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."
1 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.
2
Cicero's most elaborate defence of his change of
front is contained in a long letter to P. Lentulus
Spinther, written two years afterwards.
3The 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
4 ), 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,
5 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.