Largus et exundans letho dedit ingenii fons.

Ingenio manus est et cervix cæsa, nec unquam

Sanguine causidici maduerunt rostra pusilli[331].”

Besides the complete orations above mentioned, Cicero delivered many, of which only fragments remain, or which are now entirely lost. All those which he pronounced during the five years intervening between his election to the Quæstorship and the Ædileship have perished, except that for M. Tullius, of which the exordium and narrative were brought to light at the late celebrated discovery by Mai, in the Ambrosian library at Milan. Tullius had been forcibly dispossessed (vi armata) by one of the Fabii of a farm he held in Lucania; and the whole Fabian race were prosecuted for damages, under a law of Lucullus, whereby, in consequence of depredations committed in the municipal states of Italy, every family was held responsible for the violent aggressions of any of its tribe. A large fragment of the oration for Scaurus forms by far the most valuable part of the discovery in the Ambrosian library. The oration, indeed, is not entire, but the part we have of it is tolerably well connected. The charge was one of provincial embezzlement, and in the exordium the orator announces that he was to treat, 1st, of the general nature of the accusation itself; 2d, of the character of the Sardinians; 3d, of that of Scaurus; and, lastly, of the special charge concerning the corn. Of these, the first two heads are tolerably entire; and that in which he exposes the faithless character of the Sardinians, and thus shakes the cred[pg 183]ibility of the witnesses for the prosecution is artfully managed. The other fragments discovered in the Ambrosian library consist merely of detached sentences, of which it is almost impossible to make a connected meaning. Of this description is the oration In P. Clodium; yet still, by the aid of the Commentary found along with it, we are enabled to form some notion of the tenor of the speech. The well-known story of Clodius finding access to the house of Cæsar, in female disguise, during the celebration of the mysteries of Bona Dea, gave occasion to this invective. A sort of altercation had one day passed in the Senate between Cicero and Clodius, soon after the acquittal of the latter for this offence, which probably suggested to Cicero the notion of writing a connected oration, inveighing against the vices and crimes of Clodius, particularly his profanation of the secret rites of the goddess, and the corrupt means by which he had obtained his acquittal. In one of his epistles to Atticus, Cicero gives a detailed account of this altercation, which certainly does not afford us a very dignified notion of senatorial gravity and decorum.

Of those orations of Cicero which have entirely perished, the greatest loss has been sustained by the disappearance of the defence of Cornelius, who was accused of practices against the state during his tribuneship. This speech, which was divided into two great parts, was continued for four successive days, in presence of an immense concourse of people, who testified their admiration of its bright eloquence by repeated applause[332]. The orator himself frequently refers to it as among the most finished of his compositions[333]; and the old critics cite it as an example of genuine eloquence. “Not merely,” says Quintilian, “with strong, but with shining armour did Cicero contend in the cause of Cornelius.” We have also to lament the loss of the oration for C. Piso, accused of oppression in his government—of the farewell discourse delivered to the Sicilians, (Quum Quæstor Lilybæo discederet,) in which he gave them an account of his administration, and promised them his protection at Rome—of the invective pronounced in the Senate against Metellus, in answer to a harangue which that Tribune had delivered to the people concerning Cicero’s conduct, in putting the confederates of Catiline to death without trial; and, finally, of the celebrated speech De Proscriptorum Liberis, in which, on political grounds, he opposed, while admitting their justice, the claims of the children of those whom Sylla had proscribed and disqualified from holding [pg 184]any honours in the state, and who now applied to be relieved from their disabilities. The success which he obtained in resisting this demand, is described in strong terms by Pliny: “Te orante, proscriptorum liberos honores petere puduit[334].” A speech which is now lost, and which, though afterwards reduced to writing, must have been delivered extempore, afforded another strong example of the persuasiveness of his eloquence. The appearance of the Tribune, Roscius Otho, who had set apart seats for the knights at the public spectacles, having one day occasioned a disturbance at the theatre, Cicero, on being informed of the tumult, hastened to the spot, and, calling out the people to the Temple of Bellona, he so calmed them by the magic of his eloquence, that, returning immediately to the theatre, they clapped their hands in honour of Otho, and vied with the knights in giving him demonstrations of respect[335]. One topic which he touched on in this oration, and the only one of which we have any hint from antiquity, was the rioters’ want of taste, in creating a tumult, while Roscius was performing on the stage[336]. This speech, the orations against the Agrarian law, and that De Proscriptorum Liberis, have long been cited as the strongest examples of the power of eloquence over the passions of mankind: And it is difficult to say, whether the highest praise be due to the orator, who could persuade, or to the people, who could be thus induced to relinquish the most tempting expectations of property and honours, and the full enjoyment of their favourite amusements.

In the age of that declamation which prevailed at Rome from the time of Tiberius to the fall of the empire, it was the practice of rhetoricians to declaim on similar topics with those on which Cicero had delivered, or was supposed to have delivered, harangues. It appears from Aulus Gellius[337], that in the age of Marcus Aurelius doubts were entertained with regard to the authenticity of certain orations circulated as productions of Cicero. He was known to have delivered four speeches almost immediately after his recall from banishment, on subjects closely connected with his exile. The first was addressed to the Senate[338], and the second to the people, a few days subsequently to his return[339]; the third to the college of Pontiffs, in order to obtain restitution of a piece of ground on the Palatine hill, on which his house had formerly stood, but had been demolished, and a temple erected on the spot, with a view, as he feared, to alienate it irretrievably from the proprietor, by thus consecrating [pg 185]it to religious purposes[340]. The fourth was pronounced in consequence of Clodius declaring that certain menacing prodigies, which had lately appeared, were indubitably occasioned by the desecration of this ground, which the Pontiffs had now discharged from religious uses. Four orations, supposed to have been delivered on those occasions, and entitled, Post Reditum in Senatu, Ad Quirites post Reditum, Pro domo sua ad Pontifices, De Haruspicum Responsis, were published in all the early editions of Cicero, without any doubts of their authenticity being hinted by the commentators, and were also referred to as genuine authorities by Middleton in his Life of Cicero. At length, about the middle of last century, the well-known dispute having arisen between Middleton and Tunstall, concerning the letters to Brutus, Markland engaged in the controversy; and his remarks on the correspondence of Cicero and Brutus were accompanied with a “Dissertation on the Four Orations ascribed to M. T. Cicero,” published in 1745, which threw great doubts on their authenticity. Middleton made no formal reply to this part of Markland’s observations; but he neither retracted his opinion nor changed a word in his subsequent edition of the Life of Cicero.

Soon afterwards, Ross, the editor of Cicero’s Epistolæ Familiares, and subsequently Bishop of Exeter, ironically showed, in his “Dissertation, in which the defence of P. Sulla, ascribed to Cicero, is clearly proved to be spurious, after the manner of Mr Markland,” that, on the principles and line of argument adopted by his opponent, the authenticity of any one of the orations might be contested. This jeu d’esprit of Bishop Ross was seriously confuted in a “Dissertation, in which the Objections of a late Pamphlet to the Writings of the Ancients, after the manner of Mr Markland, are clearly Answered; and those Passages in Tully corrected, on which some of the Objections are founded.—1746.” This dissertation was printed by Bowyer, and he is generally believed to have been the author of it[341]. In Germany, J. M. Gesner, with all the weight attached to his opinion, and Thesaurus, strenuously defended these orations in two prelections, held in 1753 and 1754, and inserted in the 3d volume of the new series of the Transactions of the Royal Academy at Gottingen, under the title Cicero Restitutus, in which he refuted, one by one, all the objections of Markland.

After this, although the Letters of Brutus were no longer considered as authentic, literary men in all countries—as De Brosses, the French Translator of Sallust, Ferguson, Saxius, in his Onomasticon, and Rhunkenius—adopted the orations as genuine. Ernesti, in his edition of Cicero, makes no mention of the existence of any doubts respecting them; and, in his edition of Fabricius[342], alludes to the controversy concerning them as a foolish and insignificant dispute. A change of opinion, however, was produced by an edition of the four orations which Wolfius published at Berlin in 1801, to which he prefixed an account of the controversy, and a general view of the arguments of Markland and Gesner. The observations of each, relating to particular words and phrases, are placed below the passages as they occur, and are followed by Wolf’s own remarks, refuting, to the utmost of his power, the opinions of Gesner, and confirming those of Markland. Schütz, the late German editor of Cicero, has completely adopted the notions of Wolf; and by printing these four harangues, not in their order in the series, but separately, and at the end of the whole, along with the discarded correspondence between Cicero and Brutus, has thrown them without the classical pale as effectually as Lambinus excluded the once recognized orations, In pace, and Antequam iret in Exilium. In the fourth volume of his new edition of the works of Cicero now proceeding in Germany, Beck has followed the opinion of Wolf, after an impartial examination of the different arguments in his notes, and in an excursus criticus devoted to this subject.

Markland and Wolf believe, that these harangues were written as a rhetorical exercise, by some declaimer, who lived not long after Cicero, probably in the time of Tiberius, and who had before his eyes some orations of Cicero now lost, (perhaps those which he delivered on his return from exile,) from which the rhetorician occasionally borrowed ideas or phrases, not altogether unworthy of the orator’s genius and eloquence. But, though they may contain some insulated Ciceronian expressions, it is utterly denied that these orations can be the continued composition of Cicero. The arguments against their authenticity are deduced, first from their matter; and, secondly, from their style. These critics dwell much on the numerous thoughts and ideas inconsistent with the known sentiments, or unsuitable to the disposition of the author,—on the relation of events, told in a different manner from that in which they have been recorded by him in his undoubted works,—and, finally, on the gross ignorance shown of the laws, [pg 187]institutions, and customs of Rome, and even of the events passing at the time. Thus it is said, in one of these four orations, that, on some political occasion, all the senators changed their garb, as also the Prætors and Ædiles, which proves, that the author was ignorant that all Ædiles and Prætors were necessarily senators, since, otherwise, the special mention of them would be superfluous and absurd. What is still stronger, the author, in the oration Ad Quirites post reditum, refers to the speech in behalf of Gabinius, which was not pronounced till 699, three years subsequently to Cæsar’s recall; whereas the real oration, Ad Quirites, was delivered on the second or third day after his return. With regard to the style of these harangues, it is argued, that the expressions are affected, the sentences perplexed, and the transitions abrupt; and that their languor and want of animation render them wholly unworthy of Cicero. Markland particularly points out the absurd repetition of what the declaimer had considered Ciceronian phrases,—as, “Aras, focos, penates—Deos immortales—Res incredibiles—Esse videatur.” Of the orations individually he remarks, and justly, that the one delivered by Cicero in the Senate immediately after his return, was known to have been prepared with the greatest possible care, and to have been committed to writing before it was pronounced; while the fictitious harangue which we now have in its place, is at all events, quite unlike anything that Cicero would have produced with elaborate study. The second is a sort of compendium of the first, and the same ideas and expressions are slavishly repeated; which implies a barrenness of invention, and sterility of language, that cannot be supposed in Cicero. Of the third oration he speaks, in his letters to Atticus, as one of his happiest efforts[343]; but nothing can be more wretched than that which we now have in its stead,—the first twelve chapters, indeed, being totally irrelevant to the question at issue.

The oration for Marcellus, the genuineness of which has also been called in question, is somewhat in a different style from the other harangues of Cicero; for, though entitled Pro Marcello, it is not so much a speech in his defence, as a panegyric on Cæsar, for having granted the pardon of Marcellus at the intercession of the Senate. Marcellus had been one of the most violent opponents of the views of Cæsar. He had recommended in the Senate, that he should be deprived of the province of Gaul: he had insulted the magistrates of one of Cæsar’s new-founded colonies; and had been present at Pharsalia on the side of Pompey. After that battle he retired to Mitylene, where he was obliged to remain, being one of the [pg 188]few adversaries to whom the conqueror refused to be reconciled. The Senate, however, one day when Cæsar was present, with an united voice, and in an attitude of supplication, having implored his clemency in favour of Marcellus, and their request having been granted, Cicero, though he had resolved to preserve eternal silence, being moved by the occasion, delivered one of the most strained encomiums that has ever been pronounced.