Cicero and his friends

by Gaston Boissier

II
THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED

AFTER PHARSALIA

The civil war interrupted the intercourse that Cicero had kept up with Caesar during the Gallic war. He hesitated for a long time to take part in it, and it was after long indecision that the stings of conscience, the fear of public opinion, and above all the example of his friends decided him at length to start for Pompey’s camp. “As the ox follows the herd,” said he, “I go to join the good citizens;”[^[279]] but he went half-heartedly and without hope. After Pharsalia he did not think it was possible to continue the struggle: he said so openly in a council of the republican chiefs held at Dyrrhachium, and he hastened to return to Brundusium to hold himself at the disposal of the conqueror.

What regret must he not have felt, if his thoughts went back several years, and he remembered his triumphal return from exile! In that very town, where he had been received with so much rejoicing, he was constrained to disembark furtively, to conceal his lictors, to avoid the crowd, and only go out at night. He passed eleven months there, the saddest of his life, in isolation and anxiety. He was distressed on all sides, and his domestic affairs did not cause him less sorrow than public events. His absence had completed the disorder of his pecuniary affairs. When they were most involved, he had been so imprudent as to lend what ready money he had to Pompey: the poniard of the King of Egypt had at the same time carried off the debtor and put an end to his power of paying. While he was trying to procure some resources by selling his furniture and plate, he discovered that his wife was acting in concert with his freedmen to despoil him of what remained; he learnt that his brother and his nephew, who had gone over to Caesar, sought to justify themselves at his expense, and were working to ruin him in order to save themselves; he saw Tullia, his beloved daughter, again, but he found her sad and ill, lamenting at the same time the misfortunes of her father, and the infidelity of her husband. To these very real misfortunes were joined at the same time imaginary troubles, which caused him as much suffering; above all, he was tormented by his habitual irresolution. Scarcely had he set foot in Italy when he repented having come. According to his habit, his restless imagination always puts things at their worst, and he is ingenious in finding some reason for discontent in everything that happens to him. He laments when Antony wishes to force him to leave Italy; when he is allowed to remain, he still laments, because this exception made in his favour may injure his reputation. If Caesar neglects to write to him, he is alarmed; if he receives a letter from him, however friendly it may be, he weighs all its expressions so carefully that he discovers at last some motive for fear; even the broadest and most complete amnesty does not entirely remove his fears. “When a man pardons so easily,” he says, “it is because he defers his vengeance.”[^[280]]

At last, after a sojourn of nearly a year in that noisy and pestilential town, he was permitted to leave Brundusium. He returned to his fine country houses that he liked so much, and where he had been so happy; he found his books again, he resumed his interrupted studies, he could appreciate again those precious things which we enjoy without thinking about them while they are ours, and only begin to appreciate when we have lost them for a moment, namely, security and leisure. He thought that nothing could equal the charm of those first days passed tranquilly at Tusculum after so many storms, and of that return to the quiet pleasures of the mind for which he felt then that he was in reality made. “Know,” he wrote to his friend Varro, “that since my return I have been reconciled to my old friends: I mean my books. In truth, if I fled from them, it was not because I was angry with them, but I could not see them without some confusion. It seemed to me that in engaging in such stirring affairs, with doubtful allies, I have not followed their precepts faithfully enough. They forgive me, they recall me to their company; they tell me that you have been wiser than I not to leave them. Now that I am restored to their favour, I really hope that I shall support more easily the evils that oppress us and those with which we are threatened.”[^[281]]

His conduct henceforth was clearly marked out. He owed it to the great party he had served and defended to hold aloof from the new government. He must seek in philosophy and letters a useful employment for his activity, and create an honourable retreat far from public affairs in which he could no longer take part with honour. He well understood this when he said: “Let us preserve at least a partial liberty by knowing how to hide ourselves and keep silence.”[^[282]] To keep silence and hide, was indeed the programme that suited him best, as it did all those who had submitted after Pharsalia. We shall see how far he was faithful to it.

I.

It is very difficult to relinquish politics all at once. The conduct of public affairs and the exercise of power, even when they do not entirely content the mind, give a secondary importance to other things, and life appears aimless to him who can no longer employ himself in them. This is what happened to Cicero. He was certainly very sincere when, on leaving Brundusium, he undertook “to hide himself entirely in literature”; but he had promised more than he was able to perform. He soon wearied of repose, and the pleasures of study at length seemed a little too quiet; he listened with more curiosity to outside rumours, and, in order to hear them better, quitted Tusculum and returned to Rome. There he insensibly resumed his old habits; he returned to the senate; his house was again open to all who loved and cultivated letters; he began again to frequent the houses of the friends he had in Caesar’s party, and by their means resumed intercourse with Caesar himself.

They were easily reconciled, notwithstanding all their motives for ill will. The taste for intellectual pleasures which united them was stronger than all political antipathy. The first irritation over, they approached each other with that ease that the habit and experience of society give, forgetting or appearing to forget all the disagreements that had separated them. Nevertheless these relations had become more difficult than ever for Cicero. It was not only a protector that he had found in his old fellow-student, it was a master. There was no longer between them, as formerly, an agreement or understanding that created reciprocal obligations; there was the victor to whom the laws of war permitted everything, and the vanquished who owed his life to his clemency. The difficulty of the position was greater, because the more right the conqueror had to be exacting the more public opinion commanded the conquered to be reserved. It may be supposed that, at the time of the Gallic war, Cicero defended Caesar’s projects through friendship or conviction; but since he had shown that he disapproved his cause by boldly expressing his opinions during the civil war, the deference he might show to his wishes was nothing more than a sort of base flattery, and a discreditable way of earning his pardon. Already his sudden return from Pharsalia had been much blamed. “I am not forgiven for living,”[^[283]] said he. He was forgiven still less for his familiar relations with Caesar’s friends. Good citizens murmured at seeing him visit so assiduously the house of Balbus, go and dine with the voluptuous Eutrapelus in company with Pansa or Antony, and by the side of the actress Cytheris, take part in the sumptuous feasts that Dolabella gave with the money of the vanquished; on all sides the malevolent had their eyes open to his weaknesses. He had, then, to satisfy at once all parties, to hold with the conquerors and the conquered for the sake of his reputation or his safety, to live near the master without being too confident, and without ever offending him, and in these dangerous relations to make what he owed to his honour agree with what was needful for his repose. It was a delicate situation, from which an ordinary man would have had perhaps some trouble to extricate himself, but which was not beyond the dexterity of Cicero. To get out of it he had in his favour one marvellous quality which prevented him from appearing too humble and too base, even when he was constrained to flatter. Madame de Sévigné has said somewhere: “Wit is a dignity.” This saying is true in every sense; nothing helps one more to pass through difficult times without baseness. When a man preserves his wit before an absolute master, when he dares to joke and smile in the midst of the silence and terror of others, he shows by this that the greatness of him to whom he speaks does not intimidate him, and that he feels himself sufficiently strong to support it. To remain master of oneself in his presence is still a way of braving him, and it seems to me that an exacting and suspicious despot ought to be almost as displeased with those who dare to be witty before him as with those he may suspect of having courage. There is, then, below that courage of the soul that inspires energetic resolutions, but near it, that courage of the mind which is not to be despised, for it is often the sole courage possible. After the defeat of the men of resolution, the men of wit have their turn, and they still do some service when the others can no longer do anything. As they are crafty and supple, as they can raise their head quickly after necessity has forced them to bend it, they maintain themselves with a certain amount of honour in the ruin of their party. Their raillery, however discreet it may be, is a sort of protestation against the silence imposed on all, and it at least prevents the loss of liberty of speech after having lost the liberty of action. Wit is not then such a trivial thing as people affect to consider it; it also has its grandeur, and it may be that, after a great disaster, when all is silent, downcast, and discouraged, it alone maintains human dignity, which is in great danger of perishing.

Such was, very nearly, the part Cicero played at this time, and we must acknowledge that it was not wanting in importance. In that great city, submissive and mute, he alone dared to speak. He began to do so early, he was still at Brundusium, not knowing if he should obtain his pardon, when he frightened Atticus by the freedom of his remarks. Impunity naturally rendered him bolder, and after his return to Rome he took scarcely any other precaution than to make his raillery as agreeable and as witty as possible. Caesar liked wit even when it was exercised at his own expense. Instead of getting angry at Cicero’s jokes, he made a collection of them, and in the midst of the war in Spain, he ordered his correspondents to send them to him. Cicero, who knew this, spoke without constraint. This freedom, then so rare, drew all eyes upon him. He had never had more society round him. The friends of Caesar frequented his society readily to give themselves an air of liberality and tolerance, after the example of their chief. As he was the most illustrious survivor of the republican party after the death of Pompey and Cato, the remaining partisans of the republic crowded around him. People came to see him from all sides, and all parties met in the mornings in his vestibule. “I receive at the same time,” said he, “the visits of many good citizens who are downcast, and those of our joyful conquerors.”[^[284]]