The description of Verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax is long and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless by those who desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could make the most of an imposition which was in itself very bad, and pile up the burden till the poor province was unable to bear it. There were three kinds of imposition as to corn. The first, called the "decumanum," was simply a tithe.

The producers through the island had to furnish Rome with a tenth of their produce, and it was the Praetor's duty, or rather that of the Quaestor under the Praetor, to see that the tithe was collected. How Verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the Sicilian husbandmen in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are obliged to give the man credit for an infinite fertility of resources. Then there is the "emptum," or corn bought for the use of Rome, of which there were two kinds. A second tithe had to be furnished at a price fixed by the Roman Senate, which price was considered to be below that of its real value, and then 800,000 bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a price which was also fixed by the Senate, but which was nearer to the real value. Three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the last, were the prices fixed at this time. For making these payments vast sums of money were remitted to Verres, of which the accounts were so kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into the hands of the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. The third corn tax was the "aestimatum." This consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to be supplied to the Praetor for the use of his governmental establishment—to be supplied either in grain or in money. What such a one as Verres would do with his, the reader may conceive.

All this was of vital importance to Rome. Sicily and Africa were the granaries from which Rome was supplied with its bread. To get supplies from a province was necessary. Rich men have servants in order that they may live at ease themselves. So it was with the Romans to whom the provinces acted as servants. It was necessary to have a sharp agent, some Proconsul or Propraetor; but when there came one so sharp as Verres, all power of recreating supplies would for a time be destroyed. Even Cicero boasted that in a time of great scarcity, he, being then Quaestor in Sicily, had sent extraordinary store of corn over to the city.[124] But he had so done it as to satisfy all who were concerned.

Verres, in his corn dealings with the Sicilians, had a certain friend, companion, and minister—one of his favorite dogs, perhaps we may call him—named Apronius, whom Cicero specially describes. The description I must give, because it is so powerful; because it shows us how one man could in those days speak of another in open court before all the world; because it affords us an instance of the intensity of hatred which the orator could throw into his words; but I must hide it in the original language, as I could not translate it without offence.[125]

Then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art. We are much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, partly from love of such things, partly from pride in ornamenting our houses so as to excite the admiration of others, partly from a feeling that money so invested is not badly placed with a view to future returns. All these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater extent. Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them. Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their way about the world—to the cities which they established round the Mediterranean—they collected in their new homes great store of ornamental wealth. This was done with much profusion at Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, and spread from them over the whole island. The temples of the gods were filled with the works of the great Greek artists, and every man of note had his gallery. That Verres, hog as he is described to have been, had a passion for these things, is manifest to us. He came to his death at last in defence of some favorite images. He had returned to Rome by means of Caesar's amnesty, and Marc Antony had him murdered because he would not surrender some treasures of art. When we read the De Signis—About Statues—we are led to imagine that the search after these things was the chief object of the man throughout his three years of office—as we have before been made to suppose that all his mind and time had been devoted to the cheating of the Sicilians in the matter of corn. But though Verres loved these trinkets, it was not altogether for himself that he sought them. Only one third of his plunder was for himself. Senators, judges, advocates, Consuls, and Praetors could be bribed with articles of vertu as well as with money.

There are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. I will give very shortly the details of one or two. There was one Marcus Heius, a rich citizen of Messana, in whose house Verres took great delight. Messana itself was very useful to him, and the Mamertines, as the people of Messana were called were his best friends in all Sicily: for he made Messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the expense of the Government an enormous ship called the Cybea,[126] in which his treasures were carried out of the island. He therefore specially favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in Sicily. But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were preserved four specially beautiful images. There was a Cupid by Praxiteles, and a bronze Hercules by Myro, and two Can[oe]phrae by Polycletus. These were treasures which all the world came to see, and which were open to be seen by all the world. These Verres took away, and caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to appear that he had bought them for trifling sums. It seems that some forced assent had been obtained from Heius as to the transaction. Now there was a plan in vogue for making things pleasant for a Proconsul retiring from his government, in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to Rome to declare how well and kindly the Proconsul had behaved in his government. The allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations. Deputations were got up in Sicily from Messana and Syracuse, and with the others from Messana came this man Heius. Heius did not wish to tell about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer. Cicero informs us how it all took place. "He was a man," he said—this is what Cicero tells us that Heius said—"who was well esteemed in his own country, and would wish you"—you judges—"to think well of his religious spirit and of his personal dignity. He had come here to praise Verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. He, however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the ornaments of his own chapel.[127] Nevertheless, he had come to praise Verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible."

Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the temples of the gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan iniquities by drawing a parallel between two Romans whose names were well known in that city: Marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and Verres, who had been sent to govern it in peace. Marcellus had saved the lives of the Syracusans; Verres had made the Forum to run with their blood. The harbor which had held its own against Marcellus, as we may read in our Livy, had been wilfully opened by Verres to Cilician pirates. This Syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its Roman conqueror, the most beautiful of all the Greek cities on the face of the earth—so beautiful that Marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments—had been stripped bare by Verres. There was the temple of Minerva from which he had taken all the pictures. There were doors to this temple of such beauty that books had been written about them. He stripped the ivory ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made splendid. He tore off from them the head of the Gorgon and carried it away, leaving them to be rude doors, Goth that he was!

And he took the Sappho from the Prytaneum, the work of Silanion! a thing of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in his own private house; yet Verres has it—a man hardly fit to carry such a work of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure of his own. "What, too!" he says, "have you not stolen Paean from the temple of AEsculapius—a statue so remarkable for its beauty, so well-known for the worship attached to it, that all the world has been wont to visit it? What! has not the image of Aristaeus been taken by you from the temple of Bacchus? Have you not even stolen the statue of Jupiter Imperator, so sacred in the eyes of all men—that Jupiter which the Greeks call Ourios? You have not hesitated to rob the temple of Proserpine of the lovely head in Parian marble."[128] Then Cicero speaks of the worship due to all these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. As he had begun this chapter with the Mamertines of Messana, so he ends it with an address to them. "It is well that you should come, you alone out of all the provinces, and praise Verres here in Rome. But what can you say for him? Was it not your duty to have built a ship for the Republic? You have built none such, but have constructed a huge private transport-vessel for Verres. Have you not been exempted from your tax on corn? Have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military recruits? Have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? They will have to confess, these Mamertines, that many a ship laden with his spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship which they built for him!"

In the De Suppliciis—the treatise about punishments, as the last division of this process is called—Cicero tells the world how Verres exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. The stories, indeed, are very dreadful. It is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose. But that which strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a Roman citizen, and the audacity with which the Roman Proconsul disregarded that sanctity. "Cives Romanus" is Cicero's cry from the beginning to the end. No doubt he is addressing himself to Romans, and seeking popularity, as he always did. But, nevertheless, the demands made upon the outside world at large by the glory of that appellation are astonishing, even when put forward on such an occasion as this. One Gavius escapes from a prison in Syracuse, and, making his way to Messana, foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in Italy, out of the way of Praetor Verres and his cruelties. Verres, unfortunately, is in Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the Mamertines, what Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be flogged in public. "Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt truly. It suits Verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate slave. The poor wretch still cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal. Whereupon Verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has the man crucified in sight of Italy, so that he shall be able to see the country of which he is so proud. Whether he had done anything to deserve crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told. The accusation against Verres is not for crucifying the man, but for crucifying the Roman. It is on this occasion that Cicero uses the words which have become proverbial as to the iniquity of this proceeding.[129] During the telling of this story he explains this doctrine, claiming for the Roman citizen, all the world over, some such protection as freemasons are supposed to give each other, whether known or unknown. "Men of straw," he says, "of no special birth, go about the world. They resort to places they have never seen before, where they know none, and none know them. Here, trusting to their claim solely, they feel themselves to be safe—not only where our magistrates are to be found, who are bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other Roman citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient protection."[130] Then he goes on to say that if any Praetor may at his will put aside this sanctity, all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all the free states, all the world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling.

But the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate captain. Verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates—very cowardly, indeed, if we are to believe Cicero. Piracy in the Mediterranean was at that time a terrible drawback to trade—that piracy that a year or two afterward Pompey was effectual in destroying. A governor in Sicily had, among other special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates. This Verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the Sicilian coasts. But it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by accident into the hands of the governor's officers. It was not taken, Cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up almost sinking.[131] It was found to be full of fine, handsome men, of silver both plated and coined, and precious stuffs. Though not "taken," it was "found," and carried into Syracuse. Syracuse is full of the news, and the first demand is that the pirates, according to Roman custom, shall all be killed. But this does not suit Verres. The slave-markets of the Roman Empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will suit him better to sell than to kill. There are six musicians, "symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at Rome. But the people of Syracuse are very much in earnest. They are too sharp to be put off with pretences, and they count the number of slaughtered pirates. There are only some useless, weak, ugly old fellows beheaded from day to day; and being well aware how many men it must have taken to row and manage such a vessel, they demand that the full crew shall be brought to the block. "There is nothing in victory more sweet," says Cicero, "no evidence more sure, than to see those whom you did fear, but have now got the better of, brought out to tortures or death."[132] Verres is so much frightened by the resolution of the citizens that he does not dare to neglect their wishes. There are lying in the prisons of Syracuse a lot of prisoners, Roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid himself. He has them brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that they shall not be known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! A great deal is said, too, about the pirate captain—the arch-pirate, as he is called. There seems to have been some money dealings personally between him and Verres, on account of which Verres kept him hidden. At any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "In such a manner this celebrated victory is managed.[133] The pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate is allowed to escape. The musicians are sent to Rome. The men who are good-looking and young are taken to the Praetor's house. As many Roman citizens as will fill their places are carried out as public enemies, and are tortured and killed! All the gold and silver and precious stuffs are made a prize of by Verres!"

Such are the accusations brought against this wonderful man—the truth of which has, I think, on the whole been admitted. The picture of Roman life which it displays is wonderful, that such atrocities should have been possible; and equally so of provincial subjection, that such cruelties should have been endured. But in it all the greatest wonder is that there should have risen up a man so determined to take the part of the weak against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with no other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to which he belonged. Cicero was not a Gracchus, anxious to throw himself into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by conviction, born to oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it alone could the Roman Republic be preserved. But he was convinced also that unless these oligarchs could be made to do their duty the Republic could not stand. Therefore it was that he dared to defy his own brethren, and to make the acquittal of Verres an impossibility. I should be inclined to think that the day on which Hortensius threw up the sponge, and Verres submitted to banishment and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life.

Verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for his crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. From this he returned to Rome when the Roman exiles were amnestied, and was shortly afterward murdered by Antony, as has been told before.



CHAPTER VII.

CICERO AS AEDILE AND PRAETOR.

[Sidenote: B.C. 69, aetat. 38.]

The year after the trial of Verres was that of Cicero's AEdileship. We know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office, but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the people. He did not spend much money for their amusements, although it was the custom of AEdiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the Praetorship from the people, he was three times elected as first Praetor in all the comitia—three separate elections having been rendered necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. To all the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year—the first year possible in accordance with his age—and was elected first in honor, the first as Praetor, and then the first as Consul. This, no doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing which his brother Quintus is said to have drawn out, and which I have quoted; but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the people. The candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the aristocracy. They were put forward with the idea that thus might the aristocratic rule of Rome be best maintained. Their elections were carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent to the proceeding. Whether it might be a Verres, or an Antony, or a Hortensius, they took the money that was going. They allowed themselves to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. But every now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to the voting pens—ovilia—with a purpose of their own. When such a candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. Such had been Marius, and such had been the great Pompey, and such was Cicero. The two former were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their victories. Cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. He could afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his AEdileship, as had been common with AEdiles, because he was able to achieve his popularity in another way. It was the chief duty of the AEdiles to look after the town generally—to see to the temples of the gods, to take care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the streets, and to the supply of water. The markets were under them, and the police, and the recurrent festivals. An active man, with common-sense, such as was Cicero, no doubt did his duty as AEdile well.

He kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. We have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of another spoken during this period. The former was in favor of Fonteius, whom the Gauls prosecuted for plundering them as Propraetor, and the latter is a civil case on behalf of Caecina, addressed to the "Recuperatores," as had been that for Marcus Tullius. The speech for Fonteius is remarkable as being as hard against the provincial Gauls as his speech against Verres had been favorable to the Sicilians. But the Gauls were barbarians, whereas the Sicilians were Greeks. And it should be always remembered that Cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. Nothing that these wretched Gauls could say against a Roman citizen ought to be accepted in evidence! "All the Romans," he says, "who have been in the province wish well to Fonteius. Would you rather believe these Gauls—led by what feeling? By the opinion of men! Is the opinion, then, of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow-citizens, or is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? Would you prefer, then, unknown men to known—dishonest men to honest—foreigners to your own countrymen—greedy men to those who come before you for nothing—men of no religion to those who fear the gods—those who hate the Empire and the name of Rome to allies and citizens who are good and faithful?"[134] In every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his own case was weak; and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the judges we are sure that Fonteius was guilty. He tells the judges that the poor mother of the accused man has no other support than this son, and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of Vesta, who, being a vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. When we read such arguments as these, we are sure that Fonteius had misused the Gauls. We believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that he bought a house in Rome soon afterward; but we feel that he escaped by the too great influence of his advocate. We are driven to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good. A man with such a tongue as that of Cicero will make the listener believe almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood. In his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause. Cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of hypocrisy in consequence. There is a passage in one of the dialogues, De Oratore, which has been continually quoted against him because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. The orator is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white lies—"mendaciunculis."[135] The advice does not indeed refer to facts, or to evidence, or to arguments. It goes no farther than to suggest that amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in order that the story may be good. Such "mendaciuncula" are in the mouth of every diner-out in London, and we may pity the dinner-parties at which they are not used. Reference is made to them now because the use of the word by Cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his falsehood. You shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that he is only thirty-six inches. You know very well that he is more than four feet high. That will be a "mendaciunculum," according to Cicero. The phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little fibs of Cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him as an advocate. They have been only the garnishing of his drolleries. As an advocate, he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of our own day.[136] That he was not paid, and that our English barristers are paid for the work they do, makes, I think, no difference either in the innocency or the falseness of the practice. I cannot but believe that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man of honor to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make others believe that which he does not believe himself. Such is not the state of things now in London, nor was it at Rome in Cicero's time. There are touches of eloquence in the plea for Fonteius, but the reader will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate Gauls.

In the year following that of Cicero's AEdileship were written the first of his epistles which have come to us. He was then not yet thirty-nine years old—B.C. 68—and during that year and the next seven were written eleven letters, all to Atticus. Those to his other friends—Ad Familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; Ad Diversos, they are commonly called now—began only with the close of his consular year. How it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which were written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free correspondents, cannot be said with certainty. It has probably been occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. Of the nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. I am not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not lack much of the history of those days.[137]

A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough. From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human—how he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small man[oe]uvres—how like a man he could be proud of his work and boast—how like a man he could despair and almost die. But I wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the man—opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom friend—they must be taken as being more honestly true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all—as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile—I think it might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. On losing his Tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would not maunder out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. Whether this be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear. He said everything that there was within him—being in this, I should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters—not from Cicero—written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none, indeed, from Atticus—none written under terms of such easy friendship as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself. It will probably be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be so, he should surely have the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance. The reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the man is to be read in the little sly things he said to Atticus, but that the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as unfair to himself as he is to Cicero.

In reading the entire correspondence—the letters from Cicero either to Atticus or to others—it has to be remembered that in the ordinary arrangement of them made by Graevius[138] they are often incorrectly paced in regard to chronology. In subsequent times efforts have been made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be read. The letters to Atticus and those Ad Diversos have generally been published separately. For the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they may perhaps be best read in that way. The tone of them is different. The great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. The manner is much more familiar, much less severe—though not on that account indicating less seriousness—in those written to Atticus than in the others. With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are better worth reading. The character of the writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him who wrote them.[139]

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, aetat. 39.]

We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year after his AEdileship. In the first he tells his friend of the death of his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into Sicily, and alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between Pomponia, the sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus Cicero—our Cicero's brother. Marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of him. That Quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the Republic. But he was arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar characteristic of his brother. "When I found him to be in the wrong," says Cicero, in his first letter, "I wrote to him as to a brother whom I loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom I was bound to tell of his fault." As is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for the purchase of statues for his Tusculan villa, of which we now hear for the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, Terentia, sends her love, though she is suffering from the gout. Tullia also, the dear little Tullia, "deliciae nostrae,"[140]sends her love. In the next, he says how a certain house which Atticus had intended to purchase had been secured by Fonteius for 130,000 sesterces—something over L1000, taking the sesterce at 2 d. This no doubt was part of the plunder which Fonteius had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that year on the eighth day before the kalends of December—on the 24th of November. Some question as to the date of the old man's death had probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to statues, and declares of his Tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there. In the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one Cincius L170 on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "All my prospect of enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." These were the letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be AEdile.

From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable from the continued commissions given by Cicero to Atticus for statues. Statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his Tusculanum. Should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to decorate another that he has, the Formianum, near Caieta. He wants whatever Atticus may think proper for his "palaestra" and "gymnasium." Atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and Cicero engages to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the money. He reserves, he says, all his little comings-in, "vindemiolas"—what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the country might get a little income from her spare butter—in order that he may have books as a resource for his old age. Again, he bids Atticus not to be afraid but what he, Cicero, will be able to buy them some day—which if he can do he will be richer than Crassus, and will envy no one his mansions or his lawns. He also declares that he has betrothed Tullia, then ten years old, to Caius Piso, son of Lucius Piso Frugi. The proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal was duly solemnized, was considered to be in all respects desirable. Cicero thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to Calpurnius Piso, one of the Consuls of that year. So far everything was going well with our orator.

[Sidenote: B.C. 67, aetat. 40.]

He was then candidate for the Praetorship, and was elected first, as has been already said. It was in that year, too that a law was passed in Rome, at the instance of one Gabinius, a tribune, authorizing Pompey to exterminate the pirates in the Mediterranean, and giving him almost unlimited power for this object. Pompey was not, indeed, named in this law. A single general, one who had been Consul, was to be approved by the Senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore. He was to select as his own officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all of senatorial rank. It was well understood when the law was worded that Pompey alone could fill the place. The Senate opposed the scheme with all its power, although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. But jealousies prevailed, and the Senate was afraid of Pompey. Gabinius, however, carried his law by the votes of the people, and Pompey was appointed.

Nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in Rome at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce was almost destroyed. Sulla had re-established the outside show of a strong government—a government which was strong enough to enable rich men to live securely in Rome; but he had done nothing to consolidate the Empire. Even Lucullus in the East had only partially succeeded, leaving Mithridates still to be dealt with by Pompey. Of what nature was the government of the provinces under Sulla's aristocracy we learn from the trials of Verres, and of Fonteius, and of Catiline. The Mediterranean swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had nothing to fear from the hands of the Romans. Plutarch declares to us—no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been admitted by subsequent writers—how great was the horror of these depredations.[141] It is marvellous to us now that this should have been allowed—marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance that Verres had found it worth his while to sacrifice Roman citizens in their place. Pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his money, and cleared the Mediterranean in forty days, as Plutarch says. Floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the Romans, and not a pirate left on the seas.[142]

In the history of Rome at this time we find men of mark whose characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear. Of Marius and of Sulla we have a defined idea. Caesar, with his imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success, comes home to us. Cicero, I think, we certainly may understand. Catiline, Cato, Antony, and Brutus have left their portraits with us. Of Pompey I must acknowledge for myself that I have but a vague conception. His wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little power of his own! He was not determined and venomous as was Marius; not cold-blooded and ruthless as was Sulla; certainly not confident as was Caesar; not humane as was Cicero; not passionate as Catiline; not stoic as was Cato; not reckless as was Antony, nor wedded to the idea of an oligarchy as was Brutus. Success came in his way, and he found it—found it again and again, till fortune seemed to have adopted him. Success lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must be a Sulla whether he would or no.[143] But he could not endure the idea of a rival Sulla. I doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to fight for the empire of the Republic, had he not perceived that that empire would fall into Caesar's hands did he not grasp it himself. It would have satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him "Magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. Caesar did force it on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. He must have understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a Roman legion and of Roman auxiliaries. He had destroyed Sertorius in Spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honor of putting an end to the Servile war when Spartacus, the leader of the slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated at its utmost the meaning of those words, "Cives Romanus." He was a handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury, reticent, I should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed beneath the heel of such a man as Caesar, and as certain to leave such a one as Cicero in the lurch.

It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time forward Cicero's political life—and his life now became altogether political—was governed by that of Pompey. That this was the case to a great extent is certain—to a sad extent, I think. The two men were of the same age; but Pompey had become a general among soldiers before Cicero had ceased to be a pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way toward the front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. He had been Consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down the pirates. In some sort the mantle of Sulla had fallen upon him. He was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. If, which I doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the forms in Rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit. For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, I think, look in vain to that Pompey whom history has handed down to us. But, of all matters which interested Cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. How should the great Rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? How should Rome be ruled so that Romans might be the masters of the world, in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms—as by valor, so by virtue? He, too, was an oligarch by strongest conviction. His mind could conceive nothing better than Consuls, Praetors, Censors, Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation that the Consuls and the Praetors should be honest men. The condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would not see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown no egregious lust for personal power. His hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party. The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero indifferently calls them—meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order—believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him. The Senate did not want another Sulla; and yet it was Sulla who had reinstated the Senate. The Senate would have hindered Pompey, if it could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his command against Mithridates. But he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly when, seventeen years afterward, Caesar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in his heart acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey lived. This, I think, was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we go on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political career were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker to the end.

Then came Cicero's Praetorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight Praetors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in the provinces. The "Praetor Urbanus" was confined to the city, and was regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or judges for special causes.

[Sidenote: B.C. 66, aetat. 41.]

Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one, believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on political life. Though he had been Quaestor and AEdile, and was now Praetor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. He had had his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges—Judices; now it is to the people—Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds—although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the noblest for speech—nevertheless, not my own will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory which is open to any good man." It is only necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in question, that this command was given to Pompey in opposition to the Senate.

As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. It is one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity which have given to Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. I have sometimes attempted to make a short list of his chefs d'[oe]uvre—of his tidbits, as I must say, if I am bound to express myself in English. The list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration in its integrity has always been included in it. My space hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I will give in an appendix[144] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is unknown. I venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible I have found it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. As to the beauty of the language I shall probably find no opponent. But a serious attack has been made on Cicero's character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on Pompey with a view of securing the great General's assistance in his candidature for the Consulship. Even Middleton repeats this accusation, and only faintly repels it. M. Du Rozoir, the French critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which was not dictated to Cicero the Praetor by his desire to become Consul, and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that of Pompey." The matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it not that Cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in Pompey. Pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. He had done infinitely valuable service to the State. He had already crushed the pirates. There was good ground for believing that in his hands the Roman arms would be more efficacious against Mithridates than in those of any other General. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true.

A man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has also strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? They who have blamed Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this occasion, seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life.

One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his Praetorship—that, namely, in defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus. As it is the longest, so is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all his speeches. But there are none perhaps which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps I should say the possibilities, of life among the Romans of that day. The accusation against Roscius Amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. The iniquities of Verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life. That any man should have lived as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred and fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. We must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity. The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during the latter days of the Republic.

[Sidenote: B.C. 65, aetat. 42.]

In the year after he was Praetor—in the first of the two years between his Praetorship and Consulship, B.C. 65—he made a speech in defence of one Caius Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case occupied four days. This, with our interminable "causes celebres," does not seem much to us, but Cicero's own speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two parts. This Cornelius had been Tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused his power when in office. He had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the Senate; especially by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. Cicero's speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius,[145] a commentator on certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline. Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by the Senate—by the rich men who desired office and the government of provinces. The law proposed for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too rigorous. The rancor of the Senate against Cornelius seems to have been due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by him—for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been usurped by the Senate. Caius Cornelius seems to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the Republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but—as had been the Gracchi—ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the Senate. A second Tribune, in the interest of the Senate, attempted to exercise an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty it was to read it was stopped; then Cornelius pushed aside the inferior officer, and read it himself. There was much violence, and the men who brought the accusation about Cornelius—two brothers named Cominii—had to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses.

This took place when Cicero was standing for the Praetorship, and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his Praetorship Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made.

The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The contest on the part of the Senate was for all that made public life dear to such a body. Not to bribe—not to be able to lay out money in order that money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold—would be to them to cease to be aristocrats. The struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius Drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this Cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an honest Republic. Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself; though there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be effected, not by depriving the Senate of its power, but by teaching the Senate to use it honestly. We can sympathize with the idea, but we are driven to acknowledge that it was futile.

Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian, who speaks of them with the highest praise.[146] Cicero himself selects certain passages out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[147] thus showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. We know from Asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital interest.

We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his Praetorship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable competition for the Consulship; the second informs his friend that a son is born to him—he being then forty-two years old—and that he is thinking to undertake the defence of Catiline, who was to be accused of peculation as Propraetor in Africa. "Should he be acquitted," says Cicero, "I should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my canvass. If he should be convicted, I shall be able to bear that too." There were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would be chosen. It would be much to Cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed. Catiline, in spite of his then notorious character—in the teeth of the evils of his government in Africa—was, from his birth, his connections, and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. It was open to Cicero to defend Catiline as he had defended Fonteius, and we know from his own words that he thought of doing so. But he did not; nor did Cicero join himself with Catiline in the canvassing. It is probable that the nature of Catiline's character and intentions were now becoming clearer from day to day. Catiline was tried and acquitted, having, it is said, bribed the judges.



CHAPTER VIII.

CICERO AS CONSUL.

Hitherto everything had succeeded with Cicero. His fortune and his fame had gone hand-in-hand. The good-will of the citizens had been accorded to him on all possible occasions. He had risen surely, if not quickly, to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, Hortensius. On no memorable occasion had he been beaten. If now and then he had failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some matter in which, as he had said to Atticus in speaking of his contemplated defence of Catiline, he was not called on to break his heart if he were beaten. We may imagine that his life had been as happy up to this point as a man's life may be. He had married well. Children had been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. He had provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. Friends were thick around him. His industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. The citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. Now at the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual honor, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer, and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment trusted. Then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one misery after another—one trouble on the head of another trouble—so cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the Romans, almost wonders that he condescended to live.

[Sidenote: B.C. 64, aetat. 43.]

He was chosen Consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous acclamation of the citizens. What was the exact manner of doing this we can hardly now understand. The Consuls were elected by ballot, wooden tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose; but Cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people.[148]

He had stood with six competitors. Of these it is only necessary to mention two, as by them only was Cicero's life affected, and as out of the six, only they seem to have come prominently forward during the canvassing. These were Catiline the conspirator, as we shall have to call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and Caius Antonius, one of the sons of Marc Antony, the great orator of the preceding age, and uncle of the Marc Antony with whom we are all so well acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to the end of this work. Cicero was so easily the first that it may be said of him that he walked over the course. Whether this was achieved by the Machiavellian arts which his brother Quintus taught in his treatise De Petitione Consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may be a matter of doubt. As far as we can judge from the signs which remain to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. He had robbed none, and had been cruel to no one. He had already abandoned the profit of provincial government—to which he was by custom entitled after the lapse of his year's duty as Praetor—in order that he might remain in Rome among the people. Though one of the Senate himself—and full of the glory of the Senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the Verrine orations which I have quoted—he had generally pleaded on the popular side. Such was his cleverness, that even when on the unpopular side—as he may be supposed to have been when defending Fonteius—he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. We cannot doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his election, that he had made himself beloved But, nevertheless, he omitted none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take. He made his electioneering speech "in toga candida"—in a white robe, as candidates did, and were thence so called. It has not come down to us, nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected from the notes which Asconius wrote upon it. It was full of personal abuse of Antony and Catiline, his competitors. Such was the practice of Rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task. When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of Clodius, his enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the Consuls who allowed him to be banished, and of Marc Antony, his last great opponent—the nephew of the man who was now his colleague—we shall have very much of it. It must again be pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been preserved and that Cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been more foul mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that he was more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his words the meaning which he intended them to convey.

Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such evidence as we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted Antony no better than he did Catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide et impera"—separate your enemies and you will get the better of them, which was no doubt known as well then as now—he soon determined to use Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon Antony among his fellow-conspirators. Sallust puts into the mouth of Catiline a declaration to this effect,[149] and Cicero did use Antony for the purpose. The story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story of Cicero's Consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole year, it was not till October that the affairs in which we shall have to interest ourselves commenced.

Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the great Roman officers of State we know very little; perhaps I might better say that we know nothing. Men, in their own diaries, when they keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. A Prime-minister with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was Cicero with his friend Atticus, would hardly say when he went to the Treasury Chambers or what he did when he got there. We may imagine that to a Cabinet Minister even a Cabinet Council would, after many sittings, become a matter of course. A leading barrister would hardly leave behind him a record of his work in chambers. It has thus come to pass that, though we can picture to ourselves a Cicero before the judges, or addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the Senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his consular work. We cannot but suppose that there must have been an office with many clerks. There must have been heavy daily work. The whole operation of government was under the Consul's charge, and to Cicero, with a Catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually heavy. How he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives and red tape, I cannot make manifest to myself. I can imagine that there must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading Romans, but beyond that I cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life of a Consul.

In the old days the Consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do the fighting. When there was an enemy here, or an enemy there, the Consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or south, to different parts of Italy. But gradually this system became impracticable. Distances became too great, as the Empire extended itself beyond the bounds of Italy, to admit of the absence of the Consuls. Wars prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which was soon to take place in Gaul under Caesar. The Consuls remained at home, and Generals were sent out with proconsular authority. This had become so certainly the case, that Cicero on becoming Consul had no fear of being called on to fight the enemies of his country. There was much fighting then in course of being done by Pompey in the East; but this would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it might be in sending out necessary supplies.

The Consul's work, however, was severe enough. We find from his own words, in a letter to Atticus written in the year but one after his Consulship, 61 B.C., that as Consul he made twelve public addresses. Each of them must have been a work of labor, requiring a full mastery over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in their polished perfection from the generality of parliamentary speeches to which we are accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken great time. Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. Writing must have been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself. We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily, creeping in a little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might get up the evidence against Verres. In defending Aulus Cluentius when he was Praetor, Cicero must have found the work to have been immense. In preparing the attack upon Catiline it seems that every witness was brought to himself. There were four Catiline speeches made in the year of his Consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by him. He mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made in the year of his Consulship.

I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with those which have come to us—which were, as we may say, prepared for the press by Tiro, his slave and secretary. We have evidence as to some of them, especially as to the second Catiline oration, that time did not admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of the circumstances to which it alludes. It needs must have been extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed to give him. How the words may have been taken down in such a case we do not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed, though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as is that with us.[150] The words which we read were probably much polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not know. What we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced, and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince and charm us. Of these twelve consular speeches Cicero gives a special account to his friend. "I will send you," he says, "the speechlings[151] which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which I have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. It was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen of yours in those orations which he called his Philippics. In these he brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking, so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more statesman-like. So I have done with these speeches of mine which may be called 'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year but also with something of consular dignity. "Of these, one, on the new land laws proposed, was spoken in the Senate on the kalends of January. The second, on the same subject, to the people. The third was respecting Otho's law.[152] The fourth was in defence of Rabirius.[153] The fifth was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property and their rank under Sulla's proscription.[154] The sixth was an address to the people, and explained why I renounced my provincial government.[155] The seventh drove Catiline out of the city. The eighth was addressed to the people the day after Catiline fled. The ninth was again spoken to the people, on the day on which the Allobroges gave their evidence. Then, again, the tenth was addressed to the Senate on the fifth of December"—also respecting Catiline. "There are also two short supplementary speeches on the Agrarian war. You shall have the whole body of them. As what I write and what I do are equally interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my doings and all my sayings."

It is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which he made as Consul—those to which he was desirous of adding something of the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the weight attached to his pleadings as a lawyer. As an advocate, Consul though he was, he continued to perform his work; from whence we learn that no State dignity was so high as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of defending his friends. Hortensius, when Consul elect, had undertaken to defend Verres. Cicero defended Murena when he was Consul. He defended C. Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, I think, known.[156] Of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. Of his pleading for Murena we have, if not the whole, the material part, and, though nobody cares very much for Murena now, the oration is very amusing. It was made toward the end of the year, on the 20th of November, after the second Catiline oration, and before the third, at the very moment in which Cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on which he intended to convict Catiline's fellow-conspirators. As I read it I am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to master the details necessary for the trial of Murena.

Early in the year Cicero had caused a law to be passed—which, after him, was called the Lex Tullia—increasing the stringency of the enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. His intention had probably been to hinder Catiline, who was again about to become a candidate. But Murena, who was elected, was supposed to have been caught in the meshes of the net, and also Silanus, the other Consul designate. Cato, the man of stern nature, the great Stoic of the day, was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against some one, and not very sorry to attack Murena with weapons provided from the armory of Murena's friend, Cicero. Silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to Cato, was allowed to pass unmolested. Sulpicius, who was one of the disappointed candidates, Cato, and Postumius were the accusers. Hortensius, Crassus, and Cicero were combined together for the defence of Murena. But as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we feel that, unlike those Roman trials generally, this was carried on without any acrimony on either side. I think it must have been that Cato wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been arranged that Murena was to be acquitted. Murena was accused, among other things, of dancing! Greeks might dance, as we hear from Cornelius Nepos,[157] but for a Roman Consul it would be disgraceful in the highest extreme. A lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. Sallust tells us of Sempronia—who was, indeed, a very bad female if all that he says of her be true—that she danced more elegantly than became an honest woman.[158] She was the wife of a Consul. But a male Roman of high standing might not dance at all. Cicero defends his friend by showing how impossible it was—how monstrous the idea. "No man would dance unless drunk or mad." Nevertheless, I imagine that Murena had danced.

Cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing Cato for his stoicism, and uses it delightfully. Horace was not more happy when, in defence of Aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[159] "There was one Zeno," Cicero says, "who laid down laws. No wise man would forgive any fault. No man worthy of the name of man would allow himself to be pitiful. Wise men are beautiful, even though deformed; rich though penniless; kings though they be slaves. We who are not wise are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. Any fault is an unpardonable crime. To kill an old cock, if you do not want it, is as bad as to murder your father!"[160] And these doctrines, he goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk about, this man Cato absolutely believes, and tries to live by them. I shall have to refer back to this when I speak of Cicero's philosophy more at length; but his common-sense crops up continually in the expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a man's life, in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane things which the philosophers professed to teach their pupils. He turns to Cato and asks him questions, which he answers himself with his own philosophy: "Would you pardon nothing? Well, yes; but not all things. Would you do nothing for friendship? Sometimes, unless duty should stand in the way. Would you never be moved to pity? I would maintain my habit of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. It is good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall have prevailed with you." In all this the humanity of our Cicero, as opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a Cato or the abominable vice of a Verres, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what Christ has taught us.

But the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the lawyers. It must be understood that Cicero did not pride himself on being a lawyer. He was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. In truth, he did understand the law, being a man of deep research, who inquired into everything. As legal points had been raised, he thus addresses Sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who had been a candidate for the Consulship, and who was his own intimate friend: "I must put you out of your conceit," he says; "it was your other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws—your moderation, your wisdom, your justice—which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved. I will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not thus you made yourself worthy of the Consulship.[161] That power of eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often availed in raising a man to the Consulship, is able by its words to move the minds of the Senate and the people and the judges.[162] But in such a poor science as that of law what honor can there be? Its details are taken up with mere words and fragments of words.[163] They forget all equity in points of law, and stick to the mere letter."[164] He goes through a presumed scene of chicanery, which, Consul as he was, he must have acted before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme delight of them all. At last he says, "Full as I am of business, if you raise my wrath I will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days."[165] From these and many other passages in Cicero's writings and speeches, and also from Quintilian, we learn that a Roman advocate was by no means the same as an English barrister. The science which he was supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in effective language. It no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in getting up the details of his story—what we may call the evidence—but he looked elsewhere, to men of another profession, for his law. The "juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this trial of Murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "The greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire, all our republic, is defended and made strong by them."[166] It was thus that the advocate could speak! This comes from the man who always took glory to himself in declaring that the "toga" was superior to helmet and shield. He had already declared that they erred who thought that they were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law courts.[167] He knew how to defend his friend Murena, who was a soldier, and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against his friend Sulpicius, the lawyer. But in truth few men understood the Roman law better than did Cicero.

But we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he tells us, four of his consular speeches were made. This had been brought forward by Rullus, one of the Tribunes, toward the end of the last year. The Tribunes came into office in December, whereas at this period of the Republic the Consuls were in power only on and from January 1st. Cicero, who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. It was, to his thinking, altogether revolutionary. We have the words of many of the clauses; and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize what would have been its effect, I think we are entitled to say that it was intended to subvert all property. Property, speaking of it generally, cannot be destroyed The land remains, and the combined results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too lasting to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. Even the elements when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. A deluge is wanted—or that crash of doom which, whether it is to come or not, is believed by the world to be very distant. But it is within human power to destroy possession, and redistribute the goods which industry, avarice, or perhaps injustice has congregated. They who own property are in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors. The spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. But with the Romans political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. A subversion of property had to a great extent taken place no later than in Sulla's time. How this had been effected the story of the property of Roscius Amerinus has explained to us. Under Sulla's enactments no man with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich ornaments, was safe. Property had been made to change hands recklessly, ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law promulgated by a single individual, who, however, had himself been instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things which he approved. Rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction. The ostensible purpose was something as follows: as the Roman people had by their valor and wisdom achieved for Rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as Roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won; whereas, in fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few aristocrats. For the reform of this evil it should be enacted that all public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels, should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should be bought fit for the use of Roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to have it. It was specially suggested that the rich country called the Campania—that in which Naples now stands with its adjacent isles—should be bought up and given over to a great Roman colony. For the purpose of carrying out this law ten magistrates should be appointed, with plenipotentiary power both as to buying and selling. There were many underplots in this. No one need sell unless he chose to sell; but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that of Sulla's proscriptions. The present possessors were in daily fear of dispossession, by some new law made with the object of restoring their property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. These would be very glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or ten magistrates, would be anxious to assist. We are told that the father-in-law of Rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his use of Sulla's proscriptions. And then there would be the instantaneous selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the Roman State. When so much land would be thrown into the market it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might choose to favor. We can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would have been altogether changed by the measure. The "decemviri" were to have plenary power for ten years. All the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold, or put up to market. Everything supposed to belong to the Roman State was to be sold in every province, for the sake of collecting together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the shape of land among the poorer Romans. Whatever may have been the private intentions of Rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even at this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was intended which can only be described as a general subversion. To this the new Consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say, patriotically.

The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as manifest in these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the Catiline conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his own character and intellect. He condescends, on the other hand, to a virulence of personal abuse against Rullus which, though it is to our taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a man should not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in which the bill was first introduced: "Our Tribunes at last enter upon their office. The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially expected. He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry himself with an air of special audacity. When he was only Tribune elect he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different stop. We all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law. No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all Rome, could not but be effective. It has been supposed that Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared to go about in mourning—"sordidatus"—on behalf of his country.

But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. It is so grand as to make us feel that a Consul of Rome, who had the cares of Rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the Senate and to the people. There are the two important orations—that spoken first in the Senate, and then the speech to the people from which I have already quoted the passage personal to Rullus. In both of them he declares his own idea of a Consul, and of himself as Consul. He has been speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the State, and then proceeds: "But I pass by what I have to say on that matter and reserve it for the people. I speak now of the danger which menaces our safety and our liberty. For what will there be left to us untouched in the Republic, what will remain of your authority and freedom, when Rullus, and those whom you fear much more than Rullus,[169] with this band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of Rome, laden with gold and silver, shall have seized on Capua and all the cities round? To all this, Senators"—Patres conscripti he calls them—"I will oppose what power I have. As long as I am Consul I will not suffer them to carry out their designs against the Republic.

"But you, Rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the people in your attempts to subvert the Republic in opposition to a Consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend I call upon you, I invite you to meet me in the assembly. Let us have the people of Rome as a judge between us. Let us look round and see what it is that the people really desire. We shall find that their is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease. You have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies." (It must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his Consulship) "The wicked you have filled with hope, the good with fear. You have lobbed the Forum of loyalty and the Republic of dignity. But now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of the Consul has been heard by the people—when he shall have made it plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue no altered empire, no royal 'decemvirs,' no second Rome no other centre of rule but this; that while I am Consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease—do you suppose that I shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law? Shall I, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your Tribunes of the people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the Roman people? Shall I fear—I who have determined to be Consul after that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom, reaching to ask nothing for myself which any Tribune could object to have given to me?"[170]

This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the people. He begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right of having in their houses the busts and images of their ancestors, in their first speech to the people to join with thanks for the favors done to themselves some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers. [171] He, however, could do nothing of the kind: he had no such right: none in his family had achieved such dignity. To speak of himself might seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. Therefore would he restrain himself, but would still say something, so that he might acknowledge what he had received. Then he would leave it for them to judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him.

"It is long ago—almost beyond the memory of us now here—since you last made a new man Consul.[172] That high office the nobles had reserved for themselves, and defended it, as it were, with ramparts. You have secured it for me, so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy of it. Nor have you only made me a Consul, much as that is, but you have done so in such a fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so treated, and no new man—'novus ante me nemo.' I have, if you will think of it, been the only new man who has stood for the Consulship in the first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." Then he goes on to remind them, in words which I have quoted before, that they had elected him by their unanimous voices. All this, he says, had been very grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that he might labor on their behalf. That such labor was severe, he declares. The Consulship itself must be defended. His period of Consulship to any Consul must be a year of grave responsibility, but more so to him than to any other. To him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give no kind advice. To him, should he be overtasked, they would give no assistance. But the first thing he would look for should be their good opinion. To declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his office for the good of the people was his natural duty. But in that place, in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the Senate itself, on the very first day of his Consulship, he had declared the same thing—"popularem me futurum esse consulem."[173]

The course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. He desired, certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power of the aristocracy. He still believed, as we cannot believe now, that there was a residuum of good in the Senate sufficient to blossom forth into new powers of honest government. When speaking to the oligarchs in the Senate of Rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them with him. That a Consul should oppose a Tribune who was coming forward with a "Lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the Gracchi, was not out of the common order of things. Another Consul would either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering, as Antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have called it—as might have been the case with the Cottas, Lepiduses and Pisos of preceding years. But Cicero determined to oppose the demagogue Tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than he. He succeeded, and Rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into darkness. I regard the second speech against Rullus as the ne plus ultra, the very beau ideal of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government.

I cannot finish this chapter, in which I have attempted to describe the lesser operations of Cicero's Consulship, without again alluding to the picture drawn by Virgil of a great man quelling the storms of a seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his words.[174] The poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. When the knights, during Cicero's Consulship essayed to take their privileged places in the public theatre, in accordance with a law passed by Roscius Otho a few years earlier (B.C. 68), the founder of the obnoxious law himself entered the building. The people, enraged against a man who had interfered with them and their pleasures, and who had brought them, as it were under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and began to break everything that came to hand. "Tum pietate gravem!" The Consul was sent for. He called on the people to follow him out of the theatre to the Temple of Bellona, and there addressed to them that wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in good-humor with Otho himself. "Iste regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet." I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great Consul's doings of the year. The passage is short and I will translate it:[175] "But, Marcus Tullius, how shall I reconcile it to myself to be silent as to you, or by what special glory shall I best declare your excellence? How better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the whole nation, and to the achievements of your Consulship as a specimen of your entire life? At your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. At your persuasion they pardoned Otho his law and bore with good-humor the difference of the seats assigned to them. At your prayer the children of the proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of citizenship. Catiline was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. It was you who silenced[176] M. Antony. Hail, thou who wert first addressed as the father of your country—the first who, in the garb of peace, hast deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence." This was grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his death, by one who had no peculiar sympathies with him other than those created by literary affinity.