b.c.63, ætat 44
As to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which Sallust and Cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground for asserting that Cæsar was concerned in it.194That he was greatly concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. He had probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of Catiline at their proper worth. He too, I think, must have looked upon Cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even Pompey when he returned from the East. What practical use could there be in such a man at such a time—in one who reallybelieved in honesty, who thought of liberty and the Republic, and imagined that he could set the world right by talking? Such must have been the feeling of Cæsar, who had both experience and foresight to tell him that Rome wanted and must have a master. He probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery—would not satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding his supporters with the property of his opponents. But Cicero was impracticable—unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made useful. It was thus, I think, that Cæsar regarded Cicero, and thus that he induced Pompey to regard him. But now, in the year of his Consulship, Cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his virtue must be allowed to have its full way.
He did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. There were, too, enough of others anxious for the Republic to bolster him up in his own belief. There was that Cornelius in whose defence Cicero made the two great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was Cato, and up to this time there was Pompey, as Cicero thought. Cicero, till he found himself candidate for the Consulship, had contented himself with undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned, but which were not exclusively political. He had advocated the employment of Pompey in the East, and had defended Cornelius. He was well acquainted with the history of the Republic; but he had probably never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if so, whether it might possibly be saved. In his Consulship he did do so; and, seeing less of the Republic than we can see now, told himself that it was possible.
The stories told to us of Catiline's conspiracy by Sallust and by Cicero are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. Trusting them both, we are justified in believing thatwe know the truth. We are here concerned only with the part which Cicero took. Nothing, I think, which Cicero says is contradicted by Sallust, though of much that Cicero certainly did Sallust is silent. Sallust damns him, but only by faint praise. We may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by Cicero himself as verified: indeed, I am not aware that any of Cicero's facts have been questioned.
Sallust declares that Catiline's attempt was popular in Rome generally.195This, I think, must be taken as showing simply that revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a condition of things around him such as existed in Rome, a plotter of state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain. When the conspiracy was first announced in the Senate, Catiline had an army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants of Rome generally were with the conspirators. On the other hand, we have proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to Cicero after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. The populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to show that Catiline was ever beloved as had been the Gracchi, and other tribunes of the people who came after them.
Catiline, in the autumn of the yearb.c.63, had arranged the outside circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the Consulship. That Cicero with other Senators should be murdered seems to have been their first object, and that then the Consulship should be seized by force. On the 21st ofOctober Cicero made his first report to the Senate as to the conspiracy, and called upon Catiline for his answer. It was then that Catiline made his famous reply: "That the Republic had two bodies, of which one was weak and had a bad head"—meaning the aristocracy, with Cicero as its chief—"and the other strong, but without any head," meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be forth-coming."196Then, at that sitting, the Senate decreed, in the usual formula, "That the Consuls were to take care that the Republic did not suffer.197On the 22d of October, the new Consuls, Silanus and Murena, were elected. On the 23d, Catiline was regularly accused of conspiracy by Paulus Lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to violence applied to the State. Two days afterward it was officially reported that Manlius—or Mallius, as he seems to have been generally called—Catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in Etruria. The 27th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of Cicero and the other Senators. That all this was to be, and was so arranged by Catiline, had been declared in the Senate by Cicero himself on that day when Catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. Cicero, with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every detail. There was one Curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of the young Roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress Fulvia, and she carried the information to the Consul. It is all narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in Ben Jonson's dull play, though he has attributed to Cæsar a share in the plot, for doing which he had no authority. Cicero, on that sitting in the Senate, had been specially anxious to make Catiline understand that he knew privately every circumstance of theplot. Throughout the whole conspiracy his object was not to take Catiline, but to drive him out of Rome. If the people could be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that way there might be an end of all the trouble. But if that did not come to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the conspirators. If they could be driven out, they must either take themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and assuredly be conquered. Cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the necessity was strong upon him of ridding the Republic from these blood-thirsty men.
The scheme for destroying Cicero and the Senators on the 27th of October had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in the house of one Marcus Porcius Læca, at which a plot was arranged for the killing of Cicero the next day—for the killing of Cicero alone—he having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their path. Two knights were told off for the service, named Vargunteius and Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional timidity. He feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that which might turn against him. In much of this there was a falling off from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own life, there was very little. At this time, when, as he knew well, many men with many weapons in their hands, menwho were altogether unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have trembled.
But all Rome trembled—even according to Sallust. I have already shown how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a body were with Catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by that expression. In another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the State," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance changed.198Instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed, the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." I quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving the popularity of Catiline. There can, I think, be no doubt that the population of Rome was, as a body, afraid of Catiline. The city was to be burnt down, the Consuls and the Senate were to be murdered, debts were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against their masters. The "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which Sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes.
On the 8th of November, the day after that on which the Consul was to have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator. The Senate in Cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples. Of these none had a higher reputation than that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in his fight with the Sabines. Here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandlyin my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. Then there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain, which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary. It is said to have been a fault with Cicero that in his speeches he runs too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly palls upon us in English oratory when frequent resort is made to it. It seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. It was this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they declared him to be florid, redundant, and Asiatic in his style.199This questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in hand. Catiline was sitting there himself in the Senate, and the questions were for the most part addressed to him. We can see him now, a man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the Consul's throat, even there in the Senate. Though he knew that this attack was to be made on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of honor, among the benches intended for those who had been Consuls. When there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. The consular Senators shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. Even his brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to recognize him. Lentulus was no doubt there, and Cethegus, and two of the Sullan family, and Cassius Longinus, and Autronius, and Læca, and Curius. All of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause. Cæsar was there too, and Crassus. A fellow conspirator with Catiline would probably be a Senator. Cicero knew them all. We cannot say that in this matter Cæsarwas guilty, but Cicero, no doubt, felt that Cæsar's heart was with Catiline. It was his present task so to thunder with his eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming friends—to drive Catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did.
He declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the facts, Catiline deserved death. "If," he says, "I should order you to be taken and killed, believe me I should be blamed rather for my delay in doing so than for my cruelty." He spoke throughout as though all the power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. But it was his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "Go," he said; "that camp of yours and Mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you. Take your friends with you. Take them all. Cleanse the city of your presence. When its walls are between you and me then I shall feel myself secure. Among us here you may no longer stir yourself. I will not have it—I will not endure it. If I were to suffer you to be killed, your followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as I desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the city. Do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do yourself? The Consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. Do you ask me whether you are to go into exile? I do not order it; but if you ask my counsel, I advise it." Exile was the severest punishment known by the Roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was in the power of no Consul or other officer of state to inflict. Though he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the Republic, still he could not condemn a citizen. It was to the moral effect of his words that he must trust: "Non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." Catiline heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the Senate, and went out of the city. Sallust tells us that he threatenedto extinguish, in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.200
Of this first Catiline oration Sallust says, that "Marcus Tullius the Consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger, made a brilliant speech, very useful to the Republic."201This, coming from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by Cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a friend.
Catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. They were the very men who as Senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he declared his purpose of going. There was nothing to be done in the city by him. The Consul was not to be reached. Catiline himself was too closely watched for personal action. He would join the army at Fæsulæ and then return and burn the city. His friends, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon as Catiline with his army should appear before the walls. He went, and Cicero had been so far successful.
But these men, Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Senators, though they had not dared to sit near Catiline in the Senate, or to speak a word to him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. A report was spread among the people that the Consul had taken upon himself to drive a citizen into exile. Catiline, the ill-used Catiline—Catiline, the friend of the people, had, they said, gone to Marseilles in order that he might escape the fury of the tyrant Consul. In this we see the jealousy of Romans as to the infliction of any punishmentby an individual officer on a citizen. It was with a full knowledge of what was likely to come that Cicero had ironically declared that he only advised the conspirator to go. The feeling was so strong that on the next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the subject. Then was uttered the second Catiline oration, which was spoken in the open air to the citizens at large. Here too there are words, among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as the "Quousque tandem"—"Abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" This Catiline, says Cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, I have turned out of the city. If you like it better, I have expelled him by my very words. "He has departed. He has fled. He has gone out from among us. He has broken away!" "I have made this conspiracy plain to you all, as I said I would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not believe that the friends of Catiline will do the same as Catiline would have done. But there is no time now for soft measures. We have to be strong-handed. There is one thing I will do for these men. Let them too go out, so that Catiline shall not pine for them. I will show them the road. He has gone by the Via Aurelia. If they will hurry they may catch him before night." He implies by this that the story about Marseilles was false. Then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent Consul who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth. "Ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." So he goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief conspirators who remain in the city. If they too will go, they may go unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves.
Through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears—that he shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and which shall put him into thepower of his enemies when the day of his ascendency shall have passed away. It crops out repeatedly in these speeches.202He seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. If he can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it, he will encounter even that danger. His foresight was wonderfully accurate. The strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him, not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his heart.
Though the Senate had decreed that the Consuls were to see that the Republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power was conferred of inflicting punishment. Antony, as Cicero's colleague, was nothing. The authority, the responsibility, the action were, and were intended, to remain with Cicero. He could not legally banish any one. It was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. There was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. Let them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the provinces. The object of this second Catiline oration, spoken to the people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he was "banishing" no one. As far as the citizens were concerned he was successful; but he did not induce the friends of Catiline to follow their chief. This took place on the 9th of November.After the oration the Senate met again, and declared Catiline and Mallius to be public enemies.
Twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken—twenty- four days during which Rome must have been in a state of very great fever. Cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for Murena before the judicial bench of which I gave an account in the last chapter, and also probably another for Piso, of which we have nothing left. We cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery. There is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes.
On the same day, the 20th of November, when Cicero was defending Murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain Roman lady named Sempronia. It was she of whom Sallust said that she danced better than became an honest woman. If we can believe Sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice. At her house a most vile project was hatched for introducing into Rome Rome's bitterest foreign foes. There were in the city at this time certain delegates from a people called the Allobroges, who inhabited the lower part of Savoy. The Allobroges were of Gaulish race. They were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly discontented with Rome. There had been certain injuries, either real or presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city. There they had been delayed, and fobbedoff with official replies which gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil possible to the Republic. What if they could be got to go back suddenly to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired Gauls to assist the conspirators in burning down Rome? A deputation from the delegates came to Sempronia's house and there met the conspirators—Lentulus and others. They entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual with foreign embassies at Rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own among the aristocracy, one Fabius Sanga by name, they thought it well to consult him.203Sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our astute Consul.
Then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern inspector of police. The Allobroges were instructed to lend themselves to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. The written signed documents were given to them. With certain conspirators to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. At a bridge over the Tiber they were stopped by Cicero's emissaries. There was a feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their letters were brought home to the Consul.
We are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by Cicero and by Sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common among later writers.204The ambassadorswere taken at the Milvian bridge early on the morning of the 3d of December, and in the course of that day Cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him. Lentulus, who was then Prætor, Cethegus, Gabinius, and Statilius all obeyed the summons. They did not know what had occurred, and probably thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. Cæparius was also sent for, but he for the moment escaped—in vain; for before two days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others. Cicero again called the Senate together, and entered the meeting leading the guilty Prætor by the hand. Here the offenders were examined and practically acknowledged their guilt. The proofs against them were so convincing that they could not deny it. There were the signatures of some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. The Senate decreed that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their fate should have been pronounced. Each of them was then given in custody to some noble Roman of the day. Lentulus the Prætor was confided to the keeping of a Censor, Cethegus to Cornificius, Statilius to Cæsar, Gabinius to Crassus, and Cæparius, who had not fled very far before he was taken, to one Terentius. We can imagine how willingly would Crassus and Cæsar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was in the ascendant. Cæsar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour had not yet come for putting an end to the effete Republic, and to have perceived also that Catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work, must bide his time, and for the moment obey. That he was inclined to favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could befriend them only in accordance with the law. The Allobroges were rewarded. The Prætors in the city who had assisted Cicero were thanked. To Cicero himself a supplication was decreed. A supplication was, in its origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come to be an honor shown to the General who had gained the victory.In this case it was simply a means of adding glory to Cicero, and was peculiar, as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military service.205Remembering that, we can understand what at the time must have been the feeling in Rome as to the benefits conferred by the activity and patriotism of the Consul.
On the evening of the same day, the 3d of December, Cicero again addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he had before explained in the Senate. This was the third Catiline speech, and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever spoke. He explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of Catiline, while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.206Had Catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him here in the city; but with Lentulus the sleepy, and Cassius the fat, and Cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. It was on this account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do no harm. Then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did believe in their gods. It is one instance, one out of many which history and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not himself participated. Does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his clergy topray for fine weather, believe that the Almighty will change the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? But he feels that when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with the powers of heaven. So much also Cicero believed, and therefore spoke as he did on this occasion. As to his own religious views, I shall say something in a future chapter.
Then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of himself, he explains his own ambition: "For all which, my fellow-countrymen, I ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor, no monument but that this day may live in your memories. It is within your breasts that I would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory, the trophies of my exploits. No silent, voiceless statue, nothing which can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. Only by your remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured—by your good words, by the records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened and perpetuated. I do think that this day, the memory of which, I trust, may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been preserved, and because my Consulship has been glorious."207He ends the paragraph by an allusion to Pompey, admitting Pompey to a brotherhood of patriotism and praise. We shall see how Pompey repaid him.
How many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those words of Pompey! In the next sentence he tells the people of his own danger. He has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care of his.208But they, these Quirites, these Roman citizens, these masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed, could take careof no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not of another. They could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. Pompey was coming home, and would soon be the favorite. Cicero must have felt that he had deserved much of Pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt of gratitude would be paid.
Now we come to the fourth or last Catiline oration, which was made to the Senate, convened on the 5th of December with the purpose of deciding the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. We learn to what purport were three of the speeches made during this debate—those of Cæsar and of Cato and of Cicero. The first two are given to us by Sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact words. The Cæsarean spirit which induced Sallust to ignore altogether the words of Cicero would have induced him to give his own representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers—Cicero's words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to the short-hand writers' notes by Tiro, his slave and secretary. The three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe that we know the line of argument used by the three orators.
Silanus, one of the Consuls elect, began the debate by counselling death. We may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by Cicero to make this proposition. During the discussion he trembled at the consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision till they should have dealt with Catiline. Murena, the other Consul elect, and Catulus, the Prince of the Senate,209spoke for death. Tiberius Nero, grandfather of Tiberius the Emperor, made that proposition foradjournment to which Silanus gave way. Then—or I should rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may have spoken—Cæsar got up and made his proposition. His purpose was to save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as that existing in the Senate and the city, he could only do so not by absolving but by condemning. Wicked as these men might be, abominably wicked it was, he said, for the Senate to think of their own dignity rather than of the enormity of the crime. As they could not, he suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime, it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again, "deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. But men generally recollect what comes last. When the punishment is severe, men will remember the severity rather than the crime." He argues all this extremely well. The speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words be the words of Sallust or of Cæsar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the Senators when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under the laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended by proposing that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate town. This would, I believe, have been quite as illegal as the death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. The Senate, or the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their liberty, andcompensated them for their property. Cicero was determined that the men should die. They had not obeyed him by leaving the city, and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live also. He fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He replied to Cæsar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his danger; "but if a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one who had reached the honors of the Consulship it could not be premature; to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for judgment—men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death, but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon you as a ruler. The proofs of this are in your own hands. It was for me, as your Consul, to bring the facts before you. Now it is for you, at once, before night, to decide what shall be done. The conspirators are very many; it is not only with these few that you are dealing. On whatever you decide, decide quickly. Cæsar tells you of the Sempronian law210—the law, namely, forbidding the death of a Roman citizen—but can he be regarded as a citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" Then there is a fling at Cæsar's assumed clemency, showing us that Cæsar had alreadyendeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed afterward so signally at Alesia and Uxellodunum. Then again he speaks of himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with him: "Let Scipio's name be glorious—he by whose wisdom and valor Hannibal was forced out of Italy. Let Africanus be praised loudly, who destroyed Carthage and Numantia, the two cities which were most hostile to Rome. Let Paulus be regarded as great—he whose triumph that great King Perses adorned. Let Marius be held in undying honor, who twice saved Italy from foreign yoke. Let Pompey be praised above all, whose noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. Perhaps among them there may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the conquerors of provinces may return in safety." The last words of the orator also are fine: "Therefore, Conscript Fathers, decide wisely and without fear. Your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of Italy and of the whole Republic are at stake. It is for you to decide. In me you have a Consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to prevail while the breath of life remains to him." Cato then spoke advocating death, and the Senate decreed that the men should die. Cicero himself led Lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made to follow. A few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when Cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked after the fate of the conspirators. He answered them but by one word "Vixerunt"—there is said to have been a superstition with the Romans as to all mention of death—"They have lived their lives."
As to what was being done outside Rome with the army of conspirators in Etruria, it is not necessary for the biographerof Cicero to say much. Catiline fought, and died fighting. The conspiracy was then over. On the 31st of December Cicero retired from his office, and Catiline fell at the battle of Pistoia on the 5th of January following,b.c.62.
A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought it worth his while to remind us that a great glory was added to Cicero's consular year by the birth of Augustus—him who afterward became Augustus Cæsar.211Had a Roman been living now, he might be excused for saying that it was an honor to Augustus to have been born in the year of Cicero's Consulship.
The idea that the great Consul had done illegally in putting citizens to death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. It must be remembered that a decree of the Senate had no power as a law. The laws could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. Such was the constitution of the Republic. Further on, when Cicero will appeal as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed, I shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the Consulship. The reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many enemies. It had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be endured. When a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. It was customary for a Consul when he vacated his office to make some valedictory speech. Cicero was probably expected to take full advantage of the opportunity. From other words which have come from him, on other occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose such a speech as he might have spoken. But there were those who were already sick of hearing him say that Rome had been saved by his intelligence and courage. We can imagine what Cæsar might have said among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory Consul. As it was, Metellus Nepos, one of the Tribunes, forbade the retiring officer to do morethan take the oath usual on leaving office, because he had illegally inflicted death upon Roman citizens. Metellus, as Tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. We hear from Cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. He swore, on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the form common to Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during his Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.212We have the story only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.213That it was so we may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that Metellus was acting in agreement with Cæsar, and also in accord with the understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with his army in the East. This Tribune had been till lately an officer under Pompey, and went into office together with Cæsar, who in that year became Prætor. This, probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward formed the first Triumvirate,b.c.60. It was certainly now, in the year succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that Cæsar, as Prætor, began his great career.
b.c.62, ætat 45.
It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire must obtain it and keep it by illegal means. He had probably adhered to Catiline's first conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. It is manifest that he sympathized with thelater conspiracy, though it may be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent to the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. But, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Cæsar seems to have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to indulge. Mr. Forsyth expresses an opinion that Cæsar, till he crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in Gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution. Probably not; nor even then. It may be doubted whether Cæsar ever spoke to himself of overthrowing the Constitution. He came gradually to see that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by violent action. He had before him the examples of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. There was the example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times, had been banished as was Verres, or killed as was Catiline. We can easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. Both were exercised when he consented to be absent from Rome, and almost from Italy, during the ten years of the Gallic wars. But this, I think, is certain, that from the time in which his name appears prominent—fromthe period, namely, of the Catiline conspiracy—he had determined not to overthrow the Constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the day, as not to be overthrown himself.
Of what nature was the intercourse between him and Pompey when Pompey was still absent in the East we do not know; but we can hardly doubt that some understanding had begun to exist. Of this Cicero was probably aware. Pompey was the man whom Cicero chose to regard as his party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of Rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his party. It had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the State, before he took up with politics. That this was so I have shown by quoting the opening words of his speech Pro Lege Manilia. Proud as he was of the doings of his Consulship, he was still too new to his work to think that thus he could claim to stand first. Nor did his ambition lead him in that direction. He desired personal praise rather than personal power. When in the last Catiline oration to the people he speaks of the great men of the Republic—of the two Scipios, and of Paulus Æmilius and of Marius—he adds the name of Pompey to these names; or gives, rather, to Pompey greater glory than to any of them; "Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius." This was but a few days before Metellus as Tribune had stopped him in his speech—at the instigation, probably, of Cæsar, and in furtherance of Pompey's views. Pompey and Cæsar could agree, at any rate, in this—that they did not want such a one as Cicero to interfere with them.
All of which Cicero himself perceived. The specially rich province of Macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on quitting the Consulship, he made over to Antony—no doubt as a bribe, as with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep that other from kicking over the traces. Then Gaul became his province,as allotted—Cisalpine Gaul, as northern Italy was then called; a province less rich in plunder and pay than Macedonia. But Cicero wanted no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos, who, having been Prætor when he himself was Consul, was entitled to a government. This too was a political bribe. If courtesy to Cæsar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing. From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. The source of this was that Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all other Romans.
The first extant letter written by Cicero after his Consulship was addressed to Pompey.214Pompey was still in the East, but had completed his campaigns against Mithridates successfully. Cicero begins by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his letter. Then he tells the victorious General that there were some in Rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. It is supposed that he alluded here to Cæsar; but, if so, he probably misunderstood the alliance which was already being formed between Cæsar and Pompey. After that comes the real object of the epistle. He had received letters from Pompey congratulating him in very cold language as to the glories of his Consulship. He had expected much more than that from the friend for whom he had done so much. Still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had behaved well to his friend. If his friend were less friendly to him in return, then would the balance of friendship be on his side. If Pompeywere not bound to him, Cicero, by personal gratitude, still would he be bound by necessary co-operation in the service of the Republic. But, lest Pompey should misunderstand him, he declares that he had expected warmer language in reference to his Consulship, which he believes to have been withheld by Pompey lest offence should be given to some third person. By this he means Cæsar, and those who were now joining themselves to Cæsar. Then he goes on to warn him as to the future: "Nevertheless, when you return, you will find that my actions have been of such a nature that, even though you may loom larger than Scipio, I shall be found worthy to be accepted as your Lælius."215
Infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and sharp had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. It was only by asserting that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own fidelity as a friend, that Cicero could express his dissatisfaction at Pompey's coldness. It was only by continuing to lavish upon Pompey such flattery as was contained in the reference to Scipio, in which a touch of subtle irony is mixed with the flattery, that he could explain the nature of the praise which had, he thought, been due to himself. There is something that would have been abject in the nature of these expressions, had it not been Roman in the excess of the adulation. But there is courage in the letter, too, when he tells his correspondent what he believes to have been the cause of the coldness of which he complains: "Quod verere ne cujus animum offenderes"—"Because you fear lest you should give offence to some one." But let me tell you, he goes on to say, that my Consulship has been of such a nature that you, Scipio, as you are, must admit me as your friend.
In these words we find a key to the whole of Cicero's connectionwith the man whom he recognizes as his political leader. He was always dissatisfied with Pompey; always accusing Pompey in his heart of ingratitude and insincerity; frequently speaking to Atticus with bitter truth of the man's selfishness and incapacity, even of his cruelty and want of patriotism; nicknaming him because of his absurdities; declaring of him that he was minded to be a second Sulla; but still clinging to him as the political friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. In their earlier years, when he could have known personally but little of Pompey, because Pompey was generally absent from Rome, he had taken it into his head to love the man. He had been called "Magnus;" he had been made Consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on behalf of the Republic, and so far patriotic. He had hitherto adhered to the fame of the Republic. At any rate, Cicero had accepted him, and could never afterward bring himself to be disloyal to the leader with whom he had professed to act. But the feeling evinced in this letter was carried on to the end. He had been, he was, he would be, true to his political connection with Pompey; but of Pompey's personal character to himself he had nothing but complaints to make.