In his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and allusions are made as to his expected triumph. He is grateful to Cælius as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his confidence that all the rest will follow.[112] He is so determined to hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers who may be least unfit to hold it. His brother Quintus was his lieutenant, but if he left Quintus people would say of him that in doing so he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. At last he determines to intrust it to a young Quæstor named C. Cælius—no close connection of his friend Cælius, as Cicero finds himself obliged to apologize for the selection to his friend. "Young, you will say. No doubt; but he had been elected Quæstor, and is of noble birth."[113] So he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter.

Cicero tells us afterward, when at Athens on his way home, that he had considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder which was regarded by them as their perquisite. He had boasted much of their conduct—having taken exception to one Tullius, who had demanded only a little hay and a little wood. But now there came to be pickings—savings out of his own proconsular expenses—to part with which at the last moment was too hard upon them. "How difficult is virtue," he exclaims; "how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it when it is not felt!"[114] There had been a certain sum saved which he had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury. But the satellites were all in arms: "Ingemuit nostra cohors." Nevertheless, he disregarded the "cohort," and paid the money into the treasury.

As to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise to some most amusing literary vituperation. The care with which MSS. have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred thousand sesterces—thus expressed, "H.S.X."—amounting to something over £8000. We hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that Cicero realized out of his own legitimate allowance in Cilicia a profit of about £18,000; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself aggrieved in losing £8000 which they expected to have divided among them. Middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the X to be CIɔ or M—a thousand instead of ten—and quotes the sum saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight thousand pounds. We who have had so much done for us by intervening research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on Middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labors by infinite toil on his part; but De Quincey, who has been very rancorous against Cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of Cicero's great biographer. "Conyers Middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." The cause of this was that Middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, and a Cambridge man, differed from other Cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. Bentley was his great opponent—and as Bentley was a stout fighter, so was Middleton. Middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because Bentley was the stronger combatant; but he seems to have stood in good repute all his life, and when advanced in years was appointed Professor of Natural History. He is known to us, however, only as the biographer of Cicero. Of this book, Monk, the biographer of Middleton's great opponent, Bentley, declares that, "for elegance, purity, and ease, Middleton's style yields to none in the English language." De Quincey says of it that, by "weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic"—meaning, I suppose, that the work altogether wants dignity of composition. This charge is, to my thinking, so absolutely contrary to the fact, that it needs only to be named to be confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. De Quincey pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at Caernarvon. Middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "It is in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good-sense and thoughtfulness that I regard it as capital." That is De Quincey's estimate of Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a laborer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said that no English library should be without it.

The last letter written by Cicero in Asia was sent to Atticus from Ephesus the day before he started—on the last day, namely, of September. He had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry him and his suite. News here reached him from Rome—news which was not true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. In a letter to Atticus he speaks of "miros terrores Cæsarianos"[115]—"dreadful reports as to outrages by Cæsar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army; that he had with him the Prætors elect, one of the Tribunes, and even one of the Consuls; and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were the first tidings presaging Pharsalia. Then he adds a word about his triumph. "Tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends desire me to seek. I should not care about it if Bibulus were not also asking for a triumph—Bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors as long as there was an enemy in Syria!" Thus Cicero had to suffer untold misery because Bibulus was asking for a triumph!

Chapter V.

THE WAR BETWEEN CÆSAR AND POMPEY.

What official arrangements were made for Proconsuls in regard to money, when in command of a province, we do not know. The amounts allowed were no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the Roman governor looked as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. The means of plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an accusation. We remember how Verres calculated that he could divide his spoil into three sufficient parts—one for the lawyers, one for the judges, so as to insure his acquittal, and then one for himself. This plundering was common—so common as to have become almost a matter of course; but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to exile, and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. No accusation was made against Cicero. As to others there were constantly threats, if no more than threats. Cicero was not even threatened. But he had saved out of his legitimate expenses a sum equal to £18,000 of our money—from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a Roman governor. The expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands, and many of those of his army. Any saving effected would therefore be to his own personal advantage. On this money he counted much when his affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join Pompey at Pharsalia in the following year. He then begged Atticus to arrange his matters for him, telling him that the sum was at his call in Asia,[116] but he never saw it again: Pompey borrowed it—or took it; and when Pompey had been killed the money was of course gone.

His brother Quintus was with him in Cilicia, but of his brother's doings there he says little or nothing. We have no letters from him during the period to his wife or daughter. The latter was married to her third husband, Dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from Cicero, but not in accordance with his advice. He had purposed to accept a proposition for her hand made to him by Tiberius Nero, the young Roman nobleman who afterward married that Livia whom Augustus took away from him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her himself, and who thus became the father of the Emperor Tiberius. It is worthy of remark at the same time that the Emperor Tiberius married the granddaughter of Atticus. Cicero when in Cilicia had wished that Nero should be chosen; but the family at home was taken by the fashion and manners of Dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third husband when she was yet only twenty-five. This marriage, like the others, was unfortunate. Dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born, agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. He was a Roman nobleman of the type then common—heartless, extravagant, and greedy. His country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. Cicero tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and strength of the aristocratic party to which Dolabella belonged.