A Roman historian writing in the reign of Tiberius has thought it worth his while to remind us that a great glory was added to Cicero's consular year by the birth of Augustus—him who afterward became Augustus Cæsar.[211] Had a Roman been living now, he might be excused for saying that it was an honor to Augustus to have been born in the year of Cicero's Consulship.
Chapter X.
CICERO AFTER HIS CONSULSHIP.
The idea that the great Consul had done illegally in putting citizens to death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. It must be remembered that a decree of the Senate had no power as a law. The laws could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. Such was the constitution of the Republic. Further on, when Cicero will appeal as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed, I shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the Consulship. The reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many enemies. It had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be endured. When a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. It was customary for a Consul when he vacated his office to make some valedictory speech. Cicero was probably expected to take full advantage of the opportunity. From other words which have come from him, on other occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose such a speech as he might have spoken. But there were those who were already sick of hearing him say that Rome had been saved by his intelligence and courage. We can imagine what Cæsar might have said among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory Consul. As it was, Metellus Nepos, one of the Tribunes, forbade the retiring officer to do more than take the oath usual on leaving office, because he had illegally inflicted death upon Roman citizens. Metellus, as Tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. We hear from Cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. He swore, on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the form common to Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during his Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.[212] We have the story only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[213] That it was so we may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that Metellus was acting in agreement with Cæsar, and also in accord with the understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with his army in the East. This Tribune had been till lately an officer under Pompey, and went into office together with Cæsar, who in that year became Prætor. This, probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward formed the first Triumvirate, b.c. 60. It was certainly now, in the year succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that Cæsar, as Prætor, began his great career.
b.c. 62, ætat 45.
It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire must obtain it and keep it by illegal means. He had probably adhered to Catiline's first conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. It is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent to the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. But, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Cæsar seems to have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to indulge. Mr. Forsyth expresses an opinion that Cæsar, till he crossed the Rubicon after his ten years' fighting in Gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the Constitution. Probably not; nor even then. It may be doubted whether Cæsar ever spoke to himself of overthrowing the Constitution. He came gradually to see that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by violent action. He had before him the examples of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. There was the example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times, had been banished as was Verres, or killed as was Catiline. We can easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. Both were exercised when he consented to be absent from Rome, and almost from Italy, during the ten years of the Gallic wars. But this, I think, is certain, that from the time in which his name appears prominent—from the period, namely, of the Catiline conspiracy—he had determined not to overthrow the Constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the day, as not to be overthrown himself.
Of what nature was the intercourse between him and Pompey when Pompey was still absent in the East we do not know; but we can hardly doubt that some understanding had begun to exist. Of this Cicero was probably aware. Pompey was the man whom Cicero chose to regard as his party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of Rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his party. It had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the State, before he took up with politics. That this was so I have shown by quoting the opening words of his speech Pro Lege Manilia. Proud as he was of the doings of his Consulship, he was still too new to his work to think that thus he could claim to stand first. Nor did his ambition lead him in that direction. He desired personal praise rather than personal power. When in the last Catiline oration to the people he speaks of the great men of the Republic—of the two Scipios, and of Paulus Æmilius and of Marius—he adds the name of Pompey to these names; or gives, rather, to Pompey greater glory than to any of them; "Anteponatur omnibus Pompeius." This was but a few days before Metellus as Tribune had stopped him in his speech—at the instigation, probably, of Cæsar, and in furtherance of Pompey's views. Pompey and Cæsar could agree, at any rate, in this—that they did not want such a one as Cicero to interfere with them.
All of which Cicero himself perceived. The specially rich province of Macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on quitting the Consulship, he made over to Antony—no doubt as a bribe, as with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep that other from kicking over the traces. Then Gaul became his province, as allotted—Cisalpine Gaul, as northern Italy was then called; a province less rich in plunder and pay than Macedonia. But Cicero wanted no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos, who, having been Prætor when he himself was Consul, was entitled to a government. This too was a political bribe. If courtesy to Cæsar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids. It all availed nothing. From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. The source of this was that Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all other Romans.