 Chapter 5 The War between Caesar and Pompey Not official arrangements were made for proconsuls in regard to money, when in command of a province, we did not know. The amounts allowed were no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the Roman governor looked as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. The means of plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an accusation. We remember how Verrius calculated that he could divide his spoil into three sufficient parts—one for the lawyers, one for the judges so as to ensure his acquittal, and then one for himself. This plundering was common, so common as to have become almost a matter of course, but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to exile and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. No accusation was made against Cicero. As to others there were constantly threats, if no more than threats. Cicero was not even threatened. But he had saved, out of his legitimate expenses, a sum equal to eighteen thousand pounds of our money, from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a Roman governor. The expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands, and many of those of his army. Any saving effected would therefore be to his own personal advantage. On this money he counted much, when his affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join Pompey at Farsalia in the following year. He then begged Atticus to arrange his matters for him, telling him that the sum was at his call in Asia. But he never saw it again. Pompey borrowed it, or took it, and when Pompey had been killed, the money was of course gone. His brother Quintus was with him in Cilicia, but of his brother's doings there he says little or nothing. We have no letters from him during the period to his wife or daughter. The latter was married to her third husband, Dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from Cicero, but not in accordance with his advice. He had purpose to accept a proposition for her hand made to him by Tiberius Nero, the young Roman nobleman who afterward married Dat Livia, whom Augustus took away from him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her himself, and who thus became the father of the Emperor Tiberius. It is worthy of remark at the same time that the Emperor Tiberius married the granddaughter of Atticus. Cicero, when in Cilicia, had wished that Nero should be chosen, but the family at home was taken by the fashion and manners of Dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third husband when she was yet only twenty-five. This marriage, like the others, was unfortunate. Dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born, agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. He was a Roman nobleman of the type then common, heartless, extravagant, and greedy. His country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. Cicero tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and strength of the aristocratic party to which Dolabella belonged. I cannot bring him back to Rome, and all that he suffered there, without declaring that much of his correspondence during his government, especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey home, is very distressing. I have told the story of his own doings, I think honestly, and how he himself abstained, compelled those belonging to him to do so, how he strove to ameliorate the condition of those under his rule, how he fully appreciated the duty of doing well by others so soon to be recognized by all Christians. Such humanity on the part of a Roman at such a period is, to me, marvellous, beautiful, almost divine. But in eschewing Roman greed and Roman cruelty, he was unable to eschew Roman insincerity. I have sometimes thought that till have done so it must have been necessary for him altogether to leave public life. Why not, my readers will say? But in our days, when a man has mixed himself for many years with all that is doing in public, how hard it is for him to withdraw, even though in withdrawing he fears no violence, no punishment, no exile, no confiscation. The arguments, the prayers, the reproaches of those around him draw him back, and the arguments, the reproaches from within, are more powerful even than those from his friends. To be added to these is the scorn, perhaps the ridicule, of his opponents. Such are the difficulties in the way of the modern politician who thinks that he has resolved to retire. But the Roman ex-consul, ex-pritore, ex-governor, had entered upon a mode of warfare in which his all, his life, his property, his choice of country, his wife, his children, were open to the ready attacks of eager enemies. To have deserved well would be nothing, unless he could keep a party round him bound by mutual interests to declare that he had deserved well. A rich man who desired to live comfortably beyond the struggle of public life, had to abstain as Attica had done, from increasing the sores, from hurting the ambition, from crushing the hopes of aspirants. Such a man might be safe, but he could not be useful. Such at any rate had not been Cicero's life. In his earlier days, till he was consul, he had kept himself free from political interference in doing the work of his life. But since that time he had necessarily put himself into competition with many men, and had made many enemies by the courage of his opinions. He had found even those he had most trusted opposed to him. He had aroused the jealousy not only of the Caesars and the Crassuses and the Pizos, but also of the Pompeys and Catoes and Brutuses. Whom was he not compelled to fear? And yet he could not escape to his books, nor in truth did he wish it. He had made for himself a nature which he could not now control. He had not been long in Cilicia before he knew well how cruel, how dishonest, how greedy, how thoroughly Roman had been the conduct of his predecessor Appius. His letters to Atticus are full of the truths which he had to tell on that matter. His conduct, too, with regard to Appius, was mainly right. As far as in him lay, he endeavoured to remedy the evils which the unjust proconsul had done, and to stop what further evil was still being done. He did not hesitate to offend Appius when it was necessary to do so by his interference. But Appius was a great nobleman, one of the optimates, a man with a strong party at his back in Rome. Appius knew well that Cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. Cicero knew also that the support of Appius would be of infinite service to him in his Roman politics. Knowing this, he wrote to Appius letters full of flattery, full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose better. Trollebela, the new son-in-law, had taken upon himself, for some reason as to which it can hardly be worth our while to inquire, to accuse Appius of malversation in his province. That Appius deserved condemnation there can be no doubt, but in these accusations the contests generally took place, not as to the proof of the guilt, but as to the prestige and power of the accuser and the accused. Appius was tried twice on different charges, and was twice acquitted. But the fact that his son-in-law should be the accuser was fraught with danger to Cicero. He thought it necessary for the hopes which he then entertained to make Appius understand that his son-in-law was not acting in concert with him, and that he was desirous that Appius should receive all the praise which would have been due to a good governor. So great was the influence of Appius at Rome, that he was not only acquitted, but shortly afterwards elected censor. The office of censor was in some respects the highest in Rome. The censors were elected only once in four years, remaining in office for eighteen months. The idea was that powers so arbitrary as these should be in existence only for a year and a half out of each four years. Questions of morals were considered by them. Should a senator be held to have lived as did not befit a senator, a censor could depose him. As Appius was elected censor immediately after his acquittal, together with that piezo whom Cicero had so hated, it may be understood that his influence was very great. It was great enough to produce from Cicero letters which were flattering and false. The man who had been able to live with a humanity, a moderation, and an honesty befitting a Christian, had not risen to that appreciation of the beauty of truth which an exercise of Christianity is supposed to exact. Said Quidagas, Cicvuitur, what would you have me do? It is thus we live now. This he exclaims in a letter to Cilius, written a short time before he left the province. What would you say if you read my last letter to Appius? You would open your eyes if you knew how I have flattered Appius, that was his meaning. Cicvuitur. It is so we live now. When I read this I feel compelled to ask whether there was an opportunity for any other way of living. Had he seen the baseness of lying as an English Christian gentleman is expected to see it, and had adhered to truth at the cost of being a martyr, his conduct would have been high, though we might have known less of it. But looking at all the circumstances of the period, have we a right to think that he could have done so? From Athens on his way home, Cicero wrote to his wife, joining Tullia's name with hers, Lux Nostra, he calls his daughter, the very apple of my eye. He had already heard from various friends that civil war was expected. He will have to declare himself on his arrival, that is, to take one side or the other, and the sooner he does so the better. There is some money to be looked for, a legacy which had been left to him. He gives express directions as to the persons to be employed respecting this, omitting the name of that Philo-Thomas, as to whose honesty he is afraid. He calls his wife, Suavissima et optatissima Terencia, but he does not write to her with the true love which was expressed by his letters when in exile. From Athens also, where he seems to have stayed nearly two months, he wrote in December. He is easy, he says, about his triumph unless Caesar should interfere, but he does not care much about his triumph now. He is beginning to feel the wearesomeness of the triumph, and indeed it was a time in which the utter hollowness of triumphal pretensions must have made the idea odious to him. But to have withdrawn would have been to have declared his own fears, his own doubts, his own inferiority to the two men who were becoming declared as the rival candidates for Roman power. We may imagine that at such a time he would gladly have gone in quiet to his Roman mansion or to one of his villas, ridding himself for ever of the trouble of his Lictors, his Fasci's, and all the paraphernalia of imperial dignity. And a man cannot rid himself of such appanages without showing that he has found it necessary to do so. It was the theory of a triumph that the victorious Imperator should come home, hot as it were from the battlefield, with all his martial satellites around him, and have himself carried at once through Rome. It was barbaric and grand, as I have said before, but it required the martial satellites. Britain had become law, and the Imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his military followers till the ceremony was over. In this way Cicero was sadly hampered by his Lictors when, on his landing at Brindisium, he found that Italy was already preparing for her great civil war. Sidenote, BC 50, Eitat 57. Early in this year it had been again proposed in the Senate that Caesar should give up his command. At this time the two consuls, Lucius Emilius Paulus and Caus Claudius Marcellus, were opposed to Caesar, as was also Curio, who had been one of Cicero's young friends, and was now a Tribune. But two of these Caesar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes. Curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe. The story comes to us from Appian, but the modern reader will find it efficiently told by Momson. The consul had one thousand five hundred talents, or about five hundred thousand pounds. The sum named as that given by Caesar to Curio was something greater because he was so deeply in debt. Bribes to the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now, bestowed upon two men for their support in the Senate. It was worth the man's while to be a consul or a Tribune in those days. But the money was well earned, plunder no doubt extracted from Gaul. The Senate decided that both Pompey and Caesar should be required to abandon their commands, or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any absolute decree. But this sufficed for Caesar, who was only anxious to be relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the Senate by the knowledge that Pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. Then it was, in the summer of this year, that the two commanders were desired by the Senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three thousand men, under the pretense that the forces were wanted for the Parthian War. The historians tell us that Pompey had lent a legion to Caesar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. Caesar nobly sends up to Rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be restored by himself, and the other as belonging to Pompey. He felt, no doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better service than the withholding of the soldiers. The men were stationed at Capua, instead of being sent to the east, and no doubt he drifted back into Caesar's hands. The men who had served under Caesar would not willingly find themselves transferred to Pompey. Caesar in the summer came across the Alps into Cisalpa and Gull, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at Ravenna, which was still within his province. It was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the Rubicon, and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. Officers were in this condition when Cicero returned to Italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the Civil War which had reached him at Athens. In a letter written from Athens, earlier than the one last quoted, Cicero declared to Atticus that it would become him better to be conquered with Pompey than to conquer with Caesar. The opinion he had given may be taken as his guiding principle in politics till Pompey was no more. Through all the doubts and vacillations which encumbered him, this was the rule not only of his mind, but of his heart. To him there was no triumvirate. The word had never been mentioned to his ears. Had Pompey remained free from Caesar it would have been better. The two men had come together, and Crassus had joined them. It was better for him to remain with them and keep them right than to stand away angry and astray as Cato had done. The question how far Caesar was justified in the position which he had taken up by certain alleged injuries affected Cicero less than it has done subsequent inquirers. Had an attempt been made to recall Caesar illegally? Was he subjected to wrong by having his command taken away from him before the period had passed for which the people had given it? Cicero obviously refused indulgences to which the greatness of his services entitled him, such as permission to sue for the consulship while absent from Rome, while that and more than that had been granted to Pompey. All these questions were no doubt hot in debate at the time, but could hardly have affected much the judgment of Cicero, and did not at all affect his conduct. Nor I think should they influence the opinions of those who now attempt to judge the conduct of Caesar. Things had gone beyond the domain of law, and had fallen altogether into that of potentialities. Decrees of the senate or votes of the people were alike used as excuses. Caesar from the beginning of his career had shown his determination to sweep away as cobwebs the obligations which the law imposed upon him. It is surely vain to look for excuses for a man's conduct to the practice of that injustice against him which he has long practised against others. Shall we forgive a house-breaker, because the tools which he has himself invented are used at last upon his own door? The modern lovers of Caesar and of Caesarism generally did not seek to wash their hero white after that fashion. To them it is enough that the man has been able to trample upon the laws with impunity and to be a law not only to himself but to all the world around him. There are some of us who think that such a man, let him be ever so great, let him be ever so just if the infirmities of human nature permit justice to dwell in the breast of such a man, will in the end do more harm than good. But they who sit at the feet of the great commanders admire them as having been law-breaking, not law-abiding. I note, B.C. 50, I.T. 57. To say that Caesar was justified in the armed position which he took in northern Italy in the autumn of this year, is to rob him of his praise. I do not suppose that he had meditated any special line of policy during the years of hard work in Gaul, but I think that he was determined not to relinquish his power, and that he was ready for any violence by which he might preserve it. If such was Cicero's idea of this man, if such the troubled outlook which he took into the circumstances of the empire, he thought probably but little of the legality of Caesar's recall. What would the consuls do? What would Curio do? What would Pompey do? And what Caesar? It was of this that he thought. Had law-abiding been then possible he would have been desirous to abide by the law. Some nearest approach to the law would be best. Caesar had ignored all laws except so far as he could use them for his own purposes. Pompey in conspiring with Caesar had followed Caesar's lead, but was desirous of using the law against Caesar when Caesar outstripped him in lawlessness. But to Cicero there was still some hope of restraining Pompey. Pompey, too, had been a conspirator, but not so notorious a conspirator as Caesar. With Pompey there would be some bond to the republic, with Caesar there could be none. Therefore it was better for him to fall with Pompey than to rise with Caesar. That was his conviction till Pompey had altogether fallen. His journey homewards is made remarkable by letters to Tyro, his slave and secretary. Tyro was taken ill, and Cicero was obliged to leave him at Patra in Greece. Whence he had come to Cicero we did not know, or when, but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice before the days of the Cilician government, as we find that, on his arrival at Brindisium, he writes to Atticus respecting him as a person whom Atticus had not much known. But his affection for Tyro is very warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are charming. He is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what captain he sails. He is not to hurry. The doctor is to be consulted and well paid. Cicero himself writes various letters to various persons in order to secure that attention which Tyro could not have ensured unless so assisted. Early in January Cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because of his still unsettled triumph, and Caesar crossed the little river which divided his province from the Roman Territory. The fourth of January is given for the former small event, for the latter I have seen no precise day named. I presume that it was after the sixth, as on that day the Senate appointed demission as his successor in his province. On this being done the two tribunes, Anthony and Cassius, hurried off to Caesar, and Caesar then probably crossed the stream. Cicero was appointed to a command in Campania, that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph. His doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit, but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? The effect had been to take all power out of his hand. Caesar had given him up. He could not do so, but we can imagine how willing Pompey would have been that he should have remained in Cilicia. He had been sent there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. If he would only have remained and plundered, if he would only have remained there and have been honest, so that he would be out of the way. But here he was, back in Italy, an honest, upright man. No one so utterly unlike the usual Roman, so lost amidst the self-seekers of Rome, so unnecessarily clean-handed could be found. Cato was honest, foolishly honest for his time, but with Cato it was not so difficult to deal as with Cicero. We can imagine Cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely unreasonable. Cato was all alive to what was going on in the world, but still was honest. In the meantime he remained in the neighbourhood of Naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to Cairo, writing to Atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so well, because he has told us. In one of his letters to Atticus at this time he is sadly in earnest. He will die with Pompey in Italy, but what can he do by leaving it? He has his lictors with him still. Oh, those dreadful lictors! His friendship for Cneus! His fear of having to join himself with the coming tyrant! Oh, that you would assist me with your counsel! He writes again and describes the condition of Pompey, of Pompey who had been Magnus. See how prostrate he is! He has neither courage, counsel, men nor industry. Put aside those things. Look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns, his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy. Caesar in pursuit of Pompey, oh, sad! Will he kill him? he exclaims. Then still to Atticus he defends himself. He will die for Pompey, but he does not believe that he can do any good either to Pompey or to the Republic by a base flight. Then there is another cause for staying in Italy as to which he cannot write. This was Torentia's conduct. At the end of one of his letters he tells Atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which Atticus had sent to him. In another he speaks of the Greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain Dionysius, and he boils over with anger. His letters to Atticus about the Greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time because they show his eagerness. I never knew anything more ungrateful, and there is nothing worse than ingratitude. He heaps his scorn upon Pompey. It is true indeed that I said it was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. I would indeed. But of what Pompey was it that I so spoke? Was it of this one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will fly? He writes again the same day. Pompey had fostered Caesar and then had feared him. He had left the city. He had lost Picanum by his own fault. He had betaken himself to Apulia. Then he went into Greece, leaving us in the dark as to his plans. He excuses a letter of his own to Caesar. He had written to Caesar in terms which might be pleasing to the great man. He had told Caesar of Caesar's admirable wisdom. Was it not better so? Pompey was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all the people, if only those of Pompey might also be read aloud. Then follow copies of a correspondence between him and Pompey. In the last he declares that when he had written from Canusium he had not dreamed that Pompey was about to cross the sea. He had known that Pompey had intended to treat for peace, for peace even under unjust conditions. But he had never thought that Pompey was meditating a retreat out of Italy. He argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. Pompey had been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself against Caesar. He had failed and slipped away, leaving a man here and there to stand up for the republic. Pompey was willing to risk nothing for Rome. It had come to pass at last that he was being taught Caesarism by Caesar, and when he died was more imperial than his master. At this time Cicero's eyes were bad, mihi molestior lippitudo erat etiam com ante furat, and again lippitudines mei signum tibi sit liberare imanus. But we may doubt whether any great men have lived so long with so little to tease them as to their health. And yet the amount of work he grot through was great. He must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. When we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. Not his life, his hours were early, but they must also have been late. Of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. When he was abroad during his exile, or in Cilicia during his government, he could not have had his books with him. That Caesar should have been Caesar, or Pompey Pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as that Cicero should have been Cicero. Then comes in that letter of which I spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the Gaetai, the Armenians, and the men of Colchis. Shall I, the saviour of the city, assist to bring down upon that city these hordes of foreign men? Shall I deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who is no more than mortal? It was Pompey as to whom he then asked the question. For Pompey's sake, am I to let in these crowds?" We have been told, indeed, by Mr. Frude, that the man was Caesar, and that Cicero wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death. Now, if ever, think what we shall do, he says, a Roman army sits round Pompey and makes him a prisoner within Valley and Rampart. And shall we live? The city stands, the bright oars give the law, the e-dials keep up the games, good men look to their principle and their interest. Shall I remain sitting here? Shall I rush hither and thither madly and implore the credit of the towns? Men of substance will not follow me. The revolutionists will arrest me. Is there any end to this misery? People will point at me and say, how wise he was not to go with him. I was not wise. Of his victory I never wished to be the comrade. Just now I do of his sorrow. Side note, B.C. 49, I tarred 58. Pompey had crossed the sea from Brundizium, and Caesar had retreated across Italy to Capua. As he was journeying he saw Cicero, and asked him to go to Rome. This Cicero refused, and Caesar passed on. I must use then other councils, said Caesar, thus leaving him for the last time before the coming battle. Cicero went on to Arpinum, and there heard the nightingales. From that moment he resolved. He had not thought it possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail against Caesar's advice, but he had done so. He had feared that Caesar would overcome him, but when the moment came he was strong against even Caesar. He gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of him. He was going after Pompey, not for the sake of Pompey, not for the sake of the Republic, but for loyalty. He was going because Atticus had told him to go. But as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. He writes to Atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew, the one who is good by nature and has not yet gone astray. The other, the elder and his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence and has openly adopted evil ways. In other words, he has become Caesarean for a reward. The young Quintus has shown himself to be very false. Cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life, that this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. Then Curio comes the way and there is a most interesting conversation. It seems that Curio, who is fond of Cicero, tells him everything. But Cicero, who doubts him, lets him pass on. Then Cilius writes to him. Cilius implores him for the sake of his children to bear in mind what he is doing. He tells him much of Caesar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become Caesarean at any rate to take himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and quieter days should come. But Cilius, though it had suited Cicero to know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. He did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded Cicero. To Cilius it was play, play in which a man might be beaten or banished or slaughtered, but it was a game in which men were fighting each for themselves. But there should be a duty in the matter beyond that, was inexplicable to Cilius. And his children, too, his anger against young Quintus and his forgiveness of Marcus. He thinks that Quintus had been purchased by a large bribe on Caesar's side, and is thankful that it is no worse with him. What can have been worse to a young man than to have been opened to such payment? Antony is frequently on the scene, and already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. And then Cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. Cervius Sulpicius comes to him weeping. For Cervius, who is timid and lacrimose, everything has gone astray. And then there is that Dionysius, who had plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier master. At the last comes the news of his Tullius' child's birth. She is brought to bed of a son. He cannot, however, wait to see how the son thrives. From the midst of his enemies and with spies around him he starts. There is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from on board the ship at Caeta, sending them many loves and many careful messages, and then he is off. It was now the eleventh of June, the third day before the Eids, B.C. 49, and we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. When he reached the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. He had given his all to place himself along with Pompey in the Republican quarters, and when there the Republicans were unwilling to welcome him. Pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to be able to say hereafter that he had not come. Of what occurred to Cicero during the great battle, which led to the solution of the Roman question, we know little or nothing. We hear that Cicero was absent sick at Dirachium, but there are none of those tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. We hear indeed from other sources very full accounts of the fighting, how Caesar was nearly conquered, how Pompey might have prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way, how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how in the very presence of his wife he was murdered at last in the mouth of the Nile by the combined energies of a Roman and a Greek. We can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the pharsalus where the two armies met, and the victory remained with Caesar. Then there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the congratulations and self-applaudes of the victors. In all Cicero's letters there is not a word of it. There was terrible suffering before it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but nowhere do we find any record of what took place. There is no mourning for Pompey, no turning to Caesar as the conqueror. Petra has been lost, and Pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign. Sidenote, B.C. 48, I. Tat. 59. Cicero we know spent the time at Dirachium close to which the battle of Petra was fought, and went from thence to Coursera. There invitation was made to him as the senior consular officer present to take the command of the beaten army, but that was declined. We're informed that he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. We can imagine that it was so, that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he should have been somewhat roughly told that it behoved him to take the lead and to come forth as the new commander, that there should be a time at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he should doubt, and after more or less of reticence pass on. Young Pompey would have it so. What name would be so good to bind together the opponents of Caesar as that of Cicero? But Cicero would not be led. It seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time, that he had been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true to Pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that Pompey was gone. We can well imagine that there should be no man less able to fight against Caesar, though there was none whose name might be serviceable to use as that of Cicero. At any rate, as far as we are concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. He wrote not a word to any of the friends whom Pompey had left behind him, but returned to Italy, dispirited, silent, and unhappy. He had indeed met many men since the Battle of the Pharsalis, but to none of whom we are conversant had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign. Here we part from Pompey, who ran from the fighting ground of Macedonia to meet his doom in the roads of Alexandria. Never had man risen so high in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. He was born in the same year with Cicero, but had come up quicker into the management of the world's affairs, so was to have received something from his equals of that which was due to age. Habit had given him that ease of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his compiers the deference which was due not to his age, but to his experience. When Cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to fight against Sulla, Pompey had already won his spurs in spite of Sulla, but by means of Sulla. Men in these modern days learn as they grow old in public life to carry themselves with indifference among the back slidings of the world. In reading the life of Cicero we see that it was so then. When defending Amorinas we find the same character of man as was he who afterwards took Milo's part. There is the same readiness, the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation. But there is not the same indifference as to results. With Amorinas it is as though all the world depended on it. With Milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the outside world believe it. When Pompey triumphed seventy B.C. and was made consul for the second time he was already old in glory, when Cicero had not as yet spoken those two orations against Veriz which had made the speaking of another impossible. Pompey we may say, had never been young. Cicero was never old. There was no moment in his life in which Cicero was not able to laugh with the curios and the celiuses behind the back of the great man. There was no moment in which Pompey could have done so. He who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by idle and luxurious young men of the day. Cicero did not live for many years beyond Pompey, but I doubt whether he did not know infinitely more of men. To Pompey it had been given to rule them, but to Cicero to live with them. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The Life of Cicero Volume 2 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 2 by Anthony Trollop. Chapter 6 After the Battle Sidenote. BC. 48. Aetat. 59. In the autumn of this year Cicero had himself landed at Brindizium. He remained nearly a year at Brindizium, and it is melancholy to think how sad and how long must have been the days with him. He had no country when he reached the nearest Italian port. It was all Caesar's, and Caesar was his enemy. There had been a struggle for the masterdom between two men, and of the two the one had beaten, with whom Cicero had not arranged himself. He had known how it would be. All the Gatae and the men of Colchis and the Armenians, all the lovers of the fishponds, and those who preferred the delicacies of Biae to the work of the Forum, all who had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all those whom Caesar was determined either to drive out of Italy or keep there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. We already know when we begin to read the story how it will be with them and with Caesar. On Caesar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty. On the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no skiver and of no crastiness on Pompey's side. Men changed their nature under such leading as was that of Caesar. The inferior men become heroic by contact with the hero. But such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood dabbled down upon a fair cloth. Who that has eyes to see can look back upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the stern man passes on without a ruffled face after ordering the right hands of those who had fought at Uxallidunum to be chopped off at the wrist in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for their country. There are men, or have been from time to time in all ages of the world, let loose as it were by the hand of God to stop the iniquities of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities. They have come and done their work and have died, leaving behind them the foul smell of destruction. An Augustus followed Caesar and him Tiberius and so on to a Nero. It was necessary that men should suffer much before they were brought back to own their condition. But they who can see a Cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming, not for himself but for the world around him, and can lend their tongues, their pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been touched by the supremacy of human suffering. It must have been a sorry time with him at Brindisium. He had to stay there waiting till Caesar's pleasure had been made known to him, and Caesar was thinking of other things. Caesar was away in Egypt and the East, encountering perils at Alexandria, which, if all be true that we have heard, implied that he had lived to be past fear. Grant that a man has to live as Caesar did, and it will be well that he should be past fear. At any rate he did not think of Cicero, or thinking of him felt that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he had made. Cicero did brood, not exactly in silence, over the things that fate had done for him and for his country. For himself he was living in Italy, and yet could not venture to take himself to one of the eighteen villas, which, as Middleton tells us, he had studied about the country for his past time. There were those at Tuscanum, Antium, Astura, Arpinum, at Formae, at Cumae, at Putale, and at Pompeii. Those who tell us of Cicero's poverty are surely wandering, and carried away by their erroneous notions of what were a Roman nobleman's ideas as to money. At no period of his life do we find Cicero not doing what he was minded to do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had allowed himself in any respect to break the law. It has been argued that he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments because he says that he wanted money. It was natural that he should occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. The coming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. A man here and there might attend to his money, as did Atticus. Cicero did not, and therefore when in want of it he had to apply to a friend for relief. But he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. Is it credible that a man so circumstance should have remained with those various sources of extravagance, which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? We are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his villas, though in the hurries-curry of Roman affairs it did, now and again, become necessary for him to apply to Atticus for accommodation. Let us think what must have been Caesar's demands for money. Of these we hear nothing, because he was too wise to have an Atticus to whom he wrote everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be treasured for the curiosity of after-ages. To be hopeful and then tremulous, to be eager after success and then desponding, to have believed readily every good and then, as readily, evil, to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have turned round and declared how he had been deceived, to have been very angry, and then to have forgiven. This seems to have been Caesar's nature. Veres, Catiline, Claudius, Piso, and Vatinius seem to have caused his wrath, but was there one of them against whom, though he did not forgive him, his anger did not die out. Then at last he was moved to an interneesine fight with Antony. Is there anyone who has read the story which we are going to tell, who will not agree with us that, if after Mutina, Octavius had thought fit to repudiate Antony and to follow Cicero's counsels, Antony would not have been spared. Nothing angers me so much in describing Cicero as the assertion that he is a coward. It has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes cowardice. He did not care to fight, but are all men cowards who do not care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking. He saw that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he did not see it. When men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled, and Caesar and Pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest danger does not consist in fighting. A man's tongue makes enemies more bitter than his sword. But Cicero, when the time came, never shirked his foe. Whether it was Veres, or Catiline, or Claudius, or Antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. At moments such as that, there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave. His friendship for Pompey is perhaps of all the strong feelings of his life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse. For myself I can see why it was so, but I cannot do that without acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. Had he risen above Pompey, he would have been great indeed, for I look upon it as certain that he did see that Pompey was as untrue to the Republic as Caesar. He saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all times that Pompey was false. Caesar was not false, Caesar was an open foe. I doubt whether Pompey ever saw enough to be open. He never realised to himself more than men. He never rose to measures much less to the reason for them. When Caesar had talked him over, and had induced him to form the triumvirate, Pompey's politics were gone. Cicero never blenched. Whether full of new hopes he attacked Christ-Ogonus with all the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or with the settled purpose of his life he accused Veriz in the teeth of the coming consul Hortensius, whether in driving out Catiline or in defending Milo, whether even in standing up before Caesar for Marcellus or in his final onslaught upon Antony, his purpose was still the same. As time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went down into the arena and fought the beasts at Ephesus. Alas, it is so with mankind. Who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? And who can fight them but after some fashion of their own? He was fighting beasts at Ephesus when he was defending Milo. He was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest. It was impossible. These men would not be just, and yet he must use them. Milo and Cilius and Curio were his friends. He knew them to be bad, but he could not throw off from him all that were bad men. If by these means he could win his way to something that might be good he would pardon their evil. As we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character becomes tarnished and that his high feelings are blunted by the party which he takes and the men with whom he associates. He did not, indeed, fall away altogether. The magistracy offered to him, the lieutenancy offered to him, the free ligation offered to him, the last appeal made to him that he would go to Rome and speak a few words, or that he would stay away and remain neutral, did not move him. He did not turn conspirator and then fight for the prize as Pompey had done. But he had, for so many years, clung to Pompey as the leader of a party, and had it so dint into his ears that all must depend on Pompey. Had found himself so bound up with the man who, when appealed to as to his banishment, had sullenly told him he could only do as Caesar would have him, whom he had felt to be mean enough to be stigmatised as Samcichoramus, him of Jerusalem the hero of Arabia, whom he knew to be desirous of doing with his enemies as Sulla had done with his, that in spite of it all he clung to him still. I cannot but blame Cicero for this, but yet I can excuse it. It is hard to have to change your leader after middle life, and Cicero could only have changed his by becoming a leader himself. We can see how hopeless it was. Would it not have been mean had he allowed those men to go and fight in Macedonia without him? Who would have believed in him had he seemed to be so false? Not Cato, not Brutus, not Bibulus, not Scipio, not Marcellus. Such men were the leaders of the party of which he had been won. Would they not say that he had remained away because he was Caesar's man? He must follow either Caesar or Pompey. He knew that Pompey was beaten. There are things which a man knows, but he cannot bring himself to say so, even to himself. He went out to fight on the side already conquered, and when the thing was done he came home with his heart sad, and lived at Brindisium, mourning his lot. From thence he wrote to Atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage of advice that had been given to him that he should travel incognito to Rome. But it is the special reason given, which strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day. Nor have I resting places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to pass the entire day-time within them. The Diversorium was the place by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come that way. It must be understood that he travelled with attendance and carried his food with him or sent it on before. We see at every turn how much money could do, but we see also how little money had done for the general comfort of the people. Brindisium is above three hundred miles from Rome, and the journey is the same which horrors took afterwards going from the city. Much had then been done to make travelling comfortable or at any rate cheaper than it had been four and twenty years before. But now the journey was not made. He reminds Atticus in the letter that if he had not written to so long an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. It had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and so many ears were on the watch. He writes again some days later and assures Atticus that Caesar thinks well of his lictors—oh, those eternal lictors! But what have I to do with lictors, he says, who I am almost ordered to leave the shores of Italy? And then Caesar had sent angry messages. Cato and Metellus had been said to have come home. Caesar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away. It was clearly manifest to every man alive now that Caesar was the actual master of Italy. During the whole of this winter he is on terms with Terencia, but he writes to her in the coldest strain. There are many letters to Terencia, more in number than we have ever known before, but they are all of the same order. I translate one here to show the nature of his correspondence. If you are well, I am so also. The times are such that I expect to hear nothing from yourself, and on my part have nothing to write. Nevertheless, I look for your letters, and I write to you when a messenger is going to start. Voluminia ought to have understood her duty to you, and should have done what she did do better. There are other things, however, which I care for more, and grieve for more bitterly, as those have wished who have driven me from my own opinion. Again, he writes to Atticus, deploring that he should have been born so greater his troubles, or at any rate that one should have been born after him from the same mother. His brother has addressed him in anger, his brother who has desired to make his own affairs straight with Caesar, and to swim down the stream pleasantly with other noble Romans of the time. I can imagine that with Quintus Cicero there was nothing much higher than the wealth which the day produced. I can fancy that he was possessed of intellect, and that when it was fair sailing with our consul, it was all well with Quintus Cicero. But I can see also that when Caesar prevailed, it was occasionally a matter of doubt with Quintus whether his brother should not be abandoned, among other things which were obtrusive and vain. He could not quite do it. His brother compelled him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the oligarchy. Then Caesar fell, and Quintus saw that the matter was right. But Caesar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore Quintus after all turned out to be in the wrong. But I fancy that I can see how things went ill with Quintus. Side note, B.C. 47, I atat 60. Caesar, after the battle of the Farsalia, had followed Pompey, but had failed to catch him. When he came upon the scene in the roadstead at Alexandria, the murder had been affected. He then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. It is not a part of my plan to write the life of Caesar, nor to meddle with it further than I am driven to in the seeking after the sources of Cicero's troubles and aspirations. But the story must be told in a few words. Caesar went from Alexandria into Asia, and flashing across Syria beat Farnikes, and then wrote his famous wheni-widi-wiki, if those words were ever written. Surely he could not have written them and sent them home. Even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of Caesar have so tarnished itself. He hurried back to Italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. Only by addressing them as Quirites, instead of Milites, he appalled them into obedience. On this journey into Italy he came across Cicero. If he could be cruel without a pang to the arranging the starvation of a town full of women, because they as well as the men must eat, he could be magnificent in his treatment of the Cicero. He had hunted to the death his late colleague in the triumvirate, and had felt no remorse, though there seems to have been a moment when in Egypt the countenance of him who had so long been his superior had touched him. He had not ordered Pompey's death. On no occasion had he willfully put to death a Roman whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. He had followed the convictions of his countrymen who had ever spared themselves. To him a thousand ghouls, or men of Eastern origin, were as nothing to a single Roman nobleman. Whether there can be said to have been clemency in such a course, it is useless now to dispute. To Caesar it was at any rate policy as well. If by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, Caesar was clement. He had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to make common cause in little things with those who lose. We can see Caesar getting down from his chariot when Cicero came to meet him and throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant conversation, and we can fancy him talking to Cicero pleasantly of the greatness which in times yet to come pursuits such as his would show in comparison with those of Caesar's. We can hear Caesar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart as he thought so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing of his now-undoubted literary excellence. But to go back a little, we shall find Cicero still waiting at Brindisium during August and September. In the former of these months he reminds Atticus that he cannot at present sell anything but that he can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall fall upon him. From this may be deduced a state of things very different to that above described, but not contradicting it. I gather from this unintelligible letter, written as he tells us for the most part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under some forfeiture of the law to Caesar. It may well be that, as one adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be saleable. If that were so, Caesar in some of these bland moments must have revoked the sentence, and at such a time all sentences were within Caesar's control, because we know that on his return Cicero's villas were again within his power. But he is in sad trouble now, about his wife. He has written to her to send him twelve thousand cisterces, which he had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is left. If she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she do if it were larger? Then follow two letters for his wife, a mere word in each, not a sign of affection, nor of complaint in either of them. In the first he tells her that she shall be informed when Caesar is coming. In the latter he tells her that he is coming. When he has resolved whether to go and meet him, or to remain where he is till Caesar shall have come upon him, he will again write. Then there are three to Atticus, and two more to Tarantia. In the first he tells him that Caesar is expected. Some ten or twelve days afterwards he is still full of grief as does brother Quintus, whose conduct has been shameful. Caesar he knows is near at hand, but he almost hopes that he will not come to Brindisium. In the third, as indeed he has in various others, he complains bitterly of the heat. It is of such a nature that it adds to his grief. Shall he send word to Caesar that he will wait upon him near at a Rome? He is evidently in a sad condition. Quintus, it must be remembered, had been in gall with Caesar, and had seen the rising sun. On his return to Italy he had not force enough to declare a political conviction, and to go over to Caesar boldly. He had indeed become lieutenant to his brother when in Cilicia having left Caesar for the purpose. He afterwards went with his brother to the pharsalus, assuring the elder Cicero that they too would still be of the same party. Then the great catastrophe had come, when Cicero returned from that wretched campaign to Brindisium, and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement. Quintus followed Caesar into Asia with his own son, and there pleaded his own cause with him at the expense of his brother. Of Caesar we must all admit that, though indifferent to the shedding of blood, arrogant, without principle in money, and without heart in love, he was magnificent, and that he injured none from vindictive motives. He passed on, leaving Quintus Cicero, who as a soldier had been true to him, without, as we can fancy, many words. Cicero afterwards interceded for his brother, who had reviled him, and Quintus will ever after have to bear the stain of his treachery. Then came the two letters for his wife, with just a line in each. If her messenger should arrive, he will send her word back as to what she is to do. After an interval of nearly a month there is the other, ordering in perfectly restored good humour that the baths shall be ready at the Tusculin villa. Let the baths be all ready, and everything fit for the use of guests, there will probably be many of them. It is evident that Caesar has passed on in a good humour, and has left behind him glad tidings such as should ever brighten the feet of the conqueror. It is singular that with the correspondence such as that of Cicero's, of which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have been nothing left to us from that friend himself. It must have been the case, as Middleton suggests, that Atticus, when Cicero was dead, had the handling of the entire manuscripts, and had withdrawn his own. Either that or else Cicero and Atticus had mutually agreed to the destruction of their joint labours, and Atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing well the value of the documents he preserved, that there is no letter from a woman, not even aligned as Cicero from his dear daughter, is much to be regretted. And yet there are letters, many from Cilius, who is thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger Atticus, and from various Romans of the day. When we come to the latter days of his life, in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to Plancas and others as to their supposed duty to the state, they become numerous. There are ten such from Plancas, and nine from Decimus Brutus, and there is a whole mass of correspondence with Marcus Brutus, to be taken for what it is worth. With a view to history they are doubtless worth much. But as throwing light on Cicero's character, except as to the vigour that was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. How is it that a correspondence which is for its main purpose so full, should have fallen so short in many of its details? There is no word, no allusion, derogatory to Atticus, in these letters which have come to us from Cilius and others. We have Atticus left to us, for our judgment, free from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the insinuations of others. Of whom would we wish that the familiar letters of another about ourselves should be published? Would those objectionable epithets as to Pompey have been allowed to hold their ground, had Pompey lived, and had they been in his possession? But in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias in favour of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of them. We know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up these affairs of the moment, and turned them into ridicule, then as they do now. We discount the Herosillimarius. We do not quite believe that Bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen. But we think that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself, at any rate to tell no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be left to do so, Cicero who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been that very deafness which has done him all the harm. Not one of those letters of the last years would have been written, as it is now, had Cicero thought when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. No, will say my readers, that is their value. They would not otherwise have been true as they are. We should not then have learnt his secrets. I reply, it is a bad bargain to make. Others do not make such bargains on the same terms. But be sure, at any rate, that you read them a right. Be certain that you make the necessary allowances. Do not accuse him of falsehood, because he un-says on a Tuesday the words he said on the Monday. Bear in mind, on his behalf, all the temporary ill that humanity is heir to. Could you, living at Brindisium during the summer months, when you were scarcely able to endure the weight of the sun, have had all your intellect about you, and have been able always to choose your words? No, indeed. These letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. His anger boils over here, and he is hot. Here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in body just now, and worn out in his spirit. He is hopeless almost to the brink of despair. He is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is purposely enigmatic. All of which require an Atticus, who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now, so as accurately to decipher every intended detail. Then comes some critic, who will not even attempt to read them, who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent. Because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready to sell his country. During the whole of the last year, he must have been tortured by various turns of mind. Had he done well in joining himself to Pompey, and having done so, had he done well in severing himself immediately on Pompey's death from the Pompeians? Looking at the matter as from a standpoint quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in both. He could not without treachery have gone over to Caesar when Caesar had come to the gate of Italy, and, as it were with a blast of his trumpet, had demanded the consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions, and the continuance of his military power. Let Pompey put down his, and I will put down mine," he had said. Had Pompey put down his, Pompey and Cicero, Cato and Brutus, and Bibulus, would all have had to walk at the heels of Caesar. When Pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. Caesar was bound to go to Farsalia. But when, by Pompey's incompetence, Caesar was the victor, when Pompey had fallen at the Nile, and all the lovers of the fishponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cut-throats of the empire, such as young Pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to Asia, some to Illyricum, some to Spain, and more to Africa, as a herd of deer shall be seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jewels already dripping with blood, was Cicero then to take his part with any of them. I hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. He went back to Italy, and there he waited, till the conqueror should come. It must have been very bitter. Never to have become great has nothing in it of bitterness for a noble spirit. What matters it to the unknown man, whether a Caesar or a Pompey is at the top of all things. Or if it does matter, as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that, which way he has turned, though there may be inner regrets that Caesar should become the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that Pompey's hand should be untrammeled. Who sees them? I can walk down to my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless I be stirred to foolish wrath by the pride of some one equally vain, can enjoy myself amidst the festivities of the hour. It is but a little affair to me. If it come in my way to do a thing I will do my best, and there is an end of it. The sense of responsibility is not there, nor the grievous weight of having tried but failed to govern mankind. But to have clung to high places, to have sat in the highest seat of all with infinite honour, to have been called by others, and worse still to have called myself the saviour of my country, to have believed in myself that I was sufficient, that I alone could do it, that I could bring back by my own justice and integrity my erring countrymen to their former simplicity, and then to have found myself fixed in a little town just in Italy, waiting for the great conqueror, who though my friend in things social, was opposed to me body and soul as to rules of life, that, I say, must have been beyond the bitterness of death. During this year he had made himself acquainted with the details of that affair, whatever it might be, which led to his divorce soon after his return to Rome. He had lived about thirty years with his wife, and the matter could not have been to him but the cause of great unhappiness. Torentia was not only the mother of his children, but she had been to him also the witness of his rise in life, and the companion of his fall. He was one who would naturally learn to love those with whom he was conversant. He seems to have projected himself out of his own time into those modes of thought which have come to us with Christianity, and such a separation from this woman after an intercourse of so many years must have been very grievous to him. All married Romans underwent divorce quite as a matter of course. There were many reasons. A young wife is more agreeable to the man's taste than one who is old. A rich wife is more serviceable than a poor. A new wife is a novelty. A strange wife is an excitement. A little wife is a relief to one overburdened with the flesh. A buxom wife to him who has become tired of the pure spirit. Xanthropy asks too much, while Griselda is too tranquil. And then as a man came up in the world causes for divorce grew without even the trouble of having to search for faults. Caesar required that his wife should not be ill-spoken of, and therefore divorced her. Pompey cemented the triumvirate with divorce. We cannot but imagine that when men had so much the best of it in the affairs of life a woman had always the worst of it in even forced separations. But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb so were divorces made acceptable to Roman ladies. No woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. Terencia, when divorced from Cicero, was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honour of having married Salist after her break with Cicero. They say that she married twice again after Salist's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of Augustus she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. Divorce at any rate did not kill her. But we cannot conceive but that so sudden a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to Cicero. We shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward and then two divorcing her. But here we have only to deal with the torments Terencia inflicted on him. What those torments were we do not know, and shall never learn, unless by chance the lost letters of Atticus should come to light. But the general idea has been that the lady had, in league with a freedman and a steward in her service, been guilty of fraud against her husband. I do not know that we have much cause to lament the means of ascertaining the truth. It is sad to find that the great men with whose name we are occupied have been made subject to those whips and scorns of time which we thought to be peculiar to ourselves because they have stung us. Terencia, Cicero's wife, two thousand years ago, sent him word that he had but one hundred pounds left in his box at home when he himself knew well that there must be something more. That would have gone for nothing had there not been other things before that, many other things. So in spite of his ordering at her hands, the baths and various matters to be got ready for his friends at his tusculum, a very short time after his return there he had divorced her. During this last year he had been engaged on what has since been found to be the real work of his life. He had already written much, but had written as one who had been anxious to fill up vacant spaces of time as they came in his way. From this time forth he wrote as does one who has reconciled himself to the fact that there are no more days to be lost if he intends before the sun be set to accomplish an appointed task. He had already compiled the De Oratore, the De Repubblica, and the De Legibus. Out of the many treatises which we have from Cicero's hands these are they which are known as the works of his earlier years. He commenced the year with an inquiry, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, which he intended as a preface to the translations which he made of the great speeches of Iscunis and Demosthenes de Corona. These translations are lost that the preface remains. He then translated, or rather paraphrased, the Timaeus of Plato, of which a large proportion has come down to us, and the Protagoras, of which we have lost all but a sentence or two. We have his Oratoriae Partisiones, in which, in a dialogue between himself and his son, he repeats the lessons on Oratoriae which he has given to the young man. It is a recapitulation, in short, of all that had been said on a subject which has since been made common, and which owed its origin to the work of much earlier years. It is but dull reading, but I can imagine that even in these days it may be useful to a young lawyer. There is a cynical morsel among these precepts which is worth observing. Kito enim aresgit lacrima praisertim in alienis malis, and another grandly simple. Ni hillenim est aliud eloquentia, ni si copiose loquen sapientia. Can we fancy anything more biting than the idea that the tears caused by the ills of another soon grow dry on the Orator's cheek, or more wise than that which tells us that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently. Then he wrote the six paradoxes addressed Brutus, or rather he then gave them to the world for they were surely written as an earlier date. They are short treatises on trite subjects put into beautiful language, so as to arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their reasoning. The most remarkable is the third in which he endeavoured to show that a man cannot be wise unless he be all wise, a doctrine which he altogether overturns in his De Amichitia, written but four years afterwards. Cicero knew well what was true, and wrote his paradox in order to give a zest to the subject. In the fourth and the sixth are attacks upon Claudius and Crassus, and are here republished in what would have been the very worst taste amidst the politeness of our modern times. A man now may hate and say so, while his foe is still alive and strong, but with the Romans he might continue to hate and might republish the words which he had written eight years after the death of his victim. I know nothing of Cicero's which so much puts us in mind of the struggles of the modern authors to make the most of every word that has come from them as do these paradoxes. They remind us of some writer of leading articles who gets together a small bundle of essays and then gives them to the world. Each of them has done well at its time, but that has not sufficed for his ambition. Therefore they are dragged out into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as though they could stand well on their own legs. But they cannot stand alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than that for which they were intended, when written. CHAPTER VII Marcellus, Ligarius, and Deotarus. Sidenote, V.C. 48, I. Tat. 61. The battle of Thapsis in Africa took place in the spring of this year, and Cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined not to live under Caesar's rule. If we may believe the story, which probably Hirtius has given us in his account of the Civil War in Africa, and which has come down to us together with Caesar's countries, Cato left his last instructions to some of his offices, and then took his sword into his bed with him, and stabbed himself. Cicero, who in his dream of Scipio has given his readers such excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that Cato must be allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. He would rather die than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him. To Cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living under Caesar, but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable affront. The cartonious nobile letum has reconciled itself to the poets of all ages. Men indeed have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked something of the courage of a man. Many other Romans of the time did the same thing, but to none has been given all the honour which has been allowed to Cato. Cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies to die away. It was but a short time before that Cato had voted against the decree of the Senate giving Cicero his supplication. Cicero had then been much annoyed, but now Cato had died fighting for the republic, and was to be forgiven all personal offences. Cicero wrote a newlogy of Cato, which was known by the name of Cato, and it was much discussed at Rome at the time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Caesar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's praise. We may imagine that had it not pleased him to be generous, had he not been governed by that feeling of de morto is nil nisi bonum, which is now common to us all, he might have said much that was not good. Cato had endeavoured to live up to the austereest rules of the Stoics, a mode of living altogether antagonistic to Cicero's views. But we know that he praised Cato to the full, and we know also that Caesar nobly took the praise in good part as coming from Cicero, and answered it in an anti-Cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from Cicero. We can understand how Caesar should have shown that the rigid Stoic was not a man likely to be of service to his country. They came up at this period a question which made itself popular among the optimates of Rome as to the return of Marcellus. The man of Como, whom Marcellus had flogged, will be remembered, the Roman citizen who had first been made a citizen by Caesar. This is mentioned now not as the cause of Caesar's enmity, who did not care much probably for his citizen, but as showing the spirit of the man. He, Marcellus, had been consul four years since BC 51, and had then endeavoured to procure Caesar's recall from his province. He was one of the optimates, an oligarch altogether opposed to Caesar, a Roman nobleman of fairly good repute, who had never bent to Caesar, but had believed thoroughly in his order, and had thought, till the day of Pharsalia came, that the consuls and the senate would rule for ever. The day of Pharsalia did come, and Marcellus went into voluntary banishment in Mitelline. After Pharsalia Caesar's clemency began to make itself known. There was a pardon for almost every Roman who had fought against him and would accept it. No spark of anger burned in Caesar's bosom, except against one or two, of whom Marcellus was one. He was too wise to be angry with men whose services he might require. It was Caesar's wish not to drive out the good men, but to induce them to remain in Rome, living by the grace of his favour. Marcellus had many friends, and it seems that a public effort was made to obtain for him permission to come back to Rome. We must imagine that Caesar had hitherto refused, probably with the idea of making his final concession the more valuable. At last the United Senators determined to implore his grace, and the consulers rose one after another in their places, and all with one exception asked that Marcellus might be allowed to return. Cicero, however, had remained silent to the last. There must have been, I think, some plot to get Cicero onto his legs. He had gone to meet Caesar at Bundesium when he came back from the east, had returned to Rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant friendship with Caesar's friends. Pardon seemed to have been accorded to Cicero without an effort. As far as he was concerned, that hostile journey to Dirachium, for he did not travel farther towards the camp, counted for nothing with Caesar. He was allowed to live in peace at Rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as Caesar might rule. The idea seemed to have been that he should gradually become absorbed among Caesar's followers. But hither, too, he had remained silent. It was now six years since his voice had been heard in Rome. He had spoken for Milo, or had intended to speak, and in the same affair for Munatius Plancus, and for Sulfaeus, B.C. 52. He had then been in his fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such a period of his life would not be broken. It was manifestly his intention not to speak again at any rate in the Senate, though the threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as meaning much. Such threats from statesmen depended generally on the wishes of other men. But he held his place in the Senate and occasionally attended the debates. When this affair of Marcellus came on, and all the Senators of Contila rank, excepting only Volcatius and Cicero, had risen and had implored Caesar in a few words to condescend to be generous, when Claudius Marcellus had knelt at Caesar's feet to ask for his brother's liberty, and Caesar himself, after reminding them of the bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the powers of the Senate, then Cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in the speech which is still extant. That used to be the story till there came the German critic Wolf, who, at the beginning of this century, told us that Cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose incapable of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably written by some echinoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might have been taken as fatal, for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged, in spite of Vla'ap, the French scholar and critic, who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic speeches of Isocrates. The praise of Vla'ap was previous to the condemnation of Wolf, and we might have been willing to accede to the German as being the later and probably the more accurate. Mr. Long, the British editor of the Eurasians, Mr. Long, who has so loudly condemned the four speeches supposed to have been made after Cicero's return from exile, gives us no certain guidance. Mr. Long, at any rate, has not been so disgusted by the Tiberian Latin as to feel himself bound to repudiate it. If he can read the Pro Marcello, so can I, and so, my reader, might you do probably without detriment. But these differences among the great philologic critics tend to make us, who are so infinitely less learned, better contented with our own lot. I, who had read the Pro Marcello without stumbling over its halting Latinity, should have felt myself crushed when I afterwards came across Wolf's denunciations, had I not been somewhat comforted by la'ap. But when I found that Mr. Long, in his introduction to the piece, though he discusses Wolf's doctrine, still gives to the orator the advantage, as it may be, of his imprimatur, I felt that I might go on, and not be ashamed of myself. This is the story that has now to be told of the speech Pro Marcello. At the time the matter ended very tragically. As soon as Caesar had yielded, Cicero wrote to Marcellus, giving him strong reasons for coming home. Marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. He thanks Cicero shortly, but with kindly dignity he declines. With the comforts of the city I can well dispense, he says. Then Cicero urges him again and again, using excellent arguments for his return, which at length prevail. In the spring of the next year Marcellus, on his way back to Rome, is at Athens. There, Servius Sulpicius spends a day with him. But just as Sulpicius is about to pass on, there comes a slave to him, who tells him that Marcellus has been murdered. His friend Magius Chilo had stabbed him overnight, and had then destroyed himself. It was said that Chilo had asked Marcellus to pay his debts for him, and that Marcellus had refused. It seems to be more probable that Chilo had his own reasons for not choosing that his friend should return to Rome. Looking back at my own notes on the speech, it would make with us but a ten minutes after dinner speech. I see that it is said that it is chiefly remarkable for the beauty of the language and the abjectness of the praise of Caesar. This was before I had heard of Volce. As to the praise, I doubt whether it should be called abject, regard being had to the feelings of the moment in which it was delivered. Cicero had risen to thank Caesar, on whose breath the recall of Marcellus depended, for his unexpected courtesy. In England we should not have thanked Caesar as Cicero did. Oh, Caesar, there is no flood of eloquence, no power of the tongue, or of the pen, no richness of words which may emblazen, or even dimly tell the story of your great deeds. Such language is unusual with us, as it would also be unusual to abuse our piezos and our vatineuses, as did Cicero. It was the Southerner and the Roman who spoke to Southerners and to Romans. But undoubtedly there was present to the mind of Cicero the idea of saying words which Caesar might receive with pleasure. He was dictator, emperor, lord of all things, king. Cicero should have remained away, as Marcellus had done. Were he not prepared to speak after this fashion? He had long held aloof from speech. At length the time had come when he was, as it were, caught in a trap and compelled to be eloquent. Side note, B.C. 46, I.t. 61. The silence had been broken, and in the course of the autumn he spoke on behalf of Ligarius, beseeching the conqueror to be again merciful. This case was by no means similar to that of Marcellus, who was exiled by no direct forfeiture of his right to live in Italy, but who had expatriated himself. In this case Ligarius had been banished with others, but it seems that the punishment had been inflicted on him, not from the special ill will of Caesar, but from the malice of certain enemies, who, together with Ligarius, had found themselves among Pompey's followers when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Ligarius had at this time been left as acting governor in Africa. In the confusion of the times an unfortunate Pompeon named Varus had arrived in Africa, and to him, as being superior in rank, Ligarius had given up the government. Varus had then gone, leaving Ligarius still acting, and one tubero had come with his son and had demanded the office. Varus had refused to give it up, and the two tuberos had departed, leaving the province in anger, and had fought at the farcellus. After the battle they made their peace with Caesar, and in the scramble that ensued, Ligarius was banished. Now the case was brought into the courts, in which Caesar sat as judge. The younger tubero accused Ligarius, and Cicero defended him. It seems that having been enticed to open his mouth on behalf of Marcellus, he found himself launched again into public life. But how great was the difference from his old life? It is not to the eudices, or patres conscripti, or to the cuirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to Caesar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise. Once again he does the same thing when pleading for Deotarus, the king of Galatia, and it is impossible to deny as we read the phrases that the orator sinks in our esteem. It is not so much that we judge him to be small as that he has ceased to be great. He begins his speech for Ligarius by saying, My kinsman tubero has brought before you, O Caesar, a new crime, and one not heard of up to this day, that Ligarius has been in Africa. The commencement would have been happy enough if it had not been addressed to Caesar. For he was addressing a judge not appointed by any form, but self-assumed, a judge by military conquest. We cannot imagine how Caesar found time to sit there, with his legions round him still under arms, and spaying not wholly conquered, but he did do so, and allowed himself to be persuaded to the side of mercy. Ligarius came back to Rome, and was one of those who plunged their daggers into him. But I cannot think that he should have been hindered by this trial and by Caesar's mercy from taking such a step, if by nothing else. Brutus and Cassius also stabbed him. The question to be decided is whether on public grounds these men were justified in killing him. A question as to which I should be premature in expressing an opinion here. There are some beautiful passages in this oration. Who is there, I ask, he says, who alleges Ligarius to have been in fault because he was in Africa. He does so who himself was most anxious to be there, and now complains that he was refused admittance by Ligarius, he who was in arms against Caesar. What was your sword doing to Biro in that Farsalian army? Whom did you seek to kill then? What was the meaning of your weapon? What was it that you desired so eagerly with those eyes and hands, with that passion in your heart? I press him too much. The young man seems to be disturbed. I will speak of myself then, for I also was in that army. This was in Caesar's presence, and no doubt told with Caesar. We were all together in the same cause, you and I, and Ligarius. Why should you and I be pardoned, and not Ligarius? The oration is for the most part simply eulogistic. At any rate it was successful, and became at Rome for the time extremely popular. He writes about it early in the following year to Atticus, who was urged him to put something into it before it was published, to mitigate the feeling against Tibero. Cicero says in his reply to Atticus that the copies have already been given to the public, and that indeed he is not anxious on Tibero's behalf. Early in this year he had divorced Torentia, and seems at once to have married Publilia. Publilia had been his ward, and is supposed to have had a fortune of her own. He explains his own motives very clearly in a letter to his friend Plankius. In these wretched times he would have formed no new engagement, unless his own affairs had been as sad for him as were those of the Republic. But when he found that they to whom his prosperity should have been of the greatest concern were plotting against him within his own walls, he was forced to strengthen himself against the perfidy of his old inmates by placing his trust in a new. It must have been very bad with him when he had recourse to such a step as this. Shortly after this letter just quoted had been written, he divorced Publilia also. We are told because Publilia had treated Tullia with disrespect. We have no details on the subject, but we can well understand the pride of the young woman, who declined to hear the constant praise of her step-daughter, and thought herself to be quite as good as Tullia. At any rate she was sent away quickly from her new home, having remained there only long enough to have made not the most creditable episode in Cicero's life. At this time Dolabella, who assumed the consulship upon Caesar's death, and Hirtius, who became consul during the next year, used to attend upon Cicero and take lessons in elocution. So, at least the story has been told, from a letter written in this year to his friend Poetus, but I should imagine that the lessons were not much in earnest. Why do you talk to me of your tunny fish, your pilot fish, and your cheese and sardines? Hirtius and Dolabella preside over my banquets, and I teach them in return to make speeches. From this we may learn that Caesar's friends were most anxious to be also Cicero's friends. It may be said that Dolabella was his son-in-law, but Dolabella was at this moment on the eve of being divorced. It was in spite of his marriage that Dolabella still clung to Cicero. All Caesar's friends in Rome did the same, so that I am disposed to think that for this year, just till Tullia's death, he was falling not into a happy state, but to the passive contentment of those who submit themselves to be ruled over by a single master. He had struggled all his life, and now finding that he must yield, he thought that he might as well do so gracefully. It was so much easier to listen to the state secrets of Balbus, and to hear from Opius how the money was spent, and then to dine with Hirtius or Dolabella, than to sit ever scowling at home, as Cato would have done had Cato lived. But with his feelings about the Republic at heart, how sad it must have been! Cato was gone, and pompy, and biblious, and Marcellus was either gone or just about to go. Old age was creeping on. It was better to write philosophy in friendship with Caesar's friends than to be banished again with a he could not write it at all. Much no doubt he did, in preparation for all those treatises which the next eighteen months were to bring forth. Caesar, just at the end of the year, had been again called to Spain, B.C. 46, to quell the last throbbing of the Pompeians, and then to fight the final battle of Munda. It would seem odd to us that so little should have been said about such an event by Cicero, and that the little should depend on the education of his son, were it not that if we look at our own private letters written to-day to our friends, we find the same omission of great things. To Cicero the doings of his son were of more immediate moment than the doings of Caesar. The boy had been anxious to enlist for the Spanish war, Quintus his cousin had gone, and young Marcus was anxious to flutter his feathers beneath the eyes of royalty. At his age it was nothing to him that he had been taken to Farsalia and made to bear arms on the opposite side. Caesar had become Caesar since he had learned to form his opinion on politics, and on Caesar's side all things seemed to be bright and prosperous. The lad was anxious to get away from his new stepmother, and asked his father for the means to go with the army to Spain. It appears by Cicero's letter to Atticus on the subject that in discussing the matter with his son he did yield. These Roman fathers, in whose hands we are told were the very lives of their sons, seemed to have been much like Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been very willing at the first parental attempt to give up his military appanages, and at swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favour than himself. Young Quintus was older, and had been already able to do something to push himself with Caesar's friends. Said Ta-men permissi. Nevertheless, I told him he might go, said Cicero sadly. But he did not go. He was allured probably by the promise of a separate establishment at Athens, whither he was sent to study with Cratippus. We find another proof of Cicero's wealth in the costliness of his son's household at Athens as premeditated by the father. He is to live as do the sons of other great noblemen. He even names the young noblemen with whom he is to live. Bibulus was of the Calpurnian gents, a kidinus of the manlion, and messala of the Valerian, and these are the men whom Cicero, the noose homo from Arpinum, selects as those who shall not live at a greater cost than his son. He will not, however, at Athens want a horse. Why not? Why should not a young man so furnished want a horse at Athens? There are plenty here at home for the road, says Cicero. So young Cicero is furnished, and sent forth to learn philosophy and Greek. But no one has assayed to tell us why he should not want the horse. Young Cicero, when at Athens, did not do well. He writes home in the coming year to Tyro, two letters which have been preserved for us, and which seem to give us but a bad account at any rate of his sincerity. The errors of his youth, he says, have afflicted him grievously. Not only is his mind shocked, but his ears cannot bear to hear of his own iniquity. And now, he says, I will give you a double joy to compensate for all the anxiety I have occasioned you. Know that I live with Cratippus, my master, more like a son than a pupil. I spend all my days with him, and very often part of the night. But he seems to have had some wit. Tyro has been made a freedman, and has bought a farm for himself. Young Marcus, from whom Tyro has asked for some assistance, which Marcus cannot give him, jokes with him as to his country life, telling him that he sees him saving the apple-pips at dessert. Of the subsequent facts of the life of young Marcus, we did not know much. He did not suffer in the prescriptions of Antony and Augustus, as did his father and uncle and his cousin. He did live to be chosen as consul with Augustus, and had the reputation of a great drinker. For this latter assertion, we have only the authority of Pliny the Elder, who tells us an absurd story among the wonders of drinking which he adduces. Middleton says a word or two on behalf of the young Cicero, which are as well worthy of credit as anything else that has been told. One last glance at him, which we can credit, is given in that letter to Tyro, and that, we admit, seems to us to be hypocritical. End of chapter 7, part 1