b.c. 52, ætat. 55.
The next on the list is the De Optimo Genere Oratorum—a preliminary treatise written as a preface to a translation made by himself on the speeches of Æschines and Demosthenes against Ctesiphon in the matter of the Golden Crown. We have not the translations; but we have his reasons for translating them—namely, that he might enable readers only of Latin to judge how far Æschines and Demosthenes had deserved, either of them, the title of "Optimus orator." For they had spoken against each other with the most bitter abuse, and each spokesman was struggling for the suppression of the other. Each was speaking with the knowledge that, if vanquished, he would have to pay heavily in his person and his pocket. He gives the palm to neither; but he tells his readers that the Attic mode of speaking is gone—of which, indeed, the glory is known, but the nature unknown. But he explains that he has not translated the two pieces verbatim, as an interpreter, but in the spirit, as an orator, using the same figures, the same forms, the same strength of ideas. We have to acknowledge that we do not see how in this way he can have done aught toward answering the question De Optimo Genere Oratorum; but he may perhaps have done something to prove that he himself, in his oratory, had preserved the best known Grecian forms.
The De Partitione Oratoria Dialogus follows, of which we have already spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year of his life. It was the year in which he had divorced Terentia, and had been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. But he was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these instructions, in the form of questions and answers, on the art of speaking.
We next come to the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus, a dialogue supposed to have been held between Brutus, Atticus, and Cicero himself. It is a continuation of the three books De Oratore. He there describes what is essential to the character of the optimus orator. He here looks after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and bringing before the reader's eyes all Greek and Roman orators, till he comes down to Cicero. I cannot but say that the feeling is left with the reader that the orator optimus has been reached at last in Cicero's mind.
We must remark, in the first place, that he has chosen for his friend, to whom to address his piece, one whom he has only known late in life. It was when he went to Cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years old, that he was thrown by Atticus into close relations with Brutus. Now he has, next to Atticus, become his most chosen friend. His three next treatises, the Orator, the Tusculan Disquisitions, and the De Natura Deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of Brutus. And yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less likely to be brought together by their political ambition. The one compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing that things were evil, and contented to accept those that were the least so; the other strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were bad! And Brutus, too, had told Cicero that his lessons in oratory were not to his taste. There was a something about Cicero which enabled him to endure such rebukes while there was aught worthy of praise in the man who rebuked him; and it was to this something that his devotion was paid. We know that Brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed of a Roman nobleman, and we know also that Cicero was not. Cicero could keep his hands clean with thousands around him, and with thousands going into the pockets of other men. He could see the vice of Brutus, but he did not hate it. He must have borne, too, with something from Atticus of the same kind. The truth seems to me that to Cicero there was no horror as to greediness, except to greed in himself. He could hate it for himself and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing, or rackets, or the turf. But he must have known that Brutus had made himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his heart in consequence. In no other way can I explain to myself the feeling of subservience to Brutus which Cicero so generally expresses: it exists in none other of his relations of life. Political subservience there is to Pompey; but he can laugh at Pompey, and did not dedicate to him his treatises De Republica, or De Legibus. To Appius Claudius he was very courteous. He thought badly of Appius, but hardly worse than he ought to have done of Brutus. Of Cælius he was fond, of Curio, of Trebatius. To Pætus he was attached, to Sulpicius and Marcellus. But to none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to Brutus. I could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that the "ipsissima verba" have not probably come to us. But I cannot say that the name of Brutus does not stand there, written in imperishable letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. If this be so, Brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of Cicero. All ages since have felt it, and Shakespeare has told us that "Brutus is an honorable man."
There is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise. Cicero in it tells us of Cato and of Marcellus, and therefore we must suppose that it was written when they were alive. Indeed, he so compares Cæsar and Marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been alive. But Cato and Marcellus died b.c. 46, and how then could the treatise have been written in b.c. 45? It should, however, be remembered that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. But the time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the discourse. He begins by telling us how he had grieved when, on his return from Cilicia, he had heard that Hortensius was dead. Hortensius had brought him into the College of Augurs, and had there stood to him in the place of a parent. And he had lamented Hortensius also on behalf of Rome. Hortensius had gone. Then he goes on to say that, as he was thinking of these things while walking in his portico, Brutus had come to him and Pomponius Atticus. He says how pleasantly they greeted each other; and then gradually they go on, till Atticus asks him to renew the story he had before been telling. "In truth, Pomponius," he says, "I remember it right well, for then it was that I heard Deiotarus, that truest and best of kings, defended by our Brutus here," Deiotarus was that Eastern king whose defence by Cicero himself I have mentioned when speaking of his pleadings before Cæsar. Then he rushes off into his subject, and discusses at length his favorite idea. It must still be remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of lessons in oratory. There is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this treatise. Cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his lessons. He says of Eloquence that "she is the companion of peace, and the associate of ease."[258] He tells us of Cato, that he had read a hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had "found them all replete with bright words and with great matter; * * * and yet no one in his days read Cato's speeches!"[259] This, of course, was Cato the elder. Then we hear how Demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything: it was the first thing, the second, and the third. "For there is nothing like it to penetrate into the minds of the audience—to teach them, to turn them, and to form them, till the orator shall be made to appear exactly that which he wishes to be thought.[260] * * * The man who listens to one who is an orator believes what he hears; he thinks everything to be true, he approves of all."[261] No doubt! In his power of describing the orator and his work Cicero is perfect; but he does not describe the man doing that which he is bound to do by his duty.
He tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates—which certainly is true.[262] Further on he comes to Cæsar, and praises him very highly. But here Brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the Commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture."[263] They are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. Then he names Hortensius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic; but he reserves his greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy, which he is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases, so as to show that he himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made himself, in truth, the best orator of them all.[264]
Perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of the touch. It is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. If read without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind the impression that though now and again there had come upon him the memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the State to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent; nevertheless, it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone well with him. He writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at his heart. No one would have thought that in this very year he was perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife; that Cæsar had made good his ground, and, having been Dictator last year, had for the third time become Consul; that he knew himself to be living, as a favor, by Cæsar's pleasure. Cicero seems to have written his Brutus as one might write who was well at ease. Let a man have taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. What is it to him that politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? He has not gone into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. Though things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger, none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with Cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered Pompey and have thought of Cæsar. And though Cæsar was courteous to him, the courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled. Cæsar was Consul; and Cicero, who remembered how majestically he had walked when a few years since he was Consul by the real votes of the people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close—in its very final words—he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine that something has been lost, or that more might have been added.
The last of these works is the Orator. We have passed in review the De Oratore, and the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus. We have now to consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece of the three. Such seems to have become the general idea of those scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. He himself says that there are in all five books. There are the three De Oratore; the fourth is called the Brutus, and the fifth the Orator.[265] In some MSS. this work has a second title, De Optimo Genere Dicendi—as though the five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding work is on the best mode of oratory. Readers who may wish to carry these in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from Æschines and Demosthenes. The purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of romance may be produced—the perfect orator.
Here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume, whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. But here, in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his discourse. He distinguishes three styles of eloquence—the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties to perform. He must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. He explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that eloquence depends wholly on elocution. He tells us that the philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and work of the Forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. Then he teaches us how each of the three styles should be treated—the simple, the moderate, and the sublime—and shows us how to vary them. He informs us what laws we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what metaphors. He then considers the words we should use, and makes us understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of sound. In this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a Roman, had to deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our British ears; and I am not sure that we can follow him with rapture into all the mysteries of the Pœon, the Dochmius, and the Dichoreus. What he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder at the elaborate study given to it; but I doubt whether we here do not read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our lives.