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

If that was so, why should any accusation have been made? Our Sextus
seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to
have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. He had
betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one
Metella, whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and
her friends the defence was no doubt managed. "You have my farms," he
is made to say by his advocate; "I live on the charity of another. I
abandon everything because I am placid by nature, and because it must
be so. My house, which is closed to me, is open to you: I endure it.
You have possessed yourself of my whole establishment; I have not one
single slave. I suffer all this, and feel that I must suffer it. What
do you want more? Why do you persecute me further? In what do you
think that I shall hurt you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I
oppose you? Is it your wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You
have your plunder. If for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel
against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had
even known him?"[65] Of all this, which is the advocate's appeal to
pity, we may believe as little as we please. Cicero is addressing the
judge, and desires only an acquittal. But the argument shows that no
overt act in quest of restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless,
Chrysogonus feared such action, and had arranged with the two Tituses
that something should be done to prevent it. What are we to think of
the condition of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for
his wealth walking home from supper--that, indeed, might happen in
London if there existed the means of getting at the man's money when
the man was dead--but in which such a plot could be concerted in order
that the robbery might be consummated?

"We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false
plea that his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are
interfering--these Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son
who is the natural heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The
courts of law, which have only just been reopened since the dear days
of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert
enough to acquit a man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let
us get him convicted, and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and
thrown into the river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned,
for such was the punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb
us." It must have thus been that the plot was arranged.

It was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less
was it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance
of many. Erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on
the part of Chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father
to be murdered because of hatred. The father was going to disinherit
the son, and therefore the son murdered the father. In this there
might have been some probability, had there been any evidence of such
an intention on the father's part. But there was none. Cicero declares
that the father had never thought of disinheriting his son. There
had been no quarrel, no hatred. This had been assumed as a reason
--falsely. There was in fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it
possible that the son should have done it. The father was killed in
Rome when, as was evident, the son was fifty miles off. He never left
his farm. Erucius, the accuser, had said, and had said truly, that
Rome was full of murderers.[66] But who was the most likely to have
employed such a person: this rough husbandman, who had no intercourse
with Rome, who knew no one there, who knew little of Roman ways, who
had nothing to get by the murder when committed, or they who had long
been concerned with murderers, who knew Rome, and who were now found
to have the property in their hands?

The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed,
surely they might tell something? Here there comes out incidentally
the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were
tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might be
extracted. This is spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as far
as I can remember, by other Roman writers. It was regarded as an
established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court of
law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances. This was so
common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the
"question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of
extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of slaves having their liberty given
them in order that, being free, they may not be forced by torture to
tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty been of the nature described
by Scott in "Old Mortality," when the poor preacher's limbs were
mangled, I think we should have heard more of it. Nor was the torture
always applied, but only when the expected evidence was not otherwise
forth-coming. Cicero explains, in the little dialogue given below, how
the thing was carried on.[68] "You had better tell the truth now, my
friend: Was it so and so?" The slave knows that, if he says it was so,
there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but that, if he
will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking. And yet
the evidence went for what it was worth.

In this case of Roscius there had certainly been two slaves present;
but Cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no witnesses,
had not the power to bring them into court; nor could slaves have been
made to give evidence against their masters. These slaves, who
had belonged to the murdered man, were now the property either of
Chrysogonus or of the two Tituses. There was no getting at their
evidence but by permission of their masters, and this was withheld.
Cicero demands that they shall be produced, knowing that the demand
will have no effect. "The man here," he says, pointing to the accused,
"asks for it, prays for it. What will you do in this case? Why do you
refuse?"[69]

By this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused person
cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how much more the
hearer? Then Cicero goes on to show who in truth were guilty. "Doubt
now if you can, judges, by whom Roscius was killed: whether by him
who, by his father's death, is plunged into poverty and trouble--who
is forbidden even to investigate the truth--or by those who are afraid
of real evidence, who themselves possess the plunder, who live in the
midst of murder, and on the proceeds of murder."[70]

Then he addresses one of the Tituses, Titus Magnus, who seems to have
been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his impudence in
doing so: "Who can doubt who was the murderer--you who have got all
the plunder, or this man who has lost everything? But if it be added
to this that you were a pauper before--that you have been known as a
greedy fellow, as a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has
been killed--then need one ask what has brought you to do such a deed
as this?"[71]

He next tells what took place, as far as it was known, immediately
after the murder. The man had been killed coming home from supper, in
September, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the
fact was known in Ameria before dawn. Travelling was not then very
quick; but a messenger, one Mallius Glaucia, a man on very close terms
with Titus Magnus, was sent down at once in a light gig to travel
through the night and take the information to Titus Capito Why was all
this hurry? How did Glaucia hear of the murder so quickly? What cause
to travel all through the night? Why was it necessary that Capito
should know all about it at once? "I cannot think," says Cicero, "only
that I see that Capito has got three of the farms out of the thirteen
which the murdered man owned!" But Capito is to be produced as a witness,
and Cicero gives us to understand what sort of cross-examination he will
have to undergo.

In all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions
as to facts of which he has no evidence. When that hurried messenger
was sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. The two real
contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they
intended such a course. It had been conceived that when the man was
dead and his goods seized, the fear of Sulla's favorite, the still
customary dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to
shrink from inquiry. Hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods
taken, even if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in
accordance with Sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent
and to endure; but this poor wretch, Sextus, had friends in Rome--friends
who were friends of Sulla--of whom Chrysogonus and the Tituses had
probably not bethought themselves. When it came to pass that more stir
was made than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary.

But, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, Chrysogonus
must be sought. Sulla was then at Volaterra, in Etruria perhaps 150 miles
north-west from Rome, and with him was his favorite Chrysogonus. In four
days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither, and, so
Cicero states, by the same messenger--by Glaucia--who had taken it to
Ameria. Chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods, and from
this Cicero implies that Chrysogonus and the two Tituses were in partner-
ship.

But it seems that when the fact of the death of old Roscius was known
at Ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and
the most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with
horror, determined to send a deputation to Sulla. Something of what
was being done with their townsman's property was probably known,
and there seems to have been a desire for justice. Ten townsmen were
chosen to go to Sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into
the matter. Here, again, we are very much in the dark, because this
very Capito, to whom these farms were allotted as his share, was not
only chosen to be one of the ten, but actually became their spokesman
and their manager. The great object was to keep Sulla himself in the
dark, and this Capito managed to do by the aid of Chrysogonus. None
of the ten were allowed to see Sulla. They are hoaxed into believing
that Chrysogonus himself will look to it, and so they go back to
Ameria, having achieved nothing. We are tempted to believe that the
deputation was a false deputation, each of whom probably had his
little share, so that in this way there might be an appearance of
justice. If it was so, Cicero has not chosen to tell that part of
the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason for omitting
it.

So far the matter had gone with the Tituses, and with Chrysogonus who
had got his lion's share. Our poor Roscius, the victim, did at first
abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. We
cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that
he had lived a wretched life during all the murders of the Sullan
proscriptions. But in his abject misery he had found his way up among
the great friends of his family at Rome, and had there been charged
with the parricide, because Chrysogonus and the Tituses began to be
afraid of what these great friends might do.

This is the story as Cicero has been able to tell it in hiss speech.
Beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. Whether he got
back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us.
Whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell
those two Tituses or Chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been
no one to inform us. The matter was of little importance in Rome,
where murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common
incidents of every-day life. History would have meddled with nothing
so ordinary had not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a
man so great a master of his language that it has been worth the while
of ages to perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. But the
story, as a story of Roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight
aid to history in explaining the condition of things which Sulla had
produced.

The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been
offensive to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate
blame. Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying
words so bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--Sulla's
judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "Putting aside
Sextus Roscius," he says, "I demand, first of all, why the goods of an
esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one
who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while
defending Sulla's enemies? It is against those only that the law is
made. Then I demand why they were sold when the legal day for such
sales had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[72] Then
he gives us a picture of Chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "You
have seen him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims
along the Forum "--he, a freedman, with a crowd of Roman citizens
at his heels, that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to
none--"the only happy man of the day, the only one with any power in
his hands."[73]

This trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal
accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried
before a full bench of judges. Of these the number would be uncertain,
but they were probably above fifty. The Preter of the day--the Preter
to whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided,
and the judges all sat round him. Their duty seems to have consisted
in listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. Each judge could
vote[74] "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they do in
Scotland. They were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. It does not
seem that any amount of legal lore was looked for specially in the
judges, who at different periods had been taken from various orders
of the citizens, but who at this moment, by a special law enacted by
Sulla, were selected only from the Senators. We have ample evidence
that at this period the judges in Rome were most corrupt. They were
tainted by a double corruption: that of standing by their order
instead of standing by the public--each man among them feeling that
his turn to be accused might come--and that also of taking direct
bribes. Cicero on various occasions--on this, for instance, and
notably in the trial of Verres, to which we shall come soon--felt
very strongly that his only means of getting a true verdict from the
majority of judges was to frighten them into temporary honesty by the
magnitude of the occasion. If a trial could be slurred through with
indifferent advocates, with nothing to create public notice, with no
efforts of genius to attract admiration, and a large attendance and
consequent sympathy the judgment would, as a matter of course, be
bought. In such a case as this of Sextus Roscius, the poor wretch
would be condemned, sewed up in his bag, and thrown into the sea, a
portion of the plunder would be divided among the judges, and nothing
further would be said about it. But if an orator could achieve for
himself such a reputation that the world would come and listen to him,
if he could so speak that Rome should be made to talk about the trial,
then might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. It may
be understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the
services of a Cicero, or of a Hortensius, who was unrivalled at the
Roman bar when Cicero began to plead.

There were three special modes of oratory in which Cicero displayed
his powers. He spoke either before the judges--a large body of
judges who sat collected round the Praetor, as in the case of Sextus
Roscius--or in cases of civil law before a single judge, selected by
the Praetor, who sat with an assessor, as in the case of Roscius the
actor, which shall be mentioned just now. This was the recognized work
of his life, in which he was engaged, at any rate, in his earlier
years; or he spoke to the populace, in what was called the Concio, or
assembly of the people--speeches made before a crowd called together
for a special purpose, as were the second and third orations against
Catiline; or in the Senate, in which a political rather than a
judicial sentence was sought from the votes of the Senators. There was
a fourth mode of address, which in the days of the Emperors became
common, when the advocate spoke "ad Principem;" that is, to the
Emperor himself, or to some ruler acting for him as sole judge. It
was thus that Cicero pleaded before Caesar for Ligarius and for
King Deiotarus, in the latter years of his life. In each of these a
separate manner and a distinct line had to be adopted, in all of which
he seems to have been equally happy, and equally powerful. In judging
of his speeches, we are bound to remember that they were not probably
uttered with their words arranged as we read them. Some of those we
have were never spoken at all, as was the case with the five last
Verrene orations, and with the second, by far the longest of the
Philippics. Some, as was specially the case with the defence of Milo,
the language of which is perhaps as perfect as that of any oration
which has reached us from ancient or modern days, were only spoken
in part; so that that which we read bears but small relation to that
which was heard. All were probably retouched for publication.[75] That
words so perfect in their construction should have flowed from a man's
mouth, often with but little preparation, we cannot conceive. But
we know from the evidence of the day, and from the character which
remained of him through after Roman ages, how great was the immediate
effect of his oratory. We can imagine him, in this case of Sextus
Roscius, standing out in the open air in the Forum, with the movable
furniture of the court around him, the seats on which the judges sat
with the Praetor in the midst of them, all Senators in their white
robes, with broad purple borders. There too were seated, we may
suppose on lower benches, the friends of the accused and the
supporters of the accusation, and around, at the back of the orator,
was such a crowd as he by the character of his eloquence may have
drawn to the spot. Cicero was still a young man; but his name had made
itself known and we can imagine that some tidings had got abroad as
to the bold words which would be spoken in reference to Sulla and
Chrysogonus. The scene must have been very different from that of one
of our dingy courts, in which the ermine is made splendid only by the
purity and learning of the man who wears it. In Rome all exterior
gifts were there. Cicero knew how to use them, so that the judges
who made so large a part in the pageant should not dare to disgrace
themselves because of its publicity. Quintilian gives his pupils much
advice as to the way in which they should dress themselves[76] and
hold their togas--changing the folds of the garment so as to suit the
different parts of the speech--how they should move their arms, and
hold their heads, and turn their necks; even how they should comb
their hair when they came to stand in public and plead at the bar. All
these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years rolled on, had come
down to him from days before Cicero; but he always refers to Cicero as
though his were the palmy days of Roman eloquence. We can well believe
that Cicero had studied many of these arts by his twenty-seventh
year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop it--how to
make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair, and yet
not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the personal
graces which were at his command. Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all
his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than
the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, I think,
more attractive than most novels.

We know that Cicero pleaded other causes before he went to Greece in
the year 79 B.C., especially those for Publius Quintius, of which we
have his speech, and that for a lady of Arretium, in which he defended
her right to be regarded as a free woman of that city. In this speech
he again attacked Sulla, the rights of the lady in question having
been placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the Dictator; and
again Cicero was successful. This is not extant. Then he started on
his travels, as to which I have already spoken. While he was absent
Sulla died, and the condition of the Republic during his absence was
anything but hopeful. Lepidus was Consul during these two years, than
whom no weaker officer ever held rule in Rome--or rebelled against
Rome; and Sertorius, who was in truth a great man, was in arms against
Rome in Spain, as a rebel, though he was in truth struggling to create
a new Roman power, which should be purer than that existing in Italy.
What Cicero thought of the condition of his country at this time we
have no means of knowing. If he then wrote letters, they have not been
preserved. His spoken words speak plainly enough of the condition
of the courts of law, and let us know how resolved he was to oppose
himself to their iniquities. A young man may devote himself to
politics with as much ardor as a senior, but he cannot do so if he
be intent on a profession. It is only when his business is so well
grasped by him as to sit easily on him, that he is able to undertake
the second occupation.

There is a rumor that Cicero, when he returned home from Greece,
thought for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he
was called Greek and Sophist in ridicule. It is not, however, to be
believed that he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed
for his own career. It will become evident as we go on with his life,
that this so-called philosophy of the Greeks was never to him a matter
of more than interesting inquiry. A full, active, human life, in which
he might achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by
intelligence, erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might
serve his country, his order, and his friends--just such a life as our
leading men propose to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this
is what Cicero had determined to achieve from his earliest years, and
it was not likely that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic
of Greek philosophers, That the logic even of the Academy was false to
him we have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings.
There is a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at
Delphi as to his future career, and that on being told that he must
look to his own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large,
he determined to abandon the honors of the Republic. That he should
have talked among the young men of the day of his philosophic
investigations till they laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may
be probable, but it cannot have been that he ever thought of giving up
the bar.

In the year of his return to Rome, when he was thirty, he married
Terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good
fortune, and that her sister was one of the Vestal Virgins.[77] Her
nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule,
chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they
should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no
mean pursuits. As to the more important question of Terentia's fortune
there has never been a doubt. Plutarch, however, does not make it out
to have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal to about L4200
of our money. He tells us at the same time that Cicero's own fortune
was less than L4000. But in both of these statements, Plutarch, who
was forced to take his facts where he could get them, and was not very
particular in his authority, probably erred. The early education of
Cicero, and the care taken to provide him with all that money could
purchase, is, I think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode
of life adopted by Cicero shows that at no period did he think it
necessary to live as men do live with small incomes.

We shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as men did
at Rome who had the command of large means. We are aware that he was
often in debt. We find that from his letters. But he owed money not as
a needy man does, but as one who is speculative, sanguine, and quite
confident of his own resources. The management of incomes was not so
fixed a thing then as it is with us now. Speculation was even more
rampant, and rising men were willing and were able to become indebted
for enormous sums, having no security to offer but the promise of
their future career. Caesar's debts during various times of his life
were proverbial. He is said to have owed over L300,000 before he
reached his first step in the public employment. Cicero rushed into no
such danger as this. We know, indeed, that when the time came to him
for public expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was
filling the office of Aedile, he kept within bounds, and he did not
lavish money which he did not possess. We know also that he refrained,
altogether refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large
fortunes which were open to the great politicians of the Republic. To
be Quaestor that he might be Aedile, Aedile that he might be Praetor
and Consul, and Praetor and Consul that he might rob a province--pillage
Sicily, Spain, or Asia, and then at last come back a rich man, rich
enough to cope with all his creditors, and to bribe the judges should
he be accused for his misdeeds--these were the usual steps to take by
enterprising Romans toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. But it will be
observed, in this sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the province
was essential to success. This was sometimes done after so magnificent
a fashion as to have become an immortal fact in history. The instance of
Verres will be narrated in the next chapter but one. Something of
moderation was more general, so that the fleeced provincial might still
live, and prefer sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Pro-
consul might rob a great deal, and still return with hands apparently
clean, bringing with him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his
goodness before the citizens at home. But Cicero robbed not at all.
Even they who have been most hard upon his name, accusing him of
insincerity and sometimes of want of patriotism, because his Roman
mode of declaring himself without reserve in his letters has been
perpetuated for us by the excellence of their language, even they have
acknowledged that he kept his hands studiously clean in the service of
his country, when to have clean hands was so peculiar as to be regarded
as absurd.

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