Introduction
Ground covered by the Correspondence.
The correspondence of Cicero, as preserved for
us by his freedman Tiro, does not open till the
thirty-ninth year of the orator's life, and is so
strictly contemporary, dealing so exclusively with
the affairs of the moment, that little light is
thrown by it on by his previous life. It does not
become continuous till the year after his
consulship (B.C. 62).
There are no letters in the year of the consulship
itself or the year of his canvass for the
consulship (B.C. 64 and
63). It begins in B.C. 68, and between that date
and B.C. 65 there are
only eleven letters. We have, therefore, nothing
exactly contemporaneous to help us to form a
judgment on the great event which coloured so much
of his after life, the suppression of the
Catilinarian conspiracy and the execution of the
conspirators, in the last month of his consulship.
But setting aside the first eleven letters, we
have from that time forward a correspondence
illustrating, as no other document in antiquity
does, the hopes and fears, the doubts and
difficulties, of a keen politician living through
the most momentous period of Roman history, the
period of the fall of the Republic, beginning with
Pompey's return from the East in B.C. 62, and ending with the appearance of
the young Octavian on the scene and the formation
of the Triumvirate in B.C.
43, of whose victims Cicero was one of the
first and most illustrious. It is by his conduct
and speeches during this period that Cicero's
claim to be a statesman and a patriot must be
judged, and by his writings in the same period
that his place in literature must chiefly be
assigned. Before B.C. 63
his biography, if we had it, would be that of the
advocate and the official, no doubt with certain
general views on political questions as they
occurred, but not yet committed definitely to a
party, or inclined to regard politics as the
absorbing interest of his life. In his early youth
his hero had been his fellow townsman Marius, in
whose honour he composed a poem about the time of
taking the
toga
virilis. But it was as the successful
general, and before the days of the civil war. And
though he served in the army of Sulla in the
Marsic war (B.C.
90—88), he
always regarded his cruelties with horror, however
much he may have afterwards approved of certain
points of his legislation. It was not till the
consulship that he became definitely a party man
1 and an Optimate, and
even then his feelings were much distracted by a
strong belief—strangely
ill-founded—that Pompey would be as
successful as a statesman as he had been fortunate
as a general. For him he had also a warm personal
attachment, which never seems to have wholly died
out, in spite of much petulance of language. This
partly accounts for the surrender of B.C. 56, and his acquiescence
in the policy of the triumvirs, an acquiescence
never hearty indeed, as far as Caesar and Crassus
were concerned, but in which he consoled himself
with the belief that nothing very unconstitutional
could be done while Pompey was practically
directing affairs at
Rome.
The various nature of the
Correspondence.
It is through this period of political change
and excitement that the correspondence will take
us, with some important gaps indeed, but on the
whole fullest when it is most wanted to show the
feelings and motives guiding the active
politicians of the day, or at any rate the effect
which events had upon one eager and acute
intellect and sensitive heart. One charm of the
correspondence is variety. There is almost every
sort of letter. Those to Atticus are unstudied,
spontaneous, and reflect the varying moods of the
writer. At times of special excitement they follow
each other day by day, and sometimes more than
once in the same day; and the writer seems to
conceal nothing, however much it might expose him
to ridicule, and to the charge of fickleness,
weakness, or even cowardice. Those addressed to
other friends are sometimes familiar and playful,
some times angry and indignant. Some of them are
careful and elaborate state papers, others mere
formal introductions and recommendations.
Business, literature, and philosophy all have
their share in them; and, what is so rare in
ancient literature, the family relations of the
writer, his dealings with wife, son, and daughter,
brother and nephew, and sons-in-law, are all
depicted for us, often with the utmost frankness.
After reading them we seem to know Cicero the man,
as well as Cicero the statesman and orator. The
eleven letters which precede the consulship are
happily, from this point of view, addressed to
Atticus. For it was to Atticus that he wrote with
the least concealment, and with the confidence
that any detail, however small, which concerned
himself would be interesting to his correspondent.
It is well, therefore, that, though we thus come
into his life when it was more than half over, we
should at once hear his genuine sentiments on
whatever subjects he may be speaking. Besides his
own, we have about ninety letters to Cicero from
some of the chief men of the day—Pompey,
Caesar, Cato, Brutus, Antony, and many others.
They are of very various excellence. The best of
them are by much less known men. Neither Pompey
nor Caesar were good letter-writers, or, if the
latter was so, he was too busy to use his
powers.
Cicero's position previous to the beginning
of the Correspondence in B.C.
68.
The letters begin, then, in B.C. 68, when Cicero was in his
thirty-seventh year. He was already a man of
established reputation both as a pleader and a
writer. Rhetorical treatises (B.C. 86), translations from Xenophon and
Plato (B.C. 84), and from
the poems of Aratus (B.C.
81), had given evidence of a varied
literary interest and a promise of future
eminence, while his success as an advocate had led
to the first step in the official
cursus honorum by his becoming
a quaestor
in B.C.
75. The lot assigned
Lilybaeum as his
sphere of work, and though the duties of a
quaestor in
Sicily were not such as to bring a
man's name much before the Roman public, Cicero
plumes himself, as was not unusual with him, on
the integrity and energy which he displayed in his
administration. He has indeed the honesty to tell
against himself the story of the acquaintance who,
meeting him at
Puteoli on his return journey, asked
him what day he had left
Rome and what was
the news there. When he answered rather crossly
that he had just come from
Sicily, another
acquaintance put in with "Why, of course. Didn't
you know he has just been quaestor
at
Syracuse?" At any rate he had
done sufficiently well in
Lilybaeum to give
him his next step, the aedileship to which he was
elected B.C. 70, and to
induce the Sicilians to apply to him, when in that
year they desired the prosecution of the
extortionate Verres. His energy and success in
this business raised him, without question, to the
first rank of advocates, and pledged him to a
righteous policy in regard to the government of
the provinces.
Cicero's Boyhood and Education
Still Cicero was a
novus
homo, and the jealous exclusiveness of
the great families at
Rome might yet
prevent his attainment of the highest office of
all. When the correspondence opens he is a
candidate for the praetorship, which he obtained
without difficulty, at the head of the poll. But
his birth might still be a bar to the consulship.
His father, M. Tullius, lived at
Arpinum, an
ancient city of the Volscians and afterwards of
the Samnites, which had long enjoyed a partial,
and from B.C. 188 a
complete, Roman franchise, and was included in the
Cornelian tribe. Cicero's mother's name was
Helvia, of whom we know nothing but the one
anecdote told by Quintus (
Fam.
16.26), who says that she used to seal the
wine jars when they were emptied, so that none
might be drained without her knowing
it—a testimony to her economy and
careful housewifery. His father had weak health
and resided almost entirely in his villa at
Arpinum, which he had considerably
enlarged, much devoted to study and literature
(
de Leg. 2.1). But though he
apparently possessed considerable property, giving
him equestrian rank, and though Cicero says that
his family was very ancient, yet neither he nor
any of his ancestors had held Roman magistracies.
Marcus and his brother Quintus were the first of
their family to do so, and both had to depend on
character and ability to secure their elections.
But though the father did nothing for his sons by
holding curule office himself, he did the best for
their education that was possible. Cicero calls
him
optimus et
prudentissimus, and speaks with
gratitude of what he had done for his sons in this
respect. They were sent early to
Rome to the house
of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a
sister of Helvia; and attended—with
their cousins, the sons of Aculeo—the
best schools in the city (
De Orat.
2.1-2). The young Marcus showed
extraordinary ability from the first, and that
avidity for reading and study which never forsook
him. As a young man he diligently attended the
chambers of renowned jurisconsults, especially
those of the elder and younger Scaevola, Crassus,
and Antonius, and soon found that his calling in
life was oratory. It was not till he was
twenty-eight years old, however—when he
had already written much and pleaded many
cases—that he went on a visit of between
two and three years to
Greece,
Asia, and
Rhodes, to study in
the various schools of rhetoric and philosophy,
and to view their famous cities (B.C. 79—77).
It was after his return from this tour that his
age (he was now thirty-one) made the seeking of
office at
Rome possible From that time his
election to the several
offices—quaestorship, aedileship,
praetorship, consulship—followed without
any repulse, each in the first year of his age at
which he was legally capable of being elected.
He had doubtless made the acquaintance of Titus
Pomponius, afterwards called Atticus, early in
life. But it seems that it was their intimacy at
Athens
(B.C. 79), where Atticus,
who was three years his senior, had been residing
for several years, that began the very close and
warm friendship which lasted with nothing but the
slightest and most passing of clouds till his
death. His brother Quintus was married to
Pomponia, a sister of Atticus; but the marriage
turned out unfortunately, and was a strain upon
the friendship of Cicero and Atticus rather than
an additional bond. This source of uneasiness
meets us in the very first letter of the
correspondence, and crops up again and again till
the final rupture of the ill-assorted union by
divorce in B.C. 44.
Nothing, however, had apparently interrupted the
correspondence of the two friends, which had been
going on for a long time before the first letter
which has been preserved.
Cicero the successful Advocate.
The eleven letters, then, which date before the
consulship, show us Cicero in full career of
success as an advocate and rising official, not as
yet apparently much interested in party politics,
but with his mind, in the intervals of forensic
business, engaged on the adornment of the new
villa at
Tusculum, the first of the numerous
country residences which his growing wealth or his
heightened ideas of the dignity of his position
prompted him to purchase. Atticus is commissioned
to search in
Athens and elsewhere for objects of
art suitable for the residence of a wealthy Roman,
who at the same time was a scholar and man of
letters. He is beginning to feel the charm of at
any rate a temporary retreat from the constant
bustle and occupations of the city. Though Cicero
loved
Rome, and could hardly conceive of
life unconnected with its business and
excitements,
2 and eagerly looked for news of the
city in his absence, yet there was another side to
his character. His interest in literature and
philosophy was quite as genuine as his interest in
the forum and senate-house. When the season came
for temporarily withdrawing from the latter, he
returned to the former with eager passion. But
Tusculum was too near
Rome to secure him
the quiet and solitude necessary for study and
composition. Thus, though he says (vol. i., p.4),
"I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I
never feel really happy till I get there," he
often found it necessary, when engaged in any
serious literary work, to seek the more complete
retirement of
Formiae,
Cumae, or
Pompeii, near all of which he
acquired properties, besides an inheritance at
Arpinum.
3 But the
important achievements in literature were still in
the future. The few letters of B.C. 68—67
are full of directions to Atticus for the
collection of books or works of
Death of Cicero's
Father. |
art suitable to his house, and of
matters of Death private interest. They are also
short andsometimes abrupt. The famous allusion to
his father's death in the second letter of this
collection, contained in a single
line—
pater nobis
decessit a.d. III Kal.
Decembris—followed by
directions to Atticus as to articles of vertu for his villa, has much
exercised the minds of admirers, who do not like
to think Cicero capable of such a cold-hearted
sentence. It is certainly very unlike his usual
manner.
4 He is more apt to
exaggerate than understate his emotions; and in
the first letter extant he speaks with real
feeling of the death of a cousin.
Elsewhere—as we have seen—he
refers to his father with respect and gratitude.
How then are we to account for such a cold
announcement? Several expedients have been hit
upon. First, to change
decessit to
discessit, and to refer the sentence to
the father's quitting
Rome, and not life;
in which case it is not easy to see why the
information is given at all. Second, to suppose it
to be a mere answer to a request for the
information on the part of Atticus; in which case
the date must refer to some previous year, or the
letter must be placed considerably later, to allow
of time for Atticus to hear of the death and to
write his question. In favour of the first is the
fact that Asconius (§ 82) says that
Cicero lost his father when he was a candidate for
the consulship (B.C. 64).
Some doubt has been thrown upon the genuineness of
the passage in Asconius; and, if that is not
trustworthy, we have nothing else to help us. On
the whole I think we must leave the announcement
as it stands in all its baldness. Cicero's father
had long been an invalid, and Atticus may have
been well aware that the end was expected. He
would also be acquainted with the son's feelings
towards his father, and Cicero may have held it
unnecessary to enlarge upon them. It is possible,
too, that he had already written to tell Atticus
of the death and of his own feelings, but had
omitted the date, which he here supplies. Whatever
may be the true explanation—impossible
now to recover—everything we know of
Cicero forbids us to reckon insensibility among
his faults, or reserve in expressing his feelings
among his characteristics.
The Praetorship, B.C.
66
In the next year (B.C.
67) we find Cicero elected to the
praetorship, after at least two interruptions to
the
comitia, which,
though not aimed at himself, gave him a foretaste
of the political troubles to come a few years
later. He is, however, at present simply annoyed
at the inconvenience, not yet apprehensive of any
harm to the constitution. The double postponement,
indeed, had the effect of gratifying his vanity:
for his own name was returned three times first of
the list of eight. His praetorship (B.C. 66) passed without any
startling event. The two somewhat meagre letters
which remain belonging to this year tell us hardly
anything. Still he began more or less to define
his political position by advocating the
lex Manilia, for putting the
Mithridatic war into the hands of Pompey; and one
of his most elaborate forensic speeches
—that for Cluentius—was
delivered in the course of the year: in which also
his brother Quintus was elected to the
aedileship.
Preparations for the Consulship, B.C. 65—64
So far Cicero had risen steadily and without
serious difficulty up the official ladder. But the
stress was now to come. The old families seem not
to have been so ready to oppose the rise of the
novus homo to the
praetorship. It was the consulship on which they
tried to keep a tight hand. Accordingly,
immediately after the year of his praetorship, we
find him anxiously looking out for support and
inquiring who are likely to be his competitors.
The interesting point in regard to this is his
connexion with Catiline. In his speech in the
senate delivered in the following year (
in toga candida, B.C. 64) he denounced Catiline
in the most violent language, accusing him of
every conceivable crime; yet in B.C. 65 he not only contemplated being
elected with him without any expression of
disgust, but even considered whether he should not
undertake his defence on some charge that was
being brought against him—perhaps for
his conduct during the Sullan proscriptions. To
whitewash Catiline is a hopeless task; and it
throws a lurid light upon the political and moral
sentiments of the time to find Cicero even
contemplating such a conjunction.
After this, for two years, there is a break in
the correspondence. Atticus had probably returned
to
Rome,
and if there were letters to others (as no doubt
there were) they have been lost. A certain light
is thrown on the proceedings of the year of
candidature (B.C. 64) by
the essay "On the duties of a candidate," ascribed
to his brother Quintus, who was himself to be a
candidate for the praetorship in the next year
(B.C. 63). We may see
from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as
the greatest and most influential man at
Rome;
that Catiline's character was so atrocious in the
eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be
feared; that Cicero's "newness " was a really
formidable bar to his election, and that his chief
support was to be looked for from the individuals
and companies for whom he had acted as counsel,
and who hoped to secure his services in the
future. The support of the nobles was not a
certainty. There had been a taint of popularity in
some of Cicero's utterances, and the writer urges
him to convince the consulars that he was at one
with the Optimates, while at the same time aiming
at the conciliation of the equestrian order. This
was, in fact, to be Cicero's political position in
the future. The party of the
Optimates—in spite of his disgust at the
indifference and frivolity of many of
them—was to be his party: his favourite
constitutional object was to be to keep the
equites and the senate on good terms: and his
greatest embarrassment was how to reconcile this
position with his personal loyalty to Pompey, and
his views as to the reforms necessary in the
government of the provinces.
The Consulship, B.C.
63.
For the momentous year of the consulship we
have no letters. His brother Quintus was in
Rome as
candidate and then praetor-designate; Atticus was
also in
Rome; and the business, as well as
the dignity of a consul, were against any thing
like ordinary correspondence. Of the earlier part
of the consulship we have little record. The
speeches against Rullus were delivered at the
beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty
definitely to a policy as to the
ager publicus —which
was, to his disgust, entirely reversed by the
triumvirs in B.C.
59—but they do not show any sense
of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his
consulship took a very definite line against the
populares. Not only
did he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by
Caesar of the assassination of Saturninus, and
address the people against offering violence to L.
Roscius on account of the unpopular
lex theatralis but he even
resisted the restoration to their civil rights of
the sons of the men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly
on the ground of the necessity of maintaining the
established order, though he knew and confessed
the justice of the proposal.
5
The Conspiracy of Catiline.
Any movement, therefore, on the side of the
popular party had now his opposition with which to
reckon. He professes to have known very early in
his year of office that some more than usually
dangerous movement was in contemplation. We cannot
well decide from the violent denunciation of
Catiline contained—to judge from extant
fragments—in the speech
in toga candida, how far
Cicero was really acquainted with any definite
designs of his. Roman orators indulged in a
violence of language so alien from modern ideas
and habits, that it is difficult to draw definite
conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that
Catiline had, in a secret meeting before the
elections of B.C. 64,
professed an intention of going all lengths in a
revolutionary programme and, if that was the case,
Cicero would be sure to have had some secret
information on the subject. But his hands were
partly tied by the fact that the
comitia had given him a
colleague-C. Antonius- deeply implicated in
Catiline's policy, whatever it was. Pompey, whom
he regarded as the champion of law and order, was
in the East: and Catiline's
candidature—and it was supposed his
policy also—had had the almost open
support of the richest man in
Rome, M. Licinius
Crassus, and of the most influential man of the
populares, C. Iulius
Caesar. In the house of one or the other of them,
indeed, the meeting at which Catiline first
unfolded his purposes was believed to have been
held. Still Catiline had not been guilty of any
overt act which enabled Cicero to attack him. He
had, indeed, been informed, on very questionable
authority, that Catiline had made a plot to
assassinate him while holding the elections, and
he made a considerable parade of taking
precautions for his safety—letting it be
seen that he wore a cuirass under his toga, and
causing his house to be guarded by the younger
members of his party. The elections, according to
Plutarch, had at least been once postponed from
the ordinary time in July, though this has been
denied.
6 At any
rate it was not till they had taken place and
Catiline had been once more rejected, that any
definite step is alleged to have been taken by
him, such as Cicero could lay hold of to attack
him. On the 20th of October, in the senate, Cicero
made a speech warning the Fathers of the impending
danger, and on the 21st called upon Catiline for
an explanation in their presence. But, after all,
even the famous meeting of the 5th of November, in
the house of M. Porcius Laeca, betrayed to Cicero
by Fulvia, the mistress of Q. Curius, would not
have sufficed as grounds for the denunciation of
the first extant speech against Catiline (7th of
November), if it had not been for something else.
For some months past there had been rumours of
risings in various parts of
Italy; but by the
beginning of November it was known that C. Manlius
(or Mallius) had collected a band of desperadoes
near
Faesulae, and, having established
there a camp on the 27th of October, meant to
advance on
Rome. Manlius had been a centurion in
Sulla's army, and had received an allotment of
confiscated land in Etruria; but, like others, had
failed to prosper. The movement was one born of
discontent with embarrassments which were mostly
brought about by extravagance or incompetence. But
the rapidity with which Manlius was able to gather
a formidable force round him seems to show that
there were genuine grievances also affecting the
agricultural classes in Etruria generally. At any
rate there was now no doubt that a formidable
disturbance was brewing; the senate voted that
there was a
tumultus,
authorized the raising of troops, and named
commanders in the several districts affected. It
was complicity in this rising that Cicero now
sought to establish against Catiline and his
partisans in
Rome. The report of the meeting in
the house of Laeca gave him the pretext for his
first step—a fiery denunciation of
Catiline in the senate on the 7th of November.
Catiline left
Rome, joined the camp of Manlius, and
assumed the ensigns of
imperium. That he was allowed thus to
leave the city is a proof that Cicero had as yet
no information enabling him to act at once. It was
the right of every citizen to avoid standing a
trial by going into exile. Catiline was now under
notice of prosecution for
vis, and when leaving
Rome he professed
to be going to
Marseilles, which had the
jus exilii. But when it was
known that he had stopped short at
Faesulae the
senate at once declared both him and Manlius
hostes, and
authorized the consuls to proceed against them.
The expedition was intrusted to Antonius, in spite
of his known sympathy with Catiline, while Cicero
was retained with special powers to protect the
city. The result is too well known to be more than
glanced at here. Catiline's partisans were
detected by letters confided to certain envoys of
the Allobroges, which were held to convict them of
the guilt of treason, as instigating Catiline to
march on
Rome, and the senate of the
Allobroges to assist the invasion by sending
Cavalry to
Faesulae.
Execution of he conspirators, December,
B.C. 63. Its legal
grounds and consequences.
The decree of the senate,
videant consules, etc., had come to be
considered as reviving the full
imperium of the consul, and investing
him with the power of life and death over all
citizens. Cicero acted on this (questionable)
constitutional doctrine. He endeavoured, indeed,
to shelter himself under the authority of a
senatorial vote. But the senate never had the
power to try or condemn a citizen. It could only
record its advice to the consul. The whole legal
responsibility for the condemnation and death of
the conspirators, arrested in consequence of these
letters, rested on the consul. To our moral
judgment as to Cicero's conduct it is of primary
importance to determine whether or not these men
were guilty: to his legal and constitutional
position it matters not at all. Nor was that point
ever raised against him. The whole question turns
on whether the doctrine was true that the
senatus consultum ultimum gave
the consul the right of inflicting death upon
citizens without trial, i.e., without appeal to
the people, on the analogy of the
dictator seditionis sedandae
causa, thus practically defeating that
most ancient and cherished safeguard of Roman
liberty, the
ius
provocationis. The precedents were few,
and scarcely such as would appeal to popular
approval. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus had been
ex post facto
approved by the senate in B.C. 133—2. In the
case of Gaius Gracchus, in B.C.
121, the senate had voted
uti consul Opimius rempublicam
defenderet, and in virtue of that the
consul had authorized the killing of Gaius and his
friends: thus for the first time exercising
imperium sine
provocatione. Opimius had been impeached
after his year of office, but acquitted, which the
senate might claim as a confirmation of the right,
in spite of the
lex
of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed the right of
provocatio in all
cases. In B.C. 100 the
tribune Saturninus and the praetor Glaucia were
arrested in consequence of a similar decree, which
this time joined the other magistrates to the
consuls as authorized to protect the Republic:
their death, however, was an act of violence on
the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned
by Caesar's condemnation of Rabirius, as
duovir capitalis, but to a
certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure
his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the
people. In B.C. 88 and
83 this decree of the
senate was again passed, in the first case in
favour of Sulla against the tribune Sulpicius, who
was in consequence put to death; and in the second
case in favour of the consuls (partisans of
Marius) against the followers of Sulla. Again in
B.C. 77 the decree was
passed in consequence of the insurrection of the
proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to
Sardinia
and died there.
In every case but one this decree had been
passed against the popular party. The only legal
sanction given to the exercise of the
imperium sine provocatione was
the acquittal of the consul Opimius in B.C. 120. But the jury which
tried that case probably consisted entirely of
senators, who would not stultify their own
proceedings by condemning him. To rely upon such
precedents required either great boldness (never a
characteristic of
Cicero), or the most profound
conviction of the essential righteousness of the
measure, and the clearest assurance that the
safety of the state—the supreme
law—justified the breach of every
constitutional principle.
Cicero was not left
long in doubt as to whether there would be any to
question his proceeding. On the last day of the
year, when about to address the people, as was
customary, on laying down his consulship, the
tribune Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos forbade him to
speak, on the express ground that he "had put
citizens to death uncondemned "—
quod cives indemnatos
necavisset. Cicero consoled himself with
taking the required oath as to having observed the
laws, with an additional declaration that he had
"saved the state." Nevertheless, he must have felt
deeply annoyed and alarmed at the action of
Metellus, for he had been a
legatus of Pompey, and was supposed to
represent his views, and it was upon the
approbation and support of Pompey, now on the eve
of his return from the East, that Cicero
particularly reckoned.
Letters after B. C. 63.
The letters in our collection now recommence.
The first of the year (B.C.
62) is one addressed to Pompey, expressing
some discontent at the qualified manner in which
he had written on recent events, and affirming his
own conviction that he had acted in the best
interests of the state and with universal
approval. But indeed the whole correspondence to
the end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this
subject directly or indirectly. His quarrel with
Metellus Nepos brought upon him a remonstrance
from the latter's brother (or cousin), Metellus
Celer (Letters XIII, XIV), and when the
correspondence for B.C.
61 opens, we find him already on the eve of
the quarrel with Publius Clodius which was to
bring upon him the exile of B.C.
58.
Publius Clodius Pulcher.
P. CLODIUS PULCHER was an extreme instance of a
character not uncommon among the nobility in the
last age of the Republic. Of high birth, and
possessed of no small amount of ability and
energy, he belonged by origin and connexion to the
Optimates; but he regarded politics as a game to
be played for his personal aggrandizement, and
public office as a means of replenishing a purse
drained by boundless extravagance and
self-indulgence. His record had been bad. He had
accompanied his brother-in-law Lucullus, or had
joined his staff, in the war with Mithridates, and
had helped to excite a mutiny in his army in
revenge for some fancied slight. He had then gone
to
Cilicia, where another
brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was propraetor, and
while commanding a fleet under him had fallen into
the hands of pirates, and when freed from them had
gone—apparently in a private
capacity—to
Antioch, where he again excited a
mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against
the Arabians (B.C.
70—65). On his
return to
Rome he attempted to make himself
conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted
a bribe to withdraw. In B.C.
64, on the staff of the governor of
Gallia
Narbonensis, he is accused of having
enriched himself with plunder. For a time after
that he was still acting as a member of the party
of the Optimates; seems to have supported Cicero
during the Catiline conspiracy; and in B.C. 62 stood for the
quaestorship and was elected. His violation of the
mysteries was alleged to have been committed in
December of that year, and before he could go to
the province allotted to him as quaestor in
Sicily he
had to stand a trial for sacrilege. Such an
offence—penetrating in disguise into the
house of the Pontifex Maximus, when his wife was
engaged in the secret rites of the Bona
Dea—would place him under a curse, and
not only prevent his entering upon his
quaestorship, but would disfranchise and
politically ruin him. Clodius would seem not to
have been a person of sufficient character or
importance to make this trial a political event.
But not only had he powerful backers, but his
opponents also, by proposing an innovation in the
manner of selecting the jurors for trying him, had
managed to give a spurious political importance to
the case. One of the most brilliant of the early
letters (XV, p.37) gives us a graphic picture of
the trial. Clodius was acquitted and went to his
province, but returned in B.C.
60, apparently prepared for a change of
parties. Cicero and he had quarreled over the
trial. He had said sarcastic things about the
sacred consulship, and Cicero had retaliated by
bitter speeches in the senate, and by giving
evidence at the trial of having seen Clodius in
Rome
three hours before he professed to have been at
Interamna, on the day of the alleged
sacrilege. It is perhaps possible that his alibi
may have been true in substance, for he may have
been well out of
Rome on his way to
Interamna after
seeing Cicero. But, however that may be, he
nourished a grudge against Cicero, which he
presently had an opportunity of satisfying. The
year of his return to
Rome from
Sicily
(B.C. 60) was the same as
that of Caesar's return from
Spain.
Pompey—who had returned the year
before—was at enmity with the senate on
account of the difficulties raised to the
confirmation of his
acta and the allotments for his
veterans. Caesar had a grievance because of the
difficulties put in the way of his triumph. The
two coalesced, taking in the millionaire Crassus,
to form a triumvirate or coalition of three, with
a view to getting measures they desired passed,
and offices for themselves or their partisans.
This was a great blow to Cicero, who clung
feverously to Pompey as a political leader, but
could not follow him in a coalition with Caesar:
for he knew that the object of it was a series of
measures of which he heartily disapproved. His
hope of seeing Pompey coming to act as
acknowledged leader of the Optimates was dashed to
the ground. He could not make up his mind wholly
to abandon him, or, on the other hand, to cut
himself adrift from the party of Optimates, to
whose policy he had so deeply committed himself.
Clodius was troubled by no such scruples. Perhaps
Caesar had given him substantial reasons for his
change of policy. At any rate, from this time
forward he acts as an extreme
popularis—much too extreme,
as it turned out, for Pompey's taste. As a
patrician his next step in the official ladder
would naturally have been the aedileship. But that
peaceful office did not suit his present purpose.
The tribuneship would give him the right to bring
forward measures in the
comitia
tributa, such as he desired to pass, and
would in particular give him the opportunity of
attacking Cicero. The difficulty was that to
become tribune he must cease to be a patrician. He
could only do that by being adopted into a
plebeian gens. He had a plebeian ready to do it in
B.C. 59. But for a man
who was
sui iuris to
be adopted required a formal meeting of the old
comitia curiata, and
such a meeting required the presence of an augur,
as well as some kind of sanction of the
pontifices. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus, and
Pompey was a member of the college of augurs.
Their influence would be sufficient to secure or
prevent this being done. Their consent was, it
appears, for a time withheld. But Caesar was going
to
Gaul
at the end of his consulship, and desired to have
as few powerful enemies at
Rome during his
absence as possible. Still he had a personal
feeling for Cicero, and when it was known that one
of Clodius's objects in seeking to become a
plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Caesar
offered him two chances of honourable
retreat—first as one of the
commissioners to administer his land law, and
again as one of his
legati in
Gaul. But Cicero would not accept the
first, because he was vehemently opposed to the
law itself: nor the second, because he had no
taste for provincial business, even supposing the
proconsul to be to his liking; and because he
could not believe that P. Clodius would venture to
attack him, or would succeed if he did. Caesar's
consulship of B.C. 59
roused his worst fears for the Republic; and,
though he thought little of the statesmanship or
good sense of Caesar's hostile colleague Bibulus,
he was thoroughly disgusted with the policy of the
triumvirs, with the contemptuous treatment of the
senate, with the highhanded disregard of the
auspices—by means of which Bibulus tried
to invalidate the laws and other
acta of Caesar—and
with the armed forces which Pompey brought into
the
campus, nominally
to keep order, but really to overawe the
comitia, and secure the
passing of Caesar's laws. Nor was it in his nature
to conceal his feelings. Speaking early in the
year in defence of his former colleague, C.
Antonius, accused of
maiestas for his conduct in
Macedonia, he
expressed in no doubtful terms his view of the
political situation. Within a few hours the words
were reported to the triumvirs, and all
formalities were promptly gone through for the
adoption of Clodius. Caesar himself presided at
the
comitia curiata,
Pompey attended as augur, and the thing was done
in a few minutes. Even then Cicero does not appear
to have been alarmed, or to have been fully aware
of what the object of Publius was. While on his
usual spring visit to his seaside villas in April
(B.C. 59), he expressed
surprise at hearing from the young Curio that
Clodius was a candidate for the tribuneship (vol.
i., p.99). His surprise no doubt was more or less
assumed: he must have understood that Clodius's
object in the adoption was the tribunate, and must
have had many uneasy reflexions as to the use
which he would make of the office when he got it.
Indeed there was not very much doubt about it, for
Publius openly avowed his intentions. We have
accordingly numerous references, in the letters to
Atticus, to Cicero's doubts about the course he
ought to adopt. Should he accept Caesar's offer of
a legation in
Gaul, or a free and votive legation?
Should he stay in
Rome and fight it out? The latter
course was the one on which he was still resolved
in July, when Clodius had been, or was on the
point of being, elected tribune (p. 110). He
afterwards wavered (p.113), but was encouraged by
the belief that all the "orders" were favourable
to him, and were becoming alienated from the
triumvirs (pp. 117, 119), especially after the
affair of Vettius (pp.122-124), and by the
friendly disposition of many of the colleagues of
Clodius in the tribuneship. With such feelings of
confidence and courage the letters of B.C. 59 come to an end.
The Exile, April, B. C. 58-August, B. C.
57.
The correspondence only opens again in April of
B.C. 58, when the worst
has happened. Clodius entered upon his tribuneship
on the 10th of December, B.C.
59, and lost little time in proposing a law
to the
comitia for
the trial of any magistrate guilty of putting
citizens to death without trial (
qui cives indemnatos
necavisset). The wording of the law thus
left it open to plead that it applied only to such
act as occurred after its enactment, for the
pluperfect
necavisset
in the dependent clause answers to the future
perfect in a direct one. And this was the
interpretation that Caesar, while approving the
law itself, desired to put upon it.
7 He again offered Cicero a
legation in
Gaul, but would do nothing for him if
he stayed in
Rome; while Pompey, who had been
profuse in promises of protection, either avoided
seeing Cicero, or treated his abject entreaties
with cold disdain.
8
Every citizen, by a humane custom at
Rome, had the right
of avoiding a prosecution by quitting the city and
residing in some town which had the
ius exilii. It is this course
that we find Cicero already entered upon when the
correspondence of the year begins. In the letters
of this year of exile he continually reproaches
himself with not having stayed and even supported
the law, in full confidence that it could not be
applied to himself. He attributes his having taken
the less courageous course to the advice of his
friends, who were actuated by jealousy and a
desire to get rid of him. Even Atticus he thinks
was timid, at the best, in advising his
retirement. It is the only occasion in all the
correspondence in which the least cloud seems to
have rested on the perfect friendship of the two
men. Atticus does not appear to have shown any
annoyance at the querulous remarks of his friend.
He steadily continued to write, giving information
and advice, and made no difficulty in supplying
his friend with money. During Cicero's absence
Atticus became still more wealthy than before by
inheriting the estates of his cross-grained uncle
Caecilius. But he was always careful as to the
investment of his money and he would not, perhaps,
have been so ready to trust Cicero, had he not
felt confidence in the ultimate recovery of his
civil status. Still his confidence was peculiarly
welcome at a time which would have been otherwise
one of great pressure. For Clodius had followed up
Cicero's retirement with the usual
lex in regard to persons
leaving
Rome to avoid a trial—a
prohibition "of fire and water" within a fixed
distance from
Italy, which involved the
confiscation of all his property in
Italy. His villas
were dismantled, his town house pulled down, and a
vote of the people obtained by Clodius for the
consecration of its site as a
templum dedicated to Liberty, and a
scheme was formed and the work actually commenced
for occupying part of it by an extension of an
existing porticus or colonnade (the
porticus Catuli) to contain a
statue of Liberty. That this consecration was
regular is shown by the pleas by which it was
afterwards sought to reverse it.
9 When
Cicero was recalled the question came before the
pontifices, who decided that the consecration was
not valid unless it had been done by the "order of
the people." It could not be denied on the face of
it that there had been such an order. Cicero was
obliged to resort to the plea that Clodius's
adoption had been irregular and invalid, that
therefore he was not legally a tribune, and could
not take an order of the people. Finally, the
senate seems to have decided that its restoration
to Cicero was part of the general
restitutio in integrum voted
by the
comitia
centuriata; and a sum of money was
assigned to him for the rebuilding of the house.
Clodius refused to recognize the validity of this
decree of the senate, and attempted by violence to
interrupt the workmen engaged on the house. We
have a lively picture of this in Letter XCI (vol.
i., pp. 194-196).
Letters of the Exile (Letters
LV-LXXXVIII).
The letters from Cicero as an exile are painful
reading for those who entertain a regard for his
character. It was not unnatural, indeed, that he
should feel it grievously. He had so completely
convinced himself of the extraordinary value of
his services to the state, of the importance of
his position in Roman politics, and of the view
that the Optimates would take of the necessity of
retaining him, that to see himself treated like a
fraudulent or unsuccessful provincial governor, of
no importance to anyone but himself, was a bitter
blow to his self-esteem. The actual loss was
immense. His only means were now the amount of
money he had been able to take with him, or was
able to borrow. All was gone except such property
as his wife retained in her own right. He was a
dependent upon her, instead of being her support
and the master of his own household. The services
of freedmen—readily rendered when he was
prosperous—would now be a matter of
favour and personal attachment, which was not
always sufficient to retain them. The "life and
light" of the city, in which no man ever took a
more eager interest and delight, were closed to
him. He was cut off from his family, and from
familiar intercourse with friends, on both of
which he was much dependent for personal
happiness. Lastly, wherever he lived, he lived, as
it were, on sufferance, no longer an object of
respect as a statesman, or the source of help to
others by his eloquence. But, disagreeable as all
this was to a man of Cicero's sensitive vanity,
there was something still worse. Even in towns
which were the legal distance from
Italy he could not
safely stay, if they were within the jurisdiction
of one of his personal enemies, or contained other
exiles, who owed him an ill turn. He was protected
by no law, and more than one instance of such a
man's falling a victim to an enemy's dagger is
recorded. Cicero's first idea was to go to
Malta:
but
Malta
was for some purposes in the jurisdiction of the
governor of
Sicily, and the governor of
Sicily
(C. Vergilius)
10objected to his passing
through
Sicily or staying at
Malta. We have no
reason for supposing Vergilius personally hostile
to Cicero, but he may have thought that Cicero's
services to the Sicilians in the Case of Verres
would have called out some expression of feeling
on their part in his favour, which would have been
awkward for a Roman governor. Cicero therefore
crossed to
Epirus, and travelled down the
Egnatian road to
Thessalonica. This was the official
capital of the province of
Macedonia, and the
quaestor in
Macedonia, Gnaeus Plancius, met
Cicero at
Dyrrachium, invited him to fix his
residence there with him, and accompanied him on
his journey. Here he stayed till November in a
state of anxiety and distress, faithfully
reflected in his letters, waiting to hear how far
the elections for B.C. 57
would result in putting his friends in office, and
watching for any political changes that would
favour his recall: but prepared to go still
farther to
Cyzicus, if the incoming governor, L.
Calpurnius Piso, who, as consul in B.C. 58 with Gabinius, had
shown decided animus against him, should still
retain that feeling in
Macedonia. Events,
however, in
Rome during the summer and autumn of
B.C. 58 gave him better
hopes. Clodius, by his violent proceedings, as
well as by his legislation, had alienated Pompey,
and caused him to favour Cicero's recall. Of the
new consuls Lentulus was his friend, and Q.
Caecilius Metellus Nepos (who as tribune in
B.C. 63—62 had
prevented his speech when laying down his
consulship) consented to waive all opposition. A
majority of the new tribunes were also favourable
to him, especially P. Sestius and T. Annius Milo;
and in spite of constant ups and downs in his
feelings of confidence, he had on the whole
concluded that his recall was certain to take
place. Towards the end of November he therefore
travelled back to
Dyrrachium, a
libera civitas in which he had many
friends, and where he thought he might be safe,
and from which he could cross to
Italy as soon as he
heard of the law for his recall having been
passed. Here, however, he was kept waiting through
many months of anxiety. Clodius had managed to
make his recall as difficult as possible. He had,
while tribune, obtained an order from the people
forbidding the consuls to bring the subject before
the senate, and Piso and Gabinius had during their
year of office pleaded that law as a bar to
introducing the question.
The Recall, August, B. C. 57.
The new consuls were not, or did not consider
themselves, so bound, and Lentulus having brought
the subject forward, the senate early passed a
resolution that Cicero's recall was to take
precedence of all other business. In accordance
with the resolution of the senate, a law was
proposed by the consul Lentulus in the
comitia centuriata, and
probably one by Milo to the
tributa. But Clodius, though no longer
armed with the tribuneship, was not yet beaten. He
obtained the aid of some gladiators belonging to
his brother Appius, and more than once interrupted
and dispersed an assembly of the
comitia. In the riots thus
occasioned blood was shed on both sides, and
Cicero's brother Quintus on one occasion nearly
lost his life. This was the beginning of the
series of violent contests between Clodius and
Milo, only ended by the murder of the former on
the Appian road in B.C.
52. But Clodius was a candidate for the
aedileship in this year (B.C.
57), and could be barred from that office
legally by a prosecution for
vis, of which Milo gave notice against
him. It was, perhaps, a desire to avoid this, as
much as fear of Milo's counter exhibition of
violence, that at length caused him to relax in
his opposition, or at any rate to abstain from
violently interrupting the
comitia. Accordingly, on the 4th of
August, the law proposed by both consuls, and
supported by Pompey, was passed unanimously by the
centuries. Cicero, we must presume, had received
trustworthy information that this was to be the
case (showing that some understanding had been
come to with Clodius, or there would have been no
certainty of his not violently dispersing the
comitia again), for
on that same day he set sail from
Dyrrachium and
landed at
Brundisium on the 5th. His triumphant
return to
Rome is described in the eighty-ninth
letter of this collection. For Pompey's share in
securing it he expressed, and seems really to have
felt, an exaggerated gratitude, which still
influenced him in the unhappy months of B.C. 49, when he was hesitating
as to joining him beyond seas in the civil
war.
But though Clodius had somehow been prevented
from hindering his recall, he by no means relaxed
his hostility. He not only tried to excite the
populace against him by arguing that the scarcity
and consequent high price of corn, from which the
people were at that time suffering, was in some
way attributable to Cicero's policy, but he also
opposed the restoration of his house; and when a
decree of the senate was passed in Cicero's favour
on that point, brought his armed ruffians to
prevent the workmen from going on with the
rebuilding, as well as to molest Cicero himself
(vol. i., p.195). This was followed by a
determined opposition by
Milo to the holding
of the elections for B.C.
56, until his prosecution of Clodius
de vi should have
been tried. Clodius, however, was acquitted
11, and, being elected aedile,
immediately commenced a counter accusation against
Milo for
vis. He
impeached him before the
comitia in February (B.C. 56), on which occasion Pompey spoke
in Milo's defence in the midst of a storm of
interruptions got up by the friends of Clodius
(vol. i., pp.214, 217). Milo was also acquitted,
and the rest of Clodius's aedileship seems to have
passed without farther acts of open violence.
Cicero and the Triumvirs.
But Cicero had now other causes of anxiety. He
had spoken in favour of the commission offered to
Pompey in B.C. 57 for
superintending the corn-supply of
Rome (
cura annonae). Pompey was to
have fifteen legates, a good supply of ships and
men, and considerable powers in all corn-growing
countries in the Mediterranean. Cicero supported
this, partly from gratitude to Pompey, but partly
also from a wish to promote his power and
influence against the ever-increasing influence
and fame of Caesar. He secretly hoped that a
jealousy might grow up between them; that Pompey
would be drawn closer to the Optimates; and that
the union of the triumvirate might be gradually
weakened and finally disappear. Pompey was
thoroughly offended and alarmed by the insults
offered him by the Clodian mob, and by Clodius's
own denunciations of him; and if he could be
convinced that these were suggested or approved by
Caesar or Crassus, it would go far to withdraw him
from friendship with either of them. With Crassus,
indeed, he had never been on cordial terms: it was
only Caesar's influence that had caused him to
form any union with him. Caesar, on the other
hand, was likely to be uneasy at the great powers
which the
cura
annonae put into Pompey's hands; and at
the possible suggestion of offering him the
dictatorship, if the Clodian riots became quite
intolerable. On the whole, Cicero thought that he
saw the element of a very pretty quarrel, from
which he hoped that the result might be "liberty
the orderly working of the constitution, that is,
without the irregular supremacy of anyone, at any
rate of anyone of the popular party. He had,
however, a delicate part to play. He did not wish
or dare to break openly with Caesar, or to speak
too openly to Pompey; and he was conscious that
the intemperance, folly, or indifference of many
of the Optimates made it difficult to reckon on
their support, and made that support a very
questionable benefit if accorded. But though his
letters of this period are full of expressions
indicating doubt of Pompey and irritation with
him, yet he seems still to have spoken of him with
warmth on public occasions, while he avoided
mentioning Caesar, or spoke of him only in cold
terms.
Renewal of the Triumvirate at Luca, April, B.C. 56, and Cicero's change of
policy.
The hope, however, of detaching Pompey from
Caesar was dashed by the meeting at
Luca in April,B.C. 56, at which a fresh
arrangement was made for the mutual advantage of
the triumvirs. Caesar got the promise of the
introduction of a law giving him an additional
five years of command in
Gaul, with special
privileges as to his candidature for the
consulship of B.C. 48;
while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second
consulship in B.C. 55,
and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a
single province) and
Syria respectively, each for five
years. The care taken that none of the three
should have imperium overlapping that of the
others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and
jealousy. But the bargain was made with sufficient
approval of the members of the party crowding
Luca to
secure its being carried out by the comitia. The
union seemed stronger than ever; and Cicero at
length resolved on a great change of attitude.
Opposition to the triumvirs had been abandoned, he
saw, by the very party for whom he had been
incurring the enmity of Pompey and Caesar. Why
should he hold out any longer? "Since those who
have no power," he writes to Atticus in April,
"refuse me their affection, let me take care to
secure the affection of those who have power. You
will say, 'I could have wished that you had done
so before.' I know you did wish it, and that I
have made a real ass of myself."
12 This is the first indication in the
letters of the change. But it was soon to be
publicly avowed. The opposition to the consulship
of Pompey and Crassus was so violent that no
election took place during B.C.
56, and they were only elected under the
presidency of interreges at the beginning of
February, B.C. 55. But by
the lex Sempronia the senate was bound to name the
consular provinces—i.e., the provinces
to be governed by the incoming consuls after their
year of office—before the elections, and
in his speech on the subject (be
Provinciis Consularibus),
delivered apparently in July, B.C. 56, Cicero, while urging that Piso
and Gabinius should have successors appointed to
them in
Macedonia and
Syria, took occasion
to announce and defend his own reconciliation with
Caesar, and to support his continuance in the
governorship of
Gaul. Shortly afterwards, when
defending the citizenship of L. Cornelius Balbus,
he delivered a glowing panegyric on Pompey's
character and services to the state. This was
followed by a complete abstention from any farther
opposition to the carrying out of Caesar's law for
the allotment of the Campanian land—a
subject which he had himself brought before the
senate only a short time before, and on which he
really continued to feel strongly.
13
Cicero's most elaborate defence of his change of
front is contained in a long letter to P. Lentulus
Spinther, written two years afterwards.
14The gist of it is much the same
as the remark to Atticus already quoted. "Pompey
and Caesar were all-powerful, and could not be
resisted without civil violence, if not downright
civil war. The Optimates were feeble and shifty,
had shown ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had
openly favoured his enemy Clodius. Public peace
and safety must be the statesman's chief object,
and almost any concession was to be preferred to
endangering these." Nevertheless, we cannot think
that Cicero was ever heartily reconciled to the
policy, or the unconstitutional preponderance of
the triumvirs. He patched up some sort of
reconciliation with Crassus, and his personal
affection for Pompey made it comparatively easy
for him to give him a kind of support. Caesar was
away, and a correspondence filled on both sides
with courteous expressions could be maintained
without seriously compromising his convictions.
But Cicero was never easy under the yoke. From
B.C. 55 to B.C. 52 he sought several
opportunities for a prolonged stay in the country,
devoting himself—in default of
politics—to literature. The fruits of
this were the de Oratore and the de Republica,
besides poems on his own times and on his
consulship. Still he was obliged from time to time
to appear in the forum and senate-house, and in
various ways to gratify Pompey and Caesar. It must
have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this
new political friendship when, in B.C. 54, Pompey called upon him
to undertake the defence of P. Vatinius, whom he
had not long before attacked so fiercely while
defending Sestius. Vatinius had been a tribune in
B.C. 59, acting entirely
in Caesar's interests, and Cicero believed him to
have been his enemy both in the matter of his
exile and in the opposition to his recall. He had
denounced him in terms that would have made it
almost impossible, one would think, to have spoken
in his defence in any cause whatever. At best he
represented all that Cicero most disliked in
politics; and on this very election, to the
praetorship, for which he was charged with bribery
(
de sodalitiis),
Cicero had already spoken in strongly hostile
terms in the senate. For now undertaking his
defence he has, in fact, no explanation to give to
Lentulus (vol. i., p.319), and he was long sore at
having been forced to do it. Through B.C. 54 and 53 he was busied
with his de Republica, and was kept more in touch
with Caesar by the fact that his brother Quintus
was serving as legatus to the latter in
Britain and
Gaul, and
that his
friend Trebatius
(introduced by himself) was seeking for promotion
and profit in Caesar's camp. But even his
brother's service with Caesar did not eventually
contribute to the formation of cordial feeling on
his part towards Caesar, whom he could not help
admiring, but never really liked. For Quintus,
though he distinguished himself by his defence of
his camp in the autumn of B.C.
54, lost credit and subjected himself to
grave rebuke by the disaster incurred in B.C. 53, near Aduatuca
(
Tongres), brought about by
disregarding an express order of Caesar's. There
is no allusion to this in the extant
correspondence, but a fragment of letter from
Caesar to Cicero (neque pro cauto ac diligente se
castris continuit
15 ), seems to show that
Caesar had written sharply to Cicero on his
brother's faux pas, and after this time, though
Cicero met Caesar at
Ravenna in B.C. 52, and consented to
support the bill allowing him to stand for the
consulship in his absence,
16 there is apparent in his
references to him a return to the cold or critical
tone of former times. But of course there were
other reasons.
Pompey's third consulship and the trial of
Milo, B.C. 52.
Pompey's six months' sole consulship of B.C. 52 ("that divine third
consulship"), the rumour of his dictatorship, and
the growing determination of the Optimates to play
off Pompey against Caesar (Crassus having
disappeared) and to insist on Caesar resigning his
province and army before the end of his ten years'
tenure, and before standing for a second
consulship, caused Cicero's hope of a final
dissolution of the unconstitutional compact to
revive again; and made him draw more and more
closely to Pompey as the chief hope of the boni.
In the beginning of the year he had found himself
in opposition, or quasi-opposition, to Pompey in
regard to the prosecution of Milo for the murder
of Clodius. But though in the previous year he had
declared that the election of Milo to the
consulship was of the utmost importance to his own
position and the safety of the state,
17now that it
was rendered impossible by Milo's condemnation, he
seems to have placed all his hopes on Pompey.
Unfortunately, there is here a break in the
correspondence. There is no letter of the last six
months of B.C. 53, and
only four (perhaps only three) of B.C. 52.
18 So that
the riots which prevented Milo's election, the
death of Clodius and the riots following it, and
the consequent sole consulship of Pompey, with the
latter's new legislation and the trial of
Milo—all have to be sought for
elsewhere. The last letter of this volume and of
this year, addressed to M. Marius in December,
B.C. 52, alludes to the
condemnation of Milo, and to the numerous
prosecutions following it. "Here, in
Rome, I am so
distracted by the number of trials, the crowded
Courts, and the new legislation, that I daily
offer prayers that there may be no
intercalation."
19
Cicero appointed Proconsul of Cilicia, B.C. 51—50.
When the correspondence opens again in the
spring of B.C. 51 an
event has happened, of no particular importance in
itself, but of supreme interest to Cicero, and
very fortunate for the readers of the
correspondence. One of Pompey's new laws ordained
that no one was to take a province till the fifth
year after laying down his consulship or
praetorship. Pompey broke his own law by keeping
his province, the Spains—his position in
regard to them was altogether
exceptional—but, in order to carry out
the law in other cases, the senate arranged that
ex-consuls and ex-praetors who had not been to
provinces should in turn draw lots for vacant
governorships. Cicero and Bibulus appear to have
been the senior consulares in that position, and
with much reluctance Cicero allowed his name to be
cast into the urn. He drew
Cilicia and Bibulus
Syria. He says that his motive was a desire to
obey the wishes of the senate. Another motive may
have been a desire to be away from
Rome while the
controversy as to Caesar's retirement from his
province was settled, and to retrieve a position
of some political importance, which he had
certainly not increased during the last few years.
When it came to the actual start, however, he felt
all the gêne of the
business—the formation and control of
his staff, the separation from friends, and the
residence far from the "light and life" of
Rome,
among officials who were certainly commonplace and
probably corrupt, and amidst a population, perhaps
acute and accomplished, but certainly servile and
ill content, and in some parts predatory and
barbarous. At the best, they would be emphatically
provincial, in a dreary sense of the word. He felt
unequal to the worry and bore of the whole
business, and reproached himself with the folly of
the undertaking. Of course, this regret is mingled
with his usual self-congratulation on the purity
with which he means to manage his province. But
even that feeling is not strong enough to prevent
his longing earnestly to have the period of
banishment as short as possible, or to prevent the
alarm with which he hears of a probable invasion
by the Parthians. One effect of his almost two
years' absence from
Rome was, I think, to deprive him of
the power of judging clearly of the course of
events. He had constant intelligence and excellent
correspondents—especially
Caelius—still he could not really grasp
what was going on under the surface: and when he
returned to find the civil war on the point of
breaking out, he was, after all, taken by
surprise, and had no plan of action ready. This,
as well as his government of the province, will be
fully illustrated in the next volume of the
correspondence.
Cicero's Correspondents.
The persons to whom the chief letters are
addressed in this volume, besides Atticus, are
Cicero's brother Quintus and P. Lentulus Spinther.
There are two excellent letters to M. Marius, and
one very interesting, though rather surprising,
epistle to L. Lucceius. Others of more than
average interest are to Terentia, M. Fadius
Gallus, C. Scribonius Curio, and Tiro. ATTICUS
(B.C. 109—32) is a
man of whom we should be glad to know more than we
do. He was the
friend of all the
leading men of the day— Pompey, Caesar,
Cicero, Antony, Brutus—father-in-law of
Agrippa, and survived to be a constant
correspondent of Augustus, between B.C. 43 and his death in B.C. 32. He was spared and
respected by both sides in the civil wars, from
Sulla to the Second Triumvirate. The secret of his
success seems to have been that he was no man's
rival. He resolutely declined all official
employment, even on the staff of his
brother-in-law Quintus Cicero. He committed
himself to no side in politics, and, not being in
the senate, had no occasion by vote or speech to
wound the feelings of anyone. So, too, though he
cared for literature, it was rather as a friendly
critic of others than as an author. He did, it is
true, compile some books on Roman history, on
historical portraits, and certain family
biographies; but they were not such as made him a
rival of any of his Contemporaries. They were
rather the productions of a rich amateur, who had
leisure to indulge a quasi-literary taste, without
any thought of joining the ranks of professed
writers. Thirdly, he had great wealth, partly
inherited, partly acquired by prudent speculation
in the purchase of town properties, or in loans to
states or public bodies on fair terms: and this
wealth was at the service of his friends, but not
in the lavish or reckless manner, which often
earns only ingratitude without being of any
permanent service to the recipients. He lent
money, but expected to be repaid even by his
brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain
the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament
secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the
valuable knack of constantly replenishing the
number of his friends among men junior to himself.
His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who
was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained
the close friend of his contemporaries Hortensius
and Cicero (the former five years his senior, the
latter three years his junior) till the day of
their death. But we also find him on intimate
terms with Brutus, twenty-four, and Octavian,
forty-six years junior to himself. Lastly, he was
not too much at
Rome. More than twenty years of his
earlier manhood (B.C.
87—65) were
spent in
Greece, principally at
Athens, partly in
study and partly in business. And
Athens at this
time, long deprived of political importance, had
still the charm not only of its illustrious past,
but also of its surviving character as the home of
culture and refinement. When he at length returned
to
Rome
in B.C. 65, he had
already purchased a property in
Epirus, near
Buthrotum (see p.3), where he built a
villa, in which he continued to spend a
considerable part of his remaining years. This was
sufficiently remote, not only from
Rome, but from the
summer residences of the Roman nobles, to secure
his isolation from the intrigues and enmities of
Roman society. He did not indeed—as who
does ?—always escape giving offence. At
the very beginning of the correspondence we hear
of his vain attempts to mollify the anger of L.
Lucceius—how incurred we do not know;
and Quintus Cicero, of whose sharp temper we hear
so much, was on more than one occasion on the
point of a rupture with him. But his family life
was generally as pleasing as his connexion with
his friends. With his mother, who lived to a great
age, he boasted that he had never been reconciled,
because he had never quarrelled. He was the only
one who could get on with the crusty uncle
Caecilius. In the delicate matter of his sister
Pomponia's differences with her husband Quintus
Cicero, he seems to have acted with kindness as
well as prudence; and though he married late in
life (B.C. 56, when he
was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have
made an excellent husband to Pilia and a very
affectionate father to his daughter. His unwearied
sympathy with the varied moods of
Cicero—whether of exultation,
irritation, or despair—and the entire
confidence which Cicero feels that he will have
that sympathy in every case, are creditable to
both. It is only between sincere souls that one
can speak to the other as to a second self, as
Cicero often alleges that he does to Atticus.
Of QUINTUS CICERO, the next most important
correspondent in this volume, we get a fairly
clear picture.
Four years younger
than his famous brother (b. B.C. 102), he followed him at the due
distance up the ladder of official promotion to
the praetorship, to which he was elected in the
year of his elder's consulship. There, however,
Quintus stopped. He never seems to have stood for
the consulship. He had no oratorical genius to
give him reputation in the forum, nor were his
literary productions of any value, either for
style or originality. His abilities for
administration, as shown in his three years'
government of
Asia, appear to have been
respectable, but were marred by faults of temper,
which too often betrayed him into extreme violence
of language. In military command he showed courage
and energy in defending his camp in the rising of
the Gauls in the winter of B.C. 54—53; but he
spoilt the reputation thus gained by the mistake
Committed in the autumn of B.C.
53, which Cost the loss of a considerable
number of troops, and all but allowed the roving
Germans to storm his camp. He remained another
year in
Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve
this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely
forgives. In politics he seems to have contented
himself generally with saying ditto to his
brother. And this continued to be the case up to
Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the
losing side, he turned somewhat fiercely upon the
brother, whom he regarded as having misled him;
and for a time there was a miserable breach
between them, which, however, did not last very
long. When the end came it found the brothers
united in heart as in misfortune. His private
happiness was marred by an uncongenial marriage.
Pomponia—sister of
Atticus—seems to have been as
high-tempered as her husband, and less placable.
The constant quarrels between them exercised the
patience both of Cicero and Atticus, and crops up
all through the correspondence. One effect of them
was the loss of all control over their son, who,
being called upon to smooth over the differences
between father and mother, naturally took up at an
early age a line of his own, and showed a
disposition to act independently of his
elders.
The letters to TERENTIA do not fill much space
in the Correspondence, and are rarely interesting.
Married about B.C.
80, Cicero seems to have lived in harmony
with her at least till the time of his return from
exile, during which unhappy period he acknowledges
the activity of her exertions in support of his
recall, and the drain which his ruin was making
upon her resources. Terentia had a large private
fortune, and apparently used it liberally in his
service. Nevertheless, immediately on his return
from exile, there seems to have been some cause of
coldness between the husband and wife. He darkly
alludes to certain domestic troubles in the first
letter to Atticus written from
Rome (vol i.,
p.189), and repeats the hint in the next (p.193).
When he landed at
Brundisium it was Tullia, not
Terentia, who came to meet him (p.187), and for
some time after she appears to be presiding in his
house rather than Terentia (see pp.224, 257).
Whatever the cause of this coldness was, however,
it appears to have been removed for a time. He
kept up a correspondence with her while he was in
Cilicia
(B.C. 51—50), and
though he does not seem pleased at her having
arranged the marriage of Tullia with Dolabella, he
addresses her warmly when about to return, and was
met by her on landing. During the five or six
months that followed, before Cicero left
Italy to
join Pompey, there is no indication of any
alienation: but the short notes from Pompey's
camp, and in the first half of B.C. 47, are cold and conventional, and on
his return to
Brundisium after Pharsalia, and
during his lengthened stay there, he appears to
have declined to allow her to come and see him.
Soon after his return to
Rome, in September,
B.C. 47, matters came to
a climax. Perhaps some of the mischief was caused
by the mismanagement or dishonesty of Terentia's
steward, Philotimus, of whom we hear a good deal
in the letters from
Cilicia: but whatever was the origin
of the quarrel, Cicero asserts that on his return
he found his affairs in a state of utter disorder.
It may well have been that, like other adherents
to the losing cause, he had to suffer from loss of
any property that could be easily laid hands on in
Rome,
and that Terentia had had no power to save it. But
Cicero, rightly or wrongly, attributed the
embarrassment which he found awaiting him to his
wife. He says in a letter to Gnaeus Plancius :
20"I should not have taken any new
step at a time of such general disaster had not on
my return found my private affairs in as sorry a
position as the public. The fact is, that when I
saw that, owing to the criminal conduct of those
to whom my life and fortunes ought, in return for
my never-to-be-forgotten services, to have been
their dearest object, there was nothing safe
within the walls of my house, nothing that was not
the subject of some intrigue, I made up my mind
that I must arm myself by the faithful support of
new marriage connexions against the perfidy of the
old." This is a lame excuse for a man of sixty
separating from the companion of his whole
manhood, and in the eyes of Roman Society it was
rendered still more questionable by a prompt
marriage with a young girl, rich, and his own
ward: from whom, however, he soon again divorced
himself, angered, it is said, by her want of
feeling at the death of Tullia. Terentia long
survived her husband, living, we are told, to be
over a hundred years old. Divorce was, of course,
not regarded in these days of the Republic as it
had once been, or as it is now among ourselves.
still we should have been glad, both for his fame
and his happiness, if the few years remaining to
him had not had this additional cloud. A man of
sixty embarking on such matrimonial enterprise is
not a dignified spectacle, or one pleasing to gods
and men.
The other correspondents may be dismissed in
few words. P. CORNELIUS LENTULUS SPINTHER, to
P. Cornelius
Lentulus Spinther. |
whom some of the longest
letters are addressed, represents the high
aristocracy, to which Cicero wished to commend
himself, though seeing keenly the weakness which
underlay their magnificence. The part played by
Lentulus in politics had been showy, but never
founded on steadfast principle. He owed his
earlier promotions to Caesar's influence, but in
his consulship of B.C. 57
had taken the side of the aristocracy in promoting
the recall of Cicero, though he had gone against
their sentiment by supporting Pompey's appointment
to the
cura annonae.
But as he was going to
Cilicia in B.C. 56, Lentulus wished to
have the lucrative task of restoring Ptolemy
Auletes to the throne of
Egypt, from which he
had been righteously driven by his subjects.
Therefore it was all to the good that Pompey
should have business at home preventing him from
taking this in hand. How Lentulus was baulked in
this desire will appear in the letters. He no
doubt had his full share of the Lenlulitas
distinguishing his family. But all was forgiven by
Cicero to a man who had promoted his recall, and
he takes great pains to justify to Lentulus his
own change of policy in regard to the triumvirs
after B.C. 56. When the
civil war began Lentulus joined Domitius at
Corfinium, and with him fell into
Caesar's hands, and was dismissed unharmed. He
afterwards joined Pompey in
Epirus, intent on
succeeding Caesar as Pontifex Maximus, as soon as
the latter had been satisfactorily disposed of.
After Pharsalia he sought refuge at
Rhodes, but was
refused sanctuary by the islanders, and was
eventually put to death, though we do not know by
whom (
Att. 11.13;
Fam.
9.18).
M. FADIUS GALLUS, the Epicurean, and M. MARIUS,
the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends
valued for their personal and agreeable qualities
M. Fadius Gallus
M. Marius L. Lucceius C. Scribonius Curio C.
Trebatius Testa. |
rather than for any public
or political importance attaching to them. The
same may be said of L. LUCCEIUS, of whose Roman
history Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a
remarkable letter begging for an honourable place
in it for his consulship, as Pliny did to Tacitus.
21C. SCRIBONIUS CURIO, son of a great
friend of Cicero, after a jeunesse orageuse, returned to
Rome
from his quaestorship in
Asia, in B.C. 53, to take up the
inheritance of his father, which he quickly
dissipated. Cicero seems to have had a high idea
of his abilities, and to have believed him capable
of taking the lead of the Optimates. But in his
tribuneship of B.C.
51—50 he
disappointed all such hopes by openly joining
Caesar's party, and resisting all attempts to
recall him. He joined Caesar at
Ravenna as soon
as his tribuneship was out, and urged him to march
on
Rome.
In B.C. 49 he was sent to
secure
Sicily and
Africa. The first he
did, but in the second he perished in battle
against the senatorial governor and king Iuba.
Cicero's relation to C. TREBATIUS TESTA, a learned
jurisconsult, was apparently that of a patron or
tutor, who, thinking that he has found a young man
of ability, endeavours to push him. He sent him
with a letter of introduction to Caesar, who was
good-natured, though rather sarcastic as to the
scope for legal abilities to be found in
Gaul. He
gave him, however, a military tribuneship, without
exacting military duties, and apparently kept on
good terms with him, for he employed him in B.C. 49 to communicate his wish
to Cicero as to his remaining at
Rome.
Cicero's letters to
him, though numerous, are not among the most
interesting. They are full of banter of a rather
forced and dull kind; and Cicero was evidently
annoyed to find that his scheme for advancing
Trebatius in Caesar's province had not been very
successful. The friendship, however, survived the
civil war, and we find Cicero in B.C. 44 dedicating his
Topica to Trebatius.
“
“Tullius, of all the sons of royal
Rome
That are, or have been, or are yet to come,
Most skilled to plead, most learned in
debate,—
Catullus hails thee, small as thou art
great.
Take thou from him his thanks, his fond
regards,
The first of patrons from the least of
bards.”
”
Catullus, xlix. (J. E. S.)