b.c.62, ætat 45.
We have two other letters written by Cicero in this year, the first of which is in answer to one from Metellus Celer to him, also extant. Metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he thought he had received from Cicero in the Senate, and from the Senate generally. Cicero writes back at much greater length to defend himself, and to prove that he had behaved as a most obliging friend to his correspondent, though he had received a gross affront from his correspondent's brother Nepos. Nepos had prevented him in that matter of the speech. It is hardly necessary to go into the question of this quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to Cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in Rome. There was a counterplot going on at the moment—a plot on the behalf ofthe aristocracy for bringing back Pompey to Rome, not only with glory but with power, probably originating in a feeling that Pompey would be a more congenial master than Cicero. It was suggested that as Pompey had been found good in all State emergencies—for putting down the pirates, for instance, and for conquering Mithridates—he would be the man to contend in arms with Catiline. Catiline was killed before the matter could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on the jealousy which was felt in regard to Cicero. This man, who had declared so often that he had served his country, and who really had crushed the Catilinarians by his industry and readiness, might, after all, be coming forward as another Sulla, and looking to make himself master by dint of his virtues and his eloquence. The hopelessness of the condition of the Republic may be recognized in the increasing conspiracies which were hatched on every side. Metellus Nepos was sent home from Asia in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made Tribune, and stopped Cicero's speech. In conjunction with Cæsar, who was Prætor, he proposed his new law for the calling of Pompey to their aid. Then there was a fracas between him and Cæsar on the one side and Cato on the other, in which Cato at last was so far victorious that both Cæsar and Metellus were stopped in the performance of their official duties. Cæsar was soon reinstated, but Metellus Nepos returned to Pompey in the East, and nothing came of the conspiracy. It is only noticed here as evidence of the feeling which existed as to Cicero in Rome, and as explaining the irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between Cicero and Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos,216whom Cicero had procured the government of Gaul.
The third letter from Cicero in this year was to Sextius, who was then acting as Quæstor—or Proquæstor, as Cicero calls him—with Antony as Proconsul in Macedonia. It is specially interesting as telling us that the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in Rome from Crassus for a sum amounting to about £30,000 of our money. There was probably no private mansion in Rome of greater pretension. It had been owned by Livius Drusus, the Tribune—a man of colossal fortune, as we are told by Mommsen—who was murdered at the door of it thirty years before. It afterward passed into the hands of Crassus the rich, and now became the property of Cicero. We shall hear how it was destroyed during his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how restored to Cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. The history of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of Cicero's two successors in it, Censorinus and Statilius.217It is interesting to know the sort of house which Cicero felt to be suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his circumstances were. In making this purchasehe is supposed to have abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. Hence we may argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly circumstances. Nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter to Sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion—so much so that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any conspiracy. Hence has come to us a story through Aulus Gellius, the compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that Cicero was fain to borrow this money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor so conferred. Aulus Gellius collected his stories two centuries afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting. There is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any contemporary. In this letter to Sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount he wanted at six per cent—twelve being the ordinary rate—and gives as a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to the State. Very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed, but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in the midst of such wealth as prevailed at Rome, had practised so widely and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must surely have taken money for his services. He himself has asserted that he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he spoke the truth. Had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have heard of it from nearer witnesses than Aulus Gellius, if, as Aulus Gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. But because he tells his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! It will be found that all the stones most injurious to Cicero's reputation have been produced in the same manner. His own wordshave been misinterpreted—either the purport of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke—and then accusations have been founded on them.218
Another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made against Cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the accusations so made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling that Cicero cannot surely have been altogether clean when all others were so dirty, are too numerous to receive from each reader's judgment that indignant denial to which each is entitled. The biographer cannot but fear that when so much mud has been thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to tell of the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth deserved.
It seems that Antony, Cicero's colleague in the Consulship,who became Proconsul in Macedonia, had undertaken to pay some money to Cicero. Why the money was to be paid we do not know, but there are allusions in Cicero's letters to Atticus to one Teucris (a Trojan woman), and it seems that Antony was designated by the nickname. Teucris is very slow at paying his money, and Cicero is in want of it. But perhaps it will be as well not to push the matter. He, Antony, is to be tried for provincial peculation, and Cicero declares that the case is so bad that he cannot defend his late colleague. Hence have arisen two different suspicions: one that Antony had agreed to make over to Cicero a share of the Macedonian plunder in requital of Cicero's courtesy in giving up the province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that Antony was to pay Cicero for defending him. As to the former, Cicero himself alludes to such a report as being common in Macedonia, and as having been used by Antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. But this has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the ground because of the second accusation. But in support of that there is no word of evidence,219whereas the tenor of the story as told by Cicero himself is against it. Is it likely, would it be possible, that Cicero should have begun his letter to Atticus by complaining that he could not get from Antony money wanted for a peculiar purpose—it was wanted for his new house—and have gone on in the same letter to say that this might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform the service for which the money was to be paid? The reader will remember that the accusation is based solely on Cicero's own statement that Antony was negligent in paying to him moneythat had been promised. In all these accusations the evidence against Cicero, such as it is, is brought exclusively from Cicero's own words. Cicero did afterward defend this Antony, as we learn from his speech Pro Domo Suâ; but his change of purpose in that respect has nothing to do with the argument.
b.c.62, ætat 45.
We have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of P. Sulla, nephew to the Dictator; the other for Archias the Greek scholar and poet, who had been Cicero's tutor and now claimed to be a citizen of Rome. I have already given an extract from this letter, as showing the charm of words with which Cicero could recommend the pursuit of literature to his hearers. The whole oration is a beautiful morsel of Latinity, in which, however, strength of argument is lacking. Cicero declares of Archias that he was so eminent in literature that, if not a Roman citizen, he ought to be made one. The result is not known, but the literary world believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.220
The speech on behalf of Sulla was more important, but still not of much importance. This Sulla, as may be remembered, had been chosen as Consul with Autronius, two years before the Consulship of Cicero, and he had then after his election been deposed for bribery, as had also Autronius. L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus had been elected in their places. It has also been already explained that the two rejected Consuls had on this account joined Catiline in his first conspiracy.There can be no doubt that whether as Consuls or as rejected Consuls, and on that account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as aristocrats for robbing the State. They were of the number of those to whom no other purpose was any longer possible. Then there came Catiline's second conspiracy—the conspiracy which Cicero had crushed—and there naturally rose the question whether from time to time this or the other noble Roman should not be accused of having joined it. Many noble Romans had no doubt joined besides those who had fallen fighting, or who had been executed in the dungeons. Accusations became very rife. One Vettius accused Cæsar, the Prætor; but Cæsar, with that potentiality which was peculiar to him, caused Vettius to be put into prison instead of going to prison himself. Many were convicted and banished; among them Porcius Leca, Vargunteius, Servius Sulla, the brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and Autronius his colleague. In the trial of these men Cicero took no part. He was specially invited by Autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to defend him, but he refused; indeed, he gave evidence against Autronius at the trial. But this Publius Sulla he did defend, and defended successfully. He was joined in the case with Hortensius, and declared that as to the matter of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was concerned with political matters of that date.221He, Cicero, had known nothing about them. The part of the oration which most interests us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat unwisely made against himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of him who had been raised to the Consulship in the place of P. Sulla. Torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novushomo," and had come from the municipality of Arpinum, and had taunted him with being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in regard to Lentulus and the other conspirators. He answers this very finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus, whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "Do not," he says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at—unless, indeed, you think it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely in the Senate, to think more of services due to the people than of favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many. If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a king." Sulla was acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he had been part and parcel with Catiline in the conspiracy. It is trusted that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity and eloquence.
At the end of this year,b.c.62, there occurred a fracas in Rome which was of itself but of little consequence to Rome, and would have been of none to Cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest trouble. This was the affair of Clodius and of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and I should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it would have been made to spring from some other source had that source not sufficed. I shall have to tell how it came to pass that Cicero was sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius; but I shall have to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was but the tool which was used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of Cicero.
This Clodius, a young man of noble family and of debauched manners, as was usual with young men of noble families, dressed himself up as a woman, and made his way in among the ladies as they were performing certain religious rites in honor of the Bona Dea, or Goddess Cybele, a matron goddess so chaste in her manners that no male was admitted into her presence. It was specially understood that nothing appertaining to a man was to be seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it may possibly have been the case that Clodius effected his entrance among the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his doing so was an outrage, and therefore exciting. Another reason was alleged. The rites in question were annually held, now in the house of this matron and then of that, and during the occasion the very master of the house was excluded from his own premises. They were now being performed under the auspices of Pompeia, the wife of Julius Cæsar, the daughter of one Quintus Pompeius, and it was alleged that Clodius came among the women worshippers for the sake of carrying on an intrigue with Cæsar's wife. This was highly improbable, as Mr. Forsyth has pointed out to us, and the idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to Cæsar for divorcing a wife of whom he was weary. At any rate, when the scandal got abroad, he did divorce Pompeia, alleging that it did not suit Cæsar to have his wife suspected.
b.c.61, ætat 46.
The story became known through the city, and early in January Cicero wrote to Atticus, telling him the facts: "You have probably heard that Publius Clodius, the son of Appius, has been taken dressed in a woman's clothes in the house of Caius Cæsar, where sacrifice was being made for the people, and that he escaped by the aid of a female slave. You will be sorry to hear that it has given rise to a great scandal."222A few days afterward Cicero speaks of it again to Atticus at greater length, and we learn that the matter had beentaken up by the magistrates with the view of punishing Clodius. Cicero writes without any strong feeling of his own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very Lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.223Then there is a third letter in which Cicero is indignant because certain men of whom he disapproves, the Consul Piso among the number224are anxious to save this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him; whereas others of whom he approves Cato among the number, are desirous of seeing justice done. But it was no affair special to Cicero. Shortly afterward he writes again to Atticus as to the result of the trial—for a trial did take place—and explains to his friend how justice had failed. Atticus had asked him how it had come to pass that he, Cicero, had not exerted himself as he usually did.225This letter, though there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the Clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed no importance to it as regarded himself. He had exerted himself till Hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges. After that he had himself given evidence. An attempt was made to prove an alibi, but Cicero came forward to swear that he had seen Clodius on the very day in question. There had, too, been an exchange of repartee in the Senate between himself and Clodius after the acquittal, of which he gives the details to his correspondent with considerable self-satisfaction. The passage does not enhance our idea of the dignity of the Senate, or of the power of Roman raillery. It was known that Clodius had been saved by the wholesale bribery of a large number of the judges. There had been twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for acquittal.226Cicero in the Catiline affair had used a phrase with frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and "found out" that—"comperisse omnia." Clodius, in the discussion before the trial, throws this in his teeth: "Comperisse omnia criminabatur." This gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt Cicero much worse than the dishonor done to the Bona Dea. As for that, we may say that he and the Senate and the judges cared personally very little, although there was no doubt a feeling that it was wise to awe men's minds by the preservation of religious respect. Cicero had cared but little about the trial; but as he had been able to give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and enmity sprung from the words which were spoken both on one side and on the other. Clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and concerns Rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial that Cicero had been very bitter, and that Clodius had become his enemy. When a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in persecuting Cicero, Clodius was ready for the occasion.
While the expediency of putting Clodius on his trial was being discussed, Pompey had returned from the East, and taken up his residence outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. The General, to whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the war with all his warlike spoils around him. The usage had obtained the strength of law, but the General was not on that account debarred from city employment during the interval. The city must be taken out to him instead of his coming into the city. Pompey was so great on his return from his Mithridatic victories that the Senate went out to sit with him in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. We find him takingpart in these Clodian discussions. Cicero at once writes of him to Athens with evident dissatisfaction. When questioned about Clodius, Pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. Crassus on this occasion, between whom and Cicero there was never much friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great Consul on account of his Catiline successes. Pompey, we are told, did not bear this well.227Crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect. Then Cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of Crassus, very glibly, no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before Pompey, his new listener.228More than six years had passed since Pompey could have heard him, and then Cicero's voice had not become potential in the Senate. Cicero had praised Pompey with all the eloquence in his power. "Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius," he had said, in the last Catiline oration to the Senate; and Pompey, though he had not heard the words spoken, knew very well what had been said. Such oratory was never lost upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it. But in return for all this praise, for that Manilian oration which had helped to send him to the East, for continual loyalty, Pompey had replied to Cicero with coldness. He would now let Pompey know what was his standing in Rome. "If ever," he says to Atticus, "I was strong with my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and with logic, I was so now. Oh, the noise that I made on the occasion! You know what my voice can do. I need say no more about it, as surely you must have heard me away there in Epirus." The reader, I trust, will have already a sufficiently vivid idea of Cicero's character to understand the mingling of triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment, which is here expressed. "This Pompey, though I havebeen so true to him, has not thought much of me—of me, the great Consul who saved Rome! He has now heard what even Crassus has been forced to say about me. He shall hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will then know better." It was thus that Cicero's mind was at work while he was turning his loud periods. Pompey was sitting next to him listening, by no means admiring his admirer as that admirer expected to be admired. Cicero had probably said to himself that they two together, Pompey and Cicero, might suffice to preserve the Republic. Pompey, not thinking much of the Republic, was probably telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. When of two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second will generally feel himself to be superior to the first. Pompey would have liked Cicero better if his periods had not been so round nor his voice so powerful. Not that Pompey was distinctly desirous of any throne. His position at the moment was peculiar. He had brought back his victorious army from the East to Brundisium, and had then disbanded his legions. I will quote here the opening words from one of Mommsen's chapters:229"When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes toward home, he found, for the second time, the diadem at his feet." He says farther on, explaining why Pompey did not lift the diadem: "The very peculiar temperament of Pompeius naturally turned once more the scale. He was one of those men who are capable, it may be, of a crime, but not of insubordination." And again: "While in the capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch, newscame that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up his legions, and with a small escort had entered his journey to the capital. If it is a piece of good-fortune to gain a crown without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for Pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in vain." I must say here that, while I acknowledge the German historian's research and knowledge without any reserve, I cannot accept his deductions as to character. I do not believe that Pompey found any diadem at his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my reading of Roman history, had Marius or had Sulla; nor did Cæsar. The first who thought of that perpetual rule—a rule to be perpetuated during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his successors—was Augustus. Marius, violent, self-seeking, and uncontrollable, had tumbled into supreme power; and, had he not died, would have held it as long as he could, because it pleased his ambition for the moment. Sulla, with a purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old Roman idea of a temporary Dictatorship. The old Roman horror of a king was present to these Romans, even after they had become kings. Pompey, no doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the East thought that by his deeds he was first, easily first. Whether Consul year after year, as Marius had been, or Dictator, as Sulla had been, or Imperator, with a running command over all the Romans, it was his idea still to adhere to the forms of the Republic. Mommsen, foreseeing—if an historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in the past—that a master was to come for the Roman Empire, and giving all his sympathies to the Cæsarean idea, despises Pompey because Pompey would not pick up the diadem. No such idea ever entered Pompey's head. After a while he "Sullaturized"—was desirous of copying Sulla—to use an excellent word which Cicero coined. When he was successfully opposed by those whom he had thought inferior to himself, when he foundthat Cæsar had got the better of him, and that a stronger body of Romans went with Cæsar than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and the seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry mind, but of permanent despotic power there was, I think, no thought, nor, as far as I can read the records, had such an idea been fixed in Cæsar's bosom. To carry on the old trade of Prætor, Consul, Proconsul, and Imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in the scramble, was, I think, Cæsar's purpose. The rest grew upon him. As Shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre, composed some Lear or Tempest—that has lived and will live forever, because of the genius which was unknown to himself—so did Cæsar, by his genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. A much longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a fact from their practice. This should be proved to us by our own loyalty to the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a monarchy than our own commonwealth. From those first breaches in republican practice which the historian Florus dates back to the siege of Numantia,230b.c.133, down far into the reign of Augustus, it took a century and a quarter to make the people understand that there was no longer a republican form of government, and to produce a leader who could himself see that there was room for a despot.
Pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had annoyed Cicero had offended others. He was shorn of his honors. Only two days were allowed for his processions. He was irritated, jealous, and no doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem. Cæsarsaw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since called the First Triumvirate.
b.c.62, 61. ætat45,46.
The two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in Cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites. Two discourses were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now lost—that, namely, to the people against Metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had intended to say when Metellus stopped him from speaking at the expiration of his Consulship; the second, against Clodius and Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable Clodian affair. The fragments which we have of this contain those asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus, and are not either instructive or amusing. But we learn from these fragments that Clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the Tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he afterward carried out, to the great detriment of Cicero's happiness. Of the speeches extant on behalf of Archias and P. Sulla I have spoken already. We know of no others made during this period. We have one letter besides this to Atticus, addressed to Antony, his former colleague, which, like many of his letters, was written solely for the sake of popularity.
During these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the great men of the greatest city in the world. He had his magnificent new mansion in Rome, and his various villas, which were already becoming noted for their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. Not only had he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in taking his brother Quintus up with him. In the second of the two years,b.c.61, Quintus had been sent out as Governor or Proprætor to Asia, having then nothing higher to reach than the Consulship, which, however, he never attained. This step in the life of Quintus has become famous by a letter which theelder brother wrote to him in the second year of his office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter.
So far all things seemed to have gone well with Cicero. He was high in esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. But the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping him. He had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their malice.
Cb.c.60, ætat 47.
I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal, as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every school-girl, knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it was a political combination made by three great Romans of the day, Julius Cæsar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for managing Rome among them. Beyond this they know little, because there is little to know. That it was a conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as that of Catiline, or Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know generally, because Cæsar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate was constructed, who has an idea? How was it first suggested, where, and by whom? What was it that the conspirators combined to do? There was no purpose of wholesale murder like that of Catiline for destroying the Senate, and of Guy Faux for blowing up the House of Lords. There was no plot arranged for silencing a body of legislators like that of Napoleon. In these scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for provinces and plunder, let us help each other. If we can manage to stick fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder. That, said with a wink by one of the Triumvirate—Cæsar, let us say—and assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was sufficientfor the construction of such a conspiracy as that which I presume to have been hatched when the First Triumvirate was formed.231Mommsen, who never speaks of a Triumvirate under that name, except in his index,232where he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the First Triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having been made in (b.c.71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey and Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history, except to say that Cæsar. who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had no personal hand in that of 71. Though he had spent his early years in "harassing the aristocracy," as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with Pompey and Crassus. When this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and the great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with perfect, accuracy describes it, Cæsar no doubt had at his fingers' ends the history of past years. "The idea naturally occurred," says Mommsen, "whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats,with their ally, Crassus, on the one side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."233The democracy here means Cæsar. Cæsar during his whole life had been learning that no good could come to any one from an effete Senate, or from republican forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy was in vogue with him; not, as I think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal lord—the study of politics had never then reached to that height—but because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three, should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money was to him nothing. Another man's money was the same as his own—or better, if he could get hold of it. That doctrine taught by Cicero that men are "ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. Blood was to him nothing. A friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead. Blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible. To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. Of courage he had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then act as though there were none. Nothing was wrong to him but what was injudicious. He could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would think it folly not to do soif to do so were expedient.234In this coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people. Therefore Mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." Crassus is called the ally of the democrats. It will be enough for us here to know that Crassus had achieved his position in the Senate by his enormous wealth, and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to Cæsar, that he was admitted into the league. By means of his wealth he had risen to power and had conquered and killed Spartacus, of the honor and glory of which Pompey robbed him. Then he had been made Consul. When Cæsar had gone as Proprætor to Spain, Crassus had found the money. Now Cæsar had come back, and was hand and glove with Crassus. When the division of the spoil came, some years afterward—the spoil won by the Triumvirate—when Cæsar had half perfected his grand achievements in Gaul, and Crassus had as yet been only a second time Consul, he got himself to be sent into Syria, that by conquering the Parthians he might make himself equal to Cæsar. We know how he and his son perished there, each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a Roman—that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy—by destroying himself. Than the life of Crassus nothing could be more contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "For Pompeius," says Mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." As events turned out it became so, becauseCæsar was the stronger man of the two; but it is intelligible that at that time Pompey should have felt that he could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid from the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he wished to be the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still greatly superior to Cæsar, who as yet had been no more than Prætor, and at this time was being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same moment be in the city, as candidate for the Consulship, and out of the city waiting for his triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet fear to be overshadowed by Cæsar.235Cicero was his bugbear.
Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy, though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. The Langhornes, in translating Plutarch's life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but Plutarch himself says that Cæsar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the three men.236Paterculus and Suetonius237explain very clearly the nature of the compact, but donot use the term. There was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been used has been so far appropriate.
b.c.60, ætat 47.
Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again have been a "real power in the State;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the Republic.
I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the overtures made to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for horror; and these conspirators were all our Cicero's friends in one sense, though in another they might be his opponents. We may imagine that at first Crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that Pompey would fain have stood aloof in his jealousy. But Cæsar knew that it was well to have Cicero, if Cicero was to be had. It was not only his eloquence which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which his character had been founded. How valuable may character be made, if it can be employed under such conditions! To be believed because of your truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat; to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! The temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their naked ugliness. They certainlywere not so presented to Cicero by Cæsar and his associates. The bait was held out to him, as it is daily to others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and powerful almost to persuade. Give us the advantage of your character, and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. Though our line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into it you will see that it is expedient. What other course is there? How else shall any wreck of the Republic be preserved? Would you be another Cato, useless and impractical? Join us, and save Rome to some purpose. We can understand that in such way was the lure held out to Cicero, as it has been to many a politician since. But when the politician takes the office offered to him—and the pay, though it be but that of a Lord of the Treasury—he must vote with his party.
That Cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time throw in his lot with Cæsar and Pompey is certain. To be of real use—not to be impractical, as was Cato—to save his country and rise honestly in power and glory—not to be too straitlaced, not over-scrupulous—giving and taking a little, so that he might work to good purpose with others in harness—that was his idea of duty as a Roman. To serve in accord with Pompey was the first dream of his political life, and now Pompey was in accord with Cæsar. It was natural that he should doubt—natural that he should express his doubts. Who should receive them but Atticus, that "alter ego?" Cicero doubted whether he should cling to Pompey—as he did in every phase of his political life, till Pompey had perished at the mouth of the Nile. But at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as I think he always did. He tells his friend that Cæsar had sent his confidential messenger, Balbus, to sound him. The present question is whether he shall resist a certain agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by both Pompey and Cæsar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at his country villas, or boldly stayat Rome and oppose the law. Cæsar assures him that if he will come over to them, Cæsar will be always true to him and Pompey, and will do his best to bring Crassus into the same frame of mind. Then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue to him: "Closest friendship with Pompey—with Cæsar also, should he wish it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. But that conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."238Then he repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own Consulship. The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:239"No augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are settled.
Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in reference to which I will quote a passage out of Middleton,because the phrase which he uses exactly explains the purposes of Cæsar and Pompey.
b.c.60, ætat 47.
"Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself chosen Tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people. But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by the pretence of an adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms—wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions—so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius. Cæsar was at the bottom of it, and Pompey secretly favored it—not that they intended to ruin Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash—and if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet, and let Clodius loose upon him."240
This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in Rome at this conjunction of affairs. It had been found impossible to draw Cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. If he would live quietly at his Antian or Tusculan villa, amid his books and writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne with, even though he talked so much of his own Consulate. But if he would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into the net, then he must be dealt with. Cæsar seems to have respected Cicero always, and even to have liked him; but hewas not minded to put up with a "friend" in Rome who from day to day abused all his projects. In defending Antony, the Macedonian Proconsul who was condemned, Cicero made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. Cæsar, we are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused Clodius to be accepted as a Plebeian.
In all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of Mommsen's verdict on Rome, which I have already quoted more than once: "On the Roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." How had it come to pass that Cæsar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether for good or for evil? Cicero's description of what took place is as follows:241"About the sixth hour of the day, when I was defending my colleague Antony in court, I took occasion to complain of certain things which were being done in the Republic, and which I thought to be injurious to my poor client. Some dishonest persons carried my words to men in power"—meaning Cæsar and Pompey—"not, indeed, my own words, but words very different from mine. At the ninth hour on that very same day, you, Clodius, were accepted as a Plebeian." Cæsar, having been given to understand that Cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was determined not to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story with admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he had no sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any desire to represent in rosy colors the despotism of a Cæsar. He tells his stories simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says Suetonius,242"having at some trial complained of the state of the times, Cæsar, on the very same day, at the ninth hour, passedClodius over from the Patrician to the Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." How did it come to pass that Cæsar, who, though Consul at the time, had no recognized power of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? Because the Republic had come to the condition which the German historian has described. The conspiracy between Cæsar and his subordinates had not been made for nothing. The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have been fatal to Cicero. The story has been partly told in the passage from Middleton. A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not be a Tribune of the people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that office had been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. When such proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their votes whether it should or should not be law. The present object was to have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero, which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This could be best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune could be found—no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to be willing to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected. Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be degraded.
No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a Patrician might be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of his father—would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a son. For doing this in anycase a law had to be passed—or, in other words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. But many conditions were necessary. The father intending to adopt must have no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a fitting age to personate a son—at any rate, must be younger than the father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly intended. All these conditions were broken. The pretended father, Fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than Clodius. The great Claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the Tribunate by a fraud. It was required by the general law that the Sacred College should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. Yet Clodius was adopted, made a Plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as Tribune.
In reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. If Cæsar, who was already becoming a tyrant in his Consulship, chose to make use of this means of silencing Cicero, why not force Clodius into the Tribunate without so false and degrading a ceremony? But if, as was no doubt the case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no conjurer to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain when the rich fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of Cicero's life consisted. There could have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the Republic, when Rome had been governed as it was during the Consulship of Cæsar; but Cicero could still hope, though faintly, andstill buoy himself up with remembrances of his own year of office.
In carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for achieving Cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the year 60b.c., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since so-called Triumvirate was instituted. It has already been shown that Cicero, not without many doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the forces that were so united. He seems to have passed the greater portion of this year in Rome. One letter only was written from the country, to Atticus, from his Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as to which, though he dreaded the coming together of Cæsar and Pompey and Crassus—those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so detrimental to all who were concerned in them—he foresaw as yet but little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. He was by no means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote, and do not regret what we have lost. He composed a memoir of his Consulate in Greek, which he sent to Atticus with an allusion to his own use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in that matter. Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the road. He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he was altogether debarredfrom such an attempt by the excellence of his correspondent's performance.243He also wrote three books of a poem on his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,244and four or five other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O fortunatum natam me consule Romam"—unless, indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the orator's, M. Gueroult. Previous to these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Phænomena, having been turned into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen. Of the Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.