Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

A >> Anthony Trollope >> Life of Cicero

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

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 Propraetor, and the latter is
a civil case on behalf of Caecina, 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 Aedileship 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 manoeuvres--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 Graevius[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, _aetat._ 39.]

We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year
after his Aedileship. 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, "deliciae nostrae,"[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 L1000, 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 L170 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 Aedile.

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 "palaestra" 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, _aetat._ 40]

He was then candidate for the Praetorship, 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. Caesar, 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 Caesar; 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
Caesar'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. Caesar 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 Caesar, 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, Praetors,
Censors, Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation
that the Consuls and the Praetors 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,
Caesar 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 Praetorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight
Praetors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in
the provinces. The "Praetor 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, _aetat._ 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 bad 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 Quaestor
and Aedile, and was now Praetor, 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27