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

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.

Notes:

[148] De Lege Agraria, ii., 2: "Meis comitiis non tabellam, vindicem
tacitae libertatis, sed vocem vivam prae vobis, indicem vestrarum
erga me voluntatum ac studiorum tulistis. Itaque me----una voce
universus populus Romanus consulem declaravit."

[149] Sall., Conj. Catilinaria, xxi.: "Petere consularum 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 "orationculas
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 Philippies 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 imagins" belonged to those whose ancestors was counted
an Aedile, a Praetor, 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 Agrana, 11, 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.

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 Caesar 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 Caesar as we would do those who might now
plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we deal as heavily with the
murderers of Caesar 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 Caesar, 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. Caesar, 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 Caesar till
the time of Catiline's conspiracy, and in that I agree with him. He
possessed high family rank, and had been Quaestor and Aedile; 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 Caesar and Crassus, the rich man, were concerned with
Catiline. But Caesar 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 Caesar. 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 Caesar.

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 Praetor 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 Caecilius 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 Antronius
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.

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