The doors of the building in which the murder was perpetrated were blocked up so that it never could be entered again. The day (the 15th of March) was declared to be accursed. No public business was ever to be done upon it.

These proceedings probably represented the popular feeling about the deed, for Caesar, in addition to the genius which every one must have recognized, had just the qualities which make men popular. He had no scruples, but then he had no meannesses. He incurred enormous debts with but a faint chance of paying them—no chance, we may say, except by the robbery of others. He laid his hands upon what he wanted, taking for instance three thousand pounds weight of gold from the treasury of the Capitol and leaving gilded brass in its stead; and he plundered the unhappy Gauls without remorse. But then he was as free in giving as he was unscrupulous in taking. He had the personal courage, too, which is one of the most attractive of all qualities. Again and again in battle he turned defeat into victory. He would lay hold of the fugitives as they ran, seize them by the throat, and get them by main force face to face with the foe. Crossing the Hellespont after the battle of Pharsalia in a small boat, he met two of the enemy's ships. Without hesitation he discovered himself, called upon them to surrender, and was obeyed. At Alexandria he was surprised by a sudden sally of the besieged, and had to leap into the harbor. He swam two hundred paces to the nearest ship, lifting a manuscript in his left hand to keep it out of the water, and holding his military cloak in his teeth, for he would not have the enemy boast of securing any spoil from his person.

He allowed nothing to stand in his way. If it suited his policy to massacre a whole tribe, men, women, and children, he gave the order without hesitation, just as he recorded it afterwards in his history without a trace of remorse or regret. If a rival stood in his way he had him removed, and was quite indifferent as to how the removal was effected. But his object gained, or wherever there was no object in question, he could be the kindest and gentlest of men. A friend with whom he was traveling was seized with sudden illness. Caesar gave up at once to him the only chamber in the little inn, and himself spent the night in the open air. His enemies he pardoned with singular facility, and would even make the first advances. Political rivals, once rendered harmless, were admitted to his friendship, and even promoted to honor; writers who had assailed him with the coarsest abuse he invited to his table.

Of the outward man this picture has reached us: "He is said to have been remarkably tall, with a light complexion and well-shaped limbs. His face was a little too full; his eyes black and brilliant. His health was excellent, but towards the latter end of his life he was subject to fainting fits and to frightful dreams at night. On two occasions also, when some public business was being transacted, he had epileptic fits. He was very careful of his personal appearance, had his hair and beard scrupulously cut and shaven. He was excessively annoyed at the disfigurement of baldness, which he found was made the subject of many lampoons. It had become his habit, therefore, to bring up his scanty locks over his head; and of all the honors decreed to him by the Senate and people, none was more welcome to him than that which gave him the right of continually wearing a garland of bay."

He was wonderfully skillful in the use of arms, an excellent swimmer, and extraordinarily hardy. On the march he would sometimes ride, but more commonly walk, keeping his head uncovered both in rain and sunshine. He traveled with marvelous expedition, traversing a hundred miles in a day for several days together; if he came to a river he would swim it, or sometimes cross it on bladders. Thus he would often anticipate his own messengers. For all this he had a keen appreciation of pleasure, and was costly and even luxurious in his personal habits. He is said, for instance, to have carried with him a tesselated pavement to be laid down in his tent throughout his campaign in Gaul.



CHAPTER IX.

POMPEY.

At an age when Caesar was still idling away his time, Pompey had achieved honors such as the veteran generals of Rome were accustomed to regard as the highest to which they could aspire. He had only just left, if indeed he had left, school, when his father took him to serve under him in the war against the Italian allies of Rome. He was not more than nineteen when he distinguished himself by behaving in circumstances of great difficulty and danger with extraordinary prudence and courage. The elder Pompey, Strabo "the squint-eyed," as his contemporaries called him, after their strange fashion of giving nicknames from personal defects, and as he was content to call himself, was an able general, but hated for his cruelty and avarice. The leaders of the opposite faction saw an opportunity of getting rid of a dangerous enemy and of bringing over to their own side the forces which he commanded. Their plan was to assassinate the son as he slept, to burn the father in his tent, and at the same time to stir up a mutiny among the troops. The secret, however, was not kept. A letter describing the plot was brought to the young Pompey as he sat at dinner with the ringleader. The lad showed no sign of disturbance, but drank more freely than usual, and pledged his false friend with especial heartiness. He then rose, and after putting an extra guard on his father's tent, composed himself to sleep, but not in his bed. The assassins stabbed the coverlet with repeated blows, and then ran to rouse the soldiers to revolt. The camp was immediately in an uproar, and the elder Pompey, though he had been preserved by his son's precautions, dared not attempt to quell it. The younger man was equal to the occasion. Throwing himself on his face in front of the gate of the camp, he declared that if his comrades were determined to desert to the enemy, they must pass over his dead body. His entreaties prevailed, and a reconciliation was effected between the general and his troops.

Not many weeks after this incident the father died, struck, it was said, by lightning, and Pompey became his own master. It was not long before he found an opportunity of gaining still higher distinction. The civil war still continued to rage, and few did better service to the party of the aristocrats than Pompey. Others were content to seek their personal safety in Sulla's camp; Pompey was resolved himself to do something for the cause. He made his way to Picenum, where his family estates we e situated and where his own influence was great, and raised three legions (nearly twenty thousand men), with all their commissariat and transport complete, and hurried to the assistance of Sulla. Three of the hostile generals sought to intercept him. He fell with his whole force on one of them, and crushed him, carrying off, besides his victory, the personal distinction of having slain in single combat the champion of the opposing force. The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed him as their deliverer. A second commander who ventured to encounter him found himself deserted by his army and was barely able to escape; a third was totally routed. Sulla received his young partisan, who was not more than twenty-three years of age, with distinguished honors, even rising from his seat and uncovering at his approach.

During the next two years his reputation continued to increase. He won victories in Gaul, in Sicily, and in Africa. As he was returning to Rome after the last of these campaigns, the great Dictator himself headed the crowd that went forth to meet him, and saluted him as Pompey the Great, a title which he continued to use as his family name[5]. But there was a further honor which the young general was anxious to obtain, but Sulla was unwilling to grant, the supreme glory of a triumph. "No one," he said, "who was not or had not been consul, or at least praetor, could triumph. The first of the Scipios, who had won Spain from the Carthaginians, had not asked for this honor because he wanted this qualification. Was it to be given to a beardless youth, too young even to sit in the Senate?" But the beardless youth insisted. He even had the audacity to hint that the future belonged not to Sulla but to himself. "More men," he said, "worship the rising than the setting sun." Sulla did not happen to catch the words, but he saw the emotion they aroused in the assembly, and asked that they should be repeated to him. His astonishment permitted him to say nothing more than "Let him triumph! Let him triumph." And triumph he did, to the disgust of his older rivals, whom he intended, but that the streets were not broad enough to allow of the display, still further to affront by harnessing elephants instead of horses to his chariot.

[Footnote 5: Pompeius was the name of his house (gens). Strabo had been the name of his family (familia). This he seems to have disused, assuming Magnus in its stead.]

Two years afterwards he met an antagonist more formidable than any he had yet encountered. Sertorius, the champion at once of the party of the people and of the native tribes of Spain, was holding out against the government of Rome. The veteran leader professed a great contempt for his young adversary, "I should whip the boy," he said, "if I were not afraid of the old woman" (meaning Pompey's colleague). But he took good care not to underrate him in practice, and put forth all his skill in dealing with him. Pompey's first campaign against him was disastrous; the successes of the second were checkered by some serious defeats. For five years the struggle continued, and seemed little likely to come to an end, when Sertorius was assassinated by his second in command, Perpenna. Perpenna was unable to wield the power which he had thus acquired, and was defeated and taken prisoner by Pompey. He endeavored to save his life by producing the correspondence of Sertorius. This implicated some of the most distinguished men in Rome, who had held secret communications with the rebel leader and had even invited him over into Italy. With admirable wisdom Pompey, while he ordered the instant execution of the traitor, burned the letters unread.

Returning to Italy he was followed by his usual good fortune. That country had been suffering cruelly from a revolt of the slaves, which the Roman generals had been strangely slow in suppressing. Roused to activity by the tidings of Pompey's approach, Crassus, who was in supreme command, attacked and defeated the insurgent army. A considerable body, however, contrived to escape, and it was this with which Pompey happened to fall in, and which he completely destroyed. "Crassus defeated the enemy," he was thus enabled to boast, "but I pulled up the war by the roots." No honors were too great for a man at once so skillful and so fortunate (for the Romans had always a great belief in a general's good fortune). On the 31st of December, B.C. 71, being still a simple gentleman—that is, having held no civil office in the State—he triumphed for the second time, and on the following day, being then some years below the legal age, and having held none of the offices by which it was usual to mount to the highest dignity in the commonwealth, he entered on his first consul ship, Crassus being his colleague.

Still he had not yet reached the height of his glory. During the years that followed his consulship, the pirates who infested the Mediterranean had become intolerable. Issuing, not as was the case in after times, from the harbors of Northern Africa, but from fastnesses in the southern coast of Asia Minor, they plundered the more civilized regions of the West, and made it highly dangerous to traverse the seas either for pleasure or for gain. It was impossible to transport the armies of Rome to the provinces except in the winter, when the pirates had retired to their strongholds. Even Italy itself was not safe. The harbor of Caieta with its shipping, was burned under the very eye of the praetor. From Misenum the pirates carried off the children of the admiral who had the year before led an expedition against them. They even ventured not only to blockade Ostia, the harbor of Rome, and almost within sight of the city, but to capture the fleet that was stationed there. They were especially insulting to Roman citizens. If a prisoner claimed to be such—and the claim generally insured protection—they would pretend the greatest penitence and alarm, falling on their knees before him, and entreating his pardon. Then they would put shoes on his feet, and robe him in a citizen's garb. Such a mistake, they would say, must not happen again. The end of their jest was to make him "walk the plank," and with the sarcastic permission to depart unharmed, they let down a ladder into the sea, and compelled him to descend, under penalty of being still more summarily thrown overboard. Men's eyes began to be turned on Pompey, as the leader who had been prosperous in all his undertakings. In 67 B.C. a law was proposed appointing a commander (who, however, was not named), who should have absolute power for three years over the sea as far as the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), and the coast for fifty miles inland, and who should be furnished with two hundred ships, as many soldiers and sailors as he wanted, and more than a million pounds in money. The nobles were furious in their opposition, and prepared to prevent by force the passing of this law. The proposer narrowly escaped with his life, and Pompey himself was threatened. "If you will be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall die" (one form of the legend of Rome's first king represented him as having been torn to pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was unavailing. The new command was created, and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The price of corn, which had risen to a famine height in Rome, fell immediately the appointment was made. The result, indeed, amply justified the choice. The new general made short work of the task that had been set him. Not satisfied with the force put under his command, he collected five hundred ships and one hundred and twenty thousand men. With these he swept the pirates from the seas and stormed their strongholds, and all in less than three months. Twenty thousand prisoners fell into his hands. With unusual humanity he spared their lives, and thinking that man was the creature of circumstances, determined to change their manner of life. They were to be removed from the sea, should cease to be sailors, and become farmers. It is possible that the old man of Corycus, whose skill in gardening Virgil celebrates in one of his Georgics, was one of the pirates whom the judicious mercy of Pompey changed into a useful citizen.

A still greater success remained to be won. For more than twenty years war, occasionally intercepted by periods of doubtful peace, had been carried on between Rome and Mithridates, king of Pontus. This prince, though reduced more than once to the greatest extremities, had contrived with extraordinary skill and courage to retrieve his fortunes, and now in 67 B.C. was in possession of the greater part of his original dominion. Lucullus, a general of the greatest ability, was in command of the forces of Rome, but he had lost the confidence of his troops, and affairs were at a standstill. Pompey's friends proposed that the supreme command should be transferred to him, and the law, which Cicero supported in what is perhaps the most perfect of his political speeches[6], was passed. Pompey at once proceeded to the East. For four years Mithridates held out, but with little hope of ultimate success or even of escape. In 64, after vainly attempting to poison himself, such was the power of the antidotes by which he had fortified himself against domestic treachery (for so the story runs), he perished by the sword of one of his mercenaries. For two years more Pompey was busied in settling the affairs of the East. At last, in 61, he returned to Rome to enjoy a third triumph, and that the most splendid which the city had ever witnessed. It lasted for two days, but still the time was too short for the display of the spoils of victory. The names of no less than fifteen conquered nations were carried in procession. A thousand forts, nine hundred cities, had been taken, and the chief of them were presented by means of pictures to the eyes of the people. The revenue of the State had been almost doubled by these conquests. Ninety thousand talents in gold and silver coin were paid into the treasury, nor was this at the expense of the soldiers, whose prize money was so large that the smallest share amounted to fifty pounds. Never before was such a sight seen in the world, and if Pompey had died when it was finished, he would have been proclaimed the most fortunate of mankind.

[Footnote 6: The Pro Lege Manilia. The law was proposed by one Manilius, a tribune of the people.]

Certainly he was never so great again as he was that day. When with Caesar and Crassus he divided all the power of the State, he was only the second, and by far the second, of the three. His influence, his prestige, his popularity declined year by year. The good fortune which had followed him without ceasing from his earliest years now seemed to desert him. Even the shows, the most magnificent ever seen in the city, with which he entertained the people at the dedication of his theater (built at his own expense for the public benefit) were not wholly a success. Here is a letter of Cicero about them to his friend Marius; interesting as giving both a description of the scene and as an account of the writer's own feelings about it. "If it was some bodily pain or weakness of health that kept you from coming to the games, I must attribute your absence to fortune rather than to a judicious choice. But if you thought the things which most men admire contemptible, and so, though health permitted, would not come, then I am doubly glad; glad both that you were free from illness and that you were so vigorous in mind as to despise the sights which others so unreasonably admire.... Generally the shows were most splendid, but not to your taste, if I may judge of yours by my own. First, the veteran actors who for their own honor had retired from the stage, returned to it to do honor to Pompey. Your favorite, my dear friend Aesopus, acquitted himself so poorly as to make us all feel that he had best retire. When he came to the oath—

'And if of purpose set I break my faith,'

his voice failed him. What need to tell you more? You know all about the other shows; they had not even the charm which moderate shows commonly have. The ostentation with which they were furnished forth took away all their gayety. What charm is there in having six hundred mules in the Clytemnestra or three thousand supernumeraries in the Trojan Horse, or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in some battle-piece. The populace admired all this; but it would have given you no kind of pleasure. After this came a sort of wild-beast fights, lasting for five days. They were splendid: no man denies it. But what man of culture can feel any pleasure when some poor fellow is torn in pieces by some powerful animal, or when some noble animal is run through with a hunting spear. If these things are worth seeing, you have seen them before. And I, who was actually present, saw nothing new. The last day was given up to the elephants. Great was the astonishment of the crowd at the sight; but of pleasure there was nothing. Nay, there was some feeling of compassion, some sense that this animal has a certain kinship with man." The elder Pliny tells us that two hundred lions were killed on this occasion, and that the pity felt for the elephants rose to the height of absolute rage. So lamentable was the spectacle of their despair, so pitifully did they implore the mercy of the audience, "that the whole multitude rose in tears and called down upon Pompey the curses which soon descended on him."

And then Pompey's young wife, Julia, Caesar's daughter, died. She had been a bond of union between the two men, and the hope of peace was sensibly lessened by her loss. Perhaps the first rupture would have come any how; when it did come it found Pompey quite unprepared for the conflict. He seemed indeed to be a match for his rival, but his strength collapsed almost at a touch. "I have but to stamp with my foot," he said on one occasion, "and soldiers will spring up;" yet when Caesar declared war by crossing the Rubicon, he fled without a struggle. In little more than a year and a half all was over. The battle of Pharsalia was fought on the 9th of August, and on September the 29th the man who had triumphed over three continents lay a naked, headless corpse on the shore of Egypt.



CHAPTER X.

EXILE.

The suppression of the "Great Conspiracy" was certainly the most glorious achievement of Cicero's life. Honors such as had never before been bestowed on a citizen of Rome were heaped upon him. Men of the highest rank spoke of him both in the Senate and before the people as the "Father of his fatherland." A public thanksgiving, such as was ordered when great victories had been won, was offered in his name. Italy was even more enthusiastic than the capital. The chief towns voted him such honors as they could bestow; Capua in particular erected to him a gilded statue, and gave him the title of Patron of the city.

Still there were signs of trouble in the future. It was the duty of the consul on quitting office to swear that he had discharged his duty with fidelity, and it was usual for him at the same time to make a speech in which he narrated the events of his consulship. Cicero was preparing to speak when one of the new tribunes intervened. "A man," he cried, "who has put citizens to death without hearing them in their defense is not worthy to speak. He must do nothing more than take the oath." Cicero was ready with his answer. Raising his voice he said, "I swear that I, and I alone, have saved this commonwealth and this city." The assembly shouted their approval; and when the ceremony was concluded the whole multitude escorted the ex-consul to his house. The time was not come for his enemies to attack him; but that he had enemies was manifest.

With one dangerous man he had the misfortune to come into collision in the year that followed his consulship. This was the Clodius of whom we have heard something in the preceding chapter. The two men had hitherto been on fairly good terms. Clodius, as we have seen, belonged to one of the noblest families in Rome, was a man of some ability and wit, and could make himself agreeable when he was pleased to do so. But events for which Cicero was not in the least to blame brought about a life-long enmity between them. Toward the close of the year Clodius had been guilty of an act of scandalous impiety, intruding himself, disguised as a woman, into some peculiarly sacred rites which the matrons of Rome were accustomed to perform in honor of the "Good Goddess." He had powerful friends, and an attempt was made to screen him, which Cicero, who was genuinely indignant at the fellow's wickedness, seems to have resisted. In the end he was put upon his trial, though it was before a jury which had been specially packed for the occasion. His defense was an alibi, an attempt, that is, to prove that he was elsewhere on the night when he was alleged to have misconducted himself at Rome. He brought forward witnesses who swore that they had seen him at the very time at Interamna, a town in Umbria, and a place which was distant at least two days' journey from Rome. To rebut this evidence Cicero was brought forward by the prosecution. As he stepped forward the partisans of the accused set up a howl of disapproval. But the jury paid him the high compliment of rising from their seats, and the uproar ceased. He deposed that Clodius had been at his house on the morning of the day in question.

Clodius was acquitted. If evidence had any thing to do with the result, it was the conduct of Caesar that saved him. It was in his house that the alleged intrusion had taken place, and he had satisfied himself by a private examination of its inmates that the charge was true. But now he professed to know nothing at all about the matter. Probably the really potent influence in the case was the money which Crassus liberally distributed among the jurors. The fact of the money was indeed notorious. Some of the jury had pretended that they were in fear of their lives, and had asked for a guard. "A guard!" said Catulus, to one of them, "what did you want a guard for? that the money should not be taken from you?"

But Clodius, though he had escaped, never forgave the man whose evidence had been given against him. Cicero too felt that there as war to the knife between them. On the first meeting of the Senate after the conclusion of the trial he made a pointed attack upon his old acquaintance. "Lentulus," he said, "was twice acquitted, and Catiline twice, and now this third malefactor has been let loose on the commonwealth by his judges. But, Clodius, do not misunderstand what has happened. It is for the prison, not for the city, that your judges have kept you; not to keep you in the country, but to deprive you of the privilege of exile was what they intended. Be of good cheer, then, Fathers. No new evil has come upon us, but we have found out the evil that exists. One villain has been put upon his trial, and the result has taught us that there are more villains than one."

Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes; five-and-twenty gave me credit" (five-and-twenty of the jury had voted for a verdict of guilty; two-and-thirty for acquittal), "but your thirty-two gave you none, for they would have their money down." The Senate shouted applause, and Clodius sat down silent and confounded.

How Clodius contrived to secure for himself the office of tribune, the vantage ground from which he hoped to work his revenge, has been already told in the sketch of Caesar. Caesar indeed was really responsible for all that was done. It was he who made it possible for Clodius to act; and he allowed him "to act when he could have stopped him by the lifting of his finger. He was determined to prove to Cicero that he was master. But he never showed himself after the first interference in the matter of the adoption. He simply allowed Clodius to work his will without hindrance.

Clodius proceeded with considerable skill. He proposed various laws, which were so popular that Cicero, though knowing that they would be turned against himself, did not venture to oppose them. Then came a proposal directly leveled at him. "Any man who shall have put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned and without a trial is forbidden fire and water." (This was the form of a sentence of exile. No one was allowed under penalty of death to furnish the condemned with fire and water within a certain distance of Rome.) Cicero at once assumed the squalid dress with which it was the custom for accused persons to endeavor to arouse the compassion of their fellow-citizens. Twenty thousand of the upper classes supported him by their presence. The Senate itself, on the motion of one of the tribunes, went into this strange kind of mourning on his account.

The consuls of the year were Gabinus and Piso. The first was notoriously hostile, of the second Cicero hoped to make a friend, the more so as he was a kinsman of his daughter's husband. He gives a lively picture of an interview with him. "It was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning when we went to him. He came out of a dirty hovel to meet us, with his slippers on, and his head muffled up. His breath smelt most odiously of wine; but he excused himself on the score of his health, which compelled him, he said, to use medicines in which wine was employed." His answer to the petition of his visitors (for Cicero was accompanied by his son-in-law) was at least commendably frank. "My colleague Gabinius is in absolute poverty, and does not know where to turn. Without a province he must be ruined. A province he hopes to get by the help of Clodius, but it must be by my acting with him. I must humor his wishes, just as you, Cicero, humored your colleague when you were consul. But indeed there is no reason why you should seek the consul's protection. Every one must look out for himself."

In default of the consuls there was still some hope that Pompey might be induced to interfere, and Cicero sought an interview with him. Plutarch says that he slipped out by a back door to avoid seeing him; but Cicero's own account is that the interview was granted. "When I threw myself at his feet" (he means I suppose, humiliated himself by asking such a favor), "he could not lift me from the ground. He could do nothing, he said, against the will of Caesar."

Cicero had now to choose between two courses. He might stay and do his best with the help of his friends, to resist the passing of the law. But this would have ended, it was well known, in something like an open battle in the streets of Rome. Clodius and his partisans were ready to carry their proposal by force of arms, and would yield to nothing but superior strength. It was possible, even probable, that in such a conflict Cicero would be victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not from cowardice, for he had courage enough when occasion demanded, not even from unwillingness to risk the lives of his friends, though this weighed somewhat with him, but chiefly because he hated to confess that freedom was becoming impossible in Rome, and that the strong hand of a master was wanted to give any kind of security to life and property. The other course was to anticipate the sentence and to go into voluntary exile. This was the course which his most powerful friends pressed upon him, and this was the course which he chose. He left Rome, intending to go to Sicily, where he knew that he should find the heartiest of welcomes.

Immediately on his departure Clodius formally proposed his banishment. "Let it be enacted," so ran the proposition, "that, seeing that Marcus Tullius Cicero has put Roman citizens to death without trial, forging thereto the authority of the Senate, that he be forbidden fire and water; that no one harbor or receive him on pain of death; and that whosoever shall move, shall vote, or take any steps for the recalling of him, be dealt with as a public enemy." The bill was passed, the distance within which it was to operate being fixed at four hundred miles. The houses of the banished man were razed to the ground, the site of the mansion on the. Palatine, being dedicated to Liberty. His property was partly plundered, partly sold by auction.

Cicero meanwhile had hurried to the south of Italy. He found shelter for a while at the farm of a friend near Vibo in Brutii (now the Abruzzi), but found it necessary to leave this place because it was within the prescribed limits. Sicily was forbidden to him by its governor, who, though a personal friend, was unwilling to displease the party in power. Athens, which for many reasons he would have liked to choose for his place of exile, was unsafe. He had bitter enemies there, men who had been mixed up in Catiline's conspiracy. The place, too, was within the distance, and though this was not very strictly insisted upon—as a matter of fact, he did spend the greater part of his banishment inside the prescribed limit—it might at any moment be made a means of annoyance. Atticus invited him to take up his residence at his seat at Buthrotum in Epirus (now Albania). But the proposal did not commend itself to his taste. It was out of the way, and would be very dreary without the presence of its master, who was still at Rome, and apparently intended to remain there. After staying for about a fortnight at a friend's house near Dyrrachium—the town itself, where he was once very popular, for fear of bringing some trouble upon it, he refused to enter—he crossed over to Greece, and ultimately settled himself at Thessalonica.

Long afterward he tells us of a singular dream which seems to have given him some little comfort at this time. "I had lain awake for the greater part of the night, but fell into a heavy slumber toward morning. I was at the point of starting, but my host would not allow me to be waked. At seven o'clock, however, I rose, and then told my friend this dream. I seemed to myself to be wandering disconsolately in some lonely place when the great Marius met me. His lictors were with him, their fasces wreathed with bays. 'Why are you so sad?' he asked me. 'I have been wrongly banished from my country,' I answered. He then took my hand, and turning to the nearest lictor, bade him lead me to his own Memorial Hall. 'There,' he said, 'you will be safe.'" His friend declared that this dream portended a speedy and honorable return. Curiously enough it was in the Hall of Marius that the decree repealing the sentence of banishment was actually proposed and passed.

For the most part he was miserably unhappy and depressed. In letter after letter he poured out to Atticus his fears, his complaints, and his wants. Why had he listened to the bad advice of his friends? He had wished to stay at Rome and fight out the quarrel. Why had Hortensius advised him to retire from the struggle? It must have been jealousy, jealousy of one whom he knew to be a more successful advocate than himself. Why had Atticus hindered his purposes when he thought of putting an end to all his trouble by killing himself? Why were all his friends, why was Atticus himself, so lukewarm in his cause? In one letter he artfully reproaches himself for his neglect of his friends in times past as the cause of their present indifference. But the reproach is of course really leveled at them.

"If ever," he writes in one letter, "fortune shall restore me to my country and to you, I will certainly take care that of all my friends; none shall be more rejoiced than you. All my duty to you, a duty which I must own in time past was sadly wanting, shall be so faithfully discharged that you will feel that I have been restored to you quite as much as I shall have been restored to my brother and to my children. For whatever I have wronged you, and indeed because I have wronged you, pardon me; for I have wronged myself far worse. I do not write this as not knowing that you feel the very greatest trouble on my account; but if you were and had been under the obligation to love me, as much as you actually do love me and have loved me, you never would have allowed me to lack the wise advice which you have so abundantly at your command." This is perhaps a little obscure, as it is certainly somewhat subtle; but Cicero means that Atticus had not interested himself in his affairs as much as he would have felt bound to do, if he (Cicero) had been less remiss in the duties of friendship.

To another correspondent, his wife Terentia, he poured out his heart yet more freely. "Don't think," he writes in one of his letters to her, "that I write longer letters to others than to you, except indeed I have received some long communication which I feel I must answer. Indeed I have nothing to write; and in these days I find it the most difficult of duties. Writing to you and to my dearest Tullia I never can do without floods of tears. I see you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to be completely happy. I might have made you so. I could have made you had I been less timid.... My heart's delight, my deepest regret is to think that you, to whom all used to look for help, should now be involved in such sorrow, such distress! and that I should be to blame, I who saved others only to ruin myself and mine!... As for expenditure, let others, who can if they will, undertake it. And if you love me, don't distress your health, which is already, I know, feeble. All night, all day I think of you. I see that you are undertaking all imaginable labors on my behalf; I only fear that you will not be able to endure them. I am aware that all depends upon you. If we are to succeed in what you wish and are now trying to compass, take care of your health." In another he writes: "Unhappy that I am! to think that one so virtuous, so loyal, so honest, so kind, should be so afflicted, and all on my account. And my dearest Tullia, too, that she should be so unhappy about a father in whom she once found so much happiness. And what shall I say about my dear little Cicero? That he should feel the bitterest sorrow and trouble as soon as he began to feel any thing! If all this was really, as you write, the work of fate, I could endure it a little more easily; but it was all brought about by my fault, thinking that I was loved by men who really were jealous of me, and keeping aloof from others who were really on my side."

This is, perhaps, a good opportunity of saying something about the lady herself. Who she was we do not certainly know. There was a family of the name in Rome, the most notable of whom perhaps was the Terentius Varro[7] whose rashness brought upon his country the terrible disaster of the defeat of Cannae. She had a half-sister, probably older than herself, of the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. She brought her husband, to whom she was married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about three thousand five hundred pounds. We have seen how affectionately Cicero writes to her during his exile. She is his darling, his only hope; the mere thought of her makes his eyes overflow with tears. And she seems to have deserved all his praise and affection, exerting herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to impoverish herself to find him the means that he needed. Four letters of this period have been preserved. There are twenty others belonging to the years 50-47 B.C. The earlier of these are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about to return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), she is still the most amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness, yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to happen. He excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no one by whom to send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You are glad," he writes after the battle of Pharsalia had dashed his hopes, "that I have got back safe to Italy; I hope that you may continue to be glad." "Don't think of coming," he goes on, "it is a long journey and not very safe; and I don't see what good you would do if you should come." In another letter he gives directions about getting ready his house at Tusculum for the reception of guests. The letter is dated on the first of October, and he and his friends would come probably to stay several days, on the seventh. If there was not a tub in the bath-room, one must be provided. The greeting is of the briefest and most formal. Meanwhile we know from what he writes to Atticus that he was greatly dissatisfied with the lady's conduct. Money matters were at the bottom of their quarrel. She was careless, he thinks, and extravagant. Though he was a rich man, yet he was often in need of ready money, and Terentia could not be relied upon to help him. His vexation takes form in a letter to Atticus. "As to Terentia—there are other things without number of which I don't speak—what can be worse than this? You wrote to her to send me bills for one hundred and eight pounds; for there was so much money left in hand. She sent me just ninety pounds, and added a note that this was all. If she was capable of abstracting such a trifle from so small a sum, don't you see what she would have done in matters of real importance?" The quarrel ended in a divorce, a thing far more common than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a painful and discreditable end to an union which had lasted for more than five-and-twenty years. Terentia long survived her husband, dying in extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a hundred and three years), far on in the reign of Augustus; and after a considerable experience of matrimony, if it be true that she married three or even, according to some accounts, four other husbands.

[Footnote 7: Another of the same name was an eminent man of letters of Cicero's own time.]

Terentia's daughter, Tullia, had a short and unhappy life. She was born, it would seem, about 79 B.C., and married when fifteen or sixteen to a young Roman noble, Piso Frugi by name. "The best, the most loyal of men," Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and Rome lost, if his father-in-law's praises of him may be trusted, an orator of the very highest promise. "I never knew any one who surpassed my son-in-law, Piso, in zeal, in industry, and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next year she married a certain Crassipes, a very shadowy person indeed. We know nothing of what manner of man he was, or what became of him. But in 50 B.C. Tullia was free to marry again. Her third venture was of her own or her mother's contriving. Her father was at his government in Cilicia, and he hears of the affair with surprise. "Believe me," he writes to Atticus, "nothing could have been less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had made proposals to me, and I had sent friends to discuss the matter with the ladies. But when they got to Rome the betrothal had taken place. This, I hope, will be a better match. I fancy the ladies were very much pleased with the young gentleman's complaisance and courtesy, but do not look for the thorns." The "thorns," however, were there. A friend who kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, told him as much, though he wraps up his meaning in the usual polite phrases. "I congratulate you," he writes, "on your alliance with one who is, I really believe, a worthy fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If there have been some things in which he has not done justice to himself, these are now past and gone; any traces that may be left will soon, I am sure, disappear, thanks to your good influence and to his respect for Tullia. He is not offensive in his errors, and does not seem slow to appreciate better things." Tullia, however, was not more successful than other wives in reforming her husband. Her marriage seems to have been unhappy almost from the beginning. It was brought to an end by a divorce after about three years. Shortly afterward Tullia, who could have been little more than thirty, died, to the inconsolable grief of her father. "My grief," he writes to Atticus, "passes all consolation. Yet I have done what certainly no one ever did before, written a treatise for my own consolation. (I will send you the book if the copyists have finished it.) And indeed there is nothing like it. I write day after day, and all day long; not that I can get any good from it, but it occupies me a little, not much indeed; the violence of my grief is too much for me. Still I am soothed, and do my best to compose, not my feelings, indeed, but, if I can, my face." And again: "Next to your company nothing is more agreeable to me than solitude. Then all my converse is with books; yet this is interrupted by tears; these I resist as well as I can; but at present I fail." At one time he thought of finding comfort in unusual honors to the dead. He would build a shrine of which Tullia should be the deity. "I am determined," he writes, "on building the shrine. From this purpose I cannot be turned ... Unless the building be finished this summer, I shall hold myself guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some columns of marble of Chios for the building. He discusses the question of the site. Some gardens near Rome strike him as a convenient place. It must be conveniently near if it is to attract worshipers. "I would sooner sell or mortgage, or live on little, than be disappointed." Then he thought that he would build it on the grounds of his villa. In the end he did not build it at all. Perhaps the best memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter in which one of Cicero's friends seeks to console him for his loss. "She had lived," he says, "as long as life was worth living, as long as the republic stood." One passage, though it has often been quoted before, I must give. "I wish to tell you of something which brought me no small consolation, hoping that it may also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On my way back from Asia, as I was sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina, before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth; towns all of them that were once at the very height of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes. I began thus to reflect: 'Strange! do we, poor creatures of a day, bear it ill if one of us perish of disease, or are slain with the sword, we whose life is bound to be short, while the dead bodies of so many lie here inclosed within so small a compass?"

But I am anticipating. When Cicero was in exile the republic had yet some years to live; and there were hopes that it might survive altogether. The exile's prospects, too, began to brighten. Caesar had reached for the present the height of his ambition, and was busy with his province of Gaul. Pompey had quarreled with Clodius, whom he found to be utterly unmanageable. And Cicero's friend, one Milo, of whom I shall have to say more hereafter, being the most active of them all, never ceased to agitate for his recall. It would be tedious to recall all the vicissitudes of the struggle. As early as May the Senate passed a resolution repealing the decree of banishment, the news of it having caused an outburst of joy in the city. Accius' drama of "Telamon" was being acted at the time, and the audience applauded each senator as he entered the Senate, and rose from their places to greet the consul as he came in. But the enthusiasm rose to its height when the actor who was playing the part of Telamon (whose banishment from his country formed part of the action of the drama) declaimed with significant emphasis the following lines—

What! he—the man who still with steadfast heart Strove for his country, who in perilous days Spared neither life nor fortune, and bestowed Most help when most she needed; who surpassed In wit all other men. Father of Gods, His house—yea, his!—I saw devoured by fire; And ye, ungrateful, foolish, without thought Of all wherein he served you, could endure To see him banished; yea, and to this hour Suffer that he prolong an exile's day.

Still obstacle after obstacle was interposed, and it was not till the fourth of August that the decree passed through all its stages and became finally law. Cicero, who had been waiting at the point of Greece nearest to Italy, to take the earliest opportunity of returning, had been informed by his friends that he might now safely embark. He sailed accordingly on the very day when the decree was passed, and reached Brundisium on the morrow. It happened to be the day on which the foundation of the colony was celebrated, and also the birthday of Tullia, who had come so far to meet her father. The coincidence was observed by the towns-people with delight. On the eighth the welcome news came from Rome, and Cicero set out for the capital. "All along my road the cities of Italy kept the day of my arrival as a holiday; the ways were crowded with the deputations which were sent from all parts to congratulate me. When I approached the city, my coming was honored by such a concourse of men, such a heartiness of congratulation as are past believing. The way from the gates, the ascent of the Capitol, the return to my home made such a spectacle that in the very height of my joy I could not but be sorry that a people so grateful had yet been so unhappy, so cruelly oppressed." "That day," he said emphatically, "that day was as good as immortality to me."



CHAPTER XI.

A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Clodius, who had taken the lead in driving Cicero into exile, was of course furious at his return, and continued to show him an unceasing hostility. His first care was to hinder the restoration of his property. He had contrived to involve part at least of this in a considerable difficulty. Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill had been pulled down and the area dedicated—so at least Clodius alleged—to the Goddess of Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred forever; it could not be restored. The question was, Was it true? This question was referred to the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. Cicero argued the case before them, and they pronounced in his favor. It was now for the Senate to act. A motion was made that the site should be restored. Clodius opposed it, talking for three hours, till the anger of his audience compelled him to bring his speech to an end. One of the tribunes in his interest put his veto on the motion, but was frightened into withdrawing it. But Clodius was not at the end of his resources. A set of armed ruffians under his command drove out the workmen who were rebuilding the house. A few days afterwards he made an attack on Cicero himself. He was wounded in the struggle which followed, and might, says Cicero, have been killed, "but," he adds, "I am tired of surgery."

Pompey was another object of his hatred, for he knew perfectly well that without his consent his great enemy would not have been restored. Cicero gives a lively picture of a scene in the Senate, in which this hatred was vigorously expressed. "Pompey spoke, or rather wished to speak; for, as soon as he rose, Clodius' hired ruffians shouted at him. All through his speech it was the same; he was interrupted not only by shouts but by abuse and curses. When he came to an end—and it must be allowed that he showed courage; nothing frightened him: he said his say and sometimes even obtained silence—then Clodius rose. He was met with such an uproar from our side (for we had determined to give him back as good as he had given) that he could not collect his thoughts, control his speech, or command his countenance. This went on from three o'clock, when Pompey had only just finished his speech, till five. Meanwhile every kind of abuse, even to ribald verses, were shouted out against Clodius and his sister. Pale with fury he turned to his followers, and in the midst of the uproar asked them, 'Who is it that is killing the people with hunger?' 'Pompey,' they answered. 'Who wants to go to Alexandria?' 'Pompey,' they answered again. 'And whom do you want to go?' 'Crassus,' they said. About six o'clock the party of Clodius began, at some given signal, it seemed, to spit at our side. Our rage now burst out. They tried to drive us from our place, and we made a charge. The partisans of Clodius fled. He was thrust down from the hustings. I then made my escape, lest any thing worse should happen."

A third enemy, and one whom Clodius was destined to find more dangerous than either Cicero or Pompey, was Annius Milo. Milo was on the mother's side of an old Latin family. The name by which he was commonly known was probably a nickname given him, it may be, in joking allusion to the Milo of Crotona, the famous wrestler, who carried an ox on his shoulders and ate it in a single day. For Milo was a great fighting man, a well-born gladiator, one who was for cutting all political knots with the sword. He was ambitious, and aspired to the consulship; but the dignity was scarcely within his reach. His family was not of the highest; he was deeply in debt; he had neither eloquence nor ability. His best chance, therefore, was to attach himself to some powerful friend whose gratitude he might earn. Just such a friend he seemed to find in Cicero. He saw the great orator's fortunes were very low, but they would probably rise again, and he would be grateful to those who helped him in his adversity. Hence Milo's exertions to bring him back from banishment and hence the quarrel with Clodius. The two men had their bands of hired, or rather purchased, ruffians about the city, and came into frequent collisions. Each indicted the other for murderous assault. Each publicly declared that he should take the earliest chance of putting his I enemy to death. What was probably a chance collision brought matters to a crisis.

On the twentieth of January Milo left Rome to pay a visit to Lanuvium, a Latin town on the Appian road, and about fifteen miles south of Rome. It was a small town, much decayed from the old days when its revolt against Rome was thought to be a thing worth recording; but it contained one of the most famous temples of Italy, the dwelling of Juno the Preserver, whose image, in its goat-skin robe, its quaint, turned-up shoes, with spear in one hand and small shield in the other, had a peculiar sacredness. Milo was a native of the place, and its dictator; and it was his duty on this occasion to nominate the chief priest of the temple. He had been at a meeting of the Senate in the morning, and had remained till the close of the sitting. Returning home he had changed his dress and shoes, waited a while, as men have to wait, says Cicero, while his wife was getting ready, and then started. He traveled in a carriage his wife and a friend. Several maid-servants and a troop of singing boys belonging to his wife followed. Much was made of this great retinue of women and boys, as proving that Milo had no intention when he started of coming to blows with his great enemy. But he had also with him a number of armed slaves and several gladiators, among whom were two famous masters of their art. He had traveled about ten miles when he met Clodius, who had been delivering an address to the town council of Aricia, another Latin town, nearer to the capital than Lanuvium, and was now returning to Rome. He was on horseback, contrary to his usual custom, which was to use a carriage, and he had with him thirty slaves armed with swords. No person of distinction thought of traveling without such attendants.

The two men passed each other, but Milo's gladiators fell out with the slaves of Clodius. Clodius rode back and accosted the aggressors in a threatening manner. One of the gladiators replied by wounding him in the shoulder with his sword. A number of Milo's slaves hastened back to assist their comrades. The party of Clodius was overpowered, and Clodius himself, exhausted by his wound, took refuge in a roadside tavern, which probably marked the first stage out of Rome. Milo, thinking that now he had gone so far he might go a little further and rid himself of his enemy forever, ordered his slaves to drag Clodius from his refuge and finish him. This was promptly done. Cicero indeed declared that the slaves did it without orders, and in the belief that their master had been killed. But Rome believed the other story. The corpse of the dead man lay for some time upon the road uncared for, for all his attendants had either fallen in the struggle or had crept into hiding-places. Then a Roman gentleman on his way to the city ordered it to be put into his litter and taken to Rome, where it arrived just before nightfall. It was laid out in state in the hall of his mansion, and his widow stood by showing the wounds to the sympathizing crowd which thronged to see his remains. Next day the excitement increased. Two of the tribunes suggested that the body should be carried into the market-place, and placed on the hustings from which the speaker commonly addressed the people. Then it was resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, a notary, and a client of the family, to do it a signal honor. "Thou shalt not bury or burn a man within the city" was one of the oldest of Roman laws. Clodius, the favorite of the people, should be an exception. His body was carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual meeting-place of the Senate. The benches, the tables, the platform from which the orators spoke, the wooden tablets on which the clerks wrote their notes, were collected to make a funeral pile on which the corpse was to be consumed. The hall caught fire, and was burned to the ground; another large building adjoining it, the Hall of Porcius, narrowly escaped the same fate. The mob attacked several houses, that of Milo among them, and was with difficulty repulsed.

It had been expected that Milo would voluntarily go into exile; but the burning of the senate-house caused a strong reaction of feeling of which he took advantage. He returned to Rome, and provided to canvass for the consulship, making a present in money (which may be reckoned at five-and-twenty shillings) to every voter. The city was in a continual uproar; though the time for the new consuls to enter on their office was long past, they had not even been elected, nor was there any prospect, such was the violence of the rival candidates, of their being so. At last the Senate had recourse to the only man who seemed able to deal with the situation, and appointed Pompey sole consul. Pompey proposed to institute for the trial of Milo's case a special court with a special form of procedure. The limits of the time which it was to occupy were strictly laid down. Three days were to be given to the examination of witnesses, one to the speeches of counsel, the prosecution being allowed two hours only, the defense three. After a vain resistance on the part of Milo's friends, the proposal was carried, Pompey threatening to use force if necessary. Popular feeling now set very strongly against the accused. Pompey proclaimed that he went in fear of his life from his violence; refused to appear in the Senate lest he should be assassinated, and even left his house to live in his gardens, which could be more effectually guarded by soldiers. In the Senate Milo was accused of having arms under his clothing, a charge which he had to disprove by lifting up his under garment. Next a freedman came forward, and declared that he and four others had actually seen the murder of Clodius, and that having mentioned the fact, they had been seized and shut up for two months in Milo's counting-house. Finally a sheriff's officer, if we may so call him, deposed that another important witness, one of Milo's slaves, had been forcibly taken out of his hands by the partisans of the accused.

On the eighth of April the trial was begun. The first witness called was a friend who had been with Clodius on the day of his death. His evidence made the case look very dark against Milo, and the counsel who was to cross-examine him on behalf of the accused was received with such angry cries that he had to take refuge on the bench with the presiding judge. Milo was obliged to ask for the same protection.

Pompey resolved that better order should be kept for the future, and occupied all the approaches to the court with troops. The rest of the witnesses were heard and cross-examined without interruption. April 11th was the last day of the trial. Three speeches were delivered for the prosecution; for the defense one only, and that by Cicero. It had been suggested that he should take the bold line of arguing that Clodius was a traitor, and that the citizen who slew him had deserved well of his country. But he judged it better to follow another course, and to show that Clodius had been the aggressor, having deliberately laid an ambush for Milo, of whose meditated journey to Lanuvium he was of course aware. Unfortunately for his client the case broke down. Milo had evidently left Rome and the conflict had happened much earlier than was said, because the body of the murdered man had reached the capital not later than five o'clock in the afternoon. This disproved the assertion that Clodius had loitered on his way back to Rome till the growing darkness gave him an opportunity of attacking his adversaries. Then it came out that Milo had had in his retinue, besides the women and boys, a number of fighting men. Finally there was the damning fact, established, it would seem, by competent witnesses, that Clodius had been dragged from his hiding-place and put to death. Cicero too lost his presence of mind. The sight of the city, in which all the shops were shut in expectation of a riot, the presence of the soldiers in court, and the clamor of a mob furiously hostile to the accused and his advocate, confounded him, and he spoke feebly and hesitatingly. The admirable oration which has come down to us, and professes to have been delivered on this occasion, was really written afterwards. The jury, which was allowed by common consent to have been one of the best ever assembled, gave a verdict of guilty. Milo went into banishment at Marseilles—a punishment which he seems to have borne very easily, if it is true that when Cicero excused himself for the want of courage which had marred the effect of his defense, he answered, "It was all for the best; if you had spoken better I should never have tasted these admirable Marseilles mullets."

Naturally he tired of the mullets before long. When Caesar had made himself master of Rome, he hoped to be recalled from banishment. But Caesar did not want him, and preferred to have him where he was. Enraged at this treatment, he came over to Italy and attempted to raise an insurrection in favor of Pompey. The troops whom he endeavored to corrupt refused to follow him. He retreated with his few followers into the extreme south of the peninsula, and was there killed.



CHAPTER XII.

CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA.

"From his earliest years," so runs the character that has come down to us of Cato, "he was resolute to obstinacy. Flattery met with a rough repulse, and threats with resistance. He never laughed, and his smile was of the slightest. Not easily provoked, his anger, once roused, was implacable. He learned but slowly, but never forgot a thing once acquired; he was obedient to his teachers, but wanted to know the reason of every thing." The stories told of his boyhood bear out this character. Here is one of them. His tutor took him to Sulla's house. It was in the evil days of the Proscription, and there were signs of the bloody work that was going on. "Why does no one kill this man?" he asked his teacher. "Because, my son, they fear him more than they hate him," was the answer. "Why then," was the rejoinder, "have you not given me a sword that I may set my country free?" The tutor, as it may be supposed, carried him off in haste.

Like most young Romans he began life as a soldier, and won golden opinions not only by his courage, which indeed was common enough in a nation that conquered the world, but by his temperance and diligent performance of duty. His time of service ended, he set out on his travels, accepting an invitation from the tributary king of Galatia, who happened to be an old friend of the family, to visit him. We get an interesting little picture of a Roman of the upper class on a tour. "At dawn he would send on a baker and a cook to the place which he intended to visit. These would enter the town in a most unpretending fashion, and if their master did not happen to have a friend or acquaintance in the place, would betake themselves to an inn, and there prepare for their master's accommodation without troubling any one. It was only when there was no inn that they went to the magistrates and asked for entertainment; and they were always content with what was assigned. Often they met with but scanty welcome and attention, not enforcing their demands with the customary threats, so that Cato on his arrival found nothing prepared. Nor did their master create a more favorable impression, sitting as he did quietly on his luggage, and seeming to accept the situation. Sometimes, however, he would send for the town authorities and say, "You had best give up these mean ways, my inhospitable friends; you won't find that all your visitors are Catos." Once at least he found himself, as he thought, magnificently received. Approaching Antioch, he found the road lined on either side with troops of spectators. The men stood in one company, the boys in another. Every body was in holiday dress. Some—these were the magistrates and priests—wore white robes and garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that all these preparations were intended for himself, was annoyed that his servants had not prevented them. But he was soon undeceived. An old man ran out from the crowd, and without so much as greeting the new comer, cried, "Where did you leave Demetrius? When will he come?" Demetrius was Pompey's freedman, and had some of his master's greatness reflected on him. Cato could only turn away muttering, "Wretched place!"

Returning to Rome he went through the usual course of honors, always discharging his duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and probably, as long as he filled a subordinate place, with great success. It was when statesmanship was wanted that he began to fail.

In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline Cato stood firmly by Cicero, supporting the proposition to put the conspirators to death in a powerful speech, the only speech of all that he made that was preserved. This preservation was due to the forethought of Cicero, who put the fastest writers whom he could find to relieve each other in taking down the oration. This, it is interesting to be told, was the beginning of shorthand.

Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the republic; but he was much more uncompromising, more honest perhaps we may say, but certainly less discreet in putting his principles into action. He set himself to oppose the accumulation of power in the hands of Pompey and Caesar; but he lacked both dignity and prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, for instance, Caesar, returning from Spain, petitioned the Senate for permission to become a candidate for the consulship without entering the city—to enter the city would have been to abandon his hopes of a triumph—Cato condescended to use the arts of obstruction in opposing him. He spoke till sunset against the proposition, and it failed by sheer lapse of time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar of course abandoned the empty honor, and secured the reality, all the more certainly because people felt that he had been hardly used. And so he continued to act, always seeking to do right, but always choosing the very worst way of doing it; anxious to serve his country, but always contriving to injure it. Even in that which, we may say, best became him in his life, in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment the Roman view of the morality of suicide), he was not doing his best for Rome. Had he been willing to live (for Caesar was ready to spare him, as he was always ready to spare enemies who could not harm him), there was yet good for him to do; in his hasty impatience of what he disapproved, he preferred to deprive his country of its most honest citizen.

We must not omit a picture so characteristic of Roman life as the story of his last hours. The last army of the republic had been destroyed at Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Cato vainly endeavored to stir up the people of Utica, a town near Carthage, in which he had taken up his quarters; when they refused, he resolved to put an end to his life. A kinsman of Caesar, who was preparing to intercede with the conqueror for the lives of the vanquished leaders, begged Cato's help in revising his speech. "For you," he said, "I should think it no shame to clasp his hands and fall at his knees." "Were I willing to take my life at his hands," replied Cato, "I should go alone to ask it. But I refuse to live by the favor of a tyrant. Still, as there are three hundred others for whom you are to intercede, let us see what can be done with the speech." This business finished, he took an affectionate leave of his friend, commending to his good offices his son and his friends. On his son he laid a strict injunction not to meddle with public life. Such a part as was worthy of the name of Cato no man could take again; to take any other would be shameful. Then followed the bath, and after the bath, dinner, to which he had invited a number of friends, magistrates of the town. He sat at the meal, instead of reclining. This had been his custom ever since the fated day of Pharsalia. After dinner, over the wine, there was much learned talk, and this not other than cheerful in tone. But when the conversation happened to turn on one of the favorite maxims of the Stoics, "Only the good man is free; the bad are slaves," Cato expressed himself with an energy and even a fierceness that made the company suspect some terrible resolve. The melancholy silence that ensued warned the speaker that he had betrayed himself, and he hastened to remove the suspicion by talking on other topics. After dinner he took his customary walk, gave the necessary orders to the officers on guard, and then sought his chamber. Here he took up the Phaedo, the famous dialogue in which Socrates, on the day when he is to drink the poison, discusses the immortality of the soul. He had almost finished the book, when, chancing to turn his eyes upwards, he perceived that his sword had been removed. His son had removed it while he sat at dinner. He called a slave and asked, "Who has taken my sword?" As the man said nothing, he resumed his book; but in the course of a few minutes, finding that search was not being made, he asked for the sword again. Another interval followed; and still it was not forthcoming. His anger was now roused. He vehemently reproached the slaves, and even struck one of them with his fist, which he injured by the blow. "My son and my slaves," he said, "are betraying me to the enemy." He would listen to no entreaties, "Am I a madman," he said, "that I am stripped of my arms? Are you going to bind my hands and give me up to Caesar? As for the sword I can do without it; I need but hold my breath or dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, and finding that the blade was straight and the edge perfect, said, "Now I am my own master." He then read the Phaedo again from beginning to end, and afterwards fell into so profound a sleep that persons standing outside the chamber heard his breathing. About midnight he sent for his physician and one of his freedmen. The freedman was commissioned to inquire whether his friends had set sail. The physician he asked to bind up his wounded hand, a request which his attendants heard with delight, as it seemed to indicate a resolve to live. He again sent to inquire about his friends and expressed his regret at the rough weather which they seemed likely to have. The birds were now beginning to twitter at the approach of dawn, and he fell into a short sleep. The freedman now returned with news that the harbor was quiet. When he found himself again alone, he stabbed himself with the sword, but the blow, dealt as it was by the wounded hand, was not fatal. He fell fainting on the couch, knocking down a counting board which stood near, and groaning. His son with others rushed into the chamber, and the physician, finding that the wound was not mortal, proceeded to bind it up. Cato, recovering his consciousness, thrust the attendants aside, and tearing open the wound, expired.

If the end of Cato's life was its noblest part it is still more true that the fame of Brutus rests on one memorable deed. He was known, indeed, as a young man of promise, with whose education special pains had been taken, and who had a genuine love for letters and learning. He was free, it would seem, from some of the vices of his age, but he had serious faults. Indeed the one transaction of his earlier life with which we happen to be well acquainted is very little to his credit. And this, again, is so characteristic of one side of Roman life that it should be told in some detail.

Brutus had married the daughter of a certain Appius Claudius, a kinsman of the notorious Clodius, and had accompanied his father-in-law to his province, Cilicia. He took the opportunity of increasing his means by lending money to the provincials. Lending money, it must be remembered, was not thought a discreditable occupation even for the very noblest. To lend money upon interest was, indeed, the only way of making an investment, besides the buying of land, that was available to the Roman capitalist. But Brutus was more than a money-lender, he was an usurer; that is, he sought to extract an extravagantly high rate of interest from his debtors. And this greed brought him into collision with Cicero.

A certain Scaptius had been agent for Brutus in lending money to the town of Salamis in Cyprus. Under the government of Claudius, Scaptius had had every thing his own way. He had been appointed to a command in the town, had some cavalry at his disposal, and extorted from the inhabitants what terms he pleased, shutting up, it is told us, the Senate in their council-room till five of them perished of hunger. Cicero heard of this monstrous deed as he was on his way to his province; he peremptorily refused the request of Scaptius for a renewal of his command, saying that he had resolved not to grant such posts to any person engaged in trading or money-lending. Still, for Brutus' sake—and it was not for some time that it came out that Brutus was the principal—he would take care that the money should be paid. This the town was ready to do; but then came in the question of interest. An edict had been published that this should never exceed twelve per cent., or one per cent, monthly, that being the customary way of payment. But Scaptius pleaded his bond, which provided for four per cent, monthly, and pleaded also a special edict that regulations restraining interest were not to apply to Salamis. The town protested that they could not pay if such terms were exacted—terms which would double the principal. They could not, they said, have met even the smaller claim, if it had not been for the liberality of the governor, who had declined the customary presents. Brutus was much vexed.

"Even when he asks me a favor," writes Cicero to Atticus, "there is always something arrogant and churlish: still he moves laughter more than anger."

When the civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, it was expected that Brutus would attach himself to the former. Pompey, who had put his father to death, he had no reason to love. But if he was unscrupulous in some things, in politics he had principles which he would not abandon, the strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side of which Cato approved was the side of the right. Pompey received his new adherent with astonishment and delight, rising from his chair to greet him. He spent most of his time in camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, the Greek historian of the Second Punic War. He passed through the disastrous day of Pharsalia unhurt, Caesar having given special orders that his life was to be spared. After the battle, the conqueror not only pardoned him but treated him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for which, for a time at least, he seems not to have been ungrateful. But there were influences at work which he could not resist. There was his friendship with Cassius, who had a passionate hatred against usurpers, the remembrance of how Cato had died sooner than submit himself to Caesar, and, not least, the association of his name, which he was not permitted to forget. The statue of the old patriot who had driven out the Tarquins was covered with such inscriptions as, "Brutus, would thou wert alive!" and Brutus' own chair of office—he was praetor at the time—was found covered with papers on which were scribbled, "Brutus, thou sleepest," or, "A true Brutus art thou," and the like. How he slew Caesar I have told already; how he killed himself in despair after the second battle of Philippi may be read elsewhere.

Porcia, the daughter of Cato, was left a widow in 48 B.C., and married three years afterwards her cousin Brutus, who divorced his first wife Claudia in order to marry her. She inherited both the literary tastes and the opinions of her father, and she thought herself aggrieved when her husband seemed unwilling to confide his plans to her. Plutarch thus tells her story, his authority seeming to be a little biography which one of her sons by her first husband afterwards wrote of his step-father. "She wounded herself in the thigh with a knife such as barbers use for cutting the nails. The wound was deep, the loss of blood great, and the pain and fever that followed acute. Her husband was in the greatest distress, when his wife thus addressed him: 'Brutus, it was a daughter of Cato who became your wife, not merely to share your bed and board, but to be the partner of your adversity and your prosperity. You give me no cause to complain, but what proof can I give you of my affection if I may not bear with you your secret troubles. Women, I know, are weak creatures, ill fitted to keep secrets. Yet a good training and honest company may do much, and this, as Cato's daughter and wife to Brutus, I have had.' She then showed him the wound, and told him that she had inflicted it upon herself to prove her courage and constancy." For all this resolution she had something of a woman's weakness. When her husband had left the house on the day fixed for the assassination, she could not conceal her agitation. She eagerly inquired of all who entered how Brutus fared, and at last fainted in the hall of her house. In the midst of the business of the senate-house Brutus heard that his wife was dying.

Porcia was not with her husband during the campaigns that ended at Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the traditions of her life.



CHAPTER XIII.

A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE.

It was usual for a Roman statesman, after filling the office of praetor or consul, to undertake for a year or more the government of one of the provinces. These appointments were indeed the prizes of the profession of politics. The new governor had a magnificent outfit from the treasury. We hear of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds having been allowed for this purpose. Out of this something might easily be economized. Indeed we hear of one governor who left the whole of his allowance put out at interest in Rome. And in the province itself splendid gains might be, and indeed commonly were, got. Even Cicero, who, if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial government.

He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetorship and again after his consulship. But the time came when it was forced upon him. Pompey in his third consulship had procured the passing of a law by which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.

Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus. The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years before had cut to pieces the army of Crassus. Two legions, numbering twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the province, having attached to them between two and three thousand cavalry.

Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he received a levee of visitors—a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum, where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the civil war, which was to break out in the year after Cicero's return, were already gathering. At Brundisium, the port of embarkation for the East, he was detained partly by indisposition, partly by having to wait for one of his officials for nearly a fortnight. He reached Actium, in north-western Greece, on the 15th of June. He would have liked to proceed thence by land, being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having in view the rounding of the formidable promontory Leucate; but there was a difficulty about his retinue, without which he could not maintain the state which became a governor en route for his province. Eleven more days brought him to Athens. "So far," he writes from this place, "no expenditure of public or private money has been made on me or any of my retinue. I have convinced all my people that they must do their best for my character. So far all has gone admirably. The thing has been noticed, and is greatly praised by the Greeks." "Athens," he writes again, "delighted me much; the city with all its beauty, the great affection felt for you" (he is writing, it will be remembered, to Atticus, an old resident), "and the good feeling towards myself, much more, too, its philosophical studies." He was able before he left to do the people a service, rescuing from the hands of the builder the house of Epicurus, which the council of Areopagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as a modern town council, had doomed. Then he went on his way, grumbling at the hardships of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the winds, at the smallness of the local vessels. He reached Ephesus on July 22nd, without being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and found a vast number of persons who had come to pay their respects to him. All this was pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious to get back to Rome. Rome indeed to the ordinary Roman was—a few singular lovers of the country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted—as Paris is to the Parisian. "Make it absolutely certain," he writes to Atticus, "that I am to be in office for a year only; that there is not to be even an intercalated month." From Ephesus he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the cities of his province, to Laodicea, which he reached July 31st, exactly three months after starting[8]. The distance, directly measured, may be reckoned at something less than a thousand miles.

[Footnote 8: Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for accomplishing the journey.]

He seems to have found the province in a deplorable condition. "I staid," he writes, "three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, and as many at Synnas, and heard nothing except complaints that they could not pay the poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's property was sold; heard, I say, nothing but complaints and groans, and monstrous deeds which seemed to suit not a man but some horrid wild beast. Still it is some alleviation to these unhappy towns that they are put to no expense for me or for any of my followers. I will not receive the fodder which is my legal due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have accepted four beds and a roof over my head; often not even this, preferring to lodge in a tent. The consequence of all this is an incredible concourse of people from town and country anxious to see me. Good heavens! my very approach seems to make them revive, so completely do the justice, moderation, and clemency of your friend surpass all expectation." It must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccustomed to sound his own praises.

Usury was one of the chief causes of this widespread distress; and usury, as we have seen, was practiced even by Romans of good repute. We have seen an "honorable man," such as Brutus, exacting an interest of nearly fifty per cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of interest we do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he was entitled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such things went on under a governor who was really doing his best to be moderate and just, what was the condition of the provincials under ordinary rulers.

While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare." The whole army of this people was said to have crossed the Euphrates under the command of Pacorus, the king's son. The governor of Syria had not yet arrived. The second in command had shut himself up with all his troops in Antioch. Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which bordered the least defensible side of Cilicia, and took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. Next came news that Antioch was besieged. On hearing this he broke up his camp, crossed the Taurus range by forced marches, and occupied the passes into Syria. The Parthians raised the siege of Antioch, and suffered considerably at the hands of Cassius during their retreat.

Though Cicero never crossed swords with the Parthians, he found or contrived an opportunity of distinguishing himself as a soldier. The independent mountaineers of the border were attacked and defeated; Cicero was saluted as "Imperator" on the field of battle by his soldiers, and had the satisfaction of occupying for some days the position which Alexander the Great had taken up before the battle of Issus. "And he," says Cicero, who always relates his military achievements with something like a smile on his face, "was a somewhat better general than either you or I." He next turned his arms against the Free Cilicians, investing in regular form with trenches, earthworks, catapults, and all the regular machinery of a siege, their stronghold Pindenissum. At the end of forty-seven days the place surrendered. Cicero gave the plunder of the place to his host, reserving the horses only for public purposes. A considerable sum was realized by the sale of slaves. "Who in the world are these Pindenissi? who are they?" you will say. "I never heard the name." "Well, what can I do? I can't make Cilicia another Aetolia, or another Macedonia." The campaign was concluded about the middle of December, and the governor, handing over the army to his brother, made his way to Laodicea. From this place he writes to Atticus in language that seems to us self-glorious and boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. "I left Tarsus for Asia (the Roman province so called) on June 5th, followed by such admiration as I cannot express from the cities of Cilicia, and especially from the people of Tarsus. When I had crossed the Taurus there was a marvelous eagerness to see me in Asia as far as my districts extended. During six months of my government they had not received a single requisition from me, had not had a single person quartered upon them. Year after year before my time this part of the year had been turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities used to pay large sums of money not to have to find winter quarters for the soldiers. Cyprus paid more than L48,000 on this account; and from this island—I say it without exaggeration and in sober truth—not a single coin was levied while I was in power. In return for these benefits, benefits at which they are simply astonished. I will not allow any but verbal honors to be voted to me. Statues, temples, chariots of bronze, I forbid. In nothing do I make myself a trouble to the cities, though it is possible I do so to you, while I thus proclaim my own praises. Bear with me, if you love me. This is the rule which you would have had me follow. My journey through Asia had such results that even the famine—and than famine there is no more deplorable calamity—which then prevailed in the country (there had been no harvest) was an event for me to desire; for wherever I journeyed, without force, without the help of law, without reproaches, but my simple influence and expostulations, I prevailed upon the Greeks and Roman citizens, who had secreted the corn, to engage to convey a large quantity to the various tribes." He writes again: "I see that you are pleased with my moderation and self-restraint. You would be much more pleased if you were here. At the sessions which I held at Laodicea for all my districts, excepting Cilicia, from February 15th to May 1st, I effected a really marvelous work. Many cities were entirely freed from their debts, many greatly relieved, and all of them enjoying their own laws and courts, and so obtaining self-government received new life. There were two ways in which I gave them the opportunity of either throwing off or greatly lightening the burden of debt. First: they have been put to no expense under my rule—I do not exaggerate; I positively say that they have not to spend a farthing. Then again: the cities had been atrociously robbed by their own Greek magistrates. I myself questioned the men who had borne office during the last ten years. They confessed and, without being publicly disgraced, made restitution. In other respects my government, without being wanting in address, is marked by clemency and courtesy. There is none of the difficulty, so usual in the provinces, of approaching me; no introduction by a chamberlain. Before dawn I am on foot in my house, as I used to be in old days when I was a candidate for office. This is a great matter here and a popular, and to myself, from my old practice in it, has not yet been troublesome."

He had other less serious cares. One Caelius, who was good enough to keep him informed of what was happening at Rome, and whom we find filling his letters with an amusing mixture of politics, scandal, and gossip, makes a modest request for some panthers, which the governor of so wild a country would doubtless have no difficulty in procuring for him. He was a candidate for the office of aedile, and wanted the beasts for the show which he would have to exhibit. Cicero must not forget to look after them as soon as he hears of the election. "In nearly all my letters I have written to you about the panthers. It will be discreditable to you, that Patiscus should have sent to Curio ten panthers, and you not many times more. These ten Curio gave me, and ten others from Africa. If you will only remember to send for hunters from Cibyra, and also send letters to Pamphylia (for there, I understand, more are taken than elsewhere), you will succeed. I do beseech you look after this matter. You have only to give the orders. I have provided people to keep and transport the animals when once taken." The governor would not hear of imposing the charge of capturing the panthers on the hunters of the province. Still he would do his best to oblige his friend. "The matter of the panthers is being diligently attended to by the persons who are accustomed to hunt them; but there is a strange scarcity of them, and the few that there are complain grievously, saying that they are the only creatures in my province that are persecuted."

From Laodicea Cicero returned to Tarsus, the capital of his province, wound up the affairs of his government, appointed an acting governor, and started homewards early in August. On his way he paid a visit to Rhodes, wishing to show to his son and nephew (they had accompanied him to his government) the famous school of eloquence in which he had himself studied. Here he heard with much regret of the death of Hortensius. He had seen the great orator's son at Laodicea, where he was amusing himself in the disreputable company of some gladiators, and had asked him to dinner for his father's sake, he says. His stay at Rhodes was probably of some duration, for he did not reach Ephesus till the first of October. A tedious passage of fourteen days brought him to Athens. On his journey westwards Tiro, his confidential servant, was seized with illness, and had to be left behind at Patrae. Tiro was a slave, though afterwards set free by his master; but he was a man of great and varied accomplishments, and Cicero writes to him as he might to the very dearest of his friends. There is nothing stranger in all that we know of "Roman Life" than the presence in it of such men as Tiro. Nor is there any thing, we might even venture to say, quite like it elsewhere in the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America, mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint, of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro, man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends." They are twenty-seven in number, or rather twenty-six, as the sixteenth of the series contains the congratulations and thanks which Quintus Cicero addresses to his brother on receiving the news that Tiro has received his freedom. "As to Tiro," he writes, "I protest, as I wish to see you, my dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and my dear Tullia, that you have done a thing that pleased me exceedingly in making a man who certainly was far above his mean condition a friend rather than a servant. Believe me, when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped for joy; I both thank and congratulate you. If the fidelity of my Statius gives me so much pleasure[9], how valuable in Tiro must be this same good quality with the additional and even superior advantages of culture, wit, and politeness? I have many very good reasons for loving you; and now there is this that you have told me, as indeed you were bound to tell me, this excellent piece of news. I saw all your heart in your letter."