Plutarch's Lives, Volume 4 (of 4)

by Plutarch

XVIII. Accordingly Lentulus designed nothing small or trivial, but he determined to kill all the senators, and as many of the rest of the citizens as he could, and to burn the city, and spare nobody except the children of Pompeius, whom they intended to seize and keep in their power as securities for coming to terms with Pompeius, for already there was strong and sure report of his returning to Rome from his great expedition. A night had been fixed for the attempt, one of the Saturnalia,[185] and they took and hid in the house of Cethegus swords and tow and brimstone. They also appointed a hundred men, and assigned by lot as many parts of Rome to each, in order that by means of many incendiaries the city might be in a blaze in a short time on all sides.[186] Others were to stop up the water conduits and to kill those who attempted to get water. While this was going on, there happened to be at Rome two ambassadors of the Allobroges,[187] a nation which especially at that time was in a bad condition and oppressed by the supremacy of Rome. The partizans of Lentulus, considering them suitable persons for stiring up Gaul to revolt, made them privy to the conspiracy. They gave these men letters to their Senate and letters to Catilina, promising liberty to the Senate, and urging Catilina to free the slaves and to march upon Rome. They also sent with them to Catilina one Titus[188] of Croton to carry the letters. But inasmuch as the conspirators were unsteady men, who for the most part met one another over wine and in company with women, and Cicero followed up their designs with labour and sober consideration and unusual prudence, and had many men out of their body to keep watch and to help him in tracking out their doings, and as he had secret conversation with many of those who were considered to be in the conspiracy and whom he trusted, he became acquainted with their communication with the strangers, and laying an ambuscade by night he seized the man of Croton and the letters, with the secret assistance of the Allobroges.

XIX. At daybreak[189] Cicero, assembling the Senate at the temple of Concord, read the letters and examined the informers. Silanus Junius also said that some persons had heard Cethegus say, that three consuls and four prætors were going to be killed. Piso, a man of consular rank, gave evidence to the same effect. Caius Sulpicius, one of the prætors, being sent to the house of Cethegus, found there many missiles and arms, and a great quantity of swords and knives newly sharpened. At length the Senate having by a vote promised a pardon to the man of Croton on condition of his giving information, Lentulus being convicted abdicated his office, for he happened to be prætor, and laying down his robe with the purple hem before the Senate assumed a dress suitable to the occasion. Lentulus and his associates were delivered up to the prætors to be kept in custody, but without chains. It was now evening, and the people in crowds were waiting about the temple, when Cicero came forth and told the circumstance to the citizens, by whom he was conducted to the house of a neighbouring friend, for his own house was occupied by the women who were celebrating the mysterious rites to a goddess whom the Romans called Bona,[190] and the Greeks call Gynæceia. A sacrifice is made to the goddess annually in the house of the consul by his wife or his mother in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. Cicero, going into the house, deliberated with a very few persons what he should do with the men: for he had some scruples about inflicting the extreme punishment and that which was due to such great crimes; and he hesitated about it both from the humanity of his disposition, and because he feared that he might seem to be too much elated with his power and to be handling severely men who were of the highest rank and had powerful friends in the State; and if he treated them leniently, he dreaded danger from them. For he considered that they would not be well content if they were punished short of death, but would break forth in all extravagance of audacity and add fresh indignation to their old villainy; and that he should be judged a coward and a weak man, especially as the many had by no means a good opinion of his courage.

XX. While Cicero was thus doubting, there was a sign to the women who were sacrificing: for though the fire seemed to have gone out, the altar sent forth from the ashes and burnt bark a large and brilliant blaze.[191] This alarmed the women, except the sacred virgins, who urged Terentia, the wife of Cicero, to go with all speed to her husband and tell him to take in hand what he had resolved on behalf of his country, for the goddess was displaying a great light to lead him to safety and honour. Terentia, who generally was not a woman of a mild temper nor naturally without courage, but an ambitious woman, and as Cicero himself says,[192] more ready to share in his political perplexities than to communicate to him her domestic matters, reported this to her husband and stimulated him against the conspirators: in like manner too his brother Quintus and Publius Nigidius, one of his philosophical companions, whose advice he used in the most and chiefest of his political measures. On the following day[193] there was a discussion in the Senate about the punishment of the conspirators, when Silanus, who was first asked his opinion, said that they ought to be taken to prison and suffer the extreme punishment: and all who spoke in succession acceded to this opinion, till it came to the turn of Caius Cæsar, who was afterwards Dictator. Cæsar, who was then a young man and in the very beginning of his rise to power, and already in his policy and his hopes had entered on that road by which he changed the state of Rome into a monarchy, though he eluded the penetration of the rest, caused great suspicion to Cicero, without however giving him any hold for complete proof; but there were some heard to say that he came near being caught and yet had escaped from Cicero. However, some say that Cicero purposely overlooked and neglected the information against Cæsar through fear of his friends and his power, for it was plain to every man, that the conspirators would rather become an appendage[194] to Cæsar’s acquittal, than Cæsar would become an appendage to their punishment.

XXI. When, then, it came to Cæsar’s[195] turn to deliver his opinion, he rose and expressed it against putting the men to death, but he proposed to confiscate their property and remove them to the cities of Italy of which Cicero might approve, and there keep them confined till Catilina was defeated. The proposal was merciful and the speaker most eloquent, and Cicero added to it no small weight, for when Cicero rose[196] he handled the matter both ways, partly arguing in favour of the first opinion and partly in favour of Cæsar’s; and all his friends thinking that Cæsar’s opinion was for the advantage of Cicero, for he would be subject to less blame if he did not condemn the men to death, chose the second opinion rather, so that even Silanus himself changed and made his explanation, saying that neither had he delivered his opinion for death, for that the extreme punishment to a Roman senator was the prison. After the opinion was given, Catulus Lutatius was the first to oppose it; and he was followed by Cato, who in his speech vehemently urged suspicion against Cæsar, and so filled the Senate with passion and resolution that they passed a vote of death against the men. With respect to the confiscation of their property Cæsar made opposition, for he did not think it fair that they should reject the merciful part of his proposition and adopt the most severe part. As many of them made violent resistance, he invoked the tribunes, who however paid no attention to the call, but Cicero himself gave way and remitted that part of the vote which was for confiscation.

XXII. Cicero went with the Senate to the conspirators, who were not all in the same place, but kept by the different prætors. He first took Lentulus[197] from the Palatine and led him through the Sacred Road and the middle of the Forum, with the men of highest rank in a body around him as his guards, the people the while shuddering at what was doing and passing by in silence, and chiefly the youth, who felt as if they were being initiated with fear and trembling in certain national rites of a certain aristocratical power. When Cicero had passed through the Forum and come to the prison, he delivered Lentulus to the executioner and told him to put him to death; he then took down Cethegus and every one of the rest in order and had them put to death. Seeing that there were still many members of the conspiracy standing together in the Forum, who did not know what had been done and were waiting for the night, supposing that the men were still alive and might be rescued, Cicero said to them in a loud voice, “They have lived.” In these terms the Romans are used to speak of death when they do not choose to use words of bad omen. It was now evening, and Cicero went up from the Forum to his house, the citizens no longer accompanying him in silence or in order, but receiving him with shouts and clapping as he passed along and calling him the saviour and founder of his country. And numerous lights illuminated the streets, for people placed lamps and torches at their doors. The women too showed lights from the roofs to honour the man and in order to see him going home, honourably attended by the nobles; most of whom, having brought to an end great wars and entered the city in triumph, and added to the Roman possessions no small extent of land and sea, walked along confessing to one another that the Roman people were indebted for wealth and spoils and power to many living commanders and generals, but for their security and safety to Cicero alone, who had removed from them so great a danger. For it was not the preventing of what was in preparation and the punishing of the doers which appeared worthy of admiration, but that he had quenched the greatest of dangers that ever threatened the State with the least evils, and without disturbance and tumult. For most of those who had flocked to Catilina[198] as soon as they heard of the fate of Lentulus and Cethegus left him and went away: and Catilina, after fighting a battle with those who remained with him against Antonius, perished and his army with him.

XXIII. However there were some who were ready to abuse Cicero for this and to do him harm, and they had for their leader among those who were going to hold magistracies, Cæsar as prætor, and Metellus[199] and Bestia as tribunes. Upon entering on office, while Cicero had still a few days in authority, they would not let him address the people, and placing their seats above the Rostra they would not permit him to come forward to speak; they told him that he might, if he chose, take the oath usual on giving up office and then go down. Upon this Cicero came forward as if he were going to take the oath, and when he had procured silence, he swore not the usual oath, but one of his own and a new oath, to the effect that he had saved his country and preserved the supremacy of Rome: and the whole people confirmed the truth of his oath. At this Cæsar and the tribunes, being still more vexed, contrived other cavils against Cicero, and a law was brought forward by them that Pompeius and his army should be recalled on the pretext of putting down the power of Cicero. But Cato, who was then tribune, was a great help to Cicero and to the whole State, and he opposed himself to Cæsar’s measures with equal authority and greater good opinion. For he easily stopped other measures, and he so extolled the consulship of Cicero in a speech to the people, that they voted to him the greatest honours that had ever been conferred and called him the father of his country; for it seems that Cicero was the first on whom this title was conferred, upon Cato having so entitled him before the people.

XXIV. Cicero, who had at that time the chief power in the State, made himself generally odious, not by any ill acts, but by always praising and glorifying himself to the great annoyance of many people. For there was neither assembly of Senate nor people nor court of justice in which a man had not to hear Catilina talked of and Lentulus. Finally, he filled his books and writings with his own praises, and though his oratory was most agreeable and had the greatest charm, he made it wearisome and odious to the hearers by his unseemly habit, which stuck to him like a fatality. However, though he had such unmingled ambition, he was far removed from envying others, for he was most bountiful in his praises of those before him and those of his own time, as we may see from his writings. There are also many sayings of his recorded; for instance, he said of Aristotle, that he was a river of flowing gold, and of the dialogues of Plato, that Jupiter, if it were his nature to use language, would speak like him. Theophrastus he was used to call his own special luxury. Being asked about the speeches of Demosthenes,[200] which he thought the best, he answered, the longest. Yet some of those who pretend to be imitators of Demosthenes, dwell on an expression of Cicero, which is used in a letter to one of his friends, that Demosthenes sometimes nodded in his speeches; but the great and admirable praise which he often bestows on the man, and that he entitled his own orations on which he bestowed most labour, those against Antonius, Philippics, they say nothing about. Of the men of his own time who gained a reputation for eloquence and learning, there is not one whose reputation he did not increase either by speaking or writing in favourable terms of him. When Cæsar was in power he obtained from him the Roman citizenship for Kratippus[201] the Peripatetic, and he prevailed on the Areopagus to pass a vote and to request him to stay in Athens and instruct the young, as being an ornament to the city. There are letters from Cicero to Herodes,[202] and others to his son, in which he exhorts to the study of philosophy under Kratippus. He charged Gorgias[203] the rhetorician with leading the young man to pleasure and drinking, and banished him from his society. This and a letter to Pelops of Byzantium are almost the only Greek letters of his which are written with any passion, in which he properly rebukes Gorgias, if he was worthless and intemperate, as he was considered to be; but his letter to Pelops is in a mean and complaining tone, and charges Pelops with having neglected to procure for him certain honours and public testimonials from the Byzantines.

XXV. All this proceeded from his ambition, and also the circumstance that he was often carried away by the impetuosity of his oratory to disregard propriety. He once spoke in favour of Munatius,[204] who after being acquitted prosecuted Sabinus, a friend of Cicero, who is said to have been so transported with passion as to say, “Do you suppose, Munatius, that you were acquitted on your trial for your own merits, and not because I spread much darkness over the court when there was light?” He gained applause by a panegyric on Marcus Crassus from the Rostra, and a few days after he abused him, on which Crassus observed, “Did you not lately praise me in the same place?” to which Cicero replied, “Yes, for practice sake, exercising my eloquence on a mean subject.” Crassus having remarked on one occasion that none of the Crassi had lived in Rome to be more than sixty years of age, and afterwards denying that he had said so, and observing, What could have led him to say this? Cicero replied, “You know that the Romans would be glad to hear it and so you wished to get their favour.” When Crassus observed that he liked the Stoics, because they proved that the good man was rich,[205] “Consider,” said Cicero, “if they do not rather prove that the wise man possesses everything.” Now Crassus was charged with being fond of money. One of the sons of Crassus who was considered to resemble a certain Axius, and so to attach ill fame to his mother in respect to Axius, had made a speech in the Senate with applause, and Cicero being asked what he thought of him said, He is Axius Crassus.[206]

XXVI. When Crassus[207] was about to set out for Syria, he wished Cicero to be his friend rather than his enemy, and he said in a friendly manner that he wished to sup with him, and Cicero received him readily. A few days after when some of his friends spoke with him about Vatinius, and said that Vatinius sought a recollection and to be on good terms with him, for he was then at enmity with Cicero. “Surely,” said Cicero, “Vatinius too does not want to sup with me.” Such was his behaviour to Crassus. As to Vatinius, who had tumours in his neck, and was on one occasion pleading a cause, Cicero called him a tumid orator. Hearing that Vatinius was dead, and being shortly after certainly informed that he was still living, “Ill betide the man,” said he, “who lied so ill.” Many of the senators were dissatisfied with Cæsar’s carrying a measure for the distribution of the land in Campania among the soldiers, and Lucius Gellius,[208] who was also one of the oldest of them, said, that it should never take place while he lived. “Let us wait,” said Cicero, “for Gellius asks for no long delay.” There was a certain Octavius[209] who had the ill-repute of being a native of Libya, and on the occasion of a certain trial he said that he could not hear Cicero. “And yet,” said Cicero, “your ear is not without a hole in it.” Metellus Nepos observing that Cicero by giving testimony against persons had caused more to be condemned than he had caused to be acquitted by undertaking their cause, “Well,” said he, “I admit that I have more credit than eloquence.” A certain youth who was charged with giving poison to his father in a cake, spoke with great confidence, and said that he would abuse Cicero; “I would rather have this from you,” said Cicero, “than a cake.” Publius Sextius[210] had Cicero with others as his advocate in a cause, but he chose to say everything himself and would let nobody else speak, and when it was plain that he would be acquitted and the judices were giving their votes, Cicero said, “Make the most of your opportunity to-day, for to-morrow you will be a mere nobody.” One Publius Consta,[211] who set up for a lawyer, but was an ignorant and stupid fellow, was called as a witness by Cicero on a trial. On Consta saying that he knew nothing, “Perhaps,” said Cicero, “you suppose that you are asked about legal matters.” Metellus Nepos during a dispute with Cicero often repeated, “Who is your father?” on which Cicero said, “As for yourself, your mother has made this answer rather difficult for you.” Now the mother of Nepos was considered to be an unchaste woman, and himself a fickle kind of man. On one occasion he suddenly deserted his office of tribune and sailed off to join Pompeius[212] in Syria, whence he returned with just as little reason. Nepos had buried his teacher Philagrus with more than usual respect, and set upon his tomb a raven of stone: “In this,” said Cicero, “you have acted wiser than your wont, for he taught you to fly rather than to speak.” Marcus Appius in a certain trial prefaced his speech with saying that his friend had prayed him to exhibit vigilance and judgment and fidelity: “Are you then,” said Cicero, “so iron-hearted as to exhibit not one of such great qualities as your friend prayed you to do?”