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CONTENTS
| PAGE | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| INTRODUCTION: | |||
| CICERO’S LETTERS | [1] | ||
| Importance of private correspondence in ancient times. Characteristics of Cicero’s letters, [1] | |||
| CICERO IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE: | |||
| I. | PUBLIC LIFE | [22] | |
| Severe judgments on Cicero in modern times, [22] | |||
| i. | Circumstances which determined Cicero’s political attitude. Birth, philosophical ideas, character, [24] | ||
| ii. | Cicero’s political career. An opponent at first of the aristocracy, [36]. Attempts to form a middle party, [46]. The knights, [47]. Finally joins the aristocratic party, [51] | ||
| iii. | Judgment on Cicero should be from the point of view of his contemporaries, [51]. Corrupt state of the Roman people, [64] | ||
| iv. | Cicero’s work for the Republican party after the death of Caesar, [69]. His death, [77] | ||
| II. | PRIVATE LIFE | [79] | |
| i. | Sources of his wealth, [79] | ||
| ii. | His married life, [89] | ||
| iii. | His children, [100] | ||
| iv. | His relations to his slaves, [108]. His clients, [113]. Rabirius, [116] | ||
| ATTICUS | [123] | ||
| i. | His reasons for not entering public life, [124]. His life at Athens, [127]. His life in Rome, [132] | ||
| ii. | His character in private life, [134] | ||
| iii. | His character in public life, [147] | ||
| CAELIUS: | |||
| THE ROMAN YOUTH IN THE TIME OF CAESAR | [159] | ||
| i. | Family and education of Caelius, [160]. Influence of women at Rome, [163]. Clodia, [166] | ||
| ii. | Character of Caelius, [176]. Joins Caesar’s party, [184] | ||
| iii. | Caesar had no genuine friends, [191]. Reasons of Caelius’ enmity to him, [197]. His death, [206] | ||
| CAESAR AND CICERO: | |||
| I. | CICERO AND THE CAMP OF CAESAR IN GAUL | [209] | |
| i. | Cicero’s return to Rome, [210]. State of the city, 211. Leaves the aristocratic party and joins the triumvirs, [216] | ||
| ii. | Renews his intimacy with Caesar, [224]. Pompey and Caesar compared, [226]. Caesar in Gaul, [230] | ||
| iii. | Cicero’s letters to his brother and to Trebatius supplement the Commentaries, [241]. Effect produced in Rome by Caesar’s victories, [251] | ||
| II. | THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED | [257] | |
| Cicero’s intention to retire from political life, [257] | |||
| i. | Resumes intercourse with Caesar, [260]. The exiles recalled through his influence, [268]. The Pro Marcello, [271] | ||
| ii. | Discussion between Cicero and Caesar as to Cato. Cato not so hard as he is usually considered, his rectitude made him unpractical, [277]. Unfitted to lead a party, [284]. Becomes more moderate, [285]. His death, [287]. Contrasted with Caesar, [288] | ||
| iii. | Caesar wishes to conciliate the Republican party, 291. Appoints members of it to public offices, [293]. In spite of this there was a profound discontent with the new government, [297] | ||
| BRUTUS: | |||
| HIS RELATIONS WITH CICERO | [303] | ||
| i. | His family, education, and character, [304]. His friendship with Cicero, [308]. Roman ideas of governing the provinces, [311]. Joins Pompey, [317] | ||
| ii. | Brutus’s prospects of high office destroyed by the battle of Pharsalia. Turns to philosophy. Cicero does the same and produces his philosophical works, [318] | ||
| iii. | Formation of a new Republican party, [329]. Influences brought to bear on Brutus in order to implicate him in the conspiracy against Caesar, [330] | ||
| iv. | Causes of the failure of Brutus and his party, [339] | ||
| OCTAVIUS: | |||
| THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF AUGUSTUS | [359] | ||
| The Ancyran Inscription, [361] | |||
| i. | The narrative intentionally incomplete, [364]. Light thrown by it on the internal government of Augustus, 368. Relations of Augustus with his soldiers, [369]. With the people, [372]. With the senate, [373]. His policy in reconstructing public buildings, [377] | ||
| ii. | The preamble of the Edict of proscription and the Ancyran Inscription, together, contain the political life of Augustus, [381]. Permanent effect of his policy on the government of the empire, [386] | ||
| iii. | Publication of Cicero’s letters, [388] | ||
CICERO AND HIS FRIENDS
INTRODUCTION
CICERO’S LETTERS
No history is more readily studied now-a-days than that of the last years of the Roman Republic. Learned works have recently been published upon this subject in France, England, and Germany,[[1]] and the public has read them with avidity. The importance of the subjects which were then debated, the dramatic character of the events, and the grandeur of the characters warrant this interest; but the attraction we feel for this singular epoch is better explained by the fact that it is narrated for us in Cicero’s letters.
A contemporary said that he who read these letters would not be tempted to seek the history of that time[[2]] elsewhere, and in fact we find it much more living and true in them than in regular works composed expressly to teach it to us. What more would Asinius Pollio, Livy, or Cremutius Cordus teach us if we had them preserved? They would give us their personal opinion; but this opinion is for the most part open to suspicion because it comes from persons who could not tell the whole truth, from men like Livy, who wrote at the court of the emperors, or who hoped, like Pollio, to get their treason pardoned, by blackening the character of those whom they had betrayed. Instead of receiving a ready-made opinion it is better to make one for ourselves, and the perusal of Cicero’s letters enables us to do this. It throws us into the midst of the events, and lets us follow them day by day. We seem to see them pass before our eyes, notwithstanding the eighteen centuries that intervene, and we find ourselves in the unique position of being sufficiently near the facts to see their real character, and sufficiently distant to judge them dispassionately.
The importance of these letters is easily explained. The politicians of those times had more need of correspondence with each other than those of the present day. The proconsul starting from Rome to govern some distant province felt that he was withdrawing altogether from political life. To pass several years in those out-of-the-way countries which the public rumour of Rome did not reach, was very irksome to men accustomed to the stir of business, the agitations of parties, or, as they said, the broad daylight of the Forum. They did indeed receive a sort of official gazette, the Acta diurna, the venerable ancestor of our Moniteur. But it appears as though every official journal is condemned by its nature to be somewhat insignificant. The Roman journal contained a rather tame official report of public meetings, a short summary of important cases tried in the Forum, besides an account of public ceremonies and accurate notice of atmospheric phenomena or prodigies occurring in Rome or its neighbourhood. This is not precisely the sort of news that a praetor or proconsul wished to know, and therefore, in order to fill up the gaps in the official journal, he had recourse to paid correspondents, who made “news-letters” for the use of inquisitive provincials, as was the fashion among ourselves in the last century; but while, in the eighteenth century, literary men of reputation, intimate with the nobles and well received by ministers, undertook this duty, the Roman correspondents were only obscure compilers, workmen as Caelius calls them, usually chosen among those hungry Greeks whom want made ready for anything. They had no admittance into the great houses, nor could they approach the politicians. Their part simply consisted in running over the town and picking up what they heard or saw in the streets. They carefully noted theatrical chit-chat, inquired about actors who had been hissed and gladiators who had been beaten, described minutely handsome funerals, noted the rumours and ill-natured gossip, and especially the scandalous tales they could catch.[[3]] All this chatter amused for a moment, but did not satisfy those political personages who wished above all to be kept abreast of affairs, and, in order to become acquainted with them, they naturally applied to some one who was in a position to know them. They chose a few trustworthy and well-informed friends of good position, and through them learnt the reason and the real character of the facts reported dryly and without comment by the journals; and while their paid correspondents gave them only the talk of the town, the others introduced them into the cabinets of the high politicians, and made them listen to their most private conversations.
No one felt this need of being kept informed of everything, and, so to say, of living in the midst of Rome after he had left it, more than Cicero. No one liked that excitement of public life which statesmen complain of when they possess it, and never cease to regret when they have lost it, more than he. We must not believe him too readily when he says that he is tired of the stormy discussions of the senate; that he seeks a country where they have not heard of Vatinius or Caesar, and where they do not trouble themselves about agrarian laws; that he has an anxious craving to go and forget Rome under the agreeable shades of Arpinum, or in the delightful neighbourhood of Formiae. As soon as he is settled down at Formiae or Arpinum, or in some other of those handsome villas which he proudly calls the gems of Italy, ocellos Italiae, his thoughts naturally return to Rome, and couriers are constantly starting to go and learn what people are thinking and doing there. He could never take his eyes off the Forum, whatever he may say. Far or near he must have what Saint-Simon calls “that smack of business that politicians cannot do without.” He wished by all means to know the position of parties, their secret agreements, their internal discords, all those hidden intrigues that lead up to events and explain them. This is what he was continually demanding of Atticus, Curio, Caelius, and so many other great men mixed up in these intrigues either as actors or spectators, and what he himself narrates to his absent friends in the most lively manner, and thus the letters that he received or sent contain, without his intending it, all the history of his time.[[4]]