A PASSAGE FROM CICERO’S SPEECH IN SUPPORT OF L. LICINIUS MURENA’S CANDIDACY FOR THE CONSULATE, AGAINST THAT OF SERVIUS SULPICIUS—TWENTY YEARS BEFORE CICERO’S ASSASSINATION—CICERO AND C. ANTONY BEING CONSULS—SIXTY-TWO YEARS BEFORE CHRIST.
Introductory Note: Servius Sulpicius was perhaps the most eminent practitioner of his day in that branch of the law which belongs to the “special pleader” and the “conveyancer”; but so little of a speaker that he would not venture alone to recommend his own cause or to urge his claims before the Roman people. He employed Cneius Postumius, then very young, and Marcus Cato, a most weighty orator, whose character, however (and a reputation for unswerving principle and the austerest virtues), had a larger share than the mental power of his words in securing to them influence and authority. It was less important what Cato said than that it had been said by Cato. How very different was the case with Hortensius! A stranger, whose face, whose name, not one of the audience knew, fitly delivering any of Hortensius’ harangues, would have commanded attention from the first, retained it to the last, raised many an interrupting tempest of applause during its progress, and left, when he had finished, a powerful, a formidable impression.
Hortensius was that Bolingbroke of the Roman Forum to whom the huge and intelligent assemblies he addressed were what the organ is to a Smart or the violin to a Sivori. He had hewn a lane through many a group of brilliant opponents and rivals, with an Excalibar forged by genius and by study together (and few at last cared to face the weapon), to the very throne of contemporary eloquence. And there, for years, he sat at ease, a king. A suitor despaired of his cause beforehand upon learning that Hortensius had been retained on the other side. Of course, his wealth had become enormous, and his indirect influence (for, although he had had his year of the Consulate, he cared not very much about politics) was an element, a “quantity,” which had to be taken into account by statesmen and generals, by the senate, and by the consuls.
In the case of “Sulpicius against Murena” (Murena had defeated Sulpicius in the canvass for the ensuing year’s Consulate, and this was a prosecution of revenge to unseat the future and “designated” chief magistrate), Murena had retained Hortensius, M. Crassus, afterwards the Triumvir, and Marcus Tullius Cicero. Now, during about ten years past, Hortensius—although speaking with the same charm and the same glamour as ever—had ceased to sit upon the throne or to wear the crown of eloquence. A far mightier spirit, a far finer genius, a far deeper student—a master upon whom his competent and appreciative glance rested with an admiration at once boundless and hopeless—had, after a gallant struggle on his part, so utterly eclipsed him that there was now a greater distance between Tully and Hortensius than there ever had been between Hortensius himself and those accomplished but defeated competitors to whom Hortensius had long been a wonder and a despair.
Cicero, however, had passed a sleepless night before the day of this trial: his voice almost failed him; he looked haggard; his nerves had, for the moment, given way, and with them his presence of mind. In charm of manner, in vigor of delivery, in clearness and percussion of utterance, in external grace, and dignity, and ease, his ancient rival for once surpassed him; nay, till the respective speeches were reported, and could be compared on perusal, Hortensius created the illusion that he had at last, in all respects, overtaken his victor, and would yet again contend for the palm of pre-eminence.
This never was to be. The broken heart of the only orator known to human records, who might perhaps have performed such a task, had then been mouldering for three centuries in a small island of the Ægean Sea. We have bored the reader enough about the advocates, and have mentioned also what Servius Sulpicius, the prosecutor, was. The defendant, L. Licinius Murena, was, on the other hand, a distinguished soldier. He had served as a sort of adjutant-general to the famous Lucullus in that series of campaigns by which he had greatly reduced, without overthrowing (a task reserved for Pompey), the power of Mithridates. Except Hannibal, and perhaps Antiochus (we do not reckon Pyrrhus, for Rome was in the gristle then), no enemy had ever waged so formidable a warfare against the Romans as Mithridates. He was a winged beast. How his fame remains! What parties and excursions you Crimean gentlemen made to the spot where his ashes are supposed to have been inurned and intempled! Lord of every seaboard of Pontus and the Euxine, and lord of the “Evil Sea” itself; of ten thousand rich cities; of five hundred strong fortresses; of five hundred thousand armed men; of horses enough to mount the hordes of a Genghis Khan; of half-a-dozen numerous, adventurous, and well-found fleets; of treasures uncounted and uncountable; adroit, bold, proud, insatiably enterprising; no mean captain; an object of worship to his followers; magnificent and munificent; an implacable hater of the Roman name; the long-alight, far-flaming meteor of the East—he threatened to shake hands in Spain, across all Europe, with Sertorius; to make the shores of Italy quake at the white clouds of his sails, and to teach the waters of the Atlantic as well as those of the Levant to know either the sceptre or the sword of Mithridates. It was no child’s play to bring this potentate to the dust.
Against such a potentate, in the post next to that of the commander-in-chief (who happened, besides, to be a great general), Murena had served for years with the most brilliant efficiency and distinction.
Sulpicius, among other things (alleged bribery, etc.), had sneered at the presumption of Murena, a man “who had been principally with the army” and out of Rome, in entering into competition with, or daring to come forward as the rival of, a person of his, Sulpicius’, dignity, learning, and professional station, standing, rank.
We have said enough—perhaps too much—to frame the little picture which we want to present to our readers; to set it near the right window as you pass. That little picture is the argument in which Cicero (who was on terms of personal intimacy with the prosecutor, as well as with his gallant client) firmly questions—yet questions with the most exquisite urbanity—the rather exorbitant pretensions of Sulpicius, the “learned conveyancer and special pleader,” to a higher consideration than “ought to be, or could be,” allowed to the instruction, the knowledge of many sorts (geographical, historical, administrative, tactical, and technical—ay, strategical even—and of characters; of general statistics; of actual local supplies; of incidental resources, material and moral), and to the professional industry, to the labors, the wounds, the dangers, to say nothing of the valor and the genius of a patriotic and public-spirited soldier, who had led armies to victory, had stormed great strongholds, and had not only defended the frontier of the empire, but enlarged it, with every circumstance of legitimate splendor and honorable success.