In the Augustan Period (B.C. 42-14 A.D.), the greatest of Roman poets, Virgil and Horace, lived and wrote, prose playing a secondary part. Tibullus and Propertius put forth their sweet elegies, and Ovid his amatory pieces. Even the pages of Livy’s history are aglow with poetical coloring. But the blossom was as transient as it was beautiful, and expanded only to die.
ORNAMENTS OF THE GOLDEN AGE
HORACE CICERO VIRGIL
PROSE WRITERS OF THE CICERONIAN PERIOD.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was born at Arpi’num, a Latian town south-east of Rome. As his family (of equestrian rank) had never distinguished itself, he is known as a novus homo (new man). Detecting unusual talent in the boy, his father resolved to develop it by a thorough education, which he himself superintended at Rome. The most accomplished teachers were secured, the Greek poet Ar’chias among the number, and the youth was thoroughly grounded in grammar, rhetoric, and Grecian literature. This early training Cicero sedulously supplemented with a course on Roman law under Scævola, avoiding the whirl of dissipation that surrounded him, and even relinquishing social pleasure for the labors of his closet or to study in the forum the style of the first public speakers. “Who can blame me,” he asked in his oration for Archias, “if while others are gazing at festal shows and idle ceremonies, exploring new pleasures, engaged in midnight revels, in the distraction of gaming, the madness of intemperance, I dedicate my time to learning and the Muses?”
At twenty-five Cicero made his début; and within two years he rose to the highest rank at the Roman bar by ably pleading the cause of one Roscius against a friend of the terrible Sulla. Successful in this case, to escape the vengeance of the dictator as well as to recruit his failing health, Cicero went abroad. At Athens he pursued the study of philosophy with Pompo’nius Atticus, the companion of his boyhood and ever after his warmest friend. In the schools of Asia Minor, as well as at Rhodes, then a great literary centre, he studied under distinguished teachers, storing his memory with valuable knowledge at the same time that he made himself proficient in the rhetorical art. The death of Sulla having removed all danger, at the age of thirty he went back to Italy, thoroughly restored by his travels, and fired with the noble ambition of making himself the Demosthenes of Rome. Step by step he approached the realization of his hopes, and when, in the prosecution of Verres, the rapacious governor of Sicily, he triumphed over Hortensius (70 B.C.), his end was practically achieved.
Cicero served his country in many capacities, but in none more effectively than as consul; since, while holding this office (63-62 B.C.), he saved the republic from a dangerous conspiracy, headed by the profligate Catiline. The consul’s tact and courage were sorely tried, but prevailed. Four crushing orations laid bare the plans of the traitor and drove him from the city, to fall in a desperate battle with the Roman legions, while a grateful nation greeted the vigilant Cicero as “the Father of his Country.”
But the Roman people were fickle, and at the instigation of an enemy banished Cicero from the city he had saved, 58 B.C. The next year, however, the decree was revoked, and he returned. When the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey was imminent, Cicero’s indecision told powerfully against him.[43] At last he joined Pompey, who, provoked at his vacillation, exclaimed: “I wish that Cicero would go over to the other side; perhaps he would then be afraid of us.” The battle of Pharsalia (48 B.C.) overthrew the hopes of the party whose cause he had espoused, and Cicero, returning to Italy, accepted the rule and friendship of Cæsar, and settled down to a literary life.
Shortly after, a plot is laid against the dictator; the fatal Ides (15th) of March (44 B.C.) arrive; the assassins do their bloody work in the senate-house; and Brutus, flourishing his traitorous dagger, cries to Cicero: “Rejoice, O Father of our Country, for Rome is free!”
But it was grief, not joy, that the dagger of Brutus brought to the Republic; another Pompey and another Cæsar arose to contend for the mastery of the world. Marc Antony aspired to the dead dictator’s place; but Cicero, now the foremost statesman in Rome, regarding him as the enemy of liberty, upheld the cause of the people and of Octavius, Cæsar’s young nephew. Into the struggle that ensued, he entered with all the spirit of his youth, thundering against Antony his grand “Philippics,” in the second of which are concentrated all his powers of invective, passion, and eloquence. It is Cicero’s mightiest effort.