Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

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THE LIFE OF CICERO BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE

_IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. I.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER II.

HIS EDUCATION.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONDITION OF ROME.

CHAPTER IV.

HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME.

CHAPTER V.

CICERO AS QUAESTOR.

CHAPTER VI.

VERSES.

CHAPTER VII.

CICERO AS AEDILE AND PRAETOR.

CHAPTER VIII.

CICERO AS CONSUL.

CHAPTER IX.

CATILINE.

CHAPTER X.

CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.

CHAPTER XI.

THE TRIUMVIRATE.

CHAPTER XII.

HIS EXILE.

* * * * *

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

APPENDIX B.

APPENDIX C.

APPENDIX D.

APPENDIX E.

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 Caesar, 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 Caesar 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 Caesar'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 Caesar 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] "Caesar was mortal."[5] So much is an intended
translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how Cicero had "hailed Caesar'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
Caesar'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 Caesar to have been meant. But whether Caesar
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 Caesar. 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 Caesar!

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
Caesar 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 Caesar. It was then that the "Vigintiviratus"
was refused, which Quintilian mentions to his honor. It was then that
he refused to be Caesar's lieutenant. It was then that he might have
been fourth with Caesar, 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 patriae 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 Caesar,[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 Caesars, 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
Caesar.[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 Caesar, recollect that Caesar
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
Caesar, 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
Caesar 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.

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