10.
The connection which we have been able to preserve between the rhetorical writings of Cicero cannot be attained in his moral, political, and metaphysical treatises; partly from the extent of the subject, partly from the losses occasioned by time, partly from the inconsistency which we have warned the reader to expect in his sentiments. In our enumeration, therefore, we shall observe no other order than that which the date of their composition furnishes.
The earliest now extant is part of his treatise De Legibus, in three books; being a sequel to his work on Politics. Both were written in imitation of Plato's treatises on the same subjects.[216] The latter of these (De Republicâ) was composed a year after the De Oratore,[217] and seems to have vied with it in the majesty and interest of the dialogue. It consisted of a series of discussions in six books on the origin and principles of government, Scipio being the principal speaker, but Lælius, Philus, Manilius, and other personages of like gravity taking part in the conversation. Till lately, but a fragment of the fifth book was understood to be in existence, in which Scipio, under the fiction of a dream, inculcates the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But in the year 1822, Monsignor Mai, librarian of the Vatican, published considerable portions of the first and second books, from a palimpsest manuscript of St. Austin's Commentary on the Psalms. In the part now recovered, Scipio discourses on the different kinds of constitutions and their respective advantages; with a particular reference to that of Rome. In the third book, the subject of justice was discussed by Lælius and Philus; in the fourth, Scipio treated of morals and education; while in the fifth and sixth, the duties of a magistrate were explained, and the best means of preventing changes and revolutions in the constitution itself. In the latter part of the treatise, allusion was made to the actual posture of affairs in Rome, when the conversation was supposed to have occurred, and the commotions excited by the Gracchi.
In his treatise De Legibus, which was written two years later than the De Republicâ, when he was fifty-five, and shortly after the murder of Clodius, he represents himself as explaining to his brother Quintus and Atticus, in their walks through the woods of Arpinum, the nature and origin of the laws and their actual state, both in other countries and in Rome. The first part only of the subject is contained in the books now extant; the introduction to which we have had occasion to notice, when speaking of his Stoical sentiments on questions connected with State policy. Law he pronounces to be the perfection of reason, the eternal mind, the divine energy, which, while it pervades and unites in one the whole universe, associates gods and men by the more intimate resemblance of reason and virtue, and still more closely men with men, by the participation of common faculties, affections, and situations. He then proves, at length, that justice is not merely created by civil institutions, from the power of conscience, the imperfections of human law, the moral sense, and the disinterestedness of virtue. He next proceeds to unfold the principles, first, of religious law, under the heads of divine worship; the observance of festivals and games; the office of priests, augurs, and heralds; the punishment of sacrilege and purjury; the consecration of land, and the rights of sepulchre; and, secondly, of civil law, which gives him an opportunity of noticing the respective duties of magistrates and citizens. In these discussions, though professedly speaking of the abstract question, he does not hesitate to anticipate the subject of the lost books, by frequent allusions to the history and customs of his own country. It must be added, that in no part of his writings do worse instances occur, than in this treatise, of that vanity which was notoriously his weakness, which are rendered doubly offensive by their being put into the mouth of his brother and Atticus.[218]
Here a period of seven or eight years intervenes, during which he composed little of importance besides his Orations. He then published the De claris Oratoribus and Orator; and a year later, when he was sixty-three, his Academicæ Quæstiones, in the retirement from public business to which he was driven by the dictatorship of Cæsar. This work had originally consisted of two dialogues, which he entitled Catulus and Lucullus, from the names of the respective speakers in each. These he now remodelled and enlarged into four books, dedicating them to Varro, whom he introduced as advocating, in the presence of Atticus, the tenets of Antiochus, while he himself defended those of Philo. Of this most valuable composition, only the second book (Lucullus) of the first edition and part of the first book of the second are now extant. In the former of those two, Lucullus argues against, and Cicero for, the Academic sect, in the presence of Catulus and Hortensius; in the latter, Varro pursues the history of philosophy from Socrates to Arcesilas, and Cicero continues it down to the time of Carneades. In the second edition the style was corrected, the matter condensed, and the whole polished with extraordinary care and diligence.[219]
The same year he published his treatise De Finibus, or "On the chief good," in five books, in which are explained the sentiments of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Peripatetics on the subject. This is the earliest of his works in which the dialogue is of a disputatious character. It is opened with a defence of the Epicurean tenets, concerning pleasure, by Torquatus; to which Cicero replies at length. The scene then shifts from the Cuman villa to the library of young Lucullus (his father being dead), where the Stoic Cato expatiates on the sublimity of the system which maintains the existence of one only good, and is answered by Cicero in the character of a Peripatetic. Lastly, Piso, in a conversation held at Athens, enters into an explanation of the doctrine of Aristotle, that happiness is the greatest good. The general style of this treatise is elegant and perspicuous; and the last book in particular has great variety and splendour of diction.
It was about this time that Cicero was especially courted by the heads of the dictator's party, of whom Hirtius and Dolabella went so far as to declaim daily at his house for the benefit of his instructions.[220] A visit of this nature to the Tusculan villa, soon after the publication of the De Finibus, gave rise to his work entitled Tusculanæ Quæstiones, which professes to be the substance of five philosophical disputes between himself and friends, digested into as many books. He argues throughout after the manner of an Academic, even with an affectation of inconsistency; sometimes making use of the Socratic dialogue, sometimes launching out into the diffuse expositions which characterise his other treatises.[221] He first disputes against the fear of death; and in so doing he adopts the opinion of the Platonic school, as regards the nature of God and the soul. The succeeding discussions on enduring pain, on alleviating grief, on the other emotions of the mind, and on virtue, are conducted for the most part on Stoical principles.[222] This is a highly ornamental composition, and contains more quotations from the poets than any other of Cicero's treatises.
We have already had occasion to remark upon the singular activity of his mind, which becomes more and more conspicuous as we approach the period of his death. During the ensuing year, which is the last of his life, in the midst of the confusion and anxieties consequent on Cæsar's death, and the party warfare of his Philippics, he found time to write the De Naturâ Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato, De Senectute, De Amicitiâ, De Officiis, and Paradoxa, besides the treatise on Rhetorical Common Places above mentioned.
Of these, the first three were intended as a full exposition of the conflicting opinions entertained on their respective subjects; the De Fato, however, was not finished according to this plan.[223] His treatise De Naturâ Deorum, in three books, may be reckoned the most splendid of all his works, and shows that neither age nor disappointment had done injury to the richness and vigour of his mind. In the first book, Velleius, the Epicurean, sets forth the physical tenets of his sect, and is answered by Cotta, who is of the Academic school. In the second, Balbus, the disciple of the Porch, gives an account of his own system, and is, in turn, refuted by Cotta in the third. The eloquent extravagance of the Epicurean, the solemn enthusiasm of the Stoic, and the brilliant raillery of the Academic, are contrasted with extreme vivacity and humour;—while the sublimity of the subject itself imparts to the whole composition a grander and more elevated character, and discovers in the author imaginative powers, which, celebrated as he justly is for playfulness of fancy, might yet appear more the talent of the poet than the orator.
His treatise De Divinatione is conveyed in a discussion between his brother Quintus and himself, in two books. In the former, Quintus, after dividing Divination into the heads of natural and artificial, argues with the Stoics for its sacred nature, from the evidence of facts, the agreement of all nations, and the existence of divine intelligences. In the latter, Cicero questions its authority, with Carneades, from the uncertain nature of its rules, the absurdity and uselessness of the art, and the possibility of accounting from natural causes for the phenomena on which it was founded. This is a curious work, from the numerous cases adduced from the histories of Greece and Rome to illustrate the subject in dispute.
His treatise De Fato is quite a fragment; it purports to be the substance of a dissertation in which he explained to Hirtius (soon after Consul) the sentiments of Chrysippus, Diodorus, Epicurus, Carneades, and others, upon that abstruse subject. It is supposed to have consisted at least of two books, of which we have but the proem of the first, and a small portion of the second.
In his beautiful compositions, De Senectute and De Amicitiâ, Cato the censor and Lælius are respectively introduced, delivering their sentiments on those subjects. The conclusion of the former, in which Cato discourses on the immortality of the soul, has been always celebrated; and the opening of the latter, in which Fannius and Scævola come to console Lælius on the death of Scipio, is as exquisite an instance of delicacy and taste in composition as can be found in his works. In the latter he has borrowed largely from the eighth and ninth books of Aristotle's Ethics.
His treatise De Officiis was finished about the time he wrote his second Philippic, a circumstance which illustrates the great versatility of his mental powers. Of a work so extensively celebrated, it is enough to have mentioned the name. Here he lays aside the less authoritative form of dialogue, and, with the dignity of the Roman Consul, unfolds, in his own person, the principles of morals, according to the views of the older schools, particularly of the Stoics. It is written in three books, with great perspicuity and elegance of style; the first book treats of the honestum, or virtue, the second of the utile, or expedience, and the third adjusts the claims of the two, when they happen to interfere with each other.
His Paradoxa Stoicorum might have been more suitably, perhaps, included in his rhetorical works, being six short declamations in support of the positions of Zeno; in which that philosopher's subtleties are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, and the events of the times. The second, fourth, and sixth, are respectively directed against Antony, Clodius, and Crassus. They seem to have suffered from time.[224] The sixth is the most eloquent, but the argument of the third is strikingly maintained.
Besides the works now enumerated, we have a considerable fragment of his translation of Plato's Timæus, which he seems to have finished in his last year. His remaining philosophical works, viz.: the Hortensius, which was a defence of philosophy; De Gloriâ; De Consolatione, written upon Platonic principles on his daughter's death; De Jure Civili, De Virtutibus, De Auguriis, Chorographia, translations of Plato's Protagoras, and Xenophon's Œconomics, works on Natural History, Panegyric on Cato, and some miscellaneous writings, are, except a few fragments, entirely lost.
His Letters, about one thousand in all, are comprised in thirty-six books, sixteen of which are addressed to Atticus, three to his brother Quintus, one to Brutus, and sixteen to his different friends; and they form a history of his life from his fortieth year. Among those addressed to his friends, some occur from Brutus, Metellus, Plancius, Cælius, and others. For the preservation of this most valuable department of Cicero's writings, we are indebted to Tyro, the author's freedman, though we possess, at the present day, but a part of those originally published. As his correspondence with his friends belongs to his character as a man and politician, rather than to his literary aspect, we have already noticed it in the first part of this memoir.
His Poetical and Historical works have suffered a heavier fate. The latter class, consisting of his commentary on his consulship and his history of his own times, is altogether lost. Of the former, which consisted of the heroic poems Halcyone, Limon, Marius, and his Consulate, the elegy of Tamelastes, translations of Homer and Aratus, epigrams, etc., nothing remains, except some fragments of the Phænomena and Diosemeia of Aratus. It may, however, be questioned whether literature has suffered much by these losses. We are far, indeed, from speaking contemptuously of the poetical talent of one who possessed so much fancy, so much taste, and so fine an ear.[225] But his poems were principally composed in his youth; and afterwards, when his powers were more mature, his occupations did not allow even to his active mind the time necessary for polishing a language still more rugged in metre than it was in prose. His contemporary history, on the other hand, can hardly have conveyed more explicit, and certainly would have contained less faithful, information than his private correspondence; while, with all the penetration he assuredly possessed, it may be doubted if his diffuse and graceful style was adapted for the deep and condensed thoughts and the grasp of facts and events which are the chief excellences of historical composition.