Cicero begins the second book of the Tusculans by telling us that Neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too much at a time. With himself the matter was different: "In what else is there that I can do better?" Then he takes the bit between his teeth and rushes away with it. The reader feels that he would not stop him if he could. He does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him otherwise employed.

He wrote three treatises, De Natura Deorum. Had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis deus"[292]—that god which reigns within us—and which he declares in Scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. Nothing can be farther removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us, either in the first book, in which the gods of Epicurus are set forth; in the second, in which the Stoics are defended; or the third, in which the gods, in accordance with the Academy, are maintained; not but that, either for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect does not say the best that is to be said. Velleius is eloquent for the Epicureans, Balbus for the Stoics, and Cotta for the Academy. And in that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth—though indeed Cicero makes his Epicurean as absurd as he well can do. But he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an energetic preacher is sure to create. The language is excellent, the stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot very well reply to them; but they leave on the mind of the reader a sad feeling of the lack of reality.

In the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such subjects so late in life. "Being sick with ease, and having found the condition of the Republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man. I have thought it good, for the sake of the Republic, to write about philosophy in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens, believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the State that things of such weight should be set forth in the Latin tongue;"[293] not that the philosophy should be set forth, but what the different teachers said about it. His definition of eternity—or rather the want of definition—is singular: "There has been from all time an eternity which no measurement of time can describe. Its duration cannot be understood—that there should have been a time before time existed."[294] Then there comes an idea of the Godhead, escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly Ciceronian: "Lo, it comes to pass that this god, of whom we are sure in our minds, and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear to us."[295]

By-and-by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that Cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the Epicureans: "Therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in want, in laughing at us. Indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have not the power. I do not say this to you," he says, addressing Velleius, "for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of our people; but I am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him who is the father of your rules—a man without science, without letters—one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight, without wit."[296] Cicero, I think, must have felt some genuine dislike for Epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these.

Then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken in hand the Phaenomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar: "The Twins;" "The Bull;" "The Great Bear;" "Cassiopeia;" "The Waterman;" "The Scorpion;" these and many others are made to come forward in hexameters—and by Cicero in Latin, as by Aratus in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead—but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long. The lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world.

Farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that age, shows an accurate knowledge. But what has it to do with the nature of the gods? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge—just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life."[297]

The third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant raillery against Epicurus. Cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty with Epicurus. Epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal gods. His gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. But from Balbus, the Stoic, they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. In all these discourses it seems that the poor Epicureans are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. But Cotta continues, and tells many stories of the gods. He is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the MS., and his arguments have come to us unfinished. "It is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. In the same way I do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction."[298] It is thus that is discussed the nature of the gods in this work of Cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time.

The De Natura Deorum is followed by two books, De Divinatione, and by the fragment of one, De Fato. Divination is the science of predicting events. By "Fatum" Cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. The three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the State to foster observances, and even to punish their non-observance—for the benefit of the whole—even though they might not be in themselves true. He is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition—and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. In such a theory as this put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. I cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to assert the honesty of Cicero. I can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. If any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include Cicero with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not. It seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. I distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. I will take our Protestant Church of England religion and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. When did Sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the Word of God, and when again did they cease to be so? If it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. It has never begun! It has never wavered! And there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. In the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? Does not the Church admit prayers for change of weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it. Or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superstition of the multitude. I am not saying this as against the religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which Cicero also required when he wrote as follows: "Former ages erred in much which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. But the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the State. Our Consuls, Claudius and Junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily."[299] No stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the State. There will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail. Though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. But they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken.

Such, I think, was the reasoning within Cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. In the first he encounters his brother Quintus at his Tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of religion. Quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the auspices. He is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. In this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. "Stare super vias antiquas," is the motto of Quintus Cicero. Then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. There is the one which he calls "Ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. The soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. He is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a Friday. He knows—or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows—that ships that have put to sea on Friday have generally gone to the bottom. He therefore predicts against the going to sea. Although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false. That can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on Friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others—a process which requires the close observations of science to make good. That is Art. Then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed—one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit—as the Sibyl, or Epimenides of Crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. Quintus explains as to these that the god does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use them.[300]

He tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. The book so becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry—some by others and some by Cicero. Here are given those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon which I have ventured to call the best amid the nine versions brought forward.[301]

We cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise: "I often ask myself and turn in my mind how best I may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which I should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the State; and nothing better has occurred to me than that I should make known the way of studying the best arts—which indeed I think I have now done in various books."[302] Then he recapitulates them. There is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to Hortensius, now lost. Then in the four books of the Academics he had put forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest—meaning the new Academy. After that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. The Tusculan Inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well. Having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. We cannot but sympathize with him because we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. Brutus believed it, and Cato, and that Velleius, and that Balbus, and that Cotta. Or if perchance any of them did not, they lived, and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did. The example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. Amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened.

"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes. Intulit agresti Latio."[303]

Here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. "My fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the Republic fell into the power of one man I neither hid myself nor did I desert them; nor did I idly weep, or carry myself as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that I should have to be ashamed of what I had done myself. For I had learned this lesson from the philosophy of Plato—that there are certain changes in public affairs. They will be governed now by the leaders of the State, then by the people, sometimes by a single man."[304] This is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. He knows that he is preaching only to a few—in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. His language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. And we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother as at the gods themselves—they are so clearly wooden gods—though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the State that they shall be received. He declares that, in accordance with the theory of his brother—meaning thereby the Stoics—"it is necessary that they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men."[305] It is playful, argumentative, and satirical. At last he proposes to leave the subject. Socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. Quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse De Divinatione is brought to an end.

Of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it. It is the desire of Cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs which men call Life, it matters little whether there be a Destiny or not. Things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. What is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? All this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of thankfulness that all these books of Chrysippus of which he tells us, are not still existent to be investigated.

Such is the end of those works which I admit to have been philosophical, and of which it seems he understood that they were the work of about eighteen months. They were all written after Caesar's triumph—when it was no longer in the power of any Roman to declare his opinion either in the Senate or in the Forum. Caesar had put down all opposition, and was made supreme over everything—till his death. The De Fato was written, indeed, after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped themselves as to make it necessary that Cicero should return to public life. So, indeed, were the three last moral essays, which I shall notice in the next chapter; but in truth he had them always in his heart. It was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving either to himself or to some faithful Tiro the subsequent duty of rearrangement. But what a head there was there to contain it all!



CHAPTER XIII.

CICERO'S MORAL ESSAYS.

We have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. I have seen somewhere a calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and eager scholars. I make a more modest estimate of his powers. Judging from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort to keep the greater portion of his letters, I think that I do not exaggerate his writing. Who can say but that as time goes on some future Petrarch or some future Mai may discover writings hitherto unknown, concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the labors of Middle-Age monks? It was but in 1822 that the De Republica was brought to light—so much of it at least as we still possess; and for more than thirty years afterward Cardinal Mai continued to reproduce, from time to time, collections of Greek and Latin writings hitherto unheard of by classical readers. Let us hope, however, that the zeal of the learned may stop short of that displayed by Simon Du Bos, or we may have whole treatises of Cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[306]

I can hardly content myself with classifying the De Republica and the De Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero, which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pass, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the De Officiis in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as Cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. The works reviewed in the last chapter contained disputations on the Greek philosophy which Cicero thought might be well handled in the Latin language for the benefit of his countrymen. It would be well for them to know what Epicurus taught, or Zeno, and how they differed from Socrates and Plato, and this he told them. Now in these moral essays he gives them his own philosophy—if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach men how to live well. There are six books on government, called the De Republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to man, in three.

There is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word republic. It has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a most evil scent, according to their politics. But there is, in truth, the Republic of Russia, as there is that of the United States, and that of England. Cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means "the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account of the Roman Empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and scientific. He himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and magnificent in the Roman Empire. The great men of Rome, whom the empire had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. By the expulsion of their kings, the class from whom these men had been chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. The reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when he begins to read Roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of these oligarchs. They have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes to them from vulgar hands. Let me ask any man who remembers the reading of his Livy whether it was not so with him. But it was in truth the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of Rome and enabled the government to go on. Then by degrees the people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Plunder, rapine, and luxury took the place of duty performed. A Verres ruled where a Marcellus had conquered. Cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown according to its nature. That state of affairs was produced which Mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. But Cicero did not see it. He had his eyes on the greatness of the past—and on himself—and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from Rome. He was in this state of mind when he wrote his De Republica, nine years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical discussions. Then he still hoped. Caesar was away in Gaul, and Pompey maintained at Rome the ghost of the old Republic. He could still open his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. He had not been as yet driven to find consolation amid that play of words which constitutes the Greek philosophy.

I must remind the readers again that the De Republica is a fragment: the first part is wanting. We find him telling us the story of the elder Cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. Then he gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the number he names himself. But he soon introduces the form of dialogue which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger Scipio and Laelius upon the scene. The lessons which are given to us are supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater Scipio who out-manoeuvred Hannibal. He continues to tell story after story out of the Roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices of the people. Is it only because I am an Englishman that he seems to me to describe that form of government which was to come in England?

The second book also begins with the praises of Cato. Scipio then commences with Romulus, and tells the history of Rome's kings. Tarquin is banished, and the Consulate established. He tells us, by no means with approbation, how the Tribunate was established, and then, alas! there comes a break in the MS.

In the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by Augustine, in which Cicero complains of the injustice of Nature in having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak, infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. Then, after a while, through many "lacunae," Scipio, Laelius, and one Philus fall into a discourse as to justice. There is a remarkable passage, from which we learn that the Romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that of modern nations. They would not even permit their transalpine allies to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make their way across Italy—whereby they raised the prices against themselves terribly of oil and wine.[307] "There is a kind of slavery which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who might 'properly belong to themselves.' But when they only are made to be slaves who—" We may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. But it is evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are slaves by right. Carneades, the later master of the new Academy, has now joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in this country. "If you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you, you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. But you would do it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." From this may be seen the nature of the discourses on justice.

The next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and manners. In the sixth we come to that dream of Scipio which has become so famous in the world of literature that I do not know whether I can do better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my volume. It is in itself so beautiful in parts that I think that all readers will thank me. (See appendix to this chapter). At the same time it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty Cicero strove to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. The music of the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now as it was then—and because poetic, therefore not absurd. The length of the year's period is an extravagance. You may call your space of time by what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. He tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the other side of the Ganges, or that our voices shall come down through many years. I myself read this dream of Scipio in a volume found in Australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. He could judge of this world's future only by the past. But when he tells us of the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue, of the duty upon us to remain here where God has placed us, and of the insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he was not permitted to hear.

Two years afterward, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a copy from Plato. As is the Topica a copy from Aristotle, written on board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. There are some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow Cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow-Epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine.[308] Now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] He constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men.

In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise De Divinatione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large. There is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the gods. Gold and silver will create impure desire. Ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple enough for a god. Metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for worship. An image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood, or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colors. White is best for the gods; and so on.[310] Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a god cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. It was seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the gods. How many a man has since learned to regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the better? There may be a question of aesthetics, indeed, with which Cicero does not meddle.

In the third book he descends to practical and at the same time political questions. There had been no matter contested so vehemently among Romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? You might say the same of the Consuls; for the very possession of power is an evil in itself. But without that evil you cannot have the good which the institution contains. The power of the Tribunes is too great, you say. Who denies it? But the violence of the people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader than if no leader had been given them. The leader will measure his danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[311] He afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on principle. "Let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their votes be known to their betters."[312] It is, alas, useless now to discuss the matter here in England! We have been so impetuous in our wish to avoid the evil of bribery—which was quickly going—that we have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by revolutionary changes. When men vote by tens of thousands the ballot will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. It is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire with matters which are perplexing us to-day.

We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica. Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes difficult to assign their exact places to each. He mentions one as written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his death—the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are concerned—and I shall here treat De Senectute first, then De Amicitia, and the De Officiis last, believing them to have been published in that order.

The De Senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally called Cato Major. It is supposed to have been spoken by the old Censor, 149 B.C., and to have been listened to by Scipio and Laelius. This was the same Scipio who had the dream—who, in truth, was not a Scipio at all, but a son of Paulus AEmilius, whom we remember in history as the younger Africanus. Cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were probably as well known before his time as they have been since. All men wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. The answer is that no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of which old age is the necessary ending. It creeps on us so quickly! But in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy; but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes. It is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act poem shall be well performed. Cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of the world's history. It was written by an old man to an old man; for it is addressed to Atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals much in commonplaces. But it is full of noble thoughts, and is pleasant, and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet savor of the dignity of age. Let the old man feel that it is not for him to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself from much of the evil which Time can do to him. I am ready for you, and you cannot hurt me. "Let not the old man assume the strength of the young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * * But still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. The melodious voice, however, remains, which—and you see my years—I have not yet lost. The voice of an old man should always be tranquil and contained."[313] He tells a story of Massinissa, who was then supposed to be ninety. He was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on foot and never mounted.[314] "We must resist old age, my Laelius. We must compensate our shortness by our diligence, my Scipio. As we fight against disease, so let us contend with old age.[315] * * * Why age should be avaricious I could never tell. Can there be anything more absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a journey?"[316] He tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he believes they are still alive—that, though they have gone from this earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered worthy of the name."[317]

The De Amicitia is called Laelius. It is put into the mouth of Laelius, and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the presence of his two sons-in-law, Caius Fannius and Mucius Scaevola, a few days after the death of Scipio his friend. Not Damon and Pythias were more renowned for their friendship than Scipio and Laelius. He discusses what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what means it should be preserved.

Cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been placed under the charge of Scaevola the augur, and how, having changed his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, Scaevola fell into that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how once Laelius had discoursed to them on friendship. It is from first to last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early summer grass to men who live in cities. The reader feels, as he goes on with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have been altogether unhappy. Coming at the end of his life, in the telling the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to Atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. He has sometimes been querulous with his Atticus. He has complained of bad advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship—in reading which accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. But Atticus understood him. He knew that the privileges and the burden must go together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the privileges to compensate the burden. When we make our histories on the bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. In writing this treatise De Amicitia especially for the eyes of Atticus, how constantly the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them—how confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! He who, after nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on friendship cannot have been an unhappy man.

"Should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be repressed. You shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let it take the place of the old. Age and custom will have given the old fruit a flavor of its own. Who is there that would ride a new horse in preference to one tried—one who knows your hand?"[318]

I regard the De Officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language. It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it. It is addressed to his son, and is as good now as when it was written. There is not a precept taught in it which is not modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for Christians and Pagans. A system of morality, we might have said, should be one which would suit all men alike. We are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. The "honestum" means much more in Latin than it does in English. Neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the rendering—not that honor or that honesty which we know. Modern honor flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight; while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honor is based. "Honestum" includes it all; and Cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. But he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches. He does not fulminate his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of punishments; but he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you seem to have found out for yourself what is good—you and he together, and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and decorous.

In Cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself from the circumstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at last, by means of work done for the State, a time of blessed rest, he gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil world can bestow upon him. Look back through the treatises written during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the last polish given by his own hands to these three books De Officiis was added amid the heat and turmoils of the Philippics. It is so singular, this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are taught almost to think that there must have been two Ciceros, and that the one was eager in personal conflict with Antony, while the other was seated in the garden of some Italian villa meditating words by obeying which all men might be ennobled.

In the dialectical disputations of the Greek philosophers he had picked up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted for a discourse so free and open as is this. We are therefore somewhat offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three headings."[319] If it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know it, it should, I think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at logical completeness. It is impossible to call this a fault. Accuracy must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. But feeling myself to be occasionally wounded by this numbering, I mention it. In the De Officiis he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he devotes a book. In the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be done or left undone—that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse; and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells us what to choose and what to avoid.

The duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat higher than we accord to it. "Parents are dear, children are dear to us, so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what good man would not die so that he might serve it? How detestable, then, is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and have been and are occupied in its destruction."[320] He gives us some excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. But at the end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and fitting recreation.[321] I have said that he was modern in his views—but not altogether modern. He defends the suicide of Cato. "To them," he says, speaking of Cato's companions in Africa, "it might not have been forgiven. Their life was softer and their manners easier. But to Cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had strengthened with all the severity of his will. He had always remained steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the tyrant of his country."[322] There was something terribly grand in Cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of Cicero. So much Cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's character. Let us look back and we shall find that we make the same allowance. This is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an apology which he makes.

Read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of a gentleman: "There are two kinds of beauty. The one is loveliness, which is a woman's gift. But dignity belongs to the man. Let all ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear—and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is best."[323]

Then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "Those sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers. All those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work but not their art." As for instance, the painter of a picture shall be held to follow a liberal occupation—but not so the picture dealer. "They are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. All mere workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere workshop produce? Least of all can those trades be said to be good which administer only to our pleasures—such as fish-mongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers."[324] He adds at the end of his list that of all employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care of a freeman. In all of this it is necessary that we should receive what he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now departing from us—whether for good or evil who shall say?

In the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked among those round him. "But when the Republic," he says, "had ceased to be—that Republic which had been all my care—my employment ceased both in the Forum and the Senate. But when my mind absolutely refused to be inactive, I thought that I might best live down the misery of the time if I devoted myself to philosophy."[325] From this we may see how his mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "Nihil agere autem quum animus non posset!" How piteous was his position, and yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do—but there was nothing because hitherto there had been so much that he had always done.

He tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. To be ashamed of nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. But for him there is this difficulty: "If any one on his entrance into the world has had laid upon him the greatness of a name won by his father, let us say—as, my Cicero, has perhaps happened to you—the eyes of all men will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life. He will be so placed under the meridian sun that no word spoken or deed done by him shall be hidden.[326] * * * He must live up to the glory to which he has been born." He gives to his son much advice about the bar. "But the greatest praise," he says, "comes from defending a man accused; and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and ill-treated by the power of some great man. This happened to me more than once in my youth, when, for instance, I defended Roscius Amerinus against Sulla's power." The speech is with us extant still.[327] He tells us much as to the possession of money, and the means of insuring it in a well-governed state. "Take care that you allow no debts to the injury of the Republic. You must guard against this at all hazards—but never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. Nothing is so requisite to the State as public credit—which cannot exist unless debtors be made to pay what they owe. There was nothing to which I looked more carefully than this when I was Consul. Horse and foot, they tried their best; but I opposed them, and freed the Republic from the threatened evil. Never were debts more easily or more quickly collected. When men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they paid. But he who was then the conquered is the conqueror now. He has effected what he contemplated—even though it be not now necessary for him."[328] From this passage it seems that these books must have been first written before Caesar's death. Caesar, at the time of Catiline's conspiracy, had endeavored to annul all debts—that is, to establish "new tables" according to the Roman idiom—but had failed by Cicero's efforts. He had since affected it, although he might have held his power without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. Who could that be but Caesar? In the beginning of the third book there is another passage declaring the same thing: "I have not strength enough for silent solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. In the short time since the Republic has been overturned I have written more than in all my former years."[329] That, again, he could not have written after Caesar had fallen. We are left, indeed, to judge, from the whole nature of the discourse, that it was written at the period in which the wrongs done by Caesar to Rome—wrongs at any rate as they appeared to Cicero—were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to his slaughter. It was written then, but was published a few months afterward.



CHAPTER XIV.

CICERO'S RELIGION.

I should hardly have thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan, had I not, while studying Cicero's life, found that I was not dealing with a pagan's mind. The mind of the Roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a God. Horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. Ovid does so still more constantly. They are both full of allusions to "the gods." They are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship, and that the orders of the Emperor will be best obeyed by believers. "Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas," says Horace, when, in obedience probably to Augustus, he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples. "Superi, quorum sumus omnia," says Ovid, thinking it well to show in one of his writings, which he sent home from his banishment, that he still entertained the fashionable creed. But they did not believe. It was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief, in order that those below might live as though they believed, and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. It was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. It was not well that the augurs, who were gentlemen of high family, should go for nothing. Caesar himself was the high-priest, and thought much of the position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. A religious belief was not expected from a gentleman. Religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the Roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful assistance might perchance come. In dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. I remember no passage in Livy or Tacitus indicating a religious belief.

But with Cicero my mind is full of such; and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later I should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christ's teachings. M. Renan has reminded us of Cicero's dislike to the Jews. He could not learn from the Jews—though the Jew, indeed, had much that he could teach him. The religion which he required was far from the selfishness of either Jew or Roman. He believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of God, the performance of his duty to his neighbors, in conscience, and in honesty. "Certum esse in caelo definitum locum, ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur."[330] "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." Can St. Paul have expressed with more clearness his belief as to a heaven? Earlier in his career he expresses in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to another world: "An vero tam parvi animi videamur esse omnes, qui in republica, atque in his vitae periculis laboribusque versamur, ut, quum, usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum duxerimus, vobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur?"[331] "Are we all of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country and ourselves—though we have not had one moment of ease here upon earth—when we die all things shall die with us?" And when he did go it should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. "Neque te sermonibus vulgi dederis, nec in praemis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus."[332] "You shall put your hope neither in man's opinion nor in human rewards; but Virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." He thus tells us his idea of God's omnipotence: "Quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eamdemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam; quem Deum appellant."[333] "This force they call the soul of the world, and, looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom, they name it their God." And again he says, speaking of God's care, "Quis enim potest—quam existimet a deo se curari—non et dies, et noctes divinum numen horrere?"[334] "Who is there, when he thinks that a God is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his divine majesty?" As to man's duty to his neighbor, a subject as to which Pagans before and even after the time of Cicero seem to have had but vague ideas, the treatise De Officiis is full of it, as indeed is the whole course of his life. "Omne officium, quod ad conjunctionem hominum et ad societatem tuendam valet, anteponendum est illi officio, quod cognitione et scientia continetur."[335] "All duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object." His belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."[336] "That God within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission." As to justice, I need give no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works have been written to uphold.

This pagan had his ideas of God's governance of men, and of man's required obedience to his God, so specially implanted in his heart, that he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. To us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often the form of a stern duty. We have had it from our fathers and our mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent hands, still it has been given. It has been there with all its written laws, a thing to live by—if we choose. Rich and poor, the majority of us know at any rate the Lord's Prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus." "Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." The words to us seem to be quite commonplace. There is not a curate who might not put them into a sermon. But in Cicero's time they were new, and hitherto untaught. There was the old Greek philosopher's idea that the [Greek: to kalon]—the thing of beauty—was to be found in virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold of it. But there was no God connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was leather and prunella, that, from first to last. The man had to die and go, melancholy, across the Styx. But Cicero was the first to tell his brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. "Certum esse in caelo definitum locum ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur." "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." And then how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us—the very pith and marrow and inside meaning of Christ's teaching, by adapting which we have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. When we look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in spite of individual greatness and national honor. But Cicero had found it.—"That brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"[337] It is all contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to this passage. How different has been the world before that law was given to us and since! Even the existence of that law, though it be not obeyed, has softened the hearts of men.

If, as some think, it be the purport of Christ's religion to teach men to live after a godlike fashion rather than to worship God after a peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that Cicero was almost a Christian, even before the coming of Christ. If, as some think, an eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the disciples of Christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for the many, a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had Cicero anticipated much of Christ's doctrine. That he should have approached the mystical portion of our religion it would of course be absurd to suppose. But a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming the conduct of men. The divine birth, and the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Lord's Supper, are not necessary to teach a man to live with his brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. You shall live with a man from year's end to year's end, and shall not know his creed unless he tell you, or that you see him performing the acts of his worship; but you cannot live with him, and not know whether he live in accordance with Christ's teaching. And so it was with Cicero. Read his works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over the Sunday. The urbanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are all there. But you shall not find it to be so with Caesar, or Lucretius, or with Virgil. When you read his philosophical treatises it is as though you were discussing with some latter-day scholar the theories of Plato or of Epicurus. He does not talk of them as though he believed in them for his soul's guidance, nor do you expect it. All the interest that you have in the conversation would be lost were you to find such faith as that. You would avoid the man, as a pagan. The Stoic doctrine would so shock you, when brought out for real wear, as to make you feel yourself in the company of some mad Atheist—with a man for whose welfare, early or late in life, church bells had never been rung. But with a man who has his Plato simply by heart you can spend the long summer day in sweet conversation. So it is with Cicero. You lie down with him looking out upon the sea at Comae, or sit with him beneath the plane-tree of Crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine and the other. So Arcesilas may be supposed to have said, and so Carneades laid down the law. It was that and no more. But when he tells you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it, then he is in earnest.

We care in general but little for any teacher of religion who has not struggled to live up to his own teaching. Cicero has told us of his ideas of the Godhead, and has given us his theory as to those deeds by which a man may hope to achieve the heaven in which that God will reward with everlasting life those who have deserved such bliss. Love of country comes first with him. It behooves, at any rate, a man to be true to his country from first to last. And honesty and honor come next—that "honestum" which carries him to something beyond the mere integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen. Then family affection; then friendship; and then that constant love for our fellow-creatures which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us. Running through these there are a dozen smaller virtues, but each so mingled with the other as to have failed in obtaining a separate place—dignity, manliness, truth, mercy, long-suffering, forgiveness, and humanity.

Try him by these all round and see how he will come out of the fire. He so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely; that from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in Rome the great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart did not throb for it.

In the defence of Amerinus and in the prosecution of Verres, his object was to stop the proscriptions, to shame the bench, and to punish the plunderers of the provinces. In driving out Catiline the same strong feeling governed him. It was the same in Cilicia. The same patriotism drove him to follow Pompey to the seat of war. The same filled him with almost youthful energy when the final battle for the Republic came. It has been said of him that he began life as a Liberal in attacking Sulla, and that afterward he became a Conservative when he gained the Consulship; that he opposed Caesar, and then flattered him, and then rejoiced at his death. I think that they who have so accused him have hardly striven to read his character amidst the changes of the time. A Conservative he was always; but he wished to see that the things around him were worth conserving. He was always opposed to Caesar, whose genius and whose spirit were opposed to his own. But in order that something of the Republic might be preserved, it became necessary to bear with Caesar. For himself he would take nothing from Caesar, except permission to breathe Italian air. He flattered him, as was the Roman custom. He had to do that, or his presence would have been impossible—and he could always do something by his presence. As far as love of country went, which among virtues stood the first with him, he was pure and great. There was not a moment in his career in which the feeling was not in his heart—mixed indeed with personal ambition, as must be necessary, for how shall a man show his love for his country except by his desire to stand high in its counsels? To be called "Pater Patriae" by Cato was to his ears the sweetest music he had ever heard.

Let us compare his honesty with that of the times in which he lived. All the high rewards of the State were at his command, and he might so have taken them as to have been safer, firmer, more powerful, by taking them; but he took nothing. No gorgeous wealth from a Roman province stuck to his hands. We think of our Cavendishes, our Howards, and our Stanleys, and feel that there is nothing in such honesty as this. But the Cavendishes, the Howards, and the Stanleys of those days robbed with unblushing pertinacity. Caesar robbed so much that he put himself above all question of honesty. Where did he, who had been so greatly in debt before he went to Spain, get the million with which he bribed his adherents? Cicero neither bought nor sold. Twenty little stories have been told of him, not one with a grain of enduring truth to justify one of them. He borrowed, and he always paid; he lent, but was not always repaid. With such a voice to sell as his, a voice which carried with it the verdict of either guilt or innocence, what payments would it not have been worth the while of a Roman nobleman to make to him? No such payments, as far as we can tell, were ever made. He took a present of books from his friend Poetus, and asked another friend what "Cincius" would say to it? Men struggling to find him out, and not understanding his little joke, have said, "Lo! he has been paid for his work. He defended Poetus, and Poetus gave him books." "Did he defend Poetus?" you ask. "We surmise so, because he gave him books," they reply. I say that at any rate the fault should be brought home against him before it is implied from chance passages in his own letters.

Cicero's affection for his family gives us an entirely unfamiliar insight into Roman manners. There is a softness, a tenderness, an eagerness about it, such as would give a grace to the life of some English nobleman who had his heart garnered up for him at home, though his spirit was at work for his country. But we do not expect this from the Pompeys and Caesars and Catos of Rome, perhaps because we do not know them as we know Cicero. It is odd, however, that we should have no word of love for his boys, as to Pompey; no word of love for his daughter, as to Caesar. But Cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. All offences on their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed dishonesty, which was not to be forgiven. The ribaldry of Dio Cassius has polluted the story of his regard for Tullia; but in truth we know nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us more, than the profundity of his grief. His readiness to forgive his brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety to take them back to his affections, his inability to live without them, tell of his tenderness.

His friendship for Atticus was of the same calibre. It was of that nature that it could not only bear hard words but could occasionally give them without fear of a breach. Can any man read the records of this long affection without wishing that he might be blessed with such a friendship? As to that love of our fellow-creatures which comes not from personal liking for them, but from that kindness of heart toward all mankind which has been the fruit to us of Christ's teaching, that desire to do unto others as they should do unto us, his whole life is an example. When Quaestor in Sicily, his chief duty was to send home corn. He did send it home, but so that he hurt none of those in Sicily by whom it was supplied. In his letter to his brother as to his government of Asia Minor, the lessons which he teaches are to the same effect. When he was in Cilicia, it was the same from first to last. He would not take a penny from the poor provincials—not even what he might have taken by law. "Non modo non faenum, sed ne ligna quidem!" Where did he get the idea that it was a good thing not to torment the poor wretches that were subjected to his power? Why was it that he took such an un-Roman pleasure in making the people happy?

Cicero, no doubt, was a pagan, and in accordance with the rules prevailing in such matters it would be necessary to describe him of that religion, if his religion be brought under discussion. But he has not written as pagans wrote, nor did he act as they acted. The educated intelligence of the Roman world had come to repudiate their gods, and to create for itself a belief—in nothing. It was easier for a thoughtful man, and pleasanter for a thoughtless, to believe in nothing, than in Jupiter and Juno, in Venus and in Mars. But when there came a man of intellect so excellent as to find, when rejecting the gods of his country, that there existed for him the necessity of a real God, and to recognize it as a fact that the intercourse of man with man demanded it, we must not, in recording the facts of his life, pass over his religion as though it were simple chance. Christ came to us, and we do not need another teacher. Christ came to us so perfected in manhood as to be free from blemish. Cicero did not come at all as a teacher. He never recognized the possibility of teaching men a religion, or probably the necessity. But he did see the way to so much of the truth as to perceive that there was a heaven; that the way to it must be found in good deeds here on earth; and that the good deeds required of him would be kindness to others. Therefore I have written this final chapter on his religion.



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II.

APPENDIX.

(See page 308, Vol. II.)

SCIPIO'S DREAM.

Scipio the younger had gone, when in Africa, to meet Massinissa, and had there discussed with the African king the character of his nominal grandfather, for he was in fact the son of Paulus AEmilius and had been adopted by the son of the great conqueror at Zama. He had then retired to rest, and had dreamed a dream, and is thus made to tell it. Africanus the elder had shown himself to him greater than life, and had spoken to him in the following words: "Approach," said the ghost; "approach in spirit, and cease to fear, and write down on the tablets of your memory this that I shall tell you.

"Look down upon that city. I compelled it to obey Rome. It now seeks to renew its former strife, and you, but yet new to arms, have come to conquer it." Then from his starry heights he points to the once illustrious Carthage. "In twice twelve months that city you shall conquer, and shall have earned for yourself that name which by descent has become yours. Destroyer of Carthage, triumphant Censor, ambassador from Rome to Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you shall be chosen Consul a second time, though absent and, having besieged Numantia, shall bring a great war to an end. Then will the whole State turn to you and to your name. The Senate, the citizens, the allies will expect you. In one word, it will be to you as Dictator that the Republic will look to be saved from the crimes of your relatives.

"But that you may be always alive to protect the Republic, know this. There is in heaven a special place of bliss for those who have served their country. To that God who looks down upon the earth there is nothing dearer than men bound to each other by reverence for the laws."

"Then, frightened, I asked him whether he were still living, and my father Paulus, and others whom we believed to have departed. 'In truth,' he said, 'they live who have escaped from the bondage of the flesh. This which you call life is death. But behold Paulus your father.' Beholding him, I poured forth a world of tears, but he, embracing me, forbade me to weep.

"'Since this of yours is life, as my grandsire tells me,' I said, as soon as my tears allowed me to speak, 'why, O father most revered, do I delay here on earth, rather than haste to meet you?' 'It cannot be so,' he answered. 'Unless that God whose temple is around you everywhere shall have liberated you from the chains of the body, you cannot come to us. Men are begotten subject to his law, and inhabit the globe which is called the earth; and to them is given a soul from among the stars, perfect in their form and alive with heavenly instincts, which complete with wondrous speed their rapid courses. Wherefore, my son, by you and by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines, nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been given to you. You may not escape the duty which God has trusted to you. Live, my Scipio, and shine with piety and justice, as your grandfather did and I have done. It is your duty to your parents and to your relatives, but especially your duty to your country. There lies the road to heaven. By following that course shall you find your way to those who crowd with disembodied spirits the realm beneath your eyes.'

"Then did I behold that splendid circle of fire which you, after the Greeks, call the Milky-way, and looking out from thence could see that all things were beautiful and all wonderful. There were stars which we cannot see from hence, and others of tremendous, unsuspected size; and then those smaller ones nearest to us, which shine with a reflected light. But every star among them all loomed larger than our earth. That seemed so mean, that I was sorry to belong to so small an empire.

* * * * *

"As I gazed a sound struck my ears. 'What music is that,' said I, 'swelling so loudly and yet so sweet?'

"'It is that harmony of the stars,' he said, 'which the world creates by its own movement. Low and loud, base and treble, they clang together with unequal intervals, but each in time and tune. They could not work in silence, and nature demands that from one end of heaven to the other they shall be sonorous with a deep diapason. The far off give a loud treble twang. Those nearest to the moon sound low and base. The earth, the ninth in order, immovable upon its lowest seat, occupies the centre of the system. From the eight there come seven sounds, distinct among themselves, Venus and Mercury joining in one effort. In that number is the secret of all human affairs. Learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. Filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. What sense is duller? It is as when the Nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, become deaf.'

* * * * *

"'Then,' said Africanus, 'look and see how small are the habitations of men, how grand are those of the angels of light. What fame can you expect from men, or what glory? You see how they live in mean places—in small spots, lonely amid vast solitudes, and that they who inhabit them dwell so isolated that nothing can pass between them. Can you expect glory from them?

"'You behold this earth surrounded by zones. You see two of them, frozen from their poles, have been made solid with everlasting ice; and how the centre realm between them has been scorched by the sun's rays. Two, however, are fit for life. They who inhabit the southern, whose footsteps are opposed to ours, are a race of whom we know nothing. But see how small a part of this little earth is inhabited by us who are turned toward the north. For all the earth which you inhabit, wide and narrow, is but a small island surrounded by that sea which you call the great Atlantic Ocean—which, however large as you deem it, how small it is! Has your name or has mine been able, over this small morsel of the earth's surface, to ascend Mount Caucasus or to cross the Ganges? Who in the regions of the rising or setting sun has heard of our fame? Cut off these regions, distant but a hand's breadth, and see within what narrow borders will your reputation be spread! They who speak of you—for how short a time will their voices be heard?

"'Grant that man, unenvious, shall wish to hand down your fame to future ages, still there will come those storms of nature. The earth will be immersed in water and scorched with fire; a doom which in the course of ages must happen, and will deny to you any lasting glory. Will you be content that they who are to come only shall hear of you, when to those crowds of better men who have passed away your name shall be as nothing?

"'And remember too that no man's renown shall reach the duration of a year. Men call that space a year which they measure by the return of a single star to its old place. But when all the stars shall have come back, and shall have made their course across the heavens, then, then shall that truly be called a year. In this year how many are there of our ages contained. For as when Romulus died, and made his way here to these temples of the gods, the sun was seen by man to fade away, so will the sun again depart from the heavens, when the stars, having accomplished their spaces, shall have returned to their old abodes. Of this, the true year, not a twentieth part has been as yet consumed. If, then, you despair of reaching this abode, which all of true excellence strive to approach, what glory is there to be gained? When gained, it will not last the space of one year. Look then aloft, my son, and fix your eyes upon this eternal home. Despise all vulgar fame, nor place your hopes on human rewards. Let Virtue by her own charms lead you on to true glory. Let men talk of you—for talk they will. Man's talk of man is small in its space, and short-lived in its time. It dies with a generation and is forgotten by posterity.'

"When he had spoken I thus answered him: 'Africanus,' I said, 'I indeed have hitherto endeavored to find a road to heaven, following your example and my father's; but now, for so great a reward, will I struggle on more bravely.' 'Struggle on,' he replied, 'and know this—not that thou art mortal but only this thy body. This frail form is not thyself. It is the mind, invisible, and not a shape at which a man may point with his fingers. Know thyself to be a god. To be strong in purpose and in mind; to remember to provide and to rule; to restrain and to move the body it is placed over, as the great God does the world—that is to be a god. And as the God who moves this mortal world is eternal, so does an eternal soul govern this frail body.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As I shall explain a few pages farther on, four of these speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious.

[2] See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, and extravagant compositions."

[3] Pro Cn. Plancio, ca. xxx.: "Nonne etiam illa testis est oratio quae est a me prima habita in Senatu. * * * Recitetur oratio, quae propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est."

[4] Quintilian, lib. xi., ca. 1, who as a critic worshipped Cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been up to his time the feeling of the Roman world as to Cicero's self-praise: "Reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter Cicero."

[5] Ad Att., lib. iv., 2. He recommends that the speech should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus gives further proof that we still here have his own words. When so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an oration so prepared would remain extant.

[6] I had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v., chap. viii., of Mommsen's History.

[7] "Politique des Romains dans la religion;" a treatise which was read by its author to certain students at Bordeaux. It was intended as a preface to a longer work.

[8] Ad Div., lib. i., 2.

[9] Ad Div., lib. i., 5: "Nosti hominis tarditatem, et taciturnitatem."

[10] Ad Quintum Fratrem, lib. ii., 3.

[11] Ibid., lib. ii., 6.

[12] Ad Att., lib. iv., 5.

[13] Ad Div., lib. v., 12.

[14] Very early in the history of Rome it was found expedient to steal an Etruscan soothsayer for the reading of these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier, who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (Livy, v., 15). We are naively told by the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. On a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: Crows built in the temple of Juno. A green tree took fire. The waters of Mantua became bloody. In one place it rained chalk in another fire. Lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. An ox spoke in Sicily. A precocious baby cried out "Io triumphe" before it was born. At Spoletum a woman became a man. An altar was seen in the heavens. A ghostly band of armed men appeared in the Janiculum (Livy, xxiv., 10). On such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked sons of Eli.

Even Horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the gods—certainly as though he thought that public morals would be improved by renewed attention to them:

Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Romane, donec templa refeceris.—Od., lib. iii., 6.

[15] See the Preface by M. Guerault to his translation of this oration, De Aruspium Responsis.

[16] Ca. ix.: "Who is there so mad that when he looks up to the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung from chance—things so wonderful that the most intelligent among us do not understand their motions?"

[17] Ca. xxviii.: "Quae in tempestate saeva quieta est, et lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque haeret in patria, splendetque per se semper, neque alienis unquam sordibus obsolescit." I regard this as a perfect allocution of words in regard to the arrangement both for the ear and for the intellect.

[18] Ca. xliv.: "There have always been two kinds of men who have busied themselves in the State, and have struggled to be each the most prominent. Of these, one set have endeavored to be regarded as 'populares,' friends of the people; the other to be and to be considered as 'optimates,' the most trustworthy. They who did and said what could please the people were 'populares,' but they who so carried themselves as to satisfy every best citizen, they were 'optimates.'" Cicero, in his definition, no doubt begs the question; but to do so was his object.

[19] Mommsen, lib. v., chap. viii., in one of his notes, says that this oration as to the provinces was the very "palinodia" respecting which Cicero wrote to Atticus. The subject discussed was no doubt the same. What authority the historian has found for his statement I do not know; but no writer is generally more correct.

[20] De Prov. Cons., ca. viii.

[21] Ca. xiii.

[22] Ca. xiv.

[23] Ca. xviii.

[24] Pro C. Balbo, ca. vii.

[25] Ibid., ca. xiii.

[26] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ca. vii.

[27] There was no covenant, no bond of service, no master's authority, probably no discipline; but the eager pupil was taught to look upon the anxious tutor with love, respect, and faith.

[28] In Pisonem, xxvii. Even in Cicero's words as used here there is a touch of irony, though we cannot but imagine that at this time he was anxious to stand well with Pompey. "There are coming on the games, the most costly and the most magnificent ever known in the memory of man; such as there never were before, and, as far as I can see, never will be again." "Show yourself there if you dare!"—he goes on to say, addressing the wretched Piso.

[29] Plutarch's Life of Pompey: "Crassus upon the expiration of his Consulship repaired to his province. Pompey, remaining in Rome, opened his theatre." But Plutarch, no doubt, was wrong.

[30] We may imagine what was the standing of the family from the address which Horace made to certain members of it in the time of Augustus. "Credite Pisones," De Arte Poetica. The Pisones so addressed were the grandsons of Cicero's victim.

[31] Quin., ix., 4: "Pro dii immortales, quis hic illuxit dies!" The critic quotes it as being vicious in sound, and running into metre, which was considered a great fault in Roman prose, as it is also in English. Our ears, however, are hardly fine enough to catch the iambic twang of which Quintilian complains.

[32] Ca. xviii., xx., xxii.

[33] "Quae potest homini esse polito delectatio," Ad Div., vii., 1. These words have in subsequent years been employed as an argument against all out-of-door sports, with disregard of the fact that they were used by Cicero as to an amusement in which the spectators were merely looking on, taking no active part in deeds either of danger or of skill.—Fortnightly Review, October, 1869, The Morality of Field Sports.

[34] Ad Att., lib. iv., 16.

[35] Ad Div., ii., 8.

[36] See the letter, Ad Quin. Frat., lib. iii., 2: "Homo undique actus, et quam a me maxime vulneraretur, non tulit, et me trementi voce exulem appellavit." The whole scene is described.

[37] Ad Fam., v., 8.

[38] Ad Quin. Frat., ii., 12.

[39] Ad Att., iv., 15.

[40] Val. Max., lib. iv., ca. ii., 4.

[41] Horace, Sat., lib. ii., 1:

HOR. "Trebati, Quid faciam praescribe."—TREB. "Quiescas."—HOR. "Ne faciam, inquis, Omnino versus?"—TREB. "Aio."—HOR. "Peream male si non Optimum erat."

Trebatius became a noted jurisconsult in the time of Augustus, and wrote treatises.

[42] Ca. iv.: "Male judicavit populus. At judicavit. Non debuit, at potuit."

[43] Ca. vi.: "Servare necesse est gradus. Cedat consulari generi praetorium, nec contendat cum praetorio equester locus."

[44] Ca. xix.

[45] Ad Fam., i., 9.

[46] Ca. xi.

[47] Ad Fam., lib. ii., 6: "Dux nobis et auctor opus est et eorum ventorum quos proposui moderator quidem et quasi gubernator."

[48] Mommsen, book v., chap. viii. According to the historian, Clodius was the Achilles, and Milo the Hector. In this quarrel Hector killed Achilles.

[49] Ad Att., lib. iv., 16.

[50] Ad Fam., lib. vii., 7.

[51] Vell. Pat., ii., 47.

[52] We remember the scorn with which Horace has treated the Roman soldier whom he supposes to have consented to accept both his life and a spouse from the Parthian conqueror:

Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara Turpis maritus vixit?—Ode iii., 5.

It has been calculated that of 40,000 legionaries half were killed, 10,000 returned to Syria, and that 10,000 settled themselves in the country we now know as Merv.

[53] Ad Quin. Frat., lib. ii., 4, and Ad Att., lib. iv., 5.

[54] "Interrogatio de aere alieno Milonis."

[55] Livy, Epitome, 107: "Absens et solus quod nulli alii umquam contigit."

[56] The Curia Hostilia, in which the Senate sat frequently, though by no means always.

[57] Ca. ii.

[58] Ca. v.

[59] Ca. xx., xxi.

[60] Ca. xxix.

[61] Ca. xxxvii.: "O me miserum! O me infelicem! revocare tu me in patriam, Milo, potuisti per hos. Ego te in patria per eosdem retinere non potero!" "By the aid of such citizens as these," he says, pointing to the judges' bench, "you were able to restore me to my country. Shall I not by the same aid restore you to yours?"

[62] Ad Fam., lib. xiii., 75.

[63] Ad Fam., lib. vii., 2: "In primisque me delectavit tantum studium bonorum in me exstitisse contra incredibilem contentionem clarissimi et potentissimi viri."

[64] Caesar, a Sketch, p. 336.

[65] Ibid., p. 341.

[66] He reached Laodicea, an inland town, on July 31st, B.C. 51, and embarked, as far as we can tell, at Sida on August 3d, B.C. 50. It may be doubted whether any Roman governor got to the end of his year's government with greater despatch.

[67] No exemption was made for Caesar in Pompey's law as it originally stood; and after the law had been inscribed as usual on a bronze tablet it was altered at Pompey's order, so as to give Caesar the privilege. Pompey pleaded forgetfulness, but the change was probably forced upon him by Caesar's influence.—Suetonius, J. Caesar, xxviii.