A NEW PORTRAIT OF CICERO.
In the third volume of his History of the Romans under the Empire, just published in London, Mr. Merivale gives some elaborate pieces of character writing, one of which has for its subject Cicero. It is not good for a man to think harshly of Cicero, and however easy it may seem to be to condemn manifest faults in his character, it is by no means easy to be fair in the estimate we make. Mr. Merivale sums up a character which has too often been roughly put down as that of a great writer and a little man, as follows:
"Many writers, it has been remarked, have related the death of Cicero, but Plutarch alone has painted it. In the narrative here laid before him the reader has the substance of this picturesque account, together with some touches introduced from collateral sources. In this, as in many other massages of his Lives, the Greek biographer has evidently aimed at creating an effect, and though he seems to have been mainly guided by the genuine narrative of Tiro, Cicero's beloved freedman, we may suspect him of having embellished it to furnish a striking termination to one of his favorite sketches. Nevertheless the narrative is mainly confirmed by a fragment of Livy's history, which has fortunately been preserved. The Roman author vies with the Greek in throwing dignity and interest over the great statesman's end. But in reviewing the uneven tenor of his career, Livy concludes with the stern comment, "He bore none of his calamities as a man should, except his death." These are grave words. In the mouth of one who had cast his scrutinizing glance over the characters and exploits of all the heroes of the great republic, and had learnt by the training of his life-long studies to discriminate moral qualities and estimate desert, they constitute the most important judgment on the conduct of Cicero that antiquity has bequeathed to us. Few indeed among the Romans ever betrayed a want of resolution in the face of impending death. But it was in the endurance of calamity rather than the defiance of danger that the courage of Cicero was deficient. The orator, whose genius lay in the arts of peace and persuasion, exhibited on more than one occasion a martial spirit worthy of other habits and a ruder training. In the contest with[pg 163] Catilina he displayed all the moral confidence of a veteran general: in the struggle with Antonius he threw himself without reserve into a position where there was no alternative but to conquer or to perish. In the earlier conflict he had still his fame to acquire, his proud ascendency to establish; and the love of praise and glory inspired him with the audacity which makes and justifies its own success. But in the later, he courted danger for the sake of retaining the fame he so dearly prized. He had once saved his country, and he could not endure that it should be said he had ever deserted it. He loved his country; but it wan for his own honor, which he could preserve, rather than for his country's freedom, which he despaired of, that he returned to his post when escape was still possible. He might have remained silent, but he opened the floodgates of his eloquence. When indeed he had once launched himself on the torrent he lost all self-command; he could neither retrace nor moderate his career; he saw the rocks before him, but he dashed himself headlong against them. But another grave authority has given us the judgment of antiquity, that Cicero's defect was the want of steadfastness. His courage had no dignity because it lacked consistency. All men and all parties agreed that he could not be relied upon to lead, to co-operate, or to follow. In all the great enterprises of his party, he was left behind, except that which the nobles undertook against Catilina, in which they rather thrust him before them than engaged with him on terms of mutual support. When we read the vehement claims which Cicero put forth to the honor of association, however tardy, with the glories and dangers of Cæsar's assassins, we should deem the conspirators guilty of a monstrous oversight in having neglected to enlist him in their design, were we not assured that he was not to be trusted as a confederate either for good or for evil.
"Of all the characters of antiquity Cicero is undoubtedly that with which we are most intimately acquainted; for he alone has left to us the record of his thoughts and actions for more than half his public career in a voluminous mass of familiar as well as political correspondence. No public character probably could pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal to which he has thus subjected himself. Cicero, it must be avowed, is convicted from his own mouth of vanity, inconstancy, sordidness, jealousy, malice, selfishness, and timidity. But on the other hand no character, public or private, could thus bare its workings to our view without laying a stronger claim to our sympathy, and extorting from us more kindly consideration than we can give to the mere shell of the human being with which ordinary history brings us in contact. Cicero gains more than he loses by the confessions he pours into our ear. We read in his letters what we should vainly search for in the meagre pages of Sallust and Appian, in the captious criticism of Dion, and even in the pleasant anecdotes of his friendly biographer Plutarch, his amiableness, his refined urbanity, his admiration for excellence, his thirst for fame, his love of truth, equity, and reason. Much indeed of the patriotism, the honesty, the moral courage he exhibited, was really no other than the refined ambition of attaining the respect of his contemporaries and bequeathing a name to posterity. He might not act from a sense of duty, like Cato, but his motives, personal and selfish as they in some sense were, coincided with what a more enlightened conscience would have felt to be duty. Thus his proconsulate is perhaps the purest and most honorable passage in his life. His strict and rare probity amidst the temptations of office arrests our attention and extorts our praise: yet assuredly Cicero had no nice sense of honor, and was controlled by no delicacy of sentiment, where public opinion was silent, or a transaction strictly private. His courting his ward Publilia for her dower, his caressing Dolabella for the sake of getting his debt paid, his soliciting the historian Lucceius to color and exaggerate the merits of his consulship, display a grievous want of magnanimity and of a predominant sense of right. Fortunately his instinct taught him to see in the constitution of the republic the fairest field for the display of his peculiar talents; the orator and the pleader could not fail to love the arena on which the greatest triumph of his genius had been or were yet, as he hoped, to be acquired. And Cicero indeed was not less ambitious than Cæesar or Pompeius, Antonius or Octavius. To the pursuit of fame he sacrificed many interests and friendships. He was not less jealous of a rival in his chosen career than any of the leaders of party and candidates for popular favor. He could not endure competition for the throne of eloquence and the sceptre of persuasion. It was on this account perhaps that he sought his associates among the young, from whose rivalry he had nothing to fear, rather than from his own contemporaries, the candidates for the same prize of public admiration which he aimed at securing for himself. From his pages there flows an incessant stream of abuse of all the great masters of political power in his time; of Cæsar and Pompeius; of Crassus and Antonius, not to mention his coarse vituperation of Piso and Gabinius, and his uneasy sneers at the impracticable Cato. We may note the different tone which his disparagement assumes towards these men respectively. He speaks of Cæsar with awe, of Pompeius with mortification, with dislike of Crassus, with bitter malice of Antonius. Cæsar, even when he most deeply reprobates him, he personally loves; the cold distrust of Pompeius vexes his self-esteem; between him and Crassus there subsists a natural antipathy of temperament: but Antonius, the hate of his old age, becomes to him the incarnation of all the evil his long and bitter experience of mankind have discovered in the human heart. While we suspect Cicero of injustice towards the great men of his day, we are bound also to specify the gross dishonesty with which he magnifies his own merits where they are trivial, and embellishes them where they are really important. The perpetual recurrence to the topic of his own political deserts must have wearied the most patient of friends, and more than balanced the display of sordidness and time-serving which Atticus doubtless reflected back in his share of the correspondence between them.
"But while Cicero stands justly charged with many grave infirmities of temper and defects of principle, while we remark with a sigh the vanity, the inconstancy, and the ingratitude he so often manifested, while we lament his ignoble subserviencies and his ferocious resentments, the high standard by which we claim to judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of his transcendent[pg 164] merits. For undoubtedly had he not placed himself on a higher moral level than the statesmen and sages of his day, we should pass over many of his weaknesses in silence, and allow his pretensions to our esteem to pass almost unchallenged. But we demand a nearer approach to the perfection of human wisdom and virtue in one who sought to approve himself the greatest of their teachers. Nor need we scruple to admit that the judgment of the ancients on Cicero was for the most part unfavorable. The moralists of antiquity required in their heroes virtues with which we can more readily dispense: and they too had less sympathy with many qualities which a purer religion and a wider experience have taught us to love and admire. Nor were they capable, from their position, of estimating the slow and silent effects upon human happiness of the lessons which Cicero enforced. After all the severe judgments we are compelled to pass on his conduct, we must acknowledge that there remains a residue of what is amiable in his character and noble in his teaching beyond all ancient example. Cicero lived and died in faith. He has made converts to the belief in virtue, and had disciples in the wisdom of love. There have been dark periods in the history of man, when the feeble ray of religious instruction paled before the torch of his generous philanthropy. The praise which the great critic pronounced upon his excellence in oratory may be justly extended to the qualities of his heart, and even in our enlightened days it may be held no mean advance in virtue to venerate the master of Roman philosophy."