Cicero and his friends

by Gaston Boissier

III.

The gravest political crisis that Cicero passed through, after the great struggles of his consulship, was certainly that which terminated in the fall of the Roman republic at Pharsalia. We know that he did not willingly engage in this terrible conflict, of which he foresaw the issue, and that he hesitated for nearly a year before deciding on his course. It is not surprising that he hesitated so long. He was no longer young and obscure as when he pleaded for Roscius. He had a high position and an illustrious name that he did not wish to compromise, and a man may be allowed to reflect before he risks fortune, glory, and perchance life on a single cast. Besides, the question was not so simple nor the right so clear as they seem at first sight. Lucan, whose sympathies are not doubtful, yet said that it could not be known on which side justice lay, and this obscurity does not seem to be altogether dissipated, since, after eighteen centuries of discussion, posterity has not yet succeeded in coming to an agreement. It is curious that, among us, in the seventeenth century, at the height of monarchical government, the learned all pronounced against Caesar without hesitation. Magistrates of the high courts, men cautious and moderate by their offices and character, who approached the king and were not sparing of flattery, took the liberty of being Pompeians and even furious Pompeians in private. “The First President,” says Guy-Patin, “is so much on Pompey’s side, that one day he expressed his joy that I was so, I having said to him, in his fine garden at Bâville, that if I had been in the senate when Julius Caesar was killed, I would have given him the twenty-fourth stab.” On the contrary, it is in our own days, in a democratic epoch, after the French Revolution, and in the name of the revolution and the democracy, that the side of Caesar has been upheld with the greatest success, and that the benefit humanity has reaped from his victory has been set in its clearest light.

I have no intention to re-open this debate, it is too fertile in stormy discussions. I only wish here to deal with so much of it as is indispensable to explain Cicero’s political life. There are, I think, two very different ways of looking at the question: our own first, namely, that of people unconcerned in these quarrels of a former age, who approach them as historians or philosophers, after time has cooled them, who judge them less by their causes than by their results, and who ask themselves, above all, what good or evil they have done in the world; then that of contemporaries, who judge of them with their passions and prejudices, according to the ideas of their time, in their relation to themselves, and without knowing their remote consequences. I am going to place myself solely at this latter point of view, although the other seems to me grander and more profitable; but as my only design is to ask from Cicero an explanation of his political actions, and as one cannot reasonably require of him that he should have divined the future, I shall confine myself to showing how the question was stated in his time, what reasons were alleged on both sides, and in what manner it was natural for a wise man who loved his country to appreciate those reasons. Let us forget, then, the eighteen centuries that separate us from these events, let us suppose ourselves at Formiae or Tusculum during those long days of anxiety and uncertainty that Cicero passed there, and let us hear him discuss, with Atticus or Curio, the reasons that the two parties urged to draw him into their ranks.

What shows plainly that the judgment of contemporaries on the events which pass before them is not the same as that of posterity is, that the friends of Caesar, when they wished to gain over Cicero, did not employ the argument that seems the best to us. The chief reason that is appealed to now to justify Caesar’s victory is that, on the whole, if by it Rome lost some of her privileges, it was for the advantage of the rest of the world that she was despoiled. What does it matter that a few thousand men, who did not make a very good use of their political liberty, were deprived of it, if by the same stroke almost the entire world was rescued from pillage, slavery, and ruin? It is certain that the provinces and their inhabitants, so roughly treated by the proconsuls of the republic, found themselves better off under the régime inaugurated by Caesar. His army was open to all foreigners; he had with him Germans, Gauls, and Spaniards. They helped him to conquer, and naturally profited by his victory: and this was, without his wishing it perhaps, the revenge of the conquered nations. These nations were not anxious to recover their independence; they had lost the taste for it with their defeat. Their ambition was quite the reverse: they wished to be allowed to become Romans. Up till then, however, that proud and greedy aristocracy, who held power, and who meant to use the human race for the benefit of their pleasures or their grandeur, had obstinately refused to raise them to a level with themselves, no doubt in order to preserve the right of treating them according to their caprice. In overthrowing the aristocracy, Caesar overthrew the barrier that closed Rome to the rest of the nations. The empire made the entire world Roman; it reconciled, says a poet, and blended under one name, all the nations of the universe. These are surely great things, and it does not become us to forget them, us the sons of the vanquished, called by Caesar to partake in his victory. But who, in Cicero’s time, thought it would be thus? who could foresee and indicate these remote consequences? The question did not present itself then as it does to us who study it from a distance. Caesar does not anywhere allege the interest of the conquered among the reasons he gives for his enterprise. The senate never claimed to be the representative of the Roman nationality, threatened by an invasion of the barbarians, and it does not appear that the provinces rose in favour of him who came to defend them; on the contrary, they were almost equally divided between the two rivals. If the West fought on Caesar’s side, all the East repaired to Pompey’s camp, which proves that when the struggle commenced its consequences were unknown even to those who were to profit by them, and whose interest should have made them clear-sighted. Besides, even if Cicero had suspected the benefits that the world was going to draw from Caesar’s triumph, can we think that this reason would have sufficed to decide him? He was not one of those whose love for the whole of humanity excuses them from serving their country. He would have resigned himself with difficulty to the sacrifice of his liberty, under the pretence that this sacrifice would profit the Gauls, the Britons, and the Sarmatians. No doubt he was not indifferent to the interest of the world, but that of Rome touched him closer. His temper was gentle and humane, he had written in beautiful works that all nations are only one and the same family, he had made himself loved in the province he had governed; nevertheless, when Caesar opened the city and even the senate to the strangers who accompanied him, he showed himself very discontented, and attacked these barbarians with his most cruel raillery. He saw plainly that those Spaniards and Gauls who were walking proudly about the Forum were triumphing over Rome. His Roman pride revolted at this sight, and I see no reason to blame him for it. If he could divine or even catch a glimpse of the general emancipation of the conquered nations which was preparing, he understood also that this emancipation would bring with it the loss of the original, distinct, and independent existence of his country. It was natural that a Roman should not wish to pay this price even for the prosperity of the world.

Putting aside this reason, another, specious if not true, was much used to entice the irresolute. They were told that the republic and liberty were not interested in the war, that it was simply a struggle between two ambitious men who were contending for power. In this assertion there was a certain amount of truth capable of misleading thoughtless minds. Personal questions certainly held a large place in this contest. The soldiers of Caesar fought solely for him, and Pompey had in his suite many friends and creatures whom thirty years of prosperity and power had gained for him. Cicero himself gives us to understand, several times, that it was his old friendship for Pompey that led him into his camp. “It is to him and to him alone that I sacrifice myself,” said he, when he was preparing to leave Italy.[^[50]] There are moments in which he seems to take pleasure in limiting the subject of this quarrel he is about to engage in, and when, writing to his friends, he repeats to them what Caesar’s partisans said—“It is a conflict of ambition, regnandi contentio est.”[^[51]] But we must be careful when reading his correspondence of this period, and must read it with caution. Never was he more irresolute. He changes his opinion every day, he attacks and defends all parties, so that by skilfully putting together all the words let fall in this discontent and uncertainty, one may find in his letters grounds for charges against everybody. These are only the sallies of a restless and frightened mind, of which we must not make too much use either against others or against himself. Here, for instance, when he asserts that the republic has nothing to do in the contest, he does not say what he really thinks. It is only one of those pretexts that he invents to justify his hesitation in his friends’ eyes and his own. So rare is it to be quite sincere, I do not say with others only but with oneself! We are so ingenious in proving to ourselves that we have a thousand reasons for doing what we do without reason, or through interest or caprice! But when Cicero wishes to be frank, when he has no motive to delude himself or deceive others, he speaks in another manner. Then the cause of Pompey becomes really that of justice and right, that of honest men and of liberty. Without doubt, Pompey had rendered very indifferent services to the republic before being led by circumstances to defend it. He could not be trusted entirely, and his ambition was to be feared. In his camp he affected the airs of a sovereign; he had his flatterers and his ministers. “He is a little Sulla,” said Cicero, “who dreams also of proscriptions, sullaturit, proscripturit.”[^[52]] The republican party would certainly have taken another defender if it had been free to choose; but at the time when Caesar assembled his troops, this party, which had neither soldiers nor generals, was really forced to accept Pompey’s aid. It accepted it as that of an ally whom one distrusts and watches, who, perhaps, will become an enemy after the victory, but with whom one cannot dispense during the fight. Besides, although Pompey might not altogether secure liberty, it was known that it ran fewer risks with him than with Caesar. He was ambitious doubtless, but more ambitious of honours than of power. Twice he had been seen to arrive at the gates of Rome with an army. The democracy called him, to make himself king, he had only to will it, and twice he had disbanded his troops and laid down the fasces. He had been made sole consul, that is to say, almost dictator, and at the end of six months he had voluntarily taken a colleague. These precedents made sincere republicans believe that after the victory he would content himself with sonorous titles and pompous eulogies, and that his services would be repaid, without danger to any one, with laurels and the purple. In any case, if he had demanded something else, we may be certain that he would have been refused, and that he would have found adversaries in the greater number of those who had become his allies. There were in his camp many persons who were not his friends, and who cannot be suspected of having taken arms to win a throne for him. Cato distrusted him, and had always opposed him. Brutus, whose father he had killed, hated him. The aristocracy did not pardon him for having restored the power of the tribunes, and for having united with Caesar against it. Is it likely that all these eminent persons, experienced in affairs, were the dupes of this indifferent politician who never deceived anybody, and that, without knowing it, they worked for him alone? or must we admit, which is still less likely, that they knew it, and that they voluntarily abandoned their country, risked their fortunes, and gave their lives to serve the interests and the ambition of a man whom they did not love? Assuredly, for them, something else was in question. When they went over sea, when they decided, notwithstanding their repugnance, to begin a civil war, when they came to put themselves under the orders of a general against whom they had so many reasons for ill-will, they did not intend to intervene solely in a personal quarrel, but to come to the help of the republic and of that liberty which were threatened. “But here,” people say, “you are deceived again. These names, liberty and republic, delude you. It was not liberty that was defended in Pompey’s camp, it was the oppression of the people by a caste. They wished to maintain the privileges of a burdensome and unjust aristocracy. They fought to preserve for it the right to oppress the plebs, and to crush the world.” At that rate the friends of liberty ought to keep for Caesar the sympathies they generally accord to Pompey, for he is the liberal and the democrat, the man of the people, the successor of the Gracchi and of Marius. This is indeed the part he assumed from the day when, almost a child, he had braved Sulla. Praetor and consul, he had appeared to serve the popular cause with devotion, and at the moment when he marched on Rome, abandoned by the senate, he still said, “I come to deliver the Roman people from a faction that oppresses it.”[^[53]]

How much truth is there in this pretence that he makes of being the defender of the democracy? What ought to be thought of it, I do not say by a patrician, who naturally thought much ill of the people, but by an enemy of the nobility, by a new man like Cicero? Whatever anger the disdain of the aristocracy had caused to Cicero, whatever impatience he had felt at always finding in his way, in his candidatures, one of those nobles to whom “honours came while they slept,” I do not find that his ill-humour had ever led him to pretend that the people was oppressed;[^[54]] and I suppose that when it was asserted before him that Caesar took up arms to restore him his liberty, he asked how long it was since he had lost it, and what new privileges they wished to add to those he already possessed? He called to mind that the people possessed a legal organization, had their own magistrates to whom they appealed from the decisions of others, magistrates inviolable and sacred, whom the law armed with the enormous power of staying the action of the government by their interference, and of interrupting political life; that they had the liberty of speech and of the rostrum, the right of voting, in which they trafficked for a living, and finally, free access to all grades of the magistracy, and he had only to cite his own case to demonstrate that it was possible for a man without birth and almost without fortune to attain even the consulship. Such success in truth was rare. The equality laid down in the law disappeared in practice. The consular records of that period contain scarcely any but illustrious names. A few great families seem to have established themselves in the highest dignities of the state; they guarded the avenues to them, and allowed no one to approach; but was it necessary, in order to break down the obstacles that the cleverness of a few ambitious men opposed to the regular working of the institutions, to destroy these institutions themselves? was the evil so great that it was necessary to have recourse to the radical remedy of absolute power? Was it impossible to think that it would be more surely cured by liberty than by despotism? Had it not been seen by recent examples that a strong current of popular opinion was sufficient to overturn all this aristocratic resistance? The laws gave the people the means of recovering their influence if they willed it energetically. With the liberty of voting and of speaking in the public assembly, with the intervention of the tribunes and the invincible strength of numbers, they must always end in being masters. It was their own fault if they left the power to others, and they deserved the degradation in which the nobility held them, since they made no effort to free themselves. Cicero had small esteem for the common people of his time; he thought them careless and apathetic by nature. “They demand nothing,” said he, “they desire nothing”;[^[55]] and every time he saw them stirring in the Forum he suspected that the liberality of some ambitious men had worked this miracle. He was not, therefore, led to think it necessary to accord them new rights when he saw them use their ancient rights so little or so ill, and so he did not regard the pretext put forth by Caesar for taking up arms as serious. He never consented to look upon him as the successor of the Gracchi coming to emancipate the oppressed plebs; the war which was preparing never seemed to him to be the renewal of the ancient struggles between the people and the aristocracy, of which Roman history is full. In fact, an assembly of ruined nobles, like Dolabella, Antony, and Curio, marching under the leadership of him who boasted of being the son of the gods and of kings, little deserved the name of the popular party, and there was something else at stake than the defence of the privileges of birth in a camp to which so many knights and plebeians had repaired, and which reckoned among its chiefs Varro, Cicero, and Cato, that is to say, two burgesses of small fortune of Arpinum and Reate, and the descendant of the peasant of Tusculum.

Caesar, however, does not seem to have been very much prepossessed with this part of champion of the democracy. We do not find, on reading his memoirs, that he speaks very much of the people’s interests. The phrase just quoted is almost the only one in which they are mentioned. Elsewhere he is more frank. At the beginning of the civil war, when he set forth his reasons for commencing it, he complained that he was refused the consulship, that his province was taken from him, that he was torn from his army; he says not a word of the people, of their unrecognized rights, of their crushed liberty. This was, however, the moment to speak of them in order to justify an enterprise that so many people, and those the most honest, condemned. What did he demand in the final conditions he laid before the senate before marching on Rome? His consulship, his army, his province; he defended his personal interests, he bargained for himself, it never came into his mind to demand any guarantee for that people whose defender he called himself. Around him, in his camp, one thought no more of the people than they did of themselves. His best friends, his bravest generals, had no pretension to be reformers or democrats. They did not think, in following him, that they were going to give liberty to their fellow-citizens; they wished to avenge their outraged chief, and to win power for him. “We are the soldiers of Caesar,” said they with Curio.[^[56]] They had no other title, they knew no other name. When some one came to speak to those old centurions who had seen Germany and Britain, who had taken Alesia and Gergovia, of abandoning Caesar and passing over to the side of the laws and the republic, they did not reply that they were defending the people and their rights. “We,” said they, “shall we quit our general who has given all of us our ranks, shall we take arms against an army in which we have served and been victorious for thirty-six years? We will never do it!”[^[57]] These men were no longer citizens but soldiers. After thirty-six years of victories, they had lost the traditions of civil life and the taste for it; the rights of the people had become indifferent to them, and for them glory took the place of liberty. Cicero and his friends thought that these surroundings were not those of a popular chief who came to restore liberty to his fellow-citizens, but those of an ambitious man who came to establish absolute power by arms, and they were not mistaken. Caesar’s conduct after the war proves this more than all the rest. How did he use his victory? What benefits did he confer on the people whose interests he pretended to defend? I do not speak of what he was able to do for their comfort and their pleasures, the sumptuous feasts, the public meals that he gave, the corn and oil that he so generously distributed to the poorest, the 400 sesterces (£3 4s.) that he paid each citizen on the day of his triumph: if these alms satisfied the plebeians of that time, if they consented to sacrifice their liberty at that price, I pardon Cicero for not having more esteem for them, and for not putting himself on their side; but if they demanded something else, if they wished for a more complete independence, for a larger share in the affairs of their country, for new political rights, they did not obtain them, and Caesar’s victory, notwithstanding his promises, rendered them neither freer nor more powerful. Caesar humiliated the aristocracy, but only for his own advantage. He took the executive power out of the hands of the senate, but only to put it in his own. He established equality between all the orders, but it was an equality of servitude, and all were henceforth reduced to the same level of obedience.

I know that after he had silenced the public speakers, deprived the people of the right of voting, and united in himself all public authority, the senate that he had appointed, having exhausted flattery, solemnly awarded to him the name of Liberator, and voted the erection of a Temple of Liberty. If it is against this liberty that Cicero and his friends are accused of having taken up arms, I do not think it is worth the trouble to defend them from this charge.

Let us call things by their real name. It was for himself and not for the people that Caesar worked, and Cicero, in opposing him, thought he was defending the republic and not the privileges of the aristocracy.

But did this republic deserve to be defended? Was there any hope of preserving it? Was it not manifest that its ruin was inevitable? This is the greatest charge that is made against those who followed Pompey’s party. I admit it is not easy to answer it. The evil that Rome suffered, and which showed itself in those disorders and that violence of which Cicero’s letters give us such a sad picture, was not of a kind to be averted by a few wise reforms. It was ancient and profound. It became worse every day without any law being able to prevent or arrest it. Could one hope to cure it with those slight changes that the boldest proposed? Of what use was it to diminish, as was wished, the privileges of the aristocracy and to augment the rights of the plebeians? The sources of public life themselves were seriously impaired. The evil came from the way in which the citizenship was acquired.

For a long time Rome had drawn her strength from the country people. It was from the rustic tribes, the most honoured of all, that those valiant soldiers who had conquered Italy and subdued Carthage had come; but this agricultural and warlike people, who had so well defended the republic, could not defend themselves against the encroachments of the great estates. Enclosed little by little by those immense domains where cultivation is easiest, the poor peasant had for a long time struggled against misery and the usurers; then, discouraged in the struggle, he had ended by selling his field to his rich neighbour, who coveted it to round off his estate. He had tried then to become a tenant farmer, a metayer, a hired labourer on the property where he had been for so long the master, but there he met with the competition of the slave, a more frugal worker, who did not stand out for his wages, who did not make terms, who might be treated as one liked.[^[58]] Thus, driven twice from his fields, both as owner and as tenant farmer, without work or resources, he had been forced to migrate to the city. At Rome, however, life was not more easy for him. What could he do there? There was little trade, and usually it was not in the hands of the free men. In countries where slavery flourishes, work is looked down upon. To die of hunger without doing anything, is regarded by the free man as a privilege and an honour. Besides, each noble had men of all trades among his slaves, and as such a number of workmen were too many for himself alone, he hired them out to those who had none, or made them keep shop in a corner of his house for his own profit. Here again slave competition killed free labour. Happily at this time Marius opened the ranks of the army to the poorest citizens (capite censi). These unfortunate men, finding no other resource, became soldiers. For lack of something better to do, they achieved the conquest of the world, subjugated Africa, Gaul, and the East, visited Britain and Germany, and the greater number of them, the bravest and best, were killed in these distant expeditions. During this time, the vacancies left in the city by those who departed and did not return were ill filled. Since Rome had become powerful, people from all parts of the world came to her, and we may well suppose they were not always the most respectable.

Several times she had endeavoured to defend herself against these invasions of foreigners; but it was useless to make severe laws to remove them, they always returned to hide themselves in that immense city without a police, and, once settled there, the more prosperous, by means of their money, the others by means of base services or cunning, succeeded in obtaining the title of citizens. Those who received it more naturally, and without needing to demand it, were the freedmen. No doubt the law did not grant them all political rights at once; but after one or two generations all these reservations disappeared, and the grandson of him who had ground at the mill and who had been sold in the slave-market voted the laws and elected the consuls like a Roman of the old stock. It was of this mixture of freedmen and foreigners, that was formed what at this time was called the Roman people, a wretched people who lived on the bounty of private persons or the alms of the state, who had neither memories nor traditions, nor political capacity, nor national character, nor even morality, for they were ignorant of that which makes up the honour and dignity of life in the lower classes, namely, work. With such a people a republic was no longer possible. This is, of all governments, that which demands the greatest integrity and political judgment in those who enjoy it. The more privileges it confers the more devotedness and intelligence it demands. People who did not use their rights, or only used them to sell them, were not worthy to preserve them. That absolute power which they had invited by their votes, which they had received with applause, was made for them; and one understands that the historian who studies from afar the events of the past, when he sees liberty disappear from Rome, consoles himself for its fall by saying that it was deserved and inevitable, and that he pardons or even applauds the man who, in overturning it, was only an instrument of necessity or justice.

But the men who lived then, who were attached to the republican government by tradition and memories, who recalled the great things it had done, who owed to it their dignities, position, and renown, could they think like us and resign themselves as easily to its fall? Firstly, this government existed. They were familiarized to its defects, since they had lived with them so long. They suffered less from them, through the long habit of enduring them. On the other hand, they did not know what this new power that wished to replace the republic would be. Royalty inspired the Romans with an instinctive repugnance, especially since they had conquered the East. They had found there, under this name, the most odious of governments, the most complete slavery in the midst of the most refined civilization, all the pleasures of luxury and the arts, the finest expansion of intellect with the heaviest and basest tyranny; princes accustomed to play with the fortune, honour, and life of men, a species of cruel spoilt children, such as are only now to be found in the African deserts. This picture did not attract them, and whatever disadvantages the republic had, they asked themselves if it was worth while to exchange them for those that royalty might have. Besides, it was natural that the fall of the republic should not appear to them so near and so sure as it does to us. It is with states as with men, for whom we find, after their death, a thousand causes of death which nobody suspected during their life-time. While the machinery of this ancient government was still working it could not be seen how disorganized it was. Cicero has, sometimes, moments of profound despair, in which he announces to his friends that all is lost; but these moments do not last, and he quickly regains his courage. It seems to him that a firm hand, an eloquent voice, and the agreement of good citizens can repair all, and that liberty will easily remedy the abuses and faults of liberty. He never perceives the whole gravity of danger. In the worst days, his thoughts never go beyond the schemers and the ambitious men who disturb the public repose; it is always Catiline, Caesar, or Clodius whom he accuses, and he thinks that all will be saved if one can succeed in overcoming them. He was mistaken, Catiline and Clodius were only the symptoms of a deeper evil that could not be cured; but is he to be blamed for entertaining this hope, chimerical as it was? Is he to be blamed for having thought that there were other means of saving the republic than the sacrifice of liberty? An honest man and a good citizen ought not to accept these counsels of despair at first. It is useless to tell him that the decrees of destiny condemn to perish the constitution that he prefers and that he has promised to defend, he does well not to believe it entirely lost until it is actually overthrown. We may call such men, if we like, blind or dupes; it is honourable in them not to be too perspicacious, and there are errors and illusions that are worth more than a too easy resignation. Real liberty existed no longer at Rome, as I believe, the shadow only remained, but the shadow was still something. One cannot bear a grudge against those who attached themselves to it and made desperate efforts not to allow it to perish, for this shadow, this semblance, consoled them for lost liberty and gave them some hope of regaining it. This is what honest men like Cicero thought, who, after mature reflection, without enthusiasm, without passion, and even without hope, went to find Pompey again; this is what Lucan makes Cato say in those admirable lines which seem to me to express the feelings of all those who, without concealing from themselves the sad state of the republic, persisted in defending it to the last: “As a father who has just lost his child takes pleasure in conducting his obsequies, lights with his own hands the funeral pyre, leaves it with regret, as tardily as he can; so, Rome, I will not forsake thee until that I have held thee dead in my arms. I will follow to the end thy very name, O Liberty, even when thou shalt be no more than a vain shadow!”[^[59]]

IV.

Pharsalia was not the end of Cicero’s political career, as he had thought. Events were to lead him back once more to power and replace him at the head of the republic. His retired life, his silence during the early days of Caesar’s dictatorship, far from injuring his reputation, on the contrary enhanced it. Statesmen do not lose so much as they think by remaining for a time outside of affairs. Retirement, supported with dignity, increases their importance. That they are no longer in power suffices for people to find some inclination to regret them. There are fewer reasons to be severe towards them when their place is not coveted, and as people no longer suffer from their faults the memory of them is easily lost, and their good qualities only are remembered. This is what happened to Cicero. His disgrace disarmed all the enemies that his power had made him, and his popularity was never so great as when he kept himself voluntarily from the public eye. A little later, when he thought he ought to draw nearer to Caesar, he conducted himself with so much tact, he adjusted so cleverly submission and independence, he knew so well how to preserve an appearance of opposition even in his eulogies and flatteries, that public opinion did not cease to favour him. Besides, the most illustrious defenders of the vanquished cause, Pompey, Cato, Scipio, Bibulus, were dead. Of all those who had occupied with honour the highest posts under the old government, he alone remained; consequently it was usual to regard him as the last representative of the republic. We know that on the Ides of March, Brutus and his friends, after having struck down Caesar, while brandishing their bloody swords, called for Cicero. They seemed to recognize him as the head of their party, and to give him the credit of the bloodshed that they had just committed.

It was, then, circumstances rather than his own will that caused him to play so great a part in the events which followed the death of Caesar.

I shall narrate later[^[60]] how he was led to engage in that struggle with Antony, in which he was to perish. I shall show that it was not of himself and voluntarily that he began it. He had quitted Rome and did not wish to return. He thought that the time for resistance under legal forms had passed, that it was necessary to oppose to Antony’s veterans good soldiers rather than good reasons, and he was not wrong. Convinced that his part was finished, and that that of the men of war was about to begin, he set out for Greece, when a gale cast him on the coast of Rhegium. Thence he repaired to the port of Velia, where he found Brutus, who was also preparing to leave Italy, and it was he who, always scrupulous, always the enemy of violence, asked him to make once again an effort to rouse the people, and once more to attempt the struggle on the basis of law. Cicero yielded to the request of his friend, and although he had little hope of success, he hastened to return to Rome there to offer this last battle. This was the second time that he came, like Amphiaraüs, “to throw himself alive into the gulf.”

Brutus did him a good service that day. The desperate enterprise in which he engaged him, almost in spite of himself, could not be useful to the republic, but was serviceable to Cicero’s glory. This was perhaps the grandest moment in his political life. In the first place, we have the pleasure and almost the surprise of finding him firm and decided. He seems to have freed himself from all that hesitation that usually troubled his conduct; and besides, it was scarcely possible to hesitate then, for the question had never been so clearly stated. At each new development of events, the parties stood out more clearly. For the first time, the ambition of Caesar, of which everybody knew, by rallying round the Roman aristocracy all those who wished, like it, to preserve the ancient institutions, had enlarged the limits of this party and modified its programme. By taking into itself new elements it changed in name as in character; it became the party of order, the party of honest men, of the “optimates.” It is thus that Cicero loves to name it. The meaning of this name was at first rather vague, after Pharsalia it became more precise. As at this moment there was no longer any doubt of the intentions of the conqueror, as he was seen to openly substitute his authority for that of the senate and people, the party that resisted him took the name proper to it, and which nobody could any longer refuse it; it became the republican party. The struggle was fairly begun between the republic and despotism. And, that doubt might be still less possible, despotism after Caesar’s death showed itself to the Romans under its least disguised and, so to say, most brutal form. A soldier without political genius, without distinction of manners, without greatness of soul, at once coarse, debauched and cruel, asserted by force his right to the inheritance of the great dictator. He did not take the trouble to hide his designs, and neither Cicero nor anybody else could be deceived any longer. It must have been a great relief to that mind usually so undecided and uncertain to see the truth so clearly, to be no longer perplexed by shadows, to have such a complete confidence in the justice of his cause, and after so much doubt and obscurity at last to fight in clear daylight. We feel that his mind is at ease! how much freer and more lively he is! what ardour there is in this old man, and what eagerness for the fight! None of the young men about him show so much decision as he, and he himself is assuredly younger than when he strove against Catiline or Clodius. Not only does he begin the struggle resolutely, but, what is more unusual with him, he pursues it to the end without giving way. By a strange contrast, the most dangerous enterprise that he had ever undertaken, and which was to cost him his life, was precisely that in which he best resisted his usual fits of discouragement and weakness.

Immediately on his return to Rome, while he was still inspired by the ardour that he had acquired at Velia from his conversations with Brutus, he went to the senate and ventured to speak there. The first Philippic, compared with the others, appears timid and colourless; what courage, however, did it not need to pronounce it in that unconcerned city, before those frightened senators, at a few paces from the furious and threatening Antony, who by his spies heard all that was said against him! Cicero ended then as he had begun. Twice, at an interval of thirty-five years, he raised his voice alone, in the midst of a general silence, against a dreaded power which would not tolerate resistance. Courage, like fear, is contagious. The courage that Cicero showed in his speech awakened that of others. This freedom of speech surprised at first, then shamed those who kept silence. Cicero took advantage of this first revival, which was still rather hesitating, to assemble a few persons round him and find some defenders of the almost forgotten republic. Here was the difficulty. There were scarcely any republicans left, and the most determined had gone to join Brutus in Greece. All that could be done was to appeal to the moderates of all parties, to all those whom Antony’s excesses had shocked. Cicero adjured them to forget their old enmities and to reunite. “Now,” said he, “there is only one vessel for all honest men.”[^[61]] Here we recognize his usual policy. It is again a coalition that he tries to form as at the time of his consulship. This part is clearly that for which he has most taste and which suits him best. By the pliability of his character and his principles he was fitter than anybody to reconcile opinions, and the habit he had of approaching all parties made him not a stranger to any, and he had friends everywhere. Thus his undertaking appeared at first to succeed very well. Several of Caesar’s generals readily listened to him, those especially who thought that, in the main, they lost less by remaining citizens of a free state, than by becoming subjects of Antony; and ambitious subalterns, like Hirtius and Pansa, who, after the master’s death, did not feel themselves strong enough to aim at the first place, and who would not be contented with the second. Unfortunately it was still but a collection of chiefs without soldiers, and never had there been more need of soldiers than at that moment. Antony was at Brundusium, where he was waiting for the legions he had sent for to Macedonia. Enraged by the unexpected resistance that he had met with, he proclaimed that he would avenge himself by pillage and slaughter, and he was known to be the man to do so. Every one thought that already he saw his house sacked, his estate parcelled out, his family proscribed. Fear reigned everywhere, men trembled, hid themselves and fled. The most courageous sought on all sides for some one who might be called upon to defend the republic. No aid was to be hoped for but from Decimus Brutus, who occupied Cisalpine Gaul with some legions, or from Sextus Pompey, who was reorganizing his troops in Sicily, but this aid was distant and doubtful, and ruin was near and sure. In the midst of this general panic, the nephew of Caesar, the young Octavius, whom the jealousy of Antony, and the distrust of the republicans had up till then kept away, and who impatiently awaited the opportunity of making himself known, thought that this opportunity had come. He went through the environs of Rome calling to arms his uncle’s veterans who were settled there. His name, his liberality, the promises he lavished soon brought him soldiers. At Calatia, at Casilinum, he found three thousand in a few days. Then he addressed the leaders of the senate, offered them the support of his veterans, demanding for sole recompense that they would acknowledge him in the efforts he was about to make to save them. In such distress there was no means of refusing this help without which they would perish, and Cicero himself, who had at first shown some distrust, let himself be seduced at last by this young man who consulted him, flattered him, and called him father. When, thanks to him, they had been saved, when they saw Antony, abandoned by some of his legions, obliged to leave Rome where Octavius held him in check, the gratitude of the senate was as lavish as their fear had been great. The liberator was loaded with dignities and honours. Cicero, in his eulogies, raised him much above his uncle; he called him a divine young man raised up by heaven for the defence of his country: he stood surety for his patriotism and fidelity; imprudent words for which Brutus reproached him severely, and which the event was not long in falsifying!

The events that followed are too well known for me to have need of repeating them. Never had Cicero played a greater political part than at this moment; never had he better deserved that name of statesman that his enemies denied him. For six months he was the soul of the republican party, which was re-constituted at his call. “It was I, said he proudly, who gave the signal for this awakening,”[^[62]] and he was right in saying so. His voice seemed to restore some patriotism and some energy to this unconcerned people. He made them once more applaud those grand names of country and liberty that the Forum would soon hear no more. From Rome, the ardour gained the neighbouring townships, and gradually all Italy was roused. This, however, was not enough for him, he went still further to raise up enemies for Antony and defenders for the republic. He wrote to the proconsuls of the provinces and to the generals of the armies. From one end of the world to the other he chid the lukewarm, flattered the ambitious, and congratulated the energetic. He it was who incited Brutus, always undecided, to seize Greece. He applauded the bold stroke of Cassius, which made him master of Asia; he urged Cornificius to drive Antony’s soldiers from Africa; he encouraged Decimus Brutus to resist in Modena. The promises of support that he invited with so much earnestness arrived from all sides. Even enemies and traitors dared not openly refuse him their co-operation. Lepidus and Plancus made emphatic protestations of fidelity. Pollio wrote to him in a solemn tone “that he swears to be the enemy of all tyrants.”[^[63]] On all sides his friendship is demanded, his support solicited, men put themselves under his protection. His Philippics, which, happily, he had not time to revise, are scattered through the whole world, very nearly as he spoke them, and with the vivacity of the first sketch, preserve traces of the interruptions and applause of the people. These passionate harangues carry everywhere the passion of these grand popular scenes. They are read in the provinces, they are devoured in the armies, and from the most distant countries evidence of the admiration they excite arrives to Cicero! “Your robe is even more fortunate than our arms,” says a victorious general to him, and adds, “In you the consular has conquered the consul.”[^[64]] “My soldiers are yours,” wrote another to him.[^[65]] The credit of all the good fortune of the republic was attributed to him. It was he who was congratulated and thanked for all the successes that were obtained. On the evening that the victory of Modena was known at Rome, the whole people went to his house to seek him, conducted him in triumph to the Capitol, and wished to hear from his own mouth an account of the battle. “This day,” he wrote to Brutus, “has repaid me for all my trouble.”[^[66]]

This was the last triumph of Cicero and the republic. Success is sometimes more fatal to coalitions than reverses. When the common enemy, hatred of whom has united them, has been conquered, private dissensions break out. Octavius wished to weaken Antony in order to obtain from him what he wanted; he did not wish to destroy him. When he saw him flying towards the Alps, he made overtures to him, and both together marched on Rome. From that time nothing remained for Cicero but “to imitate brave gladiators, and seek like them to die honourably.”[^[67]] His death was courageous, whatever Pollio, who, having betrayed him, had an interest in calumniating him, may have asserted. I would rather believe the testimony of Livy, who was not one of his friends, and who lived at the court of Augustus: “Of all his misfortunes,” says he, “death is the only one that he bore like a man.”[^[68]] This, it must be confessed, was something. He might have fled, and at one moment he tried to do so. He wished to set out for Greece, where he would have found Brutus; but after some days’ sailing with contrary winds, suffering from the sea, tormented above all by regrets and sadness, he lost heart for life, and was landed at Gaeta, and went back to his house at Formiae to die there. He had often thanked the gale that took him back to Velia, the first time that he wished to flee to Greece. This it was that gave him the opportunity to deliver his Philippics. The storm which drove him ashore at Gaeta has not been less serviceable to his fame. His death seems to me to redeem the weaknesses of his life. It is much for a man like him, who did not boast of being a Cato, to have been so firm at this terrible moment; the more timid he was by temperament the more I am touched at finding him so resolute in dying. Thus, when, in studying his history, I am tempted to reproach him with his irresolution and weakness, I think of his end, I see him as Plutarch has so well depicted him, “his beard and hair dirty, his countenance worn, taking his chin in his left hand as his manner was, and looking steadily at his murderers,”[^[69]] and I no longer dare to be severe. Notwithstanding his defects he was an honest man, “who loved his country well,” as Augustus himself said on a day of sincerity and remorse. If he was sometimes too hesitating and feeble, he always ended by defending what he regarded as the cause of justice and right, and when that cause had been for ever conquered, he rendered it the last service it could claim from its defenders, he honoured it by his death.

II
CICERO’S PRIVATE LIFE

I

Those who have read Cicero’s correspondence with Atticus, and know what place questions of money occupy in these private communications, will not be surprised that I begin the study of his private life by endeavouring to estimate the amount of his fortune. The men of those days were as much concerned about money as the men of to-day, and it is perhaps in this that these two periods, which men have so often taken pleasure in comparing, most resemble each other.

It would be necessary to have at hand the account-books of Eros, Cicero’s steward, in order to set down with exactness the expenses of his household. All that we know with certainty on this subject is, that his father left him a very moderate fortune only, and that he increased this greatly, while we cannot say precisely to how much it amounted. His enemies were in the habit of exaggerating it in order to throw suspicion on the means by which it had been acquired, and it is indeed probable that if we knew the total it would appear to us considerable; but we must take care not to judge of it according to the ideas of our own time. Wealth is not an absolute thing; a man is rich or poor according to the position in which he lives, and it is possible that what would be wealth in one place would scarcely be a competency elsewhere. Now we know that at Rome wealth was far from being so evenly distributed as it is among us. Forty years before the consulship of Cicero, the tribune Philip said that, in that immense city, there were not two thousand persons who had a patrimony;[^[70]] but these possessed all the public wealth. Crassus asserted that, in order to call himself rich, it was necessary for a man to be able to support an army out of his revenues, and we know that he was in a position to do so without inconvenience. Milo contrived to get into debt in a few years to the amount of more than seventy million sesterces (£560,000). Caesar, while still a private person, expended, at one time, one hundred and twenty million sesterces (£960,000) in order to make a present of a new Forum to the Roman people. This outrageous extravagance implies immense fortunes. In comparison with these, we can understand that Cicero’s, which scarcely sufficed for the purchase of a house on the Palatine, and which the adornment of his Tusculan villa almost exhausted, must have appeared very moderate.

In what manner had he gained it? It is not without interest to know this in order to reply to the ill-natured reports that his enemies circulated. He says somewhere that the means by which a fortune was honestly made at Rome were commerce, contracting for public works and farming the taxes;[^[71]] but these means, very convenient for people in haste to enrich themselves, could only be used by those who had no political ambition; they excluded from public honours, and consequently did not suit a man who aspired to govern his country. We do not see, either, that he acted like Pompey, who invested his funds in an important bank and shared in the profits; at least there remains no trace in his letters of undertakings of this nature. Nor could he think of making money out of his works. It was not the custom then for an author to sell his works to a bookseller; or rather, the trade of a bookseller, as we understand it now, scarcely existed. Usually those who wished to read or possess a book borrowed it of the author or of his friends, and had it copied by their slaves. When they had more copyists than they needed for their own use, they made them work for the public and sold the copies they did not want; but the author had nothing to do with the profits they drew from them. And finally, public offices could not have enriched Cicero; we know that they were less a means of making money than an occasion of expense and ruin, either by the price it was sometimes necessary to pay for them, or by the games and entertainments that were expected from those who had obtained them. It was only in the government of provinces that immense gains were made. It was on these gains that the ambitious nobles usually counted to repair the waste of their fortunes that the luxury of their private life and the profusion of their public life had caused. Now Cicero deprived himself of this opportunity by yielding to his colleague Antony the province that, according to custom, he ought to have governed after his consulship. It has been suspected, indeed, that he then made with him some bargain by which he reserved to himself a share in the handsome profits that he relinquished. If this bargain existed, which is doubtful, it is certain it was not kept. Antony pillaged his province, but he pillaged it for himself alone, and Cicero drew nothing from it. Twelve years later, without having desired it, he was appointed proconsul of Cilicia. We know that he remained there only a year, and that, without doing any illegal act, and while securing the happiness of his subjects, he contrived to take back two million two hundred thousand sesterces (£17,600), which gives us an idea of what might be gained in the provinces when they were pillaged without scruple. Besides, this money did not profit Cicero; he lent part of it to Pompey, who did not return it, and it is probable that the civil war caused him to lose the rest, since he found himself without means at its close. We must seek, then, elsewhere for the origin of his fortune. If he had lived in our days we should have no trouble in learning whence it came. It would be sufficiently explained by his ability as an advocate. With an eloquence such as his, he would not fail now-a-days to enrich himself quickly at the bar; but at that time there was a law forbidding orators to accept any fee or present from those for whom they had pleaded (lex Cincia, de donis et muneribus). Although it was the work of a tribune, who had made it, says Livy, in the interest of the people,[^[72]] it was at bottom an aristocratic law. By not allowing the advocate to draw a legitimate profit from his talent, it kept away from the bar those who had nothing, and reserved the exercise of this profession for the rich as a privilege, or rather it prevented it becoming really a profession. I think, however, that this law was always very imperfectly obeyed. As it could not provide against everything, it was scarcely possible for it to prevent the gratitude of clients finding some ingenious method to escape its severity. If they were really determined to pay in some manner for the services which they had received, it seems to me that the law could only with difficulty prevent it. In Cicero’s time, they did not fail to violate it openly. Verres told his friends that he had divided the money he brought back from Sicily into three parts; the most considerable was to corrupt his judges, the second to pay his advocates, and he contented himself with the third.[^[73]] Cicero, who on this occasion laughed at Verres’ advocate, Hortensius, and at the sphynx that he had received on account, took care not to imitate him. His brother affirms that up to the time when he was a candidate for the consulship he had never asked anything from his clients.[^[74]] Nevertheless, whatever scruples we may suppose him to have had, it is very difficult to admit that he had never profited by their good-will. No doubt he refused the presents that the Sicilians wished to make him when he had avenged them on Verres; perhaps it would not have been prudent to accept them after such a notorious trial, which had drawn all eyes upon him, and made him powerful enemies; but some years afterwards I see that he allowed himself to accept the present made him by his friend Papirius Poetus, for whom he had just pleaded.[^[75]] It consisted of some fine Greek and Latin books, and Cicero loved nothing so much as books. I notice also that when he had need of money, which happened sometimes, he preferred to apply to rich men whom he had defended. These were less harsh and more patient creditors to him than others, and it was natural that he should profit by their influence after having aided them by his eloquence. He tells us himself that he bought the house of Crassus with the money of his friends. Among them, P. Sylla, for whom he had just pleaded, alone lent him two million sesterces (£16,000). When he was attacked for this in the senate, Cicero got out of it with a joke; which proves that the lex Cincia was no longer much respected, and that those who infringed it had no great fear of being prosecuted.[^[76]] It is very possible, then, that those nobles whose honour or fortune he had saved, that those towns or provinces that he had protected against greedy governors, that those foreign princes whose interests he had defended in the senate, above all, those rich societies of farmers of the taxes, through whose hands passed all the money that the world sent to Rome, and whom he served so vigorously by his reputation or his eloquence, had often sought and sometimes found an opportunity of testifying their gratitude. This generosity appears to us now-a-days so natural that we should scarcely blame Cicero for not having always rejected it; but we may be sure that, if he sometimes thought that he might accept it, he always did so with more moderation and reserve than the greater number of his contemporaries.

We know one of the most usual forms, and, as it seems, one of the most legal by which this generosity showed itself. It was the custom at Rome to pay, after death and by will, all debts of gratitude and affection contracted during life. This was a means that offered itself to the client of discharging his obligations to the advocate who had defended him, and it does not appear that the lex Cincia threw any obstacle in the way. We have nothing like it among ourselves. At that time, the father of a family who had natural heirs might withdraw from his fortune any amount that he wished, and give his relations, his friends, and all who had been useful or agreeable to him, a good share of his estate. This custom had become an abuse. Fashion and vanity had come to have a large share in it. A man wished to appear to have many friends by inscribing the names of many persons in his will, and naturally the most illustrious were inscribed by preference. Sometimes people were brought together in it who seldom met anywhere else, and who must have been surprised to find themselves there. Cluvius, a rich banker of Puteoli, left his estate to Cicero and Caesar after Pharsalia.[^[77]] The architect Cyrus placed among his heirs both Clodius and Cicero, that is to say, the two persons who most heartily detested each other in Rome.[^[78]] This architect, no doubt, regarded it as an honour to have friends among all parties. It even happened that a man set down in his will people whom he had never seen. Lucullus augmented his immense wealth by bequests which unknown persons left him while he governed Asia. Atticus received a good number of legacies from people of whom he had never heard, and who only knew him by reputation. How much more then must a great orator like Cicero, to whom so many were under obligation, and of whom all Romans were proud, have been often the object of this posthumous liberality! We see in his letters that he was the heir of many persons who do not seem to have held a large place in his life. In general, the amounts left to him are not very large. One of the largest is that which he inherited from his old master the Stoic Diodotus, whom he had kept at his house till his death.[^[79]] In recompense of this long-continued affection, Diodotus left him all his savings as a philosopher and teacher. They amounted to a hundred thousand sesterces (£800). The union of all these small legacies no doubt made up a considerable sum. Cicero himself values it at more than twenty million sesterces (£160,000).[^[80]] It seems to me, therefore, that there is no doubt that these legacies, with the presents he may have received from the gratitude of his clients, were the chief sources of his wealth.

This wealth was composed of property of different kinds. He possessed, firstly, houses in Rome. Besides that which he inhabited on the Palatine, and that which he had from his father at Carinae, he had others in Argiletum and on the Aventine which brought him in an income of eighty thousand sesterces (£640).[^[81]] He possessed numerous villas in Italy. We know of eight very important ones belonging to him,[^[82]] without reckoning those small houses (diversoria) that the nobles bought along the principal roads to have somewhere to rest when they went from one domain to another. He had also sums of money of which he disposed in different manners, as we see in his correspondence. We cannot estimate this part of his wealth with exactness; but according to the practice of the rich Romans of that time, it may be affirmed that it was not less than his houses or estates. One day when he is asking Atticus to buy him some gardens that he wishes, he says to him, in an off-hand way, that he thinks he may have about six hundred thousand sesterces (£4800) in his own hands.[^[83]] We have here perhaps one of the most curious differences that distinguish that state of society from ours. Now-a-days scarcely any but bankers by profession handle such considerable sums of money. Our aristocracy has always affected to look down upon questions of finance. The Roman aristocracy, on the contrary, understood them well, and thought much about them. Their great wealth was used to further political ambition, and they did not hesitate to risk a part of it to gain adherents. The purse of a candidate for public honours was open to all who could be of use to him. He gave to the poorest, he lent to others, and sought to form with them bonds of interest which would attach them to his cause. Success usually followed those who had put the greatest number of men under obligations. Cicero, although less rich than the majority of them, imitated them. In his letters to Atticus he is almost always writing about bills and dates of maturity, and we see in them that his money circulated on all sides. He is in constant business relations, and as we should now say, has a running account with the greatest personages. Sometimes he lends to Caesar, and sometimes borrows of him. Among his numerous debtors are found persons of all ranks and fortunes, from Pompey to Hermogenes, who seems to have been a simple freedman. Unfortunately, counting them all, his creditors are still more numerous. Notwithstanding the example and advice of Atticus, he ill understood how to manage his fortune. He constantly had costly fancies. He would have at any price statues and pictures to adorn his galleries and give them the appearance of the gymnasia of Greece. He ruined himself to embellish his country houses. Generous out of season, we see him lending to others when he is constrained to borrow for himself. It is always when he is deepest in debt that he has the greatest desire to buy some new villa. He does not hesitate, then, to apply to all the bankers of Rome; he goes to see Considius, Axius, Vectenus, Vestorius; he would even try to soften Caecilius, the uncle of his friend Atticus, if he did not know that he was inflexible. Nevertheless he bears his troubles with a light heart. The prudent Atticus tells him in vain that it is disgraceful to be in debt; but as he shares this disgrace with a great many people it seems light, and he is the first to joke about it. One day he told one of his friends that he was so much in debt that he would willingly enter into some conspiracy, if any one would receive him, but that since he had punished Catiline’s he inspired no confidence in others;[^[84]] and when the first day of the month arrives, when payments become due, he is content to shut himself up at Tusculum and leave Eros or Tiro to argue with the creditors.

These embarrassments and troubles, of which his correspondence is full, make us think, almost in spite of ourselves, of certain passages in his philosophical works which appear rather surprising when we compare them with his mode of living, and which may easily be turned against him. Is it really this thoughtless prodigal, always ready to spend without consideration, who exclaimed one day in a tone of conviction that moves us: “Ye immortal gods, when will men understand what treasures are found in economy!”[^[85]] How dared this ardent lover of works of art, this impassioned friend of magnificence and luxury, how dared he treat as madmen people who love statues and pictures too well, or build themselves magnificent houses? He stands self-condemned, and I do not wish to entirely absolve him; but while we pronounce on him a severe sentence, let us remember the times in which he lived, and let us think of his contemporaries. I will not compare him with the worst men, his superiority would be too evident; but among those who are regarded as the most honourable, he still holds one of the foremost places. He did not owe his wealth to usury like Brutus and his friends; he did not augment it by that sordid avarice with which Cato is reproached; he did not pillage the provinces like Appius or Cassius; he did not consent like Hortensius to take his share of this pillage. We must then acknowledge that, notwithstanding the blame we may lay upon him, he was more scrupulous and disinterested in money matters than others. In the main, his irregularities only injured himself,[^[86]] and if he had too much taste for ruinous prodigality, at least he did not have recourse to scandalous gains in order to satisfy it. These scruples honour him so much the more as they were then very rare, and few people have passed, without stain, through that greedy and corrupt society in the midst of which he lived.