In such a matter it was in accordance with custom that the General should send an immediate account of his victorious doings, demand a "supplication," and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after his return home. A supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods for the great favor shown by them to the State, but in fact took the guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had been done. It was usually a reward for military success, but in the affair of Catiline a supplication had been decreed to Cicero for saving the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. Cicero now applied for a supplication, and obtained it. Cato opposed it, and wrote a letter to Cicero explaining his motives—upon high republican principles. Cicero might have endured this more easily had not Cato voted for a supplication in honor of Bibulus, whose military achievements had, as Cicero thought, been less than his own. One Hirrus opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the numbers slain by Cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a supplication. We learn that, according to strict rule, two thousand dead men should have been left on the field. Cicero's victims had probably been much fewer; nevertheless the supplication was granted, and Cicero presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. Alas, there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph!

Of all that went on at Rome Caelius continued to send Cicero accounts. The Triumvirate was now over. Caelius says that Pompey will not attack Caesar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent Caesar from being elected Consul before he shall have given up his province and his army.[110] For details Caelius refers him to a Commentarium—a word which has been translated as meaning "newspaper" in this passage—by Melmoth. I think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the commentary was simply the compilation of Caelius, as were the commentaries we so well know the compilation of Caesar. The Acta Diurna were published by authority, and formed an official gazette. These no doubt reached Cicero, but were very different in their nature from the private record of things which he obtained from his friend.

There are passages in Greek, in two letters[111] written about this time to Atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his quarrel with his wife, and her divorce. He makes no direct allusion to his wife, but only to a freedman of hers, Philotomus. When Milo was convicted, his goods were confiscated and sold as a part of his punishment. Philotomus is supposed to have been a purchaser, and to have made money out of the transaction—taking advantage of his position to acquire cheap bargains—as should not have been done by any one connected with Cicero, who had been Milo's friend. The cause of Cicero's quarrel with his wife has never been absolutely known, but it is supposed to have arisen from her want of loyalty to him in regard to money. She probably employed this freedman in filling her pockets at the expense of her husband's character.

[Sidenote: B.C. 50, aetat. 57.]

In his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and allusions are made as to his expected triumph. He is grateful to Caelius as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his confidence that all the rest will follow.[112] He is so determined to hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers who may be least unfit to hold it. His brother Quintus was his lieutenant, but if he left Quintus people would say of him that in doing so he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. At last he determines to intrust it to a young Quaestor named C. Caelius—no close connection of his friend Caelius, as Cicero finds himself obliged to apologize for the selection to his friend. "Young, you will say. No doubt; but he had been elected Quaestor, and is of noble birth."[113] So he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter.

Cicero tells us afterward, when at Athens on his way home, that he had considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder which was regarded by them as their perquisite. He had boasted much of their conduct—having taken exception to one Tullius, who had demanded only a little hay and a little wood. But now there came to be pickings—savings out of his own proconsular expenses—to part with which at the last moment was too hard upon them. "How difficult is virtue," he exclaims; "how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it when it is not felt!"[114] There had been a certain sum saved which he had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury. But the satellites were all in arms: "Ingemuit nostra cohors." Nevertheless, he disregarded the "cohort," and paid the money into the treasury.

As to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise to some most amusing literary vituperation. The care with which MSS. have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred thousand sesterces—thus expressed, "H.S.X."—amounting to something over L8000. We hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that Cicero realized out of his own legitimate allowance in Cilicia a profit of about L18,000; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself aggrieved in losing L8000 which they expected to have divided among them. Middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the X to be CI[C] or M—a thousand instead of ten—and quotes the sum saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight thousand pounds. We who have had so much done for us by intervening research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on Middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labors by infinite toil on his part; but De Quincey, who has been very rancorous against Cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of Cicero's great biographer. "Conyers Middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." The cause of this was that Middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, and a Cambridge man, differed from other Cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. Bentley was his great opponent—and as Bentley was a stout fighter, so was Middleton. Middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because Bentley was the stronger combatant; but he seems to have stood in good repute all his life, and when advanced in years was appointed Professor of Natural History. He is known to us, however, only as the biographer of Cicero. Of this book, Monk, the biographer of Middleton's great opponent, Bentley, declares that, "for elegance, purity, and ease, Middleton's style yields to none in the English language." De Quincey says of it that, by "weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic"—meaning, I suppose, that the work altogether wants dignity of composition. This charge is, to my thinking, so absolutely contrary to the fact, that it needs only to be named to be confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. De Quincey pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at Caernarvon. Middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "It is in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good-sense and thoughtfulness that I regard it as capital." That is De Quincey's estimate of Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a laborer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said that no English library should be without it.

The last letter written by Cicero in Asia was sent to Atticus from Ephesus the day before he started—on the last day, namely, of September. He had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry him and his suite. News here reached him from Rome—news which was not true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. In a letter to Atticus he speaks of "miros terrores Caesarianos"[115]—"dreadful reports as to outrages by Caesar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army; that he had with him the Praetors elect, one of the Tribunes, and even one of the Consuls; and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were the first tidings presaging Pharsalia. Then he adds a word about his triumph. "Tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends desire me to seek. I should not care about it if Bibulus were not also asking for a triumph—Bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors as long as there was an enemy in Syria!" Thus Cicero had to suffer untold misery because Bibulus was asking for a triumph!



CHAPTER V.

THE WAR BETWEEN CAESAR AND POMPEY.

What official arrangements were made for Proconsuls in regard to money, when in command of a province, we do not know. The amounts allowed were no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the Roman governor looked as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. The means of plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an accusation. We remember how Verres calculated that he could divide his spoil into three sufficient parts—one for the lawyers, one for the judges, so as to insure his acquittal, and then one for himself. This plundering was common—so common as to have become almost a matter of course; but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to exile, and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. No accusation was made against Cicero. As to others there were constantly threats, if no more than threats. Cicero was not even threatened. But he had saved out of his legitimate expenses a sum equal to L18,000 of our money—from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a Roman governor. The expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands, and many of those of his army. Any saving effected would therefore be to his own personal advantage. On this money he counted much when his affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join Pompey at Pharsalia in the following year. He then begged Atticus to arrange his matters for him, telling him that the sum was at his call in Asia,[116] but he never saw it again: Pompey borrowed it—or took it; and when Pompey had been killed the money was of course gone.

His brother Quintus was with him in Cilicia, but of his brother's doings there he says little or nothing. We have no letters from him during the period to his wife or daughter. The latter was married to her third husband, Dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from Cicero, but not in accordance with his advice. He had purposed to accept a proposition for her hand made to him by Tiberius Nero, the young Roman nobleman who afterward married that Livia whom Augustus took away from him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her himself, and who thus became the father of the Emperor Tiberius. It is worthy of remark at the same time that the Emperor Tiberius married the granddaughter of Atticus. Cicero when in Cilicia had wished that Nero should be chosen; but the family at home was taken by the fashion and manners of Dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third husband when she was yet only twenty-five. This marriage, like the others, was unfortunate. Dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born, agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. He was a Roman nobleman of the type then common—heartless, extravagant, and greedy. His country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. Cicero tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and strength of the aristocratic party to which Dolabella belonged.

I cannot bring him back to Rome, and all that he suffered there, without declaring that much of his correspondence during his government, especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey home, is very distressing. I have told the story of his own doings, I think, honestly, and how he himself abstained, and compelled those belonging to him to do so; how he strove to ameliorate the condition of those under his rule; how he fully appreciated the duty of doing well by others, so soon to be recognized by all Christians. Such humanity on the part of a Roman at such a period is to me marvellous, beautiful, almost divine; but, in eschewing Roman greed and Roman cruelty, he was unable to eschew Roman insincerity. I have sometimes thought that to have done so it must have been necessary for him altogether to leave public life. Why not? my readers will say. But in our days, when a man has mixed himself for many years with all that is doing in public, how hard it is for him to withdraw, even though, in withdrawing he fears no violence, no punishment, no exile, no confiscation. The arguments, the prayers, the reproaches of those around him draw him back; and the arguments, the reproaches from within are more powerful even than those from his friends. To be added to these is the scorn, perhaps the ridicule, of his opponents. Such are the difficulties in the way of the modern politician who thinks that he has resolved to retire; but the Roman ex-Consul, ex-Praetor, ex-Governor had entered upon a mode of warfare in which his all, his life, his property, his choice of country, his wife, his children, were open to the ready attacks of his eager enemies. To have deserved well would be nothing, unless he could keep a party round him bound by mutual interests to declare that he had deserved well. A rich man, who desired to live comfortably beyond the struggle of public life, had to abstain, as Atticus had done, from increasing the sores, from hurting the ambition, from crushing the hopes of aspirants. Such a man might be safe, but he could not be useful; such, at any rate, had not been Cicero's life. In his earlier days, till he was Consul, he had kept himself free from political interference in doing the work of his life; but since that time he had necessarily put himself into competition with many men, and had made many enemies by the courage of his opinions. He had found even those he had most trusted opposed to him. He had aroused the jealousy not only of the Caesars and the Crassuses and the Pisos, but also of the Pompeys and Catos and Brutuses. Whom was he not compelled to fear? And yet he could not escape to his books; nor, in truth, did he wish it. He had made for himself a nature which he could not now control.

He had not been long in Cilicia before he knew well how cruel, how dishonest, how greedy, how thoroughly Roman had been the conduct of his predecessor Appius. His letters to Atticus are full of the truths which he had to tell on that matter. His conduct, too, with regard to Appius was mainly right. As far as in him lay he endeavored to remedy the evils which the unjust Proconsul had done, and to stop what further evil was still being done. He did not hesitate to offend Appius when it was necessary to do so by his interference. But Appius was a great nobleman, one of the "optimates," a man with a strong party at his back in Rome. Appius knew well that Cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. Cicero knew also that the support of Appius would be of infinite service to him in his Roman politics. Knowing this, he wrote to Appius letters full of flattery—full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose better. Dolabella, the new son-in-law, had taken upon himself, for some reason as to which it can hardly be worth our while to inquire, to accuse Appius of malversation in his province. That Appius deserved condemnation there can be no doubt; but in these accusations the contests generally took place not as to the proof of the guilt, but as to the prestige and power of the accuser and the accused. Appius was tried twice on different charges, and was twice acquitted; but the fact that his son-in-law should be the accuser was fraught with danger to Cicero. He thought it necessary for the hopes which he then entertained to make Appius understand that his son-in-law was not acting in concert with him, and that he was desirous that Appius should receive all the praise which would have been due to a good governor. So great was the influence of Appius at Rome that he was not only acquitted, but shortly afterward elected Censor. The office of Censor was in some respects the highest in Rome. The Censors were elected only once in four years, remaining in office for eighteen months. The idea was that powers so arbitrary as these should be in existence only for a year and a half out of each four years. Questions of morals were considered by them. Should a Senator be held to have lived as did not befit a Senator, a Censor could depose him. As Appius was elected Censor immediately after his acquittal, together with that Piso whom Cicero had so hated, it may be understood that his influence was very great.[117] It was great enough to produce from Cicero letters which were flattering and false. The man who had been able to live with a humanity, a moderation, and an honesty befitting a Christian, had not risen to that appreciation of the beauty of truth which an exercise of Christianity is supposed to exact.

"Sed quid agas? Sic vivitur!"[118]—"What would you have me do? It is thus we live now!" This he exclaims in a letter to Caelius, written a short time before he left the province. "What would you say if you read my last letter to Appius?" You would open your eyes if you knew how I have flattered Appius—that was his meaning. "Sic vivitur!"—"It is so we live now." When I read this I feel compelled to ask whether there was an opportunity for any other way of living. Had he seen the baseness of lying as an English Christian gentleman is expected to see it, and had adhered to truth at the cost of being a martyr, his conduct would have been high though we might have known less of it; but, looking at all the circumstances of the period, have we a right to think that he could have done so?

From Athens on his way home Cicero wrote to his wife, joining Tullia's name with hers. "Lux nostra," he calls his daughter; "the very apple of my eye!" He had already heard from various friends that civil war was expected. He will have to declare himself on his arrival—that is, to take one side or the other—and the sooner he does so the better. There is some money to be looked for—a legacy which had been left to him. He gives express directions as to the persons to be employed respecting this, omitting the name of that Philotomus as to whose honesty he is afraid. He calls his wife "suavissima et optatissima Terentia," but he does not write to her with the true love which was expressed by his letters when in exile. From Athens, also, where he seems to have stayed nearly two months, he wrote in December. He is easy, he says, about his triumph unless Caesar should interfere—but he does not care much about his triumph now. He is beginning to feel the wearisomeness of the triumph; and indeed it was a time in which the utter hollowness of triumphal pretensions must have made the idea odious to him. But to have withdrawn would have been to have declared his own fears, his own doubts, his own inferiority to the two men who were becoming declared as the rival candidates for Roman power. We may imagine that at such a time he would gladly have gone in quiet to his Roman mansion or to one of his villas, ridding himself forever of the trouble of his lictors, his fasces, and all the paraphernalia of imperatorial dignity; but a man cannot rid himself of such appanages without showing that he has found it necessary to do so. It was the theory of a triumph that the victorious Imperator should come home hot (as it were) from the battle-field, with all his martial satellites around him, and have himself carried at once through Rome. It was barbaric and grand, as I have said before, but it required the martial satellites. Tradition had become law, and the Imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his military followers till the ceremony was over. In this way Cicero was sadly hampered by his lictors when, on his landing at Brundisium, he found that Italy was already preparing for her great civil war.

[Sidenote: B.C. 50, aetat. 57.]

Early in this year it had been again proposed in the Senate that Caesar should give up his command. At this time the two Consuls, L. AEmilius Paulus and C. Claudius Marcellus, were opposed to Caesar, as was also Curio, who had been one of Cicero's young friends, and was now Tribune. But two of these Caesar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes. Curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe. The story comes to us from Appian,[119] but the modern reader will find it efficiently told by Mommsen.[120] The Consul had fifteen hundred talents, or about L500,000! The sum named as that given by Caesar to Curio was something greater, because he was so deeply in debt! Bribes to the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now, bestowed upon two men for their support in the Senate! It was worth a man's while to be a Consul or a Tribune in those days. But the money was well earned—plunder, no doubt, extracted from Gaul. The Senate decided that both Pompey and Caesar should be required to abandon their commands—or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any absolute decree. But this sufficed for Caesar, who was only anxious to be relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the Senate by the knowledge that Pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. Then it was—in the summer of this year—that the two commanders were desired by the Senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three thousand men, under the pretence that the forces were wanted for the Parthian war. The historians tell us that Pompey had lent a legion to Caesar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. Caesar nobly sends up to Rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be restored by himself, and the other as belonging to Pompey. He felt, no doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better service than the withholding of the soldiers. The men were stationed at Capua, instead of being sent to the East, and no doubt drifted back into Caesar's hands. The men who had served under Caesar would not willingly find themselves transferred to Pompey.

Caesar in the summer came across the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at Ravenna, which was still within his province. It was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the Rubicon and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. Matters were in this condition when Cicero returned to Italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war which had reached him at Athens.

In a letter written from Athens, earlier than the one last quoted, Cicero declared to Atticus that it would become him better to be conquered with Pompey than to conquer with Caesar.[121] The opinion here given may be taken as his guiding principle in politics till Pompey was no more. Through all the doubts and vacillations which encumbered him, this was the rule not only of his mind but of his heart. To him there was no Triumvirate: the word had never been mentioned to his ears. Had Pompey remained free from Caesar it would have been better. The two men had come together, and Crassus had joined them. It was better for him to remain with them and keep them right, than to stand away, angry and astray, as Cato had done. The question how far Caesar was justified in the position which he had taken up by certain alleged injuries, affected Cicero less than it has done subsequent inquirers. Had an attempt been made to recall Caesar illegally? Was he subjected to wrong by having his command taken away from him before the period had passed for which the people had given it? Was he refused indulgences to which the greatness of his services entitled him—such as permission to sue for the Consulship while absent from Rome—while that, and more than that, had been granted to Pompey? All these questions were no doubt hot in debate at the time, but could hardly have affected much the judgment of Cicero, and did not at all affect his conduct. Nor, I think, should they influence the opinions of those who now attempt to judge the conduct of Caesar. Things had gone beyond the domain of law, and had fallen altogether into that of potentialities. Decrees of the Senate or votes of the people were alike used as excuses. Caesar, from the beginning of his career, had shown his determination to sweep away as cobwebs the obligations which the law imposed upon him. It is surely vain to look for excuses for a man's conduct to the practice of that injustice against him which he has long practised against others. Shall we forgive a house-breaker because the tools which he has himself invented are used at last upon his own door? The modern lovers of Caesar and of Caesarism generally do not seek to wash their hero white after that fashion. To them it is enough that the man has been able to trample upon the laws with impunity, and to be a law not only to himself but to all the world around him. There are some of us who think that such a man, let him be ever so great—let him be ever so just, if the infirmities of human nature permit justice to dwell in the breast of such a man—will in the end do more harm than good. But they who sit at the feet of the great commanders admire them as having been law-breaking, not law-abiding. To say that Caesar was justified in the armed position which he took in Northern Italy in the autumn of this year, is to rob him of his praise. I do not suppose that he had meditated any special line of policy during the years of hard work in Gaul, but I think that he was determined not to relinquish his power, and that he was ready for any violence by which he might preserve it.

If such was Cicero's idea of this man—if such the troubled outlook which he took into the circumstances of the Empire—he thought probably but little of the legality of Caesar's recall. What would the Consuls do, what would Curio do, what would Pompey do, and what Caesar? It was of this that he thought. Had law-abiding then been possible, he would have been desirous to abide by the law. Some nearest approach to the law would be the best. Caesar had ignored all laws, except so far as he could use them for his own purposes. Pompey, in conspiring with Caesar, had followed Caesar's lead; but was desirous of using the law against Caesar when Caesar outstripped him in lawlessness. But to Cicero there was still some hope of restraining Pompey. Pompey, too, had been a conspirator, but not so notorious a conspirator as Caesar. With Pompey there would be some bond to the Republic; with Caesar there could be none; therefore it was better for him to fall with Pompey than to rise with Caesar. That was his conviction till Pompey had altogether fallen.

His journey homeward is made remarkable by letters to Tiro, his slave and secretary. Tiro was taken ill, and Cicero was obliged to leave him at Patrae, in Greece. Whence he had come to Cicero we do not know, or when; but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice before the days of the Cilician government, as we find that on his arrival at Brundisium he writes to Atticus respecting him as a person whom Atticus had not much known.[122] But his affection for Tiro is very warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are charming. He is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what captain he sails. He is not to hurry. The doctor is to be consulted and well paid. Cicero himself writes various letters to various persons, in order to secure that attention which Tiro could not have insured unless so assisted.

Early in January Cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because of his still unsettled triumph, and Caesar crossed the little river which divided his province from the Roman territory. The 4th of January is the date given for the former small event. For the latter I have seen no precise day named, I presume that it was after the 6th, as on that day the Senate appointed Domitian as his successor in his province. On this being done, the two Tribunes, Antony and Cassius, hurried off to Caesar, and Caesar then probably crossed the stream. Cicero was appointed to a command in Campania—that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph.

His doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit; but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? The effect had been to take all power out of his hand. Caesar had given him up. Pompey could not do so, but we can imagine how willing Pompey would have been that he should have remained in Cilicia. He had been sent there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. If he would only have remained and plundered! If he would only have remained there and have been honest—so that he would be out of the way! But here he was—back in Italy, an honest, upright man! No one so utterly unlike the usual Roman, so lost amid the self-seekers of Rome, so unnecessarily clean-handed, could be found! Cato was honest, foolishly honest for his time; but with Cato it was not so difficult to deal as with Cicero. We can imagine Cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely unreasonable. Cicero was all alive to what was going on in the world, but still was honest! In the mean time he remained in the neighborhood of Naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to Tiro, writing to Atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so well—because he has told us. In one of his letters to Atticus at this time he is sadly in earnest. He will die with Pompey in Italy, but what can he do by leaving it? He has his "lictors" with him still. Oh, those dreadful lictors! His friendship for Cnaeus! His fear of having to join himself with the coming tyrant! "Oh that you would assist me with your counsel!"[123] He writes again, and describes the condition of Pompey—of Pompey who had been Magnus. "See how prostrate he is. He has neither courage, counsel, men, nor industry! Put aside those things; look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns, his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy! * * * Caesar in pursuit of Pompey! Oh, sad! * * * Will he kill him?" he exclaims. Then, still to Atticus, he defends himself. He will die for Pompey, but he does not believe that he can do any good either to Pompey or to the Republic by a base flight. Then there is another cause for staying in Italy as to which he cannot write. This was Terentia's conduct. At the end of one of his letters he tells Atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which Atticus had sent to him. In another he speaks of a Greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain Dionysius, and he boils over with anger. His letters to Atticus about the Greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time, because they show his eagerness. "I never knew anything more ungrateful; and there is nothing worse than ingratitude."[124]

He heaps his scorn upon Pompey: "It is true, indeed, that I said that it was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. I would indeed. But of what Pompey was it that I so spoke? Was it of this one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will fly?"[125] He writes again the same day: "Pompey had fostered Caesar, and then had feared him. He had left the city; he had lost Picenum by his own fault, he had betaken himself to Apulia! Then he went into Greece, leaving us in the dark as to his plans!" He excuses a letter of his own to Caesar. He had written to Caesar in terms which might be pleasing to the great man. He had told Caesar of Caesar's admirable wisdom. Was it not better so? He was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all the people, if only those of Pompey might also be read aloud. Then follow copies of a correspondence between him and Pompey. In the last he declares[126] that "when he had written from Canusium he had not dreamed that Pompey was about to cross the sea. He had known that Pompey had intended to treat for peace—for peace even under unjust conditions—but he had never thought that Pompey was meditating a retreat out of Italy." He argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. Pompey had been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself against Caesar. He had failed, and had slipped away, leaving a man here and there to stand up for the Republic. Pompey was willing to risk nothing for Rome. It had come to pass at last that he was being taught Caesarism by Caesar, and when he died was more imperial than his master.

At this time Cicero's eyes were bad. "Mihi molestior lippitudo erat etiam quam ante fuerat." And again, "Lippitudinis meae signum tibi sit librarii manus." But we may doubt whether any great men have lived so long with so little to tease them as to their health. And yet the amount of work he got through was great. He must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. When we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. Throughout his life his hours were early, but they must also have been late. Of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. When he was abroad during his exile, or in Cilicia during his government, he could not have had his books with him. That Caesar should have been Caesar, or Pompey Pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as that Cicero should have been Cicero. Then comes that letter of which I spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the Getae, the Armenians, and the men of Colchis. "Shall I, the savior of the city, assist to bring down upon that city those hordes of foreign men? Shall I deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who is no more than mortal?"[127] It was Pompey as to whom he then asked the question. For Pompey's sake am I to let in these crowds? We have been told, indeed, by Mr. Froude that the man was Caesar, and that Cicero wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death!

"Now, if ever, think what we shall do," he says. "A Roman army sits round Pompey and makes him a prisoner within valley and rampart—and shall we live? The city stands; the Praetors give the law, the AEdiles keep up the games, good men look to their principal and their interest. Shall I remain sitting here? Shall I rush hither and thither madly, and implore the credit of the towns? Men of substance will not follow me. The revolutionists will arrest me. Is there any end to this misery? People will point at me and say, 'How wise he was not to go with him.' I was not wise. Of his victory I never wished to be the comrade—yet now I do of his sorrow."[128]

[Sidenote: B.C. 49, aetat. 58.]

Pompey had crossed the sea from Brundisium, and Caesar had retreated across Italy to Capua. As he was journeying he saw Cicero, and asked him to go to Rome. This Cicero refused, and Caesar passed on. "I must then use other counsels," said Caesar, thus leaving him for the last time before the coming battle. Cicero went on to Arpinum, and there heard the nightingales. From that moment he resolved. He had not thought it possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail against Caesar's advice; but he had done so. He had feared that Caesar would overcome him; but when the moment came he was strong against even Caesar. He gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of him. He was going after Pompey, not for the sake of Pompey, not for the sake of the Republic, but for loyalty. He was going because Atticus had told him to go. But as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. He writes to Atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew. The one is good by nature, and has not yet gone astray. The other, the elder and his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence, and has openly adopted evil ways. In other words, he has become Caesarian—for a reward.[129] The young Quintus has shown himself to be very false. Cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life that this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. Then Curio comes the way, and there is a most interesting conversation. It seems that Curio, who is fond of Cicero, tells him everything; but Cicero, who doubts him, lets him pass on. Then Caelius writes to him. Caelius implores him, for the sake of his children, to bear in mind what he is doing. He tells him much of Caesar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become Caesarian; at any rate to betake himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and quieter days should come. But Caelius, though it had suited Cicero to know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. He did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded Cicero. To Caelius it was play—play in which a man might be beaten, or banished, or slaughtered; but it was a game in which men were fighting each for himself. That there should be a duty in the matter, beyond that, was inexplicable to Caelius. And his children, too—his anger against young Quintus and his forgiveness of Marcus! He thinks that Quintus had been purchased by a large bribe on Caesar's side, and is thankful that it is no worse with him. What can have been worse to a young man than to have been open to such payment? Antony is frequently on the scene, and already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. And then Cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. Servius Sulpicius comes to him weeping. For Servius, who is timid and lachrymose, everything has gone astray. And then there is that Dionysius who had plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier master. At the last comes the news of his Tullia's child's birth. She is brought to bed of a son. He cannot, however, wait to see how the son thrives. From the midst of enemies, and with spies around him, he starts. There is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from on board the ship at Caieta, sending them many loves and many careful messages, and then he is off.

It was now the 11th of June, the third day before the ides, B.C. 49, and we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. When he reached the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. He had given his all to place himself along with Pompey in the republican quarters, and when there the republicans were unwilling to welcome him. Pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to be able to say hereafter that he had not come.

Of what occurred to Cicero during the great battle which led to the solution of the Roman question we know little or nothing. We hear that Cicero was absent, sick at Dyrrachium, but there are none of those tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. We hear, indeed, from other sources, very full accounts of the fighting—how Caesar was nearly conquered, how Pompey might have prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way, how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how, in the very presence of his wife, he was murdered at last at the mouth of the Nile by the combined energies of a Roman and a Greek.

We can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the Pharsalus where the two armies met, and the victory remained with Caesar. Then there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the congratulations and self-applause of the victors. In all Cicero's letters there is not a word of it. There was terrible suffering before it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but nowhere do we find any record of what took place. There is no mourning for Pompey, no turning to Caesar as the conqueror. Petra has been lost, and Pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign.

[Sidenote: B.C. 48, aetat. 59.]

Cicero, we know, spent the time at Dyrrachium close to which the battle of Petra was fought, and went from thence to Corcyra. There invitation was made to him, as the senior consular officer present, to take the command of the beaten army, but that he declined. We are informed that he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. We can imagine that it was so—that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he should have been somewhat roughly told that it behooved him to take the lead and to come forth as the new commander; that there should be a time at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he should doubt, and, after more or less of reticence, pass on. Young Pompey would have it so. What name would be so good to bind together the opponents of Caesar as that of Cicero? But Cicero would not be led. It seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time; that he had been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true to Pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that Pompey was gone. We can well imagine that there should be no man less able to fight against Caesar, though there was none whose name might be so serviceable to use as that of Cicero. At any rate, as far as we are concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. He wrote not a word to any of the friends whom Pompey had left behind him, but returned to Italy dispirited, silent, and unhappy. He had indeed met many men since the battle of the Pharsalus, but to none of whom we are conversant had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign.

Here we part from Pompey, who ran from the fighting-ground of Macedonia to meet his doom in the roads of Alexandria. Never had man risen so high in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. He was born in the same year with Cicero, but had come up quicker into the management of the world's affairs, so as to have received something from his equals of that which was due to age. Habit had given him that ease of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his compeers the deference which was due not to his age but to his experience. When Cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to fight against Sulla, Pompey had already won his spurs, in spite of Sulla but by means of Sulla. Men in these modern days learn, as they grow old in public life, to carry themselves with indifference among the backslidings of the world. In reading the life of Cicero, we see that it was so then. When defending Amerinus, we find the same character of man as was he who afterward took Milo's part. There is the same readiness, the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation; but there is not the same indifference as to results. With Amerinus it is as though all the world depended on it; with Milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the outside world believe it. When Pompey triumphed, 70 B.C., and was made Consul for the second time, he was already old in glory—when Cicero had not as yet spoken those two orations against Verres which had made the speaking of another impossible. Pompey, we may say, had never been young. Cicero was never old. There was no moment in his life in which Cicero was not able to laugh with the Curios and the Caeliuses behind the back of the great man. There was no moment in which Pompey could have done so. He who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by idle and luxurious young men of the day. Cicero did not live for many years beyond Pompey, but I doubt whether he did not know infinitely more of men. To Pompey it had been given to rule them; but to Cicero to live with them.



CHAPTER VI.

AFTER THE BATTLE.

[Sidenote: B.C. 48, aetat. 59.]

In the autumn of this year Cicero had himself landed at Brundisium. He remained nearly a year at Brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how sad and how long must have been the days with him. He had no country when he reached the nearest Italian port; it was all Caesar's, and Caesar was his enemy. There had been a struggle for the masterdom between two men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom Cicero had not ranged himself. He had known how it would be. All the Getae, and the men of Colchis, and the Armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those who preferred the delicacies of Baiae to the work of the Forum, all who had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all those whom Caesar was determined either to drive out of Italy or keep there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. We already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them and with Caesar. On Caesar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no Scaeva and of no Crastinus on Pompey's side. Men change their nature under such leading as was that of Caesar. The inferior men become heroic by contact with the hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood dabbled down upon a fair cloth. Who that has eyes to see can look back upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the stern man passes on without a ruffled face, after ordering the right hands of those who had fought at Uxellodunum to be chopped off at the wrist, in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for their country?

There are men—or have been, from time to time, in all ages of the world—let loose, as it were, by the hand of God to stop the iniquities of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities. They have come and done their work, and have died, leaving behind them the foul smell of destruction. An Augustus followed Caesar, and him Tiberius, and so on to a Nero. It was necessary that men should suffer much before they were brought back to own their condition. But they who can see a Cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming—not for himself but for the world around him—and can lend their tongues, their pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been touched by the supremacy of human suffering.

It must have been a sorry time with him at Brundisium. He had to stay there waiting till Caesar's pleasure had been made known to him, and Caesar was thinking of other things. Caesar was away in Egypt and the East, encountering perils at Alexandria which, if all be true that we have heard, imply that he had lived to be past fear. Grant that a man has to live as Caesar did, and it will be well that he should be past fear. At any rate he did not think of Cicero, or thinking of him felt that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he had made. Cicero did brood—not exactly in silence—over the things that fate had done for him and for his country. For himself, he was living in Italy, and yet could not venture to betake himself to one of the eighteen villas which, as Middleton tells us, he had studded about the country for his pastime. There were those at Tusculum, Antium, Astura, Arpinum—at Formiae, at Cumae, at Puteoli, and at Pompeii. Those who tell us of Cicero's poverty are surely wandering, carried away by their erroneous notions of what were a Roman nobleman's ideas as to money. At no period of his life do we find Cicero not doing what he was minded to do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had allowed himself in any respect to break the law. It has been argued that he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments, because he says that he wanted money. It was natural that he should occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. The incoming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. A man here and there might attend to his money, as did Atticus. Cicero did not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for relief. But he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. Is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? We are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his villas, though in the hurry-scurry of Roman affairs it did now and again become necessary for him to apply to Atticus for accommodation. Let us think what must have been Caesar's demands for money. Of these we hear nothing, because he was too wise to have an Atticus to whom he wrote everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be treasured for the curiosity of after-ages.

To be hopeful and then tremulous; to be eager after success and then desponding; to have believed readily every good and then, as readily, evil; to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have turned round and declared how he had been deceived; to have been very angry and then to have forgiven—this seems to have been Cicero's nature. Verres, Catiline, Clodius, Piso, and Vatinius seem to have caused his wrath; but was there one of them against whom, though he did not forgive him, his anger did not die out? Then, at last, he was moved to an internecine fight with Antony. Is there any one who has read the story which we are going to tell who will not agree with us that, if after Mutina Octavius had thought fit to repudiate Antony and to follow Cicero's counsels, Antony would not have been spared?

Nothing angers me so much in describing Cicero as the assertion that he was a coward. It has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes cowardice. He did not care to fight; but are all men cowards who do not care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking? He saw that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he did not see it. When men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled, and Caesar and Pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest danger does not consist in fighting. A man's tongue makes enemies more bitter than his sword. But Cicero, when the time came, never shirked his foe. Whether it was Verres or Catiline, or Clodius or Antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. At moments such as that there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave.

His friendship for Pompey is perhaps, of all the strong feelings of his life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse. For myself I can see why it was so; but I cannot do that without acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. Had he risen above Pompey, he would have been great indeed; for I look upon it as certain that he did see that Pompey was as untrue to the Republic as Caesar. He saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all times that Pompey was false. Caesar was not false. Caesar was an open foe. I doubt whether Pompey ever saw enough to be open. He never realized to himself more than men. He never rose to measures—much less to the reason for them. When Caesar had talked him over, and had induced him to form the Triumvirate, Pompey's politics were gone. Cicero never blanched. Whether, full of new hopes, he attacked Chrysogonus with all the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or, with the settled purpose of his life, he accused Verres in the teeth of the coming Consul Hortensius; whether in driving out Catiline, or in defending Milo; whether, even, in standing up before Caesar for Marcellus, or in his final onslaught upon Antony, his purpose was still the same. As time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went down into the arena and fought the beasts at Ephesus. Alas, it is so with mankind! Who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? And who can fight them but after some fashion of their own? He was fighting beasts at Ephesus when he was defending Milo. He was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest! It was impossible. These men would not be just, and yet he must use them. Milo and Caelius and Curio were his friends. He knew them to be bad, but he could not throw off from him all that were bad men. If by these means he could win his way to something that might be good, he would pardon their evil. As we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character becomes tarnished, and that his high feelings are blunted by the party which he takes and the men with whom he associates.

He did not, indeed, fall away altogether. The magistracy offered to him, the lieutenancy offered to him, the "free legation" offered to him, the last appeal made to him that he would go to Rome and speak a few words—or that he would stay away and remain neutral—did not move him. He did not turn conspirator and then fight for the prize, as Pompey had done. But he had, for so many years, clung to Pompey as the leader of a party; had had it so dinned into his ears that all must depend on Pompey; had found himself so bound up with the man who, when appealed to as to his banishment, had sullenly told him he could only do as Caesar would have him; whom he had felt to be mean enough to be stigmatized as Sampsiceramus, him of Jerusalem, the hero of Arabia; whom he knew to be desirous of doing with his enemies as Sulla had done with his—that, in spite of it all, he clung to him still!

I cannot but blame Cicero for this, but yet I can excuse it. It is hard to have to change your leader after middle life, and Cicero could only have changed his by becoming a leader himself. We can see how hopeless it was. Would it not have been mean had he allowed those men to go and fight in Macedonia without him? Who would have believed in him had he seemed to be so false? Not Cato, not Brutus, not Bibulus, not Scipio, not Marcellus. Such men were the leaders of the party of which he had been one. Would they not say that he had remained away because he was Caesar's man? He must follow either Caesar or Pompey. He knew that Pompey was beaten. There are things which a man knows, but he cannot bring himself to say so even to himself. He went out to fight on the side already conquered; and when the thing was done he came home with his heart sad, and lived at Brundisium, mourning his lot.

From thence he wrote to Atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage of complying with advice which had been given to him that he should travel incognito to Rome. But it is the special reason given which strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day: "Nor have I resting-places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to pass the entire daytime within them."[130] The "diversorium" was a place by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come that way. It must be understood that he travelled with attendants, and carried his food with him, or sent it on before. We see at every turn how much money could do; but we see also how little money had done for the general comfort of the people. Brundisium is above three hundred miles from Rome, and the journey is the same which Horace took afterward, going from the city.[131] Much had then been done to make travelling comfortable, or at any rate cheaper than it had been four-and-twenty years before. But now the journey was not made. He reminds Atticus in the letter that if he had not written through so long an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. It had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and so many ears were on the watch. He writes again some days later, and assures Atticus that Caesar thinks well of his "lictors!" Oh those eternal lictors! "But what have I to do with lictors," he says, "who am almost ordered to leave the shores of Italy?"[132] And then Caesar had sent angry messages. Cato and Metellus had been said to have come home. Caesar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away. It was clearly manifest to every man alive now that Caesar was the actual master of Italy.

During the whole of this winter he is on terms with Terentia, but he writes to her in the coldest strain. There are many letters to Terentia, more in number than we have ever known before, but they are all of the same order. I translate one here to show the nature of his correspondence: "If you are well, I am so also. The times are such that I expect to hear nothing from yourself, and on my part have nothing to write. Nevertheless, I look for your letters, and I write to you when a messenger is going to start. Voluminia ought to have understood her duty to you, and should have done what she did do better. There are other things, however, which I care for more, and grieve for more bitterly—as those have wished who have driven me from my own opinion."[133] Again he writes to Atticus, deploring that he should have been born—so great are his troubles—or, at any rate, that one should have been born after him from the same mother. His brother has addressed him in anger—his brother, who has desired to make his own affairs straight with Caesar, and to swim down the stream pleasantly with other noble Romans of the time. I can imagine that with Quintus Cicero there was nothing much higher than the wealth which the day produced. I can fancy that he was possessed of intellect, and that when it was fair sailing with our Consul it was all well with Quintus Cicero; but I can see also that, when Caesar prevailed, it was occasionally a matter of doubt with Quintus whether his brother should not be abandoned among other things which were obtrusive and vain. He could not quite do it. His brother compelled him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the oligarchy. Then Caesar fell, and Quintus saw that the matter was right; but Caesar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore Quintus after all turned out to be in the wrong. I fancy that I can see how things went ill with Quintus.

[Sidenote: B.C. 47, aetat. 60.]

Caesar, after the battle of the Pharsalia, had followed Pompey, but had failed to catch him. When he came upon the scene in the roadstead at Alexandria, the murder had been effected. He then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. It is not a part of my plan to write the life of Caesar, nor to meddle with it further than I am driven to do in seeking after the sources of Cicero's troubles and aspiration; but the story must be told in a few words. Caesar went from Alexandria into Asia, and, flashing across Syria, beat Pharnaces, and then wrote his famous "Veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. Surely he could not have written them and sent them home! Even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of Caesar have so tarnished itself. He hurried back to Italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. Simply by addressing them as "Quirites," instead of "Milites," he appalled them into obedience. On this journey into Italy he came across Cicero. If he could be cruel without a pang—to the arranging the starvation of a townful of women, because they as well as the men must eat—he could be magnificent in his treatment of a Cicero. He had hunted to the death his late colleague in the Triumvirate, and had felt no remorse; though there seems to have been a moment when in Egypt the countenance of him who had so long been his superior had touched him. He had not ordered Pompey's death. On no occasion had he wilfully put to death a Roman whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. He had followed the convictions of his countrymen, who had ever spared themselves. To him a thousand Gauls, or men of Eastern origin, were as nothing to a single Roman nobleman. Whether there can be said to have been clemency in such a course it is useless now to dispute. To Caesar it was at any rate policy as well. If by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, Caesar was clement. He had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to make common cause—in little things—with those who lose. We can see Caesar getting down from his chariot when Cicero came to meet him, and, throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant conversation; and we can fancy him talking to Cicero pleasantly of the greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show in comparison with those of Caesar's. "Cedant arma togae; concedat laurea linguae," we can hear Caesar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing of his now undoubted literary excellence.

[Sidenote: B.C. 47, aetat. 60.]

But to go back a little; we shall find Cicero still waiting at Brundisium during August and September. In the former of these months he reminds Atticus that "he cannot at present sell anything, but that he can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall fall upon him."[134] From this may be deduced a state of things very different to that above described, but not contradicting it. I gather from this unintelligible letter, written, as he tells us, for the most part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under some forfeiture of the law to Caesar. It may well be that, as one adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be salable. If that were so, Caesar in some of these bland moments must have revoked the sentence—and at such a time all sentences were within Caesar's control—because we know that on his return Cicero's villas were again within his own power. But he is in sad trouble now about his wife. He has written to her to send him twelve thousand sesterces, which he had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is left. If she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she do if it were larger?[135] Then follow two letters for his wife—a mere word in each—not a sign of affection nor of complaint in either of them. In the first he tells her she shall be informed when Caesar is coming—in the latter, that he is coming. When he has resolved whether to go and meet him or to remain where he is till Caesar shall have come upon him, he will again write. Then there are three to Atticus, and two more to Terentia. In the first he tells him that Caesar is expected. Some ten or twelve days afterward he is still full of grief as to his brother Quintus, whose conduct has been shameful. Caesar he knows is near at hand, but he almost hopes that he will not come to Brundisium. In the third, as indeed he has in various others, he complains bitterly of the heat: it is of such a nature that it adds to his grief. Shall he send word to Caesar that he will wait upon him nearer to Rome?[136] He is evidently in a sad condition. Quintus, it must be remembered, had been in Gaul with Caesar, and had seen the rising sun. On his return to Italy he had not force enough to declare a political conviction, and to go over to Caesar boldly. He had indeed become lieutenant to his brother when in Cilicia, having left Caesar for the purpose. He afterward went with his brother to the Pharsalus, assuring the elder Cicero that they two would still be of the same party. Then the great catastrophe had come, when Cicero returned from that wretched campaign to Brundisium, and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement. Quintus followed Caesar into Asia with his son, and there pleaded his own cause with him at the expense of his brother. Of Caesar we must all admit that, though indifferent to the shedding of blood, arrogant, without principle in money and without heart in love, he was magnificent, and that he injured none from vindictive motives. He passed on, leaving Quintus Cicero, who as a soldier had been true to him, without, as we can fancy, many words. Cicero afterward interceded for his brother who had reviled him, and Quintus will ever after have to bear the stain of his treachery. Then came the two letters for his wife, with just a line in each. If her messenger should arrive, he will send her word back as to what she is to do. After an interval of nearly a month, there is the other—ordering, in perfectly restored good-humor, that the baths shall be ready at the Tusculan villa: "Let the baths be all ready, and everything fit for the use of guests; there will probably be many of them."[137] It is evident that Caesar has passed on in a good-humor, and has left behind him glad tidings, such as should ever brighten the feet of the conqueror.

It is singular that, with a correspondence such as that of Cicero's, of which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have been nothing left to us from that friend himself. It must have been the case, as Middleton suggests, that Atticus, when Cicero was dead, had the handling of the entire MS., and had withdrawn his own; either that, or else Cicero and Atticus mutually agreed to the destruction of their joint labors, and Atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing well the value of the documents he preserved. That there is no letter from a woman—not even a line to Cicero from his dear daughter—is much to be regretted. And yet there are letters—many from Caelius, who is thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger Atticus—and from various Romans of the day. When we come to the latter days of his life, in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to Plancus and others as to their supposed duty to the State, they become numerous. There are ten such from Plancus, and nine from Decimus Brutus; and there is a whole mass of correspondence with Marcus Brutus—to be taken for what it is worth. With a view to history, they are doubtless worth much; but as throwing light on Cicero's character, except as to the vigor that was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. How is it that a correspondence, which is for its main purpose so full, should have fallen so short in many of its details? There is no word, no allusion derogatory to Atticus in these letters, which have come to us from Caelius and others. We have Atticus left to us for our judgment, free from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the insinuations of others. Of whom would we wish that the familiar letters of another about ourselves should be published? Would those objectionable epithets as to Pompey have been allowed to hold their ground had Pompey lived and had they been in his possession?

But, in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias in favor of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of them. We know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up these affairs of the moment and turned them into ridicule—then as they do now. We discount the "Hierosolymarius." We do not quite believe that Bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen; but we think that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself; at any rate, to tell no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be left to do so—Cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been that very deftness which has done him all the harm. Not one of those letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had Cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. "No," will say my readers, "that is their value; they would not have otherwise been true, as they are. We should not then have learned his secrets." I reply, "It is a hard bargain to make: others do not make such bargains on the same terms. But be sure, at any rate, that you read them aright: be certain that you make the necessary allowances. Do not accuse him of falsehood because he unsays on a Tuesday the words he said on the Monday. Bear in mind on his behalf all the temporary ill that humanity is heir to. Could you, living at Brundisium during the summer months, 'when you were scarcely able to endure the weight of the sun,'[138] have had all your intellects about you, and have been able always to choose your words?" No, indeed! These letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. His anger boils over here, and he is hot. Here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in body just now, and worn out in spirit; he is hopeless, almost to the brink of despair; he is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is purposely enigmatic—all of which require an Atticus who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them—who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent! Because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready to sell his country!

During the whole of the last year he must have been tortured by various turns of mind. Had he done well in joining himself to Pompey? and having done so, had he done well in severing himself, immediately on Pompey's death, from the Pompeians? Looking at the matter as from a stand-point quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in both. He could not without treachery have gone over to Caesar when Caesar had come to the gate of Italy, and, as it were with a blast of his trumpet, had demanded the Consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions, and the continuance of his military power. "Let Pompey put down his, and I will put down mine," he had said. Had Pompey put down his, Pompey and Cicero, Cato and Brutus, and Bibulus would all have had to walk at the heels of Caesar. When Pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. Cicero was bound to go to Pharsalia. But when, by Pompey's incompetence, Caesar was the victor; when Pompey had fallen at the Nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the Empire, such as young Pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to Asia, some to Illyricum, some to Spain, and more to Africa—as a herd of deer shall be seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jaws already dripping with blood—was Cicero then to take his part with any of them? I hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. He went back to Italy, and there he waited till the conqueror should come.

It must have been very bitter. Never to have become great has nothing in it of bitterness for a noble spirit. What matters it to the unknown man whether a Caesar or a Pompey is at the top of all things? Or if it does matter—as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that—which way he is turned, though there may be inner regrets that Caesar should become the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that Pompey's hands should be untrammelled, who sees them? I can walk down to my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless I be stirred to foolish wrath by the pride of some one equally vain, can enjoy myself amid the festivities of the hour. It is but a little affair to me. If it come in my way to do a thing, I will do my best, and there is an end of it. The sense of responsibility is not there, nor the grievous weight of having tried but failed to govern mankind. But to have clung to high places; to have sat in the highest seat of all with infinite honor; to have been called by others, and, worse still, to have called myself, the savior of my country; to have believed in myself that I was sufficient, that I alone could do it, that I could bring back, by my own justice and integrity, my erring countrymen to their former simplicity—and then to have found myself fixed in a little town, just in Italy, waiting for the great conqueror, who though my friend in things social was opposed to me body and soul as to rules of life—that, I say, must have been beyond the bitterness of death.

During this year he had made himself acquainted with the details of that affair, whatever it might be, which led to his divorce soon after his return to Rome. He had lived about thirty years with his wife, and the matter could not but have been to him the cause of great unhappiness. Terentia was not only the mother of his children, but she had been to him also the witness of his rise in life and the companion of his fall. He was one who would naturally learn to love those with whom he was conversant. He seems to have projected himself out of his own time into those modes of thought which have come to us with Christianity, and such a separation from this woman after an intercourse of so many years must have been very grievous to him. All married Romans underwent divorce quite as a matter of course. There were many reasons. A young wife is more agreeable to the man's taste than one who is old. A rich wife is more serviceable than a poor. A new wife is a novelty. A strange wife is an excitement. A little wife is a relief to one overburdened with the flesh; a buxom wife to him who has become tired of the pure spirit. Xanthippe asks too much, while Griselda is too tranquil. And then, as a man came up in the world, causes for divorce grew without even the trouble of having to search for faults. Caesar required that his wife should not be ill spoken of, and therefore divorced her. Pompey cemented the Triumvirate with a divorce. We cannot but imagine that, when men had so much the best of it in the affairs of life, a woman had always the worst of it in these enforced separations. But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to Roman ladies. No woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. Terentia when divorced from Cicero was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honor of having married Sallust after her break with Cicero. They say that she married twice again after Sallust's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of Augustus, she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. Divorce at any rate did not kill her. But we cannot conceive but that so sudden a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to Cicero. We shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward, and then, too, divorcing her; but here we have only to deal with the torments Terentia inflicted on him. What those torments were we do not know, and shall never learn unless by chance the lost letters of Atticus should come to light. But the general idea has been that the lady had, in league with a freedman and steward in her service, been guilty of fraud against her husband. I do not know that we have much cause to lament the means of ascertaining the truth. It is sad to find that the great men with whose name we are occupied have been made subject to those "whips and scorns of time" which we thought to be peculiar to ourselves, because they have stung us. Terentia, Cicero's wife two thousand years ago, sent him word that he had but L100 left in his box at home, when he himself knew well that there must be something more. That would have gone for nothing had there not been other things before that, many other things. So, in spite of his ordering at her hands the baths and various matters to be got ready for his friends at his Tusculum, a very short time after his return there he had divorced her.

During this last year he had been engaged on what has since been found to be the real work of his life. He had already written much, but had written as one who had been anxious to fill up vacant spaces of time as they came in his way. From this time forth he wrote as does one who has reconciled himself to the fact that there are no more days to be lost if he intends, before the sun be set, to accomplish an appointed task. He had already compiled the De Oratore, the De Republica, and the De Legibus. Out of the many treatises which we have from Cicero's hands, these are they which are known as the works of his earlier years. He commenced the year with an inquiry, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, which he intended as a preface to the translations which he made of the great speeches of AEschines and Demosthenes, De Corona. These translations are lost, though the preface remains. He then translated, or rather paraphrased the Timaeus of Plato, of which a large proportion has come down to us, and the Protagoras, of which we have lost all but a sentence or two. We have his Oratoriae Partitiones, in which, in a dialogue between himself and his son, he repeats the lessons on oratory which he has given to the young man. It is a recapitulation, in short, of all that had been said on a subject which has since been made common, and which owed its origin to the work of much earlier years. It is but dull reading, but I can imagine that even in these days it may be useful to a young lawyer. There is a cynical morsel among these precepts which is worth observing, "Cito enim arescit lachryma praesertim in alienis malis;"[139] and another grandly simple, "Nihil enim est aliud eloquentia nisi copiose loquens sapientia." Can we fancy anything more biting than the idea that the tears caused by the ills of another soon grow dry on the orator's cheek, or more wise than that which tells us that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently? Then he wrote the six Paradoxes addressed to Brutus—or rather he then gave them to the world, for they were surely written at an earlier date. They are short treatises on trite subjects, put into beautiful language, so as to arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their reasoning. The most remarkable is the third, in which he endeavored to show that a man cannot be wise unless he be all-wise, a doctrine which he altogether overturns in his De Amicitia, written but four years afterward. Cicero knew well what was true, and wrote his paradox in order to give a zest to the subject. In the fourth and the sixth are attacks upon Clodius and Crassus, and are here republished in what would have been the very worst taste amid the politeness of our modern times. A man now may hate and say so while his foe is still alive and strong; but with the Romans he might continue to hate, and might republish the words which he had written, eight years after the death of his victim.

I know nothing of Cicero's which so much puts us in mind of the struggles of the modern authors to make the most of every word that has come from them, as do these paradoxes. They remind us of some writer of leading articles who gets together a small bundle of essays and then gives them to the world. Each of them has done well at its time, but that has not sufficed for his ambition; therefore they are dragged out into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as though they could stand well on their own legs. But they cannot stand alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than that for which they were intended when written.



CHAPTER VII.

MARCELLUS, LIGARIUS, AND DEIOTARUS.

[Sidenote: B.C. 46, aetat. 61.]

The battle of Thapsus, in Africa, took place in the spring of this year, and Cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined not to live under Caesar's rule. If we may believe the story which, probably, Hirtius has given us, in his account of the civil war in Africa, and which has come down to us together with Caesar's Commentaries, Cato left his last instructions to some of his officers, and then took his sword into his bed with him and stabbed himself. Cicero, who, in his dream of Scipio, has given his readers such excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that Cato must be allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. He would die rather than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him.[140] To Cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living under Caesar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable affront. The "Catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets of all ages. Men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked something of the courage of a man. Many other Romans of the time did the same thing, but to none has been given all the honor which has been allowed to Cato.

Cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies to die away. It was but a short time before that Cato had voted against the decree of the Senate giving Cicero his "supplication." Cicero had then been much annoyed; but now Cato had died fighting for the Republic, and was to be forgiven all personal offences. Cicero wrote a eulogy of Cato which was known by the name of Cato, and was much discussed at Rome at the time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous—had he not been governed by that feeling of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all—he might have said much that was not good. Cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the Stoics—a mode of living altogether antagonistic to Cicero's views. But we know that he praised Cato to the full—and we know also that Caesar nobly took the praise in good part, as coming from Cicero, and answered it in an Anti-Cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from Cicero. We can understand how Caesar should have shown that the rigid Stoic was not a man likely to be of service to his country.

There came up at this period a question which made itself popular among the "optimates" of Rome, as to the return of Marcellus. The man of Como, whom Marcellus had flogged, will be remembered—the Roman citizen who had first been made a citizen by Caesar. This is mentioned now not as the cause of Caesar's enmity, who did not care much probably for his citizen, but as showing the spirit of the man. He, Marcellus, had been Consul four years since, B.C. 51, and had then endeavored to procure Caesar's recall from his province. He was one of the "optimates," an oligarch altogether opposed to Caesar, a Roman nobleman of fairly good repute, who had never bent to Caesar, but had believed thoroughly in his order, and had thought, till the day of Pharsalia came, that the Consuls and the Senate would rule forever. The day of Pharsalia did come, and Marcellus went into voluntary banishment in Mitylene. After Pharsalia, Caesar's clemency began to make itself known. There was a pardon for almost every Roman who had fought against him, and would accept it. No spark of anger burnt in Caesar's bosom, except against one or two, of whom Marcellus was one. He was too wise to be angry with men whose services he might require. It was Caesar's wish not to drive out the good men but to induce them to remain in Rome, living by the grace of his favor. Marcellus had many friends, and it seems that a public effort was made to obtain for him permission to come back to Rome. We must imagine that Caesar had hitherto refused, probably with the idea of making his final concession the more valuable. At last the united Senators determined to implore his grace, and the Consulares rose one after another in their places, and all, with one exception,[141] asked that Marcellus might be allowed to return. Cicero, however, had remained silent to the last. There must have been, I think, some plot to get Cicero on to his legs. He had gone to meet Caesar at Brundisium when he came back from the East, had returned to Rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant friendship with Caesar's friends. Pardon seems to have been accorded to Cicero without an effort. As far as he was concerned, that hostile journey to Dyrrachium—for he did not travel farther toward the camp—counted for nothing with Caesar. He was allowed to live in peace, at Rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as Caesar might rule. The idea seems to have been that he should gradually become absorbed among Caesar's followers. But hitherto he had remained silent. It was now six years since his voice had been heard in Rome. He had spoken for Milo—or had intended to speak—and, in the same affair, for Munatius Plancus, and for Saufeius, B.C. 52. He had then been in his fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such a period of his life would not be broken. It was manifestly his intention not to speak again, at any rate in the Senate; though the threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as meaning much. Such threats from statesmen depend generally on the wishes of other men. But he held his place in the Senate, and occasionally attended the debates. When this affair of Marcellus came on, and all the Senators of consular rank—excepting only Volcatius and Cicero—had risen, and had implored Caesar in a few words to condescend to be generous; when Claudius Marcellus had knelt at Caesar's feet to ask for his brother's liberty, and Caesar himself, after reminding them of the bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the prayers of the Senate, then Cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in the speech which is still extant.

That used to be the story till there came the German critic Wolf, who at the beginning of this century told us that Cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might have been taken as fatal—for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged—in spite of La Harpe, the French scholar and critic, who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic speeches of Isocrates. The praise of La Harpe was previous to the condemnation of Wolf, and we might have been willing to accede to the German as being the later and probably the more accurate. Mr. Long, the British editor of the Orations—Mr. Long, who has so loudly condemned the four speeches supposed to have been made after Cicero's return from exile—gives us no certain guidance. Mr. Long, at any rate, has not been so disgusted by the Tiberian Latin as to feel himself bound to repudiate it. If he can read the Pro Marcello, so can I, and so, my reader, might you do probably without detriment. But these differences among the great philologic critics tend to make us, who are so infinitely less learned, better contented with our own lot. I, who had read the Pro Marcello without stumbling over its halting Latinity, should have felt myself crushed when I afterward came across Wolf's denunciations, had I not been somewhat comforted by La Harpe. But when I found that Mr. Long, in his introduction to the piece, though he discusses Wolf's doctrine, still gives to the orator the advantage, as it may be, of his "imprimatur," I felt that I might go on, and not be ashamed of myself.[142]

This is the story that has now to be told of the speech Pro Marcello. At the time the matter ended very tragically. As soon as Caesar had yielded, Cicero wrote to Marcellus giving him strong reasons for coming home. Marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. He thanks Cicero shortly; but, with kindly dignity, he declines. "With the comforts of the city I can well dispense," he says.[143] Then Cicero urges him again and again, using excellent arguments for his return—which at length prevail. In the spring of the next year Marcellus, on his way back to Rome, is at Athens. There Servius Sulpicius spends a day with him; but, just as Sulpicius is about to pass on, there comes a slave to him who tells him that Marcellus has been murdered. His friend Magius Chilo had stabbed him overnight, and had then destroyed himself. It was said that Chilo had asked Marcellus to pay his debts for him, and that Marcellus had refused. It seems to be more probable that Chilo had his own reasons for not choosing that his friend should return to Rome.

Looking back at my own notes on the speech—it would make with us but a ten minutes' after-dinner speech—I see that it is said "that it is chiefly remarkable for the beauty of the language, and the abjectness of the praise of Caesar." This was before I had heard of Wolf. As to the praise, I doubt whether it should be called abject, regard being had to the feelings of the moment in which it was delivered. Cicero had risen to thank Caesar—on whose breath the recall of Marcellus depended—for his unexpected courtesy. In England we should not have thanked Caesar as Cicero did: "O Caesar, there is no flood of eloquence, no power of the tongue or of the pen, no richness of words, which may emblazon, or even dimly tell the story of your great deeds."[144] Such language is unusual with us—as it would also be unusual to abuse our Pisos and our Vatiniuses, as did Cicero. It was the Southerner and the Roman who spoke to Southerners and to Romans. But, undoubtedly, there was present to the mind of Cicero the idea of saying words which Caesar might receive with pleasure. He was dictator, emperor, lord of all things—king. Cicero should have remained away, as Marcellus had done, were he not prepared to speak after this fashion. He had long held aloof from speech. At length the time had come when he was, as it were, caught in a trap, and compelled to be eloquent.

[Sidenote: B.C. 46, aetat. 61.]

The silence had been broken, and in the course of the autumn he spoke on behalf of Ligarius, beseeching the conqueror to be again merciful. This case was by no means similar to that of Marcellus, who was exiled by no direct forfeiture of his right to live in Italy, but who had expatriated himself. In this case Ligarius had been banished with others; but it seems that the punishment had been inflicted on him, not from the special ill-will of Caesar, but from the malice of certain enemies who, together with Ligarius, had found themselves among Pompey's followers when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Ligarius had at this time been left as acting governor in Africa. In the confusion of the times an unfortunate Pompeian named Varus had arrived in Africa, and to him, as being superior in rank, Ligarius had given up the government. Varus had then gone, leaving Ligarius still acting, and one Tubero had come with his son, and had demanded the office. Ligarius had refused to give it up, and the two Tuberos had departed, leaving the province in anger, and had fought at the Pharsalus. After the battle they made their peace with Caesar, and in the scramble that ensued Ligarius was banished. Now the case was brought into the courts, in which Caesar sat as judge. The younger Tubero accused Ligarius, and Cicero defended him. It seems that, having been enticed to open his mouth on behalf of Marcellus, he found himself launched again into public life. But how great was the difference from his old life! It is not to the Judices, or Patres Conscripti, or to the Quirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to Caesar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise. Once again he does the same thing when pleading for Deiotarus, the King of Galatia, and it is impossible to deny, as we read the phrases, that the orator sinks in our esteem. It is not so much that we judge him to be small, as that he has ceased to be great. He begins his speech for Ligarius by saying, "My kinsman Tubero has brought before you, O Caesar, a new crime, and one not heard of up to this day—that Ligarius has been in Africa."[145] The commencement would have been happy enough if it had not been addressed to Caesar; for he was addressing a judge not appointed by any form, but self-assumed—a judge by military conquest. We cannot imagine how Caesar found time to sit there, with his legions round him still under arms, and Spain not wholly conquered. But he did do so, and allowed himself to be persuaded to the side of mercy. Ligarius came back to Rome, and was one of those who plunged their daggers into him. But I cannot think that he should have been hindered by this trial and by Caesar's mercy from taking such a step, if by nothing else. Brutus and Cassius also stabbed him. The question to be decided is whether, on public grounds, these men were justified in killing him—a question as to which I should be premature in expressing an opinion here.