Cicero is not the only person whom this correspondence shows us. It is full of curious details about all those who had friendly or business relations with him. They were the most illustrious persons of the time, and they played the chief parts in the revolution that put an end to the Roman Republic. No one deserves to be studied more than they. It must be remarked here, that one of Cicero’s failings has greatly benefited posterity. If it were a question of some one else, of Cato for instance, how many people’s letters would be missing in this correspondence! The virtuous alone would find a place in it, and Heaven knows their number was not then very great. But, happily, Cicero was much more tractable, and did not bring Cato’s rigorous scruples into the choice of his friends. A sort of good-nature made him accessible to people of every opinion; his vanity made him seek praise everywhere. He had dealings with all parties, a great fault in a politician, for which the shrewd people of his time have bitterly reproached him, but a fault that we profit by; hence it happens that all parties are represented in his correspondence. This obliging humour sometimes brought him into contact with people whose opinions were the most opposite to his, and he found himself at certain times in close relations with the worst citizens whom he has at other times lashed with his invectives. Letters that he had received from Antony, Dolabella, and Curio still remain, and these letters are full of expressions of respect and friendship. If the correspondence went further back we should probably have some of Catiline’s, and, frankly, I regret the want of them; for if we wish to judge of the state of a society as of the constitution of a man, it is not enough to examine the sound parts, we must handle and probe to the bottom the unsound parts. Thus, all the important men of that time, whatever their conduct may have been, or to whatever party they may have belonged, had dealings with Cicero. Memorials of all are found in his correspondence. A few of their letters still exist, and we have a large number of those that Cicero wrote to them. The private details he gives us about them, what he tells us of their opinions, their habits, and character, allows us to enter freely into their life. Thanks to him, all those persons indistinctly depicted by history resume their original appearance; he seems to bring them nearer to us and to make us acquainted with them; and when we have read his correspondence we can say that we have just visited the whole Roman society of his time.

The end we have in view in this book is to study closely a few of these personages, especially those who were most involved in the great political events of that period. But before beginning this study it is necessary to make a firm resolution not to bring to it considerations which belong to our own time. It is too much the custom now-a-days to seek arms for our present struggles in the history of the past. Smart allusions and ingenious parallels are most successful. Perhaps Roman antiquity is so much in fashion only because it gives political parties a convenient and less dangerous battle-field where, under ancient costumes, present-day passions may struggle. If the names of Caesar, Pompey, Cato, and Brutus are quoted on all occasions, these great men must not be too proud of the honour. The curiosity they excite is not altogether disinterested, and when they are spoken of it is almost always to point an epigram or set off a flattery. I wish to avoid this mistake. These illustrious dead seem to me to deserve something better than to serve as instruments in the quarrels that divide us, and I have sufficient respect for their memory and their repose not to drag them into the arena of our every-day disputes. It should never be forgotten that it is an outrage to history to subject it to the changing interest of parties, and that it should be, according to the fine expression of Thucydides, a work made for eternity.

These precautions being taken, let us penetrate with Cicero’s letters into the Roman society of that great period, and let us begin by studying him who offers himself so gracefully to do us the honours.

CICERO IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

I
CICERO’S PUBLIC LIFE

Cicero’s public life is usually severely judged by the historians of our time. He pays the penalty of his moderation. As this period is only studied now with political intentions, a man like him who tried to avoid extremes fully satisfies nobody. All parties agree in attacking him; on all sides he is laughed at or insulted. The fanatical partisans of Brutus accuse him of timidity, the warmest friends of Caesar call him a fool. It is in England and amongst us[[26]] that he has been least abused, and that classical traditions have been more respected than elsewhere; the learned still persist in their old habits and their old admirations, and in the midst of so many convulsions criticism at least has remained conservative. Perhaps also the indulgence shown to Cicero in both countries comes from the experience they have of political life. When a man has lived in the practice of affairs and in the midst of the working of parties, he can better understand the sacrifices that the necessities of the moment, the interest of his friends and the safety of his cause may demand of a statesman, but he who only judges his conduct by inflexible theories thought out in solitude and not submitted to the test of experience becomes more severe towards him. This, no doubt, is the reason why the German scholars use him so roughly. With the exception of M. Abeken,[[27]] who treats him humanely, they are without pity. Drumann[[28]] especially overlooks nothing. He has scrutinized his works and his life with the minuteness and sagacity of a lawyer seeking the grounds of a lawsuit. He has laid bare all his correspondence in a spirit of conscientious malevolence. He has courageously resisted the charm of those confidential disclosures which makes us admire the writer and love the man in spite of his weaknesses, and by opposing to each other detached fragments of his letters and discourses he has succeeded in drawing up a formal indictment, in which nothing is omitted and which almost fills a volume. M. Mommsen[[29]] is scarcely more gentle, he is only less long. Taking a general view of things he does not lose himself in the details. In two of those compact pages full of facts, such as he knows how to write, he has found means to heap on Cicero more insults than Drumann’s whole volume contains. We see particularly that this pretended statesman was only an egotist and a short-sighted politician, and that this great writer is only made up of a newspaper novelist and a special-pleader. Here we perceive the same pen that has just written down Cato a Don Quixote and Pompey a corporal. As in his studies of the past he always has the present in his mind, one would say that he looks for the squireens of Prussia in the Roman aristocracy, and that in Caesar he salutes in advance that popular despot whose firm hand can alone give unity to Germany.

How much truth is there in these fierce attacks? What confidence can we place in this boldness of revolutionary criticism? What judgment must we pronounce on Cicero’s political conduct? The study of the facts will teach us.

I.

Three causes generally contribute to form a man’s political opinions—his birth, his personal reflections, and his temperament. If I were not speaking here of sincere convictions only, I would readily add a fourth, which causes more conversions than the others, namely interest, that is to say, that leaning one has almost in spite of oneself to think that the most advantageous course is also the most just, and to conform one’s opinion to the position one holds or wishes for. Let us try and discover what influence these causes had upon Cicero’s conduct and political preferences.

At Rome, for a long time past, opinions had been decided by birth. In a city where traditions were so much respected the ideas of parents were inherited as well as their property or their name, and it was a point of honour to follow their politics faithfully; but in Cicero’s time these customs were beginning to decay. The oldest families had no scruple in failing in their hereditary engagements. At that time many names which had become illustrious by defending popular interests are found in the senatorial party, and the most audacious demagogue of that time bore the name of Clodius. Besides, Cicero would never at any time have found political direction in his birth. He belonged to an unknown family, he was the first of his race to engage in public affairs, and the name he bore did not commit him in advance to any party. In fact, he was not born at Rome. His father lived in one of those little country municipia of which the wits readily made fun, because doubtful Latin was spoken and fine manners were not well known in them, but which, none the less, were the strength and honour of the Republic. That rude but brave and temperate people who inhabited the neglected cities of Campania, Latium, and the Sabine country, and among whom the habits of rural life had preserved something of the ancient virtue,[[30]] was in reality the Roman people. That which filled the streets and squares of the great city, spent its time in the theatre, took part in the riots of the Forum, and sold its votes in the Campus Martius, was only a collection of freedmen and foreigners among whom only disorder, intrigue, and corruption could be learnt. Life was more honest and healthy in the municipia. The citizens who inhabited them remained for the most part strangers to the questions that were debated in Rome, and the rumour of public affairs did not reach them. They were sometimes seen on the Campus Martius or the Forum, when it was a question of voting for one of their fellow-citizens, or of supporting him by their presence before the tribunals; but usually they troubled themselves little about exercising their rights, and stayed at home. They were none the less devoted to their country, jealous of their privileges, even when they made no use of them, proud of their title of Roman citizens, and much attached to the Republican Government that had given it them. For them the Republic had preserved its prestige because, living at a distance, they saw less of its weaknesses and always recalled its ancient glory. Cicero’s childhood was spent in the midst of these rural populations, as backward in their ideas as in their manners. He learnt from them to love the past more than to know the present. This was the first impression and the first teaching he received from the places as from the people among whom his early years were passed. Later, he spoke with emotion of that humble house that his father had built near the Liris, and which recalled the house of the old Curius[[31]] by its stern simplicity. I fancy that those who lived in it must have thought themselves carried back a century, and that in causing them to live among the memorials of the past, it gave them the inclination and taste for old-fashioned things. If Cicero owed anything to his birth it was this. He may have gained in his family respect for the past, love of his country, and an instinctive preference for the Republican Government, but he found in it no precise tradition, no positive engagement with any party. When he entered political life he was obliged to decide for himself, a great trial for an irresolute character! And in order to choose among so many conflicting opinions it was necessary early to study and reflect.