1.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born at Arpinum, the native place of Marius,[93] in the year of Rome 648 (A.C. 106), the same year which gave birth to the Great Pompey. His family was ancient and of Equestrian rank, but had never taken part in the public affairs of Rome,[94] though both his father and grandfather were persons of consideration in the part of Italy to which they belonged.[95] His father, being a man of cultivated mind himself, determined to give his two sons the advantage of a liberal education, and to fit them for the prospect of those public employments which a feeble constitution incapacitated himself from undertaking. Marcus, the elder of the two, soon displayed indications of a superior intellect, and we are told that his schoolfellows carried home such accounts of him, that their parents often visited the school for the sake of seeing a youth who gave such promise of future eminence.[96] One of his earliest masters was the poet Archias, whom he defended afterwards in his Consular year; under his instructions he was able to compose a poem, though yet a boy, on the fable of Glaucus, which had formed the subject of one of the tragedies of Æschylus. Soon after he assumed the manly gown he was placed under the care of Scævola, the celebrated lawyer, whom he introduces so beautifully into several of his philosophical dialogues; and in no long time he gained a thorough knowledge of the laws and political institutions of his country.[97]
This was about the time of the Social war; and, according to the Roman custom, which made it a necessary part of education to learn the military art by personal service, Cicero took the opportunity of serving a campaign under the Consul Pompeius Strabo, father of Pompey the Great. Returning to pursuits more congenial to his natural taste, he commenced the study of Philosophy under Philo the Academic, of whom we shall speak more particularly hereafter.[98] But his chief attention was reserved for Oratory, to which he applied himself with the assistance of Molo, the first rhetorician of the day; while Diodotus the Stoic exercised him in the argumentative subtleties for which the disciples of Zeno were so generally celebrated. At the same time he declaimed daily in Greek and Latin with some young noblemen, who were competitors with him in the same race of political honours.
Of the two professions,[99] which, from the contentiousness of human nature, are involved in the very notion of society, while that of arms, by its splendour and importance, secures the almost undivided admiration of a rising and uncivilized people, legal practice, on the other hand, becomes the path to honours in later and more civilized ages, by reason of the oratorical accomplishments to which it usually gives scope. The date of Cicero's birth fell precisely during that intermediate state of things, in which the glory of military exploits lost its pre-eminence by means of the very opulence and luxury which were their natural issue; and he was the first Roman who found his way to the highest dignities of the State with no other recommendation than his powers of eloquence and his merits as a civil magistrate.[100]
The first cause of importance he undertook was his defence of Sextus Roscius; in which he distinguished himself by his spirited opposition to Sylla, whose favourite Chrysogonus was prosecutor in the action. This obliging him, according to Plutarch, to leave Rome on prudential motives, he employed his time in travelling for two years under pretence of his health, which, he tells us,[101] was as yet unequal to the exertion of pleading. At Athens he met with T. Pomponius Atticus, whom he had formerly known at school, and there renewed with him a friendship which lasted through life, in spite of the change of interests and estrangements of affection so common in turbulent times.[102] Here too he attended the lectures of Antiochus, who, under the name of Academic, taught the dogmatic doctrines of Plato and the Stoics. Though Cicero felt at first considerable dislike of his philosophical views,[103] he seems afterwards to have adopted the sentiments of the Old Academy, which they much resembled; and not till late in life to have relapsed into the sceptical tenets of his former instructor Philo.[104] After visiting the principal philosophers and rhetoricians of Asia, in his thirtieth year he returned to Rome, so strengthened and improved both in bodily and mental powers, that he soon eclipsed in his oratorical efforts all his competitors for public favour. So popular a talent speedily gained him the suffrage of the Commons; and, being sent to Sicily as Quæstor, at a time when the metropolis itself was visited with a scarcity of corn, he acquitted himself in that delicate situation with such address as to supply the clamorous wants of the people without oppressing the province from which the provisions were raised.[105] Returning thence with greater honours than had ever been before decreed to a Roman Governor, he ingratiated himself still farther in the esteem of the Sicilians by undertaking his celebrated prosecution of Verres; who, though defended by the influence of the Metelli and the eloquence of Hortensius, was at length driven in despair into voluntary exile.
Five years after his Quæstorship, Cicero was elected Ædile, a post of considerable expense from the exhibition of games connected with it. In this magistracy he conducted himself with singular propriety;[106] for, it being customary to court the people by a display of splendour in these official shows, he contrived to retain his popularity without submitting to the usual alternative of plundering the provinces or sacrificing his private fortune. The latter was at this time by no means ample; but, with the good sense and taste which mark his character, he preserved in his domestic arrangements the dignity of a literary and public man, without any of the ostentation of magnificence which often distinguished the candidate for popular applause.[107]
After the customary interval of two years, he was returned at the head of the list as Prætor;[108] and now made his first appearance in the rostrum in support of the Manilian law. About the same time he defended Cluentius. At the expiration of his Prætorship, he refused to accept a foreign province, the usual reward of that magistracy;[109] but, having the Consulate full in view, and relying on his interest with Cæsar and Pompey, he allowed nothing to divert him from that career of glory for which he now believed himself to be destined.