letters of pliny by gaius plinius caecilius secundus translated by william melmoth revised by f. c. t. bosanquet gaius plinius caecilius secundus, usually known as pliny the younger, was born at como in 62 a. d. he was only eight years old when his father caecilius died, and he was adopted by his uncle, the elder pliny, author of the natural history. he was carefully educated, studying rhetoric under quintilian and other famous teachers, and he became the most eloquent pleader of his time. in this and in much else he imitated cicero, who had by this time come to be the recognized master of latin style. while still young he served as military tribune in syria, but he does not seem to have taken zealously to a soldier's life. on his return he entered politics under the emperor domitian; and in the year 100 a. d. was appointed consul by trajan and admitted to confidential intercourse with that emperor. later while he was governor of bithynia, he was in the habit of submitting every point of policy to his master, and the correspondence between trajan and him, which forms the last part of the present selection, is of a high degree of interest, both on account of the subjects discussed and for the light thrown on the characters of the two men. he is supposed to have died about 113 a. d. pliny's speeches are now lost, with the exception of one, a panegyric on trajan delivered in thanksgiving for the consulate. this, though diffuse and somewhat too complimentary for modern taste, became a model for this kind of composition. the others were mostly of two classes, forensic and political, many of the latter being, like cicero's speech against verres, impeachments of provincial governors for cruelty and extortion toward their subjects. in these, as in his public activities in general, he appears as a man of public spirit and integrity; and in his relations with his native town he was a thoughtful and munificent benefactor. the letters, on which to-day his fame mainly rests, were largely written with a view to publication, and were arranged by pliny himself. they thus lack the spontaneity of cicero's impulsive utterances, but to most modern readers who are not special students of roman history they are even more interesting. they deal with a great variety of subjects: the description of a roman villa; the charms of country life; the reluctance of people to attend author's readings and to listen when they were present; a dinner party; legacy-hunting in ancient rome; the acquisition of a piece of statuary; his love for his young wife; ghost stories; floating islands, a tame dolphin, and other marvels. but by far the best known are those describing the great eruption of vesuvius in which his uncle perished, a martyr to scientific curiosity, and the letter to trajan on his attempts to suppress christianity in bithynia, with trajan's reply approving his policy. taken altogether, these letters give an absorbingly vivid picture of the days of the early empire, and of the interests of a cultivated roman gentleman of wealth. occasionally, as in the last letters referred to, they deal with important historical events; but their chief value is in bringing before us, in somewhat the same manner as "the spectator" pictures the england of the age of anne, the life of a time which is not so unlike our own as its distance in years might indicate. and in this time by no means the least interesting figure is that of the letter-writer himself, with his vanity and self-importance, his sensibility and generous affection, his pedantry and his loyalty. contents letters gaius plinius caecilius secundus i -to septittus ii -to arrianus iii -to voconius romanus iv -to cornelius tacitus v -to pompeius saturninus vi -to atrius clemens vii -to fabius justus viii -to calestrius tiro ix -to socius senecio x -to junsus mauricus xi -to septitius clarus xii -to suetonius tranquillus xiii -to romanus firmus xiv -to cornelius tacitus xv -to paternus xvi -to catilius severus [27] xvii -to voconius romanus xviii -to nepos xix -to avitus xx -to macrinus xxi -to paiscus xxii -to maimus xxiii -to gallus xxiv -to cerealis xxv -to calvisius xxvi -to calvisius xxvii -to baebius macer xxviii -to annius severus xxix -to caninius rufus xxx -to spurinna and cottia[53] xxxi -to julius genitor xxxii -to catilius severus xxxiii -to acilius xxxiv -to nepos xxxv -to severus xxxvi -to calvisius rufus xxxvii -to cornelius priscus xxxviii -to fabatus (his wife's grandfather) xxxix -to attius clemens xl -to catius lepidus xli -to maturus arrianus xlii -to statius sabinus xliii -to cornelius minicianus xlv -to asinius xlvi -to hispulla xlvii -to romatius fiasius xlviii -to licinius sura xlix -to annius severus l -to titius aristo li -to nonius maximus lii -to domitius apollinaris liii -to calvisius liv -to marcellinus lv -to spurinna lvi -to paulinus lvii -to rufus lviii -to arrianus lix -to calpurnia[88] lx -to calpurnia lxi -to priscus lxii -to albinus lxiii -to maximus lxiv -to romanus lxv -to tacitus lxvi -to cornelius tacitus lx vii -to macer lxviii -to servianus lxix -to severus lxx -to fabatus lxxi -to cornelianus lxxii -to maximus lxxiii -to restitutus lxxiv -to calpurnia[111] lxxv -to macrinus lxxvi -to tuscus lxx vii -to fabatus (his wife's grandfather) lxxviii -to corellia lxxix -to celer lxxx -to priscus lxxxi -to geminius lxxxii -to maximus lxxxiii -to sura lxxxiv -to septitius lxxxv -to tacitus lxxx vi -to septitius lxxxvii -to calvisius lxxx viii -to romanus lxxxix -to aristo xc -to paternus xci -to macrinus xcii -to rufinus xciii -to gallus xciv -to arrianus xcv -to maximus xcvi -to paulinus xcvii -to calvisius xcviii -to romanus xcix -to geminus c -to junior ci -to quadratus cii -to genitor ciii -to sabinianus civ -to maximus cv -to sabinianus cvi -to lupercus cvii -to caninius cviii -to fuscus cix -to paulinus cx -to fuscus footnotes to the letters of pliny] correspondence with the emperor trajan i -to the emperor trajan[1001] ii -to the emperor trajan iii -to the emperor trajan iv -to the emperor trajan v -trajan to pliny vi -to the emperor trajan vii -to the emperor trajan viii -trajan to pliny x -to the emperor trajan xi -to the emperor trajan xii -trajan to pliny xiii -to the emperor trajan xiv -to the emperor trajan xv -trajan to pliny xvi -to the emperor trajan xvii -trajan to pliny xviii -to the emperor trajan xix -to the emperor trajan xx -to the emperor trajan xxi -to the emperor trajan xxii -to the emperor trajan xxiii -to the emperor trajan xxiv -to the emperor trajan xxv -to the emperor trajan xxvi -to the emperor trajan xxvii -to the emperor trajan xxviii -to the emperor trajan xxix -to the emperor trajan xxx -to the emperor trajan xxxi -trajan to pliny xxxii -to the emperor trajan xxxiii -trajan to pliny xxxiv -to the emperor trajan xxxv -trajan to pliny xxxvi -to the emperor trajan xxx vii -trajan to pliny xxxviii to the emperor trajan xxxix -trajan to pliny xl -to the emperor trajan xli -trajan to pliny xlii -to the emperor trajan xliii -trajan to pliny xliv -to the emperor trajan xlv -trajan to pliny xlvi -to the emperor trajan xlvii -trajan to pliny xlviii -to the emperor trajan xlix -trajan to pliny l -to the emperor trajan li -trajan to pliny lii -to the emperor trajan liii -trajan to pliny liv -to the emperor trajan lv -trajan to pliny lvi -to the emperor trajan lvii -trajan to pliny lviii -to the emperor trajan lix -trajan to pliny lx -to the emperor trajan lxi -trajan to pliny lxii -to the emperor trajan lxiii -trajan to pliny lxiv -to the emperor trajan lxv -trajan to pliny lxvi -to the emperor trajan lxvii -to the emperor trajan lx viii -trajan to pliny lxix -to the emperor trajan lxx -trajan to pliny lxxi -to the emperor trajan lxxii trajan to pliny lxxiii -to the emperor trajan lxx iv -trajan to pliny lxxv -to the emperor trajan lxxvi -trajan to pliny lxxvii -to the emperor trajan lxxviii -trajan to pliny lxxix -to the emperor trajan lxxx -trajan to pliny lxxxi -to the emperor trajan lxxxii -trajan to pliny lxxxiii -to the emperor trajan lxxxiv -trajan to pliny lxxxv -to the emperor trajan lxxxvi -trajan to pliny lxxxvii -to the emperor trajan lxxxviii -trajan to pliny lxxxix -to the emperor trajan xc -trajan to pliny xci -to the emperor trajan xcii -trajan to pliny xciii -to the emperor trajan xciv -trajan to pliny xcv -to the emperor trajan xcvi -trajan to pliny xcvii to the emperor trajan xcviii -trajan to pliny xcix -to the emperor trajan c -trajan to pliny ci to the emperor trajan cii -trajan to pliny ciii -to the emperor trajan civ -trajan to pliny cv -to tile emperor trajan cvi -trajan to pliny cvii -to the emperor trajan cviii -trajan to pliny cix -to the emperor trajan cx -trajan to pliny cxi -to the emperor trajan cxii -trajan to pliny cxiii -to the emperor trajan cxiv -trajan to pliny cxv -to the emperor trajan cxvi -trajan to pliny cxvii -to the emperor trajan cxviii -trajan to pliny cxix -to the emperor trajan cxx -trajan to pliny cxxi -to the emperor trajan cxxii -trajan to pliny footnotes to the correspondence with the emperor trajan letters gaius plinius caecilius secundus i -to septittus you have frequently pressed me to make a select collection of my letters (if there really be any deserving of a special preference) and give them to the public. i have selected them accordingly; not, indeed, in their proper order of time, for i was not compiling a history; but just as each came to hand. and now i have only to wish that you may have no reason to repent of your advice, nor i of my compliance: in that case, i may probably enquire after the rest, which at present be neglected, and preserve those i shall hereafter write. farewell. ii -to arrianus i foresee your journey in my direction is likely to be delayed, and therefore send you the speech which i promised in my former; requesting you, as usual, to revise and correct it. i desire this the more earnestly as i never, i think, wrote with the same empressment in any of my former speeches; for i have endeavoured to imitate your old favourite demosthenes and calvus, who is lately become mine, at least in the rhetorical forms of the speech; for to catch their sublime spirit, is given, alone, to the "inspired few." my subject, indeed, seemed naturally to lend itself to this (may i venture to call it?) emulation; consisting, as it did, almost entirely in a vehement style of address, even to a degree sufficient to have awakened me (if only i am capable of being awakened) out of that indolence in which i have long reposed. i have not however altogether neglected the flowers of rhetoric of my favourite marc-tully, wherever i could with propriety step out of my direct road, to enjoy a more flowery path: for it was energy, not austerity, at which i aimed. i would not have you imagine by this that i am bespeaking your indulgence: on the contrary, to make your correcting pen more vigorous, i will confess that neither my friends nor myself are averse from the publication of this piece, if only you should join in the approval of what is perhaps my folly. the truth is, as i must publish something, i wish it might be this performance rather than any other, because it is already finished: (you hear the wish of laziness.) at all events, however, something i must publish, and for many reasons; chiefly because of the tracts which i have already sent in to the world, though they have long since lost all their recommendation from novelty, are still, i am told, in request; if, after all, the booksellers are not tickling my ears. and let them; since, by that innocent deceit, i am encouraged to pursue my studies. farewell. iii -to voconius romanus did you ever meet with a more abject and mean-spirited creature than marcus regulus since the death of domitian, during whose reign his conduct was no less infamous, though more concealed, than under nero's? he began to be afraid i was angry with him, and his apprehensions were perfectly correct; i was angry. he had not only done his best to increase the peril of the position in which rusticus arulenus[1] stood, but had exulted in his death; insomuch that he actually recited and published a libel upon his memory, in which he styles him "the stoics' ape": adding, "stigmated[2] with the vitellian scar."[3] you recognize regulus' eloquent strain! he fell with such fury upon the character of herennius senecio that metius carus said to him, one day, "what business have you with my dead? did i ever interfere in the affair of crassus[4] or camerinus?"[5] victims, you know, to regulus, in nero's time. for these reasons he imagined i was highly exasperated, and so at the recitation of his last piece, i got no invitation. besides, he had not forgotten, it seems, with what deadly purpose he had once attacked me in the court of the hundred.[6] rusticus had desired me to act as counsel for arionilla, titnon's wife: regulus was engaged against me. in one part of the case i was strongly insisting upon a particular judgment given by metius modestus, an excellent man, at that time in banishment by domitian's order. now then for regulus. "pray," says he, "what is your opinion of modestus?" you see what a risk i should have run had i answered that i had a high opinion of him, how i should have disgraced myself on the other hand if i had replied that i had a bad opinion of him. but some guardian power, i am persuaded, must have stood by me to assist me in this emergency. "i will tell you my opinion," i said, "if that is a matter to be brought before the court." "i ask you," he repeated, "what is your opinion of modestus?" i replied that it was customary to examine witnesses to the character of an accused man, not to the character of one on whom sentence had already been passed. he pressed me a third time. "i do not now enquire," said he, "your opinion of modestus in general, i only ask your opinion of his loyalty." "since you will have my opinion then," i rejoined, "i think it illegal even to ask a question concerning a person who stands convicted." he sat down at this, completely silenced; and i received applause and congratulation on all sides, that without injuring my reputation by an advantageous, perhaps, though ungenerous answer, i had not entangled myself in the toils of so insidious a catch-question. thoroughly frightened upon this then, he first seizes upon caecilius celer, next he goes and begs of fabius justus, that they would use their joint interest to bring about a reconciliation between us. and lest this should not be sufficient, he sets off to spurinna as well; to whom he came in the humblest way (for he is the most abject creature alive, where he has anything to be afraid of) and says to him, "do, i entreat of you, call on pliny to-morrow morning, certainly in the morning, no later (for i cannot endure this anxiety of mind longer), and endeavour by any means in your power to soften his resentment." i was already up, the next day, when a message arrived from spurinna, "i am coming to call on you." i sent word back, "nay, i will wait upon you;" however, both of us setting out to pay this visit, we met under livia's portico. he acquainted me with the commission he had received from regulus, and interceded for him as became so worthy a man in behalf of one so totally dissimilar, without greatly pressing the thing. "i will leave it to you," was my reply, "to consider what answer to return regulus; you ought not to be deceived by me. i am waiting for mauricus'[7] return" (for he had not yet come back out of exile), "so that i cannot give you any definite answer either way, as i mean to be guided entirely by his decision, for he ought to be my leader here, and i simply to do as he says." well, a few days after this, regulus met me as i was at the praetor's; he kept close to me there and begged a word in private, when he said he was afraid i deeply resented an expression he had once made use of in his reply to satrius and myself, before the court of the hundred, to this effect, "satrius rufus, who does not endeavour to rival cicero, and who is content with the eloquence of our own day." i answered, now i perceived indeed, upon his own confession, that he had meant it ill-naturedly; otherwise it might have passed for a compliment. "for i am free to own," i said, "that i do endeavour to rival cicero, and am not content with the eloquence of our own day. for i consider it the very height of folly not to copy the best models of every kind. but, how happens it that you, who have so good a recollection of what passed upon this occasion, should have forgotten that other, when you asked me my opinion of the loyalty of modestus?" pale as he always is, he turned simply pallid at this, and stammered out, "i did not intend to hurt you when i asked this question, but modestus." observe the vindictive cruelty of the fellow, who made no concealment of his willingness to injure a banished man. but the reason he alleged in justification of his conduct is pleasant. modestus, he explained, in a letter of his, which was read to domitian, had used the following expression, "regulus, the biggest rascal that walks upon two feet:" and what modestus had written was the simple truth, beyond all manner of controversy. here, about, our conversation came to an end, for i did not wish to proceed further, being desirous to keep matters open until mauricus returns. it is no easy matter, i am well aware of that, to destroy regulus; he is rich, and at the head of a party; courted[8] by many, feared by more: a passion that will sometimes prevail even beyond friendship itself. but, after all, ties of this sort are not so strong but they may be loosened; for a bad man's credit is as shifty as himself. however (to repeat), i am waiting until mauricus comes back. he is a man of sound judgment and great sagacity formed upon long experience, and who, from his observations of the past, well knows how to judge of the future. i shall talk the matter over with him, and consider myself justified either in pursuing or dropping this affair, as he shall advise. meanwhile i thought i owed this account to our mutual friendship, which gives you an undoubted right to know about not only all my actions but all my plans as well. farewell. iv -to cornelius tacitus you will laugh (and you are quite welcome) when i tell you that your old acquaintance is turned sportsman, and has taken three noble boars. "what!" you exclaim, "pliny!"--even he. however, i indulged at the same time my beloved inactivity; and, whilst i sat at my nets, you would have found me, not with boar spear or javelin, but pencil and tablet, by my side. i mused and wrote, being determined to return, if with all my hands empty, at least with my memorandums full. believe me, this way of studying is not to be despised: it is wonderful how the mind is stirred and quickened into activity by brisk bodily exercise. there is something, too, in the solemnity of the venerable woods with which one is surrounded, together with that profound silence which is observed on these occasions, that forcibly disposes the mind to meditation. so for the future, let me advise you, whenever you hunt, to take your tablets along with you, as well as your basket and bottle, for be assured you will find minerva no less fond of traversing the hills than diana. farewell. v -to pompeius saturninus nothing could be more seasonable than the letter which i received from you, in which you so earnestly beg me to send you some of my literary efforts: the very thing i was intending to do. so you have only put spurs into a willing horse and at once saved yourself the excuse of refusing the trouble, and me the awkwardness of asking the favour. without hesitation then i avail myself of your offer; as you must now take the consequence of it without reluctance. but you are not to expect anything new from a lazy fellow, for i am going to ask you to revise again the speech i made to my fellow-townsmen when i dedicated the public library to their use. you have already, i remember, obliged me with some annotations upon this piece, but only in a general way; and so i now beg of you not only to take a general view of the whole speech, but, as you usually do, to go over it in detail. when you have corrected it, i shall still be at liberty to publish or suppress it: and the delay in the meantime will be attended with one of these alternatives; for, while we are deliberating whether it is fit for publishing, a frequent revision will either make it so, or convince me that it is not. though indeed my principal difficulty respecting the publication of this harangue arises not so much from the composition as out of the subject itself, which has something in it, i am afraid, that will look too like ostentation and self-conceit. for, be the style ever so plain and unassuming, yet, as the occasion necessarily led me to speak not only of the munificence of my ancestors, but of my own as well, my modesty will be seriously embarrassed. a dangerous and slippery situation this, even when one is led into it by plea of necessity! for, if mankind are not very favourable to panegyric, even when bestowed upon others, how much more difficult is it to reconcile them to it when it is a tribute which we pay to ourselves or to our ancestors? virtue, by herself, is generally the object of envy, but particularly so when glory and distinction attend her; and the world is never so little disposed to detract from the rectitude of your conduct as when it passes unobserved and unapplauded. for these reasons, i frequently ask myself whether i composed this harangue, such as it is, merely from a personal consideration, or with a view to the public as well; and i am sensible that what may be exceedingly useful and proper in the prosecution of any affair may lose all its grace and fitness the moment the business is completed: for instance, in the case before us, what could be more to my purpose than to explain at large the motives of my intended bounty? for, first, it engaged my mind in good and ennobling thoughts; next, it enabled me, by frequent dwelling upon them, to receive a perfect impression of their loveliness, while it guarded at the same time against that repentance which is sure to follow on an impulsive act of generosity. there arose also a further advantage from this method, as it fixed in me a certain habitual contempt of money. for, while mankind seem to be universally governed by an innate passion to accumulate wealth, the cultivation of a more generous affection in my own breast taught me to emancipate myself from the slavery of so predominant a principle: and i thought that my honest intentions would be the more meritorious as they should appear to proceed, not from sudden impulse, but from the dictates of cool and deliberate reflection. i considered, besides, that i was not engaging myself to exhibit public games or gladiatorial combats, but to establish an annual fund for the support and education of young men of good families but scanty means. the pleasures of the senses are so far from wanting the oratorical arts to recommend them that we stand in need of all the powers of eloquence to moderate and restrain rather than stir up their influence. but the work of getting anybody to cheerfully undertake the monotony and drudgery of education must be effected not by pay merely, but by a skilfully workedup appeal to the emotions as well. if physicians find it expedient to use the most insinuating address in recommending to their patients a wholesome though, perhaps, unpleasant regimen, how much more occasion had he to exert all the powers of persuasion who, out of regard to the public welfare, was endeavouring to reconcile it to a most useful though not equally popular benefaction? particularly, as my aim was to recommend an institution, calculated solely for the benefit of those who were parents to men who, at present, had no children; and to persuade the greater number to wait patiently until they should be entitled to an honour of which a few only could immediately partake. but as at that time, when i attempted to explain and enforce the general design and benefit of my institution, i considered more the general good of my countrymen, than any reputation which might result to myself; so i am apprehensive lest, if i publish that piece, it may perhaps look as if i had a view rather to my own personal credit than the benefit of others. besides, i am very sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one's own breast than in the applause of the world. glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive, of our actions; and although it happen not to attend the worthy deed, yet it is by no means the less fair for having missed the applause it deserved. but the world is apt to suspect that those who celebrate their own beneficent acts performed them for no other motive than to have the pleasure of extolling them. thus, the splendour of an action which would have been deemed illustrious if related by another is totally extinguished when it becomes the subject of one's own applause. such is the disposition of mankind, if they cannot blast the action, they will censure its display; and whether you do what does not deserve particular notice, or set forth yourself what does, either way you incur reproach. in my own case there is a peculiar circumstance that weighs much with me: this speech was delivered not before the people, but the decurii;[9] not in the forum, but the senate; i am afraid therefore it will look inconsistent that i, who, when i delivered it, seemed to avoid popular applause, should now, by publishing this performance, appear to court it: that i, who was so scrupulous as not to admit even these persons to be present when i delivered this speech, who were interested in my benefaction, lest it might be suspected i was actuated in this affair by any ambitious views, should now seem to solicit admiration, by forwardly displaying it to such as have no other concern in my munificence than the benefit of example. these are the scruples which have occasioned my delay in giving this piece to the public; but i submit them entirely to your judgment, which i shall ever esteem as a sufficient sanction of my conduct. farewell. vi -to atrius clemens if ever polite literature flourished at rome, it certainly flourishes now; and i could give you many eminent instances: i will content myself, however, with naming only euphrates[10] the philosopher. i first became acquainted with this excellent person in my youth, when i served in the army in syria. i had an opportunity of conversing with him familiarly, and took some pains to gain his affection: though that, indeed, was not very difficult, for he is easy of access, unreserved, and actuated by those social principles he professes to teach. i should think myself extremely happy if i had as fully answered the expectations he, at that time, conceived of me, as he exceeds everything i had imagined of him. but, perhaps, i admire his excellencies more now than i did then, because i know better how to appreciate them; not that i sufficiently appreciate them even now. for as none but those who are skilled in painting, statuary, or the plastic art, can form a right judgment of any performance in those respective modes of representation, so a man must, himself, have made great advances in philosophy before he is capable of forming a just opinion of a philosopher. however, as far as i am qualified to determine, euphrates is possessed of so many shining talents that he cannot fail to attract and impress the most ordinarily educated observer. he reasons with much force, acuteness, and elegance; and frequently rises into all the sublime and luxuriant eloquence of plato. his style is varied and flowing, and at the same time so wonderfully captivating that he forces the reluctant attention of the most unwilling hearer. for the rest, a fine stature, a comely aspect, long hair, and a large silver beard; circumstances which, though they may probably be thought trifling and accidental, contribute, however, to gain him much reverence. there is no affected negligence in his dress and appearance; his countenance is grave but not austere; and his approach commands respect without creating awe. distinguished as he is by the perfect blamelessness of his life, he is no less so by the courtesy and engaging sweetness of his manner. he attacks vices, not persons, and, without severity, reclaims the wanderer from the paths of virtue. you follow his exhortations with rapt attention, hanging, as it were, upon his lips; and even after the heart is convinced, the ear still wishes to listen to the harmonious reasoner. his family consists of three children (two of which are sons), whom he educates with the utmost care. his father-in-law, pompeius julianus, as he greatly distinguished himself in every other part of his life, so particularly in this, that though he was himself of the highest rank in his province, yet, among many considerable matches, he preferred euphrates for his son-in-law, as first in merit, though not in dignity. but why do i dwell any longer upon the virtues of a man whose conversation i am so unfortunate as not to have time sufficiently to enjoy? is it to increase my regret and vexation that i cannot enjoy it? my time is wholly taken up in the execution of a very honourable, indeed, but equally troublesome, employment; in hearing cases, signing petitions, making up accounts, and writing a vast amount of the most illiterate literature. i sometimes complain to euphrates (for i have leisure at least to complain) of these unpleasing occupations. he endeavours to console me, by affirming that, to be engaged in the public service, to hear and determine cases, to explain the laws, and administer justice, is a part, and the noblest part, too, of philosophy; as it is reducing to practice what her professors teach in speculation. but even his rhetoric will never be able to convince me that it is better to be at this sort of work than to spend whole days in attending his lectures and learning his precepts. i cannot therefore but strongly recommend it to you, who have the time for it, when next you come to town (and you will come, i daresay, so much the sooner for this), to take the benefit of his elegant and refined instructions. for i do not (as many do) envy others the happiness i cannot share with them myself: on the contrary, it is a very sensible pleasure to me when i find my friends in possession of an enjoyment from which i have the misfortune to be excluded. farewell. vii -to fabius justus it is a long time since i have had a letter from you, "there is nothing to write about," you say: well then write and let me know just this, that "there is nothing to write about," or tell me in the good old style, _if you are well that's right, i am quite well_. this will do for me, for it implies everything. you think i am joking? let me assure you i am in sober earnest. do let me know how you are; for i cannot remain ignorant any longer without growing exceedingly anxious about you. farewell. viii -to calestrius tiro i have suffered the heaviest loss; if that word be sufficiently strong to express the misfortune which has deprived me of so excellent a man. corellius rufus is dead; and dead, too, by his own act! a circumstance of great aggravation to my affliction: as that sort of death which we cannot impute either to the course of nature, or the hand of providence, is, of all others, the most to be lamented. it affords some consolation in the loss of those friends whom disease snatches from us that they fall by the general destiny of mankind; but those who destroy themselves leave us under the inconsolable reflection, that they had it in their power to have lived longer. it is true, corellius had many inducements to be fond of life; a blameless conscience, high reputation, and great dignity of character, besides a daughter, a wife, a grandson, and sisters; and, amidst these numerous pledges of happiness, faithful friends. still, it must be owned he had the highest motive (which to a wise man will always have the force of destiny), urging him to this resolution. he had long been tortured by so tedious and painful a complaint that even these inducements to living on, considerable as they are, were over-balanced by the reasons on the other side. in his thirtythird year (as i have frequently heard him say) he was seized with the gout in his feet. this was hereditary; for diseases, as well as possessions, are sometimes handed down by a sort of inheritance. a life of sobriety and continence had enabled him to conquer and keep down the disease while he was still young, latterly as it grew upon him with advancing years, he had to manfully bear it, suffering meanwhile the most incredible and undeserved agonies; for the gout was now not only in his feet, but had spread itself over his whole body. i remember, in domitian's reign, paying him a visit at his villa, near rome. as soon as i entered his chamber, his servants went out: for it was his rule, never to allow them to be in the room when any intimate friend was with him; nay, even his own wife, though she could have kept any secret, used to go too. casting his eyes round the room, "why," he exclaimed, "do you suppose i endure life so long under these cruel agonies? it is with the hope that i may outlive, at least for one day, that villain." had his bodily strength been equal to his resolution, he would have carried his desire into practical effect. god heard and answered his prayer; and when he felt that he should now die a free, un-enslaved, roman, he broke through those other great, but now less forcible, attachments to the world. his malady increased; and, as it now grew too violent to admit of any relief from temperance, he resolutely determined to put an end to its uninterrupted attacks, by an effort of heroism. he had refused all sustenance during four days when his wife hispulla sent our common friend geminius to me, with the melancholy news, that corellius was resolved to die; and that neither her own entreaties nor her daughter's could move him from his purpose; i was the only person left who could reconcile him to life. i ran to his house with the utmost precipitation. as i approached it, i met a second messenger from hispulla, julius atticus, who informed me there was nothing to be hoped for now, even from me, as he seemed more hardened than ever in his purpose. he had said, indeed to his physician, who pressed him to take some nourishment, "'tis resolved": an expression which, as it raised my admiration of the greatness of his soul, so it does my grief for the loss of him. i keep thinking what a friend, what a man, i am deprived of. that he had reached his sixty-seventh year, an age which even the strongest seldom exceed, i well know; that he is released from a life of continual pain; that he has left his dearest friends behind him, and (what was dearer to him than all these) the state in a prosperous condition: all this i know. still i cannot forbear to lament him, as if he had been in the prime and vigour of his days; and i lament him (shall i own my weakness?) on my account. and--to confess to you as i did to calvisius, in the first transport of my grief--i sadly fear, now that i am no longer under his eye, i shall not keep so strict a guard over my conduct. speak comfort to me then, not that he was old, he was infirm; all this i know: but by supplying me with some reflections that are new and resistless, which i have never heard, never read, anywhere else. for all that i have heard, and all that i have read, occur to me of themselves; but all these are by far too weak to support me under so severe an affliction. farewell. ix -to socius senecio this year has produced a plentiful crop of poets: during the whole month of april scarcely a day has passed on which we have not been entertained with the recital of some poem. it is a pleasure to me to find that a taste for polite literature still exists, and that men of genius do come forward and make themselves known, notwithstanding the lazy attendance they got for their pains. the greater part of the audience sit in the lounging-places, gossip away their time there, and are perpetually sending to enquire whether the author has made his entrance yet, whether he has got through the preface, or whether he has almost finished the piece. then at length they saunter in with an air of the greatest indifference, nor do they condescend to stay through the recital, but go out before it is over, some slyly and stealthily, others again with perfect freedom and unconcern. and yet our fathers can remember how claudius cã¦sar walking one day in the palace, and hearing a great shouting, enquired the cause: and being informed that nonianus[11] was reciting a composition of his, went immediately to the place, and agreeably surprised the author with his presence. but now, were one to bespeak the attendance of the idlest man living, and remind him of the appointment ever so often, or ever so long beforehand; either he would not come at all, or if he did would grumble about having "lost a day!" for no other reason but because he had not lost it. so much the more do those authors deserve our encouragement and applause who have resolution to persevere in their studies, and to read out their compositions in spite of this apathy or arrogance on the part of their audience. myself indeed, i scarcely ever miss being present upon any occasion; though, to tell the truth, the authors have generally been friends of mine, as indeed there are few men of literary tastes who are not. it is this which has kept me in town longer than i had intended. i am now, however, at liberty to go back into the country, and write something myself; which i do not intend reciting, lest i should seem rather to have lent than given my attendance to these recitations of my friends, for in these, as in all other good offices, the obligation ceases the moment you seem to expect a return. farewell. x -to junsus mauricus you desire me to look out a proper husband for your niece: it is with justice you enjoin me that office. you know the high esteem and affection i bore that great man her father, and with what noble instructions he nurtured my youth, and taught me to deserve those praises he was pleased to bestow upon me. you could not give me, then, a more important, or more agreeable, commission; nor could i be employed in an office of higher honour, than that of choosing a young man worthy of being father of the grandchildren of rusticus arulenus; a choice i should be long in determining, were i not acquainted with minutius aemilianus, who seems formed for our purpose. he loves me with all that warmth of affection which is usual between young men of equal years (as indeed i have the advance of him but by a very few), and reveres me at the same time, with all the deference due to age; and, in a word, he is no less desirous to model himself by my instructions than i was by those of yourself and your brother. he is a native of brixia, one of those provinces in italy which still retain much of the old modesty, frugal simplicity, and even rusticity, of manner. he is the son of minutius macrinus, whose humble desires were satisfied with standing at the head of the equestrian order: for though he was nominated by vespasian in the number of those whom that prince dignified with the praetorian office, yet, with an inflexible greatness of mind, he resolutely preferred an honourable repose, to the ambitious, shall i call them, or exalted, pursuits, in which we public men are engaged. his grandmother, on the mother's side, is serrana procula, of patavium:[12] you are no stranger to the character of its citizens; yet serrana is looked upon, even among these correct people, as an exemplary instance of strict virtue. acilius, his uncle, is a man of almost exceptional gravity, wisdom, and integrity. in short, you will find nothing throughout his family unworthy of yours. minutius himself has plenty of vivacity, as well as application, together with a most amiable and becoming modesty. he has already, with considerable credit, passed through the offices of quaestor, tribune, and praetor; so that you will be spared the trouble of soliciting for him those honourable employments. he has a fine, well-bred, countenance, with a ruddy, healthy complexion, while his whole person is elegant and comely and his mien graceful and senatorian: advantages, i think, by no means to be slighted, and which i consider as the proper tribute to virgin innocence. i think i may add that his father is very rich. when i contemplate the character of those who require a husband of my choosing, i know it is unnecessary to mention wealth; but when i reflect upon the prevailing manners of the age, and even the laws of rome, which rank a man according to his possessions, it certainly claims some regard; and, indeed, in establishments of this nature, where children and many other circumstances are to be duly weighed, it is an article that well deserves to be taken into the account. you will be inclined, perhaps, to suspect that affection has had too great a share in the character i have been drawing, and that i have heightened it beyond the truth: but i will stake all my credit, you will find everything far beyond what i have represented. i love the young fellow indeed (as he justly deserves) with all the warmth of a most ardent affection; but for that very reason i would not ascribe more to his merit than i know it will bear. farewell. xi -to septitius clarus ah! you are a pretty fellow! you make an engagement to come to supper and then never appear. justice shall be exacted;--you shall reimburse me to the very last penny the expense i went to on your account; no small sum, let me tell you. i had prepared, you must know, a lettuce a-piece, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake, with some sweet wine and snow, (the snow most certainly i shall charge to your account, as a rarity that will not keep.) olives, beet-root, gourds, onions, and a thousand other dainties equally sumptuous. you should likewise have been entertained either with an interlude, the rehearsal of a poem, or a piece of music, whichever you preferred; or (such was my liberality) with all three. but the oysters, sows'-bellies, sea-urchins, and dancers from cadiz of a certain--i know not who, were, it seems, more to your taste. you shall give satisfaction, how, shall at present be a secret. oh! you have behaved cruelly, grudging your friend,--had almost said yourself;--and upon second thoughts i do say so;--in this way: for how agreeably should we have spent the evening, in laughing, trifling, and literary amusements! you may sup, i confess, at many places more splendidly; but nowhere with more unconstrained mirth, simplicity, and freedom: only make the experiment, and if you do not ever after excuse yourself to your other friends, to come to me, always put me off to go to them. farewell. xii -to suetonius tranquillus you tell me in your letter that you are extremely alarmed by a dream; apprehending that it forebodes some ill success to you in the case you have undertaken to defend; and, therefore, desire that i would get it adjourned for a few days, or, at least, to the next. this will be no easy matter, but i will try: "for dreams descend from jove." meanwhile, it is very material for you to recollect whether your dreams generally represent things as they afterwards fall out, or quite the reverse. but if i may judge of yours by one that happened to myself, this dream that alarms you seems to portend that you will acquit yourself with great success. i had promised to stand counsel for junius pastor; when i fancied in my sleep that my mother-in-law came to me, and, throwing herself at my feet, earnestly entreated me not to plead. i was at that time a very young man; the case was to be argued in the four centumviral courts; my adversaries were some of the most important personages in rome, and particular favourites of cã¦sar;[13] any of which circumstances were sufficient, after such an inauspicious dream, to have discouraged me. notwithstanding this, i engaged in the cause, reflecting that, "without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen but his country's cause."<a href="#linknote-14" name="linknoteref-14" id="linknoteref-14">[14]</a> for i looked upon the promise i had given to be as sacred to me as my country, or, if that were possible, more so. the event happened as i wished; and it was that very case which first procured me the favourable attention of the public, and threw open to me the gates of fame. consider then whether your dream, like this one i have related, may not pre-signify success. but, after all, perhaps you will think it safer to pursue this cautious maxim: "never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which you are in doubt;" if so, write me word. in the interval, i will consider of some excuse, and will so plead your cause that you may be able to plead it your self any day you like best. in this respect, you are in a better situation than i was: the court of the centumviri, where i was to plead, admits of no adjournment: whereas, in that where your case is to be heard, though no easy matter to procure one, still, however, it is possible. farewell. xiii -to romanus firmus as you are my towns-man, my school-fellow, and the earliest companion of my youth; as there was the strictest friendship between my mother and uncle and your father (a happiness which i also enjoyed as far as the great inequality of our ages would admit); can i fail (thus biassed as i am by so many and weighty considerations) to contribute all in my power to the advancement of your honours? the rank you bear in our province, as decurio, is a proof that you are possessed, at least, of an hundred thousand sesterces;[15] but that we may also have the satisfaction of seeing you a roman knight,[16] i present you with three hundred thousand, in order to make up the sum requisite to entitle you to that dignity. the long acquaintance we have had leaves me no room to apprehend you will ever be forgetful of this instance of my friendship. and i know your disposition too well to think it necessary to advise you to enjoy this honour with the modesty that becomes a person who receives it from me; for the advanced rank we possess through a friend's kindness is a sort of sacred trust, in which we have his judgment, as well as our own character, to maintain, and therefore to be guarded with the greater caution. farewell. xiv -to cornelius tacitus i have frequent debates with a certain acquaintance of mine, a man of skill and learning, who admires nothing so much in the eloquence of the bar as conciseness. i agree with him, that where the case will admit of this precision, it may with propriety be adopted; but insist that, to leave out what is material to be mentioned,--or only briefly and cursorily to touch upon those points which should be inculcated, impressed, and urged well home upon the minds of the audience, is a downright fraud upon one's client. in many cases, to deal with the subject at greater length adds strength and weight to our ideas, which frequently produce their impression upon the mind, as iron does upon solid bodies, rather by repeated strokes than a single blow. in answer to this, he usually has recourse to authorities, and produces lysias[17] amongst the grecians, together with cato and the two gracchi, among our own countrymen, many of whose speeches certainly are brief and curtailed. in return, i name demosthenes, aeschines, hyperides,[18] and many others, in opposition to lysias; while i confront cato and the gracchi with cã¦sar, pollio,[19] caelius,[20] but, above all, cicero, whose longest speech is generally considered his best. why, no doubt about it, in good compositions, as in everything else that is valuable, the more there is of them, the better. you may observe in statues, basso-relievos, pictures, and the human form, and even in animals and trees, that nothing is more graceful than magnitude, if accompanied with proportion. the same holds true in pleading; and even in books a large volume carries a certain beauty and authority in its very size. my antagonist, who is extremely dexterous at evading an argument, eludes all this, and much more, which i usually urge to the same purpose, by insisting that those very individuals, upon whose works i found my opinion, made considerable additions to their speeches when they published them. this i deny; and appeal to the harangues of numberless orators, particularly to those of cicero, for murena and varenus, in which a short, bare notification of certain charges is expressed under mere heads. whence it appears that many things which he enlarged upon at the time he delivered those speeches were retrenched when he gave them to the public. the same excellent orator informs us that, agreeably to the ancient custom, which allowed only of one counsel on a side, cluentius had no other advocate than himself; and he tells us further that he employed four whole days in defence of cornelius; by which it plainly appears that those speeches which, when delivered at their full length, had necessarily taken up so much time at the bar were considerably cut down and pruned when he afterwards compressed them into a single volume, though, i must confess, indeed, a large one. but good pleading, it is objected, is one thing, just composition another. this objection, i am aware, has had some favourers; nevertheless, i am persuaded (though i may, perhaps, be mistaken) that, as it is possible you may have a good pleading which is not a good speech, so a good speech cannot be a bad pleading; for the speech on paper is the model and, as it were, the archetype of the speech that was delivered. it is for this reason we find, in many of the best speeches extant, numberless extemporaneous turns of expression; and even in those which we are sure were never spoken; as, for instance, in the following passage from the speech against verres: --"a certain mechanic--what's his name? oh, thank you for helping me to it: yes, i mean polyclitus." it follows, then, that the nearer approach a speaker makes to the rules of just composition, the more perfect will he be in his art; always supposing, however, that he has his due share of time allowed him; for, if he be limited of that article, no blame can justly be fixed upon the advocate, though much certainly upon the judge. the sense of the laws, i am sure, is on my side, which are by no means sparing of the orator's time; it is not conciseness, but fulness, a complete representation of every material circumstance, which they recommend. now conciseness cannot effect this, unless in the most insignificant cases. let me add what experience, that unerring guide, has taught me: it has frequently been my province to act both as an advocate and a judge; and i have often also attended as an assessor.[21] upon those occasions, i have ever found the judgments of mankind are to be influenced by different modes of application, and that the slightest circumstances frequently produce the most important consequences. the dispositions and understandings of men vary to such an extent that they seldom agree in their opinions concerning any one point in debate before them; or, if they do, it is generally from different motives. besides, as every man is naturally partial to his own discoveries, when he hears an argument urged which had previously occurred to himself, he will be sure to embrace it as extremely convincing. the orator, therefore, should so adapt himself to his audience as to throw out something which every one of them, in turn, may receive and approve as agreeable to his own particular views. i recollect, once when regulus and i were engaged on the same side, his remarking to me, "you seem to think it necessary to go into every single circumstance: whereas i always take aim at once at my adversary's throat, and there i press him closely." ('tis true, he keeps a tight hold of whatever part he has once fixed upon; but the misfortune is, he is extremely apt to fix upon the wrong place.) i replied, it might possibly happen that what he called the throat was, in reality, the knee or the ankle. as for myself, said i, who do not pretend to direct my aim with so much precision, i test every part, i probe every opening; in short, to use a vulgar proverb, i leave no stone unturned. and as in agriculture, it is not my vineyards or my woods only, but my fields as well, that i look after and cultivate, and (to carry on the metaphor) as i do not content myself with sowing those fields simply with corn or white wheat, but sprinkle in barley, pulse, and the other kinds of grain; so, in my pleadings at the bar, i scatter broadcast various arguments like so many kinds of seed, in order to reap whatever may happen to come up. for the disposition of your judges is as hard to fathom as uncertain, and as little to be relied on as that of soils and seasons. the comic writer eupolis,[22] i remember, mentions it in praise of that excellent orator pericles, that "on his lips persuasion hung, and powerful reason rul'd his tongue: thus he alone could boast the art to charm at once, and pierce the heart." [23] but could pericles, without the richest variety of expression, and merely by the force of the concise or the rapid style, or both (for they are very different), have thus charmed and pierced the heart. to delight and to persuade requires time and great command of language; and to leave a sting in the minds of the audience is an effect not to be expected from an orator who merely pinks, but from him, and him only, who thrusts in. another comic poet,[24] speaking of the same orator, says: "his mighty words like jove's own thunder roll; greece hears, and trembles to her inmost soul." but it is not the close and reserved; it is the copious, the majestic, and the sublime orator, who thunders, who lightens, who, in short, bears all before him in a confused whirl. there is, undeniably, a just mean in everything; but he equally misses the mark who falls short of it, as he who goes beyond it; he who is too limited as he who is too unrestrained. hence it is as common a thing to hear our orators condemned for being too jejune and feeble as too excessive and redundant. one is said to have exceeded the bounds of his subject, the other not to have reached them. both, no doubt, are equally in fault, with this difference, however, that in the one the fault arises from an abundance, in the other, from a deficiency; an error, in the former case, which, if it be not the sign of a more correct, is certainly of a more fertile genius. when i say this, i would not be understood to approve that everlasting talker[25] mentioned in homer, but that other' described in the following lines: "frequent and soft, as falls the winter snow, thus from his lips the copious periods flow." not but that i extremely admire him,[26] too, of whom the poet says, "few were his words, but wonderfully strong." yet, if the choice were given me, i should give the preference to that style resembling winter snow, that is, to the full, uninterrupted, and diffusive; in short, to that pomp of eloquence which seems all heavenly and divine. but (it is replied) the harangue of a more moderate length is most generally admired. it is:--but only by indolent people; and to fix the standard by their laziness and false delicacy would be simply ridiculous. were you to consult persons of this cast, they would tell you, not only that it is best to say little, but that it is best to say nothing at all. thus, my friend, i have laid before you my opinions upon this subject, and i am willing to change them if not agreeable to yours. but should you disagree with me, pray let me know clearly your reasons why. for, though i ought to yield in this case to your more enlightened judgment, yet, in a point of such consequence, i had rather be convinced by argument than by authority. so if i don't seem to you very wide of the mark, a line or two from you in return, intimating your concurrence, will be sufficient to confirm me in my opinion: on the other hand, if you should think me mistaken, let me have your objections at full length. does it not look rather like bribery, my requiring only a short letter, if you agree with me; but a very long one if you should be of a different opinion. farewell. xv -to paternus as i rely very much upon the soundness of your judgment, so i do upon the goodness of your eyes: not because i think your discernment very great (for i don't want to make you conceited), but because i think it as good as mine: which, it must be confessed, is saying a great deal. joking apart, i like the look of the slaves which were purchased for me on your recommendation very well; all i further care about is, that they be honest: and for this i must depend upon their characters more than their countenances. farewell. xvi -to catilius severus [27] i am at present (and have been a considerable time) detained in rome, under the most stunning apprehensions. titus aristo,[28] whom i have a singular admiration and affection for, is fallen into a long and obstinate illness, which troubles me. virtue, knowledge, and good sense, shine out with so superior a lustre in this excellent man that learning herself, and every valuable endowment, seem involved in the danger of his single person. how consummate his knowledge, both in the political and civil laws of his country! how thoroughly conversant is he in every branch of history or antiquity? in a word, there is nothing you might wish to know which he could not teach you. as for me, whenever i would acquaint myself with any abstruse point, i go to him as my store-house. what an engaging sincerity, what dignity in his conversation! how chastened and becoming is his caution! though he conceives, at once, every point in debate, yet he is as slow to decide as he is quick to apprehend; calmly and deliberately sifting and weighing every opposite reason that is offered, and tracing it, with a most judicious penetration, from its source through all its remotest consequences. his diet is frugal, his dress plain; and whenever i enter his chamber, and view him reclined upon his couch, i consider the scene before me as a true image of ancient simplicity, to which his illustrious mind reflects the noblest ornament. he places no part of his happiness in ostentation, but in the secret approbation of his conscience, seeking the reward of his virtue, not in the clamorous applauses of the world, but in the silent satisfaction which results from having acted well. in short, you will not easily find his equal, even among our philosophers by outward profession. no, he does not frequent the gymnasia or porticoes[29] nor does he amuse his own and others' leisure with endless controversies, but busies himself in the scenes of civil and active life. many has he assisted with his interest, still more with his advice, and withal in the practice of temperance, piety, justice, and fortitude, he has no superior. you would be astonished, were you there to see, at the patience with which he bears his illness, how he holds out against pain, endures thirst, and quietly submits to this raging fever and to the pressure of those clothes which are laid upon him to promote perspiration. he lately called me and a few more of his particular friends to his bedside, requesting us to ask his physicians what turn they apprehended his distemper would take; that, if they pronounced it incurable, he might voluntarily put an end to his life; but if there were hopes of a recovery, how tedious and difficult soever it might prove, he would calmly wait the event; for so much, he thought, was due to the tears and entreaties of his wife and daughter, and to the affectionate intercession of his friends, as not voluntarily to abandon our hopes, if they were not entirely desperate. a true hero's resolution this, in my estimation, and worthy the highest applause. instances are frequent in the world, of rushing into the arms of death without reflection and by a sort of blind impulse but deliberately to weigh the reasons for life or death, and to be determined in our choice as either side of the scale prevails, shows a great mind. we have had the satisfaction to receive the opinion of his physicians in his favour: may heaven favour their promises and relieve me at length from this painful anxiety. once easy in my mind, i shall go back to my favourite laurentum, or, in other words, to my books, my papers and studious leisure. just now, so much of my time and thoughts are taken up in attendance upon my friend, and anxiety for him, that i have neither leisure nor inclination for any reading or writing whatever. thus you have my fears, my wishes, and my after-plans. write me in return, but in a gayer strain, an account not only of what you are and have been doing, but of what you intend doing too. it will be a very sensible consolation to me in this disturbance of mind, to be assured that yours is easy. farewell. xvii -to voconius romanus rome has not for many years beheld a more magnificent and memorable spectacle than was lately exhibited in the public funeral of that great, illustrious, and no less fortunate man, verginius rufus. he lived thirty years after he had reached the zenith of his fame. he read poems composed in his honour, he read histories of his achievements, and was himself witness of his fame among posterity. he was thrice raised to the dignity of consul, that he might at least be the highest of subjects, who[30] had refused to be the first of princes. as he escaped the resentment of those emperors to whom his virtues had given umbrage and even rendered him odious, and ended his days when this best of princes, this friend of mankind[31] was in quiet possession of the empire, it seems as if providence had purposely preserved him to these times, that he might receive the honour of a public funeral. he reached his eightyfourth year, in full tranquillity and universally revered, having enjoyed strong health during his lifetime, with the exception of a trembling in his hands, which, however, gave him no pain. his last illness, indeed, was severe and tedious, but even that circumstance added to his reputation. as he was practising his voice with a view of returning his public acknowledgements to the emperor, who had promoted him to the consulship, a large volume he had taken into his hand, and which happened to be too heavy for so old a man to hold standing up, slid from his grasp. in hastily endeavouring to recover it, his foot slipped on the smooth pavement, and he fell down and broke his thighbone, which being clumsily set, his age as well being against him, did not properly unite again. the funeral obsequies paid to the memory of this great man have done honour to the emperor, to the age, and to the bar. the consul cornelius tacitus[32] pronounced his funeral oration and thus his good fortune was crowned by the public applause of so eloquent an orator. he has departed from our midst, full of years, indeed, and of glory; as illustrious by the honours he refused as by those he accepted. yet still we shall miss him and lament him, as the shining model of a past age; i, especially, shall feel his loss, for i not only admired him as a patriot, but loved him as a friend. we were of the same province, and of neighbouring towns, and our estates were also contiguous. besides these accidental connections, he was left my guardian, and always treated me with a parent's affection. whenever i offered myself as a candidate for any office in the state, he constantly supported me with his interest; and although he had long since given up all such services to friends, he would kindly leave his retirement and come to give me his vote in person. on the day on which the priests nominate those they consider most worthy of the sacred office[33] he constantly proposed me. even in his last illness, apprehending the possibility of the senate's appointing him one of the five commissioners for reducing the public expenses, he fixed upon me, young as i am, to bear his excuses, in preference to so many other friends, elderly men too, and of consular rank and said to me, "had i a son of my own, i would entrust you with this matter." and so i cannot but lament his death, as though it were premature, and pour out my grief into your bosom; if indeed one has any right to grieve, or to call it death at all, which to such a man terminates his mortality, rather than ends his life. he lives, and will live on for ever; and his fame will extend and be more celebrated by posterity, now that he is gone from our sight. i had much else to write to you but my mind is full of this. i keep thinking of verginius: i see him before me: i am for ever fondly yet vividly imagining that i hear him, am speaking to him, embrace him. there are men amongst us, his fellow-citizens, perhaps, who may rival him in virtue; but not one that will ever approach him in glory. farewell. xviii -to nepos the great fame of isaeus had already preceded him here; but we find him even more wonderful than we had heard. he possesses the utmost readiness, copiousness, and abundance of language: he always speaks extempore, and his lectures are as finished as though he had spent a long time over their written composition. his style is greek, or rather the genuine attic. his exordiums are terse, elegant, attractive, and occasionally impressive and majestic. he suggests several subjects for discussion, allows his audience their choice, sometimes to even name which side he shall take, rises, arranges himself, and begins. at once he has everything almost equally at command. recondite meanings of things are suggested to you, and words--what words they are! exquisitely chosen and polished. these extempore speeches of his show the wideness of his reading, and how much practice he has had in composition. his preface is to the point, his narrative lucid, his summing up forcible, his rhetorical ornament imposing. in a word, he teaches, entertains, and affects you; and you are at a loss to decide which of the three he does best. his reflections are frequent, his syllogisms also are frequent, condensed, and carefully finished, a result not easily attainable even with the pen. as for his memory, you would hardly believe what it is capable of. he repeats from a long way back what he has previously delivered extempore, without missing a single word. this marvellous faculty he has acquired by dint of great application and practice, for night and day he does nothing, hears nothing, says nothing else. he has passed his sixtieth year and is still only a rhetorician, and i know no class of men more single-hearted, more genuine, more excellent than this class. we who have to go through the rough work of the bar and of real disputes unavoidably contract a certain unprincipled adroitness. the school, the lecture-room, the imaginary case, all this, on the other hand, is perfectly innocent and harmless, and equally enjoyable, especially to old people, for what can be happier at that time of life than to enjoy what we found pleasantest in our young days? i consider isaeus then, not only the most eloquent, but the happiest, of men, and if you are not longing to make his acquaintance, you must be made of stone and iron. so, if not upon my account, or for any other reason, come, for the sake of hearing this man, at least. have you never read of a certain inhabitant of cadiz who was so impressed with the name and fame of livy that he came from the remotest corner of the earth on purpose to see him, and, his curiosity gratified, went straight home again. it is utter want of taste, shows simple ignorance, is almost an actual disgrace to a man, not to set any high value upon a proficiency in so pleasing, noble, refining a science. "i have authors," you will reply, "here in my own study, just as eloquent." true: but then those authors you can read at any time, while you cannot always get the opportunity of hearing eloquence. besides, as the proverb says, "the living voice is that which sways the soul;" yes, far more. for notwithstanding what one reads is more clearly understood than what one hears, yet the utterance, countenance, garb, aye and the very gestures of the speaker, alike concur in fixing an impression upon the mind; that is, unless we disbelieve the truth of aeschines' statement, who, after he had read to the rhodians that celebrated speech of demosthenes, upon their expressing their admiration of it, is said to have added, "ah! what would you have said, could you have heard the wild beast himself?" and aeschines, if we may take demosthenes' word for it, was no mean elocutionist; yet, he could not but confess that the speech would have sounded far finer from the lips of its author. i am saying all this with a view to persuading you to hear isaeus, if even for the mere sake of being able to say you have heard him. farewell. xix -to avitus it would be a long story, and of no great importance, to tell you by what accident i found myself dining the other day with an individual with whom i am by no means intimate, and who, in his own opinion, does things in good style and economically as well, but according to mine, with meanness and extravagance combined. some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. there were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine; not that the guest might take their choice, but that they might not have any option in their power; one kind being for himself, and for us; another sort for his lesser friends (for it seems he has degrees of friends), and the third for his own freedmen and ours. my neighbour,[34] reclining next me, observing this, asked me if i approved the arrangement. not at all, i told him. "pray then," he asked, "what is your method upon such occasions?" "mine," i returned, "is to give all my visitors the same reception; for when i give an invitation, it is to entertain, not distinguish, my company: i place every man upon my own level whom i admit to my table." "not excepting even your freedmen?" "not excepting even my freedmen, whom i consider on these occasions my guests, as much as any of the rest." he replied, "this must cost you a great deal." "not in the least." "how can that be?" "simply because, although my freedmen don't drink the same wine as myself, yet i drink the same as they do." and, no doubt about it, if a man is wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his visitors what he takes himself. restrain it, keep it in, if you wish to be true economist. you will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other people rudely can be. why do i say all this? why, for fear a young man of your high character and promise should be imposed upon by this immoderate luxury which prevails at some tables, under the specious notion of frugality. whenever any folly of this sort falls under my eye, i shall, just because i care for you, point it out to you as an example you ought to shun. remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together. farewell. xx -to macrinus the senate decreed yesterday, on the emperor's motion, a triumphal statue to vestricius spurinna: not as they would to many others, who never were in action, or saw a camp, or heard the sound of a trumpet, unless at a show; but as it would be decreed to those who have justly bought such a distinction with their blood, their exertions, and their deeds. spurinna forcibly restored the king of the bructeri[35] to his throne; and this by the noblest kind of victory; for he subdued that warlike people by the terror of the mere display of his preparation for the campaign. this is his reward as a hero, while, to console him for the loss of his son cottius, who died during his absence upon that expedition, they also voted a statue to the youth; a very unusual honour for one so young; but the services of the father deserved that the pain of so severe a wound should be soothed by no common balm. indeed cottius himself evinced such remarkable promise of the highest qualities that it is but fitting his short limited term of life should be extended, as it were, by this kind of immortality. he was so pure and blameless, so full of dignity, and commanded such respect, that he might have challenged in moral goodness much older men, with whom he now shares equal honours. honours, if i am not mistaken, conferred not only to perpetuate the memory of the deceased youth, and in consolation to the surviving father, but for the sake of public example also. this will rouse and stimulate our young men to cultivate every worthy principle, when they see such rewards bestowed upon one of their own years, provided he deserve them: at the same time that men of quality will be encouraged to beget children and to have the joy and satisfaction of leaving a worthy race behind, if their children survive them, or of so glorious a consolation, should they survive their children. looking at it in this light then, i am glad, upon public grounds, that a statue is decreed cottius: and for my own sake too, just as much; for i loved this most favoured, gifted, youth, as ardently as i now grievously miss him amongst us. so that it will be a great satisfaction to me to be able to look at this figure from time to time as i pass by, contemplate it, stand underneath, and walk to and fro before it. for if having the pictures of the departed placed in our homes lightens sorrow, how much more those public representations of them which are not only memorials of their air and countenance, but of their glory and honour besides? farewell. xxi to paiscus as i know you eagerly embrace every opportunity of obliging me, so there is no man whom i had rather be under an obligation to. i apply to you, therefore, in preference to anyone else, for a favour which i am extremely desirous of obtaining. you, who are commander-in-chief of a very considerable army, have many opportunities of exercising your generosity; and the length of time you have enjoyed that post must have enabled you to provide for all your own friends. i hope you will now turn your eyes upon some of mine: as indeed they are but a few your generous disposition, i know, would be better pleased if the number were greater, but one or two will suffice my modest desires; at present i will only mention voconius romanus. his father was of great distinction among the roman knights, and his father-in-law, or, i might more properly call him, his second father, (for his affectionate treatment of voconius entitles him to that appellation) was still more conspicuous. his mother was one of the most considerable ladies of upper spain: you know what character the people of that province bear, and how remarkable they are for their strictness of their manners. as for himself, he lately held the post of flamen.[36] now, from the time when we were first students together, i have felt very tenderly attached to him. we lived under the same roof, in town and country, we joked together, we shared each other's serious thoughts: for where indeed could i have found a truer friend or pleasanter companion than he? in his conversation, and even in his very voice and countenance, there is a rare sweetness; as at the bar he displays talents of a high order; acuteness, elegance, ease, and skill: and he writes such letters too that were you to read them you would imagine they had been dictated by the muses themselves. i have a very great affection for him, as he has for me. even in the earlier part of our lives, i warmly embraced every opportunity of doing him all the good services which then lay in my power, as i have lately obtained for him from our most gracious prince[37] the privilege[38] granted to those who have three children: a favour which, though cã¦sar very rarely bestows, and always with great caution, yet he conferred, at my request, in such a matter as to give it the air and grace of being his own choice. the best way of showing that i think he deserves the kindnesses he has already received from me is by increasing them, especially as he always accepts my services so gratefully as to deserve more. thus i have shown you what manner of man romanus is, how thoroughly i have proved his worth, and how much i love him. let me entreat you to honour him with your patronage in a way suitable to the generosity of your heart, and the eminence of your station. but above all let him have your affection; for though you were to confer upon him the utmost you have in your power to bestow, you can give him nothing more valuable than your friendshipthat you may see he is worthy of it, even to the closest degree of intimacy, i send you this brief sketch of his tastes, character, his whole life, in fact. i should continue my intercessions in his behalf, but that i know you prefer not being pressed, and i have already repeated them in every line of this letter: for, to show a good reason for what one asks is true intercession, and of the most effectual kind. farewell. xxii -to maimus you guessed correctly: i am much engaged in pleading before the hundred. the business there is more fatiguing than pleasant. trifling, inconsiderable cases, mostly; it is very seldom that anything worth speaking of, either from the importance of the question or the rank of the persons concerned, comes before them. there are very few lawyers either whom i take any pleasure in working with. the rest, a parcel of impudent young fellows, many of whom one knows nothing whatever about, come here to get some practice in speaking, and conduct themselves so forwardly and with such utter want of deference that my friend attilius exactly hit it, i think, when he made the observation that "boys set out at the bar with cases in the court of the hundred as they do at school with homer," intimating that at both places they begin where they should end. but in former times (so my elders tell me) no youth, even of the best families, was allowed in unless introduced by some person of consular dignity. as things are now, since every fence of modesty and decorum is broken down, and all distinctions are levelled and confounded, the present young generation, so far from waiting to be introduced, break in of their own free will. the audience at their heels are fit attendants upon such orators; a low rabble of hired mercenaries, supplied by contract. they get together in the middle of the court, where the dole is dealt round to them as openly as if they were in a dining-room: and at this noble price they run from court to court. the greeks have an appropriate name in their language for this sort of people, importing that they are applauders by profession, and we stigmatize them with the opprobrious title of table-flatterers: yet the dirty business alluded to increases every day. it was only yesterday two of my domestic officers, mere striplings, were hired to cheer somebody or other, at three denarii apiece:[39] that is what the highest eloquence goes for. upon these terms we fill as many benches as we please, and gather a crowd; this is how those rending shouts are raised, as soon as the individual standing up in the middle of the ring gives the signal. for, you must know, these honest fellows, who understand nothing of what is said, or, if they did, could not hear it, would be at a loss without a signal, how to time their applause: for many of them don't hear a syllable, and are as noisy as any of the rest. if, at any time, you should happen to be passing by when the court is sitting, and feel at all interested to know how any speaker is acquitting himself, you have no occasion to give yourself the trouble of getting up on the judge's platform, no need to listen; it is easy enough to find out, for you may be quite sure he that gets most applause deserves it the least. largius licinus was the first to introduce this fashion; but then he went no farther than to go round and solicit an audience. i know, i remember hearing this from my tutor quinctilian. "i used," he told me, "to go and hear domitius afer, and as he was pleading once before the hundred in his usual slow and impressive manner, hearing, close to him, a most immoderate and unusual noise, and being a good deal surprised at this, he left off: the noise ceased, and he began again: he was interrupted a second time, and a third. at last he enquired who it was that was speaking? he was told, licinus. upon which, he broke off the case, exclaiming, 'eloquence is no more!'" the truth is it had only begun to decline then, when in afer's opinion it no longer existed -whereas now it is almost extinct. i am ashamed to tell you of the mincing and affected pronunciation of the speakers, and of the shrillvoiced applause with which their effusions are received; nothing seems wanting to complete this sing-song performance except claps, or rather cymbals and tambourines. howlings indeed (for i can call such applause, which would be indecent even in the theatre, by no other name) abound in plenty. up to this time the interest of my friends and the consideration of my early time of life have kept me in this court, as i am afraid they might think i was doing it to shirk work rather than to avoid these indecencies, were i to leave it just yet: however, i go there less frequently than i did, and am thus effecting a gradual retreat. farewell. xxiii -to gallus you are surprised that i am so fond of my laurentine, or (if you prefer the name) my laurens: but you will cease to wonder when i acquaint you with the beauty of the villa, the advantages of its situation, and the extensive view of the sea-coast. it is only seventeen miles from rome: so that when i have finished my business in town, i can pass my evenings here after a good satisfactory day's work. there are two different roads to it: if you go by that of laurentum, you must turn off at the fourteenth mile-stone; if by astia, at the eleventh. both of them are sandy in places, which makes it a little heavier and longer by carriage, but short and easy on horseback. the landscape affords plenty of variety, the view in some places being closed in by woods, in others extending over broad meadows, where numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, which the severity of the winter has driven from the mountains, fatten in the spring warmth, and on the rich pasturage. my villa is of a convenient size without being expensive to keep up. the courtyard in front is plain, but not mean, through which you enter porticoes shaped into the form of the letter d, enclosing a small but cheerful area between. these make a capital retreat for bad weather, not only as they are shut in with windows, but particularly as they are sheltered by a projection of the roof. from the middle of these porticoes you pass into a bright pleasant inner court, and out of that into a handsome hall running out towards the sea-shore; so that when there is a south-west breeze, it is gently washed with the waves, which spend themselves at its base. on every side of this hall there are either folding-doors or windows equally large, by which means you have a view from the front and the two sides of three different seas, as it were: from the back you see the middle court, the portico, and the area; and from another point you look through the portico into the courtyard, and out upon the woods and distant mountains beyond. on the left hand of this hall, a little farther from the sea, lies a large drawing-room, and beyond that, a second of a smaller size, which has one window to the rising and another to the setting sun: this as well has a view of the sea, but more distant and agreeable. the angle formed by the projection of the dining-room with this drawing-room retains and intensifies the warmth of the sun, and this forms our winter quarters and family gymnasium, which is sheltered from all the winds except those which bring on clouds, but the clear sky comes out again before the warmth has gone out of the place. adjoining this angle is a room forming the segment of a circle, the windows of which are so arranged as to get the sun all through the day: in the walls are contrived a sort of cases, containing a collection of authors who can never be read too often. next to this is a bed-room, connected with it by a raised passage furnished with pipes, which supply, at a wholesome temperature, and distribute to all parts of this room, the heat they receive. the rest of this side of the house is appropriated to the use of my slaves and freedmen; but most of the rooms in it are respectable enough to put my guests into. in the opposite wing is a most elegant, tastefully fitted up bed-room; next to which lies another, which you may call either a large bed-room or a modified dining-room; it is very warm and light, not only from the direct rays of the sun, but by their reflection from the sea. beyond this is a bed-room with an ante-room, the height of which renders it cool in summer, its thick walls warm in winter, for it is sheltered, every way from the winds. to this apartment another anteroom is joined by one common wall. from thence you enter into the wide and spacious cooling-room belonging to the bath, from the opposite walls of which two curved basins are thrown out, so to speak; which are more than large enough if you consider that the sea is close at hand. adjacent to this is the anointing-room, then the sweating-room, and beyond that the bathheating room: adjoining are two other little bath-rooms, elegantly rather than sumptuously fitted up: annexed to them is a warm bath of wonderful construction, in which one can swim and take a view of the sea at the same time. not far from this stands the tennis-court, which lies open to the warmth of the afternoon sun. from thence you go up a sort of turret which has two rooms below, with the same number above, besides a dining-room commanding a very extensive look-out on to the sea, the coast, and the beautiful villas scattered along the shore line. at the other end is a second turret, containing a room that gets the rising and setting sun. behind this is a large store-room and granary, and underneath, a spacious dining-room, where only the murmur and break of the sea can be heard, even in a storm: it looks out upon the garden, and the gestatio,[40] running round the garden. the gestatio is bordered round with box, and, where that is decayed, with rosemary: for the box, wherever sheltered by the buildings, grows plentifully, but where it lies open and exposed to the weather and spray from the sea, though at some distance from the latter, it quite withers up. next the gestatio, and running along inside it, is a shady vine plantation, the path of which is so soft and easy to the tread that you may walk bare-foot upon it. the garden is chiefly planted with fig and mulberry trees, to which this soil is as favourable as it is averse from all others. here is a dining-room, which, though it stands away from the sea enjoys the garden view which is just as pleasant: two apartments run round the back part of it, the windows of which look out upon the entrance of the villa, and into a fine kitchen-garden. from here extends an enclosed portico which, from its great length, you might take for a public one. it has a range of windows on either side, but more on the side facing the sea, and fewer on the garden side, and these, single windows and alternate with the opposite rows. in calm, clear, weather these are all thrown open; but if it blows, those on the weather side are closed, whilst those away from the wind can remain open without any inconvenience. before this enclosed portico lies a terrace fragrant with the scent of violets, and warmed by the reflection of the sun from the portico, which, while it retains the rays, keeps away the north-east wind; and it is as warm on this side as it is cool on the side opposite: in the same way it is a protection against the wind from the south-west; and thus, in short, by means of its several sides, breaks the force of the winds, from whatever quarter they may blow. these are some of its winter advantages, they are still more appreciable in the summer time; for at that season it throws a shade upon the terrace during the whole of the forenoon, and upon the adjoining portion of the gestatio and garden in the afternoon, casting a greater or less shade on this side or on that as the day increases or decreases. but the portico itself is coolest just at the time when the sun is at its hottest, that is, when the rays fall directly upon the roof. also, by opening the windows you let in the western breezes in a free current, which prevents the place getting oppressive with close and stagnant air. at the upper end of the terrace and portico stands a detached garden building, which i call my favourite; my favourite indeed, as i put it up myself. it contains a very warm winter-room, one side of which looks down upon the terrace, while the other has a view of the sea, and both lie exposed to the sun. the bed-room opens on to the covered portico by means of folding-doors, while its window looks out upon the sea. on that side next the sea, and facing the middle wall, is formed a very elegant little recess, which, by means of transparent[41] windows, and a curtain drawn to or aside, can be made part of the adjoining room, or separated from it. it contains a couch and two chairs: as you lie upon this couch, from where your feet are you get a peep of the sea; looking behind you see the neighbouring villas, and from the head you have a view of the woods: these three views may be seen either separately, from so many different windows, or blended together in one. adjoining this is a bed-room, which neither the servants' voices, the murmuring of the sea, the glare of lightning, nor daylight itself can penetrate, unless you open the windows. this profound tranquillity and seclusion are occasioned by a passage separating the wall of this room from that of the garden, and thus, by means of this intervening space, every noise is drowned. annexed to this is a tiny stove-room, which, by opening or shutting a little aperture, lets out or retains the heat from underneath, according as you require. beyond this lie a bed-room and ante-room, which enjoy the sun, though obliquely indeed, from the time it rises, till the afternoon. when i retire to this garden summer-house, i fancy myself a hundred miles away from my villa, and take especial pleasure in it at the feast of the saturnalia,[42] when, by the licence of that festive season, every other part of my house resounds with my servants' mirth: thus i neither interrupt their amusement nor they my studies. amongst the pleasures and conveniences of this situation, there is one drawback, and that is, the want of running water; but then there are wells about the place, or rather springs, for they lie close to the surface. and, altogether, the quality of this coast is remarkable; for dig where you may, you meet, upon the first turning up of the ground, with a spring of water, quite pure, not in the least salt, although so near the sea. the neighbouring woods supply us with all the fuel we require, the other necessaries ostia furnishes. indeed, to a moderate man, even the village (between which and my house there is only one villa) would supply all ordinary requirements. it has three public baths, which are a great convenience if it happen that friends come in unexpectedly, or make too short a stay to allow time in preparing my own. the whole coast is very pleasantly sprinkled with villas either in rows or detached, which whether looking at them from the sea or the shore, present the appearance of so many different cities. the strand is, sometimes, after a long calm, perfectly smooth, though, in general, through the storms driving the waves upon it, it is rough and uneven. i cannot boast that our sea is plentiful in choice fish; however, it supplies us with capital soles and prawns; but as to other kinds of provisions, my villa aspires to excel even inland countries, particularly in milk: for the cattle come up there from the meadows in large numbers, in pursuit of water and shade. tell me, now, have i not good reason for living in, staying in, loving, such a retreat, which, if you feel no appetite for, you must be morbidly attached to town? and i only wish you would feel inclined to come down to it, that to so many charms with which my little villa abounds, it might have the very considerable addition of your company to recommend it. farewell. xxiv -to cerealis you advise me to read my late speech before an assemblage of my friends. i shall do so, as you advise it, though i have strong scruples. compositions of this sort lose, i well know, all their force and fire, and even their very name almost, by a mere recital. it is the solemnity of the tribunal, the concourse of advocates, the suspense of the event, the fame of the several pleaders concerned, the different parties formed amongst the audience; add to this the gestures, the pacing, aye the actual running, to and fro, of the speaker, the body working[43] in harmony with every inward emotion, that conspire to give a spirit and a grace to what he delivers. this is the reason that those who plead sitting, though they retain most of the advantages possessed by those who stand up to plead, weaken the whole force of their oratory. the eyes and hands of the reader, those important instruments of graceful elocution, being engaged, it is no wonder that the attention of the audience droops, without anything extrinsic to keep it up, no allurements of gesture to attract, no smart, stinging impromptus to enliven. to these general considerations i must add this particular disadvantage which attends the speech in question, that it is of the argumentative kind; and it is natural for an author to infer that what he wrote with labour will not be read with pleasure. for who is there so unprejudiced as not to prefer the attractive and sonorous to the sombre and unornamented in style? it is very unreasonable that there should be any distinction; however, it is certain the judges generally expect one style of pleading, and the audience another; whereas an auditor ought to be affected only by those parts which would especially strike him, were he in the place of the judge. nevertheless it is possible the objections which lie against this piece may be surmounted in consideration of the novelty it has to recommend it: the novelty i mean with respect to us; for the greek orators have a method of reasoning upon a different occasion, not altogether unlike that which i have employed. they, when they would throw out a law, as contrary to some former one unrepealed, argue by comparing those together; so i, on the contrary, endeavour to prove that the crime, which i was insisting upon as falling within the intent and meaning of the law relating to public extortions, was agreeable, not only to that law, but likewise to other laws of the same nature. those who are ignorant of the jurisprudence of their country can have no taste for reasonings of this kind, but those who are not ought to be proportionably the more favourable in the judgments they pass upon them. i shall endeavour, therefore, if you persist in my reciting it, to collect as learned an audience as i can. but before you determine this point, do weigh impartially the different considerations i have laid before you, and then decide as reason shall direct; for it is reason that must justify you; obedience to your commands will be a sufficient apology for me. farewell. xxv -to calvisius give me a penny, and i will tell you a story "worth gold," or, rather, you shall hear two or three; for one brings to my mind another. it makes no difference with which i begin. verania, the widow of piso, the piso, i mean, whom galba adopted, lay extremely ill, and regulus paid her a visit. by the way, mark the assurance of the man, visiting a lady who detested him herself, and to whose husband he was a declared enemy! even barely to enter her house would have been bad enough, but he actually went and seated himself by her bed-side and began enquiring on what day and hour she was born. being informed of these important particulars, he composes his countenance, fixes his eyes, mutters something to himself, counts upon his fingers, and all this merely to keep the poor sick lady in suspense. when he had finished, "you are," he says, "in one of your climacterics; however, you will get over it. but for your greater satisfaction, i will consult with a certain diviner, whose skill i have frequently experienced." accordingly off he goes, performs a sacrifice, and returns with the strongest assurances that the omens confirmed what he had promised on the part of the stars. upon this the good woman, whose danger made her credulous, calls for her will and gives regulus a legacy. she grew worse shortly after this; and in her last moments exclaimed against this wicked, treacherous, and worse than perjured wretch, who had sworn falsely to her by his own son's life. but imprecations of this sort are as common with regulus as they are impious; and he continually devotes that unhappy youth to the curse of those gods whose vengeance his own frauds every day provoke. velleius blaesus, a man of consular rank, and remarkable for his immense wealth, in his last illness was anxious to make some alterations in his will. regulus, who had lately endeavoured to insinuate himself into his good graces, hoped to get something from the new will, and accordingly addresses himself to his physicians, and conjures them to exert all their skill to prolong the poor man's life. but after the will was signed, he changes his character, reversing his tone: "how long," says he to these very same physicians, "do you intend keeping this man in misery? since you cannot preserve his life, why do you grudge him the happy release of death?" blaesus dies, and, as if he had overheard every word that regulus had said, has not left him one farthing.--and now have you had enough? or are you for the third, according to rhetorical canon? if so, regulus will supply you. you must know, then, that aurelia, a lady of remarkable accomplishments, purposing to execute her will,[44] had put on her smartest dress for the occasion. regulus, who was present as a witness, turned to the lady, and "pray," says he, "leave me these fine clothes." aurelia thought the man was joking: but he insisted upon it perfectly seriously, and, to be brief, obliged her to open her will, and insert the dress she had on as a legacy to him, watching as she wrote, and then looking over it to see that it was all down correctly. aurelia, however, is still alive: though regulus, no doubt, when he solicited this bequest, expected to enjoy it pretty soon. the fellow gets estates, he gets legacies, conferred upon him, as if he really deserved them! but why should i go on dwelling upon this in a city where wickedness and knavery have, for this time past, received, the same, do i say, nay, even greater encouragement, than modesty and virtue? regulus is a glaring instance of this truth, who, from a state of poverty, has by a train of villainies acquired such immense riches that he once told me, upon consulting the omens to know how soon he should be worth sixty millions of sesterces,[45] he found them so favourable as to portend he should possess double that sum. and possibly he may, if he continues to dictate wills for other people in this way: a sort of fraud, in my opinion, the most infamous of any. farewell. xxvi -to calvisius i never, i think, spent any time more agreeably than my time lately with spurinna. so agreeably, indeed, that if ever i should arrive at old age, there is no man whom i would sooner choose for my model, for nothing can be more perfect in arrangement than his mode of life. i look upon order in human actions, especially at that advanced age, with the same sort of pleasure as i behold the settled course of the heavenly bodies. in young men, indeed, a little confusion and disarrangement is all well enough: but in age, when business is unseasonable, and ambition indecent, all should be composed and uniform. this rule spurinna observes with the most religious consistency. even in those matters which one might call insignificant, were they not of every-day occurrence, he observes a certain periodical season and method. the early morning he passes on his couch; at eight he calls for his slippers, and walks three miles, exercising mind and body together. on his return, if he has any friends in the house with him, he gets upon some entertaining and interesting topic of conversation; if by himself, some book is read to him, sometimes when visitors are there even, if agreeable to the company. then he has a rest, and after that either takes up a book or resumes his conversation in preference to reading. by-and-by he goes out for a drive in his carriage, either with his wife, a most admirable woman, or with some friend: a happiness which lately was mine.--how agreeable, how delightful it is getting a quiet time alone with him in this way! you could imagine you were listening to some worthy of ancient times! what deeds, what men you hear about, and with what noble precepts you are imbued! yet all delivered with so modest an air that there is not the least appearance of dictating. when he has gone about seven miles, he gets out of his chariot and walks a mile more, after which he returns home, and either takes a rest or goes back to his couch and writing. for he composes most elegant lyrics both in greek and latin. so wonderfully soft, sweet, and gay they are, while the author's own unsullied life lends them additional charm. when the baths are ready, which in winter is about three o'clock, and in summer about two, he undresses himself and, if there happen to be no wind, walks for some time in the sun. after this he has a good brisk game of tennis: for by this sort of exercise too, he combats the effects of old age. when he has bathed, he throws himself upon his couch, but waits a little before he begins eating, and in the meanwhile has some light and entertaining author read to him. in this, as in all the rest, his friends are at full liberty to share; or to employ themselves in any other way, just as they prefer. you sit down to an elegant dinner, without extravagant display, which is served up in antique plate of pure silver. he has another complete service in corinthian metal, which, though he admires as a curiosity, is far from being his passion. during dinner he is frequently entertained with the recital of some dramatic piece, by way of seasoning his very pleasures with study; and although he continues at the table, even in summer, till the night is somewhat advanced, yet he prolongs the entertainment with so much affability and politeness that none of his guests ever finds it tedious. by this method of living he has preserved all his senses entire, and his body vigorous and active to his seventyeighth year, without showing any sign of old age except wisdom. this is the sort of life i ardently aspire after; as i purpose enjoying it when i shall arrive at those years which will justify a retreat from active life. meanwhile i am embarrassed with a thousand affairs, in which spurinna is at once my support and my example: for he too, so long as it became him, discharged his professional duties, held magistracies, governed provinces, and by toiling hard earned the repose he now enjoys. i propose to myself the same career and the same limits: and i here give it to you under my hand that i do so. if an ill-timed ambition should carry me beyond those bounds, produce this very letter of mine in court against me; and condemn me to repose, whenever i enjoy it without being reproached with indolence. farewell. xxvii -to baebius macer it gives me great pleasure to find you such a reader of my uncle's works as to wish to have a complete collection of them, and to ask me for the names of them all. i will act as index then, and you shall know the very order in which they were written, for the studious reader likes to know this. the first work of his was a treatise in one volume, "on the use of the dart by cavalry"; this he wrote when in command of one of the cavalry corps of our allied troops, and is drawn up with great care and ingenuity. "the life of pomponius secundus,"[46] in two volumes. pomponius had a great affection for him, and he thought he owed this tribute to his memory. "the history of the wars in germany," in twenty books, in which he gave an account of all the battles we were engaged in against that nation. a dream he had while serving in the army in germany first suggested the design of this work to him. he imagined that drusus nero[47] (who extended his conquest very far into that country, and there lost his life) appeared to him in his sleep, and entreated him to rescue his memory from oblivion. next comes a work entitled "the student," in three parts, which from their length spread into six volumes: a work in which is discussed the earliest training and subsequent education of the orator. "questions of grammar and style," in eight books, written in the latter part of nero's reign, when the tyranny of the times made it dangerous to engage in literary pursuits requiring freedom and elevation of tone. he has completed the history which aufidius bassus[48] left unfinished, and has added to it thirty books. and lastly he has left thirty-seven books on natural history, a work of great compass and learning, and as full of variety as nature herself. you will wonder how a man as busy as he was could find time to compose so many books, and some of them too involving such care and labour. but you will be still more surprised when you hear that he pleaded at the bar for some time, that he died in his sixty-sixth year, that the intervening time was employed partly in the execution of the highest official duties, partly in attendance upon those emperors who honoured him with their friendship. but he had a quick apprehension, marvellous power of application, and was of an exceedingly wakeful temperament. he always began to study at midnight at the time of the feast of vulcan, not for the sake of good luck, but for learning's sake; in winter generally at one in the morning, but never later than two, and often at twelve.[49] he was a most ready sleeper, insomuch that he would sometimes, whilst in the midst of his studies, fall off and then wake up again. before day-break he used to wait upon vespasian' (who also used his nights for transacting business in), and then proceed to execute the orders he had received. as soon as he returned home, he gave what time was left to study. after a short and light refreshment at noon (agreeably to the good old custom of our ancestors) he would frequently in the summer, if he was disengaged from business, lie down and bask in the sun; during which time some author was read to him, while he took notes and made extracts, for every book he read he made extracts out of, indeed it was a maxim of his, that "no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it." when this was over, he generally took a cold bath, then some light refreshment and a little nap. after this, as if it had been a new day, he studied till supper-time, when a book was again read to him, which he would take down running notes upon. i remember once his reader having mis-pronounced a word, one of my uncle's friends at the table made him go back to where the word was and repeat it again; upon which my uncle said to his friend, "surely you understood it?" upon his acknowledging that he did, "why then," said he, "did you make him go back again? we have lost more than ten lines by this interruption." such an economist he was of time! in the summer he used to rise from supper at daylight, and in winter as soon as it was dark: a rule he observed as strictly as if it had been a law of the state. such was his manner of life amid the bustle and turmoil of the town: but in the country his whole time was devoted to study, excepting only when he bathed. in this exception i include no more than the time during which he was actually in the bath; for all the while he was being rubbed and wiped, he was employed either in hearing some book read to him or in dictating himself. in going about anywhere, as though he were disengaged from all other business, he applied his mind wholly to that single pursuit. a shorthand writer constantly attended him, with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle's studies: and for the same reason, when in rome, he was always carried in a chair. i recollect his once taking me to task for walking. "you need not," he said, "lose these hours." for he thought every hour gone that was not given to study. through this extraordinary application he found time to compose the several treatises i have mentioned, besides one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts which he left me in his will, consisting of a kind of common-place, written on both sides, in very small hand, so that one might fairly reckon the number considerably more. he used himself to tell us that when he was comptroller of the revenue in spain, he could have sold these manuscripts to largius licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces,[50] and then there were not so many of them. when you consider the books he has read, and the volumes he has written, are you not inclined to suspect that he never was engaged in public duties or was ever in the confidence of his prince? on the other hand, when you are told how indefatigable he was in his studies, are you not inclined to wonder that he read and wrote no more than he did? for, on one side, what obstacles would not the business of a court throw in his way? and on the other, what is it that such intense application might not effect? it amuses me then when i hear myself called a studious man, who in comparison with him am the merest idler. but why do i mention myself, who am diverted from these pursuits by numberless affairs both public and private? who amongst those whose whole lives are devoted to literary pursuits would not blush and feel himself the most confirmed of sluggards by the side of him? i see i have run out my letter farther than i had originally intended, which was only to let you know, as you asked me, what works he had left behind him. but i trust this will be no less acceptable to you than the books themselves, as it may, possibly, not only excite your curiosity to read his works, but also your emulation to copy his example, by some attempts of a similar nature. farewell. xxviii -to annius severus i have lately purchased with a legacy that was left me a small statue of corinthian brass. it is small indeed, but elegant and life-like, as far as i can form any judgment, which most certainly in matters of this sort, as perhaps in all others, is extremely defective. however, i do see the beauties of this figure: for, as it is naked the faults, if there be any, as well as the perfections, are the more observable. it represents an old man, in an erect attitude. the bones, muscles, veins, and the very wrinkles, give the impression of breathing life. the hair is thin and failing, the forehead broad, the face shrivelled, the throat lank, the arms loose and hanging, the breast shrunken, and the belly fallen in, as the whole turn and air of the figure behind too is equally expressive of old age. it appears to be true antique, judging from the colour of the brass. in short, it is such a masterpiece as would strike the eyes of a connoisseur, and which cannot fail to charm an ordinary observer: and this induced me, who am an absolute novice in this art, to buy it. but i did so, not with any intention of placing it in my own house (for i have nothing of the kind there), but with a design of fixing it in some conspicuous place in my native province; i should like it best in the temple of jupiter, for it is a gift well worthy of a temple, well worthy of a god. i desire therefore you would, with that care with which you always perform my requests, undertake this commission and give immediate orders for a pedestal to be made for it, out of what marble you please, but let my name be engraved upon it, and, if you think proper to add these as well, my titles. i will send the statue by the first person i can find who will not mind the trouble of it; or possibly (which i am sure you will like better) i may myself bring it along with me: for i intend, if business can spare me that is to say, to make an excursion over to you. i see joy in your looks when i promise to come; but you will soon change your countenance when i add, only for a few days: for the same business that at present keeps me here will prevent my making a longer stay. farewell. xxix -to caninius rufus i have just been informed that silius italicus[51] has starved himself to death, at his villa near naples. ill-health was the cause. being troubled with an incurable cancerous humour, he grew weary of life and therefore put an end to it with a determination not to be moved. he had been extremely fortunate all through his life with the exception of the death of the younger of his two sons; however, he has left behind him the elder and the worthier man of the two in a position of distinction, having even attained consular rank. his reputation had suffered a little in nero's time, as he was suspected of having officiously joined in some of the informations in that reign; but he used his interest with vitellius, with great discretion and humanity. he acquired considerable honour by his administration of the government of asia, and, by his good conduct after his retirement from business, cleared his character from that stain which his former public exertions had thrown upon it. he lived as a private nobleman, without power, and consequently without envy. though he was frequently confined to his bed, and always to his room, yet he was highly respected, and much visited; not with an interested view, but on his own account. he employed his time between conversing with literary men and composing verses; which he sometimes read out, by way of testing the public opinion: but they evidence more industry than genius. in the decline of his years he entirely quitted rome, and lived altogether in campania, from whence even the accession of the new emperor[52] could not draw him. a circumstance which i mention as much to the honour of cã¦sar, who was not displeased with that liberty, as of italicus, who was not afraid to make use of it. he was reproached with indulging his taste for the fine arts at an immoderate expense. he had several villas in the same province, and the last purchase was always the especial favourite, to the neglect of all the rest, these residences overflowed with books, statues, and pictures, which he more than enjoyed, he even adored; particularly that of virgil, of whom he was so passionate an admirer that he celebrated the anniversary of that poet's birthday with more solemnity than his own, at naples especially where he used to approach his tomb as if it had been a temple. in this tranquillity he passed his seventy-fifth year, with a delicate rather than an infirm constitution. as he was the last person upon whom nero conferred the consular office, so he was the last survivor of all those who had been raised by him to that dignity. it is also remarkable that, as he was the last to die of nero's consuls, so nero died when he was consul. recollecting this, a feeling of pity for the transitory condition of mankind comes over me. is there anything in nature so short and limited as human life, even at its longest? does it not seem to you but yesterday that nero was alive? and yet not one of all those who were consuls in his reign now remains! though why should i wonder at this? lucius piso (the father of that piso who was so infamously assassinated by valerius festus in africa) used to say, he did not see one person in the senate whose opinion he had consulted when he was consul: in so short a space is the very term of life of such a multitude of beings comprised! so that to me those royal tears seem not only worthy of pardon but of praise. for it is said that xerxes, on surveying his immense army, wept at the reflection that so many thousand lives would in such a short space of time be extinct. the more ardent therefore should be our zeal to lengthen out this frail and transient portion of existence, if not by our deeds (for the opportunities of this are not in our power) yet certainly by our literary accomplishments; and since long life is denied us, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived. i well know you need no incitements, but the warmth of my affection for you inclines me to urge you on in the course you are already pursuing, just as you have so often urged me. "happy rivalry" when two friends strive in this way which of them shall animate the other most in their mutual pursuit of immortal fame. farewell. xxx -to spurinna and cottia[53] i did not tell you, when i paid you my last visit, that i had composed something in praise of your son; because, in the first place, i wrote it not for the sake of talking about my performance, but simply to satisfy my affection, to console my sorrow for the loss of him. again, as you told me, my dear spurinna, that you had heard i had been reciting a piece of mine, i imagined you had also heard at the same time what was the subject of the recital, and besides i was afraid of casting a gloom over your cheerfulness in that festive season, by reviving the remembrance of that heavy sorrow. and even now i have hesitated a little whether i should gratify you both, in your joint request, by sending only what i recited, or add to it what i am thinking of keeping back for another essay. it does not satisfy my feelings to devote only one little tract to a memory so dear and sacred to me, and it seemed also more to the interest of his fame to have it thus disseminated by separate pieces. but the consideration, that it will be more open and friendly to send you the whole now, rather than keep back some of it to another time, has determined me to do the former, especially as i have your promise that it shall not be communicated by either of you to anyone else, until i shall think proper to publish it. the only remaining favour i ask is, that you will give me a proof of the same unreserve by pointing out to me what you shall judge would be best altered, omitted, or added. it is difficult for a mind in affliction to concentrate itself upon such little cares. however, as you would direct a painter or sculptor who was representing the figure of your son what parts he should retouch or express, so i hope you will guide and inform my hand in this more durable or (as you are pleased to think it) this immortal likeness which i am endeavouring to execute: for the truer to the original, the more perfect and finished it is, so much the more lasting it is likely to prove. farewell. xxxi -to julius genitor it is just like the generous disposition of artemidorus to magnify the kindnesses of his friends; hence he praises my deserts (though he is really indebted to me) beyond their due. it is true indeed that when the philosophers were expelled from rome,[54] i visited him at his house near the city, and ran the greater risk in paying him that civility, as it was more noticeable then, i being praetor at the time. i supplied him too with a considerable sum to pay certain debts he had contracted upon very honourable occasions, without charging interest, though obliged to borrow the money myself, while the rest of his rich powerful friends stood by hesitating about giving him assistance. i did this at a time when seven of my friends were either executed or banished; senecio, rusticus, and helvidius having just been put to death, while mauricus, gratilla, arria, and fannia, were sent into exile; and scorched as it were by so many lightning-bolts of the state thus hurled and flashing round me, i augured by no uncertain tokens my own impending doom. but i do not look upon myself, on that account, as deserving of the high praises my friend bestows upon me: all i pretend to is the being clear of the infamous guilt of abandoning him in his misfortunes. i had, as far as the differences between our ages would admit, a friendship for his father-in-law musonius, whom i both loved and esteemed, while artemidorus himself i entered into the closest intimacy with when i was serving as a military tribune in syria. and i consider as a proof that there is some good in me the fact of my being so early capable of appreciating a man who is either a philosopher or the nearest resemblance to one possible; for i am sure that, amongst all those who at the present day call themselves philosophers, you will find hardly any one of them so full of sincerity and truth as he. i forbear to mention how patient he is of heat and cold alike, how indefatigable in labour, how abstemious in his food, and what an absolute restraint he puts upon all his appetites; for these qualities, considerable as they would certainly be in any other character, are less noticeable by the side of the rest of those virtues of his which recommended him to musonius for a son-in-law, in preference to so many others of all ranks who paid their addresses to his daughter. and when i think of all these things, i cannot help feeling pleasurably affected by those unqualified terms of praise in which he speaks of me to you as well as to everyone else. i am only apprehensive lest the warmth of his kind feeling carry him beyond the due limits; for he, who is so free from all other errors, is apt to fall into just this one good-natured one, of overrating the merits of his friends. farewell. xxxii -to catilius severus i will come to supper, but must make this agreement beforehand, that i go when i please, that you treat me to nothing expensive, and that our conversation abound only in socratic discourse, while even that in moderation. there are certain necessary visits of ceremony, bringing people out before daylight, which cato himself could not safely fall in with; though i must confess that julius cã¦sar reproaches him with that circumstance in such a manner as redounds to his praise; for he tells us that the persons who met him reeling home blushed at the discovery, and adds, "you would have thought that cato had detected them, and not they cato." could he place the dignity of cato in a stronger light than by representing him thus venerable even in his cups? but let our supper be as moderate in regard to hours as in the preparation and expense: for we are not of such eminent reputation that even our enemies cannot censure our conduct without applauding it at the same time. farewell. xxxiii -to acilius the atrocious treatment that largius macedo, a man of praetorian rank, lately received at the hands of his slaves is so extremely tragical that it deserves a place rather in public history than in a private letter; though it must at the same time be acknowledged there was a haughtiness and severity in his behaviour towards them which shewed that he little remembered, indeed almost entirely forgot, the fact that his own father had once been in that station of life. he was bathing at his formian villa, when he found himself suddenly surrounded by his slaves; one seizes him by the throat, another strikes him on the mouth, whilst others trampled upon his breast, stomach, and even other parts which i need not mention. when they thought the breath must be quite out of his body, they threw him down upon the heated pavement of the bath, to try whether he were still alive, where he lay outstretched and motionless, either really insensible or only feigning to be so, upon which they concluded him to be actually dead. in this condition they brought him out, pretending that he had got suffocated by the heat of the bath. some of his more trusty servants received him, and his mistresses came about him shrieking and lamenting. the noise of their cries and the fresh air, together, brought him a little to himself; he opened his eyes, moved his body, and shewed them (as he now safely might) that he was not quite dead. the murderers immediately made their escape; but most of them have been caught again, and they are after the rest. he was with great difficulty kept alive for a few days, and then expired, having however the satisfaction of finding himself as amply revenged in his lifetime as he would have been after his death. thus you see to what affronts, indignities, and dangers we are exposed. lenity and kind treatment are no safeguard; for it is malice and not reflection that arms such ruffians against their masters. so much for this piece of news. and what else? what else? nothing else, or you should hear it, for i have still paper, and time too (as it is holiday time with me) to spare for more, and i can tell you one further circumstance relating to macedo, which now occurs to me. as he was in a public bath once, at rome, a remarkable, and (judging from the manner of his death) an ominous, accident happened to him. a slave of his, in order to make way for his master, laid his hand gently upon a roman knight, who, turning suddenly round, struck, not the slave who had touched him, but macedo, so violent a blow with his open palm that he almost knocked him down. thus the bath by a kind of gradation proved fatal to him; being first the scene of an indignity he suffered, afterwards the scene of his death. farewell. xxxiv -to nepos i have constantly observed that amongst the deeds and sayings of illustrious persons of either sex, some have made more noise in the world, whilst others have been really greater, although less talked about; and i am confirmed in this opinion by a conversation i had yesterday with fannia. this lady is a grand-daughter to that celebrated arria, who animated her husband to meet death, by her own glorious example. she informed me of several particulars relating to arria, no less heroic than this applauded action of hers, though taken less notice of, and i think you will be as surprised to read the account of them as i was to hear it. her husband caecinna paetus, and her son, were both attacked at the same time with a fatal illness, as was supposed; of which the son died, a youth of remarkable beauty, and as modest as he was comely, endeared indeed to his parents no less by his many graces than from the fact of his being their son. his mother prepared his funeral and conducted the usual ceremonies so privately that paetus did not know of his death. whenever she came into his room, she pretended her son was alive and actually better: and as often as he enquired after his health, would answer, "he has had a good rest, and eaten his food with quite an appetite." then when she found the tears, she had so long kept back, gushing forth in spite of herself, she would leave the room, and having given vent to her grief, return with dry eyes and a serene countenance, as though she had dismissed every feeling of bereavement at the door of her husband's chamber. i must confess it was a brave action[55] in her to draw the steel, plunge it into her breast, pluck out the dagger, and present it to her husband with that ever memorable, i had almost said that divine, expression, "paetus, it is not painful." but when she spoke and acted thus, she had the prospect of glory and immortality before her; how far greater, without the support of any such animating motives, to hide her tears, to conceal her grief, and cheerfully to act the mother, when a mother no more! scribonianus had taken up arms in illyria against clatidius, where he lost his life, and paetus, who was of his party, was brought a prisoner to rome. when they were going to put him on board ship, arria besought the soldiers that she might be permitted to attend him: "for surely," she urged, "you will allow a man of consular rank some servants to dress him, attend to him at meals, and put his shoes on for him; but if you will take me, i alone will perform all these offices." her request was refused; upon which she hired a fishing-boat, and in that small vessel followed the ship. on her return to rome, meeting the wife of scribonianus in the emperor's palace, at the time when this woman voluntarily gave evidence against the conspirators--"what," she exclaimed, "shall i hear you even speak to me, you, on whose bosom your husband scribonianus was murdered, and yet you survive him?"--an expression which plainly shews that the noble manner in which she put an end to her life was no unpremeditated effect of sudden passion. moreover, when thrasea, her son-in-law, was endeavouring to dissuade her from her purpose of destroying herself, and, amongst other arguments which he used, said to her, "would you then advise your daughter to die with me if my life were to be taken from me?" "most certainly i would," she replied, "if she had lived as long, and in as much harmony with you, as i have with my paetus." this answer greatly increased the alarm of her family, and made them watch her for the future more narrowly; which, when she perceived, "it is of no use," she said, "you may oblige me to effect my death in a more painful way, but it is impossible you should prevent it." saying this, she sprang from her chair, and running her head with the utmost violence against the wall, fell down, to all appearance, dead; but being brought to herself again, "i told you," she said, "if you would not suffer me to take an easy path to death, i should find a way to it, however hard." now, is there not, my friend, something much greater in all this than in the so-much-talked-of "paetus, it is not painful," to which these led the way? and yet this last is the favourite topic of fame, while all the former are passed over in silence. whence i cannot but infer, what i observed at the beginning of my letter, that some actions are more celebrated, whilst others are really greater. farewell. xxxv -to severus i was obliged by my consular office to compliment the emperor[56] in the name of the republic; but after i had performed that ceremony in the senate in the usual manner, and as fully as the time and place would allow, i thought it agreeable to the affection of a good subject to enlarge those general heads, and expand them into a complete discourse. my principal object in doing so was, to confirm the emperor in his virtues, by paying them that tribute of applause which they so justly deserve; and at the same time to direct future princes, not in the formal way of lecture, but by his more engaging example, to those paths they must pursue if they would attain the same heights of glory. to instruct princes how to form their conduct, is a noble, but difficult task, and may, perhaps, be esteemed an act of presumption: but to applaud the character of an accomplished prince, and to hold out to posterity, by this means, a beacon-light as it were, to guide succeeding monarchs, is a method equally useful, and much more modest. it afforded me a very singular pleasure that when i wished to recite this panegyric in a private assembly, my friends gave me their company, though i did not solicit them in the usual form of notes or circulars, but only desired their attendance, "should it be quite convenient to them," and "if they should happen to have no other engagement." you know the excuses generally made at rome to avoid invitations of this kind; how prior invitations are usually alleged; yet, in spite of the worst possible weather, they attended the recital for two days together; and when i thought it would be unreasonable to detain them any longer, they insisted upon my going through with it the next day. shall i consider this as an honour done to myself or to literature? rather let me suppose to the latter, which, though well-nigh extinct, seems to be now again reviving amongst us. yet what was the subject which raised this uncommon attention? no other than what formerly, even in the senate, where we had to submit to it, we used to grudge even a few moments' attention to. but now, you see, we have patience to recite and to attend to the same topic for three days together; and the reason of this is, not that we have more eloquent writing now than formerly, but we write under a fuller sense of individual freedom, and consequently more genially than we used to. it is an additional glory therefore to our present emperor that this sort of harangue, which was once as disgusting as it was false, is now as pleasing as it is sincere. but it was not only the earnest attention of my audience which afforded me pleasure; i was greatly delighted too with the justness of their taste: for i observed, that the more nervous parts of my discourse gave them peculiar satisfaction. it is true, indeed, this work, which was written for the perusal of the world in general, was read only to a few; however, i would willingly look upon their particular judgment as an earnest of that of the public, and rejoice at their manly taste as if it were universally spread. it was just the same in eloquence as it was in music, the vitiated ears of the audience introduced a depraved style; but now, i am inclined to hope, as a more refined judgment prevails in the public, our compositions of both kinds will improve too; for those authors whose sole object is to please will fashion their works according to the popular taste. i trust, however, in subjects of this nature the florid style is most proper; and am so far from thinking that the vivid colouring i have used will be esteemed foreign and unnatural that i am most apprehensive that censure will fall upon those parts where the diction is most simple and unornate. nevertheless, i sincerely wish the time may come, and that it now were, when the smooth and luscious, which has affected our style, shall give place, as it ought, to severe and chaste composition. -thus have i given you an account of my doings of these last three days, that your absence might not entirely deprive you of a pleasure which, from your friendship to me, and the part you take in everything that concerns the interest of literature, i know you would have received, had you been there to hear. farewell. xxxvi -to calvisius rufus i must have recourse to you, as usual, in an affair which concerns my finances. an estate adjoining my land, and indeed running into it, is for sale. there are several considerations strongly inclining me to this purchase, while there are others no less weighty deterring me from it. its first recommendation is, the beauty which will result from uniting this farm to my own lands; next, the advantage as well as pleasure of being able to visit it without additional trouble and expense; to have it superintended by the same steward, and almost by the same sub-agents, and to have one villa to support and embellish, the other just to keep in common repair. i take into this account furniture, housekeepers, fancy-gardeners, artificers, and even hunting-apparatus, as it makes a very great difference whether you get these altogether into one place or scatter them about in several. on the other hand, i don't know whether it is prudent to expose so large a property to the same climate, and the same risks of accident happening; to distribute one's possessions about seems a safer way of meeting the caprice of fortune, besides, there is something extremely pleasant in the change of air and place, and the going about between one's properties. and now, to come to the chief consideration:--the lands are rich, fertile, and well-watered, consisting chiefly of meadow-ground, vineyard, and wood, while the supply of building timber and its returns, though moderate, still, keep at the same rate. but the soil, fertile as it is, has been much impoverished by not having been properly looked after. the person last in possession used frequently to seize and sell the stock, by which means, although he lessened his tenants' arrears for the time being, yet he left them nothing to go on with and the arrears ran up again in consequence. i shall be obliged, then, to provide them with slaves, which i must buy, and at a higher than the usual price, as these will be good ones; for i keep no fettered slaves[57] myself, and there are none upon the estate. for the rest, the price, you must know, is three millions of sesterces.[58] it has formerly gone over five millions,[59] but owing, partly to the general hardness of the times, and partly to its being thus stripped of tenants, the income of this estate is reduced, and consequently its value. you will be inclined perhaps to enquire whether i can easily raise the purchase-money? my estate, it is true, is almost entirely in land, though i have some money out at interest; but i shall find no difficulty in borrowing any sum i may want. i can get it from my wife's mother, whose purse i may use with the same freedom as my own; so that you need not trouble yourself at all upon that point, should you have no other objections, which i should like you very carefully to consider: for, as in everything else, so, particularly in matters of economy, no man has more judgment and experience than yourself. farewell. xxxvii -to cornelius priscus i have just heard of valerius martial's death, which gives me great concern. he was a man of an acute and lively genius, and his writings abound in equal wit, satire, and kindliness. on his leaving rome i made him a present to defray his travelling expenses, which i gave him, not only as a testimony of friendship, but also in return for the verses with which he had complimented me. it was the custom of the ancients to distinguish those poets with honours or pecuniary rewards, who had celebrated particular individuals or cities in their verses; but this good custom, along with every other fair and noble one, has grown out of fashion now; and in consequence of our having ceased to act laudably, we consider praise a folly and impertinence. you may perhaps be curious to see the verses which merited this acknowledgment from me, and i believe i can, from memory, partly satisfy your curiosity, without referring you to his works: but if you should be pleased with this specimen of them, you must turn to his poems for the rest. he addresses himself to his muse, whom he directs to go to my house upon the esquiline,[60] but to approach it with respect. "go, wanton muse, but go with care, nor meet, ill-tim'd, my pliny's ear; he, by sage minerva taught, gives the day to studious thought, and plans that eloquence divine, which shall to future ages shine, and rival, wondrous tully! thine. then, cautious, watch the vacant hour, when bacchus reigns in all his pow'r; when, crowned with rosy chaplets gay, catos might read my frolic lay."<a href="#linknote-61" name="linknoteref-61" id="linknoteref-61">[61]</a> do you not think that the poet who wrote of me in such terms deserved some friendly marks of my bounty then, and of my sorrow now? for he gave me the very best he had to bestow, and would have given more had it been in his power. though indeed what can a man have conferred on him more valuable than the honour of never-fading praise? but his poems will not long survive their author, at least i think not, though he wrote them in the expectation of their doing so. farewell. xxxviii -to fabatus (his wife's grandfather) you have long desired a visit from your grand-daughter[62] accompanied by me. nothing, be assured, could be more agreeable to either of us; for we equally wish to see you, and are determined to delay that pleasure no longer. for this purpose we are already packing up, and hastening to you with all the speed the roads will permit of. we shall make only one, short, stoppage, for we intend turning a little out of our way to go into tuscany: not for the sake of looking upon our estate, and into our family concerns, which we can postpone to another opportunity, but to perform an indispensable duty. there is a town near my estate, called tifernum-upon-the-tiber,[63] which, with more affection than wisdom, put itself under my patronage when i was yet a youth. these people celebrate my arrival among them, express the greatest concern when i leave them, and have public rejoicings whenever they hear of my preferments. by way of requiting their kindnesses (for what generous mind can bear to be excelled in acts of friendship?) i have built a temple in this place, at my own expense, and as it is finished, it would be a sort of impiety to put off its dedication any longer. so we shall be there on the day on which that ceremony is to be performed, and i have resolved to celebrate it with a general feast. we may possibly stay on there for all the next day, but shall make so much the greater haste in our journey afterwards. may we have the happiness to find you and your daughter in good health! in good spirits i am sure we shall, should we get to you all safely. farewell. xxxix -to attius clemens regulus has lost his son; the only undeserved misfortune which could have befallen him, in that i doubt whether he thinks it a misfortune. the boy had quick parts, but there was no telling how he might turn out; however, he seemed capable enough of going right, were he not to grow up like his father. regulus gave him his freedom,[64] in order to entitle him to the estate left him by his mother; and when he got into possession of it, (i speak of the current rumours, based upon the character of the man,) fawned upon the lad with a disgusting shew of fond affection which in a parent was utterly out of place. you may hardly think this credible; but then consider what regulus is. however, he now expresses his concern for the loss of this youth in a most extravagant manner. the boy had a number of ponies for riding and driving, dogs both big and little, together with nightingales, parrots, and blackbirds in abundance. all these regulus slew round the funeral pile. it was not grief, but an ostentatious parade of grief. he is visited upon this occasion by a surprising number of people, who all hate and detest the man, and yet are as assiduous in their attendance upon him as if they really esteemed and loved him, and, to give you my opinion in a word, in endeavouring to do regulus a kindness, make themselves exactly like him. he keeps himself in his park on the other side the tiber, where he has covered a vast extent of ground with his porticoes, and crowded all the shore with his statues; for he unites prodigality with excessive covetousness, and vain-glory with the height of infamy. at this very unhealthy time of year he is boring society, and he feels pleasure and consolation in being a bore. he says he wishes to marry,--a piece of perversity, like all his other conduct. you must expect, therefore, to hear shortly of the marriage of this mourner, the marriage of this old man; too early in the former case, in the latter, too late. you ask me why i conjecture this? certainly not because he says so himself (for a greater liar never stepped), but because there is no doubt that regulus will do whatever ought not to be done. farewell. xl -to catius lepidus i often tell you that there is a certain force of character about regulus: it is wonderful how he carries through what he has set his mind to. he chose lately to be extremely concerned for the loss of his son: accordingly he mourned for him as never man mourned before. he took it into his head to have an immense number of statues and pictures of him; immediately all the artisans in rome are set to work. canvas, wax, brass, silver, gold, ivory, marble, all exhibit the figure of the young regulus. not long ago he read, before a numerous audience, a memoir of his son: a memoir of a mere boy! however he read it. he wrote likewise a sort of circular letter to the several decurii desiring them to choose out one of their order who had a strong clear voice, to read this eulogy to the people; it has been actually done. now had this force of character or whatever else you may call a fixed determination in obtaining whatever one has a mind for, been rightly applied, what infinite good it might have effected! the misfortune is, there is less of this quality about good people than about bad people, and as ignorance begets rashness, and thoughtfulness produces deliberation, so modesty is apt to cripple the action of virtue, whilst confidence strengthens vice. regulus is a case in point: he has a weak voice, an awkward delivery, an indistinct utterance, a slow imagination, and no memory; in a word, he possesses nothing but a sort of frantic energy: and yet, by the assistance of a flighty turn and much impudence, he passes as an orator. herennius senecio admirably reversed cato's definition of an orator, and applied it to regulus: "an orator," he said, "is a bad man, unskilled in the art of speaking." and really cato's definition is not a more exact description of a true orator than seneclo's is of the character of this man. would you make me a suitable return for this letter? let me know if you, or any of my friends in your town, have, like a stroller in the marketplace, read this doleful production of regulus's, "raising," as demosthenes says, "your voice most merrily, and straining every muscle in your throat." for so absurd a performance must excite laughter rather than compassion; and indeed the composition is as puerile as the subject. farewell. xli -to maturus arrianus mv advancement to the dignity of augur[65] is an honour that justly indeed merits your congratulations; not only because it is highly honourable to receive, even in the slightest instances, a testimony of the approbation of so wise and discreet a prince,[66] but because it is moreover an ancient and religious institution, which has this sacred and peculiar privilege annexed to it, that it is for life. other sacerdotal offices, though they may, perhaps, be almost equal to this one in dignity, yet as they are given so they may be taken away again: but fortune has no further power over this than to bestow it. what recommends this dignity still more highly is, that i have the honour to succeed so illustrious a person as julius frontinus. he for many years, upon the nomination-day of proper persons to be received into the sacred college, constantly proposed me, as though he had a view to electing me as his successor; and since it actually proved so in the event, i am willing to look upon it as something more than mere accident. but the circumstance, it seems, that most pleases you in this affair, is, that cicero enjoyed the same post; and you rejoice (you tell me) to find that i follow his steps as closely in the path of honours as i endeavour to do in that of eloquence. i wish, indeed, that as i had the advantage of being admitted earlier into the same order of priesthood, and into the consular office, than cicero, that so i might, in my later years, catch some spark, at least, of his divine genius! the former, indeed, being at man's disposal, may be conferred on me and on many others, but the latter it is as presumptuous to hope for as it is difficult to reach, being in the gift of heaven alone. farewell. xlii -to statius sabinus your letter informs me that sabina, who appointed you and me her heirs, though she has nowhere expressly directed that modestus shall have his freedom, yet has left him a legacy in the following words, "i give, &c.-to modestus, whom i have ordered to have his freedom": upon which you desire my opinion. i have consulted skilful lawyers upon the point, and they all agree modestus is not entitled to his liberty, since it is not expressly given, and consequently that the legacy is void, as being bequeathed to a slave.[67] but it evidently appears to be a mistake in the testatrix; and therefore i think we ought to act in this case as though sabina had directed, in so many words, what, it is clear, she had ordered. i am persuaded you will go with me in this opinion, who so religiously regard the will of the deceased, which indeed where it can be discovered will always be law to honest heirs. honour is to you and me as strong an obligation as the compulsion of law is to others. let modestus then enjoy his freedom and his legacy as fully as if sabina had observed all the requisite forms, as indeed they effectually do who make a judicious choice of their heirs. farewell. xliii -to cornelius minicianus [68] have you heard--i suppose, not yet, for the news has but just arrived -that valerius licinianus has become a professor in sicily? this unfortunate person, who lately enjoyed the dignity of praetor, and was esteemed the most eloquent of our advocates, is now fallen from a senator to an exile, from an orator to a teacher of rhetoric. accordingly in his inaugural speech he uttered, sorrowfully and solemnly, the following words: "oh! fortune, how capriciously dost thou sport with mankind! thou makest rhetoricians of senators, and senators of rhetoricians!" a sarcasm so poignant and full of gall that one might almost imagine he fixed upon this profession merely for the sake of an opportunity of applying it. and having made his first appearance in school, clad in the greek cloak (for exiles have no right to wear the toga), after arranging himself and looking down upon his attire, "i am, however," he said, "going to declaim in latin." you will think, perhaps, this situation, wretched and deplorable as it is, is what he well deserves for having stained the honourable profession of an orator with the crime of incest. it is true, indeed, he pleaded guilty to the charge; but whether from a consciousness of his guilt, or from an apprehension of worse consequences if he denied it, is not clear; for domitian generally raged most furiously where his evidence failed him most hopelessly. that emperor had determined that cornelia, chief of the vestal virgins, should be buried alive, from an extravagant notion that exemplary severities of this kind conferred lustre upon his reign. accordingly, by virtue of his office as supreme pontiff, or, rather, in the exercise of a tyrant's cruelty, a despot's lawlessness, he convened the sacred college, not in the pontifical court where they usually assemble, but at his villa near alba; and there, with a guilt no less heinous than that which he professed to be punishing, he condemned her, when she was not present to defend herself, on the charge of incest, while he himself had been guilty, not only of debauching his own brother's daughter, but was also accessory to her death: for that lady, being a widow, in order to conceal her shame, endeavoured to procure an abortion, and by that means lost her life. however, the priests were directed to see the sentence immediately executed upon cornelia. as they were leading her to the place of execution, she called upon vesta, and the rest of the gods, to attest her innocence; and, amongst other exclamations, frequently cried out, "is it possible that cã¦sar can think me polluted, under the influence of whose sacred functions he has conquered and triumphed?"[69] whether she said this in flattery or derision; whether it proceeded from a consciousness of her innocence, or contempt of the emperor, is uncertain; but she continued exclaiming in this manner, till she came to the place of execution, to which she was led, whether innocent or guilty i cannot say, at all events with every appearance and demonstration of innocence. as she was being lowered down into the subterranean vault, her robe happening to catch upon something in the descent, she turned round and disengaged it, when, the executioner offering his assistance, she drew herself back with horror, refusing to be so much as touched by him, as though it were a defilement to her pure and unspotted chastity: still preserving the appearance of sanctity up to the last moment; and, among all the other instances of her modesty, "she took great care to fall with decency."<a href="#linknote-70" name="linknoteref-70" id="linknoteref-70">[70]</a> celer likewise, a roman knight, who was accused of an intrigue with her, while they were scourging him with rods[71] in the forum, persisted in exclaiming, "what have i done?--i have done nothing." these declarations of innocence had exasperated domitian exceedingly, as imputing to him acts of cruelty and injustice, accordingly licinianus being seized by the emperor's orders for having concealed a freedwoman of cornelia's in one of his estates, was advised, by those who took him in charge, to confess the fact, if he hoped to obtain a remission of his punishment, circumstance to add further, that a young nobleman, having had his tunic torn, an ordinary occurrence in a crowd, stood with his gown thrown over him, to hear me, and that during the seven hours i was speaking, whilst my success more than counterbalanced the fatigue of so long a speech. so let us set to and not screen our own indolence under pretence of that of the public. never, be very sure of that, will there be wanting hearers and readers, so long as we can only supply them with speakers and writers worth their attention. farewell. xlv -to asinius you advise me, nay you entreat me, to undertake, in her absence, the cause of corellia, against c. caecilius, consul elect. for your advice i am grateful, of your entreaty i really must complain; without the first, indeed, i should have been ignorant of this affair, but the last was unnecessary, as i need no solicitations to comply, where it would be ungenerous in me to refuse; for can i hesitate a moment to take upon myself the protection of a daughter of corellius? it is true, indeed, though there is no particular intimacy between her adversary and myself, still we are upon good enough terms. it is also true that he is a person of rank, and one who has a high claim upon my especial regard, as destined to enter upon an office which i have had the honour to fill; and it is natural for a man to be desirous those dignities should be held in the highest esteem which he himself once possessed. yet all these considerations appear indifferent and trifling when i reflect that it is the daughter of corellius whom i am to defend. the memory of that excellent person, than whom this age has not produced a man of greater dignity, rectitude, and acuteness, is indelibly imprinted upon my mind. my regard for him sprang from my admiration of the man, and contrary to what is usually the case, my admiration increased upon a thorough knowledge of him, and indeed i did know him thoroughly, for he kept nothing back from me, whether gay or serious, sad or joyous. when he was but a youth, he esteemed, and (i will even venture to say) revered, me as if i had been his equal. when i solicited any post of honour, he supported me with his interest, and recommended me with his testimony; when i entered upon it, he was my introducer and my companion; when i exercised it, he was my guide and my counsellor. in a word, whenever my interest was concerned, he exerted himself, in spite of his weakness and declining years, with as much alacrity as though he were still young and lusty. in private, in public, and at court, how often has he advanced and supported my credit and interest! it happened once that the conversation, in the presence of the emperor nerva, turned upon the promising young men of that time, and several of the company present were pleased to mention me with applause; he sat for a little while silent, which gave what he said the greater weight; and then, with that air of dignity, to which you are no stranger, "i must be reserved," said he, "in my praises of pliny, because he does nothing without advice." by which single sentence he bestowed upon me more than my most extravagant wishes could aspire to, as he represented my conduct to be always such as wisdom must approve, since it was wholly under the direction of one of the wisest of men. even in his last moments he said to his daughter (as she often mentions), "i have in the course of a long life raised up many friends to you, but there are none in whom you may more assuredly confide than pliny and cornutus." a circumstance i cannot reflect upon without being deeply sensible how incumbent it is upon me to endeavour not to disappoint the confidence so excellent a judge of human nature reposed in me. i shall therefore most readily give my assistance to corellia in this affair, and willingly risk any displeasure i may incur by appearing in her behalf. though i should imagine, if in the course of my pleadings i should find an opportunity to explain and enforce more fully and at large than the limits of a letter allow of the reasons i have here mentioned, upon which i rest at once my apology and my glory; her adversary (whose suit may perhaps, as you say, be entirely without precedent, as it is against a woman) will not only excuse, but approve, my conduct. farewell. xlvi -to hispulla as you are a model of all virtue, and loved your late excellent brother, who had such a fondness for you, with an affection equal to his own; regarding too his daughter[72] as your child, not only shewing her an aunt's tenderness but supplying the place of the parent she had lost; i know it will give you the greatest pleasure and joy to hear that she proves worthy of her father, her grandfather, and yourself. she possesses an excellent understanding together with a consummate prudence, and gives the strongest evidence of the purity of her heart by her fondness of her husband. her affection for me, moreover, has given her a taste for books, and my productions, which she takes a pleasure in reading, and even in getting by heart, are continually in her hands. how full of tender anxiety is she when i am going to speak in any case, how rejoiced she feels when it is got through. while i am pleading, she stations persons to inform her from time to time how i am heard, what applauses i receive, and what success attends the case. when i recite my works at any time, she conceals herself behind some curtain, and drinks in my praises with greedy ears. she sings my verses too, adapting them to her lyre, with no other master but love, that best of instructors, for her guide. from these happy circumstances i derive my surest hopes, that the harmony between us will increase with our days, and be as lasting as our lives. for it is not my youth or person, which time gradually impairs; it is my honour and glory that she cares for. but what less could be expected from one who was trained by your hands, and formed by your instructions; who was early familiarized under your roof with all that is pure and virtuous, and who learnt to love me first through your praises? and as you revered my mother with all the respect due even to a parent, so you kindly directed and encouraged my tender years, presaging from that early period all that my wife now fondly imagines i really am. accept therefore of our mutual thanks, mine, for your giving me her, hers for your giving her me; for you have chosen us out, as it were, for each other. farewell. xlvii -to romatius fiasius look here! the next time the court sits, you must, at all events, take your place there. in vain would your indolence repose itself under my protection, for there is no absenting oneself with impunity. look at that severe, determined, praetor, licinius nepos, who fined even a senator for the same neglect! the senator pleaded his cause in person, but in suppliant tone. the fine, it is true, was remitted, but sore was his dismay, humble his intercession, and he had to ask pardon. "all praetors are not so severe as that," you will reply; you are mistaken -for though indeed to be the author and reviver of an example of this kind may be an act of severity, yet, once introduced, even lenity herself may follow the precedent. farewell. xlviii -to licinius sura i have brought you as a little present out of the country a query which well deserves the consideration of your extensive knowledge. there is a spring which rises in a neighbouring mountain, and running among the rocks is received into a little banqueting-room, artificially formed for that purpose, from whence, after being detained a short time, it falls into the larian lake. the nature of this spring is extremely curious; it ebbs and flows regularly three times a day. the increase and decrease is plainly visible, and exceedingly interesting to observe. you sit down by the side of the fountain, and while you are taking a repast and drinking its water, which is extremely cool, you see it gradually rise and fall. if you place a ring, or anything else at the bottom, when it is dry, the water creeps gradually up, first gently washing, finally covering it entirely, and then little by little subsides again. if you wait long enough, you may see it thus alternately advance and recede three successive times. shall we say that some secret current of air stops and opens the fountain-head, first rushing in and checking the flow and then, driven back by the counter-resistance of the water, escaping again; as we see in bottles, and other vessels of that nature, where, there not being a free and open passage, though you turn their necks perpendicularly or obliquely downwards, yet, the outward air obstructing the vent, they discharge their contents as it were by starts? or, may not this small collection of water be successively contracted and enlarged upon the same principle as the ebb and flow of the sea? or, again, as those rivers which discharge themselves into the sea, meeting with contrary winds and the swell of the ocean, are forced back in their channels, so, in the same way, may there not be something that checks this fountain, for a time, in its progress? or is there rather a certain reservoir that contains these waters in the bowels of the earth, and while it is recruiting its discharges, the stream in consequence flows more slowly and in less quantity, but, when it has collected its due measure, runs on again in its usual strength and fulness? or lastly, is there i know not what kind of subterranean counterpoise, that throws up the water when the fountain is dry, and keeps it back when it is full? you, who are so well qualified for the enquiry, will examine into the causes of this wonderful phenomenon; it will be sufficient for me if i have given you an adequate description of it. farewell. xlix -to annius severus a small legacy was lately left me, yet one more acceptable than a far larger bequest would have been. how more acceptable than a far larger one? in this way. pomponia gratilla, having disinherited her son assidius curianus, appointed me of one of her heirs, and sertorius severus, of pretorian rank, together with several eminent roman knights, co-heirs along with me. the son applied to me to give him my share of the inheritance, in order to use my name as an example to the rest of the joint-heirs, but offered at the same time to enter into a secret agreement to return me my proportion. i told him, it was by no means agreeable to my character to seem to act one way while in reality i was acting another, besides it was not quite honourable making presents to a man of his fortune, who had no children; in a word, this would not at all answer the purpose at which he was aiming, whereas, if i were to withdraw my claim, it might be of some service to him, and this i was ready and willing to do, if he could clearly prove to me that he was unjustly disinherited. "do then," he said, "be my arbitrator in this case." after a short pause i answered him, "i will, for i don't see why i should not have as good an opinion of my own impartial disinterestedness as you seem to have. but, mind, i am not to be prevailed upon to decide the point in question against your mother, if it should appear she had just reason for what she has done." "as you please," he replied, "which i am sure is always to act according to justice." i called in, as my assistants, corellius and frontinus, two of the very best lawyers rome at that time afforded. with these in attendance, i heard the case in my own chamber. curianus said everything which he thought would favour his pretensions, to whom (there being nobody but myself to defend the character of the deceased) i made a short reply; after which i retired with my friends to deliberate, and, being agreed upon our verdict, i said to him, "curianus, it is our opinion that your conduct has justly drawn upon you your mother's displeasure." sometime afterwards, curianus commenced a suit in the court of the hundred against all the co-heirs except myself. the day appointed for the trial approaching, the rest of the co-heirs were anxious to compromise the affair and have done with it, not out of any diffidence of their cause, but from a distrust of the times. they were apprehensive of what had happened to many others, happening to them, and that from a civil suit it might end in a criminal one, as there were some among them to whom the friendship of gratilla and rusticus[73] might be extremely prejudicial: they therefore desired me to go and talk with curianus. we met in the temple of concord; "now supposing," i said, "your mother had left you the fourth part of her estate, or even suppose she had made you sole heir, but had exhausted so much of the estate in legacies that there would not be more than a fourth part remaining to you, could you justly complain? you ought to be content, therefore, if, being absolutely disinherited as you are, the heirs are willing to relinquish to you a fourth part, which however i will increase by contributing my proportion. you know you did not commence any suit against me, and two years have now elapsed, which gives me legal and indisputable possession. but to induce you to agree to the proposals on the part of the other co-heirs, and that you may be no sufferer by the peculiar respect you shew me, i offer to advance my proportion with them." the silent approval of my own conscience is not the only result out of this transaction; it has contributed also to the honour of my character. for it is this same cunianus who has left me the legacy i have mentioned in the beginning of my letter, and i received it as a very notable mark of his approbation of my conduct, if i do not flatter myself. i have written and told you all this, because in all my joys and sorrows i am wont to look upon you as myself, and i thought it would be unkind not to communicate to so tender a friend whatever occasions me a sensible gratification; for i am not philosopher enough to be indifferent, when i think i have acted like an honour-able man, whether my actions meet with that approval which is in some sort their due. farewell. l -to titius aristo among the many agreeable and obliging instances i have received of your friendship, your not concealing from me the long conversations which lately took place at your house concerning my verses, and the various judgments passed upon them (which served to prolong the talk,) is by no means the least. there were some, it seems, who did not disapprove of my poems in themselves, but at the same time censured me in a free and friendly way, for employing myself in composing and reciting them. i am so far, however, from desiring to extenuate the charge that i willingly acknowledge myself still more deserving of it, and confess that i sometimes amuse myself with writing verses of the gayer sort. i compose comedies, divert myself with pantomimes, read the lyric poets, and enter into the spirit of the most wanton muse, besides that, i indulge myself sometimes in laughter, mirth, and frolic, and, to sum up every kind of innocent relaxation in one word, i am a man. i am not in the least offended, though, at their low opinion of my morals, and that those who are ignorant of the fact that the most learned, the wisest, and the best of men have employed themselves in the same way, should be surprised at the tone of my writings: but from those who know what noble and numerous examples i follow, i shall, i am confident, easily obtain permission to err with those whom it is an honour to imitate, not only in their most serious occupations but their lightest triflings. is it unbecoming me (i will not name any living example, lest i should seem to flatter), but is it unbecoming me to practise what became tully, calvus, pollio, messala, hortensius, brutus, sulla, catulus, scaevola, sulpitius, varro, the torquati, memmius, gaetulicus, seneca, lucceius, and, within our own memory, verginius rufus? but if the examples of private men are not sufficient to justify me, i can cite julius casar, augustus, nerva, and tiberius casar. i forbear to add nero to the catalogue, though i am aware that what is practised by the worst of men does not therefore degenerate into wrong: on the contrary, it still maintains its credit, if frequently countenanced by the best. in that number, virgil, cornelius nepos, and prior to these, ennius and attius, justly deserve the most distinguished place. these last indeed were not senators, but goodness knows no distinction of rank or title. i recite my works, it is true, and in this instance i am not sure i can support myself by their examples. they, perhaps, might be satisfied with their own judgment, but i have too humble an opinion of mine to suppose my compositions perfect, because they appear so to my own mind. my reason then for reciting are, that, for one thing, there is a certain deference for one's audience, which excites a somewhat more vigorous application, and then again, i have by this means an opportunity of settling any doubts i may have concerning my performance, by observing the general opinion of the audience. in a word, i have the advantage of receiving different hints from different persons: and although they should not declare their meaning in express terms, yet the expression of the countenance, the movement of the head, the eyes, the motion of a hand, a whisper, or even silence itself will easily distinguish their real opinion from the language of politeness. and so if any one of my audience should have the curiosity to read over the same performance which he heard me read, he may find several things altered or omitted, and perhaps too upon his particular judgment, though he did not say a single word to me. but i am not defending my conduct in this particular, as if i had actually recited my works in public, and not in my own house before my friends, a numerous appearance of whom has upon many occasions been held an honour, but never, surely, a reproach. farewell. li -to nonius maximus i am deeply afflicted with the news i have received of the death of fannius; in the first place, because i loved one so eloquent and refined, in the next, because i was accustomed to be guided by his judgment--and indeed he possessed great natural acuteness, improved by practice, rendering him able to see a thing in an instant. there are some circumstances about his death, which aggravate my concern. he left behind him a will which had been made a considerable time before his decease, by which it happens that his estate is fallen into the hands of those who had incurred his displeasure, whilst his greatest favourites are excluded. but what i particularly regret is, that he has left unfinished a very noble work in which he was employed. notwithstanding his full practice at the bar, he had begun a history of those persons who were put to death or banished by nero, and completed three books of it. they are written with great elegance and precision, the style is pure, and preserves a proper medium between the plain narrative and the historical: and as they were very favourably received by the public, he was the more desirous of being able to finish the rest. the hand of death is ever, in my opinion, too untimely and sudden when it falls upon such as are employed in some immortal work. the sons of sensuality, who have no outlook beyond the present hour, put an end every day to all motives for living, but those who look forward to posterity, and endeavour to transmit their names with honour to future generations by their works--to such, death is always immature, as it still snatches them from amidst some unfinished design. fannius, long before his death, had a presentiment of what has happened: he dreamed one night that as he was lying on his couch, in an undress, all ready for his work, and with his desk,[74] as usual, in front of him, nero entered, and placing himself by his side, took up the three first books of this history, which he read through and then departed. this dream greatly alarmed him, and he regarded it as an intimation, that he should not carry on his history any farther than nero had read, and so the event has proved. i cannot reflect upon this accident without lamenting that he was prevented from accomplishing a work which had cost him so many toilsome vigils, as it suggests to me, at the same time, reflections on my own mortality, and the fate of my writings: and i am persuaded the same apprehensions alarm you for those in which you are at present employed. let us then, my friend, while life permits, exert all our endeavours, that death, whenever it arrives, may find as little as possible to destroy. farewell. lii -to domitius apollinaris the kind concern you expressed on hearing of my design to pass the summer at my villa in tuscany, and your obliging endeavours to dissuade me from going to a place which you think unhealthy, are extremely pleasing to me. it is quite true indeed that the air of that part of tuscany which lies towards the coast is thick and unwholesome: but my house stands at a good distance from the sea, under one of the apennines which are singularly healthy. but, to relieve you from all anxiety on my account, i will give you a description of the temperature of the climate, the situation of the country, and the beauty of my villa, which, i am persuaded, you will hear with as much pleasure as i shall take in giving it. the air in winter is sharp and frosty, so that myrtles, olives, and trees of that kind which delight in constant warmth, will not flourish here: but the laurel thrives, and is remarkably beautiful, though now and then the cold kills it--though not oftener than it does in the neighbourhood of rome. the summers are extraordinarily mild, and there is always a refreshing breeze, seldom high winds. this accounts for the number of old men we have about, you would see grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those now grown up to be young men, hear old stories and the dialect of our ancestors, and fancy yourself born in some former age were you to come here. the character of the country is exceedingly beautiful. picture to yourself an immense amphitheatre, such as nature only could create. before you lies a broad, extended plain bounded by a range of mountains, whose summits are covered with tall and ancient woods, which are stocked with all kinds of game. the descending slopes of the mountains are planted with underwood, among which are a number of little risings with a rich soil, on which hardly a stone is to be found. in fruitfulness they are quite equal to a valley, and though their harvest is rather later, their crops are just as good. at the foot of these, on the mountain-side, the eye, wherever it turns, runs along one unbroken stretch of vineyards terminated by a belt of shrubs. next you have meadows and the open plain. the arable land is so stiff that it is necessary to go over it nine times with the biggest oxen and the strongest ploughs. the meadows are bright with flowers, and produce trefoil and other kinds of herbage as fine and tender as if it were but just sprung up, for all the soil is refreshed by never failing streams. but though there is plenty of water, there are no marshes; for the ground being on a slope, whatever water it receives without absorbing runs off into the tiber. this river, which winds through the middle of the meadows, is navigable only in the winter and spring, at which seasons it transports the produce of the lands to rome: but in summer it sinks below its banks, leaving the name of a great river to an almost empty channel: towards the autumn, however, it begins again to renew its claim to that title. you would be charmed by taking a view of this country from the top of one of our neighbouring mountains, and would fancy that not a real, but some imaginary landscape, painted by the most exquisite pencil, lay before you, such an harmonious variety of beautiful objects meets the eye, whichever way it turns. my house, although at the foot of a hill, commands as good a view as if it stood on its brow, yet you approach by so gentle and gradual a rise that you find yourself on high ground without perceiving you have been making an ascent. behind, but at a great distance, is the apennine range. in the calmest days we get cool breezes from that quarter, not sharp and cutting at all, being spent and broken by the long distance they have travelled. the greater part of the house has a southern aspect, and seems to invite the afternoon sun in summer (but rather earlier in the winter) into a broad and proportionately long portico, consisting of several rooms, particularly a court of antique fashion. in front of the portico is a sort of terrace, edged with box and shrubs cut into different shapes. you descend, from the terrace, by an easy slope adorned with the figures of animals in box, facing each other, to a lawn overspread with the soft, i had almost said the liquid, acanthus: this is surrounded by a walk enclosed with evergreens, shaped into a variety of forms. beyond it is the gestation laid out in the form of a circus running round the multiform box-hedge and the dwarf-trees, which are cut quite close. the whole is fenced in with a wall completely covered by box cut into steps all the way up to the top. on the outside of the wall lies a meadow that owes as many beauties to nature as all i have been describing within does to art; at the end of which are open plain and numerous other meadows and copses. from the extremity of the portico a large dining-room runs out, opening upon one end of the terrace, while from the windows there is a very extensive view over the meadows up into the country, and from these you also see the terrace and the projecting wing of the house together with the woods enclosing the adjacent hippodrome. almost opposite the centre of the portico, and rather to the back, stands a summer-house, enclosing a small area shaded by four plane-trees, in the midst of which rises a marble fountain which gently plays upon the roots of the plane-trees and upon the grass-plots underneath them. this summer-house has a bed-room in it free from every sort of noise, and which the light itself cannot penetrate, together with a common dining-room i use when i have none but intimate friends with me. a second portico looks upon this little area, and has the same view as the other i have just been describing. there is, besides, another room, which, being situate close to the nearest plane-tree, enjoys a constant shade and green. its sides are encrusted with carved marble up to the ceiling, while above the marble a foliage is painted with birds among the branches, which has an effect altogether as agreeable as that of the carving, at the foot of which a little fountain, playing through several small pipes into a vase it encloses, produces a most pleasing murmur. from a corner of the portico you enter a very large bed-chamber opposite the large dining-room, which from some of its windows has a view of the terrace, and from others, of the meadow, as those in the front look upon a cascade, which entertains at once both the eye and the ear; for the water, dashing from a great height, foams over the marble basin which receives it below. this room is extremely warm in winter, lying much exposed to the sun, and on a cloudy day the heat of an adjoining stove very well supplies his absence. leaving this room, you pass through a good-sized, pleasant, undressing-room into the cold-bath-room, in which is a large gloomy bath: but if you are inclined to swim more at large, or in warmer water, in the middle of the area stands a wide basin for that purpose, and near it a reservoir from which you may be supplied with cold water to brace yourself again, if you should find you are too much relaxed by the warm. adjoining the cold bath is one of a medium degree of heat, which enjoys the kindly warmth of the sun, but not so intensely as the hot bath, which projects farther. this last consists of three several compartments, each of different degrees of heat; the two former lie open to the full sun, the latter, though not much exposed to its heat, receives an equal share of its light. over the undressing-room is built the tennis-court, which admits of different kinds of games and different sets of players. not far from the baths is the staircase leading to the enclosed portico, three rooms intervening. one of these looks out upon the little area with the four plane-trees round it, the other upon the meadows, and from the third you have a view of several vineyards, so that each has a different one, and looks towards a different point of the heavens. at the upper end of the enclosed portico, and indeed taken off from it, is a room that looks out upon the hippodrome, the vineyards, and the mountains; adjoining is a room which has a full exposure to the sun, especially in winter, and out of which runs another connecting the hippodrome with the house. this forms the front. on the side rises an enclosed portico, which not only looks out upon the vineyards, but seems almost to touch them. from the middle of this portico you enter a dining-room cooled by the wholesome breezes from the apennine valleys: from the windows behind, which are extremely large, there is a close view of the vineyards, and from the folding doors through the summer portico. along that side of the dining-room where there are no windows runs a private staircase for greater convenience in serving up when i give an entertainment; at the farther end is a sleeping-room with a look-out upon the vineyards, and (what is equally agreeable) the portico. underneath this room is an enclosed portico resembling a grotto, which, enjoying in the midst of summer heats its own natural coolness, neither admits nor wants external air. after you have passed both these porticoes, at the end of the dining-room stands a third, which according as the day is more or less advanced, serves either for winter or summer use. it leads to two different apartments, one containing four chambers, the other, three, which enjoy by turns both sun and shade. this arrangement of the different parts of my house is exceedingly pleasant, though it is not to be compared with the beauty of the hippodrome,' lying entirely open in the middle of the grounds, so that the eye, upon your first entrance, takes it in entire in one view. it is set round with plane-trees covered with ivy, so that, while their tops flourish with their own green, towards the roots their verdure is borrowed from the ivy that twines round the trunk and branches, spreads from tree to tree, and connects them together. between each plane-tree are planted box-trees, and behind these stands a grove of laurels which blend their shade with that of the planes. this straight boundary to the hippodrome[75] alters its shape at the farther end, bending into a semicircle, which is planted round, shut in with cypresses, and casts a deeper and gloomier shade, while the inner circular walks (for there are several), enjoying an open exposure, are filled with plenty of roses, and correct, by a very pleasant contrast, the coolness of the shade with the warmth of the sun. having passed through these several winding alleys, you enter a straight walk, which breaks out into a variety of others, partitioned off by box-row hedges. in one place you have a little meadow, in another the box is cut in a thousand different forms, sometimes into letters, expressing the master's name, sometimes the artificer's, whilst here and there rise little obelisks with fruit-trees alternately intermixed, and then on a sudden, in the midst of this elegant regularity, you are surprised with an imitation of the negligent beauties of rural nature. in the centre of this lies a spot adorned with a knot of dwarf plane-trees. beyond these stands an acacia, smooth and bending in places, then again various other shapes and names. at the upper end is an alcove of white marble, shaded with vines and supported by four small carystian columns. from this semicircular couch, the water, gushing up through several little pipes, as though pressed out by the weight of the persons who recline themselves upon it, falls into a stone cistern underneath, from whence it is received into a fine polished marble basin, so skilfully contrived that it is always full without ever overflowing. when i sup here, this basin serves as a table, the larger sort of dishes being placed round the margin, while the smaller ones swim about in the form of vessels and water-fowl. opposite this is a fountain which is incessantly emptying and filling, for the water which it throws up to a great height, falling back again into it, is by means of consecutive apertures returned as fast as it is received. facing the alcove (and reflecting upon it as great an ornament as it borrows from it) stands a summer-house of exquisite marble, the doors of which project and open into a green enclosure, while from its upper and lower windows the eye falls upon a variety of different greens. next to this is a little private closet (which, though it seems distinct, may form part of the same room), furnished with a couch, and notwithstanding it has windows on every side, yet it enjoys a very agreeable gloom, by means of a spreading vine which climbs to the top, and entirely overshadows it. here you may lie and fancy yourself in a wood, with this only difference, that you are not exposed to the weather as you would be there. here too a fountain rises and instantly disappears--several marble seats are set in different places, which are as pleasant as the summer-house itself after one is tired out with walking. near each is a little fountain, and throughout the whole hippodrome several small rills run murmuring along through pipes, wherever the hand of art has thought proper to conduct them, watering here and there different plots of green, and sometimes all parts at once. i should have ended before now, for fear of being too chatty, had i not proposed in this letter to lead you into every corner of my house and gardens. nor did i apprehend your thinking it a trouble to read the description of a place which i feel sure would please you were you to see it; especially as you can stop just when you please, and by throwing aside my letter, sit down as it were, and give yourself a rest as often as you think proper. besides, i gave my little passion indulgence, for i have a passion for what i have built, or finished, myself. in a word, (for why should i conceal from my friend either my deliberate opinion or my prejudice?) i look upon it as the first duty of every writer to frequently glance over his title-page and consider well the subject he has proposed to himself; and he may be sure, if he dwells on his subject, he cannot justly be thought tedious, whereas if, on the contrary, he introduces and drags in anything irrelevant, he will be thought exceedingly so. homer, you know, has employed many verses in the description of the arms of achilles, as virgil has also in those of aeneas, yet neither 'of them is prolix, because they each keep within the limits of their original design. aratus, you observe, is not considered too circumstantial, though he traces and enumerates the minutest stars, for he does not go out of his way for that purpose, but only follows where his subject leads him. in the same way (to compare small things with great), so long as, in endeavouring to give you an idea of my house, i have not introduced anything irrelevant or superfluous, it is not my letter which describes, but my villa which is described, that is to be considered large. but to return to where i began, lest i should justly be condemned by my own law, if i continue longer in this digression, you see now the reasons why i prefer my tuscan villa to those which i possess at tusculum, tiber, and praeneste.[76] besides the advantages already mentioned, i enjoy here a cozier, more profound and undisturbed retirement than anywhere else, as i am at a greater distance from the business of the town and the interruption of troublesome clients. all is calm and composed; which circumstances contribute no less than its clear air and unclouded sky to that health of body and mind i particularly enjoy in this place, both of which i keep in full swing by study and hunting. and indeed there is no place which agrees better with my family, at least i am sure i have not yet lost one (may the expression be allowed![77]) of all those i brought here with me. and may the gods continue that happiness to me, and that honour to my villa. farewell. liii -to calvisius it is certain the law does not allow a corporate city to inherit any estate by will, or to receive a legacy. saturninus, however, who has appointed me his heir, had left a fourth part of his estate to our corporation of comum; afterwards, instead of a fourth part, he bequeathed four hundred thousand sesterces.[78] this bequest, in the eye of the law, is null and void, but, considered as the clear and express will of the deceased, ought to stand firm and valid. myself, i consider the will of the dead (though i am afraid what i say will not please the lawyers) of higher authority than the law, especially when the interest of one's native country is concerned. ought i, who made them a present of eleven hundred thousand sesterces[79] out of my own patrimony, to withhold a benefaction of little more than a third part of that sum out of an estate which has come quite by a chance into my hands? you, who like a true patriot have the same affection for this our common country, will agree with me in opinion, i feel sure. i wish therefore you would, at the next meeting of the decurii, acquaint them, just briefly and respectfully, as to how the law stands in this case, and then add that i offer them four hundred thousand sesterces according to the direction in saturninus' will. you will represent this donation as his present and his liberality; i only claim the merit of complying with his request. i did not trouble to write to their senate about this, fully relying as i do upon our intimate friendship and your wise discretion, and being quite satisfied that you are both able and willing to act for me upon this occasion as i would for myself; besides, i was afraid i should not seem to have so cautiously guarded my expressions in a letter as you will be able to do in a speech. the countenance, the gesture, and even the tone of voice govern and determine the sense of the speaker, whereas a letter, being without these advantages, is more liable to malignant misinterpretation. farewell. liv -to marcellinus i write this to you in the deepest sorrow: the youngest daughter of my friend fundanus is dead! i have never seen a more cheerful and more lovable girl, or one who better deserved to have enjoyed a long, i had almost said an immortal, life! she was scarcely fourteen, and yet there was in her a wisdom far beyond her years, a matronly gravity united with girlish sweetness and virgin bashfulness. with what an endearing fondness did she hang on her father's neck! how affectionately and modestly she used to greet us his friends! with what a tender and deferential regard she used to treat her nurses, tutors, teachers, each in their respective offices! what an eager, industrious, intelligent, reader she was! she took few amusements, and those with caution. how self-controlled, how patient, how brave, she was, under her last illness! she complied with all the directions of her physicians; she spoke cheerful, comforting words to her sister and her father; and when all her bodily strength was exhausted, the vigour of her mind sustained her. that indeed continued even to her last moments, unbroken by the pain of a long illness, or the terrors of approaching death; and it is a reflection which makes us miss her, and grieve that she has gone from us, the more. 0 melancholy, untimely, loss, too truly! she was engaged to an excellent young man; the wedding-day was fixed, and we were all invited. how our joy has been turned into sorrow! i cannot express in words the inward pain i felt when i heard fundanus himself (as grief is ever finding out fresh circumstances to aggravate its affliction) ordering the money he had intended laying out upon clothes, pearls, and jewels for her marriage, to be employed in frankincense, ointments, and perfumes for her funeral. he is a man of great learning and good sense, who has applied himself from his earliest youth to the deeper studies and the fine arts, but all the maxims of fortitude which he has received from books, or advanced himself, he now absolutely rejects, and every other virtue of his heart gives place to all a parent's tenderness. you will excuse, you will even approve, his grief, when you consider what he has lost. he has lost a daughter who resembled him in his manners, as well as his person, and exactly copied out all her father. so, if you should think proper to write to him upon the subject of so reasonable a grief, let me remind you not to use the rougher arguments of consolation, and such as seem to carry a sort of reproof with them, but those of kind and sympathizing humanity. time will render him more open to the dictates of reason: for as a fresh wound shrinks back from the hand of the surgeon, but by degrees submits to, and even seeks of its own accord the means of its cure, so a mind under the first impression of a misfortune shuns and rejects all consolations, but at length desires and is lulled by their gentle application. farewell. lv -to spurinna knowing, as i do, how much you admire the polite arts, and what satisfaction you take in seeing young men of quality pursue the steps of their ancestors, i seize this earliest opportunity of informing you that i went to-day to hear calpurnius piso read a beautiful and scholarly production of his, entitled the sports of love. his numbers, which were elegiac, were tender, sweet, and flowing, at the same time that they occasionally rose to all the sublimity of diction which the nature of his subject required. he varied his style from the lofty to the simple, from the close to the copious, from the grave to the florid, with equal genius and judgment. these beauties were further recommended by a most harmonious voice; which a very becoming modesty rendered still more pleasing. a confusion and concern in the countenance of a speaker imparts a grace to all he utters; for diffidence, i know not how, is infinitely more engaging than assurance and self-sufficiency. i might mention several other circumstances to his advantage, which i am the more inclined to point out, as they are exceedingly striking in one of his age, and are most uncommon in a youth of his quality: but not to enter into a farther detail of his merit, i will only add that, when he had finished his poem, i embraced him very heartily, and being persuaded that nothing is a greater encouragement than applause, i exhorted him to go on as he had begun, and to shine out to posterity with the same glorious lustre, which was reflected upon him from his ancestors. i congratulated his excellent mother, and particularly his brother, who gained as much honour by the generous affection he manifested upon this occasion as calpurnius did by his eloquence; so remarkable a solicitude he showed for him when he began to recite his poem, and so much pleasure in his success. may the gods grant me frequent occasions of giving you accounts of this nature! for i have a partiality to the age in which i live, and should rejoice to find it not barren of merit. i ardently wish, therefore, our young men of quality would have something else to show of honourable memorial in their houses than the images[80] of their ancestors. as for those which are placed in the mansion of these excellent youths, i now figure them to myself as silently applauding and encouraging their pursuits, and (what is a sufficient degree of honour to both brothers) as recognizing their kindred. farewell. lvi -to paulinus as i know the humanity with which you treat your own servants, i have less reserve in confessing to you the indulgence i shew to mine. i have ever in my mind that line of homer's -"who swayed his people with a father's love": and this expression of ours, "father of a family." but were i harsher and harder than i really am by nature, the ill state of health of my freedman zosimus (who has the stronger claim upon my tenderness, in that he now stands in more especial need of it) would be sufficient to soften me. he is a good, honest fellow, attentive in his services, and wellread; but his chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing qualification, is that of a comedian, in which he highly excels. his pronunciation is distinct, correct in emphasis, pure, and graceful: he has a very skilled touch, too, upon the lyre, and performs with better execution than is necessary for one of his profession. to this i must add, he reads history, oratory, and poetry, as well as if these had been the sole objects of his study. i am the more particular in enumerating his qualifications, to let you see how many agreeable services i receive from this one servant alone. he is indeed endeared to me by the ties of a long affection, which are strengthened by the danger he is now in. for nature has so formed our hearts that nothing contributes more to incite and kindle affection than the fear of losing the object of it: a fear which i have suffered more than once on his account. some years ago he strained himself so much by too strong an exertion of his voice, that he spit blood, upon which account i sent him into egypt;[81] from whence, after a long absence, belately returned with great benefit to his health. but having again exerted himself for several days together beyond his strength, he was reminded of his former malady by a slight return of his cough, and a spitting of blood. for this reason i intend to send him to your farm at forum-julii,[82] having frequently heard you mention it as a healthy air, and recommend the milk of that place as very salutary in disorders of his nature. i beg you would give directions to your people to receive him into your house, and to supply him with whatever he may have occasion for: which will not be much, for he is so sparing and abstemious as not only to abstain from delicacies, but even to deny himself the necessaries his ill state of health requires. i shall furnish him towards his journey with what will be sufficient for one of his moderate requirements, who is coming under your roof. farewell. lvii -to rufus i went into the julian[83] court to hear those lawyers to whom, according to the last adjournment, i was to reply. the judges had taken their seats, the decemviri[84] were arrived, the eyes of the audience were fixed upon the counsel, and all was hushed silence and expectation, when a messenger arrived from the praetor, and the hundred are at once dismissed, and the case postponed: an accident extremely agreeable to me, who am never so well prepared but that i am glad of gaining further time. the occasion of the court's rising thus abruptly was a short edict of nepos, the praetor for criminal causes, in which he directed all persons concerned as plaintiffs or defendants in any cause before him to take notice that he designed strictly to put in force the decree of the senate annexed to his edict. which decree was expressed in the following words: all persons whosoever that have any law-suits depending are hereby required and commanded, before any proceedings be had thereon, to take an oath that they have not given, promised, or engaged to give, any fee or reward to any advocate, upon account of his undertaking their cause. in these terms, and many others equally full and express, the lawyers were prohibited to make their professions venal. however, after the case is decided, they are permitted to accept a gratuity of ten thousand sesterces.[85] the praetor for civil causes, being alarmed at this order of nepos, gave us this unexpected holiday in order to take time to consider whether he should follow the example. meanwhile the whole town is talking, and either approving or condemning this edict of nepos. we have got then at last (say the latter with a sneer) a redressor of abuses. but pray was there never a praetor before this man? who is he then who sets up in this way for a public reformer? others, on the contrary, say, "he has done perfectly right upon his entry into office; he has paid obedience to the laws; considered the decrees of the senate, repressed most indecent contracts, and will not suffer the most honourable of all professions to be debased into a sordid lucre traffic." this is what one hears all around one; but which side may prevail, the event will shew. it is the usual method of the world (though a very unequitable rule of estimation) to pronounce an action either right or wrong, according as it is attended with good or ill success; in consequence of which you may hear the very same conduct attributed to zeal or folly, to liberty or licentiousness, upon different several occasions. farewell. lviii -to arrianus sometimes i miss regulus in our courts. i cannot say i deplore his loss. the man, it must be owned, highly respected his profession, grew pale with study and anxiety over it, and used to write out his speeches though he could not get them by heart. there was a practice he had of painting round his right or left eye,[86] and wearing a white patch[87] over one side or the other of his forehead, according as he was to plead either for the plaintiff or defendant; of consulting the soothsayers upon the issue of an action; still, all this excessive superstition was really due to his extreme earnestness in his profession. and it was acceptable enough being concerned in the same cause with him, as he always obtained full indulgence in point of time, and never failed to get an audience together; for what could be more convenient than, under the protection of a liberty which you did not ask yourself, and all the odium of the arrangement resting with another, and before an audience which you had not the trouble of collecting, to speak on at your ease, and as long as you thought proper? nevertheless regulus did well in departing this life, though he would have done much better had he made his exit sooner. he might really have lived now without any danger to the public, in the reign of a prince under whom he would have had no opportunity of doing any harm. i need not scruple therefore, i think, to say i sometimes miss him: for since his death the custom has prevailed of not allowing, nor indeed of asking more than an hour or two to plead in, and sometimes not above half that time. the truth is, our advocates take more pleasure in finishing a cause than in defending it; and our judges had rather rise from the bench than sit upon it: such is their indolence, and such their indifference to the honour of eloquence and the interest of justice! but are we wiser than our ancestors? are we more equitable than the laws which grant so many hours and days of adjournments to a case? were our forefathers slow of apprehension, and dull beyond measure? and are we clearer of speech, quicker in our conceptions, or more scrupulous in our decisions, because we get over our causes in fewer hours than they took days? o regulus! it was by zeal in your profession that you secured an advantage which is but rarely given to the highest integrity. as for myself, whenever i sit upon the bench (which is much oftener than i appear at the bar), i always give the advocates as much time as they require: for i look upon it as highly presuming to pretend to guess, before a case is heard, what time it will require, and to set limits to an affair before one is acquainted with its extent; especially as the first and most sacred duty of a judge is patience, which constitutes an important part of justice. but this, it is objected, would give an opening to much superfluous matter: i grant it may; yet is it not better to hear too much than not to hear enough? besides, how shall you know that what an advocate has farther to offer will be superfluous, until you have heard him? but this, and many other public abuses, will be best reserved for a conversation when we meet; for i know your affection to the commonwealth inclines you to wish that some means might be found out to check at least those grievances, which would now be very difficult absolutely to remove. but to return to affairs of private concern: i hope all goes well in your family; mine remains in its usual situation. the good which i enjoy grows more acceptable to me by its continuance; as habit renders me less sensible of the evils i suffer. farewell. lix -to calpurnia[88] never was business more disagreeable to me than when it prevented me not only from accompanying you when you went into campania for your health, but from following you there soon after; for i want particularly to be with you now, that i may learn from my own eyes whether you are growing stronger and stouter, and whether the tranquillity, the amusements, and plenty of that charming country really agree with you. were you in perfect health, yet i could ill support your absence; for even a moment's uncertainty of the welfare of those we tenderly love causes a feeling of suspense and anxiety: but now your sickness conspires with your absence to trouble me grievously with vague and various anxieties. i dread everything, fancy everything, and, as is natural to those who fear, conjure up the very things i most dread. let me the more earnestly entreat you then to think of my anxiety, and write to me every day, and even twice a day: i shall be more easy, at least while i am reading your letters, though when i have read them, i shall immediately feel my fears again. farewell. lx -to calpurnia you kindly tell me my absence very sensibly affects you, and that your only consolation is in conversing with my works, which you frequently substitute in my stead. i am glad that you miss me; i am glad that you find some rest in these alleviations. in return, i read over your letters again and again, and am continually taking them up, as if i had just received them; but, alas! this only stirs in me a keener longing for you; for how sweet must her conversation be whose letters have so many charms? let me receive them, however, as often as possible, notwithstanding there is still a mixture of pain in the pleasure they afford me. farewell. lxi -to priscus you know attilius crescens, and you love him; who is there, indeed, of any rank or worth, that does not? for myself, i profess to have a friendship for him far exceeding ordinary attachments of the world. our native towns are separated only by a day's journey; and we got to care for each other when we were very young; the season for passionate friendships. ours improved by years; and so far from being chilled, it was confirmed by our riper judgments, as those who know us best can witness. he takes pleasure in boasting everywhere of my friendship; as i do to let the world know that his reputation, his ease, and his interest are my peculiar concern. insomuch that upon his expressing to me some apprehension of insolent treatment from a certain person who was entering upon the tribuneship of the people, i could not forbear answering, -"long as achilles breathes this vital air, to touch thy head no impious hand shall dare."<a href="#linknote-89" name="linknoteref-89" id="linknoteref-89">[89]</a> what is my object in telling you these things? why, to shew you that i look upon every injury offered to attilius as done to myself. "but what is the object of all this?" you repeat. you must know then, valerius varus, at his death, owed attilius a sum of money. though i am on friendly terms with maximus, his heir, yet there is a closer friendship between him and you. i beg therefore, and entreat you by the affection you have for me, to take care that attilius is not only paid the capital which is due to him, but all the long arrears of interest too. he neither covets the property of others nor neglects the care of his own; and as he is not engaged in any lucrative profession, he has nothing to depend upon but his own frugality: for as to literature, in which he greatly distinguishes himself, he pursues this merely from motives of pleasure and ambition. in such a situation, the slightest loss presses hard upon a man, and the more so because he has no opportunities of repairing any injury done to his fortune. remove then, i entreat you, our uneasiness, and suffer me still to enjoy the pleasure of his wit and bonhommie; for i cannot bear to see the cheerfulness of my friend overclouded, whose mirth and good humour dissipates every gloom of melancholy in myself. in short, you know what a pleasant entertaining fellow he is, and i hope you will not suffer any injury to engloom and embitter his disposition. you may judge by the warmth of his affection how severe his resentments would prove; for a generous and great mind can ill brook an injury when coupled with contempt. but though he could pass it over, yet cannot i: on the contrary, i shall regard it as a wrong and indignity done to myself, and resent it as one offered to my friend; that is, with double warmth. but, after all, why this air of threatening? rather let me end in the same style in which i began, namely, by begging, entreating you so to act in this affair that neither attilius may have reason to imagine (which i am exceedingly anxious he should not) that i neglect his interest, nor that i may have occasion to charge you with carelessness of mine: as undoubtedly i shall not if you have the same regard for the latter as i have for the former. farewell. lxii -to albinus i was lately at alsium,[90] where my mother-in-law has a villa which once belonged to verginius rufus. the place renewed in my mind the sorrowful remembrance of that-great and excellent man. he was extremely fond of this retirement, and used to call it the nest of his old age. whichever way i looked, i missed him, i felt his absence. i had an inclination to visit his monument; but i repented having seen it, afterwards: for i found it still unfinished, and this, not from any difficulty residing in the work itself, for it is very plain, or rather indeed slight; but through the neglect of him to whose care it was entrusted. i could not see without a concern, mixed with indignation, the remains of a man, whose fame filled the whole world, lie for ten years after his death without an inscription, or a name. he had however directed that the divine and immortal action of his life should be recorded upon his tomb in the following lines: "here rufus lies, who vindex' arms withstood, not for himself, but for his country's good." but faithful friends are so rare, and the dead so soon forgotten, that we shall be obliged ourselves to build even our very tombs, and anticipate the office of our heirs. for who is there that has no reason to fear for himself what we see has happened to verginius, whose eminence and distinction, while rendering such treatment more shameful, so, in the same way, make it more notorious? farewell. lxiii -to maximus o what a happy day i lately spent! i was called by the prefect of rome, to assist him in a certain case, and had the pleasure of hearing two excellent young men, fuscus salinator and numidius quadratus, plead on the opposite sides: their worth is equal, and each of them will one day, i am persuaded, prove an ornament not only to the present age, but to literature itself. they evinced upon this occasion an admirable probity, supported by inflexible courage: their dress was decent, their elocution distinct, their tones were manly, their memory retentive, their genius elevated, and guided by an equal solidity of judgment. i took infinite pleasure in observing them display these noble qualities; particularly as i had the satisfaction to see that, while they looked upon me as their guide and model, they appeared to the audience as my imitators and rivals. it was a day (i cannot but repeat it again) which afforded me the most exquisite happiness, and which i shall ever distinguish with the fairest mark. for what indeed could be either more pleasing to me on the public account than to observe two such noble youths building their fame and glory upon the polite arts; or more desirable upon my own than to be marked out as a worthy example to them in their pursuits of virtue? may the gods still grant me the continuance of that pleasure! and i implore the same gods, you are my witness, to make all these who think me deserving of imitation far better than i am, farewell. lxiv -to romanus you were not present at a very singular occurrence here lately: neither was i, but the story reached me just after it had happened. passienus paulus, a roman knight, of good family, and a man of peculiar learning and culture besides, composes elegies, a talent which runs in the family, for propertius is reckoned by him amongst his ancestors, as well as being his countryman. he was lately reciting a poem which began thus: "priscus, at thy command"-whereupon javolenus priscus, who happened to be present as a particular friend of the poet's, cried out--"but he is mistaken, i did not command him." think what laughter and merriment this occasioned. priscus's wits, you must know, are reckoned rather unsound,[91] though he takes a share in public business, is summoned to consultations, and even publicly acts as a lawyer, so that this behaviour of his was the more remarkable and ridiculous: meanwhile paulus was a good deal disconcerted by his friend's absurdity. you see how necessary it is for those who are anxious to recite their works in public to take care that the audience as well as the author are perfectly sane. farewell. lxv -to tacitus your request that i would send you an account of my uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments; for, if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory of it, i am well assured, will be rendered forever illustrious. and notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune, which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins, and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him an everlasting remembrance; notwithstanding he has himself composed many and lasting works; yet i am persuaded, the mentioning of him in your immortal writings, will greatly contribute to render his name immortal. happy i esteem those to be to whom by provision of the gods has been granted the ability either to do such actions as are worthy of being related or to relate them in a manner worthy of being read; but peculiarly happy are they who are blessed with both these uncommon talents: in the number of which my uncle, as his own writings and your history will evidently prove, may justly be ranked. it is with extreme willingness, therefore, that i execute your commands; and should indeed have claimed the task if you had not enjoined it. he was at that time with the fleet under his command at misenum.[92] on the 24th of august, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. he had just taken a turn in the sun[93] and, after bathing himself in cold water, and making a light luncheon, gone back to his books: he immediately arose and went out upon a rising ground from whence he might get a better sight of this very uncommon appearance. a cloud, from which mountain was uncertain, at this distance (but it was found afterwards to come from mount vesuvius), was ascending, the appearance of which i cannot give you a more exact description of than by likening it to that of a pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches; occasioned, i imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upwards, or the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in the manner i have mentioned; it appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. this phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and research as my uncle extraordinary and worth further looking into. he ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me leave, if i liked, to accompany him. i said i had rather go on with my work; and it so happened, he had himself given me something to write out. as he was coming out of the house, he received a note from rectina, the wife of bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her; for her villa lying at the foot of mount vesuvius, there was no way of escape but by sea; she earnestly entreated him therefore to come to her assistance. he accordingly changed his first intention, and what he had begun from a philosophical, he now carries out in a noble and generous spirit. he ordered the galleys to be put to sea, and went himself on board with an intention of assisting not only rectina, but the several other towns which lay thickly strewn along that beautiful coast. hastening then to the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steered his course direct to the point of danger, and with so much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene. he was now so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumicestones, and black pieces of burning rock: they were in danger too not only of being aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain, and obstructed all the shore. here he stopped to consider whether he should turn back again; to which the pilot advising him, "fortune," said he, "favours the brave; steer to where pomponianus is." pomponianus was then at stabiae,[94] separated by a bay, which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms with the shore. he had already sent his baggage on board; for though he was not at that time in actual danger, yet being within sight of it, and indeed extremely near, if it should in the least increase, he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind, which was blowing dead in-shore, should go down. it was favourable, however, for carrying my uncle to pomponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation: he embraced him tenderly, encouraging and urging him to keep up his spirits, and, the more effectually to soothe his fears by seeming unconcerned himself, ordered a bath to be got ready, and then, after having bathed, sat down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least (what is just as heroic) with every appearance of it. meanwhile broad flames shone out in several places from mount vesuvius, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still brighter and clearer. but my uncle, in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames: after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little disquieted as to fall into a sound sleep: for his breathing, which, on account of his corpulence, was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants outside. the court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, it would have been impossible for him to have made his way out. so he was awoke and got up, and went to pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were feeling too anxious to think of going to bed. they consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now rocked from side to side with frequent and violent concussions as though shaken from their very foundations; or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened destruction. in this choice of dangers they resolved for the fields: a resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. they went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins; and this was their whole defence against the storm of stones that fell round them. it was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night; which however was in some degree alleviated by torches and other lights of various kinds. they thought proper to go farther down upon the shore to see if they might safely put out to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high, and boisterous. there my uncle, laying himself down upon a sail cloth, which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulphur, dispersed the rest of the party, and obliged him to rise. he raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as i conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapour, having always had a weak throat, which was often inflamed. as soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead. during all this time my mother and i, who were at miscnum--but this has no connection with your history, and you did not desire any particulars besides those of my uncle's death; so i will end here, only adding that i have faithfully related to you what i was either an eye-witness of myself or received immediately after the accident happened, and before there was time to vary the truth. you will pick out of this narrative whatever is most important: for a letter is one thing, a history another; it is one thing writing to a friend, another thing writing to the public. farewell. lxvi -to cornelius tacitus the letter which, in compliance with your request, i wrote to you concerning the death of my uncle has raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and dangers attended me while i continued at misenum; for there, i think, my account broke off: "though my shock'd soul recoils, my tongue shall tell." my uncle having left us, i spent such time as was left on my studies (it was on their account indeed that i had stopped behind), till it was time for my bath. after which i went to supper, and then fell into a short and uneasy sleep. there had been noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which did not alarm us much, as this is quite an ordinary occurrence in campania; but it was so particularly violent that night that it not only shook but actually overturned, as it would seem, everything about us. my mother rushed into my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her. we sat down in the open court of the house, which occupied a small space between the buildings and the sea. as i was at that time but eighteen years of age, i know not whether i should call my behaviour, in this dangerous juncture, courage or folly; but i took up livy, and amused myself with turning over that author, and even making extracts from him, as if i had been perfectly at my leisure. just then, a friend of my uncle's, who had lately come to him from spain, joined us, and observing me sitting by my mother with a book in my hand, reproved her for her calmness, and me at the same time for my careless security: nevertheless i went on with my author. though it was now morning, the light was still exceedingly faint and doubtful; the buildings all around us tottered, and though we stood upon open ground, yet as the place was narrow and confined, there was no remaining without imminent danger: we therefore resolved to quit the town. a panicstricken crowd followed us, and (as to a mind distracted with terror every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) pressed on us in dense array to drive us forward as we came out. being at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still, in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. the chariots, which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backwards and forwards, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady, even by supporting them with large stones. the sea seemed to roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth; it is certain at least the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. on the other side, a black and dreadful cloud, broken with rapid, zigzag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame: these last were like sheet-lightning, but much larger. upon this our spanish friend, whom i mentioned above, addressing himself to my mother and me with great energy and urgency: "if your brother," he said, "if your uncle be safe, he certainly wishes you may be so too; but if he perished, it was his desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him: why therefore do you delay your escape a moment?" we could never think of our own safety, we said, while we were uncertain of his. upon this our friend left us, and withdrew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. soon afterwards, the cloud began to descend, and cover the sea. it had already surrounded and concealed the island of capreae and the promontory of misenum. my mother now besought, urged, even commanded me to make my escape at any rate, which, as i was young, i might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible; however, she would willingly meet death if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she was not the occasion of mine. but i absolutely refused to leave her, and, taking her by the hand, compelled her to go with me. she complied with great reluctance, and not without many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight. the ashes now began to fall upon us, though in no great quantity. i looked back; a dense dark mist seemed to be following us, spreading itself over the country like a cloud. "let us turn out of the high-road," i said, "while we can still see, for fear that, should we fall in the road, we should be pressed to death in the dark, by the crowds that are following us." we had scarcely sat down when night came upon us, not such as we have when the sky is cloudy, or when there is no moon, but that of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights put out. you might hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the shouts of men; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and seeking to recognise each other by the voices that replied; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die, from the very fear of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.[95] among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. i remember some who declared that one part of misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them. it now grew rather lighter, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was) than the return of day: however, the fire fell at a distance from us: then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap. i might boast that, during all this scene of horror, not a sigh, or expression of fear, escaped me, had not my support been grounded in that miserable, though mighty, consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that i was perishing with the world itself. at last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, like a cloud or smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun shone out, though with a lurid light, like when an eclipse is coming on. every object that presented itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed changed, being covered deep with ashes as if with snow. we returned to misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear; though, indeed, with a much larger share of the latter: for the earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down heightening their own and their friends' calamities by terrible predictions. however, my mother and i, notwithstanding the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place, till we could receive some news of my uncle. and now, you will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in your history, of which it is not in the least worthy; and indeed you must put it down to your own request if it should appear not worth even the trouble of a letter. farewell. lx vii -to macer how much does the fame of human actions depend upon the station of those who perform them! the very same conduct shall be either applauded to the skies or entirely overlooked, just as it may happen to proceed from a person of conspicuous or obscure rank. i was sailing lately upon our lake,[96] with an old man of my acquaintance, who desired me to observe a villa situated upon its banks, which had a chamber overhanging the water. "from that room," said he, "a woman of our city threw herself and her husband." upon enquiring into the cause, he informed me, "that her husband having been long afflicted with an ulcer in those parts which modesty conceals, she prevailed with him at last to let her inspect the sore, assuring him at the same time that she would most sincerely give her opinion whether there was a possibility of its being cured. accordingly, upon viewing the ulcer, she found the case hopeless, and therefore advised him to put an end to his life: she herself accompanying him, even leading the way by her example, and being actually the means of his death; for tying herself to her husband, she plunged with him into the lake." though this happened in the very city where i was born, i never heard it mentioned before; and yet that this action is taken less notice of than that famous one of arria's, is not because it was less remarkable, but because the person who performed it was more obscure. farewell. lxviii -to servianus i am extremely glad to hear that you intend your daughter for fuscus salinator, and congratulate you upon it. his family is patrician,[97] and both his father and mother are persons of the most distinguished merit. as for himself, he is studious, learned, and eloquent, and, with all the innocence of a child, unites the sprightliness of youth and the wisdom of age. i am not, believe me, deceived by my affection, when i give him this character; for though i love him, i confess, beyond measure (as his friendship and esteem for me well deserve), yet partiality has no share in my judgment: on the contrary, the stronger my affection for him, the more exactingly i weigh his merit. i will venture, then, to assure you (and i speak it upon my own experience) you could not have, formed to your wishes, a more accomplished son-in-law. may he soon present you with a grandson, who shall be the exact copy of his father! and with what pleasure shall i receive from the arms of two such friends their children or grand-children, whom i shall claim a sort of right to embrace as my own! farewell. lxix -to severus you desire me to consider what turn you should give to your speech in honour of the emperor,[98] upon your being appointed consul elect.[99] it is easy to find copies, not so easy to choose out of them; for his virtues afford such abundant material. however, i will write and give you my opinion, or (what i should prefer) i will let you have it in person, after having laid before you the difficulties which occur to me. i am doubtful, then, whether i should advise you to pursue the method which i observed myself on the same occasion. when i was consul elect, i avoided running into the usual strain of compliment, which, however far from adulation, might yet look like it. not that i affected firmness and independence; but, as well knowing the sentiments of our amiable prince, and being thoroughly persuaded that the highest praise i could offer to him would be to show the world i was under no necessity of paying him any. when i reflected what profusion of honours had been heaped upon the very worst of his predecessors, nothing, i imagined, could more distinguish a prince of his real virtues from those infamous emperors than to address him in a different manner. and this i thought proper to observe in my speech, lest it might be suspected i passed over his glorious acts, not out of judgment, but inattention. such was the method i then observed; but i am sensible the same measures are neither agreeable nor indeed suitable to all alike. besides the propriety of doing or omitting a thing depends not only upon persons, but time and circumstances; and as the late actions of our illustrious prince afford materials for panegyric, no less just than recent and glorious, i doubt (as i said before) whether i should persuade you in the present instance to adopt the same plan as i did myself. in this, however, i am clear, that it was proper to offer you by way of advice the method i pursued. farewell. lxx -to fabatus i have the best reason, certainly, for celebrating your birthday as my own, since all the happiness of mine arises from yours, to whose care and diligence it is owing that i am gay here and at my ease in town. -your camillian villa[100] in campania has suffered by the injuries of time, and is falling into decay; however, the most valuable parts of the building either remain entire or are but slightly damaged, and it shall be my care to see it put into thorough repair. -though i flatter myself i have many friends, yet i have scarcely any of the sort you enquire after, and which the affair you mention demands. all mine lie among those whose employments engage them in town; whereas the conduct of country business requires a person of a robust constitution, and bred up to the country, to whom the work may not seem hard, nor the office beneath him, and who does not feel a solitary life depressing. you think most highly of rufus, for he was a great friend of your son's; but of what use he can be to us upon this occasion, i cannot conceive; though i am sure he will be glad to do all he can for us. farewell. lxxi -to cornelianus i received lately the most exquisite satisfaction at centumcellae[101] (as it is now called), being summoned thither by cã¦sar[102] to attend a council. could anything indeed afford a higher pleasure than to see the emperor exercising his justice, his wisdom, and his affability, even in retirement, where those virtues are most observable? various were the points brought in judgment before him, and which proved, in so many different instances, the excellence of the judge. the cause of claudius ariston came on first. he is an ephesian nobleman, of great munificence and unambitious popularity, whose virtues have rendered him obnoxious to a set of people of far different characters; they had instigated an informer against him, of the same infamous stamp with themselves; but he was honourably acquitted. the next day, the case of galitta, accused of adultery, was heard. her husband, who is a military tribune, was upon the point of offering himself as a candidate for certain honours at rome, but she had stained her own good name and his by an intrigue with a centurion.[103] the husband informed the consul's lieutenant, who wrote to the emperor about it. cã¦sar, having thoroughly sifted the evidence, cashiered the centurion, and sentenced him to banishment. it remained that some penalty should be inflicted likewise upon the other party, as it is a crime of which both must necessarily be equally guilty. but the husband's affection for his wife inclined him to drop that part of the prosecution, not without some reflections on his forbearance; for he continued to live with her even after he had commenced this prosecution, content, it would seem, with having removed his rival. but he was ordered to proceed in the suit: and, though he complied with great reluctance, it was necessary, nevertheless, that she should be condemned. accordingly, she was sentenced to the punishment directed by the julian law.[104] the emperor thought proper to specify, in his decree, the name and office of the centurion, that it might appear he passed it in virtue of military discipline; lest it should be imagined he claimed a particular cognizance in every cause of the same nature. the third day was employed in examining into an affair which had occasioned a good deal of talk and various reports; it was concerning the codicils of julius tiro, part of which was plainly genuine, while the other part, it was alleged, was forged. the persons accused of this fraud were sempronius senecio, a roman knight, and eurythmus, cã¦sar's freedman and procurator.[105] the heirs jointly petitioned the emperor, when he was in dacia,[106] that he would reserve to himself the trial of this cause; to which he consented. on his return from that expedition, he appointed a day for the hearing; and when some of the heirs, as though out of respect to eurythmus, offered to withdraw the suit, the emperor nobly replied, "he is not polycletus,[107] nor am i nero." however, he indulged the petitioners with an adjournment, and the time being expired, he now sat to hear the cause. two of the heirs appeared, and desired that either their whole number might be compelled to plead, as they had all joined in the information, or that they also might have leave to withdraw. cã¦sar delivered his opinion with great dignity and moderation; and when the counsel on the part of senecio and eurythmus had represented that unless their clients were heard, they would remain under the suspicion of guilt,--"i am not concerned," said the emperor, "what suspicions they may lie under, it is i that am suspected;" and then turning to us, "advise me," said he, "how to act in this affair, for you see they complain when allowed to withdraw their suit." at length, by the advice of the counsel, he 'ordered notice to be given to the heirs that they should either proceed with the case or each of them justify their reasons for not doing so; otherwise that he would pass sentence upon them as calumniators.[108] thus you see how usefully and seriously we spent our time, which however was diversified with amusements of the most agreeable kind. we were every day invited to cã¦sar's table, which, for so great a prince, was spread with much plainness and simplicity. there we were either entertained with interludes or passed the night in the most pleasing conversation. when we took our leave of him the last day, he made each of us presents; so studiously polite is cã¦sar! as for myself, i was not only charmed with the dignity and wisdom of the judge, the honour done to the assessors, the ease and unreserved freedom of our social intercourse, but with the exquisite situation of the place itself. this delightful villa is surrounded by the greenest meadows, and overlooks the shore, which bends inwards, forming a complete harbour. the left arm of this port is defended by exceedingly strong works, while the right is in process of completion. an artificial island, which rises at the mouth of the harbour, breaks the force of the waves, and affords a safe passage to ships on either side. this island is formed by a process worth seeing: stones of a most enormous size are transported hither in a large sort of pontoons, and being piled one upon the other, are fixed by their own weight, gradually accumulating in the manner, as it were, of a natural mound. it already lifts its rocky back above the ocean, while the waves which beat upon it, being broken and tossed to an immense height, foam with a prodigious noise, and whiten all the surrounding sea. to these stones are added wooden piers, which in process of time will give it the appearance of a natural island. this haven is to be called by the name of its great author,[109] and will prove of infinite benefit, by affording a secure retreat to ships on that extensive and dangerous coast. farewell. lxxii -to maximus you did perfectly right in promising a gladiatorial combat to our good friends the citizens of verona, who have long loved, looked up to, and honoured, you; while it was from that city too you received that amiable object of your most tender affection, your late excellent wife. and since you owed some monument or public representation to her memory, what other spectacle could you have exhibited more appropriate to the occasion? besides, you were so unanimously pressed to do so that to have refused would have looked more like hardness than resolution. the readiness too with which you granted their petition, and the magnificent manner in which you performed it, is very much to your honour; for a greatness of soul is seen in these smaller instances, as well as in matters of higher moment. i wish the african panthers, which you had largely provided for this purpose, had arrived on the day appointed, but though they were delayed by the stormy weather, the obligation to you is equally the same, since it was not your fault that they were not exhibited. farewell. lxxiii -to restitutus this obstinate illness of yours alarms me; and though i know how extremely temperate you are, yet i fear lest your disease should get the better of your moderation. let me entreat you then to resist it with a determined abstemiousness: a remedy, be assured, of all others the most laudable as well as the most salutary. human nature itself admits the practicability of what i recommend: it is a rule, at least, which i always enjoin my family to observe with respect to myself. "i hope," i say to them, "that should i be attacked with any disorder, i shall desire nothing of which i ought either to be ashamed or have reason to repent; however, if my distemper should prevail over my resolution, i forbid that anything be given me but by the consent of my physicians; and i shall resent your compliance with me in things improper as much as another man would their refusal." i once had a most violent fever; when the fit was a little abated, and i had been anointed,[110] my physician offered me something to drink; i held out my hand, desiring he would first feel my pulse, and upon his not seeming quite satisfied, i instantly returned the cup, though it was just at my lips. afterwards, when i was preparing to go into the bath, twenty days from the first attack of my illness, perceiving the physicians whispering together, i enquired what they were saying. they replied they were of opinion i may possibly bathe with safety, however that they were not without some suspicion of risk. "what need is there," said i, "of my taking a bath at all?" and so, with perfect calmness and tranquillity, i gave up a pleasure i was upon the point of enjoying, and abstained from the bath as serenely and composedly as though i were going into it. i mention this, not only by way of enforcing my advice by example, but also that this letter may be a sort of tie upon me to persevere in the same resolute abstinence for the future. farewell. lxxiv -to calpurnia[111] you will not believe what a longing for you possesses me. the chief cause of this is my love; and then we have not grown used to be apart. so it comes to pass that i lie awake a great part of the night, thinking of you; and that by day, when the hours return at which i was wont to visit you, my feet take me, as it is so truly said, to your chamber, but not finding you there, i return, sick and sad at heart, like an excluded lover. the only time that is free from these torments is when i am being worn out at the bar, and in the suits of my friends. judge you what must be my life when i find my repose in toil, my solace in wretchedness and anxiety. farewell. lxxv -to macrinus a very singular and remarkable accident has happened in the affair of varenus,[112] the result of which is yet doubtful. the bithynians, it is said, have dropped their prosecution of him being convinced at last that it was rashly undertaken. a deputy from that province is arrived, who has brought with him a decree of their assembly; copies of which he has delivered to cã¦sar,[113] and to several of the leading men in rome, and also to us, the advocates for varenus. magnus,[114] nevertheless, whom i mentioned in my last letter to you, persists in his charge, to support which he is incessantly teasing the worthy nigrinus. this excellent person was counsel for him in his former petition to the consuls, that varenus might be compelled to produce his accounts. upon this occasion, as i attended varenus merely as a friend, i determined to be silent. i thought it highly imprudent for me, as i was appointed his counsel by the senate, to attempt to defend him as an accused person, when it was his business to insist that there was actually no charge subsisting against him. however, when nigrinus had finished his speech, the consuls turning their eyes upon me, i rose up, and, "when you shall hear," i said, "what the real deputies from the province have to object against the motion of nigrinus, you will see that my silence was not without just reason." upon this nigrinus asked me, "to whom are these deputies sent?" i replied, "to me among others; i have the decree of the province in my hands." he returned, "that is a point which, though it may be clear to you, i am not so well satisfied of." to this i answered, "though it may not be so evident to you, who are concerned to support the accusation, it may be perfectly clear to me, who am on the more favourable side." then polyaenus, the deputy from the province, acquainted the senate with the reasons for superseding the prosecution, but desired it might be without prejudice to cã¦sar's determination. magnus answered him; polyaenus replied; as for myself, i only now and then threw in a word, observing in general a complete silence. for i have learned that upon some occasions it is as much an orator's business to be silent as to speak, and i remember, in some criminal cases, to have done even more service to my clients by a discreet silence than i could have expected from the most carefully prepared speech. to enter into the subject of eloquence is indeed very foreign to the purpose of my letter, yet allow me to give you one instance in proof of my last observation. a certain lady having lost her son suspected that his freedmen, whom he had appointed coheirs with her, were guilty of forging the will and poisoning him. accordingly she charged them with the fact before the emperor, who directed julianus suburanus to try the cause. i was counsel for the defendants, and the case being exceedingly remarkable, and the counsel engaged on both sides of eminent ability, it drew together a very numerous audience. the issue was, the servants being put to the torture, my clients were acquitted. but the mother applied a second time to the emperor, pretending she had discovered some new evidence. suburanus was therefore directed to hear the cause, and see if she could produce any fresh proofs. julius africanus was counsel for the mother, a young man of good parts, but slender experience. he is grandson to the famous orator of that name, of whom it is reported that passienus crispus, hearing him one day plead, archly said, "very fine, i must confess, very fine; but is all this fine speaking to the purpose?" julius africanus, i say, having made a long harangue, and exhausted the portion of time allotted to him, said, "i beg you, suburanus, to allow me to add one word more." when he had concluded, and the eyes of the whole assembly had been fixed a considerable time upon me, i rose up. "i would have answered africanus," said i, "if he had added that one word he begged leave to do, in which i doubt not he would have told us all that we had not heard before." i do not remember to have gained so much applause by any speech that i ever made as i did in this instance by making none. thus the little that i had hitherto said for varenus was received with the same general approbation. the consuls, agreeably to the request of polyaenus, reserved the whole affair for the determination of the emperor, whose resolution i impatiently wait for; as that will decide whether i may be entirely secure and easy with respect to varenus, or must again renew all my trouble and anxiety upon his account. farewell. lxxvi -to tuscus you desire my opinion as to the method of study you should pursue, in that retirement to which you have long since withdrawn. in the first place, then, i look upon it as a very advantageous practice (and it is what many recommend) to translate either from greek into latin or from latin into greek. by this means you acquire propriety and dignity of expression, and a variety of beautiful figures, and an ease and strength of exposition, and in the imitation of the best models a facility of creating such models for yourself. besides, those things which you may possibly have overlooked in an ordinary reading over cannot escape you in translating: and this method will also enlarge your knowledge, and improve your judgment. it may not be amiss, after you have read an author, to turn, as it were, to his rival, and attempt something ol your own upon the same topic, and then make a careful comparison between your performance and his, in order to see in what points either you or he may be the happier. you may congratulate yourself indeed if you shall find in some things that you have the advantage of him, while it will be a great mortification if he is always superior. you may sometimes select very famous passages and compete with what you select. the competition is daring enough, but, as it is private, cannot be called impudent. not but that we have seen instances of persons who have publicly entered this sort of lists with great credit to themselves, and, while they did not despair of overtaking, have gloriously outstripped those whom they thought it sufficient honour to follow. a speech no longer fresh in your memory, you may take up again. you will find plenty in it to leave unaltered, but still more to reject; you will add a new thought here, and alter another there. it is a laborious and tedious task, i own, thus to re-enflame the mind after the first heat is over, to recover an impulse when its force has been checked and spent, and, worse than all, to put new limbs into a body already complete without disturbing the old; but the advantage attending this method will overbalance the difficulty. i know the bent of your present attention is directed towards the eloquence of the bar; but i would not for that reason advise you never to quit the polemic, if i may so call it, and contentious style. as land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, constantly changed, so is the mind by exercising it now with this subject of study, now with that. i would recommend you, therefore, sometimes to take a subject from history, and you might give more care to the composition of your letters. for it frequently happens that in pleading one has occasion to make use not only of historical, but even poetical, styles of description; and then from letters you acquire a concise and simple mode of expression. you will do quite right again in refreshing yourself with poetry: when i say so, i do not mean that species of poetry which turns upon subjects of great length and continuity (such being suitable only for persons of leisure), but those little pieces of the sprightly kind of poesy, which serve as proper reliefs to, and are consistent with, employments of every sort. they commonly go under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have sometimes gained their authors as much reputation as works of a more serious nature; and thus (for while i am exhorting you to poetry, why should i not turn poet myself?) "as yielding wax the artist's skill commands, submissive shap'd beneath his forming hands; now dreadful stands in arms a mars confest; or now with venus's softer air imprest; a wanton cupid now the mould belies; now shines, severely chaste, a pallas wife: as not alone to quench the raging flame, the sacred fountain pours her friendly stream; but sweetly gliding through the flow'ry green, spreads glad refreshment o'er the smiling scene: so, form'd by science, should the ductile mind receive, distinct, each various art refin'd." in this manner the greatest men, as well as the greatest orators, used either to exercise or amuse themselves, or rather indeed did both. it is surprising how much the mind is enlivened and refreshed by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon love, hatred, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in short, that concerns life and the affairs of the world. besides, the same advantage attends these, as every other sort of poems, that we turn from them to prose with so much the more pleasure after having experienced the difficulty of being constrained and fettered by metre. and now, perhaps, i have troubled you upon this subject longer than you desired; however, there is one thing i have left out: i have not told you what kind of authors you should read; though indeed that was sufficiently implied when i told you on what you should write. remember to be careful in your choice of authors of every kind: for, as it has been well observed, "though we should read much, we should not read many books." who those authors are, is so clearly settled, and so generally known, that i need not particularly specify them; besides, i have already extended this letter to such an immoderate length that, while suggesting how you ought to study, i have, i fear, been actually interrupting your studies. i will here resign you therefore to your tablets, either to resume the studies in which you were before engaged or to enter upon some of those i have recommended. farewell. lxx vii -to fabatus (his wife's grandfather) you are surprised, i find, that my share of five-twelfths of the estate which lately fell to me, and which i had directed to be sold to the best bidder, should have been disposed of by my freedman hermes to corellia (without putting it up to auction) at the rate of seven hundred thousand sesterces[115] for the whole. and as you think it might have fetched nine hundred thousand,[116] you are so much the more desirous to know whether i am inclined to ratify what he has done. i am; and listen, while i tell you why, for i hope that not only you will approve, but also that my fellow-coheirs will excuse me for having, upon a motive of superior obligation, separated my interest from theirs. i have the highest esteem for corellia, both as the sister of rufus, whose memory will always be a sacred one to me, and as my mother's intimate friend. besides, that excellent man minutius tuscus, her husband, has every claim to my affection that a long friendship can give him; as there was likewise the closest intimacy between her son and me, so much so indeed that i fixed upon him to preside at the games which i exhibited when i was elected praetor. this lady, when i was last in the country, expressed a strong desire for some place upon the borders of our lake of comum; i therefore made her an offer, at her own price, of any part of my land there, except what came to me from my father and mother; for that i could not consent to part with, even to corellia, and accordingly when the inheritance in question fell to me, i wrote to let her know it was to be sold. this letter i sent by hermes, who, upon her requesting him that he would immediately make over to her my proportion of it, consented. am i not then obliged to confirm what my freedman has thus done in pursuance of my inclinations? i have only to entreat my fellowcoheirs that they will not take it ill at my hands that i have made a separate sale of what i had certainly a right to dispose of. they are not bound in any way to follow my example, since they have not the same connections with corellia. they are at full liberty therefore to be guided by interest, which in my own case i chose to sacrifice to friendship. farewell. lxxviii -to corellia you are truly generous to desire and insist that i take for my share of the estate you purchased of me, not after the rate of seven hundred thousand sesterces for the whole, as my freedman sold it to you; but in the proportion of nine hundred thousand, agreeably to what you gave to the farmers of the twentieths for their part. but i must desire and insist in my turn that you would consider not only what is suitable to your character, but what is worthy of mine; and that you would suffer me to oppose your inclination in this single instance, with the same warmth that i obey it in all others. farewell. lxxix -to celer every author has his particular reasons for reciting his works; mine, i have often said, are, in order, if any error should have escaped my own observation (as no doubt they do escape it sometimes), to have it pointed out to me. i cannot therefore but be surprised to find (what your letter assures me) that there are some who blame me for reciting my speeches: unless, perhaps, they are of opinion that this is the single species of composition that ought to be held exempt from any correction. if so, i would willingly ask them why they allow (if indeed they do allow) that history may be recited, since it is a work which ought to be devoted to truth, not ostentation? or why tragedy, as it is composed for action and the stage, not for being read to a private audience? or lyric poetry, as it is not a reader, but a chorus of voices and instruments that it requires? they will reply, perhaps, that in the instances referred to custom has made the practice in question usual: i should be glad to know, then, if they think the person who first introduced this practice is to be condemned? besides the rehearsal of speeches is no unprecedented thing either with us or the grecians. still, perhaps, they will insist that it can answer no purpose to recite a speech which has already been delivered. true; if one were immediately to repeat the very same speech word for word, and to the very same audience; but if you make several additions and alterations; if your audience is composed partly of the same, and partly of different persons, and the recital is at some distance of time, why is there less propriety in rehearsing your speech than in publishing it? "but it is difficult," the objectors urge, "to give satisfaction to an audience by the mere recital of a speech;" that is a consideration which concerns the particular skill and pains of the person who rehearses, but by no means holds good against recitation in general. the truth is, it is not whilst i am reading, but when i am read, that i aim at approbation; and upon this principle i omit no sort of correction. in the first place, i frequently go carefully over what i have written, by myself, after this i read it out to two or three friends, and then give it to others to make their remarks. if after this i have any doubt concerning the justness of their observations, i carefully weigh them again with a friend or two; and, last of all, i recite them to a larger audience, then is the time, believe me, when i correct most energetically and unsparingly; for my care and attention rise in proportion to my anxiety; as nothing renders the judgment so acute to detect error as that deference, modesty, and diffidence one feels upon those occasions. for tell me, would you not be infinitely less affected were you to speak before a single person only, though ever so learned, than before a numerous assembly, even though composed of none but illiterate people? when you rise up to plead, are you not at that juncture, above all others, most self-distrustful? and do you not wish, i will not say some particular parts only, but that the whole arrangement of your intended speech were altered? especially if the concourse should be large in which you are to speak? for there is something even in a low and vulgar audience that strikes one with awe. and if you suspect you are not well received at the first opening of your speech, do you not find all your energy relaxed, and feel yourself ready to give way? the reason i imagine to be that there is a certain weight of collective opinion in a multitude, and although each individual judgment is, perhaps, of little value, yet when united it becomes considerable. accordingly, pomponius secundus, the famous tragic poet, whenever some very intimate friend and he differed about the retaining or rejecting anything in his writings, used to say, "i appeal[117] to the people"; and thus, by their silence or applause, adopted either his own or his friend's opinion; such was the deference he paid to the popular judgment! whether justly or not, is no concern of mine, as i am not in the habit of reciting my works publicly, but only to a select circle, whose presence i respect, and whose judgment i value; in a word, whose opinions i attend to as if they were so many individuals i had separately consulted, at the same time that i stand in as much awe before them as i should before the most numerous assembly. what cicero says of composing will, in my opinion, hold true of the dread we have of the public: "fear is the most rigid critic imaginable." the very thought of reciting, the very entrance into an assembly, and the agitated concern when one is there; each of these circumstances tends to improve and perfect an author's performance. upon the whole, therefore, i cannot repent of a practice which i have found by experience so exceedingly useful; and am so far from being discouraged by the trifling objections of these censors that i request you would point out to me if there is yet any other kind of correction, that i may also adopt it; for nothing can sufficiently satisfy my anxiety to render my compositions perfect. i reflect what an undertaking it is resigning any work into the hands of the public; and i cannot but be persuaded that frequent revisals, and many consultations, must go to the perfecting of a performance, which one desires should universally and forever please. farewell. lxxx -to priscus the illness of my friend fannia gives me great concern. she contracted it during her attendance on junia, one of the vestal virgins, engaging in this good office at first voluntarily, junia being her relation, and afterwards being appointed to it by an order from the college of priests: for these virgins, when excessive ill-health renders it necessary to remove them from the temple of vesta, are always delivered over to the care and custody of some venerable matron. it was owing to her assiduity in the execution of this charge that she contracted her present dangerous disorder, which is a continual fever, attended with a cough that increases daily. she is extremely emaciated, and every part of her seems in a total decay except her spirits: those, indeed, she fully keeps up; and in a way altogether worthy the wife of helvidius, and the daughter of thrasea. in all other respects there is such a falling away that i am more than apprehensive upon her account; i am deeply afflicted. i grieve, my friend, that so excellent a woman is going to be removed from the eyes of the world, which will never, perhaps, again behold her equal. so pure she is, so pious, so wise and prudent, so brave and steadfast! twice she followed her husband into exile, and the third time she was banished herself upon his account. for senecio, when arraigned for writing the life of helvidius, having said in his defence that he composed that work at the request of fannia, metius carus, with a stern and threatening air, asked her whether she had made that request, and she replied, "i made it." did she supply him likewise with materials for the purpose? "i did." was her mother privy to this transaction? "she was not." in short, throughout her whole examination, not a word escaped her which betrayed the smallest fear. on the contrary, she had preserved a copy of those very books which the senate, over-awed by the tyranny of the times, had ordered to be suppressed, and at the same time the effects of the author to be confiscated, and carried with her into exile the very cause of her exile. how pleasing she is, how courteous, and (what is granted to few) no less lovable than worthy of all esteem and admiration! will she hereafter be pointed out as a model to all wives; and perhaps be esteemed worthy of being set forth as an example of fortitude even to our sex; since, while we still have the pleasure of seeing and conversing with her, we contemplate her with the same admiration, as those heroines who are celebrated in ancient story? for myself, i confess, i cannot but tremble for this illustrious house, which seems shaken to its very foundations, and ready to fall; for though she will leave descendants behind her, yet what a height of virtue must they attain, what glorious deeds must they perform, ere the world will be persuaded that she was not the last of her family! it is an additional affliction and anguish to me that by her death i seem to lose her mother a second time; that worthy mother (and what can i say higher in her praise?) of so noble a woman! who, as she was restored to me in her daughter, so she will now again be taken from me, and the loss of fannia will thus pierce my heart at once with a fresh, and at the same time reopened, wound. i so truly loved and honoured them both, that i know not which i loved the best; a point they desired might ever remain undetermined. in their prosperity and their adversity i did them every kindness in my power, and was their comforter in exile, as well as their avenger at their return. but i have not yet paid them what i owe, and am so much the more solicitous for the recovery of this lady, that i may have time to discharge my debt to her. such is the anxiety and sorrow under which i write this letter! but if some divine power should happily turn it into joy, i shall not complain of the alarms i now suffer. farewell. lxxxi -to geminius numidia quadratilla is dead, having almost reached her eightieth year. she enjoyed, up to her last illness, uninterrupted good health, and was unusually stout and robust for one of her sex. she has left a very prudent will, having disposed of two-thirds of her estate to her grandson, and the rest to her grand-daughter. the young lady i know very slightly, but the grandson is one of my most intimate friends. he is a remarkable young man, and his merit entitles him to the affection of a relation, even where his blood does not. notwithstanding his remarkable personal beauty, he escaped every malicious imputation both whilst a boy and when a youth: he was a husband at four-and-twenty, and would have been a father if providence had not disappointed his hopes. he lived in the family with his grandmother, who was exceedingly devoted to the pleasures of the town, yet observed great severity of conduct himself, while always perfectly deferential and submissive to her. she retained a set of pantomimes, and was an encourager of this class of people to a degree inconsistent with one of her sex and rank. but quadratus never appeared at these entertainments, whether she exhibited them in the theatre or in her own house; nor indeed did she require him to be present. i once heard her say, when she was recommending to me the supervision of her grandson's studies, that it was her custom, in order to pass away some of those unemployed hours with which female life abounds, to amuse herself with playing at chess, or seeing the mimicry of her pantomimes; but that, whenever she engaged in either of those amusements, she constantly sent away her grandson to his studies: she appeared to me to act thus as much out of reverence for the youth as from affection. i was a good deal surprised, as i am sure you will be too, at what he told me the last time the pontifical games[118] were exhibited. as we were coming out of the theatre together, where we had been entertained with a show of these pantomimes, "do you know," said he, "to-day is the first time i ever saw my grandmother's freedman dance?" such was the grandson's speech! while a set of men of a far different stamp, in order to do honour to quadratilla (am ashamed to call it honour), were running up and down the theatre, pretending to be struck with the utmost admiration and rapture at the performances of those pantomimes, and then imitating in musical chant the mien and manner of their lady patroness. but now all the reward they have got, in return for their theatrical performances, is just a few trivial legacies, which they have the mortification to receive from an heir who was never so much as present at these shows.--i send you this account, knowing you do not dislike hearing town news, and because, too, when any occurrence has given me pleasure, i love to renew it again by relating it. and indeed this instance of affection in quadratilla, and the honour done therein to that excellent youth her grandson, has afforded me a very sensible satisfaction; as i extremely rejoice that the house which once belonged to cassius,[119] the founder and chief of the cassian school, is come into the possession of one no less considerable than its former master. for my friend will fill it and become it as he ought, and its ancient dignity, lustre, and glory will again revive under quadratus, who, i am persuaded, will prove as eminent an orator as cassius was a lawyer. farewell. lxxxii -to maximus the lingering disorder of a friend of mine gave me occasion lately to reflect that we are never so good as when oppressed with illness. where is the sick man who is either solicited by avarice or inflamed with lust? at such a season he is neither a slave of love nor the fool of ambition; wealth he utterly disregards, and is content with ever so small a portion of it, as being upon the point of leaving even that little. it is then he recollects there are gods, and that he himself is but a man: no mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt; and the tales of slander neither raise his attention nor feed his curiosity: his dreams are only of baths and fountains. these are the supreme objects of his cares and wishes, while he resolves, if he should recover, to pass the remainder of his days in ease and tranquillity, that is, to live innocently and happily. i may therefore lay down to you and myself a short rule, which the philosophers have endeavoured to inculcate at the expense of many words, and even many volumes; that "we should try and realise in health those resolutions we form in sickness." farewell. lxxxiii -to sura the present recess from business we are now enjoying affords you leisure to give, and me to receive, instruction. i am extremely desirous therefore to know whether you believe in the existence of ghosts, and that they have a real form, and are a sort of divinities, or only the visionary impressions of a terrified imagination. what particularly inclines me to believe in their existence is a story which i heard of curtius rufus. when he was in low circumstances and unknown in the world, he attended the governor of africa into that province. one evening, as he was walking in the public portico, there appeared to him the figure of a woman, of unusual size and of beauty more than human. and as he stood there, terrified and astonished, she told him she was the tutelary power that presided over africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life: that he should go back to rome, to enjoy high honours there, and return to that province invested with the pro-consular dignity, and there should die. every circumstance of this prediction actually came to pass. it is said farther that upon his arrival at carthage, as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure met him upon the shore. it is certain, at least, that being seized with a fit of illness, though there were no symptoms in his case that led those about him to despair, he instantly gave up all hope of recovery; judging, apparently, of the truth of the future part of the prediction by what had already been fulfilled, and of the approaching misfortune from his former prosperity. now the following story, which i am going to tell you just as i heard it, is it not more terrible than the former, while quite as wonderful? there was at athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. in the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterwards a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. the distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. this, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terror grew upon them, and death ensued. even in the day time, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm, consequently the house was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. however, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this very alarming circumstance, a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold. it happened that athenodorus[120] the philosopher came to athens at this time, and, reading the bill, enquired the price. the extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. when it grew towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the front part of the house, and, after calling for a light, together with his pencil and tablets, directed all his people to retire. but that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits, he applied himself to writing with the utmost attention. the first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, he neither lifted up his eyes nor laid down his pen, but in order to keep calm and collected tried to pass the sounds off to himself as something else. the noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. he looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before him, beckoning with the finger, like a person who calls another. athenodorus in reply made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers; the ghost then rattled its chains over the head of the philosopher, who looked up upon this, and seeing it beckoning as before, immediately arose, and, light in hand, followed it. the ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. athenodorus, being thus deserted, made a mark with some grass and leaves on the spot where the spirit left him. the next day he gave information to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. this was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was found there; for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground, was putrefied and mouldered away from the fetters. the bones being collected together were publicly buried, and thus after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more. this story i believe upon the credit of others; what i am going to mention, i give you upon my own. i have a freedman named marcus, who is by no means illiterate. one night, as he and his younger brother were lying together, he fancied he saw somebody upon his bed, who took out a pair of scissors, and cut off the hair from the top part of his own head, and in the morning, it appeared his hair was actually cut, and the clippings lay scattered about the floor. a short time after this, an event of a similar nature contributed to give credit to the former story. a young lad of my family was sleeping in his apartment with the rest of his companions, when two persons clad in white came in, as he says, through the windows, cut off his hair as he lay, and then returned the same way they entered. the next morning it was found that this boy had been served just as the other, and there was the hair again, spread about the room. nothing remarkable indeed followed these events, unless perhaps that i escaped a prosecution, in which, if domitian (during whose reign this happened) had lived some time longer, i should certainly have been involved. for after the death of that emperor, articles of impeachment against me were found in his scrutore, which had been exhibited by carus. it may therefore be conjectured, since it is customary for persons under any public accusation to let their hair grow, this cutting off the hair of my servants was a sign i should escape the imminent danger that threatened me. let me desire you then to give this question your mature consideration. the subject deserves your examination; as, i trust, i am not myself altogether unworthy a participation in the abundance of your superior knowledge. and though you should, as usual, balance between two opinions, yet i hope you will lean more on one side than on the other, lest, whilst i consult you in order to have my doubt settled, you should dismiss me in the same suspense and indecision that occasioned you the present application. farewell. lxxxiv -to septitius you tell me certain persons have blamed me in your company, as being upon all occasions too lavish in the praise i give my friends. i not only acknowledge the charge, but glory in it; for can there be a nobler error than an overflowing benevolence? but still, who are these, let me ask, that are better acquainted with my friends than i am myself? yet grant there are any such, why will they deny me the satisfaction of so pleasing a mistake? for supposing my friends not to deserve the highest encomiums i give them, yet i am happy in believing they do. let them recommend then this malignant zeal to those (and their number is not inconsiderable) who imagine they show their judgment when they indulge their censure upon their friends. as for myself, they will never be able to persuade me i can be guilty of an excess[121] in friendship, farewell. lxxxv -to tacitus i predict (and i am persuaded i shall not be deceived) that your histories will be immortal. i frankly own therefore i so much the more earnestly wish to find a place in them. if we are generally careful to have our faces taken by the best artists, ought we not to desire that our actions may be celebrated by an author of your distinguished abilities? i therefore call your attention to the following matter, which, though it cannot have escaped your notice, as it is mentioned in the public journals, still i call your attention to, that you may the more readily believe how agreeable it will be to me that this action, greatly heightened by the risk which attended it, should receive additional lustre from the testimony of a man of your powers. the senate appointed herennius senecio, and myself, counsel for the province of baetica, in their impeachment of boebius massa. he was condemned, and the house ordered his effects to be seized into the hands of the public officer. shortly after, senecio, having learnt that the consuls intended to sit to hear petitions, came and said to me, "let us go together, and petition them with the same unanimity in which we executed the office which had been enjoined us, not to suffer massa's effects to be dissipated by those who were appointed to preserve them." i answered, "as we were counsel in this affair by order of the senate, i recommend it to your consideration whether it would be proper for us, after sentence passed, to interpose any farther." "you are at liberty," said he, "to prescribe what bounds you please to yourself, who have no particular connections with the province, except what arise from your late services to them; but then i was born there, and enjoyed the post of quaestor among them." "if such," i replied, "is your determined resolution, i am ready to accompany you, that whatever resentment may be the consequence of this affair, it may not fall singly upon yourself." we accordingly proceeded to the consuls, where senecio said what was pertinent to the affair, and i added a few words to the same effect. scarcely had we ended when massa, complaining that senecio had not acted against him with the fidelity of an advocate, but the bitterness of an enemy, desired he might be at liberty to prosecute him for treason. this occasioned general consternation. whereupon i rose up; "most noble consuls," said i, "i am afraid it should seem that massa has tacitly charged me with having favoured him in this cause, since he did not think proper to join me with senecio in the desired prosecution." this short speech was immediately received with applause, and afterwards got much talked about everywhere. the late emperor nerva (who, though at that time in a private station, yet interested himself in every meritorious action performed in public) wrote a most impressive letter to me upon the occasion, in which he not only congratulated me, but the age which had produced an example so much in the spirit (as he was pleased to call it) of the good old days. but, whatever be the actual fact, it lies in your power to raise it into a grander and more conspicuously illustrious position, though i am far from desiring you in the least to exceed the bounds of reality. history ought to be guided by strict truth, and worthy actions require nothing more. farewell. lxxx vi -to septitius i had a good journey here, excepting only that some of my servants were upset by the excessive heat. poor encolpius, my reader,[122] who is so indispensable to me in my studies and amusements, was so affected with the dust that it brought on a spitting of blood: an accident which will prove no less unpleasant to me than unfortunate to himself, should he be thereby rendered unfit for the literary work in which he so greatly excels. if that should unhappily result, where shall i find one who will read my works so well, or appreciate them so thoroughly as he? whose tones will my ears drink in as they do his? but the gods seem to favour our better hopes, as the bleeding is stopped, and the pain abated. besides, he is extremely temperate; while no concern is wanting on my part or care on his physician's. this, together with the wholesomeness of the air, and the quiet of retirement, gives us reason to expect that the country will contribute as much to the restoration of his health as to his rest. farewell. lxxxvii -to calvisius other people visit their estates in order to recruit their purses; whilst i go to mine only to return so much the poorer. i had sold my vintage to the merchants, who were extremely eager to purchase it, encouraged by the price it then bore, and what it was probable it would rise to: however they were disappointed in their expectations. upon this occasion to have made the same general abatement to all would have been much the easiest, though not so equitable a method. now i hold it particularly worthy of a man of honour to be governed by principles of strict equity in his domestic as well as public conduct; in little matters as in great ones; in his own concerns as well as in those of others. and if every deviation from rectitude is equally criminal,[123] every approach to it must be equally praiseworthy. so accordingly i remitted to all in general one-eighth part of the price they had agreed to give me, that none might go away without some compensation: next, i particularly considered those who had advanced the largest sums towards their purchase, and done me so much the more service, and been greater sufferers themselves. to those, therefore, whose purchase amounted to more than ten thousand sesterces,[124] i returned (over and above that which i may call the general and common eighth) a tenth part of what they had paid beyond that sum. i fear i do not express myself sufficiently clearly; i will endeavour to explain my meaning more fully: for instance, suppose a man had purchased of me to the value of fifteen thousand sesterces,[125] i remitted to him one-eighth part of that whole sum, and likewise one-tenth of five thousand.[126] besides this, as several had deposited, in different proportions, part of the price they had agreed to pay, whilst others had advanced nothing, i thought it would not be at all fair that all these should be favoured with the same undistinguished remission. to those, therefore, who had made any payments, i returned a tenth part upon the sums so paid. by this means i made a proper acknowledgment to each, according to their respective deserts, and likewise encouraged them, not only to deal with me for the future, but to be prompt in their payments. this instance of my goodnature or my judgment (call it which you please) was a considerable expense to me. however, i found my account in it; for all the country greatly approved both of the novelty of these abatements and the manner in which i regulated them. even those whom i did not "mete" (as they say) "by the same measure," but distinguished according to their several degrees, thought themselves obliged to me, in proportion to the probity of their principles, and went away pleased with having experienced that not with me "the brave and mean an equal honour find."<a href="#linknote-127" name="linknoteref-127" id="linknoteref-127">[127]</a> farewell. lxxx viii -to romanus have you ever seen the source of the river clitumnus? if you have not (and i hardly think you can have seen it yet, or you would have told me), go there as soon as possible. i saw it yesterday, and i blame myself for not having seen it sooner. at the foot of a little hill, well wooded with old cypress trees, a spring gushes out, which, breaking up into different and unequal streams, forms itself, after several windings, into a large, broad basin of water, so transparently clear that you may count the shining pebbles, and the little pieces of money thrown into it, as they lie at the bottom. from thence it is carried off not so much by the declivity of the ground as by its own weight and exuberance. a mere stream at its source, immediately, on quitting this, you find it expanded into a broad river, fit for large vessels even, allowing a free passage by each other, according as they sail with or against the stream. the current runs so strong, though the ground is level, that the large barges going down the river have no occasion to make use of their oars; while those going up find it difficult to make headway even with the assistance of oars and poles: and this alternate interchange of ease and toil, according as you turn, is exceedingly amusing when one sails up and down merely for pleasure. the banks are well covered with ash and poplar, the shape and colour of the trees being as clearly and distinctly reflected in the stream as if they were actually sunk in it. the water is cold as snow, and as white too. near it stands an ancient and venerable temple, in which is placed the rivergod clitumnus clothed in the usual robe of state; and indeed the prophetic oracles here delivered sufficiently testify the immediate presence of that divinity. several little chapels are scattered round, dedicated to particular gods, distinguished each by his own peculiar name and form of worship, and some of them, too, presiding over different fountains. for, besides the principal spring, which is, as it were, the parent of all the rest, there are several other lesser streams, which, taking their rise from various sources, lose themselves in the river; over which a bridge is built that separates the sacred part from that which lies open to common use. vessels are allowed to come above this bridge, but no person is permitted to swim except below it. the hispellates, to whom augustus gave this place, furnish a public bath, and likewise entertain all strangers, at their own expense. several villas, attracted by the beauty of this river, stand about on its borders. in short, every surrounding object will afford you entertainment. you may also amuse yourself with numberless inscriptions upon the pillars and walls, by different persons, celebrating the virtues of the fountain, and the divinity that presides over it. many of them you will admire, while some will make you laugh; but i must correct myself when i say so; you are too humane, i know, to laugh upon such an occasion. farewell. lxxxix -to aristo as you are no less acquainted with the political laws of your country (which include the customs and usages of the senate) than with the civil, i am particularly desirous to have your opinion whether i was mistaken in an affair which lately came before the house, or not. this i request, not with a view of being directed in my judgment as to what is passed (for that is now too late), but in order to know how to act in any possible future case of the kind. you will, ask, perhaps, "why do you apply for information concerning a point on which you ought to be well instructed?" because the tyranny of former reigns,[128] as it introduced a neglect and ignorance of all other parts of useful knowledge, so particularly of what relates to the customs of the senate; for who is there so tamely industrious as to desire to learn what he can never have an opportunity of putting in practice? besides, it is not very easy to retain even the knowledge one has acquired where no opportunity of employing it occurs. hence it was that liberty, on her return[129] found us totally ignorant and inexperienced; and thus in the warmth of our eagerness to taste her sweets, we are sometimes hurried off to action, ere we are well instructed how we ought to act. but by the institution of our ancestors, it was wisely provided that the young should learn from the old, not only by precept, but by their own observation, how to behave in that sphere in which they were one day themselves to move; while these, again, in their turn, transmitted the same mode of instruction to their children. upon this principle it was that the youth were sent early into the army, that by being taught to obey they might learn to command, and, whilst they followed others, might be trained by degrees to become leaders themselves. on the same principle, when they were candidates for any office, they were obliged to stand at the door of the senate-house, and were spectators of the public council before they became members of it. the father of each youth was his instructor upon these occasions, or if he had none, some person of years and dignity supplied the place of a father. thus they were taught by that surest method of discipline, example; how far the right of proposing any law to the senate extended; what privileges a senator had in delivering his opinion in the house; the power of the magistrates in that assembly, and the rights of the rest of the members; where it is proper to yield, and where to insist; when and how long to speak, and when to be silent; how to make necessary distinctions between contrary opinions, and how to improve upon a former motion: in a word, they learnt by this means every senatorial usage. as for myself, it is true indeed, i served in the army when i was a youth; but it was at a time when courage was suspected, and want of spirit rewarded; when generals were without authority, and soldiers without modesty; when there was neither discipline nor obedience, but all was riot, disorder, and confusion; in short, when it was happier to forget than to remember what one learnt. i attended likewise in my youth the senate, but a senate shrinking and speechless; where it was dangerous to utter one's opinion, and mean and pitiable to be silent. what pleasure was there in learning, or indeed what could be learnt, when the senate was convened either to do nothing whatever or to give their sanction to some consummate infamy! when they were assembled either for cruel or ridiculous purposes, and when their deliberations were never serious, though often sad! but i was not only a witness to this scene of wretchedness, as a spectator; i bore my share of it too as a senator, and both saw and suffered under it for many years; which so broke and damped my spirits that they have not even yet been able fully to recover themselves. it is within quite recently (for all time seems short in proportion to its happiness) that we could take any pleasure in knowing what relates to or in setting about the duties of our station. upon these considerations, therefore, i may the more reasonably entreat you, in the first place, to pardon my error (if i have been guilty of one), and, in the next, to lead me out of it by your superior knowledge: for you have always been diligent to examine into the constitution of your country, both with respect to its public and private, its ancient and modern, its general and special laws. i am persuaded indeed the point upon which i am going to consult you is such an unusual one that even those whose great experience in public business must have made them, one would have naturally supposed, acquainted with everything were either doubtful or absolutely ignorant upon it. i shall be more excusable, therefore, if i happen to have been mistaken; as you will earn the higher praise if you can set me right in an affair which it is not clear has ever yet fallen within your observation. the enquiry then before the house was concerning the freedmen of afranius dexter, who being found murdered, it was uncertain whether he fell by his own hands, or by those of his household; and if the latter, whether they committed the fact in obedience to the commands of afranius, or were prompted to it by their own villainy. after they had been put to the question, a certain senator (it is of no importance to mention his name, but if you are desirous to know, it was myself) was for acquitting them; another proposed that they should be banished for a limited time; and a third that they should suffer death. these several opinions were so extremely different that it was impossible either of them could stand with the other. for what have death and banishment in common with one another? why, no more than banishment and acquittal have together. though an acquittal approaches rather nearer a sentence of exile than a sentence of death does: for both the former agree at least in this that they spare life, whereas the latter takes it away. in the meanwhile, those senators who were for punishing with death, and those who proposed banishment, sat together on the same side of the house: and thus by a present appearance of unanimity suspended their real disagreement. i moved, therefore, that the votes for each of the three opinions should be separately taken, and that two of them should not, under favour of a short truce between themselves, join against the third. i insisted that such of the members who were for capital punishment should divide from the others who voted for banishment; and that these two distinct parties should not be permitted to form themselves into a body, in opposition to those who declared for acquittal, when they would immediately after disunite again: for it was not material that they agreed in disliking one proposal, since they differed with respect to the other two. it seemed very extraordinary that he who moved the freedmen should be banished, and the slaves suffer death, should not be allowed to join these two in one motion, but that each question should be ordered to be put to the house separately; and yet that the votes of one who was for inflicting capital punishment upon the freedmen should be taken together with that of one who was for banishing them. for if, in the former instance, it was reasonable that the motion should be divided, because it comprehended two distinct propositions, i could not see why, in the latter case, suffrages so extremely different should be thrown into the same scale. permit me, then, notwithstanding the point is already settled, to go over it again as if it were still undecided, and to lay before you those reasons at my ease, which i offered to the house in the midst of much interruption and clamour. let us suppose there had been only three judges appointed to hear this cause, one of whom was of opinion that the parties in question deserved death; the other that they should only be banished; and the third that they ought to be acquitted: should the two former unite their weight to overpower the latter, or should each be separately balanced? for the first and second are no more compatible than the second and third. they ought therefore in the same manner to be counted in the senate as contrary opinions, since they were delivered as different ones. suppose the same person had moved that they should both have been banished and put to death, could they possibly, in pursuance of this opinion, have suffered both punishments? or could it have been looked upon as one consistent motion when it united two such different decisions? why then should the same opinion, when delivered by distinct persons, be considered as one and entire, which would not be deemed so if it were proposed by a single man? does not the law manifestly imply that a distinction is to be made between those who are for a capital conviction, and those who are for banishment, in the very form of words made use of when the house is ordered to divide? you who are of such an opinion, come to this side; you who are of any other, go over to the side of him whose opinion you follow. let us examine this form, and weigh every sentence: you who are of this opinion: that is, for instance, you who are for banishment, come on this side; namely, on the side of him who moved for banishment. from whence it is clear he cannot remain on this side of those who are for death. you who are for any other: observe, the law is not content with barely saying another, but it adds any. now can there be a doubt as to whether they who declare for a capital conviction are of any other opinion than those who propose exile! go over to the side of him whose opinion you follow: does not the law seem, as it were, to call, compel, drive over, those who are of different opinions, to contrary sides? does not the consul himself point out, not only by this solemn form of words, but by his hand and gesture, the place in which every man is to remain, or to which he is to go over? "but," it is objected, "if this separation is made between those who vote for inflicting death, and those who are on the side of exile, the opinion for acquitting the prisoners must necessarily prevail." but how does that affect the parties who vote? certainly it does not become them to contend by every art, and urge every expedient, that the milder sentence may not take place. "still," say they, "those who are for condemning the accused either capitally or to banishment should be first set in opposition to those who are for acquitting them, and afterwards weighed against each other." thus, as, in certain public games, some particular combatant is set apart by lot and kept to engage with the conqueror; so, it seems, in the senate there is a first and second combat, and of two different opinions, the prevailing one has still a third to contend with. what? when any particular opinion is received, do not all the rest fall of course? is it reasonable, then, that one should be thrown into the scale merely to weigh down another? to express my meaning more plainly: unless the two parties who are respectively for capital punishment and exile immediately separate upon the first division of the house it would be to no purpose afterwards to dissent from those with whom they joined before. but i am dictating instead of receiving instruction. -tell me then whether you think these votes should have been taken separately? my motion, it is true, prevailed; nevertheless i am desirous to know whether you think i ought to have insisted upon this point, or have yielded as that member did who declared for capital punishment? for convinced, i will not say of the legality, but at least of the equity of my proposal, he receded from his opinion, and went over to the party for exile: fearing perhaps, if the votes were taken separately (which he saw would be the case), the freedmen would be acquitted: for the numbers were far greater on that side than on either of the other two, separately counted. the consequence was that those who had been influenced by his authority, when they saw themselves forsaken by his going over to the other party, gave up a motion which they found abandoned by the first proposer, and deserted, as it were, with their leader. thus the three opinions were resolved at length into two; and of those two, one prevailed, and the other was rejected; while the third, as it was not powerful enough to conquer both the others, had only to choose to which of the two it would yield. farewell. xc -to paternus the sickness lately in my family, which has carried off several of my servants, some of them, too, in the prime of their years, has been a great affliction to me. i have two consolations, however, which, though by no means equivalent to such a grief, still are consolations. one is, that as i have always readily manumitted my slaves, their death does not seem altogether immature, if they lived long enough to receive their freedom: the other, that i have allowed them to make a kind of will,[130] which i observe as religiously as if they were legally entitled to that privilege. i receive and obey their last requests and injunctions as so many authoritative commands, suffering them to dispose of their effects to whom they please; with this single restriction, that they leave them to some one in my household, for to slaves the house they are in is a kind of state and commonwealth, so to speak. but though i endeavor to acquiesce under these reflections, yet the same tenderness which led me to show them these indulgences weakens and gets the better of me. however, i would not wish on that account to become harder: though the generality of the world, i know, look upon losses of this kind in no other view than as a diminution of their property, and fancy, by cherishing such an unfeeling temper, they show a superior fortitude and philosophy. their fortitude and philosophy i will not dispute. but humane, i am sure, they are not; for it is the very criterion of true manhood to feel those impressions of sorrow which it endeavors to resist, and to admit not to be above the want of consolation. but perhaps i have detained you too long upon this subject, though not so long as i would. there is a certain pleasure even in giving vent to one's grief; especially when we weep on the bosom of a friend who will approve, or, at least, pardon, our tears. farewell. xci -to macrinus is the weather with you as rude and boisterous as it is with us? all here is in tempest and inundation. the tiber has swelled its channel, and overflowed its banks far and wide. though the wise precaution of the emperor had guarded against this evil, by cutting several outlets to the river, it has nevertheless flooded all the fields and valleys and entirely overspread the whole face of the flat country. it seems to have gone out to meet those rivers which it used to receive and carry off in one united stream, and has driven them back to deluge those countries it could not reach itself. that most delightful of rivers, the anio, which seems invited and detained in its course by the villas built along its banks, has almost entirely rooted up and carried away the woods which shaded its borders. it has overthrown whole mountains, and, in endeavouring to find a passage through the mass of ruins that obstructed its way, has forced down houses, and risen and spread over the desolation it has occasioned. the inhabitants of the hill countries, who are situated above the reach of this inundation, have been the melancholy spectators of its dreadful effects, having seen costly furniture, instruments of husbandry, ploughs, and oxen with their drivers, whole herds of cattle, together with the trunks of trees, and beams of the neighbouring villas, floating about in different parts. nor indeed have these higher places themselves, to which the waters could not reach up, escaped the calamity. a continued heavy rain and tempestuous hurricane, as destructive as the river itself, poured down upon them, and has destroyed all the enclosures which divided that fertile country. it has damaged likewise, and even overturned, some of the public buildings, by the fall of which great numbers have been maimed, smothered, bruised. and thus lamentation over the fate of friends has been added to losses. i am extremely uneasy lest this extensive ruin should have spread to you: i beg therefore, if it has not, you will immediately relieve my anxiety; and indeed i desire you would inform me though it should have done so; for the difference is not great between fearing a danger, and feeling it; except that the evil one feels has some bounds, whereas one's apprehensions have none. for we can suffer no more than what actually has happened but we fear all that possibly could happen. farewell. xcii -to rufinus the common notion is certainly quite a false one, that a man's will is a kind of mirror in which we may clearly discern his real character, for domitius tullus appears a much better man since his death than he did during his lifetime. after having artfully encouraged the expectations of those who paid court to him, with a view to being his heirs, he has left his estate to his niece whom he adopted. he has given likewise several very considerable legacies among his grandchildren, and also to his great-grandson. in a word, he has shown himself a most kind relation throughout his whole will; which is so much the more to be admired as it was not expected of him. this affair has been very much talked about, and various opinions expressed: some call him false, ungrateful, and forgetful, and, while thus railing at him in this way as if they were actually disinherited kindred, betray their own dishonest designs: others, on the contrary, applaud him extremely for having disappointed the hopes of this infamous tribe of men, whom, considering the disposition of the times, it is but prudence to deceive. they add that he was not at liberty to make any other will, and that he cannot so properly be said to have bequeathed, as returned, his estate to his adopted daughter, since it was by her means it came to him. for curtilius mancia, whose daughter domitius lucanus, brother to this tullus, married, having taken a dislike to his son-in-law, made this young lady (who was the issue of that marriage) his heiress, upon condition that lucanus her father would emancipate her. he accordingly did so, but she being afterwards adopted by tullus, her uncle, the design of mancia's will was entirely frustrated. for these two brothers having never divided their patrimony, but living together as jointtenants of one common estate, the daughter of lucanus, notwithstanding the act of emancipation, returned back again, together with her large fortune, under the dominion of her father, by means of this fraudulent adoption. it seems indeed to have been the fate of these two brothers to be enriched by those who had the greatest aversion to them. for domitius afer, by whom they were adopted, left a will in their favour, which he had made eighteen years before his death; though it was plain he had since altered his opinion with regard to the family, because he was instrumental in procuring the confiscation of their father's estate. there is something extremely singular in the resentment of afer, and the good fortune of the other two; as it was very extraordinary, on the one hand, that domitius should endeavour to extirpate from the privileges of society a man whose children he had adopted, and, on the other, that these brothers should find a parent in the very person that ruined their father. but tullus acted justly, after having been appointed sole heir by his brother, in prejudice to his own daughter, to make her amends by transferring to her this estate, which came to him from afer, as well as all the rest which he had gained in partnership with his brother. his will therefore deserves the higher praise, having been dictated by nature, justice, and sense of honour; in which he has returned his obligations to his several relations, according to their respective good offices towards him, not forgetting his wife, having bequeathed to that excellent woman, who patiently endured much for his sake, several delightful villas, besides a large sum of money. and indeed she deserved so much the more at his hands, in proportion to the displeasure she incurred on her marriage with him. it was thought unworthy a person of her birth and repute, so long left a widow by her former husband, by whom she had issue, to marry, in the decline of her life, an old man, merely for his wealth, and who was so sickly and infirm that, even had he passed the best years of his youth and health with her, she might well have been heartily tired of him. he had so entirely lost the use of all his limbs that he could not move himself in bed without assistance; and the only enjoyment he had of his riches was to contemplate them. he was even (sad and disgusting to relate) reduced to the necessity of having his teeth washed and scrubbed by others: in allusion to which he used frequently to say, when he was complaining of the indignities which his infirmities obliged him to suffer, that he was every day compelled to lick his servant's fingers. still, however, he lived on, and was willing to accept of life upon such terms. that he lived so long as he did was particularly owing, indeed, to the care of his wife, who, whatever reputation she might lose at first by her marriage, acquired great honour by her unwearied devotion as his wife. -thus i have given you all the news of the town, where nothing is talked of but tullus. it is expected his curiosities will shortly be sold by auction. he had such an abundant collection of very old statues that he actually filled an extensive garden with them, the very same day he purchased it; not to mention numberless other antiques, lying neglected in his lumber-room. if you have anything worth telling me in return, i hope you will not refuse the trouble of writing to me: not only as we are all of us naturally fond, you know, of news, but because example has a very beneficial influence upon our own conduct. farewell. xciii -to gallus those works of art or nature which are usually the motives of our travels are often overlooked and neglected if they lie within our reach: whether it be that we are naturally less inquisitive concerning those things which are near us, while our curiosity is excited by remote objects; or because the easiness of gratifying a desire is always sure to damp it; or, perhaps, that we put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please. whatever the reason be, it is certain there are numberless curiosities in and near rome which we have not only never seen, but even never so much as heard of: and yet had they been the produce of greece, or egypt, or asia, or any other country which we admire as fertile and productive of belief in wonders, we should long since have heard of them, read of them, and enquired into them. for myself at least, i confess, i have lately been entertained with one of these curiosities, to which i was an entire stranger before. my wife's grandfather desired i would look over his estate near ameria.[131] as i was walking over his grounds, 1 was shown a lake that lies below them, called vadirnon,[132] about which several very extraordinary things are told. i went up to this lake. it is perfectly circular in form, like a wheel lying on the ground; there is not the least curve or projection of the shore, but all is regular, even, and just as if it had been hollowed and cut out by the hand of art. the water is of a clear sky-blue, though with somewhat of a greenish tinge; its smell is sulphurous, and its flavour has medicinal properties, and is deemed of great efficacy in all fractures of the limbs, which it is supposed to heal. though of but moderate extent, yet the winds have a great effect upon it, throwing it into violent agitation. no vessels are suffered to sail here, as its waters are held sacred; but several floating islands swim about it, covered with reeds and rushes, and with whatever other plants the surrounding marshy ground and the edge itself of the lake produce in greater abundance. each island has its peculiar shape and size, but the edges of all of them are worn away by their frequent collision with the shore and one another. they are all of the same height and motion; as their respective roots, which are formed like the keel of a boat, may be seen hanging not very far down in the water, and at an equal depth, on whichever side you stand. sometimes they move in a cluster, and seem to form one entire little continent; sometimes they are dispersed into different quarters by the wind; at other times, when it is calm, they float up and down separately. you may frequently see one of the larger islands sailing along with a lesser joined to it, like a ship with its long boat; or, perhaps, seeming to strive which shall out-swim the other: then again they are all driven to the same spot, and by joining themselves to the shore, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, lessen or restore the size of the lake in this part or that, accordingly, till at last uniting in the centre they restore it to its usual size. the sheep which graze upon the borders of this lake frequently go upon these islands to feed, without perceiving that they have left the shore, until they are alarmed by finding themselves surrounded with water; as though they had been forcibly conveyed and placed there. afterwards, when the wind drives them back again, they as little perceive their return as their departure. this lake empties itself into a river, which, after running a little way, sinks under ground, and, if anything is thrown in, it brings it up again where the stream emerges.--i have given you this account because i imagined it would not be less new, nor less agreeable, to you than it was to me; as i know you take the same pleasure as myself in contemplating the works of nature. farewell. xciv -to arrianus nothing, in my opinion, gives a more amiable and becoming grace to our studies, as well as manners, than to temper the serious with the gay, lest the former should degenerate into melancholy, and the latter run up into levity. upon this plan it is that i diversify my graver works with compositions of a lighter nature. i had chosen a convenient place and season for some productions of that sort to make their appearance in; and designing to accustom them early to the tables of the idle, i fixed upon the month of july, which is usually a time of vacation to the courts of justice, in order to read them to some of my friends i had collected together; and accordingly i placed a desk before each couch. but as i happened that morning to be unexpectedly called away to attend a cause, i took occasion to preface my recital with an apology. i entreated my audience not to impute it to me as any want of due regard for the business to which i had invited them that on the very day i had appointed for reading my performances to a small circle of my friends i did not refuse my services to others in their law affairs. i assured them i would observe the same rule in my writings, and should always give the preference to business, before pleasure; to serious engagements before amusing ones; and to my friends before myself. the poems i recited consisted of a variety of subjects in different metres. it is thus that we who dare not rely for much upon our abilities endeavour to avoid satiating our readers. in compliance with the earnest solicitation of my audience, i recited for two days successively; but not in the manner that several practise, by passing over the feebler passages, and making a merit of so doing: on the contrary, i omitted nothing, and freely confessed it. i read the whole, that i might correct the whole; which it is impossible those who only select particular passages can do. the latter method, indeed, may have more the appearance of modesty, and perhaps respect; but the former shows greater simplicity, as well as a more affectionate disposition towards the audience. for the belief that a man's friends have so much regard for him as not to be weary on these occasions, is a sure indication of the love he bears them. otherwise, what good do friends do you who assemble merely for their own amusement? he who had rather find his friend's performance correct, than make it so, is to be regarded as a stranger, or one who is too lackadaisical to give himself any trouble. your affection for me leaves me no room to doubt that you are impatient to read my book, even in its present very imperfect condition. and so you shall, but not until i have made those corrections which were the principal inducement of my recital. you are already acquainted with some parts of it; but even those, after they have been improved (or perhaps spoiled, as is sometimes the case by the delay of excessive revision) will seem quite new to you. for when a piece has undergone various changes, it gets to look new, even in those very parts which remain unaltered. farewell. xcv -to maximus my affection for you obliges me, not indeed to direct you (for you are far above the want of a guide), but to admonish you carefully to observe and resolutely to put in practice what you already know, that is, in other words, to know it to better purpose. consider that you are sent to that noble province, achaia, the real and genuine greece, where politeness, learning, and even agriculture itself, are supposed to have taken their first rise; sent to regulate the condition of free cities; sent, that is, to a society of men who breathe the spirit of true manhood and liberty; who have maintained the rights they received from nature, by courage, by virtue, by alliances; in a word, by civil and religious faith. revere the gods their founders; their ancient glory, and even that very antiquity itself which, venerable in men, is sacred in states. honour them therefore for their deeds of old renown, nay, their very legendary traditions. grant to every one his full dignity, privileges, yes, and the indulgence of his very vanity. remember it was from this nation we derived our laws; that she did not receive ours by conquest, but gave us hers by favour. remember, it is athens to which you go; it is lacedaemon you govern; and to deprive such a people of the declining shadow, the remaining name of liberty, would be cruel, inhuman, barbarous. physicians, you see, though in sickness there is no difference between freedom and slavery, yet treat persons of the former rank with more tenderness than those of the latter. reflect what these cities once were; but so reflect as not to despise them for what they are now. far be pride and asperity from my friend; nor fear, by a proper condescension, to lay yourself open to contempt. can he who is vested with the power and bears the ensigns of authority, can he fail of meeting with respect, unless by pursuing base and sordid measures, and first breaking through that reverence he owes to himself? ill, believe me, is power proved by insult; ill can terror command veneration, and far more effectual is affection in obtaining one's purpose than fear. for terror operates no longer than its object is present, but love produces its effects with its object at a distance: and as absence changes the former into hatred, it raises the latter into respect. and therefore you ought (and i cannot but repeat it too often), you ought to well consider the nature of your office, and to represent to yourself how great and important the task is of governing a free state. for what can be better for society than such government, what can be more precious than freedom? how ignominious then must his conduct be who turns good government into anarchy, and liberty into slavery? to these considerations let me add, that you have an established reputation to maintain: the fame you acquired by the administration of the quaestorship in bithynia,[133] the good opinion of the emperor, the credit you obtained when you were tribune and praetor, in a word, this very government, which may be looked upon as the reward of your former services, are all so many glorious weights which are incumbent upon you to support with suitable dignity. the more strenuously therefore you ought to endeavour that it may not be said you showed greater urbanity, integrity, and ability in a province remote from rome, than in one which lies so much nearer the capital; in the midst of a nation of slaves, than among a free people; that it may not be remarked, that it was chance, and not judgment, appointed you to this office; that your character was unknown and unexperienced, not tried and approved. for (and it is a maxim which your reading and conversation must have often suggested to you) it is a far greater disgrace losing the name one has once acquired than never to have attained it. i again beg you to be persuaded that i did not write this letter with a design of instruction, but of reminder. though indeed, if i had, it would have only been in consequence of the great affection i bear you: a sentiment which i am in no fear of carrying beyond its just bounds: for there can be no danger of excess where one cannot love too well. farewell. xcvi -to paulinus others may think as they please; but the happiest man, in my opinion, is he who lives in the conscious anticipation of an honest and enduring name, and secure of future glory in the eyes of posterity. i confess, if i had not the reward of an immortal reputation in view, i should prefer a life of uninterrupted ease and indolent retirement to any other. there seems to be two points worthy every man's attention: endless fame, or the short duration of life. those who are actuated by the former motive ought to exert themselves to the very utmost of their power; while such as are influenced by the latter should quietly resign themselves to repose, and not wear out a short life in perishable pursuits, as we see so many doing--and then sink at last into utter self-contempt, in the midst of a wretched and fruitless course of false industry. these are my daily reflections, which i communicate to you, in order to renounce them if you do not agree with them; as undoubtedly you will, who are for ever meditating some glorious and immortal enterprise. farewell. xcvii -to calvisius i have spent these several days past, in reading and writing, with the most pleasing tranquillity imaginable. you will ask, "how that can possibly be in the midst of rome?" it was the time of celebrating the circensian games; an entertainment for which i have not the least taste. they have no novelty, no variety to recommend them, nothing, in short, one would wish to see twice. it does the more surprise me therefore that so many thousand people should be possessed with the childish passion of desiring so often to see a parcel of horses gallop, and men standing upright in their chariots. if, indeed, it were the swiftness of the horses, or the skill of the men that attracted them, there might be some pretence of reason for it. but it is the dress[134] they like; it is the dress that takes their fancy. and if, in the midst of the course and contest, the different parties were to change colours, their different partisans would change sides, and instantly desert the very same men and horses whom just before they were eagerly following with their eyes, as far as they could see, and shouting out their names with all their might. such mighty charms, such wondrous power reside in the colour of a paltry tunic! and this not only with the common crowd (more contemptible than the dress they espouse), but even with serious-thinking people. when i observe such men thus insatiably fond of so silly, so low, so uninteresting, so common an entertainment, i congratulate myself on my indifference to these pleasures: and am glad to employ the leisure of this season upon my books, which others throw away upon the most idle occupations. farewell. xcviii -to romanus i am pleased to find by your letter that you are engaged in building; for i may now defend my own conduct by your example. i am myself employed in the same sort of work; and since i have you, who shall deny i have reason on my side? our situations too are not dissimilar; your buildings are carried on upon the sea-coast, mine are rising upon the side of the larian lake. i have several villas upon the borders of this lake, but there are two particularly in which, as i take most delight, so they give me most employment. they are both situated like those at baiae:[135] one of them stands upon a rock, and overlooks the lake; the other actually touches it. the first, supported as it were by the lofty buskin,[136] i call my tragic; the other, as resting upon the humble rock, my comic villa. each has its own peculiar charm, recommending it to its possessor so much more on account of this very difference. the former commands a wider, the latter enjoys a nearer view of the lake. one, by a gentle curve, embraces a little bay; the other, being built upon a greater height, forms two. here you have a strait walk extending itself along the banks of the lake; there, a spacious terrace that falls by a gentle descent towards it. the former does not feel the force of the waves; the latter breaks them; from that you see the fishingvessels; from this you may fish yourself, and throw your line out of your room, and almost from your bed, as from off a boat. it is the beauties therefore these agreeable villas possess that tempt me to add to them those which are wanting.--but i need not assign a reason to you; who, undoubtedly, will think it a sufficient one that i follow your example. farewell. xcix -to geminus your letter was particularly acceptable to me, as it mentioned your desire that i would send you something of mine, addressed to you, to insert in your works. i shall find a more appropriate occasion of complying with your request than that which you propose, the subject you point out to me being attended with some objections; and when you reconsider it, you will think so.--as i did not imagine there were any booksellers at lugdunum,[137] i am so much the more pleased to learn that my works are sold there. i rejoice to find they maintain the character abroad which they raised at home, and i begin to flatter myself they have some merit, since persons of such distant countries are agreed in their opinion with regard to them. farewell. c -to junior a certain friend of mine lately chastised his son, in my presence, for being somewhat too expensive in the matter of dogs and horses. "and pray," i asked him, when the youth had left us, "did you never commit a fault yourself which deserved your father's correction? did you never? i repeat. nay, are you not sometimes even now guilty of errors which your son, were he in your place, might with equal gravity reprove? are not all mankind subject to indiscretions? and have we not each of us our particular follies in which we fondly indulge ourselves?"[138] the great affection i have for you induced me to set this instance of unreasonable severity before you--a caution not to treat your son with too much harshness and severity. consider, he is but a boy, and that there was a time when you were so too. in exerting, therefore, the authority of a father, remember always that you are a man, and the parent of a man. farewell. ci -to quadratus the pleasure and attention with which you read the vindication i published of helvidius,[139] has greatly raised your curiosity, it seems, to be informed of those particulars relating to that affair, which are not mentioned in the defence; as you were too young to be present yourself at that transaction. when domitian was assassinated, a glorious opportunity, i thought, offered itself to me of pursuing the guilty, vindicating the injured, and advancing my own reputation. but amidst an infinite variety of the blackest crimes, none appeared to me more atrocious than that a senator, of praetorian dignity, and invested with the sacred character of a judge, should, even in the very senate itself, lay violent hands upon a member[140] of that body, one of consular rank, and who then stood arraigned before him. besides this general consideration, i also happened to be on terms of particular intimacy with helvidius, as far as this was possible with one who, through fear of the times, endeavoured to veil the lustre of his fame, and his virtues, in obscurity and retirement. arria likewise, and her daughter fannia, who was mother-in-law to helvidius, were in the number of my friends. but it was not so much private attachments as the honour of the public, a just indignation at the action, and the danger of the example if it should pass unpunished, that animated me upon the occasion. at the first restoration of liberty every man singled out his own particular enemy (though it must be confessed, those only of a lower rank), and, in the midst of much clamour and confusion, no sooner brought the charge than procured the condemnation. but for myself, i thought it would be more reasonable and more effectual, not to take advantage of the general resentment of the public, but to crush this criminal with the single weight of his own enormous guilt. when therefore the first heat of public indignation began to cool, and declining passion gave way to justice, though i was at that time under great affliction for the loss of my wife,[142] i sent to anteia, the widow of helvidius, and desired her to come to me, as my late misfortune prevented me from appearing in public. when she arrived, i said to her, "i am resolved not to suffer the injuries your husband has received, to pass unrevenged; let arria and fannia" (who were just returned from exile) "know this; and consider together whether you would care to join with me in the prosecution. not that i want an associate, but i am not so jealous of my own glory as to refuse to share it with you in this affair." she accordingly carried this message; and they all agreed to the proposal without the least hesitation. it happened very opportunely that the senate was to meet within three days. it was a general rule with me to consult, in all my affairs, with corellius, a person of the greatest far-sightedness and wisdom this age has produced. however, in the present case, i relied entirely upon my own discretion, being apprehensive he would not approve of my design, as he was very cautious and deliberate. but though i did not previously take counsel with him (experience having taught me, never to do so with a person concerning a question we have already determined, where he has a right to expect that one shall be decided by his judgment), yet i could not forbear acquainting him with my resolution at the time i intended to carry it into execution. the senate being assembled, i came into the house, and begged i might have leave to make a motion; which i did in few words, and with general assent. when i began to touch upon the charge, and point out the person i intended to accuse (though as yet without mentioning him by name), i was attacked on all sides. "let us know," exclaims one, "who is the subject of this informal motion?" "who is it," (asked another) "that is thus accused, without acquainting the house with his name, and his crime?" "surely," (added a third) "we who have survived the late dangerous times may expect now, at least, to remain in security." i heard all this with perfect calmness, and without being in the least alarmed. such is the effect of conscious integrity; and so much difference is there with respect to inspiring confidence or fear, whether the world had only rather one should forbear a certain act, or absolutely condemn it. it would be too tedious to relate all that was advanced, by different parties, upon this occasion. at length the consul said, "you will be at liberty, secundus, to propose what you think proper when your turn comes to give your opinion upon the order of the day."[143] i replied, "you must allow me a liberty which you never yet refused to any;" and so sat down: when immediately the house went upon another business. in the meanwhile, one of my consular friends took me aside, and, with great earnestness telling me he thought i had carried on this affair with more boldness than prudence, used every method of reproof and persuasion to prevail with me to desist; adding at the same time that i should certainly, if i persevered, render myself obnoxious to some future prince. "be it so," i returned, "should he prove a bad one." scarcely had he left me when a second came up: "whatever," said he, "are you attempting? why ever will you ruin yourself? do you consider the risks you expose yourself to? why will you presume too much on the present situation of public affairs, when it is so uncertain what turn they may hereafter take? you are attacking a man who is actually at the head of the treasury, and will shortly be consul. besides, recollect what credit he has, and with what powerful friendships he is supported?" upon which he named a certain person, who (not without several strong and suspicious rumours) was then at the head of a powerful army in the east. i replied, "'all i've foreseen, and oft in thought revolv'd;[144] and am willing, if fate shall so decree, to suffer in an honest cause, provided i can draw vengeance down upon a most infamous one." the time for the members to give their opinions was now arrived. domitius apollinaris, the consul elect, spoke first; after him fabricius vejento, then fabius maximinus, vettius proculus next (who married my wife's mother, and who was the colleague of publicius certus, the person on whom the debate turned), and last of all ammius flaccus. they all defended certus, as if i had named him (though i had not yet so much as once mentioned him), and entered upon his justification as if i had exhibited a specific charge. it is not necessary to repeat in this place what they respectively said, having given it all at length in their words in the speech abovementioned. avidius quietus and cornutus tertullus answered them. the former observed, "that it was extremely unjust not to hear the complaints of those who thought themselves injured, and therefore that arria and fannia ought not to be denied the privilege of laying their grievances before the house; and that the point for the consideration of the senate was not the rank of the person, but the merit of the cause." then cornutus rose up and acquainted the house, "that, as he was appointed guardian to the daughter of helvidius by the consuls, upon the petition of her mother and her father-in-law, he felt himself compelled to fulfil the duty of his trust. in the execution of which, however, he would endeavour to set some bounds to his indignation by following that great example of moderation which those excellent women[145] had set, who contented themselves with barely informing the senate of the cruelties which certus committed in order to carry on his infamous adulation; and therefore," he said, "he would move only that, if a punishment due to a crime so notoriously known should be remitted, certus might at least be branded with some mark of the displeasure of that august assembly." satrius rufus spoke next, and, meaning to steer a middle course, expressed himself with considerable ambiguity. "i am of opinion," said he, "that great injustice will be done to certus if he is not acquitted (for i do not scruple to mention his name, since the friends of arria and fannia, as well as his own, have done so too), nor indeed have we any occasion for anxiety upon this account. we who think well of the man shall judge him with the same impartiality as the rest; but if he is innocent, as i hope he is, and shall be glad to find, i think this house may very justly deny the present motion till some charge has been proved against him." thus, according to the respective order in which they were called upon, they delivered their several opinions. when it came to my turn, i rose up, and, using the same introduction to my speech as i have published in the defence, i replied to them severally. it is surprising with what attention, what clamorous applause i was heard, even by those who just before were loudest against me: such a wonderful change was wrought either by the importance of the affair, the successful progress of the speech, or the resolution of the advocate. after i had finished, vejento attempted to reply; but the general clamour raised against him not permitting him to go on, "i entreat you, conscript fathers,"[146] said he, "not to oblige me to implore the assistance of the tribunes."[147] immediately the tribune murena cried out, "you have my permission, most illustrious vejento, to go on." but still the clamour was renewed. in the interval, the consul ordered the house to divide, and having counted the voices, dismissed the senate, leaving vejento in the midst, still attempting to speak. he made great complaints of this affront (as he called it), applying the following lines of homer to himself: "great perils, father, wait the unequal fight; those younger champions will thy strength o'ercome."<a href="#linknote-148" name="linknoteref148" id="linknoteref-148">[148]</a> there was hardly a man in the senate that did not embrace and kiss me, and all strove who should applaud me most, for having, at the cost of private enmities, revived a custom so long disused, of freely consulting the senate upon affairs that concern the honour of the public; in a word, for having wiped off that reproach which was thrown upon it by other orders in the state, "that the senators mutually favoured the members of their own body, while they were very severe in animadverting upon the rest of their fellow-citizens." all this was transacted in the absence of certus; who kept out of the way either because he suspected something of this nature was intended to be moved, or (as was alleged in his excuse) that he was really unwell. cã¦sar, however, did not refer the examination of this matter to the senate. but i succeeded, nevertheless, in my aim, another person being appointed to succeed certus in the consulship, while the election of his colleague to that office was confirmed. and thus, the wish with which i concluded my speech, was actually accomplished: "may he be obliged," said i, "to renounce, under a virtuous prince,[149] that reward he received from an infamous one!"[150] some time after i recollected, as well as i could, the speech i had made upon this occasion; to which i made several additions. it happened (though indeed it had the appearance of being something more than casual) that a few days after i had published this piece, certus was taken ill and died. i was told that his imagination was continually haunted with this affair, and kept picturing me ever before his eyes, as a man pursuing him with a drawn sword. whether there was any truth in this rumour, i will not venture to assert; but, for the sake of example, however, i could wish it might gain credit. and now i have sent you a letter which (considering it is a letter) is as long as the defence you say you have read: but you must thank yourself for not being content with such information as that piece could afford you. farewell. cii -to genitor i have received your letter, in which you complain of having been highly disgusted lately at a very splendid entertainment, by a set of buffoons, mummers, and wanton prostitutes, who were dancing about round the tables.[151] but let me advise you to smooth your knitted brow somewhat. i confess, indeed, i admit nothing of this kind at my own house; however, i bear with it in others. "and why, then," you will be ready to ask, "not have them yourself?" the truth is, because the gestures of the wanton, the pleasantries of the buffoon, or the extravagancies of the mummer, give me no pleasure, as they give me no surprise. it is my particular taste, you see, not my judgment, that i plead against them. and indeed, what numbers are there who think the entertainments with which you and i are most delighted no better than impertinent follies! how many are there who, as soon as a reader, a lyrist, or a comedian is introduced, either take their leave of the company or, if they remain, show as much dislike to this sort of thing as you did to those monsters, as you call them! let us bear therefore, my friend, with others in their amusements, that they, in return, may show indulgence to ours. farewell. ciii -to sabinianus your freedman, whom you lately mentioned to me with displeasure, has been with me, and threw himself at my feet with as much submission as he could have fallen at yours. he earnestly requested me with many tears, and even with all the eloquence of silent sorrow, to intercede for him; in short, he convinced me by his whole behaviour that he sincerely repents of his fault. i am persuaded he is thoroughly reformed, because he seems deeply sensible of his guilt. i know you are angry with him, and i know, too, it is not without reason; but clemency can never exert itself more laudably than when there is the most cause for resentment. you once had an affection for this man, and, i hope, will have again; meanwhile, let me only prevail with you to pardon him. if he should incur your displeasure hereafter, you will have so much the stronger plea in excuse for your anger as you show yourself more merciful to him now. concede something to his youth, to his tears, and to your own natural mildness of temper: do not make him uneasy any longer, and i will add too, do not make yourself so; for a man of your kindness of heart cannot be angry without feeling great uneasiness. i am afraid, were i to join my entreaties with his, i should seem rather to compel than request you to forgive him. yet i will not scruple even to write mine with his; and in so much the stronger terms as i have very sharply and severely reproved him, positively threatening never to interpose again in his behalf. but though it was proper to say this to him, in order to make him more fearful of offending, i do not say so to you. i may perhaps, again have occasion to entreat you upon this account, and again obtain your forgiveness; supposing, i mean, his fault should be such as may become me to intercede for, and you to pardon. farewell. civ -to maximus it has frequently happened, as i have been pleading before the court of the hundred, that these venerable judges, after having preserved for a long period the gravity and solemnity suitable to their character, have suddenly, as though urged by irresistible impulse, risen up to a man and applauded me. i have often likewise gained as much glory in the senate as my utmost wishes could desire: but i never felt a more sensible pleasure than by an account which i lately received from cornelius tacitus. he informed me that, at the last circensian games, he sat next to a roman knight, who, after conversation had passed between them upon various points of learning, asked him, "are you an italian, or a provincial?" tacitus replied, "your acquaintance with literature must surely have informed you who i am." "pray, then, is it tacitus or pliny i am talking with?" i cannot express how highly i am pleased to find that our names are not so much the proper appellatives of men as a kind of distinction for learning herself; and that eloquence renders us known to those who would otherwise be ignorant of us. an accident of the same kind happened to me a few days ago. fabius rufinus, a person of distinguished merit, was placed next to me at table; and below him a countryman of his, who had just then come to rome for the first time. rufinus, calling his friend's attention to me, said to him, "you see this man?" and entered into a conversation upon the subject of my pursuits: to whom the other immediately replied, "this must undoubtedly be pliny." to confess the truth, i look upon these instances as a very considerable recompense of my labours. if demosthenes had reason to be pleased with the old woman of athens crying out, "this is demosthenes!" may not i, then, be allowed to congratulate myself upon the celebrity my name has acquired? yes, my friend, i will rejoice in it, and without scruple admit that i do. as i only mention the judgment of others, not my own, i am not afraid of incurring the censure of vanity; especially from you, who, whilst envying no man's reputation, are particularly zealous for mine. farewell. cv -to sabinianus i greatly approve of your having, in compliance with my letter,[152] received again into your favour and family a discarded freedman, who you once admitted into a share of your affection. this will afford you, i doubt not, great satisfaction. it certainly has me, both as a proof that your passion can be controlled, and as an instance of your paying so much regard to me, as either to yield to my authority or to comply with my request. let me, therefore, at once both praise and thank you. at the same time i must advise you to be disposed for the future to pardon the faults of your people, though there should be none to intercede in their behalf. farewell. cvi -to lupercus i said once (and, i think, not inaptly) of a certain orator of the present age, whose compositions are extremely regular and correct, but deficient in grandeur and embellishment, "his only fault is that he has none." whereas he, who is possessed of the true spirit of oratory, should be bold and elevated, and sometimes even flame out, be hurried away, and frequently tread upon the brink of a precipice: for danger is generally near whatever is towering and exalted. the plain, it is true, affords a safer, but for that reason a more humble and inglorious, path: they who run are more likely to stumble than they who creep; but the latter gain no honour by not slipping, while the former even fall with glory. it is with eloquence as with some other arts; she is never more pleasing than when she risks most. have you not observed what acclamations our rope-dancers excite at the instant of imminent danger? whatever is most entirely unexpected, or as the greeks more strongly express it, whatever is most perilous, most excites our admiration. the pilot's skill is by no means equally proved in a calm as in a storm: in the former case he tamely enters the port, unnoticed and unapplauded; but when the cordage cracks, the mast bends, and the rudder groans, then it is that he shines out in all his glory, and is hailed as little inferior to a sea-god. the reason of my making this observation is, because, if i mistake not, you have marked some passages in my writings for being tumid, exuberant, and over-wrought, which, in my estimation, are but adequate to the thought, or boldly sublime. but it is material to consider whether your criticism turns upon such points as are real faults, or only striking and remarkable expressions. whatever is elevated is sure to be observed; but it requires a very nice judgment to distinguish the bounds between true and false grandeur; between loftiness and exaggeration. to give an instance out of homer, the author who can, with the greatest propriety, fly from one extreme of style to another. "heav'n in loud thunder bids the trumpet sound; and wide beneath them groans the rending ground."<a href="#linknote-153" name="linknoteref153" id="linknoteref-153">[153]</a> again, "reclin'd on clouds his steed and armour lay."<a href="#linknote-154" name="linknoteref-154" id="linknoteref-154">[154]</a> so in this passage: "as torrents roll, increas'd by numerous rills, with rage impetuous down their echoing hills, rush to the vales, and pour'd along the plain, roar through a thousand channels to the main." it requires, i say, the nicest balance to poise these metaphors, and determine whether they are incredible and meaningless, or majestic and sublime. not that i think anything which i have written, or can write, admits of comparison with these. i am not quite so foolish; but what i would be understood to contend for is, that we should give eloquence free rein, and not restrain the force and impetuosity of genius within too narrow a compass. but it will be said, perhaps, that one law applies to orators, another to poets. as if, in truth, marc tully were not as bold in his metaphors as any of the poets! but not to mention particular instances from him, in a point where, i imagine, there can be no dispute; does demosthenes[155] himself, that model and standard of true oratory, does demosthenes check and repress the fire of his indignation, in that well-known passage which begins thus: "these wicked men, these flatterers, and these destroyers of mankind," &c. and again: "it is neither with stones nor bricks that i have fortified this city," &c. -and afterwards: "i have thrown up these out-works before attica, and pointed out to you all the resources which human prudence can suggest," &c.--and in another place: "o athenians, i swear by the immortal gods that he is intoxicated with the grandeur of his own actions," &c.[156] but what can be more daring and beautiful than that long digression, which begins in this manner: "a terrible disease?" -the following passage likewise, though somewhat shorter, is equally boldly conceived: -"then it was i rose up in opposition to the daring pytho, who poured forth a torrent of menaces against you," &c.[157] -the subsequent stricture is of the same stamp: "when a man has strengthened himself, as philip has, in avarice and wickedness, the first pretence, the first false step, be it ever so inconsiderable, has overthrown and destroyed all," &c.[158]--so in the same style with the foregoing is this: -"railed off, as it were, from the privileges of society, by the concurrent and just judgments of the three tribunals in the city." -and in the same place: "o aristogiton! you have betrayed that mercy which used to be shown to offences of this nature, or rather, indeed, you have wholly destroyed it. in vain then would you fly for refuge to a port, which you have shut up, and encompassed with rocks."--he has said before: "i am afraid, therefore, you should appear in the judgment of some, to have erected a public seminary of faction: for there is a weakness in all wickedness which renders it apt to betray itself!" -and a little lower: "i see none of these resources open to him; but all is precipice gulf, and profound abyss."--and again: "nor do i imagine that our ancestors erected those courts of judicature that men of his character should be planted there, but on the contrary', eradicated, that none may emulate their evil actions."--and afterwards: "if he is then the artificer of every wickedness, if he only makes it his trade and traffic," &c.--and a thousand other passages which i might cite to the same purpose; not to mention those expressions which aeschines calls not words, but wonders.--you will tell me, perhaps, i have unwarily mentioned aeschines, since demosthenes is condemned even by him, for running into these figurative expressions. but observe, i entreat you, how far superior the former orator is to his critic, and superior too in the very passage to which he objects; for in others, the force of his genius, in those above quoted, its loftiness, makes itself manifest. but does aeschines himself avoid those errors which he reproves in demosthenes? "the orator," says he, "athenians, and the law, ought to speak the same language; but when the voice of the law declares one thing, and that of the orator another we should give our vote to the justice of the law, not to the impudence of the orator."[159]--and in another place: "he afterwards manifestly discovered the design he had, of concealing his fraud under cover of the decree, having expressly declared therein that the ambassadors sent to the oretae gave the five talents, not to you, but to callias. and that you may be convinced of the truth of what i say (after having stripped the decree of its gallies, its trim, and its arrogant ostentation) the clause itself." -and in another part: "suffer him not to break cover and escape out of the limits of the question." a metaphor he is so fond of that he repeats it again. "but remaining firm and confident in the assembly, drive him into the merits of the question, and observe well how he doubles."--is his style more reserved and simple when he says: "but you are ever wounding our ears, and are more concerned in the success of your daily harangues than for the salvation of the city?"--what follows is conceived in a yet higher strain of metaphor: "will you not expel this man as the common calamity of greece? will you not seize and punish this pirate of the state, who sails about in quest of favourable conjunctures," &c.--with many other passages of a similar nature. and now i expect you will make the same attacks upon certain expressions in this letter as you did upon those i have been endeavouring to defend. the rudder that groans, and the pilot compared to a sea-god, will not, i imagine, escape your criticism: for i perceive, while i am suing for indulgence to my former style, i have fallen into the same kind of figurative diction which you condemn. but attack them if you please provided you will immediately appoint a day when we may meet to discuss these matters in person: you will then either teach me to be less daring or i shall teach you to be more bold. farewell. cvii -to caninius i have met with a story, which, although authenticated by undoubted evidence, looks very like fable, and would afford a worthy field for the exercise of so exuberant, lofty, and truly poetical a genius as your own. it was related to me the other day over the dinner table, where the conversation happened to run upon various kinds of marvels. the person who told the story was a man of unsuspected veracity:--but what has a poet to do with truth? however, you might venture to rely upon his testimony, even though you had the character of a faithful historian to support. there is in africa a town called hippo, situated not far from the sea-coast: it stands upon a navigable lake, communicating with an estuary in the form of a river, which alternately flows into the lake, or into the ocean, according to the ebb and flow of the tide. people of all ages amuse themselves here with fishing, sailing, or swimming; especially boys, whom love of play brings to the spot. with these it is a fine and manly achievement to be able to swim the farthest; and he that leaves the shore and his companions at the greatest distance gains the victory. it happened, in one of these trials of skill, that a certain boy, bolder than the rest, launched out towards the opposite shore. he was met by a dolphin, who sometimes swam before him, and sometimes behind him, then played round him, and at last took him upon his back, and set him down, and afterwards took him up again; and thus he carried the poor frightened fellow out into the deepest part; when immediately he turns back again to the shore, and lands him among his companions. the fame of this remarkable accident spread through the town, and crowds of people flocked round the boy (whom they viewed as a kind of prodigy) to ask him questions and hear him relate the story. the next day the shore was thronged with spectators, all attentively watching the ocean, and (what indeed is almost itself an ocean) the lake. meanwhile the boys swam as usual, and among the rest, the boy i am speaking of went into the lake, but with more caution than before. the dolphin appeared again and came to the boy, who, together with his companions, swam away with the utmost precipitation. the dolphin, as though to invite and call them back, leaped and dived up and down, in a series of circular movements. this he practised the next day, the day after, and for several days together, till the people (accustomed from their infancy to the sea) began to be ashamed of their timidity. they ventured, therefore, to advance nearer, playing with him and calling him to them, while he, in return, suffered himself to be touched and stroked. use rendered them courageous. the boy, in particular, who first made the experiment, swam by the side of him, and, leaping upon his back, was carried backwards and forwards in that manner, and thought the dolphin knew him and was fond of him, while he too had grown fond of the dolphin. there seemed, now, indeed, to be no fear on either side, the confidence of the one and tameness of the other mutually increasing; the rest of the boys, in the meanwhile, surrounding and encouraging their companion. it is very remarkable that this dolphin was followed by a second, which seemed only as a spectator and attendant on the former; for he did not at all submit to the same familiarities as the first, but only escorted him backwards and forwards, as the boys did their comrade. but what is further surprising, and no less true than what i have already related, is that this dolphin, who thus played with the boys and carried them upon his back, would come upon the shore, dry himself in the sand, and, as soon as he grew warm, roll back into the sea. it is a fact that octavius avitus, deputy governor of the province, actuated by an absurd piece of superstition, poured some ointment[160] over him as he lay on the shore: the novelty and smell of which made him retire into the ocean, and it was not till several days after that he was seen again, when he appeared dull and languid; however, he recovered his strength and continued his usual playful tricks. all the magistrates round flocked hither to view this sight, whose arrival, and prolonged stay, was an additional expense, which the slender finances of this little community would ill afford; besides, the quiet and retirement of the place was utterly destroyed. it was thought proper, therefore, to remove the occasion of this concourse, by privately killing the poor dolphin. and now, with what a flow of tenderness will you describe this affecting catastrophe![161] and how will your genius adorn and heighten this moving story! though, indeed, the subject does not require any fictitious embellishments; it will be sufficient to describe the actual facts of the case without suppression or diminution. farewell. cviii -to fuscus you want to know how i portion out my day, in my summer villa at tuscum? i get up just when i please; generally about sunrise, often earlier, but seldom later than this. i keep the shutters closed, as darkness and silence wonderfully promote meditation. thus free and abstracted from these outward objects which dissipate attention, i am left to my own thoughts; nor suffer my mind to wander with my eyes, but keep my eyes in subjection to my mind, which, when they are not distracted by a multiplicity of external objects, see nothing but what the imagination represents to them. if i have any work in hand, this is the time i choose for thinking it out, word for word, even to the minutest accuracy of expression. in this way i compose more or less, according as the subject is more or less difficult, and i find myself able to retain it. i then call my secretary, and, opening the shutters, dictate to him what i have put into shape, after which i dismiss him, then call him in again, and again dismiss him. about ten or eleven o'clock (for i do not observe one fixed hour), according to the weather, i either walk upon my terrace or in the covered portico, and there i continue to meditate or dictate what remains upon the subject in which i am engaged. this completed, i get into my chariot, where i employ myself as before, when i was walking, or in my study; and find this change of scene refreshes and keeps up my attention. on my return home, i take a little nap, then a walk, and after that repeat out loud and distinctly some greek or latin speech, not so much for the sake of strengthening my voice as my digestion;[162] though indeed the voice at the same time is strengthened by this practice. i then take another walk, am anointed, do my exercises, and go into the bath. at supper, if i have only my wife or a few friends with me, some author is read to us; and after supper we are entertained either with music or an interlude. when that is finished, i take my walk with my family, among whom i am not without some scholars. thus we pass our evenings in varied conversation; and the day, even when at the longest, steals imperceptibly away. upon some occasions i change the order in certain of the articles abovementioned. for instance, if i have studied longer or walked more than usual, after my second sleep, and reading a speech or two aloud, instead of using my chariot i get on horseback; by which means i ensure as much exercise and lose less time. the visits of my friends from the neighbouring villages claim some part of the day; and sometimes, by an agreeable interruption, they come in very seasonably to relieve me when i am feeling tired. i now and then amuse myself with hunting, but always take my tablets into the field, that, if i should meet with no game, i may at least bring home something. part of my time too (though not so much as they desire) is allotted to my tenants; whose rustic complaints, along with these city occupations, make my literary studies still more delightful to me. farewell. -cix -to paulinus as you are not of a disposition to expect from your friends the ordinary ceremonial observances of society when they cannot observe them without inconvenience to themselves, so i love you too steadfastly to be apprehensive of your taking otherwise than i wish you should my not waiting upon you on the first day of your entrance upon the consular office, especially as i am detained here by the necessity of letting my farms upon long leases. i am obliged to enter upon an entirely new plan with my tenants: for under the former leases, though i made them very considerable abatements, they have run greatly in arrear. for this reason several of them have not only taken no sort of care to lessen a debt which they found themselves incapable of wholly discharging, but have even seized and consumed all the produce of the land, in the belief that it would now be of no advantage to themselves to spare it. i must therefore obviate this increasing evil, and endeavour to find out some remedy against it. the only one i can think of is, not to reserve my rent in money, but in kind, and so place some of my servants to overlook the tillage, and guard the stock; as indeed there is no sort of revenue more agreeable to reason than what arises from the bounty of the soil, the seasons, and the climate. it is true, this method will require great honesty, sharp eyes, and many hands. however, i must risk the experiment, and, as in an inveterate complaint, try every change of remedy. you see, it is not any pleasurable indulgence that prevents my attending you on the first day of your consulship. i shall celebrate it nevertheless, as much as if i were present, and pay my vows for you here, with all the warmest tokens of joy and congratulation. farewell. cx -to fuscus you are much pleased, i find, with the account i gave you in my former letter of how i spend the summer season at tuscum, and desire to know what alteration i make in my method when i am at laurentum in the winter. none at all, except abridging myself of my sleep at noon, and borrowing a good piece of the night before daybreak and after sunset for study: and if business is very urgent (which in winter very frequently happens), instead of having interludes or music after supper, i reconsider whatever i have previously dictated, and improve my memory at the same time by this frequent mental revision. thus i have given you a general sketch of my mode of life in summer and winter; to which you may add the intermediate seasons of spring and autumn, in which, while losing nothing out of the day, i gain but little from the night. farewell. ] footnotes to the letters of pliny] 1 (return) [ a pupil and intimate friend of paetus thrasea, the distinguished stoic philosopher. arulenus was put to death by domitian for writing a panegyric upon thrasea.] 2 (return) [ the impropriety of this expression, in the original, seems to be in the word stigmosum, which regulus, probably either coined through affectation or used through ignorance. it is a word, at least, which does not occur in any author of authority: the translator has endeavoured, therefore, to preserve the same sort of impropriety, by using an expression of like unwarranted stamp in his own tongue. m.] 3 (return) [ an allusion to a wound he had received in the war between vitellius and vespasian.] 4 (return) [ a brother of piso galba's adopted son. he was put to death by nero.] 5 (return) [ sulpicius camerinus, put to death by the same emperor, upon some frivolous charge.] 6 (return) [ a select body of men who formed a court of judicature, called the centurnviral court. their jurisdiction extended chiefly, if not entirely, to questions of wills and intestate estates. their number, it would seem, amounted to 100. m.] 7 (return) [ junius mauricus, the brother of rusticus arulenus. both brothers were sentenced on the same day, arulenue to execution and mauricui to banishment.] 8 (return) [ there seems to have been a cast of uncommon blackness in the character of this regulus; otherwise the benevolent pliny would scarcely have singled him out, as he has in this and some following letters, for the subject of his warmest contempt and indignation. yet, infamous as he was, he had his flatterers and admirers; and a contemporary poet frequently represents him as one of the most finished characters of the age, both in eloquence and virtue. m.] 9 (return) [ the decurii were a sort of senators in the municipal or corporate cities of italy. m.] 10 (return) [ "euphrates was a native of tyre, or, according to others, of byzantium. he belonged to the stoic school of philosophy. in his old age he became tired of life, and asked and obtained from hadrian permission to put an end to himself by poison." smith's dict. of greek and roman biog.] 11 (return) [ a pleader and historian of some distinction, mentioned by tacitus, ann. xiv. 19, and by quintilian, x, i, 102.] 12 (return) [ padua.] 13 (return) [ domitian] 14 (return) [ iliad, xii. 243. pope.] 15 (return) [ equal to about $4,000 of our money. after the reign of augustus the value of the sesterces.] 16 (return) [ "the equestrian dignity, or that order of the roman people which we commonly call knights, had nothing in it analogous to any order of modern knighthood, but depended entirely upon a valuation of their estates; and every citizen, whose entire fortune amounted to 400,000 sesterces, that is, to about $16,000 of our money, was enrolled, of course, in the list of knights, who were considered as a middle order between the senators and common people, yet, without any other distinction than the privilege of wearing a gold ring, which was the peculiar badge of their order." life of cicero, vol. i. iii. in note. m.] 17 (return) [ an elegant attic orator, remarkable for the grace and lucidity of his style, also for his vivid and accurate delineations of character.] 18 (return) [ a graceful and powerful orator, and friend of densosthenes.] 19 (return) [ a roman orator of the augustan age. he was a poet and historian as well, but gained most distinction as an orator.] 20 (return) [ a man of considerable taste, talent, and eloquence, but profligate and extravagant. he was on terms of some intimacy with cicero.] 21 (return) [ the praetor was assisted by ten assessors, five of whom were senators, and the rest knights. with these he was obliged to consult before he pronounced sentence. m.] 22 (return) [ a contemporary and rival of aristophanes.] 23 (return) [ aristophanes, ach. 531] 24 (return) [ thersites. iliad, ii. v. 212.] 25 (return) [ ulysses. iliad, iii. v. 222.] 26 (return) [ menelaua. iliad, iii. v. 214.] 27 (return) [ great-grandfather of the emperor m. aurelius.] 28 (return) [ an eminent lawyer of trajan's reign.] 29 (return) [ the philosophers used to hold their disputations in the gymnasia and porticoes, being places of the most public resort for walking, &c. m.] 30 (return) [ "verginius rufus was governor of upper germany at the time of the revolt of julius vindex in gaul. a.d. 68. the soldiers of verginius wished to raise him to the empire, but he refused the honour, and marched against vindex, who perished before vesontio. after the death of nero, verginius supported the claims of galba, and accompanied him to rome. upon otho's death, the soldiers again attempted to proclaim verginius emperor, and in consequence of his refusal of the honour, he narrowly escaped with his life." (see smith's dict. of greek and rom. biog., &c.)] 31 (return) [ nerva.] 32 (return) [ the historian,] 33 (return) [ namely, of augurs. "this college, as regulated by sylla, consisted of fifteen, who were all persons of the first distinction in rome; it was a priesthood for life, of a character indelible, which no crime or forfeiture could efface; it was necessary that every candidate should be nominated to the people by two augurs, who gave a solemn testimony upon, oath of his dignity and fitness for that office." middleton's life of cicero, i. 547. m.] 34 (return) [ the ancient greeks and romans did not sit up at the table as we do, but reclined round it on couches, three and sometimes even four occupying one conch, at least this latter was the custom among the romans. each guest lay flat upon his chest while eating, reaching out his hand from time to time to the table, for what he might require. as soon as he had made a sufficient meal, he turned over upon his left side, leaning on the elbow.] 35 (return) [ a people of germany.] 36 (return) [ "any roman priest devoted to the service of one particular god was designated flamen, receiving a distinguishing epithet from the deity to whom he ministered. the office was understood to last for life; but a flamen might be compelled to resign for a breach of duty, or even on account of the occurrence of an ill-omened accident while discharging his functions." smith's dictionary of antiquities.] 37 (return) [ trajan.] 38 (return) [ by a law passed a. d. 76, it was enacted that every citizen of rome who had three children should be excused from all troublesome offices where he lived. this privilege the emperors sometimes extended to those who were not legally entitled to it.] 39 (return) [ about 54 cents.] 40 (return) [ avenue] 41 (return) [ "windows made of a transparent stone called lapis specularis (mica), which was first found in hispania citerior, and afterwards in cyprus, cappadocia, sicily, and africa; but the best caine from spain and cappadocia. it was easily split into the thinnest sheets. windows, made of this stone were called specularia." smith's dictionary of antiquities.] 42 (return) [ a feast held in honour of the god saturn, which began on the 19th of december, and continued as some say, for seven days. it was a time of general rejoicing, particularly among the slaves, who had at this season the privilege of taking great liberties with their masters. m.] 43 (return) [ cicero and quintilian have laid down rules how far, and in what instances, this liberty was allowable, and both agree it ought to be used with great sagacity and judgment. the latter of these excellent critics mentions a witticism of flavius virginius, who asked one of these orators, "quot nillia assuum deciamassett." how many miles he had declaimed. m.] 44 (return) [ this was an act of great ceremony; and if aurelia's dress was of the kind which some of the roman ladies used, the legacy must have been considerable which regulus had the impudence to ask. m.] 45 (return) [ $3,350,000.] 46 (return) [ a poet to whom quintilian assigns the highest rank, as a writer of tragedies, among his contemporaries (book x. c. i. 98). tacitus also speaks of him in terms of high appreciation (annals, v. 8).] 47 (return) [ stepson of augustus and brother to tiberius. an amiable and popular prince. he died at the close of his third campaign, from a fracture received by falling from his horse.] 48 (return) [ a historian under augustus and tiberius. he wrote part of a history of rome, which was continued by the elder pliny; also an account of the german war, to which quintilian makes allusion (inst. x. 103), pronouncing him, as a historian, "estimable in all respects, yet in some things failing to do himself justice."] 49 (return) [ the distribution of time among the romans was very different from ours. they divided the night into four equal parts, which they called watches, each three hours in length; and part of these they devoted either to the pleasures of the table or to study. the natural day they divided into twelve hours, the first beginning with sunrise, and the last ending with sunset; by which means their hours were of unequal length, varying according to the different seasons of the year. the time for business began with sunrise, and continued to the fifth hour, being that of dinner, which with them was only a slight repast. from thence to the seventh hour was a time of repose; a custom which still prevails in italy. the eighth hour was employed in bodily exercises; after which they constantly bathed, and from thence went to supper. m.] 50 (return) [ $16,000.] 51 (return) [ born about a. d. 25. he acquired some distinction as an advocate. the only poem of his which has come down to us is a heavy prosaic performance in seventeen books, entitled "tunica," and containing an account of the events of the second punic war, from the capture of saguntum to the triumph of scipio africanus. see smith's dict. of gr. and roin. biog.] 52 (return) [ trajan.] 53 (return) [ spurinna's wife.] 54 (return) [ domitian banished the philosophers not only from rome, but italy, as suetonius (dom. c. x.) and aulus gellius (noct. att. b. xv. cxi. 3, 4, 5) inform us among these was the celebrated epictetus. m.] 55 (return) [ the following is the story, as related by several of the ancient historians. paetus, having joined scribonianus, who was in arms, in illyria, against claudius, was taken after the death of scribonianus, and condemned to death. arria having, in vain, solicited his life, persuaded him to destroy himself, rather than suffer the ignominy of falling by the executioner's hands; and, in order to encourage him to an act, to which, it seems, he was not particularly inclined, she set him the example in the manner pliny relates. m.] 56 (return) [ trajan.] 57 (return) [ the roman, used to employ their criminals in the lower ones of husbandry, such as ploughing, &c. pun. h. n. 1. 18, 3. m.] 58 (return) [ about $500,000.] 59 (return) [ about $800,000.] 60 (return) [ one of the famous seven hills upon which rome was situated.] 61 (return) [ mart. lx. 19.] 62 (return) [ calpurnia, pliny's wife.] 63 (return) [ now citta di castello.] 64 (return) [ the romans had an absolute power over their children, of which no age or station of the latter deprived them.] 65 (return) [ their business was to interpret dreams, oracles, prodigies, &c., and to foretell whether any action should be fortunate or prejudicial, to particular persons, or to the whole commonwealth. upon this account, they very often occasioned the displacing of magistrates, the deferring of public assemblies, &c. kennet's ron,. antig. m.] 66 (return) [ trajan.] 67 (return) [ a slave was incapable of property; and, therefore, whatever he acquired became the right of his master. m.] 68 (return) [ "their office was to attend upon the rites of vests, the chief part of which was the preservation of the holy fire. if this fire happened to go out, it was considered impiety to light it at any common flame, but they made use of the pure and unpolluted rays of the sun for that purpose. there were various other duties besides connected with their office. the chief rules prescribed them were, to vow the strictest chastity, for the space of thirty years. after this term was completed, they had liberty to leave the order. if they broke their vow of virginity, they were buried alive in a place allotted to that peculiar use." kennet's antiq. their reputation for sanctity was so high that livy mentions the fact of two of those virgins having violated their vows, as a prodigy that, threatened destruction to the roman state. lib. xxii. c. 57. and suetonius inform, us that augiastus had so high an opinion of this religious order, that he consigned the care of his will to the vestal virgins. suet, in vit. aug. c. xci. m.] 69 (return) [ it was usual with domitian to triumph, not only without a victory, but even after a defeat, m.] 70 (return) [ euripides' hecuba,] 71 (return) [ the punishment inflicted upon the violators of vestal chastity was to be scourged to death. m.] 72 (return) [ calpurnia, pliny's wife.] 73 (return) [ gratilla was the wife of rusticus: rusticus was put to death by domitian, and gratilla banished. it was sufficient crime in the reign of that execrable prince to be even a friend of those who were obnoxious to him. m.] 74 (return) [ in the original, scrinium, box for holding mss.] 75 (return) [ the hippodromus, in its proper signification, was a place, among the grecians, set apart for horse-racing and other exercises of that kind. but it seems here to be nothing more than a particular walk, to which pliny perhaps gave that name, from its bearing some resemblance in its form to the public places so called. m.] 76 (return) [ now called frascati, tivoli, and palestrina, all of them situated in the campagna di roma, and at no great distance from rome. m.] 77 (return) [ "this is said in allusion to the idea of nemesis supposed to threaten excessive prosperity." (church and brodribb.)] 78 (return) [ about $15,000.] 79 (return) [ about $42,000.] 80 (return) [ none had the right of using family pictures or statues but those whose ancestors or themselves had borne some of the highest dignities. so that the jus imaginis was much the same thing among the romans as the right of bearing a coat of arms among us. ken. antiq. m.] 81 (return) [ the roman physicians used to send their patients in consumptive cases into egypt, particularly to alexandria. m.] 82 (return) [ frejus, in provence, the southern part of france. m.] 83 (return) [ a court of justice erected by julius cã¦sar in the forum, and opposite to the basilica aemilia.] 84 (return) [ the deceniviri seem to have been magistrates for the administration of justice, subordinate to the praetors, who (to give the english reader a general notion of their office) may be termed lords chief justices, as the judges here mentioned were something in the nature of our juries. m.] 85 (return) [ about $400.] 86 (return) [ this silly piece of superstition seems to have been peculiar to regulus, and not of any general practice; at least it is a custom of which we find no other mention in antiquity. m.] 87 (return) [ "we gather from martial that the wearing of these was not an unusual practice with fops and dandies." see epig. ii. 29, in which he ridicules a certain rufus, and hints that if you were to "strip off the 'splenia (plasters)' from his face, you would find out that he was a branded runaway slave." (church and brodribb.)] 88 (return) [ his wife.] 89 (return) [ hom. ii. lib, i. v. 88.] 90 (return) [ now alzia, not far from corno.] 91 (return) [ nevertheless, javolentis priscus was one of the most eminent lawyers of his time, and is frequently quoted in the digesta of justinian.] 92 (return) [ in the bay of naples.] 93 (return) [ the romans used to lie or walk naked in the sun, after anointing their bodies with oil, which was esteemed as greatly contributing to health, and therefore daily practised by them. this custom, however, of anointing themselves, is inveighed against by the satirists as in the number of their luxurious indulgences: but since we find the elder pliny here, and the amiable spurinna in a former letter, practising this method, we can not suppose the thing itself was esteemed unmanly, but only when it was attended with some particular circumstances of an over-refined delicacy. m.] 94 (return) [ now called castelamare, in the bay of naples. m.] 95 (return) [ the stoic and epicurean philosophers held that the world was to be destroyed by fire, and all things fall again into original chaos; not excepting even the national gods themselves from the destruction of this general conflagration. m.] 96 (return) [ the lake larius.] 97 (return) [ those families were styled patrician whose ancestors had been members of the senate in the earliest times of the regal or consular government. m.] 98 (return) [ trajan] 99 (return) [ the consuls, though they were chosen in august, did not enter upon their office till the first of january, during which interval they were styled consules designati, consuls elect. it was usual for them upon that occasion to compliment the emperor, by whose appointment, after the dissolution of the republican government, they were chosen. m.] 100 (return) [ so called, because it formerly belonged to camillus. m.] 101 (return) [ civita vecchia.] 102 (return) [ trajan.] 103 (return) [ an officer in the roman legions, answering in some sort to a captain in our companies. m.] 104 (return) [ this law was made by augustus cã¦sar; but it nowhere clearly appears what was the peculiar punishment it inflicted. m.] 105 (return) [ an officer employed by the emperor to receive and regulate the public revenue in the provinces. m.] 106 (return) [ comprehending transylvania, moldavia, and walaehia. m.] 107 (return) [ polycletus was a freedman, and great favourite of nero. m.] 108 (return) [ memmius, or rhemmius (the critics are not agreed which), was author of a law by which it was enacted that whosoever was convicted of calumny and false accusation should be stigmatised with a mark in his forehead; and by the law of the twelve tables, false accusers were to suffer the same punishment as would have been inflicted upon the person unjustly accused if the crime had been proved. m.] 109 (return) [ trajan.] 110 (return) [ unction was much esteemed and prescribed by the ancients. celsus expressly recommends it in the remission of acute distempers: "ungi leniterque pertractari corpus, etiam in acutic et recentibus niorbis opartet; us rernissione fumen," &c. celsi med. ed. aliucloveen, p. 88. m.] 111 (return) [ his wife.] 112 (return) [ see book v. letter xx.] 113 (return) [ trajan.] 114 (return) [ one of the bithynians employed to manage the trial. m.] 115 (return) [ about $28,000.] 116 (return) [ about $26,000.] 117 (return) [ there is a kind of witticism in this expression, which will be lost to the mere english reader unless he be informed that the romans had a privilege, confirmed to them by several laws which passed in the earlier ages of the republic, of appealing from the decisions of the magistrates to the general assembly of the people: and they did so in the form of words which pomponius here applies to a different purpose. m.] 118 (return) [ the priests, as well as other magistrates, exhibited public games to the people when they entered upon their office. m.] 119 (return) [ a famous lawyer who flourished in the reign of the emperor claudius: those who followed his opinions were said to be cassians, or of the school of cassius. m.] 120 (return) [ a stoic philosopher and native of tarsus. he was tutor for some time to octavius, afterwards augustus, cã¦sar.] 121 (return) [ balzac very prettily observes: "il y a des riviere: qui ne font jamais tact de bien que quand elles se dibordent; de eneme, l'amitie n'a mealleur quo l'exces." m.] 122 (return) [ persons of rank and literature among the romans retained in their families a domestic whose sole business was to read to them. m.] 123 (return) [ it was a doctrine maintained by the stoics that all crimes are equal m.] 124 (return) [ about $400.] 125 (return) [ about $600.] 126 (return) [ about $93.] 127 (return) [ hom. ii. lib. ix. v. 319.] 128 (return) [ those of nero and domitian. m.] 129 (return) [ when nerva and trajan received the empire. m.] 130 (return) [ a slave could acquire no property, and consequently was incapable bylaw of making a will. m.] 131 (return) [ now called amelia, a town in ombria. m.] 132 (return) [ now laghetto di bassano. m.] 133 (return) [ a province in anatolia, or asia minor. m.] 134 (return) [ the performers at these games were divided into companies, distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the principal of which were the white, the red, the blue, and the green. accordingly the spectators favoured one or the other colour, as humour and caprice inclined them. in the reign of justinian a tumult arose in constantinople, occasioned merely by a contention among the partisans of these several colours, wherein no less than 30,000 men lost their lives. m.] 135 (return) [ now called castello di baia, in terra di lavoro. it was the place the romans chose for their winter retreat; and which they frequented upon account of its warm baths. some few ruins of the beautiful villas that once covered this delightful coast still remain; and nothing can give one a higher idea of the prodigious expense and magnificence of the romans in their private buildings than the manner in which some of these were situated. it appears from this letter, as well as from several other passages in the classic writers, that they actually projected into the sea, being erected upon vast piles, sunk for that purpose.] 136 (return) [ the buskin was a kind of high shoe worn upon the stage by the actors of tragedy, in order to give them a more heroical elevation of stature; as the sock was something between a shoe and stocking, it was appropriated to the comic players. m.] 137 (return) [ lyons.] 138 (return) [ he was accused of treason, under pretence that in a dramatic piece which he composed he had, in the characters of paris and oenone, reflected upon domitian for divorcing his wife domitia. suet, in vit. domit. c. 10. m.] 139 (return) [ helvidius.] 140 (return) [ upon the accession of nerva to the empire, after the death of domitian. m.] 142 (return) [ our authors first wife; of whom we have no particular account. after her death, he married his favourite calpurnia. m.] 143 (return) [ it is very remarkable that, when any senator was asked his opinion in the house, he had the privilege of speaking as long as he pleased upon any other affair before he came to the point in question. aul. gell. iv. c. 10. m.] 144 (return) [ aeneid, lib. vi. v. 105.] 145 (return) [ arria and fannia.] 146 (return) [ the appellation by which the senate was addressed. m.] 147 (return) [ the tribunes were magistrates chosen at first out of the body of the commons, for the defence of their liberties, and to interpose in all grievances offered by their superiors. their authority extended even to the deliberations of the senate. m.] 148 (return) [ diomed's speech to nestor, advising him to retire from the field of battle. iliad, viii. 302. pope. m.] 149 (return) [ nerva.] 150 (return) [ domitian; by whom he had been appointed consul elect, though he had not yet entered upon that office. m.] 151 (return) [ these persons were introduced at most of the tables of the great, for the purposes of mirth and gaiety, and constituted an essential part in all polite entertainments among the romans. it is surprising how soon this great people fell off from their original severity of manners, and were tainted with the stale refinements of foreign luxury. livy dates the rise of this and other unmanly delicacies from the conquest of scipio asiaticus over antiochus; that is when the roman name had scarce subsisted above a hundred and threescore years. "luxuriae peregrinae origio," says he, "exercitu asiatico in urbem invecta est." this triumphant army caught, it seems, the contagious softness of the people it subdued; and, on its return to rome, spread an infection among their countrymen, which worked by slow degrees, till it effected their total destruction. thus did eastern luxury revenge itself on roman arms. it may be wondered that pliny should keep his own temper, and check the indignation of his friends at a scene which was fit only for the dissolute revels of the infamous trimalchio. but it will not, perhaps, be doing justice to our author to take an estimate of his real sentiments upon this point from the letter before us. genitor, it seems, was a man of strict, but rather of too austere morals for the free turn of the age: "emendatus et gravis: paulo etiam horridior et durior ut in hac licentia teniporuni" (ep. iii. 1. 3). but as there is a certain seasonable accommodation to the manners of the times, not only extremely consistent with, but highly conducive to, the interests of virtue, pliny, probably, may affect a greater latitude than he in general approved, in order to draw off his friend from that stiffness and unyielding disposition which might prejudice those of a gayer turn against him, and consequently lessen the beneficial influence of his virtues upon the world. m.] 152 (return) [ see letter ciii.] 153 (return) [ iliad, xxi. 387. pope. m.] 154 (return) [ iliad, v. 356, speaking of mars. m.; iliad, iv. 452. pope.] 155 (return) [ the design of pliny in this letter is to justify the figurative expressions he had employed, probably, in same oration, by instances of the same warmth of colouring from those great masters of eloquence, demosthenes and his rival aesehines. but the force of the passages which he produces from those orators must necessarily be greatly weakened to a mere modern reader, some of them being only hinted at, as generally well known; and the metaphors in several of the others have either lost much of their original spirit and boldness, by being introduced and received in common language, or cannot, perhaps, he preserved in an english translation. m.] 156 (return) [ see 1st philippic.] 157 (return) [ see demosthenes' speech in defence of cteisphon.] 158 (return) [ see end olynthiac.] 159 (return) [ see aesehines' speech against ctesiphon.] 160 (return) [ it was a religious ceremony practised by the ancients to pour precious ointments upon the statues of their gods: avitus, it is probable, imagined this dolphin was some sea-divinity, and therefore expressed his veneration of him by the solemnity of a sacred unction. m.] 161 (return) [ the overflowing humanity of pliny's temper breaks out upon all occasions, but he discovers it in nothing more strongly than by the impression which this little story appears to have made upon him. true benevolence, indeed, extends itself through the whole compass of existence, and sympathises with the distress of every creature of sensation. little minds may be apt to consider a compassion of this inferior kind as an instance of weakness; but it is undoubtedly the evidence of a noble nature. homer thought it not unbecoming the character even of a hero to melt into tears at a distress of this sort, and has given us a most amiable and affecting picture of ulysses weeping over his faithful dog argus, when he expires at his feet: "soft pity touch'd the mighty master's soul; adown his cheek the tear unbidden stole, stole unperceived; he turn'd his head and dry'd the drop humane.". (odyss. xvii. pope.) m.] 162 (return) [ by the regimen which pliny here follows, one would imagine, if he had not told us who were his physicians, that the celebrated celsus was in the number. that author expressly recommends reading aloud, and afterwards walking, as beneficial in disorders of the stomach: "si quis stomacho laborat, leqere clare debet; post lectionem ambulare," &c. celsi medic. 1. i. c. 8. m.] correspondence with the emperor trajan i -to the emperor trajan[1001] the pious affection you bore, most sacred emperor, to your august father induced you to wish it might be late ere you succeeded him. but the immortal gods thought proper to hasten the advancement of those virtues to the helm of the commonwealth which had already shared in the steerage.[1002] may you then, and the world through your means, enjoy every prosperity worthy of your reign: to which let me add my wishes, most excellent emperor, upon a private as well as public account, that your health and spirits may be preserved firm and unbroken. ii -to the emperor trajan you have occasioned me, sir, an inexpressible pleasure in deeming me worthy of enjoying the privilege which the laws confer on those who have three children. for although it was from an indulgence to the request of the excellent julius servianus, your own most devoted servant, that you granted this favour, yet i have the satisfaction to find by the words of your rescript that you complied the more willingly as his application was in my behalf. i cannot but look upon myself as in possession of my utmost wish, after having thus received, at the beginning of your most auspicious reign, so distinguishing a mark of your peculiar favour; at the same time that it considerably heightens my desire of leaving a family behind me. i was not entirely without this desire even in the late most unhappy times: as my two marriages will induce you to believe. but the gods decreed it better, by reserving every valuable privilege to the bounty of your generous dispensations. and indeed the pleasure of being a father will be so much more acceptable to me now, that i can enjoy it in full security and happiness. iii -to the emperor trajan the experience, most excellent emperor, i have had of your unbounded generosity to me, in my own person, encourages me to hope i may be yet farther obliged to it, in that of my friends. voconius romanus (who was my schoolfellow and companion from our earliest years) claims the first rank in that number; in consequence of which i petitioned your sacred father to promote him to the dignity of the senatorial order. but the completion of my request is reserved to your goodness; for his mother had not then advanced, in the manner the law directs, the liberal gift[1003] of four hundred thousand sesterces, which she engaged to give him, in her letter to the late emperor, your father. this, however, by my advice she has since done, having made over certain estates to him, as well as completed every other act necessary to make the conveyance valid. the difficulties therefore being removed which deferred the gratification of our wishes, it is with full confidence i venture to assure you of the worth of my friend romanus, heightened and adorned as it is not only by liberal culture, but by his extraordinary tenderness to his parents as well. it is to that virtue he owes the present liberality of his mother; as well as his immediate succession to his late father's estate, and his adoption by his father-in-law. to these personal qualifications, the wealth and rank of his family give additional lustre; and i persuade myself it will be some further recommendation that i solicit in his behalf. let me, then, entreat you, sir, to enable me to congratulate romanus on so desirable an occasion, and at the same time to indulge an eager and, i hope, laudable ambition, of having it in my power to boast that your favourable regards are extended not only to myself, but also to my friend. iv -to the emperor trajan when by your gracious indulgence, sir, i was appointed to preside at the treasury of saturn, i immediately renounced all engagements of the bar (as indeed i never blended business of that kind with the functions of the state), that no avocations might call off my attention from the post to which i was appointed. for this reason, when the province of africa petitioned the senate that i might undertake their cause against marius priscus, i excused myself from that office; and my excuse was allowed. but when afterwards the consul elect proposed that the senate should apply to us again, and endeavour to prevail with us to yield to its inclinations, and suffer our names to be thrown into the urn, i thought it most agreeable to that tranquillity and good order which so happily distinguishes your times not to oppose (especially in so reasonable an instance) the will of that august assembly. and, as i am desirous that all my words and actions may receive the sanction of your exemplary virtue, i hope you approve of my compliance. v -trajan to pliny you acted as became a good citizen and a worthy senator, by paying obedience to the just requisition of that august assembly: and i have full confidence you will faithfully discharge the business you have undertaken. vi -to the emperor trajan having been attacked last year by a very severe and dangerous illness, i employed a physician, whose care and diligence, sir, i cannot sufficiently reward, but by your gracious assistance. i entreat you therefore to make him a denizen of rome; for as he is the freedman of a foreign lady, he is, consequently, himself also a foreigner. his name is harpocras; his patroness (who has been dead a considerable time) was thermuthis, the daughter of theon. i further entreat you to bestow the full privileges of a roman citizen upon hedia and antonia harmeris, the freedwomen of antonia maximilla, a lady of great merit. it is at her desire i make this request. vii -to the emperor trajan i return you thanks, sir, for your ready compliance with my desire, in granting the complete privileges of a roman to the freedwomen of a lady to whom i am allied and also for making harpocras, my physician, a denizen of rome. but when, agreeably to your directions, i gave in an account of his age, and estate, i was informed by those who are better skilled in the affairs than i pretend to be that, as he is an egyptian, i ought first to have obtained for him the freedom of alexandria before he was made free of rome. i confess, indeed, as i was ignorant of any difference in this case between those of egypt and other countries, i contented myself with only acquainting you that he had been manumitted by a foreign lady long since deceased. however, it is an ignorance i cannot regret, since it affords me an opportunity of receiving from you a double obligation in favour of the same person. that i may legally therefore enjoy the benefit of your goodness, i beg you would be pleased to grant him the freedom of the city of alexandria, as well as that of rome. and that your gracious intentions may not meet with any further obstacles, i have taken care, as you directed, to send an account to your freedman of his age and possessions. viii -trajan to pliny it is my resolution, in pursuance of the maxim observed by the princes my predecessors, to be extremely cautious in granting the freedom of the city of alexandria: however, since you have obtained of me the freedom of rome for your physician harpocras, i cannot refuse you this other request. you must let me know to what district he belongs, that i may give you a letter to my friend pompeius planta, governor of egypt. ix -to the emperor trajan i cannot express, sir, the pleasure your letter gave me, by which i am informed that you have made my physician harpocras a denizen of alexandria; notwithstanding your resolution to follow the maxim of your predecessors in this point, by being extremely cautious in granting that privilege. agreeably to your directions, i acquaint you that harpocras belongs to the district of memphis.[1004] i entreat you then, most gracious emperor, to send me, as you promised, a letter to your friend pompeius planta, governor of egypt. as i purpose (in order to have the earliest enjoyment of your presence, so ardently wished for here) to come to meet you, i beg, sir, you would permit me to extend my journey as far as possible. x -to the emperor trajan i was greatly obliged, sir, in my late illness, to posthumius marinus, my physician; and i cannot make him a suitable return, but by the assistance of your wonted gracious indulgence. i entreat you then to make chrysippus mithridates and his wife stratonica (who are related to marinus) denizens of rome. i entreat likewise the same privilege in favour of epigonus and mithridates, the two sons of chrysippus; but with this restriction [1005] that they may remain under the dominion of their father, and yet reserve their right of patronage over their own freedmen. i further entreat you to grant the full privileges of a roman to l. satrius abascantius, p. caesius phosphorus, and pancharia soteris. this request i make with the consent of their patrons.[1005] xi -to the emperor trajan after your late sacred father, sir, had, in a noble speech, as well as by his own generous example, exhorted and encouraged the public to acts of munificence, i implored his permission to remove the several statues which i had of the former emperors to my corporation, and at the same time requested permission to add his own to the number. for as i had hitherto let them remain in the respective places in which they stood when they were left to me by several different inheritances, they were dispersed in distant parts of my estate. he was pleased to grant my request, and at the same time to give me a very ample testimony of his approbation. i immediately, therefore, wrote to the decurii, to desire they would allot a piece of ground, upon which i might build a temple at my own expense; and they, as a mark of honour to my design, offered me the choice of any site i might think proper. however, my own ill-health in the first place, and later that of your father, together with the duties of that employment which you were both pleased to entrust me, prevented my proceeding with that design. but i have now, i think, a convenient opportunity of making an excursion for the purpose, as my monthly attendances ends on the 1st of september, and there are several festivals in the month following. my first request, then, is that you would permit me to adorn the temple i am going to erect with your statue, and next (in order to the execution of my design with all the expedition possible) that you would indulge me with leave of absence. it would ill become the sincerity i profess, were i to dissemble that your goodness in complying with this desire will at the same time be extremely serviceable to me in my own private affairs. it is absolutely necessary i should not defer any longer the letting of my lands in that province; for, besides that they amount to above four hundred thousand sesterces,[1006] the time for dressing the vineyards is approaching, and that business must fall upon my new tenants.[1007] the unfruitfulness of the seasons besides, for several years past, obliges me to think of making some abatements in my rents; which i cannot possibly settle unless i am present. i shall be indebted then to your indulgence, sir, for the expedition of my work of piety, and the settlement of my own private affairs, if you will be pleased to grant me leave of absence[1008] for thirty days. i cannot give myself a shorter time, as the town and the estate of which i am speaking lie above a hundred and fifty miles from rome. xii -trajan to pliny you have given me many private reasons, and every public one, why you desire leave of absence; but i need no other than that it is your desire: and i doubt not of your returning as soon as possible to the duty of an office which so much requires your attendance. as i would not seem to check any instance of your affection towards me, i shall not oppose your erecting my statue in the place you desire; though in general i am extremely cautious in giving any encouragement to honours of that kind. xiii -to the emperor trajan [1009] as i am sensible, sir, that the highest applause my actions can receive is to be distinguished by so excellent a prince, i beg you would be graciously pleased to add either the office of augur or septemvir [1009] (both which are now vacant) to the dignity i already enjoy by your indulgence; that i may have the satisfaction of publicly offering up those vows for your prosperity, from the duty of my office, which i daily prefer to the gods in private, from the affection of my heart. xiv -to the emperor trajan having safely passed the promontory of malea, i am arrived at ephesus with all my retinue, notwithstanding i was detained for some time by contrary winds: a piece of information, sir, in which, i trust, you will feel yourself concerned. i propose pursuing the remainder of my journey to the province[1010] partly in light vessels, and partly in postchaises: for as the excessive heats will prevent my travelling altogether by land, so the etesian winds,[1011] which are now set in, will not permit me to proceed entirely by sea. xv -trajan to pliny your information, my dear pliny, was extremely agreeable to mc, as it does concern me to know in what manner you arrive at your province. it is a wise intention of yours to travel either by sea or land, as you shall find most convenient. xvi -to the emperor trajan as i had a very favourable voyage to ephesus, so in travelling by postchaise from thence i was extremely troubled by the heats, and also by some slight feverish attacks, which kept me some time at pergamus. from there, sir, i got on board a coasting vessel, but, being again detained by contrary winds, did not arrive at bithynia so soon as i had hoped. however, i have no reason to complain of this delay, since (which indeed was the most auspicious circumstance that could attend me) i reached the province in time to celebrate your birthday. i am at present engaged in examining the finances of the prusenses,[1012] their expenses, revenues, and credits; and the farther i proceed in this work, the more i am convinced of the necessity of my enquiry. several large sums of money are owing to the city from private persons, which they neglect to pay upon various pretences; as, on the other hand, i find the public funds are, in some instances, very unwarrantably applied. this, sir, i write to you immediately on my arrival. i entered this province on the 17th of september,[1013] and found in it that obedience and loyalty towards yourself which you justly merit from all mankind. you will consider, sir, whether it would not be proper to send a surveyor here; for i am inclined to think much might be deducted from what is charged by those who have the conduct of the public works if a faithful admeasurement were to be taken: at least i am of that opinion from what i have already seen of the accounts of this city, which i am now going into as fully as is possible. xvii -trajan to pliny i should have rejoiced to have heard that you arrived at bithynia without the smallest inconvenience to yourself or any of your retinue, and that your journey from ephesus had been as easy as your voyage to that place was favourable. for the rest, your letter informs me, my dearest secundus, on what day you reached bithynia. the people of that province will be convinced, i persuade myself, that i am attentive to their interest: as your conduct towards them will make it manifest that i could have chosen no more proper person to supply my place. the examination of the public accounts ought certainly to be your first employment, as they are evidently in great disorder. i have scarcely surveyors sufficient to inspect those works[1014] which i am carrying on at rome, and in the neighbourhood; but persons of integrity and skill in this art may be found, most certainly, in every province, so that they will not fail you if only you will make due enquiry. xviii -to the emperor trajan though i am well assured, sir, that you, who never omit any opportunity of exerting your generosity, are not unmindful of the request i lately made to you, yet, as you have often indulged me in this manner, give me leave to remind and earnestly entreat you to bestow the praetorship now vacant upon attius sura. though his ambition is extremely moderate, yet the quality of his birth, the inflexible integrity he has preserved in a very narrow fortune, and, more than all, the felicity of your times, which encourages conscious virtue to claim your favour, induce him to hope he may experience it in the present instance. xix -to the emperor trajan i congratulate both you and the public, most excellent emperor, upon the great and glorious victory you have obtained; so agreeable to the heroism of ancient rome. may the immortal gods grant the same happy success to all your designs, that, under the administration of so many princely virtues, the splendour of the empire may shine out, not only in its former, but with additional lustre.[1015] xx -to the emperor trajan mv lieutenant, servilius pudens, came to nicomedia,[1016] sir, on the 24th of november, and by his arrival freed me, at length, from the anxiety of a very uneasy expectation. xxi -to the emperor trajan your generosity to me, sir, was the occasion of uniting me to rosianus geminus, by the strongest ties; for he was my quaestor when i was consul. his behaviour to me during the continuance of our offices was highly respectful, and he has treated me ever since with so peculiar a regard that, besides the many obligations i owe him upon a public account, i am indebted to him for the strongest pledges of private friendship. i entreat you, then, to comply with my request for the advancement of one whom (if my recommendation has any weight) you will even distinguish with your particular favour; and whatever trust you shall repose in him, he will endeavour to show himself still deserving of an higher. but i am the more sparing in my praises of him, being persuaded his integrity, his probity, and his vigilance are well known to you, not only from those high posts which he has exercised in rome within your immediate inspection, but from his behaviour when he served under you in the army. one thing, however, my affection for him inclines me to think, i have not yet sufficiently done; and therefore, sir, i repeat my entreaties that you will give me the pleasure, as early as possible, of rejoicing in the advancement of my quaestor, or, in other words, of receiving an addition to my own honours, in the person of my friend. xxii -to the emperor trajan it is not easy, sir, to express the joy i received when i heard you had, in compliance with the request of my mother-in-law and myself, granted coelius clemens the proconsulship of this province after the expiration of his consular office; as it is from thence i learn the full extent of your goodness towards me, which thus graciously extends itself through my whole family. as i dare not pretend to make an equal return to those obligations i so justly owe you, i can only have recourse to vows, and ardently implore the gods that i may not be found unworthy of those favours which you are repeatedly conferring upon me. xxiii -to the emperor trajan i received, sir, a dispatch from your freedman, lycormas, desiring me, if any embassy from bosporus[1017] should come here on the way to rome, that i would detain it till his arrival. none has yet arrived, at least in the city[1018] where i now am. but a courier passing through this place from the king of sarmatia,[1019] i embrace the opportunity which accidentally offers itself, of sending with him the messenger which lycormas despatched hither, that you might be informed by both their letters of what, perhaps, it may be expedient you should be acquainted with at one and the same time. xxiv -to the emperor trajan i am informed by a letter from the king of sarmatia that there are certain affairs of which you ought to be informed as soon as possible. in order, therefore, to hasten the despatches which his courier was charged with to you, i granted him an order to make use of the public post.[1020] xxv -to the emperor trajan the ambassador from the king of sarmatia having remained two days, by his own choice, at nicea, i did not think it reasonable, sir, to detain him any longer: because, in the first place, it was still uncertain when your freedman, lycormas, would arrive, and then again some indispensable affairs require my presence in a different part of the province. of this i thought it necessary that you should be informed, because i lately acquainted you in a letter that lycormas had desired, if any embassy should come this way from bosporus, that i would detain it till his arrival. but i saw no plausible pretext for keeping him back any longer, especially as the despatches from lycormas, which (as i mentioned before) i was not willing to detain, would probably reach you some days sooner than this ambassador. xxvi -to the emperor trajan i received a letter, sir, from apuleius, a military man, belonging to the garrison at nicomedia, informing me that one callidromus, being arrested by maximus and dionysius (two bakers, to whom he had hired himself), fled for refuge to your statue;[1021] that, being brought before a magistrate, he declared he, was formerly slave to laberius maximus, but being taken prisoner by susagus[1022] in moesia,[1023] he was sent as a present from decebalus to pacorus, king of parthia, in whose service he continued several years, from whence he made his escape, and came to nicomedia. when he was examined before me, he confirmed this account, for which reason i thought it necessary to send[1024] him to you. this i should have done sooner, but i delayed his journey in order to make an inquiry concerning a seal ring which he said was taken from him, upon which was engraven the figure of pacorus in his royal robes; i was desirous (if it could have been found) of transmitting this curiosity to you, with a small gold nugget which he says he brought from out of the parthian mines. i have affixed my seal to it, the impression of which is a chariot drawn by four horses. xxvii -to the emperor trajan your freedman and procurator,[1025] maximus, behaved, sir, during all the time we were together, with great probity, attention, and diligence; as one strongly attached to your interest, and strictly observant of discipline. this testimony i willingly give him; and i give it with all the fidelity i owe you. xxviii -to the emperor trajan after having experienced, sir, in gabius bassus, who commands on the pontic[1026] coast, the greatest integrity, honour, and diligence, as well as the most particular respect to myself, i cannot refuse him my best wishes and suffrage; and i give them to him with all that fidelity which is due to you. i have found him abundantly qualified by having served in the army under you; and it is owing to the advantages of your discipline that he has learned to merit your favour. the soldiery and the people here, who have had full experience of his justice and humanity, rival each other in that glorious testimony they give of his conduct, both in public and in private; and i certify this with all the sincerity you have a right to expect from me. xxix -to the emperor trajan nymphidius lupus,[1027] sir, and myself, served in the army together; he commanded a body of the auxiliary forces at the same time that i was military tribune; and it was from thence my affection for him began. a long acquaintance has since mutually endeared and strengthened our friendship. for this reason i did violence to his repose, and insisted upon his attending me into bithynia, as my assessor in council. he most readily granted me this proof of his friendship; and without any regard to the plea of age, or the ease of retirement, he shared, and continues to share, with me, the fatigue of public business. i consider his relations, therefore, as my own; in which number nymphidius lupus, his son, claims my particular regard. he is a youth of great merit and indefatigable application, and in every respect well worthy of so excellent a father. the early proof he gave of his merit, when he commanded a regiment of foot, shows him to be equal to any honour you may think proper to confer upon him; and it gained him the strongest testimony of approbation from those most illustrious personages, julius ferox and fuscus salinator. and i will add, sir, that i shall rejoice in any accession of dignity which he shall receive as an occasion of particular satisfaction to myself. xxx -to the emperor trajan i beg your determination, sir, on a point i am exceedingly doubtful about: it is whether i should place the public slaves[1028] as sentries round the prisons of the several cities in this province (as has been hitherto the practice) or employ a party of soldiers for that purpose? on the one hand, i am afraid the public slaves will not attend this duty with the fidelity they ought; and on the other, that it will engage too large a body of the soldiery. in the meanwhile i have joined a few of the latter with the former. i am apprehensive, however, there may be some danger that this method will occasion a general neglect of duty, as it will afford them a mutual opportunity of throwing the blame upon each other. xxxi -trajan to pliny there is no occasion, my dearest secundus, to draw off any soldiers in order to guard the prisons. let us rather persevere in the ancient customs observed in this province, of employing the public slaves for that purpose; and the fidelity with which they shall execute their duty will depend much upon your care and strict discipline. it is greatly to be feared, as you observe, if the soldiers should be mixed with the public slaves, they will mutually trust to each other, and by that means grow so much the more negligent. but my principal objection is that as few soldiers as possible should be withdrawn from their standard. xxxii -to the emperor trajan gabius bassus, who commands upon the frontiers of pontica, in a manner suitable to the respect and duty which he owes you, came to me, and has been with me, sir, for several days. as far as i could observe, he is a person of great merit and worthy of your favour. i acquainted him it was your order that he should retain only ten beneficiary[1029] soldiers, two horse-guards, and one centurion out of the troops which you were pleased to assign to my command. he assured me those would not be sufficient, and that he would write to you accordingly; for which reason i thought it proper not immediately to recall his supernumeraries. xxxiii -trajan to pliny i have received from gabius bassus the letter you mention, acquainting me that the number of soldiers i had ordered him was not sufficient; and for your information i have directed my answer to be hereunto annexed. it is very material to distinguish between what the exigency of affairs requires and what an ambitious desire of extending power may think necessary. as for ourselves, the public welfare must be our only guide: accordingly it is incumbent upon us to take all possible care that the soldiers shall not be absent from their standard. xxxiv -to the emperor trajan the prusenses, sir, having an ancient bath which lies in a ruinous state, desire your leave to repair it; but, upon examination, i am of opinion it ought to be rebuilt. i think, therefore, you may indulge them in this request, as there will be a sufficient fund for that purpose, partly from those debts which are due from private persons to the public which i am now collecting in; and partly from what they raise among themselves towards furnishing the bath with oil, which they are willing to apply to the carrying on of this building; a work which the dignity of the city and the splendour of your times seem to demand. xxxv -trajan to pliny if the erecting a public bath will not be too great a charge upon the prusenses, we may comply with their request; provided, however, that no new tax be levied for this purpose, nor any of those taken off which are appropriated to necessary services. xxxvi -to the emperor trajan i am assured, sir, by your freedman and receiver-general maximus, that it is necessary he should have a party of soldiers assigned to him, over and besides the beneficiarii, which by your orders i allotted to the very worthy gemellinus. those therefore which i found in his service, i thought proper he should retain, especially as he was going into paphlagonia,[1030] in order to procure corn. for his better protection likewise, and because it was his request, i added two of the cavalry. but i beg you would inform me, in your next despatches, what method you would have me observe for the future in points of this nature. xxx vii -trajan to pliny as my freedman maximus was going upon an extraordinary commission to procure corn, i approve of your having supplied him with a file of soldiers. but when he shall return to the duties of his former post, i think two from you and as many from his coadjutor, my receiver-general virdius gemelhinus, will be sufficient. xxxviii to the emperor trajan the very excellent young man sempronius caelianus, having discovered two slaves[1031] among the recruits, has sent them to me. but i deferred passing sentence till i had consulted you, the restorer and upholder of military discipline, concerning the punishment proper to be inflicted upon them. my principal doubt is that, whether, although they have taken the military oath, they are yet entered into any particular legion. i request you therefore, sir, to inform me what course i should pursue in this affair, especially as it concerns example. xxxix -trajan to pliny sempronius caelinus has acted agreeably to my orders, in sending such persons to be tried before you as appear to deserve capital punishment. it is material however, in the case in question, to inquire whether these slaves in-listed themselves voluntarily, or were chosen by the officers, or presented as substitutes for others. if they were chosen, the officer is guilty; if they are substitutes, the blame rests with those who deputed them; but if, conscious of the legal inabilities of their station, they presented themselves voluntarily, the punishment must fall upon their own heads. that they are not yet entered into any legion, makes no great difference in their case; for they ought to have given a true account of themselves immediately, upon their being approved as fit for the service. xl -to the emperor trajan as i have your permission, sir, to address myself to you in all my doubts, you will not consider it beneath your dignity to descend to those humbler affairs which concern my administration of this province. i find there are in several cities, particularly those of nicomedia and nicea, certain persons who take upon themselves to act as public slaves, and receive an annual stipend accordingly; notwithstanding they have been condemned either to the mines, the public games,[1032] or other punishments of the like nature. having received information of this abuse i have been long debating with myself what i ought to do. on the one hand, to send them back again to their respective punishments (many of them being now grown old, and behaving, as i am assured, with sobriety and modesty) would, i thought, be proceeding against them too severely; on the other, to retain convicted criminals in the public service, seemed not altogether decent. i considered at the same time to support these people in idleness would be an useless expense to the public; and to leave them to starve would be dangerous. i was obliged therefore to suspend the determination of this matter till i could consult with you. you will be desirous, perhaps, to be informed how it happened that these persons escaped the punishments to which they were condemned. this enquiry i have also made, but cannot return you any satisfactory answer. the decrees against them were indeed produced; but no record appears of their having ever been reversed. it was asserted, however, that these people were pardoned upon their petition to the proconsuls, or their lieutenants; which seems likely to be the truth, as it is improbable any person would have dared to set them at liberty without authority. xli -trajan to pliny you will remember you were sent into bithynia for the particular purpose of correcting those many abuses which appeared in need of reform. now none stands more so than that of criminals who have been sentenced to punishment should not only be set at liberty (as your letter informs me) without authority; but even appointed to employments which ought only to be exercised by persons whose characters are irreproachable. those therefore among them who have been convicted within these ten years, and whose sentence has not been reversed by proper authority, must be sent back again to their respective punishments: but where more than ten years have elapsed since their conviction, and they are grown old and infirm, let them he disposed of in such employments as are but few degrees removed from the punishments to which they were sentenced; that is, either to attend upon the public baths, cleanse the common sewers, or repair the streets and highways, the usual offices assigned to such persons. xlii -to the emperor trajan while i was making a progress in a different part of the province, a most extensive fire broke out at nicomedia, which not only consumed several private houses, but also two public buildings; the town-house and the temple of isis, though they stood on contrary sides of the street. the occasion of its spreading thus far was partly owing to the violence of the wind, and partly to the indolence of the people, who, manifestly, stood idle and motionless spectators of this terrible calamity. the truth is the city was not furnished with either engines, [1033]buckets, or any single instrument suitable for extinguishing fires; which i have now however given directions to have prepared. you will consider, sir, whether it may not be advisable to institute a company of fire-men, consisting only of one hundred and fifty members. i will take care none but those of that business shall be admitted into it, and that the privileges granted them shall not be applied to any other purpose. as this corporate body will be restricted to so small a number of members, it will be easy to keep them under proper regulation. xliii -trajan to pliny you are of opinion it would be proper to establish a company of firemen in nicomedia, agreeably to what has been practised in several other cities. but it is to be remembered that societies of this sort have greatly disturbed the peace of the province in general, and of those cities in particular. whatever name we give them, and for whatever purposes they may be founded, they will not fail to form themselves into factious assemblies, however short their meetings may be. it will therefore be safer to provide such machines as are of service in extinguishing fires, enjoining the owners of houses to assist in preventing the mischief from spreading, and, if it should be necessary, to call in the aid of the populace. xliv -to the emperor trajan we have acquitted, sir, and renewed our annual vows[1034] for your prosperity, in which that of the empire is essentially involved, imploring the gods to grant us ever thus to pay and thus to repeat them. xlv -trajan to pliny i received the satisfaction, my dearest secundus, of being informed by your letter that you, together with the people under your government, have both discharged and renewed your vows to the immortal gods for my health and happiness. xlvi -to the emperor trajan the citizens of nicomedia, sir, have expended three millions three hundred and twenty-nine sesterces[1035] in building an aqueduct; but, not being able to finish it, the works are entirely falling to ruin. they made a second attempt in another place, where they laid out two millions.[1036] but this likewise is discontinued; so that, after having been at an immense charge to no purpose, they must still be at a further expense, in order to be accommodated with water. i have examined a fine spring from whence the water may be conveyed over arches (as was attempted in their first design) in such a manner that the higher as well as level and low parts of the city may be supplied. there are still remaining a very few of the old arches; and the square stones, however, employed in the former building, may be used in turning the new arches. i am of opinion part should be raised with brick, as that will be the easier and cheaper material. but that this work may not meet with the same ill-success as the former, it will be necessary to send here an architect, or some one skilled in the construction of this kind of waterworks. and i will venture to say, from the beauty and usefulness of the design, it will be an erection well worthy the splendour of your times. xlvii -trajan to pliny care must be taken to supply the city of nicomedia with water; and that business, i am well persuaded, you will perform with all the diligence you ought. but really it is no less incumbent upon you to examine by whose misconduct it has happened that such large sums have been thrown away upon this, lest they apply the money to private purposes, and the aqueduct in question, like the preceding, should be begun, and afterwards left unfinished. you will let me know the result of your inquiry. xlviii -to the emperor trajan the citizens of nicea, sir; are building a theatre, which, though it is not yet finished, has already exhausted, as i am informed (for i have not examined the account myself), above ten millions of sesterces;[1037] and, what is worse, i fear to no purpose. for either from the foundation being laid in soft, marshy ground, or that the stone itself is light and crumbling, the walls are sinking, and cracked from top to bottom. it deserves your consideration, therefore, whether it would be best to carry on this work, or entirely discontinue it, or rather, perhaps, whether it would not be most prudent absolutely to destroy it: for the buttresses and foundations by means of which it is from time to time kept up appear to me more expensive than solid. several private persons have undertaken to build the compartment of this theatre at their own expense, some engaging to erect the portico, others the galleries over the pit:[1038] but this design cannot be executed, as the principal building which ought first to be completed is now at a stand. this city is also rebuilding, upon a far more enlarged plan, the gymnasium,[1039] which was burnt down before my arrival in the province. they have already been at some (and, i rather fear, a fruitless) expense. the structure is not only irregular and ill-proportioned, but the present architect (who, it must be owned, is a rival to the person who was first employed) asserts that the walls, although twenty-two feet[1040] in thickness, are not strong enough to support the superstructure, as the interstices are filled up with quarrystones, and the walls are not overlaid with brickwork. also the inhabitants of claudiopolis[1041] are sinking (i cannot call it erecting) a large public bath, upon a low spot of ground which lies at the foot of a mountain. the fund appropriated for the carrying on of this work arises from the money which those honorary members you were pleased to add to the senate paid (or, at least, are ready to pay whenever i call upon them) for their admission.[1042] as i am afraid, therefore, the public money in the city of nicea, and (what is infinitely more valuable than any pecuniary consideration) your bounty in that of nicopolis, should be ill applied, i must desire you to send hither an architect to inspect, not only the theatre, but the bath; in order to consider whether, after all the expense which has already been laid out, it will be better to finish them upon the present plan, or alter the one, and remove the other, in as far as may seem necessary: for otherwise we may perhaps throw away our future cost in endeavoring not to lose what we have already expended. xlix -trajan to pliny you, who are upon the spot, will best be able to consider and determine what is proper to be done concerning the theatre which the inhabitants of nicea are building; as for myself, it will be sufficient if you let me know your determination. with respect to the particular parts of this theatre which are to be raised at a private charge, you will see those engagements fulfilled when the body of the building to which they are to be annexed shall be finished. -these paltry greeks[1043] are, i know, immoderately fond of gymnastic diversions, and therefore, perhaps, the citizens of nicea have planned a more magnificent building for this purpose than is necessary; however, they must be content with such as will be sufficient to answer the purpose for which it is intended. i leave it entirely to you to persuade the claudiopolitani as you shall think proper with regard to their bath, which they have placed, it seems, in a very improper situation. as there is no province that is not furnished with men of skill and ingenuity, you cannot possibly want architects; unless you think it the shortest way to procure them from rome, when it is generally from greece that they come to us. l -to the emperor trajan when i reflect upon the splendour of your exalted station, and the magnanimity of your spirit, nothing, i am persuaded, can be more suitable to both than to point out to you such works as are worthy of your glorious and immortal name, as being no less useful than magnificent. bordering upon the territories of the city of nicomedia is a most extensive lake; over which marbles, fruits, woods, and all kinds of materials, the commodities of the country, are brought over in boats up to the high-road, at little trouble and expense, but from thence are conveyed in carriages to the sea-side, at a much greater charge and with great labour. to remedy this inconvenience, many hands will be in request; but upon such an occasion they cannot be wanting: for the country, and particularly the city, is exceedingly populous; and one may assuredly hope that every person will readily engage in a work which will be of universal benefit. it only remains then to send hither, if you shall think proper, a surveyor or an architect, in order to examine whether the lake lies above the level of the sea; the engineers of this province being of opinion that the former is higher by forty cubits,[1044] i find there is in the neighbourhood of this place a large canal, which was cut by a king of this country; but as it is left unfinished, it is uncertain whether it was for the purpose of draining the adjacent fields, or making a communication between the lake and the river. it is equally doubtful too whether the death of the king, or the despair of being able to accomplish the design, prevented the completion of it. if this was the reason, i am so much the more eager and warmly desirous, for the sake of your illustrious character (and i hope you will pardon me the ambition), that you may have the glory of executing what kings could only attempt. li -trajan to pliny there is something in the scheme you propose of opening a communication between the lake and the sea, which may, perhaps, tempt me to consent. but you must first carefully examine the situation of this body of water, what quantity it contains, and from whence it is supplied; lest, by giving it an opening into the sea, it should be totally drained. you may apply to calpurnius macer for an engineer, and i will also send you from hence some one skilled in works of this nature. lii -to the emperor trajan upon examining into the public expenses of the city of byzantium, which, i find, are extremely great, i was informed, sir, that the appointments of the ambassador whom they send yearly to you with their homage, and the decree which passes in the senate upon that occasion, amount to twelve thousand sesterces.[1045] but knowing the generous maxims of your government, i thought proper to send the decree without the ambassador, that, at the same time they discharged their public duty to you, their expense incurred in the manner of paying it might be lightened. this city is likewise taxed with the sum of three thousand sesterces[1046] towards defraying the expense of an envoy, whom they annually send to compliment the governor of moesia: this expense i have also directed to be spared. i beg, sir, you would deign either to confirm my judgment or correct my error in these points, by acquainting me with your sentiments. liii -trajan to pliny i entirely approve, my dearest secundus, of your having excused the byzantines that expense of twelve thousand sesterces in sending an ambassador to me. i shall esteem their duty as sufficiently paid, though i only receive the act of their senate through your hands. the governor of moesia must likewise excuse them if they compliment him at a less expense. liv -to the emperor trajan i beg, sir, you would settle a doubt i have concerning your diplomas;[1047] whether you think proper that those diplomas the dates of which are expired shall continue in force, and for how long? for i am apprehensive i may, through ignorance, either confirm such of these instruments as are illegal or prevent the effect of those which are necessary. lv -trajan to pliny the diplomas whose dates are expired must by no means be made use of. for which reason it is an inviolable rule with me to send new instruments of this kind into all the provinces before they are immediately wanted. lvi -to the emperor trajan upon intimating, sir, my intention to the city of apamea,[1048] of examining into the state of their public dues, their revenue and expenses, they told me they were all extremely willing i should inspect their accounts, but that no proconsul had ever yet looked them over, as they had a privilege (and that of a very ancient date) of administering the affairs of their corporation in the manner they thought proper. i required them to draw up a memorial of what they then asserted, which i transmit to you precisely as i received it; though i am sensible it contains several things foreign to the question. i beg you will deign to instruct me as to how i am to act in this affair, for i should be extremely sorry either to exceed or fall short of the duties of my commission. lvii -trajan to pliny the memorial of the apanieans annexed to your letter has saved me the necessity of considering the reasons they suggest why the former proconsuls forbore to inspect their accounts, since they are willing to submit them to your examination. their honest compliance deserves to be rewarded; and they may be assured the enquiry you are to make in pursuance of my orders shall be with a full reserve to their privileges. lviii -to the emperor trajan the nicomedians, sir, before my arrival in this province, had begun to build a new forum adjoining their former, in a corner of which stands an ancient temple dedicated to the mother of the gods.[1049] this fabric must either be repaired or removed, and for this reason chiefly, because it is a much lower building than that very lofty one which is now in process of erection. upon enquiry whether this temple had been consecrated, i was informed that their ceremonies of dedication differ from ours. you will be pleased therefore, sir, to consider whether a temple which has not been consecrated according to our rites may be removed,[1040b] consistently with the reverence due to religion: for, if there should be no objection from that quarter, the removal in every other respect would be extremely convenient. lix -trajan to pliny you may without scruple, my dearest secundus, if the situation requires it, remove the temple of the mother of the gods, from the place where it now stands, to any other spot more convenient. you need be under no difficulty with respect to the act of dedication; for the ground of a foreign city [1041b] is not capable of receiving that kind of consecration which is sanctified by our laws. lx -to the emperor trajan we have celebrated, sir (with those sentiments of joy your virtues so justly merit), the day of your accession to the empire, which was also its preservation, imploring the gods to preserve you in health and prosperity; for upon your welfare the security and repose of the world depends. i renewed at the same time the oath of allegiance at the head of the army, which repeated it after me in the usual form, the people of the province zealously concurring in the same oath. lxi -trajan to pliny your letter, my dearest secundus, was extremely acceptable, as it informed me of the zeal and affection with which you, together with the army and the provincials, solemnised the day of my accession to the empire. lxii -to the emperor trajan the debts which we are owing to the public are, by the prudence, sir, of your counsels, and the care of my administration, either actually paid in or now being collected: but i am afraid the money must lie unemployed. for as on one side there are few or no opportunities of purchasing land, so, on the other, one cannot meet with any person who is willing to borrow of the public [1042b] (especially at 12 per cent, interest) when they can raise money upon the same terms from private sources. you will consider then, sir, whether it may not be advisable, in order to invite responsible persons to take this money, to lower the interest; or if that scheme should not succeed, to place it in the hands of the decurii, upon their giving sufficient security to the public. and though they should not be willing to receive it, yet as the rate of interest will be diminished, the hardship will be so much the less. lxiii -trajan to pliny i agree with you, my dear pliny, that there seems to be no other method of facilitating the placing out of the public money than by lowering the interest; the measure of which you will determine according to the number of the borrowers. but to compel persons to receive it who are not disposed to do so, when possibly they themselves may have no opportunity of employing it, is by no means consistent with the justice of my government. lxiv -to the emperor trajan i return you my warmest acknowledgments, sir, that, among the many important occupations in which you are engaged you have condescended to be my guide on those points on which i have consulted you: a favour which i must now again beseech you to grant me. a certain person presented himself with a complaint that his adversaries, who had been banished for three years by the illustrious servilius calvus, still remained in the province: they, on the contrary, affirmed that calvus had revoked their sentence, and produced his edict to that effect. i thought it necessary therefore to refer the whole affair to you. for as i have your express orders not to restore any person who has been sentenced to banishment either by myself or others so i have no directions with respect to those who, having been banished by some of my predecessors in this government, have by them also been restored. it is necessary for me, therefore, to beg you would inform me, sir, how i am to act with regard to the abovementioned persons, as well as others, who, after having been condemned to perpetual banishment, have been found in the province without permission to return; for cases of that nature have likewise fallen under my cognisance. a person was brought before me who had been sentenced to perpetual exile by the proconsul julius bassus, but knowing that the acts of bassus, during his administration, had been rescinded, and that the senate had granted leave to all those who had fallen under his condemnation of appealing from his decision at any time within the space of two years, i enquired of this man whether he had, accordingly, stated his case to the proconsul. he replied he had not. i beg then you would inform me whether you would have him sent back into exile or whether you think some more severe and what kind of punishment should be inflicted upon him, and such others who may hereafter be found under the same circumstances. i have annexed to my letter the decree of calvus, and the edict by which the persons above-mentioned were restored, as also the decree of bassus. lxv -trajan to pliny i will let you know my determination concerning those exiles which were banished for three years by the proconsul p. servilius calvus, and soon afterwards restored to the province by his edict, when i shall have informed myself from him of the reasons of this proceeding. with respect to that person who was sentenced to perpetual banishment by julius bassus, yet continued to remain in the province, without making his appeal if he thought himself aggrieved (though he had two years given him for that purpose), i would have sent in chains to my praetorian prefects: [1043b] for, only to remand him back to a punishment which he has contumaciously eluded will by no means be a sufficient punishment. lxvi -to the emperor trajan when i cited the judges, sir, to attend me at a sessions [1044b] which i was going to hold, flavius archippus claimed the privilege of being excused as exercising the profession of a philosopher. [1045b] it was alleged by some who were present that he ought not only to be excused from that office, but even struck out of the rolls of judges, and remanded back to the punishment from which he had escaped, by breaking his chains. at the same time a sentence of the proconsul velius paullus was read, by which it appeared that archippus had been condemned to the mines for forgery. he had nothing to produce in proof of this sentence having ever been reversed. he alleged, however, in favour of his restitution, a petition which he presented to domitian, together with a letter from that prince, and a decree of the prusensians in his honour. to these he subjoined a letter which he had received from you; as also an edict and a letter of your august father confirming the grants which had been made to him by domitian. for these reasons, notwithstandng crimes of so atrocious a nature were laid to his charge, i did not think proper to determine anything concerning him, without first consulting with you, as it is an affair which seems to merit your particular decision. i have transmitted to you, with this letter, the several allegations on both sides. domitian's letter to terentius maximus "flavius archippus the philosopher has prevailed with me to give an order that six hundred thousand sesterces [1046b] be laid out in the purchase of an estate for the support of him and his family, in the neighbourhood of prusias, [1047b] his native country. let this be accordingly done; and place that sum to the account of my benefactions." from the same to l. appius maximus "i recommend, my dear maximus, to your protection that worthy philosopher archippus; a person whose moral conduct is agreeable to the principles of the philosophy he professes; and i would have you pay entire regard to whatever he shall reasonably request." the edict of the emperor nerva "there are some points no doubt, quirites, concerning which the happy tenour of my government is a sufficient indication of my sentiments; and a good prince need not give an express declaration in matters wherein his intention cannot but be clearly understood. every citizen in the empire will bear me witness that i gave up my private repose to the security of the public, and in order that i might have the pleasure of dispensing new bounties of my own, as also of confirming those which had been granted by predecessors. but lest the memory of him [1048b] who conferred these grants, or the diffidence of those who received them, should occasion any interruption to the public joy, i thought it as necessary as it is agreeable to me to obviate these suspicions by assuring them of my indulgence. i do not wish any man who has obtained a private or a public privilege from one of the former emperors to imagine he is to be deprived of such a privilege, merely that he may owe the restoration of it to me; nor need any who have received the gratifications of imperial favour petition me to have them confirmed. rather let them leave me at leisure for conferring new grants, under the assurance that i am only to be solicited for those bounties which have not already been obtained, and which the happier fortune of the empire has put it in my power to bestow." from the same to tullius justus "since i have publicly decreed that all acts begun and accomplished in former reigns should be confirmed, the letters of domitian must remain valid." lxvii -to the emperor trajan flavius archippus has conjured me, by all my vows for your prosperity, and by your immortal glory, that i would transmit to you the memorial which he presented to me. i could not refuse a request couched in such terms; however, i acquainted the prosecutrix with this my intention, from whom i have also received a memorial on her part. i have annexed them both to this letter; that by hearing, as it were, each party, you may the better be enabled to decide. lx viii -trajan to pliny it is possible that domitian might have been ignorant of the circumstances in which archippus was when he wrote the letter so much to that philosopher's credit. however, it is more agreeable to my disposition to suppose that prince designed he should be restored to his former situation; especially since he so often had the honour of a statue decreed to him by those who could not be ignorant of the sentence pronounced against him by the proconsul paullus. but i do not mean to intimate, my dear pliny, that if any new charge should be brought against him, you should be the less disposed to hear his accusers. i have examined the memorial of his prosecutrix, furia prima, as well as that of archippus himself, which you sent with your last letter. lxix -to the emperor trajan the apprehensions you express, sir, that the lake will be in danger of being entirely drained if a communication should be opened between that and the sea, by means of the river, are agreeable to that prudence and forethought you so eminently possess; but i think i have found a method to obviate that inconvenience. a channel may be cut from the lake up to the river so as not quite to join them, leaving just a narrow strip of land between, preserving the lake; by this means it will not only be kept quite separate from the river, but all the same purposes will be answered as if they were united: for it will be extremely easy to convey over that little intervening ridge whatever goods shall be brought down by the canal. this is a scheme which may be pursued, if it should be found necessary; but i hope there will be no occasion to have recourse to it. for, in the first place, the lake itself is pretty deep; and in the next, by damming up the river which runs from it on the opposite side and turning its course as we shall find expedient, the same quantity of water may be retained. besides, there are several brooks near the place where it is proposed the channel shall be cut which, if skilfully collected, will supply the lake with water in proportion to what it shall discharge. but if you should rather approve of the channel's being extended farther and cut narrower, and so conveyed directly into the sea, without running into the river, the reflux of the tide will return whatever it receives from the lake. after all, if the nature of the place should not admit of any of these schemes, the course of the water may be checked by sluices. these, however, and many other particulars, will be more skilfully examined into by the engineer, whom, indeed, sir, you ought to send, according to your promise, for it is an enterprise well worthy of your attention and magnificence. in the meanwhile, i have written to the illustrious calpurnius macer, in pursuance of your orders, to send me the most skilful engineer to be had. lxx -trajan to pliny it is evident, my dearest secundus, that neither your prudence nor your care has been wanting in this affair of the lake, since, in order to render it of more general benefit, you have provided so many expedients against the danger of its being drained. i leave it to your own choice to pursue whichever of the schemes shall be thought most proper. calpurnius macer will furnish you, no doubt, with an engineer, as artificers of that kind are not wanting in his province. lxxi -to the emperor trajan a very considerable question, sir, in which the whole province is interested, has been lately started, concerning the state [1049b] and maintenance of deserted children.[1050] i have examined the constitutions of former princes upon this head, but not finding anything in them relating, either in general or particular, to the bithynians, i thought it necessary to apply to you for your directions: for in a point which seems to require the special interposition of your authority, i could not content myself with following precedents. an edict of the emperor augustus (as pretended) was read to me, concerning one annia; as also a letter from vespasian to the lacedaemonians, and another from titus to the same, with one likewise from him to the achaeans, also some letters from domitian, directed to the proconsuls avidius nigrinus and armenius brocchus, together with one from that prince to the lacedaemonians: but i have not transmitted them to you, as they were not correct (and some of them too of doubtful authenticity), and also because i imagine the true copies are preserved in your archives. lxxii trajan to pliny the question concerning children who were exposed by their parents, and afterwards preserved by others, and educated in a state of servitude, though born free, has been frequently discussed; but i do not find in the constitutions of the princes my predecessors any general regulation upon this head, extending to all the provinces. there are, indeed, some rescripts of domitian to avidius nigrinus and armenhis brocchus, which ought to be observed; but bithynia is not comprehended in the provinces therein mentioned. i am of opinion therefore that the claims of those who assert their right of freedom upon this footing should be allowed; without obliging them to purchase their liberty by repaying the money advanced for their maintenance.[1051] lxxiii -to the emperor trajan having been petitioned by some persons to grant them the liberty (agreeably to the practice of former proconsuls) of removing the relics of their deceased relations, upon the suggestion that either their monuments were decayed by age or ruined by the inundations of the river, or for other reasons of the same kind, i thought proper, sir, knowing that in cases of this nature it is usual at rome to apply to the college of priests, to consult you, who are the sovereign of that sacred order, as to how you would have me act in this case. lxx iv -trajan to pliny it will be a hardship upon the provincials to oblige them to address themselves to the college of priests whenever they may have just reasons for removing the ashes of their ancestors. in this case, therefore, it will be better you should follow the example of the governors your predecessors, and grant or deny them this liberty as you shall see reasonable. lxxv -to the emperor trajan i have enquired, sir, at prusa, for a proper place on which to erect the bath you were pleased to allow that city to build, and i have found one to my satisfaction. it is upon the site where formerly, i am told, stood a very beautiful mansion, but which is now entirely fallen into ruins. by fixing upon that spot, we shall gain the advantage of ornamenting the city in a part which at present is exceedingly deformed, and enlarging it at the same time without removing any of the buildings; only restoring one which is fallen to decay. there are some circumstances attending this structure of which it is proper i should inform you. claudius polyaenus bequeathed it to the emperor claudius cã¦sar, with directions that a temple should be erected to that prince in a colonnade-court, and that the remainder of the house should be let in apartments. the city received the rents for a considerable time; but partly by its having been plundered, and partly by its being neglected, the whole house, colonnade-court, and all, is entirely gone to ruin, and there is now scarcely anything remaining of it but the ground upon which it stood. if you shall think proper, sir, either to give or sell this spot of ground to the city, as it lies so conveniently for their purpose, they will receive it as a most particular favour. i intend, with your permission, to place the bath in the vacant area, and to extend a range of porticoes with seats in that part where the former edifice stood. this new erection i purpose dedicating to you, by whose bounty it will rise with all the elegance and magnificence worthy of your glorious name. i have sent you a copy of the will, by which, though it is inaccurate, you will see that polyaenus left several articles of ornament for the embellishment of this house; but these also are lost with all the rest: i will, however, make the strictest enquiry after them that i am able. lxxvi -trajan to pliny 1 have no objection to the prusenses making use of the ruined court and house, which you say are untenanted, for the erection of their bath. but it is not sufficiently clear by your letter whether the temple in the centre of the colonnade-court was actually dedicated to claudius or not; for if it were, it is still consecrated ground.[1052] lxxvii -to the emperor trajan i have been pressed by some persons to take upon myself the enquiry of causes relating to claims of freedom by birth-right, agreeably to a rescript of domitian's to minucius rufus, and the practice of former proconsuls. but upon casting my eye on the decree of the senate concerning cases of this nature, i find it only mentions the proconsular provinces.[1053] i have therefore, sir, deferred interfering in this affair, till i shall receive your instructions as to how you would have me proceed. lxxviii -trajan to pliny if you will send me the decree of the senate, which occasioned your doubt, i shall be able to judge whether it is proper you should take upon yourself the enquiry of causes relating to claims of freedom by birth-right. lxxix -to the emperor trajan julius largus, of ponus[1054] (a person whom i never saw nor indeed ever heard his name till lately), in confidence, sir, of your distinguishing judgment in my favour, has entrusted me with the execution of the last instance of his loyalty towards you. he has left me, by his will, his estate upon trust, in the first place to receive out of it fifty thousand sesterces[1055] for my own use, and to apply the remainder for the benefit of the cities of heraclea and tios,[1056] either by erecting some public edifice dedicated to your honour or instituting athletic games, according as i shall judge proper. these games are to be celebrated every five years, and to be called trajan's games. my principal reason for acquainting you with this bequest is that i may receive your directions which of the respective alternatives to choose. lxxx -trajan to pliny by the prudent choice julius largus has made of a trustee, one would imagine he had known you perfectly well. you will consider then what will most tend to perpetuate his memory, under the circumstances of the respective cities, and make your option accordingly. lxxxi -to the emperor trajan you acted agreeably, sir, to your usual prudence and foresight in ordering the illustrious calpurnius macer to send a legionary centurion to byzantium: you will consider whether the city of juliopolis' does not deserve the same regard, which, though it is extremely small, sustains very great burthens, and is so much the more exposed to injuries as it is less capable of resisting them. whatever benefits you shall confer upon that city will in effect be advantageous to the whole country; for it is situated at the entrance of bithynia, and is the town through which all who travel into this province generally pass. lxxxii -trajan to pliny the circumstances of the city of byzantium are such, by the great confluence of strangers to it, that i held it incumbent upon me, and consistent with the customs of former reigns, to send thither a legionary centurion's guard to preserve the privileges of that state. but if we should distinguish the city of juliopolis[1057] in the same way, it will be introducing a precedent for many others, whose claim to that favour will rise in proportion to their want of strength. i have so much confidence, however, in your administration as to believe you will omit no method of protecting them from injuries. if any persons shall act contrary to the discipline i have enjoined, let them be instantly corrected; or if they happen to be soldiers, and their crimes should be too enormous for immediate chastisement, i would have them sent to their officers, with an account of the particular misdemeanour you shall find they have been guilty of; but if the delinquents should be on their way to rome, inform me by letter. lxxxiii -to the emperor trajan by a law of pompey's[1058] concerning the bithynians, it is enacted, sir, that no person shall be a magistrate, or be chosen into the senate, under the age of thirty. by the same law it is declared that those who have exercised the office of magistrate are qualified to be members of the senate. subsequent to this law, the emperor augustus published an edict, by which it was ordained that persons of the age of twenty-two should be capable of being magistrates. the question therefore is whether those who have exercised the functions of a magistrate before the age of thirty may be legally chosen into the senate by the censors?[1059] and if so, whether, by the same kind of construction, they may be elected senators, at the age which entitles them to be magistrates, though they should not actually have borne any office? a custom which, it seems, has hitherto been observed, and is said to be expedient, as it is rather better that persons of noble birth should be admitted into the senate than those of plebeian rank. the censors elect having desired my sentiments upon this point, i was of opinion that both by the law of pompey and the edict of augustus those who had exercised the magistracy before the age of thirty might be chosen into the senate; and for this reason, because the edict allows the office of magistrate to be undertaken before thirty; and the law declares that whoever has been a magistrate should be eligible for the senate. but with respect to those who never discharged any office in the state, though they were of the age required for that purpose, i had some doubt: and therefore, sir, i apply to you for your directions. i have subjoined to this letter the heads of the law, together with the edict of augustus. lxxxiv -trajan to pliny i agree with you, my dearest secundus, in your construction, and am of opinion that the law of pompey is so far repealed by the edict of the emperor augustus that those persons who are not less than twenty-two years of age may execute the office of magistrates, and, when they have, may be received into the senate of their respective cities. but i think that they who are under thirty years of age, and have not discharged the function of a magistrate, cannot, upon pretence that in point of years they were competent to the office, legally be elected into the senate of their several communities. lxxxv -to the emperor trajan whilst i was despatching some public affairs, sir, at my apartments in prusa, at the foot of olympus, with the intention of leaving that city the same day, the magistrate asclepiades informed me that eumolpus had appealed to me from a motion which cocceianus dion made in their senate. dion, it seems, having been appointed supervisor of a public building, desired that it might be assigned[1060] to the city in form. eumolpus, who was counsel for flavius archippus, insisted that dion should first be required to deliver in his accounts relating to this work, before it was assigned to the corporation; suggesting that he had not acted in the manner he ought. he added, at the same time, that in this building, in which your statue is erected, the bodies of dion's wife and son are entombed,[1061] and urged me to hear this cause in the public court of judicature. upon my at once assenting to his request, and deferring my journey for that purpose, he desired a longer day in order to prepare matters for hearing, and that i would try this cause in some other city. i appointed the city of nicea; where, when i had taken my seat, the same eumolpus, pretending not to be yet sufficiently instructed, moved that the trial might be again put off: dion, on the contrary, insisted it should be heard. they debated this point very fully on both sides, and entered a little into the merits of the cause; when being of opinion that it was reasonable it should be adjourned, and thinking it proper to consult with you in an affair which was of consequence in point of precedent, i directed them to exhibit the articles of their respective allegations in writing; for i was desirous you should judge from their own representations of the state of the question between them. dion promised to comply with this direction and eumolpus also assured me he would draw up a memorial of what he had to allege on the part of the community. but he added that, being only concerned as advocate on behalf of archippus, whose instructions he had laid before me, he had no charge to bring with respect to the sepulchres. archippus, however, for whom eulnolpus was counsel here, as at prusa, assured me he would himself present a charge in form upon this head. but neither eumolpus nor archippus (though i have waited several days for that purpose) have yet performed their engagement: dion indeed has; and i have annexed his memorial to this letter. i have inspected the buildings in question, where i find your statue is placed in a library, and as to the edifice in which the bodies of dion's wife and son are said to be deposited, it stands in the middle of a court, which is enclosed with a colonnade. deign, therefore, i entreat you, sir, to direct my judgment in the determination of this cause above all others as it is a point to which the public is greatly attentive, and necessarily so, since the fact is not only acknowledged, but countenanced by many precedents. lxxxvi -trajan to pliny you well know, my dearest secundus, that it is my standing maxim not to create an awe of my person by severe and rigorous measures, and by construing every slight offence into an act of treason; you had no reason, therefore, to hesitate a moment upon the point concerning which you thought proper to consult me. without entering therefore into the merits of that question (to which i would by no means give any attention, though there were ever so many instances of the same kind), i recommend to your care the examination of dion's accounts relating to the public works which he has finished; as it is a case in which the interest of the city is concerned, and as dion neither ought nor, it seems, does refuse to submit to the examination. lxxxvii -to the emperor trajan the niceans having, in the name of their community, conjured me, sir, by all my hopes and wishes for your prosperity and immortal glory (an adjuration which is and ought to be most sacred to me), to present to you their petition, i did not think myself at liberty to refuse them: i have therefore annexed it to this letter. lxxxviii -trajan to pliny the niceans i find, claim a right, by an edict of augustus, to the estate of every citizen who dies intestate. you will therefore summon the several parties interested in this question, and, examining these pretensions, with the assistance of the procurators virdius gemellinus, and epimachus, my freedman (having duly weighed every argument that shall be alleged against the claim), determine as shall appear most equitable. lxxxix -to the emperor trajan may this and many succeeding birthdays be attended, sir, with the highest felicity to you; and may you, in the midst of an uninterrupted course of health and prosperity, be still adding to the increase of that immortal glory which your virtues justly merit! xc -trajan to pliny your wishes, my dearest secundus, for my enjoyment of many happy birthdays amidst the glory and prosperity of the republic were extremely agreeable to me. xci -to the emperor trajan the inhabitants of sinope[1062] are ill supplied, sir, with water, which however may be brought thither from about sixteen miles' distance in great plenty and perfection. the ground, indeed, near the source of this spring is, for rather over a mile, of a very suspicious and marshy nature; but i have directed an examination to be made (which will be effected at a small expense) whether it is sufficiently firm to support any superstructure. i have taken care to provide a sufficient fund for this purpose, if you should approve, sir, of a work so conducive to the health and enjoyment of this colony, greatly distressed by a scarcity of water. xcii -trajan to pliny i would have you proceed, my dearest secundus, in carefully examining whether the ground you suspect is firm enough to support an aqueduct. for i have no manner of doubt that the sinopian colony ought to be supplied with water; provided their finances will bear the expense of a work so conducive to their health and pleasure. xciii -to the emperor trajan the free and confederate city of the amiseni[1063] enjoys, by your indulgence, the privilege of its own laws. a memorial being presented to me there, concerning a charitable institution,[1064] i have subjoined it to this letter, that you may consider, sir, whether, and how far, this society ought to be licensed or prohibited. xciv -trajan to pliny if the petition of the amiseni which you have transmitted to me, concerning the establishment of a charitable society, be agreeable to their own laws, which by the articles of alliance it is stipulated they shall enjoy, i shall not oppose it; especially if these contributions are employed, not for the purpose of riot and faction, but for the support of the indigent. in other cities, however, which are subject to our laws, i would have all assemblies of this nature prohibited. xcv -to the emperor trajan suetonius tranquillus, sir, is a most excellent, honour-able, and learned man. i was so much pleased with his tastes and disposition that i have long since invited him into my family, as my constant guest and domestic friend; and my affection for him increased the more i knew of him. two reasons concur to render the privileges which the law grants to those who have three children particularly necessary to him; i mean the bounty of his friends, and the ill-success of his marriage. those advantages, therefore, which nature has denied to him, he hopes to obtain from your goodness, by my intercession. i am thoroughly sensible, sir, of the value of the privilege i am asking; but i know, too, i am asking it from one whose gracious compliance with all my desires i have amply experienced. how passionately i wish to do so in the present instance, you will judge by my thus requesting it in my absence; which i would not, had it not been a favour which i am more than ordinarily anxious to obtain.[1065] xcvi -trajan to pliny you cannot but be sensible, my dearest secundus, how reserved i am in granting favours of the kind you desire; having frequently declared in the senate that i had not exceeded the number of which i assured that illustrious order i would be contented with. i have yielded, however, to your request, and have directed an article to be inserted in my register, that i have conferred upon tranquillus, on my usual conditions, the privilege which the law grants to these who have three children. xcvii to the emperor trajan[1066] it is my invariable rule, sir, to refer to you in all matters where i feel doubtful; for who is more capable of removing my scruples, or informing my ignorance? having never been present at any trials concerning those who profess christianity, i am unacquainted not only with the nature of their crimes, or the measure of their punishment, but how far it is proper to enter into an examination concerning them. whether, therefore, any difference is usually made with respect to ages, or no distinction is to be observed between the young and the adult; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon; or if a man has been once a christian, it avails nothing to desist from his error; whether the very profession of christianity, unattended with any criminal act, or only the crimes themselves inherent in the profession are punishable; on all these points i am in great doubt. in the meanwhile, the method i have observed towards those who have been brought before me as christians is this: i asked them whether they were christians; if they admitted it, i repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment; if they persisted, i ordered them to be at once punished: for i was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction. there were others also brought before me possessed with the same infatuation, but being roman citizens,[1067] i directed them to be sent to rome. but this crime spreading (as is usually the case) while it was actually under prosecution, several instances of the same nature occurred. an anonymous information was laid before me containing a charge against several persons, who upon examination denied they were christians, or had ever been so. they repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and incense before your statue (which for that purpose i had ordered to be brought, together with those of the gods), and even reviled the name of christ: whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really christians into any of these compliances: i thought it proper, therefore, to discharge them. some among those who were accused by a witness in person at first confessed themselves christians, but immediately after denied it; the rest owned indeed that they had been of that number formerly, but had now (some above three, others more, and a few above twenty years ago) renounced that error. they all worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, uttering imprecations at the same time against the name of christ. they affirmed the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to christ, as to a divinity, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble, to eat in common a harmless meal. from this custom, however, they desisted after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your commands, i forbade the meeting of any assemblies. after receiving this account, i judged it so much the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth, by putting two female slaves to the torture, who were said to officiate' in their religious rites: but all i could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition. i deemed it expedient, therefore, to adjourn all further proceedings, in order to consult you. for it appears to be a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great numbers must be involved in the danger of these prosecutions, which have already extended, and are still likely to extend, to persons of all ranks and ages, and even of both sexes. in fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighbouring villages and country. nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress. the temples, at least, which were once almost deserted, begin now to be frequented; and the sacred rites, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for the victims, which till lately found very few purchasers. from all this it is easy to conjecture what numbers might be reclaimed if a general pardon were granted to those who shall repent of their error.[1068] xcviii -trajan to pliny you have adopted the right course, my dearest secundtis, in investigating the charges against the christians who were brought before you. it is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. do not go out of your way to look for them. if indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished;[1069] with the restriction, however, that where the party denies he is a christian, and shall make it evident that he is not, by invoking our gods, let him (notwithstanding any former suspicion) be pardoned upon his repentance. anonymous informations ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution. it is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is quite foreign to the spirit of our age. xcix -to the emperor trajan the elegant and beautiful city of amastris,[1070] sir, has, among other principal constructions, a very fine street and of considerable length, on one entire side of which runs what is called indeed a river, but in fact is no other than a vile common sewer, extremely offensive to the eye, and at the same time very pestilential on account of its noxious smell. it will be advantageous, therefore, in point of health, as well as decency, to have it covered; which shall be done with your permission: as i will take care, on my part, that money be not wanting for executing so noble and necessary a work. c -trajan to pliny it is highly reasonable, my dearest secundus, if the water which runs through the city of amastris is prejudicial, while uncovered, to the health of the inhabitants, that it should be covered up. i am well assured you will, with your usual application, take care that the money necessary for this work shall not be wanting. ci to the emperor trajan we have celebrated, sir, with great joy and festivity, those votive soleninities which were publicly proclaimed as formerly, and renewed them the present year, accompanied by the soldiers and provincials, who zealously joined with us in imploring the gods that they would be graciously pleased to preserve you and the republic in that state of prosperity which your many and great virtues, particularly your piety and reverence towards them, so justly merit. cii -trajan to pliny it was agreeable to me to learn by your letter that the army and the provincials seconded you, with the most joyful unanimity, in those vows which you paid and renewed to the immortal gods for my preservation and prosperity. ciii -to the emperor trajan we have celebrated, with all the warmth of that pious zeal we justly ought, the day on which, by a most happy succession, the protection of mankind was committed over into your hands; recommending to the gods, from whom you received the empire, the object of your public vows and congratulations. civ -trajan to pliny i was extremely well pleased to be informed by your letter that you had, at the head of the soldiers and the provincials, solemnised my accession to the empire with all due joy and zeal. cv -to the emperor trajan valerius paulinus, sir, having bequeathed to me the right of patronage[1071] over all his freedmen, except one, i intreat you to grant the freedom of rome to three of them. to desire you to extend this favour to all of them would, i fear, be too unreasonable a trespass upon your indulgence; which, in proportion as i have amply experienced, i ought to be so much the more cautious in troubling. the persons for whom i make this request are c. valerius astraeus, c. valerius dionysius, and c. valerius aper. cvi -trajan to pliny you act most generously in so early soliciting in favour of those whom valerius paulinus has confided to your trust. i have accordingly granted the freedom of the city to such of his freedmen for whom you requested it, and have directed the patent to be registered: i am ready to confer the same on the rest, whenever you shall desire me. cvii -to the emperor trajan p. attius aquila, a centurion of the sixth equestrian cohort, requested me, sir, to transmit his petition to you, in favour of his daughter. i thought it would be unkind to refuse him this service, knowing, as i do, with what patience and kindness you attend to the petitions of the soldiers. cviii -trajan to pliny i have read the petition of p. attius aquila, centurion of the sixth equestrian cohort, which you sent to me; and in compliance with his request, i have conferred upon his daughter the freedom of the city of rome. i send you at the same time the patent, which you will deliver to him. cix -to the emperor trajan i request, sir, your directions with respect to the recovering those debts which are due to the cities of bithynia and pontus, either for rent, or goods sold, or upon any other consideration. i find they have a privilege conceded to them by several proconsuls, of being preferred to other creditors; and this custom has prevailed as if it had been established by law. your prudence, i imagine, will think it necessary to enact some settled rule, by which their rights may always be secured. for the edicts of others, how wisely however founded, are but feeble and temporary ordinances, unless confirmed and sanctioned by your authority. cx -trajan to pliny the right which the cities either of pontus or bithynia claim relating to the recovery of debts of whatever kind, due to their several communities, must be determined agreeably to their respective laws. where any of these communities enjoy the privilege of being preferred to other creditors, it must be maintained; but, where no such privilege prevails, it is not just i should establish one, in prejudice of private property. cxi -to the emperor trajan the solicitor to the treasury of the city of amisis instituted a claim, sir, before me against julius piso of about forty thousand denarii,[1072] presented to him by the public above twenty years ago, with the consent of the general council and assembly of the city: and he founded his demand upon certain of your edicts, by which donations of this kind are prohibited. piso, on the other hand, asserted that he had conferred large sums of money upon the community, and, indeed, had thereby expended almost the whole of his estate. he insisted upon the length of time which had intervened since this donation, and hoped that he should not be compelled, to the ruin of the remainder of his fortunes, to refund a present which had been granted him long since, in return for many good offices he had done the city. for this reason, sir, i thought it necessary to suspend giving any judgment in this cause till i shall receive your directions. cxii -trajan to pliny though by my edicts i have ordained that no largesses shall be given out of the public money, yet, that numberless private persons may not be disturbed in the secure possession of their fortunes, those donations which have been made long since ought not to be called in question or revoked. we will not therefore enquire into anything that has been transacted in this affair so long ago as twenty years; for i would be no less attentive to secure the repose of every private man than to preserve the treasure of every public community. cxiii -to the emperor trajan the pompeian law, sir, which is observed in pontus and bithynia, does not direct that any money for their admission shall be paid in by those who are elected into the senate by the censors. it has, however, been usual for such members as have been admitted into those assemblies, in pursuance of the privilege which you were pleased to grant to some particular cities, of receiving above their legal number, to pay one[1073] or two thousand denarii[1074] on their election. subsequent to this, the proconsul anicius maximus ordained (though indeed his edict related to some few cities only) that those who were elected by the censors should also pay into the treasury a certain sum, which varied in different places. it remains, therefore, for your consideration whether it would not be proper to settle a certain sum for each member who is elected into the councils to pay upon his entrance; for it well becomes you, whose every word and action deserves to be immortalized, to establish laws that shall endure for ever. cxiv -trajan to pliny i can give no general directions applicable to all the cities of bithynia, in relation to those who are elected members of their respective councils, whether they shall pay an honorary fee upon their admittance or not. i think that the safest method which can be pursued is to follow the particular laws of each city; and i also think that the censors ought to make the sum less for those who are chosen into the senate contrary to their inclinations than for the rest. cxv -to the emperor trajan the pompeian law, sir, allows the bithynians to give the freedom of their respective cities to any person they think proper, provided he is not a foreigner, but native of some of the cities of this province. the same law specifies the particular causes for which the censors may expel any member of the senate, but makes no mention of foreigners. certain of the censors therefore have desired my opinion whether they ought to expel a member if he should happen to be a foreigner. but i thought it necessary to receive your instructions in this case; not only because the law, though it forbids foreigners to be admitted citizens, does not direct that a senator shall be expelled for the same reason, but because i am informed that in every city in the province a great number of the senators are foreigners. if, therefore, this clause of the law, which seems to be antiquated by a long custom to the contrary, should be enforced, many cities, as well as private persons, must be injured by it. i have annexed the heads of this law to my letter. cxvi -trajan to pliny you might well be doubtful, my dearest secundus, what reply to give to the censors, who consulted you concerning their right to elect into the senate foreign citizens, though of the same province. the authority of the law on one side, and long custom prevailing against it on the other, might justly occasion you to hesitate, the proper mean to observe in this case will be to make no change in what is past, but to allow those senators who are already elected, though contrary to law, to keep their seats, to whatever city they may belong; in all future elections, however, to pursue the directions of the pompeian law: for to give it a retrospective operation would necessarily introduce great confusion. cxvii -to the emperor trajan it is customary here upon any person taking the manly robe, solemnising his marriage, entering upon the office of a magistrate, or dedicating any public work, to invite the whole senate, together with a considerable part of the commonalty, and distribute to each of the company one or two denarii.[1075] i request you to inform me whether you think proper this ceremony should be observed, or how far you approve of it. for myself, though i am of opinion that upon some occasions, especially those of public festivals, this kind of invitation may be permitted, yet, when carried so far as to draw together a thousand persons, and sometimes more, it seems to be going beyond a reasonable number, and has somewhat the appearance of ambitious largesses. cxviii -trajan to pliny you very justly apprehended that those public invitations which extend to an immoderate number of people, and where the dole is distributed, not singly to a few acquaintances, but, as it were, to whole collective bodies, may be turned to the factious purposes of ambition. but i appointed you to your present government, fully relying upon your prudence, and in the persuasion that you would take proper measures for regulating the manners and settling the peace of the province. cxix -to the emperor trajan the athletic victors, sir, in the iselastic[1076] games, conceive that the stipend you have established for the conquerors becomes due from the day they are crowned: for it is not at all material, they say, what time they were triumphantly conducted into their country, but when they merited that honour. on the contrary, when i consider the meaning of the term iselastic, i am strongly inclined to think that it is intended the stipend should commence from the time of their public entry. they likewise petition to be allowed the treat you give at those combats which you have converted into iselastic, though they were conquerors before the appointment of that institution: for it is but reasonable, they assert, that they should receive the reward in this instance, as they are deprived of it at those games which have been divested of the honour of being iselastic, since their victory. but i am very doubtful, whether a retrospect should be admitted in the case in question, and a reward given, to which the claimants had no right at the time they obtained the victory. i beg, therefore, you would be pleased to direct my judgment in these points, by explaining the intention of your own benefactions. cxx -trajan to pliny the stipend appointed for the conqueror in the iselastic games ought not, i think, to commence till he makes his triumphant entry into his city. nor are the prizes, at those combats which i thought proper to make iselastic, to be extended backwards to those who were victors before that alteration took place. with regard to the plea which these athletic combatants urge, that they ought to receive the iselastic prize at those combats which have been made iselastic subsequent to their conquests, as they are denied it in the same case where the games have ceased to be so, it proves nothing in their favour; for notwithstanding any new arrangements which has been made relating to these games, they are not called upon to return the recompense which they received prior to such alteration. cxxi -to the emperor trajan i have hitherto never, sir, granted an order for post-chaises to any person, or upon any occasion, but in affairs that relate to your administration. i find myself, however, at present under a sort of necessity of breaking through this fixed rule. my wife having received an account of her grandfather's death, and being desirous to wait upon her aunt with all possible expedition, i thought it would be unkind to deny her the use of this privilege; as the grace of so tender an office consists in the early discharge of it, and as i well knew a journey which was founded in filial piety could not fail of your approbation. i should think myself highly ungrateful therefore, were i not to acknowledge that, among other great obligations which i owe to your indulgence, i have this in particular, that, in confidence of your favour, i have ventured to do, without consulting you, what would have been too late had i waited for your consent. cxxii -trajan to pliny you did me justice, my dearest secundus, in confiding in my affection towards you. without doubt, if you had waited for my consent to forward your wife in her journey by means of those warrants which i have entrusted to your care, the use of them would not have answered your purpose; since it was proper this visit to her aunt should have the additional recommendation of being paid with all possible expedition. footnotes to the correspondence with the emperor trajan 1001 (return) [ the greater part of the following letters were written by pliny during his administration in the province of bithynia. they are of a style and character extremely different from those in the preceding collection; whence some critics have injudiciously inferred that they are the production of another hand: not considering that the occasion necessarily required a different manner. in letters of business, as these chiefly are, turn and sentiment would be foreign and impertinent; politeness and elegance of expression being the essentials that constitute perfection in this kind: and in that view, though they may be less entertaining, they have not less merit than the former. but besides their particular excellence as letters, they have a farther recommendation as so many valuable pieces of history, by throwing a strong light upon the character of one of the most amiable and glorious princes in the roman annals. trajan appears throughout in the most striking attitude that majesty can be placed in; in the exertion of power to the godlike purposes of justice and benevolence: and what one of the ancient historians has said of him is here clearly verified, that "he rather chose to be loved than flattered by his people." to have been distinguished by the favour and friendship of a monarch of so exalted a character is an honour that reflects the brightest lustre upon our author; as to have been served and celebrated by a courtier of pliny's genius and virtues is the noblest monunient of glory that could have been raised to trajan. m.] 1002 (return) [ nerva, who succeeded domitian, reigned but sixteen months and a few days. before his death he not only adopted trajan, and named him for his successor, but actually admitted him into a share of the government; giving him the titles of cã¦sar, germanicus and imperator. vid. plin. paneg. m.] 1003 (return) [ $16,000.] 1004 (return) [ one of the four governments of lower egypt. m.] 1005 (return) [ the extensive power of paternal authority was (as has been observed in the notes above) peculiar to the romans. but after chrysippus was made a denizen of rome, he was not, it would seem, consequentially entitled to that privilege over those children which were born before his denization. on the other hand, if it was expressly granted him, his children could not preserve their right of patronage over their own freedmen, because that right would of course devolve to their father, by means of this acquired dominion over them. the denization therefore of his children is as expressly solicited as his own. but both parties becoming quirites, the children by this creation, and not pleading in right of their father, would be patres fam. to prevent which the clause is added, "ita ut sint in patris potestate:" as there is another to save to them their rights of patronage over their freedmen, though they were reduced in patriam potestate. m.] 1006 (return) [ pliny enjoyed the office of treasurer in conjunction with cornutus tertullus. it was the custom at rome for those who had colleagues to administer the duties of their posts by monthly turns. buchner. m.] 1007 (return) [ about $16,000; the annual income of pliny's estate in tuscany. he mentions another near comum in milan, the yearly value of which does not appear. we find him likewise meditating the purchase of an estate, for which he was to give about $117,000 of our money; but whether he ever completed that purchase is uncertain. this, however, we are sure of, that his fortunes were but moderate, considering his high station and necessary expenses: and yet, by the advantage of a judicious economy, we have seen him in the course of these letters, exercising a liberality of which after ages have furnished no parallel. m.] 1008 (return) [ the senators were not allowed to go from rome into the provinces without having first obtained leave of the emperor. sicily, however, had the privilege to be excepted out of that law; as gallia narbonensis afterwards was, by claudius cã¦sar. tacit. ann. xii. c. 23. m.] 1009 (return) [ one of the seven priests who presided over the feasts appointed in honour of jupiter and the other gods, an office, as appears, of high dignity, since pliny ranks it with the augurship.] 1010 (return) [ bithynia, a province in anatolia, or asia minor, of which pliny was appointed governor by trajan, in the sixth year of his reign, a. d. 103, not as an ordinary proconsul, but as that emperor's own lieutenant, with powers extraordinary. (see dio.) the following letters were written during his administration of that province. m.] 1011 (return) [ a north wind in the grecian seas, which rises yearly some time in july, and continues to the end of august; though others extend it to the middle of september. they blow only in the day-time. varenius's geogr. v.i. p. 513. m.] 1012 (return) [ the inhabitants of prusa (brusa), a principal city of bithynia.] 1013 (return) [ in the sixth year of trajan's reign, a. d. 103, and the 41st of our author's age: he continued in this province about eighteen months. vid. mass, in vit. phin. 129. m.] 1014 (return) [ among other noble works which this glorious emperor executed, the forum or square which went by his name seems to have been the most magnificent. it was built with the foreign spoils he had taken in war. the covering of this edifice was all brass, the porticoes exceedingly beautiful and magnificent, with pillars of more than ordinary height and dimensions. in the centre of this forum was erected the famous pillar which has been already described.] 1015 (return) [ it is probable the victory here alluded to was that famous one which trajan gained over the daciaiss; some account of which has been given in the notes above. it is certain, at least, pliny lived to see his wish accomplished, this emperor having carried the roman splendour to its highest pitch, and extended the dominions of the empire farther than any of his predecessors; as after his death it began to decline. m.] 1016 (return) [ the capital of bithynia; its modern name is izmid.] 1017 (return) [ the town of panticapoeum, also called bosporus, standing on the european side of the cimmerian bosporus (straits of kaffa), in the modern crimea.] 1018 (return) [ nicea (as appears by the 15th letter of this book), a city in bithynia, now called iznik. m.] 1019 (return) [ sarmatia was divided into european, asiatic, and german sarmatia. it is not exactly known what bounds the ancients gave to this extensive region; however, in general, it comprehended the northern part of russia, and the greater part of poland, &c. m.] 1020 (return) [ the first invention of public couriers is ascribed to cyrus, who, in order to receive the earliest intelligence from the governors of the several provinces, erected post-houses throughout the kingdom of persia, at equal distances, which supplied men and horses to forward the public despatches. augustus was the first who introduced this most useful institution among the romans, by employing postchaises, disposed at convenient distances, for the purpose of political intelligence. the magistrates of every city were obliged to furnish horses for these messengers, upon producing a diploma, or a kind of warrant, either from the emperor himself or from those who had that authority under him. sometimes, though upon very extraordinary occasions, persons who travelled upon their private affairs, were allowed the use of these post-chaises. it is surprising they were not sooner used for the purposes of commerce and private communication. louis xi. first established them in france, in the year 1414; but it was not till later (date uncertain) that the post-office was settled in england by act of parliament, m.] 1021 (return) [ particular temples, altars, and statues were allowed among the romans as places of privilege and sanctuary to slaves, debtors and malefactors. this custom was introduced by romulus, who borrowed it probably from the greeks; but during the free state of rome, few of these asylums were permitted. this custom prevailed most under the emperors, till it grew so scandalous that the emperor pius found it necessary to restrain those privileged places by an edict. see lipsii excurs. ad taeiti ann. iii, c. 36, m.] 1022 (return) [ general under deeebalus, king of the dacians. m.] 1023 (return) [ a province in daeia, comprehending the southern parts of servia and part of bulgaria. m.] 1024 (return) [ the second expedition of trajan against decebalus was undertaken the same year that pliny went governor into this province; the reason therefore why pliny sent this calhidromus to the emperor seems to be that some use might possibly be made of him in favour of that design, m.] 1025 (return) [ receiver of the finances. m.] 1026 (return) [ the coast round the black sea.] 1027 (return) [ the text calls him primipilarem, that is, one who had been prirnipilus, in officer in the army, whose post was both highly honourable and profitable; among other parts of his office he had the care of the eagle, or chief standard of the legion. m.] 1028 (return) [ slaves who were purchased by the public. m.] 1029 (return) [ the most probable conjecture (for it is a point of a good deal of obscurity) concerning the beneficiary seems to be that they were a certain number of soldiers exempted from the usual duty of their office, in order to be employed as a sort of body-guards to the general. these were probably foot; as the equites here mentioned were perhaps of the same nature, only that they served on horseback. equites singulares cã¦saris augusti, &c., are frequently met with upon ancient inscriptions, and are generally supposed to mean the bodyguards of the emperor. m.] 1030 (return) [ a province in asia minor, bounded by the black sea on the north, bithynia on the west, pontus on the east, and phrygia on the south.] 1031 (return) [ the roman policy excluded slaves from entering into military service, and it was death if they did so. however, upon cases of great necessity, this maxim was dispensed with; but then they were first made free before they were received into the army, excepting only (as servius in his notes upon virgil) observes after the fatal battle of cannae; when the public distress was so great that the romans recruited their army with their slaves, though they had not time to give them their freedom. one reason, perhaps, of this policy might be that they did not think it safe to arm so considerable a body of men, whose numbers, in the times when the roman luxury was at its highest, we may have some idea of by the instance which pun the naturalist mentions of claudius isodorus, who at the time of his death was possessed of no less than 4,116 slaves, notwithstanding he had lost great numbers in the civil wars. pun. hist. nat. xxxiii. 10. m.] 1032 (return) [ a punishment among the romans, usually inflicted upon slaves, by which they were to engage with wild beasts, or perform the part of gladiators, in the public shows. m.] 1033 (return) [ it has been generally imagined that the ancients had not the art of raising water by engines; but this passage seems to favour the contrary opinion. the word in the original is sipho, which hesychius explains (as one of the commentators observes) "instrumentuns ad jaculandas aquas adversas incendia; an instrument to throw up water against fires." but there is a passage in seneca which seems to put this matter beyond conjecture, though none of the critics upon this place have taken notice of it: "solemiss," says he, "duabus manibus inter se junctis aguam concipere, et com pressa utrinque palma in modum ciphonis exprimere" (q. n. 1. ii. 16) where we plainly see the use of this sipho was to throw up water, and consequently the romans were acquainted with that art. the account which pliny gives of his fountains at tuscum is likewise another evident proof. m.] 1034 (return) [ this was an anniversary custom observed throughout the empire on the 30th of december. m.] 1035 (return) [ about $132,000.] 1036 (return) [ about $80,000.] 1037 (return) [ about $400,000. to those who are not acquainted with the immense riches of the ancients, it may seem incredible that a city, and not the capital one either, of a conquered province should expend so large a sum of money upon only the shell (as it appears to be) of a theatre: but asia was esteemed the most considerable part of the world for wealth; its fertility and exportations (as tully observes) exceeding that of all other countries. m.] 1038 (return) [ the word carte, in the original, comprehends more than what we call the pit in our theatres, as at means the whole space lit which the spectators sat. these theatres being open at the top, the galleries here mentioned were for the convenience of retiring in bad weather. m.] 1039 (return) [ a place in which the athletic exercises were performed, and where the philosophers also used to read their lectures. m.] 1040 (return) [ the roman foot consisted of 11.71 inches of our standard, m.] 1041 (return) [ a colony in the district of cataonia, in cappadocia.] 1042 (return) [ the honorary senators, that is, such who were not received into the council of the city by election, but by the appointment of the emperor, paid a certain sum of money upon their admission into the senate. m.] 1043 (return) [ "graeculi. even under the empire, with its relaxed morality and luxurious tone, the romans continued to apply this contemptuous designation to people to whom they owed what taste for art and culture they possessed." church and brodribb.] 1044 (return) [ a roman cubit is equal to a foot 5.406 inches of our measure. arbuthanot's tab. m.] 1045 (return) [ about $480.] 1046 (return) [ about $120.] 1047 (return) [ a diploma is properly a grant of certain privileges either to particular places or persons. it signifies also grants of other kinds; and it sometimes means post-warrants, as, perhaps, it does in this place. m.] 1048 (return) [ a city in bithynia. m.] 1049 (return) [ cybele, rhea, or ops, as she is otherwise called; from whom, according to the pagan creed, the rest of the gods are supposed to have descended. m.] 1040b (return) [ whatever was legally consecrated was ever afterwards unapplicable to profane uses. m.] 1041b (return) [ that is, a city not admitted to enjoy the laws and privileges of rome. m.] 1042b (return) [ the reason why they did not choose to borrow of the public at the same rate of interest which they paid to private persons was (as one of the commentators observes) because in the former instance they were obliged to give security, whereas in the latter they could raise money upon their personal credit. m.] 1043b (return) [ these, in the original institution as settled by augustus, were only commanders of his body-guards; but in the later times of the roman empire they were next in authority under the emperor, to whom they seem to have acted as a sort of prime ministers. m.] 1044b (return) [ the provinces were divided into, a kind of circuits called conventus, whither the proconsuls used to go in order to administer justice. the judges here mentioned must not be understood to mean the same sort of judicial officers as with us: they rather answered to our juries. m.] 1045b (return) [ by the imperial constitutions the philosophers were exempted from all public functions. catariscus. m.] 1046b (return) [ about $24,000.] 1047b (return) [ geographers are not agreed where to place this city; cellarius conjectures it may possibly be the same with prusa ad olympum, prusa at the foot of mount olympus in mysia.] 1048b (return) [ domitian.] 1049b (return) [ that is, whether they should be considered in a state of freedom or slavery. m.] 1050 (return) [ "parents throughout the entire ancient world had the right to expose their children and leave them to their fate. hence would sometimes arise the question whether such a child, if found and brought up by another, was entitled to his freedom, whether also the person thus adopting him must grant him his freedom without repayment for the cost of maintenance." church and brodribb.] 1051 (return) [ "this decision of trajan, the effect of which would be that persons would be slow to adopt an abandoned child which, when brought up, its natural parents could claim back without any compensation for its nurture, seems harsh, and we find that it was disregarded by the later emperors in their legal decisions on the subject." church and brodribb.] 1052 (return) [ and consequently by the roman laws unapplicable to any other purpose. m.] 1053 (return) [ the roman provinces in the times of the emperors were of two sorts: those which were distinguished by the name of the provinciae cã¦saris and the provinciae senatus. the provinciae cã¦saris, or imperial provinces, were such as the emperor, for reasons of policy, reserved to his own immediate administration, or of those whom he thought proper to appoint: the provinciae senatus, or proconsular provinces, were such as he left to the government of proconsuls or praetors, chosen in the ordinary method of election. (vid. suet, in aug. v. 47.) of the former kind was bithynis, at the time when our author presided there. (vid. masson. vit. plin. p. 133.) m.] 1054 (return) [ a province in asia, bordering upon the black sea, and by some ancient geographers considered as one province with bithynia. m.] 1055 (return) [ about $2,000. m.] 1056 (return) [ cities of pontus near the euxine or black sea. m.] 1057 (return) [ gordium, the old capital of phrygia. it afterwards, in the reign of the emperor augustus, received the name of juliopolis. (see smith's classical diet.)] 1058 (return) [ pompey the great having subdued mithridates, and by that means enlarged the roman empire, passed several laws relating to the newly conquered provinces, and, among others, that which is here mentioned. m.] 1059 (return) [ the right of electing senators did not originally belong to the censors, who were only, as cicero somewhere calls them, guardians of the discipline and manners of the city; but in process of time they engrossed the whole privilege of conferring that honour. m.] 1060 (return) [ this, probably, was some act whereby the city was to ratify and confirm the proceedings of dion under the commission assigned to him.] 1061 (return) [ it was a notion which generally prevailed with the ancients, in the jewish as well as heathen world, that there was a pollution in the contact of dead bodies, and this they extended to the very house in which the corpse lay, and even to the uncovered vessels that stood in the same room. (vid. pot. antiq. v. ii. 181.) from some such opinion as this it is probable that the circumstance, here mentioned, of placing trajan's statue where these bodies were deposited, was esteemed as a mark of disrespect to his person.] 1062 (return) [ a thriving greek colony in the territory of sinopis, on the euxine.] 1063 (return) [ a colony of athenians in the province of pontus. their town, amisus, on the coast, was one of the residences of mithridates.] 1064 (return) [ casaubon, in his observations upon theophrastus (as cited by one of the commentators) informs us that there were at athens and other cities of greece certain fraternities which paid into a common chest a monthly contribution towards the support of such of their members who had fallen into misfortunes; upon condition that, if ever they arrived to more prosperous circumstances, they should repay into the general fund the money so advanced. m.] 1065 (return) [ by the law for encouragement of matrimony (some account of which has already been given in the notes above), as a penalty upon those who lived bachelors, they were declared incapable of inheriting any legacy by will; so likewise, if being married, they had no children, they could not claim the full advantage of benefactions of that kind.] 1066 (return) [ this letter is esteemed as almost the only genuine monument of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately succeeding the apostles, it being written at most not above forty years after the death of st. paul. it was preserved by the christians themselves as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is frequently appealed to by the early writers of the church against the calumnies of their adversaries. m.] 1067 (return) [ it was one of the privileges of a roman citizen, secured by the semprorian law, that he could not be capitally convicted but by the suffrage of the people; which seems to have been still so far in force as to make it necessary to send the persons here mentioned to rome. m.] 1068 (return) [ these women, it is supposed, exercised the same office as phoebe mentioned by st. paul, whom he styles deaconess of the church of cenchrea. their business was to tend the poor and sick, and other charitable offices; as also to assist at the ceremony of female baptism, for the more decent performance of that rite: as vossius observes upon this passage. m.] 1069 (return) [ if we impartially examine this prosecution of the christians, we shall find it to have been grounded on the ancient constitution of the state, and not to have proceeded from a cruel or arbitrary temper in trajan. the roman legislature appears to have been early jealous of any innovation in point of public worship; and we find the magistrates, during the old republic frequently interposing in cases of that nature. valerius maximus has collected some instances to that purpose (l. i. c. 3), and livy mentions it as an established principle of the earlier ages of the commonwealth, to guard against the introduction of foreign ceremonies of religion. it was an old and fixed maxim likewise of the roman government not to suffer any unlicensed assemblies of the people. from hence it seems evident that the christians had rendered themselves obnoxious not so much to trajan as to the ancient and settled laws of the state, by introducing a foreign worship, and assembling themselves without authority. m.] 1070 (return) [ on the coast of paphlagonia.] 1071 (return) [ by the papian law, which passed in the consulship of m. papius mutilus and q. poppeas secundus, u. c. 761, if a freedman died worth a hundred thousand sesterces (or about $4,000 of our money), leaving only one child, his patron (that is, the master from whom he received his liberty) was entitled to half his estate; if he left two children, to one-third; but if more than two, then the patron was absolutely excluded. this was afterwards altered by justinian, inst. 1. iii. tit. 8. m.] 1072 (return) [ about $7,000.] 1073 (return) [ about $175] 1074 (return) [ about $350.] 1075 (return) [ the denarius=7 cents. the sum total, then, distributed among one thousand persons at the rate of, say, two denara a piece would amount to about $350.] 1076 (return) [ these games are called iselastic from the greek word invehor, because the victors, drawn by white horses, and wearing crowns on their heads, were conducted with great pomp into their respective cities, which they entered through a breach in the walls made for that purpose; intimating, as plutarch observes, that a city which produced such able and victorious citizens, had little occasion for the defence of walls (catanaeus). they received also annually a certain honourable stipend from the public. m.] the life of cicero by anthony trollope _in two volumes_ vol. i. new york harper & brothers, franklin square 1881 contents of volume i. chapter i. page introduction. 7 chapter ii. his education. 40 chapter iii. the condition of rome. 62 chapter iv. his early pleadings.--sextus roscius amerinus.--his income. 80 chapter v. cicero as quæstor. 107 chapter vi. verres. 124 chapter vii. cicero as ædile and prætor. 162 chapter viii. cicero as consul. 184 chapter ix. catiline. 206 chapter x. cicero after his consulship. 240 chapter xi. the triumvirate. 264 chapter xii. his exile. 297 * * * * * appendices. appendix a. 335 appendix b. 340 appendix c. 242 appendix d. 345 appendix e. 347 the life of cicero. chapter i. _introduction._ i am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a further life of cicero which i feel i may probably fail in justifying by any new information; and on this account the enterprise, though it has been long considered, has been postponed, so that it may be left for those who come after me to burn or publish, as they may think proper; or, should it appear during my life, i may have become callous, through age, to criticism. the project of my work was anterior to the life by mr. forsyth, and was first suggested to me as i was reviewing the earlier volumes of dean merivale's history of the romans under the empire. in an article on the dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, i inserted an apology for the character of cicero, which was found to be too long as an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. from that time the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present dimensions. i may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as of his gifts. i must acknowledge that in discussing his character with men of letters, as i have been prone to do, i have found none quite to agree with me. his intellect they have admitted, and his industry; but his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and his courage they have denied. it might have become me to have been silenced by their verdict; but i have rather been instigated to appeal to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. it is not only that cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. all this has been already so said of him by other biographers. plutarch, who is as familiar to us as though he had been english, and middleton, who thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly mr. forsyth, who has struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much as that. but there was a humanity in cicero, a something almost of christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. to have loved his neighbor as himself before the teaching of christ was much for a man to achieve; and that he did this is what i claim for cicero, and hope to bring home to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes about roman times. it has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to cicero his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him as a politician. macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the philippics as senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head of the "minds of the second order." we cannot judge of the classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world are to be included in the first rank. but macaulay probably intended to express an opinion that cicero was inferior because he himself had never dominated others as marius had done, and sylla, and pompey, and cæsar, and augustus. but what if cicero was ambitious for the good of others, while these men had desired power only for themselves? dean merivale says that cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a similar sneer another clergyman, sydney smith, ridiculed a tory prime-minister because he was true to his wife. there is nothing so open to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. and the dean declares that cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for a "moment only, a real power in the state." men who usurped authority, such as those i have named, were the "real powers," and it was in opposition to such usurpation that cicero was always urgent. mr. forsyth, who, as i have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that "the chief fault of cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity." absence of sincerity there was not. deficiency of sincerity there was. who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives of men were first written? it will be my object to show that though less than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be well examined, will indicate the same phase of character. but of all modern writers mr. froude has been the hardest to cicero. his sketch of the life of cæsar is one prolonged censure on that of cicero. our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. there is no period in cicero's life so touching, i think, as that during which he was hesitating whether, in the service of the republic, it did or did not behoove him to join pompey before the battle of pharsalia. at this time he wrote to his friend atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his friendship for pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity. as to a passage in one of those, mr. froude says "that cicero had lately spoken of cæsar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the state." "it has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the readiest means of ending it,"[1] says mr. froude. the "it has been seen" refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates certain words written by cicero to atticus.[2] "he considered it a disgrace to them that cæsar was alive." that is his translation; and in his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his literary brother of two thousand years before. "why did not somebody kill him?" the latin words themselves are added in a note, "cum vivere ipsum turpe sit nobis."[3] hot indignation has so carried the translator away that he has missed the very sense of cicero's language. "when even to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" that is what cicero meant. mr. froude in a preceding passage gives us another passage from a letter to atticus,[4] "cæsar was mortal."[5] so much is an intended translation. then mr. froude tells us how cicero had "hailed cæsar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "we read the words with sorrow and yet with pity." but cicero had never dreamed of cæsar's murder. the words of the passage are as follows: "hunc primum mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "i bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side." all the latter authorities have, i believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this man" to be pompey. i should say that this was proved by the gist of the whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his life--did i not know that former learned editors have supposed cæsar to have been meant. but whether cæsar or pompey, there is nothing in it to do with murder. it is a question--cicero is saying to his friend--of the stability of the republic. when a matter so great is considered, how is a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day, or cease from any accident to be of weight? cicero was speaking of the effect of this or that step on his own part. am i, he says, for the sake of pompey to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country, sacrificing the republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and may be gone to-morrow? or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks that the "hunc" refers to cæsar. the argument is the same. am i to consider an individual when the republic is at stake? mr. froude tells us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity." so would every one, i think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts as to his leader, as to his party, and as to his country. mr. froude does so because he gathers from them that cicero is premeditating the murder of cæsar! it is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth. a man who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be listened to and read, will be so judged. but it is not too much to demand that when a man's character is at stake his own words shall be thoroughly sifted before they are used against him. the writer of the biographical notice in the encyclopedia britannica on cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of cæsar and pompey against the liberties of rome, he was open to be bought. the augurship would have bought him. "so pitiful," says the biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth!" with no more sententious language was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. and on what evidence? we should have known nothing of the bribe and the corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from cicero himself to atticus. he is writing from one of his villas to his friend in rome, and asks for the news of the day: who are to be the new consuls? who is to have the vacant augurship? ah, says he, they might have caught even me with that bait;[6] as he said on another occasion that he was so much in debt as to be fit for a rebel; and again, as i shall have to explain just now, that he was like to be called in question under the cincian law because of a present of books! this was just at the point of his life when he was declining all offers of public service--of public service for which his soul longed--because they were made to him by cæsar. it was then that the "vigintiviratus" was refused, which quintilian mentions to his honor. it was then that he refused to be cæsar's lieutenant. it was then that he might have been fourth with cæsar, and pompey, and crassus, had he not felt himself bound not to serve against the republic. and yet the biographer does not hesitate to load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jocose and half pathetic to his friend. if a man's deeds be always honest, surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some light word spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. the light words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to pass that their very meaning is misunderstood. my friend mr. collins speaks, in his charming little volume on cicero, of "quiet evasions" of the cincian law,[7] and tells us that we are taught by cicero's letters not to trust cicero's words when he was in a boasting vein. what has the one thing to do with the other? he names no quiet evasions. mr. collins makes a surmise, by which the character of cicero for honesty is impugned--without evidence. the anonymous biographer altogether misinterprets cicero. mr. froude charges cicero with anticipation of murder, grounding his charge on words which he has not taken the trouble to understand. cicero is accused on the strength of his own private letters. it is because we have not the private letters of other persons that they are not so accused. the courtesies of the world exact, i will not say demand, certain deviations from straightforward expression; and these are made most often in private conversations and in private correspondence. cicero complies with the ways of the world; but his epistles are no longer private, and he is therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. it is because cicero's letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be made public that such accusations have been made. when the injustice of these critics strikes me, i almost wish that cicero's letters had not been preserved. as i have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter days, spoken against cicero, i will endeavor to place before the reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers, chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the hundred and fifty years after his death--from the time of augustus down to that of adrian--a period much given to literature, in which the name of a politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed. readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came after him. i trust they will believe that if i knew of testimony on the other side, of records adverse to the man, i would give them. the first passage to which i will allude does not bear cicero's name; and it may be that i am wrong in assuming honor to cicero from a passage in poetry, itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to himself. but the idea that virgil in the following lines refers to the manner in which cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with otho's law, does not originate with me. i give the lines as translated by dryden, with the original in a note.[8] "as when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd, mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud; and stones and brands in rattling volleys fly, and all the rustic arms that fury can supply; if then some grave and pious man appear, they hush their noise, and lend a listening ear; he soothes with sober words their angry mood, and quenches their innate desire of blood." this, if it be not intended for a portrait of cicero on that occasion, exactly describes his position and his success. we have a fragment of cornelius nepos, the biographer of the augustan age, declaring that at cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the republic had lost the most.[9] livy declared of him only, that he would be the best writer of latin prose who was most like to cicero.[10] velleius paterculus, who wrote in the time of tiberius, speaks of cicero's achievements with the highest honor. "at this period," he says, "lived marcus cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his life."[11] valerius maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving character.[12] perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from the pen of pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of cicero i will quote only a few words, as i shall refer to it more at length when speaking of his consulship. "hail thou," says pliny, "who first among men was called the father of your country."[13] martial, in one of his distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of cicero's writing he may fancy that he is travelling with cicero himself.[14] lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how cicero dared to speak of peace in the camp of pharsalia. the reader may think that cicero should have said nothing of the kind, but lucan mentions him with all honor.[15] not tacitus, as i think, but some author whose essay de oratoribus was written about the time of tacitus, and whose work has come to us with the name of tacitus, has told us of cicero that he was a master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[16] everybody remembers the passage in juvenal, "sed roma parentem roma patrem patriæ ciceronem libera dixit." "rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his country."[17] even plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of jealousy when speaking of cicero, declares that he verified the prediction of plato, "that every state would be delivered from its calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and justice in one person."[18] the praises of quintilian as to the man are so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters, that i would have omitted to mention them here were it not that they will help to declare what was the general opinion as to cicero at the time in which it was written. he has been speaking of demosthenes,[19] and then goes on: "nor in regard to cicero do i see that he ever failed in the duty of a good citizen. there is in evidence of this the splendor of his consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his refusal of office under cæsar,[20] the firmness of his mind on the civil wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came heavily on him in his old age. on all these occasions he did the best he could for the republic." florus, who wrote after the twelve cæsars, in the time of trajan and of adrian, whose rapid summary of roman events can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how catiline's conspiracy was crushed by the authority of cicero and cato in opposition to that of cæsar.[21] then, when he has passed in a few short chapters over all the intervening history of the roman empire, he relates, in pathetic words, the death of cicero. "it was the custom in rome to put up on the rostra the heads of those who had been slain; but now the city was not able to restrain its tears when the head of cicero was seen there, upon the spot from which the citizens had so often listened to his words."[22] such is the testimony given to this man by the writers who may be supposed to have known most of him as having been nearest to his time. they all wrote after him. sallust, who was certainly his enemy, wrote of him in his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise. it is evident that public opinion forbade him to do so. sallust is never warm in cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words i have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for having passed too lightly over cicero's doings and words in his account of catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to cicero's credit. men had heard of the danger, and therefore, says sallust,[23] "they conceived the idea of intrusting the consulship to cicero. for before that the nobles were envious, and thought that the consulship would be polluted if it were conferred on a _novus homo_, however distinguished. but when danger came, envy and pride had to give way." he afterward declares that cicero made a speech against catiline most brilliant, and at the same time useful to the republic. this was lukewarm praise, but coming from sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as eloquent as any eulogy. there is extant a passage attributed to sallust full of virulent abuse of cicero, but no one now imagines that sallust wrote it. it is called the declamation of sallust against cicero, and bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. it suited some one to forge pretended invectives between sallust and cicero, and is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to dio cassius a foundation for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator.[24] dio cassius was a greek who wrote in the reign of alexander severus, more than two centuries and a half after the death of cicero, and he no doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. what was the special cause of jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own language.[25] among other absurdities dio cassius says of cicero that in his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was younger. now i ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, i will say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country; having shown, as i profess that i have shown, that his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old republic but by the minions of the empire; having found that no charge was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am i not justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown their authority? their authority they have always found in his own words. it is on his own evidence against himself that they have depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises. when we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations of his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! he is a coward to the critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel the true meaning of his own words. if we had only known his acts and not his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of verres, with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the time of catiline, how he joined pompey in macedonia from a sense of sheer duty, how he defied antony when to defy antony was probable death--then we should not call him a coward! it is out of his own mouth that he is condemned. then surely his words should be understood. queen christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that "cicero was the only coward that was capable of great actions." the queen of sweden, whose sentences are never worth very much, has known her history well enough to have learned that cicero's acts were noble, but has not understood the meaning of words sufficiently to extract from cicero's own expressions their true bearing. the bravest of us all, if he is in high place, has to doubt much before he can know what true courage will demand of him; and these doubts the man of words will express, if there be given to him an _alter ego_ such as cicero had in atticus. in reference to the biography of mr forsyth i must, in justice both to him and to cicero, quote one passage from the work: "let those who, like de quincey,[26] mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of cicero, and are so lavish in praise of cæsar, recollect that cæsar never was troubled by a conscience." here it is that we find that advance almost to christianity of which i have spoken, and that superiority of mind being which makes cicero the most fit to be loved of all the romans. it is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all belief in a future life. why should a man do right if it be not for a reward here or hereafter? why should anything be right--or wrong? the stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could conquer all his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy, and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim. the school had many scholars, but probably never a believer. the normal greek or roman might be deterred by the law, which means fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which means ignominy. he might recognize the fact that comfort would combine itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. in this there was little need of a conscience--hardly, perhaps, room for it. but when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity, and intellect would give--as it did to sylla, to cæsar, and to augustus--then there was nothing to restrain the men. there was to such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. his cruelty or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with him. or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience. with the man of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. in his sometimes doubtful wanderings after political wisdom--in those mental mazes which have been called insincerity--we shall see him, if we look well into his doings, struggling to find whether, in searching for what was his duty, he should go to this side or to that. might he best hope a return to that state of things which he thought good for his country by adhering to cæsar or to pompey? we see the workings of his conscience, and, as we remember that scipio's dream of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth, within him a recognition of a future life. in discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. we are attracted by salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of the coast would certainly be shown to us. and so it will, if we accept the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. but to say that a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers, that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. he who so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "he has lied! he has lied!" how often in our own political contests do we hear the cry with a note of triumph! and if he have, how often has he told the truth? and if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in that matter to throw a stone at him? and if he have, do we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? in his stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. it is by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be a liar or no. to expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn its setting. and there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the common eye. the man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. it may be that an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. we do not want a clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in the atmosphere. it may be found that for the work of the world, the coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though none is so important, as that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen--instruments strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden impressions, may be the best. that it is which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. but the same man may, at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the circumstances of the occasion may affect him. at one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him. "fiat justitia, ruat c[oe]lum." "si fractus illabatur orbis impavidum ferient ruinæ." at another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. he will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with the next best. he must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. in obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "rem si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." in judging of such a character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray. in judging of cicero, such a hard and fast line has too generally been used. he was a man singularly sensitive to all influences. it must be admitted that he was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on which statesmen have generally been made to work. he had none of the fixed purpose of cæsar, or the unflinching principle of cato. they were men cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. they suffered from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something better than this world, fears of something worse, which make cicero so like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. it is because he has so little like a roman that he is of all the romans the most attractive. still there may be doubt whether, with all the intricacies of his character, his career was such as to justify a further biography at this distance of time. "what's hecuba to him, or he to hecuba?" asks hamlet, when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare recital of an old story by an itinerant player. what is cicero to us of the nineteenth century that we should care so much for him as to read yet another book? nevertheless, hamlet was moved because the tale was well told. there is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still--if the story could only be written of him as it is felt! the difficulty lies in that, and not in the nature of the story. the period of cicero's life was the very turning-point of civilization and government in the history of the world. at that period of time the world, as we know it, was rome. greece had sunk. the macedonian empire had been destroyed. the kingdoms of the east--whether conquered, or even when conquering, as was parthia for awhile--were barbaric, outside the circle of cultivation, and to be brought into it only by the arms and influence of rome. during cæsar's career gaul was conquered; and britain, with what was known of germany, supposed to be partly conquered. the subjugation of africa and spain was all but completed. letters, too, had been or were being introduced. cicero's use of language was so perfect that it seems to us to have been almost necessarily the result of a long established art of latin literature. but, in truth, he is the earliest of the prose writers of his country with whose works we are familiar. excepting varro, who was born but ten years before him, no earlier latin prose writer has left more than a name to us; and the one work by which varro is at all known, the de re rustica, was written after cicero's death. lucretius, whose language we regard as almost archaic, so unlike is it to that of virgil or horace, was born eight years after cicero. in a great degree cicero formed the latin language--or produced that manipulation of it which has made it so graceful in prose, and so powerful a vehicle of thought. that which he took from any latin writer he took from terence. and it was then, just then, that there arose in rome that unpremeditated change in its form of government which resulted in the self-assumed dictatorship of cæsar, and the usurpation of the empire by augustus. the old rome had had kings. then the name and the power became odious--the name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. the kings were abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name of a republic, with its annual magistrates--at first its two consuls, then its prætors and others, and occasionally a dictator, as some current event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a certain purpose. the republic was no republic, as we understand the word; nor did it ever become so, though their was always going on a perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people, in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to the outside class. but so little was as yet understood of liberty that, as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the magistrates of the state, he became also one of the oligarchical faction. there was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called republic--but still a contest for power. this became so continued that a foreign war was at times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of the state, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each against the other. it is probably the case that the invasion of the gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second punic war, threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of rome, provided the republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence. then came marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and sylla, as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which, as one prevailed or the other, rome was mastered. how marius died, and sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our purpose--except in this, that cicero saw sylla's proscriptions, and made his first essay into public life hot with anger at the dictator's tyranny. it occurs to us as we read the history of rome, beginning with the early consuls and going to the death of cæsar and of cicero, and the accomplished despotism of augustus, that the republic could not have been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving. we are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the roman form of government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. but it had been successful. it had made a great people, and had produced a wide-spread civilization. roman citizenship was to those outside the one thing the most worthy to be obtained. that career which led the great romans up from the state of quæstor to the ædile's, prætor's, and consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of provincial government, was held to be the highest then open to the ambition of man. the kings of greece, and of the east, and of africa were supposed to be inferior in their very rank to a roman proconsul, and this greatness was carried on with a semblance of liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the majesty of the roman citizen. when cicero began his work, consuls, prætors, ædiles, and quæstors were still chosen by the votes of the citizens. there was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a resort to those dirty arts of canvassing with which we english have been so familiar; but in cicero's time the male free inhabitants of rome did generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves. the salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out from their practice. the love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern races did not exist in the time of cicero. the idea never seems to have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. half the inhabitants of rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that it never occurred to a roman that slaves, as a body, should be manumitted. the slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. they were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally. nor was it repugnant to the roman theory of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. that boon was to be reserved for the roman citizen, and for him only. it had become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories. the glory was kept not altogether for rome, but for romans. thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. with genuine patriotism cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he did at the close of sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form of government maintained. there should still be two consuls in rome, whose annual election would guard the state against regal dominion. and there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better class--the "optimates," as he called them--as would preserve the city from democracy and revolution. no man ever trusted more entirely to popular opinion than cicero, or was more anxious for aristocratic authority. but neither in one direction nor the other did he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that which might come to him in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of government. it is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of rome and of romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the state" that his memory is still worth recording. added to this was the intellect and the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. and then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. as we are moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this man. there is a picturesqueness about the life of cicero which is wanting in the stories of marius or sylla, of pompey, or even of cæsar--a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity. his hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by greed. how infinitely cicero must have risen above his time when he could have clean hands! a man in our days will keep himself clean from leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him. advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public opinion coerces us. there is something too, we must suppose, in the lessons of christianity. or it may be that the man of our day, with all these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. even with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do it. with the romans, in the time of cicero, greed, feeding itself on usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace. but cicero, with eyes within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men, perceived the baseness of the stain. it has been said also of him that he was not altogether free from reproach. it has been suggested that he accepted payment for his services as an advocate, any such payment being illegal. the accusation is founded on the knowledge that other advocates allowed themselves to be paid, and on the belief that cicero could not have lived as he did without an income from that source. and then there is a story told of him that, though he did much at a certain period of his life to repress the usury, and to excite at the same time the enmity of a powerful friend, he might have done more. as we go on, the stories of these things will be told; but the very nature of the allegations against him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his day. in discussing the character of the men, little is thought of the robberies of sylla, the borrowings of cæsar, the money-lending of brutus, or the accumulated wealth of crassus. to plunder a province, to drive usury to the verge of personal slavery, to accept bribes for perjured judgment, to take illegal fees for services supposed to be gratuitous, was so much the custom of the noble romans that we hardly hate his dishonest greed when displayed in its ordinary course. but because cicero's honesty was abnormal, we are first surprised, and then, suspecting little deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in the midst of roman profligacy he was not altogether a puritan in his money matters. cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman, an advocate, and a man of letters. as the combination of such pursuits is common in our own days, so also was it in his. cæsar added them all to the great work of his life as a soldier. but it was given to cicero to take a part in all those political struggles, from the resignation of sylla to the first rising of the young octavius, which were made on behalf of the republic, and were ended by its downfall. his political life contains the story of the conversion of rome from republican to imperial rule; and rome was then the world. could there have been no augustus, no nero, and then no trajan, all europe would have been different. cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an augustus or a nero, or the need of a trajan; and as we read of them we feel that, had success been possible, he would have succeeded. as an advocate he was unsurpassed. from him came the feeling--whether it be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client, should give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit, but also all his sympathy. to me it is marvellous, and interesting rather than beautiful, to see how completely cicero can put off his own identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he has taken the charge. it must, however, be borne in mind that in old rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private work of the man. in the speeches best known to us cicero was working as a public man for public objects, and the ardor, i may say the fury, of his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public aspirations. the orations which have come to us in three sets, some of them published only but never spoken--those against verres, against catiline, and the philippics against antony--were all of this nature, though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one individual. of these i will speak in their turn; but i mention them here in order that i may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry into cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the objects of the man. he wished, no doubt, to shine, as does the barrister of to-day: he wished to rise; he wished, if you will, to make his fortune, not by the taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher influence by the authority of his name. no doubt he undertook this and the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause, and, when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the good cause. there seems to be special accusation made against him on this head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work without pay threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that was not in itself upright. with us the advocate does this notoriously for his fee. cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some political object of the moment, or in maintenance of a friendship which was politically important. i say nothing against the modern practice. this would not be the place for such an argument. nor do i say that, by rules of absolute right and wrong, cicero was right; but he was as right, at any rate, as the modern barrister. and in reaching the high-minded conditions under which he worked, he had only the light of his own genius to guide him. when compare the clothing of the savage race with our own, their beads and woad and straw and fibres with our own petticoats and pantaloons, we acknowledge the progress of civilization and the growth of machinery. it is not a wonderful thing to us that an african prince should not be as perfectly dressed as a young man in piccadilly. but, when we make a comparison of morals between our own time and a period before christ, we seem to forget that more should be expected from us than from those who lived two thousand years ago. there are some of those pleadings, speeches made by cicero on behalf of or against an accused party, from which we may learn more of roman life than from any other source left to us. much we may gather from terence, much from horace, something from juvenal. there is hardly, indeed, a latin author from which an attentive reader may not pick up some detail of roman customs. cicero's letters are themselves very prolific. but the pretty things of the poets are not quite facts, nor are the bitter things of the satirist; and though a man's letters to his friend may be true, such letters as come to us will have been the products of the greater minds, and will have come from a small and special class. i fear that the newgate calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of living then prevailing than the letters of lady mary w. montagu or of horace walpole. from the orations against verres we learn how the people of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them; and from those spoken in defence of sextus amerinus and aulus cluentius, we gather something of the horrors of roman life--not in rome, indeed, but within the limits of roman citizenship. it is, however, as a man of letters that cicero will be held in the highest esteem. it has been his good-fortune to have a great part of what he wrote preserved for future ages. his works have not perished, as have those of his contemporaries, varro and hortensius. but this has been due to two causes, which were independent of fortune. he himself believed in their value, and took measures for their protection; and those who lived in his own time, and in the immediately succeeding ages, entertained the same belief and took the same care. livy said that, to write latin well, the writer should write it like cicero; and quintilian, the first of latin critics, repeated to us what livy had asserted.[27] there is a sweetness of language about cicero which runs into the very sound; so that passages read aright would, by their very cadences, charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. eulogy never was so happy as his. eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison with invective. cicero's abuse is awful. let the reader curious in such matters turn to the diatribes against vatinius, one of cæsar's creatures, and to that against the unfortunate proconsul piso; or to his attacks on gabinius, who was consul together with piso in the year of cicero's banishment. there are wonderful morsels in the philippics dealing with antony's private character; but the words which he uses against gabinius and piso beat all that i know elsewhere in the science of invective. junius could not approach him; and even macaulay, though he has, in certain passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself the latitude which roman taste and roman manners permitted to cicero. it may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. but shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a boswell to paint his daily portrait. the man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. what there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. for myself i have never regretted those details of shakspeare's life which a boswell of the time might have given us. but cicero's personality as a man of letters seems especially to require elucidation. his letters lose their chief charm if the character of the man be not known, and the incidents of his life. his essays on rhetoric--the written lessons which he has left on the art of oratory--are a running commentary on his own career as an orator. most of his speeches require for their understanding a knowledge of the circumstances of his life. the treatises which we know as his philosophy--works which have been most wrongly represented by being grouped under that name--can only be read with advantage by the light of his own experience. there are two separate classes of his so-called philosophy, in describing which the word philosophy, if it be used at all, must be made to bear two different senses. he handles in one set of treatises, not, i think, with his happiest efforts, the teaching of the old greek schools. such are the tusculan disquisitions, the academics, and the de finibus. from reading these, without reference to the idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe that cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort. but he was, in truth, the last of men to lend his ears "to those budge doctors of the stoic fur." cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his weakness. to sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty, and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust, absolutely contented with abstract virtue, has probably been given to no man; but of none has it been less within the reach than of cicero. to him ginger was always hot in the mouth, whether it was the spice of politics, or of social delight, or of intellectual enterprise. when in his deep sorrow at the death of his daughter, when for a time the republic was dead to him, and public and private life were equally black, he craved employment. then he took down his greek manuscripts and amused himself as best he might by writing this way or that. it was a matter on which his intellect could work and his energies be employed, though the theory of his life was in no way concerned in it. such was one class of his philosophy. the other consisted of a code of morals which he created for himself by his own convictions, formed on the world around him, and which displayed itself in essays, such as those de officiis--on the duties of life; de senectute, de amicitia--on old age and friendship, and the like, which were not only intended for use, but are of use to any man or woman who will study them up to this day. there are others, treatises on law and on government and religion, which have all been lumped together, for the misguidance of school-boys, under the name of cicero's philosophy. but they, be they of one class or the other, require an understanding of the man's character before they can be enjoyed. for these reasons i think that there are incidents in the life, the character, and the work of cicero which ought to make his biography interesting. his story is fraught with energy, with success, with pathos, and with tragedy. and then it is the story of a man human as men are now. no child of rome ever better loved his country, but no child of rome was ever so little like a roman. arms and battles were to him abominable, as they are to us. but arms and battles were the delight of romans. he was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his feeling: "cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea linguæ." but the thing said was thoroughly good, and the better because the opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was still in ascendant over the achievements of intellectual enterprise. the greatest men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond their time--seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have hitherto been hidden from the crowd. such was columbus when he made his way across the western ocean; such were galileo and bacon; such was pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. such also was cicero. it is not given to the age in which such men live to know them. could their age even recognize them, they would not overstep their age as they do. looking back at him now, we can see how like a christian was the man--so like, that in essentials we can hardly see the difference. he could love another as himself--as nearly as a man may do; and he taught such love as a doctrine.[28] he believed in the existence of one supreme god.[29] he believed that man would rise again and live forever in some heaven.[30] i am conscious that i cannot much promote this view of cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works--words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be understood. but i may perhaps succeed in explaining to a reader what it is that i hope to do in the following pages, and why it is that i undertake a work which must be laborious, and for which many will think that there is no remaining need. i would not have it thought that, because i have so spoken of cicero's aspirations and convictions, i intend to put him forth as a faultless personage in history. he was much too human to be perfect. those who love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of cato as perfect. cicero was ambitious, and often unscrupulous in his ambition. he was a loving husband and a loving father; but at the end of his life he could quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter, while he ruined his son by indulgence. he was very great while he spoke of his country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when he spoke of himself--which he did as often. in money-matters he was honest--for the times in which he lived, wonderfully honest; but in words he was not always equally trustworthy. he could flatter where he did not love. i admit that it was so, though i will not admit without a protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing his character generally. he was so much more sincere than others that the protest is needed. if a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his shoes, shall he be called a pygmy? and yet to declare that he measures full six feet would be untrue. cicero was a busybody. were there anything to do, he wished to do it, let it be what it might. "cedant arma togæ." if anything was written on his heart, it was that. yet he loved the idea of leading an army, and panted for a military triumph. letters and literary life were dear to him, and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with the young bloods of rome, such as c[oe]lius. as far as i can judge, he cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be reckoned among the gormands and gourmets of his times. he was so little like the "budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any touch of adversity with equanimity. the stoic requires to be hardened against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." it is his profession to be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of time." no man was less hardened, or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips. there be those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. cicero did not. whether of his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he spoke openly, as he did of all things. it has not been the way of heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men as we live with them. what a man he would have been for london life! how he would have enjoyed his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips, while he seemed to give it to all ears! how popular he would have been at the carlton, and how men would have listened to him while every great or little crisis was discussed! how supreme he would have sat on the treasury bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the government from the opposite seats! how crowded would have been his rack with invitations to dinner! how delighted would have been the middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual flirtations--and the girls of the period, how proud to get his autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator with theirs! how the pages of the magazines would have run over with little essays from his pen! "have you seen our cicero's paper on agriculture? that lucky fellow, editor ----, got him to do it last month!" "of course you have read cicero's article on the soul. the bishops don't know which way to turn." "so the political article in the _quarterly_ is cicero's?" "of course you know the art-criticism in the _times_ this year is tully's doing?" but that would probably be a bounce. and then what letters he would write! with the penny-post instead of travelling messengers at his command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps with an instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have answered all questions and solved all difficulties. he would have so abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want of reticence. there will necessarily be much to be said of cicero's writings in the following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as well as the politician. in doing this, there arises a difficulty as to the sequence in which his works should be taken. it will hardly suit the purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or separately as to their subjects. the speeches and the letters clearly require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time at which they were either spoken or written. his treatises, whether on rhetoric or on the greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can best be taken apart as belonging in a very small degree, if at all, to the period in which they were written. i will therefore endeavor to introduce the orations and letters as the periods may suit, and to treat of his essays afterward by themselves. a few words i must say as to the roman names i have used in my narrative. there is a difficulty in this respect, because the practice of my boyhood has partially changed itself. pompey used to be pompey without a blush. now with an erudite english writer he is generally pompeius. the denizens of africa--the "nigger" world--have had, i think, something to do with this. but with no erudite english writer is terence terentius, or virgil virgilius, or horace horatius. were i to speak of livius, the erudite english listener would think that i alluded to an old author long prior to our dear historian. and though we now talk of sulla instead of sylla, we hardly venture on antonius instead of antony. considering all this, i have thought it better to cling to the sounds which have ever been familiar to myself; and as i talk of virgil and of horace and ovid freely and without fear, so shall i speak also of pompey and of antony and of catiline. in regard to sulla, the change has been so complete that i must allow the old name to have re-established itself altogether. it has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of which i am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting down from the building of rome, a.u.c., or "anno urbis conditæ," and back from the birth of christ, which we english mark by the letters b.c., before christ. in dealing with cicero, writers (both french and english) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning his doings or sayings to the year of his age. there is again a fourth mode, common among the romans, of indicating the special years by naming the consuls, or one of them. "o nata mecum consule manlio," horace says, when addressing his cask of wine. that was, indeed, the official mode of indicating a date, and may probably be taken as showing how strong the impression in the roman mind was of the succession of their consuls. in the following pages i will use generally the date b.c., which, though perhaps less simple than the a.u.c., gives to the mind of the modern reader a clearer idea of the juxtaposition of events. the reader will surely know that christ was born in the reign of augustus, and crucified in that of tiberius; but he will not perhaps know, without the trouble of some calculation, how far removed from the period of christ was the year 648 a.u.c., in which cicero was born. to this i will add on the margin the year of cicero's life. he was nearly sixty-four when he died. i shall, therefore, call that year his sixty-third year. chapter ii. _his education._ at arpinum, on the river liris, a little stream which has been made to sound sweetly in our ears by horace,[31] in a villa residence near the town, marcus tullius cicero was born, 106 years before christ, on the 3d of january, according to the calendar then in use. pompey the great was born in the same year. arpinum was a state which had been admitted into roman citizenship, lying between rome and capua, just within that portion of italy which was till the other day called the kingdom of naples. the district from which he came is noted, also, as having given birth to marius. cicero was of an equestrian family, which means as much as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a gentleman and nothing more. an "eques" or knight in cicero's time became so, or might become so, by being in possession of a certain income. the title conferred no nobility. the plebeian, it will be understood, could not become patrician, though he might become noble--as cicero did. the patrician must have been born so--must have sprung from the purple of certain fixed families.[32] cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the senators because of his service among the high magistrates of the republic. as none of his family had served before him, he was "novus homo," a new man, and therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. a man was noble who could reckon a consul, a prætor, or an ædile among his ancestors. such was not the case with cicero. as he filled all these offices, his son was noble--as were his son's sons and grandsons, if such there were. it was common to romans to have three names, and our cicero had three. marcus, which was similar in its use to the christian name of one of us, had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his son. this, called the prænomen, was conferred on the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. there was but a limited choice of such names among the romans, so that an initial letter will generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended. a. stands for aulus, p. for publius, m. generally for marcus, c. for caius, though there was a cneus also. the nomen, tullius, was that of the family. of this family of tullius to which cicero belonged we know no details. plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he had been descended from a prince who had governed the volsci. we do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a fuller. there can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the best education which rome or greece afforded. the third name or cognomen, that of cicero, belonged to a branch of the family of tullius. this third name had generally its origin, as do so many of our surnames, in some specialty of place, or trade, or chance circumstance. it was said that an ancestor had been called cicero from "cicer," a vetch, because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable. it is more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of vetches. be that as it may, the name had been well established before the orator's time. cicero's mother was one helvia, of whom we are told that she was well-born and rich. cicero himself never alludes to her--as neither, if i remember rightly, did horace to his mother, though he speaks so frequently of his father. helvia's younger son, quintus, tells a story of his mother in a letter, which has been, by chance, preserved among those written by our cicero. she was in the habit of sealing up the empty wine-jars, as well as those which were full, so that a jar emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known. this is told in a letter to tiro, a favorite slave belonging to marcus, of whom we shall hear often in the course of our work. as the old lady sealed up the jars, though they contained no wine, so must tiro write letters, though he has nothing to say in them. this kind of argument, taken from the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents, could be only used to a dear and familiar friend. such was tiro, though still a slave, to the two brothers. roman life admitted of such friendships, though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his life and death were at the master's disposal. this is nearly all that is known of cicero's father and mother, or of his old home. there is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid great attention to the education of his sons--if, in the case of marcus, any evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his life. at a very early age, probably when he was eight--in the year which produced julius cæsar--he was sent to rome, and there was devoted to studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life. middleton says that the father lived in rome with his son, and argues from this that he was a man of large means. but cicero gives no authority for this. it is more probable that he lived at the house of one aculeo, who had married his mother's sister, and had sons with whom cicero was educated. stories are told of his precocious talents and performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable men--not unfrequently from their own mouths. it is said of him that he was intimate with the two great advocates of the time, lucius crassus and marcus antonius the orator, the grandfather of cicero's future enemy, whom we know as marc antony. cicero speaks of them both as though he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth. he tells us anecdotes of them;[33] how they were both accustomed to conceal their knowledge of greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they were anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to have contented themselves simply with roman words and roman thoughts. but the intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt to feel that he has enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and heard him, and perhaps been taken by the hand. he himself gives in very plain language an account of his own studies when he was seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. he speaks of the orators of that day[34]: "when i was above all things anxious to listen to these men, the banishment of cotta was a great sorrow to me. i was passionately intent on hearing those who were left, daily writing, reading, and making notes. nor was i content only with practice in the art of speaking. in the following year varius had to go, condemned by his own enactment; and at this time, in working at the civil law, i gave much of my time to quintus scævola, the son of publius, who, though he took no pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave great assistance to students. the year after, when sulla and pompey were consuls, i learned what oratory really means by listening to publius sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. it was then that philo, the chief of the academy, with other leading philosophers of athens, had been put to flight by the war with mithridates, and had come to rome. to him i devoted myself entirely, stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the greek philosophy. but in that, though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed. in that year sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of our greatest orators, quintus catulus, marcus antonius, and caius julius, were cruelly killed." this was the time of the civil war between marius and sulla. "in the same year i took lessons from molo the rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." in the next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with diodatus the stoic, who afterward lived with him, and died in his house. here we have an authentic description of the manner in which cicero passed his time as a youth at rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives. nothing in it, however, is more remarkable than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the greek philosophers, his clear common sense quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion. but before these days of real study had come upon him he had given himself up to juvenile poetry. he is said to have written a poem called pontius glaucus when he was fourteen years old. this was no doubt a translation from the greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and many portions of his prose treatises.[35] plutarch tells us that the poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time, when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in rome." the english translators of plutarch tell us that their author was an indifferent judge of latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he praised cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the opinion of juvenal." but juvenal has given no opinion of cicero's poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism, and declared that cicero would never have had his head cut off had his philippics been of the same nature.[36] the evidence of quintus mucius scævola as to cicero's poetry was perhaps better, as he had the means, at any rate, of reading it. he believed that the marius, a poem written by cicero in praise of his great fellow-townsman, would live to posterity forever. the story of the old man's prophecy comes to us, no doubt, from cicero himself, and is put into the mouth of his brother;[37] but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted. the glaucus was a translation from the greek done by a boy, probably as a boy's lesson it is not uncommon that such exercises should be treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original compositions. lord brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing english essays, and even tales of fiction.[38] "i find one of these," he says, "has survived the waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition i was guilty of at the age of thirteen. my tale was entitled 'memnon, or human wisdom,' and is as follows." then we have a fair translation of voltaire's romance, "memnon," or "la sagesse humaine." the old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography, had altogether forgotten his voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! nothing so absurd as that is told of cicero by himself or on his behalf. it may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to cicero's poetry generally. but little of it remains to us, and by that little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too good in its nature to be passed over altogether without notice. it has been his fate to be rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses, and that ridicule has come from two lines which i have already quoted. the longest piece which we have is from the phænomena of aratus, which he translated from the greek when he was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly bodies. it is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the author himself in his treatise, de naturâ deorum. it must be owned that it is not pleasant reading. but translated poetry seldom is pleasant, and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of eighteen. the marius was written two years after this, and we have a passage from it, quoted by the author in his de divinatione, containing some fine lines. it tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent. cicero took it, no doubt (not translated it, however), from the passage in the iliad, lib, xii, 200, which has been rendered by pope with less than his usual fire, and by lord derby with no peculiar charm. virgil has reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words. his version has been translated by dryden, but better, perhaps, by christopher pitt. voltaire has translated cicero's lines with great power, and shelley has reproduced the same idea at much greater length in the first canto of the revolt of islam, taking it probably from cicero, but, if not, from voltaire.[39] i venture to think that, of the nine versions, cicero's is the best, and that it is the most melodious piece of latin poetry we have up to that date. twenty-seven years afterward, when lucretius was probably at work on his great poem, cicero wrote an account of his consulship in verse. of this we have fifty or sixty lines, in which the author describes the heavenly warnings which were given as to the affairs of his own consular year. the story is not a happy one, but the lines are harmonious. it is often worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen. to trace our melody from chaucer to tennyson is matter of interest to us all. of cicero as a poet we may say that he found latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. now, as we go on with the orator's life and prose works, we need not return to his poetry. the names of many masters have been given to us as those under whom cicero's education was carried on. among others he is supposed, at a very early age, to have been confided to archias. archias was a greek, born at antioch, who devoted himself to letters, and, if we are to believe what cicero says, when speaking as an advocate, excelled all his rivals of the day. like many other educated greeks, he made his way to rome, and was received as one of the household of lucullus, with whom he travelled, accompanying him even to the wars. he became a citizen of rome--so cicero assures us--and cicero's tutor. what cicero owed to him we do not know, but to cicero archias owed immortality. his claim to citizenship was disputed; and cicero, pleading on his behalf, made one of those shorter speeches which are perfect in melody, in taste, and in language. there is a passage in which speaking on behalf of so excellent a professor in the art, he sings the praises of literature generally. i know no words written in praise of books more persuasive or more valuable. "other recreations," he says, "do not belong to all seasons nor to all ages, nor to all places. these pursuits nourish our youth and delight our old age. they adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a solace to our troubles. they charm us at home, and they are not in our way when we are abroad. they go to bed with us. they travel about with us. they accompany us as we escape into the country."[40] archias probably did something for him in directing his taste, and has been rewarded thus richly. as to other lessons, we know that he was instructed in law by scævola, and he has told us that he listened to crassus and antony. at sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting off his boy's dress, the toga prætexta, and appearing in the toga virilis before the prætor, thus assuming his right to go about a man's business. at sixteen the work of education was _not_ finished--no more than it is with us when a lad at oxford becomes "of age" at twenty-one; nor was he put beyond his father's power, the "patria potestas," from which no age availed to liberate a son; but, nevertheless, it was a very joyful ceremony, and was duly performed by cicero in the midst of his studies with scævola. at eighteen he joined the army. that doctrine of the division of labor which now, with us, runs through and dominates all pursuits, had not as yet been made plain to the minds of men at rome by the political economists of the day. it was well that a man should know something of many things--that he should especially, if he intended to be a leader of men, be both soldier and orator. to rise to be consul, having first been quæstor, ædile, and prætor, was the path of glory. it had been the special duty of the consuls of rome, since the establishment of consular government, to lead the armies of the republic. a portion of the duty devolved upon the prætors, as wars became more numerous; and latterly the commanders were attended by quæstors. the governors of the provinces, proconsuls, or proprætors with proconsular authority, always combined military with civil authority. the art of war was, therefore, a necessary part of the education of a man intended to rise in the service of the state. cicero, though, in his endeavor to follow his own tastes, he made a strong effort to keep himself free from such work, and to remain at rome instead of being sent abroad as a governor, had at last to go where fighting was in some degree necessary, and, in the saddest phase of his life, appeared in italy with his lictors, demanding the honors of a triumph. in anticipation of such a career, no doubt under the advice of his friends, he now went out to see, if not a battle, something, at any rate, of war. it has already been said how the citizenship of rome was conferred on some of the small italian states around, and not on others. hence, of course, arose jealousy, which was increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded that they were called to furnish soldiers to rome, as well as those who were included. then there was formed a combination of italian cities, sworn to remedy the injury thus inflicted on them. their purpose was to fight rome in order that they might achieve roman citizenship; and hence arose the first civil war which distracted the empire. pompeius strabo, father of pompey the great, was then consul (b.c. 89), and cicero was sent out to see the campaign under him. marius and sulla, the two romans who were destined soon to bathe rome in blood, had not yet quarrelled, though they had been brought to hate each other--marius by jealousy, and sulla by rivalry. in this war they both served under the consuls, and cicero served with sulla. we know nothing of his doings in that campaign. there are no tidings even of a misfortune such as that which happened to horace when he went out to fight, and came home from the battle-field "relicta non bene parmula." rome trampled on the rebellious cities, and in the end admitted them to citizenship. but probably the most important, certainly the most notorious, result of the italian war, was the deep antagonism of marius and sulla. sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the occasion, whereas marius, who had become the great soldier of the republic, and had been six times consul, failed to gather fresh laurels. rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all the glory and all the disgrace of cicero's life, and was open to the dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and the strongest. marius, after a series of romantic adventures with which we must not connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his death, while sulla went off with his army, pillaged athens, plundered asia minor generally, and made terms with mithridates, though he did not conquer him. with the purport, no doubt, of conquering mithridates, but perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of rome, the army had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the marian faction. then came those three years, when sulla was in the east and marius dead, of which cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which a student was able to study in rome. "triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[41] these must have been the years 86, 85, and 84 before christ, when cicero was twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this period, in truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he tells us of his studies with philo, and molo, and diodatus. precocious as he was in literature, writing one poem--or translating it--when he was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he was by no means in a hurry to commence the work of his life. he is said also to have written a treatise on military tactics when he was nineteen; which again, no doubt, means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay from the greek. this, happily, does not remain. but we have four books, rhetoricorum ad c. herennium, and two books de inventione, attributed to his twentieth and twenty-first years, which are published with his works, and commence the series. of all that we have from him, they are perhaps the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper place. the success of the education of cicero probably became a commonplace among latin school-masters and latin writers. in the dialogue de oratoribus, attributed to tacitus, the story of it is given by messala when he is praising the orators of the earlier age. "we know well," says messala, "that book of cicero which is called brutus, in the latter part of which he describes to us the beginning and the progress of his own eloquence, and, as it were, the bringing up on which it was founded. he tells us that he had learned civil law under q. mutius scævola; that he had exhausted the realm of philosophy--learning that of the academy under philo, and that of the stoics under diodatus; that, not content with these treatises, he had travelled through greece and asia, so as to embrace the whole world of art. and thus it had come about that in the works of cicero no knowledge is wanting--neither of music, nor of grammar, nor any other liberal accomplishment. he understood the subtilty of logic, the purpose of ethics, the effects and causes of things." then the speaker goes on to explain what may be expected from study such as that. "thus it is, my good friends--thus, that from the acquirement of many arts, and from a general knowledge of all things, eloquence that is truly admirable is created in its full force; for the power and capacity of an orator need not be hemmed in, as are those of other callings, by certain narrow bounds; but that man is the true orator who is able to speak on all subjects with dignity and grace, so as to persuade those who listen, and to delight them, in a manner suited to the nature of the subject in hand and the convenience of the time."[42] we might fancy that we were reading words from cicero himself! then the speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us how far matters had derogated in his time, pointing out at the same time that the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even before cicero, but had been put down, as far as the law could put them down, by its interference. he is speaking of those schools of rhetoric in which greek professors of the art gave lessons for money, which were evil in their nature, and not, as it appears, efficacious even for the purpose in hand. "but now," continues messala, "our very boys are brought into the schools of those lecturers who are called 'rhetores,' who had sprung up before cicero, to the displeasure of our ancestors, as is evident from the fact that when crassus and domitius were censors they were ordered to shut up their school of impudence, as cicero calls it. our boys, as i was going to say, are taken to these lecture-rooms, in which it is hard to say whether the atmosphere of the place, or the lads they are thrown among, or the nature of the lessons taught, are the most injurious. in the place itself there is neither discipline nor respect. all who go there are equally ignorant. the boys among the boys, the lads among the lads, utter and listen to just what words they please. their very exercises are, for the most part, useless. two kinds are in vogue with these 'rhetores,' called 'suasoriæ' and 'controversiæ,'" tending, we may perhaps say, to persuade or to refute. "of these, the 'suasoriæ,' as being the lighter and requiring less of experience, are given to the little boys, the 'controversiæ' to the bigger lads. but--oh heavens, what they are--what miserable compositions!" then he tells us the subjects selected. rape, incest, and other horrors are subjected to the lads for their declamation, in order that they may learn to be orators. messala then explains that in those latter days--his days, that is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those large subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not beneficial to the state at large. but it was thus, he says, that cicero became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended only p. quintius and archias, and had had nothing to do with catiline, or milo, or verres, or antony--showing, by-the-way, how great was the reputation of that speech, pro milone, with which we shall have to deal farther on. the treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having probably been lost. from whose mouth the last words are supposed to come is not apparent. it ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial government--suitable, indeed, to the time of domitian, but very unlike tacitus. while, however, it praises despotism, it declares that only by the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained. "our country, indeed, while it was astray in its government; while it tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord; while there was no peace in the forum, no agreement in the senate, no moderation on the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters, no control among the magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger eloquence." from what we are thus told of cicero, not what we hear from himself, we are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. with his mind fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. it was macaulay, i think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the "omne scibile,"--the understanding of all things within the reach of human intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of bacon. the special preparation which was, in cicero's time, employed for students at the bar is also described in the treatise from which i have quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite of that afforded by the "rhetores." "among ourselves, the youth who was intended to achieve eloquence in the forum, when already trained at home and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by his father or his friends to that orator who might then be considered to be the leading man in the city. it became his daily work to follow that man, to accompany him, to be conversant with all his speeches, whether in the courts of law or at public meetings, so that he might learn, if i might say so, to fight in the very thick of the throng." it was thus that cicero studied his art. a few lines farther down, the pseudo-tacitus tells us that crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a brief against carbo; that cæsar did so in his twenty-first against dolabella; and pollio, in his twenty-second year, against cato.[43] in this precocity cicero did not imitate crassus, or show an example to the romans who followed him. he was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. sulla had then succeeded in crushing the marian faction, and the sullan proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. sulla had been declared dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more selections for death. the republic was supposed to be restored. "recuperata republica * * * tum primum nos ad causas et privatas et publicas adire c[oe]pimus,"[44] "the republic having been restored, i then first applied myself to pleadings, both private and public." of cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair judgment. marius had been his townsman; sulla had been his captain. but the one thing dear to him was the republic--what he thought to be the republic. he was neither marian nor sullan. the turbulence in which so much noble blood had flowed--the "crudelis interitus oratorum," the crushing out of the old legalized form of government--was abominable to him. it was his hope, no doubt his expectation, that these old forms should be restored in all their power. there seemed to be more probability of this--there was more probability of it--on the side of sulla than the other. on sulla's side was pompey, the then rising man, who, being of the same age with cicero, had already pushed himself into prominence, who was surnamed the great, and who "triumphed" during these very two years in which cicero began his career; who through cicero's whole life was his bugbear, his stumbling-block, and his mistake. but on that side were the "optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought to lead the republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to be so; those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it. if there was a hope, it was with them. the old state of things--that oligarchy which has been called a republic--had made rome what it was; had produced power, civilization, art, and literature. it had enabled such a one as cicero was himself to aspire to lead, though he had been humbly born, and had come to rome from an untried provincial family. to him the republic--as he fancied that it had been, as he fancied that it might be--was all that was good, all that was gracious, all that was beneficent. on sulla's side lay what chance there was of returning to the old ways. when sulla was declared dictator, it was presumed that the republic was restored. but not on this account should it be supposed that cicero regarded the proscriptions of sulla with favor, or that he was otherwise than shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the proscription paved the way. this is a matter with which it will be necessary to deal more fully when we come in our next chapter to the first speeches made by cicero; in the very first of which, as i place them, he attacks the sullan robberies with an audacity which, when we remember that sulla was still in power, rescues, at any rate, in regard to this period of his life, the character of the orator from that charge of cowardice which has been imputed to him. it is necessary here, in this chapter devoted to the education of cicero, to allude to his two first speeches, because that education was not completed till afterward--so that they may be regarded as experiments, or trials, as it were, of his force and sufficiency. "not content with these teachers"--teachers who had come to rome from greece and asia--"he had travelled through greece and asia, so as to embrace the whole world of art." these words, quoted a few pages back from the treatise attributed to tacitus, refer to a passage in the brutus in which cicero makes a statement to that effect. "when i reached athens,[45] i passed six months with antiochus, by far the best known and most erudite of the teachers of the old academy, and with him, as my great authority and master, i renewed that study of philosophy which i had never abandoned--which from my boyhood i had followed with always increasing success. at the same time i practised oratory laboriously with demetrius syrus, also at athens, a well-known and by no means incapable master of the art of speaking. after that i wandered over all asia, and came across the best orators there, with whom i practised, enjoying their willing assistance." there is more of it, which need not be repeated verbatim, giving the names of those who aided him in asia: menippus of stratonice--who, he says, was sweet enough to have belonged himself to athens--with dionysius of magnesia, with [oe]schilus of cnidos, and with xenocles of adramyttium. then at rhodes he came across his old friend molo, and applied himself again to the teaching of his former master. quintilian explains to us how this was done with a purpose, so that the young orator, when he had made a first attempt with his half-fledged wings in the courts, might go back to his masters for awhile[46]. he was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. it has been suggested that he did so in fear of the resentment of sulla, with whose favorites and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly. there is no reason for alleging this, except that sulla was powerful, that sulla was blood-thirsty, and that sulla must have been offended. this kind of argument is often used. it is supposed to be natural, or at least probable, that in a certain position a man should have been a coward or a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and in the presumption thus raised the accusation is brought against him. "fearing sulla's resentment," plutarch says, "he travelled into greece, and gave out that the recovery of his health was the motive." there is no evidence that such was his reason for travelling; and, as middleton says in his behalf, it is certain that he "continued for a year after this in rome without any apprehension of danger." it is best to take a man's own account of his own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for doubting the statement made. it is thus that cicero himself speaks of his journey: "now," he says, still in his brutus[47], "as you wish to know what i am--not simply what mark i may have on my body from my birth, or with what surroundings of childhood i was brought up--i will include some details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. at this time i was thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow--a habit and form of body which is supposed to be adverse to long life; and those who loved me thought the more of this, because i had taken to speaking without relaxation, without recreation with all the powers of my voice, and with much muscular action. when my friends and the doctors desired me to give up speaking, i resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an orator, i would face any danger. but when it occurred to me that by lowering my voice, by changing my method of speaking, i might avoid the danger, and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance, i accepted that as a reason for going into asia, so that i might study how to change my mode of elocution. thus, when i had been two years at work upon causes, and when my name was already well known in the forum, i took my departure, and left rome." during the six months that he was at athens he renewed an early acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful, and certainly the best known, of his friends. this was titus pomponius, known to the world as that atticus to whom were addressed something more than half the large body of letters which were written by cicero, and which have remained for our use.[48] he seems to have lived much with atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though with altogether different results. atticus applied himself to the practices of the epicurean school, and did in truth become "epicuri de grege porcus." to enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all turmoils of war or state, to make the best of the times, whether they were bad or good, without any attempt on his part to mend them--this was the philosophy of titus pomponius, who was called atticus because athens, full of art and literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear to him. to this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, cicero was altogether opposed. he studied in all the schools--among the platonists, the stoics, even with the epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise them--proclaiming himself to belong to the new academy, or younger school of platonists, but in truth drawing no system of morals or rule of life from any of them. to him, and also to atticus, no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime. atticus found himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the name of a philosopher, and therefore became an epicurean. cicero could in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves, or from its hatred; and from the greek philosophers whom he named of this or the other school, received only some assistance in that handling of so-called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future life. this was well understood by the latin authors who wrote of cicero after his own time. quintilian, speaking of cicero and brutus as writers of philosophy, says of the latter, "suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim sentire quæ dicit."[49]--"he was equal to the weight of the subject, for you feel that he believes what he writes." he leaves the inference, of course, that cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his ingenuity, as a school-boy writes. when at athens, cicero was initiated into the eleusinian mysteries--as to which mr. collins, in his little volume on cicero, in the ancient classics for english readers, says that they "contained under this veil whatever faith in the invisible and eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan." in this mr. collins is fully justified by what cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by early christian writers. they were to those pious but somewhat prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50] but cicero declares in his dialogue with atticus, de legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine gifts which your athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new life. nor have we received from them only the means of living with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the future."[51] of what took place with cicero and atticus at their introduction to the eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. but it can hardly be that, with such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed in such language to the very friend who had then been his companion, they should not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some great line of thought. the two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom we regard, the one as a pagan and the other as a christian, are the belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our neighbors. here they are both indicated, the former in plain language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of the barbarity of uncivilized life, "quibus ex agresti immanique vita exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus." of the inner life of cicero at this moment--how he ate, how he drank, with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and how lodged--we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware that he could not have travelled, as he did in greece and asia, without great expense. his brother quintus was with him, so that cost, if not double, was greatly increased. antiochus, demetrius syrus, molo, menippus, and the others did not give him their services for nothing. these were gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to the best market. and then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he went, as though travelling in some sort "en prince." no doubt he had brought with him the best introductions which rome could afford; but even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary, and this must have come from his father's pocket. as we go on, a question will arise as to cicero's income and the sources whence it came. he asserts of himself that he was never paid for his services at the bar. to receive such payment was illegal, but was usual. he claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at any rate, from the fault of having broken the law. he has not been believed. there is no evidence to convict him of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the life he led. but we do not know what were his father's means. seeing the nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly travel afforded him, i think we have reason to suppose that the old cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at arpinum was no humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment. chapter iii. _the condition of rome._ it is far from my intention to write a history of rome during the ciceronian period. were i to attempt such a work, i should have to include the doings of sertorius in spain, of lucullus and pompey in the east, cæsar's ten years in gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of marseilles to the final battles of thapsus and munda. with very many of the great events which the period includes cicero took but slight concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of the state, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. but he was a public man who concerned himself personally with rome rather than with the roman empire. home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him. to cæsar's great deeds in gaul we should have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother quintus been among cæsar's officers, and his young friend trebatius been confided by himself to cæsar's care. of pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the war. of the proconsular governments throughout the roman empire we should not learn much from cicero, were it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a roman governor, and by the narratives of cicero's own rule in cilicia, how excellent. the history of the time has been written for modern readers by merivale and mommsen, with great research and truth as to facts, but, as i think with some strong feeling. now mr. froude has followed with his cæsar, which might well have been called anti-cicero. all these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying, the successful soldier, have, i think, dealt hardly with cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. with the great facts of the roman empire as they gradually formed themselves from the fall of carthage, when the empire began,[52] to the establishment of augustus, when it was consummated, i do not pretend to deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the life of cicero. but in order that i may, if possible, show the condition of his mind toward the republic--that i may explain what it was that he hoped and why he hoped it--i must go back and relate in a few words what it was that marius and sulla had done for rome. of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned were comprised within the early years of cicero's life. marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had pushed himself to the consulate. his quarrel with sulla had probably commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the jugurthine war. but it is not matter of much moment, now that marius had proved himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter years to become the master of rome. sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before cicero--a patrician of the bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having been elected quæstor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with us may become head of the admiralty. as quæstor he was sent to join marius in africa a few months before cicero was born. into his hands, as it happened, not into those of marius, jugurtha was surrendered by his father-in-law, bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the romans. thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years later, all rome was lying butchered. the cause of quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the condition to which rome had been brought, when two such men could scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives, friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by those who would understand what rome had been, what it was, and what it was necessarily to become. when cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the father of pompey for the power of rome against the italian allies who were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its bitterness. marius and sulla were on the same side in that war. but marius had then not only been consul, but had been six times consul; and he had beaten the teutons and the cimbrians, by whom romans had feared that all italy would be occupied. what was not within the power of such a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could prevail when italy and rome, but for such a general, had been at the mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that general six times consul? marius seems to have been no politician. he became a soldier and then a general; and because he was great as a soldier and general, the affairs of the state fell into his hands with very little effort. in the old days of rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased territory. when hannibal, while he was still lingering in italy, had been circumvented by the appearance of scipio in africa and the romans had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. from that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. up to that time a consul had to become a general, because it was his business to look after the welfare of the state. after that time a man became a consul in order that he might be a general. the toga was made to give way to the sword, and the noise of the forum to the trumpets. we, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read the future. in the days of marius there was probably no man so wise. cæsar was the first to see it. cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. his life was one struggle against the coming evil--against the time in which brute force was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. his "cedant arma togæ" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that sulla had done or cæsar was about to do. the mischief had been effected years before his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. only, in considering these things, let us confess that cicero saw what was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good was still within reach. marius in his way was a cæsar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very efficient cæsar--having that great gift of ruling his own appetites which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others. it may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the two great hordes from the north, the teutons and the cimbrians, was not equal in strategy to anything that cæsar accomplished in gaul. it is probable that cæsar learned much of his tactics from studying the man[oe]uvres of marius. but marius was only a general. though he became hot in roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of power for himself. he was able to perceive how vain was law in such a period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. with him, at least, there was no idea of roman liberty, little probably of roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go together. sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political condition of the world around him. to make a dash for power, as a dog might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for marius. sulla could see something of future events. he could understand that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. he might thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. some glimmer of an idea of an augustan rule was present to him; and with the view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. it seems to have been his idea that a sullan party might rule the empire by adherence to these forms. i doubt if marius had any fixed idea of government. to get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow--this seems to have been enough for marius.[53] with sulla there was understanding that the empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would be best if they could be made compatible with the newly-concentrated power. the immediate effect upon rome, either from one or from the other, was nearly the same. in the year 87 b.c. marius occupied himself in slaughtering the sullan party--during which, however, sulla escaped from rome to the army of which he was selected as general, and proceeded to athens and the east with the object of conquering mithridates; for, during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been the chief bone of contention among them. marius, who was by age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that sulla might not have it. in the next year, 86 b.c., marius died, being then consul for the seventh time. sulla was away in the east, and did not return till 83 b.c. in the interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which cicero afterward spoke. "triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the marian massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms. it was not that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer. then sulla came back, 83 b.c., when cicero was twenty-four; and if marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions. it was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on another day. the numbers were gradually raised to 4,700! nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] all the public was armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to death. this, however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by sulla. men generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men. unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the ordinary roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake of the employment. but if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be made to flow copiously. this was what sulla did. not only was the victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the property so obtained. two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an informer could earn many talents. it was thus that fortunes were made in the last days of sulla. it was not only those 520 who were named for killing. they were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade proscription and confiscation might be made. plutarch tells us how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the forum, one who took no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. he had an alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. he had hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was slaughtered. such was the massacre of sulla, coming with an interval of two or three years after those of marius, between which was the blessed time in which rome was without arms. in the time of marius, cicero was too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or parentage, to fear anything. nor is it probable that marius would have turned against his townsmen. when sulla's turn came, cicero, though not absolutely connected with the dictator, was, so to say, on his side in politics. in going back even to this period we may use the terms liberals and conservatives for describing the two parties. marius was for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the senate, and loved to feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. of liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. sulla, on the other hand, had been born a patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the state into his own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old traditions. it must be presumed that there was at his heart something of love for old rome. the proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82 b.c., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months--up to the beginning of june, 81 b.c. a day was fixed at which there should be no more slaughtering--no more slaughtering, that is, without special order in each case, and no more confiscation--except such as might be judged necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past victims. then sulla, as dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the old laws. there should still be consuls and prætors, but with restricted powers, lessened almost down to nothing. it seems hard to gather what was exactly the dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when he should himself have left the scene. he did increase the privileges of the senate; but thinking of the senate of rome as he must have thought of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them, he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained by dividing it among them. he certainly contemplated no follower to himself, no heir to his power, as cæsar did. when he had been practically dictator about three years--though he did not continue the use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down, as it were, from his throne into private life. i know nothing in history more remarkable than sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have dealt with his name give no explanation of it. plutarch, his biographer, expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do so with security. cicero says nothing of it. he had probably left rome before it occurred, and did not return till after sulla's death. it seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57] at his own demand, the plenary power of dictator had been given to him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the senate or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. he did lay it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his dictatorship like some camillus of old. there had been no dictator in rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his office. sulla now affected to do the same; and rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old spirit. it was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special wonder. the salt of the roman constitution was gone, but the remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the romans. it seems certain that no attempt was made to injure sulla when he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection. in the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. modern writers have spoken of sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the republic again into order. middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts." mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the service of the state, as a sword or a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--sulla deserves to be named side by side with washington."[58] to us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment, were it not that cicero was probably cicero because sulla had been sulla. horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to cicero--and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous to express them[59]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of order (what we may call the best chance for the republic) lay with the senate and with the old traditions and laws of rome, in the re-establishment of which sulla had employed himself. of these institutions mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel to be justified. "on the roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the sullan constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] we have to admit that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left any savor by which it could be preserved. but the german historian seems to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern english historians, that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. sulla and his senate thought that by massacring the marian faction they had restored everything to an equilibrium. sulla himself seems to have believed that when the thing was accomplished rome would go on, and grow in power and prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he had initiated. there can be no doubt that many of the best in rome--the best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. pompey thought so, and cicero. cato thought so, and brutus. cæsar, when he came to think about it, thought the reverse. but even now to us, looking back with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder change--some such change as cicero would have advocated--might not have prevented the tyranny of augustus, the mysteries of tiberius, the freaks of caligula, the folly of claudius, and the madness of nero. it is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has failed. the cæsars of the world are they who make interesting stories. that cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be acknowledged. he had studied the history of his country, and was aware that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as roman power; and he knew that rome had produced true patriotism. her consuls, her censors, her tribunes, and her generals had, as a rule, been true to rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than themselves. and he believed that liberty had existed in rome, though nowhere else. it would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty which cicero entertained. liberty was very dear to him--dear to him not only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of others. but it was only the liberty of a few. half the population of the roman cities were slaves, and in cicero's time the freedom of the city, which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small proportion of the population of italy. it was the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was anxious. that a sicilian should be free under a roman proconsul, as a roman citizen was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine. the idea of cosmopolitan freedom--an idea which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now--had not as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to do to others as we would that they should do to us. it required christ to father that idea; and cicero, though he was nearer to christianity than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. but this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in an endeavor to preserve it. the kings had been expelled from rome because they had trampled on liberty. then came the republic, which we know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of the free people. for many years everything was done by the votes of the free people. under what inducements they had voted is another question. clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. we have heard of that even in england, where many of us still think that such a way of voting is far from objectionable. perhaps compulsion was sometimes used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven to the poll to carry this or the other measure. simple eloquence prevailed with some, and with others flattery. then corruption became rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery more or less overt. this was bad, of course. every freeman should have given a vote according to his conscience. but in what country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been achieved? though voting in england has not always been pure, we have not wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal rule. nor did cicero. he knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were very evil. he had lived through the dominations of marius and sulla, and had seen the old practices of roman government brought down to the pretence of traditional forms. but still, so he thought, there was life left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor, and intelligence. it was the best that he could imagine for the state--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody hands of one marius and one sulla after another. mommsen tells us that nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical government into which rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with mommsen, because we have seen what followed. but that cicero, living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things, should not, i think, cause us to doubt either cicero's wisdom or his patriotism. i cannot but think that, had i been a roman of those days, i should have preferred cicero, with his memories of the past, to cæsar, with his ambition for the future. looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great rome was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything else which the world has produced. it came to pass that "urbis et orbis" was not a false boast. gradually growing from the little nest of robbers established on the banks of the tiber, the people of rome learned how to spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule, while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of other people had produced. to do this, there must have been not only courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. but yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of rome. when did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? when was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling? not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the rome of the kings claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city. and from the time of their expulsion, rome, though she was rising in power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time that the day of her destruction had come upon her. not when brennus was at rome with his gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the expulsion of the kings, could rome be said to have been great; nor when, fifty or sixty years afterward, the roman army--the only army which rome then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the caudine forks and pass under the samnite yoke. then, when the samnite wars were ended, and rome was mistress in italy--mistress, after all, of no more than southern italy--the punic wars began. it could hardly have been during that long contest with carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that the palmy days of rome were at their best. hannibal seems always to be the master. trebia, thrasymene and cannæ, year after year, threaten complete destruction to the state. then comes the great scipio; and no doubt, if we must mark an era of roman greatness, it would be that of the battle of zama and the submission of carthage, 201 years before christ. but with scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition; and in the macedonian and greek wars that follow, though the arm of rome is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is already the glamour of her decline in virtue. her dealings with antiochus, with pyrrhus, and with the achæans, though successful, were hardly glorious. then came the two gracchi, and the reader begins to doubt whether the glory of the republic is not already over. they demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. the war with jugurtha followed, in which the romans were for years unsuccessful, and during which german hordes from the north rushed into gaul and destroyed an army of 80,000 romans. this brings us to marius and to sulla, of whom we have already spoken, and to that period of roman politics which the german historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." but, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity. in all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. the period of queen elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! but for a storm at sea, we might have been subjected to spain. by what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies were we governed through the reigns of james i. and charles i.! what periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! how little glorious was the reign of charles ii.! how full of danger that of william! how mean those of the four georges, with the dishonesty of ministers such as walpole and newcastle! and to-day, are there not many who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" we are a great nation, and the present threatenings are probably vain. nevertheless, the seeds of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices--so manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with certainty. but cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered and the bad eliminated. marius and sulla--pompey also, toward the end of his career, if i can read his character rightly--cæsar, and of course augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for himself, the power which the weak hands of the senate were unable to grasp. however much, or however little, the country of itself might have been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. each had the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. with cicero there is always present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional possessors of it. so much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and i am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as i am. cicero was aware quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the state. men who had been murderers on behalf of marius, and then others who had murdered on behalf of sulla--among whom that catiline, of whom we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle themselves down as quiet citizens. the laws had been set aside. even the law courts had been closed. sulla had been law, and the closets of his favorites had been the law courts. senators had been cowed and obedient. the tribunes had only been mock tribunes. rome, when cicero began his public life, was still trembling. the consuls of the day were men chosen at sulla's command. the army was sulla's army. the courts were now again opened by sulla's permission. the day fixed by sulla when murderers might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should not be paid for murdering--had arrived. there was not, one would say, much hope for good things. but sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope lay in that direction. consuls, prætors, quæstors, ædiles, even tribunes, were still there. perhaps it might be given to him, to cicero, to strengthen the hands of such officers. at any rate, there was no better course open to him by which he could serve his country. the heaviest accusation brought against cicero charges him with being insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of having changed his purpose. it has been alleged that, having begun life as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured his high office of state. as we go on, it will be my object to show that he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means, whether, for instance, he was ready to serve cæsar or to oppose him, he was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity of his purpose. i think that i can remember, even in great britain, even in the days of queen victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but friendly words. with us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. in rome expediency governed everything. all i claim for cicero is, that he was more sincere than others around him. chapter iv. _his early pleadings.--sextus roscius amerinus.--his income._ [sidenote: b.c. 80, ætat. 27.] we now come to the beginning of the work of cicero's life. this at first consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a successful barrister in our time. we do not know with absolute certainty even in what year cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. it may probably have been in 81 b.c., when he was twenty-five, or in his twenty-sixth year. of the pleadings of which we know the particulars, that in the defence of sextus roscius amerinus, which took place undoubtedly in the year 80 b.c., ætat twenty-seven, was probably the earliest. as to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also one for publius quintius, which has generally been printed first among the orator's works. it has, however, i think, been made clear that that spoken for sextus roscius came before it. it is certain that there had been others before either of them. in that for sextus he says that he had never spoken before in any public cause,[61] such as was the accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62] no doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. that of these two the defence of sextus roscius came first, is also to be found in his own words. more than once, in pleading for quintius, he speaks of the proscriptions and confiscations of sulla as evils then some time past. these were brought nominally to a close in june, 81; but it has been supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken in that very year. this seems to have been impossible. "i am most unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[63] when the tone of the two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for sextus roscius was spoken the first. it was, as i have said, spoken in his twenty-seventh year, b.c. 80, the year after the proscription lists had been closed, when sulla was still dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority. as to such violation of sulla's own enactment, cicero excuses the dictator in this very speech, likening him to great jove the thunderer. even "jupiter optimus maximus," as he is whose nod the heavens, the earth, and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. if so, how can we wonder that sulla, who has to rule the state, to govern, in fact, the world, should not be able himself to see to everything? jove probably found it convenient not to see many things. such must certainly have been the case with sulla. i will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story of sextus roscius of ameria at some length, because it is in itself a tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because, in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has produced; and also, i will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light upon the condition of rome at the time. our hair is made to stand on end when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a state as this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to die. we come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the bloody wreath of sulla as he triumphed on his marian foes, not the cruel persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such ruthless deeds--those attendant villanies for which the jupiter optimus maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. if in history we can ever get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always more interesting than any account of the great facts, however grand. the kalends of june had been fixed by sulla as the day on which the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. in the september following an old gentleman named sextus roscius was murdered in the streets of rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by two slaves. by whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. he was a man of reputation, well acquainted with the metelluses and messalas of the day, and passing rich. his name had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of sulla's friends. he was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. though there was at that time much money in rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money. immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or divided, probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom, as with every rich roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided. as to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. had the name of sextus roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it should have been so. jupiter optimus maximus could not see everything, and great advantages were taken. we must only suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their way. they could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. at any rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed. old roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that he lived always in the country at ameria, looking after his father's farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from ameria something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the time.[64] as we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him comes from his own advocate. cicero would probably say much which, though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. cicero describes him as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple, unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. he was now accused of having murdered his father. the accusation was conducted by one erucius, who in his opening speech--the speech made before that by cicero--had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. then cicero reminds him, and the judges, and the court how greatly agriculture had been honored in the old days, when consuls were taken from the ploughs. the imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have been a consul at any time--one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. erucius had declared of him that he never took part in any festivity. cicero uses this to show that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. old roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in rome--the one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. he, however, had died, and our roscius--sextus roscius amerinus, as he came to be called when he was made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down in the country. the accusation would probably not have been made, had he not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible. why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence as to guilt? that is the first question which presents itself. this son received no benefit from his father's death. he had in fact been absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and not to himself. they had been taken, and divided; taken by persons called "sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. such men in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our roscius. cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. there were two other rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named titus; titus roscius magnus, who sojourned in rome, and who seems to have exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the proscriptions, and titus roscius capito, who, when at home, lived at ameria, but of whom cicero tells us that he had become an apt pupil of the other during this affair. they had got large shares, but they shared also with one chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of sulla, who did the dirty work for jupiter optimus maximus when jupiter optimus maximus had not time to do it himself. we presume that chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. as to capito, the apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for himself. again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from cicero, who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. how instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite know. there was no system of attorneys. but the story was probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way prepared for him. that which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the case might seem to require. it has to be understood of cicero that he possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration; in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the same thing in our own enlightened days. but cicero, even as a young man, knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be disproved. the accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser, and which was subject to cross-examination. cicero would have no opportunity of producing evidence. he was thus exempted from the necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all disproved. i think we may take it for granted that the property of the murdered man was divided as he tells us. if that was so, why should any accusation have been made? our sextus seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. he had betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one metella, whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends the defence was no doubt managed. "you have my farms," he is made to say by his advocate; "i live on the charity of another. i abandon everything because i am placid by nature, and because it must be so. my house, which is closed to me, is open to you: i endure it. you have possessed yourself of my whole establishment; i have not one single slave. i suffer all this, and feel that i must suffer it. what do you want more? why do you persecute me further? in what do you think that i shall hurt you? how do i interfere with you? in what do i oppose you? is it your wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? you have your plunder. if for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[65] of all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as little as we please. cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an acquittal. but the argument shows that no overt act in quest of restitution had as yet been made. nevertheless, chrysogonus feared such action, and had arranged with the two tituses that something should be done to prevent it. what are we to think of the condition of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from supper--that, indeed, might happen in london if there existed the means of getting at the man's money when the man was dead--but in which such a plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated? "we have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that his goods had been confiscated. friends, we find, are interfering--these metellas and metelluses, probably. there is a son who is the natural heir. let us say that he killed his own father. the courts of law, which have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a man in opposition to the dictator's favorite. let us get him convicted, and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb us." it must have thus been that the plot was arranged. it was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less was it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance of many. erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on the part of chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father to be murdered because of hatred. the father was going to disinherit the son, and therefore the son murdered the father. in this there might have been some probability, had there been any evidence of such an intention on the father's part. but there was none. cicero declares that the father had never thought of disinheriting his son. there had been no quarrel, no hatred. this had been assumed as a reason--falsely. there was in fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it possible that the son should have done it. the father was killed in rome when, as was evident, the son was fifty miles off. he never left his farm. erucius, the accuser, had said, and had said truly, that rome was full of murderers.[66] but who was the most likely to have employed such a person: this rough husbandman, who had no intercourse with rome, who knew no one there, who knew little of roman ways, who had nothing to get by the murder when committed, or they who had long been concerned with murderers, who knew rome, and who were now found to have the property in their hands? the two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed, surely they might tell something? here there comes out incidentally the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might be extracted. this is spoken of with no horror by cicero, nor, as far as i can remember, by other roman writers. it was regarded as an established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court of law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances. this was so common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty. we hear, indeed, of slaves having their liberty given them in order that, being free, they may not be forced by torture to tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty been of the nature described by scott in "old mortality," when the poor preacher's limbs were mangled, i think we should have heard more of it. nor was the torture always applied, but only when the expected evidence was not otherwise forth-coming. cicero explains, in the little dialogue given below, how the thing was carried on.[68] "you had better tell the truth now, my friend: was it so and so?" the slave knows that, if he says it was so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but that, if he will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking. and yet the evidence went for what it was worth. in this case of roscius there had certainly been two slaves present; but cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no witnesses, had not the power to bring them into court; nor could slaves have been made to give evidence against their masters. these slaves, who had belonged to the murdered man, were now the property either of chrysogonus or of the two tituses. there was no getting at their evidence but by permission of their masters, and this was withheld. cicero demands that they shall be produced, knowing that the demand will have no effect. "the man here," he says, pointing to the accused, "asks for it, prays for it. what will you do in this case? why do you refuse?"[69] by this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused person cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how much more the hearer? then cicero goes on to show who in truth were guilty. "doubt now if you can, judges, by whom roscius was killed: whether by him who, by his father's death, is plunged into poverty and trouble--who is forbidden even to investigate the truth--or by those who are afraid of real evidence, who themselves possess the plunder, who live in the midst of murder, and on the proceeds of murder."[70] then he addresses one of the tituses, titus magnus, who seems to have been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his impudence in doing so: "who can doubt who was the murderer--you who have got all the plunder, or this man who has lost everything? but if it be added to this that you were a pauper before--that you have been known as a greedy fellow, as a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has been killed--then need one ask what has brought you to do such a deed as this?"[71] he next tells what took place, as far as it was known, immediately after the murder. the man had been killed coming home from supper, in september, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the fact was known in ameria before dawn. travelling was not then very quick; but a messenger, one mallius glaucia, a man on very close terms with titus magnus, was sent down at once in a light gig to travel through the night and take the information to titus capito why was all this hurry? how did glaucia hear of the murder so quickly? what cause to travel all through the night? why was it necessary that capito should know all about it at once? "i cannot think," says cicero, "only that i see that capito has got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered man owned!" but capito is to be produced as a witness, and cicero gives us to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have to undergo. in all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions as to facts of which he has no evidence. when that hurried messenger was sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. the two real contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they intended such a course. it had been conceived that when the man was dead and his goods seized, the fear of sulla's favorite, the still customary dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to shrink from inquiry. hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods taken, even if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance with sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to endure; but this poor wretch, sextus, had friends in rome--friends who were friends of sulla--of whom chrysogonus and the tituses had probably not bethought themselves. when it came to pass that more stir was made than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary. but, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, chrysogonus must be sought. sulla was then at volaterra, in etruria perhaps 150 miles north-west from rome, and with him was his favorite chrysogonus. in four days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither, and, so cicero states, by the same messenger--by glaucia--who had taken it to ameria. chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods, and from this cicero implies that chrysogonus and the two tituses were in partnership. but it seems that when the fact of the death of old roscius was known at ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and the most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with horror, determined to send a deputation to sulla. something of what was being done with their townsman's property was probably known, and there seems to have been a desire for justice. ten townsmen were chosen to go to sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into the matter. here, again, we are very much in the dark, because this very capito, to whom these farms were allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. the great object was to keep sulla himself in the dark, and this capito managed to do by the aid of chrysogonus. none of the ten were allowed to see sulla. they are hoaxed into believing that chrysogonus himself will look to it, and so they go back to ameria, having achieved nothing. we are tempted to believe that the deputation was a false deputation, each of whom probably had his little share, so that in this way there might be an appearance of justice. if it was so, cicero has not chosen to tell that part of the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason for omitting it. so far the matter had gone with the tituses, and with chrysogonus who had got his lion's share. our poor roscius, the victim, did at first abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. we cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that he had lived a wretched life during all the murders of the sullan proscriptions. but in his abject misery he had found his way up among the great friends of his family at rome, and had there been charged with the parricide, because chrysogonus and the tituses began to be afraid of what these great friends might do. this is the story as cicero has been able to tell it in his speech. beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. whether he got back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us. whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell those two tituses or chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been no one to inform us. the matter was of little importance in rome, where murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common incidents of every-day life. history would have meddled with nothing so ordinary had not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a man so great a master of his language that it has been worth the while of ages to perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. but the story, as a story of roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to history in explaining the condition of things which sulla had produced. the attack upon chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been offensive to sulla, though sulla is by name absolved from immediate blame. chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying words so bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--sulla's judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "putting aside sextus roscius," he says, "i demand, first of all, why the goods of an esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while defending sulla's enemies? it is against those only that the law is made. then i demand why they were sold when the legal day for such sales had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[72] then he gives us a picture of chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "you have seen him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims along the forum"--he, a freedman, with a crowd of roman citizens at his heels, that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to none--"the only happy man of the day, the only one with any power in his hands."[73] this trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried before a full bench of judges. of these the number would be uncertain, but they were probably above fifty. the prætor of the day--the prætor to whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided, and the judges all sat round him. their duty seems to have consisted in listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. each judge could vote[74] "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they do in scotland. they were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. it does not seem that any amount of legal lore was looked for specially in the judges, who at different periods had been taken from various orders of the citizens, but who at this moment, by a special law enacted by sulla, were selected only from the senators. we have ample evidence that at this period the judges in rome were most corrupt. they were tainted by a double corruption: that of standing by their order instead of standing by the public--each man among them feeling that his turn to be accused might come--and that also of taking direct bribes. cicero on various occasions--on this, for instance, and notably in the trial of verres, to which we shall come soon--felt very strongly that his only means of getting a true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them into temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. if a trial could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing to create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract admiration, and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the judgment would, as a matter of course, be bought. in such a case as this of sextus roscius, the poor wretch would be condemned, sewed up in his bag, and thrown into the sea, a portion of the plunder would be divided among the judges, and nothing further would be said about it. but if an orator could achieve for himself such a reputation that the world would come and listen to him, if he could so speak that rome should be made to talk about the trial, then might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. it may be understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the services of a cicero, or of a hortensius, who was unrivalled at the roman bar when cicero began to plead. there were three special modes of oratory in which cicero displayed his powers. he spoke either before the judges--a large body of judges who sat collected round the prætor, as in the case of sextus roscius--or in cases of civil law before a single judge, selected by the prætor, who sat with an assessor, as in the case of roscius the actor, which shall be mentioned just now. this was the recognized work of his life, in which he was engaged, at any rate, in his earlier years; or he spoke to the populace, in what was called the concio, or assembly of the people--speeches made before a crowd called together for a special purpose, as were the second and third orations against catiline; or in the senate, in which a political rather than a judicial sentence was sought from the votes of the senators. there was a fourth mode of address, which in the days of the emperors became common, when the advocate spoke "ad principem;" that is, to the emperor himself, or to some ruler acting for him as sole judge. it was thus that cicero pleaded before cæsar for ligarius and for king deiotarus, in the latter years of his life. in each of these a separate manner and a distinct line had to be adopted, in all of which he seems to have been equally happy, and equally powerful. in judging of his speeches, we are bound to remember that they were not probably uttered with their words arranged as we read them. some of those we have were never spoken at all, as was the case with the five last verrene orations, and with the second, by far the longest of the philippics. some, as was specially the case with the defence of milo, the language of which is perhaps as perfect as that of any oration which has reached us from ancient or modern days, were only spoken in part; so that that which we read bears but small relation to that which was heard. all were probably retouched for publication.[75] that words so perfect in their construction should have flowed from a man's mouth, often with but little preparation, we cannot conceive. but we know from the evidence of the day, and from the character which remained of him through after roman ages, how great was the immediate effect of his oratory. we can imagine him, in this case of sextus roscius, standing out in the open air in the forum, with the movable furniture of the court around him, the seats on which the judges sat with the prætor in the midst of them, all senators in their white robes, with broad purple borders. there too were seated, we may suppose on lower benches, the friends of the accused and the supporters of the accusation, and around, at the back of the orator, was such a crowd as he by the character of his eloquence may have drawn to the spot. cicero was still a young man; but his name had made itself known and we can imagine that some tidings had got abroad as to the bold words which would be spoken in reference to sulla and chrysogonus. the scene must have been very different from that of one of our dingy courts, in which the ermine is made splendid only by the purity and learning of the man who wears it. in rome all exterior gifts were there. cicero knew how to use them, so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant should not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity. quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they should dress themselves[76] and hold their togas--changing the folds of the garment so as to suit the different parts of the speech--how they should move their arms, and hold their heads, and turn their necks; even how they should comb their hair when they came to stand in public and plead at the bar. all these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years rolled on, had come down to him from days before cicero; but he always refers to cicero as though his were the palmy days of roman eloquence. we can well believe that cicero had studied many of these arts by his twenty-seventh year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop it--how to make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair, and yet not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the personal graces which were at his command. sextus roscius amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, i think, more attractive than most novels. we know that cicero pleaded other causes before he went to greece in the year 79 b.c., especially those for publius quintius, of which we have his speech, and that for a lady of arretium, in which he defended her right to be regarded as a free woman of that city. in this speech he again attacked sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the dictator; and again cicero was successful. this is not extant. then he started on his travels, as to which i have already spoken. while he was absent sulla died, and the condition of the republic during his absence was anything but hopeful. lepidus was consul during these two years, than whom no weaker officer ever held rule in rome--or rebelled against rome; and sertorius, who was in truth a great man, was in arms against rome in spain, as a rebel, though he was in truth struggling to create a new roman power, which should be purer than that existing in italy. what cicero thought of the condition of his country at this time we have no means of knowing. if he then wrote letters, they have not been preserved. his spoken words speak plainly enough of the condition of the courts of law, and let us know how resolved he was to oppose himself to their iniquities. a young man may devote himself to politics with as much ardor as a senior, but he cannot do so if he be intent on a profession. it is only when his business is so well grasped by him as to sit easily on him, that he is able to undertake the second occupation. there is a rumor that cicero, when he returned home from greece, thought for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he was called greek and sophist in ridicule. it is not, however, to be believed that he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed for his own career. it will become evident as we go on with his life, that this so-called philosophy of the greeks was never to him a matter of more than interesting inquiry. a full, active, human life, in which he might achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by intelligence, erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might serve his country, his order, and his friends--just such a life as our leading men propose to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this is what cicero had determined to achieve from his earliest years, and it was not likely that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic of greek philosophers. that the logic even of the academy was false to him we have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings. there is a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at delphi as to his future career, and that on being told that he must look to his own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large, he determined to abandon the honors of the republic. that he should have talked among the young men of the day of his philosophic investigations till they laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may be probable, but it cannot have been that he ever thought of giving up the bar. in the year of his return to rome, when he was thirty, he married terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good fortune, and that her sister was one of the vestal virgins.[77] her nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule, chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no mean pursuits. as to the more important question of terentia's fortune there has never been a doubt. plutarch, however, does not make it out to have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal to about £4200 of our money. he tells us at the same time that cicero's own fortune was less than £4000. but in both of these statements, plutarch, who was forced to take his facts where he could get them, and was not very particular in his authority, probably erred. the early education of cicero, and the care taken to provide him with all that money could purchase, is, i think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode of life adopted by cicero shows that at no period did he think it necessary to live as men do live with small incomes. we shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as men did at rome who had the command of large means. we are aware that he was often in debt. we find that from his letters. but he owed money not as a needy man does, but as one who is speculative, sanguine, and quite confident of his own resources. the management of incomes was not so fixed a thing then as it is with us now. speculation was even more rampant, and rising men were willing and were able to become indebted for enormous sums, having no security to offer but the promise of their future career. cæsar's debts during various times of his life were proverbial. he is said to have owed over £300,000 before he reached his first step in the public employment. cicero rushed into no such danger as this. we know, indeed, that when the time came to him for public expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was filling the office of ædile, he kept within bounds, and he did not lavish money which he did not possess. we know also that he refrained, altogether refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large fortunes which were open to the great politicians of the republic. to be quæstor that he might be ædile, ædile that he might be prætor and consul, and prætor and consul that he might rob a province--pillage sicily, spain, or asia, and then at last come back a rich man, rich enough to cope with all his creditors, and to bribe the judges should he be accused for his misdeeds--these were the usual steps to take by enterprising romans toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. but it will be observed, in this sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the province was essential to success. this was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to have become an immortal fact in history. the instance of verres will be narrated in the next chapter but one. something of moderation was more general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. a proconsul might rob a great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with him a score of provincial deputies to laud his goodness before the citizens at home. but cicero robbed not at all. even they who have been most hard upon his name, accusing him of insincerity and sometimes of want of patriotism, because his roman mode of declaring himself without reserve in his letters has been perpetuated for us by the excellence of their language, even they have acknowledged that he kept his hands studiously clean in the service of his country, when to have clean hands was so peculiar as to be regarded as absurd. there were other means in which a noble roman might make money, and might do so without leaving the city. an orator might be paid for his services as an advocate. cicero, had such a trade been opened to him, might have made almost any sum to which his imagination could have stretched itself. such a trade was carried on to a very great extent. it was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "lex cincia de muneribus," passed more than a century before cicero began his pleadings.[78] but the law had become a dead letter in the majority of cases. there can be no doubt that hortensius, the predecessor and great rival of cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment. indeed, the myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more practicable in rome than it has been found to be in england, where every barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. that the "lex cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be allowed by us all. services for which no regular payment can be exacted will always cost more than those which have a defined price. but cicero would not break the law. it has been hinted rather than stated that he, like other orators of the day, had his price. he himself tells us that he took nothing; and no instance has been adduced that he had ever done so. he is free enough in accusing hortensius of having accepted a beautiful statuette, an ivory sphinx of great value. what he knew of hortensius, hortensius would have known of him, had it been there to know; and what hortensius or others had heard would certainly have been told. as far as we can learn, there is no ground for accusing cicero of taking fees or presents beyond the probability that he would do so. i think we are justified in believing that he did not do so, because those who watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him. that he was paid by different allied states for undertaking their protection in the senate, is probable, such having been a custom not illegal. we know that he was specially charged with the affairs of dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other allied communities. this, however, must have been later in life, when his name was sufficiently high to insure the value of his services, and when he was a senator. noble romans also--noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the little cares of trade--were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury. we shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of brutus--that brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a par with cato in purity. to lend money to citizens, or more profitably to allied states and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the ordinary resource of a roman nobleman in quest of revenue. the allied city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble roman, who had plundered it as proconsul or governor, would escape from its immediate embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble roman, who would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal. cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise de officiis, an essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade and usury. when he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.[79] the doctrine, however, has always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and was practised by all romans who aspired to be considered among the upper classes. that other and certainly baser means of making money by usury was, however, only too common. crassus, the noted rich man of rome in cæsar's day, who was one of the first triumvirate, and who perished ignominiously in parthia, was known to have gathered much of his wealth by such means. but against this cicero is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping. "first of all," he says, "these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers of custom and lenders of money on usury."[80] again, we are entitled to say that cicero did not condescend to enrich himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so, the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have reached our ears. nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. his rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. his dear friend atticus did not so govern his conduct, or brutus, who, when he wrote the de officiis, was only less dear to him than atticus. but cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. we learn from his letter that he owned house-property in rome to a considerable extent, having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. he inherited also the family house at arpinum. he makes it a matter for boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies nearly £200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great income, and one common with romans of high position.[81] of the extent of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. but we do know that he lived always as a rich man--as one who regards such a condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was often in debt, as was customary with noble romans, he could always write about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and intelligence. he was as might be some english marquis, who, though up to his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the luxuries befitting a marquis. though we have no authority to tell us how his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his life. of that condition we have ample evidence. he commenced his career as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled himself in rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest honors of the republic, he did so with the means of living like a nobleman. but the point on which it is most necessary to insist is this: that while so many--i may almost say all around him in his own order--were unscrupulous as to their means of getting money, he kept his hands clean. the practice then was much as it is now. a gentleman in our days is supposed to have his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a feeling that, only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to him. to rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism, or, at any rate, magnificence. with cæsar his debts have been accounted happy audacity; his pillage of gaul and spain, and of rome also, have indicated only the success of the great general; his cruelty, which in cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[82] i do not mean to draw a parallel between cæsar and cicero. no two men could have been more different in their natures or in their career. but the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples dominated him. i do not say that he always did what he thought to be right. a man who doubts much can never do that. the thing that was right to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing. that from which he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp, takes the color of good when it has been beyond his reach. cicero had not the stuff in him to rule the rome and the romans of his period; but he was a man whose hands were free from all stain, either of blood or money; and for so much let him, at any rate, have the credit. between the return of cicero to rome in 77 b.c. and his election as quæstor in 75, in which period he married terentia, he made various speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or rather, a small part of one. this is notable as having been spoken in behalf of that roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has become familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have those of garrick, of siddons, and of talma. it was a pleading as to the value of a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility attaching to roscius on account of the slave, who had been murdered when in his charge. as to the murder, no question is made. the slave was valuable, and the injury done to his master was a matter of importance. he, having been a slave, could have no stronger a claim for an injury done to himself than would a dog or a horse. the slave, whose name was panurge--a name which has since been made famous as having been borrowed by rabelais, probably from this occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief--showed aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. then one flavius killed him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him, settled with roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. but roscius had only borrowed or hired the man from one chærea--or was in partnership with chærea as to the man--and on that account paid something out of the value of the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not satisfied, and after a lapse of time made a further claim. hence arose the action, in pleading which cicero was successful. in the fragment we have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which cicero had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for publius quintius, who was the brother-in-law of roscius. "he is such an actor," says cicero, "that there is none other on the stage worthy to be seen; and such a man that among men he is the last that should have become an actor."[83] the orator's praise of the actor is not of much importance. had not roscius been great in his profession, his name would not have come down to later ages. nor is it now matter of great interest that the actor should have been highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it is something for us to know that the stage was generally held in such low repute as to make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have taken himself to such a calling. in the year 76 b.c. cicero became father of a daughter, whom we shall know as tullia--who, as she grew up, became the one person whom he loved best in all the world--and was elected quæstor. cicero tells us of himself that in the preceding year he had solicited the quæstorship, when cotta was candidate for the consulship and hortensius for the prætorship. there are in the dialogue de claris oratoribus--which has had the name of brutus always given to it--some passages in which the orator tells us more of himself than in any other of his works. i will annex a translation of a small portion because of its intrinsic interest; but i will relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long either for insertion in the text or for a note.[84] chapter v. _cicero as quæstor._ cicero was elected quæstor in his thirtieth year, b.c. 76. he was then nearly thirty-one. his predecessors and rivals at the bar, cotta and hortensius, were elected consul and prætor, respectively, in the same year. to become quæstor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the roman advocate who purposed to make his fortune by serving the state. to act as quæstor in his thirty-second year, ædile in his thirty-seventh, prætor in his forty-first, and consul in his forty-fourth year, was to achieve, in the earliest succession allowed by law, all the great offices of trust, power, and future emolument. the great reward of proconsular rapine did not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable instances in which a proprætor with proconsular authority could make a large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with verres, and though ædiles, and even quæstors, could find pickings. it was therefore a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. cicero lost none. as he himself tells us in the passage to which i have referred in the last chapter, and which is to be found in the appendix, he gained the good-will of men--that is, of free romans who had the suffrage, and who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[85] putting his hand strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of those luxuries to which romans of his day were so wont to give way, he earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best. he was "novus homo"--a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as yet filled high office in the state. against such there was a strong prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like to see the good things of the republic dispersed among an increased number of hands. the power of voting was common to all roman male citizens; but the power of influencing the electors had passed very much into the hands of the rich. the admiration which cicero had determined to elicit would not go very far, unless it could be produced in a very high degree. a verres could get himself made prætor; a lepidus some years since could receive the consulship; or now an antony, or almost a catiline. the candidate would borrow money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus succeed--perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he could achieve them. with all this, the borrowing and the spending of money, that is, with direct bribery, cicero would have nothing to do; but of the art of canvassing--that art by which he could at the moment make himself beloved by the citizens who had a vote to give--he was a profound master. there is a short treatise, de petitione consulatus, on canvassing for the consulship, of which mention may be made here, because all the tricks of the trade were as essential to him, when looking to be quæstor, as when he afterward desired to be consul, and because the political doings of his life will hurry us on too quickly in the days of his consulship to admit of our referring to these lessons. this little piece, of which we have only a fragment, is supposed to have been addressed to cicero by his brother quintus, giving fraternal advice as to the then coming great occasion. the critics say that it was retouched by the orator himself. the reader who has studied cicero's style will think that the retouching went to a great extent, or that the two brothers were very like each other in their power of expression. the first piece of advice was no doubt always in cicero's mind, not only when he looked for office, but whenever he addressed a meeting of his fellow-citizens. "bethink yourself what is this republic; what it is you seek to be in it, and who you are that seek it. as you go down daily to the forum, turn the answer to this in your mind: 'novus sum; consulatum peto; roma est'--'i am a man of an untried family. it is the consulship that i seek. it is rome in which i seek it.'" though the condition of rome was bad, still to him the republic was the greatest thing in the world, and to be consul in that republic the highest honor which the world could give. there is nobility in that, but there is very much that is ignoble in the means of canvassing which are advocated. i cannot say that they are as yet too ignoble for our modern use here in england, but they are too ignoble to be acknowledged by our candidates themselves, or by their brothers on their behalf. cicero, not having progressed far enough in modern civilization to have studied the beauty of truth, is held to be false and hypocritical. we who know so much more than he did, and have the doctrine of truth at our fingers' ends, are wise enough to declare nothing of our own shortcomings, but to attribute such malpractices only to others. "it is a good thing to be thought worthy of the rank we seek by those who are in possession of it." make yourself out to be an aristocrat, he means. "canvass them, and cotton to them. make them believe that in matters of politics you have always been with the aristocracy, never with the mob;" that if "you have at all spoken a word in public to tickle the people, you have done so for the sake of gaining pompey." as to this, it is necessary to understand pompey's peculiar popularity at the moment, both with the liberals and with the conservatives. "above all, see that you have with you the 'jeunesse dorée.' they carry so much! there are many with you already. take care that they shall know how much you think of them." he is especially desired to make known to the public the iniquities of catiline, his opponent, as to whom quintus says that, though he has lately been acquitted in regard to his speculations in africa, he has had to bribe the judges so highly that he is now as poor as they were before they got their plunder. at every word we read we are tempted to agree with mommsen that on the roman oligarchy of the period no judgment can be passed save one, "of inexorable condemnation."[86] "remember," says quintus, "that your candidature is very strong in that kind of friendship which has been created by your pleadings. take care that each of those friends shall know what special business is allotted to him on the occasion; and as you have not troubled any of them yet, make them understand that you have reserved for the present moment the payment of their debts." this is all very well; but the next direction mingles so much of business with its truth, that no one but machiavelli or quintus cicero could have expressed it in words. "men," says quintus, "are induced to struggle for us in these canvassings by three motives--by memory of kindness done, by the hope of kindness to come, and by community of political conviction. you must see how you are to catch each of these. small favors will induce a man to canvass for you; and they who owe their safety to your pleadings, for there are many such, are aware that if they do not stand by you now they will be regarded by all the world as sorry fellows. nevertheless, they should be made to feel that, as they are indebted to you, you will be glad to have an opportunity of becoming indebted to them. but as to those on whom you have a hold only by hope--a class of men very much more numerous, and likely to be very much more active--they are the men whom you should make to understand that your assistance will be always at their command." how severe, how difficult was the work of canvassing in rome, we learn from these lessons. it was the very essence of a great roman's life that he should live in public; and to such an extent was this carried that we wonder how such a man as cicero found time for the real work of his life. the roman patron was expected to have a levee every morning early in his own house, and was wont, when he went down into the forum, to be attended by a crowd of parasites. this had become so much a matter of course that a public man would have felt himself deserted had he been left alone either at home or abroad. rome was full of idlers--of men who got their bread by the favors of the great, who lounged through their lives--political quidnuncs, who made canvassing a trade--men without a conviction, but who believed in the ascendency of this or the other leader, and were ready to fawn or to fight in the streets, as there might be need. these were the quirites of the day--men who were in truth fattened on the leavings of the plunder which was extracted from the allies; for it was the case now that a roman was content to live on the industry of those whom his father had conquered. they would still fight in the legions; but the work of rome was done by slaves, and the wealth of rome was robbed from the provinces. hence it came about that there was a numerous class, to whom the name "assectatores" was given, who of course became specially prominent at elections. quintus divides all such followers into three kinds, and gives instructions as to the special treatment to be applied to each. "there are those who come to pay their respects to you at your own house"--"salutatores" they were called; "then those who go down with you into the forum"--"deductores;" "and after these the third, the class of constant followers"--"assectatores," as they were specially named. "as to the first, who are the least in consequence, and who, according to our present ways of living, come in great numbers, you should take care to let them know that their doing even so much as this is much esteemed by you. let them perceive that you note it when they come, and say as much to their friends, who will repeat your words. tell themselves often if it be possible. in this way men, when there are many candidates, will observe that there is one who has his eyes open to these courtesies, and they will give themselves heart and soul to him, neglecting all others. and mind you, when you find that a man does but pretend, do not let him perceive that you have perceived it. should any one wish to excuse himself, thinking that he is suspected of indifference, swear that you have never doubted him, nor had occasion to doubt. "as to the work of the 'deductores,' who go out with you--as it is much more severe than that of those who merely come to pay their compliments, let them understand that you feel it to be so, and, as far as possible, be ready to go into town with them at fixed hours." quintus here means that the "deductores" are not to be kept waiting for the patron longer than can be helped. "the attendance of a daily crowd in taking you down to the forum gives a great show of character and dignity. "then come the band of followers which accompanies you diligently wherever you go. as to those who do this without special obligation, take care that they should know how much you think of them. from those who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously. see that they who can come themselves do come themselves, and that they who cannot, send others in their places." what an idea does this give as to the labor of a candidate in rome! i can imagine it to be worse even than the canvassing of an english borough, which to a man of spirit and honor is the most degrading of all existing employments not held to be absolutely disgraceful. quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to the general work of canvassing. "it requires the remembering of men's names"--"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not possess--"flattery, diligence, sweetness of temper, good report, and a high standing in the republic. let it be seen that you have been at the trouble to remember people, and practise yourself to it so that the power may increase with you. there is nothing so alluring to the citizen as that. if there be a softness which you have not by nature, so affect it that it shall seem to be your own naturally. you have indeed a way with you which is not unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must caress men--which is in truth vile and sordid at other times, but is absolutely necessary at elections. it is no doubt a mean thing to flatter some low fellow, but when it is necessary to make a friend it can be pardoned. a candidate must do it, whose face and look and tongue should be made to suit those he has to meet. what perseverance means i need not tell you. the word itself explains itself. as a matter of course, you shall not leave the city; but it is not enough for you to stick to your work in rome and in the forum. you must seek out the voters and canvass them separately; and take care that no one shall ask from another what it is that you want from him. let it have been solicited by yourself, and often solicited." quintus seems to have understood the business well, and the elder brother no doubt profited by the younger brother's care. it was so they did it at rome. that men should have gone through all this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as being marvellous, or even out of place. a vile object justifies vile means. but there were some at rome who had it in their hearts really to serve their country, and with whom it was at the same time a matter of conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly or dishonorably enrich themselves. there was still a grain of salt left. but even this could not make itself available for useful purpose without having recourse to tricks such as these! [sidenote: b.c. 75, ætat. 32.] in his proper year cicero became quæstor, and had assigned to him by lot the duty of looking after the western division of sicily. for sicily, though but one province as regarded general condition, being under one governor with proconsular authority, retained separate modes of government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to rome, especially in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not been conquered from the carthaginians.[87] cicero was quartered at lilybæum, on the west, whereas the other quæstor was placed at syracuse, in the east. there were at that time twenty quæstors elected annually, some of whom remained in rome; but most of the number were stationed about the empire, there being always one as assistant to each proconsul. when a consul took the field with an army, he always had a quæstor with him. this had become the case so generally that the quæstor became, as it were, something between a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a governor. the arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer than that of mere official life; so that a quæstor has been called a proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence and attachment that a son entertains for his father. but to cicero, and to young quæstors in general, the great attraction of the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a quæstor was a senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be degraded by misconduct. gradually it had come to pass that the senate was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the admission into the senate of the popularly elected magistrates. there were in the time of cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body. the numbers down to the time of sulla had been increased or made up by direct selection by the old kings, or by the censors, or by some dictator, such as was sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by julius cæsar. the years between sulla's dictatorship and that of cæsar were but thirty--from 79 to 49 b.c. these, however, were the years in which cicero dreamed that the republic could be re-established by means of an honest senate, which senate was then to be kept alive by the constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of magistrates who had been chosen by the people. tacitus tells us that it was with this object that sulla had increased the number of quæstors.[88] cicero's hopes--his futile hopes of what an honest senate might be made to do--still ran high, although at the very time in which he was elected quæstor he was aware that the judges, then elected from the senate, were so corrupt that their judgment could not be trusted. of this popular mode of filling the senate he speaks afterward in his treatise de legibus. "from those who have acted as magistrates the senate is composed--a measure altogether in the popular interest, as no one can now reach the highest rank"--namely, the senate--"except by the votes of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from the censors."[89] in his pleadings for p. sextus he makes the same boast as to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the body. "romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings, created annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the council of the senate was set over the republic for its guidance. senators were chosen for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that order was opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at large."[90] when defending cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious privileges of the roman senate. "its high place, its authority, its splendor at home, its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage of office, the fasces, the army with its command, the government of the provinces!"[91] on that splendor "apud exteras gentes," he expatiates in one of his attacks upon verres.[92] from all this will be seen cicero's idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as soon as he had been chosen quæstor. in this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life turned--the character, namely, of the roman senate--it cannot but be observed that he was wont to blow both hot and cold. it was his nature to do so, not from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was sanguine and vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. he blew hot and cold in regard to the senate, because at times he would feel it to be what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer; and then, again, at times he would think of the senate as endowed with all those privileges which he names, and would dream that under his influence it would become what it should be--such a senate as he believed it to have been in its old palmy days. his praise of the senate, his description of what it should be and might be, i have given. to the other side of the picture we shall come soon, when i shall have to show how, at the trial of verres, he declared before the judges themselves how terrible had been the corruption of the judgment-seat in rome since, by sulla's enactment, it had been occupied only by the senators. one passage i will give now, in order that the reader may see by the juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the senate as loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. in the column on the left hand in the note i quote the words with which, in the first pleading against verres, he declared "that every base and iniquitous thing done on the judgment-seat during the ten years since the power of judging had been transferred to the senate should be not only denounced by him, but also proved;" and in that on the right i will repeat the noble phrases which he afterward used in the speech for cluentius when he chose to speak well of the order.[93] it was on the senate that they who wished well for rome must depend--on the senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among the people; on a body which should be at the same time august and popular--as far removed on the one side from the tyranny of individuals as on the other from the violence of the mob; but on a senate freed from its corruption and dirt, on a body of noble romans, fitted by their individual character and high rank to rule and to control their fellow-citizens. this was cicero's idea, and this the state of things which he endeavored to achieve. no doubt he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own example might do more in producing this than is given to men to achieve by such means. no doubt there was conceit in this--conceit and perhaps, vanity. it has to be admitted that cicero always exaggerated his own powers. but the ambition was great, the purpose noble, and the course of his whole life was such as to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. he did not thunder against the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a province himself. he did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to his clients, and then open his hands to illicit payments. he did not call upon the senate for high duty, and then devote himself to luxury and pleasure. he had a _beau ideal_ of the manner in which a roman senator should live and work, and he endeavored to work and live up to that ideal. there was no period after his consulship in which he was not aware of his own failure. nevertheless, with constant labor, but with intermittent struggles, he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery year of his existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet there was a chance. how he struggled, and in struggling perished, we shall see by-and-by. what cicero did as quæstor in sicily we have no means of knowing. his correspondence does not go back so far. that he was very active, and active for good, we have two testimonies, one of which is serious, convincing, and most important as an episode in his life. the other consists simply of a good story, told by himself of himself; not intended at all for his own glorification, but still carrying with it a certain weight. as to the first: cicero was quæstor in lilybæum in the thirty-second year of his life. in the thirty-seventh year he was elected ædile, and was then called upon by the sicilians to attack verres on their behalf. verres was said to have carried off from sicily plunder to the amount of nearly £400,000,[94] after a misrule of three years' duration. all sicily was ruined. beyond its pecuniary losses, its sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had come of a governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless chance of a criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted. the tyrant would certainly have many friends in rome. the injured provincials would probably have none of great mark. a man because he had been quæstor was not, necessarily, one having influence, unless he belonged to some great family. this was not the case with cicero. but he had made for himself such a character during his year of office that the sicilians declared that, if they could trust themselves to any man at rome, it would be to their former quæstor. it had been a part of his duty to see that the proper supply of corn was collected in the island and sent to rome. a great portion of the bread eaten in rome was grown in sicily, and much of it was supplied in the shape of a tax. it was the hateful practice of rome to extract the means of living from her colonies, so as to spare her own laborers. to this, hard as it was, the sicilians were well used. they knew the amount required of them by law, and were glad enough when they could be quit in payment of the dues which the law required; but they were seldom blessed by such moderation on the part of their rulers. to what extent this special tax could be stretched we shall see when we come to the details of the trial of verres. it is no doubt only from cicero's own words that we learn that, though he sent to rome plenteous supplies, he was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and forbearing to the allies generally; and that when he took his departure they paid him honors hitherto unheard of.[95] but i think we may take it for granted that this statement is true; firstly, because it has never been contradicted; and then from the fact that the sicilians all came to him in the day of their distress. as to the little story to which i have alluded, it has been told so often since cicero told it himself, that i am almost ashamed to repeat it. it is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close an insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. in his speech for plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from sicily after his quæstorship, he found himself at puteoli just at the season when the fashion from rome betook itself to that delightful resort. he was full of what he had done--how he had supplied rome with corn, but had done so without injury to the sicilians, how honestly he had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city the citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. then at puteoli he met two acquaintances. "ah," says one to him, "when did you leave rome? what news have you brought?" cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him, replied that he had just returned from his province. "of course, just back from africa," said the other. "not so," said cicero, bridling in anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it himself--"but from sicily." then the other lounger, a fellow who pretended to know everything, put in his word. "do you not know that our cicero has been quæstor at syracuse?" the reader will remember that he had been quæstor in the other division of the island, at lilybæum. "there was no use in thinking any more about it," says cicero. "i gave up being angry and determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." yes, he had been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among quæstors, and been conscious that he had done it. perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own words, if his real words be in our possession. in doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself. but the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of the man whose character he is investigating. a reader will not be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own dispraise must be true. if a man praise himself for honor, probity, industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. it has not been presumed that cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. he was honest and industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. so much is acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of himself is false. if a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been attained have been seen and valued. a man will not sorrowfully regret that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to the glory of the first. but cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken as proof against himself. all manner of evil is argued against him from his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity. on the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted as clap-traps. no one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as cicero, and naturally. in these modern days we have contemporary records as to prominent persons. of the characters of those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. what insight have we into the personality of alexander the great, or what insight had plutarch, who wrote about him? as to samuel johnson, we seem to know every turn of his mind, having had a boswell. alexander had no boswell. but here is a man belonging to those past ages of which i speak who was his own boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters were invented, no records have ever been written in language more clear or more attractive. it is natural that we should judge out of his own mouth one who left so many more words behind him than did any one else, particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. and all that he wrote was after some fashion about himself. his letters, like all letters, are personal to himself. his speeches are words coming out of his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally engaged and interested. his rhetoric consists of lessons given by himself about his own art, founded on his own experience, and on his own observation of others. his so-called philosophy gives us the workings of his own mind. no one has ever told the world so much about another person as cicero has told the world about cicero. boswell pales before him as a chronicler of minutiæ. it may be a matter of small interest now to the bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted with a roman who was never one of the world's conquerors. it may be well for those who desire to know simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. but if it be worth while to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to learn the truth about it. "oh that mine adversary had written a book!" who does not understand the truth of these words! it is always out of a man's mouth that you may most surely condemn him. cicero wrote many books, and all about himself. he has been honored very highly. middleton, in the preface to his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy, quotes the opinion of erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." this was the effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. but then also has cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. from dio cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after christ, down to mr. froude, whose cæsar has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next after his death--with the testimony of such a man as erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his biographer, middleton. the sanctity of his heart and morals! it was thus that erasmus was struck in reading his works. it is a feeling of that kind, i profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand--a feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. it has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals. of the speeches made by cicero as advocate after his quæstorship, and before those made in the accusation of verres, we have the fragment only of the second of two spoken in defence of marcus tullius decula, whom we may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. he does not avow any relationship. "what," he says, in opening his argument, "does it become me, a tullius, to do for this other tullius, a man not only my friend, but my namesake?" it was a matter of no great importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to "recuperatores," judges chosen by the prætor, and who acted in lighter cases. chapter vi. _verres._ there are six episodes, or, as i may say, divisions in the life of cicero to which special interest attaches itself. the first is the accusation against verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out of the city. the second is his consulship, in which he drove catiline out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegally. the third was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of rome. the fourth was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a province. the fifth was cæsar's passing of the rubicon, the battle of pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to cæsar. the last was his internecine combat with antony, which produced the philippics, and that memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into flames the expiring embers of the republic. the literary work with which we are acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his whole life. i have already told the story of sextus roscius amerinus, having taken it from his own words. from that time onward he wrote continually; but the fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of his life. we have now come to the first of those episodes, and i have to tell the way in which cicero struggled with verres, and how he conquered him. in 74 b.c. verres was prætor in rome. at that period of the republic there were eight prætors elected annually, two of whom remained in the city, whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the armies of the empire. in the next year, 73 b.c., verres went in due course to sicily with proconsular or proprætorial authority, having the government assigned to him for twelve months. this was usual and constitutional, but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional, that this period should be prolonged. in the case of verres it was prolonged, so that he should hold the office for three years. he had gone through the other offices of the state, having been quæstor in asia and ædile afterward in rome, to the great misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling, as we shall learn by-and-by. the facts are mentioned here to show that the great offices of the republic were open to such a man as verres. they were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be to one less iniquitous--to an honest man or a scrupulous one, or to one partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. if you send a dog into a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find one that will tear up as many truffles as possible. a proconsular robber did not rob only for himself; he robbed more or less for all rome. verres boasted that with his three years of rule he could bring enough home to bribe all the judges, secure all the best advocates, and live in splendid opulence for the rest of his life. what a dog he was to send into a wood for truffles! to such a condition as this had rome fallen when the deputies from sicily came to complain of their late governor, and to obtain the services of cicero in seeking for whatever reparation might be possible. verres had carried on his plunder during the years 73, 72, 71 b.c. during this time cicero had been engaged sedulously as an advocate in rome. we know the names of some of the cases in which he was engaged--those, for instance, for publius oppius, who, having been quæstor in bithynia, was accused by his proconsul of having endeavored to rob the soldiers of their dues. we are told that the poor province suffered greatly under these two officers, who were always quarrelling as to a division of their plunder. in this case the senior officer accused the younger, and the younger, by cicero's aid, was acquitted. quintilian more than once refers to the speech made for oppius. cicero also defended varenus, who was charged with having murdered his brother, and one caius mustius, of whom we only know that he was a farmer of taxes. he was advocate also for sthenius, a sicilian, who was accused before the tribunes by verres. we shall hear of sthenius again among the victims in sicily. the special charge in this case was that, having been condemned by verres as prætor in sicily, he had run away to rome, which was illegal. he was, however, acquitted. of these speeches we have only some short fragments, which have been quoted by authors whose works have come down to us, such as quintilian; by which we know, at any rate, that cicero's writings had been so far carefully preserved, and that they were commonly read in those days. i will translate here the concluding words of a short paper written by m. du rozoir in reference to cicero's life at this period: "the assiduity of our orator at the bar had obtained for him a high degree of favor among the people, because they had seen how strictly he had observed that cincian law which forbade advocates to take either money or presents for then pleadings--which law, however, the advocates of the day generally did not scruple to neglect."[97] it is a good thing to be honest when honesty is in vogue; but to be honest when honesty is out of fashion is magnificent. in the affair with verres, there are two matters to interest the reader--indeed, to instruct the reader--if the story were sufficiently well told. the iniquity of verres is the first--which is of so extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his avarice and lust. as the victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can allow ourselves to be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's resources and the singular iniquity of his schemes. then we are brought face to face with the barefaced corruption of the roman judges--a corruption which, however, became a regular trade, if not ennobled, made, at any rate, aristocratic by the birth, wealth high names, and senatorial rank of the robbers. sulla, for certain state purposes--which consisted in the maintenance of the oligarchy--had transferred the privileges of sitting on the judgment-seat from the equites, or knights, to the senators. from among the latter a considerable number--thirty, perhaps, or forty, or even fifty--were appointed to sit with the prætor to hear criminal cases of importance, and by their votes, which were recorded on tablets, the accused person was acquitted or condemned. to be acquitted by the most profuse corruption entailed no disgrace on him who was tried, and often but little on the judges who tried him. in cicero's time the practice, with all its chances, had come to be well understood. the provincial governors, with their quæstors and lieutenants, were chosen from the high aristocracy, which also supplied the judges. the judges themselves had been employed, or hoped to be employed, in similar lucrative service. the leading advocates belonged to the same class. if the proconsular thief, when he had made his bag, would divide the spoil with some semblance of equity among his brethren, nothing could be more convenient. the provinces were so large, and the greek spirit of commercial enterprise which prevailed in them so lively, that there was room for plunder ample, at any rate, for a generation or two. the republic boasted that, in its love of pure justice, it had provided by certain laws for the protection of its allied subjects against any possible faults of administration on the part of its own officers. if any injury were done to a province, or a city, or even to an individual, the province, or city, or individual could bring its grievance to the ivory chair of the prætor in rome and demand redress; and there had been cases not a few in which a delinquent officer had been condemned to banishment. much, indeed, was necessary before the scheme as it was found to exist by verres could work itself into perfection. verres felt that in his time everything had been done for security as well as splendor. he would have all the great officers of state on his side. the sicilians, if he could manage the case as he thought it might be managed, would not have a leg to stand upon. there was many a trick within his power before they could succeed in making good even their standing before the prætor. it was in this condition of things that cicero bethought himself that he might at one blow break through the corruption of the judgment-seat, and this he determined to do by subjecting the judges to the light of public opinion. if verres could be tried under a bushel, as it were, in the dark, as many others had been tried, so that little or nothing should be said about the trial in the city at large, then there would be no danger for the judges. it could only be by shaming them, by making them understand that rome would become too hot to hold them, that they could be brought to give a verdict against the accused. this it was that cicero determined to effect, and did effect. and we see throughout the whole pleadings that he was concerned in the matter not only for the sicilians, or against verres. could something be done for the sake of rome, for the sake of the republic, to redeem the courts of justice from the obloquy which was attached to them? might it be possible for a man so to address himself not only to the judgment-seat, but to all rome, as to do away with this iniquity once and forever? could he so fill the minds of the citizens generally with horror at such proceedings as to make them earnest in demanding reform? hortensius, the great advocate of the day, was not only engaged on behalf of verres, but he was already chosen as consul for the next year. metellus, who was elected prætor for the next year, was hot in defence of verres. indeed, there were three metelluses among the friends of the accused, who had also on his side the scipio of the day. the aristocracy of rome was altogether on the side of verres, as was natural. but if cicero might succeed at all in this which he meditated, the very greatness of his opponents would help him. when it was known that he was to be pitted against hortensius as an advocate, and that he intended to defy hortensius as the coming consul, then surely rome would be awake to the occasion; and if rome could be made to awake herself, then would this beautiful scheme of wealth from provincial plunder be brought to an end. i will first speak of the work of the judges, and of the attempts made to hinder cicero in the business he had undertaken. then i will endeavor to tell something of the story of verres and his doings. the subject divides itself naturally in this way. there are extant seven so-called orations about verres, of which the two first apply to the manner in which the case should be brought before the courts. these two were really spoken, and were so effective that verres--or probably hortensius, on his behalf--was frightened into silence. verres pleaded guilty, as we should say, which, in accordance with the usages of the court, he was enabled to do by retiring and going into voluntary banishment. this he did, sooner than stand his ground and listen to the narration of his iniquities as it would be given by cicero in the full speech--the "perpetua oratio"--which would follow the examination of the witnesses. what the orator said before the examination of the witnesses was very short. he had to husband his time, as it was a part of the grand scheme of hortensius to get adjournment after adjournment because of certain sacred rites and games, during the celebration of which the courts could not sit. all this was arranged for in the scheme; but cicero, in order that he might baffle the schemers, got through his preliminary work as quickly as possible, saying all that he had to say about the manner of the trial, about the judges, about the scheme, but dilating very little on the iniquities of the criminal. but having thus succeeded, having gained his cause in a great measure by the unexpected quickness of his operations, then he told his story. then was made that "perpetua oratio" by which we have learned the extent to which a roman governor could go on desolating a people who were intrusted to his protection. this full narration is divided into five parts, each devoted to a separate class of iniquity. these were never spoken, though they appear in the form of speeches. they would have been spoken, if required, in answer to the defence made by hortensius on behalf of verres after the hearing of the evidence. but the defence broke down altogether, in the fashion thus described by cicero himself. "in that one hour in which i spoke"--this was the speech which we designate as the actio prima contra verrem, the first pleading made against verres, to which we shall come just now--"i took away all hope of bribing the judges from the accused--from this brazen-faced, rich, dissolute, and abandoned man. on the first day of the trial, on the mere calling of the names of the witnesses, the people of rome were able to perceive that if this criminal were absolved, then there could be no chance for the republic. on the second day his friends and advocates had not only lost all hope of gaining their cause, but all relish for going on with it. the third day so paralyzed the man himself that he had to bethink himself not what sort of reply he could make, but how he could escape the necessity of replying by pretending to be ill."[98] it was in this way that the trial was brought to an end. but we must go back to the beginning. when an accusation was to be made against some great roman of the day on account of illegal public misdoings, as was to be made now against verres, the conduct of the case, which would require probably great labor and expense, and would give scope for the display of oratorical excellence, was regarded as a task in which a young aspirant to public favor might obtain honor and by which he might make himself known to the people. it had, therefore, come to pass that there might be two or more accusers anxious to undertake the work, and to show themselves off as solicitous on behalf of injured innocence, or desirous of laboring in the service of the republic. when this was the case, a court of judges was called upon to decide whether this man or that other was most fit to perform the work in hand. such a trial was called "divinatio," because the judges had to get their lights in the matter as best they could without the assistance of witnesses--by some process of divination--with the aid of the gods, as it might be. cicero's first speech in the matter of verres is called in quintum cæcilium divinatio, because one cæcilius came forward to take the case away from him. here was a part of the scheme laid by hortensius. to deal with cicero in such a matter would no doubt be awkward. his purpose, his diligence, his skill, his eloquence, his honesty were known. there must be a trial. so much was acknowledged; but if the conduct of it could be relegated to a man who was dishonest, or who had no skill, no fitness, no special desire for success, then the little scheme could be carried through in that way. so cæcilius was put forward as cicero's competitor, and our first speech is that made by cicero to prove his own superiority to that of his rival. whether cæcilius was or was not hired to break down in his assumed duty as accuser, we do not know. the biographers have agreed to say that such was the case,[99] grounding their assertion, no doubt, on extreme probability. but i doubt whether there is any evidence as to this. cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct manner which he would have used had he been able to prove it. the sicilians, at any rate, said that it was so. as to the incompetency of the man, there was probably no doubt, and it might be quite as serviceable to have an incompetent as a dishonest accuser. cæcilius himself had declared that no one could be so fit as himself for the work. he knew sicily well, having been born there. he had been quæstor there with verres, and had been able to watch the governor's doings. no doubt there was--or had been in more pious days--a feeling that a quæstor should never turn against the proconsul under whom he had served, and to whom he had held the position almost of a son.[100] but there was less of that feeling now than heretofore. verres had quarrelled with his quæstor. oppius was called on to defend himself against the proconsul with whom he had served. no one could know the doings of the governor of a province as well as his own quæstor; and, therefore, so said cæcilius, he would be the preferable accuser. as to his hatred of the man, there could be no doubt as to that. everybody knew that they had quarrelled. the purpose, no doubt, was to give some colorable excuse to the judges for rescuing verres, the great paymaster, from the fangs of cicero. cicero's speech on the occasion--which, as speeches went in those days, was very short--is a model of sagacity and courage. he had to plead his own fitness, the unfitness of his adversary, and the wishes in the matter of the sicilians. this had to be done with no halting phrases. it was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men that, with the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better advocate of the two. we may imagine that there was not a judge there, not a roman present, who was not well aware of that before the orator began. it was needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them should be declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to betray the sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man. when cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own party, not a consul, a prætor, an ædile, or a quæstor, not a judge, not a senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that verres with his plunder should escape. their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it. but if he could speak winged words--words that should fly all over rome, that might fly also among subject nations--then would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the scheme. "when," he says, "i had served as quæstor in sicily, and had left the province after such a fashion that all the sicilians had a grateful memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom they relied much, they felt that i might be a bulwark to them in their need. these sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in public bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence. 'the time has come,' they say, 'not that i should look after the interest of this or that man, but that i should protect the very life and well-being of the whole province.' i am inclined by my sense of duty, by the faith which i owe them, by my pity for them, by the example of all good romans before me, by the custom of the republic, by the old constitution, to undertake this task, not as pertaining to my own interests, but to those of my close friends."[101] that was his own reason for undertaking the case. then he reminds the judges of what the roman people wished--the people who had felt with dismay the injury inflicted upon them by sulla's withdrawal of all power from the tribunes, and by the putting the whole authority of the bench into the hands of the senators. "the roman people, much as they have been made to suffer, regret nothing of that they have lost so much as the strength and majesty of the old judges. it is with the desire of having them back that they demand for the tribunes their former power. it is this misconduct of the present judges that has caused them to ask for another class of men for the judgment-seat. by the fault and to the shame of the judges of to-day, the censor's authority, which has hitherto always been regarded as odious and stern, even that is now requested by the people."[102] then he goes on to show that, if justice is intended, this case will be put into the hands of him whom the sicilians have themselves chosen. had the sicilians said that they were unwilling to trust their affairs to cæcilius because they had not known him, but were willing to trust him, cicero, whom they did know, would not even that have been reasonable enough of itself? but the sicilians had known both of them, had known cæcilius almost as well as cicero, and had expressed themselves clearly. much as they desired to have cicero, they were as anxious not to have cæcilius. even had they held their tongues about this, everybody would have known it; but they had been far from holding their tongues. "yet you offer yourself to these most unwilling clients," he says, turning to cæcilius. "yet you are ready to plead in a cause that does not belong to you! yet you would defend those who would rather have no defender than such a one as you!"[103] then he attacks hortensius, the advocate for verres. "let him not think that, if i am to be employed here, the judges can be bribed without infinite danger to all concerned. in undertaking this cause of the sicilians, i undertake also the cause of the people of rome at large. it is not only that one wretched sinner should be crushed, which is what the sicilians want, but that this terrible injustice should be stopped altogether, in compliance with the wishes of the people."[104] when we remember how this was spoken, in the presence of those very judges, in the presence of hortensius himself, in reliance only on the public opinion which he was to create by his own words, we cannot but acknowledge that it is very fine. after that he again turns upon cæcilius. "learn from me," he says, "how many things are expected from him who undertakes the accusation of another. if there be one of those qualities in you, i will give up to you all that you ask."[105] cæcilius was probably even now in alliance with verres. he himself, when quæstor, had robbed the people in the collection of the corn dues, and was unable therefore to include that matter in his accusation. "you can bring no charge against him on this head, lest it be seen that you were a partner with him in the business."[106] he ridicules him as to his personal insufficiency. "what, cæcilius! as to those practices of the profession without which an action such as this cannot be carried on, do you think that there is nothing in them? need there be no skill in the business, no habit of speaking, no familiarity with the forum, with the judgment-seats, and the laws?"[107] "i know well how difficult the ground is. let me advise you to look into yourself, and to see whether you are able to do that kind of thing. have you got voice for it, prudence, memory, wit? are you able to expose the life of verres, as it must be done, to divide it into parts and make everything clear? in doing all this, though nature should have assisted you"--as it has not at all, is of course implied--"if from your earliest childhood you had been imbued with letters; if you had learned greek at athens instead of at lilybæum--latin in rome instead of in sicily--still would it not be a task beyond your strength to undertake such a case, so widely thought of, to complete it by your industry, and then to grasp it in your memory; to make it plain by your eloquence, and to support it with voice and strength sufficient? 'have i these gifts,' you will ask. would that i had! but from my childhood i have done all that i could to attain them."[108] cicero makes his points so well that i would fain go through the whole speech, were it not that a similar reason might induce me to give abridgments of all his speeches. it may not be that the readers of these orations will always sympathize with the orator in the matter which he has in hand--though his power over words is so great as to carry the reader with him very generally, even at this distance of time--but the neatness with which the weapon is used, the effectiveness of the thrust for the purpose intended, the certainty with which the nail is hit on the head--never with an expenditure of unnecessary force, but always with the exact strength wanted for the purpose--these are the characteristics of cicero's speeches which carry the reader on with a delight which he will want to share with others, as a man when he has heard a good story instantly wishes to tell it again. and with cicero we are charmed by the modernness, by the tone of to-day, which his language takes. the rapid way in which he runs from scorn to pity, from pity to anger, from anger to public zeal, and then instantly to irony and ridicule, implies a lightness of touch which, not unreasonably, surprises us as having endured for so many hundred years. that poetry should remain to us, even lines so vapid as some of those in which ovid sung of love, seems to be more natural, because verses, though they be light, must have been labored. but these words spoken by cicero seem almost to ring in our ears as having come to us direct from a man's lips. we see the anger gathering on the brow of hortensius, followed by a look of acknowledged defeat. we see the startled attention of the judges as they began to feel that in this case they must depart from their intended purpose. we can understand how cæcilius cowered, and found consolation in being relieved from his task. we can fancy how verres suffered--verres whom no shame could have touched--when all his bribes were becoming inefficient under the hands of the orator. cicero was chosen for the task, and then the real work began. the work as he did it was certainly beyond the strength of any ordinary advocate. it was necessary that he should proceed to sicily to obtain the evidence which was to be collected over the whole island. he must rate up, too, all the previous details of the life of this robber. he must be thoroughly prepared to meet the schemers on every point. he asked for a hundred and ten days for the purpose of getting up his case, but he took only fifty. we must imagine that, as he became more thoroughly versed in the intrigues of his adversaries, new lights came upon him. were he to use the whole time allotted to him, or even half the time, and then make such an exposition of the criminal as he would delight to do were he to indulge himself with that "perpetua oratio" of which we hear, then the trial would be protracted till the coming of certain public games, during which the courts would not sit. there seem to have been three sets of games in his way--a special set for this year, to be given by pompey, which were to last fifteen days; then the ludi romani, which were continued for nine days. soon after that would come the games in honor of victory--so soon that an adjournment over them would be obtained as a matter of course. in this way the trial would be thrown over into the next year, when hortensius and one metellus would be consuls, and another metellus would be the prætor, controlling the judgment-seats. glabrio was the prætor for this present year. in glabrio cicero could put some trust. with hortensius and the two metelluses in power, verres would be as good as acquitted. cicero, therefore, had to be on the alert, so that in this unexpected way, by sacrificing his own grand opportunity for a speech, he might conquer the schemers. we hear how he went to sicily in a little boat from an unknown port, so as to escape the dangers contrived for him by the friends of verres.[109] if it could be arranged that the clever advocate should be kidnapped by a pirate, what a pleasant way would that be of putting an end to these abominable reforms! let them get rid of cicero, if only for a time, and the plunder might still be divided. against all this he had to provide. when in sicily he travelled sometimes on foot, for the sake of caution--never with the retinue to which he was entitled as a roman senator. as a roman senator he might have demanded free entertainment at any town he entered, at great cost to the town. but from all this he abstained, and hurried back to rome with his evidence so quickly that he was able to produce it before the judges, so as to save the adjournments which he feared. verres retired from the trial, pleading guilty, after hearing the evidence. of the witnesses and of the manner in which they told the story, we have no account. the second speech which we have--the divinatio, or speech against cæcilius, having been the first--is called the actio prima contra verrem--"the first process against verres." this is almost entirely confined to an exhortation to the judges. cicero had made up his mind to make no speech about verres till after the trial should be over. there would not be the requisite time. the evidence he must bring forward. and he would so appall these corrupt judges that they should not dare to acquit the accused. this actio prima contains the words in which he did appall the judges. as we read them, we pity the judges. there were fourteen, whose names we know. that there may have been many more is probable. there was the prætor urbanus of the day, glabrio. with him were metellus, one of the prætors for the next year, and cæsonius, who, with cicero himself, was ædile designate. there were three tribunes of the people and two military tribunes. there was a servilius, a catulus, a marcellus. whom among these he suspected we can hardly say. certainly he suspected metellus. to servilius[110] he paid an ornate compliment in one of the written orations published after the trial was over, from whence we may suppose that he was well inclined toward him. of glabrio he spoke well. the body, as a body, was of such a nature that he found it necessary to appall them. it is thus that he begins: "not by human wisdom, o ye judges, but by chance, and by the aid, as it were, of the gods themselves, an event has come to pass by which the hatred now felt for your order, and the infamy attached to the judgment seat, may be appeased; for an opinion has gone abroad, disgraceful to the republic, full of danger to yourselves--which is in the mouths of all men not only here in rome but through all nations--that by these courts as they are now constituted, a man, if he be only rich enough, will never be condemned, though he be ever so guilty." what an exordium with which to begin a forensic pleading before a bench of judges composed of prætors, ædiles, and coming consuls! and this at a time, too, when men's minds were still full of sulla's power; when some were thinking that they too might be sullas; while the idea was still strong that a few nobles ought to rule the roman empire for their own advantage and their own luxury! what words to address to a metellus, a catulus, and a marcellus! i have brought before you such a wretch, he goes on to say, that by a just judgment upon him you can recover your favor with the people of rome, and your credit with other nations. "this is a trial in which you, indeed, will have to judge this man who is accused, but in which also the roman people will have to judge you. by what is done to him will be determined whether a man who is guilty, and at the same time rich, can possibly be condemned in rome.[111]if the matter goes amiss here, all men will declare, not that better men should be selected out of your order, which would be impossible, but that another order of citizens must be named from which to select the judges."[112] this short speech was made. the witnesses were examined during nine days; then hortensius, with hardly a struggle at a reply, gave way, and verres stood condemned by his own verdict. when the trial was over, and verres had consented to go into exile, and to pay whatever fine was demanded, the "perpetua oratio" which cicero thought good to make on the matter was published to the world. it is written as though it was to have been spoken, with counterfeit tricks of oratory--with some tricks so well done in the first part of it as to have made one think that, when these special words were prepared, he must have intended to speak them. it has been agreed, however, that such was not the case. it consists of a narration of the villainies of verres, and is divided into what have been called five different speeches, to which the following appellations are given: de prætura urbana, in which we are told what verres did when he was city prætor, and very many things also which he did before he came to that office, de jurisdictione siciliensi, in which is described his conduct as a roman magistrate on the island; de re frumentaria, setting forth the abomination of his exactions in regard to the corn tax; de signis, detailing the robberies he perpetuated in regard to statues and other ornaments; and de suppliciis, giving an account of the murders he committed and the tortures he inflicted. a question is sometimes mooted in conversation whether or no the general happiness of the world has been improved by increasing civilization when the reader finds from these stories, as told by a leading roman of the day, how men were treated under the roman oligarchy--not only greek allies but romans also--i think he will be inclined to answer the question in favour of civilization. i can only give a few of the many little histories which have been preserved for us in this actio secunda; but perhaps these few may suffice to show how a great roman officer could demean himself in his government. of the doings of verres before he went to sicily i will select two. it became his duty on one occasion--a job which he seems to have sought for purpose of rapine--to go to lampsacus, a town in asia, as lieutenant, or legate, for dolabella, who then had command in asia. lampsacus was on the hellespont, an allied town of specially good repute. here he is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a roman officer, at the house of a citizen named janitor. but he heard that another citizen, one philodamus, had a beautiful daughter--an article with which we must suppose that janitor was not equally well supplied. verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his creature rubrius shall be quartered at the house of philodamus. philodamus, who from his rank was entitled to be burdened only with the presence of leading romans, grumbles at this; but, having grumbled, consents, and having consented, does the best to make his house comfortable. he gives a great supper, at which the romans eat and drink, and purposely create a tumult. verres, we understand, was not there. the intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. in the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the romans get the worst of it. at last one of verres's lictors--absolutely a roman lictor--is killed, and the woman is not carried off. the man at least bore the outward signs of a lictor, but, according to cicero, was in the pay of verres as his pimp. so far verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the father who could protect his own house even against romans, begins to feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. so far the lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon avenges his failure. he induces dolabella, his chief, to have philodamus and his son carried off to laodicea, and there tried before nero, the then proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. they are tried at laodicea before nero, verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are condemned. then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as cicero says, very sad for all asia to behold. all this had been done some years ago; and, nevertheless, verres had been chosen prætor, and sent to sicily to govern the sicilians. when verres was prætor at rome--the year before he was sent to sicily--it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he found it, to see that a certain temple of castor in the city was given up in proper condition by the executors of a defunct citizen who had taken a contract for keeping it in repair. this man, whose name had been junius, left a son, who was a junius also under age, with a large fortune in charge of various trustees, tutors, as they were called, whose duty it was to protect the heir's interests. verres, knowing of old that no property was so easily preyed on as that of a minor, sees at once that something may be done with the temple of castor. the heir took oath, and to the extent of his property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair. but verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more than usually good order. there is not a scratch on the roof of which he can make use. nothing has been allowed to go astray. then "one of his dogs"--for he had boasted to his friend ligur that he always went about with dogs to search out his game for him--suggested that some of the columns were out of the perpendicular. verres does not know what this means; but the dog explains. all columns are, in fact, by strict measurement, more or less out of the perpendicular, as we are told that all eyes squint a little, though we do not see that they squint. but as columns ought to be perpendicular, here was a matter on which he might go to work. he does go to work. the trustees knowing their man--knowing also that in the present condition of rome it was impossible to escape from an unjust prætor without paying largely--went to his mistress and endeavored to settle the matter with her. here we have an amusing picture of the way in which the affairs of the city were carried on in that lady's establishment; how she had her levee, took her bribes, and drove a lucrative trade. doing, however, no good with her, the trustees settled with an agent to pay verres two hundred thousand sesterces to drop the affair. this was something under £2000. but verres repudiated the arrangement with scorn. he could do much better than that with such a temple and such a minor. he puts the repairs up to auction; and refusing a bid from the trustees themselves--the very persons who are the most interested in getting the work done, if there were work to do--has it knocked down to himself for five hundred and sixty thousand sesterces, or about £5000.[113] then we are told how he had the pretended work done by the putting up of a rough crane. no real work is done, no new stones are brought, no money is spent. that is the way in which verres filled his office as prætor urbanus; but it does not seem that any public notice is taken of his iniquities as long as he confined himself to little jobs such as this. then we come to the affairs of sicily--and the long list of robberies is commenced by which that province was made desolate. it seems that nothing gave so grand a scope to the greed of a public functionary who was at the same time governor and judge as disputed wills. it was not necessary that any of the persons concerned should dispute the will among them. given the facts that a man had died and left property behind him, then verres would find means to drag the heir into court, and either frighten him into payment of a bribe or else rob him of his inheritance. before he left rome for the province he heard that a large fortune had been left to one dio on condition that he should put up certain statues in the market-place.[114] it was not uncommon for a man to desire the reputation of adorning his own city, but to choose that the expense should be borne by his heir rather than by himself. failing to put up the statues, the heir was required to pay a fine to venus erycina--to enrich, that is, the worship of that goddess, who had a favorite temple under mount eryx. the statues had been duly erected. but, nevertheless, here there was an opening. so verres goes to work, and in the name of venus brings an action against dio. the verdict is given, not in favor of venus but in favor of verres. this manner of paying honor to the gods, and especially to venus, was common in sicily. two sons[115] received a fortune from their father, with a condition that, if some special thing were not done, a fine should be paid to venus. the man had been dead twenty years ago. but "the dogs" which the prætor kept were very sharp, and, distant as was the time, found out the clause. action is taken against the two sons, who indeed gain their case; but they gain it by a bribe so enormous that they are ruined men. there was one heraclius,[116] the son of hiero, a nobleman of syracuse, who received a legacy amounting to 3,000,000 sesterces--we will say £24,000--from a relative, also a heraclius. he had, too, a house full of handsome silver plate, silk and hangings, and valuable slaves. a man, "dives equom, dives pictai vestis et auri." verres heard, of course. he had by this time taken some sicilian dogs into his service, men of syracuse, and had learned from them that there was a clause in the will of the elder heraclius that certain statues should be put up in the gymnasium of the city. they undertake to bring forward servants of the gymnasium who should say that the statues were never properly erected. cicero tells us how verres went to work, now in this court, now in that, breaking all the laws as to sicilian jurisdiction, but still proceeding under the pretence of law, till he got everything out of the wretch--not only all the legacies from heraclius, but every shilling, and every article left to the man by his father. there is a pretence of giving some of the money to the town of syracuse; but for himself he takes all the valuables, the corinthian vases, the purple hangings, what slaves he chooses. then everything else is sold by auction. how he divided the spoil with the syracusans, and then quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by himself, will all be found in cicero's narrative. heraclius was of course ruined. for the stories of epicrates and sopater i must refer the reader to the oration. in that of sopater there is the peculiarity that verres managed to get paid by everybody all round. the story of sthenius is so interesting that i cannot pass it by. sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at therma in sicily, with whom verres often took up his abode; for, as governor, he travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of plunder. sthenius had had his house full of beautiful things. of all these verres possessed himself--some by begging, some by demanding, and some by absolute robbery. sthenius, grieved as he was to find himself pillaged, bore all this. the man was roman prætor, and injuries such as these had to be endured. at therma, however, in the public place of the city, there were some beautiful statues. for these verres longed, and desired his host to get them for him. sthenius declared that this was impossible. the statues had, under peculiar circumstances, been recovered by scipio africanus from carthage, and been restored by the roman general to the sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and had been erected at therma. there was a peculiarly beautiful figure of stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in his hand--a very glorious work of art; and there was a goat--in bronze probably--as to which cicero is at the pains of telling us that even he, unskilled as he was in such matters, could see its charms. no one had sharper eyes for such pretty ornaments than cicero, or a more decided taste for them. but as hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case, had taken a marble sphinx from verres, he thought it expedient to show how superior he was to such matters. there was probably something of joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those he was addressing.[117] in the matter sthenius was incorruptible, and not even the prætor could carry them away without his aid. cicero, who is very warm in praise of sthenius, declares that "here at last verres had found one town, the only one in the world, from which he was unable to carry away something of the public property by force, or stealth, or open command, or favor."[118] the governor was so disgusted with this that he abandoned sthenius, leaving the house which he had plundered of everything, and betook himself to that of one agathinus, who had a beautiful daughter, callidama, who, with her husband, dorotheus, lived with her father they were enemies of sthenius, and we are given to understand that verres ingratiated himself with them partly for the sake of callidama, who seems very quickly to have been given up to him,[119] and partly that he might instigate them to bring actions against sthenius. this is done with great success; so that sthenius is forced to run away, and betake himself, winter as it was, across the seas to rome. it has already been told that when he was at rome an action was brought against him by verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which cicero defended him, and in which he was acquitted. in the teeth of his acquittal, verres persecuted the man by every form of law which came to his hands as prætor, but always in opposition to the law. there is an audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open contempt of the laws which it was his special duty to carry out, making us feel how confident he was that he could carry everything before him in rome by means of his money. by robbery and concealing his robberies, by selling his judgments in such a way that he should maintain some reticence by ordinary precaution, he might have made much money, as other governors had done. but he resolved that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly, and then, when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale. as to shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among romans. before he comes to the story of sthenius, cicero makes a grandly ironical appeal to the bench before him: "yes, o judges, keep this man; keep him in the state! spare him, preserve him so that he, too, may sit with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with impartiality, advise us, as a senator, what may be best for us as to peace and war! not that we need trouble ourselves as to his senatorial duties. his authority would be nothing. when would he dare, or when would he care, to come among us? unless it might be in the idle month of february, when would a man so idle, so debauched, show himself in the senate-house? let him come and show himself. let him advise us to attack the cretans; to pronounce the greeks of byzantium free; to declare ptolemy king.[120] let him speak and vote as hortensius may direct. this will have but little effect upon our lives or our property. but beyond this there is something we must look to; something that would be distrusted; something that every good man has to fear! if by chance this man should escape out of our hands, he would have to sit there upon that bench and be a judge. he would be called upon to pronounce on the lives of a roman citizen. he would be the right-hand officer in the army of this man here,[121] of this man who is striving to be the lord and ruler of our judgment-seats. the people of rome at least refuse this! this at least cannot be endured!" the third of these narratives tells us how verres managed in his province that provision of corn for the use of rome, the collection of which made the possession of sicily so important to the romans. he begins with telling his readers--as he does too frequently--how great and peculiar is the task he has undertaken; and he uses an argument of which we cannot but admit the truth, though we doubt whether any modern advocate would dare to put it forward. we must remember, however, that romans were not accustomed to be shamefaced in praising themselves. what cicero says of himself all others said also of themselves; only cicero could say it better than others. he reminds us that he who accuses another of any crime is bound to be especially free from that crime himself. "would you charge any one as a thief? you must be clear from any suspicion of even desiring another man's property. have you brought a man up for malice or cruelty? take care that you be not found hard-hearted. have you called a man a seducer or an adulterer? be sure that your own life shows no trace of such vices. whatever you would punish in another, that you must avoid yourself. a public accuser would be intolerable, or even a caviller, who should inveigh against sins for which he himself is called in question. but in this man i find all wickednesses combined. there is no lust, no iniquity, no shamelessness of which his life does not supply with ample evidence." the nature of the difficulty to which cicero is thus subjected is visible enough. as verres is all that is bad, so must he, as accuser, be all that is good; which is more, we should say, than any man would choose to declare of himself! but he is equal to the occasion. "in regard to this man, o judges, i lay down for myself the law as i have stated it. i must so live that i must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the very opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as to that arrogance and impudence which you see in him." then he shows how opposite he is to verres at any rate, in impudence! "i am not sorry to see," he goes on to say, "that that life which has always been the life of my own choosing, has now been made a necessity to me by the law which i have laid down for myself."[122] mr. pecksniff spoke of himself in the same way, but no one, i think, believed him. cicero probably was believed. but the most wonderful thing is, that his manner of life justified what he said of himself. when others of his own order were abandoned to lust, iniquity, and shamelessness, he lived in purity, with clean hands, doing good as far as was in his power to those around him. a laugh will be raised at his expense in regard to that assertion of his that, even in the matter of arrogance, his conduct should be the opposite of that of verres. but this will come because i have failed to interpret accurately the meaning of those words, "oris oculorumque illa contumacia ac superbia quam videtis." verres, as we can understand, had carried himself during the trial with a bragging, brazen, bold face, determined to show no shame as to his own doings. it is in this, which was a matter of manner and taste, that cicero declares that he will be the man's opposite as well as in conduct. as to the ordinary boastings, by which it has to be acknowledged that cicero sometimes disgusts his readers, it will be impossible for us to receive a just idea of his character without remembering that it was the custom of a roman to boast. we wait to have good things said of us, or are supposed to wait. the roman said them of himself. the "veni, vidi, vici" was the ordinary mode of expression in those times, and in earlier times among the greeks.[123] this is distasteful to us; and it will probably be distasteful to those who come after us, two or three hundred years hence, that this or that british statesman should have made himself an earl or a knight of the garter. now it is thought by many to be proper enough. it will shock men in future days that great peers or rich commoners should have bargained for ribbons and lieutenancies and titles. now it is the way of the time. though virtue and vice may be said to remain the same from all time to all time, the latitudes allowed and the deviations encouraged in this or the other age must be considered before the character of a man can be discovered. the boastings of cicero have been preserved for us. we have to bethink ourselves that his words are 2000 years old. there is such a touch of humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and almost of christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in them of paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday. when we come to the coarseness of his attacks, his descriptions of piso by-and-by, his abuse of gabinius, and his invectives against antony; when we read his altered opinions, as shown in the period of cæsar's dominion, his flattery of cæsar when in power, and his exultations when cæsar has been killed; when we find that he could be coarse in his language and a bully, and servile--for it has all to be admitted--we have to reflect under what circumstances, under what surroundings, and for what object were used the words which displease us. speaking before the full court at this trial, he dared to say he knew how to live as a man and to carry himself as a gentleman. as men and gentlemen were then, he was justified. the description of verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax is long and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless by those who desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could make the most of an imposition which was in itself very bad, and pile up the burden till the poor province was unable to bear it. there were three kinds of imposition as to corn. the first, called the "decumanum," was simply a tithe. the producers through the island had to furnish rome with a tenth of their produce, and it was the prætor's duty, or rather that of the quæstor under the prætor, to see that the tithe was collected. how verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the sicilian husbandmen in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are obliged to give the man credit for an infinite fertility of resources. then there is the "emptum," or corn bought for the use of rome, of which there were two kinds. a second tithe had to be furnished at a price fixed by the roman senate, which price was considered to be below that of its real value, and then 800,000 bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a price which was also fixed by the senate, but which was nearer to the real value. three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the last, were the prices fixed at this time. for making these payments vast sums of money were remitted to verres, of which the accounts were so kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into the hands of the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. the third corn tax was the "æstimatum." this consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to be supplied to the prætor for the use of his governmental establishment--to be supplied either in grain or in money. what such a one as verres would do with his, the reader may conceive. all this was of vital importance to rome. sicily and africa were the granaries from which rome was supplied with its bread. to get supplies from a province was necessary. rich men have servants in order that they may live at ease themselves. so it was with the romans to whom the provinces acted as servants. it was necessary to have a sharp agent, some proconsul or proprætor; but when there came one so sharp as verres, all power of recreating supplies would for a time be destroyed. even cicero boasted that in a time of great scarcity, he, being then quæstor in sicily, had sent extraordinary store of corn over to the city.[124] but he had so done it as to satisfy all who were concerned. verres, in his corn dealings with the sicilians, had a certain friend, companion, and minister--one of his favorite dogs, perhaps we may call him--named apronius, whom cicero specially describes. the description i must give, because it is so powerful; because it shows us how one man could in those days speak of another in open court before all the world; because it affords us an instance of the intensity of hatred which the orator could throw into his words; but i must hide it in the original language, as i could not translate it without offence.[125] then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the verrine orations the most amusing. the greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call art. we are much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, partly from love of such things, partly from pride in ornamenting our houses so as to excite the admiration of others, partly from a feeling that money so invested is not badly placed with a view to future returns. all these feelings operated with the greeks to a much greater extent. investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them. money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of losing it. the greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and prudent. from this it had come to pass that, as they made their way about the world--to the cities which they established round the mediterranean--they collected in their new homes great store of ornamental wealth. this was done with much profusion at syracuse, a greek city in sicily, and spread from them over the whole island. the temples of the gods were filled with the works of the great greek artists, and every man of note had his gallery. that verres, hog as he is described to have been, had a passion for these things, is manifest to us. he came to his death at last in defence of some favorite images. he had returned to rome by means of cæsar's amnesty, and marc antony had him murdered because he would not surrender some treasures of art. when we read the de signis--about statues--we are led to imagine that the search after these things was the chief object of the man throughout his three years of office--as we have before been made to suppose that all his mind and time had been devoted to the cheating of the sicilians in the matter of corn. but though verres loved these trinkets, it was not altogether for himself that he sought them. only one third of his plunder was for himself. senators, judges, advocates, consuls, and prætors could be bribed with articles of _vertu_ as well as with money. there are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. i will give very shortly the details of one or two. there was one marcus heius, a rich citizen of messana, in whose house verres took great delight. messana itself was very useful to him, and the mamertines, as the people of messana were called were his best friends in all sicily: for he made messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the expense of the government an enormous ship called the _cybea_,[126] in which his treasures were carried out of the island. he therefore specially favored messana, and the district of messana was supposed to have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in sicily. but this man heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were preserved four specially beautiful images. there was a cupid by praxiteles, and a bronze hercules by myro, and two can[oe]phræ by polycletus. these were treasures which all the world came to see, and which were open to be seen by all the world. these verres took away, and caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to appear that he had bought them for trifling sums. it seems that some forced assent had been obtained from heius as to the transaction. now there was a plan in vogue for making things pleasant for a proconsul retiring from his government, in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to rome to declare how well and kindly the proconsul had behaved in his government. the allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations. deputations were got up in sicily from messana and syracuse, and with the others from messana came this man heius. heius did not wish to tell about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer. cicero informs us how it all took place. "he was a man," he said--this is what cicero tells us that heius said--"who was well esteemed in his own country, and would wish you"--you judges--"to think well of his religious spirit and of his personal dignity. he had come here to praise verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. he, however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the ornaments of his own chapel.[127] nevertheless, he had come to praise verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible." cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies committed by verres in syracuse, especially from the temples of the gods; and he begins his account of the syracusan iniquities by drawing a parallel between two romans whose names were well known in that city: marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and verres, who had been sent to govern it in peace. marcellus had saved the lives of the syracusans; verres had made the forum to run with their blood. the harbor which had held its own against marcellus, as we may read in our livy, had been wilfully opened by verres to cilician pirates. this syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its roman conqueror, the most beautiful of all the greek cities on the face of the earth--so beautiful that marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments--had been stripped bare by verres. there was the temple of minerva from which he had taken all the pictures. there were doors to this temple of such beauty that books had been written about them. he stripped the ivory ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made splendid. he tore off from them the head of the gorgon and carried it away, leaving them to be rude doors, goth that he was! and he took the sappho from the prytaneum, the work of silanion! a thing of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in his own private house; yet verres has it--a man hardly fit to carry such a work of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure of his own. "what, too!" he says, "have you not stolen pæan from the temple of æsculapius--a statue so remarkable for its beauty, so well-known for the worship attached to it, that all the world has been wont to visit it? what! has not the image of aristæus been taken by you from the temple of bacchus? have you not even stolen the statue of jupiter imperator, so sacred in the eyes of all men--that jupiter which the greeks call ourios? you have not hesitated to rob the temple of proserpine of the lovely head in parian marble."[128] then cicero speaks of the worship due to all these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. as he had begun this chapter with the mamertines of messana, so he ends it with an address to them. "it is well that you should come, you alone out of all the provinces, and praise verres here in rome. but what can you say for him? was it not your duty to have built a ship for the republic? you have built none such, but have constructed a huge private transport-vessel for verres. have you not been exempted from your tax on corn? have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military recruits? have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? they will have to confess, these mamertines, that many a ship laden with his spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship which they built for him!" in the de suppliciis--the treatise about punishments, as the last division of this process is called--cicero tells the world how verres exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. the stories, indeed, are very dreadful. it is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose. but that which strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a roman citizen, and the audacity with which the roman proconsul disregarded that sanctity. "cives romanus" is cicero's cry from the beginning to the end. no doubt he is addressing himself to romans, and seeking popularity, as he always did. but, nevertheless, the demands made upon the outside world at large by the glory of that appellation are astonishing, even when put forward on such an occasion as this. one gavius escapes from a prison in syracuse, and, making his way to messana, foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in italy, out of the way of prætor verres and his cruelties. verres, unfortunately, is in messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the mamertines, what gavius was saying. he at once orders gavius to be flogged in public. "cives romanus sum!" exclaims gavius, no doubt truly. it suits verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate slave. the poor wretch still cries "cives romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal. whereupon verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has the man crucified in sight of italy, so that he shall be able to see the country of which he is so proud. whether he had done anything to deserve crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told. the accusation against verres is not for crucifying the man, but for crucifying the roman. it is on this occasion that cicero uses the words which have become proverbial as to the iniquity of this proceeding.[129] during the telling of this story he explains this doctrine, claiming for the roman citizen, all the world over, some such protection as freemasons are supposed to give each other, whether known or unknown. "men of straw," he says, "of no special birth, go about the world. they resort to places they have never seen before, where they know none, and none know them. here, trusting to their claim solely, they feel themselves to be safe--not only where our magistrates are to be found, who are bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other roman citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient protection."[130] then he goes on to say that if any prætor may at his will put aside this sanctity, all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all the free states, all the world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling. but the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate captain. verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates--very cowardly, indeed, if we are to believe cicero. piracy in the mediterranean was at that time a terrible drawback to trade--that piracy that a year or two afterward pompey was effectual in destroying. a governor in sicily had, among other special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates. this verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the sicilian coasts. but it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by accident into the hands of the governor's officers. it was not taken, cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up almost sinking.[131] it was found to be full of fine, handsome men, of silver both plated and coined, and precious stuffs. though not "taken," it was "found," and carried into syracuse. syracuse is full of the news, and the first demand is that the pirates, according to roman custom, shall all be killed. but this does not suit verres. the slave-markets of the roman empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will suit him better to sell than to kill. there are six musicians, "symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at rome. but the people of syracuse are very much in earnest. they are too sharp to be put off with pretences, and they count the number of slaughtered pirates. there are only some useless, weak, ugly old fellows beheaded from day to day; and being well aware how many men it must have taken to row and manage such a vessel, they demand that the full crew shall be brought to the block. "there is nothing in victory more sweet," says cicero, "no evidence more sure, than to see those whom you did fear, but have now got the better of, brought out to tortures or death."[132] verres is so much frightened by the resolution of the citizens that he does not dare to neglect their wishes. there are lying in the prisons of syracuse a lot of prisoners, roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid himself. he has them brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that they shall not be known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! a great deal is said, too, about the pirate captain--the arch-pirate, as he is called. there seems to have been some money dealings personally between him and verres, on account of which verres kept him hidden. at any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "in such a manner this celebrated victory is managed.[133] the pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate is allowed to escape. the musicians are sent to rome. the men who are good-looking and young are taken to the prætor's house. as many roman citizens as will fill their places are carried out as public enemies, and are tortured and killed! all the gold and silver and precious stuffs are made a prize of by verres!" such are the accusations brought against this wonderful man--the truth of which has, i think, on the whole been admitted. the picture of roman life which it displays is wonderful, that such atrocities should have been possible; and equally so of provincial subjection, that such cruelties should have been endured. but in it all the greatest wonder is that there should have risen up a man so determined to take the part of the weak against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with no other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to which he belonged. cicero was not a gracchus, anxious to throw himself into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by conviction, born to oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it alone could the roman republic be preserved. but he was convinced also that unless these oligarchs could be made to do their duty the republic could not stand. therefore it was that he dared to defy his own brethren, and to make the acquittal of verres an impossibility. i should be inclined to think that the day on which hortensius threw up the sponge, and verres submitted to banishment and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life. verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for his crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. from this he returned to rome when the roman exiles were amnestied, and was shortly afterward murdered by antony, as has been told before. chapter vii. _cicero as ædile and prætor._ [sidenote: b.c. 69, ætat. 38.] the year after the trial of verres was that of cicero's ædileship. we know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office, but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the people. he did not spend much money for their amusements, although it was the custom of ædiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the prætorship from the people, he was three times elected as first prætor in all the comitia--three separate elections having been rendered necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. to all the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year--the first year possible in accordance with his age--and was elected first in honor, the first as prætor, and then the first as consul. this, no doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing which his brother quintus is said to have drawn out, and which i have quoted; but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the people. the candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the aristocracy. they were put forward with the idea that thus might the aristocratic rule of rome be best maintained. their elections were carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent to the proceeding. whether it might be a verres, or an antony, or a hortensius, they took the money that was going. they allowed themselves to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. but every now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to the voting pens--ovilia--with a purpose of their own. when such a candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. such had been marius, and such had been the great pompey, and such was cicero. the two former were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their victories. cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. he could afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his ædileship, as had been common with ædiles, because he was able to achieve his popularity in another way. it was the chief duty of the ædiles to look after the town generally--to see to the temples of the gods, to take care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the streets, and to the supply of water. the markets were under them, and the police, and the recurrent festivals. an active man, with common-sense, such as was cicero, no doubt did his duty as ædile well. he kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. we have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of another spoken during this period. the former was in favor of fonteius, whom the gauls prosecuted for plundering them as proprætor, and the latter is a civil case on behalf of cæcina, addressed to the "recuperatores," as had been that for marcus tullius. the speech for fonteius is remarkable as being as hard against the provincial gauls as his speech against verres had been favorable to the sicilians. but the gauls were barbarians, whereas the sicilians were greeks. and it should be always remembered that cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. nothing that these wretched gauls could say against a roman citizen ought to be accepted in evidence! "all the romans," he says, "who have been in the province wish well to fonteius. would you rather believe these gauls--led by what feeling? by the opinion of men! is the opinion, then, of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow-citizens, or is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? would you prefer, then, unknown men to known--dishonest men to honest--foreigners to your own countrymen--greedy men to those who come before you for nothing--men of no religion to those who fear the gods--those who hate the empire and the name of rome to allies and citizens who are good and faithful?"[134] in every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his own case was weak; and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the judges we are sure that fonteius was guilty. he tells the judges that the poor mother of the accused man has no other support than this son, and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of vesta, who, being a vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. when we read such arguments as these, we are sure that fonteius had misused the gauls. we believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that he bought a house in rome soon afterward; but we feel that he escaped by the too great influence of his advocate. we are driven to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good. a man with such a tongue as that of cicero will make the listener believe almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood. in his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause. cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of hypocrisy in consequence. there is a passage in one of the dialogues, de oratore, which has been continually quoted against him because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. the orator is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white lies--"mendaciunculis."[135] the advice does not indeed refer to facts, or to evidence, or to arguments. it goes no farther than to suggest that amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in order that the story may be good. such "mendaciuncula" are in the mouth of every diner-out in london, and we may pity the dinner-parties at which they are not used. reference is made to them now because the use of the word by cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his falsehood. you shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that he is only thirty-six inches. you know very well that he is more than four feet high. that will be a "mendaciunculum," according to cicero. the phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little fibs of cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him as an advocate. they have been only the garnishing of his drolleries. as an advocate, he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of our own day.[136] that he was not paid, and that our english barristers are paid for the work they do, makes, i think, no difference either in the innocency or the falseness of the practice. i cannot but believe that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man of honor to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make others believe that which he does not believe himself. such is not the state of things now in london, nor was it at rome in cicero's time. there are touches of eloquence in the plea for fonteius, but the reader will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate gauls. in the year following that of cicero's ædileship were written the first of his epistles which have come to us. he was then not yet thirty-nine years old--b.c. 68--and during that year and the next seven were written eleven letters, all to atticus. those to his other friends--ad familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; ad diversos, they are commonly called now--began only with the close of his consular year. how it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which were written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free correspondents, cannot be said with certainty. it has probably been occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. of the nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. i am not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of cornelius nepos that he who has read his letters to atticus will not lack much of the history of those days.[137] a man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. but if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography. with a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, i think, been enough. from them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have been made visible. we know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. but i wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength. if they are singularly transparent as to the man--opening, especially to atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly true. to regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. nor, i think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. when with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. if one of us were to lose his all--as cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--i think it might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. on losing his tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would not maunder out his sorrows. even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. whether this be for good or for evil i will not say, but it is so. cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear. he said everything that there was within him--being in this, i should say, quite as unlike to other romans of the day as he was to ourselves. in the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters--not from cicero--written to cicero by his brother, by decimus brutus, by plancus, and others. it will, i think, be admitted that their tone is quite different from that used by himself. there are none, indeed, from atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship as prevailed when many were written by cicero himself. it will probably be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his correspondent was peculiar to him. if this be so, he should surely have the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance. the reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the man is to be read in the little sly things he said to atticus, but that the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as unfair to himself as he is to cicero. in reading the entire correspondence--the letters from cicero either to atticus or to others--it has to be remembered that in the ordinary arrangement of them made by grævius[138] they are often incorrectly paced in regard to chronology. in subsequent times efforts have been made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be read. the letters to atticus and those ad diversos have generally been published separately. for the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they may perhaps be best read in that way. the tone of them is different. the great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. the manner is much more familiar, much less severe--though not on that account indicating less seriousness--in those written to atticus than in the others. with one or two signal exceptions, those to atticus are better worth reading. the character of the writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the facts of cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written. it has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him who wrote them.[139] [sidenote: b.c. 68, ætat. 39.] we have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year after his ædileship. in the first he tells his friend of the death of his cousin, lucius cicero, who had travelled with him into sicily, and alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between pomponia, the sister of atticus, and her husband, quintus cicero--our cicero's brother. marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of him. that quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the republic. but he was arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar characteristic of his brother. "when i found him to be in the wrong," says cicero, in his first letter, "i wrote to him as to a brother whom i loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom i was bound to tell of his fault." as is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for the purchase of statues for his tusculan villa, of which we now hear for the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, terentia, sends her love, though she is suffering from the gout. tullia also, the dear little tullia, "deliciæ nostræ,"[140]sends her love. in the next, he says how a certain house which atticus had intended to purchase had been secured by fonteius for 130,000 sesterces--something over £1000, taking the sesterce at 2 _d_. this no doubt was part of the plunder which fonteius had taken from the gauls. quintus is getting on better with his wife. then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that year on the eighth day before the kalends of december--on the 24th of november. some question as to the date of the old man's death had probably been asked. he gives further commissions as to statues, and declares of his tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there. in the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one cincius £170 on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "all my prospect of enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." these were the letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be ædile. from the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable from the continued commissions given by cicero to atticus for statues. statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his tusculanum. should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to decorate another that he has, the formianum, near caieta. he wants whatever atticus may think proper for his "palæstra" and "gymnasium." atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and cicero engages to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the money. he reserves, he says, all his little comings-in, "vindemiolas"--what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the country might get a little income from her spare butter--in order that he may have books as a resource for his old age. again, he bids atticus not to be afraid but what he, cicero, will be able to buy them some day--which if he can do he will be richer than crassus, and will envy no one his mansions or his lawns. he also declares that he has betrothed tullia, then ten years old, to caius piso, son of lucius piso frugi. the proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal was duly solemnized, was considered to be in all respects desirable. cicero thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to calpurnius piso, one of the consuls of that year. so far everything was going well with our orator. [sidenote: b.c. 67, ætat. 40.] he was then candidate for the prætorship, and was elected first, as has been already said. it was in that year, too that a law was passed in rome, at the instance of one gabinius, a tribune, authorizing pompey to exterminate the pirates in the mediterranean, and giving him almost unlimited power for this object. pompey was not, indeed, named in this law. a single general, one who had been consul, was to be approved by the senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore. he was to select as his own officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all of senatorial rank. it was well understood when the law was worded that pompey alone could fill the place. the senate opposed the scheme with all its power, although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. but jealousies prevailed, and the senate was afraid of pompey. gabinius, however, carried his law by the votes of the people, and pompey was appointed. nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in rome at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce was almost destroyed. sulla had re-established the outside show of a strong government--a government which was strong enough to enable rich men to live securely in rome; but he had done nothing to consolidate the empire. even lucullus in the east had only partially succeeded, leaving mithridates still to be dealt with by pompey. of what nature was the government of the provinces under sulla's aristocracy we learn from the trials of verres, and of fonteius, and of catiline. the mediterranean swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had nothing to fear from the hands of the romans. plutarch declares to us--no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been admitted by subsequent writers--how great was the horror of these depredations.[141] it is marvellous to us now that this should have been allowed--marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance that verres had found it worth his while to sacrifice roman citizens in their place. pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his money, and cleared the mediterranean in forty days, as plutarch says. floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the romans, and not a pirate left on the seas.[142] in the history of rome at this time we find men of mark whose characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear. of marius and of sulla we have a defined idea. cæsar, with his imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success, comes home to us. cicero, i think, we certainly may understand. catiline, cato, antony, and brutus have left their portraits with us. of pompey i must acknowledge for myself that i have but a vague conception. his wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little power of his own! he was not determined and venomous as was marius; not cold-blooded and ruthless as was sulla; certainly not confident as was cæsar; not humane as was cicero; not passionate as catiline; not stoic as was cato; not reckless as was antony, nor wedded to the idea of an oligarchy as was brutus. success came in his way, and he found it--found it again and again, till fortune seemed to have adopted him. success lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must be a sulla whether he would or no.[143] but he could not endure the idea of a rival sulla. i doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to fight for the empire of the republic, had he not perceived that that empire would fall into cæsar's hands did he not grasp it himself. it would have satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him "magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. cæsar did force it on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. he must have understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a roman legion and of roman auxiliaries. he had destroyed sertorius in spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honor of putting an end to the servile war when spartacus, the leader of the slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. he must have appreciated at its utmost the meaning of those words, "cives romanus." he was a handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury, reticent, i should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed beneath the heel of such a man as cæsar, and as certain to leave such a one as cicero in the lurch. it is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the personal characteristics of pompey, as from this time forward cicero's political life--and his life now became altogether political--was governed by that of pompey. that this was the case to a great extent is certain--to a sad extent, i think. the two men were of the same age; but pompey had become a general among soldiers before cicero had ceased to be a pupil among advocates. as cicero was making his way toward the front, pompey was already the first among romans. he had been consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down the pirates. in some sort the mantle of sulla had fallen upon him. he was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. if, which i doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. such had been the forms in rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that oligarch. pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit. for any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, i think, look in vain to that pompey whom history has handed down to us. but, of all matters which interested cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. how should the great rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? how should rome be ruled so that romans might be the masters of the world, in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms--as by valor, so by virtue? he, too, was an oligarch by strongest conviction. his mind could conceive nothing better than consuls, prætors, censors, tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation that the consuls and the prætors should be honest men. the condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would not see. pompey himself was fairly honest. up to this time he had shown no egregious lust for personal power. his hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. he was the leader of the conservative party. the "optimates," or "boni," as cicero indifferently calls them--meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order--believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him. the senate did not want another sulla; and yet it was sulla who had reinstated the senate. the senate would have hindered pompey, if it could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his command against mithridates. but he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly when, seventeen years afterward, cæsar passed the rubicon, and cicero in his heart acknowledged pompey as his political leader while pompey lived. this, i think, was the case to a sad extent, as pompey was incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which cicero demanded. as we go on we shall find that the worst episodes in cicero's political career were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker to the end. then came cicero's prætorship. in the time of cicero there were eight prætors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in the provinces. the "prætor urbanus" was confined to the city, and was regarded as the first in authority. this was the office filled by cicero. his duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or judges for special causes. [sidenote: b.c. 66, ætat. 41.] cicero at this time, when he and pompey were forty or forty-one, believed thoroughly in pompey. when the great general was still away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the mithridatic war. lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. his own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and glabrio, a later consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. it was essential that something should be done, and one manilius, a tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration pro lege manilia, proposed to the people that pompey should have the command. then cicero first entered, as we may say, on political life. though he had been quæstor and ædile, and was now prætor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. he had had his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges, which, in the condition of rome, was certainly a political question of great moment. but this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. now, for the first time, he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. this speech is the oration pro lego manilia. this he explains in his first words. hitherto his addresses had been to the judges--judices; now it is to the people--quirites: "although, quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds--although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the noblest for speech--nevertheless, not my own will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which i have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory which is open to any good man." it is only necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in question, that this command was given to pompey in opposition to the senate. as to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. it is one of those choice morsels of polished latinity which have given to cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. i have sometimes attempted to make a short list of his _chefs d'[oe]uvre_--of his tidbits, as i must say, if i am bound to express myself in english. the list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration in its integrity has always been included in it. my space hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but i will give in an appendix[144] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in latin. i almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom latin is unknown. i venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible i have found it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. as to the beauty of the language i shall probably find no opponent. but a serious attack has been made on cicero's character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on pompey with a view of securing the great general's assistance in his candidature for the consulship. even middleton repeats this accusation, and only faintly repels it. m. du rozoir, the french critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which was not dictated to cicero the prætor by his desire to become consul, and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that of pompey." the matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it not that cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in pompey. pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. he had done infinitely valuable service to the state. he had already crushed the pirates. there was good ground for believing that in his hands the roman arms would be more efficacious against mithridates than in those of any other general. all that cicero says on this head, whatever might have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true. a man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres to his party. that cicero was wrong in supposing that the republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed i admit; but i will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. in our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has also strengthened his own hands. how shall a patriot do the work of his country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? they who have blamed cicero for speaking on behalf of pompey on this occasion, seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life. one other remarkable oration cicero made during his prætorship--that, namely, in defence of aulus cluentius habitus. as it is the longest, so is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all his speeches. but there are none perhaps which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps i should say the possibilities, of life among the romans of that day. the accusation against roscius amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. the iniquities of verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life. that any man should have lived as did oppianicus, or any woman as did sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by juvenal a hundred and fifty years later. cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. we must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity. the story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in italy during the latter days of the republic. [sidenote: b.c. 65, ætat. 42.] in the year after he was prætor--in the first of the two years between his prætorship and consulship, b.c. 65--he made a speech in defence of one caius cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case occupied four days. this, with our interminable "causes célèbres," does not seem much to us, but cicero's own speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two parts. this cornelius had been tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused his power when in office. he had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the senate; especially by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. cicero's speeches are not extant. we have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them, which were preserved by asconius,[145] a commentator on certain of cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that these cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against verres, or almost as those spoken against catiline. cicero defended cornelius, who was attacked by the senate--by the rich men who desired office and the government of provinces. the law proposed for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by cicero to be too rigorous. the rancor of the senate against cornelius seems to have been due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by him--for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been usurped by the senate. caius cornelius seems to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but--as had been the gracchi--ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the senate. a second tribune, in the interest of the senate, attempted to exercise an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the publication or reading of the proposed law. the person whose duty it was to read it was stopped; then cornelius pushed aside the inferior officer, and read it himself. there was much violence, and the men who brought the accusation about cornelius--two brothers named cominii--had to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses. this took place when cicero was standing for the prætorship, and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile impossible to carry on the election. in the year after his prætorship cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made. the matter seems to have been one of vital interest in rome. the contest on the part of the senate was for all that made public life dear to such a body. not to bribe--not to be able to lay out money in order that money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold--would be to them to cease to be aristocrats. the struggles made by the gracchi, by livius drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an honest republic. such were the struggles made by cicero himself; though there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be effected, not by depriving the senate of its power, but by teaching the senate to use it honestly. we can sympathize with the idea, but we are driven to acknowledge that it was futile. though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of them prefixed by asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to readers. they were extant in the time of quintilian, who speaks of them with the highest praise.[146] cicero himself selects certain passages out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[147] thus showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. we know from asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital interest. we have two letters from cicero written in the year after his prætorship, both to atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable competition for the consulship; the second informs his friend that a son is born to him--he being then forty-two years old--and that he is thinking to undertake the defence of catiline, who was to be accused of peculation as proprætor in africa. "should he be acquitted," says cicero, "i should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my canvass. if he should be convicted, i shall be able to bear that too." there were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would be chosen. it would be much to cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed. catiline, in spite of his then notorious character--in the teeth of the evils of his government in africa--was, from his birth, his connections, and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. it was open to cicero to defend catiline as he had defended fonteius, and we know from his own words that he thought of doing so. but he did not; nor did cicero join himself with catiline in the canvassing. it is probable that the nature of catiline's character and intentions were now becoming clearer from day to day. catiline was tried and acquitted, having, it is said, bribed the judges. chapter viii. _cicero as consul._ hitherto everything had succeeded with cicero. his fortune and his fame had gone hand-in-hand. the good-will of the citizens had been accorded to him on all possible occasions. he had risen surely, if not quickly, to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, hortensius. on no memorable occasion had he been beaten. if now and then he had failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some matter in which, as he had said to atticus in speaking of his contemplated defence of catiline, he was not called on to break his heart if he were beaten. we may imagine that his life had been as happy up to this point as a man's life may be. he had married well. children had been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. he had provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. friends were thick around him. his industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. the citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. now at the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual honor, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer, and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment trusted. then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one misery after another--one trouble on the head of another trouble--so cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the romans, almost wonders that he condescended to live. [sidenote: b.c. 64, ætat. 43.] he was chosen consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous acclamation of the citizens. what was the exact manner of doing this we can hardly now understand. the consuls were elected by ballot, wooden tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose; but cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people.[148] he had stood with six competitors. of these it is only necessary to mention two, as by them only was cicero's life affected, and as out of the six, only they seem to have come prominently forward during the canvassing. these were catiline the conspirator, as we shall have to call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and caius antonius, one of the sons of marc antony, the great orator of the preceding age, and uncle of the marc antony with whom we are all so well acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to the end of this work. cicero was so easily the first that it may be said of him that he walked over the course. whether this was achieved by the machiavellian arts which his brother quintus taught in his treatise de petitione consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may be a matter of doubt. as far as we can judge from the signs which remain to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. he had robbed none, and had been cruel to no one. he had already abandoned the profit of provincial government--to which he was by custom entitled after the lapse of his year's duty as prætor--in order that he might remain in rome among the people. though one of the senate himself--and full of the glory of the senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the verrine orations which i have quoted--he had generally pleaded on the popular side. such was his cleverness, that even when on the unpopular side--as he may be supposed to have been when defending fonteius--he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. we cannot doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his election, that he had made himself beloved but, nevertheless, he omitted none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take. he made his electioneering speech "in toga candida"--in a white robe, as candidates did, and were thence so called. it has not come down to us, nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected from the notes which asconius wrote upon it. it was full of personal abuse of antony and catiline, his competitors. such was the practice of rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. we shall have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task. when we come to the language in which cicero spoke of clodius, his enemy, of piso and gabinius, the consuls who allowed him to be banished, and of marc antony, his last great opponent--the nephew of the man who was now his colleague--we shall have very much of it. it must again be pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been preserved and that cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been more foul mouthed than his rivals. we can easily imagine that he was more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his words the meaning which he intended them to convey. antony was chosen as cicero's colleague. it seems, from such evidence as we are able to get on the subject, that cicero trusted antony no better than he did catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide et impera"--separate your enemies and you will get the better of them, which was no doubt known as well then as now--he soon determined to use antony as his ally against catiline, who was presumed to reckon antony among his fellow-conspirators. sallust puts into the mouth of catiline a declaration to this effect,[149] and cicero did use antony for the purpose. the story of catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story of cicero's consulship, that i may be justified in hurrying over the other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must be told. though catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole year, it was not till october that the affairs in which we shall have to interest ourselves commenced. of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the great roman officers of state we know very little; perhaps i might better say that we know nothing. men, in their own diaries, when they keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. a prime-minister with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was cicero with his friend atticus, would hardly say when he went to the treasury chambers or what he did when he got there. we may imagine that to a cabinet minister even a cabinet council would, after many sittings, become a matter of course. a leading barrister would hardly leave behind him a record of his work in chambers. it has thus come to pass that, though we can picture to ourselves a cicero before the judges, or addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his consular work. we cannot but suppose that there must have been an office with many clerks. there must have been heavy daily work. the whole operation of government was under the consul's charge, and to cicero, with a catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually heavy. how he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives and red tape, i cannot make manifest to myself. i can imagine that there must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading romans, but beyond that i cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life of a consul. in the old days the consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do the fighting. when there was an enemy here, or an enemy there, the consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or south, to different parts of italy. but gradually this system became impracticable. distances became too great, as the empire extended itself beyond the bounds of italy, to admit of the absence of the consuls. wars prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which was soon to take place in gaul under cæsar. the consuls remained at home, and generals were sent out with proconsular authority. this had become so certainly the case, that cicero on becoming consul had no fear of being called on to fight the enemies of his country. there was much fighting then in course of being done by pompey in the east; but this would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it might be in sending out necessary supplies. the consul's work, however, was severe enough. we find from his own words, in a letter to atticus written in the year but one after his consulship, 61 b.c., that as consul he made twelve public addresses. each of them must have been a work of labor, requiring a full mastery over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in their polished perfection from the generality of parliamentary speeches to which we are accustomed. the getting up of his cases must have taken great time. letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. writing must have been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft wax. an advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself. we have heard how cicero made his way over to sicily, creeping in a little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might get up the evidence against verres. in defending aulus cluentius when he was prætor, cicero must have found the work to have been immense. in preparing the attack upon catiline it seems that every witness was brought to himself. there were four catiline speeches made in the year of his consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by him. he mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made in the year of his consulship. i imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with those which have come to us--which were, as we may say, prepared for the press by tiro, his slave and secretary. we have evidence as to some of them, especially as to the second catiline oration, that time did not admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of the circumstances to which it alludes. it needs must have been extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed to give him. how the words may have been taken down in such a case we do not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed, though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as is that with us.[150] the words which we read were probably much polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not know. what we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced, and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince and charm us. of these twelve consular speeches cicero gives a special account to his friend. "i will send you," he says, "the speechlings[151] which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which i have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. it was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen of yours in those orations which he called his philippics. in these he brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking, so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more statesman-like. so i have done with these speeches of mine which may be called 'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year but also with something of consular dignity. "of these, one, on the new land laws proposed, was spoken in the senate on the kalends of january. the second, on the same subject, to the people. the third was respecting otho's law.[152] the fourth was in defence of rabirius.[153] the fifth was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property and their rank under sulla's proscription.[154] the sixth was an address to the people, and explained why i renounced my provincial government.[155] the seventh drove catiline out of the city. the eighth was addressed to the people the day after catiline fled. the ninth was again spoken to the people, on the day on which the allobroges gave their evidence. then, again, the tenth was addressed to the senate on the fifth of december"--also respecting catiline. "there are also two short supplementary speeches on the agrarian war. you shall have the whole body of them. as what i write and what i do are equally interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my doings and all my sayings." it is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which he made as consul--those to which he was desirous of adding something of the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the weight attached to his pleadings as a lawyer. as an advocate, consul though he was, he continued to perform his work; from whence we learn that no state dignity was so high as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of defending his friends. hortensius, when consul elect, had undertaken to defend verres. cicero defended murena when he was consul. he defended c. calpurnius piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, i think, known.[156] of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. of his pleading for murena we have, if not the whole, the material part, and, though nobody cares very much for murena now, the oration is very amusing. it was made toward the end of the year, on the 20th of november, after the second catiline oration, and before the third, at the very moment in which cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on which he intended to convict catiline's fellow-conspirators. as i read it i am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to master the details necessary for the trial of murena. early in the year cicero had caused a law to be passed--which, after him, was called the lex tullia--increasing the stringency of the enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. his intention had probably been to hinder catiline, who was again about to become a candidate. but murena, who was elected, was supposed to have been caught in the meshes of the net, and also silanus, the other consul designate. cato, the man of stern nature, the great stoic of the day, was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against some one, and not very sorry to attack murena with weapons provided from the armory of murena's friend, cicero. silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to cato, was allowed to pass unmolested. sulpicius, who was one of the disappointed candidates, cato, and postumius were the accusers. hortensius, crassus, and cicero were combined together for the defence of murena. but as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we feel that, unlike those roman trials generally, this was carried on without any acrimony on either side. i think it must have been that cato wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been arranged that murena was to be acquitted. murena was accused, among other things, of dancing! greeks might dance, as we hear from cornelius nepos,[157] but for a roman consul it would be disgraceful in the highest extreme. a lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. sallust tells us of sempronia--who was, indeed, a very bad female if all that he says of her be true--that she danced more elegantly than became an honest woman.[158] she was the wife of a consul. but a male roman of high standing might not dance at all. cicero defends his friend by showing how impossible it was--how monstrous the idea. "no man would dance unless drunk or mad." nevertheless, i imagine that murena had danced. cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing cato for his stoicism, and uses it delightfully. horace was not more happy when, in defence of aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[159] "there was one zeno," cicero says, "who laid down laws. no wise man would forgive any fault. no man worthy of the name of man would allow himself to be pitiful. wise men are beautiful, even though deformed; rich though penniless; kings though they be slaves. we who are not wise are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. any fault is an unpardonable crime. to kill an old cock, if you do not want it, is as bad as to murder your father!"[160] and these doctrines, he goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk about, this man cato absolutely believes, and tries to live by them. i shall have to refer back to this when i speak of cicero's philosophy more at length; but his common-sense crops up continually in the expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a man's life, in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane things which the philosophers professed to teach their pupils. he turns to cato and asks him questions, which he answers himself with his own philosophy: "would you pardon nothing? well, yes; but not all things. would you do nothing for friendship? sometimes, unless duty should stand in the way. would you never be moved to pity? i would maintain my habit of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. it is good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall have prevailed with you." in all this the humanity of our cicero, as opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a cato or the abominable vice of a verres, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what christ has taught us. but the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the lawyers. it must be understood that cicero did not pride himself on being a lawyer. he was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. in truth, he did understand the law, being a man of deep research, who inquired into everything. as legal points had been raised, he thus addresses sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who had been a candidate for the consulship, and who was his own intimate friend: "i must put you out of your conceit," he says; "it was your other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws--your moderation, your wisdom, your justice--which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved. i will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not thus you made yourself worthy of the consulship.[161] that power of eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often availed in raising a man to the consulship, is able by its words to move the minds of the senate and the people and the judges.[162] but in such a poor science as that of law what honor can there be? its details are taken up with mere words and fragments of words.[163] they forget all equity in points of law, and stick to the mere letter."[164] he goes through a presumed scene of chicanery, which, consul as he was, he must have acted before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme delight of them all. at last he says, "full as i am of business, if you raise my wrath i will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days."[165] from these and many other passages in cicero's writings and speeches, and also from quintilian, we learn that a roman advocate was by no means the same as an english barrister. the science which he was supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in effective language. it no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in getting up the details of his story--what we may call the evidence--but he looked elsewhere, to men of another profession, for his law. the "juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. in this trial of murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. when he is telling sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "the greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. all our empire, all our republic, is defended and made strong by them."[166] it was thus that the advocate could speak! this comes from the man who always took glory to himself in declaring that the "toga" was superior to helmet and shield. he had already declared that they erred who thought that they were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law courts.[167] he knew how to defend his friend murena, who was a soldier, and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against his friend sulpicius, the lawyer. but in truth few men understood the roman law better than did cicero. but we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he tells us, four of his consular speeches were made. this had been brought forward by rullus, one of the tribunes, toward the end of the last year. the tribunes came into office in december, whereas at this period of the republic the consuls were in power only on and from january 1st. cicero, who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. it was, to his thinking, altogether revolutionary. we have the words of many of the clauses; and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize what would have been its effect, i think we are entitled to say that it was intended to subvert all property. property, speaking of it generally, cannot be destroyed the land remains, and the combined results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too lasting to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. even the elements when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. a deluge is wanted--or that crash of doom which, whether it is to come or not, is believed by the world to be very distant. but it is within human power to destroy possession, and redistribute the goods which industry, avarice, or perhaps injustice has congregated. they who own property are in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors. the spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. but with the romans political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. a subversion of property had to a great extent taken place no later than in sulla's time. how this had been effected the story of the property of roscius amerinus has explained to us. under sulla's enactments no man with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich ornaments, was safe. property had been made to change hands recklessly, ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law promulgated by a single individual, who, however, had himself been instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things which he approved. rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction. the ostensible purpose was something as follows: as the roman people had by their valor and wisdom achieved for rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won; whereas, in fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few aristocrats. for the reform of this evil it should be enacted that all public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels, should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should be bought fit for the use of roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to have it. it was specially suggested that the rich country called the campania--that in which naples now stands with its adjacent isles--should be bought up and given over to a great roman colony. for the purpose of carrying out this law ten magistrates should be appointed, with plenipotentiary power both as to buying and selling. there were many underplots in this. no one need sell unless he chose to sell; but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that of sulla's proscriptions. the present possessors were in daily fear of dispossession, by some new law made with the object of restoring their property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. these would be very glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or ten magistrates, would be anxious to assist. we are told that the father-in-law of rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his use of sulla's proscriptions. and then there would be the instantaneous selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the roman state. when so much land would be thrown into the market it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might choose to favor. we can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would have been altogether changed by the measure. the "decemviri" were to have plenary power for ten years. all the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold, or put up to market. everything supposed to belong to the roman state was to be sold in every province, for the sake of collecting together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the shape of land among the poorer romans. whatever may have been the private intentions of rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even at this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was intended which can only be described as a general subversion. to this the new consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say, patriotically. the intense interest which cicero threw into his work is as manifest in these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the catiline conspiracy. he ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his own character and intellect. he condescends, on the other hand, to a virulence of personal abuse against rullus which, though it is to our taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a man should not have undertaken such a work. he is describing the way in which the bill was first introduced: "our tribunes at last enter upon their office. the harangue to be made by rullus is especially expected. he is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry himself with an air of special audacity. when he was only tribune elect he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different step. we all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] in rome men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law. no description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. the picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all rome, could not but be effective. it has been supposed that cicero was insulting the tribune because he was dirty. not so. he was ridiculing rullus because rullus had dared to go about in mourning--"sordidatus"--on behalf of his country. but the tone in which cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. it is so grand as to make us feel that a consul of rome, who had the cares of rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the senate and to the people. there are the two important orations--that spoken first in the senate, and then the speech to the people from which i have already quoted the passage personal to rullus. in both of them he declares his own idea of a consul, and of himself as consul. he has been speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the state, and then proceeds: "but i pass by what i have to say on that matter and reserve it for the people. i speak now of the danger which menaces our safety and our liberty. for what will there be left to us untouched in the republic, what will remain of your authority and freedom, when rullus, and those whom you fear much more than rullus,[169] with this band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of rome, laden with gold and silver, shall have seized on capua and all the cities round? to all this, senators"--patres conscripti he calls them--"i will oppose what power i have. as long as i am consul i will not suffer them to carry out their designs against the republic. "but you, rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the people in your attempts to subvert the republic in opposition to a consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend i call upon you, i invite you to meet me in the assembly. let us have the people of rome as a judge between us. let us look round and see what it is that the people really desire. we shall find that there is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease. you have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies." (it must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his consulship) "the wicked you have filled with hope, the good with fear. you have robbed the forum of loyalty and the republic of dignity. but now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of the consul has been heard by the people--when he shall have made it plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal 'decemvirs,' no second rome, no other centre of rule but this; that while i am consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease--do you suppose that i shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law? shall i, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens when i shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your tribunes of the people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the roman people? shall i fear--i who have determined to be consul after that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom, reaching to ask nothing for myself which any tribune could object to have given to me?"[170] this was to the senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the people. he begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right of having in their houses the busts and images of their ancestors, in their first speech to the people to join with thanks for the favors done to themselves some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers. [171] he, however, could do nothing of the kind: he had no such right: none in his family had achieved such dignity. to speak of himself might seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. therefore would he restrain himself, but would still say something, so that he might acknowledge what he had received. then he would leave it for them to judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him. "it is long ago--almost beyond the memory of us now here--since you last made a new man consul.[172] that high office the nobles had reserved for themselves, and defended it, as it were, with ramparts. you have secured it for me, so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy of it. nor have you only made me a consul, much as that is, but you have done so in such a fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so treated, and no new man--'novus ante me nemo.' i have, if you will think of it, been the only new man who has stood for the consulship in the first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." then he goes on to remind them, in words which i have quoted before, that they had elected him by their unanimous voices. all this, he says, had been very grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that he might labor on their behalf. that such labor was severe, he declares. the consulship itself must be defended. his period of consulship to any consul must be a year of grave responsibility, but more so to him than to any other. to him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give no kind advice. to him, should he be overtasked, they would give no assistance. but the first thing he would look for should be their good opinion. to declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his office for the good of the people was his natural duty. but in that place, in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the senate itself, on the very first day of his consulship, he had declared the same thing--"popularem me futurum esse consulem."[173] the course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. he desired, certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power of the aristocracy. he still believed, as we cannot believe now, that there was a residuum of good in the senate sufficient to blossom forth into new powers of honest government. when speaking to the oligarchs in the senate of rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them with him. that a consul should oppose a tribune who was coming forward with a "lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the gracchi, was not out of the common order of things. another consul would either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering, as antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have called it--as might have been the case with the cottas, lepiduses and pisos of preceding years. but cicero determined to oppose the demagogue tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than he. he succeeded, and rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into darkness. i regard the second speech against rullus as the _ne plus ultra_, the very _beau ideal_ of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government. i cannot finish this chapter, in which i have attempted to describe the lesser operations of cicero's consulship, without again alluding to the picture drawn by virgil of a great man quelling the storms of a seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his words.[174] the poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. when the knights, during cicero's consulship essayed to take their privileged places in the public theatre, in accordance with a law passed by roscius otho a few years earlier (b.c. 68), the founder of the obnoxious law himself entered the building. the people, enraged against a man who had interfered with them and their pleasures, and who had brought them, as it were under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and began to break everything that came to hand. "tum pietate gravem!" the consul was sent for. he called on the people to follow him out of the theatre to the temple of bellona, and there addressed to them that wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in good-humor with otho himself. "iste regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet." i have spoken of pliny's eulogy as to the great consul's doings of the year. the passage is short and i will translate it:[175] "but, marcus tullius, how shall i reconcile it to myself to be silent as to you, or by what special glory shall i best declare your excellence? how better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the whole nation, and to the achievements of your consulship as a specimen of your entire life? at your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. at your persuasion they pardoned otho his law and bore with good-humor the difference of the seats assigned to them. at your prayer the children of the proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of citizenship. catiline was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. it was you who silenced[176] m. antony. hail, thou who wert first addressed as the father of your country--the first who, in the garb of peace, hast deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence." this was grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his death, by one who had no peculiar sympathies with him other than those created by literary affinity. none of cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his consulship. chapter ix _catiline._ to wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some modern historians. to find a paradox in character is a relief to the investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier writers. tiberius and even nero have been praised. the memories of our early years have been shocked by instructions to regard richard iii. and henry viii. as great and scrupulous kings. the devil may have been painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men, who will not accept the verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put the matter right. we are now told that catiline was a popular hero; that, though he might have wished to murder cicero, he was, in accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for that; and that he was simply the follower of the gracchi, and the forerunner of cæsar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of rome.[177] in this there is much that is true. murder was common. he who had seen the sullan proscriptions, as both catiline and cicero had done, might well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in these days. even cicero, who of all the romans was the most humane--even he, no doubt, would have been well contented that catiline should have been destroyed by the people.[178] even he was the cause, as we shall see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality is at any rate very doubtful. but in judging even of bloodshed we have to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. our consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force this upon us. we cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered cæsar as we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we deal as heavily with the murderers of cæsar as we would have done then with catilinarian conspirators in rome, had catiline's conspiracy succeeded. and so, too, in acknowledging that catiline was the outcome of the gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for cæsar, we must again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in them worthy of praise and honor. that the gracchi were seditious no historian has, i think, denied. they were willing to use the usages and laws of the republic where those usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the usages and laws ran counter to them. in the reforms or changes which they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a regret. it has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they themselves had occasioned. but they were honest and patriotic. history has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the tyranny of oligarchs. the republic even in their time had become too rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the credit for a desire to do good; and the names of the two brothers, rebels as they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. cæsar, on the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. he too was opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could save the republic by any struggles after freedom. his mind was not given to patriotism of that sort--not to memories, not to associations. even laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. to his thinking, probably even in his early days, the state of rome required a master. its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any one to take who could take them--for any one to hold who could hold them. mr. beesly, the last defender of catiline, has stated that very little was known in rome of cæsar till the time of catiline's conspiracy, and in that i agree with him. he possessed high family rank, and had been quæstor and ædile; but it was only from this year out that his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into things. it may be that he had previously been in league with catiline--that he was in league with him till the time came for the great attempt. the evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it was so. rome had been the prey of many conspiracies. the dominion of marius and the dominion of sulla had been effected by conspiracies. no doubt the opinion was strong with many that both cæsar and crassus, the rich man, were concerned with catiline. but cæsar was very far-seeing, and, if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the time was not found to be opportune. but from first to last he always was opposed to the oligarchy. the various steps from the gracchi to him were as those which had to be made from the girondists to napoleon. catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were danton and robespierre steps. the continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in power. but as robespierre was vile and low, whereas vergniaud was honest and napoleon great, so was it with catiline between the gracchi and cæsar. there is, to my thinking, no excuse for catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even though he were a necessary step, between the gracchi and cæsar. i regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. history very often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. records have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together. but to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb rather than to assist history. of catiline we at least know that he headed a sedition in rome in the year of cicero's consulship; that he left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of pistoia fighting against the generals of the republic, and that he left certain accomplices in rome who were put to death by an edict of the senate. so much i think is certain to the most truculent doubter. from his contemporaries, sallust and cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character. they have left to us denunciations of the man which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have made him a stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. voltaire has described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder cicero and cato, and to burn the city. ben jonson makes catiline kill a slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends. "there cannot be a fitter drink to make this sanction in." the friends of catiline will say that this shows no evidence against the man. none, certainly; but it is a continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since catiline's time. in his own age cicero and sallust, who were opposed in all their political views, combined to speak ill of him. in the next, virgil makes him as suffering his punishment in hell.[179] in the next, velleius paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom cicero had banished.[180] juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the same spirit. juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was presenting.[181] valerius maximus, who wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very severe on catiline.[182] florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after the conspiracy, gives us of catiline the same personal story as that told both by sallust and cicero: "debauchery, in the first place; and then the poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time, because the roman armies were in distant lands, induced catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of cicero, declares that catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. his villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."[184] all this is no evidence. cicero and sallust may possibly have combined to lie about catiline. other roman writers may have followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed the roman writers. it is possible that the world may have been wrong as to a period of roman history with which it has thought itself to be well acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they have come down to it. the writers of the ages since have combined to speak of cicero with respect and admiration. they have combined, also, to speak of catiline with abhorrence. they have agreed, also, to treat those other rebels, the gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition, a sweet savor, as i have said, attaches itself to their names. for myself, i am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel assured that i shall do no injustice in speaking of catiline as all who have written about him hitherto have spoken of him i cannot consent to the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have concerning him.[185] two strong points have been made for catiline in mr. beesly's defence. his ancestors had been consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a later date "were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their sweaty nightcaps." that scorn against the people should be expressed by the aristocrat casca was well supposed by shakspeare; but how did a liberal of the present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such allusions? in truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom relinquished even by democratic minds. a howard is nowhere lovelier than in america, or a sweaty nightcap less relished. we are then reminded how catiline died fighting, with the wounds all in front; and are told that the "world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause, be that cause what it will; but for catiline none!" i think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. to die readily when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the poorest of mankind. the romans could generally do it, and so can the chinese. a zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization than chinese or zulus. to encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand. when i hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, i think him a fool. if it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was catiline's case, i recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. that catiline was constitutionally a brave man no one has denied. rush, the murderer, was one of the bravest men of whom i remember to have heard. what credit is due to rush is due to catiline. what we believe to be the story of catiline's life is this: in sulla's time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in carrying out the dictator's proscriptions and in running through whatever means he had. there are fearful stories told of him as to murdering his own son and other relatives; as to which mr. beesly is no doubt right in saying that such tales were too lightly told in rome to deserve implicit confidence. to serve a purpose any one would say anything of any enemy. very marvellous qualities are attributed to him--as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able and willing to bear all bodily hardships. he probably had been engaged in murders--as how should a man not have been so who had served under sulla during the dictatorship? he had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured. he had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. in reading of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. that he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and, above all, foreigners to be plundered, we may take, i think, as proved. in spite of his vices, or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. that such a one should become a prætor and a governor was natural. he went to africa with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the africans. it was as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing time. he came back intent, as was natural also, on being a consul, and of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. but there came a spoke in his wheel--the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the province. while under accusation for provincial robbery he could not come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career. it is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the time--the ins and outs of family quarrels. clodius--the clodius who was afterward cicero's notorious enemy and the victim of milo's fury--became the accuser of catiline on behalf of the africans. though clodius was much the younger, they were men of the same class. it may be possible that clodius was appointed to the work--as it had been intended that cæcilius should be appointed at the prosecution of verres--in order to assure not the conviction but the acquittal of the guilty man. the historians and biographers say that clodius was at last bought by a bribe, and that he betrayed the africans after that fashion. it may be that such bribery was arranged from the first. our interest in that trial lies in the fact that cicero no doubt intended, from political motives, to defend catiline. it has been said that he did do so. as far as we know, he abandoned the intention. we have no trace of his speech, and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have been mentioned.[186] but there was _no_ reason why he should not have done so. he defended fonteius, and i am quite willing to own that he knew fonteius to have been a robber. when i look at the practice of our own times, i find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to their own opinions. it suited cicero to do the same. if i were detected in a plot for blowing up a cabinet council, i do not doubt but that i should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[187] but catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for the consulship of the next year, b.c. 65. p. sulla and autronius were elected--that sulla to whose subsequent defence i have just referred in this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, torquatus and cotta, were elected in their place. in this way three men standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from standing for the consulship, and the other two having been robbed of their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became traitors at heart. almost as naturally they came together and conspired. why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject nations? their conduct had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common. however, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is known as the first catiline conspiracy. the reader must bear in mind that i am now telling the story of catiline, and going back to a period of two years before cicero's consulship, which was b.c. 63. how during that year cicero successfully defended murena when cato endeavored to rob him of his coming consulship, has been already told. it may be that murena's hands were no cleaner than those of sulla and autronius, and that they lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended murena. at this time, when the two appointed consuls were rejected, cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. he had been quæstor, ædile, and prætor, filling those administrative offices to the best of his ability. he had, he says, hardly heard of the first conspiracy.[189] that what he says is true, is, i think, proved by the absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches or fragments of speeches that are extant. but that there was such a conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, catiline, sulla, and autronius, were leaders in it. what would interest us, if only we could have the truth, is whether cæsar and crassus were joined in it. it is necessary again to consider the condition of the republic. to us a conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do evil which all good men should oppose. we have the happy conspiracy in which washington became the military leader, and the french revolution, which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing frenchmen from the condition of serfdom. at home we have our own conspiracy against the stuart royalty, which had also noble results. the gracchi had attempted to effect something of the same kind at rome; but the moral condition of the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained. conspiracy! oh yes. as long as there was anything to get, of course he who had not got it would conspire against him who had. there had been conspiracies for and against marius, for and against cinna, for and against sulla. there was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which such rivalry produced. these were the motive causes for conspiracies; not whether romans should be free but whether a sulla or a cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province. cæsar at this time had not done much in the roman world except fall greatly into debt. knowing, as we do know now, his immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he had now reached, thirty-five, b.c. 65, he had considered deeply his prospects in life. there is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being a great soldier. that came to him by pure accident, some years afterward. to be quæstor, prætor, and consul, and catch what was going, seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary debt. that he would have been a verres, or a fonteius, or a catiline, we certainly are not entitled to think. over whatever people he might have come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom, he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results. at this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. there were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were rising into great repute; they were pompey, cicero, and catiline. there were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the dirt around; and they were undoubtedly the first romans of the day. catiline was determined that he too would be among the first romans of the day; but his hands had never been clean. which was the better way for such a one as cæsar to go? to have had pompey under his feet, or cicero, must have then seemed to cæsar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in different ways, have his feet on both. with catiline the chance of success might be better. crassus he had already compassed. crassus was like m. poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition. if cæsar joined the plot we can well understand that crassus should have gone with him. we have all but sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority insufficient for declaring it. that sallust, in his short account of the first conspiracy, should not have implicated cæsar was a matter of course,[190] as he wrote altogether in cæsar's interest. that cicero should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. he did not wish to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy. throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. he had to pass over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. it is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the republic would be horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the crown: there were too many of them for horror. if cæsar and crassus could be got to keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add them to his list of enemies. livy is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy intended to restore the ejected consuls, and to kill the consuls who had been established in their place. but the book in which this was written is lost, and we have only the epitome, or heading of the book, of which we know that it was not written by livy.[191] suetonius, who got his story not improbably from livy, tells us that cæsar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with crassus;[192] and he goes on to say that cicero, writing subsequently to one axius, declared that "cæsar had attempted in his consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to grasp in his ædileship" the year in question. there is, however, no such letter extant. asconius, who, as i have said before, wrote in the time of tiberius, declares that cicero in his lost oration, "in toga candida," accused crassus of having been the author of the conspiracy. such is the information we have; and if we elect to believe that cæsar was then joined with catiline, we must be guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[193] as i have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. to cæsar it was no doubt becoming manifest that the republic, with its oligarchs, must fall. subsequently it did fall, and he was--i will not say the conspirator, nor will i judge the question by saying that he was the traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the republic in his hands, used them against the republic. i can well understand that he should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of catiline, and then have backed out of it when he found he could not trust those who were joined with him. this conspiracy failed. one man omitted to give a signal at one time, and another at another. the senate was to have been slaughtered; the two consuls, cotta and torquatus, murdered, and the two ex-consuls, sulla and autronius, replaced. though all the details seem to have been known to the consuls, catiline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for the punishment of the conspirators. the second conspiracy was attempted in the consulship of cicero, b.c. 63, two years after the first. catiline had struggled for the consulship, and had failed. again there would be no province, no plunder, no power. this interference, as it must have seemed to him, with his peculiar privileges, had all come from cicero. cicero was the busybody who was attempting to stop the order of things which had, to his thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the sustenance of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as himself. there was a vulgar meddling about it--all coming from the violent virtue of a consul whose father had been a nobody at arpinum--which was well calculated to drive catiline into madness. so he went to work and got together in rome a body of men as discontented and almost as nobly born as himself, and in the country north of rome an army of rebels, and began his operations with very little secrecy. in all the story the most remarkable feature is the openness with which many of the details of the conspiracy were carried on. the existence of the rebel army was known; it was known that catiline was the leader; the causes of his disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known when any special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the consul or the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in abundance. but the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go naked in rome, and not even a cicero dare to meddle with it. [sidenote: b.c. 63, ætat. 44.] as to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which sallust and cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground for asserting that cæsar was concerned in it.[194] that he was greatly concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. he had probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of catiline at their proper worth. he too, i think, must have looked upon cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even pompey when he returned from the east. what practical use could there be in such a man at such a time--in one who really believed in honesty, who thought of liberty and the republic, and imagined that he could set the world right by talking? such must have been the feeling of cæsar, who had both experience and foresight to tell him that rome wanted and must have a master. he probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery--would not satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding his supporters with the property of his opponents. but cicero was impracticable--unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made useful. it was thus, i think, that cæsar regarded cicero, and thus that he induced pompey to regard him. but now, in the year of his consulship, cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his virtue must be allowed to have its full way. he did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. there were, too, enough of others anxious for the republic to bolster him up in his own belief. there was that cornelius in whose defence cicero made the two great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was cato, and up to this time there was pompey, as cicero thought. cicero, till he found himself candidate for the consulship, had contented himself with undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned, but which were not exclusively political. he had advocated the employment of pompey in the east, and had defended cornelius. he was well acquainted with the history of the republic; but he had probably never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if so, whether it might possibly be saved. in his consulship he did do so; and, seeing less of the republic than we can see now, told himself that it was possible. the stories told to us of catiline's conspiracy by sallust and by cicero are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. trusting them both, we are justified in believing that we know the truth. we are here concerned only with the part which cicero took. nothing, i think, which cicero says is contradicted by sallust, though of much that cicero certainly did sallust is silent. sallust damns him, but only by faint praise. we may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by cicero himself as verified: indeed, i am not aware that any of cicero's facts have been questioned. sallust declares that catiline's attempt was popular in rome generally.[195] this, i think, must be taken as showing simply that revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a condition of things around him such as existed in rome, a plotter of state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain. when the conspiracy was first announced in the senate, catiline had an army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants of rome generally were with the conspirators. on the other hand, we have proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to cicero after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. the populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to show that catiline was ever beloved as had been the gracchi, and other tribunes of the people who came after them. catiline, in the autumn of the year b.c. 63, had arranged the outside circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the consulship. that cicero with other senators should be murdered seems to have been their first object, and that then the consulship should be seized by force. on the 21st of october cicero made his first report to the senate as to the conspiracy, and called upon catiline for his answer. it was then that catiline made his famous reply: "that the republic had two bodies, of which one was weak and had a bad head"--meaning the aristocracy, with cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head," meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be forth-coming."[196] then, at that sitting, the senate decreed, in the usual formula, "that the consuls were to take care that the republic did not suffer."[197] on the 22d of october, the new consuls, silanus and murena, were elected. on the 23d, catiline was regularly accused of conspiracy by paulus lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to violence applied to the state. two days afterward it was officially reported that manlius--or mallius, as he seems to have been generally called--catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in etruria. the 27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of cicero and the other senators. that all this was to be, and was so arranged by catiline, had been declared in the senate by cicero himself on that day when catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. cicero, with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every detail. there was one curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of the young roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress fulvia, and she carried the information to the consul. it is all narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in ben jonson's dull play, though he has attributed to cæsar a share in the plot, for doing which he had no authority. cicero, on that sitting in the senate, had been specially anxious to make catiline understand that he knew privately every circumstance of the plot. throughout the whole conspiracy his object was not to take catiline, but to drive him out of rome. if the people could be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that way there might be an end of all the trouble. but if that did not come to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the conspirators. if they could be driven out, they must either take themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and assuredly be conquered. cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the necessity was strong upon him of ridding the republic from these blood-thirsty men. the scheme for destroying cicero and the senators on the 27th of october had proved abortive. on the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in the house of one marcus porcius læca, at which a plot was arranged for the killing of cicero the next day--for the killing of cicero alone--he having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their path. two knights were told off for the service, named vargunteius and cornelius. these, after the roman fashion, were to make their way early on the following morning into the consul's bedroom for the ostensible purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they were to slay him. all this, however, was told to cicero, and the two knights, when they came, were refused admittance. if cicero had been a man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a wretched life at this period. as far as i can judge of his words and doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional timidity. he feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that which might turn against him. in much of this there was a falling off from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own life, there was very little. at this time, when, as he knew well, many men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have trembled. but all rome trembled--even according to sallust. i have already shown how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a body were with catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by that expression. in another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the state," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance changed.[198] instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed, the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." i quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving the popularity of catiline. there can, i think, be no doubt that the population of rome was, as a body, afraid of catiline. the city was to be burnt down, the consuls and the senate were to be murdered, debts were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against their masters. the "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes. on the 8th of november, the day after that on which the consul was to have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the senate in the temple of jupiter stator. the senate in cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples. of these none had a higher reputation than that of the special jupiter who is held to have befriended romulus in his fight with the sabines. here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all english school-boys have known for its "quousque tandem abutere, catilina, patientia nostra." whether it be from the awe which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. then there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain, which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary. it is said to have been a fault with cicero that in his speeches he runs too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly palls upon us in english oratory when frequent resort is made to it. it seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. it was this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they declared him to be florid, redundant, and asiatic in his style.[199] this questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in hand. catiline was sitting there himself in the senate, and the questions were for the most part addressed to him. we can see him now, a man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the consul's throat, even there in the senate. though he knew that this attack was to be made on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of honor, among the benches intended for those who had been consuls. when there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. the consular senators shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. even his brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to recognize him. lentulus was no doubt there, and cethegus, and two of the sullan family, and cassius longinus, and autronius, and læca, and curius. all of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause. cæsar was there too, and crassus. a fellow conspirator with catiline would probably be a senator. cicero knew them all. we cannot say that in this matter cæsar was guilty, but cicero, no doubt, felt that cæsar's heart was with catiline. it was his present task so to thunder with his eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming friends--to drive catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did. he declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the facts, catiline deserved death. "if," he says, "i should order you to be taken and killed, believe me i should be blamed rather for my delay in doing so than for my cruelty." he spoke throughout as though all the power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. but it was his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "go," he said; "that camp of yours and mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you. take your friends with you. take them all. cleanse the city of your presence. when its walls are between you and me then i shall feel myself secure. among us here you may no longer stir yourself. i will not have it--i will not endure it. if i were to suffer you to be killed, your followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as i desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the city. do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do yourself? the consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. do you ask me whether you are to go into exile? i do not order it; but if you ask my counsel, i advise it." exile was the severest punishment known by the roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was in the power of no consul or other officer of state to inflict. though he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the republic, still he could not condemn a citizen. it was to the moral effect of his words that he must trust: "non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." catiline heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the senate, and went out of the city. sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish, in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared for his own destruction. sallust, however, was not present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period of catiline's career. cicero tells us expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that catiline was struck dumb.[200] of this first catiline oration sallust says, that "marcus tullius the consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger, made a brilliant speech, very useful to the republic."[201] this, coming from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a friend. catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. they were the very men who as senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he declared his purpose of going. there was nothing to be done in the city by him. the consul was not to be reached. catiline himself was too closely watched for personal action. he would join the army at fæsulæ and then return and burn the city. his friends, lentulus, cethegus, and the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon as catiline with his army should appear before the walls. he went, and cicero had been so far successful. but these men, lentulus, cethegus, and the other senators, though they had not dared to sit near catiline in the senate, or to speak a word to him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. a report was spread among the people that the consul had taken upon himself to drive a citizen into exile. catiline, the ill-used catiline--catiline, the friend of the people, had, they said, gone to marseilles in order that he might escape the fury of the tyrant consul. in this we see the jealousy of romans as to the infliction of any punishment by an individual officer on a citizen. it was with a full knowledge of what was likely to come that cicero had ironically declared that he only advised the conspirator to go. the feeling was so strong that on the next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the subject. then was uttered the second catiline oration, which was spoken in the open air to the citizens at large. here too there are words, among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as the "quousque tandem"--"abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" this catiline, says cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, i have turned out of the city. if you like it better, i have expelled him by my very words. "he has departed. he has fled. he has gone out from among us. he has broken away!" "i have made this conspiracy plain to you all, as i said i would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not believe that the friends of catiline will do the same as catiline would have done. but there is no time now for soft measures. we have to be strong-handed. there is one thing i will do for these men. let them too go out, so that catiline shall not pine for them. i will show them the road. he has gone by the via aurelia. if they will hurry they may catch him before night." he implies by this that the story about marseilles was false. then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent consul who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth. "ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." so he goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief conspirators who remain in the city. if they too will go, they may go unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves. through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears--that he shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and which shall put him into the power of his enemies when the day of his ascendency shall have passed away. it crops out repeatedly in these speeches.[202] he seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. if he can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it, he will encounter even that danger. his foresight was wonderfully accurate. the strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him, not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his heart. though the senate had decreed that the consuls were to see that the republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power was conferred of inflicting punishment. antony, as cicero's colleague, was nothing. the authority, the responsibility, the action were, and were intended, to remain with cicero. he could not legally banish any one. it was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. there was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. let them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the provinces. the object of this second catiline oration, spoken to the people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he was "banishing" no one. as far as the citizens were concerned he was successful; but he did not induce the friends of catiline to follow their chief. this took place on the 9th of november. after the oration the senate met again, and declared catiline and mallius to be public enemies. twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four days during which rome must have been in a state of very great fever. cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for murena before the judicial bench of which i gave an account in the last chapter, and also probably another for piso, of which we have nothing left. we cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases. it was only on october 21st that murena had been elected consul; and yet on the 20th of november cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery. there is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes. on the same day, the 20th of november, when cicero was defending murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain roman lady named sempronia. it was she of whom sallust said that she danced better than became an honest woman. if we can believe sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice. at her house a most vile project was hatched for introducing into rome rome's bitterest foreign foes. there were in the city at this time certain delegates from a people called the allobroges, who inhabited the lower part of savoy. the allobroges were of gaulish race. they were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly discontented with rome. there had been certain injuries, either real or presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city. there they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil possible to the republic. what if they could be got to go back suddenly to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired gauls to assist the conspirators in burning down rome? a deputation from the delegates came to sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--lentulus and others. they entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual with foreign embassies at rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own among the aristocracy, one fabius sanga by name, they thought it well to consult him.[203] sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our astute consul. then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern inspector of police. the allobroges were instructed to lend themselves to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. the written signed documents were given to them. with certain conspirators to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. at a bridge over the tiber they were stopped by cicero's emissaries. there was a feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their letters were brought home to the consul. we are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by cicero and by sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common among later writers.[204] the ambassadors were taken at the milvian bridge early on the morning of the 3d of december, and in the course of that day cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him. lentulus, who was then prætor, cethegus, gabinius, and statilius all obeyed the summons. they did not know what had occurred, and probably thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. cæparius was also sent for, but he for the moment escaped--in vain; for before two days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others. cicero again called the senate together, and entered the meeting leading the guilty prætor by the hand. here the offenders were examined and practically acknowledged their guilt. the proofs against them were so convincing that they could not deny it. there were the signatures of some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. the senate decreed that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their fate should have been pronounced. each of them was then given in custody to some noble roman of the day. lentulus the prætor was confided to the keeping of a censor, cethegus to cornificius, statilius to cæsar, gabinius to crassus, and cæparius, who had not fled very far before he was taken, to one terentius. we can imagine how willingly would crassus and cæsar have let their men go, had they dared. but cicero was in the ascendant. cæsar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour had not yet come for putting an end to the effete republic, and to have perceived also that catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work, must bide his time, and for the moment obey. that he was inclined to favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could befriend them only in accordance with the law. the allobroges were rewarded. the prætors in the city who had assisted cicero were thanked. to cicero himself a supplication was decreed. a supplication was, in its origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come to be an honor shown to the general who had gained the victory. in this case it was simply a means of adding glory to cicero, and was peculiar, as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military service.[205] remembering that, we can understand what at the time must have been the feeling in rome as to the benefits conferred by the activity and patriotism of the consul. on the evening of the same day, the 3d of december, cicero again addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he had before explained in the senate. this was the third catiline speech, and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever spoke. he explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of catiline, while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.[206] had catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him here in the city; but with lentulus the sleepy, and cassius the fat, and cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. it was on this account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do no harm. then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did believe in their gods. it is one instance, one out of many which history and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not himself participated. does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his clergy to pray for fine weather, believe that the almighty will change the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? but he feels that when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with the powers of heaven. so much also cicero believed, and therefore spoke as he did on this occasion. as to his own religious views, i shall say something in a future chapter. then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of himself, he explains his own ambition: "for all which, my fellow-countrymen, i ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor, no monument but that this day may live in your memories. it is within your breasts that i would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory, the trophies of my exploits. no silent, voiceless statue, nothing which can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. only by your remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured--by your good words, by the records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened and perpetuated. i do think that this day, the memory of which, i trust, may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been preserved, and because my consulship has been glorious."[207] he ends the paragraph by an allusion to pompey, admitting pompey to a brotherhood of patriotism and praise. we shall see how pompey repaid him. how many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those words of pompey! in the next sentence he tells the people of his own danger. he has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care of his.[208] but they, these quirites, these roman citizens, these masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed, could take care of no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not of another. they could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. pompey was coming home, and would soon be the favorite. cicero must have felt that he had deserved much of pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt of gratitude would be paid. now we come to the fourth or last catiline oration, which was made to the senate, convened on the 5th of december with the purpose of deciding the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. we learn to what purport were three of the speeches made during this debate--those of cæsar and of cato and of cicero. the first two are given to us by sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact words. the cæsarean spirit which induced sallust to ignore altogether the words of cicero would have induced him to give his own representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--cicero's words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to the short-hand writers' notes by tiro, his slave and secretary. the three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe that we know the line of argument used by the three orators. silanus, one of the consuls elect, began the debate by counselling death. we may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by cicero to make this proposition. during the discussion he trembled at the consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision till they should have dealt with catiline. murena, the other consul elect, and catulus, the prince of the senate,[209] spoke for death. tiberius nero, grandfather of tiberius the emperor, made that proposition for adjournment to which silanus gave way. then--or i should rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may have spoken--cæsar got up and made his proposition. his purpose was to save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as that existing in the senate and the city, he could only do so not by absolving but by condemning. wicked as these men might be, abominably wicked it was, he said, for the senate to think of their own dignity rather than of the enormity of the crime. as they could not, he suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime, it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt with by the ordinary laws. it was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the idea that as senators they had no power of death. he did not dare to tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the danger skilfully before their eyes. "their crimes," he says again, "deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. but men generally recollect what comes last. when the punishment is severe, men will remember the severity rather than the crime." he argues all this extremely well. the speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words be the words of sallust or of cæsar. we may doubt, indeed, whether the general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the senators when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the lex porcia, by which the power of punishing a roman citizen, even under the laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. he ended by proposing that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate town. this would, i believe, have been quite as illegal as the death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. the senate, or the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their liberty, and compensated them for their property. cicero was determined that the men should die. they had not obeyed him by leaving the city, and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live also. he fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. he replied to cæsar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that death was necessary. for himself he had been told of his danger; "but if a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one who had reached the honors of the consulship it could not be premature; to no wise man could it be a misery." though his brother, though his wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "do you," he says, "conscript fathers, look to the safety of the republic. these are not the gracchi, nor saturninus, who are brought to you for judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death, but who still were not unpatriotic. these men had sworn to burn the city, to slay the senate, to force catiline upon you as a ruler. the proofs of this are in your own hands. it was for me, as your consul, to bring the facts before you. now it is for you, at once, before night, to decide what shall be done. the conspirators are very many; it is not only with these few that you are dealing. on whatever you decide, decide quickly. cæsar tells you of the sempronian law[210]--the law, namely, forbidding the death of a roman citizen--but can he be regarded as a citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" then there is a fling at cæsar's assumed clemency, showing us that cæsar had already endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed afterward so signally at alesia and uxellodunum. then again he speaks of himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with him: "let scipio's name be glorious--he by whose wisdom and valor hannibal was forced out of italy. let africanus be praised loudly, who destroyed carthage and numantia, the two cities which were most hostile to rome. let paulus be regarded as great--he whose triumph that great king perses adorned. let marius be held in undying honor, who twice saved italy from foreign yoke. let pompey be praised above all, whose noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. perhaps among them there may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the conquerors of provinces may return in safety." the last words of the orator also are fine: "therefore, conscript fathers, decide wisely and without fear. your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of italy and of the whole republic are at stake. it is for you to decide. in me you have a consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to prevail while the breath of life remains to him." cato then spoke advocating death, and the senate decreed that the men should die. cicero himself led lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made to follow. a few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked after the fate of the conspirators. he answered them but by one word "vixerunt"--there is said to have been a superstition with the romans as to all mention of death--"they have lived their lives." as to what was being done outside rome with the army of conspirators in etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer of cicero to say much. catiline fought, and died fighting. the conspiracy was then over. on the 31st of december cicero retired from his office, and catiline fell at the battle of pistoia on the 5th of january following, b.c. 62. a roman historian writing in the reign of tiberius has thought it worth his while to remind us that a great glory was added to cicero's consular year by the birth of augustus--him who afterward became augustus cæsar.[211] had a roman been living now, he might be excused for saying that it was an honor to augustus to have been born in the year of cicero's consulship. chapter x. _cicero after his consulship._ the idea that the great consul had done illegally in putting citizens to death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. it must be remembered that a decree of the senate had no power as a law. the laws could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. such was the constitution of the republic. further on, when cicero will appeal as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed, i shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the consulship. the reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many enemies. it had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be endured. when a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. it was customary for a consul when he vacated his office to make some valedictory speech. cicero was probably expected to take full advantage of the opportunity. from other words which have come from him, on other occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose such a speech as he might have spoken. but there were those who were already sick of hearing him say that rome had been saved by his intelligence and courage. we can imagine what cæsar might have said among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory consul. as it was, metellus nepos, one of the tribunes, forbade the retiring officer to do more than take the oath usual on leaving office, because he had illegally inflicted death upon roman citizens. metellus, as tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. we hear from cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. he swore, on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the form common to consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during his consulship rome had been saved by his work alone.[212] we have the story only as it is told by cicero himself, who avers that the people accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[213] that it was so we may, i think, take as true. there can be no doubt as to cicero's popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that metellus was acting in agreement with cæsar, and also in accord with the understood feelings of pompey, who was absent with his army in the east. this tribune had been till lately an officer under pompey, and went into office together with cæsar, who in that year became prætor. this, probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward formed the first triumvirate, b.c. 60. it was certainly now, in the year succeeding the consulship of cicero, that cæsar, as prætor, began his great career. [sidenote: b.c. 62, ætat. 45.] it becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old forms of the republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to exercise power in rome or within the roman empire must obtain it and keep it by illegal means. he had probably adhered to catiline's first conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. it is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. when the conspiracy had been crushed by cicero, he had given his full assent to the crushing of it. we have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. but, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. not that cicero was to him the same as cato, who with his stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless. cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist. it is in this light that cæsar seems to have regarded cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to indulge. mr. forsyth expresses an opinion that cæsar, till he crossed the rubicon after his ten years' fighting in gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the constitution. probably not; nor even then. it may be doubted whether cæsar ever spoke to himself of overthrowing the constitution. he came gradually to see that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by violent action. he had before him the examples of marius and sulla, both of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. there was the example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times, had been banished as was verres, or killed as was catiline. we can easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. both were exercised when he consented to be absent from rome, and almost from italy, during the ten years of the gallic wars. but this, i think, is certain, that from the time in which his name appears prominent--from the period, namely, of the catiline conspiracy--he had determined not to overthrow the constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the day, as not to be overthrown himself. of what nature was the intercourse between him and pompey when pompey was still absent in the east we do not know; but we can hardly doubt that some understanding had begun to exist. of this cicero was probably aware. pompey was the man whom cicero chose to regard as his party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his party. it had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the state, before he took up with politics. that this was so i have shown by quoting the opening words of his speech pro lege manilia. proud as he was of the doings of his consulship, he was still too new to his work to think that thus he could claim to stand first. nor did his ambition lead him in that direction. he desired personal praise rather than personal power. when in the last catiline oration to the people he speaks of the great men of the republic--of the two scipios, and of paulus æmilius and of marius--he adds the name of pompey to these names; or gives, rather, to pompey greater glory than to any of them; "anteponatur omnibus pompeius." this was but a few days before metellus as tribune had stopped him in his speech--at the instigation, probably, of cæsar, and in furtherance of pompey's views. pompey and cæsar could agree, at any rate, in this--that they did not want such a one as cicero to interfere with them. all of which cicero himself perceived. the specially rich province of macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on quitting the consulship, he made over to antony--no doubt as a bribe, as with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep that other from kicking over the traces. then gaul became his province, as allotted--cisalpine gaul, as northern italy was then called; a province less rich in plunder and pay than macedonia. but cicero wanted no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to metellus celer, the brother of nepos, who, having been prætor when he himself was consul, was entitled to a government. this too was a political bribe. if courtesy to cæsar, if provinces given up here and there to antonys and metelluses, if flattery lavished on pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids. it all availed nothing. from this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. the source of this was that pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all other romans. the first extant letter written by cicero after his consulship was addressed to pompey.[214] pompey was still in the east, but had completed his campaigns against mithridates successfully. cicero begins by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his letter. then he tells the victorious general that there were some in rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. it is supposed that he alluded here to cæsar; but, if so, he probably misunderstood the alliance which was already being formed between cæsar and pompey. after that comes the real object of the epistle. he had received letters from pompey congratulating him in very cold language as to the glories of his consulship. he had expected much more than that from the friend for whom he had done so much. still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had behaved well to his friend. if his friend were less friendly to him in return, then would the balance of friendship be on his side. if pompey were not bound to him, cicero, by personal gratitude, still would he be bound by necessary co-operation in the service of the republic. but, lest pompey should misunderstand him, he declares that he had expected warmer language in reference to his consulship, which he believes to have been withheld by pompey lest offence should be given to some third person. by this he means cæsar, and those who were now joining themselves to cæsar. then he goes on to warn him as to the future: "nevertheless, when you return, you will find that my actions have been of such a nature that, even though you may loom larger than scipio, i shall be found worthy to be accepted as your lælius."[215] infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and sharp had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. it was only by asserting that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own fidelity as a friend, that cicero could express his dissatisfaction at pompey's coldness. it was only by continuing to lavish upon pompey such flattery as was contained in the reference to scipio, in which a touch of subtle irony is mixed with the flattery, that he could explain the nature of the praise which had, he thought, been due to himself. there is something that would have been abject in the nature of these expressions, had it not been roman in the excess of the adulation. but there is courage in the letter, too, when he tells his correspondent what he believes to have been the cause of the coldness of which he complains: "quod verere ne cujus animum offenderes"--"because you fear lest you should give offence to some one." but let me tell you, he goes on to say, that my consulship has been of such a nature that you, scipio, as you are, must admit me as your friend. in these words we find a key to the whole of cicero's connection with the man whom he recognizes as his political leader. he was always dissatisfied with pompey; always accusing pompey in his heart of ingratitude and insincerity; frequently speaking to atticus with bitter truth of the man's selfishness and incapacity, even of his cruelty and want of patriotism; nicknaming him because of his absurdities; declaring of him that he was minded to be a second sulla; but still clinging to him as the political friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. in their earlier years, when he could have known personally but little of pompey, because pompey was generally absent from rome, he had taken it into his head to love the man. he had been called "magnus;" he had been made consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on behalf of the republic, and so far patriotic. he had hitherto adhered to the fame of the republic. at any rate, cicero had accepted him, and could never afterward bring himself to be disloyal to the leader with whom he had professed to act. but the feeling evinced in this letter was carried on to the end. he had been, he was, he would be, true to his political connection with pompey; but of pompey's personal character to himself he had nothing but complaints to make. [sidenote: b.c. 62, ætat. 45.] we have two other letters written by cicero in this year, the first of which is in answer to one from metellus celer to him, also extant. metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he thought he had received from cicero in the senate, and from the senate generally. cicero writes back at much greater length to defend himself, and to prove that he had behaved as a most obliging friend to his correspondent, though he had received a gross affront from his correspondent's brother nepos. nepos had prevented him in that matter of the speech. it is hardly necessary to go into the question of this quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in rome. there was a counterplot going on at the moment--a plot on the behalf of the aristocracy for bringing back pompey to rome, not only with glory but with power, probably originating in a feeling that pompey would be a more congenial master than cicero. it was suggested that as pompey had been found good in all state emergencies--for putting down the pirates, for instance, and for conquering mithridates--he would be the man to contend in arms with catiline. catiline was killed before the matter could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on the jealousy which was felt in regard to cicero. this man, who had declared so often that he had served his country, and who really had crushed the catilinarians by his industry and readiness, might, after all, be coming forward as another sulla, and looking to make himself master by dint of his virtues and his eloquence. the hopelessness of the condition of the republic may be recognized in the increasing conspiracies which were hatched on every side. metellus nepos was sent home from asia in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made tribune, and stopped cicero's speech. in conjunction with cæsar, who was prætor, he proposed his new law for the calling of pompey to their aid. then there was a fracas between him and cæsar on the one side and cato on the other, in which cato at last was so far victorious that both cæsar and metellus were stopped in the performance of their official duties. cæsar was soon reinstated, but metellus nepos returned to pompey in the east, and nothing came of the conspiracy. it is only noticed here as evidence of the feeling which existed as to cicero in rome, and as explaining the irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between cicero and metellus celer, the brother of nepos,[216] whom cicero had procured the government of gaul. the third letter from cicero in this year was to sextius, who was then acting as quæstor--or proquæstor, as cicero calls him--with antony as proconsul in macedonia. it is specially interesting as telling us that the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in rome from crassus for a sum amounting to about £30,000 of our money. there was probably no private mansion in rome of greater pretension. it had been owned by livius drusus, the tribune--a man of colossal fortune, as we are told by mommsen--who was murdered at the door of it thirty years before. it afterward passed into the hands of crassus the rich, and now became the property of cicero. we shall hear how it was destroyed during his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how restored to cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. the history of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of cicero's two successors in it, censorinus and statilius.[217] it is interesting to know the sort of house which cicero felt to be suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his circumstances were. in making this purchase he is supposed to have abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. hence we may argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly circumstances. nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter to sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion--so much so that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any conspiracy. hence has come to us a story through aulus gellius, the compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that cicero was fain to borrow this money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor so conferred. aulus gellius collected his stories two centuries afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting. there is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any contemporary. in this letter to sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount he wanted at six per cent--twelve being the ordinary rate--and gives as a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to the state. very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed, but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in the midst of such wealth as prevailed at rome, had practised so widely and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must surely have taken money for his services. he himself has asserted that he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he spoke the truth. had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have heard of it from nearer witnesses than aulus gellius, if, as aulus gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. but because he tells his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! it will be found that all the stones most injurious to cicero's reputation have been produced in the same manner. his own words have been misinterpreted--either the purport of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke--and then accusations have been founded on them.[218] another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made against cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the accusations so made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling that cicero cannot surely have been altogether clean when all others were so dirty, are too numerous to receive from each reader's judgment that indignant denial to which each is entitled. the biographer cannot but fear that when so much mud has been thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to tell of the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth deserved. it seems that antony, cicero's colleague in the consulship, who became proconsul in macedonia, had undertaken to pay some money to cicero. why the money was to be paid we do not know, but there are allusions in cicero's letters to atticus to one teucris (a trojan woman), and it seems that antony was designated by the nickname. teucris is very slow at paying his money, and cicero is in want of it. but perhaps it will be as well not to push the matter. he, antony, is to be tried for provincial peculation, and cicero declares that the case is so bad that he cannot defend his late colleague. hence have arisen two different suspicions: one that antony had agreed to make over to cicero a share of the macedonian plunder in requital of cicero's courtesy in giving up the province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that antony was to pay cicero for defending him. as to the former, cicero himself alludes to such a report as being common in macedonia, and as having been used by antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. but this has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the ground because of the second accusation. but in support of that there is no word of evidence,[219] whereas the tenor of the story as told by cicero himself is against it. is it likely, would it be possible, that cicero should have begun his letter to atticus by complaining that he could not get from antony money wanted for a peculiar purpose--it was wanted for his new house--and have gone on in the same letter to say that this might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform the service for which the money was to be paid? the reader will remember that the accusation is based solely on cicero's own statement that antony was negligent in paying to him money that had been promised. in all these accusations the evidence against cicero, such as it is, is brought exclusively from cicero's own words. cicero did afterward defend this antony, as we learn from his speech pro domo suâ; but his change of purpose in that respect has nothing to do with the argument. [sidenote: b.c. 62, ætat. 45.] we have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of p. sulla, nephew to the dictator; the other for archias the greek scholar and poet, who had been cicero's tutor and now claimed to be a citizen of rome. i have already given an extract from this letter, as showing the charm of words with which cicero could recommend the pursuit of literature to his hearers. the whole oration is a beautiful morsel of latinity, in which, however, strength of argument is lacking. cicero declares of archias that he was so eminent in literature that, if not a roman citizen, he ought to be made one. the result is not known, but the literary world believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.[220] the speech on behalf of sulla was more important, but still not of much importance. this sulla, as may be remembered, had been chosen as consul with autronius, two years before the consulship of cicero, and he had then after his election been deposed for bribery, as had also autronius. l. aurelius cotta and l. manlius torquatus had been elected in their places. it has also been already explained that the two rejected consuls had on this account joined catiline in his first conspiracy. there can be no doubt that whether as consuls or as rejected consuls, and on that account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as aristocrats for robbing the state. they were of the number of those to whom no other purpose was any longer possible. then there came catiline's second conspiracy--the conspiracy which cicero had crushed--and there naturally rose the question whether from time to time this or the other noble roman should not be accused of having joined it. many noble romans had no doubt joined besides those who had fallen fighting, or who had been executed in the dungeons. accusations became very rife. one vettius accused cæsar, the prætor; but cæsar, with that potentiality which was peculiar to him, caused vettius to be put into prison instead of going to prison himself. many were convicted and banished; among them porcius læca, vargunteius, servius sulla, the brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and autronius his colleague. in the trial of these men cicero took no part. he was specially invited by autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to defend him, but he refused; indeed, he gave evidence against autronius at the trial. but this publius sulla he did defend, and defended successfully. he was joined in the case with hortensius, and declared that as to the matter of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was concerned with political matters of that date.[221] he, cicero, had known nothing about them. the part of the oration which most interests us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat unwisely made against himself personally by young torquatus, the son of him who had been raised to the consulship in the place of p. sulla. torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and had come from the municipality of arpinum, and had taunted him with being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in regard to lentulus and the other conspirators. he answers this very finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young torquatus, whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "do not," he says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely in the senate, to think more of services due to the people than of favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many. if this be king-like, then i confess that i am a king." sulla was acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he had been part and parcel with catiline in the conspiracy. it is trusted that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity and eloquence. at the end of this year, b.c. 62, there occurred a fracas in rome which was of itself but of little consequence to rome, and would have been of none to cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest trouble. this was the affair of clodius and of the mysteries of the bona dea, and i should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it would have been made to spring from some other source had that source not sufficed. i shall have to tell how it came to pass that cicero was sent into exile by means of the misconduct of clodius; but i shall have to show also that the misconduct of clodius was but the tool which was used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of cicero. this clodius, a young man of noble family and of debauched manners, as was usual with young men of noble families, dressed himself up as a woman, and made his way in among the ladies as they were performing certain religious rites in honor of the bona dea, or goddess cybele, a matron goddess so chaste in her manners that no male was admitted into her presence. it was specially understood that nothing appertaining to a man was to be seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it may possibly have been the case that clodius effected his entrance among the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his doing so was an outrage, and therefore exciting. another reason was alleged. the rites in question were annually held, now in the house of this matron and then of that, and during the occasion the very master of the house was excluded from his own premises. they were now being performed under the auspices of pompeia, the wife of julius cæsar, the daughter of one quintus pompeius, and it was alleged that clodius came among the women worshippers for the sake of carrying on an intrigue with cæsar's wife. this was highly improbable, as mr. forsyth has pointed out to us, and the idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to cæsar for divorcing a wife of whom he was weary. at any rate, when the scandal got abroad, he did divorce pompeia, alleging that it did not suit cæsar to have his wife suspected. [sidenote: b.c. 61, ætat. 46.] the story became known through the city, and early in january cicero wrote to atticus, telling him the facts: "you have probably heard that publius clodius, the son of appius, has been taken dressed in a woman's clothes in the house of caius cæsar, where sacrifice was being made for the people, and that he escaped by the aid of a female slave. you will be sorry to hear that it has given rise to a great scandal."[222] a few days afterward cicero speaks of it again to atticus at greater length, and we learn that the matter had been taken up by the magistrates with the view of punishing clodius. cicero writes without any strong feeling of his own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.[223] then there is a third letter in which cicero is indignant because certain men of whom he disapproves, the consul piso among the number[224] are anxious to save this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him; whereas others of whom he approves cato among the number, are desirous of seeing justice done. but it was no affair special to cicero. shortly afterward he writes again to atticus as to the result of the trial--for a trial did take place--and explains to his friend how justice had failed. atticus had asked him how it had come to pass that he, cicero, had not exerted himself as he usually did.[225] this letter, though there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed no importance to it as regarded himself. he had exerted himself till hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges. after that he had himself given evidence. an attempt was made to prove an alibi, but cicero came forward to swear that he had seen clodius on the very day in question. there had, too, been an exchange of repartee in the senate between himself and clodius after the acquittal, of which he gives the details to his correspondent with considerable self-satisfaction. the passage does not enhance our idea of the dignity of the senate, or of the power of roman raillery. it was known that clodius had been saved by the wholesale bribery of a large number of the judges. there had been twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for acquittal.[226] cicero in the catiline affair had used a phrase with frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and "found out" that--"comperisse omnia." clodius, in the discussion before the trial, throws this in his teeth: "comperisse omnia criminabatur." this gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt cicero much worse than the dishonor done to the bona dea. as for that, we may say that he and the senate and the judges cared personally very little, although there was no doubt a feeling that it was wise to awe men's minds by the preservation of religious respect. cicero had cared but little about the trial; but as he had been able to give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and enmity sprung from the words which were spoken both on one side and on the other. clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and concerns rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial that cicero had been very bitter, and that clodius had become his enemy. when a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in persecuting cicero, clodius was ready for the occasion. while the expediency of putting clodius on his trial was being discussed, pompey had returned from the east, and taken up his residence outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. the general, to whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the war with all his warlike spoils around him. the usage had obtained the strength of law, but the general was not on that account debarred from city employment during the interval. the city must be taken out to him instead of his coming into the city. pompey was so great on his return from his mithridatic victories that the senate went out to sit with him in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. we find him taking part in these clodian discussions. cicero at once writes of him to athens with evident dissatisfaction. when questioned about clodius, pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. crassus on this occasion, between whom and cicero there was never much friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great consul on account of his catiline successes. pompey, we are told, did not bear this well.[227] crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect. then cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of crassus, very glibly, no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before pompey, his new listener.[228] more than six years had passed since pompey could have heard him, and then cicero's voice had not become potential in the senate. cicero had praised pompey with all the eloquence in his power. "anteponatur omnibus pompeius," he had said, in the last catiline oration to the senate; and pompey, though he had not heard the words spoken, knew very well what had been said. such oratory was never lost upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it. but in return for all this praise, for that manilian oration which had helped to send him to the east, for continual loyalty, pompey had replied to cicero with coldness. he would now let pompey know what was his standing in rome. "if ever," he says to atticus, "i was strong with my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and with logic, i was so now. oh, the noise that i made on the occasion! you know what my voice can do. i need say no more about it, as surely you must have heard me away there in epirus." the reader, i trust, will have already a sufficiently vivid idea of cicero's character to understand the mingling of triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment, which is here expressed. "this pompey, though i have so true to him, has not thought much of me--of me, the great consul who saved rome! he has now heard what even crassus has been forced to say about me. he shall hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will then know better." it was thus that cicero's mind was at work while he was turning his loud periods. pompey was sitting next to him listening, by no means admiring his admirer as that admirer expected to be admired. cicero had probably said to himself that they two together, pompey and cicero, might suffice to preserve the republic. pompey, not thinking much of the republic, was probably telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. when of two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second will generally feel himself to be superior to the first. pompey would have liked cicero better if his periods had not been so round nor his voice so powerful. not that pompey was distinctly desirous of any throne. his position at the moment was peculiar. he had brought back his victorious army from the east to brundisium, and had then disbanded his legions. i will quote here the opening words from one of mommsen's chapters:[229] "when pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes toward home, he found, for the second time, the diadem at his feet." he says farther on, explaining why pompey did not lift the diadem: "the very peculiar temperament of pompeius naturally turned once more the scale. he was one of those men who are capable, it may be, of a crime, but not of insubordination." and again: "while in the capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch, news came that pompeius, when barely landed at brundisium, had broken up his legions, and with a small escort had entered his journey to the capital. if it is a piece of good-fortune to gain a crown without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in vain." i must say here that, while i acknowledge the german historian's research and knowledge without any reserve, i cannot accept his deductions as to character. i do not believe that pompey found any diadem at his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my reading of roman history, had marius or had sulla; nor did cæsar. the first who thought of that perpetual rule--a rule to be perpetuated during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his successors--was augustus. marius, violent, self-seeking, and uncontrollable, had tumbled into supreme power; and, had he not died, would have held it as long as he could, because it pleased his ambition for the moment. sulla, with a purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old roman idea of a temporary dictatorship. the old roman horror of a king was present to these romans, even after they had become kings. pompey, no doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the east thought that by his deeds he was first, easily first. whether consul year after year, as marius had been, or dictator, as sulla had been, or imperator, with a running command over all the romans, it was his idea still to adhere to the forms of the republic. mommsen, foreseeing--if an historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in the past--that a master was to come for the roman empire, and giving all his sympathies to the cæsarean idea, despises pompey because pompey would not pick up the diadem. no such idea ever entered pompey's head. after a while he "sullaturized"--was desirous of copying sulla--to use an excellent word which cicero coined. when he was successfully opposed by those whom he had thought inferior to himself, when he found that cæsar had got the better of him, and that a stronger body of romans went with cæsar than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and the seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry mind, but of permanent despotic power there was, i think, no thought, nor, as far as i can read the records, had such an idea been fixed in cæsar's bosom. to carry on the old trade of prætor, consul, proconsul, and imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in the scramble, was, i think, cæsar's purpose. the rest grew upon him. as shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre, composed some lear or tempest--that has lived and will live forever, because of the genius which was unknown to himself--so did cæsar, by his genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. a much longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a fact from their practice. this should be proved to us by our own loyalty to the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a monarchy than our own commonwealth. from those first breaches in republican practice which the historian florus dates back to the siege of numantia,[230] b.c. 133, down far into the reign of augustus, it took a century and a quarter to make the people understand that there was no longer a republican form of government, and to produce a leader who could himself see that there was room for a despot. pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had annoyed cicero had offended others. he was shorn of his honors. only two days were allowed for his processions. he was irritated, jealous, and no doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem. cæsar saw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since called the first triumvirate. [sidenote: b.c. 62, 61, ætat. 45, 46.] the two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites. two discourses were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now lost--that, namely, to the people against metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had intended to say when metellus stopped him from speaking at the expiration of his consulship; the second, against clodius and curio, in the senate, in reference to the discreditable clodian affair. the fragments which we have of this contain those asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to atticus, and are not either instructive or amusing. but we learn from these fragments that clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he afterward carried out, to the great detriment of cicero's happiness. of the speeches extant on behalf of archias and p. sulla i have spoken already. we know of no others made during this period. we have one letter besides this to atticus, addressed to antony, his former colleague, which, like many of his letters, was written solely for the sake of popularity. during these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the great men of the greatest city in the world. he had his magnificent new mansion in rome, and his various villas, which were already becoming noted for their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. not only had he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in taking his brother quintus up with him. in the second of the two years, b.c. 61, quintus had been sent out as governor or proprætor to asia, having then nothing higher to reach than the consulship, which, however, he never attained. this step in the life of quintus has become famous by a letter which the elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter. so far all things seemed to have gone well with cicero. he was high in esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. but the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping him. he had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their malice. chapter xi. _the triumvirate._ [sidenote: b.c. 60, ætat. 47.] i know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal, as the first triumvirate. every school-boy, almost every school-girl, knows that there was a first triumvirate, and that it was a political combination made by three great romans of the day, julius cæsar, pompey the great, and crassus the rich, for managing rome among them. beyond this they know little, because there is little to know. that it was a conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as that of catiline, or guy faux, or napoleon iii., they do not know generally, because cæsar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent and heroic. but of the method in which this triumvirate was constructed, who has an idea? how was it first suggested, where, and by whom? what was it that the conspirators combined to do? there was no purpose of wholesale murder like that of catiline for destroying the senate, and of guy faux for blowing up the house of lords. there was no plot arranged for silencing a body of legislators like that of napoleon. in these scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for provinces and plunder, let us help each other. if we can manage to stick fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder. that, said with a wink by one of the triumvirate--cæsar, let us say--and assented to with a nod by pompey and crassus, was sufficient for the construction of such a conspiracy as that which i presume to have been hatched when the first triumvirate was formed.[231] mommsen, who never speaks of a triumvirate under that name, except in his index,[232] where he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the first triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having been made in (b.c. 71) the year before the consulship of pompey and crassus. with that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with the life of cicero rather than with roman history, except to say that cæsar, who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had no personal hand in that of 71. though he had spent his early years in "harassing the aristocracy," as dean merivale tells us, he had not been of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with pompey and crassus. when this first triumvirate was formed, as the modern world generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and the great military leaders, as mommsen with greater, but not with perfect, accuracy describes it, cæsar no doubt had at his fingers' ends the history of past years. "the idea naturally occurred," says mommsen, "whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats, with their ally, crassus, on the one side, and pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. for pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."[233] the democracy here means cæsar. cæsar during his whole life had been learning that no good could come to any one from an effete senate, or from republican forms which had lost all their salt. democracy was in vogue with him; not, as i think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal lord--the study of politics had never then reached to that height--but because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three, should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be more worthy than others. he had no conscience in the matter. money was to him nothing. another man's money was the same as his own--or better, if he could get hold of it. that doctrine taught by cicero that men are "ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. blood was to him nothing. a friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead. blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. pleasure was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible. to pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. but nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. of courage he had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then act as though there were none. nothing was wrong to him but what was injudicious. he could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would think it folly not to do so if to do so were expedient.[234] in this coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people. therefore mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." crassus is called the ally of the democrats. it will be enough for us here to know that crassus had achieved his position in the senate by his enormous wealth, and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to cæsar, that he was admitted into the league. by means of his wealth he had risen to power and had conquered and killed spartacus, of the honor and glory of which pompey robbed him. then he had been made consul. when cæsar had gone as proprætor to spain, crassus had found the money. now cæsar had come back, and was hand and glove with crassus. when the division of the spoil came, some years afterward--the spoil won by the triumvirate--when cæsar had half perfected his grand achievements in gaul, and crassus had as yet been only a second time consul, he got himself to be sent into syria, that by conquering the parthians he might make himself equal to cæsar. we know how he and his son perished there, each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a roman--that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy--by destroying himself. than the life of crassus nothing could be more contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "for pompeius," says mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." as events turned out it became so, because cæsar was the stronger man of the two; but it is intelligible that at that time pompey should have felt that he could not lord it over the senate, as he wished to do, without aid from the democratic party. he had no well-defined views, but he wished to be the first man in rome. he regarded himself as still greatly superior to cæsar, who as yet had been no more than prætor, and at this time was being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same moment be in the city, as candidate for the consulship, and out of the city waiting for his triumph. pompey had triumphed three times, had been consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious east and west, and was called "magnus." he did not as yet fear to be overshadowed by cæsar.[235] cicero was his bugbear. mommsen i believe to be right in eschewing the word "triumvirate." i know no mention of it by any roman writer as applied to this conspiracy, though tacitus, suetonius, and florus call by that name the later coalition of octavius, antony, and lepidus. the langhornes, in translating plutarch's life of crassus, speak of the triumvirate; but plutarch himself says that cæsar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the three men.[236] paterculus and suetonius[237] explain very clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term. there was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been used has been so far appropriate. [sidenote: b.c. 60, ætat. 47.] cicero was the bugbear to them all. that he might have been one of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of the time can doubt. had he so chosen he might again have been a "real power in the state;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the republic. i do not wish it to be supposed that cicero received the overtures made to him with horror. conspiracies were too common for horror; and these conspirators were all our cicero's friends in one sense, though in another they might be his opponents. we may imagine that at first crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that pompey would fain have stood aloof in his jealousy. but cæsar knew that it was well to have cicero, if cicero was to be had. it was not only his eloquence which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no roman living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which his character had been founded. how valuable may character be made, if it can be employed under such conditions! to be believed because of your truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat; to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! the temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their naked ugliness. they certainly were not so presented to cicero by cæsar and his associates. the bait was held out to him, as it is daily to others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and powerful almost to persuade. give us the advantage of your character, and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. though our line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into it you will see that it is expedient. what other course is there? how else shall any wreck of the republic be preserved? would you be another cato, useless and impractical? join us, and save rome to some purpose. we can understand that in such way was the lure held out to cicero, as it has been to many a politician since. but when the politician takes the office offered to him--and the pay, though it be but that of a lord of the treasury--he must vote with his party. that cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time throw in his lot with cæsar and pompey is certain. to be of real use--not to be impractical, as was cato--to save his country and rise honestly in power and glory--not to be too straitlaced, not over-scrupulous--giving and taking a little, so that he might work to good purpose with others in harness--that was his idea of duty as a roman. to serve in accord with pompey was the first dream of his political life, and now pompey was in accord with cæsar. it was natural that he should doubt--natural that he should express his doubts. who should receive them but atticus, that "alter ego?" cicero doubted whether he should cling to pompey--as he did in every phase of his political life, till pompey had perished at the mouth of the nile. but at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as i think he always did. he tells his friend that cæsar had sent his confidential messenger, balbus, to sound him. the present question is whether he shall resist a certain agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by both pompey and cæsar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at his country villas, or boldly stay at rome and oppose the law. cæsar assures him that if he will come over to them, cæsar will be always true to him and pompey, and will do his best to bring crassus into the same frame of mind. then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue to him: "closest friendship with pompey--with cæsar also, should he wish it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. but that conclusion moves me to which i came in my third book."[238] then he repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own consulship. the lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "should i doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of calliope, given to this third book of his. then he adds a line of homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "no augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "but," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays. your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." and so the doubts are settled. now came on the question of the tribuneship of clodius, in reference to which i will quote a passage out of middleton, because the phrase which he uses exactly explains the purposes of cæsar and pompey. [sidenote: b.c. 60, ætat. 47.] "clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself on cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose. his project was to get himself chosen tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people. but as all patricians were incapable of the tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a plebeian by the pretence of an adoption into a plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people. this case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms--wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions--so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than clodius. cæsar was at the bottom of it, and pompey secretly favored it--not that they intended to ruin cicero, but to keep him only under the lash--and if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet, and let clodius loose upon him."[240] this, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in rome at this conjunction of affairs. it had been found impossible to draw cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. if he would live quietly at his antian or tusculan villa, amid his books and writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne with, even though he talked so much of his own consulate. but if he would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into the net, then he must be dealt with. cæsar seems to have respected cicero always, and even to have liked him; but he was not minded to put up with a "friend" in rome who from day to day abused all his projects. in defending antony, the macedonian proconsul who was condemned, cicero made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. cæsar, we are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused clodius to be accepted as a plebeian. in all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of mommsen's verdict on rome, which i have already quoted more than once: "on the roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." how had it come to pass that cæsar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether for good or for evil? cicero's description of what took place is as follows:[241] "about the sixth hour of the day, when i was defending my colleague antony in court, i took occasion to complain of certain things which were being done in the republic, and which i thought to be injurious to my poor client. some dishonest persons carried my words to men in power"--meaning cæsar and pompey--"not, indeed, my own words, but words very different from mine. at the ninth hour on that very same day, you, clodius, were accepted as a plebeian." cæsar, having been given to understand that cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was determined not to put up with it. suetonius tells the same story with admirable simplicity. of suetonius it must be said that, if he had no sympathy for a patriot such as cicero, neither had he any desire to represent in rosy colors the despotism of a cæsar. he tells his stories simply as he has heard them. "cicero," says suetonius,[242] "having at some trial complained of the state of the times, cæsar, on the very same day, at the ninth hour, passed clodius over from the patrician to the plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." how did it come to pass that cæsar, who, though consul at the time, had no recognized power of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? because the republic had come to the condition which the german historian has described. the conspiracy between cæsar and his subordinates had not been made for nothing. the reader will require to know why clodius should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have been fatal to cicero. the story has been partly told in the passage from middleton. a patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not be a tribune of the people. from the commencement of the tribunate, that office had been reserved for the plebeians. but a tribune had a power of introducing laws which exceeded that of any senator or any other official. "they had acquired the right," we are told in smith's dictionary of greek and roman antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia tributa, or to the senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the state;" and as matters stood at this time, no one tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. when such proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their votes whether it should or should not be law. the present object was to have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to cicero, which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. this could be best done by a tribune of the people. no other adequate tribune could be found--no plebeian so incensed against cicero as to be willing to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected. therefore it was that clodius was so anxious to be degraded. no patrician could become a tribune of the people; but a patrician might be adopted by a plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of his father--would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a son. for doing this in any case a law had to be passed--or, in other words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. but many conditions were necessary. the father intending to adopt must have no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a fitting age to personate a son--at any rate, must be younger than the father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly intended. all these conditions were broken. the pretended father, fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than clodius. the great claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the tribunate by a fraud. it was required by the general law that the sacred college should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. yet clodius was adopted, made a plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as tribune. in reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. if cæsar, who was already becoming a tyrant in his consulship, chose to make use of this means of silencing cicero, why not force clodius into the tribunate without so false and degrading a ceremony? but if, as was no doubt the case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? it requires no conjurer to tell us the reason. the outside hulls and husks remain when the rich fruit has gone. it was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of cicero's life consisted. there could have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the republic, when rome had been governed as it was during the consulship of cæsar; but cicero could still hope, though faintly, and still buoy himself up with remembrances of his own year of office. in carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as tribune, i have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which clodius entertained for cicero. this originated in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the bona dea, and led to the means for achieving cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. in the year 60 b.c., when metellus celer and afranius were consuls, clodius was tried for insulting the bona dea, and the since so-called triumvirate was instituted. it has already been shown that cicero, not without many doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the forces that were so united. he seems to have passed the greater portion of this year in rome. one letter only was written from the country, to atticus, from his tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. he spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as to which, though he dreaded the coming together of cæsar and pompey and crassus--those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so detrimental to all who were concerned in them--he foresaw as yet but little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. he was by no means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote, and do not regret what we have lost. he composed a memoir of his consulate in greek, which he sent to atticus with an allusion to his own use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in that matter. atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in greek, on the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the road. he candidly tells atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas posidonius, the great greek critic of rhodes who had been invited by him, cicero, to read the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his correspondent's performance.[244] he also wrote three books of a poem on his consulate, and sent them to atticus; of which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[243] and four or five other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by quintilian, "o fortunatum natam me consule romam"--unless, indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the orator's, m. guéroult. previous to these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the prognostics of aratus. this is the second part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the phænomena, having been turned into latin verse by him when he was eighteen. of the prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by priscian, and a passage repeated by the author, also in his de divinatione. i think that cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring. [sidenote: b.c. 60, ætat. 47.] among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. this is a long letter, full of advice, to his brother quintus, who had gone out in the previous year to govern the province of asia as proprætor. we may say that good advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could not have been given. it has been suggested that it was written as a companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which quintus composed for his brother's service when standing for his consulship. but i cannot admit the analogy. the composition attributed to quintus contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the state. this letter is adapted not only to the special position of quintus, but to the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that while the one brother praises the other, justly praises him, as i believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable, it points out faults--faults which will become fatal, if not amended--in language which is not only strong but unanswerable. the style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of cicero's letters generally--so as to suggest to the reader that it must have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the correspondent. hence has come the comparison between this and the treatise de petitione consulatus. i think that the gravity of the occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of style. cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own staff and to other romans around him; for quintus cicero, though he had been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious by the ordinary roman propensity to plunder his province "what is it that is required of you as a governor?"[245] asks cicero. "that men should not be frightened by your journeys hither and thither--that they should not be eaten up by your extravagance--that they should not be disturbed by your coming among them--that there should be joy at your approach; when each city should think that its guardian angel, not a cruel master, had come upon it--when each house should feel that it entertained not a robber but a friend. practice has made you perfect in this. but it is not enough that you should exercise those good offices yourself, but that you should take care that every one of those who come with you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province, for the citizen of rome, and for the republic." i wish that i could give the letter entire--both in english, that all readers might know how grand are the precepts taught, and in latin, that they who understand the language might appreciate the beauty of the words--but i do not dare to fill my pages at such length. a little farther on he gives his idea of the duty of all those who have power over others--even over the dumb animals.[246] "to me it seems that the duty of those in authority over others consists in making those who are under them as happy as the nature of things will allow. every one knows that you have acted on this principle since you first went to asia." this, i fear, must be taken as flattery, intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "this is not only his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle, that he should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the position of master!" let the reader look into this, and ask himself what precepts of christianity have ever surpassed it. then he points out that which he describes as the one great difficulty in the career of a roman provincial governor.[247] the collectors of taxes, or "publicani," were of the equestrian order. this business of farming the taxes had been their rich privilege for at any rate more than a century, and as cicero says, farther on in his letter, it was impossible not to know with what hardship the greek allies would be treated by them when so many stories were current of their cruelty even in italy. were quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he would make them hostile not only to the republic but to himself also, and also to his brother marcus; for they were of the equestrian order, and specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. he implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the greeks to be submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. after all, where would the greeks of asia be if they had no roman master to afford them protection? he leaves the matter in the hands of his brother, with advice that he should do the best he can on one side and on the other. if possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be restrained; but let the ally be taught to understand that there may be usage in the world worse even than roman taxation. it would be hardly worth our while to allude to this part of cicero's advice, did it not give an insight into the mode in which rome taxed her subject people. after this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake of which we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "there is one thing," he says, "which i will never cease to din into your ears, because i could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting. all who come to us here"--all who come to rome from asia, that is--"when they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that you fail in temper. it is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have risen to the dignity of command." he will not, he goes on to say, trouble his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on the subject of anger; he is sure that quintus is well acquainted with all that. but is it not a pity, when all men say that nothing could be pleasanter than quintus cicero when in a good-humor, the same quintus should allow himself to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners should be regretted by all around him? "i cannot assert," he goes on to say, "that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change all that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have grown within him; yet i must tell you that if you cannot eschew this evil altogether--if you cannot protect yourself against the feeling of anger, yet you should prepare yourself to be ready for it when it comes, so that, when your very soul within you is hot with it, your tongue, at any rate, may be restrained." then toward the end of the letter there is a fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "since chance has thrown into my way the duties of official life in rome, and into yours that of administrating provincial government, if i, in the performance of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may be equally efficient." how grand, from an elder brother to a younger! "and remember this, that you and i have not to strive after some excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that which has been already won. if i should find myself in anything divided from you, i should desire no further advance in life. unless your deeds and your words go on all-fours with mine, i should feel that i had achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and i have encountered together." the brother at last was found to be a poor, envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety. but up to this time marcus was prepared to believe all good of quintus; and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see, with his brother's son, and with his own. in this he failed. he lived to know that he had failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. it was not, however, added to his misery to live to learn how little his son was to do to maintain the honor of his family. i find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in which i had read this epistle, "probably the most beautiful letter ever written." reading it again subsequently, i added another note, "the language altogether different from that of his ordinary letters." i do not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise or the more careful criticism. the letter was from the man's heart--true, affectionate, and full of anxious, brotherly duty--but written in studied language, befitting, as cicero thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion. [sidenote: b.c. 59, ætat. 48.] the year following was that of cæsar's first consulship, which he held in conjunction with bibulus, a man who was altogether opposed to him in thought, in character, and in action. so hostile were these two great officers to each other that the one attempted to undo whatever the other did. bibulus was elected by bribery, on behalf of the senate, in order that he might be a counterpoise to cæsar. but cæsar now was not only cæsar: he was cæsar, pompey, and crassus united, with all their dependents, all their clients, all their greedy hangers-on. to give this compact something of the strength of family union, pompey, who was now nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage cæsar's daughter julia, who was a quarter of a century his junior. but pompey was a man who could endear himself to women, and the opinion seems to be general that had not julia died in childbirth the friendship between the men would have been more lasting. but for cæsar's purposes the duration of this year and the next was enough. bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow of a consul, when opposed to such an enemy. he tried to use all the old forms of the republic with the object of stopping cæsar in his career; but cæsar only ridiculed him; and pompey, though we can imagine that he did not laugh much, did as cæsar would have him. bibulus was an augur, and observed the heavens when political man[oe]uvres were going on which he wished to stop. this was the old roman system for using religion as a drag upon progressive movements. no work of state could be carried on if the heavens were declared to be unpropitious; and an augur could always say that the heavens were unpropitious if he pleased. this was the recognized constitutional mode of obstruction, and was quite in accord with the feelings of the people. pompey alone, or crassus with him, would certainly have submitted to an augur; but cæsar was above augurs. whatever he chose to have carried he carried, with what approach he could to constitutional usage, but with whatever departure from constitutional usage he found to be necessary. what was the condition of the people of rome at the time it is difficult to learn from the conflicting statements of historians. that cicero had till lately been popular we know. we are told that bibulus was popular when he opposed cæsar. of personal popularity up to this time i doubt whether cæsar had achieved much. yet we learn that, when bibulus with cato and lucullus endeavored to carry out their constitutional threats, they were dragged and knocked about, and one of them nearly killed. of the illegality of cæsar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "the tribunitian veto was interposed; cæsar contented himself with disregarding it."[248] this is quoted from the german historian, who intends to leave an impression that cæsar was great and wise in all that he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak creature bibulus," and of "the dogmatical fool cato." i doubt whether there was anything of true popular ferment, or that there was any commotion except that which was made by the "roughs" who had attached themselves for pay to cæsar or to pompey, or to crassus, or, as it might be, to bibulus and the other leaders. the violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this man or the other. some roman street fights were no doubt more bloody--as for instance that in which, seven years afterward, clodius was slaughtered by milo--but the blood was made to flow, not by the people, but by hired bravoes. the roman citizens of the day were, i think, very quiescent. neither pride nor misery stirred them much. cæsar, perceiving this, was aware that he might disregard bibulus and his auguries so long as he had a band of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of the hour. it was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition had been made with pompey and crassus. his colleague bibulus, seeing how matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a farce of consular enactments. cæsar carried all his purposes, and the people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and talking of julius and cæsar as the two consuls of the year. it was in this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his irregular command in gaul. he was to be proconsul, not for one year, with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established period of five. he was to have the great province of cisalpine gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call italy, from the foot of the alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of florence. to this transalpine gaul was afterward added. the province so named, possessed at the time by the romans, was called "narbonensis," a country comparatively insignificant, running from the alps to the pyrenees along the mediterranean. the gaul or gallia of which cæsar speaks when, in the opening words of his commentary, he tells us that it was divided into three parts, was altogether beyond the roman province which was assigned to him. cæsar, when he undertook his government, can hardly have dreamed of subjecting to roman rule the vast territories which were then known as gallia, beyond the frontiers of the empire, and which we now call france. but he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. there were stationed three legions on the italian side of the alps, and one on the other. these were all to be under his command for five years certain, and amounted to a force of not less than thirty thousand men. "as no troops could constitutionally be stationed in italy proper, the commander of the legions of northern italy and gaul," says mommsen, "dominated at the same time italy and rome for the next five years; and he who was master for five years was master for life."[249] [sidenote: b.c. 59, ætat. 48.] such was the condition of rome during the second year of the triumvirate, in which cæsar was consul and prepared the way for the powers which he afterward exercised. cicero would not come to his call; and therefore, as we are told, clodius was let loose upon him. as he would not come to cæsar's call, it was necessary that he should be suppressed, and clodius, notwithstanding all constitutional difficulties--nay, impossibilities--was made tribune of the people. things had now so far advanced with a cæsar that a cicero who would not come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion. till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have looked thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at cicero's blindness. surely a man so gifted must have known enough of the state of rome to have been aware that there was no room left for one honest, patriotic, constitutional politician. was it not plain to him that if, "natus ad justitiam," he could not bring himself to serve with those who were intent on discarding the republic, he had better retire among his books, his busts, and his literary luxuries, and leave the government of the country to those who understood its people? and we are the more prone to say and to think all this because the man himself continually said it, and continually thought it. in one of the letters written early in the year[250] to atticus from his villa at antium he declares very plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a letter written in good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in which he is able pleasantly to ridicule his enemy clodius, who it seems had expressed a wish to go on an embassy to tigranes, king of armenia. "do not think," he says, "that i am complaining of all this because i myself am desirous of being engaged in public affairs. even while it was mine to sit at the helm i was tired of the work; but now, when i am in truth driven out of the ship, when the rudder has not been thrown down but seized out of my hands, how should i take a pleasure in looking from the shore at the wrecks which these other pilots have made?" but the study of human nature tells us, and all experience, that men are unable to fathom their own desires, and fail to govern themselves by the wisdom which is at their fingers' ends. the retiring prime-minister cannot but hanker after the seals and the ribbons and the titles of office, even though his soul be able to rise above considerations of emolument, and there will creep into a man's mind an idea that, though reform of abuses from other sources may be impossible, if he were there once more the evil could at least be mitigated, might possibly be cured. so it was during this period of his life with cicero. he did believe that political justice exercised by himself, with such assistance as his eloquence would obtain for it, might be efficacious for preserving the republic, in spite of cæsar, and of pompey, and of crassus. he did not yet believe that these men would consent to such an outrage as his banishment. it must have been incredible to him that pompey should assent to it. when the blow came, it crushed him for the time. but he retricked his beams and struggled on to the end, as we shall see if we follow his life to the close. such was the intended purpose of the degradation of clodius. this, however, was not at once declared. it was said that clodius as tribune intended rather to oppose cæsar than to assist him. he at any rate chose that cicero should so believe and sent curio, a young man to whom cicero was attached, to visit the orator at his villa at antium and to declare these friendly purposes. according to the story told by cicero,[251] clodius was prepared to oppose the triumvirate; and the other young men of rome, the _jeunesse dorée_, of which both curio and clodius were members, were said to be equally hostile to cæsar, pompey, and crassus, whose doings in opposition to the constitution were already evident enough; so that it suited cicero to believe that the rising aristocracy of rome would oppose them. but the aristocracy of rome, whether old or young, cared for nothing but its fish-ponds and its amusements. cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of rome, among his various villas--at tusculanum, at antium, and at formiæ. the purport of all his letters at this period is the same--to complain of the condition of the republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend pompey. though there be much of despondency in his tone, there is enough also of high spirit to make us feel that his literary aspirations are not out of place, though mingled with his political wailing. the time will soon come when his trust even in literature will fail him for a while. early in the year he declares that he would like to accept a mission to egypt, offered to him by cæsar and pompey, partly in order that he might for a while be quit of rome, and partly that romans might feel how ill they could do without him. he then uses for the first time, as far as i am aware, a line from the iliad,[252] which is repeated by him again and again, in part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on him by his own high character among his fellow-citizens. "i would go to egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that i fear what the men of troy, and the trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would say of me." and what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the optimates," say? and what would cato say, whose opinion is more to me than that of them all? and how would history tell the story in future ages? but he would like to go to egypt, and he will wait and see. then, after various questions to atticus, comes that great one as to the augurship, of which so much has been made by cicero's enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possim." a few lines above he had been speaking of another lure, that of the mission to egypt. he discusses that with his friend, and then goes on in his half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing to catch me." nothing caught him. he was steadfast all through, accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his integrity or his honor could be soiled. that it was so was well known to history in the time of quintilian, whose testimony as to the "repudiatus vigintiviratus"--his refusal of a place among the twenty commissioners--has been already quoted.[253] and yet biographers have written of him as of one willing to sell his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth, for a "pitiful bribe;" not that he did do so, not that he attempted to do it, but because in a half-joking letter to the friend of his bosom he tells his friend which way his tastes lay![254] he had been thinking of writing a book on geography, and consulted atticus on the subject; but in one of his letters he tells his friend that he had abandoned the idea. the subject was too dull; and if he took one side in a dispute that was existing, he would be sure to fall under the lash of the critics on the other. he is enjoying his leisure at antium, and thinks it a much better place than rome. if the weather will not let him catch fish, at any rate he can count the waves. in all these letters cicero asks questions about his money and his private affairs; about the mending of a wall, perhaps, and adds something about his wife or daughter or son. he is going from antium to formiæ, but must return to antium by a certain date because tullia wants to see the games. then again he alludes to clodius. pompey had made a compact with clodius--so at least cicero had heard--that he, clodius, if elected for the tribunate, would do nothing to injure cicero. the assurance of such a compact had no doubt been spread about for the quieting of cicero; but no such compact had been intended to be kept, unless cicero would be amenable, would take some of the good things offered to him, or at any rate hold his peace. but cicero affects to hope that no such agreement may be kept. he is always nicknaming pompey, who during his eastern campaign had taken jerusalem, and who now parodies the africanus, the asiaticus, and the macedonicus of the scipios and metelluses. "if that hierosolymarian candidate for popularity does not keep his word with me, i shall be delighted. if that be his return for my speeches on his behalf"--the anteponatur omnibus pompeius, for instance--"i will play him such a turn of another kind that he shall remember it."[255] he begins to know what the "triumvirate" is doing with the republic, but has not yet brought himself to suspect the blow that is to fall on himself. "they are going along very gayly," he says, "and do not make as much noise as one would have expected."[256] if cato had been more on the alert, things would not have gone so quickly; but the dishonesty of others, who have allowed all the laws to be ignored, has been worse than cato. if we used to feel that the senate took too much on itself, what shall we say when that power has been transferred, not to the people, but to three utterly unscrupulous men? "they can make whom they will consuls, whom they will tribunes--so that they may hide the very goitre of vatinius under a priest's robe." for himself, cicero says, he will be contented to remain with his books, if only clodius will allow him; if not, he will defend himself.[257] as for his country, he has done more for his country than has even been desired of him; and he thinks it to be better to leave the helm in the hands of pilots, however incompetent, than himself to steer when passengers are so thankless. then we find that he robs poor tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because it will be beneath his dignity to appear at them. he is always very anxious for his friend's letters, depending on them for news and for amusement. "my messenger will return at once," he says, in one; "therefore, though you are coming yourself very soon, send me a heavy letter, full not only of news but of your own ideas."[258] in another: "cicero the little sends greeting," he says, in greek, "to titus the athenian"--that is, to titus pomponius atticus. the greek letters were probably traced by the child at his father's knee as cicero held the pen or the stylus. in another letter he declares that there, at formiæ, pompey's name of magnus is no more esteemed than that of dives belonging to crassus. in the next he calls pompey sampsiceramus. we learn from josephus that there was a lady afterward in the east in the time of vitellius, who was daughter of sampsigeramus, king of the emesi. it might probably be a royal family name.[259] in choosing the absurd title, he is again laughing at his party leader. pompey had probably boasted of his doings with the sampsiceramus of the day and the priests of jerusalem. "when this sampsiceramus of ours finds how ill he is spoken of, he will rush headlong into revolution." he complains that he can do nothing at formiæ because of the visitors. no english poet was ever so interviewed by american admirers. they came at all hours, in numbers sufficient to fill a temple, let alone a gentleman's house. how can he write anything requiring leisure in such a condition as this? nevertheless he will attempt something. he goes on criticising all that is done in rome, especially what is done by pompey, who no doubt was vacillating sadly between cæsar, to whom he was bound, and bibulus, the other consul, to whom he ought to have been bound, as being naturally on the aristocratic side. he cannot for a moment keep his pen from public matters; nor, on the other hand, can he refrain from declaring that he will apply himself wholly, undividedly, to his literature. "therefore, oh my titus, let me settle down to these glorious occupations, and return to that which, if i had been wise, i never should have left."[260] a day or two afterward, writing from the same place, he asks what arabarches is saying of him. arabarches is another name for pompey--this arabian chieftain. in the early summer of this year cicero returned to rome, probably in time to see atticus, who was then about to leave the city for his estates in epirus. we have a letter written by him to his friend on the journey, telling us that cæsar had made him two distinct offers, evidently with the view of getting rid of him, but in such a manner as would be gratifying to cicero himself.[261] cæsar asks him to go with him to gaul as his lieutenant, or, if that will not suit him, to accept a "free legation for the sake of paying a vow." this latter was a kind of job by which roman senators got themselves sent forth on their private travels with all the appanages of a senator travelling on public business. we have his argument as to both. elsewhere he objects to a "libera legatio" as being a job.[262] here he only points out that, though it enforce his absence from rome at a time disagreeable to him--just when his brother quintus would return--it would not give him the protection which he needs. though he were travelling about the world as a senator on some pretended embassy, he would still be open to the attacks of clodius. he would necessarily be absent, or he would not be in enjoyment of his privilege, but by his very absence he would find his position weakened; whereas, as cæsar's appointed lieutenant, he need not leave the city at once, and in that position he would be quite safe against all that clodius or other enemies could do to him.[263] no indictment could be made against a roman while he was in the employment of the state. it must be remembered, too, on judging of these overtures, that both the one and the other--and indeed all the offers then made to him--were deemed to be highly honorable, as rome then existed. "the free legation"--the "libera legatio voti causa"--had no reference to parties. it was a job, no doubt, and, in the hands of the ordinary roman aristocrat, likely to be very onerous to the provincials among whom the privileged senator might travel; but it entailed no party adhesion. in this case it was intended only to guarantee the absence of a man who might be troublesome in rome. the other was the offer of genuine work in which politics were not at all concerned. such a position was accepted by quintus, our cicero's brother, and in performance of the duties which fell to him he incurred terrible danger, having been nearly destroyed by the gauls in his winter quarters among the nervii. labienus, who was cæsar's right-hand man in gaul, was of the same politics as cicero--so much so that when cæsar rebelled against the republic, labienus, true to the republic, would no longer fight on cæsar's side. it was open to cicero, without disloyalty, to accept the offer made to him; but with an insight into what was coming, of which he himself was hardly conscious, he could not bring himself to accept offers which in themselves were alluring, but which would seem in future times to have implied on his part an assent to the breaking up of the republic. [greek: aideomai trôas kai trôadas elkesipeplous.] what will be said of me in history by my citizens if i now do simply that which may best suit my own happiness? had he done so, pliny and the others would not have spoken of him as they have spoken, and it would not have been worth the while of modern lovers of cæsarism to write books against the one patriot of his age. during the remainder of this year, b.c. 59, cicero was at rome, and seems gradually to have become aware that a personal attack was to be made upon him. at the close of a long and remarkable letter written to his brother quintus in november, he explains the state of his own mind, showing us, who have now before us the future which was hidden from him, how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to be expected. he had been telling his brother how nearly cato had been murdered for calling pompey, in public, a dictator. then he goes on to describe his own condition.[264] "you may see from this what is the state of the republic. as far as i am concerned, it seems that friends will not be wanting to defend me. they offer themselves in a wonderful way, and promise assistance. i feel great hope and still greater spirit--hope, which tells me that we shall be victors in the struggle; spirit, which bids me fear no casualty in the present state of public affairs."[265] but the matter stands in this way: "if he"--that is, clodius--"should indict me in court, all italy would come to my defence, so that i should be acquitted with honor. should he attack me with open violence, i should have, i think, not only my own party but the world at large to stand by me. all men promise me their friends, their clients, their freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. our old body of aristocrats"--cato, bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. if any of these have heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of these kings"--the triumvirs. "pompey promises everything, and so does cæsar, whom i only trust so far as i can see them." even the triumvirs promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in pompey's honesty is all but gone. "the coming tribunes are my friends. the consuls of next year promise well." he was wofully mistaken. "we have excellent prætors, citizens alive to their duty. domitius, nigidius, memmius, and lentulus are specially trustworthy. the others are good men. you may therefore pluck up your courage and be confident." from this we perceive that he had already formed the idea that he might perhaps be required to fight for his position as a roman citizen; and it seems also that he understood the cause of the coming conflict. the intention was that he should be driven out of rome by personal enmity. nothing is said in any of these letters of the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that excuse was to be. he was to be charged by the patrician tribune with having put roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. but there arises at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified in what he, as consul, had done to lentulus and the others. would clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would cæsar assist clodius? or would pompey who still loomed to his eyes as the larger of the two men? he had ever been the friend of pompey, and pompey had promised him all manner of assistance; but he knew already that pompey would turn upon him. that rome should turn upon him--rome which he had preserved from the torches of catiline's conspirators--that he could not bring himself to believe! we must not pass over this long letter to quintus without observing that through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's mind becomes apparent. the severity of his administration had given offence. his punishments had been cruel. his letters had been rash, and his language violent. in short, we gather from the brother's testimony that quintus cicero was very ill-fitted to be the civil governor of a province. the only work which we have from cicero belonging to this year, except his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made for lucius valerius flaccus. flaccus had been prætor when cicero was consul, and had done good service, in the eyes of his superior officers, in the matter of the catiline conspiracy. he had then gone to asia as governor, and, after the roman manner, had fleeced the province. that this was so there is no doubt. after his return he was accused, was defended by cicero, and was acquitted. macrobius tells us that cicero, by the happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though he was manifestly guilty. he adds also that cicero took care not to allow the joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[266] there are parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently amusing even to us. he is very hard upon the greeks of asia, the class from which the witnesses against flaccus were taken. we know here in england that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may be beaten with advantage. cicero says that in asia there is a proverb that a phrygian may be improved in the same way. "fiat experimentum in corpore vili." it is declared through asia that you should take a carian for your experiment. the "last of the mysians" is the well-known asiatic term for the lowest type of humanity. look through all the comedies, you will find the leading slave is a lydian. then he turns to these poor asiatics, and asks them whether any one can be expected to think well of them, when such is their own testimony of themselves! he attacks the jew, and speaks of the jewish religion as a superstition worthy in itself of no consideration. pompey had spared the gold in the temple of jerusalem, because he thought it wise to respect the religious prejudices of the people; but the gods themselves had shown, by subjecting the jews to the romans, how little the gods had regarded these idolatrous worshippers! such were the arguments used; and they prevailed with the judges--or jury, we should rather call them--to whom they were addressed. chapter xii. _his exile._ we now come to that period of cicero's life in which, by common consent of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown himself as least worthy of his high name. middleton, who certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns him. "it cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in the republic." morabin, the french biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice and its follies. "cicéron était trop plein de son malheur pour donner entrée à de nouvelles espérances," he says. "il avait supporté ce malheur avec peu de courage," says another frenchman, m. du rozoir, in introducing us to the speeches which cicero made on his return. dean merivale declares that "he marred the grace of the concession in the eyes of posterity"--alluding to the concession made to popular feeling by his voluntary departure from rome, as will hereafter be described--"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it." mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "we now come," says mr. forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was thrown." mr. froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than that of others, and tells us that "he retired to macedonia to pour out his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." we have to admit that modern historians and biographers have been united in accusing cicero of want of manliness during his exile. i propose--not, indeed, to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if i can, that he was as white as others might be expected to have been in similar circumstances. we are, i think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the laws. our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. they have done so generally with becoming manliness. even though they may have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been made green because they have fallen like brave men. sir thomas more, who was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of leaving it. thomas cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint. lady jane grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to the others. cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. the earl of essex, and raleigh, and strafford, and strafford's master showed no fear when the fatal moment came. in reading the fate of each, we sympathize with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. but there is, i think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to carry himself honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." no doubting now can be of avail. no moment is left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires only decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree glorious. the wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve it with a halter round his neck. cicero had that moment also to face; and when it came he was as brave as the best englishman of them all. but of those i have named no one had an atticus to whom it had been the privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so charming as to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study it, to sift it, and to criticise it. wolsey made many plaints in his misery, but they have reached us in such forms of grace that they do not disparage him; but then he too had no atticus. shaftesbury and bolingbroke were dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the latter for many years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from the glare of public life to obscurity. we hear no complaint from them which can justify some future critic in saying that their wails were unworthy of a woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an atticus the thoughts of his mind as they rose. what other public man ever had an atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his heart? i think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation of character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to realize the meaning of courage and manliness. that sententious swedish queen, one of whose foolish maxims i have quoted, has said that cicero, though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know what a coward was. to doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to vacillate hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be the better--to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self, not quite knowing which way honor may require us to go--to be indignant even at fancied wrongs--to rise in wrath against another, and then, before the hour has passed, to turn that wrath against one's self--that is not to be a coward. to know what duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of results--that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples may be the greatest hero of them all. let the law of things be declared clearly so that the doubting mind shall no longer doubt, so that scruples may be laid at rest, so that the sense of justice may be satisfied--and he of whom i speak shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. there are men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that there may be before them. i will not say but that for the coarse purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious, but i will not admit that they are therefore the bravest. the bull, who has no imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave. he is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle, shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against it. this cicero always did. he braved the murderous anger of sulla when, as a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of sulla's minions. he trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it was necessary that with extraordinary speed he should get together the evidence needed for the prosecution of verres. he was firm against all that catiline attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of catiline to death. in defending milo, whether the cause were good or bad, he did not blench.[267] he joined the republican army in macedonia though he distrusted pompey and his companions. when he thought that there was a hope for the republic, he sprung at antony with all the courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and was rotten around him, when the republic had so fallen that he knew it to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all the apparent indifference of life which was displayed by those countrymen of our own whom i have named. but why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? why, at any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as though that friend had not done enough for friendship? why did he talk of suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape? i hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a sense, not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him from the injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of friends. afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as sickness and physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of our money by the breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without even inward complainings. but a sense of wrong done to him by friends will stir him, not by the misery inflicted, but because of the injustice; and that which he says to himself he will say to his wife, if his wife be to him a second self, or to his friend, if he have one so dear to him. the testimony by which the writers i have named have been led to treat cicero so severely has been found in the letters which he wrote during his exile; and of these letters all but one were addressed either to atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[268] twenty-seven of them were to atticus. before he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution of the difficulty in which he was placed--for it was voluntary at first, as will be seen--he applied to the consul piso for aid, and for the same purpose visited pompey. so far he was a suppliant, but this he did in conformity with roman usage. in asking favor of a man in power there was held to be no disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to be granted, which was not the case with cicero. and he went about the forum in mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their trial. we cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the advice of his friends. his conduct and his words after his return from exile betray exultation rather than despondency. it is from the letters which he wrote to atticus that he has been judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he should have been surrendered by the rome that he had saved, by those friends to whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as clodius! when a man has written words intended for the public ear, it is fair that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. he has intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him he should not complain. but here the secret murmurings of the man's soul were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them would he be judged by the "historians to come in 600 years,"[269] of whose good word he thought so much. "quid vero historiæ de nobis ad annos dc. prædicarint!" he says, to atticus. how is it that from them, after 2000 years, the merivales, mommsens, and froudes condemn their great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found worthy of so long a life! is there not an injustice in falling upon a man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall be arraigned forever as a coward? it is said that he was unjust even to atticus, accusing even atticus of lukewarmness. what if he did so--for an hour? is that an affair of ours? did atticus quarrel with him? let any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the injustice? he may not have written his anger, but then, perhaps, he has not had the pen of a cicero. let those who rebuke the unmanliness of cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. the story has yet to be told, but i may in rough words describe their nature. everything was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves, and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. he was driven out from italy and so driven that no place of delight could be open to him. sicily, where he had friends, athens, where he might have lived, were closed against him. he had to look where to live, and did live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. all the cherished occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the forum, the senate, and the crowded meetings of roman citizens hanging on his words. the circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and children, so that he was alone. all this was assured to him for life, as far as roman law could assure it. let us think of the condition of some great and serviceable englishman in similar circumstances. let us suppose that sir robert peel had been impeached, and forced by some iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the houses at whitehall gardens and at drayton had been confiscated, dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made over to his enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy him by the country he had served, except the act of taking away that life which would thus have been made a burden to him. would not his case have been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than that even of the mores or raleighs? he suffered under invectives in the house of commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some clodius of the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse of him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his friend of friends? had cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of doing, he would have been a second cato to admiring posterity, and some lucan with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his valor. the judges of to-day look back to his half-formed purposes in this direction as being an added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let himself blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought to have escaped from life as honorably as did junius brutus it is because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little of him,--because he had antedated christianity so far as to feel when the moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. he doubted, and when the deed had not been done he expressed regret that he had allowed himself to live. but he did not do it,--as cato would have done, or brutus. it may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible, the assertions which have been made that cicero, having begun life as a democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from the people those honors for which he had sought popularity. they who have said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much of his early forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic party. he attacked sulla, through his favorite chrysogonus, in his defence of roscius amerinus. he afterward defended a woman of arretium in the spirit of antagonism to sulla. his accusation of verres was made on the same side in politics, and was carried on in opposition to hortensius and the oligarchs. he defended the tribune caius cornelius. then, when he became consul, he devoted himself to the destruction of catiline, who was joined with many, perhaps with cæsar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for the overthrow of the republic. cæsar soon became the leader of the democracy,--became rather what mommsen describes as "democracy" itself; and as cicero had defended the senate from catiline, and had refused to attach himself to cæsar, he is supposed to have turned from the political ideas of his youth, and to have become a conservative when conservative ideas suited his ambition. i will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the early speeches were made on the side of democracy because the exigencies of the occasion required him to so devote his energies as an advocate. no doubt he was an advocate, as are our barristers of to-day, and, as an advocate, supported this side or that; but we shall be wrong if we suppose that the roman "patronus" supplied his services under such inducements. with us a man goes into the profession of the law with the intention of making money, and takes the cases right and left, unless there be special circumstances which may debar him from doing so with honor. it is a point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in turn, as he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be employed on the other side. it should not be urged on the part of cicero that, so actuated, he defended amerinus, a case in which he took part against the aristocrats, or defended publius sulla, in doing which he appeared on the side of the aristocracy. such a defence of his conduct would be misleading, and might be confuted. it would be confuted by those who suppose him to have been "notoriously a political trimmer," as mommsen has[270] called him; or a "deserter," as he was described by dio cassius and by the pseudo-sallust,[271] by showing that in fact he took up causes under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely govern an english barrister. these motives were in many cases partly political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no guide to his political views. in defending sulla's nephew he was moved, as far as we know, solely by private motives. in defending amerinus he may be said to have attacked sulla. his object was to stamp out the still burning embers of sulla's cruelty; but not the less was he wedded to sulla's general views as to the restoration of the authority of the senate. in his early speeches, especially in that spoken against verres, he denounces the corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very period of his life he again and again expresses his own belief in the glory and majesty of the senate. in accusing verres he accused the general corruption of rome's provincial governors; and as they were always past-consuls or past-prætors, and had been the elite of the aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat; but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense of duty to put a stop to corruption. the venality of the judges and the rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but i deny that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people. he was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy, though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages of rome. he had undertaken to speak for catiline when catiline was accused of corruption on his return from africa, knowing that catiline had been guilty. he did not do so; but the intention, for our present purpose, is the same as the doing. to have defended catiline would have assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the consulship. catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was fonteius, whom he certainly did defend--and catiline was a democrat. but cicero, had he defended catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to democracy. cicero, when, in the pro lege manilia, he for the first time addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the senate in proposing that pompey should have the command of the mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. it has been said that this was done because pompey could help him to the consulship. to me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading men in rome pompey was the one to whom the republic would look with the most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to bind himself to pompey in some political marriage. be that as it may, there was no tampering with democracy in the speech pro lege manilia. of all the extant orations made by him before his consulship, the attentive reader will sympathize the least with that of fonteius. after his scathing onslaught on verres for provincial plunder, he defended the plunderer of the gauls, and held up the suffering allies of rome to ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. this he did simply as an advocate, without political motive of any kind--in the days in which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office in return, as was customary. it was thus that afterward he defended antony, his colleague in the consulship, whom he knew to have been a corrupt governor. autronius had been a party to catiline's conspiracy, and autronius had been cicero's school-fellow; but cicero, for some reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for autronius. there is, i maintain, no ground for suggesting that cicero had shown by his speeches before his consulship any party adherence. the declaration which he made after his consulship, in the speech for sulla, that up to the time of catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. as quæstor, as ædile, and as prætor, he did not interfere in the political questions of rome, except in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. when he became consul then he became a politician, and after that there was certainly no vacillation in his views. critics say that he surrendered himself to cæsar when cæsar became master. we shall come to that hereafter; but the accusation with which i am dealing now is that which charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. there had been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became consul. in truth, cicero's political convictions were the same from the beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no means usual in politicians; for though, before his consulship, he had not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political views, as do all men who live in public. from the first to the last we may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative. the government of rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy is sure to exact. to that oligarchy cicero was bound by all the convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his life. when he speaks of a republic he speaks of a people and of an empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. that those few should be so select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus homo." as he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy. that the empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had created the power of rome--that was his political creed. that consuls, censors, and senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth among them--that was his political aspiration. they had made rome what it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble. he has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he had flirted in his youth." there had been no democracy in his youth, though there had existed such a condition in the time of the gracchi. there was none in his youth and none in his age. that which has been wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats such as led to our commonwealth, or to the american independence, or to the french revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the empire. of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly accused than cicero, unless it might be cæsar. to cæsar we must accord the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical forms was impracticable this cicero did not see. he thought that the wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were curable. it is attributed to cæsar that he conceived the grand idea of establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and therefore beneficent, ruler. i think he saw no farther than that he, by strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether beneficent or the reverse. but here i think that it becomes the writer, whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a form of government. for all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in ignorance, poverty, and oppression. with an oligarchy there will be other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt, though it be among a few. there will be a cicero now and again--or at least a cato. from the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power, and the fabric falls by its own decay of this no proof can be found in the world's history so manifest as that taught by the roman empire. i think it is made clear by a study of cicero's life and works, up to the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of the roman government was his guiding principle. i am sure that they who follow me to the close of his career will acknowledge that after his exile he lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "respublica," the republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm. it was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being. the word constitution is nearly as potent with us. but it is essential that the reader of roman history and roman biography should understand that the appellation had in it, for all roman ears, a thoroughly conservative meaning. among those who at cicero's period dealt with politics in rome--all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the republic as the vessel of state which was to be defended by all persons--there were four classes. these were they who simply desired the plunder of the state--the catilines, the sullas of the day, and the antonys; men such as verres had been, and fonteius, and autronius. the other three can be best typified each by one man. there was cæsar, who knew that the republic was gone, past all hope. there was cato--"the dogmatical fool cato" as mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the historian's dignity--who was true to the republic, who could not bend an inch, and was thus as detrimental to any hope of reconstruction as a catiline or a cæsar. cicero was of the fourth class, believing in the republic, intent on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the "optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to themselves, consuls, censors, and senate would still suffice to rule the world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him. it was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. nothing, he saw, could be done by catonic rigor. we can see now that ciceronic compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. the patient was past cure. but in seeking the truth as to cicero, we have to perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold fast by this idea to the end. the frequent expressions made to atticus in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope within his bosom. it was the ingratitude of his political friends, his "boni" and his "optimates," of pompey as their head, which tried him the sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving pompey as the head of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the political world must be closed to him altogether. of cicero's strength or cicero's weakness pompey seems to have known nothing. he was no judge of men. cæsar measured him with a great approach to accuracy. cæsar knew him to be the best roman of his day; one who, if he could be brought over to serve in cæsarean ranks, would be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not brought to serve on the cæsarean side. such a man, however, might be silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use. personally he was pleasant to cæsar, who had taste enough to know that he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. but cæsar was not, i think, quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at the last that cicero's energy on behalf of the republic had been quelled. [sidenote: b.c. 58, ætat. 49.] now we will go back to the story of cicero's exile. gradually during the preceding year he had learned that clodius was preparing to attack him, and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the triumvirate. that he could be made safe by the justice either of the people or by that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have occurred to him. he knew the people and he knew the courts too well. pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was cicero's idea. to him pompey was the greatest political power as yet extant in rome; but he was beginning to believe that pompey would be untrue to him. when he had sent to pompey a long account of the grand doings of his consulship, pompey had replied with faintest praises. he had rejected the overtures of the triumvirate. in the last letter to atticus in the year before, written in august,[272] he had declared that the republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this pass--meaning the triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men around him. there is a letter to his brother written in november, the next letter in the collection, in which he says that pompey and cæsar promise him everything. with the exception of two letters of introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to atticus from the first scene of his exile. when the new year commenced, clodius was tribune of the people, and immediately was active. piso and gabinius were consuls. piso was kinsman to piso frugi, who had married cicero's daughter,[273]and was expected to befriend cicero at this crisis. but clodius procured the allotment of syria and macedonia to the two consuls by the popular vote. they were provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a consul to know that the prey which should come to him as proconsul should be worthy of his grasp. they were, therefore, ready to support the tribune in what he proposed to do. it was necessary to cicero's enemies that there should be some law by which cicero might be condemned. it would not be within the power of clodius, even with the triumvirate at his back, to drive the man out of rome and out of italy, without an alleged cause. though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. now there was a matter as to which cicero was open to attack. as consul he had caused certain roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the teeth of a law which enacted that no roman citizen should be condemned to die except by a direct vote of the people. it had certainly become a maxim of the constitution of the republic that a citizen should not be made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. the valerian, the porcian, and the sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect. now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of lentulus and the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in rome in the affair of catiline. their death had been decreed by the senate, and the decree of the senate had been carried out by cicero; but no decree of the senate had the power of a law. in spite of that decree the old law was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to lentulus. but there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been supposed to override the valerian and porcian laws. in certain emergencies the senate would call upon the consuls to see that the republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such moments the consuls were invested with an authority above all law. cicero had been thus strengthened when, as consul, he had struggled with catiline; but it was an open question, as cicero himself very well knew. in the year of his consulship--the very year in which lentulus and the others had been strangled--he had defended rabirius, who was then accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. rabirius was charged with having slaughtered the tribune saturninus by consular authority, the consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the republic, as cicero had been ordered. rabirius probably had not killed saturninus, nor did any one now care whether he had done so or not. the trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of cæsar, who caused himself to be selected by the prætor as one of the two judges for the occasion;[274] and cæsar's object as notoriously was to lessen the authority of the senate, and to support the democratic interest. both cicero and hortensius defended rabirius, but he was condemned by cæsar, and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. in this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been an admixture of violence and law. we must, i think, acknowledge that there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against lentulus. it had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority for the protection of the commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that there was such an emergency, when the full senate had had time to debate on the fate of the catiline criminals. both from cæsar's words as reported by sallust, and from cicero's as given to us by himself, we are aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in the minds of senators at the moment. but, though law was loved at rome, all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on with monstrous illegality. consuls consulted the heavens falsely; tribunes used their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. in the trial and escape of rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to vindicate them. clodius had now become a tribune by the means of certain legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. in the conduct of the affair against catiline cicero seems to have been actuated by pure patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage; but he knew that in destroying lentulus and cethegus he subjected himself to certain dangers. he had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object in view. as long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was at that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any one to be for long the darling of the roman people. cicero had become so by using an eloquence to which the romans were peculiarly susceptible; but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them. since cicero's consulship he had done nothing to offend the people, except to remain occasionally out of their sight; but he had lost the brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so. in discussing popularity in rome we have to remember of what elements it was formed. we hear that this or that man was potent at some special time by the assistance coming to him from the popular voice. there was in rome a vast population of idle men, who had been trained by their city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support, and who did, in truth, live on their citizenship. of "panem et circenses" we have all heard, and know that eleemosynary bread and the public amusements of the day supplied the material and æsthetic wants of many romans. but men so fed and so amused were sure to need further occupations. they became attached to certain friends, to certain patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. this they gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed from them, till it became notorious in rome that a great party man might best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. this was the meaning of that saying of crassus, that a man could not be considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. a popular vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid. there had been street fighting of the kind when cicero had defended caius cornelius, in the year after his prætorship; there had been fighting of the kind when rabirius had been condemned in his consulship. we shall learn by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed when clodius was killed by milo's body-guard. at the period of which we are now writing, when clodius was intent on pursuing cicero to his ruin, it was a question with cicero himself whether he would not trust to a certain faction in rome to fight for him, and so to protect him. though his popularity was on the wane--that general popularity which, we may presume, had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his language--there still remained to him that other popularity which consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the "boni" and the "optimates," and which might be used, if need were, in opposition to trained bands on the other side. the bill first proposed by clodius to the people with the object of destroying cicero did not mention cicero, nor, in truth, refer to him. it purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed any roman citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be deprived of the privilege of water or fire.[275] this condemned no suggested malefactor to death; but, in accordance with roman law, made it impossible that any roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for this withholding of fire and water. the penalty intended was banishment; but by this enactment no individual would be banished. cicero, however, at once took the suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning, as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. he went about the streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and clodius also caused himself to be so accompanied. there came thus to be a question which might prevail should there be a general fight. the senate was, as a body, on cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the triumvirate. cæsar no doubt had resolved that cicero should be made to go, and cæsar was lord of the triumvirate. on behalf of cicero there was a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still true to him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning, evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his accusers. the bitterness of clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter had been cicero's tongue. when the affair of the bona dea had taken place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and the great consul. cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and well ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he found them to be witty as well as clever. this very clodius had been in his good books till the affair of the bona dea. but now the tribune's hatred was internecine. i have hitherto said nothing, and need say but little, of a certain disreputable lady named clodia. she was the sister of clodius and the wife of metellus celer. she was accused by public voice in rome of living in incest with her brother, and of poisoning her husband. cicero calls her afterward, in his defence of cælius, "amica omnium." she had the nickname of quadrantaria[276] given to her, because she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a farthing. it must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was the lesbia who inspired the muse of catullus. it was rumored in rome that she had endeavored to set her cap at cicero. cicero in his raillery had not spared the lady. to speak publicly the grossest evil of women was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the romans. our sense of chivalry, as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used by horace to women who once to him were young and pretty, but have become old and ugly. the venom of cicero's abuse of clodia annoys us, and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the romans. it is necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between clodius and cicero, till clodius was killed in a street row. it has been presumed that cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "the resolution," says middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate, and helped to precipitate his ruin." he was sensible of his error when too late, and oft reproaches atticus that, being a stander-by, and less heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such blunders. and he quotes the words written to atticus: "here my judgment first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. we were blind, blind i say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the populace. * * * i handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies, while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you, who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by no personal fears."[277] but the reader should study the entire letter, and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true purport. this the reader must do before he can understand cicero's state of mind when writing it, or his relation to atticus; or the thoughts which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of atticus, he resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. the censure to which atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address to himself. after reminding atticus of the sort of advice which should have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "you will forgive me this," he says. "i blame myself more than i do you; but i look to you as a second self, and i make you a sharer with me of my own folly." i take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in which he had to decide whether he would remain in rome and fight it out, or run before his enemies. but in writing the letter afterward his mind was as much disturbed as when he did fly. i am inclined, therefore, to think that middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating moods he blamed himself. how the battle might have gone had he remained, we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt which had been made to destroy him. in this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the senate to rescue him. it was proposed to them that they all as a body should go into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the senate passed a vote to this effect, but were prevented by the two consuls from carrying it out. as to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. some recommended that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by street-fighting should it be necessary. in doing this he would acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in rome--a condition of things to which many had given in their adherence, but with which cicero would surely have been the last to comply. he himself, in his despair, thought for a time that the old roman mode of escape would be preferable, and that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide. atticus and others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly. among these cato and hortensius have both been named. to this advice he at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have been given. lawlessness, which had been rampant in rome before, had, under the triumvirate, become almost lawful. it was cæsar's intention to carry out his will with such compliance with the forms of the republic as might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they did not suit him. the banishment of cicero was one of the last steps taken by cæsar before he left rome for his campaigns in gaul. he was already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. he had endeavored to buy cicero, but had failed. having failed, he had determined to be rid of him. clodius was but his tool, as were pompey and the two consuls. had cicero endeavored to support himself by violence in rome, his contest would, in fact have been with cæsar. cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to piso the consul, and to pompey. gabinius, the other consul, had already declared his purpose to the senate, but piso was bound to him by family ties. he himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against this piso, the manner of the meeting between him and rome's chief officer. piso told him--so at least cicero declared in the senate, and we have heard of no contradiction--that gabinius was so driven by debts as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he himself, piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with gabinius; that any application to the consuls was useless, and that every one must look after himself.[278] concerning his appeal to pompey two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true. plutarch says that when cicero had travelled out from rome to pompey's alban villa, pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him. plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. the other account is based on cicero's assertion that he did see pompey on this occasion. nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a letter to atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. the story founded on that letter declares that cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in cæsar's hands. this narrative is, i think, due to a misinterpretation of cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them. he is describing pompey when cæsar after his gallic wars had crossed the rubicon, and the two late triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the east--were in arms against each other. "alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279] cæsar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "alter is qui nos sibi quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "that other one," he continues--meaning pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days gone by would not even lift me when i lay at his feet, and told me that he could do nothing but as cæsar wished it." this little supposed detail of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has surely been missed. the prostration of which he spoke, from which pompey would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was not a prostration of the body. i hold it to have been impossible that cicero should have assumed such an attitude before pompey, or that he would so have written to atticus had he done so. it would have been neither roman nor ciceronian, as displayed by cicero to pompey. he had gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt reminded him of those promises of assistance which pompey had so often made. then pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too much truth, that cæsar's will was everything. again, we have to remember that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondents as cicero and atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they were written and in which they were received. i cannot imagine that, in describing to atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years after it had taken place, cicero had intended it to be understood that he had really grovelled in the dust. toward the end of march he started from rome, intending to take refuge among his friends in sicily. on the same day clodius brought in a bill directed against cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the people, "ut marco tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should be illegal to supply cicero with fire and water. the law when passed forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. it is evident, from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not, that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who had driven cicero to his exile. they who refused him succor did do so not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest cæsar and pompey would be offended. it did not last long, and during the short period of his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. we are told that he was afraid to go to athens, because at athens lived that autronius whom he had refused to defend. autronius had been convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a catilinarian conspirator, had been in truth on cæsar's side. nor were geographical facts sufficiently established to tell cicero what places were and what were not without the forbidden circle. he sojourned first at vibo, in the extreme south of italy, intending to pass from thence into sicily. it was there that he learned that a certain distance had been prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the proconsular governor of the island would not receive him, fearing cæsar. then he came north from vibo to brundisium, that being the port by which travellers generally went from italy to the east. he had determined to leave his family in rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together. and there were money difficulties in which atticus helped him.[280] atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of an uncle. we do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made by cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his exile were very great. there was a thorough disruption of his property, for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether to atone. but this sat lightly on cicero's heart. pecuniary losses never weighed heavily with him. as he journeyed back from vibo to brundisium friends were very kind to him, in spite of the law. toward the end of the speech which he made five years afterward on behalf of his friend c. plancius he explains the debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in his exile had been very great. he commences his story of the goodness of plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend flavius, who had received him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to dyrrachium. there were many schemes running in his head at this time. at one period he had resolved to pass through macedonia into asia, and to remain for a while at cyzicum. this idea he expresses in a letter to his wife written from brundisium. then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a condition: "o me perditum, o me afflictum;"[281] exclamations which it is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "how am i to ask you to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body and in spirit. i cannot ask you! must i then live without you? it must be so, i think. if there be any hope of my return, it is you must look to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as i fear, the thing is done, then come to me. if i can have you i shall not be altogether destroyed." no doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he so wails to the wife of his bosom? other humans have written prettily about women: it was common for romans to do so. catullus desires from lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of libya. horace swears that he would perish for chloe if chloe might be left alive. "when i am dying," says tibullus to delia, "may i be gazing at you; may my last grasp hold your hand." propertius tells cynthia that she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life. "whether he be sad with his friends or happy, cynthia does it all." the language in each case is perfect; but what other roman was there of whom we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? ovid in his letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but there is no passion expressed in anything that ovid wrote. clodius, as soon as the enactment against cicero became law, caused it be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. the criminal's property was confiscated. the house on the palatine hill was destroyed, and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack of buyers. his choicest treasures were carried away by the consuls themselves. piso, who had lived near him in rome, got for himself and for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. the country villas were also destroyed, and gabinius, who had a country house close by cicero's tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the garden. he tells the story of the greed and enmity of the consuls in the speech he made after his return, pro domo sua,[282] pleading for the restitution of his household property. "my house on the palatine was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. in the mean time the consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been catiline's friend, the other that cethegus had been his cousin." by this he implies that the conspiracy which during his consulship had been so odious to rome was now, in these days of the triumvirate, again in favor among roman aristocrats. he went across from brundisium to dyrrachium, and from thence to thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by plancius, who was quæstor in these parts, and who came down to dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. this was the plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so. plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present consul piso had already been appointed. thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet cicero lived there with plancius for some months. the letters from cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though i have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a roman. perhaps i am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than roman fortitude. we remember the story of the spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. i think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his chosen chum. such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence either of sagacity or of courage. roman fortitude was but a suit of armor to be worn on state occasions. if we come across a warrior with his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an impressive object. if we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. chance has given us cicero in his night-shirt. the linen is of such fine texture that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a garment--such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody is then brought in to look at us. there is one most touching letter written from thessalonica to his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of pain than of service. "mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. the words in english would hardly give all the pathos. "did you think that i did not write because i am angry, or that i did not wish to see you? i angry with you! but i could not endure to be seen by you. you would not have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] then he heaps blame on his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. in this letter he throws great blame upon hortensius, whom together with pompey he accuses of betraying him. what truth there may have been in this accusation as to hortensius we have no means of saying. he couples pompey in the same charge, and as to pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. pompey had been untrue to his promises because of his bond with cæsar. it is probable that hortensius had failed to put himself forward on cicero's behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. cicero and hortensius were friends afterward, but so were cicero and pompey. cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. it did not suit his purposes to retain his enmities. had there been a possibility of reconciling antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the philippics, he would have availed himself of it. cicero at one time intended to go to buthrotum in epirus, where atticus possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. he remained at thessalonica till november, and then returned to dyrrachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his recall. there seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in rome that the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and cæsar had gone to his provinces. we can well imagine that when he had once left rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. then pompey and clodius soon quarrelled. pompey, without cæsar to direct him, found the arrogance of the patrician tribune insupportable. we hear of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of roman history as it was played at this time. together with cicero, it had been necessary to cæsar's projects that cato also should be got out of rome; and this had been managed by means of clodius, who had a bill passed for the honorable employment of cato on state purposes in cyprus. cato had found himself obliged to go. it was as though our prime-minister had got parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the opposition to asiatic turkey for six months there was an attempt, or an alleged attempt, of clodius to have pompey murdered; and there was street-fighting, so that pompey was besieged, or pretended to be besieged, in his own house. "we might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says mommsen, speaking of the state of rome when cæsar was gone, cicero banished, and pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] there was, at any rate, quarrelling between clodius and pompey, in the course of which pompey was induced to consent to cicero's return. then clodius took upon himself, in revenge, to turn against the triumvirate altogether, and to repudiate even cæsar himself. but it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to which cæsar, when he heard the details in gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with pompey. he had achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the assistance of crassus, whose wealth, and of pompey, whose authority, stood highest in rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for either of them. there is a little story which must be repeated, as against cicero, in reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all records of his life. were i to omit the little story, it would seem as though i shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his credit. he had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been severe upon the elder curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little who was the object or what the subject. this had got wind in rome, as such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a mischief with the curios and the friends of the curios. the authorship was only matter of gossip. could it not be denied? "as it is written," says cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it not be shown not to have been mine?"[285] had cicero possessed all the christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the expression of such a wish. as it is, the enemies of cicero must make the most of it. his friends, i think, will look upon it leniently. continued efforts were made among cicero's friends at rome to bring him back, with which he was not altogether contented. he argues the matter repeatedly with atticus, not always in the best temper. his friends at rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he would still have to finish his days abroad. atticus, in his way to epirus, visits him at dyrrachium, and he is sure that atticus would not have left rome but that the affair was hopeless. the reader of the correspondence is certainly led to the belief that atticus must have been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that atticus would not have been patient had not cicero been affectionate and true. the consuls for the new year were lentulus and metellus nepos. the former was cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned his enmity. clodius was no longer tribune, and pompey had been brought to yield. the senate were all but unanimous. but there was still life in clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after month, while cicero still lingered at dyrrachium, waiting till a bill should have been passed by the people. pompey, who was never whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people would be necessary. the bill at last was voted, on the 14th of august, and cicero, who knew well what was being done at rome, passed over from dyrrachium to brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four months absent from rome. during the year b.c. 57, up to the time of his return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us--two very short notes to atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come over on the authority of a decree of the senate, without waiting for a law. in the second he falls again into despair, declaring that everything is over. in the third he asks metellus for his aid, telling the consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked will no longer be living to receive it. metellus did give the aid very cordially. it has been remarked that cicero did nothing for literature during his banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. it should, however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. as to his essays, including what we call his philosophy and his rhetoric, they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. he translates and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and illustrations of those who have gone before him. he was a man who rarely worked without the use of a library. when i think how impossible it would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of cicero's life without a crowd of books within reach of my hand, i can easily understand why cicero was silent at thessalonica and dyrrachium. it has been remarked also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with the style of his happier days." i will not for a moment put my judgment in such a matter in opposition to that of mr. tyrrell--but i should myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of cicero's letters varies constantly, being very different when used to atticus, or to his brother, or to lighter friends such as poetus and trebatius; and very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his letters to decimus brutus, cassius brutus, and plancus. to be correct in familiar letters is not to charm. a studied negligence is needed to make such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer. his sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. i have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief. appendices to volume i. appendix a. (_see_ ch. ii., note [39]) _the battle of the eagle and the serpent._ homer, iliad, lib. xii, 200: [greek: hoi rh' eti mermêrizon ephestaotes para taphrôi. ornis gar sphin epêlthe perêsemenai memaôsin, aietos upsipetês ep' aristera laon eergôn, phoinêenta drakonta pherôn onuchessi pelôron, zôon et' aspaironta; kai oupô lêtheto charmês. kopse gar auton echonta kata stêthos para deirên, idnôtheis opisô; ho d' apo ethen êke chamaze, algêsas odunêisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homilôi; autos de klanxas peteto pnoêis anemoio.] pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231: "a signal omen stopp'd the passing host, the martial fury in their wonder lost. jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; a bleeding serpent, of enormous size, his talons trussed; alive, and curling round, he stung the bird, whose throat received the wound. mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, in airy circles wings his painful way, floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries. amid the host the fallen serpent lies. they, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, and jove's portent with beating hearts behold." lord derby's iliad, book xii, 236: "for this i read the future, if indeed to us, about to cross, this sign from heaven was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd: a soaring eagle, bearing in his claws a dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue, alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home, nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey." cicero's telling of the story: "hic jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles, arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu, ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem. quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans, jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores, abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda; seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus." voltaire's translation: "tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre, blessé par un serpent élancé de la terre; il s'envole, il entraîne au séjour azuré l'ennemi tortueux dont il est entouré. le sang tombe des airs. il déchire, il dévore le reptile acharné qui le combat encore; il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs; par cent coups redoublés il venge ses douleurs. le monstre, en expirant, se débat, se replie; il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie; et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et victorieux, le rejette en fureur, et plane au haut des cieux." virgil's version, æneid, lib. xi., 751: "utque volans alte raptum quum fulva draconem fert aquila, implicuitque pedes, atque unguibus hæsit saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat, arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore, arduus insurgens. illa haud minus urget obunco luctantem rostro; simul æthera verberat alis." dryden's translation from virgil's æneid, book xi.: "so stoops the yellow eagle from on high, and bears a speckled serpent through the sky; fastening his crooked talons on the prey, the prisoner hisses through the liquid way; resists the royal hawk, and though opprest, she fights in volumes, and erects her crest. turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale, and shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail. against the victor all defence is weak. th' imperial bird still plies her with his beak: he tears her bowels, and her breast he gores, then claps his pinions, and securely soars." pitt's translation, book xi.: "as when th' imperial eagle soars on high, and bears some speckled serpent through the sky, while her sharp talons gripe the bleeding prey, in many a fold her curling volumes play, her starting brazen scales with horror rise, the sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes she writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain, who wins at ease the wide ærial plain, with her strong hooky beak the captive plies, and bears the struggling prey triumphant through the skies." shelley's version of the battle, the revolt of islam, canto i.: "for in the air do i behold indeed an eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight, and now relaxing its impetuous flight, before the ærial rock on which i stood the eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, and hung with lingering wings over the flood, and startled with its yells the wide air's solitude "a shaft of light upon its wings descended, and every golden feather gleamed therein- feather and scale inextricably blended the serpent's mailed and many-colored skin shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within by many a swollen and knotted fold, and high and far, the neck receding lithe and thin, sustained a crested head, which warily shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye. "around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling, with clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed incessantly--sometimes on high concealing its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed, drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed, and casting back its eager head, with beak and talon unremittingly assailed the wreathed serpent, who did ever seek upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak "what life, what power was kindled, and arose within the sphere of that appalling fray! for, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes, a vapor like the sea's suspended spray hung gathered; in the void air, far away, floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, where'er the eagle's talons made their way, like sparks into the darkness; as they sweep, blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep. "swift chances in that combat--many a check, and many a change--a dark and wild turmoil; sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, until the eagle, faint with pain and toil, remitted his strong flight, and near the sea languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil his adversary, who then reared on high his red and burning crest, radiant with victory. "then on the white edge of the bursting surge, where they had sunk together, would the snake relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge the wind with his wild writhings; for, to break that chain of torment, the vast bird would shake the strength of his unconquerable wings as in despair, and with his sinewy neck dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings, then soar--as swift as smoke from a volcano springs. "wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength, thus long, but unprevailing--the event of that portentous fight appeared at length. until the lamp of day was almost spent it had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, hung high that mighty serpent, and at last fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, with clang of wings and scream, the eagle past, heavily borne away on the exhausted blast." i have repudiated the adverse criticism on cicero's poetry which has been attributed to juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of renown as a classic. in the treatise de oratoribus, attributed to tacitus, and generally published with his works by him--a treatise commenced, probably, in the last year of vespasian's reign, and completed only in that of domitian--cicero as a poet is spoken of with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his recognized desert. "for cæsar," he says, "and brutus made verses, and sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than cicero, but with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that they had done so." this must be taken for what it is worth. the treatise, let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is charming in language and feeling. it is a dialogue after the manner of cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the subjects in hand. but it is, no doubt, the case that those two unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in rome when there was a party anxious to put down cicero. appendix b. (_see_ ch. iv., note [84]) from the brutus--ca. xcii., xciii. "there were at that time two orators, cotta and hortensius, who towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. the first spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily, expressing his ideas in appropriate language. the other was magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, brutus, when he was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions. i then resolved that hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because i felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age. i observed that when they were in the same causes, those for canuleius and for our consular dolabella, though cotta was the senior counsel, hortensius took the lead. a large gathering of men and the noise of the forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and loud. the year after my return from asia i undertook the charge of causes that were honorable, and in that year i was seeking to be quæstor, cotta to be consul, and hortensius to be prætor. then for a year i served as quæstor in sicily. cotta, after his consulship, went as governor into gaul, and then hortensius was, and was considered to be, first at the bar. when i had been back from sicily twelve months i began to find that whatever there was within me had come to such perfection as it might attain. i feel that i am speaking too much of myself, but it is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or my eloquence--which is far from my thoughts--but that you may see how great was my toil and my industry. then, when i had been employed for nearly five years in many cases, and was accounted a leading advocate, i specially concerned myself in conducting the great cause on behalf of sicily--the trial of verres--when i and hortensius were ædile and consul designate. "but as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a mere catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us see what there was in hortensius that we must blame. when he was out of his consulship, seeing that among past consuls there was no one on a par with him, and thinking but little of those who were below consular rank, he became idle in his work to which from boyhood he had devoted himself, and chose to live in the midst of his wealth, as he thought a happier life--certainly an easier one. the first two or three years took off something from him. as the gradual decay of a picture will be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at large, so was it with his decay. from day to day he became more and more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. but for myself i never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. passing over many things in the year after i was ædile, i will come to that in which i was elected first prætor, to the great delight of the public generally; for i had gained the good-will of men, partly by my attention to the causes which i undertook, but specially by a certain new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which i spoke." cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter, to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. it is easy for us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for which he had been celebrated, is of value. appendix c. (_see_ ch. vi., note [117]) there was still prevailing in rome at this time a strong feeling that a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. we are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its stability gone the existence of a verres is proof that it was so; but still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. we know how conquering rome caught the taste for them from conquered greece. "græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti latio." [286] cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge of art. two years afterward, in a letter to atticus, giving him instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not without a feeling of shame. "nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--"though you will help me, others i know will blame me." the same feeling is expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by horace when he declares, as cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies: "gems, marbles, ivory, tuscan statuettes, pictures, gold plate, gætulian coverlets, there are who have not. one there is, i trow, who cares not greatly if he has or no."[288] many years afterward, in the time of tiberius, velleius paterculus says the same when he is telling how ignorant mummius was of sculpture, who, when he had taken corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to replace them. "you will not doubt, however," the historian says, "that it would have been better for the republic to remain ignorant of these corinthian gems than to understand them as well as it does now. that rudeness befitted the public honor better than our present taste."[289] cicero understood well enough, with one side of his intelligence, that as the longing for these things grew in the minds of rich men, as the leading romans of the day became devoted to luxury rather than to work, the ground on which the republic stood must be sapped. a marcellus or a scipio had taken glory in ornamenting the city. a verres or even an hortensius--even a cicero--was desirous of beautiful things for his own house. but still, with the other side of his intelligence, he saw that a perfect citizen might appreciate art, and yet do his duty, might appreciate art, and yet save his country. what he did not see was, that the temptations of luxury, though compatible with virtue, are antagonistic to it. the camel may be made to go through the eye of the needle--but it is difficult. appendix d. (_see_ ch. vii., note [144]) pro lege manilia--ca. x., xvi. "utinam, quirites, virorum fortium, atque innocentium copiam tantam haberetis, ut hæc vobis deliberatio difficilis esset, quemnam potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello præficiendum putaretis! nunc vero cum sit unus cn. pompeius, qui non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc sunt, gloriam, sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; quæ res est, quæ cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset? ego enim sic existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse oportere, scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem. quis igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut esse debuit? qui e ludo, atque pueritiæ disciplina, bello maximo atque acerrimis hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militiæ disciplinam profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi imperatoris? ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui sæpius cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit? plura bella gessit, quam cæteri legerunt? plures provincias confecit, quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei militaris non alienis præceptis, sed suis imperiis; non offensionibus belli, sed victoriis; non stipendiis, sed triumphis est erudita? quod denique genus belli esse potest, in quo illum non exercuerit fortuna reipublicæ? civile; africanum; transalpinum; hispaniense; mistum ex civitatibus atque ex bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale bellum, varia et diversa genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum gesta ab hoc uno, sed etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in usu militari positam, quæ hojus viri scientiam fugere posset. * * * * * "quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut negligi non possit; ita magnum, ut accuratissime sit administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem præficere possitis, in quo sit eximia belli scientia, singularis virtus, clarissima auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, quirites, quin hoc tantum boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum est, in rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?" * * * * * "i could wish, quirites, that there was open to you so large a choice of men capable at the same time, and honest, that you might find a difficulty in deciding who might best be selected for command in a war so momentous as this. but now when pompey alone has surpassed in achievements not only those who live, but all of whom we have read in history, what is there to make any one hesitate in the matter? in my opinion there are four qualities to be desired in a general--military knowledge, valor, authority, and fortune. but whoever was or was ever wanted to be more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school and from the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline of his father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies were strong against us? in his earliest youth he served under our greatest general. as years went on he was himself in command over a large army. he has been more frequent in fighting than others in quarrelling. few have read of so many battles as he has fought. he has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage. he learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own practice; not from reverses, but from victories. he does not count his campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. what nature of warfare is there in which the republic has not used his services? think of our civil war[290]--of our african war[291]--of our war on the other side of the alps[292]--of our spanish wars[293]--of our servile war[294]--which was carried on by the energies of so many mighty people--and this maritime war.[295] how many enemies had we, how various were our contests! they were all not only carried through by this one man, but brought to an end so gloriously as to show that there is nothing in the practice of warfare which has escaped his knowledge. * * * * * "seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be neglected; that its importance demands the utmost care in its administration; that it requires a general in whom should be found sure military science, manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and pre-eminent good fortune--do you doubt, quirites, but that you should use the great blessing which the gods have given you for the preservation and glory of the republic?" * * * * * on reading, however, the piece over again, i almost doubt whether there be any passages in it which should be selected as superior to others. appendix e. (_see_ ch. xi., note [235]) _lucan, liber i._ "o male concordes, nimiaque cupidine cæci, quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere in medio." "temporis angusti mansit concordia discors, paxque fuit non sponte ducum. nam sola futuri crassus erat belli medius mora. qualiter undas qui secat, et geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos, nec patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat, ionium ægæo frangat mare. sic, ubi sæva arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere crassus assyrias latio maculavit sanguine carras." "dividitur ferro regnum; populique potentis, quæ mare, quæ terras, quæ totum possidet orbem, non cepit fortuna duos." "tu nova ne veteres obscurent acta triumphos, et victis cedat piratica laurea gallis, magne, times; te jam series, ususque laborum erigit, impatiensque loci fortuna secundi. nec quemquam jam ferre potest cæsarve priorem, pompeiusve parem. quis justius induit arma, scire nefas; magno se judice quisque tuetur, victrix causa deis placuit sed victa, catoni.[296] nec coiere pares; alter vergentibus annis in senium, longoque togæ tranquillior usu dedidicit jam pace ducem; famæque petitor multa dare in vulgas; totus popularibus auris impelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri; nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunæ. stat magni nominis umbra." "sed non in cæsare tantum nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus stare loco; solusque pudor non vincere bello. acer et indomitus; quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, ferre manum, et nunquam te merando parcere ferro; successus urgere suos; instare favori numinis."--lucan, lib. i. * * * * * "o men so ill-fitted to agree, o men blind with greed, of what service can it be that you should join your powers, and possess the world between you?" "for a short time the ill-sorted compact lasted, and there was a peace which each of them abhorred. crassus alone stood between the others, hindering for a while the coming war--as an isthmus separates two waters and forbids sea to meet sea. if the morsel of land gives way, the ionian waves and the ægean dash themselves in foam against each other. so was it with the arms of the two chiefs when crassus fell, and drenched the assyrian carræ with roman blood." "then the possession of the empire was put to the arbitration of the sword. the fortunes of a people which possessed sea and earth and the whole world, were not sufficient for two men." "you, magnus, you, pompeius, fear lest newer deeds than yours should make dull your old triumphs, and the scattering of the pirates should be as nothing to the conquering of gaul. the practice of many wars has so exalted you, o cæsar, that you cannot put up with a second place. cæsar will endure no superior; but pompey will have no equal. whose cause was the better the poet dares not inquire! each will have his own advocate in history. on the side of the conqueror the gods ranged themselves. cato has chosen to follow the conquered. "but surely the men were not equal. the one in declining years, who had already changed his arms for the garb of peace, had unlearned the general in the statesman--had become wont to talk to the people, to devote himself to harangues, and to love the applause of his own theatre. he has not cared to renew his strength, trusting to his old fortune. there remains of him but the shadow of his great name." "the name of cæsar does not loom so large; nor is his character as a general so high. but there is a spirit which can content itself with no achievements; there is but one feeling of shame--that of not conquering; a man determined, not to be controlled, taking his arms wherever lust of conquest or anger may call him; a man never sparing the sword, creating all things from his own good-fortune trusting always the favors of the gods." [1] froude's cæsar, p. 444. [2] ibid., p. 428. [3] ad att., lib. xiii., 28. [4] ad att., lib. ix., 10. [5] froude, p. 365. [6] ad att., lib. ii., 5: "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possum." [7] the cincian law, of which i shall have to speak again, forbade roman advocates to take any payment for their services. cicero expressly declares that he has always obeyed that law. he accused others of disobeying it, as, for instance, hortensius. but no contemporary has accused him. mr. collins refers to some books which had been given to cicero by his friend p[oe]tus. they are mentioned in a letter to atticus, lib. i., 20; and cicero, joking, says that he has consulted cincius--perhaps some descendant of him who made the law 145 years before--as to the legality of accepting the present. but we have no reason for supposing that he had ever acted as an advocate for p[oe]tus. [8] virgil, æneid, i., 150: "ac, veluti magno in populo quum sæpe coorta est seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus; jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat: tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant; iste regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet." [9] the author is saying that a history from cicero would have been invaluable, and the words are "interitu ejus utrum respublica an historia magis doleat." [10] quintilian tells us this, lib. ii., c. 5. the passage of livy is not extant. the commentators suppose it to have been taken from a letter to his son. [11] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., c. 34. [12] valerius maximus, lib. iv., c. 2; 4. [13] pliny, hist. nat., lib. vii., xxxi., 30. [14] martial, lib. xiv., 188. [15] lucan, lib. vii., 62: "cunctorum voces romani maximus auctor tullius eloquii, cujus sub jure togaque pacificas sævus tremuit catilina secures, pertulit iratus bellis, cum rostra forumque optaret passus tam longa silentia miles addidit invalidæ robur facundia causæ." [16] tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx. [17] juvenal, viii., 243. [18] demosthenes and cicero compared. [19] quintilian, xii., 1. [20] "repudiatus vigintiviratus." he refused a position of official value rendered vacant by the death of one cosconius. see letters to atticus, 2,19. [21] florus, lib. iv., 1. in a letter from essex to foulke greville, the writing of which has been attributed to bacon by mr. spedding, florus is said simply to have epitomized livy (life, vol. ii., p. 23). in this i think that bacon has shorn him of his honors. [22] florus, lib. iv., 1. [23] sallust, catilinaria, xxiii. [24] i will add the concluding passage from the pseudo declamation, in order that the reader may see the nature of the words which were put into sallust's mouth: "quos tyrannos appellabas, eorum nunc potentiæ faves; qui tibi ante optumates videbantur, eosdem nunc dementes ac furiosos vocas; vatinii caussam agis, de sextio male existumas; bibulum petulantissumis verbis lædis, laudas cæsarem; quem maxume odisti, ei maxume obsequeris. aliud stans, aliud sedens, de republica sentis; his maledicis, illos odisti; levissume transfuga, neque in hac, neque illa parte fidem habes." hence dio cassius declared that cicero had been called a turncoat. [greek: kai automalos ônomazeto.] [25] dio cassius, lib. xlvi., 18: [greek: pros hên kai autên toiautas epistolas grapheis hoias an grapseien anêr skôptolês athuroglôrros ... kai proseti kai to stoma autou diaballein epecheirêse tosautê aselgeia kai akatharsia para panta ton bion chrômenos hôste mêde tôn sungenestatôn apechesthai, alla tên te gunaika proagôgeuein kai tên thugatera moicheuein.] [26] as it happens, de quincey specially calls cicero a man of conscience. "cicero is one of the very few pagan statesmen who can be described as a thoroughly conscientious man," he says. the purport of his illogical essay on cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile to the man. it is chiefly worth reading on account of the amusing virulence with which middleton, the biographer, is attacked. [27] quintilian, lib. ii., c. 5. [28] de finibus, lib. v., ca. xxii.: "nemo est igitur, qui non hanc affectionem animi probet atque laudet." [29] de rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius." tusc. quest., lib. i., ca. xxx.: "vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus." [30] de rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "certum esse in c[oe]lo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur." [31] hor., lib. i., ode xxii., "non rura quæ; liris quieta mordet aqua taciturnus amnis." [32] such was the presumed condition of things at rome. by the passing of a special law a plebeian might, and occasionally did, become patrician. the patricians had so nearly died out in the time of julius cæsar that he introduced fifty new families by the lex cassia. [33] de orat., lib. ii., ca. 1. [34] brutus, ca. lxxxix. [35] it should be remembered that in latin literature it was the recognized practice of authors to borrow wholesale from the greek, and that no charge of plagiarism attended such borrowing. virgil, in taking thoughts and language from homer, was simply supposed to have shown his judgment in accommodating greek delights to roman ears and roman intellects. the idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and has grown up with personal claims for originality and with copyright. shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he took his plots, because it was unnecessary. now, if a writer borrow a tale from the french, it is held that he ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even pay for it. [36] juvenal, sat. x., 122, "o fortunatam natam me consule romam! antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic omnia dixisset." [37] de leg., lib. i., ca. 1. [38] life and times of henry lord brougham, written by himself, vol. i., p. 58. [39] i give the nine versions to which i allude in an appendix a, at the end of this volume, so that those curious in such matters may compare the words in which the same picture has been drawn by various hands. [40] pro archia, ca. vii. [41] brutus, ca. xc. [42] tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx. [43] quintilian, lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the same time as this essayist, tells us of these three instances of early oratory, not, however, specifying the exact age in either case. he also reminds us that demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that augustus at the age of twelve made a public harangue in honor of his grandmother. [44] brutus, ca. xc. [45] brutus, xci. [46] quintilian, lib. xii., vi.: "quum jam clarum meruisset inter patronos, qui tum erant, nomen, in asiam navigavit, seque et aliis sine dubio eloquentiæ ac sapientiæ magistris, sed præcipue tamen apollonio moloni, quem romæ quoque audierat, rhodi rursus formandum ac velut recognendum dedit." [47] brutus, xci. [48] the total correspondence contains 817 letters, of which 52 were written to cicero, 396 were written by cicero to atticus, and 369 by cicero to his friends in general. we have no letters from atticus to cicero. [49] quintilian, lib. x., ca. 1. [50] clemens of alexandria, in his exhortation to the gentiles, is very severe upon the iniquities of these rites. "all evil be to him," he says, "who brought them into fashion, whether it was dardanus, or eetion the thracian, or midas the phrygian." the old story which he repeats as to ceres and proserpine may have been true, but he was altogether ignorant of the changes which the common-sense of centuries had produced. [51] de legibus, lib. ii., c. xiv. [52] it was then that the foreign empire commenced, in ruling which the simplicity and truth of purpose and patriotism of the republic were lost. [53] the reverses of fortune to which marius was subjected, how he was buried up to his neck in the mud, hiding in the marshes of minturnæ, how he would have been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his eyes; how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among the ruins of carthage--all which things happened to him while he was running from the partisans of sulla--are among the picturesque episodes of history. there is a tragedy called the _wounds of civil war_, written by lodge, who was born some eight years before shakspeare, in which the story of marius is told with some exquisite poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions. the gaul who is hired to kill marius, but is frightened by his eyes, talks bad french mingled with bad english, and calls on jesus in his horror! [54] brutus, ca. xc. [55] florus tells us that there were 2000 senators and knights, but that any one was allowed to kill just whom he would. "quis autem illos potest computare quos in urbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib. iii., ca. 21). [56] about £487 10_s._ in smith's dictionary of greek and roman antiquities the attic talent is given as being worth £243 15_s._ mommsen quotes the price as 12,000 denarii, which would amount to about the same sum. [57] suetonius speaks of his death. florus mentions the proscriptions and abdication. velleius paterculus is eloquent in describing the horrors of the massacres and confiscation. dio cassius refers again and again to the sullan cruelty. but none of them give a reason for the abdication of sulla. [58] vol. iii., p. 386. i quote from mr. dickson's translation, as i do not read german. [59] in defending roscius amerinus, while sulla was still in power, he speaks of the sullan massacres as "pugna cannensis," a slaughter as foul, as disgraceful, as bloody as had been the defeat at cannæ. [60] mommsen, vol. iii., p. 385. [61] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxi.: "quod antea causam publicam nullam dixerim." he says also in the brutus, ca. xc., "itaque prima causa publica, pro sex. roscio dicta." by "publica causa" he means a criminal accusation in distinction from a civil action. [62] pro publio quintio, ca. i.: "quod mihi consuevit in ceteris causis esse adjumento, id quoque in hac causa deficit." [63] pro publio quintio, ca. xxi.: "nolo eam rem commemorando renovare, cujus omnino rei memoriam omnem tolli funditus ac deleri arbitror oportere." [64] pro roscio, ca. xlix. cicero says of him that he would be sure to suppose that anything would have been done according to law of which he should be told that it was done by sulla's order. "putat homo imperitus morum, agricola et rusticus, ista omnia, quæ vos per sullam gesta esse dicitis, more, lege, jure gentium facta." [65] pro sexto roscio, ca. 1. [66] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxix.: "ejusmodi tempus erat, inquit, ut homines vulgo impune occiderentur." [67] pro t. a. milone, ca. xxi.: "cur igitur cos manumisit? metuebat scilicit ne indicarent; ne dolorem perferre non possent." [68] pro t. a. milone, ca. xxii.: "heus tu, ruscio, verbi gratia, cave sis mentiaris. clodius insidias fecit miloni? fecit. certa crux. nullas fecit. sperata libertas." [69] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxviii. [70] ibid. [71] ibid., ca. xxxi. [72] pro sexto roscio, ca. xlv. [73] pro sexto roscio, ca. xlvi. the whole picture of chrysogonus, of his house, of his luxuries, and his vanity, is too long for quotation, but is worth referring to by those who wish to see how bold and how brilliant cicero could be. [74] they put in tablets of wax, on which they recorded their judgment by inscribing letter, c, a, or nl--condemno, absolvo, or non liquet--intending to show that the means of coming to a decision did not seem to be sufficient. [75] quintilian tells us, lib. x., ca. vii., that cicero's speeches as they had come to his day had been abridged--by which he probably means only arranged--by tiro, his slave and secretary and friend. "nam ciceronis ad præsens modo tempus aptatos libertus tiro contraxit." [76] quintilian, lib. xi., ca. iii.: "nam et toga, et calecus, et capillus, tam nimia cura, quam negligentia, sunt reprehendenda." * * * "sinistrum brachium eo usque allevandum est, ut quasi normalem illum angulum faciat." quint., lib. xii., ca. x., "ne hirta toga sit;" don't let the toga be rumpled; "non serica:" the silk here interdicted was the silk of effeminacy, not that silk of authority of which our barristers are proud. "ne intonsum caput; non in gradus atque annulos comptum." it would take too much space were i to give here all the lessons taught by this professor of deportment as to the wearing of the toga. [77] a doubt has been raised whether he was not married when he went to greece, as otherwise his daughter would seem to have become a wife earlier than is probable. the date, however, has been generally given as it is stated here. [78] tacitus, annal., xi., 5, says, "qua cavetur antiquitus, ne quis, ob causam orandam, pecuniam donumve accipiat." [79] de off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "sordidi etiam putandi, qui mercantur a mercatoribus, quod statim vendant. nihil enim proficiunt, nisi admodum mentiantur." [80] de off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "primum improbantur ii quæstus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum ut f[oe]neratorum." the portitores were inferior collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports, who are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their dealings with the public. [81] philipp., 11-16. [82] let any who doubt this statement refer to the fate of the inhabitants of alesia and uxellodunum. cæsar did not slay or torture for the sake of cruelty, but was never deterred by humanity when expediency seemed to him to require victims. men and women, old and young, many or few, they were sacrificed without remorse if his purpose required it. [83] pro pub. quintio, ca. xxv. [84] see appendix b, brutus, ca. xcii., xciii. [85] brutus, ca. xciii.: "animos hominum ad me dicendi novitate converteram." [86] it must be remembered that this advice was actually given when cicero subsequently became a candidate for the consulship, but it is mentioned here as showing the manner in which were sought the great offices of state. [87] cicero speaks of sicily as divided into two provinces, "quæstores utriusque provinciæ." there was, however, but one prætor or proconsul. but the island had been taken by the romans at two different times. lilybæum and the west was obtained from the carthaginians at the end of the first punic war, whereas, syracuse was conquered by marcellus and occupied during the second punic war. [88] tacitus, ann., lib. xi., ca. xxii.: "post, lege sullæ, viginti creati supplendo senatui, cui judicia tradiderat." [89] de legibus, iii., xii. [90] pro p. sexto, lxv. [91] pro cluentio, lvi. [92] contra verrem, act. iv., ca. xi.: "ecquæ civitas est, non modo in provinciis nostris, verum etiam in ultimis nationibus, aut tam potens, aut tam libera, aut etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex denique ecquis est, qui senatorem populi romani tecto ac domo non invitet?" [93] contra verrem, act. i., ca. xiii.: "omnia non modo commemorabuntur, sed etiam, expositis certis rebus, agentur, quæ inter decem annos, posteaquam judicia ad senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis nefarie flagitioseque facta sunt." pro cluentio, lvi.: "locus, auctoritas, domi splendor, apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia, toga prætexta, sella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus, imperia, provincia." [94] contra verrem, act. i., ca. xviii.: "quadringenties sestertium ex sicilia contra leges abstulisse." in smith's dictionary of grecian and roman antiquities we are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in our money to £8 17_s._ 1_d._ of the estimated amount of this plunder we shall have to speak again. [95] pro plancio, xxvi. [96] pro plancio, xxvi. [97] m. du rozoir was a french critic, and was joined with m. guéroult and m. de guerle in translating and annotating the orations of cicero for m. panckoucke's edition of the latin classics. [98] in verrem actio secunda, lib. i., vii. [99] plutarch says that cæcilius was an emancipated slave, and a jew, which could not have been true, as he was a roman senator. [100] de oratore, lib. ii., c. xlix. the feeling is beautifully expressed in the words put into the mouth of antony in the discussion on the charms and attributes of eloquence: "qui mihi in liberum loco more majorum esse deberet." [101] in q. cæc. divinatio, ca. ii. [102] divinatio, ca. iii. [103] ibid., ca. vi. [104] ibid., ca. viii. [105] divinatio, ca. ix. [106] ibid., ca. xi. [107] ibid. [108] ibid., ca. xii. [109] actio secunda, lib. ii., xl. he is speaking of sthenius, and the illegality of certain proceedings on the part of verres against him. "if an accused man could be condemned in the absence of the accuser, do you think that i would have gone in a little boat from vibo to velia, among all the dangers prepared for me by your fugitive slaves and pirates, when i had to hurry at the peril of my life, knowing that you would escape if i were not present to the day?" [110] actio secunda, l. xxi. [111] in verrem, actio prima, xvi. [112] in verrem, actio prima, xvi. [113] we are to understand that the purchaser at the auction having named the sum for which he would do the work, the estate of the minor, who was responsible for the condition of the temple, was saddled with that amount. [114] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., vii. [115] ibid., ix. [116] ibid., lib. ii., xiv. [117] see appendix c. [118] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., ca. xxxvi. [119] ibid. "una nox intercesserat, quam iste dorotheum sic diligebat, ut diceres, omnia inter eos esse communia."--wife and all. "iste" always means verres in these narratives. [120] these were burning political questions of the moment. it was as though an advocate of our days should desire some disgraced member of parliament to go down to the house and assist the government in protecting turkey in asia and invading zululand. [121] "sit in ejus exercitu signifer." the "ejus" was hortensius, the coming consul, too whom cicero intended to be considered as pointing. for the passage, see in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., xxxi. [122] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iii., 11. [123] "exegi monumentum ære perennius," said horace, gloriously. "sum pius æneas" is virgil's expression, put into the mouth of his hero. "ipse menaleas," said virgil himself. homer and sophocles introduce their heroes with self-sounded trumpetings: [greek: eim' odysseus daertiadês hos pasi doloisi anthrôpoisi melô, kai meu kleos ouranon ikei.] odyssey, book ix., 19 and 20. [greek: ho pasi kleinos oidipous kaloumenos.] [oe]dipus tyrannus, 8. [124] pro plancio, xxvi.: "frumenti in summa caritate maximum numerum miseram; negotiatoribus comis, mercatoribus justus, municipibus liberalis, sociis abstinens, omnibus eram visus in omni officio diligentissimus." [125] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iii., ix.: "is erit apronius ille; qui, ut ipse non solum vita, sed etiam corpore atque ore significat, immensa aliqua vorago est ac gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. hunc in omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in impuris conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque habebat morum similitudo conjunctionem atque concordiam, ut apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac barbarus, isti uni commodus ac disertus videretur; ut quem omnes odissent neque videre vellent sine eo iste esse non posset; ut quum alii ne conviviis quidem iisdem quibus apronius, hic iisdem etiam poculis uteretur, postremo, ut, odor apronii teterrimus oris et corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne bestiæ quidem ferre possent, uni isti suavis et jucundus videretur. ille erat in tribunali proximus; in cubiculo socius; in convivio dominus, ac tum maxime, quum, accubante prætextato prætoris filio, in convivio saltare nudus c[oe]perat." [126] a great deal is said of the _cybea_ in this and the last speech. the money expended on it was passed through the accounts as though the ship had been built for the defence of the island from pirates, but it was intended solely for the depository of the governor's plunder. [127] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iv., vii. [128] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iv., lvii. [129] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., lxvi.: "facinus est vinciri civem romanum; scelus verberari; prope parricidium necari; quid dicam in crucem tollere!" [130] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., lxv. [131] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., xx.: "onere suo plane captam atque depressam." [132] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., xxvi. [133] ibid., xxviii. [134] pro fonteio, xiii. [135] de oratore, lib. ii., lix.: "perspicitis, hoc genus quam sit facetum, quam elegans, quam oratorium, sive habeas vere, quod narrare possis, quod tamen, est mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas." either invent a story, or if you have an old one, add on something so as to make it really funny. is there a parson, a bishop, an archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about him, does not do the same? [136] cicero, pro cluentio, l., explains very clearly his own idea as to his own speeches as an advocate, and may be accepted, perhaps, as explaining the ideas of barristers of to-day. "he errs," he says, "who thinks that he gets my own opinions in speeches made in law courts; such speeches are what the special cases require, and are not to be taken as coming from the advocate as his own." [137] when the question is discussed, we are forced rather to wonder how many of the great historical doings of the time are not mentioned, or are mentioned very slightly, in cicero's letters. of pompey's treatment of the pirates, and of his battling in the east, little or nothing is said, nothing of cæsar's doings in spain. mention is made of cæsar's great operations in gaul only in reference to the lieutenancy of cicero's brother quintus, and to the employment of his young friend trebatius. nothing is said of the manner of cæsar's coming into rome after passing the rubicon; nothing of the manner of fighting at dyrrachium and pharsalia; very little of the death of pompey; nothing of cæsar's delay in egypt. the letters deal with cicero's personal doings and thoughts, and with the politics of rome as a city. the passage to which allusion is made occurs in the life of atticus, ca. xvi: "quæ qui legat non multum desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum." [138] jean george greefe was a german, who spent his life as a professor at leyden, and, among other classical labors, arranged and edited the letters of cicero. he died in 1703. [139] it must be explained, however, that continued research and increased knowledge have caused the order of the letters, and the dates assigned to them, to be altered from time to time; and, though much has been done to achieve accuracy, more remains to be done. in my references to the letters i at first gave them, both to the arrangement made by grævius and to the numbers assigned in the edition i am using; but i have found that the numbers would only mislead, as no numbering has been yet adopted as fixed. arbitrary and even fantastic as is the arrangement of grævius, it is better to confine myself to that because it has been acknowledged, and will enable my readers to find the letters if they wish to do so. should mr. tyrrell continue and complete his edition of the correspondence, he will go far to achieve the desired accuracy. a second volume has appeared since this work of mine has been in the press. [140] the peculiarities of cicero's character are nowhere so clearly legible as in his dealings with and words about his daughter. there is an effusion of love, and then of sorrow when she dies, which is un-roman, almost feminine, but very touching. [141] i annex a passage from our well known english translation: "the power of the pirates had its foundation in cilicia. their progress was the more dangerous, because at first it had been but little noticed. in the mithridatic war they assumed new confidence and courage, on account of some services which they had rendered the king. after this, the romans being engaged in civil war at the very gates of their capital, the sea was left unguarded, and the pirates by degrees attempted higher things--not only attacking ships, but islands and maritime towns. many persons distinguished for their wealth, birth and capacity embarked with them, and assisted in their depredations, as if their employment had been worthy the ambition of men of honor. they had in various places arsenals, ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. their fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength, in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany. music resounded, and drunken revels were exhibited on every coast. here generals were made prisoners; and there the cities which the pirates had seized upon were paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the roman power. the number of their galleys amounted to a thousand, and the cities taken to four hundred." the passage is taken from the life of pompey. [142] florus, lib. iii., 6: "an felicitatem, quod ne una cuidam navis amissa est; an vero perpetuitatem, quod amplius piratæ non fuerunt." [143] of the singular trust placed in pompey there are very many proofs in the history of rome at this period, but none, perhaps, clearer than the exception made in this favor in the wording of laws. in the agrarian law proposed by the tribune rullus, and opposed by cicero when he was consul, there is a clause commanding all generals under the republic to account for the spoils taken by them in war. but there is a special exemption in favor of pompey. "pompeius exceptus esto." it is as though no tribune dared to propose a law affecting pompey. [144] see appendix d. [145] asconius pedianus was a grammarian who lived in the reign of tiberius, and whose commentaries on cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are very useful in explaining to us the meaning of the orator. we have his notes on these two cornelian orations and some others, especially on that of pro milone. there are also commentaries on some of the verrine orations--not by asconius, but from the pen of some writer now called pseudo-asconius, having been long supposed to have come from asconius. they, too, go far to elucidate much which would otherwise be dark to us. [146] quint., lib. viii., 3. the critic is explaining the effect of ornament in oratory--of that beauty of language which with the people has more effect than argument--and he breaks forth himself into perhaps the most eloquent passage in the whole institute: "cicero, in pleading for cornelius, fought with arms which were as splendid as they were strong. it was not simply by putting the facts before the judges, by talking usefully, in good language and clearly, that he succeeded in forcing the roman people to acknowledge by their voices and by their hands their admiration; it was the grandeur of his words, their magnificence, their beauty, their dignity, which produced that outburst." [147] orator., lxvii. and lxx. [148] de lege agraria, ii., 2: "meis comitiis non tabellam, vindicem tacitæ libertatis, sed vocem vivam præ vobis, indicem vestrarum erga me voluntatum ac studiorum tulistis. itaque me * * * una voce universus populus romanus consulem declaravit." [149] sall., conj. catilinaria, xxi.: "petere consulatum c. antonium, quem sibi collegam fore speraret, hominem et familiarem, et omnibus necessitudinibus circumventum." sallust would no doubt have put anything into catiline's mouth which would suit his own purpose; but it was necessary for his purpose that he should confine himself to credibilities. [150] cicero himself tells us that many short-hand writers were sent by him--"plures librarii," as he calls them--to take down the words of the agrarian law which rullus proposed. de lege agra., ii., 5. pliny, quintilian, and martial speak of these men as notarii. martial explains the nature of their business: "currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis; nondum lingua suum, dextra peregit opus."--xiv., 208. [151]ad att., ii., 1. "oratiunculas," he calls them. it would seem here that he pretends to have preserved these speeches only at the request of some admiring young friends. demosthenes, of course, was the "fellow-citizen," so called in badinage, because atticus, deserting rome, lived much at athens. [152] this speech, which has been lost, was addressed to the people with the view of reconciling them to a law in accordance with which the equites were entitled to special seats in the theatre. it was altogether successful. [153] this, which is extant, was spoken in defence of an old man who was accused of a political homicide thirty-seven years before--of having killed, that is, saturninus the tribune. cicero was unsuccessful, but rabirius was saved by the common subterfuge of an interposition of omens. there are some very fine passages in this oration. [154] this has been lost. cicero, though he acknowledged the iniquity of sulla's proscriptions, showed that their effects could not now be reversed without further revolutions. he gained his point on this occasion. [155] this has been lost. cicero, in accordance with the practice of the time, was entitled to the government of a province when ceasing to be consul. the rich province of macedonia fell to him by lot, but he made it over to his colleague antony, thus purchasing, if not antony's co-operation, at any rate his quiescence, in regard to catiline. he also made over the province of gaul, which then fell to his lot, to metellus, not wishing to leave the city. all this had to be explained to the people. [156] it will be seen that he also defended rabirius in his consular year, but had thought fit to include that among his consular speeches. some doubt has been thrown, especially by mr. tyrrell, on the genuineness of cicero's letter giving the list of his "oratiunculas consulares," because the speeches pro murena and pro pisone are omitted, and as containing some "rather un-ciceronian expressions." my respect for mr. tyrrell's scholarship and judgment is so great that i hardly dare to express an opinion contrary to his; but i should be sorry to exclude a letter so ciceronian in its feeling. and if we are to have liberty to exclude without evidence, where are we to stop? [157] corn. nepo., epaminondas, i.: "we know that with us" (romans) "music is foreign to the employments of a great man. to dance would amount to a vice. but these things among the greeks are not only pleasant but praiseworthy." [158] conj. catilinaria, xxv. [159] horace, epis. i., xvii.: "si sciret regibus uti fastidiret olus qui me notat." [160] pro murena, xxix. [161] pro murena, x. this sulpicius was afterward consul with m. marcellus, and in the days of the philippics was sent as one of a deputation to antony. he died while on the journey. he is said to have been a man of excellent character, and a thorough-going conservative. [162] pro murena, xi. [163] ibid., xi. [164] ibid., xii. [165] ibid., xiii. [166] ibid., xi. [167] pro cluentio, 1. [168] de lege agraria, ii., 5. [169] he alludes here to his own colleague antony, whom through his whole year of office he had to watch lest the second consul should join the enemies whom he fears--should support rullus or go over to catiline. with this view, choosing the lesser of the two evils, he bribes antony with the government of macedonia. [170] de lege agraria, i., 7 and 8. [171] the "jus imaginis" belonged to those whose ancestors was counted an ædile, a prætor, or a consul. the descendants of such officers were entitled to have these images, whether in bronze, or marble, or wax, carried at the funerals of their friends. [172] forty years since, marius who was also "novus homo," and also, singularly enough, from arpinum, had been made consul, but not with the glorious circumstances as now detailed by cicero. [173] de lege agraria, ii., 1, 2, and 3. [174] see introduction. [175] pliny the elder, hist. nat., lib. vii., ca. xxxi. [176] the word is "proscripsisti," "you proscribed him." for the proper understanding of this, the bearing of cicero toward antony during the whole period of the philippics must be considered. [177] catiline, by mr. beesly. fortnightly review, 1865. [178] pro murena, xxv.: "quem omnino vivum illinc exire non oportuerat." i think we must conclude from this that cicero had almost expected that his attack upon the conspirators, in his first catiline oration, would have the effect of causing him to be killed. [179] æneid, viii., 668: "te, catilina, minaci pendentem scopulo." [180] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., xxxiv. [181] juvenal, sat. ii., 27: "catilina cethegum!" could such a one as catiline answer such a one as cethegus? sat. viii., 232: "arma tamen vos nocturna et flammas domibus templisque parastis." catiline, in spite of his noble blood, had endeavored to burn the city. sat. xiv., 41: "catilinam quocunque in populo videas." it is hard to find a good man, but it is easy enough to put your hand anywhere on a catiline. [182] val maximus, lib. v., viii., 5; lib. ix., 1, 9; lib. ix., xi., 3. [183] florus, lib. iv. [184] mommsen's history of rome, book v., chap v. [185] i feel myself constrained here to allude to the treatment given to catiline by dean merivale in his little work on the two roman triumvirates. the dean's sympathies are very near akin to those of mr. beesly, but he values too highly his own historical judgment to allow it to run on all fours with mr. beesly's sympathies. "the real designs," he says, "of the infamous catiline and his associates must indeed always remain shrouded in mystery. * * * nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there really was, and that the very existence of the commonwealth was for a moment seriously imperilled." it would certainly be unreasonable to doubt it. but the dean, though he calls catiline infamous, and acknowledges the conspiracy, nevertheless give us ample proof of his sympathy with the conspirators, or rather of his strong feeling against cicero. speaking of catiline at a certain moment, he says that he "was not yet hunted down." he speaks of the "upstart cicero," and plainly shows us that his heart is with the side which had been cæsar's. whether conspiracy or no conspiracy, whether with or without wholesale murder and rapine, a single master with a strong hand was the one remedy needed for rome! the reader must understand that cicero's one object in public life was to resist that lesson. [186] asconius, "in toga candida," reports that fenestella, a writer of the time of augustus, had declared that cicero had defended catiline; but asconius gives his reasons for disbelieving the story. [187] cicero, however, declares that he has made a difference between traitors to their country and other criminals. pro p. sulla, ca. iii.: "verum etiam quædam contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum esse patriæ parricidio suspicere." further on in the same oration, ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to defend autronius because he had known autronius to be a conspirator against his country. i cannot admit the truth of the argument in which mr. forsyth defends the practice of the english bar in this respect, and in doing so presses hard upon cicero. "at rome," he says, "it was different. the advocate there was conceived to have a much wider discretion than we allow." neither in rome nor in england has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. what an english barrister may do, there was no reason that a roman advocate should not do, in regard to simple criminality. cicero himself has explained in the passage i have quoted how the roman practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. he has stated also that he knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend catiline on the score of provincial peculations. no writer has been heavy on hortensius for defending verres, but only because he took bribes from verres. [188] publius cornelius sulla, and publius autronius p[oe]tus. [189] pro p. sulla, iv. he declares that he had known nothing of the first conspiracy and gives the reason: "quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram, quod mea me ambitio et forensis labor ab omni illa cogitatione abstrahebat." [190] sallust, catilinaria, xviii. [191] livy, epitome, lib. ci. [192] suetonius, j. cæsar, ix. [193] mommsen, book v., ca. v., says of cæsar and crassus as to this period, "that this notorious action corresponds with striking exactness to the secret action which this report ascribes to them." by which he means to imply that they probably were concerned in the plot. [194] sallust tells us, catilinaria, xlix., that cicero was instigated by special enemies of cæsar to include cæsar in the accusation, but refused to mix himself up in so great a crime. crassus also was accused, but probably wrongfully. sallust declares that an attempt was made to murder cæsar as he left the senate. there was probably some quarrel and hustling, but no more. [195] sallust, catilinaria, xxxvii.: "omnino cuncta plebes, novarum rerum studio, catilinæ incepta probabat." by the words "novarum rerum studio"--by a love of revolution--we can understand the kind of popularity which sallust intended to express. [196] pro murena, xxv. [197] "darent operam consules ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat." [198] catilinaria, xxxi. [199] quintilian, lib. xii., 10: "quem tamen et suorum homines temporum incessere audebant, ut tumidiorem, et asianum, et redundantem." [200] orator., xxxvii.: "a nobis homo audacissimus catilina in senatu accusatus obmutuit." [201] 2 catilinaria, xxxi. [202] in the first of them to the senate, chap. ix., he declares this to catiline himself: "si mea voce perterritus ire in exsilium animum induxeris, quanta tempestas invidiæ nobis, si minus in præsens tempus, recenti memoria scelerum tuorum, at in posteritatem impendeat." he goes on to declare that he will endure all that, if by so doing he can save the republic. "sed est mihi tanti; dummodo ista privata sit calamitas, et a reipublicæ periculis sejungatur." [203] sallust, catilinaria, xli.: "itaque q. fabio sangæ cujus patrocinio civitas plurimum utebatur rem omnem uti cognoverant aperiunt." [204] horace, epo. xvi., 6: "novisque rebus infidelis allobrox." the unhappy savoyard has from this line been known through ages as a conspirator, false even to his fellow-conspirators. juvenal, vii., 214: "rufum qui toties ciceronem allobroga dixit." some rufus, acting as advocate, had thought to put down cicero by calling him an allobrogian. [205] the words in which this honor was conferred he himself repeats: "quod urbem incendiis, cæde cives, italiam bello liberassem"--"because i had rescued the city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and italy from war." [206] it is necessary in all oratory to read something between the lines. it is allowed to the speaker to produce effect by diminishing and exaggerating. i think we should detract something from the praises bestowed on catiline's military virtues. the bigger catiline could be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of having driven him out of the city. [207] in catilinam, iii., xi. [208] in catilinam, ibid., xii.: "ne mihi noceant vestrum est providere." [209] "prince of the senate" was an honorary title, conferred on some man of mark as a dignity--at this period on some ex-consul; it conferred no power. cicero, the consul who had convened the senate, called on the speakers as he thought fit. [210] cæsar, according to sallust, had referred to the lex porcia. cicero alludes, and makes cæsar allude, to the lex sempronia. the porcian law, as we are told by livy, was passed b.c. 299, and forbade that a roman should be scourged or put to death. the lex sempronia was introduced by c. gracchus, and enacted that the life of a citizen should not be taken without the voice of the citizens. [211] velleius paterculus, xxxvi.: "consulatui ciceronis non mediocre adjecit decus natus eo anno divus augustus." [212] in pisonem, iii.: "sine ulla dubitatione juravi rempublicam atque hanc urbem mea unius opera esse salvam." [213] dio cassius tells the same story, lib. xxxvii., ca. 38, but he adds that cicero was more hated than ever because of the oath he took: [greek: kai ho men kai ek toutou poly mallon emisêthê.] [214] it is the only letter given in the collection as having been addressed direct to pompey. in two letters written some years later to atticus, b.c. 49, lib. viii., 11, and lib. viii., 12, he sends copies of a correspondence between himself and pompey and two of the pompeian generals. [215] lib. v., 7. it is hardly necessary to explain that the younger scipio and lælius were as famous for their friendship as pylades and orestes. the "virtus scipiadæ et mitis sapientia læli" have been made famous to us all by horace. [216] these two brothers, neither of whom was remarkable for great qualities, though they were both to be consuls, were the last known of the great family of the metelli, a branch of the "gens cæcilia." among them had been many who had achieved great names for themselves in roman history, on account of the territories added to the springing roman empire by their victories. there had been a macedonicus, a numidicus, a balearicus, and a creticus. it is of the first that velleius paterculus sings the glory--lib. i., ca. xi., and the elder pliny repeats the story, hist. nat., vii., 44--that of his having been carried to the grave by four sons, of whom at the time of his death three had been consuls, one had been a prætor, two had enjoyed triumphal honors, and one had been censor. in looking through the consular list of cicero's lifetime, i find that there were no less than seven taken from the family of the metelli. these two brothers, metellus nepos and celer, again became friends to cicero; nepos, who had stopped his speech and assisted in forcing him into exile, having assisted as consul in obtaining his recall from exile. it is very difficult to follow the twistings and turnings of roman friendships at this period. [217] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. paterculus tells us how, when the architect offered to build the house so as to hide its interior from the gaze of the world, drusus desired the man so to construct it that all the world might see what he was doing. [218] it may be worth while to give a translation of the anecdote as told by aulus gellius, and to point out that the authors intention was to show what a clever fellow cicero was. cicero did defend p. sulla this year; but whence came the story of the money borrowed from sulla we do not know. "it is a trick of rhetoric craftily to confess charges made, so as not to come within the reach of the law. so that, if anything base be alleged which cannot be denied, you may turn it aside with a joke, and make it a matter of laughter rather than of disgrace, as it is written that cicero did when, with a drolling word, he made little of a charge which he could not deny. for when he was anxious to buy a house on the palatine hill, and had not the ready money, he quietly borrowed from p. sulla--who was then about to stand his trial, 'sestertium viciens'--twenty million sesterces. when that became known, before the purchase was made, and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the money from a client, then cicero, instigated by the unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that he was going to buy the house. but when he had bought it and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the price of the article against himself."--noctes atticæ, xii., 12. aulus gellius though he tells us that the story was written, does not tell us where he read it. [219] i must say this, "pace" mr. tyrrell, who, in his note on the letter to atticus, lib. i., 12, attempts to show that some bargain for such professional fee had been made. regarding mr. tyrrell as a critic always fair, and almost always satisfactory, i am sorry to have to differ from him; but it seems to me that he, too, has been carried away by the feeling that in defending a man's character it is best to give up some point. [220] i have been amused at finding a discourse, eloquent and most enthusiastic, in praise of cicero and especially of this oration, spoken by m. guéroult at the college of france in june, 1815. the worst literary faults laid to the charge of cicero, if committed by him--which m. guéroult thinks to be doubtful--had been committed even by voltaire and racine! the learned frenchman, with whom i altogether sympathize, rises to an ecstasy of violent admiration, and this at the very moment in which waterloo was being fought. but in truth the great doings of the world do not much affect individual life. we should play our whist at the clubs though the battle of dorking were being fought. [221] pro p. sulla, iv.: "scis me * * * illorum expertem temporum et sermonum fuisse; credo, quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram. * * * quis ergo intererat vestris consiliis? omnes hi, quos vides huic adesse et in primis q. hortensius." [222] ad att., lib. i., 12. [223] ad att., lib. i., 13. [224] ibid., i., 14. [225]ibid., i., 16: "vis scire quomodo minus quam soleam præliatus sum." [226] "you have bought a fine house," said clodius. "there would be more in what you say if you could accuse me of buying judges," replied cicero. "the judges would not trust you on your oath," said clodius, referring to the alibi by which he had escaped in opposition to cicero's oath. "yes," replied cicero, "twenty-five trusted me; but not one of the thirty-one would trust you without having his bribe paid beforehand." [227] ad att., i., 14: "proxime pompeium sedebam. intellexi hominem moveri." [228] ibid.: "quo modo [greek: eneperpereusamên], novo auditori pompeio." [229] mommsen, book v., chap. vi. this probably has been taken from the statement of paterculus, lib. ii., 40: "quippe plerique non sine exercitu venturum in urbem adfirmabant, et libertati publicæ statuturum arbitrio suo modum. quo magis hoc homines timuerant, eo gratior civilis tanti imperatoris reditus fuit." no doubt there was a dread among many of pompey coming back as sulla had come: not from indications to be found in the character of pompey, but because sulla had done so. [230] florus, lib. ii., xix. having described to us the siege of numantia, he goes on "hactenus populus romanus pulcher, egregius, pius, sanctus atque magnificus. reliqua seculi, ut grandia æque, ita vel magis turbida et f[oe]da." [231] we have not pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but we have horace's record of pollio's poem: motum ex metello consule civicum, bellique causas et vitia, et modos, ludumque fortunæ, gravesque principum amicitias, et arma nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus, periculosæ plenum opus aleæ, tractas, et incedis per ignes suppositos cineri doloso.--odes, lib. ii., 1. [232] the german index appeared--very much after the original work--as late as 1875. [233] mommsen, lib. v., chap. vi. i cannot admit that mommsen is strictly accurate, as cæsar had no real idea of democracy. he desired to be the head of the oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate himself with the people. [234] for the character of cæsar generally i would refer readers to suetonius, whose life of the great man is, to my thinking, more graphic than any that has been written since. for his anecdotes there is little or no evidence. his facts are not all historical. his knowledge was very much less accurate than that of modern writers who have had the benefit of research and comparison. but there was enough of history, of biography, and of tradition to enable him to form a true idea of the man. he himself as a narrator was neither specially friendly nor specially hostile. he has told what was believed at the time, and he has drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all that we have learned since. [235] by no one has the character and object of the triumvirate been so well described as by lucan, who, bombastic as he is, still manages to bring home to the reader the ideas as to persons and events which he wishes to convey. i have ventured to give in an appendix, e, the passages referred to, with such a translation in prose as i have been able to produce. it will be found at the end of this volume. [236] plutarch--crassus: [greek: kai synestêsen ek tôn triôn ischyn amachon.] [237] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., 44: "hoc igitur consule, inter eum et cn. pompeium et m. crassum inita potentiæ societas, quæ urbi orbique terrarum, nec minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis fuit." suetonius, julius cæsar, xix., "societatem cum utroque iniit." officers called triumviri were quite common, as were quinqueviri and decemviri. livy speaks of a "triumviratus"--or rather two such offices exercised by one man--ix., 46. we remember, too, that wretch whom horace gibbeted, epod. iv.: "sectus flagellis hic triumviralibus." but the word, though in common use, was not applied to this conspiracy. [238] ad att., lib. ii., 3: "is affirmabat, illum omnibus in rebus meo et pompeii consilio usurum, daturumque operam, ut cum pompeio crassum conjungeret. hic sunt hæc. conjunctio mihi summa cum pompeio; si placet etiam cum cæsare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax cum multitudine; senectulis otium. sed me [greek: katakleis] mea illa commovet, quæ est in libro iii. "interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventæ quosque adeo consul virtute, animoque petisti, hos retine, atque, auge famam laudesque bonorum." [239] homer, iliad, lib. xii., 243: [greek: eis oiônos aristos amynesthai peri patrês.] [240] middleton's life of cicero, vol. i., p. 291. [241] pro domo sua, xvi. this was an oration, as the reader will soon learn more at length, in which the orator pleaded for the restoration of his town mansion after his return from exile. it has, however, been doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made by cicero. [242] suetonius, julius cæsar, xx. [243] ad att., lib. ii., 1: "quid quæris?" says cicero. "conturbavi græcam nationem"--"i have put all greece into a flutter." [244] de divinatione, lib. i. [245] ad quin. fratrem, lib. i., 1: "non itineribus tuis perterreri homines? non sumptu exhauriri? non adventu commoveri? esse, quocumque veneris, et publice et privatim maximam lætitiam; quum urbs custodem non tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse videatur? his autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto erudivit nequaquam satis esse, ipsum hasce habere virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum diligentur, ut in hac custodia provinciæ non te unum, sed omnes ministros imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublicæ præstare videare." [246] ad quin. fratrem, lib. i., 1: "ac mihi quidem videntur huc omnia esse referenda iis qui præsunt aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio sint quam beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab initio fuisse, ut primum asiam attigisti, constante fama atque omnium sermone celebratum est. est autem non modo ejus, qui sociis et civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui mutis pecudibus præsit, eorum quibus præsit commodis utilitatique servire." [247] "hæc est una in toto imperio tuo difficultas." [248] mommsen, book v., ca. 6. [249] mommsen, vol. v., ca. vi. [250] ad att., lib. ii., 7: "atque hæc, sin velim existimes, non me abs te [greek: kata to praktikon] quærere, quod gestiat animus aliquid agere in republica. jam pridem gubernare me tædebat, etiam quum licebat." [251] ad att., lib. ii., 8: "scito curionem adolescentem venisse ad me salutatum. valde ejus sermo de publio cum tuis litteris congruebat, ipse vero mirandum in modum reges odisse superbos. peræque narrabat incensam esse juventutem, neque ferre hæc posse." the "reges superbos" were cæsar and pompey. [252] ad att., lib. ii., 5: [greek: aideomai trôas kai trôadas helkesipeplous].--il., vi., 442. "i fear what mrs. grundy would say of me," is mr. tyrrell's homely version. cicero's mind soared, i think, higher when he brought the words of hector to his service than does the ordinary reference to our old familiar critic. [253] quint., xii., 1. [254] enc. britannica on cicero. [255] ad att., lib. ii., 9. [256] ibid.: "festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu, quam putaram, orbis hic in republica est conversus." "orbis hic," this round body of three is the triumvirate. [257] we cannot but think of the threat horace made, sat., lib. ii., 1: "at ille qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo, flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe." [258] ad att., lib. ii., 11: "da ponderosam aliquam epistolam." [259] josephus, lib. xviii., ca. 5. [260] ad att., lib. ii., 16. [261] ad att., lib. ii., 18: "a cæsare valde liberaliter invitor in legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatus; atque etiam libera legatio voti causa datur." [262] de legibus, lib. iii., ca. viii.: "jam illud apertum prefecto est nihil esse turpius, quam quenquam legari nisi republica causa." [263] it may be seen from this how anxious cæsar was to secure his silence, and yet how determined not to screen him unless he could secure his silence. [264] ad quintum, lib. i., 2. [265] of this last sentence i have taken a translation given by mr. tyrrell, who has introduced a special reading of the original which the sense seems to justify. [266] macrobius, saturnalia, lib. ii., ca. i.: we are told that cicero had been called the consular buffoon. "and i," says macrobius, "if it would not be too long, could relate how by his jokes he has brought off the most guilty criminals." then he tells the story of lucius flaccus. [267] see the evidence of asconius on this point, as to which cicero's conduct has been much mistaken. we shall come to milo's trial before long. [268] the statement is made by mr. tyrrell in his biographical introduction to the epistles. [269] the 600 years, or anni dc., is used to signify unlimited futurity. [270] mommsen's history, book v., ca. v. [271] [greek: automalos ônomazeto] is the phrase of dio cassius. "levissume transfuga" is the translation made by the author of the "declamatio in ciceronem." if i might venture on a slang phrase, i should say that [greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own hook." but no man was ever more loyal as a political adherent than cicero. [272] ad att., ii., 25. [273] we do not know when the marriage took place, or any of the circumstances; but we are aware that when tullia came, in the following year, b.c. 57, to meet her father at brundisium, she was a widow. [274] suetonius, julius cæsar, xii.: "subornavit etiam qui c. rabirio perduellionis diem diceret." [275] "qui civem romanum indemnatum perimisset, ei aqua at igni interdiceretur." [276] plutarch tells us of this sobriquet, but gives another reason for it, equally injurious to the lady's reputation. [277] ad att., lib. iii., 15. [278] in pisonem, vi. [279] ad att., lib. x., 4. [280] we are told by cornelius nepos, in his life of atticus, that when cicero fled from his country atticus advanced to him two hundred and fifty sesterces, or about £2000. i doubt, however, whether the flight here referred to was not that early visit to athens which cicero was supposed to have made in his fear of sulla. [281] ad fam., lib. xiv., iv.: "tullius to his terentia, and to his young tullia, and to his cicero," meaning his boy. [282] pro domo sua, xxiv. [283] ad quin. fra., 1, 3. [284] the reader who wishes to understand with what anarchy the largest city in the world might still exist, should turn to chapter viii. of book v. of mommsen's history. [285] ad att., lib. iii., 12. [286] horace, epis., lib. ii., 1. [287] ad att., lib. i., 8. [288] horace, epis., lib. ii., 11. the translation is conington's. [289] vell. pat., lib. i., xiii. [290] "civile;" when sulla, with pompey under him, was fighting with young marius and cinna. [291] "africanum;" when he had fought with domitius, the son-in-law of cinna, and with hiarbas. [292] "transalpinum;" during his march through gaul into spain. [293] "hispaniense;" in which he conquered sertorius. [294] "servile;" the war with spartacus, with the slaves and gladiators. [295] "navale bellum;" the war with the pirates. [296] for the full understanding of this oft-quoted line the reader should make himself acquainted with cato's march across libya after the death of pompey, as told by lucan in his 9th book. end of volume i. +----------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | latin word "demuntiat" in footnote 222 has been | | corrected as "denuntiat" and the latin words "at" | | and "audient" in footnote 253 have been corrected | | as "ut" and "audiunt" respectively after checking | | with reliable sources. | +----------------------------------------------------+ the life of cicero by anthony trollope _in two volumes_ vol. ii. new york harper & brothers, franklin square 1881 contents of volume ii. page chapter i. his return from exile 7 chapter ii. cicero, ætat. 52, 53, 54. 38 chapter iii. milo 59 chapter iv. cilicia 76 chapter v. the war between cæsar and pompey 110 chapter vi. after the battle 129 chapter vii. marcellus, ligarius, and deiotarus 147 chapter viii. cæsar's death 172 chapter ix. the philippics 195 chapter x. cicero's death 231 chapter xi. cicero's rhetoric 249 chapter xii. cicero's philosophy 277 chapter xiii. cicero's moral essays 304 chapter xiv. cicero's religion 321 appendix 333 index 337 the life of cicero. chapter i. _his return from exile._ cicero's life for the next two years was made conspicuous by a series of speeches which were produced by his exile and his return. these are remarkable for the praise lavished on himself, and by the violence with which he attacked his enemies. it must be owned that never was abuse more abusive, or self-praise uttered in language more laudatory.[1] cicero had now done all that was useful in his public life. the great monuments of his literature are to come. none of these had as yet been written except a small portion of his letters--about a tenth--and of these he thought no more in regard to the public than do any ordinary letter-writers of to-day. some poems had been produced, and a history of his own consulship in greek; but these are unknown to us. he had already become the greatest orator, perhaps, of all time--and we have many of the speeches spoken by him. some we have--those five, namely, telling the story of verres--not intended to be spoken, but written for the occasion of the day rather than with a view to permanent literature. he had been quæstor, ædile, prætor, and consul, with singular and undeviating success. he had been honest in the exercise of public functions when to be honest was to be singular. he had bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. he had been true to his country, and useful also--a combination which it was given to no other public man of those days to achieve. having been prætor and consul, he had refused the accustomed rewards, and had abstained from the provinces. his speeches, with but few exceptions, had hitherto been made in favor of honesty. they are declamations against injustice, against bribery, against cruelty, and all on behalf of decent civilized life. had he died then, he would not have become the hero of literature, the marvel among men of letters whom the reading world admires; but he would have been a great man, and would have saved himself from the bitterness of cæsarean tongues. his public work was in truth done. his further service consisted of the government of cilicia for a year--an employment that was odious to him, though his performance of it was a blessing to the province. after that there came the vain struggle with cæsar, the attempt to make the best of cæsar victorious, the last loud shriek on behalf of the republic, and then all was over. the fourteen years of life which yet remained to him sufficed for erecting that literary monument of which i have spoken, but his public usefulness was done. to the reader of his biography it will seem that these coming fourteen years will lack much of the grace which adorned the last twenty. the biographer will be driven to make excuses, which he will not do without believing in the truth of them, but doubting much whether he may beget belief in others. he thinks that he can see the man passing from one form to another--his doubting devotion to pompey, his enforced adherence to cæsar, his passionate opposition to antony; but he can still see him true to his country, and ever on the alert against tyranny and on behalf of pure patriotism. at the present we have to deal with cicero in no vacillating spirit, but loudly exultant and loudly censorious. within the two years following his return he made a series of speeches, in all of which we find the altered tone of his mind. there is no longer that belief in the ultimate success of justice, and ultimate triumph of the republic, which glowed in his verrine and catiline orations. he is forced to descend in his aspirations. it is not whether rome shall be free, or the bench of justice pure, but whether cicero shall be avenged and gabinius punished. it may have been right--it was right--that cicero should be avenged and gabinius punished; but it must be admitted that the subjects are less alluring. his first oration, as generally received, was made to the senate in honor of his return. the second was addressed to the people on the same subject. the third was spoken to the college of priests, with the view of recovering the ground on which his house had stood, and which clodius had attempted to alienate forever by dedicating it to a pretended religious purpose. the next, as coming on our list, though not so in time, was addressed again to the senate concerning official reports made by the public soothsayers as interpreters of occult signs, as to whether certain portents had been sent by the gods to show that cicero ought not to have back his house. before this was made he had defended sextius, who as tribune had been peculiarly serviceable in assisting his return. this was before a bench of judges; and separated from this, though made apparently at the same time, is a violent attack upon vatinius, one of cæsar's creatures, who was a witness against sextius. then there is a seventh, regarding the disposition of the provinces among the proprætors and proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of piso from macedonia and gabinius from syria, and to win cæsar's favor by showing that cæsar should be allowed to keep the two gauls and illyricum. to these must be added two others, made within the same period, for cælius and balbus. the close friendship between cicero and the young man cælius was one of the singular details of the orator's life. balbus was a spaniard, attached to cæsar, and remarkable as having been the first man not an italian who achieved the honor of the consulship. it has been disputed whether the first four of these orations were really the work of cicero, certain german critics and english scholars having declared them to be "parum ciceronias"--too little like cicero. that is the phrase used by nobbe, who published a valuable edition of all cicero's works, after the text of ernesti, in a single volume. mr. long, in his introduction to these orations, denounces them in language so strong as to rob them of all chance of absolute acceptance from those who know the accuracy of mr. long's scholarship.[2] there may probably have been subsequent interpolations. the first of the four, however, is so closely referred to by cicero himself in the speech made by him two years subsequently in the defence of plancius, that the fact of an address to the senate in the praise of those who had assisted him in his return cannot be doubted; and we are expressly told by the orator that, because of the importance of the occasion, he had written it out before he spoke it.[3] as to the latinity, it is not within my scope, nor indeed within my power, to express a confident opinion; but as to the matter of the speech, i think that cicero, in his then frame of mind, might have uttered what is attributed to him. having said so much, i shall best continue my narrative by dealing with the four speeches as though they were genuine. [sidenote: b.c. 57, ætat. 50.] cicero landed at brundisium on the 5th of august, the day on which his recall from exile had been enacted by the people, and there met his daughter tullia, who had come to welcome him back to italy on that her birthday. but she had come as a widow, having just lost her first husband, piso frugi. at this time she was not more than nineteen years old. of tullia's feelings we know nothing from her own expressions, as they have not reached us; but from the warmth of her father's love for her, and by the closeness of their friendship, we are led to imagine that the joy of her life depended more on him than on any of her three husbands. she did not live long with either of them, and died soon after the birth of a child, having been divorced from the third. i take it, there was much of triumph in the meeting, though piso frugi had died so lately. the return of cicero to rome was altogether triumphant. it must be remembered that the contemporary accounts we have had of it are altogether from his own pen. they are taken chiefly from the orations i have named above, though subsequent allusions to the glory of his return to rome are not uncommon in his works. but had his boasting not been true, the contradictions to them would have been made in such a way as to have reached our ears. plutarch, indeed, declares that cicero's account of the glory of his return fell short of the truth. it may be taken for granted that with that feeble monster, the citizen populace of rome, cicero had again risen to a popularity equal to that which had been bestowed upon him when he had just driven catiline out of rome. of what nature were the crowds who were thus loud in the praise of their great consul, and as loud afterward in their rejoicings at the return of the great exile, we must form our own opinion from circumstantial evidence. there was a mass of people, with keen ears taking artistic delight in eloquence and in personal graces, but determined to be idle, and to be fed as well as amused in their idleness; and there were also vast bands of men ready to fight--bands of gladiators they have been called, though it is probable that but few of them had ever been trained to the arena--whose business it was to shout as well as to fight on behalf of their patrons. we shall not be justified in supposing that those who on the two occasions named gave their sweet voices for cicero were only the well-ordered, though idle, proportion of the people, whereas they who had voted against him in favor of clodius had all been assassins, bullies, and swordsmen. we shall probably be nearer the mark if we imagine that the citizens generally were actuated by the prevailing feelings of their leaders at the moment, but were carried into enthusiasm when enabled, without detriment to their interests, to express their feelings for one who was in truth popular with them. when cicero, after the death of the five conspirators, declared that the men "had lived"--"vixerunt"--his own power was sufficient to insure the people that they would be safe in praising him. when he came back to rome, pompey had been urgent for his return, and cæsar had acceded to it. when the bill was passed for banishing him, the triumvirate had been against him, and clodius had been able to hound on his crew. but milo also had a crew, and milo was cicero's friend. as the clodian crew helped to drive cicero from rome, so did milo's crew help to bring him back again. cicero, on reaching rome, went at once to the capitol, to the temple of jupiter, and there returned thanks for the great thing that had been done for him. he was accompanied by a vast procession who from the temple went with him to his brother's house, where he met his wife, and where he resided for a time. his own house in the close neighborhood had been destroyed. he reached rome on the 4th of september, and on the 5th an opportunity was given to the then hero of the day for expressing his thanks to the senate for what they had done for him. his intellect had not grown rusty in macedonia, though he had been idle. on the 5th, cicero spoke to the senate; on the 6th, to the people. before the end of the month he made a much longer speech to the priests in defence of his own property. out of the full heart the mouth speaks, and his heart was very full of the subject. his first object was to thank the senate and the leading members of it for their goodness to him. the glowing language in which this is done goes against the grain with us when we read continuously the events of his life as told by himself. his last grievous words had been expressions of despair addressed to atticus; now he breaks out into a pæan of triumph. we have to remember that eight months had intervened, and that the time had sufficed to turn darkness into light. "if i cannot thank you as i ought, o conscript fathers, for the undying favors which you have conferred on me, on my brother, and my children, ascribe it, i beseech you, to the greatness of the things you have done for me, and not to the defect of my virtue." then he praises the two consuls, naming them, lentulus and metellus--metellus, as the reader will remember, having till lately been his enemy. he lauds the prætors and the tribunes, two of the latter members having opposed his return; but he is loudest in praise of pompey--that "sampsiceramus," that "hierosolymarius," that "arabarches" into whose character he had seen so clearly when writing from macedonia to atticus--that "cn. pompey who, by his valor, his glory, his achievements, stands conspicuously the first of all nations, of all ages, of all history." we cannot but be angry when we read the words, though we may understand how well he understood that he was impotent to do anything for the republic unless he could bring such a man as pompey to act with him. we must remember, too, how impossible it was that one roman should rise above the falsehood common to romans. we cannot ourselves always escape even yet from the atmosphere of duplicity in which policy delights. he describes the state of rome in his absence. "when i was gone, you"--you, the senate--"could decree nothing for your citizens, or for your allies, or for the dependent kings. the judges could give no judgment; the people could not record their votes; the senate availed nothing by its authority. you saw only a silent forum, a speechless senate-house, a city dumb and deserted." we may suppose that rome was what cicero described it to be when he was in exile, and cæsar had gone to his provinces; but its condition had been the result of the crushing tyranny of the triumvirate rather than of cicero's absence. lentulus, the present consul, had been, he says, a second father, almost a god, to him. but he would not have needed the hand of a consul to raise him from the ground, had he not been wounded by consular hands. catulus, one of rome's best citizens, had told him that though rome had now and again suffered from a bad consul, she had never before been afflicted by two together. while there was one consul worthy of the name, catulus had declared that cicero would be safe. but there had come two, two together, whose spirits had been so narrow, so low, so depraved, so burdened with greed and ignorance, "that they had been unable to comprehend, much less to sustain the splendor of the name of consul. not consuls were they, but buyers and sellers of provinces." these were piso and gabinius, of whom the former was now governor of macedonia, and the latter of syria. cicero's scorn against these men, who as consuls had permitted his exile, became a passion with him. his subsequent hatred of antony was not as bitter. he had come there to thank the assembled senators for their care of him, but he is carried off so violently by his anger that he devotes a considerable portion of his speech to these indignant utterances. the reader does not regret it. abuse makes better reading than praise, has a stronger vitality, and seems, alas, to come more thoroughly from the heart! those who think that genuine invective has its charms would ill spare piso and gabinius. he goes back to his eulogy, and names various prætors and officers who have worked on his behalf. then he declares that by the view of the present consul, lentulus, a decree has been passed in his favor more glorious than has been awarded to any other single roman citizen--namely that from all italy those who wished well to their country should be collected together for the purpose of bringing him back from his banishment--him, cicero. there is much in this in praise of lentulus, but more in praise of cicero. throughout these orations we feel that cicero is put forward as the hero, whereas piso and gabinius are the demons of the piece. "what could i leave as a richer legacy to my posterity," he goes on to say, opening another clause of his speech, "than that the senate should have decreed that the citizen who had not come forward in my defence was one regardless of the republic." by these boastings, though he was at the moment at the top of the ladder of popularity, he was offending the self-importance of all around him. he was offending especially pompey, with whom it was his fate to have to act.[4] but that was little to the offence he was giving to those who were to come many centuries after him, who would not look into the matter with sufficient accuracy to find that his vanity deserved forgiveness because of his humanity and desire for progress. "o lentulus," he says, at the end of the oration, "since i am restored to the republic, as with me the republic is itself restored, i will slacken nothing in my efforts at liberty; but, if it may be possible, will add something to my energy." in translating a word here and there as i have done, i feel at every expression my incapacity. there is no such thing as good translation. if you wish to drink the water, with its life and vigor in it, you must go to the fountain and drink it there. on the day following he made a similar speech to the people--if, indeed, the speech we have was from his mouth or his pen--as to which it has been remarked that in it he made no allusion to clodius, though he was as bitter as ever against the late consuls. from this we may gather that, though his audience was delighted to hear him, even in his self-praise, there might have been dispute had he spoken ill of one who had been popular as tribune. his praise of pompey was almost more fulsome than that of the day before, and the same may be said of his self-glorification. of his brother's devotion to him he speaks in touching words, but in words which make us remember how untrue to him afterward was that very brother. there are phrases so magnificent throughout this short piece that they obtain from us, as they are read, forgiveness for the writer's faults. "sic ulciscar facinorum singula." let the reader of latin turn to chapter ix. of the oration and see how the speaker declares that he will avenge himself against the evil-doers whom he has denounced. cicero, though he had returned triumphant, had come back ruined in purse, except so far as he could depend on the senate and the people for reimbursing to him the losses to which he had been subjected. the decree of the senate had declared that his goods should be returned to him, but the validity of such a promise would depend on the value which might be put upon the goods in question. his house on the palatine hill had been razed to the ground; his tusculan and formian villas had been destroyed; his books, his pictures, his marble columns, his very trees, had been stolen; but, worst of all, an attempt had been made to deprive him forever of the choicest spot of ground in all the city, the park lane of rome, by devoting the space which had belonged to him to the service of one of the gods. clodius had caused something of a temple to liberty to be built there, because ground so consecrated was deemed at rome, as with us, to be devoted by consecration to the perpetual service of religion. it was with the view of contesting this point that cicero made his next speech, pro domo sua, for the recovery of his house, before the bench of priests in rome. it was for the priests to decide this question. the senate could decree the restitution of property generally, but it was necessary that that spot of ground should be liberated from the thraldom of sacerdotal tenure by sacerdotal interference. these priests were all men of high birth and distinction in the republic. nineteen among them were "consulares," or past-consuls. superstitious awe affects more lightly the consciences of priests than the hearts of those who trust the priests for their guidance. familiarity does breed contempt. cicero, in making this speech, probably felt that, if he could carry the people with him, the college of priests would not hold the prey with grasping hands. the nineteen consulares would care little for the sanctity of the ground if they could be brought to wish well to cicero. he did his best. he wrote to atticus concerning it a few days after the speech was made, and declared that if he had ever spoken well on any occasion he had done so then, so deep had been his grief, and so great the importance of the occasion;[5] and he at once informs his friend of the decision of the bench, and of the ground on which it was based. "if he who declares that he dedicated the ground had not been appointed to that business by the people, nor had been expressly commanded by the people to do it, then that spot of ground can be restored without any breach of religion." cicero asserts that he was at once congratulated on having gained his cause, the world knowing very well that no such authority had been conferred on clodius. in the present mood of rome, all the priests, with the nineteen consulares, were no doubt willing that cicero should have back his ground. the senate had to interpret the decision, and on the discussion of the question among them clodius endeavored to talk against time. when, however, he had spoken for three hours, he allowed himself to be coughed down. it may be seen that in some respects even roman fortitude has been excelled in our days. in the first portion of this speech, pro domo sua, cicero devotes himself to a matter which has no bearing on his house. concomitant with cicero's return there had come a famine in rome. such a calamity was of frequent occurrence, though i doubt whether their famines ever led to mortality so frightful as that which desolated ireland just before the repeal of the corn laws. no records, as far as i am aware, have reached us of men perishing in the streets; but scarcity was not uncommon, and on such occasions complaints would become very loud. the feeding of the people was a matter of great difficulty, and subject to various chances. we do not at all know what was the number to be fed, including the free and the slaves, but have been led by surmises to suppose that it was under a million even in the time of augustus. but even though the number was no more than five hundred thousand at this time, the procuring of food must have been a complicated and difficult matter. it was not produced in the country. it was imported chiefly from sicily and africa, and was plentiful or the reverse, not only in accordance with the seasons but as certain officers of state were diligent and honest, or fraudulent and rapacious. we know from one of the verrine orations the nature of the laws on the subject, but cannot but marvel that, even with the assistance of such laws, the supply could be maintained with any fair proportion to the demand. the people looked to the government for the supply, and when it fell short would make their troubles known with seditious grumblings, which would occasionally assume the guise of insurrection. at this period of cicero's return food had become scarce and dear; and clodius, who was now in arms against pompey as well as against cicero, caused it to be believed that the strangers flocking into rome to welcome cicero had eaten up the food which should have filled the bellies of the people. an idea farther from truth could hardly have been entertained: no chance influx of visitors on such a population could have had the supposed effect. but the idea was spread abroad, and it was necessary that something should be done to quiet the minds of the populace. pompey had hitherto been the resource in state difficulties. pompey had scattered the pirates, who seem, however, at this period to have been gathering head again. pompey had conquered mithridates. let pompey have a commission to find food for rome. pompey himself entertained the idea of a commission which should for a time give him almost unlimited power. cæsar was increasing his legions and becoming dominant in the west. pompey, who still thought himself the bigger man of the two, felt the necessity of some great step in rivalry of cæsar. the proposal made on his behalf was that all the treasure belonging to the state should be placed at his disposal; that he should have an army and a fleet, and should be for five years superior in authority to every proconsul in his own province. this was the first great struggle made by pompey to strangle the growing power of cæsar. it failed altogether.[6] the fear of cæsar had already become too great in the bosoms of roman senators to permit them to attempt to crush him in his absence. but a mitigated law was passed, enjoining pompey to provide the food required, and conferring upon him certain powers. cicero was nominated as his first lieutenant, and accepted the position. he never acted, however, giving it up to his brother quintus. a speech which he made to the people on the passing of the law is not extant; but as there was hot blood about it in rome, he took the opportunity of justifying the appointment of pompey in the earlier portion of this oration to the priests. it must be understood that he did not lend his aid toward giving those greater powers which pompey was anxious to obtain. his trust in pompey had never been a perfect trust since the first days of the triumvirate. to cicero's thinking, both pompey and cæsar were conspirators against the republic. cæsar was the bolder, and therefore the more dangerous. it might probably come to pass that the services of pompey would be needed for restraining cæsar. pompey naturally belonged to the "optimates," while cæsar was as naturally a conspirator. but there never again could come a time in which cicero would willingly intrust pompey with such power as was given to him nine years before by the lex manilia. nevertheless, he could still say grand things in praise of pompey. "to pompey have been intrusted wars without number, wars most dangerous to the state, wars by sea and wars by land, wars extraordinary in their nature. if there be a man who regrets that this has been done, that man must regret the victories which rome has won." but his abuse of clodius is infinitely stronger than his praise of pompey. for the passages in which he alluded to the sister of clodius i must refer the reader to the speech itself. it is impossible here to translate them or to describe them. and these words were spoken before the college of priests, of whom nineteen were consulares! and they were prepared with such care that cicero specially boasted of them to atticus, and declares that they should be put into the hands of all young orators. montesquieu says that the roman legislators, in establishing their religion, had no view of using it for the improvement of manners or of morals.[7] the nature of their rites and ceremonies gives us evidence enough that it was so. if further testimony were wanting, it might be found in this address, ad pontifices. cicero himself was a man of singularly clean life as a roman nobleman, but, in abusing his enemy, he was restrained by no sense of what we consider the decency of language. he argues the question as to his house very well, as he did all questions. he tells the priests that the whole joy of his restoration must depend on their decision. citizens who had hitherto been made subject to such penalties had been malefactors; whereas, it was acknowledged of him that he had been a benefactor to the city. clodius had set up on the spot, not a statue of liberty, but, as was well known to all men, the figure of a greek prostitute. the priests had not been consulted. the people had not ratified the proposed consecration. of the necessity of such authority he gives various examples. "and this has been done," he says, "by an impure and impious enemy of all religions--by this man among women, and woman among men--who has gone through the ceremony so hurriedly, so violently, that his mind and his tongue and his voice have been equally inconsistent with each other." "my fortune," he says, as he ends his speech, "all moderate as it is, will suffice for me. the memory of my name will be a patrimony sufficient for my children;" but if his house be so taken from him, so stolen, so falsely dedicated to religion, he cannot live without disgrace. of course he got back his house; and with his house about £16,000 for its re-erection, and £4000 for the damage done to the tusculan villa with £2000 for the formian villa. with these sums he was not contented; and indeed they could hardly have represented fairly the immense injury done to him. [sidenote: b.c. 56, ætat. 51.] so ended the work of the year of his return. from the following year, besides the speeches, we have twenty-six letters of which nine were written to lentulus, the late consul, who had now gone to cilicia as proconsul. lentulus had befriended him, and he found it necessary to show his gratitude by a continued correspondence, and by a close attendance to the interests of the absent officer. these letters are full of details of roman politics, too intricate for such a work as this--perhaps i might almost say too uninteresting, as they refer specially to lentulus himself. in one of them he tells his friend that he has at last been able to secure the friendship of pompey for him. it was, after all, but a show of friendship. he has supped with pompey, and says that when he talks to pompey everything seems to go well: no one can be more gracious than pompey. but when he sees the friends by whom pompey is surrounded he knows, as all others know, that the affair is in truth going just as he would not have it.[8] we feel as we read these letters, in which pompey's name is continually before us, how much pompey prevailed by his personal appearance, by his power of saying gracious things, and then again by his power of holding his tongue. "you know the slowness of the man," he says to lentulus, "and his silence."[9] a slow, cautious, hypocritical man, who knew well how to use the allurements of personal manners! these letters to lentulus are full of flattery. there are five letters to his brother quintus, dealing with the politics of the time, especially with the then king of egypt, who was to be, or was not to be, restored. from all these things, however, i endeavor to abstain as much as possible, as matters not peculiarly affecting the character of cicero. he gives his brother an account of the doings in the senate, which is interesting as showing us how that august assembly conducted itself. while pompey was speaking with much dignity, clodius and his supporters in vain struggled with shouts and cries to put him down. at noon pompey sat down, and clodius got possession of the rostra, and in the middle of a violent tumult remained on his feet for two hours. then, on pompey's side, the "optimates" sang indecent songs --"versus obscenissimi"--in reference to clodius and his sister clodia. clodius, rising in his anger, demanded, "who had brought the famine?" "pompey," shouted the clodians. "who wanted to go to egypt?" demanded clodius. "pompey," again shouted his followers. after that, at three o'clock, at a given signal, they began to spit upon their opponents. then there was a fight, in which each party tried to drive the others out. the "optimates" were getting the best of it, when cicero thought it as well to run off lest he should be hurt in the tumult.[10] what hope could there be for an oligarchy when such things occurred in the senate? cicero in this letter speaks complacently of resisting force by force in the city. even cato, the law-abiding, precise cato, thought it necessary to fall into the fashion and go about rome with an armed following. he bought a company of gladiators and circus-men; but was obliged to sell them, as cicero tells his brother with glee, because he could not afford to feed them.[11] there are seven letters also to atticus--always more interesting than any of the others. there is in these the most perfect good-feeling, so that we may know that the complaints made by him in his exile had had no effect of estranging his friend; and we learn from them his real, innermost thoughts, as they are not given even to his brother--as thoughts have surely seldom been confided by one man of action to another. atticus had complained that he had not been allowed to see a certain letter which cicero had written to cæsar. this he had called a [greek: palinôdia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to cæsar with the view of professing a withdrawal to some extent of his opposition to the triumvirate. it had been of sufficient moment to be talked about. atticus had heard of it, and had complained that it had not been sent to him. cicero puts forward his excuses, and then bursts out with the real truth: "why should i nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be swallowed?" the recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and he had been ashamed of it. "but," says he, "farewell to all true, upright, honest policy. you could hardly believe what treachery there is in those who ought to be our leading men, and who would be so if there was any truth in them."[12] he does not rely upon those who, if they were true to their party, would enable the party to stand firmly even against cæsar. therefore it becomes necessary for him to truckle to cæsar, not for himself but for his party. unsupported he cannot stand in open hostility to cæsar. he truckles. he writes to cæsar, singing cæsar's praises. it is for the party rather than for himself, but yet he is ashamed of it. there is a letter to lucceius, an historian of the day then much thought of, of whom however our later world has heard nothing. lucceius is writing chronicles of the time, and cicero boldly demands to be praised. "ut ornes mea postulem"[13]--"i ask you to praise me." but he becomes much bolder than that. "again and again i beseech you, without any beating about the bush, to speak more highly of me than you perhaps think that i deserve, even though in doing so you abandon all the laws of history." then he uses beautiful flattery to his correspondent. alexander had wished to be painted only by apelles. he desires to be praised by none but lucceius. lucceius, we are told, did as he was asked. [sidenote: b.c. 56, ætat. 51.] i will return to the speeches of the period to which this chapter is devoted, taking that first which he made to the senate as to the report of the soothsayers respecting certain prodigies. readers familiar with livy will remember how frequently, in time of disaster, the anger of heaven was supposed to have been shown by signs and miracles, indications that the gods were displeased, and that expiations were necessary.[14] the superstition, as is the fate of all superstitions, had frequently been used for most ungodlike purposes. if a man had a political enemy, what could do him better service than to make the populace believe that a house had been crushed by a thunder-bolt, or that a woman had given birth to a pig instead of a child, because jupiter had been offended by that enemy's devices? by using such a plea the grecians got into troy, together with the wooden horse, many years ago. the scotch worshippers of the sabbath declared the other day, when the bridge over the tay was blown away, that the lord had interposed to prevent travelling on sunday! cicero had not been long back from his exile when the gods began to show their anger. a statue of juno twisted itself half round; a wolf had been seen in the city; three citizens were struck with lightning; arms were heard to clang, and then wide subterranean noises. nothing was easier than the preparation and continuing of such portents. for many years past the heavens above and the earth beneath had been put into requisition for prodigies.[15] the soothsayers were always well pleased to declare that there had been some neglect of the gods. it is in the nature of things that the superstitious tendencies of mankind shall fall a prey to priestcraft. the quarrels between cicero and clodius were as full of life as ever. in this year, clodius being ædile, there had come on debates as to a law passed by cæsar as consul, in opposition to bibulus, for the distribution of lands among the citizens. there was a question as to a certain tax which was to be levied on these lands. the tax-gatherers were supported by cicero, and denounced by clodius. then clodius and his friends found out that the gods were showering their anger down upon the city because the ground on which cicero's house had once stood was being desecrated by its re-erection. an appeal was made to the soothsayers. they reported, and cicero rejoined. the soothsayers had of course been mysterious and doubtful. cicero first shows that the devotion of his ground to sacred purposes had been an absurdity, and then he declares that the gods are angry, not with him but with clodius. to say that the gods were not angry at all was more than cicero dared. the piece, taken as a morsel of declamatory art, is full of vigor, is powerful in invective, and carries us along in full agreement with the orator; but at the conclusion we are led to wish that cicero could have employed his intellect on higher matters. there are, however, one or two passages which draw the reader into deep mental inquiry as to the religious feelings of the time. in one, which might have been written by paley, cicero declares his belief in the creative power of some god--or gods, as he calls them.[16] and we see also the perverse dealings of the romans with these gods, dealings which were very troublesome--not to be got over except by stratagem. the gods were made use of by one party and the other for dishonest state purposes. when cicero tells his hearers what the gods intended to signify by making noises in the sky, and other divine voices, we feel sure that he was either hoaxing them who heard him or saying what he knew they would not believe. [sidenote: b.c. 56, ætat. 51.] previous to the speech as to the "aruspices," he had defended sextius--or sestius, as he is frequently called--on a charge brought against him by clodius in respect of violence. we at once think of the commonplace from juvenal: "quis tulerit gracchos de seditione querentes." but rome, without remonstrating, put up with any absurdity of that kind. sextius and milo and others had been joined together in opposing the election of clodius as ædile, and had probably met violence with violence. as surely as an english master of hounds has grooms and whips ready at his command, milo had a band of bullies prepared for violence. clodius himself had brought an action against milo, who was defended by pompey in person. the case against sextius was intrusted to albinovanus, and hortensius undertook the defence. sextius before had been one of the most forward in obtaining the return of cicero, and had travelled into gaul to see cæsar and to procure cæsar's assent. cæsar had not then assented; but not the less great had been the favor conferred by sextius on cicero. cicero had been grateful, but it seems that sextius had thought not sufficiently grateful; hence there had grown up something of a quarrel. but cicero, when he heard of the proceeding against his old friend, at once offered his assistance. for a roman to have more than one counsel to plead for him was as common as for an englishman. cicero was therefore added to hortensius, and the two great advocates of the day spoke on the same side. we are told that hortensius managed the evidence, showing, probably, that clodius struck the first blow. cicero then addressed the judges with the object of gaining their favor for the accused. in this he was successful, and sextius was acquitted. as regards sextius and his quarrel with clodius, the oration has but little interest for us. there is not, indeed, much about sextius in it. it is a continuation of the pæan which cicero was still singing as to his own return, but it is distinguished from his former utterances by finer thought and finer language. the description of public virtue as displayed by cato has perhaps, in regard to melody of words and grandeur of sentiment, never been beaten. i give the orator's words below in his own language, because in no other way can any idea of the sound be conveyed.[17] there is, too, a definition made very cleverly to suit his own point of view between the conservatives and the liberals of the day. "optimates" is the name by which the former are known; the latter are called "populares."[18] attached to this speech for sextius is a declamation against vatinius, who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. instead of examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate oration. we have no other instance of such a forensic manoeuvre either in cicero's practice or in our accounts of the doings of other roman advocates. this has reached us as a separate oration. it is a coarse tirade of abuse against a man whom we believe to have been bad, but as to whom we feel that we are not justified in supposing that we can get his true character here. he was a creature of cæsar's, and cicero was able to say words as to vatinius which he was unwilling to speak as to cæsar and his doings. it must be added here that two years later cicero pleaded for this very vatinius, at the joint request of cæsar and pompey, when vatinius on leaving the prætorship was accused of corruption. [sidenote: b.c. 56, ætat. 51.] the nature of the reward to which the aspiring oligarch of rome always turned his eyes has been sufficiently explained. he looked to be the governor of a province. at this period of which we are speaking there was no reticence in the matter. syria, or macedonia, or hispania had been the prize, or sicily, or sardinia. it was quite understood that an aspiring oligarch went through the dust and danger and expense of political life in order that at last he might fill his coffers with provincial plunder. there were various laws as to which these governments were allotted to the plunderers. of these we need only allude to the leges semproniæ, or laws proposed b.c. 123, by caius sempronius gracchus, for the distribution of those provinces which were to be enjoyed by proconsuls. there were prætorian provinces and consular provinces, though there was no law making it sure that any province should be either consular or prætorian. but the senate, without the interference of the people and free from the tribunes' veto, had the selection of provinces for the consuls; whereas, for those intended for the prætors, the people had the right of voting and the tribunes of the people had a right of putting a veto on the propositions made. now, in this year there came before the senate a discussion as to the fate of three proconsuls--not as to the primary allocation of provinces to them, but on the question whether they should be continued in the government which they held. piso was in macedonia, where he was supposed to have disgraced himself and the empire which he served. gabinius was in syria, where it was acknowledged that he had done good service, though his own personal character stood very low. cæsar was lord in the two gauls--that is, on both sides of the alps, in northern italy, and in that portion of modern france along the mediterranean which had been already colonized--and was also governor of illyricum. he had already made it manifest to all men that the subjugation of a new empire was his object rather than provincial plunder. whether we love the memory of cæsar as of a great man who showed himself fit to rule the world, or turn away from him as from one who set his iron heel on the necks of men, and by doing so retarded for centuries the liberties of mankind, we have to admit that he rose by the light of his own genius altogether above the ambition of his contemporaries. if we prefer, as i do, the humanity of cicero, we must confess to ourselves the supremacy of cæsar, and acknowledge ourselves to belong to the beaten cause. "victrix causa deis placuit; sed victa catoni." in discussing the fate of these proconsular officials we feel now the absurdity of mixing together in the same debate the name of piso and gabinius with that of cæsar. yet such was the subject in dispute when cicero made his speech, de provinciis consularibus, as to the adjudication of the consular provinces. there was a strong opinion among many senators that cæsar should be stopped in his career. i need not here investigate the motives, either great or little, on which this opinion was founded. there was hardly a senator among them who would not have wished cæsar to be put down, though there were many who did not dare declare their wishes. there were reasons for peculiar jealousy on the part of the senate. cisalpine gaul had been voted for him by the intervention of the people, and especially by that of the tribune vatinius--to cæsar who was consularis, whose reward should have been an affair solely for the senate. then there had arisen a demand, a most unusual demand, for the other gaul also. the giving of two provinces to one governor was altogether contrary to the practice of the state; but so was the permanent and acknowledged continuance of a conspiracy such as the triumvirate unusual. cæsar himself was very unusual. then the senate, feeling that the second province would certainly be obtained, and anxious to preserve some shred of their prerogative, themselves voted the farther gaul. as it must be done, let it at any rate be said that they had done it. but as they had sent cæsar over the alps so they could recall him, or try to recall him. therefore, with the question as to piso and gabinius, which really meant nothing, came up this also as to cæsar, which meant a great deal. but cæsar had already done great things in gaul. he had defeated the helvetians and driven ariovistus out of the country. he had carried eight legions among the distant belgæ, and had conquered the nervii. in this very year he had built a huge fleet, and had destroyed the veneti, a seafaring people on the coast of the present brittany. the more powerful he showed himself to be, the more difficult it was to recall him; but also the more desirable in the eyes of many. in the first portion of his speech cicero handles piso and gabinius with his usual invective. there was no considerable party desirous of renewing to them their governments, but cicero always revelled in the pleasure of abusing them. he devotes by far the longer part of his oration to the merit of cæsar.[19] as for recalling him, it would be irrational. who had counted more enemies in rome than marius? but did they recall marius when he was fighting for the republic?[20] hitherto the republic had been forced to fear the gauls. rome had always been on the defence against them. now it had been brought about by cæsar that the limits of the world were the limits of the roman empire.[21] the conquest was not yet finished, but surely it should be left to him who had begun it so well. even though cæsar were to demand to return himself, thinking that he had done enough for his own glory, it would be for the senators to restrain him--for the senate to bid him finish the work that he had in hand.[22] as for himself, continued cicero, if cæsar had been his enemy, what of that? cæsar was not his enemy now. he had told the senate what offers of employment cæsar had made him. if he could not forget, yet he would forgive, former injuries.[23] it is important for the reading of cicero's character that we should trace the meaning of his utterances about cæsar from this time up to the day on which cæsar was killed--his utterances in public, and those which are found in his letters to atticus and his brother. that there was much of pretence--of falsehood, if a hard word be necessary to suit the severity of those who judge the man hardly--is admitted. how he praised pompey in public, dispraising him in private, at one and the same moment, has been declared. how he applied for praise, whether deserved or not, has been shown. in excuse, not in defence, of this i allege that the romans of the day were habitually false after this fashion. the application to lucceius proves the habitual falseness not of cicero only, but of lucceius also; and the private words written to atticus, in opposition to the public words with which atticus was well acquainted, prove the falseness also of atticus. it was roman; it was italian; it was cosmopolitan; it was human. i only wish that it were possible to declare that it is no longer italian, no longer cosmopolitan, no longer human. to this day it is very difficult even for an honorable man to tell the whole truth in the varying circumstances of public life. the establishment of even a theory of truth, with all the advantages which have come to us from christianity, has been so difficult, hitherto so imperfect, that we ought, i think, to consider well the circumstances before we stigmatize cicero as specially false. to my reading he seems to have been specially true. when cæsar won his way up to power, cicero was courteous to him, flattered him, and, though, never subservient, yet was anxious to comply when compliance was possible. nevertheless, we know well that the whole scheme of cæsar's political life was opposed to the scheme entertained by cicero. it was cicero's desire to maintain as much as he could of the old form of oligarchical rule under which, as a constitution, the roman empire had been created. it was cæsar's intention to sweep it all away. we can see that now; but cicero could only see it in part. to his outlook the man had some sense of order, and had all the elements of greatness. he was better, at any rate, than a verres, a catiline, a clodius, a piso, or a gabinius. if he thought that by flattery he could bring cæsar somewhat round, there might be conceit in his so thinking, but there could be no treachery. in doing so he did not abandon his political _beau ideal_. if better times came, or a better man, he would use them. in the mean time he could do more by managing cæsar than by opposing him. he was far enough from succeeding in the management of cæsar, but he did do much in keeping his party together. it was in this spirit that he advocated before the senate the maintenance of cæsar's authority in the two gauls. the senate decreed the withdrawal of piso and gabinius, but decided to leave cæsar where he was. mommsen deals very hardly with cicero as to this period of his life. "they used him accordingly as--what he was good for--an advocate." "cicero himself had to thank his literary reputation for the respectful treatment which he experienced from cæsar." the question we have to ask ourselves is whether he did his best to forward that scheme of politics which he thought to be good for the republic. to me it seems that he did do so. he certainly did nothing with the object of filling his own pockets. i doubt whether as much can be said with perfect truth as to any other roman of the period, unless it be cato. balbus, for whom cicero also spoke in this year, was a spaniard of cadiz, to whom pompey had given the citizenship of rome, who had become one of cæsar's servants and friends, and whose citizenship was now disputed. cicero pleaded in favor of the claim, and gained his cause. there were, no doubt, certain laws in accordance with which balbus was or was not a citizen; but cicero here says that because balbus was a good man, therefore there should be no question as to his citizenship.[24] this could hardly be a good legal argument. but we are glad to have the main principles of roman citizenship laid down for us in this oration. a man cannot belong to more than one state at a time. a man cannot be turned out of his state against his will. a man cannot be forced to remain in his state against his will.[25] this balbus was acknowledged as a roman, rose to be one of cæsar's leading ministers, and was elected consul of the empire b.c. 40. thirty-four years afterward his nephew became consul. nearly three centuries after that, a.d. 237, a descendant of balbus was chosen as emperor, under the name of balbinus, and is spoken of by gibbon with eulogy.[26] i know no work on cicero written more pleasantly, or inspired by a higher spirit of justice, than that of gaston boissier, of the french academy, called cicéron et ses amis. among his chapters one is devoted to cicero's remarkable intimacy with cælius, which should be read by all who wish to study cicero. we have now come to the speech which he made in this year in defence of cælius. cælius had entered public life very early, as the son of a rich citizen who was anxious that his heir should be enabled to shine as well by his father's wealth as by his own intellect. when he was still a boy, according to our ideas of boyhood, he was apprenticed to cicero,[27] as was customary, in order that he might pick up the crumbs which fell from the great man's table. it was thus that a young man would hear what was best worth hearing; thus he would become acquainted with those who were best worth knowing; thus that he would learn in public life all that was best worth learning. cælius heard all, and knew many, and learned much; but he perhaps learned too much at too early an age. he became bright and clever, but unruly and dissipated. cicero, however, loved him well. he always liked the society of bright young men, and could forgive their morals if their wit were good. clodius--even clodius, young curio, cælius and afterward dolabella, were companions with whom he loved to associate. when he was in cilicia, as proconsul, this cælius became almost a second atticus to him, in the writing of news from rome. but cælius had become one of clodia's many lovers, and seems for a time to have been the first favorite, to the detriment of poor catullus. the rich father had, it seems, quarrelled with his son, and cælius was in want of money. he borrowed it from clodia, and then, without paying his debt, treated clodia as she had treated catullus. the lady tried to get her money back, and when she failed she accused her former lover of an attempt to poison her. this she did so that cælius was tried for the offence. there were no less than four accusers, or advocates, on her behalf, of whom her brother was one. cælius was defended by crassus as well as by cicero, and was acquitted. all these cases combined political views with criminal charges. cælius was declared to have been a catilinian conspirator. he was also accused of being in debt, of having quarrelled with his father, of having insulted women, of having beaten a senator, of having practised bribery, of having committed various murders, and of having perpetrated all social and political excesses to which his enemies could give a name. it was probable that his life had been very irregular, but it was not probably true that he had attempted to poison clodia. the speech is very well worth the trouble of reading. it is lively, bright, picturesque, and argumentative; and it tells the reader very much of the manners of rome at the time. it has been condemned for a passage which, to my taste, is the best in the whole piece. cicero takes upon himself to palliate the pleasures of youth, and we are told that a man so grave, so pure, so excellent in his own life, should not have condescended to utter sentiments so lax in defence of so immoral a young friend. i will endeavor to translate a portion of the passage, and i think that any ladies who may read these pages will agree with me in liking cicero the better for what he said upon the occasion. he has been speaking of the changes which the manners of the world had undergone, not only in rome but in greece, since pleasure had been acknowledged even by philosophers to be necessary to life. "they who advocate one constant course of continual labor as the road to fame are left alone in their schools, deserted by their scholars. nature herself has begotten for us allurements, seduced by which virtue herself will occasionally become drowsy. nature herself leads the young into slippery paths, in which not to stumble now and again is hardly possible. nature has produced for us a variety of pleasures, to which not only youth, but even middle-age, occasionally yields itself. if, therefore, you shall find one who can avert his eyes from all that is beautiful--who is charmed by no sweet smell, by no soft touch, by no rich flavor--who can turn a deaf ear to coaxing words--i indeed, and perhaps a few others, may think that the gods have been good to such a one; but i doubt whether the world at large will not think that the gods have made him a sorry fellow." there is very much more of it, delightfully said, and in the same spirit; but i have given enough to show the nature of the excuse for cælius which has brought down on cicero the wrath of the moralists. chapter ii. _cicero, ætat._ 52, 53, 54. [sidenote: b.c. 55, ætat. 52.] i can best continue my record of cicero's life for this and the two subsequent years by following his speeches and his letters. it was at this period the main object of his political life to reconcile the existence of a cæsar with that of a republic--two poles which could not by any means be brought together. outside of his political life he carried on his profession as an advocate with all his former energy, with all his former bitterness, with all his old friendly zeal, but never, i think, with his former utility. his life with his friends and his family was prosperous; but that ambition to do some great thing for his country which might make his name more famous than that of other romans was gradually fading, and, as it went, was leaving regrets and remorse behind which would not allow him to be a happy man. but it was now, when he had reached his fifty-second year, that he in truth began that career in literature which has made him second to no roman in reputation. there are some early rhetorical essays, which were taken from the greek, of doubtful authenticity; there are the few lines which are preserved of his poetry; there are the speeches which he wrote as well as spoke for the rome of the day; and there are his letters, which up to this time had been intended only for his correspondents. all that we have from his pen up to this time has been preserved for us by the light of those great works which he now commenced. in this year, b.c. 55, there appeared the dialogue de oratore, and in the next the treatise de republica. it was his failure as a politician which in truth drove cicero to the career of literature. as i intend to add to this second volume a few chapters as to his literary productions, i will only mention the dates on which these dialogues and treatises were given to the world as i go on with my work. in the year b.c. 55, the two of the triumvirate who had been left in rome, pompey and crassus, were elected consuls, and provinces were decreed to each of them for five years--to pompey the two spains, and to crassus that syria which was to be so fatal to him. all this had been arranged at lucca, in the north of italy, whither cæsar was able to come as being within the bounds of his province, to meet his friends from rome--or his enemies. all aristocratic rome went out in crowds to lucca, so that two hundred senators might be seen together in the streets of that provincial town. it was nevertheless near enough to rome to permit the conqueror from gaul to look closely into the politics of the city. by his permission, if not at his instigation, pompey and crassus had been chosen consuls, and to himself was conceded the government of his own province for five further years--that is, down to year b.c. 49 inclusive. it must now at least have become evident to cicero that cæsar intended to rule the empire. though we already have cicero's letters arranged for us in a chronological sequence which may be held to be fairly correct for biographical purposes, still there is much doubt remaining as to the exact periods at which many of them were written. abeken, the german biographer, says that this year, b.c. 55, produced twelve letters. in the french edition of cicero's works published by panckoucke thirty-five are allotted to it. mr. watson, in his selected letters, has not taken one from the year in question. mr. tyrrell, who has been my mentor hitherto in regard to the correspondence, has not, unfortunately, published the result of his labors beyond the year 53 b.c. at the time of my present writing. some of those who have dealt with cicero's life and works, and have illustrated them by his letters, have added something to the existing confusion by assuming an accuracy of knowledge in this respect which has not existed. we have no right to quarrel with them for having done so; certainly not with middleton, as in his time such accuracy was less valued by readers than it is now; and we have the advantage of much light which, though still imperfect, is very bright in comparison with that enjoyed by him. a study of the letters, however, in the sequence now given to them affords an accurate picture of cicero's mind during the years between the period of his return from exile b.c. 57 and milo's trial b.c. 52, although the reader may occasionally be misled as to the date of this or the other letter. with the dates of his speeches, at any rate with the year in which they were made, we are better acquainted. they are of course much fewer in number, and are easily traced by the known historical circumstances of the time. b.c. 55, he made that attack upon his old enemy, the late consul piso, which is perhaps the most egregious piece of abuse extant in any language. even of this we do not know the precise date, but we may be sure that it was spoken early in the year, because cicero alludes in it to pompey's great games which were in preparation, and which were exhibited when pompey's new theatre was opened in may.[28] plutarch tells us that they did not take place till the beginning of the following year.[29] piso on his return from macedonia attacked cicero in the senate in answer to all the hard things that had already been said of him, and cicero, as middleton says, "made a reply to him on the spot in an invective speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever was spoken by any man, on the person, the parts, the whole life and conduct of piso, which as long as the roman name subsists must deliver down a most detestable character of him to all posterity." we are here asked to imagine that this attack was delivered on the spur of the moment in answer to piso's attack. i cannot believe that it should have been so, however great may have been the orator's power over thoughts and words. we have had in our own days wonderful instances of ready and indignant reply made instantaneously, but none in which the angry eloquence has risen to such a power as is here displayed. we cannot but suppose that had human intellect ever been perfect enough for such an exertion, it would have soared high enough also to have abstained from it. it may have been that cicero knew well enough beforehand what the day was about to produce, so as to have prepared his reply. it may well have been that he himself undertook the polishing of his speech before it was given to the public in the words which we now read. we may, i think, take it for granted that piso did make an attack upon him, and that cicero answered him at once with words which crushed him, and which are not unfairly represented by those which have come down to us. the imaginative reader will lose himself in wonder as he pictures to himself the figure of the pretentious proconsul, with his assumption of confidence, as he was undergoing the castigation which this great master of obloquy was inflicting upon him, and the figure of the tall, lean orator, with his long neck and keen eyes, with his arms trained to assist his voice, managing his purple bordered toga with a perfect grace, throwing all his heart into his impassioned words as they fell into the ears of the senators around him without the loss of a syllable. this lucius calpurnius piso cæsoronius had come from one of the highest families in rome, and had possessed interest enough to be elected consul for the year in which cicero was sent into banishment.[30] he was closely connected with that piso frugi to whom cicero's daughter had been married; and cicero, when he was threatened by the faction of clodius--a faction which he did not then believe to be supported by the triumvirate--had thought that he was made safe, at any rate, from cruel results by consular friendship and consular protection. piso cæsoronius had failed him altogether, saying, in answer to cicero's appeal, that the times were of such a nature that every one must look to himself. the nature of cicero's rage may be easily conceived. an attempt to describe it has already been made. it was not till after his consulate that he was ever waked to real anger, and the one object whom he most entirely hated with his whole soul was lucius piso. by the strength of cicero's eloquence this man has occupied an immortality of meanness. we cannot but believe that he must have in some sort deserved it, or the justice of the world would have vindicated his character. it should, however, be told of him that three years afterward he was chosen censor, together with appius claudius. but it must also be told that, as far as we can judge, both these men were unworthy of the honor. they were the last two censors elected in rome before the days of the empire. it is impossible not to believe that piso was vile, but impossible also to believe that he was as vile as cicero represented him. cæsar was at this time his son-in-law, as he was father to calphurnia, with whom shakspeare has made us familiar. i do not know that cæsar took in bad part the hard things that were said of his father-in-law. the first part of the speech is lost. the first words we know because they have been quoted by quintilian, "oh ye gods immortal, what day is this which has shone upon me at last?"[31] we may imagine from this that cicero intended it to be understood that he exulted in the coming of his revenge. the following is a fair translation of the opening passage of what remains to us: "beast that you are, do you not see, do you not perceive, how odious to the men around you is that face of yours?" then with rapid words he heaps upon the unfortunate man accusations of personal incompetencies. nobody complains, says cicero, that that fellow of yesterday, gabinius, should have been made consul: we have not been deceived in him. "but your eyes and eyebrows, your forehead, that face of yours, which should be the dumb index of the mind within, have deceived those who have not known you. few of us only have been aware of your infamous vices, the sloth of your intellect, your dulness, your inability to speak. when was your voice heard in the forum? when has your counsel been put to the proof? when did you do any service either in peace or war? you have crept into your high place by the mistakes of men, by the regard to the dirty images of your ancestors, to whom you have no resemblance except in their present grimy color. and shall he boast to me," says the orator, turning from piso to the audience around, "that he has gone on without a check from one step in the magistracy to another? that is a boast for me to make, for me--"homini novo"--a man without ancestors, on whom the roman people has showered all its honors. you were made ædile, you say; the roman people choose a piso for their ædile--not this man from any regard for himself, but because he is a piso. the prætorship was conferred not on you but on your ancestors who were known and who were dead! of you, who are alive no one has known anything. but me--!" then he continues the contrast between himself and piso; for the speech is as full of his own merits as of the other man's abominations. so the oration goes on to the end. he asserts, addressing himself to piso, that if he saw him and gabinius crucified together, he did not know whether he would be most delighted by the punishment inflicted on their bodies or by the ruin of their reputation. he declares that he has prayed for all evil on piso and gabinius, and that the gods have heard him, but it has not been for death, or sickness, or for torment, that he had prayed, but for such evils as have in truth come upon them. two consuls sent with large armies into two of the grandest provinces have returned with disgrace. that one--meaning piso--has not dared even to send home an account of his doings; and the other--gabinius--has not had his words credited by the senate, nor any of his requests granted! he cicero, had hardly dared to hope for all this, but the gods had done it for him! the most absurd passage is that in which he tells piso that, having lost his army--which he had done--he had brought back nothing in safety but that "old impudent face of his."[32] altogether it is a tirade of abuse very inferior to cicero's dignity. le clerc, the french critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "il faut avouer qu'il manque surtout de modération, et que la gravité d'un orateur consulaire y fait trop souvent place à l'emportement d'un ennemi." it is, however, full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. the reader when reading it will of course remember that roman manners allowed a mode of expression among the upper classes which is altogether denied to those among us who hope to be regarded as gentlemen. the games in pompey's theatre, to the preparation of which cicero alludes in his speech against piso, are described by him with his usual vivacity and humor in a letter written immediately after them to his friend marius. pompey's games, with which he celebrated his second consulship, seem to have been divided between the magnificent theatre which he had just built--fragments of which still remain to us--and the "circus maximus." this letter from cicero is very interesting, as showing the estimation in which these games were held, or were supposed to be held, by a roman man of letters, and as giving us some description of what was done on the occasion. marius had not come to rome to see them, and cicero writes as though his friend had despised them. cicero himself, having been in rome, had of course witnessed them. to have been in rome and not to have seen them would have been quite out of the question. not to come to rome from a distance was an eccentricity. he congratulated marius for not having come, whether it was that he was ill, or that the whole thing was too despicable: "you in the early morning have been looking out upon your view over the bay while we have been staring at puppets half asleep. most costly games, but i should say--judging of you by myself--that they would have been quite revolting to you. poor æsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. why should i tell you of it all? the very costliness of the affair took away all the pleasure. six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of clytemnestra, or three thousand golden goblets in the trojan horse--what delight could they give you? if your slave protogenes was reading to you something--so that it were not one of my speeches--you were better off at any rate than we. there were two marvellous slaughterings of beasts which lasted for five days. nobody denies but that they were very grand. but what pleasure can there be to a man of letters[33] when some weak human creature is destroyed by a sturdy beast, or when some lonely animal is pierced through by a hunting-spear. the last day was the day of elephants, in which there could be no delight except to the vulgar crowd. you could not but pity them, feeling that the poor brutes had something in common with humanity." in these combats were killed twenty elephants and two hundred lions. the bad taste and systematical corruption of rome had reached its acme when this theatre was opened and these games displayed by pompey. he tells atticus,[34] in a letter written about this time, that he is obliged to write to him by the hand of a secretary; from which we gather that such had not been, at any rate, his practice. he is every day in the forum, making speeches; and he had already composed the dialogues de oratore, and had sent them to lentulus. though he was no longer in office, his time seems to have been as fully occupied as when he was prætor or consul. we have records of at least a dozen speeches, made b.c. 55 and b.c. 54, between that against piso and the next that is extant, which was delivered in defence of plancius. he defended cispius, but cispius was convicted. he defended caninius gallus, of whom we may presume that he was condemned and exiled, because cicero found him at athens on his way to cilicia, athens being the place to which exiled roman oligarchs generally betook themselves.[35] in this letter to his young friend cælius he speaks of the pleasure he had in meeting with caninius at athens; but in the letter to marius which i have quoted he complains of the necessity which has befallen him of defending the man. the heat of the summer of this year he passed in the country, but on his return to the city in november he found crassus defending his old enemy gabinius. gabinius had crept back from his province into the city, and had been received with universal scorn and a shower of accusations. cicero at first neither accused nor defended him, but, having been called on as a witness, seems to have been unable to refrain from something of the severity with which he had treated piso. there was at any rate a passage of arms in which gabinius called him a banished criminal.[36] the senate then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. he was, however, afterward driven by the expostulations of pompey to defend the man. at his first trial gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished when cicero defended him. cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint thus put upon him by pompey, and refused pompey till cæsar's request was added. we can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the obligation thus forced upon him. we have nothing of the speech left, but can hardly believe that it was eloquent. from this, however, there rose a reconciliation between crassus and cicero, both cæsar and pompey having found it to their interest to interfere. as a result of this, early in the next year cicero defended crassus in the senate, when an attempt was made to rob the late consul of his coveted mission to syria. of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to crassus,[37] which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as base. he despised crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things he had said of him; but we have no right to think that cicero could have been altogether unlike a roman. he speaks also in the senate on behalf of the people of tenedos, who had brought their immunities and privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. all we know of this speech is that it was spoken in vain. he pleaded against an asiatic king, antiochus of comagene, who was befriended by pompey, but cicero seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[38] he spoke for the inhabitants of reate on some question of water-privilege against the interamnates. interamna we now know as terne, where a modern pope made a lovely water-fall, and at the same time rectified the water-privileges of the surrounding district. cicero went down to its pleasant tempe, as he calls it, and stayed there awhile with one axius.[39] he returned thence to rome to undertake some case for fonteius, and attended the games which milo was giving, milo having been elected ædile. here we have a morsel of dramatic criticism on antiphon the actor and arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of pepys. then he defended messius, then drusus, then scaurus. he mentions all these cases in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves with their details. we only feel that he was kept as busy as a london barrister in full practice. he also defended vatinius--that vatinius with whose iniquities he had been so indignant at the trial of sextius. he defended him twice at the instigation of cæsar; and he does not seem to have suffered in doing so, as he had certainly done when called upon to stand up and plead for his late consular enemy, gabinius. valerius maximus, a dull author, often quoted but seldom read, whose task it was to give instances of all the virtues and vices produced by mankind, refers to these pleadings for gabinius and vatinius as instances of an almost divine forgiveness of injury.[40] i think we must seek for the good, if good is to be discovered in the proceeding, in the presumed strength which might be added to the republic by friendly relations between himself and cæsar. [sidenote: b.c. 54, ætat. 53.] in the spring of the year we find cicero writing to cæsar in apparently great intimacy. he recommends to cæsar his young friend trebatius, a lawyer, who was going to gaul in search of his fortune, and in doing so he refers to a joking promise from cæsar that he would make another friend, whom he had recommended, king of gaul; or, if not that, foreman at least to lepta, his head of the mechanics. lepta was an officer in trust under cæsar, with whose name we become familiar in cicero's correspondence, though i do not remember that cæsar ever mentions him. "send me some one else that i may show my friendship," cæsar had said, knowing well that cicero was worth any price of the kind. cicero declares to cæsar that on hearing this he held up his hands in grateful surprise, and on this account he had sent trebatius. "mi cæsar," he says, writing with all affection; and then he praises trebatius, assuring cæsar that he does not recommend the young man loosely, as he had some other young men who were worthless--such as milo, for instance. this results in much good done to trebatius, though the young man at first does not like the service with the army. he is a lawyer, and finds the work in gaul very rough. cicero, who is anxious on his behalf, laughs at him and bids him take the good things that come in his way. in subsequent years trebatius was made known to the world as the legal pundit whom horace pretends to consult as to the libellous nature of his satires.[41] in september of this year cicero pleaded in court for his friend cn. plancius, against whom there was brought an accusation that, in canvassing and obtaining the office of ædile, he had been guilty of bribery. in all these accusations, which come before us as having been either promoted or opposed by cicero, there is not one in which the reader sympathizes more strongly with the person accused than in this. plancius had shown cicero during his banishment the affection of a brother, or almost of a son. plancius had taken him in and provided for him in macedonia, when to do so was illegal. cicero now took great delight in returning the favor. the reader of this oration cannot learn from it that plancius had in truth done anything illegal. the complaint really made against him was that he, filling the comparatively humble position of a knight, had ventured to become the opposing candidate of such a gallant young aristocrat as m. juventius laterensis, who was beaten at this election, and now brought this action in revenge. there is no tearing of any enemy to tatters in this oration, but there is much pathos, and, as was usual with cicero at this period of his life, an inordinate amount of self-praise. there are many details as to the way in which the tribes voted at elections, which the patient and curious student will find instructive, but which will probably be caviare to all who are not patient and curious students. there are a few passages of peculiar force. addressing himself to the rival of plancius, he tells laterensis that, even though the people might have judged badly in selecting plancius, it was not the less his duty to accept the judgment of the people.[42] say that the people ought not to have done so; but it should have been sufficient for him that they had done so. then he laughs with a beautiful irony at the pretensions of the accuser. "let us suppose that it was so," he says.[43] "let no one whose family has not soared above prætorian honors contest any place with one of consular family. let no mere knight stand against one with prætorian relations." in such a case there would be no need of the people to vote at all. farther on he gives his own views as to the honors of the state in language that is very grand. "it has," he says, "been my first endeavor to deserve the high rank of the state; my second, to have been thought to deserve it. the rank itself has been but the third object of my desires."[44] plancius was acquitted--it seems to us quite as a matter of course. in this perhaps the most difficult period of his existence, when the organized conspiracy of the day had not as yet overturned the landmarks of the constitution, he wrote a long letter to his friend lentulus,[45] him who had been prominent as consul in rescuing him from his exile, and who was now proconsul in cilicia. lentulus had probably taxed him, after some friendly fashion, with going over from the "optimates" or senatorial party to that of the conspirators pompey, cæsar, and crassus. he had been called a deserter for having passed in his earlier years from the popular party to that of the senate, and now the leading optimates were doubtful of him--whether he was not showing himself too well inclined to do the bidding of the democratic leaders. the one accusation has been as unfair as the other. in this letter he reminds lentulus that a captain in making a port cannot always sail thither in a straight line, but must tack and haul and use a slant of wind as he can get it. cicero was always struggling to make way against a head-wind, and was running hither and thither in his attempt, in a manner most perplexing to those who were looking on without knowing the nature of the winds; but his port was always there, clearly visible to him, if he could only reach it. that port was the old republic, with its well-worn and once successful institutions. it was not to be "fetched." the winds had become too perverse, and the entrance had become choked with sand. but he did his best to fetch it; and, though he was driven hither and thither in his endeavors, it should be remembered that to lookers-on such must ever be the appearance of those who are forced to tack about in search of their port. i have before me mr. forsyth's elaborate and very accurate account of this letter. "now, however," says the biographer, "the future lay dark before him; and not the most sagacious politician at rome could have divined the series of events--blundering weakness on the one side and unscrupulous ambition on the other--which led to the dictatorship of cæsar and the overthrow of the constitution." nothing can be more true. cicero was probably the most sagacious politician in rome; and he, though he did understand much of the weakness--and, it should be added, of the greed--of his own party, did not foresee the point which cæsar was destined to reach, and which was now probably fixed before cæsar's own eyes. but i cannot agree with mr. forsyth in the result at which he had arrived when he quoted a passage from one of the notes affixed by melmoth to his translation of this letter: "it was fear alone that determined his resolution; and having once already suffered in the cause of liberty, he did not find himself to be disposed to be twice its martyr." i should not have thought these words worthy of refutation had they not been backed by mr. forsyth. how did cicero show his fear? had he feared--as indeed there was cause enough, when it was difficult for a leading man to keep his throat uncut amid the violence of the times, or a house over his head--might he not have made himself safe by accepting cæsar's offers? a proconsul out of rome was safe enough, but he would not be a proconsul out of rome till he could avoid it no longer. when the day of danger came, he joined pompey's army against cæsar, doubting, not for his life but for his character, as to what might be the best for the republic. he did not fear when cæsar was dead and only antony remained. when the hour came in which his throat had to be cut, he did not fear. when a man has shown such a power of action in the face of danger as cicero displayed at forty-four in his consulship, and again at sixty-four in his prolonged struggle with antony, it is contrary to nature that he should have been a coward at fifty-four. and all the evidence of the period is opposed to this theory of cowardice. there was nothing special for him to fear when cæsar was in gaul, and crassus about to start for syria, and pompey for his provinces. such was the condition of rome, social and political, that all was uncertain and all was dangerous. but men had become used to danger, and were anxious only, in the general scramble, to get what plunder might be going. unlimited plunder was at cicero's command--provinces, magistracies, abnormal lieutenancies--but he took nothing. he even told his friend in joke that he would have liked to be an augur, and the critics have thereupon concluded that he was ready to sell his country for a trifle. but he took nothing when all others were helping themselves. the letter to lentulus is well worth studying, if only as evidence of the thoughtfulness with which he weighed every point affecting his own character. he did wish to stand well with the "optimates," of whom lentulus was one. he did wish to stand well with cæsar, and with pompey, who at this time was cæsar's jackal. he did find the difficulty of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. he must have surely learned at last to hate all compromise. but he had fallen on hard times, and the task before him was impossible. if, however, his hands were clean when those of others were dirty, and his motives patriotic while those of others were selfish, so much ought to be said for him. in the same year he defended rabirius postumus, and in doing so carried on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by cæsar in defending gabinius. this rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years before cicero had defended when accused of having killed saturninus. he was a knight, and, as was customary with the equites, had long been engaged in the pursuit of trade, making money by lending money, and such like. he had, it seems, been a successful man, but, in an evil time for himself, had come across king ptolemy auletes when there was a question of restoring that wretched sovereign to the throne of egypt. as cicero was not himself much exercised in this matter, i have not referred to the king and his affairs, wishing as far as possible to avoid questions which concern the history of rome rather than the life of cicero; but the affairs of this banished king continually come up in the records of this time. pompey had befriended auletes, and gabinius, when proconsul in syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne--no doubt in obedience to pompey, though not in obedience to the senate. auletes, when in rome, had required large sums of money--suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal senators--and rabirius had supplied him. the profits to be made from suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but this king seems so have got hold of all the money which rabirius possessed, so that the knight-banker found himself obliged to become one of the king's suite when the king went back to take possession of his kingdom. in no other way could he hang on to the vast debt that was owing to him. in egypt he found himself compelled to undergo various indignities. he became no better than a head-servant among the king's servants. one of the charges brought against him was that he, a roman knight, had allowed himself to be clothed in the half-feminine garb of an oriental attendant upon a king. it was also brought against him as part of the accusation that he had bribed, or had endeavored to bribe, a certain senator. the crime nominally laid to the charge of rabirius was "de repetundis"--for extorting money in the position of a magistrate. the money alluded to had been, in truth, extorted by gabinius from ptolemy auletes as the price paid for his restoration, and had come in great part probably from out of the pocket of rabirius himself. gabinius had been condemned, and ordered to repay the money. he had none to repay, and the claim, by some clause in the law to that effect was transferred to rabirius as his agent. rabirius was accused as though he had extorted the money--which he had in fact lost, but the spirit of the accusation lay in the idea that he, a roman knight, had basely subjected himself to an egyptian king. that rabirius had been base and sordid there can be no doubt. that he was ruined by his transaction with auletes is equally certain. it is supposed that he was convicted. he was afterward employed by cæsar, who, when in power, may have recalled him from banishment. there are many passages in the oration to which i would fain refer the reader had i space to do so. i will name only one in which cicero endeavors to ingratiate himself with his audience by referring to the old established roman hatred of kings: "who is there among us who, though he may not have tried them himself, does not know the ways of kings? 'listen to me here!' 'obey my word at once!' 'speak a word more than you are told, and you'll see what you'll get!' 'do that a second time, and you die!' we should read of such things and look at them from a distance, not only for our pleasure, but that we may know of what we have to be aware, and what we ought to avoid."[46] there is a letter written in this year to curio, another young friend such as cælius, of whom i have spoken. curio also was clever, dissipated, extravagant, and unscrupulous. but at this period of his life he was attached to cicero, who was not indifferent to the services which might accrue to him from friends who might be violent and unscrupulous on the right side. [sidenote: b.c. 53, ætat. 54.] this letter was written to secure curio's services for another friend not quite so young, but equally attached, and perhaps of all the romans of the time the most unscrupulous and the most violent. this friend was milo, who was about to stand for the consulship of the following year. curio was on his road from asia minor, where he had been quæstor, and is invited by cicero in language peculiarly pressing to be the leader of milo's party on the occasion.[47] we cannot but imagine that the winds which curio was called upon to govern were the tornadoes and squalls which were to be made to rage in the streets of rome to the great discomfiture of milo's enemies during his canvass. to such a state had rome come, that for the first six months of this year there were no consuls, an election being found to be impossible. milo had been the great opponent of clodius in the city rows which had taken place previous to the exile of cicero. the two men are called by mommsen the achilles and the hector of the streets.[48] cicero was of course on milo's side, as milo was an enemy to clodius. in this matter his feeling was so strong that he declares to curio that he does not think that the welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were those of milo to him. milo's success is the only object of interest he has in the world. this is interesting to us now as a prelude to the great trial which was to take place in the next year, when milo, instead of being elected consul, was convicted of murder. in the two previous years cæsar had made two invasions into britain, in the latter of which quintus cicero had accompanied him. cicero in various letters alludes to this undertaking, but barely gives it the importance which we, as britons, think should have been attached to so tremendous an enterprise. there might perhaps be some danger, he thought, in crossing the seas, and encountering the rocky shores of the island, but there was nothing to be got worth the getting. he tells atticus that he can hardly expect any slaves skilled either in music or letters,[49] and he suggests to trebatius that, as he will certainly find neither gold nor slaves, he had better put himself into a british chariot and come back in it as soon as possible.[50] in this year cæsar reduced the remaining tribes of gaul, and crossed the rhine a second time. it was his sixth year in gaul, and men had learned to know what was his nature. cicero had discovered his greatness, as also pompey must have done, to his great dismay; and he had himself discovered what he was himself; but two accidents occurred in this year which were perhaps as important in roman history as the continuance of cæsar's success. julia, cæsar's daughter and pompey's wife, died in childbed. she seems to have been loved by all, and had been idolized from the time of the marriage by her uxorious husband, who was more than twenty-four years her senior. she certainly had been a strong bond of union between cæsar and pompey; so much so that we are surprised that such a feeling should have been so powerful among the romans of the time. "concordiæ pignus," a "pledge of friendship," she is called by paterculus, who tells us in the same sentence that the triumvirate had no other bond to hold it together.[51] whether the friendship might have remained valid had julia lived we cannot say; but she died, and the two friends became enemies. from the moment of julia's death there was no triumvirate. the other accident was equally fatal to the bond of union which had bound the three men together. late in the year, after his consulship, b.c. 54, crassus had gone to his syrian government with the double intention of increasing his wealth and rivalling the military glories of cæsar and pompey. in the following year he became an easy victim to eastern deceit, and was destroyed by the parthians, with his son and the greater part of the roman army which had been intrusted to him.[52] we are told that crassus at last destroyed himself. i doubt, however, whether there was enough of patriotism alive among romans at the time to create the feeling which so great a loss and so great a shame should have occasioned. as far as we can learn, the destruction of crassus and his legions did not occasion so much thought in rome as the breaking up of the triumvirate. cicero's daughter tullia was now a second time without a husband. she was the widow of her first husband piso; had then, b.c. 56, married crassipes, and had been divorced. of him we have heard nothing, except that he was divorced. a doubt has been thrown on the fact whether she was in truth ever married to crassipes. we learn from letters, both to his brother and to atticus, that cicero was contented with the match, when it was made, and did his best to give the lady a rich dowry.[53] in this year cicero was elected into the college of augurs, to fill the vacancy made by the death of young crassus, who had been killed with his father in parthia. the reader will remember that he had in a joking manner expressed a desire for the office. he now obtained it without any difficulty, and certainly without any sacrifice of his principle. it had formerly been the privilege of the augurs to fill up the vacancies in their own college, but the right had been transferred to the people. it was now conferred upon cicero without serious opposition. chapter iii. _milo._ [sidenote: b.c. 52, ætat. 55.] the preceding year came to an end without any consular election. it was for the election expected to have taken place that the services of curio had been so ardently bespoken by cicero on behalf of milo. in order to impede the election clodius accused milo of being in debt, and cicero defended him. what was the nature of the accusation we do not exactly know. "an inquiry into milo's debts!" such was the name given to the pleadings as found with the fragments which have come to us.[54] in these, which are short and not specially interesting, there is hardly a word as to milo's debts; but much abuse of clodius, with some praise of cicero himself, and some praise also of pompey, who was so soon to take up arms against cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of milo. we cannot believe that milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know that at last he was not elected. early in the year clodius was killed, and then, at the suggestion of bibulus--whom the reader will remember as the colleague of cæsar in the consulship when cæsar reduced his colleague to ridiculous impotence by his violence--pompey was elected as sole consul, an honor which befell no other roman.[55] the condition of rome must have been very low when such a one as bibulus thought that no order was possible except by putting absolute power into the hands of him who had so lately been the partner of cæsar in the conspiracy which had not even yet been altogether brought to an end. that bibulus acted under constraint is no doubt true. it would be of little matter now from what cause he acted, were it not that his having taken a part in this utter disruption of the roman form of government is one proof the more that there was no longer any hope for the republic. but the story of the killing of clodius must be told at some length, because it affords the best-drawn picture that we can get of the sort of violence with which roman affairs had to be managed; and also because it gave rise to one of the choicest morsels of forensic eloquence that have ever been prepared by the intellect and skill of an advocate. it is well known that the speech to which i refer was not spoken, and could not have been spoken, in the form in which it has reached us. we do not know what part of it was spoken and what was omitted; but we do know that the pro milone exists for us, and that it lives among the glories of language as a published oration. i find, on looking through the institutio oratoria of quintilian, that in his estimation the pro milone was the first in favor of all our author's orations--"facile princeps," if we may collect the critic's ideas on the subject from the number of references made and examples taken. quintilian's work consists of lessons on oratory, which he supports by quotations from the great orators, both greek and latin, with whose speeches he has made himself familiar. cicero was to him the chief of orators; so much so that we may almost say that quintilian's institutio is rather a lecture in honor of cicero than a general lesson. with the roman school-master's method of teaching for the benefit of the roman youth of the day we have no concern at present, but we can gather from the references made by him the estimation in which various orations were held by others, as well as by him, in his day. the pro cluentio, which is twice as long as the pro milone, and which has never, i think, been a favorite with modern readers, is quoted very frequently by quintilian. it is the second in the list. quintilian makes eighteen references to it; but the pro milone is brought to the reader's notice thirty-seven times. quintilian was certainly a good critic; and he understood how to recommend himself to his own followers by quoting excellences which had already been acknowledged as the best which roman literature had afforded. those who have gone before me in writing the life of cicero have, in telling their story as to milo, very properly gone to asconius for their details. as i must do so too, i shall probably not diverge far from them. asconius wrote as early as in the reign of claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. among other writings he could refer to those books of livy which have since been lost. he seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of affection and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the other. there can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of asconius as to milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge of the facts. [sidenote: b.c. 52, ætat. 55.] when the year began, no consuls had been chosen, and an interrex became necessary--one interrex after another--to make the election of consuls possible in accordance with the forms of the constitution. these men remained in office each for five days, and it was customary that an election which had been delayed should be completed within the days of the second or third interrex. there were three candidates, milo, hypsæus, and q. metellus scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence were used with open and unblushing profligacy. cicero was wedded to milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to curio, but it does not appear that he himself took any active part in the canvass. the duties to be done required rather the services of a curio. pompey, on the other hand, was nearly as warmly engaged in favor of hypsæus and scipio, though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. milo and clodius had often fought in the streets of rome, each ruffian attended by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as asconius says, they were equal. on the 20th of january milo was returning to rome from lanuvium, where he had been engaged, as chief magistrate of the town, in nominating a friend for the municipality. he was in a carriage with his wife fausta, and with a friend, and was followed, as was his wont, by a large band of armed men, among whom were two noted gladiators, eudamus and birria. at bovillæ, near the temple of the bona dea, his cortege was met by clodius on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed with swords. milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. it is not supposed by asconius that either of the two men expected the meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous. milo and clodius passed each other without words or blows--scowling, no doubt; but the two gladiators who were at the end of the file of milo's men began to quarrel with certain of the followers of clodius. clodius interfered, and was stabbed in the shoulder by birria; then he was carried to a neighboring tavern while the fight was in progress. milo, having heard that his enemy was there concealed--thinking that he would be greatly relieved in his career by the death of such a foe, and that the risk should be run though the consequences might be grave--caused clodius to be dragged out from the tavern and slaughtered. on what grounds asconius has attributed these probable thoughts to milo we do not know. that the order was given the jury believed, or at any rate affected to believe. up to this moment milo was no more guilty than clodius, and neither of them, probably, guilty of more than their usual violence. partisans on the two sides endeavored to show that each had prepared an ambush for the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. there is no evidence existing now as to this dragging out of clodius that he might be murdered; but we know what was the general opinion of rome at the time and we may conclude that it was right. the order probably was given by milo--as it would have been given by clodius in similar circumstances--at the spur of the moment, when milo allowed his passion to get the better of his judgment. the thirty servants of clodius were either killed or had run away and hidden themselves, when a certain senator, s. tedius, coming that way, found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a litter deposited it in the dead man's house. before nightfall the death of clodius was known through the city, and the body was surrounded by a crowd of citizens of the lower order and of slaves. with them was fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the people to sympathy. on the morrow there was an increased crowd, among whom were senators and tribunes, and the body was carried out into the forum, and the people were harangued by the tribunes as to the horror of the deed that had been done. from thence the body was borne into the neighboring senate-house[56] by the crowd, under the leading of sextus clodius, a cousin of the dead man. here it was burnt with a great fire fed with the desks and benches, and even with the books and archives which were stored there. not only was the senate-house destroyed by the flames, but a temple also that was close to it. milo's house was attacked, and was defended by arms. we are made to understand that all rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. the consuls' fasces had been put away in one of the temples--that of venus libitina: these the people seized and carried to the house of pompey, declaring that he should be dictator, and he alone consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous reverence for legal forms. but there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of the senate-house, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy for clodius, so that milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off, came back to rome and renewed his canvass, distributing bribes to all the citizens--"millia assuum"--perhaps something over ten pounds to every man. both he and cælius harangued the people, and declared that clodius had begun the fray. but no consuls could be elected while the city was in such a state, and pompey, having been desired to protect the republic in the usual form, collected troops from all italy. preparations were made for trying milo, and the friends of each party demanded that the slaves of the other party should be put to the torture and examined as witnesses; but every possible impediment and legal quibble was used by the advocates on either side. hortensius, who was engaged for milo, declared that milo's slaves had all been made free men and could not be touched. stories were told backward and forward of the cruelty and violence on each side. milo made an offer to pompey to abandon his canvass in favor of hypsæus, if pompey would accept this as a compromise. pompey answered, with the assumed dignity that was common to him, that he was not the roman people, and that it was not for him to interfere. it was then that pompey was created sole consul at the instigation of bibulus. he immediately caused a new law to be passed for the management of the trial which was coming on, and when he was opposed in this by cælius, declared that if necessary he would carry his purpose by force of arms. pretending to be afraid of milo's violence, he remained at home, and on one occasion dismissed the senate. afterward, when milo entered the senate, he was accused by a senator present of having come thither with arms hidden beneath his toga; whereupon he lifted his toga and showed that there were none. asconius tells us that upon this cicero declared that all the other charges made against the accused were equally false. this is the first word of cicero's known to us in the matter. two or three men declared that because they had been present at the death of clodius they had been kidnapped and kept close prisoners by milo; and the story, whether true or false, did milo much harm. it seems that milo became again very odious to the people, and that their hatred was for the time extended to cicero as milo's friend and proposed advocate. pompey seems to have shared the feeling, and to have declared that violence was contemplated against himself. "but such was cicero's constancy," says asconius, "that neither the alienation of the people nor the suspicions of pompey, no fear of what might befall himself at the trial, no dread of the arms which were used openly against milo, could hinder him from going on with the defence, although it was within his power to avoid the quarrel with the people and to renew his friendship for pompey by abstaining from it." domitius ænobarbus was chosen as president, and the others elected as judges were, we are told, equally good men. milo was accused both of violence and bribery, but was able to arrange that the former case should be tried first. the method of the trial is explained. fifty-one judges or jurymen were at last chosen. schola was the first witness examined, and he exaggerated as best he could the horror of the murder. when marcellus, as advocate for milo, began to examine schola, the people were so violent that the president was forced to protect marcellus by taking him within the barrier of the judges' seats. milo also was obliged to demand protection within the court. pompey, then sitting at the treasury, and frightened by the clamor, declared that he himself would come down with troops on the next day. after the hearing of the evidence the tribune munatius plancus harangued the people, and begged them to come in great numbers on the morrow so that milo might not be allowed to escape. on the following day, which was the 11th of april, all the taverns were shut. pompey filled the forum and every approach to it with his soldiers. he himself remained seated at the treasury as before, surrounded by a picked body of men. at the trial on this day, when three of the advocates against milo had spoken--appius, marc antony, and valerius nepos--cicero stood up to defend the criminal. brutus had prepared an oration declaring that the killing of clodius was in itself a good deed, and praiseworthy on behalf of the republic; but to this speech cicero refused his consent, arguing that a man could not legally be killed simply because his death was to be desired, and brutus's speech was not spoken. witnesses had declared that milo had lain in wait for clodius. this cicero alleged to be false, contending that clodius had lain in wait for milo, and he endeavored to make this point and no other. "but it is proved," says asconius, "that neither of the men had any design of violence on that day; that they met by chance, and that the killing of clodius had come from the quarrelling of the slaves. it was well known that each had often threatened the death of the other. milo's slaves had no doubt been much more numerous than those of clodius when the meeting took place; but those of clodius had been very much better prepared for fighting. when cicero began to address the judges, the partisans of clodius could not be induced to abstain from riot even by fear of the soldiery; so that he was unable to speak with his accustomed firmness." such is the account as given by asconius, who goes on to tell us that out of the fifty-one judges thirty-eight condemned milo and only thirteen were for acquitting him. milo, therefore, was condemned, and had to retire at once into exile at marseilles. it seems to have been acknowledged by the judges that clodius had not been wounded at first by any connivance on the part of milo; but they thought that milo did direct that clodius should be killed during the fight which the slaves had commenced among themselves. as far as we can take any interest in the matter we must suppose that it was so; but we are forced to agree with brutus that the killing of clodius was in itself a good deed done--and we have to acknowledge at the same time that the killing of milo would have been as good. though we may doubt as to the manner in which clodius was killed, there are points in the matter as to which we may be quite assured. milo was condemned, not for killing clodius, but because he was opposed at the moment to the line of politics which pompey thought would be most conducive to his own interests. milo was condemned, and the death of the wretched clodius avenged, because pompey had desired hypsæus to be consul and milo had dared to stand in his way. an audience was refused to cicero, not from any sympathy with clodius, but because it suited pompey that milo should be condemned. could cicero have spoken the words which afterward were published, the jury might have hesitated and the criminal might have been acquitted. cæsar was absent, and pompey found himself again lifted into supreme power--for a moment. though no one in rome had insulted pompey as clodius had done, though no one had so fought for pompey as cicero had done, still it suited pompey to avenge clodius and to punish cicero for having taken milo's part in regard to the consulship. milo, after his condemnation for the death of clodius, was condemned in three subsequent trials, one following the other almost instantly, for bribery, for secret conspiracy, and again for violence in the city. he was absent, but there was no difficulty in obtaining his conviction. when he was gone one saufeius, a friend of his, who had been with him during the tumult, was put upon his trial for his share in the death of clodius. he at any rate was known to have been guilty in the matter. he had been leader of the party who attacked the tavern, had killed the tavern-keeper, and had dragged out clodius to execution. but saufeius was twice acquitted. had there been any hope of law-abiding tranquillity in rome, it might have been well that clodius should be killed and milo banished. as it was, neither the death of the one nor the banishment of the other could avail anything. the pity of it was--the pity--that such a one as cicero, a man with such intellect, such ambition, such sympathies, and such patriotism, should have been brought to fight on such an arena. [sidenote: b.c. 52, ætat. 55.] we have in this story a graphic and most astounding picture of the rome of the day. no consuls had been or could be elected, and the system by which "interreges" had been enabled to superintend the election of their successors in lieu of the consuls of the expiring year had broken down. pompey had been made sole consul in an informal manner, and had taken upon himself all the authority of a dictator in levying troops. power in rome seems at the moment to have been shared between him and bands of gladiators, but he too had succeeded in arming himself, and as the clodian faction was on his side, he was for a while supreme. for law by this time he could have but little reverence, having been partner with cæsar in the so-called triumvirate for the last eight years. but yet he had no aptitude for throwing the law altogether on one side, and making such a coup-de-main as was now and again within his power. beyond pompey there was at this time no power in rome, except that of the gladiators, and the owners of the gladiators, who were each intent on making plunder out of the empire. there were certain men, such as were bibulus and cato, who considered themselves to be "optimates"--leading citizens who believed in the republic, and were no doubt anxious to maintain the established order of things--as we may imagine the dukes and earls are anxious in these days of ours. but they were impotent and bad men of business, and as a body were too closely wedded to their "fish ponds"--by which cicero means their general luxuries and extravagances. in the bosoms of these men there was no doubt an eager desire to perpetuate a republic which had done so much for them, and a courage sufficient for the doing of some great deed, if the great deed would come in their way. they went to pharsalia, and cato marched across the deserts of libya. they slew cæsar, and did some gallant fighting afterward; but they were like a rope of sand, and had among them no fitting leader and no high purpose. outside of these was cicero, who certainly was not a fitting leader when fighting was necessary, and who as to politics in general was fitted rather by noble aspirations than supported by fixed purposes. we are driven to wonder that there should have been, at such a period and among such a people, aspirations so noble joined with so much vanity of expression. among romans he stands the highest, because of all romans he was the least roman. he had begun with high resolves, and had acted up to them. among all the quæstors, ædiles, prætors, and consuls rome had known, none had been better, none honester, none more patriotic. there had come up suddenly in those days a man imbued with the unwonted idea that it behooved him to do his duty to the state according to the best of his lights--no cincinnatus, no decius, no camillus, no scipio, no pretentious follower of those half-mythic heroes, no demigod struggling to walk across the stage of life enveloped in his toga and resolved to impose on all eyes by the assumption of a divine dignity, but one who at every turn was conscious of his human duty, and anxious to do it to the best of his human ability. he did it; and we have to acknowledge that the conceit of doing it overpowered him. he mistook the feeling of people around him, thinking that they too would be carried away by their admiration of his conduct. up to the day on which he descended from his consul's seat duty was paramount with him. then gradually there came upon him the conviction that duty, though it had been paramount with him, did not weigh so very much with others. he had been lavish in his worship of pompey, thinking that pompey, whom he had believed in his youth to be the best of citizens, would of all men be the truest to the republic. pompey had deceived him, but he could not suddenly give up his idol. gradually we see that there fell upon him a dread that the great roman republic was not the perfect institution which he had fancied. in his early days chrysogonus had been base, and verres, and oppianicus, and catiline; but still, to his idea, the body of the roman republic had been sound. but when he had gone out from his consulship, with resolves strung too high that he would remain at rome, despising provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there were no romans such as he had conceived them to be. then he fell away and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequalled intellect in attacking piso, in praising himself, and in defending milo. the glory of his active life was over when his consulship was done--the glory was over, with the exception of that to come from his final struggle with antony--but the work by which his immortality was to be achieved was yet before him. i think that after defending milo he must have acknowledged to himself that all partisan fighting in rome was mean, ignoble, and hollow. with the senate-house and its archives burnt as a funeral pile for clodius, and the forum in which he had to plead lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by cicero that the old republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection. he had said so often to atticus; but men say words in the despondency of the moment which they do not wish to have accepted as their established conviction. in such humor cicero had written to his friend; but now it must have occurred to him that his petulant expressions were becoming only too true. when instigating curio to canvass for milo, and defending milo as though it had been a good thing for a roman nobleman to travel in the neighborhood of the city with an army at his heels, he must have ceased to believe even in himself as a roman statesman. in the oration which we possess--which we must teach ourselves to regard as altogether different from that which cicero had been able to pronounce among pompey's soldiers and the clodian rabble--the reader is astonished by the magnificence of the language in which a case so bad in itself could be enveloped, and is made to feel that had he been on the jury, and had such an address been made to him, he would certainly have voted for an acquittal. the guilt or innocence of milo as to the murder really turned on the point whether he did or did not direct that clodius should be dragged out of the tavern and slain; but here in this oration three points are put forward, in each of which it was within the scope of the orator to make the jury believe that clodius had in truth prepared an ambuscade, that clodius was of all romans the worst, and that milo was loyal and true, and, in spite of a certain fierceness of disposition, a good citizen at heart. we agree with milo, who declared, when banished, that he would never have been able to enjoy the fish of marseilles had cicero spoken in the forum the speech which he afterward composed. "i would not remind you," he says, "of milo's tribuneship, nor of all his service to the state, unless i could make plain to you as daylight the ambush which on that day was laid for him by his enemy. i will not pray you to forgive a crime simply because milo has been a good citizen; nor, because the death of clodius has been a blessing to us all, will i therefore ask you to regard it as a deed worthy of praise. but if the fact of the ambush be absolutely made evident, then i beseech you at any rate to grant that a man may lawfully defend himself from the arrogance and from the arms of his enemies."[57] from this may be seen the nature of the arguments used. for the language the reader must turn to the original. that it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence of all critics--especially that of milo when he was eating sardines in his exile, and of quintilian when he was preparing his lessons on rhetoric. it seems that cicero had been twitted with using something of a dominating tyranny in the senate--which would hardly have been true, as the prevailing influence of the moment was that of pompey--but he throws aside the insinuation very grandly. "call it tyranny if you please--if you think it that, rather than some little authority which has grown from my services to the state, or some favor among good men because of my rank. call it what you will, while i am able to use it for the defence of the good against the violence of the evil-minded."[58] then he describes the fashion in which these two men travelled on the occasion--the fashion of travelling as it suited him to describe it. "if you did not hear the details of the story, but could see simply a picture of all that occurred, would it not appear which of them had planned the attack, which of them was ignorant of all evil? one of them was seated in his carriage, clad in his cloak, and with his wife beside him. his garments, his clients, his companions all show how little prepared he was for fighting. then, as to the other, why was he leaving his country-house so suddenly? why should he do this so late in the evening? why did he travel so slowly at this time of the year? he was going, he says, to pompey's villa. not that he might see pompey, because he knew that pompey was at alsium. did he want to see the villa? he had been there a thousand times. why all this delay, and turning backward and forward? because he would not leave the spot till milo had come up. and now compare this ruffian's mode of travelling with that of milo. it has been the constant custom with clodius to have his wife with him, but now she was not there. he has always been in a carriage, but now he was on horseback. his young greek sybarites have ever been with him, even when he went as far as tuscany; on this occasion there were no such trifles in his company. milo, with whom such companions were not usual, had his wife's singing-boys with him and a bevy of female slaves. clodius, who usually never moved without a crowd of prostitutes at his heels, now had no one with him but men picked for this work in hand."[59] what a picture we have here of the manner in which noble romans were wont to move about the city and the suburbs! we may imagine that the singing-boys of milo's wife were quite as bad as the greek attendants in whom clodius usually rejoiced. then he asks a question as to pompey full of beautiful irony. if pompey could bring back clodius from the dead--pompey, who is so fond of him; pompey, who is so powerful, so fortunate, so capable of all things; pompey, who would be so glad to do it because of his love for the man--do you not know that on behalf of the republic he would leave him down among the ghosts where he is?[60] there is a delightful touch of satire in this when we remember how odious clodius had been to pompey in days not long gone by, and how insolent. the oration is ended by histrionic effects in language which would have been marvellous had they ever been spoken, but which seem to be incredible to us when we know that they were arranged for publication when the affair was over. "o me wretched! o me unhappy!"[61] but these attempts at translation are all vain. the student who wishes to understand what may be the effect of latin words thrown into this choicest form should read the milo. we have very few letters from cicero in this year--four only, i think, and they are of no special moment. in one of them he recommends avianus to titus titius, a lieutenant then serving under pompey.[62] in this he is very anxious to induce titius to let avianus know all the good things that cicero had said of him. in our times we sometimes send our letters of introduction open by the hands of the person introduced, so that he may himself read his own praise; but the romans did not scruple to ask that this favor might be done for them. "do me this favor. titius, of being kind to avianus; but do me also the greater favor of letting avianus know that i have asked you." what cicero did to titius other noble romans did in their communications with their friends in the provinces. in another letter to marius he expresses his great joy at the condemnation of that munatius plancus who had been tribune when clodius was killed. plancus had harangued the people, exciting them against milo and against cicero, and had led to the burning of the senate-house and of the temple next door. for this plancus could not be accused during his year of office, but he had been put upon his trial when that year was over. pompey had done his best to save him, but in vain; and cicero rejoices not only that the tribune who had opposed him should be punished, but that pompey should have been beaten, which he attributes altogether to the favor shown toward himself by the jury.[63] he is aroused to true exultation that there should have been men on the bench who, having been chosen by pompey in order that they might acquit this man, had dared to condemn him. cicero had himself spoken against plancus on the occasion. sextus clodius, who had been foremost among the rioters, was also condemned. [sidenote: b.c. 52, ætat. 55.] this was the year in which cæsar was so nearly conquered by the gauls at gergovia, and in which vercingetorix, having shut himself up in alesia, was overcome at last by the cruel strategy of the romans. the brave gaul, who had done his best to defend his country and had carried himself to the last with a fine gallantry, was kept by his conqueror six years in chains and then strangled amid the glories of that conqueror's triumph, a signal instance of the mercy which has been attributed to cæsar as his special virtue. in this year, too, cicero's dialogues with atticus, de legibus, were written. he seems to have disturbed his labors in the forum with no other work. chapter iv. _cilicia._ [sidenote: b.c. 51, ætat. 56.] we cannot but think that at this time the return of cæsar was greatly feared at rome by the party in the state to which cicero belonged; and this party must now be understood as including pompey. pompey had been nominally proconsul in spain since the year of his second consulship, conjointly with crassus, b.c. 55, but had remained in rome and had taken upon himself the management of roman affairs, considering himself to be the master of the irregular powers which the triumvirate had created; and of this party was also cicero, with cato, bibulus, brutus, and all those who were proud to call themselves "optimates." they were now presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to the character of the men. cato and brutus were thoroughly in earnest, not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the old spirit. pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking that all must be well in rome as long as he was possessed of high office, grand names, and the appanages of dictatorship. cicero, too, was anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. something might perhaps be saved if these optimates could be aroused to some idea of their duty by the exercise of eloquence such as his own. i will quote a few words from mr. froude's cæsar: "if cæsar came to rome as consul, the senate knew too well what it might expect;" and then he adds, "cicero had for some time seen what was coming."[64] as to these assertions i quite agree with mr. froude; but i think that he has read wrongly both the history of the time and the character of the man when he goes on to state that "cicero preferred characteristically to be out of the way at the moment when he expected that the storm should break, and had accepted the government of cilicia and cyprus." all the known details of cicero's life up to the period of his government of cilicia, during his government, and after his return from that province, prove that he was characteristically wedded to a life in rome. this he declared by his distaste to that employment and his impatience of return while he was absent. nothing, i should say, could be more certain than that he went to cilicia in obedience to new legal enactments which he could not avoid, but which, as they acted upon himself, were odious to him. mr. froude tells us that he held the government but for two years.[65] the period of these provincial governments had of late much varied. the acknowledged legal duration was for one year. they had been stretched by the governing party to three, as in the case of verres in sicily; to five, as with pompey for his spanish government; to ten for cæsar in gaul. this had been done with the view of increasing the opportunities for plunder and power, but had been efficacious of good in enabling governors to carry out work for which one year would not have sufficed. it may be a question whether cicero as proconsul in cilicia deserved blame for curtailing the period of his services to the empire, or praise for abstaining from plunder and power; but the fact is that he remained in his province not two years but exactly one;[66] and that he escaped from it with all the alacrity which we may presume to be expected by a prisoner when the bars of his jail have been opened for him. whether we blame him or praise him, we can hardly refrain from feeling that his impatience was grotesque. there certainly was no desire on cicero's part either to go to cilicia or to remain there, and of all his feelings that which prompted him never to be far absent from rome was the most characteristic of the man. among various laws which pompey had caused to be passed in the previous year, b.c. 52, and which had been enacted with views personal to himself and his own political views, had been one "de jure magistratuum"--as to the way in which the magistrates of the empire should be selected. among other clauses it contained one which declared that no prætor and no consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of office. it would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive of the old system of the republic this new law would have been, had the new law and the old system attempted to live together. the proprætor would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the province or for the consulship, and no consular governor would have been eligible for a province till after his fiftieth year. but at this time pompey was both consul and governor, and cæsar was governor for ten years with special exemption from another clause in the war which would otherwise have forbidden him to stand again for the consulship during his absence.[67] the law was wanted probably only for the moment; but it had the effect of forcing cicero out of rome. as there would naturally come from it a dearth of candidates for the provinces it was further decreed by the senate that the ex-prætors and ex-consuls who had not yet served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of government. in compliance with this order, and probably as a specially intended consequence of it, cicero was compelled to go to cilicia. mr. froude has said that "he preferred characteristically to be out of the way." i have here given what i think to be the more probable cause of his undertaking the government of cilicia. [sidenote: b.c. 51, ætat. 56.] in april of this year cicero before he started wrote the first of a series of letters which he addressed to appius claudius, who was his predecessor in the province. this appius was the brother of the publius clodius whom we have known for the last two or three years as cicero's pest and persecutor; but he addresses appius as though they were dear friends: "since it has come to pass, in opposition to all my wishes and to my expectations, that i must take in hand the government of a province, i have this one consolation in my various troubles--that no better friend to yourself than i am could follow you, and that i could take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the business pleasant to me than you will be."[68] and then he goes on: "you perceive that, in accordance with the decree of the senate, the province has to be occupied." his next letter on the subject was written to atticus while he was still in italy, but when he had started on his journey. "in your farewell to me," he says, "i have seen the nature of your love to me. i know well what is my own for you. it must, then, be your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of ours should be prolonged beyond one year."[69] then he goes on to tell the story of a scene that had occurred at arcanum, a house belonging to his brother quintus, at which he had stopped on the road for a family farewell. pomponia was there, the wife of quintus and the sister to atticus. there were a few words between the husband and the wife as to the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved with much christian perversity of temper. "alas," says quintus to his brother, "you see what it is that i have to suffer every day!" knowing as we all do how great were the powers of the roman paterfamilias, and how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should have thought that an ex-prætor might have managed his home more comfortably; but ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make themselves disagreeable in all ages. i doubt whether we have any testimony whatever as to cicero's provincial government, except that which comes from himself and which is confined to the letters written by him at the time.[70] nevertheless, we have a clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters which he then wrote. the truth of his account of himself has never been questioned. he draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity, and his own power of administration which is the more astonishing, because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other governors. we have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malefactors, till we are taught to acknowledge that, in the low condition to which roman nature had fallen, it was useless to expect any other conduct from a roman governor; and then he gives us the account of how a man did govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest, clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. that man was himself; and he gives this account of himself, as it were, without a blush! he tells the story of himself, not as though it was remarkable! that other governors should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them, and draw the blood from their veins for drink; but that cicero should not condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered, seems to cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from him! a wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character; but surely the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more wonderful. "the conduct of cicero in his command was meritorious," says de quincey. "his short career as proconsul in cilicia had procured for him well-merited honor," says dean merivale.[71] "he had managed his province well; no one ever suspected cicero of being corrupt or unjust," says mr. froude, who had, however, said (some pages before) that cicero was "thinking as usual of himself first, and his duty afterward."[72] dio cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of cicero's life, says not a word of his cilician government, from which we may, at any rate, argue that no stories detrimental to cicero as a proconsul had come in the way of dio cassius. i have confirmed what i have said as to this episode in cicero's life by the corroborating testimony of writers who have not been generally favorable in their views of his character. nevertheless, we have no testimony but his own as to what cicero did in cilicia.[73] it has never occurred to any reader of cicero's letters to doubt a line in which he has spoken directly of his own conduct. his letters have often been used against himself, but in a different manner. he has been judged to give true testimony against himself, but not false testimony in his own favor. his own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant--and sometimes as implying much more that the writer intended. a word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. he has been injured, not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having them too well credited where they have been misunderstood. it is at any rate the fact that his own account of his own proconsular doings has been accepted in full, and that the present reader may be encouraged to believe what extracts i may give to him by the fact that all other readers before him have believed them. from his villa at cumæ on his journey he wrote to atticus in high spirits. hortensius had been to see him--his old rival, his old predecessor in the glory of the forum--hortensius, whom he was fated never to see again. his only request to hortensius had been that he should assist in taking care that he, cicero, should not be required to stay above one year in his province. atticus is to help him also; and another friend, furnius, who may probably be the tribune for the next year, has been canvassed for the same object. in a further letter from beneventum he alludes to a third marriage for his daughter tullia, but seems to be aware that, as he is leaving italy, he cannot interfere in that matter himself. he writes again from venusia, saying that he purports to see pompey at tarentum before he starts, and gives special instructions to atticus as to the payment of a debt which is due by him to cæsar. he has borrowed money of cæsar, and is specially anxious that the debt should be settled. in another letter from tarentum he presses the same matter. he is anxious to be relieved from the obligation.[74] from athens he wrote again to his friend a letter which is chiefly remarkable as telling us something of the quarrel between marcus claudius marcellus, who was one of the consuls for the year, and cæsar, who was still absent in gaul. this marcellus, and others of his family who succeeded him in his office, were hotly opposed to cæsar, belonging to that party of the state to which cicero was attached, and to which pompey was returning.[75] it seems to have been the desire of the consul not only to injure but to insult cæsar. he had endeavored to get a decree of the senate for recalling cæsar at once, but had succeeded only in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following year--when cæsar would naturally return. but to show how little was his regard to cæsar, he caused to be flogged in rome a citizen from one of those towns of cisalpine gaul to which cæsar had assumed to give the privilege of roman citizenship. the man was present as a delegate from his town, novocomum[76]--the present como--in furtherance of the colony's claims, and the consul had the man flogged to show thereby that he was not a roman. marcellus was punished for his insolence by banishment, inflicted by cæsar when cæsar was powerful. we shall learn before long how cicero made an oration in his favor; but, in the letter written from athens, he blames marcellus much for flogging the man.[77] "fight in my behalf," he says, in the course of this letter; "for if my government be prolonged, i shall fail and become mean." the idea of absence from rome is intolerable to him. from athens also he wrote to his young friend cælius, from whom he had requested information as to what was going on in rome. but cælius has to be again instructed as to the nature of the subjects which are to be regarded as interesting. "what!--do you think that i have asked you to send me stories of gladiators, law-court adjournments, and the pilferings of christus--trash that no one would think of mentioning to me if i were in rome?"[78] but he does not finish his letter to cælius without begging cælius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. cælius troubles him much afterward by renewed requests for cilician panthers wanted for ædilian shows. cicero becomes very sea-sick on his journey, and then reaches ephesus, in asia minor, dating his arrival there on the five hundred and sixtieth day from the battle of bovilla, showing how much the contest as to milo still clung to his thoughts.[79] ephesus was not in his province, but at ephesus all the magistrates came out to do him honor, as though he had come among them as their governor. "now has arrived," he says, "the time to justify all those declarations which i have made as to my own conduct; but i trust i can practise the lessons which i have learned from you." atticus, in his full admiration of his friend's character, had doubtless said much to encourage and to instigate the virtue which it was cicero's purpose to employ. we have none of the words ever written by atticus to cicero, but we have light enough to show us that the one friend was keenly alive to the honor of the other, and thoroughly appreciated its beauty. "do not let me be more than a year away," he exclaims; "do not let even another month be added."[80] then there is a letter from cælius praying for panthers.[81] in passing through the province of asia to his own province, he declares that the people everywhere receive him well. "my coming," he says, "has cost no man a shilling."[82] his whole staff has now joined him except one tullius, whom he speaks of as a friend of atticus, but afterward tells us he had come to him from titinius. then he again enjoins atticus to have that money paid to cæsar. from tralles, still in the province of asia, he writes to appius, the outgoing governor, a letter full of courtesies, and expressing an anxious desire for a meeting. he had offered before to go by any route which might suit appius, but appius, as appears afterward, was anxious for anything rather than to encounter the new governor within the province he was leaving.[83] on 31st july he reached laodicea, within his own boundaries, having started on his journey on 10th may, and found all people glad to see him; but the little details of his office harass him sadly. "the action of my mind, which you know so well, cannot find space enough. all work worthy of my industry is at an end. i have to preside at laodicea while some plotius is giving judgment at rome. * * * and then am i not regretting at every moment the life of rome--the forum, the city itself, my own house? am i not always regretting you? i will endeavor to bear it for a year; but if it be prolonged, then it will be all over with me. * * * you ask me how i am getting on. i am spending a fortune in carrying out this grand advice of yours. i like it hugely; but when the time comes for paying you your debts i shall have to renew the bill. * * * to make me do such work as this is putting a saddle upon a cow"--cutting a block with a razor, as we should say--"clearly i am not made for it; but i will bear it, so that it be only for one year."[84] from laodicea, a town in phrygia, he went west to synnada. his province, known as cilicia, contained the districts named on the map of asia minor as phrygia, pisidia, pamphylia, part of cappadocia, cilicia, and the island of cyprus. he soon found that his predecessors had ruined the people. "know that i have come into a province utterly and forever destroyed," he says to atticus.[85] "we hear only of taxes that cannot be paid, of men's chattels sold on all sides, of the groans from the cities, of lamentations, of horrors such as some wild beast might have produced rather than a human being. there is no room for question. every man is tired of his life; and yet some relief is given now, because of me, and by my officers, and by my lieutenants. no expense is imposed on any one. we do not take even the hay which is allowed by the julian law--not even the wood. four beds to lie on is all we accept, and a roof over our heads. in many places not even that, for we live in our tents. enormous crowds therefore come to us, and return, as it were, to life through the justice and moderation of your cicero. appius, when he knew that i was come, ran away to tarsus, the farthest point of the province." what a picture we have here of the state of a roman dependency under a normal roman governor, and of the good which a man could do who was able to abstain from plunder! in his next letter his pride expresses itself so loudly that we have to remember that this man, after all, is writing only his own secret thoughts to his bosom friend. "if i can get away from this quickly, the honors which will accrue to me from my justice will be all the greater, as happened to scævola, who was governor in asia only for nine months."[86] then again he declares how appius had escaped into the farthest corner of the province--to tarsus--when he knew that cicero was coming. he writes again to appius, complaining. "when i compare my conduct to yours," he says, "i own that i much prefer my own."[87] he had taken every pains to meet appius in a manner convenient to him, but had been deceived on every side. appius had, in a way unusual among roman governors, carried on his authority in remote parts of the province, although he had known of his successor's arrival. cicero assures him that he is quite indifferent to this. if appius will relieve him of one month's labor out of the twelve he will be delighted. but why has appius taken away three of the fullest cohorts, seeing that in the entire province the number of soldiers left has been so small? but he assures appius that, as he makes his journey, neither good nor bad shall hear evil spoken by him of his predecessor. "but as for you, you seem to have given to the dishonest reasons for thinking badly of me." then he describes the exact course he means to take in his further journey, thus giving appius full facility for avoiding him. from cybistra, in cappadocia, he writes official letters to caius marcellus, who had been just chosen consul, the brother of marcus the existing consul; to an older caius marcellus, who was their father, a colleague of his own in the college of augurs, and to marcus the existing consul, with his congratulations, also to æmilius paulus, who had also been elected consul for the next year. he writes, also, a despatch to the consuls, to the prætors, to the tribunes, and to the senate, giving them a statement as to affairs in the province. these are interesting, rather as showing the way in which these things were done, than by their own details. when he reaches cilicia proper he writes them another despatch, telling them that the parthians had come across the euphrates. he writes as wellington may have done from torres vedras. he bids them look after the safety of their eastern dominions. though they are too late in doing this, yet better now than never.[88] "you know," he says, "with what sort of an army you have supported me here; and you know also that i have undertaken this duty not in blind folly, but because in respect for the republic i have not liked to refuse. * * * as for our allies here in the province, because our rule here has been so severe and injurious, they are either too weak to help us, or so embittered against us that we dare not trust them." then there is a long letter to appius,[89] respecting the embassy which was to be sent from the province to rome, to carry the praises of the departing governor and declare his excellence as a proconsul! this was quite the usual thing to do! the worse the governor the more necessary the embassy; and such was the terror inspired even by a departing roman, and such the servility of the allies--even of those who were about to escape from him--that these embassies were a matter of course. there had been a sicilian embassy to praise verres. appius had complained as though cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be allowed for its expenses. he rebukes appius for bringing the charge against him. the series of letters written this year by cælius to cicero is very interesting as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other than ciceronian. we have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters ten or twelve from brutus, if those attributed to him were really written by him; ten or twelve from decimus brutus, and an equal number from plancus; but these were written in the stirring moments of the last struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. we have a few from quintus, but not of special interest unless we are to consider that treatise on the duties of a candidate as a letter. but these from cælius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from cicero himself. there are seventeen. they are scattered over three or four years, but most of them refer to the period of cicero's provincial government. the marvel to me is that cælius should have adopted a style so near akin to that of his master in literature. scholars who have studied the words can probably tell us of deficiencies in language; but the easy, graphic tone is to my ear ciceronian. tiro, who was slave, secretary, freedman, and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters, and have done something toward producing their literary excellence. the subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have produced in cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments; but cælius does communicate much of the political news from rome. in one letter, written in october of this year, he declares what the senate has decreed as to the recall of cæsar from gaul, and gives the words of the enactments made, with the names subscribed to them of the promoters--and also the names of the tribunes who had endeavored to oppose them.[90] the purport of these decrees i have mentioned before. the object was to recall cæsar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it would mean nothing; but cælius specially declares that the intention of recalling cæsar was agreeable to pompey, whereby we may know that the pact of the triumvirate was already at an end. in another letter he speaks of the coming of the parthians, and of cicero's inability to fight with them because of the inadequate number of soldiers intrusted to him. had there been a real roman army, then cælius would have been afraid, he says, for his friend's life. as it is, he fears only for his reputation, lest men should speak ill of him for not fighting, when to fight was beyond his power.[91] the language here is so pretty that i am tempted to think that tiro must have had a hand in it. at rome, we must remember, the tidings as to crassus were as yet uncertain. we cannot, however, doubt that cælius was in truth attached to cicero. but cicero was forced to fight, not altogether unwillingly--not with the parthians, but with tribes which were revolting from roman authority because of the parthian success. "it has turned out as you wished it," he says to cælius--"a job just sufficient to give me a small coronet of laurel." hearing that men had risen in the taurus range of mountains, which divided his province from that of syria, in which bibulus was now governor, he had taken such an army as he was able to collect to the amanus, a mountain belonging to that range, and was now writing from his camp at pindenissum, a place beyond his own province. joking at his own soldiering, he tells cælius that he had astonished those around him by his prowess. "is this he whom we used to know in the city? is this our talkative senator? you can understand the things they said.[92] * * * when i got to the amanus i was glad enough to find our friend cassius had beaten back the real parthians from antioch." but cicero claims to have done some gallant things: "i have harassed those men of amanus who are always troubling us. many i have killed; some i have taken; the rest are dispersed. i came suddenly upon their strongholds, and have got possession of them. i was called 'imperator' at the river issus." it is hardly necessary to explain, yet once again, that this title belonged properly to no commander till it had been accorded to him by his own soldiers on the field of battle.[93] he reminds cælius that it was on the issus that alexander had conquered darius. then he had sat down before pindenissum with all the machinery of a siege--with the turrets, covered ways, and ramparts. he had not as yet quite taken the town. when he had done so, he would send home his official account of it all; but the parthians may yet come, and there may be danger. "therefore, o my rufus"--he was cælius rufus--"see that i am not left here, lest, as you suspect, things should go badly with me." there is a mixture in all this of earnestness and of drollery, of boasting and of laughing at what he was doing, which is inimitable in its reality. his next letter is to his other young friend, curio, who has just been elected tribune. he gives much advice to curio, who certainly always needed it.[94] he carries on the joke when he tells atticus that the "people of pindenissum have surrendered." "who the mischief are these pindenissians? you will say. i have not even heard the name before. what would you have? i cannot make an ætolia out of cilicia. with such an army as this do you expect me to do things like a macedonicus?[95] * * * i had my camp on the issus, where alexander had his--a better soldier no doubt than you or i. i really have made a name for myself in syria. then up comes bibulus, determined to be as good as i am; but he loses his whole cohort." the failure made by bibulus at soldiering is quite as much to him as his own success. then he goes back to laodicea, leaving the army in winter-quarters, under the command of his brother quintus. but his heart is truly in other matters, and he bursts out, in the same letter, with enthusiastic praise of the line of conduct which atticus has laid down for him: "but that which is more to me than anything is that i should live so that even that fellow cato cannot find fault with me. may i die, if it could be done better. nor do i take praise for it as though i was doing something distasteful; i never was so happy as in practising this moderation. the thing itself is better to me even than the reputation of it. what would you have me say? it was worth my while to be enabled thus to try myself, so that i might know myself as to what i could do." then there is a long letter to cato in which he repeats the story of his grand doings at pindenissum. the reader will be sure that a letter to cato cannot be sincere and pleasant as are those to atticus and cælius. "if there be one man far removed from the vulgar love of praise, it is i," he says to cato.[96] he tells cato that they two are alike in all things. they two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the forum. never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked cato and the versatile cicero. [sidenote: b.c. 50, ætat. 57.] lucius æmilius paullus and c. clodius marcellus were consuls for the next year. cicero writes to both of them with tenders of friendship; but from both of them he asks that they should take care to have a decree of the senate passed praising his doings in cilicia.[97] with us, too, a returning governor is anxious enough for a good word from the prime-minister; but he does not ask for it so openly. the next letter from cælius tells him that appius has been accused as to malpractices in his government, and that pompey is in favor of appius. curio has gone over to cæsar. but the important subject is the last handled: "it will be mean in you if i should have no greek panthers."[98] the next refers to the marriages and divorces of certain ladies, and ends with an anecdote told as to a gentleman with just such ill-natured wit as is common in london. no one could have suspected ocella of looking after his neighbor's wife unless he had been detected thrice in the fact.[99] from laodicea he answers a querulous letter which his predecessor had written, complaining, among other things, that cicero had failed to show him personal respect. he proves that he had not done so, and then rises to a strain of indignation. "do you think that your grand old names will affect me who, even before i had become great in the service of my country, knew how to distinguish between titles and the men who bore them?"[100] the next letter to appius is full of flattery, and asking for favors, but it begins with a sharp reproof. "now at last i have received an epistle worthy of appius claudius. the sight of rome has restored you to your good-humor. those i got from you in your journey were such that i could not read them without displeasure."[101] in february cicero wrote a letter to atticus which is, i think, more expressive in describing the mind of the man than any other which we have from him. in it is commenced the telling of a story respecting brutus--the brutus we all know so well--and one scaptius, of whom no one would have heard but for this story, which, as it deeply affects the character of cicero, must occupy a page or two in our narrative; but i must first refer to his own account of his own government as again given here. nothing was ever so wonderful to the inhabitants of a province as that they should not have been put to a shilling of expense since he had entered it. not a penny had been taken on his own behalf or on that of the republic by any belonging to him, except on one day by one tullius, and by him indeed under cover of the law. this dirty fellow was a follower with whom titinius had furnished him. when he was passing from tarsus back into the centre of his province wondering crowds came out to him, the people not understanding how it had been that no letters had been sent to them exacting money, and that none of his staff had been quartered on them. in former years during the winter months they had groaned under exactions. municipalities with money at their command had paid large sums to save themselves from the quartering of soldiers on them. the island of cyprus, which on a former occasion had been made to pay nearly £50,000 on this head,[102] had been asked for nothing by him. he had refused to have any honors paid to him in return for this conduct. he had prohibited the erection of statues, shrines, and bronze chariots in his name--compliments to roman generals which had become common. the harvest that year was bad; but so fully convinced were the people of his honest dealing, that they who had saved up corn--the regraters--brought it freely into market at his coming. as some scourge from hell must have been the presence of such governors as appius and his predecessors among a people timid but industrious like these asiatic greeks. like an unknown, unexpected blessing, direct from heaven, must have been the coming of a cicero. now i will tell the story of brutus and scaptius and their money--premising that it has been told by mr. forsyth with great accuracy and studied fairness. indeed, there is not a line in mr. forsyth's volume which is not governed by a spirit of justice. he, having thought that cicero had been too highly praised by middleton, and too harshly handled by subsequent critics, has apparently written his book with the object of setting right these exaggerations. but in his comments on this matter of brutus and scaptius he seems to me not to have considered the difference in that standard of honor and honesty which governs himself, and that which prevailed in the time of cicero. not seeing, as i think, how impossible it was for a roman governor to have achieved that impartiality of justice with which a long course of fortunate training has imbued an english judge, he accuses cicero of "trifling with equity." the marvel to me is that one man such as cicero--a man single in his purpose--should have been able to raise his own ideas of justice so high above the level prevailing with the best of those around him. it had become the nature of a roman aristocrat to pillage an ally till hardly the skin should be left to cover the man's bones. out of this nature cicero elevated himself completely. in his own conduct he was free altogether from stain. the question here arose how far he could dare to go on offending the instincts, the habits, the nature, of other noble romans, in protecting from their rapacity the poor subjects who were temporarily beneath his charge. it is easy for a judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the feelings of the world around him are in favor of such impartiality; but it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the noblest romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious. in this case brutus, our old friend whom all english readers have so much admired because he dared to tell his brother-in-law cassius that he was "much condemned to have an itching palm," appears before us in the guise of an usurious money-lender. it would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. his practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. but yet brutus was accounted one of the noblest romans of the day, only second, if second, to cato in general virtue and philosophy. in this trade of money-lending the roman nobleman had found no more lucrative business than that of dealing with the municipalities of the allies. the cities were peopled by a money-making, commercial race, but they were subjected to the grinding impositions of their governors. under this affliction they were constantly driven to borrow money, and found the capitalists who supplied it among the class by whom they were persecuted and pillaged. a brutus lent the money which an appius exacted--and did not scruple to do so at forty-eight per cent., although twelve per cent. per annum, or one per cent. per month, was the rate of interest permitted by law. but a noble roman such as brutus did not carry on his business of this nature altogether in his own name. brutus dealt with the municipality of salamis in the island of cyprus, and there had two agents, named scaptius and matinius, whom he specially recommended to cicero as creditors of the city of salamis, praying cicero, as governor of the province, to assist these men in obtaining the payment of their debts.[103] this was quite usual, but it was only late in the transaction that cicero became aware that the man really looking for his money was the noble roman who gave the recommendation. cicero's letter tells us that scaptius came to him, and that he promised that for brutus's sake he would take care that the people of salamis should pay their debt.[104] scaptius thanked him, and asked for an official position in salamis which would have given him the power of compelling the payment by force. cicero refused, explaining that he had determined to give no such offices in his province to persons engaged in trade. he had refused such requests already--even to pompey and to torquatus. appius had given the same man a military command in salamis--no doubt also at the instance of brutus--and the people of salamis had been grievously harassed. cicero had heard of this, and had recalled the man from cyprus. of this scaptius had complained bitterly, and at last he and delegates from salamis who were willing to pay their debt, if they could only do it without too great extortion, went together to cicero who was then at tarsus, in the most remote part of his province. here he was called upon to adjudicate in the matter, scaptius trusting to the influence which brutus would naturally have with his friend the governor, and the men of salamis to the reputation for justice which cicero had already created for himself in cilicia. the reader must also be made to understand that cicero had been entreated by atticus to oblige brutus, who was specially the friend of atticus. he must remember also that this narrative is sent by cicero to atticus, who exhorted his correspondent, even with tears in his eyes, to be true to his honor in the government of his province.[105] he is appealing from atticus to atticus. i am bound to oblige you--but how can i do so in opposition to your own lessons? that is his argument to atticus. then there arises a question as to the amount of money due. the principal is not in dispute, but the interest. the money has been manifestly lent on an understanding that four per cent. per month, or forty-eight per cent. per annum, should be charged on it. but there has been a law passed that higher interest than one per cent. per month, or twelve per cent. per annum, shall not be legal. there has, however, been a counter decree made in regard to these very salaminians, and made apparently at the instigation of brutus, saying that any contract with them shall be held in force, notwithstanding the law. but cicero again has made a decree that he will authorize no exaction above twelve per cent. in his province. the exact condition of the legal claim is less clear to me than to mr. forsyth, who has the advantage of being a lawyer. be that as it may, cicero decides that twelve per cent. shall be exacted, and orders the salaminians to pay the amount. to his request they demur, but at last agree to obey, alleging that they are enabled to do so by cicero's own forbearance to them, cicero having declined to accept the presents which had been offered to him from the island.[106] they will therefore pay this money in some sort, as they say, out of the governor's own pocket. but when the sum is fixed, scaptius, finding that he cannot get it over-reckoned after some fraudulent scheme of his own, declines to receive it. if with the assistance of a friendly governor he cannot do better than that for himself and his employer, things must be going badly with roman noblemen. but the delegates are now very anxious to pay this money, and offer to deposit it. scaptius begs that the affair shall go no farther at present, no doubt thinking that he may drive a better bargain with some less rigid future governor. the delegates request to be allowed to place their money as paid in some temple, by doing which they would acquit themselves of all responsibility; but cicero begs them to abstain. "impetravi ab salaminiis ut silerent," he says. "i shall be grieved, indeed, that brutus should be angry with me," he writes; "but much more grieved that brutus should have proved himself to be such as i shall have found him." then comes the passage in his letter on the strength of which mr. forsyth has condemned cicero, not without abstract truth in his condemnation: "they, indeed, have consented"--that is the salaminians--"but what will befall them if some such governor as paulus should come here? and all this i have done for the sake of brutus!" æmilius paulus was the consul, and might probably have cilicia as a province, and would no doubt give over the salaminians to brutus and his myrmidons without any compunction. in strictness--with that assurance in the power of law by means of which our judges are enabled to see that their righteous decisions shall be carried out without detriment to themselves--cicero should have caused the delegates from salamis instantly to have deposited their money in the temple. instead of doing so, he had only declared the amount due according to his idea of justice--in opposition to all romans, even to atticus--and had then consented to leave the matter, as for some further appeal. do we not know how impossible it is for a man to abide strictly by the right, when the strict right is so much in advance of all around him as to appear to other eyes than his own as straitlaced, unpractical, fantastic, and almost inhuman? brutus wanted his money sorely, and brutus was becoming a great political power on the same side with pompey, and cato, and the other "optimates." even atticus was interfering for brutus. what other roman governor of whom we have heard would have made a question on the subject? appius had lent a guard of horse-soldiers to this scaptius with which he had outraged all humanity in cyprus--had caused the councillors of the city to be shut up till they would come to obedience, in doing which he had starved five of them to death! nothing had come of this, such being the way with the romans in their provinces. yet cicero, who had come among these poor wretches as an unheard-of blessing from heaven, is held up to scorn because he "trifled with equity!" equity with us runs glibly on all fours. with appius in cilicia it was utterly unknown. what are we to say of the man who, by the strength of his own conscience and by the splendor of his own intellect, could advance so far out of the darkness of his own age, and bring himself so near to the light of ours! let us think for a moment of our own francis bacon, a man more like to cicero than any other that i can remember in history. they were both great lawyers, both statesmen, both men affecting the _omne scibile_, and coming nearer to it than perhaps any other whom we can name; both patriots, true to their conceived idea of government, each having risen from obscure position to great power, to wealth, and to rank; each from his own education and his nature prone to compromise, intimate with human nature, not over-scrupulous either as to others or as to himself. they were men intellectually above those around them, to a height of which neither of them was himself aware. to flattery, to admiration, to friendship, and to love each of them was peculiarly susceptible. but one failed to see that it behooved him, because of his greatness, to abstain from taking what smaller men were grasping; while the other swore to himself from his very outset that he would abstain--and kept the oath which he had sworn. i am one who would fain forgive bacon for doing what i believe that others did around him; but if i can find a man who never robbed, though all others around him did--in whose heart the "auri sacra fames" had been absolutely quenched, while the men with whom he had to live were sickening and dying with an unnatural craving--then i seem to have recognized a hero. another complaint is made against cicero as to ariobarzanes, the king of cappadocia, and is founded, as are all complaints against cicero, on cicero's own telling of the story in question. why there should have been complaint in this matter i have not been able to discover. ariobarzanes was one of those eastern kings who became milch cows to the roman nobles, and who, in their efforts to satisfy the roman nobles, could only fleece their own subjects. the power of this king to raise money seems to have been limited to about £8000 a month.[107] out of this he offered a part to cicero as the proconsul who was immediately over him. this cicero declined, but pressed the king to pay the money to the extortionate brutus, who was a creditor, and who endeavored to get this money through cicero. but pompey also was a creditor, and pompey's name was more dreadful to the king than that of brutus. pompey, therefore, got it all, though we are told that it was not enough to pay him his interest; but pompey, getting it all, was graciously pleased to be satisfied "cnæus noster clementer id fert." "our cicero puts up with that, and asks no questions about the capital," says cicero, ironically. pompey was too wise to kill the goose that laid such golden eggs. nevertheless, we are told that cicero, in this case, abused his proconsular authority in favor of brutus. cicero effected nothing for brutus; but, when there was a certain amount of plunder to be divided among the romans, refused any share for himself. pompey got it all, but not by cicero's aid. there is another long letter, in which cicero again, for the third time, tells the story of brutus and scaptius.[108] i mention it, as he continues to describe his own mode of doing his work. he has been at laodicea from february to may, deciding questions that had been there brought before him from all parts of his province except cilicia proper. the cities which had been ground down by debt have been enabled to free themselves, and then to live under their own laws. this he has done by taking nothing from them for his own expenses--not a farthing. it is marvellous to see how the municipalities have sprung again into life under this treatment. "he has been enabled by this to carry on justice without obstruction and without severity. everybody has been allowed approach to him--a custom which has been unknown in the provinces. there has been no back-stairs influence. he has walked openly in his own courts, as he used to do when a candidate at home. all this has been grateful to the people, and much esteemed; nor has it been too laborious to himself, as he had learned the way of it in his former life." it was thus that cicero governed cilicia. there are further letters to appius and cælius, written from various parts of the province, which cannot fail to displease us because we feel that cicero is endeavoring to curry favor. he wishes to stand well with those who might otherwise turn against him on his reappearance in rome. he is afraid lest appius should be his enemy and lest pompey should not be his friend. the practice of justice and of virtue would, he knew, have much less effect in rome than the friendship and enmity of such men. but to atticus he bursts out into honest passion against brutus. brutus had recommended to him one gavius, whom, to oblige brutus, he appointed to some office. gavius was greedy, and insolent when his greed was not satisfied. "you have made me a prefect," said gavius; "where am i to go for my rations?" cicero tells him that as he has done no work he will get no pay; whereupon gavius, quite unaccustomed to such treatment, goes off in a huff. "if brutus can be stirred by the anger of such a knave as this," he says to atticus, "you may love him, if you will, yourself; you will not find me a rival for his friendship."[109] brutus, however, became a favorite with cicero, because he had devoted himself to literature. in judging these two men we should not lean too heavily on brutus, because he did no worse than his neighbors. but then, how are we to judge of cicero? in the latter months of his government there began a new trouble, in which it is difficult to sympathize with him, because we are unable to produce in our own minds a roman's estimation of roman things. with true spirit he had laughed at his own military doings at pindenissum; but not the less on that account was he anxious to enjoy the glories of a triumph, and to be dragged through the city on a chariot, with military trophies around him, as from time immemorial the roman conquerors had been dragged when they returned from their victories. for the old barbaric conquerors this had been fine enough. a display of armor--of helmets, of shields, and of swords--a concourse of chariots, of trumpets, and of slaves, of victims kept for the tarpeian rock, the spoils and rapine of battle, the self-asserting glory of the big fighting hero, the pride of bloodshed, and the boasting over fallen cities, had been fit for men who had in their hearts conceived nothing greater than military renown. our sympathies go along with a camillus or a scipio steeped in the blood of rome's enemies. a marius, a pompey, and again a few years afterward a cæsar, were in their places as they were dragged along the via sacra up to the capitol amid the plaudits of the city, in commemoration of their achievements in arms; but it could not be so with cicero. "concedat laurea linguæ" had been the watchword of his life. "let the ready tongue and the fertile brain be held in higher honor than the strong right arm." that had been the doctrine which he had practised successfully. to him it had been given to know that the lawyer's gown was raiment worthier of a man than the soldier's breastplate. how, then, could it be that he should ask for so small a thing as a triumph in reward for so small a deed as that done at pindenissum? but it had become the way with all proconsuls who of late years had been sent forth from rome into the provinces. men to whose provincial government a few cohorts were attached aspired to be called "imperator" by their soldiers after mock battles, and thought that, as others had followed up their sham victories with sham triumphs, it should be given to them to do the same. if bibulus triumphed it would be a disgrace to cicero not to triumph. we measure our expected rewards not by our own merits but by the good things which have been conceded to others. to have returned from pindenissum and not to be allowed the glory of trumpets would be a disgrace, in accordance with the theory then prevailing in rome on such matters; therefore cicero demanded a triumph. in such a matter it was in accordance with custom that the general should send an immediate account of his victorious doings, demand a "supplication," and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after his return home. a supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods for the great favor shown by them to the state, but in fact took the guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had been done. it was usually a reward for military success, but in the affair of catiline a supplication had been decreed to cicero for saving the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. cicero now applied for a supplication, and obtained it. cato opposed it, and wrote a letter to cicero explaining his motives--upon high republican principles. cicero might have endured this more easily had not cato voted for a supplication in honor of bibulus, whose military achievements had, as cicero thought, been less than his own. one hirrus opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the numbers slain by cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a supplication. we learn that, according to strict rule, two thousand dead men should have been left on the field. cicero's victims had probably been much fewer; nevertheless the supplication was granted, and cicero presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. alas, there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph! of all that went on at rome cælius continued to send cicero accounts. the triumvirate was now over. cælius says that pompey will not attack cæsar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent cæsar from being elected consul before he shall have given up his province and his army.[110] for details cælius refers him to a commentarium--a word which has been translated as meaning "newspaper" in this passage--by melmoth. i think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the commentary was simply the compilation of cælius, as were the commentaries we so well know the compilation of cæsar. the acta diurna were published by authority, and formed an official gazette. these no doubt reached cicero, but were very different in their nature from the private record of things which he obtained from his friend. there are passages in greek, in two letters[111] written about this time to atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his quarrel with his wife, and her divorce. he makes no direct allusion to his wife, but only to a freedman of hers, philotomus. when milo was convicted, his goods were confiscated and sold as a part of his punishment. philotomus is supposed to have been a purchaser, and to have made money out of the transaction--taking advantage of his position to acquire cheap bargains--as should not have been done by any one connected with cicero, who had been milo's friend. the cause of cicero's quarrel with his wife has never been absolutely known, but it is supposed to have arisen from her want of loyalty to him in regard to money. she probably employed this freedman in filling her pockets at the expense of her husband's character. [sidenote: b.c. 50, ætat. 57.] in his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and allusions are made as to his expected triumph. he is grateful to cælius as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his confidence that all the rest will follow.[112] he is so determined to hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers who may be least unfit to hold it. his brother quintus was his lieutenant, but if he left quintus people would say of him that in doing so he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. at last he determines to intrust it to a young quæstor named c. cælius--no close connection of his friend cælius, as cicero finds himself obliged to apologize for the selection to his friend. "young, you will say. no doubt; but he had been elected quæstor, and is of noble birth."[113] so he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter. cicero tells us afterward, when at athens on his way home, that he had considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder which was regarded by them as their perquisite. he had boasted much of their conduct--having taken exception to one tullius, who had demanded only a little hay and a little wood. but now there came to be pickings--savings out of his own proconsular expenses--to part with which at the last moment was too hard upon them. "how difficult is virtue," he exclaims; "how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it when it is not felt!"[114] there had been a certain sum saved which he had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury. but the satellites were all in arms: "ingemuit nostra cohors." nevertheless, he disregarded the "cohort," and paid the money into the treasury. as to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise to some most amusing literary vituperation. the care with which mss. have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred thousand sesterces--thus expressed, "h.s.x."--amounting to something over £8000. we hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that cicero realized out of his own legitimate allowance in cilicia a profit of about £18,000; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself aggrieved in losing £8000 which they expected to have divided among them. middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the x to be ci[c] or m--a thousand instead of ten--and quotes the sum saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight thousand pounds. we who have had so much done for us by intervening research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labors by infinite toil on his part; but de quincey, who has been very rancorous against cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of cicero's great biographer. "conyers middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." the cause of this was that middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the church of england, and a cambridge man, differed from other cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. bentley was his great opponent--and as bentley was a stout fighter, so was middleton. middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because bentley was the stronger combatant; but he seems to have stood in good repute all his life, and when advanced in years was appointed professor of natural history. he is known to us, however, only as the biographer of cicero. of this book, monk, the biographer of middleton's great opponent, bentley, declares that, "for elegance, purity, and ease, middleton's style yields to none in the english language." de quincey says of it that, by "weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic"--meaning, i suppose, that the work altogether wants dignity of composition. this charge is, to my thinking, so absolutely contrary to the fact, that it needs only to be named to be confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. de quincey pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at caernarvon. middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it as he found it, without much thought. de quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "it is in the light of an evidence against middleton's good-sense and thoughtfulness that i regard it as capital." that is de quincey's estimate of middleton as a biographer. i regard him as a laborer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of english, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said that no english library should be without it. the last letter written by cicero in asia was sent to atticus from ephesus the day before he started--on the last day, namely, of september. he had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry him and his suite. news here reached him from rome--news which was not true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. in a letter to atticus he speaks of "miros terrores cæsarianos"[115]--"dreadful reports as to outrages by cæsar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army; that he had with him the prætors elect, one of the tribunes, and even one of the consuls; and that pompey had resolved to leave the city. such were the first tidings presaging pharsalia. then he adds a word about his triumph. "tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends desire me to seek. i should not care about it if bibulus were not also asking for a triumph--bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors as long as there was an enemy in syria!" thus cicero had to suffer untold misery because bibulus was asking for a triumph! chapter v. _the war between cæsar and pompey._ what official arrangements were made for proconsuls in regard to money, when in command of a province, we do not know. the amounts allowed were no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the roman governor looked as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. the means of plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an accusation. we remember how verres calculated that he could divide his spoil into three sufficient parts--one for the lawyers, one for the judges, so as to insure his acquittal, and then one for himself. this plundering was common--so common as to have become almost a matter of course; but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to exile, and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. no accusation was made against cicero. as to others there were constantly threats, if no more than threats. cicero was not even threatened. but he had saved out of his legitimate expenses a sum equal to £18,000 of our money--from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a roman governor. the expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands, and many of those of his army. any saving effected would therefore be to his own personal advantage. on this money he counted much when his affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join pompey at pharsalia in the following year. he then begged atticus to arrange his matters for him, telling him that the sum was at his call in asia,[116] but he never saw it again: pompey borrowed it--or took it; and when pompey had been killed the money was of course gone. his brother quintus was with him in cilicia, but of his brother's doings there he says little or nothing. we have no letters from him during the period to his wife or daughter. the latter was married to her third husband, dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from cicero, but not in accordance with his advice. he had purposed to accept a proposition for her hand made to him by tiberius nero, the young roman nobleman who afterward married that livia whom augustus took away from him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her himself, and who thus became the father of the emperor tiberius. it is worthy of remark at the same time that the emperor tiberius married the granddaughter of atticus. cicero when in cilicia had wished that nero should be chosen; but the family at home was taken by the fashion and manners of dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third husband when she was yet only twenty-five. this marriage, like the others, was unfortunate. dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born, agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. he was a roman nobleman of the type then common--heartless, extravagant, and greedy. his country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. cicero tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and strength of the aristocratic party to which dolabella belonged. i cannot bring him back to rome, and all that he suffered there, without declaring that much of his correspondence during his government, especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey home, is very distressing. i have told the story of his own doings, i think, honestly, and how he himself abstained, and compelled those belonging to him to do so; how he strove to ameliorate the condition of those under his rule; how he fully appreciated the duty of doing well by others, so soon to be recognized by all christians. such humanity on the part of a roman at such a period is to me marvellous, beautiful, almost divine; but, in eschewing roman greed and roman cruelty, he was unable to eschew roman insincerity. i have sometimes thought that to have done so it must have been necessary for him altogether to leave public life. why not? my readers will say. but in our days, when a man has mixed himself for many years with all that is doing in public, how hard it is for him to withdraw, even though, in withdrawing he fears no violence, no punishment, no exile, no confiscation. the arguments, the prayers, the reproaches of those around him draw him back; and the arguments, the reproaches from within are more powerful even than those from his friends. to be added to these is the scorn, perhaps the ridicule, of his opponents. such are the difficulties in the way of the modern politician who thinks that he has resolved to retire; but the roman ex-consul, ex-prætor, ex-governor had entered upon a mode of warfare in which his all, his life, his property, his choice of country, his wife, his children, were open to the ready attacks of his eager enemies. to have deserved well would be nothing, unless he could keep a party round him bound by mutual interests to declare that he had deserved well. a rich man, who desired to live comfortably beyond the struggle of public life, had to abstain, as atticus had done, from increasing the sores, from hurting the ambition, from crushing the hopes of aspirants. such a man might be safe, but he could not be useful; such, at any rate, had not been cicero's life. in his earlier days, till he was consul, he had kept himself free from political interference in doing the work of his life; but since that time he had necessarily put himself into competition with many men, and had made many enemies by the courage of his opinions. he had found even those he had most trusted opposed to him. he had aroused the jealousy not only of the cæsars and the crassuses and the pisos, but also of the pompeys and catos and brutuses. whom was he not compelled to fear? and yet he could not escape to his books; nor, in truth, did he wish it. he had made for himself a nature which he could not now control. he had not been long in cilicia before he knew well how cruel, how dishonest, how greedy, how thoroughly roman had been the conduct of his predecessor appius. his letters to atticus are full of the truths which he had to tell on that matter. his conduct, too, with regard to appius was mainly right. as far as in him lay he endeavored to remedy the evils which the unjust proconsul had done, and to stop what further evil was still being done. he did not hesitate to offend appius when it was necessary to do so by his interference. but appius was a great nobleman, one of the "optimates," a man with a strong party at his back in rome. appius knew well that cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. cicero knew also that the support of appius would be of infinite service to him in his roman politics. knowing this, he wrote to appius letters full of flattery--full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose better. dolabella, the new son-in-law, had taken upon himself, for some reason as to which it can hardly be worth our while to inquire, to accuse appius of malversation in his province. that appius deserved condemnation there can be no doubt; but in these accusations the contests generally took place not as to the proof of the guilt, but as to the prestige and power of the accuser and the accused. appius was tried twice on different charges, and was twice acquitted; but the fact that his son-in-law should be the accuser was fraught with danger to cicero. he thought it necessary for the hopes which he then entertained to make appius understand that his son-in-law was not acting in concert with him, and that he was desirous that appius should receive all the praise which would have been due to a good governor. so great was the influence of appius at rome that he was not only acquitted, but shortly afterward elected censor. the office of censor was in some respects the highest in rome. the censors were elected only once in four years, remaining in office for eighteen months. the idea was that powers so arbitrary as these should be in existence only for a year and a half out of each four years. questions of morals were considered by them. should a senator be held to have lived as did not befit a senator, a censor could depose him. as appius was elected censor immediately after his acquittal, together with that piso whom cicero had so hated, it may be understood that his influence was very great.[117] it was great enough to produce from cicero letters which were flattering and false. the man who had been able to live with a humanity, a moderation, and an honesty befitting a christian, had not risen to that appreciation of the beauty of truth which an exercise of christianity is supposed to exact. "sed quid agas? sic vivitur!"[118]--"what would you have me do? it is thus we live now!" this he exclaims in a letter to cælius, written a short time before he left the province. "what would you say if you read my last letter to appius?" you would open your eyes if you knew how i have flattered appius--that was his meaning. "sic vivitur!"--"it is so we live now." when i read this i feel compelled to ask whether there was an opportunity for any other way of living. had he seen the baseness of lying as an english christian gentleman is expected to see it, and had adhered to truth at the cost of being a martyr, his conduct would have been high though we might have known less of it; but, looking at all the circumstances of the period, have we a right to think that he could have done so? from athens on his way home cicero wrote to his wife, joining tullia's name with hers. "lux nostra," he calls his daughter; "the very apple of my eye!" he had already heard from various friends that civil war was expected. he will have to declare himself on his arrival--that is, to take one side or the other--and the sooner he does so the better. there is some money to be looked for--a legacy which had been left to him. he gives express directions as to the persons to be employed respecting this, omitting the name of that philotomus as to whose honesty he is afraid. he calls his wife "suavissima et optatissima terentia," but he does not write to her with the true love which was expressed by his letters when in exile. from athens, also, where he seems to have stayed nearly two months, he wrote in december. he is easy, he says, about his triumph unless cæsar should interfere--but he does not care much about his triumph now. he is beginning to feel the wearisomeness of the triumph; and indeed it was a time in which the utter hollowness of triumphal pretensions must have made the idea odious to him. but to have withdrawn would have been to have declared his own fears, his own doubts, his own inferiority to the two men who were becoming declared as the rival candidates for roman power. we may imagine that at such a time he would gladly have gone in quiet to his roman mansion or to one of his villas, ridding himself forever of the trouble of his lictors, his fasces, and all the paraphernalia of imperatorial dignity; but a man cannot rid himself of such appanages without showing that he has found it necessary to do so. it was the theory of a triumph that the victorious imperator should come home hot (as it were) from the battle-field, with all his martial satellites around him, and have himself carried at once through rome. it was barbaric and grand, as i have said before, but it required the martial satellites. tradition had become law, and the imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his military followers till the ceremony was over. in this way cicero was sadly hampered by his lictors when, on his landing at brundisium, he found that italy was already preparing for her great civil war. [sidenote: b.c. 50, ætat. 57.] early in this year it had been again proposed in the senate that cæsar should give up his command. at this time the two consuls, l. æmilius paulus and c. claudius marcellus, were opposed to cæsar, as was also curio, who had been one of cicero's young friends, and was now tribune. but two of these cæsar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes. curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe. the story comes to us from appian,[119] but the modern reader will find it efficiently told by mommsen.[120] the consul had fifteen hundred talents, or about £500,000! the sum named as that given by cæsar to curio was something greater, because he was so deeply in debt! bribes to the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now, bestowed upon two men for their support in the senate! it was worth a man's while to be a consul or a tribune in those days. but the money was well earned--plunder, no doubt, extracted from gaul. the senate decided that both pompey and cæsar should be required to abandon their commands--or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any absolute decree. but this sufficed for cæsar, who was only anxious to be relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the senate by the knowledge that pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. then it was--in the summer of this year--that the two commanders were desired by the senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three thousand men, under the pretence that the forces were wanted for the parthian war. the historians tell us that pompey had lent a legion to cæsar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. cæsar nobly sends up to rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be restored by himself, and the other as belonging to pompey. he felt, no doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better service than the withholding of the soldiers. the men were stationed at capua, instead of being sent to the east, and no doubt drifted back into cæsar's hands. the men who had served under cæsar would not willingly find themselves transferred to pompey. cæsar in the summer came across the alps into cisalpine gaul, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at ravenna, which was still within his province. it was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the rubicon and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. matters were in this condition when cicero returned to italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war which had reached him at athens. in a letter written from athens, earlier than the one last quoted, cicero declared to atticus that it would become him better to be conquered with pompey than to conquer with cæsar.[121] the opinion here given may be taken as his guiding principle in politics till pompey was no more. through all the doubts and vacillations which encumbered him, this was the rule not only of his mind but of his heart. to him there was no triumvirate: the word had never been mentioned to his ears. had pompey remained free from cæsar it would have been better. the two men had come together, and crassus had joined them. it was better for him to remain with them and keep them right, than to stand away, angry and astray, as cato had done. the question how far cæsar was justified in the position which he had taken up by certain alleged injuries, affected cicero less than it has done subsequent inquirers. had an attempt been made to recall cæsar illegally? was he subjected to wrong by having his command taken away from him before the period had passed for which the people had given it? was he refused indulgences to which the greatness of his services entitled him--such as permission to sue for the consulship while absent from rome--while that, and more than that, had been granted to pompey? all these questions were no doubt hot in debate at the time, but could hardly have affected much the judgment of cicero, and did not at all affect his conduct. nor, i think, should they influence the opinions of those who now attempt to judge the conduct of cæsar. things had gone beyond the domain of law, and had fallen altogether into that of potentialities. decrees of the senate or votes of the people were alike used as excuses. cæsar, from the beginning of his career, had shown his determination to sweep away as cobwebs the obligations which the law imposed upon him. it is surely vain to look for excuses for a man's conduct to the practice of that injustice against him which he has long practised against others. shall we forgive a house-breaker because the tools which he has himself invented are used at last upon his own door? the modern lovers of cæsar and of cæsarism generally do not seek to wash their hero white after that fashion. to them it is enough that the man has been able to trample upon the laws with impunity, and to be a law not only to himself but to all the world around him. there are some of us who think that such a man, let him be ever so great--let him be ever so just, if the infirmities of human nature permit justice to dwell in the breast of such a man--will in the end do more harm than good. but they who sit at the feet of the great commanders admire them as having been law-breaking, not law-abiding. to say that cæsar was justified in the armed position which he took in northern italy in the autumn of this year, is to rob him of his praise. i do not suppose that he had meditated any special line of policy during the years of hard work in gaul, but i think that he was determined not to relinquish his power, and that he was ready for any violence by which he might preserve it. if such was cicero's idea of this man--if such the troubled outlook which he took into the circumstances of the empire--he thought probably but little of the legality of cæsar's recall. what would the consuls do, what would curio do, what would pompey do, and what cæsar? it was of this that he thought. had law-abiding then been possible, he would have been desirous to abide by the law. some nearest approach to the law would be the best. cæsar had ignored all laws, except so far as he could use them for his own purposes. pompey, in conspiring with cæsar, had followed cæsar's lead; but was desirous of using the law against cæsar when cæsar outstripped him in lawlessness. but to cicero there was still some hope of restraining pompey. pompey, too, had been a conspirator, but not so notorious a conspirator as cæsar. with pompey there would be some bond to the republic; with cæsar there could be none; therefore it was better for him to fall with pompey than to rise with cæsar. that was his conviction till pompey had altogether fallen. his journey homeward is made remarkable by letters to tiro, his slave and secretary. tiro was taken ill, and cicero was obliged to leave him at patræ, in greece. whence he had come to cicero we do not know, or when; but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice before the days of the cilician government, as we find that on his arrival at brundisium he writes to atticus respecting him as a person whom atticus had not much known.[122] but his affection for tiro is very warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are charming. he is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what captain he sails. he is not to hurry. the doctor is to be consulted and well paid. cicero himself writes various letters to various persons, in order to secure that attention which tiro could not have insured unless so assisted. early in january cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because of his still unsettled triumph, and cæsar crossed the little river which divided his province from the roman territory. the 4th of january is the date given for the former small event. for the latter i have seen no precise day named, i presume that it was after the 6th, as on that day the senate appointed domitian as his successor in his province. on this being done, the two tribunes, antony and cassius, hurried off to cæsar, and cæsar then probably crossed the stream. cicero was appointed to a command in campania--that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph. his doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit; but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? the effect had been to take all power out of his hand. cæsar had given him up. pompey could not do so, but we can imagine how willing pompey would have been that he should have remained in cilicia. he had been sent there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. if he would only have remained and plundered! if he would only have remained there and have been honest--so that he would be out of the way! but here he was--back in italy, an honest, upright man! no one so utterly unlike the usual roman, so lost amid the self-seekers of rome, so unnecessarily clean-handed, could be found! cato was honest, foolishly honest for his time; but with cato it was not so difficult to deal as with cicero. we can imagine cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely unreasonable. cicero was all alive to what was going on in the world, but still was honest! in the mean time he remained in the neighborhood of naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to tiro, writing to atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so well--because he has told us. in one of his letters to atticus at this time he is sadly in earnest. he will die with pompey in italy, but what can he do by leaving it? he has his "lictors" with him still. oh, those dreadful lictors! his friendship for cnæus! his fear of having to join himself with the coming tyrant! "oh that you would assist me with your counsel!"[123] he writes again, and describes the condition of pompey--of pompey who had been magnus. "see how prostrate he is. he has neither courage, counsel, men, nor industry! put aside those things; look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns, his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy! * * * cæsar in pursuit of pompey! oh, sad! * * * will he kill him?" he exclaims. then, still to atticus, he defends himself. he will die for pompey, but he does not believe that he can do any good either to pompey or to the republic by a base flight. then there is another cause for staying in italy as to which he cannot write. this was terentia's conduct. at the end of one of his letters he tells atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which atticus had sent to him. in another he speaks of a greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain dionysius, and he boils over with anger. his letters to atticus about the greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time, because they show his eagerness. "i never knew anything more ungrateful; and there is nothing worse than ingratitude."[124] he heaps his scorn upon pompey: "it is true, indeed, that i said that it was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. i would indeed. but of what pompey was it that i so spoke? was it of this one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will fly?"[125] he writes again the same day: "pompey had fostered cæsar, and then had feared him. he had left the city; he had lost picenum by his own fault, he had betaken himself to apulia! then he went into greece, leaving us in the dark as to his plans!" he excuses a letter of his own to cæsar. he had written to cæsar in terms which might be pleasing to the great man. he had told cæsar of cæsar's admirable wisdom. was it not better so? he was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all the people, if only those of pompey might also be read aloud. then follow copies of a correspondence between him and pompey. in the last he declares[126] that "when he had written from canusium he had not dreamed that pompey was about to cross the sea. he had known that pompey had intended to treat for peace--for peace even under unjust conditions--but he had never thought that pompey was meditating a retreat out of italy." he argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. pompey had been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself against cæsar. he had failed, and had slipped away, leaving a man here and there to stand up for the republic. pompey was willing to risk nothing for rome. it had come to pass at last that he was being taught cæsarism by cæsar, and when he died was more imperial than his master. at this time cicero's eyes were bad. "mihi molestior lippitudo erat etiam quam ante fuerat." and again, "lippitudinis meæ signum tibi sit librarii manus." but we may doubt whether any great men have lived so long with so little to tease them as to their health. and yet the amount of work he got through was great. he must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. when we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. throughout his life his hours were early, but they must also have been late. of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. when he was abroad during his exile, or in cilicia during his government, he could not have had his books with him. that cæsar should have been cæsar, or pompey pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as that cicero should have been cicero. then comes that letter of which i spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the getæ, the armenians, and the men of colchis. "shall i, the savior of the city, assist to bring down upon that city those hordes of foreign men? shall i deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who is no more than mortal?"[127] it was pompey as to whom he then asked the question. for pompey's sake am i to let in these crowds? we have been told, indeed, by mr. froude that the man was cæsar, and that cicero wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death! "now, if ever, think what we shall do," he says. "a roman army sits round pompey and makes him a prisoner within valley and rampart--and shall we live? the city stands; the prætors give the law, the ædiles keep up the games, good men look to their principal and their interest. shall i remain sitting here? shall i rush hither and thither madly, and implore the credit of the towns? men of substance will not follow me. the revolutionists will arrest me. is there any end to this misery? people will point at me and say, 'how wise he was not to go with him.' i was not wise. of his victory i never wished to be the comrade--yet now i do of his sorrow."[128] [sidenote: b.c. 49, ætat. 58.] pompey had crossed the sea from brundisium, and cæsar had retreated across italy to capua. as he was journeying he saw cicero, and asked him to go to rome. this cicero refused, and cæsar passed on. "i must then use other counsels," said cæsar, thus leaving him for the last time before the coming battle. cicero went on to arpinum, and there heard the nightingales. from that moment he resolved. he had not thought it possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail against cæsar's advice; but he had done so. he had feared that cæsar would overcome him; but when the moment came he was strong against even cæsar. he gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of him. he was going after pompey, not for the sake of pompey, not for the sake of the republic, but for loyalty. he was going because atticus had told him to go. but as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. he writes to atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew. the one is good by nature, and has not yet gone astray. the other, the elder and his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence, and has openly adopted evil ways. in other words, he has become cæsarian--for a reward.[129] the young quintus has shown himself to be very false. cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life that this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. then curio comes the way, and there is a most interesting conversation. it seems that curio, who is fond of cicero, tells him everything; but cicero, who doubts him, lets him pass on. then cælius writes to him. cælius implores him, for the sake of his children, to bear in mind what he is doing. he tells him much of cæsar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become cæsarian; at any rate to betake himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and quieter days should come. but cælius, though it had suited cicero to know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. he did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded cicero. to cælius it was play--play in which a man might be beaten, or banished, or slaughtered; but it was a game in which men were fighting each for himself. that there should be a duty in the matter, beyond that, was inexplicable to cælius. and his children, too--his anger against young quintus and his forgiveness of marcus! he thinks that quintus had been purchased by a large bribe on cæsar's side, and is thankful that it is no worse with him. what can have been worse to a young man than to have been open to such payment? antony is frequently on the scene, and already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. and then cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. servius sulpicius comes to him weeping. for servius, who is timid and lachrymose, everything has gone astray. and then there is that dionysius who had plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier master. at the last comes the news of his tullia's child's birth. she is brought to bed of a son. he cannot, however, wait to see how the son thrives. from the midst of enemies, and with spies around him, he starts. there is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from on board the ship at caieta, sending them many loves and many careful messages, and then he is off. it was now the 11th of june, the third day before the ides, b.c. 49, and we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. when he reached the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. he had given his all to place himself along with pompey in the republican quarters, and when there the republicans were unwilling to welcome him. pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to be able to say hereafter that he had not come. of what occurred to cicero during the great battle which led to the solution of the roman question we know little or nothing. we hear that cicero was absent, sick at dyrrachium, but there are none of those tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. we hear, indeed, from other sources, very full accounts of the fighting--how cæsar was nearly conquered, how pompey might have prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way, how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how, in the very presence of his wife, he was murdered at last at the mouth of the nile by the combined energies of a roman and a greek. we can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the pharsalus where the two armies met, and the victory remained with cæsar. then there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the congratulations and self-applause of the victors. in all cicero's letters there is not a word of it. there was terrible suffering before it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but nowhere do we find any record of what took place. there is no mourning for pompey, no turning to cæsar as the conqueror. petra has been lost, and pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign. [sidenote: b.c. 48, ætat. 59.] cicero, we know, spent the time at dyrrachium close to which the battle of petra was fought, and went from thence to corcyra. there invitation was made to him, as the senior consular officer present, to take the command of the beaten army, but that he declined. we are informed that he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. we can imagine that it was so--that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he should have been somewhat roughly told that it behooved him to take the lead and to come forth as the new commander; that there should be a time at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he should doubt, and, after more or less of reticence, pass on. young pompey would have it so. what name would be so good to bind together the opponents of cæsar as that of cicero? but cicero would not be led. it seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time; that he had been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true to pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that pompey was gone. we can well imagine that there should be no man less able to fight against cæsar, though there was none whose name might be so serviceable to use as that of cicero. at any rate, as far as we are concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. he wrote not a word to any of the friends whom pompey had left behind him, but returned to italy dispirited, silent, and unhappy. he had indeed met many men since the battle of the pharsalus, but to none of whom we are conversant had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign. here we part from pompey, who ran from the fighting-ground of macedonia to meet his doom in the roads of alexandria. never had man risen so high in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. he was born in the same year with cicero, but had come up quicker into the management of the world's affairs, so as to have received something from his equals of that which was due to age. habit had given him that ease of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his compeers the deference which was due not to his age but to his experience. when cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to fight against sulla, pompey had already won his spurs, in spite of sulla but by means of sulla. men in these modern days learn, as they grow old in public life, to carry themselves with indifference among the backslidings of the world. in reading the life of cicero, we see that it was so then. when defending amerinus, we find the same character of man as was he who afterward took milo's part. there is the same readiness, the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation; but there is not the same indifference as to results. with amerinus it is as though all the world depended on it; with milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the outside world believe it. when pompey triumphed, 70 b.c., and was made consul for the second time, he was already old in glory--when cicero had not as yet spoken those two orations against verres which had made the speaking of another impossible. pompey, we may say, had never been young. cicero was never old. there was no moment in his life in which cicero was not able to laugh with the curios and the cæliuses behind the back of the great man. there was no moment in which pompey could have done so. he who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by idle and luxurious young men of the day. cicero did not live for many years beyond pompey, but i doubt whether he did not know infinitely more of men. to pompey it had been given to rule them; but to cicero to live with them. chapter vi. _after the battle._ [sidenote: b.c. 48, ætat. 59.] in the autumn of this year cicero had himself landed at brundisium. he remained nearly a year at brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how sad and how long must have been the days with him. he had no country when he reached the nearest italian port; it was all cæsar's, and cæsar was his enemy. there had been a struggle for the masterdom between two men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom cicero had not ranged himself. he had known how it would be. all the getæ, and the men of colchis, and the armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those who preferred the delicacies of baiæ to the work of the forum, all who had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all those whom cæsar was determined either to drive out of italy or keep there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. we already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them and with cæsar. on cæsar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. we hear of no scæva and of no crastinus on pompey's side. men change their nature under such leading as was that of cæsar. the inferior men become heroic by contact with the hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood dabbled down upon a fair cloth. who that has eyes to see can look back upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the stern man passes on without a ruffled face, after ordering the right hands of those who had fought at uxellodunum to be chopped off at the wrist, in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for their country? there are men--or have been, from time to time, in all ages of the world--let loose, as it were, by the hand of god to stop the iniquities of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities. they have come and done their work, and have died, leaving behind them the foul smell of destruction. an augustus followed cæsar, and him tiberius, and so on to a nero. it was necessary that men should suffer much before they were brought back to own their condition. but they who can see a cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming--not for himself but for the world around him--and can lend their tongues, their pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been touched by the supremacy of human suffering. it must have been a sorry time with him at brundisium. he had to stay there waiting till cæsar's pleasure had been made known to him, and cæsar was thinking of other things. cæsar was away in egypt and the east, encountering perils at alexandria which, if all be true that we have heard, imply that he had lived to be past fear. grant that a man has to live as cæsar did, and it will be well that he should be past fear. at any rate he did not think of cicero, or thinking of him felt that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he had made. cicero did brood--not exactly in silence--over the things that fate had done for him and for his country. for himself, he was living in italy, and yet could not venture to betake himself to one of the eighteen villas which, as middleton tells us, he had studded about the country for his pastime. there were those at tusculum, antium, astura, arpinum--at formiæ, at cumæ, at puteoli, and at pompeii. those who tell us of cicero's poverty are surely wandering, carried away by their erroneous notions of what were a roman nobleman's ideas as to money. at no period of his life do we find cicero not doing what he was minded to do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had allowed himself in any respect to break the law. it has been argued that he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments, because he says that he wanted money. it was natural that he should occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. the incoming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. a man here and there might attend to his money, as did atticus. cicero did not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for relief. but he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? we are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his villas, though in the hurry-scurry of roman affairs it did now and again become necessary for him to apply to atticus for accommodation. let us think what must have been cæsar's demands for money. of these we hear nothing, because he was too wise to have an atticus to whom he wrote everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be treasured for the curiosity of after-ages. to be hopeful and then tremulous; to be eager after success and then desponding; to have believed readily every good and then, as readily, evil; to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have turned round and declared how he had been deceived; to have been very angry and then to have forgiven--this seems to have been cicero's nature. verres, catiline, clodius, piso, and vatinius seem to have caused his wrath; but was there one of them against whom, though he did not forgive him, his anger did not die out? then, at last, he was moved to an internecine fight with antony. is there any one who has read the story which we are going to tell who will not agree with us that, if after mutina octavius had thought fit to repudiate antony and to follow cicero's counsels, antony would not have been spared? nothing angers me so much in describing cicero as the assertion that he was a coward. it has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes cowardice. he did not care to fight; but are all men cowards who do not care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking? he saw that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he did not see it. when men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled, and cæsar and pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest danger does not consist in fighting. a man's tongue makes enemies more bitter than his sword. but cicero, when the time came, never shirked his foe. whether it was verres or catiline, or clodius or antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. at moments such as that there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave. his friendship for pompey is perhaps, of all the strong feelings of his life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse. for myself i can see why it was so; but i cannot do that without acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. had he risen above pompey, he would have been great indeed; for i look upon it as certain that he did see that pompey was as untrue to the republic as cæsar. he saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all times that pompey was false. cæsar was not false. cæsar was an open foe. i doubt whether pompey ever saw enough to be open. he never realized to himself more than men. he never rose to measures--much less to the reason for them. when cæsar had talked him over, and had induced him to form the triumvirate, pompey's politics were gone. cicero never blanched. whether, full of new hopes, he attacked chrysogonus with all the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or, with the settled purpose of his life, he accused verres in the teeth of the coming consul hortensius; whether in driving out catiline, or in defending milo; whether, even, in standing up before cæsar for marcellus, or in his final onslaught upon antony, his purpose was still the same. as time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went down into the arena and fought the beasts at ephesus. alas, it is so with mankind! who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? and who can fight them but after some fashion of their own? he was fighting beasts at ephesus when he was defending milo. he was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest! it was impossible. these men would not be just, and yet he must use them. milo and cælius and curio were his friends. he knew them to be bad, but he could not throw off from him all that were bad men. if by these means he could win his way to something that might be good, he would pardon their evil. as we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character becomes tarnished, and that his high feelings are blunted by the party which he takes and the men with whom he associates. he did not, indeed, fall away altogether. the magistracy offered to him, the lieutenancy offered to him, the "free legation" offered to him, the last appeal made to him that he would go to rome and speak a few words--or that he would stay away and remain neutral--did not move him. he did not turn conspirator and then fight for the prize, as pompey had done. but he had, for so many years, clung to pompey as the leader of a party; had had it so dinned into his ears that all must depend on pompey; had found himself so bound up with the man who, when appealed to as to his banishment, had sullenly told him he could only do as cæsar would have him; whom he had felt to be mean enough to be stigmatized as sampsiceramus, him of jerusalem, the hero of arabia; whom he knew to be desirous of doing with his enemies as sulla had done with his--that, in spite of it all, he clung to him still! i cannot but blame cicero for this, but yet i can excuse it. it is hard to have to change your leader after middle life, and cicero could only have changed his by becoming a leader himself. we can see how hopeless it was. would it not have been mean had he allowed those men to go and fight in macedonia without him? who would have believed in him had he seemed to be so false? not cato, not brutus, not bibulus, not scipio, not marcellus. such men were the leaders of the party of which he had been one. would they not say that he had remained away because he was cæsar's man? he must follow either cæsar or pompey. he knew that pompey was beaten. there are things which a man knows, but he cannot bring himself to say so even to himself. he went out to fight on the side already conquered; and when the thing was done he came home with his heart sad, and lived at brundisium, mourning his lot. from thence he wrote to atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage of complying with advice which had been given to him that he should travel incognito to rome. but it is the special reason given which strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day: "nor have i resting-places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to pass the entire daytime within them."[130] the "diversorium" was a place by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come that way. it must be understood that he travelled with attendants, and carried his food with him, or sent it on before. we see at every turn how much money could do; but we see also how little money had done for the general comfort of the people. brundisium is above three hundred miles from rome, and the journey is the same which horace took afterward, going from the city.[131] much had then been done to make travelling comfortable, or at any rate cheaper than it had been four-and-twenty years before. but now the journey was not made. he reminds atticus in the letter that if he had not written through so long an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. it had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and so many ears were on the watch. he writes again some days later, and assures atticus that cæsar thinks well of his "lictors!" oh those eternal lictors! "but what have i to do with lictors," he says, "who am almost ordered to leave the shores of italy?"[132] and then cæsar had sent angry messages. cato and metellus had been said to have come home. cæsar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away. it was clearly manifest to every man alive now that cæsar was the actual master of italy. during the whole of this winter he is on terms with terentia, but he writes to her in the coldest strain. there are many letters to terentia, more in number than we have ever known before, but they are all of the same order. i translate one here to show the nature of his correspondence: "if you are well, i am so also. the times are such that i expect to hear nothing from yourself, and on my part have nothing to write. nevertheless, i look for your letters, and i write to you when a messenger is going to start. voluminia ought to have understood her duty to you, and should have done what she did do better. there are other things, however, which i care for more, and grieve for more bitterly--as those have wished who have driven me from my own opinion."[133] again he writes to atticus, deploring that he should have been born--so great are his troubles--or, at any rate, that one should have been born after him from the same mother. his brother has addressed him in anger--his brother, who has desired to make his own affairs straight with cæsar, and to swim down the stream pleasantly with other noble romans of the time. i can imagine that with quintus cicero there was nothing much higher than the wealth which the day produced. i can fancy that he was possessed of intellect, and that when it was fair sailing with our consul it was all well with quintus cicero; but i can see also that, when cæsar prevailed, it was occasionally a matter of doubt with quintus whether his brother should not be abandoned among other things which were obtrusive and vain. he could not quite do it. his brother compelled him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the oligarchy. then cæsar fell, and quintus saw that the matter was right; but cæsar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore quintus after all turned out to be in the wrong. i fancy that i can see how things went ill with quintus. [sidenote: b.c. 47, ætat. 60.] cæsar, after the battle of the pharsalia, had followed pompey, but had failed to catch him. when he came upon the scene in the roadstead at alexandria, the murder had been effected. he then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. it is not a part of my plan to write the life of cæsar, nor to meddle with it further than i am driven to do in seeking after the sources of cicero's troubles and aspiration; but the story must be told in a few words. cæsar went from alexandria into asia, and, flashing across syria, beat pharnaces, and then wrote his famous "veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. surely he could not have written them and sent them home! even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of cæsar have so tarnished itself. he hurried back to italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. simply by addressing them as "quirites," instead of "milites," he appalled them into obedience. on this journey into italy he came across cicero. if he could be cruel without a pang--to the arranging the starvation of a townful of women, because they as well as the men must eat--he could be magnificent in his treatment of a cicero. he had hunted to the death his late colleague in the triumvirate, and had felt no remorse; though there seems to have been a moment when in egypt the countenance of him who had so long been his superior had touched him. he had not ordered pompey's death. on no occasion had he wilfully put to death a roman whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. he had followed the convictions of his countrymen, who had ever spared themselves. to him a thousand gauls, or men of eastern origin, were as nothing to a single roman nobleman. whether there can be said to have been clemency in such a course it is useless now to dispute. to cæsar it was at any rate policy as well. if by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, cæsar was clement. he had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to make common cause--in little things--with those who lose. we can see cæsar getting down from his chariot when cicero came to meet him, and, throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant conversation; and we can fancy him talking to cicero pleasantly of the greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show in comparison with those of cæsar's. "cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea linguæ," we can hear cæsar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing of his now undoubted literary excellence. [sidenote: b.c. 47, ætat. 60.] but to go back a little; we shall find cicero still waiting at brundisium during august and september. in the former of these months he reminds atticus that "he cannot at present sell anything, but that he can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall fall upon him."[134] from this may be deduced a state of things very different to that above described, but not contradicting it. i gather from this unintelligible letter, written, as he tells us, for the most part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under some forfeiture of the law to cæsar. it may well be that, as one adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be salable. if that were so, cæsar in some of these bland moments must have revoked the sentence--and at such a time all sentences were within cæsar's control--because we know that on his return cicero's villas were again within his own power. but he is in sad trouble now about his wife. he has written to her to send him twelve thousand sesterces, which he had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is left. if she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she do if it were larger?[135] then follow two letters for his wife--a mere word in each--not a sign of affection nor of complaint in either of them. in the first he tells her she shall be informed when cæsar is coming--in the latter, that he is coming. when he has resolved whether to go and meet him or to remain where he is till cæsar shall have come upon him, he will again write. then there are three to atticus, and two more to terentia. in the first he tells him that cæsar is expected. some ten or twelve days afterward he is still full of grief as to his brother quintus, whose conduct has been shameful. cæsar he knows is near at hand, but he almost hopes that he will not come to brundisium. in the third, as indeed he has in various others, he complains bitterly of the heat: it is of such a nature that it adds to his grief. shall he send word to cæsar that he will wait upon him nearer to rome?[136] he is evidently in a sad condition. quintus, it must be remembered, had been in gaul with cæsar, and had seen the rising sun. on his return to italy he had not force enough to declare a political conviction, and to go over to cæsar boldly. he had indeed become lieutenant to his brother when in cilicia, having left cæsar for the purpose. he afterward went with his brother to the pharsalus, assuring the elder cicero that they two would still be of the same party. then the great catastrophe had come, when cicero returned from that wretched campaign to brundisium, and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement. quintus followed cæsar into asia with his son, and there pleaded his own cause with him at the expense of his brother. of cæsar we must all admit that, though indifferent to the shedding of blood, arrogant, without principle in money and without heart in love, he was magnificent, and that he injured none from vindictive motives. he passed on, leaving quintus cicero, who as a soldier had been true to him, without, as we can fancy, many words. cicero afterward interceded for his brother who had reviled him, and quintus will ever after have to bear the stain of his treachery. then came the two letters for his wife, with just a line in each. if her messenger should arrive, he will send her word back as to what she is to do. after an interval of nearly a month, there is the other--ordering, in perfectly restored good-humor, that the baths shall be ready at the tusculan villa: "let the baths be all ready, and everything fit for the use of guests; there will probably be many of them."[137] it is evident that cæsar has passed on in a good-humor, and has left behind him glad tidings, such as should ever brighten the feet of the conqueror. it is singular that, with a correspondence such as that of cicero's, of which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have been nothing left to us from that friend himself. it must have been the case, as middleton suggests, that atticus, when cicero was dead, had the handling of the entire ms., and had withdrawn his own; either that, or else cicero and atticus mutually agreed to the destruction of their joint labors, and atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing well the value of the documents he preserved. that there is no letter from a woman--not even a line to cicero from his dear daughter--is much to be regretted. and yet there are letters--many from cælius, who is thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger atticus--and from various romans of the day. when we come to the latter days of his life, in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to plancus and others as to their supposed duty to the state, they become numerous. there are ten such from plancus, and nine from decimus brutus; and there is a whole mass of correspondence with marcus brutus--to be taken for what it is worth. with a view to history, they are doubtless worth much; but as throwing light on cicero's character, except as to the vigor that was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. how is it that a correspondence, which is for its main purpose so full, should have fallen so short in many of its details? there is no word, no allusion derogatory to atticus in these letters, which have come to us from cælius and others. we have atticus left to us for our judgment, free from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the insinuations of others. of whom would we wish that the familiar letters of another about ourselves should be published? would those objectionable epithets as to pompey have been allowed to hold their ground had pompey lived and had they been in his possession? but, in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias in favor of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of them. we know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up these affairs of the moment and turned them into ridicule--then as they do now. we discount the "hierosolymarius." we do not quite believe that bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen; but we think that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself; at any rate, to tell no untruth against himself. we think that cicero of all men may be left to do so--cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. i maintain that it has been that very deftness which has done him all the harm. not one of those letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. "no," will say my readers, "that is their value; they would not have otherwise been true, as they are. we should not then have learned his secrets." i reply, "it is a hard bargain to make: others do not make such bargains on the same terms. but be sure, at any rate, that you read them aright: be certain that you make the necessary allowances. do not accuse him of falsehood because he unsays on a tuesday the words he said on the monday. bear in mind on his behalf all the temporary ill that humanity is heir to. could you, living at brundisium during the summer months, 'when you were scarcely able to endure the weight of the sun,'[138] have had all your intellects about you, and have been able always to choose your words?" no, indeed! these letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. his anger boils over here, and he is hot. here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. he is weak in body just now, and worn out in spirit; he is hopeless, almost to the brink of despair; he is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is purposely enigmatic--all of which require an atticus who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them--who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent! because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready to sell his country! during the whole of the last year he must have been tortured by various turns of mind. had he done well in joining himself to pompey? and having done so, had he done well in severing himself, immediately on pompey's death, from the pompeians? looking at the matter as from a stand-point quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in both. he could not without treachery have gone over to cæsar when cæsar had come to the gate of italy, and, as it were with a blast of his trumpet, had demanded the consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions, and the continuance of his military power. "let pompey put down his, and i will put down mine," he had said. had pompey put down his, pompey and cicero, cato and brutus, and bibulus would all have had to walk at the heels of cæsar. when pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. cicero was bound to go to pharsalia. but when, by pompey's incompetence, cæsar was the victor; when pompey had fallen at the nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the empire, such as young pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to asia, some to illyricum, some to spain, and more to africa--as a herd of deer shall be seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jaws already dripping with blood--was cicero then to take his part with any of them? i hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. he went back to italy, and there he waited till the conqueror should come. it must have been very bitter. never to have become great has nothing in it of bitterness for a noble spirit. what matters it to the unknown man whether a cæsar or a pompey is at the top of all things? or if it does matter--as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that--which way he is turned, though there may be inner regrets that cæsar should become the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that pompey's hands should be untrammelled, who sees them? i can walk down to my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless i be stirred to foolish wrath by the pride of some one equally vain, can enjoy myself amid the festivities of the hour. it is but a little affair to me. if it come in my way to do a thing, i will do my best, and there is an end of it. the sense of responsibility is not there, nor the grievous weight of having tried but failed to govern mankind. but to have clung to high places; to have sat in the highest seat of all with infinite honor; to have been called by others, and, worse still, to have called myself, the savior of my country; to have believed in myself that i was sufficient, that i alone could do it, that i could bring back, by my own justice and integrity, my erring countrymen to their former simplicity--and then to have found myself fixed in a little town, just in italy, waiting for the great conqueror, who though my friend in things social was opposed to me body and soul as to rules of life--that, i say, must have been beyond the bitterness of death. during this year he had made himself acquainted with the details of that affair, whatever it might be, which led to his divorce soon after his return to rome. he had lived about thirty years with his wife, and the matter could not but have been to him the cause of great unhappiness. terentia was not only the mother of his children, but she had been to him also the witness of his rise in life and the companion of his fall. he was one who would naturally learn to love those with whom he was conversant. he seems to have projected himself out of his own time into those modes of thought which have come to us with christianity, and such a separation from this woman after an intercourse of so many years must have been very grievous to him. all married romans underwent divorce quite as a matter of course. there were many reasons. a young wife is more agreeable to the man's taste than one who is old. a rich wife is more serviceable than a poor. a new wife is a novelty. a strange wife is an excitement. a little wife is a relief to one overburdened with the flesh; a buxom wife to him who has become tired of the pure spirit. xanthippe asks too much, while griselda is too tranquil. and then, as a man came up in the world, causes for divorce grew without even the trouble of having to search for faults. cæsar required that his wife should not be ill spoken of, and therefore divorced her. pompey cemented the triumvirate with a divorce. we cannot but imagine that, when men had so much the best of it in the affairs of life, a woman had always the worst of it in these enforced separations. but as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to roman ladies. no woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. terentia when divorced from cicero was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honor of having married sallust after her break with cicero. they say that she married twice again after sallust's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of augustus, she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. divorce at any rate did not kill her. but we cannot conceive but that so sudden a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to cicero. we shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward, and then, too, divorcing her; but here we have only to deal with the torments terentia inflicted on him. what those torments were we do not know, and shall never learn unless by chance the lost letters of atticus should come to light. but the general idea has been that the lady had, in league with a freedman and steward in her service, been guilty of fraud against her husband. i do not know that we have much cause to lament the means of ascertaining the truth. it is sad to find that the great men with whose name we are occupied have been made subject to those "whips and scorns of time" which we thought to be peculiar to ourselves, because they have stung us. terentia, cicero's wife two thousand years ago, sent him word that he had but £100 left in his box at home, when he himself knew well that there must be something more. that would have gone for nothing had there not been other things before that, many other things. so, in spite of his ordering at her hands the baths and various matters to be got ready for his friends at his tusculum, a very short time after his return there he had divorced her. during this last year he had been engaged on what has since been found to be the real work of his life. he had already written much, but had written as one who had been anxious to fill up vacant spaces of time as they came in his way. from this time forth he wrote as does one who has reconciled himself to the fact that there are no more days to be lost if he intends, before the sun be set, to accomplish an appointed task. he had already compiled the de oratore, the de republica, and the de legibus. out of the many treatises which we have from cicero's hands, these are they which are known as the works of his earlier years. he commenced the year with an inquiry, de optimo genere oratorum, which he intended as a preface to the translations which he made of the great speeches of æschines and demosthenes, de corona. these translations are lost, though the preface remains. he then translated, or rather paraphrased the timæus of plato, of which a large proportion has come down to us, and the protagoras, of which we have lost all but a sentence or two. we have his oratoriæ partitiones, in which, in a dialogue between himself and his son, he repeats the lessons on oratory which he has given to the young man. it is a recapitulation, in short, of all that had been said on a subject which has since been made common, and which owed its origin to the work of much earlier years. it is but dull reading, but i can imagine that even in these days it may be useful to a young lawyer. there is a cynical morsel among these precepts which is worth observing, "cito enim arescit lachryma præsertim in alienis malis;"[139] and another grandly simple, "nihil enim est aliud eloquentia nisi copiose loquens sapientia." can we fancy anything more biting than the idea that the tears caused by the ills of another soon grow dry on the orator's cheek, or more wise than that which tells us that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently? then he wrote the six paradoxes addressed to brutus--or rather he then gave them to the world, for they were surely written at an earlier date. they are short treatises on trite subjects, put into beautiful language, so as to arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their reasoning. the most remarkable is the third, in which he endeavored to show that a man cannot be wise unless he be all-wise, a doctrine which he altogether overturns in his de amicitia, written but four years afterward. cicero knew well what was true, and wrote his paradox in order to give a zest to the subject. in the fourth and the sixth are attacks upon clodius and crassus, and are here republished in what would have been the very worst taste amid the politeness of our modern times. a man now may hate and say so while his foe is still alive and strong; but with the romans he might continue to hate, and might republish the words which he had written, eight years after the death of his victim. i know nothing of cicero's which so much puts us in mind of the struggles of the modern authors to make the most of every word that has come from them, as do these paradoxes. they remind us of some writer of leading articles who gets together a small bundle of essays and then gives them to the world. each of them has done well at its time, but that has not sufficed for his ambition; therefore they are dragged out into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as though they could stand well on their own legs. but they cannot stand alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than that for which they were intended when written. chapter vii. _marcellus, ligarius, and deiotarus._ [sidenote: b.c. 46, ætat. 61.] the battle of thapsus, in africa, took place in the spring of this year, and cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined not to live under cæsar's rule. if we may believe the story which, probably, hirtius has given us, in his account of the civil war in africa, and which has come down to us together with cæsar's commentaries, cato left his last instructions to some of his officers, and then took his sword into his bed with him and stabbed himself. cicero, who, in his dream of scipio, has given his readers such excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that cato must be allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. he would die rather than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him.[140] to cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living under cæsar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable affront. the "catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets of all ages. men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked something of the courage of a man. many other romans of the time did the same thing, but to none has been given all the honor which has been allowed to cato. cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies to die away. it was but a short time before that cato had voted against the decree of the senate giving cicero his "supplication." cicero had then been much annoyed; but now cato had died fighting for the republic, and was to be forgiven all personal offences. cicero wrote a eulogy of cato which was known by the name of cato, and was much discussed at rome at the time. it has now been lost. he sent it to cæsar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in cato's praise. we may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous--had he not been governed by that feeling of "de mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all--he might have said much that was not good. cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the stoics--a mode of living altogether antagonistic to cicero's views. but we know that he praised cato to the full--and we know also that cæsar nobly took the praise in good part, as coming from cicero, and answered it in an anti-cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from cicero. we can understand how cæsar should have shown that the rigid stoic was not a man likely to be of service to his country. there came up at this period a question which made itself popular among the "optimates" of rome, as to the return of marcellus. the man of como, whom marcellus had flogged, will be remembered--the roman citizen who had first been made a citizen by cæsar. this is mentioned now not as the cause of cæsar's enmity, who did not care much probably for his citizen, but as showing the spirit of the man. he, marcellus, had been consul four years since, b.c. 51, and had then endeavored to procure cæsar's recall from his province. he was one of the "optimates," an oligarch altogether opposed to cæsar, a roman nobleman of fairly good repute, who had never bent to cæsar, but had believed thoroughly in his order, and had thought, till the day of pharsalia came, that the consuls and the senate would rule forever. the day of pharsalia did come, and marcellus went into voluntary banishment in mitylene. after pharsalia, cæsar's clemency began to make itself known. there was a pardon for almost every roman who had fought against him, and would accept it. no spark of anger burnt in cæsar's bosom, except against one or two, of whom marcellus was one. he was too wise to be angry with men whose services he might require. it was cæsar's wish not to drive out the good men but to induce them to remain in rome, living by the grace of his favor. marcellus had many friends, and it seems that a public effort was made to obtain for him permission to come back to rome. we must imagine that cæsar had hitherto refused, probably with the idea of making his final concession the more valuable. at last the united senators determined to implore his grace, and the consulares rose one after another in their places, and all, with one exception,[141] asked that marcellus might be allowed to return. cicero, however, had remained silent to the last. there must have been, i think, some plot to get cicero on to his legs. he had gone to meet cæsar at brundisium when he came back from the east, had returned to rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant friendship with cæsar's friends. pardon seems to have been accorded to cicero without an effort. as far as he was concerned, that hostile journey to dyrrachium--for he did not travel farther toward the camp--counted for nothing with cæsar. he was allowed to live in peace, at rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as cæsar might rule. the idea seems to have been that he should gradually become absorbed among cæsar's followers. but hitherto he had remained silent. it was now six years since his voice had been heard in rome. he had spoken for milo--or had intended to speak--and, in the same affair, for munatius plancus, and for saufeius, b.c. 52. he had then been in his fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such a period of his life would not be broken. it was manifestly his intention not to speak again, at any rate in the senate; though the threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as meaning much. such threats from statesmen depend generally on the wishes of other men. but he held his place in the senate, and occasionally attended the debates. when this affair of marcellus came on, and all the senators of consular rank--excepting only volcatius and cicero--had risen, and had implored cæsar in a few words to condescend to be generous; when claudius marcellus had knelt at cæsar's feet to ask for his brother's liberty, and cæsar himself, after reminding them of the bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the prayers of the senate, then cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in the speech which is still extant. that used to be the story till there came the german critic wolf, who at the beginning of this century told us that cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. according to wolf, it would be doing cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of tiberius. such a verdict might have been taken as fatal--for wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged--in spite of la harpe, the french scholar and critic, who has named the marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic speeches of isocrates. the praise of la harpe was previous to the condemnation of wolf, and we might have been willing to accede to the german as being the later and probably the more accurate. mr. long, the british editor of the orations--mr. long, who has so loudly condemned the four speeches supposed to have been made after cicero's return from exile--gives us no certain guidance. mr. long, at any rate, has not been so disgusted by the tiberian latin as to feel himself bound to repudiate it. if he can read the pro marcello, so can i, and so, my reader, might you do probably without detriment. but these differences among the great philologic critics tend to make us, who are so infinitely less learned, better contented with our own lot. i, who had read the pro marcello without stumbling over its halting latinity, should have felt myself crushed when i afterward came across wolf's denunciations, had i not been somewhat comforted by la harpe. but when i found that mr. long, in his introduction to the piece, though he discusses wolf's doctrine, still gives to the orator the advantage, as it may be, of his "imprimatur," i felt that i might go on, and not be ashamed of myself.[142] this is the story that has now to be told of the speech pro marcello. at the time the matter ended very tragically. as soon as cæsar had yielded, cicero wrote to marcellus giving him strong reasons for coming home. marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. he thanks cicero shortly; but, with kindly dignity, he declines. "with the comforts of the city i can well dispense," he says.[143] then cicero urges him again and again, using excellent arguments for his return--which at length prevail. in the spring of the next year marcellus, on his way back to rome, is at athens. there servius sulpicius spends a day with him; but, just as sulpicius is about to pass on, there comes a slave to him who tells him that marcellus has been murdered. his friend magius chilo had stabbed him overnight, and had then destroyed himself. it was said that chilo had asked marcellus to pay his debts for him, and that marcellus had refused. it seems to be more probable that chilo had his own reasons for not choosing that his friend should return to rome. looking back at my own notes on the speech--it would make with us but a ten minutes' after-dinner speech--i see that it is said "that it is chiefly remarkable for the beauty of the language, and the abjectness of the praise of cæsar." this was before i had heard of wolf. as to the praise, i doubt whether it should be called abject, regard being had to the feelings of the moment in which it was delivered. cicero had risen to thank cæsar--on whose breath the recall of marcellus depended--for his unexpected courtesy. in england we should not have thanked cæsar as cicero did: "o cæsar, there is no flood of eloquence, no power of the tongue or of the pen, no richness of words, which may emblazon, or even dimly tell the story of your great deeds."[144] such language is unusual with us--as it would also be unusual to abuse our pisos and our vatiniuses, as did cicero. it was the southerner and the roman who spoke to southerners and to romans. but, undoubtedly, there was present to the mind of cicero the idea of saying words which cæsar might receive with pleasure. he was dictator, emperor, lord of all things--king. cicero should have remained away, as marcellus had done, were he not prepared to speak after this fashion. he had long held aloof from speech. at length the time had come when he was, as it were, caught in a trap, and compelled to be eloquent. [sidenote: b.c. 46, ætat. 61.] the silence had been broken, and in the course of the autumn he spoke on behalf of ligarius, beseeching the conqueror to be again merciful. this case was by no means similar to that of marcellus, who was exiled by no direct forfeiture of his right to live in italy, but who had expatriated himself. in this case ligarius had been banished with others; but it seems that the punishment had been inflicted on him, not from the special ill-will of cæsar, but from the malice of certain enemies who, together with ligarius, had found themselves among pompey's followers when cæsar crossed the rubicon. ligarius had at this time been left as acting governor in africa. in the confusion of the times an unfortunate pompeian named varus had arrived in africa, and to him, as being superior in rank, ligarius had given up the government. varus had then gone, leaving ligarius still acting, and one tubero had come with his son, and had demanded the office. ligarius had refused to give it up, and the two tuberos had departed, leaving the province in anger, and had fought at the pharsalus. after the battle they made their peace with cæsar, and in the scramble that ensued ligarius was banished. now the case was brought into the courts, in which cæsar sat as judge. the younger tubero accused ligarius, and cicero defended him. it seems that, having been enticed to open his mouth on behalf of marcellus, he found himself launched again into public life. but how great was the difference from his old life! it is not to the judices, or patres conscripti, or to the quirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to cæsar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise. once again he does the same thing when pleading for deiotarus, the king of galatia, and it is impossible to deny, as we read the phrases, that the orator sinks in our esteem. it is not so much that we judge him to be small, as that he has ceased to be great. he begins his speech for ligarius by saying, "my kinsman tubero has brought before you, o cæsar, a new crime, and one not heard of up to this day--that ligarius has been in africa."[145] the commencement would have been happy enough if it had not been addressed to cæsar; for he was addressing a judge not appointed by any form, but self-assumed--a judge by military conquest. we cannot imagine how cæsar found time to sit there, with his legions round him still under arms, and spain not wholly conquered. but he did do so, and allowed himself to be persuaded to the side of mercy. ligarius came back to rome, and was one of those who plunged their daggers into him. but i cannot think that he should have been hindered by this trial and by cæsar's mercy from taking such a step, if by nothing else. brutus and cassius also stabbed him. the question to be decided is whether, on public grounds, these men were justified in killing him--a question as to which i should be premature in expressing an opinion here. there are some beautiful passages in this oration. "who is there, i ask," he says, "who alleges ligarius to have been in fault because he was in africa? he does so who himself was most anxious to be there, and now complains that he was refused admittance by ligarius, he who was in arms against cæsar. what was your sword doing, tubero, in that pharsalian army? whom did you seek to kill then? what was the meaning of your weapon? what was it that you desired so eagerly, with those eyes and hands, with that passion in your heart? i press him too much; the young man seems to be disturbed. i will speak of myself, then, for i also was in that army."[146] this was in cæsar's presence, and no doubt told with cæsar. we were all together in the same cause--you, and i, and ligarius. why should you and i be pardoned and not ligarius? the oration is for the most part simply eulogistic. at any rate it was successful, and became at rome, for the time, extremely popular. he writes about it early in the following year to atticus, who has urged him to put something into it, before it was published, to mitigate the feeling against tubero. cicero says in his reply to atticus that the copies have already been given to the public, and that, indeed, he is not anxious on tubero's behalf. early in this year he had divorced terentia, and seems at once to have married publilia. publilia had been his ward, and is supposed to have had a fortune of her own. he explains his own motives very clearly in a letter to his friend plancius. in these wretched times he would have formed no new engagement, unless his own affairs had been as sad for him as were those of the republic; but when he found that they to whom his prosperity should have been of the greatest concern were plotting against him within his own walls, he was forced to strengthen himself against the perfidy of his old inmates by placing his trust in new.[147] it must have been very bad with him when he had recourse to such a step as this. shortly after this letter just quoted had been written, he divorced publilia also--we are told because publilia had treated tullia with disrespect. we have no details on the subject, but we can well understand the pride of the young woman who declined to hear the constant praise of her step-daughter, and thought herself to be quite as good as tullia. at any rate, she was sent away quickly from her new home, having remained there only long enough to have made not the most creditable episode in cicero's life. at this time dolabella, who assumed the consulship upon cæsar's death, and hirtius, who became consul during the next year, used to attend upon cicero and take lessons in elocution. so at least the story has been told, from a letter written in this year to his friend poetus; but i should imagine that the lessons were not much in earnest. "why do you talk to me of your tunny-fish, your pilot-fish, and your cheese and sardines? hirtius and dolabella preside over my banquets, and i teach them in return to make speeches."[148] from this we may learn that cæsar's friends were most anxious to be also cicero's friends. it may be said that dolabella was his son-in-law; but dolabella was at this moment on the eve of being divorced. it was in spite of his marriage that dolabella still clung to cicero. all cæsar's friends in rome did the same; so that i am disposed to think that for this year, just till tullia's death, he was falling, not into a happy state, but to the passive contentment of those who submit themselves to be ruled over by a single master. he had struggled all his life, and now finding that he must yield, he thought that he might as well do so gracefully. it was so much easier to listen to the state secrets of balbus, and hear from oppius how the money was spent, and then to dine with hirtius or dolabella, than to sit ever scowling at home, as cato would have done had cato lived. but with his feelings about the republic at heart, how sad it must have been! cato was gone, and pompey, and bibulus; and marcellus was either gone or just about to go. old age was creeping on. it was better to write philosophy, in friendship with cæsar's friends, than to be banished again whither he could not write it at all. much, no doubt, he did in preparation for all those treatises which the next eighteen months were to bring forth. cæsar, just at the end of the year, had been again called to spain, b.c. 46, to quell the last throbbings of the pompeians, and then to fight the final battle of munda. it would seem odd to us that so little should have been said about such an event by cicero, and that the little should depend on the education of his son, were it not that if we look at our own private letters, written to-day to our friends, we find the same omission of great things. to cicero the doings of his son were of more immediate moment than the doings of cæsar. the boy had been anxious to enlist for the spanish war. quintus, his cousin, had gone, and young marcus was anxious to flutter his feathers beneath the eyes of royalty. at his age it was nothing to him that he had been taken to pharsalia and made to bear arms on the opposite side. cæsar had become cæsar since he had learned to form his opinion on politics, and on cæsar's side all things seemed to be bright and prosperous. the lad was anxious to get away from his new step-mother, and asked his father for the means to go with the army to spain. it appears by cicero's letter to atticus on the subject[149] that, in discussing the matter with his son, he did yield. these roman fathers, in whose hands we are told were the very lives of their sons, seem to have been much like christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. the lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. young quintus was older, and had been already able to do something to push himself with cæsar's friends. "sed tamen permisi"--"nevertheless, i told him he might go," said cicero, sadly. but he did not go. he was allured, probably, by the promise of a separate establishment at athens, whither he was sent to study with cratippus. we find another proof of cicero's wealth in the costliness of his son's household at athens, as premeditated by the father. he is to live as do the sons of other great noblemen. he even names the young noblemen with whom he is to live. bibulus was of the calpurnian "gens." acidinus of the manlian, and messala of the valerian, and these are the men whom cicero, the "novus homo" from arpinum, selects as those who shall not live at a greater cost than his son.[150] "he will not, however, at athens want a horse." why not? why should not a young man so furnished want a horse at athens? "there are plenty here at home for the road," says cicero. so young cicero is furnished, and sent forth to learn philosophy and greek. but no one has essayed to tell us why he should not want the horse. young cicero when at athens did not do well. he writes home in the coming year, to tiro, two letters which have been preserved for us, and which seem to give us but a bad account, at any rate, of his sincerity. "the errors of his youth," he says, "have afflicted him grievously." not only is his mind shocked, but his ears cannot bear to hear of his own iniquity.[151] "and now," he says, "i will give you a double joy, to compensate all the anxiety i have occasioned you. know that i live with cratippus, my master, more like a son than a pupil. i spend all my days with him, and very often part of the night." but he seems to have had some wit. tiro has been made a freedman, and has bought a farm for himself. young marcus--from whom tiro has asked for some assistance which marcus cannot give him--jokes with him as to his country life, telling him that he sees him saving the apple-pips at dessert. of the subsequent facts of the life of young marcus we do not know much. he did not suffer in the proscriptions of antony and augustus, as did his father and uncle and his cousin. he did live to be chosen as consul with augustus, and had the reputation of a great drinker. for this latter assertion we have only the authority of pliny the elder, who tells us an absurd story, among the wonders of drinking which he adduces.[152] middleton says a word or two on behalf of the young cicero, which are as well worthy of credit as anything else that has been told. one last glance at him which we can credit is given in that letter to tiro, and that we admit seems to us to be hypocritical. [sidenote: b.c. 45, ætat. 62.] in the spring of the year cicero lost his daughter tullia. we have first a letter of his to lepta, a man with whom he had become intimate, saying that he had been kept in rome by tullia's confinement, and that now he is still detained, though her health is sufficiently confirmed, by the expectation of obtaining from dolabella's agents the first repayment of her dowry. the repayment of the divorced lady's marriage portion was a thing of every-day occurrence in rome, when she was allowed to take away as much as she had brought with her. cicero, however, failed to get back tullia's dowry. but he writes in good spirits. he does not think that he cares to travel any more. he has a house at rome better than any of his villas in the country, and greater rest than in the most desert region. his studies are now never interrupted. he thinks it probable that lepta will have to come to him before he can be induced to go to lepta. in the mean time let the young lepta take care and read his hesiod.[153] then he writes in the spring to atticus a letter from antium, and we first hear that tullia is dead. she had seemed to recover from childbirth; but her strength did not suffice, and she was no more.[154] a boy had been born, and was left alive. in subsequent letters we find that cicero gives instructions concerning him, and speaks of providing for him in his will.[155] but of the child we hear nothing more, and must surmise that he also died. of tullia's death we have no further particulars; but we may well imagine that the troubles of the world had been very heavy on her. the little stranger was being born at the moment of her divorce from her third husband. she was about thirty-two years of age, and it seems that cicero had taken consolation in her misfortunes from the expected pleasure of her companionship. she was now dead, and he was left alone. she had died in february, and we know nothing of the first outbreak of his sorrow. it appears that he at first buried himself for a while in a villa belonging to atticus, near rome, and that he then retreated to his own at astura. from thence, and afterward from antium, there are a large number of letters, all dealing with the same subject. he declares himself to be inconsolable; but he does take consolation from two matters--from his books on philosophy, and from an idea which occurs to him that he will perpetuate the name of tullia forever by the erection of a monument that shall be as nearly immortal as stones and bricks can make it. his letters to atticus at this time are tedious to the general reader, because he reiterates so often his instructions as to the purchase of the garden near rome in which the monument is to be built; but they are at the same time touching and natural. "nothing has been written," he says, "for the lessening of grief which i have not read at your house; but my sorrow breaks through it all."[156] then he tells atticus that he too has endeavored to console himself by writing a treatise on consolation. "whole days i write; not that it does any good." in that he was wrong. he could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied himself continually. "totos dies scribo." by doing so, he did contrive not to break his heart. in a subsequent letter he says, "reading and writing do not soften it, but they deaden it."[157] on the appian way, a short distance out of rome, the traveller is shown a picturesque ancient building, of enormous strength, called the mole of cæcilia metella. it is a castle in size, but is believed to have been the tomb erected to the memory of cæcilia, the daughter of metellus creticus, and the wife of crassus the rich. history knows of her nothing more, and authentic history hardly knows so much of the stupendous monument. there it stands, however, and is supposed to be proof of what might be done for a roman lady in the way of perpetuating her memory. she was, at any rate, older than tullia, having been the wife of a man older than tullia's father. if it be the case that this monument be of the date named, it proves to us, at least, that the notion of erecting such monuments was then prevalent. some idea of a similar kind--of a monument equally stupendous, and that should last as long--seems to have taken a firm hold of cicero's mind. he has read all the authors he could find on the subject, and they agree that it shall be done in the fashion he points out. he does not, he says, consult atticus on that matter, nor on the architecture, for he has already settled on the design of one cluatius. what he wants atticus to do for him now is to assist him in buying the spot on which it shall be built. many gardens near rome are named. if drusus makes a difficulty, atticus must see damasippus. then there are those which belong to sica and to silius! but at last the matter dies away, and even the gardens are not bought. we are led to imagine that atticus has been opposed to the monument from first to last, and that the immense cost of constructing such a temple as cicero had contemplated is proved to him to be injudicious. there is a charming letter written to him at this time by his friend sulpicius, showing the great feeling entertained for him. but, as i have said before, i doubt whether that or any other phrases of consolation were of service to him. it was necessary for him to wait and bear it, and the more work that he did when he was bearing it, the easier it was borne. lucceius and torquatus wrote to him on the same subject, and we have his answers. [sidenote: b.c. 45, ætat. 62.] in september cæsar returned from spain, having at last conquered the republic. all hope for liberty was now gone. atticus had instigated cicero to write something to cæsar as to his victories--something that should be complimentary, and at the same time friendly and familiar; but cicero had replied that it was impossible. "when i feel," he said, "that to draw the breath of life is in itself base, how base would be my assent to what has been done![158] but it is not only that. there are not words in which such a letter ever can be written. do you not know that aristotle, when he addressed himself to alexander, wrote to a youth who had been modest; but then, when he had once heard himself called king, he became proud, cruel, and unrestrained? how, then, shall i now write in terms which shall suffice for his pride to the man who has been equalled to romulus?" it was true; cæsar had now returned inflated with such pride that brutus, and cassius, and casca could no longer endure him. he came back, and triumphed over the five lands in which he had conquered not the enemies of rome, but rome itself. he triumphed nominally over the gauls, the egyptians, the asiatics of pontus, over the africans, and the spaniards; but his triumph was, in truth, over the republic. there appears from suetonius to have been five separate triumphal processions, each at the interval of a few days.[159] amid the glory of the first vercingetorix was strangled. to the glory of the third was added--as suetonius tells us--these words, "veni, vidi, vici," displayed on a banner. this i think more likely than that he had written them on an official despatch. we are told that the people of rome refused to show any pleasure, and that even his own soldiers had enough in them of the roman spirit to feel resentment at his assumption of the attributes of a king. cicero makes but little mention of these gala doings in his letters. he did not see them, but wrote back word to atticus, who had described it all. "an absurd pomp," he says, alluding to the carriage of the image of cæsar together with that of the gods; and he applauds the people who would not clap their hands, even in approval of the goddess of victory, because she had shown herself in such bad company.[160] there are, however, but three lines on the subject, showing how little there is in that statement of cornelius nepos that he who had read cicero's letters carefully wanted but little more to be well informed of the history of the day. cæsar was not a man likely to be turned away from his purpose of ruling well by personal pride--less likely, we should say, than any self-made despot dealt with in history. he did make efforts to be as he was before. he endeavored to live on terms of friendship with his old friends; but the spirit of pride which had taken hold of him was too much for him. power had got possession of him, and he could not stand against it. it was sad to see the way in which it compelled him to make himself a prey to the conspirators, were it not that we learn from history how impossible it is that a man should raise himself above the control of his fellow-men without suffering. [sidenote: b.c. 45, ætat. 62.] during these days cicero kept himself in the country, giving himself up to his philosophical writings, and indulging in grief for tullia. efforts were repeatedly made to bring him to rome, and he tells atticus in irony that if he is wanted there simply as an augur, the augurs have nothing to do with the opening of temples. in the same letter he speaks of an interview he has just had with his nephew quintus, who had come to him in his disgrace. he wants to go to the parthian war, but he has not money to support him. then cicero uses, as he says, the eloquence of atticus, and holds his tongue.[161] we can imagine how very unpleasant the interview must have been. cicero, however, decides that he will go up to the city, so that he may have atticus with him on his birthday. this letter was written toward the close of the year, and cicero's birthday was the 3d of january. he then goes to rome, and undertakes to plead the cause of deiotarus, the king of galatia, before cæsar. this very old man had years ago become allied with pompey, and, as far as we can judge, been singularly true to his idea of roman power. he had seen pompey in all his glory when pompey had come to fight mithridates. the tetrarchs in asia minor, of whom this deiotarus was one, had a hard part to play when the romans came among them. they were forced to comply, either with their natural tendency to resist their oppressors, or else were obliged to fleece their subjects in order to satisfy the cupidity of the invaders. we remember ariobarzanes, who sent his subjects in gangs to rome to be sold as slaves in order to pay pompey the interest on his debt. deiotarus had similarly found his best protection in being loyal to pompey, and had in return been made king of armenia by a decree of the roman senate. he joined pompey at the pharsalus, and, when the battle was over, returned to his own country to look for further forces wherewith to aid the republic. unfortunately for him, cæsar was the conqueror, and deiotarus found himself obliged to assist the conqueror with his troops. cæsar seems never to have forgiven him his friendship for pompey. he was not a roman, and was unworthy of forgiveness. cæsar took away from him the kingdom of armenia, but left him still titular king of galatia. but this enmity was known in the king's own court, and among his own family. his own daughter's son, one castor, became desirous of ruining his grandfather, and brought a charge against the king. cæsar had been the king's compelled guest in his journey in quest of pharnaces, and had passed quickly on. now, when the war was over and cæsar had returned from his five conquered nations, castor came forward with his accusation. deiotarus, according to his grandson, had endeavored to murder cæsar while cæsar was staying with him. at this distance of time and place we cannot presume to know accurately what the circumstances were; but it appears to have been below the dignity of cæsar to listen to such a charge. he did do so, however, and heard more than one speech on the subject delivered in favor of the accused. brutus spoke on behalf of the aged king, and spoke in vain. cicero did not speak in vain, for cæsar decided that he would pronounce no verdict till he had himself been again in the east, and had there made further inquiries. he never returned to the east; but the old king lived to fight once more, and again on the losing side. he was true to the party he had taken, and ranged himself with brutus and cassius at the field of philippi. the case was tried, if tried it can be called, in cæsar's private house, in which the audience cannot have been numerous. cæsar seems to have admitted cicero to say what could be said for his friend, rather than as an advocate to plead for his client, so that no one should accuse him, cæsar, of cruelty in condemning the criminal. the speech must have occupied twenty minutes in the delivery, and we are again at a loss to conceive how cæsar should have found the time to listen to it. cicero declares that he feels the difficulty of pleading in so unusual a place--within the domestic walls of a man's private house, and without any of those accustomed supports to oratory which are to be found in a crowded law court. "but," he says, "i rest in peace when i look into your eyes and behold your countenance." the speech is full of flattery, but it is turned so adroitly that we almost forgive it.[162] there is a passage in which cicero compliments the victor on his well-known mercy in his victories--from which we may see how much cæsar thought of the character he had achieved for himself in this particular. "of you alone, o cæsar, is it boasted that no one has fallen under your hands but they who have died with arms in their hands."[163] all who had been taken had been pardoned. no man had been put to death when the absolute fighting was brought to an end. cæsar had given quarter to all. it is the modern, generous way of fighting. when our country is invaded, and we drive back the invaders, we do not, if victorious, slaughter their chief men. much less, when we invade a country, do we kill or mutilate all those who have endeavored to protect their own homes. cæsar has evidently much to boast, and among the italians he has caused it to be believed. it suited cicero to assert it in cæsar's ears. cæsar wished to be told of his own clemency among the men of his own country. but because cæsar boasted, and cicero was complaisant, posterity is not to run away with the boast, and call it true. for all that is great in cæsar's character i am willing to give him credit; but not for mercy; not for any of those divine gifts the loveliness of which was only beginning to be perceived in those days by some few who were in advance of their time. it was still the maxim of rome that a "supplicatio" should be granted only when two thousand of the enemy should have been left on the field. we have something still left of the pagan cruelty about us when we send triumphant words of the numbers slain on the field of battle. we cannot but remember that cæsar had killed the whole senate of the veneti, a nation dwelling on the coast of brittany, and had sold all the people as slaves, because they had detained the messengers he had sent to them during his wars in gaul. "gravius vindicandum statuit"[164]--"he had thought it necessary to punish them somewhat severely." therefore he had killed the entire senate, and enslaved the entire people. this is only one of the instances of wholesale horrible cruelty which he committed throughout his war in gaul--of cruelty so frightful that we shudder as we think of the sufferings of past ages. the ages have gone their way, and the sufferings are lessened by increased humanity. but we cannot allow cicero's compliment to pass idly by. the "nemo nisi armatus" referred to italians, and to italians, we may take it, of the upper rank--among whom, for the sake of dramatic effect, deiotarus was placed for the occasion. this was the last of cicero's casual speeches. it was now near the end of the year, and on the ides of march following it was fated that cæsar should die. after which there was a lull in the storm for a while, and then cicero broke out into that which i have called his final scream of liberty. there came the philippics--and then the end. this speech of which i have given record as spoken pro rege deiotaro was the last delivered by him for a private purpose. forty-two he has spoken hitherto, of which something of the story has been told; the philippics of which i have got to speak are fourteen in number, making the total number of speeches which we possess to be fifty-six. but of those spoken by him we have not a half, and of those which we possess some have been declared by the great critics to be absolutely spurious. the great critics have perhaps been too hard upon them: they have all been polished. cicero himself was so anxious for his future fame that he led the way in preparing them for the press. quintilian tells us that tiro adapted them.[165] others again have come after him and have retouched them, sometimes, no doubt, making them smoother, and striking out morsels which would naturally become unintelligible to later readers. we know what he himself did to the milo. others subsequently may have received rougher usage, but still from loving hands. bits have been lost, and other bits interpolated, and in this way have come to us the speeches which we possess. but we know enough of the history of the times, and are sufficient judges of the language, to accept them as upon the whole authentic. the great critic, when he comes upon a passage against which his very soul recoils, on the score of its halting latinity, rises up in his wrath and tears the oration to tatters, till he will have none of it. one set of objectionable words he encounters after another, till the whole seems to him to be damnable, and the oration is condemned. it has been well to allude to this, because in dealing with these orations it is necessary to point out that every word cannot be accepted as having been spoken as we find it printed. taken collectively, we may accept them as a stupendous monument of human eloquence and human perseverance. [sidenote: b.c. 45, ætat. 62.] late in the year, on the 12th before the calends of january, or the 21st of december, there took place a little party at puteoli, the account of which interests us. cicero entertained cæsar at supper. though the date is given as above, and though december had originally been intended to signify, as it does with us, a winter month, the year, from want of proper knowledge, had run itself out of order, and the period was now that of october. the amendment of the calendar, which was made under cæsar's auspices, had not as yet been brought into use, and we must understand that october, the most delightful month of the year, was the period in question. cicero was staying at his puteolan villa, not far from baiæ, close upon the sea-shore--the corner of the world most loved by all the great romans of the day for their retreat in autumn.[166] puteoli, we may imagine, was as pleasant as baiæ, but less fashionable, and, if all that we hear be true, less immoral. here cicero had one of his villas, and here, a few months before his death, cæsar came to visit him. he gives, in a very few lines to atticus, a graphic account of the entertainment. cæsar had sent on word to say that he was coming, so that cicero was prepared for him. but the lord of all the world had already made himself so evidently the lord, that cicero could not entertain him without certain of those inner quakings of the heart which are common to us now when some great magnate may come across our path and demand hospitality for a moment. cicero jokes at his own solicitude, but nevertheless we know that he has felt it when, on the next morning, he sent atticus an account of it. his guest has been a burden to him indeed, but still he does not regret it, for the guest behaved himself so pleasantly! we must remark that cicero did not ostensibly shake in his shoes before him. cicero had been consul, and has had to lead the senate when cæsar was probably anxious to escape himself as an undetected conspirator. cæsar has grown since, but only by degrees. he has not become, as augustus did, "facile princeps." he is aware of his own power, but aware also that it becomes him to ignore his own knowledge. and cicero is also aware of it, but conscious at the same time of a nominal equality. cæsar is now dictator, has been consul four times, and will be consul again when the new year comes on. but other romans have been dictator and consul. all of which cæsar feels on the occasion, and shows that he feels it. cicero feels it also, and endeavors, not quite successfully, to hide it. cæsar has come accompanied by troops. cicero names two thousand men--probably at random. when cicero hears that they have come into the neighborhood, he is terribly put about till one barba cassius, a lieutenant in cæsar's employment, comes and reassures him. a camp is made for the men outside in the fields, and a guard is put on to protect the villa. on the following day, about one o'clock, cæsar comes. he is shut up at the house of one philippus, and will admit no one. he is supposed to be transacting accounts with balbus. we can imagine how cicero's cooks were boiling and stewing at the time. then the great man walked down upon the sea-shore. rome was the only recognized nation in the world. the others were provinces of rome, and the rest were outlying barbaric people, hardly as yet fit to be roman provinces. and he was now lord of rome. did he think of this as he walked on the shore of puteoli--or of the ceremony he was about to encounter before he ate his dinner? he did not walk long, for at two o'clock he bathed, and heard "that story about mamurra" without moving a muscle. turn to your catullus, the 57th epigram, and read what cæsar had read to him on this occasion, without showing by his face the slightest feeling. it is short enough, but i cannot quote it even in a note, even in latin. who told cæsar of the foul words, and why were they read to him on this occasion? he thought but little about them, for he forgave the author and asked him afterward to supper. this was at the bath, we may suppose. he then took his siesta, and after that "[greek: emetikên] agebat." how the romans went through the daily process and lived, is to us a marvel. i think we may say that cicero did not practise it. cæsar, on this occasion, ate and drank plenteously and with pleasure. it was all well arranged, and the conversation was good of its kind, witty and pleasant. cæsar's couch seems to have been in the midst, and around him lay supping, at other tables, his freedmen, and the rest of his suite. it was all very well; but still, says cicero, he was not such a guest as you would welcome back--not one to whom you would say, "come again, i beg, when you return this way." once is enough. there were no politics talked--nothing of serious matters. cæsar had begun to find now that no use could be made of cicero for politics. he had tried that, and had given it up. philology was the subject--the science of literature and languages. cæsar could talk literature as well as cicero, and turned the conversation in that direction. cicero was apt, and took the desired part, and so the afternoon passed pleasantly, but still with a little feeling that he was glad when his guest was gone.[167] cæsar declared, as he went, that he would spend one day at puteoli and another at baiæ. dolabella had a villa down in those parts, and cicero knows that cæsar, as he passed by dolabella's house, rode in the midst of soldiers--in state, as we should say--but that he had not done this anywhere else. he had already promised dolabella the consulship. was cicero mean in his conduct toward cæsar? up to this moment there had been nothing mean, except that roman flattery which was simply roman good manners. he had opposed him at pharsalia--or rather in macedonia. he had gone across the water--not to fight, for he was no fighting man--but to show on which side he had placed himself. he had done this, not believing in pompey, but still convinced that it was his duty to let all men know that he was against cæsar. he had resisted every attempt which cæsar had made to purchase his services. neither with pompey nor with cæsar did he agree. but with the former--though he feared that a second sulla would arise should he be victorious--there was some touch of the old republic. something might have been done then to carry on the government upon the old lines. cæsar had shown his intention to be lord of all, and with that cicero could hold no sympathy. cæsar had seen his position, and had respected it. he would have nothing done to drive such a man from rome. under these circumstances cicero consented to live at rome, or in the neighborhood, and became a man of letters. it must be remembered that up to the ides of march he had heard of no conspiracy. the two men, cæsar and cicero, had agreed to differ, and had talked of philology when they met. there has been, i think, as yet, nothing mean in his conduct. chapter viii. _cæsar's death._ [sidenote: b.c. 44, ætat. 63.] after the dinner-party at puteoli, described in the last chapter, cicero came up to rome, and was engaged in literary pursuits. cæsar was now master and lord of everything. in january cicero wrote to his friend curio, and told him with disgust of the tomfooleries which were being carried on at the election of quæstors. an empty chair had been put down, and was declared to be the consul's chair. then it was taken away, and another chair was placed, and another consul was declared. it wanted then but a few hours to the end of the consular year--but not the less was caninius, the new consul, appointed, "who would not sleep during his consulship," which lasted but from mid-day to the evening. "if you saw all this you would not fail to weep," says cicero![168] after this he seems to have recovered from his sorrow. we have a correspondence with poetus which always typifies hilarity of spirits. there is a discussion, of which we have but the one side, on "double entendre" and plain speaking. poetus had advocated the propriety of calling a spade a spade, and cicero shows him the inexpediency. then we come suddenly upon his letter to atticus, written on the 7th of april, three weeks after the fall of cæsar. mommsen endeavors to explain the intention of cæsar in the adoption of the names by which he chose to be called, and in his acceptance of those which, without his choosing, were imposed upon him.[169] he has done it perhaps with too great precision, but he leaves upon our minds a correct idea of the resolution which cæsar had made to be king, emperor, dictator, or what not, before he started for macedonia, b.c. 49,[170] and the disinclination which moved him at once to proclaim himself a tyrant. dictator was the title which he first assumed, as being temporary, roman, and in a certain degree usual. he was dictator for an indefinite period, annually, for ten years, and, when he died, had been designated dictator for life. he had already been, for the last two years, named "imperator" for life; but that title--which i think to have had a military sound in men's ears, though it may, as mommsen says, imply also civil rule--was not enough to convey to men all that it was necessary that they should understand. till the moment of his triumph had come, and that "veni, vidi, vici" had been flaunted in the eyes of rome--till cæsar, though he had been ashamed to call himself a king, had consented to be associated with the gods--brutus, cassius, and those others, sixty in number we are told, who became the conspirators, had hardly realized the fact that the republic was altogether at an end. a bitter time had come upon them; but it was softened by the personal urbanity of the victor. but now, gradually, the truth was declaring itself, and the conspiracy was formed. i am inclined to think that shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "i do fear the people choose cæsar for their king," says brutus. "i had as lief not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as i myself," says cassius.[171] it had come home to them at length that cæsar was to be king, and therefore they conspired. it would be a difficult task in the present era to recommend to my readers the murderers of cæsar as honest, loyal politicians, who did for their country, in its emergency, the best that the circumstances would allow. the feeling of the world in regard to murder has so changed during the last two thousand years, that men, hindered by their sense of what is at present odious, refuse to throw themselves back into the condition of things a knowledge of which can have come to them only from books. they measure events individually by the present scale, and refuse to see that brutus should be judged by us now in reference to the judgment that was formed of it then. in an age in which it was considered wise and fitting to destroy the nobles of a barbarous community which had defended itself, and to sell all others as slaves, so that the perpetrator simply recorded the act he had done as though necessary, can it have been a base thing to kill a tyrant? was it considered base by other romans of the day? was that plea ever made even by cæsar's friends, or was it not acknowledged by them all that "brutus was an honorable man," even when they had collected themselves sufficiently to look upon him as an enemy? it appears abundantly in cicero's letters that no one dreamed of regarding them as we regard assassins now, or spoke of cæsar's death as we look upon assassination. "shall we defend the deeds of him at whose death we are rejoiced?" he says: and again, he deplores the feeling of regret which was growing in rome on account of cæsar's death, "lest it should be dangerous to those who have slain the tyrant for us."[172] we find that quintilian, among his stock lessons in oratory, constantly refers to the old established rule that a man did a good deed who had killed a tyrant--a lesson which he had taken from the greek teachers.[173] we are, therefore, bound to accept this murder as a thing praiseworthy according to the light of the age in which it was done, and to recognize the fact that it was so regarded by the men of the day. we are told now that cicero "hated" cæsar. there was no such hatred as the word implies. and we are told of "assassins," with an intention to bring down on the perpetrators of the deed the odium they would have deserved had the deed been done to-day; but the word has, i think, been misused. a king was abominable to roman ears, and was especially distasteful to men like cicero, brutus, and the other "optimates" who claimed to be peers. to be "primus inter pares" had been cicero's ambition--to be the leading oligarch of the day. cæsar had gradually mounted higher and still higher, but always leaving some hope--infinitesimally small at last--that he might be induced to submit himself to the republic. sulla had submitted. personally there was no hatred; but that hope had almost vanished, and therefore, judging as a roman, when the deed was done, cicero believed it to have been a glorious deed. there can be no doubt on that subject. the passages in which he praises it are too numerous for direct quotation; but there they are, interspersed through the letters and the philippics. there was no doubt of his approval. the "assassination" of cæsar, if that is to be the word used, was to his idea a glorious act done on behalf of humanity. the all-powerful tyrant who had usurped dominion over his country had been made away with, and again they might fall back upon the law. he had filched the army. he had run through various provinces, and had enriched himself with their wealth. he was above all law; he was worse than a marius or a sulla, who confessed themselves, by their open violence, to be temporary evils. cæsar was creating himself king for all time. no law had established him. no plebiscite of the nation had endowed him with kingly power. with his life in his hands, he had dared to do it, and was almost successful. it is of no purpose to say that he was right and cicero was wrong in their views as to the government of so mean a people as the romans had become. cicero's form of government, under men who were not ciceros, had been wrong, and had led to a state of things in which a tyrant might for the time be the lesser evil; but not on that account was cicero wrong to applaud the deed which removed cæsar. middleton in his life (vol. ii, p. 435) gives us the opinion of suetonius on this subject, and tells us that the best and wisest men in rome supposed cæsar to have been justly killed. mr. forsyth generously abstains from blaming the deed, as to which he leaves his readers to form their own opinion. abeken expresses no opinion concerning its morality, nor does morabin. it is the critics of cicero's works who have condemned him without thinking much, perhaps, of the judgment they have given. but cicero was not in the conspiracy, nor had he even contemplated cæsar's death. assertions to the contrary have been made both lately and in former years, but without foundation. i have already alluded to some of these, and have shown that phrases in his letters have been misinterpreted. a passage was quoted by m. du rozoir--ad att., lib. x., 8--"i don't think that he can endure longer than six months. he must fall, even if we do nothing." how often might it be said that the murder of an english minister had been intended if the utterings of such words be taken as a testimony! he quotes again--ad att., lib. xiii., 40--"what good news could brutus hear of cæsar, unless that he hung himself?" this is to be taken as meditating cæsar's death, and is quoted by a french critic, after two thousand years, in proof of cicero's fatal ill-will![174] the whole tenor of cicero's letters proves that he had never entertained the idea of cæsar's destruction. how long before the time the conspiracy may have been in existence we have no means of knowing; but we feel that cicero was not a man likely to be taken into the plot. he would have dissuaded brutus and cassius. judging from what we know of his character, we think that he would have distrusted its success. though he rejoiced in it after it was done, he would have been wretched while burdened with the secret. at any rate, we have the fact that he was not so burdened. the sight of cæsar's slaughter, when he saw it, must have struck him with infinite surprise, but we have no knowledge of what his feelings may have been when the crowd had gathered round the doomed man. cicero has left us no description of the moment in which cæsar is supposed to have gathered his toga over his face so that he might fall with dignity. it certainly is the case that when you take your facts from the chance correspondence of a man you lose something of the most touching episodes of the day. the writer passes these things by, as having been surely handled elsewhere. it is always so with cicero. the trial of milo, the passing of the rubicon, the battle of the pharsalus, and the murder of pompey are, with the death of cæsar, alike unnoticed. "i have paid him a visit as to whom we spoke this morning. nothing could be more forlorn."[175] it is thus the next letter begins, after cæsar's death, and the person he refers to is matius, cæsar's friend; but in three weeks the world had become used to cæsar's death. the scene had passed away, and the inhabitants of rome were already becoming accustomed to his absence. but there can be no doubt as to cicero's presence at cæsar's fall. he says so clearly to atticus.[176] morabin throws a doubt upon it. the story goes that brutus, descending from the platform on which cæsar had been seated, and brandishing the bloody dagger in his hand, appealed to cicero. morabin says that there is no proof of this, and alleges that brutus did it for stage effect. but he cannot have seen the letter above quoted, or seeing it, must have misunderstood it.[177] it soon became evident to the conspirators that they had scotched the snake, and not killed it. cassius and others had desired that antony also should be killed, and with him lepidus. that antony would be dangerous they were sure. but marcus brutus and decimus overruled their counsels. marcus had declared that the "blood of the tyrant was all that the people required."[178] the people required nothing of the kind. they were desirous only of ease and quiet, and were anxious to follow either side which might be able to lead them and had something to give away. but antony had been spared; and though cowed at the moment by the death of cæsar, and by the assumption of a certain dignified forbearance on the part of the conspirators, was soon ready again to fight the battle for the cæsareans. it is singular to see how completely he was cowed, and how quickly he recovered himself. mommsen finishes his history with a loud pæan in praise of cæsar, but does not tell us of his death. his readers, had they nothing else to inform them, might be led to suppose that he had gone direct to heaven, or at any rate had vanished from the world, as soon as he had made the empire perfect. he seems to have thought that had he described the work of the daggers in the senate-house he would have acknowledged the mortality of his godlike hero. we have no right to complain of his omissions. for research, for labor, and for accuracy he has produced a work almost without parallel. that he should have seen how great was cæsar because he accomplished so much, and that he should have thought cicero to be small because, burdened with scruples of justice, he did so little, is in the idiosyncrasy of the man. a cæsar was wanted, impervious to clemency, to justice, to moderation--a man who could work with any tools. "men had forgotten what honesty was. a person who refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man but as a personal foe."[179] cæsar took money, and gave bribes, when he had the money to pay them, without a scruple. it would be absurd to talk about him as dishonest. he was above honesty. he was "supra grammaticam." it is well that some one should have arisen to sing the praises of such a man--some two or three in these latter days. to me the character of the man is unpleasant to contemplate, unimpressionable, very far from divine. there is none of the human softness necessary for love; none of the human weakness needed for sympathy. on the 15th of march cæsar fell. when the murder had been effected. brutus and the others concerned in it went out among the people expecting to be greeted as saviors of their country. brutus did address the populace, and was well received; but some bad feeling seems to have been aroused by hard expressions as to cæsar's memory coming from one of the prætors. for the people, though they regarded cæsar as a tyrant, and expressed themselves as gratified when told that the would-be king had been slaughtered, still did not endure to hear ill spoken of him. he had understood that it behooved a tyrant to be generous, and appealed among them always with full hands--not having been scrupulous as to his mode of filling them. then the conspirators, frightened at menacing words from the crowd, betook themselves to the capitol. why they should have gone to the capitol as to a sanctuary i do not think that we know. the capitol is that hill to a portion of which access is now had by the steps of the church of the ara coeli in front, and from the forum in the rear. on one side was the fall from the tarpeian rock down which malefactors were flung. on the top of it was the temple to jupiter, standing on the site of the present church. and it was here that brutus and cassius and the other conspirators sought for safety on the evening of the day on which cæsar had been killed. here they remained for the two following days, till on the 18th they ventured down into the city. on the 17th dolabella claimed to be consul, in compliance with cæsar's promise, and on the same day the senate, moved by antony, decreed a public funeral to cæsar. we may imagine that the decree was made by them with fainting hearts. there were many fainting hearts in rome during those days, for it became very soon apparent that the conspirators had carried their plot no farther than the death of cæsar. brutus, as far as the public service was concerned, was an unpractical, useless man. we know nothing of public work done by him to much purpose. he was filled with high ideas as to his own position among the oligarchs, and with especial notions as to what was due by rome to men of his name. he had a fierce conception of his own rights--among which to be prætor, and consul, and governor of a province were among the number. but he had taken early in life to literature and philosophy, and eschewed the crowd of "fish-ponders," such as were antony and dolabella, men prone to indulge the luxury of their own senses. his idea of liberty seems to have been much the same as cicero's--the liberty to live as one of the first men in rome; but it was not accompanied, as it was with cicero, by an innate desire to do good to those around him. to maintain the prætors, consuls, and governors so that each man high in position should win his way to them as he might be able to obtain the voices of the people, and not to leave them to be bestowed at the call of one man who had thrust himself higher than all--that seems to have been his _beau ideal_ of roman government. it was cicero's also--with the addition that when he had achieved his high place he should serve the people honestly. brutus had killed cæsar, but had spared antony, thinking that all things would fall into their accustomed places when the tyrant should be no more. but he found that cæsar had been tyrant long enough to create a lust for tyranny; and that though he might suffice to kill a king, he had no aptitude for ruling a people. it was now that those scenes took place which shakspeare has described with such accuracy--the public funeral, antony's oration, and the rising of the people against the conspirators. antony, when he found that no plan had been devised for carrying on the government, and that the men were struck by amazement at the deed they had themselves done, collected his thoughts and did his best to put himself in cæsar's place. cicero had pleaded in the senate for a general amnesty, and had carried it as far as the voice of the senate could do so. but the amnesty only intended that men should pretend to think that all should be forgotten and forgiven. there was no forgiving, as there could be no forgetting. then cæsar's will was brought forth. they could not surely dispute his will or destroy it. in this way antony got hold of the dead man's papers, and with the aid of the dead man's private secretary or amanuensis, one fabricius, began a series of most unblushing forgeries. he procured, or said that he procured, a decree to be passed confirming by law all cæsar's written purposes. such a decree he could use to any extent to which he could carry with him the sympathies of the people. he did use it to a great extent, and seems at this period to have contemplated the assumption of dictatorial power in his own hands. antony was nearly being one of the greatest rascals the world has known. the desire was there, and so was the intellect, had it not been weighted by personal luxury and indulgence. now young octavius came upon the scene. he was the great-nephew of cæsar, whose sister julia had married one marcus atius. their daughter atia had married caius octavius, and of that marriage augustus was the child. when octavius, the father, died, atia, the widow, married marcius philippus, who was consul b.c. 56. cæsar, having no nearer heir, took charge of the boy, and had, for the last years of his life, treated him as his son, though he had not adopted him. at this period the youth had been sent to apollonia, on the other side of the adriatic, in macedonia, to study with apollodorus, a greek tutor, and was there when he heard of cæsar's death. he was informed that cæsar had made him his heir and at once crossed over into italy with his friend agrippa. on the way up to rome he met cicero at one of his southern villas, and in the presence of the great orator behaved himself with becoming respect. he was then not twenty years old, but in the present difficulty of his position conducted himself with a caution most unlike a boy. he had only come, he said for what his great-uncle had left him; and when he found that antony had spent the money, does not appear to have expressed himself immediately in anger. he went on to rome, where he found that antony and dolabella and marcus brutus and decimus brutus and cassius were scrambling for the provinces and the legions. some of the soldiers came to him, asking him to avenge his uncle's death; but he was too prudent as yet to declare any purpose of revenge. not long after cæsar's death cicero left rome, and spent the ensuing month travelling about among his different villas. on the 14th of april he writes to atticus, declaring that whatever evil might befall him he would find comfort in the ides of march. in the same letter he calls brutus and the others "our heroes," and begs his friend to send him news--or if not news, then a letter without news.[180] in the next he again calls them his heroes, but adds that he can take no pleasure in anything but in the deed that had been done. men are still praising the work of cæsar, and he laments that they should be so inconsistent. "though they laud those who had destroyed cæsar, at the same time they praise his deeds."[181] in the same letter he tells atticus that the people in all the villages are full of joy. "it cannot be told how eager they are--how they run out to meet me, and to hear my accounts of what was done. but the senate passes no decree!"[182] he speaks of going into greece to see his son--whom he never lived to see again--telling him of letters from the lad from athens, which, he thinks, however, may be hypocritical, though he is comforted by finding their language to be clear. he has recovered his good-humor, and can be jocose. one cluvius has left him a property at puteoli, and the house has tumbled down; but he has sent for chrysippus, an architect. but what are houses falling to him? he can thank socrates and all his followers that they have taught him to disregard such worldly things. nevertheless, he has deemed it expedient to take the advice of a certain friend as to turning the tumble-down house into profitable shape.[183] a little later he expresses his great disgust that cæsar, in the public speeches in rome, should be spoken of as that "great and most excellent man."[184] and yet he had said, but a few months since, in his oration for king deiotarus, in the presence of cæsar, "that he looked only into his eyes, only into his face--that he regarded only him." the flattery and the indignant reprobation do, in truth, come very near upon each other, and induce us to ask whether the fact of having to live in the presence of royalty be not injurious to the moral man. could any of us have refused to speak to cæsar with adulation--any of us whom circumstances compelled to speak to him? power had made cæsar desirous of a mode of address hardly becoming a man to give or a man to receive. does not the etiquette of to-day require from us certain courtesies of conversation, which i would call abject were it not that etiquette requires them? nevertheless, making the best allowance that i can for cicero, the difference of his language within a month or two is very painful. in the letter above quoted octavius comes to him, and we can see how willing was the young aspirant to flatter him. he sees already that, in spite of the promised amnesty, there must be internecine feud. "i shall have to go into the camp with young sextus"--sextus pompeius--"or perhaps with brutus, a prospect at my years most odious." then he quotes two lines of homer, altering a word: "to you, my child, is not given the glory of war; eloquence, charming eloquence, must be the weapon with which you will fight." we hear of his contemplated journey into greece, under the protection of a free legation. he was going for the sake of his son; but would not people say that he went to avoid the present danger? and might it not be the case that he should be of service if he remained?[185] we see that the old state of doubt is again falling upon him. [greek: aideomai trôas.] otherwise he could go and make himself safe in athens. there is a correspondence between him and antony, of which he sends copies to atticus. antony writes to him, begging him to allow sextus clodius to return from his banishment. this sextus had been condemned because of the riot on the death of his uncle in milo's affair, and antony wishes to have him back. cicero replies that he will certainly accede to antony's views. it had always been a law with him, he says, not to maintain a feeling of hatred against his humbler enemies. but in both these letters we see the subtilty and caution of the writers. antony could have brought back sextus without cicero, and cicero knew that he could do so. cicero had no power over the law. but it suited antony to write courteously a letter which might elicit an uncivil reply. cicero, however, knew better, and answered it civilly. he writes to tiro telling him that he has not the slightest intention of quarrelling with his old friend antony, and will write to antony, but not till he shall have seen him, tiro; showing on what terms of friendship he stands with his former slave, for tiro had by this time been manumitted.[186] he writes to tiro quite as he might have written to a younger atticus, and speaks to him of atticus with all the familiarity of confirmed friendship. there must have been something very sweet in the nature of the intercourse which bound such a man as cicero to such another as tiro. atticus applies to him, desiring him to use his influence respecting a certain question of importance as to buthrotum. buthrotum was a town in epirus opposite to the island of corcyra, in which atticus had an important interest. the lands about the place were to be divided, and to be distributed to roman soldiers--much, as we may suppose to the injury of atticus. he has earnestly begged the interference of cicero for the protection of the buthrotians, and cicero tells him that he wishes he could have seen antony on the subject, but that antony is too much busied looking after the soldiers in the campagna. cicero fails to have the wishes of atticus carried out, and shortly the subject becomes lost in the general confusion. but the discussion shows of how much importance at the present moment cicero's interference with antony is considered. it shows also that up to this period, a few months previous to the envenomed hatred of the second philippic, antony and cicero were presumed to be on terms of intimate friendship. the worship of cæsar had been commenced in rome, and an altar had been set up to him in the forum as to a god. had cæsar, when he perished, been said to have usurped the sovereign authority, his body would have been thrown out as unworthy of noble treatment. such treatment the custom of the republic required. it had been allowed to be buried, and had been honored, not disgraced. now, on the spot where the funeral pile had been made, the altar was erected, and crowds of men clamored round it, worshipping. that this was the work of antony we cannot doubt. but dolabella, cicero's repudiated son-in-law, who in furtherance of a promise from cæsar had seized the consulship, was jealous of antony and caused the altar to be thrown down and the worshippers to be dispersed. many were killed in the struggle--for, though the republic was so jealous of the lives of the citizens as not to allow a criminal to be executed without an expression of the voice of the entire people, any number might fall in a street tumult, and but little would be thought about it. dolabella destroyed the altar, and cicero was profuse in his thanks.[187] for though tullia had been divorced, and had since died, there was no cause for a quarrel. divorces were so common that no family odium was necessarily created. cicero was at this moment most anxious to get back from dolabella his daughter's dowry. it was never repaid. indeed, a time was quickly coming in which such payments were out of the question, and dolabella soon took a side altogether opposed to the republic--for which he cared nothing. he was bought by antony, having been ready to be bought by any one. he went to syria as governor before the end of the year, and at smyrna, on his road, he committed one of those acts of horror on trebonius, an adverse governor, in which the romans of the day would revel when liberated from control. cassius came to avenge his friend trebonius, and dolabella, finding himself worsted, destroyed himself. he had not progressed so far in corruption as verres, because time had not permitted it--but that was the direction in which he was travelling. at the present moment, however, no praise was too fervid to be bestowed upon him by cicero's pen. that turning of cæsar into a god was opposed to every feeling of his heart, both, as to men and as to gods. a little farther on[188] we find him complaining of the state of things very grievously: "that we should have feared this thing, and not have feared the other!"--meaning cæsar and antony. he declares that he must often read, for his own consolation, his treatise on old age, then just written and addressed to atticus. "old age is making me bitter," he says; "i am annoyed at everything. but my life has been lived. let the young look to the future." we here meet the name of cærellia in a letter to his friend. she had probably been sent to make up the quarrel between him and his young wife publilia. nothing came of it, and it is mentioned only because cærellia's name has been joined so often with that of cicero by subsequent writers. in the whole course of his correspondence with atticus i do not remember it to occur, except in one or two letters at this period. i imagine that some story respecting the lady was handed down, and was published by dio cassius when the greek historian found that it served his purpose to abuse cicero. on june 22nd he sent news to atticus of his nephew. young quintus had written home to his father to declare his repentance. he had been in receipt of money from antony, and had done antony's dirty work. he had been "antoni dextella"--"antony's right hand"--according to cicero, and had quarrelled absolutely with his father and his uncle. he now expresses his sorrow, and declares that he would come himself at once, but that there might be danger to his father. and there is money to be expected if he will only wait. "did you ever hear of a worse knave?" cicero adds. probably not; but yet he was able to convince his father and his uncle, and some time afterward absolutely offered to prosecute antony for stealing the public money out of the treasury. he thought, as did some others, that the course of things was going against antony. as a consequence of this he was named in the proscriptions, and killed, with his father. in the same letter cicero consults atticus as to the best mode of going to greece. brundisium is the usual way, but he has been told by tiro that there are soldiers in the town.[189] he is now at arpinum, on his journey, and receives a letter from brutus inviting him back to rome, to see the games given by brutus. he is annoyed to think that brutus should expect this. "these shows are now only honorable to him who is bound to give them," he says; "i am not bound to see them, and to be present would be dishonorable."[190] then comes his parting with atticus, showing a demonstrative tenderness foreign to the sternness of our northern nature. "that you should have wept when you had parted from me, has grieved me greatly. had you done it in my presence, i should not have gone at all."[191] "nonis juliis!"[192] he exclaims. the name of july had already come into use--the name which has been in use ever since--the name of the man who had now been destroyed! the idea distresses him. "shall brutus talk of july?" it seems that some advertisement had been published as to his games in which the month was so called. writing from one of his villas in the south, he tells atticus that his nephew has again been with him, and has repented him of all his sins. i think that cicero never wrote anything vainer than this: "he has been so changed," he says, "by reading some of my writings which i happened to have by me, and by my words and precepts, that he is just such a citizen as i would have him."[193] could it be that he should suppose that one whom he had a few days since described as the biggest knave he knew should be so changed by a few words well written and well pronounced? young quintus must in truth have been a clever knave. in the same letter cicero tells us that tiro had collected about seventy of his letters with a view to publication. we have at present over seven hundred written before that day. just as he is starting he gives his friend a very wide commission: "by your love for me, do manage my matters for me. i have left enough to pay everything that i owe. but it will happen, as it often does, that they who owe me will not be punctual. if anything of that kind should happen, only think of my character. put me right before the world by borrowing, or even by selling, if it be necessary."[194] this is not the language of a man in distress, but of one anxious that none should lose a shilling by him. he again thinks of starting from brundisium, and promises, when he has arrived there, instantly to begin a new work. he has sent his de gloria to atticus; a treatise which we have lost. we should be glad to know how he treated this most difficult subject. we are astonished at his fecundity and readiness. he was now nearly sixty-three, and, as he travels about the country, he takes with him all the adjuncts necessary for the writing of treatises such as he composed at this period of his life! his topica, containing aristotelian instructions as to a lawyer's work, he put together on board ship, immediately after this, for the benefit of trebatius, to whom it had been promised. july had come, and at last he resolved to sail from pompeii and to coast round to sicily. he lands for a night at velia, where he finds brutus, with whom he has an interview. then he writes a letter to trebatius, who had there a charming villa, bought no doubt with gallic spoils. he is reminded of his promise, and going on to rhegium writes his topica, which he sends to trebatius from that place. thence he went across to syracuse, but was afraid to stay there, fearing that his motions might be watched, and that antony would think that he had objects of state in his journey. he had already been told that some attributed his going to a desire to be present at the olympian games; but the first notion seems to have been that he had given the republic up as lost, and was seeking safety elsewhere. from this we are made to perceive how closely his motions were watched, and how much men thought of them. from syracuse he started for athens--which place, however, he was doomed never to see again. he was carried back to leucopetra on the continent; and though he made another effort, he was, he says, again brought back. there, at the villa of his friend valerius, he learned tidings which induced him to change his purpose, and hurry off to rome. brutus and cassius had published a decree of the senate, calling all the senators, and especially the consulares, to rome. there was reason to suppose that antony was willing to relax his pretensions. they had strenuously demanded his attendance, and whispers were heard that he had fled from the difficulties of the times. "when i heard this, i at once abandoned my journey, with which, indeed, i had never been well pleased."[195] then he enters into a long disquisition with atticus as to the advice which had been given to him, both by atticus and by brutus, and he says some hard words to atticus. but he leaves an impression on the reader's mind that brutus had so disturbed him by what had passed between them at velia, that from that moment his doubts as to going, which had been always strong, had overmastered him. it was not the winds at leucopetra that hindered his journey, but the taunting words which brutus had spoken. it was suggested to him that he was deserting his country. the reproach had been felt by him to be heavy, for he had promised to atticus that he would return by the first of january; yet he could not but feel that there was something in it of truth. the very months during which he would be absent would be the months of danger. indeed, looking out upon the political horizon then, it seemed as though the nearest months, those they were then passing, would be the most dangerous. if antony could be got rid of, be made to leave italy, there might be something for an honest senator to do--a man with consular authority--a something which might not jeopardize his life. when men now call a politician of those days a coward for wishing to avoid the heat of the battle, they hardly think what it is for an old man to leave his retreat and rush into the forum, and there encounter such a one as antony, and such soldiers as were his soldiers. cicero, who had been brave enough in the emergencies of his career, and had gone about his work sometimes regardless of his life, no doubt thought of all this. it would be pleasant to him again to see his son, and to look upon the rough doings of rome from amid the safety of athens; but when his countrymen told him that he had not as yet done enough--when brutus, with his cold, bitter words, rebuked him for going--then his thoughts turned round on the quick pivot on which they were balanced, and he hurried back to the fight. he travelled at once up to rome, which he reached on the last of august, and there received a message from antony demanding his presence in the senate on the next day. he had been greeted on his journey once again by the enthusiastic welcome of his countrymen, who looked to receive some especial advantage from his honesty and patriotism. once again he was made proud by the clamors of a trusting people. but he had not come to rome to be antony's puppet. antony had some measure to bring before the senate in honor of cæsar which it would not suit cicero to support or to oppose. he sent to say that he was tired after his journey and would not come. upon this the critics deal hardly with him, and call him a coward. "with an incredible pusillanimity," says m. du rozoir, "cicero excused himself, alleging his health and the fatigue of his voyage." "he pretended that he was too tired to be present," says mr long. it appears to me that they who have read cicero's works with the greatest care have become so enveloped by the power of his words as to expect from them an unnatural weight. if a politician of to-day, finding that it did not suit him to appear in the house of commons on a certain evening, and that it would best become him to allow a debate to pass without his presence, were to make such an excuse, would he be treated after the same fashion? pusillanimity, and pretence, in regard to those philippics in which he seems to have courted death by every harsh word that he uttered! the reader who has begun to think so must change his mind, and be prepared, as he progresses, to find quite another fault with cicero. impetuous, self-confident, rash; throwing down the gage with internecine fury; striving to crush with his words the man who had the command of the legions of rome; sticking at nothing which could inflict a blow; forcing men by his descriptions to such contempt of antony that they should be induced to leave the stronger party, lest they too should incur something of the wrath of the orator--that they will find to be the line which cicero adopted, and the demeanor he put on during the next twelve months! he thundered with his philippics through rome, addressing now the senate and now the people with a hardihood which you may condemn as being unbecoming one so old, who should have been taught equanimity by experience; but pusillanimity and pretence will not be the offences you will bring against him. antony, not finding that cicero had come at his call, declared in the senate that he would send his workmen to dig him out from his house. cicero alludes to this on the next day without passion.[196] antony was not present, and in this speech he expresses no bitterness of anger. it should hardly have been named one of the philippics, which title might well have been commenced with the second. the name, it should be understood, has been adopted from a jocular allusion by cicero to the philippics of demosthenes, made in a letter to brutus. we have at least the reply of brutus, if indeed the letter be genuine, which is much to be doubted.[197] but he had no purpose of affixing his name to them. for many years afterward they were called antonianæ, and the first general use of the term by which we know them has probably been comparatively modern. the one name does as well as another, but it is odd that speeches from demosthenes should have given a name to others so well known as these made by cicero against antony. plutarch, however, mentions the name, saying that it had been given to the speeches by cicero himself. in this, the first, he is ironically reticent as to antony's violence and unpatriotic conduct. antony was not present, and cicero tells his hearers with a pleasant joke that to antony it may be allowed to be absent on the score of ill-health, though the indulgence had been refused to him. antony is his friend, and why had antony treated him so roughly? was it unusual for senators to be absent? was hannibal at the gate, or were they dealing for peace with pyrrhus, as was the case when they brought the old blind appius down to the house? then he comes to the question of the hour, which was, nominally, the sanctioning as law those acts of cæsar's which he had decreed by his own will before his death. when a tyrant usurps power for a while and is then deposed, no more difficult question can be debated. is it not better to take the law as he leaves it, even though the law has become a law illegally, than encounter all the confusion of retrograde action? nothing could have been more iniquitous than some of sulla's laws, but cicero had opposed their abrogation. but here the question was one not of cæsar's laws, but of decrees subsequently made by antony and palmed off upon the people as having been found among cæsar's papers. soon after cæsar's death a decision had been obtained by antony in favor of cæsar's laws or acts, and hence had come these impudent forgeries under the guise of which antony could cause what writings he chose to be made public. "i think that cæsar's acts should be maintained," says cicero, "not as being in themselves good, for that no one can assert. i wish that antony were present here without his usual friends," he adds, alluding to his armed satellites. "he would tell us after what manner he would maintain those acts of cæsar's. are they to be found in notes and scraps and small documents brought forward by one witness, or not brought forward at all but only told to us? and shall those which he engraved in bronze, and which he wished to be known as the will of the people and as perpetual laws--shall they go for nothing?"[198] here was the point in dispute. the decree had been voted soon after cæsar's death, giving the sanction of the senate to his laws. for peace this had been done, as the best way out of the difficulty which oppressed the state. but it was intolerable that, under this sanction, antony should have the power of bringing forth new edicts day after day, while the very laws which cæsar had passed were not maintained. "what better law was there, or more often demanded in the best days of the republic, than that law," passed by cæsar, "under which the provinces were to be held by the prætors only for one year, and by the consuls for not more than two? but this law is abolished. so it is thus that cæsar's acts are to be maintained?"[199] antony, no doubt, and his friends, having an eye to the fruition of the provinces, had found among cæsar's papers--or said they had found--some writing to suit their purpose. all things to be desired were to be found among cæsar's papers. "the banished are brought back from banishment, the right of citizenship is given not only to individuals but to whole nations and provinces, exceptions from taxations are granted, by the dead man's voice."[200] antony had begun, probably, with some one or two more modest forgeries, and had gone on, strengthened in impudence by his own success, till cæsar dead was like to be worse to them than cæsar living. the whole speech is dignified, patriotic, and bold, asserting with truth that which he believed to be right, but never carried into invective or dealing with expressions of anger. it is very short, but i know no speech of his more closely to its purpose. i can see him now, with his toga round him, as he utters the final words: "i have lived perhaps long enough--both as to length of years and the glory i have won. what little may be added, shall be, not for myself, but for you and for the republic." the words thus spoken became absolutely true. chapter ix. _the philippics._ [sidenote: b.c. 44, ætat. 63.] cicero was soon driven by the violence of antony's conduct to relinquish the idea of moderate language, and was ready enough to pick up the gauntlet thrown down for him. from this moment to the last scene of his life it was all the fury of battle and the shout of victory, and then the scream of despair. antony, when he read cicero's speech, the first philippic, the language of which was no doubt instantly sent to him, seems to have understood at once that he must either vanquish cicero or be vanquished by him. he appreciated to the letter the ironically cautious language in which his conduct was exposed. he had not chosen to listen to cicero, but was most anxious to get cicero to listen to him. those "advocates" of whom cicero had spoken would be around him, and at a nod, or perhaps without a nod, would do to cicero as brutus and cassius had done to cæsar. the last meeting of the senate had been on the 2d of september. when it was over, antony, we are told, went down to his villa at tivoli, and there devoted himself for above a fortnight to the getting up of a speech by which he might silence, or at any rate answer cicero. nor did he leave himself to his own devices, but took to himself a master of eloquence who might teach him when to make use of his arms, where to stamp his feet, and in what way to throw his toga about with a graceful passion. he was about forty at this time,[201] and in the full flower of his manhood, yet, for such a purpose, he did not suppose himself to know all that lessons would teach him in the art of invective. there he remained, mouthing out his phrases in the presence of his preceptor, till he had learned by heart all that the preceptor knew. then he summoned cicero to meet him in the senate on the 19th. this cicero was desirous of doing, but was prevented by his friends, who were afraid of the "advocates." there is extant a letter from cicero to cassius in which he states it to be well known in rome that antony had declared that he, cicero, had been the author of cæsar's death, in order that cæsar's old soldiers might slay him.[202] there were other senators, he says, who did not dare to show themselves in the senate-house--piso, and servilius, and cotta. antony came down and made his practised oration against cicero. the words of his speech have not been preserved, but cicero has told us the manner of it, and some of the phrases which he used. the authority is not very good, but we may imagine from the results that his story is not far from the truth. from first to last it was one violent tirade of abuse which he seemed to vomit forth from his jaws, rather than to "speak after the manner of a roman consular." such is cicero's description. it has been said of antony that we hear of him only from his enemies. he left behind him no friend to speak for him, and we have heard of him certainly from one enemy; but the tidings are of a nature to force upon us belief in the evil which cicero spoke of him. had he been a man of decent habits of life, and of an honest purpose, would cicero have dared to say to the romans respecting him the words which he produced, not only in the second philippic, which was unspoken, but also in the twelve which followed? the record of him, as far as it goes, is altogether bad. plutarch tells us that he was handsome, and a good soldier, but altogether vicious. plutarch is not a biographer whose word is to be taken as to details, but he is generally correct in his estimate of character. tacitus tells us but little about him as direct history, but mentions him ever in the same tone. tacitus knew the feeling of rome regarding him. paterculus speaks specially of his fraud, and breaks out into strong repudiation of the murder of cicero.[203] valerius maximus, in his anecdotes, mentions him slightingly, as an evil man is spoken of who has forced himself into notice. virgil has stamped his name with everlasting ignominy. "sequiturque nefas egyptia conjux." i can think of no roman writer who has named him with honor. he was a roman of the day--what rome had made him--brave, greedy, treacherous, and unpatriotic. cicero again was absent from the senate, but was in rome when antony attacked him. we learn from a letter to cornificius that antony left the city shortly afterward, and went down to brundisium to look after the legions which had come across from macedonia, with which cicero asserts that he intends to tyrannize over them all in rome.[204] he then tells his correspondent that young octavius has just been discovered in an attempt to have antony murdered, but that antony, having found the murderer in his house, had not dared to complain. he seems to think that octavius had been right! the state of things was such that men were used to murder; but this story was probably not true. he passes on to declare in the next sentence that he receives such consolation from philosophy as to be able to bear all the ills of fortune. he himself goes to puteoli, and there he writes the second philippic. it is supposed to be the most violent piece of invective ever produced by human ingenuity and human anger. the readers of it must, however, remember that it was not made to be spoken--was not even written, as far as we are aware, to be shown to antony, or to be published to the world. we do not even know that antony ever saw it. there has been an idea prevalent that antony's anger was caused by it, and that cicero owed to it his death; but the surmise is based on probability--not at all on evidence. cicero, when he heard what antony had said of him, appears to have written all the evil he could say of his enemy, in order that he might send it to atticus. it contained rather what he could have published than what he did intend to publish. he does, indeed, suggest, in the letter which accompanied the treatise when sent to atticus, in some only half-intelligible words, that he hopes the time may come when the speech "shall find its way freely even into sica's house;"[205] but we gather even from that his intention that it should have no absolutely public circulation. he had struggled to be as severe as he knew how, but had done it, as it were, with a halter round his neck; and for antony's anger--the anger which afterward produced the proscription--there came to be cause enough beyond this. before that day he had endeavored to stir up the whole empire against antony, and had all but succeeded. it has been alleged that cicero again shows his cowardice by writing and not speaking his oration, and also by writing it only for private distribution. if he were a coward, why did he write it at all? if he were a coward, why did he hurry into this contest with antony? if he be blamed because his philippic was anonymous, how do the anonymous writers of to-day escape? if because he wrote it, and did not speak it, what shall be said of the party writers of to-day? he was a coward, say his accusers, because he avoided a danger. have they thought of the danger which he did run when they bring those charges against him? of what was the nature of the fight? do they remember how many romans in public life had been murdered during the last dozen years? we are well aware how far custom goes, and that men became used to the fear of violent death. cicero was now habituated to that fear, and was willing to face it. but not on that account are we to imagine that, with his eyes open, he was to be supposed always ready to rush into immediate destruction. to write a scurrilous attack, such as the second philippic, is a bad exercise for the ingenuity of a great man; but so is any anonymous satire. it is so in regard to our own times, which have received the benefit of all antecedent civilization. cicero, being in the midst of those heartless romans, is expected to have the polished manners and high feelings of a modern politician! i have hardly a right to be angry with his critics because by his life he went so near to justify the expectation. he begins by asking his supposed hearers how it has come to pass that during the last twenty years the republic had had no enemy who was not also his enemy. "and you, antony, whom i have never injured by a word, why is it that, more brazen-faced than catiline, more fierce than clodius, you should attack me with your maledictions? will your enmity against me be a recommendation for you to every evil citizen in rome? * * * why does not antony come down among us to-day?" he says, as though he were in the senate and antony were away. "he gives a birthday fête in his garden: to whom, i wonder? i will name no one. to phormio, perhaps, or gnatho, or ballion? oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" these were the vile knaves of the roman comedy--the nyms. pistols, and bobadils. "your consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! you talk of my verses," he says--antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togæ." "i will only say that you do not understand them or any other. clodius was killed by my counsels--was he? what would men have said had they seen him running from you through the forum--you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of the bookseller's shop?[206] * * * it was by my advice that cæsar was killed! i fear, o conscript fathers, lest i should seem to have employed some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me. who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that glorious affair? among those who did do the deed, whose name has been hidden--or, indeed, is not most widely known? some had been inclined to boast that they were there, though they were absent; but not one who was present has ever endeavored to conceal his name." "you deny that i have had legacies? i wish it were true, for then my friends might still be living. but where have you learned that, seeing that i have inherited twenty million sesterces?[207] i am happier in this than you. no one but a friend has made me his heir. lucius rubrius cassinas, whom you never even saw, has named you." he here refers to a man over whose property antony was supposed to have obtained control fraudulently. "did he know of you whether you were a white man or a negro? * * * would you mind telling me what height turselius stood?" here he names another of whose property antony is supposed to have obtained possession illegally. "i believe all you know of him is what farms he had. * * * do you bear in mind," he says, "that you were a bankrupt as soon as you had become a man? do you remember your early friendship with curio, and the injuries you did his father?" here it is impossible to translate literally, but after speaking as he had done very openly, he goes on: "but i must omit the iniquities of your private life. there are things i cannot repeat here. you are safe, because the deeds you have done are too bad to be mentioned. but let us look at the affairs of your public life. i will just go through them;" which he does, laying bare as he well knew how to do, every past act. "when you had been made quæstor you flew at once to cæsar. you knew that he was the only refuge for poverty, debt, wickedness, and vice. then, when you had gorged upon his generosity and your plunderings--which indeed you spent faster than you got it--you betook yourself instantly to the tribunate. * * * it is you, antony, you who supplied cæsar with an excuse for invading his country." cæsar had declared at the rubicon that the tribunate had been violated in the person of antony. "i will say nothing here against cæsar, though nothing can excuse a man for taking up arms against his country. but of you it has to be confessed that you were the cause. * * * he has been a very helen to us trojans. * * * he has brought back many a wretched exile, but has forgotten altogether his own uncle"--cicero's colleague in the consulship, who had been banished for plundering his province. "we have seen this tribune of the people carried through the town on a british war-chariot. his lictors with their laurels went before him. in the midst, on an open litter, was carried an actress. when you come back from thessaly with your legions to brundisium you did not kill me! oh, what a kindness! * * * you with those jaws of yours, with that huge chest, with that body like a gladiator, drank so much wine at hippea's marriage that in the sight of all rome you were forced to vomit.* * * when he had seized pompey's property he rejoiced like some stage-actor who in a play is as poor as poverty, and then suddenly becomes rich. all his wine, the great weight of silver, the costly furniture and rich dresses, in a few days where were they all? a charybdis do i call him? he swallowed them all like an entire ocean!" then he accuses him of cowardice and cruelty in the pharsalian wars, and compares him most injuriously with dolabella. "do you remember how dolabella fought for you in spain, when you were getting drunk at narbo? and how did you get back from narbo? he has asked as to my return to the city. i have explained to you, o conscript fathers, how i had intended to be here in january, so as to be of some service to the republic. you inquire how i got back. in daylight--not in the dark, as you did; with roman shoes on and a roman toga--not in barbaric boots and an old cloak.* * * when cæsar returned from spain you again pushed yourself into his intimacy--not a brave man, we should say, but still strong enough for his purposes. cæsar did always this--that if there were a man ruined, steeped in debt, up to his ears in poverty--a base, needy, bold man--that was the man whom he could receive into his friendship." this as to cæsar was undoubtedly true. "recommended in this way, you were told to declare yourself consul." then he describes the way in which he endeavored to prevent the nomination of dolabella to the same office. cæsar had said that dolabella should be consul, but when cæsar was dead this did not suit antony. when the tribes had been called in their centuries to vote, antony, not understanding what form of words he ought to have used as augur to stop the ceremony, had blundered. "would you not call him a very lælius?" says cicero. lælius had made for himself a name among augurs for excellence. "miserable that you are, you throw yourself at cæsar's feet asking only permission to be his slave. you sought for yourself that state of slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. had you any command from the roman people to ask the same for them? oh, that eloquence of yours; when naked you stood up to harangue the people! who ever saw a fouler deed than that, or one more worthy scourges?" "has tarquin suffered for this; have spurius cassius, melius, and marcus manlius suffered, that after many ages a king should be set up in rome by marc antony?" with abuse of a similar kind he goes on to the end of his declamation, when he again professes himself ready to die at his post in defence of the republic. that he now made up his mind so to die, should it become necessary, we may take for granted, but we cannot bring ourselves to approve of the storm of abuse under which he attempted to drown the memory and name of his antagonist. so virulent a torrent of words, all seeming, as we read them, to have been poured out in rapid utterances by the keen energy of the moment, astonish us, when we reflect that it was the work of his quiet moments. that he should have prepared such a task in the seclusion of his closet is marvellous. it has about it the very ring of sudden passion; but it must be acknowledged that it is not palatable. it is more roman and less english than anything we have from cicero--except his abuse of piso, with whom he was again now half reconciled. but it was solely on behalf of his country that he did it. he had grieved when cæsar had usurped the functions of the government; but in his grief he had respected cæsar, and had felt that he might best carry on the contest by submission. but, when cæsar was dead, and antony was playing tyrant, his very soul rebelled. then he sat down to prepare his first instalment of keen personal abuse, adding word to word and phrase to phrase till he had built up this unsavory monument of vituperation. it is by this that antony is now known to the world. plutarch makes no special mention of the second philippic. in his life of antony he does not allude to these orations at all, but in that of cicero he tells us how antony had ordered that right hand to be brought to him with which cicero had written his philippics. the "young octavius" of shakespeare had now taken the name of octavianus--caius julius cæsar octavianus--and had quarrelled to the knife with antony. he had assumed that he had been adopted by cæsar, and now demanded all the treasures his uncle had collected as his own. antony, who had already stolen them, declared that they belonged to the state. at any rate there was cause enough for quarrelling among them, and they were enemies. each seems to have brought charges of murder against the other, and each was anxious to obtain possession of the soldiery. seen as we see now the period in rome of which we are writing--every safeguard of the republic gone, all law trampled under foot, consuls, prætors, and tribunes not elected but forced upon the state, all things in disorder, the provinces becoming the open prey of the greediest plunderer--it is apparent enough that there could be no longer any hope for a cicero. the marvel is that the every-day affairs of life should have been carried on with any reference to the law. when we are told that antony stole cæsar's treasures and paid his debts with them, we are inclined to ask why he had paid his debts at all. but cicero did hope. in his whole life there is nothing more remarkable than the final vitality with which he endeavored to withstand the coming deluge of military despotism. nor in all history is there anything more wonderful than the capacity of power to re-establish itself, as is shown by the orderly empire of augustus growing out of the disorder left by cæsar. one is reminded by it of the impotency of a reckless heir to bring to absolute ruin the princely property of a great nobleman brought together by the skill of many careful progenitors. a thing will grow to be so big as to be all but indestructible. it is like that tower of cæcilia metella against which the storms of twenty centuries have beaten in vain. looking at the state of the roman empire when cicero died, who would not declare its doom? but it did "retrick its beams," not so much by the hand of one man, augustus, as by the force of the concrete power collected within it--"quod non imber edax non aquilo impotens possit diruere."[208] cicero with patriotic gallantry thought that even yet there might be a chance for the old republic--thought that by his eloquence, by his vehemence of words, he could turn men from fraud to truth, and from the lust of plundering a province to a desire to preserve their country. of antony now he despaired, but he still hoped that his words might act upon this young cæsar's heart. the youth was as callous as though he had already ruled a province for three years. no roman was ever more cautious, more wise, more heartless, more able to pick his way through blood to a throne, than the young augustus. cicero fears octavian--as we must now call him--and knows that he can only be restrained by the keeping of power out of his hands. writing to atticus from arpinum, he says, "i agree altogether with you. if octavian gets power into his hands he will insist upon the tyrant's decrees much more thoroughly than he did when the senate sat in the temple of tellus. everything then will be done in opposition to brutus. but if he be conquered, then see how intolerable would be the dominion of antony."[209] in the same letter he speaks of the de officiis, which he has just written. in his next and last epistle to his old friend he congratulates himself on having been able at last to quarrel with dolabella. dolabella had turned upon him in the end, bought by antony's money. he then returns to the subject of octavian, and his doubts as to his loyalty. he has been asked to pledge himself to octavian, but has declined till he shall see how the young man will behave when casea becomes candidate for the tribunate. if he show himself to be casea's enemy, casea having been one of the conspirators, cicero will know that he is not to be trusted. then he falls into a despairing mood, and declares that there is no hope. "even hippocrates was unwilling to bestow medicine on those to whom it could avail nothing." but he will go to rome, into the very jaws of the danger. "it is less base for such as i am to fall publicly than privately." with these words, almost the last written by him to atticus, this correspondence is brought to an end: the most affectionate, the most trusting, and the most open ever published to the world as having come from one man to another. no letters more useful to the elucidation of character were ever written; but when read for that purpose they should be read with care, and should hardly be quoted till they have been understood. [sidenote: b.c. 44, ætat. 63.] the struggles for the provinces were open and acknowledged. under cæsar, decimus brutus had been nominated for cisalpine gaul, marcus brutus for macedonia, and cassius for syria. it will be observed that these three men were the most prominent among the conspirators. since that time antony and dolabella had obtained votes of the people to alter the arrangement. antony was to go to macedonia, and dolabella to syria. this was again changed when antony found that decimus had left rome to take up his command. he sent his brother caius to macedonia, and himself claimed to be governor of cisalpine gaul. hence there were two roman governors for each province; and in each case each governor was determined to fight for the possession. antony hurried out of rome before the end of the year with the purpose of hindering decimus from the occupation of the north of italy, and cicero went up to rome, determined to take a part in the struggle which was imminent. the senate had been summoned for the 19th of december, and attended in great numbers. then it was that he spoke the third philippic, and in the evening of the same day he spoke the fourth to the people. it should be understood that none of these speeches were heard by antony. cicero had at this time become the acknowledged chief of the republican party, having drifted into the position which pompey had so long filled. many of cæsar's friends, frightened by his death, or rather cowed by the absence of his genius, had found it safer to retreat from the cæsarean party, of which the antonys, with dolabella, the cutthroats and gladiators of the empire, had the command. hirtius and pansa, with balbus and oppius, were among them. they, at this moment, were powerful in rome. the legions were divided--some with antony, some with octavian, and some with decimus brutus. the greater number were with antony, whom they hated for his cruelty; but were with him because the mantle of cæsar's power had fallen on to his shoulders. it was felt by cicero that if he could induce octavian to act with him the republic might be again established. he would surely have influence enough to keep the lad from hankering after his great uncle's pernicious power. he was aware that the dominion did in fact belong to the owner of the soldiers, but he thought that he could control this boy-officer, and thus have his legions at the command of the republic. the senate had been called together, nominally for the purpose of desiring the consuls of the year to provide a guard for its own safety. cicero makes it an occasion for perpetuating the feeling against antony, which had already become strong in rome. he breaks out into praise of octavian, whom he calls "this young cæsar--almost a boy;" tells them what divine things the boy had already done, and how he had drawn away from the rebels those two indomitable legions, the martia and the fourth. then he proceeds to abuse antony. tarquinius, the man whose name was most odious to romans, had been unendurable as a tyrant, though himself not a bad man; but antony's only object is to sell the empire, and to spend the price. antony had convoked the senate for november, threatening the senators with awful punishments should they absent themselves; but, when the day came, antony, the consul, had himself fled. he not only pours out the vials of his wrath but of his ridicule upon antony's head, and quotes his bungling words. he gives instances of his imprudence, and his impotence, and of his greed. then he again praises the young cæsar, and the two consuls for the next year, and the two legions, and decimus brutus, who is about to fight the battle of the republic for them in the north of italy, and votes that the necessary guard be supplied. in the same evening he addresses the people in his fourth philippic. he again praises the lad and the two legions, and again abuses antony. no one can say after this day that he hid his anger, or was silent from fear. he congratulates the romans on their patriotism--vain congratulations--and encourages them to make new efforts. he bids them rejoice that they have a hero such as decimus brutus to protect their liberties, and, almost, that they have such an enemy as antony to conquer. it seems that his words, few as they were--perhaps because they were so few--took hold of the people's imaginations; so that they shouted to him that he had on that day a second time saved his country, as he reminds them afterward.[210] from this time forward we are without those intimate and friendly letters which we have had with us as our guide through the last twenty-one years of cicero's life. for though we have a large body of correspondence written during the last year of his life, which are genuine, they are written in altogether a different style from those which have gone before. they are for the most part urgent appeals to those of his political friends to whom he can look for support in his views--often to those to whom he looked in vain. they are passionate prayers for the performance of a public duty, and as such are altogether to the writer's credit. his letters to plancus are beautiful in their patriotism, as are also those to decimus brutus. when we think of his age, of his zeal, of his earnestness, and of the dangers which he ran, we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the public spirit with which at such a crisis he had taken on himself to lead the party. but our guide to his inner feelings is gone. there are no further letters to tell us of every doubt at his heart. we think of him as of some stalwart commander left at home to arrange the affairs of the war, while the less experienced men were sent to the van. there is also a book of letters published as having passed between cicero and junius brutus. the critics have generally united in condemning them as spurious. they are at, any rate, if genuine, cold and formal in their language. [sidenote: b.c. 43, ætat. 64.] antony had proceeded into cisalpine gaul to drive out of the province the consul named by the people to govern it. the nomination of decimus had in truth been cæsar's nomination; but the right of decimus to rule was at any rate better than that of any other claimant. he had been appointed in accordance with the power then in existence, and his appointment had been confirmed by the decree of the senate sanctioning all cæsar's acts. it was, after all, a question of simple power, for cæsar had overridden every legal form. it became necessary, however, that they who were in power in rome should decide. the consuls hirtius and pansa had been cæsar's friends, and had also been the friends of antony. they had not the trust in antony which cæsar had inspired; but they were anxious to befriend him--or rather not to break with him. when the senate met, they called on one fufius calenus--who was antony's friend and pansa's father-in-law--first to offer his opinion. he had been one of cæsar's consuls, appointed for a month or two, and was now chosen for the honorable part of first spokesman, as being a consular senator. he was for making terms with antony, and suggested that a deputation of three senators should be sent to him with a message calling upon him to retire. the object probably was to give antony time, or rather to give octavian time, to join with antony if it suited him. others spoke in the same sense, and then cicero was desired to give his opinion. this was the fifth philippic. he is all for war with antony--or rather he will not call it war, but a public breach of the peace which antony has made. he begins mildly enough, but warms with his subject as he goes on: "should they send ambassadors to a traitor to his country? * * * let him return from mutina." i keep the old latin name, which is preserved for us in that of modena. "let him cease to contend with decimus. let him depart out of gaul. it is not fit that we should send to implore him to do so. we should by force compel him. * * * we are not sending messengers to hannibal, who, if hannibal would not obey, might be desired to go on to carthage. whither shall the men go if antony refuses to obey them?" but it is of no use. with eloquent words he praises octavian and the two legions and decimus. he praises even the coward lepidus, who was in command of legions, and was now governor of gaul beyond the alps and of northern spain, and proposes that the people should put up to him a gilt statue on horseback--so important was it to obtain, if possible, his services. alas! it was impossible that such a man should be moved by patriotic motives. lepidus was soon to go with the winning side, and became one of the second triumvirate with antony and octavian. cicero's eloquence was on this occasion futile. at this sitting the senate came to no decision, but on the third day afterward they decreed that the senators, servius sulpicius, lucius piso, and lucius philippus, should be sent to antony. the honors which he had demanded for lepidus and the others were granted, but he was outvoted in regard to the ambassadors. on the 4th of january cicero again addressed the people in the forum. his task was very difficult. he wished to give no offence to the senate, and yet was anxious to stir the citizens and to excite them to a desire for immediate war. the senate, he told them, had not behaved disgracefully, but had--temporized. the war, unfortunately, must be delayed for those twenty days necessary for the going and coming of the ambassadors. the ambassadors could do nothing. but still they must wait. in the mean time he will not be idle. for them, the roman people, he will work and watch with all his experience, with diligence almost above his strength, to repay them for their faith in him. when cæsar was with them they had had no choice but obedience--so much the times were out of joint. if they submit themselves to be slaves now, it will be their own fault. then in general language he pronounces an opinion--which was the general roman feeling of the day: "it is not permitted to the roman people to become slaves--that people whom the immortal gods have willed to rule all nations of the earth."[211] so he ended the sixth philippic, which, like the fourth, was addressed to the people. all the others were spoken in the senate. he writes to decimus at mutina about this time a letter full of hope--of hope which we can see to be genuine. "recruits are being raised in all italy--if that can be called recruiting which is in truth a spontaneous rushing into arms of the entire population."[212] he expects letters telling him what "our hirtius" is doing, and what "my young cæsar." hirtius and pansa, the consuls of the year, though they had been cæsar's party, and made consuls by cæsar, were forced to fight for the republic. they had been on friendly terms with cicero, and they doubted antony. hirtius had now followed the army, and pansa was about to do so. they both fell in the battle that was fought at mutina, and no one can now accuse them of want of loyalty. but "my cæsar," on whose behalf cicero made so many sweet speeches, for whose glory he was so careful, whose early republican principles he was so anxious to direct, made his terms with antony on the first occasion. at that time cicero wrote to plancus. consul elect for the next year, and places before his eyes a picture of all that he can do for the republic. "lay yourself out--yes, i pray you, by the immortal gods--for that which will bring you to the height of glory and renown."[213] at the end of january or beginning of february he again addressed the senate on the subject of the embassy--a matter altogether foreign from that which it had been convoked to discuss. to cicero's mind there was no other subject at the present moment fit to occupy the thoughts of a roman senator. "we have met together to settle something about the appian way, and something about the coinage. the mind revolts from such little cares, torn by greater matters." the ambassadors are expected back--two of them at least, for sulpicius had died on his road. he cautions the senate against receiving with quiet composure such an answer as antony will probably send them. "why do i--i who am a man of peace--refuse peace? because it is base, because it is full of danger--because peace is impossible." then he proceeds to explain that it is so. "what a disgrace would it be that antony, after so many robberies, after bringing back banished comrades, after selling the taxes of the state, putting up kingdoms to auction, shall rise up on the consular bench and address a free senate! * * * can you have an assured peace while there is an antony in the state--or many antonys? or how can you be at peace with one who hates you as does he; or how can he be at peace with those who hate him as do you? * * * you have such an opportunity," he says at last, "as never fell to the lot of any. you are able, with all senatorial dignity, with all the zeal of the knights, with all the favor of the roman people, now to make the republic free from fear and danger, once and forever." then he thus ends his speech. "about those things which have been brought before us, i agree with servilius." that is the seventh philippic. in february the ambassadors returned, but returned laden with bad tidings. servius sulpicius, who was to have been their chief spokesman, died just as they reached antony. the other two immediately began to treat with him, so as to become the bearers back to rome of conditions proposed by him. this was exactly what they had been told not to do. they had carried the orders of the senate to their rebellious officer, and then admitted the authority of that rebel by bringing back his propositions. they were not even allowed to go into mutina so as to see decimus; but they were, in truth, only too well in accord with the majority of the senate, whose hearts were with antony. anything to those lovers of their fish-ponds was more desirable than a return to the loyalty of the republic. the deputies were received by the senate, who discussed their embassy, and on the next day they met again, when cicero pronounced his eighth philippic. why he did not speak on the previous day i do not know. middleton is somewhat confused in his account. morabin says that cicero was not able to obtain a hearing when the deputies were received. the senate did on that occasion come to a decision; against which act of pusillanimity cicero on the following day expressed himself very vehemently. they had decided that this was not to be called a war, but rather a tumult, and seem to have hesitated in denouncing antony as a public enemy. the senate was convoked on the next day to decide the terms of the amnesty to be accorded to the soldiers who had followed antony, when cicero, again throwing aside the minor matter, burst upon them in his wrath. he had hitherto inveighed against antony; now his anger is addressed to the senate. "lucius cæsar," he said, "has told us that he is antony's uncle, and must vote as such. are you all uncles to antony?" then he goes on to show that war is the only name by which this rebellion can be described. "has not hirtius, who has gone away, sick as he is, called it a war? has not young cæsar, young as he is, prompted to it by no one, undertaken it as a war?" he repeats the words of a letter from hirtius which could only have been used in war: "i have taken claterna. their cavalry has been put to flight. a battle has been fought. so many men have been killed. this is what you call peace!" then he speaks of other civil wars, which he says have grown from difference of opinion--"except that last between pompey and cæsar, as to which i will not speak. i have been ignorant of its cause, and have hated its ending." but in this war all men are of one opinion who are worthy of the name of romans. "we are fighting for the temples of our gods, for our walls, our homes, for the abode of the roman people, for their penates, their altars, their hearths for the graves of ancestors--and we are fighting only against antony. * * * fufius calenus tells us of peace--as though i of all men did not know that peace was a blessing. but tell me, calenus, is slavery peace?" he is very angry with calenus. although he has called him his friend, he was in great wrath against him. "i am fighting for decimus and you for antony. i wish to preserve a roman city; you wish to see it battered to the ground. can you deny this, you who are creating all means of delays by which decimus may be weakened and antony made strong?" "i had consoled myself with this," he says, "that when these ambassadors had been sent and had returned despised, and had told the senate that not only had antony refused to leave gaul but was besieging mutina, and would not let them even see decimus--that then, in our passion and our rage, we should have gone forth with our arms, and our horses, and our men, and at once have rescued our general. but we--since we have seen the audacity, the insolence, and the pride of antony--we have become only more cowardly than before." then he gives his opinion about the amnesty: "let any of those who are now with antony, but shall leave him before the ides of march and pass to the armies of the consuls, or of decimus, or of young cæsar, be held to be free from reproach. if one should quit their ranks through their own will, let them be rewarded and honored as hirtius and pansa, our consuls, may think proper." this was the eighth philippic, and is perhaps the finest of them all. it does not contain the bitter invective of the second, but there is in it a true feeling of patriotic earnestness. the ninth also is very eloquent, though it is rather a pæan sung on behalf of his friend sulpicius, who in bad health had encountered the danger of the journey, and had died in the effort, than one of these philippics which are supposed to have been written and spoken with the view of demolishing antony. it is a specimen of those funereal orations delivered on behalf of a citizen who had died in the service of his country which used to be common among the romans. the tenth is in praise of marcus junius brutus. were i to attempt to explain the situation of brutus in macedonia, and to say how he had come to fill it, i should be carried away from my purpose as to cicero's life, and should be endeavoring to write the history of the time. my object is simply to illustrate the life of cicero by such facts as we know. in the confusion which existed at the time, brutus had obtained some advantages in macedonia, and had recovered for himself the legions of which caius antonius had been in possession, and who was now a prisoner in his hands. at this time young marcus cicero was his lieutenant, and it is told us how one of those legions had put themselves under his command. brutus had at any rate written home letters to the senate early in march, and pansa had called the senate together to receive them. again he attacks fufius calenus, pansa's father-in-law, who was the only man in the senate bold enough to stand up against him; though there were doubtless many of those foot senators--men who traversed the house backward and forward to give their votes--who were anxious to oppose him. he thanks pansa for calling them so quickly, seeing that when they had parted yesterday they had not expected to be again so soon convoked. we may gather from this the existence of a practice of sending messengers round to the senators' houses to call them together. he praises brutus for his courage and his patience. it is his object to convince his hearers, and through them the romans of the day, that the cause of antony is hopeless. let us rise up and crush him. let us all rise, and we shall certainly crush him. there is nothing so likely to attain success as a belief that the success has been already attained. "from all sides men are running together to put out the flames which he has lighted. our veterans, following the example of young cæsar, have repudiated antony and his attempts. the 'legio martia' has blunted the edge of his rage, and the 'legio quarta' has attacked him. deserted by his own troops, he has broken through into gaul, which he has found to be hostile to him with its arms and opposed to him in spirit. the armies of hirtius and of young cæsar are upon his trail; and now pansa's levies have raised the heart of the city and of all italy. he alone is our enemy, although he has along with him his brother lucius, whom we all regret so dearly, whose loss we have hardly been able to endure! what wild beast do you know more abominable than that, or more monstrous--who seems to have been created lest marc antony himself should be of all things the most vile?" he concludes by proposing the thanks of the senate to brutus, and a resolution that quintus hortensius, who had held the province of macedonia against caius antonius, should be left there in command. the two propositions were carried. as we read this, all appears to be prospering on behalf of the republic; but if we turn to the suspected correspondence between brutus and cicero, we find a different state of things. and these letters, though we altogether doubt their authenticity--for their language is cold, formal, and un-ciceronian--still were probably written by one who had access to those which cicero had himself penned: "as to what you write about wanting men and money, it is very difficult to give you advice. i do not see how you are to raise any except by borrowing it from the municipalities"--in macedonia--"according to the decree of the senate. as to men, i do not know what to propose. pansa is so far from sparing men from his army, that he begrudges those who go to you as volunteers. some think that he wishes you to be less strong than you are--which, however. i do not suspect myself."[214] a letter might fall into the hands of persons not intended to read it, and cicero was forced to be on his guard in communicating his suspicions--cicero or the pseudo-cicero. in the next brutus is rebuked for having left antony live when cæsar was slain. "had not some god inspired octavian," he says, "we should have been altogether in the power of antony, that base and abominable man. and you see how terrible is our contest with him." and he tries to awaken him to the necessity of severity. "i see how much you delight in clemency. that is very well. but there is another place, another time, for clemency. the question for us is whether we shall any longer exist or be put out of the world." these, which are intended to represent his private fears, deal with the affairs of the day in a tone altogether different from that of his public speeches. doubt, anxiety, occasionally almost despair, are expressed in them. but not the less does he thunder on in the senate, aware that to attain success he must appear to have obtained it. the eleventh philippic was occasioned by the news which had arrived in rome of the death of trebonius. trebonius had been surprised in smyrna by a stratagem as to which alone no disgrace would have fallen on dolabella, had he not followed up his success by killing trebonius. how far the bloody cruelty, of which we have the account in cicero's words, was in truth executed, it is now impossible to say. the greek historian appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off.[215] that cicero believed the story is probable. it is told against his son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably. he would not have spoken against the man except on conviction. dolabella was immediately declared an enemy to the republic. cicero inveighs against him with all his force, and says that such as dolabella is, he had been made by the cruelty of antony. but he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much more miserable than trebonius was dolabella himself, who is so base that from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have been held as disgraceful by other children. then he turns to the question which is in dispute, whether brutus should be left in command of macedonia, and cassius of syria--cassius was now on his way to avenge the death of trebonius--or whether other noble romans, publius servilius, for instance, or that hirtius and pansa, the two consuls, when they can be spared from italy, shall be sent there. it is necessary here to read between the lines. the going of the consuls would mean the withdrawing of the troops from italy, and would leave rome open to the cæsarean faction. at present decimus and cicero, and whoever else there might be loyal to the republic, had to fight by the assistance of other forces than their own. hirtius and pansa were constrained to take the part of the republic by cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those senators who felt themselves compelled to obey cicero. but they did not object to send the consuls away, and the consular legions, under the plea of saving the provinces. this they were willing enough to do--with the real object of delivering italy over to those who were cicero's enemies but were not theirs. all this cicero understood, and, in conducting the contest, had to be on his guard, not only against the soldiers of antony but against the senators also, who were supposed to be his own friends, but whose hearts were intent on having back some cæsar to preserve for them their privileges. cicero in this matter talked some nonsense. "by what right, by what law," he asks, "shall cassius go to syria? by that law which jupiter sanctioned when he ordained that all things good for the republic should be just and legal." for neither had brutus a right to establish himself in macedonia as proconsul nor cassius in syria. this reference to jupiter was a begging of the question with a vengeance. but it was perhaps necessary, in a time of such confusion, to assume some pretext of legality, let it be ever so poor. nothing could now be done in true obedience to the laws. the triumvirate, with cæsar at its head, had finally trodden down all law; and yet every one was clamoring for legal rights! then he sings the praises of cassius, but declares that he does not dare to give him credit in that place for the greatest deed he had done. he means, of course, the murder of cæsar. paterculus tells us that all these things were decreed by the senate.[216] but he is wrong. the decree of the senate went against cicero, and on the next day, amid much tumult, he addressed himself to the people on the subject. this he did in opposition to pansa, who endeavored to hinder him from speaking in the forum, and to servilia, the mother-in-law of cassius, who was afraid lest her son-in-law should encounter the anger of the consuls. he went so far as to tell the people that cassius would not obey the senate, but would take upon himself, on such an emergency, to act as best he could for the republic.[217] there was no moment in this stirring year, none, i think, during cicero's life, in which he behaved with greater courage than now in appealing from the senate to the people, and in the hardihood with which he declared that the senate's decree should be held as going for nothing. before the time came in which it could be carried out both hirtius and pansa were dead. they had fallen in relieving decimus at mutina. his address on this occasion to the people was not made public, and has not been preserved. then there came up the question of a second embassy, to which cicero at first acceded. he was induced to do so, as he says, by news which had arrived of altered circumstances on antony's part. calenus and piso had given the senate to understand that antony was desirous of peace. cicero had therefore assented, and had agreed to be one of the deputation. the twelfth philippic was spoken with the object of showing that no such embassy should be sent. cicero's condition at this period was most peculiar and most perilous. the senate would not altogether oppose his efforts, but they hated them. they feared that, if antony should succeed, they who had opposed antony would be ruined. those among them who were the boldest openly reproached cicero with the danger which they were made to incur in fighting his battles.[218] to be rid of cicero was their desire and their difficulty. he had agreed to go on this embassy--who can say for what motives? to him it would be a mission of especial peril. it was one from which he could hardly hope ever to come back alive. it may be that he had agreed to go with his life in his hand, and to let them know that he at any rate had been willing to die for the republic. it may be that he had heard of some altered circumstances. but he changed his mind and resolved that he would not go, unless driven forth by the senate. there seems to have been a manifest attempt to get him out of rome and send him where he might have his throat cut. but he declined; and this is the speech in which he did so. "it is impossible," says the french critic, speaking of the twelfth philippic, "to surround the word 'i fear' with more imposing oratorical arguments." it has not occurred to him that cicero may have thought that he might even yet do something better with the lees and dregs of his life than throw them away by thus falling into a trap. nothing is so common to men as to fear to die--and nothing more necessary, or men would soon cease to live. to fear death more than ignominy is the disgrace--a truth which the french critic does not seem to have recognized when he twits the memory of cicero with his scornful sneer. "j'ai peur." did it occur to the french critic to ask himself for what purpose should cicero go to antony's camp, where he would probably be murdered, and by so doing favor the views of his own enemies in rome? the deputation was not sent; but in lieu of the deputation pansa, the remaining consul, led his legions out of rome at the beginning of april. [sidenote: b.c. 43, ætat. 64.] lepidus, who was proconsul in gaul and northern spain, wrote a letter at this time to the senate recommending them to make peace with antony. cicero in his thirteenth philippic shows how futile such a peace would be. that lepidus was a vain, inconstant man, looking simply to his own advantage in the side which he might choose, is now understood; but when this letter was received he was supposed to have much weight in rome. he had, however, given some offence to the senate, not having acknowledged all the honors which had been paid to him. the advice had been rejected, and cicero shows how unfit the man was to give it. this, however, he still does with complimentary phrases, though from a letter written by him to lepidus about this time the nature of his feeling toward the man is declared: "you would have done better, in my judgment, if you had left alone this attempt at making peace, which approves itself neither to the senate nor to the people, not to any good man."[219] when we remember the ordinary terms of roman letter-writing, we must acknowledge that this was a plain and not very civil attempt to silence lepidus. he then goes on in the philippic to read a letter which antony had sent to hirtius and to young cæsar, and which they had sent on to the senate. the letter is sufficiently bold and abusive--throwing it in their teeth that they would rather punish the murderer of trebonius than those of cæsar. cicero does this with some wit, but we feel compelled to observe that as much is to be said on the one side as on the other. brutus, cassius, with trebonius and others, had killed cæsar. dolabella, perhaps with circumstances of great cruelty, had killed trebonius. cicero had again and again expressed his sorrow that antony had been spared when cæsar was killed. we have to go back before the first slaughter to resolve who was right and who was wrong, and even afterward can only take the doings of each in that direction as part of the internecine feud. experience has since explained to us the results of introducing bloodshed into such quarrels. the laws which recognize war are and were acknowledged. but when a kills b because he thinks b to have done evil. a can no longer complain of murder. and cicero's criticism is somewhat puerile. "and thou, boy," antony had said in addressing octavian--"et te, puer!" "you shall find him to be a man by-and-by," says cicero. antony's latin is not ciceronian. "utrum sit elegantius," he asks, putting some further question about cæsar and trebonius. "as if there could be anything elegant in this war," demands cicero. he goes through the letter in the same way, turning antony into ridicule in a manner which must have riveted in the heart of fulvia, antony's wife, who was in rome, her desire to have that bitter-speaking tongue torn out of his mouth. such was the thirteenth philippic. on the 21st of april was spoken the fourteenth and the last. pansa early in the month had left rome, and marched toward mutina with the intention of relieving decimus. antony, who was then besieging mutina after such a fashion as to prevent all egress or ingress, and had all but brought decimus to starvation, finding himself about to be besieged, put his troops into motion, and attacked those who were attacking him. then was fought the battle in which antony was beaten, and pansa, one of the consuls, so wounded that he perished soon afterward. antony retreated to his camp, but was again attacked by hirtius and octavian, and by decimus, who sallied out of the town. he was routed, and fled, but hirtius was killed in the battle. suetonius tells us that in his time a rumor was abroad that augustus, then octavian, had himself killed hirtius with his own hands in the fight--hirtius having been his fellow-general, and fighting on the same side; and that he had paid glyco, pansa's doctor, to poison him while dressing his wounds.[220] tacitus had already made the story known.[221] it is worth repeating here only as showing the sort of conduct which a grave historian and a worthy biographer were not ashamed to attribute to the favorite emperor of rome. it was on the receipt of the news in rome of the first battle, but before the second had been fought, that the last philippic was spoken. pansa was not known to have been mortally wounded, nor hirtius killed, nor was it known that decimus had been relieved; but it was understood that antony had received a check. servilius had proposed a supplication, and had suggested that they should put away their saga and go back to their usual attire. the "sagum" was a common military cloak, which the early romans wore instead of the toga when they went out to war. in later days, when the definition between a soldier and a civilian became more complete, they who were left at home wore the sagum, in token of their military feelings, when the republic was fighting its battles near rome. i do not suppose that when crassus was in parthia, or cæsar in gaul, the sagum was worn. it was not exactly known when the distant battles were being fought. but cicero had taken care that the sagum should be properly worn, and had even put it on himself--to do which as a consular was not required of him. servilius now proposed that they should leave off their cloaks, having obtained a victory; but cicero would not permit it. decimus, he says, has not been relieved, and they had taken to their cloaks as showing their determination to succor their general in his distress. and he is discontented with the language used: "you have not even yet called antony a 'public enemy.'" then he again lashes out against the horror of antony's proceedings: "he is waging war, a war too dreadful to be spoken of, against four roman consuls"--he means hirtius and pansa, who were already consuls, and in truth already dead, and decimus and plancus, who were designated as consuls for the next year. plancus, however, joined his legions afterward with those of antony, and insisted in establishing the second triumvirate. "rushing from one scene of slaughter to another, he causes wherever he goes misery, desolation, bloodshed, and agony." the language is so fine that it is worth our while to see the words.[222] "is he not responsible for the horrors of dolabella? what he would do in rome, were it not for the protection of jupiter, may be seen from the miseries which his brother has inflicted on those poor men of parma--that lucius, whom all men hate, and the gods too would hate, if they hated as they ought. in what city was hannibal as cruel as antony at parma; and shall we not call him an enemy?" servilius had asked for a supplication, but had only asked for one of moderate length. and servilius had not called the generals imperatores. who should be so called but they who have been valiant, and lucky, and successful? cicero forgets the meaning of the title, and that even bibulus had been called imperator in syria. here he runs off from his subject, and at some length praises himself. it seems that rome was in a tumult at the time, and that antony's enemies did all they could to support him, and also to turn his head. he had been carried into the senate-house in triumph, and had been thanked by the whole city. after lauding the different generals, and calling them all imperatores, he desires the senate to decree them a supplication for fifty days. fifty days are to be devoted to thanksgiving to the gods, though it had already been declared how very little they have done for which to be thankful, as decimus had not yet been liberated. fifty days are granted for the battle of mutina, which as yet was supposed to have been but half fought. when we hear the term "supplicatio" first mentioned in livy one day was granted. it had grown to twenty when the gods were thanked for the victory over vercingetorix. now for this half-finished affair fifty was hardly enough. when the time was over, antony and lepidus had joined their forces triumphantly. pansa and hirtius were dead, and decimus brutus had fled, and had probably been murdered. nothing increases so out of proportion to the occasion as the granting of honors. stars, when they fall in showers, pale their brilliancy, and turn at last to no more than a cloud of dust. honors are soon robbed of all their honor when once the first step downward has been taken. the decree was passed, and cicero finished his last speech on so poor an occasion. but though the thing itself then done be small and trivial to us now, it was completed in magnificent language.[223] the passage of which i give the first words below is very fine in the original, though it does not well bear translation. thus he ended his fourteenth philippic, and the silver tongue which had charmed rome so often was silent forever. we at least have no record of any further speech; nor, as i think, did he again take the labor of putting into words which should thrill through all who heard them, not the thoughts but the passionate feelings of the moment. i will venture to quote from a contemporary his praise of the philippics. mr. forsyth says: "nothing can exceed the beauty of the language, the rhythmical flow of the periods, and the harmony of the style. the structure of the latin language, which enables the speaker or writer to collocate his words, not, as in english, merely according to the order of thought, but in the manner best calculated to produce effect, too often baffles the powers of the translator who seeks to give the force of the passage without altering the arrangement. often again, as is the case with all attempts to present the thoughts of the ancient in a modern dress, a periphrasis must be used to explain the meaning of an idea which was instantly caught by the greek or roman ear. many allusions which flashed like lightning upon the minds of the senators must be explained in a parenthesis, and many a home-thrust and caustic sarcasm are now deprived of their sting, which pierced sharply at the moment of their utterance some twenty centuries ago. "but with all such disadvantages i hope that even the english reader will be able to recognize in these speeches something of the grandeur of the old roman eloquence. the noble passages in which cicero strove to force his countrymen for very shame to emulate the heroic virtues of their forefathers, and urged them to brave every danger and welcome death rather than slavery in the last struggle for freedom, are radiant with a glory which not even a translation can destroy. and it is impossible not to admire the genius of the orator whose words did more than armies toward recovering the lost liberty of rome." his words did more than armies, but neither could do anything lasting for the republic. what was one honest man among so many? we remember mommsen's verdict: "on the roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." the farther we see into the facts of roman history in our endeavors to read the life of cicero, the more apparent becomes its truth. but cicero, though he saw far toward it, never altogether acknowledged it. in this consists the charm of his character, though at the same time the weakness of his political aspirations; his weakness--because he was vain enough to imagine that he could talk men back from their fish-ponds; its charm--because he was able through it all to believe in honesty. the more hopeless became the cause, the sweeter, the more impassioned, the more divine, became his language. he tuned his notes to still higher pitches of melody, and thought that thus he could bring back public virtue. often in these philippics the matter is small enough. the men he has to praise are so little; and antony does not loom large enough in history to have merited from cicero so great a meed of vituperation! nor is the abuse all true, in attributing to him motives so low. but cicero was true through it all, anxious, all on fire with anxiety to induce those who heard him to send men to fight the battles to which he knew them, in their hearts, to be opposed. the courage, the persistency, and the skill shown, in the attempt were marvellous. they could not have succeeded, but they seem almost to have done so. i have said that he was one honest man among many. brutus was honest in his patriotism, and cassius, and all the conspirators. i do not doubt that cæsar was killed from a true desire to restore the roman republic. they desired to restore a thing that was in itself evil--the evils of which had induced cæsar to see that he might make himself its master. but cicero had conceived a republic in his own mind--not utopian, altogether human and rational--a republic which he believed to have been that of scipio, of marcellus, and lælius: a republic which should do nothing for him but require his assistance, in which the people should vote, and the oligarchs rule in accordance with the established laws. peace and ease, prosperity and protection, it would be for the rome of his dream to bestow upon the provinces. law and order, education and intelligence, it would be for her rulers to bestow upon rome. in desiring this, he was the one honest man among many. in accordance with that theory he had lived, and i claim for him that he had never departed from it. in his latter days, when the final struggle came, when there had arisen for him the chance of cæsar's death, when antony was his chief enemy, when he found himself in rome with authority sufficient to control legions, when the young cæsar had not shown--probably had not made--his plans, when lepidus and plancus and pollio might still prove themselves at last true men, he was once again alive with his dream. there might yet be again a scipio, or a cicero as good as scipio, in the republic; one who might have lived as gloriously, and die--not amid the jealousies but with the love of his countrymen. it was not to be. looking back at it now, we wonder that he should have dared to hope for it. but it is to the presence within gallant bosoms of hope still springing, though almost forlorn, of hope which has in its existence been marvellous, that the world is indebted for the most beneficial enterprises. it was not given to cicero to stem the tide and to prevent the evil coming of the cæsars; but still the nature of the life he had led, the dreams of a pure republic, those aspirations after liberty have not altogether perished. we have at any rate the record of the great endeavors which he made. nothing can have been worse managed than the victory at mutina. the two consuls were both killed; but that, it may be said, was the chance of war. antony with all his cavalry was allowed to escape eastward toward the cottian alps. decimus brutus seems to have shown himself deficient in all the qualities of a general, except that power of endurance which can hold a town with little or no provision. he wrote to cicero saying that he would follow antony. he makes a promise that antony shall not be allowed to remain in italy. he beseeches cicero to write to that "windy fellow lepidus," to prevent him from joining the enemy. lepidus will never do what is right unless made to do so by cicero. as to plancus, decimus has his doubts, but he thinks that plancus will be true to the republic now that antony is beaten.[224] in his next letter he speaks of the great confusion which has come among them from the death of the two consuls. he declares also how great has been antony's energy in already recruiting his army. he has opened all the prisons and workhouses, and taken the men he found there. ventidius has joined him with his army, and he still fears lepidus. and young cæsar, who is supposed to be on their side, will obey no one, and can make none obey him. he, decimus, cannot feed his men. he has spent all his own money and his friends'. how is he to support seven legions?[225] on the next day he writes again, and is still afraid of plancus and of lepidus and of pollio. and he bids cicero look after his good name: "stop the evil tongues of men if you can."[226] a few days afterward cicero writes him a letter which he can hardly have liked to receive. what business had brutus to think the senate cowardly?[227] who can be afraid of antony conquered who did not fear him in his strength? how should lepidus doubt now when victory had declared for the republic? though antony may have collected together the scrapings of the jails, decimus is not to forget that he, decimus, has the whole roman people at his back. cicero was probably right to encourage the general, and to endeavor to fill him with hope. to make a man victorious you should teach him to believe in victory. but decimus knew the nature of the troops around him, and was aware that every soldier was so imbued with an idea of the power of cæsar that, though cæsar was dead, they could fight with only half a heart against soldiers who had been in his armies. the name and authority and high office of the two consuls had done something with them, and young cæsar had been with the consuls. but both the consuls had been killed--which was in itself ominous--and antony was still full of hope, and young cæsar was not there, and decimus was unpopular with the men. it was of no use that cicero should write with lofty ideas and speak of the spirit of the senate. antony had received a severe check, but the feeling of military rule which cæsar had engendered was still there, and soldiers who would obey their officers were not going to submit themselves to "votes of the people." cicero in the mean time had his letters passing daily between himself and the camps, thinking to make up by the energy of his pen for the weakness of his party. lepidus sends him an account of his movements on the rhone, declaring how he was anxious to surround antony. lepidus was already meditating his surrender. "i ask from you, my cicero, that if you have seen with what zeal i have in former times served the republic, you should look for conduct equal to it, or surpassing it for the future; and, that you should think me the more worthy of your protection, the higher are my deserts."[228] he was already, when writing that letter, in treaty with antony. plancus writes to him at the same time apologizing for his conduct in joining lepidus. it was a service of great danger for him. plancus, but it was necessary for lepidus that this should be done. we are inclined to doubt them all, knowing whither they were tending. lepidus was false from the beginning. plancus doubled for a while, and then yielded himself. the reader, i think, will have had no hope for cicero and the republic since the two consuls were killed; but as he comes upon the letters which passed between cicero and the armies he will have been altogether disheartened. chapter x. _cicero's death._ [sidenote: b.c. 43, ætat. 64.] what other letters from cicero we possess were written almost exclusively with the view of keeping the army together, and continuing the contest against antony. there are among them a few introductory letters of little or no interest. and these military despatches, though of importance as showing the eager nature of the man, seem, as we read them, to be foreign to his nature. he does not understand war, and devotes himself to instigating men to defend the republic, of whom we suspect that they were not in the least affected by the words they received from him. the correspondence as to this period of his life consists of his letters to the generals, and of theirs to him. there are nearly as many of the one as of the other, and the reader is often inclined to doubt whether cicero be writing to plancus or plancus to cicero. he remained at rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among the official workshops of the state, writing letters, scraping together money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amid a crowd of hopeless, doubting, disheartened senators, whom he still kept together by his eloquence as republicans, though each was eager to escape. but who can be made consuls in the place of pansa and hirtius? octavian, who had not left italy after the battle of mutina, was determined to be one; but the senate, probably under the guidance of cicero, for a time would not have him. there was a rumor that cicero had been elected--or is said to have been such a rumor. our authority for it comes from that correspondence with marcus brutus on the authenticity of which we do not trust, and the date of which we do not know.[229] "when i had already written my letter, i heard that you had been made consul. when that is done i shall believe that we shall have a true republic, and one supported by its own strength." but probably neither was the rumor true, nor the fact that there was such a rumor. it was not thus that octavian meant to play his part. he had been passed over by cicero when a general against antony was needed. decimus had been used, and hirtius and pansa had been employed as though they had been themselves strong as were the consuls of old. so they were to cicero--in whose ears the very name of consul had in it a resonance of the magnificence of rome. octavian thought that pansa and hirtius were but cæsar's creatures, who at cæsar's death had turned against him. but even they had been preferred to him. in those days he was very quick to learn. he had been with the army, and with cæsar's soldiers, and was soon instructed in the steps which it was wise that he should take. he put aside, as with a sweep of his hand, all the legal impediments to his holding the consulship. talk to him of age! he had already heard that word "boy" too often. he would show them what a boy would do. he would let them understand that there need be no necessity for him to canvass, to sue for the consulship cap in hand, to have morning levees and to know men's names--as had been done by cicero. his uncle had not gone through those forms when he had wanted the consulship. octavian sent a military order by a band of officers, who, marching into the senate, demanded the office. when the old men hesitated, one cornelius, a centurion, showed them his sword, and declared that by means of that should his general be elected consul. the greek biographers and historians, plutarch, dio, and appian, say that he was minded to make cicero his fellow-consul, promising to be guided by him in everything; but it could hardly have been so, with the feelings which were then hot against cicero in octavian's bosom. dio cassius is worthy of little credit as to this period, and appian less so, unless when supported by latin authority. and we find that plutarch inserts stories with that freedom which writers use who do not suppose that others coming after them will have wider sources of information than their own. octavian marched into rome with his legions, and had himself chosen consul in conjunction with quintius pedius, who had also been one of the coheirs to cæsar's will. this happened in september. previous to this cicero had sent to africa for troops; but the troops when they came all took part with the young cæsar. a story is told which appears to have been true, and to have assisted in creating that enmity which at last induced octavian to assent to cicero's death. he was told that cicero had said that "the young man was to be praised, and rewarded, and elevated!"[230] the last word, "tollendum," has a double meaning; might be elevated to the skies--or to the "gallows." in english, if meaning the latter, we should say that such a man must be "put out of the way." decimus brutus told this to cicero as having been repeated by sigulius, and cicero answers him, heaping all maledictions upon sigulius. but he does not deny the words, or their intention--and though he is angry, he is angry half in joke. he had probably allowed himself to use the witticism, meaning little or nothing--choosing the phrase without a moment's thought, because it contained a double meaning. no one can conceive that he meant to imply that young cæsar should be murdered. "let us reward him, but for the moment let us be rid of him." and then, too, he had in the same sentence called him a boy. as far as evidence goes, we know that the words were spoken. we can trust the letter from decimus to cicero, and the answer from cicero to decimus. and we know that, a short time afterward, octavian, sitting in the island near bologna with antony, consented that cicero's name should be inserted in the fatal list as one of those doomed to be murdered. in the mean time lepidus had taken his troops over to antony, and pollio joined them soon afterward with his from spain. after that it was hardly to be expected that plancus should hesitate. there has always been a doubt whether plancus should or should not be regarded as a traitor. he held out longer than the others, and is supposed to have been true in those assurances which he made to cicero of republican fervor. why was he bound to obey cicero, who was then at rome, sending out his orders without official authority? while the consuls had been alive he could obey the consuls; and at the consuls' death he could for a while follow the spirit of their instructions. but as that spirit died away he found himself without orders other than cicero's. in this condition was it not better for him to go with the other generals of the empire rather than to perish with a falling party? in addition to this it will happen at such a time that the soldiers themselves have a will of their own. with them the name of cæsar was still powerful, and to their thinking antony was fighting on dead cæsar's side. when we read the history of this year, the fact becomes clear that out of rome cæsar's name was more powerful than cicero's eloquence. governed by such circumstances, driven by events which he could not control, plancus has the merit of having been the last among the doubtful generals to desert the cause which cicero had at heart. cassius and brutus in the east were still collecting legions for the battle of philippi. with that we shall have no trouble here. in the west, plancus found himself bound to follow the others, and to join antony and lepidus in spite of the protestations he had made. to those who read cicero's letters of this year the question must often arise whether plancus was a true man. i have made his excuse to the reader with all that i can say in his favor. the memory of the man is, however, unpleasant to me. decimus, when he found himself thus alone, endeavored to force his way with his army along the northern shore of the adriatic, so as to join marcus brutus in macedonia. to him, as one of those who had slain cæsar, no power was left of deserting. he was doomed unless he was victorious. he was deserted by his soldiers, who left him in batches, and at last was taken alive, when wandering through the country, and sent (dead) to antony. marcus brutus and cassius seem to have turned a deaf ear to all cicero's entreaties that they should come to his rescue. cicero in his last known letter--which however was written as far back as in july--is very eager with cassius: "only attempts are heard of your army, very great in themselves, but we expect to hear of deeds. * * * nothing can be grander or more noble than yourself, and therefore it is that we are longing for you here in rome. * * * believe me that everything depends on you and brutus--that we are waiting for both of you. for brutus we are waiting constantly."[231] this was after lepidus had gone, but while plancus was supposed to be as yet true--or rather, not yet false. he did, no doubt, write letters to brutus urging him in the same way. alas, alas! it was his final effort made for the republic. in september octavian marched into rome as a conqueror, at the head of those troops from africa which had been sent as a last resource to help the republicans. then we may imagine that cicero recognized the fact that there was left nothing further for which to struggle. the republic was done, his dream was over, and he could only die. brutus and cassius might still carry on the contest; but rome had now fallen a second time, in spite of his efforts, and all hope must have fled from him. when cæsar had conquered at pharsalia, and on his return from the east had graciously met him at brundisium, and had generously accorded to him permission to live under the shadow of his throne, the time for him must have been full of bitterness. but he had not then quite realized the meaning of a tyrant's throne. he had not seen how willingly the people would submit themselves, how little they cared about their liberty; nor had he as yet learned the nature of military despotism. rome had lived through sulla's time, and the republic had been again established. it might live through cæsar's period of command. when cæsar had come to him and supped with him, as a prince with one of his subjects, his misery had been great. still there was a hope, though he knew not from whence. those other younger men had felt as he had felt--and cæsar had fallen. to his eyes it was as though some god had interfered to restore to him, a roman, his ancient form of government. cæsar was now dead, and all would be right--only that antony was left alive. there was need for another struggle before consuls, prætors, and ædiles could be elected in due order; and when he found that the struggle was to be made under his auspices, he girded up his loins and was again happy. no man can be unhappy who is pouring out his indignation in torrents, and is drinking in the applause of his audience. every hard word hurled at antony, and every note of praise heard in return, was evidence to him of his own power. he did believe, while the philippics were going on, that he was stirring up a mighty power to arouse itself and claim its proper dominion over the world. there were moments between in which he may have been faint-hearted--in which he may have doubted as to young cæsar--in which he feared that pansa might escape from him, or that decimus would fall before relief could reach him; but action lent a pleasantness and a grace to it all. it is sweet to fight with the hope of victory. but now, when young cæsar had marched into rome with his legions, and was doubtless prepared to join himself to antony, there was no longer anything for cicero to do in this world. it is said, but not as i think on good authority, that cicero went out to meet cæsar--and if to meet him, then also to congratulate him. appian tells us that in the senate cicero hastened to congratulate cæsar, assuring him how anxious he had been to secure the consulship for him, and how active. cæsar smiled, and said that cicero had perhaps been a little late in his friendship.[232] dio cassius only remarks that cæsar was created consul by the people in the regular way, two consuls having been chosen; and adds that the matter was one of great glory to cæsar, seeing that he had obtained the consulship at an unusually early age.[233] but, as i have said above, their testimony for many reasons is to be doubted. each wrote in the interest of the cæsars, and, in dealing with the period before the empire, seems only to have been anxious to make out some connected story which should suit the emperor's views. young cæsar left rome still with the avowed purpose of proceeding against antony as against one declared by the senate to be an enemy; but the purpose was only avowed. messengers followed him on the road, informing him that the ban had been removed, and he was then at liberty to meet his friend on friendly terms. antony had sent word to him that it was not so much his duty as young cæsar's to avenge the death of his uncle, and that unless he would assist him, he, antony, would take his legions and join brutus and cassius.[234] i prefer to believe with mr. forsyth that cicero had retired with his brother quintus to one of his villas. plutarch tells us that he went to his tusculan retreat, and that on receiving news of the proscriptions he determined to remove to astura, on the sea-side, in order that he might be ready to escape into macedonia. octavian, in the mean time, having caused a law to be passed by pedius condemning all the conspirators to death, went northward to meet antony and lepidus at bononia, the bologna of to-day. here it was necessary that the terms of the compact should be settled by which the spoils of the world should be divided among them; and here they met, these three men, on a small river island, remote from the world--where, as it is supposed, each might think himself secure from the other. antony and lepidus were men old in craft--antony in middle life, and lepidus somewhat older. cæsar was just twenty-one; but from all that we have been able to gather as to that meeting, he was fully able to hold his own with his elders. what each claimed as his share in the empire is not so much matter of history as the blood which each demanded. paterculus says that the death-warrants which were then signed were all arranged in opposition to cæsar.[235] but paterculus wrote as the servant of tiberius, and had been the servant of augustus. it was his object to tell the story as much in favor of augustus as it could be told. it is said that, debating among themselves the murders which each desired for his own security, young cæsar, on the third day only, gave up cicero to the vengeance of antony. it may have been so. it is impossible that we should have a record of what took place from day to day on that island. but we do know that there cicero's death was pronounced, and to that doom young cæsar assented. it did not occur to them, as it would have done to julius cæsar at such a time, that it would be better that they should show their mercy than their hatred. this proscription was made by hatred and not by fear. it was not brutus and cassius against whom it was directed--the common enemies of the three triumviri. sulla had attempted to stamp out a whole faction, and so far succeeded as to strike dumb with awe the remainder. but here the bargain of death was made by each against the other's friends. "your brother shall go," said antony to lepidus. "if so, your uncle also," said lepidus to antony. so the one gave up his brother and the other his uncle, to indulge the private spleen of his partner; and cicero must go to appease both. as it happened, though cicero's fate was spoken, the two others escaped their doom. "nothing so bad was done in those days," says paterculus, "that cæsar should have been compelled to doom any one to death, or that such a one as cicero should have been doomed by any."[236] middleton thinks, and perhaps with fair reason, that cæsar's objection was feigned, and that his delay was made for show. a slight change in quoting the above passage, unintentionally made, favors his view; "or that cicero should have been proscribed by him," he says, turning "ullo" into "illo." the meaning of the passage seems to be, that it was sad that cæsar should have been forced to yield, or that any one should have been there to force him. as far as cæsar is concerned, it is palliative rather than condemnatory. suetonius, indeed, declares that though augustus for a time resisted the proscription, having once taken it in hand he pursued it more bloodily than the others.[237] it is said that the list when completed contained the names of three hundred senators and two thousand knights; but their fate was for a time postponed, and most of them ultimately escaped. we have no word of their deaths, as would have been the case had they all fallen. seventeen were named for instant execution, and against these their doom went forth. we can understand that cicero's name should have been the first on the list. we are told that when the news reached rome the whole city was struck with horror. during the speaking of the philippics the republican party had been strong and cicero had been held in favor. the soldiers had still clung to the memory of cæsar; but the men of mark in the city, those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders" generally, had thought that, now cæsar was dead, and especially as antony had left rome, their safest course would be to join the republic. they had done so, and had found their mistake. young cæsar had first come to rome and they had been willing enough to receive him, but now he had met antony and lepidus, and the bloody days of sulla were to come back upon them. all rome was in such a tumult of horror and dismay that pedius, the new consul, was frightened out of his life by the clamor. the story goes that he ran about the town trying to give comfort, assuring one and another that he had not been included in the lists, till, as the result of it all, he himself, when the morning came, died from the exertion and excitement. there is extant a letter addressed to octavian--supposed to have been written by cicero, and sometimes printed among his works--which, if written by him, must have been composed about this time. it no doubt was a forgery, and probably of a much later date; but it serves to show what were the feelings presumed to have been in cicero's bosom at the time. it is full of abuse of antony, and of young cæsar. i can well imagine that such might have been cicero's thoughts as he remembered the praise with which he had laden the young man's name; how he had decreed to him most unusual honors and voted statues for him. it had all been done in order that the republic might be preserved, but had all been done in vain. it must have distressed him sorely at this time as he reflected how much eulogy he had wasted. to be sneered at by the boy when he came back to rome to assume the consulship, and to be told, with a laugh, that he had been a little late in his welcome! and to hear that the boy had decreed his death in conjunction with antony and lepidus! this was all that rome could do for him at the end--for him who had so loved her, suffered so much for her, and been so valiant on her behalf! are you not a little late to welcome me as one of my friends? the boy had said when cicero had bowed and smiled to him. then the next tidings that reached him contained news that he was condemned! was this the youth of whom he had declared, since the year began, that "he knew well all the boy's sentiments; that nothing was dearer to the lad than the republic, nothing more reverent than the dignity of the senate?" was it for this that he had bade the senate "fear nothing" as to young octavian, "but always still look for better and greater things?" was it for this that he had pledged his faith for him with such confident words--"i promise for him, i become his surety, i engage myself, conscript fathers, that caius cæsar will always be such a citizen as he has shown himself to-day?"[238] and thus the young man had redeemed his tutor's pledges on his behalf! "a little late to welcome me, eh?" his pupil had said to him, and had agreed that he should be murdered. but, as i have said, the story of that speech rests on doubtful authority. had not cicero too rejoiced at the uncle's murder? and having done so, was he not bound to endure the enmity he had provoked? he had not indeed killed cæsar, or been aware that he was to be killed; but still it must be said of him that, having expressed his satisfaction at what had been done, he had identified himself with those who had killed him, and must share their fate. the slaying of a tyrant was almost by law enjoined upon romans--was at any rate regarded as a virtue rather than a crime. there of course arises the question, who is to decide whether a man be a tyrant? and the idea being radically wrong, becomes enveloped in difficulty out of which there is no escape. but there remains as a fact the existence of the feeling which was at the time held to have justified brutus--and also cicero. a man has to inquire of his own heart with what amount of criminality he can accuse the cicero of the day, or the young augustus. can any one say that cicero was base to have rejoiced that cæsar had been killed? can any one not regard with horror the young consul, as he sat there in the privacy of the island, with antony on one side and lepidus on the other, and then in the first days of his youth, with the down just coming on his cheeks, sending forth his edict for slaughtering the old friend of the republic? [sidenote: b.c. 43, ætat. 64.] it is supposed that cicero left rome in company with his brother quintus, and that at first they went to tusculum. there was no bar to their escaping from italy had they so chosen, and probably such was their intention as soon as tidings reached them of the proscription. it is pleasant to think that they should again have become friends before they died. in truth, marcus the elder was responsible for his brother's fate. quintus had foreseen the sun rising in the political horizon, and had made his adorations accordingly. he, with others of his class, had shown himself ready to bow down before cæsar. with his brother's assent he had become cæsar's lieutenant in gaul, such employment being in conformity with the practice of the republic. when cæsar had returned, and the question as to power arose at once between cæsar and pompey, quintus, who had then been with his brother in cilicia, was restrained by the influence of marcus; but after pharsalia the influence of marcus was on the wane. we remember how young quintus had broken away and had joined cæsar's party. he had sunk so low that he had become "antony's right hand." in that direction lay money, luxury, and all those good things which the government of the day had to offer. cicero was so much in cæsar's eyes, that cæsar despised the elder and the younger quintus for deserting their great relative, and would hardly have them. the influence of the brother and the uncle sat heavily on them. the shame of being cæsarean while he was pompeian, the shame of siding with antony while he sided with the republic, had been too great for them. while he was speaking his philippics they could not but be enthusiastic on the same side. and now, when he was proscribed, they were both proscribed with him. as the story goes, quintus returned from tusculum to rome to seek provision for their journey to macedonia, there met his son, and they both died gallantly. antony's hirelings came upon the two together, or nearly together, and, finding the son first, put him to the torture, so to learn from him the place of his father's concealment; then the father, hearing his son's screams, rushed out to his aid, and the two perished together. but this story also comes to us from greek sources, and must be taken for what it is worth. marcus, alone in his litter, travelled through the country to his sea-side villa at astura. then he went on to formiæ, sick with doubt, not knowing whether to stay and die, or encounter the winter sea in such boat as was provided for him. should he seek the uncomfortable refuge of brutus's army? we can remember his bitter exclamations as to the miseries of camp life. he did go on board; but was brought back by the winds, and his servants could not persuade him to make another attempt. plutarch tells us that he was minded to go to rome, to force his way into young cæsar's house and there to stab himself, but that he was deterred from this melodramatic death by the fear of torture. the story only shows how great had been the attention given to every detail of his last moments, and what the people in rome had learned to say of them. the same remark applies to plutarch's tale as to the presuming crows who pecked at the cordage of his sails when his boat was turned to go back to the land, and afterward with their beaks strove to drag the bedclothes from off him when he lay waiting his fate the night before the murderers came to him. he was being carried down from his villa at formiæ to the sea-side when antony's emissaries came upon him in his litter. there seem to have been two of them--both soldiers and officers in the pay of antony--popilius lænas and herennius. they overtook him in the wood, through which paths ran from the villa down to the sea-shore. on arriving at the house they had not found cicero, but were put upon his track by a freedman who had belonged to quintus, named philologus. he could hardly have done a kinder act than to show the men the way how they might quickly release cicero from his agony. they went down to the end of the wood, and there met the slaves bearing the litter. the men were willing to fight for their master; but cicero, bidding them put down the chair, stretched out his neck and received his death-blow. antony had given special orders to his servants. they were to bring cicero's head and his hands--the hands which had written the philippics, and the tongue which had spoken them--and his order was obeyed to the letter. cicero was nearly sixty-four when he died, his birthday being on the 3d of january following. it would be hardly worth our while to delay ourselves for a moment with the horrors of antony's conduct, and those of his wife fulvia--fulvia the widow of clodius and the wife of antony--were it not that we may see what were the manners to which a great roman lady had descended in those days in which the republic was brought to an end. on the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. that is the story of cicero's death as it has been generally told. we are told also that rome heard the news and saw the sight with ill-suppressed lamentation. we can easily believe that it should have been so. i have endeavored, as i have gone on with my work, to compare him to an englishman of the present day; but there is no comparing english eloquence to his, or the ravished ears of a roman audience to the pleasure taken in listening to our great orators. the world has become too impatient for oratory, and then our northern senses cannot appreciate the melody of sounds as did the finer organs of the roman people. we require truth, and justice, and common-sense from those who address us, and get much more out of our public speeches than did the old italians. we have taught ourselves to speak so that we may be believed--or have come near to it. a roman audience did not much care, i fancy, whether the words spoken were true. but it was indispensable that they should be sweet--and sweet they always were. sweet words were spoken to them, with their cadences all measured, with their rhythm all perfect; but no words had ever been so sweet as those of cicero. i even, with my obtuse ears, can find myself sometimes lifted by them into a world of melody, little as i know of their pronunciation and their tone. and with the upper classes--those who read--his literature had become almost as divine as his speech. he had come to be the one man who could express himself in perfect language. as in the next age the eclogues of virgil and the odes of horace became dear to all the educated classes because of the charm of their expression, so in their time, i fancy, had become the language of cicero. it is not surprising that men should have wept when they saw that ghastly face staring at them from the rostra, and the protruding tongue and the outstretched hands. the marvel is that, seeing it, they should still have borne with antony. that which cicero has produced in literature is, as a rule, admitted to be excellent; but his character as a man has been held to be tarnished by three faults--dishonesty, cowardice, and insincerity. as to the first, i have denied it altogether, and my denial is now submitted to the reader for his judgment. it seems to have been brought against him not in order to make him appear guilty, but because it has appeared to be impossible that, when others were so deeply in fault, he should have been innocent. that he should have asked for nothing, that he should have taken no illicit rewards, that he should not have submitted to be feed, but that he should have kept his hands clean while all around him were grasping at everything--taking money, selling their aid for stipulated payments, grinding miserable creditors--has been too much for men to believe. i will not take my readers back over the cases brought against him, but will ask them to ask themselves whether there is one supported by evidence fit to go before a jury. the accusations have been made by men clean-handed themselves; but to them it has appeared unreasonable to believe that a roman oligarch of those days should be an honest gentleman. as to his cowardice, i feel more doubt as to my power of carrying my readers with me, though no doubt as to cicero's courage. cowardice in a man is abominable. but what is cowardice? and what courage? it is a matter in which so many errors are made! tinsel is so apt to shine like gold and dazzle the sight! in one of the earlier chapters of this book, when speaking of catiline, i have referred to the remarks of a contemporary writer: "the world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause!" "all wounded in front," is quoted by this author from sallust. "not a man taken alive! catiline himself gasping out his life ringed around with corpses of his friends." that is given as a picture of a brave man dying for his cause, who should excite our admiration even though his cause were bad. in the previous lines we have an intended portrait of cicero, who, "thinking, no doubt, that he had done a good day's work for his patrons, declined to run himself into more danger." here is one story told of courage, and another of fear. let us pause for a moment and regard the facts. catiline, when hunted to the last gasp, faced his enemy and died fighting like a man--or a bull. who is there cannot do so much as that? for a shilling or eighteen-pence a day we can get an army of brave men who will face an enemy--and die, if death should come. it is not a great thing, nor a rare, for a man in battle not to run away. with regard to cicero the allegation is that he would not be allowed to be bribed to accuse cæsar, and thus incur danger. the accusation which is thus brought against him is borrowed from sallust, and is no doubt false; but i take it in the spirit in which it is made. cicero feared to accuse cæsar, lest he should find himself enveloped, through cæsar's means, in fresh danger. grant that he did so. was he wrong at such a moment to save his life for the republic--and for himself? his object was to banish catiline, and not to catch in his net every existing conspirator. he could stop the conspiracy by securing a few, and might drive many into arms by endeavoring to encircle all. was this cowardice? during all those days he had to live with his life in his hands, passing about among conspirators who he knew were sworn to kill him, and in the midst of his danger he could walk and talk and think like a man. it was the same when he went down into the court to plead for milo, with the gladiators of clodius and the soldiery of pompey equally adverse to him. it was the same when he uttered philippic after philippic in the presence of antony's friends. true courage, to my thinking, consists not in facing an unavoidable danger. any man worthy of the name can do that. the felon that will be hung to-morrow shall walk up to the scaffold and seem ready to surrender the life he cannot save. but he who, with the blood running hot through his veins, with a full desire of life at his heart, with high aspirations as to the future, with everything around him to make him happy--love and friendship and pleasant work--when he can willingly imperil all because duty requires it, he is brave. of such a nature was cicero's courage. as to the third charge--that of insincerity--i would ask of my readers to bethink themselves how few men are sincere now? how near have we approached to the beauty of truth, with all christ's teaching to guide us? not by any means close, though we are nearer to it than the romans were in cicero's days. at any rate we have learned to love it dearly, though we may not practise it entirely. he also had learned to love it, but not yet to practise it quite so well as we do. when it shall be said of men truly that they are thoroughly sincere, then the millennium will have come. we flatter, and love to be flattered. cicero flattered men, and loved it better. we are fond of praise, and all but ask for it. cicero was fond of it, and did ask for it. but when truth was demanded from him, truth was there. was cicero sincere to his party, was he sincere to his friends, was he sincere to his family, was he sincere to his dependents? did he offer to help and not help? did he ever desert his ship, when he had engaged himself to serve? i think not. he would ask one man to praise him to another--and that is not sincere. he would apply for eulogy to the historian of his day--and that is not sincere. he would speak ill or well of a man before the judge, according as he was his client or his adversary--and that perhaps is not sincere. but i know few in history on whose positive sincerity in a cause his adherents could rest with greater security. look at his whole life with pompey--as to which we see his little insincerities of the moment because we have his letters to atticus; but he was true to his political idea of a pompey long after that pompey had faded from his dreams. for twenty years we have every thought of his heart; and because the feelings of one moment vary from those of another, we call him insincere. what if we had pompey's thoughts and cæsar's, would they be less so? could cæsar have told us all his feelings? cicero was insincere: i cannot say otherwise. but he was so much more sincere than other romans as to make me feel that, when writing his life, i have been dealing with the character of one who might have been a modern gentleman. chapter xi. _cicero's rhetoric._ it is well known that cicero's works are divided into four main parts. there are the rhetoric, the orations, the epistles, and the philosophy. there is a fifth part, indeed--the poetry; but of that there is not much, and of the little we have but little is esteemed. there are not many, i fear, who think that cicero has deserved well of his country by his poetry. his prose works have been divided as i have stated them. of these, two portions have been dealt with already--as far as i am able to deal with them. of the orations and epistles i have spoken as i have gone on with my task, because the matter there treated has been available for the purposes of biography: the other two, the rhetoric and the philosophy, have been distinct from the author's life.[239] they might have been good or bad, and his life would have been still the same; therefore it is necessary to divide them from his life, and to speak of them separately. they are the work of his silent chamber, as the others were the enthusiastic outpourings of his daily spirit, or the elaborated arguments of his public career. who has left behind him so widely spread a breadth of literature? who has made so many efforts, and has so well succeeded in them all? i do not know that it has ever been given to any one man to run up and down the strings of knowledge, and touch them all as though each had been his peculiar study, as cicero has done. his rhetoric has been always made to come first, because, upon the whole, it was first written. it may be as well here to give a list of his main works, with their dates--premising, however, that we by no means in that way get over the difficulty as to time, even in cases as to which we are sure of our facts. a treatise may have been commenced and then put by, or may have been written some time previously to publication. or it may be, as were those which are called the academica, that it was remodelled, and altered in its shape and form. the academica were written at the instance of atticus. we now have the altered edition of a fragment of the first book, and the original of the second book. in this manner there have come discrepancies which nearly break the heart of him who would fain make his list clear. but here, on the whole, is presented to the reader with fair accuracy a list of the works of cicero, independent of that continual but ever-changing current of his thought which came welling out from him daily in his speeches and his letters. again, however, we must remember that here are omitted all those which are either wholly lost or have come to us only in fragments too abruptly broken for the purposes of continuous study. of these i will not even attempt to give the names, though when we remember some of the subjects--the de gloria, the de re militari--he could not go into the army for a month or two without writing a book about it--the de auguriis, the de philosophia, the de suis temporibus, the de suis consiliis, the de jure civili, and the de universo, we may well ask ourselves what were the subjects on which he did not write. in addition to these, much that has come to us has been extracted, as it were unwillingly, from palimpsests, and is, from that and from other causes, fragmentary. we have indeed only fragments of the essays de republica. de legibus, de natura deorum, de divinatione, and de fato, in addition to the academica. the list of the works of which it is my purpose to give some shortest possible account in the following chapters is as follows: nature of the work. titles of those as to rhetoric are marked [a] the date the works. " " philosophy " [b] of the moral essays " [c] publication. rheticorum { four books, giving lessons in rhetoric; } ad c. { supposed to have been written, not by cicero, } b.c. herennium. { but by one cornificius.[a][240] } 87, 86. } ætat. de { four books, giving lessons in rhetoric, } 20, 21. inventione. { supposed to have been translated from the } { greek. two out of four have come to us.[a] } { three dialogues, in three books--supposed to } { have been held under a plane-tree, in the } de oratore. { garden at tusculum belonging to crassus, } b.c. 55. { forty years before--in which are laid down } ætat. 52. { instructions for the making of an orator.[a] } { six political discussions--supposed to have } de { been held seventy-five years before the date } b.c. 53. republica. { at which they were written--on the best mode } ætat. 54. { of governance. we have but a fragment of them. } { [c] } { three out of six books as to the best laws for } { governing the republic. they are carried on } de legibus. { between atticus, quintus, and marcus. they } b.c. 52. { are supposed to have been written b.c. 52 } ætat. 55. { (ætat. 55), but were not published till after } { his death.[c] } de optimo { a preface to the translation of the speeches } genere { of æschines and of demosthenes for and against } b.c. 52. oratorum. { ctesiphon--in the matter of the golden crown. } ætat. 55. { [a] } de { instructions by questions and answers, } partitione { supposed to have been previously given to his } b.c. 46. oratoria. { son in greek, on the art of speaking in public.} ætat. 61. { [a] } { treatises, in which he deals with the various } { phases of philosophy taught by the academy. it } the { has been altered, and we have only a part of } b.c. 45. academica. { the first book of the altered portion and the } ætat. 62. { second part of the treatise before it was } { altered. in its altered form it is addressed } { to varro.[b] } de finibus { a treatise in five books, in the form of } bonorum et { dialogues, as to the results to be looked for } b.c. 45. malorum. { in inquiries as to what is good and what is } ætat. 62. { evil. it is addressed to brutus.[b] } brutus: or, { a treatise on the most perfect orators of past } de claris { times. it is addressed to brutus, and has, in } b.c. 45. oratoribus. { a peculiar manner, been always called by his } ætat. 62. { name.[a] } orator. { a treatise, addressed to brutus, to show what } b.c. 45. { the perfect orator should be.[a] } ætat. 62. { or the tusculan inquiries, supposed to have } tusculanæ { been held with certain friends in his tusculan } disputa { villa, as to contempt of death and pain and } b.c. 45. tiones. { sorrow, as to conquering the passions, and the } ætat. 62. { happiness to be derived from virtue. they are } { addressed to brutus.[a] } { three books addressed to brutus. velleius, } de natura { balbus, and cotta discuss the relative merits } b.c. 44. deorum. { of the epicurean, stoic, and academic schools. } ætat. 63 { [b] } { he discusses with his brother quintus the } de { property of the gods to "divine," or rather } b.c. 44. divinatione.{ to enable men to read prophecies. it is a } ætat. 63. { continuation of a former work.[b] } de fato. { the part only of a book on destiny.[b] } b.c. 44. { } ætat. 63. the topica. { a so-called translation from aristotle. it is } b.c. 44. { addressed to trebatius.[a] } ætat. 63. de { a treatise on old age, addressed to atticus, } b.c. 44. senectute. { and called cato major.[c] } ætat. 63. de { a treatise on friendship, addressed also to } b.c. 44. amicitia. { atticus, and called lælius.[c] } ætat. 63. { to his son. treating of the moral duties of } de { life. containing three books- } b.c. 44. officiis. { i. on honesty } ætat. 63. { ii. on expediency } { iii. comparing honesty and expediency. } it is to be observed from this list that for thirty years of his life cicero was silent in regard to literature--for those thirty years in which the best fruits of a man's exertion are expected from him. indeed, we may say that for the first fifty-two years of his life he wrote nothing but letters and speeches. of the two treatises with which the list is headed, the first, in all probability, did not come from his pen, and the second is no more than a lad's translation from a greek author. as to the work of translation, it must be understood that the greek and latin languages did not stand in reference to each other as they do now to modern readers. we translate in order that the pearls hidden under a foreign language may be conveyed to those who do not read it, and admit, when we are so concerned, that none can truly drink the fresh water from a fountain so handled. the romans, in translating from the greek, thinking nothing of literary excellence, felt that they were bringing greek thought into a form of language in which it could be thus made useful. there was no value for the words, but only for the thing to be found in it. thence it has come that no acknowledgment is made. we moderns confess that we are translating, and hardly assume for ourselves a third-rate literary place. when, on the other hand, we find the unexpressed thought floating about the world, we take it, and we make it our own when we put it into a book. the originality is regarded as being in the language, not in the thought. but to the roman, when he found the thought floating about the world in the greek character, it was free for him to adopt it and to make it his own. cicero, had he done in these days with this treatise as i have suggested, would have been guilty of gross plagiarism, but there was nothing of the kind known then. this must be continually remembered in reading his essays. you will find large portions of them taken from the greek without acknowledgment. often it shall be so, because it suits him to contradict an assertion or to show that it has been allowed to lead to false conclusions. this general liberty of translation has been so frequently taken by the latin poets--by virgil and horace, let us say, as being those best known--that they have been regarded by some as no more than translations. to them to have been translators of homer, or of pindar and stesichorus, and to have put into latin language ideas which were noble, was a work as worthy of praise as that of inventing. and it must be added that the forms they have used have been perfect in their kind. there has been no need to them for close translation. they have found the idea, and their object has been to present it to their readers in the best possible language. he who has worked amid the bonds of modern translation well knows how different it has been with him. there is not much in the treatise de inventione to arrest us. we should say, from reading it, that the matter it contains is too good for the production of a youth of twenty-one, but that the language in which it is written is not peculiarly fine. the writer intended to continue it--or wrote as though he did--and therefore we may imagine that it has come to us from some larger source. it is full of standing cases, or examples of the law courts, which are brought up to show the way in which these things are handled. we can imagine that a roman youth should be practised in such matters, but we cannot imagine that the same youth should have thought of them all, and remembered them all, and should have been able to describe them. the following is an example: "a certain man on his journey encountered a traveller going to make a purchase, having with him a sum of money. they chatted along the road together, and, as happens on such occasions, they became intimate. they went to the same inn, where they supped, and said that they would sleep together. having supped they went to bed; when the landlord--for this was told after it had all been found out, and he had been taken for another offence--having perceived that one man had money, in the middle of the night, knowing how sound they would sleep from fatigue, crept up to them, and having taken out of its scabbard the sword of him that was without the money as it lay by his side, he killed the other man, put back the sword, and then went to his bed. but he whose sword had been used rose long before daylight and called loudly to his companion. finding that the man slumbered too heavily to be stirred, he took himself and his sword and the other things he had brought away with him and started alone. but the landlord soon raised the hue-and-cry, 'a man has been killed!' and, with some of the guests, followed him who had gone off. they took the man on the road, and dragged his sword out of its sheath, which they found all bloody. they carried him back to the city, and he was accused." in this cause there is the declaration of the crime alleged, "you killed the man." there is the defence, "i did not kill him." thence arises the issue. the question to be judged is one of conjecture. "did he kill him?"[241] we may judge from the story that the case was not one which had occurred in life, but had been made up. the truculent landlord creeping in and finding that everything was as he wished it; and the moneyless man going off in the dark, leaving his dead bedfellow behind him--as the landlord had intended that he should--form all the incidents of a stock piece for rehearsal rather than the occurrence of a true murder. the same may be said of other examples adduced, here as afterward, by quintilian. they are well-known cases, and had probably been handed down from one student to another. they tell us more of the manners of the people than of the rudiments of their law. from this may be seen the nature of the work. from thence we skip over thirty years and come at once to b.c. 55. the days of the triumvirate had come, and the quarrel with clodius--of cicero's exile and his return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of his anger, against his enemies. and all this had taken place since those halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to be quæstor, ædile, prætor, and consul. he had first succeeded as a public man, and then, having been found too honest, he had failed. there can be no doubt that he had failed because he had been too honest. i must have told the story of his political life badly if i have not shown that cæsar had retired from the assault because cicero was consul, but had retired only as a man does who steps back in order that his next spring forward may be made with more avail. he chose well the time for his next attack, and cicero was driven to decide between three things--he must be cæsarean, or must be quiet, or he must go. he would not be cæsarean, he certainly could not be quiet, and he went. the immediate effect of his banishment was on him so great that he could not employ himself. but he returned to rome, and, with too evident a reliance on a short-lived popularity, he endeavored to replace himself in men's eyes; but it must have been clear to him that he had struggled in vain. then he looked back upon his art, his oratory, and told himself that, as the life of a man of action was no longer open to him, he could make for himself a greater career as a man of letters. he could do so. he has done so. but i doubt whether he had ever a confirmed purpose as to the future. had some grand consular career been open to him--had it been given to him to do by means of the law what cæsar did by ignoring the law--this life of him would not have been written. there would, at any rate, have been no need of these last chapters to show how indomitable was the energy and how excellent the skill of him who could write such books, because--he had nothing else to do. the de oratore is a work in three divisions, addressed to his brother quintus, in which it has undoubtedly been cicero's object to convince the world that an orator's employment is the highest of all those given to a man to follow; and this he does by showing that, in all the matters which an orator is called upon to touch, there is nothing which he cannot adorn by the possession of some virtue or some knowledge. to us, in these days, he seems to put the cart before the horse, and to fail from the very beginning, by reason of the fact that the orator, in his eloquence, need never tell the truth. it is in the power of man so to praise--constancy, let us say--as to make it appear of all things the best. but he who sings the praise of it may be the most inconstant of mankind, and may know that he is deceiving his hearers as to his own opinions--at any rate, as to his own practice. the virtue should come first, and then the speech respecting it. cicero seems to imply that, if the speech be there, the virtue may be assumed. but it has to be acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers after the [greek: to kalon].[242] we must recognize the fact that the romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the greeks, and, having described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should it ever be attained. it is so in the de oratore, as to which we must begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not to be found in any house of commons. no conservative and no liberal need fear that he will be put out of court by the coming of this perfectly eloquent man. but this cicero of whom we are speaking has been he who has been most often quoted for his perfections.[243] the running after an impossible hero throws a damp over the whole search. when no one can expect to find the thing sought for, who can seek diligently? by degrees the ambitious student becomes aware that it is impossible, and is then carried on by a desire to see how he is to win a second or a third place, if so much may be accorded to him. in his inquiries he will find that the cicero, if he look to quintilian or tacitus--or the crassus, if he look to cicero--is so set before him as the true model; and with that he may be content. the de oratore is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as i think, the pleasantest to read. it was followed, after ten years, by the brutus, or de claris oratoribus, and then by the orator. but in all of them he charms us rather by his example than instructs us by his precepts. he will never make us believe, for instance, that a man who talks well will on that account be better than a man who thinks well; but he does make us believe that a man who talks as cicero knew how to do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words, when listening to them is no longer possible, is a great delight. having done that, he has no doubt carried his object. he was too much a man of the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself. oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself, with the romans, the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of fighting. literature had not as yet assumed its place. it needed cicero himself to do that for her. it required the writing of such an essay as this to show, by the fact of its existence, that cicero the writer stood quite as high as cicero the orator. and then the written words remain when the sounds have died away. we believe that cicero spoke divinely. we can form for ourselves some idea of the rhythm of his periods. of the words in which cicero spoke of himself as a speaker we have the entire charm. boccaccio, when he takes his queen into a grassy meadow and seats her in the midst of her ladies, and makes her and them and their admirers tell their stories, seems to have given rise to the ideas which cicero has used when introducing his roman orators lying under a plane-tree in the garden of tusculum, and there discussing rhetoric; so much nearer to us appear the times of cicero, with all the light that has been thrown upon them by their own importance, than does the middle of the fourteenth century in the same country. but the practice in this as in all matters of social life was borrowed from the greeks, or perhaps rather the pretence of the practice. we can hardly believe that romans of an advanced age would so have arranged themselves for the sake of conversation. it was a manner of bringing men together which had its attraction for the mind's eye; and cicero, whose keen imagination represented to him the pleasantness of the picture, has used the form of narrative with great effect. he causes crassus and antony to meet in the garden of crassus at tusculum, and thither he brings, on the first day, old mucius scævola the augur, and sulpicius and cotta, two rising orators of the period. on the second day scævola is supposed to be too fatigued to renew the intellectual contest, and he retires; but one cæsar comes in with quintus lutatius catulus, and the conversation is renewed. crassus and antony carry it on in chief, but crassus has the leading voice. cæsar, who must have been the wag among barristers of his day, undertakes to give examples of that attic salt by which the profundity of the law courts is supposed to have been relieved. the third conversation takes place on the afternoon of the second day, when they had refreshed themselves with sleep; though crassus, we are specially told, had given himself up to the charms of no mid-day siesta. his mind had been full of the greatness of the task before him, but he will show neither fatigue nor anxiety. the art, the apparent ease with which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without exertion, are admirable. it is as though, they were sitting by running water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. they remove themselves to a wood a little farther from the house, and there they listen to the eloquence of crassus. cotta and sulpicius only hear and assent, or imply a modified dissent in doubting words. it is crassus who insists that the orator shall be omniscient, and antony who is supposed to contest the point with him. but they differ in the sweetest language; and each, though he holds his own, does it with a deference that is more convincing than any assertion. it may be as well, perhaps, to let it be understood that crassus and cæsar are only related by distant family ties--or perhaps only by ties of adoption--to the two of the first triumvirate whose names they bear; whereas antony was the grandfather of that cleopatra's lover against whom the philippics were hurled. no one, as i have said before, will read these conversations for the sake of the argument they contain; but they are, and will be, studied as containing, in the most appropriate language, a thousand sayings respecting the art of speech. "no power of speaking well can belong to any but to him who knows the subjects on which he has to speak;"[244] a fact which seems so clear that no one need be troubled with stating it, were it not that men sin against it every day. "how great the undertaking to put yourself forward among a crowd of men as being the fittest of all there to be heard on some great subject!"[245] "though all men shall gnash their teeth, i will declare that the little book of the twelve tables surpasses in authority and usefulness all the treatises of all the philosophers."[246] here speaks the cicero of the forum, and not that cicero who amused himself among the philosophers. "let him keep his books of philosophy for some tusculum idleness such as is this of ours, lest, when he shall have to speak of justice, he must go to plato and borrow from him, who, when he had to express him in these things, created in his books some new utopia."[247] for in truth, though cicero deals much, as we shall see by-and-by, with the philosophers, and has written whole treatises for the sake of bringing greek modes of thought among the romans, he loved the affairs of the world too well to trust them to philosophy. there has been some talk of old age, and antony, before the evening has come, declares his view. "so far do i differ from you," he says, "that not only do i not think that any relief in age is to be found in the crowd of them who may come to me for advice, but i look to its solitude as a harbor. you indeed may fear it, but to me it will be most welcome."[248] then cicero begins the second book with a renewal of the assertion as to oratory generally, not putting the words into the mouth of any of his party, but declaring it as his own belief: "this is the purpose of this present treatise, and of the present time, to declare that no one has been able to excel in eloquence, not merely without capacity for speaking, but also without acquired knowledge of all kinds."[249] but antony professes himself of another opinion: "how can that be when crassus and i often plead opposite causes, and when one of us can only say the truth? or how can it be possible, when each of us must take the cause as it comes to him?"[250] then, again, he bursts into praise of the historian, as though in opposition to crassus: "how worthy of an orator's eulogy is the writing of history, whether greatest in the flood of its narrative or in its variety! i do not know that we have ever treated it separately, but it is there always before our eyes. for who does not know that the first law of the historian is that he must not dare to say what is false: the next, that he must not dare to suppress what is true."[251] we wonder, when cicero was writing this, whether he remembered his request to lucceius, made now two years ago. he gives a piece of advice to young advocates, apologizing, indeed, for thinking it necessary; but he has found it to be necessary, and he gives it: "let me teach this to them all; when they intend to plead, let them first study their causes."[252] it is not only here that we find that the advice which is useful now was wanted then. "read your cases!" the admonition was wanted in rome as it has been since in london. but the great mistake of the whole doctrine creeps out at every page as we go on, and disproves the idea on which the de oratore is founded. all cicero's treatises on the subject, and quintilian's, and those of the pseudo-tacitus, and of the first greek from which they have come, fall to the ground as soon as we are told that it must be the purport of the orator to turn the mind of those who hear him either to the right or to the left, in accordance with the drift of the cause.[253] the mind rejects the idea that it can be the part of a perfect man to make another believe that which he believes to be false. if it be necessary that an orator should do so, then must the orator be imperfect. we have the same lesson taught throughout. it is the great gift of the orator, says antony, to turn the judge's mind so that he shall hate or love, shall fear or hope, shall rejoice or grieve, or desire to pity or desire to punish.[254] no doubt it is a great power. all that is said as to eloquence is true. it may be necessary that to obtain the use of it you shall educate yourself with more precision than for any other purpose. but there will be the danger that they who have fitted the dagger to the hand will use it. it cannot be right to make another man believe that which you think to be false. in the use of raillery in eloquence the roman seems to have been very backward; so much so that it is only by the examples given of it by themselves as examples that we learn that it existed. they can appall us by the cruelty which they denounce. they can melt us by their appeals to our pity. they can terrify; they can horrify; they can fill us with fear or hope, with anger, with despair, or with rage; but they cannot cause us to laugh. their attempts at a joke amuse us because we recognize the attempt. here cæsar is put forward to give us the benefit of his wit. we are lost in surprise when we find how miserable are his jokes, and take a pride in finding that in one line we are the masters of the romans. i will give an instance, and i pick it out as the best among those selected by cicero. nasica goes to call upon ennius, and is informed by the maid-servant that her master is not at home. ennius returns the visit, and nasica halloos out from the window that he is not within. "not within!" says ennius; "don't i know your voice?" upon which nasica replies, "you are an impudent fellow! i had the grace to believe your maid, and now you will not believe me myself."[255] how this got into a law-case we do not know; it is told, however, just as i have told it. but there are enough of them here to make a small joe miller; and yet, in the midst of language that is almost divine in its expressions, they are given as having been worthy of all attention. the third book is commenced by the finest passage in the whole treatise. cicero remembers that crassus is dead, and then tells the story of his death. and antony is dead, and the cæsars. the last three had fallen in the marian massacres. there is but little now in the circumstances of their death to excite our tears. who knows aught of that crassus, or of that antony, or of those cæsars? but cicero so tells it in his pretended narrative as almost to make us weep. the day was coming when a greater than either of them was to die the same death as antony, by the order of another antony--to have his tongue pierced, and his bloody head thrust aloft upon the rostra. but no roman has dared to tell us of it as cicero has told the story of those others. augustus had done his work too well, and it was much during his reign that romans who could make themselves heard should dare to hold their tongues. it would be useless in me here to attempt to give any notion of the laws as to speech which cicero lays down. for myself i do not take them as laws, feeling that the interval of time has been too great to permit laws to remain as such. no orator could, i feel sure, form himself on cicero's ideas. but the sweetness of the language is so great as to convince us that he, at any rate, knew how to use language as no one has done since: "but there is a building up of words, and a turning of them round, and a nice rendering. there is the opposing and the loosening. there is the avoiding, the holding back, the sudden exclamation, and the dropping of the voice; and the taking an argument from the case at large and bringing it to bear on a single point; and the proof and the propositions together. and there is the leave given; and then a doubting, and an expression of surprise. there is the counting up, the setting right; the utter destruction, the continuation, the breaking off, the pretence, the answer made to one's self, the change of names, the disjoining and rejoining of things--the relation, the retreat, and the curtailing."[256] who can translate all these things when quintilian himself has been fain to acknowledge that he has attempted and has failed to handle them in fitting language? and then at last there comes that most lovely end to these most charming discourses: "his autem de rebus sol me ille admonuit, ut brevior essem, qui ipse jam præcipitans, me quoque hac præcipitem pæne evolvere coegit."[257] these words are so charming in their rhythm that i will not rob them of their beauty by a translation. the setting sun requires me also to go to rest: that is their simple meaning. at the end of the book he introduces a compliment to hortensius, who during his life had been his great rival, and who was still living when the de oratore was written. [sidenote: b.c. 52, ætat. 55.] the next on the list is the de optimo genere oratorum--a preliminary treatise written as a preface to a translation made by himself on the speeches of æschines and demosthenes against ctesiphon in the matter of the golden crown. we have not the translations; but we have his reasons for translating them--namely, that he might enable readers only of latin to judge how far æschines and demosthenes had deserved, either of them, the title of "optimus orator." for they had spoken against each other with the most bitter abuse, and each spokesman was struggling for the suppression of the other. each was speaking with the knowledge that, if vanquished, he would have to pay heavily in his person and his pocket. he gives the palm to neither; but he tells his readers that the attic mode of speaking is gone--of which, indeed, the glory is known, but the nature unknown. but he explains that he has not translated the two pieces verbatim, as an interpreter, but in the spirit, as an orator, using the same figures, the same forms, the same strength of ideas. we have to acknowledge that we do not see how in this way he can have done aught toward answering the question de optimo genere oratorum; but he may perhaps have done something to prove that he himself, in his oratory, had preserved the best known grecian forms. the de partitione oratoria dialogus follows, of which we have already spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year of his life. it was the year in which he had divorced terentia, and had been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. but he was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these instructions, in the form of questions and answers, on the art of speaking. we next come to the brutus; or, de claris oratoribus, a dialogue supposed to have been held between brutus, atticus, and cicero himself. it is a continuation of the three books de oratore. he there describes what is essential to the character of the optimus orator. he here looks after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and bringing before the reader's eyes all greek and roman orators, till he comes down to cicero. i cannot but say that the feeling is left with the reader that the orator optimus has been reached at last in cicero's mind. we must remark, in the first place, that he has chosen for his friend, to whom to address his piece, one whom he has only known late in life. it was when he went to cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years old, that he was thrown by atticus into close relations with brutus. now he has, next to atticus, become his most chosen friend. his three next treatises, the orator, the tusculan disquisitions, and the de natura deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of brutus. and yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less likely to be brought together by their political ambition. the one compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing that things were evil, and contented to accept those that were the least so; the other strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were bad! and brutus, too, had told cicero that his lessons in oratory were not to his taste. there was a something about cicero which enabled him to endure such rebukes while there was aught worthy of praise in the man who rebuked him; and it was to this something that his devotion was paid. we know that brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed of a roman nobleman, and we know also that cicero was not. cicero could keep his hands clean with thousands around him, and with thousands going into the pockets of other men. he could see the vice of brutus, but he did not hate it. he must have borne, too, with something from atticus of the same kind. the truth seems to me that to cicero there was no horror as to greediness, except to greed in himself. he could hate it for himself and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing, or rackets, or the turf. but he must have known that brutus had made himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his heart in consequence. in no other way can i explain to myself the feeling of subservience to brutus which cicero so generally expresses: it exists in none other of his relations of life. political subservience there is to pompey; but he can laugh at pompey, and did not dedicate to him his treatises de republica, or de legibus. to appius claudius he was very courteous. he thought badly of appius, but hardly worse than he ought to have done of brutus. of cælius he was fond, of curio, of trebatius. to pætus he was attached, to sulpicius and marcellus. but to none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to brutus. i could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that the "ipsissima verba" have not probably come to us. but i cannot say that the name of brutus does not stand there, written in imperishable letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. if this be so, brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of cicero. all ages since have felt it, and shakespeare has told us that "brutus is an honorable man." there is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise. cicero in it tells us of cato and of marcellus, and therefore we must suppose that it was written when they were alive. indeed, he so compares cæsar and marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been alive. but cato and marcellus died b.c. 46, and how then could the treatise have been written in b.c. 45? it should, however, be remembered that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. but the time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the discourse. he begins by telling us how he had grieved when, on his return from cilicia, he had heard that hortensius was dead. hortensius had brought him into the college of augurs, and had there stood to him in the place of a parent. and he had lamented hortensius also on behalf of rome. hortensius had gone. then he goes on to say that, as he was thinking of these things while walking in his portico, brutus had come to him and pomponius atticus. he says how pleasantly they greeted each other; and then gradually they go on, till atticus asks him to renew the story he had before been telling. "in truth, pomponius," he says, "i remember it right well, for then it was that i heard deiotarus, that truest and best of kings, defended by our brutus here," deiotarus was that eastern king whose defence by cicero himself i have mentioned when speaking of his pleadings before cæsar. then he rushes off into his subject, and discusses at length his favorite idea. it must still be remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of lessons in oratory. there is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this treatise. cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his lessons. he says of eloquence that "she is the companion of peace, and the associate of ease."[258] he tells us of cato, that he had read a hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had "found them all replete with bright words and with great matter; * * * and yet no one in his days read cato's speeches!"[259] this, of course, was cato the elder. then we hear how demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything: it was the first thing, the second, and the third. "for there is nothing like it to penetrate into the minds of the audience--to teach them, to turn them, and to form them, till the orator shall be made to appear exactly that which he wishes to be thought.[260] * * * the man who listens to one who is an orator believes what he hears; he thinks everything to be true, he approves of all."[261] no doubt! in his power of describing the orator and his work cicero is perfect; but he does not describe the man doing that which he is bound to do by his duty. he tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates--which certainly is true.[262] further on he comes to cæsar, and praises him very highly. but here brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture."[263] they are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. then he names hortensius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic; but he reserves his greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy, which he is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases, so as to show that he himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made himself, in truth, the best orator of them all.[264] perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of the touch. it is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. if read without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind the impression that though now and again there had come upon him the memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the state to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent; nevertheless, it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone well with him. he writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at his heart. no one would have thought that in this very year he was perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife; that cæsar had made good his ground, and, having been dictator last year, had for the third time become consul; that he knew himself to be living, as a favor, by cæsar's pleasure. cicero seems to have written his brutus as one might write who was well at ease. let a man have taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. what is it to him that politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? he has not gone into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. though things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger, none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered pompey and have thought of cæsar. and though cæsar was courteous to him, the courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled. cæsar was consul; and cicero, who remembered how majestically he had walked when a few years since he was consul by the real votes of the people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with brutus and with atticus. yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. but we must remark that at its close--in its very final words--he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine that something has been lost, or that more might have been added. the last of these works is the orator. we have passed in review the de oratore, and the brutus; or, de claris oratoribus. we have now to consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece of the three. such seems to have become the general idea of those scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. he himself says that there are in all five books. there are the three de oratore; the fourth is called the brutus, and the fifth the orator.[265] in some mss. this work has a second title, de optimo genere dicendi--as though the five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding work is on the best mode of oratory. readers who may wish to carry these in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from æschines and demosthenes. the purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of romance may be produced--the perfect orator. here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume, whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. but here, in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his discourse. he distinguishes three styles of eloquence--the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties to perform. he must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. he explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that eloquence depends wholly on elocution. he tells us that the philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and work of the forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. then he teaches us how each of the three styles should be treated--the simple, the moderate, and the sublime--and shows us how to vary them. he informs us what laws we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what metaphors. he then considers the words we should use, and makes us understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of sound. in this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a roman, had to deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our british ears; and i am not sure that we can follow him with rapture into all the mysteries of the poeon, the dochmius, and the dichoreus. what he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder at the elaborate study given to it; but i doubt whether we here do not read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our lives. there are, again, delightful morsels here. he tells us, for instance, that he who has created a beautiful thing must have beauty in his soul,[266]--a charming idea, as to which we do not stop to inquire whether it be true or not. he gives us a most excellent caution against storing up good sayings, and using them from the storehouse of our memory: "let him avoid these studied things, not made of the moment, but brought from the closet."[267] then he rises into a grand description of the perfect orator: "but that third man is he, rich, abundant, dignified, and instructed, in whom there is a divine strength. this is he whose fulness and culture of speech the nations have admired, and whose eloquence has been allowed to prevail over the people.[268] * * * then will the orator make himself felt more abundantly. then will he rule their minds and turn their hearts. then will he do with them as he would wish."[269] but in the teeth of all this it did not please brutus himself. "when i wrote to him," he said to atticus, "in obedience to his wishes, 'de optimo genere dicendi,' he sent word, both to you and me, that that which pleased me did not satisfy him."[270] "let every man kiss his own wife," says cicero in his letter in the next words to those we have quoted; and we cannot but love the man for being able to joke when he is telling of the rebuff he has received. it must have been an additional pang to him, that he for whom he had written his book should receive it with stern rebuke. at last we come to the topica; the last instructions which cicero gives on the subject of oratory. the romans seem to have esteemed much the lessons which are here conveyed, but for us it has but little attraction. he himself declares it to have been a translation from aristotle, but declares also that the translation has been made from memory. he has been at sea, he says, in the first chapter, and has there performed his task, and has sent it as soon as it has been done. there is something in this which is unintelligible to us. he has translated a treatise of aristotle from memory--that is, without having the original before him--and has done this at sea, on his intended journey to greece![271] i do not believe that cicero has been false in so writing. the work has been done for his young friend trebatius, who had often asked it, and was much too clever when he had received it not to recognize its worth. but cicero has, in accordance with his memory, reduced to his own form aristotle's idea as to "invention" in logic. aristotle's work is, i am informed, in eight books: here is a bagatelle in twenty-five pages. there is an audacity in the performance--especially in the doing it on board ship; but we must remember that he had spent his life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down with all the rapidity of a practised professor the doctrines on the matter which he wished to teach trebatius. this later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher, or statesman, may look for his arguments. that they should have been of any great use to trebatius, in the course of his long life as attorney-general about the court of augustus, i cannot believe. i do not know that he rose to special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor; nor do i think that oratory, or the powers of persuasion, can be so brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. and here they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. it is for modern readers perhaps the least interesting of all cicero's works. there is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of the immense amount of attention which, in the roman educated world, was paid to the science of speaking. to bring his arguments to bear at the proper moment--to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the minds of men--to know when the sympathies may be expected and when demanded, when the feelings may be trusted and when they have been too blunted to be of service--to perceive from an instinctive outlook into those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate and when melting--this was the business of a roman orator. and this was to be achieved only by a careful study of the characters of men. it depended in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on education. how he might please the multitude--this was everything to him. it was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic world in london we have been told that men ought not to attempt. they do attempt it, but they fail--through the innate honesty which there is in the hearts of men. in italy, in cicero's time, they attempted it, and did not fail. but we can see what were the results. the attention which roman orators paid to their voices was as serious, and demanded the same restraint, as the occupations of the present athlete. we are inclined to doubt whether too much of life is not devoted to the purpose. it could not be done but by a people so greedy of admiration as to feel that all other things should be abandoned by those who desire to excel. the actor of to-day will do it, but it is his business to act; and if he so applies himself to his profession as to succeed, he has achieved his object. but oratory in the law court, as in parliament, or in addressing the public, is only the means of imbuing the minds of others with the ideas which the speaker wishes to implant there. to have those ideas, and to have the desire to teach them to others, is more to him than the power of well expressing them. to know the law is better than to talk of knowing it. but with the romans so great was the desire to shine that the reality was lost in its appearance; and so prone were the people to indulge in the delight of their senses that they would sacrifice a thing for a sound, and preferred lies in perfect language to truth in halting syllables. this feeling had sunk deep into cicero's heart when he was a youth, and has given to his character the only stain which it has. he would be patriotic: to love his country was the first duty of a roman. he would be honest: so much was indispensable to his personal dignity. but he must so charm his countrymen with his voice as to make them feel while they listened to him that some god addressed them. in this way he became permeated by the love of praise, till it was death to him not to be before the lamps. the "perfect orator" is, we may say, a person neither desired nor desirable. we, who are the multitude of the world, and have been born to hold our tongues and use our brains, would not put up with him were he to show himself. but it was not so in cicero's time; and this was the way he took to sing the praises of his own profession and to magnify his own glory. he speaks of that profession in language so excellent as to make us who read his words believe that there was more in it than it did in truth hold. but there was much in it, and the more so as the performers reacted upon their audience. the delicacy of the powers of expression had become so great, that the powers of listening and distinguishing had become great also. as the instruments became fine, so did the ears which were to receive their music. cicero, and quintilian after him, tell us this. the latter, in speaking of the nature of the voice, gives us a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to attempt to translate: "nam est et candida, et fusca, et plena, et exilis, et levis, et aspera, et contracta, et fusa, et dura, et flexibilis, et clara, et obtusa; spiritus etiam longior, breviorque."[272] and the remarkable thing was, that every roman who listened would understand what the orator intended, and would know too, and would tell him of it, if by error he had fallen into some cadence which was not exactly right. to the modes of raising the voice, which are usually divided into three--the high or treble, the low or bass, and that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor--many others are added. there are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes, the quicker and the slower. it seems little to us, who know that we can speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. but then every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. no wonder that cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. then the strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." this must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the food--which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the words must not strike each other. and as to the action of the orator, cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the words themselves. in all this we find that quintilian only follows his master too closely. the hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of the foot, the single step or many steps--every motion of the body, agreeing with the words from his mouth, are all described.[273] he attributes this to antony--but only because, as he thinks of it, some movement of antony's has recurred to his memory. to make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which cicero valued; not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him to be so. this it was, in cicero's time, to be the optimus orator. since cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct of men. they are less greedy, less cruel, less selfish--greedy, cruel, and selfish though they still are. the progress which the best among us have made cicero in fact achieved; but he had not acquired that theoretic aversion to a lie which is the first feeling in the bosom of a modern gentleman; therefore it was that he still busied himself with finding the optimus orator. chapter xii. _cicero's philosophy._ it will have been observed that in the list given in the previous chapter the works commonly published as cicero's philosophy have been divided. some are called his philosophy and some his moral essays. it seems to be absurd to put forward to the world his tusculan inquiries, written with the declared object of showing that death and pain were not evils, together with a moral essay, such as that de officiis, in which he tells us what it may become a man of the world to do. it is as though we bound up lord chesterfield's letters in a volume with hume's essays, and called them the philosophy of the eighteenth century. it might be true, but it would certainly be absurd. there might be those who regard the letters as philosophical, and those who would so speak of the essays; but their meaning would be diametrically opposite. it is so with cicero, whose treatises have been lumped together under this name with the view of bringing them under one appellation. it had been found necessary to divide his works and to describe them. the happy man who first thought to put the de natura deorum and the de amicitia into boards together, and to present them to the world under the name of his philosophy, perhaps found the only title that could unite the two. but he has done very much to mislead the world, and to teach readers to believe that cicero was in truth one who endeavored to live in accordance with the doctrine of any special school of philosophy. he was too honest, too wise, too civilized, too modern for that. he knew, no one better, that the pleasure of the world was pleasant, and that the ills are the reverse. when his wife betrayed him, he grieved. when his daughter died, he sorrowed. when his foe was strong against him, he hated him. he avoided pain when it came near him, and did his best to have everything comfortable around him. he was so far an epicurean, as we all are. he did not despise death, or pain, or grief. he was a modern-minded man--if i make myself understood--of robust tendencies, moral, healthy, and enduring; but he was anything but a philosopher in his life. let us remember the way in which he laughs at the idea of bringing philosophy into real life in the de oratore. he is speaking of the manner in which the lawyers would have had to behave themselves in the law courts if philosophy had been allowed to prevail: "no man could have grieved aloud. no patron would have wept. no one would have sorrowed. there would have been no calling of the republic to witness; not a man would have dared to stamp his foot, lest it should have been told to the stoics."[274] "you should keep the books of the philosophers for your tusculan ease," he had said in the preceding chapter; and he speaks, in the same page, of "plato's fabulous state." then why, it may be asked, did he write so many essays on philosophy--enough to have consumed the energies of many laborious years? there can be no doubt that he did write the philosophy, though we have ample reason to know that it was not his philosophy. all those treatises, beginning with the academica--written when he was sixty-two, two years only before his death, and carried on during twelve months with indomitable energy--the de finibus, the tusculan disputations, the de natura deorum, the de divinatione, and the de fato--were composed during the time named. to those who have regarded cicero as a philosopher--as one who has devoted his life to the pursuits of philosophy--does it not appear odd that he should have deferred his writing on the subject and postponed his convictions till now? at this special period of his life why should he have rushed into them at once, and should so have done it as to be able to leave them aside at another period? why has all this been done within less than two years? let any man look to the last year of his life, when the philippics were coming hot from his brain and eager from his mouth, and ask himself how much of greek philosophy he finds in them. out of all the sixty-four years of his life he devoted one to this philosophy, and that not the last, but the penultimate; and so lived during all these years, even including that one, as to show how little hold philosophy had upon his conduct. [greek: aideomai trôas]. was that greek philosophy? or the eager exclamation of a human spirit, in its weakness and in its strength, fearing the breath of his fellow-men, and yet knowing that the truth would ultimately be expressed by it? nor is the reason for this far to seek, though the character which could avail itself of such a reason requires a deep insight. to him literature had been everything. we have seen with what attention he had studied oratory--rhetoric rather--so as to have at his fingers'-ends the names of those who had ever shone in it, and the doctrines they had taught. we know how well read he was in homer and the greek tragedians; how he knew by heart his ennius, his nævius, his pacuvius, and the others who had written in his own tongue. as he was acquainted with the poets and rhetoricians, so also was he acquainted with those writers who have handled philosophy. his incredible versatility was never at fault. he knew them all from the beginning, and could interest himself in their doctrines. he had been in the schools at athens, and had learned it all. in one sense he believed in it. there was a great battle of words carried on, and in regard to that battle he put his faith in this set or in the other. but had he ever been asked by what philosophical process he would rule the world, he would have smiled. then he would have declared himself not to be an academician, but a republican. it was with him a game of play, ornamented with all the learning of past ages. he had found the schools full of it at athens, and had taken his part in their teaching. it had been pleasant to him to call himself a disciple of plato, and to hold himself aloof from the straitness of the stoics, and from the mundane theories of the followers of epicurus. it had been well for him also to take an interest in that play. but to suppose that cicero, the modern cicero, the cicero of the world--cicero the polished gentleman, cicero the soft hearted, cicero the hater, cicero the lover, cicero the human--was a believer in greek philosophy--that he had taken to himself and fed upon those shreds and tatters and dry sticks--that he had ever satisfied himself with such a mode of living as they could promise to him--is indeed to mistake the man. his soul was quiveringly alive to all those instincts which now govern us. go among our politicians, and you shall find this man and the other, who, in after-dinner talk, shall call himself an epicurean, or shall think himself to be an academician. he has carried away something of the learning of his college days, and remembers enough of his school exercises for that; but when he has to make a speech for or against protection, then you will find out where lies his philosophy. and so it was with cicero during this the penultimate year of his life. he poured forth during this period such an amount of learning on the subject, that when men took it up after the lapse of centuries they labelled it all as his philosophy. when he could no longer talk politics, nor act them--when the forum was no longer open to him, nor the meetings of the people or of the senate--when he could no longer make himself heard on behalf of the state--then he took to discussions on carneades. and his discussions are wonderful. how could he lay his mind to work when his daughter was dead, and write in beautiful language four such treatises as came from his pen while he was thinking of the temple which was to be built to her memory? it is a marvel that at such a period, at such an age, he should have been equal to the labor. but it was thus that he amused himself, consoled himself, distracted himself. it is hard to believe that, in the sad evening of his life, such a power should have remained with him; but easier, i think, than to imagine that in that year of his life he had suddenly become philosophical. in describing the academica, the first of these works in point of time, it is necessary to explain that by reason of an alteration in his plan of publishing, made by cicero after he had sent the first copy to atticus, and by the accident that the second part has been preserved of the former copy and the first part of the second, a confusion has arisen. cicero had felt that he might have done better by his friends than to bring hortensius, catulus, and lucullus discussing greek philosophy before the public. they were, none of them, men who when alive had interested themselves in the matter. he therefore rewrote the essays, or altered them, and again sent them forth to his friend varro. time has been so far kind to them as to have preserved portions of the first book as altered, and the second of the four which constituted the first edition. it is that which has been called lucullus. the catulus had come first, but has been lost. hortensius and cicero were the last two. we may perceive, therefore, into what a length of development he carried his purpose. it must be of course understood that he dictated these exercises, and assisted himself by the use of all mechanical means at his disposal. the men who worked for him were slaves, and these slaves were always willing to keep in their own hands the good things which came to them by the exercise of their own intelligence and adroitness. he could not multiply his own hands or brain, but he could multiply all that might assist them. he begins by telling varro that he has long since desired to illustrate in latin letters the philosophy which socrates had commended, and he asks varro why he, who was so much given to writing, had not as yet written about any of these things. as varro boasted afterward that he was the author of four hundred and ninety books, there seems to be a touch of irony in this. be that as it may, varro is made to take up the gauntlet and to rush away at once amid the philosophers. but here on the threshold, as it were, of his inquiries, we have cicero's own reasons given in plain language: "but now, hit hard by the heavy blow of fortune, and freed as i am from looking after the state, i seek from philosophy relief from my pain." he thinks that he may in this way perhaps best serve the public, or even "if it be not so, what else is there that he may find to do?"[275] as he goes on, however, we find that what he writes is about the philosophers rather than philosophy. then we come to the lucullus. it seems odd that the man whose name has come down to us as a by-word for luxury, and who is laden with the reproach of overeating, should be thus brought forward as a philosopher. it was perhaps the subsequent feeling on cicero's part that such might be the opinion of men which induced him to alter his form--in vain, as far as we are concerned. but lucullus had lived with antiochus, a greek philosopher, who had certain views of his own, and he is made to defend them through this book. here as elsewhere it is not the subject which delights us so much as the manner in which he handles certain points almost outside the subject: "how many things do those exercised in music know which escape us! ah, there is antiope, they say; that is andromache."[276] what can be truer, or less likely, we may suppose, to meet us in a treatise on philosophy, and, therefore, more welcome? he is speaking of evidence: "it is necessary that the mind shall yield to what is clear, whether it wish it or no, as the dish in a balance must give way when a weight is put upon it.[277] * * * you may snore, if you will, as well as sleep," says carneades; "what good will it do you?"[278] and then he gives the guesses of some of the old philosophers as to the infinite. thales has said that water is the source of everything. anaximander would not agree to this, for he thought that all had come from space. anaximenes had affirmed that it was air. anaxagoras had remarked that matter was infinite. xenophanes had declared that everything was one whole, and that it was a god, everlasting, eternal, never born and never dying, but round in his shape! parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." what "full and empty" may mean i cannot tell; but democritus could, for he believed in it--though in other matters he went a little farther! empedocles sticks to the old four elements. heraclitus is all for fire. melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ever will be. plato thinks that the world has always existed, while the pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics.[279] "your wise man," continues cicero, "will know one whom to choose out of all these. let the others, who have been repudiated, retire." "they are all concealed, these things--hidden in thick darkness, so that no human eye can have power enough to look up into the heavens or down on to the earth. we do not know our own bodies, or the nature or strength of their component parts. the doctors themselves, who have opened them and looked at them, are ignorant. the empirics declare that they know nothing; because, as soon as looked at, they may change. * * * hicetas, the syracusan, as theophrastus tells us, thinks that the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars all stand still, and that nothing in all the world moves but the earth. now what do you, followers of epicurus, say to this?"[280] i need not carry the conversation on any farther to show that cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. this hicetas, the syracusan, seems to have been nearer the mark than the others, according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in cicero's days. "but what was the meaning of it all? who knows anything about it? how is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?" it is thus that cicero means to be understood. i will agree that cicero does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole thing into ridicule. he does generally find it well to say something in praise of these philosophers. he does not quite declare the fact that nothing is to be made of them; or, rather, there is existing in it all an under feeling that, were he to do so, he would destroy his character and rob himself of his amusement. but we remember always his character of a philosopher, as attributed to cato, in his speech during his consulship for murena. i have told the story when giving an account of the speech. "he who cuts the throat of an old cock when there is no need, has sinned as deeply as the parricide when breaking his father's neck,"[281] says cicero, laughing at the stoics. there he speaks out the feelings of his heart--there, and often elsewhere in his orations. here, in his academica, he is eloquent on the same side. we cannot but rejoice at the plainness of his words; but it has to be acknowledged that we do not often find him so loudly betraying himself when dealing with the old discussions of the greek philosophers. very quickly after his academica, in b.c. 45, came the five books, de finibus bonorum et malorum, written as though with the object of settling the whole controversy, and declaring whether the truth lay with the epicureans, the stoics, or the academics. what, at last, is the good thing, and what the evil thing, and how shall we gain the one and avoid the other? if he will tell us this, he will have proved himself to be a philosopher to some purpose. but he does nothing of the kind. at the end of the fifth book we find atticus, who was an epicurean, declaring to quintus cicero that he held his own opinion just as firmly as ever, although he had been delighted to hear how well the academician piso had talked in latin. he had hitherto considered that these were things which would not sound well unless in the greek language. it is again in the form of a dialogue, and, like all his writings at this time, is addressed to brutus. it is in five books. the first two are supposed to have been held at cumæ, between cicero, torquatus, and triarius. here, after a prelude in favor of philosophy and latin together, torquatus is allowed to make the best excuse he can for epicurus. the prelude contains much good sense; for, whether he be right or not in what he says, it is good for every man to hold his own language in respect. "i have always thought and said that the latin language is not poor as it is supposed to be, but even richer than the greek."[282] "let us learn," says torquatus, who has happened to call upon him at cumæ with triarius, a grave and learned youth, as we are told, "since we have found you at your house, why it is that you do not approve of epicurus--he who, alive, seems to have freed the minds of men from error, and to have taught them everything which could tend to make them happy."[283] then torquatus goes to work and delivers a most amusing discourse on the wisdom of democritus and his great disciple. the words fly about with delightful power, so as to leave upon our minds an idea that torquatus is persuading his audience; for it is cicero's peculiar gift, in whosesoever mouth he puts his words, to make him argue as though he were the victor. we feel sure that, had he in his hand held a theory contrary to that of torquatus, had he in truth cared about it, he could not have made torquatus speak so well. but the speaker comes to an end, and assures his hearers that his only object had been to hear--as he had never heard before--what cicero's own opinion might be on the matter. the second book is a continuation of the same meeting. the word is taken up by cicero, and he refutes torquatus. it seems to us, however, that poor epicurus is but badly treated--as has been generally the case in the prose works which have come down to us. we have, indeed, the poem of lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. but i was always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit suicide--a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black colors, though cato and brutus, the stoics, did the same thing very gloriously. the epicureans are held to be sensualists, because they have used the word "pleasure" instead of "happiness," and cicero is hard upon them. he tells a story of the dying moments of epicurus, quoting a letter written on his death-bed. "while i am writing," he says, "i am living my last hour, and the happiest. i have so bad a pain in my stomach that nothing can be worse. but i am compensated for it all by the joy i feel as i think of my philosophical discourses."[284] cicero then goes on to declare that, though the saying is very noble, it is unnecessary; he should not, in truth, have required compensation. but whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be unnecessary. he does not want opinion. he is satisfied with the language in which cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and severe. in the third book he, some time afterward, discusses the stoic doctrine with cato at the tusculan villa of lucullus, near to his own. he had walked over, and finding cato there by chance, had immediately gone to work to demolish cato's philosophical doctrines. he tells us what a glutton cato was over his books, taking them even into the senate with him. cicero asks for certain volumes of aristotle, and cato answers him that he would fain put into his hand those of zeno's school. we can see how easily cato falls into the trap. he takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. i will translate his last words of cato's appeal to the world at large: "i have been carried farther than my intention. but in truth the admirable order of the system, and the incredible symmetry of it, has led him on. by the gods, do you not wonder at it? in nature there is nothing so close packed, nor in art so well fitted. the latter always agrees with the former--that which follows with that which has gone before. not a stone in it all can be moved from its place. if you touch but one letter it falls to the ground. how severe, how magnificent, how dignified stands out the person of the wise man, who, when his reason shall have taught him that virtue is the only good, of a necessity must be happy! he shall be more justly called king than tarquin, who could rule neither himself nor others; more rightly dictator than sulla, the owner of the three vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; more rightly rich than crassus, who, had he not in truth been poor, would never have crossed the euphrates in quest of war. all things are justly his who knows how to use them justly. you may call him beautiful whose soul is more lovely than his body. he is free who is slave to no desire. he is unconquered for whose mind you can forge no chains; you need not wait with him for the last day to pronounce him happy. if this be so, then the good man is also the happy man. what can be better worth our study than philosophy, or what more heavenly than virtue?"[285] all of this was written by cicero in most elaborate language, with a finish of words polished down to the last syllable, because he had nothing else wherewith to satisfy the cravings of his intellect. the fourth book is a continuation of the argument "which when he had said he (made) an end.--but i (began)."[286] with no other introduction cicero goes to work and demolishes every word that cato had said. he is very courteous, so that cato cannot but admit that he is answered becomingly; but, to use a common phrase, he does not leave him a leg to stand upon. although during the previous book cato has talked so well that the reader will think that there must be something in it, he soon is made to perceive that the stoic budge is altogether shoddy. the fifth and last book, de finibus, is supposed to recount a dialogue held at athens, or, rather, gives the circumstances of a discourse pretended to have been delivered there by pupius piso to the two ciceros, and to their cousin lucius, on the merits of the old academy and the aristotelian peripatetics; for plato's philosophy had got itself split into two. there was the old and the new, and we may perhaps doubt to which cicero devoted himself. he certainly was not an epicurean, and he certainly was not a stoic. he delighted to speak of himself as a lover of plato. but in some matters he seems to have followed aristotle, who had diverged from plato, and he seems also to have clung to carneades, who had become master of the new academy. but, in truth, to ascertain the special doctrine of such a man on such a subject is vain. as we read these works we lose ourselves in admiration of his memory; we are astonished at the industry which he exhibits; we are delighted by his perspicuity; and feel ourselves relieved amid the crowd of names and theories by flashes of his wit; but there comes home to us, as a result, the singular fact of a man playing with these theories as the most interesting sport the world had produced, but not believing the least in any of them. it was not that he disbelieved; and perhaps among them all the tenets of the new academy were those which reconciled themselves the best to his common-sense. but they were all nothing to him but an amusement. in this book there are some exquisite bits. he says, speaking of athens, that, "go where you will through the city, you place your footsteps on the vestiges of history."[287] he says of a certain demetrius, whom he describes as writing books without readers in egypt, "that this culture of his mind was to him, as it were, the food by which his humanity was kept alive."[288] and then he falls into the praise of our love for our neighbors, and introduces us to that true philosophy which was the real guide of his life. "among things which are honest," he says, "there is nothing which shines so brightly and so widely as that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race. it comes from our original condition, in which children are loved by their parents; and then binding together the family, it spreads itself abroad among relations, connections, friends, and neighbors. then it includes citizens and those who are our allies. at last it takes in the whole human race, and that feeling of the soul arises which, giving every man his own, and defending by equal laws the rights of each, is called justice."[289] it matters little how may have been introduced this great secret which christ afterward taught, and for which we look in vain through the writings of all the philosophers. it comes here simply from cicero himself in the midst of his remarks on the new academy, but it gives the lesson which had governed his life: "i will do unto others as i would they should do unto me." in this is contained the rudiments of that religion which has served to soften the hearts of us all. it is of you i must think, and not of myself. hitherto the schools had taught how a man should make himself happy, whether by pleasure, whether by virtue, or whether by something between the two. it seems that it had never as yet occurred to a man to think of another except as a part of the world around him. then there had come a teacher who, while fumbling among the old greek lessons which had professed to tell mankind what each should do for himself, brings forth this, as it were, in preparation for the true doctrine that was to come: "ipsa caritas generis humani!"--"that love of the human race!" i trust i may be able to show, before i have finished my work, that this was cicero's true philosophy. all the rest is merely with him a play of words. our next work contains the five books of the tusculan disputations, addressed to brutus: tusculanarum disputationum, ad m. brutum, libri i., ii., iii., iv., and v. that is the name that has at last been decided by the critics and annotators as having been probably given to them by cicero. they are supposed to have been written to console himself in his grief for the death of tullia. i have great doubt whether consolation in sorrow is to be found in philosophy, but i have none as to the finding it in writing philosophy. here, i may add, that the poor generally suffer less in their sorrow than the rich, because they are called upon to work for their bread. the man who must make his pair of shoes between sunrise and the moment at which he can find relief from his weary stool, has not time to think that his wife has left him, and that he is desolate in the world. pulling those weary threads, getting that leather into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taut, so that he do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he has not a moment for a tear. and it is the same if you go from the lowest occupation to the highest. writing greek philosophy does as well as the making of shoes. the nature of the occupation depends on the mind, but its utility on the disposition. it was cicero's nature to write. will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled himself with one of his treatises on oratory? but philosophy was then to his hands. it seems to have cropped up in his latter years, after he had become intimate with brutus. when life was again one turmoil of political fever it was dropped. in the five of the books of the tusculan disputations, still addressed to brutus, he contends: 1. that death is no evil; 2. that pain is none; 3. that sorrow may be abolished; 4. that the passions may be conquered; 5. that virtue will suffice to make a man happy. these are the doctrines of the stoics; but cicero does not in these books defend any school especially. he leans heavily on epicurus, and gives all praise to socrates and to plato; but he is comparatively free: "nullius adductus jurare in verba magistri,"[290] as horace afterward said, probably ridiculing cicero. "i live for the day. whatever strikes my mind as probable, that i say. in this way i alone am free."[291] let us take his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each with his own life. this, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions, then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes. was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his eyes--not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? even after tullia was dead the republic had come again for him, and something might be done to stir up these fainéant nobles! what could a dead man do for his country? look back at cicero's life, and see how seldom he has put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work of attack. was this the man to console himself with the idea that death was no evil? and did he despise pain, or make any attempt at showing his disregard of it? you can hardly answer this question by looking for a man's indifference when undergoing it. it would be to require too much from philosophy to suppose that it could console itself in agony by reasoning. it would not be fair to insist on arguing with cato in the gout. the clemency of human nature refuses to deal with philosophy in the hard straits to which it may be brought by the malevolence of evil. but when you find a man peculiarly on the alert to avoid the recurrence of pain, when you find a man with a strong premeditated antipathy to a condition as to which he pretends an indifference, then you may fairly assert that his indifference is only a matter of argument. and this was always cicero's condition. he knew that he must at any rate lose the time passed by him under physical annoyance. his health was good, and by continued care remained so to the end; but he was always endeavoring to avoid sea-sickness. he was careful as to his baths, careful as to his eyes, very careful as to his diet. was there ever a man of whom it might be said with less truth that he was indifferent as to pain? the third position is that sorrow may be abolished. read his letters to atticus about his daughter tullia, written at the very moment he was proving this. he was a heart-broken, sorrow-stricken man. it will not help us now to consider whether in this he showed strength or weakness. there will be doubt about it, whether he gained or lost more by that deep devotion to another creature which made his life a misery to him because that other one had gone; whether, too, he might not have better hidden his sorrow than have shown it even to his friend. but with him, at any rate, it was there. he can talk over it, weep over it, almost laugh over it; but if there be a thing that he cannot do, it is to treat it after the manner of a stoic. his passions should be conquered. look back at every period of his life, and see whether he has ever attempted it. he has always been indignant, or triumphant, or miserable, or rejoicing. remember the incidents of his life before and after his consulship--the day of his election and the day of his banishment--and ask the philosophers why he had not controlled his passion. i shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his passion had the masterhood. but what attempt did he ever make? has he shown himself to us to be a man with a leaning toward such attempts? has he not revelled in his passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a man? has he regretted them? did they occasion him remorse? will any one tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? that virtue will make men happy he might probably have granted, if asked; but he would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. the commonest christian of the day will say as much; but he will say it in a different meaning from that intended by the philosophers, who had declared, as a rule of life, that virtue would suffice to make them happy. to be good to your neighbors will make you happy in the manner described by cicero in the fifth book, de finibus. love those who come near you. be good to your fellow-creatures. think, when dealing with each of them, what his feelings may be. melt to a woman in her sorrow. lend a man the assistance of your shoulder. be patient with age. be tender with children. let others drink of your cup and eat of your loaf. where the wind cuts, there lend your cloak. that virtue will make you happy. but that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he laid down his doctrine. that was not the virtue with which brutus was strong when he was skinning those poor wretches of salamis. such was the virtue with which the heart of cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the cilician town come out into the market-place with their corn. cicero begins the second book of the tusculans by telling us that neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too much at a time. with himself the matter was different: "in what else is there that i can do better?" then he takes the bit between his teeth and rushes away with it. the reader feels that he would not stop him if he could. he does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him otherwise employed. he wrote three treatises, de natura deorum. had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. we have an idea of what was cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis deus"[292]--that god which reigns within us--and which he declares in scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. nothing can be farther removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us, either in the first book, in which the gods of epicurus are set forth; in the second, in which the stoics are defended; or the third, in which the gods, in accordance with the academy, are maintained; not but that, either for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect does not say the best that is to be said. velleius is eloquent for the epicureans, balbus for the stoics, and cotta for the academy. and in that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth--though indeed cicero makes his epicurean as absurd as he well can do. but he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an energetic preacher is sure to create. the language is excellent, the stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot very well reply to them; but they leave on the mind of the reader a sad feeling of the lack of reality. in the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such subjects so late in life. "being sick with ease, and having found the condition of the republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man. i have thought it good, for the sake of the republic, to write about philosophy in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens, believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the state that things of such weight should be set forth in the latin tongue;"[293] not that the philosophy should be set forth, but what the different teachers said about it. his definition of eternity--or rather the want of definition--is singular: "there has been from all time an eternity which no measurement of time can describe. its duration cannot be understood--that there should have been a time before time existed."[294] then there comes an idea of the godhead, escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly ciceronian: "lo, it comes to pass that this god, of whom we are sure in our minds, and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear to us."[295] by-and-by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the epicureans: "therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in want, in laughing at us. indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have not the power. i do not say this to you," he says, addressing velleius, "for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of our people; but i am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him who is the father of your rules--a man without science, without letters--one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight, without wit."[296] cicero, i think, must have felt some genuine dislike for epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these. then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the greek poet aratus. cicero when a lad had taken in hand the phænomena of aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced some of his lines. aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar: "the twins;" "the bull;" "the great bear;" "cassiopeia;" "the waterman;" "the scorpion;" these and many others are made to come forward in hexameters--and by cicero in latin, as by aratus in their greek guise. we may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead--but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of epicurus, and is made to conclude that balbus does not believe in his own argument. it has been sometimes said of cicero that he is too long. the lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world. farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that age, shows an accurate knowledge. but what has it to do with the nature of the gods? "when the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. the stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * the lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge--just fit for drawing in the breath. they blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life."[297] the third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant raillery against epicurus. cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty with epicurus. epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal gods. his gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. but from balbus, the stoic, they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. in all these discourses it seems that the poor epicureans are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. but cotta continues, and tells many stories of the gods. he is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the ms., and his arguments have come to us unfinished. "it is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. in the same way i do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction."[298] it is thus that is discussed the nature of the gods in this work of cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time. the de natura deorum is followed by two books, de divinatione, and by the fragment of one, de fato. divination is the science of predicting events. by "fatum" cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. the three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the state to foster observances, and even to punish their non-observance--for the benefit of the whole--even though they might not be in themselves true. he is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition--and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. if the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. if they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. he repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. in such a theory as this put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. i cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to assert the honesty of cicero. i can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. if any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include cicero with the archbishop of canterbury. i am not. it seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. i distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. i will take our protestant church of england religion and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. when did sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the word of god, and when again did they cease to be so? if it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. it has never begun! it has never wavered! and there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. in the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? does not the church admit prayers for change of weather? ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. he has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it. or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superstition of the multitude. i am not saying this as against the religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which cicero also required when he wrote as follows: "former ages erred in much which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. but the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the state. our consuls, claudius and junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily."[299] no stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the state. there will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail. though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. but they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken. such, i think, was the reasoning within cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. in the first he encounters his brother quintus at his tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of religion. quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the auspices. he is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. in this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. "stare super vias antiquas," is the motto of quintus cicero. then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. there is the one which he calls "ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. the soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. he is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a friday. he knows--or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows--that ships that have put to sea on friday have generally gone to the bottom. he therefore predicts against the going to sea. although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false. that can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others--a process which requires the close observations of science to make good. that is art. then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed--one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit--as the sibyl, or epimenides of crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. quintus explains as to these that the god does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use them.[300] he tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. the book so becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry--some by others and some by cicero. here are given those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon which i have ventured to call the best amid the nine versions brought forward.[301] we cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise: "i often ask myself and turn in my mind how best i may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which i should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the state; and nothing better has occurred to me than that i should make known the way of studying the best arts--which indeed i think i have now done in various books."[302] then he recapitulates them. there is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to hortensius, now lost. then in the four books of the academics he had put forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest--meaning the new academy. after that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. the tusculan inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well. having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. we cannot but sympathize with him because we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. brutus believed it, and cato, and that velleius, and that balbus, and that cotta. or if perchance any of them did not, they lived, and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did. the example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened. "græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes. intulit agresti latio."[303] here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. "my fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the republic fell into the power of one man i neither hid myself nor did i desert them; nor did i idly weep, or carry myself as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that i should have to be ashamed of what i had done myself. for i had learned this lesson from the philosophy of plato--that there are certain changes in public affairs. they will be governed now by the leaders of the state, then by the people, sometimes by a single man."[304] this is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. he knows that he is preaching only to a few--in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. his language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. and we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother as at the gods themselves--they are so clearly wooden gods--though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the state that they shall be received. he declares that, in accordance with the theory of his brother--meaning thereby the stoics--"it is necessary that they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men."[305] it is playful, argumentative, and satirical. at last he proposes to leave the subject. socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse de divinatione is brought to an end. of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it. it is the desire of cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs which men call life, it matters little whether there be a destiny or not. things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. what is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? all this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of thankfulness that all these books of chrysippus of which he tells us, are not still existent to be investigated. such is the end of those works which i admit to have been philosophical, and of which it seems he understood that they were the work of about eighteen months. they were all written after cæsar's triumph--when it was no longer in the power of any roman to declare his opinion either in the senate or in the forum. cæsar had put down all opposition, and was made supreme over everything--till his death. the de fato was written, indeed, after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped themselves as to make it necessary that cicero should return to public life. so, indeed, were the three last moral essays, which i shall notice in the next chapter; but in truth he had them always in his heart. it was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving either to himself or to some faithful tiro the subsequent duty of rearrangement. but what a head there was there to contain it all! chapter xiii. _cicero's moral essays._ we have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. i have seen somewhere a calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and eager scholars. i make a more modest estimate of his powers. judging from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort to keep the greater portion of his letters, i think that i do not exaggerate his writing. who can say but that as time goes on some future petrarch or some future mai may discover writings hitherto unknown, concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the labors of middle-age monks? it was but in 1822 that the de republica was brought to light--so much of it at least as we still possess; and for more than thirty years afterward cardinal mai continued to reproduce, from time to time, collections of greek and latin writings hitherto unheard of by classical readers. let us hope, however, that the zeal of the learned may stop short of that displayed by simon du bos, or we may have whole treatises of cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[306] i can hardly content myself with classifying the de republica and the de legibus under the same name with these essays of cicero, which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. but it may pass, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the de officiis in the garb of philosophy. it has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. the works reviewed in the last chapter contained disputations on the greek philosophy which cicero thought might be well handled in the latin language for the benefit of his countrymen. it would be well for them to know what epicurus taught, or zeno, and how they differed from socrates and plato, and this he told them. now in these moral essays he gives them his own philosophy--if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach men how to live well. there are six books on government, called the de republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to man, in three. there is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word republic. it has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a most evil scent, according to their politics. but there is, in truth, the republic of russia, as there is that of the united states, and that of england. cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means "the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account of the roman empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and scientific. he himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and magnificent in the roman empire. the great men of rome, whom the empire had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. by the expulsion of their kings, the class from whom these men had been chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. the reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when he begins to read roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of these oligarchs. they have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes to them from vulgar hands. let me ask any man who remembers the reading of his livy whether it was not so with him. but it was in truth the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of rome and enabled the government to go on. then by degrees the people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. then the evils of oligarchy began. plunder, rapine, and luxury took the place of duty performed. a verres ruled where a marcellus had conquered. cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown according to its nature. that state of affairs was produced which mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. but cicero did not see it. he had his eyes on the greatness of the past--and on himself--and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from rome. he was in this state of mind when he wrote his de republica, nine years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical discussions. then he still hoped. cæsar was away in gaul, and pompey maintained at rome the ghost of the old republic. he could still open his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. he had not been as yet driven to find consolation amid that play of words which constitutes the greek philosophy. i must remind the readers again that the de republica is a fragment: the first part is wanting. we find him telling us the story of the elder cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. then he gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the number he names himself. but he soon introduces the form of dialogue which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger scipio and lælius upon the scene. the lessons which are given to us are supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater scipio who out-manoeuvred hannibal. he continues to tell story after story out of the roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices of the people. is it only because i am an englishman that he seems to me to describe that form of government which was to come in england? the second book also begins with the praises of cato. scipio then commences with romulus, and tells the history of rome's kings. tarquin is banished, and the consulate established. he tells us, by no means with approbation, how the tribunate was established, and then, alas! there comes a break in the ms. in the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by augustine, in which cicero complains of the injustice of nature in having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak, infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. then, after a while, through many "lacunæ," scipio, lælius, and one philus fall into a discourse as to justice. there is a remarkable passage, from which we learn that the romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that of modern nations. they would not even permit their transalpine allies to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make their way across italy--whereby they raised the prices against themselves terribly of oil and wine.[307] "there is a kind of slavery which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who might 'properly belong to themselves.' but when they only are made to be slaves who--" we may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. but it is evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are slaves by right. carneades, the later master of the new academy, has now joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in this country. "if you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you, you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. but you would do it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." from this may be seen the nature of the discourses on justice. the next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and manners. in the sixth we come to that dream of scipio which has become so famous in the world of literature that i do not know whether i can do better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my volume. it is in itself so beautiful in parts that i think that all readers will thank me. (see appendix to this chapter). at the same time it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty cicero strove to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. the music of the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now as it was then--and because poetic, therefore not absurd. the length of the year's period is an extravagance. you may call your space of time by what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. he tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the other side of the ganges, or that our voices shall come down through many years. i myself read this dream of scipio in a volume found in australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. he could judge of this world's future only by the past. but when he tells us of the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue, of the duty upon us to remain here where god has placed us, and of the insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he was not permitted to hear. two years afterward, about the time that milo was killing clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, de legibus. it is, we are told, a copy from plato. as is the topica a copy from aristotle, written on board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. the idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. it is a dialogue between him and atticus and his brother quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. all that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. there are some pretty morsels, as when atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow-epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine.[308] now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] he constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his greek philosophy. it was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men. in the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise de divinatione. but in this, de legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large. there is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the gods. gold and silver will create impure desire. ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple enough for a god. metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for worship. an image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood, or one block of stone. if cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. let there be no bright colors. white is best for the gods; and so on.[310] here we have the wisdom of plato, or of those from whom plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. it is not only that a god cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. that rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. it was seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the gods. how many a man has since learned to regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the better? there may be a question of æsthetics, indeed, with which cicero does not meddle. in the third book he descends to practical and at the same time political questions. there had been no matter contested so vehemently among romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the tribunate. cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother quintus. quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. what can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? then cicero puts him down. "o quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? you might say the same of the consuls; for the very possession of power is an evil in itself. but without that evil you cannot have the good which the institution contains. the power of the tribunes is too great, you say. who denies it? but the violence of the people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader than if no leader had been given them. the leader will measure his danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[311] he afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on principle. "let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their votes be known to their betters."[312] it is, alas, useless now to discuss the matter here in england! we have been so impetuous in our wish to avoid the evil of bribery--which was quickly going--that we have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by revolutionary changes. when men vote by tens of thousands the ballot will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. it is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the roman empire with matters which are perplexing us to-day. we now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the philippics and certain of his letters, and the topica. indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes difficult to assign their exact places to each. he mentions one as written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the former. they were all composed in the same year, the year before his death--the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are concerned--and i shall here treat de senectute first, then de amicitia, and the de officiis last, believing them to have been published in that order. the de senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally called cato major. it is supposed to have been spoken by the old censor, 149 b.c., and to have been listened to by scipio and lælius. this was the same scipio who had the dream--who, in truth, was not a scipio at all, but a son of paulus æmilius, whom we remember in history as the younger africanus. cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were probably as well known before his time as they have been since. all men wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. the answer is that no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of which old age is the necessary ending. it creeps on us so quickly! but in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy; but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes. it is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act poem shall be well performed. cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of the world's history. it was written by an old man to an old man; for it is addressed to atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals much in commonplaces. but it is full of noble thoughts, and is pleasant, and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet savor of the dignity of age. let the old man feel that it is not for him to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself from much of the evil which time can do to him. i am ready for you, and you cannot hurt me. "let not the old man assume the strength of the young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * * but still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. the melodious voice, however, remains, which--and you see my years--i have not yet lost. the voice of an old man should always be tranquil and contained."[313] he tells a story of massinissa, who was then supposed to be ninety. he was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on foot and never mounted.[314] "we must resist old age, my lælius. we must compensate our shortness by our diligence, my scipio. as we fight against disease, so let us contend with old age.[315] * * * why age should be avaricious i could never tell. can there be anything more absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a journey?"[316] he tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he believes they are still alive--that, though they have gone from this earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered worthy of the name."[317] the de amicitia is called lælius. it is put into the mouth of lælius, and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the presence of his two sons-in-law, caius fannius and mucius scævola, a few days after the death of scipio his friend. not damon and pythias were more renowned for their friendship than scipio and lælius. he discusses what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what means it should be preserved. cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been placed under the charge of scævola the augur, and how, having changed his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, scævola fell into that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how once lælius had discoursed to them on friendship. it is from first to last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early summer grass to men who live in cities. the reader feels, as he goes on with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have been altogether unhappy. coming at the end of his life, in the telling the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. he has sometimes been querulous with his atticus. he has complained of bad advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship--in reading which accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. but atticus understood him. he knew that the privileges and the burden must go together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the privileges to compensate the burden. when we make our histories on the bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. in writing this treatise de amicitia especially for the eyes of atticus, how constantly the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them--how confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! he who, after nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on friendship cannot have been an unhappy man. "should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be repressed. you shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let it take the place of the old. age and custom will have given the old fruit a flavor of its own. who is there that would ride a new horse in preference to one tried--one who knows your hand?"[318] i regard the de officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language. it is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it. it is addressed to his son, and is as good now as when it was written. there is not a precept taught in it which is not modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for christians and pagans. a system of morality, we might have said, should be one which would suit all men alike. we are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. the "honestum" means much more in latin than it does in english. neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the rendering--not that honor or that honesty which we know. modern honor flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight; while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honor is based. "honestum" includes it all; and cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. but he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. he never preaches. he does not fulminate his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of punishments; but he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you seem to have found out for yourself what is good--you and he together, and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and decorous. in cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself from the circumstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at last, by means of work done for the state, a time of blessed rest, he gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil world can bestow upon him. look back through the treatises written during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the last polish given by his own hands to these three books de officiis was added amid the heat and turmoils of the philippics. it is so singular, this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are taught almost to think that there must have been two ciceros, and that the one was eager in personal conflict with antony, while the other was seated in the garden of some italian villa meditating words by obeying which all men might be ennobled. in the dialectical disputations of the greek philosophers he had picked up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted for a discourse so free and open as is this. we are therefore somewhat offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three headings."[319] if it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know it, it should, i think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at logical completeness. it is impossible to call this a fault. accuracy must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. but feeling myself to be occasionally wounded by this numbering, i mention it. in the de officiis he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he devotes a book. in the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be done or left undone--that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse; and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells us what to choose and what to avoid. the duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat higher than we accord to it. "parents are dear, children are dear to us, so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what good man would not die so that he might serve it? how detestable, then, is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and have been and are occupied in its destruction."[320] he gives us some excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. but at the end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and fitting recreation.[321] i have said that he was modern in his views--but not altogether modern. he defends the suicide of cato. "to them," he says, speaking of cato's companions in africa, "it might not have been forgiven. their life was softer and their manners easier. but to cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had strengthened with all the severity of his will. he had always remained steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the tyrant of his country."[322] there was something terribly grand in cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of cicero. so much cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's character. let us look back and we shall find that we make the same allowance. this is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an apology which he makes. read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of a gentleman: "there are two kinds of beauty. the one is loveliness, which is a woman's gift. but dignity belongs to the man. let all ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear--and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. the manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. the same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is best."[323] then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "those sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers. all those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work but not their art." as for instance, the painter of a picture shall be held to follow a liberal occupation--but not so the picture dealer. "they are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. all mere workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere workshop produce? least of all can those trades be said to be good which administer only to our pleasures--such as fish-mongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers."[324] he adds at the end of his list that of all employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care of a freeman. in all of this it is necessary that we should receive what he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now departing from us--whether for good or evil who shall say? in the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked among those round him. "but when the republic," he says, "had ceased to be--that republic which had been all my care--my employment ceased both in the forum and the senate. but when my mind absolutely refused to be inactive, i thought that i might best live down the misery of the time if i devoted myself to philosophy."[325] from this we may see how his mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "nihil agere autem quum animus non posset!" how piteous was his position, and yet how proud! there was nothing for him to do--but there was nothing because hitherto there had been so much that he had always done. he tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. to be ashamed of nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. but for him there is this difficulty: "if any one on his entrance into the world has had laid upon him the greatness of a name won by his father, let us say--as, my cicero, has perhaps happened to you--the eyes of all men will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life. he will be so placed under the meridian sun that no word spoken or deed done by him shall be hidden.[326] * * * he must live up to the glory to which he has been born." he gives to his son much advice about the bar. "but the greatest praise," he says, "comes from defending a man accused; and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and ill-treated by the power of some great man. this happened to me more than once in my youth, when, for instance, i defended roscius amerinus against sulla's power." the speech is with us extant still.[327] he tells us much as to the possession of money, and the means of insuring it in a well-governed state. "take care that you allow no debts to the injury of the republic. you must guard against this at all hazards--but never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. nothing is so requisite to the state as public credit--which cannot exist unless debtors be made to pay what they owe. there was nothing to which i looked more carefully than this when i was consul. horse and foot, they tried their best; but i opposed them, and freed the republic from the threatened evil. never were debts more easily or more quickly collected. when men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they paid. but he who was then the conquered is the conqueror now. he has effected what he contemplated--even though it be not now necessary for him."[328] from this passage it seems that these books must have been first written before cæsar's death. cæsar, at the time of catiline's conspiracy, had endeavored to annul all debts--that is, to establish "new tables" according to the roman idiom--but had failed by cicero's efforts. he had since affected it, although he might have held his power without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. who could that be but cæsar? in the beginning of the third book there is another passage declaring the same thing: "i have not strength enough for silent solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. in the short time since the republic has been overturned i have written more than in all my former years."[329] that, again, he could not have written after cæsar had fallen. we are left, indeed, to judge, from the whole nature of the discourse, that it was written at the period in which the wrongs done by cæsar to rome--wrongs at any rate as they appeared to cicero--were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to his slaughter. it was written then, but was published a few months afterward. chapter xiv. _cicero's religion._ i should hardly have thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan, had i not, while studying cicero's life, found that i was not dealing with a pagan's mind. the mind of the roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a god. horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. ovid does so still more constantly. they are both full of allusions to "the gods." they are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship, and that the orders of the emperor will be best obeyed by believers. "dis te minorem quod geris, imperas," says horace, when, in obedience probably to augustus, he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples. "superi, quorum sumus omnia," says ovid, thinking it well to show in one of his writings, which he sent home from his banishment, that he still entertained the fashionable creed. but they did not believe. it was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief, in order that those below might live as though they believed, and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. it was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. it was not well that the augurs, who were gentlemen of high family, should go for nothing. cæsar himself was the high-priest, and thought much of the position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. a religious belief was not expected from a gentleman. religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful assistance might perchance come. in dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. i remember no passage in livy or tacitus indicating a religious belief. but with cicero my mind is full of such; and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later i should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of christ's teachings. m. renan has reminded us of cicero's dislike to the jews. he could not learn from the jews--though the jew, indeed, had much that he could teach him. the religion which he required was far from the selfishness of either jew or roman. he believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of god, the performance of his duty to his neighbors, in conscience, and in honesty. "certum esse in cælo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur."[330] "there is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." can st. paul have expressed with more clearness his belief as to a heaven? earlier in his career he expresses in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to another world: "an vero tam parvi animi videamur esse omnes, qui in republica, atque in his vitæ periculis laboribusque versamur, ut, quum, usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum duxerimus, vobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur?"[331] "are we all of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country and ourselves--though we have not had one moment of ease here upon earth--when we die all things shall die with us?" and when he did go it should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. "neque te sermonibus vulgi dederis, nec in præmis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus."[332] "you shall put your hope neither in man's opinion nor in human rewards; but virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." he thus tells us his idea of god's omnipotence: "quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eamdemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam; quem deum appellant."[333] "this force they call the soul of the world, and, looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom, they name it their god." and again he says, speaking of god's care, "quis enim potest--quam existimet a deo se curari--non et dies, et noctes divinum numen horrere?"[334] "who is there, when he thinks that a god is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his divine majesty?" as to man's duty to his neighbor, a subject as to which pagans before and even after the time of cicero seem to have had but vague ideas, the treatise de officiis is full of it, as indeed is the whole course of his life. "omne officium, quod ad conjunctionem hominum et ad societatem tuendam valet, anteponendum est illi officio, quod cognitione et scientia continetur."[335] "all duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object." his belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide: "vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."[336] "that god within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission." as to justice, i need give no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works have been written to uphold. this pagan had his ideas of god's governance of men, and of man's required obedience to his god, so specially implanted in his heart, that he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. to us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often the form of a stern duty. we have had it from our fathers and our mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent hands, still it has been given. it has been there with all its written laws, a thing to live by--if we choose. rich and poor, the majority of us know at any rate the lord's prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. there are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. all rome and all romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. he found it out, certainly. "suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus." "virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." the words to us seem to be quite commonplace. there is not a curate who might not put them into a sermon. but in cicero's time they were new, and hitherto untaught. there was the old greek philosopher's idea that the [greek: to kalon]--the thing of beauty--was to be found in virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold of it. but there was no god connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. it was leather and prunella, that, from first to last. the man had to die and go, melancholy, across the styx. but cicero was the first to tell his brother romans of an intelligible heaven. "certum esse in cælo definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur." "there is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." and then how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us--the very pith and marrow and inside meaning of christ's teaching, by adapting which we have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. when we look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in spite of individual greatness and national honor. but cicero had found it.--"that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"[337] it is all contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to this passage. how different has been the world before that law was given to us and since! even the existence of that law, though it be not obeyed, has softened the hearts of men. if, as some think, it be the purport of christ's religion to teach men to live after a godlike fashion rather than to worship god after a peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that cicero was almost a christian, even before the coming of christ. if, as some think, an eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the disciples of christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for the many, a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had cicero anticipated much of christ's doctrine. that he should have approached the mystical portion of our religion it would of course be absurd to suppose. but a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming the conduct of men. the divine birth, and the doctrine of the trinity, and the lord's supper, are not necessary to teach a man to live with his brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. you shall live with a man from year's end to year's end, and shall not know his creed unless he tell you, or that you see him performing the acts of his worship; but you cannot live with him, and not know whether he live in accordance with christ's teaching. and so it was with cicero. read his works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over the sunday. the urbanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are all there. but you shall not find it to be so with cæsar, or lucretius, or with virgil. when you read his philosophical treatises it is as though you were discussing with some latter-day scholar the theories of plato or of epicurus. he does not talk of them as though he believed in them for his soul's guidance, nor do you expect it. all the interest that you have in the conversation would be lost were you to find such faith as that. you would avoid the man, as a pagan. the stoic doctrine would so shock you, when brought out for real wear, as to make you feel yourself in the company of some mad atheist--with a man for whose welfare, early or late in life, church bells had never been rung. but with a man who has his plato simply by heart you can spend the long summer day in sweet conversation. so it is with cicero. you lie down with him looking out upon the sea at comæ, or sit with him beneath the plane-tree of crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine and the other. so arcesilas may be supposed to have said, and so carneades laid down the law. it was that and no more. but when he tells you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it, then he is in earnest. we care in general but little for any teacher of religion who has not struggled to live up to his own teaching. cicero has told us of his ideas of the godhead, and has given us his theory as to those deeds by which a man may hope to achieve the heaven in which that god will reward with everlasting life those who have deserved such bliss. love of country comes first with him. it behooves, at any rate, a man to be true to his country from first to last. and honesty and honor come next--that "honestum" which carries him to something beyond the mere integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen. then family affection; then friendship; and then that constant love for our fellow-creatures which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us. running through these there are a dozen smaller virtues, but each so mingled with the other as to have failed in obtaining a separate place--dignity, manliness, truth, mercy, long-suffering, forgiveness, and humanity. try him by these all round and see how he will come out of the fire. he so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely; that from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in rome the great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart did not throb for it. in the defence of amerinus and in the prosecution of verres, his object was to stop the proscriptions, to shame the bench, and to punish the plunderers of the provinces. in driving out catiline the same strong feeling governed him. it was the same in cilicia. the same patriotism drove him to follow pompey to the seat of war. the same filled him with almost youthful energy when the final battle for the republic came. it has been said of him that he began life as a liberal in attacking sulla, and that afterward he became a conservative when he gained the consulship; that he opposed cæsar, and then flattered him, and then rejoiced at his death. i think that they who have so accused him have hardly striven to read his character amidst the changes of the time. a conservative he was always; but he wished to see that the things around him were worth conserving. he was always opposed to cæsar, whose genius and whose spirit were opposed to his own. but in order that something of the republic might be preserved, it became necessary to bear with cæsar. for himself he would take nothing from cæsar, except permission to breathe italian air. he flattered him, as was the roman custom. he had to do that, or his presence would have been impossible--and he could always do something by his presence. as far as love of country went, which among virtues stood the first with him, he was pure and great. there was not a moment in his career in which the feeling was not in his heart--mixed indeed with personal ambition, as must be necessary, for how shall a man show his love for his country except by his desire to stand high in its counsels? to be called "pater patriæ" by cato was to his ears the sweetest music he had ever heard. let us compare his honesty with that of the times in which he lived. all the high rewards of the state were at his command, and he might so have taken them as to have been safer, firmer, more powerful, by taking them; but he took nothing. no gorgeous wealth from a roman province stuck to his hands. we think of our cavendishes, our howards, and our stanleys, and feel that there is nothing in such honesty as this. but the cavendishes, the howards, and the stanleys of those days robbed with unblushing pertinacity. cæsar robbed so much that he put himself above all question of honesty. where did he, who had been so greatly in debt before he went to spain, get the million with which he bribed his adherents? cicero neither bought nor sold. twenty little stories have been told of him, not one with a grain of enduring truth to justify one of them. he borrowed, and he always paid; he lent, but was not always repaid. with such a voice to sell as his, a voice which carried with it the verdict of either guilt or innocence, what payments would it not have been worth the while of a roman nobleman to make to him? no such payments, as far as we can tell, were ever made. he took a present of books from his friend poetus, and asked another friend what "cincius" would say to it? men struggling to find him out, and not understanding his little joke, have said, "lo! he has been paid for his work. he defended poetus, and poetus gave him books." "did he defend poetus?" you ask. "we surmise so, because he gave him books," they reply. i say that at any rate the fault should be brought home against him before it is implied from chance passages in his own letters. cicero's affection for his family gives us an entirely unfamiliar insight into roman manners. there is a softness, a tenderness, an eagerness about it, such as would give a grace to the life of some english nobleman who had his heart garnered up for him at home, though his spirit was at work for his country. but we do not expect this from the pompeys and cæsars and catos of rome, perhaps because we do not know them as we know cicero. it is odd, however, that we should have no word of love for his boys, as to pompey; no word of love for his daughter, as to cæsar. but cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. all offences on their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed dishonesty, which was not to be forgiven. the ribaldry of dio cassius has polluted the story of his regard for tullia; but in truth we know nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us more, than the profundity of his grief. his readiness to forgive his brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety to take them back to his affections, his inability to live without them, tell of his tenderness. his friendship for atticus was of the same calibre. it was of that nature that it could not only bear hard words but could occasionally give them without fear of a breach. can any man read the records of this long affection without wishing that he might be blessed with such a friendship? as to that love of our fellow-creatures which comes not from personal liking for them, but from that kindness of heart toward all mankind which has been the fruit to us of christ's teaching, that desire to do unto others as they should do unto us, his whole life is an example. when quæstor in sicily, his chief duty was to send home corn. he did send it home, but so that he hurt none of those in sicily by whom it was supplied. in his letter to his brother as to his government of asia minor, the lessons which he teaches are to the same effect. when he was in cilicia, it was the same from first to last. he would not take a penny from the poor provincials--not even what he might have taken by law. "non modo non fænum, sed ne ligna quidem!" where did he get the idea that it was a good thing not to torment the poor wretches that were subjected to his power? why was it that he took such an un-roman pleasure in making the people happy? cicero, no doubt, was a pagan, and in accordance with the rules prevailing in such matters it would be necessary to describe him of that religion, if his religion be brought under discussion. but he has not written as pagans wrote, nor did he act as they acted. the educated intelligence of the roman world had come to repudiate their gods, and to create for itself a belief--in nothing. it was easier for a thoughtful man, and pleasanter for a thoughtless, to believe in nothing, than in jupiter and juno, in venus and in mars. but when there came a man of intellect so excellent as to find, when rejecting the gods of his country, that there existed for him the necessity of a real god, and to recognize it as a fact that the intercourse of man with man demanded it, we must not, in recording the facts of his life, pass over his religion as though it were simple chance. christ came to us, and we do not need another teacher. christ came to us so perfected in manhood as to be free from blemish. cicero did not come at all as a teacher. he never recognized the possibility of teaching men a religion, or probably the necessity. but he did see the way to so much of the truth as to perceive that there was a heaven; that the way to it must be found in good deeds here on earth; and that the good deeds required of him would be kindness to others. therefore i have written this final chapter on his religion. appendix to volume ii. appendix. (_see_ page 308, vol. ii.) _scipio's dream._ scipio the younger had gone, when in africa, to meet massinissa, and had there discussed with the african king the character of his nominal grandfather, for he was in fact the son of paulus æmilius and had been adopted by the son of the great conqueror at zama. he had then retired to rest, and had dreamed a dream, and is thus made to tell it. africanus the elder had shown himself to him greater than life, and had spoken to him in the following words: "approach," said the ghost; "approach in spirit, and cease to fear, and write down on the tablets of your memory this that i shall tell you. "look down upon that city. i compelled it to obey rome. it now seeks to renew its former strife, and you, but yet new to arms, have come to conquer it." then from his starry heights he points to the once illustrious carthage. "in twice twelve months that city you shall conquer, and shall have earned for yourself that name which by descent has become yours. destroyer of carthage, triumphant censor, ambassador from rome to egypt, syria, asia, and greece, you shall be chosen consul a second time, though absent and, having besieged numantia, shall bring a great war to an end. then will the whole state turn to you and to your name. the senate, the citizens, the allies will expect you. in one word, it will be to you as dictator that the republic will look to be saved from the crimes of your relatives. "but that you may be always alive to protect the republic, know this. there is in heaven a special place of bliss for those who have served their country. to that god who looks down upon the earth there is nothing dearer than men bound to each other by reverence for the laws." "then, frightened, i asked him whether he were still living, and my father paulus, and others whom we believed to have departed. 'in truth,' he said, 'they live who have escaped from the bondage of the flesh. this which you call life is death. but behold paulus your father.' beholding him, i poured forth a world of tears, but he, embracing me, forbade me to weep. "'since this of yours is life, as my grandsire tells me,' i said, as soon as my tears allowed me to speak, 'why, o father most revered, do i delay here on earth, rather than haste to meet you?' 'it cannot be so,' he answered. 'unless that god whose temple is around you everywhere shall have liberated you from the chains of the body, you cannot come to us. men are begotten subject to his law, and inhabit the globe which is called the earth; and to them is given a soul from among the stars, perfect in their form and alive with heavenly instincts, which complete with wondrous speed their rapid courses. wherefore, my son, by you and by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines, nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been given to you. you may not escape the duty which god has trusted to you. live, my scipio, and shine with piety and justice, as your grandfather did and i have done. it is your duty to your parents and to your relatives, but especially your duty to your country. there lies the road to heaven. by following that course shall you find your way to those who crowd with disembodied spirits the realm beneath your eyes.' "then did i behold that splendid circle of fire which you, after the greeks, call the milky-way, and looking out from thence could see that all things were beautiful and all wonderful. there were stars which we cannot see from hence, and others of tremendous, unsuspected size; and then those smaller ones nearest to us, which shine with a reflected light. but every star among them all loomed larger than our earth. that seemed so mean, that i was sorry to belong to so small an empire. * * * * * "as i gazed a sound struck my ears. 'what music is that,' said i, 'swelling so loudly and yet so sweet?' "'it is that harmony of the stars,' he said, 'which the world creates by its own movement. low and loud, base and treble, they clang together with unequal intervals, but each in time and tune. they could not work in silence, and nature demands that from one end of heaven to the other they shall be sonorous with a deep diapason. the far off give a loud treble twang. those nearest to the moon sound low and base. the earth, the ninth in order, immovable upon its lowest seat, occupies the centre of the system. from the eight there come seven sounds, distinct among themselves, venus and mercury joining in one effort. in that number is the secret of all human affairs. learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. what sense is duller? it is as when the nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, become deaf.' * * * * * "'then,' said africanus, 'look and see how small are the habitations of men, how grand are those of the angels of light. what fame can you expect from men, or what glory? you see how they live in mean places--in small spots, lonely amid vast solitudes, and that they who inhabit them dwell so isolated that nothing can pass between them. can you expect glory from them? "'you behold this earth surrounded by zones. you see two of them, frozen from their poles, have been made solid with everlasting ice; and how the centre realm between them has been scorched by the sun's rays. two, however, are fit for life. they who inhabit the southern, whose footsteps are opposed to ours, are a race of whom we know nothing. but see how small a part of this little earth is inhabited by us who are turned toward the north. for all the earth which you inhabit, wide and narrow, is but a small island surrounded by that sea which you call the great atlantic ocean--which, however large as you deem it, how small it is! has your name or has mine been able, over this small morsel of the earth's surface, to ascend mount caucasus or to cross the ganges? who in the regions of the rising or setting sun has heard of our fame? cut off these regions, distant but a hand's breadth, and see within what narrow borders will your reputation be spread! they who speak of you--for how short a time will their voices be heard? "'grant that man, unenvious, shall wish to hand down your fame to future ages, still there will come those storms of nature. the earth will be immersed in water and scorched with fire; a doom which in the course of ages must happen, and will deny to you any lasting glory. will you be content that they who are to come only shall hear of you, when to those crowds of better men who have passed away your name shall be as nothing? "'and remember too that no man's renown shall reach the duration of a year. men call that space a year which they measure by the return of a single star to its old place. but when all the stars shall have come back, and shall have made their course across the heavens, then, then shall that truly be called a year. in this year how many are there of our ages contained. for as when romulus died, and made his way here to these temples of the gods, the sun was seen by man to fade away, so will the sun again depart from the heavens, when the stars, having accomplished their spaces, shall have returned to their old abodes. of this, the true year, not a twentieth part has been as yet consumed. if, then, you despair of reaching this abode, which all of true excellence strive to approach, what glory is there to be gained? when gained, it will not last the space of one year. look then aloft, my son, and fix your eyes upon this eternal home. despise all vulgar fame, nor place your hopes on human rewards. let virtue by her own charms lead you on to true glory. let men talk of you--for talk they will. man's talk of man is small in its space, and short-lived in its time. it dies with a generation and is forgotten by posterity.' "when he had spoken i thus answered him: 'africanus,' i said, 'i indeed have hitherto endeavored to find a road to heaven, following your example and my father's; but now, for so great a reward, will i struggle on more bravely.' 'struggle on,' he replied, 'and know this--not that thou art mortal but only this thy body. this frail form is not thyself. it is the mind, invisible, and not a shape at which a man may point with his fingers. know thyself to be a god. to be strong in purpose and in mind; to remember to provide and to rule; to restrain and to move the body it is placed over, as the great god does the world--that is to be a god. and as the god who moves this mortal world is eternal, so does an eternal soul govern this frail body.'" footnotes: [1] as i shall explain a few pages farther on, four of these speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious. [2] see mr. long's introduction to these orations. "all this i admit," says mr. long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, and extravagant compositions." [3] pro cn. plancio, ca. xxx.: "nonne etiam illa testis est oratio quæ est a me prima habita in senatu. * * * recitetur oratio, quæ propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est." [4] quintilian, lib. xi., ca. 1, who as a critic worshipped cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been up to his time the feeling of the roman world as to cicero's self-praise: "reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter cicero." [5] ad att., lib. iv., 2. he recommends that the speech should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus gives further proof that we still here have his own words. when so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an oration so prepared would remain extant. [6] i had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v., chap. viii., of mommsen's history. [7] "politique des romains dans la religion;" a treatise which was read by its author to certain students at bordeaux. it was intended as a preface to a longer work. [8] ad div., lib. i., 2. [9] ad div., lib. i., 5: "nosti hominis tarditatem, et taciturnitatem." [10] ad quintum fratrem, lib. ii., 3. [11] ibid., lib. ii., 6. [12] ad att., lib. iv., 5. [13] ad div., lib. v., 12. [14] very early in the history of rome it was found expedient to steal an etruscan soothsayer for the reading of these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier, who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (livy, v., 15). we are naively told by the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. on a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: crows built in the temple of juno. a green tree took fire. the waters of mantua became bloody. in one place it rained chalk in another fire. lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. an ox spoke in sicily. a precocious baby cried out "io triumphe" before it was born. at spoletum a woman became a man. an altar was seen in the heavens. a ghostly band of armed men appeared in the janiculum (livy, xxiv., 10). on such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked sons of eli. even horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the gods--certainly as though he thought that public morals would be improved by renewed attention to them: delicta majorum immeritus lues, romane, donec templa refeceris.--od., lib. iii., 6. [15] see the preface by m. guerault to his translation of this oration, de aruspium responsis. [16] ca. ix.: "who is there so mad that when he looks up to the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung from chance--things so wonderful that the most intelligent among us do not understand their motions?" [17] ca. xxviii.: "quæ in tempestate sæva quieta est, et lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque hæret in patria, splendetque per se semper, neque alienis unquam sordibus obsolescit." i regard this as a perfect allocution of words in regard to the arrangement both for the ear and for the intellect. [18] ca. xliv.: "there have always been two kinds of men who have busied themselves in the state, and have struggled to be each the most prominent. of these, one set have endeavored to be regarded as 'populares,' friends of the people; the other to be and to be considered as 'optimates,' the most trustworthy. they who did and said what could please the people were 'populares,' but they who so carried themselves as to satisfy every best citizen, they were 'optimates.'" cicero, in his definition, no doubt begs the question; but to do so was his object. [19] mommsen, lib. v., chap. viii., in one of his notes, says that this oration as to the provinces was the very "palinodia" respecting which cicero wrote to atticus. the subject discussed was no doubt the same. what authority the historian has found for his statement i do not know; but no writer is generally more correct. [20] de prov. cons., ca. viii. [21] ca. xiii. [22] ca. xiv. [23] ca. xviii. [24] pro c. balbo, ca. vii. [25] ibid., ca. xiii. [26] gibbon, decline and fall, ca. vii. [27] there was no covenant, no bond of service, no master's authority, probably no discipline; but the eager pupil was taught to look upon the anxious tutor with love, respect, and faith. [28] in pisonem, xxvii. even in cicero's words as used here there is a touch of irony, though we cannot but imagine that at this time he was anxious to stand well with pompey. "there are coming on the games, the most costly and the most magnificent ever known in the memory of man; such as there never were before, and, as far as i can see, never will be again." "show yourself there if you dare!"--he goes on to say, addressing the wretched piso. [29] plutarch's life of pompey: "crassus upon the expiration of his consulship repaired to his province. pompey, remaining in rome, opened his theatre." but plutarch, no doubt, was wrong. [30] we may imagine what was the standing of the family from the address which horace made to certain members of it in the time of augustus. "credite pisones," de arte poetica. the pisones so addressed were the grandsons of cicero's victim. [31] quin., ix., 4: "pro dii immortales, quis hic illuxit dies!" the critic quotes it as being vicious in sound, and running into metre, which was considered a great fault in roman prose, as it is also in english. our ears, however, are hardly fine enough to catch the iambic twang of which quintilian complains. [32] ca. xviii., xx., xxii. [33] "quæ potest homini esse polito delectatio," ad div., vii., 1. these words have in subsequent years been employed as an argument against all out-of-door sports, with disregard of the fact that they were used by cicero as to an amusement in which the spectators were merely looking on, taking no active part in deeds either of danger or of skill.--_fortnightly review_, october, 1869, the morality of field sports. [34] ad att., lib. iv., 16. [35] ad div., ii., 8. [36] see the letter, ad quin. frat., lib. iii., 2: "homo undique actus, et quam a me maxime vulneraretur, non tulit, et me trementi voce exulem appellavit." the whole scene is described. [37] ad fam., v., 8. [38] ad quin. frat., ii., 12. [39] ad att., iv., 15. [40] val. max., lib. iv., ca. ii., 4. [41] horace, sat., lib. ii., 1: hor. "trebati, quid faciam præscribe."--treb. "quiescas."--hor. "ne faciam, inquis, omnino versus?"--treb. "aio."--hor. "peream male si non optimum erat." trebatius became a noted jurisconsult in the time of augustus, and wrote treatises. [42] ca. iv.: "male judicavit populus. at judicavit. non debuit, at potuit." [43] ca. vi.: "servare necesse est gradus. cedat consulari generi prætorium, nec contendat cum prætorio equester locus." [44] ca. xix. [45] ad fam., i., 9. [46] ca. xi. [47] ad fam., lib. ii., 6: "dux nobis et auctor opus est et eorum ventorum quos proposui moderator quidem et quasi gubernator." [48] mommsen, book v., chap. viii. according to the historian, clodius was the achilles, and milo the hector. in this quarrel hector killed achilles. [49] ad att., lib. iv., 16. [50] ad fam., lib. vii., 7. [51] vell. pat., ii., 47. [52] we remember the scorn with which horace has treated the roman soldier whom he supposes to have consented to accept both his life and a spouse from the parthian conqueror: milesne crassi conjuge barbara turpis maritus vixit?--ode iii., 5. it has been calculated that of 40,000 legionaries half were killed, 10,000 returned to syria, and that 10,000 settled themselves in the country we now know as merv. [53] ad quin. frat., lib. ii., 4, and ad att., lib. iv., 5. [54] "interrogatio de ære alieno milonis." [55] livy, epitome, 107: "absens et solus quod nulli alii umquam contigit." [56] the curia hostilia, in which the senate sat frequently, though by no means always. [57] ca. ii. [58] ca. v. [59] ca. xx., xxi. [60] ca. xxix. [61] ca. xxxvii.: "o me miserum! o me infelicem! revocare tu me in patriam, milo, potuisti per hos. ego te in patria per eosdem retinere non potero!" "by the aid of such citizens as these," he says, pointing to the judges' bench, "you were able to restore me to my country. shall i not by the same aid restore you to yours?" [62] ad fam., lib. xiii., 75. [63] ad fam., lib. vii., 2: "in primisque me delectavit tantum studium bonorum in me exstitisse contra incredibilem contentionem clarissimi et potentissimi viri." [64] cæsar, a sketch, p. 336. [65] ibid., p. 341. [66] he reached laodicea, an inland town, on july 31st, b.c. 51, and embarked, as far as we can tell, at sida on august 3d, b.c. 50. it may be doubted whether any roman governor got to the end of his year's government with greater despatch. [67] no exemption was made for cæsar in pompey's law as it originally stood; and after the law had been inscribed as usual on a bronze tablet it was altered at pompey's order, so as to give cæsar the privilege. pompey pleaded forgetfulness, but the change was probably forced upon him by cæsar's influence.--suetonius, j. cæsar, xxviii. [68] ad div., lib. iii., 2. [69] ad att., lib. v., 1. [70] abeken points out to us, in dealing with the year in which cicero's government came to an end, b.c. 50, that cato's letters to cicero (ad fam., lib. xv., 5) bear irrefutable testimony as to the real greatness of cicero. see the translation edited by merivale, p. 235. this applies to his conduct in cilicia, and may thus be taken as evidence outside his own, though addressed to himself. [71] the roman triumvirate, p. 107. [72] cæsar, a sketch, pp. 170, 341. [73] professor mommsen says no word of cicero's government in cilicia. [74] i cannot but refer to mommsen's account of this transaction, book v., chap. viii.: "golden fetters were also laid upon him," cicero. "amid the serious embarrassments of his finances the loans of cæsar free of interest * * * were in a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration for the senate was nipped in the bud by the thought that the agent of cæsar might present a bill to him after the close of the sitting." there are many assertions here for which i have looked in vain for the authority. i do not know that cicero's finances were seriously embarrassed at the time. the evidence goes rather to show that they were not so. had he ever taken more than one loan from cæsar? i find nothing as to any question of interest; but i imagine that cæsar treated cicero as cicero afterward treated pompey when he lent him money. we do not know whether even crassus charged cæsar interest. we may presume that a loan is always made welcome, or the money would not be borrowed, but the "high degree of welcome," as applied to this especial loan, ought to have some special justification. as to cicero's anxiety in borrowing the money i know nothing, but he was very anxious to pay it. the borrowing and the lending of money between roman noblemen was very common. no one had ever borrowed so freely as cæsar had done. cicero was a lender and a borrower, but i think that he was never seriously embarrassed. what oration was nipped in the bud by fear of his creditor? he had lately spoken twice for saufeius, once against s. clodius, and against plancus--in each case opposing the view of cæsar, as far as cæsar had views on the matter. the sum borrowed on this occasion was 800,000 sesterces--between £6000 and £7000. a small additional sum of £100 is mentioned in one of the letters to atticus, lib. v., 5., which is, however, spoken of by cicero as forming one whole with the other. i can hardly think that mommsen had this in view when he spoke of loans in the plural number. [75] m. c. marcellus was consul b.c. 51; his brother, c. claudius marcellus, was consul b.c. 50, another c. claudius marcellus, a cousin, in b.c. 49. [76] mommsen calls him a "respected senator." m. de guerle, in his preface to the oration pro marcello, claims for him the position of a delegate. he was probably both--though we may doubt whether he was "respected" after his flogging. [77] ad att., lib. v., 11: "marcellus foede in comensi;" and he goes on to say that even if the man had been no magistrate, and therefore not entitled to full roman treatment, yet he was a transalpine, and therefore not subject to the scourge. see mr. watson's note in his select letters. [78] ad div., lib. ii., 8. [79] ad att., lib. v., 13. [80] ibid.: "quæso ut simus annui; ne intercaletur quidem." it might be that an intercalary month should be added, and cause delay. [81] ad div., lib. viii., 2: "ut tibi curæ sit quod ad pantheras attinet." [82] ad att., lib. v., 14. [83] ad div., lib. iii., 5. [84] ad att., lib. v., 15. [85] ibid., 16. [86] ad att., lib. v., 17. [87] ad div., lib. iii., 6. [88] ad div., lib. xv., 1. [89] ibid., iii., 8. [90] ad div., lib. viii., 8. [91] ad div., lib. viii., 10. [92] ibid., ii., 10. [93] this mode of greeting a victorious general had no doubt become absurd in the time of cicero, when any body of soldiers would be only too willing to curry favor with the officer over them by this acclamation. cicero ridicules this; but is at the same time open to the seduction--as a man with us will laugh at the sir johns and sir thomases who are seated around him, but still, when his time comes, will be pleased that his wife shall be called "my lady" like the rest of them. [94] ad div., lib. ii., 7. [95] ad att., lib. v., 2. [96] ad div., lib. xv., 4. [97] ibid., xv., 10, and lib. xv., 13: "ut quam honorificentissimum senatus consultum de meis rebus gestis faciendum cures." [98] ad div., lib. viii., 6. [99] ibid., 7. [100] ibid., iii., 7. [101] ibid., 9. [102] the amount seems so incredible that i cannot but suspect an error in the ms. the sum named is two hundred attic talents. the attic talent, according to smith's dictionary, was worth £243 13_s._ it may be that this large amount had been collected over a series of years. [103] ad att., lib. v., 21. [104] ibid., vi., 1. this is the second letter to atticus on the transaction, and in this he asserts, as though apologizing for his conduct to brutus, that he had not before known that the money belonged to brutus himself: "nunquam enim ex illo audivi illam pecuniam esse suam." [105] in the letter last quoted, "flens mihi meam famam commendasti." "believe," he says, "that i cling to the doctrines which you yourself have taught me. they are fixed in my very heartstrings." [106] see the former of the two letters, ad. att., lib. v., 21: "quod enim prætori dare consuessent, quoniam ego non acceperam, se a me quodam modo dare." [107] ad att., vi., 1: "tricesimo quoque die talenta attica xxxiii., et hoc ex tributis." on every thirteenth day he gets thirty three talents from the taxes, the talent being about £243. of the poverty of ariobarzanes we have heard much, and of the number of slaves which reached rome from his country. it was thus, probably, that the king paid pompey his interest. mancipiis locuples eget æris cappadonum rex.--hor. epis., lib. i., vi. persius tells us how the roman slave-dealer was wont to slap the fat cappadocian on the thigh to show how sound he was as he was selling him, sat. vi., 77. "cappadocis eques catastis" is a phrase used by martial, lib. x., 76, to describe from how low an origin a roman knight might descend, telling us also that there were platforms erected for the express purpose of selling slaves from cappadocia. juvenal speaks also of "equites cappadoces" in the same strain, sat. vii., 15. the descendant even of a slave from cappadocia might rise to be a knight. from all this we may learn what was the source of the £8000 a month which pompey condescended to take, and which cicero describes as being "ex tributis." [108] ad att., lib. vi., 2. [109] ad att., lib. vi., 3. [110] ad div., lib. viii., 11. [111] ad att., lib. vi., 4, 5. [112] ad div., lib. ii., 15: "scito me sperare ea quæ sequuntur." [113] ibid. [114] ad att., lib. vii., 1. [115] ad att., lib. vi., 8. [116] ad att., lib. xi., 1. [117] appius and piso were the last two censors elected by the republic. [118] ad div., lib. ii., 15. [119] appian, de bell. civ., lib. ii., 26. the historian tells us that the consul built a temple with the money, but that curio had paid his debts. [120] mommsen, book v., ca. ix. [121] ad att., lib. vii., 1: "video cum altero vinci satius esse quam cum altero vincere." [122] ad att., lib. vii., 2: "adolescentem, ut nosti, et adde, si quid vis, probum." [123] ad att., lib. vii., 20-23. [124] ibid., lib. viii., 4. [125] ibid., lib. viii., 7. [126] copy of letter d, enclosed in letter to atticus, lib. viii., 11. [127] ad att., lib. ix., 10. [128] ibid., lib. ix., 12. [129] ad att., lib. x., 4. [130] ad att., lib. xi., 5. [131] horace, sat., lib. i., sat. 5. [132] ad att., lib. xi., 7. [133] ad div., xiv., 16. [134] ad att., lib. xi., 24. [135] ad att., lib. xi., 24. [136] ibid., lib. xi., 20-22. [137] ad div., xiv., 22, 20. the numbers going the wrong way is only an indication that the letters were wrongly placed by grævius. [138] ad att., lib. xi., 22. [139] oratoriæ partitiones, xvii., xxiii. [140] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxi.: "catoni cum incredibilem tribuisset natura gravitatem, eamque ipse perpetua constantia roborasset, semperque in proposito susceptoque consilio permansisset, moriendum potius quam tyranni vultum aspiciendum fuit." [141] this was lucius volcatius tullus. [142] but it is now, i believe, the opinion of scholars that wolf has been proved to be wrong, and the words to have been the very words of cicero, by the publication of certain fragments of ancient scholia on the pro marcello which have been discovered by cardinal mai since the time of the dispute. [143] ad div., iv., 11. [144] pro marcello, ii. [145] pro ligario, i. [146] pro ligario, iii. [147] ad fam., lib. iv., 14. [148] ad div., lib. ix., 16. [149] ad att., lib. xii., 7. [150] ibid., 32. [151] ad div., lib. xvi., 21. [152] pliny, hist. nat., lib. xiv., 28. [153] ad div., lib. vi., 18. [154] ad att., lib. xii., 12. [155] ibid., 18, 28. [156] ad att., lib. xii., 14. [157] ibid., 18, 28. [158] ad att., lib. xiii., 28. [159] suetonius, julius cæsar, ca. xxxvii. [160] ad att., lib. xiii., 44. [161] ad att., lib xiii., 42. [162] pro rege deiotaro, ii. [163] ibid., ca. xii.: "solus, inquam, es, c. cæsar, cujus in victoria cecide it nemo nisi armatus." [164] cæsar, de bello gallico, lib. iii., 16: "itaque, omni senatu necato, reliquos sub corona vendidit," he says, and passes on in his serene, majestic manner. [165] quint., lib. x., vii.: "nam ciceronis ad præsens modo tempus aptatos libertus tiro contraxit." [166] horace, epis., lib. i., 1: "nullus in orbe sinus baiis prælucet amænis." [167] ad att., lib. xiii., 52. [168] ad div., lib. vii., 30. [169] mommsen, book v., xi. [170] he left brundisium on the last day of the year. [171] shakspeare, julius cæsar, act i., sc. 2. [172] ad att., lib. xiv., 9, 15. [173] quintilian, lib. vii., 4. [174] these words will be found in m. du rozoir's summary to the philippics. [175] ad att., lib. xiv., 1. [176] ibid., 14: "quam oculis cepi justo interitu tyranni." [177] morabin, liv. vi., chap. iii., sec. 6. [178] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., ca. lviii. [179] mommsen, book v., xi. [180] ad att., lib. xiv., 4. [181] ibid., lib. xiv., 6. [182] ibid., lib. xiv., 7. [183] ad att., lib. xiv., 9. [184] ibid., lib. xiv., 11. [185] ad att., lib. xiv., 13. [186] ad div., lib. xvi., 23. [187] ad div., lib. ix., 11. [188] ad att., lib. xiv., 21. [189] ad att., lib. xv., 21. [190] ibid., lib. xv., 26. [191] ad att., lib. xv., 27. [192] ibid., lib. xvi., 1. [193] ibid., lib. xvi., 5. [194] ibid., lib. xvi., 2. [195] ad att., lib. xvi., 7. [196] phil., i., 5: "nimis iracunde hoc quidem, et valde intemperanter." "who," he goes on to say, "has sinned so heavily against the republic that here, in the senate, they shall dare to threaten his house by sending the state workmen?" [197] brutus, ciceroni, lib. ii., 5: "jam concedo ut vel philippici vocentur quod tu quadam epistola jocans scripsisti." i fear, however, that we must acknowledge that this letter cannot be taken as an authority for the early use of the name. [198] phil., i., ca. vii. [199] ibid., i., ca. viii. [200] ibid., i., ca. x. [201] the year of his birth is uncertain. he had been consul three years back, and must have spoken often. [202] ad div., lib. xii., 2. [203] it may here be worth our while to quote the impassioned language which velleius paterculus uses when he chronicles the death of cicero, lib. ii., 66: "nihil tamen egisti, m. antoni (cogit enim excedere propositi formam operis, erumpens animo ac pectore indignatio), nihil, inquam, egisti, mercedem cælestissimi oris et clarissimi capitis abscissi numerando, auctoramentoque funebri ad conservatoris quondam reipublicæ tantique consulis irritando necem. rapuisti tu m. ciceroni lucem solicitam, et ætatem senilem, et vitam miseriorem, te principe, quam sub te triumviro mortem. famam vero gloriamque factorum atque dictorum adeo non abstulisti, ut auxeris. vivit, vivetque per omnium sæculorum memoriam; dumque hoc vel forte, vel providentia, vel utcumque constitutum, rerum naturæ corpus, quod ille pæne solus romanorum animo vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentia illuminavit, manebit incolume, comitem ævi sui laudem ciceronis trahet, omnisque posteritas illius in te scripta mirabitur, tuum in eum factum execrabitur; citiusque in mundo genus hominum, quam ea, cadet." this was the popular idea of cicero in the time of tiberius. [204] ad div., lib. xii., 23. [205] ad att., lib. xvi., 11. [206] on referring to the milo, ca. xv., the reader will see the very different tone in which cicero spoke of this incident when antony was in favor with him. [207] it was a sign of an excellent character in rome to have been chosen often as heir in part to a man's property. [208] horace, odes, lib. iii., 30. [209] ad att., lib. xvi., 14. [210] philippics, lib. vi., 1. [211] "populum romanum servire fas non est, quem dii immortales omnibus gentibus imperare voluerunt." [212] ad div., lib. xi., 8. [213] ad div., lib. x., 3. [214] ad brutum, lib. ii., 6. [215] appian. de bell. civ., lib. iii., ca. 26. [216] vell. pat., lib. ii., 62: "quæ omnia senatus decretis comprensa et comprobata sunt." [217] ad div., lib. xii., 7. this is in a letter to cassius, in which he says, "promisi enim et prope confirmavi, te non expectasse nec expectaturum decreta nostra, sed te ipsum tuo more rempublicam defensurum." [218] appian, lib. iii., ca. 50. the historian of the civil wars declares that piso spoke up for antony, saying that he should not be damnified by loose statements, but should be openly accused. feelings ran very high, but cicero seems to have held his own. [219] ad div., lib. x., 27. [220] suetonius, augustus, lib. xi. [221] tacitus, ann., lib. i., x.: "cæsis hirtio et pansa, sive hostis illos, seu pansam venenum vulneri affusum, sui milites hirtium et, machinator doli, cæsar abstulerat." [222] philip., xiv., 3: "omnibus, quanquam ruit ipse suis cladibus, pestem, vastitatem, cruciatum, tormenta denuntiat." [223] philip., xiv., 12: "o fortunata mors, quæ naturæ debita, pro patria est potissimum reddita." [224] ad div., lib. xi., 9. [225] ibid., lib. xi., 10. [226] ibid., lib. xi., 11. [227] ibid., lib. xi., 18. [228] ad div., lib. x., 34. [229] ad brutum, lib. i., 4. [230] ad div., lib. xi., 20: "ipsum cæsarem nihil sane de te questum, nisi quod diceret, te dixisse, laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum." [231] ad div., lib. xii., 10. [232] appian, lib. iii., 92. [233] dio cassius, lib. xlvi., 46. [234] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., 65. [235] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., 66: "repugnante cæsare, sed frustra adversus duos, instauratum sullani exempli malum, proscriptio." [236] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., 66: "nihil tam indignum illo tempore fuit, quam quod aut cæsar aliquem proscribere coactus est, aut ab ullo cicero proscriptus est." [237] suetonius, augustus, 27: "in quo restitit quidem aliquamdiu collegis, ne qua fieret proscriptio, sed inceptam utroque acerbius exercuit." [238] phil., iv., ca. xviii. [239] in the following list i have divided the latter, making the moral essays separate from the philosophy. [240] i have given here those treatises which are always printed among the works of cicero. [241] de inventione, lib. ii., 4. [242] quintilian, in his proæmium or preface: "oratorem autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse nisi vir bonus non potest." it seems as though there had almost been the question whether the perfect orator could exist, although there was no question he had never done so as yet. [243] quint., lib. iii., 1: "præcipuum vero lumen sicut eloquentiæ, ita præceptis quoque ejus, dedit unicum apud nos specimen orandi, docendique oratorias artes, m. tullius." and in tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx.: "ita ex multa eruditione, ex pluribus artibus," he says, speaking of cicero, "et omnium rerum scientia exundat, et exuberat illa admirabilis eloquentia; neque oratoris vis et facultas, sicut ceterarum rerum, angustis et brevibus terminis cluditur; sed is est orator, qui de omni quæstione pulchre, et ornate, et ad persuadendum apte dicere, pro dignitate rerum, ad utilitatem temporum, cum voluptate audientium possit." this has not the ring of tacitus, but it shows equally well the opinion of the day. [244] de oratore, lib. i., ca. xi. [245] ibid., lib. i., ca. xxv. [246] ibid., lib. i., ca. xliv. [247] ibid., lib. i., ca. lii. [248] ibid., lib. i., ca. lx. [249] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. i. [250] ibid., lib. ii., ca. vii. [251] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xv. [252] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxiv. [253] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. xxvii.: "ut probemus vera esse ea, quæ defendimus; ut conciliemus nobis eos, qui audiunt; ut animos eorum, ad quemcumque causa postulabit motum, vocemus." [254] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xliv. [255] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. lxviii. [256] de oratore, lib. iii., ca. liv. [257] ibid., lib. iii., ca. lv. [258] brutus, ca. xii. [259] ibid., ca. xvii. [260] ibid., ca. xxxviii. [261] ibid., ca. l. [262] ibid., ca. lvii. [263] ibid., ca. lxxv. [264] brutus, ca. xciii. [265] de divinatione, lib. ii., 1. [266] orator, ca. ii. [267] orator, ca. xxvi. [268] ibid., ca. xxviii. [269] ibid., ca. xxxvi. here his language becomes very fine. [270] ad. att., lib. xiv., 20. [271] topica, ca. 1: "itaque hæc quum mecum libros non haberem, memoria repetita, in ipsa navigatione conscripsi, tibique ex itinere misi." [272] quint., lib. xi., 3. the translations of these epithets are "open, obscure, full, thin, light, rough, shortened, lengthened, harsh, pliable, clear, clouded." [273] brutus, ca. xxxviii. [274] de oratore, lib. i., ca. liii. [275] academica, ii., lib. i., ca. iii. [276] ibid., i., lib. ii., ca. vii. [277] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xii. [278] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix. [279] academica, i., lib. ii., ca. xxxvii. [280] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxxix. [281] pro murena, ca. xxix. [282] de finibus, lib. i., ca. iii. [283] ibid., lib. i., ca. v. [284] de finibus, lib. ii., ca. xxx. [285] de finibus, lib. iii., ca. xxii. [286] de finibus, lib. iv., ca. 1. [287] de finibus, lib. v., ca. ii. [288] ibid., lib. v., ca. xix. [289] ibid., lib. v., ca. xxiii. [290] epis., lib. i., 1, 14. [291] tus. disp., lib. v., ca. xi. [292] tus. disp., lib. i., ca. xxx. [293] de natura deo., lib. i., ca. iv. [294] ibid., lib. i., ca. ix. [295] ibid., lib. i., ca. xiv. [296] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix. [297] de nat. deo., lib. ii., ca. liv., lv. [298] de nat. deo., lib. iii., ca. xxvii. [299] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. xxxiii. [300] de divinatione, lib. i., ca. xviii. [301] ibid., lib. i., ca. xlvii. [302] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. i. [303] horace, ep., lib. ii., ca. i.: "greece, conquered greece, her conqueror subdued. and rome grew polished who till then was rude." conington's translation. [304] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. ii. [305] ibid., lib. ii., ca. li. [306] the story of simon du bos and his ms. has been first told to me by mr. tyrell in his first volume of the correspondence of cicero, p. 88. that a man should have been such a scholar, and yet such a liar, and should have gone to his long account content with the feeling that he had cheated the world by a fictitious ms., when his erudition, if declared, would have given him a scholar's fame, is marvellous. perhaps he intended to be discovered. i, for one, should not have heard of bosius but for his lie. [307] de republica, lib. iii. it is useless to give the references here. it is all fragmentary, and has been divided differently as new information has been obtained. [308] de legibus, lib. i., ca. vii. [309] de legibus, lib. i., ca. x. [310] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xviii. [311] de legibus, lib. iii., ca. ix., x. [312] ibid., lib. iii., xvii. [313] de senectute, ca. ix. [314] ibid., ca. x. [315] ibid., ca. xi. [316] ibid., ca. xviii. [317] ibid., ca. xxi. [318] de amicitia, ca. xix. [319] de officiis, lib. ii., ca. v. [320] ibid., lib. i., ca. xvii. [321] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxix: "suppeditant autem et campus noster et studia venandi, honesta exempla ludendi." the passage is quoted here as an antidote to that extracted some time since from one of his letters, which has been used to show that hunting was no occupation for a "polite man"--as he, cicero, had disapproved of pompey's slaughter of animals on his new stage. [322] ibid., lib. i., ca. xxxi. [323] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxvi. it is impossible not to be reminded by this passage of lord chesterfield's letters to his son, written with the same object; but we can see at once that the roman desired in his son a much higher type of bearing than the englishman. the following is the advice given by the englishman: "a thousand little things, not separately to be defined, conspire to form these graces--this 'je ne sais quoi' that always pleases. a pretty person; genteel motions; a proper degree of dress; an harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly raised manner of speaking--all these things and many others are necessary ingredients in the composition of the pleasing 'je ne sais quoi' which everybody feels, though nobody can describe. observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be persuaded that, in general, the same thing will please or displease them in you. having mentioned laughing, i must particularly warn you against it; and i could wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh, while you live." i feel sure that cicero would laugh, and was heard to laugh, and yet that he was always true to the manners of a gentleman. [324] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xlii. [325] de officiis, lib. ii., l. [326] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiii. [327] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiv. [328] de officiis, lib. ii., ca. xxiv. [329] ibid., lib. iii., ca. i. [330] de republica, lib. vi. it is useless to give the chapters, as the treatise, being fragmentary, is differently divided in different editions. [331] ad archiam, ca. xii. [332] de republica, lib. vi. [333] academica, 2, lib. i., ca. vii. [334] academica, 1, lib. ii., ca. xxxviii. [335] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xliv. [336] tusc. disputationes, lib. i., ca. xxx. [337] de finibus, lib. v., ca. xxiii. index. a. abeken, german, biographer of cicero, ii., 39. "abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit," i., 228. academica, the, i., 33; ii., 251, 281. actio prima, contra verrem, i., 139. actio secunda, contra verrem, i., 138. aculeo, cicero's uncle, i., 42. adjournments, on account of games in the trial of verres, i., 138. advocate, duty in rome, i., 85, 165; his duties, ii., 319. ædile, cicero as, i., 162. "æstimatum," tax on corn in sicily, i., 152. agrarian law, two speeches, i., 190; two supplementary speeches, 191. [greek:aideomai trôas], i., 288. allobroges, their ambassadors, i., 230; alluded to by horace, 231; rewarded, 233. æmilius, the consul, bribed by cæsar, ii., 116. amanus, cicero's campaign at the mountain range, ii., 90. amicitia, de, ii., 252; lælius tells its praises, 313. amnesty, granted after cæsar's death, ii., 181; cicero's opinion respecting it, 214. anatomical researches, ii., 296. antiochus of comagene, cicero pleads against, ii., 48. antiphon, an actor, criticism on, ii., 48. antonius caius, cicero's colleague in the consulship, i., 185; not trusted, 186; was worth nothing, 229; cicero expects money from, 251. antonius marcus, the orator, i., 43. antony, abuse of, i., 151; silenced by cicero, 204; cassius had desired his death, ii., 178; forges cæsar's writing, 181; writes to cicero, 184; cicero desires to make him leave italy, 190; desires cicero to assist in the senate, 191; desires that cicero's house shall be attacked, 192; determines to answer the first philippic, 195; left no friend to speak for him, 196; his character by paterculus, 197; the same from virgil, _ibid._; how he sought favor with cæsar, 201; how he quarrelled with dolabella, 202; his letter to hirtius, 222; wages war against four consuls, 224; one of the triumvirate, 238. appius claudius, letter to, ii., 79; runs away from cicero, 87; takes away three cohorts, 87; sends ambassadors to rome to praise him, 88; his dishonesty, 113; twice tried, _ibid._; censor, 114. apronius, who he was, and his character, i., 153. arabarches, nickname for pompey, i., 291. aratus, the phænomena translated, i., 46; the prognostics translated, 277; ii., 296. arbuscula, the actress, ii., 48. archias, cicero's tutor, i., 47; cicero's speech, 252. ariobarzanes, in debt to pompey and brutus, ii., 100. army, cicero joins it, i., 48. arpinum, cicero's birthplace, i., 40. asconius pedianus, commentator of cicero, i., 180; declares that cicero had accused crassus of joining catiline, 218; tells the story of milo's trial, ii., 61. asia, cicero travels in, i., 56. asians, the character given them by cicero, i., 296. "assectatores," who they were, i., 112. athens, cicero is afraid to live there, i., 322; cicero's description of, ii., 289. atticus, letters, private, i., 10, 12, 13, 16; cicero's faith in, 19; general letters, 58; his character, 58, 166, 182; cicero informs him as to clodius, 255; and of his speech in pompey's favor, 258; did not quarrel with cicero, 302; cicero complains of his conduct, and then apologizes, 318; leads money to cicero, 323; no letter of his extant, ii., 139; receives a commission to see cicero's debts paid, 188; cicero's last letter to, 206. augurs, college of, ii., 58. augustine has produced a fragment of the de republica, ii., 307. augustus, devoid of scruple, i., 77; born in the consulship of cicero, i., 239. aulus gellius, tells a story of cicero's house, i., 249. aurelia, via, catiline had left the city by that route, i., 228. autronius, selected consul, i., 214, 252. b. bacon, compared to cicero, ii., 100. balbus, messenger from cæsar to cicero, i., 270; his citizenship defended, ii., 34; his descendant emperor, 34. battle of the eagle and the serpent, i., 46. beesley, mr., as to catiline, i., 205. bibulus as consul, i., 282. birria stabs clodius, ii., 62. boasting, habit of the romans, i., 151. boissier, gaston, his book on cicero, ii., 34. bona dea, her mysteries violated, i., 255. bovilla, at, milo meets clodius, ii., 62. brennus, when at rome, i., 75. brougham, lord, as to "memnon," a tale, i., 46. brundisium, cicero lands at on his return from exile, ii., 129; cicero's misery at, 142. brutus, proposes to make a speech in behalf of milo, ii., 66; his usury, 96; the story of his debt in cilicia, 97; cicero's opinion, 103; letters from, 140; how he should be judged for the murder of cæsar, 174; his character, 180; no aptitude for ruling, _ibid._; cicero meets him at velia, 189; his manners to cicero, 190; praised, 216; correspondence with, doubted, 216; an honest patriot, 227; will not assist cicero, 235; cicero's respect for, 267. brutus, the, ii., 251; brutus, or de claris oratoribus, 265. brutus, decimus, letters from, ii., 140; preparing to fight, 206; deficient as a general, 228; is slain, 235. buthrotum, atticus, writes to cicero respecting, ii., 185. c. cæcilia metella, her tomb, ii., 160. cæcilius, put up to plead against verres, i., 132; ridiculed as to his insufficiency, 136. cæcina, cicero's speech for, i., 163. cælius, one of the young bloods of rome, i., 36; his character, ii., 35; one of clodia's lovers, _ibid._; defended by cicero, 36; harangues the people for milo, 64; scolded for the folly of his letters, 84; asks for panthers, 85; style of his letters, 89; attached to cicero, 90; letters from, 140. cælius, c., left in charge of cilicia, ii., 106. cæparius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., 232. cærellia, her name mentioned, ii., 186. cæsar, devoid of scruple, i., 77; his debts, 103; his cruelty, 104; cicero's treatment of, 152; passing the rubicon, 176; did he join the conspiracy of catiline, 215; in debt, 216; his prospects, _ibid._; no ground for accusing him as second conspiracy, 219; his opinion of cicero, _ibid._; attempt to murder as he left the senate, _ibid._; present at the first catiline oration, 225; speech as to catiline, 236; his career commenced, 241; did not think of overthrowing the republic, 242; had not thought of ruling rome, 260; money nothing to him, 266; his general character, _ibid._; his first consulship, 282; illegality of his actions, 283; has the two gauls allotted to him, 284; endeavors to screen cicero, 292; naturally a conspirator, ii., 20; defence of his proconsular power, 29, 30, 31; his doings in gaul, 31; cicero's conduct in reference to, 32; why cicero flattered him, 33; intends to rule the empire, 39; crosses into britain, 56; money due to him by cicero, 82; returns the two legions, 116; sits down at the rubicon, 117; tramples on all the laws, 118; cicero excuses his letter to, 122; his clemency to romans, 137; absence of revenge, _ibid._; does not allow cicero to sell his property, 138; is magnificent, 139; sits as judge, 153; returns to spain, 156; returns from spain, 161; is likened to romulus, 162; his five triumphs, _ibid._; is flattered by cicero, 165; sups with cicero, 168; his death, 172; his assassination esteemed a glorious deed, 175; cicero present, 177; an altar put up to, 185; his laws to be sanctioned, 193. calenus, talks of peace, ii., 214; attacked by cicero, 215. caninius, consul for a few hours, ii., 272. capitol, description of, ii., 179; brutus returns to, _ibid._ cappadocian slaves, ii., 101. cassius, cicero says that he would not obey the senate, ii., 219; will not assist cicero, 235. castor, the temple of, in the trial of verres, i., 143. castor, accuses his grandfather, deiotarus, ii., 164. catiline, one of sulla's murderers, i., 78; cicero opposed to for consulship, 110, 183; cicero does not defend him, 183; the catiline speeches described by cicero, 191; a popular hero, 205; a step between the gracchi and cæsar, 207; mr. beesley's opinion as to his high birth, 211; and courage, _ibid._; his real character, 212; not elected consul, 214; second conspiracy, 218; accused by lepidus, 222; he leaves the city, 228; third speech against, 230; fourth speech against, 235; he dies, 239. cato, accuses murena, i., 193; his stoicism laughed at, _ibid._; speech as to catiline, 238; opposed clodius, 256; keeping gladiators, ii., 23; opposes cicero's request for a "supplication," 105; his death, 147; cicero praises him, 148; a glutton with books, 287; his suicide defended, 317. cato the elder, praise of, ii., 307. catullus, his epigram on cæsar and mamurra, ii., 169. caudine forks, i., 76. "cedant arma togæ," an impotent scream, i., 65. cethegus, one of catiline's conspirators, i., 232. chesterfield, lord, his advice to his son, ii., 318. christian, cicero almost one, ii., 325. christina, queen, on cicero, i., 19. chrysogonus, creature of sulla's, i., 85, 86, 91, 92. churches, rules complied with for the sake of example, ii., 298. cicero, young marcus, wishes to serve under cæsar, ii., 156; money allowed for living at athens, 157; does not do well, 158. cilicia, governed for a year, ii., 8; cicero's mode of government, 77; why undertaken, _ibid._; cicero's government had cost no man a shilling, 85. "cincia lex de muneribus," i., 100. cispius, defended, ii., 46. "civis romanus," his privileges, i., 158. claterna, taken by hirtius, ii., 214. claudian family, desecrated by clodius, i., 275. clodia, her character, i., 317. clodius, cicero's language to, i., 186; accuses catiline, 213; intrudes on the mysteries of the bona dea, 255; acquitted, 257; quarrels with cicero, _ibid._; cicero's speech against, 262; his tribunate, 272; favored by cæsar and pompey, _ibid._; is made a plebeian, 273; prepares to attack cicero, 311; had put up a statue of a greek prostitute as a figure of liberty, ii., 21; slaughtered, 62; his mode of travelling about, 72. cluentius aulus, speech on his behalf, i., 179; work in defending immense, 189. cluvius, leaves cicero a property, ii., 182. "cohors," cicero, in anger, so calls his suite, ii., 107. college of priests, oration spoken before, ii., 20. commentarium of cælius, ii., 105. conduct, cicero's, as governor, ii., 22. conservative, cicero was one, i., 308. consolation, cicero complains that nothing is of use, ii., 160. consular speeches, twelve, i., 190. consulatu de suo, cicero quotes his own poem, i., 271. consulatus de petitione, i., 108. consuls and other officers reconformed by sulla, i., 78; the manner in which they were selected, 184; their duties, 187; never two bad consuls together, ii., 14; cicero asks them to praise him, 92; are they to be sent out of italy? 218. cornelius, a knight employed to kill cicero, i., 223. cornelius caius, speech on his behalf, i., 180. cornelius nepos, on cicero, i., 14; his sayings as to cicero's letters, 166. cotta, lucius aurelius, elected consul, i., 214. cotta, the orator, cicero knew him in his youth, i., 43. courage, as to the nature of, i., 299; shown in the philippics, ii., 199. cowardice, cicero accused of, ii., 220; the charge repelled, 246. crassus, noted for usury, i., 102; did he join catiline? 215; like m. pourier, 217; present at first catiline oration, 225; belauds cicero in the senate, 258; one of the triumvirate, 267; says a man cannot be rich unless he can keep an army in his pay, 315; destroyed in parthia, ii., 57. crassus, lucius, the orator, i., 43; his death, ii., 263. curio the elder, cicero's lampoon, i., 328. curio and claudius, speech against, i., 262. curio bribed by cæsar, ii., 116; intimate with antony, 201. curius, betrays catiline's conspiracy, i., 222. _cybea_, the ship built for verres by the mamertines, i., 155. d. dates, as to those to be used, i., 39. death, endured bravely by cicero, i., 298. decemviri, to be appointed under the law of rullus, i., 198. "decumanum," tithe on corn in sicily, i., 152. "deductores," who they were, i., 115. deiotarus, cicero pleads for, ii., 163. democrat, cicero wrongly called, i., 304. de quincey, his opinion of cicero, i., 20; his anger against middleton, ii., 107. deserter, in politics cicero defended from the accusation, i., 305. despotism, personal, ill effects of, i., 309. dio persecuted in the trial of verres, i., 145. dio cassius, as to cicero, i., 18; as to cicero's oath, 241. diodotus, cicero studies with, i., 50. dionysius, the greek tutor, ii., 121. dishonesty, the charge repelled as to cicero, ii., 245. diversos, ad, letters to, i., 166. "divinatio, in quintum cæcilium," i., 132. divinatione, de, ii., 252, 297. divorces, common with romans, ii., 144. doctrine, cicero does not live according to his own, ii., 291. dolabella, cicero's pupil in oratory, ii., 155; his cruelty, 186. dorotheus, an enemy of sthenius, i., 147; trial of verres, _ibid._ drusus, his gardens to be bought, ii., 161. du bos, simon, ii., 304. duty to the state, ii., 316. dyrrachium, cicero's protection of, i., 101; sojourned there during his exile, 325. e. education, expense of, i., 61. egypt, cicero asked by cæsar to go there, i., 288. eleusinian mysteries, i., 59. elizabeth, queen, glory of her reign, i., 77. "emptum," tax on corn, i., 152. encyclopædia britannica, character of cicero, i., 11. ephesus, how cicero was received there, ii., 85. epicureans, i., 58. epicurus, dying, ii., 286; cicero's peculiar dislike to, 295. epistles, number written by and to cicero, i., 58; the first we have, 166; do not deal with history, 167; their truth, _ibid._; tiro had collected, 70; ii., 188; his last official and military, 231. eques, or knight, cicero one, i., 40. equites, i., 128; their duties as tax-gatherers, 280. equity, cicero accused of trifling with, ii., 100. erasmus, his opinion of cicero, i., 123. erucius, accuses sextus roscius, i., 84, 87. eryx, mount, temple of venus, i., 145. exile, cicero's, i., 125, 297; sentence against cicero, 322; attempt to bring him back, 329; did not write during, 330. f. famine, in rome, ii., 18. fato, de, i., 252, 297, 303. finibus, de, i., 33; ii., 251, 284. fish-ponders, who they were, ii., 180. flaccus, speech on behalf of, i., 295. flavius, his goodness to cicero when exiled, i., 323. florus, as to cicero, i., 16; as to catiline, 209. fonteius, cicero's speech for, i., 163; purchase of a house, 170. formiæ, cicero killed at, ii., 243. formanum, purchases for the villa, i., 171. forsyth, mr., i., 7, 9; passage quoted, 20; defends the english bar, 214; as to cicero's exile, 298; as to the story of brutus, ii., 99; quoted as to the philippics, 226. fortitude, roman, i., 326. froude, mr., accuses cicero of a desire for cæsar's death, i., 9, 10; his sketch of cæsar, 63; hard things said of cicero, 123; as to cicero's exile, 298; gives his reason for cicero's going to cilicia, ii., 77. frumentaria, de re, third speech on the actio secunda in verrem, i., 141. fulvia betrays catiline's conspiracy, i., 222. fulvia, widow of clodius, exposes the body of clodius, ii., 63. g. gabinius, a., abuse of, i., 151; proposes law in favor of pompey, 172; consul when cicero was banished, 312; takes his shrubs, 325; whether he shall be punished, ii., 9; comes back to rome and is defended by cicero, 47. gabinius, p., one of catiline's conspirators, i., 232. gain, the source of mean or noble, ii., 318. gallus, caninius, defended by cicero, ii., 46. gavius, cicero's treatment of, ii., 102. gavius, p., a roman citizen, i., 158. geography, cicero thinks of writing about, i., 289. getæ, shall he bring them down on rome, ii., 123. glabrio, prætor at the trial of verres, i., 138. gloria, de, translated, ii., 188. godhead, cicero's belief in, ii., 26; cicero's ideas of, 295, 326. gracchi, the two, i., 76; latest disciple of, 203; what they attempted, 215. grævius, arranged cicero's letters, i., 168. greece, cicero travels in, i., 56. gueroult, m., his enthusiasm for cicero, i., 252. h. heaven, cicero's idea of, ii., 324. hierosolymarius, nickname of pompey, i., 289. heius, marcus, his story in the trial of verres, i., 155. helvia, cicero's mother's story respecting, i., 42. heraclius, the story of, on the trial of verres, i., 145. herennius, killed cicero, ii., 243. hirtius, on cicero's side, ii., 209; killed, 223. historians, what they would say of cicero, i., 301. homer's verses of the eagle and the serpent, i., 46. honest man, how he ought to live, ii., 319. "honestum," what it means, ii., 315. horace, his boasting, i., 151; his treatment of women, 317. hortensius, on the trial of verres, i., 130, 138, 161; comes to see cicero as he leaves rome, ii., 82. house, purchased on the palatine hill, i., 250; the spot consecrated by clodius, ii., 16. human race, cicero's love for, ii., 290. hypsæus, candidate for the consulship, ii., 61. i. "imperator," cicero is named, ii., 91. income, cicero's amount of, i., 61, 99. insincerity of cicero, ii., 112; almost necessary, _ibid._; cicero's defended, 247. invective, bitterness of cicero's, i., 32. inventione, de, i., 51; four books remaining, ii., 251, 253. j. "jews," gold of their temple saved, i., 296. jonson, ben, his description of catiline, i., 208, 222. journey into greece, cicero intends a, ii., 184. judges, how they sat with a prætor, i., 93. julia, cæsar's wife, dies, ii., 57. jupiter stator, cicero's first speech against catiline in the temple of, i., 224; cicero returns thanks for, in the temple, ii., 12. jurisdictione siciliensi, de, i., 141. juvenal, as to cicero, i., 16; as to catiline, 209. k. killing roman citizens, cicero to be charged with, i., 295. kings, odious to cicero as to all romans, ii., 175. l. labienus, an optimate, i., 293. la harpe, his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., 151. lælius in the dialogue de republica, ii., 307. lanuvium, milo returning from, ii., 62. laodicea, cicero is governor, i., 86. lawyers, cicero ridicules them, i., 194. legacies, a source of income, i., 103. legions, the, are cæsarian, ii., 229. legibus, de, ii., 251; taken from plato, 309. legation offered to cicero, i., 292. lentulus, letters to, ii., 22; explaining his conduct, 51. lentulus, publius cornelius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., 232; killed, 238; cicero broke the law in regard to, 313. lepidus, his character, ii., 210; recommended peace, 221; one of the triumvirate, 240. leucopetra, cicero landed at, ii., 189. lex porcia forbidden death of roman, i., 236. liberty, roman idea of, i., 26. "librarii," short-hand writers, i., 189. ligarius, cicero speaks for, ii., 152. lilybæum, cicero quæstor at, i., 114. literature, cicero's reason for devoting himself to, ii., 256. livy, as to cicero, i., 15; his evidence as to catiline's conspiracy, 217; his political tendencies, ii., 306. long, mr., his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., 151. lucan, as to cicero, i., 15; would have extolled him had he killed himself, 303. lucceius, cicero applies to him for praise, ii., 24. lucretius, the period at which he wrote, i., 24. lucullus, absent in the east seven years, i., 176. lucullus, the, ii., 282 m. macaulay, mr., his verdict as to cicero's character, i., 8. mai, cardinal, his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., 151. mallius, lieutenant of catiline, i., 222; declared a public enemy, 230. mamertines, people of messina, favorites of verres, i., 155. manilia pro lege, i., 177, appendix d. manilius, his law in favor of pompey, i., 177. marcellus, had conquered syracuse, i., 156. marcellus, m. c., is consul, ii., 83; flogs a citizen of novocomum, _ibid._; his enmity to cæsar, 148; cicero speaks for him, 150; is murdered, 151. marcellus caius, cicero congratulates him on his consulship, ii., 88. marius, born at arpinum, i., 40; origin of his quarrel with sulla, 49. marius, a poem by cicero, i., 47. martia, legio, character of, ii., 207. martial, as to cicero, i., 15. mendaciuncula, cicero's use of, i., 164. merivale, dean, as to cicero, i., 9; history of rome, 63; as to catiline, 210; as to cicero's exile, 297. metellus, quintus on the side of verres, i., 129, 138; the history of the family, 248; celer, his complaint against cicero, 246; nepos, forbids cicero to speak on vacating the consulship, 240. middleton, his biography a by word for eulogy, i., 123; quoted as to clodius, 274; as to cicero's exile, 297; censures cicero for going into, 318; nature of his biography, ii., 107. milo, gives public games, ii., 48; cicero wishes him to be consul, 56; his trial, 59; accused of bringing a dagger into the senate, 64; demands protection, 65; condemned, 67; his mode of travelling, 72. milone, pro, cicero's oration, i., 53; specially admired, ii., 60; not heard, 67. mithridates, sulla sent against, i., 50; pompey has command against, 176. molo, cicero studies with, i., 50, 56. mommsen, his history, i., 63; opinion of rome, 72, 74; as to cæsar and crassus, 218; as to cicero's exile, 297; description of rome during cicero's exile, 328; deals hardly with cicero, ii., 33; as to cicero owing money to cæsar, 82; his interpretation of cæsar's names, 172; tells us nothing of cæsar's death, 178; his verdict as to rome, 306. money, restored to cicero for rebuilding his house, ii., 21. montesquieu, as to roman religion, ii., 20. morabin, as to cicero's exile, i., 297; doubts cicero's presence at cæsar's death, ii., 177. moral essays, ii., 304. mourning, cicero assumes prior to his exile, i., 316. munda, final battle of, ii., 156. murena, cicero defended, i., 191; accused of bribery, 192; and of dancing, 193; a soldier, 195. musical charm of cicero's language, ii., 28. mutina, ambassadors sent to antony before, ii., 209; the battle, 223; badly managed, 228. n. names, roman, as to forms to be used, i., 38; usual with romans to have three, 41. nasica, his joke, ii., 262. natura deorum, de, ii., 252, 266, 294. "nomenclatio," the meaning, i., 113. nonis juliis, ii., 188. "novus ante me nemo," i., 202. o. octavius, comes to rome, ii., 181; meets cicero, _ibid._; quarrels with antony, 204; feared by cicero, 205; would he be consul, 232; marches into rome, _ibid._; his enmity to cicero, 233; his insolence, 237; is reconciled to antony, _ibid._; the meeting in the island at bologna, 238; his conduct, _ibid._; letter to him, supposed from cicero, but a forgery, 240. officiis, de, ii., 205, 252; perfect treatise on morals, 314. "o fortunatam natam," i., 277. "old mortality," torture as there described, i., 88. oppianicus, his life, i., 179. oppius publius, his trial, i., 126. optimates, pompey their leader, i., 175. optimo genere oratorum, de, ii., 251, 264. orations, how cicero treated his own, ii., 167. oratiuncula, twelve consular speeches so called, i., 190. orator, the, ii., 251; graced by the name of brutus, 266. oratore, de, cicero's dialogues, ii., 38; sent to lentulus, 46, 251, 256, 270. oratoriæ partitiones, ii., 145, 265. oratory, cicero's three modes of speaking, i., 94; his charms, 137; purposes of, ii., 274. ornament, greek taste for, i., 154. otho's law, speech concerning, i., 190, 204. p. pagan, cicero one, ii., 330. palinodia, or recantation, by cicero, ii., 23. palatine hill, cicero's house destroyed, i., 325. pansa, the consul on cicero's side, ii., 209; slain, 223. paradoxes, the six, ii., 146. partitiones, oratoriæ, ii., 251. peel, sir robert, i., 303. perfection, required in an orator, ii., 257; cicero fails in describing it, 257, 258, 261. perfect orator, not desirable, ii., 275. philippics, origin of the name, ii., 192; the first, 193; the second not intended to be spoken or published, 198; commences with satire against antony, 199; the third and fourth, 206; the fifth, 210; the sixth, 211; the seventh, 212; the eighth, 215; the ninth, _ibid._; the tenth, _ibid._; the eleventh, 217; the twelfth, 220; the thirteenth, 222; the fourteenth, _ibid._ philo, the academician, i., 43; cicero studies with, 50, 51. philodamus, and his daughter in the trial of verres, i., 142. philology, discussed with cæsar, ii., 170. philosophy, cicero's nature of, i., 33, 58, 59; rumor that cicero will devote himself to it, 97; cicero did not believe in it, 194; devotes himself to it, ii., 163; the nature of cicero's treatises, 277; the nature of his feeling, 278; greek laughed at by cicero, _ibid._; not real with him, 280; apologizes for, 319. philotomus, freedman of terentia, ii., 105. phænomena, the, by aratus, i., 46. pindenissum, cicero besieges, ii., 91; his letter to cato respecting, 92. pirates, picked up by officers of verres, i., 160; commission given to pompey against, 171; their power, 172. piso, abuse of, i., 151; consul when cicero was banished, 312; cicero appeals to him, 320; robs cicero, 324; cicero's speech against, ii., 41; of high family, _ibid._; becomes censor, 42; speaks for antony in the senate, 220. piso, calpurnius, cicero defended, i., 191. plancius, very kind to cicero, i., 325; cicero pleads for, ii., 49. plancus, lucius, letters from, ii., 140; cicero writes to him, 211; may have been true, 228, 230, 234. plancus, munatius, cicero's joy at his condemnation, ii., 74. pliny, the elder, as to cicero, i., 204. plato, cicero describes himself as a lover of, ii., 288. plutarch, is to cicero, i., 16; accuses him of running from sulla's wrath, 57. poetry, cicero as a poet, i., 47. poetus, gave some books to cicero, i., 13; cicero's correspondence with, ii., 172; cicero took his books, 328. political opinions, cicero's, i., 54, 55; definition made by cicero, ii., 28. pollio, may have been true, ii., 228, 234. pompeia, cæsar's wife divorced, i., 255. pompeius, strabo, father of pompey the great, i., 49. pompey, the rising man, i., 55; devoid of scruple, 77; appointed to put down the pirates, 172; his character, 173; how regarded by cæsar, 216; his intercourse with cæsar, 243; cicero's letters to, 244; chosen by him as his leader, 246; called home to act against catiline, 247; returns from the east, 257; his jealousy, 259; mommsen's opinion, _ibid._; one of the triumvirate, 267; his marriage with julia, 282; his ingratitude to cicero, 287; his nick-names, 289, 291; promises to help cicero against clodius, 294; the story of cicero kneeling to him, 321; cicero forgives him, 327; offended by cicero's praise of himself, ii., 15; commissioned to feed rome, 19; cicero to be his lieutenant, _ibid._; his games, cicero's description of, 44, 45; sole consul, 59; dictator, 63; would be unwilling to bring back clodius, 73; claims money from ariobarzanes, 101; begins to attack cæsar, 105; borrowed cicero's money, 111; cicero clings to, 119; was murdered at the mouth of the nile, 126. pomponia, her treatment of her husband quintius, ii., 79. pontius glaucus, a poem, i., 44. popilius lænas, killed cicero, ii., 243, 244. populace of rome, condition of, ii., 11. prætor, cicero elected, i., 171, 176. prætura urbana, de, first speech in the second action in verrem, i., 141. proconsul, his desire for provincial robbery, i., 99, 100. property, redistribution of, i., 196. provinces, the struggle for, ii., 206. pseudo asconius, commentaries on the verrine orations, i., 180. publicani, their duties, i., 280. publilia, married to cicero, ii., 155. publius quintius, speech on his behalf, i., 80. punic wars, the, i., 76. puteoli, at, the story he tells of himself, i., 120. q. quæstor, cicero elected, i., 107; his character in regard to the proconsul with whom he acted, 133. quintilian, as to cicero, i., 16, 182, 225; as to cicero's education, 57; says that cicero's speeches were arranged by tiro, 95; description of bar oratory, 96; accuses cicero of running into iambics, ii., 43; his opinion of the pro milone, 60; pro cluentio, 61; cases given by him, 255; his description of an orator's voice, 275, 276. quintus cicero (the elder), i., 42; service in gaul, 62; his character, 169; sent out as proprætor, 262; his brother's letter to him, 277, 278; affecting letter to, 326; speaks ill of his brother to cæsar, ii., 139; and his son, are killed, 243. quintus cicero (the younger) wishes to go to the parthian war, ii., 163; declares his repentance, 187; had been antony's "right hand," _ibid._; his fate, _ibid._; his hypocrisy and the vanity of cicero, 188. quirites, their mode of living, i., 111. r. rabirius, cicero defends, i., 190. rabirius postumus, cicero defends, ii., 53. raillery, not good at the roman bar, ii., 262. reate, cicero speaks for the inhabitants, ii., 48. religion, cicero's, ii., 321. republic, cicero swears that he has saved it, i., 241; cicero's guiding principle, 309; held fast by the idea of preserving it, 310; as conceived by cicero, ii., 227. republica, de, cicero's treatise, ii., 38, 251; six books, 305. republican form of government, popular, i., 261. retail trade, base, i., 102. rheticorum, four books addressed to herennius, i., 51; ii., 251. "rhetores," their mode of tuition, i., 52. rhythm, cicero's lessons too fine for our ears, ii., 271. roman citizens, their mode of life, i., 315. romans, the, had no religion, ii., 321. rome, falling into anarchy, i., 50; how she recovered herself, ii., 204. roscius, the actor, cicero pleads on his behalf, i., 105. roscius, titus capito, i., 85, 90. roscius, titus magnus, i., 85, 89. rosoir, du m, his testimony as to cicero, i., 127; his accusations against, 178; as to cicero's exile, 297; his accusations, ii., 176; accuses cicero of cowardice, 191. rubicon, the passage of, i., 125; ii., 120. ruined man, cicero returns from exile as, ii., 16. rullus, brings in agrarian laws, i., 196; his father-in-law had acquired property under sulla, 198; ridiculed for being "sordidatus," 199; spoken of in the senate, 203. s. "saga," when worn, ii., 223. salaminians agree to be guided by cicero, ii., 99. sallust, as to cicero, i., 17; as to catiline, 187, 209, 219; his story not conflicting with cicero's, 220, 227. "salutatores," who they were, i., 112. sampsiceramus, nickname for pompey, i., 291. sappho, the statue of, by silanion, i., 157. sassia, her life, i., 179. saufeius twice acquitted, ii., 67. scævola, quintus, instructed cicero, i., 43. scaptius, the story of, ii., 93, 102; agent of brutus in getting his debts paid, 96, 99. scipio the great, gives the idea of roman power, i., 76. scipio the younger, in the dialogue de republica, ii., 307; his dream, 308; translated, 333. scipio, q. metellus, candidate for the consulship, ii., 61. sempronia, accused by sallust of dancing too well, i., 193; catiline's plot carried on at her house, 230. sempronia lex declares that a roman should not be put to death, i., 237. senate, their honors, i., 116; their disgrace, 117; pass a vote that they will go into mourning for cicero, 319; cicero's presence demanded in, ii., 189. senate house scene described in a letter to quintus, ii., 22, 23; is burnt, 63; archives destroyed, 70. senectute, de, ii., 252; cato tells its praises, 312. servilius, compliment paid to, at the trial of verres, i., 140. serving his fellow creatures, cicero's way of doing, ii., 300, 301. sextus, letter to, as to borrowing money, i., 249; defence of, ii., 27; cicero's gratitude to, _ibid._ sextus roscius amerinus, i., 80. shakespeare, his conception correct as to cæsar's death, ii., 173. shelley, version of the eagle and the serpent, i., 46. short hand writing, the system of, i., 189. sicilians invite cicero to take their part against verres, i., 118; their wishes for his assistance, 135. sicily divided into two provinces, i., 114. signis, de, fourth speech at the second action in verrem, i., 141. slaves, tortured to obtain evidence, i., 88. solitude, he had not strength to exercise, ii., 320. soothsayers, appeal made to them as to cicero, ii., 26. soothsaying, ii., 300. "sordidatus," cicero's dress before going into exile, i., 301. speeches made by cicero on his return from exile, ii., 9; question whether they be genuine, 10. states, italian, jealousy of, leading to first civil war, i., 49. statilius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., 252. statues, purchase of, i., 170. stenography, the roman system, i., 189. sthenius, his trial, i., 127, 146. suetonius, accuses cæsar of joining catiline, i., 217; character of cæsar, 273. sulla, cicero served with, i., 49; declared dictator, 54; cicero on sulla's side in politics, 55; goes to the east, 67; his massacres, 68; reorganizes the law, 69; his resignation, 70; attacked by cicero, 92. sulla, p., elected consul, i., 214; cicero's speech for, 252. sulpicius, publius, the orator, i., 43. sulpicius, servius, laughed at as an orator, i., 194; one of the ambassadors dies on his journey ii., 213. superstitions of old rome, ii., 25. "supplicatio," decreed to cicero, i., 282, nature of, ii., 104; granted for mutina for fifty days, 225. suppliciis, de, fifth speech in the second action in verrem, i., 141. "symphoniacos homines," i., 160. syracuse, robberies of verres, i., 156. t. tablets of wax used by judges, i., 93. tacitus, as to cicero, i., 16; de oratoribus, 51. terentia, cicero's wife, i., 98; cicero's affection for, 324; as to the divorce, ii., 105; his style to is changed, 115; cicero in a sad condition as to, 138; divorced, 145, 154. teucris, nickname for antony, cicero's colleague, i., 251. thapsus, battle of, ii., 147. thessalonica, cicero's sojourn there during his exile, i., 325. tiro, cicero's slave and secretary, i., 42; cicero's affectionate letters to, ii., 119; cicero writes to, respecting antony, 184. toga virilis, cicero assumes it, i., 48. topica, the, prepared for trebatius, ii., 189, 252; taken from aristotle, 272, 273. torquatus, elected consul, i., 214. torquatus, young, attacks cicero, i., 253. translating, roman feeling in doing it, ii., 252. travels, gives his own reasons for going to greece and asia, i., 58. trebatius, confided to cæsar, i., 62; recommends him to cæsar, ii., 48, 49. trebonius, massacred by dolabella, ii., 217. tribunate, cicero's defence of, ii., 311. "triennium fere fuit, urbs sine armis," i., 67. triumph, cicero applies for, ii., 103; nature of, _ibid._; the cause of trouble to him, 115, 120. triumvirate, the first, i., 264; not mentioned by mommsen, 265; description by horace, _ibid._; not so known, 269. tubero, accuses ligarius, ii., 153; cicero refuses to alter his speech, 154. tullia, cicero's daughter, i., 106, 170; betrothed to caius piso, 171; meets cicero at brundisium, ii., 11; she is a widow, _ibid._; divorced from crassipes, 58; marries dolabella for her third husband, 111; cicero had desired that she should marry tiberius nero, _ibid._; calls her the light of his life, 115; dies, 158; her proposed monument, 160. tullius marcus decula, defended by cicero, i., 123. tusculanæ disputationes, i., 33; ii., 251, 290; their five heads, 291. tusculum villa, gives commission for purchase of statues, i., 170. tusculum, dialogue de oratore held there, ii., 259. twenty-six years old when cicero pleaded his first cause, i., 54. tyranny, in the senate, cicero charged with, ii., 72. tyrrell, mr., arrangement of cicero's letters, i., 169; doubts thrown on a letter to atticus, 191. u. usury, base, i., 102. v. valerius maximus, as to catiline, i., 209. valerius, cicero stays at his villa, ii., 189. varenus, his trial, i., 127. vargunteius, a knight employed to kill cicero, i., 223. varro, the period at which he wrote, i., 24. vatinius, speech against, ii., 28; cicero defends, 48. velleius paterculus, as to cicero, i., 15; as to catiline, 209. veneti, cæsar's treatment of, ii., 166. vercingetorix, conquered at alesia, ii., 74. verres, his trial, i., 125; governor for three years, 126; retires into exile, 141; standard-bearer to hortensius, 149; fined and sent into exile, 161. vibo to velia, cicero's journey in a small boat from, i., 138. vigintiviratus, offered to cicero, i., 12; cicero repudiates, 288. vindemiolæ, the way cicero expends them, 177. virgil, cicero intended by, i., 14; his version of the eagle and the serpent, 46; his boasting, 151; his allusion to cicero, 203; description of catiline, 209. volcatius, does not speak for marcellus, ii., 150. voltaire, version of the eagle and the serpent, i., 40; description of catiline, 208. w. wolf, his criticism on the pro marcello, ii., 151. work, the amount of, done by cicero, ii., 122. the end. 