Roman life in the days of Cicero

by Alfred John Church

CHAPTER XIII.

A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE.

It was usual for a Roman statesman, after filling the office of praetor or consul, to undertake for a year or more the government of one of the provinces. These appointments were indeed the prizes of the profession of politics. The new governor had a magnificent outfit from the treasury. We hear of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds having been allowed for this purpose. Out of this something might easily be economized. Indeed we hear of one governor who left the whole of his allowance put out at interest in Rome. And in the province itself splendid gains might be, and indeed commonly were, got. Even Cicero, who, if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial government.

He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetorship and again after his consulship. But the time came when it was forced upon him. Pompey in his third consulship had procured the passing of a law by which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.

Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus. The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years before had cut to pieces the army of Crassus. Two legions, numbering twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the province, having attached to them between two and three thousand cavalry.

Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he received a levee of visitors—a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum, where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the civil war, which was to break out in the year after Cicero's return, were already gathering. At Brundisium, the port of embarkation for the East, he was detained partly by indisposition, partly by having to wait for one of his officials for nearly a fortnight. He reached Actium, in north-western Greece, on the 15th of June. He would have liked to proceed thence by land, being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having in view the rounding of the formidable promontory Leucate; but there was a difficulty about his retinue, without which he could not maintain the state which became a governor en route for his province. Eleven more days brought him to Athens. "So far," he writes from this place, "no expenditure of public or private money has been made on me or any of my retinue. I have convinced all my people that they must do their best for my character. So far all has gone admirably. The thing has been noticed, and is greatly praised by the Greeks." "Athens," he writes again, "delighted me much; the city with all its beauty, the great affection felt for you" (he is writing, it will be remembered, to Atticus, an old resident), "and the good feeling towards myself, much more, too, its philosophical studies." He was able before he left to do the people a service, rescuing from the hands of the builder the house of Epicurus, which the council of Areopagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as a modern town council, had doomed. Then he went on his way, grumbling at the hardships of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the winds, at the smallness of the local vessels. He reached Ephesus on July 22nd, without being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and found a vast number of persons who had come to pay their respects to him. All this was pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious to get back to Rome. Rome indeed to the ordinary Roman was—a few singular lovers of the country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted—as Paris is to the Parisian. "Make it absolutely certain," he writes to Atticus, "that I am to be in office for a year only; that there is not to be even an intercalated month." From Ephesus he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the cities of his province, to Laodicea, which he reached July 31st, exactly three months after starting[8]. The distance, directly measured, may be reckoned at something less than a thousand miles.

[Footnote 8: Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for accomplishing the journey.]

He seems to have found the province in a deplorable condition. "I staid," he writes, "three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, and as many at Synnas, and heard nothing except complaints that they could not pay the poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's property was sold; heard, I say, nothing but complaints and groans, and monstrous deeds which seemed to suit not a man but some horrid wild beast. Still it is some alleviation to these unhappy towns that they are put to no expense for me or for any of my followers. I will not receive the fodder which is my legal due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have accepted four beds and a roof over my head; often not even this, preferring to lodge in a tent. The consequence of all this is an incredible concourse of people from town and country anxious to see me. Good heavens! my very approach seems to make them revive, so completely do the justice, moderation, and clemency of your friend surpass all expectation." It must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccustomed to sound his own praises.

Usury was one of the chief causes of this widespread distress; and usury, as we have seen, was practiced even by Romans of good repute. We have seen an "honorable man," such as Brutus, exacting an interest of nearly fifty per cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of interest we do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he was entitled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such things went on under a governor who was really doing his best to be moderate and just, what was the condition of the provincials under ordinary rulers.

While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare." The whole army of this people was said to have crossed the Euphrates under the command of Pacorus, the king's son. The governor of Syria had not yet arrived. The second in command had shut himself up with all his troops in Antioch. Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which bordered the least defensible side of Cilicia, and took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. Next came news that Antioch was besieged. On hearing this he broke up his camp, crossed the Taurus range by forced marches, and occupied the passes into Syria. The Parthians raised the siege of Antioch, and suffered considerably at the hands of Cassius during their retreat.