Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader will not be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own dispraise must be true. If a man praise himself for honor, probity, industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. It has not been presumed that Cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. He was honest and industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. So much is acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of himself is false. If a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been attained have been seen and valued. A man will not sorrowfully regret that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to the glory of the first. But Cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken as proof against himself. All manner of evil is argued against him from his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity. On the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to Atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted as clap-traps.
No one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as Cicero, and naturally. In these modern days we have contemporary records as to prominent persons. Of the characters of those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight have we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know every turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no Boswell. But here is a man belonging to those past ages of which I speak who was his own Boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters were invented, no records have ever been written in language more clear or more attractive. It is natural that we should judge out of his own mouth one who left so many more words behind him than did any one else, particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. And all that he wrote was after some fashion about himself. His letters, like all letters, are personal to himself. His speeches are words coming out of his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally engaged and interested. His rhetoric consists of lessons given by himself about his own art, founded on his own experience, and on his own observation of others. His so-called philosophy gives us the workings of his own mind. No one has ever told the world so much about another person as Cicero has told the world about Cicero. Boswell pales before him as a chronicler of minutiæ. It may be a matter of small interest now to the bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted with a Roman who was never one of the world's conquerors. It may be well for those who desire to know simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. But if it be worth while to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to learn the truth about it.
"Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" Who does not understand the truth of these words! It is always out of a man's mouth that you may most surely condemn him. Cicero wrote many books, and all about himself. He has been honored very highly. Middleton, in the preface to his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy quotes the opinion of Erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." This was the effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. But then also has Cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. From Dio Cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after Christ, down to Mr. Froude, whose Cæsar has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next after his death—with the testimony of such a man as Erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his biographer, Middleton. The sanctity of his heart and morals! It was thus that Erasmus was struck in reading his works. It is a feeling of that kind, I profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand—a feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. It has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals.
Of the speeches made by Cicero as advocate after his Quæstorship, and before those made in the accusation of Verres, we have the fragment only of the second of two spoken in defence of Marcus Tullius Decula, whom we may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. He does not avow any relationship. "What," he says, in opening his argument, "does it become me, a Tullius, to do for this other Tullius, a man not only my friend, but my namesake?" It was a matter of no great importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to "recuperatores," judges chosen by the Prætor, and who acted in lighter cases.
Chapter VI.
VERRES.
There are six episodes, or, as I may say, divisions in the life of Cicero to which special interest attaches itself. The first is the accusation against Verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out of the city. The second is his Consulship, in which he drove Catiline out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegally. The third was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of Rome. The fourth was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a province. The fifth was Cæsar's passing of the Rubicon, the battle of Pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to Cæsar. The last was his internecine combat with Antony, which produced the Philippics, and that memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into flames the expiring embers of the Republic. The literary work with which we are acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his whole life. I have already told the story of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, having taken it from his own words. From that time onward he wrote continually; but the fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of his life.
We have now come to the first of those episodes, and I have to tell the way in which Cicero struggled with Verres, and how he conquered him. In 74 b.c. Verres was Prætor in Rome. At that period of the Republic there were eight Prætors elected annually, two of whom remained in the city, whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the armies of the Empire. In the next year, 73 b.c., Verres went in due course to Sicily with proconsular or proprætorial authority, having the government assigned to him for twelve months. This was usual and constitutional, but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional, that this period should be prolonged. In the case of Verres it was prolonged, so that he should hold the office for three years. He had gone through the other offices of the State, having been Quæstor in Asia and Ædile afterward in Rome, to the great misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling, as we shall learn by-and-by. The facts are mentioned here to show that the great offices of the Republic were open to such a man as Verres. They were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be to one less iniquitous—to an honest man or a scrupulous one, or to one partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. If you send a dog into a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find one that will tear up as many truffles as possible. A proconsular robber did not rob only for himself; he robbed more or less for all Rome. Verres boasted that with his three years of rule he could bring enough home to bribe all the judges, secure all the best advocates, and live in splendid opulence for the rest of his life. What a dog he was to send into a wood for truffles!