Cicero's unrivaled eloquence won him not only a golden shower of gifts and legacies, but also the prætorship and consulship at the earliest legal age. Perhaps some of the old nobles foresaw and prudently avoided the Catilinarian storm of 63 B.C. The common dangers of that year, and the pride of assured position, may have hastened the full transfer of Cicero's allegiance to the old senatorial faction. Tiberius Gracchus, boldly praised in January, has become for Cicero a notorious demagogue; his slayers instead are the undoubted patriots, in the famous harangues of November. These latter, by the way, were certainly under the file three years afterward,—and it is not likely that we read any Ciceronian speech just as it was delivered. If there be any thread of consistency in Cicero's public career, it must be sought in his long but vain hope to unite the nobility and the equites, in order to resist the growing proletariat.
The eager vanity with which Cicero seized the proud title "Father of the fatherland" is truly pathetic. The summary execution of the traitors may have been prompted by that physical timidity so often associated with the scholarly temperament. Whether needless or not, the act returned to plague him.
The happiest effort of the orator in his consular year was the famous plea for Murena. This consul-elect for 62 was a successful soldier. Catiline must be met in the spring "in the jaws of Etruria." Cicero's dearest friend, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a defeated candidate, accused Murena of bribery. The conditions of Roman politics, the character of Sulpicius, the tone of Cicero himself, bid us adjudge Murena probably guilty. Cicero had supported Sulpicius, but now feels it is no time to "go behind the returns," or to replace a bold soldier by a scholarly lawyer.
To win his case Cicero must heap ridicule upon his own profession in his friend's person, and upon Stoic philosophy, represented by Cato, Sulpicius's chief advocate. This he did so successfully that Cato himself exclaimed with a grim smile, "What a jester our consul is!" Cicero won his case—and kept his friends. This speech is cited sixteen times by Quintilian, and is a model of forensic ingenuity, wit, and grace. Its patriotism may be plausibly defended, but hardly its moral standards.
The next year produced the famous and successful defense of Cluentius,—probably guilty of poisoning,—and also the most delightful of all Cicero's speeches, the oration for the poet Archias. Whether the old Greek's claim to Roman citizenship was beyond cavil we neither know nor greatly care. The legal argument is suspiciously brief. The praise of literature and the scholarly life, however, has re-echoed ever since, and still reaches all hearts. Brother Quintus, sitting in judgment as prætor, is pleasantly greeted.
This is the culmination in Cicero's career of success. Some boastful words uttered in these days make us doubt if he remembered Solon's and Sophocles's maxim, "Count no life happy before its close." The fast-growing power of Cæsar presently made the two successful generals Pompey and Crassus his political tools. Cicero refused to enter, on similar conditions, the cabal later known as the "First Triumvirate." Cæsar, about to depart for his long absence in Gaul, might well regard the patriotic and impulsive orator as the most serious source of possible opposition in his absence. Marcus refused, himself, to go along to Gaul a-soldiering, though Brother Quintus accepted a commission and served creditably. At last, reluctantly, Cæsar suffered Cicero's personal enemy Clodius to bring forward a decree outlawing "those who had put Roman citizens to death without trial" (March, 58 B.C.). Cicero meekly withdrew from Rome, was condemned by name in absence, and his town house and villas pillaged.
As to the cowardice of this hasty retreat, none need use severer words than did the exile himself. It is the decisive event in his career. His uninterrupted success was ended. His pride could never recover fully from the hurt. Worst of all, he could never again pose, even before his own eyes, as the fearless hero-patriot. In short, Cæsar, the consummate master of action and of men, had humanely but decisively crippled the erratic yet patriotic rhetorician.
In little more than a year the bad conduct of Clodius, the personal good-will of the "triumvirs," and the whirligig of politics, brought round Cicero's return from Greece. His wings were however effectively clipped. After a brief and slight flutter of independence, he made full, even abject, submission to the dominant Cæsarian faction. This was in 56 B.C. The next five years, inglorious politically, were however full of activity in legal oratory and other literary work. In his eloquent defense of Cælius Rufus, charged with an attempt to poison Clodia, Cicero perforce whitewashes, or at least paints in far milder colors than of old, Catiline, Cælius's lifelong friend! A still less pleasing feature is the abusive attack on the famous and beautiful Clodia, probably the "Lesbia" of Catullus. (The unhappy young poet seems to have preceded Cælius in the fickle matron's favor.)
The events of the year 52 well illustrate the unfitness of Cicero for politics in such an age. Rome was full of street brawls, which Pompey could not check. The orator's old enemy Clodius, at the head of his bravos, was slain by a fellow ruffian Milo in January. At Milo's trial in April Cicero defended him, or attempted to do so. A court-room encircled by a yelling mob and guarded by Pompey's legions caused him to break down altogether. As afterward written out at leisure, the speech is a masterpiece of special pleading. The exiled Milo's criticism on it is well known: "I'm glad you never delivered it: I should not now be enjoying the mullets of Marseilles."
The year 51-50 Cicero spent, most unwillingly, as proconsular governor in far-off Cilicia. Though really humane and relatively honest, he accumulated in these few months a handsome sum in "gifts" from provincials and other perquisites. Even Cicero was a Roman.