Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

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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 autobiogiaphy 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 Phaenomena 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 Natura 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 Scaevola, 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
praetexta, and appearing in the toga virilis before the Praetor, 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
Scaevola.

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 Quaestor, Aedile, and Praetor, 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 Praetors, as wars became more numerous; and
latterly the commanders were attended by Quaestors. The Governors of
the provinces, Proconsuls, or Propretors 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
Scaevola; 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 'suasoriae' and
'controversiae,'" tending, we may perhaps say, to persuade or to
refute. "Of these, the 'suasoriae,' as being the lighter and requiring
less of experience, are given to the little boys, the 'controversiae'
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 Caesar 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 cepimus,"[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 Manan 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 Oeschilus 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; seias enim
sentire quae 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.

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