 against his brother,- for he wrote bitter letters about him not 
 only to Caesar but also to Atticus and to a number of people 
 who were scarcely more than mere acquaintances. Some of these 
 letters were brought to Cicero's notice by the addressees, and 
 some fell into his hands by accident, and he opened them, as has 
 already been mentioned. 13 A whole year after the separation 
 of the brothers, when Cicero had succeeded in overcoming much 
 of the sorrow caused by it, Atticus sent him such a letter, which 
 he himself had received, and Cicero's comment is that it has 
 served only to reopen the wound. 
 
 Atticus could have spared himself the trouble, for Quintus 
 made no secret of his feelings. Both he and his son wrote coarse 
 and insulting letters to Cicero. The younger Quintus, like his 
 father, also took others into his noble confidence. In Ephesus, 
 so Cicero learned, he displayed to a friend a long account he had 
 drawn up about his uncle and intended to read to Caesar. It 
 is to be presumed that Caesar never listened to it. Young 
 Quintus, incidentally, was a worthless rascal, and caused trouble 
 
 i3 See above, p. 17. 
 
TKEACHEEY OF QUINTUS 517 
 
 to his father as well as to his uncle. The elder Quintus, after 
 a while, wrote to Marcus in Brundisium in a somewhat concilia- 
 tory spirit, but his excuses, as Cicero told Atticus, were more 
 bitter than accusations. Among other things Quintus wrote that 
 he regretted having written to people about Marcus, since it had 
 displeased Atticus, but that the . letters themselves had been 
 justified. 
 
 "We do not know very well what caused Quintus' enmity to 
 Marcus, whom he had always admired and to whom he very 
 probably owed much of his public success. It was not a passing 
 quarrel, such as abounded in Quintus' life. In all likelihood it 
 was due to the political situation. Quintus, because of his legate- 
 ship in Gaul, had been nearer to Caesar than to Pompey. Either 
 from a natural tendency to imitate his brother or because of 
 persuasion, but of such persuasion we hear nothing, Quintus had 
 followed Marcus when the latter joined the Pompeians, and when 
 the Pompeians failed at Pharsalus, he seems to have held his 
 brother responsible for his own political mistake. This would 
 explain his repeated criticisms of Marcus, for, once embarked on 
 an attempt to disparage the latter in the eyes of Caesar and 
 Caesarians, he could not readily change his attitude while 
 Caesar's opinion of Marcus was still uncertain ; and we know that 
 Quintus sent hearty congratulations to Marcus on learning that 
 Caesar was well disposed to him. While still hostile, Quintus 
 thought of everything in which his elder brother had supposedly 
 wronged him, and so he complained of having failed to receive 
 a share of the money made in Cilicia; apparently he had not 
 asked for it before. 14 
 
 It was a one-sided quarrel, with all the honor and kindness 
 on Cicero's side. After reaching Brundisium, Cicero wrote to 
 Caesar about Quintus. 15 He could no longer venture to recom- 
 mend Quintus to Caesar, he says, but he wished to make it clear 
 
 uAtt. 11, 13, 4. 
 ^ An. 11, 12, 2.. 
 
518 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 that Quintus had been more opposed than favorable to Marcus' 
 decision to leave Italy for Dyrrhachium ; Quintus had been a 
 companion and not a leader; and Cicero hoped earnestly that 
 his own relation to Caesar would in no way be detrimental to 
 Quintus. And later, in the many references to Quintus' treach- 
 ery that are found in the correspondence, Cicero 's only feeling is 
 one of grief. Quintus ' actions caused him more sorrow, he wrote 
 to Atticus, than anything else — and yet this was written while 
 Cicero was still in Brundisium. On his birthday, the third of 
 January, in 47 B.C., he ends a pathetic letter 16 to Atticus with 
 the wish that he had not been reared or that his mother had 
 not had another child. 
 
 Quintus apparently returned with Caesar to Italy. We have 
 no information as to when and how the brothers were reconciled. 
 Quintus, after all, was affectionate ; he had never received any- 
 thing but benefits from his brother ; and he had a very excellent 
 reason for being thoroughly ashamed of himself. And as for 
 Marcus, he was always ready to forgive. They were now about 
 sixty, old men, as the Romans counted it. In July of the fol- 
 lowing year, 46 B.C., Cicero speaks of Quintus' foolish delight 
 at young Quintus 7 appointment as one of the Luperci, a favor 
 received from Caesar ; and in November he visited Quintus. But 
 it does not seem that even then the old relation had been quite 
 reestablished, for shortly afterwards, at the death of Tullia, it 
 was Atticus and not Quintus who gave comfort. As for the 
 nephew, he remained a nuisance for a long time. 
 
 Less harrowing probably was the divorce from Terentia, 
 which took place at the end of 47 or the beginning of 46 B.C. 
 Apparently Cicero and Terentia drifted apart, and nobody now 
 can assign the blame. 17 The first letter extant from Cicero 's long 
 stay in Brundisium is addressed to Terentia. She had offered 
 to join Cicero, it seems, but Cicero replies that it would be a long 
 
 wAtt. 11, 9. 
 
 i? See Tyrrell, IV, p. xlviii, note. 
 
DIVORCE FROM TEBENTIA 519 
 
 journey from Rome, that travel is not safe, and that her coming 
 would do no particular good. It is a brief note, only a few lines, 
 but it is not unfriendly. The fact still remains, however, that 
 Cicero had no desire for her company. Later, we learn, she had 
 made a will in such terms that Cicero asked Atticus to interfere ; 
 apparently some evasion of debt on her part was involved, for 
 Cicero urges that the condition of the times demands that she 
 make arrangements to pay her debts. The report of her financial 
 doings was such that Cicero could scarcely believe it. 
 
 There are several notes, always brief, to Terentia from Brun- 
 disium. He asks her, as of old, not to neglect her health, and 
 he occasionally gives a bit of news, referring her for details, 
 however, to somebody else. And when he is finally on his way 
 to Rome again, he informs 18 her of the date when he can be 
 expected at the Tusculan villa and asks her to have everything 
 ready. There may be several people with him and they may 
 stay for a considerable time, he writes; if there is not a large 
 basin in the bathroom, he wishes her to have one put in. This 
 letter, the last to Terentia that has come down to us, may owe 
 its matter-of-fact brevity to haste, but such can not have been the 
 case with the other letters. It was written on the first of October 
 in 47 B.C., and the divorce soon followed. 
 
 There are only two or three further matters to be noted, and 
 then Terentia passes out of his life. The repayment of her 
 dowry, always a slow process in Rome, as many cases indicate, 
 was still under discussion in the year 45 b.c. Terentia had 
 entrusted the matter to Balbus, the Spanish Caesarian. This 
 may have been done to insure prompt payment, but it may also 
 have been intended to bring Cicero into a humiliating relation 
 with the Caesarian, since Terentia possibly feigned that her 
 divorced husband either could not or would not pay. Cicero was 
 annoyed, and calls Terentia 's action domineering. But he is 
 not greatly worried about it, for he had a more profound sorrow 
 
 ™Fam. 14, 20. 
 
520 UNDES CAESAR 
 
 then. He refuses to see Terentia for the purpose of coming to 
 a settlement, and asks Atticus to make the necessary arrange- 
 ments. He would rather be overreached by Terentia, he ex- 
 plains, than insist on his own rights ; it is a matter of honor with 
 him. 
 
 Terentia was active also in another way. Cicero had recently- 
 made his will, the witnesses to which, according to Terentia, 
 were not such as would protect the rights of Lentulus, the son 
 of Tullia. Cicero explains to Atticus how the witnesses came to 
 be chosen. He adds that he is willing to let any one read the 
 will; if Terentia will do the same with her will, it will be dis- 
 covered that her provision for the grandson is no more generous 
 than Cicero's. Dolabella, the father, was in Spain; he was a 
 spendthrift, furthermore, and had been divorced from Tullia in 
 the late autumn of 46 b.c. Tullia herself had died early the 
 following February. It would seem that Cicero looked after the 
 child's support, for in the letters of this year he asks Atticus to 
 assign the slaves necessary to care for the child. 
 
 The identity of Lentulus is not certain. In the year 49 b.c. 
 Tullia had given birth to a son, born in the seventh month and 
 very weak ; and in 45 b.c. she bore another son. The child men- 
 tioned was one or the other of these two. Since nothing is 
 known about the boys beyond the statement of their births and 
 Cicero's thought for Lentulus, they probably died in childhood. 
 Cicero had no other grandchildren, so that only four generations 
 of the family are known to us. His portrait bust, therefore, 
 never gathered smoke in an aristocratic atrium. 
 
 It is scarcely conceivable that Terentia could have believed 
 Cicero capable of neglecting Tullia 's child. Her avowed reason 
 for anxiety was the fact that one of the witnesses to Cicero 's will 
 was Publilius, the brother of the young girl whom Cicero had 
 married early in the year. After Cicero's divorce from Terentia, 
 his friends immediately interested themselves in the possibilities 
 of a new marriage; particularly the wife of the jurist Servius 
 
PVBLILIA 521 
 
 Sulpicius. Cicero considered the daughter of Pompey, and 
 another lady of whom he writes to Atticus that he had never 
 seen anything uglier. He was in need of money, and finally, 
 at the advice of friends and relatives, if Plutarch is to be trusted, 
 he married Publilia. 
 
 Cicero's second wife is scarcely more than a name. She had 
 a widowed mother and a brother ; she was very young and very 
 rich ; and she was Cicero's ward. A few weeks after the wedding 
 Tullia died, and Cicero, seeking solitude, sent Publilia back to 
 her mother, perhaps at first merely for a visit. Plutarch explains 
 that she had rejoiced at the death of Tullia ; but no such expla- 
 nation is needed for her return home. Cicero at this time shrank 
 from every one, even from Atticus, and the young wife — a child, 
 in Plutarch's phrase — could have been no companion to him. 
 Apparently Cicero never saw her again, and they were divorced, 
 for the letters mention the dowry which was to be repaid. 
 
 The fact that Cicero had married her so soon after his 
 separation from Terentia and had thereupon divorced her, was 
 held up to scorn by his political opponents of the next year, 
 but in the light of the Roman attitude it does not seem that he 
 could be held to blame. His friends had taken a prompt marriage 
 for granted, and after the separation Caerellia, Cicero's old 
 literary friend, had visited him, to be. sure, for the purpose of 
 urging him to take Publilia back, but, as he himself writes to 
 Atticus, she was not urgent and was readily persuaded that there 
 was no reason for a continuance of the marriage. She had been 
 sent by the brother and mother, who apparently were loth to lose 
 the honor of a connection with the illustrious statesman. The 
 young Publilia does not seem to have' been considered in the 
 matter. If we knew more about her, we might have reason to 
 pity her. 
 
 The divorce led to a ludicrous incident. Publilia, so Cicero 
 informs Atticus, 19 had written that her mother and brother were 
 
 ™Att. 12, 32. 
 
522 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 coming to visit Cicero, and she had proposed that she accompany 
 them. Cicero had sent word back to Publilia not to come, but 
 we are not told what he had written to the relatives. Being 
 unwilling to see them, he asks Atticus to discover the exact date 
 of their proposed visit,' in order that he himself may be away. 
 He will come to Atticus. Publilia, he remarks, could not herself 
 have composed the letter. As Cicero presently left Astura, where 
 he had been staying, it is likely that he succeeded in avoiding 
 the unwelcome relatives. 
 
 Marcus, Cicero's only son, was at this time making prepara- 
 tions to go to Athens to study, though, as we know, he did not 
 exert himself, and Cicero was arranging for a generous allow- 
 ance. Marcus had been with his father in Dyrrhachium and 
 Brundisium. After their return to Rome, he had proposed join- 
 ing Caesar in Spain, but his father, in a serious conversation, 
 reported to Atticus, 20 had pointed out the political unseemliness 
 of such a course, and he had also adroitly hinted that Marcus 
 would be annoyed to find his cousin Quintus high in Caesar's 
 favor. Though Cicero had left the decision in the hands of 
 Marcus, the latter had yielded. The young man had also had 
 a desire of setting up a bachelor establishment in Rome, but this 
 plan, too, had come to nothing; and now he was leaving for 
 Athens. This saved his life, for in the next year his father,- 
 his uncle, and his cousin were proscribed and murdered, and 
 he himself was proscribed. Before he went away, Terentia made 
 it known that she might remember him in her will. Apparently 
 he had sided with his father; indeed, he had been Cicero's com- 
 panion almost constantly since the year in Cilicia. Cicero did 
 not greatly credit Terentia 's kindly professions, but he con- 
 sidered it wise for the son to observe a prudent decency toward 
 his mother. It is doubtful whether Marcus was rewarded. He 
 survived his father by at least thirty years, but Terentia lived 
 to be one hundred and three, if the report is true. 
 
 20 Att. 12, 7, 1. 
 
FATSEE AND DAUGHTER 523 
 
 ' The departure of Marcus, however, though it left Cicero 
 alone, and the tribulations with Terentia and Publilia seem to 
 have had little effect upon Cicero ; Atticus was asked to manage 
 them all. Cicero was grieving for Tullia. In January he had 
 been staying in Rome with her. She was expecting to be confined, 
 and about the fifteenth her son was born. At first she seems to 
 have done well, but presently her strength gave way. Cicero had 
 taken her to his Tusculan villa, the one he loved best, from which 
 they could look down upon the city where his whole life had 
 centered; and there, a month after the childbirth, Tullia died. 
 With the death of Tullia all joy went out of Cicero's life, or 
 all solace in affliction, rather, for his moments of joy had been 
 rare of late. Only a few incidents are known in the relation 
 between the father and his daughter, but it is abundantly clear 
 from numerous references that no one else had responded so 
 fully to Cicero's extremely affectionate nature. She resembled 
 him both in appearance and in character, and was devoted to 
 him. In joy as well as in sorrow she was with him. When he 
 returned from exile, she met him in Brundisium, and they cele- 
 brated her birthday in the first happy hours of his restoration. 
 When he came again to Brundisium, to wait for Caesar, she 
 visited him; though only for a little while, as circumstances 
 forced her soon to return to Rome. And Cicero's love for her 
 seems to have been even greater. He was impetuous, ready when 
 disappointed to find fault both with himself and with his dearest 
 friends; but he found no fault with Tullia. She had become 
 engaged to Dolabella against her father's wishes, but he acqui- 
 esced in her choice; and when the political extravagances and 
 the faithlessness of the young husband made the marriage 
 unhappy, and at last impossible, as Cicero learned when in 
 Brundisium, he laid the blame for the marriage on himself; he 
 ought to have prevented it, he thought. The little Tulliola who 
 scribbled her greetings to Atticus in Cicero's earliest extant 
 letters had fulfilled her promise, and now that she was dead, 
 his heart was like a house gutted with fire. 
 
524 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 A little more is known about Tullia's marriages than about 
 anything else connected with her, and they were not altogether 
 fortunate. With her first husband, Calpurnius Piso, she was 
 happy. They had been married in the year of Cicero's consul- 
 ship, or shortly before it. During the time of Cicero's exile he 
 died, and not long afterwards, the haste being truly Roman, she 
 became engaged to a certain Crassipes, a man of good birth. 
 It is not certain that they were married. If the marriage took 
 place, it ended in divorce, for Crassipes was still living when 
 Tullia, in 50 B.C., became the wife of Dolabella. The latter had 
 been divorced within the year in order to marry Tullia, and he 
 brought her no happiness. It is therefore a strange commentary 
 on Roman marriages that meets us in the famous letter 21 written 
 to Cicero by Servius Sulpicius after Tullia's death. She had 
 been happy, says Sulpicius, in many ways ; she had lived to see 
 her father attain the praetorship, the consulship, and the augur- 
 ship, and she had been married to young men — not to one young 
 man ! — of the first rank. Her death, after a life of good fortune, 
 had come opportunely, for she was spared the sight of a fallen 
 Rome. And what could further years have given her? Cicero's 
 high station could easily have secured for her a husband among 
 the foremost youths of Rome, and she might have become the 
 mother of children, but these would have had no opportunity 
 of continuing the tradition of public service begun by their 
 grandfather; they would not have been free men. This was 
 written by Sulpicius, who was one of the most high-minded men 
 of his generation, and yet he found a source of comfort to Cicero 
 in Tullia's marriages and prospects of further unions. 
 
 After seeing how Sulpicius looked upon marriage, we should 
 not be surprised on learning that Cicero's relations with Dola- 
 bella were not altered by the divorce of his daughter ;. marriage 
 was, after all, a simple contract; and we need not imagine, as 
 some have done, that Cicero remained friendly in order to secure 
 
 ziFam. 4, 5. 
 
AT ASTURA 525 
 
 the repayment of Tullia's dowry, which never was repaid, or 
 because Dolabella was influential with Caesar. Cicero needed no 
 such mercurial mediator between himself and his old friend. 
 Dolabella took Cicero's part when men about Caesar slandered 
 him, but, as Cicero writes himself, he received no services from 
 his son-in-law. 22 Cicero, like Tullia, submitted, despite a better 
 knowledge, to the spell of the young rascal's personality. When 
 Tullia had died, Dolabella sent Cicero a letter of consolation, 
 unfortunately lost. Cicero, in reply, 23 says that although he 
 is not a broken man, he has lost that gaiety and charm which 
 used to delight Dolabella above all others. 
 
 After Tullia's death, probably immediately after the funeral, 
 Cicero went to Atticus in Eome, having sent Publilia to her 
 mother. He stayed with Atticus about three weeks ; but many 
 people came to the house, and Cicero could not refuse to see them, 
 though he was in no mood to receive their condolences. Finally 
 the strain became too great, and he left Rome, on the sixth of 
 March, for his villa at Astura, some miles down the coast. Soli- 
 tude had become necessary to him, though immediately on arriv- 
 ing in Astura he writes to Atticus that his longing for the latter 
 is almost unbearable. 
 
 The villa at Astura had probably been recently acquired by 
 Cicero, for it is not mentioned in his earlier letters ; perhaps he 
 had bought it during his stay with Atticus, in order to have a 
 refuge free from all associations with Tullia. He certainly 
 avoided the Tusculanum because of its wealth of reminiscences. 
 Astura, furthermore, was far enough from the city to make 
 visits unlikely. Three days after his arrival, Cicero writes with 
 concern that a friend of his, who owned a villa near by, is 
 reported to be coming down, and it is with a sigh of relief that 
 he can write the next day that the threatened destroyer- of his 
 solitude had merely called and had thereupon departed for Rome. 
 
 22 Fam. 6, 11, 1. 
 
 23 Fam. 9, 11, 1. 
 
526 UNDER CAESAR 
 
 Astura had wild and dense woods, and it had the beach. 
 Sometimes Cicero goes into the woods in the morning, and does 
 not emerge until evening. He is busy with his books all day, and 
 even in the night, for sleep will not come ; and this statement 
 about his sleeplessness is dated two weeks after he came down. 
 
 The books with which he was busy during the first days were 
 philosophical works that spoke of sorrow and how to meet it. 
 While with Atticus, he had read all the books on this subject 
 in the latter 's library, and there were many. These books and 
 the numerous visitors are the only things mentioned in reference 
 to Cicero's three weeks in Atticus' Roman house, except that 
 Cicero did not utterly sink under his grief, but struggled against 
 it, as he calls upon Atticus to testify. The character of the books 
 indicates the nature of his struggle, which continued in Asturia. 
 He wrestled in solitude, not with the Angel of the Lord, as Jacob 
 had done, but with Fate, which, by taking away his daughter 
 at a time when he most needed her, threatened to shatter the 
 very foundation of his whole being. Though the crisis through 
 which he passed was different from that of a man who believes 
 in a personal god, there was nevertheless an element of mysticism 
 in his experience which made his struggle almost religious. 24 
 
 To the ancient Romans, as Panaetius had phrased it for 
 them, there were three kinds of religion, that of mythology, found 
 mostly in Greek literature, that of the Roman state, and that 
 of the philosophers. But the mythological gods were mostly 
 dead by this time. Perhaps they had never been quite alive in 
 Rome. They had lent some of their attributes to the members 
 of the Roman pantheon, making the latter a little more human 
 than they had been before the Greek gods arrived; but beyond 
 that their sole office was to adorn a tale, though rarely to point 
 a moral. We cannot imagine a saddened Roman going into his 
 closet to pray to Zeus or to Aphrodite. 
 
 The religion of the Roman state was still in existence, but 
 this existence was mainly an external one. Jupiter and the other 
 21 Fowler, Religious Experience etc., 383 ff. 
 
THREE KINDS OF RELIGION 527 
 
 gods were a part of the Roman social order ; they received sacri- 
 fices, they had their priests to minister to them, and they were 
 often apostrophized in the forum ; when the Roman state was in 
 trouble, it turned with gifts and promises to Jupiter; Roman 
 life, indeed, both private and public, was filled with the. wor- 
 ship of these gods ; but the individual Roman, facing the crises 
 of his life, was not likely to ask for strength and courage from 
 Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Even if he believed in the actual 
 existence of the gods of his state, and there were countless grades 
 of unbelief, these were, after all, merely the gods of his state 
 and not of his own individual self. There was nothing vicarious 
 in his religion. No Roman god, however anxious for the glory 
 of Rome — and Roman history pointed proudly to numerous 
 events tending to prove the existence of this anxiety — no Roman 
 god had ever died for the sins of the Romans nor had any 
 divinity whose temple adorned the forum promised to take men's 
 burdens on his shoulders. If properly worshiped, the Roman 
 gods might refrain from doing harm, and might even give 
 assistance, to the Roman people or its great men, but under no 
 circumstances did they love the individual Roman. 
 
 The uneducated Roman was at this time turning to the 
 religions of the East; religions that abounded in shouts, ecstacies, 
 and dreams; forms of worship that benumbed his consciousness 
 of the living world and transported him to a new atmosphere. 
 And if he embraced a philosophy, it was that of the Epicureans, 
 which said that the gods had nothing to do with men, that the 
 soul died with the body, and that, as the uneducated interpreted 
 it, pleasure, mainly physical pleasure, is the chief end of life. 
 
 To the educated Roman the Eastern religions were too blind 
 to the facts of life and too noisy. There were too many cymbals 
 connected with them, and too little sobriety. If the man of read- 
 ing and culture was of a trusting temperament, he no doubt 
 crept closer than his sceptical neighbor to the religion of his 
 state, but the result was likely to be little else than a belief in 
 
528 UNDEB CAESAR 
 
 omens and a constant anxious interpreting of good and bad 
 dreams. And so the only religion left for him, if he wished to 
 have one at all — and many had none — was that of the philoso- 
 phers. 
 
 But the philosophers were human beings. They observed 
 the heavens and they watched their fellows, and then they 
 reasoned about what they had seen, or thought they had seen, 
 and drew inferences; but, being men, they did not always agree. 
 Some said there was a providence and others said there was 
 not.. Some believed in a life after death and others denied it. 
 Some insisted that man was endowed with a free will, while 
 others made him part of a large soulless machine called the 
 universe. Some admitted that their own inferences might be 
 erroneous, for, after all, the premises were doubtful; and others 
 asserted that they alone were right and everybody else was wrong. 
 If Pythagoras had said that a thing was so, his followers believed 
 him; and the ipse dixit of Pythagoras was heard occasionally 
 through the centuries of the Roman republic, though few men 
 heeded it. The Epicureans, scornful of others, if they were 
 true Epicureans, shouted that Epicurus was always right. He 
 was like a god, nay, he was a god, as Lucretius had sung; but 
 that scarcely added to his authority. 
 
 The Stoics were no less certain of the truth of their own 
 teachings than the Epicureans, and they believed in a divine 
 providence; but they assigned its workings almost entirely to 
 the external world. 25 The world was beautiful ; therefore a god 
 must have made it. The world continued well-ordered and 
 beautiful ; it was a cosmos ; and so the creator of it must still 
 be watching over it. He no doubt watched also over the indi- 
 viduals, but only incidentally, as it were. Placed in a beautiful, 
 well-ordered universe, the individual human being need have no 
 apprehensions. All was well with the world; consequently, if 
 he was wise, he would see that everything was well with him. 
 
 25 See below, pp. 567-568. 
 
CONSOLATIO 529 
 
 If things seemed not to. be well with him, he was after all not 
 wise, and it was his duty to get wisdom, to follow duty, and to 
 be strong. The god who was looking after the world did not 
 come down to help him. Man, in the face of his troubles and 
 his sorrows, was alone. If he broke under them, this only proved 
 that he did not have the true wisdom. But even the Stoics had 
 human weaknesses. Chrysippus, one of their greatest, had taught 
 that there was nothing to do for fresh grief. It must be left 
 alone. Time would cure it. It was the old human cry that time 
 heals all wounds. 
 
 Cicero, however, was not made of the stuff that left things 
 to the kindliness of time. He had never let himself drift. He 
 was always terribly, courageously honest with himself, and he 
 faced his problems. While a question was still debatable, he 
 debated almost endlessly, for he saw clearly, so that his letters 
 to Atticus are filled with the long and anxious weighing of one 
 side against the other; but when the decision had to be made, he 
 decided for himself. If a blow threatened to fall and there was 
 still hope of escape, his appeals and his regrets were sometimes 
 numerous. After the blow had fallen, he hid his grief as best 
 he could, fighting with it by himself. This he had done after 
 Luca; and this he did also now. Writing to Atticus shortly 
 after he had reached Astura, he says that no one can help him 
 as yet, but whenever he shall be able to receive help, it will be 
 from Atticus. He also says, a day later, that he will show his 
 grief to nobody, not even to Atticus, if he can avoid it. And he 
 did avoid it in a remarkable degree, for in all his daily letters 
 to Atticus during the first month's stay in Astura, except in 
 those of the first three, days, he makes no mention of his loss 
 except when some word in a letter from Atticus calls forth a 
 reply. 
 
 On his second day in Astura he informs Atticus 26 that he 
 has written, and is sending him, an essay On Grief and How to 
 Meet It, Consolatio or De Luctu Minuendo, which he has 
 
 26 An. 12, 14, 3. 
 
530 UNDEE CAESAB 
 
 addressed to himself. In this he had brought together the 
 arguments of various writers on the subject, following mainly, 
 as we learn from Pliny the Elder, Crantor, who lived in the 
 fourth and third centuries. Nobody had ever before addressed 
 such an essay to himself, Cicero says; adding that he finds 
 unusual comfort in this kind of treatment. 
 
 The thoughts were not new. Indeed, it would be difficult 
 to find new reasons for consolation after generations of philoso- 
 phers had pondered the subject. Nor did Cicero innovate in 
 combining various people's thoughts, for the philosophers of 
 Greece were always borrowing from each other. 27 But to address 
 it to himself was new. This was not like the satires of Varro 
 and of others, in which a man carries on a discussion with his 
 other self. The Consolation of Cicero may have been in dialogue 
 form, but this is not likely, and we have no hint of a divided 
 personality, as in Varro 's satires. "What Cicero seems to have 
 done, was to step away from himself, and, looking upon his 
 position with the eyes of the philosophers whom he had been 
 reading, gather together what applied to him and address it 
 to himself as if it were an exhortation to endure. 
 
 The essay has been lost. It was much read, however, so 
 that later writers quote from it and refer to its thoughts, and 
 Cicero himself, in treating of death and the endurance of pain 
 in the Tusculan Disputations, written some four months later, 
 both refers to it and in one instance quotes from it. It could 
 not have been a very long essay. Apparently it was written 
 during Cicero's first two days in Astura, unless we are to sup- 
 pose that he had been working on it in Rome without informing 
 Atticus. It seems likely that after reading the philosophers in 
 Atticus' library, filling himself with their thoughts as he stag- 
 gered under his fresh grief, he suddenly, on reaching Astura 
 and its solitude, having perhaps taken with him Crantor 's book, 
 which most appealed to him, threw himself into composition, 
 following Crantor when possible and adding things of his own. 
 
 27 Tusc. 3, 76; De Fin. 1, 6. 
 
MANY SAD SUFFERED 531 
 
 It was an effort to clarify his thoughts. It was also the act of the 
 born writer, who never reads without an impulse to write ; and 
 he had long ago discovered the solace of constant occupation. 
 
 One weapon against grief was the realization that others 
 had suffered in the same way, and had endured. The Greek 
 philosophers were fond of citing examples to prove their theories ; 
 it was one way of bringing their philosophy close to life. Cicero 
 cites many instances of prominent Romans who had lost their 
 children. He speaks of numerous deaths shrouded in great 
 sadness. "While in the heat of composition, he did not stop to 
 insert all the cases parallel to his own that he wished to include, 
 so that, after finishing the essay in the rough, he writes to Atticus 
 for further information. The remarkable thing is that he wishes 
 to include people about whom he did not know whether they had 
 died before or after their children ; people, therefore, about whose 
 manner of enduring their loss, if they had had any, he could 
 have known nothing. "Did Caepio die before or after his 
 father ? " he writes. ' ' Did Rutilia survive her son ? ' ' And other 
 cases. This reveals the author, who writes for others even while 
 he is writing for himself, but it is also probable that the mere 
 length of a list of sufferers had in it a considerable amount of 
 comfort. Cicero certainly did know that most of these men and 
 women had led brave lives and done noble deeds; and that was 
 a call to him also to live bravely and act nobly. 
 
 But these men and women had had one source of comfort 
 denied to Cicero. Q. Marcius Rex, colleague of the Elder Cato 
 in the consulship, lost his son, and went directly from the funeral 
 services to the senate-house, to preside at a meeting. Aemilius 
 Paulus lost two sons while he was celebrating a triumph, and 
 he was able in public to refer to his loss with such courage that 
 people might have thought he was speaking of somebody else. 
 Cicero, on the other hand, could not have recourse to the state. 
 The state that he had been able to serve was fallen, apparently 
 never to be restored, and his political opponents, some of them 
 
532 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 also personal enemies, lorded it over the ruins. In the Conso- 
 lation he declares that he had always fought against Fortune 
 and had conquered her, repelling the attacks of his enemies ; that 
 he had not lost heart even when he was driven into exile; but 
 that now, after losing Tullia, his beloved daughter, he confessed 
 himself defeated. "I yield," he cried, "and raise my hand." 
 
 Owning himself defeated in the unequal fray — basely de- 
 feated, he wrote — he turns to the transcendentalism that some 
 years before had inspired his Dream of Scipio. Life is sad, he 
 wrote, enlarging on it with such conviction that the speaker in 
 the Tusculan Disputations can say that when he read it he wished 
 for nothing except to leave this world. The best thing for a 
 man is never to have been born, so as not to fall upon the rocks 
 of life; the next best, to die as soon as possible, and so escape, 
 as it were, the fierce fire through which Fortune makes men pass. 
 Indeed, men are born to earth in order to atone for the crimes 
 they have committed in a previous life. After death, the souls 
 that are laden with crimes and wickedness are thrust into dark- 
 ness and lie in filth, whereas those that are pure and innocent 
 and have improved themselves with suitable meditation rise 
 naturally and easily to the gods, who are like themselves. The 
 soul, he takes care to prove, is not of the earth earthy. Its 
 wonderful qualities prevent such a belief. It is heavenly, divine, 
 and so eternal. And God himself can be understood only as a 
 spirit, free from all earthly admixtures, knowing and directing 
 all things, and endowed with unceasing motion, that is, life. 
 This passage about the nature of the soul is the only one he quotes 
 in his later writings, which is perhaps an indication of the 
 importance he assigned to it. 
 
 But Cicero, in this transcendentalism, was thinking less of 
 himself than of Tullia. He may have cherished the hope of 
 meeting her in a future life, as he later makes Cato hope in refer- 
 ence to his son in the essay on Old Age; but this hope does not 
 occur in the fragments of the Consolation. It is for Tullia that 
 
SEBINE TO TULLIA 533 
 
 he writes. His father's love would not allow him to think of her 
 as dead. The gods that men worship were at one time human 
 beings, .he says, combining in his mysticism, as the Stoics had 
 done, the belief in immortality and the current religion. And 
 he wishes to give Tullia the glory of deification that had been 
 given to the children of a Cadmus, an Amphitryo, and a Tyn- 
 darus; and the gods, he says, will gladly receive her into their 
 midst, while mortals will always remember her. 
 
 Lactantius, the church father, who quotes this passage, says 
 that people might suppose that the great grief had made Cicero 
 unbalanced, and proceeds to show that the excellence of the whole 
 essay makes this impossible; it was the work, he says, of one 
 whose soul and judgment did not waver. From the point of 
 view of the Christian Lactantius, this is true ; but it is only partly 
 true when we consider Cicero's own character. He was not 
 unbalanced, but his yearning for Tullia caused him for a time 
 to embrace a belief of which under ordinary circumstances he 
 knew that there was considerable uncertainty. He willed to 
 believe. Presently, as the days pass by, he writes in his ordinary 
 manner about the eternity that begins with death, calling it the 
 time when he will be no more. He may be less certain than he 
 was at first about Tullia 's deification; no more certain, indeed, 
 than he was about the existence of the gods ; but he seems never- 
 theless to cling to the exalted belief, and he desires at least that 
 Tullia shall not be forgotten on earth. 
 
 Even before leaving Atticus, he had determined to build a 
 memorial to Tullia. It was to be a shrine, ficmum, such as had 
 been erected to others before her, as he had learned from his 
 Greek philosophers. This shrine would perpetuate her memory ; 
 it would also be a reminder to Cicero himself, and an encourage- 
 ment to believe in her continued existence. Three days after 
 reaching Astura, he writes of it to Atticus, and from that time 
 on it is much in his letters. He has set his heart on it. If 
 Atticus wishes to do anything to please him, he must do his 
 
534 VNDES CAESAR 
 
 best to further Cicero's plan. Cicero has determined to do it; 
 an architect has made the drawings ; there is nothing left except 
 to find a suitable place and to procure the money. Atticus 
 must see to these two things. 
 
 The place was important. The shrine must have a conspicu- 
 ous situation, so that people will see it. It must be erected in a 
 spot where it will remain untouched, even if the land on which 
 it is built should in the future change owners. It must not be 
 too far from Rome, for Cicero should like to visit it without 
 having to take a whole day to do it. Many places are considered, 
 and difficulties arise. Some owners will not sell. Others ask 
 too much. One piece of land is too small; another too remote 
 and hidden, though this would add to the sanctity of the shrine. 
 And Cicero writes about it almost daily, desiring reports from 
 Atticus as to what he is doing about the matter and what the 
 prospects are. He asks Atticus not to weary at his importunity, 
 for it is the one thing that he desires. It appears to him almost 
 in the light of a vow to Tullia ; he owes it to her. 
 
 And Atticus seems to have done his best. Being an Epicurean, 
 • he could not doctrinally take much interest in deifications, but 
 he and Cicero never quarreled about doctrine. He reports daily 
 about the place for the shrine. For months the matter is under 
 discussion. Gradually it ceases in the letters, as Atticus and 
 Cicero meet, and after that there is no reference to it. But 
 we do not learn that the shrine was ever built. Probably the 
 assassination of Caesar, which convulsed Rome, putting an end 
 to many men's plans and starting others, put an end also to 
 Cicero's plans for deifying his daughter. 
 
 But neither the thoughts of Tullia 's shrine nor Cicero's own 
 Consolation could remove the pain from his heart. Nor were the 
 letters he received from friends more successful. Many of his 
 friends had seen him in Rome ; one of them, the son of Sulpicius, 
 is mentioned ; but some of them were away. Brutus wrote from 
 Cisalpine Gaul, where he was fighting for Caesar. It was the 
 
SULPICIVS' LETTER 535 
 
 letter of a friend. It arrived on the second day of Cicero's 
 stay in Astura, when his loneliness was most profound; and he 
 wept when he read it. But it brought no comfort. Brutus prob- 
 ably talked mainly of firmness in the face of grief, for Brutus 
 never forgot that he was a Stoic. Caesar wrote from Spain, 
 where he was settling matters after Munda, and, as has already 
 been mentioned, there were letters both from Sulpicius and 
 Dolabella. 
 
 Sulpicius' letter is the only one extant. The great jurist, 
 now sixty years old, did not have much iron in his nature. At 
 the outbreak of the Civil "War, during an interview with Cicero, 
 he had been thoroughly upset, fearing everything and everybody, 
 and shedding so many tears that Cicero, describing the incident 
 to Atticus, 28 wondered that Sulpicius' eyes had not become dry 
 with his long grief. His one wish, whatever happened, had been 
 that he might die in his bed. Now, writing of Tullia's death, 
 he has no thoughts of consolation to offer besides those Cicero 
 had found in Atticus' books, and the letter has, indeed, some- 
 thing of the character of a philosophical essay; but the gentle- 
 ness and the delicacy of the old jurist are no less apparent. It 
 is one of the best letters in the correspondence. Cicero 's reply 29 
 is nearly as good, and it is more personal. It shows, however, 
 that Sulpicius had not succeeded in taking away his grief. 
 
 Nothing could take it away. Cicero was from now on a 
 changed man. His dolor, as he calls it, meaning the pain at the 
 bottom of his very being, the knowledge that he was destined to 
 remain a desolate man — this sense of loss could not be eradicated. 
 What he strove to do was to get control of his facial expression 
 and his voice, and at first even this effort seemed like disloyalty 
 to Tullia. He was conscious of retaining his strength of char- 
 acter, his constantim and firmitas, as he writes both to Atticus 
 and to others. Some friends had said that he grieved too 
 much, that he behaved like a broken man. ""Why," he exclaims 
 
 28 Att. 10, 14. 
 ™Fam. 4, 6. 
 
536 UNDER CAESAB 
 
 impatiently in a letter to Atticus, ' ' I write more than they even 
 read." They would find nothing in him of which to complain 
 when he mingled again with the politicians of the forum. But 
 they would nevertheless find him a changed man. He would not 
 be the pleasant, witty companion, who could relieve a dark 
 situation with a little joke. 
 
 His main source of comfort from others was an occasional 
 meeting with Atticus, after which he was likely to write that now 
 that he was alone again he realized better than during the time 
 of the visit how much Atticus' presence had meant to him. He 
 discouraged visits from others, although he wrote to a few men, 
 like Brutus, Dolabella, Lucceius, and Sulpicius, that it would 
 be a satisfaction to see them. He remained as much as possible 
 alone ; when friends insisted on coming to see him, he left them 
 for a while, to pour out his heart to Atticus in a letter. 
 
 During this time he read and wrote constantly. Immediately 
 after finishing the Consolatio, or perhaps even earlier, he began 
 to make plans for his comprehensive presentation in Latin of 
 Greek philosophy. He had thought before of writing on this 
 subject and had even made a sort of announcement to that effect 
 in the Orator, 30 but the Consolatio was his first work. The writ- 
 ing, as he said, did not diminish his sense of loss, but it kept his 
 thoughts from dwelling on it; and it is interesting to note that 
 while much time had to pass before his letters regained even a 
 little of the former light-heartedness, the philosophical treatises 
 are from the first as witty as his earlier works. He wrote in 
 feverish haste, with very few interruptions, until the assassina- 
 tion of Caesar, and later at intervals, until the end of 44 B.C. 
 The mere bulk of this writing is marvelous, but when we consider 
 the difficulty of the subject and the excellence of the results, as 
 well as his many disappointments and sorrows, which could have 
 sapped the vitality of almost any man, this period of production 
 becomes one of the miracles in literary history. 
 
 so Or. 148. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 I 
 
 HOBTENSIUS 
 
 The Hortensius was the second of Cicero's philosophical 
 treatises. 1 It has been lost, but later references to it and a 
 number of brief quotations give a pretty complete idea of its 
 content. It was an exhortation to the study of philosophy, in 
 dialogue form, Hortensius being 'one of the chief speakers and 
 also giving his name to the treatise. The conversation doubtless 
 proceeded much as in the De Oratore, one interlocutor advancing 
 and defending one view while another criticised it; and conse- 
 quently the dialogue became a defense as well as a eulogy of 
 philosophy, just as the De Oratore had been a defense and a 
 eulogy of Cicero's oratorical ideal. 
 
 There was need of defense. Aside from the difficulty of 
 writing about philosophy in Latin and the questionable propriety 
 of a Roman ex-consul undertaking the task, matters discussed 
 in nearly every one of the prefaces to Cicero 's later philosophical 
 works, it could well be maintained by the practical Romans that 
 other intellectual pursuits ministered more directly to the needs 
 of life. Such were oratory, which scarcely required defense; 
 history, which inspired by noble examples and supplied informa- 
 tion useful in public life; and even poetry, which among other 
 things provided the means for stylistic instruction. Philosophy, 
 on the other hand, taking the place of religion, professed to 
 discuss life, to give rules, as the objector held, where no rules 
 were needed. There had not always been philosophers ; and after 
 
 1 On Cicero as a philosophical writer, see esp. Zeller, pp. 648-668 ; Eeid, 
 Acad., Introduction; Goedeckemeyer, pp. 130-200; Zielinski, Cicero im 
 Wandel etc., pp. 44-106. Goedeckemeyer gives numerous references to 
 Cicero's philosophical works. 
 
538 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 this hair-splitting tribe had appeared, they had often failed to 
 agree among themselves, they had been pedantic, and they had 
 not made their lives tally with their teachings. 
 
 In replying to these strictures, Cicero apparently said little 
 or nothing about the usefulness of philosophical study for the 
 orator, a thing the Be Oratore had set forth at length; nor 
 does he seem to have drawn any arguments from the part of 
 philosophy that was concerned with government, a field .which, 
 next to rhetoric, needed less defense in Roman eyes than any 
 other kind of didactic writing. He seems to have confined him- 
 self to philosophy in its narrower, modern sense, putting the 
 emphasis on its claim of being a guide and comforter, but also 
 saying something about its literary form. 
 
 Philosophy as practised by the old masters, the consular 
 philosophers, as Cicero calls them, and also by many later writers, 
 was a part of literature. Like history, it was intended to give 
 aesthetic pleasure as well as to teach; and Cicero at least 
 touched upon this conception here in the Hortensius. In the 
 philosophical series that he was introducing, he wished to appeal 
 to those who loved literature for its own sake ; if once attracted 
 by the form, they would be led to consider the substance. 
 
 It was with the substance that he was most concerned. In 
 the Consolatio he had urged the need of philosophy in grief; 
 now he enlarged the thought so as to apply it to life in general. 
 But the main contention remained the same. Life on earth is 
 full of errors and unhappiness, and needs direction and comfort. 
 We must learn to look upon it with exalted contempt. Man 
 consists of a body and a soul, of which the latter is by far the 
 more important. Certain Etruscan robbers, so he wrote, tor- 
 tured their captives by closely tying them to corpses, so that they 
 would rot with the dead bodies. The soul is like one of those 
 captives; it is tied to the body as to a corpse, and needs to be 
 freed by philosophy. 
 
 But he went beyond this. Philosophic contemplation, mere 
 knowledge without a practical bearing, would be most open 
 
JOT OF KNOWING 539 
 
 to attack at the hands of the objectors. Cicero, however, glorifies 
 it as the best fruit of philosophy. If there is no life after this, 
 man needs philosophy to make this life tolerable; but if there 
 is a future existense, his need of philosophy is even greater. In 
 the Isles of the Blessed, Cicero says, men do not require eloquence, 
 for there are no law courts, nor even the four cardinal virtues. 
 Fortitude is not demanded in a place that has no troubles and 
 no dangers; nor justice, where no one tries to cheat his fellow; 
 r.or self-restraint, where there is no lust ; nor wisdom, where no 
 qie is called upon to choose between good and evil. These virtues 
 arc necessary on earth, but in the Isles of the Blessed men find 
 happiness only in contemplation. They must therefore prepare 
 themselves here for a life of thought. The joy of knowing, with- 
 out extrinsic advantages, is what makes blessed the lives of the 
 gods, he says. Perhaps, by the way, no statement sheds a 
 stronger light on the difference between the ancient philosophical 
 and the Christian attitude; to the Greeks and Romans, God was 
 Intellect; to the Christians, He is Love. 
 
 The intense feeling with which Cicero wrote, not many weeks 
 after Tullia's death, and his power as a writer of impassioned 
 prose undoubtedly made this treatise one of the most brilliant 
 and effective of his works. It was a glowing introduction to his 
 projected series of philosophical writings ; a portal to the temple, 
 as it has been called. 2 Pour hundred years later it had not lost 
 its power of appeal. St. Augustine, in his Confessions? describes 
 how he came upon the book in the ordinary course of his study, 
 and how thereupon his purpose in life changed. Vain hopes 
 became worthless to him ; he was filled with an incredible longing 
 for wisdom, and turned to God. He adds earnestly, for he had 
 been reading Cicero to become a speaker, that it was not for the 
 sharpening of his tongue that he later employed the book, but for 
 the content. 
 
 2 Zielinski, op. cit., p. 45. 
 
 3 St. Augustine, Confess. 3, 4, 8. 
 
540 PEILOSOPET 
 
 II 
 ACADEMICA 
 
 Though St. Augustine found inspiration in the Hortensius, 
 he could in later years have felt no agreement with the doubt 
 that caused Cicero to refer to a future life as a mere possibility. 
 This doubt, or unwillingness to decide, when no proofs could be 
 adduced was the most marked characteristic of Cicero's philo- 
 sophical attitude. He explained it in the next treatise, the 
 Academica, thus informing his readers of the spirit in which 
 he intended to proceed. The question propounded relates to 
 human knowledge : Can we know absolutely, or can we not 1 — 
 and would properly lie at the foundation of any philosophical 
 system. Cicero, however, ignores one of the three theories held 
 at this time, the Epicurean, and devotes the treatise to an exam- 
 ination of the views of the Stoics and of the so-called New 
 Academy, or of Antiochus and Philo, rather, both of whom 
 claimed to be true followers of the Old Academy. He discusses 
 the question less as a philosopher in search of the truth than 
 as a member of the Academy who would explain how the ques- 
 tion had been treated within this school and why one view was 
 better than another. 
 
 The work has come down to us in a peculiar condition. The 
 first edition of it consisted of two books, named Catulus and 
 Lucullus, after two of the principal speakers. Of this edition 
 the second book is extant, except for the loss of a considerable 
 portion at the end. There was also a second edition, undertaken 
 both because Cicero felt that the two men of affairs, as well as 
 Hortensius, who also appeared, would not be convincing in an 
 abstruse discussion, and also because Cicero wished to compli- 
 ment Varro by making him a speaker. This edition consisted 
 of four books, of which the first has come down. Though the 
 work is thus far from complete, quite enough is left to make clear 
 the whole matter. 
 
KNOWLEDGE DERIVED FROM SENSES 541 
 
 The ancients agreed that all knowledge is derived from the 
 senses, but they held varying views as to the reliability of sense 
 impressions. The Epicureans asserted that the senses were 
 infallible. If the eyes tell us that the sun is about a foot in 
 diameter, it is a foot in diameter, or very little more or less, 
 despite astronomical theories to the contrary. If we push an 
 oar into the water, it looks crooked, to be sure, but the reason for 
 this does not lie in any fallibility of the eye but in some obviously 
 mistaken reasoning about the impression received from it. The 
 Stoics, on the other hand, maintained that sense impressions 
 may be erroneous, but that man possesses a certain innate 
 criterion by which he can correct them. This criterion resides in 
 his soul and comes from the Creator. The wise man, therefore, 
 whose soul and judgment have been trained, by Stoic teaching 
 of course, can never be in doubt. Both Epicureans and Stoics 
 were thus dogmatists, believing, for different reasons, in the 
 human ability to attain absolute knowledge. Antiochus had 
 adopted the Stoic view. 
 
 The sceptics, on the other hand, who were represented in 
 Cicero 's youth by Philo, and now by Cicero, held with the Stoics 
 that the senses were fallible, but denied the existence of the Stoic 
 criterion. To them absolute knowledge was humanly unattain- 
 able, so that the proper philosophical attitude was one of doubt 
 or indecision. Probability, a conviction that certain things are 
 more likely to be true than others, could be attained, and this 
 would serve as well as any alleged absolute knowledge both for 
 speculation and for practical life. 
 
 The philosophical question at issue, however, namely, the 
 sources of human knowledge and their reliability, receives rela- 
 tively small attention. The Epicureans are dismissed with a 
 single sentence. "Let them look to their assertions," it is 
 remarked; and no attempt is made to prove the senses fallible 
 any more than the Epicureans themselves had tried to give 
 proofs as distinguished from mere assertions. Perhaps this was 
 
542 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 natural. Ordinary observation constantly shows that men see, 
 or think they see, what does not exist; and beyond that the 
 ancients could scarcely go. 
 
 The modern scientist, with his delicate instruments, has 
 created psychology and chemistry; and though he must ulti- 
 mately theorize if he wishes to make fundamental statements 
 about the processes of the human intellect or about the structure 
 and creation of the world, he nevertheless bases his theories on 
 an almost infinite number of observations or experiments of con- 
 stantly increasing exactness, and, more important still, he realizes 
 clearly where experimentation stops and theorizing begins. The 
 ancients, on the other hand, had no instruments for sharpening 
 the senses or differentiating their impressions. If speaking of 
 sight, they reasoned about unaided vision. They had neither 
 microscopes nor telescopes, and they did not know that the eye 
 is a camera, nor that this camera may be out of focus. 
 
 The discussion, therefore, is limited to the question of the 
 Stoic criterion, which, by correcting the fallible senses, would 
 yield a knowledge of the truth ; but even here the arguments are 
 puerile. The Stoics themselves, in their eagerness to confute 
 their arch-enemies, the Epicureans, had collected whole books of 
 instances to prove that the senses make mistakes. These instances 
 are now laid at the door of the Stoics by the sceptics ; and it is 
 further pointed out that dialectic, by which the Stoics professed 
 to train their alleged criterion, is a useful enough science in 
 some ways, but it does not lead to certitude. It gives rise to 
 fallacies, admitted even by the dialectician. If you say that it 
 is daylight, and if you are speaking the truth, then it is day- 
 light ; but change the verbs thus : if you say that you are a liar 
 and if you are speaking the truth, then you are a liar ; and yet, 
 how can a liar speak the truth 1 
 
 Quite as interesting as the epistemological part of the dis- 
 cussion, however, both to Cicero and to his contemporaries, was 
 the question of the historical justification of the sceptical atti- 
 
FIVE OS TWO ACADEMIES 543 
 
 tude. Zeno, in the third century b.c, had founded Stoicism. The 
 Greek world, politically at least, was out of joint, and men 
 turned from the state to the individual. There was need for a 
 philosophy that assisted and comforted the individual. Philoso- 
 phers, therefore, addressed themselves to ethics as eagerly as 
 Socrates had done, but they became dogmatic, for speculation 
 only raised questions without answering them. Stoicism thus 
 aro"se, and it was rigidly dogmatic; and the later Stoics looked 
 upon their system as an independent philosophy. Arcesilas, 
 however, somewhat younger than Zeno, and probably in protest 
 to the latter 's dogmatism, asserted that nothing could be known, 
 and he claimed that this was also the attitude of Socrates and 
 of Plato. Socrates professed to be sure of only one thing, his 
 own ignorance, and even this certainty was denied to him by 
 Arcesilas; and as for Plato, he discusses various topics in his 
 dialogues, but approaches them, so Arcesilas and his followers 
 held, in a spirit of inquiry; he does not dogmatize. Arcesilas, 
 therefore, insisted that he was a follower of Plato, a true 
 Academic. 
 
 The sceptical attitude was thereupon notably represented by 
 Carneades, and later by Philo, Cicero's teacher; but these added 
 something positive to the doctrine of the school, particularly 
 Philo, though the exact extent of his positive teachings can not 
 be determined. Then came Antiochus, once a pupil of Philo, 
 who abandoned scepticism, and would have it that he, and not 
 Arcesilas, Carneades, or Philo, was a true disciple of Plato. 
 In 'his eyes these three philosophers had been heretics. There 
 was thus a struggle for the name of Academic, a matter never 
 settled; and we have as many as five Academies: that of Plato 
 and his immediate followers, of Arcesilas, of Carneades, of 
 Philo, and of Antiochus; or else two Academies, the Old and 
 the New, the New being the sceptical school, and the Old being 
 that of Plato, to which Antiochus returned. 
 
544 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The historical squabble renewed by Antiochus is significant 
 as an indication of the lack of originality that had come upon 
 philosophy. If a new view had appeared, but none did, it 
 would probably have been considered little less than damnable 
 heresy. Philosophers were forever stretching their hands, for 
 justification, to their old gods, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, 
 and the writings of Plato and Aristotle had very much the same 
 relation toward philosophizing as the Bible has, or had, toward 
 protestant theology. Philosophy was largely a matter of inter- 
 preting Plato and Aristotle; men wished to prove themselves 
 orthodox. Even the Stoics, although they considered Stoicism 
 an independent philosophy, and though proud of their system, 
 constantly appealed to the early philosophers; only the Epicur- 
 eans stood aloof. They were the Ishmaelites; but they were 
 more orthodox than any one else — in their acceptance of Epi- 
 curus. 
 
 All this babble about ancient worthies would not have arisen 
 if men had been really orthodox, willing unconditionally to yield 
 to ancient authority. On all sides there was a falling away from 
 grace. Even the Epicureans, though doctrinally of chemical 
 purity, had allowed the practical spirit of the times to invade 
 their ranks. They took sides for and against rhetoric, with which 
 properly they should have had no concern. They wrote about 
 things that ought to have lain beyond their sphere' of interest, 
 as conceived by Epicurus; some of them, like Lucretius, culti- 
 vated a literary style, at which Epicurus would have shaken 
 a sad head ; and nearly all the professing Epicureans among the 
 Romans, Atticus excepted, and he did not act from doctrinal 
 motives, allowed Roman instincts to get the better of their 
 philosophical profession, and took part in political life. 
 
 The Stoics, though to them all others were fools, did not 
 agree among themselves; their greatest had doubts. And when 
 Antiochus abandoned the sceptical attitude, becoming prac- 
 tically a Stoic, he insisted that the Stoics were nothing but 
 
PROBABILITY IS GUESSWOBK 545 
 
 followers of Plato, disguising their dependence under a cloud 
 of words — as appears from Cicero's next treatise, the Be Fimlus. 
 The Stoics, according to Antiochus, were thieves ; but the oppon- 
 ents to Antiochus asked whether his objection to being called 
 a Stoic was not due to a desire to be looked upon as the founder 
 of a new school. Thus hairsplitting and recriminations were 
 abroad in the philosophical lecture rooms. Varro announced 
 that there were two hundred and eighty-eight different philoso- 
 phies ; he had examined them all, and had rejected two hundred 
 and eighty-seven, clinging to the two hundred and eighty-eighth. 4 
 
 But philosophy is a power, in the world, or it is nothing. 
 No philosophers could be more conscious of this than those who 
 taught the practical Romans. The discussion in the Academics, 
 therefore, becomes largely a series of assertions and denials 
 relative to the effects of the sceptical attitude. Antiochus, for 
 the dogmatists, maintained that the result of scepticism is 
 inactivity of every kind, both physical and mental. Logic, 
 memory, art, and morals can not exist side by side with scepti- 
 cism, for they depend on certainty of knowledge. The sceptics 
 can not be considered philosophers at all if they lack confidence 
 even in their one dogma of scepticism. Man is made for the 
 attainment of certitude; the denial of its attainability throws 
 all life into confusion. The probability of the sceptics is random 
 guesswork. Even if they profess to ■ decide after careful pon- 
 dering, a decision that may be false is useless. Their doctrine 
 even does away with probability, and leads to that suspension 
 of judgment which Arcesilas announced as the result of the 
 sceptical attitude, and such suspension of judgment is inevitably 
 fruitless. Cicero may praise philosophy, so he has his opponent 
 say in this dialogue, but he is the one person in the world who 
 ought not to consider knowledge unattainable. If nothing can be 
 known, how could he in the senate give utterance to the notorious 
 expression that Clodius found so delightful, namely, that he, 
 Cicero, had discovered all about the Catilinarian conspiracy ? 
 
 i St. Aug., De Civ. Dei 19, 1, 2. 
 
546 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The charge of the dogmatists was palp'ably weak, and Cicero 
 points out that the difference between sceptic probability and 
 dogmatic certitude is a mere matter of assertion, in so far as they 
 relate to an active life. Even dogmatists act on probability. 
 People can remember things that are false, as, for instance, the 
 doctrines of Epicurus, no less readily than those that are true. 
 In the sphere of thought, however, the difference is considerable. 
 The sceptics are open-minded, the dogmatists are not. They 
 follow somebody else's lead. Is not their position, after all, due 
 to laziness? Or can any one of them claim — Varro excepted — 
 that he has completely examined everybody's every opinion, 
 and on the basis of that examination has come absolutely to agree 
 with every single tenet of one particular philosopher? And, 
 finally, the dogmatists do not agree among themselves. Not all 
 of them, indeed, only one of them, can be right; and he, very 
 likely, is wrong. The dogmatic attitude itself, therefore, makes 
 dogmatism impossible. 
 
 All this, though very fine, goes in a circle. The point of it 
 all is this, that the sceptical attitude is not one of mere criticism, 
 as it had been. The New Academy leaves its adherent free to 
 choose the good things wherever he may find them. Philo 
 advised his hearers to attend the lectures of other philosophers. 
 And so a New Academic, like Cicero, when he turns to the one 
 subject of importance, ethics, is not merely free, but feels it his 
 duty, to examine various views, whereupon he has the right to 
 adopt the best. He may borrow from the Stoics, of varying 
 degrees of orthodoxy, from Antiochus, and even from the Epi- 
 cureans. He is not hampered by a proud desire for consistency, 
 and he is not trying to build up a complete system, a thing for 
 which dogmatism is necessary, but he moves from revelation 
 to revelation, as it were, always realizing that he does not know, 
 and only finding one thing more likely than another. In modern 
 phraseology he might be called a pragmatist. 
 
THE CHIEF END IN LIFE 547 
 
 III 
 De Finibus 
 
 This is the attitude Cicero at once exemplified in the De 
 Finibus Bonorum et Mulorum, his next treatise, in which he 
 discussed the fundamental question of ancient philosophy : What 
 is happiness? The search was for the chief end of human 
 action, and this explains the title. Finis is the aim or end. To 
 this was added Bonorum et Malorum, of good things and bad, 
 for an inquiry into the theories of the chief end or good in life 
 involved. a consideration of the evils as well. 
 
 The work is in five books. In the first, the Epicurean doe- 
 trine is set forth, and in the second, it is criticised. The third 
 and fourth books are similarly devoted to the Stoic view. The 
 fifth book gives an exposition of Antiochus' version of the Old 
 Academic and the Peripatetic doctrine, which he conceived to 
 be the same — Plato and Aristotle and their immediate followers, 
 in other words, or the Ancients — and this is followed by a brief 
 criticism. In including an account of the Epicurean teaching, 
 with which Cicero had no sympathy, he is obeying the dictates 
 of his New Academic conscience, which demanded an examina- 
 tion of all things, but he is also carrying out the purposes that 
 inspired his philosophical writings. One of these, though not 
 very important it would seem, was to confute the Epicureans 
 and counteract their growing influence ; another, his paramount 
 purpose, was to transfer to Latin, with criticisms, all that was 
 significant in contemporary philosophical thought. 
 
 Though the De Finibus is a long work, for the peculiar 
 manner of each philosophy is reproduced, the substance of it 
 can be stated briefly. 
 
 Turning to unsophisticated nature for guidance, Epicurus 
 had observed that every living thing, as soon as it is born, seeks 
 pleasure and avoids pain. A child has no need of intricate 
 
548 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 arguments to know that honey is sweet. Nature herself thus 
 indicates that the one thing toward which all creatures strive, 
 the one criterion by which all things are tested, the chief end in 
 life then, is pleasure ; whereas the great evil, its opposite, is pain. 
 All the nonsensical disparagement of pleasure and praise of 
 pain — so the Epicurean continues contemptuously — arise from 
 faulty reasoning. No one scorns pleasure because it is pleasant, 
 but because some men lack sense in their pursuit of it, and so 
 are made to suffer; nor does any one love pain because it is 
 painful, but because the endurance of pain at times brings 
 pleasure. So, too, the Epicurean philosopher rejects some pleas- 
 ures that he may enjoy others which are greater, and he 'is willing 
 to suffer pain that he may avoid still greater pain. But when 
 there are no effects to be considered, all men choose pleasure 
 and avoid pain. 
 
 Epicurus does not understand pleasure in a narrow sense. 
 The ceasing of pain, as all will admit, is positively pleasant, a 
 fact that points to the true interpretation of Epicurus' term: 
 that pleasure is freedom from pain, freedom from every de- 
 sire for a change. The Stoics, Cicero's Epicurean spokesman 
 observes, are fond of asking whether the raised hand of a statue 
 can be said to enjoy pleasure. No, not if pleasure is merely a 
 pleasant titillation of the senses, as the hedonistic Cyrenaics 
 maintained, but yes, if pleasure be rightly understood as the 
 opposite of pain, which is the great evil. Pleasure is thus pain- 
 lessness, absolute contentment. It can be varied, but never 
 increased. 
 
 The Stoics set up virtue as the chief end in life, but, the 
 champion of Epicureanism continues, the practise of their four 
 cardinal virtues, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice, can 
 easily be shown to aim at nothing but a happy life, that is, at 
 pleasure. They are in their essence selfish. Even justice is not 
 'altruistic, for, however well a wrongdoer may insure himself 
 against discovery, he can never be certain that he will not be 
 
EVLOGY OF EPICUREANISM 549 
 
 found out. Men may be deceived, but not the immortal gods. 
 And so, in the last analysis, a man is just because he is afraid 
 of being unjust. The virtues are means to an end, and not an 
 end in themselves. 
 
 All pleasures, to be sure, are ultimately derived from the 
 senses, but the pleasures of the body are by no means so great 
 as those of the mind. Physical sensations, whether pleasurable 
 or painful, are confined to the present. The mind, on the other 
 hand, looks both into the past and into the future. This can be 
 easily shown. Physical pain becomes immeasurably more irk- 
 some if the sufferer learns that he will never be free from it, 
 that it is chronic. Fools are always torturing themselves by 
 thinking of past injuries, whereas the wise man forgets these 
 and turns his thoughts to the pleasant things that have befallen 
 him. 
 
 ' ' Oh, what a clear, open, simple, straight road to happiness ! ' ' 
 Cicero's Epicurean finally exclaims; whereupon he launches 
 into an ardent eulogy of Epicureanism, in which the sentences 
 follow one another in breathless exaltation, mingling praise of 
 Epicurus with contempt and ridicule for every one else, but 
 particularly for the Stoics, who are said to prattle about virtue, 
 a thing sublime in name but empty of substance ; showing how 
 a pleasant life is always virtuous, and a virtuous life always 
 pleasant; pointing out the uselessness of logic, which is of no 
 assistance either to happy living or clear thinking, and extolling 
 the study of natural science, which teaches that the atomic world 
 has nothing to do with any gods, but is formed and will be 
 dissolved according to natural laws, so that man, fearing nothing, 
 can calmly await death, which will bring utter extinction, beset 
 by no hopeless longings, and suffering no tortures; lauding 
 friendship, for which the Epicureans were noted, as the greatest 
 blessing in life, and insisting that their assertion that its basis 
 is selfishness does not weaken their friendships, for, having once 
 won a friend, the Epicurean forgets his own advantage and 
 
550 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 sacrifices all for his friend; and finally exclaiming, somewhat 
 weakly it would seem, that Epicurus, having found the one road 
 to happiness, was right in neglecting, as many Epicureans in 
 their cultured weakness did not neglect, both poetry, which is 
 unpractical and mere child's play, and other arts and sciences, 
 such as music, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, on which 
 Plato had wasted his time ; for these can not be true, since they 
 are founded on erroneous premises, and, even if they were true, 
 they would not be helpful to a happy life ; they are taught as a 
 matter of convention, and it is a disgrace not to know them. 
 
 The ardor of the Epicurean speaker, who is no less fervid 
 than Lucretius himself, is suddenly abated by Cicero, who proves 
 by Socratic dialectic that Epicurus has attempted to unite under 
 one term two different conceptions — that of pleasure, whether 
 physical or mental, and painlessness. This attempt, it is pointed 
 out, was due to a desire on the part of Epicurus to avoid being 
 classed with the pure hedonists. It led him to the assertion, 
 furthermore, that pleasure, though variable in kind, can not be 
 increased. The error of this is demonstrated by a simple dilemma : 
 if a man mixes a drink for another, without being thirsty him- 
 self, does he get as much pleasure from his action as the thirsty 
 man who receives the drink? The confusion of terms also 
 vitiated Epicurus' manner of reasoning. He had started from 
 the premise that the new-born child seeks pleasure, but he had 
 abandoned it when converting pleasure into painlessness. Nor, 
 indeed, is it true that pleasure is the one object of instinctive 
 appetition; there are many such objects, the chief of which is 
 self-preservation. 
 
 The principal objection, however, to Epicurus' theory is that 
 he excludes virtue from his definition. Such a doctrine is 
 rejected, Cicero maintains, both by human reason and by human 
 endeavor, for all good men strive to live virtuously. And virtue, 
 or morality, is not a matter of convention, as Epicurus would 
 have it, but is founded in the very nature of man. 
 
ONLY VIRTUE IS GOOD 551 
 
 In this statement, which Cicero had already made in his 
 works on the State and on the Laws, Cicero is on Stoic ground ; 
 and it remains for him only to give the Stoic explanations and 
 arguments connected with it. But the Stoics, despite their 
 nobility, were a proud, contentious, logical sect, abounding in 
 nicely differentiated terms, which, Cicero admits, were sometimes 
 difficult to understand and frequently hard to turn into Latin. 
 Cato, with his faults and his virtues, was a fit representative of. 
 these philosophers, and Cicero makes him the speaker. 
 
 Like the Epicureans, the Stoics based their theory on the 
 primal instinct, Cato says ; but this, according to them, is self- 
 preservation. The earliest actions of a new-born creature are 
 aimed at acquiring things that are good for it and avoiding 
 things that are bad for it. The former minister to physical and 
 mental health, not to pleasure, and may be called excellent or 
 preferable. The others are neither excellent nor preferable. 
 When a man reaches years of discretion, his duty, as derived 
 from his unadulterated instinct, that of self-preservation, is to 
 choose properly between the preferable things in life and their 
 opposites. The systematic exercise of this proper choice consti- 
 tutes virtue, which is thus the chief or sole good. 
 
 Since the aim of philosophy is to make men happy and since, 
 therefore, a perfect philosophical system must be able to make 
 men perfectly happy, the Stoics further explained that perfect 
 happiness consists in this proper choice. Happiness is not the 
 possession of the preferable things, for a man might not succeed 
 in acquiring them ; it is the choice itself, which is always within 
 the power of the philosopher. The true Stoic, therefore, the 
 sapiens or wise man, is always perfectly happy. 
 
 The preferable things and their opposites are neither good 
 nor bad. Only virtue is good, and only vice, its opposite, is bad. 
 Some things are more or less preferable than others, or more or 
 less to be avoided; but they are of importance only as objects 
 among which the philosopher chooses rightly when the choice is 
 
552 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 presented to him. And since all wise men are perfectly happy, 
 they are of necessity equally happy. There are no degrees. 
 Neither is there any difference between them due to time. Hap- 
 piness being the proper choice, an hour of virtuous action is as 
 good as sixty years. On the other hand, those who are not wise — 
 the foolish, the stulti — are also alike in their unhappiness. 
 
 The Stoics condescended to make their assertions a little less 
 obscure by the use of comparisons. The preferable things in 
 life, over which the Stoic has no control, like wealth, health, 
 friendship, are as insignificant when compared with virtue as 
 the light of a lamp beside the sun, a drop of honey in the Aegean 
 Sea, a penny among the millions of Croesus, a single step on the 
 long road to India. There are no degrees in happiness. If the 
 virtue of a shoe is to fit, many shoes can fulfil that purpose no 
 better than one ; nor are big shoes better than small ones. Time 
 has no influence. It is folly to instance good health, and how it 
 is better to be well for a long time than for a short time. It 
 is, of course, but that comes from the fact that good health is 
 valuable just in proportion to its continuance. Virtue is differ- 
 ent ; it is an action. To say that virtue, perfect happiness, is 
 increased by continuance is no better than saying that the act 
 of dying or being born is made better by being made longer. 
 All fools are equally unhappy. If you are above the water, 
 you can breathe ; if you are not, you can not breathe, and it does 
 not matter whether you are near the surface or near the bottom. 
 
 Cicero was at one with the Stoics in exalting virtue. His 
 criticism, therefore, is not very serious ; he has not a good ease 
 against them, as he makes Cato say, but he has won worse 
 cases. His objections, those of Antiochus, are directed against 
 Stoic pedantry and assumption of logical precision. 
 
 Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, took his ideas from the 
 Ancients, Cicero contends, and, to cover up the theft, he invented 
 a technical vocabulary professing to express differences on which 
 he laid much emphasis but which in reality do not exist. Zeno 
 
MAN A DISEMBODIED SPIRIT 553 
 
 has thus poured the good old wine into very poor new bottles. 
 The Ancients made the claims of virtue paramount, just as do 
 the Stoics, but they did not say that happiness depends entirely 
 on virtue. Good and bad things they called good and bad. 
 Pain is bad, and the Stoics do not mend the matter by saying 
 that it is not bad, but hard, irksome, hateful, contrary to our 
 nature, difficult to endure. It is true that a man who is rising 
 to the surface is no more able to breathe than the man at the 
 bottom of the sea, but he is more likely to recover his breath ; 
 and that constitutes a difference which should not be neglected. 
 There is also a difference between the man who beats a slave and 
 the man who beats his father. 
 
 The Stoics had reared a system so consistent and logical, they 
 proudly claimed, that not a word could be changed without 
 causing the whole structure to collapse. They based their theory 
 on the instinct of self-preservation, which applies both to the 
 body and the soul, and thereupon they abandoned all thought 
 of the body and said that happiness depends entirely on a man 's 
 spiritual attitude. You might think that man consists only of 
 soul, that he is a disembodied spirit. And, even worse, some of 
 their preferable and not preferable things, like good and bad 
 health, have a demonstrable influence on a man's spiritual con- 
 dition, but the Stoics, stating such things to be negligible, had 
 thought of the soul only in so far as it was concerned with right 
 and wrong. Their so-called instinct of self-preservation was 
 thus made to preserve nothing but a man's morality. 
 
 The matter had now been threshed out. The attitude of the 
 Ancients, which was also that of Antiochus and of Cicero, had 
 been given in the criticism of Stoicism, and Cicero makes his 
 speaker repeat it, only adding some praise of the wider intel- 
 lectual interests and the attention to literary .form displayed by 
 the Academics as opposed to the narrow and uncouth Stoics. As 
 a motto for Cicero's attitude stands the old reply of Apollo: 
 "Know thyself," and this is interpreted as applying to the 
 
554 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 body as well as to the soul. Of this view Cicero has necessarily 
 no criticism to make ; he only reminds his readers that they must 
 realise that they are dealing with probabilities and not with 
 demonstrated verities. The last word of all, none the less, is 
 that a man's moral attitude is the only thing really important 
 for his happiness; it is justifiable to call a man happy who is 
 on the whole happy, and that depends on virtue. M. Crassus, 
 the father of the rich Crassus, was called laughterless, and this 
 was proper, in spite of Lucilius' report that Crassus did laugh 
 once in his life. 
 
 IV 
 
 Tusculan Disputations 
 
 Although the whole discussion in the De Finibus is concerned 
 with the question of happiness, it is only a theoretical examina- 
 tion of the term, and offers but little assistance to the struggling 
 individual. The individual, however, was to be helped, or else 
 philosophy had failed of its aim. In the next work, therefore, 
 .the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero approaches the question of 
 happiness from the other side, and inasmuch as life is full of 
 trouble — a circumstance that is not always admitted, particu- 
 larly by the Stoics, but nevertheless taken for granted — philo- 
 sophy becomes in the Tusculaons a defensive armor. 
 
 In the first book, which treats of death, this defensive char- 
 acter is scarcely more than a pretense. The ancients, with rare 
 exceptions, did not worry much about death. The possibility 
 of punishment in a future life for sins committed on earth was 
 not vivid to the Greeks and Romans, and is usually dismissed 
 by the philosophers as absurd. Cicero often expresses this 
 thought, even in his orations. The alternatives connected with 
 death, therefore, were to the ancients either absolute extinction 
 or else a future life of happiness, for it is only in poetry that we 
 have the ghostlike existence after death which Achilles found so 
 unsatisfactory. And extinction, the more troublesome alterna- 
 
CICEBO'S NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 555 
 
 tive, did not cast a veil of gloom over human existence; Pro- 
 metheus, according to Aeschylus, had taught men not to think 
 of it. It is therefore only theoretically that the fear of death 
 was considered one of life's troubles, which needed to be dis- 
 pelled by philosophy. But the consideration of death, with which 
 goes an attempt to determine the nature of the soul, has always 
 been of absorbing interest, and it is consequently one of the 
 most remarkable illustrations of Cicero's philosophical method, 
 and of that of his contemporaries, that this metaphysical ques- 
 tion, which they wished to discuss, was introduced under ethics. 
 
 It would be possible — and it has been done 5 — to construct, 
 approximately at least, a philosophical system from Cicero's 
 writings, or to discuss his writings from the point of view of a 
 system, 6 under the three ancient fields of physics, logic, and 
 ethics. Either of these methods contributes to clearness, but it 
 tends to obscure the main characteristic of Cicero 's philosophical 
 attitude, 7 and that of his contemporaries, that only one field was 
 important, namely ethics. Philosophy was after all religion, 
 and mainly a religion of the intellect, on the whole concerning 
 itself with this life; philosophers followed Socrates, who had 
 directed his fellow-men to turn their eyes to earth. 
 
 Physics, the science of the whole world, included mathematics, 
 the natural sciences, and metaphysics. Though technically a part 
 of philosophy, it becomes a matter of real concern to the philoso- 
 phers of Cicero's time only in so far as it can be brought under 
 ethics. The Epicureans emphasized their theories of the struc- 
 ture of the world, because these explained that the world is 
 governed by physical laws, without a providence, and that the 
 human soul is mortal. The other philosophers, when they treated 
 these subjects, did so in the spirit of the modern scientist. 
 Posidonius, the Stoic, was thus a tireless investigator. Cicero 
 
 5 By Goedeckemeyer. 
 
 « By Zielinski. 
 
 'Zielinski, op. eit., p. 45, thinks otherwise. 
 
556 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 had an interest in these matters; his philosophical works refer 
 to them, especially to the atomic theory of the Epicureans, which 
 is also frequently mentioned in his letters. There is likewise still 
 extant a partial translation of Plato's Timaeus, which treats of 
 creation. This translation was made by Cicero for use in a 
 projected dialogue, since it is preceded by an introductory scene ; 
 but this dialogue was not finished. The only parts of ancient 
 physics, properly metaphysics, that he treats of in extant dia- 
 logues are the questions of the existence and nature of the gods, 
 and of divination, providence, fate, and free will, which grow 
 out of the former ; and his reason for discussing them was ethical. 
 
 As for logic, that had little connection with philosophy of an 
 ethical trend. One part of it, inventio, or more specifically, 
 topica, was neglected by the Stoics, but received much attention 
 from the Academics. It had become a rhetorical subject, and 
 was treated as such by Cicero, though cursorily and without any 
 claim to originality, in his smaller rhetorical works. 
 
 The other part of logic was dialectic. The Stoics cherished 
 it as leading to the precise definitions in which they took delight. 
 Cicero had studied the subject with Diodotus, who lived in his 
 house, and he frequently speaks very highly of it ; but we have 
 already seen, in the Aoademica, that Stoic dialectic was not 
 considered useful by the New Academy for the attainment of 
 sure knowledge; and it was only in this connection that it could 
 have found a place among Cicero's philosophical writings. As 
 an aid to the orator, however, it seemed to him very valuable, 
 and probably the Stoics cultivated the subject largely for a 
 didactic purpose. In the year 44 B.C., while writing the Topica," 
 Cicero himself thought of treating the subject, but this was never 
 done. 
 
 The ethical purpose of the philosophers resulted in numerous 
 books that seem to have had very much the character of modern 
 lectures or sermons, being, in reality, something between these 
 
 s Topica, 7. 
 
CONSOLATORY MEDITATIONS 557 
 
 two. As Cicero himself says, at the end of the third book of 
 the Tusculans," philosophers treated of poverty, of disgrace, of 
 exile, of the destruction of one 's country, of slavery, of sickness 
 or weakness, of blindness, and indeed of everything that could 
 be called a calamity. They delivered lectures on these subjects 
 and then published the lectures in separate books. These books 
 Cicero found interesting, but he adds with a smile that the 
 Greeks certainly do look for work, or, as we might say, for 
 trouble. Since the arguments would be drawn from the basic 
 conceptions of philosophy, there was necessarily much repetition 
 from one book to another, as would not have been the case if the 
 philosophers had been intent, as modern philosophers usually are, 
 on expounding a system. 
 
 This repetition is also seen in Cicero. Thus the arguments 
 for the immortality of the soul are given most completely in the 
 first book of the Tusculan Disputations, but one or another is 
 frequently mentioned in other works, as in the Dr&am of Scipio, 
 and in the essay on Old Age they are set down systematically. 
 Old age was one of the troubles in life that had to be combated ; 
 it was thus properly the subject of one of the many little books 
 of consolatory meditation. But one of the troublesome circum- 
 stances about old age is its proximity to death; and so the 
 philosophical lecturer or preacher at once leads forth his meta- 
 physical arguments. 
 
 The Tusculan Disputations is a sheaf of such consolatory 
 meditations. By Cicero's own avowal, 10 indeed, it came about 
 in the same way as such books among the Greeks, for Cicero 
 professes to have lectured to several friends who were visiting 
 him in his Tusculan villa, hence the name, and later to have put 
 these lectures into book form. As the lecturing lasted five days, 
 there are five books. The listeners propounded a thesis, and 
 Cicero, in the manner of a philosopher of the New Academy, 
 
 s Tusc. 3, 81. 
 ioTusc. 1, 7-8. 
 
558 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 controverted it. The first book discussed death; the second, 
 physical pain; the third, grief; the fourth, other mental affec- 
 tions, such as fear, desire, and unrestrained joy; and the fifth 
 book, instead of meeting some definite trouble, gives unity to the 
 work by addressing itself to life as a whole and maintaining the 
 Stoic thesis that virtue is sufficient for happiness. 
 
 There might have been other books. Cicero's own essay on 
 Old Age might have been included; but possibly old age was 
 not obviously enough one of the drawbacks of human existence. 
 Cicero preferred to treat it separately, addressing it to his old 
 friend Atticus and giving his treatment a wide character by 
 making Cato the Elder the speaker. Cicero later wrote on Glory, 
 two books, which are lost, and on Friendship, and these books 
 might have been a part of the Tusculaus, for philosophy consoles 
 by pointing out the blessings of life ; but glory was such an 
 important subject in the Roman view of things, and friendship 
 was so well adapted to a separate treatment addressed to Atticus, 
 that they became subjects of special treatises. 
 
 There might also have been fewer books. The third book, 
 on grief, and the fourth, on other mental affections, are so much 
 alike that they could easily have become a single book. Even 
 the second book, on physical pain, might have been incorporated 
 with them, though less readily. And it should be remembered 
 that in the Consolaiio Cicero had already treated of grief, the 
 subject of the third book, and, to some extent, of death and a 
 future life, the subject of the first book. The treatment in the 
 Consolatio, however, was obviously less calmly philosophical than 
 in the Tusculans, and it had a wider range, in that it discussed 
 the sadness of life in general. 
 
 That man consists of a body and a soul was recognized by 
 philosophers generally, even by the materialistic Epicureans. To 
 the latter, however, the soul was composed of atoms, which sep- 
 arate at the death of the body, so that the soul dies, though its 
 fragments wander about the universe, ultimately entering into 
 
NATURE OF THE SOUL 559 
 
 new combinations. The soul of the Epicureans consisted of a 
 higher and a lower part, and they were modest enough not to 
 give a name to the highest constituent element of the soul, but 
 this element was material nevertheless, and not spiritual; the 
 two parts of the soul correspond surprisingly to our brain and 
 bur nervous system, even though the higher part of the soul was 
 placed in the chest. 
 
 To others the soul was spiritual. The scattered references 
 • to it in Cicero's works make it clear that he did not try to deter- 
 mine its composition, its form, or its place in the body. He 
 says that men know little enough about the body, and still less 
 about the soul. It comes from the outside, being of divine 
 essence, and is placed in man, as Cicero says in the De Senectute, 
 so that the earth may have inhabitants to govern it, guided by 
 their contemplation of the heavenly order, or, rather, by their 
 recollection of it. The soul consists of two parts; the lower, 
 vegetative part, which feels, moves, and desires, and the higher 
 part, which thinks and wills. This soul is immortal, and immor- 
 tality involves pre-existence as well as post-existence. 
 
 Cicero willed to believe that the soul was immortal, as has 
 already been noticed. It was the nobler doctrine; more con- 
 vincing, too, according to the Tiiscvians, than the view of the 
 Epicureans. Not all men or philosophers, even among the 
 loftiest, agreed with Cicero. Some Stoics, he says, maintained 
 that the soul lived longer than the body, but not eternally ; and 
 Panaetius even gave arguments for thinking the soul destructible. 
 Nor does Cicero himself wish to seem certain of the matter. His 
 questioner, in the first book of the Tusculans, 11 explains that, 
 while reading Plato, who argued for immortality, he agrees with 
 the latter 's doctrine, but, after putting away the book, he has 
 doubts. Cicero also allows Cato to say, in the De Senectute, 12 
 that he would rather err in his belief in the soul's immortality 
 
 n Tuso. 1, 24. 
 12 De Sen. 85. 
 
560 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 than give it up ; if death should end all, there is at least some 
 consolation in the thought that the philosophers whom he had 
 opposed, and who will thus be proved right, will also be dead, 
 and consequently unable to laugh at him. 
 
 The arguments for immortality are drawn from reason, 
 Cicero says, and from the natural human attitude. Keason, 
 necessarily only inference, leads us to believe that the soul is 
 light, and so is of divine substance and will naturally rise to 
 heaven, its true home, after death. It is swift and always in 
 motion, and consequently has had no beginning and will have 
 no end, for motion, which is life, is its very essence. Being of 
 a simple and indivisible nature, furthermore, it can not be 
 destroyed, for destruction means disintegration into component 
 parts, as in the case of the atomic soul of the Epicureans. 
 Finally, and here the philosophers become a little more concrete, 
 the wonderful Imman powers of memory, foresight, expression, 
 ability to study and to create artistically, indicate both that we 
 have a soul and that it is divine — immortal, in other words. 
 This last inference, as will be seen in the De Natura Deorum, 
 is exactly like the one by which the existence and the nature of 
 the gods can be gathered from the excellence of the world itself. 
 
 In addition to these reasons, men have always believed in 
 the immortality of the soul, as is indicated by their care of the 
 dead, deifications, and their interest in events that will occur 
 after their death. The noblest men desire posthumous fame; 
 they have an instinctive longing for immortality. Indeed, the 
 souls of dead men continue to exert an influence on human affairs, 
 without which their fame could not be perpetuated, so Cato in 
 the De Senectute 13 quotes from the supposed last words of Cyrus 
 in Xenophon 's Cyropaedeia; but how this is done, Cicero unfor- 
 tunately does not undertake to explain. 
 
 But if the arguments to prove the soul immortal are weak, 
 those to the contrary, Cicero says, are even weaker. He men- 
 
 is De Sen. 80. 
 
BEATS A BLESSING OR A RELEASE 561 
 
 tions two, advanced by Panaetius, who disagreed with his master, 
 Plato, only in regard to this one subject. One of Panaetius' 
 thoughts was like that of the Epicureans. The soul, he said, 
 can feel pain, and pain is equivalent to sickness, but that which 
 can be sick can also die. To which Cicero returns that it is only 
 the lower part of the soul that is exposed to pain; the higher 
 part, not so exposed, neither falls sick nor dies. The soul, fur- 
 thermore, still according to Panaetius, has been born, and that 
 which has been born will die ; and the fact that the soul has had 
 a beginning is indicated by the resemblance of a child's soul to 
 that of the parent, as though the soul of the child had been born 
 from that of the parent. The reply to this contention is the 
 explanation that this similarity is due to inherited physical char- 
 acteristics, which influence the soul. 
 
 The question before Cicero, however, is whether death is an 
 evil. If there is a future life, it is happy, as has already been 
 stated, and death is in that case a blessing. Indeed, what we 
 call life is really death, whereas real life begins after physical 
 death; while on earth, the soul is shackled and held to unavoid- 
 able, heavy tasks, sunk to earth from its heavenly home, as it 
 were. But even if death means extinction, men have no reason 
 for anxiety. Having ceased to be, the soul can feel no regret 
 for the loss of its wonderful powers. Even if life be considered 
 a blessing, there can be no longing for it after death. Nor can 
 we ever say with certainty that death deprives a man of any 
 happiness awaiting him on earth; fortunes are too uncertain; 
 Priam would have been happier if his life had been shorter. 
 The first thought, however, is that human existence is an evil; 
 and, in that case, death is a deliverer. As Cicero had written 
 in the Ccmsolatio, it is best never to have been born ; after that, 
 the most fortunate thing is to die young. 
 
 Death, then, is either a blessing of a somewhat uncertain 
 nature, or it is, sadly enough, a release from human misery, 
 actual or threatening. If these thoughts fail to bring conviction, 
 
562 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 then a man can merely realize that death, being decreed for all, 
 can not be an evil — provided he believes that the world is ruled 
 by a kindly providence. The man who has lived a good life 
 should be ready to die. As for the act of dying, which also might 
 be a cause for anxiety, the thought is thrown out that the 
 death struggle lasts at the worst only a few moments. But 
 the philosophers' consolation for this falls under the question 
 of the endurance of physical pain, just as the further phase of 
 the question, the sorrow caused by death to the survivors, belongs 
 under the treatment of grief. 
 
 Physical pain, Cicero says, in the second book, is, Stoically 
 speaking, not an evil, but he adds that a mere assertion to that 
 effect is of little value. "We have to endure pain by getting 
 accustomed to it, and still more by keeping our mental balance, 
 realizing from our philosophical meditations that praiseworthy 
 actions are the greatest good in life and that our higher nature 
 must govern the lower. It is only philosophical meditation 
 that enables us to endure all kinds of pain; -without it, we become 
 inconsistent. Thus the Greeks endure sickness with fortitude, 
 but they lack the courage to look an enemy in the face, and 
 barbarians exult in battle, but wail in sickness. Physical pain, 
 however, is a real evil; bodily medicines do not always help. If 
 the pain becomes too great, there is always an escape through 
 suicide. 
 
 Sorrow and other mental affections differ from physical pain. 
 If a man really wishes to cure himself, he can do so, says Cicero 
 in the preface to the third book; later in the book, however, he 
 recedes somewhat from this position, as he remembers the death 
 of Tullia. There are many considerations that may bring help ; 
 different philosophers urge one or another, but Cicero, in agree- 
 ment with still other philosophers, thinks that all means of 
 assistance should be used. Our imagination is the chief cause 
 of suffering, and as a riotous imagination is philosophically a 
 sick condition of the soul, it is our duty to eradicate it. In other 
 
SOBBOW 563 
 
 words, it is bad for us to grieve, to fear, to rejoice overmuch. 
 The imagination also at times makes it appear that grieving is 
 our duty, as Cicero had experienced not many months before 
 writing this treatise, but our real duty is to endure all things 
 with calmness. "We must be prepared for anything that may 
 happen, realizing that trouble comes to all men. Time, though 
 working slowly, is a great comforter ; and Cicero confesses 14 that 
 he was unwise when he tried to hasten his own cure by writing 
 the Consolatio. A man must lift up his soul and forget his 
 sufferings in the contemplation of the grandeur of the universe. 
 But some part, at least of sorrow, may still remain, and for that 
 philosophy has no cure. 
 
 The Epicureans would have a man forget his sorrows by 
 turning to thoughts of pleasure. Cicero rejects this advice, 
 repelled by the introduction of the word pleasure, which he gives 
 as the reason for his opposition to the Epicureans. And yet it 
 was the Epicurean counsel that he had virtually followed, work- 
 ing out the solution for himself. In Astura he summoned 
 philosophy to his aid, but even then his main comfort lay in 
 mental occupation, one of the pleasant things in life ; and earlier, 
 after Luca, he had found comfort, not in philosophical contem- 
 plation, but in writing about rhetoric. Aside from the cure 
 effected by time, occupation with other matters than the grief 
 itself was the thing by means of which Cicero had preserved his 
 mental balance and his usefulness, but such occupation is not 
 given by him as a help in sorrow. Perhaps it seemed too much 
 like running away. 
 
 Nearly all of Cicero's arguments necessarily come back to 
 the one thought that life must be met with calmness and nobility ; 
 man must rise above his fate. The last book of the Tusculans, 
 therefore, maintaining that virtue is sufficient for a happy life, 
 fitly concludes the work; and the spirit of the book is unavoid- 
 ably one of exultation. 
 
 ™Tusc. 4, 63. 
 
564 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The potency of virtue, Cicero exclaims at the beginning of 
 the book, is difficult to prove because of the many and varied 
 blows of fortune; but we must strive toward it with our best 
 effort. Nothing in philosophy deserves to be announced with 
 more exphasis or with more enthusiasm. If we once admit that 
 chance or fate is stronger than virtue, then there is nothing left 
 except prayer, and prayer, we thus see, is a confession of defeat. 
 Cicero himself, so he says, has faltered, not because virtue is 
 weak but because he and others have been weak. Philosophy 
 is the guide of life. Without it, human existence would be im- 
 possible. One day spent in accordance with the teachings of 
 philosophy is better than an eternity of error. And Cicero goes 
 on to describe philosophical contemplation as the highest of 
 human activities, comparing life, with Pythagoras, to a fair. 15 
 
 This unwavering belief in the efficacy of virtue was Stoic, and 
 Cicero explicitly renounces his New Academic attitude, which he 
 had expressed in the De Finibus. The book becomes thus a hymn, 
 with much argument such as had been used by the Stoic in the 
 earlier treatise; but suddenly, in his enthusiasm, Cicero reverts 
 to the previous teaching, and even goes farther. The Old Acad- 
 emy and the Peripatetics, he repeats, thought as highly of virtue 
 as do the Stoics. The power of virtue over fate may indeed be 
 illustrated from other philosophies; and the book which had 
 begun with an insistence on the Stoic view, ends with a eulogy 
 of Epicurus. He was better than his teachings. He cared 
 neither for pain, nor death, nor wealth, nor popularity, nor 
 exile ; mental pleasure was paramount in his eyes ; and if life 
 should become too difficult, he considered suicide justifiable. 
 
 It is a far-reaching commentary on the ancient attitude that 
 even in this book almost the last word should be a justification 
 of suicide. It is an indication, however, not of weakness, but 
 of independence — the final argument to prove that man is master 
 of his own fortunes. 
 
 is See above, p. 38. 
 
NOT TO DESTROY RELIGION .565 
 
 V 
 
 Metaphysics 
 
 After finishing the Tusculcm Disputations, Cicero turned to 
 the part of metaphysics, already mentioned, that dealt with the 
 gods and their relation to the world. This subject is treated in 
 three dialogues. The De Natum Deorum, in three books, is con- 
 cerned with the gods and their nature as well as with providence ; 
 the De Divinaticme, in two books, treats of prophecies of every 
 kind; and the De Fata, in one book, of which only a part is 
 extant, discusses the question of fate and free will. 
 
 The De Natural Deorum follows the arrangement of the De 
 Finibus; the Epicurean and the Stoic doctrines are stated and 
 criticised from the New Academic point of view. No conception 
 of the gods, however, is put forward as that of the New Academy. 
 Cicero, as we have seen, believed in a divine power in the 
 world just as he believed in a future life, a religious attitude 
 seeming to him essential to lofty living, but beyond this he 
 did not go. Though he says later 16 that the work on the gods 
 was not intended to destroy religion, both the preface to the 
 treatise and the whole tenor of the work is destructive of 
 Epicurean and Stoic doctrines alike. This was probably not 
 so very iconoclastic, after all, for the Romans who read his 
 philosophical works do not seem likely to have believed the 
 ridiculous theories advocated by either of the two important 
 schools. The reason for Cicero's treatment of the subject, ethical 
 though it was, must have been his overwhelming desire to trans- 
 fer to the Latin Greek philosophic thought, or rather, in this 
 case, philosophical vagaries. The whole subject, even more than 
 that of the De Finibus, was theoretical. 
 
 The Epicureans, it is explained by their spokesman, based 
 their belief in the existence of the gods upon the universal 
 
 16 Be Divin. 1, 8. 
 
566 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 opinion of mankind, but the critic points out that this opinion 
 has not been ascertained and that many men deny that there 
 are any gods. The Epicurean deities have the most beautiful 
 form conceivable, the human; but it is only prejudice, so the 
 critic says, to claim such preeminence for the human form. 
 They are made of a finer texture than men, and consequently 
 can be perceived only by the mind. But the Epicureans asserted 
 that the world was made of atoms and void. What then are the 
 gods made of? What is quasi-blood? These gods, enjoying the 
 Epicurean happiness of painlessness, take no thought for mortals 
 and do them no harm, so that men need not grovel in super- 
 stitious awe. But, retorts the critic, can inactivity make any 
 beings happy? And if the gods did not create the world and 
 have nothing to do with it now, then there is no reason for 
 worshipping them. Posidonius, therefore, was correct in assert- 
 ing that Epicurus professed to believe in the gods merely to 
 avoid the charge of atheism. 
 
 With the Stoics the problem is less simple, though their 
 pedantry and logic led them into extravagances that could read- 
 ily be dismissed as ridiculous. Like the Epicureans, they found 
 reason for their belief in a divinity in the universal opinion, 
 a singularly unfortunate argument in their ease, since they 
 called all men but themselves fools. They also adduced various 
 epiphanies, but these could scarcely be well established. They 
 were pantheists, and explained at great length how the universe 
 was all-sufficient, consequently perfect, and therefore pure intel- 
 lect, the essence of which is fire. And yet fire, or heat, is no 
 more essential to life than many other things, as for example, 
 moisture. 
 
 They individualized this pantheistic deity, and asserted that 
 the divine form is the most beautiful. But as they had already 
 announced that the sphere is the most perfect form, as seen in 
 the universe and the heavenly bodies, the anthropomorphic Epi- 
 cureans inquired whether the Stoic gods were round. Some of 
 
PROVIDENCE 567 
 
 them were round, for the heavenly bodies, being pure ether or 
 heat, Stoically also intellect, were gods. As the Stoics considered 
 it man's duty to worship according to the popular religion, the 
 popular gods are also included among their divinities, and are 
 explained by much etymology and allegory to be mainfestations 
 of the one pantheistic deity. These popular gods, so they said, 
 are names for benefits received from the divine power, personified 
 virtues and passions, the spirits of departed benefactors of man- 
 kind, or, finally, personified forces of nature. Thus Concord, 
 Liberty, and Victory are gods, or rather, goddesses; and an 
 endless series of gods is made possible, which the Academic 
 critic immediately places side by side with the deities of myth- 
 ology, inquiring why there are so many Jupiters, one in each 
 of several localities, or why Hercules had so many parents. 
 
 The main contention of the Stoics, however, was that the 
 world is perfect, and that this indicates both that there are gods 
 and that these rule the world with kindness. They saw the 
 wonder-working hand of providence in everything, from the 
 stars in heaven to the flowers on earth, and particularly in man, 
 with his erect position, his ingeniously capable hands, his delicate 
 senses, his reason, his power of speech, and his capacity for 
 meditation and worship. Throughout nature, according to them, 
 there is a perfect adaptation, and everything exists for the sake 
 of man. 
 
 This raised the old question about the happiness or unhappi- 
 ness of human life, with endless arguments, which can easily be 
 imagined. One matter, however, should be noticed. The Stoic 
 gods, we are told, have created and rule this perfect world; 
 they care for the human race; they protect whole nations and 
 cities ; they give wisdom and strength for great deeds, like those 
 of a Pabricius, a Cato, and a Scipio ; but when the enthusiastic 
 Stoics, in their long account, finally reach the ordinary indi- 
 vidual, not the exceptional man engaged in the performance of 
 great national deeds, but the man in the crowd, living his daily 
 
56S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 life, then their eloquence dwindles to two sentences. Sometimes, 
 they say, 17 storms cause damage to the crops, and in the same 
 way misfortunes come to men; but let us not infer from this 
 that the individual is either hated or neglected by the gods. 
 The gods, and here is the root of the matter, the gods take 
 thought for great things; little things they neglect — magna di 
 curant, parva neglegunt. 
 
 These Stoic gods, however, vouchsafe to men a view into the 
 future; indeed, the gift of prophecy to mankind is one of the 
 Stoic proofs of the existence of the gods, as it is also an inference 
 from the belief in a divine providence. Here, as in all the Stoic 
 reasoning about the deity, their arguments go in a circle. The 
 world is perfect, therefore there must be gods who have created 
 it and who maintain it ; since the gods created this perfect world 
 and are maintaining it, they must be all-powerful and kindly, 
 and consequently there is a beneficent providence. Transferred 
 to the matter of prophecy, the argument becomes this : if the gods 
 do not foretell the future, either they do not love us, or they do 
 not know the future, or they think that prophecy would not be 
 useful to us, or they consider prophesying beneath their divine 
 dignity, or they have no means of communicating their knowl- 
 edge to us. Since all these suppositions, in Stoic eyes, are 
 obviously erroneous, either there are no gods or else there is 
 prophecy; but there are gods, therefore there is also prophecy. 
 
 The answer to this manner of reasoning is not difficult to find. 
 Prophecy, or divination, is possible only if everything happens 
 according to the unchangeable decrees of fate; but if nothing 
 can be changed, no evil avoided, then divination can give no 
 help in a sad world. "Would it have profited Pompey to know 
 that after three consulships and three triumphs he would be 
 murdered in Egypt, and that his death would be followed by 
 events to be spoken of only with tears? "What assistance or joy 
 could Caesar have derived from a knowledge that he was to be 
 
 « De Nat. Deor. 2, 167. 
 
DIVINATION 569 
 
 murdered at the foot of Pompey's statue, in the midst of a 
 senate appointed largely by himself, by nobles some of whom 
 he had honored? 
 
 The real reason for a belief in divination, however, and also 
 the reason for discrediting it, is found in experience; and 
 Cicero's two books on the subject are a veritable encyclopedia 
 of dreams, omens, portents, soothsaying, fortune telling, oracles, 
 strange visions, the whispers of Socrates' demon, the answers of 
 the Sibylline books, and the ceremonious mummery of Roman 
 augurs. There is a story about nearly every prominent Roman, 
 and countless experiences of common people. The whole mantic 
 art is set forth, from its large part in the state religion to the 
 wandering tricksters that penetrated to every cranny of ancient 
 life. Philosophical books had been written, we learn, to prove 
 that a knowledge of the future would be useless; other books, 
 countless in number and also by philosophers, interpreted dreams. 
 Nothing was so absurd, says Cicero, that it was not maintained 
 by some philosopher. And every kind of ridicule and sarcasm 
 and criticism is leveled against a belief that seems to have 
 influenced many men of whom it could hardly have been 
 expected. Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, constantly objects of 
 prophecy, had been told that they would live glorious lives, and 
 then die in their beds. During the Civil War many answers 
 of haruspices came from Greece to Rome, and Pompey was 
 inclined to heed them ; but they were nearly all wrong. Apollo 
 at Delphi once gave a reply in Latin, but it is well known that 
 he knows only Greek. How can the position of the stars at a 
 child's birth have any influence, and yet twins be different both 
 in character and fortunes? Prophesying gods, since they need 
 interpreters, resemble Spaniards or Carthaginians struggling 
 with idiom in the Roman senate. Why do the gods hover about 
 a man's cot, ready to begin their whispers when the man begins 
 to snore ? Why is it that an omen in Galatia often has a mean- 
 
570 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ing entirely different from what it would have in Rome ? Cicero 
 himself had discussed divination with Deiotarus and found this 
 to be the case. 
 
 Cicero also wrote a treatise on auguries, now lost, which was 
 probably of a technical content. His view of the whole situation 
 has already been stated in many connections, and it seems to have 
 been the general view among educated men. Appius Claudius, 
 his predecessor in Cilicia, was an augur; and he was nicknamed 
 by his colleagues for believing in augury. He had a quarrel 
 about the matter with Marcellus, and Cicero sided with the lat- 
 ter, 18 to the effect that the art of augury was practised for the 
 good of the state, not because it could foretell the future. Cato 
 the Elder used to wonder, so Cicero also reminds his readers, 
 that a soothsayer could meet a colleague without laughing. 19 
 They were both in the precious secret. 
 
 Closely connected with the treatise on Divination is the De 
 Fato, which discusses fate and free will. If fate rules the 
 world, if everything is preordained, then a man is morally irre- 
 sponsible, for not only his character has been given him but 
 his every smallest action is in accordance with an outside decree. 
 Chrysippus, the great Stoic, who believed in divination, would 
 have it so; and it is, indeed, also obvious that there is a cause 
 for everything that happens. On the other hand, we feel that 
 we exercise a free will. 
 
 The Epicureans tried to solve the dilemma. Though they 
 did not believe in fate as an outside power, their philosophy was 
 thoroughly fatalistic, in that they considered the world an aggre- 
 gation of atoms, which move unconsciously according to physical 
 laws, and they made man a part of this huge machine, himself 
 an aggregation of such atom's. In order to save human free will 
 in the midst of these whirling atoms, the Epicureans broke their 
 own physical laws of atomic motion, and introduced what they 
 
 is Be Divin. 2, 75. 
 "De Divin. 2, 51. 
 
VATE AND FREE WILL 571 
 
 called the swerve : the atoms, for no known reason, sometimes 
 veer from their regular course, they said, and this swerve — itself 
 not dictated by human consciousness, it must be remembered — 
 results in certain impulses and desires in the human soul which 
 constitute what men call free will. 
 
 This was not very satisfactory. Carneades, the New Aca- 
 demic, whom Cicero follows, had another explanation. There is 
 a causal connection in the world, according to him, but this does 
 not extend to every detail of life. . Causes are of two kinds. 
 The so-called natural causes bring about a certain condition, 
 but before human action takes place, another cause, the acci- 
 dental, must intervene. Thus fate, through natural causes, 
 preordains that an athlete will, or rather may, win in a contest, 
 but he cannot win unless he himself decides to enter the contest. 
 Men may have an inclination to viciousness; for example, Soc- 
 rates was said by a physiognomist to be fond of women, at which 
 Alcibiades laughed, but Socrates, and any one else, can determine, 
 in virtue of his free will, not to yield to his natural propensities. 
 It is absurd to imagine a minute concatenation of cause and effect 
 in the world. Ennius wrote: "Would that this fir beam" — 
 to make the Argo — ' ' had never been cut with axes in the Pelian 
 grove ! " He should have written : ' ' "Would that the tree had 
 never grown ! ' ' — or : ' ' Would that there had never been a Mount 
 Pelion!" 
 
 VI 
 Old Age and Friendship 
 Cicero's philosophical authorship was drawing to a close. 
 The De Divinatione, in both books, contains expressions some of 
 which were obviously written before the assassination of Caesar, 
 and others after it. Apparently the work was composed before 
 the Ides of March, but published later, after a revision. In the 
 preface to the second book Cicero bids farewell to writing ; his 
 time must be given to the state. Shortly before the death of 
 
572 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Caesar, it seems, he had written the essay on Old Age; it cer- 
 tainly came before the preface to the second book of the De 
 Divinatione, in which it is mentioned. Conditions, however, 
 presently forced him into leisure again, and he composed his 
 works on Fate, Augury, Glory, Friendship, Duty, and the Vir- 
 tues. Those on Augury, Glory, and the Virtues have been lost. 
 
 The brief dialogues on Old Age and on Friendship, perhaps 
 most often read of all Cicero's treatises, have a character of 
 their own. Like the rest, they were no doubt modeled upon Greek 
 works on the same subjects, and yet they seem to contain, not 
 more of Cicero's philosophical opinions than those that pre- 
 ceded, but more of his own personality. This is due to some 
 extent to the fact that they were addressed to Atticus; Cicero 
 writes as one old friend to another, not as either a teacher or 
 an expounder. The essays, indeed, stand outside of his philoso- 
 phical series. They could have been included in the Tusculams, 
 as has already been observed, but, written as they were, they 
 became less technical, more directly founded on ordinary human 
 experience. This is fitting since Atticus was an Epicurean, 
 presumably in doctrinal opposition to Cicero. The other treatises 
 could not so properly have been addressed to him ; but these are 
 like personal gifts. Cicero, in the preface to the De Senectute, 
 says that while writing the little dialogue, he had thought of 
 Atticus as the person to whom it should be naturally dedicated; 
 the composition of the De Amicitia he attributes to a request 
 from Atticus. 
 
 The De Senectute, called also Cato Mcmr, after the principal 
 speaker, who practically delivers a monologue, has a firm philoso- 
 phic substructure, once the conversation is under way. The 
 method is that of the New Academy. Objections to old age are 
 advanced, in this ease by Cato himself, and they are thereupon 
 shown to be baseless, or nearly so. Cato, with sanity, refrains 
 from proving too much. Old age is said to take men from 
 active life, to deprive them of strength, to take from them almost 
 
CATO 573 
 
 all pleasures, and to be near death. Each one of these charges 
 points to a real obstacle to happiness ; but even while Cato admits 
 this, no reader can feel that old age is a burden. Cato's replies 
 are familiar to all students of Latin, and need not be repeated. 
 The old man gossips on, and on, excusing himself for his gar- 
 rulity, but not mending his ways. He weaves into his discourse 
 precise statements about men and events, with many dates, 
 always correlating them with happenings in his own life, as an 
 old man would; and yet the learned reader suspects that much 
 of this information came from Atticus' scholarly Liber Armalis. 
 
 Cato's character shines through his whole monologue; he 
 praises farming with an enthusiasm that . neither Cicero nor 
 Atticus shared, except as a matter of patriotism and of the past ; 
 he is pompous, which Cicero never was; he seems older than 
 Cicero could ever have become, despite his sorrows. And yet, 
 though the manner is Cato's, or what would have been Cato's if 
 he had truly profited by the late study of Greek which Cicero 
 attributes to him, the sentiments are very much those of Cicero. 
 When rereading the book, Cicero said 20 that he seemed to be 
 listening to Cato himself; and the modern reader has the same 
 feeling ; but it is a Cato thoroughly admired by Cicero, though 
 also treated with an eye to his eccentricities. 
 
 Laelius speaks in the De Amicitia, giving his name to the 
 treatise. He is represented as having Scipio in mind as the 
 model of a true friend; but Cicero, in the preface, says that 
 Atticus may recognize himself in the picture. Indeed, some of 
 Laelius' expressions are found almost word for word in Cicero's 
 letters to his friend. The philosophical skeleton of the treatise 
 is less rigid than that of the Cato, but Laelius, on the other hand, 
 speaks more as a student than the old censor. The essay is 
 neither so gossipy nor so light-hearted as its companion work; 
 the troublesome conditions after Caesar's death have set their 
 mark upon it, although there is no direct reference to them. 
 
 20 De Amie. i. 
 
574 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A few remarks may be recalled, for the book is Cicero 's public 
 recognition of Atticus' long friendship. Friendship consists in 
 a complete agreement about all things, human and divine, to 
 which are added good will and affection; next to wisdom, it is 
 the greatest gift of the gods to man. What is better than to have 
 some one with whom you can speak as with yourself? A friend 
 increases the joy in success, and makes adversity easier to bear. 
 It is not true that a man should avoid friendship, so as not to 
 take up the burdens of others, as though each one should think 
 only of his own difficulties. Nothing is more foolish than for a 
 man to give all his energies to the acquisition of horses, servants, 
 clothes, and furnishings, and not to win friends, for without 
 friendship life can not be happy. Do not treat a friend, as some 
 would have us do, as if you were some day to hate him. Ambition 
 is opposed to friendship ; it is therefore difficult to find true 
 friends in public life. Confidence is the basis of friendship; 
 friends do not listen to malicious gossip. Friends can not always 
 remain equally intimate, for we outgrow some of them, but 
 that is no reason for neglect. Sometimes external events make 
 it necessary to break with a friend ; in such a case, it is only the 
 weakling who clings to the old relation. Such a weakling can 
 not be a true friend. 
 
 True friendship can exist only between good men, and friends 
 must neither ask from each other nor do for each other anything 
 base. Do not be hasty in making friends. "We all need friend- 
 ship. The misanthrope, though he avoids and hates men, wants 
 some one on whom he may vent his bitterness; and if a man 
 should rise to heaven and view all its splendors, he would find 
 no pleasure in it unless he could communicate his joy to a friend. 
 Old friends are best, but new friendships are not to be rejected. 
 Nothing is more desirable than to keep a friend through life, 
 setting out with him from the starting point, as it were, and 
 reaching the goal still by his side. 
 
SOMAN VIEW OF LIFE 575 
 
 VII 
 
 Duty 
 
 The Laelius was Cicero's tribute to the lifelong friendship 
 between Atticus and himself. In the De Officiis, on Duty, he 
 wrote, as it were, his spiritual testament. It stands as his last 
 comment on life, and so fitly concludes his philosophical writings. 
 In a later work, the De Virtutibus, which has been lost, he dis- 
 cussed the four cardinal virtues ; but this treatise comprised only 
 one book and was in the nature of a more particular statement, 
 more philosophical perhaps, of the matter already treated in the 
 De Officiis, and can therefore be looked upon as a mere appendix 
 to the longer treatise. The De Officiis was thus to Cicero's 
 readers, as it is to us, his last word. 
 
 It is Cicero's Roman view of life that is here set forth. The 
 first two books, far more important than the third, were taken 
 largely from Panaetius, Scipio's Stoic friend and teacher, but 
 Panaetius, whether from conviction or policy, had adopted the 
 Roman attitude. Probably very much of the detail in Cicero's 
 first two books comes from him. We have already seen, 21 for 
 instance, how Panaetius had maintained that it was proper to 
 defend in court a man known to the pleader to be guilty, pro- 
 vided the defendant was not personally base. It would therefore 
 seem that Panaetius, living in the atmosphere of the Scipionic 
 Circle, had commented on the various phases of Roman life, fit- 
 ting his comments into a philosophical frame. Where Panaetius, 
 that is the Stoics, expressed views that won Cicero's assent, the 
 latter incorporated them, but in other cases, as he himself says 
 in the preface, he reserved the rights of criticism and selection. 
 "In this work," so runs Cicero's explanation, 22 "I shall follow 
 the Stoics in particular, not as an interpreter" — a translator, we 
 should say — "but, according to my wont, borrowing from them 
 
 2i See above, p. 122. 
 22 De Off. 1, 6. 
 
576 PHILOSOPHY ' 
 
 that of which my judgment approves." That Cicero was not 
 overawed by Stoic authority appears in his witty manner of 
 introducing Panaetius' observation about the defense of a guilty 
 person. Cicero would not have dared to say such a thing, he 
 remarks, if it had not also been the opinion of Panaetius, the 
 strictest of the Stoics. The theory of the good Stoic, in other 
 words, was no stricter than the practise of the forum. 
 
 It is a curious work, fortunately deceptive in the apparent 
 philosophical character of its content. The first book discusses 
 moral goodness, honestum. Moral goodness, we are told, consists 
 of four principles: a regard for the welfare of others, a desire 
 for knowledge, a desire for prominence and independence, and 
 a sense of propriety. These are the four cardinal virtues : jus- 
 tice, wisdom, courage, and temperance. They are treated, one 
 after the other, and then, briefly, their various claims are com- 
 pared. In the second book Cicero takes up the question of 
 expedience, utile, or the duties that arise out of our needs in 
 life. These duties are thereupon compared in a single para- 
 graph, or rather it is merely stated that comparisons will arise. 
 Since the matters discussed have to do with man in his relations 
 with other men, they might well have been included in the 
 first book, under the headings of justice, courage, and temper- 
 ance ; and the material of the second book is, indeed, treated to 
 a considerable extent in the first. The division, however, is 
 justified by a slight difference in the point of view, and by the 
 greater ease with which the extensive material can be handled 
 in two books. That the two belong together in content appears 
 in the third book. Here, investigating the supposed conflict 
 between moral goodness and expedience, Cicero first discusses 
 the question in general, and thereupon points out under what 
 circumstances expedience may come into conflict with the virtues 
 of justice, courage, and temperance. 
 
 This outline is formidably philosophical, and Cicero did pride 
 himself somewhat on its theoretical completeness. Panaetius had 
 
EXPEDIENCE VERSUS MORAL GOODNESS 577 
 
 failed to discuss the relative claims of the four virtues and also 
 of the obligations connected with expedience, and Cicero, with 
 some surprise at this failure, does discuss them; very briefly, 
 however, and yet not altogether fruitlessly, for it gives him an 
 opportunity to insist on the paramount claims of social duties. 
 Panaetius had also intended to write on the conflict between moral 
 goodness and expedience. He seems, however, to have been one 
 of those whose plans are larger than their performance. Accord- 
 ing to his pupil Posidonius, he lived thirty years after completing 
 his work on Duty — in three books, corresponding to Cicero's first 
 two — but he never carried out his intention in reference to the 
 moral conflict. 
 
 If the dictates of expedience be rightly, that is, Stoically, 
 conceived as demanding those things from us which contribute 
 to spiritual health, and not to worldly success, then there can be 
 no conflict between expedience and moral goodness. The mere 
 conception, however, of expedience as a source of action intro- 
 duces worldly advantage; and the conflict becomes inevitable. 
 Cicero had doubts about the wisdom of discussing the question 
 at all. He does so, nevertheless, drawing from various philoso- 
 phers, and states that in this book he has exercised unusual 
 independence. The treatment, however, is scarcely useful except 
 to show into what casuistries philosophers may fall. A typical 
 case is that of a man wishing to sell a house. Ought he to inform 
 the prospective buyer about its hidden defects? The philoso- 
 phers disagreed, but Cicero decides for absolute honesty. 
 
 But the work is not so innocuously speculative as this dilemma 
 might indicate. Purely abstract statements are constantly illus- 
 trated by references to Cicero's long record of public service and 
 to persons and events that were still the subjects of acrimonious 
 disagreement in Rome. 
 
 The references to Caesar may be mentioned, being perhaps 
 the most important. The treatise was written toward the end 
 of the year 44 B.C., within a few months of Caesar's death. 
 
578 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Cicero, speaking of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, 
 says that there was too much crime on one side and too little 
 good fortune on the other. Injustice, according to Cicero, is 
 caused particularly by a desire for power and glory. Thus 
 Caesar broke every law, human and divine, in order to attain 
 the rule on which he had wrongly set his heart. And the tragedy 
 consists in the fact that such overweening ambition comes 
 especially to the greatest and most gifted men. Caesar, so 
 Cicero observes in another place, did not confiscate the property 
 of private citizens, but he placed whole provinces and regions 
 under a rule of destruction — a reference to his land laws and to 
 his government of the provinces, which he took from the senate 
 and assigned to political supporters. To abolish debts, says 
 Cicero, is to enable one man to buy something with another man's 
 money. Caesar abolished debts from the mere desire of doing 
 wrong, at a time when such action could bring him no benefit — a 
 statement that reveals Cicero's unwillingness, perhaps his in- 
 ability, to see anything good in Caesar 's rule, since the rule itself 
 had overturned the state. Of tyrants, though without a men- 
 tion of Caesar, Cicero remarks that there can be no intercourse 
 with them; it is honorable to kill a tyrant, and to exterminate 
 the whole race of tyrants from society. Can the base and wicked 
 murderer of his country, so he asks elsewhere, be useful to any 
 one even if he be called the father of his country? This name 
 had been given to Caesar. And, finally, personal affection is the 
 strongest foundation for power, fear the weakest; no resources 
 can withstand the hatred of the many; and even if this was 
 formerly unknown, it has recently been illustrated. 
 
 The treatise, however, is no more a political pamphlet than 
 it is a series of abstract speculations. Cicero gives in it an 
 account of the goals which a man may set for himself, his duties 
 in the forum and in the courts, toward his enemies and his 
 friends, and how he should behave under various circumstances ; 
 and Cicero goes into great detail. Nearly every important 
 
SUMANITAS 579 
 
 expression of opinion on his part that has already been quoted 
 can be found in the De Officiis, at least in some indirect form, 
 as well as many of the incidental comments that have been used 
 to indicate the Eoman attitude both in polities and in private 
 intercourse. It is therefore unnecessary to repeat them. The 
 governing thought is duty toward Rome, greater than all others, 
 even than the duty toward a parent or a child. But, beside it, 
 is the demand that a man be his own self, and that he observe 
 the proprieties of life. Indeed, the virtue of temperance is con- 
 cerned with the so-called decorum, that which is suitable and 
 fitting; and, according to Cicero, it must permeate a man's 
 whole existence. Cicero's treatment of this duty becomes thus 
 a statement of the humanitas that was first created in Rome when 
 Scipio and his friends listened to Panaetius. It demanded that 
 a man be an individual, a scholar, and a gentleman; but since 
 he was already a Roman, he must first of all devote his energies 
 to the service of his country. This Scipionic ideal has already 
 been mentioned. The most complete expression of it is found 
 in the De Officiis; no one was a better exponent of it than Cicero. 
 Philosophically, Cicero speaks throughout this work as a 
 dogmatist. But it is a dogmatism, as he explains at the begin- 
 ning of the second book, which clearly realizes that intellectually 
 it is founded on probability. How Cicero's New Academic atti- 
 tude enabled him to transfer and criticise Greek philosophy has 
 already been explained and illustrated. It was inevitable that 
 he should be a follower of Philo. The Academics gave far more 
 attention to the esthetic side of philosophical study and writing 
 than either the Stoics or the Epicureans, and they were active 
 teachers of rhetoric. Cicero, furthermore, had an extraordinarily 
 alert, inquisitive, and all-embracing intellect, and his long prac- 
 tise at the bar had accustomed him to seeing both sides of a 
 question. He abhorred posing; and it is posing, unless it be 
 blindness, or laziness, or a conscious surrender of individual 
 judgment, for a philosopher to assert that he and his fellows 
 
580 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 alone know, and that their knowledge is absolute. But Cicero's 
 moral convictions, on the other hand, were as strong as those 
 of the most rigid Stoic. Where a question arose in reference 
 to a man 's duty in the world, Cicero would have no hairsplitting. 
 And he also saw clearly that a man is good or bad quite inde- 
 pendently of his intellectual opinions. Thus he frequently 
 observes that the Epicureans are better than their doctrine. In 
 the De Finibus, therefore, he treats the question of human hap- 
 piness as a proper matter for debate, even criticising what we 
 know to have been his own preference ; but when, as in the De 
 Officiis, the question no longer is what a man states in philo- 
 sophical language to be his goal, but what he actually should do, 
 then Cicero leaves no room for the Epicurean teaching, for 
 instance, that men should avoid public life, but makes a definite 
 requirement. 
 
 This is not like the momentary dogmatism in the fifth book 
 of the Tusculan Disputations, which was clue to moral enthusiasm 
 and presently ended in a eulogy of Epicurus. It is not emotional,, 
 but comes from a very matter-of-fact desire to make clear the 
 motives of his own actions and to influence the actions of others. 
 This division of the philosophical field into a part in which 
 scepticism is proper and a part in which dogmatism is required, 
 is the most marked, and perhaps the most original, 23 character- 
 istic of Cicero as a philosopher. 
 
 The De Officiis, being on the whole a serious sermon, naturally 
 keeps young men in view, and was therefore fittingly dedicated 
 to young Marcus. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Cicero's Originality 
 
 Cicero's position as a philosophical thinker may thus be 
 defined as that of a doubter and an investigator. He rightly 
 called himself a New Academic. He also had the noble tran- 
 scendental yearnings of Pythagoras and Plato, shared by others, 
 
 23 Zielinski, op. cit., p. 81. 
 
HUMAN SATHEM THAN PHILOSOPHICAL 581 
 
 even by Stoics like Panaetius, and he was thoroughly sympathetic 
 with the best aspirations of the Stoics, but he did not attempt 
 to demonstrate the truth of these yearnings and aspirations by 
 fitting them into a system, and he had no patience with the 
 etymological explanations or the logical self-sufficiency of the 
 Stoics. It would therefore be a misrepresentation to cull from 
 his works the statements from the Stoics and the Old Academy 
 toward which he is more sympathetic than toward those of the 
 Epicureans, and to construct from them a complete philosophical 
 system, as if it were his. 
 
 Cicero's attitude was human rather than philosophical. 
 While he laughs at Stoic dogmatism, he also, both in his letters 
 and in his philosophical treatises, ridicules the agnosticism of 
 the New Academics. They give forth an uncertain sound, he 
 says in the Fifth Tusculcm; and at the end of the De Finibus he 
 has one of the speakers suggest that if young Lucius Cicero 
 should follow the opinions of Marcus and master the New 
 Academic doctrine thoroughly, then it would result in his know- 
 ing nothing at all. 
 
 In practical matters, however, Cicero had very definite 
 convictions, and these had been most insisted upon by the Stoics. 
 It must be remembered, however, that they were claimed for 
 the Old Academy by Antiochus, who differed in ethics from the 
 Stoics only in his assertion that virtue, while the one important 
 element in happiness, was not the only one. And Cicero agreed 
 with Antiochus, for when he addressed the work on Duty to his 
 son, the latter was studying under a Peripatetic philosopher, and 
 Cicero observes, in the preface to the first book, that the Peri- 
 patetics like himself claimed to be Socratics and Platonists, so 
 that they did not much differ from him. Cicero also, as has 
 already been pointed out, reserved the right to choose and to 
 criticize while he followed the Stoics, and the Stoic whom he 
 followed was Panaetius, himself an admirer of Plato and a rene- 
 gade from Stoic dogmatism. Cicero, therefore, can not be called 
 a Stoic in ethics, except with reservations. 
 
582 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Whether Cicero's attitude would entitle him to be called an 
 independent philosopher, depends ultimately on the relation 
 between his own works and those of the Greeks that had written 
 on the same subjects, and here our information is slight. What 
 has already been said in general about the sources of his treatises, 
 particularly of the De Oratore, need not be repeated in detail. 24 
 The sources have to be reconstructed largely from Cicero's own 
 works, and the results are far from trustworthy. In connection 
 with nearly every work — except where Cicero, as in the first two 
 books of the De Officiis, expressly indicates his main source — 
 there is the greatest diversity of opinion. Sometimes we have 
 practically nothing to guide us. Thus in the De Senectute 
 Cicero says that he will not assign the conversation to the myth- 
 ological Tithonus, as Aristo has done, and this statement is the 
 only starting point for an inquiry. Does it indicate that he 
 followed Aristo in other respects, as, for instance, in the four 
 charges against old age ? Who was Aristo ? From Ceos or from 
 Chios? In any case, his work is lost. Cicero in his treatise 
 quoted passages both from Plato and Xenophon. Did the unde- 
 termined Aristo do likewise ? Cicero was certainly familiar with 
 the books from which these passages came; he wrote to Paetus 
 that he had read his copy of Xenophon 's Cyropaedeia to pieces; 
 so that there was no need of Aristo 's mediation. 
 
 When Cicero gives an outline of a part of a definite 
 philosophy, as of the Epicurean doctrine of the chief good, he 
 undoubtedly followed some philosophical handbook; but when 
 he writes on less clearly defined topics, as in the Tusculams, the 
 sources were numerous and must remain debatable. Cicero con- 
 stantly refers to the opinions of Greek philosophers, but though 
 he seems often to be repeating somebody else's citation of these 
 opinions, that need not always be the case. The books that he 
 may have read were extremely numerous, ranging from large 
 works to published lectures; and, in addition, he may have 
 incorporated thoughts that had never been written down at all, 
 
 2* See above, pp. 422-423. 
 
SOURCES 583 
 
 but had been merely expressed in lectures and conversations. It 
 
 was difficult to obtain books. The books that he actually used 
 
 while composing a treatise, therefore, are sometimes indicated 
 
 by a request to Atticus' in a letter for a certain book, or for an 
 
 outline of a book, with which Cicero himself may, or may not, 
 
 have been familiar, but these indications only give names of 
 
 authors and titles, the books in question being lost, and, indeed, 
 
 the names of some of the books as well. The Greeks themselves, 
 
 furthermore, were constantly copying from one another, as 
 
 Cicero says ; we have seen in connection with Antiochus that they 
 
 called one another thieves. 
 
 Cicero frequently mentions his sources, but not always, for 
 
 he was, after all, transferring a whole field of thought, and his 
 
 readers were not interested to know the exact books or lectures 
 
 from which he had received the various details of his information. 
 
 It was enough to know that one opinion was Epicurean and 
 
 another Stoic, or that one came from Carneades and another 
 
 from Philo ; and often even that amount of knowledge was 
 
 ♦ 
 unnecessary. 
 
 Once Atticus wondered anxiously at the rapidity of Cicero's 
 composition, and Cicero replied 25 that he was only making 
 transcripts — apographa — only supplying the words. This ex- 
 pression may well describe his method in parts of such a book 
 as the De Finibus. In other works his task was less easy. He 
 selected, and he criticised, as he himself said in the De Officiis: 
 and this expression, found also even in the De Finibus, is 
 made to apply to his method in general. It is his formal state- 
 ment, whereas the words of Atticus — whether humorously self- 
 depreciatory or not, and scholars take them both ways, some- 
 times with much solemnity — are not intended to tell the whole 
 story. 
 
 There is one other consideration. Since originality among 
 the Greeks in Cicero's time was a very small quantity, he may 
 have been as original as many another who made philosophy a 
 
 25 Att. 12, 52, 2. 
 
584 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 profession. The sceptical attitude had been in abeyance 26 since 
 Philo, who died about 79 B.C., and Cicero in a manner revived it, 
 and went farther than Philo on the constructive side. One of 
 the noteworthy characteristics of Cicero as a philosopher, fur- 
 thermore, is his separation of practical from theoretical ethics, 
 in the De Officiis and the De Fiivibus. This may be a sign of 
 originality, but it is not to be forgotten that in the work on Duty 
 he was following Panaetius. The latter also was responsible for 
 another element in Cicero's ethics, namely, the emphasis on the 
 individual, in the De Officiis. This very emphasis, though the 
 earliest extant philosophical expression of it is found in Cicero, 
 must have been the very essence of Panaetius' message to the 
 Scipionic Circle. 
 
 These somewhat uncertain marks of originality, and others 
 like them, have been brought forward as proofs of Cicero's 
 independence as a philosopher, and he has been considered an 
 important member of the New Academic school, even having 
 Greek followers. 27 Usually, however, Cicero is held to be merely 
 a translator. Only one thing is absolutely certain, that Cicero, 
 the Roman consular, had no ambition to be classed among Greek 
 philosophers. He experienced a certain satisfaction when he 
 could improve upon their works, or add to them a little, as in 
 the De Officiis, but his claims to philosophical fame went no 
 farther. Cicero's Roman attitude to Greek pursuits has been 
 stated before; but one of his expressions of it may be recalled. 
 In the preface to the first book of the De Officiis, he writes of 
 his philosophical works that they seem to have given much 
 assistance to the Romans, so that not. only those who are not 
 Greek scholars but also the educated think they have gained 
 a good deal from them, both as speakers and as philosophical 
 thinkers. This is a reference to very gratifying results, and yet, 
 in the preface to the third book, Cicero compares his own leisure 
 
 26 J)e Nat. Dear. 1, 6 and 11. 
 
 27 Goedeckemeyer, p. 201. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE IN LATIN 585 
 
 to that of Africanus, with a confession of weakness because Afri- 
 canus could enjoy his leisure in calm meditation, whereas Cicero 
 found it necessary to resort to writing. 
 
 Cicero's claim to originality, and it is a very real claim, 
 consists in the fact that he alone saw the possibility of creating 
 a philosophical literature in Latin. Other Romans had written 
 and were writing on philosophy. Lucretius' poem had been 
 published, but systematic philosophy in verse was an anachron- 
 ism. Lucretius, despite his ardent enthusiasm, worked in the 
 spirit of a .recluse, and, therefore, need scarcely be considered 
 in the general trend of things. Indeed, Cicero does not mention 
 the poem in his philosophical writings, though he was acquainted 
 with it, as a letter to Quintus indicates; and the character of 
 the poem makes it amply clear that it could not make converts, 
 nor lead to imitation except as poetry. 
 
 Brutus wrote on Virtue, and Cicero, in the De Finibus, says 
 that this work inspired his own philosophical writing. But 
 Cicero is obviously only complimenting his young friend, for in 
 the Tusculans, though they are dedicated to Brutus himself, 
 Cicero practically ignores him as a philosophical writer, when 
 he says that little or nothing had been done in philosophy by 
 the Romans except by certain Epicurean propagandists. Brutus 
 also wrote on Duty and on. Patience. But while such works as 
 these were doubtless much like Cicero 's own essays on Friendship 
 and Old Age, or like one of the consolatory meditations in the 
 Tusculans, they were no part of a complete presentation of 
 philosophy and could not have suggested Cicero's comprehensive 
 plan. They left the philosophical situation unchanged ; the chief 
 books and the vocabulary were still Greek. Cicero could have 
 satisfied his need of mental occupation by such writings, but he 
 saw better things to do. 
 
 Neither was he satisfied with making mere translations from 
 the Greek. This he would have considered a worthy enough 
 thing to do, and he even hints 28 that he may yet undertake it ; 
 
 28 De Fin. 1, 7. 
 
586 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 but translations, and philosophically Lucretius was a translator, 
 would not have answered his wider patriotic purpose. There was 
 need of critical interpretation and of comparisons. 
 
 Even the ethical aim of Cicero was subordinate to the 
 patriotic. Of course, if he had not considered philosophy impor- 
 tant morally, he would not have written at all; but if ethical 
 instruction had been his principal aim, he would scarcely have 
 given so much attention to the presentation of debatable matter, 
 and he would certainly not have presented this matter in so 
 impartial a way. So far as we can judge, he does full justice 
 to Epicureanism, and in reference to the Academica, about which 
 we have his own private comment, he says 29 that in assigning 
 the dogmatic side to Varro he had treated the latter honorably, 
 not exhibiting him in the character of a defeated combatant. 
 The preponderance of ethics in his treatises was obviously due 
 quite as much to its similar position in contemporary philosophy 
 as to Cicero's personal appreciation of its importance. 
 
 Cicero's ethical purpose was perhaps active to some extent 
 in reference to the Epicurean propagandists just mentioned. 
 These had set forth their doctrine, particularly the physics of it, 
 without any literary finish. As they were easy to read, says 30 
 Cicero, and as the common people would be attracted by the 
 doctrine of Pleasure as the chief end of life, and as there was 
 no other philosophy in Latin, they had conquered all Italy. 
 Cicero, though explaining that he had not read them, mentions 
 them frequently enough to show that he had them in mind. To 
 counteract their influence may no doubt have been one of Cicero's 
 purposes, but it can easily be overestimated. Cicero's writings 
 are not at all of a character to appeal to the people who were 
 attracted by the bald Epicurean tracts. Cicero wrote for the 
 educated, or, at least, for those who appreciated literary style. 
 He was opposed to Epicureanism, but his opposition was not 
 
 29 Att. 13, 25, 3. 
 
 3" Tusc. 4, 6-7. For further references, see Schanz, p. 339. 
 
THE PREFACES 587 
 
 of a missionary kind. The educated Epicureans in Rome were 
 no better and no worse than the Stoics; even the publisher of 
 Cicero's essays, Atticus, was an Epicurean. Cicero would gladly 
 have admitted, as he did admit in reference to Epicurus, that 
 they were better than their doctrine. He hints at that pleasant 
 fact more than once. 
 
 Cicero's philosophical aim is obvious, from the treatises them- 
 selves, but it also finds frequent expression in the prefaces. 
 These prefaces — nearly every book has one, and not merely every 
 treatise — are very remarkable documents. Cicero informed Atti- 
 cus that he had a book — a volumen — of them, and it is clear from 
 Cicero's use. of the same preface twice 31 that they were, some- 
 times at least, written without any thought of a particular 
 work. They contain Cicero's thoughts about philosophical writ- 
 ing, jotted down apparently from time to time, as well as his 
 answers to criticisms. They thus belong together, and constitute 
 a history of the philosophical situation in Rome, just as the 
 prologues to Terence's comedies give a history of the theatrical 
 situation. The same thing is naturally said more than once, 
 for not every reader would have all his works, nor would a single 
 reply convince all objectors. The expression, nevertheless, is 
 infinitely varied; the emphasis shifts according to the fortunes 
 of his works as they were published and also according to the 
 content of the books to which they were prefixed, for, whatever 
 form they may have had in Cicero's volumen, he only once, to 
 our knowledge, made a slip in using them ; so that, as we have 
 them, they are adapted each to its particular book. In this 
 respect, too, they resemble the Terentian prologues. 
 
 It is clear from these prefaces that Cicero's readers did not 
 approve of his self-imposed task, and failed to comprehend its 
 full signficance. He was an intellectual pioneer, and met with 
 the usual fate ; but he gradually won his critics to his own view 
 of the matter, or at least he did so to a considerable degree. As 
 
 31 See below, p. 615, note 14. 
 
588 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 he says in the De Officios, both the educated and the uneducated 
 admitted that they had learned something. He convinced no- 
 body, neither himself nor others, however, that philosophical 
 writing was quite worthy of a Roman consular, but that was to 
 be expected ; nor does it really touch the situation. 
 
 Any study of philosophy, some contended, was useless. To 
 these Cicero had already replied in the Hortensius, but the reply 
 is enthusiastically repeated in several of the prefaces. Others 
 wished him to indicate his own beliefs,, and Cicero explained 
 that he was not interested in preaching a dogma. He wished 
 to arouse interest, and was glad of philosophical opponents. It 
 was through controversy that philosophy had nourished in 
 Greece, and he could add that he had had some success in 
 turning other Romans to philosophical writing. It was observed 
 that Cicero wrote too much. But, he retorts, it is not enough 
 merely to make men interested, which can be done with a little 
 writing; they must also be taught. Nor is it possible to exercise 
 tempercmtia in so noble a subject. Why, some asked, had he 
 so suddenly turned to philosophy ? And he replies that in his 
 youth he had given much time to it, and later he had been even 
 more busy with it, as was indicated by the frequent references to 
 philosophy in his orations and by his friendships with learned 
 men, many of whom were often at his house. 
 
 Greek, it seemed to his critics, was the only language for 
 philosophy. Latin was inadequate ; and even if philosophy were 
 written in Latin, it would be useless. Those who knew Greek 
 would prefer to read their philosophy in Greek, and the others 
 would not understand even the Latin. Cicero replied that he 
 had no objection to anybody reading Greek, provided he really 
 read it. A contempt for Latin, however, was hypercritical and 
 unpatriotic ; and, for that matter, Latin was as good a language 
 as Greek, better at times, as he tried to prove by pointing out 
 in the treatises themselves, now and then, how certain concep- 
 tions could be more precisely expressed in Latin than in Greek. 
 
A DIFFICULT TASK WELL EXECUTED 589 
 
 But the real answer to all these criticisms was given by the 
 character and the success of Cicero's works. They contain mis- 
 takes and inconsistencies. Some of these are doubtless due to 
 Cicero, and were caused by rapidity of composition and, at times, 
 by misunderstanding, but many of them must have come from 
 the Greek sources. It was an age of constant shifting and bor- 
 rowing, and the modern critic must not forget that his own pro- 
 fessed knowledge of the Greeks is often only uncertain inference. 
 But it is not possible to discuss minute details. Cicero's task 
 was a difficult one, and he solved it with signal success. His 
 style saved his treatises when those of all the Greeks of this 
 period, and of the centuries that lay between him and Aristotle, 
 were lost, with fragmentary exceptions; and Cicero's treatises 
 were so well conceived and so well executed that our knowledge 
 of post-Aristotelian philosophy, as derived from him, is very 
 considerable. It is not likely that anything x>i real importance 
 was omitted. 
 
 The assertion has been made that Cicero's philosophical 
 treatises have had a more profound influence than any other 
 works belonging to ancient Greece and Rome, with the single 
 exception of Plutarch's Lives. Whether this be so or not, the 
 power and the fascination that they exercised upon later genera- 
 tions for centuries are attested in almost countless ways. St. 
 Augustine's acknowledgment of indebtedness to the Hortensius 
 has already been mentioned. One other instance, equally well 
 known, is worthy of mention — that of St. Jerome. 32 
 
 He had determined to leave his house, parents, sisters, and 
 relatives, and even to change his mode of life and go to Jeru- 
 salem, making all these sacrifices that he might save his soul, 
 but he had not been able to give up the books that he had suc- 
 ceeded in collecting in Rome. He fasted, he says, in order that 
 he might be justified in finishing his day with the reading of 
 Cicero. Once he was seized with a fever, and his condition 
 became critical. Even preparations for his funeral were being 
 
 32 Zielinski, op. oit., pp. 112-114. 
 
590 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 made. Suddenly, during his sickness, he seemed to be trans- 
 lated to heaven and stood before the judgment seat of God. 
 Asked who he was, he said, "A Christian." "No," was the 
 reply, "you are not a Christian, but a Ciceronian, for where 
 your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ' ' St. Jerome was 
 overcome with his transgression. Those present, it seemed to 
 him, interceded in his behalf, for he was still young. Finally, 
 he cried aloud and took an oath that he would not again keep 
 worldly books in his possession, nor read them. He was released, 
 and returned to earth. Regaining consciousness, he wept so 
 bitterly that all who saw him were convinced of his repentance 
 and change of heart. 
 
 But he could not keep his oath. He continued reading Cicero, 
 quoting him repeatedly in his writings. When he later became 
 involved in religious controversy, an opponent, Rufinus, charged 
 him with his continued love for Cicero, and even spoke of it as 
 perjury and sacrilege. St. Jerome tried to defend himself. His 
 promise had referred to the future, he said ; he had not promised 
 to forget all he knew. And, indeed, where had Rufinus acquired 
 his own copiousness of expression, his brilliance, and his variety, 
 if not from Cicero? Either St. Jerome was mistaken or else 
 Rufinus, too, read Cicero — in secret. But Rufinus had made 
 no promise, and St. Jerome was forced to resort to causistry. He 
 had given his promise while in a dream. Rufinus should heed 
 the prophets, who tell us not to believe in dreams. 
 
 Cicero could not have foreseen St. Jerome's devotion and 
 agony ; nor, most likely, did he have his eyes turned to a very 
 distant future. His task seemed to him a very modest one, despite 
 his moral and literary enthusiasm and his conviction of its 
 Roman usefulness. He was writing for a relatively narrow circle 
 of contemporaries, with some thought of further results. As he 
 said himself in the De Divinatione, 33 he hoped to reach, not all 
 young men, but a few, whose influence, however, might be con- 
 33 Be Divin. 2, 5. 
 
TWO GREAT ROMANS 591 
 
 siderable in the state. He also found some pleasure in the 
 knowledge that even older men read his books; they were more 
 numerous than he had expected. It seemed glorious, so he said, 
 still in the same connection, to think that the Romans would no 
 longer need the Greeks. 
 
 It is therefore interesting to remember how Caesar and Cicero, 
 the two greatest Romans of their time, were occupied in the 
 early months of the year 45 b.c. Caesar was conquering in 
 Spain, and so establishing his power, which would result in the 
 Roman empire. Quite unknown to him, the empire would 
 become the bridge, as it were, over which would be carried the 
 numerous gifts that the ancients had been preparing for the 
 modern world. Cicero, in the meanwhile, sorrowing at Astura, 
 was seeking consolation in writing, and, with a lack of foresight 
 like Caesar's, was making ready one of the most precious of these 
 gifts. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 I 
 
 After the Ides 
 
 Caesar was murdered, in the senate-house erected by Pompey 
 in the Campus Martius, on the Ides of March, the fifteenth, in 
 the year 44 b.c. Though we do not know where Cicero was at 
 this time, it is almost certain that he did not witness the assassi- 
 nation. Neither is it likely that he was in the forum. He had 
 not been in the habit, for a long time, of mingling with men in 
 public ; it was too humiliating an advertisement of his political 
 helplessness. Most probably he was at home, whether in his 
 Palatine residence or in his Tusculan villa. During the days 
 when the plot against Caesar was being matured, and perhaps 
 on the very day it was executed, he may have been collecting 
 instances of ancient superstition for the De Dwinatione or writ- 
 ing his essay to Atticus on Old Age. "News of the assassination 
 was probably sent to him by Basilus, one of the assassins; 1 and 
 he wrote in reply his famous two lines: "Congratulations! I 
 am happy. I love you and watch over your interests. Send me 
 your love, and let me know what you are doing and what is 
 happening." Later in the day he repaired to the Capitol for 
 a conference with the assassins; he was ready to take his place 
 in the political turmoil. 
 
 i If Cicero had been present in the senate-house or in the forum on the 
 Ides, he would undoubtedly have referred to it in his letters or in his 
 Philippics, but these contain no such reference. Basilus was far less inti- 
 mate with Cicero than were several of the other conspirators. Cicero's note 
 to Basilus can therefore scarcely be explained except on the supposition that 
 Basilus, who was not an important member of the conspiracy, was either 
 delegated to communicate with Cicero or else did so out of a greater thought- 
 fulness. This letter (Fam. 6, 15) is the only one in the correspondence 
 addressed to Basilus. 
 
MATIUS' GRIEF 593 
 
 The relief and the unpitying exultation at Caesar's death 
 which inspired Cicero's note to Basilus is a sad testimony to 
 the hatred the great dictator had drawn upon himself during 
 the last months of his life. Cicero had been his friend ; he had 
 admired his talents probably more than those of any other man in 
 Rome ; Cicero himself was not cruel, though he could on occasion 
 be surprisingly stern; but Caesar had made himself a tyrant. 
 The murder was dastardly, for many of the conspirators owed 
 their whole political existence to Caesar and some had been 
 on very intimate terms with him. All men did not condone it. 
 The soldiers did not forget their great commander. Though 
 some of the prominent Romans made their devotion to Caesar's 
 memory a cloak for their own ambitions, others were moved by 
 profound grief. Matius was one of these. The letter 2 to Cicero 
 in which he discussed his relations to Caesar bears witness, as 
 does nothing else, to Caesar's lovable personality, and is one of 
 the most pathetic things in history. To the modern student who 
 has learned to know Caesar the murder can not but be inexpress- 
 ibly sad. But this feeling did not predominate in. Rome. Matius 
 thought that all men should mourn, and yet he continued on 
 terms of intimacy with such men as Cicero, who supported 
 the assassins, and publicly praised the deed. Indeed, political 
 assassinations were not rare in Rome; Caesar's death did not 
 seem to raise a moral question. Matius was actually criticised 
 for not concealing his grief, which, it was claimed, argued a lack 
 of patriotism. It was felt to be a noble thing to have had a part 
 in the murder; men who were innocent wished to be known as 
 conspirators. Cicero made no such claim, but when Antony, a 
 few months later, accused him of having instigated the murder, 
 he replied that Antony was giving him more credit than he 
 deserved. Trebonius was one of the conspirators. It had been 
 his duty to detain Antony outside the senate-house while the 
 
 2 Warn. 11, 28. It is a reply to Fam. 11, 27. 
 
594 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 assassins crowded around Caesar. In a letter 3 to Cicero, who 
 was expected to write something about Caesar's death, he 
 expressed the hope that Cicero would not assign to him too small 
 a part in the deed. 
 
 There is something almost appalling in the suddenness and 
 the energy with which Cicero changed the whole tenor of his 
 life. It was almost eight years since he had last appeared in the 
 courts of Rome. Then had come the wearisome administration 
 of Cilicia; the Civil War, with Cicero's many anxieties and dis- 
 appointments, including the long humiliation in Brundisium and 
 the years of submission to Caesar's dictatorship. Once, when 
 Marcellus was pardoned, Cicero had broken his silence in public ; 
 but otherwise he had been absent from public life or silently 
 present. Terentia had been divorced, Publilia had come and 
 gone, Quintus had been treacherous, and Tullia had died. Cicero 
 had composed the Brutus and the Orator, and several minor 
 things ; and lately he had been immersing himself in the disputes 
 of the Academy, and the ethical and metaphysical meditations of 
 Stoics and Epicureans. He took an active part in the doings 
 of the first few feverish days of chaos after the assassination, 
 but after that, for several months, there was nothing that he; 
 could do. During these months, however, he held himself in 
 readiness, and when his opportunity at last came, at the end of 
 the year, he acted with an energy, vigilance, courage, and wis- 
 dom that he had not surpassed in his prosecution of Verres or 
 in the trying and perilous activities of his consulship. 
 
 The assassins had counted on Cicero 's support. His name was 
 therefore the first to be mentioned in public after Caesar had 
 been slain. While the dictator was still lying in his blood on 
 the floor of the senate-house, Brutus brandished his dagger in 
 the air and, shouting the name of Cicero, congratulated him on 
 the restoration of Roman liberty. This was a summons to 
 Cicero to come forward and labor for his country, but it was 
 
 sFam. 12, 16. 
 
ANTONY ALLOWED TO LIFE 595 
 
 also an announcement that the murder was a patriotic act. And 
 this claim was in the main true. There is necessarily a multi- 
 plicity of motives wherever men band themselves together for 
 good or for evil, but the one thought that animated the con- 
 spirators against Caesar's life was the desire to get rid of a 
 King and to reestablish the republic. They sought no power 
 greater than would fall to their lot as senators or .magistrates. 
 In their eagerness to avoid even the appearance of aiming at 
 more than this, they spared Antony, Caesar's colleague in the 
 consulship. 
 
 The tyrannicides made a mistake in allowing Antony to live. 
 Some of them had urged that he should fall with his master, but 
 Marcus Brutus, we are told, had objected to what he considered 
 useless bloodshed, and he had carried his point. The conspirators 
 made other mistakes, which could less easily have been avoided, 
 but the hope that the assassination would restore the republic 
 was not altogether chimerical. Indeed, among the sixty or more 
 conspirators were many men who had had quite enough experi- 
 ence both in war and in politics not to strike down Caesar without 
 a thought of the consequences. Marcus Brutus himself was 
 unfortunately a theorizer and a dreamer, but even Marcus 
 showed later, in the Bast, that he was not a man of contemptible 
 ability. Decimus Brutus and Cassius were, with Marcus Brutus, 
 the leaders of the conspiracy; Decimus had proved himself a 
 very capable soldier under Caesar, and Cassisus had fought with 
 great success in the East. These men and their accomplices had 
 reason for expecting that, with Caesar gone, the republic would 
 immediately revive. Rome had not been changed into an 
 autocracy by Caesar ; the new order had not been so well stabil- 
 ized that at Caesar's death another man would automatically 
 take his place. Caesar's power had been something over and 
 above the republican constitution, but that constitution still 
 remained. The senate and the assemblies still met, though their 
 decisions were dictated by Caesar. There were still magistrates : 
 
596 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 Antony was Caesar's colleague, and Dolabella, Cicero's son-in- 
 law, had been selected to take Caesar's place till the end of the 
 year after Caesar himself should have departed on his intended 
 campaign against the Parthians. The expectation of the conspir- 
 ators, therefore, was that the agencies of the republic — the magis- 
 tracies, the senate, and the assemblies — which had not ceased 
 to exist, should now become effective. The senate, which had 
 lost all its power through Caesar, might well be counted upon 
 to hail with eagerness the restoration of its ancient supremacy; 
 the people of Rome, who on the whole seemed to care but little 
 for anything except their own livelihood and amusements, had 
 of late shown indifference and even hostility toward the deceased 
 dictator, and would not be likely to make any serious attempt 
 to put some one else in his place. Everything might be well if 
 the conspirators could only persuade the senate and the people 
 that no man's life was in danger and that the death of Caesar 
 was not intended to secure unusual powers for the conspirators 
 themselves. 
 
 It was necessary to start the republican government at once, 
 or rather, to make sure that it continued in operation under the 
 new circumstances. The tyrannicides tried to do this. Caesar 
 was slain in the senate-house. The assassins endeavored to calm 
 the senators, evidently hoping that the fathers might be induced 
 to take immediate action; Brutus' apostrophe to Cicero, which 
 proclaimed the liberation of Rome, indicates what the assassins 
 wished to announce; but the senators dared not stay to listen. 
 The unexpected fall of Caesar had come upon them with the 
 shattering force of a thunderbolt. No one would trust himself 
 to the men who had been bold enough to strike the great Caesar. 
 The senators fled, leaving the expostulating assassins beside the 
 bloody corpse of their victim. 
 
 The conspirators decided to appeal to the people in the forum. 
 Adjoining the curia, from which the senators had just fled, was 
 the theatre of Pompey, where a performance was being given. 
 
CONSPIBATOBS BETBEAT 597 
 
 The news of the murder scattered the large audience, and the 
 word was carried through the city. Decimus Brutus had, some 
 gladiators at hand, perhaps kept in readiness for the eventuality 
 that had now occurred. Guarded by these, the assassins marched 
 to the forum. They had their bloody swords in their hands, 
 but on a spear one of them carried a cap of liberty. But the 
 excited people in the forum would not listen to their assurance 
 that all men were safe, and that a tyrant had been slain. Vio- 
 lent scenes ensued, in which many were accidentally killed. The 
 conspirators seem to have held some sort of public meeting, but 
 they could arouse no enthusiasm. There were many Caesarian 
 veterans among the people. They were in Rome awaiting their 
 rewards from the state, which Caesar had been expected to 
 procure for them. The veterans were a class by themselves, and 
 could not be won by grandiloquent phrases about Roman liberty. 
 They wanted concrete recompense for their services; they had 
 at no time preferred the senate to a general, and many of them 
 had been devoted to their great leader. Whether or not any 
 violence was now attempted by them, the conspirators found it 
 desirable to retreat. They mounted to the Capitol, where they 
 could best protect themselves; they had no soldiers, only their 
 personal attendants and Decimus Brutus' gladiators. 
 
 Though the assassins had failed both in the senate and in 
 the forum, and were actually on the defensive, their failure had 
 been largely due to the tumult that resulted from the murder. 
 The rioting was certain to come to an end, and they could then 
 have made another appeal to the senate and the people, as well 
 as to the veterans, and might have been more successful, if they 
 had not made the mistake of sparing Antony. The latter had 
 fled when Caesar was struck down. Disguised as a slave, accord- 
 ing to the story, he had first remained hidden in a friend's house, 
 and had later reached his own dwelling, which he garrisoned 
 with his slaves and clients. He was soon able to make arrange- 
 ments looking to the future. From Caesar's widow he secured 
 
598 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 possession of the late dictator's papers and official accounts, 
 as well as of his private moneys, which are said to have amounted 
 to four thousand talents, or approximately four million dollars. 
 He also seized the state treasure of some thirty-five million dol- 
 lars, which had been kept in the temple of Ops. His prospects 
 both of safety and power were now far better than those of the 
 assassins. As consul, he was legally at the head of the govern- 
 ment; as the representative of Caesar, he could appeal to the 
 veterans, strengthening his appeal with his immense treasure. 
 And he was presently aided by one other circumstance. The only 
 soldiers stationed in Rome were under the command of Lepidus, 
 who had been Caesar's master of horse. Appointed by Caesar . 
 to the governorship of Hither Gaul, Lepidus had enlisted a legion 
 for service in the province. With this legion he occupied the 
 forum, probably during the night following Caesar's death, and 
 thus became for the moment master of Rome. He was intensely 
 hostile to the assassins, and, being a man of weak character, he 
 allowed himself to become the tool of Antony. 
 
 The conspirators in the meanwhile had accomplished nothing. 
 Several prominent men had come to consult with them in the 
 Capitol, willing in this way to express their public approval of 
 the assassination. Dolabella was among these. He had been 
 chosen by Caesar to hold the consulship during the months of 
 this year that would remain after Caesar should have departed 
 for Parthia, but Antony had as augur interfered with Dolabella 's 
 election. As consul-elect and the opponent of Antony, Dola- 
 bella was therefore an important adherent. Cicero also had 
 joined the assassins. Seeing the need of immediate action, he 
 had urged that the senate be summoned to meet on the Capitol. 
 Though Antony, as sole consul, was the only person who could 
 constitutionally summon such a meeting, this was not a time 
 for the observance of legality. Dolabella might have issued the 
 summons with a fair appearance of decency; it could have been 
 done by Brutus or Cassius, who were praetors. The senators, as 
 
BBUTUS AS AN OEATOS 599 
 
 later events showed, were in sympathy with the conspirators. 
 They might have come together, and so given their sanction 
 to the new order of things, and this action might have had some 
 influence with the populace ; but the senate was not summoned. 
 Cicero also insisted on a new appeal to the people ; and such an 
 appeal was made on the next day. But Brutus, the orator, 
 declaimed about the tyranny of Caesar, which had not borne 
 very heavily on the veterans; he compared Caesar's death to 
 the expulsion of the tyrants; he demanded the return to Rome 
 of those Caesar had exiled, for whom the people could scarcely 
 he expected to care; he very nearly identified his cause with 
 that of a mere political party by championing the rights of 
 Sextus Pompey, who had remained in revolt against the state 
 since the death of his father, Pompey the Great; and, above all, 
 Brutus failed to put any patriotic ardor into his speech, such 
 as would have answered to the needs of the moment. He spoke 
 like a philosopher, and we are told that the people listened with 
 deference, but without enthusiasm.* 
 
 There was now nothing to do but to negotiate with Antony 
 and his supporters; but the result of these negotiations were 
 not comforting. Decimus Brutus had by Caesar been appointed 
 to Cisalpine Gaul and wished to go to this province. The 
 assassins, having failed to gain a following in Rome, must look 
 abroad; if Decimus Brutus could hold Cisalpine Gaul with an 
 army, this would give strength to the tyrannicides, for, with the 
 exception of Lepidus' legion, Decimus 1 army would thus be the 
 military force nearest Rome. But Antony declared that Decimus 
 must not go to Gaul. Antony also gave it as his opinion that in 
 
 4 Brutus later wished to publish this oration as a pamphlet and asked 
 Cicero first to eritieise it ' ' candidly, ' ' but Cicero found it too tame and 
 could do nothing with it (Att. 15, lb, 2). About the same time Atticus 
 asked Cicero to write a speech for Brutus to deliver at a public meeting, 
 but Cicero would not undertake it, and mentioned that when he had written 
 an edict for Brutus, at Atticus' request, Brutus had preferred his own (Att. 
 14, 20, 3). These two letters contain other matters as well which are inter- 
 esting as comments on Brutus' "Attic" oratory. 
 
600 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 view of the attitude of the veterans and the populace in Rome 
 the city was not a safe place for the assassins. Other matters 
 were discussed, all indicating that the assassins were not only 
 on the defensive but even in danger. 5 
 
 After two days of chaos the senate met, on the seventeenth, 
 but it was Antony who had issued the summons. Outside the 
 temple of Earth, in which the meeting took place, were the popu- 
 lace, Caesar's veterans, and Lepidus' legion. The assassins were 
 not present. Antony presided. By his side sat Dolabella, also 
 in consular garb ; and Antony wisely made no objection. Among 
 the senators was Cicero, but he had come unwillingly, not expect- 
 ing anything very favorable to the republic. The debate was 
 long. Some of the senators ventured to move that the assassins 
 receive thanks and rewards for their deed, and the people 
 outside, it is said, when an attempt was made to enlist their 
 sympathies for Antony and his partisans, refused to interfere; 
 two circumstances which indicate that a more strenuous effort 
 on the part of the assassins to win support, as Cicero had urged, 
 might have altered the situation to a considerable degree. Now, 
 however, it was too 'late. The assassins could hope for nothing 
 beyond their personal safety, and were glad to make a compro- 
 mise. Nor was this rejected by Antony. He and Lepidus had 
 the upper hand, but they were not sufficiently sure of their 
 power to dictate harsh terms. Cicero acted as the mediator. 
 The assassins were not to be held accountable for their crime, 
 but Caesar's acts were to remain in force, while his will was 
 to be opened and read in public and his body was to receive the 
 honor of a public funeral. The veterans were not forgotten, for 
 both the* Antonians and the liberators hoped for their ultimate 
 support; it was decided that the colonies planned for them by 
 Caesar should be founded. In passing these measures, the two 
 hostile parties pretended to be actuated by a desire for peace 
 
 s A very vivid picture of the situation is found in a letter addressed by 
 Deoimus Brutus to Marcus Brutus and Cassius, probably on the morning of 
 March 17 {Earn. 11, 1). 
 
A COMPROMISE 601 
 
 and concord, and the touching act of patriotic conciliation was 
 celebrated in the evening when Brutus dined with Lepidus, and 
 Cassius with Antony. The two tyrannicides, however, had not 
 thought it safe to descend from their fortified aerie on the 
 Capitol until they had received hostages; Antony's son is 
 reported to have been one of these. 
 
 The compromise had, in Cicero's words, laid a foundation 
 for peace, but neither he nor any one else expected ever to erect 
 a temple on it. The republic had been restored, but it was 
 under the shadow of Caesar 's dictatorship ; Caesar himself had 
 by the honor of a public funeral been declared the benefactor 
 of Rome. Antony had the favor of the veterans and the support 
 of Lepidus' legion; he had money; he was at the head of the 
 state; and he had possession of Caesar's papers, of which he 
 presently made good use. He had also strengthened his position 
 by recognizing Dolabella as consul and by securing to Lepidus 
 the office of chief pontiff, made vacant by Caesar's death. The 
 assassins, on the other hand, were safe from criminal prosecu- 
 tion, but their lives were in danger. Antony had already advised 
 them that they were remaining in Rome at their own risk. The 
 truth of his advice became alarmingly clear at the reading of 
 the will and at Caesar's funeral. "When the will was opened, it 
 was discovered that Caesar had left three hundred sesterces to 
 each and every citizen and had donated his gardens on the right 
 bank of the Tiber to the public for a park. Octavius, his sister's 
 grandson, had been adopted as his son and was the chief heir, 
 but among the second heirs, those who were to inherit in case 
 the first or real heirs failed to accept, was Decimus Brutus, who 
 had been one of the chief plotters against Caesar 's life. Emotions 
 of gratitude to the late dictator and of intense hatred against 
 his assassins were thus aroused, and these were cleverly fanned 
 into flame by Antony 's dramatic management of the funeral and 
 his exceedingly astute eulogy of Caesar. A serious riot ensued. 
 The crowd rushed through the streets with firebrands to ignite 
 
602 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 the houses of the assassins. Brutus and Cassius had enough 
 armed men to protect themselves, but the house of one assassin 
 was burned, and a harmless citizen, who was mistaken for an 
 assassin, was murdered. 
 
 The fate of the tyrannicides was now sealed in so far as the 
 city was concerned. Decimus Brutus departed for Cisalpine 
 Gaul, and Trebonius set out for Asia, to take possession of these 
 provinces, for which they had been destined by Caesar. The 
 other assassins slipped out of Rome, and skulked about in various 
 hiding-places. The senate continued to meet, but though Antony 
 was not unquestionably supreme, there was no opportunity for 
 independent action by republicans like Cicero. For some three 
 weeks Cicero lingered in the city, but on the seventh of April 
 he was on his way to his Tusculan villa. From this time on, for 
 several months, there was nothing that Cicero could accomplish. 
 He lived now at one villa and now at another ; he wrote a good 
 deal, but no longer professed, as he had done during the period 
 of Caesar's sovereignty, that he was finding happiness in writ- 
 ing; the wonder is that he could write at all. All his thoughts 
 were engaged with the rumors and messages that came to him 
 from Borne, from other places in Italy, and from the provinces. 
 He also had meetings with many men, always discussing the 
 political situation, and he was in direct, though not in frequent, 
 communication with the assassins. The extant letters written 
 by him or to him were very numerous ; one quarter of the whole 
 correspondence belongs to the year and a half after Caesar's 
 death. But the letters of the first few months after the assassina- 
 tion are only a record of disappointments, hopelessness, and 
 disgust. 
 
 These months witnessed the gradual but constant rise to 
 power of Antony. At first he had need to be conciliatory, and 
 we hear that he made a motion to abolish the dictatorship, which 
 was, of course, unanimously carried. His real power, neverthe- 
 less, was not disguised. It rested on the veterans, who seem to 
 
ANTONY'S RISE TO POWER 603 
 
 have been devoted to him, whereas they detested the assassins 
 and had no confidence in those who championed a republic with 
 the senate in the chief place. When riots occurred in Kome, 
 Antony seized the opportunity to declare that his life was im- 
 periled, and by this means he seems to have secured permission 
 to enroll a bodyguard. This troop, which consisted of veterans, 
 was gradually increased to six thousand men. "With them 
 Antony ruled Rome. The constitutional means by which he 
 established and extended his power consisted of Caesar's papers. 
 There can be no doubt that these contained plans for making 
 changes, but, what they did not contain, Antony seems to have 
 inserted. Caesar's former secretary is reported to have made 
 any additions Antony desired. The senate tried to interfere, 
 interpreting the confirmation of Caesar's acts as referring only 
 to those that had actually been published before the Ides; they 
 also decreed that on June first a commission should examine 
 Caesar's papers, but their decree led to nothing since the com- 
 mission consisted of Dolabella and Antony himself. With a 
 show of piously carrying out Caesar's intentions, Antony plunged 
 into an orgy of legislation. Immunities from taxation were 
 granted, forged decrees were passed, exiles were recalled, Roman 
 citizenship was given to whole communities, petty sovereigns in 
 distant countries were confirmed; and for all this Antony 
 received money. "Caesar is dead," wrote Cicero, "but Rome is 
 ruled by his nod." And when Antony felt tolerably secure 
 of his power in the city, he departed on a tour through Cam- 
 pania, where he founded colonies for veterans and won the favor 
 of those who were already settled there. 
 
 Antony thus dominated Rome and central Italy, and there 
 was no means of opposing him. The senate was overawed by 
 his bodyguard. It also contained a minority who were his sup- 
 porters, while its more independent members had left the city. 
 The populace occasionally showed a preference for the friends 
 of the assassins, but, as Cicero put it, they used up their energy 
 
604 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 in applause. Outside of Rome things were scarcely better. 
 There was exultant joy in some of the municipal towns; people 
 rushed eagerly to hear Cicero speak of the regained liberty of 
 the state. Cicero had many visitors. Some of these, like Hirtius 
 and Pansa, the consuls-elect for the next year, were not friends 
 of Antony, but they would, or could, do nothing; they desired 
 peace, so that they might without molestation enter upon their 
 offices at the end of the year. Nor were they heartily in favor 
 of the assassins. They were Caesarians, but neither Antonians 
 nor republicans. Cicero was on intimate terms with them, even 
 giving them lessons in declamation; and he did his best to win 
 their adherence for the assassins. The latter both Cicero and 
 others praised highly. Cicero called them heroes, liberators, 
 tyrannicides; but presently he was punning on the name of 
 Brutus as though Marcus and Decimus had acted like stupid 
 brutes. Perhaps this appellation was partly deserved. Brutus 
 and Cassius issued edicts, which had no effect. Brutus published 
 the uninspired oration he had delivered to the people shortly 
 after the assassination. He was forever hoping for peace with 
 Antony. One clay he thought he might safely return to Rome; 
 on another, he was meditating exile. Neither he nor any other 
 republican had reason for a cheerful view of the future. While 
 Antony was in Campania, riots took place in Rome; Dolabella 
 suppressed them with severity, and this was looked upon by 
 Cicero as a good omen for future peace. At Atticus' advice, he 
 wrote his congratulations to his former son-in-law; he was very 
 complimentary, 6 for there was yet a forlorn hope that Dolabella 
 would side with the republicans against Antony. 
 
 A new element was injected into the situation by the landing 
 in Italy of Octavius, the adopted son and chief heir of Caesar. 
 During nearly six months before Caesar's death the young man 
 had been living in Apollonia in Macedonia. He had been sent 
 
 « Letter to Dolabella, Ait. 14, 17a (Fam. 9, 14). For Cicero's comments 
 on it, see Alt. 14, 19, 4; 14, 18, 1. 
 
THE HEIR OF CAESAR 605 
 
 there, by the order of Caesar, his great-uncle, to continue his 
 studies, for he was only eighteen years old, and to get some 
 military training. Caesar had stationed six legions in Mace- 
 donia, which he meant to employ in his campaign against the 
 Parthians. "When the news of Caesar 's death reached Apollonia, 
 the people of the city offered their support to Octavius, and the 
 officers and some soldiers of the legions volunteered either to 
 protect him or to assist him in avenging the murder. Octavius 
 refused their assistance for the time being, but asked them not 
 to forget their offer in the future. He then went to Italy to 
 claim his inheritance. He did not dare to land at Brundisium, 
 which was the busiest Italian harbor on the Adriatic and had 
 a garrison, but when he had received more complete information 
 about the murder, after he had landed, he visited Brundisium, 
 and here the soldiers, like the soldiers in Macedonia, greeted him 
 as the son of Caesar. This was important for the future. 
 Octavius thereupon started slowly toward Rome. 
 
 Cicero did not fail to realize the political possibilities involved 
 in Octavius' arrival. Hearing of his landing, he wondered 
 anxiously whether a great number of Caesarians were flocking 
 to meet him and whether he would be likely to attempt a coup. 
 For the moment this did not seem likely. Octavius in the mean- 
 time traveled northward. Cicero heard that he had arrived in 
 Naples on the eighteenth of April, and a few days later Cicero 
 himself met him. Octavius, who was born in the year of Cicero 's 
 consulship, treated the old consular with every mark of respect, 
 but Cicero could not bring himself to look upon the young man 
 as the heir and successor of Caesar. By accepting the adoption 
 of Caesar, Octavius would take his adopted father's name, only 
 retaining a modified form of his own, thus becoming Gaius Iulius 
 Caesar Octavianus. Following the lead of Octavius' stepfather, 
 Cicero nevertheless addressed the young man as Octavius. To 
 address him otherwise would have been virtually to acknowledge 
 any claim to power that Octavius might put forward in his 
 
606 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 capacity of Caesar's son. And Cicero had his fears, for Octavius 
 was surrounded by a large number of avowed Caesarians, who 
 threatened the assassins with the severest reprisals. Octavius 
 gave indication that he meant not to renounce the position offered 
 him by Caesar, saying that "the present state of things was ■ 
 intolerable." Cicero's only consolation was the thought that 
 Octavius would cause trouble to Antony ; and he wondered what 
 would happen when "the boy" came to Rome. 
 
 Octavius proceeded slowly to the city, probably forming 
 connections on the way with veterans of Caesar settled in the 
 region, and after reaching Rome during Antony's absence in 
 Campania, he made a public declaration, according to law, 
 before the praetor that he would accept the inheritance. This 
 he did contrary to the advice of his mother Atia and his step- 
 father Philippus. In order to get the adoption completed, it 
 was necessary to have a law passed by the curiate assembly. He 
 was therefore introduced to the people at a public meeting as 
 Caesar, by a tribune, and made a speech in which he eulogized 
 Caesar, and promised to pay Caesar's legacies to the people. 
 He was extremely well received. 
 
 Antony now returned to Rome from his tour among this 
 veterans in Campania, and it is very likely that his return was 
 hastened by the presence in Rome of the young Caesar. "What- 
 ever Octavius' natural attitude of hostility might be toward, 
 the assassins of Caesar, who were Antony's chief opponents, 
 Octavius had arrived in Rome to claim his inheritance, and 
 Antony had already inherited Caesar. He had taken Caesar's 
 money, and he had taken as much of Caesar's power as he could 
 lay hands on. He was neither able nor willing to pay Octavius 
 Caesar 's money, and he had no desire to give Octavius an oppor- 
 tunity to become his political rival. Cicero had called Octavius 
 a boy; Antony treated him as a boy, and even threatened him. 
 Octavius could get no concessions from Antony ; Antony hindered 
 the passing of the curiate law, which would complete Octavius' 
 
ANTONY AND OCT AVIAN 607 
 
 adoption, and he caused him annoyance in other ways. But 
 Octavius, whose resources seem to have been considerable, and 
 who was assisted by friends and relatives, paid Caesar's legacies, 
 and gave games in Caesar's honor, thus increasing his popularity 
 among the people and the veterans. On the tenth of June 
 Cicero wrote 7 to Atticus about Octavius, for the first time giving 
 him the name of Caesar's son, that is, Octavian. Cicero remarked 
 that Octavian had talents and spirit, and that he seemed as 
 well disposed as could be wished to the "heroes." But Cicero 
 thought it well worth considering what trust could be placed in 
 him, in view of his youth, his name, his inheritance, and his 
 education. Cicero quoted Octavian 's own stepfather to the 
 effect that the young man could not be trusted, and he ended 
 his brief but shrewd characterization of the young Caesar by 
 saying that efforts must be made to keep him on the side of the 
 republicans, ' ' to foster him, ' ' and above all to separate him from 
 Antony. 
 
 Antony 's position, while for the present unassailable, was 
 precarious. In the city he was master by means of his body- 
 guard, and perhaps did not greatly fear Octavian 's growing 
 popularity ; and the tyrannicides who were hiding in Italy, were 
 not dangerous. Trebonius, the assassin who had gone to Asia, 
 would doubtless secure a military force, but Asia was far away. 
 Decimus Brutus, however, was growing powerful in Cisalpine 
 Gaul, and in the western Mediterranean was Sextus Pompey. 
 The latter seems already to have won some successes against 
 Asinius Pollio, the governor of Further Spain; he had a navy 
 and threatened Italy with invasion. Indeed, the interference by 
 Sextus had been feared since the days immediately after Caesar's 
 death ; and the war cloud had been growing darker. Sextus was 
 in communication with the assassins, but he was also negotiating 
 with Antony. Though the latter had earlier in the year per- 
 suaded Lepidus to go to his provinces, Narbonese Gaul and 
 
 t Att. 15, 12. 
 
608 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 Hither Spain, for the purpose of winning over Sextus, the result 
 of Lepidus' undertaking seems still to have been uncertain. 
 Antony, on the other hand, had no army. It seems likely that 
 Macedonia had been intended for him by Caesar, and Syria for 
 Dolabella, but even if they secured these provinces at the end 
 of the year, their position would be far from favorable; they 
 would be farther from Rome than Decimus, and the tenure of 
 their governorships would be only two years. Antony therefore 
 determined to take drastic measures. His first acts after the 
 assassination of Caesar had been dictated largely by a sense of 
 self-preservation, though, as was seen from the conspirators' 
 decision to spare him, he had been in no real danger. The way 
 to unbounded power had suddenly opened before him, and he 
 had followed it. During the subsequent months he had made so 
 many enemies that, even if he had been inclined not to seize more 
 illegal power, he could not draw back now. 
 
 On the first of June and the days following he carried out his 
 plan. Rumors of his intention to seize Cisalpine and Trans- 
 alpine Gaul had long been heard; immediately after the assassi- 
 nation he had forbidden Decimus Brutus to go to Cisalpine Gaul. 
 He now filled the city with veterans; neither the assassins, nor 
 Cicero, nor even Hirtius dared to come to Rome. As the senate 
 seems still to have shown some signs of independence, due per- 
 haps to the presence of Octavian, Antony acted through the 
 assembly. The two Gauls were assigned to him for the illegal 
 period of six years, including the current year. This gave him 
 a legal excuse for making war on Decimus. The six years, fur- 
 thermore, would establish him in a position not unlike that held 
 by Caesar after his Gallic campaigns. Dolabella received Syria, 
 also for six years ; and was thus won over definitely to the side 
 of Antony. As governor of Syria, which bordered on Parthia, 
 Dolabella might claim the six legions stationed in Macedonia for 
 Caesar's Parthian campaign. Arrangement was therefore made 
 so that Dolabella should be satisfied with one legion, another 
 
THE FIMST OF JUNE 609 
 
 should remain in Macedonia, and the four remaining legions 
 should be given to Antony for service in the Gauls — that is, to 
 fight against Decimus. Marcus Brutus and Cassius were assigned 
 each to an insignificant province, though, according to one story, 
 Caesar had destined them for Macedonia and Syria respectively. 
 They were also appointed to have charge of procuring grain for 
 the city, Brutus in Asia and Cassius in Sicily, but without such 
 sweeping powers as would place them above the governors of 
 these provinces. The intention was obviously to get them out 
 of Italy with the least amount of trouble. 
 
 By these measures Antony proclaimed without dissimulation 
 that he meant to make himself master of the Roman world. The 
 situation of the assassins became utterly hopeless, and was pres- 
 ently made worse, if possible, by the rumor that Sextus Pompey 
 had sided with Antony. It is, therefore, from the first of June 
 that Cicero later dated the beginning of Antony's usurpation. 
 Many of his acts before that date had been subversive of law 
 and order, but, compared with the measures which were passed 
 on the first of June — so Cicero said in the First Philippic, which 
 was delivered on the second of September— they had been harm- 
 less; Antony and Dolabella had until then almost deserved to 
 be called law-abiding. 
 
 The immediate effect of Antony's measures on the leaders 
 of the republicans, Brutus and Cassius, is seen in a conference 8 
 Cicero had with them at Antium on the eighth of June. Several 
 persons were present, including three ladies of Brutus' family, 
 his mother, his second wife, and his half-sister, who was married 
 to Cassius. Brutus talked about going to Eome, and Cicero had 
 to remind him that he could not do so with safety. As praetor, 
 Brutus was to give some games, from which he expected much 
 in the way of popular enthusiasm, but it was finally settled that 
 Brutus should stay away from Rome, though the games would 
 be given at his expense. The grain commission to Asia at first 
 
 s See Att. 15, 11 and 12. 
 
610 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 seemed to Brutus an insult, but he presently came to look upon 
 it as his only respectable opportunity for leaving Rome ; indeed, 
 two days after the conference he was busy collecting vessels for 
 the voyage, though he talked tragically about the matter. Cas- 
 sius, more fiery than Brutus, angrily rejected his commission, 
 which would have taken him to Sicily, and proclaimed that he 
 would go to Achaia. This plan, on which he did not seem 
 absolutely determined at the end of the conference, meant prep- 
 aration for future war against Antony. Both Brutus and Cassius 
 were bitter in their regrets and their reproaches; many oppor- 
 tunities for opposing Antony, they said, had been missed; 
 especially had Decimus Brutus been negligent, who ought to have 
 come to Italy with his northern- army. As a matter of fact, 
 Decimus was waging war against native tribes, doubtless to give 
 his legions some very essential training, for a large number of 
 his soldiers were raw recruits; altogether it seems that Decimus 
 was the only conspirator who thus far had acted with prompt- 
 ness, prudence, and a certain measure of success. In the course 
 of the long conversation at Antium there was much talk of the 
 past. Cicero observed that nothing could be gained by harping 
 on the past, thus making use of an expression that characterized 
 his later efforts ; 9 but he did say that one great mistake had been 
 made at the beginning, in that the senate had not been 
 summoned and no adequate effort had been made to profit by 
 the popular enthusiasm which ensued upon the assassination, 
 whereas it had been of supreme importance to get the govern- 
 mental machinery running at once. Cicero refrained, however, 
 from repeating a remark with which he • had earlier put his 
 finger on the weakness of the conspirators* plans: that Antony 
 should have been taken out of the way at the same time as 
 Caesar; all the trouble had come from Antony. It was a dis- 
 couraging conference, Cicero wrote to Atticus. Going down to 
 Antium, Cicero had been considering carefully what he ought to 
 say; after the conference was finished, he could only feel that 
 
 a See below, pp. 633, 645. 
 
CONFERENCE AT ANTIUM 611 
 
 he had done his duty as a friend and an adviser : " I found the 
 ship of state going to pieces or rather already in fragments." 
 
 The discouraging interview with Brutus and Cassius revived 
 in Cicero a thought that he had had for a long time, that of 
 going to Greece. As early as the middle of April he had written 
 to Atticus that he wished to go away in July. He was now in 
 a position to leave Italy with all the dignity of a Roman of high 
 rank. Dolabella had appointed him a legate on the second of 
 June, at the very time when Antony's revolutionary measures 
 were being pushed through in Rome; and the legateship was in 
 every way suitable. Its terms left Cicero free to leave Italy 
 and to return whenever he should choose; it imposed no duties 
 upon him ; and it would last for the whole period of Dolabella 's 
 governorship of Syria. The relations between Cicero and his 
 former son-in-law had been on the whole satisfactory during the 
 year. Dolabella was inexcusably dilatory in repaying Tullia's 
 dowry, and Cicero, whose circumstances were straitened, had 
 written to the young man very sharply about this. Dolabella 
 had also disappointed Cicero's hope that he would side with the 
 republicans. There had, nevertheless, been no break between the 
 two men, and Dolabella had now shown his friendliness in the 
 matter of the legateship. 
 
 Nor did Antony make any objection to Cicero's departure. 
 He and Cicero had known each other for several years, not 
 always pleasantly, but without open enmity. Though after 
 Caesar's death they were inevitably on opposite sides, they had 
 preserved their old relation of outward respect and friendship. 
 Both Antony and his brother had gone out of their way to 
 please Cicero. On one occasion, for example, Antony had in the 
 most polite language requested Cicero's approval of his intention 
 to recall from exile a freedman of Cicero's late enemy, Clodius. 
 Antony had married Clodius' widow. He explained to Cicero 
 that Cicero's friendliness in the matter, which would be a sign 
 that old enmities were forgotten, would give great pleasure both 
 
612 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 to Antony and to Clodius' son; Antony would not recall the 
 man if Cicero objected. Cicero gave his approval in the most 
 cordial terms. But all this mutual politeness and flattery was 
 only a farce; Cicero wrote to Atticus that he was certain that 
 Antony would have carried out his purpose under any circum- 
 stances. 10 Antony's deference was due to a realization of Cicero's 
 political influence; he could scarcely hope to gain Cicero's sup- 
 port, but he was determined not to break with him openly. In 
 all likelihood Antony welcomed Cicero's desire to go to Greece; 
 it would remove one possible source of trouble. 
 
 Cicero had long wished to visit his son in Athens. The young 
 man was spending his generous allowance as befitted the son 
 of a great consular, but it was not so obvious that he was working 
 very hard. Early in June, to be sure, Cicero received a letter 
 from him which showed an improvement in style, and was indeed 
 well written, as Cicero informed Atticus. There were, however, 
 varying reports both from friends and from the son's teachers; 
 in reference to one account of Marcus, which was highly eulo- 
 gistic, Cicero said that, even if he was deceived, he was glad 
 to be credulous. It should perhaps be added that young Marcus 
 was glad to profit by his father's willing credulity. Two or three 
 months later he wrote a letter 11 to Tiro, obviously for careful 
 transmission to Cicero. Marcus, Tiro is told, has just been greatly 
 delighted by a letter from his affectionate father, and now his 
 joy has been made complete by a few lines from Tiro. He thanks 
 Tiro for publishing his good fame, and will strive to increase it 
 as the days go by. And much more to the same effect, including 
 a most entrancing picture of Marcus' industry and his intimate 
 relations with one of his admirable teachers. Evidently Marcus 
 might profit by a visit from his father. 
 
 The political situation in Rome, however, was Cicero's chief 
 reason for planning his trip, as it was also his chief reason for 
 hesitating to go. While it was still possible that Sextus Pompey 
 
 10 Att. 14, 13a; 14, 13b. See also 14, 13, 6; 14, 19, 2. 
 a Fam. 16, 21. 
 
CICERO TO VISIT MARCUS 613 
 
 might invade Italy, Cicero had desired to be out of the way; 
 he could do nothing in a civil war, and this war promised to be 
 such that nobody would be allowed to remain neutral. "I go 
 away," he wrote to Atticus, "to meet a better kind of death 
 than would come to me here. ' ' He had remained in Italy with 
 a vague hope that an opportunity would present itself for him 
 to take some part in politics; if anything was to be done, he 
 would be ashamed to be absent from his post. But the changes 
 brought about on the first of June precluded any possibility 
 of political action. The first of January, when Antony would 
 no longer be consul, would present the earliest opportunity, 
 and Cicero, in deciding to leave Italy, made clear to every one 
 that he meant to return before that date. Atticus and other 
 friends approved thoroughly of his decision. And yet, since 
 nothing could be accomplished on the first of January, except 
 through war, Cicero found it ridiculous that he was going away 
 while Rome still had peace, only to return when there would 
 be war. 
 
 Cicero also shrank from the fatigue of a sea voyage at his 
 time of life ; he heard with some apprehension that the pirates 
 were still hovering about Italy; and he was very loath to be 
 separated from Atticus. Up to the last day before his going 
 he would have preferred to remain, provided, as he wrote to 
 Atticus, he could have remained in safety; and when he learned 
 from his friend that the latter had wept after bidding farewell 
 to him, he wrote back that, if Atticus had wept in his presence, 
 he would perhaps even then have given up his trip. He thought 
 for a little while of accompanying Brutus, who was preparing 
 to go to the Bast, but Brutus could not get ready; he was still 
 'expecting some favorable turn in the political situation. • And 
 when Cicero was at last about to go r one of his freedmen caused 
 a delay by some mismanagement of his affairs. 
 
 Cicero's perplexity arose from the fact that he could see 
 no clear path of duty before him; he loved Rome too much to 
 
614 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 leave her while there was the slightest chance of his accomplish- 
 ing anything for her betterment, and he decided to withdraw 
 in order to escape the sight of an arbitrary and lawless govern- 
 ment. But no worries quite deprived him of his inexhaustible 
 resiliency. Going to Astura, toward the middle of June, he 
 found great enjoyment in the natural beauty of the little place, 
 the more as he could there be alone and write, if he pleased. 
 He was at that time deeply vexed by the appointment of Brutus 
 as a grain commissioner, which he looked upon as a deliberate 
 insult, and yet he wrote to Atticus that it would perhaps be 
 better for Brutus to undertake the commission than to sit idly 
 by the banks of Eurotas, explaining that Eurotas was a stream 
 on Brutus' estate in Lanuvium. "Can you laugh in reference 
 to such matters?" he makes Atticus ask. "What shall I do? 
 I am tired of finding fault." While in the midst of prepara- 
 tions for his voyage, he turned to philosophical writing, probably 
 the De Officvis; and he was planning further work. On the day 
 of his departure he sent Atticus a revised copy of his essay on 
 Glory. "Have it copied on large paper," he wrote, 12 "and 
 read it to your guests, but if you love me, make them first cheer- 
 ful with a good dinner, so that they do not vent their spleen on 
 my writing when they are really annoyed with you." Atticus 
 was parsimonious, and had been known to serve cheap dinners 
 on expensive plate. This letter, however, is not all equally light- 
 hearted. It ends with love and kisses for Atticus' wife and 
 daughter. 
 
 Cicero departed from Pompeii on the seventeenth of July 
 with three ten-oared vessels. Like Octavian when he landed in 
 Italy, Cicero in leaving had decided to avoid Brundisium, though 
 the voyage from this port would have been shorter ; he did not ' 
 wish to encounter the legions that were expected from Mace- 
 donia. The voyage down the coast was slow, for, as there was 
 little wind, the oars had to be used. In Velia he borrowed a 
 
 izAtt. 16, 3, l. 
 
WOULD MATHER BE IN HOME 615 
 
 Greek book On Overeating, and remarked in a letter 13 that 
 he was an apt pupil of the teaching it contained. He was stay- 
 ing at the house of Trebatius, the jurisconsult, who was then in 
 Rome. Trebatius had been thinking of selling his house in 
 Velia, and Cicero urged him not to do so. Another house belong- 
 ing to Trebatius had a lotus tree which attracted tourists. Cicero 
 advised that it be cut down, so as to improve the view. He had 
 onee promised the young lawyer to explain to him the nature of 
 Aristotle's Topics. As he coasted down from Velia, therefore, 
 he wrote the Topioa, which is still extant. It was a habit of 
 Cicero's to glance over his own books. On board ship he now 
 read his Academical 4, and discovered that the third book was 
 introduced with a preface which he had recently prefixed to 
 the essay on Glory. He wrote a new preface and despatched it 
 to Atticus. Cicero was trying to forget his unwillingness to leave 
 Rome. Atticus had written that his departure was being 
 "lauded to the skies" on the understanding that he would return 
 before the first of January. "That I shall certainly try to do," 
 he answered. ' ' I would rather be in Rome in fear, than in your 
 beloved Athens without fear." 
 
 II 
 Philippics 
 
 Cicero was not destined to reach Greece. He arrived in 
 Syracuse on the first of August and put to sea on the following 
 day, but contrary winds drove him to Italy. He set out a second 
 time, and was again driven back. While he was waiting for 
 better weather at a friend's house not far from Rhegium, a 
 number of prominent citizens came from this place to visit him. 
 Some of them, who had just returned from Rome, brought with 
 them a copy of a speech delivered by Antony at a public meeting, 
 
 13 Earn. 7, 20. See above, pp. 97-98. 
 
 " Att. 16, 6, 4. This preface is not extant. 
 
616 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 which was very satisfactory from Cicero 's point of view, and they 
 also enthusiastically informed Cicero that everything in the city 
 held promise of a return to peaceful methods. Antony, they 
 said, had given up his plan of taking the Gallic provinces and 
 would bow to the authority of the senate. It was expected that 
 the meeting of the senate scheduled for the first of September 
 would be of extraordinary importance ; Brutus and Cassius were 
 requesting all ex-consuls and ex-praetors to be present. 
 
 Cicero started at once for Rome. He had intended under 
 any circumstances to be back in the city by the first of January, 
 when, under the presidency of the new consuls, Hirtius and 
 Pansa, the senate would be freed from Antony's military 
 tyranny and might take measures for the reestablishment of 
 normal conditions. If the opportunity for senatorial action was 
 to come on the first of September, Cicero felt that it was his 
 duty, as it was also in accord with his desires, to be present on 
 that date. His absence, furthermore, might arouse unfavorable 
 comment, for he was recognized as a leader and a patriot. The 
 unfavorable comment had indeed already begun. At this time 
 he received a letter from Atticus. This prudent gentleman, 
 who always counseled caution, and who with others had thor- 
 oughly approved of Cicero's projected visit to Greece, now wrote 
 about his absence in a petulant spirit, accusing Cicero of aban- 
 doning his country and requesting him to draw up a formal 
 statement of his reasons for leaving Rome. Evidently things 
 looked for the moment so bright that people began to wonder 
 why Cicero was going to Greece, and Atticus, in his anxiety for 
 Cicero 's good name, came to think that Cicero ought not to have 
 gone away. Cicero replied to Atticus while traveling toward 
 the capital. 15 
 
 On his way, he also met Brutus, who was delighted that 
 Cicero had not proceeded to Greece. His absence would have 
 indicated that he despaired of the republic, or was so indifferent 
 
 "Att. 16, 7. 
 
RETURNS TO SOME 617 
 
 that he thought only of his own amusement, for, according to 
 one rumor, he had intended to go to Olympia for the games. 
 Brutus regretted that Cicero had not been in Rome on the 
 first of August, for on that day opposition to Antony had been 
 voiced in the senate by Piso, the consul of 58 B.C., against whom 
 Cicero had delivered one of his most bitter invectives. Brutus' 
 news was by no means altogether encouraging. He did not 
 know whether Piso had secured a following, nor whether he had 
 subsequently dared to face Antony in the senate. Neither was 
 Cieero heartened by the activities of Brutus and Cassius, the 
 republican leaders, who were expending their energy in issuing 
 edicts, which seemed futile to Cicero, since they had no physical 
 force behind them. This was the last time that Cicero saw 
 Brutus, who left Italy for Greece a few weeks later. Cicero went 
 on to Rome. He had little hope of finding it possible to accom- 
 plish anything there, but he told himself that he would look after 
 his financial obligations. The money market was getting tight, 
 and Cicero's affairs were in a wretched condition. 
 
 Cicero reached Rome on the last of August. Though he did 
 not expect at once to take a prominent part in politics, he could 
 not have failed to realize that his mere arrival in the city would 
 have a remarkable effect. He had not been in Rome since the 
 few days of tumult that ensued after the assassination of Caesar, 
 and by setting out for Greece he had virtually announced that 
 for the time being he had renounced politics, and yet it was he 
 who had proposed the compromise between the Antonians and 
 the republicans early in the year, and he was known not only as 
 the most distinguished ex-consul living but also as an avowed 
 friend of the assassins. His arrival caused the commotion that 
 he must have foreseen. The people flocked to meet him in such 
 numbers, we are told, that it took him nearly the whole day to 
 make his way from the city gate to his house ; and Antony decided 
 at once to have it clearly understood whether Cicero was to be 
 counted among his enemies or his friends. 
 
618 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 Antony was not in a mood for conciliation or for submission 
 to senatorial authority. Any slight signs of yielding that he 
 may have shown, as well as the temerity of Piso in his fruitless 
 opposition to Antony on the first of August, had been due no 
 doubt to the popularity of Octavian, which for a little while 
 may have made Antony 's position seem precarious ; but when 
 Cicero returned to Rome, Antony still had the upper hand. He 
 was expected soon to go to southern Italy to take command of 
 the four legions that had been summoned from Macedonia, 
 which, with his large bodyguard, would make him the undisputed 
 master of Rome, and he was bidding for popularity by the intro- 
 duction of two important measures, which seem to have been 
 passed in September. One of these measures, intended to win 
 the support of the veterans, provided that one third of the 
 jurors in the standing courts should be drawn from a panel 
 consisting of the centurions and soldiers of the legion Alauda; 
 the other measure, which was addressed to the prejudices of the 
 common people, allowed an appeal from the courts to the popular 
 assembly in cases of public violence and of treason. Besides, 
 these subversive proposals, he was going to bring before the 
 senate on the first of September, the day after Cicero's arrival, 
 a motion that in all public thanksgivings a day should be added 
 in honor of the deified Caesar. This proposal had for aim to 
 attract the Caesarians. 
 
 Cicero decided not to attend the meeting on the first. He 
 was opposed to the extraordinary honor proposed for Caesar,, 
 and he was probably unwilling to appear in the senate, where 
 he would be forced to take sides for or against Antony, while^ 
 he was tired from his journey and before he had had time to 
 inform himself thoroughly in regard to public opinion. As a 
 matter of courtesy, he sent word to Antony that he would not 
 attend; he needed rest after his journey. A consul had the 
 right to coerce senators to attend meetings if the occasion seemed, 
 to require their presence. Antony, therefore, who was deter- 
 
FIBST PHILIPPIC 619 
 
 mined to force Cicero to make a political decision, declared 16 
 angrily in the senate that he would take some carpenters with 
 him and go to tear down Cicero's house if he did not come to 
 the meeting. Antony's outburst was the first act of open hos- 
 tility during the year between the two men. 
 £_Cicero did not attend the meeting of the first, but he was 
 present on the following day, when Dolabella presided and 
 Antony had gone to his villa. Cicero explained 17 the reasons 
 for his departure from Italy, remembering perhaps Atticus' 
 advice that he draw up a formal statement. He said that the 
 events in Rome up to the first of June had made him hope 
 for the restoration of the republic, but that Antony's measures 
 in June had shattered this hope. The senate had been frightened 
 into inaction, the populace had become revolutionary, and the 
 veterans had become insolent. Cicero had therefore left Rome, 
 finding, no opportunity for accomplishing anything for the state, 
 but he had intended to return by the first of January, when 
 the senate would meet under new magistrates. After he had 
 been accidentally prevented from continuing his journey, good 
 news about Antony had led him to set out for Rome, he said, 
 and he had proceeded to the city in spite of later information 
 from Brutus, to the effect that Antony had not fulfilled his 
 promise to yield obedience to the senate on the first of August. 
 Cicero protested_aganisi_Antony 's violence of the d aybefore. 
 Fatigue had prevented Cicero from attending the senate~TTfie~ 
 meeting was not so important that Antony had a reason for 
 
 16 PM. l, 12. 
 
 17 In the First Philippic. The Philippics seem to have received their 
 name by accident. The Fifth and the Tenth had been sent to M. Brutus, 
 and Cicero had in jest referred to them as Philippics, the name given to 
 Demosthenes' speeches against Philip of Macedon, which were held to be 
 masterpieces of political invective. Brutus approved of Cicero's reference 
 (Ad Brut. 2, 3 (5), 4; 2, 4, 2), and the name became attached to all the 
 speeches delivered during Cicero's struggle with Antony. Fourteen of them 
 are extant, but there were others. Fragments are quoted from a Sixteenth 
 Philippic. See also below, p. 653, for a lost Philippic. Gellius refers to 
 them as Orationes Antonianae in a way that might indicate this to have been 
 the accepted name. 
 
620 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 indulging in threats ; and, indeed, if Cicero had been present, he 
 would not have voted for Antony's motion. Cicero complimented 
 his old enemy Piso on the stand he had taken against Antony 
 on the first of August, expressing his regret that he had not been 
 present; in that case, he said, there would have been at least 
 one consular whom fear and personal considerations could not 
 prevent from upholding the senatorial dignity. He hoped that 
 the senators would listen with their usual consideration to what 
 he had further to say, even though they should lack the courage 
 to adopt his views ; and he thereupon gave it as his opinion that 
 Caesar's acts should be maintained, not because he approved of 
 them but because they were essential to peace. But by Caesar's 
 acts he did not mean the subversive measures published by 
 Antony; he could in no way approve of Antony's proposal to 
 establish a jury panel of soldiers and to allow an appeal from 
 the courts to the people. 
 / " Cicero avowed' feelings of friendship for the two consuls: 
 *~ he still believed that they had acted from a mistaken desire for 
 glory, he said, and not from an unlawful craving for money 
 and power. He complimented Dolabella warmly on the fact 
 that he had restored order in Rome during Antony's absence in 
 Campania; and he praised Antony for his behavior after the 
 assassination, particularly because he had abolished the dictator- 
 ship. But as he approached the end of his speech, he warned 
 Antony against adopting for a motto the line from an old play 
 which read to this effect: "Let men hate, provided they fear." 
 This line Cicero was soon to quote in his work. on Duty, where 
 he wrote of Caesar that it is the most gifted men who are par- 
 ticularly tempted to do wrong by a desire for fame. He 
 called upon Antony to remember his grandfather, the famous 
 orator Marcus Antonius, who had befriended Cicero in his youth, 
 and about whom Cicero had often spoken to Antony. And 
 especially, Cicero continued with sudden grimness, ought Antony 
 to be warned by the fate of Caesar; no man is happy if his 
 
OPEN ENMITY 621 
 
 murderers are able not merely to remain unpunished but even 
 to reap glory from their deed. Cicero finally concluded with 
 the promise that he would speak again in the senate if that could 
 be done with safety both to the senate and to himself. He had 
 had enough of years and glory, he said, just as Caesar had said 
 before him ; any time still remaining to him he would devote to 
 the senate and the state. 
 
 Cicero's speech was calm and dignified; he had come to the 
 senate, as he also declared while speaking, to put his political 
 attitude on record. From the Eoman point of view, he had not 
 broken with Antony, for he had refrained from personal vituper- 
 ation, and he had professed himself ready to remain on a friendly 
 footing. But he had spoken with a frankness and a determina- 
 tion that could not fail to indicate his readiness to undertake 
 the leadership in any opposition to Antony that should prove 
 practicable, provided Antony persisted in his autocratic rule. 
 Antony's irritation now flared into open enmity. He formally 
 renounced his friendship with Cicero, and challenged him to 
 appear at a session of the senate which he set for the nineteenth. 
 When this day arrived, however, Antony's soldiers were present 
 to overawe the meeting and Cicero wisely remained at home. 
 Antony delivered a bitter speech against him, in which he 
 reviewed Cicero's whole political career from the conspiracy 
 of Catiline, and accused Cicero of having instigated the assassina- 
 tion of Caesar. The last charge, as Cicero correctly interpreted 
 it, had for aim to turn the veterans from Cicero. 
 
 Cicero had done wisely in remaining away from the meeting 
 of the nineteenth. He declared later that Antony had intended 
 to murder him, and this may well have been the case. Antony 
 ruled Rome by means of his huge bodyguard; he had consider- 
 able influence with Caesar's veterans, and he was on the point 
 of starting for Brundisium to take command of the four Mace- 
 donian legions, two of which had already arrived, it seems, while 
 the others were expected at any time. The senators, therefore, 
 
622 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 who were known as Antony's opponents, did not dare to attend 
 senatorial meetings, and some of them left the city. Brutus set 
 sail for Greece at the end of the month, hoping to create a mili- 
 tary force in the East before Antony's growing power should 
 make that impossible. Cicero wrote at this time to Cassius that 
 conditions in Rome were desperate and that no change could be 
 looked for unless Cassius should be able to do something, but 
 that Cicero expected nothing from him ; and Cassius was power- 
 less. He left Italy, also for the East, shortly after Brutus had 
 gone away. 
 
 There was still some slight opposition to Antony in the city. 
 On the second of October, a tribune of the people called upon 
 him at a public meeting to express his views about the assassins, 
 and he declared that they were to be punished. It was an 
 embarrassing situation, thus to be forced to break openly with 
 the republicans ; and Antony in his anger exclaimed that it was 
 Cicero who had caused the tribune to put the question, and that 
 it was Cicero, indeed, who was also directing the activity of 
 Cassius, that is, of the republicans. On the fifth of October, 
 Antony charged openly that Octavian had tried to bring about 
 his death. The common people, Cicero wrote of this, considered 
 the charge false, and intended merely to justify Antony in 
 taking possession of Octavian 's property; but the more prudent 
 believed the charge well founded, and approved of Octavian 's 
 attempt. It is no longer possible to decide as to the truth of 
 the matter, but Antony's accusation indicates that the rivalry 
 between him and Caesar's heir had by this time become open 
 hostility. Antony was in a state of extreme irritation. Before 
 starting for Brundisium, he declared publicly that only the 
 victor in the impending struggle would escape death, and he 
 announced that even after the expiration of his consulship he • 
 would enter and leave the city at his pleasure. Since Antony 
 would at that time be in command of a provincial army and 
 consequently could not legally enter the city, this declaration 
 
OCT AVI AN MOVES 623 
 
 was tantamount to an avowal that he meant to make himself 
 absolute ruler. On the ninth of October he left Rome. Cicero 
 remained a little longer and then departed for his villas. 
 He was finishing the so-called Second Philippic, his reply to 
 Antony's speech of the nineteenth. 
 
 And then a dramatic change came over the situation. 
 Octavian started on a journey through Campania for the purpose 
 of appealing to the Caesarian veterans settled there, and he sent 
 agents to work among the Macedonian legions at Brundisium. 
 Antony's declared enmity, which had culminated in his charge 
 that Octavian had plotted against his life, had made Octavian 's 
 position impossible; either he had peacefully to await Antony's 
 return to Rome at the head of a powerful army, and then, with 
 every one else, to submit to whatever treatment Antony should 
 accord him, or else he must seek a decision by arms. He was 
 the only man in Italy for whom the latter alternative was pos- 
 sible ; as the heir of Caesar, he had the affection of the soldiers, 
 both of the veterans and the legionaries from Macedonia, and 
 besides, he had the money with which to buy their support. 
 
 Octavian 's success was phenomenal. The Macedonian legions 
 had offered him their services early in the year, at the time 
 when the news of Caesar's death arrived in Apollonia. Now 
 they were readily influenced by his agents, who distributed 
 pamphlets and promises among them, adding the information 
 that in Campania Octavian was giving each soldier five hundred 
 denarii, about one hundred dollars, whereas Antony was offering 
 only one fifth of this amount at Brundisium. As a result of 
 Octavian 's machinations, Antony had trouble with the legions 
 and was forced to resort to military discipline. According to 
 one report,- the ringleaders among the mutinous soldiers were 
 arrested, and finally every tenth man was executed. Cicero said 
 that three hundred of the bravest men were cut down. In the 
 meantime Octavian prospered even better in Campania. Every- 
 body was joining his standard; he was received with shouts of 
 
624 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 joy, the people of one place coming in procession to meet him as 
 he was approaching. As early as the first of November, Cicero 
 heard from him that his force amounted to three thousand. 
 
 But Octavian was acting like a rebel in mustering an army 
 with which to oppose Antony, who was after all consul of Rome. 
 He could not hope for ultimate success unless the people and 
 government of Rome gave him their support. He needed an 
 alliance with the large party who wished to see the reestablish- 
 ment of a free republic and who were disgusted with Antony. 
 But this could be secured only through action of the senate, and 
 nobody was more likely to succeed in winning the senate for 
 Octavian than Cicero. Octavian therefore turned to him. He 
 wrote to Cicero constantly, sometimes more than once a day, 
 and he sent messengers to him, one of whom was Oppius, 18 the 
 former adherent of Caesar, who was a friend of Atticus and 
 who had always had cordial relations with Cicero. But Cicero 
 had serious apprehensions in reference to the new political sit- 
 uation. He recognized Octavian 's high spirit and he appreciated 
 his influence among the all-important veterans, but he also saw 
 that these had been won over by the large money reward and 
 that Octavian was very young and without prestige. In addition 
 to Cicero's doubt as to Octavian 's ability to accomplish anything, 
 his chief concern was caused by his suspicion of Octavian 's good 
 faith. Octavian was almost inevitably an enemy to the assassins 
 of his adoptive father, and his political aim could scarcely be the 
 restoration of the republic since he himself had been chosen by 
 Caesar to be his successor. Oppius explained that Octavian 
 would not merely refrain from hostility against the tyrannicides 
 but would actually become their friend. Cicero, however, was 
 not persuaded. 
 
 Octavian professed his eagerness to follow Cicero's advice. 
 When he had gathered together three thousand veterans, and it 
 
 is Oppius has been called the shadow of Balbus (Tyrrell, IV, p. Ua). 
 It was Balbus who acted for Caesar in offering Cicero a place in the trium- 
 virate; now Oppius acts for Caesar's son. 
 
APPEALS TO CICERO 625 
 
 had become known that Antony was on his way from Brundisium 
 with the faithful legion Alauda, while three of the Macedonian 
 legions were marching northward along the Adriatic, Octavian 
 wrote to Cicero inquiring whether he should go to Rome, or 
 hold Capua against Antony, or set out to meet the three legions. 
 Cicero advised him to go to Rome, on the ground that he would 
 secure the support of the people, and possibly of the republicans. 
 Octavian wished to have a secret interview with Cicero at Capua, 
 but Cicero considered secrecy impossible. Apparently Octavian 
 realized that Cicero would not consult with him in a public 
 manner, being unwilling in this way to give his approval to 
 Octavian 's position, and he therefore suggested secrecy; but 
 Cicero, who could not have traveled about without causing com- 
 ment and political speculation, refused to confer with him in 
 person. Octavian also urged Cicero to go to Rome, to lead the 
 senate, but Cicero replied that the senate could not act before 
 the first of January. The reason was, we may surmise, that 
 there were no consuls in Rome to preside; and for the senate 
 to meet under another presidency when one consul, Antony, was 
 on his way to Rome, would be tantamount to a proclamation of 
 civil war. Cicero, indeed, had not sufficient confidence in 
 Octavian to act; he wanted some proof of Octavian 's proclaimed 
 change of heart in favor of the assassins, and thought that some 
 proof might be contained in Octavian 's attitude toward Casca, 
 one of Caesar's murderers, who would enter on the tribuneship 
 on the tenth of December. 
 
 Cicero held himself in readiness to go to Rome, both because 
 he wished to be present if anything of importance was to be 
 undertaken, and because he feared to be cut off in the country 
 by Antony's troops. But in spite of Octavian 's urgent messages 
 and in spite of Octavian's success among the veterans, Cicero did 
 not look forward to a prompt participation in politics. Some 
 days after hearing that Octavian had three thousand men, he 
 wrote to Atticus wondering whether the day would ever come 
 
626 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 when the Second Philippic; his attack on Antony, could be freely- 
 circulated in Rome. He gave much of his time to writing; he 
 discussed the name of his essay on Duty as well as other literary 
 matters, in the very letter in which he expressed his view of the 
 political situation. His opinion, which agreed with that of 
 Atticus, who urged caution, was that if Octavian should get 
 much power, the situation would be bad for Brutus, that is, for 
 the republicans, whereas, if Octavian should be beaten, Antony 
 would be intolerable. Cicero did not consider Octavian a cham- 
 pion of the republic, although the latter was making efforts to 
 assume this character, but looked upon the situation as present- 
 ing a choice between two evils, submission to Antony or to 
 Octavian, of which submission to Antony was of course the 
 greater. 19 
 
 Octavian, in the meantime, went to Rome, perhaps as a 
 result of Cicero's advice. He addressed the people at a public 
 meeting, and was well received. He appealed to them as the 
 successor of Caesar, for he raised his hand to the dictator's 
 statue, and prayed that "he might attain to the honors of his 
 parent." Cicero read Octavian 's speech, with the comment 20 
 that he hoped he would never owe his safety to such as Octavian ; 
 after that, Oppius' arguments had no effect. It is also reported 
 of Octavian 's visit to Rome that when the veterans heard that 
 they were expected to oppose Antony, there was much grumbling 
 and many of them returned home under one pretext or another, 
 but that their places were quickly filled by new men. If this 
 really occurred, it only proved the truth of Cicero's interpreta- 
 tion of Octavian 's success among the veterans: they had sold 
 their services; at heart they were friendly to Antony no less 
 than to Octavian. 
 
 Antony was hastening toward the city. On the way he had 
 exacted contributions of money from the municipal towns. He 
 was marching in military array, and Octavian, who was not 
 
 wAtt. 16, 14. See also 3 6, 11. 
 20 Att. 16, 15. 
 
ANTONY LEAVES SOME 627 
 
 strong enough to meet him, retired to Arretium in Etruria, where 
 he made his camp, his officers training his soldiers and enrolling 
 new recruits. Antony took possession of Rome, but his stay was 
 brief and nothing of importance was accomplished. First came 
 the news that the Martian legion, one of the four from Mace- 
 donia, had revolted to Octavian; and soon afterwards it was 
 learned that the Fourth legion had done the same. Antony 
 succeeded in keeping the two remaining Macedonian legions, by 
 offering them the same pay that Octavian was giving- his soldiers, 
 but he was not in a position to take stringent measures against 
 his enemies. He had summoned the senate for the twenty-fourth 
 of November, threatening death to the tribunes hostile to him if 
 they attended, and proclaiming that he would consider as an 
 enemy any senator who stayed away. As Antony found it neces- 
 sary to go to Tibur in order to confirm the loyalty of the soldiers 
 who were stationed there, the meeting was postponed until the 
 twenty-eighth. On that day many prominent senators were 
 present; one of them, an ex-consul, brought a written motion 
 to declare Octavian a public enemy, but the motion was not made. 
 A thanksgiving was decreed in honor of Lepidus, because he 
 had dissuaded Sextus Pompey from making war on Italy, and 
 late in the evening various provinces were assigned to new gov- 
 ernors. Antony's brother Gaius received Macedonia, and was 
 thus chosen to wage war against Marcus Brutus. Mark Antony 
 himself hastened from the city late at night, and, after making 
 a vain attempt to win back the loyalty of the Martian legion, 
 marched north to Ariminum, which was situated near the bound- 
 ary of Cisalpine Gaul. 
 
 Antony's purpose was to drive Decimus Brutus from this 
 rich and populous province; if he succeeded, he would be in a 
 position to raise new armies, and Rome would be at his mercy. 
 Civil war, which had been smoldering since the Ides of March, 
 .had now begun, and it had begun in the very manner in which 
 it had threatened to break forth in the beginning. While Caesar 
 
628 TSE LAST BATTLE 
 
 still lay unburied, Antony had forbidden Decimus Brutus to 
 take possession of Cisalpine Gaul; Brutus had disobeyed 
 Antony's injunction, and had raised an army in the province; 
 and now Antony, with far larger forces than he could have put 
 in the field early in the year, was attempting to expel Brutus. 
 The situation in Italy was one of utter chaos. All the 
 prospective combatants were in the wrong, and all could claim 
 to be in the right. The law was on the side of Antony and his 
 supporters. Cisalpine Gaul had been assigned to Antony him- 
 self. If Decimus Brutus refused to give it up, it was both the 
 prerogative and the duty of Antony to take forcible possession. 
 His brother Gaius had been appointed to Macedonia. The gen- 
 erals and armies stationed in Greece and Macedonia were in 
 duty bound to give their allegiance to him, and Marcus Brutus, 
 who had gone thither to organize a military force, was acting 
 in opposition to the legally constituted authority. The same 
 situation prevailed farther east. Dolabella had received Syria, 
 and neither Cassius nor any governor in that part of the world 
 had legal justification for opposing him. Antony and Dolabella, 
 furthermore, were the consuls of Rome. They, and they alone, 
 had the right to levy and command armies in Italy. Praetors 
 also possessed the so-called imperium, the right to command an 
 army, and Brutus and Cassius were praetors, but no armies had 
 been entrusted to them, whereas Antony had received permis- 
 sion to raise his famous bodyguard and had actually had the 
 Macedonian legions transferred to him. Octavian was a rebel; 
 the Macedonian legions that had gone over to him were deserters ; 
 the veterans who had joined him could not even pretend that 
 they had acted legally. And yet it was true that the laws and 
 decrees which justified Antony had been passed under coercion; 
 they were the result of Antony's unjustifiable domination. He 
 was consul, to be sure, but he had neither spoken nor acted as 
 befitted a consul ; quite to the contrary, he had announced that 
 he would rule Rome, and to this announcement he had added 
 
UTTER CHAOS 629 
 
 threats of future reprisals against any one who should oppose 
 him. His opponents, therefore, though legally in the wrong, 
 could lay claim to the moral justification that they were defend- 
 ing Rome herself against an avowed usurper. 
 
 The legal confusion was no greater than the weakness, the 
 mutual distrust, and the lack of harmony which prevailed among 
 Antony's actual and prospective opponents. On Antony's side, 
 everything was clear and unanimous. He and his two adherents, 
 Gaius and Dolabella, had set out to secure military dominance; 
 they had chosen different spheres of action, and there was 
 neither rivalry nor secret suspicion to divide them. The legions 
 of Antony also, though their services had been bought, knew 
 against whom they were arrayed, and they were also perfectly 
 conscious of the fact that victory would make Antony ruler and 
 would bring them extraordinary rewards and privileges. There 
 was no such unanimity of purpose or of feeling on the other 
 side. The restoration of the republic, in the character which it 
 had had before the First Triumvirate, would make the senate the 
 chief seat of authority. But the senators, though they knew and 
 admitted that Antony had acted arrogantly, violently, and 
 illegally, nevertheless did not all believe, or at least they did not 
 all admit their belief, that Antony was a serious threat to the 
 republic. It was said that Antony could be won over from his 
 unlawful practises by proper and yet safe concessions, and there 
 was a disinclination to adopt strong measures against him. Per- 
 haps a few senators were sincere in their attitude. Some, how- 
 ever, favored Antony openly, even excusing themselves on the 
 ground that they were bound to him by ties of friendship or 
 relationship. Many others were timid, particularly the more 
 prominent members of the senate, who, in their character of 
 leaders, would be especially exposed to Antony's vengeance in 
 case they headed an unsuccessful opposition. 
 
 And there was reason for timidity. Antony had so long 
 dominated Rome that men had not yet learned to breathe freely. 
 
630 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 The armies of Octavian and Decimus Brutus, furthermore, could 
 scarcely be considered a match for Antony's legions; as later 
 events proved, two additional armies had to be sent against 
 him. Nor could the generals or the soldiers opposed to Antony 
 'be relied upon to act together or to yield obedience to the senate. 
 Decimus Brutus would undoubtedly remain faithful to the 
 republic, for he was in danger from Antony, but his forces, 
 which consisted largely of recruits, were not to be trusted to 
 face Antony's veterans. Cassius and Marcus Brutus would not 
 willingly make terms with Antony, but if they acquired great 
 power in the East, it was by no means so certain that they would 
 obey senatorial orders. The tyrannicides could not view Octavian 
 without suspicion. If the senate honored and rewarded him, 
 they would be jealous; if Octavian became very powerful, they 
 would fear him. Octavian himself, though an enemy of Antony, 
 was not a friend of the tyrannicides; and his troops abhorred 
 them, whereas they had no serious quarrel with Antony. In 
 addition to these generals and armies, there were the governors 
 and legions stationed in the provinces, the more important of 
 whom held Gaul and Spain. Though these were not likely to 
 become immediately involved in the impending struggle, nothing 
 but the annihilation of Antony would prevent them from having 
 a decisive voice in the final settlement. None of them, however, 
 had any reason for opposing Antony except a possible desire 
 to restore the republic ; and one of the governors, Lepidus, who 
 had a large army in Southern Gaul and Hither Spain, was a 
 notorious turncoat and had early in the year sided with Antony. 
 But whatever the disposition of the generals and the soldiers, 
 whether in the East, in Italy, or in Gaul and Spain, armies 
 needed not only pay but also gifts and rewards, and the treasury 
 had been rifled by Antony. 
 
 These difficulties, however, insuperable though many of them 
 might seem, and these conflicting moral claims neither deterred 
 nor confused Cicero. Antony was actually marching against 
 
TEEBE WAS NO CHOICE 631 
 
 Decimus Brutus. Unless a powerful opposition to Antony were 
 organized in Rome and in the provinces, Decimus would be 
 crushed and Antony would return to establish an intolerable 
 tyranny. Perhaps Antony would be victorious under any cir- 
 cumstances. Cicero saw this possibility ; and he also feared that 
 the defeat of Antony, if it did take place, would result merely 
 in establishing Octavian as a dictator. He had had no reason 
 for changing his opinion about the young Caesar ; the latter, so 
 far as is known, had done nothing in reference to the tribune 
 Casca which could convince Cicero that he was well disposed 
 to the tyrranicides. By raising an army, however, Octavian had 
 made it possible for the first time since the death of Caesar to 
 oppose Antony. Cicero had not embraced this opportunity at 
 the time when the conflict was not absolutely inevitable. He 
 had said that Octavian might not be strong enough, and Octavian 
 had shown his lack of strength by leaving Rome at Antony's 
 approach. But now there was no choice. The question of vic- 
 tory, as well as the question of the future disposition of Rome, 
 had to be dismissed. Neither could Cicero ask himself, as some 
 modern students might ask, whether it was worth while to attempt 
 to reestablish the republic. During the republican form of 
 government, there had been license, perhaps, rather than free- 
 dom ; the senate had been selfish and corrupt, the assemblies had 
 been equally selfish and corrupt, and the provinces had suffered 
 grievously ; but the situation created by Antony 's march against 
 Decimus offered a choice not between a faulty republic and a 
 less faulty monarchy, but between the only kind of freedom the 
 Romans knew and slavery under a man who had already acted 
 with violence and brutality and who had uttered the most violent 
 threats. 
 
 Cicero could have evaded the struggle. He had drawn upon 
 himself the enmity of Antony, as had others, and he had written 
 the Second Philippic, which would mark him as Antony's 
 declared opponent, but he had not yet published it. If he had 
 
632 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 held back this speech and if he had followed the example of other 
 prominent leaders, either abjuring politics or taking a vague 
 and conciliatory attitude in his opposition to Antony, he might 
 have earned Antony's gratitude, for it was Cicero of all men 
 in Kome that Antony feared; he certainly would have exposed 
 himself to no especial enmity. He was nearly sixty-three years 
 old, and might well have felt that the younger men should do 
 the fighting. But in spite of his advanced age and his personal 
 danger, and despite his own misgivings about the outcome, he 
 determined to take the lead in Rome. 
 
 Cicero 's task was to unite the nation in unswerving opposition 
 to Antony, in order that moral and legal support might be given 
 to the armies and generals already in the field against Antony, 
 and that new armies might be equipped and sent against him. 
 Since the senate was the chief possessor of power in the republic 
 and could most readily initiate action, it was mainly as the leader 
 of the senate that Cicero exerted his influence. He was not 
 technically its leader, for he was not called upon to give his 
 opinion first, though, as one of the few ex-consuls, he spoke very 
 early at the meetings. Neither did the senate always obey his 
 advice. The measures advocated by him were sometimes voted 
 down and sometimes postponed, and measures that he opposed 
 were adopted, but Cicero's policy of unconditional warfare with 
 Antony prevailed in the end. In his capacity of leader, he could 
 not confine his activities to the senate. It was he who generally 
 addressed the people, informing them of important senatorial 
 action, inspiring them with zeal for the war, even appealing to 
 them for support when the senate had failed to uphold his policy. 
 And it was he who more than anyone else kept in touch with 
 the various generals and provincial governors on the loyalist 
 side, and to whom they turned with requests for aid and for 
 senatorial recognition of their numerous claims to distinction. 
 
 Cicero has been called the prime minister of Rome, but his 
 activities were more varied than those of any prime minister. 
 
MORE THAN PRIME MINISTER 633 
 
 He guided and often coerced the senate, he explained and 
 defended policies at public meetings, he had countless interviews 
 with private individuals, and he wrote countless letters; and 
 through it all he kept his faith, uniting discordant elements, 
 praising and criticising, and always inspiring the nation with 
 courage and enthusiasm and love of Rome. His speeches and 
 his letters contain many wise and energetic sayings, but nothing 
 is more characteristic of his attitude than his frequent advice, 
 which is found both in his public utterances and in his private 
 messages, that past mistakes or misfortunes must be forgotten 
 and all thoughts turned to the future. 21 He thus became the 
 conscience and the nervous center of Rome. In his work entitled 
 the Republic he had given a description of those who should 
 guide the state. He was now such a rector and moderator ; he 
 waged the longest, the most violent, and the most brilliant par- 
 liamentary battle that was ever waged in Rome; his successes 
 and his failures show in just how far Rome could yet be directed 
 by reason and patriotism. 
 
 Cicero entered Rome on the ninth of December, eleven days 
 after Antony's hurried departure. Though the city was free 
 from the immediate domination of Antony, everything was dis- 
 organized. Nor did it seem possible for the senate to meet until 
 the first of January. In the absence of the consuls, a meeting 
 could legally be summoned and presided over by the praetors 
 or the tribunes, but the senators, who even in the midst of violent 
 civil upheavals clung pertinaciously to old forms, seem to have 
 felt that they could not take energetic action under any but 
 consular presidency, and as the levy of an army was the duty 
 of a consul, they may also have been of the opinion that if a 
 senatorial decree could not lead to a levy, then it was useless to 
 meet at all. No doubt some of them were also glad to postpone 
 action as much as possible. The tribunes, however, did summon 
 a meeting for the twentieth of December, announcing that they 
 
 21 See above, p. 610, and below, p. 645. 
 
634 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 wolald make a motion for the protection of the consuls-elect, or, 
 in other words, devise measures so that the senate might meet 
 in safety on the first of January. This proposal of the tribunes 
 may have had for object to create some military guard to over- 
 awe those supporters of Antony who were still in Kome, for 
 there seem to have been a number of these, but a meeting like 
 this one held out no promise that anything of importance would 
 be attempted, and may, indeed, have been considered as merely 
 a routine matter. 
 
 Cicero did not look forward to taking a prompt part in 
 politics. The date of his coming to Rome seems to have been 
 due to business reasons. But his mere arrival indicated, as it 
 had indicated on the last of August, that he was prepared to do 
 his share. This was further shown by the fact that he called 
 at once on the consul-elect Pansa, to inquire about the situation 
 in Cisalpine Gaul, for Cicero could not visit Pansa without the 
 knowledge of the citizens. During these days Cicero urged the 
 need of immediate action, but he seems to have had no success. 
 A large attendance was not expected at the meeting summoned 
 by the tribunes for the twentieth. But on that very day an 
 edict of Decimus Brutus was put up in the city, in which Brutus 
 announced that he would hold his province "for the senate and 
 people of Rome. ' ' This was a declaration of war against Antony, 
 and Cicero, who feared that the timid and disorganized senate 
 would take no cognizance of it, decided to attend the meeting. 
 He went early; and when this was observed, the senators came 
 together in large numbers. 
 
 Cicero led the debate. In the speech he delivered, .the Third 
 Philippic, he urged that war must be waged against Antony, 
 and that the action of Brutus and Octavian must be approved; 
 the people of Cisalpine Gaul who had joined Decimus in oppo- 
 sition to Antony must be praised, the veterans who had deserted 
 from Antony must be praised and rewards must be promised to 
 them, and the other provincial governors must be instructed not 
 
TEIBB PHILIPPIC 635 
 
 to surrender their provinces to those to whom Antony had 
 assigned these provinces. Fear and hatred of Antony and 
 enthusiasm for Octavian were the two emotions that Cicero aimed 
 to inspire ; and these two, rightly interpreted, meant patriotism, 
 the determination to make Rome free from tyranny. 
 
 When all were apprehensive of Antony's return from Brun- 
 disium, Cicero said, then Caesar, a young man, or almost a 
 boy, put himself in Antony's way. Nobody had expected him 
 to do this, nor had any one even dared to wish it. The young 
 Caesar had spent his patrimony in securing the services of the 
 invincible veterans. No, he had not spent it, Cicero exclaimed, 
 he had invested it for the safety of the state. At Brundisium 
 Antony had massacred three hundred gallant men ; it was known 
 that his wife had been present and that her face had been 
 besprinkled with blood. The victorious return to Rome of such 
 a man as Antony would have meant slavery, and though it is 
 true that all slavery is wretched, it would have been intolerable 
 to bow to a man who was profligate, immoral, and effeminate, 
 a man who did not keep sober even when he was afraid. 
 
 Octavian had saved the city. Antony had formerly insulted 
 the young Caesar, taunting him with the fact that his mother 
 came from the small town Aricia; but when Antony had last 
 returned to Rome, he had not dared to make a motion, as he 
 had prepared to do, that Octavian be declared a public enemy. 
 Antony, who could not write an edict in decent Latin, had 
 threatened death to the tribunes opposed to him in case they 
 attended. In his fear, he hurried through some legislation. 
 Certain provinces had been assigned by lot, and the kind gods 
 had favored him, so that his friends secured just the provinces 
 they wanted. Two provinces, however, had strangely fallen to 
 men who were not his supporters ; evidently the gods had been 
 negligent. 
 
 Nothing but misery, Cicero said, could be expected from 
 the rule of Antony. His brother Lucius, who was leading a 
 
636 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 force to join the tyrannical consul, was destroying provisions 
 and slaughtering cattle, wherever he found them; his soldiers 
 were feasting, and Lucius himself, in imitation of his brother, 
 was intoxicated; fields were laid waste, farms were plundered, 
 matrons, girls and boys were carried away and given to the 
 soldiers. But Lucius was only doing what his brother had done 
 everywhere. Now the opportunity had come to the senate to 
 exert their mighty influence. It was their last opportunity. 
 Caesar was protecting the city; Decimus Brutus was holding 
 Gaul; Cicero was ready to undertake any task. Let the senate 
 therefore approve of Decimus, of Octavian, and of their soldiers, 
 and instruct the consuls to prepare for forcible action at the 
 beginning of next year. 
 
 The senate passed the resolutions moved by Cicero. Though 
 Antony was not decreed a public enemy, war was declared against 
 him, for the senate, acting for the nation as of old, commended 
 and promised rewards to his opponents. And the people 
 approved. Cicero was received with unbounded enthusiasm 
 when, appearing before them after the meeting, he explained 22 
 what the senate had decided, and urged war against Antony. 
 
 As the leader of debate in the senate and as the spokesman 
 of the senate before the people, Cicero was now unofficially at 
 the head of affairs. He had reestablished the republic, as it 
 were, in that he had caused the senate to take action with old- 
 time independence, and he had succeeded in committing 'this 
 reestablished nation to war with Antony, the consul of Eome. 
 He had also given legal sanction, through the decrees of the 
 senate, to the position of Brutus and of Octavian; and he had 
 secured authority for loyal governors to retain their provinces 
 in defiance of Antony's recent legislation. But he realized that 
 there was both fear and treachery in Rome. "We wage war," 
 he wrote 23 to Cornificius in Africa, ' ' against the most abandoned 
 
 22 Fourth Philippic. 
 ™Fcm. 12, 22. 
 
SECOND PHILIPPIC 637 
 
 cutthroat in the world, but not on equal terms, for it is words 
 against arms. Rome is a scene of universal depression. The 
 loyalists have no leader, and the tyrannicides are far away." 
 
 It was probably during his first days in Rome that Cicero 
 published the Second Philippic, which he had polished with 
 great • care. "We have no record of its publication or of the 
 manner in which it was received, but Cicero's assumption of 
 leadership and the need of arousing enmity against Antony 
 made this the most suitable time for issuing the oration. It would 
 have been suicidal, as well as useless, to publish it while Antony 
 held Rome under military sway; to publish it later would have 
 served no purpose. 
 
 The Second Philippic was Cicero's reply to the speech that 
 Antony had delivered on the nineteenth of September. On that 
 day Antony had taken much care to explain that he and Cicero 
 had formerly been on intimate terms, and that Cicero had been 
 the recipient of many services at Antony 's hands. Cicero, there- 
 fore, according to Antony, had had no justification for opposing 
 him on the second of September, the day when Cicero delivered 
 the First Philippic. Antony's argument was due to the Roman 
 feeling that politics was largely a personal matter, but it may 
 also have been an effort to give Cicero's opposition the appear- 
 ance of personal enmity, in order to obscure the fact that Cicero 
 had in reality attacked Antony's arrogant and illegal behavior. 
 To show, however, that Cicero was not a safe person to follow, 
 Antony had thereupon reviewed Cicero's political career, revil- 
 ing and ridiculing him with the violence customary in Rome. 
 Cicero replied to Antony's charge of lack of gratitude, saying 
 among other things that in a certain sense he did owe his life 
 to Antony, inasmuch as Antony had not murdered him during 
 the civil war between Caesar and Pompey ; he answered the criti- 
 cisms levelled against him as a statesman ; and he gave a picture 
 of Antony's preparation of the speech. Antony, so Cicero said, 
 had spent seventeen days in Scipio's villa, which he had seized 
 
638 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 illegally. He had declaimed assiduously, though, according to 
 his friends, he usually declaimed to work off the effects of too 
 much wine. He had engaged a witty rhetorician to teach him 
 jokes, and had rewarded this unsuccessful teacher with a gift 
 of two thousand acres of land, exempt from taxation. The result 
 of this expensive teaching had been merely to make Antony 
 a fool. 
 
 After thus meeting Antony's charges in the spirit in which 
 they had been made, Cicero continued with an account of 
 Antony's own life. Antony's father, he wrote, had been bank- 
 rupt. Antony himself was in his youth so dissolute that the 
 details must for shame's sake be omitted. He was a friend of 
 Curio, and Curio's father often had to turn him out of the 
 house. Later he was with Caesar in Gaul, and came from that 
 province to stand for the quaestorship. At Caesar's request 
 Cicero supported Antony's candidature, and the latter showed 
 his gratitude by trying to murder Clodius. As soon as he had 
 been elected, he went off to Gaul, without waiting for the neces- 
 sary authorization of the senate. The reason for his haste was 
 his insolvency ; only in a camp could he hope to restore his shat- 
 tered fortunes. Then he became a tribune. Though still a young 
 man, he had the assurance to oppose the senate at every turn, 
 until finally he fled to his ambitious patron, who thus got a 
 pretext for beginning civil war. It was Antony's tribunieian 
 rights, forsooth, that Caesar was defending. What Helen had 
 been to Troy, Antony was to Rome : a cause of war, trouble, and 
 ruin. 
 
 Caesar went to Spain and left Antony in charge of Italy; 
 and now Antony's behavior became scandalous. Everywhere 
 men talked about him. He traveled back and forth over the 
 country, and this was the mode of his progress : though a Roman 
 magistrate, he rode in a barbarian carriage, such as only women 
 use; though he was only a tribune and as such had no right to 
 the use of lictors, he was preceded by lictors, and these were 
 
ANTONY'S LIFE 639 
 
 crowned with laurel wreaths, as though Antony had won a 
 vitory. But this was not all. The lictors surrounded the open 
 litter of his mistress, an actress ; her name was Cytheris, but as 
 she had been manumitted by her former paramour, a certain 
 Volumnius, she was hailed as Volumnia by the citizens of the 
 municipal towns, who were forced to come out and greet the 
 cavalcade. Behind Volumnia came a carriage filled with pimps ; 
 behind them were a crowd of Antony's worthless boon com- 
 panions ; and finally Antony 's own mother followed. You would 
 have thought that she was doing honor to the actress as a legiti- 
 mate daughter-in-law. In the course of these peregrinations 
 Antony despoiled the cities of Italy; he stole their gold, their 
 silver, and especially their wine. Even on public occasions he 
 so overloaded himself with food and wine that he became sick 
 and disgraced himself. It was during these performances that 
 he showed the great goodness of not taking Cicero's life. 
 
 In the meantime Caesar had gone to Egypt, and on his 
 return the house of Pompey was put up for sale; but among all 
 Caesar 's reckless followers there was only one who had the 
 effrontery to bid for it, and this man was Antony. He began 
 to act like a buffoon in a farce. Pompey had been a very rich 
 man; his house contained a large supply of wine, of plate of 
 exquisite workmanship, expensive clothes and furnishings. 
 Antony wasted it all in an incredibly short time. No, there was 
 nothing incredible about it, after all, for he had filled the house 
 with actors, actresses, gamblers, and drunkards; nothing was 
 kept under lock and key; and Antony himself gambled away 
 enormous sums. Even the slaves had their share in the ruinous 
 doings ; their quarters were adorned with the precious tapestries 
 of Pompey. And all this took place in the house of Pompey, a 
 house which for a long time men could not pass without shedding 
 tears, a house adorned with the beaks of captured ships and 
 other trophies of war. But Antony had not paid for all this 
 luxury. Caesar asked him to settle, and finally had to send 
 
640 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 soldiers to collect. But there was nothing to collect. Forced to 
 sell at auction, Antony brought out what he alleged to be the 
 property he had bought, some wretched old clothes, covered with 
 stains, a few silver vessels, all nicked, and a few meanly clad 
 slaves. As nothing could be done with such a miserable collec- 
 tion, the auction was stopped; Caesar actually discussed the 
 disgraceful proceeding in the senate. 
 
 In the course of time Antony became Caesar's master of 
 horse, and was thus next in dignity to the dictator, and this is 
 the way in which he supported that dignity. While Caesar was 
 absent in Spain, Antony was once on his way to Rome. Arriving 
 late in the afternoon at a little town called Red Rocks, he spent 
 the rest of the day drinking in a public house. At night he 
 hastened to Rome in a gig, with his head veiled, and knocked 
 at the door of his own house. ' ' Who are you ? ' ' asked the porter. 
 "A messenger from Marcus Antonius. " He was at once ad- 
 mitted to the presence of his wife, to whom he handed a letter 
 in which he promised not to have any further connection with 
 the actress. It was a real love letter, and his wife wept with 
 joy. Her emotion so affected the susceptible Antony that he 
 made himself known, and they embraced. But Antony had not 
 come to Rome merely to comfort his wife. He had come also 
 to prevent a creditor from selling his sureties. As soon as it 
 was learned that Antony was in town, the city was alarmed. He 
 was asked at a public meeting to explain the reason for his pres- 
 ence in Rome, and he informed his auditors that he had come 
 on private business. Everybody thought this a good joke, and 
 the wits had much to say about it. 24 
 
 Antony had always professed to be a friend of Caesar's, but 
 this was only a pretense; and Cicero, coming to the end of 
 his bitter review of Antony's life, gave an account of Antony's 
 lawlessness during the time before and after Caesar's death, 
 especially insisting that not only was Antony in every way 
 
 -* See above, p. 502. 
 
NOT A TRUE FBIEND OF CAESAR 641 
 
 inferior to Caesar, whom he resembled only in his love of power, 
 but that his protestations of reverence for Caesar's memory were 
 merely a cloak to cover his own greed and ambition. Cicero 
 concluded with this attack on Antony's alleged devotion to 
 Caesar in order to weaken Antony's hold on the Caesarians, and 
 he instituted the comparison between Antony and Caesar to 
 remind his readers, it would seem, that, if they had found 
 Caesar's rule tolerable, they must not imagine that Antony would 
 be" like Caesar. Antony posed as the upholder of Caesar's laws, 
 Cicero said, but he had upheld only those which served his own 
 purposes. On the Ides of March he had been in debt to the 
 amount of forty million sesterces; two weeks later he was free 
 from debt. 
 
 This invective against Antony was far coarser and venomous, 
 and also far more powerful, than can be represented; but it 
 was quite to the taste of Cicero's contemporaries. So far as 
 Cicero's relations with Antony were concerned, it proclaimed 
 that Cicero was now his enemy, but it did not go much beyond 
 that. Antony's attack on Cicero had been equally bitter, as we 
 can infer from Cicero's quotations from Antony's speech, and 
 Cicero himself had inveighed with no less virulence against 
 several political opponents, with some of whom he had later 
 made his peace. Others, furthermore, had attacked Antony with 
 even less restraint. Of Cannutius, the tribune, it was later said 25 
 that his speech, when compared with the divine brilliancy of 
 Cicero, seemed like the snarling of a mad dog. The Second 
 Philippic, nevertheless, was not looked upon as a tame perform- 
 ance. Pliny the Younger, evidently referring to it, said that, 
 just as it was Cicero's longest speech, so it was his best; and 
 Juvenal, who had an eye for satire, called it heavenly. 26 The 
 enemies of Antony must have relished it, but it was not Cicero 's 
 chief purpose either to vent his personal chagrin or to amuse 
 
 25VeUeius, 2, 64. 
 
 26 Pliny, Epist. 1, 20, 4. Juv. 10, 125. 
 
642 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 his readers. In publishing this speech, Cicero was striking a 
 mighty blow against Antony. In view of the greed, the violence, 
 and the baseness of Antony, so Cicero would have it understood, 
 the Romans had no choice but to oppose him to the end ; to make 
 terms with him was impossible, and to submit to him meant 
 shameful slavery. This thought Cicero constantly repeated in 
 his later orations, and there was constant need of the repetition. 
 
 But it was not enough that Antony should be looked upon 
 with abhorrence; the people of Rome must also be made to 
 feel that they could trust Cicero, that he was unselfish and 
 courageous, aiming at nothing but the liberation of Rome and 
 fearing nothing, not even death. The Second Philippic there- 
 fore contained Cicero's justification of his own political career; 
 and it is very probable that, as a further appeal to the Romans, 
 he published his long essay on Duty at this time. He had been 
 at work on it while writing the Second Philippic; two of its 
 three books were finished on the fifth of November. This essay 
 set forth Cicero's view of life, with frequent references to his 
 own career; it was addressed particularly to young men; and 
 it taught that a man's foremost duty is to serve the state. In 
 the Second Philippic itself, as well as in the speech that preceded 
 it and in all those that followed it, no less than in Cicero 's letters 
 to generals and governors, he repeatedly insisted that nothing 
 was dearer to him than Rome, and that for Rome he was willing 
 to lay down his life. "No one for the last twenty years has 
 been an enemy to the state who has not at the same time declared 
 war against me," he wrote at the beginning of the Second 
 Philippic. And, at the end, he expressed two wishes: one, that 
 dying he might leave Rome free ; the other, that every one might 
 fare as he had deserved of the state. 
 
 It was in this spirit of unhesitating devotion to Rome and 
 of undeviating opposition to Antony that Cicero took up the 
 burden of leadership, and he carried it to the end in the same 
 spirit. The senate met on the first of January under the presi- 
 
FIFTH PHILIPPIC 643 
 
 dency of the new consuls, Hirtius and Pansa. Quintus Cicero, 
 who had been with them in Gaul, had recently written of them 
 that they were both immoral and slothful ; and Cicero 's opinion 
 of them was very much the same. They were too fond of wine 
 and sleep ; and at this time Hirtius was also in poor health. In 
 the senate, however, they spoke loyally and energetically enough, 
 hut they called first upon Calenus to deliver his opinion, and 
 Calenus, who was Pansa 's father-in-law, was known as an 
 opponent to Cicero and as Antony's most devoted partisan. The 
 latter 's wife and children were actually staying at Calenus' 
 house. "With a show of moderation and leniency, Calenus pro- 
 posed that an embassy be sent to negotiate with Antony. 
 
 Cicero, who was called upon after two other consulars had 
 spoken, at once took issue with Calenus. If Antony wanted 
 peace, Cicero exclaimed, he could get it by laying down his arms 
 at once and imploring pardon ; he would find nobody more reason- 
 able than Cicero. But Antony did not want peace. At the most, 
 he wanted an opportunity for bargaining, and the bargain was 
 already being prepared, Cicero said, for it was understood that 
 one of the senators, who had not yet spoken, intended to propose 
 than Transalpine Gaul be handed over to Antony in case he 
 would desist from his attempt to expel Decimus Brutus from 
 Cisalpine Gaul. But this exchange, it may be remarked, would 
 have placed Antony in as favorable a position as Caesar had 
 secured after the formation of the First Triumvirate. 
 
 The speech which Cicero delivered, the Fifth Philippic, was 
 violent and acrimonious, and led to a debate which lasted four 
 days. Cicero pointed out that the negotiations, even if the terms 
 proposed to Antony were made exceedingly severe, would have 
 the effect of lowering the martial enthusiasm which was abroad 
 in Italy. Men had already begun to enlist; if it was learned 
 that the senate, which on the twentieth of December had vir- 
 tually declared war on Antony, was now sending embassadors 
 to him, then it would be impossible to continue effective prepara- 
 
644 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 tions. The partisans of Antony insisted that these preparations 
 could go on, irrespective of the embassy, but Cicero retorted that 
 great events are frequently the result of very trivial causes ; that 
 in civil war common gossip is a powerful factor ; men would say 
 that the senate was afraid. Cicero therefore proposed that 
 the "last decree" be passed; the declaration of martial law, he 
 said, would once and for all put the opposition to Antony on 
 the right footing. For three days Cicero held his own, but 
 when the matter came to a vote on the fourth, it was decided 
 to send the embassy. 
 
 A dangerous step backward had thus been taken. Some- 
 thing, nevertheless, was gained during the long debate. Decimus 
 and the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul, as well as Octavian and 
 his veterans, who had been accorded praise two weeks earlier, 
 were commended again; Octavian was also given a seat in the 
 senate and was in other ways made a privileged person, and his 
 veterans were promised greater rewards than had ever been 
 given to soldiers. Even Lepidus was not forgotten; he received 
 the unprecedented honor of a gilt statue for his services in dis- 
 suading Sextus Pompey from making war on Italy. Lepidus 
 had negotiated with Pompey for the benefit of Antony, but the 
 senate, under Cicero's guidance, eagerly made this attempt to 
 bind the shifty general to the loyalist side. 
 
 The decrees in favor of Octavian and his soldiers were the 
 most important. It was well known to Cicero that the two legions 
 from Macedonia which had gone over to Octavian, as well as a 
 number of deserters- to Octavian from the other two Macedonian 
 legions, had not acted from patriotism; yet Cicero described 
 them as high-minded patriots, even proposing and carrying a 
 motion for rewards to the quaestor who had commanded one of 
 the deserting legions. An amnesty was also offered to those of 
 Antony's soldiers who should join the republican forces before 
 the first o"f February. The ultimate decision, as every one knew, 
 rested with the veterans. 
 
PRAISE OF OCT AVI AN 645 
 
 In order to win support and honors for Octavian, whom 
 the senators distrusted, Cicero pledged himself formally for 
 Octavian 's future conduct. He professed to know the young man 
 intimately, and averred that nothing was dearer to this new 
 champion of liberty than the true glory that comes from service 
 to one's country. -Octavian had already saved Rome from 
 Antony; in order to insure this safety for the future, he had 
 renounced any enmity he might have felt toward the liberators. 
 It was not rashness to trust Octavian, said Cicero, knowing neces- 
 sarily that Octavian had not acted from patriotism, and still 
 doubting the sincerity of his proclaimed friendliness for the 
 assassins. By announcing publicly that Octavian was the savior 
 of Rome, Cicero hoped perhaps that he could win the young 
 man to a generous and patriotic state of mind. 
 
 At the end of the meeting Cicero addressed 27 the people. He 
 made no secret of his disappointment at the decision to open 
 negotiations. The ambassadors were to order Antony to desist 
 from his attempts on Cisalpine Gaul and to place himself under 
 the authority of the senate. The purpose of the embassy, prop- 
 erly speaking, was therefore to deliver an ultimatum, but even 
 an ultimatum was at this time unnecessary, Cicero said ; he knew 
 that the people must be disappointed no less than he was him- 
 self. "But we will say nothing of the past," he urged: 2 - 8 "Let 
 the ambassadors hasten their return! In the meantime there 
 must be no slackening of effort in prosecuting the war, for war 
 is not to be avoided." Everybody was opposed to Antony, 
 Cicero exclaimed; all the orders of the state, as well as the 
 municipal towns, the colonies, and the whole of Italy. After 
 all, the embassy would accomplish one thing: the negotiations 
 would fail, and this would prove to every one that Antony was 
 no longer to be thought of as a Roman citizen, but as an enemy. 
 "Hereafter," said Cicero in conclusion, "if any disaster happens 
 to us, it will be of our own making." 
 
 2f Sixth Philippic. 
 
 as See above, pp. 610, 633. 
 
646 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 The ambassadors departed for Antony's camp, and the 
 preparations for war continued in Rome and Italy. A levy was 
 held, but men volunteered with such enthusiasm, so Cicero wrote 
 to a friend, that it could scarcely be called a levy. The municipal 
 towns furnished soldiers in large numbers and promised sums 
 of money; one town voted that any one who evaded military 
 service should be branded with infamy. A wave of martial 
 ardor swept over Italy. 
 
 But Cicero's moral guardianship was not allowed to relax. 
 Traitorous propaganda was still active. Antony wrote letters 
 filled with confidence in ultimate victory, and these letters were 
 copied and distributed in the city. Rumors were also started 
 to the effect that Antony was ready for negotiations. And while 
 these things were going on, the senate met to wrangle about 
 trivialities. At one meeting of such a nature Cicero arose. "We 
 are talking about matters of small import," he said, 29 "though 
 perhaps they have to be considered. It is not possible, however, 
 to forget the grave crisis which we are facing;" and with this 
 brief introduction, he launched into a vigorous attack on those 
 who were whispering about peace. "I too am for peace, but 
 there can be no peace unless we first wage war ; if we shrink from 
 war, we shall never have peace. I dread war disguised as 
 peace." To treat for peace was shameful and inconsistent, he 
 said ; it was dangerous ; and it could lead to nothing. The mood 
 of Antony's opponents, and they comprised the whole people, 
 was such that they could never come to an agreement with 
 Antony. "As to the matter under discusison," Cicero said, as 
 he prepared to take his seat, "I agree with Servilius." Three 
 lines at the beginning of Cicero's speech and less than one line 
 at the end constituted his references to the object for which 
 the senate had met. Just as Cato had been in the habit of 
 demanding at every senatorial meeting that Carthage should be 
 destroyed, so Cicero demanded that Antony should be destroyed. 
 
 2 9 Seventh Philippic. 
 
ANTONY'S TEEMS 647 
 
 The ambassadors proceeded to Antony. Hirtius, one of the 
 consuls, had by that time led an army against Antony, and 
 some fighting had taken place. Decimus Brutus, unable to face 
 Antony's forces in the field, had shut himself up in the fortified 
 city of Mutina, where Antony was besieging him. When the 
 Roman ambassadors reached Antony's camp, they were invited 
 to view his measures for reducing the town, and as the siege 
 was prosecuted with undiminished vigor during their presence, 
 they actually witnessed the bombardment. They were not 
 allowed to proceed to Decimus, as they requested, nor did Antony 
 listen to their ultimatum. He sent them back with terms of 
 his own, and these were the terms of a man who already con- 
 sidered himself victorious. Antony wanted full pardon for 
 himself and his followers for the proceedings of the past year: 
 no inquiry was to be made about the money he had taken from 
 the temple of Ops; all his laws, as well as his distributions of 
 land to his soldiers, were to remain in force; and, in return for 
 his willingness to raise the siege of Mutina and surrender his 
 claim to Cisalpine Gaul, he was to receive Further Gaul. It was 
 chiefly in his proposal in reference to Further Gaul that Antony 
 revealed his true state of mind, for he demanded the province 
 for a period of five years, and he asked for six legions; these 
 legions were to be brought up to their full complement with 
 soldiers from Decimus Brutus' army, and they were to remain 
 under Antony's command as long as Brutus and Cassius kept 
 possession of their provinces in the East. 
 
 Cicero's prophecy as to the outcome of the negotiations had 
 thus been justified, and the indignation in Rome at Antony's 
 proposal was intense ; but Antony's supporters were not abashed. 
 They treated Antony 's envoy Cotyla with notorious courtesy and 
 friendliness, and succeeded, despite Cicero's objections, in having 
 him admitted to the senate. This body met on the second of 
 February, the very day when the ambassadors arrived. Cotyla 
 kept his pen busy recording for Antony's perusal the words of 
 
648 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 the various speakers, and he seems even to have actually can- 
 vassed among the leading senators, for Cicero says that these 
 "sold themselves to him in utter disregard of their dignity." 
 Pansa proposed, properly enough, that war should be declared 
 against Antony, but it was immediately moved that the term 
 war should be avoided, and he replaced with the word for civil 
 disturbance; it was to be a tumultus and not a helium; and 
 Pansa acquiesced. By this change in terms Antony was saved 
 from being declared a public enemy, but the state nevertheless 
 committed itself to war; the toga was to be exchanged for the 
 military cloak. 
 
 But the partisans of Antony had further plans. At the 
 meeting of the senate which took place on the following day, 
 the third of February, they began to agitate in favor of a second 
 embassy; but, before a motion was made to this effect, Cicero 
 intervened. He had urged the declaration of war on the preced- 
 ing day, and had been outvoted. Now he appeared in the senate 
 dressed in military garb ; as an ex-consul, he was not required to 
 lay aside the toga, but he wished by his change of dress to 
 emphasize the fact that all loyal Romans were at war with 
 Antony. He was not in a mood to spare those who were influ- 
 enced by timidity, or greed, or disloyalty. On the day before, 
 he said, 30 things had been managed in a spirit of confusion that 
 was unworthy of the way in which Pansa had begun his consul- 
 ship. Pansa himself had been too lenient. Lucius Caesar, the 
 ex-consul who had moved to substitute the term tumult for the 
 term war, and whom Cicero knew to be genuinely devoted to 
 the republic, had had some excuse, so Cicero seemed to feel, for 
 his action. While admitting that the more severe expression 
 was deserved, Lucius Caesar had justified his preference for 
 the other by pleading his relationship to Antony. He was 
 Antony's uncle. "But," Cicero exclaimed, "are you all 
 Antony's uncles?" The question of the exact term, however, 
 
 so Eighth Philippic. 
 
SECOND EMBASSY PROPOSED 649 
 
 was of minor significance, Cicero continued; the senate should 
 not waste its energies in quibbling about words. Indeed, a 
 tumult is a more serious thing than war, for it does not allow 
 exemptions from military service, Cicero said, which are allowed 
 in war. The one circumstance worthy of consideration was 
 that, whatever the name used, Eome was actually at war with 
 Antony. 
 
 Calenus, Antony's chief supporter, suggested that what was 
 really wanted was peace. "Yes," retorted Cicero, "I could speak 
 in praise of peace as well as Calenus, were that suitable, but 
 slavery is not peace." Calenus, in the course of the debate, 
 complained that Cicero was speaking in anger. "I do not 
 readily get angry with my friends, ' ' Cicero replied, ' ' even when 
 they deserve it." And later: "I speak without anger, but not 
 without profound indignation." And he inveighed against the 
 ex-consuls; in sorrow, as he explained, for they were all his 
 friends. Their actions, however, had been disgraceful; they, 
 who should have guided the senate, had deserted it. Nor had 
 the ambassadors done their duty. While their inability to 
 influence Antony was pardonable, they had had the callousness 
 to report his demands without any signs of indignation. And 
 yet these demands, if acceded to, would make Antony all- 
 powerful ! Cicero therefore moved that pardon should be given 
 to those who deserted from Antony to the republican forces 
 before the fifteenth of March, that rewards should be given to 
 those among them who should perform any signal service to the 
 state, and that, while Antony's envoy, Cotyla, would be allowed 
 to return to his master, any one else who should go to Antony 
 was to be adjudged a traitor to Rome. By this motion, which 
 was carried, Cicero tried, as he had tried at the first meeting of 
 the year, to draw the veterans from Antony, and he also, for 
 the time being, prevented the sending of a second embassy. 
 
 Scarcely had the agitation in favor of further negotiations 
 been successfully combated by Cicero when he had to face new 
 
650 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 difficulties, this time from the East. Marcus Brutus had done 
 well in Greece and Macedonia. He had raised an army, consist- 
 ing partly of old Pompeians and some cavalry which were on 
 their way to Dolabella in Asia Minor ; he had secured additional 
 ships, money, and arms; and the governors of Macedonia and 
 Illyricum had submitted to his authority. Antony's brother 
 Gaius, who had come to take possesion of Macedonia, was unable 
 to resist him; some fighting took place, in the course of which 
 some distinction was won by Cicero's son, who had joined 
 Brutus in Athens ; and finally Gaius, whose troops deserted, was 
 forced to retreat to Apollonia, leaving Brutus in command of 
 the whole Balkan peninsula. Nothing except the actual annihi- 
 lation of Mark Antony and his army in Italy could have been 
 more favorable to the republican cause; the success of Brutus 
 not only cut off all danger to Italy from Gaius Antony or from 
 any other possible sympathizer with Antony in the near East, 
 but it also gave the republicans a large army close at hand, to 
 which they could retreat, or which they could summon to Italy, 
 in case the campaign of Mutina should end disastrously. Brutus, 
 however, like Deeimus and like Octavian, had acted without 
 authorization from the senate; and this body, on the reception 
 of news from him, very properly met to consider whether he 
 should be confirmed in his position. 
 
 Pansa laid the matter before the senate in an enthusiastic 
 address, but Calenus saw his opportunity for embarrassing the 
 republicans and moved that Brutus be removed from his assumed 
 command. An acrimonius debate ensued. Cicero defended 31 
 Brutus' position, not on the ground that he had acted legally 
 or had any claim to the overlordship of the Balkan peninsula, but 
 on the ground that he had acted for the best interests of the state, 
 and was not a person who would in the future rebel against the 
 authority of the senate. Calenus' objections to Brutus were 
 
 si Tenth Philippic. For the Ninth Philippic, see below, p. 665. Accord- 
 ing to Appian (3, 2), Caesar had intended that Brutus should govern Mace- 
 donia, and Cassius Syria. 
 
BRUTUS AND CASSIUS DEFENDED 651 
 
 obviously partisan, and it was finally voted to give formal thanks 
 to Brutus and to recognize him as the commander in general 
 charge of Macedonia, Illyricum, and Greece, with power to use 
 public moneys, to contract for loans, and to levy supplies. He 
 was also directed to remain as near the eastern coast of the 
 Adriatic as possible, evidently for the purpose of lending aid, if 
 necessary, in the struggle in Italy. 
 
 A situation analagous to that of Brutus arose almost immedi- 
 ately afterwards in connection with Cassius. Dolabella, who 
 had gone to the East early in the year to take possession of his 
 province of Syria, had by treachery captured Trebonius, one of 
 the assassins, and had put him to death. Trebonius had been 
 scourged and otherwise tortured for two days, Cicero said; his 
 head had been cut off and fixed on a javelin ; and his mutilated 
 body had been dragged through the streets and then thrown into 
 the sea. Cassius in the meantime had secured a considerable 
 following among the armies stationed in the East, and was very 
 favorably placed for opposing Dolabella. There was a strong 
 likelihood that Brutus and Cassius would presently hold the 
 eastern part of the empire. "When the reports of these events 
 reached the senate, Dolabella was declared a public enemy, but 
 on the following day it was moved to deprive Cassius of his 
 command, and to entrust the inevitable war with Dolabella to 
 some one else. 
 
 The chief opponent to Cassius was, of course, Calenus. He 
 had seen that nothing could be done to save Dolabella in the 
 eyes of the senate, and had therefore himself moved to declare 
 him a public enemy; but, Dolabella failing, it was clearly his 
 duty as a partisan of Antony to have the senate appoint some 
 one, any one, to the eastern command who would be a less able 
 or a less determined opponent to Dolabella than Cassius. Calenus 
 was supported by Pansa. The consul wished an eastern province 
 for himself, and was willing to endanger the precarious harmony 
 among Antony's opponents in his eagerness to provide for his 
 
652 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 own future. It was proposed that the eastern command should 
 be given either to a certain Servilius, who was not a magistrate, 
 or to the consuls Pansa and Hirtius, after they had first aided 
 in the defeat of Antony. Cicero wanted Cassius. He argued 32 
 against Servilius, on the ground that it was not customary for 
 the senate to appoint a private individual to a proconsulship ; 
 and against the consuls, on the ground that, as they could not 
 go against Dolabella at once, their power would have to be exer- . 
 cised by lieutenants, and this was always unsatisfactory. He 
 also showed that the appointment of the consuls would make it 
 seem that they were thinking less of Antony 's defeat than of their 
 own future, and he assured their supporters that, once victory 
 had been gained over Antony, the senate would see to it that 
 Hirtius and Pansa were well provided for in the provinces. 
 Cicero defended the irregular position of Cassius in the same 
 way that he had defended that of Decimus Brutus, of Octavian, 
 and of Marcus Brutus : Cassius had acted wisely and patriotically, 
 and such action was better than mere obedience to law, for the 
 highest law comes from the gods and bids v us do that which is 
 right. He pointed out that no man was so well prepared to carry 
 on the war in the East as Cassius, who was already there, and 
 that no decree of the senate could deprive Cassius of his com- 
 mand ; he had a devoted army and would go on as he had begun, 
 with or without the approval of the senate. Cicero's arguments 
 were wise and just, but the senate followed the lead of Calenus 
 and Pansa. Some of them were probably mere partisans of 
 Antony; but that a majority favored Pansa 's ambition must 
 have been due not merely to the influence of Pansa but also to a 
 feeling that the republicans could get along without Cassius. 
 The loyalty of Marcus Brutus had been secured; he and the 
 armies in Italy, it was felt, would be able to take care of Antony ; 
 it was better not to put too much power into the hands of the 
 assassins. Hirtius and Pansa were therefore appointed to the 
 provinces of Asia and Syria. 
 
 32 Eleventh Philippic. 
 
THE VETERANS 653 
 
 Having failed to persuade the senate, Cicero appealed 33 to the 
 people, who listened with great enthusiasm to his praise of 
 Cassius and to his declaration that Cassius would act for the best 
 of the state, even without the authorization of the senate. Cicero 
 at once wrote to the same effect to Cassius, urging him to ' ' defend 
 the constitution in his own way." Cicero had written in this 
 manner to Decimus Brutus before the senate met on the twentieth 
 of December, and, indeed, it was the attitude that he generally 
 assumed in his correspondence with the republican commanders. 
 The position in which Cicero found himself was a strange one. 
 His aim was to prevent Antony from becoming a military dic- 
 tator and to restore the republic, but this restoration consisted 
 chiefly in the reestablishment of the senate's authority. The 
 senate, however, was often influenced by treachery, or timidity, 
 or selfishness to such a degree that Cicero, while laboring for 
 senatorial ascendancy, urged loyal republicans to ignore the 
 decrees of the senate, and openly announced to the senate and 
 the people that these decrees both should and would be disobeyed. 
 The necessity for such action on the part of Cicero was a bad 
 omen for the future. 
 
 An omen of even greater seriousness appeared when Cicero 's 
 opponents argued that he must not carry his advocacy of Brutus 
 and Cassius so far as to offend the veterans. This thought, to 
 judge from Cicero's reply, was constantly brought forward to 
 paralyze action in Rome and to create dissension among Antony 's 
 opponents. "Why, in the name of mischief, is the name of the 
 veterans always introduced to prevent every good undertaking ! ' ' 
 Cicero exclaimed, while defending Brutus. Proclaiming himself 
 attached to them when they acted patriotically, Cicero refused 
 to tolerate them if they should put on airs. There were others 
 besides the veterans, he said, who were devoted to liberty. The 
 senate ought to be grateful to the youth of the country, who were 
 everywhere enlisting. "And this one thing I must say: if the 
 senate is to be governed by the nod of the veterans and if all our 
 
 33 This speech is lost. The situation is described in Fam. 12, 7. 
 
654 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 words and actions are to be referred to them, then it is time to 
 wish for death ; true Komans have always chosen death in prefer- 
 ence to slavery. ' ' And in his speech in behalf of Cassius, Cicero 
 divided the veterans into three groups : those who had sided with 
 the republicans, those who remained neutral, and those who were 
 fighting under Antony ; insisting that, whereas the well-disposed 
 veterans should be properly rewarded, they were not to be 
 feared. Indeed, the day of the veterans was passed, he said; 
 success now depended on the young soldiers. 
 
 Cicero could not have failed to realize that the final outcome 
 of the war depended on the veterans; every Roman knew that 
 young recruits could not face seasoned soldiers, and Cicero had 
 already heaped unprecedented praise and promises on the vet- 
 erans. But Calenus and his supporters had no tender regard for 
 the veterans ; they were using the weakness inherent in the repub- 
 lican cause in order to strengthen Antony, and Cicero answered 
 as best he could. It was also wise to stimulate enthusiasm among 
 the troops who were gathering under Pansa. As for the vet- 
 erans, Cicero said justly that they were fighting under Octavian 
 to free Decimus, who was an assassin. Hirtius and Octavian 
 were also exerting themselves in behalf of Decimus, and yet they, 
 too, were devoted to Caesar's memory. It was neither possible 
 nor profitable to alienate the assassins and their supporters by 
 ignoring their claims in an effort to bind the veterans more 
 closely to the republican cause. Each element of the republican 
 coalition must be humored, so that Antony might be promptly 
 defeated. The veterans cared less for Antony than for them- 
 selves. They could be trusted to carry through the present 
 campaign under Octavian and the consuls ; if Antony was utterly 
 undone before Mutina, neither the veterans nor Octavian, nor 
 any other Caesarian, would be greatly tempted to make common 
 cause with him from any love of Caesar's memory. 
 
 But it was by no means certain that Antony would be 
 defeated. Though Hirtius and Octavian had written to Cicero 
 
NOT AN AMBASSADOR TO ANTONY 655 
 
 in a spirit of hopefulness, they were as yet too weak to attack 
 their powerful opponent; severe winter weather may also have 
 impeded the movement of their armies. Antony blocked the 
 road to Mutina, where provisions were running low. The parti- 
 sans of Antony took advantage of the anxiety about Decimus 
 which prevailed among the republicans, and again began to urge 
 the propriety of sending an embassy. They hinted that Antony, 
 uncertain of ultimate success, was eager for peace ; they assumed 
 an air of dejection, for the benefit of such as Cicero, who, accord- 
 ing to his own statement, was always observing them; and they 
 circulated a report that Antony's wife, who was staying with 
 Calenus, was overcome with apprehension. A motion to send • 
 an embassy was finally introduced in the senate ; Pansa supported 
 it; and Cicero as well as his staunchest followers allowed it to 
 be passed. Five ambassadors were appointed, including Cicero 
 himself. 
 
 A night 's meditation, however, convinced Cicero and the loyal 
 republicans that they had made a mistake; and the question of 
 the embassy was revived in the senate on the following day. 
 Cicero obviously directed the discussion. Servilius, one of the 
 newly appointed ambassadors and a determined opponent of 
 Antony, made a speech in which he explained that his approval 
 of the embassy must not be interpreted as an act of treachery ; 
 but Cicero's speech, the Twelfth Philippic, makes it clear that 
 the reconsideration was due to his efforts. He frankly admitted 
 that he had made a mistake on the previous day, influenced both 
 by his anxiety for the safety of Decimus Brutus and by the 
 behavior of Antony 's partisans: Good men, he said, had properly 
 wondered at his action, and loyal friends had criticised him for 
 hoping that there could be peace. The Antonians themselves had 
 helped him to regain his correct view of things. Thinking the 
 senate unalterably committed to the embassy, they had openly 
 rejoiced as though they had won a victory; they had discussed 
 the character of the ambassadors, calmly declaring that three of 
 
656 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 them were friends of Antony; they had criticised Servilius 
 for his past antagonism to Antony, and had insisted that a 
 prejudiced man like Cicero should not be on the embassy at all. 
 In other words, they had made no secret of their opinion that, 
 since the appointment of the embassy was intended as a favor 
 to Antony, the ambassadors should have been chosen accordingly. 
 Now they were questioned in reference to their former hints 
 about Antony, and admitted that there had been no news from 
 him; there was no reason for supposing that he would lower his 
 demands. 
 
 Starting from this admission, Cicero urged vehemently, as 
 he had urged throughout this period, that the embassy could at 
 best only defer the inevitable war. It would weaken the ardor 
 and martial preparations of Antony's opponents, and it would 
 be a breach of faith with such men as Hirtius and Octavian. The 
 situation was exactly what it had been when the first embassy 
 had been sent ; and in one respect it was worse : the ambassadors 
 had not been intrusted with a definite message for Antony, that 
 is, they were not to ask for his submission. Cicero added a new 
 argument. After showing that his undisguised enmity toward 
 Antony quite incapacitated him for carrying on negotiations, 
 he declared that it would indeed be impossible for him ever to 
 reach Antony's camp. He gave a picture of the violence and 
 the lawlessness that prevailed everywhere. In the city he had 
 constantly to be on his guard ; outside the city the dangers were 
 even greater. His life had frequently been threatened; only 
 a few days before, he had not dared to leave Rome for the suburbs 
 and to return on the same day. But even if he was able to reach 
 Antony's camp, he could not trust himself to Antony's good 
 faith. And supposing he reached the enemy's camp safely and 
 was allowed to leave it, he would be set upon before he could 
 return to Rome. He was willing to go if he could go safely, but 
 that was impossible. Nor was it likely that Antony would come 
 
THE TASK COMPLETED 657 
 
 to the camp of the ambassadors. The negotiations, therefore, 
 would have to be carried on by correspondence, and this could 
 be done equally well directly from the city. Cicero dwelt at 
 great length on these personal arguments, the effect of which 
 must have been profound, for they came to this : if it was impos- 
 sible for a loyal republican even to negotiate with Antony, how 
 could loyal republicans expect to be able to live side by side 
 with Antony after patching up a truce? Against Cicero's 
 opposition to the embassy it was argued that the veterans wanted 
 peace. Cicero met this reference to the veterans as he had met 
 it before, by. insisting that the senate must act independently. 
 Many calumnies of him, he said, had been circulated among them, 
 but, as every one could bear witness, he had always exerted him- 
 self for their good. The senate followed Cicero's lead, and the 
 embassy was abandoned. 
 
 We do not know just when this debate took place; probably 
 it was in the last days of February or early in March. On the 
 twentieth of March, exactly three months after Cicero had first 
 led the senate against Antony, Pansa left Rome with his army. 
 He had not been zealous in prosecuting the war with Antony, 
 and he had been willing, for the sake of his own advantage, to 
 oppose Cassius and so foster discord among the loyalists; but, 
 once in the field, he cooperated loyally with Hirtius and 
 Octavian. "With his departure for the north Cicero's task was 
 finisherl • he had given to the naliuu whatever Union was possible, 
 and two armies had been sent against Antony. The outcome of 
 the war rested now with the armies. 
 
 But the successful completion of Cicero's labors did not 
 procure him any rest. Rome was seething with hopes and fears ; 
 speeches, meetings, and disturbances still continued. Even the 
 efforts to make peace with Antony had still to be combated. 
 They came this time from Lepidus and Plancus, who commanded 
 armies in Gaul and Spain. Cicero argued the question in the 
 
658 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 senate, in his Thirteenth Philippic. His reasons were those that 
 he had used before, but, as a further argument in favor of war, 
 he produced and read a letter from Antony to Hirtius and 
 Oetavian, which Hirtius had forwarded to him. 
 
 In this letter 34 Antony expressed his joy at the murder of 
 Trebonius, because he was one of the assassins of Caesar, and 
 bitterly denounced the senate for declaring Dolabella, the mur- 
 derer, an outlaw. He pointed out that, although Hirtius and 
 Oetavian owed everything to Caesar, they were acting in a way 
 that could have but one result, the supremacy of Brutus and 
 Cassius. He called the republicans Pompeians, as though they 
 were merely a political party, and referred to Cicero as their 
 defeated leader. Under this leadership, Hirtius and Oetavian 
 had made friends with the assassins, Antony maintained, and had 
 acted exactly as Pompey would have done if he could have come 
 to life again. On the pretext of destroying the assassins, they 
 had collected an army of soldiers who legally belonged to Antony 
 himself, and had then led them against their commander and 
 fellow-soldiers. In a letter to Antony, Hirtius and Oetavian had 
 written that there could be no peace unless Antony either raised 
 the siege of Mutina or supplied Decimus Brutus with provisions. 
 In reply to this, Antony asked if they were in this matter voicing 
 the opinions of the veterans who were still neutral. If Hirtius 
 and Oetavian should answer that it was really Decimus' soldiers 
 they wished to relieve, then Antony avowed his willingness to 
 have this done, provided Decimus paid the penalty of death, 
 which he richly deserved. Hirtius and Oetavian had informed 
 Antony that five consulars had been appointed to negotiate with 
 him. Antony asserted that he expected nothing from a senate 
 that had already refused his moderate terms, which indeed he 
 had been thinking of making even more moderate; a senate 
 that had declared Dolabella a public enemy would not spare 
 those who agreed with Dolabella. 
 
 3* This letter is given by Cicero in PMl. 13, chaps. 10 ff. It is not con- 
 tained in the correspondence. 
 
ANTONY'S LETTER 659 
 
 There were two courses open, Antony continued: either he 
 and the republican commanders must fight against each other, 
 and so put the Pompeians into power; or they must come to 
 terms, and so avoid making themselves ridiculous. The death 
 of Antony or of his opponents would only profit their common 
 enemy, the Pompeians. The armies facing each other at Mutina 
 were like gladiators, and it was Cicero who had pitted them 
 against each other. He had deceived Hirtius and Octavian by 
 the same awards of honors by which he boasted of having de- 
 ceived Caesar. Antony, however, would uphold his own dignity 
 and that of his friends ; he would not desert those whom Pompey 
 had hated; he would champion the rights of the veterans; he 
 would not abandon Dolabella, nor break the agreement he had 
 made with Lepidus and Plancus. After thus insinuating that 
 the two generals in the west were on his side, and after declaring 
 that he would take some satisfaction even in his own eventual 
 defeat and death, inasmuch as that would be followed by dis- 
 aster to Hirtius and Octavian, Antony concluded to the effect 
 that he was willing to forgive the injuries inflicted upon him 
 by his own partisans, in case they would forget that they had 
 themselves inflicted them and were ready with him to avenge 
 Caesar's death; as for the five ambassadors, he did not believe 
 they would come, but if they did come, he would then learn their 
 demands. 
 
 Cicero accompanied his reading of this letter in the senate 
 with attacks on Antony which for bitterness and scorn had not 
 been excelled by any of Cicero's utterances during the long 
 parliamentary struggle. Antony had put his finger on the 
 weakness of the republican cause; from the point of view of a 
 man who had no thought of the republic, his diagnosis was 
 absolutely correct. And the correctness of it was not hidden 
 from Cicero, who had constantly battled against dissension within 
 the republican ranks. The letter showed, however, as Cicero had 
 intended that it should show, that no peace could be made with 
 
660 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 Antony; unless Antony was defeated, the republic, which the 
 assasins of Caesar had hoped to reestablish, would not become 
 a reality, nor would the assassins themselves and their supporters 
 be safe. 
 
 The reports from the north were still disconcerting. About 
 the seventeenth of April rumors reached the capital that Antony 
 had won a victory and was marching upon Kome. The city was 
 thrown into confusion ; large numbers of citizens with their wives 
 and children departed to seek safety in- the camp of Marcus 
 Brutus across the Adriatic. The chaos lasted for a- period of three 
 or four days. The partisans of Antony did not conceal their 
 exultation. They gathered openly at the senate-house, made 
 plans for the massacre of their opponents, and even assigned men 
 to seize the capital, the rostra, and the city gates. Knowing 
 that in this crisis the citizens would look to Cicero for leader- 
 ship, they started a rumor that Cicero was planning to make 
 himself ruler. According to Cicero's assertion, they even mado 
 arrangements to bring lictors' fasces to his house, intending to 
 use their presence as evidence of his alleged design, whereupon, 
 when the people should have turned against him, they meant 
 to begin the massacre in Rome with the murder of Cicero. At 
 this juncture a tribune of the plebs, who had been devoted to 
 Cicero since the year 63 B.C., intervened by calling a contio; the 
 people surged to the meeting, and when the tribune in the course 
 of his speech was entering upon his vindication of Cicero, the 
 whole assembly shouted with one voice that Cicero 's one aim had 
 always been the welfare of the state. 
 
 Within less than three hours after this meeting, messengers 
 arrived announcing that Antony had been defeated; and the 
 people, streaming in multitudes to Cicero's house, escorted him 
 to the Capitol and thence to the forum, where they placed him 
 on the rostra, acclaiming him as their savior. "This," Cicero 
 wrote on the next day to Marcus Brutus, "was the abundant 
 reward for my labors and my many sleepless nights. I have 
 
THE LAST PHILIPPIC 661 
 
 no vanity about it," he added; and on the same day, speaking 
 in the senate, he referred to the tumultous demonstration in his 
 honor as in reality a compliment to the victorious generals, for 
 whom he recommended signal distinctions. 
 
 The defeat of Antony was reported in Rome on the twentieth 
 of April. The arrival of Pansa in the north had threatened 
 Antony's position before Mutina, and had led to an engagement 35 
 on the fifteenth of April at Forum Gallorum, which was situated 
 on the road to Mutina, not far from this city. Pansa had been 
 defeated and had been seriously wounded. But Antony had 
 immediately afterwards been defeated by Hirtius, and Octavian 
 had at the same time successfully defended his camp against an 
 attack of Antony's brother, Lucius. Six days later, on the 
 twenty-first, Antony was completely defeated by the republican 
 armies under the walls of Mutina, and fled toward the west. In 
 this battle Hirtius was killed, and shortly afterwards Pansa died 
 from his wounds. 
 
 The authentic news of the first battle thus reached Rome on 
 the day before the second battle was fought; it was discussed 
 in the senate on the very day when Antony suffered his second 
 defeat. Servilius, the tribune, moved that the- military garb 
 should be laid aside and that a public thanksgiving should be 
 celebrated in honor of the victory. Cicero's speech in reference 
 to this motion, the Fourteenth Philippic, is the last of his extant 
 speeches, though it was not the last speech that he delivered. 
 Both in its noble expressions of joy at the victory and in its 
 sane recognition of the fact that the war was not ended, it is 
 worthy to stand at the end of Cicero's long career as an orator. 
 Reminding his auditors that the siege of Mutina had not yet 
 been raised, he opposed the motion to lay aside the military garb, 
 and while he favored the public thanksgiving, even proposing to 
 have it extend for fifty days, which was unprecedented, he 
 
 35 An account of this battle was sent to Cicero by a certain Galba (Fam. 
 10, 30). 
 
662 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 pointed out that his approval of the proposed thanksgiving rested 
 largely on the fact that, as thanksgivings were not celebrated 
 for victories over citizens, this particular celebration would indi- 
 cate that Antony from now on was looked upon as an enemy of 
 his country. 
 
 Cicero saw the difficulties that would arise within the ranks 
 of the republicans after the elimination of Antony. Writing to 
 Marcus Brutus on this very day, he expressed a somewhat doubt- 
 ful hope that it might be possible to restrain and guide Octavian 
 in the hour of triumph no less than he had allowed himself to 
 be guided in the past. Octavian 's share in the battle of Forum 
 Gallorum had been insignificant, but Cicero, seeing the necessity 
 of retaining his loyalty by rewarding him in the same way as 
 the other generals, proposed in the senate that all the com- 
 manders should receive the title of imperator and that the 
 thanksgiving should be celebrated in the name of all of them. 
 Nor did Cicero forget the soldiers. He concluded his speech with 
 a eulogy of their valor and patriotism, with a proposal to erect 
 a monument in honor of those who had fallen, and with the 
 request that the honors and rewards due to the dead heroes 
 should be given to their surviving relatives. 
 
 There was no light-hearted rejoicing in Cicero's oration. He 
 began by reminding the senators that Decimus Brutus was still 
 in danger, and he went on to urge the necessity of declaring 
 Antony a public enemy, which even yet the senate was unwilling 
 to do. It was only in connection with the senators who still 
 favored Antony and opposed Cicero's leadership that he made 
 mention of the task which he had carried to the very threshold 
 of a successful completion. He noticed ' ' with grief ' ' that some 
 were opposed to the interests of the state, that others were utterly 
 indifferent, and that those who were well-disposed lacked perse- 
 verence, and were swayed, now by hope and now by fear. 
 Having referred to the envy and the enmity that had tried to 
 discredit him by alleging that he was seeking supreme power, 
 
NO LIGET-EEAMTED REJOICING 663 
 
 he declared that the leadership which had come to him was not 
 of his own seeking, but was the result of his attitude throughout 
 the long crisis, whereupon he briefly reviewed the recent events. 
 "The people remember," he said, "that I on the twentieth of 
 December took the initiative in recovering our freedom; that 
 from the first of January until this hour I have not ceased watch- 
 ing over the state ; that my house and my ears have been open 
 night and day to the advice of all men ; that it is by my letters, 
 my messages, and my exhortations that all men in every part 
 of the empire have been roused to the defense of their country ; 
 that I have not voted for negotiations with Antony ; that I have 
 always called Antony a public enemy, and this a war, so that, 
 though at all times favoring genuine peace, I have refused to 
 give the name of peace to an arrangement that could bring 
 nothing but disaster." 
 
 These words contained a just characterization of Cicero's 
 position and efforts ; they were spoken by way of argument, with- 
 out the feeling of triumph that might well have been inspired 
 by the thought that his task had been practically completed by 
 the defeat of Antony. A few days later there arrived the report 
 of the second battle. The news, which no one thought of doubt- 
 ing, was excellent: Antony had fled with a small body of men, 
 who were without arms, panic-stricken and demoralized; the 
 republican armies were in pursuit. On hearing this, the senate 
 declared Antony and his followers public enemies. Cicero's 
 speech in the senate on this occasion has not been preserved, nor 
 have we any record in his correspondence of the feelings with 
 which he received the word that he had succeeded in making 
 Rome free. 
 
 Indeed, we know very little about his thoughts or his private 
 doings throughout the period that began with his arrival in 
 Rome in December. He was a very busy man, sometimes finding 
 no other time for writing his letters than when his house was 
 actually crowded with morning callers. It is not likely that he 
 
664 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 had much leisure for the talks with such friends as Atticus which 
 he loved so well. We do not know whether Atticus was in Rome 
 during this time ; he is not mentioned in Cicero 's letters, nor are 
 there any extant letters addressed to him. Quintus seems to have 
 been in Rome. He is mentioned once, in February, when Cicero 
 wrote that he had had a talk with him and two other men about 
 a matter of politics. Cicero's son was in Creece, and did good 
 work in Brutus' army; they wrote to each other, but the letters 
 have been lost. 
 
 Apparently Cicero's thoughts as well as his time were 
 occupied with his struggle in behalf of Rome. Only one letter 
 is extant — and probably there were not many — in which we see 
 his old ability to jest in the midst of the gravest anxiety. "I am 
 sorry you have stopped going to dinners," he writers 36 to his 
 witty friend Paetus, "for you have deprived yourself of much 
 gratification and pleasure. And I also fear, for I am allowed 
 to tell the truth, that you will unlearn and ' forget something 
 that you once knew, how to arrange pleasant little dinner parties. 
 For if in former times, when you had some one to imitate, you 
 did not get very far in that art, what will you accomplish now? 
 Spurinna thinks it a serious matter for the state if you do not 
 go back to your old habits when the West wind begins to blow. 
 But, joking aside, nothing brings greater happiness than to 
 associate with good, pleasant, and fond companions. I am not 
 referring to excellent dinners, but to good talk, which is always 
 best at a dinner table. But don't think because I am joking," 
 he adds, "that I have thrown away all thought of the state. 
 Day and night I do nothing and think of nothing except for the 
 purpose of making my fellow-citizens safe and free. My thought, 
 is that if I have to lay down my life in these efforts, I shall feel 
 that my end has been a glorious one." This thought, that his 
 day was nearly done, which he uttered in his speeches as well, 
 crept into one or two other letters, accompanied by a passing 
 
 as Fam. 9, 24. 
 
LIVING IN A NEW GENERATION 665 
 
 confession that the strain was almost too heavy to bear. "I shall 
 continue to protect the interests of the state, if the strength is 
 given me," he wrote after learning of the deaths of Hirtius and 
 Pansa, "and yet I am by this time very tired. No weariness, 
 however, must stand in the way of a man's duty." 
 
 Cicero was living in a new generation. Antony could have 
 been his son ; Octavian, his grandson. The men with whom he 
 had begun life had nearly all died, most of them violent deaths. 
 One of these friends, Servius Sulpicius, the great jurist, died at 
 this time. He was one of the three ambassadors sent to Antony 
 early in the year, but he had succumbed to sickness on the way 
 to Antony's camp. When it was moved in the senate to honor 
 the deceased with a gilt equestrian statue and a public funeral, 
 Cicero spoke in favor of the motion, in the Ninth Philippic. 
 This is one of his shortest orations, but it is one of the most 
 impressive. Though spoken during the days immediately sub- 
 sequent to the return to Rome of the embassy, and both the 
 appointment of this embassy and its report drew forth Cicero's 
 most violent invective, still this speech is free from partisanship, 
 calm and elevated ; it is like a bit of blue sky suddenly revealed 
 amid an angry welter of dark storm clouds. 
 
 Sulpicius had been the greatest of jurists, Cicero said; his 
 knowledge of law had never been equalled. But the principles 
 that had guided him were those of kindness and justice ; he was 
 no more eager to manage a lawsuit properly than to prevent 
 disputes altogether. Such a man needed no monuments ; but 
 in honoring him the senate would honor itself. Cicero here spoke 
 out of his long friendship with Sulpicius, and it will be remem- 
 bered that it was Sulpicius who wrote the noble letter to Cicero 
 after Tullia's death, and that it was his son who visited Cicero 
 in Rome during the first days after the funeral. Sulpicius, 
 Cicero said, had traveled through snow and over bad roads, in 
 the middle of winter, in order to reach Antony's camp, and had 
 not stopped for rest on the way, though he knew that the exertion 
 
666 TEE LAST BATTLE 
 
 might cause his death. He had sacrificed himself to his duty. 
 When appointed on the embassy, he had pleaded illness, but 
 when the senate and the consul had insisted, he had yielded. 
 His son and Cicero had attempted to dissuade him, but he had 
 answered that the wishes of the senate were more important 
 than his life. And early in the morning on the next day the 
 young Sulpicius and Cicero had accompanied him as he set out; 
 his last words had seemed like a prophecy of his end. 
 
 The increasing loneliness of Cicero's life, his advanced age, 
 and the mental and physical weariness that occasionally beset 
 him, had not relaxed his energy ; he had fought on, with the one 
 wish of seeing Rome free. The news of Antony's defeat must 
 therefore have brought him an intense feeling of relief and of 
 triumph, but this feeling was quickly dissipated. The war had 
 been all but lost in the hour of victory. It was learned in the 
 next few weeks that, while Antony had indeed been defeated, he 
 had not been crushed, and, what was of even greater import, the 
 republican armies were not in united pursuit. The flight of 
 Antony had raised the siege of Mutina, but the troops of Decimus 
 Brutus were in a deplorable condition on account of their long 
 investment, and Brutus lacked both cavalry and pack animals. 
 Even if his forces had been fit and well equipped, it would have 
 been highly desirable for him to arrange for the pursuit with 
 the generals who had relieved him; now it was necessary, 
 Hirtius, however, was dead, as he soon discovered, and Pansa, 
 who summoned him to a conference, died from his wounds while 
 Brutus was actually on his way to see him. Octavian remained, 
 but neither he nor his soldiers would cooperate with the assassin 
 of Caesar, and the legions of the deceased consuls also sided with 
 Octavian. Brutus thus lost two days in fruitless efforts to 
 organize a pursuit, and when he started, on the third day, he 
 had a feeble army and was unable to proceed with the despatch 
 of Antony. The latter, whose cavalry was powerful, marched 
 rapidly westward; he enrolled in his army the slaves quartered 
 
OCT AVI AN HOLDS BACK 667 
 
 in the barracks along his way; and presently he was joined by 
 Ventidius Bassus, a praetor, who had enrolled three legions of 
 veterans, with whom he had come up from Italy. The force 
 of Antony was now considerable, and might readily become even 
 more formidable if Lepidus, who was stationed nearest to him 
 in the west, should make common cause with him. The war, 
 therefore, was far from won; it had only been transferred to 
 another region, and the prospects were less promising than they 
 had been at any time since Cicero assumed the leadership. 
 
 Nothing short of a defeat of the republican armies could have 
 been more disastrous to the republic than their failure to unite 
 in pursuit of Antony. The refusal of Octavian and the armies 
 to join Decimus was partly due to policy. "While Antony was 
 still in command of a large army, he had in vain urged upon 
 Hirtius and Octavian that an agreement between them all was 
 to their mutual advantage; now, with Antony no longer in a 
 predominant position, there was a greater likelihood that Octav- 
 ian might secure favorable terms from Antony. But more 
 important than any policy of Octavian and his soldiers was the 
 death of the consuls. What would have happened if both or 
 one of them had survived, can not be determined. By their 
 death, however, Octavian and the soldiers were brought into 
 immediate relations with Decimus; and with him, the assassin 
 of Caesar, any association would be intolerable. Octavian him- 
 self might not have found it more difficult to act in unison with 
 Decimus than with Antony, who had insulted and robbed the 
 young man, had actually prepared to have him declared a public 
 enemy, and had forced him to fly to arms; but it is unthink- 
 able that the armies should cooperate with Decimus, especially 
 in an effort to destroy Antony. The veterans had rallied to 
 Octavian, or had deserted to him from Antony, as the case might 
 be, largely because of his generous pay; while devoted to him 
 as the heir of Caesar, they had no quarrel with Antony, and 
 may indeed have been in as friendly a frame of mind toward 
 
668 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 him as toward Oetavian himself. Antony, no less than Oetavian, 
 had been faithful to Caesar's memory; and Antony, the dashing 
 general, was the idol of the army, whereas Oetavian had not 
 shown himself a great commander. The veterans, indeed, accord- 
 ing to one account, had expected to be led by Oetavian against 
 the assassins, and had mutinied when told that they were to go 
 against Antony. Both the interests and the sentiments of the 
 veterans and of Oetavian therefore prevented a union with 
 Decimus. 
 
 To the student who remembers Oetavian 's adroitness as dis- 
 played in his later life, it may readily seem that the young man 
 caused the rupture with Decimus in a farsighted view of the 
 future, but such a conception leaves out of account the fact that 
 in times of revolution the leaders of a party keep their position 
 only by following the men whom they seem to lead. The Roman 
 legions had learned independence; their likes and dislikes had 
 been a frequent argument in the forum ; it is inconceivable that 
 they would have obeyed Oetavian if he had ordered them to 
 march with him and Decimus in pursuit of Antony. They had 
 fought against Antony while the consuls were still with them, 
 representing the loyalist element which bound together the fol- 
 lowers of the assassins and of Oetavian; and they had fought, 
 less, it would seem, to free Decimus than to free the legions shut 
 up with him in Mutina; but after the death of the consuls and 
 the relief of the legions in Mutina, the veterans were not willing 
 to carry the fight any further. 
 
 The fateful antagonism that kept Oetavian and his soldiers 
 aloof from Decimus was presently increased by the perversity 
 of the senate. When the news of the second victory at Mutina 
 reached the capital, the senate, believing that the state had been 
 saved, at once set about ordering the affairs of Rome as though 
 all power had again come into its hands. Marcus Brutus and 
 Cassius were given special powers in the Bast, for the purpose 
 of holding the provinces and of crushing Dolabella. Sextus 
 
PERVERSITY OF THE SENATE 669 
 
 Pompey was made commander of the fleet. Decimus Brutus was 
 directed to take command of all the forces in the north ; and this 
 order applied not only to the legions of the deceased consuls 
 but also to the Fourth and Martian legions, which had in the 
 previous year gone over to Octavian and so made opposition to 
 Antony possible. A triumph was decreed to Decimus ; the lesser 
 honor of an ovation was granted to Octavian. The preference 
 for Decimus over Octavian might be explained on the ground 
 that Decimus had by the death of the consuls become the ranking 
 officer in the north ; he was older than Octavian, and it was for 
 his relief that the campaign about Mutina had taken place ; but 
 the senate had nevertheless shown that they no longer considered 
 Octavian 's assistance of supreme importance, and thought that 
 he could be safely ignored. 
 
 The senate went even further. A committee of ten was 
 appointed to revise the acts of Antony's consulship. The de- 
 cisions of this committee would inevitably be of far-reaching 
 importance; it would practically remake the political situation, 
 which included the assignment of land to the veterans ; and yet 
 neither Decimus nor Octavian was made a member of this com- 
 mittee. In its determination to exercise complete control, the 
 senate thus managed not only to intensify the antagonism already 
 existing between the northern generals but also to indicate that, 
 as these generals would have nothing to say about the rewards 
 due to the veterans, the latter would have to depend entirely on 
 the senate. By these measures, and others like them but of less 
 importance, the senate once for all gave proof that they could 
 not to be trusted to recognize the claims either of Octavian or of 
 the veterans. The republican coalition had been held together 
 for a few months by the eloquent patriotism of Cicero, aided by 
 the threatening position of Antony; the restoration of a peaceful 
 republic would have meant supreme power for the senate, and 
 now the senate, in its supposed hour of triumph, had proved 
 itself unfit for such power. 
 
670 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 A period of intense activity now set in for Cicero; in June 
 he wrote to Cornificius that he could not choose his own time 
 even for letter- writing ; on the twenty-seventh of July, when 
 he wrote the last letter that has been preserved, he was in the 
 midst of the political turmoil. Everything depended on the 
 attitude of the generals and the armies in the field, and Cicero 
 did what he could to retain their allegiance to the doomed repub- 
 lic, but it was not much that he could accomplish. He had not 
 been a party to the high-handed behavior of the senate. During 
 the first debate, he had not advocated severe measures. Though 
 he had undoubtedly welcomed with eagerness the branding of 
 Antony and his followers as public enemies, for on this he had 
 insisted from the beginning, the only measure proposed by him 
 in which an individual was mentioned by name related to 
 Antony's brother, Gaius, who had been taken captive by Marcus 
 Brutus and had been treated by him with a consideration that 
 had already caused a scandal among Brutus' friends. It was 
 due to Cicero, it seems, that Octavian received even as much as 
 an ovation. And when the senate was considering the appoint- 
 ment of the important board of ten, Cicero spoke vehemently 
 for the inclusion of Decimus and Octavian, but he was silenced 
 with shouts, and outvoted. Cicero was thus powerless while the 
 senate believed Antony hopelessly defeated and in danger of 
 prompt capture ; nor was he more successful after the first news 
 had been contradicted. The city became a prey to fear and 
 anxiety. There were meetings of the senate and Cicero spoke, 
 but by the end of May he wrote that he seemed like one beating 
 the air, for he no longer had his "old weapon" the senate. 
 
 The disorganization of the senate merely reflected the con- 
 fusion prevalent in Rome. Rumors and guesses filled the air. 
 Even as late as the end of May there were people who were 
 surprised that the war in the north was not ended. Criticisms 
 were leveled at Decimus for having allowed Antony to escape. 
 Writing to Marcus Brutus, Cicero himself expressed the opinion 
 
PLANCUS AND LEPIDUS 671 
 
 that Decimus had blundered fatally; writing to Decimus, he 
 made light of the general 's detractors, but added that care must 
 he taken to avoid criticism. The partisans of the various generals 
 were active ; there were enemies in the city, according to Cicero, 
 no less than in the field. Nobody knew for some time exactly 
 what had happened in the north, and nobody knew what was 
 going to happen. The attitude of Lepidus and of Plancus was 
 most important. Lepidus had seven legions, and was stationed 
 nearest Antony. Plancus, a little to the north, had a good army, 
 apparently consisting of three veteran legions and one of recruits. 
 "When a loyal message was delivered from Plancus, the senate 
 shouted with joy ; no dispatch within the memory of man, wrote 
 Cicero, had been more welcome. The senate had just been 
 alarmed by a shifty letter from Lepidus. Though Antony's 
 former supporter was distrusted, yet people felt that he might, 
 after all, remain loyal to the republic. On the twenty-second 
 of May he sent Cicero his professions of loyalty, surmising with 
 regret that the political situation must have given rise to unfavor- 
 able rumors about him; and on the twenty-ninth he joined 
 Antony. 
 
 On the next day Lepidus despatched a letter 37 to the magis- 
 trates and senate of Rome, informing them that his army had 
 mutinied and forced him to make peace with Antony. The 
 soldiers had been averse to shedding the blood of fellow citizens, 
 Lepidus wrote; and he himself, adopting their point of view, 
 urged the senate not to condemn the action that had been taken. 
 This account of Lepidus' defection seems on the whole to be 
 correct. It is certainly beyond doubt that there had been a 
 question as to the loyalty toward the republic among Lepidus' 
 troops even before the final crisis arrived, for Plancus in his 
 correspondence with Cicero refers to this, and it is also reported 
 in some detail that when the armies of Lepidus and Antony were 
 encamped near each other, there was fraternizing among the 
 
 « Fam. 10, 35. 
 
672 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 troops. The attitude of Lepidus' veterans is worthy of note, 
 not as a means of clearing Lepidus of double dealing, for he 
 would under any circumstances have acted for his own advan- 
 tage, but as another indication that the soldiers had perhaps an 
 even greater influence than the generals in bringing about the 
 fall of the republic. "When the army had first become a power 
 in Roman politics, it had been the instrument of its leaders; it 
 was now beginning to speak for itself, directly; the time was 
 approaching when the soldiers would make and unmake Roman 
 emperors. 
 
 The other general of importance in the west was Plancus. 
 He had perhaps not been whole-heartedly on the side of the 
 republicans at the beginning of the war, but he had been won 
 over by Cicero's example and letters, and he had, no doubt, also 
 been influenced, earlier in the year, by Antony's proposal to 
 take his province, Further Gaul, in exchange for Cisalpine Gaul. 
 Plancus had done his best, by letters and messengers, to secure 
 the loyalty of Lepidus ; and two weeks after Lepidus ' desertion 
 he joined forces with Decimus Brutus. Their armies seem to 
 have been of about the same size as the combined armies of 
 Antony, Bassus, and Lepidus. The latter had approximately 
 ten full legions and six fragmentary legions, whereas the two 
 republican commanders had about fourteen legions. But the 
 proportion of recruits was very great in the armies of Plancus 
 and Decimus, so that they could not confidently offer battle. 
 Nothing therefore was done. As late as the twenty-eighth of 
 July, when Plancus wrote the last extant letter to Cicero, which 
 is also the last in the correspondence, Plancus recalled the fact 
 that experience had often shown that raw recruits could not 
 be trusted to oppose veterans, and he pointed out that the only 
 hope of safety lay in reinforcements from Africa or from 
 Octavian. Plancus had written constantly to Octavian, and the 
 latter had always replied that he was coming straightway, but 
 now, by the end of July, Plancus understood that Octavian was 
 pursuing a policy of his own. 
 
BEVTVS HOLDS BACK 673 
 
 The senate, in the meantime, had on the thirtieth of June 
 declared Lepidus a public enemy. The decree, though voted 
 unanimously, had been long delayed, and may in the end have 
 been chiefly due to the new hope inspired by Plancus' junction 
 with Decimus. Writing of the decree to Cassius, Cicero said 
 that the courage of the senate was founded mainly on the expec- 
 tation that Cassius would bring aid to the republic. There was 
 still some hope that Lepidus' soldiers might desert, for an 
 amnesty was offered to those who "returned to their senses" 
 by the first of September. 
 
 As the decree against Lepidus made his property forfeit to 
 the state, the senate may also have been influenced by their lack 
 of money. The treasury was empty, and yet money was needed 
 in all directions. Cassius seems to have been the only republican 
 general who was able to pay his own legions. Decimus had 
 begun the war with more than forty million sesterces, about two 
 million dollars, and by the fifth of May he had not only spent 
 this but had been forced to "load all his friends with debt." 
 What the senate could gather together, was decreed to him. A 
 property tax, the first for over a century, was declared, but the 
 wealthy made fraudulent returns, and no more was realized 
 than was needed for two legions. 
 
 Armies were needed quite as much as money. Troops were 
 summoned from Africa, and two legions ultimately arrived, but 
 too late to alter the situation. Cassius was called from the Bast, 
 but Cassius was clearly too far away. Marcus Brutus was 
 repeatedly requested to come from Macedonia. Whether he 
 could have aided the state is not certain. The task of transport- 
 ing a large army across the Adriatic was considerable; he had 
 reason for doubting the loyalty of Octavian, whose army would 
 stand between him and Antony; and he could not be confident 
 that his legions would remain loyal if brought face to face with 
 an opposing army. But Brutus did not wish to come. He did 
 not refuse to obey Cicero's insistent summons; for reply, he 
 
674 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 merely paraded his own grievances. He bitterly criticised 
 Cicero's praise of Octavian and the ovation that Cicero's efforts 
 had secured for him, not seeming to realize the necessity of 
 binding Octavian and his army to the state by every possible 
 means; and he objected strenuously to the threatened confiscation 
 of Lepidus' property. Lepidus was married to a half-sister of 
 Brutus, and the latter was eager to protect her and her children. 
 Cicero had at first been inclined not to interfere with the course 
 of the law, but he later spoke in the senate in favor of Lepidus' 
 family, and assured Brutus that the settlement of the question 
 would be left to him. No concession, however, had any effect 
 on this philosopher who had turned politician. Indeed, Brutus 
 had from the beginning of the struggle believed in the possibility 
 of an amicable arrangement with Antony ; he had not yet learned 
 that there could be no peace between the assassins of Caesar and 
 those who revered Caesar's memory and desired to inherit his 
 power. 
 
 While these events were slowly shaping themselves for the 
 destruction of the republic, Octavian remained in the north with 
 his army. His refusal to join Decimus had brought on the new 
 phase of the war; his possible intervention on one side or the 
 other was still of supreme importance. Cicero and he corre- 
 sponded frequently, and Cicero kept in constant touch with his 
 friends and partisans in Rome. The personal relations of the 
 two men seem to have been cordial and even intimate. Octavian 
 is said to have called Cicero "father," and this may be true, 
 but there is no evidence for the further statement that the young 
 Caesar deceived Cicero by the use of this name, and by the 
 deference and affection it implied. Neither did Cicero attempt 
 to deceive Octavian. On one occasion he said that the young 
 man must be "praised, distinguished, and extinguished." 38 
 There is no indication in Cicero's public acts that this epigram, 
 
 38 Laudandum, ornand/wm, tollendum. Shuekburgh's translation. For 
 his conjecture as to the circumstances under which it was uttered, see Shuck- 
 burgh, Augustus, p. 52, footnote 3. 
 
CICERO AND OCTAVIAN 675 
 
 which was reported to Octavian by a busybody, represented 
 Cicero's real attitude to Octavian. It is not unlikely that the 
 words were a diplomatic reply to Octavian 's numerous detractors, 
 against whom Cicero was constantly urging Octavian 's claims. 
 Cicero understood that Octavian 's attitude to the state would 
 inevitably depend on the way in which the senate treated him ; 
 since his power for good and for evil was unusual, his loyalty 
 had to be secured by unusual concessions. The ultimate position 
 intended for Octavian by Cicero seems to have been that of a 
 man held in high esteem and generously rewarded by the repub- 
 lic. Cicero was known as Octavian 's champion. When Octavian 
 desired the consulship, after the death of Hirtius and Pansa, 
 Cicero opposed it. There were constitutional difficulties about 
 a consular election in 43 B.C. and Octavian was very young. 
 Cicero urged Octavian to desist from his intention ; he reasoned 
 with Octavian 's friends in Rome, and he spoke of the matter in 
 the senate ; but there was nevertheless a rumor to the effect that 
 Cicero and Octavian were planning to make themselves consuls, 
 and Brutus actually was informed that Cicero had been elected. 
 While Cicero therefore seems to have been sincere as well as 
 prudent in his advocacy of Octavian, the latter, on the other 
 hand, may not have attempted to deceive Cicero. If circum- 
 stances had allowed him to receive the honors intended for him 
 by Cicero, he might have been satisfied. But the hatred felt 
 by the soldiers for Caesar's assassins and the perversity of the 
 senate made this impossible. Cicero speaks again and again of 
 Octavian 's numerous bad advisers, who might at any time turn 
 his loyalty to enmity. Perhaps there is more truth in Cicero's 
 view of the young Octavian and his position than is usually 
 supposed. 
 
 On the twenty-seventh of July Cicero wrote the last letter 39 
 which has been preserved from his hand; it was addressed to 
 Marcus Brutus. At that time Cicero still expected Brutus to 
 come to Italy, and he hoped, though with very little confidence, 
 
 39 Ad Brut. 1, 18. 
 
676 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 that Octavian would remain loyal to the extent of protecting the 
 city. The crisis followed shortly after this date, but our knowl- 
 edge of it comes from later historians, and can not be trusted in 
 all its details. Rumors, guesses, and partisan assertions con- 
 stituted much of the evidence for these narratives. The main 
 facts, however, are clear. Octavian needed the consulship, in 
 order that he might meet Antony on somewhat equal terms when 
 the deadlock in the north should have come to an end, and also, 
 it would seem, in order that he, as consul, might take measures 
 for the reward of his soldiers. For some months Octavian 
 remained quiet, watching events, but in the month of August 
 he sent a deputation of soldiers to Rome with two demands: 
 that Octavian receive the consulship, and that his soldiers receive 
 the money due them. They also asked for the repeal of the 
 decree declaring Antony a public enemy. This deputation was 
 not successful, and Octavian marched on Rome with his army. 
 The senate, we are told, sent him word, offering to yield in every- 
 thing, but when two legions at last arrived from Africa, they 
 changed their minds, and decided to defend the city with the 
 African legions and one other legion, which had been left in 
 Rome by Pansa. They also made preparations to flee to Marcus 
 Brutus. Octavian came nearer, and the three legions deserted to 
 him. The senate had now no choice ; and we are informed that 
 among those who sought pardon from Octavian was Cicero, who, 
 however, was received with scorn. 40 Again the senate had a 
 moment of hope, for it was reported that the Fourth and Martian 
 legions had refused obedience to Octavian. The fathers met, 
 Cicero standing at the door of the senate-house to welcome them, 
 we are told, but when the rumor was exploded, Cicero vanished 
 in a litter. About the truth of these stories we can no longer 
 decide. 
 
 40 Cieero had a successful interview with Octavian during this time. 
 There is still extant a fragment from a letter addressed by him to Octavian, 
 perhaps the last words of Cicero which have come down to us. It reads: 
 "Touching your grant of leave of absence to Philippus and myself, I feel 
 a twofold pleasure; for it implies pardon for the past, and indulgence for 
 the future" (Tyrrell, VI, 298). 
 
OCT AVI AN BECOMES CONSUL 677 
 
 Octavian, however, and his half-brother Pedius became cori- 
 suls on the nineteenth of August, and several measures of 
 importance were passed. The soldiers had already been paid: 
 Octavian had secured possession of public moneys, it is said, but 
 the treasury was empty, and no explanation is given of the origin 
 of this treasure. Octavian was put in command of Decimus 
 Brutus' army; the assassins were condemned and their property 
 declared forfeit; even Sextus Pompey was included in this sen- 
 tence; the decree of outlawry against Dolabella was repealed, 
 for it was not known that Dolabella had committed suicide when 
 his struggle with Cassius had grown hopeless; later the decrees 
 against Antony and Lepidus were also repealed. Octavian there- 
 upon marched north. His avowed purpose was to carry out the 
 verdict against Decimus Brutus, but he went away really to 
 make terms with Antony. He had begun to prepare a way for 
 reconciliation with Antony immediately after Mutina, when, in 
 addition to remaining aloof from Decimus, he released Antonian 
 soldiers, who had been captured, and allowed some officers to 
 join Antony. 
 
 Antony in the meantime had prospered. Pollio, who had 
 held Further Spain with three legions, had come up from the 
 south. Though conceited and ill-tempered, he was a patriot and 
 would doubtless have preferred to remain loyal to the republic, 
 but his three legions were no match for the large forces com- 
 manded by Antony. He therefore made common cause with him. 
 The armies of Decimus Brutus and Plancus were thus made still 
 more inferior to the forces of Antony, and there was no prospect 
 of relief. Pollio is said to have managed the negotiations with 
 Plancus, who went over to Antony. His army, like that of 
 Pollio, could not have been in a mood to fight against unequal 
 odds with less reward in prospect than if they joined the superior 
 forces of Antony. It is at any rate reported that the army of 
 Decimus refused to stand by their commander, and his army 
 had been as loyal an army as the republicans had had. They 
 
678 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 joined Plancus in his desertion to Antony. Decimus tried to 
 escape to the East, but the few troops that had at first accom- 
 panied him melted away, and he was finally killed by a Gallic 
 chieftain, at the command of Antony. Antony, Lepidus, and 
 Pollio then marched eastward with a large part of their forces, 
 and were met by Octavian. 
 
 The result of this meeting was the establishment by Antony, 
 Lepidus, and Octavian of the military dictatorship which has 
 been called the Second Triumvirate. The duty of the triumvirs, 
 according to the very phrase under which they took office, was 
 to settle the constitution. This settlement took twelve years of 
 almost constant warfare. Brutus and Cassius were defeated at 
 Philippi in the year 42 b.c. ; Sextus Pompey, who had hovered 
 on the edge of things since his father's death, was conquered, 
 and executed in 35 B.C. ; Lepidus was thrust aside, to live on to 
 an inglorious old age; the inevitable rivalry between the two 
 remaining triumvirs, which was patched up twice, led to the 
 battle of Actium, in 31 B.C., where Antony was defeated; and 
 finally Antony stabbed himself, and Octavian remained the un- 
 disputed master of the Roman world. "When Octavian first took 
 up arms against Antony, Cicero had surmised that the outcome 
 would be supreme power either for Antony or for Octavian, and 
 he had preferred Octavian. His ineffectual efforts to restore the 
 republic had put Octavian in a position in which he could ulti- 
 mately bargain with Antony, and had thus had the result which 
 Cicero had foreseen but had hoped to avoid. He had served 
 Rome in a way that he had not intended, but the service was 
 considerable; Antony, as dictator of Rome, would not have 
 created an empire like that of Augustus. 
 
 For the purpose of settling the constitution, in the meantime, 
 the triumvirs decided upon a proscription. It was the prudent 
 thing to do, for the republic could be destroyed only by destroy- 
 ing her defenders; it was necessary, for the triumvirs needed 
 
TEE SECOND TBIVMVIBATE 679 
 
 tlie money of the proscribed with which to pay the soldiers ; but 
 it was also an act of vengeance, so that each triumvir agreed to 
 sacrifice some relative or friend to the hatred of the others. 
 Before the triumvirs themselves reached Eome, where they pub- 
 lished a large proscription list, they sent soldiers in advance 
 with orders to put to death twelve or seventeen of their most 
 conspicuous opponents. Cicero was one of these. 
 
 Ill 
 The End 
 
 The death of Cicero has been described by many ancient 
 writers. It took place on the seventh of December, 43 b.c. ; 
 but as to the truthfulness of the various descriptions, it must 
 be recalled that Cicero's last days became early a subject for 
 declamation in the rhetorical schools. The rhetoricians discussed 
 such topics as that of the Ailing Twins; and they also made use 
 of historical, semi-historical, and mythical episodes. Agamem- 
 non was made to deliberate whether he should sacrifice Iphigenia, 
 for Calchas had foretold that without the sacrifice the Greek 
 fleet would not be allowed to depart for Troy. Alexander the 
 Great deliberated whether he should enter Babylon in spite of 
 the augur's response that it would be dangerous. The Athenians 
 deliberated whether to destroy their Persian trophies, Xerxes 
 having threatened that otherwise he would invade Greece again. 
 In the same way Cicero deliberated whether he should beg 
 Antony for mercy ; and also whether he should burn his writings, 
 for Antony had promised that if he did this, his life would be 
 spared. And, finally, this situation was suggested, for its ethical 
 bearings : Cicero had successfully defended Popillius on a charge 
 of parricide; when Cicero had been proscribed, Popillius was 
 sent by Antony to murder him; this he did, and returned to 
 Antony with the orator's head. 
 
680 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 For these exercises the rhetoricians suggested every conceiv- 
 able thought and detail, eagerly embroidering the event and 
 arguing as to the probability and effectiveness of their points. 
 A few of these will illustrate their character. 
 
 The state could be a slave to Antony, it was said, but not 
 Cicero. How could Cicero have entered the senate, to beg for 
 mercy, when this body had been cruelly depleted and its ranks 
 thereupon filled with Antony's base adherents? Cicero would 
 no longer see Pompey there, nor Cato, the Luculli, Hortensius, 
 and others. What, Cicero, have you to do with a new age? 
 Your day is past. If you, Cicero, consider the longing for you 
 on the part of the Roman people, then your life, whenever you 
 die, has been too short; if you consider your own great deeds, 
 then you have lived long enough; if the injuries inflicted by 
 fortune and the condition of the state, then you have lived too 
 long ; if the memory of your deeds, you will live forever. All the 
 murders of the proscriptions were perpetrated in order that 
 Cicero, too, might die. When you come before Antony, you will 
 ask for death. It was just that Cicero should give satisfaction 
 to Antony, whom he had himself declared an outlaw and a public 
 enemy. Cicero, finally, could not be so cowardly as to ask for 
 mercy, nor so stupid as to expect it. 
 
 No one but Asinius Pollio thought so, says Seneca the Elder, 
 from whom these details come,' 41 and even he did not dare to put 
 his charges against Cicero into his history. Pollio, continues 
 Seneca, was the only one to assert that Cicero died a coward's 
 death. In the reign of Augustus he was a literary light, exceed- 
 ingly jealous of Cicero's fame. Once he was present at the 
 house of Messalla when a certain Sextilius Bna won applause 
 with a poem on Cicero, in which one line was to the effect that 
 men must weep for Cicero and for the silence of the Roman 
 tongue. Pollio became angry, and said to his host, "It is for 
 you to decide what may be allowed in your house, but I shall not 
 listen to a man who makes me out to be a mute." 
 
 « Sen. Controv. 7, 2 ; Suas. 6 and 7. 
 
THE TRUTH NOT KNOWN 681 
 
 Livy said 42 that at the time of the proscriptions Cicero left 
 Rome for Tusculum, and thence by devious ways he went to 
 Formiae to take ship from Caieta. Contrary winds arose, Cicero 
 became seasick, and he was also disgusted with the thought of 
 flight and of living any longer. He therefore returned to his 
 upper villa, more than a mile from the sea, saying, "I shall die 
 in my country, which I have so often saved. " It is well known, 
 says Livy, that his slaves were both brave and faithful, ready to 
 defend him, but he, when pursued, ordered them to set down 
 the litter and quietly to allow an unjust fate to take its course. 
 He bent out of the litter and, without wincing, received the blow 
 that severed his head from his body. His head and hands were 
 taken to Rome, and nailed, a hand on either side of the head, to 
 the rostra, where his voice had often been heard. The citizens 
 could scarcely raise their tearful eyes to look at the sight. 
 
 One author, Seneca adds, tried to describe the expression on 
 the dead orator's face, but found the task too difficult. 
 
 And it would be difficult, indeed impossible, to ascertain the 
 truth about Cicero's ending. The broad outlines are known, but 
 we can not be certain of the emotions with which he met death 
 or of the events that surrounded the murder. The influence 
 of the rhetoricians is everywhere present. The details that 
 could be gathered are very numerous. Only one more, because 
 rather well known, need be set down. Fulvia, the widow of 
 Clodius and the wife of Antony, it is said, took Cicero 's severed 
 head in her lap, addressed insulting words to it, pulled out the 
 tongue and pierced it with a sharp hairpin. St. Jerome, who 
 tells 43 the story, compares these indignities to those inflicted by 
 Herodias on the head of John the Baptist. 
 
 The most complete account of Cicero's last days is found at 
 the end of Plutarch 's Life. Many of his details doubtless come 
 from Tiro ; but when he speaks of Popillius and Philologus, it is 
 
 42 Sen. Suas. 6, 17. 
 
 *s St. Jerome, Contra Mufinum, 3, 42. 
 
682 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 necessary to remember the rhetoricians. He represents Cicero as 
 considering suicide, but that is exactly like the rhetorical deliber- 
 ations about his books. 44 Plutarch never omitted anything, how- 
 ever incredible, provided it was picturesque, pathetic, or useful 
 to point a moral. Nevertheless his account is the best that we 
 have, and may well be cited. 
 
 "Whilst these things were contriving, 45 Cicero was with his 
 brother at his country-house near Tusculum; whence, hearing 
 of the proscriptions, they determined to pass to Astura, a villa 
 of Cicero's near the sea, and to take shipping from thence for 
 Macedonia to Brutus, of whose strength in that province news 
 had already been heard. They traveled together in their separate 
 litters, overwhelmed with sorrow; and, often stopping on the 
 way till their litters came together, condoled with one another. 
 But Quintus was the more disheartened, when he reflected on his 
 want of means for his journey; for, as he said, he had brought 
 nothing with him from home. And even Cicero himself had but 
 a slender provision. It was judged, therefore, most expedient 
 that Cicero should make what haste he could to fly, and Quintus 
 return home to provide necessaries, and thus resolved, they 
 mutually embraced, and parted with many tears. 
 
 "Quintus, within a few days after, betrayed by his servants 
 to those who came to search for him, was slain, together with 
 his young son. But Cicero was carried to Astura, where, finding 
 a vessel, he immediately went on board her, and sailed as far as 
 Circaeum with a prosperous gale; but when the pilots resolved 
 immediately to set sail from thence, whether fearing the sea, or 
 not wholly distrusting the faith of Caesar, 46 he went on shore, 
 and passed by land a hundred furlongs, as if he was going for 
 Eome. But losing resolution and changing his mind, he again 
 
 « Gudeman, pp. 27-29. 
 
 « Clough 's translation. The quaintness of the style accords well with 
 the legendary character of the content. 
 * 6 i.e., Oetavian, later Augustus. 
 
THE FLIGET 683 
 
 returned to the sea, and there spent the night in fearful and 
 perplexed thoughts. Sometimes he resolved to go into Caesar's 
 house privately, and there kill himself upon the altar of his 
 household gods, to bring divine vengeance upon him ; but the fear 
 of torture put him off this course. And after passing through a 
 variety of confused and uncertain counsels, at last he let his 
 servants carry him by sea to Capitae, where he had a house, an 
 agreeable place to retire to in the heat of summer, when the 
 Etesian winds are so pleasant. 
 
 "There was at that place a chapel of Apollo, not far from 
 the seaside, from which a flight of crows arose with a great noise, 
 and made towards Cicero 's vessel as it rowed to land, and light- 
 ing on both sides of the yard, some croaked, others pecked the 
 ends of the ropes. This was looked upon by all as an ill omen ; 
 and, therefore, Cicero again went ashore, and, entering his house, 
 lay down upon his bed to compose himself to rest. Many of 
 the crows settled about the window, making a dismal cawing; 
 but one of them alighted upon the bed where Cicero lay covered 
 up, and with its bill by little and little pecked off the clothes 
 from his face. His servants, seeing this, blamed themselves that 
 they should stay to be spectators of their master's murder, and 
 do nothing in his defence, whilst the brute creatures came to 
 assist and take care of him in his undeserved affliction; and 
 therefore, partly by entreaty, partly by force, they took him 
 up, and carried him in his litter towards the seaside. 
 
 ' ' But in the meantime the assassins were come with a band of 
 soldiers, Herennius, a centurion, and Popillius, a tribune, whom 
 Cicero had formerly defended when prosecuted for the murder 
 of his father. Finding the doors shut, they broke them open, 
 and Cicero not appearing, and those within saying they knew 
 not where he was, it is stated that a youth, who had been educated 
 by Cicero in the liberal arts and sciences, an emancipated slave 
 of his brother Quintus, Philologus by name, informed the tribune 
 that the litter was on its way to the sea through the close and 
 
684 THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 shady walks. The tribune, taking a few with him, ran to the 
 place where he was to come out. And Cicero, perceiving Her- 
 ennius running in the walks, commanded his servants to set down 
 the litter; and stroking his chin, as he used to do, with his left 
 hand, he looked steadfastly upon his murderers, his person cov- 
 ered with dust, his beard and hair untrimmed, and his face worn 
 with his troubles. So that the greatest part of those that stood 
 by covered their faces whilst Herennius slew him. And thus 
 was he murdered, stretching forth his neck out of the litter, 
 being now in his sixty-fourth year. Herennius cut off his 
 head, and, by Antony's command, his hands also, by which his 
 Philippics were written; for so Cicero styled those orations he 
 wrote against Antony, and so they are called to this day. 
 
 "When these members of Cicero were brought to Koine, 
 Antony was holding an assembly for the choice of public officers ; 
 and when he heard it, and saw them, he cried out, ' Now let there 
 be an end of our proscriptions.' He commanded his head and 
 hands to be fastened up over the rostra, where the orators 
 spoke ; a sight which the Roman people shuddered to behold, and 
 they believed they saw there, not the face of Cicero, but the image 
 of Antony's own soul. And yet amidst these actions he did 
 justice in one thing, by delivering up Philologus to Eomponia, 
 the wife of Quintus ; who, having got his body into her power, 
 besides other grievous punishments, made him cut off his own 
 flesh by pieces, and roast and eat it; for so some writers have 
 related. But Tiro, Cicero's emancipated slave, has not so much 
 as mentioned the treachery of Philologus. 
 
 ' ' Some long time after, Caesar, I have been told, visiting one 
 of his daughter's sons, found him with a book of Cicero's in his 
 hand. The boy for fear endeavored to hide it under his gown; 
 which Caesar perceiving, took it from him, and turning over a 
 great part of the book standing, gave it to him again, and said, 
 'My child, this was a learned man, and a lover of his country.' 
 And immediately after he had vanquished Antony, being then 
 
CICERO DIED FOR ROME 685 
 
 consul, he made Cicero 's son his colleague in the office ; and under 
 that consulship, the senate took down all the statues of Antony, 
 and abolished all the other honors that had been given him, and 
 decreed that none of that family should thereafter bear the name 
 of Marcus ; and thus the final acts of the punishment of Antony 
 were, by the divine powers, devolved upon the family of Cicero. ' ' 
 
 If it is true that no man should be accounted happy before 
 his death, then it is also true that a man may be accounted happy 
 because of his death. Cicero's death was happy, despite its 
 tragedy. He died, as he had lived, for Rome ; after the republic 
 had fallen, he would not have chosen to live. It is not possible 
 to conceive of Cicero as finding rest or contentment hidden away 
 in a Roman villa or in a Greek city while the Roman world was 
 convulsed by the ambition of her masters, or even later, when 
 the rule of Augustus gave peace, for the peace of Augustus would 
 have seemed like a pall of death to the old champion of the free 
 republic. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 This bibliography contains only the books and articles that I have 
 found particularly useful or that treat in greater detail some of the topics 
 not usually much attended to in biographies of Cicero. For a classified and 
 very full bibliography, see Schanz; also Heitland, Laurand, and Niese. 
 
 Abbott, F. F. 
 
 A history and description of Roman political institutions; ed. 3. 1911. 
 Aknim, H. von. 
 
 Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa. 1898. 
 Beenouilli, J. J. 
 
 Eoemische Ikonographie. 1882. 
 BESANgoN, A. 
 
 Les adversaires de l'hellenisme a Eome pendant la periode republicaine, 
 1910. A very interesting book. Discusses Cicero's attitude both to 
 things Greek and to the Romans in their connection with the Greeks. 
 Like other writers, Besangon takes Cicero's characterizations of 
 Crassus and other Romans as true to history; but see above, pp. 
 416 ff. 
 Bertrand, Isd. 
 
 Ciceron artiste. 1890. 
 Ciceron au theatre. 1897. 
 Birt, Th. 
 
 Abriss des antiken Buehwesens; ed. 3. 1913. In Mueller's Eandibuch. 
 Boissier, G. 
 
 Ciceron et ses amis (1865) ; ed. 13. 1905. A classic, and needs no 
 praise. This book is not superficial, as has sometimes been main- 
 tained. 
 Botspord, G. W. 
 
 "On the legality of the trial and condemnation of the Catiline conspira- 
 tors," Classical Weekly, VI, 130-132 (March 1, 1913). 
 BoTsroRB, G. 
 
 The Roman assemblies from their origin to the end of the republic. 1909. 
 Bdettner, R. 
 
 Porcius Licinus und der literarisehe Kreis des Q. Lutatius Catulus. 
 1893. 
 Cauer, Fr. 
 
 Ciceros politisehes Denken. 1903. See above, p. 224, note 2. 
 Clark, A. C 
 
 Fontes prosae numerosae. 1910. 
 Cowles, F. H. 
 
 Gaius Verres ; an historical study. 1917. Published after I had written 
 the chapter on the prosecution of Verrea. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGBAPHY 687 
 
 CUCHEVAL, V. 
 
 Ciceron orateur; analyse et critique des discours de Ciceron. 1901. 
 2 vols. Has many excellent observations on the details of Cicero's 
 orations. 
 Histoire de 1 'eloquence latine depuis l'origine de Rome jusqu'a Ciceron. 
 1892. 2 vols. 
 Dmtmann", W. 
 
 Geschichte Rorns. 1834 ff . ; ed. 2, 1899 ff. 6 vols. 
 Fowler, W. W. 
 
 Social life at Rome in the age of Cicero. 1909. 
 The religious experience of the Roman people. 1911. 
 Fruechtl, A. 
 
 Die Geldgeschafte bei Cicero. 1912. 
 Gasquy, A. 
 
 Ciceron jurisconsulte. 1887. See above, p. 115. 
 Goedeckemeyer, A. 
 
 Die Geschichte des griechisehen Skeptizismus. 1905. This is the most 
 complete account of Cicero as a philosophical writer. See Zielinski's 
 criticism. Cicero im Wandel etc., p. 374. See also above, p. 555. 
 Greenidge, A. H. 
 
 Roman public life. 1901. 
 
 The legal procedure of Cicero 's time. 1901. See above, p. 115. 
 
 GtTDEMAN, A. 
 
 "The sources of Plutarch's life of Cieero. " Publ. Univ. Penna. Series 
 in Philol. and Lit., VIII, no. 2 (1902). 
 Heinze, R. 
 
 "Cicero's politische Anfange, " A b h. d. saclis. Ges. d. Wiss., XXVII 
 (1909), 947-1010. See above, p. 140, note 10. 
 Heitland, W. E. 
 
 The Roman Republic. 1909. 3 vols. 
 Henbrickson, G. L. 
 
 "Literary sources in Cicero's Brutus and the technique of citation in 
 dialogue." Amer. Jour. Phil., XXVII (1906), 184-199. 
 
 HlRZEL, R. 
 
 Der Dialog. 1895. See above, p. 414. 
 Kroll, W. 
 
 "Cicero und die Rhetorik," Neue Jahrb. f. d. Mass. Alt., XI (1903), 
 681 ff. Founded on investigations given by Kroll in Bhein. Mus., 
 LVIII, 522 ff. See above, p. 423. 
 
 Ed. Cicero's Orator. 1913. 
 Ladrand, L. 
 
 De M. Tulli Ciceronis studiis rhetoricis. 1907. 
 
 Etudes sur le style des discours de Ciceron. 1907. 
 Martha, J. 
 
 Ed. Cicero's Brutus. 1907. 
 
688 CICEEO 
 
 Misch, G. 
 
 Geschichte der Autobiographie, Erster Band, Das Altertum. 1907. See 
 above, p. 356. 
 
 NlESE, B. 
 
 Grundriss der romischen Geschichte nebst Quellenkunde ; ed. 3. 1906. 
 
 In Mueller's Handbuch. 
 Noeden, Ed. 
 
 Aus Cieeros Werkstatt. 1913. 
 
 Die antike Kunstprosa, I. 1898. 
 Peter, H. 
 
 "Der Brief in der romischen Literate," Abh. d. siiolis. Ges. d. Wiss., 
 XX, no. 3 (1901). 258 pages. Full of suggestions. 
 
 Die gesehiehtliehe Literatur iiber die roemische Kaiserzeit. 1897. 
 Plaumann, G. 
 
 "Das sogenannte senatus eonsultum ultimum, die Quasidiktatur der 
 spaeteren roemisehen Republik," KUo, XIII (1913), 321-380. See 
 above, p. 238, note 8. 
 Reid, J. S. 
 
 Ed. Cicero's Academica. 1885. 
 Eeitzenstein, B. 
 
 Werden und Wesen der Humanitat im Altertum. 1907. 
 Eeure, C. O. 
 
 Les gens de lettres et leurs protecteurs a, Borne. 1891. 
 Schanz, M. 
 
 Geschichte der roemisehen Literatur, I, 2; ed. 3. 1909. In Mueller's 
 Handbuoh. 
 
 SCHMEKEL, A. 
 
 Die Philosophie der Mittleren Stoa. 1892. 
 Schmidt, O. E. 
 
 Cicero und Terentia. 1898. Neu-e Jahrb. f. d. Mass. Alt., I, 174-185. 
 Cieeros Villen. 1899. Also in ~Ne%e Jahrb. f. d. Mass. Alt., Ill, 328— 
 
 355, 467-497. 
 Der Briefwechsel des Marcus Tullius Cicero von seinem Prokonsulat in 
 
 Cilicien bis zu Caesars Ermordung. 1893. 
 
 SCHNEIDEWIN, M. 
 
 Antike Humanitat. 1897. 
 
 Schwartz, Ed. 
 
 Charakterkopfe aus der antiken Literatur. 1903-1910. I, 4 (Polybius 
 
 und Posidonius) ; I, 5 (Cicero). 
 
 Sihler, E. G. 
 
 Cicero of Arpinum. 1914. The most useful reference book on Cicero 
 
 in a single volume. Very little effort to treat the broader aspects of 
 
 Cicero 's life, though many golden thoughts can be found by the 
 
 reader who will search for them. 
 
 "GeTiKurepov, Cicero ad Quint. Fr. 3, 3, 4," Amer. Jovr. Phil. XXIII. (1902). 
 283 ft. 
 
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 689 
 
 Strachan-Davidson, L. 
 
 Cicero and the fall of the Roman Republic. 1894. Excellent. As the 
 title indicates, the book is concerned largely with the history of 
 Cicero's times. 
 Taylor, H. 
 
 Cicero, a sketch of his life and works. 1916. Mentioned here prin- 
 cipally because it is the latest biography of Cicero. Constructed on 
 broad lines, but shows little evidence of independent study of Cicero 's 
 works. 
 Tyrrell, R. Y., and Purser, L. 
 
 The correspondence of M. Tullius Cicero, arranged according to its 
 chronological order. 7 vols. 1879 ff. ; I, ed. 2, 1885. Indispensable 
 to the student of Cicero or of his times. The introductory essays 
 are of very great value. The publishers would do a real service 
 to classical scholarship by issuing them separately, so as to make 
 them widely accessible. The index volume contains in brief a critical 
 biography of nearly every person mentioned in the correspondence. 
 Volkmann, R. E. 
 
 Die Rhetorik der Grieehen und Rbmer; ed. 2. 1885. 
 Rhetorik; ed. 3, by C. Hammer, 1901. In Mueller's Handbuch. 
 Watson, A. 
 
 Cicero, Select letters; ed. 4. 1891. 
 Wilkins, A. S. 
 
 Ed. Cieero 's De Oratore. 1892. 
 Zeller, Ed. 
 
 Die Philosophie der Grieehen. Dritter Teil, Erste Abt., ed. 3. 1880. 
 
 ZlELINSKI, TH. 
 
 "Antike Humanitat," Neue Jarb. f. d. Tclass. Alt., I (1898), 1-22. 
 Mainly a criticism of Sehneidewin 's Antike Humanitat. 
 
 Cieero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte ; ' ed. 2. 1908. A third edition, 
 which I have not seen, in 1912. Probably the most brilliant book 
 written on Cicero. Though Zielinski is concerned primarily with 
 Cicero's influence in later times, he has made a very earnest effort 
 to grasp Cicero's personality and at the same time to express it in 
 brief compass, but his account, though very interesting and sugges- 
 tive, explains too much. A human character is not a skeleton, the 
 bones of which can be taken apart and labeled. Zielinski too often 
 assumes that Cicero's actions were dictated by conscious motives, 
 and he fails to give due consideration to the private or political cir- 
 cumstances that lie behind many of the passages on which he founds 
 his judgment. See also above, p. 454. 
 
 Transmitted February 14, 1919. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Academica, 417-418, 500, 540-546, 
 
 586, 615. 
 Academy, 540-546 (esp. 543), 547, 
 
 565, 571, 579, 580-581, 584. 
 Academy (garden), 220-221. 
 Achaian trial, 126. 
 Actiones, 135, 141-142. 
 Actium, 678. 
 Aculeo, 30, 113. 
 Adsectatores, 195. 
 Advocati, 124. 
 Aeschines, 428. 
 
 Against Ctesipho, 372, 440. 
 Aesop (actor), 100, 101. 
 Agricultural legislation, 222-227. 
 Ailing Twins, 411-412, 679. 
 Allobroges, 264-270, 278-279. 
 Amaltheum, 27. 
 Amicitia, Be, 558, 571-574. 
 Anecdota, 356. 
 Antioch, 43-44. 
 Antiochus, 220, 221, 423, 454, 540- 
 
 541, 543, 545, 547, 581. 
 Antonius, C. (Cicero's colleague; 
 
 uncle of triumvir), 197-198, 
 
 200-202, 216, 245, 247, 256, 
 
 269, 285, 308. 
 Antonius, C. (brother of triumvir), 
 
 627-629, 650, 670. 
 Antonius, L. (brother of triumvir), 
 
 635-636, 661. 
 Antonius, M. (orator; grandfather 
 
 of triumvir), 51, 62, 87, 88, 
 
 104-106, 111-112, 119, 122, 
 
 204, 366, 415, 417-418, 432, 
 
 620. 
 Antonius Creticus, M. (father of 
 
 triumvir), 182-183. 
 Antonius, M. (Mark Antony), 67, 
 
 135, 217, 481, 492, 501, 512, 
 
 595, 597-604, 606-613 (esp. 
 
 611-612), 615-663 (esp. 638- 
 
 641), 665-672, (esp. 667-668), 
 
 674, 676-680, 684-685. 
 Apographa, 583. 
 Appius Claudius the Blind, 117, 
 
 435. 
 
 Appius Claudius (Cicero's prede- 
 cessor in Cilicia), 471-472 
 476, 479, 570. 
 
 Aratus, 350. 
 
 Arcesilas, 543, 545. 
 
 Archias, 289-290, 348, 350-351, 
 353, 355. 
 Pro Archia, 288-290. 
 
 Archimedes, 173. 
 
 Armenia, 184. 
 
 Arpinum, 22-32, 33, 45, 215, 218. 
 
 Aristo, 582. 
 
 Artistotle, 261, 370, 378, 414-415, 
 443, 544, 547. 
 Aristotelio more, 414-416. 
 
 Art, 160-161, 211. 
 
 Asia, 184, 190, 309. 
 
 Asia Minor, 43, 181, 184. 
 
 Astura, 525-526, 614. 
 
 Athens, 44, 203, 213, 218-221. 
 
 "Attic" oratory, 438-441, 599. 
 
 Atticus, 8-10, 22-26 (esp. 25), 27, 
 38-39, 50, 67, 191-192, 203, 
 205, 208-211, 219-221, 304, 
 308, 313-315, 317, 320, 341- 
 342, 355, 476, 525, 536, 572- 
 574, 616, 664; his grandmother, 
 19; his mother, 203; sister, 
 203, 208-210; his uncle, 191- 
 192, 208. 
 Liber Annalis, 434, 573. 
 
 Auctortfas, 3, 12, 75, 103, 106. 
 
 Augury (Cicero on), 570. 
 
 Augustine, St., 438, 444, 539. 
 
 Augustus (see Octavius), 6, 682, 
 684, 685. 
 
 Autobiographical passage, 437-438. 
 
 Autobiography, 3-13, 352-360. 
 
 Authorship, 88-89, 343-365. See 
 Publication. 
 
 Balbus, 303, 320, 491, 493, 503, 
 519, 624. 
 Pro Balbo, 335. 
 
 Basilus, 515, 591. 
 
 Bassus, Ventidius, 667, 672. 
 
 Bibulus, 302, 305, 310, 336, 469. 
 
 Biography, 352-360. 
 
 Bona Dea, 275, 297-298. 
 
INDEX 
 
 691 
 
 Boni, 232, 249, 334. 
 
 Botsford, 281. 
 
 Bovillae, 336-337. 
 
 Brundisium, 315, 323-324, 494-495, 
 516-519. 
 
 Brutus, Decimus, 241, 595, 597, 
 599-602, 604, 607, 610, 627- 
 628, 630-631, 634, 636, 647, 
 653-655, 658, 662, 666-672, 
 677-678. 
 
 Brutus, M. Iunius, 31, 279, 282, 
 350, 438-441, 474, 476, 500, 
 534-535, 585, 594-595, 598- 
 602, 604, 609-611, 613-614, 
 616-617, 622, 627-628, 630, 
 650-651, 660, 668, 670, 673- 
 676, 678. 
 
 Brutus, M. (opponent of L. Cras- 
 sus), 106-108, 119. 
 
 Brutus, (71, 102-103), 372, 433- 
 440, 445. 
 
 Caecilium, Divinatio in, 125-126, 
 137. 
 
 Caecilius (Atticus' uncle), 191- 
 192, 208. 
 
 Caecina, Pro, 115-116. 
 
 Caelfus, 467, 473, 481, 493. 
 Pro Caelio, 200, 207, 335. 
 
 Caeparius, 266, 269. 
 
 Caerellia, 206-207, 521. 
 
 Caesar, 5, 15-17, 54, 180-183, 188, 
 190, 198-199, 201, 213, 222, 
 227-228, 230, 236-239, 242, 
 244, 269, 271, 276-283, 287, 
 292, 295-297, 300, 302-312, 
 314, 320, 322, 329, 331-333, 
 336, 339-341, 350, 352, 353- 
 354, 357, 437, 454, 456, 464- 
 467, 468^171, 480-515 (esp. 
 488-489, 491-492, 504-505, 
 511-513), 516-518, 535, 577- 
 578, 591-592, 594-596, 601, 
 638-641. 
 Civil War, 352; Commentaries, 
 361; Gallic War, 352, 354; 
 minor works, 349. 
 
 Caesar, L., 648. 
 
 Calenus, 643, 649-651, 654. 
 
 Calliope, 304. 
 
 Calvus, 438-441. 
 
 Campania, 483. 
 
 Caninius, 514-515. 
 
 Canvassing, 194-198. 
 
 Capua, 483. 
 
 Carneades, 221, 449-450, 543. 
 
 Cassius, 265, 468, 481, 595, 598, 
 600-602, 604, 609-610, 616- 
 617, 622, 628, 630, 651-652, 
 668, 673, 677, 678. 
 Catiline, 63, 118, 121, 191, 197-202 
 (esp. 199-200), 222. 
 First Catilinarian Conspiracy, 
 
 199, 272-273. 
 Catilinarian Conspiracy, 235, 
 240-285, 287-288, 293, 295, 
 297-298, 309, 311, 314, 354; 
 Cicero's orations against, 93, 
 95-96; I, 249-255; II, 255- 
 257; III, 270-275; IV, 279- 
 281. 
 Catilinarians, 304, 306, 308-309, 
 
 315. 
 Cato (the Elder), 417, 435, 455, 
 
 573. 
 Cato (of TJtica), 3, 15, 43-44, 227, 
 242, 247, 258-262, 277, 279, 
 282-283, 287, 292, 294-296, 
 298, 301-303, 307, 314, 319, 
 336, 352, 373, 466, 470-471, 
 476, 493^194, 500, 503. 
 Cato Maior, see Senectute, Be. 
 Catullus, 207, 298, 329, 360, 438, 
 
 504. 
 Catulus, 183, 186-187, 235, 256, 
 278, 287, 296, 301, 354, 418, 
 432-433, 540. 
 Cauer, 454. 
 
 Cethegus, 263-265, 267-268, 277. 
 Chelidon, 149-150. 
 Chrysogonus, 80-86 (esp. 85-86). 
 Cicero, advocate, career as, 72-76; 
 aedileship, 133, 174-175; am- 
 bition, 33-34, 67, 291-292, 307; 
 apographa, 583; appearance, 
 98; art, 160-161, 211; augury, 
 work on, 570; autobiographical 
 passage, 437-438; autobiogra- 
 phy, 3-13, 352-360; author- 
 ship, 88-89, 343-365. 
 Canvasser, 193; character and 
 failings, 18-21; character and 
 talents, 33-34; consular can- 
 vass, 191-202; consulship, 
 222 ff., 295, 334; writings on 
 consulship, 355-356; cynicus 
 consularis, 299. 
 Declaims theses, 490; despond- 
 ency, 318-320; dignitas, 214- 
 
692 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cicero — (Continued). 
 
 'Education, 33 (note), 71, 348; 
 epigrams, 349; exile, 306 ff., 
 334. 
 
 Essays, 4-6, 364; historical back- 
 ground of, 416-418; prefaces 
 to, 6, 587-588, 615. 
 
 Fame, 1-2, 239, 307, 461; family, 
 30; "father of his country," 
 287; four great days, 491 (280 
 ff., 303-304, 619 ff.). 
 
 Geography, work on, 307, 351. 
 
 "Gnaeus Cicero," 299. 
 
 Health, 97-98; honest with him- 
 self, 529; Jmmanilas, 344-348, 
 579. 
 
 Jurisconsult, 114. 
 
 Letters, 6-11, 286, 351, 495; 
 library, 212; life divided in 
 two parts, unevenly known, 
 11-13, 286-287; literature 289; 
 lover, 206-208. 
 
 Memory, 193; military man, 467- 
 471; money, 212-217. 
 
 "New" man, 53, 197, 202, 276, 
 296, 313, 330; not bookishly 
 blind, 454. 
 
 Old, 594, 665; opens Quintius' 
 letters, 17, 516. 
 
 Orations, 2-4, 11-12, 335-336; 
 commonplaces, 98-99; delivery, 
 100-102, 430-431; digressions, 
 148; passion, 99-100; prepar- 
 ation of, 92-93, 430-431; rhet- 
 orical passages, 78-79, 83,' 98- 
 99. 
 
 Palatine, house on, 206, 214-215, 
 283, 288, 314, 334; patriotism, 
 37-38, 456, 460-461. 
 
 Philosophy, sources of Cicero 's 
 works, 582-584; writing, 536. 
 
 Poetry, 350-351; political atti- 
 tude, 75, 139-140, 176, 196-197, 
 222, 290-293, 303-305, 329- 
 330, 453-456, 491-493, 628- 
 633; praetorship, 175-190; 
 prominence after consulship, 
 287-290. 
 
 Ouaestorship, 124, 172-174. 
 
 Recantation, 333; rector, 451, 
 456, 633; religion, 274-275, 
 526-529, 565; rex, 288. 
 
 Ehetoric, authorship, 366-367; 
 declamations about Cicero, 679- 
 681 ; sources of Cicero 's works, 
 422-425; works, 366-373. 
 
 Cicero — ( Continued ) . 
 
 Sarcasm, 259; "sojourner" in 
 Rome, 202, 254; speaks Greek, 
 131; style, 94-95, 98-100, 103- 
 104, 258-259, 428-431, 441- 
 442; suicide, 318-320, 458, 
 562, 564; supplicatio, 269, 470- 
 471. 
 Toga virilis, 51, 61; "togatus," 
 269; translations, 350, 372 
 429, 585-586; " triumph, " 483, 
 498. 
 Vanity, 288-289, 291-292, 352- 
 360; villas, 27 (note), 213- 
 214, 218, 337. 
 Wit, 426-427; works, 2, 10-12, 
 362-365; minor works, 349- 
 351, 355-358. 
 
 Cicero, Lucius (cousin of orator), 
 127, 129-130, 204, 219-221. 
 
 Cicero, M. Tullius (grandfather of 
 orator), 25, 28-29. 
 
 Cicero, M. Tullius (father of ora- 
 tor), 25, 29, 204. 
 
 Cicero, M. Tullius (son of orator), 
 6, 31, 213, 281, 478, 484, 490, 
 
 493, 522, 580, 612, 664, 685. 
 Cicero, Quintus Tullius (brother of 
 
 orator), 5, 8-9, 14, 22-26, 28, 
 204, 208-210, 215, 219-221, 
 273-274, 277, 280-281, 289, 
 316, 318, 321-322, 332, 339, 
 341-342, 349, 350, 467-469, 
 472, 493-494, 516-518, 664, 
 682. 
 Commentariolum Petitionis, 14, 
 194-198. 
 Cicero, Quintus Tullius (nephew of 
 orator), 31, 209, 478, 484, 493- 
 
 494, 516, 518. 
 Cicero 's mother, 29-30. 
 Cicero's uncle, 51, 204. 
 Cilicia, 54, 216, 462-479. 
 Cinna, 62, 264. 
 Clodia, 206, 298, 308. 
 
 Clodius, 16, 182, 185, 214, 297-299, 
 301, 306, 308-314, 317, 320- 
 323, 326-327, 329, 330, 332- 
 334, 336, 338, 611-612, 638, 
 681. 
 
 Cluentio, Pro, 118-122. 
 
 Cluvius, 217. 
 
 Comitia centuriata, 55. 
 
 Comitia tributa, 55. 
 
INDEX 
 
 693 
 
 Commentariolum Petitionls, 14, 194- 
 
 198. 
 Concordia ordinum, 255, 290, 300, 
 
 305. 
 Consensio bonorum, 249. 
 Consilium, 154. 
 Consiliis Suis, De, 356. 
 Consolatio, 365, 529-532, 558. 
 Contio, 59-60, 70. 
 Cornelius, Cicero's defense of, 142, 
 
 190. 
 Cornificii, 212-213. 
 Cotta, 196. 
 Crantor, 530. 
 Crassipes, 524. 
 
 Crassus, L. (orator), 30, 50-51, 61, 
 . 71, 87, 106-108, 111-112, 114, 
 
 119, 122, 346, 367, 368, 417- 
 
 418, 432. 
 Crassus (triumvir), 21, 40, 47, 73, 
 
 176, 178-181, 198-199, 201, 
 
 213, 227, 244, 247-248, 258, 
 
 269, 278, 298-305, 310, 311, 
 
 331, 353, 465. 
 Crete, 183. 
 
 Curio, 307, 481-482, 486, 493, 638. 
 Curius, 245-246, 250. 
 Death, 532-533, 554-555, 561-562. 
 Decorum, 579. 
 Deductores, 195. 
 Defense and prosecution, 73-74, 
 
 122, 138-139, 170. 
 Deiotarus, 468-469, 478, 570. 
 
 Pro Deiotaro, 507-511. 
 Delphi, 218-219. 
 Demetrius, 44. 
 
 Demosthenes, 221, 362, 428, 440. 
 On the Crown, 372, 440. 
 Philippics, 88, 619, 
 De repetundis rebus, 54. 
 Dialectic, 542, 556. 
 Dialogue writing, 413-416. 
 Digest of Justinian, 115. 
 Dignitas, 214-215. 
 Diodotus, 217, 348, 556. 
 Dionysius, 172-173. 
 Divinatio (in courts), 124, 137. 
 Dwinatio in Caecilium, 125-126, 
 
 137. 
 Divination (prophecy), 568-570. 
 Divinatione, De, 5 (101), 569-570, 
 
 592. 
 Divisores, 133. 
 Dogmatism, 541-546, 579-580. 
 
 Dolabella, 205, 479, 520, 524-525, 
 535, 596, 598, 601, 603-604, 
 608-611, 619-620, 628-629, 
 650-653, 658-659, 668, 677. 
 
 Domo Sua, De, 334. 
 
 Dream of Scipio, see Somnium Sci- 
 pionis. 
 
 Dreams, 32, 322, 528, 569. 
 
 Duty, see Officiis, De. 
 
 Dyrrhachium, 315-317, 493-494. 
 
 Education, 70, 348, 450; liberal, 
 419-422; self-educated man, 
 419; vocational training, 421- 
 422. 
 
 Egypt, 226, 230. 
 
 Eleusinian mysteries, 218-219. 
 
 Ennius, 427. 
 
 Epicurus, 220-221, 564. 
 
 Epicureans, 328, 477, 541, 544, 
 581-582, 586-587. See also 
 Finibus, De, esp. 547-550; Tus- 
 culan Disputations, esp. 564; 
 Natura Deorum, De, esp. 565- 
 566; Fato, De. 
 Epicurean thoughts, 27, 282. 
 
 Epigrams, 349. 
 
 Equites, 49-52, 180, 190. 
 
 Erucius, 81-82, 95. 
 
 Essays, 4-6, 364; historical back- 
 ground, 416-418; prefaces, 6, 
 587-588, 615. 
 
 Ethics, 581, 586. See Finibus, De; 
 TusCulan Disputations, esp. 
 555-557; Officiis, De. 
 
 Etruria, 247, 255. 
 
 Eupolis, 221. 
 
 Fabia, 200-201, 264. 
 
 Fadius, 340. 
 
 Faesulae, 177, 242. 
 
 Fame, 459-461. See Gloria, De. 
 
 Fato, De, 570-571. 
 
 Felix, 179. 
 
 Finibus, De, 207, 219-221, 547- 
 554, 580, 583. 
 
 Flacci, 315, 324. 
 
 Flaccus, L., 266, 269, 308-309. 
 Pro Flacco, 308-309. 
 
 Fonteius, 140, 175. 
 Pro Fonteio, 309, 335. 
 
 Foreigners, 41—44, 335. 
 
 Formiae, villa at, 213-214, 218, 
 314. 
 
 Forum, life in, 59-60. 
 
 Free will, see Fato, De. 
 
694 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Friendship, On, see Amicitia, De. 
 
 Fulvia, 246, 251, 681. 
 
 Gabinius, Aulus (consul 58 B.C.), 
 
 183, 311, 314, 320, 328-329, 
 
 338. 
 Gabinius, Publius (conspirator), 
 
 265, 266, 268. 
 Gaul, 301, 305, 331, 333. 
 
 Cispadane, 191-192. 
 Gauls, 41, 309. See Allobroges. 
 Geography, Cicero 's work on, 307, 
 
 351. 
 Gloria, De, 558. 
 "Gnaeus Cicero," 299. 
 Gods, see Natura Deorum, De. 
 Government, three forms of, 446- 
 
 447. 
 Gracchi, 227, 232. 
 
 C. Gracchus, 428. 
 Gratidianus, 63, 200. 
 ece, • 
 
 315. 
 
 Greek chroniclers, 289, 290, 292. 
 Greek language, 131, 588. 
 Greeks, 18, 38, 41-43, 97, 112, 173, 
 
 218, 309, 328, 343-351, 361- 
 
 362, 425-426, 448, 450-451. 
 Grief, 526, 558, 562-564. 
 Hannibal, 425. 
 
 Haruspicum Responses, De, 334. 
 Heinze, 140. 
 Helvia, 29-30. 
 Eerennium, Ad, 367-368. 
 Hermagoras, 44. 
 Herodes, 355. 
 Hirtius, 354, 604, 608, 616, 643, 
 
 647, 652, 654, 656-659, 661, 
 
 665-667. 
 Homer, 192, 304. 
 Honestum, 576. 
 Horace, 292, 324, 341. 
 Hortensius, 15, 74, 76, 79, 124-126, 
 
 132-137 (esp. 135-137), 183, 
 
 186-187, 237, 239, 258, 287- 
 
 288, 298, 303, 313, 418, 432- 
 
 433, 438, 477-478, 537, 540; his 
 
 son, 493. 
 Hortensius, 537-539. 
 Eumanitas, (210), 344-348, 579. 
 Sypomnema, hypomnemata, 354. 
 Illyrieum, 305. 
 Immortality, 458, 532-533, 554, 
 
 557-561. 
 Imperio Cn. Pompei, De, 185-190. 
 Ineptus, 425. 
 
 Innocentia, 54. 
 
 Inventione, De, see Bhetorici, Libri. 
 
 lure Civili in Artem Bedigendo, De, 
 
 114. 
 Jerome, St., 589-590. 
 Jews, 41, 309. 
 Julia, 464-465. 
 
 "Julius and Caesar," 245, 305. 
 Jupiter, 251, 267, 272-275. 
 Jurisconsult, 113-114. 
 Jury courts, 139, 180. 
 Justice, 449-450, 576. 
 Justinian, Digest, 115. 
 Juvenal, 287, 641. 
 King, 511. 
 
 Knights, see Equites. 
 Labienus, 236-237, 484, 486. 
 Lactantius, 444, 450, 533. 
 Laeca's house, 251-252, 266. 
 Laelia, 51, 428. 
 Laelius, 220, 291, 297, 573. 
 Laelius, see De Amicitia. 
 "Last decree" of the senate, see 
 
 Senatus consultum ultimum. 
 Latin language, 362-363, 380-382, 
 
 537, 585-586, 588. 
 Latin rhetoricians, 367, 424. 
 Latin word formation, 380-381. 
 Laudatio funeoris, 53, 391. 
 Law, 110-117, 259-260, 406. 
 Lege Agraria, De, see Rullus. 
 Lege Manilia, Pro, see Imperio Vn. 
 
 Pompei, De. 
 Legationes liberae, 235-236. 
 Legions, De, (22-26), (30-31), 114, 
 
 445. 
 Lentulus (conspirator), 244, 263- 
 
 265, 277-278, 283. 
 Lentulus (consul 57 B.C.), 326. 
 Lentulus (Tullia's son), 520. 
 Lepidus, 598, 600-601, 607, 627, 
 
 630, 644, 657, 659, 667, 671- 
 
 674, 677-678. 
 Lesbia, 298. See also Clodia. 
 Letter writing, 6-7. 
 Ligario, Pro, 502-503. 
 Lilybaeum, 172. 
 Livy, 319, 681. 
 Logic, 378, 545, 556. • 
 Luca, conference at, 331. 
 Lueceius, 359-360. 
 Lucretius, 585-586. 
 Luculli, 289-290, 292. 
 Lucullus, L., 54, 184, 186-187, 213, 
 
 235, 261, 313, 417, 540. 
 
INDEX 
 
 695 
 
 Lucullus, M., 178, 311-312. 
 Lysias, 438. 
 Macedonia, 245, 316. 
 Macer, 175-176, 180, 190. 
 Magistrates, 56-57. 
 Mamurra, 504. 
 Manilius, 176, 185-190. 
 
 Pro Lege Manilia, 185-190. 
 Manlius, 242, 247-250, 253, 256, 
 
 264. 
 Marcello, Pro (consul 51 B.C.), 505- 
 
 507. 
 Marcellus (consul 50 B.C.), 481. 
 Marcia, 15. 
 Marius (conqueror of Cimbri and 
 
 Teutones), 22, 26, 31-32, 60- 
 
 62, 68, 110, 187, 202, 236, 287, 
 
 322, 455. 
 Marians, 177, 186, 264. 
 Marius, 22-23, 51, 350. 
 Marius (friend of Cicero) 340. 
 Marriage in Eome, 15-16. 
 Martial law, see Senatus consultum 
 
 ultimum. 
 Masinissa, 457. 
 Matius, 592. 
 Medea, 186. 
 Memmius, C, 477. 
 Metaphysics, 556, 565-571. 
 Metelli, 124, 126, 128-133, 183, 
 
 290, 292. 
 Metellus, Q., 250. 
 Metellus Celer, 237, 262, 296 (note), 
 
 298. 
 Metellus Nepos, 294-296, 306, 318, 
 
 320, 326. 
 Milky Way, 458. 
 Milo, 320-323, 336. 
 
 Pro Milone, 91, 336-337. 
 Mithradates, 40-41, 61, 176-177, 
 
 184-188, 235, 261. 
 Molo, 98-100, 437. 
 Money getting, 36-37. 
 Montaigne, 15. 
 Mulvian bridge, 266. 
 Munda, battle of, 497. 
 Murena (consul 62 B.C.), 276. 
 
 Pro Murena, 257-262, 284. 
 Murena, C, 262. 
 Music of the spheres, 459. 
 Mutina, 647, 650, 655, 658-661, 
 
 666. 
 Mytileue, 44. 
 Nasica, 427. 
 Natura Deorum, Be, 565-568. 
 
 "New" man, 53, 197, 202, 276, 
 296, 313, 330. 
 
 Nigidius Figulus, 270, 277. 
 
 Nine heavenly spheres, 459. 
 
 Nobiles, 52-55. 
 
 Nomenclator, 193-194. 
 
 Norbanus, 104-106, 111, 377, 397, 
 403^04. 
 
 Octavian, 607-608, 614, 618, 622- 
 628 (esp. 624), 630-631 fesp. 
 631), 634-636, 644-646 (asp. 
 645), 654, 656-659, 661-662 
 (esp. 662), 665-670 (esp. G67- 
 668), 672-678 (esp. 674-675, 
 678), 684-685. See Augustus; 
 Octavius. 
 
 Octavius, 601, 604-607. See Octa- 
 vian. 
 
 Officiis, Be, (35-36), (122), 449, 
 575-580, 583, 614, 642. 
 
 Old Age, On, see Senectute, Be. 
 
 Oppius, 503, 624. 
 
 Optimo Genere Oratorum, De, 372- 
 373. 
 
 Orations, 2-4, 11-12, 335-336; com- 
 monplaces, 98-99; delivery, 
 100-102, 430-431; digressions, 
 148; passion, 99-100; prepara- 
 tion of, 92-93, 430-431; rhetor- 
 ical passages, 78-79, 83, 98-99. 
 
 Orator, 366, 372, 433, 439-442. 
 
 Oratore, Be, (111), (114), 343, 371- 
 372, 375, 412-433, 436, 445. 
 
 Oratorical Divisions, see Partiiiones 
 Oratoriae. 
 
 Oratory, importance of, 68-71. 
 
 Otho, 234-235. 
 
 Otium (scholarly leisure), 37-40, 
 289, 347. 
 
 Otium cum dignitate, 12, 218, 2SS, 
 291, 342. 
 
 Paetus, 470, 499, 664. 
 
 Palatine, house on, 206, 214-215, 
 283, 288, 314, 334, 337, 341. 
 
 Pamphleteering, 3-4, 352. 
 
 Panaetius, 36, 122, 345-346, 453- 
 454, 526, 575-576, 580-581. 
 
 Pansa, 604, 616, 634, 643, 648, 650- 
 652, 654-655, 657, 661, 665- 
 666. 
 
 Paradoxa, 373. 
 
 Parthians, 40, 468. 
 
 Partitiones Oratoriae, 370-371, 375- 
 376. 
 
 Patrae, 516. 
 
690 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Patriotism, 37-38, 456, 460-461. 
 
 Paul, St., 350. 
 
 Pericles, 221. 
 
 Phaenomena, 350. 
 
 Pharsalia, battle of, 494. 
 
 P7iiHg2i££--4*£--Gi cer0 )> 88, 619; I, 
 'lT09, 619-621p II, 89, 623, 626, 
 532, 637-642; III, 634- 
 636; IV, 636; V, 643-645; VI, 
 645; VII, 646; VIII, 648-649; 
 IX, 665-666; X, 650-651, 653; 
 XI, 651-652, 654; XII, 655- 
 657; XIII, 658-659; XIV, 661- 
 663. 
 
 Philo, 423, 540-541, 543, 584. 
 
 Philosophy, 537-591 (esp. 538-539, 
 555-557, 572, 587-591); apo- 
 grapha, 583; augury, 570; 
 death, 532-533, 554-555, 561- 
 562; decorum, 579; dialectic, 
 542, 556; divination, 568-570, 
 see also Divinatione, De; dog- 
 matism, 541-546, 579-580; 
 duty, see Officiis, De; ethics, 
 581, 586, see also Finibus, De, 
 Tusculan Disputations, esp. 555- 
 557; fate, free will, see Fato, 
 De; gods, see Natura Deorum, 
 De; grief, 526, 558, 562-564; 
 honestum, 576 ; humanitas, 344- 
 348, 579; immortality, 458, 
 532-533, 554, 557-561; justice, 
 449-450, 576; logic, 378, 545, 
 556; metaphysics, 556, 565- 
 571; physics, 555-556; provi- 
 dence, 272-275, 567-568; re- 
 ligion, 526-529, 565; sceptic- 
 ism, 541-546; soul, 458, 558- 
 559; suicide, 318-320, 458, 562, 
 564; utile, 396, 576; virtue, 
 393-394, 564; virtues, 576. 
 
 Phormio (rhetorician), 425. 
 
 Physics, 555-556. 
 
 Pindenissus, 469. 
 
 Pirates, 165-168, 181-184. 
 
 Piscinarii, 301. 
 
 Piso, C. Calpurnius (opposed to 
 Caesar in 63 B.C.), 235, 278. 
 
 Piso, C. Calpurnius P. Frugi (Ci- 
 cero's son-in-law), 205, 311- 
 312, 524. 
 
 Piso, L. Calpurnius (consul 58 
 B.C.), 311-312, 314, 316, 327- 
 329, 358, 617, 620. 
 In Pisonem, 327, 335. 
 
 Piso Calpurnianus, M. Pupius (con- 
 sul 61 B.C.), 219-221. 
 
 Plancius, 315-316, 320. 
 
 Pro Plancio, 30, (174), 334-335. 
 
 Plancus, 657, 659, 671-673, 677- 
 678. 
 
 Plato; 196, 220, 261, 345, 362, 414- 
 415, 450, 452-453, 543-544, 
 547, 556, 580-582. 
 Laws, 452; Phaedrus, 432; Re- 
 public, 452; Timaeus, 556. 
 
 Plaumann, 238. 
 
 Plebs urbana, 47-49. 
 
 Pliny (the lounger), 1-2, 349, 641. 
 
 Plutarch, 2, 193, 589, 681-682. 
 
 Politics as life work in Borne, 34- 
 39. 
 
 Pollio, 98, 607, 677, 680. 
 
 Polybius, 345, 446-447, 453-454. 
 
 Pompeius Strabo (father of Pom- 
 pey), 61. 
 
 Pompey, 15, 21, 25-26, 43-44, 45, 
 54, 61, 68, 176-190, 192-193, 
 196, 198, 213, 216, 224, 226- 
 228, 230-231, 235, 244, 261, 
 272, 278, 289, 291-292, 294- 
 312, 320-322, 325-326, 329- 
 333, 336, 353-355, 358, 455- 
 456, 464-467, 468-469, 471, 
 474, 480-494 (esp. 488), 497, 
 507-510, 578, 639-640; his 
 daughter, 521. 
 Imperio Cn. Pompei, De, 185-190. 
 
 Pompey, Sextus (son of Pompey), 
 599, 607-608, 612-613, 627, 
 644, 668-669, 677-678. 
 
 Pomponia, 203, 208-210. 
 
 Pomptinus, 266, 269, 467-468, 477. 
 
 Pontus, 184. 
 
 Post Beditum, Orationes, 325, 334. 
 Cum Populo Gratias Egit, 334. 
 Cum Senatui Gratias Egit, 90, 
 325-330. 
 
 Praeneste, 249. 
 
 Pragmatici, 112. 
 
 Prensatio, 191. 
 
 Prognostica, 350. 
 
 Prosecution, 70-71. See also De- 
 fense and prosecution. 
 
 Providence, 272-275, 567-568. 
 
 Provincial government,, Eoman at- 
 titude to, 462-463. 
 
 Provinciis Consularibus, De, 333. 
 
 Publica iura, 112. 
 
INDEX 
 
 697 
 
 Publication, 87-96, 119, 121, 142, 
 210-211. See also Authorship. 
 
 Publilia, 520-522. 
 
 Publilius, 520. 
 
 Puteoli, 173-174, 207, 260. 
 
 Pythagoras, 38, 580. 
 
 Quinctio, Pro, 76-79, 98, 114-115. 
 
 Quintilian, 1, 121, 234, 438. 
 
 Rabirio, Pro, 236-239, 275, 279. 
 
 Rabirio Postumo, Pro, 335. 
 
 Rector (moderator, gubernator) , 
 451, 456, 633. 
 
 Eeligion and philosophy, 526-529, 
 565. 
 
 Re Publico,, Be, 443-461, 633. 
 
 Rex, 288. 
 
 Rhetoric, 366-442; a<-iio (delivery, 
 pronuntiatio) , 100-102, 376, 
 428, 430-431; amor, caritas, 
 honestas, 389; amplificatio, 385, 
 388-389; animi magnitudo, see 
 temperantia ; argumentation, 
 see confirmatio ; arrangement, 
 see collocatio; clearness, 383; 
 collocatio (arrangement, dispo- 
 sitio), 375-376, 383-386, 430; 
 commonplaces, see loci com- 
 munes; conclusio, see perora- 
 tio; ■ confirmatio (argumenta- 
 tion, refutatio, reprehensio) , 
 375, 384; conquestio, 390; 
 crime, motives and traces of, 
 399-400; deliberative oratory, 
 see genus deliberativum; deliv- 
 ery, see actio; demonstrative 
 oratory, see genus demonstra- 
 tivum; digression, 385; dispo- 
 sitio, see collocatio ; elocutio 
 (style), 375-376, 379-383, 428- 
 431, 436, 440-441; emotions 
 appealed to, 99-100, 383-384, 
 391, 426, 440-441; enumeratio 
 (recapitulation), 388; epideic- 
 tic oratory, see genus demon- 
 strativum; eulogy, see lauda- 
 tio; exordium (initium, princi- 
 pium), 384, 386-387, 431. 
 Genus deliberativum (deliberative 
 oratory), 390-391, 394-397; 
 genus demonstrativnm (demon- 
 strative or epideictic oratory), 
 390-394; genus iudiciale (judi- 
 cial oratory), 390-391. 397- 
 406; hypotheses, 410-412, 422; 
 initium, see exordium; inven- 
 
 tio, 375-379, 430-431, 556; 
 judgment appealed to, 384, 
 390-391, 440-441; judicial or- 
 atory, see genus iudiciale; 
 Latin word formation, 380- 
 381; laudatio (eulogy), 53, 
 391, see also genus demonstra- 
 tivnm; loci (topics), 370, 377- 
 379, 556, 615; loci communes 
 (commonplaces), 98-99, 385- 
 386; logic, 378, 545, 556; me- 
 moria, 220, 376; miseratio, 390, 
 403; narratio (narrative), 375, 
 384, 387-388; ornate, 383. 
 Partitio, 384; pathos, 426, see 
 also emotions, etc.; peroratio 
 {conclusio), 384, 388-390; 
 principium, see exordium; pro- 
 nuntiatio, see actio; recapitu- 
 lation, see enumeratio; refuta- 
 tatio, reprehensio, see confirma- 
 tio; status, 397; status coniec- 
 turalis, 398-403; status defini- 
 tive, 398, 403-405; status le- 
 gates, 406 ; status rationis or 
 qualitatis, 398, 403-406; style, 
 see elocutio; suasio, 394, see 
 also genus deliberativum ; tem- 
 perantia (animi magnitudo), 
 394, 576; theses, 409-410, 412, 
 422, 490; topics, see loci; util- 
 ity, 396, 576; virtues, 393-394, 
 564, 576; wit, 426-427; wit- 
 nesses, 95, 109, 400-402. 
 
 Rhetorici, Libri, 351,-368-369. 
 
 Rhetoricians, Latin, 367, 424. 
 
 Rhodes, 44, 98, 218. 
 
 Romulus, 271, 287. 
 
 Roscio Amerino, Pro, 79-86; 99, 
 122. 
 
 Roseius (actor), 76, 100, 234. 
 Pro Roscio Comoedo, 115-116. 
 
 Rubicon, 480. 
 
 Rullus, 223-233; bill of, 223-233, 
 466; orations against, 226, 228- 
 233. 
 
 Rutilius Rufus, 353. 
 
 Sacred Way, 338. 
 
 St. Augustine, 438, 444, 539. 
 
 St. Jerome, 589-590. 
 
 St. Paul, 350. 
 
 Sallust (historian), 199-200, 238, 
 241, 282. 
 
 Sallustius, 443. 
 
698 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sdlutatio, 58, 195. 
 
 Salutatores, 195. 
 
 Sanga, 265. 
 
 Saturnalia, 263-264. 
 
 Saturninus, 236. 
 
 Scaevola (augur), 51, 61, 72, 115, 
 
 346. 
 Scaevola (pontifex maximus), 51, 
 
 62, 472. 
 Scaevolas, 113. 
 Scamander, 119. 
 Seaptius, 474-476. 
 Scauro, Pro, 335. 
 Scaurus (wrote autobiography), 
 
 359. 
 Scepticism, 541-546. 
 Scipio Africanus (the Elder), 457. 
 Scipio Africanus (the Younger), 
 
 220, 291, 397, 344-348, 445, 
 
 573, 584, 585. 
 Seipionic Circle, 51, 343-351, 452, 
 
 575. 
 Sempronia, 241-242, 265, 269. 
 Senate, 55-58. 
 Senatus auctoritas, 290, 305. 
 Senatus consultum ultimum, 236- 
 
 239, 248-249, 257, 275-276. 
 Seneca (the Elder), 438, 680. 
 Senectute, De, (67), 558, 571-573, 
 
 582, 592. 
 Sertorius, 177-178. 
 Servilius (consul 79 B.C.), 183. 
 Servilius (son of consul), 646, 652, 
 
 655. 
 Sestius, 285, 320-323, 326. 
 
 Pro Sestio, 334. 
 Sibylline books, 264. 
 Sica, 315. 
 Sicilians, 139, 175. 
 Sicily, 123-170 (passim, esp. 139), 
 
 172. 
 Silanus, 276, 279-280. 
 Socrates, 414, 420, 452-453, 543- 
 
 544, 555, 581. 
 Somnium Scipionis, 444, 451-461, 
 
 532. 
 Sophocles, 220. 
 Soul, 458, 558-559. 
 Spain, 177-178, 186. 
 Spartacus, 123, 178, 182. 
 Statesman, the true, 451, 456, 633. 
 Statilius, 268. 
 
 Stoics, 36, 122, 261, 345-346, 449- 
 450, 541-545, 575-576, 580- 
 581. See Finibus, De, esp. 550- 
 553; Natura Deorum, De, esp. 
 566-568; Fato, De. 
 
 Style, 429-430, 436, 440-441. 
 
 Suicide, 318-320, 458, 562, 564. 
 
 Sulla (dictator), 55-56, 61-64, 83- 
 85, 171, 176-181 (esp. 180- 
 181), 184, 187, 264, 353; con- 
 stitution of, 234; Memoirs of, 
 354, 356, 358; those proscribed 
 by, 234; veterans of, 225, 240- 
 241. 
 
 Sulla (alleged conspirator), 217. 
 Pro Sulla, 270, 287-288. 
 
 Sulpicius, P., 61-62, 104-106. 
 
 Sulpicius, Servius (jurist), 115, 
 257-262, 284, 520-521, 524, 
 535, 665-666. 
 
 Sulpicius, Servius (son of jurist), 
 534, 665. 
 
 Syracuse, 123, 128-132, 172-173. 
 
 Tacitus, 350, 438. 
 
 Temporibus Suis, De, 356. 
 
 Terence, (36), 348, 349. 
 Prefaces, 587. 
 
 Terentia, 16, 203, 206-208, 275, 
 277, 281, 298, 317-318, 342, 
 479, 484, 493, 518-520, 522. 
 
 Thapsus, battle of, 497. 
 
 Themistocles, 20, 67. 
 
 Theomnastus (Theoractus), 131- 
 132. 
 
 Theophanes, 44, 353. 
 
 Thessalonica, 316. 
 
 Thucydides, 438. 
 
 Thyillus, 290, 355. 
 
 Tigellius, 501. 
 
 Timaeus, 556. 
 
 Tiro, 2, 478, 612. 
 
 Tithonus, 582. 
 
 Toga Candida, In, 201. 
 
 Topica, 370, 377-379, 556, 615. 
 
 Translations, 350, 372, 429, 585- 
 586. 
 
 Trebatius, 339-341, 370, 485, 489, 
 615. 
 
 Trebonius, 592-593, 602, 607, 651, 
 658. 
 
 Tullia, 204-205, 281, 288, 323, 342, 
 478-479, 484, 493, 520, 523- 
 536 (esp. 523), 562. 
 
INDEX 
 
 699 
 
 Tullianum, 283. 
 
 Tullio, Pro, 115-116. 
 
 Tumultus, 482. 
 
 Twmultus and helium, 648-649. 
 
 Tusculan Disputations, (101), 554- 
 
 564, 580. 
 Tusculum, villa at, 211, 213-214, 
 
 218, 314, 525. 
 Twelve Tables, 111, 115. 
 Umbrenus, 265, 269. 
 Unde, 117. 
 Utile, 576. 
 Utility, 396. 
 
 Varro, 270, 302, 353, 362, 494, 499- 
 500, 540, 545, 586. 
 
 Legationes, De Sua Vita, 353. 
 Vatinius, 321, 338, 502. 
 
 In Vatinium, 95, 335. 
 Veni, vidi, viei, 497. 
 
 Verres, 54, 122, 123-170, 180. 
 Orations against, 89, 141-142, 
 147-148, 151; I, 134; II, 89, 
 123, 151; II 1, 142-151; II 2, 
 151-156; II 3, 156-159; II 4, 
 159-162; II 5, 162-170. 
 
 Vestal Virgins, 264. 
 
 Vibo, 315. 
 
 Villas, 27 (note), 213-214, 218, 
 337. 
 
 Virtue, 393-394, 564. 
 
 Virtues, 576. 
 
 Virtutibus, De, 575. 
 
 Volturcius, 265-268, 278-279. 
 
 Wills, strange, 217. 
 
 Wit, 426-427. 
 
 Witnesses, 95, 109, 400-402. 
 
 Xenophon, 438, 582. 
 
 Cyropaedeia, 359, 470, 582. 
 
 Zeno, 543. 
 
 Zielinski, 454.