Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope

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"As to the work of the 'Deductores,' who go out with you--as it is
much more severe than that of those who merely come to pay their
compliments, let them understand that you feel it to be so, and, as
far as possible, be ready to go into town with them at fixed hours."
Quintus here means that the "Deductores" are not to be kept waiting
for the patron longer than can be helped. "The attendance of a daily
crowd in taking you down to the Forum gives a great show of character
and dignity.

"Then come the band of followers which accompanies you diligently
wherever you go. As to those who do this without special obligation,
take care that they should know how much you think of them. From those
who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously. See that they who
can come themselves do come themselves, and that they who cannot, send
others in their places." What an idea does this give as to the labor
of a candidate in Rome! I can imagine it to be worse even than the
canvassing of an English borough, which to a man of spirit and honor
is the most degrading of all existing employments not held to be
absolutely disgraceful.

Quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to the
general work of canvassing. "It requires the remembering of men's
names"--"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not possess--"flattery,
diligence, sweetness of temper, good report, and a high standing in
the Republic. Let it be seen that you have been at the trouble to
remember people, and practise yourself to it so that the power may
increase with you. There is nothing so alluring to the citizen as
that. If there be a softness which you have not by nature, so affect
it that it shall seem to be your own naturally. You have indeed a way
with you which is not unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must
caress men--which is in truth vile and sordid at other times, but is
absolutely necessary at elections. It is no doubt a mean thing to
flatter some low fellow, but when it is necessary to make a friend
it can be pardoned. A candidate must do it, whose face and look and
tongue should be made to suit those he has to meet. What perseverance
means I need not tell you. The word itself explains itself. As a
matter of course, you shall not leave the city; but it is not enough
for you to stick to your work in Rome and in the Forum. You must seek
out the voters and canvass them separately; and take care that no one
shall ask from another what it is that you want from him. Let it have
been solicited by yourself, and often solicited." Quintus seems to
have understood the business well, and the elder brother no doubt
profited by the younger brother's care.

It was so they did it at Rome. That men should have gone through all
this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as being
marvellous, or even out of place. A vile object justifies vile means.
But there were some at Rome who had it in their hearts really to serve
their country, and with whom it was at the same time a matter of
conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly
or dishonorably enrich themselves. There was still a grain of salt
left. But even this could not make itself available for useful purpose
without having recourse to tricks such as these!

[Sidenote: B.C. 75, aetat 32.]

In his proper year Cicero became Quaestor, and had assigned to him
by lot the duty of looking after the Western Division of Sicily. For
Sicily, though but one province as regarded general condition, being
under one governor with proconsular authority, retained separate
modes of government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to Rome,
especially in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not
been conquered from the Carthaginians.[87] Cicero was quartered at
Lilybaeum, on the west, whereas the other Quaestor was placed at
Syracuse, in the east. There were at that time twenty Quaestors
elected annually, some of whom remained in Rome; but most of the
number were stationed about the Empire, there being always one as
assistant to each Proconsul. When a Consul took the field with an
army, he always had a Quaestor with him. This had become the case so
generally that the Quaestor became, as it were, something between
a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a governor. The
arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to it, as though
there was something in the connection warmer and closer than that of
mere official life; so that a Quaestor has been called a Proconsul's
son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence and
attachment that a son entertains for his father.

But to Cicero, and to young Quaestors in general, the great attraction
of the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once
become a Quaestor was a Senator for the rest of his life, unless he
should be degraded by misconduct. Gradually it had come to pass that
the Senate was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly,
but by the admission into the Senate of the popularly elected
magistrates. There were in the time of Cicero between 500 and 600
members of this body. The numbers down to the time of Sulla had been
increased or made up by direct selection by the old Kings, or by the
Censors, or by some Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing
was done afterward by Julius Caesar. The years between Sulla's
Dictatorship and that of Caesar were but thirty--from 79 to 49 B.C.
These, however, were the years in which Cicero dreamed that the
Republic could be re-established by means of an honest Senate, which
Senate was then to be kept alive by the constant infusion of new
blood, accruing to it from the entrance of magistrates who had been
chosen by the people. Tacitus tells us that it was with this object
that Sulla had increased the number of Quaestors.[88]Cicero's
hopes--his futile hopes of what an honest Senate might be made to
do--still ran high, although at the very time in which he was elected
Quaestor he was aware that the judges, then elected from the Senate,
were so corrupt that their judgment could not be trusted. Of this
popular mode of filling the Senate he speaks afterward in his treatise
De Legibus. "From those who have acted as magistrates the Senate is
composed--a measure altogether in the popular interest, as no one can
now reach the highest rank"--namely, the Senate--"except by the votes
of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from the
Censors.[89] In his pleadings for P. Sextus he makes the same boast as
to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand
the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the
body. "Romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings,
created annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the Council of
the Senate was set over the Republic for its guidance. Senators were
chosen for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that
order was opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at
large."[90] When defending Cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious
privileges of the Roman Senate. "Its high place, its authority, its
splendor at home, its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory
chair, the appanage of office, the fasces, the army with its command,
the government of the provinces!"[91] On that splendor "apud exteras
gentes," he expatiates in one of his attacks upon Verres.[92] From all
this will be seen Cicero's idea of the chamber into which he had made
his way as soon as he had been chosen Quaestor.

In this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life
turned--the character, namely, of the Roman Senate--it cannot but be
observed that he was wont to blow both hot and cold. It was his
nature to do so, not from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was
sanguine and vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. He
blew hot and cold in regard to the Senate, because at times he would
feel it to be what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who
were time-serving and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price
to any buyer; and then, again, at times he would think of the Senate
as endowed with all those privileges which he names, and would dream
that under his influence it would become what it should be--such a
Senate as he believed it to have been in its old palmy days. His
praise of the Senate, his description of what it should be and might
be, I have given. To the other side of the picture we shall come soon,
when I shall have to show how, at the trial of Verres, he declared
before the judges themselves how terrible had been the corruption of
the judgment-seat in Rome since, by Sulla's enactment, it had been
occupied only by the Senators. One passage I will give now, in order
that the reader may see by the juxtaposition of the words that he
could denounce the Senate as loudly as he would vaunt its privileges.
In the column on the left hand in the note I quote the words with
which, in the first pleading against Verres, he declared "that every
base and iniquitous thing done on the judgment-seat during the ten
years since the power of judging had been transferred to the Senate
should be not only denounced by him, but also proved;" and in that on
the right I will repeat the noble phrases which he afterward used in
the speech for Cluentius when he chose to speak well of the order.[93]
Contra Verrem, Act. i, ca. xiii.: "Omnia non modo commemorabuntur,
sed etiam, expositis certis rebus, agentur, quae inter decem annos,
posteaquam judicia ad senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis
nefarie flagitioseque facta sunt."

It was on the Senate that they who wished well for Rome must
depend--on the Senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among
the people; on a body which should be at the same time august
and popular--as far removed on the one side from the tyranny of
individuals as on the other from the violence of the mob; but on a
Senate freed from its corruption and dirt, on a body of noble Romans,
fitted by their individual character and high rank to rule and to
control their fellow-citizens. This was Cicero's idea, and this the
state of things which he endeavored to achieve. No doubt he dreamed
that his own eloquence and his own example might do more in producing
this than is given to men to achieve by such means. No doubt there was
conceit in this--conceit and perhaps, vanity. It has to be admitted
that Cicero always exaggerated his own powers. But the ambition was
great, the purpose noble, and the course of his whole life was such as
to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. He did not thunder against
the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a province himself. He
did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to his clients, and then
open his hands to illicit payments. He did not call upon the Senate
for high duty, and then devote himself to luxury and pleasure. He had
a _beau ideal_ of the manner in which a Roman Senator should live and
work, and he endeavored to work and live up to that ideal. There was
no period after his Consulship in which he was not aware of his own
failure. Nevertheless, with constant labor, but with intermittent
struggles, he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery year of his
existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet there was
a chance. How he struggled, and in struggling perished, we shall see
by-and-by.

What Cicero did as Quaestor in Sicily we have no means of knowing. His
correspondence does not go back so far. That he was very active, and
active for good, we have two testimonies, one of which is serious,
convincing, and most important as an episode in his life. The other
consists simply of a good story, told by himself of himself; not
intended at all for his own glorification, but still carrying with it
a certain weight. As to the first: Cicero was Quaestor in Lilybaeum in
the thirty-second year of his life. In the thirty-seventh year he was
elected Aedile, and was then called upon by the Sicilians to attack
Verres on their behalf. Verres was said to have carried off from
Sicily plunder to the amount of nearly L400,000,[94] after a misrule
of three years' duration. All Sicily was ruined. Beyond its pecuniary
losses, its sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had
come of a Governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless
chance of a criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted.
The tyrant would certainly have many friends in Rome. The injured
provincials would probably have none of great mark. A man because he
had been Quaestor was not, necessarily, one having influence, unless
he belonged to some great family. This was not the case with Cicero.
But he had made for himself such a character during his year of office
that the Sicilians declared that, if they could trust themselves to
any man at Rome, it would be to their former Quaestor. It had been a
part of his duty to see that the proper supply of corn was collected
in the island and sent to Rome. A great portion of the bread eaten in
Rome was grown in Sicily, and much of it was supplied in the shape of
a tax. It was the hateful practice of Rome to extract the means of
living from her colonies, so as to spare her own laborers. To this,
hard as it was, the Sicilians were well used. They knew the amount
required of them by law, and were glad enough when they could be quit
in payment of the dues which the law required; but they were seldom
blessed by such moderation on the part of their rulers. To what extent
this special tax could be stretched we shall see when we come to the
details of the trial of Verres. It is no doubt only from Cicero's own
words that we learn that, though he sent to Rome plenteous supplies,
he was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and forbearing to the
allies generally; and that when he took his departure they paid him
honors hitherto unheard of.[95] But I think we may take it for granted
that this statement is true; firstly, because it has never been
contradicted; and then from the fact that the Sicilians all came to
him in the day of their distress.

As to the little story to which I have alluded, it has been told so
often since Cicero told it himself, that I am almost ashamed to repeat
it. It is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close
an insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his
pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. In his
speech for Plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from
Sicily after his Quaestorship, he found himself at Puteoli just at the
season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that delightful
resort. He was full of what he had done--how he had supplied Rome with
corn, but had done so without injury to the Sicilians, how honestly he
had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on
all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city
the citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli
he met two acquaintances. "Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave
Rome? What news have you brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we
can see him, replied that he had just returned from his province. "Of
course, just back from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero,
bridling in anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it
himself--"but from Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow who
pretended to know everything, put in his word. "Do you not know that
our Cicero has been Quaestor at Syracuse?" The reader will remember
that he had been Quaestor in the other division of the island, at
Lilybaeum. "There was no use in thinking any more about it," says
Cicero. "I gave up being angry and determined to be like any one else,
just one at the waters." Yes, he had been very conceited, and well
understood his own fault of character in that respect; but he would
not have shown his conceit in that matter had he not resolved to do
his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quaestors, and been conscious
that ho had done it.

Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his
own words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are
bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in
his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a
man's praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be
indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with
the nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader
will not be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own
praises must be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own
words in his own dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for
honor, probity, industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show
that these virtues are dear to him, unless the course of his life has
proved him to be altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has not
been presumed that Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. He was
honest and industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country.
So much is acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has
told us of himself is false. If a man doubt of himself constantly; if
in his most private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he
admit occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have
failed at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have
produced such confessions are proof that the highest points which
have not been attained have been seen and valued. A man will not
sorrowfully regret that he has won only a second place, or a
third, unless he be alive to the glory of the first. But Cicero's
acknowledgments have all been taken as proof against himself. All
manner of evil is argued against him from his own words, when an ill
meaning can be attached to them; but when he speaks of his great
aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity. On the strength
of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to Atticus, he
is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which he has
thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted as
clap-traps.

No one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as Cicero,
and naturally. In these modern days we have contemporary records as to
prominent persons. Of the characters of those who lived in long-past
ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those
close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight
have we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight
had Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to
know every turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no
Boswell. But here is a man belonging to those past ages of which I
speak who was his own Boswell, and after such a fashion that, since
letters were invented, no records have ever been written in language
more clear or more attractive. It is natural that we should judge out
of his own mouth one who left so many more words behind him than did
any one else, particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. And
all that he wrote was after some fashion about himself. His letters,
like all letters, are personal to himself. His speeches are words
coming out of his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally
engaged and interested. His rhetoric consists of lessons given by
himself about his own art, founded on his own experience, and on his
own observation of others. His so-called philosophy gives us the
workings of his own mind. No one has ever told the world so much about
another person as Cicero has told the world about Cicero. Boswell
pales before him as a chronicler of minutiae. It may be a matter of
small interest now to the bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted
with a Roman who was never one of the world's conquerors. It may be
well for those who desire to know simply the facts of the world's
history, to dismiss as unnecessary the aspirations of one who lived so
long ago. But if it be worth while to discuss the man's character, it
must be worth while to learn the truth about it.

"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand
the truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you
may most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about
himself. He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to
his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a by-word
for eulogy; quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves
the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his
style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the
effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. But
then also has Cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio
Cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to
Mr. Froude, whose Caesar has just been published, he has had such hard
things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth,
that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with
the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next
after his death--with the testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with
the hearty praises of his biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his
heart and morals! It was thus that Erasmus was struck in reading his
works. It is a feeling of that kind, I profess, that has induced me to
take this work in hand--a feeling produced altogether by the study of
his own words. It has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has
been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when
dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the
cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but
little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity
of heart and morals.

Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quaestorship, and
before those made in the accusation of Verres, we have the fragment
only of the second of two spoken in defence of Marcus Tullius Decula,
whom we may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family.
He does not avow any relationship. "What," he says, in opening his
argument, "does it become me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius,
a man not only my friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no
great importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but
to "recuperatores," judges chosen by the Praetor, and who acted in
lighter cases.

NOTES:

[85] Brutus, ca. xciii.: "Animos hominum ad me dicendi novitate
converteram."

[86] It must be remembered that this advice was actually given when
Cicero subsequently became a candidate for the Consulship, but it is
mentioned here as showing the manner in which were sought the great
offices of State.

[87] Cicero speaks of Sicily as divided into two provinces,
"Quaestores utriusque provinciae" There was, however, but one Praetor
or Proconsul. But the island had been taken by the Romans at two
different times.

Lilybaeum and the west was obtained from the Carthaginians at the end
of the first Punic war, whereas, Syracuse was conquered by Marcellus
and occupied during the second Punic war.

[88] Tacitus, Ann., lib.xi., ca.xxii.: "Post, lege Sullae, viginti
creati supplendo senatui, cui judica tradiderat."

[89] De Legibus, iii, xii.

[90] Pro P. Sexto, lxv.

[91] Pro Cluentio, lvi.

[92] Contra Verrem, Act.iv., ca.xi.: "Ecquae civitas est, non modo in
provinciis nostris, verum etiam in ultimis nationibus, aut tam potens,
aut tam libera, aut etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex denique ecquis
est, qui senatorem populi Romani tecto ac domo non invitet?"

[93] Contra Verrem, Act.i, ca.xiii.: "Omnia non modo
commemorabuntur, sed etiam, expositis certis rebus, agentur, quae
inter decem annos, posteaquam judicia ad senatum translata sunt, in
rebus judicandis nefarie flagitioseque facta sunt." Pro Cluentio,
lvi.: "Locus, auctoritas, domi splendor, apud exteras nationes nomen
et gratia, toga praetexta, cella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus,
imperia, provincia."

[94] Contra Verrem, Act.i., ca.xviii.: "Quadringenties sestertium ex
Sicilia contra leges abstulisse." In Smith's Dictionary of Grecian and
Roman Antiquities we are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in
our money to L8 17s.1d. Of the estimated amount of this plunder we
shall have to speak again.

[95] Pro Plancio, xxvi.

[96] Pro Plancio, xxvi.

CHAPTER VI.

_VERRES_

There are six episodes, or, as I may say, divisions in the life of
Cicero to which special interest attaches itself. The first is the
accusation against Verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out
of the city. The second is his Consulship, in which he drove Catiline
out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined
with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegaly. The
third was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of Rome. The
fourth was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when
he was compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government
of a province. The fifth was Caesar's passing of the Rubicon, the
battle of Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to Caesar. The last
was his internecine combat with Antony, which produced the Philippics,
and that memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into
flames the expiring embers of the Republic. The literary work with
which we are acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his
whole life. I have already told the story of Sextus Roscius Amerinus,
having taken it from his own words. From that time onward he wrote
continually; but the fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from
him with unrivalled rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of
his life.

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