Plate XXIII. AUGUSTUS: THE BLACAS CAMEO
Cicero, the most classical of all classics, is, however, far the greatest literary product of the Republic. He is, indeed, far too vast a figure for these modest pages. By his colossal industry and immense fertility of genius his influence dominates the whole field of Latin prose literature. He is not only the greatest of all orators, but he stands as the type of the orator in life as in literature. We of this generation, who live in the eclipse of rhetoric, do not find it easy to be just to him. With such gifts of eloquence, such a power of uttering tremendous phrases about duty and patriotism, we cannot but feel affronted at his political incapacity. Mommsen, who is all for action, peppers him with contemptuous expressions—“a statesman without insight, opinion or purpose”; “a short-sighted egoist”; “a journalist of the worst description”; “his lawyer’s talent of finding excuses—or, at any rate, words—for everything.” And, indeed, among men like Cæsar with legions at their backs, or creatures like Clodius with their packs of hooligans, a man of golden words and honest principles does cut a sorry figure on the pages of history—so much the worse for history! He had, as we have seen, a policy, his talents made him a leader among the moderates of the senate, and his character made him genuinely popular among all the more respectable classes of society. But Rhetoric is one of the feminine Muses, and Cicero’s nature was as soft and sympathetic as a woman’s. So he turns his coat at a word from Pompeius, utters brave words one day and eats them on the next, publishes magnificent denunciations which he has not had the courage to deliver. Moreover, we see his intimate thoughts revealed in all the frankness of an unexpurgated private correspondence—and there are few statesmen, certainly very few orators, whose reputations can sustain that test. Thus the golden words often ring hollow. His vanity is often ludicrous, as when he writes to Lucceius, to beseech a conspicuous place in his history, even if the truth has to be distorted for the purpose; or when he loiters at Brundisium, with his lictors’ rods continually wreathed in laurel for the futile hope of a triumph. Certainly he was an egoist. Probably in their private correspondence all men are. But he was also a gentleman, one of the few Romans of his day with whom one would care to shake hands in Elysium.
To Mommsen, Cæsar is the “sole creative genius” of Roman history. We may well ask what he created. Certainly not the empire, for that fell to pieces at his death, and had to be re-created on a new plan by his successor. Not even the Gallic province, for though he conquered it, he left the problem of its organisation to Augustus. Possibly the Lex Julia municipalis. But Cicero[26] created Latin prose out of next to nothing and left it to the world as its grandest form of literary expression. The splendid Latin period, with its clear logical order, its chain of dependent clauses each in its place with absolute precision, a thought built of words as a temple is built of marble, is the best expression of Roman grandeur, as typical and as enduring as a Roman road or wall. It was not mere art. It was the natural expression of a Roman mind trained in law and rhetoric. It was perhaps the finest thing the Romans ever made, and the Latin period is the true justification for retaining Latin in its place for the education of young barbarians accustomed to string their random ideas together like dish-clouts on a line. Although it was the result of long training under all the most distinguished masters of Rome and Greece, and was perfected with infinite labour, Cicero’s style, when once achieved, was extraordinarily rapid and fluent, as the number of his works can testify. It is true that, like many great stylists—Dryden, for example—he came to believe that style was everything. He was prepared to write a geography of the world or a history of Rome. He only wanted a few notes from his brother Quintus to write an account of Britain. His multitudinous philosophical works were, as we have seen, more style than philosophy, thrown off in a few months to while away the time at his Tusculan villa at intervals when the temperature of Rome, literally or politically, was too high to suit his health. In such work he may fairly be called a journalist, though a very great one. When he writes of a subject he really understands, such as rhetoric, he is at his best. Again, in his forensic speeches or writings he is much better as an advocate than as a lawyer. His mind is not capable of juristic precision, he is neither deep nor subtle, and so far his influence is wholly detrimental in the history of Roman law. He would probably infuriate a trained judge; but give him a jury, and, if possible, a large Italian one, and he is irresistible, now with translucent rapid narrative, now with clever mystification, breaking off into thundering appeals to conscience or heaven, or again with passionate denunciation of his opponent or majestic encomium for his client. In the senate he is not at his best. We are told that a few blunt words from Cato had more power to move that assembly of practical men than all the Catilinarian orations. But if Rome had been governed as Greece was, by orations in the market-place, Cicero would have been in Cæsar’s place as dictator of the world. Imagine the Roman mob assembling in 63 B.C. to hear their consul’s account of Catiline’s flight—
tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam, furentem audacia, scelus anhelantem, pestem patriæ nefarie molientem, uobis atque huic urbi ferrum flammamque minitantem, ex urbe uel eiecimus, uel emisimus, uel ipsum egredientem uerbis prosecuti sumus. abiit, excessit, euasit, erupit. nulla iam pernicius a monstro illo atque prodigio mœnibus ipsis intra mœnia comparabitur. non enim iam inter latera nostra sica illa uersabitur: non in Campo, non in foro, non in Curia, non denique intra domesticas parietes, pertimescemus[27]
—his voice screams with passion, or sinks into pathos; presently he drops into the tones of calm reason or fluent narrative; as he nears his peroration his eyes flash, his hands gesticulate, his body sways from side to side, his foot stamps the ground, he seems to foam at the mouth:
dolebam, dolebam, patres conscripti, rempublicam uestris quondam meisque consiliis conseruatam, breui tempore esse perituram ... audite, audite, patres conscripti, et cognoscite reipublicæ uolnera....[28]
“Why, you did not even stamp your foot!” he exclaims in rebuking the coolness of an opposing counsel. It is true that there were purists of the severer school of Roman oratory who thought such vehemence meretricious and undignified. The true Roman eloquence of the old school is to be found in that ambassador who came to the Carthaginian senate with “peace or war,” gathered in the folds of his mantle and briefly commanded them to choose; or that other who drew a circle in the dust round the Great King and demanded an answer before he left the circle. Cicero had studied his art both in the flowery Asiatic and the severer Attic schools. There was still, his critics complained, too much Asia in his style. But that was part of the tendency of his age. The austerity of Cato, with his simple formulæ, was gone for ever. The Romans of this age are more emotional, more sentimental, more characteristically Southern.