The Life of Cicero, Volume One

by Anthony Trollope

Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought in a bill directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"—that it should be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law when passed forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of Rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. It is evident, from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not, that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest Cæsar and Pompey would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. We are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived that Autronius whom he had refused to defend. Autronius had been convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a Catilinarian conspirator, had been in truth on Cæsar's side. Nor were geographical facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and what were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily. It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the Proconsular Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing Cæsar. Then he came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which travellers generally went from Italy to the East. He had determined to leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together. And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him.[280] Atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of an uncle. We do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made by Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his property, for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart. Pecuniary losses never weighed heavily with him.

As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium friends were very kind to him, in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech which he made five years afterward on behalf of his friend C. Plancius he explains the debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in his exile had been very great. He commences his story of the goodness of Plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to Brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to Dyrrachium. There were many schemes running in his head at this time. At one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into Asia, and to remain for a while at Cyzicum. This idea he expresses in a letter to his wife written from Brundisium. Then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a condition: "O me perditum, O me afflictum;"[281] exclamations which it is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "How am I to ask you to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body and in spirit. I cannot ask you! Must I then live without you? It must be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you must look to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as I fear, the thing is done, then come to me. If I can have you I shall not be altogether destroyed." No doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans have written prettily about women: it was common for Romans to do so. Catullus desires from Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of Libya. Horace swears that he would perish for Chloe if Chloe might be left alive. "When I am dying," says Tibullus to Delia, "may I be gazing at you; may my last grasp hold your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life. "Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The language in each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.

Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed, and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the Consuls themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. The country villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close by Cicero's Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,[282] pleading for the restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman aristocrats.

He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by Plancius, who was Quæstor in these parts, and who came down to Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so. Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for some months.

The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but a suit of armor to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a warrior with his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an impressive object. If we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. Chance has given us Cicero in his night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a garment—such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody is then brought in to look at us.

There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. The words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did you think that I did not write because I am angry, or that I did not wish to see you? I angry with you! But I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] Then he heaps blame on his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him. What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue to his promises because of his bond with Cæsar. It is probable that Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey. Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. It did not suit his purposes to retain his enmities. Had there been a possibility of reconciling Antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the Philippics, he would have availed himself of it.

Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where Atticus possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. He remained at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dyrrachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and Cæsar had gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without Cæsar to direct him, found the arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero, it had been necessary to Cæsar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome; and this had been managed by means of Clodius, who had a bill passed for the honorable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had found himself obliged to go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the Opposition to Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt, or an alleged attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and there was street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or pretended to be besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says Mommsen, speaking of the state of Rome when Cæsar was gone, Cicero banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] There was, at any rate, quarrelling between Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon himself, in revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to repudiate even Cæsar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to which Cæsar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority, stood highest in Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for either of them.

There is a little story which must be repeated, as against Cicero, in reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all records of his life. Were I to omit the little story, it would seem as though I shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his credit. He had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been severe upon the elder Curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little who was the object or what the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a mischief with the Curios and the friends of the Curios. The authorship was only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? "As it is written," says Cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it not be shown not to have been mine?"[285] Had Cicero possessed all the Christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must make the most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it leniently.

Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to bring him back, with which he was not altogether contented. He argues the matter repeatedly with Atticus, not always in the best temper. His friends at Rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he would still have to finish his days abroad. Atticus, in his way to Epirus, visits him at Dyrrachium, and he is sure that Atticus would not have left Rome but that the affair was hopeless. The reader of the correspondence is certainly led to the belief that Atticus must have been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that Atticus would not have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and true. The Consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned his enmity. Clodius was no longer Tribune, and Pompey had been brought to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there was still life in Clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after month, while Cicero still lingered at Dyrrachium, waiting till a bill should have been passed by the people. Pompey, who was never whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people would be necessary. The bill at last was voted, on the 14th of August, and Cicero, who knew well what was being done at Rome, passed over from Dyrrachium to Brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four months absent from Rome. During the year b.c. 57, up to the time of his return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us—two very short notes to Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come over on the authority of a decree of the Senate, without waiting for a law. In the second he falls again into despair, declaring that everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid, telling the Consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give the aid very cordially.

It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature during his banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. It should, however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. As to his essays, including what we call his Philosophy and his Rhetoric, they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. He translates and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who rarely worked without the use of a library. When I think how impossible it would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of Cicero's life without a crowd of books within reach of my hand, I can easily understand why Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. It has been remarked also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with the style of his happier days." I will not for a moment put my judgment in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell—but I should myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus and Trebatius; and very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make such work live to posterity—a grace of loose expression which may indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.