Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

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It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who
has failed. The Caesars of the world are they who make interesting
stories. That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be
acknowledged. He had studied the history of his country, and was aware
that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as Roman power;
and he knew that Rome had produced true patriotism. Her Consuls, her
Censors, her Tribunes, and her Generals had, as a rule, been true to
Rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather
than themselves. And he believed that liberty had existed in Rome,
though nowhere else. It would be well if we could realize the idea of
liberty which Cicero entertained. Liberty was very dear to him--dear
to him not only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the
enjoyment of others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the
population of the Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time
the freedom of the city, which he regarded as necessary to liberty,
belonged only to a small proportion of the population of Italy. It was
the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was anxious. That
a Sicilian should be free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen
was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of
cosmopolitan freedom--an idea which exists with us, but is not common
to very many even now--had not as yet been born: that care for freedom
which springs from a desire to do to others as we would that they
should do to us. It required Christ to father that idea; and Cicero,
though he was nearer to Christianity than any who had yet existed, had
not reached it. But this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so
dear to him that he spent his life in an endeavor to preserve it.
The kings had been expelled from Rome because they had trampled on
liberty. Then came the Republic, which we know to have been at its
best no more than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea
that everything should be done by the votes of the free people. For
many years everything was done by the votes of the free people. Under
what inducements they had voted is another question. Clients were
subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We have heard
of that even in England, where many of us still think that such a way
of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was sometimes
used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven to the
poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence prevailed
with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became rampant,
as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were
bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish
expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery
more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman should have
given a vote according to his conscience. But in what country--the
millennium not having arrived in any--has this been achieved? Though
voting in England has not always been pure, we have not wished to do
away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal
rule. Nor did Cicero.

He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were
very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla,
and had seen the old practices of Roman government brought down to the
pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he thought, there was
life left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism,
labor, and intelligence. It was the best that he could imagine for the
State--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody
hands of one Marius and one Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us
that nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical
government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree
with Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero,
living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped
better things, should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's
wisdom or his patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman
of those days, I should have preferred Cicero, with his memories of
the past, to Caesar, with his ambition for the future.

Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome
was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything
else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et
orbis" was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest
of robbers established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome
learned how to spread their arms over all the known world, and to
conquer and rule, while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity
and industry of other people had produced. To do this, there must have
been not only courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism,
and superior excellence in that art of combination of which government
consists. But yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the
palmy days of Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power
was founded? When was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her
capacity for ruling? Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic
virtues, if they existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the
Rome of the kings claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few
miles from the city. And from the time of their expulsion, Rome,
though she was rising in power, was rising slowly, and through such
difficulties that the reader of history, did he not know the future,
would think from time to time that the day of her destruction had come
upon her. Not when Brennus was at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and
twenty-five years after the expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said
to have been great; nor when, fifty or sixty years afterward, the
Roman army--the only army which Rome then possessed--had to lay down
its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass under the Samnite yoke.
Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome was mistress in
Italy--mistress, after all, of no more than Southern Italy--the Punic
wars began. It could hardly have been during that long contest with
Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that the palmy
days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be the
master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Canne, year after year, threaten
complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no
doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of
the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before
Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal
ambition; and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the
arm of Rome is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader,
there is already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings
with Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Achaeans, though
successful, were hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and
the reader begins to doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not
already over. They demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as
they were impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The
war with Jugurtha followed, in which the Romans were for years
unsuccessful, and during which German hordes from the north rushed
into Gaul and destroyed an army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to
Marius and to Sulla, of whom we have already spoken, and to that
period of Roman politics which the German historian describes as
being open to no judgment "save one of inexorable and remorseless
condemnation."

But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will
be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same
severity. In all that man has done as yet in the way of government,
the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in
advance. The period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by
what dangers were we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we
might have been subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and
petty tyrannies were we governed through the reigns of James I. and
Charles I.! What periods of rottenness and danger there have been
since! How little glorious was the reign of Charles II.! how full of
danger that of William! how mean those of the four Georges, with the
dishonesty of ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And to-day, are
there not many who are telling us that we are losing the liberties
which our forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed
on us "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" We are
a great nation, and the present threatenings are probably vain.
Nevertheless, the seeds of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies
and our practices--so manifestly inherent that future historians will
pronounce upon them with certainty.

But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his
mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in
his heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and
which was his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might
be recovered and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla--Pompey
also, toward the end of his career, if I can read his character
rightly--Caesar, and of course Augustus, being all destitute of
scruple, strove to acquire, each for himself, the power which the weak
hands of the Senate were unable to grasp. However much, or however
little, the country of itself might have been to any of them, it
seemed good to him, whether for the country's sake or for his own,
that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had the opportunity,
and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there is always
present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional
possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and
I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters,
dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend
so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware quite as well
as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than
any others, that there was much that was rotten in the State. Men
who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others who had
murdered on behalf of Sulla--among whom that Catiline, of whom we have
to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle themselves
down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the law
courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closests of
his favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and
obedient. The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero
began his public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day
were men chosen at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The
courts were now again opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by
Sulla when murderers might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should
not be paid for murdering--had arrived. There was not, one would say,
much hope for good things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of
order, and the best hope lay in that direction. Consuls, Praetors,
Quaestors, Aediles, even Tribunes, were still there. Perhaps it might
be given to him, to Cicero, to strengthen the hands of such officers.
At any rate, there was no better course open to him by which he could
serve his country.

The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with being
insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in
carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of
having changed his purpose. It has been alleged that, having begun
life as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had
secured his high office of State. As we go on, it will be my object
to show that he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never
changed his political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men
and as to means, whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Caesar
or to oppose him, he was guided, even in the insincerity of his
utterances, by the sincerity of his purpose. I think that I can
remember, even in Great Britain, even in the days of Queen Victoria,
men sitting check by jowl on the same Treasury bench who have been
very bitter to each other with anything but friendly words. With us
fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In Rome expediency
governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he was more
sincere than others around him.

NOTES:

[52] It was then that the foreign empire commenced, in ruling which
the simplicity and truth of purpose and patriotism of the Republic
were lost.

[53] The reverses of fortune to which Marius was subjected, how he was
buried up to his neck in the mud, hiding in the marshes of Minturne,
how he would have been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that
city but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his eyes;
how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among the ruins of
Carthage--all which things happened to him while he was running from
the partisans of Sulla--are among the picturesque episodes of history.
There is a tragedy called the _Wounds of Civil War_, written by Lodge,
who was born some eight years before Shakspeare, in which the story of
Marius is told with some exquisite poetry, but also with some ludicrous
additions. The Gaul who is hired to kill Marius, but is frightened by
his eyes, talks bad French mingled with bad English, and calls on Jesus
in his horror!

[54] Brutus, ca.xc.

[55] Florus tells us that there were 2000 Senators and Knights, but
that any one was allowed to kill just whom he would. "Quis autem illos
potest computare quos in erbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib.
iii., ca. 21).

[56] About L487 10s. In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities the Attic talent is given as being worth L243 15s. Mommsen
quotes the price as 12,000 denarii, which would amount to about the
same sum.

[57] Suetonius speaks of his death. Florus mentions the proscriptions
and abdication. Velleius Paterculus is eloquent in describing the
horrors of the massacres and confiscation. Dio Cassius refers again
and again to the Sullan cruelty. But none of them give a reason for
the abdication of Sulla.

[58] Vol.iii., p.386. I quote from Mr. Dickson's translation, as I do
not read German.

[59] In defending Roscius Amerinus, while Sulla was still in power, he
speaks of the Sullan massacres as "pugna Cannensis," a slaughter as
foul, as disgraceful, as bloody as had been the defeat at Canne.

[60] Mommsen, vol.iii., p.385.

CHAPTER IV.

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

[Sidenote: B.C. 80, _aetat._ 27]

We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This at
first consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he
gradually rose into public or political occupation, as so often
happens with a successful barrister in our time. We do not know with
absolute certainty even in what year Cicero began his pleadings, or
in what cause. It may probably have been in 81 B.C., when he was
twenty-five, or in his twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which
we know the particulars, that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus,
which took place undoubtedly in the year 80 B.C., etat twenty-seven,
was probably the earliest. As to that, we have his speech nearly entire,
as we have also one for Publius Quintius, which has generally been
printed first among the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been
made clear that that spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is
certain that there had been others before either of them. In that for
Sextus he says that he had never spoken before in any public cause,[61]
such as was the accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the
inference has to be made that he had been engaged in private causes;
and in that for Quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in
that matter an aid which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62]
No doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance.
That of these two the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to
be found in his own words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he
speaks of the proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then
some time past. These were brought nominally to a close in June, 81;
but it has been supposed by those who have placed this oration
first that it was spoken in that very year. This seems to have been
impossible. "I am most unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that
subject, the very memory of which should be wiped out from our
thoughts."[63] When the tone of the two speeches is compared, it will
become evident that that for Sextus Roscius was spoken the first. It
was, as I have said, spoken in his twenty-seventh year, B.C. 80, the
year after the proscription lists had been closed, when Sulla was
still Dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no
longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority. As to
such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero excuses the Dictator
in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the Thunderer. Even
"Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the heavens, the earth,
and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his numerous affairs but
that the winds and the storms will be too strong sometimes, or the
heat too great, or the cold too bitter. If so, how can we wonder that
Sulla, who has to rule the State, to govern, in fact, the world,
should not be able himself to see to everything? Jove probably found
it convenient not to see many things. Such must certainly have been
the case with Sulla.

I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the
story of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length, because it is in
itself a tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt
of the deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled;
because, in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern
fiction has produced; and also, I will tell it, because it lets in a
flood of light upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is
made to stand on end when we remember that men had to pick their steps
in such a State as this, and to live if it were possible, and, if
not, then to be ready to die. We come in upon the fag-end of the
proscription, and see, not the bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed
on his Marian foes, not the cruel persecution of the ruler determined
to establish his order of things by slaughtering every foe, but the
necessary accompaniments of such ruthless deeds--those attendant
villanies for which the Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the day had neither
ears nor eyes. If in history we can ever get a glimpse at the real
life of the people, it is always more interesting than any account of
the great facts, however grand.

The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which
the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the
September following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was murdered
in the streets of Rome as he was going home from supper one night,
attended by two slaves. By whom he was murdered, probably more
than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of
reputation, well acquainted with the Metelluses and Messalas of the
day, and passing rich. His name had been down on no proscription list,
for he had been a friend of Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he
was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something
between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. Though there was
at that time much money in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though
we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was
murdered for his money.

Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or
divided, probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom,
as with every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his
landed estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided.
As to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the
dark. Had the name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even
though the list would then have been out of date, we could have
understood that it should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could
not see everything, and great advantages were taken. We must only
suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been
accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to
stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their
way. They could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on
the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. At any
rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered
man as though he had been proscribed.

Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that
he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after his father's
farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from Ameria
something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest
man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and
who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the
time.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the
character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of
him comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which,
though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would
state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him
as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well
by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple,
unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather
than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now
accused of having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by
one Erucius, who in his opening speech--the speech made before that
by Cicero--had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero
reminds him, and the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture
had been honored in the old days, when Consuls were taken from the
ploughs. The imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself
a man who could hardly have been a Consul at any time--one silent,
lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant
intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of him that he never took
part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show that he was not likely
to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old Roscius had had two
sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome--the one, probably,
whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had died, and our
Roscius--Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called when he was
made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down in the
country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he not
been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to
whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.

Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear
evidence as to guilt? That is the first question which presents
itself. This son received no benefit from his father's death. He had
in fact been absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming
utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his
father, and not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken
by persons called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took
possession of and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. Such men
in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at
once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our
Roscius. Cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. There were
two other Rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named Titus;
Titus Roscius Magnus, who sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have
exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the proscriptions,
and Titus Roscius Capito, who, when at home, lived at Ameria, but of
whom Cicero tells us that he had become an apt pupil of the other
during this affair. They had got large shares, but they shared also
with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of Sulla, who did the
dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus when Jupiter Optimus Maximus
had not time to do it himself. We presume that Chrysogonus had the
greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the apt pupil, we are told
again and again that he got three farms for himself.

Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero,
who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would
scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How
instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not
quite know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was
probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling,
and in some way prepared for him. That which was thus prepared he
exaggerated as the case might seem to require. It has to be understood
of Cicero that he possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity
in such exaggeration; in regard to which we should certainly not bear
very heavily upon him now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily
upon those who do the same thing in our own enlightened days. But
Cicero, even as a young man, knew his business much too well to put
forward statements which could be disproved. The accusation came
first; then the speech in defence; after that the evidence, which was
offered only on the side of the accuser, and which was subject to
cross-examination. Cicero would have no opportunity of producing
evidence. He was thus exempted from the necessity of proving his
statements, but was subject to have them all disproved. I think we may
take it for granted that the property of the murdered man was divided
as he tells us.

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