Cicero has embodied the results of his reflections and studies in political writings, of which the most important, The Republic, has only reached us in a very imperfect state. What remains of it shows that he is here, as everywhere else, a fervent disciple of the Greeks. He attaches himself by preference to Plato, and his admiration for him is so strong that he often almost makes us think that he is content with translating him. In general Cicero does not appear to care much for the glory of originality. This is almost the only vanity he lacks. In his correspondence there is a singular admission on this subject, which has been freely used against him. In order to make his friend Atticus understand how his works cost him so little trouble, he says: “I only furnish the words, of which I have no lack”;[[32]] but Cicero, contrary to his usual custom, calumniates himself here. He is not such a servile translator as he wishes to make believe, and the difference between him and Plato is great, especially in his political works. Their books bear, indeed, the same title, but as soon as they are opened we perceive that in reality they are quite unlike. It is the characteristic of a speculative philosopher like Plato to consider the absolute end in everything. If he wants to form a constitution, instead of studying the people to be governed by it, he begins with some principle which reason lays down, and follows it up with inflexible rigour to its logical consequences. Thus he succeeds in forming one of those political systems where everything is bound and held together, and which by their admirable unity delight the mind of the sage who studies them as the regularity of a fine building pleases the eye of those who look at it. Unfortunately this kind of constitution, thought out in solitude and cast all of a piece, is difficult of application. When it comes to be put in practice unexpected resistance crops up on all sides. National traditions, character, and recollections, all those social forces which have been overlooked, will not submit to the severe laws imposed on them. It is then perceived that these things cannot be moulded at will, and since they absolutely refuse to give way, one must be prepared to modify this constitution which seemed so fine when it was not put into use. But here again the difficulty is great. It is not easy to change anything in these compact and logical systems, where everything is so skilfully arranged that one piece being disturbed throws the rest out of gear. Besides, philosophers are naturally imperious and absolute; they do not like to be thwarted. To avoid that opposition that provokes them, to escape as much as possible the demands of reality, they imitate the Athenian of whom Aristophanes speaks, who, despairing of finding here below a republic to suit him, went to look for one in the clouds. They also build castles in the air, ideal republics governed by imaginary laws. They frame admirable constitutions, but they have the defect of not applying to any particular country because they are made for the whole human race.
Cicero did not act thus. He knew the public he addressed; he knew that that grave and sensible race, so quick to seize the practical side of things, would be ill-satisfied with these fancies, and so he does not lose himself in these dreams of the ideal and the absolute. He does not presume to make laws for the universe; he is thinking especially of his own country and his own times, and although he appears to be drawing up the plan of a perfect republic, that is to say, one that cannot exist, it is plain that his eyes are fixed on a constitution which does really exist. The following are very nearly his political theories. Of the three forms of government usually distinguished, none altogether pleases him when it is isolated. I need not speak of the absolute government of a single man, he died in order to oppose that.[[33]]
The other two, government by all or by a few, that is to say democracy and aristocracy, do not seem to him faultless either. It is difficult to be quite contented with the aristocracy when one has not the advantage of belonging to a great family. The Roman aristocracy, notwithstanding the great qualities it displayed in the conquest and government of the world, was supercilious and exclusive like others. The checks it had suffered for a century, its visible decline, and the feeling it must have had of its approaching end, far from curing its pride, rendered it more intractable. Prejudices seem to become narrower and more inflexible when they have but a short time to live. We know how our émigrés, face to face with a victorious revolution, used up their last strength in foolish struggles for precedence. In the same way the Roman nobility, at the moment when the power was slipping from it, seemed to make a point of exaggerating its defects, and of discouraging by its disdain the respectable people who offered themselves to defend it. Cicero felt himself drawn towards it by his taste for refinement of manners and elegant pleasures; but he could not endure its insolence. Thus he always kept up the ill-will of the discontented plebeian against it, even while serving it. He knew very well that his birth was not overlooked, and that he was called an upstart (homo novus), and in return he was never tired of jesting about those fortunate people who do not need to have any merit, who do not require to take trouble, and to whom the highest places in the republic come while they are sleeping (quibus omnia populi romani beneficia dormientibus deferuntur).[[34]]
But if aristocracy pleased him little, he liked popular government still less. It is the worst of all, he said, anticipating Corneille,[[35]] and in saying so he followed the opinion of the greater number of the Greek philosophers, his masters, who have almost all shown a great aversion to democracy. They were not only kept aloof from the multitude by the nature of their studies, pursued in silence and solitude, but they carefully shunned it lest they should partake of its errors and prejudices. Their constant care was to keep themselves outside and above it. The pride that this isolation nourished in them prevented them seeing an equal in a man of the people, a stranger to those studies they were so proud of. Thus the supremacy of numbers, which gives the same importance to the unlearned as to the sage, was distasteful to them. Cicero says positively that equality understood in this way is the greatest inequality, ipsa aequitas iniquissima est.[[36]] This was not the only nor even the greatest reproach that the Greek philosophers, and Cicero with them, threw on democracy. They thought it was naturally restless and turbulent, the enemy of meditation, and that it does not give that leisure to the learned and the sage which is needful for the works they are projecting. When Cicero thought of popular government, he had in his mind only wrangles and faction-fights. He recalled the plebeian riots and the stormy scenes of the Forum. He fancied he heard those threatening complaints of the debtors and the needy which had troubled the repose of the rich for three hundred years. How could any one apply himself amidst this turmoil to studies which require peace and quietness? The pleasures of the mind are interrupted every moment in this reign of violence, which constantly drags people from the tranquillity of their library into the public streets. This tumultuous and unstable life was ill suited to such a firm friend of study, and if the arrogance of the nobles sometimes threw him towards the popular party, dislike of violence and noise did not allow him to remain in it.
What form of government then seemed to him the best? That which unites them all in a just equilibrium—he says so very plainly in his Republic. “I should wish that there be in the state a supreme and royal power, that another part be reserved for the authority of the chief citizens, and that certain things be left to the judgment and will of the people.”[[37]] Now this mixed and limited government is not, according to him, an imaginary system, like the republic of Plato. It is in actual existence and working; it is that of his own country. This opinion has been much contested. M. Mommsen thinks it agrees as little with philosophy as with history. Taking it strictly, it is certainly more patriotic than true. It would be going very far to consider the Roman constitution as a faultless model, and to close our eyes to its defects at the very moment when it perished through those very defects; yet it must be admitted that, with all its imperfections, it was one of the wisest of ancient times, and that none, perhaps, had made so many efforts to satisfy the two great needs of society—order and liberty. Nor can it be denied that its chief merit consisted in its effort to unite and reconcile the different forms of government, notwithstanding their obvious antagonisms. Polybius had perceived this before Cicero, and it derives this merit from its origin and the way in which it was formed. The constitution of Greece had almost all been the work of one man, the Roman constitution was the work of time. That skilful balance of powers that Polybius admired so much, had not been contrived by one foreseeing mind. We do not find in the early times of Rome a single legislator who regulated in advance the part each social element was to play in the general combination; these elements combined by themselves. The seditions of the plebeians, the desperate struggles of the tribunate with the patricians, which terrified Cicero, had contributed more than all the rest to complete that constitution that he admired. After a struggle of nearly two hundred years, when the opposing forces perceived that they were not able to destroy each other, they resigned themselves to unite, and from the efforts they made to agree together there resulted a government, imperfect doubtless—can there be a perfect one?—but which is none the less the best, perhaps, of the ancient world. We remember, of course, that Cicero did not bestow this praise on the Roman constitution as it was in his time. His admiration went further back. He recognized that it had been profoundly modified since the time of the Gracchi, but he thought that before it had undergone these alterations it was irreproachable. Thus the studies of his riper age carried him back to those first impressions of his childhood, and strengthened his love of ancient times and his respect for ancient customs. As he advanced in life all his mistakes and all his misfortunes threw him back to that time. The more the present was sad and the future threatening the more he looked back with regret on the past. If he had been asked in what time he would have wished to have been born, I think he would have unhesitatingly chosen the period that followed the Punic wars, that is to say, the moment when Rome, proud of her victory, confident in the future and dreaded by the world, caught a glimpse for the first time of the beauties of Greece, and began to feel the charm of letters and the arts. Cicero considers this Rome’s best time, and places in it by preference the scene of his dialogues. He would certainly have liked to live among those great men whom he causes to speak so well, in the company of Scipio, Fabius, and Cato the Elder, by the side of Lucilius and Terence; and in this illustrious group, the personage whose life and career would most have tempted him, he that he would have wished to be, if a man could choose his time and order his destiny, was the wise and learned Laelius.[[38]] To unite, like him, a high political situation to the cultivation of literature, to add to the supreme authority of eloquence some military successes, which the greatest preachers of pacific triumphs do not disdain, to reach the highest dignities of the republic in quiet and orderly times, and after an honourable life to enjoy a respected old age—this was Cicero’s ideal. What regrets and sadness does he not experience, when he wakes from this fine dream to the disappointments of reality, and instead of living in a tranquil republic, and in free intercourse with the Scipios, he must be the rival of Catiline, the victim of Clodius, and the subject of Caesar.
Cicero’s temperament, I think, had still more to do with his political preferences than his birth or his reflections. There is no more to learn about the weaknesses of his character; they have been laid bare with delight, they have even been wilfully exaggerated, and since Montaigne it is the usual thing to laugh at them. I need not repeat, then, what has been said so often, that he was timid, hesitating, and irresolute. I admit with everybody that nature made him a man of letters rather than a politician, but I do not think that this admission does him so much harm as might be thought. The mind of the man of letters is often more perfect, more comprehensive, broader than that of the politician, and it is precisely this breadth that cramps and thwarts him when he undertakes public affairs. We ask ourselves what qualities are necessary for a statesman; would it not be wiser to seek those it is good for him to lack, and does not political capacity show itself sometimes in its limitations and exclusions? A man of action who ought to decide quickly may be hampered by the number of contradictory reasons a too close and penetrating view of things may present to him. A too vivid imagination, showing him many plans at once, prevents him fixing on any. Determination often comes from narrowness of mind, and is one of the greatest virtues in a politician. A very sensitive conscience, by making him too particular in the choice of his allies, would deprive him of powerful support. He must distrust those generous impulses which lead him to do justice even to his enemies: in the furious struggle for power a man runs the risk of disarming himself and allowing an advantage to be taken if he has the misfortune to be just and tolerant. There is nothing that may not become a danger for him, even to that natural uprightness, the first quality of a statesman. If he is too sensitive to the excesses and acts of injustice of his party he will serve it feebly, if his fidelity is to be unshaken he must not only excuse, he should be able to shut his eyes to them. These are some of the imperfections of heart and mind by which he gains his successes. If it be true, as I believe it is, that the politician often succeeds in the government of a state through his defects, and that the literary man fails by his very qualities, it is paying the latter almost a compliment to say he is not fit for the management of affairs.
We may say then without discrediting Cicero, that he was not altogether fit for public life. The causes which made him an incomparable writer did not allow him to be a good politician. That openness to impressions, that delicate and irritable sensitiveness, the principal sources of his literary talent, did not leave him sufficiently master of his will. Particular events had too great a hold on him, and a man must be able to detach himself from these in order to control them. His versatile and fertile imagination, by drawing his attention to all sides at once, rather incapacitated him for forming well-connected plans. He could not delude himself enough about men or enterprises, and thus he was subject to sudden fits of irresolution. He often boasted of having foreseen and predicted the future. It was certainly not in his position of augur, but by a kind of troublesome perspicacity, that showed him the consequences of events, and the bad ones rather than the good. On the nones of December, when he executed Catiline’s accomplices, he did not forget the vengeance to which he exposed himself, and he foresaw his exile: that day then, notwithstanding the irresolution he has been reproached with, he had more courage than another who in a moment of excitement would not have seen the danger. One cause of his inferiority and weakness was that he was moderate, moderate by constitution rather than principle, that is to say, with that nervous and irritable impatience which at last employs violence to defend moderation. In political struggles all excess can seldom be avoided. Usually parties are unjust in their complaints when they are beaten, cruel in their reprisals when they conquer, and ready to do without scruple, as soon as they are able, what they blame in their enemies. If any in the victorious party perceive they are going too far and dare to say so, they inevitably irritate everybody against them. They are accused of timidity and vacillation, they are called weak and changeable; but is this reproach well deserved? Did Cicero contradict himself when, after defending the unfortunate men whom the aristocracy oppressed under Sulla, he defended, thirty years later, the victims of the democracy under Caesar? Was he not, on the contrary, more consistent than those who, after bitterly complaining of being exiled, exiled their enemies as soon as they had the power? We must, however, admit that if this lively sense of justice is honourable in a private man it may become dangerous in a politician. Parties do not like those who refuse to join in their excesses, and in the midst of general licence set up the claim of alone remaining within bounds. It was Cicero’s misfortune not to have that firm resolution which fixes a man in his opinions, and to pass from one opinion to another, because he saw clearly the good and evil of all. A man must be very self-reliant to try and do without others. This isolation takes for granted a decision and energy that were wanting in Cicero. If he had resolutely attached himself to one party he would have found in it traditions and fixed principles, firm friends and steady leading, and need only have allowed himself to be led. On the other hand, by endeavouring to walk alone he risked making all the rest his enemies while he himself had no clearly marked out line of conduct. A glance at the chief events of his political life is sufficient to show that this was the origin of a part of his misfortunes and his faults.
II.
What I have just said of Cicero’s character explains his early political opinions. He first appeared in the Forum under the government of Sulla. The aristocracy was then all-powerful, and strangely abused its power. Having been conquered for a moment by Marius its reprisals had been terrible. Tumultuous and indiscriminate massacres could not appease its rage. Applying its cold and orderly spirit to murder itself, it had invented proscription, which was only another way of organizing assassination. After having thus satisfied its vengeance it began to strengthen its authority. It had dispossessed the richest municipia of Italy of their property, excluded the knights from the tribunals, lessened the privileges of the popular comitia, deprived the tribunes of the right of intervention, that is, it had levelled everything around itself. When it had broken down all resistance by the death of its enemies, and concentrated all power in itself, it solemnly declared that the revolution was ended, that legal government would recommence, and that “killing would cease after the kalends of June.” Notwithstanding these pompous declarations, massacres still continued for a long time. Assassins, protected by the freedmen of Sulla, who shared the profits with them, went out by night into the dark and crooked streets of the old city, even to the foot of the Palatine. They murdered rich men returning home, and under some pretext or other obtained their property from the courts of justice, no one daring to complain. Such was the government under which men lived at Rome when Cicero pleaded his first causes. A moderate man like him, to whom excess was distasteful, must have had a horror of this violence. An aristocratic tyranny did not suit him better than a popular tyranny. Before this abuse of authority that the nobility allowed itself he felt himself naturally drawn to aid the democracy, and he began his career in the ranks of its defenders.
He made a bold and splendid beginning. In the midst of that silent terror that the memory of the proscriptions kept up, he dared to speak out, and the universal silence gave a louder echo to his words. His political importance dates from the defence of Roscius. This unfortunate man, whose property had been first taken, and who had then been accused of murdering his father, could find no defender. Cicero undertook his defence. He was young and unknown, two great advantages in undertaking these bold strokes, for obscurity diminishes the danger which a man runs, and youth prevents the seeing it. He had no trouble in proving the innocence of his client, who was accused without evidence; but this success was not enough for him. It was known that one of the most powerful freedmen of Sulla, the rich and voluptuous Chrysogonus, was the hidden mover of the accusation. No doubt he thought the dread his name inspired was a sufficient protection against the boldness of the defence. Cicero dragged him into the case. Traces of the dismay that seized the audience when they heard this dreaded name are perceptible in his speech. The accusers were dumfoundered, the multitude remained silent. The young orator alone seemed tranquil and self-possessed. He smiled, he joked, he dared to jeer at those terrible men whom no one else dared look in the face, because in doing so they thought of the two thousand heads of knights and senators they had cut off. He does not altogether respect the master himself. That surname, “the happy,” that his flatterers had given him gave rise to a pun. “What man is happy enough,” says he, “not to have some rascal in his train?”[[39]] This rascal is no other than the all-powerful Chrysogonus. Cicero does not spare him. He depicts his vulgar luxury and arrogance. He shows him heaping up in his house on the Palatine all the precious objects that he had taken from his victims, annoying the neighbourhood with the noise of his singers and musicians, “or hovering about the Forum with his hair well combed and shining with unguents.”[[40]] More serious accusations are mingled with these jests. The word proscriptions is sometimes pronounced in this speech, the memory and impression they have left is found everywhere. We feel that the speaker, who has seen them, has his mind full of the subject, and that the horror that he feels and that he cannot master prevents him keeping silence whatever danger there may be in speaking. This generous emotion shows itself every moment, in spite of the reticence the neighbourhood of the proscribers imposes. Speaking of their victims, he dares to say that they have been cruelly murdered, though it was usual to attribute to them every kind of crime. He holds up to public scorn and hatred the wretches who have enriched themselves by these massacres, and with a successful pun calls them “cut-heads and cut-purses.”[[41]] He then demands formally that an end should be put to these proceedings, of which humanity was ashamed; “otherwise,” he adds, “it would be better to go and live among wild beasts than to remain in Rome.”[[42]]