A History of Roman Literature

by Harold North Fowler

Here you will even dare to say, “Among the judges, that one is my friend, that one a friend of my father.” Is not every one, the more closely he is connected with you in any way, the more ashamed of you for being subject to a charge of this kind? He is your father’s friend. If your father himself were a judge, what, in the name of the immortal gods, could you do when he said to you: “You, the prætor of the Roman people in a province, when you had to carry on a naval war, excused the Mamertines for three years from supplying the ship which they were bound by treaty to supply; for your private use a freight ship of the largest size was built at public expense by those same Mamertines; you exacted money from the cities under the pretext of the fleet; you dismissed rowers for bribes; you, when a pirate vessel had been captured by the quæstor and the lieutenant, removed the leader of the pirates from the sight of all; you could put under the headsman’s axe men who were said to be Roman citizens, who were known as such by many; you dared to take pirates to your house, and to bring the pirate captain to the court from your own dwelling; you, in that splendid province, in the sight of our most faithful allies, of most honorable Roman citizens, lay for days together on the shore at festive banquets at a time when the province was in fear and danger; during those days no one could find you at your house, no one could see you in the forum; you brought to those banquets the wives of allies and friends; among women of that sort you placed your youthful son, my grandson, that his father’s life might offer him examples of wickedness at the age which is especially unsteady and lacking in fixed principles; you, the prætor, were seen in the province in a tunic and purple cloak; you, for the gratification of your passion and lust, took away the command of the ships from a lieutenant of the Roman people and gave it to a Syracusan; your soldiers in the province of Sicily were in want of food and grain; owing to your luxury and avarice a fleet of the Roman people was captured and burned by pirates; in your prætorship pirates sailed their ships in that harbor which no enemy had ever entered since the foundation of Syracuse; and these disgraces of yours, so many and so great, you did not care to hide by concealment on your part, nor by making men forget them and keep silent about them, but you tore away to death and torture even the captains of the ships, without any cause, from the embraces of their parents, your own friends, nor in seeing the grief and tears of those parents did any memory of me soften you; to you the blood of innocent men was not only a pleasure, but even a source of profit.” If your father should say this to you, could you ask pardon from him? could you entreat him to forgive you?[44]

These few examples, perhaps not the most striking to be found in the great body of his orations, may give some idea of the variety of Cicero’s oratory. In his youth the Roman orators were divided into two parties on the question of style; the elder men, chief among whom was Hortensius, favored the Asian style, with its wealth of rhetorical adornment, while the younger men, the Atticists, as they called themselves, aimed at extreme simplicity, taking Lysias as their model. Cicero perceived that a middle course was best. His natural tendency was toward exuberance, but he tempered it by careful study. He does not avoid rhetorical adornment, but he seldom uses it to excess. Like Demosthenes, whom he regarded as the greatest of the Greek orators, he varies his style to suit the occasion, and, like him, he stands forth as the greatest orator of his nation.

Philosophical works.In his philosophical writings Cicero’s purpose was to be useful to his fellow citizens by making them acquainted with the results of Greek speculative thought. As he himself says:

As I sought and pondered much and long by what means I could be of use to as many men as possible, that I might never cease to care for the welfare of the republic, nothing greater occurred to me than if I should make accessible to my fellow citizens the paths of the noblest learning.[45]

With this end in view he wrote his treatises, for the most part in the dialogue form, after the manner of Plato, in which he set forth the doctrines of the Greek philosophers on the most important subjects, such as the chief end of life, the means of attaining happiness, duty, the nature of the gods, and the like, laying the chief stress upon what he believed to be true and correct. He lays no claim to great originality of thought, but only to independence of judgment. In general, he regards himself as a disciple of the Academic school, which did not claim to establish absolute truth, but to show what was most probable. He uses, however, the works of Stoic and even of Epicurean philosophers, whenever they express views in accordance with his own, as well as when he wishes to refute their teachings. He is not entirely consistent in all his writings, but his high moral sense, his belief in the divine government of the world, and his hope of immortality are the foundations of his philosophy. His style in these writings is, as befits his subject, dignified and serene, but enlivened by the occasional interruptions incident to the dialogue form.

Importance of Cicero’s philosophical works. To the professional student of ancient philosophy these treatises are of great importance chiefly because of the information they contain concerning the writings and doctrines of Greek philosophers whose works have been lost; to the student of literature they offer admirable examples of learned works in popular form, with all the charm of exquisite literary workmanship; and their influence upon later ages was so great that no one who is interested in the progress of human thought can disregard them. St. Augustine, and many other writers of the early Christian Church, acknowledge their indebtedness to them; they are the foundation of the speculative thought of the middle ages; and it is in great measure due to their influence that the Latin language has remained, almost to our own day, the great medium for the expression of philosophical and scientific speculation. Cicero made “the paths of the noblest learning” accessible not only to his Roman fellow citizens, but to countless generations of men of all lands. His noble purpose was accomplished more grandly than he ever hoped or dreamed. Let those who will, accuse him of shallowness and superficiality; mankind owes him an immeasurable debt of gratitude.

Cicero’s orations have served as models for many generations of orators, his rhetorical treatises may be regarded as the foundation of nearly all later theories of style, his philosophical works exerted an influence which permeated the thought of centuries. Cicero’s letters. It remains to speak of his letters. These are in some respects the most interesting of his writings, because they show the feelings of the man as he disclosed them to his intimate friends, they make us acquainted with the personal relations between the prominent Romans of the time, and shed many rays of light upon the dark pages of contemporary history. The first of the extant letters is dated in 68 B. C., the last July 28, 43 B. C. The collection was made by Cicero’s friends, and edited probably by his freedman, Tiro, and his publisher and most intimate friend, Atticus. They fall into four groups; sixteen books addressed to various persons (Ad Familiares), three books to Cicero’s brother Quintus (Ad Quintum Fratrem), sixteen books to Atticus (Ad Atticum), and two books to Brutus (Ad Brutum). There were originally nine books of letters to Brutus, but only the eighth and the ninth are preserved.

The letters differ greatly in importance, in length, and in interest. Some are mere greetings or brief introductions, while others are carefully composed treatises; some are expressions of Cicero’s inmost feelings to his intimate friends, while others are business notes or occasional letters to men with whom he was on a less familiar footing; some are addressed to the great leaders of the political parties, others to comparatively obscure persons; some are on literary subjects, others on private business, and still others on matters that pertain to the history of the world. Variety of contents. The style and language vary with the contents of the letters, but are in general less careful than in any of Cicero’s other writings. The language is evidently that of common speech rather than of literary composition. In the letters written during his exile Cicero betrays unmanly discouragement, and breaks out into pitiful lamentation, just as in many of his orations he betrays great vanity, and extols overmuch his own courage and patriotism in the matter of the Catilinarian conspiracy; but these letters are the confidential utterances of momentary feelings, not the deliberate expressions of the man’s character, and we must not forget that Cicero was an Italian, a man of easily aroused emotions, whose vanity might overflow or whose grief might break forth without affecting his real earnestness or steadfastness. One of the briefer letters to Atticus is the following, written from Thurium, in April, 58 B. C., soon after Cicero’s banishment began:

Terentia thanks you frequently and very warmly. That is a great comfort to me. I am the most miserable man alive, and am being worn out with the most poignant sorrow. I don’t know what to write to you. For if you are at Rome, it is now too late for me to reach you; but if you are on the road, we shall discuss together all that needs to be discussed when you have overtaken me. All I ask you is to retain the same affection for me, since it was always myself you loved. For I am still the same man; my enemies have taken what was mine, they have not taken myself. Take care of your health.[46]

A letter to Marcus Terentius Varro, written in 46 B. C., among the troubles of the civil war, shows Cicero consoling himself with literature: