An event occurred the year after his consulate, which brought him into a new conflict with some of the worst of these men. P. Clodius, at this time a quæstor, a vicious and debauched young man of family, and who possessed many personal advantages, had an intrigue with Cæsar’s wife Pompeia. Satiated with ordinary voluptuousness, he disguised himself as a woman, and entered the house of Pompeia in the night time, when she with other distinguished Roman matrons, was celebrating the mysteries of the Bona Dea, or Patroness of Chastity. He was discovered and fled. Such was the respect in which these mysteries, at which women alone officiated, were held, that the profanation excited the utmost indignation throughout the city. Even Cæsar found it necessary to put away his wife. The senate directed the consuls to prepare a law for the trial of Clodius before the people, which was resisted by one of the tribunes friendly to Clodius. At length it was agreed that a law should be passed to try him before the prætor and a select number of judges. Clodius rested his defence upon an alibi, which he endeavoured to sustain by witnesses. When Cicero was called to give his deposition, he was insulted by the mob which adhered to Clodius; but such was the veneration in which he was held, that the judges stood up, and received him with great honour. He testified that Clodius had been with him in his house in Rome on the very day of the pollution. Cæsar who was also called, said that he was ignorant of the whole affair; although it occurred in his own house, and in the presence of his mother and sister, who had deposed to the truth of the accusation. Being asked, why then he had put away his wife? he answered, “Because those who are connected with me, must be as free from suspicion as from crime.”[[6]]
That the wife of Cæsar must be free even from suspicion, is a saying that has passed down to our days: yet too many who have heard it are ignorant of the circumstances attending its origin. We read the commentaries of Cæsar at school, and are fired with admiration at his talents and successes. We are thus prepared to pity his death and the manner of it. But the military and political glories of Cæsar, can never furnish an apology for a profligate private life; and a memorable saying is stripped of every attraction, when we know that it was uttered by the lips of a perjured atheist.
In a letter to Atticus, Cicero draws a curious picture of the judges selected to try this famous cause; a majority of whom appears to have been packed from the outcasts of all the orders, and to have been paid for the occasion. Clodius was acquitted by a majority of thirty-one voices over twenty-five. Upon their appointment some of them had requested a guard from the senate to protect them from the mob. Upon which occasion, Catulus a distinguished member of the senate, very facetiously asked one of the judges, “why they wanted a guard, and whether it was to protect the money which Clodius had bribed them with?”
After his acquittal, Clodius was wont to attempt to throw ridicule upon Cicero in the senate, finding it vain to encounter him in argument, and hoping to divert in some degree the force of his attacks. “So the judges” said Clodius, “would give no credit to your oath.” “Twenty-five of them did,” replied Cicero: “the rest would give you none it seems, but made you pay beforehand.”
After the return of Pompey to Rome, as well as of Cæsar from Spain, a triumvirate of interests was formed between these two and Crassus: each having his own ascendancy in view. Cæsar, to make the interest it was thus intended to direct against the independence of the republic, still stronger, made overtures to Cicero, who declined connecting himself with them. At length Cæsar openly declared against him, and favoured the election of Clodius to the tribunate, in the which he succeeded. Being now in authority, he brought forward the law, that whoever had taken away the life of a Roman citizen, uncondemned, should be interdicted bread and water. This was directed against Cicero, in relation to his consular acts respecting the conspirators; and affected him so much, that although the law was in general terms, and his name was not mentioned in it, he changed his garments, and appeared abroad sordidly dressed to attract the compassion of the people. The young Romans of liberal character, to the number of twenty thousand also changed their dress, and accompanied him; soliciting the favour of all in authority, and of the people, against the passage of this law. But the combination of bad men proved too strong against him, and Pompey having refused his protection, Cicero was induced by the advice of his friends, to withdraw himself into a temporary exile from Rome. This humiliating event took place in his forty-ninth year. During his absence his residences both in town and country, which were upon a scale commensurate with his dignity, were despoiled; and together with the furniture appropriated by the consuls and by Clodius. At length the daring insolence of that tribune, and the perpetual broils he occasioned, began to indispose all men against him, except his immediate profligate retainers. Advantage was taken of this to propose in the senate the recall of Cicero; which finally prevailed at a very numerous convocation of the senators and magistrates; Clodius alone giving a dissenting voice. At its final passage into a law by the Roman people, the field of Mars was crowded with their assembled centuries. Such was the public veneration for him, that voters from every town in Italy were present to insure the passage of a law which restored so great a benefactor to his country. All the centuries concurred in an act thus most solemnly passed by the whole Roman people. In anticipation of the event, he left Dyrrhachium in Macedonia, and soon after his arrival at Brundisium, where his daughter Tullia had come to meet him, he received the welcome news from Rome. His journey was a continued triumph, and he was received on his arrival at the city in the most enthusiastic manner. An insufficient sum of money was voted to him to rebuild his mansions. When he had almost finished his palatine house, it was attacked by one of Clodius’ mobs, and destroyed. Broils and slaughters were now so common in the streets of Rome, that gladiators were retained to assist in these feuds; in which the consuls of the same year were sometimes opposed to each other. Cicero who had now reached his fifty-first year, was again made to feel how unremitting is the hatred of enemies, and uncertain the support of friends. Public virtue appeared to him to have no longer any value in the eyes of the Romans. He saw that every man attended more to his private safety and advancement, than to the public peace and dignity of the city; and perceiving the necessity of a powerful protector for himself and family in his old age, he appears from one of his letters to have determined to conform himself in every thing to the pleasure of Pompey. We also see him from time to time engaged in agreeable services to Cæsar, with whom Pompey was yet connected. Experience and persecution appear to have induced him to adopt a course foreign to the character of the perfect citizen he has pourtrayed in his republic. In his fourth epistle to Atticus, he says[[7]] “If they will not be friendly to me who possess no power, I must endeavour to make those like me who have the power of being useful. ‘I told you so long ago,’ you will say; I know that you did, and I was an ass for not taking your advice.” The opinion too of his friend Cælius, would have great weight with most men, in such disturbed times. “It cannot have escaped you, that the duty of men amidst domestic dissensions, is to espouse the honestest side, as long as the contention is of a civil nature, and force is not used. But when it comes to wars and camps, they should take the strongest side, and consider that the best which is the most safe.”[[8]]
The influence of Cæsar was now becoming very conspicuous. His military career in Gaul, his generosity, and the universality of his talents, gave him at length a pre-eminence over Pompey in the public estimation. Pompey and Crassus had entered into the consulship with little observance of constitutional forms; and, with as little deference to the senate, had caused provinces to be assigned to them for five years. Spain and Africa to Pompey. Syria and the fatal Parthian war to Crassus. This triumvirate had now almost the whole Roman military force at their command.
It was in the spring of the next year, that Cicero at his Cuman villa, began his famous work on government. He was now advancing into his fifty-fourth year, and it appears that he had completed his work before he entered upon his command in Cilicia. His military career was distinguished by great activity and judgment. He was saluted emperor by the army upon one of his military successes, and returned gladly to Rome at the end of the year. During the remainder of his eventful life, he appears to have found comfort only in the cultivation of philosophy and letters. The corruption of the Romans, the ruin of the republic, the death of his beloved daughter, and his separation from the wife he had lived with thirty years, embittered his days. He was too conspicuous a man not to be affected by all the political changes which took place. Crassus perished in the Parthian war; and Cæsar, as soon as he felt himself strong enough, crossed the Rubicon, which was the limit of his military command, and marched upon Rome, from which Pompey and the senate ingloriously fled. Cicero at length felt himself also constrained to follow the fortunes of Pompey, because he believed the dignity of the Roman name was alone to be found under his banners. And when the battle of Pharsalia left Cæsar sole master of the Roman world, he submitted to Cæsar, because there was no other government to submit to. But he rejoiced in his death, of which he was a spectator, and to the last, gave all the aid in his power to the patriots who sought to raise the liberties of his country. In his latter days, he showed an invincible spirit, defying the profligate Anthony in the plenitude of his power. And when the assassins of the second and more bloody triumvirate surprised him, he ordered his servants to set down the litter in which they were carrying him, and forbade them to defend him. Then undauntedly stretching out his neck, he bade his executioners do their pleasure; happy to escape from so much misery, to the immortality he had always believed in. This occurred when he was just entering his sixty-fourth-year.
This rapid sketch of the transactions of Cicero’s times, will, it is hoped, not be deemed impertinent, but may rather be considered as assisting the general reader to form an adequate estimate of the great object which Cicero had in view, when he drew up this celebrated treatise, which was to revive the veneration of the Roman people for their ancient institutions, now in danger from the machinations of lawless men, at the head of whom was Cæsar, who denying in the senate a future existence, expressed his contempt for all religion. But it has been objected to Cicero that he was insincere, and that he called upon his countrymen to venerate what was often the object of his ridicule. The leading men of Rome who formed the sacerdotal order, from the earliest periods and under all circumstances maintained their influence over the people, chiefly by that religion they had been brought up in the veneration of, and especially by the observance of auspices. But in time the credulity of the Romans began to relax. Men like Cicero had for their religion the glorious doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and a great majority of his enlightened equals no doubt entertained his opinions. Others, and among them was his brother Quintus, from various motives, as has always been the case in the history of superstitions, persevered in the prejudices they had received from education. Prejudices acquired in infancy from our earliest and dearest protectors, and to relinquish which, seems to require the relinquishment of all reverence for those we most venerate. When therefore Cicero ridicules the religious observances of his times, it is to enlightened men he sometimes addresses himself; just as men have in all times laughed at absurdities they do not care publicly to assail: and at other times he may have used his ridicule to expose the most stupid superstitions indiscriminately to all. When in his Republic he praises the institution of auspices, however he may be charged with inconsistency, it was done from great and public motives, and not from selfish ones. There is no hypocrisy in this conduct, as we understand the word; and if we examine the whole bearing of Cicero’s life, the policy which the circumstances of it, sometimes obliged him to, will not offend liberal minds. In estimating therefore the character of Cicero, it is well to remember Dr. Middleton’s remark in his preface “and in every thing especially that relates to Cicero, I would recommend the reader to contemplate the whole character, before he thinks himself qualified to judge of its separate parts, on which the whole will always be found the surest comment.”
The first book is the most complete of the whole six: the opening however is imperfect. Cicero in his own person enters into a discussion whether governments should be administered by contemplative philosophers, or by active practical men. He recapitulates the arguments on both sides of the question, often discussed by the ancients, and decides the question in consonance with those feelings which had governed his very active life. The eloquence and force of some of the passages are inimitable. They will be applicable to all times as long as civil government exists among men. But in this country where the experiment of a popular government is trying upon so comprehensive a scale, the grandeur of the sentiments deserves the attention of every man. As where he states as an argument of those who shun active occupations, that it is dangerous to meddle with public affairs in turbulent times, and disgraceful to associate with the low and disreputable men who are conspicuous at those periods; that it is vain to hope to restrain the mad violence of the vulgar, or to withdraw from such a contest without injury; “As if,” he adds with a generous enthusiasm, “there could be a more just cause for good and firm men, endowed with noble minds, to stand forth in aid of their country, than that they may not be subject to bad men; nor suffer the republic to be lacerated by them, before the desire of saving it may come too late.”
After disposing of this question, he proceeds with great address to open the plan of his work, and presents in all the beautiful simplicity of the times, Scipio, his friend Lælius, with some of their most accomplished cotemporaries, seated, not in the gorgeous saloon of a Lucullus or Crassus, but in the sunny part, because it was the winter season, of the lawn of Scipio’s country place; where they had convened to pass the Latin holidays in discussing philosophical questions. Here, upon an inquiry being instituted into the cause of two suns reported to have been seen in the heavens, occasion is found to introduce in a very pleasing manner, the astronomical knowledge of the day, which Cicero was well versed in. Scipio is made here to deliver a magnificent passage, beginning at the 17th section. “Who can perceive any grandeur in human affairs,” &c.[[9]] This inquiry about celestial phenomena, which appeared so foreign to a philosophical investigation on the principles of government, is admirably closed and without the abruptness being perceived, by Lælius asking how it can interest him that Scipio should be solicitous about the two suns, “when he does not inquire the cause why two senates, and almost two people exist in one republic.” At the general request Scipio consents to deliver his opinion of government. He defines a republic to be the “public thing,” or common interest of all: and he shews most satisfactorily that human beings congregate not on account of their weakness, but that they are led thereto by the social principle, which is innate in man, and leads him even in the midst of the greatest abundance to seek his fellow. He successively examines the despotic, the aristocratic, and democratic forms of government: their advantages and disadvantages; and concludes that a fourth kind of government, moderated and compounded from those three is most to be approved. This is subsequently recurred to and enlarged upon. Many persons will be surprised that the balanced representative form of government, which has but in modern times received the sanction of the wisest nations, should have been shadowed forth in an apparently speculative opinion, two thousand years ago. We must however remember, that in the numerous small independent states of Greece; their various forms of government, the tyranny of their kings, the oppression of the aristocracies, and the violence of the people, had produced many discussions among their writers. Few of these have come down to us. Yet Cicero was familiar with them, and it is evident that his plan of a mixed government was drawn from this source. There is a passage to this effect preserved in the Anthology of Stobæus, of Hyppodamus. He says that royalty, which is a copy of divinity, is insufficient, on account of the degeneracy of human nature. That it must be limited by an aristocracy, where the principle of emulation leads men to excel each other: and that the citizen also should be admitted into that mixed government as of right: but cautiously, as the people are apt to fall into disorders. These opinions also flattered the Romans, for in fact it was substantially their own form of government, which consisted of consuls, patricians, and the people and their tribunes.