Cicero and his friends

by Gaston Boissier

I.

Atticus, the friend of everybody, brought them together. It was about the year 700, a short time after Cicero’s return from exile, and in the midst of the troubles stirred up by Clodius, one of those vulgar agitators like Catiline, by whose means Caesar exhausted the strength of the Roman aristocracy that he might one day overcome it more easily. Cicero and Brutus occupied at that time very different positions in the republic. Cicero had filled the highest offices, and in them had rendered eminent services. His talents and his probity made him a valuable auxiliary for the aristocratical party to which he was attached; he was not without influence with the people whom his eloquence charmed; the provinces loved him, as they had seen him more than once defend their interests against greedy governors, and still more recently Italy had shown her affection by carrying him in triumph from Brundusium to Rome. Brutus was only thirty-one; a great part of his life had been passed away from Rome, at Athens, where we know that he devoted himself earnestly to the study of Greek philosophy, in Cyprus, and in the East, where he had followed Cato. He had not yet filled any of those offices which gave political importance, and he had to wait more than ten years before thinking of the consulship. Nevertheless Brutus was already an important person. In his early relations with Cicero, notwithstanding the distance that age and official position set between them, it is Cicero who makes the advances, who treats Brutus with consideration, and who seeks his friendship. One would say that this young man had given rise to singular expectations, and that it was already vaguely felt that he was destined for great things. While Cicero was in Cilicia, Atticus, pressing him to do justice to certain claims of Brutus, said: “It would be something if you only brought back his friendship from that province.”[^[321]] And Cicero wrote of him at the same period: “He is already the first among the young men; he will soon be, I hope, the first in the city.”[^[322]]

Everything in fact seemed to promise a splendid future for Brutus. A descendant of one of the most illustrious families of Rome, the nephew of Cato, the brother-in-law of Cassius and Lepidus, he had just married one of the daughters of Appius Claudius; another was already married to Pompey’s eldest son. By these alliances he was connected on all sides with the most influential families; but his character and manners distinguished him even more than his birth. His youth had been austere: he had studied philosophy, not merely as a dilettante and as being a most useful discipline for the mind, but like a wise man who wishes to apply the lessons that it gives. He had returned from Athens with a great reputation for wisdom, which his virtuous and regular life confirmed. The admiration that his virtue excited was redoubled when his surroundings and the detestable examples he had resisted were considered. His mother Servilia had been the object of one of the most violent passions of Caesar, perhaps his first love. She always held a great sway over him, and took advantage of it to enrich herself after Pharsalia by getting the property of the conquered awarded to her. When she became old, and felt the powerful dictator slipping from her, in order to continue to rule him, she favoured, it is said, his amours with one of her daughters, the wife of Cassius. The daughter who had married Lepidus, had no better reputation, and Cicero tells a merry tale about her. A young Roman fop, C. Vedius, going through Cilicia with a great train, found it convenient to leave part of his baggage with one of his hosts. Unfortunately this host died; seals were put on the traveller’s baggage along with the rest, and to begin with, the portraits of five great ladies were found in it, and among them that of Brutus’ sister. “It must be admitted,” said Cicero, who did not lose an opportunity for a joke, “that the brother and the husband well deserve their names. The brother is very stupid (brutus) who perceives nothing, and the husband very easy-going (lepidus) who endures all without complaint.”[^[323]] Such was the family of Brutus. As to his friends, there is no need to say much about them. We know how the rich young men of Rome lived at that time, and what Caelius, Curio, and Dolabella were. Among all this dissipation the rigid integrity of Brutus, his application to business, that disdain for pleasures, that taste for study to which his pale and serious countenance bore witness, stood out in higher relief by the contrast. Accordingly all eyes were fixed on this grave young man who resembled the others so little. In approaching him men could not help a feeling that seemed ill suited to his age: he inspired respect. Even those who were his elders and his superiors, Cicero and Caesar, notwithstanding their glory, Antony who resembled him so little, his opponents and his enemies, could not escape this impression in his presence. What is most surprising is, that it has survived him. It has been felt in presence of his memory as it was before his person; living and dead he has commanded respect. The official historians of the empire, Dio, who has so roughly handled Cicero, Velleius, the flatterer of Tiberius, all have respected Brutus. It seems that political rancour, the wish to flatter, and the violence of party have felt themselves disarmed before this austere figure.

While respecting him, they loved him. These are sentiments which do not always go together. Aristotle forbids us to represent heroes perfect in all points in the drama, lest they should not interest the public. Things go in ordinary life very much as they do on the stage; a sort of instinctive dread holds us aloof from irreproachable characters, and as it is usually by our common failings that we are drawn together, we feel very little attraction towards a man who has no failings, and are content to respect perfection at a distance. Yet it was not so in the case of Brutus, and Cicero could say of him with truth in one of the works that he addresses to him: “Who was ever more respected and loved than you?”[^[324]] And yet this man without weaknesses was weak for those he loved. His mother and sisters had great influence over him, and made him commit more than one fault. He had many friends, and Cicero blames him for listening too readily to their advice; they were worthy men who understood nothing of public affairs; but Brutus was so much attached to them that he could not protect himself against them. His last sorrow at Philippi was to learn of the death of Flavius, his overseer of works, and that of Labeo, his lieutenant; he forgot his own self to weep for them. His last words before his death were to congratulate himself that none of his friends had betrayed him: this fidelity, so rare at that time, consoled his last moments. His legions also, although they were partly composed of old soldiers of Caesar, and he kept them tightly in hand, punishing plunderers and marauders, his very legions loved him and remained faithful to him. Even the people of Rome themselves, who were in general enemies of the cause he defended, showed their sympathy for him more than once. When Octavius proclaimed the assassins of Caesar public enemies, every one sadly bowed their heads when they heard the name of Brutus pronounced from the rostrum, and in the midst of the terrified senate which foresaw the proscriptions, a voice dared to declare that it would never condemn Brutus.

Cicero fell under the charm like the rest, but not without resistance. His friendship with Brutus was troubled and stormy, and, notwithstanding the general agreement of their opinions, violent dissensions arose between them more than once. Their disagreements are explained by the diversity of their characters. Never did two friends resemble each other less. There never was a man who seemed made for society more than Cicero; he brought into it all the qualities that are necessary for success, great flexibility of opinion, much toleration for others, allowance enough for himself, the talent of steering with ease between all parties, and a certain natural indulgence that made him understand and almost accept everything. Although he made bad verses, he had the temperament of a poet, a strange mobility of impression, an irritable sensitiveness, a supple, broad, and quick intellect which conceived promptly, but quickly abandoned its ideas, and passed from one extreme to another at a bound. He did not make a single serious resolution of which he did not repent the next day. Whenever he joined a party he was only quick and decided at the beginning, and gradually cooled down. Brutus, on the contrary, had not a quick intelligence: he usually hesitated at the commencement of an enterprise and did not decide at once. Slow and serious, he advanced step by step in everything, but, once resolved, he was so absorbed in his conviction that nothing could divert him: he isolated and concentrated himself in it, he excited and inflamed himself for it by reflection, and at last listened only to that inflexible logic that drove him to realize his purpose. He was one of those minds of which Saint-Simon says that they have an almost ferocious consistency. His obstinacy was the real source of his strength, and Caesar well understood it when he said of him: “All that he wills he means.”[^[325]]

Two friends who resembled each other so little must naturally have clashed at every opportunity. Their first differences were literary. It was a custom then at the bar to divide an important case among several orators; each took the part best suited to his talents. Cicero, obliged to appear often before the judges, went with his friends and pupils, and gave out to them part of his work in order to be able to get through it. He was often satisfied with keeping the peroration for himself, in which his copious and impassioned eloquence was at home, and left them the rest. It was thus that Brutus pleaded at his side and under his direction. Brutus, however, was not of his school: a fanatical admirer of Demosthenes, whose statue he had placed among those of his ancestors, and nurtured on the study of the Attic masters, he sought to reproduce their graceful severity and vigorous strength. Tacitus says that his efforts were not always happy: by dint of avoiding ornament and pathos he was dull and cold, and by too eagerly seeking precision and strength he became dry and stiff. These faults were repugnant to Cicero, who always saw in this type of eloquence, which was founding a school, a criticism of his own, and tried by every means to convert Brutus; but he did not succeed, and on this point they never agreed. After the death of Caesar, and when something else than literary discussions was in question, Brutus sent his friend the speech he had just delivered in the Capitol, and begged him to correct it. Cicero took good care not to do so: he knew too well by experience the self-esteem of the literary man to run the risk of offending Brutus by trying to do better than he. Besides, the speech seemed to him very fine, and he wrote to Atticus that nothing could have been more graceful or better written. “Yet,” added he, “if I had had to make it I should have put more passion in it.”[^[326]] Assuredly Brutus did not lack passion, but it was in him a secret and repressed flame that only touched the nearest, and he disliked to give the rein to those powerful emotions and that fiery pathos without which one cannot carry away the multitude.

He was not then a docile follower of Cicero, and we may add that neither was he an accommodating friend. He lacked pliancy in his relations with others, and his tone was always rough and abrupt. At the commencement of their intercourse, Cicero, accustomed to be treated with great respect even by the highest personages, thought the letters of this young man were curt and haughty, and felt hurt. This was not the only complaint he had to make of him. We know the great consular’s irritable, suspicious and exacting vanity; we know to what a degree he loved praise; he gave it to himself liberally and he expected it from others, and if they were slow in giving it he was not ashamed to ask for it. His friends were generally indulgent to this harmless failing, and did not wait to be invited by him to praise him. Brutus alone resisted; he prided himself on his candour, and spoke out what he thought. Accordingly Cicero often complains that he was chary of his praises; one day indeed he was seriously angry with him. It was a question of the great consulship, and of the discussion in consequence of which Lentulus and the accomplices of Catiline were executed. This was the most vigorous action of Cicero’s life, and he had a right to be proud of it, since he had paid for it with exile. In the narrative that Brutus gave of the events of this day he depreciated the part that Cicero had played in them to the advantage of his uncle Cato. He only praised him for having punished the conspiracy, without saying that he had discovered it, and contented himself with calling him an excellent consul. “Poor praise!” said Cicero angrily; “one would think it came from an enemy.”[^[327]] But those were only small differences arising from wounded self-esteem, which might easily be made up; we must now mention a graver disagreement that deserves to be dwelt upon, for it suggests some serious reflections on the Roman society of that period.

In 702, that is to say, a short time after the commencement of his relations with Brutus, Cicero went out as proconsul to Cilicia. He had not sought this office, for he knew what difficulties he should find in it. He set out decided to do his duty, and he could not do it without bringing on his hands at the same time the patricians, his protectors, and the knights, his protégés and clients. In fact, patricians and knights, usually enemies, agreed, with a singular unanimity, in plundering the provinces. The knights, farmers of the public revenue, had only one thought: to make a fortune in five years, the usual duration of their contract. Consequently they exacted without mercy the tax of a tenth on the productions of the soil, a twentieth on merchandise at the ports, the harbour dues, the tax on pasture-lands in the interior; in fact, all the tribute that Rome had imposed on the conquered nations. Their greed respected nothing. Livy wrote this terrible sentence about them: “Wherever the ‘publican’ penetrates, there is no more justice or liberty for any one.”[^[328]] It was very difficult for the wretched cities to satisfy these insatiable financiers; almost everywhere the municipal coffers, ill administered by incompetent, or pillaged by dishonest magistrates, were empty. Money, however, had to be found at any price. Now, of whom could they borrow it, except of the bankers of Rome, who had been for a century the bankers of the whole world? It was to them therefore that they applied. Some were rich enough to draw from their private fortune money to lend to foreign cities, or sovereigns, like that Rabirius Postumus, for whom Cicero had pleaded, who furnished the king of Egypt with the money necessary to reconquer his kingdom. Others, in order to run less risk, formed financial companies, in which the most illustrious Romans invested their funds. Thus, Pompey had a share for a considerable sum in one of those joint-stock companies founded by Cluvius of Puteoli. All these money-lenders, whether private individuals or companies, knights or patricians, were very unscrupulous, and only advanced their money at enormous interest, generally 4 or 5 per cent. per month. Their difficulty consisted in getting paid. As it is only men who are quite ruined who accept these hard terms, the money lent on such high interest is always subject to risk. When the date of payment arrived the poor city was less than ever in a position to pay: it employed a thousand pettifogging tricks, spoke of complaining to the senate, and began by appealing to the proconsul. Unfortunately for it, the proconsul was usually an accomplice of its enemies, and took his share of their profits. The creditors who had secured his co-operation by paying him well, had then only to send into the province some freedman or agent who represented them; the proconsul placed the public forces at the service of private interests, gave this agent the title of his lieutenant, some soldiers, and full powers, and if the insolvent town did not quickly come to some satisfactory arrangement, it suffered the horrors of a siege and of official pillage in time of peace. The proconsul who refused to lend himself to these abuses, and who intended, according to Cicero’s expression, to prevent the provinces perishing, naturally aroused the anger of all those who lived by the ruin of the provinces. The knights, the nobles, who no longer got their money, became his deadly enemies. It is true he had the gratitude of his province, but this did not amount to much. It had been remarked that, in those Eastern countries “trained by a long servitude to loathsome flattery,”[^[329]] the governors who received most adulation, and to whom they raised most statues were precisely those who had robbed the most, because they were the most dreaded. Cicero’s predecessor had completely ruined Cilicia: consequently they thought of building him a temple. These were some of the difficulties to which an upright governor exposed himself. Cicero extricated himself with honour. Seldom was a province so well administered as his under the Roman republic; but he only brought back from it some gratitude, little money, and many enemies, and very nearly quarrelled with Brutus.

Brutus, though we can scarcely believe it, had a hand in this traffic. He had lent money to Ariobarzanes, king of Armenia, one of those small princes that Rome charitably allowed to live, and to the town of Salamis in the island of Cyprus. At the moment of Cicero’s departure for his province, Atticus, who himself, as we know, did not despise this species of gain, recommended these two affairs to him very warmly; but Brutus had invested his money badly, and it was not possible for Cicero to get him repaid. Ariobarzanes had many creditors and paid none. “I cannot imagine,” said Cicero, “any one poorer than this king, and anything more miserable than this kingdom.”[^[330]] Nothing could be got from him. As to the business of Salamis, it was from the first still graver. Brutus had not dared, at the beginning, to acknowledge that he was directly interested in it, the usury was so enormous and the circumstances so scandalous. A certain Scaptius, a friend of Brutus, had lent a large sum to the inhabitants of Salamis at 4 per cent. per month. As they could not repay it he had, according to custom, obtained from Appius, Cicero’s predecessor, a company of cavalry, with which he held the senate of Salamis so closely besieged that five senators had died of hunger. On learning of this conduct Cicero was shocked, and hastened to recall the soldiers of whom such bad use had been made. He only thought he was hurting a protégé of Brutus; but as the affair took a more serious turn, Brutus showed his hand more openly, so that Cicero might show himself more accommodating in arranging matters. As he saw that he had no hope of being paid, except at a great reduction, he became quite offended, and decided to let it be known that Scaptius was only a man of straw, and that he himself was the real creditor of the Salaminians. Cicero’s astonishment when he learnt this will be shared by everybody, so much does Brutus’ action seem at variance with his whole conduct. Certainly no one could doubt his disinterestedness and honesty. Some years before, Cato had paid them a splendid tribute, when, not knowing whom to trust, so rare were men of honour, he had appointed him to collect the treasure of the king of Cyprus, and to carry it to Rome. Let us be assured then, that if Brutus conducted himself as he had done towards the Salaminians, it was because he thought he might legitimately do so. He followed the example of others, he yielded to an opinion that was universal around him. The provinces were still considered as conquered countries by the Romans of that time. They had been conquered too short a time for the remembrance of their defeat to be obliterated. It was supposed that they also had not forgotten it, which led to distrust of them; in any case it was remembered, and the conquerors always thought themselves armed with those terrible laws of war against which no one in antiquity had protested. The property of the vanquished belonging to the victor, far from blaming themselves for taking what they took, they thought they gave whatever they did not take, and perhaps at the bottom of their heart they thought they were generous in leaving them anything. The provinces were regarded as the domains and property of the Roman people (praedia, agri fructuarii populi Romani), and they were treated accordingly. When they consented to spare them it was not through pity or affection, but through prudence, and in imitation of good landowners who take care not to exhaust their fields by over-cultivation. This was the meaning of the laws made under the republic to protect the provinces; humanity had a smaller share in them than well-considered interest, which, in exercising a certain restraint on the present, is mindful of the future. Evidently Brutus fully accepted this way of looking at the rights of the conqueror and the condition of the vanquished. In this we touch one of the greatest failings of this upright but narrow soul. Brought up in the selfish ideas of the Roman aristocracy, he had not sufficient breadth or elevation of mind to perceive their iniquity; he followed them without hesitation till the time that his natural mildness and humanity got the better of the recollections of his education, and the traditions of his class. The mode in which he behaved in the provinces that he governed shows that all his life there was a struggle between the integrity of his nature and these imperious prejudices. After having ruined the Salaminians by his usury, he governed Cisalpine Gaul with a disinterestedness that did him honour, and while he had made himself detested in the island of Cyprus, the remembrance of his beneficent administration was preserved in Milan even to the time of Augustus. The same contrast is found in the last campaign; he wept with grief at seeing the inhabitants of Xanthus persist in destroying their city, and on the eve of Philippi he promised his soldiers the pillage of Thessalonica and Lacedaemon. This is the single grave fault that Plutarch finds to censure in his whole life; it was the last awakening of an inveterate prejudice of which he could never get rid notwithstanding his uprightness of mind, and which shows the sway that the society in which his birth had placed him, exercised over him to the last.

Yet this influence was not felt then by everybody. Cicero, who, being a “new man,” could more easily protect himself against the tyranny of tradition, had always shown more humanity towards the provinces, and blamed the scandalous gains that were drawn from them. In a letter to his brother he boldly proclaimed this principle,[^[331]] then altogether new, that they must not be governed in the exclusive interest of the Roman people, but also in their own interest, and in such a manner as to give them the greatest amount of happiness and well-being that was possible. This is what he tried to do in Cilicia: accordingly he was very much hurt by the action of Brutus, and flatly refused to have anything to do with it, although Atticus, whose conscience was more elastic, warmly begged him to do so. “I am sorry,” he replied, “that I am not able to please Brutus, and still more so to find him so different from what I had thought him.”[^[332]] “If he condemns me,” he said elsewhere, “I do not want such friends. At least I am certain that his uncle Cato will not condemn me.”[^[333]]

These were bitter words, and their friendship would no doubt have suffered much from these disputes if the grave events which supervened had not drawn them together again. Cicero had scarcely returned to Italy when the civil war, so long foreseen, broke out. Private differences had to disappear before this great conflict. Besides, Cicero and Brutus were united by a singular community of feelings. Both had gone to Pompey’s camp, but both had done so without enthusiasm or eagerness, as a sacrifice demanded by duty. Brutus loved Caesar, who showed him a paternal affection on all occasions, and moreover he detested Pompey. Besides the fact that his pompous vanity displeased him, he could not forgive the death of his father, killed during the civil wars of Sulla. Yet, in this public danger, he forgot his personal likings and hatreds, and went to Thessaly, where the consuls and senate were already. We know that he made himself remarked for his zeal in Pompey’s camp;[^[334]] many things however happened there which must have displeased him, and no doubt he thought that too many personal rancours and ambitions were mixed up with the cause of liberty which alone he wished to defend. This also displeased his friend Cicero and his brother-in-law Cassius, and these two last, indignant at the language of those madmen who surrounded Pompey, resolved not to pursue the war to extremes as others wished to do. “I still remember,” Cicero wrote later to Cassius, “those familiar conversations in which, after long deliberation, we made up our minds to allow our action, if not the abstract justice of our cause, to be determined by the result of a single battle.”[^[335]] We do not know whether Brutus was present at these conversations of his two friends; but it is certain that all three behaved in the same manner. Cicero, on the day after Pharsalia, refused the command of the republican army; Cassius hastened to hand over the fleet he commanded to Caesar; as to Brutus, he did his duty as a brave man during the battle; but, the battle over, he thought he had done enough, and went over to the conqueror, who welcomed him joyfully, took him apart in confidential conversation, and succeeded in obtaining some information about Pompey’s retreat. After this conversation Brutus was completely gained over; not only did he not go and rejoin the republicans who were fighting in Africa, but he followed Caesar to the conquest of Egypt and of Asia.