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THE

LIFE OF CICERO

BY

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

_IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. I.

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1881




 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.


  CHAPTER I.
                                         PAGE
  INTRODUCTION.                             7


  CHAPTER II.

  HIS EDUCATION.                           40


  CHAPTER III.

  THE CONDITION OF ROME.                   62


  CHAPTER IV.

  HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS
    AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME.                 80


  CHAPTER V.

  CICERO AS QUAESTOR.                      107


  CHAPTER VI.

  VERRES.                                 124


  CHAPTER VII.

  CICERO AS AEDILE AND PRAETOR.             162


  CHAPTER VIII.

  CICERO AS CONSUL.                       184


  CHAPTER IX.

  CATILINE.                               206


  CHAPTER X.

  CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.            240


  CHAPTER XI.

  THE TRIUMVIRATE.                        264


  CHAPTER XII.

  HIS EXILE.                              297

       *       *       *       *       *

  APPENDICES.

  APPENDIX A.                             335

  APPENDIX B.                             340

  APPENDIX C.                             242

  APPENDIX D.                             345

  APPENDIX E.                             347




THE LIFE OF CICERO.




CHAPTER I.

_INTRODUCTION._


I am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a
further life of Cicero which I feel I may probably fail in justifying by
any new information; and on this account the enterprise, though it has
been long considered, has been postponed, so that it may be left for
those who come after me to burn or publish, as they may think proper;
or, should it appear during my life, I may have become callous, through
age, to criticism.

The project of my work was anterior to the life by Mr. Forsyth, and was
first suggested to me as I was reviewing the earlier volumes of Dean
Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire. In an article on the
Dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, I inserted an
apology for the character of Cicero, which was found to be too long as
an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. From that time
the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present
dimensions.

I may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and
from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as
of his gifts. I must acknowledge that in discussing his character with
men of letters, as I have been prone to do, I have found none quite to
agree with me. His intellect they have admitted, and his industry; but
his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and
his courage they have denied. It might have become me to have been
silenced by their verdict; but I have rather been instigated to appeal
to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It
is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and
has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a
rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a
statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor
pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of
the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and
enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. All this has been
already so said of him by other biographers. Plutarch, who is as
familiar to us as though he had been English, and Middleton, who
thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly Mr. Forsyth, who has
struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much
as that. But there was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of
Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of
Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into
domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not
seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbor
as himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to achieve;
and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring home
to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to
the constantly increasing volumes about Roman times.

It has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to Cicero
his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him
as a politician. Macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of
Cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the Philippics as
senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head
of the "minds of the second order." We cannot judge of the
classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world
are to be included in the first rank. But Macaulay probably intended to
express an opinion that Cicero was inferior because he himself had never
dominated others as Marius had done, and Sylla, and Pompey, and Caesar,
and Augustus. But what if Cicero was ambitious for the good of others,
while these men had desired power only for themselves?

Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a
similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a Tory
prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open
to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no
glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. And the
Dean declares that Cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for
a "moment only, a real power in the State." Men who usurped authority,
such as those I have named, were the "real powers," and it was in
opposition to such usurpation that Cicero was always urgent. Mr.
Forsyth, who, as I have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that
"the chief fault of Cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity."
Absence of sincerity there was not. Deficiency of sincerity there was.
Who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives
of men were first written? It will be my object to show that though less
than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he
was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be
well examined, will indicate the same phase of character.

But of all modern writers Mr. Froude has been the hardest to Cicero. His
sketch of the life of Caesar is one prolonged censure on that of Cicero.
Our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so
remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. There is no period
in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was
hesitating whether, in the service of the Republic, it did or did not
behoove him to join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia. At this time
he wrote to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts
as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his
friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity.
As to a passage in one of those, Mr. Froude says "that Cicero had lately
spoken of Caesar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the State." "It
has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the
readiest means of ending it,"[1] says Mr. Froude. The "It has been seen"
refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates
certain words written by Cicero to Atticus.[2] "He considered it a
disgrace to them that Caesar was alive." That is his translation; and in
his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his
literary brother of two thousand years before. "Why did not somebody
kill him?" The Latin words themselves are added in a note, "Cum vivere
ipsum turpe sit nobis."[3] Hot indignation has so carried the translator
away that he has missed the very sense of Cicero's language. "When even
to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" That is
what Cicero meant. Mr. Froude in a preceding passage gives us another
passage from a letter to Atticus,[4] "Caesar was mortal."[5] So much is
an intended translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how Cicero had "hailed
Caesar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "We read the
words with sorrow and yet with pity." But Cicero had never dreamed of
Caesar's murder. The words of the passage are as follows: "Hunc primum
mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "I
bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then
that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side."
All the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this
man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the
whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as
telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his
life--did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Caesar to
have been meant. But whether Caesar or Pompey, there is nothing in it to
do with murder. It is a question--Cicero is saying to his friend--of the
stability of the Republic. When a matter so great is considered, how is
a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day, or
cease from any accident to be of weight? Cicero was speaking of the
effect of this or that step on his own part. Am I, he says, for the sake
of Pompey to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country,
sacrificing the Republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and
may be gone to-morrow? Or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks
that the "hunc" refers to Caesar. The argument is the same. Am I to
consider an individual when the Republic is at stake? Mr. Froude tells
us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity." So would
every one, I think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts as to his
leader, as to his party, and as to his country. Mr. Froude does so
because he gathers from them that Cicero is premeditating the murder of
Caesar!

It is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth. A man
who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be listened to and
read, will be so judged. But it is not too much to demand that when a
man's character is at stake his own words shall be thoroughly sifted
before they are used against him.

The writer of the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica on
Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the
first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of
Caesar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be
bought. The augurship would have bought him. "So pitiful," says the
biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor,
his opinions, and the commonwealth!" With no more sententious language
was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. And on
what evidence? We should have known nothing of the bribe and the
corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from Cicero himself
to Atticus. He is writing from one of his villas to his friend in Rome,
and asks for the news of the day: Who are to be the new consuls? Who is
to have the vacant augurship? Ah, says he, they might have caught even
me with that bait;[6] as he said on another occasion that he was so much
in debt as to be fit for a rebel; and again, as I shall have to explain
just now, that he was like to be called in question under the Cincian
law because of a present of books! This was just at the point of his
life when he was declining all offers of public service--of public
service for which his soul longed--because they were made to him by
Caesar. It was then that the "Vigintiviratus" was refused, which
Quintilian mentions to his honor. It was then that he refused to be
Caesar's lieutenant. It was then that he might have been fourth with
Caesar, and Pompey, and Crassus, had he not felt himself bound not to
serve against the Republic. And yet the biographer does not hesitate to
load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jocose
and half pathetic to his friend. If a man's deeds be always honest,
surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some
light word spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. The light
words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye
clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to pass
that their very meaning is misunderstood.

My friend Mr. Collins speaks, in his charming little volume on Cicero,
of "quiet evasions" of the Cincian law,[7] and tells us that we are
taught by Cicero's letters not to trust Cicero's words when he was in a
boasting vein. What has the one thing to do with the other? He names no
quiet evasions. Mr. Collins makes a surmise, by which the character of
Cicero for honesty is impugned--without evidence. The anonymous
biographer altogether misinterprets Cicero. Mr. Froude charges Cicero
with anticipation of murder, grounding his charge on words which he has
not taken the trouble to understand. Cicero is accused on the strength
of his own private letters. It is because we have not the private
letters of other persons that they are not so accused. The courtesies of
the world exact, I will not say demand, certain deviations from
straightforward expression; and these are made most often in private
conversations and in private correspondence. Cicero complies with the
ways of the world; but his epistles are no longer private, and he is
therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. It is because Cicero's
letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be
made public that such accusations have been made. When the injustice of
these critics strikes me, I almost wish that Cicero's letters had not
been preserved.

As I have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter
days, spoken against Cicero, I will endeavor to place before the
reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers,
chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the hundred and
fifty years after his death--from the time of Augustus down to that
of Adrian--a period much given to literature, in which the name of a
politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed.
Readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came
after him. I trust they will believe that if I knew of testimony on
the other side, of records adverse to the man, I would give them. The
first passage to which I will allude does not bear Cicero's name; and
it may be that I am wrong in assuming honor to Cicero from a passage
in poetry, itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to
himself. But the idea that Virgil in the following lines refers to the
manner in which Cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the
theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with
Otho's law, does not originate with me. I give the lines as translated
by Dryden, with the original in a note.[8]

   "As when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd,
    Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud;
    And stones and brands in rattling volleys fly,
    And all the rustic arms that fury can supply;
    If then some grave and pious man appear,
    They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear;
    He soothes with sober words their angry mood,
    And quenches their innate desire of blood."

This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that occasion,
exactly describes his position and his success. We have a fragment of
Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the Augustan age, declaring that at
Cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the Republic had
lost the most.[9] Livy declared of him only, that he would be the best
writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero.[10] Velleius
Paterculus, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's
achievements with the highest honor. "At this period," he says, "lived
Marcus Cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new
family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his
life."[11] Valerius Maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving
character.[12] Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from
the pen of Pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of Cicero I
will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to it more at length when
speaking of his consulship. "Hail thou," says Pliny, "who first among
men was called the father of your country."[13] Martial, in one of his
distichs, tells