 Chapter 1, Part 1 of the Life of Cicero, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life of Cicero, Volume 1 by Anthony Trollop Chapter 1, Introduction, Part 1 I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a further life of Cicero, which I feel I may probably fail in justifying by any new information, and on this account the enterprise that which has been long considered has been postponed so that it may be left for those who come after me to burn or publish as they may think proper, or should it appear during my life, I may have become callous through age to criticism. The project of my work was anterior to the life by Mr Forsythe, and was first suggested to me as I was reviewing the earlier volumes of Dean Merrivale's history of the Romans under the Empire. In an article on the Dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, I inserted an apology for the character of Cicero, which was found to be too long as an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. From that time the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present dimensions. I may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as of his gifts. I must acknowledge that in discussing his character with men of letters, as I have been prone to do, I have found none quite to agree with me. His intellect they have admitted, and his industry, but his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and his courage they have denied. It might have become me to have been silenced by their verdict, but I have rather been instigated to appeal to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has given a new grace to all that he has touched, that as an orator, a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme, that as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure, that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of the body, that in taste he was excellent in thought, both correct and enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. All this has been already so said of him by other biographers. Plutarch, who is as familiar to us as though he had been English, and Middleton, who thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly Mr Forsythe, who has struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much as that. But there was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life, into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbour as himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to achieve, and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring home to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes about Roman times. It has been the habit of some latter writers who have left to Cicero his literary honours to rob him of those which had been accorded to him as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head of the minds of the second order. We cannot judge of the classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world are to be included in the first rank. But Macaulay probably intended to express an opinion that Cicero was inferior because he himself had never dominated others as Marius had done, and Sulla, and Pompey, and Caesar, and Augustus. But what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others, while these men had desired power only for themselves? Dean Merivale says that Cicero was discreet and decorous, as with a similar sneer another clergyman Sidney Smith ridiculed a Tory prime minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no glitter can be gained but only the happiness of many preserved. And the Dean declares that Cicero himself was not except once or twice and for a moment only a real power in the state. Men who usurped authority such as those I have named were the real powers, and it was in opposition to such usurpation that Cicero was always urgent. Mr Forsyth, who as I have said strives to be impartial, tells us that the chief fault of Cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity. Absence of sincerity there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was, who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives of men were first written. It will be my object to show that though less than Godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him, he was sincere as he was also self-denying, which if the two virtues be well examined will indicate the same phase of character. But of all modern writers Mr Frude has been the hardest to Cicero. His sketch of the life of Caesar is one prolonged censure on that of Cicero. Our historian with all that glory of language for which he is so remarkable has covered the poor orator with obliquy. There is no period in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was hesitating whether in the service of the Republic it did or did not behoove him to join Pompey before the Battle of Varsalia. At this time he wrote to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonising doubts as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party and by his own dignity. As to a passage in one of those Mr Frude says that Cicero had lately spoken of Caesar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the state. It has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the readiest means of ending it, says Mr Frude. The it has been seen refers to a statement made a few pages earlier in which he translates certain words written by Cicero to Atticus. He considers it a disgrace to them that Caesar was alive, that is his translation. And in his indignation he puts other words as it were into the mouth of his literary brother of 2000 years before. Why did not somebody kill him? The Latin words themselves are added in a note. Cwm wywere ipsum turpe sitnobis. Hot indignation has so carried the translator away that he has missed the very sense of Cicero's language. When even to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us. That is what Cicero meant. Mr Frude in a preceding passage gives us another passage from a letter to Atticus. Caesar was mortal. So much is an intended translation. Then Mr Frude tells us how Cicero had hailed Caesar's eventual murder with rapture and goes on to say, we read the words with sorrow and yet with pity. But Cicero had never dreamed of Caesar's murder. The words of the passage are as follows. Honc primum mortale mese. De in de etia multis modis extinguipose cogitabam. I bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal and then that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side. All the lateral authorities have, I believe, suppose the honc or this man to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the whole letter, one of the most interesting that was ever written as telling the workings of the great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his life. Did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Caesar to have been meant? But whether Caesar or Pompey, there is nothing in it to do with murder. It is a question, Cicero is saying to his friend, of the stability of the Republic. When a matter so great is considered, how is a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day or cease from any accident to be of weight? Cicero was speaking of the effect of this or that step on his own part. Am I, he says, for the sake of Pompey, to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country, sacrificing the Republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and gone to-morrow? Or, for the sake of an enemy if the reader thinks that the honc refers to Caesar, the argument is the same. Am I to consider an individual when the Republic is at stake? Mr Frude tells us that he reads the words with sorrow and yet with pity. So would everyone, I think, sympathising with the Patriots doubts as to his leader, as to his party and as to his country. Mr Frude does so because he gathers from them that Cicero is premeditating the murder of Caesar. It is natural that a man should be judged out of his own math. A man who speaks much, and so speaks that his word shall be listened to and read, will be so judged. But it is not too much to demand that when a man's character is at stake, his own word shall be thoroughly sifted before they are used against him. The writer of the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica on Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the first triumphorate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of Caesar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be bought. The augurship would have bought him. So pitiful, says the biographer, was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honour, his opinions and the commonwealth. With no more sententious language was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn, and on what evidence? We should have known nothing of the bribe and the corruption, but for a few playful words in a letter from sister-ome-self to Atticus. He is writing from one of his villas to his friend in Rome, and asks for news of the day. Who are to be the new consuls? Who is to have the vacant augurship? Ah, says he, they might have called even me with that bait. As he said on another occasion that he was so much in debt as to be fit for a rebel, and, as again, as I shall have to explain just now, that he was like to be called in question under the Syntzian law because of a present of books. This was just at the point of his life when he was declining all offers of public service, of public service for which he's so longed, because they were made to him by Caesar. It was then that the Vaginti Viratus was refused, which Quintillian mentions to his honour. It was then that he refused to be Caesar's lieutenant. It was then that he might have been forth with Caesar and Pompey and Crassus had he not felt himself bound not to serve against the Republic. And yet the biographer does not hesitate to load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jacos and half pathetic to his friend. If a man's deeds be always honest, surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some light words spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. The light words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye closed in the majesty of a dead language and thus it comes to pass that their very meaning is misunderstood. My friend Mr Collins speaks in his charming little volume on Cicero of quiet evasions of the Syntzian law and tells us that we are taught by Cicero's letters not to trust Cicero's words when he was in a boasting vein. What has the one thing to do with the other? He names no quiet evasions. Mr Collins makes a surmise by which the character of Cicero for honesty is impugned without evidence. The anonymous biographer altogether misinterprets Cicero. Mr Frude charges Cicero with anticipation of murder grounding his charge on words which he has not taken the trouble to understand. Cicero is accused on the strength of his own private letters. It is because we have not the private letters of other persons that they are not so accused. The courtesies of the world exact, I will not say demand, certain deviations from straightforward expression. And these are made most often in private conversations and in private correspondence. Cicero complies with the ways of the world, but his epistles are no longer private, and he is therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. It is because Cicero's letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be made public that such accusations have been made. When the injustice of these critics strikes me, I almost wish that Cicero's letters had not been preserved. As I referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter days, spoken against Cicero, I will endeavour to place before the reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers, chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the 150 years after his death, from the time of Augustus down to that of Adrian, a period much given to literature in which the name of a politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed. Readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came after him. I trust they will believe that if I knew of testimony on the other side of records adverse to the man, I would give them. The first passage to which I will allude does not bear Cicero's name, and it may be that I am wrong in assuming honour to Cicero from a passage in poetry itself so famous in which no direct illusion is made to himself. But the idea that Virgil in the following lines refers to the manner in which Cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with Otto's law does not originate with me. I give the lines as translated by Dryden with the original in a note. As when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd mad at their motions and their tongues are loud and stones and brands in rattling volleys fly and all the rustic arms that fury can supply, if then some grave and pious man appear they hush their noise and lend a listening ear. He soothes with sober words their angry mood and quenches their innate desire of blood. Footnote, Virgil in Eard, Book 1, line 150. Ac, wellwt i magno i'n popol o cwm saip e'ch orta est seditio saibid coe animus ignobilegwlgus, jam coe faces et sac savolant furor arma ministrat, tum pietate grawem ac meritis sy'n ffordd e wirwm coe'n conspexere, silent ar ectis coe awrwbus adstant, isde regit dictis animus et pectora mulchet. End of footnote. This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that occasion, exactly describes his position and his success. We have a fragment of Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the Augustan age, declaring that at Cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the republic had lost the most. Livy declared of him only that he would be the best writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero. Veleus Paterculus, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's achievements with the highest honour. At this period, he says, lived Marcus Cicero, who owed everything to himself, a man of altogether a new family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his life. Veleus Maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving character. Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from the pen of Pliny the Elder, from whose address to the memory of Cicero I will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to it more at length when speaking of his consulship. Hail thou, says Pliny, who first among men was called the father of your country. Marshall, in one of his districts, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of Cicero's writing, he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero himself. Lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of peace in the camp of Farsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should have said nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all honour. Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author whose essay De Oratoribus was written about the time of Tacitus and whose work has come to us with the name of Tacitus, has told us of Cicero that he was a master of logic, of ethics and of physical science. Everybody remembers the passage in Juvenal. said Roma parentem Roma pacem patriae chicheronem liber adixit. Rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his country. Even Plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of jealousy when speaking of Cicero, declares that he verified the prediction of Plato, that every state would be delivered from its calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and justice in one person. The praises of Quintillion, as to the man, are so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters that I would have omitted to mention them here, were it not that they will help to declare what was the general opinion as to Cicero at the time in which it was written? He has been speaking of Demosthenes, and then goes on. Nor in regard to Cicero do I see that he ever failed in the duty of a good citizen. There is in evidence of this, the splendour of his consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his refusal of office under Caesar, the firmness of his mind on the civil wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came heavily on him in his old age. On all these occasions he did the best he could for the Republic. Florus, who wrote after the twelve Caesars in the time of Trajan and of Adrian, whose rapid summary of Roman events can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how Catiline's conspiracy was crushed by the authority of Cicero and Cato in opposition to that of Caesar. Then, when he has passed in a few short chapters over all the intervening history of the Roman Empire, he relates, in pathetic words, the death of Cicero. It was the custom in Rome to put up on the rostra the heads of those who had been slain, but now the city was not able to restrain its tears when the head of Cicero was seen there upon the spot from which the citizens had so often listened to his words. Such is the testimony given to this man by the writers who may be supposed to have known most of him as having been nearest to his time. They all wrote after him, Salast, who was certainly his enemy, wrote of him in his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise. It is evident that public opinion forbade him to do so. Salast is never warm in Cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words I have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for Envy for having passed too lightly over Cicero's doings and words in his account of Catiline's conspiracy, but what he did say was to Cicero's credit. Men had heard of the danger, and therefore, says Salast, they conceived the idea of entrusting the consulship to Cicero. For before that, the nobles were envious and thought that the consulship would be polluted if it were conferred on a no-wis homo, however distinguished. But when danger came, Envy and pride had to give way. He afterward declares that Cicero made a speech against Catiline, most brilliant and at the same time useful to the Republic. This was lukewarm praise, but coming from Salast who would have censured if he could, it is as eloquent as any eulogy. There is extant a passage attributed to Salast full of virulent abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Salast wrote it. It is called the Declimation of Salast Against Cicero, and bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited someone to forge pretended invectives between Salast and Cicero and is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to Diel Cassius a foundation for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator. Diel Cassius was a Greek who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus, more than two centuries and a half after the death of Cicero, and he, no doubt, speaks evil enough of our hero. What was the special cause of jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note which is so foul-mouthed that it can only be inserted under the veil of his own language. Footnote Diel Cassius, book 46, section 18. Greek text follows. End of footnote Among other absurdities, Diel Cassius says of Cicero that in his later days he put away a gay young wife 40 years younger than himself in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was younger. Now I ask, having brought forward such strong a testimony, not I will say as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country, having shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old republic, but by the minions of the empire, having found that no charge was ever made against him, either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty, by those who dealt commonly with his name. Am I not justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown their authority? Their authority they have always found in his own words. It is on his own evidence against himself that they have defended, on his own evidence or occasionally on their own surmises. When we are told of his cowardice because those human vacillations of his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came quivering out of his bosom onto his fingers. He is a coward to the critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel the true meaning of his own words. If we had only known his acts and not his words, how he stood up against the judges at the trial of Veriz, with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the time of Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia from a sense of sheer duty, how he defied Antony, when to defy Antony was probable death, then we should not call him a coward. It is out of his own mouth that he has condemned. Then surely his word should be understood. Queen Christina says of him in one of her maxims that Cicero was the only coward that was capable of great actions. The Queen of Sweden, whose sentences are never worth very much, has known her history well enough to have learned that Cicero's acts were noble, but has not understood the meaning of words sufficiently to extract from Cicero's own expressions their true bearing. The bravest of us all, if he is in high place, has to doubt much before he can know what true courage will demand of him, and these doubts the man of words will express if there be given to him an alter ego such as Cicero had in Atticus. In reference to the biography of Mr Forsythe, it is in justice both to him and to Cicero quote one passage from the work. Let those who like to Quincy, Momsen and others, speak disparagingly of Cicero and are so lavish in praise of Caesar, recollect that Caesar never was troubled by a conscience. Here it is that we find that advance almost to Christianity of which I have spoken, and that superiority of mind which makes Cicero the most fit to be loved of all the Romans. It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to analyse the meaning of a conscience if he put out of question all the leaf in a future life. Why should a man do right if it be not for a reward, here or here after? Why should anything be right or wrong? The Stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could conquer all his personal desires he would become by doing so happy and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim. The school had many scholars but probably never a believer. The normal Greek or Roman might be deterred by the law which means fear of punishment or by the opinion of his neighbours which means ignominy. He might recognise the fact that comfort would combine itself with innocence or disease and want with lust and greed. In this there was little need of a conscience, hardly perhaps room for it. But when ambition came with all the opportunities that chance, audacity and intellect would give, as it did to Sulla, to Caesar and to Augustus, then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty or his clemency might be more or less as his conviction of the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with him or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him but there was no conscience. With the man of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. In his sometimes doubtful wanderings after political wisdom in those mental mazes which have been called insincerity we shall see him if we look well into his doings struggling to find whether in searching for what was his duty he should go to this side or to that. Might he best hope a return to that state of things which he thought good for his country by adhering to Caesar or to Pompey? We see the workings of his conscience and as we remember that Scipio's dream of his we feel sure that he had in truth within him a recognition of a future life. In discussing the character of a man there is no cause of error so fertile as the drawing of a hardened fast line. We are attracted by salient points and seeing them clearly we jumped to conclusions as though there were a lighthouse on every point by which the nature of the coast would certainly be shown to us and so it will if we accept the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines but to say that a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other difficulty that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers that he is dishonest because he has swerved that he is a liar because an untrue word has been traced to him is to suppose that you know all the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you he who so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy he has lied how often in our own political contest do we hear the cry with a note of triumph and if he have how often has he told the truth and if he have how many are entitled by pure innocence in that matter to throw a stone at him and if he have do we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying in his stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself when afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words he shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied it is by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him whether he be a liar or no to expect a man to be the same at 60 as he was at 30 is to suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colours which adorn its setting and there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a pivot a variation in the breeze of the moment which Corsa mine shall not feel will carry them round with the rapidity which battles the common eye the man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning shall before the evening come recognise it on the other and then again and again and yet again the vein shall go round it may be that an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses we do not want a clock to strike the minutes or a glass to tell the momentary changes in the atmosphere it may be found that for the work of the world the course work and no work is so course though none is so important as that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen instruments strong in texture and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden impressions may be the best that it is which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics but the same man may at various periods of his life and on various days at the same period be scrupulous and unscrupulous impractical and practical as the circumstances for the occasion may affect him at one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him ffiat justitia ruat coelum sifractus ilabatur orbis impavidum feriunt ruinae at another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many he will tell himself that if the best cannot be done he must content himself with the next best he must shake hands with the imperfect as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way to order better in obedience to his very conscience he will temporise and finding no other way of achieving good will do even evil that good may come of it rem si posis recte si non co cunque modol rem in judging of such a character as this a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray in judging of Cicero such a hard and fast line has to generally been used he was a man singularly sensitive to all influences it must be admitted that he was a vain turning on a pivot finer than those on which statesmen have generally been made to work he had none of the fixed purpose of Caesar or the unflinching principle of Cato they were men caced in brass whose feelings nothing could hurt they suffered from none of those inward flutterings of the heart doubtful aspirations human longings sharp sympathies dreams of something better than this world fears of something worse which makes Cicero so like a well bred polished gentleman of the present day it is because he has so little like a Roman that he is of all the Romans the most attractive still there may be doubt whether with all the intricacies of his character his career was such as to justify a further biography at this distance of time what's hecuba to him or he to hecuba asks Hamlet when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare recital of an old story by an itinerant player what is Cicero to us of the 19th century that we should care so much for him as to read yet another book nevertheless Hamlet was moved because the tale was well told there is matter in the earnestness the pleasantness, the patriotism and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still if the story could only be written of him as it is felt the difficulty lies in that and not in the nature of the story the period of Cicero's life was the very turning point of civilisation and government in the history of the world at that period of time the world as we know it was Rome Greece had sunk the Macedonian empire had been destroyed the kingdoms of the east whether conquered or even when conquering as was pathia for a while were barbaric outside the circle of cultivation and to be brought into it only by the arms and influence of Rome during Caesar's career Gaul was conquered and Britain with what was known of Germany supposed to be partly conquered the subjugation of Africa and Spain was all but completed letters too had been or were being introduced Cicero's use of language was so perfect that it seems to us to have been almost necessarily the result of a long established art of Latin literature but in truth he is the earliest of the prose writers of his country and his works we are familiar accepting Varro who was born but ten years before him no earlier Latin prose writer has left more than a name to us and the one work by which Varro is at all known the Deirei Rustica was written after Cicero's death Lucretius whose language we regard as almost archaic so unlike is it to that of Virgil or Horus was born eight years after Cicero in a great degree Cicero formed the Latin language or produced that manipulation of it which has made it so graceful in prose and so powerful a vehicle of thought that which he took from any Latin writer he took from Terence and it was then, just then that there arose in Rome that unpremeditated change in its form of government which resulted in the self-assumed dictatorship of Caesar and the usurpation of the empire by Augustus the old Rome had had kings then the name and the power became odious the name to all the citizens no doubt but the power simply to the nobility who grudged the supremacy of one man the kings were abolished and an oligarchy was established under the name of a republic with its annual magistrates at first its two consuls then its pritals and others and occasionally a dictator as some current event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a certain purpose the republic was no republic the republic was no republic as we understand the word nor did it ever become so though there was always going on a perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to the outside class but so little was as yet understood of liberty that as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the magistrates of the state he became also one of the oligarchical faction there was a continued contest with a certain amount of good faith on each side on behalf of the so-called republic but still a contest for power this became so continued that a foreign war was at times regarded as a blessing because it concentrated the energies of the state which had been split and used by the two sections by each against the other it is probably the case that the invasion of the Gauls in earlier days and later on the Second Punic War threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome provided the republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence then came Marius dominant on one side as a tribune of the people and Sulla as aristocrat on the other and the civil wars between them in which as one prevailed or the other Rome was mastered how Marius died and Sulla reigned for three bloody fatal years outside the scope of our purpose except in this that Cicero saw Sulla's prescriptions and made his first essay into public life hot with anger at the dictator's tyranny end of chapter 1 part 1 chapter 1 part 2 of the life of Cicero volume 1 this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org recording by Philippa Jevons the life of Cicero volume 1 by Anthony Trollop chapter 1 introduction part 2 it occurs to us as we read the history of Rome beginning with the early consuls and going to the death of Caesar and of Cicero and the accomplished despotism of Augustus that the republic could not have been saved by any efforts and was in truth not worth the saving we are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty that there was so much of tyranny so little of real freedom in the Roman form of government that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies but it had been successful it had made a great people and had produced a widespread civilisation Roman citizenship was to those outside the one thing the most worthy to be obtained that career which led the great Romans up from the state of Quistor the Ediles, Pritos and Consuls chair and thence to the rich reward of provincial government was held to be the highest then open to the ambition of man the kings of Greece and of the east and of Africa was supposed to be inferior in their very rank to a Roman proconsul and this greatness was carried on with the semblance of liberty and was compatible with the belief in the majesty of the Roman citizen when Cicero began his work Pritos, Ediles and Quisters were still chosen by the votes of the citizens there was bribery no doubt and intimidation and a resort to those dirty arts of canvassing with which we English have been so familiar but in Cicero's time the male free inhabitants of Rome did generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves the salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out from their practice the love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern races did not exist in the time of Cicero the idea never seems to have reached even his bosom human and humanitarian as were his sympathies that a man as man should be free half the inhabitants of Rome were slaves and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that it never occurred to a Roman that slaves as a body should be manumitted the slaves themselves though they were not as have been the slaves whom we have seen of a different colour and presumed inferior race do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea they were instigated now and again to servile wars but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory of liberty that the people whom they dominated though not subjected to slavery should still be outside the pale of civil freedom that boon was to be reserved for the Roman citizen and for him only it had become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories the glory was not kept altogether for Rome but for Romans thus though the government was oligarchical and the very essence of freedom ignored there was a something which stood in the name of liberty and could endear itself to a real patriot with genuine patriotism Cicero loved his country and beginning his public life as he did at the close of Sulla's tyranny he was able to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form of government maintained there should still be two consuls in Rome whose annual election would guard the state against regal dominion and there should at the same time be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better class the optimates as he called them as would preserve the city from democracy and revolution no man ever trusted more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero or was more anxious for aristocratic authority but neither in one direction nor the other did he look for personal aggrandizement beyond that which might come to him in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of government it is because he was in truth patriotic because his dreams of a republic were noble dreams because he was intent on doing good in public affairs because he was anxious for the honour of Rome and of Romans not because he was or was not a real power in the state that his memory is still worth recording added to this was the intellect and the wit and erudition of the man which were at any rate supreme and then though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding him he was so nearly successful so often on the verge of success that we are exalted by the romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy as we are moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy so are we stirred by the efforts, the fortune and at last the fall of this man there is a picturesqueness about the life of Cicero which is wanting in the stories of Marius or Sulla of Pompey or even of Caesar a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity his hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by greed how infinitely Cicero must have risen above his time when he could have clean hands a man in our days will keep himself clean from leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad and public opinion coerces us there is something too we must suppose in the lessons of Christianity or it may be that the man of our day with all these advantages does not keep himself clean that so many go astray that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance even with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do it with the Romans in the time of Cicero greed feeding itself on usury wrapping and dishonesty was so fully the recognised condition of life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace but Cicero with eyes within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men perceived the baseness of the stain it has been said also of him that he was not altogether free from reproach it has been suggested that he accepted payment for his services as an advocate any such payment being illegal the accusation is founded on the knowledge that other advocates allowed themselves to be paid and on the belief that Cicero could not have lived as he did without an income from that source and then there is a story told of him that though he did much at a certain period of his life to repress the usury and to excite at the same time the enmity of a powerful friend he might have done more as we go on the stories of these things will be told but the very nature of the allegations against him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his day discussing the character of the men little is thought of the robberies of Sulla the borrowings of Caesar the money lending of Brutus or the accumulated wealth of Crassus to plunder a province to drive usury to the verge of personal slavery to accept bribes for perjured judgement to take illegal fees for services supposed to be gratuitous was so much the custom of the noble Romans that we hardly hate this dishonest greed when displayed in its ordinary course but because Cicero's honesty was abnormal we are first surprised and then suspecting little deviations rise up in wrath against him because in the midst of Roman profligacy he was not altogether a Puritan in his money matters Cicero is known to us in three great capacities as a statesman, an advocate and a man of letters as the combination of such pursuits is common in our own days so also was it in his Caesar added to them all the great work of his life as a soldier but it was given to Cicero to take apart in all those political struggles from the resignation of Sulla to the first rising of the young Octavius which were made on behalf of the Republic and were ended by its downfall his political life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to imperial rule and Rome was then the world could there have been no Augustus, no Nero and then no Trajan all Europe would have been different Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an Augustus or a Nero or the need of a Trajan and as we read of them we feel that had success been possible he would have succeeded as an advocate he was unsurpassed from him came the feeling whether it be right or wrong that a lawyer in pleading for his client should give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit but also all his sympathy to me it is marvellous and interesting rather than beautiful to see how completely Cicero can put off his own identity and assume another's in any cause whatever it be of which he has taken the charge it must however be born in mind that in old Rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us and also that the reader having the speeches which have come down to us whether of one nature or the other presented to him in the same volume is apt to confuse the public and that which may perhaps be called the private work of the man in the speeches best known to us Cicero was working as a public man for public objects and the ardor I may say the fury of his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public aspirations the orations which have come to us in three sets some of them published only but never spoken those against Veres, against Catterline and the Philippics against Antony were all of this nature though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one individual of these I will speak in their turn but I mention them here in order that I may if possible induce the reader to begin his inquiry into Cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the objects of the man he wished no doubt to shine as does the barrister of today he wished to rise he wished if you will to make his fortune not by the taking of fees but by extending himself into higher influence by the authority of his name no doubt he undertook this and the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause and when he did so used all his energy for the bad as he did for the good cause there seems to be special accusation made against him on this head as though the very fact that he undertook his work without pay threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that was not in itself upright with us the advocate does this notoriously for his fee Cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some political object of the moment or in maintenance of a friendship which was politically important I say nothing against the modern practice this would not be the place for such an argument nor do I say that by rules of absolute right and wrong Cicero was right but he was as right at any rate as the modern barrister and in reaching the high-minded conditions under which he worked he had only the light of his own genius to guide him when we compare the clothing of the savage race with our own their beads and wode and straw and fibres with our own petticoats and pantaloons we acknowledge the progress of civilization and the growth of machinery it is not a wonderful thing to us that an African prince should not be as perfectly dressed as a young man in Piccadilly but when we make a comparison of morals between our own time and a period before Christ we seem to forget that more should be expected from us than from those who lived 2,000 years ago there are some of those pleadings speeches made by Cicero on behalf of or against an accused party from which we may learn more of Roman life than from any other source left to us much we may gather from Terence, much from Horace, something from Juvenal there is hardly indeed a Latin author from which an attentive reader may not pick up some detail of Roman customs Cicero's letters are themselves very prolific but the pretty things of the poets are not quite facts nor are the bitter things of the satyrist and though a man's letters to his friend may be true such letters as come to us will have been the products of the greater minds and will have come from a small and special class I fear that the Newgate calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of living then prevailing than the letters of Lady Mary W. Montague or of Horace Walpole from the orations against ferries we learn how the people of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them and from those spoken in defence of Sextus Amorinus and Aulus Cluentius we gather something of the horrors of Roman life not in Rome indeed but within the limits of Roman citizenship it is however as a man of letters that Cicero will be held in the highest esteem it has been his good fortune to have a great part of what he wrote preserved for future ages his works have not perished as have those of his contemporaries Varro and Hortensius but this has been due to two causes which were independent of fortune he himself believed in their value and took measures for their protection and those who lived in his own time and in the immediately succeeding ages entertained the same belief and took the same care Livy said that to write Latin well the writer should write it like Cicero and Quintillion, the first of Latin critics, repeated to us what Livy had asserted there is a sweetness of language about Cicero which runs into the very sound so that passages read or write would by their very cadences charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language eulogy never was so happy as his eulogy however is tasteless in comparison with invective Cicero's abuse is awful let the reader curious in such matters turn to the dire tribes against Vatinius one of Caesar's creatures and to that against the unfortunate proconsul Piso or to his attacks on Gabinius who was consul together with Piso in the year of Cicero's banishment there are wonderful morsels in the Philippics dealing with Antony's private character but the words which he uses against Gabinius and Piso beat all that I know elsewhere in the science of invective Junius could not approach him and even Macaulay though he has in certain passages been very bitter has not allowed himself the latitude which Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to Cicero it may however be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved Alexander is known but little to us because we know so little of the details of his life Caesar is much to us because we have in truth been made acquainted with him but Shakespeare of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a boswell to paint his daily portrait the man of letters is in truth ever writing his own biography what there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself and if he can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written no other memoir will perhaps be necessary for myself I have never regretted those details of Shakespeare's life which a boswell of the time might have given us but Cicero's personality as a man of letters seems especially to require elucidation his letters lose their chief charm if the character of the man be not known and the incidents of his life his essays on rhetoric the written lessons which he has left on the art of oratory are a running commentary on his own career as an orator most of his speeches require for their understanding a knowledge of the circumstances of his life the treatises which we know as his philosophy works which have been most wrongly represented by being grouped under that name can only be read with advantage by the light of his own experience there are two separate classes of his so-called philosophy in describing which the word philosophy if it be used at all must be made to bear two different senses he handles in one set of treatises not I think with his happiest efforts the teaching of the old Greek schools such as his Tuscalan Disquisitions, the academics and the De Finubus from reading these without reference to the idiosyncrasies of the writer the student would be led to believe that Cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort but he was in truth the last of men to lend his ears to those budge doctors of the stoic fur Cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his weakness to sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty and obscurity with a mess of cabbage and a crust absolutely contented with abstract virtue has probably been given to no man but of none has it been less within the reach than of Cicero to him ginger was always hot in the mouth whether it was the spice of politics or of social delight or of intellectual enterprise when in his deep sorrow at the death of his daughter when for a time the republic was dead to him and public and private life were equally black he craved employment then he took down his Greek manuscripts and amused himself as best he might by writing this way or that it was a matter on which his intellect could work and his energies be employed though the theory of his life was in no way concerned in it such was one class of his philosophy the other consisted of a code of morals which he created for himself by his own convictions formed on the world around him and which displayed itself in essays such as those deoficis on the duties of life desenectute de amichitia on old age and friendship and the like which were not only intended for use but are of use to any man or woman who will study them up to this day there are others treatises on law and on government and religion which have all been lumped together for the misguidance of schoolboys under the name of Cicero's philosophy but they, be they of one class or the other, require an understanding of the man's character before they can be enjoyed for these reasons I think that there are incidents in the life, the character and the works of Cicero which ought to make his biography interesting his story is fraught with energy, with success, with pathos and with tragedy and then it is the story of a man, human as men are now no child of Rome ever better loved his country but no child of Rome was ever so little like a Roman arms and battles were to him abominable as they are to us but arms and battles were the delight of Romans he was ridiculed in his own time and has been ridiculed ever since for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his feeling but the thing said was thoroughly good and the better because the opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was still in the ascendant over the achievements of intellectual enterprise the greatest men have been those who have stepped out from the mass and gone beyond their time seeing things with eyesight almost divine which have hitherto been hidden from the crowd such was Columbus when he made his way across the western ocean such were Galileo and Bacon such was Pythagoras if the ideas we have of him be at all true such also was Cicero it is not given to the age in which such men live to know them could their age even recognize them they would not overstep their age as they do looking back at him now we can see how like a Christian was the man who liked that in essentials we can hardly see the difference he could love another as himself as nearly as a man may do and he taught such love as a doctrine he believed in the existence of one supreme God he believed that man would rise again and live forever in some heaven I am conscious that I cannot much promote this view of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another and which should be read each with its context before their due meaning can be understood but I may perhaps succeed in explaining to a reader what it is that I hope to do in the following pages and why it is that I undertake a work which must be laborious and for which many will think that there is no remaining need I would not have it thought that because I have so spoken of Cicero's aspirations and convictions I intend to put him forth as a faultless personage in history he was much too human to be perfect those who love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of Cato as perfect Cicero was ambitious and often unscrupulous in his ambition he was a loving husband and a loving father but at the end of his life he could quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably and could idolise his daughter while he ruined his son by indulgence he was very great while he spoke of his country which he did so often but he was almost as little when he spoke of himself which he did as often in money matters he was honest for the times in which he lived wonderfully honest but in words he was not always equally trustworthy he could flatter where he did not love I admit that it was so though I will not admit without a protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing his character generally he was so much more sincere than others that the protest is needed if a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his shoes shall he be called a pygmy? and yet to declare that he measures full six feet would be untrue Cicero was a busybody were there anything to do he wished to do it let it be what it might cadant arma togai if anything was written on his heart it was that yet he loved the idea of leading an army and panted for a military triumph letters and literary life would adhere to him and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with the young bloods of Rome such as Cilius as far as I can judge he cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking and yet he wished to be reckoned among the gourmonds and gourmets of his times he was so little like the budge doctors of the stoic fur of whom it was his delight to write when he had nothing else to do that he could not bear any touch of adversity with equanimity the stoic requires to be hardened against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune it is his profession to be indifferent to the whips and scorns of time no man was less hardened or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips there may be those who think pronness to such suffering is unmanly or that the sufferer should at any rate hide his agony Cicero did not whether of his glory or of his shame whether of his joy or of his sorrow whether of his love or of his hatred whether of his hopes or of his despair he spoke openly as he did of all things it has not been the way of heroes as we read of them but it is the way with men as we live with them what a man he would have been for London life how he would have enjoyed his club picking up the news of the day from all lips while he seemed to give it to all ears how popular he would have been at the Carlton and how men would have listened to him while every great all little crisis was discussed how supreme he would have sat on the treasury bench or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous when attacking the government from the opposite seats how crowded would have been his rack with invitations to dinner how delighted would have been the middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual flotations and the girls of the period how proud to get his autograph how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator with theirs how the pages of the magazines would have run over with little essays from his pen have you seen how Cicero's paper on agriculture that lucky fellow editor Blanc got him to do it last month of course you've read Cicero's article on the soul the bishops don't know which way to turn so the political article in the quarterly is Cicero's of course you know that the art criticism in the Times this year is Tully's doing but that would probably be a bounce and then what letters he would write with the penny post instead of travelling messengers at his command and pen instead of whacks and sticks or perhaps with an instrument writer and a private secretary he would have answered all questions and solved all difficulties he would have so abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want of reticence there will necessarily be much to be said of Cicero's writings in the following pages as it is my object to delineate the literary man as well as the politician in doing this there arises a difficulty as to the sequence in which his work should be taken it will hardly suit the purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or separately as to their subjects the speeches and the letters clearly require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time at which they were either spoken or written his treatises, whether on rhetoric or on the Greek philosophy or on government or on morals can best be taken apart as belonging in a very small degree if at all to the period in which they were written I will therefore endeavour to introduce the orations and letters as the periods may suit and to treat of his essays afterwards by themselves a few words I must say as to the Roman names I have used in my narrative there is a difficulty in this respect because the practice of my boyhood has partially changed itself Pompey used to be Pompey without a blush now with an erudite English writer he is generally Pompeos the denizens of Africa, the nigger world have had I think something to do with this but with no erudite English writer is Terence Terentius or Virgil Oegilius or Horus Horatius were I to speak of Lliwius the erudite English listener would think that I alluded to an old author long prior to our dear historian and though we now talk of Sulla instead of Sulla we hardly venture on Antonius instead of Anthony considering all this I have thought it better to cling to the sound which I have ever been familiar to myself and as I talk of Virgil and of Horus and Ovid freely and without fear so shall I speak also of Pompey and of Anthony and of Catiline in regard to Sulla the change has been so complete that I must allow the old name to have re-established itself altogether it has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of which I am about to write by dating from two different eras counting down from the building of Rome Auc or Anno Urbis Conditai and back from the birth of Christ which we English mark by the letters BC before Christ in dealing with Cicero writers both French and English have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating assigning his doings or sayings to the year of his age there is again a fourth mode common among the Romans of indicating the special years by naming the consoles or one of them or nata me cum consule manlio Horus says when addressing his cast of wine that was indeed the official mode of indicating a date and may probably be taken as showing how strong the impression in the Roman mind was of the succession of their consoles in the following pages I will use generally the date BC which though perhaps less simple than the Auc gives to the mind of the modern reader a clearer idea of the juxtaposition of events the reader will surely know that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus and crucified in that of Tiberius but he will not perhaps know without the trouble of some calculation how far removed from the period of Christ was the year 648 Auc in which Cicero was born to this I will add on the margin the year of Cicero's life he was nearly 64 when he died I shall therefore call that year his 63rd year End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of the Life of Cicero Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Philippa Jevons The Life of Cicero Volume 1 by Anthony Trollop Chapter 2 His Education At Arpinum, on the River Lyrus a little stream which has been made to sound sweetly in our ears by Horus in a villa residence near the town Marcus Tullius Cicero was born 106 years before Christ on the 3rd of January according to the calendar then in use Pompey the Great was born in the same year Arpinum was a state which had been admitted into Roman citizenship lying between Rome and Capua within that portion of Italy which was till the other day called the Kingdom of Naples The district from which he came is noted also as having given birth to Marius Cicero was of an equestrian family which means as much as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a gentleman and nothing more an eques or knight in Cicero's time became so or might become so by being in possession of a certain income the title conferred no nobility the plebeian it will be understood could not become patrician though he might become noble as Cicero did the patrician must have been born so must have sprung from the purple of certain fixed families Cicero was born a plebeian of equestrian rank and became a noble when he was ranked amongst the Senators because of his service among the high magistrates of the Republic as none of his family had served before him he was Nobus Homo a new man and therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself a man was noble who could reckon a consul, a prytor or an edyle among his ancestors such was not the case with Cicero as he filled all these offices his son was noble as were his sons, sons and grandsons if such there were it was common to Romans to have three names and our Cicero had three Marcus which was similar in its use to the Christian name of one of us had been that of his grandfather and father and was handed on to his son this called the Prino-men was conferred on the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism there was but a limited choice of such names among the Romans so that an initial letter will generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended a stands for Aulus, p for Publius, m generally for Marcus c for Caeus though there was a Cneus also the no-men Tullius was that of the family of this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know no details Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in extremes some declaring that he had been a fuller and others that he had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volski we do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince and also have been a fuller there can however be no doubt that he was a gentleman not uneducated himself with means and the desire to give his children the best education which Rome or Greece afforded the third name or Cognomen that of Cicero belonged to a branch of the family of Tullius this third name had generally its origin as do so many of our surnames in some speciality of place or trade or chance circumstance it was said that Anatestor had been called Cicero from Cicare a Vetch because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable it is more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of Vetch's be that as it may the name had been well established before the orator's time Cicero's mother was one Helvia of whom we are told that she was well-born and rich Cicero himself never alludes to her as neither if I remember rightly did Horace to his mother though he speaks so frequently of his father Helvia's younger son Quintus tells a story of his mother in a letter which has been by chance preserved among those written by our Cicero she was in the habit of sealing up the empty wine jars as well as those which were full so that a jar emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known this is told in a letter to Tyro a favourite slave belonging to Marcus of whom we shall hear often in the course of our work as the old lady sealed up the jars though they contained no wine so must Tyro writes letters though he has nothing to say in them this kind of argument taken from the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents could be only used to a dear and familiar friend such was Tyro though still a slave to the two brothers Roman life admitted of such friendships though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his life and death were at the master's disposal this is nearly all that is known of Cicero's father and mother or of his old home there is however sufficient evidence that the father paid great attention to the education of his sons if in the case of Marcus any evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his life at a very early age probably when he was eight in the year which produced Julius Caesar he was sent to Rome and there was devoted to studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life Middleton says that the father lived in Rome with his son and argues from this that he was a man of large means but Cicero gives no authority for this it is more probable that he lived at the house of one Akaleo who had married his mother's sister and had sons with whom Cicero was educated stories are told of his precocious talents and performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable men not unfrequently from their own mouths it is said of him that he was intimate with the two great advocates of the time Lucius Crassus and Marcus Antonius the orator the grandfather of Cicero's future enemy whom we know as Mark Anthony Cicero speaks of them both as though he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth he tells us anecdotes of them how they were both accustomed to conceal their knowledge of Greek fancying that the people in whose eyes they were anxious to shine would think more of them if they seem to have contended themselves simply with Roman words and Roman thoughts but the intimacy was probably that which allowed now is apt to feel that he's enjoyed with a great man if he has seen and heard him and perhaps been taken by the hand he himself gives in very plain language an account of his own studies when he was 17, 18 and 19 he speaks of the orators of that day when I was above all things anxious to listen to these men the banishment of Cotter was a great sorrow to me I was passionately intent on hearing those who were left daily writing, reading and making notes nor was I content only with practice in the art of speaking in the following year Various had to go condemned by his own enactment and at this time in working at the civil law I gave much of my time to Quintus Skyvola the son of Publius who though he took no pupils by explaining points to those who consulted him gave great assistance to students the year after when Sulla and Pompey were consuls I learned what oratory really means by listening to Publius Sulpicius who as tribune was daily making harangs it was then that Philo the chief of the academy with other leading philosophers of Athens had been put to flight by the war with Mithridates and had come to Rome to him I devoted myself entirely stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy but in that though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether yet it seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed in that year Sulpicius perished and in the next three of our greatest orators Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius and Caius Julius were cruelly killed this was the time of the civil war between Marius and Sulla in the same year I took lessons from Molo the Rodian a great preeder and master of the art in the next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with Deodartus the Stoic who afterwards lived with him and died in his house here we have an authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a youth at Rome and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives nothing in it however is more remarkable than the confession that while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers his clear common sense quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion but before these days of real study had come upon him he had given himself up to juvenile poetry he has said to have written a poem called Pontius Glaucus when he was 14 years old this was no doubt a translation from the Greek as were most of the poems that he wrote and many portions of his prose treatises Plutarch tells us that the poem was extant in his time and declares that in process of time when he had studied this art with greater application he was looked upon as the best poet as well as the greatest orator in Rome the English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an indifferent judge of Latin poetry and allege as proof of this that he praised Cicero as a poet a praise which he gave contrary to the opinion of juvenile but juvenile has given no opinion of Cicero's poetry having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for his egotism and declared that Cicero would never have had his head cut off had his philippics been of the same nature footnote juvenile satire 10 line 122 o fortunata nata me consule Romam Antoni Gladios Potuit Contemnere Cicic Omnia di Cicet end of footnote the evidence of Quintus Mucius Skyvola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps better as he had the means at any rate of reading it he believed that the Marius a poem written by Cicero in praise of his great fellow townsmen would live to posterity forever the story of the old man's prophecy comes to us no doubt from Cicero himself and is put into the mouth of his brother but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted the Glaucus was the translation from the Greek done by a boy probably as a boy's lesson it is not uncommon that such exercises should be treasured by parents or perhaps by the performer himself and not impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original compositions Lord Braum tells us in his autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing English essays and even tales of fiction I find one of these he says has survived the waste paper basket and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition I was guilty of at the age of 13 my tale was entitled Memnon or human wisdom and is as follows then we have a fair translation of Voltaire's romance Memnon or las agas ymen the old lord when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography had altogether forgotten his Voltaire and thought that he had composed the story nothing so absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on his behalf it may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to Cicero's poetry generally but little of it remains to us and by that little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great poet but what he did was too great an extent and too good in its nature to be passed over altogether without notice it has been his fate to be rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses and that ridicule has come from two lines which I have already quoted the longest piece which we have is from the phenomena of Aratus which he translated from the Greek when he was 18 years old and which describes the heavenly bodies it is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the author himself in his treatise De Natura Deorum it must be owned that it is not pleasant reading but translated poetry seldom is pleasant and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of 18 the Marius was written two years after this and we have a passage from it quoted by the author in his De Divinazione containing some fine lines it tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent Cicero took it no doubt not translated it however from the passage in the Iliad book 12200 which has been rendered by Pope with less than his usual fire and by Lord Derby with no peculiar charm Virgil has reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words his version has been translated by Dryden but better perhaps by Christopher Pitt Voltaire has translated Cicero's lines with great power and Shelley has reproduced the same idea at much greater length in the first canto of the revolt of Islam taking it probably from Cicero but if not from Voltaire I venture to think that of the nine versions Cicero's is the best and that it is the most melodious piece of Latin poetry we have up to that date 27 years afterward when Lucretius was probably at work on his great poem Cicero wrote an account of his consulship in verse of this we have 50 or 60 lines in which the author describes the heavenly warnings which were given as to the affairs of his own consular year the story is not a happy one but the lines are harmonious it is often worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is and how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen to trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson is a matter of interest to us all of Cicero as a poet we may say that he found Latin versification rough and left it smooth and musical now as we go on with the orator's life and prose works we need not return to his poetry the names of many masters have been given to us as those under whom Cicero's education was carried on among others he is supposed at a very early age to have been confided to Archias Archias was a Greek born at Antioch who devoted himself to letters and if we are to believe what Cicero says when speaking as an advocate excelled all his rivals of the day like many other educated Greeks he made his way to Rome and was received as one of the household of Lecullus with whom he travelled accompanying him even to the wars he became a citizen of Rome so Cicero shawls us and Cicero's tutor what Cicero owed to him we do not know but to Cicero Archias owed immortality his claim to citizenship was disputed and Cicero pleading on his behalf made one of those shorter speeches which are perfect in melody, in taste and in language there is a passage in which speaking on behalf of so excellent a professor in the art he sings the praises of literature generally I know no words written in praise of books more persuasive or more valuable other recreations he says do not belong to all seasons nor to all ages nor to all places these pursuits nourish our youth and delight our old age they adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a solace to our troubles they charm us at home and they are not in our way when we are abroad they go to bed with us they travel about with us they accompany us as we escape into the country Archias probably did something for him in directing his taste and has been rewarded thus richly as to other lessons we know that he was instructed in law by Skyveller and he has told us that he listened to Crassus and Antony at sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting off his boys dress the toga prytexter and appearing in the toga virilis before the prytor thus assuming his right to go about a man's business at sixteen the work of his education was not finished no more than it is with us when a ladder at Oxford becomes of age at twenty one nor was he put beyond his father's power the patria potestas from which no age availed to liberate a son but nevertheless it was a very joyful ceremony and was duly performed by Cicero in the midst of his studies with Skyveller at eighteen he joined the army that doctrine of the division of labour which now with us runs through and dominates all pursuits had not as yet been made plain to the minds of men at Rome by the political economists of the day it was well that a man should know something of many things that he should especially if he intended to be a leader of men be both soldier and orator to rise to be consul having first been questor, edil and prytor was the path of glory it had been the special duty of the consuls of Rome since the establishment of consular government to lead the armies of the republic a portion of the duty devolved upon the prytors as wars became more numerous and latterly the commanders were attended by questors the governors of the provinces pro consuls or pro prytors with pro consular authority always combined military with civil authority the art of war was therefore a necessary part of the education of a man intended to rise in the service of the state Cicero though in his endeavour to follow his own tastes he made a strong effort to keep himself free from such work and to remain at Rome instead of being sent abroad as a governor had at last to go where fighting was in some degree necessary and in the saddest phase of his life appeared in Italy with his lyctors demanding the honours of a triumph in anticipation of such a career no doubt under the advice of his friends he now went out to see if not a battle something at any rate of war it has already been said how the citizenship of Rome was conferred on some of the small Italian states around and not on others hence of course a rose jealousy which was increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded that they were called to furnish soldiers to Rome as well as those who were included then there was formed a combination of Italian cities sworn to remedy the injury that's inflicted on them their purpose was to fight Rome in order that they might achieve Roman citizenship and hence arose the first civil war which distracted the empire Pompeii Strabo father of Pompey the Great was then consul BC 89 and Cicero was sent out to see the campaign under him Marius and Sulla the two Romans who were destined soon to bathe Rome in blood had not yet quarrelled though they had been brought to hate each other Marius by jealousy and Sulla by rivalry in this war they both served under the consuls and Cicero served with Sulla we know nothing of his doings in that campaign there are no tidings even of a misfortune such as that which happened to Horace when he went out to fight and came home from the battlefield relicta non bene parmula Rome trampled on the rebellious cities and in the end admitted them to citizenship but probably the most important certainly the most notorious result of the Italian war was the deep antagonism of Marius and Sulla Sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the occasion whereas Marius who had become the great soldier of the republic and had been six times consul failed to gather fresh laurels Rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all the glory and all the disgrace of Cicero's life and was open to the dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and the strongest Marius after a series of romantic adventures with which we must not connect ourselves here was triumphant only just before his death while Sulla went off with his army, pillaged Athens, plundered Asia Minor generally and made terms with Mithridates though he did not conquer him with the purport no doubt of conquering Mithridates but perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of Rome the army had been entrusted to him with the consent of the Marian faction then came those three years when Sulla was in the east and Marius dead of which Cicero speaks as a period of peace in which a student was able to study in Rome trienium ffere fuet urbs sine armis these must have been the years 86, 85 and 84 before Christ when Cicero was 21, 22 and 23 years old and it was this period in truth of which he speaks and not of earlier years when he tells us of his studies with Philo and Molo and Deodatus precocious as he was in literature writing one poem or translating it when he was 14 and another when he was 18 he was by no means in a hurry to commence the work of his life he has said also to have written a treatise on military tactics when he was 19 which again no doubt means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay from the Greek this happily does not remain but we have four books retoricorum ad si herenium and two books de inventione attributed to his 20th and 21st years which are published with his works and commence the series of all that we have from him they are perhaps the least worth reading but as they are or were among his recognised writings a word shall be said of them in their proper place the success of the education of Cicero probably became a commonplace among Latin school masters and Latin writers in the dialogue de oratoribus attributed to Tacitus the story of it is given by Masala when he is praising the orators of the earlier age we know well says Masala that book of Cicero which is called Brutus in the latter part of which he describes to us the beginning and the progress of his own eloquence and as it were the bringing up on which it was founded he tells us that he had learned civil law and acumutius skyvola again with mucius he tells us that he had learned civil law and acumutius skyvola that he had exhausted the realm of philosophy learning that of the academy under Philo and that of the Stoics under Deodartus that not content with these treatises he had travelled through Greece and Asia so as to embrace the whole world of art and thus it had come about that in the works of Cicero no knowledge is wanting neither of music nor of grammar nor any other liberal accomplishment he understood the subtlety of logic the purpose of ethics the effects and causes of things then the speaker goes on to explain what may be expected from such study as that thus it is my good friends thus that from the acquirement of many arts and from a general knowledge of all things eloquence that is truly admirable is created in its full force for the power and capacity of an orator need not be hemmed in as are those of other callings by certain narrow bounds but that man is the true orator who is able to speak on all subjects with dignity and grace so as to persuade those who listen and to delight them in a manner suited to the nature of the subject in hand and the convenience of the time we might fancy that we were reading words from Cicero himself then the speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us how far matters had derogated in his time pointing out at the same time that the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even before Cicero but had been put down as far as the law could put them down by its interference here speaking of those schools of rhetoric in which Greek professors of the art gave lessons for money which were evil in their nature and not as it appears efficacious even for the purpose in hand but now continues Missala our very boys are brought into the schools of those lecturers who are called retores who had sprung up before Cicero to the displeasure of our ancestors as is evident from the fact that when Crassus and Demitius were censors they were ordered to shut up their school of impurence as Cicero calls it our boys as I was going to say are taken to these lecture rooms in which it is hard to say whether the atmosphere of the place or the lads they are thrown among or the nature of the lessons taught are the most injurious in the place itself there is neither discipline nor respect all who go there are equally ignorant the boys among the boys the lads among the lads utter and listen to just what words they please their very exercises are for the most part useless two kinds are in vogue with these retores called swaziori and controversy I tending we may perhaps say to persuade or to refute of these the swaziori as being the lighter and requiring less of experience are given to the little boys the controversy I to the bigger lads but oh heavens what they are what miserable compositions then he tells us the subjects selected rape incest and other horrors are subjected to the lads for their declamation in order that they may learn to be orators mesala then explains that in those latter days his days that is under the rule of despotic princes truly large subjects are not allowed to be discussed in public confessing however that those large subjects though they afford fine opportunities to orators are not beneficial to the state at large but it was thus he says that Cicero became what he was who would not have grown into favour had he defended only P. Quintius and Archeas and had had nothing to do with Catiline or Milo or Veriz or Anthony showing by the way how great was the reputation of that speech Promilone with which we shall have to deal further on the treatise becomes somewhat confused a portion of it having probably been lost from whose mouth the last words are supposed to come is not apparent it ends with a rhapsody in favour of imperial government suitable indeed to the time of the mission but very unlike Tacitus while however it praises despotism it declares that only by the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained our country indeed while it was a stray in its government while it tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord while there was no peace in the forum no agreement in the senate no moderation on the judgement seat no reverence for letters no control among the magistrates boasted no doubt a stronger eloquence from what we have us told of Cicero not what we hear from himself we are able to form an idea of the nature of his education with his mind fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with himself he gave himself up to all kinds of learning it was Macaulay I think who said of him that the idea of conquering the omne scibilet the understanding of all things within the reach of human intellect was before his eyes as it was before those of Bacon the special preparation which was in Cicero's time employed for students at the bar is also described in the treaties from which I have quoted the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite of that afforded by the retores among ourselves the youth who was intended to achieve eloquence in the forum when already trained at home and exercised in classical knowledge was brought by his father or his friends to that orator who might then be considered to be the leading man in the city it became his daily work to follow that man to accompany him to be conversant with all his speeches whether in the courts of law or at public meetings so that he might learn if I might say so to fight in the very thick of the throng it was thus that Cicero studied his art a few lines farther down the pseudotacitus tells us that Crassus in his 19th year held a brief against Carbo that Caesar did so in his 21st against Dolabella and Polio in his 22nd year against Cato in this precocity Cicero did not imitate Crassus or show an example to the Romans who followed him he was 26 when he pleaded his first cause Sulla had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction and the Sullen prescriptions had taken place and were nominally over Sulla had been declared dictator and had proclaimed that there should be no more selections for death the republic was supposed to be restored recuperata repubblica tum primumnos adcausas et privatas et publicas adir eich epimus the republic having been restored I then first applied myself to pleadings both private and public of Cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair judgement Marius had been his townsman Sulla has been his captain but the one thing dear to him was the republic what he thought to be the republic he was neither Marian nor Sullen the turbulence in which so much noble blood had flowed the crudalis interitas oratorum the crushing out of the old legalized form of government was abominable to him it was his hope no doubt his expectation that these old forms should be restored in all their power there seem to be more probability of this there was more probability of it on the side of Sulla than the other on Sulla's side was Pompey the then rising man who being of the same age with Cicero had already pushed himself into prominence who was so named the great and who triumphed during these very two years in which Cicero began his career who through Cicero's whole life was his bugbear his stumbling block and his mistake but on that side was the optimates the men who if they did not lead ought to lead the republic those who if they were not respectable ought to be so those who if they did not love their country ought to love it if there was a hope it was with them the old state of things that oligarchy which has been called a republic had made Rome what it was had produced power civilization art and literature it had enabled such one as Cicero was himself to aspire to lead though he had been humbly born and had come to Rome from an untried provincial family to him the republic as he fancied that it had been as he fancied that it might be was all that was good all that was gracious all that was beneficent on Sulla's side lay what chance there was of returning to the old ways when Sulla was declared dictator it was presumed that the republic was restored but not on this account should it be supposed that Cicero regarded the prescriptions of Sulla with favour or that he was otherwise than shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the prescription paved the way this is a matter with which it will be necessary to deal more fully when we come in our next chapter to the first speeches made by Cicero in the very first of which as I place them he attacks the Sulla and robberies with an audacity which when we remember that Sulla was still in power rescues at any rate in regard of this period of his life the character of the orator from that charge of cowardice which has been imputed to him it is necessary here in this chapter devoted to the education of Cicero to allude to his two first speeches because that education was not completed till afterwards so that they may be regarded as experiments or trials as it were of his force and sufficiency not content with these teachers teachers who had come to Rome from Greece and Asia he had travelled through Greece and Asia so was to embrace the whole world of art these words quoted a few pages back from the treatise attributed to Tacitus refer to a passage in the Brutus in which Cicero makes a statement of that effect when I reached Athens I passed six months with Antiochus by far the best known and most erudite of the teachers of the old academy and with him as my great authority and master I renewed that study of philosophy which I had never abandoned which from my boyhood I had followed with always increasing success at the same time I practiced oratory laboriously with Demetrius Cyrus also at Athens a well known and by no means incapable master of the art of speaking after that I wandered all over Asia and came across the best orators there with whom I practiced enjoying their willing assistance there is more of it which need not be repeated verbatim giving the names of those who aided him in Asia Manipus of Stratonisae who he says was sweet enough to have belonged himself to Athens was Dionysus of Magnesia with Oesculus of Cnedos and with Xenocles of Adrimitium then at Rhodes he came across his old friend Molo and applied himself again to the teaching of his former master Quintillion explained to us how this was done with a purpose so that the young orator when he had made a first attempt with his half-fledged wings in the courts might go back to his masters for a while he was 28 when he started on this tour it has been suggested that he did so in fear of the resentment of Sulla with whose favourites and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly there is no reason for alleging this except that Sulla was powerful that Sulla was blood thirsty and that Sulla must have been offended this kind of argument is often used it is supposed to be natural or at least probable that in a certain position a man should have been a coward or a knave ungrateful or cruel and in the presumption thus raised the accusation is brought against him Searing Sulla's resentment Plutarch says he travelled into Greece and gave out that the recovery of his health was the motive there is no evidence that such was his reason for travelling and as Middleton says in his behalf it is certain that he continued for a year after this in Rome without any apprehension of danger it is best to take a man's own account of his own doings and their causes unless they're beground for doubting the statement made it is thus that Citro himself speaks of his journey now he says still in his Brutus as you wish to know what I am not simply what mark I may have on my body from my birth or with what surroundings of childhood I was brought up I will include some details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary at this time I was thin and weak my neck being long and narrow a habit and form of body which is supposed to be adverse to a long life and those who loved me thought the more of this because I had taken to speaking without relaxation without recreation with all the powers of my voice and with much muscular action when my friends and the doctors desired me to give up speaking I resolved that rather than abandon my career as an orator I would face any danger but when it occurred to me that by lowering my voice by changing my method of speaking I might avoid the danger and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance I accepted that as a reason for going into Asia so that I might study how to change my mode of elocution thus when I had been two years at work upon causes and when my name was already well known in the forum I took my departure and left Rome during the six months that he was at Athens he renewed an early acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful and certainly the best known of his friends this was Titus Pomponius known to the world as that Atticus to whom were addressed something more than half the large body of letters which were written by Cicero and which have remained for our use he seems to have lived much with Atticus who was occupied with similar studies though with altogether different results Atticus applied himself to the practices of the Epicurean school and did in truth become Epicuri de Gregae Porcus to enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all term oils of war or state, to make the best of the times whether they were bad or good without any attempt on his part to mend them this was the philosophy of Titus Pomponius who was called Atticus because Athens, full of art and literature, easy, unenegetic and luxurious was dear to him to this philosophy or rather to this theory of life Cicero was altogether opposed he studied in all the schools among the Platonists, the Stoics even with the Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise them proclaiming himself to belong to the new academy or younger school of Platonists but in truth drawing no system of morals or rule of life from any of them to him and also to Atticus no doubt these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime Atticus found himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the name of a philosopher and therefore became an Epicurean Cicero could in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves or from its hatred and from the Greek philosophers whom he named of this or the other school received only some assistance in that handling of so called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future life this was well understood by the Latin authors who wrote of Cicero after his own time, Quintillion speaking of Cicero and Brutus as writers of philosophy says of the latter Sufechit ponderirerum, sciocenim sentire coedicit he was equal to the weight of the subject for you feel that he believes what he writes he leaves the inference of course that Cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his ingenuity as a schoolboy writes when at Athens Cicero was initiated into the Elysianian mysteries as to which Mr Collins in his little volume on Cicero in the ancient classics for English readers says that they contained under this veil whatever faith in the invisible and eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan in this Mr Collins is fully justified by what Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by early Christian writers they were to those pious but somewhat prejudice theologist mysterious and pagan and therefore horrible but Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus de Legibus written when he was 55 years old in the prime of his intellect that of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries by which the harshness of our uncivilised life has been softened and we have been lifted up to humanity and as they are called initia by which aspirants were initiated so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new life nor have we received from them only the means of living with satisfaction but also of dying with a better hope as to the future of what took place with Cicero and Atticus at their introduction to the Elysianian mysteries we know nothing but it can hardly be that with such memories running in his mind after 30 years expressed in such language to the very friend who had then been his companion they should not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some great line of thought the two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom we regard the one as a pagan and the other as a Christian are the belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our neighbours here they are both indicated the former in plain language and the latter in that assurance of the softening of the barbarity of uncivilised life cwibus exagresti imanicue wita exculti adhumanitatem edmitigati sauce of the inner life of Cicero at this moment how he ate how he drank with what accompaniment of slaves he lived how he was dressed and how he lodged we know very little but we are told enough to be aware that he could not have travelled as he did in Greece and Asia without great expense his brother Quintus was with him so that cost if not double was greatly increased Antiochus, Demetrius Cyrus, Molo, Minipus and the others did not give him their services for nothing these were gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to the best market and then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he went as though travelling in some sort en prince no doubt he had brought with him the best introductions which Rome could afford but even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary and this must have come from his father's pocket as we go on a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the sources once it came he asserts of himself that he was never paid for his services at the bar to receive such payment was illegal but was usual he claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees exempt at any rate from the fault of having broken the law he has not been believed there is no evidence to convict him of falsehood but he has not been believed because there have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the life he led but we do not know what his father's means seeing the nature of the education given to the lad of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from his earliest days of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it of the advantages which costly travel afforded him I think we have reason to suppose that the old Cicero was an opulent man and that the house at Arpinum was no humble farm or fullers poor establishment End of chapter 2