It was not yet the custom to confine young men to the schools of the rhetoricians, and to be contented with exercising them in imaginary cases. As soon as they had assumed the toga virilis, that is, when they were about sixteen years old, no time was lost in taking them to some statesman of reputation, whom they did not leave. Admitted to his most intimate society, they listened to his conversations with his friends, his disputations with his adversaries; they saw him prepare himself in silence for the great battles of eloquence, they followed him into the basilicas and the Forum, they heard him pleading causes or speaking to the assembled people, and when they had become capable of speaking themselves, they made their first appearance at his side and under his patronage. Tacitus much regrets this manly education, which, placing a young man under the conditions of reality instead of retaining him among the fictions of rhetoric, gave him a taste for real and natural eloquence which strengthened him, by throwing him from the first into the midst of real contests, and, according to his expression, taught him war on the field of battle, pugnare in praelio discebant.[[179]] This education, however, had its dangers. It taught him things that it is better to be ignorant of for a long time, it familiarized him with the scandalous and corrupt sights that public life usually offers, it gave him a too rapid maturity and inflamed him with precocious ambition. Must not a young man of sixteen, who thus lived in intimacy with old and unscrupulous statesmen, and to whom were laid bare without precaution the basest manœuvres of parties, must he not have lost something of the generosity and sensitiveness of his age? Was it not to be feared that this corrupting intercourse might end by giving him a taste for intrigue, for the worship of success, an unbridled love of power, the desire to attain a high position quickly and by any means, and as, generally, the worst means are also the quickest, the temptation to employ them by preference? This is what happened to Caelius. For three entire years, three honest and laborious years, he did not leave Cicero; but he perceived at length, that a young man like himself, who had his political fortune to make, would gain more with those who wished to destroy the government than with him who wished to preserve it, and he abandoned Cicero to attach himself to Catiline. The change was sudden, but Caelius never took the trouble to delay about these transitions. Henceforth, we can easily understand, his life took another turn; he became a seditious and turbulent man, whose biting speech in the Forum and violence in the Campus Martius were dreaded. At the election of a pontif he struck a senator. When he was appointed quaestor, every one accused him of having bought his votes. Not content with disturbing the comitia at Rome, we see him stirring up a popular tumult at Naples, we do not know why. At the same time, he did not neglect his pleasures. The debaucheries of those noisy young men of whom he was one, continually disturbed the public peace. It is said that the streets of Rome were unsafe when they returned at night from their suppers, and that, after the manner of those giddy fellows that Plautus and Terence depict, they molested honest women whom they met on their road. All these follies did not go on without great expense, and the father of Caelius, although he was rich, was not of a temper to be always paying. No doubt at this time the honest merchant of Puteoli must have regretted his ambition for his son, and thought it cost him dear to have wished to make him a politician. Caelius, on his side, was not of a temper to put up with reprimands easily; he left the paternal house, and, under pretext of being nearer the Forum and business, rented a lodging on the Palatine, in the house of the famous tribune Appius Clodius, for ten thousand sesterces (£80). This was an important event in his life, for it was there that he became acquainted with Clodia.
If we relied on the evidence of Cicero we should have a very bad opinion of Clodia; but Cicero is a too partial witness to be altogether just, and the furious hatred he bore the brother renders him very much suspected when he speaks of the sister. Moreover, he partly contradicts himself when he tells us she had kept up relations with very honourable people, which would be very surprising if it were true that she had committed all the crimes that he lays to her charge. It is very difficult to believe that persons of consideration in the republic, and persons who were careful of their reputation, would have continued to see her if they had thought that she had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of her brothers. Cicero, however, did not invent this; it was public rumour that he complacently repeated. Many people in Rome believed it, Clodia’s enemies liked to repeat it, and mischievous verses were made about it which were written upon every wall. Clodia’s reputation was, then, very bad, and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding some exaggerations, she partly deserved it. There is nothing to show that she killed her husband, as she was accused of doing; these accusations of poisoning were then widespread, and were accepted with incredible levity, but she had made him very unhappy during his life, and did not appear very much grieved at his death. It is doubtful, also, whatever Cicero may assert, that her brothers were her lovers, but it is unfortunately too certain that she had a good many others. The sole excuse that can be pleaded for her is that this way of living was then very general. Scandals of this kind had never been more common among the great ladies of Rome. Roman society was passing through a crisis whose causes, which go back a long way, deserve to be considered. We must say a few words about them, in order to account for the grave injury that public morals had received.
In a country where the family was respected as it was at Rome, women could not fail to have much importance. It was impossible that their influence, which was already so great within the house, should not attempt to show itself outside, and the honourable place they held in private life must one day tempt them to invade public life also. The ancient Romans, so jealous of their authority, had the consciousness of this danger, and neglected nothing in order to defend themselves against it. We know how they affected to treat women; there was no sort of unkind remarks they did not make about them; they got them attacked on the stage and mocked them even in their political speeches:[[180]] but we must not mistake the sense of these railleries and pity the objects of them too much. They are only attacked thus because they are feared, and all these pleasantries are not so much insults as precautions. These rough soldiers, these rude peasants, have learnt, in living with them, how subtle and enterprising their minds are, and in how many ways they are more capable than themselves; consequently they take a good deal of trouble to confine them to their households, and even that does not suffice to reassure them; in the household itself they must be subjugated and bridled. They affect to think and to say that they are weak and untamed beings (indomita animalia), incapable of governing themselves alone, and they hasten to provide for their management. They are kept, under this pretext, in a continual state of tutelage; they are always “under the hand” of their father, brother, or husband; they cannot sell, buy, trade, or do anything without a council to assist them: in acting thus the men pretend they are protecting them, in reality it is themselves they are protecting against them. Cato, their great enemy, ingenuously admits it in a moment of frankness. “Remember,” Livy makes him say à propos of the lex Oppia, “all those regulations our ancestors made to subject wives to their husbands. Shackled as they are, you have trouble to manage them. What will happen if you give them their liberty, if you allow them to enjoy the same rights as yourselves? Do you think you will then be their masters? The day they become your equals they will be your superiors.”[[181]] This day arrived just about the time of which we are treating. In the midst of the weakening of ancient usages, the laws against women were not more respected than others. Cicero says that the gallant lawyers furnished them with ingenious means to free themselves from these laws without appearing to violate them.[[182]] At the same time, men were accustomed to see them take a more important place in society, and to recognize their influence in the government of the republic. Almost all the politicians of that time are governed by their wives or by their mistresses, thus the innumerable gallantries of Caesar must have passed in the eyes of many people, as later those of Augustus did, for profound policy, as it might be supposed that he only sought to please the women in order to lead their husbands.
Thus, by the abolition of the old laws, and by the alteration of ancient maxims, women had become free. Now, it is to be remarked that, in general, the first use made of regained liberty is to abuse it. We cannot enjoy quietly the rights of which we have been long deprived, and the first moments of liberty bring a sort of intoxication that it is difficult to check. This is what happened to the Roman society of that time, and all these irregularities that we notice in the conduct of women then are partly explained by the allurements and intoxication of their new liberty. Those who love money, like Terentia, Cicero’s wife, hasten to take advantage of the right of disposing of their fortune, that has been restored to them, they associate themselves with freedmen and agents for doubtful gains, rob their husbands without scruple, and throw themselves into speculations and trade, to which they bring, together with an almost incredible rapacity, that taste for small savings and economies which is natural to them. Those who prefer pleasure to wealth give themselves up to all pleasures with a passionate eagerness. The less bold take advantage of the facilities of divorce to pass from one amour to another under cover of the law. Others do not even take this trouble, and impudently flaunt their scandalous behaviour.
Clodia was one of the latter; but among all her vices, which she took no care to hide, we are forced to recognize in her some good qualities. She was not grasping; her purse was open to her friends, and Caelius was not ashamed to dip into it. She liked clever men, and attracted them to her house. At one time she wished to persuade Cicero, whose talents she much admired, to give up his foolish Terentia for her and to marry her; but Terentia, who suspected it, succeeded in mortally embroiling them. An old scholiast says that she danced better than it was proper for an honest woman to do.[[183]] This was not the only art for which she had a taste, and it has been thought possible to infer from a passage of Cicero that she also wrote verses.[[184]] To cultivate letters, to seek out clever men, to like refined and elegant pleasures, does not seem at first sight to be blameworthy; on the contrary, these are among us the qualities that a woman of society is obliged to possess or to feign. They thought otherwise at Rome, and, as the courtesans alone had then the privilege of following this free and accomplished life, every woman who sought this ran the risk of being confounded with them, and of being treated with the same rigour by public opinion; but Clodia did not care for public opinion. She brought into her private conduct, into her affections, the same passionateness and the same ardour that her brother did into public life. Ready for all excesses, and not blushing to avow them, loving and hating furiously, incapable of self-control, and hating all restraint, she did not belie that great and haughty family from which she was descended, and even in her vices her blood was recognized. In a country where so much respect was shown for ancient customs, in that classic land of decorum (the thing and the word are Roman), Clodia took pleasure in shocking the established customs; she went out publicly with her male friends; she was accompanied by them in the public gardens or on the Appian road, constructed by her great ancestor. She boldly accosted people whom she knew; instead of timidly lowering her eyes as a well-brought-up matron should have done, she dared to speak to them (Cicero says that she even kissed them sometimes), and invited them to her repasts. Grave, staid, and rigid people were indignant; but the young, whom this freedom did not displease, were charmed, and went to dine with Clodia.[[185]]
Caelius was at that time one of the fashionable young men of Rome. Already he had a great reputation as an orator. He was dreaded for the satirical sharpness of his speech. He was bold to temerity, always ready to throw himself into the most perilous enterprises. He spent his money freely, and drew after him a train of friends and clients. Few men danced as well as he,[[186]] no one surpassed him in the art of dressing with taste, and the beauty and breadth of the purple band that bordered his toga were spoken of on all hands in Rome. All these qualities, the serious as well as the trivial, were of a nature to attract Clodia. Neighbourhood made their acquaintance more easy, and she soon became the mistress of Caelius.
Cicero, notwithstanding his reserve, permits us to guess the life they then led. He speaks in hints of those brilliant fêtes that Clodia gave to her lover and to the youth of Rome in her gardens on the banks of the Tiber; but it seems that Baiae was the chief theatre of these amours. Baiae had been for some time already the regular rendezvous of the fashionable people of Rome and Italy. The hot-springs that are found there in abundance served as the occasion or pretext for these gatherings. Some invalids went there for their health, and their presence provided an excuse for a crowd of healthy people who went there to amuse themselves. People flocked there from the month of April, and during the fine season a thousand light intrigues were carried on, the report of which reached Rome. Grave folks took great care not to be seen in this whirl of pleasure, and later Clodius accused Cicero, as if it were a crime, simply of having passed through it; but Caelius and Clodia were not anxious to hide themselves; consequently they gave themselves up without restraint to all the pleasures that were to be found in that country that Horace calls the most beautiful in the world. All Rome talked of their races on the shore, the brilliancy of their feasts and water-parties in boats carrying singers and musicians. This is all that Cicero tells us, or rather only gives us a glimpse of, for, contrary to his habit, and to our great loss, he has for once in a way been discreet, in order not to compromise his friend Caelius. Fortunately we can learn more about this society and satisfy our curiosity; to do so we have only to turn ourselves to him who was, with Lucretius, the greatest poet of that time, Catullus. Catullus lived among these persons who were so well worthy of study, and had relations with them which permitted him to depict them well. Everybody knows that Lesbia whom his verses have immortalized; but it is not so well known that Lesbia was not one of those fictitious persons that the elegiac poets often create. Ovid tells us that this name covered that of a Roman lady, probably a great lady, since he will not name her, and by his way of speaking we see clearly that everybody then knew her.[[187]] Apuleius, who lived much later, is less reticent, and he tells us that Lesbia was Clodia.[[188]] Catullus, then, was the lover of Clodia, and the rival of Caelius: he also frequented that house on the Palatine, and those fine gardens on the Tiber, and his verses complete our knowledge of that society of which he was one of the heroes.
I said just now that Clodia did not love money with the avidity of the women of gallantry of that time and of all times. The history of Catullus proves this well. This young provincial of Verona, although he belonged to an honourable family, was not very rich, and after he had lived a life of dissipation and pleasure for some time at Rome, he had nothing left. His poor little estate was soon deeply mortgaged. “It is not exposed, he says gaily, either to the impetuous north wind, or to the fury of the auster: it is a hurricane of debts that blows on it from all sides. Oh! the horrible and pestilent wind!”[[189]] By the picture that he draws of some of his friends, still poorer and more indebted than himself, we see clearly that he could not reckon upon them, and that his purse which was “full of spiders” had no great help to expect from them. It was not, then, fortune or birth that Clodia loved in Catullus, but wit and talent. What attracted him in her, what he so passionately loved, was distinction and grace. These are not usually the qualities of women who live like Clodia; but, however low she might have descended, she was still a great lady. Catullus says so in an epigram in which he compares Lesbia to a celebrated beauty of that time—“Quintia is considered beautiful by many men. I think her tall, fair, erect: these are her attractions; I recognize them all. But that their union forms beauty, that I deny. There is nothing graceful in her, and in all that vast body there is not a spark of wit or charm. It is Lesbia who is beautiful, more beautiful than all, and she has so much grace that there is none left for the rest.”[[190]]
A woman like Clodia, who had such a decided taste for clever people, must have been pleased to frequent the society in which Catullus lived. We see plainly, by what he relates to us of it, that there was none more witty and agreeable in Rome. It united writers and politicians, poets and noblemen, differing in position and fortune, but all friends of letters and pleasure. There were Cornificius, Quintilius Varus, Helvius Cinna, whose verses had then much reputation, Asinius Pollio, who was as yet only a youth of great promise; there was above all Licinius Calvus, at once statesman and poet, one of the most striking figures of that time, who, at twenty-one, had attacked Vatinius with so much vigour, that Vatinius, terrified, had turned towards his judges, saying: “If my opponent is a great orator, it does not follow that I am guilty!” In the same group we must place Caelius, who, by his wit and tastes, was worthy to belong to it, and over it Cicero the protector of all this brilliant youth, which was proud of his genius and renown, and which saluted in him, according to the expression of Catullus, the most eloquent of the sons of Romulus.
In these assemblies of clever men, of whom many were political personages, politics were not excluded; they were very republican, and from them issued the most violent epigrams against Caesar. We know the tone in which those of Catullus are written; Calvus had composed others which are lost, and which were, it is said, still more cutting. Literature, however, we can well understand, held in them at least as high a place as politics. They did not fail to laugh at bad writers from time to time, and in order to make an example, ceremoniously burnt the poems of Volusius. Sometimes, at the end of the repast, when wine and laughter had heated their brains, they sent each other poetic challenges; the tablets passed from hand to hand, and each wrote the most incisive verses he could make. But it was pleasure more than anything else that occupied them. All these poets and politicians were young and amorous, and whatever pleasure they may have found in rallying Volusius, or tearing Caesar to pieces, they preferred to sing their loves. It is this which has made them famous. The lyrical poetry of the Latins has nothing to compare with those short and charming pieces that Catullus wrote for Lesbia. Propertius mingles too much mythology with his sighs; Ovid is only an inspired debauchee, Catullus alone has tones that touch the heart, because he alone was mastered by a deep and sincere love. Till then he had led a gay and dissipated life, and his heart was wearied with passing connections; but the day that he met Lesbia he learnt the meaning of passion. Whatever we may think of Clodia, the love of Catullus elevates her, and we never see her in a more favourable light than in this exquisite poetry. The verses of Catullus seem to make real and living those fêtes that she gave to the youth of Rome, and of which we regretted just now the absence of sufficient details; for was it not for these charming parties, for these free and sumptuous repasts, that he composed his finest works? It was there, no doubt, under the groves on the banks of the Tiber, that he sang that fine imitation of Sappho’s most fervid ode that he made for Lesbia. It was, perhaps, on the shore of Baiae, fronting Naples and Capreae, under that voluptuous sky, in the midst of the attractions of that enchanted land, that for the first time were read those verses in which so much grace is mingled with so much passion, and which are so worthy of the exquisite landscape in the midst of which I take pleasure in placing them: