 CHAPTER III. MILO SIDE-NOTE. BC 52, ITAT 55. The preceding year came to an end without any consular election. It was for the election expected to have taken place, that the services of Curio had been so ardently bespoken by Cicero on behalf of Milo. In order to impede the election, Claudius accused Milo of being in debt, and Cicero defended him. What was the nature of the accusation we did not exactly know? An inquiry into Milo's debts, such was the name given to the pleadings, as found with the fragments which have come to us. In these, which are short and not especially interesting, there is hardly a word as to Milo's debts, but much abuse of Claudius, with some praise of Cicero himself, and some praise also of Pompey, who was so soon to take up arms against Cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of Milo. We cannot believe that Milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know that at last he was not elected. Early in the year Claudius was killed, and then the suggestion of Bibulus, whom the reader will remember as the colleague of Caesar in the consulship, when Caesar reduced his colleague to ridiculous impotence by his violence, Pompey was elected as sole consul, an honour which befell no other Roman. The condition of Rome must have been very low when such a one as Bibulus thought that no order was possible except by putting absolute power into the hands of him who had so lately been the partner of Caesar, in the conspiracy which had not even yet been altogether brought to an end. That Bibulus acted under constraint is no doubt true. It would be of little matter now from what cause he acted, were it not that his having taken a part in this utter disruption of the Roman form of government, is one proof the more that there was no longer any hope for the Republic. But the story of the killing of Claudius must be told at some length, because it affords the best drawn pictures that we can get of the sort of violence with which Roman affairs had to be managed, and also because it gave rise to one of the choicest morsels of forensic eloquence that have ever been prepared by the intellect and skill of an advocate. It is well known that the speech to which I refer was not spoken and could not have been spoken in the form in which it has reached us. We do not know what part of it was spoken and what was emitted, but we do know that the promilone exists for us, and that it lives among the glories of language as a published aeration. I find on looking through the institutio oratoria of Quintillian, that in his estimation the promilone was the first in favour of all our author's erasions, facile prinkeps, if we may collect the critic's ideas on the subject from the number of references made and examples taken. Quintillian's work consists of lessons on oratory, which he supports by quotations from the great orators, both Greek and Latin, with whose speeches he has made himself familiar. Cicero was to him the chief of orators, so much so that we may almost say that Quintillian's institutio is rather a lecture in honour of Cicero than a general lesson. With the Roman schoolmaster's method of teaching for the benefit of the Roman youth of the day we have no concern at present, but we can gather from the references made by him the estimation in which various erasions were held by others as well as by him in his day. The Procluentio, which is twice as long as the promilone and which has never, I think, been a favourite with modern readers, is quoted very frequently by Quintillian. It is the second in the list. Quintillian makes eighteen references of it. But the promilone is brought to the reader's notice thirty-seven times. Quintillian was certainly a good critic, and he understood how to recommend himself to his own followers by quoting excellences which had already been acknowledged as the best which Roman literature had afforded. Those who have gone before me in writing the Life of Cicero have, in telling their story as to Milo, very properly gone to Asconius for their details. As I must do so, too, I shall probably not diverge far from them. Asconius wrote as early as the reign of Claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. Among other writings he could refer to those books of Livy which have since been lost. He seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of affection, and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the other. There can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of Asconius as to Milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge of the facts. B.C. 52, I.T. 55 When the year began, no consuls had been chosen, and an interrex became necessary, one interrex after another, to make the election of consuls possible in accordance with the forms of the Constitution. These men remained in office each for five days, and it was customary that an election which had been delayed should be completed within the days of the second or third interrex. There were three candidates, Milo, Hypceus, and Q. Metellus Scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence were used with open and unblushing profligacy. Cicero was wedded to Milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to Curio, but it does not appear that he himself took any active part in the canvas. The duties to be done required rather the services of a Curio. Pompey, on the other hand, was nearly as warmly engaged in favour of Hypceus and Scipio, though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. Milo and Claudius had often fought in the streets of Rome, each roughing and attended by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as Asconius says, they were equal. On the twentieth of January Milo was returning to Rome from Lanuvium, where he had been engaged as Chief Magistrate of the town in nominating a friend for the municipality. He was in a carriage with his wife Fausta, and with a friend, and was followed, as was his wife, by a large band of armed men, among whom were two noted gladiators, Udamus and Biria. At Puvili, near the temple of the Bonadere, his cottage was met by Claudius on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed with swords. Milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. It is not supposed by Asconius that either of the two men expected the meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous. Milo and Claudius passed each other without words or blows, scowling no doubt. But the two gladiators, who were at the end of the file of Milo's men, began to quarrel with certain of the followers of Claudius. Claudius interfered, and was stabbed in the shoulder by Biria. Then he was carried to a neighbouring tavern while the fight was in progress. Milo, having heard that his enemy was there concealed, thinking that he would be greatly relieved in his career by the death of such a foe, and that the risk should be run, though the consequences might be grave, caused Claudius to be dragged out from the tavern, and slaughtered. On what grounds Asconius has attributed these probable thoughts to Milo, we do not know, that the order was given, the jury believed, or at any rate affected to believe. Up to this moment Milo was no more guilty than Claudius, and neither of them probably guilty of more than their usual violence. Partisans on the two sides endeavoured to show that each had prepared an ambush for the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. There is no evidence existing now as to this dragging out of Claudius that he might be murdered, but we know what was the general opinion of Rome at the time, and we may conclude that it was right. The order probably was given by Milo, as it would have been given by Claudius in similar circumstances, at the spur of the moment, when Milo allowed his passion to get the better of his judgment. The thirty servants of Claudius were either killed or had run away and hidden themselves, when a certain senator, S. Tedius, coming the way, found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a litter, deposited it in the dead man's house. Before nightfall the death of Claudius was known throughout the city, and the body was surrounded by a crowd of citizens of the lower order, and of slaves. With them was Fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the people to sympathy. On the morrow there was an increased crowd, among whom were senators and tribunes, and the body was carried out into the forum, and the people were harangued by the tribunes as to the horror of the deed that had been done. From thence the body was born into the neighbouring Senate House by the crowd, under the leading of Sextus Claudius, a cousin of the dead man. Here it was burned, with a great fire, fed with the desks and benches and even with the books and archives which were stored there. Not only was the Senate House destroyed by the flames, but a temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was attacked and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The consul Sfaskis had been put away in one of the temples, that of Venus Libitina. These the people seized and carried to the house of Pompey declaring that he should be dictator and he alone consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous reverence for legal forms. But there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of the Senate House, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy for Claudius, so that Milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off, came back to Rome and renewed his canvas distributing bribes to all the citizens, millia assum, perhaps something over ten pounds, to every man. Both he and Celius harangued the people and declared that Claudius had begun the fray. But no consuls could be elected while the city was in such a state, and Pompey having been desired to protect the Republic in the usual form, collected troops from all Italy. Preparations were made for trying Milo, and the friends of each party demanded that the slaves of the other party should be put to the torture and examined as witnesses. But every possible impediment and legal quibble was used by the advocates on either side. Hortensius, who was engaged for Milo, declared that Milo's slaves had all been made free men and could not be touched. Stories were told backwards and forwards of the cruelty and violence on each side. Milo made an offer to Pompey to abandon his canvas in favour of Hypceus, if Pompey would accept this as a compromise. Pompey answered with the assumed dignity that was common to him, that he was not the Roman people, and that it was not for him to interfere. It was then that Pompey was created sole consul at the instigation of Bibulus. He immediately caused a new law to be passed for the management of the trial which was coming on, and when he was opposed in this by Cilius, declared that if necessary he would carry his purpose by force of arms. Pretending to be afraid of Milo's violence, he remained at home and on one occasion dismissed the Senate. Afterwards, when Milo entered the Senate, he was accused by a senator present of having come with arms hidden beneath his toga, whereupon he lifted his toga and showed that there were none. Asconius tells us that upon this, Cicero declared that all the other charges made against the accused were equally false. This is the first word of Cicero's known to us in the matter. Two or three men declared that because they had been present at the death of Claudius, they had been kidnapped and kept close prisoners by Milo, and the story whether two or false did Milo much harm. It seems that Milo became again very odious to the people, and that their hatred was for the time extended to Cicero as Milo's friend and proposed advocate. Pompey seemed to have shared the feeling and have declared that violence was contemplated against himself. But such was Cicero's constancy, says Asconius, that neither the alienation of the people nor the suspicions of Pompey, nor fear of what might befall himself at the trial, nor dread of the arms which were used openly against Milo, could hinder him from going on with the defense, although it was within his power to avoid the quarrel with the people and to renew his friendship for Pompey by abstaining from it. Demitius Aenobarbis was chosen as president, and the others elected as judges were, we are told, equally good men. Milo was accused both of violence and bribery, but was able to arrange that the former case should be tried first. The method of the trial is explained. Fifty-one judges or jurymen were at last chosen. Scola was the first witness examined, and he exaggerated as best he could the horror of the murder. When Marcellus, as advocate for Milo, began to examine Scola, the people were so violent that the president was forced to protect Marcellus by taking him within the barrier of the judge's seat. Milo also was obliged to demand protection within the court. Pompey, then sitting at the treasury and frightened by the clamour, declared that he himself would come down with troops on the next day. After the hearing of the evidence, the tribune Munatius Plancus harangued the people and begged them to come in great numbers on the morrow so that Milo might not be allowed to escape. On the following day, which was the eleventh of April, all the taverns were shut. Pompey filled the forum at every approach to it with his soldiers. He himself remained seated at the treasury as before, surrounded by a pick to body of men. At the trial on this day, when three of the advocates against Milo had spoken, Apius, Mark Antony and Valerius Nepos, Cicero stood up to defend the criminal. Brutus had prepared an oration declaring that the killing of Claudius was in itself a good deed and praiseworthy on behalf of the republic. But to this speech Cicero refused his consent, arguing that a man could not legally be killed simply because his death was to be desired, and Brutus' speech was not spoken. Witnesses had declared that Milo had lain in wait for Claudius. This Cicero alleged to be false, contending that Claudius had lain in wait for Milo, and he endeavored to make this point and no other. But it is proved, Zesconius, that neither of the men had any design of violence on that day, that they met by chance, and that the killing of Claudius had come from the quarrelling of the slaves. It was well known that each had often threatened the death of the other. Milo's slaves had no doubt been much more numerous than those of Claudius when the meeting took place, but those of Claudius had been very much better prepared for fighting. When Cicero began to address the judges, the partisans of Claudius could not be induced to abstain from riot even by fear of the soldiery, so that he was unable to speak with his accustomed firmness. Such is the account as given by Zesconius, who goes on to tell us that out of the fifty-one judges thirty-eight condemned Milo, and only thirteen were for acquitting him. Milo therefore was condemned, and had to retire at once into exile at Marseille. It seemed to have been acknowledged by the judges that Claudius had not been wounded at first by any connivance on the part of Milo, but they thought that Milo did direct that Claudius should be killed during the fight which the slaves commenced among themselves. As far as we can take any interest in the matter we must suppose that it was so, but we are forced to agree with Brutus that the killing of Claudius was in itself a good deed done, and we have to acknowledge at the same time that the killing of Milo would have been as good. Though we may doubt as to the manner in which Claudius was killed, there are points in the matter as to which we may be quite assured. Milo was condemned not for killing Claudius, but because he was opposed at the moment to the line of politics which Pompey thought would be most conducive to his own interests. Milo was condemned, and the death of the wretched Claudius avenged, because Pompey had desired Hipsaeus to be consul, and Milo had dared to stand in his way. An audience was refused to Cicero, not from any sympathy with Claudius, but because it suited Pompey that Milo should be condemned. Could Cicero have spoken the words which afterwards were published, the jury might have hesitated, and the criminal might have been acquitted. Caesar was absent, and Pompey found himself again lifted into supreme power for a moment. Though no one in Rome had insulted Pompey as Claudius had done, though no one had so fought for Pompey as Cicero had done, still it suited Pompey to avenge Claudius and to punish Cicero for having taken Milo's part in regard to the consulship. Milo, after his condemnation for the death of Claudius, was condemned in three subsequent trials, one following the other almost instantly, for bribery, for secret conspiracy, and again for violence in the city. He was absent, but there was no difficulty in obtaining his conviction. When he was gone, one Salphaeus, a friend of his, who had been with him during the tumult, was put upon his trial for his share in the death of Claudius. He, at any rate, was known to have been guilty in the matter. He had been leader of the party who attacked the tavern, had killed the tavernkeeper, and had dragged out Claudius to execution. But Salphaeus was twice acquitted. Had there been any hope of law-abiding tranquility in Rome, it might have been well that Claudius should be killed and Milo banished. As it was, neither the death of the one nor the banishment of the other could avail anything. The pity of it was, the pity that such a one as Cicero, a man with such intellect, such ambition, such sympathies, and such patriotism, should have been brought to fight on such an arena. Sidenote BC. 52, I. 55. We have in this story a graphic and most astounding picture of the Rome of the day. No consuls had been or could be elected, and the system by which Interreges had been enabled to superintend the election of their successors in lieu of the consuls of the expiring year had broken down. Pompey had been made sole consul in an informal manner, and had taken upon himself all the authority of a dictator in levying troops. Power in Rome seems at the moment to have been shared between him and bands of gladiators, but he too had succeeded in arming himself, and as the Claudian faction was on his side he was for a while supreme. For law by this time he could have but little reverence, having been partnered with Caesar in the so-called triumvirate for the last eight years, but yet he had no aptitude for throwing the law all together on one side and making such a coup de main as was now and again within his power. Beyond Pompey there was at this time no power in Rome except that of the gladiators and the owners of the gladiators who were each intent on making plunder out of the empire. There were certain men, such as were Bibulus and Cato, who considered themselves to be optimates, leading citizens who believed in the republic, and were no doubt anxious to maintain the established order of things, as we may imagine the dukes and earls are anxious in these days of ours. But they were impotent and bad men of business, and as a body were too closely wedded to their fishponds, by which Cicero means their general luxuries and extravagances. In the bosoms of these men there was no doubt an eager desire to perpetuate a republic which had done so much for them, and a courage sufficient for the doing of some great deed, if the great deed would come in their way. They went to Farsalia and Cato marched across the deserts of Libya. They slew Caesar and did some gallant fighting afterwards. But they were like a rope of sand, and had among them no fitting leader, and no high purpose. Outside of these was Cicero, who certainly was not a fitting leader when fighting was necessary, and who asked politics in general, was fitted rather by noble aspirations than supported by fixed purposes. We are driven to wonder that there should have been at such a period, and among such a people, aspirations so noble joined with so much vanity of expression. Among Romans he stands the highest, because of all Romans, he was the least Roman. He had begun with high resolves and had acted up to them. Among all the equistores, ediles, praetors, and consuls Rome had known, none had been better, none honester, none more patriotic. There had come up suddenly in those days a man imbued with the unwonted idea that it behoved him to do his duty to the state according to the best of his lights. No Cincinnati's, no Dessius, no Camilla, no Scipio, no pretentious follower of those half-mythic heroes, no demigods struggling to walk across the stage of life, enveloped in his toga, and resolved to impose on all eyes by the assumption of a divine dignity, but one who at every turn was conscious of his human duty, and anxious to do it to the best of his human ability. He did it, and we have to acknowledge that the conceit of doing it overpowered him. He mistook the feeling of people around him, thinking that they too would be carried away by their admiration of his conduct. Up to the day on which he descended from his consul's seat duty was paramount with him. Then gradually there came upon him the conviction that the duty, though it had been paramount with him, did not weigh so very much with others. He had been lavish in his worship of Pompey, thinking that Pompey, whom he had believed in his youth to be the best of citizens, would of all men be the truest of the Republic. Pompey had deceived him, but he could not suddenly give up his idol. Gradually we see that there fell upon him a dread that the great Roman Republic was not the perfect institution which he had fancied. In his early days Christogonus had been base, and veris, and Opianicus and Catiline, but still to his idea the body of the Roman Republic had been sound. But when he had gone out from his consul's ship, with resolves strung too high that he would remain at Rome despising provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the Republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there were no Romans such as he had conceived them to be. Then he fell away and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequal intellect in attacking Piso, in praising himself, and in defending Milo. The glory of his active life was over when his consul's ship was done. The glory was over, with the exception of that to come from his final struggle with Antony. But the work by which his immortality was to be achieved was yet before him. I think that after defending Milo he must have acknowledged to himself that all partisan fighting in Rome was mean, ignoble, and hollow. With the Senate House and its archives burned as a funeral pile for Claudius, and the forum in which he had to plead lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by Cicero that the old Republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection. He had said so often to Atticus, but meant say words in the despondency of the moment which they do not wish to have accepted as their established conviction. In such humour Cicero had written to his friend, but now it must have occurred to him that his petulant expressions were becoming only too true. When instigating Curio to canvass for Milo, and defending Milo as though it had been a good thing for a Roman nobleman to travel in the neighbourhood of the city with an army at his heels, he must have ceased to believe even in himself as a Roman statesman. In the oration which we possess, which we must teach ourselves to regard as altogether different from that which Cicero had been able to pronounce among Pompey's soldiers and the Claudian rabble, the reader is astonished by the magnificence of the language in which a case so bad in itself could be enveloped, and is made to feel that had he been on the jury and had such an address been made to him, he would certainly have voted for an acquittal. The guilt or innocence of Milo as to the murder really turned on the point whether he did or did not direct that Claudius should be dragged out of the tavern and slain. But here in this oration three points are put forward in each of which it was within the scope of the orator to make the jury believe that Claudius had in truth prepared an ambush gate, that Claudius was of all Romans the worst, and that Milo was loyal and true, and in spite of a certain fierceness of disposition, a good citizen at heart. We agree with Milo, who declared when banished, that he would never have been able to enjoy the fish of Marseille had Cicero spoken in the forum the speech which he afterwards composed. I would not remind you, he says, of Milo's tribunship, nor of all his service to the State, unless I could make plain to you as daylight the ambush which on that day was laid for him by his enemy. I will not pray you to forgive a crime simply because Milo has been a good citizen, nor because the death of Claudius has been a blessing to us all will I therefore ask you to regard it as a deed worthy of praise. But if the fact of the ambush be absolutely made evident, then I beseech you at any rate to grant that a man may lawfully defend himself from the arrogance and from the arms of his enemies. From this may be seen the nature of the arguments used. For the language the reader must turn to the original. That it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence of all the critics, especially that of Milo, when he was eating sardines in his exile, and of Quintillion when he was preparing his lessons on rhetoric. It seems that Cicero had been twitted with using something of a dominating tyranny in the senate, which would hardly have been true as the prevailing influence of the moment was that of Pompey, but he throws aside the insinuation very grandly. Call it tyranny, if you please, if you think it that rather than some little authority which has grown from my services to the State, or some favour among good men because of my rank, call it what you will while I am able to use it for the defence of the good against the violence of the evil minded. Then he describes the fashion in which these two men travelled on the occasion, the fashion of travelling as it suited him to describe it. If you did not hear the details of the story, but could simply see a picture of all that occurred, would it not appear which of them had planned the attack, which of them was ignorant of all evil? One of them was seated in his carriage, clad in his cloak and with his wife beside him. His garments, his clients, his companions, all show how little prepared he was for fighting. Then as to the other, why was he leaving his country-house so suddenly? Why should he do this so late in the evening? Why did he travel so slowly at this time of the year? He was going, he says, to Pompey's villa. Not that he might see Pompey because he knew that Pompey was at Alciam. Did he want to see the villa? He had been there a thousand times. Why all this delay and turning back was in forwards? Because he would not leave the spot till Milo had come up. And now compare this Rothian's mode of travelling with that of Milo. It has been the constant custom with Claudius to have his wife with him, but now she was not there. He has always been in a carriage, but now he was on horseback. His young Greek Siborites have ever been with him, even when he went as far as Tuscany. On this occasion there were no such trifles in his company. Milo, with whom such companions were not usual, had his wife's singing-boys with him and a bevy of female slaves. Claudius, who usually never moved without a crowd of prostitutes at his heels, now had no one with him, but men picked for this work in hand. What a picture we have here of the manners in which noble Romans were won't to move about the city and the suburbs. We may imagine that the singing-boys of Milo's wife were quite as bad as the Greek attendants in whom Claudius usually rejoiced. Then he asks a question as to Pompey full of beautiful irony. If Pompey could bring back Claudius from the dead, Pompey who is so fond of him, Pompey who is so powerful, so fortunate, so capable of all things, Pompey who would be so glad to do it because of his love for the man, do you not know that on behalf of the Republic he would leave him down among the ghosts where he is? There is a delightful touch of satire in this when we remember how odious Claudius had been to Pompey in days not long and how insolent. The oration is ended by histrionic effects in language which would have been marvellous had they ever been spoken, but which seemed to be incredible to us when we know that they were arranged for publication when the affair was over. Oh, me wretched, oh me unhappy! But these attempts at translation are all vain. The student who wishes to understand what may be the effect of Latin words thrown into this choicest form should read the Milo. We have very few letters from Cicero in this year, four only, I think, and they are of no special moment. In one of them he recommends Avianus to Titus Titius, a lieutenant then serving under Pompey. In this he is very anxious to induce Titius to let Avianus know all the good things that Cicero had said of him. In our times we sometimes send our letters of introduction open by the hands of the person introduced, so that he may himself read his own praise, but the Romans did not scruple to ask that this favour might be done for them. Do me this favour, Titius, of being kind to Avianus, but do me also the greater favour of letting Avianus know that I've asked you. What Cicero did to Titius other noble Romans did in their communications with their friends in the provinces. In another letter to Marius he expresses his great joy at the condemnation of that munatius Plancas who had been tribune when Claudius was killed. Plancas had harangued the people, exciting them against Milo and against Cicero, and had led to the burning of the Senate House and of the temple next door. For this Plancas could not be accused during his year of office, but he had been put upon his trial when that year was over. Pompey had done his best to save him, but in vain, and Cicero rejoices not only that the tribune who had opposed him should be punished, but that Pompey should have been beaten, which he attributes altogether to the favour shown towards himself by the jury. He is aroused to true exultation that there should have been men on the bench who, having been chosen by Pompey in order that they might acquit this man, had dared to condemn him. Cicero had himself spoken against Plancas on the occasion. Sextus Claudius, who had been foremost among the rioters, was also condemned. This was the year in which Caesar was so nearly conquered by the Gauls at Goebbia, and in which Vercingetorix, having shut himself up in Elysia, was overcome at last by the cruel strategy of the Romans. The brave Gaul who had done his best to defend his country, and had carried himself to the last with a fine gallantry, was kept by his conqueror six years in chains, and then strangled amidst the glories of that conqueror's triumph, a signal instance of the mercy which has been attributed to Caesar as his special virtue. In this year, too, Cicero's dialogues with Atticus de Legibus were written. He seems to have disturbed his labours in the forum with no other work. End of Chapter 3. We cannot but think that at this time the return of Caesar was greatly feared at Rome by the party in the state to which Cicero belonged, and this party must now be understood as including Pompey. Pompey had been nominally proconsul in Spain since the year of his Second Consulship, conjoined with Crassus, B.C. 55, but had remained in Rome, and had taken upon himself the management of Roman affairs, considering himself to be the master of the irregular powers which the triumvirate had created. End of this party was also Cicero, with Cato, Bibulus, Brutus, and all those who were proud to call themselves Optimates. They were now presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to the character of the men. Cato and Brutus were thoroughly in earnest, not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the old spirit. Pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking that all must be well in Rome as long as he was possessed of high office, grand names, and the appendages of dictatorship. Cicero, too, was anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. Something might perhaps be saved if these Optimates could be aroused to some idea of their duty by the exercise of eloquence such as his own. I will cut a few words from Mr. Frude's Caesar. If Caesar came to Rome as consul, the Senate knew too well what it might expect, and then he adds, Cicero had for some time seen what was coming. As to these assertions I quite agree with Mr. Frude, but I think that he has read wrongly both the history of the time and the character of the man when he goes on to state that Cicero preferred characteristically to be out of the way at the moment when he expected that the storm should break, and had accepted the government of Cilicia and Cyprus. All the known details of Cicero's life up to the period of his government of Cilicia during his government and after his return from that province prove that he was characteristically wedded to a life in Rome. This he declared by his distaste to that employment and his impatience of return while he was absent. Nothing, I should say, could be more certain than that he went to Cilicia in obedience to new legal enactments which he could not avoid, but which as they acted upon himself were odious to him. Mr. Frude tells us that he held the government but for two years. The period of these provincial governments had of late much varied. The acknowledged duration was for one year. They had been stretched by the governing party to three, as in the case of Verres in Sicily, to five as with Pompey for his Spanish government, to ten for Caesar in Gaul. This had been done with the view of increasing the opportunities for plunder and power, but had been efficacious of good in enabling governors to carry out work for which one year would not have sufficed. It may be a question whether Cicero, as proconsul in Cilicia, deserved blame for curtailing the period of his services to the empire, or praise for abstaining from plunder and power, but the fact is that he remained in his province not two years, but exactly one, and that he escaped from it with all the alacrity which we may presume to be expected by a prisoner when the bars of his jail have been opened for him. Whether we blame him or praise him, we can hardly refrain from feeling that his impatience was grotesque. There certainly was no desire on Cicero's part either to go to Cilicia or to remain there, and of all his feelings that which prompted him never to be far absent from Rome was the most characteristic of the man. Among various laws which Pompey had caused to be passed in the previous year, B.C. 52, and which had been enacted with views personal to himself and his own political views, had been one de jure magistratum, as to the way in which the magistrates of the empire should be selected. Among other clauses it contained one which declared that no praetor and no consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of office. It would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive of the old system of the republic this new law would have been had the new law and the old system attempted to live together. The pro praetor would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the province or for the consulship, and no consular governor would have been eligible for a province till after his fiftieth year. But at this time Pompey was both consul and governor, and Caesar was governor for ten years with special exemption from another clause in the law which would otherwise have forbidden him to stand again for the consulship during his absence. The law was wanted probably only for the moment, but it had the effect of forcing Cicero out of Rome. As there would naturally come from it a dearth of candidates for the provinces it was further decreed by the senate that the ex-praetors and ex-consuls who had not yet served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of government. In compliance with this order, and probably as a specially intended consequence of it, Cicero was compelled to go to Cilicia. Mr. Frude has said that he preferred characteristically to be out of the way. I have here given what I think to be the more probable cause of his undertaking the government of Cilicia. Side note BC 51, Eitat 56. In April of this year Cicero before he started wrote the first of a series of letters which he addressed to Apius Claudius who was his predecessor in the province. This Apius was the brother of the Publius Claudius whom we have known for the last two or three years as Cicero's pest and persecutor, but he addresses Apius as though they were dear friends. Since it has come to pass in opposition to all my wishes and my expectations, that I must take in hand the government of a province, I have this one consolation in my various troubles, that no better friend to yourself than I am could follow you, and that I could take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the business pleasant to me than you will be. And then he goes on, you perceive that in accordance with the decree of the senate the province has to be occupied. His next letter on the subject was written to Atticus, while he was still in Italy but when he had started on his journey. In your farewell to me, he says, I have seen the nature of your love to me. I know well what is my own for you. It must then be your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of hours should be prolonged beyond one year. Then he goes on to tell the story of a scene that had occurred at Arcanum, a house belonging to his brother Quintus at which he had stopped on the road for a family farewell. Pomponia was there, the wife of Quintus and the sister to Atticus. There were a few words between the husband and the wife, as to the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved with much Christian perversity of temper. Alas! says Quintus to his brother, you see what it is that I have to suffer every day. Knowing, as we all do, how great were the powers of the Roman Patafemilius, and how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should have thought that an ex-prytor might have managed his home more comfortably. But ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make themselves disagreeable in all ages. I doubt whether we have any testimony whatever, as to Cicero's provincial government, except that which comes from himself, and which is confined to the letters written by him at the time. Nevertheless, we have a clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters which he then wrote. The truth of his account of himself has never been questioned. He draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity, and his power of administration, which is the more astonishing because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other governors. We have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malifactors, till we are taught to acknowledge that in the low condition to which Roman nature had fallen it was useless to expect any other conduct from a Roman governor. And then he gives us the account of how a man did govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest, clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. That man was himself, and he gives this account of himself, as it were without a blush, he tells the story of himself, not as though it was remarkable. That other governors should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them and draw the blood from their veins for drink, but that Cicero should not condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered seems to Cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from him. A wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character, but surely the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more wonderful. The conduct of Cicero in his command was meritorious, says De Quincey. His short career as proconsul in Cilicia had procured for him well-merited honor, says Dean Merrivale. He had managed his province well. No one ever suspected Cicero of being corrupt or unjust, says Mr. Frude, who had, however, said some pages before that Cicero was thinking as usual of himself first and his duty afterwards. Dio Cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of Cicero's life, says not a word of his Cilician government, from which we may at any rate argue that no stories detrimental to Cicero as a proconsul had come in the way of Dio Cassius. I have confirmed what I have said as to this episode in Cicero's life by the corroborating testimony of writers who have not been generally favorable in their view of his character. Nevertheless, we have no testimony but his own as to what Cicero did in Cilicia. It has never occurred to any reader of Cicero's letters to doubt a line in which he has spoken directly of his own conduct. His letters have often been used against himself, but in a different manner. He has been judged to give true testimony against himself, but not false testimony in his own favor. His own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant, and sometimes as implying much more than the writer intended. A word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. He has been injured not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having them too well credited where there have been misunderstood. It is at any rate the fact that his own account of his own proconsular doings has been accepted in full, and that the present reader may be encouraged to believe what extracts I may give to him by the fact that all other readers before him have believed them. From his villa at Kumai on his journey he wrote to Atticus in High Spirits. Hortensius had been to see him, his old rival, his old predecessor in the glory of the Forum, Hortensius whom he was fated never to see again. His only request to Hortensius had been that he should assist in taking care that he, Cicero, should not be required to stay above one year in his province. Atticus is to help him also, and another friend, Furnius, who may probably be the Tribune for the next year, has been canvassed for the same object. In a further letter from Beninventum he alludes to a third marriage for his daughter Tullia, but seems to be aware that as he is leaving Italy he cannot interfere in that matter himself. He writes again from Venusia, saying that he purports to see Pompey at Tarentum before he starts, and gives special instructions to Atticus as to the payment of a debt which is due by him to Caesar. He has borrowed money of Caesar and is especially anxious that the debt should be settled. In another letter from Tarentum he presses the same matter. He is anxious to be relieved from the obligation. From Athens he wrote again to his friend a letter which is chiefly remarkable as telling us something of the quarrel between Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who was one of the consuls for the year, and Caesar who was still absent in Gaul. This Marcellus and others of his family who succeeded him in his office were hotly opposed to Caesar, belonging to that party of the state to which Cicero was attached and to which Pompey was returning. It seemed to have been the desire of the consul not only to injure but to insult Caesar. He had endeavoured to get a decree of the senate for recalling Caesar at once, but had succeeded only in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following year, when Caesar would naturally return. But to show how little was his regard to Caesar he caused to be flogged in Rome a citizen from one of those towns of Cisalpine Gaul to which Caesar had assumed to give the privilege of Roman citizenship. The man was present as a delegate from his town Novocomum, the present Como, in furtherance of the colony's claims, and the consul had the man flogged to show thereby that he was not a Roman. Marcellus was punished for his insolence by banishment inflicted by Caesar when Caesar was powerful. We shall learn before long how Cicero made an oration in his favour, but in the letter written from Athens he blames Marcellus much for flogging the man. Fight in my behalf, he says, in the course of the letter, for if my government be prolonged I shall fail and become mean. The idea of absence from Rome is intolerable to him. From Athens also he wrote to his young friend Celius, from whom he had requested information as to what was going on in Rome. But Celius has to be again instructed as to the nature of the subjects which are to be regarded as interesting. What! do you think that I have asked you to send me stories of gladiators, law court adjournments, and the pilferings of Christus, trash that no one would think of mentioning to me if I were in Rome? But he does not finish his letter to Celius without begging Celius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. Celius troubles him much afterwards by renewed requests for Cilician panthers wanted for Edelian shows. Cicero becomes very seasick on his journey, and then reaches Ephesus in Asia Minor, dating his arrival there on the five hundred and sixtieth day from the Battle of Bavilla, showing how much the contest as to Milo still clung to his thoughts. Ephesus was not in his province, but at Ephesus all the magistrates came out to do him honour, as though he had come among them as their governor. Now has arrived, he says, the time to justify all those declarations which I have made as to my own conduct. But I trust I can practice the lessons which I have learned from you. Atticus, in his full admiration of his friend's character, had doubtless said much to encourage and instigate the virtue which it was Cicero's purpose to employ. We have none of the words ever written by Atticus to Cicero, but we have light enough to show us that the one friend was keenly alive to the honour of the other, and thoroughly appreciated its beauty. Do not let me be more than a year away, he exclaims, do not let even another month be added. Then there is another letter from Cilius praying for Panthers. In passing through the province of Asia to his own province, he declares that the people everywhere receive him well. My coming, he says, has cost no man a shilling. His whole staff has now joined him except one Tullius, whom he speaks of as a friend of Atticus, but afterwards tells us had come to him from Titinius. Then he again enjoins Atticus to have that money paid to Caesar. From Trales, still in the province of Asia, he writes to Apius, the outgoing governor, a letter full of courtesies and expressing an anxious desire for a meeting. He had offered before to go by any route which might suit Apius, but Apius, as appears afterwards, was anxious for anything rather than to encounter the new governor within the province he was leaving. On the thirty-first of July he reached Laodicea within his own boundaries, having started on his journey on the tenth of May, and found all people glad to see him, but the little details of his office harass him sadly. The action of my mind, which you know so well, cannot find space enough. All work worthy of my industry is at an end. I have to preside at Laodicea, while some Plotius is giving judgment at Rome. And then am I not regretting at every moment the life of Rome, the forum, the city itself, my own house? Am I not always regretting you? I will endeavour to bear it for a year, but if it be prolonged, then it will be all over with me. You ask me how I am getting on. I am spending a fortune in carrying out this grand advice of yours. I like it hugely, but when the time comes for paying you your debts, I shall have to renew the bill. To make me do such work as this is putting a saddle upon a cow, cutting a block with a razor, as we should say. Clearly I am not made for it. But I will bear it so that it be only for one year. From Laodicea, a town in Frigia, he went west to Sinada. His province, known as Cilicia, contained the districts named on the map of Asia Minor as Frigia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, part of Cabadosia, Cilicia, and the island of Cyprus. He soon found that his predecessors had ruined the people. Know that I have come into a province utterly and forever destroyed, he says to Atticus. We hear only of taxes that cannot be paid, of men's chattels sold on all sides, of the groans from the cities, of lamentations, of horrors such as some wild beast might have produced rather than a human being. There is no room for question. Every man is tired of his life. And yet some relief is given now because of me and by my officers and by my lieutenants. No expense is imposed on any one. We do not take even the hay which is allowed by the Julian law, not even the wood—four beds to lie on is all we accept and a roof over our heads. In many places not even that, for we live in our tents. Enormous crowds therefore come to us and return as it were to life through the justice and moderation of your Cicero. Appius, when he knew that I was come, ran away to Tarsus, the furthest point of the province. What a picture we have here of the state of a Roman dependency under a normal Roman governor, and of the good which a man could do who was able to abstain from plunder. In his next letter his pride expresses itself so loudly that we have to remember that this man, after all, is writing only his own secret thoughts to his bosom friend. If I can get away from this quickly, the honours which will accrue to me from my justice will be all the greater, as happened to Skyvillar, who was governor in Asia only for nine months. Then again he declares how Appius had escaped into the furthest corner of the province to Tarsus when he knew that Cicero was coming. He writes again to Appius, complaining, When I compare my conduct to yours, he says, I own that I much prefer my own. He had taken every pains to meet Appius in a manner convenient to him, but had been deceived on every side. Appius had, in a way unusual among Roman governors, carried on his authority in remote parts of the province, although he had known of his success as a rival. Cicero assures him that he is quite indifferent to this. If Appius will relieve him of one month's labour out of the twelve, he will be delighted. But why has Appius taken away three of the fullest cohorts, seeing that in the entire province the number of soldiers left has been so small? But he assures Appius that as he makes his journey neither good nor bad shall hear evil spoken by him of his predecessor. But as for you, you seem to have given to the dishonest reasons for thinking badly of me. Then he describes the exact course he means to take in his further journey, thus giving Appius full facility for avoiding him. From Kibistra in Cappadocia he writes official letters to Caesars Marcellus, who had been just chosen consul, the brother of Marcus, the existing consul, to an older Caesars Marcellus, who was their father, a colleague of his own in the College of Orgas, and to Marcus the existing consul, with his congratulations, also to Emilia's Paulus, who had also been elected consul for the next year. He writes also a dispatch to the consuls, to the praetors, to the tribunes, and to the Senate, giving them a statement as to affairs in the province. These are interesting, rather as showing the way in which these things were done, than by their own details. When he reaches Solicia proper, he writes them another dispatch, telling them that the Parthians had come across the Euphrates. He writes as Wellington may have done from Torres Vedras. He bids them look after the safety of their eastern dominions. Though they are too late in doing this, yet better now than never. You know, he says, with what sort of an army you have supported me here, and you know also that I have undertaken this duty not in blind folly, but because in respect for the Republic I have not liked to refuse. As for our allies here in the province, because our rule here has been so severe and injurious, they are either too weak to help us, or so embittered against us that we dare not trust them. Then there is a long letter to Apius, respecting the Embassy which was to be sent from the province to Rome to carry the praises of the departing governor, and declare his excellence as a proconsul. This was quite the usual thing to do. The worst, the governor, the more necessary the Embassy, and such was the terror inspired even by a departing Roman, and such the servility of the allies, even of those who were about to escape from him, that these embassies were a matter of course. There had been a Sicilian Embassy to praise Veres. Apius had complained as though Cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be allowed for its expenses. He rebukes Apius for bringing the charge against him. The series of letters written this year by Cilius de Cicero is very interesting, as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other than Ciceronian. We have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters, ten or twelve from Brutus, if those attributed to him were really written by him, ten or twelve from Decimus Brutus, and an equal number from Plancas. But these were written in the stirring moments of the last struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. We have a few from Cuntus, but not of special interest, unless we are to consider that treaties on the duties of a candidate as a letter. But these from Cilius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from Cicero himself. There are seventeen. They are scattered over three or four years, but most of them refer to the period of Cicero's provincial government. The marvel to me is that Cilius should have adopted a style so near akin to that of his master in literature. Scholars who have studied the words can probably tell us of deficiencies in language, but the easy graphic tone is to my ear Ciceronian. Tyro, who was slave, secretary, freedman, and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters, and have done something towards producing their literary excellence. The subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have produced in Cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments. But Cilius does communicate much of the political news from Rome. In one letter written in October of this year he declares what the senate has decreed as to the recall of Caesar from Gaul, and gives the words of the enactments made with the names subscribed to them of the promoters, and also the names of the tribunes who had endeavoured to oppose them. The purport of these decrees I have mentioned before, the object was to recall Caesar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it would mean nothing. But Cilius specially declares that the intention of recalling Caesar was agreeable to Pompey, whereby we may know that the pact of the triumvirate was already at an end. In another letter he speaks of the coming of the Parthians, and of Cicero's inability to fight with them because of the inadequate number of soldiers entrusted to him. Had there been a real Roman army, then Cilius would have been afraid, he says, for his friend's life. As it is, he fears only for his reputation, lest men should speak ill of him for not fighting when to fight was beyond his power. The language here is so pretty that I am tempted to think that Tyro must have had a hand in it. At Rome we must remember that tidings as to Crassus were as yet uncertain. We cannot, however, doubt that Cilius was in truth attached to Cicero. But Cicero was forced to fight, not altogether unwillingly, not with the Parthians, but with tribes which were revolting from Roman authority because of the Parthian success. It has turned out, as you wished it, he says to Cilius, a job just sufficient to give me a small coronet of laurel. Hearing that men had risen in the townus range of mountains, which divided his province from that of Syria, in which Bibulus was now governor, he had taken such an army as he was able to collect, to the Amanus, a mountain belonging to that range, and was now writing from his camp at Pindinissum, a place beyond his own province. Joking at his own soldiering, he tells Cilius that he had astonished those around him by his prowess. Is this he whom we used to know in the city? Is this our talkative senator? You can understand the things they said. When I got to the Amanus I was glad enough to find our friend Cassius had beaten back the real Parthians from Antioch. But Cicero claims to have done some gallant things. I have harassed those men of Amanus who are always troubling us. Many I have killed, some I have taken, the rest are dispersed. I came suddenly upon their strongholds and have got possession of them. I was called Imperator at the river Issus. It is hardly necessary to explain yet once again that this title belonged properly to no commander till it had been accorded to him by his own soldiers on the field of battle. He reminds Cilius that it was on the Issus that Alexander had conquered Darius. Then he had sat down before Pindanissum with all the machinery of the siege, with the turrets, covered ways, and ramparts. He had not, as yet, quite taken the town. When he had done so, he would send home his official account of it all. But the Parthians may yet come, and there may be danger. Therefore, O my Rufus, he was Cilius Rufus, see that I am not left here, lest, as you suspect, things should go badly with me. There is a mixture in all this of earnestness and of drollery, of boasting and of laughing at what he was doing, which is inimitable in its reality. His next letter is to his other young friend Curio, who has just been elected Tribune. He gives much advice to Curio, who certainly always needed it. He carries on the joke when he tells Atticus that the people of Pindanissum have surrendered. Who the mischief are these Pindanissians, he will say. I have not even heard the name before. What would you have? I cannot make an Etolia out of Cilicia. With such an army as this, do you expect me to do things like a Macedonicus? I had my camp on the Isis, where Alexander had his. A better soldier, no doubt, than you or I. I really have made a name for myself in Syria. Then up comes Bibulus, determined to be as good as I am, but he loses his whole cohort. The failure made by Bibulus at soldiering is quite as much to him as his own success. Then he goes back to Laodicea, leaving the army in winter quarters under the command of his brother Quintus. But his heart is truly in other matters, and he bursts out in the same letter with enthusiastic praise of the line of conduct which Atticus has laid down for him. But that which is more to me than anything, is that I should live so that even that fellow Cato cannot find fault with me. May I die if it could be done better. Nor do I take praise for it, as though I was doing something distasteful. I never was so happy as in practicing this moderation. The thing itself is better to me even than the reputation of it. What would you have me say? It was worth my while to be enabled thus to try myself, so that I might know myself as to what I could do. Then there is a long letter to Cato, in which he repeats the story of his grand doings at Pindanissum. The reader will be sure that a letter to Cato cannot be sincere and pleasant, as are those to Atticus and Cilius. If there be one man far removed from the vulgar love of praise, it is I, he says to Cato. He tells Cato that they too are alike in all things. They too only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the forum. Never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked Cato and the versatile Cicero. Lucius Emilius Paulus and Caus Claudius Marcellus were consuls for the next year. Cicero writes to both of them with tenders of friendship, but from both of them he asks that they should take care to have a decree of the senate passed praising his doings in Cilicia. With us too, a returning governor is anxious enough for a good word from the prime minister, but he does not ask for it so openly. The next letter from Cilius tells him that Appius has been accused as to malpractices in his government and that Pompey is in favour of Appius. Curio has gone over to Caesar. But the important subject is the last handled. It will be mean in you if I should have no Greek panthers. The next refers to the marriages and divorces of certain ladies, and ends with an anecdote told as to a gentleman with just such ill-natured wit as is common in London. No one could have suspected Ocella of looking after his neighbour's wife, unless he had been detected thrice in fact. From Laodicea he answers a quarrelous letter which his predecessor had written, complaining, among other things, that Cicero had failed to show him personal respect. He proves that he had not done so, and then rises to a strain of indignation. Do you think that your grand old names will affect me, who even before I had become great in the service of my country, knew how to distinguish between titles and the men who bore them? The next letter to Appius is full of flattery and asking for favours, but it begins with a sharp reproof. Now at last I have received an epistle worthy of Appius Claudius. The sight of Rome has restored you to your good humour. Those I got from you in your journey were such that I could not read them without displeasure. In February Cicero wrote a letter to Atticus, which is, I think, more expressive in describing the mind of the man than any other which we have from him. In it is commenced the telling of a story respecting Brutus, the Brutus we all know so well, and one scaptious of whom no one would have heard but for this story, which, as it deeply affects the character of Cicero, must occupy a page or two in our narrative. But I must first refer to his own account of his own government as again given here. Nothing was ever so wonderful to the inhabitants of a province, as that they should not have been put to a shilling of expense since he had entered it. Not a penny has been taken on his own behalf or on that of the Republic by any belonging to him, except on one day by one Tullius, and by him indeed under cover of the law. This dirty fellow was a follower with whom Titinius had furnished him. When he was passing from Tarsus, back into the centre of his province, wondering crowds came out to him, the people not understanding how it had been that no letters had been sent to them exacting money, and that none of his staff had been quartered on them. In former years during the winter months they had groaned under exactions. Municipalities with money at their command had paid large sums to save themselves from the quartering of soldiers on them. The island of Cyprus, which on a former occasion had been made to pay nearly fifty thousand pounds on this head, had been asked for nothing by him. He had refused to have any honours paid to him in return for this conduct. He had prohibited the erection of statues, shrines, and bronze chariots in his name, compliments to Roman generals which had become common. The harvest that year was bad, but so fully convinced with the people of his honest dealing, that they who had saved up corn, the Regratus, brought it freely into market at his coming. As some scourge from hell must have been the presence of such governors as Apius and his predecessors, among a people timid but industrious like these Asiatic Greeks. Like an unknown, unexpected blessing direct from heaven must have been the coming of a Cicero. The Life of Cicero Volume 2 by Anthony Trollope Now I will tell the story of Brutus and Scapitius and their money, promising that it has been told by Mr. Forsythe with great accuracy and studied fairness. Indeed, there is not a line in Mr. Forsythe's volume which is not governed by a spirit of justice. He, having thought that Cicero had been too highly praised by Middleton, and too harshly handled by subsequent critics, has apparently written his book with the object of setting right these exaggerations. But in his comments on this matter of Brutus and Scapitius, he seems to me not to have considered the difference in that standard of honour and honesty which governs himself, and that which prevailed in the time of Cicero. Not seeing, as I think, how impossible it was for a Roman governor to have achieved that impartiality of justice with which a long course of fortunate training has imbued an English judge, he accuses Cicero of trifling with equity. The marvel to me is that one man such as Cicero, a man single in his purpose, should have been able to raise his own ideas of justice so high above the level prevailing with the best of those around him. It had become the nature of a Roman aristocrat to pillage an ally till hardly the skin should be left to cover the man's bones. Out of this nature Cicero elevated himself completely. In his own conduct he was free altogether from stain. The question here arose how far he could dare to go on offending the instincts, the habits, the nature of other noble Romans in protecting from their capacity the poor subjects who were temporarily beneath his charge. It is easy for a judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the feelings of the world around him are in favour of such impartiality, but it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the noblest Romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious. In this case, Brutus, our old friend whom all English readers have so much admired, because he dared to tell his brother-in-law Cassius that he was much condemned to have an itching palm, appears before us in the guise of a neuserious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-assetained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the noblest Romans of the day, only second if second to Cato, in general virtue and philosophy. In this trade of money-lending the Roman nobleman had found no more lucrative business than that of dealing with the municipalities of the allies. The cities were peopled by a money-making commercial race, but they were subjected to the grinding impositions of their governors. Under this affliction they were constantly driven to borrow money, and found the capitalists who supplied it, among the class by whom they were persecuted and pillaged. A Brutus lent the money, which an apious exacted, and did not scruple to do so at forty-eight percent, though twelve percent per annum, or one percent per month, was the rate of interest permitted by law. But a noble Roman such as Brutus did not carry on his business of this nature altogether in his own name. Brutus dealt with the municipality of Salamis in the island of Cyprus, and there had two agents named Scaptius and Matinius, whom he specially recommended to Cicero as creditors of the city of Salamis, preying Cicero as governor of the province, to assist these men in obtaining the payment of their debts. This was quite usual, but it was only late in the transaction that Cicero became aware that the man really looking for his money was the noble Roman who gave the recommendation. Cicero's letter tells us that Scaptius came to him, and that he promised that for Brutus' sake he would take care that the people of Salamis should pay their debt. Scaptius thanked him, and asked for an official position in Salamis, which would have given him the power of compelling the payment by force. Cicero refused, explaining that he had determined to give no such offices in his province to persons engaged in trade. He had refused such requests already, even to Pompey and to Torquatis. Appius had given the same man a military command in Salamis, no doubt also at the insistence of Brutus, and the people of Salamis had been grievously harassed. Cicero had heard of this, and had recalled the man from Cyprus. Of this Scaptius had complained bitterly, and at last he and delegates from Salamis who were willing to pay their debt if they could only do it without too great extortion, went together to Cicero, who was then at Tarsus, in the most remote part of his province. Here he was called upon to adjudicate in the matter, Scaptius trusting to the influence which Brutus would naturally have with his friend the Governor, and the men of Salamis to the reputation for justice which Cicero had already created for himself in Cilicia. The reader must also be made to understand that Cicero had been entreated by Atticus to oblige Brutus, who was specially the friend of Atticus. He must remember also that this narrative is sent by Cicero to Atticus, who exhorted his correspondent, even with tears in his eyes, to be true to his honour in the Government of his province. He is appealing from Atticus to Atticus. I am bound to oblige you, but how can I do so in opposition to your own lessons? That is his argument to Atticus. Then there arises a question as to the amount of money due. The principle is not in dispute, but the interest. The money has been manifestly lent on an understanding that four percent per month or forty-eight percent per annum should be charged on it. But there has been a law passed that a higher interest than one percent per month or twelve percent per annum shall not be legal. There has, however, been a counter decree made in regard to these very Salaminians, and made apparently at the instigation of Brutus, saying that any contract with them shall be held in force, notwithstanding the law. But Cicero again has made a decree that he will authorise no exaction above twelve percent in his province. The exact condition of the legal claim is less clear to me than to Mr. Forsythe, who has the advantage of being a lawyer. Be that as it may, Cicero decides that twelve percent shall be exacted, and orders the Salaminians to pay the amount. To his request they demur, but at last agree to obey, alleging that they are unable to do so by Cicero's own forbearance to them, Cicero having declined to accept the presence which had been offered to him from the island. They will therefore pay this money, in some sort, as they say, out of the governor's own pocket. But when the sum is fixed, Scapgeus, finding that he cannot get it overreckoned after some fraudulent scheme of his own, declines to receive it. If with the assistance of a friendly governor he cannot do better than that for himself and his employer, things must be going badly with Roman nobleman. But the delegates are now very anxious to pay this money and offer to deposit it. Scapgeus begs that the official go no further at present, no doubt thinking that he may drive a better bargain with some less rigid future governor. The delegates request to be allowed to place their money as paid in some temple, by doing which they would acquit themselves of all responsibility. But Cicero begs them to abstain. Impetravi absalamini sudsilerent, he says. I shall be grieved indeed that Brutus should be angry with me, he writes, but much more grieved that Brutus should have proved himself to be such as I to love found him. Then comes the passage in his letter on the strengths of which Mr. Forsythe has condemned Cicero, not without abstract truth in his condemnation. They indeed have consented, that is, the Salaminians, but what will befall them if some such governor as Paulus should come here? And all this I have done for the sake of Brutus. Emilius Paulus was the consul, and might probably have Cilicia as a province, and would no doubt give over the Salaminians to Brutus and his murmidons without any compunction. In strictness, with that assurance in the power of law by means of which our judges are unable to see that their righteous decision shall be carried out without detriment to themselves, Cicero should have caused the delegates from Salamis instantly to have deposited their money in the temple. Instead of doing so, he had only declared the amount due, according to his idea of justice, in opposition to all Romans even to Atticus, and had then consented to leave the matter as for some further appeal. Do we not know how impossible it is for a man to abide strictly by the right, when the strict right is so much in advance of all around him, as to appear to otherize than his own as straight-laced, unpractical, fantastic, and almost inhuman? Brutus wanted his money sorely, and Brutus was becoming a great political power, on the same side with Pompey and Cato, and the other optimates. Even Atticus was interfering for Brutus. What other Roman governor of whom he have heard would have made a question on the subject. Atticus had lend a guard of horse soldiers to this Scapitius, with which he had outraged all humanity in Cyprus, had caused the counsellors of the city to be shut up till they would come to obedience, in doing which he had starved five of them to death. Nothing had come of this, such being the way with the Romans in their provinces. Yet Cicero, who had come among these poor wretches as an unheard of blessing from heaven, is held up to scorn because he trifled with equity. Equity with us runs glibly on all falls. With Appius in Sicilia it was utterly unknown. What are we to say of the man who by the strength of his own conscience, and by the splendour of his own intellect, could advance so far out of the darkness of his own age, and bring himself so near to the light of ours? Let us think for a moment of our own Francis Bacon, a man more like to Cicero than any other that I can remember in history. They were both great lawyers, both statesmen, both men affecting the omniscibile, and coming nearer it perhaps than any other whom we can name. Both patriots true to their conceived idea of government, each having risen from obscure position to great power, to wealth, and to rank. Each, from his own education, and his nature, prone to compromise, intimate with human nature, not overscrupulous either as to others or as to himself. They were men intellectually above those around them, to a height of which neither of them was himself aware, to flattery, to admiration, to friendship and to love each of them was peculiarly susceptible. But one failed to see that it behoved him because of his greatness to abstain from taking what smaller men were grasping, while the other swore to himself from his very onset that he would abstain, and kept the oath which he had sworn. I am one who would fain forgive Bacon for doing what I believe that others did around him. But if I can find a man who never robbed, though all others around him did, in whose heart the auri sacrafames had been absolutely quenched, while the men with whom he had to live were sickening and dying with an unnatural craving, then I seem to have recognized a hero. Another complaint is made against Cicero as to Ariobarzanes, the king of Cappadocia, and is founded, as are all complaints against Cicero, on Cicero's own telling of the story in question. Why there should have been complaint in this matter I have not been able to discover. Ariobarzanes was one of those eastern kings who became Milch cows to the Roman nobles, and who in their efforts to satisfy the Roman nobles could only fleece their own subjects. The power of this king to raise money seems to have been limited to about eight thousand pounds a month. Out of this he offered a part to Cicero as the proconsul who was immediately over him. This Cicero declined, but pressed the king to pay the money to the extortionate Brutus, who was a creditor, and who endeavored to get this money through Cicero. But Pompey also was a creditor, and Pompey's name was more dreadful to the king than that of Brutus. Pompey therefore got it all, though we are told that it was not enough to pay him his interest. But Pompey, getting it all, was graciously pleased to be satisfied. Our Cicero puts up with that, and asks no questions about the capital. Says Cicero ironically. Pompey was too wise to kill the goose that laid such golden eggs. Nevertheless, we are told that Cicero, in this case, abused his proconsular authority in favor of Brutus. Cicero affected nothing for Brutus, but when there was a certain amount of plunder to be divided among the Romans, refused any share for himself. Pompey got it all, but not by Cicero's aid. There is another long letter in which Cicero again, for the third time, tells the story of Brutus and Scapteus. I mention it as he continues to describe his own mode of doing his work. He has been Laodicea from February to May, deciding questions that had been there brought before him from all parts of his province, except Cilicia proper. The cities which had been ground down by debt have been enabled to free themselves, and then to live under their own laws. This he has done by taking nothing from them for his own expenses, not a farthing. It is marvellous to see how the municipalities have sprung again into life under this treatment. He has been enabled by this to carry on justice without obstruction and without severity. Everybody has been allowed approach to him, a custom which has been unknown in the provinces. There has been no back stairs influence. He has walked open in his own courts, as he used to do when a candidate at home. All this has been grateful to the people, and much esteemed, nor has it been too laborious to himself, as he had learned the way of it in his former life. It was thus that Cicero governs Cilicia. There are further letters to Apius and Cilius, written from various parts of the province, which cannot fail to displease us, because we feel that Cicero is endeavouring to curry favour. He wishes to stand well with those who might otherwise turn against him on his reappearance in Rome. He is afraid lest Apius should be his enemy, and lest Pompey should not be his friend. The practice of justice and of virtue would, he knew, have much less effect in Rome than the friendship and enmity of such men. But to Atticus he bursts out into honest passion against Brutus. Brutus had recommended to him one Gavius, whom, to oblige Brutus, he appointed to some office. Gavius was greedy, and insolent when his greed was not satisfied. You have made me a prefect, said Gavius. Where am I to go for my rations? Cicero tells him that as he has done no work he will get no pay, whereupon Gavius, quite unaccustomed to such treatment, goes off in a half. If Brutus can be stirred by the anger of such a nave as this, he says to Atticus, you may love him if you will yourself. You will not find me a rival for his friendship. Brutus, however, became a favourite with Cicero, because he had devoted himself to literature. In judging these two men we should not lean too heavily on Brutus, because he did no worse than his neighbours. But then how are we to judge of Cicero? In the latter months of his government there began a new trouble in which it is difficult to sympathise with him, because we are unable to produce in our own minds a Roman's estimation of Roman things. With true spirit he had laughed at his own military doings at Pindinissum, but not the less on that account was he anxious to enjoy the glories of a triumph, and to be dragged through the city on a chariot with military trophies around him, as from time to time immemorial the Roman conquerors had been dragged when they returned from their victories. For the old barbaric conquerors this had been fine enough—a display of armour, of helmets, of shields, and of swords, a concourse of chariots, of trumpets, and of slaves, of victims kept for that hapean rock, the spoils and rapin of battle, the self-asserting glory of the big fighting hero, the pride of bloodshed and the boasting over fallen cities, had been fit for men who had in their hearts conceived nothing greater than military renown. Our sympathies go along with a Camilla, or a Scipio, steeped in the blood of Rome's enemies. A Marius, a Pompey, and again a few years afterwards a Caesar, were in their places as they were dragged along the Via Sacra, up to the capital, amidst the plaudits of the city, in commemoration of their achievements in arms. But it could not be so with Cicero. Conquedat laurea lingui had been the watchword of his life, let the ready tongue and the fertile brain be held in higher honour than the strong right arm. That had been the doctrine which he had practised successfully. To him it had been given to know that the lawyer's gown was Raymond worthy of a man than the soldier's breastplate. How then could it be that he should ask for so small a thing as a triumph, in reward for so small a deed as that done at Pindonissum? But it had become the way with all proconsuls who of late years had been sent forth from Rome into the provinces. Men to whose provincial government a few cohorts were attached aspired to be called Imperator by their soldiers after mock battles, and thought that as others had followed up their sham victories with sham triumphs it should be given to them to do the same. If Bibulus triumphed it would be a disgrace to Cicero not to triumph. We measure our expected rewards not by our own merits but by the good things which have been conceded to others. To have returned from Pindonissum and not to be allowed the glory of trumpets would be a disgrace in accordance with the theory then prevailing in Rome on such matters. Therefore Cicero demanded a triumph. In such a matter it was in accordance with custom that the general should send an immediate account of his victorious doings demand a supplication and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after his return home. A supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods for the great favour shown by them to the state, but in fact took the guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had been done. It was usually a reward for military success, but in the affair of Catiline a supplication had been decreed to Cicero for saving the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. Cicero now applied for a supplication and obtained it. Cato opposed it and wrote a letter to Cicero explaining his motives upon high republican principles. Cicero might have endured this more easily had not Cato voted for a supplication in honour of Bibulus whose military achievements had, as Cicero thought, been less than his own. One heroess opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the numbers slain by Cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a supplication. We learned that according to strict rule two thousand dead men should have been left on the field. Cicero's victims had probably been much fewer. Nevertheless the supplication was granted, and Cicero presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. Alas! there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph. Of all that went on at Rome, Cicero continued to send Cicero accounts. The triumvirate was now over. Cicero says that Pompey will not attack Caesar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent Caesar from being elected consul before he shall have given up his province and his army. For details Cilius refers him to a commentarium, a word which has been translated as meaning newspaper in this passage by Melmoth. I think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the commentary was simply the compilation of Cilius, as were the commentaries we so well know, the compilation of Caesar. The Acta di Urna were published by authority and formed an official gazette. These no doubt reached Cicero, but were very different in their nature from the private record of things which he obtained from his friend. There are passages in Greek, in two letters written around this time to Atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his quarrel with his wife and her divorce. He makes no direct allusion to his wife, but only to a freedman of hers, Philotomus. When Milo was convicted, his goods were confiscated and sold as part of his punishment. Philotomus is supposed to have been a purchaser, and to have made money out of the transaction, taking advantage of his position to acquire cheap bargains, as should not have been done by any one connected with Cicero, who had been Milo's friend. The cause of Cicero's quarrel with his wife has never been absolutely known, but it is supposed to have arisen from her want of loyalty to him in regard to money. She probably employed this freedman in filling her pockets at the expense of her husband's character. Sidenote, B.C. 50, I.T. 57 In his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and allusions are made as to his expected triumph. He is grateful to Cilius as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his confidence that all the rest will follow. He is so determined to hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers who may be least unfit to hold it. His brother Quintus was his lieutenant, but if he left Quintus, people would say of him that, in doing so, he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. At last he determines to entrust it to a young choir store named Chios Cilius, no close connection of his friend Cilius, as Cicero finds himself obliged to apologize for the selection to his friend. Young, he will say, no doubt, but he had been elected choir store and is of noble birth. So he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter. Cicero tells us afterwards, when at Athens on his way home, that he had considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder which was regarded by them as their perquisite. He had boasted much of their conduct, having taken exception to one Cilius who had demanded only a little hay and a little wood. But now there came to be pickings, savings out of his own proconsular expenses, to part with which at the last moment was too hard upon them. How difficult is our virtue, he exclaims, how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it when it is not felt. There had been a certain sum saved which he had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury, but the satellites were all in arms, in gemuit nostra cohors. Nevertheless he disregarded the cohort and paid the money into the treasury. As to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise to some most amusing literary vituperation. The care with which manuscripts have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred thousand cisterces thus expressed, H S X, amounting to something over eight thousand pounds. We here elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that Cicero realized out of his own legitimate allowance in Cilicia a profit of about eighteen thousand pounds, and we may imagine that the cohort should pink itself aggrieved in losing eight thousand, which they expected to have divided among them. Middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the X to be C I backward C, or M, a thousand instead of ten, and quotes the sum saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight thousand pounds. We who have had so much done for us by intervening research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on Middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labours by infinite toil on his part. But De Quincey, who has been very rankerous against Cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of Cicero's great biographer. Conyers Middleton, he says, is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust. The cause of this was that Middleton, a benefaced clergyman of the Church of England and Cambridge man, differed from other Cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. Bentley was his great opponent, and as Bentley was a stout fighter, so was Middleton. Middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because Bentley was the stronger combatant. But he seemed to have stood in good repute all his life, and when advanced in years was appointed Professor of Natural History. He is known to us, however, only as the biographer of Cicero. Of this book, Monk, the biographer of Middleton's great opponent, Bentley, declares that, for elegance, purity, and ease, Middleton's style yields to none in the English language. De Quincey says of it, that by weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic, meaning, I suppose, that the work altogether wants dignity of composition. This charge is, to my thinking, so absolutely contrary to the fact that it needs only to be named to be confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. De Quincey pounces upon the above-named error, with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at Canavan. Middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it, as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book. It is in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good sense and thoughtfulness that I regard it as capital. That is De Quincey's estimate of Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a labourer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left as one of those books of which it may truly be said that no English library should be without it. The last letter written by Cicero in Asia was sent to Atticus from Ephesus, the day before he started, on the last day, namely of September. He had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry him and his suite. News here reached him from Rome, news which was not true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. In a letter to Atticus he speaks of Miros Terores Caesarianos, dreadful reports as to outrages by Caesar, that he would by no means dismiss his army, that he had with him the Pritils elect one of the tribunes and even one of the consuls, and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were the first tidings presaging Farsalia. Then he adds the word about his triumph. Tell me what you think about this triumph which my friends desire me to seek. I should not care about it if Bibulus were not also asking for a triumph. Bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors as long as there was an enemy in Syria. Thus Cicero had to suffer untold misery, because Bibulus was asking for a triumph.