Long afterward he tells us of a singular dream which seems to have given him some little comfort at this time. "I had lain awake for the greater part of the night, but fell into a heavy slumber toward morning. I was at the point of starting, but my host would not allow me to be waked. At seven o'clock, however, I rose, and then told my friend this dream. I seemed to myself to be wandering disconsolately in some lonely place when the great Marius met me. His lictors were with him, theirfasceswreathed with bays. 'Why are you so sad?' he asked me. 'I have been wrongly banished from my country,' I answered. He then took my hand, and turning to the nearest lictor, bade him lead me to his own Memorial Hall. 'There,' he said, 'you will be safe.'" His friend declared that this dream portended a speedy and honorable return. Curiously enough it was in the Hall of Marius that the decree repealing the sentence of banishment was actually proposed and passed.
For the most part he was miserably unhappy and depressed. In letter after letter he poured out to Atticus his fears, his complaints, and his wants. Why had he listened to the bad advice of his friends? He had wished to stay at Rome and fight out the quarrel. Why had Hortensius advised him to retire from the struggle? It must have been jealousy, jealousy of one whom he knew to be a more successful advocate than himself. Why had Atticus hindered his purposes when he thought of putting an end to all his trouble by killing himself? Why were all his friends, why was Atticus himself, so lukewarm in his cause? In one letter he artfully reproaches himself for his neglect of his friends in times past as the cause of their present indifference. But the reproach is of course really leveled at them.
"If ever," he writes in one letter, "fortune shall restore me to my country and to you, I will certainly take care that of all my friends; none shall be more rejoiced than you. All my duty to you, a duty which I must own in time past was sadly wanting, shall be so faithfully discharged that you will feel that I have been restored to you quite as much as I shall have been restored to my brother and to my children. For whatever I have wronged you, and indeed because I have wronged you, pardon me; for I have wronged myself far worse. I do not write this as not knowing that you feel the very greatest trouble on my account; but if you were and had been under the obligation to love me, as much as you actually do love me and have loved me, you never would have allowed me to lack the wise advice which you have so abundantly at your command." This is perhaps a little obscure, as it is certainly somewhat subtle; but Cicero means that Atticus had not interested himself in his affairs as much as he would have felt bound to do, if he (Cicero) had been less remiss in the duties of friendship.
To another correspondent, his wife Terentia, he poured out his heart yet more freely. "Don't think," he writes in one of his letters to her, "that I write longer letters to others than to you, except indeed I have received some long communication which I feel I must answer. Indeed I have nothing to write; and in these days I find it the most difficult of duties. Writing to you and to my dearest Tullia I never can do without floods of tears. I see you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to be completely happy. I might have made you so. I could have made you had I been less timid…. My heart's delight, my deepest regret is to think that you, to whom all used to look for help, should now be involved in such sorrow, such distress! and that I should be to blame, I who saved others only to ruin myself and mine!… As for expenditure, let others, who can if they will, undertake it. And if you love me, don't distress your health, which is already, I know, feeble. All night, all day I think of you. I see that you are undertaking all imaginable labors on my behalf; I only fear that you will not be able to endure them. I am aware that all depends upon you. If we are to succeed in what you wish and are now trying to compass, take care of your health." In another he writes: "Unhappy that I am! to think that one so virtuous, so loyal, so honest, so kind, should be so afflicted, and all on my account. And my dearest Tullia, too, that she should be so unhappy about a father in whom she once found so much happiness. And what shall I say about my dear little Cicero? That he should feel the bitterest sorrow and trouble as soon as he began to feel any thing! If all this was really, as you write, the work of fate, I could endure it a little more easily; but it was all brought about by my fault, thinking that I was loved by men who really were jealous of me, and keeping aloof from others who were really on my side."
This is, perhaps, a good opportunity of saying something about the lady herself. Who she was we do not certainly know. There was a family of the name in Rome, the most notable of whom perhaps was the Terentius Varro[7] whose rashness brought upon his country the terrible disaster of the defeat of Cannae. She had a half-sister, probably older than herself, of the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. She brought her husband, to whom she was married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about three thousand five hundred pounds. We have seen how affectionately Cicero writes to her during his exile. She is his darling, his only hope; the mere thought of her makes his eyes overflow with tears. And she seems to have deserved all his praise and affection, exerting herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to impoverish herself to find him the means that he needed. Four letters of this period have been preserved. There are twenty others belonging to the years 50-47 B.C. The earlier of these are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about to return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), she is still the most amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness, yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to happen. He excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no one by whom to send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You are glad," he writes after the battle of Pharsalia had dashed his hopes, "that I have got back safe to Italy; I hope that you may continue to be glad." "Don't think of coming," he goes on, "it is a long journey and not very safe; and I don't see what good you would do if you should come." In another letter he gives directions about getting ready his house at Tusculum for the reception of guests. The letter is dated on the first of October, and he and his friends would come probably to stay several days, on the seventh. If there was not a tub in the bath-room, one must be provided. The greeting is of the briefest and most formal. Meanwhile we know from what he writes to Atticus that he was greatly dissatisfied with the lady's conduct. Money matters were at the bottom of their quarrel. She was careless, he thinks, and extravagant. Though he was a rich man, yet he was often in need of ready money, and Terentia could not be relied upon to help him. His vexation takes form in a letter to Atticus. "As to Terentia—there are other things without number of which I don't speak—what can be worse than this? You wrote to her to send me bills for one hundred and eight pounds; for there was so much money left in hand. She sent me just ninety pounds, and added a note that this was all. If she was capable of abstracting such a trifle from so small a sum, don't you see what she would have done in matters of real importance?" The quarrel ended in a divorce, a thing far more common than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a painful and discreditable end to an union which had lasted for more than five-and-twenty years. Terentia long survived her husband, dying in extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a hundred and three years), far on in the reign of Augustus; and after a considerable experience of matrimony, if it be true that she married three or even, according to some accounts, four other husbands.
[Footnote 7: Another of the same name was an eminent man of letters ofCicero's own time.]
Terentia's daughter, Tullia, had a short and unhappy life. She was born, it would seem, about 79 B.C., and married when fifteen or sixteen to a young Roman noble, Piso Frugi by name. "The best, the most loyal of men," Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and Rome lost, if his father-in-law's praises of him may be trusted, an orator of the very highest promise. "I never knew any one who surpassed my son-in-law, Piso, in zeal, in industry, and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next year she married a certain Crassipes, a very shadowy person indeed. We know nothing of what manner of man he was, or what became of him. But in 50 B.C. Tullia was free to marry again. Her third venture was of her own or her mother's contriving. Her father was at his government in Cilicia, and he hears of the affair with surprise. "Believe me," he writes to Atticus, "nothing could have been less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had made proposals to me, and I had sent friends to discuss the matter with the ladies. But when they got to Rome the betrothal had taken place. This, I hope, will be a better match. I fancy the ladies were very much pleased with the young gentleman's complaisance and courtesy, but do not look for the thorns." The "thorns," however, were there. A friend who kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, told him as much, though he wraps up his meaning in the usual polite phrases. "I congratulate you," he writes, "on your alliance with one who is, I really believe, a worthy fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If there have been some things in which he has not done justice to himself, these are now past and gone; any traces that may be left will soon, I am sure, disappear, thanks to your good influence and to his respect for Tullia. He is not offensive in his errors, and does not seem slow to appreciate better things." Tullia, however, was not more successful than other wives in reforming her husband. Her marriage seems to have been unhappy almost from the beginning. It was brought to an end by a divorce after about three years. Shortly afterward Tullia, who could have been little more than thirty, died, to the inconsolable grief of her father. "My grief," he writes to Atticus, "passes all consolation. Yet I have done what certainly no one ever did before, written a treatise for my own consolation. (I will send you the book if the copyists have finished it.) And indeed there is nothing like it. I write day after day, and all day long; not that I can get any good from it, but it occupies me a little, not much indeed; the violence of my grief is too much for me. Still I am soothed, and do my best to compose, not my feelings, indeed, but, if I can, my face." And again: "Next to your company nothing is more agreeable to me than solitude. Then all my converse is with books; yet this is interrupted by tears; these I resist as well as I can; but at present I fail." At one time he thought of finding comfort in unusual honors to the dead. He would build a shrine of which Tullia should be the deity. "I am determined," he writes, "on building the shrine. From this purpose I cannot be turned … Unless the building be finished this summer, I shall hold myself guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some columns of marble of Chios for the building. He discusses the question of the site. Some gardens near Rome strike him as a convenient place. It must be conveniently near if it is to attract worshipers. "I would sooner sell or mortgage, or live on little, than be disappointed." Then he thought that he would build it on the grounds of his villa. In the end he did not build it at all. Perhaps the best memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter in which one of Cicero's friends seeks to console him for his loss. "She had lived," he says, "as long as life was worth living, as long as the republic stood." One passage, though it has often been quoted before, I must give. "I wish to tell you of something which brought me no small consolation, hoping that it may also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On my way back from Asia, as I was sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina, before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth; towns all of them that were once at the very height of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes. I began thus to reflect: 'Strange! do we, poor creatures of a day, bear it ill if one of us perish of disease, or are slain with the sword, we whose life is bound to be short, while the dead bodies of so many lie here inclosed within so small a compass?"
But I am anticipating. When Cicero was in exile the republic had yet some years to live; and there were hopes that it might survive altogether. The exile's prospects, too, began to brighten. Caesar had reached for the present the height of his ambition, and was busy with his province of Gaul. Pompey had quarreled with Clodius, whom he found to be utterly unmanageable. And Cicero's friend, one Milo, of whom I shall have to say more hereafter, being the most active of them all, never ceased to agitate for his recall. It would be tedious to recall all the vicissitudes of the struggle. As early as May the Senate passed a resolution repealing the decree of banishment, the news of it having caused an outburst of joy in the city. Accius' drama of "Telamon" was being acted at the time, and the audience applauded each senator as he entered the Senate, and rose from their places to greet the consul as he came in. But the enthusiasm rose to its height when the actor who was playing the part of Telamon (whose banishment from his country formed part of the action of the drama) declaimed with significant emphasis the following lines—
What! he—the man who still with steadfast heartStrove for his country, who in perilous daysSpared neither life nor fortune, and bestowedMost help when most she needed; who surpassedIn wit all other men. Father of Gods,Hishouse—yea,his!—I saw devoured by fire;And ye, ungrateful, foolish, without thoughtOf all wherein he served you, could endureTo see him banished; yea, and to this hourSuffer that he prolong an exile's day.
Still obstacle after obstacle was interposed, and it was not till the fourth of August that the decree passed through all its stages and became finally law. Cicero, who had been waiting at the point of Greece nearest to Italy, to take the earliest opportunity of returning, had been informed by his friends that he might now safely embark. He sailed accordingly on the very day when the decree was passed, and reached Brundisium on the morrow. It happened to be the day on which the foundation of the colony was celebrated, and also the birthday of Tullia, who had come so far to meet her father. The coincidence was observed by the towns-people with delight. On the eighth the welcome news came from Rome, and Cicero set out for the capital. "All along my road the cities of Italy kept the day of my arrival as a holiday; the ways were crowded with the deputations which were sent from all parts to congratulate me. When I approached the city, my coming was honored by such a concourse of men, such a heartiness of congratulation as are past believing. The way from the gates, the ascent of the Capitol, the return to my home made such a spectacle that in the very height of my joy I could not but be sorry that a people so grateful had yet been so unhappy, so cruelly oppressed." "That day," he said emphatically, "that day was as good as immortality to me."
Clodius, who had taken the lead in driving Cicero into exile, was of course furious at his return, and continued to show him an unceasing hostility. His first care was to hinder the restoration of his property. He had contrived to involve part at least of this in a considerable difficulty. Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill had been pulled down and the area dedicated—so at least Clodius alleged—to the Goddess of Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred forever; it could not be restored. The question was, Was it true? This question was referred to the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. Cicero argued the case before them, and they pronounced in his favor. It was now for the Senate to act. A motion was made that the site should be restored. Clodius opposed it, talking for three hours, till the anger of his audience compelled him to bring his speech to an end. One of the tribunes in his interest put his veto on the motion, but was frightened into withdrawing it. But Clodius was not at the end of his resources. A set of armed ruffians under his command drove out the workmen who were rebuilding the house. A few days afterwards he made an attack on Cicero himself. He was wounded in the struggle which followed, and might, says Cicero, have been killed, "but," he adds, "I am tired of surgery."
Pompey was another object of his hatred, for he knew perfectly well that without his consent his great enemy would not have been restored. Cicero gives a lively picture of a scene in the Senate, in which this hatred was vigorously expressed. "Pompey spoke, or rather wished to speak; for, as soon as he rose, Clodius' hired ruffians shouted at him. All through his speech it was the same; he was interrupted not only by shouts but by abuse and curses. When he came to an end—and it must be allowed that he showed courage; nothing frightened him: he said his say and sometimes even obtained silence—then Clodius rose. He was met with such an uproar from our side (for we had determined to give him back as good as he had given) that he could not collect his thoughts, control his speech, or command his countenance. This went on from three o'clock, when Pompey had only just finished his speech, till five. Meanwhile every kind of abuse, even to ribald verses, were shouted out against Clodius and his sister. Pale with fury he turned to his followers, and in the midst of the uproar asked them, 'Who is it that is killing the people with hunger?' 'Pompey,' they answered. 'Who wants to go to Alexandria?' 'Pompey,' they answered again. 'And whom doyouwant to go?' 'Crassus,' they said. About six o'clock the party of Clodius began, at some given signal, it seemed, to spit at our side. Our rage now burst out. They tried to drive us from our place, and we made a charge. The partisans of Clodius fled. He was thrust down from the hustings. I then made my escape, lest any thing worse should happen."
A third enemy, and one whom Clodius was destined to find more dangerous than either Cicero or Pompey, was Annius Milo. Milo was on the mother's side of an old Latin family. The name by which he was commonly known was probably a nickname given him, it may be, in joking allusion to the Milo of Crotona, the famous wrestler, who carried an ox on his shoulders and ate it in a single day. For Milo was a great fighting man, a well-born gladiator, one who was for cutting all political knots with the sword. He was ambitious, and aspired to the consulship; but the dignity was scarcely within his reach. His family was not of the highest; he was deeply in debt; he had neither eloquence nor ability. His best chance, therefore, was to attach himself to some powerful friend whose gratitude he might earn. Just such a friend he seemed to find in Cicero. He saw the great orator's fortunes were very low, but they would probably rise again, and he would be grateful to those who helped him in his adversity. Hence Milo's exertions to bring him back from banishment and hence the quarrel with Clodius. The two men had their bands of hired, or rather purchased, ruffians about the city, and came into frequent collisions. Each indicted the other for murderous assault. Each publicly declared that he should take the earliest chance of putting his I enemy to death. What was probably a chance collision brought matters to a crisis.
On the twentieth of January Milo left Rome to pay a visit to Lanuvium, a Latin town on the Appian road, and about fifteen miles south of Rome. It was a small town, much decayed from the old days when its revolt against Rome was thought to be a thing worth recording; but it contained one of the most famous temples of Italy, the dwelling of Juno the Preserver, whose image, in its goat-skin robe, its quaint, turned-up shoes, with spear in one hand and small shield in the other, had a peculiar sacredness. Milo was a native of the place, and its dictator; and it was his duty on this occasion to nominate the chief priest of the temple. He had been at a meeting of the Senate in the morning, and had remained till the close of the sitting. Returning home he had changed his dress and shoes, waited a while, as men have to wait, says Cicero, while his wife was getting ready, and then started. He traveled in a carriage his wife and a friend. Several maid-servants and a troop of singing boys belonging to his wife followed. Much was made of this great retinue of women and boys, as proving that Milo had no intention when he started of coming to blows with his great enemy. But he had also with him a number of armed slaves and several gladiators, among whom were two famous masters of their art. He had traveled about ten miles when he met Clodius, who had been delivering an address to the town council of Aricia, another Latin town, nearer to the capital than Lanuvium, and was now returning to Rome. He was on horseback, contrary to his usual custom, which was to use a carriage, and he had with him thirty slaves armed with swords. No person of distinction thought of traveling without such attendants.
The two men passed each other, but Milo's gladiators fell out with the slaves of Clodius. Clodius rode back and accosted the aggressors in a threatening manner. One of the gladiators replied by wounding him in the shoulder with his sword. A number of Milo's slaves hastened back to assist their comrades. The party of Clodius was overpowered, and Clodius himself, exhausted by his wound, took refuge in a roadside tavern, which probably marked the first stage out of Rome. Milo, thinking that now he had gone so far he might go a little further and rid himself of his enemy forever, ordered his slaves to drag Clodius from his refuge and finish him. This was promptly done. Cicero indeed declared that the slaves did it without orders, and in the belief that their master had been killed. But Rome believed the other story. The corpse of the dead man lay for some time upon the road uncared for, for all his attendants had either fallen in the struggle or had crept into hiding-places. Then a Roman gentleman on his way to the city ordered it to be put into his litter and taken to Rome, where it arrived just before nightfall. It was laid out in state in the hall of his mansion, and his widow stood by showing the wounds to the sympathizing crowd which thronged to see his remains. Next day the excitement increased. Two of the tribunes suggested that the body should be carried into the market-place, and placed on the hustings from which the speaker commonly addressed the people. Then it was resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, a notary, and a client of the family, to do it a signal honor. "Thou shalt not bury or burn a man within the city" was one of the oldest of Roman laws. Clodius, the favorite of the people, should be an exception. His body was carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual meeting-place of the Senate. The benches, the tables, the platform from which the orators spoke, the wooden tablets on which the clerks wrote their notes, were collected to make a funeral pile on which the corpse was to be consumed. The hall caught fire, and was burned to the ground; another large building adjoining it, the Hall of Porcius, narrowly escaped the same fate. The mob attacked several houses, that of Milo among them, and was with difficulty repulsed.
It had been expected that Milo would voluntarily go into exile; but the burning of the senate-house caused a strong reaction of feeling of which he took advantage. He returned to Rome, and provided to canvass for the consulship, making a present in money (which may be reckoned at five-and-twenty shillings) to every voter. The city was in a continual uproar; though the time for the new consuls to enter on their office was long past, they had not even been elected, nor was there any prospect, such was the violence of the rival candidates, of their being so. At last the Senate had recourse to the only man who seemed able to deal with the situation, and appointed Pompey sole consul. Pompey proposed to institute for the trial of Milo's case a special court with a special form of procedure. The limits of the time which it was to occupy were strictly laid down. Three days were to be given to the examination of witnesses, one to the speeches of counsel, the prosecution being allowed two hours only, the defense three. After a vain resistance on the part of Milo's friends, the proposal was carried, Pompey threatening to use force if necessary. Popular feeling now set very strongly against the accused. Pompey proclaimed that he went in fear of his life from his violence; refused to appear in the Senate lest he should be assassinated, and even left his house to live in his gardens, which could be more effectually guarded by soldiers. In the Senate Milo was accused of having arms under his clothing, a charge which he had to disprove by lifting up his under garment. Next a freedman came forward, and declared that he and four others had actually seen the murder of Clodius, and that having mentioned the fact, they had been seized and shut up for two months in Milo's counting-house. Finally a sheriff's officer, if we may so call him, deposed that another important witness, one of Milo's slaves, had been forcibly taken out of his hands by the partisans of the accused.
On the eighth of April the trial was begun. The first witness called was a friend who had been with Clodius on the day of his death. His evidence made the case look very dark against Milo, and the counsel who was to cross-examine him on behalf of the accused was received with such angry cries that he had to take refuge on the bench with the presiding judge. Milo was obliged to ask for the same protection.
Pompey resolved that better order should be kept for the future, and occupied all the approaches to the court with troops. The rest of the witnesses were heard and cross-examined without interruption. April 11th was the last day of the trial. Three speeches were delivered for the prosecution; for the defense one only, and that by Cicero. It had been suggested that he should take the bold line of arguing that Clodius was a traitor, and that the citizen who slew him had deserved well of his country. But he judged it better to follow another course, and to show that Clodius had been the aggressor, having deliberately laid an ambush for Milo, of whose meditated journey to Lanuvium he was of course aware. Unfortunately for his client the case broke down. Milo had evidently left Rome and the conflict had happened much earlier than was said, because the body of the murdered man had reached the capital not later than five o'clock in the afternoon. This disproved the assertion that Clodius had loitered on his way back to Rome till the growing darkness gave him an opportunity of attacking his adversaries. Then it came out that Milo had had in his retinue, besides the women and boys, a number of fighting men. Finally there was the damning fact, established, it would seem, by competent witnesses, that Clodius had been dragged from his hiding-place and put to death. Cicero too lost his presence of mind. The sight of the city, in which all the shops were shut in expectation of a riot, the presence of the soldiers in court, and the clamor of a mob furiously hostile to the accused and his advocate, confounded him, and he spoke feebly and hesitatingly. The admirable oration which has come down to us, and professes to have been delivered on this occasion, was really written afterwards. The jury, which was allowed by common consent to have been one of the best ever assembled, gave a verdict of guilty. Milo went into banishment at Marseilles—a punishment which he seems to have borne very easily, if it is true that when Cicero excused himself for the want of courage which had marred the effect of his defense, he answered, "It was all for the best; if you had spoken better I should never have tasted these admirable Marseilles mullets."
Naturally he tired of the mullets before long. When Caesar had made himself master of Rome, he hoped to be recalled from banishment. But Caesar did not want him, and preferred to have him where he was. Enraged at this treatment, he came over to Italy and attempted to raise an insurrection in favor of Pompey. The troops whom he endeavored to corrupt refused to follow him. He retreated with his few followers into the extreme south of the peninsula, and was there killed.
"From his earliest years," so runs the character that has come down to us of Cato, "he was resolute to obstinacy. Flattery met with a rough repulse, and threats with resistance. He never laughed, and his smile was of the slightest. Not easily provoked, his anger, once roused, was implacable. He learned but slowly, but never forgot a thing once acquired; he was obedient to his teachers, but wanted to know the reason of every thing." The stories told of his boyhood bear out this character. Here is one of them. His tutor took him to Sulla's house. It was in the evil days of the Proscription, and there were signs of the bloody work that was going on. "Why does no one kill this man?" he asked his teacher. "Because, my son, they fear him more than they hate him," was the answer. "Why then," was the rejoinder, "have you not given me a sword that I may set my country free?" The tutor, as it may be supposed, carried him off in haste.
Like most young Romans he began life as a soldier, and won golden opinions not only by his courage, which indeed was common enough in a nation that conquered the world, but by his temperance and diligent performance of duty. His time of service ended, he set out on his travels, accepting an invitation from the tributary king of Galatia, who happened to be an old friend of the family, to visit him. We get an interesting little picture of a Roman of the upper class on a tour. "At dawn he would send on a baker and a cook to the place which he intended to visit. These would enter the town in a most unpretending fashion, and if their master did not happen to have a friend or acquaintance in the place, would betake themselves to an inn, and there prepare for their master's accommodation without troubling any one. It was only when there was no inn that they went to the magistrates and asked for entertainment; and they were always content with what was assigned. Often they met with but scanty welcome and attention, not enforcing their demands with the customary threats, so that Cato on his arrival found nothing prepared. Nor did their master create a more favorable impression, sitting as he did quietly on his luggage, and seeming to accept the situation. Sometimes, however, he would send for the town authorities and say, "You had best give up these mean ways, my inhospitable friends; you won't find that all your visitors are Catos." Once at least he found himself, as he thought, magnificently received. Approaching Antioch, he found the road lined on either side with troops of spectators. The men stood in one company, the boys in another. Every body was in holiday dress. Some—these were the magistrates and priests—wore white robes and garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that all these preparations were intended for himself, was annoyed that his servants had not prevented them. But he was soon undeceived. An old man ran out from the crowd, and without so much as greeting the new comer, cried, "Where did you leave Demetrius? When will he come?" Demetrius was Pompey's freedman, and had some of his master's greatness reflected on him. Cato could only turn away muttering, "Wretched place!"
Returning to Rome he went through the usual course of honors, always discharging his duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and probably, as long as he filled a subordinate place, with great success. It was when statesmanship was wanted that he began to fail.
In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline Cato stood firmly by Cicero, supporting the proposition to put the conspirators to death in a powerful speech, the only speech of all that he made that was preserved. This preservation was due to the forethought of Cicero, who put the fastest writers whom he could find to relieve each other in taking down the oration. This, it is interesting to be told, was the beginning of shorthand.
Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the republic; but he was much more uncompromising, more honest perhaps we may say, but certainly less discreet in putting his principles into action. He set himself to oppose the accumulation of power in the hands of Pompey and Caesar; but he lacked both dignity and prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, for instance, Caesar, returning from Spain, petitioned the Senate for permission to become a candidate for the consulship without entering the city—to enter the city would have been to abandon his hopes of a triumph—Cato condescended to use the arts of obstruction in opposing him. He spoke till sunset against the proposition, and it failed by sheer lapse of time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar of course abandoned the empty honor, and secured the reality, all the more certainly because people felt that he had been hardly used. And so he continued to act, always seeking to do right, but always choosing the very worst way of doing it; anxious to serve his country, but always contriving to injure it. Even in that which, we may say, best became him in his life, in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment the Roman view of the morality of suicide), he was not doing his best for Rome. Had he been willing to live (for Caesar was ready to spare him, as he was always ready to spare enemies who could not harm him), there was yet good for him to do; in his hasty impatience of what he disapproved, he preferred to deprive his country of its most honest citizen.
We must not omit a picture so characteristic of Roman life as the story of his last hours. The last army of the republic had been destroyed at Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Cato vainly endeavored to stir up the people of Utica, a town near Carthage, in which he had taken up his quarters; when they refused, he resolved to put an end to his life. A kinsman of Caesar, who was preparing to intercede with the conqueror for the lives of the vanquished leaders, begged Cato's help in revising his speech. "For you," he said, "I should think it no shame to clasp his hands and fall at his knees." "Were I willing to take my life at his hands," replied Cato, "I should go alone to ask it. But I refuse to live by the favor of a tyrant. Still, as there are three hundred others for whom you are to intercede, let us see what can be done with the speech." This business finished, he took an affectionate leave of his friend, commending to his good offices his son and his friends. On his son he laid a strict injunction not to meddle with public life. Such a part as was worthy of the name of Cato no man could take again; to take any other would be shameful. Then followed the bath, and after the bath, dinner, to which he had invited a number of friends, magistrates of the town. He sat at the meal, instead of reclining. This had been his custom ever since the fated day of Pharsalia. After dinner, over the wine, there was much learned talk, and this not other than cheerful in tone. But when the conversation happened to turn on one of the favorite maxims of the Stoics, "Only the good man is free; the bad are slaves," Cato expressed himself with an energy and even a fierceness that made the company suspect some terrible resolve. The melancholy silence that ensued warned the speaker that he had betrayed himself, and he hastened to remove the suspicion by talking on other topics. After dinner he took his customary walk, gave the necessary orders to the officers on guard, and then sought his chamber. Here he took up the Phaedo, the famous dialogue in which Socrates, on the day when he is to drink the poison, discusses the immortality of the soul. He had almost finished the book, when, chancing to turn his eyes upwards, he perceived that his sword had been removed. His son had removed it while he sat at dinner. He called a slave and asked, "Who has taken my sword?" As the man said nothing, he resumed his book; but in the course of a few minutes, finding that search was not being made, he asked for the sword again. Another interval followed; and still it was not forthcoming. His anger was now roused. He vehemently reproached the slaves, and even struck one of them with his fist, which he injured by the blow. "My son and my slaves," he said, "are betraying me to the enemy." He would listen to no entreaties, "Am I a madman," he said, "that I am stripped of my arms? Are you going to bind my hands and give me up to Caesar? As for the sword I can do without it; I need but hold my breath or dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, and finding that the blade was straight and the edge perfect, said, "Now I am my own master." He then read the Phaedo again from beginning to end, and afterwards fell into so profound a sleep that persons standing outside the chamber heard his breathing. About midnight he sent for his physician and one of his freedmen. The freedman was commissioned to inquire whether his friends had set sail. The physician he asked to bind up his wounded hand, a request which his attendants heard with delight, as it seemed to indicate a resolve to live. He again sent to inquire about his friends and expressed his regret at the rough weather which they seemed likely to have. The birds were now beginning to twitter at the approach of dawn, and he fell into a short sleep. The freedman now returned with news that the harbor was quiet. When he found himself again alone, he stabbed himself with the sword, but the blow, dealt as it was by the wounded hand, was not fatal. He fell fainting on the couch, knocking down a counting board which stood near, and groaning. His son with others rushed into the chamber, and the physician, finding that the wound was not mortal, proceeded to bind it up. Cato, recovering his consciousness, thrust the attendants aside, and tearing open the wound, expired.
If the end of Cato's life was its noblest part it is still more true that the fame of Brutus rests on one memorable deed. He was known, indeed, as a young man of promise, with whose education special pains had been taken, and who had a genuine love for letters and learning. He was free, it would seem, from some of the vices of his age, but he had serious faults. Indeed the one transaction of his earlier life with which we happen to be well acquainted is very little to his credit. And this, again, is so characteristic of one side of Roman life that it should be told in some detail.
Brutus had married the daughter of a certain Appius Claudius, a kinsman of the notorious Clodius, and had accompanied his father-in-law to his province, Cilicia. He took the opportunity of increasing his means by lending money to the provincials. Lending money, it must be remembered, was not thought a discreditable occupation even for the very noblest. To lend money upon interest was, indeed, the only way of making an investment, besides the buying of land, that was available to the Roman capitalist. But Brutus was more than a money-lender, he was an usurer; that is, he sought to extract an extravagantly high rate of interest from his debtors. And this greed brought him into collision with Cicero.
A certain Scaptius had been agent for Brutus in lending money to the town of Salamis in Cyprus. Under the government of Claudius, Scaptius had had every thing his own way. He had been appointed to a command in the town, had some cavalry at his disposal, and extorted from the inhabitants what terms he pleased, shutting up, it is told us, the Senate in their council-room till five of them perished of hunger. Cicero heard of this monstrous deed as he was on his way to his province; he peremptorily refused the request of Scaptius for a renewal of his command, saying that he had resolved not to grant such posts to any person engaged in trading or money-lending. Still, for Brutus' sake—and it was not for some time that it came out that Brutus was the principal—he would take care that the money should be paid. This the town was ready to do; but then came in the question of interest. An edict had been published that this should never exceed twelve per cent., or one per cent, monthly, that being the customary way of payment. But Scaptius pleaded his bond, which provided for four per cent, monthly, and pleaded also a special edict that regulations restraining interest were not to apply to Salamis. The town protested that they could not pay if such terms were exacted—terms which would double the principal. They could not, they said, have met even the smaller claim, if it had not been for the liberality of the governor, who had declined the customary presents. Brutus was much vexed.
"Even when he asks me a favor," writes Cicero to Atticus, "there is always something arrogant and churlish: still he moves laughter more than anger."
When the civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, it was expected that Brutus would attach himself to the former. Pompey, who had put his father to death, he had no reason to love. But if he was unscrupulous in some things, in politics he had principles which he would not abandon, the strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side of which Cato approved was the side of the right. Pompey received his new adherent with astonishment and delight, rising from his chair to greet him. He spent most of his time in camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, the Greek historian of the Second Punic War. He passed through the disastrous day of Pharsalia unhurt, Caesar having given special orders that his life was to be spared. After the battle, the conqueror not only pardoned him but treated him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for which, for a time at least, he seems not to have been ungrateful. But there were influences at work which he could not resist. There was his friendship with Cassius, who had a passionate hatred against usurpers, the remembrance of how Cato had died sooner than submit himself to Caesar, and, not least, the association of his name, which he was not permitted to forget. The statue of the old patriot who had driven out the Tarquins was covered with such inscriptions as, "Brutus, would thou wert alive!" and Brutus' own chair of office—he was praetor at the time—was found covered with papers on which were scribbled, "Brutus, thou sleepest," or, "A true Brutus art thou," and the like. How he slew Caesar I have told already; how he killed himself in despair after the second battle of Philippi may be read elsewhere.
Porcia, the daughter of Cato, was left a widow in 48 B.C., and married three years afterwards her cousin Brutus, who divorced his first wife Claudia in order to marry her. She inherited both the literary tastes and the opinions of her father, and she thought herself aggrieved when her husband seemed unwilling to confide his plans to her. Plutarch thus tells her story, his authority seeming to be a little biography which one of her sons by her first husband afterwards wrote of his step-father. "She wounded herself in the thigh with a knife such as barbers use for cutting the nails. The wound was deep, the loss of blood great, and the pain and fever that followed acute. Her husband was in the greatest distress, when his wife thus addressed him: 'Brutus, it was a daughter of Cato who became your wife, not merely to share your bed and board, but to be the partner of your adversity and your prosperity.Yougive me no cause to complain, but what proof can I give you of my affection if I may not bear with you your secret troubles. Women, I know, are weak creatures, ill fitted to keep secrets. Yet a good training and honest company may do much, and this, as Cato's daughter and wife to Brutus, I have had.' She then showed him the wound, and told him that she had inflicted it upon herself to prove her courage and constancy." For all this resolution she had something of a woman's weakness. When her husband had left the house on the day fixed for the assassination, she could not conceal her agitation. She eagerly inquired of all who entered how Brutus fared, and at last fainted in the hall of her house. In the midst of the business of the senate-house Brutus heard that his wife was dying.
Porcia was not with her husband during the campaigns that ended at Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the traditions of her life.
It was usual for a Roman statesman, after filling the office of praetor or consul, to undertake for a year or more the government of one of the provinces. These appointments were indeed the prizes of the profession of politics. The new governor had a magnificent outfit from the treasury. We hear of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds having been allowed for this purpose. Out of this something might easily be economized. Indeed we hear of one governor who left the whole of his allowance put out at interest in Rome. And in the province itself splendid gains might be, and indeed commonly were, got. Even Cicero, who, if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial government.
He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetorship and again after his consulship. But the time came when it was forced upon him. Pompey in his third consulship had procured the passing of a law by which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.
Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus. The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years before had cut to pieces the army of Crassus. Two legions, numbering twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the province, having attached to them between two and three thousand cavalry.
Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he received a levee of visitors—a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum, where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the civil war, which was to break out in the year after Cicero's return, were already gathering. At Brundisium, the port of embarkation for the East, he was detained partly by indisposition, partly by having to wait for one of his officials for nearly a fortnight. He reached Actium, in north-western Greece, on the 15th of June. He would have liked to proceed thence by land, being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having in view the rounding of the formidable promontory Leucate; but there was a difficulty about his retinue, without which he could not maintain the state which became a governoren routefor his province. Eleven more days brought him to Athens. "So far," he writes from this place, "no expenditure of public or private money has been made on me or any of my retinue. I have convinced all my people that they must do their best for my character. So far all has gone admirably. The thing has been noticed, and is greatly praised by the Greeks." "Athens," he writes again, "delighted me much; the city with all its beauty, the great affection felt for you" (he is writing, it will be remembered, to Atticus, an old resident), "and the good feeling towards myself, much more, too, its philosophical studies." He was able before he left to do the people a service, rescuing from the hands of the builder the house of Epicurus, which the council of Areopagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as a modern town council, had doomed. Then he went on his way, grumbling at the hardships of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the winds, at the smallness of the local vessels. He reached Ephesus on July 22nd, without being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and found a vast number of persons who had come to pay their respects to him. All this was pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious to get back to Rome. Rome indeed to the ordinary Roman was—a few singular lovers of the country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted—as Paris is to the Parisian. "Make it absolutely certain," he writes to Atticus, "that I am to be in office for a year only; that there is not to be even an intercalated month." From Ephesus he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the cities of his province, to Laodicea, which he reached July 31st, exactly three months after starting[8]. The distance, directly measured, may be reckoned at something less than a thousand miles.
[Footnote 8: Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for accomplishing the journey.]
He seems to have found the province in a deplorable condition. "I staid," he writes, "three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, and as many at Synnas, and heard nothing except complaints that they could not pay the poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's property was sold; heard, I say, nothing but complaints and groans, and monstrous deeds which seemed to suit not a man but some horrid wild beast. Still it is some alleviation to these unhappy towns that they are put to no expense for me or for any of my followers. I will not receive the fodder which is my legal due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have accepted four beds and a roof over my head; often not even this, preferring to lodge in a tent. The consequence of all this is an incredible concourse of people from town and country anxious to see me. Good heavens! my very approach seems to make them revive, so completely do the justice, moderation, and clemency of your friend surpass all expectation." It must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccustomed to sound his own praises.
Usury was one of the chief causes of this widespread distress; and usury, as we have seen, was practiced even by Romans of good repute. We have seen an "honorable man," such as Brutus, exacting an interest of nearly fifty per cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of interest we do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he was entitled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such things went on under a governor who was really doing his best to be moderate and just, what was the condition of the provincials under ordinary rulers.
While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare." The whole army of this people was said to have crossed the Euphrates under the command of Pacorus, the king's son. The governor of Syria had not yet arrived. The second in command had shut himself up with all his troops in Antioch. Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which bordered the least defensible side of Cilicia, and took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. Next came news that Antioch was besieged. On hearing this he broke up his camp, crossed the Taurus range by forced marches, and occupied the passes into Syria. The Parthians raised the siege of Antioch, and suffered considerably at the hands of Cassius during their retreat.
Though Cicero never crossed swords with the Parthians, he found or contrived an opportunity of distinguishing himself as a soldier. The independent mountaineers of the border were attacked and defeated; Cicero was saluted as "Imperator" on the field of battle by his soldiers, and had the satisfaction of occupying for some days the position which Alexander the Great had taken up before the battle of Issus. "And he," says Cicero, who always relates his military achievements with something like a smile on his face, "was a somewhat better general than either you or I." He next turned his arms against the Free Cilicians, investing in regular form with trenches, earthworks, catapults, and all the regular machinery of a siege, their stronghold Pindenissum. At the end of forty-seven days the place surrendered. Cicero gave the plunder of the place to his host, reserving the horses only for public purposes. A considerable sum was realized by the sale of slaves. "Who in the world are these Pindenissi? who are they?" you will say. "I never heard the name." "Well, what can I do? I can't make Cilicia another Aetolia, or another Macedonia." The campaign was concluded about the middle of December, and the governor, handing over the army to his brother, made his way to Laodicea. From this place he writes to Atticus in language that seems to us self-glorious and boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. "I left Tarsus for Asia (the Roman province so called) on June 5th, followed by such admiration as I cannot express from the cities of Cilicia, and especially from the people of Tarsus. When I had crossed the Taurus there was a marvelous eagerness to see me in Asia as far as my districts extended. During six months of my government they had not received a single requisition from me, had not had a single person quartered upon them. Year after year before my time this part of the year had been turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities used to pay large sums of money not to have to find winter quarters for the soldiers. Cyprus paid more than £48,000 on this account; and from this island—I say it without exaggeration and in sober truth—not a single coin was levied while I was in power. In return for these benefits, benefits at which they are simply astonished. I will not allow any but verbal honors to be voted to me. Statues, temples, chariots of bronze, I forbid. In nothing do I make myself a trouble to the cities, though it is possible I do so to you, while I thus proclaim my own praises. Bear with me, if you love me. This is the rule which you would have had me follow. My journey through Asia had such results that even the famine—and than famine there is no more deplorable calamity—which then prevailed in the country (there had been no harvest) was an event for me to desire; for wherever I journeyed, without force, without the help of law, without reproaches, but my simple influence and expostulations, I prevailed upon the Greeks and Roman citizens, who had secreted the corn, to engage to convey a large quantity to the various tribes." He writes again: "I see that you are pleased with my moderation and self-restraint. You would be much more pleased if you were here. At the sessions which I held at Laodicea for all my districts, excepting Cilicia, from February 15th to May 1st, I effected a really marvelous work. Many cities were entirely freed from their debts, many greatly relieved, and all of them enjoying their own laws and courts, and so obtaining self-government received new life. There were two ways in which I gave them the opportunity of either throwing off or greatly lightening the burden of debt. First: they have been put to no expense under my rule—I do not exaggerate; I positively say that they have not to spend a farthing. Then again: the cities had been atrociously robbed by their own Greek magistrates. I myself questioned the men who had borne office during the last ten years. They confessed and, without being publicly disgraced, made restitution. In other respects my government, without being wanting in address, is marked by clemency and courtesy. There is none of the difficulty, so usual in the provinces, of approaching me; no introduction by a chamberlain. Before dawn I am on foot in my house, as I used to be in old days when I was a candidate for office. This is a great matter here and a popular, and to myself, from my old practice in it, has not yet been troublesome."
He had other less serious cares. One Caelius, who was good enough to keep him informed of what was happening at Rome, and whom we find filling his letters with an amusing mixture of politics, scandal, and gossip, makes a modest request for some panthers, which the governor of so wild a country would doubtless have no difficulty in procuring for him. He was a candidate for the office of aedile, and wanted the beasts for the show which he would have to exhibit. Cicero must not forget to look after them as soon as he hears of the election. "In nearly all my letters I have written to you about the panthers. It will be discreditable to you, that Patiscus should have sent to Curio ten panthers, and you not many times more. These ten Curio gave me, and ten others from Africa. If you will only remember to send for hunters from Cibyra, and also send letters to Pamphylia (for there, I understand, more are taken than elsewhere), you will succeed. I do beseech you look after this matter. You have only to give the orders. I have provided people to keep and transport the animals when once taken." The governor would not hear of imposing the charge of capturing the panthers on the hunters of the province. Still he would do his best to oblige his friend. "The matter of the panthers is being diligently attended to by the persons who are accustomed to hunt them; but there is a strange scarcity of them, and the few that there are complain grievously, saying that they are the only creatures in my province that are persecuted."
From Laodicea Cicero returned to Tarsus, the capital of his province, wound up the affairs of his government, appointed an acting governor, and started homewards early in August. On his way he paid a visit to Rhodes, wishing to show to his son and nephew (they had accompanied him to his government) the famous school of eloquence in which he had himself studied. Here he heard with much regret of the death of Hortensius. He had seen the great orator's son at Laodicea, where he was amusing himself in the disreputable company of some gladiators, and had asked him to dinner for his father's sake, he says. His stay at Rhodes was probably of some duration, for he did not reach Ephesus till the first of October. A tedious passage of fourteen days brought him to Athens. On his journey westwards Tiro, his confidential servant, was seized with illness, and had to be left behind at Patrae. Tiro was a slave, though afterwards set free by his master; but he was a man of great and varied accomplishments, and Cicero writes to him as he might to the very dearest of his friends. There is nothing stranger in all that we know of "Roman Life" than the presence in it of such men as Tiro. Nor is there any thing, we might even venture to say, quite like it elsewhere in the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America, mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint, of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro, man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends." They are twenty-seven in number, or rather twenty-six, as the sixteenth of the series contains the congratulations and thanks which Quintus Cicero addresses to his brother on receiving the news that Tiro has received his freedom. "As to Tiro," he writes, "I protest, as I wish to see you, my dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and my dear Tullia, that you have done a thing that pleased me exceedingly in making a man who certainly was far above his mean condition a friend rather than a servant. Believe me, when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped for joy; I both thank and congratulate you. If the fidelity of my Statius gives me so much pleasure[9], how valuable in Tiro must be this same good quality with the additional and even superior advantages of culture, wit, and politeness? I have many very good reasons for loving you; and now there is this that you have told me, as indeed you were bound to tell me, this excellent piece of news. I saw all your heart in your letter."
[Footnote 9: See page 277.]
Cicero's letters to the invalid are at first very frequent. One is dated on the third, another on the fifth, and a third on the seventh of November; and on the eighth of the month there are no fewer than three, the first of them apparently in answer to a letter from Tiro. "I am variously affected by your letter—much troubled by the first page, a little comforted by the second. The result is that I now say, without hesitation, till you are quite strong, do not trust yourself to travel either by land of sea. I shall see you as soon as I wish if I see you quite restored." He goes on to criticise the doctor's prescriptions. Soup was not the right thing to give to a dyspeptic patient. Tiro is not to spare any expense. Another fee to the doctor might make him more attentive. In another letter he regrets that the invalid had felt himself compelled to accept an invitation to a concert, and tells him that he had left a horse and mule for him at Brundisium. Then, after a brief notice of public affairs, he returns to the question of the voyage. "I must again ask you not to be rash in your traveling. Sailors, I observe, make too much haste to increase their profits. Be cautious, my dear Tiro. You have a wide and dangerous sea to traverse. If you can, come with Mescinius. He is wont to be careful in his voyages. If not with him, come with a person of distinction, who will have influence with the captain." In another letter he tells Tiro that he must revive his love of letters and learning. The physician thought that his mind was ill at ease; for this the best remedy was occupation. In another he writes: "I have received your letter with its shaky handwriting; no wonder, indeed, seeing how serious has been your illness. I send you Aegypta (probably a superior slave) to wait upon you, and a cook with him." Cicero could not have shown more affectionate care of a sick son.
Tiro is said to have written a life of his master. And we certainly owe to his care the preservation of his correspondence. His weak health did not prevent him from living to the age of a hundred and three.
Cicero pursued his homeward journey by slow stages, and it was not till November 25th that he reached Italy. His mind was distracted between two anxieties—the danger of civil war, which he perceived to be daily growing more imminent, and an anxious desire to have his military successes over the Cilician mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of a triumph. The honor of a public thanksgiving had already been voted to him; Cato, who opposed it on principle, having given him offense by so doing. A triumph was less easy to obtain, and indeed it seems to show a certain weakness in Cicero that he should have sought to obtain it for exploits of so very moderate a kind. However, he landed at Brundisium as a formal claimant for the honor. His lictors had their fasces (bundles of rods inclosing an ax) wreathed with bay leaves, as was the custom with the victorious general who hoped to obtain this distinction. Pompey, with whom he had a long interview, encouraged him to hope for it, and promised his support. It was not till January 4th that he reached the capital. The look of affairs was growing darker and darker, but he still clung to the hopes of a triumph, and would not dismiss his lictors with their ornaments, though he was heartily wearied of their company. Things went so far that a proposition was actually made in the Senate that the triumph should be granted; but the matter was postponed at the suggestion of one of the consuls, anxious, Cicero thinks, to make his own services more appreciated when the time should come. Before the end of January he seems to have given up his hopes. In a few more days he was fairly embarked on the tide of civil war.
The name of Atticus has been mentioned more than once in the preceding chapters as a correspondent of Cicero. We have indeed more than five hundred letters addressed to him, extending over a period of almost five-and-twenty years. There are frequent intervals of silence—not a single letter, for instance, belongs to the year of the consulship, the reason being that both the correspondents were in Rome. Sometimes, especially in the later years, they follow each other very closely. The last was written about a year before Cicero's death.
Atticus was one of those rare characters who contrive to live at peace with all men. The times were troublous beyond all measure; he had wealth and position; he kept up close friendship with men who were in the very thickest of the fight; he was ever ready with his sympathy and help for those who were vanquished; and yet he contrived to arouse no enmities; and after a life-long peace, interrupted only by one or two temporary alarms, died in a good old age.
Atticus was of what we should call a gentleman's family, and belonged by inheritance to the democratic party. But he early resolved to stand aloof from politics, and took an effectual means of carrying out his purpose by taking up his residence at Athens. With characteristic prudence he transferred the greater part of his property to investments in Greece. At Athens he became exceedingly popular. He lent money at easy rates to the municipality, and made liberal distributions of corn, giving as much as a bushel and a half to every needy citizen. He spoke Greek and Latin with equal ease and eloquence; and had, we are told, an unsurpassed gift for reciting poetry. Sulla, who, for all his savagery, had a cultivated taste, was charmed with the young man, and would have taken him in his train. "I beseech you," replied Atticus, "don't take me to fight against those in whose company, but that I left Italy, I might be fighting against you." After a residence of twenty-three years he returned to Rome, in the very year of Cicero's consulship. At Rome he stood as much aloof from the turmoil of civil strife as he had stood at Athens. Office of every kind he steadily refused; he was under no obligations to any man, and therefore was not thought ungrateful by any. The partisans of Caesar and of Pompey were content to receive help from his purse, and to see him resolutely neutral. He refused to join in a project of presenting what we should call a testimonial to the murderers of Caesar on behalf of the order of the knights; but he did not hesitate to relieve the necessities of the most conspicuous of them with a present of between three and four thousand pounds. When Antony was outlawed he protected his family; and Antony in return secured his life and property amidst the horrors of the second Proscription.
His biographer, Cornelius Nepos, has much to say of his moderation and temperate habits of life. He had no sumptuous country-house in the suburbs or at the sea-coast, but two farm-houses. He possessed, however, what seems to have been a very fine house (perhaps we should call it "castle," for Cicero speaks of it as a place capable of defense) in Epirus. It contained among other things a gallery of statues. A love of letters was one of his chief characteristics. His guests were not entertained with the performances of hired singers, but with readings from authors of repute. He had collected, indeed, a very large library. All his slaves, down to the very meanest, were well educated, and he employed them to make copies.
Atticus married somewhat late in life. His only daughter was the first wife of Agrippa, the minister of Augustus, and his grand-daughter was married to Tiberius. Both of these ladies were divorced to make room for a consort of higher rank, who, curiously enough, was in both cases Julia, the infamous daughter of Augustus. Both, we may well believe, were regretted by their husbands.
Atticus died at the age of seventy-seven. He was afflicted with a disease which he believed to be incurable, and shortened his days by voluntary starvation.
It was to this correspondent, then, that Cicero confided for about a quarter of a century his cares and his wants. The two had been schoolfellows, and had probably renewed their acquaintance when Cicero visited Greece in search of health. Afterwards there came to be a family connection between them, Atticus' sister, Pomponia, marrying Cicero's younger brother, Quintus, not much, we gather from the letters, to the happiness of either of them. Cicero could not have had a better confidant. He was full of sympathy, and ready with his help; and he was at the same time sagacious and prudent in no common degree, an excellent man of business, and, thanks to the admirable coolness which enabled him to stand outside the turmoil of politics, an equally excellent adviser in politics.
One frequent subject of Cicero's letters to his friend is money. I may perhaps express the relation between the two by saying that Atticus was Cicero's banker, though the phrase must not be taken too literally. He did not habitually receive and pay money on Cicero's account, but he did so on occasions; and he was constantly in the habit of making advances, though probably without interest, when temporary embarrassments, not infrequent, as we may gather from the letters, called for them. Atticus was himself a wealthy man. Like his contemporaries generally, he made an income by money-lending, and possibly, for the point is not quite clear, by letting out gladiators for hire. His biographer happens to give us the precise figure of his property. His words do not indeed expressly state whether the sum that he mentions means capital or income. I am inclined to think that it is the latter. If this be so, he had in early life an income of something less than eighteen thousand pounds, and afterwards nearly ninety thousand pounds.
I may take this occasion to say something about Cicero's property, a matter which is, in its way, a rather perplexing question. In the case of a famous advocate among ourselves there would be no difficulty in understanding that he should have acquired a great fortune. But the Roman law strictly forbade an advocate to receive any payment from his clients. The practice of old times, when the great noble pleaded for the life or property of his humbler defendants, and was repaid by their attachment and support, still existed in theory. It exists indeed to this day, and accounts for the fact that a barrister among ourselves has nolegalmeans of recovering his fees. But a practice of paying counsel had begun to grow up. Some of Cicero's contemporaries certainly received a large remuneration for their services. Cicero himself always claims to have kept his hands clean in this respect, and as his enemies never brought any charge of this kind against him, his statement may very well be accepted. We have, then, to look for other sources of income. His patrimony was considerable. It included, as we have seen, an estate at Arpinum and a house in Rome. And then he had numerous legacies. This is a source of income which is almost strange to our modern ways of acting and thinking. It seldom happens among us that a man of property leaves any thing outside the circle of his family. Sometimes an intimate friend will receive a legacy. But instances of money bequeathed to a statesman in recognition of his services, or a literary man in recognition of his eminence, are exceedingly rare. In Rome they were very common. Cicero declares, giving it as a proof of the way in which he had been appreciated by his fellow-citizens, that he had received two hundred thousand pounds in legacies. This was in the last year of his life. This does something to help us out of our difficulty. Only we must remember that it could hardly have been till somewhat late in his career that these recognitions of his services to the State and to his friends began to fall in. He made about twenty thousand pounds out of his year's government of his province, but it is probable that this money was lost. Then, again, he was elected into the College of Augurs (this was in his fifty-fourth year). These religious colleges were very rich. Their banquets were proverbial for their splendor. Whether the individual members derived any benefit from their revenues we do not know. We often find him complaining of debt; but he always speaks of it as a temporary inconvenience rather than as a permanent burden. It does not oppress him; he can always find spirits enough to laugh at it. When he buys his great town mansion on the Palatine Hill (it had belonged to the wealthy Crassus), for thirty thousand pounds, he says, "I now owe so much that I should be glad to conspire if any body would accept me as an accomplice." But this is not the way in which a man who did not see his way out of his difficulties would speak.
Domestic affairs furnish a frequent topic. He gives accounts of the health of his wife he announces the birth of his children. In after years he sends the news when his daughter is betrothed and when she is married, and tells of the doings and prospects of his son. He has also a good deal to say about his brother's household, which, as I have said before, was not very happy. Here is a scene of their domestic life. "When I reached Arpinum, my brother came to me. First we had much talk about you; afterwards we came to the subject which you and I had discussed at Tusculum. I never saw any thing so gentle, so kind as my brother was in speaking of your sister. If there had been any ground for their disagreement, there was nothing to notice. So much for that day. On the morrow we left for Arpinum. Quintus had to remain in the Retreat; I was going to stay at Aquinum. Still we lunched at the Retreat (you know the place). When we arrived Quintus said in the politest way, 'Pomponia, ask the ladies in; I will call the servants,' Nothing could—so at least I thought—have been more pleasantly said, not only as far as words go, but in tone and look. However, she answered before us all, 'I am myself but a stranger here.' This, I fancy, was because Statius had gone on in advance to see after the lunch. 'See,' said Quintus, 'this is what I have to put up with every day.' Perhaps you will say, 'What was there in this?' It was really serious, so serious as to disturb me much, so unreasonably, so angrily did she speak and look. I did not show it, but I was greatly vexed. We all sat down to table, all, that is, but her. However, Quintus sent her something from the table. She refused it Not to make a long story of it, no one could have been more gentle than my brother, and no one more exasperating than your sister—in my judgment at least, and I pass by many other things which offended me more than they did Quintus. I went on to Aquinum." (The lady's behavior was all the more blameworthy because her husband was on his way to a remote province.) "Quintus remained at the Retreat. The next day he joined me at Arpinum. Your sister, he told me, would have nothing to do with him, and up to the moment of her departure was just in the same mood in which I had seen her."