Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

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When at Athens, Cicero was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries--as
to which Mr. Collins, in his little volume on Cicero, in the Ancient
Classics for English Readers, says that they "contained under this
veil whatever faith in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of
an enlightened pagan." In this Mr. Collins is fully justified by what
Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these
mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them
by early Christian writers. They were to those pious but somewhat
prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50]
But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus De Legibus, written
when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that
"of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for
the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the
harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been
lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which
aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds
of a new life. Nor have we received from them only the means of living
with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the
future."[51]

Of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction to
the Eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. But it can hardly be that,
with such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed
in such language to the very friend who had then been his companion,
they should not have been accepted by him as indicating the
commencement of some great line of thought. The two doctrines which
seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom we
regard, the one as a pagan and the other as a Christian, are the
belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our neighbors.
Here they are both indicated, the former in plain language, and
the latter in that assurance of the softening of the barbarity of
uncivilized life, "Quibus ex agresti immanique vita exculti ad
humanitatem et mitigati sumus."

Of the inner life of Cicero at this moment--how he ate, how he drank,
with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and
how lodged--we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware
that he could not have travelled, as he did in Greece and Asia,
without great expense. His brother Quintus was with him, so that cost,
if not double, was greatly increased. Antiochus, Demetrius Syrus,
Molo, Menippus, and the others did not give him their services for
nothing. These were gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious
to carry their wares to the best market. And then he seems to have
been welcomed wherever he went, as though travelling in some sort "en
prince." No doubt he had brought with him the best introductions which
Rome could afford; but even with them a generous allowance must have
been necessary, and this must have come from his father's pocket.

As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the
sources whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never paid
for his services at the bar. To receive such payment was illegal,
but was usual. He claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever
meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at
any rate, from the fault of having broken the law. He has not been
believed. There is no evidence to convict him of falsehood, but he has
not been believed, because there have not been found palpable sources
of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know
to have been incident to the life he led. But we do not know what were
his father's means. Seeing the nature of the education given to the
lad, of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from
his earliest days, of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a
career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it, of the
advantages which costly travel afforded him, I think we have reason to
suppose that the old Cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at
Arpinum was no humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment.

NOTES:

[31] Hor., lib.i., Ode xxii.,

"Non rura qua; Liris quicta
Mordet aqua taciturnus amnis."

[32] Such was the presumed condition of things at Rome. By the passing
of a special law a plebeian might, and occasionally did, become
patrician. The patricians had so nearly died out in the time of Julius
Caesar that he introduced fifty new families by the Lex Cassia.

[33] De Orat., lib.ii., ca.1.

[34] Brutus, ca.lxxxix.

[35] It should be remembered that in Latin literature it was the
recognized practice of authors to borrow wholesale from the Greek,
and that no charge of plagiarism attended such borrowing. Virgil, in
taking thoughts and language from Homer, was simply supposed to have
shown his judgment in accommodating Greek delights to Roman ears and
Roman intellects.

The idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and has grown up
with personal claims for originality and with copyright. Shakspeare
did not acknowledge whence he took his plots, because it was
unnecessary. Now, if a writer borrow a tale from the French, it is
held that he ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even pay
for it.

[36] Juvenal, Sat.x., 122,

"O fortunatum natam me Consule Romam!
Antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic
Omnia dixisset."

[37] De Leg., lib.i., ca.1.

[38] Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by himself, vol.i.,
p. 58.

[39] I give the nine versions to which I allude in an Appendix A, at
the end of this volume, so that those curious in such matters may
compare the words in which the same picture has been drawn by various
hands.

[40] Pro Archia, ca.vii.

[41] Brutus, ca.xc.

[42] Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.

[43] Quintilian, lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the same time as
this essayist, tells us of these three instances of early oratory,
not, however, specifying the exact age in either case. He also reminds
us that Demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that Augustus at
the age of twelve made a public harangue in honor of his grandmother.

[44] Brutus, ca.xc.

[45] Brutus, xci.

[46] Quintilian, lib. xii., vi.: "Quum jam clarum meruisset inter
patronos, qui tum erant, nomen, in Asiam navigavit, seque et aliis
sine dubio eloquentiae ae sapientiae magistris, sed praecipue tamen
Apollonio Moloni, quem Romae quoque audierat, Rhodi rursus formandum
ae velut recognendum dedit".

[47] Brutus, xci.

[48] The total correspondence contains 817 letters, of which 52 were
written to Cicero, 396 were written by Cicero to Atticus, and 369 by
Cicero to his friends in general. We have no letters from Atticus to
Cicero.

[49] Quintilian, lib.x., ca.1.

[50] Clemens of Alexandria, in his exhortation to the Gentiles, is
very severe upon the iniquities of these rites. "All evil be to him,"
he says, "who brought them into fashion, whether it was Dardanus, or
Eetion the Thracian, or Midas the Phrygian." The old story which he
repeats as to Ceres and Proserpine may have been true, but he was
altogether ignorant of the changes which the common-sense of centuries
had produced.

[51] De Legibus, lib.ii., c.xiv.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONDITION OF ROME.

It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the
Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to
include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in
the East, Caesar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the
taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With
very many of the great events which the period includes Cicero took
but slight concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished
when we find how little he had to say of them--he who ran through
all the offices of the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain
allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on
public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four
years. But he was a public man who concerned himself personally with
Rome rather than with the Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign
affairs, were dear to him. To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should
have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother Quintus been
among Caesar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been confided
by himself to Caesar's care. Of Pharsalia we only learn from him that,
in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the
war. Of the proconsular governments throughout the Roman Empire we
should not learn much from Cicero, were it not that it has been shown
to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a
Roman Governor, and by the narratives of Cicero's own rule in Cilicia,
how excellent. The history of the time has been written for modern
readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great research and truth as to
facts, but, as I think with some strong feeling. Now Mr. Froude
has followed with his Caesar, which might well have been called
Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying,
the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with Cicero,
attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts.
With the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed
themselves from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to
the establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not
pretend to deal, although by far the most momentous of them were
crowded into the life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible,
show the condition of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain
what it was that he hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and
relate in a few words what it was that Marius and Sulla had done for
Rome.

Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly
concerned were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life.
Marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman
was born, and had become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of
humble parents, had pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with
Sulla had probably commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done
in the Jugurthine war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that
Marius had proved himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting
in this, that, by making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled
himself in his latter years to become the master of Rome.

Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero--a patrician of
the bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and
having been elected Quaestor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a
man with us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quaestor he was sent
to join Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into
his hands, as it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was
surrendered by his father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry
favor with the Romans. Thence came those internecine feuds, in which,
some twenty-five years later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause
of quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the
heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are not
much to us now; but the condition to which Rome had been brought, when
two such men could scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of
the relatives, friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be
inquired into by those who would understand what Rome had been, what
it was, and what it was necessarily to become.

When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had
put on the "toga virilis", and girt himself with a sword to fight
under the father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian
allies who were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising
to its bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that
war. But Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times
Consul; and he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom
Romans had feared that all Italy would be occupied. What was not
within the power of such a leader of soldiers? and what else but a
leader of soldiers could prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a
General, had been at the mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had
been compelled to make that General six times Consul?

Marias seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then
a General; and because he was great as a soldier and General, the
affairs of the State fell into his hands with very little effort. In
the old days of Rome military power had been needed for defence, and
successful defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and
increased territory. When Hannibal, while he was still lingering in
Italy, had been circumvented by the appearance of Scipio in Africa and
the Romans had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest,
the desire for foreign domination became stronger than that of native
rule. From that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy.
Up to that time a Consul had to become a General, because it was his
business to look after the welfare of the State. After that time a man
became a Consul in order that he might be a General. The toga was made
to give way to the sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets.
We, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are
prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read
the future. In the days of Marius there was probably no man so wise.
Caesar was the first to see it. Cicero would have seen it, but that
the idea was so odious to him that he could not acknowledge to himself
that it need be so. His life was one struggle against the coming
evil--against the time in which brute force was to be made to dominate
intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma togae" was a scream, an
impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done or Caesar was about
to do. The mischief had been effected years before his time, and
had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. Only, in
considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what was good
and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good
was still within reach.

Marius in his way was a Caesar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very
efficient Caesar-having that great gift of ruling his own appetites
which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others.
It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the
two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was
not equal in strategy to anything that Caesar accomplished in Gaul. It
is probable that Caesar learned much of his tactics from studying the
manoeuvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became
hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and
how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been
handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and
the official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest
only of power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law
in such a period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by
force of arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his
life. With him, at least, there was no idea of Roman liberty, little
probably of Roman glory, except so far as military glory and military
power go together.

Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political
condition of the world around him. To make a dash for power, as a dog
might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough
for Marius. Sulla could see something of future events. He could
understand that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could
make fast his own power over them, and that he could best do this by
cutting off the heads of all who stood a little higher than their
neighbors. He might thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself
and others. Some glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to
him; and with the view of producing it, he re-established many of the
usages of the Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of
liberty. It seems to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule
the Empire by adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any
fixed idea of government. To get the better of his enemies, and then
to grind them into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and
riches, and then to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and
money and women, at last even with wine, and to feed his revenge by
remembering the hard things which he was made to endure during
the period of his overthrow--this seems to have been enough for
Marius.[53] With Sulla there was understanding that the Empire must
be ruled, and that the old ways would be best if they could be made
compatible, with the newly-concentrated power.

The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the other,
was nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in
slaughtering the Sullan party--during which, however, Sulla escaped
from Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and
proceeded to Athens and the East with the object of conquering
Mithridates; for, during these personal contests, the command of this
expedition had been the chief bone of contention among them. Marius,
who was by age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla
might not have it. In the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then
Consul for the seventh time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not
return till 83 B.C. In the interval was that period of peace, fit for
study, of which Cicero afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine
armis."[54] Cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old,
and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the Marian
massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms. It was not
that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at
the pleasure of the slaughterer. Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when
Cicero was twenty-four; and if Marius had scourged the city with rods,
he scourged it with scorpions. It was the city, in truth, that
was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. Sulla began by
proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list
all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on
another day. The numbers were gradually raised to 4,7OO! Nor did this
merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some
miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was armed against
the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to
death. This, however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to
inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men generally do
not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men.
Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the ordinary
Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake of the
employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be made to
flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the victim's
life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the man
who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business
assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the
property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere
assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of
an informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were
made in the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were
named for killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock--the few
victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a
trade proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us
how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one
who took no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He
had an Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin.
He had hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before
he was slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an
interval of two or three years after those of Marius, between which
was the blessed time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of
Marius, Cicero was too young, and of no sufficient importance, on
account of his birth or parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it
probable that Marius would have turned against his townsmen. When
Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not absolutely connected with the
Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in politics. In going back even
to this period we may use the terms Liberals and Conservatives for
describing the two parties. Marius was for the people; that is to say,
he was opposed to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and
loved to feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. Of
liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but not
the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. Sulla, on the
other hand, had been born a patrician, and affected to preserve the
old traditions of oligarchic rule; and, indeed, though he took all the
power of the State into his own hands, he did restore, and for a time
preserve, these old traditions. It must be presumed that there was
at his heart something of love for old Rome. The proscriptions began
toward the end of the year 82 B.C., and were continued through eight
or nine fearful months--up to the beginning of June, 81 B.C. A day
was fixed at which there should be no more slaughtering--no more
slaughtering, that is, without special order in each case, and no more
confiscation--except such as might be judged necessary by those who
had not as yet collected their prey from past victims. Then Sulla, as
Dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the old laws. There should
still be Consuls and Praetors, but with restricted powers, lessened
almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what was exactly the
Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when he should
himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges of the
Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have thought of
it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them, he
could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained
by dividing it among them. He certainly contemplated no follower
to himself, no heir to his power, as Caesar did. When he had been
practically Dictator about three years--though he did not continue the
use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down,
as it were, from his throne into private life. I know nothing in
history more remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers
who have dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch,
his biographer, expresses wonder that he should have been willing to
descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies should
have been able to do so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He
had probably left Rome before it occurred, and did not return till
after Sulla's death. It seems to have been accepted as being in no
especial way remarkable.[57] At his own demand, the plenary power of
Dictator had been given to him--power to do all as he liked, without
reference either to the Senate or to the people, and with an added
proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it
down when it pleased him. He did lay it down, flattering himself,
probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his
dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There had been no Dictator in
Rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of
Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a
few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having accomplished the
special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected to do the same;
and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation
in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only by tradition,
that a Dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special
wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the remembrance
of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the Romans.

It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he
ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable
that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without
protection. In the year after his abdication he died, at the age
of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if
Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease.
Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have
praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty,
he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic
again into order. Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom
the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by
the glory of his great acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the
proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being
either a sword or a pen in the service of the State, as a sword or
a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total
"absence of political selfishness--although it is true in this respect
only--Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington."[58] To
us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the
nature of Cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but
of little moment, were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because
Sulla had been Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations
were to Cicero--and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough
when it was dangerous to express them[59]--still it was apparent to
him that the cause of order (what we may call the best chance for the
Republic) lay with the Senate and with the old traditions and laws of
Rome, in the re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of
these institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot
but feel to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he
says "no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless
condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan
constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit
that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left
any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian
seems to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English
historians, that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the
day had not the means of knowing all that they, the historians, know.
Sulla and his Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction
they had restored everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to
have believed that when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on,
and grow in power and prosperity as she had grown, without other
reforms than those which he had initiated. There can be no doubt that
many of the best in Rome--the best in morals, the best in patriotism,
and the best in erudition--did think that, with the old forms, the old
virtue would come back. Pompey thought so, and Cicero. Cato thought
so, and Brutus. Caesar, when he came to think about it, thought the
reverse. But even now to us, looking back with so many things made
clear to us, with all the convictions which prolonged success
produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder change--some such
change as Cicero would have advocated--might not have prevented
the tyranny of Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks of
Caligula, the folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.

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