Life and literature in the Roman republic

by Tenney Frank

This year in fact proved a new turning point in Cicero’s politics. Pompey had now been absent for two years and his coalition lacked effective leadership. The democrats had suffered in prestige by electing to the consulship Autronius and Sulla, who were presently convicted of bribery and deposed. In the reaction against the radicals two conservatives had been elected. The deposed candidates made matters worse for their party by entering into (or so it was widely rumored) a conspiracy to seize power, only to fail again. Catiline, one of their aides, continued the agitation with more and more questionable proposals, and the party was so far discredited that the soberer element began to look for saner leadership. The party itself, under such leadership as Catiline could give, drifted far toward the left, and among the stronger men only ambitious politicians like Caesar and Crassus—who hoped to use its fortunes to their advantage—remained in nominal allegiance. Cicero of course could not follow such guidance, and it is probable that most of the property-owning knights had drifted rightward before the year was over. These men of the middle class had been willing to support the Gracchan theory of popular sovereignty because it seemed to insure the possibility of progressive legislation; but when the more radical democrats began to talk of using the assembly for monetary inflation and moratoria on private debts, the knights were of course frightened. Caesar and Crassus added to their fears by proposing to ask for imperialistic commands for themselves and to check the power of Pompey who had been winning provinces which the knights hoped to exploit under a stable régime. Unfortunately none of Cicero’s utterances have survived from this momentous year (July 65 to July 64) when, like the rest of the knights, he must have drifted steadily away from the old coalition, or rather when he saw the left wing of the party drifting steadily away from the time-honored Roman devotion to law and property rights.

Before the election of 64, in which Cicero stood for the consulship, Catiline became ever more a demagogue and made an alliance with the unprincipled Antonius. These two men received the support of Caesar and Crassus, but of course not of the moderates. The conservative element of the state disliked to vote for a novus homo like Cicero, but the only other sound candidates were Cornificius and Galba, who were little known and fairly sure of defeat. Cicero was certain to get most of the equestrian vote, he would draw heavily from the popular vote because of his well-known liberal connections, he had the favor of Pompeian soldiers and adherents, and on economic and social questions he could be trusted. The optimates therefore decided to support him although he was not one of them. But the veering was not all on their part. Cicero also had learned from the talk of Catiline, Caesar, and Crassus that the Gracchan theory of popular sovereignty without a senatorial check might lead to dangerous economic and imperialistic legislation. He accordingly abandoned the theory that the senate had no constitutional right to interfere in the popular will, a theory which he had supported in 66 and 65. He doubtless said so in the senate before election day, when saying so would count. At any rate very soon after he assumed office, when the question of the senate’s auctoritas came up in Caesar’s prosecution of Rabirius, he threw all his energy into the defense of Rabirius and the senate’s right to proclaim martial law,[9] and he did so by reminding the people that their great leader Marius, contrary to his party politics, had recognized the authority of the senate when a great crisis came. This served well as an apology, if one were needed, for his own abandonment of the central democratic doctrine when his eyes had been opened to its dangers. Cicero thus led the knights into a coalition with the optimates and continued through the year to cement a concordia ordinum.

During the summer the second violent canvass of Catiline on a reckless program of revolution only made Cicero a more confirmed conservative. To save the state from revolution he had himself to propose a senatorial order of martial law in October, a measure he would doubtless have fought three years before, and under its provisions he had the conspirators put to death, an act which made him the prime defender and advocate of the central optimate theory, and later caused his banishment at the hands of Caesar’s democratic coalition. Thus experience and circumstances had in three years turned the avowed democrat into an extreme optimate. It is needless to follow his career in detail: the desertion of his coalition by the knights because Caesar offered them what they desired, his banishment, which only confirmed his convictions that he was right, his failure on his return to undo Caesar’s popular legislation because the senate feared Caesar and dared not follow Cicero. He still clung for a while to his new doctrine of the senate’s importance, as the Pro Sestio proves, but it was a futile policy. The senators, fearing Caesar, failed to respond. He saw then, if not before, that the senate could not rule Rome.

Cicero now retired from active political life and found time to think and draw conclusions from his experiences for a carefully considered review of Roman political needs. In the De Republica, which he wrote in 54-1, shortly before the Civil War, he carefully reviewed the history of the Roman constitution in order to lay a sound foundation for a durable and reasonable program in case the senate and people should ever regain the freedom of action which the first “triumvirate” had taken away. There was some hope that such a program might have a chance, for Crassus was out of reach and Pompey and Caesar were noticeably falling apart. In this book he shows that Rome had definitely rejected autocratic government, and that, as Polybius had already seen, it had combined the machinery of popular sovereignty with aristocratic checks under strong but short-term executives. In showing that this form was historically based and that it had operated well in the happiest days of Rome, Cicero became convinced that he must give a larger place in his book to the popular assembly than he had been willing to accord it since the days of Catiline. He says with rather surprising firmness that the populace must have liberty of action or they will revolt, and that liberty was a natural right that no man of intelligence could propose to destroy. This is virtually a confession that he had gone too far toward oligarchy in his own consulship. He knew now that if the nobles had been more friendly to the populace, Caesar would not have been able to seize control. He therefore admits the theory of popular sovereignty which could not be denied after the events of 59, but he also seeks for some method by which to check the danger of such a concession. His new theory is that the body politic should be educated to accept the leadership and advice of some strong person who might, like the revered princeps senatus of old, be honored as guardian (rector or gubernator) and whose considered advice would be respected by all. He says explicitly that he has in mind such a man as Scipio Aemilianus, who at times served in just such a capacity even when he held only the honorary designation of princeps senatus.

In the fragments that we have the precise intention of the great office does not come out clearly. One scholar believes that Cicero had Pompey in mind, and that Augustus later tried to put the program in action under his own régime.[10] A few years later Cicero in a letter to his most trusted friend says that Pompey had never measured up to the height of his ideal rector,[11] which seems to be a confession that Cicero had had Pompey in mind as a possible candidate though fearing that Pompey would prove deficient as a leader. It can hardly be doubted that Cicero must have had moments of regrets that the state had not accepted him, Cicero, for such unofficial leadership after his consulship. It is quite clear that if Cicero had at that time proved himself a man of outstanding qualities of leadership he might have become for many years a rector of the type that he describes. At any rate in 43, after Caesar’s murder, Cicero assumed for himself the position of rector and gubernator, though he held no office.[12] However, while writing the De Republica in 54-1, Cicero could hardly have supposed that his day of influence would return so long as Caesar or Pompey continued in power.

Another possibility is that when Caesar appeared to be aiming at some form of autocracy, Cicero entertained the hope of converting that powerful man by his monograph on government to accept a constitution of good old traditions and to assume under that constitution a legal and dignified position such as Scipio had for a while enjoyed. There is at any rate a significant passage in the De Provinciis Consularibus,[13] written in the year 56 (two years before he began to write the De Republica) in which, after much flattering of Caesar, he suggested that since Caesar was as moderate as he was wise he would be willing to accept a constitutional position and act in harmony with the senate, if the senate would act in a conciliatory manner. That passage may be the safest clue to follow in trying to fathom the intentions of the De Republica.

Cicero’s hopes, however, were shattered. Pompey continued to fall short of deserving full confidence, and Caesar grew into a politician bent on his own advancement. The civil war and the victory of Caesar antiquated the doctrine that Cicero had preached in the De Republica, and he had to revise his program once more. Caesar’s dictatorship temporarily destroyed the republic, but Cicero could not avoid hoping that there might be a day of recovery. When he wrote the De Legibus[14] a few years later, Pompey was dead, Caesar was playing the tyrant and Cicero himself had little hope of gaining the helm of influence. He therefore abandoned the idea of a rector, and yet he knew that if Caesar should die or be removed the state would again need a constitution. In this new work accordingly he reverts to the historical tradition of the Scipionic republic, but openly assigns to the senate the leadership that it tacitly had had before Scipio’s day, by proposing to allow the senate to control legislation by the requirement of a vote of ratification (eius decreta rata sunto). This proposed change, which would eliminate the dangers inherent in the tribunate, shows that Cicero had learned from Caesar’s career that a rector might become too powerful, that while popular sovereignty must be recognized as a safety-valve in legislation, the senate must be given a firmer hold on legislation so that it might check both the assembly and the magistrates at critical moments. He was once more, and for reasons easy to comprehend, an advocate of aristocracy.

Cicero had only one brief opportunity to take the helm once more, and then, in the war against Antony, during the last year of his life, the state was in such confusion and under such stress of compulsion that it is not easy to say what theory of the constitution Cicero actually followed. During his unofficial leadership (he probably had frequent occasion to think of himself as the rector of his De Republica) the senate carried on the war under a senatus consultum ultimum, which was regular enough at times of internal disturbance. When it was necessary to impose a direct tax upon all citizens—which had not been necessary since 167—the senate seems to have voted the measure without reference to the assembly. But this also, illogical as it may seem,[15] followed precedent. Finally, it was the senate that annulled the legislation of Antony, for which there was also an abundance of precedents. There was, however, one piece of legislation during this period which betrays the direction of Cicero’s thought. The lex Vibia,[16] an act to confirm the legality of Caesar’s deed, was ordered to be submitted to the centuriate assembly on an auctoritas senatus, and this shows clearly that the democratic constitution of Caesar’s régime was now out of favor. The plebeian assembly could hardly have been slighted in this instance through fear of the lower classes, for the measure was popular enough. It was clearly a procedure which could only have meant that Cicero intended the senate to control legislation by use of the most conservative machinery provided by the old constitution of Rome. Cicero’s last acts therefore reveal him even farther away from the democratic policy than those of his consulship.

This review reveals Cicero as inconsistent in party loyalty; it shows that he began as a moderate, then, forced by hatred of Sullan tyranny and induced by immediate practical needs, that he plunged well into democracy, only to be driven by the democratic excesses and the offices of responsibility deeply into conservative sympathies. Experience and observation next led him to revise his theories, first in the direction of liberalism, then, reacting to Caesar’s errors, toward conservatism. Yet we need not, with Mommsen, call Cicero a turncoat. He generally followed a straighter course than the parties that shifted all about him. Nor need we, with Heinze, insist that he was consistently an optimate all the years before his consulship, for he was always willing to seek new theories of government when experience proved the old ones inadequate. Finally, Zielinski’s view that he acted generally on theories found in his reading is perhaps less justified than any other. Cicero read widely and certainly gained some of his ideas from books—the source-hunter may find parallels in abundance—but when Cicero acted it was not merely because of what he had found in a book, but because he had had actual experience and was feeling his way to the logical conclusion of his observations.

Here we have attempted to illustrate very briefly how Cicero reached his conclusions in political theory through experience, as in a preceding chapter we stressed forensic experience as the chief formative factor of Ciceronian prose. In both of these fields Cicero wrote not primarily as a well-read man transmitting the views of others, but rather as the chief authority of his day by virtue of his own accomplishments. In tracing the body of philosophic essays which he compiled with amazing speed during the six months of retirement in the year 45, we find a very different product, for, as he told Atticus, who was surprised by this prolific output, these are and purport to be merely paraphrases and translations from the Greek.