During the six months that he was at Athens he renewed an early acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful, and certainly the best known, of his friends. This was Titus Pomponius, known to the world as that Atticus to whom were addressed something more than half the large body of letters which were written by Cicero, and which have remained for our use.[48] He seems to have lived much with Atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though with altogether different results. Atticus applied himself to the practices of the Epicurean school, and did in truth become "Epicuri de grege porcus." To enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all turmoils of war or state, to make the best of the times, whether they were bad or good, without any attempt on his part to mend them—this was the philosophy of Titus Pomponius, who was called Atticus because Athens, full of art and literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear to him. To this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, Cicero was altogether opposed. He studied in all the schools—among the Platonists, the Stoics, even with the Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise them—proclaiming himself to belong to the new Academy, or younger school of Platonists, but in truth drawing no system of morals or rule of life from any of them. To him, and also to Atticus, no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime. Atticus found himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the name of a philosopher, and therefore became an Epicurean. Cicero could in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves, or from its hatred; and from the Greek philosophers whom he named of this or the other school, received only some assistance in that handling of so-called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future life. This was well understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero after his own time. Quintilian, speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers of philosophy, says of the latter, "Suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim sentire quae dicit."[49]—"He was equal to the weight of the subject, for you feel that he believes what he writes." He leaves the inference, of course, that Cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his ingenuity, as a school-boy writes.

When at Athens, Cicero was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries—as to which Mr. Collins, in his little volume on Cicero, in the Ancient Classics for English Readers, says that they "contained under this veil whatever faith in the Invisible and Eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan." In this Mr. Collins is fully justified by what Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by early Christian writers. They were to those pious but somewhat prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50] But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus, De Legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new life. Nor have we received from them only the means of living with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the future."[51]

Of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction to the Eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. But it can hardly be that, with such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed in such language to the very friend who had then been his companion, they should not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some great line of thought. The two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom we regard, the one as a pagan and the other as a Christian, are the belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our neighbors. Here they are both indicated, the former in plain language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of the barbarity of uncivilized life, "Quibus ex agresti immanique vita exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus."

Of the inner life of Cicero at this moment—how he ate, how he drank, with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and how lodged—we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware that he could not have travelled, as he did in Greece and Asia, without great expense. His brother Quintus was with him, so that cost, if not double, was greatly increased. Antiochus, Demetrius Syrus, Molo, Menippus, and the others did not give him their services for nothing. These were gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to the best market. And then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he went, as though travelling in some sort "en prince." No doubt he had brought with him the best introductions which Rome could afford; but even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary, and this must have come from his father's pocket.

As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the sources whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never paid for his services at the bar. To receive such payment was illegal, but was usual. He claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees—exempt, at any rate, from the fault of having broken the law. He has not been believed. There is no evidence to convict him of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the life he led. But we do not know what were his father's means. Seeing the nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly travel afforded him, I think we have reason to suppose that the old Cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at Arpinum was no humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment.



CHAPTER III.

THE CONDITION OF ROME.

It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the East, Caesar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With very many of the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight concern—so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of them—he who ran through all the offices of the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him. To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Caesar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Caesar's care. Of Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has been written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his Caesar, which might well have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with Cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to the establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not pretend to deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible, show the condition of his mind toward the Republic—that I may explain what it was that he hoped and why he hoped it—I must go back and relate in a few words what it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.

Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life. Marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had pushed himself to the Consulate. His quarrel with Sulla had probably commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the Jugurthine war. But it is not matter of much moment, now that Marius had proved himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter years to become the master of Rome.

Sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before Cicero—a patrician of the bluest blood—and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having been elected Quaestor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with us may become head of the Admiralty. As Quaestor he was sent to join Marius in Africa a few months before Cicero was born. Into his hands, as it happened, not into those of Marius, Jugurtha was surrendered by his father-in-law, Bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the Romans. Thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years later, all Rome was lying butchered. The cause of quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the condition to which Rome had been brought, when two such men could scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives, friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by those who would understand what Rome had been, what it was, and what it was necessarily to become.

When Cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the father of Pompey for the power of Rome against the Italian allies who were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its bitterness. Marius and Sulla were on the same side in that war. But Marius had then not only been Consul, but had been six times Consul; and he had beaten the Teutons and the Cimbrians, by whom Romans had feared that all Italy would be occupied. What was not within the power of such a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could prevail when Italy and Rome, but for such a General, had been at the mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that General six times Consul?

Marius seems to have been no politician. He became a soldier and then a General; and because he was great as a soldier and General, the affairs of the State fell into his hands with very little effort. In the old days of Rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased territory. When Hannibal, while he was still lingering in Italy, had been circumvented by the appearance of Scipio in Africa and the Romans had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. From that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. Up to that time a Consul had to become a General, because it was his business to look after the welfare of the State. After that time a man became a Consul in order that he might be a General. The toga was made to give way to the sword, and the noise of the Forum to the trumpets. We, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read the future. In the days of Marius there was probably no man so wise. Caesar was the first to see it. Cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. His life was one struggle against the coming evil—against the time in which brute force was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. His "cedant arma togae" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that Sulla had done or Caesar was about to do. The mischief had been effected years before his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. Only, in considering these things, let us confess that Cicero saw what was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good was still within reach.

Marius in his way was a Caesar—as a soldier, undoubtedly a very efficient Caesar—having that great gift of ruling his own appetites which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others. It may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the two great hordes from the north, the Teutons and the Cimbrians, was not equal in strategy to anything that Caesar accomplished in Gaul. It is probable that Caesar learned much of his tactics from studying the man[oe]uvres of Marius. But Marius was only a General. Though he became hot in Roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of power for himself. He was able to perceive how vain was law in such a period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. With him, at least, there was no idea of Roman liberty, little probably of Roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go together.

Sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political condition of the world around him. To make a dash for power, as a dog might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for Marius. Sulla could see something of future events. He could understand that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. He might thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. Some glimmer of an idea of an Augustan rule was present to him; and with the view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the Republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. It seems to have been his idea that a Sullan party might rule the Empire by adherence to these forms. I doubt if Marius had any fixed idea of government. To get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow—this seems to have been enough for Marius.[53] With Sulla there was understanding that the Empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would be best if they could be made compatible, with the newly-concentrated power.

The immediate effect upon Rome, either from one or from the other, was nearly the same. In the year 87 B.C. Marius occupied himself in slaughtering the Sullan party—during which, however, Sulla escaped from Rome to the army of which he was selected as General, and proceeded to Athens and the East with the object of conquering Mithridates; for, during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been the chief bone of contention among them. Marius, who was by age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that Sulla might not have it. In the next year, 86 B.C., Marius died, being then Consul for the seventh time. Sulla was away in the East, and did not return till 83 B.C. In the interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which Cicero afterward spoke. "Triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[54] Cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the Marian massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms. It was not that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer. Then Sulla came back, 83 B.C., when Cicero was twenty-four; and if Marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions. It was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. Sulla began by proscribing 520 citizens declaring that he had included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on another day. The numbers were gradually raised to 4,700! Nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[55] All the public was armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to death. This, however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by Sulla. Men generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men. Unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the ordinary Roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake of the employment. But if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be made to flow copiously. This was what Sulla did. Not only was the victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the property so obtained. Two talents[56] was to be the fee for mere assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an informer could earn many talents. It was thus that fortunes were made in the last days of Sulla. It was not only those 520 who were named for killing. They were but the firstlings of the flock—the few victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade proscription and confiscation might be made. Plutarch tells us how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the Forum, one who took no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. He had an Alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. He had hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was slaughtered. Such was the massacre of Sulla, coming with an interval of two or three years after those of Marius, between which was the blessed time in which Rome was without arms. In the time of Marius, Cicero was too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or parentage, to fear anything. Nor is it probable that Marius would have turned against his townsmen. When Sulla's turn came, Cicero, though not absolutely connected with the Dictator, was, so to say, on his side in politics. In going back even to this period we may use the terms Liberals and Conservatives for describing the two parties. Marius was for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the Senate, and loved to feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. Of liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. Sulla, on the other hand, had been born a patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the State into his own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old traditions. It must be presumed that there was at his heart something of love for old Rome. The proscriptions began toward the end of the year 82 B.C., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months—up to the beginning of June, 81 B.C. A day was fixed at which there should be no more slaughtering—no more slaughtering, that is, without special order in each case, and no more confiscation—except such as might be judged necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past victims. Then Sulla, as Dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the old laws. There should still be Consuls and Praetors, but with restricted powers, lessened almost down to nothing. It seems hard to gather what was exactly the Dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when he should himself have left the scene. He did increase the privileges of the Senate; but thinking of the Senate of Rome as he must have thought of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them, he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained by dividing it among them. He certainly contemplated no follower to himself, no heir to his power, as Caesar did. When he had been practically Dictator about three years—though he did not continue the use of the objectionable name—he resigned his rule and walked down, as it were, from his throne into private life. I know nothing in history more remarkable than Sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have dealt with his name give no explanation of it. Plutarch, his biographer, expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do so with security. Cicero says nothing of it. He had probably left Rome before it occurred, and did not return till after Sulla's death. It seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[57] At his own demand, the plenary power of Dictator had been given to him—power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the Senate or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. He did lay it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his dictatorship like some Camillus of old. There had been no Dictator in Rome for more than a century and a quarter—not since the time of Hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the Dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his office. Sulla now affected to do the same; and Rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old spirit. It was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a Dictator should resign—so natural that it required no special wonder. The salt of the Roman Constitution was gone, but the remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the Romans.

It seems certain that no attempt was made to injure Sulla when he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection. In the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if Plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. Modern writers have spoken of Sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the Republic again into order. Middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts." Mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of Sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the service of the State, as a sword or a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political selfishness—although it is true in this respect only—Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington."[58] To us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of Cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment, were it not that Cicero was probably Cicero because Sulla had been Sulla. Horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to Cicero—and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous to express them[59]—still it was apparent to him that the cause of order (what we may call the best chance for the Republic) lay with the Senate and with the old traditions and laws of Rome, in the re-establishment of which Sulla had employed himself. Of these institutions Mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel to be justified. "On the Roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the Sullan constitution is involved in that condemnation."[60] We have to admit that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left any savor by which it could be preserved. But the German historian seems to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern English historians, that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. Sulla and his Senate thought that by massacring the Marian faction they had restored everything to an equilibrium. Sulla himself seems to have believed that when the thing was accomplished Rome would go on, and grow in power and prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he had initiated. There can be no doubt that many of the best in Rome—the best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition—did think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. Pompey thought so, and Cicero. Cato thought so, and Brutus. Caesar, when he came to think about it, thought the reverse. But even now to us, looking back with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder change—some such change as Cicero would have advocated—might not have prevented the tyranny of Augustus, the mysteries of Tiberius, the freaks of Caligula, the folly of Claudius, and the madness of Nero.

It is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has failed. The Caesars of the world are they who make interesting stories. That Cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be acknowledged. He had studied the history of his country, and was aware that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as Roman power; and he knew that Rome had produced true patriotism. Her Consuls, her Censors, her Tribunes, and her Generals had, as a rule, been true to Rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than themselves. And he believed that liberty had existed in Rome, though nowhere else. It would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty which Cicero entertained. Liberty was very dear to him—dear to him not only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of others. But it was only the liberty of a few. Half the population of the Roman cities were slaves, and in Cicero's time the freedom of the city, which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small proportion of the population of Italy. It was the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was anxious. That a Sicilian should be free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of cosmopolitan freedom—an idea which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now—had not as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to do to others as we would that they should do to us. It required Christ to father that idea; and Cicero, though he was nearer to Christianity than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. But this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in an endeavor to preserve it. The kings had been expelled from Rome because they had trampled on liberty. Then came the Republic, which we know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of the free people. For many years everything was done by the votes of the free people. Under what inducements they had voted is another question. Clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. We have heard of that even in England, where many of us still think that such a way of voting is far from objectionable. Perhaps compulsion was sometimes used—a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven to the poll to carry this or the other measure. Simple eloquence prevailed with some, and with others flattery. Then corruption became rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were bought in various ways—by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery more or less overt. This was bad, of course. Every freeman should have given a vote according to his conscience. But in what country—the millennium not having arrived in any—has this been achieved? Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal rule. Nor did Cicero.

He knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were very evil. He had lived through the dominations of Marius and Sulla, and had seen the old practices of Roman government brought down to the pretence of traditional forms. But still, so he thought, there was life left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor, and intelligence. It was the best that he could imagine for the State—infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody hands of one Marius and one Sulla after another. Mommsen tells us that nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero, living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things, should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's wisdom or his patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman of those days, I should have preferred Cicero, with his memories of the past, to Caesar, with his ambition for the future.

Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome was—infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis" was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest of robbers established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule, while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of other people had produced. To do this, there must have been not only courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. But yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? When was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling? Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the Rome of the kings claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city. And from the time of their expulsion, Rome, though she was rising in power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time that the day of her destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when, fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army—the only army which Rome then possessed—had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome was mistress in Italy—mistress, after all, of no more than Southern Italy—the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during that long contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that the palmy days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Cannae, year after year, threaten complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition; and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with Antiochus, with Pyrrhus, and with the Achaeans, though successful, were hardly glorious. Then came the two Gracchi, and the reader begins to doubt whether the glory of the Republic is not already over. They demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. The war with Jugurtha followed, in which the Romans were for years unsuccessful, and during which German hordes from the north rushed into Gaul and destroyed an army of 80,000 Romans. This brings us to Marius and to Sulla, of whom we have already spoken, and to that period of Roman politics which the German historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation."

But, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity. In all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea, we might have been subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies were we governed through the reigns of James I. and Charles I.! What periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! How little glorious was the reign of Charles II.! how full of danger that of William! how mean those of the four Georges, with the dishonesty of ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And to-day, are there not many who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" We are a great nation, and the present threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless, the seeds of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices—so manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with certainty.

But Cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered and the bad eliminated. Marius and Sulla—Pompey also, toward the end of his career, if I can read his character rightly—Caesar, and of course Augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for himself, the power which the weak hands of the Senate were unable to grasp. However much, or however little, the country of itself might have been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. Each had the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. With Cicero there is always present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional possessors of it. So much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and I am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as I am. Cicero was aware quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the State. Men who had been murderers on behalf of Marius, and then others who had murdered on behalf of Sulla—among whom that Catiline, of whom we have to speak presently, had been one—were not apt to settle themselves down as quiet citizens. The laws had been set aside. Even the law courts had been closed. Sulla had been law, and the closets of his favorites had been the law courts. Senators had been cowed and obedient. The Tribunes had only been mock Tribunes. Rome, when Cicero began his public life, was still trembling. The Consuls of the day were men chosen at Sulla's command. The army was Sulla's army. The courts were now again opened by Sulla's permission. The day fixed by Sulla when murderers might no longer murder—or, at any rate, should not be paid for murdering—had arrived. There was not, one would say, much hope for good things. But Sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope lay in that direction. Consuls, Praetors, Quaestors, AEdiles, even Tribunes, were still there. Perhaps it might be given to him, to Cicero, to strengthen the hands of such officers. At any rate, there was no better course open to him by which he could serve his country.

The heaviest accusation brought against Cicero charges him with being insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of having changed his purpose. It has been alleged that, having begun life as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured his high office of State. As we go on, it will be my object to show that he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means, whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Caesar or to oppose him, he was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in Great Britain, even in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same Treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but friendly words. With us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In Rome expediency governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he was more sincere than others around him.



CHAPTER IV.

HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.—SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.—HIS INCOME.

[Sidenote: B.C. 80, aetat. 27.]

We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This at first consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a successful barrister in our time. We do not know with absolute certainty even in what year Cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. It may probably have been in 81 B.C., when he was twenty-five, or in his twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which we know the particulars, that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, which took place undoubtedly in the year 80 B.C., aetat twenty-seven, was probably the earliest. As to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also one for Publius Quintius, which has generally been printed first among the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been made clear that that spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is certain that there had been others before either of them. In that for Sextus he says that he had never spoken before in any public cause,[61] such as was the accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for Quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62] No doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. That of these two the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time past. These were brought nominally to a close in June, 81; but it has been supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken in that very year. This seems to have been impossible. "I am most unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[63] When the tone of the two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for Sextus Roscius was spoken the first. It was, as I have said, spoken in his twenty-seventh year, B.C. 80, the year after the proscription lists had been closed, when Sulla was still Dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority. As to such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero excuses the Dictator in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the Thunderer. Even "Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the heavens, the earth, and seas obey—even he cannot so look after his numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. If so, how can we wonder that Sulla, who has to rule the State, to govern, in fact, the world, should not be able himself to see to everything? Jove probably found it convenient not to see many things. Such must certainly have been the case with Sulla.

I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length, because it is in itself a tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because, in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has produced; and also, I will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a State as this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to die. We come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such ruthless deeds—those attendant villanies for which the Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. If in history we can ever get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always more interesting than any account of the great facts, however grand.

The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the September following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was murdered in the streets of Rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by two slaves. By whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of reputation, well acquainted with the Metelluses and Messalas of the day, and passing rich. His name had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. Though there was at that time much money in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money.

Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold—or divided, probably, without being sold—including his slaves, in whom, as with every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed estates—his farms, of which he had many—were also divided. As to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. Had the name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could not see everything, and great advantages were taken. We must only suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their way. They could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. At any rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed.

Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after his father's farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from Ameria something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest man—one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the time.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which, though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land—a simple, unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now accused of having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by one Erucius, who in his opening speech—the speech made before that by Cicero—had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero reminds him, and the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture had been honored in the old days, when Consuls were taken from the ploughs. The imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have been a Consul at any time—one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of him that he never took part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old Roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome—the one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had died, and our Roscius—Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called when he was made famous by the murder—was left on one of the farms down in the country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular—as to whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.

Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence as to guilt? That is the first question which presents itself. This son received no benefit from his father's death. He had in fact been absolutely beggared by it—had lost the farm, the farming utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken by persons called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of and sold—or did not sell—confiscated goods. Such men in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our Roscius. Cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. There were two other Rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named Titus; Titus Roscius Magnus, who sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the proscriptions, and Titus Roscius Capito, who, when at home, lived at Ameria, but of whom Cicero tells us that he had become an apt pupil of the other during this affair. They had got large shares, but they shared also with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of Sulla, who did the dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus when Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not time to do it himself. We presume that Chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for himself.

Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero, who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way prepared for him. That which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the case might seem to require. It has to be understood of Cicero that he possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration; in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the same thing in our own enlightened days. But Cicero, even as a young man, knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be disproved. The accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser, and which was subject to cross-examination. Cicero would have no opportunity of producing evidence. He was thus exempted from the necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all disproved. I think we may take it for granted that the property of the murdered man was divided as he tells us.

If that was so, why should any accusation have been made? Our Sextus seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. He had betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one Metella, whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends the defence was no doubt managed. "You have my farms," he is made to say by his advocate; "I live on the charity of another. I abandon everything because I am placid by nature, and because it must be so. My house, which is closed to me, is open to you: I endure it. You have possessed yourself of my whole establishment; I have not one single slave. I suffer all this, and feel that I must suffer it. What do you want more? Why do you persecute me further? In what do you think that I shall hurt you? How do I interfere with you? In what do I oppose you? Is it your wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? You have your plunder. If for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[65] Of all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as little as we please. Cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an acquittal. But the argument shows that no overt act in quest of restitution had as yet been made. Nevertheless, Chrysogonus feared such action, and had arranged with the two Tituses that something should be done to prevent it. What are we to think of the condition of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from supper—that, indeed, might happen in London if there existed the means of getting at the man's money when the man was dead—but in which such a plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated? "We have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that his goods had been confiscated. Friends, we find, are interfering—these Metellas and Metelluses, probably. There is a son who is the natural heir. Let us say that he killed his own father. The courts of law, which have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a man in opposition to the Dictator's favorite. Let us get him convicted, and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the river"—as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the punishment—"and then he at least will not disturb us." It must have thus been that the plot was arranged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, I think, more attractive than most novels.

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

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

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

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

There were other means in which a noble Roman might make money, and might do so without leaving the city. An orator might be paid for his services as an advocate. Cicero, had such a trade been opened to him, might have made almost any sum to which his imagination could have stretched itself. Such a trade was carried on to a very great extent. It was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "Lex Cincia De Muneribus," passed more than a century before Cicero began his pleadings.[78] But the law had become a dead letter in the majority of cases. There can be no doubt that Hortensius, the predecessor and great rival of Cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment. Indeed, the myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more practicable in Rome than it has been found to be in England, where every barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. That the "Lex Cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be allowed by us all. Services for which no regular payment can be exacted will always cost more than those which have a defined price. But Cicero would not break the law. It has been hinted rather than stated that he, like other orators of the day, had his price. He himself tells us that he took nothing; and no instance has been adduced that he had ever done so. He is free enough in accusing Hortensius of having accepted a beautiful statuette, an ivory sphinx of great value. What he knew of Hortensius, Hortensius would have known of him, had it been there to know; and what Hortensius or others had heard would certainly have been told. As far as we can learn, there is no ground for accusing Cicero of taking fees or presents beyond the probability that he would do so. I think we are justified in believing that he did not do so, because those who watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him. That he was paid by different allied States for undertaking their protection in the Senate, is probable, such having been a custom not illegal. We know that he was specially charged with the affairs of Dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other allied communities. This, however, must have been later in life, when his name was sufficiently high to insure the value of his services, and when he was a Senator.

Noble Romans also—noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the little cares of trade—were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury. We shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of Brutus—that Brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a par with Cato in purity. To lend money to citizens, or more profitably to allied States and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the ordinary resource of a Roman nobleman in quest of revenue. The allied city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had plundered it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal. Cicero, in the most perfect of his works—the treatise De Officiis, an essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman—inveighs both against trade and usury. When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.[79] The doctrine, however, has always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered among the upper classes. That other and certainly baser means of making money by usury was, however, only too common. Crassus, the noted rich man of Rome in Caesar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate, and who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have gathered much of his wealth by such means. But against this Cicero is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping. "First of all," he says, "these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers of custom and lenders of money on usury."[80]

Again, we are entitled to say that Cicero did not condescend to enrich himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so, the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have reached our ears. Nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. His rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. His dear friend Atticus did not so govern his conduct, or Brutus, who, when he wrote the De Officiis, was only less dear to him than Atticus. But Cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. We learn from his letter that he owned house-property in Rome to a considerable extent, having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. He inherited also the family house at Arpinum. He makes it a matter for boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies nearly L200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great income, and one common with Romans of high position.[81] Of the extent of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. But we do know that he lived always as a rich man—as one who regards such a condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was often in debt, as was customary with noble Romans, he could always write about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and intelligence. He was as might be some English marquis, who, though up to his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the luxuries befitting a marquis. Though we have no authority to tell us how his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his life. Of that condition we have ample evidence. He commenced his career as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled himself in Rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest honors of the Republic, he did so with the means of living like a nobleman.

But the point on which it is most necessary to insist is this: that while so many—I may almost say all around him in his own order—were unscrupulous as to their means of getting money, he kept his hands clean. The practice then was much as it is now. A gentleman in our days is supposed to have his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a feeling that, only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to him. To rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism, or, at any rate, magnificence. With Caesar his debts have been accounted happy audacity; his pillage of Gaul and Spain, and of Rome also, have indicated only the success of the great General; his cruelty, which in cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[82] I do not mean to draw a parallel between Caesar and Cicero. No two men could have been more different in their natures or in their career. But the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples dominated him. I do not say that he always did what he thought to be right. A man who doubts much can never do that. The thing that was right to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing. That from which he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp, takes the color of good when it has been beyond his reach. Cicero had not the stuff in him to rule the Rome and the Romans of his period; but he was a man whose hands were free from all stain, either of blood or money; and for so much let him, at any rate, have the credit.

Between the return of Cicero to Rome in 77 B.C. and his election as Quaestor in 75, in which period he married Terentia, he made various speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or rather, a small part of one. This is notable as having been spoken in behalf of that Roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has become familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have those of Garrick, of Siddons, and of Talma. It was a pleading as to the value of a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility attaching to Roscius on account of the slave, who had been murdered when in his charge. As to the murder, no question is made. The slave was valuable, and the injury done to his master was a matter of importance. He, having been a slave, could have no stronger a claim for an injury done to himself than would a dog or a horse. The slave, whose name was Panurge—a name which has since been made famous as having been borrowed by Rabelais, probably from this occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief—showed aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. Then one Flavius killed him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him, settled with Roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. But Roscius had only borrowed or hired the man from one Chaerea—or was in partnership with Chaerea as to the man—and on that account paid something out of the value of the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not satisfied, and after a lapse of time made a further claim. Hence arose the action, in pleading which Cicero was successful. In the fragment we have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which Cicero had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for Publius Quintius, who was the brother-in-law of Roscius. "He is such an actor," says Cicero, "that there is none other on the stage worthy to be seen; and such a man that among men he is the last that should have become an actor."[83] The orator's praise of the actor is not of much importance. Had not Roscius been great in his profession, his name would not have come down to later ages. Nor is it now matter of great interest that the actor should have been highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it is something for us to know that the stage was generally held in such low repute as to make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have taken himself to such a calling.