The Life of Cicero, Volume II.

by Anthony Trollope

Then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken in hand the Phænomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar: "The Twins;" "The Bull;" "The Great Bear;" "Cassiopeia;" "The Waterman;" "The Scorpion;" these and many others are made to come forward in hexameters—and by Cicero in Latin, as by Aratus in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead—but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long. The lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world.

Farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that age, shows an accurate knowledge. But what has it to do with the nature of the gods? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge—just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life."[297]

The third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant raillery against Epicurus. Cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty with Epicurus. Epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal gods. His gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. But from Balbus, the Stoic, they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. In all these discourses it seems that the poor Epicureans are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. But Cotta continues, and tells many stories of the gods. He is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the MS., and his arguments have come to us unfinished. "It is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. In the same way I do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction."[298] It is thus that is discussed the nature of the gods in this work of Cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time.

The De Natura Deorum is followed by two books, De Divinatione, and by the fragment of one, De Fato. Divination is the science of predicting events. By "Fatum" Cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. The three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the State to foster observances, and even to punish their non-observance—for the benefit of the whole—even though they might not be in themselves true. He is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition—and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the flight ofbirds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. In such a theory as this put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. I cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to assert the honesty of Cicero. I can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. If any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include Cicero with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not. It seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. I distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. I will take our Protestant Church of England religion and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. When did Sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the Word of God, and when again did they cease to be so? If it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. It has never begun! It has never wavered! And there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. In the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? Does not the Church admit prayers for change of weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it. Or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superstition of the multitude. I am not saying this as against the religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which Cicero also required when he wrote as follows: "Former ages erred in much which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. But the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the State. Our Consuls, Claudius and Junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily."[299] No stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the State. There will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail. Though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. But they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken.

Such, I think, was the reasoning within Cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. In the first he encounters his brother Quintus at his Tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of religion. Quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the auspices. He is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. In this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. "Stare super vias antiquas," is the motto of Quintus Cicero. Then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. There is the one which he calls "Ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. The soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. He is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a Friday. He knows—or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows—that ships that have put to sea on Friday have generally gone to the bottom. He therefore predicts against the going to sea. Although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false. That can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on Friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others—a process which requires the close observations of science to make good. That is Art. Then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed—one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit—as the Sibyl, or Epimenides of Crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. Quintus explains as to these that the god does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use them.[300]

He tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. The book so becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry—some by others and some by Cicero. Here are given those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon which I have ventured to call the best amid the nine versions brought forward.[301]

We cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise: "I often ask myself and turn in my mind how best I may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which I should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the State; and nothing better has occurred to me than that I should make known the way of studying the best arts—which indeed I think I have now done in various books."[302] Then he recapitulates them. There is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to Hortensius, now lost. Then in the four books of the Academics he had put forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest—meaning the new Academy. After that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. The Tusculan Inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well. Having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. We cannot but sympathize with him because we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. Brutus believed it, and Cato, and that Velleius, and that Balbus, and that Cotta. Or if perchance any of them did not, they lived, and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did. The example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. Amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened.

"Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes, Intulit agresti Latio."[303]

Here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. "My fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the Republic fell into the power of one man I neither hid myself nor did I desert them; nor did I idly weep, or carry myself as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that I should have to be ashamed of what I had done myself. For I had learned this lesson from the philosophy of Plato—that there are certain changes in public affairs. They will be governed now by the leaders of the State, then by the people, sometimes by a single man."[304] This is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. He knows that he is preaching only to a few—in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. His language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. And we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother as at the gods themselves—they are so clearly wooden gods—though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the State that they shall be received. He declares that, in accordance with the theory of his brother—meaning thereby the Stoics—"it is necessary that they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men."[305] It is playful, argumentative, and satirical. At last he proposes to leave the subject. Socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. Quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse De Divinatione is brought to an end.

Of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it. It is the desire of Cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs which men call Life, it matters little whether there be a Destiny or not. Things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. What is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? All this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of thankfulness that all these books of Chrysippus of which he tells us, are not still existent to be investigated.