He was well-born, but not of noble ancestors. The great peculiarity of his youth was his precocity. He was an intellectual prodigy,--like Pitt, Macaulay, and Mill. Like them, he had a wonderful memory. He early mastered the Greek language; he wrote poetry, studied under eminent professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into the mazes of literature and philosophy. He was conscious of his marvellous gifts, and was, of course, ambitious of distinction.
There were only three ways at Rome in which a man could rise to eminence and power. One was by making money, like army contractors and merchants, such as the Equites, to whose ranks he belonged; the second was by military service; and the third by the law,--an honorable profession. Like Caesar, a few years younger than he, Cicero selected the law. But he was a new man,--not a patrician, as Caesar was,--and had few powerful friends. Hence his progress was not rapid in the way of clients. He was twenty-five years of age before he had a case. He was twenty-seven when he defended Roscius, which seems to have brought him into notice,--even as the fortune of Erskine was made in the Greenwich Hospital case and that of Daniel Webster in the case of Dartmouth College. To have defended Roscius against all the influence of Sulla, then the most powerful man in Rome, was considered bold and audacious. His fame for great logical power rests on his defence of Milo,--the admiration of all lawyers.
Cicero was not naturally robust. His figure was tall and spare, his neck long and slender, and his mouth anything but sensual. He looked more like an elegant scholar than a popular public speaker. Yet he was impetuous, ardent, and fiery, like Demosthenes, resorting to violent gesticulations. The health of such a young man could not stand the strain on his nervous system, and he was obliged to leave Rome for recreation; he therefore made the tour of Greece and Asia Minor, which every fashionable and cultivated man was supposed to do. Yet he did not abandon himself to the pleasures of cities more fascinating than Rome itself, but pursued his studies in rhetoric and philosophy under eminent masters, or "professors" as we should now call them. He remained abroad two years, returning when he was thirty years of age and settling down in his profession, taking at first but little part in politics. He married Terentia, with whom he lived happily for thirty years.
But the Roman lawyer was essentially a politician, looking ultimately to political office, since only through the great public offices could he enter the Senate,--the object of ambition to all distinguished Romans, as a seat in Parliament is the goal of an Englishman. The Roman lawyer did not receive fees, like modern lawyers, but derived his support from presents and legacies. When he became a political leader, a man of influence with the great, his presents were enormous. Cicero acknowledged, late in life, to have received what would now be equal to more than a million of dollars from legacies alone. The great political leaders and orators were the stipendiaries of Eastern princes and nobles who wanted favors from the Senate, and who knew as well how to reward such services as do the railway kings in our times.
Before Cicero, then, could be a Senator, he must pass through those great public offices which were in the gift of the people. The first step on the ladder of advancement was the office of quaestor, which entailed the duty of collecting revenues in one of the provinces. This office he was sufficiently influential to secure, being sent to Sicily, where he distinguished himself for his activity and integrity. At the end of a year he renewed his practice in the courts at Rome,--being hardly anything more than a mere lawyer for five years, when he was elected an Aedile, to whom the care of the public buildings was intrusted.
It was while he was aedile-elect that Cicero appeared as the public prosecutor of Verres. This was one of the great cases of antiquity, and the one from which the orator's public career fairly dates. His residence in Sicily had prepared him for this duty; and he secured the conviction of this great criminal, whose peculations and corruptions would amaze our modern New Yorkers and all the "rings" of our great cities combined. But the Praetor of Sicily was a provincial governor,--more like Warren Hastings than Tweed. For this public service Cicero gained more éclat than Burke did for his prosecution of Hastings; since Hastings, though a corrupt man, laid, after Clive, the foundation of the English empire in India, and was a man of immense talents,--greater than those of any who has since filled his place. Hence the nation screened Hastings. But Verres had no virtues and no great abilities; he was an outrageous public robber, and hoped, from his wealth and powerful connections, to purchase immunity for his crimes. In the hands of such an orator as Cicero he could not escape the penalty of the law, powerful as he was, even at Rome. This case placed Cicero above Hortensius, hitherto the leader of the Roman bar.
It was at this period that the extant correspondence of Cicero began, which is the best picture we have of the manners and habits of the Roman aristocracy at the time. History could scarcely spare those famous letters, especially to Atticus, in which also the private life and character of Cicero shine to the most advantage, revealing no vices, no treacheries,--only egotism, vanity, and vacillation, and a way that some have of speaking about people in private very differently from what they say in public, which looks like insincerity. In these letters Cicero appears as a very frank man, genial, hospitable, domestic, witty, whose society and conversation must have been delightful. In no modern correspondence do we see a higher perfection in the polished courtesies and urbanities of social life, with the alloy of vanity, irony, and discontent. But in these letters he also evinces a friendship which is immortal; and what is nobler than the capacity of friendship? In these he not only shines as a cultivated scholar, but as a great statesman and patriot, living for the good of his country, though not unmindful of the luxuries of home and the charms of country retirement, and those enjoyments which are ever associated with refined and favored life. We read here of pictures, books, medals, statues, curiosities of every kind, all of which adorned his various villas, as well as his magnificent palace on Mount Palatine, which cost him what would be equal in our money to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To keep up this town house, and some fifteen villas in different parts of Italy, and to feast the greatest nobles, like Pompey and Caesar, would imply that his income was enormous, much greater than that of any modern professional man. And yet he seems to have lived, like Bacon and our Webster, beyond his income, and was in debt the greater part of his life,--another flaw in his character; for I do not wish to paint him without faults, but only as a good as well as a great man, for his times. His private character was as lofty as that of Chatham or Canning,--if we could forget his vanity, which after all is not so offensive as the intellectual pride of Burke and Pitt, and of sundry other great lights who might be mentioned, conscious of their gifts and attainments. There is something very different in the egotism of a silly and self-seeking aristocrat from that of a great benefactor who has something to be proud of, and with whose private experiences the greatest national deeds are connected. I speak of this fault because it has been handled too severely by modern critics. What were the faults of Cicero, compared with those of Theodosius or Constantine, to say nothing of his contemporaries, like Caesar, before whom so much incense has been burned?
At the age of forty Cicero became Praetor, or Supreme Judge. This office, when it expired, entitled him to a provincial government,--the great ultimate ambition of a senator; since the administration of a province, even for a single year, usually secured an enormous fortune. But this tempting offer he resigned, since he felt he could not be spared from Rome in such a crisis of public affairs, when the fortunate generals were grasping power and the demagogues were almost preparing the way for despotism. Some might say he was a far-sighted and ambitious statesman, who could not afford to weaken his chances of being made Consul by absence from the capital.
This great office, the consulship, the highest in the gift of the people,--which gave supreme executive control,--was rarely conferred, although elective, upon any but senators of ancient family and enormous wealth. It was as difficult for a "new man" to reach this dignity, under an aristocratic Constitution, as for a commoner a hundred years ago to become prime minister of England. Transcendent talents and services scarcely sufficed. Only generals who had won great military fame, or the highest of the nobles, stood much chance. For a lawyer to aim at the highest office in the State, without a great family to back him, would have been deemed as audacious as for such a man as Burke to aspire to a seat in the cabinet during the reign of George III. A lawyer at Rome, like a lawyer in London, might become a lord chancellor or praetor, but not easily a prime minister: he would be defeated by aristocratic influence and jealousies. Although the people had the right of election, they voted at the dictation of those who had money and power. Yet Cicero obtained the consulship, probably with the aid of senators, which he justly regarded as a great triumph. It was a very unusual thing. It was more marvellous than for a Jew to reign in Great Britain, or, like Mordecai, in the court of a Persian king.
The most distinguished service of Cicero as consul was to ferret out the conspiracy of Catiline. Now, this traitor belonged to the very highest rank in a Senate of nobles; he was like an ancient duke in the British House of Peers. It was no easy thing for a plebeian consul to bring to justice so great a culprit. He was more formidable than Essex in the reign of Elizabeth, or Bassompierre in the time of Richelieu. He was a man of profligate life, but of marked ability and boundless ambition. He had a band of numerous and faithful followers, armed and desperate. He was also one of those oily and aristocratic demagogues who bewitch the people,--not, as in our times, by sophistries, but by flatteries. He was as debauched as Mirabeau, but without his patriotism, though like him he aimed to overturn the Constitution by allying himself with the democracy. The people, whom he despised, he gained by his money and promises; and he had powerful confederates of his own rank, so that he was on the point of deluging Rome with blood, his aim being nothing less than the extermination of the Senate and the magistrates by assassination, and a general division of the public treasure, with personal assumption of public power.