I have thought it proper to give this minute account of the treatise De Republicâ, for the sake of those who may not have had an opportunity of consulting Mai’s publication, and who may be curious to know somewhat of the value and extent of his discovery. On the whole, I suspect that the treatise will disappoint those whose expectations were high, especially if they thought to find in it much political or statistical information. It corresponds little to the idea that one would naturally form of a political work from the pen of Cicero—a distinguished statesman, always courted by the chiefs of political parties, and at one time himself at the head of the government of his country. But, on reflection, it will not appear surprising that we receive from this work so little insight into the doubtful and disputed points of Roman polity. Those questions, with [pg 275]regard to the manner in which the Senate was filled up—the force of degrees of the people, and the rank of the different jurisdictions, which in modern times have formed subjects of discussion, had not become problems in the time of Cicero. The great men whom he introduces in conversation together, understood each other on such topics, by a word or suggestion; and I am satisfied that those parts of the treatise De Republicâ, which are lost, contained as little that could contribute to the solution of such difficulties, as the portions that have been recovered.
But though the work of Cicero will disappoint those who expect to find in it much political information, still, as in his other productions, every page exhibits a rich and glowing magnificence of style, ever subjected to the controul of a taste the most correct and pure. It contains, like all his writings, some passages of exquisite beauty, and everywhere breathes an exalted spirit of virtue and patriotism. The Latin language, so noble in itself, and dignified, assumes additional majesty in the periods of the Roman Consul, and adds an inexpressible beauty and loftiness to the natural sublimity of his sentiments. No writings, in fact, are so full of moral and intellectual grandeur as those of Cicero, none are more calculated to elevate and purify our nature—to inculcate the tu vero enitere, in the path of knowledge and virtue, and to excite not merely a fond desire, or idle longing, but strenuous efforts after immortality. Indeed, the whole life of the Father of his Country was a noble fulfilment, and his sublime philosophic works are but an expansion of that golden precept, tu vero enitere, enjoined from on high, to his great descendant, by the Spirit of the first Africanus[469].
About a century after the revival of letters, when mankind had at length despaired of any farther discovery of the philosophic writings of Cicero, the learned men of the age employed themselves in collecting the scattered fragments of his lost works, and arranging them according to the order of the books from which they had been extracted. Sigonius had thus united the detached fragments of the work De Republicâ, and he made a similar attempt to repair another lost treatise of Cicero, entitled De Consolatione. But in this instance he not merely collected the fragments, but connected them by sentences of his own composition. The work De Consolatione was written by Cicero in the year 708, on occasion of the death of his much-loved Tullia, with the design of relieving his own mind, and consecrating to all posterity the virtues [pg 276]and memory of his daughter[470]. In this treatise, he set out with the paradoxical propositions, that human life is a punishment, and that men are brought into the world only to pay the forfeit of their sins[471]. Cicero chiefly followed Crantor the Academic[472], who had left a celebrated piece on the same topic; but he inserted whatever pleased him in any other author who had written on the subject. He illustrated his precepts, as he proceeded, by examples from Roman history, of eminent characters who had borne a similar loss with that which he had himself sustained, or other severe misfortunes, with remarkable constancy[473],—dwelling particularly on the domestic calamities of Q. Maximus, who buried a consular son; of Æmilius Paullus, who lost two sons in two days; and of M. Cato, who had been deprived of a son, who was Prætor-Elect[474]. Sigonius pretended, that the patched-up treatise De Consolatione, which he gave to the public, was the lost work of Cicero, of which he had discovered a MS. The imposture succeeded for a considerable time, but was at length detected and pointed out by Riccoboni[475].
Cicero also wrote a treatise in two books, addressed to Atticus, on the subject of Glory, which was the predominant and most conspicuous passion of his soul. It was composed in the year 710, while sailing along the delightful coast of the Campagna, on his voyage to Greece:—
“On as he moved along the level shore,
These temples, in their splendour eminent
Mid arcs, and obelisks, and domes, and towers,
Reflecting back the radiance of the west,
Well might he dream of glory[476]!”
This treatise was extant in the 14th century. A copy had been presented to Petrarch, from his vast collection of books, by Raymond Soranzo, a Sicilian lawyer[477]. Petrarch long preserved this precious volume with great care, and valued it highly. Unfortunately a man called Convenoli, who resided at Avignon, and who had formerly been his preceptor, begged and obtained the loan of it; and having afterwards fallen into indigent circumstances, pawned it for the relief of his necessities, to some unknown person, from whom Petrarch never [pg 277]could regain its possession. Two copies, however, were still extant in the subsequent century, one in a private library at Nuremburg, and another in that of a Venetian nobleman, Bernard Giustiniani, who, dying in 1489, bequeathed his books to a monastery of nuns, to whom Petrus Alcyonius was physician. Filelfo was accused, though on no good foundation, of having burned the Nuremburg copy, after inserting passages from it in his treatise De Contemptu Mundi[478]. But the charge of destroying the original MS. left by Giustiniani to the nuns, has been urged against Alcyonius on better grounds, and with more success. Paulus Manutius, of whose printing-press Alcyonius had been at one time corrector, charged him with having availed himself of his free access to the library of the nuns, whose physician he was, to purloin the treatise De Gloria, and with having destroyed it, to conceal his plagiarisms, after inserting from it various passages in his dialogue De Exilio[479]. The assertion of Manutius is founded only on the disappearance of the MS.,—the opportunities possessed by Alcyonius of appropriating it, and his own critical opinion of the dialogue De Exilio, in which he conceives that there are many passages composed in a style evincing a writer of talents, far superior to those of its nominal author. This accusation was repeated by Paulus Jovius and others[480]. Mencken, in the preface to his edition of the dialogue De Exilio, has maintained the innocence of Alcyonius, and has related a conversation which he had with Bentley on the subject, in the course of which that great scholar declared, that he found nothing in the work of Alcyonius which could convict him of the imputed plagiarism[481]. He has been defended at greater length by Tiraboschi, on the strong grounds that Giustiniani lived after the invention of printing, and that had he actually been in possession of Cicero’s treatise De Gloriâ, he would doubtless have published it—that it is not said to what monastery of nuns Giustiniani bequeathed this precious MS.—that the charge against Alcyonius was not advanced till after his death, although his dialogue De Exilio was first printed in 1522, and he survived till 1527; and, finally, that so great a proportion of it relates to modern events, that there are not more than a few pages which could possibly have been pilfered from Cicero, or any writer of his age[482]. M. Bernardi, in a [pg 278]dissertation subjoined to a work above mentioned, De la Republique, has revived the accusation, at least to a certain extent, by quoting various passages from the work of Alcyonius, which are not well connected with the others, and which, being of a superior order of composition, may be conjectured to be those he had detached from the treatises of Cicero. On the whole, the question of the theft and plagiarism of Alcyonius still remains undecided, and will probably continue so till the discovery of some perfect copy of the tract De Gloriâ—an event rather to be earnestly desired than reasonably anticipated.