Some mistakes of Caesar's
Caesar too no doubt made certain mistakes. He
has been often called a consummate judge of men.
If it was so, it is only another proof of the
truth of Cicero's words that a conqueror in a
civil war is much at the mercy of those who helped
to win his victory: for his choice of agents was
not happy. Neither Cassius nor Trebonius, whom he
sent to Spain, was successful there. Of those he
selected as his second in command or masters of
the horse—Antony no doubt was a man of
energy and courage, but shewed neither wisdom nor
ability as a statesman, while Lepidus lived to
prove the contemptible weakness of his character.
Perhaps his own commanding personality choked off
men of ability. But the fact remains that a large
number of men of energy who had served him turned
against him, while those who remained faithful to
him were men of second-rate abilities. He was
probably unwise to undertake the Getic and
Parthian wars. His presence was needed to maintain
order in Italy. He had been engaged for fifteen
years in almost incessant military labours. No man
could hope to be at his best at the end of such
fatigues; and we gather from expressions in
Cicero's speech
pro Marcello1 that he was
weary in body and mind; and, like Napoleon at
Waterloo, he might have found that he no longer
had the vigour that had won him so many victories.
An absolute ruler may have almost any vice except
that of weakness. If weakness had begun to shew
itself in Caesar, it would not only encourage open
enemies, it would make everyone prone to regard as
a hardship what they tolerated before as
inevitable. The very multitude and greatness of
his beneficent schemes, while they prove his
wisdom and statesmanship, must have brought him
into collision with a hundred vested interests and
as many deep-seated prejudices. He was ruling men
who had known what it was, not only to be free,
but to belong to a body small enough to allow
every member to feel himself an integral part of
the government in a world-wide empire. His
great-nephew—more adroit, though without
a tithe of his great-uncle's military ability and
largeness of view—was more successful,
partly because he had to deal with a generation
that had largely forgotten what it was to be free.
Cicero at any rate was never for a moment
reconciled in heart to Caesar's régime; never for a moment
forgot and perhaps exaggerated the dignity of the
position from which he had fallen.
His final view of Caesar is perhaps best
expressed in the second Philippic (§
116): “He had genius, a power of reasoning,
memory, knowledge of literature, accuracy, depth
of thought, energy. His achievements in war,
however disastrous to the Republic, were at any
rate great. After planning for many years his way
to royal power, with great labour, with many
dangers he had effected his design. By public
exhibitions, by monumental buildings, by
largesses, by fiats he had conciliated the
unreflecting multitude. He had bound to himself
his own friends by favours, his opponents by a
show of clemency. In short, he at last brought
upon a free state—partly by the fear
which he inspired, partly by the toleration
extended to him—the habit of
servitude.”
In these circumstances Cicero found his
consolation in literature. He had the power which
distinguished Mr. Gladstone—nor is this
the only point of resemblance—of
throwing himself with extraordinary vehemence and
apparently exclusive interest into whatever he
took in hand. His first impulse was
to return to his old field of
distinction—eloquence;
Cicero takes refuge in
literature. |
and to discuss the science and
history of the art to which he owed his splendid
reputation. Accordingly, we owe to the first years
of his return to Rome and his villas three
rhetorical treatises, the
Partitiones
Oratoriae, the
Orator ad M.
Brutum, and the
Brutus or
de claris Oratoribus. The
last-named is made especially interesting by
numerous references to his own intellectual
history. For a time he found some interest, as
well as renewed health and cheerfulness, in
teaching a number of young men the art of which he
was master.
2 But his thoughts were turning in
another direction. He soon resolved to abandon as
much as possible the active business of the forum,
and to bury himself "in the obscurity of
literature."
3 From oratory therefore he passed to
philosophy. He begins with a brief tract on the
Paradoxes of the Stoics; but when, early in B.C.
45, the death of his beloved daughter Tullia added
a new motive and a new excuse for retirement, he
strove to dispel his sorrow and drown bitter
recollections by flinging himself with ardour into
the task of making Greek philosophy intelligible
to his countrymen. The
de Finibus
and the
Academics were the
first-fruits of this toil. They were produced with
extraordinary speed; and whatever may be said
about their value as original treatises, they were
and still remain the most popular and generally
intelligible exposition of post-Platonic
philosophy existing. The charm of his inimitable
style will always attract readers who might be
repelled by works which contain clearer reasoning
or more exact statement. At any rate their
composition had the effect of lightening his
sorrow, and distracting his mind from dwelling so
exclusively on the mortifications caused by the
political situation. Finally, in the last few
months preceding the murder of Caesar, he composed
what is perhaps the most pleasing of all his
quasi-philosophical works, the Tusculan
Disputations. The first book "On the Fear of
Death"— both from the
universal interest of its subject and the wisdom
which it contains—whether his own or of
the authorities from whom he quotes—has
an abiding place among the choicest books of the
world. Thus posterity has had as much reason to be
glad as he had himself that he "effected a
reconciliation with his old friends—his
books."
4
