In his absence his exile was decreed, and his town and country houses were given up to plunder. It cannot be denied that during his banishment he exhibited weakness and pusillanimity: his reverses had such an effect upon his mind that he was even supposed to be mad.[[799]] His great fault was vanity, of which defect he was himself conscious, and confessed it;[[800]] and disappointed vanity was the cause of his affliction. He could bear anything better than loss of popular applause; and on this occasion, more than any other, he gave grounds for the assertion, that “he bore none of his calamities like a man, except his death.” Rome, however, could not forget her preserver; and in the following year he was recalled, and entered Rome in triumph, in the midst of the loud plaudits of the assembled people.[[801]] Still, however, he was obliged to secure the prosperity which he had recovered by political tergiversation. The measures of the triumvirate, which he had formerly attacked with the utmost virulence, he did not hesitate now to approve and defend.
After his return[[802]] he was appointed to a seat in the College of Augurs; a dignity which he had anxiously coveted before his exile, and to obtain which, he had offered almost any terms to Cæsar and Pompey.[[803]] The following year, much against his will, the province of Cilicia was assigned to him. Strictly did the accuser of Verres act up to the high and honourable principles which he professed. His was a model administration: a stop was put to corruption, wrongs were redressed, justice impartially administered. Those great occasions on which he was compelled to act on his own responsibility, and to listen to the dictates of his beautiful soul, “seine schöne seele,”[[804]] his pure, honest, and incorruptible heart, are the bright points in Cicero’s career. The emergency of the occasion overcame his constitutional timidity.
In the year B. C. 49, he returned to Rome, and finding himself in a position in which he could calmly observe the current of affairs, and determine unbiassed what part he should take in them, or whether it was his duty to take any part at all, his weak, wavering, vacillating temper again got the mastery over him. He would not do anything dishonest, but he was not chivalrous enough to spurn at once that which was dishonourable. Cæsar and Pompey were now at open war, and he could not make up his mind which to join.[[805]] He felt, probably, that the energy, ability, and firmness of Cæsar, would be crowned with success; and yet his friends, his party, and his own heart were with Pompey, and he dreaded the scorn which would be heaped upon him if he forsook his political opinions. His were not the stern, unyielding principles of a Cato; but the fear of what men would say of him made him anxious and miserable. The struggle was a long one between caution and honour, but at length honour overcame caution. He made his decision, and went to the camp of Pompey; but he could never rally his spirits, or feel sanguine as to the result. He immediately saw that Pharsalia decided the question for ever, and consequently hastened to Brundisium, where he awaited the return of the conqueror. It was a long time to remain in suspense; but at last the generous Cæsar relieved him from it by a full and free pardon.
And now again his character rose higher, and his good qualities had room to display themselves. There were no longer equally balanced parties to revive the discord which formerly distracted his mind, nor were the circumstances of the times such as to demand his active interference in the cause of his country; but he was as great in the exercise of his contemplative faculties as he had been in the brightest period of his political life. The same faults may, perhaps, be discerned in his philosophical speculations: the same indecision which rendered him incapable of being a statesman or a patriot caused him to adopt in philosophy a skeptical eclecticism. Truth was to him as variable as political honesty; but he is always the advocate and supporter of resignation, and fortitude, and purity, and virtue.
He had hitherto suffered as a public man: he was now bowed down by domestic affliction. A quarrel with his wife Terentia ended in a divorce:[[806]] such was the facility with which at Rome the nuptial tie could be severed. His second wife was his own ward—a young lady of large fortune; but disparity of years and temper prevented this connexion from lasting long. In B. C. 45 he lost his daughter Tullia. The blow was overwhelming: he sought in vain to soothe his grief in the woody solitudes of his maritime villa at Astura, and it was long before the bereaved father found consolation in philosophy.
The political crisis which ensued upon the assassination of Cæsar alarmed him for his own personal safety: he therefore meditated a voyage to Greece; but being wind-bound at Rhegium, the hopes of an accommodation between Antony and the senate (a hope destined not to be realized) induced him to return. Antony now left Rome, and Cicero delivered that torrent of indignant and eloquent invective—his twelve Philippic orations.[[807]] He was again the popular idol—crowds of applauding and admiring fellow-citizens attended him to the Forum in a kind of triumphant procession, as they had on his return from exile. But soon the second triumvirate was formed. Each member readily gave up friends to satisfy the vengeance of his colleagues, and Octavius sacrificed Cicero.
The story of his death is a brief and sad one. He was enjoying the literary retirement of his Tusculan villa when his friends warned him of his approaching fate. He was too great a philosopher to fear death; but too high-principled and resigned to the Divine will to commit suicide. Still he scarcely thought life worth preserving: “I will die,” he said, “in my fatherland, which I have so often saved.” However, at the entreaty of his brother, to whom he was affectionately attached, he endeavoured to escape. He first went across the country to Astura, and there embarked. The weather was tempestuous, and as he suffered much from sea-sickness, he again landed at Gaëta. A treacherous freedman betrayed him, and as he was being carried in a litter he was overtaken by his pursuers. He would not permit his attendants to make any resistance; but patiently and courageously submitted to the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands and carried them to Antony. A savage joy sparkled in the eyes of the triumvir at the sight of these bloody trophies. His wife, Fulvia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle that once eloquent tongue. The head and hands were fixed upon the rostrum which had so often witnessed his unequalled eloquence. All that passed by bewailed his death, and gave vent to their affectionate feelings.
Although it is impossible to be blind to the numerous faults of Cicero, few men have been more maligned and misrepresented, and the judgment of antiquity has been, upon the whole, generally unfavourable. He was vain, vacillating, inconstant, constitutionally timid, and the victim of a morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. His amiability, acted upon by timidity, led him to set too high a value on public esteem and favour; and this weakened his moral sense and his instinctive love of virtue. That he possessed heroism is proved by his defence of Roscius, although the favourite of the terrible Sulla was his adversary. He was not entirely destitute of decision, or he would not so promptly have expressed his approbation of Cæsar’s assassins as tyrannicides. He had resolution to strive against his over-sensitiveness, and wisdom to see that mental occupation was its best remedy; for in the midst of the distractions and anxieties of that eventful and critical year which preceded the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa an almost incredible number of works proceeded from his pen.[[808]]
There are many circumstances to account for his political inconsistency and indecision. He had an early predilection for the aristocratic party; but he saw that they were narrow-minded and behind their age. All the patricians, except Sulla and his small party, were on the popular side. He was proud of his connexion with Marius; and his friend Sulpicius Rufus, whom he greatly admired, joined the Marians. For these reasons, Cicero was inconsistent as a politician. Again, during periods of revolutionary turbulence, moderate men are detested by both sides; and yet it was impossible for a philosophic temper, which could calmly and dispassionately weigh the merits and demerits of both, to sympathize warmly with either. Cicero saw that both were wrong: he was too temperate to approve, too honest to pretend a zeal which he did not feel, and, therefore, he was undecided.
Again, having a large benevolence, and a firm faith in virtue, he was unconscious of guile himself, and thought no evil of others. He therefore mistook flattery for sincerity, and compliments for kindness. He was vain; but vanity is a weakness not inconsistent with great minds, and in the case of Cicero it was fed by the unanimous voice of public approbation.