The Life of Cicero, Volume One

by Anthony Trollope

It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time forward Cicero's political life—and his life now became altogether political—was governed by that of Pompey. That this was the case to a great extent is certain—to a sad extent, I think. The two men were of the same age; but Pompey had become a general among soldiers before Cicero had ceased to be a pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way toward the front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. He had been Consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down the pirates. In some sort the mantle of Sulla had fallen upon him. He was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. If, which I doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the forms in Rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit. For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, I think, look in vain to that Pompey whom history has handed down to us. But, of all matters which interested Cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. How should the great Rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? How should Rome be ruled so that Romans might be the masters of the world, in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms—as by valor, so by virtue? He, too, was an oligarch by strongest conviction. His mind could conceive nothing better than Consuls, Prætors, Censors, Tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation that the Consuls and the Prætors should be honest men. The condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would not see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown no egregious lust for personal power. His hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party. The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero indifferently calls them—meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order—believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him. The Senate did not want another Sulla; and yet it was Sulla who had reinstated the Senate. The Senate would have hindered Pompey, if it could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his command against Mithridates. But he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly when, seventeen years afterward, Cæsar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in his heart acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey lived. This, I think, was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we go on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political career were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker to the end.

Then came Cicero's Prætorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight Prætors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in the provinces. The "Prætor Urbanus" was confined to the city, and was regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or judges for special causes.

b.c. 66, ætat 41.

Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one, believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on political life. Though he had been Quæstor and Ædile, and was now Prætor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. He had had his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges—Judices; now it is to the people—Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds—although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the noblest for speech—nevertheless, not my own will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory which is open to any good man." It is only necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in question, that this command was given to Pompey in opposition to the Senate.

As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. It is one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity which have given to Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. I have sometimes attempted to make a short list of his chefs d'œuvre—of his tidbits, as I must say, if I am bound to express myself in English. The list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration in its integrity has always been included in it. My space hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I will give in an appendix[144] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is unknown. I venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible I have found it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. As to the beauty of the language I shall probably find no opponent. But a serious attack has been made on Cicero's character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on Pompey with a view of securing the great General's assistance in his candidature for the Consulship. Even Middleton repeats this accusation, and only faintly repels it. M. Du Rozoir, the French critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which was not dictated to Cicero the Prætor by his desire to become Consul, and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that of Pompey." The matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it not that Cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in Pompey. Pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. He had done infinitely valuable service to the State. He had already crushed the pirates. There was good ground for believing that in his hands the Roman arms would be more efficacious against Mithridates than in those of any other General. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true.

A man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has also strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? They who have blamed Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this occasion, seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life.

One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his Prætorship—that, namely, in defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus. As it is the longest, so is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all his speeches. But there are none perhaps which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps I should say the possibilities, of life among the Romans of that day. The accusation against Roscius Amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. The iniquities of Verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life. That any man should have lived as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred and fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. We must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity. The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during the latter days of the Republic.

b.c. 65, ætat 42.

In the year after he was Prætor—in the first of the two years between his Prætorship and Consulship, b.c. 65—he made a speech in defence of one Caius Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case occupied four days. This, with our interminable "causes célèbres," does not seem much to us, but Cicero's own speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two parts. This Cornelius had been Tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused his power when in office. He had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the Senate; especially by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. Cicero's speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius,[145] a commentator on certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline. Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by the Senate—by the rich men who desired office and the government of provinces. The law proposed for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too rigorous. The rancor of the Senate against Cornelius seems to have been due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by him—for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been usurped by the Senate. Caius Cornelius seems to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the Republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but—as had been the Gracchi—ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the Senate. A second Tribune, in the interest of the Senate, attempted to exercise an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty it was to read it was stopped; then Cornelius pushed aside the inferior officer, and read it himself. There was much violence, and the men who brought the accusation about Cornelius—two brothers named Cominii—had to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses.

This took place when Cicero was standing for the Prætorship, and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his Prætorship Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made.