+----------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | latin word "demuntiat" in footnote has been | | corrected as "denuntiat" and the latin words "at" | | and "audient" in footnote have been corrected | | as "ut" and "audiunt" respectively after checking | | with reliable sources. | +----------------------------------------------------+ the life of cicero by anthony trollope _in two volumes_ vol. ii. new york harper & brothers, franklin square contents of volume ii. page chapter i. his return from exile chapter ii. cicero, Ætat. , , . chapter iii. milo chapter iv. cilicia chapter v. the war between cÆsar and pompey chapter vi. after the battle chapter vii. marcellus, ligarius, and deiotarus chapter viii. cÆsar's death chapter ix. the philippics chapter x. cicero's death chapter xi. cicero's rhetoric chapter xii. cicero's philosophy chapter xiii. cicero's moral essays chapter xiv. cicero's religion appendix index the life of cicero. chapter i. _his return from exile._ cicero's life for the next two years was made conspicuous by a series of speeches which were produced by his exile and his return. these are remarkable for the praise lavished on himself, and by the violence with which he attacked his enemies. it must be owned that never was abuse more abusive, or self-praise uttered in language more laudatory.[ ] cicero had now done all that was useful in his public life. the great monuments of his literature are to come. none of these had as yet been written except a small portion of his letters--about a tenth--and of these he thought no more in regard to the public than do any ordinary letter-writers of to-day. some poems had been produced, and a history of his own consulship in greek; but these are unknown to us. he had already become the greatest orator, perhaps, of all time--and we have many of the speeches spoken by him. some we have--those five, namely, telling the story of verres--not intended to be spoken, but written for the occasion of the day rather than with a view to permanent literature. he had been quæstor, Ædile, prætor, and consul, with singular and undeviating success. he had been honest in the exercise of public functions when to be honest was to be singular. he had bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. he had been true to his country, and useful also--a combination which it was given to no other public man of those days to achieve. having been prætor and consul, he had refused the accustomed rewards, and had abstained from the provinces. his speeches, with but few exceptions, had hitherto been made in favor of honesty. they are declamations against injustice, against bribery, against cruelty, and all on behalf of decent civilized life. had he died then, he would not have become the hero of literature, the marvel among men of letters whom the reading world admires; but he would have been a great man, and would have saved himself from the bitterness of cæsarean tongues. his public work was in truth done. his further service consisted of the government of cilicia for a year--an employment that was odious to him, though his performance of it was a blessing to the province. after that there came the vain struggle with cæsar, the attempt to make the best of cæsar victorious, the last loud shriek on behalf of the republic, and then all was over. the fourteen years of life which yet remained to him sufficed for erecting that literary monument of which i have spoken, but his public usefulness was done. to the reader of his biography it will seem that these coming fourteen years will lack much of the grace which adorned the last twenty. the biographer will be driven to make excuses, which he will not do without believing in the truth of them, but doubting much whether he may beget belief in others. he thinks that he can see the man passing from one form to another--his doubting devotion to pompey, his enforced adherence to cæsar, his passionate opposition to antony; but he can still see him true to his country, and ever on the alert against tyranny and on behalf of pure patriotism. at the present we have to deal with cicero in no vacillating spirit, but loudly exultant and loudly censorious. within the two years following his return he made a series of speeches, in all of which we find the altered tone of his mind. there is no longer that belief in the ultimate success of justice, and ultimate triumph of the republic, which glowed in his verrine and catiline orations. he is forced to descend in his aspirations. it is not whether rome shall be free, or the bench of justice pure, but whether cicero shall be avenged and gabinius punished. it may have been right--it was right--that cicero should be avenged and gabinius punished; but it must be admitted that the subjects are less alluring. his first oration, as generally received, was made to the senate in honor of his return. the second was addressed to the people on the same subject. the third was spoken to the college of priests, with the view of recovering the ground on which his house had stood, and which clodius had attempted to alienate forever by dedicating it to a pretended religious purpose. the next, as coming on our list, though not so in time, was addressed again to the senate concerning official reports made by the public soothsayers as interpreters of occult signs, as to whether certain portents had been sent by the gods to show that cicero ought not to have back his house. before this was made he had defended sextius, who as tribune had been peculiarly serviceable in assisting his return. this was before a bench of judges; and separated from this, though made apparently at the same time, is a violent attack upon vatinius, one of cæsar's creatures, who was a witness against sextius. then there is a seventh, regarding the disposition of the provinces among the proprætors and proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of piso from macedonia and gabinius from syria, and to win cæsar's favor by showing that cæsar should be allowed to keep the two gauls and illyricum. to these must be added two others, made within the same period, for cælius and balbus. the close friendship between cicero and the young man cælius was one of the singular details of the orator's life. balbus was a spaniard, attached to cæsar, and remarkable as having been the first man not an italian who achieved the honor of the consulship. it has been disputed whether the first four of these orations were really the work of cicero, certain german critics and english scholars having declared them to be "parum ciceronias"--too little like cicero. that is the phrase used by nobbe, who published a valuable edition of all cicero's works, after the text of ernesti, in a single volume. mr. long, in his introduction to these orations, denounces them in language so strong as to rob them of all chance of absolute acceptance from those who know the accuracy of mr. long's scholarship.[ ] there may probably have been subsequent interpolations. the first of the four, however, is so closely referred to by cicero himself in the speech made by him two years subsequently in the defence of plancius, that the fact of an address to the senate in the praise of those who had assisted him in his return cannot be doubted; and we are expressly told by the orator that, because of the importance of the occasion, he had written it out before he spoke it.[ ] as to the latinity, it is not within my scope, nor indeed within my power, to express a confident opinion; but as to the matter of the speech, i think that cicero, in his then frame of mind, might have uttered what is attributed to him. having said so much, i shall best continue my narrative by dealing with the four speeches as though they were genuine. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cicero landed at brundisium on the th of august, the day on which his recall from exile had been enacted by the people, and there met his daughter tullia, who had come to welcome him back to italy on that her birthday. but she had come as a widow, having just lost her first husband, piso frugi. at this time she was not more than nineteen years old. of tullia's feelings we know nothing from her own expressions, as they have not reached us; but from the warmth of her father's love for her, and by the closeness of their friendship, we are led to imagine that the joy of her life depended more on him than on any of her three husbands. she did not live long with either of them, and died soon after the birth of a child, having been divorced from the third. i take it, there was much of triumph in the meeting, though piso frugi had died so lately. the return of cicero to rome was altogether triumphant. it must be remembered that the contemporary accounts we have had of it are altogether from his own pen. they are taken chiefly from the orations i have named above, though subsequent allusions to the glory of his return to rome are not uncommon in his works. but had his boasting not been true, the contradictions to them would have been made in such a way as to have reached our ears. plutarch, indeed, declares that cicero's account of the glory of his return fell short of the truth. it may be taken for granted that with that feeble monster, the citizen populace of rome, cicero had again risen to a popularity equal to that which had been bestowed upon him when he had just driven catiline out of rome. of what nature were the crowds who were thus loud in the praise of their great consul, and as loud afterward in their rejoicings at the return of the great exile, we must form our own opinion from circumstantial evidence. there was a mass of people, with keen ears taking artistic delight in eloquence and in personal graces, but determined to be idle, and to be fed as well as amused in their idleness; and there were also vast bands of men ready to fight--bands of gladiators they have been called, though it is probable that but few of them had ever been trained to the arena--whose business it was to shout as well as to fight on behalf of their patrons. we shall not be justified in supposing that those who on the two occasions named gave their sweet voices for cicero were only the well-ordered, though idle, proportion of the people, whereas they who had voted against him in favor of clodius had all been assassins, bullies, and swordsmen. we shall probably be nearer the mark if we imagine that the citizens generally were actuated by the prevailing feelings of their leaders at the moment, but were carried into enthusiasm when enabled, without detriment to their interests, to express their feelings for one who was in truth popular with them. when cicero, after the death of the five conspirators, declared that the men "had lived"--"vixerunt"--his own power was sufficient to insure the people that they would be safe in praising him. when he came back to rome, pompey had been urgent for his return, and cæsar had acceded to it. when the bill was passed for banishing him, the triumvirate had been against him, and clodius had been able to hound on his crew. but milo also had a crew, and milo was cicero's friend. as the clodian crew helped to drive cicero from rome, so did milo's crew help to bring him back again. cicero, on reaching rome, went at once to the capitol, to the temple of jupiter, and there returned thanks for the great thing that had been done for him. he was accompanied by a vast procession who from the temple went with him to his brother's house, where he met his wife, and where he resided for a time. his own house in the close neighborhood had been destroyed. he reached rome on the th of september, and on the th an opportunity was given to the then hero of the day for expressing his thanks to the senate for what they had done for him. his intellect had not grown rusty in macedonia, though he had been idle. on the th, cicero spoke to the senate; on the th, to the people. before the end of the month he made a much longer speech to the priests in defence of his own property. out of the full heart the mouth speaks, and his heart was very full of the subject. his first object was to thank the senate and the leading members of it for their goodness to him. the glowing language in which this is done goes against the grain with us when we read continuously the events of his life as told by himself. his last grievous words had been expressions of despair addressed to atticus; now he breaks out into a pæan of triumph. we have to remember that eight months had intervened, and that the time had sufficed to turn darkness into light. "if i cannot thank you as i ought, o conscript fathers, for the undying favors which you have conferred on me, on my brother, and my children, ascribe it, i beseech you, to the greatness of the things you have done for me, and not to the defect of my virtue." then he praises the two consuls, naming them, lentulus and metellus--metellus, as the reader will remember, having till lately been his enemy. he lauds the prætors and the tribunes, two of the latter members having opposed his return; but he is loudest in praise of pompey--that "sampsiceramus," that "hierosolymarius," that "arabarches" into whose character he had seen so clearly when writing from macedonia to atticus--that "cn. pompey who, by his valor, his glory, his achievements, stands conspicuously the first of all nations, of all ages, of all history." we cannot but be angry when we read the words, though we may understand how well he understood that he was impotent to do anything for the republic unless he could bring such a man as pompey to act with him. we must remember, too, how impossible it was that one roman should rise above the falsehood common to romans. we cannot ourselves always escape even yet from the atmosphere of duplicity in which policy delights. he describes the state of rome in his absence. "when i was gone, you"--you, the senate--"could decree nothing for your citizens, or for your allies, or for the dependent kings. the judges could give no judgment; the people could not record their votes; the senate availed nothing by its authority. you saw only a silent forum, a speechless senate-house, a city dumb and deserted." we may suppose that rome was what cicero described it to be when he was in exile, and cæsar had gone to his provinces; but its condition had been the result of the crushing tyranny of the triumvirate rather than of cicero's absence. lentulus, the present consul, had been, he says, a second father, almost a god, to him. but he would not have needed the hand of a consul to raise him from the ground, had he not been wounded by consular hands. catulus, one of rome's best citizens, had told him that though rome had now and again suffered from a bad consul, she had never before been afflicted by two together. while there was one consul worthy of the name, catulus had declared that cicero would be safe. but there had come two, two together, whose spirits had been so narrow, so low, so depraved, so burdened with greed and ignorance, "that they had been unable to comprehend, much less to sustain the splendor of the name of consul. not consuls were they, but buyers and sellers of provinces." these were piso and gabinius, of whom the former was now governor of macedonia, and the latter of syria. cicero's scorn against these men, who as consuls had permitted his exile, became a passion with him. his subsequent hatred of antony was not as bitter. he had come there to thank the assembled senators for their care of him, but he is carried off so violently by his anger that he devotes a considerable portion of his speech to these indignant utterances. the reader does not regret it. abuse makes better reading than praise, has a stronger vitality, and seems, alas, to come more thoroughly from the heart! those who think that genuine invective has its charms would ill spare piso and gabinius. he goes back to his eulogy, and names various prætors and officers who have worked on his behalf. then he declares that by the view of the present consul, lentulus, a decree has been passed in his favor more glorious than has been awarded to any other single roman citizen--namely that from all italy those who wished well to their country should be collected together for the purpose of bringing him back from his banishment--him, cicero. there is much in this in praise of lentulus, but more in praise of cicero. throughout these orations we feel that cicero is put forward as the hero, whereas piso and gabinius are the demons of the piece. "what could i leave as a richer legacy to my posterity," he goes on to say, opening another clause of his speech, "than that the senate should have decreed that the citizen who had not come forward in my defence was one regardless of the republic." by these boastings, though he was at the moment at the top of the ladder of popularity, he was offending the self-importance of all around him. he was offending especially pompey, with whom it was his fate to have to act.[ ] but that was little to the offence he was giving to those who were to come many centuries after him, who would not look into the matter with sufficient accuracy to find that his vanity deserved forgiveness because of his humanity and desire for progress. "o lentulus," he says, at the end of the oration, "since i am restored to the republic, as with me the republic is itself restored, i will slacken nothing in my efforts at liberty; but, if it may be possible, will add something to my energy." in translating a word here and there as i have done, i feel at every expression my incapacity. there is no such thing as good translation. if you wish to drink the water, with its life and vigor in it, you must go to the fountain and drink it there. on the day following he made a similar speech to the people--if, indeed, the speech we have was from his mouth or his pen--as to which it has been remarked that in it he made no allusion to clodius, though he was as bitter as ever against the late consuls. from this we may gather that, though his audience was delighted to hear him, even in his self-praise, there might have been dispute had he spoken ill of one who had been popular as tribune. his praise of pompey was almost more fulsome than that of the day before, and the same may be said of his self-glorification. of his brother's devotion to him he speaks in touching words, but in words which make us remember how untrue to him afterward was that very brother. there are phrases so magnificent throughout this short piece that they obtain from us, as they are read, forgiveness for the writer's faults. "sic ulciscar facinorum singula." let the reader of latin turn to chapter ix. of the oration and see how the speaker declares that he will avenge himself against the evil-doers whom he has denounced. cicero, though he had returned triumphant, had come back ruined in purse, except so far as he could depend on the senate and the people for reimbursing to him the losses to which he had been subjected. the decree of the senate had declared that his goods should be returned to him, but the validity of such a promise would depend on the value which might be put upon the goods in question. his house on the palatine hill had been razed to the ground; his tusculan and formian villas had been destroyed; his books, his pictures, his marble columns, his very trees, had been stolen; but, worst of all, an attempt had been made to deprive him forever of the choicest spot of ground in all the city, the park lane of rome, by devoting the space which had belonged to him to the service of one of the gods. clodius had caused something of a temple to liberty to be built there, because ground so consecrated was deemed at rome, as with us, to be devoted by consecration to the perpetual service of religion. it was with the view of contesting this point that cicero made his next speech, pro domo sua, for the recovery of his house, before the bench of priests in rome. it was for the priests to decide this question. the senate could decree the restitution of property generally, but it was necessary that that spot of ground should be liberated from the thraldom of sacerdotal tenure by sacerdotal interference. these priests were all men of high birth and distinction in the republic. nineteen among them were "consulares," or past-consuls. superstitious awe affects more lightly the consciences of priests than the hearts of those who trust the priests for their guidance. familiarity does breed contempt. cicero, in making this speech, probably felt that, if he could carry the people with him, the college of priests would not hold the prey with grasping hands. the nineteen consulares would care little for the sanctity of the ground if they could be brought to wish well to cicero. he did his best. he wrote to atticus concerning it a few days after the speech was made, and declared that if he had ever spoken well on any occasion he had done so then, so deep had been his grief, and so great the importance of the occasion;[ ] and he at once informs his friend of the decision of the bench, and of the ground on which it was based. "if he who declares that he dedicated the ground had not been appointed to that business by the people, nor had been expressly commanded by the people to do it, then that spot of ground can be restored without any breach of religion." cicero asserts that he was at once congratulated on having gained his cause, the world knowing very well that no such authority had been conferred on clodius. in the present mood of rome, all the priests, with the nineteen consulares, were no doubt willing that cicero should have back his ground. the senate had to interpret the decision, and on the discussion of the question among them clodius endeavored to talk against time. when, however, he had spoken for three hours, he allowed himself to be coughed down. it may be seen that in some respects even roman fortitude has been excelled in our days. in the first portion of this speech, pro domo sua, cicero devotes himself to a matter which has no bearing on his house. concomitant with cicero's return there had come a famine in rome. such a calamity was of frequent occurrence, though i doubt whether their famines ever led to mortality so frightful as that which desolated ireland just before the repeal of the corn laws. no records, as far as i am aware, have reached us of men perishing in the streets; but scarcity was not uncommon, and on such occasions complaints would become very loud. the feeding of the people was a matter of great difficulty, and subject to various chances. we do not at all know what was the number to be fed, including the free and the slaves, but have been led by surmises to suppose that it was under a million even in the time of augustus. but even though the number was no more than five hundred thousand at this time, the procuring of food must have been a complicated and difficult matter. it was not produced in the country. it was imported chiefly from sicily and africa, and was plentiful or the reverse, not only in accordance with the seasons but as certain officers of state were diligent and honest, or fraudulent and rapacious. we know from one of the verrine orations the nature of the laws on the subject, but cannot but marvel that, even with the assistance of such laws, the supply could be maintained with any fair proportion to the demand. the people looked to the government for the supply, and when it fell short would make their troubles known with seditious grumblings, which would occasionally assume the guise of insurrection. at this period of cicero's return food had become scarce and dear; and clodius, who was now in arms against pompey as well as against cicero, caused it to be believed that the strangers flocking into rome to welcome cicero had eaten up the food which should have filled the bellies of the people. an idea farther from truth could hardly have been entertained: no chance influx of visitors on such a population could have had the supposed effect. but the idea was spread abroad, and it was necessary that something should be done to quiet the minds of the populace. pompey had hitherto been the resource in state difficulties. pompey had scattered the pirates, who seem, however, at this period to have been gathering head again. pompey had conquered mithridates. let pompey have a commission to find food for rome. pompey himself entertained the idea of a commission which should for a time give him almost unlimited power. cæsar was increasing his legions and becoming dominant in the west. pompey, who still thought himself the bigger man of the two, felt the necessity of some great step in rivalry of cæsar. the proposal made on his behalf was that all the treasure belonging to the state should be placed at his disposal; that he should have an army and a fleet, and should be for five years superior in authority to every proconsul in his own province. this was the first great struggle made by pompey to strangle the growing power of cæsar. it failed altogether.[ ] the fear of cæsar had already become too great in the bosoms of roman senators to permit them to attempt to crush him in his absence. but a mitigated law was passed, enjoining pompey to provide the food required, and conferring upon him certain powers. cicero was nominated as his first lieutenant, and accepted the position. he never acted, however, giving it up to his brother quintus. a speech which he made to the people on the passing of the law is not extant; but as there was hot blood about it in rome, he took the opportunity of justifying the appointment of pompey in the earlier portion of this oration to the priests. it must be understood that he did not lend his aid toward giving those greater powers which pompey was anxious to obtain. his trust in pompey had never been a perfect trust since the first days of the triumvirate. to cicero's thinking, both pompey and cæsar were conspirators against the republic. cæsar was the bolder, and therefore the more dangerous. it might probably come to pass that the services of pompey would be needed for restraining cæsar. pompey naturally belonged to the "optimates," while cæsar was as naturally a conspirator. but there never again could come a time in which cicero would willingly intrust pompey with such power as was given to him nine years before by the lex manilia. nevertheless, he could still say grand things in praise of pompey. "to pompey have been intrusted wars without number, wars most dangerous to the state, wars by sea and wars by land, wars extraordinary in their nature. if there be a man who regrets that this has been done, that man must regret the victories which rome has won." but his abuse of clodius is infinitely stronger than his praise of pompey. for the passages in which he alluded to the sister of clodius i must refer the reader to the speech itself. it is impossible here to translate them or to describe them. and these words were spoken before the college of priests, of whom nineteen were consulares! and they were prepared with such care that cicero specially boasted of them to atticus, and declares that they should be put into the hands of all young orators. montesquieu says that the roman legislators, in establishing their religion, had no view of using it for the improvement of manners or of morals.[ ] the nature of their rites and ceremonies gives us evidence enough that it was so. if further testimony were wanting, it might be found in this address, ad pontifices. cicero himself was a man of singularly clean life as a roman nobleman, but, in abusing his enemy, he was restrained by no sense of what we consider the decency of language. he argues the question as to his house very well, as he did all questions. he tells the priests that the whole joy of his restoration must depend on their decision. citizens who had hitherto been made subject to such penalties had been malefactors; whereas, it was acknowledged of him that he had been a benefactor to the city. clodius had set up on the spot, not a statue of liberty, but, as was well known to all men, the figure of a greek prostitute. the priests had not been consulted. the people had not ratified the proposed consecration. of the necessity of such authority he gives various examples. "and this has been done," he says, "by an impure and impious enemy of all religions--by this man among women, and woman among men--who has gone through the ceremony so hurriedly, so violently, that his mind and his tongue and his voice have been equally inconsistent with each other." "my fortune," he says, as he ends his speech, "all moderate as it is, will suffice for me. the memory of my name will be a patrimony sufficient for my children;" but if his house be so taken from him, so stolen, so falsely dedicated to religion, he cannot live without disgrace. of course he got back his house; and with his house about £ , for its re-erection, and £ for the damage done to the tusculan villa with £ for the formian villa. with these sums he was not contented; and indeed they could hardly have represented fairly the immense injury done to him. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] so ended the work of the year of his return. from the following year, besides the speeches, we have twenty-six letters of which nine were written to lentulus, the late consul, who had now gone to cilicia as proconsul. lentulus had befriended him, and he found it necessary to show his gratitude by a continued correspondence, and by a close attendance to the interests of the absent officer. these letters are full of details of roman politics, too intricate for such a work as this--perhaps i might almost say too uninteresting, as they refer specially to lentulus himself. in one of them he tells his friend that he has at last been able to secure the friendship of pompey for him. it was, after all, but a show of friendship. he has supped with pompey, and says that when he talks to pompey everything seems to go well: no one can be more gracious than pompey. but when he sees the friends by whom pompey is surrounded he knows, as all others know, that the affair is in truth going just as he would not have it.[ ] we feel as we read these letters, in which pompey's name is continually before us, how much pompey prevailed by his personal appearance, by his power of saying gracious things, and then again by his power of holding his tongue. "you know the slowness of the man," he says to lentulus, "and his silence."[ ] a slow, cautious, hypocritical man, who knew well how to use the allurements of personal manners! these letters to lentulus are full of flattery. there are five letters to his brother quintus, dealing with the politics of the time, especially with the then king of egypt, who was to be, or was not to be, restored. from all these things, however, i endeavor to abstain as much as possible, as matters not peculiarly affecting the character of cicero. he gives his brother an account of the doings in the senate, which is interesting as showing us how that august assembly conducted itself. while pompey was speaking with much dignity, clodius and his supporters in vain struggled with shouts and cries to put him down. at noon pompey sat down, and clodius got possession of the rostra, and in the middle of a violent tumult remained on his feet for two hours. then, on pompey's side, the "optimates" sang indecent songs --"versus obscenissimi"--in reference to clodius and his sister clodia. clodius, rising in his anger, demanded, "who had brought the famine?" "pompey," shouted the clodians. "who wanted to go to egypt?" demanded clodius. "pompey," again shouted his followers. after that, at three o'clock, at a given signal, they began to spit upon their opponents. then there was a fight, in which each party tried to drive the others out. the "optimates" were getting the best of it, when cicero thought it as well to run off lest he should be hurt in the tumult.[ ] what hope could there be for an oligarchy when such things occurred in the senate? cicero in this letter speaks complacently of resisting force by force in the city. even cato, the law-abiding, precise cato, thought it necessary to fall into the fashion and go about rome with an armed following. he bought a company of gladiators and circus-men; but was obliged to sell them, as cicero tells his brother with glee, because he could not afford to feed them.[ ] there are seven letters also to atticus--always more interesting than any of the others. there is in these the most perfect good-feeling, so that we may know that the complaints made by him in his exile had had no effect of estranging his friend; and we learn from them his real, innermost thoughts, as they are not given even to his brother--as thoughts have surely seldom been confided by one man of action to another. atticus had complained that he had not been allowed to see a certain letter which cicero had written to cæsar. this he had called a [greek: palinôdia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to cæsar with the view of professing a withdrawal to some extent of his opposition to the triumvirate. it had been of sufficient moment to be talked about. atticus had heard of it, and had complained that it had not been sent to him. cicero puts forward his excuses, and then bursts out with the real truth: "why should i nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be swallowed?" the recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and he had been ashamed of it. "but," says he, "farewell to all true, upright, honest policy. you could hardly believe what treachery there is in those who ought to be our leading men, and who would be so if there was any truth in them."[ ] he does not rely upon those who, if they were true to their party, would enable the party to stand firmly even against cæsar. therefore it becomes necessary for him to truckle to cæsar, not for himself but for his party. unsupported he cannot stand in open hostility to cæsar. he truckles. he writes to cæsar, singing cæsar's praises. it is for the party rather than for himself, but yet he is ashamed of it. there is a letter to lucceius, an historian of the day then much thought of, of whom however our later world has heard nothing. lucceius is writing chronicles of the time, and cicero boldly demands to be praised. "ut ornes mea postulem"[ ]--"i ask you to praise me." but he becomes much bolder than that. "again and again i beseech you, without any beating about the bush, to speak more highly of me than you perhaps think that i deserve, even though in doing so you abandon all the laws of history." then he uses beautiful flattery to his correspondent. alexander had wished to be painted only by apelles. he desires to be praised by none but lucceius. lucceius, we are told, did as he was asked. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] i will return to the speeches of the period to which this chapter is devoted, taking that first which he made to the senate as to the report of the soothsayers respecting certain prodigies. readers familiar with livy will remember how frequently, in time of disaster, the anger of heaven was supposed to have been shown by signs and miracles, indications that the gods were displeased, and that expiations were necessary.[ ] the superstition, as is the fate of all superstitions, had frequently been used for most ungodlike purposes. if a man had a political enemy, what could do him better service than to make the populace believe that a house had been crushed by a thunder-bolt, or that a woman had given birth to a pig instead of a child, because jupiter had been offended by that enemy's devices? by using such a plea the grecians got into troy, together with the wooden horse, many years ago. the scotch worshippers of the sabbath declared the other day, when the bridge over the tay was blown away, that the lord had interposed to prevent travelling on sunday! cicero had not been long back from his exile when the gods began to show their anger. a statue of juno twisted itself half round; a wolf had been seen in the city; three citizens were struck with lightning; arms were heard to clang, and then wide subterranean noises. nothing was easier than the preparation and continuing of such portents. for many years past the heavens above and the earth beneath had been put into requisition for prodigies.[ ] the soothsayers were always well pleased to declare that there had been some neglect of the gods. it is in the nature of things that the superstitious tendencies of mankind shall fall a prey to priestcraft. the quarrels between cicero and clodius were as full of life as ever. in this year, clodius being Ædile, there had come on debates as to a law passed by cæsar as consul, in opposition to bibulus, for the distribution of lands among the citizens. there was a question as to a certain tax which was to be levied on these lands. the tax-gatherers were supported by cicero, and denounced by clodius. then clodius and his friends found out that the gods were showering their anger down upon the city because the ground on which cicero's house had once stood was being desecrated by its re-erection. an appeal was made to the soothsayers. they reported, and cicero rejoined. the soothsayers had of course been mysterious and doubtful. cicero first shows that the devotion of his ground to sacred purposes had been an absurdity, and then he declares that the gods are angry, not with him but with clodius. to say that the gods were not angry at all was more than cicero dared. the piece, taken as a morsel of declamatory art, is full of vigor, is powerful in invective, and carries us along in full agreement with the orator; but at the conclusion we are led to wish that cicero could have employed his intellect on higher matters. there are, however, one or two passages which draw the reader into deep mental inquiry as to the religious feelings of the time. in one, which might have been written by paley, cicero declares his belief in the creative power of some god--or gods, as he calls them.[ ] and we see also the perverse dealings of the romans with these gods, dealings which were very troublesome--not to be got over except by stratagem. the gods were made use of by one party and the other for dishonest state purposes. when cicero tells his hearers what the gods intended to signify by making noises in the sky, and other divine voices, we feel sure that he was either hoaxing them who heard him or saying what he knew they would not believe. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] previous to the speech as to the "aruspices," he had defended sextius--or sestius, as he is frequently called--on a charge brought against him by clodius in respect of violence. we at once think of the commonplace from juvenal: "quis tulerit gracchos de seditione querentes." but rome, without remonstrating, put up with any absurdity of that kind. sextius and milo and others had been joined together in opposing the election of clodius as Ædile, and had probably met violence with violence. as surely as an english master of hounds has grooms and whips ready at his command, milo had a band of bullies prepared for violence. clodius himself had brought an action against milo, who was defended by pompey in person. the case against sextius was intrusted to albinovanus, and hortensius undertook the defence. sextius before had been one of the most forward in obtaining the return of cicero, and had travelled into gaul to see cæsar and to procure cæsar's assent. cæsar had not then assented; but not the less great had been the favor conferred by sextius on cicero. cicero had been grateful, but it seems that sextius had thought not sufficiently grateful; hence there had grown up something of a quarrel. but cicero, when he heard of the proceeding against his old friend, at once offered his assistance. for a roman to have more than one counsel to plead for him was as common as for an englishman. cicero was therefore added to hortensius, and the two great advocates of the day spoke on the same side. we are told that hortensius managed the evidence, showing, probably, that clodius struck the first blow. cicero then addressed the judges with the object of gaining their favor for the accused. in this he was successful, and sextius was acquitted. as regards sextius and his quarrel with clodius, the oration has but little interest for us. there is not, indeed, much about sextius in it. it is a continuation of the pæan which cicero was still singing as to his own return, but it is distinguished from his former utterances by finer thought and finer language. the description of public virtue as displayed by cato has perhaps, in regard to melody of words and grandeur of sentiment, never been beaten. i give the orator's words below in his own language, because in no other way can any idea of the sound be conveyed.[ ] there is, too, a definition made very cleverly to suit his own point of view between the conservatives and the liberals of the day. "optimates" is the name by which the former are known; the latter are called "populares."[ ] attached to this speech for sextius is a declamation against vatinius, who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. instead of examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate oration. we have no other instance of such a forensic manoeuvre either in cicero's practice or in our accounts of the doings of other roman advocates. this has reached us as a separate oration. it is a coarse tirade of abuse against a man whom we believe to have been bad, but as to whom we feel that we are not justified in supposing that we can get his true character here. he was a creature of cæsar's, and cicero was able to say words as to vatinius which he was unwilling to speak as to cæsar and his doings. it must be added here that two years later cicero pleaded for this very vatinius, at the joint request of cæsar and pompey, when vatinius on leaving the prætorship was accused of corruption. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the nature of the reward to which the aspiring oligarch of rome always turned his eyes has been sufficiently explained. he looked to be the governor of a province. at this period of which we are speaking there was no reticence in the matter. syria, or macedonia, or hispania had been the prize, or sicily, or sardinia. it was quite understood that an aspiring oligarch went through the dust and danger and expense of political life in order that at last he might fill his coffers with provincial plunder. there were various laws as to which these governments were allotted to the plunderers. of these we need only allude to the leges semproniæ, or laws proposed b.c. , by caius sempronius gracchus, for the distribution of those provinces which were to be enjoyed by proconsuls. there were prætorian provinces and consular provinces, though there was no law making it sure that any province should be either consular or prætorian. but the senate, without the interference of the people and free from the tribunes' veto, had the selection of provinces for the consuls; whereas, for those intended for the prætors, the people had the right of voting and the tribunes of the people had a right of putting a veto on the propositions made. now, in this year there came before the senate a discussion as to the fate of three proconsuls--not as to the primary allocation of provinces to them, but on the question whether they should be continued in the government which they held. piso was in macedonia, where he was supposed to have disgraced himself and the empire which he served. gabinius was in syria, where it was acknowledged that he had done good service, though his own personal character stood very low. cæsar was lord in the two gauls--that is, on both sides of the alps, in northern italy, and in that portion of modern france along the mediterranean which had been already colonized--and was also governor of illyricum. he had already made it manifest to all men that the subjugation of a new empire was his object rather than provincial plunder. whether we love the memory of cæsar as of a great man who showed himself fit to rule the world, or turn away from him as from one who set his iron heel on the necks of men, and by doing so retarded for centuries the liberties of mankind, we have to admit that he rose by the light of his own genius altogether above the ambition of his contemporaries. if we prefer, as i do, the humanity of cicero, we must confess to ourselves the supremacy of cæsar, and acknowledge ourselves to belong to the beaten cause. "victrix causa deis placuit; sed victa catoni." in discussing the fate of these proconsular officials we feel now the absurdity of mixing together in the same debate the name of piso and gabinius with that of cæsar. yet such was the subject in dispute when cicero made his speech, de provinciis consularibus, as to the adjudication of the consular provinces. there was a strong opinion among many senators that cæsar should be stopped in his career. i need not here investigate the motives, either great or little, on which this opinion was founded. there was hardly a senator among them who would not have wished cæsar to be put down, though there were many who did not dare declare their wishes. there were reasons for peculiar jealousy on the part of the senate. cisalpine gaul had been voted for him by the intervention of the people, and especially by that of the tribune vatinius--to cæsar who was consularis, whose reward should have been an affair solely for the senate. then there had arisen a demand, a most unusual demand, for the other gaul also. the giving of two provinces to one governor was altogether contrary to the practice of the state; but so was the permanent and acknowledged continuance of a conspiracy such as the triumvirate unusual. cæsar himself was very unusual. then the senate, feeling that the second province would certainly be obtained, and anxious to preserve some shred of their prerogative, themselves voted the farther gaul. as it must be done, let it at any rate be said that they had done it. but as they had sent cæsar over the alps so they could recall him, or try to recall him. therefore, with the question as to piso and gabinius, which really meant nothing, came up this also as to cæsar, which meant a great deal. but cæsar had already done great things in gaul. he had defeated the helvetians and driven ariovistus out of the country. he had carried eight legions among the distant belgæ, and had conquered the nervii. in this very year he had built a huge fleet, and had destroyed the veneti, a seafaring people on the coast of the present brittany. the more powerful he showed himself to be, the more difficult it was to recall him; but also the more desirable in the eyes of many. in the first portion of his speech cicero handles piso and gabinius with his usual invective. there was no considerable party desirous of renewing to them their governments, but cicero always revelled in the pleasure of abusing them. he devotes by far the longer part of his oration to the merit of cæsar.[ ] as for recalling him, it would be irrational. who had counted more enemies in rome than marius? but did they recall marius when he was fighting for the republic?[ ] hitherto the republic had been forced to fear the gauls. rome had always been on the defence against them. now it had been brought about by cæsar that the limits of the world were the limits of the roman empire.[ ] the conquest was not yet finished, but surely it should be left to him who had begun it so well. even though cæsar were to demand to return himself, thinking that he had done enough for his own glory, it would be for the senators to restrain him--for the senate to bid him finish the work that he had in hand.[ ] as for himself, continued cicero, if cæsar had been his enemy, what of that? cæsar was not his enemy now. he had told the senate what offers of employment cæsar had made him. if he could not forget, yet he would forgive, former injuries.[ ] it is important for the reading of cicero's character that we should trace the meaning of his utterances about cæsar from this time up to the day on which cæsar was killed--his utterances in public, and those which are found in his letters to atticus and his brother. that there was much of pretence--of falsehood, if a hard word be necessary to suit the severity of those who judge the man hardly--is admitted. how he praised pompey in public, dispraising him in private, at one and the same moment, has been declared. how he applied for praise, whether deserved or not, has been shown. in excuse, not in defence, of this i allege that the romans of the day were habitually false after this fashion. the application to lucceius proves the habitual falseness not of cicero only, but of lucceius also; and the private words written to atticus, in opposition to the public words with which atticus was well acquainted, prove the falseness also of atticus. it was roman; it was italian; it was cosmopolitan; it was human. i only wish that it were possible to declare that it is no longer italian, no longer cosmopolitan, no longer human. to this day it is very difficult even for an honorable man to tell the whole truth in the varying circumstances of public life. the establishment of even a theory of truth, with all the advantages which have come to us from christianity, has been so difficult, hitherto so imperfect, that we ought, i think, to consider well the circumstances before we stigmatize cicero as specially false. to my reading he seems to have been specially true. when cæsar won his way up to power, cicero was courteous to him, flattered him, and, though, never subservient, yet was anxious to comply when compliance was possible. nevertheless, we know well that the whole scheme of cæsar's political life was opposed to the scheme entertained by cicero. it was cicero's desire to maintain as much as he could of the old form of oligarchical rule under which, as a constitution, the roman empire had been created. it was cæsar's intention to sweep it all away. we can see that now; but cicero could only see it in part. to his outlook the man had some sense of order, and had all the elements of greatness. he was better, at any rate, than a verres, a catiline, a clodius, a piso, or a gabinius. if he thought that by flattery he could bring cæsar somewhat round, there might be conceit in his so thinking, but there could be no treachery. in doing so he did not abandon his political _beau ideal_. if better times came, or a better man, he would use them. in the mean time he could do more by managing cæsar than by opposing him. he was far enough from succeeding in the management of cæsar, but he did do much in keeping his party together. it was in this spirit that he advocated before the senate the maintenance of cæsar's authority in the two gauls. the senate decreed the withdrawal of piso and gabinius, but decided to leave cæsar where he was. mommsen deals very hardly with cicero as to this period of his life. "they used him accordingly as--what he was good for--an advocate." "cicero himself had to thank his literary reputation for the respectful treatment which he experienced from cæsar." the question we have to ask ourselves is whether he did his best to forward that scheme of politics which he thought to be good for the republic. to me it seems that he did do so. he certainly did nothing with the object of filling his own pockets. i doubt whether as much can be said with perfect truth as to any other roman of the period, unless it be cato. balbus, for whom cicero also spoke in this year, was a spaniard of cadiz, to whom pompey had given the citizenship of rome, who had become one of cæsar's servants and friends, and whose citizenship was now disputed. cicero pleaded in favor of the claim, and gained his cause. there were, no doubt, certain laws in accordance with which balbus was or was not a citizen; but cicero here says that because balbus was a good man, therefore there should be no question as to his citizenship.[ ] this could hardly be a good legal argument. but we are glad to have the main principles of roman citizenship laid down for us in this oration. a man cannot belong to more than one state at a time. a man cannot be turned out of his state against his will. a man cannot be forced to remain in his state against his will.[ ] this balbus was acknowledged as a roman, rose to be one of cæsar's leading ministers, and was elected consul of the empire b.c. . thirty-four years afterward his nephew became consul. nearly three centuries after that, a.d. , a descendant of balbus was chosen as emperor, under the name of balbinus, and is spoken of by gibbon with eulogy.[ ] i know no work on cicero written more pleasantly, or inspired by a higher spirit of justice, than that of gaston boissier, of the french academy, called cicéron et ses amis. among his chapters one is devoted to cicero's remarkable intimacy with cælius, which should be read by all who wish to study cicero. we have now come to the speech which he made in this year in defence of cælius. cælius had entered public life very early, as the son of a rich citizen who was anxious that his heir should be enabled to shine as well by his father's wealth as by his own intellect. when he was still a boy, according to our ideas of boyhood, he was apprenticed to cicero,[ ] as was customary, in order that he might pick up the crumbs which fell from the great man's table. it was thus that a young man would hear what was best worth hearing; thus he would become acquainted with those who were best worth knowing; thus that he would learn in public life all that was best worth learning. cælius heard all, and knew many, and learned much; but he perhaps learned too much at too early an age. he became bright and clever, but unruly and dissipated. cicero, however, loved him well. he always liked the society of bright young men, and could forgive their morals if their wit were good. clodius--even clodius, young curio, cælius and afterward dolabella, were companions with whom he loved to associate. when he was in cilicia, as proconsul, this cælius became almost a second atticus to him, in the writing of news from rome. but cælius had become one of clodia's many lovers, and seems for a time to have been the first favorite, to the detriment of poor catullus. the rich father had, it seems, quarrelled with his son, and cælius was in want of money. he borrowed it from clodia, and then, without paying his debt, treated clodia as she had treated catullus. the lady tried to get her money back, and when she failed she accused her former lover of an attempt to poison her. this she did so that cælius was tried for the offence. there were no less than four accusers, or advocates, on her behalf, of whom her brother was one. cælius was defended by crassus as well as by cicero, and was acquitted. all these cases combined political views with criminal charges. cælius was declared to have been a catilinian conspirator. he was also accused of being in debt, of having quarrelled with his father, of having insulted women, of having beaten a senator, of having practised bribery, of having committed various murders, and of having perpetrated all social and political excesses to which his enemies could give a name. it was probable that his life had been very irregular, but it was not probably true that he had attempted to poison clodia. the speech is very well worth the trouble of reading. it is lively, bright, picturesque, and argumentative; and it tells the reader very much of the manners of rome at the time. it has been condemned for a passage which, to my taste, is the best in the whole piece. cicero takes upon himself to palliate the pleasures of youth, and we are told that a man so grave, so pure, so excellent in his own life, should not have condescended to utter sentiments so lax in defence of so immoral a young friend. i will endeavor to translate a portion of the passage, and i think that any ladies who may read these pages will agree with me in liking cicero the better for what he said upon the occasion. he has been speaking of the changes which the manners of the world had undergone, not only in rome but in greece, since pleasure had been acknowledged even by philosophers to be necessary to life. "they who advocate one constant course of continual labor as the road to fame are left alone in their schools, deserted by their scholars. nature herself has begotten for us allurements, seduced by which virtue herself will occasionally become drowsy. nature herself leads the young into slippery paths, in which not to stumble now and again is hardly possible. nature has produced for us a variety of pleasures, to which not only youth, but even middle-age, occasionally yields itself. if, therefore, you shall find one who can avert his eyes from all that is beautiful--who is charmed by no sweet smell, by no soft touch, by no rich flavor--who can turn a deaf ear to coaxing words--i indeed, and perhaps a few others, may think that the gods have been good to such a one; but i doubt whether the world at large will not think that the gods have made him a sorry fellow." there is very much more of it, delightfully said, and in the same spirit; but i have given enough to show the nature of the excuse for cælius which has brought down on cicero the wrath of the moralists. chapter ii. _cicero, Ætat._ , , . [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] i can best continue my record of cicero's life for this and the two subsequent years by following his speeches and his letters. it was at this period the main object of his political life to reconcile the existence of a cæsar with that of a republic--two poles which could not by any means be brought together. outside of his political life he carried on his profession as an advocate with all his former energy, with all his former bitterness, with all his old friendly zeal, but never, i think, with his former utility. his life with his friends and his family was prosperous; but that ambition to do some great thing for his country which might make his name more famous than that of other romans was gradually fading, and, as it went, was leaving regrets and remorse behind which would not allow him to be a happy man. but it was now, when he had reached his fifty-second year, that he in truth began that career in literature which has made him second to no roman in reputation. there are some early rhetorical essays, which were taken from the greek, of doubtful authenticity; there are the few lines which are preserved of his poetry; there are the speeches which he wrote as well as spoke for the rome of the day; and there are his letters, which up to this time had been intended only for his correspondents. all that we have from his pen up to this time has been preserved for us by the light of those great works which he now commenced. in this year, b.c. , there appeared the dialogue de oratore, and in the next the treatise de republica. it was his failure as a politician which in truth drove cicero to the career of literature. as i intend to add to this second volume a few chapters as to his literary productions, i will only mention the dates on which these dialogues and treatises were given to the world as i go on with my work. in the year b.c. , the two of the triumvirate who had been left in rome, pompey and crassus, were elected consuls, and provinces were decreed to each of them for five years--to pompey the two spains, and to crassus that syria which was to be so fatal to him. all this had been arranged at lucca, in the north of italy, whither cæsar was able to come as being within the bounds of his province, to meet his friends from rome--or his enemies. all aristocratic rome went out in crowds to lucca, so that two hundred senators might be seen together in the streets of that provincial town. it was nevertheless near enough to rome to permit the conqueror from gaul to look closely into the politics of the city. by his permission, if not at his instigation, pompey and crassus had been chosen consuls, and to himself was conceded the government of his own province for five further years--that is, down to year b.c. inclusive. it must now at least have become evident to cicero that cæsar intended to rule the empire. though we already have cicero's letters arranged for us in a chronological sequence which may be held to be fairly correct for biographical purposes, still there is much doubt remaining as to the exact periods at which many of them were written. abeken, the german biographer, says that this year, b.c. , produced twelve letters. in the french edition of cicero's works published by panckoucke thirty-five are allotted to it. mr. watson, in his selected letters, has not taken one from the year in question. mr. tyrrell, who has been my mentor hitherto in regard to the correspondence, has not, unfortunately, published the result of his labors beyond the year b.c. at the time of my present writing. some of those who have dealt with cicero's life and works, and have illustrated them by his letters, have added something to the existing confusion by assuming an accuracy of knowledge in this respect which has not existed. we have no right to quarrel with them for having done so; certainly not with middleton, as in his time such accuracy was less valued by readers than it is now; and we have the advantage of much light which, though still imperfect, is very bright in comparison with that enjoyed by him. a study of the letters, however, in the sequence now given to them affords an accurate picture of cicero's mind during the years between the period of his return from exile b.c. and milo's trial b.c. , although the reader may occasionally be misled as to the date of this or the other letter. with the dates of his speeches, at any rate with the year in which they were made, we are better acquainted. they are of course much fewer in number, and are easily traced by the known historical circumstances of the time. b.c. , he made that attack upon his old enemy, the late consul piso, which is perhaps the most egregious piece of abuse extant in any language. even of this we do not know the precise date, but we may be sure that it was spoken early in the year, because cicero alludes in it to pompey's great games which were in preparation, and which were exhibited when pompey's new theatre was opened in may.[ ] plutarch tells us that they did not take place till the beginning of the following year.[ ] piso on his return from macedonia attacked cicero in the senate in answer to all the hard things that had already been said of him, and cicero, as middleton says, "made a reply to him on the spot in an invective speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever was spoken by any man, on the person, the parts, the whole life and conduct of piso, which as long as the roman name subsists must deliver down a most detestable character of him to all posterity." we are here asked to imagine that this attack was delivered on the spur of the moment in answer to piso's attack. i cannot believe that it should have been so, however great may have been the orator's power over thoughts and words. we have had in our own days wonderful instances of ready and indignant reply made instantaneously, but none in which the angry eloquence has risen to such a power as is here displayed. we cannot but suppose that had human intellect ever been perfect enough for such an exertion, it would have soared high enough also to have abstained from it. it may have been that cicero knew well enough beforehand what the day was about to produce, so as to have prepared his reply. it may well have been that he himself undertook the polishing of his speech before it was given to the public in the words which we now read. we may, i think, take it for granted that piso did make an attack upon him, and that cicero answered him at once with words which crushed him, and which are not unfairly represented by those which have come down to us. the imaginative reader will lose himself in wonder as he pictures to himself the figure of the pretentious proconsul, with his assumption of confidence, as he was undergoing the castigation which this great master of obloquy was inflicting upon him, and the figure of the tall, lean orator, with his long neck and keen eyes, with his arms trained to assist his voice, managing his purple bordered toga with a perfect grace, throwing all his heart into his impassioned words as they fell into the ears of the senators around him without the loss of a syllable. this lucius calpurnius piso cæsoronius had come from one of the highest families in rome, and had possessed interest enough to be elected consul for the year in which cicero was sent into banishment.[ ] he was closely connected with that piso frugi to whom cicero's daughter had been married; and cicero, when he was threatened by the faction of clodius--a faction which he did not then believe to be supported by the triumvirate--had thought that he was made safe, at any rate, from cruel results by consular friendship and consular protection. piso cæsoronius had failed him altogether, saying, in answer to cicero's appeal, that the times were of such a nature that every one must look to himself. the nature of cicero's rage may be easily conceived. an attempt to describe it has already been made. it was not till after his consulate that he was ever waked to real anger, and the one object whom he most entirely hated with his whole soul was lucius piso. by the strength of cicero's eloquence this man has occupied an immortality of meanness. we cannot but believe that he must have in some sort deserved it, or the justice of the world would have vindicated his character. it should, however, be told of him that three years afterward he was chosen censor, together with appius claudius. but it must also be told that, as far as we can judge, both these men were unworthy of the honor. they were the last two censors elected in rome before the days of the empire. it is impossible not to believe that piso was vile, but impossible also to believe that he was as vile as cicero represented him. cæsar was at this time his son-in-law, as he was father to calphurnia, with whom shakspeare has made us familiar. i do not know that cæsar took in bad part the hard things that were said of his father-in-law. the first part of the speech is lost. the first words we know because they have been quoted by quintilian, "oh ye gods immortal, what day is this which has shone upon me at last?"[ ] we may imagine from this that cicero intended it to be understood that he exulted in the coming of his revenge. the following is a fair translation of the opening passage of what remains to us: "beast that you are, do you not see, do you not perceive, how odious to the men around you is that face of yours?" then with rapid words he heaps upon the unfortunate man accusations of personal incompetencies. nobody complains, says cicero, that that fellow of yesterday, gabinius, should have been made consul: we have not been deceived in him. "but your eyes and eyebrows, your forehead, that face of yours, which should be the dumb index of the mind within, have deceived those who have not known you. few of us only have been aware of your infamous vices, the sloth of your intellect, your dulness, your inability to speak. when was your voice heard in the forum? when has your counsel been put to the proof? when did you do any service either in peace or war? you have crept into your high place by the mistakes of men, by the regard to the dirty images of your ancestors, to whom you have no resemblance except in their present grimy color. and shall he boast to me," says the orator, turning from piso to the audience around, "that he has gone on without a check from one step in the magistracy to another? that is a boast for me to make, for me--"homini novo"--a man without ancestors, on whom the roman people has showered all its honors. you were made Ædile, you say; the roman people choose a piso for their Ædile--not this man from any regard for himself, but because he is a piso. the prætorship was conferred not on you but on your ancestors who were known and who were dead! of you, who are alive no one has known anything. but me--!" then he continues the contrast between himself and piso; for the speech is as full of his own merits as of the other man's abominations. so the oration goes on to the end. he asserts, addressing himself to piso, that if he saw him and gabinius crucified together, he did not know whether he would be most delighted by the punishment inflicted on their bodies or by the ruin of their reputation. he declares that he has prayed for all evil on piso and gabinius, and that the gods have heard him, but it has not been for death, or sickness, or for torment, that he had prayed, but for such evils as have in truth come upon them. two consuls sent with large armies into two of the grandest provinces have returned with disgrace. that one--meaning piso--has not dared even to send home an account of his doings; and the other--gabinius--has not had his words credited by the senate, nor any of his requests granted! he cicero, had hardly dared to hope for all this, but the gods had done it for him! the most absurd passage is that in which he tells piso that, having lost his army--which he had done--he had brought back nothing in safety but that "old impudent face of his."[ ] altogether it is a tirade of abuse very inferior to cicero's dignity. le clerc, the french critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "il faut avouer qu'il manque surtout de modération, et que la gravité d'un orateur consulaire y fait trop souvent place à l'emportement d'un ennemi." it is, however, full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. the reader when reading it will of course remember that roman manners allowed a mode of expression among the upper classes which is altogether denied to those among us who hope to be regarded as gentlemen. the games in pompey's theatre, to the preparation of which cicero alludes in his speech against piso, are described by him with his usual vivacity and humor in a letter written immediately after them to his friend marius. pompey's games, with which he celebrated his second consulship, seem to have been divided between the magnificent theatre which he had just built--fragments of which still remain to us--and the "circus maximus." this letter from cicero is very interesting, as showing the estimation in which these games were held, or were supposed to be held, by a roman man of letters, and as giving us some description of what was done on the occasion. marius had not come to rome to see them, and cicero writes as though his friend had despised them. cicero himself, having been in rome, had of course witnessed them. to have been in rome and not to have seen them would have been quite out of the question. not to come to rome from a distance was an eccentricity. he congratulated marius for not having come, whether it was that he was ill, or that the whole thing was too despicable: "you in the early morning have been looking out upon your view over the bay while we have been staring at puppets half asleep. most costly games, but i should say--judging of you by myself--that they would have been quite revolting to you. poor Æsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. why should i tell you of it all? the very costliness of the affair took away all the pleasure. six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of clytemnestra, or three thousand golden goblets in the trojan horse--what delight could they give you? if your slave protogenes was reading to you something--so that it were not one of my speeches--you were better off at any rate than we. there were two marvellous slaughterings of beasts which lasted for five days. nobody denies but that they were very grand. but what pleasure can there be to a man of letters[ ] when some weak human creature is destroyed by a sturdy beast, or when some lonely animal is pierced through by a hunting-spear. the last day was the day of elephants, in which there could be no delight except to the vulgar crowd. you could not but pity them, feeling that the poor brutes had something in common with humanity." in these combats were killed twenty elephants and two hundred lions. the bad taste and systematical corruption of rome had reached its acme when this theatre was opened and these games displayed by pompey. he tells atticus,[ ] in a letter written about this time, that he is obliged to write to him by the hand of a secretary; from which we gather that such had not been, at any rate, his practice. he is every day in the forum, making speeches; and he had already composed the dialogues de oratore, and had sent them to lentulus. though he was no longer in office, his time seems to have been as fully occupied as when he was prætor or consul. we have records of at least a dozen speeches, made b.c. and b.c. , between that against piso and the next that is extant, which was delivered in defence of plancius. he defended cispius, but cispius was convicted. he defended caninius gallus, of whom we may presume that he was condemned and exiled, because cicero found him at athens on his way to cilicia, athens being the place to which exiled roman oligarchs generally betook themselves.[ ] in this letter to his young friend cælius he speaks of the pleasure he had in meeting with caninius at athens; but in the letter to marius which i have quoted he complains of the necessity which has befallen him of defending the man. the heat of the summer of this year he passed in the country, but on his return to the city in november he found crassus defending his old enemy gabinius. gabinius had crept back from his province into the city, and had been received with universal scorn and a shower of accusations. cicero at first neither accused nor defended him, but, having been called on as a witness, seems to have been unable to refrain from something of the severity with which he had treated piso. there was at any rate a passage of arms in which gabinius called him a banished criminal.[ ] the senate then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. he was, however, afterward driven by the expostulations of pompey to defend the man. at his first trial gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished when cicero defended him. cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint thus put upon him by pompey, and refused pompey till cæsar's request was added. we can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the obligation thus forced upon him. we have nothing of the speech left, but can hardly believe that it was eloquent. from this, however, there rose a reconciliation between crassus and cicero, both cæsar and pompey having found it to their interest to interfere. as a result of this, early in the next year cicero defended crassus in the senate, when an attempt was made to rob the late consul of his coveted mission to syria. of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to crassus,[ ] which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as base. he despised crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things he had said of him; but we have no right to think that cicero could have been altogether unlike a roman. he speaks also in the senate on behalf of the people of tenedos, who had brought their immunities and privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. all we know of this speech is that it was spoken in vain. he pleaded against an asiatic king, antiochus of comagene, who was befriended by pompey, but cicero seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[ ] he spoke for the inhabitants of reate on some question of water-privilege against the interamnates. interamna we now know as terne, where a modern pope made a lovely water-fall, and at the same time rectified the water-privileges of the surrounding district. cicero went down to its pleasant tempe, as he calls it, and stayed there awhile with one axius.[ ] he returned thence to rome to undertake some case for fonteius, and attended the games which milo was giving, milo having been elected Ædile. here we have a morsel of dramatic criticism on antiphon the actor and arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of pepys. then he defended messius, then drusus, then scaurus. he mentions all these cases in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves with their details. we only feel that he was kept as busy as a london barrister in full practice. he also defended vatinius--that vatinius with whose iniquities he had been so indignant at the trial of sextius. he defended him twice at the instigation of cæsar; and he does not seem to have suffered in doing so, as he had certainly done when called upon to stand up and plead for his late consular enemy, gabinius. valerius maximus, a dull author, often quoted but seldom read, whose task it was to give instances of all the virtues and vices produced by mankind, refers to these pleadings for gabinius and vatinius as instances of an almost divine forgiveness of injury.[ ] i think we must seek for the good, if good is to be discovered in the proceeding, in the presumed strength which might be added to the republic by friendly relations between himself and cæsar. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in the spring of the year we find cicero writing to cæsar in apparently great intimacy. he recommends to cæsar his young friend trebatius, a lawyer, who was going to gaul in search of his fortune, and in doing so he refers to a joking promise from cæsar that he would make another friend, whom he had recommended, king of gaul; or, if not that, foreman at least to lepta, his head of the mechanics. lepta was an officer in trust under cæsar, with whose name we become familiar in cicero's correspondence, though i do not remember that cæsar ever mentions him. "send me some one else that i may show my friendship," cæsar had said, knowing well that cicero was worth any price of the kind. cicero declares to cæsar that on hearing this he held up his hands in grateful surprise, and on this account he had sent trebatius. "mi cæsar," he says, writing with all affection; and then he praises trebatius, assuring cæsar that he does not recommend the young man loosely, as he had some other young men who were worthless--such as milo, for instance. this results in much good done to trebatius, though the young man at first does not like the service with the army. he is a lawyer, and finds the work in gaul very rough. cicero, who is anxious on his behalf, laughs at him and bids him take the good things that come in his way. in subsequent years trebatius was made known to the world as the legal pundit whom horace pretends to consult as to the libellous nature of his satires.[ ] in september of this year cicero pleaded in court for his friend cn. plancius, against whom there was brought an accusation that, in canvassing and obtaining the office of Ædile, he had been guilty of bribery. in all these accusations, which come before us as having been either promoted or opposed by cicero, there is not one in which the reader sympathizes more strongly with the person accused than in this. plancius had shown cicero during his banishment the affection of a brother, or almost of a son. plancius had taken him in and provided for him in macedonia, when to do so was illegal. cicero now took great delight in returning the favor. the reader of this oration cannot learn from it that plancius had in truth done anything illegal. the complaint really made against him was that he, filling the comparatively humble position of a knight, had ventured to become the opposing candidate of such a gallant young aristocrat as m. juventius laterensis, who was beaten at this election, and now brought this action in revenge. there is no tearing of any enemy to tatters in this oration, but there is much pathos, and, as was usual with cicero at this period of his life, an inordinate amount of self-praise. there are many details as to the way in which the tribes voted at elections, which the patient and curious student will find instructive, but which will probably be caviare to all who are not patient and curious students. there are a few passages of peculiar force. addressing himself to the rival of plancius, he tells laterensis that, even though the people might have judged badly in selecting plancius, it was not the less his duty to accept the judgment of the people.[ ] say that the people ought not to have done so; but it should have been sufficient for him that they had done so. then he laughs with a beautiful irony at the pretensions of the accuser. "let us suppose that it was so," he says.[ ] "let no one whose family has not soared above prætorian honors contest any place with one of consular family. let no mere knight stand against one with prætorian relations." in such a case there would be no need of the people to vote at all. farther on he gives his own views as to the honors of the state in language that is very grand. "it has," he says, "been my first endeavor to deserve the high rank of the state; my second, to have been thought to deserve it. the rank itself has been but the third object of my desires."[ ] plancius was acquitted--it seems to us quite as a matter of course. in this perhaps the most difficult period of his existence, when the organized conspiracy of the day had not as yet overturned the landmarks of the constitution, he wrote a long letter to his friend lentulus,[ ] him who had been prominent as consul in rescuing him from his exile, and who was now proconsul in cilicia. lentulus had probably taxed him, after some friendly fashion, with going over from the "optimates" or senatorial party to that of the conspirators pompey, cæsar, and crassus. he had been called a deserter for having passed in his earlier years from the popular party to that of the senate, and now the leading optimates were doubtful of him--whether he was not showing himself too well inclined to do the bidding of the democratic leaders. the one accusation has been as unfair as the other. in this letter he reminds lentulus that a captain in making a port cannot always sail thither in a straight line, but must tack and haul and use a slant of wind as he can get it. cicero was always struggling to make way against a head-wind, and was running hither and thither in his attempt, in a manner most perplexing to those who were looking on without knowing the nature of the winds; but his port was always there, clearly visible to him, if he could only reach it. that port was the old republic, with its well-worn and once successful institutions. it was not to be "fetched." the winds had become too perverse, and the entrance had become choked with sand. but he did his best to fetch it; and, though he was driven hither and thither in his endeavors, it should be remembered that to lookers-on such must ever be the appearance of those who are forced to tack about in search of their port. i have before me mr. forsyth's elaborate and very accurate account of this letter. "now, however," says the biographer, "the future lay dark before him; and not the most sagacious politician at rome could have divined the series of events--blundering weakness on the one side and unscrupulous ambition on the other--which led to the dictatorship of cæsar and the overthrow of the constitution." nothing can be more true. cicero was probably the most sagacious politician in rome; and he, though he did understand much of the weakness--and, it should be added, of the greed--of his own party, did not foresee the point which cæsar was destined to reach, and which was now probably fixed before cæsar's own eyes. but i cannot agree with mr. forsyth in the result at which he had arrived when he quoted a passage from one of the notes affixed by melmoth to his translation of this letter: "it was fear alone that determined his resolution; and having once already suffered in the cause of liberty, he did not find himself to be disposed to be twice its martyr." i should not have thought these words worthy of refutation had they not been backed by mr. forsyth. how did cicero show his fear? had he feared--as indeed there was cause enough, when it was difficult for a leading man to keep his throat uncut amid the violence of the times, or a house over his head--might he not have made himself safe by accepting cæsar's offers? a proconsul out of rome was safe enough, but he would not be a proconsul out of rome till he could avoid it no longer. when the day of danger came, he joined pompey's army against cæsar, doubting, not for his life but for his character, as to what might be the best for the republic. he did not fear when cæsar was dead and only antony remained. when the hour came in which his throat had to be cut, he did not fear. when a man has shown such a power of action in the face of danger as cicero displayed at forty-four in his consulship, and again at sixty-four in his prolonged struggle with antony, it is contrary to nature that he should have been a coward at fifty-four. and all the evidence of the period is opposed to this theory of cowardice. there was nothing special for him to fear when cæsar was in gaul, and crassus about to start for syria, and pompey for his provinces. such was the condition of rome, social and political, that all was uncertain and all was dangerous. but men had become used to danger, and were anxious only, in the general scramble, to get what plunder might be going. unlimited plunder was at cicero's command--provinces, magistracies, abnormal lieutenancies--but he took nothing. he even told his friend in joke that he would have liked to be an augur, and the critics have thereupon concluded that he was ready to sell his country for a trifle. but he took nothing when all others were helping themselves. the letter to lentulus is well worth studying, if only as evidence of the thoughtfulness with which he weighed every point affecting his own character. he did wish to stand well with the "optimates," of whom lentulus was one. he did wish to stand well with cæsar, and with pompey, who at this time was cæsar's jackal. he did find the difficulty of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. he must have surely learned at last to hate all compromise. but he had fallen on hard times, and the task before him was impossible. if, however, his hands were clean when those of others were dirty, and his motives patriotic while those of others were selfish, so much ought to be said for him. in the same year he defended rabirius postumus, and in doing so carried on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by cæsar in defending gabinius. this rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years before cicero had defended when accused of having killed saturninus. he was a knight, and, as was customary with the equites, had long been engaged in the pursuit of trade, making money by lending money, and such like. he had, it seems, been a successful man, but, in an evil time for himself, had come across king ptolemy auletes when there was a question of restoring that wretched sovereign to the throne of egypt. as cicero was not himself much exercised in this matter, i have not referred to the king and his affairs, wishing as far as possible to avoid questions which concern the history of rome rather than the life of cicero; but the affairs of this banished king continually come up in the records of this time. pompey had befriended auletes, and gabinius, when proconsul in syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne--no doubt in obedience to pompey, though not in obedience to the senate. auletes, when in rome, had required large sums of money--suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal senators--and rabirius had supplied him. the profits to be made from suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but this king seems so have got hold of all the money which rabirius possessed, so that the knight-banker found himself obliged to become one of the king's suite when the king went back to take possession of his kingdom. in no other way could he hang on to the vast debt that was owing to him. in egypt he found himself compelled to undergo various indignities. he became no better than a head-servant among the king's servants. one of the charges brought against him was that he, a roman knight, had allowed himself to be clothed in the half-feminine garb of an oriental attendant upon a king. it was also brought against him as part of the accusation that he had bribed, or had endeavored to bribe, a certain senator. the crime nominally laid to the charge of rabirius was "de repetundis"--for extorting money in the position of a magistrate. the money alluded to had been, in truth, extorted by gabinius from ptolemy auletes as the price paid for his restoration, and had come in great part probably from out of the pocket of rabirius himself. gabinius had been condemned, and ordered to repay the money. he had none to repay, and the claim, by some clause in the law to that effect was transferred to rabirius as his agent. rabirius was accused as though he had extorted the money--which he had in fact lost, but the spirit of the accusation lay in the idea that he, a roman knight, had basely subjected himself to an egyptian king. that rabirius had been base and sordid there can be no doubt. that he was ruined by his transaction with auletes is equally certain. it is supposed that he was convicted. he was afterward employed by cæsar, who, when in power, may have recalled him from banishment. there are many passages in the oration to which i would fain refer the reader had i space to do so. i will name only one in which cicero endeavors to ingratiate himself with his audience by referring to the old established roman hatred of kings: "who is there among us who, though he may not have tried them himself, does not know the ways of kings? 'listen to me here!' 'obey my word at once!' 'speak a word more than you are told, and you'll see what you'll get!' 'do that a second time, and you die!' we should read of such things and look at them from a distance, not only for our pleasure, but that we may know of what we have to be aware, and what we ought to avoid."[ ] there is a letter written in this year to curio, another young friend such as cælius, of whom i have spoken. curio also was clever, dissipated, extravagant, and unscrupulous. but at this period of his life he was attached to cicero, who was not indifferent to the services which might accrue to him from friends who might be violent and unscrupulous on the right side. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] this letter was written to secure curio's services for another friend not quite so young, but equally attached, and perhaps of all the romans of the time the most unscrupulous and the most violent. this friend was milo, who was about to stand for the consulship of the following year. curio was on his road from asia minor, where he had been quæstor, and is invited by cicero in language peculiarly pressing to be the leader of milo's party on the occasion.[ ] we cannot but imagine that the winds which curio was called upon to govern were the tornadoes and squalls which were to be made to rage in the streets of rome to the great discomfiture of milo's enemies during his canvass. to such a state had rome come, that for the first six months of this year there were no consuls, an election being found to be impossible. milo had been the great opponent of clodius in the city rows which had taken place previous to the exile of cicero. the two men are called by mommsen the achilles and the hector of the streets.[ ] cicero was of course on milo's side, as milo was an enemy to clodius. in this matter his feeling was so strong that he declares to curio that he does not think that the welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were those of milo to him. milo's success is the only object of interest he has in the world. this is interesting to us now as a prelude to the great trial which was to take place in the next year, when milo, instead of being elected consul, was convicted of murder. in the two previous years cæsar had made two invasions into britain, in the latter of which quintus cicero had accompanied him. cicero in various letters alludes to this undertaking, but barely gives it the importance which we, as britons, think should have been attached to so tremendous an enterprise. there might perhaps be some danger, he thought, in crossing the seas, and encountering the rocky shores of the island, but there was nothing to be got worth the getting. he tells atticus that he can hardly expect any slaves skilled either in music or letters,[ ] and he suggests to trebatius that, as he will certainly find neither gold nor slaves, he had better put himself into a british chariot and come back in it as soon as possible.[ ] in this year cæsar reduced the remaining tribes of gaul, and crossed the rhine a second time. it was his sixth year in gaul, and men had learned to know what was his nature. cicero had discovered his greatness, as also pompey must have done, to his great dismay; and he had himself discovered what he was himself; but two accidents occurred in this year which were perhaps as important in roman history as the continuance of cæsar's success. julia, cæsar's daughter and pompey's wife, died in childbed. she seems to have been loved by all, and had been idolized from the time of the marriage by her uxorious husband, who was more than twenty-four years her senior. she certainly had been a strong bond of union between cæsar and pompey; so much so that we are surprised that such a feeling should have been so powerful among the romans of the time. "concordiæ pignus," a "pledge of friendship," she is called by paterculus, who tells us in the same sentence that the triumvirate had no other bond to hold it together.[ ] whether the friendship might have remained valid had julia lived we cannot say; but she died, and the two friends became enemies. from the moment of julia's death there was no triumvirate. the other accident was equally fatal to the bond of union which had bound the three men together. late in the year, after his consulship, b.c. , crassus had gone to his syrian government with the double intention of increasing his wealth and rivalling the military glories of cæsar and pompey. in the following year he became an easy victim to eastern deceit, and was destroyed by the parthians, with his son and the greater part of the roman army which had been intrusted to him.[ ] we are told that crassus at last destroyed himself. i doubt, however, whether there was enough of patriotism alive among romans at the time to create the feeling which so great a loss and so great a shame should have occasioned. as far as we can learn, the destruction of crassus and his legions did not occasion so much thought in rome as the breaking up of the triumvirate. cicero's daughter tullia was now a second time without a husband. she was the widow of her first husband piso; had then, b.c. , married crassipes, and had been divorced. of him we have heard nothing, except that he was divorced. a doubt has been thrown on the fact whether she was in truth ever married to crassipes. we learn from letters, both to his brother and to atticus, that cicero was contented with the match, when it was made, and did his best to give the lady a rich dowry.[ ] in this year cicero was elected into the college of augurs, to fill the vacancy made by the death of young crassus, who had been killed with his father in parthia. the reader will remember that he had in a joking manner expressed a desire for the office. he now obtained it without any difficulty, and certainly without any sacrifice of his principle. it had formerly been the privilege of the augurs to fill up the vacancies in their own college, but the right had been transferred to the people. it was now conferred upon cicero without serious opposition. chapter iii. _milo._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the preceding year came to an end without any consular election. it was for the election expected to have taken place that the services of curio had been so ardently bespoken by cicero on behalf of milo. in order to impede the election clodius accused milo of being in debt, and cicero defended him. what was the nature of the accusation we do not exactly know. "an inquiry into milo's debts!" such was the name given to the pleadings as found with the fragments which have come to us.[ ] in these, which are short and not specially interesting, there is hardly a word as to milo's debts; but much abuse of clodius, with some praise of cicero himself, and some praise also of pompey, who was so soon to take up arms against cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of milo. we cannot believe that milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know that at last he was not elected. early in the year clodius was killed, and then, at the suggestion of bibulus--whom the reader will remember as the colleague of cæsar in the consulship when cæsar reduced his colleague to ridiculous impotence by his violence--pompey was elected as sole consul, an honor which befell no other roman.[ ] the condition of rome must have been very low when such a one as bibulus thought that no order was possible except by putting absolute power into the hands of him who had so lately been the partner of cæsar in the conspiracy which had not even yet been altogether brought to an end. that bibulus acted under constraint is no doubt true. it would be of little matter now from what cause he acted, were it not that his having taken a part in this utter disruption of the roman form of government is one proof the more that there was no longer any hope for the republic. but the story of the killing of clodius must be told at some length, because it affords the best-drawn picture that we can get of the sort of violence with which roman affairs had to be managed; and also because it gave rise to one of the choicest morsels of forensic eloquence that have ever been prepared by the intellect and skill of an advocate. it is well known that the speech to which i refer was not spoken, and could not have been spoken, in the form in which it has reached us. we do not know what part of it was spoken and what was omitted; but we do know that the pro milone exists for us, and that it lives among the glories of language as a published oration. i find, on looking through the institutio oratoria of quintilian, that in his estimation the pro milone was the first in favor of all our author's orations--"facile princeps," if we may collect the critic's ideas on the subject from the number of references made and examples taken. quintilian's work consists of lessons on oratory, which he supports by quotations from the great orators, both greek and latin, with whose speeches he has made himself familiar. cicero was to him the chief of orators; so much so that we may almost say that quintilian's institutio is rather a lecture in honor of cicero than a general lesson. with the roman school-master's method of teaching for the benefit of the roman youth of the day we have no concern at present, but we can gather from the references made by him the estimation in which various orations were held by others, as well as by him, in his day. the pro cluentio, which is twice as long as the pro milone, and which has never, i think, been a favorite with modern readers, is quoted very frequently by quintilian. it is the second in the list. quintilian makes eighteen references to it; but the pro milone is brought to the reader's notice thirty-seven times. quintilian was certainly a good critic; and he understood how to recommend himself to his own followers by quoting excellences which had already been acknowledged as the best which roman literature had afforded. those who have gone before me in writing the life of cicero have, in telling their story as to milo, very properly gone to asconius for their details. as i must do so too, i shall probably not diverge far from them. asconius wrote as early as in the reign of claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. among other writings he could refer to those books of livy which have since been lost. he seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of affection and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the other. there can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of asconius as to milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge of the facts. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] when the year began, no consuls had been chosen, and an interrex became necessary--one interrex after another--to make the election of consuls possible in accordance with the forms of the constitution. these men remained in office each for five days, and it was customary that an election which had been delayed should be completed within the days of the second or third interrex. there were three candidates, milo, hypsæus, and q. metellus scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence were used with open and unblushing profligacy. cicero was wedded to milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to curio, but it does not appear that he himself took any active part in the canvass. the duties to be done required rather the services of a curio. pompey, on the other hand, was nearly as warmly engaged in favor of hypsæus and scipio, though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. milo and clodius had often fought in the streets of rome, each ruffian attended by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as asconius says, they were equal. on the th of january milo was returning to rome from lanuvium, where he had been engaged, as chief magistrate of the town, in nominating a friend for the municipality. he was in a carriage with his wife fausta, and with a friend, and was followed, as was his wont, by a large band of armed men, among whom were two noted gladiators, eudamus and birria. at bovillæ, near the temple of the bona dea, his cortege was met by clodius on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed with swords. milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. it is not supposed by asconius that either of the two men expected the meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous. milo and clodius passed each other without words or blows--scowling, no doubt; but the two gladiators who were at the end of the file of milo's men began to quarrel with certain of the followers of clodius. clodius interfered, and was stabbed in the shoulder by birria; then he was carried to a neighboring tavern while the fight was in progress. milo, having heard that his enemy was there concealed--thinking that he would be greatly relieved in his career by the death of such a foe, and that the risk should be run though the consequences might be grave--caused clodius to be dragged out from the tavern and slaughtered. on what grounds asconius has attributed these probable thoughts to milo we do not know. that the order was given the jury believed, or at any rate affected to believe. up to this moment milo was no more guilty than clodius, and neither of them, probably, guilty of more than their usual violence. partisans on the two sides endeavored to show that each had prepared an ambush for the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. there is no evidence existing now as to this dragging out of clodius that he might be murdered; but we know what was the general opinion of rome at the time and we may conclude that it was right. the order probably was given by milo--as it would have been given by clodius in similar circumstances--at the spur of the moment, when milo allowed his passion to get the better of his judgment. the thirty servants of clodius were either killed or had run away and hidden themselves, when a certain senator, s. tedius, coming that way, found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a litter deposited it in the dead man's house. before nightfall the death of clodius was known through the city, and the body was surrounded by a crowd of citizens of the lower order and of slaves. with them was fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the people to sympathy. on the morrow there was an increased crowd, among whom were senators and tribunes, and the body was carried out into the forum, and the people were harangued by the tribunes as to the horror of the deed that had been done. from thence the body was borne into the neighboring senate-house[ ] by the crowd, under the leading of sextus clodius, a cousin of the dead man. here it was burnt with a great fire fed with the desks and benches, and even with the books and archives which were stored there. not only was the senate-house destroyed by the flames, but a temple also that was close to it. milo's house was attacked, and was defended by arms. we are made to understand that all rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. the consuls' fasces had been put away in one of the temples--that of venus libitina: these the people seized and carried to the house of pompey, declaring that he should be dictator, and he alone consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous reverence for legal forms. but there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of the senate-house, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy for clodius, so that milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off, came back to rome and renewed his canvass, distributing bribes to all the citizens--"millia assuum"--perhaps something over ten pounds to every man. both he and cælius harangued the people, and declared that clodius had begun the fray. but no consuls could be elected while the city was in such a state, and pompey, having been desired to protect the republic in the usual form, collected troops from all italy. preparations were made for trying milo, and the friends of each party demanded that the slaves of the other party should be put to the torture and examined as witnesses; but every possible impediment and legal quibble was used by the advocates on either side. hortensius, who was engaged for milo, declared that milo's slaves had all been made free men and could not be touched. stories were told backward and forward of the cruelty and violence on each side. milo made an offer to pompey to abandon his canvass in favor of hypsæus, if pompey would accept this as a compromise. pompey answered, with the assumed dignity that was common to him, that he was not the roman people, and that it was not for him to interfere. it was then that pompey was created sole consul at the instigation of bibulus. he immediately caused a new law to be passed for the management of the trial which was coming on, and when he was opposed in this by cælius, declared that if necessary he would carry his purpose by force of arms. pretending to be afraid of milo's violence, he remained at home, and on one occasion dismissed the senate. afterward, when milo entered the senate, he was accused by a senator present of having come thither with arms hidden beneath his toga; whereupon he lifted his toga and showed that there were none. asconius tells us that upon this cicero declared that all the other charges made against the accused were equally false. this is the first word of cicero's known to us in the matter. two or three men declared that because they had been present at the death of clodius they had been kidnapped and kept close prisoners by milo; and the story, whether true or false, did milo much harm. it seems that milo became again very odious to the people, and that their hatred was for the time extended to cicero as milo's friend and proposed advocate. pompey seems to have shared the feeling, and to have declared that violence was contemplated against himself. "but such was cicero's constancy," says asconius, "that neither the alienation of the people nor the suspicions of pompey, no fear of what might befall himself at the trial, no dread of the arms which were used openly against milo, could hinder him from going on with the defence, although it was within his power to avoid the quarrel with the people and to renew his friendship for pompey by abstaining from it." domitius Ænobarbus was chosen as president, and the others elected as judges were, we are told, equally good men. milo was accused both of violence and bribery, but was able to arrange that the former case should be tried first. the method of the trial is explained. fifty-one judges or jurymen were at last chosen. schola was the first witness examined, and he exaggerated as best he could the horror of the murder. when marcellus, as advocate for milo, began to examine schola, the people were so violent that the president was forced to protect marcellus by taking him within the barrier of the judges' seats. milo also was obliged to demand protection within the court. pompey, then sitting at the treasury, and frightened by the clamor, declared that he himself would come down with troops on the next day. after the hearing of the evidence the tribune munatius plancus harangued the people, and begged them to come in great numbers on the morrow so that milo might not be allowed to escape. on the following day, which was the th of april, all the taverns were shut. pompey filled the forum and every approach to it with his soldiers. he himself remained seated at the treasury as before, surrounded by a picked body of men. at the trial on this day, when three of the advocates against milo had spoken--appius, marc antony, and valerius nepos--cicero stood up to defend the criminal. brutus had prepared an oration declaring that the killing of clodius was in itself a good deed, and praiseworthy on behalf of the republic; but to this speech cicero refused his consent, arguing that a man could not legally be killed simply because his death was to be desired, and brutus's speech was not spoken. witnesses had declared that milo had lain in wait for clodius. this cicero alleged to be false, contending that clodius had lain in wait for milo, and he endeavored to make this point and no other. "but it is proved," says asconius, "that neither of the men had any design of violence on that day; that they met by chance, and that the killing of clodius had come from the quarrelling of the slaves. it was well known that each had often threatened the death of the other. milo's slaves had no doubt been much more numerous than those of clodius when the meeting took place; but those of clodius had been very much better prepared for fighting. when cicero began to address the judges, the partisans of clodius could not be induced to abstain from riot even by fear of the soldiery; so that he was unable to speak with his accustomed firmness." such is the account as given by asconius, who goes on to tell us that out of the fifty-one judges thirty-eight condemned milo and only thirteen were for acquitting him. milo, therefore, was condemned, and had to retire at once into exile at marseilles. it seems to have been acknowledged by the judges that clodius had not been wounded at first by any connivance on the part of milo; but they thought that milo did direct that clodius should be killed during the fight which the slaves had commenced among themselves. as far as we can take any interest in the matter we must suppose that it was so; but we are forced to agree with brutus that the killing of clodius was in itself a good deed done--and we have to acknowledge at the same time that the killing of milo would have been as good. though we may doubt as to the manner in which clodius was killed, there are points in the matter as to which we may be quite assured. milo was condemned, not for killing clodius, but because he was opposed at the moment to the line of politics which pompey thought would be most conducive to his own interests. milo was condemned, and the death of the wretched clodius avenged, because pompey had desired hypsæus to be consul and milo had dared to stand in his way. an audience was refused to cicero, not from any sympathy with clodius, but because it suited pompey that milo should be condemned. could cicero have spoken the words which afterward were published, the jury might have hesitated and the criminal might have been acquitted. cæsar was absent, and pompey found himself again lifted into supreme power--for a moment. though no one in rome had insulted pompey as clodius had done, though no one had so fought for pompey as cicero had done, still it suited pompey to avenge clodius and to punish cicero for having taken milo's part in regard to the consulship. milo, after his condemnation for the death of clodius, was condemned in three subsequent trials, one following the other almost instantly, for bribery, for secret conspiracy, and again for violence in the city. he was absent, but there was no difficulty in obtaining his conviction. when he was gone one saufeius, a friend of his, who had been with him during the tumult, was put upon his trial for his share in the death of clodius. he at any rate was known to have been guilty in the matter. he had been leader of the party who attacked the tavern, had killed the tavern-keeper, and had dragged out clodius to execution. but saufeius was twice acquitted. had there been any hope of law-abiding tranquillity in rome, it might have been well that clodius should be killed and milo banished. as it was, neither the death of the one nor the banishment of the other could avail anything. the pity of it was--the pity--that such a one as cicero, a man with such intellect, such ambition, such sympathies, and such patriotism, should have been brought to fight on such an arena. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we have in this story a graphic and most astounding picture of the rome of the day. no consuls had been or could be elected, and the system by which "interreges" had been enabled to superintend the election of their successors in lieu of the consuls of the expiring year had broken down. pompey had been made sole consul in an informal manner, and had taken upon himself all the authority of a dictator in levying troops. power in rome seems at the moment to have been shared between him and bands of gladiators, but he too had succeeded in arming himself, and as the clodian faction was on his side, he was for a while supreme. for law by this time he could have but little reverence, having been partner with cæsar in the so-called triumvirate for the last eight years. but yet he had no aptitude for throwing the law altogether on one side, and making such a coup-de-main as was now and again within his power. beyond pompey there was at this time no power in rome, except that of the gladiators, and the owners of the gladiators, who were each intent on making plunder out of the empire. there were certain men, such as were bibulus and cato, who considered themselves to be "optimates"--leading citizens who believed in the republic, and were no doubt anxious to maintain the established order of things--as we may imagine the dukes and earls are anxious in these days of ours. but they were impotent and bad men of business, and as a body were too closely wedded to their "fish ponds"--by which cicero means their general luxuries and extravagances. in the bosoms of these men there was no doubt an eager desire to perpetuate a republic which had done so much for them, and a courage sufficient for the doing of some great deed, if the great deed would come in their way. they went to pharsalia, and cato marched across the deserts of libya. they slew cæsar, and did some gallant fighting afterward; but they were like a rope of sand, and had among them no fitting leader and no high purpose. outside of these was cicero, who certainly was not a fitting leader when fighting was necessary, and who as to politics in general was fitted rather by noble aspirations than supported by fixed purposes. we are driven to wonder that there should have been, at such a period and among such a people, aspirations so noble joined with so much vanity of expression. among romans he stands the highest, because of all romans he was the least roman. he had begun with high resolves, and had acted up to them. among all the quæstors, Ædiles, prætors, and consuls rome had known, none had been better, none honester, none more patriotic. there had come up suddenly in those days a man imbued with the unwonted idea that it behooved him to do his duty to the state according to the best of his lights--no cincinnatus, no decius, no camillus, no scipio, no pretentious follower of those half-mythic heroes, no demigod struggling to walk across the stage of life enveloped in his toga and resolved to impose on all eyes by the assumption of a divine dignity, but one who at every turn was conscious of his human duty, and anxious to do it to the best of his human ability. he did it; and we have to acknowledge that the conceit of doing it overpowered him. he mistook the feeling of people around him, thinking that they too would be carried away by their admiration of his conduct. up to the day on which he descended from his consul's seat duty was paramount with him. then gradually there came upon him the conviction that duty, though it had been paramount with him, did not weigh so very much with others. he had been lavish in his worship of pompey, thinking that pompey, whom he had believed in his youth to be the best of citizens, would of all men be the truest to the republic. pompey had deceived him, but he could not suddenly give up his idol. gradually we see that there fell upon him a dread that the great roman republic was not the perfect institution which he had fancied. in his early days chrysogonus had been base, and verres, and oppianicus, and catiline; but still, to his idea, the body of the roman republic had been sound. but when he had gone out from his consulship, with resolves strung too high that he would remain at rome, despising provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there were no romans such as he had conceived them to be. then he fell away and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequalled intellect in attacking piso, in praising himself, and in defending milo. the glory of his active life was over when his consulship was done--the glory was over, with the exception of that to come from his final struggle with antony--but the work by which his immortality was to be achieved was yet before him. i think that after defending milo he must have acknowledged to himself that all partisan fighting in rome was mean, ignoble, and hollow. with the senate-house and its archives burnt as a funeral pile for clodius, and the forum in which he had to plead lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by cicero that the old republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection. he had said so often to atticus; but men say words in the despondency of the moment which they do not wish to have accepted as their established conviction. in such humor cicero had written to his friend; but now it must have occurred to him that his petulant expressions were becoming only too true. when instigating curio to canvass for milo, and defending milo as though it had been a good thing for a roman nobleman to travel in the neighborhood of the city with an army at his heels, he must have ceased to believe even in himself as a roman statesman. in the oration which we possess--which we must teach ourselves to regard as altogether different from that which cicero had been able to pronounce among pompey's soldiers and the clodian rabble--the reader is astonished by the magnificence of the language in which a case so bad in itself could be enveloped, and is made to feel that had he been on the jury, and had such an address been made to him, he would certainly have voted for an acquittal. the guilt or innocence of milo as to the murder really turned on the point whether he did or did not direct that clodius should be dragged out of the tavern and slain; but here in this oration three points are put forward, in each of which it was within the scope of the orator to make the jury believe that clodius had in truth prepared an ambuscade, that clodius was of all romans the worst, and that milo was loyal and true, and, in spite of a certain fierceness of disposition, a good citizen at heart. we agree with milo, who declared, when banished, that he would never have been able to enjoy the fish of marseilles had cicero spoken in the forum the speech which he afterward composed. "i would not remind you," he says, "of milo's tribuneship, nor of all his service to the state, unless i could make plain to you as daylight the ambush which on that day was laid for him by his enemy. i will not pray you to forgive a crime simply because milo has been a good citizen; nor, because the death of clodius has been a blessing to us all, will i therefore ask you to regard it as a deed worthy of praise. but if the fact of the ambush be absolutely made evident, then i beseech you at any rate to grant that a man may lawfully defend himself from the arrogance and from the arms of his enemies."[ ] from this may be seen the nature of the arguments used. for the language the reader must turn to the original. that it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence of all critics--especially that of milo when he was eating sardines in his exile, and of quintilian when he was preparing his lessons on rhetoric. it seems that cicero had been twitted with using something of a dominating tyranny in the senate--which would hardly have been true, as the prevailing influence of the moment was that of pompey--but he throws aside the insinuation very grandly. "call it tyranny if you please--if you think it that, rather than some little authority which has grown from my services to the state, or some favor among good men because of my rank. call it what you will, while i am able to use it for the defence of the good against the violence of the evil-minded."[ ] then he describes the fashion in which these two men travelled on the occasion--the fashion of travelling as it suited him to describe it. "if you did not hear the details of the story, but could see simply a picture of all that occurred, would it not appear which of them had planned the attack, which of them was ignorant of all evil? one of them was seated in his carriage, clad in his cloak, and with his wife beside him. his garments, his clients, his companions all show how little prepared he was for fighting. then, as to the other, why was he leaving his country-house so suddenly? why should he do this so late in the evening? why did he travel so slowly at this time of the year? he was going, he says, to pompey's villa. not that he might see pompey, because he knew that pompey was at alsium. did he want to see the villa? he had been there a thousand times. why all this delay, and turning backward and forward? because he would not leave the spot till milo had come up. and now compare this ruffian's mode of travelling with that of milo. it has been the constant custom with clodius to have his wife with him, but now she was not there. he has always been in a carriage, but now he was on horseback. his young greek sybarites have ever been with him, even when he went as far as tuscany; on this occasion there were no such trifles in his company. milo, with whom such companions were not usual, had his wife's singing-boys with him and a bevy of female slaves. clodius, who usually never moved without a crowd of prostitutes at his heels, now had no one with him but men picked for this work in hand."[ ] what a picture we have here of the manner in which noble romans were wont to move about the city and the suburbs! we may imagine that the singing-boys of milo's wife were quite as bad as the greek attendants in whom clodius usually rejoiced. then he asks a question as to pompey full of beautiful irony. if pompey could bring back clodius from the dead--pompey, who is so fond of him; pompey, who is so powerful, so fortunate, so capable of all things; pompey, who would be so glad to do it because of his love for the man--do you not know that on behalf of the republic he would leave him down among the ghosts where he is?[ ] there is a delightful touch of satire in this when we remember how odious clodius had been to pompey in days not long gone by, and how insolent. the oration is ended by histrionic effects in language which would have been marvellous had they ever been spoken, but which seem to be incredible to us when we know that they were arranged for publication when the affair was over. "o me wretched! o me unhappy!"[ ] but these attempts at translation are all vain. the student who wishes to understand what may be the effect of latin words thrown into this choicest form should read the milo. we have very few letters from cicero in this year--four only, i think, and they are of no special moment. in one of them he recommends avianus to titus titius, a lieutenant then serving under pompey.[ ] in this he is very anxious to induce titius to let avianus know all the good things that cicero had said of him. in our times we sometimes send our letters of introduction open by the hands of the person introduced, so that he may himself read his own praise; but the romans did not scruple to ask that this favor might be done for them. "do me this favor. titius, of being kind to avianus; but do me also the greater favor of letting avianus know that i have asked you." what cicero did to titius other noble romans did in their communications with their friends in the provinces. in another letter to marius he expresses his great joy at the condemnation of that munatius plancus who had been tribune when clodius was killed. plancus had harangued the people, exciting them against milo and against cicero, and had led to the burning of the senate-house and of the temple next door. for this plancus could not be accused during his year of office, but he had been put upon his trial when that year was over. pompey had done his best to save him, but in vain; and cicero rejoices not only that the tribune who had opposed him should be punished, but that pompey should have been beaten, which he attributes altogether to the favor shown toward himself by the jury.[ ] he is aroused to true exultation that there should have been men on the bench who, having been chosen by pompey in order that they might acquit this man, had dared to condemn him. cicero had himself spoken against plancus on the occasion. sextus clodius, who had been foremost among the rioters, was also condemned. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] this was the year in which cæsar was so nearly conquered by the gauls at gergovia, and in which vercingetorix, having shut himself up in alesia, was overcome at last by the cruel strategy of the romans. the brave gaul, who had done his best to defend his country and had carried himself to the last with a fine gallantry, was kept by his conqueror six years in chains and then strangled amid the glories of that conqueror's triumph, a signal instance of the mercy which has been attributed to cæsar as his special virtue. in this year, too, cicero's dialogues with atticus, de legibus, were written. he seems to have disturbed his labors in the forum with no other work. chapter iv. _cilicia._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we cannot but think that at this time the return of cæsar was greatly feared at rome by the party in the state to which cicero belonged; and this party must now be understood as including pompey. pompey had been nominally proconsul in spain since the year of his second consulship, conjointly with crassus, b.c. , but had remained in rome and had taken upon himself the management of roman affairs, considering himself to be the master of the irregular powers which the triumvirate had created; and of this party was also cicero, with cato, bibulus, brutus, and all those who were proud to call themselves "optimates." they were now presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to the character of the men. cato and brutus were thoroughly in earnest, not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the old spirit. pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking that all must be well in rome as long as he was possessed of high office, grand names, and the appanages of dictatorship. cicero, too, was anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. something might perhaps be saved if these optimates could be aroused to some idea of their duty by the exercise of eloquence such as his own. i will quote a few words from mr. froude's cæsar: "if cæsar came to rome as consul, the senate knew too well what it might expect;" and then he adds, "cicero had for some time seen what was coming."[ ] as to these assertions i quite agree with mr. froude; but i think that he has read wrongly both the history of the time and the character of the man when he goes on to state that "cicero preferred characteristically to be out of the way at the moment when he expected that the storm should break, and had accepted the government of cilicia and cyprus." all the known details of cicero's life up to the period of his government of cilicia, during his government, and after his return from that province, prove that he was characteristically wedded to a life in rome. this he declared by his distaste to that employment and his impatience of return while he was absent. nothing, i should say, could be more certain than that he went to cilicia in obedience to new legal enactments which he could not avoid, but which, as they acted upon himself, were odious to him. mr. froude tells us that he held the government but for two years.[ ] the period of these provincial governments had of late much varied. the acknowledged legal duration was for one year. they had been stretched by the governing party to three, as in the case of verres in sicily; to five, as with pompey for his spanish government; to ten for cæsar in gaul. this had been done with the view of increasing the opportunities for plunder and power, but had been efficacious of good in enabling governors to carry out work for which one year would not have sufficed. it may be a question whether cicero as proconsul in cilicia deserved blame for curtailing the period of his services to the empire, or praise for abstaining from plunder and power; but the fact is that he remained in his province not two years but exactly one;[ ] and that he escaped from it with all the alacrity which we may presume to be expected by a prisoner when the bars of his jail have been opened for him. whether we blame him or praise him, we can hardly refrain from feeling that his impatience was grotesque. there certainly was no desire on cicero's part either to go to cilicia or to remain there, and of all his feelings that which prompted him never to be far absent from rome was the most characteristic of the man. among various laws which pompey had caused to be passed in the previous year, b.c. , and which had been enacted with views personal to himself and his own political views, had been one "de jure magistratuum"--as to the way in which the magistrates of the empire should be selected. among other clauses it contained one which declared that no prætor and no consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of office. it would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive of the old system of the republic this new law would have been, had the new law and the old system attempted to live together. the proprætor would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the province or for the consulship, and no consular governor would have been eligible for a province till after his fiftieth year. but at this time pompey was both consul and governor, and cæsar was governor for ten years with special exemption from another clause in the war which would otherwise have forbidden him to stand again for the consulship during his absence.[ ] the law was wanted probably only for the moment; but it had the effect of forcing cicero out of rome. as there would naturally come from it a dearth of candidates for the provinces it was further decreed by the senate that the ex-prætors and ex-consuls who had not yet served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of government. in compliance with this order, and probably as a specially intended consequence of it, cicero was compelled to go to cilicia. mr. froude has said that "he preferred characteristically to be out of the way." i have here given what i think to be the more probable cause of his undertaking the government of cilicia. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in april of this year cicero before he started wrote the first of a series of letters which he addressed to appius claudius, who was his predecessor in the province. this appius was the brother of the publius clodius whom we have known for the last two or three years as cicero's pest and persecutor; but he addresses appius as though they were dear friends: "since it has come to pass, in opposition to all my wishes and to my expectations, that i must take in hand the government of a province, i have this one consolation in my various troubles--that no better friend to yourself than i am could follow you, and that i could take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the business pleasant to me than you will be."[ ] and then he goes on: "you perceive that, in accordance with the decree of the senate, the province has to be occupied." his next letter on the subject was written to atticus while he was still in italy, but when he had started on his journey. "in your farewell to me," he says, "i have seen the nature of your love to me. i know well what is my own for you. it must, then, be your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of ours should be prolonged beyond one year."[ ] then he goes on to tell the story of a scene that had occurred at arcanum, a house belonging to his brother quintus, at which he had stopped on the road for a family farewell. pomponia was there, the wife of quintus and the sister to atticus. there were a few words between the husband and the wife as to the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved with much christian perversity of temper. "alas," says quintus to his brother, "you see what it is that i have to suffer every day!" knowing as we all do how great were the powers of the roman paterfamilias, and how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should have thought that an ex-prætor might have managed his home more comfortably; but ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make themselves disagreeable in all ages. i doubt whether we have any testimony whatever as to cicero's provincial government, except that which comes from himself and which is confined to the letters written by him at the time.[ ] nevertheless, we have a clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters which he then wrote. the truth of his account of himself has never been questioned. he draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity, and his own power of administration which is the more astonishing, because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other governors. we have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malefactors, till we are taught to acknowledge that, in the low condition to which roman nature had fallen, it was useless to expect any other conduct from a roman governor; and then he gives us the account of how a man did govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest, clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. that man was himself; and he gives this account of himself, as it were, without a blush! he tells the story of himself, not as though it was remarkable! that other governors should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them, and draw the blood from their veins for drink; but that cicero should not condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered, seems to cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from him! a wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character; but surely the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more wonderful. "the conduct of cicero in his command was meritorious," says de quincey. "his short career as proconsul in cilicia had procured for him well-merited honor," says dean merivale.[ ] "he had managed his province well; no one ever suspected cicero of being corrupt or unjust," says mr. froude, who had, however, said (some pages before) that cicero was "thinking as usual of himself first, and his duty afterward."[ ] dio cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of cicero's life, says not a word of his cilician government, from which we may, at any rate, argue that no stories detrimental to cicero as a proconsul had come in the way of dio cassius. i have confirmed what i have said as to this episode in cicero's life by the corroborating testimony of writers who have not been generally favorable in their views of his character. nevertheless, we have no testimony but his own as to what cicero did in cilicia.[ ] it has never occurred to any reader of cicero's letters to doubt a line in which he has spoken directly of his own conduct. his letters have often been used against himself, but in a different manner. he has been judged to give true testimony against himself, but not false testimony in his own favor. his own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant--and sometimes as implying much more that the writer intended. a word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. he has been injured, not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having them too well credited where they have been misunderstood. it is at any rate the fact that his own account of his own proconsular doings has been accepted in full, and that the present reader may be encouraged to believe what extracts i may give to him by the fact that all other readers before him have believed them. from his villa at cumæ on his journey he wrote to atticus in high spirits. hortensius had been to see him--his old rival, his old predecessor in the glory of the forum--hortensius, whom he was fated never to see again. his only request to hortensius had been that he should assist in taking care that he, cicero, should not be required to stay above one year in his province. atticus is to help him also; and another friend, furnius, who may probably be the tribune for the next year, has been canvassed for the same object. in a further letter from beneventum he alludes to a third marriage for his daughter tullia, but seems to be aware that, as he is leaving italy, he cannot interfere in that matter himself. he writes again from venusia, saying that he purports to see pompey at tarentum before he starts, and gives special instructions to atticus as to the payment of a debt which is due by him to cæsar. he has borrowed money of cæsar, and is specially anxious that the debt should be settled. in another letter from tarentum he presses the same matter. he is anxious to be relieved from the obligation.[ ] from athens he wrote again to his friend a letter which is chiefly remarkable as telling us something of the quarrel between marcus claudius marcellus, who was one of the consuls for the year, and cæsar, who was still absent in gaul. this marcellus, and others of his family who succeeded him in his office, were hotly opposed to cæsar, belonging to that party of the state to which cicero was attached, and to which pompey was returning.[ ] it seems to have been the desire of the consul not only to injure but to insult cæsar. he had endeavored to get a decree of the senate for recalling cæsar at once, but had succeeded only in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following year--when cæsar would naturally return. but to show how little was his regard to cæsar, he caused to be flogged in rome a citizen from one of those towns of cisalpine gaul to which cæsar had assumed to give the privilege of roman citizenship. the man was present as a delegate from his town, novocomum[ ]--the present como--in furtherance of the colony's claims, and the consul had the man flogged to show thereby that he was not a roman. marcellus was punished for his insolence by banishment, inflicted by cæsar when cæsar was powerful. we shall learn before long how cicero made an oration in his favor; but, in the letter written from athens, he blames marcellus much for flogging the man.[ ] "fight in my behalf," he says, in the course of this letter; "for if my government be prolonged, i shall fail and become mean." the idea of absence from rome is intolerable to him. from athens also he wrote to his young friend cælius, from whom he had requested information as to what was going on in rome. but cælius has to be again instructed as to the nature of the subjects which are to be regarded as interesting. "what!--do you think that i have asked you to send me stories of gladiators, law-court adjournments, and the pilferings of christus--trash that no one would think of mentioning to me if i were in rome?"[ ] but he does not finish his letter to cælius without begging cælius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. cælius troubles him much afterward by renewed requests for cilician panthers wanted for Ædilian shows. cicero becomes very sea-sick on his journey, and then reaches ephesus, in asia minor, dating his arrival there on the five hundred and sixtieth day from the battle of bovilla, showing how much the contest as to milo still clung to his thoughts.[ ] ephesus was not in his province, but at ephesus all the magistrates came out to do him honor, as though he had come among them as their governor. "now has arrived," he says, "the time to justify all those declarations which i have made as to my own conduct; but i trust i can practise the lessons which i have learned from you." atticus, in his full admiration of his friend's character, had doubtless said much to encourage and to instigate the virtue which it was cicero's purpose to employ. we have none of the words ever written by atticus to cicero, but we have light enough to show us that the one friend was keenly alive to the honor of the other, and thoroughly appreciated its beauty. "do not let me be more than a year away," he exclaims; "do not let even another month be added."[ ] then there is a letter from cælius praying for panthers.[ ] in passing through the province of asia to his own province, he declares that the people everywhere receive him well. "my coming," he says, "has cost no man a shilling."[ ] his whole staff has now joined him except one tullius, whom he speaks of as a friend of atticus, but afterward tells us he had come to him from titinius. then he again enjoins atticus to have that money paid to cæsar. from tralles, still in the province of asia, he writes to appius, the outgoing governor, a letter full of courtesies, and expressing an anxious desire for a meeting. he had offered before to go by any route which might suit appius, but appius, as appears afterward, was anxious for anything rather than to encounter the new governor within the province he was leaving.[ ] on st july he reached laodicea, within his own boundaries, having started on his journey on th may, and found all people glad to see him; but the little details of his office harass him sadly. "the action of my mind, which you know so well, cannot find space enough. all work worthy of my industry is at an end. i have to preside at laodicea while some plotius is giving judgment at rome. * * * and then am i not regretting at every moment the life of rome--the forum, the city itself, my own house? am i not always regretting you? i will endeavor to bear it for a year; but if it be prolonged, then it will be all over with me. * * * you ask me how i am getting on. i am spending a fortune in carrying out this grand advice of yours. i like it hugely; but when the time comes for paying you your debts i shall have to renew the bill. * * * to make me do such work as this is putting a saddle upon a cow"--cutting a block with a razor, as we should say--"clearly i am not made for it; but i will bear it, so that it be only for one year."[ ] from laodicea, a town in phrygia, he went west to synnada. his province, known as cilicia, contained the districts named on the map of asia minor as phrygia, pisidia, pamphylia, part of cappadocia, cilicia, and the island of cyprus. he soon found that his predecessors had ruined the people. "know that i have come into a province utterly and forever destroyed," he says to atticus.[ ] "we hear only of taxes that cannot be paid, of men's chattels sold on all sides, of the groans from the cities, of lamentations, of horrors such as some wild beast might have produced rather than a human being. there is no room for question. every man is tired of his life; and yet some relief is given now, because of me, and by my officers, and by my lieutenants. no expense is imposed on any one. we do not take even the hay which is allowed by the julian law--not even the wood. four beds to lie on is all we accept, and a roof over our heads. in many places not even that, for we live in our tents. enormous crowds therefore come to us, and return, as it were, to life through the justice and moderation of your cicero. appius, when he knew that i was come, ran away to tarsus, the farthest point of the province." what a picture we have here of the state of a roman dependency under a normal roman governor, and of the good which a man could do who was able to abstain from plunder! in his next letter his pride expresses itself so loudly that we have to remember that this man, after all, is writing only his own secret thoughts to his bosom friend. "if i can get away from this quickly, the honors which will accrue to me from my justice will be all the greater, as happened to scævola, who was governor in asia only for nine months."[ ] then again he declares how appius had escaped into the farthest corner of the province--to tarsus--when he knew that cicero was coming. he writes again to appius, complaining. "when i compare my conduct to yours," he says, "i own that i much prefer my own."[ ] he had taken every pains to meet appius in a manner convenient to him, but had been deceived on every side. appius had, in a way unusual among roman governors, carried on his authority in remote parts of the province, although he had known of his successor's arrival. cicero assures him that he is quite indifferent to this. if appius will relieve him of one month's labor out of the twelve he will be delighted. but why has appius taken away three of the fullest cohorts, seeing that in the entire province the number of soldiers left has been so small? but he assures appius that, as he makes his journey, neither good nor bad shall hear evil spoken by him of his predecessor. "but as for you, you seem to have given to the dishonest reasons for thinking badly of me." then he describes the exact course he means to take in his further journey, thus giving appius full facility for avoiding him. from cybistra, in cappadocia, he writes official letters to caius marcellus, who had been just chosen consul, the brother of marcus the existing consul; to an older caius marcellus, who was their father, a colleague of his own in the college of augurs, and to marcus the existing consul, with his congratulations, also to Æmilius paulus, who had also been elected consul for the next year. he writes, also, a despatch to the consuls, to the prætors, to the tribunes, and to the senate, giving them a statement as to affairs in the province. these are interesting, rather as showing the way in which these things were done, than by their own details. when he reaches cilicia proper he writes them another despatch, telling them that the parthians had come across the euphrates. he writes as wellington may have done from torres vedras. he bids them look after the safety of their eastern dominions. though they are too late in doing this, yet better now than never.[ ] "you know," he says, "with what sort of an army you have supported me here; and you know also that i have undertaken this duty not in blind folly, but because in respect for the republic i have not liked to refuse. * * * as for our allies here in the province, because our rule here has been so severe and injurious, they are either too weak to help us, or so embittered against us that we dare not trust them." then there is a long letter to appius,[ ] respecting the embassy which was to be sent from the province to rome, to carry the praises of the departing governor and declare his excellence as a proconsul! this was quite the usual thing to do! the worse the governor the more necessary the embassy; and such was the terror inspired even by a departing roman, and such the servility of the allies--even of those who were about to escape from him--that these embassies were a matter of course. there had been a sicilian embassy to praise verres. appius had complained as though cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be allowed for its expenses. he rebukes appius for bringing the charge against him. the series of letters written this year by cælius to cicero is very interesting as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other than ciceronian. we have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters ten or twelve from brutus, if those attributed to him were really written by him; ten or twelve from decimus brutus, and an equal number from plancus; but these were written in the stirring moments of the last struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. we have a few from quintus, but not of special interest unless we are to consider that treatise on the duties of a candidate as a letter. but these from cælius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from cicero himself. there are seventeen. they are scattered over three or four years, but most of them refer to the period of cicero's provincial government. the marvel to me is that cælius should have adopted a style so near akin to that of his master in literature. scholars who have studied the words can probably tell us of deficiencies in language; but the easy, graphic tone is to my ear ciceronian. tiro, who was slave, secretary, freedman, and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters, and have done something toward producing their literary excellence. the subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have produced in cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments; but cælius does communicate much of the political news from rome. in one letter, written in october of this year, he declares what the senate has decreed as to the recall of cæsar from gaul, and gives the words of the enactments made, with the names subscribed to them of the promoters--and also the names of the tribunes who had endeavored to oppose them.[ ] the purport of these decrees i have mentioned before. the object was to recall cæsar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it would mean nothing; but cælius specially declares that the intention of recalling cæsar was agreeable to pompey, whereby we may know that the pact of the triumvirate was already at an end. in another letter he speaks of the coming of the parthians, and of cicero's inability to fight with them because of the inadequate number of soldiers intrusted to him. had there been a real roman army, then cælius would have been afraid, he says, for his friend's life. as it is, he fears only for his reputation, lest men should speak ill of him for not fighting, when to fight was beyond his power.[ ] the language here is so pretty that i am tempted to think that tiro must have had a hand in it. at rome, we must remember, the tidings as to crassus were as yet uncertain. we cannot, however, doubt that cælius was in truth attached to cicero. but cicero was forced to fight, not altogether unwillingly--not with the parthians, but with tribes which were revolting from roman authority because of the parthian success. "it has turned out as you wished it," he says to cælius--"a job just sufficient to give me a small coronet of laurel." hearing that men had risen in the taurus range of mountains, which divided his province from that of syria, in which bibulus was now governor, he had taken such an army as he was able to collect to the amanus, a mountain belonging to that range, and was now writing from his camp at pindenissum, a place beyond his own province. joking at his own soldiering, he tells cælius that he had astonished those around him by his prowess. "is this he whom we used to know in the city? is this our talkative senator? you can understand the things they said.[ ] * * * when i got to the amanus i was glad enough to find our friend cassius had beaten back the real parthians from antioch." but cicero claims to have done some gallant things: "i have harassed those men of amanus who are always troubling us. many i have killed; some i have taken; the rest are dispersed. i came suddenly upon their strongholds, and have got possession of them. i was called 'imperator' at the river issus." it is hardly necessary to explain, yet once again, that this title belonged properly to no commander till it had been accorded to him by his own soldiers on the field of battle.[ ] he reminds cælius that it was on the issus that alexander had conquered darius. then he had sat down before pindenissum with all the machinery of a siege--with the turrets, covered ways, and ramparts. he had not as yet quite taken the town. when he had done so, he would send home his official account of it all; but the parthians may yet come, and there may be danger. "therefore, o my rufus"--he was cælius rufus--"see that i am not left here, lest, as you suspect, things should go badly with me." there is a mixture in all this of earnestness and of drollery, of boasting and of laughing at what he was doing, which is inimitable in its reality. his next letter is to his other young friend, curio, who has just been elected tribune. he gives much advice to curio, who certainly always needed it.[ ] he carries on the joke when he tells atticus that the "people of pindenissum have surrendered." "who the mischief are these pindenissians? you will say. i have not even heard the name before. what would you have? i cannot make an Ætolia out of cilicia. with such an army as this do you expect me to do things like a macedonicus?[ ] * * * i had my camp on the issus, where alexander had his--a better soldier no doubt than you or i. i really have made a name for myself in syria. then up comes bibulus, determined to be as good as i am; but he loses his whole cohort." the failure made by bibulus at soldiering is quite as much to him as his own success. then he goes back to laodicea, leaving the army in winter-quarters, under the command of his brother quintus. but his heart is truly in other matters, and he bursts out, in the same letter, with enthusiastic praise of the line of conduct which atticus has laid down for him: "but that which is more to me than anything is that i should live so that even that fellow cato cannot find fault with me. may i die, if it could be done better. nor do i take praise for it as though i was doing something distasteful; i never was so happy as in practising this moderation. the thing itself is better to me even than the reputation of it. what would you have me say? it was worth my while to be enabled thus to try myself, so that i might know myself as to what i could do." then there is a long letter to cato in which he repeats the story of his grand doings at pindenissum. the reader will be sure that a letter to cato cannot be sincere and pleasant as are those to atticus and cælius. "if there be one man far removed from the vulgar love of praise, it is i," he says to cato.[ ] he tells cato that they two are alike in all things. they two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the forum. never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked cato and the versatile cicero. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] lucius Æmilius paullus and c. clodius marcellus were consuls for the next year. cicero writes to both of them with tenders of friendship; but from both of them he asks that they should take care to have a decree of the senate passed praising his doings in cilicia.[ ] with us, too, a returning governor is anxious enough for a good word from the prime-minister; but he does not ask for it so openly. the next letter from cælius tells him that appius has been accused as to malpractices in his government, and that pompey is in favor of appius. curio has gone over to cæsar. but the important subject is the last handled: "it will be mean in you if i should have no greek panthers."[ ] the next refers to the marriages and divorces of certain ladies, and ends with an anecdote told as to a gentleman with just such ill-natured wit as is common in london. no one could have suspected ocella of looking after his neighbor's wife unless he had been detected thrice in the fact.[ ] from laodicea he answers a querulous letter which his predecessor had written, complaining, among other things, that cicero had failed to show him personal respect. he proves that he had not done so, and then rises to a strain of indignation. "do you think that your grand old names will affect me who, even before i had become great in the service of my country, knew how to distinguish between titles and the men who bore them?"[ ] the next letter to appius is full of flattery, and asking for favors, but it begins with a sharp reproof. "now at last i have received an epistle worthy of appius claudius. the sight of rome has restored you to your good-humor. those i got from you in your journey were such that i could not read them without displeasure."[ ] in february cicero wrote a letter to atticus which is, i think, more expressive in describing the mind of the man than any other which we have from him. in it is commenced the telling of a story respecting brutus--the brutus we all know so well--and one scaptius, of whom no one would have heard but for this story, which, as it deeply affects the character of cicero, must occupy a page or two in our narrative; but i must first refer to his own account of his own government as again given here. nothing was ever so wonderful to the inhabitants of a province as that they should not have been put to a shilling of expense since he had entered it. not a penny had been taken on his own behalf or on that of the republic by any belonging to him, except on one day by one tullius, and by him indeed under cover of the law. this dirty fellow was a follower with whom titinius had furnished him. when he was passing from tarsus back into the centre of his province wondering crowds came out to him, the people not understanding how it had been that no letters had been sent to them exacting money, and that none of his staff had been quartered on them. in former years during the winter months they had groaned under exactions. municipalities with money at their command had paid large sums to save themselves from the quartering of soldiers on them. the island of cyprus, which on a former occasion had been made to pay nearly £ , on this head,[ ] had been asked for nothing by him. he had refused to have any honors paid to him in return for this conduct. he had prohibited the erection of statues, shrines, and bronze chariots in his name--compliments to roman generals which had become common. the harvest that year was bad; but so fully convinced were the people of his honest dealing, that they who had saved up corn--the regraters--brought it freely into market at his coming. as some scourge from hell must have been the presence of such governors as appius and his predecessors among a people timid but industrious like these asiatic greeks. like an unknown, unexpected blessing, direct from heaven, must have been the coming of a cicero. now i will tell the story of brutus and scaptius and their money--premising that it has been told by mr. forsyth with great accuracy and studied fairness. indeed, there is not a line in mr. forsyth's volume which is not governed by a spirit of justice. he, having thought that cicero had been too highly praised by middleton, and too harshly handled by subsequent critics, has apparently written his book with the object of setting right these exaggerations. but in his comments on this matter of brutus and scaptius he seems to me not to have considered the difference in that standard of honor and honesty which governs himself, and that which prevailed in the time of cicero. not seeing, as i think, how impossible it was for a roman governor to have achieved that impartiality of justice with which a long course of fortunate training has imbued an english judge, he accuses cicero of "trifling with equity." the marvel to me is that one man such as cicero--a man single in his purpose--should have been able to raise his own ideas of justice so high above the level prevailing with the best of those around him. it had become the nature of a roman aristocrat to pillage an ally till hardly the skin should be left to cover the man's bones. out of this nature cicero elevated himself completely. in his own conduct he was free altogether from stain. the question here arose how far he could dare to go on offending the instincts, the habits, the nature, of other noble romans, in protecting from their rapacity the poor subjects who were temporarily beneath his charge. it is easy for a judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the feelings of the world around him are in favor of such impartiality; but it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the noblest romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious. in this case brutus, our old friend whom all english readers have so much admired because he dared to tell his brother-in-law cassius that he was "much condemned to have an itching palm," appears before us in the guise of an usurious money-lender. it would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. his practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. but yet brutus was accounted one of the noblest romans of the day, only second, if second, to cato in general virtue and philosophy. in this trade of money-lending the roman nobleman had found no more lucrative business than that of dealing with the municipalities of the allies. the cities were peopled by a money-making, commercial race, but they were subjected to the grinding impositions of their governors. under this affliction they were constantly driven to borrow money, and found the capitalists who supplied it among the class by whom they were persecuted and pillaged. a brutus lent the money which an appius exacted--and did not scruple to do so at forty-eight per cent., although twelve per cent. per annum, or one per cent. per month, was the rate of interest permitted by law. but a noble roman such as brutus did not carry on his business of this nature altogether in his own name. brutus dealt with the municipality of salamis in the island of cyprus, and there had two agents, named scaptius and matinius, whom he specially recommended to cicero as creditors of the city of salamis, praying cicero, as governor of the province, to assist these men in obtaining the payment of their debts.[ ] this was quite usual, but it was only late in the transaction that cicero became aware that the man really looking for his money was the noble roman who gave the recommendation. cicero's letter tells us that scaptius came to him, and that he promised that for brutus's sake he would take care that the people of salamis should pay their debt.[ ] scaptius thanked him, and asked for an official position in salamis which would have given him the power of compelling the payment by force. cicero refused, explaining that he had determined to give no such offices in his province to persons engaged in trade. he had refused such requests already--even to pompey and to torquatus. appius had given the same man a military command in salamis--no doubt also at the instance of brutus--and the people of salamis had been grievously harassed. cicero had heard of this, and had recalled the man from cyprus. of this scaptius had complained bitterly, and at last he and delegates from salamis who were willing to pay their debt, if they could only do it without too great extortion, went together to cicero who was then at tarsus, in the most remote part of his province. here he was called upon to adjudicate in the matter, scaptius trusting to the influence which brutus would naturally have with his friend the governor, and the men of salamis to the reputation for justice which cicero had already created for himself in cilicia. the reader must also be made to understand that cicero had been entreated by atticus to oblige brutus, who was specially the friend of atticus. he must remember also that this narrative is sent by cicero to atticus, who exhorted his correspondent, even with tears in his eyes, to be true to his honor in the government of his province.[ ] he is appealing from atticus to atticus. i am bound to oblige you--but how can i do so in opposition to your own lessons? that is his argument to atticus. then there arises a question as to the amount of money due. the principal is not in dispute, but the interest. the money has been manifestly lent on an understanding that four per cent. per month, or forty-eight per cent. per annum, should be charged on it. but there has been a law passed that higher interest than one per cent. per month, or twelve per cent. per annum, shall not be legal. there has, however, been a counter decree made in regard to these very salaminians, and made apparently at the instigation of brutus, saying that any contract with them shall be held in force, notwithstanding the law. but cicero again has made a decree that he will authorize no exaction above twelve per cent. in his province. the exact condition of the legal claim is less clear to me than to mr. forsyth, who has the advantage of being a lawyer. be that as it may, cicero decides that twelve per cent. shall be exacted, and orders the salaminians to pay the amount. to his request they demur, but at last agree to obey, alleging that they are enabled to do so by cicero's own forbearance to them, cicero having declined to accept the presents which had been offered to him from the island.[ ] they will therefore pay this money in some sort, as they say, out of the governor's own pocket. but when the sum is fixed, scaptius, finding that he cannot get it over-reckoned after some fraudulent scheme of his own, declines to receive it. if with the assistance of a friendly governor he cannot do better than that for himself and his employer, things must be going badly with roman noblemen. but the delegates are now very anxious to pay this money, and offer to deposit it. scaptius begs that the affair shall go no farther at present, no doubt thinking that he may drive a better bargain with some less rigid future governor. the delegates request to be allowed to place their money as paid in some temple, by doing which they would acquit themselves of all responsibility; but cicero begs them to abstain. "impetravi ab salaminiis ut silerent," he says. "i shall be grieved, indeed, that brutus should be angry with me," he writes; "but much more grieved that brutus should have proved himself to be such as i shall have found him." then comes the passage in his letter on the strength of which mr. forsyth has condemned cicero, not without abstract truth in his condemnation: "they, indeed, have consented"--that is the salaminians--"but what will befall them if some such governor as paulus should come here? and all this i have done for the sake of brutus!" Æmilius paulus was the consul, and might probably have cilicia as a province, and would no doubt give over the salaminians to brutus and his myrmidons without any compunction. in strictness--with that assurance in the power of law by means of which our judges are enabled to see that their righteous decisions shall be carried out without detriment to themselves--cicero should have caused the delegates from salamis instantly to have deposited their money in the temple. instead of doing so, he had only declared the amount due according to his idea of justice--in opposition to all romans, even to atticus--and had then consented to leave the matter, as for some further appeal. do we not know how impossible it is for a man to abide strictly by the right, when the strict right is so much in advance of all around him as to appear to other eyes than his own as straitlaced, unpractical, fantastic, and almost inhuman? brutus wanted his money sorely, and brutus was becoming a great political power on the same side with pompey, and cato, and the other "optimates." even atticus was interfering for brutus. what other roman governor of whom we have heard would have made a question on the subject? appius had lent a guard of horse-soldiers to this scaptius with which he had outraged all humanity in cyprus--had caused the councillors of the city to be shut up till they would come to obedience, in doing which he had starved five of them to death! nothing had come of this, such being the way with the romans in their provinces. yet cicero, who had come among these poor wretches as an unheard-of blessing from heaven, is held up to scorn because he "trifled with equity!" equity with us runs glibly on all fours. with appius in cilicia it was utterly unknown. what are we to say of the man who, by the strength of his own conscience and by the splendor of his own intellect, could advance so far out of the darkness of his own age, and bring himself so near to the light of ours! let us think for a moment of our own francis bacon, a man more like to cicero than any other that i can remember in history. they were both great lawyers, both statesmen, both men affecting the _omne scibile_, and coming nearer to it than perhaps any other whom we can name; both patriots, true to their conceived idea of government, each having risen from obscure position to great power, to wealth, and to rank; each from his own education and his nature prone to compromise, intimate with human nature, not over-scrupulous either as to others or as to himself. they were men intellectually above those around them, to a height of which neither of them was himself aware. to flattery, to admiration, to friendship, and to love each of them was peculiarly susceptible. but one failed to see that it behooved him, because of his greatness, to abstain from taking what smaller men were grasping; while the other swore to himself from his very outset that he would abstain--and kept the oath which he had sworn. i am one who would fain forgive bacon for doing what i believe that others did around him; but if i can find a man who never robbed, though all others around him did--in whose heart the "auri sacra fames" had been absolutely quenched, while the men with whom he had to live were sickening and dying with an unnatural craving--then i seem to have recognized a hero. another complaint is made against cicero as to ariobarzanes, the king of cappadocia, and is founded, as are all complaints against cicero, on cicero's own telling of the story in question. why there should have been complaint in this matter i have not been able to discover. ariobarzanes was one of those eastern kings who became milch cows to the roman nobles, and who, in their efforts to satisfy the roman nobles, could only fleece their own subjects. the power of this king to raise money seems to have been limited to about £ a month.[ ] out of this he offered a part to cicero as the proconsul who was immediately over him. this cicero declined, but pressed the king to pay the money to the extortionate brutus, who was a creditor, and who endeavored to get this money through cicero. but pompey also was a creditor, and pompey's name was more dreadful to the king than that of brutus. pompey, therefore, got it all, though we are told that it was not enough to pay him his interest; but pompey, getting it all, was graciously pleased to be satisfied "cnæus noster clementer id fert." "our cicero puts up with that, and asks no questions about the capital," says cicero, ironically. pompey was too wise to kill the goose that laid such golden eggs. nevertheless, we are told that cicero, in this case, abused his proconsular authority in favor of brutus. cicero effected nothing for brutus; but, when there was a certain amount of plunder to be divided among the romans, refused any share for himself. pompey got it all, but not by cicero's aid. there is another long letter, in which cicero again, for the third time, tells the story of brutus and scaptius.[ ] i mention it, as he continues to describe his own mode of doing his work. he has been at laodicea from february to may, deciding questions that had been there brought before him from all parts of his province except cilicia proper. the cities which had been ground down by debt have been enabled to free themselves, and then to live under their own laws. this he has done by taking nothing from them for his own expenses--not a farthing. it is marvellous to see how the municipalities have sprung again into life under this treatment. "he has been enabled by this to carry on justice without obstruction and without severity. everybody has been allowed approach to him--a custom which has been unknown in the provinces. there has been no back-stairs influence. he has walked openly in his own courts, as he used to do when a candidate at home. all this has been grateful to the people, and much esteemed; nor has it been too laborious to himself, as he had learned the way of it in his former life." it was thus that cicero governed cilicia. there are further letters to appius and cælius, written from various parts of the province, which cannot fail to displease us because we feel that cicero is endeavoring to curry favor. he wishes to stand well with those who might otherwise turn against him on his reappearance in rome. he is afraid lest appius should be his enemy and lest pompey should not be his friend. the practice of justice and of virtue would, he knew, have much less effect in rome than the friendship and enmity of such men. but to atticus he bursts out into honest passion against brutus. brutus had recommended to him one gavius, whom, to oblige brutus, he appointed to some office. gavius was greedy, and insolent when his greed was not satisfied. "you have made me a prefect," said gavius; "where am i to go for my rations?" cicero tells him that as he has done no work he will get no pay; whereupon gavius, quite unaccustomed to such treatment, goes off in a huff. "if brutus can be stirred by the anger of such a knave as this," he says to atticus, "you may love him, if you will, yourself; you will not find me a rival for his friendship."[ ] brutus, however, became a favorite with cicero, because he had devoted himself to literature. in judging these two men we should not lean too heavily on brutus, because he did no worse than his neighbors. but then, how are we to judge of cicero? in the latter months of his government there began a new trouble, in which it is difficult to sympathize with him, because we are unable to produce in our own minds a roman's estimation of roman things. with true spirit he had laughed at his own military doings at pindenissum; but not the less on that account was he anxious to enjoy the glories of a triumph, and to be dragged through the city on a chariot, with military trophies around him, as from time immemorial the roman conquerors had been dragged when they returned from their victories. for the old barbaric conquerors this had been fine enough. a display of armor--of helmets, of shields, and of swords--a concourse of chariots, of trumpets, and of slaves, of victims kept for the tarpeian rock, the spoils and rapine of battle, the self-asserting glory of the big fighting hero, the pride of bloodshed, and the boasting over fallen cities, had been fit for men who had in their hearts conceived nothing greater than military renown. our sympathies go along with a camillus or a scipio steeped in the blood of rome's enemies. a marius, a pompey, and again a few years afterward a cæsar, were in their places as they were dragged along the via sacra up to the capitol amid the plaudits of the city, in commemoration of their achievements in arms; but it could not be so with cicero. "concedat laurea linguæ" had been the watchword of his life. "let the ready tongue and the fertile brain be held in higher honor than the strong right arm." that had been the doctrine which he had practised successfully. to him it had been given to know that the lawyer's gown was raiment worthier of a man than the soldier's breastplate. how, then, could it be that he should ask for so small a thing as a triumph in reward for so small a deed as that done at pindenissum? but it had become the way with all proconsuls who of late years had been sent forth from rome into the provinces. men to whose provincial government a few cohorts were attached aspired to be called "imperator" by their soldiers after mock battles, and thought that, as others had followed up their sham victories with sham triumphs, it should be given to them to do the same. if bibulus triumphed it would be a disgrace to cicero not to triumph. we measure our expected rewards not by our own merits but by the good things which have been conceded to others. to have returned from pindenissum and not to be allowed the glory of trumpets would be a disgrace, in accordance with the theory then prevailing in rome on such matters; therefore cicero demanded a triumph. in such a matter it was in accordance with custom that the general should send an immediate account of his victorious doings, demand a "supplication," and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after his return home. a supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods for the great favor shown by them to the state, but in fact took the guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had been done. it was usually a reward for military success, but in the affair of catiline a supplication had been decreed to cicero for saving the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. cicero now applied for a supplication, and obtained it. cato opposed it, and wrote a letter to cicero explaining his motives--upon high republican principles. cicero might have endured this more easily had not cato voted for a supplication in honor of bibulus, whose military achievements had, as cicero thought, been less than his own. one hirrus opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the numbers slain by cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a supplication. we learn that, according to strict rule, two thousand dead men should have been left on the field. cicero's victims had probably been much fewer; nevertheless the supplication was granted, and cicero presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. alas, there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph! of all that went on at rome cælius continued to send cicero accounts. the triumvirate was now over. cælius says that pompey will not attack cæsar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent cæsar from being elected consul before he shall have given up his province and his army.[ ] for details cælius refers him to a commentarium--a word which has been translated as meaning "newspaper" in this passage--by melmoth. i think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the commentary was simply the compilation of cælius, as were the commentaries we so well know the compilation of cæsar. the acta diurna were published by authority, and formed an official gazette. these no doubt reached cicero, but were very different in their nature from the private record of things which he obtained from his friend. there are passages in greek, in two letters[ ] written about this time to atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his quarrel with his wife, and her divorce. he makes no direct allusion to his wife, but only to a freedman of hers, philotomus. when milo was convicted, his goods were confiscated and sold as a part of his punishment. philotomus is supposed to have been a purchaser, and to have made money out of the transaction--taking advantage of his position to acquire cheap bargains--as should not have been done by any one connected with cicero, who had been milo's friend. the cause of cicero's quarrel with his wife has never been absolutely known, but it is supposed to have arisen from her want of loyalty to him in regard to money. she probably employed this freedman in filling her pockets at the expense of her husband's character. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and allusions are made as to his expected triumph. he is grateful to cælius as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his confidence that all the rest will follow.[ ] he is so determined to hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers who may be least unfit to hold it. his brother quintus was his lieutenant, but if he left quintus people would say of him that in doing so he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. at last he determines to intrust it to a young quæstor named c. cælius--no close connection of his friend cælius, as cicero finds himself obliged to apologize for the selection to his friend. "young, you will say. no doubt; but he had been elected quæstor, and is of noble birth."[ ] so he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter. cicero tells us afterward, when at athens on his way home, that he had considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder which was regarded by them as their perquisite. he had boasted much of their conduct--having taken exception to one tullius, who had demanded only a little hay and a little wood. but now there came to be pickings--savings out of his own proconsular expenses--to part with which at the last moment was too hard upon them. "how difficult is virtue," he exclaims; "how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it when it is not felt!"[ ] there had been a certain sum saved which he had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury. but the satellites were all in arms: "ingemuit nostra cohors." nevertheless, he disregarded the "cohort," and paid the money into the treasury. as to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise to some most amusing literary vituperation. the care with which mss. have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred thousand sesterces--thus expressed, "h.s.x."--amounting to something over £ . we hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that cicero realized out of his own legitimate allowance in cilicia a profit of about £ , ; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself aggrieved in losing £ which they expected to have divided among them. middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the x to be ci[c] or m--a thousand instead of ten--and quotes the sum saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight thousand pounds. we who have had so much done for us by intervening research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may fairly be put forward on middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our labors by infinite toil on his part; but de quincey, who has been very rancorous against cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his denunciation of cicero's great biographer. "conyers middleton," he says, "is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust." the cause of this was that middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the church of england, and a cambridge man, differed from other cambridge clergymen on controversial points and church questions. bentley was his great opponent--and as bentley was a stout fighter, so was middleton. middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because bentley was the stronger combatant; but he seems to have stood in good repute all his life, and when advanced in years was appointed professor of natural history. he is known to us, however, only as the biographer of cicero. of this book, monk, the biographer of middleton's great opponent, bentley, declares that, "for elegance, purity, and ease, middleton's style yields to none in the english language." de quincey says of it that, by "weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip it of all that is characteristic"--meaning, i suppose, that the work altogether wants dignity of composition. this charge is, to my thinking, so absolutely contrary to the fact, that it needs only to be named to be confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. de quincey pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at caernarvon. middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it as he found it, without much thought. de quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "it is in the light of an evidence against middleton's good-sense and thoughtfulness that i regard it as capital." that is de quincey's estimate of middleton as a biographer. i regard him as a laborer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of english, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said that no english library should be without it. the last letter written by cicero in asia was sent to atticus from ephesus the day before he started--on the last day, namely, of september. he had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry him and his suite. news here reached him from rome--news which was not true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. in a letter to atticus he speaks of "miros terrores cæsarianos"[ ]--"dreadful reports as to outrages by cæsar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army; that he had with him the prætors elect, one of the tribunes, and even one of the consuls; and that pompey had resolved to leave the city. such were the first tidings presaging pharsalia. then he adds a word about his triumph. "tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends desire me to seek. i should not care about it if bibulus were not also asking for a triumph--bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors as long as there was an enemy in syria!" thus cicero had to suffer untold misery because bibulus was asking for a triumph! chapter v. _the war between cÆsar and pompey._ what official arrangements were made for proconsuls in regard to money, when in command of a province, we do not know. the amounts allowed were no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the roman governor looked as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. the means of plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an accusation. we remember how verres calculated that he could divide his spoil into three sufficient parts--one for the lawyers, one for the judges, so as to insure his acquittal, and then one for himself. this plundering was common--so common as to have become almost a matter of course; but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to exile, and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. no accusation was made against cicero. as to others there were constantly threats, if no more than threats. cicero was not even threatened. but he had saved out of his legitimate expenses a sum equal to £ , of our money--from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a roman governor. the expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands, and many of those of his army. any saving effected would therefore be to his own personal advantage. on this money he counted much when his affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join pompey at pharsalia in the following year. he then begged atticus to arrange his matters for him, telling him that the sum was at his call in asia,[ ] but he never saw it again: pompey borrowed it--or took it; and when pompey had been killed the money was of course gone. his brother quintus was with him in cilicia, but of his brother's doings there he says little or nothing. we have no letters from him during the period to his wife or daughter. the latter was married to her third husband, dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from cicero, but not in accordance with his advice. he had purposed to accept a proposition for her hand made to him by tiberius nero, the young roman nobleman who afterward married that livia whom augustus took away from him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her himself, and who thus became the father of the emperor tiberius. it is worthy of remark at the same time that the emperor tiberius married the granddaughter of atticus. cicero when in cilicia had wished that nero should be chosen; but the family at home was taken by the fashion and manners of dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third husband when she was yet only twenty-five. this marriage, like the others, was unfortunate. dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born, agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. he was a roman nobleman of the type then common--heartless, extravagant, and greedy. his country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. cicero tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and strength of the aristocratic party to which dolabella belonged. i cannot bring him back to rome, and all that he suffered there, without declaring that much of his correspondence during his government, especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey home, is very distressing. i have told the story of his own doings, i think, honestly, and how he himself abstained, and compelled those belonging to him to do so; how he strove to ameliorate the condition of those under his rule; how he fully appreciated the duty of doing well by others, so soon to be recognized by all christians. such humanity on the part of a roman at such a period is to me marvellous, beautiful, almost divine; but, in eschewing roman greed and roman cruelty, he was unable to eschew roman insincerity. i have sometimes thought that to have done so it must have been necessary for him altogether to leave public life. why not? my readers will say. but in our days, when a man has mixed himself for many years with all that is doing in public, how hard it is for him to withdraw, even though, in withdrawing he fears no violence, no punishment, no exile, no confiscation. the arguments, the prayers, the reproaches of those around him draw him back; and the arguments, the reproaches from within are more powerful even than those from his friends. to be added to these is the scorn, perhaps the ridicule, of his opponents. such are the difficulties in the way of the modern politician who thinks that he has resolved to retire; but the roman ex-consul, ex-prætor, ex-governor had entered upon a mode of warfare in which his all, his life, his property, his choice of country, his wife, his children, were open to the ready attacks of his eager enemies. to have deserved well would be nothing, unless he could keep a party round him bound by mutual interests to declare that he had deserved well. a rich man, who desired to live comfortably beyond the struggle of public life, had to abstain, as atticus had done, from increasing the sores, from hurting the ambition, from crushing the hopes of aspirants. such a man might be safe, but he could not be useful; such, at any rate, had not been cicero's life. in his earlier days, till he was consul, he had kept himself free from political interference in doing the work of his life; but since that time he had necessarily put himself into competition with many men, and had made many enemies by the courage of his opinions. he had found even those he had most trusted opposed to him. he had aroused the jealousy not only of the cæsars and the crassuses and the pisos, but also of the pompeys and catos and brutuses. whom was he not compelled to fear? and yet he could not escape to his books; nor, in truth, did he wish it. he had made for himself a nature which he could not now control. he had not been long in cilicia before he knew well how cruel, how dishonest, how greedy, how thoroughly roman had been the conduct of his predecessor appius. his letters to atticus are full of the truths which he had to tell on that matter. his conduct, too, with regard to appius was mainly right. as far as in him lay he endeavored to remedy the evils which the unjust proconsul had done, and to stop what further evil was still being done. he did not hesitate to offend appius when it was necessary to do so by his interference. but appius was a great nobleman, one of the "optimates," a man with a strong party at his back in rome. appius knew well that cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. cicero knew also that the support of appius would be of infinite service to him in his roman politics. knowing this, he wrote to appius letters full of flattery--full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose better. dolabella, the new son-in-law, had taken upon himself, for some reason as to which it can hardly be worth our while to inquire, to accuse appius of malversation in his province. that appius deserved condemnation there can be no doubt; but in these accusations the contests generally took place not as to the proof of the guilt, but as to the prestige and power of the accuser and the accused. appius was tried twice on different charges, and was twice acquitted; but the fact that his son-in-law should be the accuser was fraught with danger to cicero. he thought it necessary for the hopes which he then entertained to make appius understand that his son-in-law was not acting in concert with him, and that he was desirous that appius should receive all the praise which would have been due to a good governor. so great was the influence of appius at rome that he was not only acquitted, but shortly afterward elected censor. the office of censor was in some respects the highest in rome. the censors were elected only once in four years, remaining in office for eighteen months. the idea was that powers so arbitrary as these should be in existence only for a year and a half out of each four years. questions of morals were considered by them. should a senator be held to have lived as did not befit a senator, a censor could depose him. as appius was elected censor immediately after his acquittal, together with that piso whom cicero had so hated, it may be understood that his influence was very great.[ ] it was great enough to produce from cicero letters which were flattering and false. the man who had been able to live with a humanity, a moderation, and an honesty befitting a christian, had not risen to that appreciation of the beauty of truth which an exercise of christianity is supposed to exact. "sed quid agas? sic vivitur!"[ ]--"what would you have me do? it is thus we live now!" this he exclaims in a letter to cælius, written a short time before he left the province. "what would you say if you read my last letter to appius?" you would open your eyes if you knew how i have flattered appius--that was his meaning. "sic vivitur!"--"it is so we live now." when i read this i feel compelled to ask whether there was an opportunity for any other way of living. had he seen the baseness of lying as an english christian gentleman is expected to see it, and had adhered to truth at the cost of being a martyr, his conduct would have been high though we might have known less of it; but, looking at all the circumstances of the period, have we a right to think that he could have done so? from athens on his way home cicero wrote to his wife, joining tullia's name with hers. "lux nostra," he calls his daughter; "the very apple of my eye!" he had already heard from various friends that civil war was expected. he will have to declare himself on his arrival--that is, to take one side or the other--and the sooner he does so the better. there is some money to be looked for--a legacy which had been left to him. he gives express directions as to the persons to be employed respecting this, omitting the name of that philotomus as to whose honesty he is afraid. he calls his wife "suavissima et optatissima terentia," but he does not write to her with the true love which was expressed by his letters when in exile. from athens, also, where he seems to have stayed nearly two months, he wrote in december. he is easy, he says, about his triumph unless cæsar should interfere--but he does not care much about his triumph now. he is beginning to feel the wearisomeness of the triumph; and indeed it was a time in which the utter hollowness of triumphal pretensions must have made the idea odious to him. but to have withdrawn would have been to have declared his own fears, his own doubts, his own inferiority to the two men who were becoming declared as the rival candidates for roman power. we may imagine that at such a time he would gladly have gone in quiet to his roman mansion or to one of his villas, ridding himself forever of the trouble of his lictors, his fasces, and all the paraphernalia of imperatorial dignity; but a man cannot rid himself of such appanages without showing that he has found it necessary to do so. it was the theory of a triumph that the victorious imperator should come home hot (as it were) from the battle-field, with all his martial satellites around him, and have himself carried at once through rome. it was barbaric and grand, as i have said before, but it required the martial satellites. tradition had become law, and the imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his military followers till the ceremony was over. in this way cicero was sadly hampered by his lictors when, on his landing at brundisium, he found that italy was already preparing for her great civil war. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] early in this year it had been again proposed in the senate that cæsar should give up his command. at this time the two consuls, l. Æmilius paulus and c. claudius marcellus, were opposed to cæsar, as was also curio, who had been one of cicero's young friends, and was now tribune. but two of these cæsar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes. curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe. the story comes to us from appian,[ ] but the modern reader will find it efficiently told by mommsen.[ ] the consul had fifteen hundred talents, or about £ , ! the sum named as that given by cæsar to curio was something greater, because he was so deeply in debt! bribes to the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now, bestowed upon two men for their support in the senate! it was worth a man's while to be a consul or a tribune in those days. but the money was well earned--plunder, no doubt, extracted from gaul. the senate decided that both pompey and cæsar should be required to abandon their commands--or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any absolute decree. but this sufficed for cæsar, who was only anxious to be relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the senate by the knowledge that pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. then it was--in the summer of this year--that the two commanders were desired by the senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three thousand men, under the pretence that the forces were wanted for the parthian war. the historians tell us that pompey had lent a legion to cæsar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. cæsar nobly sends up to rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be restored by himself, and the other as belonging to pompey. he felt, no doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better service than the withholding of the soldiers. the men were stationed at capua, instead of being sent to the east, and no doubt drifted back into cæsar's hands. the men who had served under cæsar would not willingly find themselves transferred to pompey. cæsar in the summer came across the alps into cisalpine gaul, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at ravenna, which was still within his province. it was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the rubicon and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. matters were in this condition when cicero returned to italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war which had reached him at athens. in a letter written from athens, earlier than the one last quoted, cicero declared to atticus that it would become him better to be conquered with pompey than to conquer with cæsar.[ ] the opinion here given may be taken as his guiding principle in politics till pompey was no more. through all the doubts and vacillations which encumbered him, this was the rule not only of his mind but of his heart. to him there was no triumvirate: the word had never been mentioned to his ears. had pompey remained free from cæsar it would have been better. the two men had come together, and crassus had joined them. it was better for him to remain with them and keep them right, than to stand away, angry and astray, as cato had done. the question how far cæsar was justified in the position which he had taken up by certain alleged injuries, affected cicero less than it has done subsequent inquirers. had an attempt been made to recall cæsar illegally? was he subjected to wrong by having his command taken away from him before the period had passed for which the people had given it? was he refused indulgences to which the greatness of his services entitled him--such as permission to sue for the consulship while absent from rome--while that, and more than that, had been granted to pompey? all these questions were no doubt hot in debate at the time, but could hardly have affected much the judgment of cicero, and did not at all affect his conduct. nor, i think, should they influence the opinions of those who now attempt to judge the conduct of cæsar. things had gone beyond the domain of law, and had fallen altogether into that of potentialities. decrees of the senate or votes of the people were alike used as excuses. cæsar, from the beginning of his career, had shown his determination to sweep away as cobwebs the obligations which the law imposed upon him. it is surely vain to look for excuses for a man's conduct to the practice of that injustice against him which he has long practised against others. shall we forgive a house-breaker because the tools which he has himself invented are used at last upon his own door? the modern lovers of cæsar and of cæsarism generally do not seek to wash their hero white after that fashion. to them it is enough that the man has been able to trample upon the laws with impunity, and to be a law not only to himself but to all the world around him. there are some of us who think that such a man, let him be ever so great--let him be ever so just, if the infirmities of human nature permit justice to dwell in the breast of such a man--will in the end do more harm than good. but they who sit at the feet of the great commanders admire them as having been law-breaking, not law-abiding. to say that cæsar was justified in the armed position which he took in northern italy in the autumn of this year, is to rob him of his praise. i do not suppose that he had meditated any special line of policy during the years of hard work in gaul, but i think that he was determined not to relinquish his power, and that he was ready for any violence by which he might preserve it. if such was cicero's idea of this man--if such the troubled outlook which he took into the circumstances of the empire--he thought probably but little of the legality of cæsar's recall. what would the consuls do, what would curio do, what would pompey do, and what cæsar? it was of this that he thought. had law-abiding then been possible, he would have been desirous to abide by the law. some nearest approach to the law would be the best. cæsar had ignored all laws, except so far as he could use them for his own purposes. pompey, in conspiring with cæsar, had followed cæsar's lead; but was desirous of using the law against cæsar when cæsar outstripped him in lawlessness. but to cicero there was still some hope of restraining pompey. pompey, too, had been a conspirator, but not so notorious a conspirator as cæsar. with pompey there would be some bond to the republic; with cæsar there could be none; therefore it was better for him to fall with pompey than to rise with cæsar. that was his conviction till pompey had altogether fallen. his journey homeward is made remarkable by letters to tiro, his slave and secretary. tiro was taken ill, and cicero was obliged to leave him at patræ, in greece. whence he had come to cicero we do not know, or when; but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice before the days of the cilician government, as we find that on his arrival at brundisium he writes to atticus respecting him as a person whom atticus had not much known.[ ] but his affection for tiro is very warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are charming. he is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what captain he sails. he is not to hurry. the doctor is to be consulted and well paid. cicero himself writes various letters to various persons, in order to secure that attention which tiro could not have insured unless so assisted. early in january cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because of his still unsettled triumph, and cæsar crossed the little river which divided his province from the roman territory. the th of january is the date given for the former small event. for the latter i have seen no precise day named, i presume that it was after the th, as on that day the senate appointed domitian as his successor in his province. on this being done, the two tribunes, antony and cassius, hurried off to cæsar, and cæsar then probably crossed the stream. cicero was appointed to a command in campania--that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph. his doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit; but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? the effect had been to take all power out of his hand. cæsar had given him up. pompey could not do so, but we can imagine how willing pompey would have been that he should have remained in cilicia. he had been sent there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. if he would only have remained and plundered! if he would only have remained there and have been honest--so that he would be out of the way! but here he was--back in italy, an honest, upright man! no one so utterly unlike the usual roman, so lost amid the self-seekers of rome, so unnecessarily clean-handed, could be found! cato was honest, foolishly honest for his time; but with cato it was not so difficult to deal as with cicero. we can imagine cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely unreasonable. cicero was all alive to what was going on in the world, but still was honest! in the mean time he remained in the neighborhood of naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to tiro, writing to atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so well--because he has told us. in one of his letters to atticus at this time he is sadly in earnest. he will die with pompey in italy, but what can he do by leaving it? he has his "lictors" with him still. oh, those dreadful lictors! his friendship for cnæus! his fear of having to join himself with the coming tyrant! "oh that you would assist me with your counsel!"[ ] he writes again, and describes the condition of pompey--of pompey who had been magnus. "see how prostrate he is. he has neither courage, counsel, men, nor industry! put aside those things; look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns, his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy! * * * cæsar in pursuit of pompey! oh, sad! * * * will he kill him?" he exclaims. then, still to atticus, he defends himself. he will die for pompey, but he does not believe that he can do any good either to pompey or to the republic by a base flight. then there is another cause for staying in italy as to which he cannot write. this was terentia's conduct. at the end of one of his letters he tells atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which atticus had sent to him. in another he speaks of a greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain dionysius, and he boils over with anger. his letters to atticus about the greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time, because they show his eagerness. "i never knew anything more ungrateful; and there is nothing worse than ingratitude."[ ] he heaps his scorn upon pompey: "it is true, indeed, that i said that it was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. i would indeed. but of what pompey was it that i so spoke? was it of this one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will fly?"[ ] he writes again the same day: "pompey had fostered cæsar, and then had feared him. he had left the city; he had lost picenum by his own fault, he had betaken himself to apulia! then he went into greece, leaving us in the dark as to his plans!" he excuses a letter of his own to cæsar. he had written to cæsar in terms which might be pleasing to the great man. he had told cæsar of cæsar's admirable wisdom. was it not better so? he was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all the people, if only those of pompey might also be read aloud. then follow copies of a correspondence between him and pompey. in the last he declares[ ] that "when he had written from canusium he had not dreamed that pompey was about to cross the sea. he had known that pompey had intended to treat for peace--for peace even under unjust conditions--but he had never thought that pompey was meditating a retreat out of italy." he argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. pompey had been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself against cæsar. he had failed, and had slipped away, leaving a man here and there to stand up for the republic. pompey was willing to risk nothing for rome. it had come to pass at last that he was being taught cæsarism by cæsar, and when he died was more imperial than his master. at this time cicero's eyes were bad. "mihi molestior lippitudo erat etiam quam ante fuerat." and again, "lippitudinis meæ signum tibi sit librarii manus." but we may doubt whether any great men have lived so long with so little to tease them as to their health. and yet the amount of work he got through was great. he must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. when we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. throughout his life his hours were early, but they must also have been late. of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. when he was abroad during his exile, or in cilicia during his government, he could not have had his books with him. that cæsar should have been cæsar, or pompey pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as that cicero should have been cicero. then comes that letter of which i spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the getæ, the armenians, and the men of colchis. "shall i, the savior of the city, assist to bring down upon that city those hordes of foreign men? shall i deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who is no more than mortal?"[ ] it was pompey as to whom he then asked the question. for pompey's sake am i to let in these crowds? we have been told, indeed, by mr. froude that the man was cæsar, and that cicero wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death! "now, if ever, think what we shall do," he says. "a roman army sits round pompey and makes him a prisoner within valley and rampart--and shall we live? the city stands; the prætors give the law, the Ædiles keep up the games, good men look to their principal and their interest. shall i remain sitting here? shall i rush hither and thither madly, and implore the credit of the towns? men of substance will not follow me. the revolutionists will arrest me. is there any end to this misery? people will point at me and say, 'how wise he was not to go with him.' i was not wise. of his victory i never wished to be the comrade--yet now i do of his sorrow."[ ] [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] pompey had crossed the sea from brundisium, and cæsar had retreated across italy to capua. as he was journeying he saw cicero, and asked him to go to rome. this cicero refused, and cæsar passed on. "i must then use other counsels," said cæsar, thus leaving him for the last time before the coming battle. cicero went on to arpinum, and there heard the nightingales. from that moment he resolved. he had not thought it possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail against cæsar's advice; but he had done so. he had feared that cæsar would overcome him; but when the moment came he was strong against even cæsar. he gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of him. he was going after pompey, not for the sake of pompey, not for the sake of the republic, but for loyalty. he was going because atticus had told him to go. but as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. he writes to atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew. the one is good by nature, and has not yet gone astray. the other, the elder and his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence, and has openly adopted evil ways. in other words, he has become cæsarian--for a reward.[ ] the young quintus has shown himself to be very false. cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life that this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. then curio comes the way, and there is a most interesting conversation. it seems that curio, who is fond of cicero, tells him everything; but cicero, who doubts him, lets him pass on. then cælius writes to him. cælius implores him, for the sake of his children, to bear in mind what he is doing. he tells him much of cæsar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become cæsarian; at any rate to betake himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and quieter days should come. but cælius, though it had suited cicero to know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. he did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded cicero. to cælius it was play--play in which a man might be beaten, or banished, or slaughtered; but it was a game in which men were fighting each for himself. that there should be a duty in the matter, beyond that, was inexplicable to cælius. and his children, too--his anger against young quintus and his forgiveness of marcus! he thinks that quintus had been purchased by a large bribe on cæsar's side, and is thankful that it is no worse with him. what can have been worse to a young man than to have been open to such payment? antony is frequently on the scene, and already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. and then cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. servius sulpicius comes to him weeping. for servius, who is timid and lachrymose, everything has gone astray. and then there is that dionysius who had plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier master. at the last comes the news of his tullia's child's birth. she is brought to bed of a son. he cannot, however, wait to see how the son thrives. from the midst of enemies, and with spies around him, he starts. there is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from on board the ship at caieta, sending them many loves and many careful messages, and then he is off. it was now the th of june, the third day before the ides, b.c. , and we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. when he reached the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. he had given his all to place himself along with pompey in the republican quarters, and when there the republicans were unwilling to welcome him. pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to be able to say hereafter that he had not come. of what occurred to cicero during the great battle which led to the solution of the roman question we know little or nothing. we hear that cicero was absent, sick at dyrrachium, but there are none of those tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. we hear, indeed, from other sources, very full accounts of the fighting--how cæsar was nearly conquered, how pompey might have prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way, how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how, in the very presence of his wife, he was murdered at last at the mouth of the nile by the combined energies of a roman and a greek. we can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the pharsalus where the two armies met, and the victory remained with cæsar. then there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the congratulations and self-applause of the victors. in all cicero's letters there is not a word of it. there was terrible suffering before it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but nowhere do we find any record of what took place. there is no mourning for pompey, no turning to cæsar as the conqueror. petra has been lost, and pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cicero, we know, spent the time at dyrrachium close to which the battle of petra was fought, and went from thence to corcyra. there invitation was made to him, as the senior consular officer present, to take the command of the beaten army, but that he declined. we are informed that he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. we can imagine that it was so--that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he should have been somewhat roughly told that it behooved him to take the lead and to come forth as the new commander; that there should be a time at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he should doubt, and, after more or less of reticence, pass on. young pompey would have it so. what name would be so good to bind together the opponents of cæsar as that of cicero? but cicero would not be led. it seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time; that he had been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true to pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that pompey was gone. we can well imagine that there should be no man less able to fight against cæsar, though there was none whose name might be so serviceable to use as that of cicero. at any rate, as far as we are concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. he wrote not a word to any of the friends whom pompey had left behind him, but returned to italy dispirited, silent, and unhappy. he had indeed met many men since the battle of the pharsalus, but to none of whom we are conversant had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign. here we part from pompey, who ran from the fighting-ground of macedonia to meet his doom in the roads of alexandria. never had man risen so high in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. he was born in the same year with cicero, but had come up quicker into the management of the world's affairs, so as to have received something from his equals of that which was due to age. habit had given him that ease of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his compeers the deference which was due not to his age but to his experience. when cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to fight against sulla, pompey had already won his spurs, in spite of sulla but by means of sulla. men in these modern days learn, as they grow old in public life, to carry themselves with indifference among the backslidings of the world. in reading the life of cicero, we see that it was so then. when defending amerinus, we find the same character of man as was he who afterward took milo's part. there is the same readiness, the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation; but there is not the same indifference as to results. with amerinus it is as though all the world depended on it; with milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the outside world believe it. when pompey triumphed, b.c., and was made consul for the second time, he was already old in glory--when cicero had not as yet spoken those two orations against verres which had made the speaking of another impossible. pompey, we may say, had never been young. cicero was never old. there was no moment in his life in which cicero was not able to laugh with the curios and the cæliuses behind the back of the great man. there was no moment in which pompey could have done so. he who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by idle and luxurious young men of the day. cicero did not live for many years beyond pompey, but i doubt whether he did not know infinitely more of men. to pompey it had been given to rule them; but to cicero to live with them. chapter vi. _after the battle._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in the autumn of this year cicero had himself landed at brundisium. he remained nearly a year at brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how sad and how long must have been the days with him. he had no country when he reached the nearest italian port; it was all cæsar's, and cæsar was his enemy. there had been a struggle for the masterdom between two men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom cicero had not ranged himself. he had known how it would be. all the getæ, and the men of colchis, and the armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those who preferred the delicacies of baiæ to the work of the forum, all who had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all those whom cæsar was determined either to drive out of italy or keep there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. we already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them and with cæsar. on cæsar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. we hear of no scæva and of no crastinus on pompey's side. men change their nature under such leading as was that of cæsar. the inferior men become heroic by contact with the hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood dabbled down upon a fair cloth. who that has eyes to see can look back upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the stern man passes on without a ruffled face, after ordering the right hands of those who had fought at uxellodunum to be chopped off at the wrist, in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for their country? there are men--or have been, from time to time, in all ages of the world--let loose, as it were, by the hand of god to stop the iniquities of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities. they have come and done their work, and have died, leaving behind them the foul smell of destruction. an augustus followed cæsar, and him tiberius, and so on to a nero. it was necessary that men should suffer much before they were brought back to own their condition. but they who can see a cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming--not for himself but for the world around him--and can lend their tongues, their pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been touched by the supremacy of human suffering. it must have been a sorry time with him at brundisium. he had to stay there waiting till cæsar's pleasure had been made known to him, and cæsar was thinking of other things. cæsar was away in egypt and the east, encountering perils at alexandria which, if all be true that we have heard, imply that he had lived to be past fear. grant that a man has to live as cæsar did, and it will be well that he should be past fear. at any rate he did not think of cicero, or thinking of him felt that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he had made. cicero did brood--not exactly in silence--over the things that fate had done for him and for his country. for himself, he was living in italy, and yet could not venture to betake himself to one of the eighteen villas which, as middleton tells us, he had studded about the country for his pastime. there were those at tusculum, antium, astura, arpinum--at formiæ, at cumæ, at puteoli, and at pompeii. those who tell us of cicero's poverty are surely wandering, carried away by their erroneous notions of what were a roman nobleman's ideas as to money. at no period of his life do we find cicero not doing what he was minded to do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had allowed himself in any respect to break the law. it has been argued that he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments, because he says that he wanted money. it was natural that he should occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. the incoming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. a man here and there might attend to his money, as did atticus. cicero did not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for relief. but he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? we are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his villas, though in the hurry-scurry of roman affairs it did now and again become necessary for him to apply to atticus for accommodation. let us think what must have been cæsar's demands for money. of these we hear nothing, because he was too wise to have an atticus to whom he wrote everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be treasured for the curiosity of after-ages. to be hopeful and then tremulous; to be eager after success and then desponding; to have believed readily every good and then, as readily, evil; to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have turned round and declared how he had been deceived; to have been very angry and then to have forgiven--this seems to have been cicero's nature. verres, catiline, clodius, piso, and vatinius seem to have caused his wrath; but was there one of them against whom, though he did not forgive him, his anger did not die out? then, at last, he was moved to an internecine fight with antony. is there any one who has read the story which we are going to tell who will not agree with us that, if after mutina octavius had thought fit to repudiate antony and to follow cicero's counsels, antony would not have been spared? nothing angers me so much in describing cicero as the assertion that he was a coward. it has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes cowardice. he did not care to fight; but are all men cowards who do not care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking? he saw that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he did not see it. when men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled, and cæsar and pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest danger does not consist in fighting. a man's tongue makes enemies more bitter than his sword. but cicero, when the time came, never shirked his foe. whether it was verres or catiline, or clodius or antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. at moments such as that there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave. his friendship for pompey is perhaps, of all the strong feelings of his life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse. for myself i can see why it was so; but i cannot do that without acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. had he risen above pompey, he would have been great indeed; for i look upon it as certain that he did see that pompey was as untrue to the republic as cæsar. he saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all times that pompey was false. cæsar was not false. cæsar was an open foe. i doubt whether pompey ever saw enough to be open. he never realized to himself more than men. he never rose to measures--much less to the reason for them. when cæsar had talked him over, and had induced him to form the triumvirate, pompey's politics were gone. cicero never blanched. whether, full of new hopes, he attacked chrysogonus with all the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or, with the settled purpose of his life, he accused verres in the teeth of the coming consul hortensius; whether in driving out catiline, or in defending milo; whether, even, in standing up before cæsar for marcellus, or in his final onslaught upon antony, his purpose was still the same. as time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went down into the arena and fought the beasts at ephesus. alas, it is so with mankind! who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? and who can fight them but after some fashion of their own? he was fighting beasts at ephesus when he was defending milo. he was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest! it was impossible. these men would not be just, and yet he must use them. milo and cælius and curio were his friends. he knew them to be bad, but he could not throw off from him all that were bad men. if by these means he could win his way to something that might be good, he would pardon their evil. as we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character becomes tarnished, and that his high feelings are blunted by the party which he takes and the men with whom he associates. he did not, indeed, fall away altogether. the magistracy offered to him, the lieutenancy offered to him, the "free legation" offered to him, the last appeal made to him that he would go to rome and speak a few words--or that he would stay away and remain neutral--did not move him. he did not turn conspirator and then fight for the prize, as pompey had done. but he had, for so many years, clung to pompey as the leader of a party; had had it so dinned into his ears that all must depend on pompey; had found himself so bound up with the man who, when appealed to as to his banishment, had sullenly told him he could only do as cæsar would have him; whom he had felt to be mean enough to be stigmatized as sampsiceramus, him of jerusalem, the hero of arabia; whom he knew to be desirous of doing with his enemies as sulla had done with his--that, in spite of it all, he clung to him still! i cannot but blame cicero for this, but yet i can excuse it. it is hard to have to change your leader after middle life, and cicero could only have changed his by becoming a leader himself. we can see how hopeless it was. would it not have been mean had he allowed those men to go and fight in macedonia without him? who would have believed in him had he seemed to be so false? not cato, not brutus, not bibulus, not scipio, not marcellus. such men were the leaders of the party of which he had been one. would they not say that he had remained away because he was cæsar's man? he must follow either cæsar or pompey. he knew that pompey was beaten. there are things which a man knows, but he cannot bring himself to say so even to himself. he went out to fight on the side already conquered; and when the thing was done he came home with his heart sad, and lived at brundisium, mourning his lot. from thence he wrote to atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage of complying with advice which had been given to him that he should travel incognito to rome. but it is the special reason given which strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day: "nor have i resting-places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to pass the entire daytime within them."[ ] the "diversorium" was a place by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come that way. it must be understood that he travelled with attendants, and carried his food with him, or sent it on before. we see at every turn how much money could do; but we see also how little money had done for the general comfort of the people. brundisium is above three hundred miles from rome, and the journey is the same which horace took afterward, going from the city.[ ] much had then been done to make travelling comfortable, or at any rate cheaper than it had been four-and-twenty years before. but now the journey was not made. he reminds atticus in the letter that if he had not written through so long an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. it had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and so many ears were on the watch. he writes again some days later, and assures atticus that cæsar thinks well of his "lictors!" oh those eternal lictors! "but what have i to do with lictors," he says, "who am almost ordered to leave the shores of italy?"[ ] and then cæsar had sent angry messages. cato and metellus had been said to have come home. cæsar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away. it was clearly manifest to every man alive now that cæsar was the actual master of italy. during the whole of this winter he is on terms with terentia, but he writes to her in the coldest strain. there are many letters to terentia, more in number than we have ever known before, but they are all of the same order. i translate one here to show the nature of his correspondence: "if you are well, i am so also. the times are such that i expect to hear nothing from yourself, and on my part have nothing to write. nevertheless, i look for your letters, and i write to you when a messenger is going to start. voluminia ought to have understood her duty to you, and should have done what she did do better. there are other things, however, which i care for more, and grieve for more bitterly--as those have wished who have driven me from my own opinion."[ ] again he writes to atticus, deploring that he should have been born--so great are his troubles--or, at any rate, that one should have been born after him from the same mother. his brother has addressed him in anger--his brother, who has desired to make his own affairs straight with cæsar, and to swim down the stream pleasantly with other noble romans of the time. i can imagine that with quintus cicero there was nothing much higher than the wealth which the day produced. i can fancy that he was possessed of intellect, and that when it was fair sailing with our consul it was all well with quintus cicero; but i can see also that, when cæsar prevailed, it was occasionally a matter of doubt with quintus whether his brother should not be abandoned among other things which were obtrusive and vain. he could not quite do it. his brother compelled him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the oligarchy. then cæsar fell, and quintus saw that the matter was right; but cæsar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore quintus after all turned out to be in the wrong. i fancy that i can see how things went ill with quintus. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cæsar, after the battle of the pharsalia, had followed pompey, but had failed to catch him. when he came upon the scene in the roadstead at alexandria, the murder had been effected. he then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. it is not a part of my plan to write the life of cæsar, nor to meddle with it further than i am driven to do in seeking after the sources of cicero's troubles and aspiration; but the story must be told in a few words. cæsar went from alexandria into asia, and, flashing across syria, beat pharnaces, and then wrote his famous "veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. surely he could not have written them and sent them home! even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of cæsar have so tarnished itself. he hurried back to italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. simply by addressing them as "quirites," instead of "milites," he appalled them into obedience. on this journey into italy he came across cicero. if he could be cruel without a pang--to the arranging the starvation of a townful of women, because they as well as the men must eat--he could be magnificent in his treatment of a cicero. he had hunted to the death his late colleague in the triumvirate, and had felt no remorse; though there seems to have been a moment when in egypt the countenance of him who had so long been his superior had touched him. he had not ordered pompey's death. on no occasion had he wilfully put to death a roman whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. he had followed the convictions of his countrymen, who had ever spared themselves. to him a thousand gauls, or men of eastern origin, were as nothing to a single roman nobleman. whether there can be said to have been clemency in such a course it is useless now to dispute. to cæsar it was at any rate policy as well. if by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, cæsar was clement. he had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to make common cause--in little things--with those who lose. we can see cæsar getting down from his chariot when cicero came to meet him, and, throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant conversation; and we can fancy him talking to cicero pleasantly of the greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show in comparison with those of cæsar's. "cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea linguæ," we can hear cæsar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing of his now undoubted literary excellence. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] but to go back a little; we shall find cicero still waiting at brundisium during august and september. in the former of these months he reminds atticus that "he cannot at present sell anything, but that he can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall fall upon him."[ ] from this may be deduced a state of things very different to that above described, but not contradicting it. i gather from this unintelligible letter, written, as he tells us, for the most part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under some forfeiture of the law to cæsar. it may well be that, as one adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be salable. if that were so, cæsar in some of these bland moments must have revoked the sentence--and at such a time all sentences were within cæsar's control--because we know that on his return cicero's villas were again within his own power. but he is in sad trouble now about his wife. he has written to her to send him twelve thousand sesterces, which he had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is left. if she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she do if it were larger?[ ] then follow two letters for his wife--a mere word in each--not a sign of affection nor of complaint in either of them. in the first he tells her she shall be informed when cæsar is coming--in the latter, that he is coming. when he has resolved whether to go and meet him or to remain where he is till cæsar shall have come upon him, he will again write. then there are three to atticus, and two more to terentia. in the first he tells him that cæsar is expected. some ten or twelve days afterward he is still full of grief as to his brother quintus, whose conduct has been shameful. cæsar he knows is near at hand, but he almost hopes that he will not come to brundisium. in the third, as indeed he has in various others, he complains bitterly of the heat: it is of such a nature that it adds to his grief. shall he send word to cæsar that he will wait upon him nearer to rome?[ ] he is evidently in a sad condition. quintus, it must be remembered, had been in gaul with cæsar, and had seen the rising sun. on his return to italy he had not force enough to declare a political conviction, and to go over to cæsar boldly. he had indeed become lieutenant to his brother when in cilicia, having left cæsar for the purpose. he afterward went with his brother to the pharsalus, assuring the elder cicero that they two would still be of the same party. then the great catastrophe had come, when cicero returned from that wretched campaign to brundisium, and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement. quintus followed cæsar into asia with his son, and there pleaded his own cause with him at the expense of his brother. of cæsar we must all admit that, though indifferent to the shedding of blood, arrogant, without principle in money and without heart in love, he was magnificent, and that he injured none from vindictive motives. he passed on, leaving quintus cicero, who as a soldier had been true to him, without, as we can fancy, many words. cicero afterward interceded for his brother who had reviled him, and quintus will ever after have to bear the stain of his treachery. then came the two letters for his wife, with just a line in each. if her messenger should arrive, he will send her word back as to what she is to do. after an interval of nearly a month, there is the other--ordering, in perfectly restored good-humor, that the baths shall be ready at the tusculan villa: "let the baths be all ready, and everything fit for the use of guests; there will probably be many of them."[ ] it is evident that cæsar has passed on in a good-humor, and has left behind him glad tidings, such as should ever brighten the feet of the conqueror. it is singular that, with a correspondence such as that of cicero's, of which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have been nothing left to us from that friend himself. it must have been the case, as middleton suggests, that atticus, when cicero was dead, had the handling of the entire ms., and had withdrawn his own; either that, or else cicero and atticus mutually agreed to the destruction of their joint labors, and atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing well the value of the documents he preserved. that there is no letter from a woman--not even a line to cicero from his dear daughter--is much to be regretted. and yet there are letters--many from cælius, who is thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger atticus--and from various romans of the day. when we come to the latter days of his life, in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to plancus and others as to their supposed duty to the state, they become numerous. there are ten such from plancus, and nine from decimus brutus; and there is a whole mass of correspondence with marcus brutus--to be taken for what it is worth. with a view to history, they are doubtless worth much; but as throwing light on cicero's character, except as to the vigor that was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. how is it that a correspondence, which is for its main purpose so full, should have fallen so short in many of its details? there is no word, no allusion derogatory to atticus in these letters, which have come to us from cælius and others. we have atticus left to us for our judgment, free from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the insinuations of others. of whom would we wish that the familiar letters of another about ourselves should be published? would those objectionable epithets as to pompey have been allowed to hold their ground had pompey lived and had they been in his possession? but, in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias in favor of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of them. we know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up these affairs of the moment and turned them into ridicule--then as they do now. we discount the "hierosolymarius." we do not quite believe that bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen; but we think that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself; at any rate, to tell no untruth against himself. we think that cicero of all men may be left to do so--cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. i maintain that it has been that very deftness which has done him all the harm. not one of those letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have been judged after two thousand years. "no," will say my readers, "that is their value; they would not have otherwise been true, as they are. we should not then have learned his secrets." i reply, "it is a hard bargain to make: others do not make such bargains on the same terms. but be sure, at any rate, that you read them aright: be certain that you make the necessary allowances. do not accuse him of falsehood because he unsays on a tuesday the words he said on the monday. bear in mind on his behalf all the temporary ill that humanity is heir to. could you, living at brundisium during the summer months, 'when you were scarcely able to endure the weight of the sun,'[ ] have had all your intellects about you, and have been able always to choose your words?" no, indeed! these letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. his anger boils over here, and he is hot. here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. he is weak in body just now, and worn out in spirit; he is hopeless, almost to the brink of despair; he is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is purposely enigmatic--all of which require an atticus who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them--who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent! because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready to sell his country! during the whole of the last year he must have been tortured by various turns of mind. had he done well in joining himself to pompey? and having done so, had he done well in severing himself, immediately on pompey's death, from the pompeians? looking at the matter as from a stand-point quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in both. he could not without treachery have gone over to cæsar when cæsar had come to the gate of italy, and, as it were with a blast of his trumpet, had demanded the consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions, and the continuance of his military power. "let pompey put down his, and i will put down mine," he had said. had pompey put down his, pompey and cicero, cato and brutus, and bibulus would all have had to walk at the heels of cæsar. when pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. cicero was bound to go to pharsalia. but when, by pompey's incompetence, cæsar was the victor; when pompey had fallen at the nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the empire, such as young pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to asia, some to illyricum, some to spain, and more to africa--as a herd of deer shall be seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jaws already dripping with blood--was cicero then to take his part with any of them? i hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. he went back to italy, and there he waited till the conqueror should come. it must have been very bitter. never to have become great has nothing in it of bitterness for a noble spirit. what matters it to the unknown man whether a cæsar or a pompey is at the top of all things? or if it does matter--as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that--which way he is turned, though there may be inner regrets that cæsar should become the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that pompey's hands should be untrammelled, who sees them? i can walk down to my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless i be stirred to foolish wrath by the pride of some one equally vain, can enjoy myself amid the festivities of the hour. it is but a little affair to me. if it come in my way to do a thing, i will do my best, and there is an end of it. the sense of responsibility is not there, nor the grievous weight of having tried but failed to govern mankind. but to have clung to high places; to have sat in the highest seat of all with infinite honor; to have been called by others, and, worse still, to have called myself, the savior of my country; to have believed in myself that i was sufficient, that i alone could do it, that i could bring back, by my own justice and integrity, my erring countrymen to their former simplicity--and then to have found myself fixed in a little town, just in italy, waiting for the great conqueror, who though my friend in things social was opposed to me body and soul as to rules of life--that, i say, must have been beyond the bitterness of death. during this year he had made himself acquainted with the details of that affair, whatever it might be, which led to his divorce soon after his return to rome. he had lived about thirty years with his wife, and the matter could not but have been to him the cause of great unhappiness. terentia was not only the mother of his children, but she had been to him also the witness of his rise in life and the companion of his fall. he was one who would naturally learn to love those with whom he was conversant. he seems to have projected himself out of his own time into those modes of thought which have come to us with christianity, and such a separation from this woman after an intercourse of so many years must have been very grievous to him. all married romans underwent divorce quite as a matter of course. there were many reasons. a young wife is more agreeable to the man's taste than one who is old. a rich wife is more serviceable than a poor. a new wife is a novelty. a strange wife is an excitement. a little wife is a relief to one overburdened with the flesh; a buxom wife to him who has become tired of the pure spirit. xanthippe asks too much, while griselda is too tranquil. and then, as a man came up in the world, causes for divorce grew without even the trouble of having to search for faults. cæsar required that his wife should not be ill spoken of, and therefore divorced her. pompey cemented the triumvirate with a divorce. we cannot but imagine that, when men had so much the best of it in the affairs of life, a woman had always the worst of it in these enforced separations. but as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to roman ladies. no woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. terentia when divorced from cicero was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honor of having married sallust after her break with cicero. they say that she married twice again after sallust's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of augustus, she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. divorce at any rate did not kill her. but we cannot conceive but that so sudden a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to cicero. we shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward, and then, too, divorcing her; but here we have only to deal with the torments terentia inflicted on him. what those torments were we do not know, and shall never learn unless by chance the lost letters of atticus should come to light. but the general idea has been that the lady had, in league with a freedman and steward in her service, been guilty of fraud against her husband. i do not know that we have much cause to lament the means of ascertaining the truth. it is sad to find that the great men with whose name we are occupied have been made subject to those "whips and scorns of time" which we thought to be peculiar to ourselves, because they have stung us. terentia, cicero's wife two thousand years ago, sent him word that he had but £ left in his box at home, when he himself knew well that there must be something more. that would have gone for nothing had there not been other things before that, many other things. so, in spite of his ordering at her hands the baths and various matters to be got ready for his friends at his tusculum, a very short time after his return there he had divorced her. during this last year he had been engaged on what has since been found to be the real work of his life. he had already written much, but had written as one who had been anxious to fill up vacant spaces of time as they came in his way. from this time forth he wrote as does one who has reconciled himself to the fact that there are no more days to be lost if he intends, before the sun be set, to accomplish an appointed task. he had already compiled the de oratore, the de republica, and the de legibus. out of the many treatises which we have from cicero's hands, these are they which are known as the works of his earlier years. he commenced the year with an inquiry, de optimo genere oratorum, which he intended as a preface to the translations which he made of the great speeches of Æschines and demosthenes, de corona. these translations are lost, though the preface remains. he then translated, or rather paraphrased the timæus of plato, of which a large proportion has come down to us, and the protagoras, of which we have lost all but a sentence or two. we have his oratoriæ partitiones, in which, in a dialogue between himself and his son, he repeats the lessons on oratory which he has given to the young man. it is a recapitulation, in short, of all that had been said on a subject which has since been made common, and which owed its origin to the work of much earlier years. it is but dull reading, but i can imagine that even in these days it may be useful to a young lawyer. there is a cynical morsel among these precepts which is worth observing, "cito enim arescit lachryma præsertim in alienis malis;"[ ] and another grandly simple, "nihil enim est aliud eloquentia nisi copiose loquens sapientia." can we fancy anything more biting than the idea that the tears caused by the ills of another soon grow dry on the orator's cheek, or more wise than that which tells us that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently? then he wrote the six paradoxes addressed to brutus--or rather he then gave them to the world, for they were surely written at an earlier date. they are short treatises on trite subjects, put into beautiful language, so as to arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their reasoning. the most remarkable is the third, in which he endeavored to show that a man cannot be wise unless he be all-wise, a doctrine which he altogether overturns in his de amicitia, written but four years afterward. cicero knew well what was true, and wrote his paradox in order to give a zest to the subject. in the fourth and the sixth are attacks upon clodius and crassus, and are here republished in what would have been the very worst taste amid the politeness of our modern times. a man now may hate and say so while his foe is still alive and strong; but with the romans he might continue to hate, and might republish the words which he had written, eight years after the death of his victim. i know nothing of cicero's which so much puts us in mind of the struggles of the modern authors to make the most of every word that has come from them, as do these paradoxes. they remind us of some writer of leading articles who gets together a small bundle of essays and then gives them to the world. each of them has done well at its time, but that has not sufficed for his ambition; therefore they are dragged out into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as though they could stand well on their own legs. but they cannot stand alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than that for which they were intended when written. chapter vii. _marcellus, ligarius, and deiotarus._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the battle of thapsus, in africa, took place in the spring of this year, and cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined not to live under cæsar's rule. if we may believe the story which, probably, hirtius has given us, in his account of the civil war in africa, and which has come down to us together with cæsar's commentaries, cato left his last instructions to some of his officers, and then took his sword into his bed with him and stabbed himself. cicero, who, in his dream of scipio, has given his readers such excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that cato must be allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. he would die rather than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him.[ ] to cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living under cæsar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable affront. the "catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets of all ages. men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked something of the courage of a man. many other romans of the time did the same thing, but to none has been given all the honor which has been allowed to cato. cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies to die away. it was but a short time before that cato had voted against the decree of the senate giving cicero his "supplication." cicero had then been much annoyed; but now cato had died fighting for the republic, and was to be forgiven all personal offences. cicero wrote a eulogy of cato which was known by the name of cato, and was much discussed at rome at the time. it has now been lost. he sent it to cæsar, having been bold enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in cato's praise. we may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous--had he not been governed by that feeling of "de mortuis nil nisi bonum," which is now common to us all--he might have said much that was not good. cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the stoics--a mode of living altogether antagonistic to cicero's views. but we know that he praised cato to the full--and we know also that cæsar nobly took the praise in good part, as coming from cicero, and answered it in an anti-cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from cicero. we can understand how cæsar should have shown that the rigid stoic was not a man likely to be of service to his country. there came up at this period a question which made itself popular among the "optimates" of rome, as to the return of marcellus. the man of como, whom marcellus had flogged, will be remembered--the roman citizen who had first been made a citizen by cæsar. this is mentioned now not as the cause of cæsar's enmity, who did not care much probably for his citizen, but as showing the spirit of the man. he, marcellus, had been consul four years since, b.c. , and had then endeavored to procure cæsar's recall from his province. he was one of the "optimates," an oligarch altogether opposed to cæsar, a roman nobleman of fairly good repute, who had never bent to cæsar, but had believed thoroughly in his order, and had thought, till the day of pharsalia came, that the consuls and the senate would rule forever. the day of pharsalia did come, and marcellus went into voluntary banishment in mitylene. after pharsalia, cæsar's clemency began to make itself known. there was a pardon for almost every roman who had fought against him, and would accept it. no spark of anger burnt in cæsar's bosom, except against one or two, of whom marcellus was one. he was too wise to be angry with men whose services he might require. it was cæsar's wish not to drive out the good men but to induce them to remain in rome, living by the grace of his favor. marcellus had many friends, and it seems that a public effort was made to obtain for him permission to come back to rome. we must imagine that cæsar had hitherto refused, probably with the idea of making his final concession the more valuable. at last the united senators determined to implore his grace, and the consulares rose one after another in their places, and all, with one exception,[ ] asked that marcellus might be allowed to return. cicero, however, had remained silent to the last. there must have been, i think, some plot to get cicero on to his legs. he had gone to meet cæsar at brundisium when he came back from the east, had returned to rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant friendship with cæsar's friends. pardon seems to have been accorded to cicero without an effort. as far as he was concerned, that hostile journey to dyrrachium--for he did not travel farther toward the camp--counted for nothing with cæsar. he was allowed to live in peace, at rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as cæsar might rule. the idea seems to have been that he should gradually become absorbed among cæsar's followers. but hitherto he had remained silent. it was now six years since his voice had been heard in rome. he had spoken for milo--or had intended to speak--and, in the same affair, for munatius plancus, and for saufeius, b.c. . he had then been in his fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such a period of his life would not be broken. it was manifestly his intention not to speak again, at any rate in the senate; though the threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as meaning much. such threats from statesmen depend generally on the wishes of other men. but he held his place in the senate, and occasionally attended the debates. when this affair of marcellus came on, and all the senators of consular rank--excepting only volcatius and cicero--had risen, and had implored cæsar in a few words to condescend to be generous; when claudius marcellus had knelt at cæsar's feet to ask for his brother's liberty, and cæsar himself, after reminding them of the bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the prayers of the senate, then cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in the speech which is still extant. that used to be the story till there came the german critic wolf, who at the beginning of this century told us that cicero did not utter the words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. according to wolf, it would be doing cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable of having used such words, which are not latin, and which were probably written by some ignoramus in the time of tiberius. such a verdict might have been taken as fatal--for wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism are acknowledged--in spite of la harpe, the french scholar and critic, who has named the marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with the eulogistic speeches of isocrates. the praise of la harpe was previous to the condemnation of wolf, and we might have been willing to accede to the german as being the later and probably the more accurate. mr. long, the british editor of the orations--mr. long, who has so loudly condemned the four speeches supposed to have been made after cicero's return from exile--gives us no certain guidance. mr. long, at any rate, has not been so disgusted by the tiberian latin as to feel himself bound to repudiate it. if he can read the pro marcello, so can i, and so, my reader, might you do probably without detriment. but these differences among the great philologic critics tend to make us, who are so infinitely less learned, better contented with our own lot. i, who had read the pro marcello without stumbling over its halting latinity, should have felt myself crushed when i afterward came across wolf's denunciations, had i not been somewhat comforted by la harpe. but when i found that mr. long, in his introduction to the piece, though he discusses wolf's doctrine, still gives to the orator the advantage, as it may be, of his "imprimatur," i felt that i might go on, and not be ashamed of myself.[ ] this is the story that has now to be told of the speech pro marcello. at the time the matter ended very tragically. as soon as cæsar had yielded, cicero wrote to marcellus giving him strong reasons for coming home. marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. he thanks cicero shortly; but, with kindly dignity, he declines. "with the comforts of the city i can well dispense," he says.[ ] then cicero urges him again and again, using excellent arguments for his return--which at length prevail. in the spring of the next year marcellus, on his way back to rome, is at athens. there servius sulpicius spends a day with him; but, just as sulpicius is about to pass on, there comes a slave to him who tells him that marcellus has been murdered. his friend magius chilo had stabbed him overnight, and had then destroyed himself. it was said that chilo had asked marcellus to pay his debts for him, and that marcellus had refused. it seems to be more probable that chilo had his own reasons for not choosing that his friend should return to rome. looking back at my own notes on the speech--it would make with us but a ten minutes' after-dinner speech--i see that it is said "that it is chiefly remarkable for the beauty of the language, and the abjectness of the praise of cæsar." this was before i had heard of wolf. as to the praise, i doubt whether it should be called abject, regard being had to the feelings of the moment in which it was delivered. cicero had risen to thank cæsar--on whose breath the recall of marcellus depended--for his unexpected courtesy. in england we should not have thanked cæsar as cicero did: "o cæsar, there is no flood of eloquence, no power of the tongue or of the pen, no richness of words, which may emblazon, or even dimly tell the story of your great deeds."[ ] such language is unusual with us--as it would also be unusual to abuse our pisos and our vatiniuses, as did cicero. it was the southerner and the roman who spoke to southerners and to romans. but, undoubtedly, there was present to the mind of cicero the idea of saying words which cæsar might receive with pleasure. he was dictator, emperor, lord of all things--king. cicero should have remained away, as marcellus had done, were he not prepared to speak after this fashion. he had long held aloof from speech. at length the time had come when he was, as it were, caught in a trap, and compelled to be eloquent. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the silence had been broken, and in the course of the autumn he spoke on behalf of ligarius, beseeching the conqueror to be again merciful. this case was by no means similar to that of marcellus, who was exiled by no direct forfeiture of his right to live in italy, but who had expatriated himself. in this case ligarius had been banished with others; but it seems that the punishment had been inflicted on him, not from the special ill-will of cæsar, but from the malice of certain enemies who, together with ligarius, had found themselves among pompey's followers when cæsar crossed the rubicon. ligarius had at this time been left as acting governor in africa. in the confusion of the times an unfortunate pompeian named varus had arrived in africa, and to him, as being superior in rank, ligarius had given up the government. varus had then gone, leaving ligarius still acting, and one tubero had come with his son, and had demanded the office. ligarius had refused to give it up, and the two tuberos had departed, leaving the province in anger, and had fought at the pharsalus. after the battle they made their peace with cæsar, and in the scramble that ensued ligarius was banished. now the case was brought into the courts, in which cæsar sat as judge. the younger tubero accused ligarius, and cicero defended him. it seems that, having been enticed to open his mouth on behalf of marcellus, he found himself launched again into public life. but how great was the difference from his old life! it is not to the judices, or patres conscripti, or to the quirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to cæsar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise. once again he does the same thing when pleading for deiotarus, the king of galatia, and it is impossible to deny, as we read the phrases, that the orator sinks in our esteem. it is not so much that we judge him to be small, as that he has ceased to be great. he begins his speech for ligarius by saying, "my kinsman tubero has brought before you, o cæsar, a new crime, and one not heard of up to this day--that ligarius has been in africa."[ ] the commencement would have been happy enough if it had not been addressed to cæsar; for he was addressing a judge not appointed by any form, but self-assumed--a judge by military conquest. we cannot imagine how cæsar found time to sit there, with his legions round him still under arms, and spain not wholly conquered. but he did do so, and allowed himself to be persuaded to the side of mercy. ligarius came back to rome, and was one of those who plunged their daggers into him. but i cannot think that he should have been hindered by this trial and by cæsar's mercy from taking such a step, if by nothing else. brutus and cassius also stabbed him. the question to be decided is whether, on public grounds, these men were justified in killing him--a question as to which i should be premature in expressing an opinion here. there are some beautiful passages in this oration. "who is there, i ask," he says, "who alleges ligarius to have been in fault because he was in africa? he does so who himself was most anxious to be there, and now complains that he was refused admittance by ligarius, he who was in arms against cæsar. what was your sword doing, tubero, in that pharsalian army? whom did you seek to kill then? what was the meaning of your weapon? what was it that you desired so eagerly, with those eyes and hands, with that passion in your heart? i press him too much; the young man seems to be disturbed. i will speak of myself, then, for i also was in that army."[ ] this was in cæsar's presence, and no doubt told with cæsar. we were all together in the same cause--you, and i, and ligarius. why should you and i be pardoned and not ligarius? the oration is for the most part simply eulogistic. at any rate it was successful, and became at rome, for the time, extremely popular. he writes about it early in the following year to atticus, who has urged him to put something into it, before it was published, to mitigate the feeling against tubero. cicero says in his reply to atticus that the copies have already been given to the public, and that, indeed, he is not anxious on tubero's behalf. early in this year he had divorced terentia, and seems at once to have married publilia. publilia had been his ward, and is supposed to have had a fortune of her own. he explains his own motives very clearly in a letter to his friend plancius. in these wretched times he would have formed no new engagement, unless his own affairs had been as sad for him as were those of the republic; but when he found that they to whom his prosperity should have been of the greatest concern were plotting against him within his own walls, he was forced to strengthen himself against the perfidy of his old inmates by placing his trust in new.[ ] it must have been very bad with him when he had recourse to such a step as this. shortly after this letter just quoted had been written, he divorced publilia also--we are told because publilia had treated tullia with disrespect. we have no details on the subject, but we can well understand the pride of the young woman who declined to hear the constant praise of her step-daughter, and thought herself to be quite as good as tullia. at any rate, she was sent away quickly from her new home, having remained there only long enough to have made not the most creditable episode in cicero's life. at this time dolabella, who assumed the consulship upon cæsar's death, and hirtius, who became consul during the next year, used to attend upon cicero and take lessons in elocution. so at least the story has been told, from a letter written in this year to his friend poetus; but i should imagine that the lessons were not much in earnest. "why do you talk to me of your tunny-fish, your pilot-fish, and your cheese and sardines? hirtius and dolabella preside over my banquets, and i teach them in return to make speeches."[ ] from this we may learn that cæsar's friends were most anxious to be also cicero's friends. it may be said that dolabella was his son-in-law; but dolabella was at this moment on the eve of being divorced. it was in spite of his marriage that dolabella still clung to cicero. all cæsar's friends in rome did the same; so that i am disposed to think that for this year, just till tullia's death, he was falling, not into a happy state, but to the passive contentment of those who submit themselves to be ruled over by a single master. he had struggled all his life, and now finding that he must yield, he thought that he might as well do so gracefully. it was so much easier to listen to the state secrets of balbus, and hear from oppius how the money was spent, and then to dine with hirtius or dolabella, than to sit ever scowling at home, as cato would have done had cato lived. but with his feelings about the republic at heart, how sad it must have been! cato was gone, and pompey, and bibulus; and marcellus was either gone or just about to go. old age was creeping on. it was better to write philosophy, in friendship with cæsar's friends, than to be banished again whither he could not write it at all. much, no doubt, he did in preparation for all those treatises which the next eighteen months were to bring forth. cæsar, just at the end of the year, had been again called to spain, b.c. , to quell the last throbbings of the pompeians, and then to fight the final battle of munda. it would seem odd to us that so little should have been said about such an event by cicero, and that the little should depend on the education of his son, were it not that if we look at our own private letters, written to-day to our friends, we find the same omission of great things. to cicero the doings of his son were of more immediate moment than the doings of cæsar. the boy had been anxious to enlist for the spanish war. quintus, his cousin, had gone, and young marcus was anxious to flutter his feathers beneath the eyes of royalty. at his age it was nothing to him that he had been taken to pharsalia and made to bear arms on the opposite side. cæsar had become cæsar since he had learned to form his opinion on politics, and on cæsar's side all things seemed to be bright and prosperous. the lad was anxious to get away from his new step-mother, and asked his father for the means to go with the army to spain. it appears by cicero's letter to atticus on the subject[ ] that, in discussing the matter with his son, he did yield. these roman fathers, in whose hands we are told were the very lives of their sons, seem to have been much like christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. the lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. young quintus was older, and had been already able to do something to push himself with cæsar's friends. "sed tamen permisi"--"nevertheless, i told him he might go," said cicero, sadly. but he did not go. he was allured, probably, by the promise of a separate establishment at athens, whither he was sent to study with cratippus. we find another proof of cicero's wealth in the costliness of his son's household at athens, as premeditated by the father. he is to live as do the sons of other great noblemen. he even names the young noblemen with whom he is to live. bibulus was of the calpurnian "gens." acidinus of the manlian, and messala of the valerian, and these are the men whom cicero, the "novus homo" from arpinum, selects as those who shall not live at a greater cost than his son.[ ] "he will not, however, at athens want a horse." why not? why should not a young man so furnished want a horse at athens? "there are plenty here at home for the road," says cicero. so young cicero is furnished, and sent forth to learn philosophy and greek. but no one has essayed to tell us why he should not want the horse. young cicero when at athens did not do well. he writes home in the coming year, to tiro, two letters which have been preserved for us, and which seem to give us but a bad account, at any rate, of his sincerity. "the errors of his youth," he says, "have afflicted him grievously." not only is his mind shocked, but his ears cannot bear to hear of his own iniquity.[ ] "and now," he says, "i will give you a double joy, to compensate all the anxiety i have occasioned you. know that i live with cratippus, my master, more like a son than a pupil. i spend all my days with him, and very often part of the night." but he seems to have had some wit. tiro has been made a freedman, and has bought a farm for himself. young marcus--from whom tiro has asked for some assistance which marcus cannot give him--jokes with him as to his country life, telling him that he sees him saving the apple-pips at dessert. of the subsequent facts of the life of young marcus we do not know much. he did not suffer in the proscriptions of antony and augustus, as did his father and uncle and his cousin. he did live to be chosen as consul with augustus, and had the reputation of a great drinker. for this latter assertion we have only the authority of pliny the elder, who tells us an absurd story, among the wonders of drinking which he adduces.[ ] middleton says a word or two on behalf of the young cicero, which are as well worthy of credit as anything else that has been told. one last glance at him which we can credit is given in that letter to tiro, and that we admit seems to us to be hypocritical. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in the spring of the year cicero lost his daughter tullia. we have first a letter of his to lepta, a man with whom he had become intimate, saying that he had been kept in rome by tullia's confinement, and that now he is still detained, though her health is sufficiently confirmed, by the expectation of obtaining from dolabella's agents the first repayment of her dowry. the repayment of the divorced lady's marriage portion was a thing of every-day occurrence in rome, when she was allowed to take away as much as she had brought with her. cicero, however, failed to get back tullia's dowry. but he writes in good spirits. he does not think that he cares to travel any more. he has a house at rome better than any of his villas in the country, and greater rest than in the most desert region. his studies are now never interrupted. he thinks it probable that lepta will have to come to him before he can be induced to go to lepta. in the mean time let the young lepta take care and read his hesiod.[ ] then he writes in the spring to atticus a letter from antium, and we first hear that tullia is dead. she had seemed to recover from childbirth; but her strength did not suffice, and she was no more.[ ] a boy had been born, and was left alive. in subsequent letters we find that cicero gives instructions concerning him, and speaks of providing for him in his will.[ ] but of the child we hear nothing more, and must surmise that he also died. of tullia's death we have no further particulars; but we may well imagine that the troubles of the world had been very heavy on her. the little stranger was being born at the moment of her divorce from her third husband. she was about thirty-two years of age, and it seems that cicero had taken consolation in her misfortunes from the expected pleasure of her companionship. she was now dead, and he was left alone. she had died in february, and we know nothing of the first outbreak of his sorrow. it appears that he at first buried himself for a while in a villa belonging to atticus, near rome, and that he then retreated to his own at astura. from thence, and afterward from antium, there are a large number of letters, all dealing with the same subject. he declares himself to be inconsolable; but he does take consolation from two matters--from his books on philosophy, and from an idea which occurs to him that he will perpetuate the name of tullia forever by the erection of a monument that shall be as nearly immortal as stones and bricks can make it. his letters to atticus at this time are tedious to the general reader, because he reiterates so often his instructions as to the purchase of the garden near rome in which the monument is to be built; but they are at the same time touching and natural. "nothing has been written," he says, "for the lessening of grief which i have not read at your house; but my sorrow breaks through it all."[ ] then he tells atticus that he too has endeavored to console himself by writing a treatise on consolation. "whole days i write; not that it does any good." in that he was wrong. he could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied himself continually. "totos dies scribo." by doing so, he did contrive not to break his heart. in a subsequent letter he says, "reading and writing do not soften it, but they deaden it."[ ] on the appian way, a short distance out of rome, the traveller is shown a picturesque ancient building, of enormous strength, called the mole of cæcilia metella. it is a castle in size, but is believed to have been the tomb erected to the memory of cæcilia, the daughter of metellus creticus, and the wife of crassus the rich. history knows of her nothing more, and authentic history hardly knows so much of the stupendous monument. there it stands, however, and is supposed to be proof of what might be done for a roman lady in the way of perpetuating her memory. she was, at any rate, older than tullia, having been the wife of a man older than tullia's father. if it be the case that this monument be of the date named, it proves to us, at least, that the notion of erecting such monuments was then prevalent. some idea of a similar kind--of a monument equally stupendous, and that should last as long--seems to have taken a firm hold of cicero's mind. he has read all the authors he could find on the subject, and they agree that it shall be done in the fashion he points out. he does not, he says, consult atticus on that matter, nor on the architecture, for he has already settled on the design of one cluatius. what he wants atticus to do for him now is to assist him in buying the spot on which it shall be built. many gardens near rome are named. if drusus makes a difficulty, atticus must see damasippus. then there are those which belong to sica and to silius! but at last the matter dies away, and even the gardens are not bought. we are led to imagine that atticus has been opposed to the monument from first to last, and that the immense cost of constructing such a temple as cicero had contemplated is proved to him to be injudicious. there is a charming letter written to him at this time by his friend sulpicius, showing the great feeling entertained for him. but, as i have said before, i doubt whether that or any other phrases of consolation were of service to him. it was necessary for him to wait and bear it, and the more work that he did when he was bearing it, the easier it was borne. lucceius and torquatus wrote to him on the same subject, and we have his answers. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in september cæsar returned from spain, having at last conquered the republic. all hope for liberty was now gone. atticus had instigated cicero to write something to cæsar as to his victories--something that should be complimentary, and at the same time friendly and familiar; but cicero had replied that it was impossible. "when i feel," he said, "that to draw the breath of life is in itself base, how base would be my assent to what has been done![ ] but it is not only that. there are not words in which such a letter ever can be written. do you not know that aristotle, when he addressed himself to alexander, wrote to a youth who had been modest; but then, when he had once heard himself called king, he became proud, cruel, and unrestrained? how, then, shall i now write in terms which shall suffice for his pride to the man who has been equalled to romulus?" it was true; cæsar had now returned inflated with such pride that brutus, and cassius, and casca could no longer endure him. he came back, and triumphed over the five lands in which he had conquered not the enemies of rome, but rome itself. he triumphed nominally over the gauls, the egyptians, the asiatics of pontus, over the africans, and the spaniards; but his triumph was, in truth, over the republic. there appears from suetonius to have been five separate triumphal processions, each at the interval of a few days.[ ] amid the glory of the first vercingetorix was strangled. to the glory of the third was added--as suetonius tells us--these words, "veni, vidi, vici," displayed on a banner. this i think more likely than that he had written them on an official despatch. we are told that the people of rome refused to show any pleasure, and that even his own soldiers had enough in them of the roman spirit to feel resentment at his assumption of the attributes of a king. cicero makes but little mention of these gala doings in his letters. he did not see them, but wrote back word to atticus, who had described it all. "an absurd pomp," he says, alluding to the carriage of the image of cæsar together with that of the gods; and he applauds the people who would not clap their hands, even in approval of the goddess of victory, because she had shown herself in such bad company.[ ] there are, however, but three lines on the subject, showing how little there is in that statement of cornelius nepos that he who had read cicero's letters carefully wanted but little more to be well informed of the history of the day. cæsar was not a man likely to be turned away from his purpose of ruling well by personal pride--less likely, we should say, than any self-made despot dealt with in history. he did make efforts to be as he was before. he endeavored to live on terms of friendship with his old friends; but the spirit of pride which had taken hold of him was too much for him. power had got possession of him, and he could not stand against it. it was sad to see the way in which it compelled him to make himself a prey to the conspirators, were it not that we learn from history how impossible it is that a man should raise himself above the control of his fellow-men without suffering. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] during these days cicero kept himself in the country, giving himself up to his philosophical writings, and indulging in grief for tullia. efforts were repeatedly made to bring him to rome, and he tells atticus in irony that if he is wanted there simply as an augur, the augurs have nothing to do with the opening of temples. in the same letter he speaks of an interview he has just had with his nephew quintus, who had come to him in his disgrace. he wants to go to the parthian war, but he has not money to support him. then cicero uses, as he says, the eloquence of atticus, and holds his tongue.[ ] we can imagine how very unpleasant the interview must have been. cicero, however, decides that he will go up to the city, so that he may have atticus with him on his birthday. this letter was written toward the close of the year, and cicero's birthday was the d of january. he then goes to rome, and undertakes to plead the cause of deiotarus, the king of galatia, before cæsar. this very old man had years ago become allied with pompey, and, as far as we can judge, been singularly true to his idea of roman power. he had seen pompey in all his glory when pompey had come to fight mithridates. the tetrarchs in asia minor, of whom this deiotarus was one, had a hard part to play when the romans came among them. they were forced to comply, either with their natural tendency to resist their oppressors, or else were obliged to fleece their subjects in order to satisfy the cupidity of the invaders. we remember ariobarzanes, who sent his subjects in gangs to rome to be sold as slaves in order to pay pompey the interest on his debt. deiotarus had similarly found his best protection in being loyal to pompey, and had in return been made king of armenia by a decree of the roman senate. he joined pompey at the pharsalus, and, when the battle was over, returned to his own country to look for further forces wherewith to aid the republic. unfortunately for him, cæsar was the conqueror, and deiotarus found himself obliged to assist the conqueror with his troops. cæsar seems never to have forgiven him his friendship for pompey. he was not a roman, and was unworthy of forgiveness. cæsar took away from him the kingdom of armenia, but left him still titular king of galatia. but this enmity was known in the king's own court, and among his own family. his own daughter's son, one castor, became desirous of ruining his grandfather, and brought a charge against the king. cæsar had been the king's compelled guest in his journey in quest of pharnaces, and had passed quickly on. now, when the war was over and cæsar had returned from his five conquered nations, castor came forward with his accusation. deiotarus, according to his grandson, had endeavored to murder cæsar while cæsar was staying with him. at this distance of time and place we cannot presume to know accurately what the circumstances were; but it appears to have been below the dignity of cæsar to listen to such a charge. he did do so, however, and heard more than one speech on the subject delivered in favor of the accused. brutus spoke on behalf of the aged king, and spoke in vain. cicero did not speak in vain, for cæsar decided that he would pronounce no verdict till he had himself been again in the east, and had there made further inquiries. he never returned to the east; but the old king lived to fight once more, and again on the losing side. he was true to the party he had taken, and ranged himself with brutus and cassius at the field of philippi. the case was tried, if tried it can be called, in cæsar's private house, in which the audience cannot have been numerous. cæsar seems to have admitted cicero to say what could be said for his friend, rather than as an advocate to plead for his client, so that no one should accuse him, cæsar, of cruelty in condemning the criminal. the speech must have occupied twenty minutes in the delivery, and we are again at a loss to conceive how cæsar should have found the time to listen to it. cicero declares that he feels the difficulty of pleading in so unusual a place--within the domestic walls of a man's private house, and without any of those accustomed supports to oratory which are to be found in a crowded law court. "but," he says, "i rest in peace when i look into your eyes and behold your countenance." the speech is full of flattery, but it is turned so adroitly that we almost forgive it.[ ] there is a passage in which cicero compliments the victor on his well-known mercy in his victories--from which we may see how much cæsar thought of the character he had achieved for himself in this particular. "of you alone, o cæsar, is it boasted that no one has fallen under your hands but they who have died with arms in their hands."[ ] all who had been taken had been pardoned. no man had been put to death when the absolute fighting was brought to an end. cæsar had given quarter to all. it is the modern, generous way of fighting. when our country is invaded, and we drive back the invaders, we do not, if victorious, slaughter their chief men. much less, when we invade a country, do we kill or mutilate all those who have endeavored to protect their own homes. cæsar has evidently much to boast, and among the italians he has caused it to be believed. it suited cicero to assert it in cæsar's ears. cæsar wished to be told of his own clemency among the men of his own country. but because cæsar boasted, and cicero was complaisant, posterity is not to run away with the boast, and call it true. for all that is great in cæsar's character i am willing to give him credit; but not for mercy; not for any of those divine gifts the loveliness of which was only beginning to be perceived in those days by some few who were in advance of their time. it was still the maxim of rome that a "supplicatio" should be granted only when two thousand of the enemy should have been left on the field. we have something still left of the pagan cruelty about us when we send triumphant words of the numbers slain on the field of battle. we cannot but remember that cæsar had killed the whole senate of the veneti, a nation dwelling on the coast of brittany, and had sold all the people as slaves, because they had detained the messengers he had sent to them during his wars in gaul. "gravius vindicandum statuit"[ ]--"he had thought it necessary to punish them somewhat severely." therefore he had killed the entire senate, and enslaved the entire people. this is only one of the instances of wholesale horrible cruelty which he committed throughout his war in gaul--of cruelty so frightful that we shudder as we think of the sufferings of past ages. the ages have gone their way, and the sufferings are lessened by increased humanity. but we cannot allow cicero's compliment to pass idly by. the "nemo nisi armatus" referred to italians, and to italians, we may take it, of the upper rank--among whom, for the sake of dramatic effect, deiotarus was placed for the occasion. this was the last of cicero's casual speeches. it was now near the end of the year, and on the ides of march following it was fated that cæsar should die. after which there was a lull in the storm for a while, and then cicero broke out into that which i have called his final scream of liberty. there came the philippics--and then the end. this speech of which i have given record as spoken pro rege deiotaro was the last delivered by him for a private purpose. forty-two he has spoken hitherto, of which something of the story has been told; the philippics of which i have got to speak are fourteen in number, making the total number of speeches which we possess to be fifty-six. but of those spoken by him we have not a half, and of those which we possess some have been declared by the great critics to be absolutely spurious. the great critics have perhaps been too hard upon them: they have all been polished. cicero himself was so anxious for his future fame that he led the way in preparing them for the press. quintilian tells us that tiro adapted them.[ ] others again have come after him and have retouched them, sometimes, no doubt, making them smoother, and striking out morsels which would naturally become unintelligible to later readers. we know what he himself did to the milo. others subsequently may have received rougher usage, but still from loving hands. bits have been lost, and other bits interpolated, and in this way have come to us the speeches which we possess. but we know enough of the history of the times, and are sufficient judges of the language, to accept them as upon the whole authentic. the great critic, when he comes upon a passage against which his very soul recoils, on the score of its halting latinity, rises up in his wrath and tears the oration to tatters, till he will have none of it. one set of objectionable words he encounters after another, till the whole seems to him to be damnable, and the oration is condemned. it has been well to allude to this, because in dealing with these orations it is necessary to point out that every word cannot be accepted as having been spoken as we find it printed. taken collectively, we may accept them as a stupendous monument of human eloquence and human perseverance. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] late in the year, on the th before the calends of january, or the st of december, there took place a little party at puteoli, the account of which interests us. cicero entertained cæsar at supper. though the date is given as above, and though december had originally been intended to signify, as it does with us, a winter month, the year, from want of proper knowledge, had run itself out of order, and the period was now that of october. the amendment of the calendar, which was made under cæsar's auspices, had not as yet been brought into use, and we must understand that october, the most delightful month of the year, was the period in question. cicero was staying at his puteolan villa, not far from baiæ, close upon the sea-shore--the corner of the world most loved by all the great romans of the day for their retreat in autumn.[ ] puteoli, we may imagine, was as pleasant as baiæ, but less fashionable, and, if all that we hear be true, less immoral. here cicero had one of his villas, and here, a few months before his death, cæsar came to visit him. he gives, in a very few lines to atticus, a graphic account of the entertainment. cæsar had sent on word to say that he was coming, so that cicero was prepared for him. but the lord of all the world had already made himself so evidently the lord, that cicero could not entertain him without certain of those inner quakings of the heart which are common to us now when some great magnate may come across our path and demand hospitality for a moment. cicero jokes at his own solicitude, but nevertheless we know that he has felt it when, on the next morning, he sent atticus an account of it. his guest has been a burden to him indeed, but still he does not regret it, for the guest behaved himself so pleasantly! we must remark that cicero did not ostensibly shake in his shoes before him. cicero had been consul, and has had to lead the senate when cæsar was probably anxious to escape himself as an undetected conspirator. cæsar has grown since, but only by degrees. he has not become, as augustus did, "facile princeps." he is aware of his own power, but aware also that it becomes him to ignore his own knowledge. and cicero is also aware of it, but conscious at the same time of a nominal equality. cæsar is now dictator, has been consul four times, and will be consul again when the new year comes on. but other romans have been dictator and consul. all of which cæsar feels on the occasion, and shows that he feels it. cicero feels it also, and endeavors, not quite successfully, to hide it. cæsar has come accompanied by troops. cicero names two thousand men--probably at random. when cicero hears that they have come into the neighborhood, he is terribly put about till one barba cassius, a lieutenant in cæsar's employment, comes and reassures him. a camp is made for the men outside in the fields, and a guard is put on to protect the villa. on the following day, about one o'clock, cæsar comes. he is shut up at the house of one philippus, and will admit no one. he is supposed to be transacting accounts with balbus. we can imagine how cicero's cooks were boiling and stewing at the time. then the great man walked down upon the sea-shore. rome was the only recognized nation in the world. the others were provinces of rome, and the rest were outlying barbaric people, hardly as yet fit to be roman provinces. and he was now lord of rome. did he think of this as he walked on the shore of puteoli--or of the ceremony he was about to encounter before he ate his dinner? he did not walk long, for at two o'clock he bathed, and heard "that story about mamurra" without moving a muscle. turn to your catullus, the th epigram, and read what cæsar had read to him on this occasion, without showing by his face the slightest feeling. it is short enough, but i cannot quote it even in a note, even in latin. who told cæsar of the foul words, and why were they read to him on this occasion? he thought but little about them, for he forgave the author and asked him afterward to supper. this was at the bath, we may suppose. he then took his siesta, and after that "[greek: emetikên] agebat." how the romans went through the daily process and lived, is to us a marvel. i think we may say that cicero did not practise it. cæsar, on this occasion, ate and drank plenteously and with pleasure. it was all well arranged, and the conversation was good of its kind, witty and pleasant. cæsar's couch seems to have been in the midst, and around him lay supping, at other tables, his freedmen, and the rest of his suite. it was all very well; but still, says cicero, he was not such a guest as you would welcome back--not one to whom you would say, "come again, i beg, when you return this way." once is enough. there were no politics talked--nothing of serious matters. cæsar had begun to find now that no use could be made of cicero for politics. he had tried that, and had given it up. philology was the subject--the science of literature and languages. cæsar could talk literature as well as cicero, and turned the conversation in that direction. cicero was apt, and took the desired part, and so the afternoon passed pleasantly, but still with a little feeling that he was glad when his guest was gone.[ ] cæsar declared, as he went, that he would spend one day at puteoli and another at baiæ. dolabella had a villa down in those parts, and cicero knows that cæsar, as he passed by dolabella's house, rode in the midst of soldiers--in state, as we should say--but that he had not done this anywhere else. he had already promised dolabella the consulship. was cicero mean in his conduct toward cæsar? up to this moment there had been nothing mean, except that roman flattery which was simply roman good manners. he had opposed him at pharsalia--or rather in macedonia. he had gone across the water--not to fight, for he was no fighting man--but to show on which side he had placed himself. he had done this, not believing in pompey, but still convinced that it was his duty to let all men know that he was against cæsar. he had resisted every attempt which cæsar had made to purchase his services. neither with pompey nor with cæsar did he agree. but with the former--though he feared that a second sulla would arise should he be victorious--there was some touch of the old republic. something might have been done then to carry on the government upon the old lines. cæsar had shown his intention to be lord of all, and with that cicero could hold no sympathy. cæsar had seen his position, and had respected it. he would have nothing done to drive such a man from rome. under these circumstances cicero consented to live at rome, or in the neighborhood, and became a man of letters. it must be remembered that up to the ides of march he had heard of no conspiracy. the two men, cæsar and cicero, had agreed to differ, and had talked of philology when they met. there has been, i think, as yet, nothing mean in his conduct. chapter viii. _cÆsar's death._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] after the dinner-party at puteoli, described in the last chapter, cicero came up to rome, and was engaged in literary pursuits. cæsar was now master and lord of everything. in january cicero wrote to his friend curio, and told him with disgust of the tomfooleries which were being carried on at the election of quæstors. an empty chair had been put down, and was declared to be the consul's chair. then it was taken away, and another chair was placed, and another consul was declared. it wanted then but a few hours to the end of the consular year--but not the less was caninius, the new consul, appointed, "who would not sleep during his consulship," which lasted but from mid-day to the evening. "if you saw all this you would not fail to weep," says cicero![ ] after this he seems to have recovered from his sorrow. we have a correspondence with poetus which always typifies hilarity of spirits. there is a discussion, of which we have but the one side, on "double entendre" and plain speaking. poetus had advocated the propriety of calling a spade a spade, and cicero shows him the inexpediency. then we come suddenly upon his letter to atticus, written on the th of april, three weeks after the fall of cæsar. mommsen endeavors to explain the intention of cæsar in the adoption of the names by which he chose to be called, and in his acceptance of those which, without his choosing, were imposed upon him.[ ] he has done it perhaps with too great precision, but he leaves upon our minds a correct idea of the resolution which cæsar had made to be king, emperor, dictator, or what not, before he started for macedonia, b.c. ,[ ] and the disinclination which moved him at once to proclaim himself a tyrant. dictator was the title which he first assumed, as being temporary, roman, and in a certain degree usual. he was dictator for an indefinite period, annually, for ten years, and, when he died, had been designated dictator for life. he had already been, for the last two years, named "imperator" for life; but that title--which i think to have had a military sound in men's ears, though it may, as mommsen says, imply also civil rule--was not enough to convey to men all that it was necessary that they should understand. till the moment of his triumph had come, and that "veni, vidi, vici" had been flaunted in the eyes of rome--till cæsar, though he had been ashamed to call himself a king, had consented to be associated with the gods--brutus, cassius, and those others, sixty in number we are told, who became the conspirators, had hardly realized the fact that the republic was altogether at an end. a bitter time had come upon them; but it was softened by the personal urbanity of the victor. but now, gradually, the truth was declaring itself, and the conspiracy was formed. i am inclined to think that shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "i do fear the people choose cæsar for their king," says brutus. "i had as lief not be, as live to be in awe of such a thing as i myself," says cassius.[ ] it had come home to them at length that cæsar was to be king, and therefore they conspired. it would be a difficult task in the present era to recommend to my readers the murderers of cæsar as honest, loyal politicians, who did for their country, in its emergency, the best that the circumstances would allow. the feeling of the world in regard to murder has so changed during the last two thousand years, that men, hindered by their sense of what is at present odious, refuse to throw themselves back into the condition of things a knowledge of which can have come to them only from books. they measure events individually by the present scale, and refuse to see that brutus should be judged by us now in reference to the judgment that was formed of it then. in an age in which it was considered wise and fitting to destroy the nobles of a barbarous community which had defended itself, and to sell all others as slaves, so that the perpetrator simply recorded the act he had done as though necessary, can it have been a base thing to kill a tyrant? was it considered base by other romans of the day? was that plea ever made even by cæsar's friends, or was it not acknowledged by them all that "brutus was an honorable man," even when they had collected themselves sufficiently to look upon him as an enemy? it appears abundantly in cicero's letters that no one dreamed of regarding them as we regard assassins now, or spoke of cæsar's death as we look upon assassination. "shall we defend the deeds of him at whose death we are rejoiced?" he says: and again, he deplores the feeling of regret which was growing in rome on account of cæsar's death, "lest it should be dangerous to those who have slain the tyrant for us."[ ] we find that quintilian, among his stock lessons in oratory, constantly refers to the old established rule that a man did a good deed who had killed a tyrant--a lesson which he had taken from the greek teachers.[ ] we are, therefore, bound to accept this murder as a thing praiseworthy according to the light of the age in which it was done, and to recognize the fact that it was so regarded by the men of the day. we are told now that cicero "hated" cæsar. there was no such hatred as the word implies. and we are told of "assassins," with an intention to bring down on the perpetrators of the deed the odium they would have deserved had the deed been done to-day; but the word has, i think, been misused. a king was abominable to roman ears, and was especially distasteful to men like cicero, brutus, and the other "optimates" who claimed to be peers. to be "primus inter pares" had been cicero's ambition--to be the leading oligarch of the day. cæsar had gradually mounted higher and still higher, but always leaving some hope--infinitesimally small at last--that he might be induced to submit himself to the republic. sulla had submitted. personally there was no hatred; but that hope had almost vanished, and therefore, judging as a roman, when the deed was done, cicero believed it to have been a glorious deed. there can be no doubt on that subject. the passages in which he praises it are too numerous for direct quotation; but there they are, interspersed through the letters and the philippics. there was no doubt of his approval. the "assassination" of cæsar, if that is to be the word used, was to his idea a glorious act done on behalf of humanity. the all-powerful tyrant who had usurped dominion over his country had been made away with, and again they might fall back upon the law. he had filched the army. he had run through various provinces, and had enriched himself with their wealth. he was above all law; he was worse than a marius or a sulla, who confessed themselves, by their open violence, to be temporary evils. cæsar was creating himself king for all time. no law had established him. no plebiscite of the nation had endowed him with kingly power. with his life in his hands, he had dared to do it, and was almost successful. it is of no purpose to say that he was right and cicero was wrong in their views as to the government of so mean a people as the romans had become. cicero's form of government, under men who were not ciceros, had been wrong, and had led to a state of things in which a tyrant might for the time be the lesser evil; but not on that account was cicero wrong to applaud the deed which removed cæsar. middleton in his life (vol. ii, p. ) gives us the opinion of suetonius on this subject, and tells us that the best and wisest men in rome supposed cæsar to have been justly killed. mr. forsyth generously abstains from blaming the deed, as to which he leaves his readers to form their own opinion. abeken expresses no opinion concerning its morality, nor does morabin. it is the critics of cicero's works who have condemned him without thinking much, perhaps, of the judgment they have given. but cicero was not in the conspiracy, nor had he even contemplated cæsar's death. assertions to the contrary have been made both lately and in former years, but without foundation. i have already alluded to some of these, and have shown that phrases in his letters have been misinterpreted. a passage was quoted by m. du rozoir--ad att., lib. x., --"i don't think that he can endure longer than six months. he must fall, even if we do nothing." how often might it be said that the murder of an english minister had been intended if the utterings of such words be taken as a testimony! he quotes again--ad att., lib. xiii., --"what good news could brutus hear of cæsar, unless that he hung himself?" this is to be taken as meditating cæsar's death, and is quoted by a french critic, after two thousand years, in proof of cicero's fatal ill-will![ ] the whole tenor of cicero's letters proves that he had never entertained the idea of cæsar's destruction. how long before the time the conspiracy may have been in existence we have no means of knowing; but we feel that cicero was not a man likely to be taken into the plot. he would have dissuaded brutus and cassius. judging from what we know of his character, we think that he would have distrusted its success. though he rejoiced in it after it was done, he would have been wretched while burdened with the secret. at any rate, we have the fact that he was not so burdened. the sight of cæsar's slaughter, when he saw it, must have struck him with infinite surprise, but we have no knowledge of what his feelings may have been when the crowd had gathered round the doomed man. cicero has left us no description of the moment in which cæsar is supposed to have gathered his toga over his face so that he might fall with dignity. it certainly is the case that when you take your facts from the chance correspondence of a man you lose something of the most touching episodes of the day. the writer passes these things by, as having been surely handled elsewhere. it is always so with cicero. the trial of milo, the passing of the rubicon, the battle of the pharsalus, and the murder of pompey are, with the death of cæsar, alike unnoticed. "i have paid him a visit as to whom we spoke this morning. nothing could be more forlorn."[ ] it is thus the next letter begins, after cæsar's death, and the person he refers to is matius, cæsar's friend; but in three weeks the world had become used to cæsar's death. the scene had passed away, and the inhabitants of rome were already becoming accustomed to his absence. but there can be no doubt as to cicero's presence at cæsar's fall. he says so clearly to atticus.[ ] morabin throws a doubt upon it. the story goes that brutus, descending from the platform on which cæsar had been seated, and brandishing the bloody dagger in his hand, appealed to cicero. morabin says that there is no proof of this, and alleges that brutus did it for stage effect. but he cannot have seen the letter above quoted, or seeing it, must have misunderstood it.[ ] it soon became evident to the conspirators that they had scotched the snake, and not killed it. cassius and others had desired that antony also should be killed, and with him lepidus. that antony would be dangerous they were sure. but marcus brutus and decimus overruled their counsels. marcus had declared that the "blood of the tyrant was all that the people required."[ ] the people required nothing of the kind. they were desirous only of ease and quiet, and were anxious to follow either side which might be able to lead them and had something to give away. but antony had been spared; and though cowed at the moment by the death of cæsar, and by the assumption of a certain dignified forbearance on the part of the conspirators, was soon ready again to fight the battle for the cæsareans. it is singular to see how completely he was cowed, and how quickly he recovered himself. mommsen finishes his history with a loud pæan in praise of cæsar, but does not tell us of his death. his readers, had they nothing else to inform them, might be led to suppose that he had gone direct to heaven, or at any rate had vanished from the world, as soon as he had made the empire perfect. he seems to have thought that had he described the work of the daggers in the senate-house he would have acknowledged the mortality of his godlike hero. we have no right to complain of his omissions. for research, for labor, and for accuracy he has produced a work almost without parallel. that he should have seen how great was cæsar because he accomplished so much, and that he should have thought cicero to be small because, burdened with scruples of justice, he did so little, is in the idiosyncrasy of the man. a cæsar was wanted, impervious to clemency, to justice, to moderation--a man who could work with any tools. "men had forgotten what honesty was. a person who refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man but as a personal foe."[ ] cæsar took money, and gave bribes, when he had the money to pay them, without a scruple. it would be absurd to talk about him as dishonest. he was above honesty. he was "supra grammaticam." it is well that some one should have arisen to sing the praises of such a man--some two or three in these latter days. to me the character of the man is unpleasant to contemplate, unimpressionable, very far from divine. there is none of the human softness necessary for love; none of the human weakness needed for sympathy. on the th of march cæsar fell. when the murder had been effected. brutus and the others concerned in it went out among the people expecting to be greeted as saviors of their country. brutus did address the populace, and was well received; but some bad feeling seems to have been aroused by hard expressions as to cæsar's memory coming from one of the prætors. for the people, though they regarded cæsar as a tyrant, and expressed themselves as gratified when told that the would-be king had been slaughtered, still did not endure to hear ill spoken of him. he had understood that it behooved a tyrant to be generous, and appealed among them always with full hands--not having been scrupulous as to his mode of filling them. then the conspirators, frightened at menacing words from the crowd, betook themselves to the capitol. why they should have gone to the capitol as to a sanctuary i do not think that we know. the capitol is that hill to a portion of which access is now had by the steps of the church of the ara coeli in front, and from the forum in the rear. on one side was the fall from the tarpeian rock down which malefactors were flung. on the top of it was the temple to jupiter, standing on the site of the present church. and it was here that brutus and cassius and the other conspirators sought for safety on the evening of the day on which cæsar had been killed. here they remained for the two following days, till on the th they ventured down into the city. on the th dolabella claimed to be consul, in compliance with cæsar's promise, and on the same day the senate, moved by antony, decreed a public funeral to cæsar. we may imagine that the decree was made by them with fainting hearts. there were many fainting hearts in rome during those days, for it became very soon apparent that the conspirators had carried their plot no farther than the death of cæsar. brutus, as far as the public service was concerned, was an unpractical, useless man. we know nothing of public work done by him to much purpose. he was filled with high ideas as to his own position among the oligarchs, and with especial notions as to what was due by rome to men of his name. he had a fierce conception of his own rights--among which to be prætor, and consul, and governor of a province were among the number. but he had taken early in life to literature and philosophy, and eschewed the crowd of "fish-ponders," such as were antony and dolabella, men prone to indulge the luxury of their own senses. his idea of liberty seems to have been much the same as cicero's--the liberty to live as one of the first men in rome; but it was not accompanied, as it was with cicero, by an innate desire to do good to those around him. to maintain the prætors, consuls, and governors so that each man high in position should win his way to them as he might be able to obtain the voices of the people, and not to leave them to be bestowed at the call of one man who had thrust himself higher than all--that seems to have been his _beau ideal_ of roman government. it was cicero's also--with the addition that when he had achieved his high place he should serve the people honestly. brutus had killed cæsar, but had spared antony, thinking that all things would fall into their accustomed places when the tyrant should be no more. but he found that cæsar had been tyrant long enough to create a lust for tyranny; and that though he might suffice to kill a king, he had no aptitude for ruling a people. it was now that those scenes took place which shakspeare has described with such accuracy--the public funeral, antony's oration, and the rising of the people against the conspirators. antony, when he found that no plan had been devised for carrying on the government, and that the men were struck by amazement at the deed they had themselves done, collected his thoughts and did his best to put himself in cæsar's place. cicero had pleaded in the senate for a general amnesty, and had carried it as far as the voice of the senate could do so. but the amnesty only intended that men should pretend to think that all should be forgotten and forgiven. there was no forgiving, as there could be no forgetting. then cæsar's will was brought forth. they could not surely dispute his will or destroy it. in this way antony got hold of the dead man's papers, and with the aid of the dead man's private secretary or amanuensis, one fabricius, began a series of most unblushing forgeries. he procured, or said that he procured, a decree to be passed confirming by law all cæsar's written purposes. such a decree he could use to any extent to which he could carry with him the sympathies of the people. he did use it to a great extent, and seems at this period to have contemplated the assumption of dictatorial power in his own hands. antony was nearly being one of the greatest rascals the world has known. the desire was there, and so was the intellect, had it not been weighted by personal luxury and indulgence. now young octavius came upon the scene. he was the great-nephew of cæsar, whose sister julia had married one marcus atius. their daughter atia had married caius octavius, and of that marriage augustus was the child. when octavius, the father, died, atia, the widow, married marcius philippus, who was consul b.c. . cæsar, having no nearer heir, took charge of the boy, and had, for the last years of his life, treated him as his son, though he had not adopted him. at this period the youth had been sent to apollonia, on the other side of the adriatic, in macedonia, to study with apollodorus, a greek tutor, and was there when he heard of cæsar's death. he was informed that cæsar had made him his heir and at once crossed over into italy with his friend agrippa. on the way up to rome he met cicero at one of his southern villas, and in the presence of the great orator behaved himself with becoming respect. he was then not twenty years old, but in the present difficulty of his position conducted himself with a caution most unlike a boy. he had only come, he said for what his great-uncle had left him; and when he found that antony had spent the money, does not appear to have expressed himself immediately in anger. he went on to rome, where he found that antony and dolabella and marcus brutus and decimus brutus and cassius were scrambling for the provinces and the legions. some of the soldiers came to him, asking him to avenge his uncle's death; but he was too prudent as yet to declare any purpose of revenge. not long after cæsar's death cicero left rome, and spent the ensuing month travelling about among his different villas. on the th of april he writes to atticus, declaring that whatever evil might befall him he would find comfort in the ides of march. in the same letter he calls brutus and the others "our heroes," and begs his friend to send him news--or if not news, then a letter without news.[ ] in the next he again calls them his heroes, but adds that he can take no pleasure in anything but in the deed that had been done. men are still praising the work of cæsar, and he laments that they should be so inconsistent. "though they laud those who had destroyed cæsar, at the same time they praise his deeds."[ ] in the same letter he tells atticus that the people in all the villages are full of joy. "it cannot be told how eager they are--how they run out to meet me, and to hear my accounts of what was done. but the senate passes no decree!"[ ] he speaks of going into greece to see his son--whom he never lived to see again--telling him of letters from the lad from athens, which, he thinks, however, may be hypocritical, though he is comforted by finding their language to be clear. he has recovered his good-humor, and can be jocose. one cluvius has left him a property at puteoli, and the house has tumbled down; but he has sent for chrysippus, an architect. but what are houses falling to him? he can thank socrates and all his followers that they have taught him to disregard such worldly things. nevertheless, he has deemed it expedient to take the advice of a certain friend as to turning the tumble-down house into profitable shape.[ ] a little later he expresses his great disgust that cæsar, in the public speeches in rome, should be spoken of as that "great and most excellent man."[ ] and yet he had said, but a few months since, in his oration for king deiotarus, in the presence of cæsar, "that he looked only into his eyes, only into his face--that he regarded only him." the flattery and the indignant reprobation do, in truth, come very near upon each other, and induce us to ask whether the fact of having to live in the presence of royalty be not injurious to the moral man. could any of us have refused to speak to cæsar with adulation--any of us whom circumstances compelled to speak to him? power had made cæsar desirous of a mode of address hardly becoming a man to give or a man to receive. does not the etiquette of to-day require from us certain courtesies of conversation, which i would call abject were it not that etiquette requires them? nevertheless, making the best allowance that i can for cicero, the difference of his language within a month or two is very painful. in the letter above quoted octavius comes to him, and we can see how willing was the young aspirant to flatter him. he sees already that, in spite of the promised amnesty, there must be internecine feud. "i shall have to go into the camp with young sextus"--sextus pompeius--"or perhaps with brutus, a prospect at my years most odious." then he quotes two lines of homer, altering a word: "to you, my child, is not given the glory of war; eloquence, charming eloquence, must be the weapon with which you will fight." we hear of his contemplated journey into greece, under the protection of a free legation. he was going for the sake of his son; but would not people say that he went to avoid the present danger? and might it not be the case that he should be of service if he remained?[ ] we see that the old state of doubt is again falling upon him. [greek: aideomai trôas.] otherwise he could go and make himself safe in athens. there is a correspondence between him and antony, of which he sends copies to atticus. antony writes to him, begging him to allow sextus clodius to return from his banishment. this sextus had been condemned because of the riot on the death of his uncle in milo's affair, and antony wishes to have him back. cicero replies that he will certainly accede to antony's views. it had always been a law with him, he says, not to maintain a feeling of hatred against his humbler enemies. but in both these letters we see the subtilty and caution of the writers. antony could have brought back sextus without cicero, and cicero knew that he could do so. cicero had no power over the law. but it suited antony to write courteously a letter which might elicit an uncivil reply. cicero, however, knew better, and answered it civilly. he writes to tiro telling him that he has not the slightest intention of quarrelling with his old friend antony, and will write to antony, but not till he shall have seen him, tiro; showing on what terms of friendship he stands with his former slave, for tiro had by this time been manumitted.[ ] he writes to tiro quite as he might have written to a younger atticus, and speaks to him of atticus with all the familiarity of confirmed friendship. there must have been something very sweet in the nature of the intercourse which bound such a man as cicero to such another as tiro. atticus applies to him, desiring him to use his influence respecting a certain question of importance as to buthrotum. buthrotum was a town in epirus opposite to the island of corcyra, in which atticus had an important interest. the lands about the place were to be divided, and to be distributed to roman soldiers--much, as we may suppose to the injury of atticus. he has earnestly begged the interference of cicero for the protection of the buthrotians, and cicero tells him that he wishes he could have seen antony on the subject, but that antony is too much busied looking after the soldiers in the campagna. cicero fails to have the wishes of atticus carried out, and shortly the subject becomes lost in the general confusion. but the discussion shows of how much importance at the present moment cicero's interference with antony is considered. it shows also that up to this period, a few months previous to the envenomed hatred of the second philippic, antony and cicero were presumed to be on terms of intimate friendship. the worship of cæsar had been commenced in rome, and an altar had been set up to him in the forum as to a god. had cæsar, when he perished, been said to have usurped the sovereign authority, his body would have been thrown out as unworthy of noble treatment. such treatment the custom of the republic required. it had been allowed to be buried, and had been honored, not disgraced. now, on the spot where the funeral pile had been made, the altar was erected, and crowds of men clamored round it, worshipping. that this was the work of antony we cannot doubt. but dolabella, cicero's repudiated son-in-law, who in furtherance of a promise from cæsar had seized the consulship, was jealous of antony and caused the altar to be thrown down and the worshippers to be dispersed. many were killed in the struggle--for, though the republic was so jealous of the lives of the citizens as not to allow a criminal to be executed without an expression of the voice of the entire people, any number might fall in a street tumult, and but little would be thought about it. dolabella destroyed the altar, and cicero was profuse in his thanks.[ ] for though tullia had been divorced, and had since died, there was no cause for a quarrel. divorces were so common that no family odium was necessarily created. cicero was at this moment most anxious to get back from dolabella his daughter's dowry. it was never repaid. indeed, a time was quickly coming in which such payments were out of the question, and dolabella soon took a side altogether opposed to the republic--for which he cared nothing. he was bought by antony, having been ready to be bought by any one. he went to syria as governor before the end of the year, and at smyrna, on his road, he committed one of those acts of horror on trebonius, an adverse governor, in which the romans of the day would revel when liberated from control. cassius came to avenge his friend trebonius, and dolabella, finding himself worsted, destroyed himself. he had not progressed so far in corruption as verres, because time had not permitted it--but that was the direction in which he was travelling. at the present moment, however, no praise was too fervid to be bestowed upon him by cicero's pen. that turning of cæsar into a god was opposed to every feeling of his heart, both, as to men and as to gods. a little farther on[ ] we find him complaining of the state of things very grievously: "that we should have feared this thing, and not have feared the other!"--meaning cæsar and antony. he declares that he must often read, for his own consolation, his treatise on old age, then just written and addressed to atticus. "old age is making me bitter," he says; "i am annoyed at everything. but my life has been lived. let the young look to the future." we here meet the name of cærellia in a letter to his friend. she had probably been sent to make up the quarrel between him and his young wife publilia. nothing came of it, and it is mentioned only because cærellia's name has been joined so often with that of cicero by subsequent writers. in the whole course of his correspondence with atticus i do not remember it to occur, except in one or two letters at this period. i imagine that some story respecting the lady was handed down, and was published by dio cassius when the greek historian found that it served his purpose to abuse cicero. on june nd he sent news to atticus of his nephew. young quintus had written home to his father to declare his repentance. he had been in receipt of money from antony, and had done antony's dirty work. he had been "antoni dextella"--"antony's right hand"--according to cicero, and had quarrelled absolutely with his father and his uncle. he now expresses his sorrow, and declares that he would come himself at once, but that there might be danger to his father. and there is money to be expected if he will only wait. "did you ever hear of a worse knave?" cicero adds. probably not; but yet he was able to convince his father and his uncle, and some time afterward absolutely offered to prosecute antony for stealing the public money out of the treasury. he thought, as did some others, that the course of things was going against antony. as a consequence of this he was named in the proscriptions, and killed, with his father. in the same letter cicero consults atticus as to the best mode of going to greece. brundisium is the usual way, but he has been told by tiro that there are soldiers in the town.[ ] he is now at arpinum, on his journey, and receives a letter from brutus inviting him back to rome, to see the games given by brutus. he is annoyed to think that brutus should expect this. "these shows are now only honorable to him who is bound to give them," he says; "i am not bound to see them, and to be present would be dishonorable."[ ] then comes his parting with atticus, showing a demonstrative tenderness foreign to the sternness of our northern nature. "that you should have wept when you had parted from me, has grieved me greatly. had you done it in my presence, i should not have gone at all."[ ] "nonis juliis!"[ ] he exclaims. the name of july had already come into use--the name which has been in use ever since--the name of the man who had now been destroyed! the idea distresses him. "shall brutus talk of july?" it seems that some advertisement had been published as to his games in which the month was so called. writing from one of his villas in the south, he tells atticus that his nephew has again been with him, and has repented him of all his sins. i think that cicero never wrote anything vainer than this: "he has been so changed," he says, "by reading some of my writings which i happened to have by me, and by my words and precepts, that he is just such a citizen as i would have him."[ ] could it be that he should suppose that one whom he had a few days since described as the biggest knave he knew should be so changed by a few words well written and well pronounced? young quintus must in truth have been a clever knave. in the same letter cicero tells us that tiro had collected about seventy of his letters with a view to publication. we have at present over seven hundred written before that day. just as he is starting he gives his friend a very wide commission: "by your love for me, do manage my matters for me. i have left enough to pay everything that i owe. but it will happen, as it often does, that they who owe me will not be punctual. if anything of that kind should happen, only think of my character. put me right before the world by borrowing, or even by selling, if it be necessary."[ ] this is not the language of a man in distress, but of one anxious that none should lose a shilling by him. he again thinks of starting from brundisium, and promises, when he has arrived there, instantly to begin a new work. he has sent his de gloria to atticus; a treatise which we have lost. we should be glad to know how he treated this most difficult subject. we are astonished at his fecundity and readiness. he was now nearly sixty-three, and, as he travels about the country, he takes with him all the adjuncts necessary for the writing of treatises such as he composed at this period of his life! his topica, containing aristotelian instructions as to a lawyer's work, he put together on board ship, immediately after this, for the benefit of trebatius, to whom it had been promised. july had come, and at last he resolved to sail from pompeii and to coast round to sicily. he lands for a night at velia, where he finds brutus, with whom he has an interview. then he writes a letter to trebatius, who had there a charming villa, bought no doubt with gallic spoils. he is reminded of his promise, and going on to rhegium writes his topica, which he sends to trebatius from that place. thence he went across to syracuse, but was afraid to stay there, fearing that his motions might be watched, and that antony would think that he had objects of state in his journey. he had already been told that some attributed his going to a desire to be present at the olympian games; but the first notion seems to have been that he had given the republic up as lost, and was seeking safety elsewhere. from this we are made to perceive how closely his motions were watched, and how much men thought of them. from syracuse he started for athens--which place, however, he was doomed never to see again. he was carried back to leucopetra on the continent; and though he made another effort, he was, he says, again brought back. there, at the villa of his friend valerius, he learned tidings which induced him to change his purpose, and hurry off to rome. brutus and cassius had published a decree of the senate, calling all the senators, and especially the consulares, to rome. there was reason to suppose that antony was willing to relax his pretensions. they had strenuously demanded his attendance, and whispers were heard that he had fled from the difficulties of the times. "when i heard this, i at once abandoned my journey, with which, indeed, i had never been well pleased."[ ] then he enters into a long disquisition with atticus as to the advice which had been given to him, both by atticus and by brutus, and he says some hard words to atticus. but he leaves an impression on the reader's mind that brutus had so disturbed him by what had passed between them at velia, that from that moment his doubts as to going, which had been always strong, had overmastered him. it was not the winds at leucopetra that hindered his journey, but the taunting words which brutus had spoken. it was suggested to him that he was deserting his country. the reproach had been felt by him to be heavy, for he had promised to atticus that he would return by the first of january; yet he could not but feel that there was something in it of truth. the very months during which he would be absent would be the months of danger. indeed, looking out upon the political horizon then, it seemed as though the nearest months, those they were then passing, would be the most dangerous. if antony could be got rid of, be made to leave italy, there might be something for an honest senator to do--a man with consular authority--a something which might not jeopardize his life. when men now call a politician of those days a coward for wishing to avoid the heat of the battle, they hardly think what it is for an old man to leave his retreat and rush into the forum, and there encounter such a one as antony, and such soldiers as were his soldiers. cicero, who had been brave enough in the emergencies of his career, and had gone about his work sometimes regardless of his life, no doubt thought of all this. it would be pleasant to him again to see his son, and to look upon the rough doings of rome from amid the safety of athens; but when his countrymen told him that he had not as yet done enough--when brutus, with his cold, bitter words, rebuked him for going--then his thoughts turned round on the quick pivot on which they were balanced, and he hurried back to the fight. he travelled at once up to rome, which he reached on the last of august, and there received a message from antony demanding his presence in the senate on the next day. he had been greeted on his journey once again by the enthusiastic welcome of his countrymen, who looked to receive some especial advantage from his honesty and patriotism. once again he was made proud by the clamors of a trusting people. but he had not come to rome to be antony's puppet. antony had some measure to bring before the senate in honor of cæsar which it would not suit cicero to support or to oppose. he sent to say that he was tired after his journey and would not come. upon this the critics deal hardly with him, and call him a coward. "with an incredible pusillanimity," says m. du rozoir, "cicero excused himself, alleging his health and the fatigue of his voyage." "he pretended that he was too tired to be present," says mr long. it appears to me that they who have read cicero's works with the greatest care have become so enveloped by the power of his words as to expect from them an unnatural weight. if a politician of to-day, finding that it did not suit him to appear in the house of commons on a certain evening, and that it would best become him to allow a debate to pass without his presence, were to make such an excuse, would he be treated after the same fashion? pusillanimity, and pretence, in regard to those philippics in which he seems to have courted death by every harsh word that he uttered! the reader who has begun to think so must change his mind, and be prepared, as he progresses, to find quite another fault with cicero. impetuous, self-confident, rash; throwing down the gage with internecine fury; striving to crush with his words the man who had the command of the legions of rome; sticking at nothing which could inflict a blow; forcing men by his descriptions to such contempt of antony that they should be induced to leave the stronger party, lest they too should incur something of the wrath of the orator--that they will find to be the line which cicero adopted, and the demeanor he put on during the next twelve months! he thundered with his philippics through rome, addressing now the senate and now the people with a hardihood which you may condemn as being unbecoming one so old, who should have been taught equanimity by experience; but pusillanimity and pretence will not be the offences you will bring against him. antony, not finding that cicero had come at his call, declared in the senate that he would send his workmen to dig him out from his house. cicero alludes to this on the next day without passion.[ ] antony was not present, and in this speech he expresses no bitterness of anger. it should hardly have been named one of the philippics, which title might well have been commenced with the second. the name, it should be understood, has been adopted from a jocular allusion by cicero to the philippics of demosthenes, made in a letter to brutus. we have at least the reply of brutus, if indeed the letter be genuine, which is much to be doubted.[ ] but he had no purpose of affixing his name to them. for many years afterward they were called antonianæ, and the first general use of the term by which we know them has probably been comparatively modern. the one name does as well as another, but it is odd that speeches from demosthenes should have given a name to others so well known as these made by cicero against antony. plutarch, however, mentions the name, saying that it had been given to the speeches by cicero himself. in this, the first, he is ironically reticent as to antony's violence and unpatriotic conduct. antony was not present, and cicero tells his hearers with a pleasant joke that to antony it may be allowed to be absent on the score of ill-health, though the indulgence had been refused to him. antony is his friend, and why had antony treated him so roughly? was it unusual for senators to be absent? was hannibal at the gate, or were they dealing for peace with pyrrhus, as was the case when they brought the old blind appius down to the house? then he comes to the question of the hour, which was, nominally, the sanctioning as law those acts of cæsar's which he had decreed by his own will before his death. when a tyrant usurps power for a while and is then deposed, no more difficult question can be debated. is it not better to take the law as he leaves it, even though the law has become a law illegally, than encounter all the confusion of retrograde action? nothing could have been more iniquitous than some of sulla's laws, but cicero had opposed their abrogation. but here the question was one not of cæsar's laws, but of decrees subsequently made by antony and palmed off upon the people as having been found among cæsar's papers. soon after cæsar's death a decision had been obtained by antony in favor of cæsar's laws or acts, and hence had come these impudent forgeries under the guise of which antony could cause what writings he chose to be made public. "i think that cæsar's acts should be maintained," says cicero, "not as being in themselves good, for that no one can assert. i wish that antony were present here without his usual friends," he adds, alluding to his armed satellites. "he would tell us after what manner he would maintain those acts of cæsar's. are they to be found in notes and scraps and small documents brought forward by one witness, or not brought forward at all but only told to us? and shall those which he engraved in bronze, and which he wished to be known as the will of the people and as perpetual laws--shall they go for nothing?"[ ] here was the point in dispute. the decree had been voted soon after cæsar's death, giving the sanction of the senate to his laws. for peace this had been done, as the best way out of the difficulty which oppressed the state. but it was intolerable that, under this sanction, antony should have the power of bringing forth new edicts day after day, while the very laws which cæsar had passed were not maintained. "what better law was there, or more often demanded in the best days of the republic, than that law," passed by cæsar, "under which the provinces were to be held by the prætors only for one year, and by the consuls for not more than two? but this law is abolished. so it is thus that cæsar's acts are to be maintained?"[ ] antony, no doubt, and his friends, having an eye to the fruition of the provinces, had found among cæsar's papers--or said they had found--some writing to suit their purpose. all things to be desired were to be found among cæsar's papers. "the banished are brought back from banishment, the right of citizenship is given not only to individuals but to whole nations and provinces, exceptions from taxations are granted, by the dead man's voice."[ ] antony had begun, probably, with some one or two more modest forgeries, and had gone on, strengthened in impudence by his own success, till cæsar dead was like to be worse to them than cæsar living. the whole speech is dignified, patriotic, and bold, asserting with truth that which he believed to be right, but never carried into invective or dealing with expressions of anger. it is very short, but i know no speech of his more closely to its purpose. i can see him now, with his toga round him, as he utters the final words: "i have lived perhaps long enough--both as to length of years and the glory i have won. what little may be added, shall be, not for myself, but for you and for the republic." the words thus spoken became absolutely true. chapter ix. _the philippics._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cicero was soon driven by the violence of antony's conduct to relinquish the idea of moderate language, and was ready enough to pick up the gauntlet thrown down for him. from this moment to the last scene of his life it was all the fury of battle and the shout of victory, and then the scream of despair. antony, when he read cicero's speech, the first philippic, the language of which was no doubt instantly sent to him, seems to have understood at once that he must either vanquish cicero or be vanquished by him. he appreciated to the letter the ironically cautious language in which his conduct was exposed. he had not chosen to listen to cicero, but was most anxious to get cicero to listen to him. those "advocates" of whom cicero had spoken would be around him, and at a nod, or perhaps without a nod, would do to cicero as brutus and cassius had done to cæsar. the last meeting of the senate had been on the d of september. when it was over, antony, we are told, went down to his villa at tivoli, and there devoted himself for above a fortnight to the getting up of a speech by which he might silence, or at any rate answer cicero. nor did he leave himself to his own devices, but took to himself a master of eloquence who might teach him when to make use of his arms, where to stamp his feet, and in what way to throw his toga about with a graceful passion. he was about forty at this time,[ ] and in the full flower of his manhood, yet, for such a purpose, he did not suppose himself to know all that lessons would teach him in the art of invective. there he remained, mouthing out his phrases in the presence of his preceptor, till he had learned by heart all that the preceptor knew. then he summoned cicero to meet him in the senate on the th. this cicero was desirous of doing, but was prevented by his friends, who were afraid of the "advocates." there is extant a letter from cicero to cassius in which he states it to be well known in rome that antony had declared that he, cicero, had been the author of cæsar's death, in order that cæsar's old soldiers might slay him.[ ] there were other senators, he says, who did not dare to show themselves in the senate-house--piso, and servilius, and cotta. antony came down and made his practised oration against cicero. the words of his speech have not been preserved, but cicero has told us the manner of it, and some of the phrases which he used. the authority is not very good, but we may imagine from the results that his story is not far from the truth. from first to last it was one violent tirade of abuse which he seemed to vomit forth from his jaws, rather than to "speak after the manner of a roman consular." such is cicero's description. it has been said of antony that we hear of him only from his enemies. he left behind him no friend to speak for him, and we have heard of him certainly from one enemy; but the tidings are of a nature to force upon us belief in the evil which cicero spoke of him. had he been a man of decent habits of life, and of an honest purpose, would cicero have dared to say to the romans respecting him the words which he produced, not only in the second philippic, which was unspoken, but also in the twelve which followed? the record of him, as far as it goes, is altogether bad. plutarch tells us that he was handsome, and a good soldier, but altogether vicious. plutarch is not a biographer whose word is to be taken as to details, but he is generally correct in his estimate of character. tacitus tells us but little about him as direct history, but mentions him ever in the same tone. tacitus knew the feeling of rome regarding him. paterculus speaks specially of his fraud, and breaks out into strong repudiation of the murder of cicero.[ ] valerius maximus, in his anecdotes, mentions him slightingly, as an evil man is spoken of who has forced himself into notice. virgil has stamped his name with everlasting ignominy. "sequiturque nefas egyptia conjux." i can think of no roman writer who has named him with honor. he was a roman of the day--what rome had made him--brave, greedy, treacherous, and unpatriotic. cicero again was absent from the senate, but was in rome when antony attacked him. we learn from a letter to cornificius that antony left the city shortly afterward, and went down to brundisium to look after the legions which had come across from macedonia, with which cicero asserts that he intends to tyrannize over them all in rome.[ ] he then tells his correspondent that young octavius has just been discovered in an attempt to have antony murdered, but that antony, having found the murderer in his house, had not dared to complain. he seems to think that octavius had been right! the state of things was such that men were used to murder; but this story was probably not true. he passes on to declare in the next sentence that he receives such consolation from philosophy as to be able to bear all the ills of fortune. he himself goes to puteoli, and there he writes the second philippic. it is supposed to be the most violent piece of invective ever produced by human ingenuity and human anger. the readers of it must, however, remember that it was not made to be spoken--was not even written, as far as we are aware, to be shown to antony, or to be published to the world. we do not even know that antony ever saw it. there has been an idea prevalent that antony's anger was caused by it, and that cicero owed to it his death; but the surmise is based on probability--not at all on evidence. cicero, when he heard what antony had said of him, appears to have written all the evil he could say of his enemy, in order that he might send it to atticus. it contained rather what he could have published than what he did intend to publish. he does, indeed, suggest, in the letter which accompanied the treatise when sent to atticus, in some only half-intelligible words, that he hopes the time may come when the speech "shall find its way freely even into sica's house;"[ ] but we gather even from that his intention that it should have no absolutely public circulation. he had struggled to be as severe as he knew how, but had done it, as it were, with a halter round his neck; and for antony's anger--the anger which afterward produced the proscription--there came to be cause enough beyond this. before that day he had endeavored to stir up the whole empire against antony, and had all but succeeded. it has been alleged that cicero again shows his cowardice by writing and not speaking his oration, and also by writing it only for private distribution. if he were a coward, why did he write it at all? if he were a coward, why did he hurry into this contest with antony? if he be blamed because his philippic was anonymous, how do the anonymous writers of to-day escape? if because he wrote it, and did not speak it, what shall be said of the party writers of to-day? he was a coward, say his accusers, because he avoided a danger. have they thought of the danger which he did run when they bring those charges against him? of what was the nature of the fight? do they remember how many romans in public life had been murdered during the last dozen years? we are well aware how far custom goes, and that men became used to the fear of violent death. cicero was now habituated to that fear, and was willing to face it. but not on that account are we to imagine that, with his eyes open, he was to be supposed always ready to rush into immediate destruction. to write a scurrilous attack, such as the second philippic, is a bad exercise for the ingenuity of a great man; but so is any anonymous satire. it is so in regard to our own times, which have received the benefit of all antecedent civilization. cicero, being in the midst of those heartless romans, is expected to have the polished manners and high feelings of a modern politician! i have hardly a right to be angry with his critics because by his life he went so near to justify the expectation. he begins by asking his supposed hearers how it has come to pass that during the last twenty years the republic had had no enemy who was not also his enemy. "and you, antony, whom i have never injured by a word, why is it that, more brazen-faced than catiline, more fierce than clodius, you should attack me with your maledictions? will your enmity against me be a recommendation for you to every evil citizen in rome? * * * why does not antony come down among us to-day?" he says, as though he were in the senate and antony were away. "he gives a birthday fête in his garden: to whom, i wonder? i will name no one. to phormio, perhaps, or gnatho, or ballion? oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" these were the vile knaves of the roman comedy--the nyms. pistols, and bobadils. "your consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil! you talk of my verses," he says--antony having twitted him with the "cedant arma togæ." "i will only say that you do not understand them or any other. clodius was killed by my counsels--was he? what would men have said had they seen him running from you through the forum--you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of the bookseller's shop?[ ] * * * it was by my advice that cæsar was killed! i fear, o conscript fathers, lest i should seem to have employed some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me. who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that glorious affair? among those who did do the deed, whose name has been hidden--or, indeed, is not most widely known? some had been inclined to boast that they were there, though they were absent; but not one who was present has ever endeavored to conceal his name." "you deny that i have had legacies? i wish it were true, for then my friends might still be living. but where have you learned that, seeing that i have inherited twenty million sesterces?[ ] i am happier in this than you. no one but a friend has made me his heir. lucius rubrius cassinas, whom you never even saw, has named you." he here refers to a man over whose property antony was supposed to have obtained control fraudulently. "did he know of you whether you were a white man or a negro? * * * would you mind telling me what height turselius stood?" here he names another of whose property antony is supposed to have obtained possession illegally. "i believe all you know of him is what farms he had. * * * do you bear in mind," he says, "that you were a bankrupt as soon as you had become a man? do you remember your early friendship with curio, and the injuries you did his father?" here it is impossible to translate literally, but after speaking as he had done very openly, he goes on: "but i must omit the iniquities of your private life. there are things i cannot repeat here. you are safe, because the deeds you have done are too bad to be mentioned. but let us look at the affairs of your public life. i will just go through them;" which he does, laying bare as he well knew how to do, every past act. "when you had been made quæstor you flew at once to cæsar. you knew that he was the only refuge for poverty, debt, wickedness, and vice. then, when you had gorged upon his generosity and your plunderings--which indeed you spent faster than you got it--you betook yourself instantly to the tribunate. * * * it is you, antony, you who supplied cæsar with an excuse for invading his country." cæsar had declared at the rubicon that the tribunate had been violated in the person of antony. "i will say nothing here against cæsar, though nothing can excuse a man for taking up arms against his country. but of you it has to be confessed that you were the cause. * * * he has been a very helen to us trojans. * * * he has brought back many a wretched exile, but has forgotten altogether his own uncle"--cicero's colleague in the consulship, who had been banished for plundering his province. "we have seen this tribune of the people carried through the town on a british war-chariot. his lictors with their laurels went before him. in the midst, on an open litter, was carried an actress. when you come back from thessaly with your legions to brundisium you did not kill me! oh, what a kindness! * * * you with those jaws of yours, with that huge chest, with that body like a gladiator, drank so much wine at hippea's marriage that in the sight of all rome you were forced to vomit.* * * when he had seized pompey's property he rejoiced like some stage-actor who in a play is as poor as poverty, and then suddenly becomes rich. all his wine, the great weight of silver, the costly furniture and rich dresses, in a few days where were they all? a charybdis do i call him? he swallowed them all like an entire ocean!" then he accuses him of cowardice and cruelty in the pharsalian wars, and compares him most injuriously with dolabella. "do you remember how dolabella fought for you in spain, when you were getting drunk at narbo? and how did you get back from narbo? he has asked as to my return to the city. i have explained to you, o conscript fathers, how i had intended to be here in january, so as to be of some service to the republic. you inquire how i got back. in daylight--not in the dark, as you did; with roman shoes on and a roman toga--not in barbaric boots and an old cloak.* * * when cæsar returned from spain you again pushed yourself into his intimacy--not a brave man, we should say, but still strong enough for his purposes. cæsar did always this--that if there were a man ruined, steeped in debt, up to his ears in poverty--a base, needy, bold man--that was the man whom he could receive into his friendship." this as to cæsar was undoubtedly true. "recommended in this way, you were told to declare yourself consul." then he describes the way in which he endeavored to prevent the nomination of dolabella to the same office. cæsar had said that dolabella should be consul, but when cæsar was dead this did not suit antony. when the tribes had been called in their centuries to vote, antony, not understanding what form of words he ought to have used as augur to stop the ceremony, had blundered. "would you not call him a very lælius?" says cicero. lælius had made for himself a name among augurs for excellence. "miserable that you are, you throw yourself at cæsar's feet asking only permission to be his slave. you sought for yourself that state of slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. had you any command from the roman people to ask the same for them? oh, that eloquence of yours; when naked you stood up to harangue the people! who ever saw a fouler deed than that, or one more worthy scourges?" "has tarquin suffered for this; have spurius cassius, melius, and marcus manlius suffered, that after many ages a king should be set up in rome by marc antony?" with abuse of a similar kind he goes on to the end of his declamation, when he again professes himself ready to die at his post in defence of the republic. that he now made up his mind so to die, should it become necessary, we may take for granted, but we cannot bring ourselves to approve of the storm of abuse under which he attempted to drown the memory and name of his antagonist. so virulent a torrent of words, all seeming, as we read them, to have been poured out in rapid utterances by the keen energy of the moment, astonish us, when we reflect that it was the work of his quiet moments. that he should have prepared such a task in the seclusion of his closet is marvellous. it has about it the very ring of sudden passion; but it must be acknowledged that it is not palatable. it is more roman and less english than anything we have from cicero--except his abuse of piso, with whom he was again now half reconciled. but it was solely on behalf of his country that he did it. he had grieved when cæsar had usurped the functions of the government; but in his grief he had respected cæsar, and had felt that he might best carry on the contest by submission. but, when cæsar was dead, and antony was playing tyrant, his very soul rebelled. then he sat down to prepare his first instalment of keen personal abuse, adding word to word and phrase to phrase till he had built up this unsavory monument of vituperation. it is by this that antony is now known to the world. plutarch makes no special mention of the second philippic. in his life of antony he does not allude to these orations at all, but in that of cicero he tells us how antony had ordered that right hand to be brought to him with which cicero had written his philippics. the "young octavius" of shakespeare had now taken the name of octavianus--caius julius cæsar octavianus--and had quarrelled to the knife with antony. he had assumed that he had been adopted by cæsar, and now demanded all the treasures his uncle had collected as his own. antony, who had already stolen them, declared that they belonged to the state. at any rate there was cause enough for quarrelling among them, and they were enemies. each seems to have brought charges of murder against the other, and each was anxious to obtain possession of the soldiery. seen as we see now the period in rome of which we are writing--every safeguard of the republic gone, all law trampled under foot, consuls, prætors, and tribunes not elected but forced upon the state, all things in disorder, the provinces becoming the open prey of the greediest plunderer--it is apparent enough that there could be no longer any hope for a cicero. the marvel is that the every-day affairs of life should have been carried on with any reference to the law. when we are told that antony stole cæsar's treasures and paid his debts with them, we are inclined to ask why he had paid his debts at all. but cicero did hope. in his whole life there is nothing more remarkable than the final vitality with which he endeavored to withstand the coming deluge of military despotism. nor in all history is there anything more wonderful than the capacity of power to re-establish itself, as is shown by the orderly empire of augustus growing out of the disorder left by cæsar. one is reminded by it of the impotency of a reckless heir to bring to absolute ruin the princely property of a great nobleman brought together by the skill of many careful progenitors. a thing will grow to be so big as to be all but indestructible. it is like that tower of cæcilia metella against which the storms of twenty centuries have beaten in vain. looking at the state of the roman empire when cicero died, who would not declare its doom? but it did "retrick its beams," not so much by the hand of one man, augustus, as by the force of the concrete power collected within it--"quod non imber edax non aquilo impotens possit diruere."[ ] cicero with patriotic gallantry thought that even yet there might be a chance for the old republic--thought that by his eloquence, by his vehemence of words, he could turn men from fraud to truth, and from the lust of plundering a province to a desire to preserve their country. of antony now he despaired, but he still hoped that his words might act upon this young cæsar's heart. the youth was as callous as though he had already ruled a province for three years. no roman was ever more cautious, more wise, more heartless, more able to pick his way through blood to a throne, than the young augustus. cicero fears octavian--as we must now call him--and knows that he can only be restrained by the keeping of power out of his hands. writing to atticus from arpinum, he says, "i agree altogether with you. if octavian gets power into his hands he will insist upon the tyrant's decrees much more thoroughly than he did when the senate sat in the temple of tellus. everything then will be done in opposition to brutus. but if he be conquered, then see how intolerable would be the dominion of antony."[ ] in the same letter he speaks of the de officiis, which he has just written. in his next and last epistle to his old friend he congratulates himself on having been able at last to quarrel with dolabella. dolabella had turned upon him in the end, bought by antony's money. he then returns to the subject of octavian, and his doubts as to his loyalty. he has been asked to pledge himself to octavian, but has declined till he shall see how the young man will behave when casea becomes candidate for the tribunate. if he show himself to be casea's enemy, casea having been one of the conspirators, cicero will know that he is not to be trusted. then he falls into a despairing mood, and declares that there is no hope. "even hippocrates was unwilling to bestow medicine on those to whom it could avail nothing." but he will go to rome, into the very jaws of the danger. "it is less base for such as i am to fall publicly than privately." with these words, almost the last written by him to atticus, this correspondence is brought to an end: the most affectionate, the most trusting, and the most open ever published to the world as having come from one man to another. no letters more useful to the elucidation of character were ever written; but when read for that purpose they should be read with care, and should hardly be quoted till they have been understood. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the struggles for the provinces were open and acknowledged. under cæsar, decimus brutus had been nominated for cisalpine gaul, marcus brutus for macedonia, and cassius for syria. it will be observed that these three men were the most prominent among the conspirators. since that time antony and dolabella had obtained votes of the people to alter the arrangement. antony was to go to macedonia, and dolabella to syria. this was again changed when antony found that decimus had left rome to take up his command. he sent his brother caius to macedonia, and himself claimed to be governor of cisalpine gaul. hence there were two roman governors for each province; and in each case each governor was determined to fight for the possession. antony hurried out of rome before the end of the year with the purpose of hindering decimus from the occupation of the north of italy, and cicero went up to rome, determined to take a part in the struggle which was imminent. the senate had been summoned for the th of december, and attended in great numbers. then it was that he spoke the third philippic, and in the evening of the same day he spoke the fourth to the people. it should be understood that none of these speeches were heard by antony. cicero had at this time become the acknowledged chief of the republican party, having drifted into the position which pompey had so long filled. many of cæsar's friends, frightened by his death, or rather cowed by the absence of his genius, had found it safer to retreat from the cæsarean party, of which the antonys, with dolabella, the cutthroats and gladiators of the empire, had the command. hirtius and pansa, with balbus and oppius, were among them. they, at this moment, were powerful in rome. the legions were divided--some with antony, some with octavian, and some with decimus brutus. the greater number were with antony, whom they hated for his cruelty; but were with him because the mantle of cæsar's power had fallen on to his shoulders. it was felt by cicero that if he could induce octavian to act with him the republic might be again established. he would surely have influence enough to keep the lad from hankering after his great uncle's pernicious power. he was aware that the dominion did in fact belong to the owner of the soldiers, but he thought that he could control this boy-officer, and thus have his legions at the command of the republic. the senate had been called together, nominally for the purpose of desiring the consuls of the year to provide a guard for its own safety. cicero makes it an occasion for perpetuating the feeling against antony, which had already become strong in rome. he breaks out into praise of octavian, whom he calls "this young cæsar--almost a boy;" tells them what divine things the boy had already done, and how he had drawn away from the rebels those two indomitable legions, the martia and the fourth. then he proceeds to abuse antony. tarquinius, the man whose name was most odious to romans, had been unendurable as a tyrant, though himself not a bad man; but antony's only object is to sell the empire, and to spend the price. antony had convoked the senate for november, threatening the senators with awful punishments should they absent themselves; but, when the day came, antony, the consul, had himself fled. he not only pours out the vials of his wrath but of his ridicule upon antony's head, and quotes his bungling words. he gives instances of his imprudence, and his impotence, and of his greed. then he again praises the young cæsar, and the two consuls for the next year, and the two legions, and decimus brutus, who is about to fight the battle of the republic for them in the north of italy, and votes that the necessary guard be supplied. in the same evening he addresses the people in his fourth philippic. he again praises the lad and the two legions, and again abuses antony. no one can say after this day that he hid his anger, or was silent from fear. he congratulates the romans on their patriotism--vain congratulations--and encourages them to make new efforts. he bids them rejoice that they have a hero such as decimus brutus to protect their liberties, and, almost, that they have such an enemy as antony to conquer. it seems that his words, few as they were--perhaps because they were so few--took hold of the people's imaginations; so that they shouted to him that he had on that day a second time saved his country, as he reminds them afterward.[ ] from this time forward we are without those intimate and friendly letters which we have had with us as our guide through the last twenty-one years of cicero's life. for though we have a large body of correspondence written during the last year of his life, which are genuine, they are written in altogether a different style from those which have gone before. they are for the most part urgent appeals to those of his political friends to whom he can look for support in his views--often to those to whom he looked in vain. they are passionate prayers for the performance of a public duty, and as such are altogether to the writer's credit. his letters to plancus are beautiful in their patriotism, as are also those to decimus brutus. when we think of his age, of his zeal, of his earnestness, and of the dangers which he ran, we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the public spirit with which at such a crisis he had taken on himself to lead the party. but our guide to his inner feelings is gone. there are no further letters to tell us of every doubt at his heart. we think of him as of some stalwart commander left at home to arrange the affairs of the war, while the less experienced men were sent to the van. there is also a book of letters published as having passed between cicero and junius brutus. the critics have generally united in condemning them as spurious. they are at, any rate, if genuine, cold and formal in their language. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] antony had proceeded into cisalpine gaul to drive out of the province the consul named by the people to govern it. the nomination of decimus had in truth been cæsar's nomination; but the right of decimus to rule was at any rate better than that of any other claimant. he had been appointed in accordance with the power then in existence, and his appointment had been confirmed by the decree of the senate sanctioning all cæsar's acts. it was, after all, a question of simple power, for cæsar had overridden every legal form. it became necessary, however, that they who were in power in rome should decide. the consuls hirtius and pansa had been cæsar's friends, and had also been the friends of antony. they had not the trust in antony which cæsar had inspired; but they were anxious to befriend him--or rather not to break with him. when the senate met, they called on one fufius calenus--who was antony's friend and pansa's father-in-law--first to offer his opinion. he had been one of cæsar's consuls, appointed for a month or two, and was now chosen for the honorable part of first spokesman, as being a consular senator. he was for making terms with antony, and suggested that a deputation of three senators should be sent to him with a message calling upon him to retire. the object probably was to give antony time, or rather to give octavian time, to join with antony if it suited him. others spoke in the same sense, and then cicero was desired to give his opinion. this was the fifth philippic. he is all for war with antony--or rather he will not call it war, but a public breach of the peace which antony has made. he begins mildly enough, but warms with his subject as he goes on: "should they send ambassadors to a traitor to his country? * * * let him return from mutina." i keep the old latin name, which is preserved for us in that of modena. "let him cease to contend with decimus. let him depart out of gaul. it is not fit that we should send to implore him to do so. we should by force compel him. * * * we are not sending messengers to hannibal, who, if hannibal would not obey, might be desired to go on to carthage. whither shall the men go if antony refuses to obey them?" but it is of no use. with eloquent words he praises octavian and the two legions and decimus. he praises even the coward lepidus, who was in command of legions, and was now governor of gaul beyond the alps and of northern spain, and proposes that the people should put up to him a gilt statue on horseback--so important was it to obtain, if possible, his services. alas! it was impossible that such a man should be moved by patriotic motives. lepidus was soon to go with the winning side, and became one of the second triumvirate with antony and octavian. cicero's eloquence was on this occasion futile. at this sitting the senate came to no decision, but on the third day afterward they decreed that the senators, servius sulpicius, lucius piso, and lucius philippus, should be sent to antony. the honors which he had demanded for lepidus and the others were granted, but he was outvoted in regard to the ambassadors. on the th of january cicero again addressed the people in the forum. his task was very difficult. he wished to give no offence to the senate, and yet was anxious to stir the citizens and to excite them to a desire for immediate war. the senate, he told them, had not behaved disgracefully, but had--temporized. the war, unfortunately, must be delayed for those twenty days necessary for the going and coming of the ambassadors. the ambassadors could do nothing. but still they must wait. in the mean time he will not be idle. for them, the roman people, he will work and watch with all his experience, with diligence almost above his strength, to repay them for their faith in him. when cæsar was with them they had had no choice but obedience--so much the times were out of joint. if they submit themselves to be slaves now, it will be their own fault. then in general language he pronounces an opinion--which was the general roman feeling of the day: "it is not permitted to the roman people to become slaves--that people whom the immortal gods have willed to rule all nations of the earth."[ ] so he ended the sixth philippic, which, like the fourth, was addressed to the people. all the others were spoken in the senate. he writes to decimus at mutina about this time a letter full of hope--of hope which we can see to be genuine. "recruits are being raised in all italy--if that can be called recruiting which is in truth a spontaneous rushing into arms of the entire population."[ ] he expects letters telling him what "our hirtius" is doing, and what "my young cæsar." hirtius and pansa, the consuls of the year, though they had been cæsar's party, and made consuls by cæsar, were forced to fight for the republic. they had been on friendly terms with cicero, and they doubted antony. hirtius had now followed the army, and pansa was about to do so. they both fell in the battle that was fought at mutina, and no one can now accuse them of want of loyalty. but "my cæsar," on whose behalf cicero made so many sweet speeches, for whose glory he was so careful, whose early republican principles he was so anxious to direct, made his terms with antony on the first occasion. at that time cicero wrote to plancus. consul elect for the next year, and places before his eyes a picture of all that he can do for the republic. "lay yourself out--yes, i pray you, by the immortal gods--for that which will bring you to the height of glory and renown."[ ] at the end of january or beginning of february he again addressed the senate on the subject of the embassy--a matter altogether foreign from that which it had been convoked to discuss. to cicero's mind there was no other subject at the present moment fit to occupy the thoughts of a roman senator. "we have met together to settle something about the appian way, and something about the coinage. the mind revolts from such little cares, torn by greater matters." the ambassadors are expected back--two of them at least, for sulpicius had died on his road. he cautions the senate against receiving with quiet composure such an answer as antony will probably send them. "why do i--i who am a man of peace--refuse peace? because it is base, because it is full of danger--because peace is impossible." then he proceeds to explain that it is so. "what a disgrace would it be that antony, after so many robberies, after bringing back banished comrades, after selling the taxes of the state, putting up kingdoms to auction, shall rise up on the consular bench and address a free senate! * * * can you have an assured peace while there is an antony in the state--or many antonys? or how can you be at peace with one who hates you as does he; or how can he be at peace with those who hate him as do you? * * * you have such an opportunity," he says at last, "as never fell to the lot of any. you are able, with all senatorial dignity, with all the zeal of the knights, with all the favor of the roman people, now to make the republic free from fear and danger, once and forever." then he thus ends his speech. "about those things which have been brought before us, i agree with servilius." that is the seventh philippic. in february the ambassadors returned, but returned laden with bad tidings. servius sulpicius, who was to have been their chief spokesman, died just as they reached antony. the other two immediately began to treat with him, so as to become the bearers back to rome of conditions proposed by him. this was exactly what they had been told not to do. they had carried the orders of the senate to their rebellious officer, and then admitted the authority of that rebel by bringing back his propositions. they were not even allowed to go into mutina so as to see decimus; but they were, in truth, only too well in accord with the majority of the senate, whose hearts were with antony. anything to those lovers of their fish-ponds was more desirable than a return to the loyalty of the republic. the deputies were received by the senate, who discussed their embassy, and on the next day they met again, when cicero pronounced his eighth philippic. why he did not speak on the previous day i do not know. middleton is somewhat confused in his account. morabin says that cicero was not able to obtain a hearing when the deputies were received. the senate did on that occasion come to a decision; against which act of pusillanimity cicero on the following day expressed himself very vehemently. they had decided that this was not to be called a war, but rather a tumult, and seem to have hesitated in denouncing antony as a public enemy. the senate was convoked on the next day to decide the terms of the amnesty to be accorded to the soldiers who had followed antony, when cicero, again throwing aside the minor matter, burst upon them in his wrath. he had hitherto inveighed against antony; now his anger is addressed to the senate. "lucius cæsar," he said, "has told us that he is antony's uncle, and must vote as such. are you all uncles to antony?" then he goes on to show that war is the only name by which this rebellion can be described. "has not hirtius, who has gone away, sick as he is, called it a war? has not young cæsar, young as he is, prompted to it by no one, undertaken it as a war?" he repeats the words of a letter from hirtius which could only have been used in war: "i have taken claterna. their cavalry has been put to flight. a battle has been fought. so many men have been killed. this is what you call peace!" then he speaks of other civil wars, which he says have grown from difference of opinion--"except that last between pompey and cæsar, as to which i will not speak. i have been ignorant of its cause, and have hated its ending." but in this war all men are of one opinion who are worthy of the name of romans. "we are fighting for the temples of our gods, for our walls, our homes, for the abode of the roman people, for their penates, their altars, their hearths for the graves of ancestors--and we are fighting only against antony. * * * fufius calenus tells us of peace--as though i of all men did not know that peace was a blessing. but tell me, calenus, is slavery peace?" he is very angry with calenus. although he has called him his friend, he was in great wrath against him. "i am fighting for decimus and you for antony. i wish to preserve a roman city; you wish to see it battered to the ground. can you deny this, you who are creating all means of delays by which decimus may be weakened and antony made strong?" "i had consoled myself with this," he says, "that when these ambassadors had been sent and had returned despised, and had told the senate that not only had antony refused to leave gaul but was besieging mutina, and would not let them even see decimus--that then, in our passion and our rage, we should have gone forth with our arms, and our horses, and our men, and at once have rescued our general. but we--since we have seen the audacity, the insolence, and the pride of antony--we have become only more cowardly than before." then he gives his opinion about the amnesty: "let any of those who are now with antony, but shall leave him before the ides of march and pass to the armies of the consuls, or of decimus, or of young cæsar, be held to be free from reproach. if one should quit their ranks through their own will, let them be rewarded and honored as hirtius and pansa, our consuls, may think proper." this was the eighth philippic, and is perhaps the finest of them all. it does not contain the bitter invective of the second, but there is in it a true feeling of patriotic earnestness. the ninth also is very eloquent, though it is rather a pæan sung on behalf of his friend sulpicius, who in bad health had encountered the danger of the journey, and had died in the effort, than one of these philippics which are supposed to have been written and spoken with the view of demolishing antony. it is a specimen of those funereal orations delivered on behalf of a citizen who had died in the service of his country which used to be common among the romans. the tenth is in praise of marcus junius brutus. were i to attempt to explain the situation of brutus in macedonia, and to say how he had come to fill it, i should be carried away from my purpose as to cicero's life, and should be endeavoring to write the history of the time. my object is simply to illustrate the life of cicero by such facts as we know. in the confusion which existed at the time, brutus had obtained some advantages in macedonia, and had recovered for himself the legions of which caius antonius had been in possession, and who was now a prisoner in his hands. at this time young marcus cicero was his lieutenant, and it is told us how one of those legions had put themselves under his command. brutus had at any rate written home letters to the senate early in march, and pansa had called the senate together to receive them. again he attacks fufius calenus, pansa's father-in-law, who was the only man in the senate bold enough to stand up against him; though there were doubtless many of those foot senators--men who traversed the house backward and forward to give their votes--who were anxious to oppose him. he thanks pansa for calling them so quickly, seeing that when they had parted yesterday they had not expected to be again so soon convoked. we may gather from this the existence of a practice of sending messengers round to the senators' houses to call them together. he praises brutus for his courage and his patience. it is his object to convince his hearers, and through them the romans of the day, that the cause of antony is hopeless. let us rise up and crush him. let us all rise, and we shall certainly crush him. there is nothing so likely to attain success as a belief that the success has been already attained. "from all sides men are running together to put out the flames which he has lighted. our veterans, following the example of young cæsar, have repudiated antony and his attempts. the 'legio martia' has blunted the edge of his rage, and the 'legio quarta' has attacked him. deserted by his own troops, he has broken through into gaul, which he has found to be hostile to him with its arms and opposed to him in spirit. the armies of hirtius and of young cæsar are upon his trail; and now pansa's levies have raised the heart of the city and of all italy. he alone is our enemy, although he has along with him his brother lucius, whom we all regret so dearly, whose loss we have hardly been able to endure! what wild beast do you know more abominable than that, or more monstrous--who seems to have been created lest marc antony himself should be of all things the most vile?" he concludes by proposing the thanks of the senate to brutus, and a resolution that quintus hortensius, who had held the province of macedonia against caius antonius, should be left there in command. the two propositions were carried. as we read this, all appears to be prospering on behalf of the republic; but if we turn to the suspected correspondence between brutus and cicero, we find a different state of things. and these letters, though we altogether doubt their authenticity--for their language is cold, formal, and un-ciceronian--still were probably written by one who had access to those which cicero had himself penned: "as to what you write about wanting men and money, it is very difficult to give you advice. i do not see how you are to raise any except by borrowing it from the municipalities"--in macedonia--"according to the decree of the senate. as to men, i do not know what to propose. pansa is so far from sparing men from his army, that he begrudges those who go to you as volunteers. some think that he wishes you to be less strong than you are--which, however. i do not suspect myself."[ ] a letter might fall into the hands of persons not intended to read it, and cicero was forced to be on his guard in communicating his suspicions--cicero or the pseudo-cicero. in the next brutus is rebuked for having left antony live when cæsar was slain. "had not some god inspired octavian," he says, "we should have been altogether in the power of antony, that base and abominable man. and you see how terrible is our contest with him." and he tries to awaken him to the necessity of severity. "i see how much you delight in clemency. that is very well. but there is another place, another time, for clemency. the question for us is whether we shall any longer exist or be put out of the world." these, which are intended to represent his private fears, deal with the affairs of the day in a tone altogether different from that of his public speeches. doubt, anxiety, occasionally almost despair, are expressed in them. but not the less does he thunder on in the senate, aware that to attain success he must appear to have obtained it. the eleventh philippic was occasioned by the news which had arrived in rome of the death of trebonius. trebonius had been surprised in smyrna by a stratagem as to which alone no disgrace would have fallen on dolabella, had he not followed up his success by killing trebonius. how far the bloody cruelty, of which we have the account in cicero's words, was in truth executed, it is now impossible to say. the greek historian appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off.[ ] that cicero believed the story is probable. it is told against his son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably. he would not have spoken against the man except on conviction. dolabella was immediately declared an enemy to the republic. cicero inveighs against him with all his force, and says that such as dolabella is, he had been made by the cruelty of antony. but he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much more miserable than trebonius was dolabella himself, who is so base that from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have been held as disgraceful by other children. then he turns to the question which is in dispute, whether brutus should be left in command of macedonia, and cassius of syria--cassius was now on his way to avenge the death of trebonius--or whether other noble romans, publius servilius, for instance, or that hirtius and pansa, the two consuls, when they can be spared from italy, shall be sent there. it is necessary here to read between the lines. the going of the consuls would mean the withdrawing of the troops from italy, and would leave rome open to the cæsarean faction. at present decimus and cicero, and whoever else there might be loyal to the republic, had to fight by the assistance of other forces than their own. hirtius and pansa were constrained to take the part of the republic by cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those senators who felt themselves compelled to obey cicero. but they did not object to send the consuls away, and the consular legions, under the plea of saving the provinces. this they were willing enough to do--with the real object of delivering italy over to those who were cicero's enemies but were not theirs. all this cicero understood, and, in conducting the contest, had to be on his guard, not only against the soldiers of antony but against the senators also, who were supposed to be his own friends, but whose hearts were intent on having back some cæsar to preserve for them their privileges. cicero in this matter talked some nonsense. "by what right, by what law," he asks, "shall cassius go to syria? by that law which jupiter sanctioned when he ordained that all things good for the republic should be just and legal." for neither had brutus a right to establish himself in macedonia as proconsul nor cassius in syria. this reference to jupiter was a begging of the question with a vengeance. but it was perhaps necessary, in a time of such confusion, to assume some pretext of legality, let it be ever so poor. nothing could now be done in true obedience to the laws. the triumvirate, with cæsar at its head, had finally trodden down all law; and yet every one was clamoring for legal rights! then he sings the praises of cassius, but declares that he does not dare to give him credit in that place for the greatest deed he had done. he means, of course, the murder of cæsar. paterculus tells us that all these things were decreed by the senate.[ ] but he is wrong. the decree of the senate went against cicero, and on the next day, amid much tumult, he addressed himself to the people on the subject. this he did in opposition to pansa, who endeavored to hinder him from speaking in the forum, and to servilia, the mother-in-law of cassius, who was afraid lest her son-in-law should encounter the anger of the consuls. he went so far as to tell the people that cassius would not obey the senate, but would take upon himself, on such an emergency, to act as best he could for the republic.[ ] there was no moment in this stirring year, none, i think, during cicero's life, in which he behaved with greater courage than now in appealing from the senate to the people, and in the hardihood with which he declared that the senate's decree should be held as going for nothing. before the time came in which it could be carried out both hirtius and pansa were dead. they had fallen in relieving decimus at mutina. his address on this occasion to the people was not made public, and has not been preserved. then there came up the question of a second embassy, to which cicero at first acceded. he was induced to do so, as he says, by news which had arrived of altered circumstances on antony's part. calenus and piso had given the senate to understand that antony was desirous of peace. cicero had therefore assented, and had agreed to be one of the deputation. the twelfth philippic was spoken with the object of showing that no such embassy should be sent. cicero's condition at this period was most peculiar and most perilous. the senate would not altogether oppose his efforts, but they hated them. they feared that, if antony should succeed, they who had opposed antony would be ruined. those among them who were the boldest openly reproached cicero with the danger which they were made to incur in fighting his battles.[ ] to be rid of cicero was their desire and their difficulty. he had agreed to go on this embassy--who can say for what motives? to him it would be a mission of especial peril. it was one from which he could hardly hope ever to come back alive. it may be that he had agreed to go with his life in his hand, and to let them know that he at any rate had been willing to die for the republic. it may be that he had heard of some altered circumstances. but he changed his mind and resolved that he would not go, unless driven forth by the senate. there seems to have been a manifest attempt to get him out of rome and send him where he might have his throat cut. but he declined; and this is the speech in which he did so. "it is impossible," says the french critic, speaking of the twelfth philippic, "to surround the word 'i fear' with more imposing oratorical arguments." it has not occurred to him that cicero may have thought that he might even yet do something better with the lees and dregs of his life than throw them away by thus falling into a trap. nothing is so common to men as to fear to die--and nothing more necessary, or men would soon cease to live. to fear death more than ignominy is the disgrace--a truth which the french critic does not seem to have recognized when he twits the memory of cicero with his scornful sneer. "j'ai peur." did it occur to the french critic to ask himself for what purpose should cicero go to antony's camp, where he would probably be murdered, and by so doing favor the views of his own enemies in rome? the deputation was not sent; but in lieu of the deputation pansa, the remaining consul, led his legions out of rome at the beginning of april. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] lepidus, who was proconsul in gaul and northern spain, wrote a letter at this time to the senate recommending them to make peace with antony. cicero in his thirteenth philippic shows how futile such a peace would be. that lepidus was a vain, inconstant man, looking simply to his own advantage in the side which he might choose, is now understood; but when this letter was received he was supposed to have much weight in rome. he had, however, given some offence to the senate, not having acknowledged all the honors which had been paid to him. the advice had been rejected, and cicero shows how unfit the man was to give it. this, however, he still does with complimentary phrases, though from a letter written by him to lepidus about this time the nature of his feeling toward the man is declared: "you would have done better, in my judgment, if you had left alone this attempt at making peace, which approves itself neither to the senate nor to the people, not to any good man."[ ] when we remember the ordinary terms of roman letter-writing, we must acknowledge that this was a plain and not very civil attempt to silence lepidus. he then goes on in the philippic to read a letter which antony had sent to hirtius and to young cæsar, and which they had sent on to the senate. the letter is sufficiently bold and abusive--throwing it in their teeth that they would rather punish the murderer of trebonius than those of cæsar. cicero does this with some wit, but we feel compelled to observe that as much is to be said on the one side as on the other. brutus, cassius, with trebonius and others, had killed cæsar. dolabella, perhaps with circumstances of great cruelty, had killed trebonius. cicero had again and again expressed his sorrow that antony had been spared when cæsar was killed. we have to go back before the first slaughter to resolve who was right and who was wrong, and even afterward can only take the doings of each in that direction as part of the internecine feud. experience has since explained to us the results of introducing bloodshed into such quarrels. the laws which recognize war are and were acknowledged. but when a kills b because he thinks b to have done evil. a can no longer complain of murder. and cicero's criticism is somewhat puerile. "and thou, boy," antony had said in addressing octavian--"et te, puer!" "you shall find him to be a man by-and-by," says cicero. antony's latin is not ciceronian. "utrum sit elegantius," he asks, putting some further question about cæsar and trebonius. "as if there could be anything elegant in this war," demands cicero. he goes through the letter in the same way, turning antony into ridicule in a manner which must have riveted in the heart of fulvia, antony's wife, who was in rome, her desire to have that bitter-speaking tongue torn out of his mouth. such was the thirteenth philippic. on the st of april was spoken the fourteenth and the last. pansa early in the month had left rome, and marched toward mutina with the intention of relieving decimus. antony, who was then besieging mutina after such a fashion as to prevent all egress or ingress, and had all but brought decimus to starvation, finding himself about to be besieged, put his troops into motion, and attacked those who were attacking him. then was fought the battle in which antony was beaten, and pansa, one of the consuls, so wounded that he perished soon afterward. antony retreated to his camp, but was again attacked by hirtius and octavian, and by decimus, who sallied out of the town. he was routed, and fled, but hirtius was killed in the battle. suetonius tells us that in his time a rumor was abroad that augustus, then octavian, had himself killed hirtius with his own hands in the fight--hirtius having been his fellow-general, and fighting on the same side; and that he had paid glyco, pansa's doctor, to poison him while dressing his wounds.[ ] tacitus had already made the story known.[ ] it is worth repeating here only as showing the sort of conduct which a grave historian and a worthy biographer were not ashamed to attribute to the favorite emperor of rome. it was on the receipt of the news in rome of the first battle, but before the second had been fought, that the last philippic was spoken. pansa was not known to have been mortally wounded, nor hirtius killed, nor was it known that decimus had been relieved; but it was understood that antony had received a check. servilius had proposed a supplication, and had suggested that they should put away their saga and go back to their usual attire. the "sagum" was a common military cloak, which the early romans wore instead of the toga when they went out to war. in later days, when the definition between a soldier and a civilian became more complete, they who were left at home wore the sagum, in token of their military feelings, when the republic was fighting its battles near rome. i do not suppose that when crassus was in parthia, or cæsar in gaul, the sagum was worn. it was not exactly known when the distant battles were being fought. but cicero had taken care that the sagum should be properly worn, and had even put it on himself--to do which as a consular was not required of him. servilius now proposed that they should leave off their cloaks, having obtained a victory; but cicero would not permit it. decimus, he says, has not been relieved, and they had taken to their cloaks as showing their determination to succor their general in his distress. and he is discontented with the language used: "you have not even yet called antony a 'public enemy.'" then he again lashes out against the horror of antony's proceedings: "he is waging war, a war too dreadful to be spoken of, against four roman consuls"--he means hirtius and pansa, who were already consuls, and in truth already dead, and decimus and plancus, who were designated as consuls for the next year. plancus, however, joined his legions afterward with those of antony, and insisted in establishing the second triumvirate. "rushing from one scene of slaughter to another, he causes wherever he goes misery, desolation, bloodshed, and agony." the language is so fine that it is worth our while to see the words.[ ] "is he not responsible for the horrors of dolabella? what he would do in rome, were it not for the protection of jupiter, may be seen from the miseries which his brother has inflicted on those poor men of parma--that lucius, whom all men hate, and the gods too would hate, if they hated as they ought. in what city was hannibal as cruel as antony at parma; and shall we not call him an enemy?" servilius had asked for a supplication, but had only asked for one of moderate length. and servilius had not called the generals imperatores. who should be so called but they who have been valiant, and lucky, and successful? cicero forgets the meaning of the title, and that even bibulus had been called imperator in syria. here he runs off from his subject, and at some length praises himself. it seems that rome was in a tumult at the time, and that antony's enemies did all they could to support him, and also to turn his head. he had been carried into the senate-house in triumph, and had been thanked by the whole city. after lauding the different generals, and calling them all imperatores, he desires the senate to decree them a supplication for fifty days. fifty days are to be devoted to thanksgiving to the gods, though it had already been declared how very little they have done for which to be thankful, as decimus had not yet been liberated. fifty days are granted for the battle of mutina, which as yet was supposed to have been but half fought. when we hear the term "supplicatio" first mentioned in livy one day was granted. it had grown to twenty when the gods were thanked for the victory over vercingetorix. now for this half-finished affair fifty was hardly enough. when the time was over, antony and lepidus had joined their forces triumphantly. pansa and hirtius were dead, and decimus brutus had fled, and had probably been murdered. nothing increases so out of proportion to the occasion as the granting of honors. stars, when they fall in showers, pale their brilliancy, and turn at last to no more than a cloud of dust. honors are soon robbed of all their honor when once the first step downward has been taken. the decree was passed, and cicero finished his last speech on so poor an occasion. but though the thing itself then done be small and trivial to us now, it was completed in magnificent language.[ ] the passage of which i give the first words below is very fine in the original, though it does not well bear translation. thus he ended his fourteenth philippic, and the silver tongue which had charmed rome so often was silent forever. we at least have no record of any further speech; nor, as i think, did he again take the labor of putting into words which should thrill through all who heard them, not the thoughts but the passionate feelings of the moment. i will venture to quote from a contemporary his praise of the philippics. mr. forsyth says: "nothing can exceed the beauty of the language, the rhythmical flow of the periods, and the harmony of the style. the structure of the latin language, which enables the speaker or writer to collocate his words, not, as in english, merely according to the order of thought, but in the manner best calculated to produce effect, too often baffles the powers of the translator who seeks to give the force of the passage without altering the arrangement. often again, as is the case with all attempts to present the thoughts of the ancient in a modern dress, a periphrasis must be used to explain the meaning of an idea which was instantly caught by the greek or roman ear. many allusions which flashed like lightning upon the minds of the senators must be explained in a parenthesis, and many a home-thrust and caustic sarcasm are now deprived of their sting, which pierced sharply at the moment of their utterance some twenty centuries ago. "but with all such disadvantages i hope that even the english reader will be able to recognize in these speeches something of the grandeur of the old roman eloquence. the noble passages in which cicero strove to force his countrymen for very shame to emulate the heroic virtues of their forefathers, and urged them to brave every danger and welcome death rather than slavery in the last struggle for freedom, are radiant with a glory which not even a translation can destroy. and it is impossible not to admire the genius of the orator whose words did more than armies toward recovering the lost liberty of rome." his words did more than armies, but neither could do anything lasting for the republic. what was one honest man among so many? we remember mommsen's verdict: "on the roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." the farther we see into the facts of roman history in our endeavors to read the life of cicero, the more apparent becomes its truth. but cicero, though he saw far toward it, never altogether acknowledged it. in this consists the charm of his character, though at the same time the weakness of his political aspirations; his weakness--because he was vain enough to imagine that he could talk men back from their fish-ponds; its charm--because he was able through it all to believe in honesty. the more hopeless became the cause, the sweeter, the more impassioned, the more divine, became his language. he tuned his notes to still higher pitches of melody, and thought that thus he could bring back public virtue. often in these philippics the matter is small enough. the men he has to praise are so little; and antony does not loom large enough in history to have merited from cicero so great a meed of vituperation! nor is the abuse all true, in attributing to him motives so low. but cicero was true through it all, anxious, all on fire with anxiety to induce those who heard him to send men to fight the battles to which he knew them, in their hearts, to be opposed. the courage, the persistency, and the skill shown, in the attempt were marvellous. they could not have succeeded, but they seem almost to have done so. i have said that he was one honest man among many. brutus was honest in his patriotism, and cassius, and all the conspirators. i do not doubt that cæsar was killed from a true desire to restore the roman republic. they desired to restore a thing that was in itself evil--the evils of which had induced cæsar to see that he might make himself its master. but cicero had conceived a republic in his own mind--not utopian, altogether human and rational--a republic which he believed to have been that of scipio, of marcellus, and lælius: a republic which should do nothing for him but require his assistance, in which the people should vote, and the oligarchs rule in accordance with the established laws. peace and ease, prosperity and protection, it would be for the rome of his dream to bestow upon the provinces. law and order, education and intelligence, it would be for her rulers to bestow upon rome. in desiring this, he was the one honest man among many. in accordance with that theory he had lived, and i claim for him that he had never departed from it. in his latter days, when the final struggle came, when there had arisen for him the chance of cæsar's death, when antony was his chief enemy, when he found himself in rome with authority sufficient to control legions, when the young cæsar had not shown--probably had not made--his plans, when lepidus and plancus and pollio might still prove themselves at last true men, he was once again alive with his dream. there might yet be again a scipio, or a cicero as good as scipio, in the republic; one who might have lived as gloriously, and die--not amid the jealousies but with the love of his countrymen. it was not to be. looking back at it now, we wonder that he should have dared to hope for it. but it is to the presence within gallant bosoms of hope still springing, though almost forlorn, of hope which has in its existence been marvellous, that the world is indebted for the most beneficial enterprises. it was not given to cicero to stem the tide and to prevent the evil coming of the cæsars; but still the nature of the life he had led, the dreams of a pure republic, those aspirations after liberty have not altogether perished. we have at any rate the record of the great endeavors which he made. nothing can have been worse managed than the victory at mutina. the two consuls were both killed; but that, it may be said, was the chance of war. antony with all his cavalry was allowed to escape eastward toward the cottian alps. decimus brutus seems to have shown himself deficient in all the qualities of a general, except that power of endurance which can hold a town with little or no provision. he wrote to cicero saying that he would follow antony. he makes a promise that antony shall not be allowed to remain in italy. he beseeches cicero to write to that "windy fellow lepidus," to prevent him from joining the enemy. lepidus will never do what is right unless made to do so by cicero. as to plancus, decimus has his doubts, but he thinks that plancus will be true to the republic now that antony is beaten.[ ] in his next letter he speaks of the great confusion which has come among them from the death of the two consuls. he declares also how great has been antony's energy in already recruiting his army. he has opened all the prisons and workhouses, and taken the men he found there. ventidius has joined him with his army, and he still fears lepidus. and young cæsar, who is supposed to be on their side, will obey no one, and can make none obey him. he, decimus, cannot feed his men. he has spent all his own money and his friends'. how is he to support seven legions?[ ] on the next day he writes again, and is still afraid of plancus and of lepidus and of pollio. and he bids cicero look after his good name: "stop the evil tongues of men if you can."[ ] a few days afterward cicero writes him a letter which he can hardly have liked to receive. what business had brutus to think the senate cowardly?[ ] who can be afraid of antony conquered who did not fear him in his strength? how should lepidus doubt now when victory had declared for the republic? though antony may have collected together the scrapings of the jails, decimus is not to forget that he, decimus, has the whole roman people at his back. cicero was probably right to encourage the general, and to endeavor to fill him with hope. to make a man victorious you should teach him to believe in victory. but decimus knew the nature of the troops around him, and was aware that every soldier was so imbued with an idea of the power of cæsar that, though cæsar was dead, they could fight with only half a heart against soldiers who had been in his armies. the name and authority and high office of the two consuls had done something with them, and young cæsar had been with the consuls. but both the consuls had been killed--which was in itself ominous--and antony was still full of hope, and young cæsar was not there, and decimus was unpopular with the men. it was of no use that cicero should write with lofty ideas and speak of the spirit of the senate. antony had received a severe check, but the feeling of military rule which cæsar had engendered was still there, and soldiers who would obey their officers were not going to submit themselves to "votes of the people." cicero in the mean time had his letters passing daily between himself and the camps, thinking to make up by the energy of his pen for the weakness of his party. lepidus sends him an account of his movements on the rhone, declaring how he was anxious to surround antony. lepidus was already meditating his surrender. "i ask from you, my cicero, that if you have seen with what zeal i have in former times served the republic, you should look for conduct equal to it, or surpassing it for the future; and, that you should think me the more worthy of your protection, the higher are my deserts."[ ] he was already, when writing that letter, in treaty with antony. plancus writes to him at the same time apologizing for his conduct in joining lepidus. it was a service of great danger for him. plancus, but it was necessary for lepidus that this should be done. we are inclined to doubt them all, knowing whither they were tending. lepidus was false from the beginning. plancus doubled for a while, and then yielded himself. the reader, i think, will have had no hope for cicero and the republic since the two consuls were killed; but as he comes upon the letters which passed between cicero and the armies he will have been altogether disheartened. chapter x. _cicero's death._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] what other letters from cicero we possess were written almost exclusively with the view of keeping the army together, and continuing the contest against antony. there are among them a few introductory letters of little or no interest. and these military despatches, though of importance as showing the eager nature of the man, seem, as we read them, to be foreign to his nature. he does not understand war, and devotes himself to instigating men to defend the republic, of whom we suspect that they were not in the least affected by the words they received from him. the correspondence as to this period of his life consists of his letters to the generals, and of theirs to him. there are nearly as many of the one as of the other, and the reader is often inclined to doubt whether cicero be writing to plancus or plancus to cicero. he remained at rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among the official workshops of the state, writing letters, scraping together money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amid a crowd of hopeless, doubting, disheartened senators, whom he still kept together by his eloquence as republicans, though each was eager to escape. but who can be made consuls in the place of pansa and hirtius? octavian, who had not left italy after the battle of mutina, was determined to be one; but the senate, probably under the guidance of cicero, for a time would not have him. there was a rumor that cicero had been elected--or is said to have been such a rumor. our authority for it comes from that correspondence with marcus brutus on the authenticity of which we do not trust, and the date of which we do not know.[ ] "when i had already written my letter, i heard that you had been made consul. when that is done i shall believe that we shall have a true republic, and one supported by its own strength." but probably neither was the rumor true, nor the fact that there was such a rumor. it was not thus that octavian meant to play his part. he had been passed over by cicero when a general against antony was needed. decimus had been used, and hirtius and pansa had been employed as though they had been themselves strong as were the consuls of old. so they were to cicero--in whose ears the very name of consul had in it a resonance of the magnificence of rome. octavian thought that pansa and hirtius were but cæsar's creatures, who at cæsar's death had turned against him. but even they had been preferred to him. in those days he was very quick to learn. he had been with the army, and with cæsar's soldiers, and was soon instructed in the steps which it was wise that he should take. he put aside, as with a sweep of his hand, all the legal impediments to his holding the consulship. talk to him of age! he had already heard that word "boy" too often. he would show them what a boy would do. he would let them understand that there need be no necessity for him to canvass, to sue for the consulship cap in hand, to have morning levees and to know men's names--as had been done by cicero. his uncle had not gone through those forms when he had wanted the consulship. octavian sent a military order by a band of officers, who, marching into the senate, demanded the office. when the old men hesitated, one cornelius, a centurion, showed them his sword, and declared that by means of that should his general be elected consul. the greek biographers and historians, plutarch, dio, and appian, say that he was minded to make cicero his fellow-consul, promising to be guided by him in everything; but it could hardly have been so, with the feelings which were then hot against cicero in octavian's bosom. dio cassius is worthy of little credit as to this period, and appian less so, unless when supported by latin authority. and we find that plutarch inserts stories with that freedom which writers use who do not suppose that others coming after them will have wider sources of information than their own. octavian marched into rome with his legions, and had himself chosen consul in conjunction with quintius pedius, who had also been one of the coheirs to cæsar's will. this happened in september. previous to this cicero had sent to africa for troops; but the troops when they came all took part with the young cæsar. a story is told which appears to have been true, and to have assisted in creating that enmity which at last induced octavian to assent to cicero's death. he was told that cicero had said that "the young man was to be praised, and rewarded, and elevated!"[ ] the last word, "tollendum," has a double meaning; might be elevated to the skies--or to the "gallows." in english, if meaning the latter, we should say that such a man must be "put out of the way." decimus brutus told this to cicero as having been repeated by sigulius, and cicero answers him, heaping all maledictions upon sigulius. but he does not deny the words, or their intention--and though he is angry, he is angry half in joke. he had probably allowed himself to use the witticism, meaning little or nothing--choosing the phrase without a moment's thought, because it contained a double meaning. no one can conceive that he meant to imply that young cæsar should be murdered. "let us reward him, but for the moment let us be rid of him." and then, too, he had in the same sentence called him a boy. as far as evidence goes, we know that the words were spoken. we can trust the letter from decimus to cicero, and the answer from cicero to decimus. and we know that, a short time afterward, octavian, sitting in the island near bologna with antony, consented that cicero's name should be inserted in the fatal list as one of those doomed to be murdered. in the mean time lepidus had taken his troops over to antony, and pollio joined them soon afterward with his from spain. after that it was hardly to be expected that plancus should hesitate. there has always been a doubt whether plancus should or should not be regarded as a traitor. he held out longer than the others, and is supposed to have been true in those assurances which he made to cicero of republican fervor. why was he bound to obey cicero, who was then at rome, sending out his orders without official authority? while the consuls had been alive he could obey the consuls; and at the consuls' death he could for a while follow the spirit of their instructions. but as that spirit died away he found himself without orders other than cicero's. in this condition was it not better for him to go with the other generals of the empire rather than to perish with a falling party? in addition to this it will happen at such a time that the soldiers themselves have a will of their own. with them the name of cæsar was still powerful, and to their thinking antony was fighting on dead cæsar's side. when we read the history of this year, the fact becomes clear that out of rome cæsar's name was more powerful than cicero's eloquence. governed by such circumstances, driven by events which he could not control, plancus has the merit of having been the last among the doubtful generals to desert the cause which cicero had at heart. cassius and brutus in the east were still collecting legions for the battle of philippi. with that we shall have no trouble here. in the west, plancus found himself bound to follow the others, and to join antony and lepidus in spite of the protestations he had made. to those who read cicero's letters of this year the question must often arise whether plancus was a true man. i have made his excuse to the reader with all that i can say in his favor. the memory of the man is, however, unpleasant to me. decimus, when he found himself thus alone, endeavored to force his way with his army along the northern shore of the adriatic, so as to join marcus brutus in macedonia. to him, as one of those who had slain cæsar, no power was left of deserting. he was doomed unless he was victorious. he was deserted by his soldiers, who left him in batches, and at last was taken alive, when wandering through the country, and sent (dead) to antony. marcus brutus and cassius seem to have turned a deaf ear to all cicero's entreaties that they should come to his rescue. cicero in his last known letter--which however was written as far back as in july--is very eager with cassius: "only attempts are heard of your army, very great in themselves, but we expect to hear of deeds. * * * nothing can be grander or more noble than yourself, and therefore it is that we are longing for you here in rome. * * * believe me that everything depends on you and brutus--that we are waiting for both of you. for brutus we are waiting constantly."[ ] this was after lepidus had gone, but while plancus was supposed to be as yet true--or rather, not yet false. he did, no doubt, write letters to brutus urging him in the same way. alas, alas! it was his final effort made for the republic. in september octavian marched into rome as a conqueror, at the head of those troops from africa which had been sent as a last resource to help the republicans. then we may imagine that cicero recognized the fact that there was left nothing further for which to struggle. the republic was done, his dream was over, and he could only die. brutus and cassius might still carry on the contest; but rome had now fallen a second time, in spite of his efforts, and all hope must have fled from him. when cæsar had conquered at pharsalia, and on his return from the east had graciously met him at brundisium, and had generously accorded to him permission to live under the shadow of his throne, the time for him must have been full of bitterness. but he had not then quite realized the meaning of a tyrant's throne. he had not seen how willingly the people would submit themselves, how little they cared about their liberty; nor had he as yet learned the nature of military despotism. rome had lived through sulla's time, and the republic had been again established. it might live through cæsar's period of command. when cæsar had come to him and supped with him, as a prince with one of his subjects, his misery had been great. still there was a hope, though he knew not from whence. those other younger men had felt as he had felt--and cæsar had fallen. to his eyes it was as though some god had interfered to restore to him, a roman, his ancient form of government. cæsar was now dead, and all would be right--only that antony was left alive. there was need for another struggle before consuls, prætors, and Ædiles could be elected in due order; and when he found that the struggle was to be made under his auspices, he girded up his loins and was again happy. no man can be unhappy who is pouring out his indignation in torrents, and is drinking in the applause of his audience. every hard word hurled at antony, and every note of praise heard in return, was evidence to him of his own power. he did believe, while the philippics were going on, that he was stirring up a mighty power to arouse itself and claim its proper dominion over the world. there were moments between in which he may have been faint-hearted--in which he may have doubted as to young cæsar--in which he feared that pansa might escape from him, or that decimus would fall before relief could reach him; but action lent a pleasantness and a grace to it all. it is sweet to fight with the hope of victory. but now, when young cæsar had marched into rome with his legions, and was doubtless prepared to join himself to antony, there was no longer anything for cicero to do in this world. it is said, but not as i think on good authority, that cicero went out to meet cæsar--and if to meet him, then also to congratulate him. appian tells us that in the senate cicero hastened to congratulate cæsar, assuring him how anxious he had been to secure the consulship for him, and how active. cæsar smiled, and said that cicero had perhaps been a little late in his friendship.[ ] dio cassius only remarks that cæsar was created consul by the people in the regular way, two consuls having been chosen; and adds that the matter was one of great glory to cæsar, seeing that he had obtained the consulship at an unusually early age.[ ] but, as i have said above, their testimony for many reasons is to be doubted. each wrote in the interest of the cæsars, and, in dealing with the period before the empire, seems only to have been anxious to make out some connected story which should suit the emperor's views. young cæsar left rome still with the avowed purpose of proceeding against antony as against one declared by the senate to be an enemy; but the purpose was only avowed. messengers followed him on the road, informing him that the ban had been removed, and he was then at liberty to meet his friend on friendly terms. antony had sent word to him that it was not so much his duty as young cæsar's to avenge the death of his uncle, and that unless he would assist him, he, antony, would take his legions and join brutus and cassius.[ ] i prefer to believe with mr. forsyth that cicero had retired with his brother quintus to one of his villas. plutarch tells us that he went to his tusculan retreat, and that on receiving news of the proscriptions he determined to remove to astura, on the sea-side, in order that he might be ready to escape into macedonia. octavian, in the mean time, having caused a law to be passed by pedius condemning all the conspirators to death, went northward to meet antony and lepidus at bononia, the bologna of to-day. here it was necessary that the terms of the compact should be settled by which the spoils of the world should be divided among them; and here they met, these three men, on a small river island, remote from the world--where, as it is supposed, each might think himself secure from the other. antony and lepidus were men old in craft--antony in middle life, and lepidus somewhat older. cæsar was just twenty-one; but from all that we have been able to gather as to that meeting, he was fully able to hold his own with his elders. what each claimed as his share in the empire is not so much matter of history as the blood which each demanded. paterculus says that the death-warrants which were then signed were all arranged in opposition to cæsar.[ ] but paterculus wrote as the servant of tiberius, and had been the servant of augustus. it was his object to tell the story as much in favor of augustus as it could be told. it is said that, debating among themselves the murders which each desired for his own security, young cæsar, on the third day only, gave up cicero to the vengeance of antony. it may have been so. it is impossible that we should have a record of what took place from day to day on that island. but we do know that there cicero's death was pronounced, and to that doom young cæsar assented. it did not occur to them, as it would have done to julius cæsar at such a time, that it would be better that they should show their mercy than their hatred. this proscription was made by hatred and not by fear. it was not brutus and cassius against whom it was directed--the common enemies of the three triumviri. sulla had attempted to stamp out a whole faction, and so far succeeded as to strike dumb with awe the remainder. but here the bargain of death was made by each against the other's friends. "your brother shall go," said antony to lepidus. "if so, your uncle also," said lepidus to antony. so the one gave up his brother and the other his uncle, to indulge the private spleen of his partner; and cicero must go to appease both. as it happened, though cicero's fate was spoken, the two others escaped their doom. "nothing so bad was done in those days," says paterculus, "that cæsar should have been compelled to doom any one to death, or that such a one as cicero should have been doomed by any."[ ] middleton thinks, and perhaps with fair reason, that cæsar's objection was feigned, and that his delay was made for show. a slight change in quoting the above passage, unintentionally made, favors his view; "or that cicero should have been proscribed by him," he says, turning "ullo" into "illo." the meaning of the passage seems to be, that it was sad that cæsar should have been forced to yield, or that any one should have been there to force him. as far as cæsar is concerned, it is palliative rather than condemnatory. suetonius, indeed, declares that though augustus for a time resisted the proscription, having once taken it in hand he pursued it more bloodily than the others.[ ] it is said that the list when completed contained the names of three hundred senators and two thousand knights; but their fate was for a time postponed, and most of them ultimately escaped. we have no word of their deaths, as would have been the case had they all fallen. seventeen were named for instant execution, and against these their doom went forth. we can understand that cicero's name should have been the first on the list. we are told that when the news reached rome the whole city was struck with horror. during the speaking of the philippics the republican party had been strong and cicero had been held in favor. the soldiers had still clung to the memory of cæsar; but the men of mark in the city, those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders" generally, had thought that, now cæsar was dead, and especially as antony had left rome, their safest course would be to join the republic. they had done so, and had found their mistake. young cæsar had first come to rome and they had been willing enough to receive him, but now he had met antony and lepidus, and the bloody days of sulla were to come back upon them. all rome was in such a tumult of horror and dismay that pedius, the new consul, was frightened out of his life by the clamor. the story goes that he ran about the town trying to give comfort, assuring one and another that he had not been included in the lists, till, as the result of it all, he himself, when the morning came, died from the exertion and excitement. there is extant a letter addressed to octavian--supposed to have been written by cicero, and sometimes printed among his works--which, if written by him, must have been composed about this time. it no doubt was a forgery, and probably of a much later date; but it serves to show what were the feelings presumed to have been in cicero's bosom at the time. it is full of abuse of antony, and of young cæsar. i can well imagine that such might have been cicero's thoughts as he remembered the praise with which he had laden the young man's name; how he had decreed to him most unusual honors and voted statues for him. it had all been done in order that the republic might be preserved, but had all been done in vain. it must have distressed him sorely at this time as he reflected how much eulogy he had wasted. to be sneered at by the boy when he came back to rome to assume the consulship, and to be told, with a laugh, that he had been a little late in his welcome! and to hear that the boy had decreed his death in conjunction with antony and lepidus! this was all that rome could do for him at the end--for him who had so loved her, suffered so much for her, and been so valiant on her behalf! are you not a little late to welcome me as one of my friends? the boy had said when cicero had bowed and smiled to him. then the next tidings that reached him contained news that he was condemned! was this the youth of whom he had declared, since the year began, that "he knew well all the boy's sentiments; that nothing was dearer to the lad than the republic, nothing more reverent than the dignity of the senate?" was it for this that he had bade the senate "fear nothing" as to young octavian, "but always still look for better and greater things?" was it for this that he had pledged his faith for him with such confident words--"i promise for him, i become his surety, i engage myself, conscript fathers, that caius cæsar will always be such a citizen as he has shown himself to-day?"[ ] and thus the young man had redeemed his tutor's pledges on his behalf! "a little late to welcome me, eh?" his pupil had said to him, and had agreed that he should be murdered. but, as i have said, the story of that speech rests on doubtful authority. had not cicero too rejoiced at the uncle's murder? and having done so, was he not bound to endure the enmity he had provoked? he had not indeed killed cæsar, or been aware that he was to be killed; but still it must be said of him that, having expressed his satisfaction at what had been done, he had identified himself with those who had killed him, and must share their fate. the slaying of a tyrant was almost by law enjoined upon romans--was at any rate regarded as a virtue rather than a crime. there of course arises the question, who is to decide whether a man be a tyrant? and the idea being radically wrong, becomes enveloped in difficulty out of which there is no escape. but there remains as a fact the existence of the feeling which was at the time held to have justified brutus--and also cicero. a man has to inquire of his own heart with what amount of criminality he can accuse the cicero of the day, or the young augustus. can any one say that cicero was base to have rejoiced that cæsar had been killed? can any one not regard with horror the young consul, as he sat there in the privacy of the island, with antony on one side and lepidus on the other, and then in the first days of his youth, with the down just coming on his cheeks, sending forth his edict for slaughtering the old friend of the republic? [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] it is supposed that cicero left rome in company with his brother quintus, and that at first they went to tusculum. there was no bar to their escaping from italy had they so chosen, and probably such was their intention as soon as tidings reached them of the proscription. it is pleasant to think that they should again have become friends before they died. in truth, marcus the elder was responsible for his brother's fate. quintus had foreseen the sun rising in the political horizon, and had made his adorations accordingly. he, with others of his class, had shown himself ready to bow down before cæsar. with his brother's assent he had become cæsar's lieutenant in gaul, such employment being in conformity with the practice of the republic. when cæsar had returned, and the question as to power arose at once between cæsar and pompey, quintus, who had then been with his brother in cilicia, was restrained by the influence of marcus; but after pharsalia the influence of marcus was on the wane. we remember how young quintus had broken away and had joined cæsar's party. he had sunk so low that he had become "antony's right hand." in that direction lay money, luxury, and all those good things which the government of the day had to offer. cicero was so much in cæsar's eyes, that cæsar despised the elder and the younger quintus for deserting their great relative, and would hardly have them. the influence of the brother and the uncle sat heavily on them. the shame of being cæsarean while he was pompeian, the shame of siding with antony while he sided with the republic, had been too great for them. while he was speaking his philippics they could not but be enthusiastic on the same side. and now, when he was proscribed, they were both proscribed with him. as the story goes, quintus returned from tusculum to rome to seek provision for their journey to macedonia, there met his son, and they both died gallantly. antony's hirelings came upon the two together, or nearly together, and, finding the son first, put him to the torture, so to learn from him the place of his father's concealment; then the father, hearing his son's screams, rushed out to his aid, and the two perished together. but this story also comes to us from greek sources, and must be taken for what it is worth. marcus, alone in his litter, travelled through the country to his sea-side villa at astura. then he went on to formiæ, sick with doubt, not knowing whether to stay and die, or encounter the winter sea in such boat as was provided for him. should he seek the uncomfortable refuge of brutus's army? we can remember his bitter exclamations as to the miseries of camp life. he did go on board; but was brought back by the winds, and his servants could not persuade him to make another attempt. plutarch tells us that he was minded to go to rome, to force his way into young cæsar's house and there to stab himself, but that he was deterred from this melodramatic death by the fear of torture. the story only shows how great had been the attention given to every detail of his last moments, and what the people in rome had learned to say of them. the same remark applies to plutarch's tale as to the presuming crows who pecked at the cordage of his sails when his boat was turned to go back to the land, and afterward with their beaks strove to drag the bedclothes from off him when he lay waiting his fate the night before the murderers came to him. he was being carried down from his villa at formiæ to the sea-side when antony's emissaries came upon him in his litter. there seem to have been two of them--both soldiers and officers in the pay of antony--popilius lænas and herennius. they overtook him in the wood, through which paths ran from the villa down to the sea-shore. on arriving at the house they had not found cicero, but were put upon his track by a freedman who had belonged to quintus, named philologus. he could hardly have done a kinder act than to show the men the way how they might quickly release cicero from his agony. they went down to the end of the wood, and there met the slaves bearing the litter. the men were willing to fight for their master; but cicero, bidding them put down the chair, stretched out his neck and received his death-blow. antony had given special orders to his servants. they were to bring cicero's head and his hands--the hands which had written the philippics, and the tongue which had spoken them--and his order was obeyed to the letter. cicero was nearly sixty-four when he died, his birthday being on the d of january following. it would be hardly worth our while to delay ourselves for a moment with the horrors of antony's conduct, and those of his wife fulvia--fulvia the widow of clodius and the wife of antony--were it not that we may see what were the manners to which a great roman lady had descended in those days in which the republic was brought to an end. on the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. that is the story of cicero's death as it has been generally told. we are told also that rome heard the news and saw the sight with ill-suppressed lamentation. we can easily believe that it should have been so. i have endeavored, as i have gone on with my work, to compare him to an englishman of the present day; but there is no comparing english eloquence to his, or the ravished ears of a roman audience to the pleasure taken in listening to our great orators. the world has become too impatient for oratory, and then our northern senses cannot appreciate the melody of sounds as did the finer organs of the roman people. we require truth, and justice, and common-sense from those who address us, and get much more out of our public speeches than did the old italians. we have taught ourselves to speak so that we may be believed--or have come near to it. a roman audience did not much care, i fancy, whether the words spoken were true. but it was indispensable that they should be sweet--and sweet they always were. sweet words were spoken to them, with their cadences all measured, with their rhythm all perfect; but no words had ever been so sweet as those of cicero. i even, with my obtuse ears, can find myself sometimes lifted by them into a world of melody, little as i know of their pronunciation and their tone. and with the upper classes--those who read--his literature had become almost as divine as his speech. he had come to be the one man who could express himself in perfect language. as in the next age the eclogues of virgil and the odes of horace became dear to all the educated classes because of the charm of their expression, so in their time, i fancy, had become the language of cicero. it is not surprising that men should have wept when they saw that ghastly face staring at them from the rostra, and the protruding tongue and the outstretched hands. the marvel is that, seeing it, they should still have borne with antony. that which cicero has produced in literature is, as a rule, admitted to be excellent; but his character as a man has been held to be tarnished by three faults--dishonesty, cowardice, and insincerity. as to the first, i have denied it altogether, and my denial is now submitted to the reader for his judgment. it seems to have been brought against him not in order to make him appear guilty, but because it has appeared to be impossible that, when others were so deeply in fault, he should have been innocent. that he should have asked for nothing, that he should have taken no illicit rewards, that he should not have submitted to be feed, but that he should have kept his hands clean while all around him were grasping at everything--taking money, selling their aid for stipulated payments, grinding miserable creditors--has been too much for men to believe. i will not take my readers back over the cases brought against him, but will ask them to ask themselves whether there is one supported by evidence fit to go before a jury. the accusations have been made by men clean-handed themselves; but to them it has appeared unreasonable to believe that a roman oligarch of those days should be an honest gentleman. as to his cowardice, i feel more doubt as to my power of carrying my readers with me, though no doubt as to cicero's courage. cowardice in a man is abominable. but what is cowardice? and what courage? it is a matter in which so many errors are made! tinsel is so apt to shine like gold and dazzle the sight! in one of the earlier chapters of this book, when speaking of catiline, i have referred to the remarks of a contemporary writer: "the world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause!" "all wounded in front," is quoted by this author from sallust. "not a man taken alive! catiline himself gasping out his life ringed around with corpses of his friends." that is given as a picture of a brave man dying for his cause, who should excite our admiration even though his cause were bad. in the previous lines we have an intended portrait of cicero, who, "thinking, no doubt, that he had done a good day's work for his patrons, declined to run himself into more danger." here is one story told of courage, and another of fear. let us pause for a moment and regard the facts. catiline, when hunted to the last gasp, faced his enemy and died fighting like a man--or a bull. who is there cannot do so much as that? for a shilling or eighteen-pence a day we can get an army of brave men who will face an enemy--and die, if death should come. it is not a great thing, nor a rare, for a man in battle not to run away. with regard to cicero the allegation is that he would not be allowed to be bribed to accuse cæsar, and thus incur danger. the accusation which is thus brought against him is borrowed from sallust, and is no doubt false; but i take it in the spirit in which it is made. cicero feared to accuse cæsar, lest he should find himself enveloped, through cæsar's means, in fresh danger. grant that he did so. was he wrong at such a moment to save his life for the republic--and for himself? his object was to banish catiline, and not to catch in his net every existing conspirator. he could stop the conspiracy by securing a few, and might drive many into arms by endeavoring to encircle all. was this cowardice? during all those days he had to live with his life in his hands, passing about among conspirators who he knew were sworn to kill him, and in the midst of his danger he could walk and talk and think like a man. it was the same when he went down into the court to plead for milo, with the gladiators of clodius and the soldiery of pompey equally adverse to him. it was the same when he uttered philippic after philippic in the presence of antony's friends. true courage, to my thinking, consists not in facing an unavoidable danger. any man worthy of the name can do that. the felon that will be hung to-morrow shall walk up to the scaffold and seem ready to surrender the life he cannot save. but he who, with the blood running hot through his veins, with a full desire of life at his heart, with high aspirations as to the future, with everything around him to make him happy--love and friendship and pleasant work--when he can willingly imperil all because duty requires it, he is brave. of such a nature was cicero's courage. as to the third charge--that of insincerity--i would ask of my readers to bethink themselves how few men are sincere now? how near have we approached to the beauty of truth, with all christ's teaching to guide us? not by any means close, though we are nearer to it than the romans were in cicero's days. at any rate we have learned to love it dearly, though we may not practise it entirely. he also had learned to love it, but not yet to practise it quite so well as we do. when it shall be said of men truly that they are thoroughly sincere, then the millennium will have come. we flatter, and love to be flattered. cicero flattered men, and loved it better. we are fond of praise, and all but ask for it. cicero was fond of it, and did ask for it. but when truth was demanded from him, truth was there. was cicero sincere to his party, was he sincere to his friends, was he sincere to his family, was he sincere to his dependents? did he offer to help and not help? did he ever desert his ship, when he had engaged himself to serve? i think not. he would ask one man to praise him to another--and that is not sincere. he would apply for eulogy to the historian of his day--and that is not sincere. he would speak ill or well of a man before the judge, according as he was his client or his adversary--and that perhaps is not sincere. but i know few in history on whose positive sincerity in a cause his adherents could rest with greater security. look at his whole life with pompey--as to which we see his little insincerities of the moment because we have his letters to atticus; but he was true to his political idea of a pompey long after that pompey had faded from his dreams. for twenty years we have every thought of his heart; and because the feelings of one moment vary from those of another, we call him insincere. what if we had pompey's thoughts and cæsar's, would they be less so? could cæsar have told us all his feelings? cicero was insincere: i cannot say otherwise. but he was so much more sincere than other romans as to make me feel that, when writing his life, i have been dealing with the character of one who might have been a modern gentleman. chapter xi. _cicero's rhetoric._ it is well known that cicero's works are divided into four main parts. there are the rhetoric, the orations, the epistles, and the philosophy. there is a fifth part, indeed--the poetry; but of that there is not much, and of the little we have but little is esteemed. there are not many, i fear, who think that cicero has deserved well of his country by his poetry. his prose works have been divided as i have stated them. of these, two portions have been dealt with already--as far as i am able to deal with them. of the orations and epistles i have spoken as i have gone on with my task, because the matter there treated has been available for the purposes of biography: the other two, the rhetoric and the philosophy, have been distinct from the author's life.[ ] they might have been good or bad, and his life would have been still the same; therefore it is necessary to divide them from his life, and to speak of them separately. they are the work of his silent chamber, as the others were the enthusiastic outpourings of his daily spirit, or the elaborated arguments of his public career. who has left behind him so widely spread a breadth of literature? who has made so many efforts, and has so well succeeded in them all? i do not know that it has ever been given to any one man to run up and down the strings of knowledge, and touch them all as though each had been his peculiar study, as cicero has done. his rhetoric has been always made to come first, because, upon the whole, it was first written. it may be as well here to give a list of his main works, with their dates--premising, however, that we by no means in that way get over the difficulty as to time, even in cases as to which we are sure of our facts. a treatise may have been commenced and then put by, or may have been written some time previously to publication. or it may be, as were those which are called the academica, that it was remodelled, and altered in its shape and form. the academica were written at the instance of atticus. we now have the altered edition of a fragment of the first book, and the original of the second book. in this manner there have come discrepancies which nearly break the heart of him who would fain make his list clear. but here, on the whole, is presented to the reader with fair accuracy a list of the works of cicero, independent of that continual but ever-changing current of his thought which came welling out from him daily in his speeches and his letters. again, however, we must remember that here are omitted all those which are either wholly lost or have come to us only in fragments too abruptly broken for the purposes of continuous study. of these i will not even attempt to give the names, though when we remember some of the subjects--the de gloria, the de re militari--he could not go into the army for a month or two without writing a book about it--the de auguriis, the de philosophia, the de suis temporibus, the de suis consiliis, the de jure civili, and the de universo, we may well ask ourselves what were the subjects on which he did not write. in addition to these, much that has come to us has been extracted, as it were unwillingly, from palimpsests, and is, from that and from other causes, fragmentary. we have indeed only fragments of the essays de republica. de legibus, de natura deorum, de divinatione, and de fato, in addition to the academica. the list of the works of which it is my purpose to give some shortest possible account in the following chapters is as follows: nature of the work. titles of those as to rhetoric are marked [a] the date the works. " " philosophy " [b] of the moral essays " [c] publication. rheticorum { four books, giving lessons in rhetoric; } ad c. { supposed to have been written, not by cicero, } b.c. herennium. { but by one cornificius.[a][ ] } , . } Ætat. de { four books, giving lessons in rhetoric, } , . inventione. { supposed to have been translated from the } { greek. two out of four have come to us.[a] } { three dialogues, in three books--supposed to } { have been held under a plane-tree, in the } de oratore. { garden at tusculum belonging to crassus, } b.c. . { forty years before--in which are laid down } Ætat. . { instructions for the making of an orator.[a] } { six political discussions--supposed to have } de { been held seventy-five years before the date } b.c. . republica. { at which they were written--on the best mode } Ætat. . { of governance. we have but a fragment of them. } { [c] } { three out of six books as to the best laws for } { governing the republic. they are carried on } de legibus. { between atticus, quintus, and marcus. they } b.c. . { are supposed to have been written b.c. } Ætat. . { (ætat. ), but were not published till after } { his death.[c] } de optimo { a preface to the translation of the speeches } genere { of Æschines and of demosthenes for and against } b.c. . oratorum. { ctesiphon--in the matter of the golden crown. } Ætat. . { [a] } de { instructions by questions and answers, } partitione { supposed to have been previously given to his } b.c. . oratoria. { son in greek, on the art of speaking in public.} Ætat. . { [a] } { treatises, in which he deals with the various } { phases of philosophy taught by the academy. it } the { has been altered, and we have only a part of } b.c. . academica. { the first book of the altered portion and the } Ætat. . { second part of the treatise before it was } { altered. in its altered form it is addressed } { to varro.[b] } de finibus { a treatise in five books, in the form of } bonorum et { dialogues, as to the results to be looked for } b.c. . malorum. { in inquiries as to what is good and what is } Ætat. . { evil. it is addressed to brutus.[b] } brutus: or, { a treatise on the most perfect orators of past } de claris { times. it is addressed to brutus, and has, in } b.c. . oratoribus. { a peculiar manner, been always called by his } Ætat. . { name.[a] } orator. { a treatise, addressed to brutus, to show what } b.c. . { the perfect orator should be.[a] } Ætat. . { or the tusculan inquiries, supposed to have } tusculanæ { been held with certain friends in his tusculan } disputa- { villa, as to contempt of death and pain and } b.c. . tiones. { sorrow, as to conquering the passions, and the } Ætat. . { happiness to be derived from virtue. they are } { addressed to brutus.[a] } { three books addressed to brutus. velleius, } de natura { balbus, and cotta discuss the relative merits } b.c. . deorum. { of the epicurean, stoic, and academic schools. } Ætat. { [b] } { he discusses with his brother quintus the } de { property of the gods to "divine," or rather } b.c. . divinatione.{ to enable men to read prophecies. it is a } Ætat. . { continuation of a former work.[b] } de fato. { the part only of a book on destiny.[b] } b.c. . { } Ætat. . the topica. { a so-called translation from aristotle. it is } b.c. . { addressed to trebatius.[a] } Ætat. . de { a treatise on old age, addressed to atticus, } b.c. . senectute. { and called cato major.[c] } Ætat. . de { a treatise on friendship, addressed also to } b.c. . amicitia. { atticus, and called lælius.[c] } Ætat. . { to his son. treating of the moral duties of } de { life. containing three books-- } b.c. . officiis. { i. on honesty } Ætat. . { ii. on expediency } { iii. comparing honesty and expediency. } it is to be observed from this list that for thirty years of his life cicero was silent in regard to literature--for those thirty years in which the best fruits of a man's exertion are expected from him. indeed, we may say that for the first fifty-two years of his life he wrote nothing but letters and speeches. of the two treatises with which the list is headed, the first, in all probability, did not come from his pen, and the second is no more than a lad's translation from a greek author. as to the work of translation, it must be understood that the greek and latin languages did not stand in reference to each other as they do now to modern readers. we translate in order that the pearls hidden under a foreign language may be conveyed to those who do not read it, and admit, when we are so concerned, that none can truly drink the fresh water from a fountain so handled. the romans, in translating from the greek, thinking nothing of literary excellence, felt that they were bringing greek thought into a form of language in which it could be thus made useful. there was no value for the words, but only for the thing to be found in it. thence it has come that no acknowledgment is made. we moderns confess that we are translating, and hardly assume for ourselves a third-rate literary place. when, on the other hand, we find the unexpressed thought floating about the world, we take it, and we make it our own when we put it into a book. the originality is regarded as being in the language, not in the thought. but to the roman, when he found the thought floating about the world in the greek character, it was free for him to adopt it and to make it his own. cicero, had he done in these days with this treatise as i have suggested, would have been guilty of gross plagiarism, but there was nothing of the kind known then. this must be continually remembered in reading his essays. you will find large portions of them taken from the greek without acknowledgment. often it shall be so, because it suits him to contradict an assertion or to show that it has been allowed to lead to false conclusions. this general liberty of translation has been so frequently taken by the latin poets--by virgil and horace, let us say, as being those best known--that they have been regarded by some as no more than translations. to them to have been translators of homer, or of pindar and stesichorus, and to have put into latin language ideas which were noble, was a work as worthy of praise as that of inventing. and it must be added that the forms they have used have been perfect in their kind. there has been no need to them for close translation. they have found the idea, and their object has been to present it to their readers in the best possible language. he who has worked amid the bonds of modern translation well knows how different it has been with him. there is not much in the treatise de inventione to arrest us. we should say, from reading it, that the matter it contains is too good for the production of a youth of twenty-one, but that the language in which it is written is not peculiarly fine. the writer intended to continue it--or wrote as though he did--and therefore we may imagine that it has come to us from some larger source. it is full of standing cases, or examples of the law courts, which are brought up to show the way in which these things are handled. we can imagine that a roman youth should be practised in such matters, but we cannot imagine that the same youth should have thought of them all, and remembered them all, and should have been able to describe them. the following is an example: "a certain man on his journey encountered a traveller going to make a purchase, having with him a sum of money. they chatted along the road together, and, as happens on such occasions, they became intimate. they went to the same inn, where they supped, and said that they would sleep together. having supped they went to bed; when the landlord--for this was told after it had all been found out, and he had been taken for another offence--having perceived that one man had money, in the middle of the night, knowing how sound they would sleep from fatigue, crept up to them, and having taken out of its scabbard the sword of him that was without the money as it lay by his side, he killed the other man, put back the sword, and then went to his bed. but he whose sword had been used rose long before daylight and called loudly to his companion. finding that the man slumbered too heavily to be stirred, he took himself and his sword and the other things he had brought away with him and started alone. but the landlord soon raised the hue-and-cry, 'a man has been killed!' and, with some of the guests, followed him who had gone off. they took the man on the road, and dragged his sword out of its sheath, which they found all bloody. they carried him back to the city, and he was accused." in this cause there is the declaration of the crime alleged, "you killed the man." there is the defence, "i did not kill him." thence arises the issue. the question to be judged is one of conjecture. "did he kill him?"[ ] we may judge from the story that the case was not one which had occurred in life, but had been made up. the truculent landlord creeping in and finding that everything was as he wished it; and the moneyless man going off in the dark, leaving his dead bedfellow behind him--as the landlord had intended that he should--form all the incidents of a stock piece for rehearsal rather than the occurrence of a true murder. the same may be said of other examples adduced, here as afterward, by quintilian. they are well-known cases, and had probably been handed down from one student to another. they tell us more of the manners of the people than of the rudiments of their law. from this may be seen the nature of the work. from thence we skip over thirty years and come at once to b.c. . the days of the triumvirate had come, and the quarrel with clodius--of cicero's exile and his return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of his anger, against his enemies. and all this had taken place since those halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to be quæstor, Ædile, prætor, and consul. he had first succeeded as a public man, and then, having been found too honest, he had failed. there can be no doubt that he had failed because he had been too honest. i must have told the story of his political life badly if i have not shown that cæsar had retired from the assault because cicero was consul, but had retired only as a man does who steps back in order that his next spring forward may be made with more avail. he chose well the time for his next attack, and cicero was driven to decide between three things--he must be cæsarean, or must be quiet, or he must go. he would not be cæsarean, he certainly could not be quiet, and he went. the immediate effect of his banishment was on him so great that he could not employ himself. but he returned to rome, and, with too evident a reliance on a short-lived popularity, he endeavored to replace himself in men's eyes; but it must have been clear to him that he had struggled in vain. then he looked back upon his art, his oratory, and told himself that, as the life of a man of action was no longer open to him, he could make for himself a greater career as a man of letters. he could do so. he has done so. but i doubt whether he had ever a confirmed purpose as to the future. had some grand consular career been open to him--had it been given to him to do by means of the law what cæsar did by ignoring the law--this life of him would not have been written. there would, at any rate, have been no need of these last chapters to show how indomitable was the energy and how excellent the skill of him who could write such books, because--he had nothing else to do. the de oratore is a work in three divisions, addressed to his brother quintus, in which it has undoubtedly been cicero's object to convince the world that an orator's employment is the highest of all those given to a man to follow; and this he does by showing that, in all the matters which an orator is called upon to touch, there is nothing which he cannot adorn by the possession of some virtue or some knowledge. to us, in these days, he seems to put the cart before the horse, and to fail from the very beginning, by reason of the fact that the orator, in his eloquence, need never tell the truth. it is in the power of man so to praise--constancy, let us say--as to make it appear of all things the best. but he who sings the praise of it may be the most inconstant of mankind, and may know that he is deceiving his hearers as to his own opinions--at any rate, as to his own practice. the virtue should come first, and then the speech respecting it. cicero seems to imply that, if the speech be there, the virtue may be assumed. but it has to be acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers after the [greek: to kalon].[ ] we must recognize the fact that the romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the greeks, and, having described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should it ever be attained. it is so in the de oratore, as to which we must begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not to be found in any house of commons. no conservative and no liberal need fear that he will be put out of court by the coming of this perfectly eloquent man. but this cicero of whom we are speaking has been he who has been most often quoted for his perfections.[ ] the running after an impossible hero throws a damp over the whole search. when no one can expect to find the thing sought for, who can seek diligently? by degrees the ambitious student becomes aware that it is impossible, and is then carried on by a desire to see how he is to win a second or a third place, if so much may be accorded to him. in his inquiries he will find that the cicero, if he look to quintilian or tacitus--or the crassus, if he look to cicero--is so set before him as the true model; and with that he may be content. the de oratore is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as i think, the pleasantest to read. it was followed, after ten years, by the brutus, or de claris oratoribus, and then by the orator. but in all of them he charms us rather by his example than instructs us by his precepts. he will never make us believe, for instance, that a man who talks well will on that account be better than a man who thinks well; but he does make us believe that a man who talks as cicero knew how to do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words, when listening to them is no longer possible, is a great delight. having done that, he has no doubt carried his object. he was too much a man of the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself. oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself, with the romans, the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of fighting. literature had not as yet assumed its place. it needed cicero himself to do that for her. it required the writing of such an essay as this to show, by the fact of its existence, that cicero the writer stood quite as high as cicero the orator. and then the written words remain when the sounds have died away. we believe that cicero spoke divinely. we can form for ourselves some idea of the rhythm of his periods. of the words in which cicero spoke of himself as a speaker we have the entire charm. boccaccio, when he takes his queen into a grassy meadow and seats her in the midst of her ladies, and makes her and them and their admirers tell their stories, seems to have given rise to the ideas which cicero has used when introducing his roman orators lying under a plane-tree in the garden of tusculum, and there discussing rhetoric; so much nearer to us appear the times of cicero, with all the light that has been thrown upon them by their own importance, than does the middle of the fourteenth century in the same country. but the practice in this as in all matters of social life was borrowed from the greeks, or perhaps rather the pretence of the practice. we can hardly believe that romans of an advanced age would so have arranged themselves for the sake of conversation. it was a manner of bringing men together which had its attraction for the mind's eye; and cicero, whose keen imagination represented to him the pleasantness of the picture, has used the form of narrative with great effect. he causes crassus and antony to meet in the garden of crassus at tusculum, and thither he brings, on the first day, old mucius scævola the augur, and sulpicius and cotta, two rising orators of the period. on the second day scævola is supposed to be too fatigued to renew the intellectual contest, and he retires; but one cæsar comes in with quintus lutatius catulus, and the conversation is renewed. crassus and antony carry it on in chief, but crassus has the leading voice. cæsar, who must have been the wag among barristers of his day, undertakes to give examples of that attic salt by which the profundity of the law courts is supposed to have been relieved. the third conversation takes place on the afternoon of the second day, when they had refreshed themselves with sleep; though crassus, we are specially told, had given himself up to the charms of no mid-day siesta. his mind had been full of the greatness of the task before him, but he will show neither fatigue nor anxiety. the art, the apparent ease with which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without exertion, are admirable. it is as though, they were sitting by running water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. they remove themselves to a wood a little farther from the house, and there they listen to the eloquence of crassus. cotta and sulpicius only hear and assent, or imply a modified dissent in doubting words. it is crassus who insists that the orator shall be omniscient, and antony who is supposed to contest the point with him. but they differ in the sweetest language; and each, though he holds his own, does it with a deference that is more convincing than any assertion. it may be as well, perhaps, to let it be understood that crassus and cæsar are only related by distant family ties--or perhaps only by ties of adoption--to the two of the first triumvirate whose names they bear; whereas antony was the grandfather of that cleopatra's lover against whom the philippics were hurled. no one, as i have said before, will read these conversations for the sake of the argument they contain; but they are, and will be, studied as containing, in the most appropriate language, a thousand sayings respecting the art of speech. "no power of speaking well can belong to any but to him who knows the subjects on which he has to speak;"[ ] a fact which seems so clear that no one need be troubled with stating it, were it not that men sin against it every day. "how great the undertaking to put yourself forward among a crowd of men as being the fittest of all there to be heard on some great subject!"[ ] "though all men shall gnash their teeth, i will declare that the little book of the twelve tables surpasses in authority and usefulness all the treatises of all the philosophers."[ ] here speaks the cicero of the forum, and not that cicero who amused himself among the philosophers. "let him keep his books of philosophy for some tusculum idleness such as is this of ours, lest, when he shall have to speak of justice, he must go to plato and borrow from him, who, when he had to express him in these things, created in his books some new utopia."[ ] for in truth, though cicero deals much, as we shall see by-and-by, with the philosophers, and has written whole treatises for the sake of bringing greek modes of thought among the romans, he loved the affairs of the world too well to trust them to philosophy. there has been some talk of old age, and antony, before the evening has come, declares his view. "so far do i differ from you," he says, "that not only do i not think that any relief in age is to be found in the crowd of them who may come to me for advice, but i look to its solitude as a harbor. you indeed may fear it, but to me it will be most welcome."[ ] then cicero begins the second book with a renewal of the assertion as to oratory generally, not putting the words into the mouth of any of his party, but declaring it as his own belief: "this is the purpose of this present treatise, and of the present time, to declare that no one has been able to excel in eloquence, not merely without capacity for speaking, but also without acquired knowledge of all kinds."[ ] but antony professes himself of another opinion: "how can that be when crassus and i often plead opposite causes, and when one of us can only say the truth? or how can it be possible, when each of us must take the cause as it comes to him?"[ ] then, again, he bursts into praise of the historian, as though in opposition to crassus: "how worthy of an orator's eulogy is the writing of history, whether greatest in the flood of its narrative or in its variety! i do not know that we have ever treated it separately, but it is there always before our eyes. for who does not know that the first law of the historian is that he must not dare to say what is false: the next, that he must not dare to suppress what is true."[ ] we wonder, when cicero was writing this, whether he remembered his request to lucceius, made now two years ago. he gives a piece of advice to young advocates, apologizing, indeed, for thinking it necessary; but he has found it to be necessary, and he gives it: "let me teach this to them all; when they intend to plead, let them first study their causes."[ ] it is not only here that we find that the advice which is useful now was wanted then. "read your cases!" the admonition was wanted in rome as it has been since in london. but the great mistake of the whole doctrine creeps out at every page as we go on, and disproves the idea on which the de oratore is founded. all cicero's treatises on the subject, and quintilian's, and those of the pseudo-tacitus, and of the first greek from which they have come, fall to the ground as soon as we are told that it must be the purport of the orator to turn the mind of those who hear him either to the right or to the left, in accordance with the drift of the cause.[ ] the mind rejects the idea that it can be the part of a perfect man to make another believe that which he believes to be false. if it be necessary that an orator should do so, then must the orator be imperfect. we have the same lesson taught throughout. it is the great gift of the orator, says antony, to turn the judge's mind so that he shall hate or love, shall fear or hope, shall rejoice or grieve, or desire to pity or desire to punish.[ ] no doubt it is a great power. all that is said as to eloquence is true. it may be necessary that to obtain the use of it you shall educate yourself with more precision than for any other purpose. but there will be the danger that they who have fitted the dagger to the hand will use it. it cannot be right to make another man believe that which you think to be false. in the use of raillery in eloquence the roman seems to have been very backward; so much so that it is only by the examples given of it by themselves as examples that we learn that it existed. they can appall us by the cruelty which they denounce. they can melt us by their appeals to our pity. they can terrify; they can horrify; they can fill us with fear or hope, with anger, with despair, or with rage; but they cannot cause us to laugh. their attempts at a joke amuse us because we recognize the attempt. here cæsar is put forward to give us the benefit of his wit. we are lost in surprise when we find how miserable are his jokes, and take a pride in finding that in one line we are the masters of the romans. i will give an instance, and i pick it out as the best among those selected by cicero. nasica goes to call upon ennius, and is informed by the maid-servant that her master is not at home. ennius returns the visit, and nasica halloos out from the window that he is not within. "not within!" says ennius; "don't i know your voice?" upon which nasica replies, "you are an impudent fellow! i had the grace to believe your maid, and now you will not believe me myself."[ ] how this got into a law-case we do not know; it is told, however, just as i have told it. but there are enough of them here to make a small joe miller; and yet, in the midst of language that is almost divine in its expressions, they are given as having been worthy of all attention. the third book is commenced by the finest passage in the whole treatise. cicero remembers that crassus is dead, and then tells the story of his death. and antony is dead, and the cæsars. the last three had fallen in the marian massacres. there is but little now in the circumstances of their death to excite our tears. who knows aught of that crassus, or of that antony, or of those cæsars? but cicero so tells it in his pretended narrative as almost to make us weep. the day was coming when a greater than either of them was to die the same death as antony, by the order of another antony--to have his tongue pierced, and his bloody head thrust aloft upon the rostra. but no roman has dared to tell us of it as cicero has told the story of those others. augustus had done his work too well, and it was much during his reign that romans who could make themselves heard should dare to hold their tongues. it would be useless in me here to attempt to give any notion of the laws as to speech which cicero lays down. for myself i do not take them as laws, feeling that the interval of time has been too great to permit laws to remain as such. no orator could, i feel sure, form himself on cicero's ideas. but the sweetness of the language is so great as to convince us that he, at any rate, knew how to use language as no one has done since: "but there is a building up of words, and a turning of them round, and a nice rendering. there is the opposing and the loosening. there is the avoiding, the holding back, the sudden exclamation, and the dropping of the voice; and the taking an argument from the case at large and bringing it to bear on a single point; and the proof and the propositions together. and there is the leave given; and then a doubting, and an expression of surprise. there is the counting up, the setting right; the utter destruction, the continuation, the breaking off, the pretence, the answer made to one's self, the change of names, the disjoining and rejoining of things--the relation, the retreat, and the curtailing."[ ] who can translate all these things when quintilian himself has been fain to acknowledge that he has attempted and has failed to handle them in fitting language? and then at last there comes that most lovely end to these most charming discourses: "his autem de rebus sol me ille admonuit, ut brevior essem, qui ipse jam præcipitans, me quoque hac præcipitem pæne evolvere coegit."[ ] these words are so charming in their rhythm that i will not rob them of their beauty by a translation. the setting sun requires me also to go to rest: that is their simple meaning. at the end of the book he introduces a compliment to hortensius, who during his life had been his great rival, and who was still living when the de oratore was written. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the next on the list is the de optimo genere oratorum--a preliminary treatise written as a preface to a translation made by himself on the speeches of Æschines and demosthenes against ctesiphon in the matter of the golden crown. we have not the translations; but we have his reasons for translating them--namely, that he might enable readers only of latin to judge how far Æschines and demosthenes had deserved, either of them, the title of "optimus orator." for they had spoken against each other with the most bitter abuse, and each spokesman was struggling for the suppression of the other. each was speaking with the knowledge that, if vanquished, he would have to pay heavily in his person and his pocket. he gives the palm to neither; but he tells his readers that the attic mode of speaking is gone--of which, indeed, the glory is known, but the nature unknown. but he explains that he has not translated the two pieces verbatim, as an interpreter, but in the spirit, as an orator, using the same figures, the same forms, the same strength of ideas. we have to acknowledge that we do not see how in this way he can have done aught toward answering the question de optimo genere oratorum; but he may perhaps have done something to prove that he himself, in his oratory, had preserved the best known grecian forms. the de partitione oratoria dialogus follows, of which we have already spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year of his life. it was the year in which he had divorced terentia, and had been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. but he was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these instructions, in the form of questions and answers, on the art of speaking. we next come to the brutus; or, de claris oratoribus, a dialogue supposed to have been held between brutus, atticus, and cicero himself. it is a continuation of the three books de oratore. he there describes what is essential to the character of the optimus orator. he here looks after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and bringing before the reader's eyes all greek and roman orators, till he comes down to cicero. i cannot but say that the feeling is left with the reader that the orator optimus has been reached at last in cicero's mind. we must remark, in the first place, that he has chosen for his friend, to whom to address his piece, one whom he has only known late in life. it was when he went to cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years old, that he was thrown by atticus into close relations with brutus. now he has, next to atticus, become his most chosen friend. his three next treatises, the orator, the tusculan disquisitions, and the de natura deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of brutus. and yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less likely to be brought together by their political ambition. the one compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing that things were evil, and contented to accept those that were the least so; the other strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were bad! and brutus, too, had told cicero that his lessons in oratory were not to his taste. there was a something about cicero which enabled him to endure such rebukes while there was aught worthy of praise in the man who rebuked him; and it was to this something that his devotion was paid. we know that brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed of a roman nobleman, and we know also that cicero was not. cicero could keep his hands clean with thousands around him, and with thousands going into the pockets of other men. he could see the vice of brutus, but he did not hate it. he must have borne, too, with something from atticus of the same kind. the truth seems to me that to cicero there was no horror as to greediness, except to greed in himself. he could hate it for himself and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing, or rackets, or the turf. but he must have known that brutus had made himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his heart in consequence. in no other way can i explain to myself the feeling of subservience to brutus which cicero so generally expresses: it exists in none other of his relations of life. political subservience there is to pompey; but he can laugh at pompey, and did not dedicate to him his treatises de republica, or de legibus. to appius claudius he was very courteous. he thought badly of appius, but hardly worse than he ought to have done of brutus. of cælius he was fond, of curio, of trebatius. to pætus he was attached, to sulpicius and marcellus. but to none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to brutus. i could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that the "ipsissima verba" have not probably come to us. but i cannot say that the name of brutus does not stand there, written in imperishable letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. if this be so, brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of cicero. all ages since have felt it, and shakespeare has told us that "brutus is an honorable man." there is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise. cicero in it tells us of cato and of marcellus, and therefore we must suppose that it was written when they were alive. indeed, he so compares cæsar and marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been alive. but cato and marcellus died b.c. , and how then could the treatise have been written in b.c. ? it should, however, be remembered that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. but the time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the discourse. he begins by telling us how he had grieved when, on his return from cilicia, he had heard that hortensius was dead. hortensius had brought him into the college of augurs, and had there stood to him in the place of a parent. and he had lamented hortensius also on behalf of rome. hortensius had gone. then he goes on to say that, as he was thinking of these things while walking in his portico, brutus had come to him and pomponius atticus. he says how pleasantly they greeted each other; and then gradually they go on, till atticus asks him to renew the story he had before been telling. "in truth, pomponius," he says, "i remember it right well, for then it was that i heard deiotarus, that truest and best of kings, defended by our brutus here," deiotarus was that eastern king whose defence by cicero himself i have mentioned when speaking of his pleadings before cæsar. then he rushes off into his subject, and discusses at length his favorite idea. it must still be remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of lessons in oratory. there is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this treatise. cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his lessons. he says of eloquence that "she is the companion of peace, and the associate of ease."[ ] he tells us of cato, that he had read a hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had "found them all replete with bright words and with great matter; * * * and yet no one in his days read cato's speeches!"[ ] this, of course, was cato the elder. then we hear how demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything: it was the first thing, the second, and the third. "for there is nothing like it to penetrate into the minds of the audience--to teach them, to turn them, and to form them, till the orator shall be made to appear exactly that which he wishes to be thought.[ ] * * * the man who listens to one who is an orator believes what he hears; he thinks everything to be true, he approves of all."[ ] no doubt! in his power of describing the orator and his work cicero is perfect; but he does not describe the man doing that which he is bound to do by his duty. he tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates--which certainly is true.[ ] further on he comes to cæsar, and praises him very highly. but here brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture."[ ] they are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. then he names hortensius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic; but he reserves his greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy, which he is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases, so as to show that he himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made himself, in truth, the best orator of them all.[ ] perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of the touch. it is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. if read without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind the impression that though now and again there had come upon him the memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the state to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent; nevertheless, it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone well with him. he writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at his heart. no one would have thought that in this very year he was perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife; that cæsar had made good his ground, and, having been dictator last year, had for the third time become consul; that he knew himself to be living, as a favor, by cæsar's pleasure. cicero seems to have written his brutus as one might write who was well at ease. let a man have taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. what is it to him that politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? he has not gone into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. though things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger, none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered pompey and have thought of cæsar. and though cæsar was courteous to him, the courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled. cæsar was consul; and cicero, who remembered how majestically he had walked when a few years since he was consul by the real votes of the people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with brutus and with atticus. yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. but we must remark that at its close--in its very final words--he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine that something has been lost, or that more might have been added. the last of these works is the orator. we have passed in review the de oratore, and the brutus; or, de claris oratoribus. we have now to consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece of the three. such seems to have become the general idea of those scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. he himself says that there are in all five books. there are the three de oratore; the fourth is called the brutus, and the fifth the orator.[ ] in some mss. this work has a second title, de optimo genere dicendi--as though the five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding work is on the best mode of oratory. readers who may wish to carry these in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from Æschines and demosthenes. the purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of romance may be produced--the perfect orator. here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume, whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. but here, in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his discourse. he distinguishes three styles of eloquence--the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties to perform. he must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. he explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that eloquence depends wholly on elocution. he tells us that the philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and work of the forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. then he teaches us how each of the three styles should be treated--the simple, the moderate, and the sublime--and shows us how to vary them. he informs us what laws we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what metaphors. he then considers the words we should use, and makes us understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of sound. in this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a roman, had to deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our british ears; and i am not sure that we can follow him with rapture into all the mysteries of the poeon, the dochmius, and the dichoreus. what he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder at the elaborate study given to it; but i doubt whether we here do not read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our lives. there are, again, delightful morsels here. he tells us, for instance, that he who has created a beautiful thing must have beauty in his soul,[ ]--a charming idea, as to which we do not stop to inquire whether it be true or not. he gives us a most excellent caution against storing up good sayings, and using them from the storehouse of our memory: "let him avoid these studied things, not made of the moment, but brought from the closet."[ ] then he rises into a grand description of the perfect orator: "but that third man is he, rich, abundant, dignified, and instructed, in whom there is a divine strength. this is he whose fulness and culture of speech the nations have admired, and whose eloquence has been allowed to prevail over the people.[ ] * * * then will the orator make himself felt more abundantly. then will he rule their minds and turn their hearts. then will he do with them as he would wish."[ ] but in the teeth of all this it did not please brutus himself. "when i wrote to him," he said to atticus, "in obedience to his wishes, 'de optimo genere dicendi,' he sent word, both to you and me, that that which pleased me did not satisfy him."[ ] "let every man kiss his own wife," says cicero in his letter in the next words to those we have quoted; and we cannot but love the man for being able to joke when he is telling of the rebuff he has received. it must have been an additional pang to him, that he for whom he had written his book should receive it with stern rebuke. at last we come to the topica; the last instructions which cicero gives on the subject of oratory. the romans seem to have esteemed much the lessons which are here conveyed, but for us it has but little attraction. he himself declares it to have been a translation from aristotle, but declares also that the translation has been made from memory. he has been at sea, he says, in the first chapter, and has there performed his task, and has sent it as soon as it has been done. there is something in this which is unintelligible to us. he has translated a treatise of aristotle from memory--that is, without having the original before him--and has done this at sea, on his intended journey to greece![ ] i do not believe that cicero has been false in so writing. the work has been done for his young friend trebatius, who had often asked it, and was much too clever when he had received it not to recognize its worth. but cicero has, in accordance with his memory, reduced to his own form aristotle's idea as to "invention" in logic. aristotle's work is, i am informed, in eight books: here is a bagatelle in twenty-five pages. there is an audacity in the performance--especially in the doing it on board ship; but we must remember that he had spent his life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down with all the rapidity of a practised professor the doctrines on the matter which he wished to teach trebatius. this later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher, or statesman, may look for his arguments. that they should have been of any great use to trebatius, in the course of his long life as attorney-general about the court of augustus, i cannot believe. i do not know that he rose to special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor; nor do i think that oratory, or the powers of persuasion, can be so brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. and here they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. it is for modern readers perhaps the least interesting of all cicero's works. there is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of the immense amount of attention which, in the roman educated world, was paid to the science of speaking. to bring his arguments to bear at the proper moment--to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the minds of men--to know when the sympathies may be expected and when demanded, when the feelings may be trusted and when they have been too blunted to be of service--to perceive from an instinctive outlook into those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate and when melting--this was the business of a roman orator. and this was to be achieved only by a careful study of the characters of men. it depended in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on education. how he might please the multitude--this was everything to him. it was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic world in london we have been told that men ought not to attempt. they do attempt it, but they fail--through the innate honesty which there is in the hearts of men. in italy, in cicero's time, they attempted it, and did not fail. but we can see what were the results. the attention which roman orators paid to their voices was as serious, and demanded the same restraint, as the occupations of the present athlete. we are inclined to doubt whether too much of life is not devoted to the purpose. it could not be done but by a people so greedy of admiration as to feel that all other things should be abandoned by those who desire to excel. the actor of to-day will do it, but it is his business to act; and if he so applies himself to his profession as to succeed, he has achieved his object. but oratory in the law court, as in parliament, or in addressing the public, is only the means of imbuing the minds of others with the ideas which the speaker wishes to implant there. to have those ideas, and to have the desire to teach them to others, is more to him than the power of well expressing them. to know the law is better than to talk of knowing it. but with the romans so great was the desire to shine that the reality was lost in its appearance; and so prone were the people to indulge in the delight of their senses that they would sacrifice a thing for a sound, and preferred lies in perfect language to truth in halting syllables. this feeling had sunk deep into cicero's heart when he was a youth, and has given to his character the only stain which it has. he would be patriotic: to love his country was the first duty of a roman. he would be honest: so much was indispensable to his personal dignity. but he must so charm his countrymen with his voice as to make them feel while they listened to him that some god addressed them. in this way he became permeated by the love of praise, till it was death to him not to be before the lamps. the "perfect orator" is, we may say, a person neither desired nor desirable. we, who are the multitude of the world, and have been born to hold our tongues and use our brains, would not put up with him were he to show himself. but it was not so in cicero's time; and this was the way he took to sing the praises of his own profession and to magnify his own glory. he speaks of that profession in language so excellent as to make us who read his words believe that there was more in it than it did in truth hold. but there was much in it, and the more so as the performers reacted upon their audience. the delicacy of the powers of expression had become so great, that the powers of listening and distinguishing had become great also. as the instruments became fine, so did the ears which were to receive their music. cicero, and quintilian after him, tell us this. the latter, in speaking of the nature of the voice, gives us a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to attempt to translate: "nam est et candida, et fusca, et plena, et exilis, et levis, et aspera, et contracta, et fusa, et dura, et flexibilis, et clara, et obtusa; spiritus etiam longior, breviorque."[ ] and the remarkable thing was, that every roman who listened would understand what the orator intended, and would know too, and would tell him of it, if by error he had fallen into some cadence which was not exactly right. to the modes of raising the voice, which are usually divided into three--the high or treble, the low or bass, and that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor--many others are added. there are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes, the quicker and the slower. it seems little to us, who know that we can speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. but then every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. no wonder that cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. then the strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." this must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the food--which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the words must not strike each other. and as to the action of the orator, cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the words themselves. in all this we find that quintilian only follows his master too closely. the hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of the foot, the single step or many steps--every motion of the body, agreeing with the words from his mouth, are all described.[ ] he attributes this to antony--but only because, as he thinks of it, some movement of antony's has recurred to his memory. to make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which cicero valued; not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him to be so. this it was, in cicero's time, to be the optimus orator. since cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct of men. they are less greedy, less cruel, less selfish--greedy, cruel, and selfish though they still are. the progress which the best among us have made cicero in fact achieved; but he had not acquired that theoretic aversion to a lie which is the first feeling in the bosom of a modern gentleman; therefore it was that he still busied himself with finding the optimus orator. chapter xii. _cicero's philosophy._ it will have been observed that in the list given in the previous chapter the works commonly published as cicero's philosophy have been divided. some are called his philosophy and some his moral essays. it seems to be absurd to put forward to the world his tusculan inquiries, written with the declared object of showing that death and pain were not evils, together with a moral essay, such as that de officiis, in which he tells us what it may become a man of the world to do. it is as though we bound up lord chesterfield's letters in a volume with hume's essays, and called them the philosophy of the eighteenth century. it might be true, but it would certainly be absurd. there might be those who regard the letters as philosophical, and those who would so speak of the essays; but their meaning would be diametrically opposite. it is so with cicero, whose treatises have been lumped together under this name with the view of bringing them under one appellation. it had been found necessary to divide his works and to describe them. the happy man who first thought to put the de natura deorum and the de amicitia into boards together, and to present them to the world under the name of his philosophy, perhaps found the only title that could unite the two. but he has done very much to mislead the world, and to teach readers to believe that cicero was in truth one who endeavored to live in accordance with the doctrine of any special school of philosophy. he was too honest, too wise, too civilized, too modern for that. he knew, no one better, that the pleasure of the world was pleasant, and that the ills are the reverse. when his wife betrayed him, he grieved. when his daughter died, he sorrowed. when his foe was strong against him, he hated him. he avoided pain when it came near him, and did his best to have everything comfortable around him. he was so far an epicurean, as we all are. he did not despise death, or pain, or grief. he was a modern-minded man--if i make myself understood--of robust tendencies, moral, healthy, and enduring; but he was anything but a philosopher in his life. let us remember the way in which he laughs at the idea of bringing philosophy into real life in the de oratore. he is speaking of the manner in which the lawyers would have had to behave themselves in the law courts if philosophy had been allowed to prevail: "no man could have grieved aloud. no patron would have wept. no one would have sorrowed. there would have been no calling of the republic to witness; not a man would have dared to stamp his foot, lest it should have been told to the stoics."[ ] "you should keep the books of the philosophers for your tusculan ease," he had said in the preceding chapter; and he speaks, in the same page, of "plato's fabulous state." then why, it may be asked, did he write so many essays on philosophy--enough to have consumed the energies of many laborious years? there can be no doubt that he did write the philosophy, though we have ample reason to know that it was not his philosophy. all those treatises, beginning with the academica--written when he was sixty-two, two years only before his death, and carried on during twelve months with indomitable energy--the de finibus, the tusculan disputations, the de natura deorum, the de divinatione, and the de fato--were composed during the time named. to those who have regarded cicero as a philosopher--as one who has devoted his life to the pursuits of philosophy--does it not appear odd that he should have deferred his writing on the subject and postponed his convictions till now? at this special period of his life why should he have rushed into them at once, and should so have done it as to be able to leave them aside at another period? why has all this been done within less than two years? let any man look to the last year of his life, when the philippics were coming hot from his brain and eager from his mouth, and ask himself how much of greek philosophy he finds in them. out of all the sixty-four years of his life he devoted one to this philosophy, and that not the last, but the penultimate; and so lived during all these years, even including that one, as to show how little hold philosophy had upon his conduct. [greek: aideomai trôas]. was that greek philosophy? or the eager exclamation of a human spirit, in its weakness and in its strength, fearing the breath of his fellow-men, and yet knowing that the truth would ultimately be expressed by it? nor is the reason for this far to seek, though the character which could avail itself of such a reason requires a deep insight. to him literature had been everything. we have seen with what attention he had studied oratory--rhetoric rather--so as to have at his fingers'-ends the names of those who had ever shone in it, and the doctrines they had taught. we know how well read he was in homer and the greek tragedians; how he knew by heart his ennius, his nævius, his pacuvius, and the others who had written in his own tongue. as he was acquainted with the poets and rhetoricians, so also was he acquainted with those writers who have handled philosophy. his incredible versatility was never at fault. he knew them all from the beginning, and could interest himself in their doctrines. he had been in the schools at athens, and had learned it all. in one sense he believed in it. there was a great battle of words carried on, and in regard to that battle he put his faith in this set or in the other. but had he ever been asked by what philosophical process he would rule the world, he would have smiled. then he would have declared himself not to be an academician, but a republican. it was with him a game of play, ornamented with all the learning of past ages. he had found the schools full of it at athens, and had taken his part in their teaching. it had been pleasant to him to call himself a disciple of plato, and to hold himself aloof from the straitness of the stoics, and from the mundane theories of the followers of epicurus. it had been well for him also to take an interest in that play. but to suppose that cicero, the modern cicero, the cicero of the world--cicero the polished gentleman, cicero the soft hearted, cicero the hater, cicero the lover, cicero the human--was a believer in greek philosophy--that he had taken to himself and fed upon those shreds and tatters and dry sticks--that he had ever satisfied himself with such a mode of living as they could promise to him--is indeed to mistake the man. his soul was quiveringly alive to all those instincts which now govern us. go among our politicians, and you shall find this man and the other, who, in after-dinner talk, shall call himself an epicurean, or shall think himself to be an academician. he has carried away something of the learning of his college days, and remembers enough of his school exercises for that; but when he has to make a speech for or against protection, then you will find out where lies his philosophy. and so it was with cicero during this the penultimate year of his life. he poured forth during this period such an amount of learning on the subject, that when men took it up after the lapse of centuries they labelled it all as his philosophy. when he could no longer talk politics, nor act them--when the forum was no longer open to him, nor the meetings of the people or of the senate--when he could no longer make himself heard on behalf of the state--then he took to discussions on carneades. and his discussions are wonderful. how could he lay his mind to work when his daughter was dead, and write in beautiful language four such treatises as came from his pen while he was thinking of the temple which was to be built to her memory? it is a marvel that at such a period, at such an age, he should have been equal to the labor. but it was thus that he amused himself, consoled himself, distracted himself. it is hard to believe that, in the sad evening of his life, such a power should have remained with him; but easier, i think, than to imagine that in that year of his life he had suddenly become philosophical. in describing the academica, the first of these works in point of time, it is necessary to explain that by reason of an alteration in his plan of publishing, made by cicero after he had sent the first copy to atticus, and by the accident that the second part has been preserved of the former copy and the first part of the second, a confusion has arisen. cicero had felt that he might have done better by his friends than to bring hortensius, catulus, and lucullus discussing greek philosophy before the public. they were, none of them, men who when alive had interested themselves in the matter. he therefore rewrote the essays, or altered them, and again sent them forth to his friend varro. time has been so far kind to them as to have preserved portions of the first book as altered, and the second of the four which constituted the first edition. it is that which has been called lucullus. the catulus had come first, but has been lost. hortensius and cicero were the last two. we may perceive, therefore, into what a length of development he carried his purpose. it must be of course understood that he dictated these exercises, and assisted himself by the use of all mechanical means at his disposal. the men who worked for him were slaves, and these slaves were always willing to keep in their own hands the good things which came to them by the exercise of their own intelligence and adroitness. he could not multiply his own hands or brain, but he could multiply all that might assist them. he begins by telling varro that he has long since desired to illustrate in latin letters the philosophy which socrates had commended, and he asks varro why he, who was so much given to writing, had not as yet written about any of these things. as varro boasted afterward that he was the author of four hundred and ninety books, there seems to be a touch of irony in this. be that as it may, varro is made to take up the gauntlet and to rush away at once amid the philosophers. but here on the threshold, as it were, of his inquiries, we have cicero's own reasons given in plain language: "but now, hit hard by the heavy blow of fortune, and freed as i am from looking after the state, i seek from philosophy relief from my pain." he thinks that he may in this way perhaps best serve the public, or even "if it be not so, what else is there that he may find to do?"[ ] as he goes on, however, we find that what he writes is about the philosophers rather than philosophy. then we come to the lucullus. it seems odd that the man whose name has come down to us as a by-word for luxury, and who is laden with the reproach of overeating, should be thus brought forward as a philosopher. it was perhaps the subsequent feeling on cicero's part that such might be the opinion of men which induced him to alter his form--in vain, as far as we are concerned. but lucullus had lived with antiochus, a greek philosopher, who had certain views of his own, and he is made to defend them through this book. here as elsewhere it is not the subject which delights us so much as the manner in which he handles certain points almost outside the subject: "how many things do those exercised in music know which escape us! ah, there is antiope, they say; that is andromache."[ ] what can be truer, or less likely, we may suppose, to meet us in a treatise on philosophy, and, therefore, more welcome? he is speaking of evidence: "it is necessary that the mind shall yield to what is clear, whether it wish it or no, as the dish in a balance must give way when a weight is put upon it.[ ] * * * you may snore, if you will, as well as sleep," says carneades; "what good will it do you?"[ ] and then he gives the guesses of some of the old philosophers as to the infinite. thales has said that water is the source of everything. anaximander would not agree to this, for he thought that all had come from space. anaximenes had affirmed that it was air. anaxagoras had remarked that matter was infinite. xenophanes had declared that everything was one whole, and that it was a god, everlasting, eternal, never born and never dying, but round in his shape! parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." what "full and empty" may mean i cannot tell; but democritus could, for he believed in it--though in other matters he went a little farther! empedocles sticks to the old four elements. heraclitus is all for fire. melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ever will be. plato thinks that the world has always existed, while the pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics.[ ] "your wise man," continues cicero, "will know one whom to choose out of all these. let the others, who have been repudiated, retire." "they are all concealed, these things--hidden in thick darkness, so that no human eye can have power enough to look up into the heavens or down on to the earth. we do not know our own bodies, or the nature or strength of their component parts. the doctors themselves, who have opened them and looked at them, are ignorant. the empirics declare that they know nothing; because, as soon as looked at, they may change. * * * hicetas, the syracusan, as theophrastus tells us, thinks that the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars all stand still, and that nothing in all the world moves but the earth. now what do you, followers of epicurus, say to this?"[ ] i need not carry the conversation on any farther to show that cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. this hicetas, the syracusan, seems to have been nearer the mark than the others, according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in cicero's days. "but what was the meaning of it all? who knows anything about it? how is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?" it is thus that cicero means to be understood. i will agree that cicero does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole thing into ridicule. he does generally find it well to say something in praise of these philosophers. he does not quite declare the fact that nothing is to be made of them; or, rather, there is existing in it all an under feeling that, were he to do so, he would destroy his character and rob himself of his amusement. but we remember always his character of a philosopher, as attributed to cato, in his speech during his consulship for murena. i have told the story when giving an account of the speech. "he who cuts the throat of an old cock when there is no need, has sinned as deeply as the parricide when breaking his father's neck,"[ ] says cicero, laughing at the stoics. there he speaks out the feelings of his heart--there, and often elsewhere in his orations. here, in his academica, he is eloquent on the same side. we cannot but rejoice at the plainness of his words; but it has to be acknowledged that we do not often find him so loudly betraying himself when dealing with the old discussions of the greek philosophers. very quickly after his academica, in b.c. , came the five books, de finibus bonorum et malorum, written as though with the object of settling the whole controversy, and declaring whether the truth lay with the epicureans, the stoics, or the academics. what, at last, is the good thing, and what the evil thing, and how shall we gain the one and avoid the other? if he will tell us this, he will have proved himself to be a philosopher to some purpose. but he does nothing of the kind. at the end of the fifth book we find atticus, who was an epicurean, declaring to quintus cicero that he held his own opinion just as firmly as ever, although he had been delighted to hear how well the academician piso had talked in latin. he had hitherto considered that these were things which would not sound well unless in the greek language. it is again in the form of a dialogue, and, like all his writings at this time, is addressed to brutus. it is in five books. the first two are supposed to have been held at cumæ, between cicero, torquatus, and triarius. here, after a prelude in favor of philosophy and latin together, torquatus is allowed to make the best excuse he can for epicurus. the prelude contains much good sense; for, whether he be right or not in what he says, it is good for every man to hold his own language in respect. "i have always thought and said that the latin language is not poor as it is supposed to be, but even richer than the greek."[ ] "let us learn," says torquatus, who has happened to call upon him at cumæ with triarius, a grave and learned youth, as we are told, "since we have found you at your house, why it is that you do not approve of epicurus--he who, alive, seems to have freed the minds of men from error, and to have taught them everything which could tend to make them happy."[ ] then torquatus goes to work and delivers a most amusing discourse on the wisdom of democritus and his great disciple. the words fly about with delightful power, so as to leave upon our minds an idea that torquatus is persuading his audience; for it is cicero's peculiar gift, in whosesoever mouth he puts his words, to make him argue as though he were the victor. we feel sure that, had he in his hand held a theory contrary to that of torquatus, had he in truth cared about it, he could not have made torquatus speak so well. but the speaker comes to an end, and assures his hearers that his only object had been to hear--as he had never heard before--what cicero's own opinion might be on the matter. the second book is a continuation of the same meeting. the word is taken up by cicero, and he refutes torquatus. it seems to us, however, that poor epicurus is but badly treated--as has been generally the case in the prose works which have come down to us. we have, indeed, the poem of lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. but i was always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit suicide--a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black colors, though cato and brutus, the stoics, did the same thing very gloriously. the epicureans are held to be sensualists, because they have used the word "pleasure" instead of "happiness," and cicero is hard upon them. he tells a story of the dying moments of epicurus, quoting a letter written on his death-bed. "while i am writing," he says, "i am living my last hour, and the happiest. i have so bad a pain in my stomach that nothing can be worse. but i am compensated for it all by the joy i feel as i think of my philosophical discourses."[ ] cicero then goes on to declare that, though the saying is very noble, it is unnecessary; he should not, in truth, have required compensation. but whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be unnecessary. he does not want opinion. he is satisfied with the language in which cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and severe. in the third book he, some time afterward, discusses the stoic doctrine with cato at the tusculan villa of lucullus, near to his own. he had walked over, and finding cato there by chance, had immediately gone to work to demolish cato's philosophical doctrines. he tells us what a glutton cato was over his books, taking them even into the senate with him. cicero asks for certain volumes of aristotle, and cato answers him that he would fain put into his hand those of zeno's school. we can see how easily cato falls into the trap. he takes up his parable, and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. i will translate his last words of cato's appeal to the world at large: "i have been carried farther than my intention. but in truth the admirable order of the system, and the incredible symmetry of it, has led him on. by the gods, do you not wonder at it? in nature there is nothing so close packed, nor in art so well fitted. the latter always agrees with the former--that which follows with that which has gone before. not a stone in it all can be moved from its place. if you touch but one letter it falls to the ground. how severe, how magnificent, how dignified stands out the person of the wise man, who, when his reason shall have taught him that virtue is the only good, of a necessity must be happy! he shall be more justly called king than tarquin, who could rule neither himself nor others; more rightly dictator than sulla, the owner of the three vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; more rightly rich than crassus, who, had he not in truth been poor, would never have crossed the euphrates in quest of war. all things are justly his who knows how to use them justly. you may call him beautiful whose soul is more lovely than his body. he is free who is slave to no desire. he is unconquered for whose mind you can forge no chains; you need not wait with him for the last day to pronounce him happy. if this be so, then the good man is also the happy man. what can be better worth our study than philosophy, or what more heavenly than virtue?"[ ] all of this was written by cicero in most elaborate language, with a finish of words polished down to the last syllable, because he had nothing else wherewith to satisfy the cravings of his intellect. the fourth book is a continuation of the argument "which when he had said he (made) an end.--but i (began)."[ ] with no other introduction cicero goes to work and demolishes every word that cato had said. he is very courteous, so that cato cannot but admit that he is answered becomingly; but, to use a common phrase, he does not leave him a leg to stand upon. although during the previous book cato has talked so well that the reader will think that there must be something in it, he soon is made to perceive that the stoic budge is altogether shoddy. the fifth and last book, de finibus, is supposed to recount a dialogue held at athens, or, rather, gives the circumstances of a discourse pretended to have been delivered there by pupius piso to the two ciceros, and to their cousin lucius, on the merits of the old academy and the aristotelian peripatetics; for plato's philosophy had got itself split into two. there was the old and the new, and we may perhaps doubt to which cicero devoted himself. he certainly was not an epicurean, and he certainly was not a stoic. he delighted to speak of himself as a lover of plato. but in some matters he seems to have followed aristotle, who had diverged from plato, and he seems also to have clung to carneades, who had become master of the new academy. but, in truth, to ascertain the special doctrine of such a man on such a subject is vain. as we read these works we lose ourselves in admiration of his memory; we are astonished at the industry which he exhibits; we are delighted by his perspicuity; and feel ourselves relieved amid the crowd of names and theories by flashes of his wit; but there comes home to us, as a result, the singular fact of a man playing with these theories as the most interesting sport the world had produced, but not believing the least in any of them. it was not that he disbelieved; and perhaps among them all the tenets of the new academy were those which reconciled themselves the best to his common-sense. but they were all nothing to him but an amusement. in this book there are some exquisite bits. he says, speaking of athens, that, "go where you will through the city, you place your footsteps on the vestiges of history."[ ] he says of a certain demetrius, whom he describes as writing books without readers in egypt, "that this culture of his mind was to him, as it were, the food by which his humanity was kept alive."[ ] and then he falls into the praise of our love for our neighbors, and introduces us to that true philosophy which was the real guide of his life. "among things which are honest," he says, "there is nothing which shines so brightly and so widely as that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race. it comes from our original condition, in which children are loved by their parents; and then binding together the family, it spreads itself abroad among relations, connections, friends, and neighbors. then it includes citizens and those who are our allies. at last it takes in the whole human race, and that feeling of the soul arises which, giving every man his own, and defending by equal laws the rights of each, is called justice."[ ] it matters little how may have been introduced this great secret which christ afterward taught, and for which we look in vain through the writings of all the philosophers. it comes here simply from cicero himself in the midst of his remarks on the new academy, but it gives the lesson which had governed his life: "i will do unto others as i would they should do unto me." in this is contained the rudiments of that religion which has served to soften the hearts of us all. it is of you i must think, and not of myself. hitherto the schools had taught how a man should make himself happy, whether by pleasure, whether by virtue, or whether by something between the two. it seems that it had never as yet occurred to a man to think of another except as a part of the world around him. then there had come a teacher who, while fumbling among the old greek lessons which had professed to tell mankind what each should do for himself, brings forth this, as it were, in preparation for the true doctrine that was to come: "ipsa caritas generis humani!"--"that love of the human race!" i trust i may be able to show, before i have finished my work, that this was cicero's true philosophy. all the rest is merely with him a play of words. our next work contains the five books of the tusculan disputations, addressed to brutus: tusculanarum disputationum, ad m. brutum, libri i., ii., iii., iv., and v. that is the name that has at last been decided by the critics and annotators as having been probably given to them by cicero. they are supposed to have been written to console himself in his grief for the death of tullia. i have great doubt whether consolation in sorrow is to be found in philosophy, but i have none as to the finding it in writing philosophy. here, i may add, that the poor generally suffer less in their sorrow than the rich, because they are called upon to work for their bread. the man who must make his pair of shoes between sunrise and the moment at which he can find relief from his weary stool, has not time to think that his wife has left him, and that he is desolate in the world. pulling those weary threads, getting that leather into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taut, so that he do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he has not a moment for a tear. and it is the same if you go from the lowest occupation to the highest. writing greek philosophy does as well as the making of shoes. the nature of the occupation depends on the mind, but its utility on the disposition. it was cicero's nature to write. will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled himself with one of his treatises on oratory? but philosophy was then to his hands. it seems to have cropped up in his latter years, after he had become intimate with brutus. when life was again one turmoil of political fever it was dropped. in the five of the books of the tusculan disputations, still addressed to brutus, he contends: . that death is no evil; . that pain is none; . that sorrow may be abolished; . that the passions may be conquered; . that virtue will suffice to make a man happy. these are the doctrines of the stoics; but cicero does not in these books defend any school especially. he leans heavily on epicurus, and gives all praise to socrates and to plato; but he is comparatively free: "nullius adductus jurare in verba magistri,"[ ] as horace afterward said, probably ridiculing cicero. "i live for the day. whatever strikes my mind as probable, that i say. in this way i alone am free."[ ] let us take his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each with his own life. this, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions, then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes. was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his eyes--not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? even after tullia was dead the republic had come again for him, and something might be done to stir up these fainéant nobles! what could a dead man do for his country? look back at cicero's life, and see how seldom he has put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work of attack. was this the man to console himself with the idea that death was no evil? and did he despise pain, or make any attempt at showing his disregard of it? you can hardly answer this question by looking for a man's indifference when undergoing it. it would be to require too much from philosophy to suppose that it could console itself in agony by reasoning. it would not be fair to insist on arguing with cato in the gout. the clemency of human nature refuses to deal with philosophy in the hard straits to which it may be brought by the malevolence of evil. but when you find a man peculiarly on the alert to avoid the recurrence of pain, when you find a man with a strong premeditated antipathy to a condition as to which he pretends an indifference, then you may fairly assert that his indifference is only a matter of argument. and this was always cicero's condition. he knew that he must at any rate lose the time passed by him under physical annoyance. his health was good, and by continued care remained so to the end; but he was always endeavoring to avoid sea-sickness. he was careful as to his baths, careful as to his eyes, very careful as to his diet. was there ever a man of whom it might be said with less truth that he was indifferent as to pain? the third position is that sorrow may be abolished. read his letters to atticus about his daughter tullia, written at the very moment he was proving this. he was a heart-broken, sorrow-stricken man. it will not help us now to consider whether in this he showed strength or weakness. there will be doubt about it, whether he gained or lost more by that deep devotion to another creature which made his life a misery to him because that other one had gone; whether, too, he might not have better hidden his sorrow than have shown it even to his friend. but with him, at any rate, it was there. he can talk over it, weep over it, almost laugh over it; but if there be a thing that he cannot do, it is to treat it after the manner of a stoic. his passions should be conquered. look back at every period of his life, and see whether he has ever attempted it. he has always been indignant, or triumphant, or miserable, or rejoicing. remember the incidents of his life before and after his consulship--the day of his election and the day of his banishment--and ask the philosophers why he had not controlled his passion. i shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his passion had the masterhood. but what attempt did he ever make? has he shown himself to us to be a man with a leaning toward such attempts? has he not revelled in his passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a man? has he regretted them? did they occasion him remorse? will any one tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? that virtue will make men happy he might probably have granted, if asked; but he would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. the commonest christian of the day will say as much; but he will say it in a different meaning from that intended by the philosophers, who had declared, as a rule of life, that virtue would suffice to make them happy. to be good to your neighbors will make you happy in the manner described by cicero in the fifth book, de finibus. love those who come near you. be good to your fellow-creatures. think, when dealing with each of them, what his feelings may be. melt to a woman in her sorrow. lend a man the assistance of your shoulder. be patient with age. be tender with children. let others drink of your cup and eat of your loaf. where the wind cuts, there lend your cloak. that virtue will make you happy. but that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he laid down his doctrine. that was not the virtue with which brutus was strong when he was skinning those poor wretches of salamis. such was the virtue with which the heart of cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the cilician town come out into the market-place with their corn. cicero begins the second book of the tusculans by telling us that neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too much at a time. with himself the matter was different: "in what else is there that i can do better?" then he takes the bit between his teeth and rushes away with it. the reader feels that he would not stop him if he could. he does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him otherwise employed. he wrote three treatises, de natura deorum. had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. we have an idea of what was cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis deus"[ ]--that god which reigns within us--and which he declares in scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. nothing can be farther removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us, either in the first book, in which the gods of epicurus are set forth; in the second, in which the stoics are defended; or the third, in which the gods, in accordance with the academy, are maintained; not but that, either for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect does not say the best that is to be said. velleius is eloquent for the epicureans, balbus for the stoics, and cotta for the academy. and in that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth--though indeed cicero makes his epicurean as absurd as he well can do. but he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an energetic preacher is sure to create. the language is excellent, the stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot very well reply to them; but they leave on the mind of the reader a sad feeling of the lack of reality. in the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such subjects so late in life. "being sick with ease, and having found the condition of the republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man. i have thought it good, for the sake of the republic, to write about philosophy in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens, believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the state that things of such weight should be set forth in the latin tongue;"[ ] not that the philosophy should be set forth, but what the different teachers said about it. his definition of eternity--or rather the want of definition--is singular: "there has been from all time an eternity which no measurement of time can describe. its duration cannot be understood--that there should have been a time before time existed."[ ] then there comes an idea of the godhead, escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly ciceronian: "lo, it comes to pass that this god, of whom we are sure in our minds, and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear to us."[ ] by-and-by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the epicureans: "therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in want, in laughing at us. indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have not the power. i do not say this to you," he says, addressing velleius, "for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of our people; but i am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him who is the father of your rules--a man without science, without letters--one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight, without wit."[ ] cicero, i think, must have felt some genuine dislike for epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these. then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the greek poet aratus. cicero when a lad had taken in hand the phænomena of aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced some of his lines. aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar: "the twins;" "the bull;" "the great bear;" "cassiopeia;" "the waterman;" "the scorpion;" these and many others are made to come forward in hexameters--and by cicero in latin, as by aratus in their greek guise. we may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead--but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of epicurus, and is made to conclude that balbus does not believe in his own argument. it has been sometimes said of cicero that he is too long. the lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world. farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that age, shows an accurate knowledge. but what has it to do with the nature of the gods? "when the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. the stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * the lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge--just fit for drawing in the breath. they blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life."[ ] the third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant raillery against epicurus. cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty with epicurus. epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal gods. his gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. but from balbus, the stoic, they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. in all these discourses it seems that the poor epicureans are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. but cotta continues, and tells many stories of the gods. he is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the ms., and his arguments have come to us unfinished. "it is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. in the same way i do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction."[ ] it is thus that is discussed the nature of the gods in this work of cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time. the de natura deorum is followed by two books, de divinatione, and by the fragment of one, de fato. divination is the science of predicting events. by "fatum" cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. the three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the state to foster observances, and even to punish their non-observance--for the benefit of the whole--even though they might not be in themselves true. he is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition--and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. if the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. if they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. he repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. in such a theory as this put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. i cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to assert the honesty of cicero. i can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. if any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include cicero with the archbishop of canterbury. i am not. it seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. i distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. i will take our protestant church of england religion and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. when did sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the word of god, and when again did they cease to be so? if it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. it has never begun! it has never wavered! and there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. in the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of example? does not the church admit prayers for change of weather? ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. he has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it. or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superstition of the multitude. i am not saying this as against the religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which cicero also required when he wrote as follows: "former ages erred in much which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. but the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the state. our consuls, claudius and junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily."[ ] no stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the state. there will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail. though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. but they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken. such, i think, was the reasoning within cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. in the first he encounters his brother quintus at his tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of religion. quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the auspices. he is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. in this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. "stare super vias antiquas," is the motto of quintus cicero. then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. there is the one which he calls "ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. the soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. he is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a friday. he knows--or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows--that ships that have put to sea on friday have generally gone to the bottom. he therefore predicts against the going to sea. although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false. that can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others--a process which requires the close observations of science to make good. that is art. then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed--one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit--as the sibyl, or epimenides of crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. quintus explains as to these that the god does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use them.[ ] he tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. the book so becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry--some by others and some by cicero. here are given those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon which i have ventured to call the best amid the nine versions brought forward.[ ] we cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise: "i often ask myself and turn in my mind how best i may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which i should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the state; and nothing better has occurred to me than that i should make known the way of studying the best arts--which indeed i think i have now done in various books."[ ] then he recapitulates them. there is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to hortensius, now lost. then in the four books of the academics he had put forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest--meaning the new academy. after that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. the tusculan inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well. having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. we cannot but sympathize with him because we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. brutus believed it, and cato, and that velleius, and that balbus, and that cotta. or if perchance any of them did not, they lived, and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did. the example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened. "græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes. intulit agresti latio."[ ] here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. "my fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the republic fell into the power of one man i neither hid myself nor did i desert them; nor did i idly weep, or carry myself as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that i should have to be ashamed of what i had done myself. for i had learned this lesson from the philosophy of plato--that there are certain changes in public affairs. they will be governed now by the leaders of the state, then by the people, sometimes by a single man."[ ] this is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. he knows that he is preaching only to a few--in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. his language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. and we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother as at the gods themselves--they are so clearly wooden gods--though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the state that they shall be received. he declares that, in accordance with the theory of his brother--meaning thereby the stoics--"it is necessary that they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men."[ ] it is playful, argumentative, and satirical. at last he proposes to leave the subject. socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse de divinatione is brought to an end. of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it. it is the desire of cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs which men call life, it matters little whether there be a destiny or not. things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. what is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? all this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of thankfulness that all these books of chrysippus of which he tells us, are not still existent to be investigated. such is the end of those works which i admit to have been philosophical, and of which it seems he understood that they were the work of about eighteen months. they were all written after cæsar's triumph--when it was no longer in the power of any roman to declare his opinion either in the senate or in the forum. cæsar had put down all opposition, and was made supreme over everything--till his death. the de fato was written, indeed, after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped themselves as to make it necessary that cicero should return to public life. so, indeed, were the three last moral essays, which i shall notice in the next chapter; but in truth he had them always in his heart. it was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving either to himself or to some faithful tiro the subsequent duty of rearrangement. but what a head there was there to contain it all! chapter xiii. _cicero's moral essays._ we have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. i have seen somewhere a calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and eager scholars. i make a more modest estimate of his powers. judging from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort to keep the greater portion of his letters, i think that i do not exaggerate his writing. who can say but that as time goes on some future petrarch or some future mai may discover writings hitherto unknown, concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the labors of middle-age monks? it was but in that the de republica was brought to light--so much of it at least as we still possess; and for more than thirty years afterward cardinal mai continued to reproduce, from time to time, collections of greek and latin writings hitherto unheard of by classical readers. let us hope, however, that the zeal of the learned may stop short of that displayed by simon du bos, or we may have whole treatises of cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[ ] i can hardly content myself with classifying the de republica and the de legibus under the same name with these essays of cicero, which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. but it may pass, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the de officiis in the garb of philosophy. it has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. the works reviewed in the last chapter contained disputations on the greek philosophy which cicero thought might be well handled in the latin language for the benefit of his countrymen. it would be well for them to know what epicurus taught, or zeno, and how they differed from socrates and plato, and this he told them. now in these moral essays he gives them his own philosophy--if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach men how to live well. there are six books on government, called the de republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to man, in three. there is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word republic. it has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a most evil scent, according to their politics. but there is, in truth, the republic of russia, as there is that of the united states, and that of england. cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means "the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account of the roman empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and scientific. he himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and magnificent in the roman empire. the great men of rome, whom the empire had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. by the expulsion of their kings, the class from whom these men had been chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. the reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when he begins to read roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of these oligarchs. they have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes to them from vulgar hands. let me ask any man who remembers the reading of his livy whether it was not so with him. but it was in truth the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of rome and enabled the government to go on. then by degrees the people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. then the evils of oligarchy began. plunder, rapine, and luxury took the place of duty performed. a verres ruled where a marcellus had conquered. cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown according to its nature. that state of affairs was produced which mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. but cicero did not see it. he had his eyes on the greatness of the past--and on himself--and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from rome. he was in this state of mind when he wrote his de republica, nine years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical discussions. then he still hoped. cæsar was away in gaul, and pompey maintained at rome the ghost of the old republic. he could still open his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. he had not been as yet driven to find consolation amid that play of words which constitutes the greek philosophy. i must remind the readers again that the de republica is a fragment: the first part is wanting. we find him telling us the story of the elder cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. then he gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the number he names himself. but he soon introduces the form of dialogue which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger scipio and lælius upon the scene. the lessons which are given to us are supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater scipio who out-manoeuvred hannibal. he continues to tell story after story out of the roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices of the people. is it only because i am an englishman that he seems to me to describe that form of government which was to come in england? the second book also begins with the praises of cato. scipio then commences with romulus, and tells the history of rome's kings. tarquin is banished, and the consulate established. he tells us, by no means with approbation, how the tribunate was established, and then, alas! there comes a break in the ms. in the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by augustine, in which cicero complains of the injustice of nature in having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak, infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. then, after a while, through many "lacunæ," scipio, lælius, and one philus fall into a discourse as to justice. there is a remarkable passage, from which we learn that the romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that of modern nations. they would not even permit their transalpine allies to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make their way across italy--whereby they raised the prices against themselves terribly of oil and wine.[ ] "there is a kind of slavery which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who might 'properly belong to themselves.' but when they only are made to be slaves who--" we may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. but it is evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are slaves by right. carneades, the later master of the new academy, has now joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in this country. "if you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you, you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. but you would do it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." from this may be seen the nature of the discourses on justice. the next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and manners. in the sixth we come to that dream of scipio which has become so famous in the world of literature that i do not know whether i can do better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my volume. it is in itself so beautiful in parts that i think that all readers will thank me. (see appendix to this chapter). at the same time it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty cicero strove to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. the music of the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now as it was then--and because poetic, therefore not absurd. the length of the year's period is an extravagance. you may call your space of time by what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. he tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the other side of the ganges, or that our voices shall come down through many years. i myself read this dream of scipio in a volume found in australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. he could judge of this world's future only by the past. but when he tells us of the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue, of the duty upon us to remain here where god has placed us, and of the insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he was not permitted to hear. two years afterward, about the time that milo was killing clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, de legibus. it is, we are told, a copy from plato. as is the topica a copy from aristotle, written on board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. the idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. it is a dialogue between him and atticus and his brother quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. all that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. there are some pretty morsels, as when atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow-epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine.[ ] now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[ ] he constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his greek philosophy. it was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men. in the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise de divinatione. but in this, de legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large. there is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the gods. gold and silver will create impure desire. ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple enough for a god. metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for worship. an image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood, or one block of stone. if cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. let there be no bright colors. white is best for the gods; and so on.[ ] here we have the wisdom of plato, or of those from whom plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. it is not only that a god cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. that rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. it was seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the gods. how many a man has since learned to regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the better? there may be a question of æsthetics, indeed, with which cicero does not meddle. in the third book he descends to practical and at the same time political questions. there had been no matter contested so vehemently among romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the tribunate. cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother quintus. quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. what can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? then cicero puts him down. "o quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? you might say the same of the consuls; for the very possession of power is an evil in itself. but without that evil you cannot have the good which the institution contains. the power of the tribunes is too great, you say. who denies it? but the violence of the people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader than if no leader had been given them. the leader will measure his danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[ ] he afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on principle. "let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their votes be known to their betters."[ ] it is, alas, useless now to discuss the matter here in england! we have been so impetuous in our wish to avoid the evil of bribery--which was quickly going--that we have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by revolutionary changes. when men vote by tens of thousands the ballot will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. it is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the roman empire with matters which are perplexing us to-day. we now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the philippics and certain of his letters, and the topica. indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes difficult to assign their exact places to each. he mentions one as written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the former. they were all composed in the same year, the year before his death--the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are concerned--and i shall here treat de senectute first, then de amicitia, and the de officiis last, believing them to have been published in that order. the de senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally called cato major. it is supposed to have been spoken by the old censor, b.c., and to have been listened to by scipio and lælius. this was the same scipio who had the dream--who, in truth, was not a scipio at all, but a son of paulus Æmilius, whom we remember in history as the younger africanus. cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were probably as well known before his time as they have been since. all men wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. the answer is that no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of which old age is the necessary ending. it creeps on us so quickly! but in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy; but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes. it is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act poem shall be well performed. cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of the world's history. it was written by an old man to an old man; for it is addressed to atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals much in commonplaces. but it is full of noble thoughts, and is pleasant, and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet savor of the dignity of age. let the old man feel that it is not for him to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself from much of the evil which time can do to him. i am ready for you, and you cannot hurt me. "let not the old man assume the strength of the young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * * but still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. the melodious voice, however, remains, which--and you see my years--i have not yet lost. the voice of an old man should always be tranquil and contained."[ ] he tells a story of massinissa, who was then supposed to be ninety. he was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on foot and never mounted.[ ] "we must resist old age, my lælius. we must compensate our shortness by our diligence, my scipio. as we fight against disease, so let us contend with old age.[ ] * * * why age should be avaricious i could never tell. can there be anything more absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a journey?"[ ] he tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he believes they are still alive--that, though they have gone from this earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered worthy of the name."[ ] the de amicitia is called lælius. it is put into the mouth of lælius, and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the presence of his two sons-in-law, caius fannius and mucius scævola, a few days after the death of scipio his friend. not damon and pythias were more renowned for their friendship than scipio and lælius. he discusses what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what means it should be preserved. cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been placed under the charge of scævola the augur, and how, having changed his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, scævola fell into that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how once lælius had discoursed to them on friendship. it is from first to last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early summer grass to men who live in cities. the reader feels, as he goes on with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have been altogether unhappy. coming at the end of his life, in the telling the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. he has sometimes been querulous with his atticus. he has complained of bad advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship--in reading which accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. but atticus understood him. he knew that the privileges and the burden must go together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the privileges to compensate the burden. when we make our histories on the bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. in writing this treatise de amicitia especially for the eyes of atticus, how constantly the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them--how confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! he who, after nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on friendship cannot have been an unhappy man. "should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be repressed. you shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let it take the place of the old. age and custom will have given the old fruit a flavor of its own. who is there that would ride a new horse in preference to one tried--one who knows your hand?"[ ] i regard the de officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language. it is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it. it is addressed to his son, and is as good now as when it was written. there is not a precept taught in it which is not modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for christians and pagans. a system of morality, we might have said, should be one which would suit all men alike. we are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. the "honestum" means much more in latin than it does in english. neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the rendering--not that honor or that honesty which we know. modern honor flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight; while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honor is based. "honestum" includes it all; and cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. but he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. he never preaches. he does not fulminate his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of punishments; but he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you seem to have found out for yourself what is good--you and he together, and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and decorous. in cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself from the circumstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at last, by means of work done for the state, a time of blessed rest, he gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil world can bestow upon him. look back through the treatises written during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the last polish given by his own hands to these three books de officiis was added amid the heat and turmoils of the philippics. it is so singular, this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are taught almost to think that there must have been two ciceros, and that the one was eager in personal conflict with antony, while the other was seated in the garden of some italian villa meditating words by obeying which all men might be ennobled. in the dialectical disputations of the greek philosophers he had picked up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted for a discourse so free and open as is this. we are therefore somewhat offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three headings."[ ] if it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know it, it should, i think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at logical completeness. it is impossible to call this a fault. accuracy must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. but feeling myself to be occasionally wounded by this numbering, i mention it. in the de officiis he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he devotes a book. in the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be done or left undone--that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse; and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells us what to choose and what to avoid. the duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat higher than we accord to it. "parents are dear, children are dear to us, so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what good man would not die so that he might serve it? how detestable, then, is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and have been and are occupied in its destruction."[ ] he gives us some excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. but at the end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and fitting recreation.[ ] i have said that he was modern in his views--but not altogether modern. he defends the suicide of cato. "to them," he says, speaking of cato's companions in africa, "it might not have been forgiven. their life was softer and their manners easier. but to cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had strengthened with all the severity of his will. he had always remained steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the tyrant of his country."[ ] there was something terribly grand in cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of cicero. so much cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's character. let us look back and we shall find that we make the same allowance. this is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an apology which he makes. read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of a gentleman: "there are two kinds of beauty. the one is loveliness, which is a woman's gift. but dignity belongs to the man. let all ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear--and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. the manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. the same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is best."[ ] then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "those sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers. all those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work but not their art." as for instance, the painter of a picture shall be held to follow a liberal occupation--but not so the picture dealer. "they are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. all mere workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere workshop produce? least of all can those trades be said to be good which administer only to our pleasures--such as fish-mongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers."[ ] he adds at the end of his list that of all employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care of a freeman. in all of this it is necessary that we should receive what he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now departing from us--whether for good or evil who shall say? in the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked among those round him. "but when the republic," he says, "had ceased to be--that republic which had been all my care--my employment ceased both in the forum and the senate. but when my mind absolutely refused to be inactive, i thought that i might best live down the misery of the time if i devoted myself to philosophy."[ ] from this we may see how his mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "nihil agere autem quum animus non posset!" how piteous was his position, and yet how proud! there was nothing for him to do--but there was nothing because hitherto there had been so much that he had always done. he tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. to be ashamed of nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. but for him there is this difficulty: "if any one on his entrance into the world has had laid upon him the greatness of a name won by his father, let us say--as, my cicero, has perhaps happened to you--the eyes of all men will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life. he will be so placed under the meridian sun that no word spoken or deed done by him shall be hidden.[ ] * * * he must live up to the glory to which he has been born." he gives to his son much advice about the bar. "but the greatest praise," he says, "comes from defending a man accused; and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and ill-treated by the power of some great man. this happened to me more than once in my youth, when, for instance, i defended roscius amerinus against sulla's power." the speech is with us extant still.[ ] he tells us much as to the possession of money, and the means of insuring it in a well-governed state. "take care that you allow no debts to the injury of the republic. you must guard against this at all hazards--but never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. nothing is so requisite to the state as public credit--which cannot exist unless debtors be made to pay what they owe. there was nothing to which i looked more carefully than this when i was consul. horse and foot, they tried their best; but i opposed them, and freed the republic from the threatened evil. never were debts more easily or more quickly collected. when men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they paid. but he who was then the conquered is the conqueror now. he has effected what he contemplated--even though it be not now necessary for him."[ ] from this passage it seems that these books must have been first written before cæsar's death. cæsar, at the time of catiline's conspiracy, had endeavored to annul all debts--that is, to establish "new tables" according to the roman idiom--but had failed by cicero's efforts. he had since affected it, although he might have held his power without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. who could that be but cæsar? in the beginning of the third book there is another passage declaring the same thing: "i have not strength enough for silent solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. in the short time since the republic has been overturned i have written more than in all my former years."[ ] that, again, he could not have written after cæsar had fallen. we are left, indeed, to judge, from the whole nature of the discourse, that it was written at the period in which the wrongs done by cæsar to rome--wrongs at any rate as they appeared to cicero--were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to his slaughter. it was written then, but was published a few months afterward. chapter xiv. _cicero's religion._ i should hardly have thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan, had i not, while studying cicero's life, found that i was not dealing with a pagan's mind. the mind of the roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a god. horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. ovid does so still more constantly. they are both full of allusions to "the gods." they are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship, and that the orders of the emperor will be best obeyed by believers. "dis te minorem quod geris, imperas," says horace, when, in obedience probably to augustus, he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples. "superi, quorum sumus omnia," says ovid, thinking it well to show in one of his writings, which he sent home from his banishment, that he still entertained the fashionable creed. but they did not believe. it was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief, in order that those below might live as though they believed, and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. it was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. it was not well that the augurs, who were gentlemen of high family, should go for nothing. cæsar himself was the high-priest, and thought much of the position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. a religious belief was not expected from a gentleman. religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful assistance might perchance come. in dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. i remember no passage in livy or tacitus indicating a religious belief. but with cicero my mind is full of such; and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later i should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of christ's teachings. m. renan has reminded us of cicero's dislike to the jews. he could not learn from the jews--though the jew, indeed, had much that he could teach him. the religion which he required was far from the selfishness of either jew or roman. he believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of god, the performance of his duty to his neighbors, in conscience, and in honesty. "certum esse in cælo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur."[ ] "there is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." can st. paul have expressed with more clearness his belief as to a heaven? earlier in his career he expresses in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to another world: "an vero tam parvi animi videamur esse omnes, qui in republica, atque in his vitæ periculis laboribusque versamur, ut, quum, usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum duxerimus, vobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur?"[ ] "are we all of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country and ourselves--though we have not had one moment of ease here upon earth--when we die all things shall die with us?" and when he did go it should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. "neque te sermonibus vulgi dederis, nec in præmis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus."[ ] "you shall put your hope neither in man's opinion nor in human rewards; but virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." he thus tells us his idea of god's omnipotence: "quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eamdemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam; quem deum appellant."[ ] "this force they call the soul of the world, and, looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom, they name it their god." and again he says, speaking of god's care, "quis enim potest--quam existimet a deo se curari--non et dies, et noctes divinum numen horrere?"[ ] "who is there, when he thinks that a god is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his divine majesty?" as to man's duty to his neighbor, a subject as to which pagans before and even after the time of cicero seem to have had but vague ideas, the treatise de officiis is full of it, as indeed is the whole course of his life. "omne officium, quod ad conjunctionem hominum et ad societatem tuendam valet, anteponendum est illi officio, quod cognitione et scientia continetur."[ ] "all duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object." his belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide: "vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."[ ] "that god within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission." as to justice, i need give no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works have been written to uphold. this pagan had his ideas of god's governance of men, and of man's required obedience to his god, so specially implanted in his heart, that he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. to us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often the form of a stern duty. we have had it from our fathers and our mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent hands, still it has been given. it has been there with all its written laws, a thing to live by--if we choose. rich and poor, the majority of us know at any rate the lord's prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. there are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. all rome and all romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. he found it out, certainly. "suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus." "virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." the words to us seem to be quite commonplace. there is not a curate who might not put them into a sermon. but in cicero's time they were new, and hitherto untaught. there was the old greek philosopher's idea that the [greek: to kalon]--the thing of beauty--was to be found in virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold of it. but there was no god connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. it was leather and prunella, that, from first to last. the man had to die and go, melancholy, across the styx. but cicero was the first to tell his brother romans of an intelligible heaven. "certum esse in cælo definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur." "there is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." and then how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us--the very pith and marrow and inside meaning of christ's teaching, by adapting which we have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. when we look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in spite of individual greatness and national honor. but cicero had found it.--"that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"[ ] it is all contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to this passage. how different has been the world before that law was given to us and since! even the existence of that law, though it be not obeyed, has softened the hearts of men. if, as some think, it be the purport of christ's religion to teach men to live after a godlike fashion rather than to worship god after a peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that cicero was almost a christian, even before the coming of christ. if, as some think, an eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the disciples of christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for the many, a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had cicero anticipated much of christ's doctrine. that he should have approached the mystical portion of our religion it would of course be absurd to suppose. but a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming the conduct of men. the divine birth, and the doctrine of the trinity, and the lord's supper, are not necessary to teach a man to live with his brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. you shall live with a man from year's end to year's end, and shall not know his creed unless he tell you, or that you see him performing the acts of his worship; but you cannot live with him, and not know whether he live in accordance with christ's teaching. and so it was with cicero. read his works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over the sunday. the urbanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are all there. but you shall not find it to be so with cæsar, or lucretius, or with virgil. when you read his philosophical treatises it is as though you were discussing with some latter-day scholar the theories of plato or of epicurus. he does not talk of them as though he believed in them for his soul's guidance, nor do you expect it. all the interest that you have in the conversation would be lost were you to find such faith as that. you would avoid the man, as a pagan. the stoic doctrine would so shock you, when brought out for real wear, as to make you feel yourself in the company of some mad atheist--with a man for whose welfare, early or late in life, church bells had never been rung. but with a man who has his plato simply by heart you can spend the long summer day in sweet conversation. so it is with cicero. you lie down with him looking out upon the sea at comæ, or sit with him beneath the plane-tree of crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine and the other. so arcesilas may be supposed to have said, and so carneades laid down the law. it was that and no more. but when he tells you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it, then he is in earnest. we care in general but little for any teacher of religion who has not struggled to live up to his own teaching. cicero has told us of his ideas of the godhead, and has given us his theory as to those deeds by which a man may hope to achieve the heaven in which that god will reward with everlasting life those who have deserved such bliss. love of country comes first with him. it behooves, at any rate, a man to be true to his country from first to last. and honesty and honor come next--that "honestum" which carries him to something beyond the mere integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen. then family affection; then friendship; and then that constant love for our fellow-creatures which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us. running through these there are a dozen smaller virtues, but each so mingled with the other as to have failed in obtaining a separate place--dignity, manliness, truth, mercy, long-suffering, forgiveness, and humanity. try him by these all round and see how he will come out of the fire. he so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely; that from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in rome the great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart did not throb for it. in the defence of amerinus and in the prosecution of verres, his object was to stop the proscriptions, to shame the bench, and to punish the plunderers of the provinces. in driving out catiline the same strong feeling governed him. it was the same in cilicia. the same patriotism drove him to follow pompey to the seat of war. the same filled him with almost youthful energy when the final battle for the republic came. it has been said of him that he began life as a liberal in attacking sulla, and that afterward he became a conservative when he gained the consulship; that he opposed cæsar, and then flattered him, and then rejoiced at his death. i think that they who have so accused him have hardly striven to read his character amidst the changes of the time. a conservative he was always; but he wished to see that the things around him were worth conserving. he was always opposed to cæsar, whose genius and whose spirit were opposed to his own. but in order that something of the republic might be preserved, it became necessary to bear with cæsar. for himself he would take nothing from cæsar, except permission to breathe italian air. he flattered him, as was the roman custom. he had to do that, or his presence would have been impossible--and he could always do something by his presence. as far as love of country went, which among virtues stood the first with him, he was pure and great. there was not a moment in his career in which the feeling was not in his heart--mixed indeed with personal ambition, as must be necessary, for how shall a man show his love for his country except by his desire to stand high in its counsels? to be called "pater patriæ" by cato was to his ears the sweetest music he had ever heard. let us compare his honesty with that of the times in which he lived. all the high rewards of the state were at his command, and he might so have taken them as to have been safer, firmer, more powerful, by taking them; but he took nothing. no gorgeous wealth from a roman province stuck to his hands. we think of our cavendishes, our howards, and our stanleys, and feel that there is nothing in such honesty as this. but the cavendishes, the howards, and the stanleys of those days robbed with unblushing pertinacity. cæsar robbed so much that he put himself above all question of honesty. where did he, who had been so greatly in debt before he went to spain, get the million with which he bribed his adherents? cicero neither bought nor sold. twenty little stories have been told of him, not one with a grain of enduring truth to justify one of them. he borrowed, and he always paid; he lent, but was not always repaid. with such a voice to sell as his, a voice which carried with it the verdict of either guilt or innocence, what payments would it not have been worth the while of a roman nobleman to make to him? no such payments, as far as we can tell, were ever made. he took a present of books from his friend poetus, and asked another friend what "cincius" would say to it? men struggling to find him out, and not understanding his little joke, have said, "lo! he has been paid for his work. he defended poetus, and poetus gave him books." "did he defend poetus?" you ask. "we surmise so, because he gave him books," they reply. i say that at any rate the fault should be brought home against him before it is implied from chance passages in his own letters. cicero's affection for his family gives us an entirely unfamiliar insight into roman manners. there is a softness, a tenderness, an eagerness about it, such as would give a grace to the life of some english nobleman who had his heart garnered up for him at home, though his spirit was at work for his country. but we do not expect this from the pompeys and cæsars and catos of rome, perhaps because we do not know them as we know cicero. it is odd, however, that we should have no word of love for his boys, as to pompey; no word of love for his daughter, as to cæsar. but cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. all offences on their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed dishonesty, which was not to be forgiven. the ribaldry of dio cassius has polluted the story of his regard for tullia; but in truth we know nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us more, than the profundity of his grief. his readiness to forgive his brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety to take them back to his affections, his inability to live without them, tell of his tenderness. his friendship for atticus was of the same calibre. it was of that nature that it could not only bear hard words but could occasionally give them without fear of a breach. can any man read the records of this long affection without wishing that he might be blessed with such a friendship? as to that love of our fellow-creatures which comes not from personal liking for them, but from that kindness of heart toward all mankind which has been the fruit to us of christ's teaching, that desire to do unto others as they should do unto us, his whole life is an example. when quæstor in sicily, his chief duty was to send home corn. he did send it home, but so that he hurt none of those in sicily by whom it was supplied. in his letter to his brother as to his government of asia minor, the lessons which he teaches are to the same effect. when he was in cilicia, it was the same from first to last. he would not take a penny from the poor provincials--not even what he might have taken by law. "non modo non fænum, sed ne ligna quidem!" where did he get the idea that it was a good thing not to torment the poor wretches that were subjected to his power? why was it that he took such an un-roman pleasure in making the people happy? cicero, no doubt, was a pagan, and in accordance with the rules prevailing in such matters it would be necessary to describe him of that religion, if his religion be brought under discussion. but he has not written as pagans wrote, nor did he act as they acted. the educated intelligence of the roman world had come to repudiate their gods, and to create for itself a belief--in nothing. it was easier for a thoughtful man, and pleasanter for a thoughtless, to believe in nothing, than in jupiter and juno, in venus and in mars. but when there came a man of intellect so excellent as to find, when rejecting the gods of his country, that there existed for him the necessity of a real god, and to recognize it as a fact that the intercourse of man with man demanded it, we must not, in recording the facts of his life, pass over his religion as though it were simple chance. christ came to us, and we do not need another teacher. christ came to us so perfected in manhood as to be free from blemish. cicero did not come at all as a teacher. he never recognized the possibility of teaching men a religion, or probably the necessity. but he did see the way to so much of the truth as to perceive that there was a heaven; that the way to it must be found in good deeds here on earth; and that the good deeds required of him would be kindness to others. therefore i have written this final chapter on his religion. appendix to volume ii. appendix. (_see_ page , vol. ii.) _scipio's dream._ scipio the younger had gone, when in africa, to meet massinissa, and had there discussed with the african king the character of his nominal grandfather, for he was in fact the son of paulus Æmilius and had been adopted by the son of the great conqueror at zama. he had then retired to rest, and had dreamed a dream, and is thus made to tell it. africanus the elder had shown himself to him greater than life, and had spoken to him in the following words: "approach," said the ghost; "approach in spirit, and cease to fear, and write down on the tablets of your memory this that i shall tell you. "look down upon that city. i compelled it to obey rome. it now seeks to renew its former strife, and you, but yet new to arms, have come to conquer it." then from his starry heights he points to the once illustrious carthage. "in twice twelve months that city you shall conquer, and shall have earned for yourself that name which by descent has become yours. destroyer of carthage, triumphant censor, ambassador from rome to egypt, syria, asia, and greece, you shall be chosen consul a second time, though absent and, having besieged numantia, shall bring a great war to an end. then will the whole state turn to you and to your name. the senate, the citizens, the allies will expect you. in one word, it will be to you as dictator that the republic will look to be saved from the crimes of your relatives. "but that you may be always alive to protect the republic, know this. there is in heaven a special place of bliss for those who have served their country. to that god who looks down upon the earth there is nothing dearer than men bound to each other by reverence for the laws." "then, frightened, i asked him whether he were still living, and my father paulus, and others whom we believed to have departed. 'in truth,' he said, 'they live who have escaped from the bondage of the flesh. this which you call life is death. but behold paulus your father.' beholding him, i poured forth a world of tears, but he, embracing me, forbade me to weep. "'since this of yours is life, as my grandsire tells me,' i said, as soon as my tears allowed me to speak, 'why, o father most revered, do i delay here on earth, rather than haste to meet you?' 'it cannot be so,' he answered. 'unless that god whose temple is around you everywhere shall have liberated you from the chains of the body, you cannot come to us. men are begotten subject to his law, and inhabit the globe which is called the earth; and to them is given a soul from among the stars, perfect in their form and alive with heavenly instincts, which complete with wondrous speed their rapid courses. wherefore, my son, by you and by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines, nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been given to you. you may not escape the duty which god has trusted to you. live, my scipio, and shine with piety and justice, as your grandfather did and i have done. it is your duty to your parents and to your relatives, but especially your duty to your country. there lies the road to heaven. by following that course shall you find your way to those who crowd with disembodied spirits the realm beneath your eyes.' "then did i behold that splendid circle of fire which you, after the greeks, call the milky-way, and looking out from thence could see that all things were beautiful and all wonderful. there were stars which we cannot see from hence, and others of tremendous, unsuspected size; and then those smaller ones nearest to us, which shine with a reflected light. but every star among them all loomed larger than our earth. that seemed so mean, that i was sorry to belong to so small an empire. * * * * * "as i gazed a sound struck my ears. 'what music is that,' said i, 'swelling so loudly and yet so sweet?' "'it is that harmony of the stars,' he said, 'which the world creates by its own movement. low and loud, base and treble, they clang together with unequal intervals, but each in time and tune. they could not work in silence, and nature demands that from one end of heaven to the other they shall be sonorous with a deep diapason. the far off give a loud treble twang. those nearest to the moon sound low and base. the earth, the ninth in order, immovable upon its lowest seat, occupies the centre of the system. from the eight there come seven sounds, distinct among themselves, venus and mercury joining in one effort. in that number is the secret of all human affairs. learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. what sense is duller? it is as when the nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, become deaf.' * * * * * "'then,' said africanus, 'look and see how small are the habitations of men, how grand are those of the angels of light. what fame can you expect from men, or what glory? you see how they live in mean places--in small spots, lonely amid vast solitudes, and that they who inhabit them dwell so isolated that nothing can pass between them. can you expect glory from them? "'you behold this earth surrounded by zones. you see two of them, frozen from their poles, have been made solid with everlasting ice; and how the centre realm between them has been scorched by the sun's rays. two, however, are fit for life. they who inhabit the southern, whose footsteps are opposed to ours, are a race of whom we know nothing. but see how small a part of this little earth is inhabited by us who are turned toward the north. for all the earth which you inhabit, wide and narrow, is but a small island surrounded by that sea which you call the great atlantic ocean--which, however large as you deem it, how small it is! has your name or has mine been able, over this small morsel of the earth's surface, to ascend mount caucasus or to cross the ganges? who in the regions of the rising or setting sun has heard of our fame? cut off these regions, distant but a hand's breadth, and see within what narrow borders will your reputation be spread! they who speak of you--for how short a time will their voices be heard? "'grant that man, unenvious, shall wish to hand down your fame to future ages, still there will come those storms of nature. the earth will be immersed in water and scorched with fire; a doom which in the course of ages must happen, and will deny to you any lasting glory. will you be content that they who are to come only shall hear of you, when to those crowds of better men who have passed away your name shall be as nothing? "'and remember too that no man's renown shall reach the duration of a year. men call that space a year which they measure by the return of a single star to its old place. but when all the stars shall have come back, and shall have made their course across the heavens, then, then shall that truly be called a year. in this year how many are there of our ages contained. for as when romulus died, and made his way here to these temples of the gods, the sun was seen by man to fade away, so will the sun again depart from the heavens, when the stars, having accomplished their spaces, shall have returned to their old abodes. of this, the true year, not a twentieth part has been as yet consumed. if, then, you despair of reaching this abode, which all of true excellence strive to approach, what glory is there to be gained? when gained, it will not last the space of one year. look then aloft, my son, and fix your eyes upon this eternal home. despise all vulgar fame, nor place your hopes on human rewards. let virtue by her own charms lead you on to true glory. let men talk of you--for talk they will. man's talk of man is small in its space, and short-lived in its time. it dies with a generation and is forgotten by posterity.' "when he had spoken i thus answered him: 'africanus,' i said, 'i indeed have hitherto endeavored to find a road to heaven, following your example and my father's; but now, for so great a reward, will i struggle on more bravely.' 'struggle on,' he replied, 'and know this--not that thou art mortal but only this thy body. this frail form is not thyself. it is the mind, invisible, and not a shape at which a man may point with his fingers. know thyself to be a god. to be strong in purpose and in mind; to remember to provide and to rule; to restrain and to move the body it is placed over, as the great god does the world--that is to be a god. and as the god who moves this mortal world is eternal, so does an eternal soul govern this frail body.'" footnotes: [ ] as i shall explain a few pages farther on, four of these speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious. [ ] see mr. long's introduction to these orations. "all this i admit," says mr. long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, and extravagant compositions." [ ] pro cn. plancio, ca. xxx.: "nonne etiam illa testis est oratio quæ est a me prima habita in senatu. * * * recitetur oratio, quæ propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est." [ ] quintilian, lib. xi., ca. , who as a critic worshipped cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been up to his time the feeling of the roman world as to cicero's self-praise: "reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter cicero." [ ] ad att., lib. iv., . he recommends that the speech should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus gives further proof that we still here have his own words. when so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an oration so prepared would remain extant. [ ] i had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v., chap. viii., of mommsen's history. [ ] "politique des romains dans la religion;" a treatise which was read by its author to certain students at bordeaux. it was intended as a preface to a longer work. [ ] ad div., lib. i., . [ ] ad div., lib. i., : "nosti hominis tarditatem, et taciturnitatem." [ ] ad quintum fratrem, lib. ii., . [ ] ibid., lib. ii., . [ ] ad att., lib. iv., . [ ] ad div., lib. v., . [ ] very early in the history of rome it was found expedient to steal an etruscan soothsayer for the reading of these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier, who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (livy, v., ). we are naively told by the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. on a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: crows built in the temple of juno. a green tree took fire. the waters of mantua became bloody. in one place it rained chalk in another fire. lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. an ox spoke in sicily. a precocious baby cried out "io triumphe" before it was born. at spoletum a woman became a man. an altar was seen in the heavens. a ghostly band of armed men appeared in the janiculum (livy, xxiv., ). on such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked sons of eli. even horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the gods--certainly as though he thought that public morals would be improved by renewed attention to them: delicta majorum immeritus lues, romane, donec templa refeceris.--od., lib. iii., . [ ] see the preface by m. guerault to his translation of this oration, de aruspium responsis. [ ] ca. ix.: "who is there so mad that when he looks up to the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung from chance--things so wonderful that the most intelligent among us do not understand their motions?" [ ] ca. xxviii.: "quæ in tempestate sæva quieta est, et lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque hæret in patria, splendetque per se semper, neque alienis unquam sordibus obsolescit." i regard this as a perfect allocution of words in regard to the arrangement both for the ear and for the intellect. [ ] ca. xliv.: "there have always been two kinds of men who have busied themselves in the state, and have struggled to be each the most prominent. of these, one set have endeavored to be regarded as 'populares,' friends of the people; the other to be and to be considered as 'optimates,' the most trustworthy. they who did and said what could please the people were 'populares,' but they who so carried themselves as to satisfy every best citizen, they were 'optimates.'" cicero, in his definition, no doubt begs the question; but to do so was his object. [ ] mommsen, lib. v., chap. viii., in one of his notes, says that this oration as to the provinces was the very "palinodia" respecting which cicero wrote to atticus. the subject discussed was no doubt the same. what authority the historian has found for his statement i do not know; but no writer is generally more correct. [ ] de prov. cons., ca. viii. [ ] ca. xiii. [ ] ca. xiv. [ ] ca. xviii. [ ] pro c. balbo, ca. vii. [ ] ibid., ca. xiii. [ ] gibbon, decline and fall, ca. vii. [ ] there was no covenant, no bond of service, no master's authority, probably no discipline; but the eager pupil was taught to look upon the anxious tutor with love, respect, and faith. [ ] in pisonem, xxvii. even in cicero's words as used here there is a touch of irony, though we cannot but imagine that at this time he was anxious to stand well with pompey. "there are coming on the games, the most costly and the most magnificent ever known in the memory of man; such as there never were before, and, as far as i can see, never will be again." "show yourself there if you dare!"--he goes on to say, addressing the wretched piso. [ ] plutarch's life of pompey: "crassus upon the expiration of his consulship repaired to his province. pompey, remaining in rome, opened his theatre." but plutarch, no doubt, was wrong. [ ] we may imagine what was the standing of the family from the address which horace made to certain members of it in the time of augustus. "credite pisones," de arte poetica. the pisones so addressed were the grandsons of cicero's victim. [ ] quin., ix., : "pro dii immortales, quis hic illuxit dies!" the critic quotes it as being vicious in sound, and running into metre, which was considered a great fault in roman prose, as it is also in english. our ears, however, are hardly fine enough to catch the iambic twang of which quintilian complains. [ ] ca. xviii., xx., xxii. [ ] "quæ potest homini esse polito delectatio," ad div., vii., . these words have in subsequent years been employed as an argument against all out-of-door sports, with disregard of the fact that they were used by cicero as to an amusement in which the spectators were merely looking on, taking no active part in deeds either of danger or of skill.--_fortnightly review_, october, , the morality of field sports. [ ] ad att., lib. iv., . [ ] ad div., ii., . [ ] see the letter, ad quin. frat., lib. iii., : "homo undique actus, et quam a me maxime vulneraretur, non tulit, et me trementi voce exulem appellavit." the whole scene is described. [ ] ad fam., v., . [ ] ad quin. frat., ii., . [ ] ad att., iv., . [ ] val. max., lib. iv., ca. ii., . [ ] horace, sat., lib. ii., : hor. "trebati, quid faciam præscribe."--treb. "quiescas."--hor. "ne faciam, inquis, omnino versus?"--treb. "aio."--hor. "peream male si non optimum erat." trebatius became a noted jurisconsult in the time of augustus, and wrote treatises. [ ] ca. iv.: "male judicavit populus. at judicavit. non debuit, at potuit." [ ] ca. vi.: "servare necesse est gradus. cedat consulari generi prætorium, nec contendat cum prætorio equester locus." [ ] ca. xix. [ ] ad fam., i., . [ ] ca. xi. [ ] ad fam., lib. ii., : "dux nobis et auctor opus est et eorum ventorum quos proposui moderator quidem et quasi gubernator." [ ] mommsen, book v., chap. viii. according to the historian, clodius was the achilles, and milo the hector. in this quarrel hector killed achilles. [ ] ad att., lib. iv., . [ ] ad fam., lib. vii., . [ ] vell. pat., ii., . [ ] we remember the scorn with which horace has treated the roman soldier whom he supposes to have consented to accept both his life and a spouse from the parthian conqueror: milesne crassi conjuge barbara turpis maritus vixit?--ode iii., . it has been calculated that of , legionaries half were killed, , returned to syria, and that , settled themselves in the country we now know as merv. [ ] ad quin. frat., lib. ii., , and ad att., lib. iv., . [ ] "interrogatio de ære alieno milonis." [ ] livy, epitome, : "absens et solus quod nulli alii umquam contigit." [ ] the curia hostilia, in which the senate sat frequently, though by no means always. [ ] ca. ii. [ ] ca. v. [ ] ca. xx., xxi. [ ] ca. xxix. [ ] ca. xxxvii.: "o me miserum! o me infelicem! revocare tu me in patriam, milo, potuisti per hos. ego te in patria per eosdem retinere non potero!" "by the aid of such citizens as these," he says, pointing to the judges' bench, "you were able to restore me to my country. shall i not by the same aid restore you to yours?" [ ] ad fam., lib. xiii., . [ ] ad fam., lib. vii., : "in primisque me delectavit tantum studium bonorum in me exstitisse contra incredibilem contentionem clarissimi et potentissimi viri." [ ] cæsar, a sketch, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] he reached laodicea, an inland town, on july st, b.c. , and embarked, as far as we can tell, at sida on august d, b.c. . it may be doubted whether any roman governor got to the end of his year's government with greater despatch. [ ] no exemption was made for cæsar in pompey's law as it originally stood; and after the law had been inscribed as usual on a bronze tablet it was altered at pompey's order, so as to give cæsar the privilege. pompey pleaded forgetfulness, but the change was probably forced upon him by cæsar's influence.--suetonius, j. cæsar, xxviii. [ ] ad div., lib. iii., . [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] abeken points out to us, in dealing with the year in which cicero's government came to an end, b.c. , that cato's letters to cicero (ad fam., lib. xv., ) bear irrefutable testimony as to the real greatness of cicero. see the translation edited by merivale, p. . this applies to his conduct in cilicia, and may thus be taken as evidence outside his own, though addressed to himself. [ ] the roman triumvirate, p. . [ ] cæsar, a sketch, pp. , . [ ] professor mommsen says no word of cicero's government in cilicia. [ ] i cannot but refer to mommsen's account of this transaction, book v., chap. viii.: "golden fetters were also laid upon him," cicero. "amid the serious embarrassments of his finances the loans of cæsar free of interest * * * were in a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration for the senate was nipped in the bud by the thought that the agent of cæsar might present a bill to him after the close of the sitting." there are many assertions here for which i have looked in vain for the authority. i do not know that cicero's finances were seriously embarrassed at the time. the evidence goes rather to show that they were not so. had he ever taken more than one loan from cæsar? i find nothing as to any question of interest; but i imagine that cæsar treated cicero as cicero afterward treated pompey when he lent him money. we do not know whether even crassus charged cæsar interest. we may presume that a loan is always made welcome, or the money would not be borrowed, but the "high degree of welcome," as applied to this especial loan, ought to have some special justification. as to cicero's anxiety in borrowing the money i know nothing, but he was very anxious to pay it. the borrowing and the lending of money between roman noblemen was very common. no one had ever borrowed so freely as cæsar had done. cicero was a lender and a borrower, but i think that he was never seriously embarrassed. what oration was nipped in the bud by fear of his creditor? he had lately spoken twice for saufeius, once against s. clodius, and against plancus--in each case opposing the view of cæsar, as far as cæsar had views on the matter. the sum borrowed on this occasion was , sesterces--between £ and £ . a small additional sum of £ is mentioned in one of the letters to atticus, lib. v., ., which is, however, spoken of by cicero as forming one whole with the other. i can hardly think that mommsen had this in view when he spoke of loans in the plural number. [ ] m. c. marcellus was consul b.c. ; his brother, c. claudius marcellus, was consul b.c. , another c. claudius marcellus, a cousin, in b.c. . [ ] mommsen calls him a "respected senator." m. de guerle, in his preface to the oration pro marcello, claims for him the position of a delegate. he was probably both--though we may doubt whether he was "respected" after his flogging. [ ] ad att., lib. v., : "marcellus foede in comensi;" and he goes on to say that even if the man had been no magistrate, and therefore not entitled to full roman treatment, yet he was a transalpine, and therefore not subject to the scourge. see mr. watson's note in his select letters. [ ] ad div., lib. ii., . [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ibid.: "quæso ut simus annui; ne intercaletur quidem." it might be that an intercalary month should be added, and cause delay. [ ] ad div., lib. viii., : "ut tibi curæ sit quod ad pantheras attinet." [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ad div., lib. iii., . [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ibid., . [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ad div., lib. iii., . [ ] ad div., lib. xv., . [ ] ibid., iii., . [ ] ad div., lib. viii., . [ ] ad div., lib. viii., . [ ] ibid., ii., . [ ] this mode of greeting a victorious general had no doubt become absurd in the time of cicero, when any body of soldiers would be only too willing to curry favor with the officer over them by this acclamation. cicero ridicules this; but is at the same time open to the seduction--as a man with us will laugh at the sir johns and sir thomases who are seated around him, but still, when his time comes, will be pleased that his wife shall be called "my lady" like the rest of them. [ ] ad div., lib. ii., . [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ad div., lib. xv., . [ ] ibid., xv., , and lib. xv., : "ut quam honorificentissimum senatus consultum de meis rebus gestis faciendum cures." [ ] ad div., lib. viii., . [ ] ibid., . [ ] ibid., iii., . [ ] ibid., . [ ] the amount seems so incredible that i cannot but suspect an error in the ms. the sum named is two hundred attic talents. the attic talent, according to smith's dictionary, was worth £ _s._ it may be that this large amount had been collected over a series of years. [ ] ad att., lib. v., . [ ] ibid., vi., . this is the second letter to atticus on the transaction, and in this he asserts, as though apologizing for his conduct to brutus, that he had not before known that the money belonged to brutus himself: "nunquam enim ex illo audivi illam pecuniam esse suam." [ ] in the letter last quoted, "flens mihi meam famam commendasti." "believe," he says, "that i cling to the doctrines which you yourself have taught me. they are fixed in my very heartstrings." [ ] see the former of the two letters, ad. att., lib. v., : "quod enim prætori dare consuessent, quoniam ego non acceperam, se a me quodam modo dare." [ ] ad att., vi., : "tricesimo quoque die talenta attica xxxiii., et hoc ex tributis." on every thirteenth day he gets thirty three talents from the taxes, the talent being about £ . of the poverty of ariobarzanes we have heard much, and of the number of slaves which reached rome from his country. it was thus, probably, that the king paid pompey his interest. mancipiis locuples eget æris cappadonum rex.--hor. epis., lib. i., vi. persius tells us how the roman slave-dealer was wont to slap the fat cappadocian on the thigh to show how sound he was as he was selling him, sat. vi., . "cappadocis eques catastis" is a phrase used by martial, lib. x., , to describe from how low an origin a roman knight might descend, telling us also that there were platforms erected for the express purpose of selling slaves from cappadocia. juvenal speaks also of "equites cappadoces" in the same strain, sat. vii., . the descendant even of a slave from cappadocia might rise to be a knight. from all this we may learn what was the source of the £ a month which pompey condescended to take, and which cicero describes as being "ex tributis." [ ] ad att., lib. vi., . [ ] ad att., lib. vi., . [ ] ad div., lib. viii., . [ ] ad att., lib. vi., , . [ ] ad div., lib. ii., : "scito me sperare ea quæ sequuntur." [ ] ibid. [ ] ad att., lib. vii., . [ ] ad att., lib. vi., . [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] appius and piso were the last two censors elected by the republic. [ ] ad div., lib. ii., . [ ] appian, de bell. civ., lib. ii., . the historian tells us that the consul built a temple with the money, but that curio had paid his debts. [ ] mommsen, book v., ca. ix. [ ] ad att., lib. vii., : "video cum altero vinci satius esse quam cum altero vincere." [ ] ad att., lib. vii., : "adolescentem, ut nosti, et adde, si quid vis, probum." [ ] ad att., lib. vii., - . [ ] ibid., lib. viii., . [ ] ibid., lib. viii., . [ ] copy of letter d, enclosed in letter to atticus, lib. viii., . [ ] ad att., lib. ix., . [ ] ibid., lib. ix., . [ ] ad att., lib. x., . [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] horace, sat., lib. i., sat. . [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] ad div., xiv., . [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xi., - . [ ] ad div., xiv., , . the numbers going the wrong way is only an indication that the letters were wrongly placed by grævius. [ ] ad att., lib. xi., . [ ] oratoriæ partitiones, xvii., xxiii. [ ] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxi.: "catoni cum incredibilem tribuisset natura gravitatem, eamque ipse perpetua constantia roborasset, semperque in proposito susceptoque consilio permansisset, moriendum potius quam tyranni vultum aspiciendum fuit." [ ] this was lucius volcatius tullus. [ ] but it is now, i believe, the opinion of scholars that wolf has been proved to be wrong, and the words to have been the very words of cicero, by the publication of certain fragments of ancient scholia on the pro marcello which have been discovered by cardinal mai since the time of the dispute. [ ] ad div., iv., . [ ] pro marcello, ii. [ ] pro ligario, i. [ ] pro ligario, iii. [ ] ad fam., lib. iv., . [ ] ad div., lib. ix., . [ ] ad att., lib. xii., . [ ] ibid., . [ ] ad div., lib. xvi., . [ ] pliny, hist. nat., lib. xiv., . [ ] ad div., lib. vi., . [ ] ad att., lib. xii., . [ ] ibid., , . [ ] ad att., lib. xii., . [ ] ibid., , . [ ] ad att., lib. xiii., . [ ] suetonius, julius cæsar, ca. xxxvii. [ ] ad att., lib. xiii., . [ ] ad att., lib xiii., . [ ] pro rege deiotaro, ii. [ ] ibid., ca. xii.: "solus, inquam, es, c. cæsar, cujus in victoria cecide it nemo nisi armatus." [ ] cæsar, de bello gallico, lib. iii., : "itaque, omni senatu necato, reliquos sub corona vendidit," he says, and passes on in his serene, majestic manner. [ ] quint., lib. x., vii.: "nam ciceronis ad præsens modo tempus aptatos libertus tiro contraxit." [ ] horace, epis., lib. i., : "nullus in orbe sinus baiis prælucet amænis." [ ] ad att., lib. xiii., . [ ] ad div., lib. vii., . [ ] mommsen, book v., xi. [ ] he left brundisium on the last day of the year. [ ] shakspeare, julius cæsar, act i., sc. . [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., , . [ ] quintilian, lib. vii., . [ ] these words will be found in m. du rozoir's summary to the philippics. [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., . [ ] ibid., : "quam oculis cepi justo interitu tyranni." [ ] morabin, liv. vi., chap. iii., sec. . [ ] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., ca. lviii. [ ] mommsen, book v., xi. [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., . [ ] ibid., lib. xiv., . [ ] ibid., lib. xiv., . [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., . [ ] ibid., lib. xiv., . [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., . [ ] ad div., lib. xvi., . [ ] ad div., lib. ix., . [ ] ad att., lib. xiv., . [ ] ad att., lib. xv., . [ ] ibid., lib. xv., . [ ] ad att., lib. xv., . [ ] ibid., lib. xvi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xvi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xvi., . [ ] ad att., lib. xvi., . [ ] phil., i., : "nimis iracunde hoc quidem, et valde intemperanter." "who," he goes on to say, "has sinned so heavily against the republic that here, in the senate, they shall dare to threaten his house by sending the state workmen?" [ ] brutus, ciceroni, lib. ii., : "jam concedo ut vel philippici vocentur quod tu quadam epistola jocans scripsisti." i fear, however, that we must acknowledge that this letter cannot be taken as an authority for the early use of the name. [ ] phil., i., ca. vii. [ ] ibid., i., ca. viii. [ ] ibid., i., ca. x. [ ] the year of his birth is uncertain. he had been consul three years back, and must have spoken often. [ ] ad div., lib. xii., . [ ] it may here be worth our while to quote the impassioned language which velleius paterculus uses when he chronicles the death of cicero, lib. ii., : "nihil tamen egisti, m. antoni (cogit enim excedere propositi formam operis, erumpens animo ac pectore indignatio), nihil, inquam, egisti, mercedem cælestissimi oris et clarissimi capitis abscissi numerando, auctoramentoque funebri ad conservatoris quondam reipublicæ tantique consulis irritando necem. rapuisti tu m. ciceroni lucem solicitam, et ætatem senilem, et vitam miseriorem, te principe, quam sub te triumviro mortem. famam vero gloriamque factorum atque dictorum adeo non abstulisti, ut auxeris. vivit, vivetque per omnium sæculorum memoriam; dumque hoc vel forte, vel providentia, vel utcumque constitutum, rerum naturæ corpus, quod ille pæne solus romanorum animo vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentia illuminavit, manebit incolume, comitem ævi sui laudem ciceronis trahet, omnisque posteritas illius in te scripta mirabitur, tuum in eum factum execrabitur; citiusque in mundo genus hominum, quam ea, cadet." this was the popular idea of cicero in the time of tiberius. [ ] ad div., lib. xii., . [ ] ad att., lib. xvi., . [ ] on referring to the milo, ca. xv., the reader will see the very different tone in which cicero spoke of this incident when antony was in favor with him. [ ] it was a sign of an excellent character in rome to have been chosen often as heir in part to a man's property. [ ] horace, odes, lib. iii., . [ ] ad att., lib. xvi., . [ ] philippics, lib. vi., . [ ] "populum romanum servire fas non est, quem dii immortales omnibus gentibus imperare voluerunt." [ ] ad div., lib. xi., . [ ] ad div., lib. x., . [ ] ad brutum, lib. ii., . [ ] appian. de bell. civ., lib. iii., ca. . [ ] vell. pat., lib. ii., : "quæ omnia senatus decretis comprensa et comprobata sunt." [ ] ad div., lib. xii., . this is in a letter to cassius, in which he says, "promisi enim et prope confirmavi, te non expectasse nec expectaturum decreta nostra, sed te ipsum tuo more rempublicam defensurum." [ ] appian, lib. iii., ca. . the historian of the civil wars declares that piso spoke up for antony, saying that he should not be damnified by loose statements, but should be openly accused. feelings ran very high, but cicero seems to have held his own. [ ] ad div., lib. x., . [ ] suetonius, augustus, lib. xi. [ ] tacitus, ann., lib. i., x.: "cæsis hirtio et pansa, sive hostis illos, seu pansam venenum vulneri affusum, sui milites hirtium et, machinator doli, cæsar abstulerat." [ ] philip., xiv., : "omnibus, quanquam ruit ipse suis cladibus, pestem, vastitatem, cruciatum, tormenta denuntiat." [ ] philip., xiv., : "o fortunata mors, quæ naturæ debita, pro patria est potissimum reddita." [ ] ad div., lib. xi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xi., . [ ] ibid., lib. xi., . [ ] ad div., lib. x., . [ ] ad brutum, lib. i., . [ ] ad div., lib. xi., : "ipsum cæsarem nihil sane de te questum, nisi quod diceret, te dixisse, laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum." [ ] ad div., lib. xii., . [ ] appian, lib. iii., . [ ] dio cassius, lib. xlvi., . [ ] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., . [ ] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., : "repugnante cæsare, sed frustra adversus duos, instauratum sullani exempli malum, proscriptio." [ ] vell. paterculus, lib. ii., : "nihil tam indignum illo tempore fuit, quam quod aut cæsar aliquem proscribere coactus est, aut ab ullo cicero proscriptus est." [ ] suetonius, augustus, : "in quo restitit quidem aliquamdiu collegis, ne qua fieret proscriptio, sed inceptam utroque acerbius exercuit." [ ] phil., iv., ca. xviii. [ ] in the following list i have divided the latter, making the moral essays separate from the philosophy. [ ] i have given here those treatises which are always printed among the works of cicero. [ ] de inventione, lib. ii., . [ ] quintilian, in his proæmium or preface: "oratorem autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse nisi vir bonus non potest." it seems as though there had almost been the question whether the perfect orator could exist, although there was no question he had never done so as yet. [ ] quint., lib. iii., : "præcipuum vero lumen sicut eloquentiæ, ita præceptis quoque ejus, dedit unicum apud nos specimen orandi, docendique oratorias artes, m. tullius." and in tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx.: "ita ex multa eruditione, ex pluribus artibus," he says, speaking of cicero, "et omnium rerum scientia exundat, et exuberat illa admirabilis eloquentia; neque oratoris vis et facultas, sicut ceterarum rerum, angustis et brevibus terminis cluditur; sed is est orator, qui de omni quæstione pulchre, et ornate, et ad persuadendum apte dicere, pro dignitate rerum, ad utilitatem temporum, cum voluptate audientium possit." this has not the ring of tacitus, but it shows equally well the opinion of the day. [ ] de oratore, lib. i., ca. xi. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xxv. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xliv. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. lii. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. lx. [ ] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. i. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. vii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xv. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxiv. [ ] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. xxvii.: "ut probemus vera esse ea, quæ defendimus; ut conciliemus nobis eos, qui audiunt; ut animos eorum, ad quemcumque causa postulabit motum, vocemus." [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xliv. [ ] de oratore, lib. ii., ca. lxviii. [ ] de oratore, lib. iii., ca. liv. [ ] ibid., lib. iii., ca. lv. [ ] brutus, ca. xii. [ ] ibid., ca. xvii. [ ] ibid., ca. xxxviii. [ ] ibid., ca. l. [ ] ibid., ca. lvii. [ ] ibid., ca. lxxv. [ ] brutus, ca. xciii. [ ] de divinatione, lib. ii., . [ ] orator, ca. ii. [ ] orator, ca. xxvi. [ ] ibid., ca. xxviii. [ ] ibid., ca. xxxvi. here his language becomes very fine. [ ] ad. att., lib. xiv., . [ ] topica, ca. : "itaque hæc quum mecum libros non haberem, memoria repetita, in ipsa navigatione conscripsi, tibique ex itinere misi." [ ] quint., lib. xi., . the translations of these epithets are "open, obscure, full, thin, light, rough, shortened, lengthened, harsh, pliable, clear, clouded." [ ] brutus, ca. xxxviii. [ ] de oratore, lib. i., ca. liii. [ ] academica, ii., lib. i., ca. iii. [ ] ibid., i., lib. ii., ca. vii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix. [ ] academica, i., lib. ii., ca. xxxvii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxxix. [ ] pro murena, ca. xxix. [ ] de finibus, lib. i., ca. iii. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. v. [ ] de finibus, lib. ii., ca. xxx. [ ] de finibus, lib. iii., ca. xxii. [ ] de finibus, lib. iv., ca. . [ ] de finibus, lib. v., ca. ii. [ ] ibid., lib. v., ca. xix. [ ] ibid., lib. v., ca. xxiii. [ ] epis., lib. i., , . [ ] tus. disp., lib. v., ca. xi. [ ] tus. disp., lib. i., ca. xxx. [ ] de natura deo., lib. i., ca. iv. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. ix. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xiv. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix. [ ] de nat. deo., lib. ii., ca. liv., lv. [ ] de nat. deo., lib. iii., ca. xxvii. [ ] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. xxxiii. [ ] de divinatione, lib. i., ca. xviii. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xlvii. [ ] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. i. [ ] horace, ep., lib. ii., ca. i.: "greece, conquered greece, her conqueror subdued. and rome grew polished who till then was rude." conington's translation. [ ] de divinatione, lib. ii., ca. ii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. li. [ ] the story of simon du bos and his ms. has been first told to me by mr. tyrell in his first volume of the correspondence of cicero, p. . that a man should have been such a scholar, and yet such a liar, and should have gone to his long account content with the feeling that he had cheated the world by a fictitious ms., when his erudition, if declared, would have given him a scholar's fame, is marvellous. perhaps he intended to be discovered. i, for one, should not have heard of bosius but for his lie. [ ] de republica, lib. iii. it is useless to give the references here. it is all fragmentary, and has been divided differently as new information has been obtained. [ ] de legibus, lib. i., ca. vii. [ ] de legibus, lib. i., ca. x. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xviii. [ ] de legibus, lib. iii., ca. ix., x. [ ] ibid., lib. iii., xvii. [ ] de senectute, ca. ix. [ ] ibid., ca. x. [ ] ibid., ca. xi. [ ] ibid., ca. xviii. [ ] ibid., ca. xxi. [ ] de amicitia, ca. xix. [ ] de officiis, lib. ii., ca. v. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xvii. [ ] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxix: "suppeditant autem et campus noster et studia venandi, honesta exempla ludendi." the passage is quoted here as an antidote to that extracted some time since from one of his letters, which has been used to show that hunting was no occupation for a "polite man"--as he, cicero, had disapproved of pompey's slaughter of animals on his new stage. [ ] ibid., lib. i., ca. xxxi. [ ] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxvi. it is impossible not to be reminded by this passage of lord chesterfield's letters to his son, written with the same object; but we can see at once that the roman desired in his son a much higher type of bearing than the englishman. the following is the advice given by the englishman: "a thousand little things, not separately to be defined, conspire to form these graces--this 'je ne sais quoi' that always pleases. a pretty person; genteel motions; a proper degree of dress; an harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly raised manner of speaking--all these things and many others are necessary ingredients in the composition of the pleasing 'je ne sais quoi' which everybody feels, though nobody can describe. observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be persuaded that, in general, the same thing will please or displease them in you. having mentioned laughing, i must particularly warn you against it; and i could wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh, while you live." i feel sure that cicero would laugh, and was heard to laugh, and yet that he was always true to the manners of a gentleman. [ ] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xlii. [ ] de officiis, lib. ii., l. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiii. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiv. [ ] de officiis, lib. ii., ca. xxiv. [ ] ibid., lib. iii., ca. i. [ ] de republica, lib. vi. it is useless to give the chapters, as the treatise, being fragmentary, is differently divided in different editions. [ ] ad archiam, ca. xii. [ ] de republica, lib. vi. [ ] academica, , lib. i., ca. vii. [ ] academica, , lib. ii., ca. xxxviii. [ ] de officiis, lib. i., ca. xliv. [ ] tusc. disputationes, lib. i., ca. xxx. [ ] de finibus, lib. v., ca. xxiii. index. a. abeken, german, biographer of cicero, ii., . "abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit," i., . academica, the, i., ; ii., , . actio prima, contra verrem, i., . actio secunda, contra verrem, i., . aculeo, cicero's uncle, i., . adjournments, on account of games in the trial of verres, i., . advocate, duty in rome, i., , ; his duties, ii., . Ædile, cicero as, i., . "Æstimatum," tax on corn in sicily, i., . agrarian law, two speeches, i., ; two supplementary speeches, . [greek:aideomai trôas], i., . allobroges, their ambassadors, i., ; alluded to by horace, ; rewarded, . Æmilius, the consul, bribed by cæsar, ii., . amanus, cicero's campaign at the mountain range, ii., . amicitia, de, ii., ; lælius tells its praises, . amnesty, granted after cæsar's death, ii., ; cicero's opinion respecting it, . anatomical researches, ii., . antiochus of comagene, cicero pleads against, ii., . antiphon, an actor, criticism on, ii., . antonius caius, cicero's colleague in the consulship, i., ; not trusted, ; was worth nothing, ; cicero expects money from, . antonius marcus, the orator, i., . antony, abuse of, i., ; silenced by cicero, ; cassius had desired his death, ii., ; forges cæsar's writing, ; writes to cicero, ; cicero desires to make him leave italy, ; desires cicero to assist in the senate, ; desires that cicero's house shall be attacked, ; determines to answer the first philippic, ; left no friend to speak for him, ; his character by paterculus, ; the same from virgil, _ibid._; how he sought favor with cæsar, ; how he quarrelled with dolabella, ; his letter to hirtius, ; wages war against four consuls, ; one of the triumvirate, . appius claudius, letter to, ii., ; runs away from cicero, ; takes away three cohorts, ; sends ambassadors to rome to praise him, ; his dishonesty, ; twice tried, _ibid._; censor, . apronius, who he was, and his character, i., . arabarches, nickname for pompey, i., . aratus, the phænomena translated, i., ; the prognostics translated, ; ii., . arbuscula, the actress, ii., . archias, cicero's tutor, i., ; cicero's speech, . ariobarzanes, in debt to pompey and brutus, ii., . army, cicero joins it, i., . arpinum, cicero's birthplace, i., . asconius pedianus, commentator of cicero, i., ; declares that cicero had accused crassus of joining catiline, ; tells the story of milo's trial, ii., . asia, cicero travels in, i., . asians, the character given them by cicero, i., . "assectatores," who they were, i., . athens, cicero is afraid to live there, i., ; cicero's description of, ii., . atticus, letters, private, i., , , , ; cicero's faith in, ; general letters, ; his character, , , ; cicero informs him as to clodius, ; and of his speech in pompey's favor, ; did not quarrel with cicero, ; cicero complains of his conduct, and then apologizes, ; leads money to cicero, ; no letter of his extant, ii., ; receives a commission to see cicero's debts paid, ; cicero's last letter to, . augurs, college of, ii., . augustine has produced a fragment of the de republica, ii., . augustus, devoid of scruple, i., ; born in the consulship of cicero, i., . aulus gellius, tells a story of cicero's house, i., . aurelia, via, catiline had left the city by that route, i., . autronius, selected consul, i., , . b. bacon, compared to cicero, ii., . balbus, messenger from cæsar to cicero, i., ; his citizenship defended, ii., ; his descendant emperor, . battle of the eagle and the serpent, i., . beesley, mr., as to catiline, i., . bibulus as consul, i., . birria stabs clodius, ii., . boasting, habit of the romans, i., . boissier, gaston, his book on cicero, ii., . bona dea, her mysteries violated, i., . bovilla, at, milo meets clodius, ii., . brennus, when at rome, i., . brougham, lord, as to "memnon," a tale, i., . brundisium, cicero lands at on his return from exile, ii., ; cicero's misery at, . brutus, proposes to make a speech in behalf of milo, ii., ; his usury, ; the story of his debt in cilicia, ; cicero's opinion, ; letters from, ; how he should be judged for the murder of cæsar, ; his character, ; no aptitude for ruling, _ibid._; cicero meets him at velia, ; his manners to cicero, ; praised, ; correspondence with, doubted, ; an honest patriot, ; will not assist cicero, ; cicero's respect for, . brutus, the, ii., ; brutus, or de claris oratoribus, . brutus, decimus, letters from, ii., ; preparing to fight, ; deficient as a general, ; is slain, . buthrotum, atticus, writes to cicero respecting, ii., . c. cæcilia metella, her tomb, ii., . cæcilius, put up to plead against verres, i., ; ridiculed as to his insufficiency, . cæcina, cicero's speech for, i., . cælius, one of the young bloods of rome, i., ; his character, ii., ; one of clodia's lovers, _ibid._; defended by cicero, ; harangues the people for milo, ; scolded for the folly of his letters, ; asks for panthers, ; style of his letters, ; attached to cicero, ; letters from, . cælius, c., left in charge of cilicia, ii., . cæparius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., . cærellia, her name mentioned, ii., . cæsar, devoid of scruple, i., ; his debts, ; his cruelty, ; cicero's treatment of, ; passing the rubicon, ; did he join the conspiracy of catiline, ; in debt, ; his prospects, _ibid._; no ground for accusing him as second conspiracy, ; his opinion of cicero, _ibid._; attempt to murder as he left the senate, _ibid._; present at the first catiline oration, ; speech as to catiline, ; his career commenced, ; did not think of overthrowing the republic, ; had not thought of ruling rome, ; money nothing to him, ; his general character, _ibid._; his first consulship, ; illegality of his actions, ; has the two gauls allotted to him, ; endeavors to screen cicero, ; naturally a conspirator, ii., ; defence of his proconsular power, , , ; his doings in gaul, ; cicero's conduct in reference to, ; why cicero flattered him, ; intends to rule the empire, ; crosses into britain, ; money due to him by cicero, ; returns the two legions, ; sits down at the rubicon, ; tramples on all the laws, ; cicero excuses his letter to, ; his clemency to romans, ; absence of revenge, _ibid._; does not allow cicero to sell his property, ; is magnificent, ; sits as judge, ; returns to spain, ; returns from spain, ; is likened to romulus, ; his five triumphs, _ibid._; is flattered by cicero, ; sups with cicero, ; his death, ; his assassination esteemed a glorious deed, ; cicero present, ; an altar put up to, ; his laws to be sanctioned, . calenus, talks of peace, ii., ; attacked by cicero, . caninius, consul for a few hours, ii., . capitol, description of, ii., ; brutus returns to, _ibid._ cappadocian slaves, ii., . cassius, cicero says that he would not obey the senate, ii., ; will not assist cicero, . castor, the temple of, in the trial of verres, i., . castor, accuses his grandfather, deiotarus, ii., . catiline, one of sulla's murderers, i., ; cicero opposed to for consulship, , ; cicero does not defend him, ; the catiline speeches described by cicero, ; a popular hero, ; a step between the gracchi and cæsar, ; mr. beesley's opinion as to his high birth, ; and courage, _ibid._; his real character, ; not elected consul, ; second conspiracy, ; accused by lepidus, ; he leaves the city, ; third speech against, ; fourth speech against, ; he dies, . cato, accuses murena, i., ; his stoicism laughed at, _ibid._; speech as to catiline, ; opposed clodius, ; keeping gladiators, ii., ; opposes cicero's request for a "supplication," ; his death, ; cicero praises him, ; a glutton with books, ; his suicide defended, . cato the elder, praise of, ii., . catullus, his epigram on cæsar and mamurra, ii., . caudine forks, i., . "cedant arma togæ," an impotent scream, i., . cethegus, one of catiline's conspirators, i., . chesterfield, lord, his advice to his son, ii., . christian, cicero almost one, ii., . christina, queen, on cicero, i., . chrysogonus, creature of sulla's, i., , , , . churches, rules complied with for the sake of example, ii., . cicero, young marcus, wishes to serve under cæsar, ii., ; money allowed for living at athens, ; does not do well, . cilicia, governed for a year, ii., ; cicero's mode of government, ; why undertaken, _ibid._; cicero's government had cost no man a shilling, . "cincia lex de muneribus," i., . cispius, defended, ii., . "civis romanus," his privileges, i., . claterna, taken by hirtius, ii., . claudian family, desecrated by clodius, i., . clodia, her character, i., . clodius, cicero's language to, i., ; accuses catiline, ; intrudes on the mysteries of the bona dea, ; acquitted, ; quarrels with cicero, _ibid._; cicero's speech against, ; his tribunate, ; favored by cæsar and pompey, _ibid._; is made a plebeian, ; prepares to attack cicero, ; had put up a statue of a greek prostitute as a figure of liberty, ii., ; slaughtered, ; his mode of travelling about, . cluentius aulus, speech on his behalf, i., ; work in defending immense, . cluvius, leaves cicero a property, ii., . "cohors," cicero, in anger, so calls his suite, ii., . college of priests, oration spoken before, ii., . commentarium of cælius, ii., . conduct, cicero's, as governor, ii., . conservative, cicero was one, i., . consolation, cicero complains that nothing is of use, ii., . consular speeches, twelve, i., . consulatu de suo, cicero quotes his own poem, i., . consulatus de petitione, i., . consuls and other officers reconformed by sulla, i., ; the manner in which they were selected, ; their duties, ; never two bad consuls together, ii., ; cicero asks them to praise him, ; are they to be sent out of italy? . cornelius, a knight employed to kill cicero, i., . cornelius caius, speech on his behalf, i., . cornelius nepos, on cicero, i., ; his sayings as to cicero's letters, . cotta, lucius aurelius, elected consul, i., . cotta, the orator, cicero knew him in his youth, i., . courage, as to the nature of, i., ; shown in the philippics, ii., . cowardice, cicero accused of, ii., ; the charge repelled, . crassus, noted for usury, i., ; did he join catiline? ; like m. pourier, ; present at first catiline oration, ; belauds cicero in the senate, ; one of the triumvirate, ; says a man cannot be rich unless he can keep an army in his pay, ; destroyed in parthia, ii., . crassus, lucius, the orator, i., ; his death, ii., . curio the elder, cicero's lampoon, i., . curio and claudius, speech against, i., . curio bribed by cæsar, ii., ; intimate with antony, . curius, betrays catiline's conspiracy, i., . _cybea_, the ship built for verres by the mamertines, i., . d. dates, as to those to be used, i., . death, endured bravely by cicero, i., . decemviri, to be appointed under the law of rullus, i., . "decumanum," tithe on corn in sicily, i., . "deductores," who they were, i., . deiotarus, cicero pleads for, ii., . democrat, cicero wrongly called, i., . de quincey, his opinion of cicero, i., ; his anger against middleton, ii., . deserter, in politics cicero defended from the accusation, i., . despotism, personal, ill effects of, i., . dio persecuted in the trial of verres, i., . dio cassius, as to cicero, i., ; as to cicero's oath, . diodotus, cicero studies with, i., . dionysius, the greek tutor, ii., . dishonesty, the charge repelled as to cicero, ii., . diversos, ad, letters to, i., . "divinatio, in quintum cæcilium," i., . divinatione, de, ii., , . divorces, common with romans, ii., . doctrine, cicero does not live according to his own, ii., . dolabella, cicero's pupil in oratory, ii., ; his cruelty, . dorotheus, an enemy of sthenius, i., ; trial of verres, _ibid._ drusus, his gardens to be bought, ii., . du bos, simon, ii., . duty to the state, ii., . dyrrachium, cicero's protection of, i., ; sojourned there during his exile, . e. education, expense of, i., . egypt, cicero asked by cæsar to go there, i., . eleusinian mysteries, i., . elizabeth, queen, glory of her reign, i., . "emptum," tax on corn, i., . encyclopædia britannica, character of cicero, i., . ephesus, how cicero was received there, ii., . epicureans, i., . epicurus, dying, ii., ; cicero's peculiar dislike to, . epistles, number written by and to cicero, i., ; the first we have, ; do not deal with history, ; their truth, _ibid._; tiro had collected, ; ii., ; his last official and military, . eques, or knight, cicero one, i., . equites, i., ; their duties as tax-gatherers, . equity, cicero accused of trifling with, ii., . erasmus, his opinion of cicero, i., . erucius, accuses sextus roscius, i., , . eryx, mount, temple of venus, i., . exile, cicero's, i., , ; sentence against cicero, ; attempt to bring him back, ; did not write during, . f. famine, in rome, ii., . fato, de, i., , , . finibus, de, i., ; ii., , . fish-ponders, who they were, ii., . flaccus, speech on behalf of, i., . flavius, his goodness to cicero when exiled, i., . florus, as to cicero, i., ; as to catiline, . fonteius, cicero's speech for, i., ; purchase of a house, . formiæ, cicero killed at, ii., . formanum, purchases for the villa, i., . forsyth, mr., i., , ; passage quoted, ; defends the english bar, ; as to cicero's exile, ; as to the story of brutus, ii., ; quoted as to the philippics, . fortitude, roman, i., . froude, mr., accuses cicero of a desire for cæsar's death, i., , ; his sketch of cæsar, ; hard things said of cicero, ; as to cicero's exile, ; gives his reason for cicero's going to cilicia, ii., . frumentaria, de re, third speech on the actio secunda in verrem, i., . fulvia betrays catiline's conspiracy, i., . fulvia, widow of clodius, exposes the body of clodius, ii., . g. gabinius, a., abuse of, i., ; proposes law in favor of pompey, ; consul when cicero was banished, ; takes his shrubs, ; whether he shall be punished, ii., ; comes back to rome and is defended by cicero, . gabinius, p., one of catiline's conspirators, i., . gain, the source of mean or noble, ii., . gallus, caninius, defended by cicero, ii., . gavius, cicero's treatment of, ii., . gavius, p., a roman citizen, i., . geography, cicero thinks of writing about, i., . getæ, shall he bring them down on rome, ii., . glabrio, prætor at the trial of verres, i., . gloria, de, translated, ii., . godhead, cicero's belief in, ii., ; cicero's ideas of, , . gracchi, the two, i., ; latest disciple of, ; what they attempted, . grævius, arranged cicero's letters, i., . greece, cicero travels in, i., . gueroult, m., his enthusiasm for cicero, i., . h. heaven, cicero's idea of, ii., . hierosolymarius, nickname of pompey, i., . heius, marcus, his story in the trial of verres, i., . helvia, cicero's mother's story respecting, i., . heraclius, the story of, on the trial of verres, i., . herennius, killed cicero, ii., . hirtius, on cicero's side, ii., ; killed, . historians, what they would say of cicero, i., . homer's verses of the eagle and the serpent, i., . honest man, how he ought to live, ii., . "honestum," what it means, ii., . horace, his boasting, i., ; his treatment of women, . hortensius, on the trial of verres, i., , , ; comes to see cicero as he leaves rome, ii., . house, purchased on the palatine hill, i., ; the spot consecrated by clodius, ii., . human race, cicero's love for, ii., . hypsæus, candidate for the consulship, ii., . i. "imperator," cicero is named, ii., . income, cicero's amount of, i., , . insincerity of cicero, ii., ; almost necessary, _ibid._; cicero's defended, . invective, bitterness of cicero's, i., . inventione, de, i., ; four books remaining, ii., , . j. "jews," gold of their temple saved, i., . jonson, ben, his description of catiline, i., , . journey into greece, cicero intends a, ii., . judges, how they sat with a prætor, i., . julia, cæsar's wife, dies, ii., . jupiter stator, cicero's first speech against catiline in the temple of, i., ; cicero returns thanks for, in the temple, ii., . jurisdictione siciliensi, de, i., . juvenal, as to cicero, i., ; as to catiline, . k. killing roman citizens, cicero to be charged with, i., . kings, odious to cicero as to all romans, ii., . l. labienus, an optimate, i., . la harpe, his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., . lælius in the dialogue de republica, ii., . lanuvium, milo returning from, ii., . laodicea, cicero is governor, i., . lawyers, cicero ridicules them, i., . legacies, a source of income, i., . legions, the, are cæsarian, ii., . legibus, de, ii., ; taken from plato, . legation offered to cicero, i., . lentulus, letters to, ii., ; explaining his conduct, . lentulus, publius cornelius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., ; killed, ; cicero broke the law in regard to, . lepidus, his character, ii., ; recommended peace, ; one of the triumvirate, . leucopetra, cicero landed at, ii., . lex porcia forbidden death of roman, i., . liberty, roman idea of, i., . "librarii," short-hand writers, i., . ligarius, cicero speaks for, ii., . lilybæum, cicero quæstor at, i., . literature, cicero's reason for devoting himself to, ii., . livy, as to cicero, i., ; his evidence as to catiline's conspiracy, ; his political tendencies, ii., . long, mr., his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., . lucan, as to cicero, i., ; would have extolled him had he killed himself, . lucceius, cicero applies to him for praise, ii., . lucretius, the period at which he wrote, i., . lucullus, absent in the east seven years, i., . lucullus, the, ii., m. macaulay, mr., his verdict as to cicero's character, i., . mai, cardinal, his opinion of the pro marcello, ii., . mallius, lieutenant of catiline, i., ; declared a public enemy, . mamertines, people of messina, favorites of verres, i., . manilia pro lege, i., , appendix d. manilius, his law in favor of pompey, i., . marcellus, had conquered syracuse, i., . marcellus, m. c., is consul, ii., ; flogs a citizen of novocomum, _ibid._; his enmity to cæsar, ; cicero speaks for him, ; is murdered, . marcellus caius, cicero congratulates him on his consulship, ii., . marius, born at arpinum, i., ; origin of his quarrel with sulla, . marius, a poem by cicero, i., . martia, legio, character of, ii., . martial, as to cicero, i., . mendaciuncula, cicero's use of, i., . merivale, dean, as to cicero, i., ; history of rome, ; as to catiline, ; as to cicero's exile, . metellus, quintus on the side of verres, i., , ; the history of the family, ; celer, his complaint against cicero, ; nepos, forbids cicero to speak on vacating the consulship, . middleton, his biography a by word for eulogy, i., ; quoted as to clodius, ; as to cicero's exile, ; censures cicero for going into, ; nature of his biography, ii., . milo, gives public games, ii., ; cicero wishes him to be consul, ; his trial, ; accused of bringing a dagger into the senate, ; demands protection, ; condemned, ; his mode of travelling, . milone, pro, cicero's oration, i., ; specially admired, ii., ; not heard, . mithridates, sulla sent against, i., ; pompey has command against, . molo, cicero studies with, i., , . mommsen, his history, i., ; opinion of rome, , ; as to cæsar and crassus, ; as to cicero's exile, ; description of rome during cicero's exile, ; deals hardly with cicero, ii., ; as to cicero owing money to cæsar, ; his interpretation of cæsar's names, ; tells us nothing of cæsar's death, ; his verdict as to rome, . money, restored to cicero for rebuilding his house, ii., . montesquieu, as to roman religion, ii., . morabin, as to cicero's exile, i., ; doubts cicero's presence at cæsar's death, ii., . moral essays, ii., . mourning, cicero assumes prior to his exile, i., . munda, final battle of, ii., . murena, cicero defended, i., ; accused of bribery, ; and of dancing, ; a soldier, . musical charm of cicero's language, ii., . mutina, ambassadors sent to antony before, ii., ; the battle, ; badly managed, . n. names, roman, as to forms to be used, i., ; usual with romans to have three, . nasica, his joke, ii., . natura deorum, de, ii., , , . "nomenclatio," the meaning, i., . nonis juliis, ii., . "novus ante me nemo," i., . o. octavius, comes to rome, ii., ; meets cicero, _ibid._; quarrels with antony, ; feared by cicero, ; would he be consul, ; marches into rome, _ibid._; his enmity to cicero, ; his insolence, ; is reconciled to antony, _ibid._; the meeting in the island at bologna, ; his conduct, _ibid._; letter to him, supposed from cicero, but a forgery, . officiis, de, ii., , ; perfect treatise on morals, . "o fortunatam natam," i., . "old mortality," torture as there described, i., . oppianicus, his life, i., . oppius publius, his trial, i., . optimates, pompey their leader, i., . optimo genere oratorum, de, ii., , . orations, how cicero treated his own, ii., . oratiuncula, twelve consular speeches so called, i., . orator, the, ii., ; graced by the name of brutus, . oratore, de, cicero's dialogues, ii., ; sent to lentulus, , , , . oratoriæ partitiones, ii., , . oratory, cicero's three modes of speaking, i., ; his charms, ; purposes of, ii., . ornament, greek taste for, i., . otho's law, speech concerning, i., , . p. pagan, cicero one, ii., . palinodia, or recantation, by cicero, ii., . palatine hill, cicero's house destroyed, i., . pansa, the consul on cicero's side, ii., ; slain, . paradoxes, the six, ii., . partitiones, oratoriæ, ii., . peel, sir robert, i., . perfection, required in an orator, ii., ; cicero fails in describing it, , , . perfect orator, not desirable, ii., . philippics, origin of the name, ii., ; the first, ; the second not intended to be spoken or published, ; commences with satire against antony, ; the third and fourth, ; the fifth, ; the sixth, ; the seventh, ; the eighth, ; the ninth, _ibid._; the tenth, _ibid._; the eleventh, ; the twelfth, ; the thirteenth, ; the fourteenth, _ibid._ philo, the academician, i., ; cicero studies with, , . philodamus, and his daughter in the trial of verres, i., . philology, discussed with cæsar, ii., . philosophy, cicero's nature of, i., , , ; rumor that cicero will devote himself to it, ; cicero did not believe in it, ; devotes himself to it, ii., ; the nature of cicero's treatises, ; the nature of his feeling, ; greek laughed at by cicero, _ibid._; not real with him, ; apologizes for, . philotomus, freedman of terentia, ii., . phænomena, the, by aratus, i., . pindenissum, cicero besieges, ii., ; his letter to cato respecting, . pirates, picked up by officers of verres, i., ; commission given to pompey against, ; their power, . piso, abuse of, i., ; consul when cicero was banished, ; cicero appeals to him, ; robs cicero, ; cicero's speech against, ii., ; of high family, _ibid._; becomes censor, ; speaks for antony in the senate, . piso, calpurnius, cicero defended, i., . plancius, very kind to cicero, i., ; cicero pleads for, ii., . plancus, lucius, letters from, ii., ; cicero writes to him, ; may have been true, , , . plancus, munatius, cicero's joy at his condemnation, ii., . pliny, the elder, as to cicero, i., . plato, cicero describes himself as a lover of, ii., . plutarch, is to cicero, i., ; accuses him of running from sulla's wrath, . poetry, cicero as a poet, i., . poetus, gave some books to cicero, i., ; cicero's correspondence with, ii., ; cicero took his books, . political opinions, cicero's, i., , ; definition made by cicero, ii., . pollio, may have been true, ii., , . pompeia, cæsar's wife divorced, i., . pompeius, strabo, father of pompey the great, i., . pompey, the rising man, i., ; devoid of scruple, ; appointed to put down the pirates, ; his character, ; how regarded by cæsar, ; his intercourse with cæsar, ; cicero's letters to, ; chosen by him as his leader, ; called home to act against catiline, ; returns from the east, ; his jealousy, ; mommsen's opinion, _ibid._; one of the triumvirate, ; his marriage with julia, ; his ingratitude to cicero, ; his nick-names, , ; promises to help cicero against clodius, ; the story of cicero kneeling to him, ; cicero forgives him, ; offended by cicero's praise of himself, ii., ; commissioned to feed rome, ; cicero to be his lieutenant, _ibid._; his games, cicero's description of, , ; sole consul, ; dictator, ; would be unwilling to bring back clodius, ; claims money from ariobarzanes, ; begins to attack cæsar, ; borrowed cicero's money, ; cicero clings to, ; was murdered at the mouth of the nile, . pomponia, her treatment of her husband quintius, ii., . pontius glaucus, a poem, i., . popilius lænas, killed cicero, ii., , . populace of rome, condition of, ii., . prætor, cicero elected, i., , . prætura urbana, de, first speech in the second action in verrem, i., . proconsul, his desire for provincial robbery, i., , . property, redistribution of, i., . provinces, the struggle for, ii., . pseudo asconius, commentaries on the verrine orations, i., . publicani, their duties, i., . publilia, married to cicero, ii., . publius quintius, speech on his behalf, i., . punic wars, the, i., . puteoli, at, the story he tells of himself, i., . q. quæstor, cicero elected, i., ; his character in regard to the proconsul with whom he acted, . quintilian, as to cicero, i., , , ; as to cicero's education, ; says that cicero's speeches were arranged by tiro, ; description of bar oratory, ; accuses cicero of running into iambics, ii., ; his opinion of the pro milone, ; pro cluentio, ; cases given by him, ; his description of an orator's voice, , . quintus cicero (the elder), i., ; service in gaul, ; his character, ; sent out as proprætor, ; his brother's letter to him, , ; affecting letter to, ; speaks ill of his brother to cæsar, ii., ; and his son, are killed, . quintus cicero (the younger) wishes to go to the parthian war, ii., ; declares his repentance, ; had been antony's "right hand," _ibid._; his fate, _ibid._; his hypocrisy and the vanity of cicero, . quirites, their mode of living, i., . r. rabirius, cicero defends, i., . rabirius postumus, cicero defends, ii., . raillery, not good at the roman bar, ii., . reate, cicero speaks for the inhabitants, ii., . religion, cicero's, ii., . republic, cicero swears that he has saved it, i., ; cicero's guiding principle, ; held fast by the idea of preserving it, ; as conceived by cicero, ii., . republica, de, cicero's treatise, ii., , ; six books, . republican form of government, popular, i., . retail trade, base, i., . rheticorum, four books addressed to herennius, i., ; ii., . "rhetores," their mode of tuition, i., . rhythm, cicero's lessons too fine for our ears, ii., . roman citizens, their mode of life, i., . romans, the, had no religion, ii., . rome, falling into anarchy, i., ; how she recovered herself, ii., . roscius, the actor, cicero pleads on his behalf, i., . roscius, titus capito, i., , . roscius, titus magnus, i., , . rosoir, du m, his testimony as to cicero, i., ; his accusations against, ; as to cicero's exile, ; his accusations, ii., ; accuses cicero of cowardice, . rubicon, the passage of, i., ; ii., . ruined man, cicero returns from exile as, ii., . rullus, brings in agrarian laws, i., ; his father-in-law had acquired property under sulla, ; ridiculed for being "sordidatus," ; spoken of in the senate, . s. "saga," when worn, ii., . salaminians agree to be guided by cicero, ii., . sallust, as to cicero, i., ; as to catiline, , , ; his story not conflicting with cicero's, , . "salutatores," who they were, i., . sampsiceramus, nickname for pompey, i., . sappho, the statue of, by silanion, i., . sassia, her life, i., . saufeius twice acquitted, ii., . scævola, quintus, instructed cicero, i., . scaptius, the story of, ii., , ; agent of brutus in getting his debts paid, , . scipio the great, gives the idea of roman power, i., . scipio the younger, in the dialogue de republica, ii., ; his dream, ; translated, . scipio, q. metellus, candidate for the consulship, ii., . sempronia, accused by sallust of dancing too well, i., ; catiline's plot carried on at her house, . sempronia lex declares that a roman should not be put to death, i., . senate, their honors, i., ; their disgrace, ; pass a vote that they will go into mourning for cicero, ; cicero's presence demanded in, ii., . senate house scene described in a letter to quintus, ii., , ; is burnt, ; archives destroyed, . senectute, de, ii., ; cato tells its praises, . servilius, compliment paid to, at the trial of verres, i., . serving his fellow creatures, cicero's way of doing, ii., , . sextus, letter to, as to borrowing money, i., ; defence of, ii., ; cicero's gratitude to, _ibid._ sextus roscius amerinus, i., . shakespeare, his conception correct as to cæsar's death, ii., . shelley, version of the eagle and the serpent, i., . short hand writing, the system of, i., . sicilians invite cicero to take their part against verres, i., ; their wishes for his assistance, . sicily divided into two provinces, i., . signis, de, fourth speech at the second action in verrem, i., . slaves, tortured to obtain evidence, i., . solitude, he had not strength to exercise, ii., . soothsayers, appeal made to them as to cicero, ii., . soothsaying, ii., . "sordidatus," cicero's dress before going into exile, i., . speeches made by cicero on his return from exile, ii., ; question whether they be genuine, . states, italian, jealousy of, leading to first civil war, i., . statilius, one of catiline's conspirators, i., . statues, purchase of, i., . stenography, the roman system, i., . sthenius, his trial, i., , . suetonius, accuses cæsar of joining catiline, i., ; character of cæsar, . sulla, cicero served with, i., ; declared dictator, ; cicero on sulla's side in politics, ; goes to the east, ; his massacres, ; reorganizes the law, ; his resignation, ; attacked by cicero, . sulla, p., elected consul, i., ; cicero's speech for, . sulpicius, publius, the orator, i., . sulpicius, servius, laughed at as an orator, i., ; one of the ambassadors dies on his journey ii., . superstitions of old rome, ii., . "supplicatio," decreed to cicero, i., , nature of, ii., ; granted for mutina for fifty days, . suppliciis, de, fifth speech in the second action in verrem, i., . "symphoniacos homines," i., . syracuse, robberies of verres, i., . t. tablets of wax used by judges, i., . tacitus, as to cicero, i., ; de oratoribus, . terentia, cicero's wife, i., ; cicero's affection for, ; as to the divorce, ii., ; his style to is changed, ; cicero in a sad condition as to, ; divorced, , . teucris, nickname for antony, cicero's colleague, i., . thapsus, battle of, ii., . thessalonica, cicero's sojourn there during his exile, i., . tiro, cicero's slave and secretary, i., ; cicero's affectionate letters to, ii., ; cicero writes to, respecting antony, . toga virilis, cicero assumes it, i., . topica, the, prepared for trebatius, ii., , ; taken from aristotle, , . torquatus, elected consul, i., . torquatus, young, attacks cicero, i., . translating, roman feeling in doing it, ii., . travels, gives his own reasons for going to greece and asia, i., . trebatius, confided to cæsar, i., ; recommends him to cæsar, ii., , . trebonius, massacred by dolabella, ii., . tribunate, cicero's defence of, ii., . "triennium fere fuit, urbs sine armis," i., . triumph, cicero applies for, ii., ; nature of, _ibid._; the cause of trouble to him, , . triumvirate, the first, i., ; not mentioned by mommsen, ; description by horace, _ibid._; not so known, . tubero, accuses ligarius, ii., ; cicero refuses to alter his speech, . tullia, cicero's daughter, i., , ; betrothed to caius piso, ; meets cicero at brundisium, ii., ; she is a widow, _ibid._; divorced from crassipes, ; marries dolabella for her third husband, ; cicero had desired that she should marry tiberius nero, _ibid._; calls her the light of his life, ; dies, ; her proposed monument, . tullius marcus decula, defended by cicero, i., . tusculanæ disputationes, i., ; ii., , ; their five heads, . tusculum villa, gives commission for purchase of statues, i., . tusculum, dialogue de oratore held there, ii., . twenty-six years old when cicero pleaded his first cause, i., . tyranny, in the senate, cicero charged with, ii., . tyrrell, mr., arrangement of cicero's letters, i., ; doubts thrown on a letter to atticus, . u. usury, base, i., . v. valerius maximus, as to catiline, i., . valerius, cicero stays at his villa, ii., . varenus, his trial, i., . vargunteius, a knight employed to kill cicero, i., . varro, the period at which he wrote, i., . vatinius, speech against, ii., ; cicero defends, . velleius paterculus, as to cicero, i., ; as to catiline, . veneti, cæsar's treatment of, ii., . vercingetorix, conquered at alesia, ii., . verres, his trial, i., ; governor for three years, ; retires into exile, ; standard-bearer to hortensius, ; fined and sent into exile, . vibo to velia, cicero's journey in a small boat from, i., . vigintiviratus, offered to cicero, i., ; cicero repudiates, . vindemiolæ, the way cicero expends them, . virgil, cicero intended by, i., ; his version of the eagle and the serpent, ; his boasting, ; his allusion to cicero, ; description of catiline, . volcatius, does not speak for marcellus, ii., . voltaire, version of the eagle and the serpent, i., ; description of catiline, . w. wolf, his criticism on the pro marcello, ii., . work, the amount of, done by cicero, ii., . the end. historical sketches vol. i. the turks in their relation to europe marcus tullius cicero apollonius of tyana primitive christianity by john henry cardinal newman new impression [illustration] longmans, green, and co. paternoster row, london new york, bombay, and calcutta * * * * * longmans' pocket library. _fcap. vo. gilt top._ works by cardinal newman. apologia pro vita sua. s. d. net in cloth; s. d. net in leather. the church of the fathers. reprinted from "historical sketches". vol. . s. net in cloth; s. net in leather. university teaching. being the first part of "the idea of a university defined and illustrated". s. net in cloth; s. net in leather. * * * * * to the right reverend david moriarty, d.d. bishop of kerry. my dear lord if i have not asked your lordship for your formal leave to dedicate this volume to you, this has been because one part of it, written by me as an anglican controversialist, could not be consistently offered for the direct sanction of a catholic bishop. if, in spite of this, i presume to inscribe your name in its first page, i do so because i have a freedom in this matter which you have not, because i covet much to be associated publicly with you, and because i trust to gain your forgiveness for a somewhat violent proceeding, on the plea that i may perhaps thereby be availing myself of the only opportunity given to me, if not the most suitable occasion, of securing what i so earnestly desire. i desire it, because i desire to acknowledge the debt i owe you for kindnesses and services rendered to me through a course of years. all along, from the time that the oratory first came to this place, you have taken a warm interest in me and in my doings. you found me out twenty-four years ago on our first start in the narrow streets of birmingham, before we could well be said to have a home or a church. and you have never been wanting to me since, or spared time or trouble, when i had occasion in any difficulty to seek your guidance or encouragement. especially have i cause to remember the help you gave me, by your prudent counsels and your anxious sympathy, when i was called over to ireland to initiate a great catholic institution. from others also, ecclesiastics and laymen, i received a hearty welcome and a large assistance, which i ever bear in mind; but you, when i would fill the professors' chairs, were in a position to direct me to the men whose genius, learning, and zeal became so great a part of the life and strength of the university; and, even as regards those whose high endowments i otherwise learned, or already knew myself, you had your part in my appointments, for i ever tried to guide myself by what i had gained from the conversations and correspondence which you had from time to time allowed me. to you, then, my dear lord, more than to any other, i owe my introduction to a large circle of friends, who faithfully worked with me in the course of my seven years of connexion with the university, and who now, for twice seven years since, have generously kept me in mind, though i have been out of their sight. there is no one, then, whom i more intimately associate with my life in dublin than your lordship; and thus, when i revive the recollections of what my friends there did for me, my mind naturally reverts to you; and again in making my acknowledgments to you, i am virtually thanking them. that you may live for many years, in health, strength, and usefulness, the centre of many minds, a blessing to the irish people, and a light in the universal church, is, my dear lord, the fervent prayer of your affectionate friend and servant, john henry newman. birmingham, _october , ._ i. lectures on the history of the turks, in their relation to europe. prefatory notice. the following sketch of turkish history was the substance of lectures delivered in the catholic institute of liverpool during october, . it may be necessary for its author to state at once, in order to prevent disappointment, that he only professes in the course of it to have brought together in one materials which are to be found in any ordinarily furnished library. not intending it in the first instance for publication, but to answer a temporary purpose, he has, in drawing it up, sometimes borrowed words and phrases, to save himself trouble, from the authorities whom he has consulted; and this must be taken as his excuse, if any want of keeping is discernible in the composition. he has attempted nothing more than to group old facts in his own way; and he trusts that his defective acquaintance with historical works and travels, and the unreality of book-knowledge altogether in questions of fact, have not exposed him to superficial generalizations. one other remark may be necessary. such a work at the present moment, when we are on the point of undertaking a great war in behalf of the turks, may seem without meaning, unless it conducts the reader to some definite conclusions, as to what is to be wished, what to be done, in the present state of the east; but a minister of religion may fairly protest against being made a politician. political questions are mainly decided by political expediency, and only indirectly and under circumstances fall into the province of theology. much less can such a question be asked of the priests of that church, whose voice in this matter has been for five centuries unheeded by the powers of europe. as they have sown, so must they reap: had the advice of the holy see been followed, there would have been no turks in europe for the russians to turn out of it. all that need be said here in behalf of the sultan is, that the christian powers are bound to keep such lawful promises as they have made to him. all that need be said in favour of the czar is, that he is attacking an infamous power, the enemy of god and man. and all that need be said by way of warning to the catholic is, that he should beware of strengthening the czar's cause by denying or ignoring its strong point. it is difficult to understand how a reader of history can side with the spanish people in past centuries in their struggle with the moors, without wishing godspeed, in mere consistency, to any christian power, which aims at delivering the east of europe from the turkish yoke. the turks. i. the mother country of the turks. lect. page . the tribes of the north . the tartars ii. the descent of the turks. . the tartar and the turk . the turk and the saracen iii. the conquests of the turks. . the turk and the christian . the pope and the turk iv. the prospects of the turks. . barbarism and civilization . the past and present of the ottomans . the future of the ottomans note chronological tables * * * * * i. the mother country of the turks. * * * * * lecture . _the tribes of the north._ . the collision between russia and turkey, which at present engages public attention, is only one scene in that persevering conflict, which is carried on, from age to age, between the north and the south,--the north aggressive, the south on the defensive. in the earliest histories this conflict finds a place; and hence, when the inspired prophets[ ] denounce defeat and captivity upon the chosen people or other transgressing nations, who were inhabitants of the south, the north is pointed out as the quarter from which the judgment is to descend. nor is this conflict, nor is its perpetuity, difficult of explanation. the south ever has gifts of nature to tempt the invader, and the north ever has multitudes to be tempted by them. the north has been fitly called the storehouse of nations. along the breadth of asia, and thence to europe, from the chinese sea on the east, to the euxine on the west, nay to the rhine, nay even to the bay of biscay, running between and beyond the th and th degrees of latitude, and above the fruitful south, stretches a vast plain, which has been from time immemorial what may be called the wild common and place of encampment, or again the highway, or the broad horse-path, of restless populations seeking a home. the european portion of this tract has in christian times been reclaimed from its state of desolation, and is at present occupied by civilized communities; but even now the east remains for the most part in its primitive neglect, and is in possession of roving barbarians. it is the eastern portion of this vast territory which i have pointed out, that i have now, gentlemen, principally to keep before your view. it goes by the general name of tartary: in width from north to south it is said to vary from to , miles, while in length from east to west it is not far short of , . it is of very different elevations in different parts, and it is divided longitudinally by as many as three or four mountain-chains of great height. the valleys which lie between them necessarily confine the wandering savage to an eastward or westward course, and the slope of the land westward invites him to that direction rather than to the east. then, at a certain point in these westward passages, as he approaches the meridian of the sea of aral, he finds the mountain-ranges cease, and open upon him the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to roam to the north or to the south also. up in the east, from whence he came, in the most northerly of the lofty ranges which i have spoken of, is a great mountain, which some geographers have identified with the classical imaus; it is called by the saracens caf, by the turks altai. sometimes too it has the name of the girdle of the earth, from the huge appearance of the chain to which it belongs, sometimes of the golden mountain, from the gold, as well as other metals, with which its sides abound. it is said to be at an equal distance of , miles from the caspian, the frozen sea, the north pacific ocean, and the bay of bengal: and, being in situation the furthest withdrawn from west and south, it is in fact the high capital or metropolis of the vast tartar country, which it overlooks, and has sent forth, in the course of ages, innumerable populations into the illimitable and mysterious regions around it, regions protected by their inland character both from the observation and the civilizing influence of foreign nations. . to eat bread in the sweat of his brow is the original punishment of mankind; the indolence of the savage shrinks from the obligation, and looks out for methods of escaping it. corn, wine, and oil have no charms for him at such a price; he turns to the brute animals which are his aboriginal companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to be a grazier rather than to till the ground. he feeds his horses, flocks, and herds on its spontaneous vegetation, and then in turn he feeds himself on their flesh. he remains on one spot while the natural crop yields them sustenance; when it is exhausted, he migrates to another. he adopts, what is called, the life of a _nomad_. in maritime countries indeed he must have recourse to other expedients; he fishes in the stream, or among the rocks of the beach.[ ] in the woods he betakes himself to roots and wild honey; or he has a resource in the chase, an occupation, ever ready at hand, exciting, and demanding no perseverance. but when the savage finds himself inclosed in the continent and the wilderness, he draws the domestic animals about him, and constitutes himself the head of a sort of brute polity. he becomes a king and father of the beasts, and by the economical arrangements which this pretension involves, advances a first step, though a low one, in civilization, which the hunter or the fisher does not attain. and here, beyond other animals, the horse is the instrument of that civilization. it enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion and shifting location and independence of the soil define the idea, and secure the existence, both of a household and of personal property. nor is this all which the horse does for him; it is food both in its life and in its death;--when dead, it nourishes him with its flesh, and, while alive, it supplies its milk for an intoxicating liquor which, under the name of _koumiss_, has from time immemorial served the tartar instead of wine or spirits. the horse then is his friend under all circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast. hence it was that the ancient saxons had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the ottoman ordinances are, i believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the gate of the palace is the ottoman signal of war. thus too, as the catholic ritual measures intervals by "a miserere," and st ignatius in his exercises by "a pater noster," so the turcomans and the usbeks speak familiarly of the time of a gallop. but as to houses, on the other hand, the tartars contemptuously called them the sepulchres of the living, and, when abroad, could hardly be persuaded to cross a threshold. their women, indeed, and children could not live on horseback; them some kind of locomotive dwelling must receive, and a less noble animal must draw. the old historians and poets of greece and rome describe it, and the travellers of the middle ages repeat and enlarge the classical description of it the strangers from europe gazed with astonishment on huge wattled houses set on wheels, and drawn by no less than twenty-two oxen. . from the age of job, the horse has been the emblem of battle; a mounted shepherd is but one remove from a knight-errant, except in the object of his excursions; and the discipline of a pastoral station from the nature of the case is not very different from that of a camp. there can be no community without order, and a community in motion demands a special kind of organization. provision must be made for the separation, the protection, and the sustenance of men, women, and children, horses, flocks, and cattle. to march without straggling, to halt without confusion, to make good their ground, to reconnoitre neighbourhoods, to ascertain the character and capabilities of places in the distance, and to determine their future route, is to be versed in some of the most important duties of the military art. such pastoral tribes are already an army in the field, if not as yet against any human foe, at least against the elements. they have to subdue, or to check, or to circumvent, or to endure the opposition of earth, water, and wind, in their pursuits of the mere necessaries of life. the war with wild beasts naturally follows, and then the war on their own kind. thus when they are at length provoked or allured to direct their fury against the inhabitants of other regions, they are ready-made soldiers. they have a soldier's qualifications in their independence of soil, freedom from local ties, and practice in discipline; nay, in one respect they are superior to any troops which civilized countries can produce. one of the problems of warfare is how to feed the vast masses which its operations require; and hence it is commonly said, that a well-managed commissariat is a chief condition of victory. few people can fight without eating;--englishmen as little as any. i have heard of a work of a foreign officer, who took a survey of the european armies previously to the revolutionary war; in which he praised our troops highly, but said they would not be effective till they were supported by a better commissariat. moreover, one commonly hears, that the supply of this deficiency is one of the very merits of the great duke of wellington. so it is with civilized races; but the tartars, as is evident from what i have already observed, have in their wars no need of any commissariat at all; and that, not merely from the unscrupulousness of their foraging, but because they find in the instruments of their conquests the staple of their food. "corn is a bulky and perishable commodity," says an historian;[ ] "and the large magazines, which are indispensably necessary for the subsistence of civilized troops, are difficult and slow of transport." but, not to say that even their flocks and herds were fitted for rapid movement, like the nimble sheep of wales and the wild cattle of north britain, the tartars could even dispense with these altogether. if straitened for provisions, they ate the chargers which carried them to battle; indeed they seemed to account their flesh a delicacy, above the reach of the poor, and in consequence were enjoying a banquet in circumstances when civilized troops would be staving off starvation. and with a view to such accidents, they have been accustomed to carry with them in their expeditions a number of supernumerary horses, which they might either ride or eat, according to the occasion. it was an additional advantage to them in their warlike movements, that they were little particular whether their food had been killed for the purpose, or had died of disease. nor is this all: their horses' hides were made into tents and clothing, perhaps into bottles and coracles; and their intestines into bowstrings.[ ] trained then as they are, to habits which in themselves invite to war, the inclemency of their native climate has been a constant motive for them to seek out settlements and places of sojournment elsewhere. the spacious plains, over which they roam, are either monotonous grazing lands, or inhospitable deserts, relieved with green valleys or recesses. the cold is intense in a degree of which we have no experience in england, though we lie to the north of them.[ ] this arises in a measure from their distance from the sea, and again from their elevation of level, and further from the saltpetre with which their soil or their atmosphere is impregnated. the sole influence then of their fatherland, if i may apply to it such a term, is to drive its inhabitants from it to the west or to the south. i have said that the geographical features of their country carry them forward in those two directions, the south and the west; not to say that the ocean forbids them going eastward, and the north does but hold out to them a climate more inclement than their own. leaving the district of mongolia in the furthermost east, high above the north of china, and passing through the long and broad valleys which i spoke of just now, the emigrants at length would arrive at the edge of that elevated plateau, which constitutes tartary proper. they would pass over the high region of pamer, where are the sources of the oxus, they would descend the terrace of the bolor, and the steeps of badakshan, and gradually reach a vast region, flat on the whole as the expanse they had left, but as strangely depressed below the level of the sea, as tartary is lifted above it.[ ] this is the country, forming the two basins of the aral and the caspian, which terminates the immense asiatic plain, and may be vaguely designated by the name of turkistan. hitherto the necessity of their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but now they may diverge, and have diverged. if they were to cross the jaxartes and the oxus, and then to proceed southward, they would come to khorasan, the ancient bactriana, and so to affghanistan and to hindostan on the east, or to persia on the west. but if, instead, they continued their westward course, then they would skirt the north coast of the aral and the caspian, cross the volga, and there would have a second opportunity, if they chose to avail themselves of it, of descending southwards, by georgia and armenia, either to syria or to asia minor. refusing this diversion, and persevering onwards to the west, at length they would pass the don, and descend upon europe across the ukraine, bessarabia, and the danube. such are the three routes,--across the oxus, across the caucasus, and across the danube,--which the pastoral nations have variously pursued at various times, when their roving habits, their warlike propensities, and their discomforts at home, have combined to precipitate them on the industry, the civilization, and the luxury of the west and of the south. and at such times, as might be inferred from what has been already said, their invasions have been rather irruptions, inroads, or, what are called, raids, than a proper conquest and occupation of the countries which have been their victims. they would go forward, , of them at once, at the rate of miles a day, swimming the rivers, galloping over the plains, intoxicated with the excitement of air and speed, as if it were a fox-chase, or full of pride and fury at the reverses which set them in motion; seeking indeed their fortunes, but seeking them on no plan; like a flight of locusts, or a swarm of angry wasps smoked out of their nest. they would seek for immediate gratification, and let the future take its course. they would be bloodthirsty and rapacious, and would inflict ruin and misery to any extent; and they would do tenfold more harm to the invaded, than benefit to themselves. they would be powerful to break down; helpless to build up. they would in a day undo the labour and skill, the prosperity of years; but they would not know how to construct a polity, how to conduct a government, how to organize a system of slavery, or to digest a code of laws. rather they would despise the sciences of politics, law, and finance; and, if they honoured any profession or vocation, it would be such as bore immediately and personally on themselves. thus we find them treating the priest and the physician with respect, when they found such among their captives; but they could not endure the presence of a lawyer. how could it be otherwise with those who may be called the outlaws of the human race? they did but justify the seeming paradox of the traveller's exclamation, who, when at length, after a dreary passage through the wilderness, he came in sight of a gibbet, returned thanks that he had now arrived at a civilized country. "the pastoral tribes," says the writer i have already quoted, "who were ignorant of the distinction of landed property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer would excite only their contempt or their abhorrence." and he refers to an outrage on the part of a barbarian of the north, who, not satisfied with cutting out a lawyer's tongue, sewed up his mouth, in order, as he said, that the viper might no longer hiss. the well-known story of the czar peter, himself a tartar, is here in point. when told there were some thousands of lawyers at westminster, he is said to have observed that there had been only two in his own dominions, and he had hung one of them. . now i have thrown the various inhabitants of the asiatic plain together, under one description, not as if i overlooked, or undervalued, the distinction of races, but because i have no intention of committing myself to any statements on so intricate and interminable a subject as ethnology. in spite of the controversy about skulls, and skins, and languages, by means of which man is to be traced up to his primitive condition, i consider place and climate to be a sufficiently real aspect under which he may be regarded, and with this i shall content myself. i am speaking of the inhabitants of those extended plains, whether scythians, massagetæ, sarmatians, huns, moguls, tartars, turks, or anything else; and whether or no any of them or all of them are identical with each other in their pedigree and antiquities. position and climate create habits; and, since the country is called tartary, i shall call them tartar habits, and the populations which have inhabited it and exhibited them, tartars, for convenience-sake, whatever be their family descent. from the circumstances of their situation, these populations have in all ages been shepherds, mounted on horseback, roaming through trackless spaces, easily incited to war, easily formed into masses, easily dissolved again into their component parts, suddenly sweeping across continents, suddenly descending on the south or west, suddenly extinguishing the civilization of ages, suddenly forming empires, suddenly vanishing, no one knows how, into their native north. such is the fearful provision for havoc and devastation, when the divine word goes forth for judgment upon the civilized world, which the north has ever had in store; and the regions on which it has principally expended its fury, are those, whose fatal beauty, or richness of soil, or perfection of cultivation, or exquisiteness of produce, or amenity of climate, makes them objects of desire to the barbarian. such are china, hindostan, persia, syria, and anatolia or the levant, in asia; greece, italy, sicily, and spain, in europe; and the northern coast of africa. these regions, on the contrary, have neither the inducement nor the means to retaliate upon their ferocious invaders. the relative position of the combatants must always be the same, while the combat lasts. the south has nothing to win, the north nothing to lose; the north nothing to offer, the south nothing to covet. nor is this all: the north, as in an impregnable fortress, defies the attack of the south. immense trackless solitudes; no cities, no tillage, no roads; deserts, forests, marshes; bleak table-lands, snowy mountains; unlocated, flitting, receding populations; no capitals, or marts, or strong places, or fruitful vales, to hold as hostages for submission; fearful winters and many months of them;--nature herself fights and conquers for the barbarian. what madness shall tempt the south to undergo extreme risks without the prospect or chance of a return? true it is, ambition, whose very life is a fever, has now and then ventured on the reckless expedition; but from the first page of history to the last, from cyrus to napoleon, what has the northern war done for the greatest warriors but destroy the flower of their armies and the _prestige_ of their name? our maps, in placing the north at the top, and the south at the bottom of the sheet, impress us, by what may seem a sophistical analogy, with the imagination that huns or moguls, kalmucks or cossacks, have been a superincumbent mass, descending by a sort of gravitation upon the fair territories which lie below them. yet this is substantially true;--though the attraction towards the south is of a moral, not of a physical nature, yet an attraction there is, and a huge conglomeration of destructive elements hangs over us, and from time to time rushes down with an awful irresistible momentum. barbarism is ever impending over the civilized world. never, since history began, has there been so long a cessation of this law of human society, as in the period in which we live. the descent of the turks on europe was the last instance of it, and that was completed four hundred years ago. they are now themselves in the position of those races, whom they themselves formerly came down upon. . as to the instances of this conflict between north and south in the times before the christian era, we know more of them from antiquarian research than from history. the principal of those which ancient writers have recorded are contained in the history of the persian empire. the wandering tartar tribes went at that time by the name of scythians, and had possession of the plains of europe as well as of asia. central europe was not at that time the seat of civilized nations; but from the chinese sea even to the rhine or bay of biscay, a course of many thousand miles, the barbarian emigrant might wander on, as necessity or caprice impelled him. darius assailed the scythians of europe; cyrus, his predecessor, the scythians of asia. as to cyrus, writers are not concordant on the subject; but the celebrated greek historian, herodotus, whose accuracy of research is generally confessed, makes the great desert, which had already been fatal, according to some accounts, to the assyrian semiramis, the ruin also of the founder of the persian empire. he tells us that cyrus led an army against the scythian tribes (massagetæ, as they were called), who were stationed to the east of the caspian; and that they, on finding him prepared to cross the river which bounded their country to the south, sent him a message which well illustrates the hopelessness of going to war with them. they are said to have given him his choice of fighting them either three days' march within their own territory, or three days' march within his; it being the same to them whether he made himself a grave in their inhospitable deserts, or they a home in his flourishing provinces. he had with him in his army a celebrated captive, the lydian king croesus, who had once been head of a wealthy empire, till he had succumbed to the fortunes of a more illustrious conqueror; and on this occasion he availed himself of his advice. croesus cautioned him against admitting the barbarians within the persian border, and counselled him to accept their permission of his advancing into their territory, and then to have recourse to stratagem. "as i hear," he says in the simple style of the historian, which will not bear translation, "the massagetæ have no experience of the good things of life. spare not then to serve up many sheep, and add thereunto stoups of neat wine, and all sorts of viands. set out this banquet for them in our camp, leave the refuse of the army there, and retreat with the body of your troops upon the river. if i am not mistaken, the scythians will address themselves to all this good cheer, as soon as they fall in with it, and then we shall have the opportunity of a brilliant exploit." i need not pursue the history further than to state the issue. in spite of the immediate success of his _ruse de guerre_, cyrus was eventually defeated, and lost both his army and his life. the scythian queen tomyris, in revenge for the lives which he had sacrificed to his ambition, is related to have cut off his head and plunged it into a vessel filled with blood, saying, "cyrus, drink your fill." such is the account given us by herodotus; and, even if it is to be rejected, it serves to illustrate the difficulties of an invasion of scythia; for legends must be framed according to the circumstances of the case, and grow out of probabilities, if they are to gain credit, and if they have actually succeeded in gaining it. . our knowledge of the expedition of darius in the next generation, is more certain. this fortunate monarch, after many successes, even on the european side of the bosphorus, impelled by that ambition, which holy daniel had already seen in prophecy to threaten west and north as well as south, towards the end of his life directed his arms against the scythians who inhabited the country now called the ukraine. his pretext for this expedition was an incursion which the same barbarians had made into asia, shortly before the time of cyrus. they had crossed the don, just above the sea of azoff, had entered the country now called circassia, had threaded the defiles of the caucasus, and had defeated the median king cyaxares, the grandfather of cyrus. then they overran armenia, cappadocia, pontus, and part of lydia, that is, a great portion of anatolia or asia minor; and managed to establish themselves in the country for twenty-eight years, living by plunder and exaction. in the course of this period, they descended into syria, as far as to the very borders of egypt. the egyptians bought them off, and they turned back; however, they possessed themselves of a portion of palestine, and gave their name to one town, scythopolis, in the territory of manasses. this was in the last days of the jewish monarchy, shortly before the captivity. at length cyaxares got rid of them by treachery; he invited the greater number of them to a banquet, intoxicated, and massacred them. nor was this the termination of the troubles, of which they were the authors; and i mention the sequel, because both the office which they undertook and their manner of discharging it, their insubordination and their cruelty, are an anticipation of some passages in the early history of the turks. the median king had taken some of them into his pay, made them his huntsmen, and submitted certain noble youths to their training. justly or unjustly they happened one day to be punished for leaving the royal table without its due supply of game: without more ado, the savages in revenge murdered and served up one of these youths instead of the venison which had been expected of them, and made forthwith for the neighbouring kingdom of lydia. a war between the two states was the consequence. but to return to darius:--it is said to have been in retaliation for these excesses that he resolved on his expedition against the scythians, who, as i have mentioned, were in occupation of the district between the danube and the don. for this purpose he advanced from susa in the neighbourhood of the persian gulf, through assyria and asia minor to the bosphorus, just opposite to the present site of constantinople, where he crossed over into europe. thence he made his way, with the incredible number of , men, horse and foot, to the danube, reducing thrace, the present roumelia, in his way. when he had crossed that stream, he was at once in scythia; but the scythians had adopted the same sort of strategy, which in the beginning of this century was practised by their successors against napoleon. they cut and carried off the green crops, stopped up their wells or spoilt their water, and sent off their families and flocks to places of safety. then they stationed their outposts just a day's journey before the enemy, to entice him on. he pursued them, they retreated; and at length he found himself on the don, the further boundary of the scythian territory. they crossed the don, and he crossed it too, into desolate and unknown wilds; then, eluding him altogether, from their own knowledge of the country, they made a circuit, and got back into their own land again. darius found himself outwitted, and came to a halt; how he had victualled his army, whatever deduction we make for its numbers, does not appear; but it is plain that the time must come, when he could not proceed. he gave the order for retreat. meanwhile, he found an opportunity of sending a message to the scythian chief, and it was to this effect:--"perverse man, take your choice; fight me or yield." the scythians intended to do neither, but contrived, as before, to harass the persian retreat. at length an answer came; not a message, but an ominous gift; they sent darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows; without a word of explanation. darius himself at first hailed it as an intimation of submission; in greece to offer earth and water was the sign of capitulation, as, in a sale of land in our own country, a clod from the soil still passes, or passed lately, from seller to purchaser, as a symbol of the transfer of possession. the persian king, then, discerned in these singular presents a similar surrender of territorial jurisdiction. but another version, less favourable to his vanity and his hopes, was suggested by one of his courtiers, and it ran thus: "unless you can fly like a bird, or burrow like a mouse, or swim the marshes like a frog, you cannot escape our arrows." whichever interpretation was the true one, it needed no message from the enemy to inflict upon darius the presence of the dilemma suggested in this unpleasant interpretation. he yielded to imperative necessity, and hastened his escape from the formidable situation in which he had placed himself, and through great good fortune succeeded in effecting it. he crossed the sea just in time; for the scythians came down in pursuit, as far as the coast, and returned home laden with booty. this is pretty much all that is definitely recorded in history of the ancient tartars. alexander, in a later age, came into conflict with them in the region called sogdiana which lies at the foot of that high plateau of central and eastern asia, which i have designated as their proper home. but he was too prudent to be entangled in extended expeditions against them, and having made trial of their formidable strength, and made some demonstrations of the superiority of his own, he left them in possession of their wildernesses. footnotes: [ ] isai. xli. : jer. i. ; vi. , ; joel ii. ; etc., etc. [ ] gibbon. [ ] gibbon. [ ] caldecott's baber. [ ] vid. mitford's greece, vol. viii. p. . [ ] pritchard's researches. lecture ii. _the tartars._ . if anything needs be added to the foregoing account, in illustration of the natural advantages of the scythian or tartar position, it is the circumstance that the shepherds of the ukraine were divided in their counsels when darius made war against them, and that only a portion of their tribes coalesced to repel his invasion. indeed, this internal discord, which is the ordinary characteristic of races so barbarous, and the frequent motive of their migrations, is the cause why in ancient times they were so little formidable to their southern neighbours; and it suggests a remark to the philosophical historian, thucydides, which, viewed in the light of subsequent history, is almost prophetic. "as to the scythians," he says, "not only no european nation, but not even any asiatic, would be able to measure itself with them, nation with nation, were they but of one mind." such was the safeguard of civilization in ancient times; in modern unhappily it has disappeared. not unfrequently, since the christian era, the powers of the north have been under one sovereign, sometimes even for a series of years; and have in consequence been brought into combined action against the south; nay, as time has gone on, they have been thrown into more and more formidable combinations, with more and more disastrous consequences to its prosperity. of these northern coalitions or empires, there have been three, nay five, which demand our especial attention both from their size and their historical importance. the first of these is the empire of the huns, under the sovereignty of attila, at the termination of the roman empire; and it began and ended in himself. the second is in the time of the crusades, when the moguls spread themselves over europe and asia under zingis khan, whose power continued to the third generation, nay, for two centuries, in the northern parts of europe. the third outbreak was under timour or tamerlane, a century and more before the rise of protestantism, when the mahometan tartars, starting from the basin of the aral and the fertile region of the present bukharia, swept over nearly the whole of asia round about, and at length seated themselves in delhi in hindostan, where they remained in imperial power till they succumbed to the english in the last century. then come the turks, a multiform and reproductive race, varied in its fortunes, complicated in its history, falling to rise again, receding here to expand there, and harassing and oppressing the world for at least a long years. and lastly comes the russian empire, in which the tartar element is prominent, whether in its pure blood or in the slavonian approximation, and which comprises a population of many millions, gradually moulded into one in the course of centuries, ever growing, never wavering, looking eagerly to the south and to an unfulfilled destiny, and possessing both the energy of barbarism in its subjects and the subtlety of civilization in its rulers. the two former of these five empires were pagan, the two next mahometan, the last christian, but schismatic; all have been persecutors of the church, or, at least, instruments of evil against her children. the russians i shall dismiss; the turks, who form my proper subject, i shall postpone. first of all, i will take a brief survey of the three empires of the tartars proper; of attila and his huns; of zingis and his moguls; and of timour and his mahometan tartars. i have already waived the intricate question of race, as regards the various tribes who have roamed from time immemorial, or used to roam, in the asiatic and european wilderness, because it was not necessary to the discussion in which i am engaged. their geographical position assimilated them to each other in their wildness, their love of wandering, their pastoral occupations, their predatory habits, their security from attack, and the suddenness and the transitoriness of their conquests, even though they descend from our first parent by different lines. however, there is no need of any reserve or hesitation in speaking of the three first empires into which the shepherds of the north developed, the huns, the moguls, and the mahometan tartars: they were the creation of tribes, whose identity of race is as certain as their community of country. . of these the first in order is the hunnish empire of attila, and if i speak of it and of him with more of historical consecutiveness than of zingis or of timour, it is because i think in him we see the pure undiluted tartar, better than in the other two, and in his empire the best specimen of a tartar rule. nothing brings before us more vividly the terrible character of attila than this, that he terrified the goths themselves. these celebrated barbarians at the time of attila inhabited the countries to the north of the black sea, between the danube and the don, the very district in which darius so many centuries before found the scythians. they were impending over the roman empire, and threatening it with destruction; their king was the great hermanric, who, after many victories, was closing his days in the fulness of power and renown. that they themselves, the formidable goths, should have to fear and flee, seemed the most improbable of prospects; yet it was their lot. suddenly they heard, or rather they felt before they heard,--so rapid is the torrent of scythian warfare,--they felt upon them and among them the resistless, crushing force of a remorseless foe. they beheld their fields and villages in flames about them, and their hearthstones deluged in the blood of their dearest and their bravest. shocked and stunned by so unexpected a calamity, they could think of nothing better than turning their backs on the enemy, crowding to the danube, and imploring the romans to let them cross over, and to lodge themselves and their families in safety from the calamity which menaced them. indeed, the very appearance of the enemy scared them; and they shrank from him, as children before some monstrous object. it is observed of the scythians, their ancestors, who, as i have mentioned, came down upon asia in the median times, that they were a frightful set of men. "the persons of the scythians," says a living historian,[ ] "naturally unsightly, were rendered hideous by indolent habits, only occasionally interrupted by violent exertions; and the same cause subjected them to disgusting diseases, in which they themselves revered the finger of heaven." some of these ancient tribes are said to have been cannibals, and their horrible outrage in serving up to cyaxares human flesh for game, may be taken to confirm the account their sensuality was unbridled, so much so that even polygamy was a licence too limited for their depravity. the huns were worthy sons of such fathers. the goths, the bravest and noblest of barbarians, recoiled in horror from their physical and mental deformity. their voices were shrill, their gestures uncouth, and their shapes scarcely human. they are said by a gothic historian to have resembled brutes set up awkwardly on their hind legs, or to the misshapen figures (something like, i suppose, the grotesque forms of medieval sculpture), which were placed upon the bridges of antiquity. their shoulders were broad, their noses flat, and their eyes black, small, and deeply buried in their head. they had little hair on their skulls, and no beard. the report was spread and believed by the goths, that they were not mere men, but the detestable progeny of evil spirits and witches in the wilds of the east. as the huns were but reproductions of the ancient scythians, so are they reproduced themselves in various tartar races of modern times. tavernier, the french traveller, in the seventeenth century, gives us a similar description of the kalmuks, some of whom at present are included in the russian empire. "they are robust men," he says,[ ] "but the most ugly and deformed under heaven; a face so flat and broad, that from one eye to the other is a space of five or six fingers. their eyes are very small, the nose so flat that two small nostrils is the whole of it; their knees turned out, and their feet turned in." attila himself did not degenerate in aspect from this unlovely race; for an historian tells us, whom i have already made use of, that "his features bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern calmuck; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form." i should add that the tartar eyes are not only far apart, but slant inwards, as do the eyebrows, and are partly covered by the eyelid. now attila, this writer continues, "had a custom of rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he had inspired;" yet, strange to say, all this was so far from being thought a deformity by his people, that it even went for something supernatural, for we presently read, "the barbarian princes confessed, that they could not presume to gaze, with a steady eye, on the divine majesty of the king of the huns." i consider attila to have been a pure hun; i do not suppose the later hordes under zingis and timour to have been so hideous, as being the descendants of mixed marriages. both zingis himself and timour had foreign mothers; as to the turks, from even an earlier date than those conquerors, they had taken foreign captives to be mothers of their families, and had lived among foreign people. borrowing the blood of a hundred tribes as they went on, they slowly made their way, in the course of six or seven centuries, from turkistan to constantinople. then as to the russians again, only a portion of the empire is strictly tartar or scythian; the greater portion is but scythian in its first origin, many ages ago, and has long surrendered its wandering or nomad habits, its indolence, and its brutality. . to return to attila:--this extraordinary man is the only conqueror of ancient and modern times who has united in one empire the two mighty kingdoms of eastern scythia and western germany, that is, of that immense expanse of plain, which stretches across europe and asia. if we divide the inhabited portions of the globe into two parts, the land of civilization and the land of barbarism, we may call him the supreme and sole king of the latter, of all those populations who did not live in cities, who did not till the soil, who were hunters and shepherds, dwelling in tents, in waggons, and on horseback.[ ] imagination can hardly take in the extent of his empire. in the west he interfered with the franks, and chastised the burgundians, on the rhine. on the east he even sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal alliance with the chinese empire. the north of asia was the home of his race, and on the north of europe he ascended as high as denmark and sweden. it is said he could bring into the field an army of , or , men. you will ask perhaps how he gained this immense power; did he inherit it? the russian empire is the slow growth of centuries; had attila a long line of royal ancestors, and was his empire, like that of haroun, or soliman, or aurunzebe, the maturity and consummation of an eventful history? nothing of the kind; it began, as it ended, with himself. the history of the huns during the centuries immediately before him, will show us how he came by it. it seems that, till shortly before the christian era, the huns had a vast empire, from a date unknown, in the portion of tartary to the east of mount altai. it was against these formidable invaders that the chinese built their famous wall, , miles in length, which still exists as one of the wonders of the world. in spite of its protection, however, they were obliged to pay tribute to their fierce neighbours, until one of their emperors undertook a task which at first sight seems an exception to what i have already laid down as if a universal law in the history of northern warfare. this chinese monarch accomplished the bold design of advancing an army as much as miles into the depths of the tartar wilderness, and thereby at length succeeded in breaking the power of the huns. he succeeded;--but at the price of , men. he entered tartary with an army , strong; he returned with , . the huns, however, though broken, had no intention at all of being reduced. the wild warriors turned their faces westward, and not knowing whither they were going, set out for europe. this was at the end of the first century after christ; in the course of the following centuries they pursued the track which i have already marked out for the emigrating companies. they passed the lofty altai; they gradually travelled along the foot of the mountain-chain in which it is seated; they arrived at the edge of the high table-land which bounds tartary on the west; then turning southward down the slopes which led to the low level of turkistan, they found themselves close to a fertile region between the jaxartes and the oxus, the present bukharia, then called sogdiana by the greeks, afterwards the native land of timour. here was the first of the three thoroughfares for a descent southwards, which i have pointed out as open to the choice of adventurers. a portion of these huns, attracted by the rich pasture-land and general beauty of sogdiana, took up their abode there; the main body wandered on. persevering in their original course, they skirted siberia and the north of the caspian, crossed the volga, then the don, and thus in the fifth century of the christian era, as i just now mentioned, came upon the goths, who were in undisturbed possession of the country. now it would appear that, in this long march from the wall of china to the danube, lasting as it did through some centuries, they lost hold of no part of the tracts which they traversed. they remained on each successive encampment long enough (if i may so express myself) to sow themselves there. they left behind them at least a remnant of their own population while they went forward, like a rocket thrown up in the sky, which, while it shoots forward, keeps possession of its track by its train of fire. and hence it was that attila, when he found himself at length in hungary, and elevated to the headship of his people, became at once the acknowledged king of the vast territories and the untold populations which that people had been leaving behind them in its advance during the foregoing years. such a power indeed had none of the elements of permanence in it, but it was appalling at the moment, whenever there was a vigorous and unscrupulous hand to put it into motion. such was attila; it was his boast, that, where his horse once trod, there grass never grew again. as he fulfilled his terrible destiny, religious men looked on with awe, and called him the "scourge of god." he burst as a thunder-cloud upon the whole extent of country, now called turkey in europe, along a line of more than five hundred miles from the black sea to the gulf of venice. he defeated the roman armies in three pitched battles, and then set about destroying the cities of the empire. three of the greatest, constantinople, adrianople, and another, escaped: but as for the rest, the barbarian fury fell on as many as seventy; they were sacked, levelled to the ground, and their inhabitants carried off to captivity. next he turned round to the west, and rode off with his savage horsemen to the rhine. he entered france, and stormed and sacked the greater part of its cities. at metz he involved in one promiscuous massacre priests and children; he burned the city, so that a solitary chapel of st. stephen was its sole remains. at length he was signally defeated by the romans and goths united at chalons on the marne, in a tremendous battle, which ended in , , or, as one account says, , men being left dead on the field. irritated rather than humbled, as some beast of prey, by this mishap, he turned to italy. crossing the alps, he laid siege to aquileia, at that time one of the richest, most populous, and strongest of the cities on the hadriatic coast. he took it, sacked it, and so utterly destroyed it, that the succeeding generation could scarcely trace its ruins. it is, we know, no slight work, in toil and expense, even with all the appliances of modern science, to raze a single fortress; yet the energy of these wild warriors made sport of walled cities. he turned back, and passed along through lombardy; and, as he moved, he set fire to padua and other cities; he plundered vincenza, verona, and bergamo; and sold to the citizens of milan and pavia their lives and buildings at the price of the surrender of their property. there were a number of minute islands in the shallows of the extremity of the hadriatic; and thither the trembling inhabitants of the coast fled for refuge. fish was for a time their sole food, and salt, extracted from the sea, their sole possession. such was the origin of the city and the republic of venice. . it does not enter into my subject to tell you how this ferocious conqueror was stayed in the course of blood and fire which was carrying him towards rome, by the great st. leo, the pope of the day, who undertook an embassy to his camp. it was not the first embassy which the romans had sent to him, and their former negotiations had been associated with circumstances which could not favourably dispose the hun to new overtures. it is melancholy to be obliged to confess that, on that occasion, the contrast between barbarism and civilization had been to the advantage of the former. the romans, who came to attila to treat upon the terms of an accommodation, after various difficulties and some insults, had found themselves at length in the hunnish capital, in hungary, the sole city of an empire which extended for some thousand miles. in the number of these ambassadors were some who were conducting an intrigue with attila's own people for his assassination, and who actually had with them the imperial gold which was to be the price of the crime. attila was aware of the conspiracy, and showed his knowledge of it; but, from respect for the law of nations and of hospitality, he spared the guilty instruments or authors. sad as it is to have to record such practices of an imperial court professedly christian, still, it is not unwelcome, for the honour of human nature, to discover in consequence of them those vestiges of moral rectitude which the degradation of ages had not obliterated from the tartar character. it is well known that when homer, , years before, speaks of these barbarians, he calls them, on the one hand, "drinkers of mare's milk;" on the other, "the most just of men." truth, honesty, justice, hospitality, according to their view of things, are the historical characteristics, it must be granted, of scythians, tartars, and turks, down to this day; and homer, perhaps, as other authors after him, was the more struck with such virtues in these wild shepherds, in contrast with the subtlety and perfidy, which, then as since, were the qualities of his own intellectually gifted countrymen. attila, though aware of the treachery and of the traitor, had received the roman ambassadors, as a barbarian indeed, but as a king; and with that strange mixture of rudeness and magnificence of which i shall have, as i proceed, to give more detailed specimens. as he entered the royal village or capital with his guests, a numerous troop of women came out to meet him, and marched in long files before him, chanting hymns in his honour. as he passed the door of one of his favourite soldiers, the wife of the latter presented wine and meat for his refreshment. he did not dismount, but a silver table was raised for his accommodation by his domestics, and then he continued his march. his palace, which was all of wood, was surrounded by a wooden wall, and contained separate houses for each of his numerous wives. the romans were taken round to all of them to pay their respects; and they admired the singular quality and workmanship of the wooden columns, which they found in the apartments of his queen or state wife. she received them reclining on a soft couch, with her ladies round her working at embroidery. afterwards they had an opportunity of seeing his council; the supreme tribunal was held in the gate of the palace according to oriental custom, perpetuated even to this day in the title of the "ottoman porte." they were invited to two solemn banquets, in which attila feasted with the princes and nobles of scythia. the royal couch and table were covered with carpets and fine linen. the swords, and even the shoes of the nobles, were studded with gold and precious stones; the tables were profusely spread with gold and silver plates, goblets, and vases. two bards stood before the king's couch, and sung of his victories. wine was drunk in great excess; and buffoons, scythian and moorish, exhibited their unseemly dances before the revellers. when the romans were to depart, attila discovered to them his knowledge of the treachery which had been carried on against him. such were some of the untoward circumstances under which the great pontiff i have mentioned undertook a new embassy to the king of the huns. he was not, we may well conceive, to be a spectator of their barbaric festivities, or to be a listener to their licentious interludes; he was rather an object to be gazed upon, than to gaze; and in truth there was that about him, in the noble aspect and the spare youthful form, which portraits give to pope leo, which was adapted to arrest and subdue even attila. attila had seen many great men in his day; he had seen the majesty of the cæsars, and the eagles of their legions; he had never seen before a vicar of christ. the place of their interview has been ascertained by antiquarians;[ ] it is near the great austrian fortress of peschiera, where the mincio enters the lago di garda, close to the farm of virgil. it is said he saw behind the pontiff the two apostles st. peter and st. paul, as they are represented in the picture of raffaelle; he was subdued by the influence of religion, and agreed to evacuate italy. a few words will bring us to the end of his career. evil has its limit; the scourge of god had accomplished his mission. hardly had st. leo retired, when the barbarian king availed himself of the brief interval in his work of blood, to celebrate a new marriage. in the deep corruption of the tartar race, polygamy is comparatively a point of virtue: attila's wives were beyond computation. zingis, after him, had as many as five hundred; another of the tartar leaders, whose name i forget, had three hundred. attila, on the evening of his new nuptials, drank to excess, and was carried to his room. there he was found in the morning, bathed and suffocated in his blood. an artery had suddenly burst; and, as he lay on his back, the blood had flowed back upon his throat and lungs, and so he had gone to his place. . and now for zingis and timour:--like the huns, they and their tribes came down from the north of asia, swept over the face of the south, obliterated the civilization of centuries, inflicted unspeakable misery on whole nations, and then were spent, extinguished, and only survived to posterity in the desolation they caused. as attila ruled from china to the rhine, and wasted europe from the black sea to the loire, so zingis and his sons and grandsons occupied a still larger portion of the world's surface, and exercised a still more pitiless sway. besides the immense range of territory, from germany to the north pacific ocean, throughout which their power was felt, even if it was not acknowledged, they overran china, siberia, russia, poland, hungary, anatolia, syria, and persia. during the sixty-five years of their dominion, they subdued almost all asia and a large portion of europe. the conquests of timour were as sudden and as complete, if not as vast, as those of zingis; and, if he did not penetrate into europe, he accomplished instead the subjugation of hindostan. the exploits of those warriors have the air of eastern romance; , men marched under the standard of zingis; and in one of his battles he left , of his enemies upon the field. before timour died, he had had twenty-seven crowns upon his head. when he invaded turkistan, his army stretched along a line of thirteen miles. we may conceive his energy and determination, when we are told that, for five months, he marched through wildernesses, subsisting his immense army on the fortunes of the chase. in his invasion of hindostan he had to pass over a high chain of mountains, and, in one stage of the passage, had to be lowered by ropes on a scaffold, down a precipice of cubits in depth. he attempted the operation five times before he got safely to the bottom. these two extraordinary men rivalled or exceeded attila in their wholesale barbarities. attila vaunted that the grass never grew again after his horse's hoof; so it was the boast of zingis, that when he destroyed a city, he did it so completely, that his horse could gallop across its site without stumbling. he depopulated the whole country from the danube to the baltic in a season; and the ruins of cities and churches were strewed with the bones of the inhabitants. he allured the fugitives from the woods, where they lay hid, under a promise of pardon and peace; he made them gather in the harvest and the vintage, and then he put them to death. at gran, in hungary, he had noble ladies slaughtered in his presence. but these were slight excesses compared with other of his acts. when he had subdued the northern part of china, he proposed, not in the heat of victory, but deliberately in council, to exterminate all its inhabitants, and to turn it into a cattle-walk; from this project indeed he was diverted, but a similar process was his rule with the cities he conquered. let it be understood, he came down upon cities living in peace and prosperity, as the cities of england now, which had done him no harm, which had not resisted him, which submitted to him at discretion on his summons. what was his treatment of such? he ordered out the whole population on some adjacent plain; then he proceeded to sack their city. next he divided them into three parts: first, the soldiers and others capable of bearing arms; these he either enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. the second class consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;--these he divided amongst his followers. the remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he suffered to return to their rifled city. such was his ordinary course; but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses followed. the slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part of an individual, sufficed for the massacre of whole populations. the three great capitals of khorasan were destroyed by his orders, and a reckoning made of the slain; at maru were killed , , ; at herat, , , ; and at neisabour, , , ; making a total of , , deaths. say these numbers are exaggerated fourfold or tenfold; even on the last supposition you will have a massacre of towards half a million of helpless beings. after recounting such preternatural crimes, it is little to add, that his devastation of the fine countries between the caspian and the indus, a tract of many hundred miles, was so complete, that six centuries have been unable to repair the ravages of four years. timour equalled zingis, if he could not surpass him, in barbarity. at delhi, the capital of his future dynasty, he massacred , prisoners, because some of them were seen to smile when the army of their countrymen came in sight. he laid a tax of the following sort on the people of ispahan, viz, to find him , human skulls, to build his towers with; and, after bagdad had revolted, he exacted of the inhabitants as many as , . he burned, or sacked, or razed to the ground, the cities of astrachan, carisme, delhi, ispahan, bagdad, aleppo, damascus, broussa, smyrna, and a thousand others. we seem to be reading of some antediluvian giant, rather than of a medieval conqueror. . the terrible races which i have been describing, like those giants of old, have ever been enemies of god and persecutors of his church. celts, goths, lombards, franks, have been converted, and their descendants to this day are christian; but, whether we consider huns, moguls, or turks, up to this time they are in the outer darkness. and accordingly, to the innumerable tartar tribes, and to none other, have been applied by commentators the solemn passages about gog and magog, who are to fight the battles of antichrist against the faithful. "satan shall go forth and seduce the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, gog and magog, and shall collect them to battle, whose number is as the sea sand." from time to time the holy see has fulfilled its apostolic mission of sending preachers to them, but without success. the only missionaries who have had any influence upon them have been those of the nestorian heresy, who have in certain districts made the same sort of impression on them which the greek schism has made upon the russians. st. louis too sent a friar to them on an embassy, when he wished to persuade them to turn their strength upon the turks, with whom he was at war; other european monarchs afterwards followed his pattern; and sometimes european merchants visited them for the purposes of trade. however little influence as these various visitants, in the course of several centuries, had upon their minds, they have at least done us the service of giving us information concerning their habits and manners; and this so fully corroborates the historical account of them which i have been giving, that it will be worth while laying before you some specimens of it here. i have said that some of these travellers were laymen travelling for gain or in secular splendour, and others were humble servants of religion. the contrast of their respective adventures is striking. the celebrated marco polo, who was one of a company of enterprising venetian merchants, lived many years in tartary in honour, and returned laden with riches; the poor friars met with hardships in plenty, and nothing besides. not that the poli were not good catholics, not that they went out without a blessing from the pope, or without friars of the order of st. dominic of his selection; but so it was, that the tartars understood the merchant well enough, but could not comprehend, could not set a value on the friar. when the pope's missionaries came in sight of the tartar encampment on the northern frontier of persia, they at once announced their mission and its object. it was from the vicar of christ upon earth, and the spiritual head of christendom; and it was a simple exhortation addressed to the fierce conquerors before whom they stood, to repent and believe. the answer of the tartars was equally prompt and equally intelligible. when they had fully mastered the business of their visitors, they sentenced them to immediate execution; and did but hesitate about the mode. they were to be flayed alive, their skins filled with hay, and so sent back to the pope; or they were to be put in the first rank in the next battle with the franks, and to die by the weapons of their own countrymen. eventually one of the khan's wives begged them off. they were kept in a sort of captivity for three years, and at length thought themselves happy to be sent away with their lives. so much for the friars; how different was the lot of the merchants may be understood by the scene which took place on their return to venice, it is said that, on their arrival at their own city, after the absence of a quarter of a century, their change of appearance and poorness of apparel were such that even their nearest friends did not know them. having with difficulty effected an entrance into their own house, they set about giving a splendid entertainment to the principal persons of the city. the banquet over, following the oriental custom, they successively put on and then put off again, and distributed to their attendants, a series of magnificent dresses; and at length they entered the room in the same weather-stained and shabby dresses, in which, as travellers, they had made their first appearance at venice. the assembled company eyed them with wonder; which you may be sure was not diminished, when they began to unrip the linings and the patches of those old clothes, and as the seams were opened, poured out before them a prodigious quantity of jewels. this had been their expedient for conveying their gains to europe, and the effect of the discovery upon the world may be anticipated. persons of all ranks and ages crowded to them, as the report spread, and they were the wonder of their day.[ ] . savage cruelty, brutal gluttony, and barbarous magnificence, are the three principal ethical characteristics of a tartar prince, as we may gather from what has come down to us in history, whether concerning the scythians or the huns. the first of these three qualities has also been illustrated, from the references which i have been making to the history of zingis and timour, so that i think we have heard enough of it, without further instances from the report of these travellers, whether ecclesiastical or lay. i will but mention one corroboration of a barbarity, which at first hearing it is difficult to credit. when the spanish ambassador, then, was on his way to timour, and had got as far as the north of persia, he there actually saw a specimen of that sort of poll-tax, which i just now mentioned. it was a structure consisting of four towers, composed of human skulls, a layer of mud and of skulls being placed alternately; and he tells us that upwards of , men were massacred to afford materials for this building. indeed it seems a demonstration of revenge familiar to the tartar race. selim, the ottoman sultan, reared a similar pyramid on the banks of the nile.[ ] to return to our spanish traveller. he proceeded to his destination, which was samarcand, the royal city of timour, in sogdiana, the present bukharia, and was presented to the great conqueror. he describes the gate of the palace as lofty, and richly ornamented with gold and azure; in the inner court were six elephants, with wooden castles on their backs, and streamers which performed gambols for the amusement of the courtiers. he was led into a spacious room, where were some boys, timour's grandsons, and these carried the king of spain's letters to the khan. he then was ushered into timour's presence, who was seated, like attila's queen, on a sort of cushioned sofa, with a fountain playing before him. he was at that time an old man, and his eyesight was impaired. at the entertainment which followed, the meat was introduced in leathern bags, so large as to be dragged along with difficulty. when opened, pieces were cut out and placed on dishes of gold, silver, or porcelain. one of the most esteemed, says the ambassador, was the hind quarter of a horse; i must add what i find related, in spite of its offending our ears:--our informant tells us that horse-tripe also was one of the delicacies at table. no dish was removed, but the servants of the guests were expected to carry off the remains, so that our ambassador doubtless had his larder provided with the sort of viands i have mentioned for some time to come. the drink was the famous tartar beverage which we hear of so often, mares' milk, sweetened with sugar, or perhaps rather the _koumiss_ or spirit which is distilled from it. it was handed round in gold and silver cups. nothing is more strange about the tartars than the attachment they have shown to such coarse fare, from the earliest times till now. timour, at whose royal table this most odious banquet was served, was lord of all asia, and had the command of every refinement not only of luxury, but of gluttony. yet he is faithful to the food which regaled the old scythians in the heroic age of greece, and which is prized by the usbek of the present day. as homer, in the beginning of the historic era, calls the scythians "mares'-milk drinkers," so geographers of the present day describe their mode of distilling it in russia. tavernier speaks of it two centuries ago; the european visitors partook of it in the middle ages; and the roman ambassadors, in the later times of the empire. these tribes have had the command of the vine, yet they seem to have scorned or even abhorred its use; and we have a curious account in herodotus, of a scythian king who lost his life for presuming to take part secretly in the orgies of bacchus. yet it was not that they did not intoxicate themselves freely with the distillation which they had chosen; and even when they tolerated wine, they still adhered to their _koumiss_. that beverage is described by the franciscan, who was sent by st. louis, as what he calls biting, and leaving a taste like almond milk on the palate; though elphinstone, on the contrary writing in this century, says "it is of a whitish colour and a sourish taste." and so of horse-flesh; i believe it is still put out for sale in the chinese markets; lieutenant wood, in his journey to the source of the oxus, speaks of it among the usbeks as an expensive food. so does elphinstone, adding that in consequence the usbeks are "obliged to be content with beef." pinkerton tells us that it is made into dried hams; but this seems to be a refinement, for we hear a great deal from various authors of its being eaten more than half raw. after all, horse-flesh was the most delicate of the tartar viands in the times we are now considering. we are told that, in spite of their gold and silver, and jewels, they were content to eat dogs, foxes, and wolves; and, as i have observed before, the flesh of animals which had died of disease. but again we have lost sight of the ambassador of spain. after this banquet, he was taken about by timour to other palaces, each more magnificent than the one preceding it. he speaks of the magnificent halls, painted with various colours, of the hangings of silk, of gold and silver embroidery, of tables of solid gold, and of the rubies and other precious stones. the most magnificent of these entertainments was on a plain; , pavilions being pitched around timour's, which displayed the most gorgeous variety of colours. two entertainments were given by the ladies of the court, in which the state queens of timour, nine in number, sat in a row, and here pages handed round wine, not _koumiss_, in golden cups, which they were not slow in emptying. the good friar, who went from st. louis to the princes of the house of zingis, several centuries earlier, gives us a similar account. when he was presented to the khan, he went with a bible and a psalter in his hand; on entering the royal apartment, he found a curtain of felt spread across the room; it was lifted up, and discovered the great man at table with his wives about him, and prepared for drinking _koumiss_. the court knew something of christianity from the nestorians, who were about it, and the friar was asked to say a blessing on the meal; so he entered singing the salve regina. on another occasion he was present at the baptism of a wife of the khan by a nestorian priest. after the ceremony, she called for a cup of liquor, desired a blessing from the officiating minister, and drank it off. then she drank off another, and then another; and continued this process till she could drink no more, and was put into her carriage, and taken home. at another entertainment the friar had to make a speech, in the name of the holy king he represented, to pray for health and long life to the khan. when he looked round for his interpreter, he found him in a state of intoxication, and in no condition to be of service; then he directed his gaze upon the khan himself, and found him intoxicated also. i have made much mention of the wealth of the tartars, from attila to timour; their foreign conquests would yield to them of course whatever of costly material their pride might require; but their native territory itself was rich in minerals. altai in the north yielded the precious metals; the range of mountains which branches westward from the himalaya on the south yielded them rubies and lapis lazuli. we are informed by the travellers whom i have been citing that they dressed in winter in costly furs; in summer in silk, and even in cloth of gold.[ ] one of the franciscans speaks of the gifts received by the khan from foreign powers. they were more than could be numbered;--satin cloths, robes of purple, silk girdles wrought with gold, costly skins. we are told of an umbrella enriched with precious stones; of a train of camels covered with cloth of bagdad; of a tent of glowing purple; of five hundred waggons full of silver, gold, and silk stuffs. . it is remarkable that the three great conquerors, who have been our subject, all died in the fulness of glory. from the beginning of history to our own times, the insecurity of great prosperity has been the theme of poets and philosophers. scripture points out to our warning in opposite ways the fortunes of sennacherib, nabuchodonosor, and antiochus. profane history tells us of solon, the athenian sage, coming to the court of croesus, the prosperous king of lydia, whom in his fallen state i have already had occasion to mention; and, when he had seen his treasures and was asked by the exulting monarch who was the happiest of men, making answer that no one could be called happy before his death. and we may call to mind in confirmation the history of cyrus, of hannibal, of mithridates, of belisarius, of bajazet, of napoleon. but these tartars finished a prosperous course without reverse; they died indeed and went to judgment, but, as far as the visible scene of their glory is concerned, they underwent no change. attila was summoned suddenly, but the summons found him a triumphant king; and the case is the same with zingis and timour. these latter conquerors had glories besides of a different kind which increased the lustre of their rule. they were both lawgivers; it is the boast of zingis that he laid down the principle of religious toleration with a clearness which modern philsophers have considered to rival the theory of locke; and timour, also established an efficient police in his dominions, and was a patron of literature. their sun went down full and cloudless, with the merit of having shed some rays of blessing upon the earth, scorching and withering as had been its day. it is remarkable also that all three had something of a misgiving, or softening of mind, miserably unsatisfactory as it was, shortly before their deaths. attila's quailing before the eye of the vicar of christ, and turning away from italy, i have already spoken of. as to zingis, as, laden at once with years and with the spoils of asia, he reluctantly measured his way home at the impatient bidding of his veterans, who were tired of war, he seemed visited by a sense of the vanity of all things and a terror for the evil he had done. he showed some sort of pity for the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities he had destroyed. alas! it is ever easier to pull down than to build up. his wars continued; he was successful by his lieutenants when he could not go to battle himself; he left his power to his children and grandchildren, and he died. . such was the end of zingis, a pagan, who had some notion of christianity in a corrupted form, and who once almost gave hopes of becoming a christian, but who really had adopted a sort of indifference towards religious creeds altogether. timour was a zealous mahometan, and had been instructed in more definite notions of moral duty. he too felt some misgivings about his past course towards the end of his life; and the groans and shrieks of the dying and the captured in the sack of aleppo awoke for a while the stern monitor within him. he protested to the cadhi his innocence of the blood which he had shed. "you see me here," he said, "a poor, lame, decrepit mortal; yet by my arm it has pleased the almighty to subdue the kingdoms of iran, touran, and hindostan. i am not a man of blood; i call god to witness, that never, in all my wars, have i been the aggressor, but that my enemies have ever been the authors of the calamities which have come upon them."[ ] this was the feeling of a mind sated with conquest, sated with glory, aware at length that he must go further and look deeper, if he was to find that on which the soul could really feed and live, and startled to find the entrance to that abode of true greatness and of glory sternly shut against him. he looked towards the home of his youth, and the seat of his long prosperity, across the oxus, to sogdiana, to samarcand, its splendid capital, with its rich groves and smiling pastures, and there the old man went to die. not that he directly thought of death; for still he yearned after military success: and he went thither for but a short repose, between his stupendous victories in asia minor and a projected campaign in china. but samarcand was a fitting halt in that long march; and there for the last time he displayed the glory of his kingdom, receiving the petitions or appeals of his subjects, ostentatiously judging between the deserving and the guilty, inspecting plans for the erection of palaces and temples, and giving audience to ambassadors from russia, spain, egypt, and hindostan. an english historian, whom i have already used, has enlarged upon this closing scene, and i here abridge his account of it. "the marriage of six of the emperor's grandsons," he says, "was esteemed an act of religion as well as of paternal tenderness; and the pomp of the ancient caliphs was revived in their nuptials. they were celebrated in the garden of canighul, where innumerable tents and pavilions displayed the luxury of a great city and the spoils of a victorious camp. whole forests were cut down to supply fuel for the kitchens; the plain was spread with pyramids of meat and vases of every liquor, to which thousands of guests were courteously invited. the orders of the state and the nations of the earth were marshalled at the royal banquet. the public joy was testified by illuminations and masquerades; the trades of samarcand passed in review; and every trade was emulous to execute some quaint device, some marvellous pageant, with the materials of their peculiar art. after the marriage contracts had been ratified by the cadhies, nine times, according to the asiatic fashion, were the bridegrooms and their brides dressed and undressed; and at each change of apparel, pearls and rubies were showered on their heads, and contemptuously abandoned to their attendants." you may recollect the passage in milton's paradise lost, which has a reference to the oriental ceremony here described. it is in his account of satan's throne in pandemonium. "high on a throne," the poet says, "high on a throne of royal state, which far outshone the wealth of ormus or of ind, or where the gorgeous east, with richest hand, showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, satan exulting sat, by merit raised to that bad eminence." so it is; the greatest magnificence of this world is but a poor imitation of the flaming throne of the author of evil. but let us return to the history:--"a general indulgence was proclaimed, and every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people were free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of timour may remark, that after devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy period of his life was the two months in which he ceased to exercise his power. but he was soon awakened to the cares of government and war. the standard was unfurled for the invasion of china; the emirs made the report of , , the select and veteran soldiers of iran and touran; the baggage and provisions were transported by great waggons, and an immense train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long absence, since more than six months were employed in the tranquil journey of a caravan from samarcand to pekin. neither age, nor the severity of winter, could retard the impatience of timour; he mounted on horseback, passed the sihun" (or jaxartes) "on the ice, marched miles from his capital, and pitched his last camp at otrar, where he was expected by the angel of death. fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced water accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of asia expired in the seventieth year of his age; his designs were lost; his armies were disbanded; china was saved." * * * * * but the wonderful course of human affairs rolled on. timour's death was followed at no long interval by the rise of john basilowich in russia, who succeeded in throwing of the mogul yoke, and laid the foundation of the present mighty empire. the tartar sovereignty passed from samarcand to moscow. footnotes: [ ] thirlwall: greece, vol. ii. p. . [ ] voyages, t. i. p. . [ ] gibbon. [ ] maffei verona, part ii. p. . [ ] murray's asia. [ ] thornton's turkey. vid. also jenkinson's voyage across the caspian in . [ ] vid. also jenkinson, _supr._ [ ] gibbon. ii. the descent of the turks, lecture iii. _the tartar and the turk._ you may think, gentlemen, i have been very long in coming to the turks, and indeed i have been longer than i could have wished; but i have thought it necessary, in order to your taking a just view of them, that you should survey them first of all in their original condition. when they first appear in history they are huns or tartars, and nothing else; they are indeed in no unimportant respects tartars even now; but, had they never been made something more than tartars, they never would have had much to do with the history of the world. in that case, they would have had only the fortunes of attila and zingis; they might have swept over the face of the earth, and scourged the human race, powerful to destroy, helpless to construct, and in consequence ephemeral; but this would have been all. but this has not been all, as regards the turks; for, in spite of their intimate resemblance or relationship to the tartar tribes, in spite of their essential barbarism to this day, still they, or at least great portions of the race, have been put under education; they have been submitted to a slow course of change, with a long history and a profitable discipline and fortunes of a peculiar kind; and thus they have gained those qualities of mind, which alone enable a nation to wield and to consolidate imperial power. . i have said that, when first they distinctly appear on the scene of history, they are indistinguishable from tartars. mount altai, the high metropolis of tartary, is surrounded by a hilly district, rich not only in the useful, but in the precious metals. gold is said to abound there; but it is still more fertile in veins of iron, which indeed is said to be the most plentiful in the world. there have been iron works there from time immemorial, and at the time that the huns descended on the roman empire (in the fifth century of the christian era), we find the turks nothing more than a family of slaves, employed as workers of the ore and as blacksmiths by the dominant tribe. suddenly in the course of fifty years, soon after the fall of the hunnish power in europe, with the sudden development peculiar to tartars, we find these turks spread from east to west, and lords of a territory so extensive, that they were connected, by relations of peace or war, at once with the chinese, the persians, and the romans. they had reached kamtchatka on the north, the caspian on the west, and perhaps even the mouth of the indus on the south. here then we have an intermediate empire of tartars, placed between the eras of attila and zingis; but in this sketch it has no place, except as belonging to turkish history, because it was contained within the limits of asia, and, though it lasted for years, it only faintly affected the political transactions of europe. however, it was not without some sort of influence on christendom, for the romans interchanged embassies with its sovereign in the reign of the then greek emperor justin the younger (a.d. ), with the view of engaging him in a warlike alliance against persia. the account of one of these embassies remains, and the picture it presents of the turks is important, because it seems clearly to identify them with the tartar race. for instance, in the mission to the tartars from the pope, which i have already spoken of, the friars were led between two fires, when they approached the khan, and they at first refused to follow, thinking they might be countenancing some magical rite. now we find it recorded of this roman embassy, that, on its arrival, it was purified by the turks with fire and incense. as to incense, which seems out of place among such barbarians, it is remarkable that it is used in the ceremonial of the turkish court to this day. at least sir charles fellows, in his work on the antiquities of asia minor, in , speaks of the sultan as going to the festival of bairam with incense-bearers before him. again, when the romans were presented to the great khan, they found him in his tent, seated on a throne, to which wheels were attached and horses attachable, in other words, a tartar waggon. moreover, they were entertained at a banquet which lasted the greater part of the day; and an intoxicating liquor, not wine, which was sweet and pleasant, was freely presented to them; evidently the tartar _koumiss_.[ ] the next day they had a second entertainment in a still more splendid tent; the hangings were of embroidered silk, and the throne, the cups, and the vases were of gold. on the third day, the pavilion, in which they were received, was supported on gilt columns; a couch of massive gold was raised on four gold peacocks; and before the entrance to the tent was what might be called a sideboard, only that it was a sort of barricade of waggons, laden with dishes, basins, and statues of solid silver. all these points in the description,--the silk hangings, the gold vessels, the successively increasing splendour of the entertainments,--remind us of the courts of zingis and timour, and years afterwards. this empire, then, of the turks was of a tartar character; yet it was the first step of their passing from barbarism to that degree of civilization which is their historical badge. and it was their first step in civilization, not so much by what it did in its day, as (unless it be a paradox to say so), by its coming to an end. indeed it so happens, that those turkish tribes which have changed their original character and have a place in the history of the world, have obtained their _status_ and their qualifications for it, by a process very different from that which took place in the nations most familiar to us. what this process has been i will say presently; first, however, let us observe that, fortunately for our purpose, we have still specimens existing of those other turkish tribes, which were never submitted to this process of education and change, and, in looking at them as they now exist, we see at this very day the turkish nationality in something very like its original form, and are able to decide for ourselves on its close approximation to the tartar. you may recollect i pointed out to you, gentlemen, in the opening of these lectures, the course which the pastoral tribes, or nomads as they are often called, must necessarily take in their emigrations. they were forced along in one direction till they emerged from their mountain valleys, and descended their high plateau at the end of tartary, and then they had the opportunity of turning south. if they did not avail themselves of this opening, but went on still westward, their next southern pass would be the defiles of the caucasus and circassia, to the west of the caspian. if they did not use this, they would skirt the top of the black sea, and so reach europe. thus in the emigration of the huns from china, you may recollect a tribe of them turned to the south as soon as they could, and settled themselves between the high tartar land and the sea of aral, while the main body went on to the furthest west by the north of the black sea. now with this last passage into europe we are not here concerned, for the turks have never introduced themselves to europe by means of it;[ ] but with those two southward passages which are asiatic, viz., that to the east of the aral, and that to the west of the caspian. the turkish tribes have all descended upon the civilized world by one or other of these two roads; and i observe, that those which have descended along the east of the aral have changed their social habits and gained political power, while those which descended to the west of the caspian remain pretty much what they ever were. the former of these go among us by the general name of turks; the latter are the turcomans or turkmans. . now, first, i shall briefly mention the turcomans, and dismiss them, because, when they have once illustrated the original state of their race, they have no place in this sketch. i have said, then, that the ancient turco-tartar empire, to which the romans sent their embassy in the sixth century, extended to the caspian and towards the indus. it was in the beginning of the next century that the romans, that is, the greco-romans of constantinople, found them in the former of these neighbourhoods; and they made the same use of them in the defence of their territory, to which they had put the goths before the overthrow of the western empire. it was a most eventful era at which they addressed themselves to these turks of the caspian. it was almost the very year of the hegira, which marks the rise of the mahometan imposture and rule. as yet, however, the persians were in power, and formidable enemies to the romans, and at this very time in possession of the holy cross, which chosroes, their powerful king, had carried away from jerusalem twelve years before. but the successful emperor heraclius was already in the full tide of those brilliant victories, which in the course of a few years recovered it; and, to recall him from their own soil, the persians had allied themselves with the barbarous tribes of europe, (the russians, sclavonians, bulgarians, and others,) which, then as now, were pressing down close upon constantinople from the north. this alliance suggested to heraclius the counterstroke of allying himself with the turkish freebooters, who in like manner, as stationed above the caspian, were impending over persia. accordingly the horde of chozars, as this turkish tribe was called, at the emperor's invitation, transported their tents from the plains of the volga through the defiles of the caucasus into georgia. heraclius showed them extraordinary attention; he put his own diadem on the head of the barbarian prince, and distributed gold, jewels, and silk to his officers; and, on the other hand, he obtained from them an immediate succour of , horse, and the promise of an irruption of their brethren into persia from the far east, from the quarter of the sea of aral, which i have pointed out as the first of the passages by which the shepherds of tartary came down upon the south. such were the allies, with which heraclius succeeded in utterly overthrowing and breaking up the persian power; and thus, strange to say, the greatest of all the enemies of the church among the nations of the earth, the turk, began his career in christian history by coöperating with a christian emperor in the recovery of the holy cross, of which a pagan, the ally of russia, had got possession. the religious aspect, however, of this first era of their history, seems to have passed away without improvement; what they gained was a temporal advantage, a settlement in georgia and its neighbourhood, which they have held from that day to this. this horde of turks, the chozars, was nomad and pagan; it consisted of mounted shepherds, surrounded with their flocks, living in tents and waggons. in the course of the following centuries, under the shadow of their more civilized brethren, other similar hordes were introduced, nomad and pagan still; they might indeed happen sometimes to pass down from the east of the caspian as well as from the west, hastening to the south straight from turkistan along the coast of the aral;--either road would lead them down to the position which the chozars were the first to occupy in georgia and armenia,--but still there would be but one step in their journey between their old native sheep-walk and horse-path and the fair region into which they came. it was a sudden tartar descent, accompanied with no national change of habits, and promising no permanent stability. nor would they have remained there, i suppose, as they did remain, were it not that they have been protected, as they were originally introduced, by neighbouring states which have made use of them. there, however, in matter of fact, they remain to this day, the successors of the chozars, in armenia, in syria, in asia minor, even as far west as the coast of the archipelago and its maritime cities and ports, being pretty much what they were a thousand years ago, except that they have taken up the loose profession of mahometanism, and have given up some of the extreme peculiarities of their tartar state, such as their attachment to horse-flesh and mares' milk. these are the turcomans. . the writer in the universal history divides them into eastern and western. of the eastern, with which we are not concerned, he tells us that[ ] "they are tall and robust, with square flat faces, as well as the western; only they are more swarthy, and have a greater resemblance to the tartars. some of them have betaken themselves to husbandry. they are all mohammedans; they are very turbulent, very brave, and good horsemen." and of the western, that they once had two dynasties in the neighbourhood of armenia, and were for a time very powerful, but that they are now subjects of the turks, who never have been able to subdue their roving habits; that they dwell in tents of thick felt, without fixed habitation; that they profess mahomedanism, but perform its duties no better than their brethren in the east; that they are governed by their own chiefs according to their own laws; that they pay tribute to the ottoman porte, and are bound to furnish it with horsemen; that they are great robbers, and are in perpetual warfare with their neighbours the kurds; that they march sometimes two or three hundred families together, and with their droves cover sometimes a space of two leagues, and that they prefer the use of the bow to that of firearms. this account is drawn up from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. precisely the same report of their habits is made by dr. chandler in his travels in asia minor in the middle of the last century; he fell in with them in his journey between smyrna and ephesus. "we were told here," he says, "that the road farther on was beset with turcomans, a people supposed to be descended from the nomades scythæ: or shepherd scythians; busied, as of old, in breeding and nurturing cattle, and leading, as then, an unsettled life; not forming villages and towns with stable habitations, but flitting from place to place, as the season and their convenience directs; choosing their stations, and overspreading without control the vast neglected pastures of this desert empire.... we set out, and ... soon after came to a wild country covered with thickets, and with the black booths of the turcomans, spreading on every side, innumerable, with flocks and herds and horses and poultry feeding round them."[ ] i may seem to be making unnecessary extracts, but i have two reasons for multiplying them; in order, first, to show the identity in character of the various tribes of the tartar and the turkish stock, and next, in order to impress upon your imagination what that character is; for it is not easy to admit into the mind the very idea of a people of this kind, dwelling too, and that for ages, in some of the most celebrated and beautiful regions of the world, such as syria and asia minor. with this view i will read what volney says of them, as he found them in syria towards the close of the last century. "the turkmans," he says,[ ] "are of the number of those tartar hordes, who, in the great revolutions of the empire of the caliphs, emigrated from the eastward of the caspian sea, and spread themselves over the vast plains of armenia and asia minor. their language is the same as that of the turks, and their mode of life nearly resembles that of the bedouin arabs. like them, they are shepherds, and consequently obliged to travel over immense tracts of land to procure subsistence for their numerous herds.... their whole occupation consists in smoking and looking after their flocks. perpetually on horseback, with their lances on their shoulders, their crooked sabres by their sides, and their pistols in their belts, they are expert horsemen and indefatigable soldiers.... a great number of these tribes pass in the summer into armenia and caramania, where they find grass in great abundance, and return to their former quarters in the winter. the turkmans are reputed to be moslem ... but they trouble themselves little about religion." while i was collecting these passages, a notice of these tribes appeared in the columns of the _times_ newspaper, sent home by its constantinople correspondent, apropos of the present concentration of troops in that capital in expectation of a russian war. his statement enables us to carry down our specimens of the tartar type of the turkish race to the present day "from the coast of the black sea," he writes home, "to the taurus chain of mountains, a great part of the population is nomad, and besides the turks or osmanlis," that is, the ottoman or imperial turks, "consists of two distinct races;--the turcomans, who possessed themselves of the land before the advent of the osmanlis, and who wander with their black tents up to the shores of the bosphorus; and the curds." with the curds we are not here concerned. he proceeds: "the turcomans, who are spread over the whole of asia minor, are a most warlike people. clans, numbering many thousand, acknowledge the sultan as the representative of the caliphs and the sovereign lord of islam, from whom all the frank kings receive their crowns; but they are practically independent of him, and pay no taxes but to their own chiefs. in the neighbourhood of cæsarea, kusan oghlou, a turcoman chief, numbers , armed horsemen, rules despotically over a large district, and has often successfully resisted the sultan's arms. these people lead a nomad life, are always engaged in petty warfare, are well mounted, and armed with pistol, scimitar, spear, or gun, and would always be useful as irregular troops." . and now i have said enough, and more than enough, of the original state of the turkish race, as exhibited in the chozars and turcomans:--it is time to pursue the history of that more important portion of it with which we are properly engaged, which received some sort of education, and has proved itself capable of social and political union. i observed just now, that that education was very different in its mode and circumstances from that which has been the lot of the nations with which we are best acquainted. other nations have been civilized in their own homes, and, by their social progress, have immortalized a country as well as a race. they have been educated by their conquests, or by subjugation, or by the intercourse with foreigners which commerce or colonization has opened; but in every case they have been true to their fatherland, and are children of the soil. the greeks sent out their colonies to asia minor and italy, and those colonies reacted upon the mother country. magna græcia and ionia showed their mother country the way to her intellectual supremacy. the romans spread gradually from one central city, and when their conquests reached as far as greece, "the captive," in the poet's words, "captivated her wild conqueror, and introduced arts into unmannered latium."[ ] england was converted by the roman see and conquered by the normans, and was gradually civilized by the joint influences of religion and of chivalry. religion indeed, though a depraved religion, has had something to do, as we shall see, with the civilization of the turks; but the circumstances have been altogether different from those which we trace in the history of england, rome, or greece. the turks present the spectacle of a race poured out, as it were, upon a foreign material, interpenetrating all its parts, yet preserving its individuality, and at length making its way through it, and reappearing, in substance the same as before, but charged with the qualities of the material through which it has been passed, and modified by them. they have been invaded by no conqueror, they have brought no captive arts or literature home, they have undergone no conversion in mass, they have been taught by no commerce, by no international relationship; but they have in the course of centuries slowly soaked or trickled, if i may use the words, through the saracenic populations with which they came in contact, and after being nationally lost to the world, as far as history goes, for long periods and through different countries, eventually they have come to the face of day with that degree of civilization which they at present possess, and at length have usurped a place within the limits of the great european family. and this is why the path southwards to the east of the aral was, in matter of fact, the path of civilization, and that by the caucasus the path of barbarism; this is why the turks who took the former course could found an empire, and those who took the latter have remained tartars or turcomans, as they were originally; because the way of the caucasus was a sheer descent from turkistan into the country which they occupy, but the way of the aral was a circuitous course, leading them through many countries--through sogdiana, khorasan, zabulistan, and persia,--with many fortunes, under many masters, for many hundred years, before they came round to the region to which their turcoman brethren attained so easily, but with so little eventual advantage. my meaning will be clearer, as i proceed. . . first of all, we may say that the very region into which they came, tended to their civilization. of course the peculiarities of soil, climate, and country are not by themselves sufficient for a social change, else the turcomans would have the best right to civilization; yet, when other influences are present too, climate and country are far from being unimportant. you may recollect that i have spoken more than once of the separation of a portion of the huns from the main body, when they were emigrating from tartary into europe, in the time of the goths.[ ] these turned off sharp to the south immediately on descending the high table-land; and, crossing the jaxartes, found themselves in a fertile and attractive country, between the aral and their old country, where they settled. it is a peculiarity of asia that its regions are either very hot or very cold. it has the highest mountains in the world, bleak table-lands, vast spaces of burning desert, tracts stretched out beneath the tropical sun. siberia goes for a proverb for cold: india is a proverb for heat. it is not adequately supplied with rivers, and it has little of inland sea. in these respects it stands in singular contrast with europe. if then the tribes which inhabit a cold country have, generally speaking, more energy than those which are relaxed by the heat, it follows that you will have in asia two descriptions of people brought together in extreme, sometimes in sudden, contrariety with each other, the strong and the weak. here then, as some philosophers have argued,[ ] you have the secret of the despotisms and the vast empires of which asia has been the seat; for it always possesses those who are naturally fitted to be tyrants, and those also whose nature it is to tremble and obey. but we may take another, perhaps a broader, view of the phenomenon. the sacred writer says: "give me neither riches nor beggary:" and, as the extremes of abundance and of want are prejudicial to our moral well-being, so they seem to be prejudicial to our intellectual nature also. mental cultivation is best carried on in temperate regions. in the north men are commonly too cold, in the south too hot, to think, read, write, and act. science, literature, and art refuse to germinate in the frost, and are burnt up by the sun. now it so happened that the region in which this party of huns settled themselves was one of the fairest and most fruitful in asia. it is bounded by deserts, it is in parts encroached on by deserts; but viewed in its length and breadth, in its produce and its position, it seems a country equal, or superior, to any which that vast continent, as at present known, can show. its lower portion is the extensive territory of khorasan, the ancient bactriana; going northwards across the oxus, we come into a spacious tract, stretching to the aral and to the jaxartes, and measuring a square of miles. it was called in ancient times sogdiana; in the history of the middle ages transoxiana, or "beyond the oxus;" by the eastern writers maver-ul-nere, or mawer-al-nahar, which is said to have the same meaning; and it is now known by the name bukharia. to these may be added a third province, at the bottom of the aral, between the mouth of the oxus and the caspian, called kharasm. these, then, were the regions in which the huns in question took up their abode. the two large countries i first mentioned are celebrated in all ages for those characteristics which render a spot desirable for human habitation. as to sogdiana, or maver-ul-nere, the region with which we are specially concerned, the orientals, especially the persians, of the medieval period do not know how to express in fit terms their admiration of its climate and soil. they do not scruple to call it the paradise of asia. "it may be considered," says a modern writer,[ ] "as almost the only example of the finest temperate climate occurring in that continent, which presents generally an abrupt transition from burning tropical heat to the extreme cold of the north." according to an arabian author, there are just three spots in the globe which surpass all the rest in beauty and fertility; one of them is near damascus, another seems to be the valley of a river on the persian gulf, and the third is the plain of sogdiana. another writer says: "i have cast my eyes around bokhara, and never have i seen a verdure more fresh or of wider extent. the green carpet mingles in the horizon with the azure of the sky."[ ] abulfeda in like manner calls it "the most delightful of all places god has created." some recent writer, i think, speaks in disparagement of it.[ ] and i can quite understand, that the deserts which must be passed to reach it from the south or the north may betray the weary traveller into an exaggerated praise, which is the expression both of his recruited spirits and of his gratitude. but all things are good only by comparison; and i do not see why an asiatic, having experience of the sands which elsewhere overspread the face of his continent, should for that reason be ill qualified to pronounce that sogdiana affords a contrast to them. moreover, we have the experience of other lands, as asia minor, which have presented a very different aspect in different ages. a river overflows and turns a fruitful plain into a marsh; or it fails, and turns it into a sandy desert. sogdiana is watered by a number of great rivers, which make their way across it from the high land on its east to the aral or caspian. now we read in history of several instances of changes, accidental or artificial, in the direction or the supply of these great water-courses. i think i have read somewhere, but cannot recover my authority, of some emigration of the inhabitants of those countries, caused by a failure of the stream on which they depended. and we know for certain that the oxus has been changed in its course, accidentally or artificially, more than once. disputes have arisen before now between the russian government and the tartars, on the subject of one of these diversions of the bed of a river.[ ] one province of khorasan, which once was very fertile, is in consequence now a desert it may be questioned, too, whether the sands of the adjacent deserts, which are subject to violent agitation from the action of the wind, may not have encroached upon sogdiana. nor should it be overlooked that this rich country has been subjected to the same calamities which have been the desolation of asia minor; for, as the turcomans have devastated the latter, so, as i have already had occasion to mention, zingis swept round the sea of aral, and destroyed the fruits of a long civilization. even after the ravages of that conqueror, however, timour and the emperor baber, who had a right to judge of the comparative excellence of the countries of the east, bear witness to the beauty of sogdiana. timour, who had fixed his imperial seat in samarcand, boasted he had a garden miles in extent. baber expatiates on the grain and fruit and game of its northern parts; of the tulips, violets, and roses of another portion of it; of the streams and gardens of another. its plains are said by travellers to abound in wood, its rivers in fish, its valleys in fruit-trees, in wheat and barley, and in cotton.[ ] the quince, pomegranate, fig, apricot, and almond all flourish in it. its melons are the finest in the world. mulberries abound, and provide for a considerable manufacture of silk. no wine, says baber, is equal to the wine of bokhara. its atmosphere is so clear and serene, that the stars are visible even to the verge of the horizon. a recent russian traveller says he came to a country so smiling, well cultivated, and thickly peopled, with fields, canals, avenues of trees, villages, and gardens, that he thought himself in an enchanted country. he speaks in raptures of its melons, pomegranates, and grapes.[ ] its breed of horses is celebrated; so much so that a late british traveller[ ] visited the country with the special object of substituting it for the arab in our indian armies. its mountains abound in useful and precious produce. coal is found there; gold is collected from its rivers; silver and iron are yielded by its hills; we hear too of its mines of turquoise, and of its cliffs of lapis lazuli,[ ] and its mines of rubies, which to this day are the object of the traveller's curiosity.[ ] i might extend my remarks to the country south of the oxus and of its mountain range, the modern affghanistan. though cabul is , feet above the level of the sea, it abounds in pomegranates, mulberries, apples, and fruit of every kind. grapes are so plentiful, that for three months of the year they are given to the cattle. . this region, favoured in soil and climate, is favoured also in position. lying at the mouth of the two great roads of emigration from the far east, the valleys of the jaxartes and the oxus, it is the natural mart between high asia and europe, receiving the merchandize of east and north, and transporting it by its rivers, by the caspian, the kur, and the phasis, to the black sea. thus it received in former days the silk of china, the musk of thibet, and the furs of siberia, and shipped them for the cities of the roman empire. to samarcand, its metropolis, we owe the art of transforming linen into paper, which the sogdian merchants are said to have gained from china, and thence diffused by means of their own manufacturers over the western world. a people so circumstanced could not be without civilization; but that civilization was of a much earlier date. it must not be forgotten that the celebrated sage, zoroaster, before the times of history, was a native, and, as some say, king of bactriana. cyrus had established a city in the same region, which he called after his name. alexander conquered both bactriana and sogdiana, and planted grecian cities there. there is a long line of greco-bactrian kings; and their coins and pateræ have been brought to light within the last few years. alexander's name is still famous in the country; not only does marco polo in the middle ages speak of his descendants as still found there, but even within the last fifteen years sir alexander burns found a man professing that descent in the valley of the oxus, and lieutenant wood another in the same neighbourhood. nor was greek occupation the only source of the civilization of sogdiana. centuries rolled on, and at length the saracens renewed, on their own peculiar basis, the mental cultivation which sogdiana had received from alexander. the cities of bokhara and samarcand have been famous for science and literature. bokhara was long celebrated as the most eminent seat of mahometan learning in central asia; its colleges were, and are, numerous, accommodating from to students each. one of them gained the notice and the pecuniary aid of the russian empress catharine.[ ] samarcand rivals bokhara in fame; its university even in the last century was frequented by mahometan youth from foreign countries. there were more than colleges for students, and there was an observatory, celebrated in the middle ages, the ruins of which remain. here lies the body of timour, under a lofty dome, the sides of which are enriched with agate. "since the time of the holy prophet," that is, mahomet, says the emperor baber, "no country has produced so many imaums and eminent divines as mawar-al-nahar," that is, sogdiana. it was celebrated for its populousness. at one time it boasted of being able to send out , foot, and as many horse, without missing them. bridges and caravansaries abounded; the latter, in the single province attached to its capital, amounted to , . in bactriana, the very ruins of balkh extend for a circuit of miles, and sir a. burns wound through three miles of them continuously. such is the country, seated at present between the british and the russian empires, and such as regards its previous and later state, which the savage huns, in their emigration from tartary, had necessarily encountered; and it cannot surprise us that one of their many tribes had been persuaded to settle there, instead of seeking their fortunes farther west. the effect upon these settlers in course of time was marvellous. though it was not of course the mere climate of sogdiana that changed them, still we cannot undervalue the influence which is necessarily exerted on the mind by the idea of property, when once recognised and accepted, by the desire of possession and by the love of home, and by the sentiment of patriotism which arises in the mind, especially with the occupation of a rich and beautiful country. moreover, they became the guests or masters of a people, who, however rude, at least had far higher claims to be called civilized than they themselves, and possessed among them the remains of a more civilized era. they found a race, too, not tartar, more capable of civilization, more gifted with intellect, and more comely in person. settling down among the inhabitants, and intermarrying with them, in the course of generations their tartar characteristics were sensibly softened. for a thousand years this restless people remained there, as if chained to the soil. they still had the staple of barbarism in them, but so polished were they for children of a tartar stock, that they are called in history the white huns of sogdiana. they took to commerce, they took to literature; and when, at the end of a few centuries, the turks, as i have already described, spread abroad from the iron works and forges of mount altai to kamtchatka, the volga, and the indus, and overran these white huns in the course of their victories, they could find no parties more fitted than them to act as their diplomatists and correspondents in their negotiations with the romans. such was the influence of sogdiana on the huns; is it wonderful that it exerted some influence on the turks, when they in turn got possession of it? history justifies the anticipation; as the huns of the second or third centuries settled around the aral, so the turks in the course of the sixth or seventh centuries overran them, and descended down to the modern affghanistan and the indus; and as the fair region and its inhabitants, which they crossed and occupied, had begun at the former era the civilization of the first race of tartars, so did it at the latter era begin the education of the second. . . but a more direct and effective instrument of social education was accorded to the turks on their occupation of sogdiana. you may recollect i spoke of their first empire as lasting for only years,[ ] about of which measures the period of that occupation. their power then came to an end; what was the consequence of their fall? were they driven out of sogdiana again? were they massacred? did they take refuge in the mountains or deserts? were they reduced to slavery? thus we are introduced to a famous passage of history: the case was as follows:--at the very date at which heraclius called the turcomans into georgia, at the very date when their eastern brethren crossed the northern border of sogdiana, an event of most momentous import had occurred in the south. a new religion had arisen in arabia. the impostor mahomet, announcing himself the prophet of god, was writing the pages of that book, and moulding the faith of that people, which was to subdue half the known world. the turks passed the jaxartes southward in a.d. ; just four years before mahomet had assumed the royal dignity, and just six years after, on his death, his followers began the conquest of the persian empire. in the course of years they effected it; sogdiana was at its very extremity, or its borderland; there the last king of persia took refuge from the south, while the turks were pouring into it from the north. there was little to choose for the unfortunate prince between the turk and the saracen; the turks were his hereditary foe; they had been the giants and monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw himself into their arms. they engaged in his service, betrayed him, murdered him, and measured themselves with the saracens in his stead. thus the military strength of the north and south of asia, the saracenic and the turkish, came into memorable conflict in the regions of which i have said so much. the struggle was a fierce one, and lasted many years; the turks striving to force their way down to the ocean, the saracens to drive them back into their scythian deserts. they first fought this issue in bactriana or khorasan; the turks got the worst of the fight, and then it was thrown back upon sogdiana itself, and there it ended again in favour of the saracens. at the end of years from the time of the first turkish descent on this fair region, they relinquished it to their mahometan opponents. the conquerors found it rich, populous, and powerful; its cities, carisme, bokhara, and samarcand, were surrounded beyond their fortifications by a suburb of fields and gardens, which was in turn protected by exterior works; its plains were well cultivated, and its commerce extended from china to europe. its riches were proportionally great; the saracens were able to extort a tribute of two million gold pieces from the inhabitants; we read, moreover, of the crown jewels of one of the turkish princesses; and of the buskin of another, which she dropt in her flight from bokhara, as being worth two thousand pieces of gold.[ ] such had been the prosperity of the barbarian invaders, such was its end; but not _their_ end, for adversity did them service, as well as prosperity, as we shall see. it is usual for historians to say, that the triumph of the south threw the turks back again upon their northern solitudes; and this might easily be the case with some of the many hordes, which were ever passing the boundary and flocking down; but it is no just account of the historical fact, viewed as a whole. not often indeed do the oriental nations present us with an example of versatility of character; the turks, for instance, of this day are substantially what they were four centuries ago. we cannot conceive, were turkey overrun by the russians at the present moment, that the fanatical tribes, which are pouring into constantinople from asia minor, would submit to the foreign yoke, take service under their conquerors, become soldiers, custom-officers, police, men of business, attachés, statesmen, working their way up from the ranks and from the masses into influence and power; but, whether from skill in the saracens, or from far-reaching sagacity in the turks (and it is difficult to assign it to either cause), so it was, that a process of this nature followed close upon the mahometan conquest of sogdiana. it is to be traced in detail to a variety of accidents. many of the turks probably were made slaves, and the service to which they were subjected was no matter of choice. numbers had got attached to the soil; and inheriting the blood of persians, white huns, or aboriginal inhabitants for three generations, had simply unlearned the wildness of the tartar shepherd. others fell victims to the religion of their conquerors, which ultimately, as we know, exercised a most remarkable influence upon them. not all at once, but as tribe descended after tribe, and generation followed generation, they succumbed to the creed of mahomet; and they embraced it with the ardour and enthusiasm which franks and saxons so gloriously and meritoriously manifested in their conversion to christianity. . . here again was a very powerful instrument in modification of their national character. let me illustrate it in one particular. if there is one peculiarity above another, proper to the savage and to the tartar, it is that of excitability and impetuosity on ordinary occasions; the turks, on the other hand, are nationally remarkable for gravity and almost apathy of demeanour. now there are evidently elements in the mahometan creed, which would tend to change them from the one temperament to the other. its sternness, its coldness, its doctrine of fatalism; even the truths which it borrowed from revelation, when separated from the truths it rejected, its monotheism untempered by mediation, its severe view of the divine attributes, of the law, and of a sure retribution to come, wrought both a gloom and also an improvement in the barbarian, not very unlike the effect which some forms of protestantism produce among ourselves. but whatever was the mode of operation, certainly it is to their religion that this peculiarity of the turks is ascribed by competent judges. lieutenant wood in his journal gives us a lively account of a peculiarity of theirs, which he unhesitatingly attributes to islamism. "nowhere," he says, "is the difference between european and mahomedan society more strongly marked than in the lower walks of life.... a kasid, or messenger, for example, will come into a public department, deliver his letters in full durbar, and demean himself throughout the interview with so much composure and self-possession, that an european can hardly believe that his grade in society is so low. after he has delivered his letters, he takes his seat among the crowd, and answers, calmly and without hesitation, all the questions which may be addressed to him, or communicates the verbal instructions with which he has been entrusted by his employer, and which are often of more importance than the letters themselves. indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect, and a natural gravity of deportment, which differs as far from the suppleness of a hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an english clown." ... "even children," he continues, "in mahomedan countries have an unusual degree of gravity in their deportment. the boy, who can but lisp his 'peace be with you,' has imbibed this portion of the national character. in passing through a village, these little men will place their hands upon their breasts, and give the usual greeting. frequently have i seen the children of chiefs approach their father's durbar, and stopping short at the threshold of the door, utter the shout of 'salam ali-kum,' so as to draw all eyes upon them; but nothing daunted, they marched boldly into the room, and sliding down upon their knees, folded their arms and took their seat upon the musnad with all the gravity of grown-up persons." as islamism has changed the demeanour of the turks, so doubtless it has in other ways materially innovated on their tartar nature. it has given an aim to their military efforts, a political principle, and a social bond. it has laid them under a sense of responsibility, has moulded them into consistency, and taught them a course of policy and perseverance in it. but to treat this part of the subject adequately to its importance would require, gentlemen, a research and a fulness of discussion unsuitable to the historical sketch which i have undertaken. i have said enough for my purpose upon this topic; and indeed on the general question of the modification of national character to which the turks were at this period subjected. footnotes: [ ] univ. hist. modern, vol. iii. p. . [ ] i am here assuming that the magyars are not of the turkish stock; vid. gibbon and pritchard. [ ] vol. v. p. . [ ] p. , ed. . [ ] travels in syria, vol. i. p. , ed. . [ ] hor. epist. ii , . [ ] _supr._ p. . [ ] montesquieu. [ ] murray. [ ] caldecott's baber. [ ] vid. quarterly review, vol. lii. p. - . [ ] univ. hist. mod. vol. v. p. , etc. [ ] ibid. vol. iv. p. . [ ] meyendorff. [ ] moorcroft. [ ] vid. elphinstone. [ ] wood's oxus. [ ] elphinstone's cabul. [ ] _supr._ p. . [ ] gibbon. lecture iv. _the turk and the saracen._ . mere occupation of a rich country is not enough for civilization, as i have granted already. the turks came into the pleasant plains and valleys of sogdiana; the turcomans into the well-wooded mountains and sunny slopes of asia minor. the turcomans were brought out of their dreary deserts, yet they retained their old habits, and they remain barbarians to this day. but why? it must be borne in mind, they neither subjugated the inhabitants of their new country on the one hand, nor were subjugated by them on the other. they never had direct or intimate relations with it; they were brought into it by the roman government at constantinople as its auxiliaries, but they never naturalized themselves there. they were like gipseys in england, except that they were mounted freebooters instead of pilferers and fortune-tellers. it was far otherwise with their brethren in sogdiana; they were there first as conquerors, then as conquered. first they held it in possession as their prize for or years; they came into the usufruct and enjoyment of it. next, their political ascendancy over it involved, as in the case of the white huns, some sort of moral surrender of themselves to it. what was the first consequence of this? that, like the white huns, they intermarried with the races they found there. we know the custom of the tartars and turks; under such circumstances they would avail themselves of their national practice of polygamy to its full extent of licence. in the course of twenty years a new generation would arise of a mixed race; and these in turn would marry into the native population, and at the end of ninety or a hundred years we should find the great-grandsons or the great-great-grandsons of the wild marauders who first crossed the jaxartes, so different from their ancestors in features both of mind and body, that they hardly would be recognized as deserving the tartar name. at the end of that period their power came to an end, the saracens became masters of them and of their country, but the process of emigration southward from the scythian desert, which had never intermitted during the years of their domination, continued still, though that domination was no more. here it is necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of that association of the turkish tribes from the volga to the eastern sea, to which i have given the name of empire:--it was not so much of a political as of a national character; it was the power, not of a system, but of a race. they were not one well-organized state, but a number of independent tribes, acting generally together, acknowledging one leader or not, according to circumstances, combining and coöperating from the identity of object which acted on them, and often jealous of each other and quarrelling with each other on account of that very identity. each tribe made its way down to the south as it could; one blocked up the way of the other for a time; there were stoppages and collisions, but there was a continual movement and progress. down they came one after another, like wolves after their prey; and as the tribes which came first became partially civilized, and as a mixed generation arose, these would naturally be desirous of keeping back their less polished uncles or cousins, if they could; and would do so successfully for awhile: but cupidity is stronger than conservatism; and so, in spite of delay and difficulty, down they would keep coming, and down they did come, even after and in spite of the overthrow of their empire; crowding down as to a new world, to get what they could, as adventurers, ready to turn to the right or the left, prepared to struggle on anyhow, willing to be forced forward into countries farther still, careless what might turn up, so that they did but get down. and this was the process which went on (whatever were their fortunes when they actually got down, prosperous or adverse) for , nay, i will say for years. the storehouse of the north was never exhausted; it sustained the never-ending run upon its resources. . i was just now referring to a change in the turks, which i have mentioned before, and which had as important a bearing as any other of their changes upon their subsequent fortunes. it was a change in their physiognomy and shape, so striking as to recommend them to their masters for the purposes of war or of display. instead of bearing any longer the hideous exterior which in the huns frightened the romans and goths, they were remarkable, even as early as the ninth century, when they had been among the natives of sogdiana only two hundred years, for the beauty of their persons. an important political event was the result: hence the introduction of the turks into the heart of the saracenic empire. by this time the caliphs had removed from damascus to bagdad; persia was the imperial province, and into persia they were introduced for the reason i have mentioned, sometimes as slaves, sometimes as captives taken in war, sometimes as mercenaries for the saracenic armies: at length they were enrolled as guards to the caliph, and even appointed to offices in the palace, to the command of the forces, and to governorships in the provinces. the son of the celebrated harun al raschid had as many as , of these troops in bagdad itself. and thus slowly and silently they made their way to the south, not with the pomp and pretence of conquest, but by means of that ordinary intercommunion which connected one portion of the empire of the caliphs with another. in this manner they were introduced even into egypt. this was their history for a hundred and fifty years, and what do we suppose would be the result of this importation of barbarians into the heart of a flourishing empire? would they be absorbed as slaves or settlers in the mass of the population, or would they, like mercenaries elsewhere, be fatal to the power that introduced them? the answer is not difficult, considering that their very introduction argued a want of energy and resource in the rulers whom they served. to employ them was a confession of weakness; the saracenic power indeed was not very aged, but the turkish was much younger, and more vigorous;--then too must be considered the difference of national character between the turks and the saracens. a writer of the beginning of the present century,[ ] compares the turks to the romans; such parallels are generally fanciful and fallacious; but, if we must accept it in the present instance, we may complete the picture by likening the saracens and persians to the greeks, and we know what was the result of the collision between greece and rome. the persians were poets, the saracens were philosophers. the mathematics, astronomy, and botany were especial subjects of the studies of the latter. their observatories were celebrated, and they may be considered to have originated the science of chemistry. the turks, on the other hand, though they are said to have a literature, and though certain of their princes have been patrons of letters, have never distinguished themselves in exercises of pure intellect; but they have had an energy of character, a pertinacity, a perseverance, and a political talent, in a word, they then had the qualities of mind necessary for ruling, in far greater measure, than the people they were serving. the saracens, like the greeks, carried their arms over the surface of the earth with an unrivalled brilliancy and an unchequered success; but their dominion, like that of greece, did not last for more than or years. rome grew slowly through many centuries, and its influence lasts to this day; the turkish race battled with difficulties and reverses, and made its way on amid tumult and complication, for a good , years from first to last, till at length it found itself in possession of constantinople, and a terror to the whole of europe. it has ended its career upon the throne of constantine; it began it as the slave and hireling of the rulers of a great empire, of persia and sogdiana. . as to sogdiana, we have already reviewed one season of power and then in turn of reverse which there befell the turks; and next a more remarkable outbreak and its reaction mark their presence in persia. i have spoken of the formidable force, consisting of turks, which formed the guard of the caliphs immediately after the time of harun al raschid:--suddenly they rebelled against their master, burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, murdered him, and cut his body into seven pieces. they got possession of the symbols of imperial power, the garment and the staff of mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake caliphs at their pleasure. in the course of four years they had elevated, deposed, and murdered as many as three. at their wanton caprice, they made these successors of the false prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. they dragged them by the feet, stripped them, and exposed them to the burning sun, beat them with iron clubs, and left them for days without food. at length, however, the people of bagdad were roused in defence of the caliphate, and the turks for a time were brought under; but they remained in the country, or rather, by the short-sighted policy of the moment, were dispersed throughout it, and thus became in the sequel ready-made elements of revolution for the purposes of other traitors of their own race, who, at a later period, as we shall presently see, descended on persia from turkistan. indeed, events were opening the way slowly, but surely, to their ascendancy. throughout the whole of the tenth century, which followed, they seem to disappear from history; but a silent revolution was all along in progress, leading them forward to their great destiny. the empire of the caliphate was already dying in its extremities, and sogdiana was one of the first countries to be detached from his power. the turks were still there, and, as in persia, filled the ranks of the army and the offices of the government; but the political changes which took place were not at first to their visible advantage. what first occurred was the revolt of the caliph's viceroy, who made himself a great kingdom or empire out of the provinces around, extending it from the jaxartes, which was the northern boundary of sogdiana, almost to the indian ocean, and from the confines of georgia to the mountains of affghanistan. the dynasty thus established lasted for four generations and for the space of ninety years. then the successor happened to be a boy; and one of his servants, the governor of khorasan, an able and experienced man, was forced by circumstances to rebellion against him. he was successful, and the whole power of this great kingdom fell into his hands; now he was a tartar or turk; and thus at length the turks suddenly appear in history, the acknowledged masters of a southern dominion. . this is the origin of the celebrated turkish dynasty of the gaznevides, so called after gazneh, or ghizni, or ghuznee, the principal city, and it lasted for two hundred years. we are not particularly concerned in it, because it has no direct relations with europe; but it falls into our subject, as having been instrumental to the advance of the turks towards the west. its most distinguished monarch was mahmood, and he conquered hindostan, which became eventually the seat of the empire. in mahmood the gaznevide we have a prince of true oriental splendour. for him the title of sultan or soldan was invented, which henceforth became the special badge of the turkish monarchs; as khan is the title of the sovereign of the tartars, and caliph of the sovereign of the saracens. i have already described generally the extent of his dominions: he inherited sogdiana, carisme, khorasan, and cabul; but, being a zealous mussulman, he obtained the title of gazi, or champion, by his reduction of hindostan, and his destruction of its idol temples. there was no need, however, of religious enthusiasm to stimulate him to the war: the riches, which he amassed in the course of it, were a recompense amply sufficient. his indian expeditions in all amounted to twelve, and they abound in battles and sieges of a truly oriental cast. "never," says a celebrated historian,[ ] "was the mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy," or their elephants of war. one of the sovereigns of the country brought against him as many as , elephants; the borderers on the indus resisted him with , war-boats. he was successful in every direction; he levelled to the ground many hundreds of pagodas, and carried off their treasures. in one of his campaigns[ ] he took prisoner the prince of lahore, round whose neck alone were sixteen strings of jewels, valued at £ , of our money. at mutra he found five great idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies; and a hundred idols of silver, which, when melted down, loaded a hundred camels with bullion. these stories, which sound like the fables in the arabian nights, are but a specimen of the wonderful fruits of the victories of this mahmood. his richest prize was the great temple of sunnat, or somnaut, on the promontory of guzerat, between the indus and bombay. it was a place as diabolically wicked as it was wealthy, and we may safely regard mahmood as the instrument of divine vengeance upon it. but here i am only concerned with its wealth, for which grave writers are the vouchers. when this temple was taken, mahmood entered a great square hall, having its lofty roof supported with pillars, curiously turned and set with precious stones. in the centre stood the idol, made of stone, and five feet high. the conqueror began to demolish it. he raised his mace, and struck off the idol's nose. the brahmins interposed, and are said to have offered the fabulous sum, as mill considers it, of ten millions sterling for its ransom. his officers urged him to accept it, and the sultan himself was moved; but recovering himself, he observed that it was somewhat more honourable to destroy idols than to traffic in them, and proceeded to repeat his blows at the trunk of the figure. he broke it open; it was found to be hollow, and at once explained the prodigality of the offer of the brahmins. inside was found an incalculable treasure of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. mahmood took away the lofty doors of sandal-wood, which belonged to this temple, as a trophy for posterity. till a few years ago, they were the decoration of his tomb near gazneh, which is built of white marble with a cupola, and where moollas are still maintained to read prayers over his grave.[ ] there too once hung the ponderous mace, which few but himself could wield; but the mace has disappeared, and the sandal gates, if genuine, were carried off about twelve years since by the british governor-general of india, and restored to their old place, as an acceptable present to the impure idolaters of guzerat.[ ] it is not wonderful that this great conqueror should have been overcome by the special infirmity, to which such immense plunder would dispose him; he has left behind him a reputation for avarice. he desired to be a patron of literature, and on one occasion he promised a court poet a golden coin for every verse of an heroic poem he was writing. stimulated by the promise, "the divine poet," to use the words of the persian historian, "wrote the unparalleled poem called the shah namna, consisting of , couplets." this was more than had been bargained for by the sultan, who, repenting of his engagement, wished to compromise the matter for , rupees, about a sixteenth part of the sum he had promised. the indignant author would accept no remuneration at all, but wrote a satire upon mahmood instead; but he was merciful in his revenge, for he reached no more than the seven-thousandth couplet. there is a melancholy grandeur about the last days of this victorious sultan, which seems to show that even then the character of his race was changed from the fierce impatience of hun and tartar to the grave, pensive, and majestic demeanour of the turk. tartar he was in his countenance, as he was painfully conscious, but his mind had a refinement, to which the tartar was a stranger. broken down by an agonizing complaint, he perceived his life was failing, and his glory coming to an end. two days before his death, he commanded all the untold riches of his treasury, his sacks of gold and silver, his caskets of precious stones, to be brought out and placed before him. having feasted his eyes upon them, he burst into tears; he knew they would not long be his, but he had not the heart to give any part of then away. the next day he caused to be drawn up before his travelling throne, for he observed still the tartar custom, his army of , foot and , horse, his chariots, his camels, and his , elephants of war; and again he wept, and, overcome with grief, retired to his palace. next day he died, after a prosperous reign of more than thirty years. but, to return to the general history. it will be recollected that mahmood's dominions stretched very far to the west, as some say, even round the caspian to georgia; and it is not wonderful that, while he was adding india to them, he found a difficulty in defending his frontier towards persia. meantime, as before, his own countrymen kept streaming down upon him without intermission from the north, and he thought he could not do better than employ these dangerous visitors in garrison duty against his western enemies. they took service under him, but did not fulfil his expectations. indeed, what followed may be anticipated from the history which i have been giving of the caliphs: it was an instance of workmen emancipating themselves from their employer. the fierce barbarians who were defending the province of khorasan so well for another, naturally felt that they could take as good care of it for themselves; and when mahmood was approaching the end of his life, he became sensible of the error he had committed in introducing them. he asked one of their chiefs what force he could lend him: "if you sent one of the arrows into our camp," was the answer, " , of us will mount to do thy bidding." "but what if i want more?" inquired mahmood; "send this arrow into the camp of balik, and you will have another , ." the sultan asked again: "but what if i require your whole forces?" "send round my bow," answered the turk, "and the summons will be obeyed by , horse."[ ] the foreboding, which disclosures such as this inspired, was fulfilled the year before his death. the turks came into collision with his lieutenants, and defeated one of them in a bloody action; and though he took full reprisals, and for a while cleared the country of them, yet in the reign of his son they succeeded in wresting from his dynasty one-half of his empire, and hindostan, the acquisition of mahmood, became henceforth its principal possession. . we have now arrived at what may literally be called the turning-point of turkish history. we have seen them gradually descend from the north, and in a certain degree become acclimated in the countries where they settled. they first appear across the jaxartes in the beginning of the seventh century; they have now come to the beginning of the eleventh. four centuries or thereabout have they been out of their deserts, gaining experience and educating themselves in such measure as was necessary for playing their part in the civilized world. first they came down into sogdiana and khorasan, and the country below it, as conquerors; they continued in it as subjects and slaves. they offered their services to the race which had subdued them; they made their way by means of their new masters down to the west and the south; they laid the foundations for their future supremacy in persia, and gradually rose upwards through the social fabric to which they had been admitted, till they found themselves at length at the head of it. the sovereign power which they had acquired in the line of the gaznevides, drifted off to hindostan; but still fresh tribes of their race poured down from the north, and filled up the gap; and while one dynasty of turks was established in the peninsula, a second dynasty arose in the former seat of their power. now i call the era at which i have arrived the turning-point of their fortunes, because, when they had descended down to khorasan and the countries below it, they might have turned to the east or to the west, as they chose. they were at liberty to turn their forces eastward against their kindred in hindostan, whom they had driven out of ghizni and affghanistan, or to face towards the west, and make their way thither through the saracens of persia and its neighbouring countries. it was an era which determined the history of the world. i recollect once hearing a celebrated professor of geology attempt to draw out the consequences which would have occurred, had there not been an outlet for the thames, which exists in fact, at a certain point of its course. he said that, had the range of hills been unbroken, it would have streamed off to the north-east, and have run into the sea at the wash in lincolnshire. an utter change in the political events which came after, another history of england, and nothing short of it, would have been the result. an illustration such as this will at least serve to express what i would say of the point at which we now stand in the history of the turks. mahmood turned to the east; and had the barbarian tribes which successively descended done the same, they might have conquered the gaznevide dynasty, they might have settled themselves, like timour, at delhi, and their descendants might have been found there by the british in their conquests during the last century; but they would have been unknown to europe, they would have been strange to constantinople, they would have had little interest for the church. they had rebelled against mahmood, they had driven his family to the east; but they did not pursue him thither; he had strength enough to keep them off the rich territory he had appropriated; he was the obstacle which turned the stream westward; in consequence, they looked towards persia, where their brethren had been so long settled, and they directed their course for good and all towards europe. but this era was a turning-point in their history in another and more serious respect. in sogdiana and khorasan, they had become converts to the mahometan faith. you will not suppose i am going to praise a religious imposture, but no catholic need deny that it is, considered in itself, a great improvement upon paganism. paganism has no rule of right and wrong, no supreme and immutable judge, no intelligible revelation, no fixed dogma whatever; on the other hand, the being of one god, the fact of his revelation, his faithfulness to his promises, the eternity of the moral law, the certainty of future retribution, were borrowed by mahomet from the church, and are steadfastly held by his followers. the false prophet taught much which is materially true and objectively important, whatever be its subjective and formal value and influence in the individuals who profess it. he stands in his creed between the religion of god and the religion of devils, between christianity and idolatry, between the west and the extreme east. and so stood the turks, on adopting his faith, at the date i am speaking of; they stood between christ in the west, and satan in the east, and they had to make their choice; and, alas! they were led by the circumstances of the time to oppose themselves, not to paganism, but to christianity. a happier lot indeed had befallen poor sultan mahmood than befell his kindred who followed in his wake. mahmood, a mahomedan, went eastward and found a superstition worse than his own, and fought against it, and smote it; and the sandal doors which he tore away from the idol temple and hung up at his tomb at gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through centuries as the soldier and the instrument of heaven. the tribes which followed him, moslem also, faced westward, and found, not error but truth, and fought against it as zealously, and in doing so, were simply tools of the evil one, and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not witnesses of god. the one destroyed idol temples, the other christian shrines. the one has been saved the woe of persecuting the bride of the lamb; the other is of all races the veriest brood of the serpent which the church has encountered since she was set up. for years did the sandal gates remain at mahmood's tomb, as a trophy over idolatry; and for years have seljuk and othman been our foe, singled out as such, and denounced by successive vicars of christ. . the year of our era is fixed by chronologists as the date of the rise of the turkish power, as far as christendom is interested in its history.[ ] sixty-three years before this date, a turk of high rank, of the name of seljuk, had quarrelled with his native prince in turkistan, crossed the jaxartes with his followers, and planted himself in the territory of sogdiana. his father had been a chief officer in the prince's court, and was the first of his family to embrace islamism; but seljuk, in spite of his creed, did not obtain permission to advance into sogdiana from the saracenic government, which at that time was in possession of the country. after several successful encounters, however, he gained admission into the city of bokhara, and there he settled. as time went on, he fully recompensed the tardy hospitality which the saracens had shown him; for his feud with his own countrymen, whom he had left, took the shape of a religious enmity, and he fought against them as pagans and infidels, with a zeal, which was both an earnest of the devotion of his people to the faith of mahomet, and a training for the exercise of it. he died, it is said, in battle against the pagans, and at the wonderful age of . of his five sons, whom he left behind him, one, michael, was cut off prematurely in battle against the infidels also, and has obtained the name of shadid or the martyr; for in a religion where the soldier is the missionary, the soldier is the martyr also. the other sons became rich and powerful; they had numerous flocks and fertile pastures in sogdiana, till at length they attracted the notice of the sultan mahmood, who, having dispossessed the saracens of the country where seljuk had placed himself, looked about for mercenary troops to keep his possession of it. it was one of seljuk's family, who at a later date alarmed mahmood by telling him he could bring , horsemen from the scythian wilderness, if he sent round his bow to summon them; it was seljuk's horde and retainers that ultimately forced back mahmood's son into the south and the east, and got possession of sogdiana and khorasan. having secured this acquisition, they next advanced into persia, and this was the event, which is considered to fix the date of their entrance into ecclesiastical history. it was the date of their first steadily looking westward; it determined their destiny; they began to be enemies of the cross in the year , under the leading of michael the martyr's son, togrul beg. it is the inconvenience of any mere sketch of historical transactions, that a multiplicity of objects successively passes over the field of view, not less independent in themselves, though not less connected in the succession of events, than the pictures of a magic lantern. i am aware of the weariness and the perplexity which are in consequence inflicted on the attention and the memory of the hearer; but what can i do but ask your indulgence, gentlemen, for a circumstance which is inherent in any undertaking like the present? i have in the course of an hour to deal with a series of exploits and fortunes, which begin in the wilds of turkistan, and conclude upon the bosphorus; in which, as i may say, time is no measure of events, one while from the obscurity in which they lie, at another from their multitude and consequent confusion. for four centuries the turks are little or hardly heard of; then suddenly in the course of as many tens of years, and under three sultans, they make the whole world resound with their deeds; and, while they have pushed to the east through hindostan, in the west they have hurried down to the coasts of the mediterranean and the archipelago, have taken jerusalem, and threatened constantinople. in their long period of silence they had been sowing the seeds of future conquests; in their short period of action they were gathering the fruit of past labours and sufferings. the saracenic empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a turk showed himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he found himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred which had been so long in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of turcomans, to whom the romans in a former age had shown the passes of the caucasus; and he could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his native desert, and following in his track. such was the state of western asia in the middle of the eleventh century. . i have said there were three great sultans of the race of seljuk, by whom the conquest of the west of asia was begun and completed; their names are togrul beg, alp arslan, and malek shah. i have not to write their histories, but i may say a few words of their characters and their actions. . the first, togrul, was the son and grandson of mahometan martyrs, and he inherited that fanaticism, which made the old seljuk and the young michael surrender their lives in their missionary warfare against the enemies of their faith. each day he repeated the five prayers prescribed for the disciples of islam; each week he gave two days to fasting; in every city which he made his own, he built a mosque before he built his palace. he introduced vast numbers of his wild countrymen into his provinces, and suffered their nomadic habits, on the condition of their becoming proselytes to his creed. he was the man suited to his time; mere material power was not adequate to the overthrow of the saracenic sovereignty: rebellion after rebellion had been successful against the caliph; and at the very time i speak of he was in subjection to a family of the old persian race. but then he was spiritual head of the empire as well as temporal; and, though he lay in his palace wallowing in brutal sensuality, he was still a sort of mock-pope, even after his armies and his territories had been wrested from his hands; but it was the reward of togrul's zeal to gain from him this spiritual prerogative, retaining which the caliph could never have fallen altogether. he gave to togrul the title of rocnoddîn, or "the firm pillar of religion;" and, what was more to the purpose, he made him his vicegerent over the whole moslem world. armed with this religious authority, which was temporal in its operation, he went to war against the various insurgents who troubled the caliph's repose, and substituted himself for them, a more powerful and insidious enemy than any or all. but even mahomet, the caliph's predecessor, would not have denied that togrul was worthy of his hire; he turned towards armenia and asia minor, and began that terrible war against the cross, which was to last years. the prodigious number of , christians, in battle or otherwise, is said to be the sacrifice he offered up to the false prophet. on his victorious return, he was again recognized by his grateful master as his representative. he made his public entry into the imperial city on horseback. at the palace gate he showed the outward deference to the caliph's authority which was his policy. he dismounted, his nobles laid aside their arms, and thus they walked respectfully into the recesses of the palace. according to the saracenic ceremonial, the caliph received them behind his black veil, the black garment of his family was cast over his shoulders, and the staff of mahomet was in his hand. togrul kissed the ground, and waited modestly, till he was led to the throne, and was there allowed to seat himself, and to hear the commission publicly declaring him invested with the authority of the vicar of the arch-deceiver. he was then successively clothed in seven robes of honour, and presented with seven slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the saracenic empire. his veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were set upon his head; two scimitars were girded on his side, in token of his double reign over east and west. he twice kissed the caliph's hand; and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the moslem. such was togrul beg, and such was his reward. after these exploits, he marched against his brother (for these turkish tribes were always quarrelling over their prey), deposed him, strangled him and put to death a number of his adherents, married the caliph's daughter, and then died without children. his power passed to his nephew alp arslan. . alp arslan, the second sultan of the line of seljuk, is said to signify in turkish "the courageous lion:" and the caliph gave its possessor the arabic appellation of azzaddin, or "protector of religion." it was the distinctive work of his short reign to pass from humbling the caliph to attacking the greek emperor. togrul had already invaded the greek provinces of asia minor, from cilicia to armenia, along a line of miles, and here it was that he had achieved his tremendous massacres of christians. alp arslan renewed the war; he penetrated to cæsarea in cappadocia, attracted by the gold and pearls which encrusted the shrine of the great st. basil. he then turned his arms against armenia and georgia, and conquered the hardy mountaineers of the caucasus, who at present give such trouble to the russians. after this he encountered, defeated, and captured the greek emperor. he began the battle with all the solemnity and pageantry of a hero of romance. casting away his bow and arrows, he called for an iron mace and scimitar; he perfumed his body with musk, as if for his burial, and dressed himself in white, that he might be slain in his winding-sheet. after his victory, the captive emperor of new rome was brought before him in a peasant's dress; he made him kiss the ground beneath his feet, and put his foot upon his neck. then, raising him up, he struck or patted him three times with his hand, and gave him his life and, on a large ransom, his liberty. at this time the sultan was only forty-four years of age, and seemed to have a career of glory still before him. twelve hundred nobles stood before his throne; two hundred thousand soldiers marched under his banner. as if dissatisfied with the south, he turned his arms against his own paternal wildernesses, with which his family, as i have related, had a feud. new tribes of turks seem to have poured down, and were wresting sogdiana from the race of seljuk, as the seljukians had wrested it from the gaznevides. alp had not advanced far into the country, when he met his death from the hand of a captive. a carismian chief had withstood his progress, and, being taken, was condemned to a lingering execution. on hearing the sentence, he rushed forward upon alp arslan; and the sultan, disdaining to let his generals interfere, bent his bow, but, missing his aim, received the dagger of his prisoner in his breast. his death, which followed, brings before us that grave dignity of the turkish character, of which we have already had an example in mahmood. finding his end approaching, he has left on record a sort of dying confession:--"in my youth," he said, "i was advised by a sage to humble myself before god, to distrust my own strength, and never to despise the most contemptible foe. i have neglected these lessons, and my neglect has been deservedly punished. yesterday, as from an eminence, i beheld the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit of my armies; the earth seemed to tremble under my feet, and i said in my heart, surely thou art the king of the world, the greatest and most invincible of warriors. these armies are no longer mine; and, in the confidence of my personal strength, i now fall by the hand of an assassin." on his tomb was engraven an inscription, conceived in a similar spirit. "o ye, who have seen the glory of alp arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to maru, and you will behold it buried in the dust."[ ] alp arslan was adorned with great natural qualities both of intellect and of soul. he was brave and liberal: just, patient, and sincere: constant in his prayers, diligent in his alms, and, it is added, witty in his conversation;--but his gifts availed him not. . it often happens in the history of states and races, in which there is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest glories take place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun. thus, for instance, in the history of the ottoman turks, to which i have not yet come, soliman the magnificent is at once the last and greatest of a series of great sultans. so was it as regards this house of seljuk. malek shah, the son of alp arslan, the third sovereign, in whom its glories ended, is represented to us in history in colours so bright and perfect, that it is difficult to believe we are not reading the account of some mythical personage. he came to the throne at the early age of seventeen; he was well-shaped, handsome, polished both in manners and in mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. he engaged himself even more in the consolidation of his empire than in its extension. he reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he repaired the high roads, bridges, and canals; he built an imperial mosque at bagdad; he founded and nobly endowed a college. he patronised learning and poetry, and he reformed the calendar. he provided marts for commerce; he upheld the pure administration of justice, and protected the helpless and the innocent. he established wells and cisterns in great numbers along the road of pilgrimage to mecca; he fed the pilgrims, and distributed immense sums among the poor. he was in every respect a great prince; he extended his conquests across sogdiana to the very borders of china. he subdued by his lieutenants syria and the holy land, and took jerusalem. he is said to have travelled round his vast dominions twelve times. so potent was he, that he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great princes. he gave to his cousin his territories in asia minor, and planted him over against constantinople, as an earnest of future conquests; and he may be said to have finally allotted to the turcomans the fair regions of western asia, over which they roam to this day. all human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great sultan's rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he came to his power, the earlier did he lose it he had reigned twenty years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with pride and came to his end. he disgraced and abandoned to an assassin his faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years had been the servant and benefactor of the house of seljuk. after obtaining from the caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title of "the commander of the faithful," unsatisfied still, he wished to fix his own throne in bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his few remaining honours. he demanded the hand of the daughter of the greek emperor, a christian, in marriage. a few days, and he was no more; he had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was opened, and the blood would not flow. a burning fever took him off, only eighteen days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten before the day when the caliph was to have been removed from bagdad. . such is human greatness at the best, even were it ever so innocent; but as to this poor sultan, there is another aspect even of his glorious deeds. if i have seemed here or elsewhere in these lectures to speak of him or his with interest or admiration, only take me, gentlemen, as giving the external view of the turkish history, and that as introductory to the determination of its true significance. historians and poets may celebrate the exploits of malek; but what were they in the sight of him who has said that whoso shall strike against his corner-stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, shall be ground to powder? looking at this sultan's deeds as mere exhibitions of human power, they were brilliant and marvellous; but there was another judgment of them formed in the west, and other feelings than admiration roused by them in the faith and the chivalry of christendom. especially was there one, the divinely appointed shepherd of the poor of christ, the anxious steward of his church, who from his high and ancient watch tower, in the fulness of apostolic charity, surveyed narrowly what was going on at thousands of miles from him, and with prophetic eye looked into the future age; and scarcely had that enemy, who was in the event so heavily to smite the christian world, shown himself, when he gave warning of the danger, and prepared himself with measures for averting it. scarcely had the turk touched the shores of the mediterranean and the archipelago, when the pope detected and denounced him before all europe. the heroic pontiff, st. gregory the seventh, was then upon the throne of the apostle; and though he was engaged in one of the severest conflicts which pope has ever sustained, not only against the secular power, but against bad bishops and priests, yet at a time when his very life was not his own, and present responsibilities so urged him, that one would fancy he had time for no other thought, gregory was able to turn his mind to the consideration of a contingent danger in the almost fabulous east. in a letter written during the reign of malek shah, he suggested the idea of a crusade against the misbeliever, which later popes carried out. he assures the emperor of germany, whom he was addressing, that he had , troops ready for the holy war, whom he would fain have led in person. this was in the year . in truth, the most melancholy accounts were brought to europe of the state of things in the holy land. a rude turcoman ruled in jerusalem; his people insulted there the clergy of every profession; they dragged the patriarch by the hair along the pavement, and cast him into a dungeon, in hopes of a ransom; and disturbed from time to time the latin mass and office in the church of the resurrection. as to the pilgrims, asia minor, the country through which they had to travel in an age when the sea was not yet safe to the voyager, was a scene of foreign incursion and internal distraction. they arrived at jerusalem exhausted by their sufferings, and sometimes terminated them by death, before they were permitted to kiss the holy sepulchre. . outrages such as these were of frequent occurrence, and one was very like another. in concluding, however, this lecture, i think it worth while to set before you, gentlemen, the circumstances of one of them in detail, that you may be able to form some ideas of the state both of asia minor and of a christian pilgrimage, under the dominion of the turks. you may recollect, then, that alp arslan, the second seljukian sultan, invaded asia minor, and made prisoner the greek emperor. this sultan came to the throne in , and appears to have begun his warlike operations immediately. the next year, or the next but one, a body of pilgrims, to the number of , , were pursuing their peaceful way to jerusalem, by a route which at that time lay entirely through countries professing christianity.[ ] the pious company was headed by the archbishop of mentz, the bishops of utrecht, bamberg, and ratisbon, and, among others, by a party of norman soldiers and clerks, belonging to the household of william duke of normandy, who made himself, very soon afterwards, our william the conqueror. among these clerks was the celebrated benedictine monk ingulphus, william's secretary, afterwards abbot of croyland in lincolnshire, being at that time a little more than thirty years of age. they passed through germany and hungary to constantinople, and thence by the southern coast of asia minor or anatolia, to syria and palestine. when they got on the confines of asia minor towards cilicia, they fell in with the savage turcomans, who were attracted by the treasure, which these noble persons and wealthy churchmen had brought with them for pious purposes and imprudently displayed. ingulphus's words are few, but so graphic that i require an apology for using them. he says then, they were "exenterated" or "cleaned out of the immense sums of money they carried with them, together with the loss of many lives." a contemporary historian gives us fuller particulars of the adventure, and he too appears to have been a party to the expedition.[ ] it seems the prelates celebrated the rites of the church with great magnificence, as they went along, and travelled with a pomp which became great dignitaries. the turcomans in consequence set on them, overwhelmed them, stripped them to the skin, and left the bishop of utrecht disabled and half dead upon the field. the poor sufferers effected their retreat to a village, where they fortified an enclosure and took possession of a building which stood within it. here they defended themselves courageously for as many as three days, though they are said to have had nothing to eat. at the end of that time they expressed a wish to surrender themselves to the enemy, and admitted eighteen of the barbarian leaders into their place of strength, with a view of negotiating the terms. the bishop of bamberg, who is said to have had a striking presence, acted for the christians, and bargained for nothing more than their lives. the savage turcoman, who was the speaker on the other side, attracted by his appearance, unrolled his turban, and threw it round the bishop's neck, crying out: "you and all of you are mine." the bishop made answer by an interpreter: "what will you do to me?" the savage shrieked out some unintelligible words, which, being explained to the bishop, ran thus: "i will suck that blood which is so ruddy in your throat, and then i will hang you up like a dog at your gate." "upon which," says the historian, "the bishop, who had the modesty of a gentleman, and was of a grave disposition, not bearing the insult, dashed his fist into the turcoman's face with such vigour as to fell him to the ground, crying out that the profane wretch should rather be the sufferer, for laying his unclean hands upon a priest." this was the signal for an exploit so bold, that it seemed, if i may so express myself, like a particular inspiration. the christians, unarmed as they were, started up, and though, as i have observed, they may be said to have scarcely tasted food for three days, rushed upon the eighteen turcomans, bound their arms behind their backs, and showing them in this condition to their own troops who surrounded the house, protested that they would instantly put them all to death, unless they themselves were let go. it is difficult to see how this complication would have ended, in which neither side were in a condition either to recede or to advance, had not a third party interfered with a considerable force in the person of the military governor, himself a pagan,[ ] of a neighbouring city; and though, as our historian says, the christians found it difficult to understand how satan could cast out satan, so it was, that they found themselves at liberty and their enemies marched off to punishment, on the payment of a sum of money to their deliverers. i need not pursue the history of these pilgrims further than to say, that, of , who set out, only , returned to europe. * * * * * much less am i led to enter into the history of the crusades which followed. how the holy see, twenty years after st. gregory, effected that which st. gregory attempted without result; how, along the very way which the pilgrims i have described journeyed, , men at length appeared cased in complete armour and on horseback; how they drove the turk from nicæa over against constantinople, where he had fixed his imperial city, to the farther borders of asia minor; how, after defeating him in a pitched battle at dorylæum, they went on and took antioch, and then at length, after a long pilgrimage of three years, made conquest of jerusalem itself, i need not here relate. to one point only is it to our present purpose to direct attention. it is commonly said that the crusades failed in their object; that they were nothing else but a lavish expenditure of men and treasure; and that the possession of the holy places by the turks to this day is a proof of it. now i will not enter here into a very intricate controversy; this only will i say, that, if the tribes of the desert, under the leadership of the house of seljuk, turned their faces to the west in the middle of the eleventh century; if in forty years they had advanced from khorasan to jerusalem and the neighbourhood of constantinople; and if in consequence they were threatening europe and christianity; and if, for that reason, it was a great object to drive them back or break them to pieces; if it were a worthy object of the crusades to rescue europe from this peril and to reassure the anxious minds of christian multitudes;--then were the crusades no failure in their issue, for this object was fully accomplished. the seljukian turks were hurled back upon the east, and then broken up, by the hosts of the crusaders.[ ] the lieutenant of malek shah, who had been established as sultan of roum (as asia minor was called by the turks), was driven to an obscure town, where his dynasty lasted, indeed, but gradually dwindled away. a similar fate attended the house of seljuk in other parts of the empire, and internal quarrels increased and perpetuated its weakness. sudden as was its rise, as sudden was its fall; till the terrible zingis, descending on the turkish dynasties, like an avalanche, coöperated effectually with the crusaders and finished their work; and if jerusalem was not protected from other enemies, at least constantinople was saved, and europe was placed in security, for three hundred years.[ ] footnotes: [ ] thornton. [ ] gibbon. [ ] vid. dow's hindostan. [ ] caldecott's baber. vid. also elphinstone, vol. ii. p. . [ ] "our victorious army bears the gates of the temple of somnauth in triumph from affghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of sultan mahmood looks upon the ruins of ghuznee. the insult of years is at last avenged," etc., etc.--_proclamation of the governor-general to all the princes, chiefs, and people of india._ [ ] gibbon. universal hist. [ ] baronius, pagi. [ ] gibbon. [ ] baronius, gibbon. [ ] vid. cave's hist. litterar. in nom. _lambertus_. [ ] gibbon makes this the fatimite governor of some town in galilee, laying the scene in palestine. the name capernaum is doubtfully mentioned in the history, but the occurrence is said to have taken place on the borders of lycia. anyhow, there were turcomans in palestine. part of the account in the text is taken from marianus scotus. [ ] i should observe that the turks were driven out of jerusalem by the fatimites of egypt, two years before the crusaders appeared. [ ] i am pleased to see that mr. sharon turner takes the same view strongly.--_england in middle ages_, i. . also mr. francis newman; "the see of rome," he says, "had not forgotten, if europe had, how deadly and dangerous a war charles martel and the franks had had to wage against the moors from spain. a new and redoubtable nation, the seljuk turks, had now appeared on the confines of europe, as a fresh champion of the mohammedan creed; and it is not attributing too much foresight or too sagacious policy to the court of rome, to believe, that they wished to stop and put down the turkish power before it should come too near. be this as it may, such was the result. the might of the seljukians was crippled on the plains of palestine, and did not ultimately reach europe.... a large portion of christendom, which disowned the religious pretensions of rome, was afterwards subdued by another turkish tribe, the ottomans or osmanlis; but romish christendom remained untouched: poland, germany, and hungary, saved her from the later turks, even during the schism of the reformation, as the franks had saved her from the moors. on the whole, it would seem that to the romish church we have been largely indebted for that union between european nations, without which mohammedanism might perhaps not have been repelled. i state this as probable, not at all as certain."--_lectures at manchester, ._ iii. the conquests of the turks lecture v. _the turk and the christian._ i said in my last lecture, that we are bound to judge of persons and events in history, not by their outward appearance, but by their inward significancy. in speaking of the turks, we may for a moment yield to the romance which attends on their name and their actions, as we may admire the beauty of some beast of prey; but, as it would be idle and puerile to praise its shape or skin, and form no further judgment upon it, so in like manner it is unreal and unphilosophical to interest ourselves in the mere adventures and successes of the turks, without going on to view them in their moral aspect also. no race casts so broad and dark a shadow on the page of ecclesiastical history, and leaves so painful an impression on the minds of the reader, as the turkish. the fierce goths and vandals, and then again the lombards, were converted to catholicism. the franks yielded to the voice of st. remigius, and clovis, their leader, became the eldest son of the church. the anglo-saxons gave up their idols at the preaching of st. augustine and his companions. the german tribes acknowledged christ amid their forests, though they martyred st. boniface and other english and irish missionaries who came to them. the magyars in hungary were led to faith through loyalty to their temporal monarch, their royal missioner st. stephen. the heathen danes reappear as the chivalrous normans, the haughty but true sons and vassals of st. peter. the saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture, withered away at the end of or years, and had not the power, though they had the will, to persevere in their enmity to the cross. the tartars had both the will and the power, but they were far off from christendom, or they came down in ephemeral outbreaks, which were rather those of freebooters than of persecutors, or they directed their fury as often against the enemies of the church as against her children. but the unhappy race, of whom i am speaking, from the first moment they appear in the history of christendom, are its unmitigated, its obstinate, its consistent foes. they are inexhaustible in numbers, pouring down upon the south and west, and taking one and the same terrible mould of misbelief, as they successively descend. they have the populousness of the north, with the fire of the south; the resources of tartars, with, the fanaticism of saracens. and when their strength declines, and age steals upon them, there is no softening, no misgiving; they die and make no sign. in the words of the wise man, "being born, they forthwith ceased to be; and have been able to show no mark of virtue, but are consumed in wickedness." god's judgments, god's mercies, are inscrutable; one nation is taken, another is left. it is a mystery; but the fact stands; since the year the turks have been the great antichrist among the races of men. i say since this date, because then it was that togrul beg finally opened the gates of the north to those descents, which had taken place indeed at intervals before, but then became the habit of centuries. in vain was the power of his dynasty overthrown by the crusaders; in vain do the seljukians disappear from the annals of the world; in vain is constantinople respited; in vain is europe saved. christendom in arms had not yet finished, it had but begun the work, in which it needed the grace to persevere. down came the savage hordes, as at first, upon sogdiana and khorasan, so then upon syria and its neighbouring countries. sometimes they remain wild turcomans, sometimes they fall into the civilization of the south; but there they are, in egypt, in the holy land, in armenia, in anatolia, forming political bodies of long or short duration, breaking up here to form again there, in all cases trampling on christianity, and beating out its sacred impression from the breasts of tens of thousands. nor is this all; scarcely is the race of seljuk quite extinct, or rather when it is on its very death-bed, after it had languished and shrunk and dwindled and flickered and kept on dying through a tedious two hundred years, when its sole remaining heir was just in one obscure court, from that very court we discern the birth of another empire, as dazzling in its rise, as energetic and impetuous in its deeds as that of togrul, alp, and malek, and far more wide-spreading, far more powerful, far more lasting than the seljukian. this is the empire of the great (if i must measure it by a human standard) and glorious race of othman; this is the dynasty of the ottomans or osmanlis; once the admiration, the terror of nations, now, even in its downfall, an object of curiosity, interest, anxiety, and even respect; but, whether high or low, in all cases to the christian the inveterate and hateful enemy of the cross. . there is a certain remarkable parallel and contrast between the fortunes of these two races, the seljukian and the ottoman. in the beginning of the twelfth century, the race of seljuk all but took constantinople, and overran the west, and did not; in the beginning of the fifteenth, the ottoman turks were all but taking the same city, and then were withheld from taking it, and at length did take it, and have it still. in each case a foe came upon them from the north, still more fierce and vigorous than they, and humbled them to the dust. these two foes, which came upon the seljukian turks and the ottoman turks respectively, are names by this time familiar to us; they are zingis and timour. zingis came down upon the seljukians, and timour came down upon the ottomans. timour pressed the ottomans even more severely than zingis pressed the seljukians; yet the seljukians did not recover the blow of zingis; but the ottomans survived the blow of timour, and rose more formidable after it, and have long outlived the power which inflicted it. zingis and timour were but the blind instruments of divine vengeance. they knew not what they did. the inward impulse of gigantic energy and brutal cupidity urged them forward; ambition, love of destruction, sensual appetite, frenzied them, and made them both more and less than men. they pushed eastward, westward, southward; they confronted promptly and joyfully every peril, every obstacle which lay in their course. they smote down all rival pride and greatness of man; and therefore, by the law (as i may call it) of their nature and destiny, not on politic reason or far-reaching plan, but because they came across him, they smote the turk. these then were one class of his opponents; but there was another adversary, stationed against him, of a different order, one whose power was not material, but mental and spiritual; one whose enmity was not random, or casual, or temporary, but went on steadily from age to age, and lasts down to this day, except so far as the turk's decrepitude has at length disarmed anxiety and opposition. i have spoken of him already; of course i mean the vicar of christ. i mean the zealous, the religious enmity to every anti-christian power, of him who has outlasted zingis and timour, who has outlasted seljuk, who is now outlasting othman. he incited christendom against the seljukians, and the seljukians, assailed also by zingis, sunk beneath the double blow. he tried to rouse christendom against the ottomans also, but in vain; and therefore in vain did timour discharge his overwhelming, crushing force against them. overwhelmed and crushed they were, but they revived. the seljukians fell, in consequence of the united zeal of the great christian commonwealth moving in panoply against them; the ottomans succeeded by reason of its deplorable divisions, and its decay of faith and heroism. . whether indeed in the long run, and after all his disappointments and reverses, the pope was altogether unsuccessful in his warfare against the ottomans, we shall see by-and-by; but certainly, if perseverance merited a favourable issue, at least he has had a right to expect it. war with the turks was his uninterrupted cry for seven or eight centuries, from the eleventh to the eighteenth; it is a solitary and singular event in the history of the church. sylvester the second was the originator of the scheme of a union of christian nations against them. st. gregory the seventh collected , men to repel them. urban the second actually set in motion the long crusade. honorius the second instituted the order of knight templars to protect the pilgrims from their assaults. eugenius the third sent st. bernard to preach the holy war. innocent the third advocated it in the august council of the lateran. nicholas the fourth negotiated an alliance with the tartars for its prosecution. gregory the tenth was in the holy land in the midst of it, with our edward the first, when he was elected pope. urban the fifth received and reconciled the greek emperor with a view to its renewal. innocent the sixth sent the blessed peter thomas the carmelite to preach in its behalf. boniface the ninth raised the magnificent army of french, germans, and hungarians, who fought the great battle of nicopolis. eugenius the fourth formed the confederation of hungarians and poles who fought the battle of varna. nicholas the fifth sent round st. john capistran to urge the princes of christendom against the enemy. callixtus the third sent the celebrated hunniades to fight with them. pius the second addressed to their sultan an apostolic letter of warning and denunciation. sixtus the fourth fitted out a fleet against them. innocent the eighth made them his mark from the beginning of his pontificate to the end. st. pius the fifth added the "auxilium christianorum" to our lady's litany in thankfulness for his victory over them. gregory the thirteenth with the same purpose appointed the festival of the rosary. clement the ninth died of grief on account of their successes. the venerable innocent the eleventh appointed the festival of the holy name of mary, for their rout before vienna. clement the eleventh extended the feast of the rosary to the whole church for the great victory over them near belgrade. these are but some of the many instances which might be given; but they are enough for the purpose of showing the perseverance of the popes. nor was their sagacity in this matter less remarkable than their pertinacity. the holy see has the reputation, even with men of the world, of seeing instinctively what is favourable, what is unfavourable, to the interests of religion and of the catholic faith. its undying opposition to the turks is not the least striking instance of this divinely imparted gift. from the very first it pointed at them as an object of alarm for all christendom, in a way in which it had marked out neither tartars nor saracens. it exposed them to the reprobation of europe, as a people, with whom, if charity differ from merciless ferocity, tenderness from hardness of heart, depravity of appetite from virtue, and pride from meekness and humility, the faithful never could have sympathy, never alliance. it denounced, not merely an odious outlying deformity, painful simply to the moral sight and scent, but an energetic evil, an aggressive, ambitious, ravenous foe, in whom foulness of life and cruelty of policy were methodized by system, consecrated by religion, propagated by the sword. i am not insensible, i wish to do justice, to the high qualities of the turkish race. i do not altogether deny to its national character the grandeur, the force and originality, the valour, the truthfulness and sense of justice, the sobriety and gentleness, which historians and travellers speak of; but, in spite of all that has been done for them by nature and by the european world, tartar still is the staple of their composition, and their gifts and attainments, whatever they may be, do but make them the more efficient foes of faith and civilization. . it was said by a prophet of old, in the prospect of a fierce invader, "a day of clouds and whirlwinds, a numerous and strong people, as the morning spread upon the mountains. the like to it hath not been from the beginning, nor shall be after it, even to the years of generation and generation. before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a burning flame. the land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness; neither is there any one can escape it." now i might, in illustration of the character which the turks bear in history, suitably accommodate these words to the moral, or the social, or the political, or the religious calamities, of which they were the authors to the christian countries they overran; and so i might bring home to you the meaning and drift of that opposition with which the holy see has met them in every age. i might allude (if i dare, but i dare not, nor does any one dare),--else, allusion might be made to those unutterable deeds which brand the people which allows them, even in the natural judgment of men, as the most flagitious, the most detestable of nations. i might enlarge on the reckless and remorseless cruelty which, had they succeeded in europe, as they succeeded in asia, would have decimated or exterminated her children; i might have reminded you, for instance, how it has been almost a canon of their imperial policy for centuries, that their sultan, on mounting the throne, should destroy his nearest of kin, father, brother, or cousin, who might rival him in his sovereignty; how he is surrounded, and his subjects according to their wealth, with slaves carried off from their homes, men and boys, living monuments of his barbarity towards the work of god's hands; how he has at his remorseless will and in the sudden breath of his mouth the life or death of all his subjects; how he multiplies his despotism by giving to his lieutenants in every province, a like prerogative; how little scruple those governors have ever felt in exercising this prerogative to the full, in executions on a large scale, and sudden overwhelming massacres, shedding blood like water, and playing with the life of man as though it were the life of a mere beast or reptile. i might call your attention to particular instances of such atrocities, such as that outrage perpetrated in the memory of many of us,--how, on the insurrection of the greeks at scio, their barbarian masters carried fire and sword throughout the flourishing island till it was left a desert, hurrying away women and boys to an infamous captivity, and murdering youths and grown men, till out of , souls, in the spring time, not were left there when the crops were ripe for the sickle. if i do not go into scenes such as these in detail, it is because i have wearied and troubled you more than enough already, in my account of the savage perpetrations of zingis and timour. or i might, in like manner, still more obviously insist on their system of compulsory conversion, which, from the time of the seljukian sultans to the present day, have raised the indignation and the compassion of the christian world; how, when the lieutenants of malek shah got possession of asia minor, they profaned the churches, subjected bishops and clergy to the most revolting outrages, circumcised the youth, and led off their sisters to their profligate households;--how, when the ottomans conquered in turn, and added an infantry, i mean the janizaries, to their tartar horse, they formed that body of troops, from first to last, for near five hundred years, of boys, all born christian, a body of at first , , at last , strong, torn away year by year from their parents, circumcised, trained to the faith and morals of their masters, and becoming in their turn the instruments of the terrible policy of which they had themselves been victims; and how, when at length lately they abolished this work of their hands, they ended it by the slaughter of , of the poor renegades whom they had seduced from their god. i might remind you how within the last few years a protestant traveller tells us that he found the nestorian christians, who had survived the massacres of their race, living in holes and pits, their pastures and tillage land forfeited, their sheep and cattle driven away, their villages burned, and their ministers and people tortured; and how a catholic missionary has found in the neighbourhood of broussa the remnant of some twenty catholic families, who, in consequence of repudiating the turkish faith, had been carried all the way from servia and albania across the sea to asia minor; the men killed, the women disgraced, the boys sold, till out of a hundred and eighty persons but eighty-seven were left, and they sick, and famished, and dying among their unburied dead. i could of course continue this topic also to any extent, and draw it out as an illustration of the words of the prophet which i have quoted. but i prefer to take those words literally, as expressive of the desolation spread by an infidel foe over the face of a flourishing country; and then i shall be viewing the turkish rule under an aspect addressed to the senses, not admitting of a question, calculated to rouse the sensibilities of christians of whatever caste of opinion, and explanatory by itself of the determined front which the holy see has ever made against it. . the catholic church was in the first instance a wanderer on the earth, and had nothing to attach her to its soil; but no sooner did persecution cease, and territory was allowed to her, than she began to exert a beneficent influence upon the face of the land, and on its cultivators. she shed her consolations, and extended her protection, over the serf and the slave; and, while she gradually relaxed his fetters, she sent her own dearest children to bear his burden with him, and to aid him in the cultivation of the soil. under the loving assiduity of the benedictine monk, the ravages of war were repaired, the plantation throve, the river diffused itself in rills and channels, and hill and dale and plain rejoiced in corn land and pasture. and when in a later time a world was to be created, not restored, when the deep forests of the north were to be cleared, and the unwholesome marsh to be drained, who but the missionaries from the same great order were to be the ministers of temporal, as well as spiritual, benefits to the rude tribes they were converting? and then again, when history moved on into the era of the first turkish outbreak, who but st. bernard, the very preacher of the crusade, who but he led on his peaceful cistercians, after the pattern of his master, st. stephen, to that laborious but cheerful husbandry, which they continue in the wild places of the earth even to this day? never has holy church forgotten,--abhorrent, as she is, from the pantheistic tendencies which in all ages have surrounded her,--never has she forgotten the interests of that mighty mother on whose bosom we feed in life, into whose arms we drop in death; never has she forgotten that that mother is the special creature of god, and to be honoured, in leaf and flower, in lofty tree and pleasant stream, for his sake, as well as for our own; that while it is our primeval penalty to till the earth, she lovingly repays us for our toil; that adam was a gardener even in paradise, and that noe inaugurated his new world by "beginning to be a husbandman, and by planting a vineyard." such is the genius of the true faith; and it might have been thought, that, though not christians, even of very gratitude, the barbarous race, which owed a part of whatever improvement of mind or manners they had received to the fair plains of sogdiana, would, on seizing on their rich and beautiful lands on the north, east, and south of the mediterranean, have felt some sort of reverence for their captive, and, while enjoying her gifts, would have been merciful to the giver. but the same selfish sensuality, with which they regard the rational creation of god, possesses them in their conduct towards physical nature. they have made the earth their paramour, and are heartless towards her dishonour and her misery. we have lately been reminded in this place of the doge of venice[ ] making the adriatic his bride, and claiming her by a ring of espousal; but the turk does not deign to legitimatize his possession of the soil he has violently seized, or to gain a title to it by any sacred tie; caring for no better right to it than the pirate has to the jurisdiction of the high seas. let the turcoman ride up and down asia minor or syria for a thousand years, how is the trampling of his horse-hoofs a possession of those countries, more than a scythian raid or a tartar gallop across it? the imperial osmanli sits and smokes long days in his pavilion, without any thought at all of his broad domain except to despise and to plunder and impoverish its cultivators; and is his title made better thereby than the turcoman's, to be the heir of alexander and seleucus, of the ptolemies and massinissa, of constantine and justinian? what claim does it give him upon europe, asia, and africa, upon greece, palestine, and egypt, that he has frustrated the munificence of nature and demolished the works of man? . asia minor especially, the peninsula which lies between the black sea, the archipelago, and the mediterranean, was by nature one of the most beautiful, and had been made by art one of the most fertile of countries. it had for generations contained flourishing marts of commerce, and it had been studded with magnificent cities, the ruins of which now stand as a sepulchre of the past. no country perhaps has seen such a succession of prosperous states, and had such a host of historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various distributions of territory. it is memorable in the beginning of history for its barbarian kings and nobles, whose names stand as commonplaces and proverbs of wealth and luxury. the magnificence of pelops imparts lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. the name of croesus, king of lydia, whom i have already had occasion to mention, goes as a proverb for his enormous riches. midas, king of phrygia, had such abundance of the precious metals, that he was said by the poets to have the power of turning whatever he touched into gold. the tomb of mausolus, king of caria, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. it was the same with the greek colonies which were scattered along its coasts; they are renowned for opulence, for philosophy, and for the liberal and the fine arts. homer among the poets, thales among philosophers, herodotus, the father of history, hippocrates, the oracle of physicians, apelles, the prince of painters, were among their citizens; and pythius, who presented one of the persian kings with a plane-tree and a vine of massive gold, was in his day, after those kings, the richest man in the known world. then come the many splendid cities founded by the successors of alexander, through its extent; and the powerful and opulent kingdoms, greek or barbarian, of pontus, and bithynia, and pergamus--pergamus, with its library of , choice volumes. later still, the resources of the country were so well recognised, that it was the favourite prey of the roman statesmen, who, after involving themselves in enormous debts in the career of ambition, needed by extortion and rapine to set themselves right with their creditors. next it became one of the first seats of christianity; st. luke in the acts of the apostles relates to us the apostolic labours of st. paul there in town and country; st. john wrote the apocalypse to the churches of seven of its principal cities; and st. peter, his first epistle to christians scattered through its provinces. it was the home of some of the greatest saints, martyrs, and doctors of the early ages: there first, in bithynia, the power of christianity manifested itself over a heathen population; there st. polycarp was martyred, there st. gregory thamaturgus converted the inhabitants of pontus; there st. gregory nazianzen, st. gregory nyssen, st. basil, and st. amphilochius preached and wrote. there were held three of the first four councils of the church, at chalcedon, at ephesus, and at nicæa, the very city afterwards profaned by the palace of the sultan. it abounded in the gifts of nature, for food, utility, or ornament; its rivers ran with gold, its mountains yielded the most costly marbles; it had mines of copper, and especially of iron; its plains were fruitful in all kinds of grain, in broad pastures and luxuriant woods, while its hills were favourable to the olive and the vine. such was that region, once celebrated for its natural advantages, for its arts, its splendour, as well as for its gifts of grace; and the misery and degradation which are at present imprinted on the very face of the soil are the emblems of that worse ruin which has overtaken the souls of its children. i have already referred to the journal of dr. chandler, who saw it, even in its western coast, overrun by the hideous tents of the turcomans. another traveller of late years[ ] tells us of that ancient bithynia, which runs along the black sea, a beautiful and romantic country, intersected with lofty mountains and fertile valleys, and abounding in rivers and forests. the luxuriance of the pastures, he says, and the richness of the woods, often reminded him of an english gentleman's park. such is it as nature has furnished it for the benefit of man; but he found its forests covered with straggling turcomans and numerous flocks of goats. as he was passing through phrygia, the inhabitants smiled, when he asked for ruins, assuring him that the whole country was overspread with them. there too again he found a great part of its face covered with the roving turcomans, "a boisterous and ignorant race, though much more honourable and hospitable," he adds, "than the inhabitants of the towns." mr. alison tells us that when the english fleet, in , was stationed on the southern coast, some sailors accidentally set fire to a thick wood, and the space thus left bare was studded all along with the ruins of temples and palaces. a still more recent traveller[ ] corroborates this testimony. striking inland from smyrna, he found "the scenery extremely beautiful, and the land," he continues, "which is always rich, would be valuable, if sufficiently cultivated, but it is much neglected." in another part of the country, he "rode for at least three miles through a ruined city, which was one pile of temples, theatres, and buildings, vying with each other in splendour." now here, you will observe, i am not finding fault with the mere circumstance that the scenes of ancient grandeur should abound in ruins. buildings will decay; old buildings will not answer new uses; there are ruins enough in europe; but the force of the argument lies in this, that in these countries there are ruins and nothing else; that the old is gone, and has not been replaced by the new. so was it about smyrna; and so too about sardis: "its situation," he says, "is very beautiful, but the country over which it looks is now almost deserted, and the valley is become a swamp. its little rivers of clear water, after turning a mill or two, serve only to flood, instead of draining and beautifying the country." his descriptions of the splendour of the scenery, yet of the desolation of the land, are so frequent that i should not be able to confine my extracts within bounds, did i attempt to give them all. he speaks of his route as lying through "a rich wilderness" of ruins. sometimes the landscape "so far exceeded the beauty of nature, as to seem the work of magic." again, "the splendid view passed like a dream; for the continual turns in the road, and the increasing richness of the woods and vegetation, soon limited my view to a mere foreground. nor was this without interest; on each projecting rock stood an ancient sarcophagus; and the trees half concealed the lids and broken sculpture of innumerable tombs." the gifts of nature remain; he was especially struck with the trees. "we traversed the coast," he says, "through woods of the richest trees, the planes being the handsomest to be found in this or perhaps any other part of the world. i have never seen such stupendous arms to any trees." everything was running wild; "the underwood was of myrtle, growing sometimes twenty feet high, the beautiful daphne laurel, and the arbutus; and they seemed contending for preëminence with the vine, clematis, and woodbine, which climbed to the very tops, and in many instances bore them down into a thicket of vegetation, impervious except to the squirrels and birds, which, sensible of their security in these retreats, stand boldly to survey the traveller." elsewhere he found the ground carpeted with the most beautiful flowers. a protestant missionary,[ ] in like manner, travelling in a different part of the country, speaks of the hedges of wild roses, the luxuriant gardens and fruit-trees, principally the cherry, the rich soil, the growth of beech, oak, and maple, the level meadows and swelling hills covered with the richest sward, and the rivulets of the purest water. no wonder that, as he tells us, "sitting down under a spreading walnut-tree, by the side of a murmuring mill stream, he was led by the charming woodland scenery around to reflect upon that mysterious providence, by which so beautiful a country has been placed under such a blighting government, in the hands of so ignorant and barbarous a people." the state of the population is in keeping with the neglected condition of the country. it is, down to the present time, wasting away; and that there are inhabitants at all seems in the main referable to merely accidental causes. on the road from angora to constantinople there were old people, twenty years since, who remembered as many as forty or fifty villages, where now there are none; and in the middle of the last century two hundred places had become forsaken in the tract lying between those two cities and smyrna.[ ] this desolation is no accident of a declining empire; it dates from the very time that a turk first came into the country, from the era of the seljukian sultans, eight hundred years ago. we have indirect but clear proof of it in the course of history following their expulsion from the country by the crusaders. for a while the greeks recovered their dominion in its western portion, and fixed their imperial residence at nicæa, which had been the capital of the seljukians. a vigorous prince mounted the throne, and the main object of his exertions and the special work of his reign was the recovery of the soil. we are told by an english historian,[ ] that he found the most fertile lands without either cultivation or inhabitants, and he took them into his own management. it followed that, in the course of some years, the imperial domain became the granary and garden of asia; and the sovereign made money without impoverishing his people. according to the nature of the soil, he sowed it with corn, or planted it with vines, or laid it down in grass: his pastures abounded with herds and flocks, horses and swine; and his speculation, as it may be called, in poultry was so happy, that he was able to present his empress with a crown of pearls and diamonds out of his gains. his example encouraged his nobles to imitation; and they learned to depend for their incomes on the honourable proceeds of their estates, instead of oppressing their people, and seeking favours from the court. such was the immediate consequence when man coöperated with the bountifulness of nature in this fruitful region; and it brings out prominently by its contrast the wretchedness of the turkish domination. . that wretchedness is found, not in asia minor only, but wherever turks are to be found in power. throughout the whole extent of their territory, if you believe the report of travellers, the peasantry are indigent, oppressed, and wretched.[ ] the great island of crete or candia would maintain four times its present population; once it had a hundred cities; many of its towns, which were densely populous, are now obscure villages. under the venetians it used to export corn largely; now it imports it. as to cyprus, from holding a million of inhabitants, it now has only , . its climate was that of a perpetual spring; now it is unwholesome and unpleasant; its cities and towns nearly touched one another, now they are simply ruins. corn, wine, oil, sugar, and the metals are among its productions; the soil is still exceedingly rich; but now, according to dr. clarke, in that "paradise of the levant, agriculture is neglected, inhabitants are oppressed, population is destroyed." cross over to the continent, and survey syria and its neighbouring cities; at this day the turks themselves are dying out; diarbekr, which numbered , souls in the middle of last century, forty years afterwards had dwindled to , . mosul had lost half its inhabitants; bagdad had fallen from , to , ; and bassora from , to , . if we pass on to egypt, the tale is still the same. "in the fifteenth century," says mr. alison, "egypt, after all the revolutions which it had undergone, was comparatively rich and populous; but since the fatal era of turkish conquest, the tyranny of the pashas has expelled industry, riches, and the arts." stretch across the width of africa to barbary, wherever there is a turk, there is desolation. what indeed have the shepherds of the desert, in the most ambitious effort of their civilization, to do with the cultivation of the soil? "that fertile territory," says robertson, "which sustained the roman empire, still lies in a great measure uncultivated; and that province, which victor called _speciositas totius terræ florentis_, is now the retreat of pirates and banditti." end your survey at length with europe, and you find the same account is to be given of its turkish provinces. in the morea, chateaubriand, wherever he went, beheld villages destroyed by fire and sword, whole suburbs deserted, often fifteen leagues without a single habitation. "i have travelled," says mr. thornton, "through several provinces of european turkey, and cannot convey an idea of the state of desolation in which that beautiful country is left. for the space of seventy miles, between kirk kilise and carnabat, there is not an inhabitant, though the country is an earthly paradise. the extensive and pleasant village of faki, with its houses deserted, its gardens overrun with weeds and grass, its lands waste and uncultivated, and now the resort of robbers, affects the traveller with the most painful sensations."[ ] even in wallachia and moldavia the population has been gradually decreasing, while of that rich country not more than a fortieth part is under tillage. in a word, the average population in the whole empire is not a fifth of what it was in ancient times. . here i am tempted to exclaim (though the very juxtaposition of two countries so different from each other in their condition needs an apology), i cannot help exclaiming, how different is the condition of that other peninsula in the centre of which is placed the see of peter! i am ashamed of comparing, or even contrasting, italy with asia minor--the seat of christian governments with the seat of a barbarian rule--except that, since i have been speaking of the tenderness which the popes have shown, according to their means, for the earth and its cultivators, there is a sort of fitness in pointing out that the result is in their case conformable to our just anticipation. besides, so much is uttered among us in disparagement of the governments of that beautiful country, that there is a reason for pressing the contrast on the attention of those, who in their hearts acknowledge little difference between the rulers of italy and of turkey. i think it will be instructive, then, to dwell upon the account given us of italy by an intelligent and popular writer of this day; nor need we, in doing so, concern ourselves with questions which he elsewhere discusses, such as whether italy has received the last improvements in agriculture, or in civil economy, or in finance, or in politics, or in mechanical contrivances; in short, whether the art of life is carried there to its perfection. systems and codes are to be tested by their results; let us put aside theories and disputable points; let us survey a broad, undeniable, important fact; let us look simply at the state both of the land and of the population in italy; let us take it as our gauge and estimate of political institutions; let us, by way of contrast, put it side by side of the state of land and population, as reported to us by travellers in turkey. mr. alison, then, in his most diligent and interesting history of europe,[ ] divides the extent of italy into three great districts, of mountain, plain, and marsh. the region of marsh lies between the apennines and the mediterranean; and here, i confess, he finds fault with the degree of diligence in reclaiming it exerted by its present possessors. he notices with dissatisfaction that the marshes of volterra are still as pestilential as in the days of hannibal; moreover, that the campagna of rome, once inhabited by numerous tribes, is now an almost uninhabited desert, and that the pontine marshes, formerly the abode of thirty nations, are now a pestilential swamp. i will not stop to remind you that the irruptions of barbarians like the turks, have been the causes of this desolation, that the existing governments had nothing to do with it, and that, on the contrary, they have made various efforts to overcome the evil. for argument's sake, i will allow them to be a reproach to the government, for they will be found to be only exceptions to the general state of the country. even as regards this low tract, he speaks of one portion of it, the plain of the clitumnus, as being rich, as in ancient days, in herds and flocks; and he enlarges upon the campagna of naples as "still the scene of industry, elegance, and agricultural riches. there," he says, "still, as in ancient times, an admirable cultivation brings to perfection the choicest gifts of nature. magnificent crops of wheat and maize cover the rich and level expanse; rows of elms or willows shelter their harvests from the too scorching rays of the sun; and luxuriant vines, clustering to the very tops of the trees, are trained in festoons from one summit to the other. on its hills the orange, the vine, and the fig-tree flourish in luxuriant beauty; the air is rendered fragrant by their ceaseless perfume; and the prodigy is here exhibited of the fruit and the flower appearing at the same time on the same stem." so much for that portion of italy which owes least to the labours of the husbandman: the second portion is the plain of lombardy, which stretches three hundred miles in length by one hundred and twenty in breadth, and which, he says, "beyond question is the richest and the most fertile in europe." this great plain is so level, that you may travel two hundred miles in a straight line, without coming to a natural eminence ten feet high; and it is watered by numerous rivers, the ticino, the adda, the adige, and others, which fall into the great stream of the po, the "king of rivers," as virgil calls it, which flows majestically through its length from west to east till it finds its mouth in the adriatic. it is obvious, from the testimony of the various travellers in the east, whom i have cited, what would be the fate of this noble plain under a turkish government; it would become nothing more or less than one great and deadly swamp. but mr. alison observes: "it is hard to say, whether the cultivation of the soil, the riches of nature, or the structures of human industry in this beautiful region, are most to be admired. an unrivalled system of agriculture, from which every nation in europe might take a lesson, has long been established over its whole surface, and two, and sometimes three successive crops annually reward the labours of the husbandman. indian corn is produced in abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords subsistence for a numerous and dense population. rice arrives at maturity to a great extent in the marshy districts; and an incomparable system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of the alps to every field, and in some places to every ridge, in the grass lands. it is in these rich meadows, stretching round lodi, and from thence to verona, that the celebrated parmesan cheese, known over all europe for the richness of its flavour, is made. the vine and the olive thrive in the sunny slopes which ascend from the plain to the ridges of the alps; and a woody zone of never-failing beauty lies between the desolation of the mountain and the fertility of the plain." . such is his language concerning the cultivation at present bestowed upon the great plain of italy; but after all it is for the third or mountainous region of the country, where art has to supply the deficiencies of nature, that he reserves his enthusiastic praises. after speaking of what nature really does for it in the way of vegetation and fruits, he continues: "an admirable terrace-cultivation, where art and industry have combined to overcome the obstacles of nature, has everywhere converted the slopes, naturally sterile and arid, into a succession of gardens, loaded with the choicest vegetable productions. a delicious climate there brings the finest fruits to maturity; the grapes hang in festoons from tree to tree; the song of the nightingale is heard in every grove; all nature seems to rejoice in the paradise which the industry of man has created. to this incomparable system of horticulture, which appears to have been unknown to the ancient romans, and to have been introduced into europe by the warriors who returned from the crusades, the riches and smiling aspect of tuscany and the mountain-region of italy are chiefly to be ascribed; for nothing can be more desolate by nature than the waterless declivities, in general almost destitute of soil, on which it has been formed. the earth required to be brought in from a distance, retaining walls erected, the steep slopes converted into a series of gentle inclinations, the mountain-torrent diverted or restrained, and the means of artificial irrigation, to sustain nature during the long droughts of summer, obtained. by the incessant labour of centuries this prodigy has been completed, and the very stony sterility of nature converted into the means of heightening, by artificial means, the heat of summer.... no room is lost in these little but precious freeholds; the vine extends its tendrils along the terrace walls ... in the corners formed by their meeting, a little sheltered nook is found, where fig-trees are planted, which ripen delicious fruit under their protection. the owner takes advantage of every vacant space to raise melons and vegetables. olives shelter it from the rains; so that, within the compass of a very small garden, he obtains olives, figs, grapes, pomegranates, and melons. such is the return which nature yields under this admirable system of management, that half the crop of seven acres is sufficient in general for the maintenance of a family of five persons, and the whole produce supports them all in rustic affluence. italy, in this delightful region, still realizes the glowing description of her classic historian three hundred years ago." the author i have quoted goes on next to observe that this diligent cultivation of the rock accounts for what at first sight is inexplicable, viz., the vast population, which is found, not merely in the valleys, but over the greater part of the ridges of the apennines, and the endless succession of villages and hamlets which are perched on the edge or summit of rocks, often, to appearance, scarcely accessible to human approach. he adds that the labour never ends, for, if a place goes out of repair, the violence of the rain will soon destroy it. "stones and torrents wash down the soil; the terraces are broken through; the heavy rains bring down a shapeless mass of ruins; everything returns rapidly to its former state." thus it is that parts of palestine at present exhibit such desolate features to the traveller, who wonders how it ever could have been the rich land described in scripture; till he finds that it was this sort of cultivation which made it what it was, that this it was the crusaders probably saw and imported into europe, and this that the ruthless turks in great measure laid waste. lastly, he speaks of the population of italy; as to the towns, it has declined on account of the new channels of commerce which nautical discovery has opened, to the prejudice of the marts and ports of the middle ages. in spite of this, however, he says, "that the provinces have increased both in riches and inhabitants, and the population of italy was never, either in the days of the emperors, or of the modern republics, so considerable as it is at the present moment. in the days of napoleon, it gave , to the square marine league, a density greater than that of either france or england at that period. this populousness of italy," he adds, "is to be explained by the direction of its capital to agricultural investment, and the increasing industry with which, during a long course of centuries, its inhabitants have overcome the sterility of nature." such is the contrast between italy under its present governments and asia minor under the turks; and can we doubt at all, that, if the turks had conquered italy, they would have caused the labours of the agriculturist and the farmer to cease, and have reduced it to the level of their present dominions? footnotes: [ ] vid. a beautiful passage in cardinal wiseman's late lecture at liverpool. [ ] vid. murray's asia. [ ] sir charles fellows. [ ] vid. smith and dwight's travels. [ ] eclectic review, dec., . [ ] gibbon. [ ] alison on population, vol. i. p. , etc. [ ] vol. i., p. , note. [ ] alison, ch. xx., § . lecture vi. _the pope and the turk._ . and now, having dwelt upon the broad contrast which exists between christendom and turkey, i proceed to give you some general idea of the ottoman turks, who are at present in power, as i have already sketched the history of the seljukian. we left off with the crusaders victorious in the holy land, and the seljukian sultan, the cousin of malek shah, driven back from his capital over against constantinople, to an obscure town on the cilician border of asia minor. this is that sultan soliman, who plays so conspicuous a part in tasso's celebrated poem of "jerusalem delivered,"-- that solyman, than whom there was not any of all god's foes more rebel an offender; nay, nor a giant such, among the many whom earth once bore, and might again engender; the turkish prince, who first the greeks expelling, fixed at nicæa his imperial dwelling. and then he made his infidel advances from phrygian sangar to meander's river; lydia and mysia, humbled in war's chances, bithynia, pontus, hymned the arch-deceiver; but when to asia passed the christian lances, to battle with the turk and misbeliever, he, in two fields, encountered two disasters, and so he fled, and the vexed land changed masters. two centuries of military effort followed, and then the contest seemed over; the barbarians of the north destroyed, and europe free. it seemed as though the turks had come to their end and were dying out, as the saracens had died out before them, when suddenly, when the breath of the last seljukian sultan was flitting at iconium, and the crusaders had broken their last lance for the holy sepulchre, on the th of july, , the rule and dynasty of the ottomans rose up from his death-bed. . othman, the founder of the line and people, who take from him the name of ottoman or osmanli, was the grandson of a nomad turk, or turcoman, who, descending from the north by sogdiana and the oxus, took the prescriptive course (as i may call it) towards social and political improvement. his son, othman's father, came into the service of the last sultan of the seljukian line, and governed for fifty-two years a horde of families. that line of sovereigns had been for a time in alliance with the greek emperors; but othman inherited the fanaticism of the desert, and, when he succeeded to his father's power, he proclaimed a gazi, or holy war, against the professors of christianity. suddenly, like some beast of prey, he managed to leap the mountain heights which separated the greek province from the mahomedan conquests, and he pitched himself in broussa, in bithynia, which remained from that time the turkish capital, till it was exchanged for adrianople and constantinople. this was the beginning of a long series of conquests lasting about years, till the ottomans became one of the first, if not the first power, not only of asia, but of the world. these conquests were achieved during the reigns of ten great sultans, the average length of whose reigns is as much as twenty-six years, an unusual period for military sovereigns, and both an evidence of the stability, and a means of the extension, of their power. then came the period of their decline, and we are led on through the space of another years, up to our own day, when they seem on the verge of some great reverse or overthrow. in this second period they have had as many as twenty-one sultans, whose average reigns are only half the length of those who preceded them, and afford as cogent an argument of their national disorder and demoralization. of these twenty-one, five have been strangled, three have been deposed, and three have died of excess; of the remaining ten, four only have attained the age of man, and these come together in the course of the last century; two others have died about the age of thirty, and three about the age of fifty. the last, the thirty-first from othman, is the present sultan, who came to the throne as a boy, and is described at that time by an english traveller, as one of the most "sickly, pale, inanimate, and unmanly youths he ever saw,"[ ] and who has this very year just reached the average length of the reign of his twenty predecessors. the names of the ottoman sultans are more familiar to us and more easy to recollect than other oriental sovereigns, partly from their greater euphony as europeans read them, partly from their recurrence again and again in the catalogue. there are four mahomets, four mustaphas, four amuraths or murads, three selims, three achmets, three othmans, two mahmoods, two solimans, and two bajazets.[ ] i have already described othman, the founder of the line, as a soldier of fortune in the seljukian service; and, in spite of the civilizing influences of the country, the people, and the religion, to which he had attached himself, he had not as yet laid aside the habits of his ancestors, but was half shepherd, half freebooter. nor is it likely that any of his countrymen would be anything else, as long as they were still in war and in subordinate posts. peace must precede the enjoyment, and power the arts of government; and the very readiness with which his followers left their nomad life, as soon as they had the opportunity, shows that the means of civilization which they had enjoyed, had not been thrown away on them. the soldiers of zingis, when laden with booty, and not till then, cried out to be led back, and would fight no more; tamerlane, at the end of fifty years, began to be a magnificent king. in like manner, othman observed the life of a turcoman, till he became a conqueror; but, as soon as he had crossed mount olympus, and found himself in the greek territory as a master, he was both willing and able to accommodate himself to a pomp and luxury to which a mere turcoman was unequal. he bade adieu to his fastnesses in the heights, and he began to fortify the towns and castles which he had heretofore pillaged. conquest and civilization went hand in hand; his successor, orchan, selected a capital, which he ornamented with a mosque, a hospital, a mint, and a college; he introduced professors of the sciences, and, what was as great a departure from tartar habits, he raised a force of infantry, among his captives (in anticipation of the janizaries, formed soon after), and he furnished himself with a train of battering engines. more strange still, he gained the greek emperor's daughter in marriage, a christian princess; and lastly, he crossed over into europe under cover of friendship to the court of constantinople, and possessed himself of gallipoli, the key of the hellespont. his successors gained first roumelia, that is, the country round constantinople, as far as the balkan, with adrianople for a capital; then they successively swept over moldavia, servia, bulgaria, greece, and the morea. then they gained a portion of hungary; then they took constantinople, just years ago this very year. meanwhile they had extended their empire into syria, egypt, and along the coast of africa. and thus at length they more than half encompassed the mediterranean, from the straits of gibraltar to the gulf of venice, and reigned in three quarters of the world. . now you may ask me, what were christians doing in europe all this while? what was the holy father about at rome, if he did not turn his eyes, as heretofore, on the suffering state of his asiatic provinces, and oppose some rampart to the advance of the enemy upon constantinople? and how has he been the enduring enemy of the turk, if he acquiesced in the turk's long course of victories? alas! he often looked towards the east, and often raised the alarm, and often, as i have said, attempted by means of the powers of christendom, what his mission did not give him arms to do himself. but he was impeded and embarrassed by so many and such various difficulties, that, if i proposed to go through them, i should find myself engaged in a history of europe during those centuries. i will suggest some of them, though i can do no more. . first of all, then, i observe generally, that the pope, in attempting to save constantinople and its empire, was attempting to save a fanatical people, who had for ages set themselves against the holy see and the latin world, and who had for centuries been under a sentence of excommunication. they hated and feared the catholics, as much as they hated and feared the turks, and they contemned them too, for their comparative rudeness and ignorance of literature; and this hatred and fear and contempt were grafted on a cowardly, crafty, insincere, and fickle character of mind, for which they had been notorious from time immemorial. it was impossible to save them without their own cordial coöperation; it was impossible to save them in spite of themselves. these odious traits and dispositions had, in the course of the two hundred years during which the crusades lasted, borne abundant fruits and exhibited themselves in results intolerable to the warlike multitudes who had come to their assistance. for two hundred years "each spring and summer had produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the holy land;"[ ] and what had been the effect upon the greeks of such prodigality of succour? what satisfaction, what gratitude had they shown for an undertaking on the part of the west, which ought properly to have been their own, and which the west commenced, because the east asked it? when the celebrated peter the hermit was in constantinople, he would have addressed himself first of all to its imperial master; and not till the patriarch of the day showed the hopelessness of seeking help from a vicious and imbecile court, did he cry out: "i will rouse the nations of europe in your cause." the emperors sought help themselves instead of lending it. again and again, in the course of the holy wars, did they selfishly betake themselves to the european capitals; and they made their gain of the successes of the crusaders, as far as they had opportunity, as the jackal follows the lion; but from the very first, their pride was wounded, and their cowardice alarmed, at the sight of their protectors in their city and provinces, and they took every means to weaken and annoy the very men whom they had invited. in the great council of placentia, summoned by urban the second, before the crusades were yet begun, in the presence of latin bishops, , inferior clergy, and , laity, the ambassadors of the greek emperor had been introduced, and they pleaded the distress of their sovereign and the danger of their city, which the misbelievers already were threatening.[ ] they insisted on its being the policy of the latin princes to repel the barbarian in asia rather than when he was in the heart of europe, and drew such a picture of their own miseries, that the vast assembly burst into tears, and dismissed them with the assurance of their most zealous coöperation. yet what, i say, was the reception which the cowardly suppliants had given to their avengers and protectors? from the very first, they threw difficulties in the way of their undertaking. when the heroic godfrey and his companions in arms arrived in the neighbourhood of constantinople, they found themselves all but betrayed into a dangerous position, where they might either have been starved, or been easily attacked. when at length they had crossed over into asia, the crusaders found themselves without the means of sustenance. they had bargained for a fair market in the greek territories; but the imperial court allowed the cities which they passed by to close their gates upon them, to let down to them from the wall an insufficient supply of food, to mix poisonous ingredients in their bread, to give them base coin, to break down the bridges before them, and to fortify the passes, and to mislead them by their guides, to give information of their movements to the turk, to pillage and murder the stragglers, and to hang up their dead bodies on gibbets along the highway. the greek clergy preached against them as heretics and schismatics and dogs; the patriarch and the bishops spoke of their extermination as a merit, and their priests washed and purified the altars where the latin priests had said mass. nay, the emperors formed a secret alliance with turks and saracens against them, and the price at which they obtained it, was the permission of erecting a mosque in constantinople. as time went on, they did not stop even here. a number of latin merchants had settled at constantinople, as our own merchants now are planted all over the cities of the continent. the greek populace rose against them; and the emperor did not scruple to send his own troops to aid the rioters. the latins were slaughtered in their own homes and in the streets; their clergy were burned in the churches, their sick in the hospitals, and their whole quarter reduced to ashes; nay, , of the survivors were sold into perpetual slavery to the turks. they cut off the head of the cardinal legate, and tied it to the tail of a dog, and then chanted a _te deum_. what could be said to such a people? what could be made of them? the turks might be a more powerful and energetic, but could not be a more virulent, a more unscrupulous foe. it did not seem to matter much to the latin whether turk or greek was lord of constantinople; and the greek justified the indifference of the latin by declaring that he would rather have the turban in constantinople than the tiara. . it is the nature of crime to perpetuate itself, and the atrocities of the greeks brought about a retaliation from the latins. twenty years after the events i have been relating, the crusading hosts turned their arms against the greeks, and besieged and gained possession of constantinople; and, though their excesses seem to have been inferior to those which provoked them, it is not to be supposed that a city could be taken by a rude and angry multitude, without the occurrence of innumerable outrages. it was pillaged and disfigured; and the pope had to publish an indignant protest against the work of his own adherents and followers. he might well be alarmed and distressed, not only for the crime itself, but for its bearing on the general course of the crusades; for, if it was difficult under any circumstances to keep the greeks in a right course, it was doubly difficult, when they had been injured, even though they were the original offenders. . . but there were other causes, still less satisfactory than those i have mentioned, tending to nullify all the pope's efforts to make head against the barbarian power. i have said that the period of the ottoman growth was about years; and this period, viz., the fourteenth and fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries, was the most disastrous and melancholy in the internal history of the church of any that can be named. it was that miserable period, which directly prepared the way for protestantism. the resistance to the pope's authority, on the part of the states of europe generally, is pretty nearly coincident with the rise of the ottomans. heresy followed; in the middle of the fourteenth century, the teaching of wickliffe gained ground in england; huss and others followed on the continent; and they were succeeded by luther. that energy of popes, those intercessions of holy men, which hitherto had found matter in the affairs of the east, now found a more urgent incentive in the troubles which were taking place at home. . the increase of national prosperity and strength, to which the alienation of kings and states from the holy see must be ascribed, in various ways indisposed them to the continuance of the war against the misbelievers. rulers and people, who were increasing in wealth, did not like to spend their substance on objects both distant and spiritual. wealth is a present good, and has a tendency to fix the mind on the visible and tangible, to the prejudice of both faith and secular policy. the rich and happy will not go to war, if they can help it; and trade, of course, does not care for the religious tenets of those who offer to enter into relations with it, whether of interchange or of purchase. nor was this all; when nations began to know their own strength, they had a tendency to be jealous of each other, as well as to be indifferent to the interests of religion; and the two most valiant nations of europe, france and england, gave up the holy wars, only to go to war one with another. as in the twelfth century, we read of coeur de lion in palestine, and in the thirteenth, of st. louis in egypt, so in the fourteenth do we read the sad tale of poitiers and cressy, and in the fifteenth of agincourt. people are apt to ask what good came of the prowess shown at ascalon or damietta; forgetting that they should rather ask themselves what good came of the conquests of our edwards and henries, of which they are so proud. if richard's prowess ended in his imprisonment in germany, and st. louis died in africa, yet there is another history which ends as ingloriously in the maid of orleans, and the expulsion of tyrants from a soil they had usurped. in vain did the popes attempt to turn the restless destructiveness of the european commonwealth into a safer channel. in vain did the legates of the holy see interpose between edward of england and the french king; in their very presence was a french town delivered over by the english conqueror to a three days' pillage.[ ] in vain did one pope take a vow of never-dying hostility to the turks; in vain did another, close upon his end, repair to the fleet, that "he might, like moses, raise his hands to god during the battle;"[ ] christian was to war with christian, not with infidel. the suppliant greek emperor in one of his begging missions, as they may be called, came to england: it was in the reign of henry the fourth, but henry could do nothing for him. he had usurped the english crown, and could not afford to rescue the holy sepulchre, with so precarious a position at home. however, he was under some kind of promise to take the cross, which is signified in the popular story, that he had expected to die at jerusalem, whereas he died in his palace at westminster instead, in the jerusalem chamber. it is said, too, that he was actually meditating a crusade, and had ordered galleys to be prepared, when he came to his end.[ ] his son, henry the fifth, crossed the channel to conquer france, just at the very, the only time, when the ottoman reverses gave a fair hope of the success of christendom. when premature death overtook him, and he had but two hours to live,[ ] he ordered his confessor to recite the seven penitential psalms; and, when the verse was read about building the walls of jerusalem, the word caught his ear; he stopped the reader, and observed that he had proposed to conquer jerusalem, and to have rebuilt it, had god granted him life. indeed, he had already sent a knight to take a survey of the towns and country of syria, which is still extant. alas, that good intentions should only become strong in moments of sickness or of death! a like necessary or unnecessary attention, as the case might be, to national concerns and private interests, prevailed all over europe. in the same century[ ] charles the seventh of france forbade the preaching of a crusade in his dominions, lest it should lay him open to the attacks of the english. alfonso of portugal promised to join in a holy war, and retracted. alfonso of arragon and sicily took the cross, and used the men and money raised for its objects in a war against the genoese. the bohemians would not fight, unless they were paid; and the germans affected or felt a fear that the pope would apply the sums they contributed for some other purpose. . alas! more must be said; it seldom happens that the people go wrong, without the rulers being somewhere in fault, nor is the portion of history to which i am referring an exception. it must be confessed that, at the very time the turks were making progress, the christian world was in a more melancholy state than it had ever been either before or since. the sins of nations were accumulating that heavy judgment which fell upon them in the ottoman conquests and the reformation. there were great scandals among bishops and priests, as well as heresy and insubordination. as to the pontiffs who filled the holy see during that period, i will say no more than this, that it did not please the good providence of god to raise up for his church such heroic men as st. leo, of the fifth, and st. gregory, of the eleventh century. for a time the popes removed from italy to france; then, when they returned to rome, there was a schism in the papacy for nearly forty years, during which time the populations of europe were perplexed to find the real successor of st. peter, or even took the pretended pope for the true one. . such was the condition of christendom, thus destitute of resources, thus weakened by internal quarrels, thus bribed and retained (so to speak) by the temptations of the world, at the very time when the ottomans were pressing on its outposts. one moment occurred, and just one, in their history, when they might have been resisted with success. you will recollect that the seljukians were broken, not simply by the crusaders, but also, though not so early, by the terrible zingis. what zingis was to the seljukians, such, and more than such, was timour to the ottomans. it was in their full career of victory, and when everything seemed in their power, when they had gained the whole province of roumelia, which is round about constantinople, that a terrible reverse befell them. the sultan then on the throne was bajazet, surnamed ilderim, or the lightning, from the rapidity of his movements. he had extended his empire, or his sensible influence, from the carpathians to the euphrates; he had destroyed the remains of rival dynasties in asia minor, had carried his arms down to the morea, and utterly routed an allied christian army in hungary. elated with these successes, he put no bounds to his pride and ambition. he vaunted that he would subdue, not hungary only, but germany and italy besides; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of st. peter's, at rome. the apostle heard the blasphemy; and this mighty conqueror was not suffered to leave this world for his eternal habitation without divine infliction in evidence that he who made him, could unmake him at his will. the disposer of all things sent against him the fierce timour, of whom i have already said so much. one would have thought the two conquerors could not possibly have come into collision--timour, the lord of persia, khorasan, sogdiana, and hindostan, and bajazet, the sultan of syria, asia minor, and greece. they were both mahomedans; they might have turned their backs on each other, if they were jealous of each other, and might have divided the world between them. bajazet might have gone forward towards germany and italy, and timour might have stretched his conquests into china. but ambition is a spirit of envy as well as of covetousness; neither of them could brook a rival greatness. timour was on the ganges, and bajazet was besieging constantinople, when they interchanged the words of hatred and defiance. timour called bajazet a pismire, whom he would crush with his elephants; and bajazet retaliated with a worse insult on timour, by promising that he would capture his retinue of wives. the foes met at angora in asia minor; bajazet was defeated and captured in the battle, and timour secured him in an iron-barred apartment or cage, which, according to tartar custom, was on wheels, and he carried him about, as some wild beast, on his march through asia. can imagination invent a more intolerable punishment upon pride? is it not wonderful that the victim of it was able to live as many as nine months under such a visitation? this was at the beginning of the fifteenth century, shortly before young harry of monmouth, the idol of english poetry and loyalty, crossed the sea to kill the french at agincourt; and an opportunity was offered to christendom to destroy an enemy, who never before or since has been in such extremity of peril. for fourteen years a state of interregnum, or civil war, lasted in the ottoman empire; and the capture of constantinople, which was imminent at the time of bajazet's downfall, was anyhow delayed for full fifty years. had a crusade been attempted with the matured experience and subdued enthusiasm, which the trials of three hundred years had given to the european nations, the ottomans, according to all human probability, would have perished, as the seljukians before them. but, in the inscrutable decree of heaven, no such attempt was made; one attempt indeed was made too soon, and a second attempt was made too late, but none at the time. . the first of these two was set on foot when bajazet was in the full tide of his victories; and he was able, not only to defeat it, but, by defeating, to damp the hopes, and by anticipation, to stifle the efforts, which might have been used against him with better effect in the day of his reverses. in the year , eight years before bajazet's misfortunes, pope boniface the ninth proclaimed a crusade, with ample indulgences for those who engaged in it, to the countries which were especially open to the ottoman attack. in his bull, he bewails the sins of christendom, which had brought upon them that scourge which was the occasion of his invitation. he speaks of the massacres, the tortures, and slavery which had been inflicted on multitudes of the faithful. "the mind is horrified," he says, "at the very mention of these miseries; but it crowns our anguish to reflect, that the whole of christendom, which, if in concord, might put an end to these and even greater evils, is either in open war, country with country, or, if in apparent peace, is secretly wasted by mutual jealousies and animosities."[ ] the pontiff's voice, aided by the imminent peril of hungary and its neighbouring kingdoms, was successful. not only from germany, but even from france, the bravest knights, each a fortress in himself, or a man-of-war on land (as he may be called), came forward in answer to his call, and boasted that, even were the sky to fall, they would uphold its canopy upon the points of their lances. they formed the flower of the army of , men, who rallied round the king of hungary in the great battle of nicopolis. the turk was victorious; the greater part of the christian army were slain or driven into the danube; and a part of the french chivalry of the highest rank were made prisoners. among these were the son of the duke of burgundy; the sire de coucy, who had great possessions in france and england; the marshal of france (boucicault), who afterwards fell on the field of agincourt; and four french princes of the blood. bajazet spared twenty-five of his noblest prisoners, whom their wealth and station made it politic to except; then, summoning the rest before his throne, he offered them the famous choice of the koran or the sword. as they came up one by one, they one by one professed their faith in christ, and were beheaded in the sultan's presence. his royal and noble captives he carried about with him in his march through europe and asia, as he himself was soon to grace the retinue of timour. two of the most illustrious of them died in prison in asia. as to the rest, he exacted a heavy ransom from them; but, before he sent them away, he gave them a grand entertainment, which displayed both the barbarism and the magnificence of the asiatic. he exhibited before them his hunting and hawking equipage, amounting to seven thousand huntsmen and as many falconers; and, when one of his chamberlains was accused before him of drinking a poor woman's goat's milk, he literally fulfilled the "castigat auditque" of the poet, by having the unhappy man ripped open, in order to find in his inside the evidence of the charge. such was the disastrous issue of the battle of nicopolis; nor is it wonderful that it should damp the zeal of the christians and weaken the influence of the pope, for a long time to come; anyhow, it had this effect till the critical moment of the turkish misfortunes was over, and the race of othman was recovering itself after the captivity and death of its sultan. "whereas the turks might have been expelled from greece on the loss of their sultan," says rainaldus, "christians, torn to pieces by their quarrels and by schism, lost a fit and sufficient opportunity. whence it followed, that the wound inflicted upon the beast was not unto death, but he revived more ferocious for the devouring of the faithful." . however, christendom made a second attempt still, but when it was too late. the grandson of bajazet was then on the throne, one of the ablest of the sultans; and, though the allied christian army had considerable success against him at first, in vain was the bravery of hunniades, and the preaching of st. john capistran: the turk managed to negotiate with its leaders, to put them in the wrong, to charge them with perjury, and then to beat them in the fatal battle of varna, in which the king of hungary and poland and the pope's legate were killed, with , men. in vain after this was any attempt to make head against the enemy; in vain did pope after pope raise his warning voice and point to the judgment which hung over christendom; constantinople fell. . thus things did but go on worse and worse for the interest of christendom. even the taking of constantinople was not the limit of the ottoman successes. mahomet the conqueror, as he is called, was but the seventh of the great sultans, who carried on the fortunes of the barbarian empire. an eighth, a ninth followed. the ninth, selim, returned from his eastern conquests with the last of the caliphs in his company, and made him resign to himself the prerogatives of pontiff and lawgiver, which the caliph inherited from mahomet. then came a tenth, the greatest perhaps of all, soliman the magnificent, the contemporary of the emperor charles, francis the first of france, and henry the eighth of england. and an eleventh might have been expected, and a twelfth, and the power of the enemy would have become greater and greater, and would have afflicted the church more and more heavily; and what was to be the end of these things? what was to be the end? why, not a christian only, but any philosopher of this world would have known what was to be the end, in spite of existing appearances. all earthly power has an end; it rises to fall, it grows to die; and the depth of its humiliation issues out of the pride of its lifting up. this is what even a philosopher would say; he would not know whether soliman, the tenth conqueror, was also to be the last; but if not the tenth, he would be bold to say it would be the twelfth, who would close their victories, or the fifteenth, or the twentieth. but what a philosopher could not say, what a christian knows and enjoys, is this, that one earthly power there is which is something more than earthly, and which, while it dies in the individual, for he is human, is immortal in its succession, for it is divine. it was a remarkable question addressed by the savage tartars of zingis to the missionaries whom the pope sent them in the thirteenth century: "who was the pope?" they asked; "was he not an old man, five hundred years of age?"[ ] it was their one instinctive notion of the religion of the west; and the turks in their own history have often had cause to lament over its truth. togrul beg first looked towards the west, in the year ; twenty years later, between the years and ,[ ] his successor, malek shah, attracted the attention of the great st. gregory the seventh. time went on; they were thrown back by the impetuosity of the crusaders; they returned to the attack. fresh and fresh multitudes poured down from turkistan; the furious deluge of the tartars under zingis spread itself and disappeared; the turks sunk in it, but emerged; the race seemed indestructible; then othman began a new career of victory, as if there had never been an old one, and founded an empire, more stable, more coherent than any turkish rule before it. then followed sultan after sultan, each greater than his predecessor, while the line of popes had indeed many bright names to show, pontiffs of learning, and of piety, and of genius, and of zeal and energy; but still where was the destined champion of christendom, the holy, the inflexible, the lion-hearted, the successor of st. gregory, who in a luxurious and a self-willed age, among his other high duties and achievements, had the mission, by his prayers and by his efforts, of stopping the enemy in his full career, and of rescuing catholicism from the pollution of the blasphemer? the five hundred years were not yet completed. but the five hundred years at length were run out; the long-expected champion was at hand. he appeared at the very time when the ottoman crescent had passed its zenith and was beginning to descend the sky. the turkish successes began in the middle of the eleventh century; they ended in the middle of the sixteenth; in the middle of the sixteenth century, just five hundred years after st. gregory and malek shah, selim the sot came to the throne of othman, and st. pius the fifth to the throne of the apostle; pius became pope in , and selim became sultan in that very same year. o what a strange contrast, gentlemen, did rome and constantinople present at that era! neither was what it had been, but they had changed in opposite directions. both had been the seat of imperial power; rome, where heresy never throve, had exchanged its emperors for the succession of st. peter and st. paul; constantinople had passed from secular supremacy into schism, and thence into a blasphemous apostasy. the unhappy city, which with its subject provinces had been successively the seat of arianism, of nestorianism, of photianism, now had become the metropolis of the false prophet; and, while in the west the great edifice of the vatican basilica was rising anew in its wonderful proportions and its costly materials, the temple of st. sophia in the east was degraded into a mosque! o the strange contrast in the state of the inhabitants of each place! here in the city of constantine a god-denying misbelief was accompanied by an impure, man-degrading rule of life, by the slavery of woman, and the corruption of youth. but there, in the city which apostles had consecrated with their blood, the great and true reformation of the age was in full progress. there the determinations in doctrine and discipline of the great council of trent had lately been promulgated. there for twenty years past had laboured our own dear saint, st. philip, till he earned the title of apostle of rome, and yet had still nearly thirty years of life and work in him. there, too, the romantic royal-minded saint, ignatius loyola, had but lately died. and there, when the holy see fell vacant, and a pope had to be appointed in the great need of the church, a saint was present in the conclave to find in it a brother saint, and to recommend him for the chair of st. peter, to the suffrages of the fathers and princes of the church. . st carlo borromeo,[ ] the cardinal archbishop of milan, was the nephew of the pope who was just dead, and though he was only twenty-five years of age at the time, nevertheless, by the various influences arising out of the position which he held, and from the weight attached to his personal character, he might be considered to sway the votes of the college of cardinals, and to determine the election of a new pontiff. it is remarkable that cardinal alessandrino, as st. pius was then called, (from alexandria, in north italy, near which he was born,) was not the first object of his choice. his eyes were first turned on cardinal morone, who was in many respects the most illustrious of the sacred college, and had served the church on various occasions with great devotion, and with distinguished success. from his youth he had been reared up in public affairs, he had held many public offices, he had great influence with the german emperor, he had been apostolical legate at the council of trent. he had great virtue, judgment, experience, and sagacity. such, then, was the choice of st. carlo, and the votes were taken; but it seemed otherwise to the holy ghost. he wanted four to make up the sufficient number of votes. st. carlo had to begin again; and again, strange to say, the cardinal alessandrino still was not his choice. he chose cardinal sirleto, a man most opposite in character and history to morone. he was not nobly born, he was no man of the world, he had ever been urgent with the late pope not to make him cardinal. he was a first-rate scholar in hebrew, greek, and latin; versed in the scriptures, ready as a theologian. moreover, he was of a character most unblemished, of most innocent life, and of manners most popular and winning. st. pius as well as st. carlo advocated the cause of cardinal sirleto, and the votes were given a second time; a second time they came short. it was like holy samuel choosing eliab instead of david. then matters were in confusion; one name and another were mentioned, and no progress was made. at length and at last, and not till all others were thought of who could enter into the minds of the electors, the cardinal alessandrino himself began to attract attention. he seems not to have been known to the fathers of the conclave in general; a dominican friar, of humble rank, ever taken up in the duties of his rule and his special employments, living in his cell, knowing little or nothing of mankind--such a one st. carlo, the son of a prince and the nephew of a pope, had no means of knowing; and the intimacy, consequent on their coöperation in behalf of cardinal sirleto, was the first real introduction which the one saint had to the other. it was just at this moment that our own st. philip was in his small room at st. girolamo, with marcello ferro, one of his spiritual children, when, lifting up his eyes to heaven, and going almost into an ecstasy, he said: "the pope will be elected on monday." on one of the following days, as they were walking together, marcello asked him who was to be pope. philip answered, "come, i will tell you; the pope will be one whom you have never thought of, and whom no one has spoken of as likely; and that is cardinal alessandrino; and he will be elected on monday evening without fail." the event accomplished the prediction; the statesman and the man of the world, the accomplished and exemplary and amiable scholar, were put aside to make way for the saint. he took the name of pius. i am far from denying that st. pius was stern and severe, as far as a heart burning within and melting with the fulness of divine love could be so; and this was the reason that the conclave was so slow in electing him. yet such energy and vigour as his was necessary for his times. he was emphatically a soldier of christ in a time of insurrection and rebellion, when, in a spiritual sense, martial law was proclaimed. st. philip, a private priest, might follow his bent, in casting his net for souls, as he expressed himself, and enticing them to the truth; but the vicar of christ had to right and to steer the vessel, when it was in rough waters, and among breakers. a protestant historian on this point does justice to him. "when pope," he says, "he lived in all the austerity of his monastic life, fasted with the utmost rigour and punctuality, would wear no finer garments than before ... arose at an extremely early hour in the morning, and took no _siesta_. if we doubted the depth of his religious earnestness, we may find a proof of it in his declaration, that the papacy was unfavourable to his advance in piety; that it did not contribute to his salvation and to his attainment of paradise; and that, but for prayer, the burden had been too heavy for him. the happiness of a fervent devotion, which often moved him to tears, was granted him to the end of his life. the people were excited to enthusiasm, when they saw him walking in procession, barefooted and bareheaded, with the expression of unaffected piety in his countenance, and with his long snow-white beard falling on his breast. they thought there had never been so pious a pope; they told each other how his very look had converted heretics. pius was kind, too, and affable; his intercourse with his old servants was of the most confidential kind. at a former period, before he was pope, the count della trinità had threatened to have him thrown into a well, and he had replied, that it must be as god pleased. how beautiful was his greeting to this same count, who was now sent as ambassador to his court! 'see,' said he, when he recognized him, 'how god preserves the innocent.' this was the only way in which he made him feel that he recollected his enmity. he had ever been most charitable and bounteous; he kept a list of the poor of rome, whom he regularly assisted according to their station and their wants." the writer, after proceeding to condemn what he considers his severity, ends thus: "it is certain that his deportment and mode of thinking exercised an incalculable influence on his contemporaries, and on the general development of the church of which he was the head. after so many circumstances had concurred to excite and foster a religious spirit, after so many resolutions and measures had been taken to exalt it to universal dominion, a pope like this was needed, not only to proclaim it to the world, but also to reduce it to practice; his zeal and his example combined produced the most powerful effect."[ ] . it is not to be supposed that a saint on whom lay the "solicitude of all the churches," should neglect the tradition, which his predecessors of so many centuries had bequeathed to him, of zeal and hostility against the turkish power. he was only six years on the pontifical throne; and the achievement of which i am going to speak was among his last; he died the following year. at this time the ottoman armies were continuing their course of victory; they had just taken cyprus, with the active coöperation of the greek population of the island, and were massacring the latin nobility and clergy, and mutilating and flaying alive the venetian governor. yet the saint found it impossible to move christendom to its own defence. how, indeed, was that to be done, when half christendom had become protestant, and secretly perhaps felt as the greeks felt, that the turk was its friend and ally? in such a quarrel england, france, and germany were out of the question. at length, however, with great effort, he succeeded in forming a holy league between himself, king philip of spain, and the venetians. don john, of austria, king philip's half brother, was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces, and colonna admiral. the treaty was signed on the th of may; but such was the cowardice and jealousy of the parties concerned, that the autumn had arrived, and nothing of importance was accomplished. with difficulty were the armies united; with difficulty were the dissensions of the commanders brought to a settlement. meanwhile, the ottomans were scouring the gulf of venice, blockading the ports, and terrifying the city itself. but the holy pope was securing the success of his cause by arms of his own, which the turks understood not. he had been appointing a triduo of supplication at rome, and had taken part in the procession himself. he had proclaimed a jubilee to the whole christian world, for the happy issue of the war. he had been interesting the holy virgin in his cause. he presented to his admiral, after high mass in his chapel, a standard of red damask, embroidered with a crucifix, and with the figures of st. peter and st. paul, and the legend, "_in hoc signo vinces_." next, sending to messina, where the allied fleet lay, he assured the general-in-chief and the armament, that "if, relying on divine, rather than on human help, they attacked the enemy, god would not be wanting to his own cause. he augured a prosperous and happy issue; not on any light or random hope, but on a divine guidance, and by the anticipations of many holy men." moreover, he enjoined the officers to look to the good conduct of their troops; to repress swearing, gaming, riot, and plunder, and thereby to render them more deserving of victory. accordingly, a fast of three days was proclaimed for the fleet, beginning with the nativity of our lady; all the men went to confession and communion, and appropriated to themselves the plentiful indulgences which the pope attached to the expedition. then they moved across the foot of italy to corfu, with the intention of presenting themselves at once to the enemy; being disappointed in their expectations, they turned back to the gulf of corinth; and there at length, on the th of october, they found the turkish fleet, half way between lepanto and the echinades on the north, and patras, in the morea, on the south; and, though it was towards evening, strong in faith and zeal, they at once commenced the engagement. the night before the battle, and the day itself, aged as he was, and broken with a cruel malady, the saint had passed in the vatican in fasting and prayer. all through the holy city the monasteries and the colleges were in prayer too. as the evening advanced, the pontifical treasurer asked an audience of the sovereign pontiff on an important matter. pius was in his bedroom, and began to converse with him; when suddenly he stopped the conversation, left him, threw open the window, and gazed up into heaven. then closing it again, he looked gravely at his official, and said, "this is no time for business; go, return thanks to the lord god. in this very hour our fleet has engaged the turkish, and is victorious." as the treasurer went out, he saw him fall on his knees before the altar in thankfulness and joy. and a most memorable victory it was: upwards of , turks are said to have lost their lives in the engagement, and , were made prisoners. almost their whole fleet was taken. i quote from protestant authorities when i say that the sultan, on the news of the calamity, neither ate, nor drank, nor showed himself, nor saw any one for three days; that it was the greatest blow which the ottomans had had since timour's victory over bajazet, a century and a half before; nay, that it was the turning-point in the turkish history;[ ] and that, though the sultans have had isolated successes since, yet from that day they undeniably and constantly declined, that they have lost their _prestige_ and their self-confidence, and that the victories gained over them since are but the complements and the reverberations of the overthrow at lepanto. such was the catastrophe of this long and anxious drama; the hosts of turkistan and tartary had poured down from their wildernesses through ages, to be withstood, and foiled, and reversed by an old man. it was a repetition, though under different circumstances, of the history of leo and the hun. in the contrast between the combatants we see the contrast of the histories of good and evil. the enemy, as the turks in this battle, rushing forward with the terrible fury of wild beasts; and the church, ever combating with the energetic perseverance and the heroic obstinacy of st. pius. footnotes: [ ] formby's visit to the east. [ ] the three remaining of the thirty are orchan, ibrahim, and abdoul achmet. [ ] gibbon. [ ] gibbon. [ ] hume's history. [ ] ranke, vol. i [ ] turner's history. [ ] ibid. [ ] gieseler's text book. [ ] baronius. [ ] bergeron. [ ] gibbon says twenty years: sharon turner gives . [ ] bollandist. mai. . [ ] ranke's hist. of the popes. [ ] "the battle of lepanto arrested for ever the danger of mahometan invasion in the south of europe."--alison's europe, vol. ix. p. . "the powers of the turks and of their european neighbours were now nearly balanced; in the reign of amurath the third, who succeeded selim, the advantages became more evidently in favour of the christians; and since that time, though the turks have sometimes enjoyed a transitory success, the real stability of their affairs has constantly declined."--bell's geography, vol. ii, part . vid. also ranke, vol. i., pp. - . it is remarkable that it should be passed over by professor creasy in his "fifteen decisive battles." iv. the prospects of the turks. lecture vii. _barbarism and civilization._ . my object in the sketch which i have been attempting, of the history of the turks, has been to show the relation of this celebrated race to europe and to christendom. i have not been led to speak of them by any especial interest in them for their own sake, but by the circumstances of the present moment, which bring them often before us, oblige us to speak of them, and involve the necessity of entertaining some definite sentiments about them. with this view i have been considering their antecedents; whence they came, how they came, where they are, and what title they have to be there at all. when i now say, that i am proceeding to contemplate their future, do not suppose me to be so rash as to be hazarding any political prophecy; i do but mean to set down some characteristics in their existing state (if i have any right to fancy, that in any true measure we at the distance of some thousand miles know it), which naturally suggest to us to pursue their prospective history in one direction, not in another. now it seems safe to say, in the first place, that some time or other the ottomans will come to an end. all human power has its termination sooner or later; states rise to fall; and, secure as they may be now, so one day they will be in peril and in course of overthrow. nineveh, tyre, babylon, persia, egypt, and greece, each has had its day; and this was so clear to mankind , years ago, that the conqueror of carthage wept, as he gazed upon its flames, for he saw in them the conflagration of her rival, his own rome. "_fuit ilium._" the saracens, the moguls, have had their day; those european states, so great three centuries ago, spain and poland, venice and genoa, are now either extinct or in decrepitude. what is the lot of all states, is still more strikingly fulfilled in the case of empires; kingdoms indeed are of slow growth, but empires commonly are but sudden manifestations of power, which are as short-lived as they are sudden. even the roman empire, which is an exception, did not last beyond five hundred years; the saracenic three hundred; the spanish three hundred; the russian has lasted about a hundred and fifty, that is, since the czar peter; the british not a hundred; the ottoman has reached four or five. if there be an empire which does not at all feel the pressure of this natural law, but lasts continuously, repairs its losses, renews its vigour, and with every successive age emulates its antecedent fame, such a power must be more than human, and has no place in our present inquiry. we are concerned, not with any supernatural power, to which is promised perpetuity, but with the ottoman empire, famous in history, vigorous in constitution, but, after all, human, and nothing more. there is, then, neither risk nor merit in prophesying the eventual fall of the osmanlis, as of the seljukians, as of the gaznevides before them; the only wonder is that they actually have lasted as much as four hundred years. such will be the issue and the sum of their whole history; but, certain as this is, and confidently as it may be pronounced, nothing else can be prudently asserted about their future. times and moments are in the decrees of the all-wise, and known to him alone; and so are the occurrences to which they give birth. the only further point open to conjecture, as being not quite destitute of data for speculating upon it, is the particular course of events and quality of circumstances, which will precede the downfall of the turkish power; for, granting that that downfall is to come, it is reasonable to think it will take place in that particular way, for which in their present state we see an existing preparation, if such can be discerned, or in a way which at least is not inconsistent with the peculiarities of that present state. . hence, in speculating on this question, i shall take this as a reasonable assumption first of all, that the catastrophe of a state is according to its antecedents, and its destiny according to its nature; and therefore, that we cannot venture on any anticipation of the instruments or the conditions of its death, until we know something about the principle and the character of its life. next i lay down, that, whereas a state is in its very idea a society, and a society is a collection of many individuals made one by their participation in some common possession, and to the extent of that common possession, the presence of that possession held in common constitutes the life, and the loss of it constitutes the dissolution, of a state. in like manner, whatever avails or tends to withdraw that common possession, is either fatal or prejudicial to the social union. as regards the ottoman power, then, we have to inquire what its life consists in, and what are the dangers to which that life, from the nature of its constitution, is exposed. now, states may be broadly divided into _barbarous_ and _civilized_; their common possession, or life, is some object either of _sense_ or of _imagination_; and their bane and destruction is either _external_ or _internal_. and, to speak in general terms, without allowing for exceptions or limitations (for i am treating the subject scientifically only so far as is requisite for my particular inquiry), we may pronounce that _barbarous_ states live in a common _imagination_, and are destroyed _from without_; whereas _civilized_ states live in some common object of _sense_, and are destroyed from _within_. by _external_ enemies i mean foreign wars, foreign influence, insurrection of slaves or of subject races, famine, accidental enormities of individuals in power, and other instruments analogous to what, in the case of an individual, is called a violent death; by _internal_ i mean civil contention, excessive changes, revolution, decay of public spirit, which may be considered analogous to natural death. again, by objects of _imagination_, i mean such as religion, true or false (for there are not only false imaginations but true), divine mission of a sovereign or of a dynasty, and historical fame; and by objects of _sense_, such as secular interests, country, home, protection of person and property. i do not allude to the conservative power of habit when i speak of the social bond, because habit is rather the necessary result of possessing a common object, and protects all states equally, barbarous and civilized. nor do i include moral degeneracy among the instruments of their destruction, because this too attaches to all states, civilized and barbarous, and is rather a disposition exposing them to the influence of what is their bane, than a direct cause of their ruin in itself. . but what is meant by the words _barbarous_ and _civilized_, as applied to political bodies? this is a question which it will take more time to answer, even if i succeed in satisfying it at all. by "barbarism," then, i suppose, in itself is meant a state of nature; and by "civilization," a state of mental cultivation and discipline. in a state of nature man has reason, conscience, affections, and passions, and he uses these severally, or rather is influenced by them, according to circumstances; and whereas they do not one and all necessarily move in the same direction, he takes no great pains to make them agree together, but lets them severally take their course, and, if i may so speak, jostle into a sort of union, and get on together, as best they can. he does not improve his talents; he does not simplify and fix his motives; he does not put his impulses under the control of principle, or form his mind upon a rule. he grows up pretty much what he was when a child; capricious, wayward, unstable, idle, irritable, excitable; with not much more of habituation than that which experience of living unconsciously forces even on the brutes. brutes act upon instinct, not on reason; they are ferocious when they are hungry; they fiercely indulge their appetite; they gorge themselves; they fall into torpor and inactivity. in a like, but a more human way, the savage is drawn by the object held up to him, as if he could not help following it; an excitement rushes on him, and he yields to it without a struggle; he acts according to the moment, without regard to consequences; he is energetic or slothful, tempestuous or calm, as the winds blow or the sun shines. he is one being to-day, another to-morrow, as if he were simply the sport of influences or circumstances. if he is raised somewhat above this extreme state of barbarism, just one idea or feeling occupies the narrow range of his thoughts, to the exclusion of others. moreover, brutes differ from men in this; that they cannot invent, cannot progress. they remain in the use of those faculties and methods, which nature gave them at their birth. they are endowed by the law of their being with certain weapons of defence, and they do not improve on them. they have food, raiment, and dwelling, ready at their command. they need no arrow or noose to catch their prey, nor kitchen to dress it; no garment to wrap round them, nor roof to shelter them. their claws, their teeth, their viscera, are their butcher and their cook; and their fur is their wardrobe. the cave or the jungle is their home; or if it is their nature to exercise some architectural craft, they have not to learn it. but man comes into the world with the capabilities, rather than the means and appliances, of life. he begins with a small capital, but one which admits of indefinite improvement. he is, in his very idea, a creature of progress. he starts, the inferior of the brute animals, but he surpasses them in the long run; he subjects them to himself, and he goes forward on a career, which at least hitherto has not found its limit. even the savage of course in some measure exemplifies this law of human nature, and is lord of the brutes; and what he is and man is generally, compared with the inferior animals, such is man civilized compared with the barbarian. civilization is that state to which man's nature points and tends; it is the systematic use, improvement, and combination of those faculties which are his characteristic; and, viewed in its idea, it is the perfection, the happiness of our mortal state. it is the development of art out of nature, and of self-government out of passion, and of certainty out of opinion, and of faith out of reason. it is the due disposition of the various powers of the soul, each in its place, the subordination or subjection of the inferior, and the union of all into one whole. aims, rules, views, habits, projects; prudence, foresight, observation, inquiry, invention, resource, resolution, perseverance, are its characteristics. justice, benevolence, expedience, propriety, religion, are its recognized, its motive principles. supernatural truth is its sovereign law. such is it in its true idea, synonymous with christianity; and, not only in idea, but in matter of fact also, is christianity ever civilization, as far as its influence prevails; but, unhappily, in matter of fact, civilization is not necessarily christianity. if we would view things as they really are, we must bear in mind that, true as it is, that only a supernatural grace can raise man towards the perfection of his nature, yet it is possible,--without the cultivation of its spiritual part, which contemplates objects subtle, distant, delicate of apprehension, and slow of operation, nay, even with an actual contempt of faith and devotion, in comparison of objects tangible and present,--possible it is, i say, to combine in some sort the other faculties of man into one, and to progress forward, with the substitution of natural religion for faith, and a refined expediency or propriety for true morality, just as with practice a man might manage to run without an arm or without sight, and as the defect of one organ is sometimes supplied to a certain extent by the preternatural action of another. and this is, in fact, what is commonly understood by civilization, and it is the sense in which the word must be used here; not that perfection which nature aims at, and requires, and cannot of itself reach; but a second-rate perfection of nature, being what it is, and remaining what it is, without any supernatural principle, only with its powers of ratiocination, judgment, sagacity, and imagination fully exercised, and the affections and passions under sufficient control. such was it, in its higher excellences, in heathen greece and rome, where the perception of moral principles, possessed by the cultivated and accomplished intellect, by the mind of plato or isocrates, of cleanthes, seneca, epictetus, or antoninus, rivalled in outward pretensions the inspired teaching of the apostle of the gentiles. such is it at the present day, not only in its reception of the elements of religion and morals (when christianity is in the midst of it as an inexhaustible storehouse for natural reason to borrow from), but especially in a province peculiar to these times, viz., in science and art, in physics, in politics, in economics, and mechanics. and great as are its attainments at present, still, as i have said, we are far from being able to discern, even in the distance, the limit of its advancement and of its perfectibility. . it is evident from what has been said, that barbarism is a principle, not of society, but of isolation; he who will not submit even to himself, is not likely to volunteer a subjection to others; and this is more or less the price which, from the nature of the case, the members of society pay individually for the security of that which they hold in common. it follows, that no polity can be simply barbarous; barbarians may indeed combine in small bodies, as they have done in gaul, scythia, and america, from the gregariousness of our nature, from fellowship of blood, from accidental neighbourhood, or for self-preservation; but such societies are not bodies or polities; they are but the chance result of an occasion, and are destitute of a common life. barbarism has no individuality, it has no history; quarrels between neighbouring tribes, grudges, blood-shedding, exhaustion, raids, success, defeat, the same thing over and over again, this is not the action of society, nor the subject-matter of narrative; it neither interests the curiosity, nor leaves any impression on the memory. "_labitur et labetur_;" it forms and breaks again, like the billows of the sea, and is but a mockery of unity. when i speak of barbarian states, i mean such as consist of members not simply barbarous, but just so far removed from the extreme of savageness that they admit of having certain principles in common, and are able to submit themselves individually to the system which rises out of those principles; that they do recognize the ideas of government, property, and law, however imperfectly; though they still differ from civilized polities in those main points, which i have set down as analogous to the difference between brutes and the human species. as instinct is perfect after its kind at first, and never advances, whereas the range of the intellect is ever growing, so barbarous states are pretty much the same from first to last, and this is their characteristic; and civilized states, on the other hand, though they have had a barbarian era, are ever advancing further and further from it, and thus their distinguishing badge is progress. so far my line of thought leads me to concur in the elaborate remarks on the subject put forth by the celebrated m. guizot, in his "lectures on european civilization." civilized states are ever developing into a more perfect organization, and a more exact and more various operation; they are ever increasing their stock of thoughts and of knowledge: ever creating, comparing, disposing, and improving. hence, while bodily strength is the token of barbarian power, mental ability is the honourable badge of civilized states. the one is like ajax, the other like ulysses; civilized nations are constructive, barbarous are destructive. civilization spreads by the ways of peace, by moral suasion, by means of literature, the arts, commerce, diplomacy, institutions; and, though material power never can be superseded, it is subordinate to the influence of mind. barbarians can provide themselves with swift and hardy horses, can sweep over a country, rush on with a shout, use the steel and firebrand, and frighten and overwhelm the weak or cowardly; but in the wars of civilized countries, even the implements of carnage are scientifically constructed, and are calculated to lessen or supersede it; and a campaign becomes co-ordinately a tour of _savants_, or a colonizing expedition, or a political demonstration. when sesostris marched through asia to the euxine, he left upon his road monuments of himself, which have not utterly disappeared even at this day; and the memorials of the rule of the pharaohs are still engraved on the rocks of libya and arabia. alexander, again, in a later age, crossed from macedonia to asia with the disciples of aristotle in his train. his march was the diffusion of the arts and commerce, and the acquisition of scientific knowledge; the countries he passed through were accurately described, as he proceeded, and the intervals between halt and halt regularly measured.[ ] his naval armaments explored nearly the whole distance from attock on the upper indus to the isthmus of suez: his philosophers noted down the various productions and beasts of the unknown east; and his courtiers were the first to report to the western world the singular institutions of hindostan. again, while attila boasted that his horse's hoof withered the grass it trod on, and zingis could gallop over the site of the cities he had destroyed, seleucus, or ptolemy, or trajan, covered the range of his conquests with broad capitals, marts of commerce, noble roads, and spacious harbours. lucullus collected a magnificent library in the east, and cæsar converted his northern expeditions into an antiquarian and historical research. nor is this an accident in roman annals. she was a power pre-eminently military; yet what is her history but the most remarkable instance of a political development and progress? more than any power, she was able to accommodate and expand her institutions according to the circumstances of successive ages, extending her municipal privileges to the conquered cities, yielding herself to the literature of greece, and admitting into her bosom the rites of egypt and phrygia. at length, by an effort of versatility unrivalled in history, she was able to reverse one main article of her policy, and, as she had already acknowledged the intellectual supremacy of greece, so did she humble herself in a still more striking manner before a religion which she had persecuted. . if these remarks upon the difference between barbarism and civilization be in the main correct, they have prepared the way for answering the question which i have raised concerning the principle of life and the mode of dissolution proper or natural to barbarous and civilized powers respectively. ratiocination and its kindred processes, which are the necessary instruments of political progress, are, taking things as we find them, hostile to imagination and auxiliary to sense. it is true that a st. thomas can draw out a whole system of theology from principles impalpable and invisible, and fix upon the mind by pure reason a vast multitude of facts and truths which have no pretence to a bodily form. but, taking man as he is, we shall commonly find him dissatisfied with a demonstrative process from an undemonstrated premiss, and, when he has once begun to reason, he will seek to prove the point from which his reasoning starts, as well as that at which it arrives. thus he will be forced back from immediate first principles to others more remote, nor will he be satisfied till he ultimately reaches those which are as much within his own handling and mastery as the reasoning apparatus itself. hence it is that civilized states ever tend to substitute objects of sense for objects of imagination, as the basis of their existence. the pope's political power was greater when europe was semi-barbarous; and the divine right of the successors of the english st. edward received a death-blow in the philosophy of bacon and locke. at present, i suppose, our own political life, as a nation, lies in the supremacy of the law; and that again is resolvable into the internal peace, and protection of life and property, and freedom of the individual, which are its result; and these i call objects of sense. for the very same reason, objects of this nature will not constitute the life of a barbarian community; prudence, foresight, calculation of consequences do not enter into its range of mental operations; it has no talent for analysis; it cannot understand expediency; it is impressed and affected by what is direct and absolute. religion, superstition, belief in persons and families, objects, not proveable, but vivid and imposing, will be the bond which keeps its members together. i have already alluded to the divinity which in the imagination of the huns encircled the hideous form of attila. zingis claimed for himself or his ancestry a miraculous conception, and received from a prophet, who ascended to heaven, the dominion of the earth. he called himself the son of god; and when the missionary friars came to his immediate successor from the pope, that successor made answer to them, that it was the pope's duty to do him homage, as being earthly lord of all by divine right. it was a similar pretension, i need hardly say, which was the life of the mahometan conquests, when the wild saracen first issued from the arabian desert. so, too, in the other hemisphere, the caziques of aboriginal america were considered to be brothers of the sun, and received religious homage as his representatives. they spoke as the oracles of the divinity, and claimed the power of regulating the seasons and the weather at their will. this was especially the case in peru; "the whole system of policy," says robertson, "was founded on religion. the incas appeared, not only as a legislator, but as the messenger of heaven."[ ] elsewhere, the divine virtue has been considered to rest, not on the monarch, but on the code of laws, which accordingly is the social principle of the nation. the celts ascribed their legislation to mercury;[ ] as lycurgus and numa in sparta and rome appealed to a divine sanction in behalf of their respective institutions. this being the case, imperfect as is the condition of barbarous states, still what is there to overthrow them? they have a principle of union congenial to the state of their intellect, and they have not the ratiocinative habit to scrutinize and invalidate it. since they admit of no mental progress, what serves as a bond to-day will be equally serviceable to-morrow; so that apparently their dissolution cannot come from themselves. it is true, a barbarous people, possessed of a beautiful country, may be relaxed in luxury and effeminacy; but such degeneracy has no obvious tendency to weaken their faith in the objects in which their political unity consists, though it may render them defenceless against external attacks. and here indeed lies their real peril at all times; they are ever vulnerable from without. thus sparta, formed deliberately on a barbarian pattern, remained faithful to it, without change, without decay, while its intellectual rival was the victim of successive revolutions. at length its power was broken externally by the theban epaminondas; and by the restoration of messenia, the insurrection of the laconians, and the emancipation of the helots. agesilaus, at the time of its fall, was as good a spartan as any of his predecessors. again, the ancient empire of the huns in asia is said to have lasted , years; at length its wanton tyranny was put an end to by the chinese king plunging into the tartar desert, and thus breaking their power. thrace, again, a barbarous country, lasted many centuries, with kings of great vigour, with much external prosperity, and then succumbed, not to internal revolution, but to the permanent ascendancy of rome. similar too is the instance of pontus, and again of numidia and mauritania; they may have had great or accomplished sovereigns, but they have no history, except in the wars of their conquerors. great leaders are necessary for the prosperity, as great enemies for the destruction, of barbarians; they thrive, as they come to nought, by means of agents external to themselves. so again malek shah died, and his empire fell to pieces. hence, too, the unexpected and utter catastrophes which befall barbarous people, analogous to a violent death, which i have alluded to in speaking of the sudden rise and fall of tartar dynasties; for no one can anticipate results, which, instead of being the slow evolution of political principles, proceed from the accident of external quarrels and of the relative condition of rival powers. . far otherwise is the history of those states, in which the intellect, not prescription, is recognized as the ultimate authority, and where the course of time is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding course of change. such polities are ever in progress; at first from worse to better, and then from better to worse. in all human things there is a _maximum_ of advance, and that _maximum_ is not an established state of things, but a point in a career. the cultivation of reason and the spread of knowledge for a time develop and at length dissipate the elements of political greatness; acting first as the invaluable ally of public spirit, and then as its insidious enemy. barbarian minds remain in the circle of ideas which sufficed their forefathers; the opinions, principles, and habits which they inherited, they transmit. they have the _prestige_ of antiquity and the strength of conservatism; but where thought is encouraged, too many will think, and will think too much. the sentiment of sacredness in institutions fades away, and the measure of truth or expediency is the private judgment of the individual. an endless variety of opinion is the certain though slow result; no overpowering majority of judgments is found to decide what is good and what is bad; political measures become acts of compromise; and at length the common bond of unity in the state consists in nothing really common, but simply in the unanimous wish of each member of it to secure his own interests. thus the veterans of sylla, comfortably settled in their farms, refused to rally round pompey in his war with cæsar.[ ] thus the municipal cities in the provinces refused to unite together in a later age for the defence of the empire, then evidently on the way to dissolution.[ ] selfishness takes the place of loyalty, patriotism, and faith; parties grow and strengthen themselves; classes and ranks withdraw from each other more and more; the national energy becomes but a self-consuming fever, and but enables the constituent parts to be their own mutual destruction; and at length such union as is necessary for political life is found to be impossible. meanwhile corruption of morals, which is common to all prosperous countries, completes the internal ruin, and, whether an external enemy appears or not, the nation can hardly be considered any more a state. it is but like some old arch, which, when its supports are crumbled away, stands by the force of cohesion, no one knows how. it dies a natural death, even though some alaric or genseric happens to be at hand to take possession of the corpse. and centuries before the end comes, patriots may see it coming, though they cannot tell its hour; and that hour creates surprise, not because it at length is come, but because it has been so long delayed. i have been referring to the decline, as i before spoke of the progress, of the romans: the career of that people through twelve centuries is a drama of sustained interest and equable and majestic evolution; it has given scope for the most ingenious researches into its internal history. there one age is the parent of another; the elements and principles of its political system are brought out into a variety of powers with mutual relations; external events act and react with domestic affairs; manners and views change; excess of prosperity becomes the omen of misfortune to come; till in the words of the poet, "_suis et ipsa roma viribus ruit_." for how many philosophical histories has greece afforded opportunity! while the constitutional history of england, as far as it has hitherto gone, is a recognized subject-matter of scientific and professional teaching. the case is the same with the history of the medieval italian cities, of the medieval church, and of the saracenic empire. as regards the last of these instances, i am not alluding merely to the civil contentions and wars which took place in it, for such may equally happen to a barbarian state. cupidity and ambition are inherent in the nature of man; the gauls and british, the tribes of scythia, the seljukian turks, consisted each of a number of mutually hostile communities or kingdoms. what is relevant to my purpose in the history of the saracens is, that their quarrels often had an intellectual basis, and arose out of their religion. the white, the green, and the black factions, who severally reigned at cordova, cairo, and bagdad, excommunicated each other, and claimed severally to be the successors of mahomet. then came the fanatical innovation of the carmathians, who pretended to a divine mission to complete the religion of mahomet, as mahomet had completed christianity.[ ] they relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and pilgrimage; admitted the use of wine, and protested against the worldly pomp of the caliphs. they spread their tents along the coast of the persian gulf, and in no long time were able to bring an army of , men into the field. ultimately they took up their residence on the borders of assyria, syria, and egypt. as time went on, and the power of the caliphs was still further reduced, religious contention broke out in bagdad itself, between the rigid and the lax parties, and the followers of the abbassides and of ali. if we consult ancient history, the case is the same; the jews, a people of progress, were ruined, as appears on the face of scripture, by internal causes; they split into sects, pharisees, sadducees, herodians, essenes, as soon as the divine hand retired from the direct government of their polity; and they were fighting together in jerusalem when the romans were beleaguering its walls. nay, even the disunion, which was a special and divine punishment for their sins, was fulfilled according to this natural law which i am illustrating; it was the splendid reign of solomon, the era of literature, commerce, opulence, and general prosperity, which was the antecedent of fatal revolutions. if we turn to civilized nations of an even earlier date, the case is the same; we are accustomed indeed to associate chinese and egyptians with ideas of perpetual untroubled stability; but a philosophical historian, whom i shall presently cite, speaks far otherwise of those times when the intellect was prominently active. china was for many centuries the seat of a number of petty principalities, which were limited, not despotic; about years before our era it became one absolute monarchy. till then idolatry was unknown, and the doctrines of confucius were in honour: the first emperor ordered a general burning of books, burning at the same time between and of the followers of confucius, and persecuting the men of letters. a rationalist philosophy succeeded, and this again gave way to the introduction of the religion of buddha or fo, just about the time of our lord's crucifixion. at later periods, in the fifth and in the thirteenth centuries, the country was divided into two distinct kingdoms, north and south; and such was its state when marco polo visited it. it has been several times conquered by the tartars, and it is a remarkable proof of its civilization, that it has ever obliged them to adopt its manners, laws, and even language. china, then, has a distinct and peculiar internal history, and has paid to the full the penalty which, in the course of centuries, goes along with the blessings of civilization. "the whole history of china, from beginning to end," says frederic schlegel, "displays one continued series of seditions, usurpations, anarchy, changes of dynasty, and other violent revolutions and catastrophes."[ ] the history of egypt tells the same tale; "civil discord," he says, "existed there under various forms. the country itself was often divided into several kingdoms; and, even when united, we observe a great conflict of interests between the agricultural province of upper egypt, and the commercial and manufacturing province of the lower: as, indeed, a similar clashing of interests is often to be noticed in modern states. in the period immediately preceding the persian conquest, the caste of warriors, or the whole class of nobility, were decidedly opposed to the monarchs, because they imagined them to promote too much the power of the priesthood;"--in other words, their national downfall was not owing directly to an external cause, but to an internal collision of parties and interests;--"in the same way," continues the author i am quoting, "as the history of india presents a similar rivalry or political hostility between the brahmins and the caste of the cshatriyas. in the reign of psammatichus, the disaffection of the native nobility obliged this prince to take greek soldiers into his pay; and thus at length was the defence of egypt entrusted to an army of foreign mercenaries." he adds, which is apposite to my purpose, for i suppose he is speaking of civilized nations, "in general, states and kingdoms, before they succumb to a foreign conqueror, are, if not outwardly and visibly, yet secretly and internally, undermined." so much on the connexion between the civilization of a state and its overthrow from internal causes, or, what may be called, its succumbing to a natural death. i will only add, that i am but attempting to set down general rules, to which there may be exceptions, explicable or not. for instance, venice is one of the most civilized states of the middle age; but, by a system of jealous and odious tyranny, it continued to maintain its ground without revolution, when revolutions were frequent in the other italian cities; yet the very necessity of so severe a despotism shows us what would have happened there, if natural causes had been left to work unimpeded. . i feel i owe you, gentlemen, an apology for the time i have consumed in an abstract discussion; it is drawing to an end, but it still requires the notice of two questions, on which, however, i have not much to say, even if i would. first, can a civilized state become barbarian in course of years? and secondly, can a barbarian state ever become civilized? as to the former of these questions, considering the human race did start with society, and did not start with barbarism, and barbarism exists, we might be inclined at first sight to answer it in the affirmative; again, since christianity implies civilization, and is the recovery of the whole race of adam, we might answer the second in the affirmative also; but such resolutions of the inquiry are scarcely to the point. doubtless the human race may degenerate, doubtless it may make progress; doubtless men, viewed as individuals or as members of races or tribes, or as inhabitants of certain countries, may change their state from better to worse, or from worse to better: this, however, is not the question; but whether a given state, which has a certain political unity, can change the principle of that unity, and, without breaking up into its component parts, become barbarian instead of civilized, and civilized instead of barbarian. ( .) now as to the latter of these questions, it still must be answered in the affirmative under circumstances: that is, all civilized states have started with barbarism, and have gradually in the course of ages developed into civilization, unless there be any political community in the world, as china has by some been considered, representative of noe; and unless we consider the case of colonies, as constantinople or venice, fairly to form an exception. but the question is very much altered, when we contemplate a change in one or two generations from barbarism to civilization. the substitution of one form of political life for another, when it occurs, is the sort of process by which fossils take the place of animal substances, or strata are formed, or carbon is crystallized, or boys grow into men. christianity itself has never, i think, suddenly civilized a race; national habits and opinions cannot be cast off at will without miracle. hence the extreme jealousy and irritation of the members of a state with innovators, who would tamper with what the greeks called [greek: nomima], or constitutional and vital usages. hence the fury of pentheus against the mænades, and of the scythians against their king scylas, and the agitation created at athens by the destruction of the mercuries. hence the obstinacy of the roman statesmen of old, and of the british constituency now, against the catholic church; and the feeling is so far justified, that projected innovations often turn out, if not simply nugatory, nothing short of destructive; and though there is a great notion just now that the british constitution admits of being fitted upon every people under heaven, from the blacks to the italians, i do not know what has occurred to give plausibility to the anticipation. england herself once attempted the costume of republicanism, but she found that monarchy was part of her political essence. ( .) still less can the possibility be admitted of a civilized polity really relapsing into barbarism; though a state of things may be superinduced, which in many of its features may be thought to resemble it. in truth, i have not yet traced out the ultimate result of those internal revolutions which i have assigned as the incidental but certain evils, in the long run, attendant on civilization. that result is various: sometimes the over-civilized and degenerate people is swept from the face of the earth, as the roman populations in africa by the vandals; sometimes it is reduced to servitude, as the egyptians by the ptolemies, or the greeks by the turks; sometimes it is absorbed or included in new political combinations, as the northern italians by the lombards and franks; sometimes it remains unmolested on its own territory, and lives by the momentum, or the repute, or the habit, or the tradition of its former civilization. this last of course is the only case which bears upon the question i am considering; and i grant that a state of things does then ensue, which in some of its phenomena is like barbarism; china is an example in point. no one can deny its civilization; its diligent care of the soil, its cultivation of silk and of the tea-tree, its populousness, its canals, its literature, its court ceremonial, its refinement of manners, its power of persevering so loyally in its old institutions through so many ages, abundantly vindicate it from the reproach of barbarism. but at the same time there are tokens of degeneracy, which are all the stronger for being also tokens, still more striking than those i have hitherto mentioned, of its high civilization in times past. it has had for ages the knowledge of the more recent discoveries and institutions of the west, which have done so much for europe, yet it has been unable to use them, the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing. the littleness of the national character, its self-conceit, and its formality, are further instances of an effete civilization. they remind the observer vividly of the picture which history presents to us of the byzantine court before the taking of constantinople; or, again, of that _material_ retention of christian doctrine (to use the theological word), of which protestantism in its more orthodox exhibitions, and still more, of which the greek schism affords the specimen. either a state of deadness and mechanical action, or a restless ebb and flow of opinion and sentiment, is the symptom of that intellectual exhaustion and decrepitude, whether in politics or religion, which, if old age be a second childhood, may in some sense be called barbarism, and of which, at present, we are respectively reminded in china on the one hand, and in some southern states of europe on the other. these are the principles, whatever modifications they may require, which, however rudely adumbrated, i trust will suffice to enable me to contemplate the future of the ottoman empire. footnotes: [ ] murray's asia. [ ] robertson's america, books vi. and vii. [ ] univ. hist. anc., vol. xvi. [ ] merivale's rome, vol. ii. [ ] guizot's european civilization. [ ] gibbon, vol x. [ ] philosophy of history; robertson's translation. lecture viii. _the past and present of the ottomans._ whatever objections in detail may stand against the account i have been giving of barbarism and civilization--and i trust there are none which do not admit of removal--so far, i think, is clear, that, if my account be only in the main correct, the turkish power certainly is not a civilized, and is a barbarous power. the barbarian lives without principle and without aim; he does but reflect the successive outward circumstances in which he finds himself, and he varies with them. he changes suddenly, when their change is sudden, and is as unlike what he was just before, as one fortune or external condition is unlike another. he moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he remains in sloth and inactivity. he lives, and he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the world as he found it. and what the individual is, such is his whole generation; and as that generation, such is the generation before and after. no generation can say what it has been doing; it has not made the state of things better or worse; for retrogression there is hardly room; for progress, no sort of material. now i shall show that these characteristics of the barbarian are rudimental points, as i may call them, in the picture of the turks, as drawn by those who have studied them. i shall principally avail myself of the information supplied by mr. thornton and m. volney, men of name and ability, and for various reasons preferable as authorities to writers of the present day. . "the turks," says mr. thornton, who, though not blind to their shortcomings, is certainly favourable to them, "the turks are of a grave and saturnine cast ... patient of hunger and privations, capable of enduring the hardships of war, but not much inclined to habits of industry.... they prefer apathy and indolence to active enjoyments; but when moved by a powerful stimulus they sometimes indulge in pleasures in excess." "the turk," he says elsewhere, "stretched at his ease on the banks of the bosphorus, glides down the stream of existence without reflection on the past, and without anxiety for the future. his life is one continued and unvaried reverie. to his imagination the whole universe appears occupied in procuring him pleasures.... every custom invites to repose, and every object inspires an indolent voluptuousness. their delight is to recline on soft verdure under the shade of trees, and to muse without fixing the attention, lulled by the trickling of a fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and inhaling through their pipe a gently inebriating vapour. such pleasures, the highest which the rich can enjoy, are equally within the reach of the artizan or the peasant." m. volney corroborates this account of them:--"their behaviour," he says, "is serious, austere, and melancholy; they rarely laugh, and the gaiety of the french appears to them a fit of delirium. when they speak, it is with deliberation, without gestures and without passion; they listen without interrupting you; they are silent for whole days together, and they by no means pique themselves on supporting conversation. if they walk, it is always leisurely, and on business. they have no idea of our troublesome activity, and our walks backwards and forwards for amusement. continually seated, they pass whole days smoking, with their legs crossed, their pipes in their mouths, and almost without changing their attitude." englishmen present as great a contrast to the ottoman as the french; as a late english traveller brings before us, apropos of seeing some turks in quarantine: "certainly," he says, "englishmen are the least able to wait, and the turks the most so, of any people i have ever seen. to impede an englishman's locomotion on a journey, is equivalent to stopping the circulation of his blood; to disturb the repose of a turk on his, is to re-awaken him to a painful sense of the miseries of life. the one nation at rest is as much tormented as prometheus, chained to his rock, with the vulture feeding on him; the other in motion is as uncomfortable as ixion tied to his ever-moving wheel."[ ] . however, the barbarian, when roused to action, is a very different being from the barbarian at rest. "the turk," says mr. thornton, "is usually placid, hypochondriac, and unimpassioned; but, when the customary sedateness of his temper is ruffled, his passions ... are furious and uncontrollable. the individual seems possessed with all the ungovernable fury of a multitude; and all ties, all attachments, all natural and moral obligations, are forgotten or despised, till his rage subsides." a similar remark is made by a writer of the day: "the turk on horseback has no resemblance to the turk reclining on his carpet. he there assumes a vigour, and displays a dexterity, which few europeans would be capable of emulating; no horsemen surpass the turks; and, with all the indolence of which they are accused, no people are more fond of the violent exercise of riding."[ ] so was it with their ancestors, the tartars; now dosing on their horses or their waggons, now galloping over the plains from morning to night. however, these successive phases of turkish character, as reported by travellers, have seemed to readers as inconsistencies in their reports; thornton accepts the inconsistency. "the national character of the turks," he says, "is a composition of contradictory qualities. we find them brave and pusillanimous; gentle and ferocious; resolute and inconstant; active and indolent; fastidiously abstemious, and indiscriminately indulgent. the great are alternately haughty and humble, arrogant and cringing, liberal and sordid." what is this but to say in one word that we find them barbarians? according to these distinct moods or phases of character, they will leave very various impressions of themselves on the minds of successive beholders. a traveller finds them in their ordinary state in repose and serenity; he is surprised and startled to find them so different from what he imagined; he admires and extols them, and inveighs against the prejudice which has slandered them to the european world. he finds them mild and patient, tender to the brute creation, as becomes the children of a tartar shepherd, kind and hospitable, self-possessed and dignified, the lowest classes sociable with each other, and the children gamesome. it is true; they are as noble as the lion of the desert, and as gentle and as playful as the fireside cat. our traveller observes all this;[ ] and seems to forget that from the humblest to the highest of the feline tribe, from the cat to the lion, the most wanton and tyrannical cruelty alternates with qualities more engaging or more elevated. other barbarous tribes also have their innocent aspects--from the scythians in the classical poets and historians down to the lewchoo islanders in the pages of basil hall. . . but whatever be the natural excellences of the turks, progressive they are not. this sir charles fellows seems to allow: "my intimacy with the character of the turks," he says, "which has led me to think so highly of their moral excellence, has not given me the same favourable impression of the development of their mental powers. their refinement is of manners and affections; there is little cultivation or activity of mind among them." this admission implies a great deal, and brings us to a fresh consideration. observe, they were in the eighth century of their political existence when thornton and volney lived among them, and these authors report of them as follows:--"their buildings," says thornton, "are heavy in their proportions, bad in detail, both in taste and execution, fantastic in decoration, and destitute of genius. their cities are not decorated with public monuments, whose object is to enliven or to embellish." their religion forbids them every sort of painting, sculpture, or engraving; thus the fine arts cannot exist among them. they have no music but vocal; and know of no accompaniment except a bass of one note like that of the bagpipe. their singing is in a great measure recitative, with little variation of note. they have scarcely any notion of medicine or surgery; and they do not allow of anatomy. as to science, the telescope, the microscope, the electric battery, are unknown, except as playthings. the compass is not universally employed in their navy, nor are its common purposes thoroughly understood. navigation, astronomy, geography, chemistry, are either not known, or practised only on antiquated and exploded principles. as to their civil and criminal codes of law, these are unalterably fixed in the koran. their habits require very little furniture; "the whole inventory of a wealthy family," says volney, "consists in a carpet, mats, cushions, mattresses, some small cotton clothes, copper and wooden platters for the table, a mortar, a portable mill, a little porcelain, and some plates of copper tinned. all our apparatus of tapestry, wooden bedsteads, chairs, stools, glasses, desks, bureaus, closets, buffets with their plate and table services, all our cabinet and upholstery-work are unknown." they have no clocks, though they have watches. in short, they are hardly more than dismounted tartars still; and, if pressed by the powers of christendom, would be able, at very short warning, to pack up and turn their faces northward to their paternal deserts. you find in their cities barbers and mercers; saddlers and gunsmiths; bakers and confectioners; sometimes butchers; whitesmiths and ironmongers; these are pretty nearly all their trades. their inheritance is their all; their own acquisition is nought. their stuffs are from the classical greeks; their dyes are the old tyrian; their cement is of the age of the romans; and their locks may be traced back to solomon. they do not commonly engage either in agriculture or in commerce; of the cultivators of the soil i have said quite enough in a foregoing lecture, and their commerce seems to be generally in the hands of franks, greeks, or armenians, as formerly in the hands of the jews.[ ] the white huns took to commerce and diplomacy in the course of a century or two; the saracens in a shorter time unlearned their barbarism, and became philosophers and experimentalists; what have the turks to show to the human race for their long spell of prosperity and power? as to their warfare, their impracticable and unprogressive temperament showed itself even in the era of their military and political ascendancy, and had much to do, as far as human causes are concerned, with their defeat at lepanto. "the signal for engaging was no sooner given," says the writer in the "universal history," "than the turks with a hideous cry fell on six galeasses, which lay at anchor near a mile ahead of the confederate fleet." "with a hideous cry,"--this was the true barbarian onset; we find it in the red indians and the new zealanders; and it is noticed of the seljukians, the predecessors of the ottomans, in their celebrated engagement with the crusaders at dorylæum. "with horrible howlings," says mr. turner, "and loud clangour of drums and trumpets, the turks rushed on;" and you may recollect, the savage who would have murdered the bishop of bamberg, began with a shriek. however, as you will see directly, such an onset was as ignorant as it was savage, for it was made with a haughty and wilful blindness to the importance of firearms under their circumstances. the turks, in the hey-day of their victories and under their most sagacious leaders, had scorned and ignored the use of the then newly invented instruments of war. in truth, they had shared the prejudice against firearms which had been in the first instance felt by the semi-barbarous chivalry of europe. the knight-errant, as ariosto draws and reflects him, disdained so dishonourable a means of beating a foe. he looked upon the use of gunpowder, as mr. thornton reminds us, as "cruel, cowardly, and murderous;" because it gave an unfair and disgraceful advantage to the feeble or the unwarlike. such was the sentiment of the ottomans even in the reign of their great soliman. shortly before the battle of lepanto, a dalmatian horseman rode express to constantinople, and reported to the divan, that , turks had been surprised and routed by musqueteers. great was the indignation of the assembly against the unfortunate troops, of whom the messenger was one. but he was successful in his defence of himself and his companions. "do you not hear," he said, "that we were overcome by guns? we were routed by fire, not by the enemy. it would have been otherwise, had it been a contest of courage. they took fire to their aid; fire is one of the elements; what is man that he should resist their shock?" they did not dream of the apophthegm that knowledge is power; and that we become strong by subduing nature to our will. accordingly, their tactics by sea was a sort of land engagement on deck, as it was with our ancestors, and with the ancients. first, they charged the adverse vessel, with a view of taking it; if that would not do, they boarded it. they fought hand to hand, and each captain might pretty much exercise his own judgment which ship to attack, as homer's heroes chose their combatants on the field of troy. however, the christian galeasses at lepanto,--for to these we must at length return,--were vessels of larger dimensions than the ottomans had ever built; they were fortified, like castles, with heavy ordnance, and were so disposed as to cover the line of their own galleys. the consequence was, that as the turks advanced in order of battle, these galeasses kept up a heavy and destructive fire upon them, and their barbarian energy availed them as little as their howlings. it was the triumph of civilization over brute force, as well as of faith over misbelief. "while discipline and attention to the military exercises could insure success in war, the turks," says thornton, "were the first of military nations. when the whole art of war was changed, and victory or defeat became matter of calculation, the rude and illiterate turkish warriors experienced the fatal consequences of ignorance without suspecting the cause; accustomed to employ no other means than force, they sunk into despondency, when force could no longer avail." another half century has passed since this was written, and the turkish power has now completed its eighth century since togrul beg, the first seljukian sultan; and what has been the fruit of so long a duration? just about the time of togrul beg, flourished william, duke of normandy; he passed over to take possession of england; compare the england of the conquest with the england of this day. again, compare the rome of junius brutus to the rome of constantine, years afterwards. in each of these polities there was a continuous progression, and the end was unlike the beginning; but the turks, except that they have gained the faculty of political union, are pretty much what they were when they crossed the jaxartes and oxus. again, at the time of togrul beg, the greek schism also took place; now from michael cerularius, in , to anthimus, in , patriarchs of constantinople, eight centuries have passed of religious deadness and insensibility: a longer time has passed in china of a similar political inertness: yet china has preserved at least the civilization, and greece the ecclesiastical science, with which they respectively passed into their long sleep; but the turks of this day are still in the less than infancy of art, literature, philosophy, and general knowledge; and we may fairly conclude that, if they have not learned the very alphabet of science in eight hundred years, they are not likely to set to work on it in the nine hundredth. moreover, it is remarkable that with them, as with the ancient medes and persians, change of law and government is distinctly prohibited. the greatest of their sultans, and the last of the great ten, soliman, known in european history as the magnificent, is called by his compatriots the regulator, on account of the irreversible sanction which he gave to the existing administration of affairs. "the magnitude and the splendour of the military achievements of soliman," says mr. thornton, "are surpassed in the judgment of his people by the wisdom of his legislation. he has acquired the name of canuni, or institutor of rules ... on account of the order and police which he established in his empire. he caused a compilation to be made of all the maxims and regulations of his predecessors on subjects of political and military economy. he strictly defined the duties, the powers, and the privileges of all governors, commanders, and public functionaries, he regulated the levies, the services, the equipments, and the pay of the military and maritime force of the empire. he prescribed the mode of collecting, and of applying, the public revenue. he assigned to every officer his rank at court, in the city, and in the army; and the observance of his regulations was enforced on his successors by the sanction of his authority. the work, which his ancestors had begun, and which his care had completed, seemed to himself and his contemporaries the compendium of human wisdom. soliman contemplated it with the fondness of a parent; and, conceiving it not to be susceptible of further improvement, he endeavoured to secure its perpetual duration." the author, after pointing out that this was done at the very time when a new hemisphere was in course of exploration, when the telescope was mapping for mankind the heavens, when the baconian philosophy was about to convert discovery and experiment into instruments of science, printing was carrying knowledge and literature into the heart of society, and the fine arts were receiving one of their most remarkable developments, proceeds: "the institutions of soliman placed a barrier between his subjects and future improvement. he beheld with complacency and exultation the eternal fabric which his hands had reared; and the curse denounced against pride has reduced the nation, which participated in his sentiments, to a state of inferiority to the present level of civilized men." the result is the same, though we say that soliman only recognized and affirmed that barbarism was the law of the ottoman power. . . it is true that in the last quarter of a century efforts have been made by the government of constantinople to innovate on the existing condition of its people; and it has addressed itself in the first instance to certain details of daily turkish life. we must take it for granted that it began with such changes as were easiest; if so, its failure in these small matters suggests how little ground there is for hope of success in other advances more important and difficult. every one knows that in the details of dress, carriage, and general manners, the turks are very different from europeans: so different, and so consistently different, that the contrariety would seem to arise from some difference of essential principle. "this dissimilitude," says mr. thornton, "which pervades the whole of their habits, is so general, even in things of apparent insignificance, as almost to indicate design rather than accident. the whole exterior of the oriental is different from ours." and then he goes on to mention some specimens, to which we are able to add others from volney and bell. for instance:--the european stands firm and erect; his head drawn back, his chest advanced, his toes turned out, his knees straight. the attitude of the turk, in each of these particulars, is different, and, to express myself by an antithesis, is more conformable to nature, and less to reason. the european wears short and close garments, the turk long and ample. the one uncovers the head, when he would show reverence; with the other, a bared head is a sign of folly. the one salutes by an inclination, the other by raising himself. the one passes his life upright, the other sitting. the one sits on raised seats, the other on the ground. in inviting a person to approach, the one draws his hand to him, the other thrusts it from him. the host in europe helps himself last; in turkey, first. the one drinks to his company, or at least to some toast; the other drinks silently, and his guests congratulate him. the european has a night dress, the turk lies down in his clothes. the turkish barber pushes the razor from him; the turkish carpenter draws the saw to him; the turkish mason sits as he builds; and he begins a house at the top, and finishes at the bottom, so that the upper rooms are inhabited, when the bottom is a framework. now it would seem as if this multitude of little usages hung together, and were as difficult to break through as the meshes of some complicated web. however, the sultan found it the most favourable subject-matter of his incipient reformation; and his consequent attempt and the omens of its ultimate issue are interestingly recounted in the pages of sir charles fellows, the panegyrist both of mahmood and his people. "the turk," he says, "proud of his beard, comes up from the province a candidate for, or to receive, the office of governor. the sultan gives him an audience, passes his hand over his own short-trimmed beard; the candidate takes the hint, and appears the next day shorn of his honoured locks. the sultan, who is always attired in a plain blue frock coat, asks of the aspirant for office if he admires it; he, of course, praises the costume worn by his patron; whereupon the sultan suggests that he would look well in it, as also in the red unturbaned fez. the following day the officer again attends to receive or lose his appointment; and, to promote the progress of his suit, throws off his costly and beautiful costume, and appears like the sultan in the dull unsightly frock." such is the triumph of loyalty and self-interest, and such is its limit. "a regimental cloak," continues our author, "may sometimes be seen covering a fat body inclosed in all the robes of the turkish costume; the whole bundle, including the fur-lined gown, being strapped together round the waist. some of the figures are literally as broad as long, and have a laughable effect on horseback. the saddles for the upper classes are now generally made of the european form; but the people, who cannot give up their accustomed love of finery for plain leather, have them mostly of purple or crimson velvet, embroidered with silver or gold, the holsters ornamented with beautiful patterns." after a while, he continues: "one very unpopular reform which the sultan tried to effect in the formation of his troops was that of their wearing braces, a necessary accompaniment to the trousers; and why? because these form a cross, the badge of the infidel, upon the back. many, indeed, will submit to severe punishment, and even death, for disobedience to military orders, rather than bear upon their persons this sign hostile to their religion." in another place he continues this subject with an amusing accuracy of analysis:--"the mere substitution of trousers for their loose dress interferes seriously with their old habits; they all turn in their toes, in consequence of the turkish manner of sitting, and they walk wide, and with a swing, from being habituated to the full drapery: this gait has become natural to them, and in their european trousers they walk in the same manner. they wear wide-topped loose boots, which push up their trousers. wellington boots would be still more inconvenient, as they must slip them off six times a day for prayers. in this new dress they cannot with comfort sit or kneel on the ground, as is their custom; and they will thus be led to use chairs; and with chairs they will want tables. but, were these to be introduced, their houses would be too low, for their heads would almost touch the ceiling. thus by a little innovation might their whole usages be unhinged." . . in these failures, however, should they turn out to be such, the _vis inertiæ_ of habit is not the whole account of the matter; an antagonistic principle is at work, characteristic of the barbarian, and intimately present to the mind of a turk--national pride. all nations, indeed, are proud of themselves; but, as being the first and the best, not as being the solitary existing perfection, among the inhabitants of the earth. civilized nations allow that foreigners have their specific excellences, and such excellences as are a lesson to themselves. they may think too well of their own proficiency, and may lose by such blindness; but they admit enough about others to allow of their own emulation and advance; whereas the barbarian, in his own estimate, is perfect already; and what is perfect cannot be improved. hence he cherishes in his heart a self-esteem of a very peculiar kind, and a special contempt of others. he views foreigners, either as simply unworthy of his attention, or as objects of his legitimate dominion. thus, too, he justifies his sloth, and places his ignorance of all things human and divine on a sort of intellectual basis. robertson, in his history of america, enlarges on this peculiarity of the savage. "the tartar," he says, "accustomed to roam over extensive plains, and to subsist on the produce of his herds, imprecates upon his enemy, as the greatest of all curses, that he may be condemned to reside in one place, and to be nourished with the top of a weed. the rude americans ... far from complaining of their own situation, or viewing that of men in a more improved state with admiration or envy, regard themselves as the standard of excellence, as beings the best entitled, as well as the most perfectly qualified, to enjoy real happiness.... void of foresight, as well as free from care themselves, and delighted with that state of indolent security, they wonder at the anxious precautions, the unceasing industry, and complicated arrangements of europeans, in guarding against distant evils, or providing for future wants; and they often exclaim against their preposterous folly, in thus multiplying the troubles, and increasing the labour of life.... the appellation which the iroquois give to themselves is, 'the chief of men.' caraibe, the original name of the fierce inhabitants of the windward islands, signifies 'the warlike people.' the cherokees, from an idea of their own superiority, call the europeans 'nothings,' or 'the accursed race,' and assume to themselves the name of 'the beloved people....' they called them the froth of the sea, men without father or mother. they suppose that either they have no country of their own, and, therefore, invaded that which belonged to others; or that, being destitute of the necessaries of life at home, they were obliged to roam over the ocean, in order to rob such as were more amply provided."[ ] it is easy to see that an intense self-adoration, such as is here suggested, is, in the case of a martial people, to a certain point a principle of strength; it gives a sort of intellectual force to the impetuosity and obstinacy of their attacks; while, on the other hand, it is in the long run a principle of debility, as blinding them to the most evident and imminent dangers, and, after defeat, burdening and precipitating their despair. now, is it possible to trace this attribute of barbarism among the turks? if so, what does it do for them, and whence is it supplied? you will recollect, i have not been unwilling in a former lecture to acknowledge what is salutary in mahometanism; certainly it embodies in it some ancient and momentous truths, and is undeniably beneficial so far as their proper influence extends. but, after all, looked at as a religion, it is as debasing to the populations which receive it as it is false; and, as it arose among barbarians, it is not wonderful that it subserves the reign of barbarism. this it certainly does in the case of the turks; already three great departments of intellectual activity in civilized countries have incidentally come before us, which are forbidden ground to its professors. the first is legislation; for the criminal and civil code of the mahometan is unalterably fixed in the koran. the second is the modern system of money transactions and finance; for "in obedience to their religion," says an author i have been lately quoting,[ ] "which, like the jewish law, forbids taking interest for money, the turks abstain from carrying on many lucrative trades connected with the lending of money. hence other nations, generally the armenians, act as their bankers." the third is the department of the fine arts for, it being unlawful to represent the human form, nay, any natural substance whatever, as fruit or flowers, sculpture loses its solitary object, painting is almost extinguished, while architecture has been obliged to undergo a sort of revolution in its decorative portions to accommodate it to the restriction. these, however, are matters of detail, though of very high importance; what i wish rather to point out is the general tendency of mahometanism, as such, to foster those very faults in the barbarian which keep him from ameliorating his condition. here something might be said on what seems to be the acknowledged effect of its doctrine of fatalism, viz., in encouraging a barbarian recklessness of mind both in special seasons of prosperity and adversity, and in the ordinary business of life; but this is a point which it is difficult to speak of without a more intimate knowledge of its circumstances than can be gained at a distance; i prefer to show how the religion is calculated to act upon that extravagant self-conceit, which robertson tells us is so congenial to uncivilized man. while, on the one hand, it closes the possible openings and occasions of internal energy and self-education, it has no tendency to compensate for this mischief, on the other, by inculcating any docile attention to the instruction of foreigners. . to learn from others, you must entertain a respect for them; no one listens to those whom he contemns. christian nations make progress in secular matters, because they are aware they have many things to learn, and do not mind from whom they learn them, so that he be able to teach. it is true that christianity, as well as mahometanism, which imitated it, has its visible polity, and its universal rule, and its especial prerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. but, with a divine wisdom, and contrary to its human copyist, it has carefully guarded (if i may use the expression) against extending its revelations to any point which would blunt the keenness of human research or the activity of human toil. it has taken those matters for its field in which the human mind, left to itself, could not profitably exercise itself, or progress, if it would; it has confined its revelations to the province of theology, only indirectly touching on other departments of knowledge, so far as theological truth accidentally affects them; and it has shown an equally remarkable care in preventing the introduction of the spirit of caste or race into its constitution or administration. pure nationalism it abhors; its authoritative documents pointedly ignore the distinction of jew and gentile, and warn us that the first often becomes the last; while its subsequent history has illustrated this great principle, by its awful, and absolute, and inscrutable, and irreversible passage from country to country, as its territory and its home. such, then, it has been in the divine counsels, and such, too, as realized in fact; but man has ways of his own, and, even before its introduction into the world, the inspired announcements, which preceded it, were distorted by the people to whom they were given, to minister to views of a very different kind. the secularized jews, relying on the supernatural favours locally and temporally bestowed on themselves, fell into the error of supposing that a conquest of the earth was reserved for some mighty warrior of their own race, and that, in compensation of the reverses which befell them, they were to become an imperial nation. what a contrast is presented to us by these different ideas of a universal empire! the distinctions of race are indelible; a jew cannot become a greek, or a greek a jew; birth is an event of past time; according to the judaizers, their nation, as a nation, was ever to be dominant; and all other nations, as such, were inferior and subject. what was the necessary consequence? there is nothing men more pride themselves on than birth, for this very reason, that it is irrevocable; it can neither be given to those who have it not, nor taken away from those who have. the almighty can do anything which admits of doing; he can compensate every evil; but a greek poet says that there is one thing impossible to him--to undo what is done. without throwing the thought into a shape which borders on the profane, we may see in it the reason why the idea of national power was so dear and so dangerous to the jew. it was his consciousness of inalienable superiority that led him to regard roman and greek, syrian and egyptian, with ineffable arrogance and scorn. christians, too, are accustomed to think of those who are not christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which possesses them, that they have what others have not, is obviously not open to the temptation which nationalism presents. according to their own faith, there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind; there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by their religion to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he come, would stand on their very level, as if he had ever been there. such accessions to their body they continually receive, and they are bound under obligation of duty to promote them. they never can pronounce of any one, now external to them, that he will not some day be among them; they never can pronounce of themselves that, though they are now within, they may not some day be found outside, the divine polity. such are the sentiments inculcated by christianity, even in the contemplation of the very superiority which it imparts; even there it is a principle, not of repulsion between man and man, but of good fellowship; but as to subjects of secular knowledge, since here it does not arrogate any superiority at all, it has in fact no tendency whatever to centre its disciple's contemplation on himself, or to alienate him from his kind. he readily acknowledges and defers to the superiority in art or science of those, if so be, who are unhappily enemies to christianity. he admits the principle of progress on all matters of knowledge and conduct on which the creator has not decided the truth already by revealing it; and he is at all times ready to learn, in those merely secular matters, from those who can teach him best. thus it is that christianity, even negatively, and without contemplating its positive influences, is the religion of civilization. . but i have here been directing your attention to christianity with no other view than to illustrate, by the contrast, the condition of the mahometan turks. their religion is not far from embodying the very dream of the judaizing zealots of the apostolic age. on the one hand, there is in it the profession of a universal empire, and an empire by conquest; nay, military success seems to be considered the special note of its divine origin. on the other hand, i believe it is a received notion with them that their religion is not even intended for the north of the earth, for some reasons connected with its ceremonial; nor is there in it any public recognition, as in intercessory prayer, of the duty of converting infidels. certainly, the idea of mahometan missions and missionaries, unless an army in the field may be considered to be such, is never suggested to us by eastern historian or traveller, as entering into their religious system. though the caliphate, then, may be transferred from saracen to turk, mahometanism is essentially a consecration of the principle of nationalism; and thereby is as congenial to the barbarian as christianity is congenial to man civilized. the less a man knows, the more conceited he is of his proficiency; and, the more barbarous is a nation, the more imposing and peremptory are its claims. such was the spirit of the religion of the tartars, whatever was the nature of its tenets in detail. it deified the tartar race; zingis khan was "the son of god, mild and venerable;" and "god was great and exalted over all, and immortal, but zingis khan was sole lord upon the earth."[ ] such, too, is the strength of the greek schism, which there only flourishes where it can fasten on barbarism, and extol the prerogatives of an elect nation. the czar is the divinely-appointed source of religious power; his country is "holy russia;" and the high office committed to him and to it is to extend what it considers the orthodox faith. the osmanlis are not behind tartar or russ in pretending to a divine mission; the sultan, in his treaties with christian powers, calls himself "refuge of sovereigns, distributor of crowns to the kings of the earth, master of europe, asia, and africa, and shadow of god upon earth." we might smile at such titles, were they not claimed in good earnest, and professed in order to be used. it is said to be the popular belief among the turks, that the monarchs of europe are, as this imperial style declares, the feudatories of the sultan. we should smile, too, at the very opposite titles which they apply to europeans, did they not here, too, mean what they say, and strengthen and propagate their own scorn and hatred of us by using them. "the mussulmans, courteous and humane in their intercourse with each other," says thornton, "sternly refuse to unbelievers the salutation of peace." not that they necessarily insult the christian, he adds, by this refusal; nay, he even insists that polished turks are able to practise condescension; and then, as an illustration of their courtesy, he tells us that "mr. eton, pleasantly and accurately enough, compared the general behaviour of a turk to a christian with that of a german baron to his vassal." however, he allows that at least "the common people, more bigoted to their dogmas, express more bluntly their sense of superiority over the christians." "their usual salutation addressed to christians," says volney, "is 'good morning;' but it is well if it be not accompanied with a djaour, kafer, or kelb, that is, impious, infidel, dog, expressions to which christians are familiarized." sir c. fellows is an earnest witness for their amiableness; but he does not conceal that the children "hoot after a european, and call him frank dog, and even strike him;" and on one occasion a woman caught up a child and ran off from him, crying out against the ghiaour; which gives him an opportunity of telling us that the word "ghiaour" means a man without a soul, without a god. a writer in a popular review, who seems to have been in the east, tells us that "their hatred and contempt of the ghiaour and frangi is as burning as ever; perhaps even more so, because they are forced to implore his aid. the eastern seeks christian aid in the same spirit and with the same disgust as he would eat swine's flesh, were it the only means of securing him from starvation."[ ] such conduct is indeed only consistent with their faith, and the untenableness of that faith is not my present question; here i do but ask, are these barbarians likely to think themselves inferior in any respect to men without souls? are they likely to receive civilization from the nations of the west, whom, according to the well-known story, they definitively divide into the hog and the dog? i have not time for more than an allusion to what is the complement of this arrogance, and is a most pregnant subject of thought, whenever the fortunes of the ottomans are contemplated; i mean the despair which takes its place in their minds, consistently with the barbarian temperament, upon the occurrence of any considerable reverses. a passage from mr. thornton just now quoted refers to this characteristic. the overthrow at lepanto, though they rallied from their consternation for a while, was a far more serious and permanent misfortune in its moral than in its material consequences. and, on any such national calamity, the fatalism of their creed, to which i have already referred, consecrates and fortifies their despair. * * * * * i have been proving a point, which most persons would grant me, in thus insisting on the essential barbarism of the turks; but i have thought it worth while to insist on it under the feeling, that to prove it is at the same time to describe it, and many persons will vaguely grant that they are barbarous without having any clear idea what barbarism means. with this view i draw out my formal conclusion:--if civilization be the ascendancy of mind over passion and imagination; if it manifests itself in consistency of habit and action, and is characterised by a continual progress or development of the principles on which it rests; and if, on the other hand, the turks alternate between sloth and energy, self-confidence and despair,--if they have two contrary characters within them, and pass from one to the other rapidly, and when they are the one, are as if they could not be the other;--if they think themselves, notwithstanding, to be the first nation upon earth, while at the end of many centuries they are just what they were at the beginning;--if they are so ignorant as not to know their ignorance, and so far from making progress that they have not even started, and so far from seeking instruction that they think no one fit to teach them;--there is surely not much hazard in concluding, that, apart from the consideration of any supernatural intervention, barbarians they have lived, and barbarians they will die. footnotes: [ ] formby's visit, p. . [ ] bell's geography. [ ] vid, sir charles fellows' asia minor. [ ] the correspondent of the _times_ in february, , speaking of the great arsenal of rustchuk, observes: "all the heavy smith work was done by bulgarians, the light iron work by gipsies, the carpenters were all turks, the sawyers bulgarians, the tinmen all jews." [ ] lib. iv. fin. [ ] sir c. fellows. [ ] bergeron, t. . [ ] edinburgh rev. . lecture ix. _the future of the ottomans._ scientific anticipations are commonly either truisms or failures; failures, if, as is usually the case, they are made upon insufficient data; and truisms, if they succeed, for conclusions, being always contained in their premisses, never can be discoveries. yet, as mixed mathematics correct, without superseding, the pure science, so i do not see why i may not allowably take a sort of pure philosophical view of the turks and their position, though it be but abstract and theoretical, and require correction when confronted by the event. there is a use in investigating what ought to be, under given suppositions and conditions, even though speculation and fact do not happen to keep pace together. as to myself, having laid down my premisses, as drawn from historical considerations, i must needs go on, whether i will or no, to the conjectures to which they lead; and that shall be my business in this concluding discussion. my line of argument has been as follows:--first, i stated some peculiarities of civilized and of barbarian communities; i said that it is a general truth that civilized states are destroyed from within, and barbarian states from without; that the very causes, which lead to the greatness of civilized communities, at length by continuing become their ruin, whereas the causes of barbarian greatness uphold that greatness, as long as they continue, and by ceasing to act, not by continuing, lead the way to its overthrow. thus the intellect of athens first was its making and then its unmaking; while the warlike prowess of the spartans maintained their pre-eminence, till it succumbed to the antagonist prowess of thebes. . i laid down this principle as a general law of human society, open to exceptions and requiring modifications in particular cases, but true on the whole. next, i went on to show that the ottoman power was of a barbarian character. the conclusion is obvious; viz., that it has risen, and will fall, not by anything within it, but by agents external to itself; and this conclusion, i certainly think, is actually confirmed by turkish history, as far as it has hitherto gone. the ottoman state seems, in matter of fact, to be most singularly constructed, so as to have nothing inside of it, and to be moved solely or mainly by influences from without. what a contrast, for instance, to the german race! in the earliest history of that people, we discern an element of civilization, a vigorous action of the intellect residing in the body, independent of individuals, and giving birth to great men, rather than created by them. again, in the first three centuries of the church, we find martyrs indeed in plenty, as the turks might have soldiers; but (to view the matter humanly) perhaps there was not one great mind, after the apostles, to teach and to mould her children. the highest intellects, origen, tertullian, and eusebius, were representatives of a philosophy not hers; her greatest bishops, such as st. gregory, st. dionysius, and st cyprian, so little exercised a doctor's office, as to incur, however undeservedly, the imputation of doctrinal inaccuracy. vigilant as was the holy see then, as in every age, yet there is no pope, i may say, during that period, who has impressed his character upon his generation; yet how well instructed, how precisely informed, how self-possessed an oracle of truth, nevertheless, do we find the church to be, when the great internal troubles of the fourth century required it! how unambiguous, how bold is the christianity of the great pontiffs, st. julius, st. damasus, st. siricius, and st. innocent; of the great doctors, st. athanasius; st. basil, st. ambrose, and st. augustine! by what channels, then, had the divine philosophy descended down from the great teacher through three centuries of persecution? first through the see and church of peter, into which error never intruded (though popes might be little more than victims, to be hunted out and killed, as soon as made), and to which the faithful from all quarters of the world might have recourse when difficulties arose, or when false teachers anywhere exalted themselves. but intercommunion was difficult, and comparatively rare in days like those, and of nothing is there less pretence of proof than that the holy see, while persecution raged, imposed a faith upon the ecumenical body. rather, in that earliest age, it was simply the living spirit of the myriads of the faithful, none of them known to fame, who received from the disciples of our lord, and husbanded so well, and circulated so widely, and transmitted so faithfully, generation after generation, the once delivered apostolic faith; who held it with such sharpness of outline and explicitness of detail, as enabled even the unlearned instinctively to discriminate between truth and error, spontaneously to reject the very shadow of heresy, and to be proof against the fascination of the most brilliant intellects, when they would lead them out of the narrow way. here, then, is a luminous instance of what i mean by an energetic action from within. take again the history of the saracenic schools and parties, on which i have already touched. mr. southgate considers the absence of religious controversy among the turks, contrasted with its frequency of old among the saracens, as a proof of the decay of the spirit of islam. i should rather refer the present apathy to the national temperament of the turks, and set it down, with other instances i shall mention presently, as a result of their barbarism. saracenic mahometanism, on the contrary, gives me an apposite illustration of what i mean by an "interior" people, if i may borrow a devotional word to express a philosophical idea. a barbarous nation has no "interior," but the saracens show us what a national "interior" is. "in former ages," says the author to whom i have referred, mr. southgate, "the bosom of islamism was riven with numerous feuds and schisms, some of which have originated from religious controversy, and others from political ambition. during the first centuries of its existence, and while mussulman learning flourished under the patronage of the caliphs, religious questions were discussed by the learned with all the proverbial virulence of theological hatred. the chief of these questions respected the origin of the koran, the nature of god, predestination and free will, and the grounds of human salvation. the question, whether the koran was created or eternal, rent for a time the whole body of islamism into twain, and gave rise to the most violent persecutions.... besides these religious contentions, which divided the mussulmans into parties, but seldom gave birth to sects, there have sprung up, at different periods, avowed heresies, which flourished for a time, and for the most part died with their authors. others, stimulated by ambition only, have reared the standard of revolt, and under cover of some new religious dogma, propounded only to shield a selfish end, have sought to raise themselves to power. most of these, whether theological disputes, heresies, or civil rebellions, cloaked under the name of religion, arose previously to the sixteenth century."[ ] . such is that internal peculiarity, the presence of which constitutes a civilized, the absence a barbarous people; which makes a people great, and small again; and which, just consistently with the notion of their being barbarians, i cannot discern, for strength or for weakness, in the turks. on the contrary, almost all the elements of their success, and instruments of their downfall, are external to themselves. for instance, their religion, one of their principal bonds, owes nothing to them; it is, not only in substance, but in concrete shape, just what it was when it came to them. i cannot find that they have commented upon it; i cannot find that they are the channels of any of those famous traditions by which the koran is interpreted, and which they themselves accept; or that they have exercised their minds upon it at all, except so far as they have been obliged, in a certain degree, to do so in the administration of the law. it is true also that they have been obliged to choose to be sunnites and not shiahs; but, considering the latter sect arose in persia, since the date of the turkish occupation of constantinople, it was really no choice at all. they have but remained as they were. besides, the shiahs maintain the hereditary transmission of the caliphate, which would exclude the line of othman from the succession--good reason then the turks should be sunnites; and the dates of the two events so nearly coincide, that one could even fancy that the shiahs actually arose in consequence of the sultan selim's carrying off the last of the abassides from egypt, and gaining the transference of the caliphate from his captive. besides, if it is worth while pursuing the point, did they not remain sunnites, they would have to abandon the traditional or oral law, and must cease to use the labours of its four great doctors, which would be to bring upon themselves an incalculable extent of intellectual toil; for without recognized comments on the koran, neither the religion nor the civil state could be made to work. the divine right of the line of othman is another of their special political bonds, and this too is shown by the following extract from a well-known historian,[ ] if it needs showing, to be simply external to themselves: "the origin of the sultans," he says, "is obscure; but this sacred and indefeasible right" to the throne, "which no time can erase, and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. a weak or vicious sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. while the transient dynasties of asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the turkish nation." here we have on the one hand the imperial succession described as an element of the political life of the osmanlis--on the other as an appointment over which they have no power; and obviously it is from its very nature independent of them. it is a form of life external to the community it vivifies. probably it was the wonderful continuity of so many great sultans in their early ages, which wrought in their minds the idea of a divine mission as the attribute of the dynasty; and its acquisition of the caliphate would fix it indelibly within them. and here again, we have another special instrument of their imperial greatness, but still an external one. i have already had occasion to observe, that barbarians make conquests by means of great men, in whom they, as it were, live; ten successive monarchs, of extraordinary vigour and talent, carried on the ottomans to empire. will any one show that those monarchs can be fairly called specimens of the nation, any more than zingis was the specimen of the tartars? have they not rather acted as the _deus è machinâ_, carrying on the drama, which has languished or stopped, since the time when they ceased to animate it? contrast the ottoman history in this respect with the rise of the anglo-indian empire, or with the military successes of great britain under the regency; or again with the literary eminence of england under charles the second or even anne, which owed little to those monarchs. kings indeed at various periods have been most effective patrons of art and science; but the question is, not whether english or french literature has ever been indebted to royal encouragement, but whether the ottomans can do anything at all, as a nation, without it. indeed, i should like it investigated what internal history the ottomans have at all; what inward development of any kind they have made since they crossed mount olympus and planted themselves in broussa; how they have changed shape and feature, even in lesser matters, since they were a state, or how they are a year older than when they first came into being. we see among them no representative of confucius, chi-hoagti, and the sect of ta-osse; no magi; no pisistratus and harmodius; no socrates and alcibiades; no patricians and plebeians; no cæsar; no invasion or adoption of foreign mysteries; no mythical impersonation of an ali; no suffeeism; no guelphs and gibellines; nothing really on the type of catholic religious orders; no luther; nothing, in short, which, for good or evil, marks the presence of a life internal to the political community itself. some authors indeed maintain they have a literature; but i cannot ascertain what the assertion is worth. rather the tenor of their annals runs thus:--two pachas make war against each other, and a kat-sherif comes from constantinople for the head of the one or the other; or a pacha exceeds in pillaging his province, or acts rebelliously, and is preferred to a higher government and suddenly strangled on his way to it; or he successfully maintains himself, and gains an hereditary settlement, still subject, however, to the feudal tenure, which is the principle of the political structure, continuing to send his contingent of troops, when the sultan goes to war, and remitting the ordinary taxes through his agent at court. such is the staple of turkish history, whether amid the hordes of turkistan, or the feudatory turcomans of anatolia, or the imperial osmanlis. . the remark i am making applies to them, not only as a nation, but as a body politic. when they descended on horseback upon the rich territories which they occupy, they had need to become agriculturists, and miners, and civil engineers, and traders; all which they were not; yet i do not find that they have attempted any of these functions themselves. public works, bridges, and roads, draining, levelling, building, they seem almost entirely to have neglected; where, however, to do something was imperative, instead of applying themselves to their new position, and manifesting native talent for each emergency, they usually have had recourse to foreign assistance to execute what was uncongenial or dishonourable to themselves. the franks were their merchants, the armenians their bankers, the subject races their field labourers, and the greeks their sailors. "almost the whole business of the ship," says thornton, "is performed by the slaves, or by the greeks who are retained upon wages." the most remarkable instance of this reluctance to develop from within--remarkable, both for the originality, boldness, success, and permanence of the policy adopted, and for its appositeness to my purpose--is the institution of the janizaries, detestable as it was in a moral point of view. i enlarge upon it here because it is at the same time a palmary instance of the practical ability and wisdom of their great sultans, exerted in compensation of the resourceless impotence of the barbarians whom they governed. the turks were by nature nothing better than horsemen; infantry they could not be; an infantry their sultans hardly attempted to form out of them; but since infantry was indispensable in european warfare, they availed themselves of passages in their own earlier history, and provided themselves with a perpetual supply of foot soldiers from without. of this procedure they were not, strictly speaking, the originators; they took the idea of it from the saracens. you may recollect that, when their ancestors were defeated by the latter people in sogdiana, instead of returning to their deserts, they suffered themselves to be diffused and widely located through the great empire of the caliphs. whether as slaves, or as captives, or as mercenaries, they were taken into favour by the dominant nation, and employed as soldiers or civilians. they were chosen as boys or youths for their handsome appearance, turned into mahometans, and educated for the army or other purposes. and thus the strength of the empire which they served was always kept fresh and vigorous, by the continual infusion into it of new blood to perform its functions; a skilful policy, if the servants could be hindered from becoming masters. masters in time they did become, and then they adopted a similar system themselves; we find traces of it even in the history of the gaznevide dynasty. in the reign of the son of the great mahmood, we read of an insurrection of the slaves; who, conspiring with one of his nobles, seized his best horses, and rode off to his enemies. "by slaves," says dow, in translating this history, "are meant the captives and young children, bought by kings, and educated for the offices of state. they were often adopted by the emperors, and very frequently succeeded to the empire. a whole dynasty of these possessed afterwards the throne in hindostan." the same system appears in egypt, about or soon after the time of the celebrated saladin. zingis, in his dreadful expedition from khorasan to syria and russia, had collected an innumerable multitude of youthful captives, who glutted, as we may say, the markets of asia. this gave the conquerors of egypt an opportunity of forming a mercenary or foreign force for their defence, on a more definite idea than seems hitherto to have been acted upon. saladin was a curd, and, as such, a neighbour of the caucasus; hence the caucasian tribes became for many centuries the store-houses of egyptian mercenaries. a detestable slave trade has existed with this object, especially among the circassians, since the time of the moguls; and of these for the most part this egyptian force, mamlouks, as they are called, has consisted. after a time, these mamlouks took matters into their own hands, and became a self-elective body, or sort of large corporation. they were masters of the country, and of its nominal ruler, and they recruited their ranks continually, and perpetuated their power, by means of the natives of the caucasus, slaves like themselves, and of their own race. "during the or years," says volney, "that there have been mamlouks in egypt, not one of them has left subsisting issue; there does not exist one single family of them in the second generation; all their children perish in the first and second descent. the means therefore by which they are perpetuated and multiplied were of necessity the same by which they were first established." these troops have been massacred and got rid of in the memory of the last generation; towards the end of last century they formed a body of above , men. the writer i have just been quoting adds the following remarks:--"born for the most part in the rites of the greek church, and circumcised the moment they are bought, they are considered by the turks themselves as renegades, void of faith and of religion. strangers to each other, they are not bound by those natural ties which unite the rest of mankind. without parents, without children, the past has nothing to do for them, and they do nothing for the future. ignorant and superstitious from education, they become ferocious from the murders they commit, and corrupted by the most horrible debauchery." on the other hand, they had every sort of incentive and teaching to prompt them to rapacity and lawlessness. "the young peasant, sold in mingrelia or georgia, no sooner arrives in egypt, than his ideas undergo a total alteration. a new and extraordinary scene opens before him, where everything conduces to awaken his audacity and ambition. though now a slave, he seems destined to become a master, and already assumes the spirit of his future condition. no sooner is a slave enfranchised, than he aspires to the principal employments; and who is to oppose his pretensions? and he will be no less able than his betters in the art of governing, which consists only in taking money, and giving blows with the sabre." in describing the mamlouks i have been in a great measure describing the janizaries, and have little to add to the picture. when amurath, one of the ten sultans, had made himself master of the territory round constantinople, as far as the balkan, he passed northwards, and subdued the warlike tribes which possessed bulgaria, servia, bosnia, and the neighbouring provinces. these countries had neither the precious metals in their mountains, nor marts of commerce; but their inhabitants were a brave and hardy race, who had been for ages the terror of constantinople. it was suggested to the sultan, that, according to the mahometan law, he was entitled to a fifth part of the captives, and he made this privilege the commencement of a new institution. twelve thousand of the strongest and handsomest youths were selected as his share; he formed them into a military force; he made them abjure christianity, he consecrated them with a religious rite, and named them janizaries. the discipline to which they were submitted was peculiar, and in some respects severe. they were in the first instance made over to the peasantry to assist them in the labours of the field, and thus were prepared by penury and hard fare for the privations of a military life. after this introduction, they were drafted into the companies of the janizaries, but only in order to commence a second noviciate. sometimes they were employed in the menial duties of the palace, sometimes in the public works, sometimes in the dockyards, and sometimes in the imperial gardens. meanwhile they were taught their new religion, and were submitted to the drill. when at length they went on service, the road to promotion was opened upon them; nor were military honours the only recompense to which they might aspire. there are examples in history, of men from the ranks attaining the highest dignities in the state, and at least of one of them marrying the sister of the sultan. this corps has constituted the main portion of the infantry of the ottoman armies for a period of nearly five hundred years; till, in our own day, on account of its repeated turbulence, it was annihilated, as the mamlouks before it, by means of a barbarous massacre. its end was as strange as its constitution; but here it comes under our notice as a singular exemplification of the unproductiveness, as i may call it, of the turkish intellect. it was nothing else but an external institution devised to supply a need which a civilized state would have supplied from its own resources; and it fell perhaps without any essential prejudice to the integrity of the power which it had served. that power is just what it was before the janizaries were formed. they may still fall back upon the powerful cavalry, which carried them all the way from turkistan; or they may proceed to employ a mercenary force; anyhow their primitive social type remains inviolate. such is the strange phenomenon, or rather portent, presented to us by the barbarian power which has been for centuries seated in the very heart of the old world; which has in its brute clutch the most famous countries of classical and religious antiquity, and many of the most fruitful and beautiful regions of the earth; which stretches along the course of the danube, the euphrates, and the nile; which embraces the pindus, the taurus, the caucasus, mount sinai, the libyan mountains, and the atlas, as far as the pillars of hercules; and which, having no history itself, is heir to the historical names of constantinople and nicæa, nicomedia and cæsarea, jerusalem and damascus, nineveh and babylon, mecca and bagdad, antioch and alexandria, ignorantly holding in possession one-half of the history of the whole world. there it lies and will not die, and has not in itself the elements of death, for it has the life of a stone, and, unless pounded and pulverized, is indestructible. such is it in the simplicity of its national existence, while that mode of existence remains, while it remains faithful to its religion and its imperial line. should its fidelity to either fail, it would not merely degenerate or decay; it would simply cease to be. . but we have dwelt long enough on the internal peculiarities of the ottomans; now let us shift the scene, and view them in the presence of their enemies, and in their external relations both above and below them; and then at once a very different prospect presents itself for our contemplation. however, the first remark i have to make is one which has reference still to their internal condition, but which does not properly come into consideration, till we place them in the presence of rival and hostile nations and races. moral degeneracy is not, strictly speaking, a cause of political ruin, as i have already said; but its existence is of course a point of the gravest importance, when we would calculate the chance which a people has of standing the brunt of war and insurrection. it is a natural question to ask whether the osmanlis, after centuries of indulgence, have the physical nerve and mental vigour which carried them forward through such a course of fortunes, till it enthroned them in three quarters of the world. their numbers are diminished and diminishing; their great cities are half emptied; their villages have disappeared; i believe that even out of the fraction of mahometans to be found amid their european population, but a miserable minority are osmanlis. too much stress, however, must not be laid on this circumstance. though the osmanlis are the conquering race, it requires to be shown that they have ever had much to do, as a race, with the executive of the empire. while there are some vigorous minds at the head of affairs, while there is a constant introduction of foreigners into posts of authority and power, while curd and turcoman supply the cavalry, while egypt and other pachalics send their contingents, while the government can manage to combine, or to steer between, the fanaticism of its subjects and the claims of european diplomacy, there is a certain counterbalance in the state to the depravity and worthlessness, whatever it be, of those who have the nominal power. a far more formidable difficulty, when we survey their external prospects, is that very peculiarity, which, internally considered, is so much in their favour--the simplicity of their internal unity, and the individuality of their political structure. the turkish races, as being conquerors, of course are only a portion of the whole population of their empire; for four centuries they have remained distinct from slavonians, greeks, copts, armenians, curds, arabs, jews, druses, maronites, ansarians, motoualis; and they never can coalesce with them. like other empires, they have kept their sovereign position by the insignificance, degeneracy, or mutual animosities of the several countries and religions which they rule, and by the ruthless tyranny of their government. were they to relax that tyranny, were they to relinquish their ascendancy, were they to place their greek subjects, for instance, on a civil equality with themselves, how in the nature of things could two incommunicable races coexist beside each other in one political community? yet if, on the other hand, they refuse this enfranchisement of their subjects, they will have to encounter the displeasure of united christendom. nor is it a mere question of political practicability or expedience: will the koran, in its laxest interpretation, admit of that toleration, on which the frank kingdoms insist? yet what and where are they without the koran? nor do we understand the full stress of the dilemma in which they are placed, until we have considered what is meant by the demands and the displeasure of the european community. pledged by the very principle of their existence to barbarism, the turks have to cope with civilized governments all around them, ever advancing in the material and moral strength which civilization gives, and ever feeling more and more vividly that the turks are simply in the way. they are in the way of the progress of the nineteenth century. they are in the way of the russians, who wish to get into the mediterranean; they are in the way of the english, who wish to cross to the east; they are in the way of the french, who, from the crusades to napoleon, have felt a romantic interest in syria; they are in the way of the austrians, their hereditary foes. there they lie, unable to abandon their traditionary principles, without simply ceasing to be a state; unable to retain them, and retain the sympathy of christendom;--mahometans, despots, slave merchants, polygamists, holding agriculture in contempt, europe in abomination, their own wretched selves in admiration, cut off from the family of nations,[ ] existing by ignorance and fanaticism, and tolerated in existence by the mutual jealousies of christian powers as well as of their own subjects, and by the recurring excitement of military and political combinations, which cannot last for ever. . and, last of all, as if it were not enough to be unable to procure the countenance of any christian power, except on specific conditions prejudicial to their existence, still further, as the alternative of their humbling themselves before the haughty nations of the west whom they abhor, they have to encounter the direct cupidity, hatred, and overpowering pressure of the multitudinous north, with its fanaticism almost equal, and its numbers superior, to their own; a peril more awful in imagination, from the circumstance that its descent has been for so many centuries foretold and commenced, and of late years so widely acquiesced in as inevitable. seven centuries and a half have passed, since, at the very beginning of the crusades, a greek writer still extant turns from the then menacing inroads of the turks in the east, and the long centuries of their triumph which lay in prospect, to record a prophecy, old in his time, relating to the north, to the effect that in the last days the russians should be masters of constantinople. when it was uttered no one knows; but it was written on an equestrian statue, in his day one of the special monuments of the imperial city, which had one time been brought thither from antioch. that statue, whether of christian or pagan origin is not known, has a name in history, for it was one of the works of art destroyed by the latins in the taking of constantinople; and the prediction engraven on it bears at least a remarkable evidence of the congruity in itself, if i may use the word; of that descent of the north upon constantinople, which, though not as yet accomplished, generation after generation grows more probable. it is now a thousand years since this famous prophecy has been illustrated by the actual incursions of the russian hordes. such was the date of their first expedition against constantinople; their assaults continued through two centuries; and, in the course of that period, they seemed to be nearer the capture of the city than they have been at any time since. they descended the dnieper in boats, coasted along the east of the black sea, and so came round by trebizond to the bosphorus, plundering the coast as they advanced. at one time their sovereign had got possession of bulgaria, to the south of the danube. barbarians of other races flocked to his standard; he found himself surrounded by the luxuries of the east and west, and he marched down as far as adrianople, and threatened to go further. ultimately he was defeated; then followed the conversion of his people to christianity, which for a period restrained their barbarous rapacity; after this, for two centuries, they were under the yoke and bondage of the tartars; but the prophecy, or rather the omen, remains, and the whole world has learned to acquiesce in the probability of its fulfilment. the wonder rather is, that that fulfilment has been so long delayed. the russians, whose wishes would inspire their hopes, are not solitary in their anticipations: the historian from whom i have borrowed this sketch of their past attempts,[ ] writing at the end of last century, records his own expectation of the event. "perhaps," he says, "the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of a rare prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable." the turks themselves have long been under the shadow of its influence; even as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, when they were powerful, and austria and poland also, and russia distant and comparatively feeble, a traveller tells us that, "of all the princes of christendom, there was none whom the turks so much feared as the czar of muscovy." this apprehension has ever been on the increase; in favour of russia, they made the first formal renunciation of territory which had been consecrated to islam by the solemnities of religion,--a circumstance which has sunk deep into their imaginations; there is an enigmatical inscription on the tomb of the great constantine, to the effect that "the yellow-haired race shall overthrow ismael;" moreover, ever since their defeats by the emperor leopold, they have had a surmise that the true footing of their faith is in asia; and so strong is the popular feeling on the subject, that in consequence their favourite cemetery is at scutari on the asiatic coast.[ ] . it seems likely, then, at no very remote day, to fare ill with the old enemy of the cross. however, we must not undervalue what is still the strength of his position. first, no well-authenticated tokens come to us of the decay of the mahometan faith. it is true that in one or two cities, in constantinople, perhaps, or in the marts of commerce, laxity of opinion and general scepticism may to a certain extent prevail, as also in the highest class of all, and in those who have most to do with europeans; but i confess nothing has been brought home to me to show that this superstition is not still a living, energetic principle in the turkish population, sufficient to bind them together in one, and to lead to bold and persevering action. it must be recollected that a national and local faith, like the mahometan, is most closely connected with the sentiments of patriotism, family honour, loyalty towards the past, and party spirit; and this the more in the case of a religion which has no articles of faith at all, except those of the divine unity and the mission of mahomet. to these must be added more general considerations: that they have ever prospered under their religion, that they are habituated to it, that it suits them, that it is their badge of a standing antagonism to nations they abhor, and that it places them, in their own imagination, in a spiritual position relatively to those nations, which they would simply forfeit if they abandoned it. it would require clear proof of the fact, to credit in their instance the report of a change of mind, which antecedently is so improbable. and next it must be borne in mind that, few as may be the osmanlis, yet the raw material of the turkish nation, represented principally by the turcomans, extends over half asia; and, if it is what it ever has been, might under circumstances be combined or concentrated into a formidable power. it extends at this day from asia minor, in a continuous tract, to the lena, towards kamtchatka, and from siberia down to khorasan, the hindu cush, and china. the nogays on the north-east of the danube, the inhabitants of the crimea, the populations on each side of the don and wolga, the wandering turcomans who are found from the west of asia, along the euxine, caspian, and so through persia into bukharia, the kirghies on the jaxartes, are said to speak one tongue, and to have one faith.[ ] religion is a bond of union, and language is a medium of intercourse; and, what is still more, they are all sunnites, and recognize in the sultan the successor of mahomet. without a head, indeed, to give them a formal unity, they are only one in name. nothing is less likely than a resuscitation of the effete family of othman; still, supposing the ottomans driven into asia, and a sultan of that race to mount the throne, such as amurath, mahomet, or selim, it is not easy to set bounds to the influence the sovereign pontiff of islam might exert, and to the successes he might attain, in rallying round him the scattered members of a race, warlike, fanatical, one in faith, in language, in habits, and in adversity. nay, even supposing the turkish caliph, like the saracenic of old, still to slumber in his seraglio, he might appoint a vicegerent, emir-ul-omra, or mayor of the palace, such as togrul beg, to conquer with his authority in his stead. but, supposing great men to be wanting to the turkish race, and the despair, natural to barbarians, to rush upon them, and defeat, humiliation, and flight to be their lot; supposing the rivalries and dissensions of pachas, in themselves arguing no disaffection to their sultan and caliph, should practically lead to the success of their too powerful foes, to the divulsion of their body politic, and the partition of their territory; should this be the distant event to which the present complications tend, then the fiercer spirits, i suppose, would of their free will return into the desert, as a portion of the kalmucks have done within the last hundred years. those, however, who remained, would lead the easiest life under the protection of russia. she already is the sovereign ruler of many barbarian populations, and, among them, turks and mahometans; she lets them pursue their wandering habits without molestation, satisfied with such service on their part as the interests of the empire require. the turcomans would have the same permission, and would hardly be sensible of the change of masters. it is a more perplexing question how england or france, did they on the other hand become their masters, would be able to tolerate them in their reckless desolation of a rich country. rather, such barbarians, unless they could be placed where they would answer some political purpose, would eventually share the fate of the aboriginal inhabitants of north america; they would, in the course of years, be surrounded, pressed upon, divided, decimated, driven into the desert by the force of civilization, and would once more roam in freedom in their old home in persia or khorasan, in the presence of their brethren, who have long succeeded them in its possession. * * * * * many things are possible; one thing is inconceivable,--that the turks should, as an existing nation, accept of modern civilization; and, in default of it, that they should be able to stand their ground amid the encroachments of russia, the interested and contemptuous patronage of europe, and the hatred of their subject populations. footnotes: [ ] tour through armenia, etc. [ ] gibbon. [ ] since this was written, they have been taken into the european family by the treaty of , and the sultan has become a knight of the garter. this strange phenomenon is not for certain to the advantage of their political position. [ ] gibbon. [ ] thornton, ii. ; formby, p. ; eclectic rev., dec., . [ ] pritchard. note on page . cardinal fisher, in his _assert. luther. confut._, fol. clxi., gives the following list of popes who, up to his time, had called on the princes of christendom to direct their arms against the turks:--urban ii., paschal ii., gelasius ii., calistus ii., eugenius iii., lucius iii., gregory viii., clement iii., coelestine iii., innocent iii., honorius iii., gregory ix., innocent iv., alexander iv., gregory x., john xxii., martin iv., nicolas iv., innocent vi., urban v. note on page , etc. the following passages, as being upon the subject of the foregoing lectures, are extracted from the lively narrative of an expedition to the jordan and dead sea by commander lynch, of the united states navy. . he was presented to sultan abdoul medjid in february, . he says: "on the left hung a gorgeous crimson velvet curtain, embroidered and fringed with gold" [the ancient tartar one was of felt], "and towards it the secretary led the way. his countenance and his manner exhibited more awe than i had ever seen depicted in the human countenance. he seemed to hold his breath; and his step was so soft and stealthy, that once or twice i stopped, under the impression that i had left him behind, but found him ever beside me. there were three of us in close proximity, and the stairway was lined with officers and attendants; but such was the death-like stillness that i could distinctly hear my own foot-fall. if it had been a wild beast slumbering in his lair that we were about to visit, there could not have been a silence more deeply hushed." . "i presented him, in the name of the president of the united states, with some biographies and prints, illustrative of the character and habits of our north american indians, the work of american artists. he looked at some of them ... and said that he considered them as evidences of the advancement of the united states in _civilization_, and would treasure them as a souvenir of the good feeling of its government towards him. at the word 'civilization,' pronounced in french, i started, for it seemed singular, coming from the lips of a turk, and applied to our country." the author accounts for it by observing that the sultan is but a beginner in french, and probably meant by "civilization" arts and sciences. . he saw the old tartar throne, which puts one in mind of attila's queen, zingis's lieutenant, and timour. "the old divan, upon which the sultans formerly reclined when they gave audience, looks like an overgrown four-poster, covered with carbuncles, turquoise, amethysts, topaz, emeralds, ruby, and diamond: the couch was covered with damascus silk and cashmere shawls." . "anchored in the bay of scio. in the afternoon, the weather partially moderating, visited the shore. from the ship we had enjoyed a view of rich orchards and green fields; but on landing we found ourselves amid a scene of desolation.... we rode into the country.... what a contrast between the luxuriant vegetation, the bounty of nature, and the devastation of man! nearly every house was unroofed and in ruins, not one in ten inhabited, although surrounded with thick groves of orange-trees loaded with the weight of their golden fruit." "while weather-bound, we availed ourselves of the opportunity to visit the ruins [of ephesus]. there are no trees and but very few bushes on the face of this old country, but the mountain-slopes and the valleys are enamelled with thousands of beautiful flowers.... winding round the precipitous crest of a mountain, we saw the river cayster ... flowing through the alluvial plain to the sea, and on its banks the black tents of herdsmen, with their flocks of goats around them." as chandler had seen them there ninety years ago. . "the tomb of mahmood is a sarcophagus about eight feet high and as many long, covered with purple cloth embroidered in gold, and many votive shawls of the richest cashmere thrown over it.... at the head is the crimson tarbouch which the monarch wore in life, with a lofty plume, secured by a large and lustrous aigrette of diamonds. the following words are inscribed in letters of gold on the face of the tomb:--'this is the tomb of the layer of the basis of the civilization of his empire; of the monarch of exalted place, the sultan victorious and just, mahmood khan, son of the victorious abd' al hamid khan. may the almighty make his abode in the gardens of paradise! born,' etc." "from the eager employment of franks, the introduction of foreign machinery, and the adoption of improved modes of cultivating the land, the present sultan gives the strongest assurance of his anxiety to promote the welfare of his people." san stefano "possesses two things in its near vicinity, of peculiar interest to an american--a model farm and an agricultural school. the farm consists of about , acres of land, especially appropriated to the culture of the cotton-plant. both farm and school are under the superintendence of dr. davis of south carolina.... besides the principal culture, he is sedulously engaged in the introduction of seeds, plants, domestic animals, and agricultural instruments. the school is held in one of the kiosks of the sultan, which overlooks the sea." at jaffa, dr. kayat, h.b.m. consul, "has encouraged the culture of the vine; has introduced that of the mulberry and of the irish potato; and by word and example is endeavouring to prevail on the people in the adjacent plain to cultivate the sweet potato.... in the court-yard we observed an english plough of improved construction." he speaks in several places of the remains of the terrace cultivation (vid. above, p. ) of palestine. . "we visited the barracks, where a large number of turkish soldiers, shaved and dressed like europeans except the moustache and the tarbouch, received us with the asiatic salute.... the whole caserne was scrupulously clean, the bread dark coloured, but well baked and sweet. the colonel, who politely accompanied us, said that the bastinado had been discontinued, on account of its injuring the culprit's eyes." ... "here," in the palace, "we saw the last of the white eunuchs; the present enlightened sultan having pensioned off those on hand, and discontinued their attendance for ever." "in an extensive, but nearly vacant building, was an abortive attempt at a museum." "it is said, but untruly, that the slave market of constantinople has been abolished. an edict, it is true, was some years since promulgated, which declared the purchase and sale of slaves to be unlawful; the prohibition, however, is only operative against the franks, under which term the greeks are included." . "every coloured person, employed by the government, receives monthly wages; and, if a slave, is emancipated at the expiration of seven years, when he becomes eligible to any office beneath the sovereignty. many of the high dignitaries of the empire were originally slaves; the present governor of the dardanelles is a black, and was, a short time since, freed from servitude." "the secretary had the most prepossessing countenance of any turk i had yet seen, and in conversation evinced a spirit of inquiry and an amount of intelligence that far surpassed my expectations.... his history is a pleasing one. he was a poor boy, a charity scholar in one of the public schools. the late sultan mahmood requiring a page to fill a vacancy in his suite, directed the appointment to be given to the most intelligent pupil. the present secretary was the fortunate one; and by his abilities, his suavity and discretion, has risen to the highest office near the person of majesty." chronological tables. [the dates, as will be seen, are fixed on no scientific principal, but are taken as they severally occur in approved authors.] outlines of turkish chronology. a.d. i. tartar empire of the turks in the north and centre of asia - ii. their subjection, education, and silent growth, under the saracens - iii. their gaznevide empire in hindostan - iv. their seljukian empire in persia and asia minor - v. decline of the seljukians, yet continuous descent of their kindred tribes to the west - vi. their ottoman empire in asia, africa, and europe, growing for years - vii. their ottoman empire declining for years - chronological events introduced into the foregoing lectures. b.c. semiramis lost in the scythian desert p. -- the scythians celebrated by homer pp. , the scythians occupy for twenty-eight years the median kingdom in the time of cyaxares pp. , (_prideaux_) cyrus loses his life in an expedition against the scythian massagetæ p. (_clinton_) darius invades scythia north of the danube, p. (_clinton_) zoroaster p. (_prideaux_) alexander's campaign in sogdiana p. (_clinton_) a.d. ancient empire of the huns in further asia ends; their consequent emigration westward p. (_gibbon_) the white huns of sogdiana pp. , , , , after main body of the huns invade the goths on the north of the danube p. (_l'art de vérifier les dates_) attila and his huns ravage the roman empire pp. , - mission of st. leo to attila pp. , tartar empire of the turks pp. - (_l'art_, etc., _gibbon_), about - chosroes the second captures the holy cross p. (_l'art_, etc.) mahomet assumes the royal dignity. the hegira p. (_l'art_) the turks from the wolga settled by the emperor heraclius in georgia against the persians p. (_gibbon_) the turks invade sogdiana p. (_gibbon_) heraclius recovers the holy cross p. (_l'art_, etc.) death of mahomet p. (_l'art_) yezdegerde, last king of persia, flying from the saracens, is received and murdered by the turks in sogdiana p. (_universal history_) the saracens reduce the turks in sogdiana p. (_l'art_, and _univ. hist._) - the caliphate transferred from damascus to bagdad p. (_l'art_) harun al raschid p. (_l'art_) the turks taken into the pay of the caliphs p. (_l'art_) , etc. the turks tyrannize over the caliphs p. (_l'art_) - the caliphs lose sogdiana p. (_l'art_) the turkish dynasty of the gaznevides in khorasan and sogdiana p. (_dow_) mahmood the gaznevide pp. - (_dow_) seljuk the turk pp. - (_univ. hist._) the seljukian turks wrest sogdiana and khorasan from the gaznevides p. (_dow_) togrul beg, the seljukian, turns to the west pp. , (_baronius_) sufferings of christians on pilgrimage to jerusalem pp. - (_baronius_) alp arslan's victory over the emperor diogenes p. (_baronius_) st. gregory the seventh's letter against the turks p. (_sharon turner_) jerusalem in possession of the turks p. (_l'art_) soliman, the seljukian sultan of roum, establishes himself at nicæa p. (_l'art_) the council of placentia under urban the second pp. , (_l'art_) the first crusade p. (_l'art_) conquests of zingis khan and the moguls pp. - (_l'art_) - richard coeur de lion in palestine p. (_l'art_) institution of mamlooks p. about constantinople taken by the latins p. (_l'art_) greek empire of nicæa p. (_l'art_) the greek emperor vataces encourages agriculture in asia minor p. (_l'art_) - the moguls subjugate russia p. (_l'art_) mission of st. louis to the moguls pp. - (_l'art_) the turks attack the north and west coast of asia minor p. (_univ. hist._) - marco polo p. end of the seljukian kingdom of roum p. (_l'art_) othman p. the popes retire to avignon for seventy years p. (_l'art_) orchan, successor to othman, originates the institution of janizaries p. (_l'art_) - battle of cressy p. battle of poitiers, p. wicliffe, p. amurath institutes the janizaries pp. , , (_gibbon_) conquests of timour p. (_l'art_) , etc. schismatical pontiffs for thirty-eight years p. (_l'art_) - battle of nicopolis p. (_l'art_) timour defeats and captures bajazet p. (_l'art_) timour at samarcand pp. , (_l'art_) timour dies on his chinese expedition p. henry the fourth of england dies, p. battle of agincourt pp. , huss p. henry the fifth of england dies p. maid of orleans p. battle of varna p. (_l'art_) constantinople taken by the ottomans p. john basilowich rescues russia from the moguls p. (_l'art_) about luther p. soliman the great pp. , st. pius the fifth p. battle of lepanto pp. , ii. personal and literary character of cicero. (_from the_ encyclopÃ�dia metropolitana _of _.) prefatory notice. if the following sketch of cicero's life and writings be thought unworthy of so great a subject, the author must plead the circumstances under which it was made. in the spring of , when his hands were full of work, dr. whately paid him the compliment of asking him to write it for the _encyclopædia metropolitana_, to which he was at that time himself contributing. dr. whately explained to him that the editor had suddenly been disappointed in the article on cicero which was to have appeared in the _encyclopædia_, and that in consequence he could not allow more than two months for the composition of the paper which was to take its place; also, that it must contain such and such subjects. the author undertook and finished it under these conditions. in the present edition ( ) he has in some places availed himself of the excellent translations of its greek and latin passages, made by the reverend henry thompson in the edition of . marcus tullius cicero page . chief events in the life of cicero, §§ - . his literary position, § . the new academy and his relation to it, §§ - . his philosophical writings, §§ - . his letters, his historical and poetical compositions, § . his orations, § . his style, § . the orators of rome, § marcus tullius cicero. . marcus tullius cicero was born at arpinum, the native place of marius,[ ] in the year of rome (a.c. ), the same year which gave birth to the great pompey. his family was ancient and of equestrian rank, but had never taken part in the public affairs of rome,[ ] though both his father and grandfather were persons of consideration in the part of italy to which they belonged.[ ] his father, being a man of cultivated mind himself, determined to give his two sons the advantage of a liberal education, and to fit them for the prospect of those public employments which a feeble constitution incapacitated himself from undertaking. marcus, the elder of the two, soon displayed indications of a superior intellect, and we are told that his schoolfellows carried home such accounts of him, that their parents often visited the school for the sake of seeing a youth who gave such promise of future eminence.[ ] one of his earliest masters was the poet archias, whom he defended afterwards in his consular year; under his instructions he was able to compose a poem, though yet a boy, on the fable of glaucus, which had formed the subject of one of the tragedies of Ã�schylus. soon after he assumed the manly gown he was placed under the care of scævola, the celebrated lawyer, whom he introduces so beautifully into several of his philosophical dialogues; and in no long time he gained a thorough knowledge of the laws and political institutions of his country.[ ] this was about the time of the social war; and, according to the roman custom, which made it a necessary part of education to learn the military art by personal service, cicero took the opportunity of serving a campaign under the consul pompeius strabo, father of pompey the great. returning to pursuits more congenial to his natural taste, he commenced the study of philosophy under philo the academic, of whom we shall speak more particularly hereafter.[ ] but his chief attention was reserved for oratory, to which he applied himself with the assistance of molo, the first rhetorician of the day; while diodotus the stoic exercised him in the argumentative subtleties for which the disciples of zeno were so generally celebrated. at the same time he declaimed daily in greek and latin with some young noblemen, who were competitors with him in the same race of political honours. of the two professions,[ ] which, from the contentiousness of human nature, are involved in the very notion of society, while that of arms, by its splendour and importance, secures the almost undivided admiration of a rising and uncivilized people, legal practice, on the other hand, becomes the path to honours in later and more civilized ages, by reason of the oratorical accomplishments to which it usually gives scope. the date of cicero's birth fell precisely during that intermediate state of things, in which the glory of military exploits lost its pre-eminence by means of the very opulence and luxury which were their natural issue; and he was the first roman who found his way to the highest dignities of the state with no other recommendation than his powers of eloquence and his merits as a civil magistrate.[ ] the first cause of importance he undertook was his defence of sextus roscius; in which he distinguished himself by his spirited opposition to sylla, whose favourite chrysogonus was prosecutor in the action. this obliging him, according to plutarch, to leave rome on prudential motives, he employed his time in travelling for two years under pretence of his health, which, he tells us,[ ] was as yet unequal to the exertion of pleading. at athens he met with t. pomponius atticus, whom he had formerly known at school, and there renewed with him a friendship which lasted through life, in spite of the change of interests and estrangements of affection so common in turbulent times.[ ] here too he attended the lectures of antiochus, who, under the name of academic, taught the dogmatic doctrines of plato and the stoics. though cicero felt at first considerable dislike of his philosophical views,[ ] he seems afterwards to have adopted the sentiments of the old academy, which they much resembled; and not till late in life to have relapsed into the sceptical tenets of his former instructor philo.[ ] after visiting the principal philosophers and rhetoricians of asia, in his thirtieth year he returned to rome, so strengthened and improved both in bodily and mental powers, that he soon eclipsed in his oratorical efforts all his competitors for public favour. so popular a talent speedily gained him the suffrage of the commons; and, being sent to sicily as quæstor, at a time when the metropolis itself was visited with a scarcity of corn, he acquitted himself in that delicate situation with such address as to supply the clamorous wants of the people without oppressing the province from which the provisions were raised.[ ] returning thence with greater honours than had ever been before decreed to a roman governor, he ingratiated himself still farther in the esteem of the sicilians by undertaking his celebrated prosecution of verres; who, though defended by the influence of the metelli and the eloquence of hortensius, was at length driven in despair into voluntary exile. five years after his quæstorship, cicero was elected Ã�dile, a post of considerable expense from the exhibition of games connected with it. in this magistracy he conducted himself with singular propriety;[ ] for, it being customary to court the people by a display of splendour in these official shows, he contrived to retain his popularity without submitting to the usual alternative of plundering the provinces or sacrificing his private fortune. the latter was at this time by no means ample; but, with the good sense and taste which mark his character, he preserved in his domestic arrangements the dignity of a literary and public man, without any of the ostentation of magnificence which often distinguished the candidate for popular applause.[ ] after the customary interval of two years, he was returned at the head of the list as prætor;[ ] and now made his first appearance in the rostrum in support of the manilian law. about the same time he defended cluentius. at the expiration of his prætorship, he refused to accept a foreign province, the usual reward of that magistracy;[ ] but, having the consulate full in view, and relying on his interest with cæsar and pompey, he allowed nothing to divert him from that career of glory for which he now believed himself to be destined. . it may be doubted, indeed, whether any individual ever rose to power by more virtuous and truly honourable conduct; the integrity of his public life was only equalled by the correctness of his private morals; and it may at first sight excite our wonder that a course so splendidly begun should afterwards so little fulfil its early promise. yet it was a failure from the period of his consulate to his pro-prætorship in cilicia, and each year is found to diminish his influence in public affairs, till it expires altogether with the death of pompey. this surprise, however, arises in no small degree from measuring cicero's political importance by his present reputation, and confounding the authority he deservedly possesses as an author with the opinions entertained of him by his contemporaries as a statesman. from the consequence usually attached to passing events, a politician's celebrity is often at its zenith in his own generation; while the author, who is in the highest repute with posterity, may perhaps have been little valued or courted in his own day. virtue indeed so conspicuous as that of cicero, studies so dignified, and oratorical powers so commanding, will always invest their possessor with a large portion of reputation and authority; and this is nowhere more apparent than in the enthusiastic welcome with which he was greeted on his return from exile. but unless other qualities be added, more peculiarly necessary for a statesman, they will hardly of themselves carry that political weight which some writers have attached to cicero's public life, and which his own self-love led him to appropriate. the advice of the oracle,[ ] which had directed him to make his own genius, not the opinion of the people, his guide to immortality (which in fact pointed at the above-mentioned distinction between the fame of a statesman and of an author), at first made a deep impression on his mind; and at the present day he owes his reputation principally to those pursuits which, as plutarch tells us, exposed him to the ridicule and even to the contempt of his contemporaries as a "pedant and a professor."[ ] but his love of popularity overcame his philosophy, and he commenced a career which gained him one triumph and ten thousand mortifications. it is not indeed to be doubted that in his political course he was more or less influenced by a sense of duty. to many it may even appear that a public life was best adapted for the display of his particular talents; that, at the termination of the mithridatic war, cicero was in fact marked out as the very man to adjust the pretensions of the rival parties in the commonwealth, to withstand the encroachments of pompey, and to baffle the arts of cæsar. and if the power of swaying and controlling the popular assemblies by his eloquence; if the circumstances of his rank, equestrian as far as family was concerned, yet almost patrician from the splendour of his personal honours; if the popularity derived from his accusation of verres, and defence of cornelius, and the favour of the senate acquired by the brilliant services of his consulate; if the general respect of all parties which his learning and virtue commanded; if these were sufficient qualifications for a mediator between contending factions, cicero was indeed called upon by the voice of his country to that most arduous and honourable post. and in his consulate he had seemed sensible of the call: "all through my consulate," he declares in his speech against piso, "i made a point of doing nothing without the advice of the senate and the approval of the people. i ever defended the senate in the rostrum, in the senate house the people, and united the populace with the leading men, the equestrian order with the senate." yet, after that eventful period, we see him resigning his high station to cato, who, with half his abilities, little foresight, and no address,[ ] possessed that first requisite for a statesman, firmness. cicero, on the contrary, was irresolute, timid, and inconsistent.[ ] he talked indeed largely of preserving a middle course,[ ] but he was continually vacillating from one to the other extreme; always too confident or too dejected; incorrigibly vain of success, yet meanly panegyrizing the government of an usurper. his foresight, sagacity, practical good sense, and singular tact, were lost for want of that strength of mind which points them steadily to one object. he was never decided, never (as has sometimes been observed) took an important step without afterwards repenting of it. nor can we account for the firmness and resolution of his consulate, unless we discriminate between the case of resisting and exposing a faction, and that of balancing contending interests. vigour in repression differs widely from steadiness in mediation; the latter requiring a coolness of judgment, which a direct attack upon a public foe is so far from implying, that it even inspires minds naturally timid with unusual ardour. . his consulate was succeeded by the return of pompey from the east, and the establishment of the first triumvirate; which, disappointing his hopes of political power, induced him to resume his forensic and literary occupations. from these he was recalled, after an interval of four years, by the threatening measures of clodius, who at length succeeded in driving him into exile. this event, which, considering the circumstances connected with it, was one of the most glorious of his life, filled him with the utmost distress and despondency. he wandered about greece bewailing his miserable fortune, refusing the consolations which his friends attempted to administer, and shunning the public honours with which the greek cities were eager to load him.[ ] his return, which took place in the course of the following year, reinstated him in the high station he had filled at the termination of his consulate, but the circumstances of the times did not allow him to retain it. we refer to roman history for an account of his vacillations between the several members of the triumvirate; his defence of vatinius to please cæsar; and of his bitter political enemy gabinius, to ingratiate himself with pompey. his personal history in the meanwhile furnishes little worth noticing, except his election into the college of augurs, a dignity which had been a particular object of his ambition. his appointment to the government of cilicia, which took place about five years after his return from exile, was in consequence of pompey's law, which obliged those senators of consular or prætorian rank, who had never held any foreign command, to divide the vacant provinces among them. this office, which we have above seen him decline, he now accepted with feelings of extreme reluctance, dreading perhaps the military occupations which the movements of the parthians in that quarter rendered necessary. yet if we consider the state and splendour with which the proconsuls were surrounded, and the opportunities afforded them for almost legalized plunder and extortion, we must confess that this insensibility to the common objects of human cupidity was the token of no ordinary mind. the singular disinterestedness and integrity of his administration, as well as his success against the enemy, also belong to the history of his times. the latter he exaggerated from the desire, so often instanced in eminent men, of appearing to excel in those things for which nature has not adapted them. his return to italy was followed by earnest endeavours to reconcile pompey with cæsar, and by very spirited behaviour when cæsar required his presence in the senate. on this occasion he felt the glow of self-approbation with which his political conduct seldom repaid him: he writes to atticus,[ ] "i believe i do not please cæsar, but i am pleased with myself, which has not happened to me for a long while." however, this effort at independence was but transient. at no period of his public life did he display such miserable vacillation as at the opening of the civil war.[ ] we find him first accepting a commission from the republic; then courting cæsar; next, on pompey's sailing for greece, resolving to follow him thither; presently determining to stand neuter; then bent on retiring to the pompeians in sicily; and, when after all he had joined their camp in greece, discovering such timidity and discontent as to draw from pompey the bitter reproof, "i wish cicero would go over to the enemy, that he may learn to fear us."[ ] on his return to italy, after the battle of pharsalia, he had the mortification of learning that his brother and nephew were making their peace with cæsar, by throwing on himself the blame of their opposition to the conqueror. and here we see one of those elevated points of character which redeem the weaknesses of his political conduct; for, hearing that cæsar had retorted on quintus cicero the charge which the latter had brought against himself, he wrote a pressing letter in his favour, declaring his brother's safety was not less precious to him than his own, and representing him not as the leader, but as the companion of his voyage.[ ] now too the state of his private affairs reduced him to much perplexity; a sum he had advanced to pompey had impoverished him, and he was forced to stand indebted to atticus for present assistance.[ ] these difficulties led him to take a step which it has been customary to regard with great severity; the divorce of his wife terentia, though he was then in his sixty-second year, and his marriage with his rich ward publilia, who of course was of an age disproportionate to his own.[ ] yet, in reviewing this proceeding, we must not adopt the modern standard of propriety, forgetful of a condition of society which reconciled actions even of moral turpitude with a reputation for honour and virtue. terentia was a woman of a most imperious and violent temper, and (what is more to the purpose) had in no slight degree contributed to his present embarrassments by her extravagance in the management of his private affairs.[ ] by her he had two children, a son, born a year before his consulate, and a daughter whose loss he was now fated to deplore. to tullia he was tenderly attached, not only from the excellence of her disposition, but from her literary tastes; and her death tore from him, as he so pathetically laments to sulpicius, the only comfort which the course of public events had left him.[ ] at first he was inconsolable; and, retiring to a little island near his estate at antium, he buried himself in the woods, to avoid the sight of man.[ ] his distress was increased by the conduct of his new wife publilia; whom he soon divorced for testifying joy at the death of her stepdaughter. on this occasion he wrote his treatise on consolation, with a view to alleviate his grief; and, with the same object, he determined on dedicating a temple to his daughter, as a memorial of her virtues and his affection. his friends were assiduous in their attentions; and cæsar, who had treated him with extreme kindness on his return from egypt, signified the respect he bore his character by sending him a letter of condolence from spain,[ ] where the remains of the pompeian party still engaged him. cæsar, moreover, had shortly before given a still stronger proof of his favour, by replying to a work which cicero had drawn up in praise of cato;[ ] but no attentions, however considerate, could soften cicero's vexation at seeing the country he had formerly saved by his exertions now subjected to the tyranny of one master. his speeches, indeed, for marcellus and ligarius, exhibit traces of inconsistency; but for the most part he retired from public business, and gave himself up to the composition of those works which, while they mitigated his political sorrows, have secured his literary celebrity. . the murder of cæsar, which took place in the following year, once more brought him on the stage of public affairs; but as our present paper is but supplemental to the history of the times, we leave to others to relate what more has to be told of him, his unworthy treatment of brutus, his coalition with octavius, his orations against antonius, his proscription, and his violent death, at the age of sixty-four. willingly would we pass over his public life altogether; for he was as little of a great statesman as of a great commander. his merits are of another kind and in a higher order of excellence. antiquity may be challenged to produce a man more virtuous, more perfectly amiable than cicero. none interest more in their life, none excite more painful emotions in their death. others, it is true, may be found of loftier and more heroic character, who awe and subdue the mind by the grandeur of their views, or the intensity of their exertions. but cicero engages our affections by the integrity of his public conduct, the correctness of his private life, the generosity,[ ] placability, and kindness of his heart, the playfulness of his wit, the warmth of his domestic attachments. in this respect his letters are invaluable. "here," says middleton, "we may see the genuine man without disguise or affectation, especially in his letters to atticus; to whom he talked with the same frankness as to himself, opened the rise and progress of each thought; and never entered into any affair without his particular advice."[ ] it must be confessed, indeed, that this private correspondence discloses the defects of his political conduct, and shows that they were partly of a moral character. want of firmness has been repeatedly mentioned as his principal failing; and insincerity is the natural attendant on a timid and irresolute mind. on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that openness and candour are rare qualities in a statesman at all times, and while the duplicity of weakness is despised, the insincerity of a powerful but crafty mind, though incomparably more odious, is too commonly regarded with feelings of indulgence. cicero was deficient, not in honesty, but in moral courage; his disposition, too, was conciliatory and forgiving; and much which has been referred to inconsistency should be attributed to the generous temper which induced him to remember the services rather than the neglect of plancius, and to relieve the exiled and indigent verres.[ ] much too may be traced to his professional habits as a pleader; which led him to introduce the licence of the forum into deliberative discussions, and (however inexcusably) even into his correspondence with private friends. some writers, as lyttelton, have considered it an aggravation of cicero's inconsistencies, that he was so perfectly aware, as his writings show, of what was philosophically and morally upright and honest. it might be sufficient to reply, that there is a wide difference between calmly deciding on an abstract point, and acting on that decision in the hurry of real life; that cicero in fact was apt to fancy (as all will fancy when assailed by interest or passion) that the circumstances of his case constituted it an exception to the broad principles of duty. besides, he considered it to be actually the duty of a statesman to accommodate theoretical principle to the exigencies of existing circumstances. "surely," he says in his defence of plancius, "it is no mark of inconsistency in a statesman to determine his judgment and to steer his course by the state of the political weather. this is what i have been taught, what i have experienced, what i have read; this is what is recorded in history of the wisest and most eminent men, whether at home or abroad; namely, that the same man is not bound always to maintain the same opinions, but those, whatever they may be, which the state of the commonwealth, the direction of the times, and the interests of peace may demand."[ ] moreover, he claimed for himself especially the part of mediator between political rivals; and he considered it to be a mediator's duty alternately to praise and blame both parties, even to exaggeration, if by such means it was possible either to flatter or frighten them into an adoption of temperate measures.[ ] "cicero," says plutarch, "used to give them private advice, keeping up a correspondence with cæsar, and urging many things upon pompey himself, soothing and persuading each of them."[ ] . but such criticism on cicero as lyttelton's proceeds on an entire misconception of the design and purpose with which the ancients prosecuted philosophical studies. the motives and principles of morals were not so seriously acknowledged as to lead to a practical application of them to the conduct of life. even when they proposed them in the form of precept, they still regarded the perfectly virtuous man as the creature of their imagination rather than a model for imitation--a character whom it was a mental recreation rather than a duty to contemplate; and if an individual here or there, as scipio or cato, attempted to conform his life to his philosophical conceptions of virtue, he was sure to be ridiculed for singularity and affectation. even among the athenians, by whom philosophy was, in many cases, cultivated to the exclusion of every active profession, intellectual amusement, not the discovery of truth, was the principal object of their discussions. that we must thus account for the ensnaring questions and sophistical reasonings of which their disputations consisted, has been noticed by writers on logic;[ ] and it was their extension of this system to the case of morals which brought upon their sophists the irony of socrates and the sterner rebuke of aristotle. but if this took place in a state of society in which the love of speculation pervaded all ranks, much more was it to be expected among the romans, who, busied as they were in political enterprises, and deficient in philosophical acuteness, had neither time nor inclination for abstruse investigations; and who considered philosophy simply as one of the many fashions introduced from greece, "a sort of table furniture," as warburton well expresses it, a mere refinement in the arts of social enjoyment.[ ] this character it bore both among friends and enemies. hence the popularity which attended the three athenian philosophers who had come to rome on an embassy from their native city; and hence the inflexible determination with which cato procured their dismissal, through fear, as plutarch tells us,[ ] lest their arts of disputation should corrupt the roman youth. and when at length, by the authority of scipio,[ ] the literary treasures of sylla, and the patronage of lucullus, philosophical studies had gradually received the countenance of the higher classes of their countrymen, still, in consistency with the principle above laid down, we find them determined in their adoption of this or that system, not so much by the harmony of its parts, or by the plausibility of its reasonings, as by its suitableness to the particular profession and political station to which they severally belonged. thus, because the stoics were more minute than other sects in inculcating the moral and social duties, we find the roman jurisconsults professing themselves followers of zeno;[ ] the orators, on the contrary, adopted the disputatious system of the later academics;[ ] while epicurus was the master of the idle and the wealthy. hence, too, they confined the profession of philosophical science to greek teachers; considering them the sole proprietors, as it were, of a foreign and expensive luxury, which the vanquished might suitably have the duty of furnishing, and which the conquerors could well afford to purchase. before the works of cicero, no attempts worth considering had been made for using the latin tongue in philosophical subjects. the natural stubbornness of the language conspired with roman haughtiness to prevent this application.[ ] the epicureans, indeed, had made the experiment, but their writings were even affectedly harsh and slovenly,[ ] and we find cicero himself, in spite of his inexhaustible flow of rich and expressive diction, making continual apologies for his learned occupations, and extolling philosophy as the parent of everything great, virtuous, and amiable.[ ] yet, with whatever discouragement his design was attended, he ultimately triumphed over the pride of an unlettered people, and the difficulties of a defective language. he was indeed possessed of that first requisite for eminence, an enthusiastic attachment to the studies he was recommending. but, occupied as he was with the duties of a statesman, mere love of literature would have availed little, if separated from that energy and breadth of intellect by which he was enabled to pursue a variety of objects at once, with equally perserving and indefatigable zeal. "he suffered no part of his leisure to be idle," says middleton, "or the least interval of it to be lost; but what other people gave to the public shows, to pleasures, to feasts, nay, even to sleep and the ordinary refreshments of nature, he generally gave to his books, and the enlargement of his knowledge. on days of business, when he had anything particular to compose, he had no other time for meditating but when he was taking a few turns in his walks, where he used to dictate his thoughts to his scribes who attended him. we find many of his letters dated before daylight, some from the senate, others from his meals, and the crowd of his morning levee."[ ] thus he found time, without apparent inconvenience, for the business of the state, for the turmoil of the courts, and for philosophical studies. during his consulate he delivered twelve orations in the senate, rostrum, or forum. his treatises _de oratore_ and _de republicâ_, the most finished perhaps of his compositions, were written at a time when, to use his own words, "not a day passed without his taking part in forensic disputes."[ ] and in the last year of his life he composed at least eight of his philosophical works, besides the fourteen orations against antony, which are known by the name of philippics. being thus ardent in the cause of philosophy, he recommended it to the notice of his countrymen, not only for the honour which its introduction would reflect upon himself (which of course was a motive with him), but also with the fondness of one who esteemed it "the guide of life, the parent of virtue, the guardian in difficulty, and the tranquillizer in misfortune."[ ] nor were his mental endowments less adapted to the accomplishment of his object than the spirit with which he engaged in the work. gifted with great versatility of talent, with acuteness, quickness of perception, skill in selection, art in arrangement, fertility of illustration, warmth of fancy, and extraordinary taste, he at once seizes upon the most effective parts of his subject, places them in the most striking point of view, and arrays them in the liveliest and most inviting colours. his writings have the singular felicity of combining brilliancy of execution with never-failing good sense. it must be allowed that he is deficient in depth; that he skims over rather than dives into the subjects of which he treats; that he had too great command of the plausible to be a patient investigator or a sound reasoner. yet if he has less originality of thought than others, if he does not grapple with his subject, if he is unequal to a regular and lengthened disquisition, if he is frequently inconsistent in his opinions, we must remember that mere soundness of view, without talent for display, has few recommendations for those who have not yet imbibed a taste even for the outward form of knowledge,[ ] that system nearly precludes freedom, and depth almost implies obscurity. it was this very absence of scientific exactness which constituted in roman eyes a principal charm of cicero's compositions.[ ] nor must his profession as a pleader be forgotten in enumerating the circumstances which concurred to give his writings their peculiar character. for, however his design of interesting his countrymen in greek literature, however too his particular line of talent, may have led him to explain rather than to invent; yet he expressly informs us it was principally with a view to his own improvement in oratory that he devoted himself to philosophical studies.[ ] this induced him to undertake successively the cause of the stoic, the epicurean, or the platonist, as an exercise for his powers of argumentation; while the wavering and unsettled state of mind, occasioned by such habits of disputation, led him in his personal judgment to prefer the sceptical tenets of the new academy. . here then, before enumerating cicero's philosophical writings, an opportunity is presented to us of redeeming the pledge we have given elsewhere in our encyclopædia,[ ] to consider the system of doctrine which the reformers (as they thought themselves) of the academic school introduced about years before the christian era. we shall not trace here the history of the old academy, or speak of the innovations on the system of plato, silently introduced by the austere polemo. when zeno, however, who was his pupil, advocated the same rigid tenets in a more open and dogmatic form,[ ] the academy at length took the alarm, and a reaction ensued. arcesilas, who had succeeded polemo and crates, determined on reverting to the principles of the elder schools;[ ] but mistaking the profession of ignorance, which socrates had used against the sophists on physical questions, for an actual scepticism on points connected with morals, he fell into the opposite extreme, and declared, first, that nothing could be known, and therefore, secondly, nothing should be maintained.[ ] whatever were his private sentiments (for some authors affirm his esoteric doctrines to have been dogmatic[ ]), he brought forward these sceptical tenets in so unguarded a form, that it required all his argumentative powers, which were confessedly great, to maintain them against the obvious objections which were pressed upon him from all quarters. on his death, therefore, as might have been anticipated, his school was deserted for those of zeno and epicurus; and during the lives of lacydes, evander, and hegesinus, who successively filled the academic chair, being no longer recommended by the novelty of its doctrines,[ ] or the talents of its masters, it became of little consideration amid the wranglings of more popular philosophies. carneades,[ ] therefore, who succeeded hegesinus, found it necessary to use more cautious and guarded language; and, by explaining what was paradoxical, by reservations and exceptions, in short, by all the arts which an acute and active genius could suggest, he contrived to establish its authority, without departing, as far as we have the means of judging, from the principle of universal scepticism which arcesilas had so pertinaciously advocated.[ ] the new academy,[ ] then, taught with plato, that all things in their own nature were fixed and determinate; but that, through the constitution of the human mind, it was impossible _for us_ to see them in their simple and eternal forms, to separate appearance from reality, truth from falsehood.[ ] for the conception we form of any object is altogether derived from and depends on the sensation, the impression, it produces on our own minds ([greek: pathos energeias, phantasia]). reason does but deduce from premisses ultimately supplied by sensation. our only communication, then, with actual existences being through the medium of our own impressions, we have no means of ascertaining the correspondence of the things themselves with the ideas we entertain of them; and therefore can in no case be certain of the truthfulness of our senses. of their fallibility, however, we may easily assure ourselves; for in cases in which they are detected contradicting each other, all cannot be correct reporters of the object with which they profess to acquaint us. food, which is the same as far as _sight_ and _touch_ are concerned, _tastes_ differently to different individuals; fire, which is the same to the _eye_, communicates a sensation of _pain_ at one time, of _pleasure_ at another; the oar _appears_ crooked in the water, while the _touch_ assures us it is as straight as before it was immersed.[ ] again, in dreams, in intoxication, in madness, impressions are made upon the mind, vivid enough to incite to reflection and action, yet utterly at variance with those produced by the same objects when we are awake, or sober, or in possession of our reason.[ ] it appears, then, that we cannot prove that our senses are _ever_ faithful to the things they profess to report about; but we do know they _often_ produce erroneous impressions of them. here then is room for endless doubt; for why may they not deceive us in cases in which we cannot detect the deception? it is certain they _often_ act irregularly; is there any consistency _at all_ in their operations, any law to which these varieties may be referred? it is undeniable that an object often varies in the impression which it makes upon the mind, while, on the other hand, the same impression may arise from different objects. what limit is to be assigned to this disorder? is there any sensation strong enough to _assure_ us of the presence of the object which it seems to intimate, any such as to preclude the possibility of deception? if, when we look into a mirror, our minds are impressed with the appearance of trees, fields, and houses, which are unreal, how can we ascertain beyond all doubt whether the scene we directly look upon has any more substantial existence than the former?[ ] from these reasonings the academics taught that nothing was certain, nothing was to be known ([greek: katalêpton]). for the stoics themselves, their most determined opponents, defined the [greek: katalêptikê phantasia] (the phantasy or impression which involved knowledge[ a]) to be one that was capable of being produced by no object except that to which it really belonged.[ ] since then we cannot arrive at knowledge, we must suspend our decision, pronounce absolutely on nothing, nay, according to arcesilas, never even form an opinion.[ ] in the conduct of life, however, probability[ ] must determine our choice of action; and this admits of different degrees. the lowest kind is that which suggests itself on the first view of the case ([greek: phantasia pithanê], or _persuasive phantasy_); but in all important matters we must correct the evidence of our senses by considerations derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, the disposition of the organ, the time, the manner, and other attendant circumstances. when the impression has been thus minutely considered, the _phantasy_ becomes [greek: aperiôdeumenê], or _approved on circumspection_; and if during this examination no objection has arisen to weaken our belief, the highest degree of probability is attained, and the phantasy is pronounced _unembarrassed with doubt_, or [greek: aperispastos].[ ] sextus empiricus illustrates this as follows:[ ] if on entering a dark room we discern a coiled rope, our first impression may be that it is a serpent--this is the _persuasive phantasy_. on a closer inspection, however, after _walking round it_ ([greek: periodeusantes]), or _on circumspection_, we observe it does not move, nor has it the proper colour, shape, or proportions; and now we conclude it is not a serpent; here we are determined in our belief by the [greek: periôdeumenê phantasia], and we assent to the _circumspective phantasy_. for an instance of the third and most accurate kind, viz., that with which no contrary impression interferes, we may refer to the conduct of admetus on the return of alcestis from the infernal regions. he believes he sees his wife; everything confirms it; but he cannot simply acquiesce in that opinion, because his mind is _embarrassed or distracted_ [greek: perispatai] from the knowledge he has of her having died; he asks, "what! do i see my wife i just now buried?" (_alc._ .) hercules resolves his difficulty, and his phantasy is in repose, or [greek: aperispastos]. the suspension then of assent ([greek: epochê]) which the academics enjoined, was, at least from the time of carneades,[ ] almost a speculative doctrine;[ ] and herein lay the chief difference between them and the pyrrhonists; that the latter altogether denied the existence of the probable, while the former admitted there was sufficient to allow of action, provided we pronounced absolutely on nothing. little more can be said concerning the opinions of a sect whose fundamental maxim was that nothing could be known, and nothing should be taught. it lay midway between the other philosophies; and in the altercations of the various schools it was at once attacked by all,[ ] yet appealed to by each of the contending parties, if not to countenance its own sentiments, at least to condemn those advocated by its opponents,[ ] and thus to perform the office of an umpire.[ ] from this necessity, then, of being prepared on all sides for attack,[ ] it became as much a school of rhetoric as of philosophy,[ ] and was celebrated among the ancients for the eloquence of its masters.[ ] hence also its reputation was continually varying: for, requiring the aid of great abilities to maintain its exalted and arduous post, it alternately rose and fell in estimation, according to the talents of the individual who happened to fill the chair.[ ] and hence the frequent alterations which took place in its philosophical tenets; which, depending rather on the arbitrary determinations of its present head, than on the tradition of settled maxims, were accommodated to the views of each successive master, according as he hoped by sophistry or concession to overcome the repugnance which the mind ever will feel to the doctrines of universal scepticism. and in these continual changes it is pleasing to observe that the interests of virtue and good order were uniformly promoted; interests to which the academic doctrines were certainly hostile, if not necessarily fatal. thus, although we find carneades, in conformity to the plan adopted by arcesilas,[ ] opposing the _dogmatic_ principles of the stoics concerning moral duty,[ ] and studiously concealing his private views even from his friends;[ ] yet, by allowing that the suspense of judgment was not always a duty, that the wise man might sometimes _believe_ though he could not _know_;[ ] he in some measure restored the authority of those great instincts of our nature which his predecessor appears to have discarded. clitomachus pursued his steps by innovations in the same direction;[ ] philo, who followed next, attempting to reconcile his tenets with those of the platonic school,[ ] has been accounted the founder of a fourth academy--while, to his successor antiochus, who embraced the doctrines of the porch,[ ] and maintained the fidelity of the senses, it has been usual to assign the establishment of a fifth. . we have already observed that cicero in early life inclined to the doctrines of plato and antiochus, which, at the time he composed the bulk of his writings, he had abandoned for those of carneades and philo.[ ] yet he was never so entirely a disciple of the new academy as to neglect the claims of morality and the laws. he is loud in his protestations that truth is the great object of his search: "for my own part, if i have applied myself especially to this philosophy, through any love of display or pleasure in disputation, i should condemn not only my folly, but my moral condition. and, therefore, unless it were absurd, in an argument like this, to do what is sometimes done in political discussions, i would swear by jupiter and the divine penates that i burn with a desire of discovering the truth, and really believe what i am saying."[ ] and, however inappropriate this boast may appear, he at least pursues the useful and the magnificent in philosophy; and uses his academic character as a pretext rather for a judicious selection from each system than for an indiscriminate rejection of all.[ ] thus, in the capacity of a statesman, he calls in the assistance of doctrines which, as an orator, he does not scruple to deride; those of zeno in particular, who maintained the truth of the popular theology, and the divine origin of augury, and (as we noticed above) was more explicit than the other masters in his views of social duty. this difference of sentiment between the magistrate and the pleader is strikingly illustrated in the opening of his treatise _de legibus_; where, after deriving the principles of law from the nature of things, he is obliged to beg quarter of the academics, whose reasonings he feels could at once destroy the foundation on which his argument rested. "my treatise throughout," he says, "aims at the strengthening of states and the welfare of peoples. i dread therefore to lay down any but well considered and carefully examined principles; i do not say principles which are universally received, for none are such, but principles received by those philosophers who consider virtue to be desirable for its own sake, and nothing whatever to be good, or at least a great good, which is not in its own nature praiseworthy." these philosophers are the stoics; and then, apparently alluding to the arguments of carneades against justice, which he had put into the mouth of philus in the third book of his _de republicâ_, he proceeds: "as to the academy, which puts the whole subject into utter confusion, i mean the new academy of arcesilas and carneades, let us persuade it to hold its peace. for, should it make an inroad upon the views which we consider we have so skilfully put into shape, it will make an extreme havoc of them. the academy i cannot conciliate, and i dare not ignore."[ ] and as, in questions connected with the interests of society, he thus uniformly advocates the tenets of the porch, so in discussions of a physical character we find him adopting the sublime and glowing sentiments of pythagoras and plato. here, however, having no object of expediency in view to keep him within the bounds of consistency, he scruples not to introduce whatever is most beautiful in itself, or most adapted to his present purpose. at one time he describes the deity as the all-pervading soul of the world, the cause of life and motion;[ ] at another he is the intelligent preserver and governor of every separate part.[ ] at one time the soul of man is in its own nature necessarily eternal, without beginning or end of existence;[ ] at another it is represented as a portion, or the haunt of the one infinite spirit;[ ] at another it is to enter the assembly of the gods, or to be driven into darkness, according to its moral conduct in this life;[ ] at another, it is only in its best and greatest specimens destined for immortality;[ ] sometimes that immortality is described as attended with consciousness and the continuance of earthly friendships;[ ] sometimes as but an immortality of name and glory;[ ] more frequently however these separate notions are confused together in the same passage. though the works of aristotle were not given to the world till sylla's return from greece, cicero appears to have been a considerable proficient in his philosophy,[ ] and he has not overlooked the important aid it affords in those departments of science which are alike removed from abstract reasoning and fanciful theorizing. to aristotle he is indebted for most of the principles laid down in his rhetorical discussions,[ ] while in his treatises on morals not a few of his remarks may be traced to the same acute philosopher.[ ] the doctrines of the garden alone, though some of his most intimate friends were of the epicurean school, he regarded with aversion and contempt; feeling no sort of interest in a system which cut at the very root of that activity of mind, industry, and patriotism, for which he himself both in public and private was so honourably distinguished.[ ] such then was the new academy, and such the variation of opinion which, in cicero's judgment, was not inconsistent with the profession of an academic. and, however his adoption of that philosophy may be in part referred to his oratorical habits, or his natural cast of mind, yet, considering the ambition which he felt to inspire his countrymen with a taste for literature and science,[ ] we must conclude with warburton[ ] that, in acceding to the system of philo, he was strongly influenced by the freedom of thought and reasoning which it allowed to his literary works, the liberty of illustrating the principles and doctrines, the strong and weak parts, of every grecian school. bearing then in mind his design of recommending the study of philosophy, it is interesting to observe the artifices of style and manner which, with this end, he adopted in his treatises; and though to enter minutely into this subject would be foreign to our present purpose, it may be allowed us to make some general remarks on the character of works so eminently successful in accomplishing the object for which they were undertaken. . the obvious peculiarity of cicero's philosophical discussions is the form of dialogue in which most of them are conveyed. plato, indeed, and xenophon, had, before his time, been even more strictly dramatic in their compositions; but they professed to be recording the sentiments of an individual, and the socratic mode of argument could hardly be displayed in any other shape. of that interrogative and inductive conversation, however, cicero affords but few specimens;[ ] the nature of his dialogue being as different from that of the two athenians as was his object in writing. his aim was to excite interest; and he availed himself of this mode of composition for the life and variety, the ease, perspicuity, and vigour which it gave to his discussions. his dialogue is of two kinds: according as the subject of it is beyond or under controversy, it assumes the shape of a continued treatise, or a free disputation; in the latter case imparting clearness to what is obscure, in the former relief to what is clear. thus his practical and systematic treatises on rhetoric and moral duty, when not written in his own person, are merely divided between several speakers who are the mere organs of his own sentiments; while in questions of a more speculative cast, on the nature of the gods, on the human soul, on the greatest good, he uses his academic liberty, and brings forward the theories of contending schools under the character of their respective advocates. the advantages gained in both cases by the form of dialogue are evident. in controverted subjects he is not obliged to discover his own views, he can detail opposite arguments forcibly and luminously, and he is allowed the use of those oratorical powers in which, after all, his great strength lay. in those subjects, on the other hand, which are uninteresting because they are familiar, he may pause or digress before the mind is weary and the attention begins to flag; the reader is carried on by easy journeys and short stages, and novelty in the speaker supplies the want of novelty in the matter. nor does cicero discover less skill in the execution of these dialogues than address in their method. it were idle to enlarge upon the beauty, richness, and taste of compositions which have been the admiration of every age and country. in the dignity of his speakers, their high tone of mutual courtesy, the harmony of his groups, and the delicate relief of his contrasts, he is inimitable. the majesty and splendour of his introductions, which generally address themselves to the passions or the imagination, the eloquence with which both sides of a question are successively displayed, the clearness and terseness of his statements on abstract points, the grace of his illustrations, his exquisite allusions to the scene or time of the supposed conversation, his digressions in praise of philosophy or great men, his quotations from grecian and roman poetry; lastly, the melody and fulness of his style, unite to throw a charm round his writings peculiar to themselves. to the roman reader they especially recommended themselves by their continual and most artful references to the heroes of the old republic, who now appeared but exemplars, and (as it were) patrons of that eternal philosophy, which he had before, perhaps, considered as the short-lived reveries of ingenious but inactive men. nor is there any confusion, want of keeping, or appearance of effort in the introduction of the various beauties we have been enumerating, which are blended together with so much skill and propriety, that it is sometimes difficult to point out the particular sources of the admiration which they inspire. . the series of his rhetorical works[ ] has been preserved nearly complete, and consists of the _de inventione_, _de oratore_, _brutus sive de claris oratoribus_, _orator sive de optimo genere dicendi_, _de partitione oratoriâ_, _topica_, and _de optimo genere oratorum_. the last-mentioned, which is a fragment, is understood to have been the proem to his translation (now lost) of the speeches of demosthenes and Ã�schines, _de coronâ_. these he translated with the view of defending, by the example of the greek orators, his own style of eloquence, which, as we shall afterwards find, the critics of the day censured as too asiatic in its character; and hence the proem, which still survives, is on the subject of the attic style of oratory. this composition and his abstracts of his own orations[ ] are his only rhetorical works not extant, and probably our loss is not very great. the _treatise on rhetoric_, addressed to herennius, though edited with his works, and ascribed to him by several of the ancients, is now generally attributed to cornificius, or some other writer of the day. the works, which we have enumerated, consider the art of rhetoric in different points of view, and thus receive from each other mutual support and illustration, while they prevent the tediousness which might else arise, if they were moulded into one systematic treatise on the general subject. three are in the form of dialogue; the rest are written in his own person. in all, except perhaps the _orator_, he professes to have availed himself of the principles of the aristotelic and isocratean schools, selecting what was best in each of them, and, as occasion might offer, adding remarks and precepts of his own.[ ] the subject of oratory is considered in three distinct lights;[ ] with reference to the case, the speaker, and the speech. the case, as respects its nature, is definite or indefinite; with reference to the hearer, it is judicial, deliberative, or descriptive; as regards the opponent, the division is fourfold--according as the fact, its nature, its quality, or its propriety is called in question. the art of the speaker is directed to five points: the discovery of persuasives (whether ethical, pathetical, or argumentative), arrangement, diction, memory, delivery. and the speech itself consists of six parts: introduction, statement of the case, division of the subject, proof, refutation, and conclusion. his treatises _de inventione_ and _topica_, the first and nearly the last of his compositions, are both on the invention of arguments, which he regards, with aristotle, as the very foundation of the art; though he elsewhere confines the term eloquence, according to its derivation, to denote excellence of diction and delivery, to the exclusion of argumentative skill.[ ] the former of these works was written at the age of twenty, and seems originally to have consisted of four books, of which but two remain.[ ] in the first of these he considers rhetorical invention generally, supplies commonplaces for the six parts of an oration promiscuously, and gives a full analysis of the two forms of argument, syllogism and induction. in the second book he applies these rules particularly to the three subject-matters of rhetoric, the deliberative, the judicial, and the descriptive, dwelling principally on the judicial, as affording the most ample field for discussion. this treatise seems for the most part compiled from the writings of aristotle, isocrates, and hermagoras;[ ] and as such he alludes to it in the opening of his _de oratore_ as deficient in the experience and judgment which nothing but time and practice can impart. still it is an entertaining, nay, useful work; remarkable, even among cicero's writings, for its uniform good sense, and less familiar to the scholar only because the greater part has been superseded by the compositions of his riper years. his _topica_, or treatise on commonplaces, has less extent and variety of plan, being little else than a compendium of aristotle's work on the same subject. it was, as he informs us in its proem, drawn up from memory on his voyage from italy to greece, soon after cæsar's murder, and in compliance with the wishes of trebatius, who had some time before urged him to undertake the translation.[ ] cicero seems to have intended his _de oratore_, _de claris oratoribus_, and _orator_, to form one complete system.[ ] of these three noble works the first lays down the principles and rules of the rhetorical art; the second exemplifies them in the most eminent speakers of greece and rome; and the third shadows out the features of that perfect orator, whose superhuman excellences should be the aim of our ambition. the _de oratore_ was written when the author was fifty-two, two years after his return from exile; and is a dialogue between some of the most illustrious romans of the preceding age on the subject of oratory. the principal speakers are the orators crassus and antonius, who are represented unfolding the principles of their art to sulpicius and cotta, young men just rising in the legal profession. in the first book, the conversation turns on the subject-matter of rhetoric, and the qualifications requisite for the perfect orator. here crassus maintains the necessity of his being acquainted with the whole circle of the arts, while antonius confines eloquence to the province of speaking well. the dispute for the most part seems verbal; for cicero himself, though he here sides with crassus, yet elsewhere, as we have above noticed, pronounces eloquence, strictly speaking, to consist in beauty of diction. scævola, the celebrated lawyer, takes part in this preliminary discussion; but, in the ensuing meetings, makes way for catulus and cæsar, the subject leading to such technical disquisitions as were hardly suitable to the dignity of the aged augur.[ ] the next morning antonius enters upon the subject of invention, which cæsar completes by subjoining some remarks on the use of humour in oratory; and antonius, relieving him, finishes the morning discussion with treating of arrangement and memory. in the afternoon the rules for propriety and elegance of diction are explained by crassus, who was celebrated in this department of the art; and the work concludes with his handling the subject of delivery and action. such is the plan of the _de oratore_, the most finished perhaps of cicero's compositions. an air of grandeur and magnificence reigns throughout. the characters of the aged senators are finely conceived, and the whole company is invested with an almost religious majesty, from the allusions interspersed to the melancholy destinies for which its members were reserved. his treatise _de claris oratoribus_ was written after an interval of nine years, about the time of cato's death, when he was sixty-one, and is thrown into the shape of a dialogue between brutus, atticus, and himself. he begins with solon, and after briefly mentioning the orators of greece, proceeds to those of his own country, so as to take in the whole period from the time of junius brutus down to himself. about the same time he wrote his _orator_; in which he directs his attention principally to diction and delivery, as in his _de inventione_ and _topica_ he considers the matter of an oration.[ ] this treatise is of a less practical nature than the rest.[ ] it adopts the principles of plato, and delineates the perfect orator according to the abstract conceptions of the intellect rather than the deductions of observation and experience. hence he sets out with a definition of the perfectly eloquent man, whose characteristic it is to express himself with propriety on all subjects, whether humble, great, or of an intermediate character;[ ] and here he has an opportunity of paying some indirect compliments to himself. with this work he was so well satisfied that he does not scruple to declare, in a letter to a friend, that he was ready to rest on its merits his reputation for judgment in oratory.[ ] the treatise _de partitione oratoriâ_, or on the three parts of rhetoric, is a kind of catechism between cicero and his son, drawn up for the use of the latter at the same time with the two preceding. it is the most systematic and perspicuous of his rhetorical works, but seems to be but the rough draught of what he originally intended.[ ] . the connection which we have been able to preserve between the rhetorical writings of cicero cannot be attained in his moral, political, and metaphysical treatises; partly from the extent of the subject, partly from the losses occasioned by time, partly from the inconsistency which we have warned the reader to expect in his sentiments. in our enumeration, therefore, we shall observe no other order than that which the date of their composition furnishes. the earliest now extant is part of his treatise _de legibus_, in three books; being a sequel to his work on politics. both were written in imitation of plato's treatises on the same subjects.[ ] the latter of these (_de republicâ_) was composed a year after the _de oratore_,[ ] and seems to have vied with it in the majesty and interest of the dialogue. it consisted of a series of discussions in six books on the origin and principles of government, scipio being the principal speaker, but lælius, philus, manilius, and other personages of like gravity taking part in the conversation. till lately, but a fragment of the fifth book was understood to be in existence, in which scipio, under the fiction of a dream, inculcates the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. but in the year , monsignor mai, librarian of the vatican, published considerable portions of the first and second books, from a palimpsest manuscript of st. austin's _commentary on the psalms_. in the part now recovered, scipio discourses on the different kinds of constitutions and their respective advantages; with a particular reference to that of rome. in the third book, the subject of justice was discussed by lælius and philus; in the fourth, scipio treated of morals and education; while in the fifth and sixth, the duties of a magistrate were explained, and the best means of preventing changes and revolutions in the constitution itself. in the latter part of the treatise, allusion was made to the actual posture of affairs in rome, when the conversation was supposed to have occurred, and the commotions excited by the gracchi. in his treatise _de legibus_, which was written two years later than the _de republicâ_, when he was fifty-five, and shortly after the murder of clodius, he represents himself as explaining to his brother quintus and atticus, in their walks through the woods of arpinum, the nature and origin of the laws and their actual state, both in other countries and in rome. the first part only of the subject is contained in the books now extant; the introduction to which we have had occasion to notice, when speaking of his stoical sentiments on questions connected with state policy. law he pronounces to be the perfection of reason, the eternal mind, the divine energy, which, while it pervades and unites in one the whole universe, associates gods and men by the more intimate resemblance of reason and virtue, and still more closely men with men, by the participation of common faculties, affections, and situations. he then proves, at length, that justice is not merely created by civil institutions, from the power of conscience, the imperfections of human law, the moral sense, and the disinterestedness of virtue. he next proceeds to unfold the principles, first, of religious law, under the heads of divine worship; the observance of festivals and games; the office of priests, augurs, and heralds; the punishment of sacrilege and purjury; the consecration of land, and the rights of sepulchre; and, secondly, of civil law, which gives him an opportunity of noticing the respective duties of magistrates and citizens. in these discussions, though professedly speaking of the abstract question, he does not hesitate to anticipate the subject of the lost books, by frequent allusions to the history and customs of his own country. it must be added, that in no part of his writings do worse instances occur, than in this treatise, of that vanity which was notoriously his weakness, which are rendered doubly offensive by their being put into the mouth of his brother and atticus.[ ] here a period of seven or eight years intervenes, during which he composed little of importance besides his orations. he then published the _de claris oratoribus_ and _orator_; and a year later, when he was sixty-three, his _academicæ quæstiones_, in the retirement from public business to which he was driven by the dictatorship of cæsar. this work had originally consisted of two dialogues, which he entitled _catulus_ and _lucullus_, from the names of the respective speakers in each. these he now remodelled and enlarged into four books, dedicating them to varro, whom he introduced as advocating, in the presence of atticus, the tenets of antiochus, while he himself defended those of philo. of this most valuable composition, only the second book (_lucullus_) of the first edition and part of the first book of the second are now extant. in the former of those two, lucullus argues against, and cicero for, the academic sect, in the presence of catulus and hortensius; in the latter, varro pursues the history of philosophy from socrates to arcesilas, and cicero continues it down to the time of carneades. in the second edition the style was corrected, the matter condensed, and the whole polished with extraordinary care and diligence.[ ] the same year he published his treatise _de finibus_, or "on the chief good," in five books, in which are explained the sentiments of the epicureans, stoics, and peripatetics on the subject. this is the earliest of his works in which the dialogue is of a disputatious character. it is opened with a defence of the epicurean tenets, concerning pleasure, by torquatus; to which cicero replies at length. the scene then shifts from the cuman villa to the library of young lucullus (his father being dead), where the stoic cato expatiates on the sublimity of the system which maintains the existence of one only good, and is answered by cicero in the character of a peripatetic. lastly, piso, in a conversation held at athens, enters into an explanation of the doctrine of aristotle, that happiness is the greatest good. the general style of this treatise is elegant and perspicuous; and the last book in particular has great variety and splendour of diction. it was about this time that cicero was especially courted by the heads of the dictator's party, of whom hirtius and dolabella went so far as to declaim daily at his house for the benefit of his instructions.[ ] a visit of this nature to the tusculan villa, soon after the publication of the _de finibus_, gave rise to his work entitled _tusculanæ quæstiones_, which professes to be the substance of five philosophical disputes between himself and friends, digested into as many books. he argues throughout after the manner of an academic, even with an affectation of inconsistency; sometimes making use of the socratic dialogue, sometimes launching out into the diffuse expositions which characterise his other treatises.[ ] he first disputes against the fear of death; and in so doing he adopts the opinion of the platonic school, as regards the nature of god and the soul. the succeeding discussions on enduring pain, on alleviating grief, on the other emotions of the mind, and on virtue, are conducted for the most part on stoical principles.[ ] this is a highly ornamental composition, and contains more quotations from the poets than any other of cicero's treatises. we have already had occasion to remark upon the singular activity of his mind, which becomes more and more conspicuous as we approach the period of his death. during the ensuing year, which is the last of his life, in the midst of the confusion and anxieties consequent on cæsar's death, and the party warfare of his philippics, he found time to write the _de naturâ deorum_, _de divinatione_, _de fato_, _de senectute_, _de amicitiâ_, _de officiis_, and _paradoxa_, besides the treatise on rhetorical common places above mentioned. of these, the first three were intended as a full exposition of the conflicting opinions entertained on their respective subjects; the _de fato_, however, was not finished according to this plan.[ ] his treatise _de naturâ deorum_, in three books, may be reckoned the most splendid of all his works, and shows that neither age nor disappointment had done injury to the richness and vigour of his mind. in the first book, velleius, the epicurean, sets forth the physical tenets of his sect, and is answered by cotta, who is of the academic school. in the second, balbus, the disciple of the porch, gives an account of his own system, and is, in turn, refuted by cotta in the third. the eloquent extravagance of the epicurean, the solemn enthusiasm of the stoic, and the brilliant raillery of the academic, are contrasted with extreme vivacity and humour;--while the sublimity of the subject itself imparts to the whole composition a grander and more elevated character, and discovers in the author imaginative powers, which, celebrated as he justly is for playfulness of fancy, might yet appear more the talent of the poet than the orator. his treatise _de divinatione_ is conveyed in a discussion between his brother quintus and himself, in two books. in the former, quintus, after dividing divination into the heads of natural and artificial, argues with the stoics for its sacred nature, from the evidence of facts, the agreement of all nations, and the existence of divine intelligences. in the latter, cicero questions its authority, with carneades, from the uncertain nature of its rules, the absurdity and uselessness of the art, and the possibility of accounting from natural causes for the phenomena on which it was founded. this is a curious work, from the numerous cases adduced from the histories of greece and rome to illustrate the subject in dispute. his treatise _de fato_ is quite a fragment; it purports to be the substance of a dissertation in which he explained to hirtius (soon after consul) the sentiments of chrysippus, diodorus, epicurus, carneades, and others, upon that abstruse subject. it is supposed to have consisted at least of two books, of which we have but the proem of the first, and a small portion of the second. in his beautiful compositions, _de senectute_ and _de amicitiâ_, cato the censor and lælius are respectively introduced, delivering their sentiments on those subjects. the conclusion of the former, in which cato discourses on the immortality of the soul, has been always celebrated; and the opening of the latter, in which fannius and scævola come to console lælius on the death of scipio, is as exquisite an instance of delicacy and taste in composition as can be found in his works. in the latter he has borrowed largely from the eighth and ninth books of aristotle's _ethics_. his treatise _de officiis_ was finished about the time he wrote his second philippic, a circumstance which illustrates the great versatility of his mental powers. of a work so extensively celebrated, it is enough to have mentioned the name. here he lays aside the less authoritative form of dialogue, and, with the dignity of the roman consul, unfolds, in his own person, the principles of morals, according to the views of the older schools, particularly of the stoics. it is written in three books, with great perspicuity and elegance of style; the first book treats of the _honestum_, or _virtue_, the second of the _utile_, or _expedience_, and the third adjusts the claims of the two, when they happen to interfere with each other. his _paradoxa stoicorum_ might have been more suitably, perhaps, included in his rhetorical works, being six short declamations in support of the positions of zeno; in which that philosopher's subtleties are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, and the events of the times. the second, fourth, and sixth, are respectively directed against antony, clodius, and crassus. they seem to have suffered from time.[ ] the sixth is the most eloquent, but the argument of the third is strikingly maintained. besides the works now enumerated, we have a considerable fragment of his translation of plato's _timæus_, which he seems to have finished in his last year. his remaining philosophical works, viz.: the _hortensius_, which was a defence of philosophy; _de gloriâ_; _de consolatione_, written upon platonic principles on his daughter's death; _de jure civili_, _de virtutibus_, _de auguriis_, _chorographia_, translations of plato's _protagoras_, and xenophon's _oeconomics_, works on natural history, panegyric on cato, and some miscellaneous writings, are, except a few fragments, entirely lost. * * * * * his letters, about one thousand in all, are comprised in thirty-six books, sixteen of which are addressed to atticus, three to his brother quintus, one to brutus, and sixteen to his different friends; and they form a history of his life from his fortieth year. among those addressed to his friends, some occur from brutus, metellus, plancius, cælius, and others. for the preservation of this most valuable department of cicero's writings, we are indebted to tyro, the author's freedman, though we possess, at the present day, but a part of those originally published. as his correspondence with his friends belongs to his character as a man and politician, rather than to his literary aspect, we have already noticed it in the first part of this memoir. * * * * * his poetical and historical works have suffered a heavier fate. the latter class, consisting of his commentary on his consulship and his history of his own times, is altogether lost. of the former, which consisted of the heroic poems _halcyone_, _limon_, _marius_, and his consulate, the elegy of _tamelastes_, translations of homer and aratus, epigrams, etc., nothing remains, except some fragments of the _phænomena_ and _diosemeia_ of aratus. it may, however, be questioned whether literature has suffered much by these losses. we are far, indeed, from speaking contemptuously of the poetical talent of one who possessed so much fancy, so much taste, and so fine an ear.[ ] but his poems were principally composed in his youth; and afterwards, when his powers were more mature, his occupations did not allow even to his active mind the time necessary for polishing a language still more rugged in metre than it was in prose. his contemporary history, on the other hand, can hardly have conveyed more explicit, and certainly would have contained less faithful, information than his private correspondence; while, with all the penetration he assuredly possessed, it may be doubted if his diffuse and graceful style was adapted for the deep and condensed thoughts and the grasp of facts and events which are the chief excellences of historical composition. . the orations which he is known to have composed amount in all to about eighty, of which fifty-nine, either entire or in part, are preserved. of these some are deliberative, others judicial, others descriptive; some delivered from the rostrum, or in the senate; others in the forum, or before cæsar; and, as might be anticipated from the character already given of his talents, he is much more successful in pleading or in panegyric than in debate or invective. in deliberative oratory, indeed, great part of the effect of the composition depends on its creating in the hearer a high opinion of the speaker; and, though cicero takes considerable pains to interest the audience in his favour, yet his style is not simple and grave enough, he is too ingenious, too declamatory, discovers too much personal feeling, to elicit that confidence in him, without which argument has little influence. his invectives, again, however grand and imposing, yet, compared with his calmer and more familiar productions, have a forced and unnatural air. splendid as is the eloquence of his catilinarians and philippics, it is often the language of abuse rather than of indignation; and even his attack on piso, the most brilliant and imaginative of its kind, becomes wearisome from want of ease and relief. his laudatory orations, on the other hand, are among his happiest efforts. nothing can exceed the taste and beauty of those for the manilian law, for marcellus, for ligarius, for archias, and the ninth philippic, which is principally in praise of servius sulpicius. but it is in judicial eloquence, particularly on subjects of a lively cast, as in his speeches for cælius and muræna, and against cæcilius, that his talents are displayed to the best advantage. in both these departments of oratory the grace and amiableness of his genius are manifested in their full lustre, though none of his orations are without tokens of those characteristic excellences. historical allusions, philosophical sentiments, descriptions full of life and nature, and polite raillery, succeed each other in the most agreeable manner, without appearance of artifice or effort. such are his pictures of the confusion of the catilinarian conspirators on detection;[ ] of the death of metellus;[ ] of sulpicius undertaking the embassy to antony;[ ] the character he draws of catiline;[ ] and his fine sketch of old appius, frowning on his degenerate descendant clodia.[ ] these, however, are but incidental and occasional artifices to divert and refresh the mind, since his orations are generally laid out according to the plan proposed in rhetorical works; the introduction, containing the ethical proof; the body of the speech, the argument, and the peroration addressing itself to the passions of the judges. in opening his case, he commonly makes a profession of timidity and diffidence, with a view to conciliate the favour of his audience; the eloquence, for instance, of hortensius, is so powerful,[ ] or so much prejudice has been excited against his client,[ ] or it is his first appearance in the rostrum,[ ] or he is unused to speak in an armed assembly,[ ] or to plead in a private apartment.[ ] he proceeds to entreat the patience of his judges; drops out some generous or popular sentiment, or contrives to excite prejudice against his opponent. he then states the circumstances of his case, and the intended plan of his oration; and here he is particularly clear. but it is when he comes actually to prove his point that his oratorical powers begin to have their full play. he accounts for everything so naturally, makes trivial circumstances tell so happily, so adroitly converts apparent objections into confirmations of his argument, connects independent facts with such ease and plausibility, that it becomes impossible to entertain a question on the truth of his statement. this is particularly observable in his defence of cluentius, where prejudices, suspicions, and difficulties are encountered with the most triumphant ingenuity; in the antecedent probabilities of his _pro milone_;[ ] in his apology for muræna's public,[ ] and cælius's private life,[ ] and his disparagement of verres's military services in sicily;[ ] it is observable too in the address with which the agrarian law of rullus,[ ] and the accusation of rabirius,[ ] both popular measures, are represented to be hostile to public liberty; with which milo's impolitic unconcern is made a touching incident;[ ] and cato's attack upon the crowd of clients which accompanied the candidate for office, a tyrannical disregard for the feelings of the poor.[ ] so great indeed is his talent, that he even hurts a good cause by an excess of plausibility. but it is not enough to have barely proved his point; he proceeds, either immediately, or towards the conclusion of his speech, to heighten the effect by amplification.[ ] here he goes (as it were) round and round his object; surveys it in every light; examines it in all its parts; retires, and then advances; turns and re-turns it; compares and contrasts it; illustrates, confirms, enforces his view of the question, till at last the hearer feels ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly argumentative. of this nature is his justification of rabirius in taking up arms against saturninus;[ ] his account of the imprisonment of the roman citizens by verres, and of the crucifixion of gavius;[ ] his comparison of antony with tarquin;[ ] and the contrast he draws of verres with fabius, scipio, and marius.[ ] and now, having established his case, he opens upon his opponent a discharge of raillery, so delicate and good-natured, that it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it. or where the subject is too grave to admit this, he colours his exaggeration with all the bitterness of irony or vehemence of passion. such are his frequent delineations of gabinius, piso, clodius, and antony;[ ] particularly his vivid and almost humorous contrast of the two consuls, who sanctioned his banishment, in his oration for sextius.[ ] such the celebrated account (already referred to) of the crucifixion of gavius by verres, which it is difficult to read, even at the present day, without having our feelings roused against the merciless prætor. but the appeal to the gentler emotions of the soul is reserved (perhaps with somewhat of sameness) for the close of his oration; as in his defence of cluentius, muræna, cælius, milo, sylla, flaccus, and rabirius postumus; the most striking instances of which are the poetical burst of feeling with which he addresses his client plancius,[ ] and his picture of the desolate condition of the vestal fonteia, should her brother be condemned.[ ] at other times, his peroration contains more heroic and elevated sentiments; as in his invocation of the alban groves and altars in the peroration of the _pro milone_, the panegyric on patriotism, and the love of glory in his defence of sextius, and that on liberty at the close of the third and tenth philippics.[ ] . but it is by the invention of a style, which adapts itself with singular felicity to every class of subjects, whether lofty or familiar, philosophical or forensic, that cicero answers even more exactly to his own definition of a perfect orator[ ] than by his plausibility, pathos, and brilliancy. it is not, however, here intended to enter upon the consideration of a subject so ample and so familiar to all scholars as cicero's diction, much less to take an extended view of it through the range of his philosophical writings and familiar correspondence. among many excellences, the greatest is its suitableness to the genius of the latin language; though the diffuseness thence necessarily resulting has exposed it, both in his own days and since his time, to the criticisms of those who have affected to condemn its asiatic character, in comparison with the simplicity of attic writers, and the strength of demosthenes.[ ] greek, however, is celebrated for its copiousness in vocabulary, for its perspicuity, and its reproductive power; and its consequent facility of expressing the most novel or abstruse ideas with precision and elegance. hence the attic style of eloquence was plain and simple, because simplicity and plainness were not incompatible with clearness, energy, and harmony. but it was a singular want of judgment, an ignorance of the very principles of composition, which induced brutus, calvus, sallust, and others to imitate this terse and severe beauty in their own defective language, and even to pronounce the opposite kind of diction deficient in taste and purity. in greek, indeed, the words fall, as it were, naturally, into a distinct and harmonious order; and, from the exuberant richness of the materials, less is left to the ingenuity of the artist. but the latin language is comparatively weak, scanty, and unmusical; and requires considerable skill and management to render it expressive and graceful. simplicity in latin is scarcely separable from baldness; and justly as terence is celebrated for chaste and unadorned diction, yet, even he, compared with attic writers, is flat and heavy.[ ] again, the perfection of strength is clearness united to brevity; but to this combination latin is utterly unequal. from the vagueness and uncertainty of meaning which characterises its separate words, to be perspicuous it must be full. what livy, and much more tacitus, have gained in energy, they have lost in lucidity and elegance; the correspondence of brutus with cicero is forcible, indeed, but harsh and abrupt. latin, in short, is not a philosophical language, not a language in which a deep thinker is likely to express himself with purity or neatness. cicero found it barren and dissonant, and as such he had to deal with it. his good sense enabled him to perceive what could be done, and what it was in vain to attempt; and happily his talents answered precisely to the purpose required. he may be compared to a clever landscape-gardener, who gives depth and richness to narrow and confined premises by ingenuity and skill in the disposition of his trees and walks. terence and lucretius had cultivated simplicity; cotta, brutus, and calvus had attempted strength; but cicero rather made a language than a style; yet not so much by the invention as by the combination of words. some terms, indeed, his philosophical subjects obliged him to coin;[ ] but his great art lies in the application of existing materials, in converting the very disadvantages of the language into beauties,[ ] in enriching it with circumlocutions and metaphors, in pruning it of harsh and uncouth expressions, in systematizing the structure of a sentence.[ ] this is that _copia dicendi_ which gained cicero the high testimony of cæsar to his inventive powers,[ ] and which, we may add, constitutes him the greatest master of composition that the world has seen. . such, then, are the principal characteristics of cicero's oratory; on a review of which we may, with some reason, conclude that roman eloquence stands scarcely less indebted to his works than roman philosophy. for, though in his _de claris oratoribus_ he begins his review from the age of junius brutus, yet, soberly speaking (and as he seems to allow in the opening of the _de oratore_), we cannot assign an earlier date to the rise of eloquence among his countrymen, than that of the same athenian embassy which introduced the study of philosophy. to aim, indeed, at persuasion, by appeals to the reason or passions, is so natural, that no country, whether refined or barbarous, is without its orators. if, however, eloquence be the mere power of persuading, it is but a relative term, limited to time and place, connected with a particular audience, and leaving to posterity no test of its merits but the report of those whom it has been successful in influencing; but we are speaking of it as the subject-matter of an art.[ ] the eloquence of carneades and his associates had made (to use a familiar term) a great sensation among the roman orators, who soon split into two parties,--the one adhering to the rough unpolished manners of their forefathers, the other favouring the artificial graces which distinguished the grecian rhetoricians. in the former class were cato and lælius,[ ] both men of cultivated minds, particularly cato, whose opposition to greek literature was founded solely on political considerations. but, as might have been expected, the athenian cause had prevailed; and carbo and the two gracchi, who are the principal orators of the next generation, are praised as masters of an oratory learned, majestic, and harmonious in its character.[ ] these were succeeded by antonius, crassus, cotta, sulpicius, and hortensius; who, adopting greater liveliness and variety of manner, form a middle age in the history of roman eloquence. but it was in that which immediately followed that the art was adorned by an assemblage of orators, which even greece will find it difficult to match. of these cæsar, cicero, curio, brutus, cælius, calvus, and callidius, are the most celebrated. the talents, indeed, of cæsar were not more conspicuous in arms than in his style, which was noted for its force and purity.[ ] cælius, whom cicero brought forward into public life, excelled in natural quickness, loftiness of sentiment, and politeness in attack;[ ] brutus in philosophical gravity, though he sometimes indulged himself in a warmer and bolder style.[ ] callidius was delicate and harmonious; curio bold and flowing; calvus, from studied opposition to cicero's peculiarities, cold, cautious, and accurate.[ ] brutus and calvus have been before noticed as the advocates of the dry sententious mode of speaking, which they dignified by the name of attic; a kind of eloquence which seems to have been popular from the comparative facility with which it was attained. in the ciceronian age the general character of the oratory was dignified and graceful. the popular nature of the government gave opportunities for effective appeals to the passions; and, greek literature being as yet a novelty, philosophical sentiments were introduced with corresponding success. the republican orators were long in their introductions, diffuse in their statements, ample in their divisions, frequent in their digressions, gradual and sedate in their perorations.[ ] under the emperors, however, the people were less consulted in state affairs; and the judges, instead of possessing an almost independent authority, being but delegates of the executive, from interested politicians became men of business; literature, too, was now familiar to all classes; and taste began sensibly to decline. the national appetite felt a craving for stronger and more stimulating compositions. impatience was manifested at the tedious majesty and formal graces, the parade of arguments, grave sayings, and shreds of philosophy,[ ] which characterized their fathers; and a smarter and more sparkling kind of oratory succeeded,[ ] just as in our own country the minuet of the last century has been supplanted by the quadrille, and the stately movements of giardini have given way to rossini's brisker and more artificial melodies. corvinus, even before the time of augustus, had shown himself more elaborate and fastidious in his choice of expressions.[ ] cassius severus, the first who openly deviated from the old style of oratory, introduced an acrimonious and virulent mode of pleading.[ ] it now became the fashion to decry cicero as inflated, languid, tame, and even deficient in ornament;[ ] mecænas and gallio followed in the career of degeneracy; till flippancy of attack, prettiness of expression, and glitter of decoration prevailed over the bold and manly eloquence of free rome. footnotes: [ ] de legg. i. , ii. . [ ] contra rull. ii. . [ ] de legg. ii. , iii. ; de orat. ii. . [ ] plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] middleton's life, vol. i. p. . to; de clar. orat. . [ ] ibid. [ ] pro muræna, ; de orat. i. g. [ ] in catil. iii. ; in pis. ; pro sylla, ; pro dom. ; de harusp. resp. ; ad fam. xv. . [ ] de clar. orat. . [ ] middleton's life, vol. i. p. , to. [ ] plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] warburton, div. leg. lib, iii. sec. ; and vossius. de nat. logic. c. viii. sec. . [ ] pro planc. ; in ver. vi. . [ ] pro dom. , . [ ] de offic. ii. ; middleton. [ ] in pis. . [ ] pro murænâ, . [ ] plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] [greek: graikos kai scholastikos]. plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] ad atticum, i. , ii. . [ ] see montesquieu, grandeur des romains, ch. xii. [ ] ad atticum, i. . [ ] ad atticum, lib. iii.; ad fam. lib. xiv.; pro sext. ; pro dom. ; plutarch, in vitâ. it is curious to observe how he converts the alleviating circumstances of his case into exaggerations of his misfortune: he writes to atticus: "as to your many fierce objurgations of me, for my weakness of mind, i ask you, what aggravation is wanting to my calamity? who else has ever fallen from so high a position, in so good a cause, with so large an intellect, influence, popularity, with all good men so powerfully supporting him, as i?"--iii. . other persons would have reckoned the justice of their cause, and the countenance of good men, alleviations of their distress; and so, when others were concerned, he himself thought. vid. pro sext. . [ ] ad atticum, ix. . [ ] ibid. vii. , ix. , x. and , xi, , etc. [ ] macrobius, saturnalia, ii. . [ ] ad atticum, xi. , , and . [ ] ibid. xi. . [ ] ad fam. iv. ; middleton, vol. ii. p. . [ ] ibid. [ ] ad fam. iv. . [ ] ad atticum, xii. , etc [ ] ad atticum, xiii. . [ ] ibid. xii. and . [ ] his want of jealousy towards his rivals was remarkable; this was exemplified in his esteem for hortensius, and still more so in his conduct towards calvus. see ad fam. xv. . [ ] vol. ii. p. , to. [ ] pro planc.; middleton, vol. i. p. . [ ] c. . [ ] ad fam. vi. , vii. . [ ] plutarch, in vitâ cic. see also in vitâ pomp. [ ] vid. dr. whately in the encyclopædia metropolitana. [ ] lactantius, inst. iii. . [ ] plutarch, in vitâ caton. see also de invent. i. . [ ] paterculus, i. , etc. plutarch, in vitt. lucull. et syll. [ ] gravin. origin. juris civil. lib. i. c. . [ ] quinct. xii. . auct. dialog. de orator. . [ ] de nat. deor. i. ; de off. i. ; de fin.; init. acad. quæst. init. etc. [ ] tusc quæst. i. ; ii. ; acad. quæst. i. ; de nat. deor. i. ; de fin. i. , etc.; de clar. orat. . [ ] lucullus, ; de fin. i. - ; tusc quæst. ii. , ; iii. ; v. ; de legg. i. - ; de off. ii. ; de orat. , etc. [ ] middleton's life, vol. ii. p. . [ ] ad quinct. fratr. iii. . [ ] tusc. quæst, v. . [ ] de off. i. . _init._ [ ] johnson's observations on addison's writings may be well applied to those of cicero, who would have been eminently successful in short miscellaneous essays, like those of the spectator, had the manners of the age allowed it. [ ] orat iii. ; tusc. quæst. ii. ; de off. i. . paradox. _præfat._ quinct. instit. xii. . [ ] article, plato, in the encyclopædia metropolitana. [ ] acad. quæst. i. , etc.; lucullus, ; de legg. i. ; iii. , etc. [ ] acad. quæst. i. , , ; lucullus, and ; de nat. deor. i. ; de fin. ii. ; de orat. iii. . augustin. contra acad. ii. . plutarch, in colot. . [ ] "arcesilas negabat esse quidquam, quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum quod socrates sibi reliquisset. sic omnia latere censebat in occulto, neque esse quicquam quod cerni, quod intelligi, posset; quibus de causis nihil oportere neque profiteri neque affirmare quenquam, neque assentione approbare, etc."--_acad. quæst._ i. . see also lucullus, and . they were countenanced in these conclusions by plato's doctrine of ideas.--_lucullus_, . [ ] sext. empir. pyrrh. hypot. i. . diogenes laertius, lib. iv. in arcesil. vid. lactant. instit. iii. . [ ] lucullus, . [ ] augustin. contr. acad. iii. . [ ] lucullus, , . augustin. contr. acad. iii. . [ ] see sext. empir. adv. log. i. ., etc., p. . [ ] acad. quæst. i. ; lucullus, , ; de nat. deor. i. ; orat. . [ ] "tu autem te negas infracto remo neque columbæ collo commoveri. primum cur? nam et in remo sentio non esse id quod videatur, et in columbâ plures videri colores, nec esse plus uno, etc."--_lucullus_, . [ ] lucullus, - ; - . [ ] "vehementer errare eos qui dicant ab academiâ sensus eripi; à quibus nunquam dictum sit aut colorem aut saporem aut sonum nullum esse, [sed] illud sit disputatum, non inesse in his propriam, quæ nusquam alibi esset, veri et certi notam."--_lucullus_, . see also , , ; de nat. deor. i. . [ a] [greek: oi goun stôikoi katalêpsin einai phasi katalêptikê phantasia sugkatathesô] _sext. empir. pyrrh. hypot._ iii. . vid. also adv. log. i. , p. . [ ] "verum non posse comprehendi ex illâ stoici zenonis definitione arripuisse videbantur, qui ait id verum percipi posse, quod ita esset animo impressum ex eo unde esset, ut esse non posset ex eo unde non esset. quod brevius planiusque sic dicitur, his signis verum posse comprehendi, quæ signa non potest habere quod falsum est."--_augustin, contra acad._ ii. . see also sext. empir. adv. math. lib. vii. [greek: peri metabolês], and cf. lucullus, with . [ ] lucullus, , , . [ ] [greek: tois phainomenois oun prosechoutes kata tên biôtikên têrêsin adoxastôs bioumen, epei mê dunametha anenergêtoi pantapasin einai].--_sext. empir. pyrrh. hypot._ , . [ ] cicero terms these three impressions, "visio probabilis; quæ ex circumspectione aliquâ et accuratâ consideratione fiat; quæ non impediatur."--_lucullus_, . [ ] pyrrh. hypot. i. . [ ] numen. apud euseb. præp. evang. xiv. . [ ] lucullus, , ; de off. ii. ; de fin. v. . quinct. xii. . [ ] lucullus, , et alibi; tusc. quæst. ii. . [ ] see a striking passage from cicero's academics, preserved by augustine, contra acad. iii. , and lucullus, . [ ] de nat. deor. passim; de div. ii. . "quorum controversiam solebat tanquam honorarius arbiter judicare carneades."--_tusc. quæst._ v. . [ ] de fin. ii. ; de orat. i. ; lucullus, ; tusc. quæst. v. ; numen. apud euseb. præp. evang. xiv. , etc. lactantius, inst. iii. . [ ] de nat. deor. i. ; de fat. ; dialog. de orat. , . [ ] lucullus, , ; de orat. ii. , iii. . quint, inst. xii. . numen. apud euseb. præp. evang. xiv. and . [ ] "hæc in philosophiâ ratio contra omnia disserendi nullamque rem apertè judicandi, profecta à socrate, _repetita_ ab arcesilâ, _confirmata_ à carneade, usque ad nostram viguit ætatem; quam _nunc_ propemodum _orbam_ esse in ipsâ græciâ intelligo. quod non academiæ vitio, sed _tarditate hominum_ arbitror contigisse. nam si singulas disciplinas percipere magnum est, quanto majus omnes? quod facere iis necesse est, quibus propositum est, veri reperiendi causâ, et contra omnes philosophos et pro omnibus dicere."--_de nat. deor._ i. . [ ] de nat. deor. i. , augustin, contra acad. iii. . numen. apud euseb. præp. evang. xiv. . [ ] de fin. ii. , v. ; lucullus, ; tusc. quæst. v. . [ ] lucullus, . [ ] lucullus, , ; for an elevated moral precept of his, see de fin. ii. . [ ] [greek: anêr en tais trisin airesesi diatripsas, en te tê akadêmaikê kai peripatê tikê kai stôikê].--_diogenes laertius_, lib. iv. sub fin. [ ] "quanquam philo, magnus vir, negaret in libris duas academias esse erroremque eorum qui ita putârunt coarguit."--_acad. quæst._ i. . [ ] de fin, v. ; lucullus, , . sext. emp. pyrrh. hyp. i. . [ ] acad. quæst. i. ; de nat. deor. i. . [ ] lucullus, ; see also de nat. deor. i. ; de fin. i. . [ ] "nobis autem nostra academia magnam licentiam dat, ut, quodcunque maximè probabile occurrat, id nostro jure liceat defendere."--_de off._ iii. . see also tusc. quæst. iv. , v. ; de invent. ii. . [ ] de legg. i. . [ ] tusc. quæst. i. ; de div. ii. ; pro milon. ; de legg. ii. . [ ] fragm. de rep. ; tusc. quæst. i. . [ ] tusc. quæst. i. _passim_; de senect. , ; somn. scip. . [ ] de div. i. , ; fragm. de consolat. [ ] tusc. quæst. i. ; som. scip. ; de legg. ii. . [ ] de amic. ; de off. iii. ; pro cluent. ; de legg. ii. : tusc. quæst. i. ; pro sext. ; de nat. deor. i. . [ ] de senect. . [ ] pro arch. , , ad fam. v. , vi. . [ ] he seems to have fallen into some misconceptions of aristotle's meaning. de invent. i. , , ii. ; see quinct. inst. v. . [ ] de invent. i. , ii. , _et passim_; ad. fam. i. ; de orat. ii. . [ ] de off. i. ; de fin. iv. . [ ] de fin. ii. , iii. ; de legg. i. ; de orat. iii. ; ad fam. xiii. ; pro sext. . [ ] de nat. deor. i. ; tusc. quæst. i. , v. ; de fin. i. , ; de off. i. ; de div. ii. , . [ ] div. leg. lib. iii. sec. . [ ] see tusc. quæst and de republ. [ ] see fabricius, bibliothec. latin.; olivet, in cic. opp. omn.; middleton's life. [ ] quinct. inst. x. . [ ] de invent. ii. et ; ad fam. i. . [ ] cf. de part. orat. with de invent. [ ] orat. . [ ] vossius, de nat. rhet. c. xiii.; fabricius, bibliothec. latin. [ ] de invent. i. , ; de clar. orat. . [ ] ad fam. vii. . [ ] de div. ii. . [ ] ad atticum. iv. . [ ] orat. . [ ] orat. , . [ ] orat. , . [ ] ad fam. vi. . [ ] see middleton, vol. ii. p. . [ ] de legg. i. . [ ] ang. mai. præf. in remp. middleman, vol. i. p. [ ] quinct. inst. xi. . [ ] ad atticum, xiii. , , . [ ] ad fam. ix. , . [ ] tusc. quæst v. , . [ ] ibid. iii. , v. . [ ] de nat. deor. i. ; de div. i. , de fat. . [ ] sciopp. in olivet. [ ] see plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] in catil. iii. - . [ ] pro cæl. . [ ] philipp. ix. . [ ] pro cæl. . [ ] ibid. . [ ] pro quinct. , and in verr. act i. [ ] pro cluent . [ ] pro leg. manil. . [ ] pro milon. . [ ] pro deiotar. . [ ] pro milon. , etc. [ ] pro muræn. . [ ] pro cæl. , etc. [ ] in verr. vi. , etc. [ ] contra rull. ii. , . [ ] pro rabir. . [ ] pro milon. _init. et alibi._ [ ] pro muræn. . [ ] de orat. partit. , , . [ ] pro rabir. . [ ] in verr. v. , etc., and , etc. [ ] philipp. iii. . [ ] in verr. vi. . [ ] post redit. in senat. i. - ; pro dom. , , etc.; in pis. , . philipp. ii. , etc. [ ] pro sext. - . [ ] pro planc. , . [ ] pro fonteio, . [ ] vid. his ideal description of an orator, in orat. . vid. also de clar. orat. , his negative panegyric on his own oratorical attainments. [ ] orat. . [ ] tusc. quæst. i. ; de clar. orat. , etc., de opt. gen. dicendi. [ ] quinct. x. . [ ] de fin. iii. and ; lucull. . plutarch, in vitâ. [ ] this, which is analogous to his address in pleading, is nowhere more observable than in his rendering the recurrence of the same word, to which he is forced by the barrenness or vagueness of the language, an elegance. [ ] it is remarkable that some authors attempted to account for the _invention_ of the asiatic style, on the same principle we have here adduced to account for cicero's _adoption_ of it in latin; viz. that the asiatics had a defective knowledge of greek, and devised phrases, etc., to make up for the imperfection of their scanty vocabulary. see quinct. xii. . [ ] de clar. orat. . [ ] "vulgus interdum," says cicero, "non probandum oratorem probat, sed probat sine comparatione, cùm à mediocri aut etiam â malo delectatur; eo est contentus: esse melius sentit: illud quod est, qualecunque est, probat."--de clar. orat. . [ ] de clar. orat. . quinct. xii. . [ ] de clar. orat. , ; pro harusp. resp. . [ ] quinct. x. and . de clar. orat. . [ ] ibid. [ ] ibid. and ad atticum, xiv. . [ ] ibid. [ ] dialog. de orat. apud tacit. and . quinct. x. . [ ] "it is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the labour of others, to add a little of their own, and overlook their master."--_johnson. we have before compared cicero to addison as regards the purpose of inspiring their respective countrymen with literary taste. they resembled each other in the return they experienced. [ ] dialog. . [ ] ibid. [ ] dialog. . [ ] dialog. and quinct. xii . iii. the apollonius of tyana (_from the_ encyclopÃ�dia metropolitana _of ._) apollonius of tyana. page introduction.--his life written by philostratus, indirectly against christianity . his birth, education, pythagorean training, and travels . his political aspect . his reputation . his profession of miracles . not borne out by the internal character of the acts themselves . nor by their drift . but an imitation of scripture miracles apollonius of tyana. apollonius, the pythagorean philosopher, was born at tyana, in cappadocia, in the year of rome , four years before the common christian era.[ ] his reputation rests, not so much on his personal merits, as on the attempt made in the early ages of the church, and since revived,[ ] to bring him forward as a rival to the divine author of our religion. a narrative of his life, which is still extant, was written with this object, about a century after his death (a.d. ), by philostratus of lemnos, when ammonius was systematizing the eclectic tenets to meet the increasing influence and the spread of christianity. philostratus engaged in this work at the instance of his patroness julia domna, wife of the emperor severus, a princess celebrated for her zeal in the cause of heathen philosophy; who put into his hands a journal of the travels of apollonius rudely written by one damis, an assyrian, his companion.[ ] this manuscript, an account of his residence at Ã�gæ, prior to his acquaintance with damis, by maximus of that city, a collection of his letters, some private memoranda relative to his opinions and conduct, and lastly the public records of the cities he frequented, were the principal documents from which philostratus compiled his elaborate narrative.[ ] it is written with considerable elegance and command of greek, but with more attention to ornament than is consistent with correct taste. though it is not a professed imitation of the gospels, it contains quite enough to show that it was written with a view of rivalling the sacred narrative; and accordingly, in the following age, it was made use of in a direct attack upon christianity by hierocles,[ ] prefect of bithynia, a disciple of the eclectic school, to whom a reply was made by eusebius of cæsarea. the selection of a pythagorean philosopher for the purpose of a comparison with our lord was judicious. the attachment of the pythagorean sect to the discipline of the established religion, which most other philosophies neglected, its austerity, its pretended intercourse with heaven, its profession of extraordinary power over nature, and the authoritative tone of teaching which this profession countenanced,[ ] were all in favour of the proposed object. but with the plans of the eclectics in their attack upon christianity we have no immediate concern. . philostratus begins his work with an account of the prodigies attending the philosopher's birth, which, with all circumstances of a like nature, we shall for the present pass over, intending to make some observations on them in the sequel. at the age of fourteen he was placed by his father under the care of euthydemus, a distinguished rhetorician of tarsus; but, being displeased with the dissipation of the place, he removed with his master to Ã�gæ, a neighbouring town, frequented as a retreat for students in philosophy.[ ] here he made himself master of the platonic, stoic, epicurean, and peripatetic systems; giving, however, an exclusive preference to the pythagorean, which he studied with euxenus of heraclea, a man, however, whose life ill accorded with the ascetic principles of his sect. at the early age of sixteen years, according to his biographer, he resolved on strictly conforming himself to the precepts of pythagoras, and, if possible, rivalling the fame of his master. he renounced animal food and wine; restricted himself to the use of linen garments and sandals made of the bark of trees; suffered his hair to grow; and betook himself to the temple of Ã�sculapius, who is said to have regarded him with peculiar favour.[ ] on the news of his father's death, which took place not long afterwards, he left Ã�gæ for his native place, where he gave up half his inheritance to his elder brother, whom he is said to have reclaimed from a dissolute course of life, and the greater part of the remainder to his poorer relatives.[ ] prior to composing any philosophical work, he thought it necessary to observe the silence of five years, which was the appointed initiation into the esoteric doctrines of his sect. during this time he exercised his mind in storing up materials for future reflection. we are told that on several occasions he hindered insurrections in the cities in which he resided by the mute eloquence of his look and gestures;[ ] but such an achievement is hardly consistent with the pythagorean rule, which forbad its disciples during their silence the intercourse of mixed society.[ ] the period of silence being expired, apollonius passed through the principal cities of asia minor, disputing in the temples in imitation of pythagoras, unfolding the mysteries of his sect to such as were observing their probationary silence, discoursing with the greek priests about divine rites, and reforming the worship of barbarian cities.[ ] this must have been his employment for many years; the next incident in his life being his eastern journey, which was not undertaken till he was between forty and fifty years of age.[ ] his object in this expedition was to consult the magi and brachmans on philosophical matters; still following the example of pythagoras, who is said to have travelled as far as india with the same purpose. at nineveh, where he arrived with two companions, he was joined by damis, already mentioned as his journalist.[ ] proceeding thence to babylon, he had some interviews with the magi, who rather disappointed his expectations; and was well received by bardanes the parthian king, who, after detaining him at his court for the greater part of two years, dismissed him with marks of peculiar honour.[ ] from babylon he proceeded, by way of the caucasus and the indus, to taxila, the city of phraotes, king of the indians, who is represented as an adept in the pythagorean philosophy;[ ] and passing on, at length accomplished the object of his expedition by visiting iarchas, chief of the brachmans, from whom he is said to have learned many valuable theurgic secrets.[ ] on his return to asia minor, after an absence of about five years, he stationed himself for a time in ionia; where the fame of his travels and his austere mode of life gained for him much attention to his philosophical harangues. the cities sent embassies to him, decreeing him public honours; while the oracles pronounced him more than mortal, and referred the sick to him for relief.[ ] from ionia he passed over to greece, and made his first tour through its principal cities;[ ] visiting the temples and oracles, reforming the divine rites, and sometimes exercising his theurgic skill. except at sparta, however, he seems to have attracted little attention. at eleusis his application for admittance to the mysteries was unsuccessful; as was a similar attempt at the cave of trophonius at a later date.[ ] in both places his reputation for magical powers was the cause of his exclusion. . hitherto our memoir has only set before us the life of an ordinary pythagorean, which may be comprehended in three words, mysticism, travel, and disputation. from the date, however, of his journey to rome, which succeeded his grecian tour, it is in some degree connected with the history of the times; and, though for much of what is told us of him we have no better authority than the word of philostratus himself, still there is neither reason nor necessity for supposing the narrative to be in substance untrue. nero had at this time prohibited the study of philosophy, alleging that it was made the pretence for magical practices;[ ]--and the report of his tyrannical excesses so alarmed the followers of apollonius as they approached rome, that out of thirty-four who had accompanied him thus far, eight only could be prevailed on to proceed. on his arrival, his religious pretensions were the occasion of his being brought successively before the consul telesinus and tigellinus the minister of nero.[ ] both of them, however, dismissed him after an examination; the former from a secret leaning towards philosophy, the latter from fear (as we are told) of his extraordinary powers. he was in consequence allowed to go about at his pleasure from temple to temple, haranguing the people, and, as in asia, prosecuting his reforms in the worship paid to the gods. this, however, can hardly have been the case, supposing the edict against philosophers was as severe as his biographer represents. in that case neither apollonius, nor demetrius the cynic, who joined him after his arrival, would have been permitted to remain in rome; certainly not apollonius, after his acknowledgment of his own magical powers in the presence of tigellinus.[ ] it is more probable he was sent out of the city; anyhow we soon find him in spain, taking part in the conspiracy forming against nero by vindex and others.[ ] the political partisans of that day seem to have made use of professed jugglers and magicians to gain over the body of the people to their interests. to this may be attributed nero's banishing such men from rome;[ ] and apollonius had probably been already serviceable in this way at the capital, as he was now in spain, and immediately after to vespasian; and at a later period to nerva. his next expeditions were to africa, to sicily, and so to greece,[ ] but they do not supply anything of importance to the elucidation of his character. at athens he obtained the initiation in the mysteries, for which he had on his former visit unsuccessfully applied. the following spring, the seventy-third of his life, according to the common calculation, he proceeded to alexandria,[ ] where he attracted the notice of vespasian, who had just assumed the purple, and who seemed desirous of countenancing his proceedings by the sanction of religion. apollonius might be recommended to him for this purpose by the fame of his travels, his reputation for theurgic knowledge, and his late acts in spain against nero. it is satisfactory to be able to detect an historical connexion between two personages, each of whom has in his turn been made to rival our lord and his apostles in pretensions to miraculous power. thus, claims which appeared to be advanced on distinct grounds are found to proceed from one centre, and by their coalition to illustrate and expose one another. the celebrated cures by vespasian are connected with the ordinary theurgy of the pythagorean school; and apollonius is found here, as in many other instances, to be the instrument of a political party. his biographer's account of his first meeting with the emperor, which is perhaps substantially correct, is amusing from the theatrical character with which it was invested.[ ] the latter, on entering alexandria, was met by the great body of the magistrates, prefects, and philosophers of the city; but, not discovering apollonius in the number, he hastily asked, "whether the tyanean was in alexandria," and when told he was philosophizing in the serapeum, proceeding thither he suppliantly entreated him to make him emperor; and, on the philosopher's answering he had already done so in praying for a just and venerable sovereign,[ ] vespasian avowed his determination of putting himself entirely into his hands, and of declining the supreme power, unless he could obtain his countenance in assuming it.[ ] a formal consultation was in consequence held, at which, besides apollonius, dio and euphrates, stoics in the emperor's train, were allowed to deliver their sentiments; when the latter philosopher entered an honest protest against the sanction which apollonius was giving to the ambition of vespasian, and advocated the restoration of the roman state to its ancient republican form.[ ] this difference of opinion laid the foundation of a lasting quarrel between the rival advisers, to which philostratus makes frequent allusion in the course of his history. euphrates is mentioned by the ancients in terms of high commendation; by pliny especially, who knew him well.[ ] he seems to have seen through his opponent's religious pretences, as we gather even from philostratus;[ ] and when so plain a reason exists for the dislike which apollonius, in his letters, and philostratus, manifest towards him, their censure must not be allowed to weigh against the testimony, which unbiassed writers have delivered in his favour. after parting from vespasian, apollonius undertook an expedition into Ã�thiopia, where he held discussions with the gymnosophists, and visited the cataracts of the nile.[ ] on his return he received the news of the destruction of jerusalem; and being pleased with the modesty of the conqueror, wrote to him in commendation of it. titus is said to have invited him to argos in cilicia, for the sake of his advice on various subjects, and obtained from him a promise that at some future time he would visit him at rome.[ ] on the succession of domitian, he became once more engaged in the political commotions of the day, exerting himself to excite the countries of asia minor against the emperor.[ ] these proceedings at length occasioned an order from the government to bring him to rome, which, however, according to his biographer's account, he anticipated by voluntarily surrendering himself, under the idea that by his prompt appearance he might remove the emperor's jealousy, and save nerva and others whose political interests he had been promoting. on arriving at rome he was brought before domitian; and when, very inconsistently with his wish to shield his friends from suspicion, he launched out into praise of nerva, he was forced away into prison to the company of the worst criminals, his hair and beard were cut short, and his limbs loaded with chains. after some days he was brought to trial; the charges against him being the singularity of his dress and appearance, his being called a god, his foretelling a pestilence at ephesus, and his sacrificing a child with nerva for the purpose of augury.[ ] philostratus supplies us with an ample defence, which, it seems, he was to have delivered,[ ] had he not in the course of the proceedings suddenly vanished from the court, and transported himself to puteoli, whither he had before sent on damis. this is the only miraculous occurrence which forces itself into the history as a component part of the narrative; the rest being of easy omission without any detriment to its entireness.[ ] and strictly speaking, even here, it is only his vanishing which is of a miraculous nature, and his vanishing is not really necessary for the continuity of events. his "liberation" and "transportation" are sufficient for that continuity; and to be set free from prison and sent out of rome are occurrences which might happen without a divine interposition. and in fact they seem very clearly to have taken place in the regular course of business. philostratus allows that just before the philosopher's pretended disappearance, domitian had publicly acquitted him, and that after the miracle he proceeded to hear the cause next in order, as if nothing had happened;[ ] and tells us, moreover, that apollonius on his return to greece gave out that he had pleaded his own cause and so escaped, no allusion being made to a miraculous preservation.[ ] after spending two years in the latter country in his usual philosophical disputations, he passed into ionia. according to his biographer's chronology, he was now approaching the completion of his hundredth year. we may easily understand, therefore, that when invited to rome by nerva, who had just succeeded to the empire, he declined the proposed honour with an intimation that their meeting must be deferred to another state of being.[ ] his death took place shortly after; and ephesus, rhodes, and crete are variously mentioned as the spot at which it occurred.[ ] a temple was dedicated to him at tyana,[ ] which was in consequence accounted one of the sacred cities, and permitted the privilege of electing its own magistrates.[ ] he is said to have written[ ] a treatise upon judicial astrology, a work on sacrifices, another on oracles, a life of pythagoras, and an account of the answers which he received from trophonius, besides the memoranda noticed in the opening of our memoir. a collection of letters ascribed to him is still extant.[ ] . it may be regretted that so elaborate a history, as that which we have abridged, should not contain more authentic and valuable matter. both the secular transactions of the times and the history of christianity might have been illustrated by the life of one, who, while he was an instrument of the partisans of vindex, vespasian, and nerva, was a contemporary and in some respects a rival of the apostles; and who, probably, was with st. paul at ephesus and rome.[ ] as far as his personal character is concerned, there is nothing to be lamented in these omissions. there is nothing very winning, or very commanding, either in his biographer's picture of him, or in his own letters. his virtues, as we have already seen, were temperance and a disregard of wealth; and that he really had these, and such as these, may be safely concluded from the fact of the popularity which he enjoyed. the great object of his ambition seems to have been to emulate the fame of his master; and his efforts had their reward in the general admiration he attracted, the honours paid him by the oracles, and the attentions shown him by men in power. we might have been inclined, indeed, to suspect that his reputation existed principally in his biographer's panegyric, were it not attested by other writers. the celebrity, which he has enjoyed since the writings of the eclectics, by itself affords but a faint presumption of his notoriety before they appeared. yet, after all allowances, there remains enough to show that, however fabulous the details of his history may be, there was something extraordinary in his life and character. some foundation there must have been for statements which his eulogists were able to maintain in the face of those who would have spoken out had they been altogether novel. pretensions never before advanced must have excited the surprise and contempt of the advocates of christianity.[ ] yet eusebius styles him a wise man, and seems to admit the correctness of philostratus, except in the miraculous parts of the narrative.[ ] lactantius does not deny that a statue was erected to him at ephesus;[ ] and sidonius apollinaris, who even wrote his life, speaks of him as the admiration of the countries he traversed, and the favourite of monarchs.[ ] one of his works was deposited in the palace at antium by the emperor hadrian, who also formed a collection of his letters;[ ] statues were erected to him in the temples, divine honours paid him by caracalla, alexander severus, and aurelian, and magical virtue attributed to his name.[ ] it has in consequence been made a subject of dispute, how far his reputation was built upon that supposed claim to extraordinary power which, as was noticed in the opening of our memoir, has led to his comparison with sacred names. if it could be shown that he did advance such pretensions, and upon the strength of them was admitted as an object of divine honour, a case would be made out, not indeed so strong as that on which christianity is founded, yet remarkable enough to demand our serious examination. assuming, then, or overlooking this necessary condition, sceptical writers have been forward to urge the history and character of apollonius as creating a difficulty in the argument for christianity derived from miracles; while their opponents have sometimes attempted to account for a phenomenon of which they had not yet ascertained the existence, and have most gratuitously ascribed his supposed power to the influence of the evil principle.[ ] on examination, we shall find not a shadow of a reason for supposing that apollonius worked miracles in any proper sense of the word; or that he professed to work them; or that he rested his authority on extraordinary works of any kind; and it is strange indeed that christians, with victory in their hands, should have so mismanaged their cause as to establish an objection where none existed, and in their haste to extricate themselves from an imaginary difficulty, to overturn one of the main arguments for revealed religion. . . to state these pretended prodigies is in most cases a refutation of their claim upon our notice,[ ] and even those which are not in themselves exceptionable become so from the circumstances or manner in which they took place. apollonius is said to have been an incarnation of the god proteus; his birth was announced by the falling of a thunderbolt and a chorus of swans; his death signalized by a wonderful voice calling him up to heaven; and after death he appeared to a youth to convince him of the immortality of the soul.[ ] he is reported to have known the language of birds; to have evoked the spirit of achilles; to have dislodged a demon from a boy; to have detected an empusa who was seducing a youth into marriage; when brought before tigellinus, to have caused the writing of the indictment to vanish from the paper; when imprisoned by domitian, to have miraculously released himself from his fetters; to have discovered the soul of amasis in the body of a lion; to have cured a youth attacked by hydrophobia, whom he pronounced to be telephus the mysian.[ ] in declaring men's thoughts and distant events, he indulged most liberally; adopting a brevity which seemed becoming the dignity of his character, while it secured his prediction from the possibility of an entire failure. for instance: he gave previous intimation of nero's narrow escape from lightning; foretold the short reigns of his successors; informed vespasian at alexandria of the burning of the capitol; predicted the violent death of titus by a relative; discovered a knowledge of the private history of his egyptian guide; foresaw the wreck of a ship he had embarked in, and the execution of a cilician proprætor.[ ] his prediction of the proprætor's ruin was conveyed in the words, "o that particular day!" that is, of execution; of the short reigns of the emperors in his saying that many thebans would succeed nero. we must not omit his first predicting and then removing a pestilence at ephesus, the best authenticated of his professed miracles, as being attested by the erecting of a statue to him in consequence. he is said to have put an end to the malady by commanding an aged man to be stoned, whom he pointed out as its author, and who when the stones were removed was found changed into the shape of a dog.[ ] that such marvellous occurrences are wanting either in the gravity, or in the conclusiveness, proper to true miracles, is very plain; moreover, that they gain no recommendation from the mode in which they are recorded will be evident, if we extract the accounts given us by philostratus of those two which alone among apollonius's acts, from their internal character, demand our attention. these are the revival of a young maid at rome, who was on her way to burial, and the announcement at ephesus of domitian's assassination at the very time of its occurrence. as to the former of these, it will be seen to be an attempt, and an elaborate, pretentious attempt, to outdo certain narratives in the gospels. it runs as follows:-- "a maiden of marriageable age seemed to have died, and the bridegroom was accompanying her bier, uttering wailing cries, as was natural on his marriage being thus cut short. and all rome lamented with him, for the maiden belonged to a consular house. but apollonius, coming upon this sad sight, said, 'set down the bier, for i will stop your tears for her.' at the same time, he asked her name; and most of those present thought he was going to make a speech about her, after the manner of professed mourners. but he, doing nothing else than touching her, and saying over her some indistinct words, woke her from her seeming death. and the girl spoke, and returned to her father's house, as alcestis, when restored to life by hercules."[ ] as to his proclaiming at ephesus the assassination of domitian at the time of its occurrence, of course, if he was at a great distance from rome and the synchronism of events could be proved, we should be bound to give it our serious consideration; but synchronisms are difficult to verify. moreover, apollonius is known to have taken part in the politics of the empire; and his words, if he used them, might be prompted by his knowledge, or by his furtherance, of some attempt upon domitian's life. apollonius was at this time busily engaged in promoting nerva's interests among the ionians. dion[ ] tells us that his success was foretold by the astrologers, among whom tzetzes reckons apollonius; and he mentions a prediction of domitian's death which had been put into circulation in germany. it is true that dion confirms philostratus's statement so far as the prediction is concerned, expressing strongly his personal belief in it. "apollonius," he says, "ascending upon a high stone at ephesus or elsewhere, and calling together the people, cried out, 'well done, stephanus!'" he adds, "this really took place, though a man should ever so much disbelieve it."[ ] but it must be recollected that dion was writing his history when philostratus wrote; and one of them may have taken the account from the other; moreover, he is well known to be of a credulous turn of mind, and far from averse from recording marvellous stories. let us now turn to the statement of philostratus; it will be found to form as strong a contrast to the simplicity and dignity of the gospel narratives, as the dabbling in politics, which is so marked a feature in apollonius, differs from the conduct of him who emphatically declared that his kingdom was not of this world. "he was conversing," says philostratus, "among the groves attached to the porticoes, about noon, that is, just at the time when the event was occurring in the imperial palace; and first he dropped his voice, as if in terror; then, with a faltering unusual to him, he described [an action], as if he beheld something external, as his words proceeded. then he was silent, stopping abruptly; and looking with agitation on the ground, and advancing up three or four of the steps, 'strike the tyrant, strike!' he cried out, not as drawing a mere image of the truth from some mirror, but as seeing the thing itself, and seeming to realize what was doing; and, to the consternation of all ephesus, for it was thronging around while he was conversing, after an interval of suspense, such as happens when spectators are following some undecided action up to its issue, he said, 'courage, my men, for the tyrant is slaughtered this day--nay, now, now.'"[ ] only an eye-witness is warranted to write thus pictorially; philostratus was born years after apollonius's death. . . but it is almost superfluous to speak either of the general character of his extraordinary acts, or of the tone and manner in which they are narrated, when, in truth, neither apollonius nor his biographer had any notion or any intention of maintaining that, in our sense of the word "miracle," these acts were miracles at all, or were to be referred to the immediate agency of the supreme being. apollonius neither claimed for himself, nor did philostratus claim for him, any direct mission from on high; nor did he in consequence submit the exercise of his preternatural powers to such severe tests as may fairly be applied to the miracles of christianity. of works, indeed, which are asserted to proceed from the author of nature, sobriety, dignity, and conclusiveness may fairly be required; but when a man ascribes his extraordinary power to his knowledge of some merely human secret, impropriety does but evidence his own want of taste, and ambiguity his want of skill. we have no longer a right to expect a great end, worthy means, or a frugal and judicious application of the miraculous gift. now, apollonius claimed nothing beyond a fuller insight into nature than others had; a knowledge of the fated and immutable laws to which it is conformed, of the hidden springs on which it moves.[ ] he brought a secret from the east and used it; and though he professed to be favoured, and in a manner taught, by good spirits,[ ] yet he certainly referred no part of his power to a supreme intelligence. theurgic virtues, or those which consisted in communion with the powers and principles of nature, were high in the scale of pythagorean excellence, and to them it was that he ascribed his extraordinary gift. by temperate living, it was said, the mind was endued with ampler and more exalted faculties than it otherwise possessed; partook more fully of the nature of the one universal soul, was gifted with prophetic inspiration, and a kind of intuitive perception of secret things.[ ] this power, derived from the favour of the celestial deities, who were led to distinguish the virtuous and high-minded, was quite distinct from magic, an infamous, uncertain, and deceitful art, consisting in a compulsory power over infernal spirits, operating by means of astrology, auguries, and sacrifices, and directed to the personal emolument of those who cultivated it.[ ] to our present question, however, this distinction made by the genuine pythagorean, is unimportant. to whichever principle the miracles of apollonius be referred, theurgy or magic, in either case they are independent of the first cause, and not granted with a view to the particular purpose to which they are to be applied.[ ] . we have also incidentally shown that they did not profess to be miracles in the proper meaning of the word, that is, evident innovations on the laws of nature. at the utmost they do but exemplify the aphorism, "knowledge is power."[ ] such as are within the range of human knowledge are no miracles. those of them, on the contrary, which are beyond it, will be found on inspection to be unintelligible, and to convey no evidence. the prediction of an earthquake (for instance) is not necessarily superhuman. an interpretation of the discourse of birds can never be verified. in understanding languages, knowing future events, discovering the purposes of others, recognising human souls when enclosed in new bodies, apollonius merely professes extreme penetration and extraordinary acquaintance with nature. the spell by which he evokes spirits and exorcises demons, implies the mere possession of a secret;[ ] and so perfectly is his biographer aware of this, as almost to doubt the resuscitation of the roman damsel, the only decisive miracle of them all, on the ground of its being supernatural, insinuating that perhaps she was dead only in appearance.[ ] accordingly, in the narrative which we have extracted above, he begins by saying that she "seemed to have died," or "was to all appearance dead;" and again at the end of it he speaks of her "seeming death." hence, moreover, may be understood the meaning of the charge of magic, as brought against the early christians by their heathen adversaries; the miracles of the gospels being strictly interruptions of physical order, and incompatible with theurgic knowledge.[ ] when our lord and his apostles declare themselves to be sent from god, this claim to a divine mission illustrates and gives dignity to their profession of extraordinary power; whereas the divinity,[ ] no less than the gift of miracles to which apollonius laid claim, must be understood in its pythagorean sense, as referring not to any intimate connection with a supreme agent, but to his partaking, through his theurgic skill, more largely than others in the perfections of the animating principle of nature. . . yet, whatever is understood by his miraculous gift and his divine nature, certainly his works were not adduced as vouchers for his divinity, nor were they, in fact, the principal cause of his reputation. what we desiderate is a contemporary appeal to them, on the part of himself or his friends; as st. paul speaks of his miracles to the romans and corinthians, even calling them in one place "the signs of an apostle;" or as st. luke, in the acts of the apostles, details the miracles of both st. peter and st. paul.[ ] far different is it with apollonius: we meet with no claim to extraordinary power in his letters; nor when returning thanks to a city for public honours bestowed on him, nor when complaining to his brother of the neglect of his townsmen, nor when writing to his opponent euphrates.[ ] to the milesians, indeed, he speaks of earthquakes which he had predicted; but without appealing to the prediction in proof of his authority.[ ] since, then, he is so far from insisting on his pretended extraordinary powers, and himself connects the acquisition of them with his eastern expedition,[ ] we may conclude that credit for possessing magical secrets was a _part_ of the reputation which that expedition conferred. a foreign appearance, singularity of manners, a life of travel, and pretences to superior knowledge, excite the imagination of beholders;[ ] and, as in the case of a wandering people among ourselves, appear to invite the persons who are thus distinguished, to fraudulent practices. apollonius is represented as making converts as soon as seen.[ ] it was not, then his display of marvels, but his pythagorean dress and mysterious deportment, which arrested attention, and made him thought superior to other men, because he was different from them. like lucian's alexander[ ] (who was all but his disciple), he was skilled in medicine, professed to be favoured by Ã�sculapius, pretended to foreknowledge, was in collusion with the heathen priests, and was supported by the oracles; and being more strict in conduct than the paphlagonian,[ ] he established a more lasting celebrity. his usefulness to political aspirants contributed to his success; perhaps also the real and contemporary miracles of the christian teachers would dispose many minds easily to acquiesce in any claims of a similar character. . . in the foregoing remarks we have admitted, the general fidelity of the history, because ancient authors allow it, and there was no necessity to dispute it. tried however on his own merits, it is quite unworthy of serious attention. not only in the miraculous accounts (as we have already seen), but in the relation of a multitude of ordinary facts, an effort to rival our saviour's history is distinctly visible. the favour in which apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the temple of Ã�sculapius; his determination in spite of danger to go up to rome;[ ] the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him; the charge brought against him of disaffection to cæsar; the minister's acknowledging, on his private examination, that he was more than man; the ignominious treatment of him by domitian on his second appearance at rome; his imprisonment with criminals; his vanishing from court and sudden reappearance to his mourning disciples at puteoli;[ ]--these, with other particulars of a similar cast, evidence a history modelled after the narrative of the evangelists. expressions, moreover, and descriptions occur, clearly imitated from the sacred volume. to this we must add[ ] the rhetorical colouring of the whole composition, so contrary to the sobriety of truth;[ ] the fabulous accounts of things and places interspersed through the history;[ ] lastly, we must bear in mind the principle, recognised by the pythagorean and eclectic schools, of permitting exaggeration and deceit in the cause of philosophy.[ ] * * * * * after all, it must be remembered, that were the pretended miracles as unexceptionable as we have shown them to be absurd and useless--were they plain interruptions of established laws--were they grave and dignified in their nature, and important in their object, and were there nothing to excite suspicion in the design, manner, or character of the narrator--still the testimony on which they rest is the bare word of an author writing one hundred years after the death of the person panegyrized, and far distant from the places in which most of the miracles were wrought, and who can give no better account of his information than that he gained it from an unpublished work,[ ] professedly indeed composed by a witness of the extraordinary transactions, but passing into his hands through two intermediate possessors. these are circumstances which almost, without positive objections, are sufficient by their own negative force to justify a summary rejection of the whole account. unless, indeed, the history had been perverted to a mischievous purpose, we should esteem it impertinent to direct argument against a mere romance, and to subject a work of imagination to a grave discussion. footnotes: [ ] olear. ad philostr. i. . [ ] by lord herbert and mr. blount. [ ] philostr. i. . [ ] philostr. i. , . [ ] his work was called [greek: logoi philalêtheis pros christianous]' on this subject see mosheim, _dissertat. de turbatâ per recentiores platonicos ecclesiâ_, sec. . [ ] philostr i. , vi. . [ ] philostr. i. . [ ] ibid. i. . [ ] ibid. i. . [ ] ibid. i. , . [ ] brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] philostr. i. . [ ] see olear. _præfat. ad vitam._ as he died, u.c. , he is usually considered to have lived to a hundred. since, however, here is an interval of almost twenty years in which nothing important happens, in a part also of his life unconnected with any public events to fix its chronology, it is highly probable that the date of his birth is put too early. philostratus says that accounts varied, making him live eighty, ninety, or one hundred years; see viii. . see also ii. , where, by some inaccuracy, he makes him to have been in india twenty years _before_ he was at babylon.--olear. _ad locum et præfat. ad vit._ the common date of his birth is fixed by his biographer's merely accidental mention of the revolt of archelaus against the romans, as taking place before apollonius was twenty years old; see i. . [ ] philostr. i. . [ ] philostr. i. - . [ ] ibid. ii. - . brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] ibid. iii. . [ ] ibid. iv. . acts xiii. ; see also acts viii. - , and xix. - . [ ] ibid. iv. , _et seq._ [ ] when denied at the latter place he forced his way in.--philostr. viii. . [ ] ibid. iv. . brucker (vol. ii. p. ) with reason thinks this prohibition extended only to the profession of magic. [ ] ibid. iv. , etc. [ ] brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] philostr. v. . [ ] astrologers were concerned in libo's conspiracy against tiberius, and punished. vespasian, as we shall have occasion to notice presently, made use of them in furthering his political plans.--tacit. hist. ii. . we read of their predicting nero's accession, the deaths of vitellius and domitian, etc. they were sent into banishment by tiberius, claudius, vitellius, and domitian. philostratus describes nero as issuing his edict _on leaving the capital_ for greece, iv. . these circumstances seem to imply that astrology, magic, etc, were at that time of considerable service in political intrigues. [ ] philostr. v. ii, etc. [ ] ibid. v. , etc. [ ] philostr. v. . [ ] tacitus relates, that when vespasian was going to the _serapeum, ut super rebus imperii consuleret_, basilides, an egyptian, who was at the time eighty miles distant, suddenly appeared to him; from his name the emperor drew an omen that the god sanctioned his assumption of the imperial power.--hist. iv. . this sufficiently agrees in substance with the narrative of philostratus to give the latter some probability. it was on this occasion that the famous cures are said to have been wrought. [ ] as egypt supplied rome with corn, vespasian by taking possession of that country almost secured to himself the empire.--tacit. hist. ii. , iii. . philostratus insinuates that he was already in possession of supreme power, and came to egypt for the sanction of apollonius. [greek: tên men archên kektêmeuos, dialexomeuos de tps audri]. v. . [ ] philostr. v. . [ ] brucker, vol. ii. p. , etc. [ ] philostr. v. , he makes euphrates say to vespasian, [greek: philosophian, ô basileu, tên men kata physin echainei kai aspazou tên de theoklutein phaskousan paraitou katapseudomenoi gar tou theiou polla kai anoêta, êmas epairousi.] see brucker; and apollon. epist. . [ ] ibid. vi. , etc. [ ] philostr. vi. , etc. [ ] ibid. vii. , etc., see brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] ibid. viii. , , etc. on account of his foretelling the pestilence he was honoured as a god by the ephesians, vii. . hence this prediction appeared in the indictment. [ ] euseb. in hier. . [ ] perhaps his causing the writing of the indictment to vanish from the paper, when he was brought before tigellinus, may be an exception, as being the alleged cause of his acquittal. in general, however, no consequence follows from his marvellous actions: _e. g._ when imprisoned by domitian, in order to show damis his power, he is described as drawing his leg out of the fetters, and then--as putting it back again, vii. . a great exertion of power with apparently a small object. [ ] philostr. viii. , . [ ] ibid. viii. . [ ] philostr. viii. . [ ] ibid. viii. . [ ] ibid. i. . viii. . [ ] a coin of hadrian's reign is extant with the inscription, which seems to run [greek: tyana iera, asulos autonomos]. olear. ad philostr. viii. . [ ] see bayle, art. _apollonius_; and brucker. [ ] bishop lloyd considers them spurious, but olearius and brucker show that there is good reason from internal evidence to suppose them genuine. see olear. addend. ad præfat. epistol.; and brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] apollonius continued at ephesus, smyrna, etc., from a.d. to about , and was at rome from a.d. to . st. paul passed through ionia into greece a.d. , and was at ephesus a.d. , and again from a.d. to ; he was at rome in a.d. and , when he was martyred. [ ] lucian and apuleius speak of him as if his name were familiar to them. olear. præf. ad vit. [ ] in hierocl. . [ ] inst. v. . [ ] see bayle, art. _apollonius_; and cudworth, intell. syst. iv. . [ ] philostr. viii. , . [ ] see eusebius, vopiscus, lampridius, etc., as quoted by bayle. [ ] see brucker on this point, vol. ii. p. , who refers to various authors. eusebius takes a more sober view of the question, allowing the substance of the history, but disputing the extraordinary parts. see in hierocl. and . [ ] most of them are imitations of the miracles attributed to pythagoras. [ ] see philostr. i. , , viii. , . he insinuates (cf. viii. with ), that apollonius was taken up alive. see euseb. . [ ] philostr. iv. , , , , , v. , vi. , vii. . [ ] ibid. i. , iv. , , - , , , vi. , . [ ] ibid. iv. . [ ] vit. iv. ; cf. mark v. , etc.; luke vii. ; also john xi. - ; acts iii. - . in the sequel, the parents offer him money, which he gives as a portion to the damsel. see kings v. , [ kings], and other passages in scripture. [ ] lib. . [ ] hist. . [ ] vit. viii. . [ ] philostr. v. ; in i. , he associates democritus, a natural philosopher, with pythagoras and empedocies. see viii. , § , and brucker, vol. i. p. , etc., and p. . [ ] in his apology before domitian, he expressly attributes his removal of the ephesian pestilence to hercules, and makes this ascription the test of a divine philosopher as distinguished from a magician, viii. , § , _ubi vid._ olear. [ ] vid. viii, , § . see also ii. , vi. , viii. . [ ] philostr. i. , and olear. _ad loc._ note , iv. , v. , vii. , viii. ; apollon. epist. and ; philostr. prooem. vit. sophist.; euseb. in hier. ; mosheim, de simone mago, sec. . yet it must be confessed that the views both of the pythagoreans and eclectics were very inconsistent on this subject. eusebius notices several instances of [greek: goêteia] in apollonius's miracles; in hierocl. , , , and . see brucker, vol. ii. p. . at eleusis, and the cave of triphonius, apollonius was, as we have seen, accounted a magician, and so also by euphrates, moeragenes, apuleius, etc. see olear. præf. ad vit. p. ; and brucker, vol. ii. p. , note _k_. [ ] see mosheim, dissertat. de turbatâ ecclesiâ, etc., sec. . [ ] see quæst. ad orthodox as quoted by olearius, in his preface, p. . [ ] eusebius calls it [greek: theia tis kai arrêtos sophia] in hierocl. . in iii. , philostratus speaks of the [greek: klêseis ais theoi chairousi], the _spells_ for evoking them, which apollonius brought from india; cf. iv. , and in iv. of the [greek: tekmêrion] used for casting out an evil spirit. [ ] [greek: ei te spinthêra tês psychês euren en autê], etc. [ ] douglas (criterion, p. , note), observes that some heretics affirmed that our lord rose from the dead [greek: phantasiôdôs], only in appearance, _from an idea of the impossibility of a resurrection_. [ ] apollon. epist. . [ ] vid. rom. xv. ; cor. ii. ; cor. xii. , and acts _passim_. [ ] see epist. , , etc., , ; the last-mentioned addressed to his brother begins, "what wonder, that, while the rest of mankind think me godlike, and some even a god, my own country alone hitherto ignores me, for whose sake especially i wished to distinguish myself, when not even to you, my brother, as i perceive, has it become clear how much i excel this race of men in my _doctrine_ and my _life_?"--epist. ii. , vid. also i. . he does not say "in supernatural power." cf. john xii. : "but though he had done so many _miracles_ before them, yet they believed not in him." [ ] epist. . claudius, in a message to the tyanæans, epist. , praises him merely as a benefactor to youth. [ ] philostr. vi. . see euseb. in hierocl. , . [ ] hence the first of the charges brought against him by domitian was the strangeness of his dress.--philostr. viii. . by way of contrast, cf. cor. ii. , ; cor. x. . [ ] philostr. iv. . see also i. , , iv. , , , vii. , etc., and i. , etc. [ ] brucker, vol. ii. p. . [ ] brucker supposes that, as in the case of alexander, gain was his object; but we seem to have no proof of this, nor is it necessary thus to account for his conduct. we discover, indeed, in his character, no marks of that high enthusiasm which would support him in his whimsical career without any definite worldly object; yet the veneration he inspired, and the notice taken of him by great men, might be quite a sufficient recompense to a conceited and narrow mind. [ ] cf. also acts xx. , ; xxi. , - . [ ] philostr. i. , , iv. , , , vii. , viii. , . [ ] see the description of his raising the roman maid as above given. or take again the account of his appearance to damis and demetrius at puteoli, after vanishing from court, viii. ; in which there is much incautious agreement with luke xxiv. - , , , , - . also more or less in the following: vii. , init. and , fin. with luke xii. , ; iii. , with matt. xvii. , etc., where observe the contrast of the two narratives: viii. , fin. with acts xii. - : iv. , with john xviii. , etc.: vii. , init. with mark xiv. : iv. , init. with acts xvi. - : i. , fin. with mark vii. , . brucker and douglas notice the following in the detection of the empusa: [greek: dakruonti epskei to phasma, kai edeito mê basanizein auto, mêde anagkazein omolsgein dti eiê], iv. , cf. mark v. - . olearius compares an expression in vii. , with cor. ix. . [ ] _e. g._ his ambitious descriptions of countries, etc. in iv. , , v. , vi. , he ascribes to apollonius regular socratic disputations, and in vi. , a long and flowery speech in the presence of the gymnosophists--modes of philosophical instruction totally at variance with the genius of the pythagorean school, the philosopher's letters still extant, and the writer's own description of his manner of teaching, i. . some of his exaggerations and mis-statements have been noticed in the course of the narrative. as a specimen of the rhetorical style in which the work is written, vid. his account of the restoration of the roman damsel, [greek: o de ouden all ê prosapsamenos autês aphypnise],--contrast this with the simplicity of the scripture narrative. see also the last sentence of v. , and indeed _passim_. [ ] _e. g._ his accounts of indian and Ã�thiopian monsters; of serpents whose eyes were jewels of magical virtue; of pygmies; of golden water; of the speaking tree; of a woman half white and half black, etc.; he incorporates in his narrative the fables of ctesias, agatharchidas, and other writers. his blunders in geography and natural philosophy may be added, as far as they arise from the desire of describing wonders, etc. see also his pompous description of the wonders of babylon, which were not then in existence.--prideaux, connection, part . book viii. for his inconsistencies, see eusebius and brucker. it must be remembered, that in the age of philostratus the composition of romantic histories was in fashion. [ ] see brucker, vol. i. p. , vol. ii. p. . apollonius was only one out of several who were set up by the eclectics as rivals to christ brucker, vol. ii. p. . mosheim, de turbatâ ecclesiâ, etc. secs. , . [ ] philostr. i. , . he professes that his account contains much _news_. as to the sources, besides the journal of damis, from which he pretends to derive his information, he neither tells us how he met with them, nor what they contained; nor does he refer to them in the course of his history. on the other hand (as we have above noticed), much of the detail of apollonius's journey is derived from the writings of ctesias, etc. iv. primitive christianity. (_from the_ british magazine, - .) prefatory notice. the following papers originally belonged to the "church of the fathers," as it appeared in the _british magazine_, in the years - , and as it was published afterwards in one volume, with additions and omissions, in . they were removed from the subsequent catholic editions, except the chapter on apollinaris, as containing polemical matter, which had no interest for catholic readers. now they are republished under a separate title. the date of their composition is a sufficient indication of the character of the theology which they contain. they are written under the assumption that the anglican church has a place, as such, in catholic communion and apostolic christianity. this is a question of fact, which the author would now of course answer in the negative, retaining still, and claiming as his own, the positive principles and doctrines which that fact is, in these papers, taken to involve. primitive christianity. chap. page . what does st. ambrose say about it? . what says vincent of lerins? . what says the history of apollinaris? . what say jovinian and his companions? . what say the apostolical canons? primitive christianity. chapter i. what does st. ambrose say about it? § . _ambrose and justina._ no considerate person will deny that there is much in the spirit of the times, and in the actual changes which the british constitution has lately undergone, which makes it probable, or not improbable, that a material alteration will soon take place in the relations of the church towards the state, to which it has been hitherto united. i do not say that it is out of the question that things may return to their former quiet and pleasant course, as in the good old time of king george iii.; but the very chance that they will not makes it a practical concern for every churchman to prepare himself for a change, and a practical question for the clergy, by what instruments the authority of religion is to be supported, should the protection and patronage of the government be withdrawn. truth, indeed, will always support itself in the world by its native vigour; it will never die while heaven and earth last, but be handed down from saint to saint until the end of all things. but this was the case before our lord came, and is still the case, as we may humbly trust, in heathen countries. my question concerns _the church_, that peculiar institution which christ set up as a visible home and memorial of truth; and which, as being in this world, must be manifested by means of this world. i know it is common to make light of this solicitude about the church, under the notion that the gospel may be propagated without it,--or that men are about the same under every dispensation, their hearts being in fault, and not their circumstances,--or for other reasons, better or worse as it may be; to all which i am accustomed to answer (and i do not see how i can be in error), that, if christ had not meant his church to answer a purpose, he would not have set it up, and that our business is not to speculate about possible dispensations of religion, but to resign and devote ourselves to that in which we are actually placed. hitherto the english church has depended on the state, _i. e._ on the ruling powers in the country--the king and the aristocracy; and this is so natural and religious a position of things when viewed in the abstract, and in its actual working has been productive of such excellent fruits in the church, such quietness, such sobriety, such external propriety of conduct, and such freedom from doctrinal excesses, that we must ever look back upon the period of ecclesiastical history so characterized with affectionate thoughts; particularly on the reigns of our blessed martyr st. charles, and king george the good. but these recollections of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us from looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and from inquiring what is intended by providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument, which he has broken (if it be yet broken), the regal and aristocratical power. i shall offend many men when i say, we must _look to the people_; but let them give me a hearing. well can i understand their feelings. who at first sight does not dislike the thoughts of gentlemen and clergymen depending for their maintenance and their reputation on their flocks? of their strength, as a visible power, lying not in their birth, the patronage of the great, and the endowment of the church (as hitherto), but in the homage of a multitude? i confess i have before now had a great repugnance to the notion myself; and if i have overcome it, and turned from the government to the people, it has been simply because i was forced to do so. it is not we who desert the government, but the government that has left us; we are forced back upon those below us, because those above us will not honour us; there is no help for it, i say. but, in truth, the prospect is not so bad as it seems at first sight. the chief and obvious objection to the clergy being thrown on the people, lies in the probable lowering of christian views, and the adulation of the vulgar, which would be its consequence; and the state of dissenters is appealed to as an evidence of the danger. but let us recollect that we are an apostolical body; we were not made, nor can be unmade by our flocks; and if our influence is to depend on _them_, yet the sacraments reside with _us_. we have that with us, which none but ourselves possess, the mantle of the apostles; and this, properly understood and cherished, will ever keep us from being the creatures of a populace. and what may become necessary in time to come, is a more religious state of things also. it will not be denied that, according to the scripture view of the church, though all are admitted into her pale, and the rich inclusively, yet, the poor are her members with a peculiar suitableness, and by a special right. scripture is ever casting slurs upon wealth, and making much of poverty. "to the poor the gospel is preached." "god hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom." "if thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." to this must be added the undeniable fact that the church, when purest and when most powerful, _has_ depended for its influence on its consideration with the many. becket's letters, lately published,[ ] have struck me not a little; but of course i now refer, not to such dark ages as most englishmen consider these, but to the primitive church--the church of st. athanasius and st. ambrose. with a view of showing the power of the church at that time, and on what it was based, not (as protestants imagine) on governments, or on human law, or on endowments, but on popular enthusiasm, on dogma, on hierarchical power, and on a supernatural divine presence, i will now give some account of certain ecclesiastical proceedings in the city of milan in the years , ,--ambrose being bishop, and justina and her son, the younger valentinian, the reigning powers. . ambrose was eminently a popular bishop, as every one knows who has read ever so little of his history. his very promotion to the sacred office was owing to an unexpected movement of the populace. auxentius, his arian predecessor in the see of milan, died, a.d. , upon which the bishops of the province wrote to the then emperor, valentinian the first, who was in gaul, requesting him to name the person who was to succeed him. this was a prudent step on their part, arianism having introduced such matter for discord and faction among the milanese, that it was dangerous to submit the election to the people at large, though the majority of them were orthodox. valentinian, however, declined to avail himself of the permission thus given him; the choice was thrown upon the voices of the people, and the cathedral, which was the place of assembling, was soon a scene of disgraceful uproar, as the bishops had anticipated. ambrose was at that time civil governor of the province of which milan was the capital: and, the tumult increasing, he was obliged to interfere in person, with a view of preventing its ending in open sedition. he was a man of grave character, and had been in youth brought up with a sister, who had devoted herself to the service of god in a single life; but as yet was only a catechumen, though he was half way between thirty and forty. arrived at the scene of tumult, he addressed the assembled crowds, exhorting them to peace and order. while he was speaking, a child's voice, as is reported, was heard in the midst of the crowd to say, "ambrose is bishop;" the populace took up the cry, and both parties in the church, catholic and arian, whether influenced by a sudden enthusiasm, or willing to take a man who was unconnected with party, voted unanimously for the election of ambrose. it is not wonderful that the subject of this sudden decision should have been unwilling to quit his civil office for a station of such high responsibility; for many days he fought against the popular voice, and that by the most extravagant expedients. he absconded, and was not recovered till the emperor, confirming the act of the people of milan, published an edict against all who should conceal him. under these strange circumstances, ambrose was at length consecrated bishop. his ordination was canonical only on the supposition that it came under those rare exceptions, for which the rules of the church allow, when they speak of election "by divine grace," by the immediate suggestion of god; and if ever a bishop's character and works might be appealed to as evidence of the divine purpose, surely ambrose was the subject of that singular and extraordinary favour. from the time of his call he devoted his life and abilities to the service of christ. he bestowed his personal property on the poor: his lands on the church; making his sister tenant for life. next he gave himself up to the peculiar studies necessary for the due execution of his high duties, till he gained that deep insight into catholic truth, which is evidenced in his writings, and in no common measure in relation to arianism, which had been the dominant creed in milan for the twenty years preceding his elevation. basil of cæsarea, in cappadocia, was at this time the main pillar of catholic truth in the east, having succeeded athanasius of alexandria, who died about the time that both basil and ambrose were advanced to their respective sees. he, from his see in the far east, addresses the new bishop in these words in an extant epistle:-- "proceed in thy work, thou man of god; and since thou hast not received the gospel of christ of men, neither wast taught it, but the lord himself translated thee from among the world's judges to the chair of the apostles, fight the good fight, set right the infirmities of the people, wherever the arian madness has affected them; renew the old foot-prints of the fathers, and by frequent correspondence build up thy love towards us, of which thou hast already laid the foundation."--_ep._ . i just now mentioned st. thomas becket. there is at once a similarity and a contrast between his history and that of ambrose. each of the two was by education and society what would now be called a gentleman. each was in high civil station when he was raised to a great ecclesiastical position; each was in middle age. each had led an upright, virtuous life before his elevation; and each, on being elevated, changed it for a life of extraordinary penance and saintly devotion. each was promoted to his high place by the act, direct or concurrent, of his sovereign; and each showed to that sovereign in the most emphatic way that a bishop was the servant, not of man, but of the lord of heaven and earth. each boldly confronted his sovereign in a great religious quarrel, and staked his life on its issue;--but then comes the contrast, for becket's earthly master was as resolute in his opposition to the church as becket was in its behalf, and made him a martyr; whereas the imperial power of rome quailed and gave way before the dauntless bearing and the grave and gracious presence of the great prelate of milan. indeed, the whole pontificate of ambrose is a history of successive victories of the church over the state; but i shall limit myself to a bare outline of one of them. . ambrose had presided in his see about eleven years at the time when the events took place which are here to be related. valentinian was dead, as well as his eldest son gratian. his second son, who bore his own name, was emperor of the west, under the tutelage of justina, his second wife. justina was an arian, and brought up her son in her own heretical views. this was about the time when the heresy was finally subdued in the eastern churches; the ecumenical council of constantinople had lately been held, many arian bishops had conformed, and laws had been passed by theodosius against those who held out. it was natural under such circumstances that a number of the latter should flock to the court of milan for protection and patronage. the gothic officers of the palace were arians also, as might be supposed, after the creed of their nation. at length they obtained a bishop of their persuasion from the east; and having now the form of an ecclesiastical body, they used the influence of valentinian, or rather of his mother, to extort from ambrose one of the churches of milan for their worship. the bishop was summoned to the palace before the assembled court, and was formally asked to relinquish st. victor's church, then called the portian basilica, which was without the walls, for the arian worship. his duty was plain; the churches were the property of christ; he was the representative of christ, and was therefore bound not to cede what was committed to him in trust. this is the account of the matter given by himself in the course of the dispute:-- "do not," he says, "o emperor, embarrass yourself with the thought that you have an emperor's right over sacred things. exalt not yourself, but, as you would enjoy a continuance of power, be god's subject. it is written, god's to god, and cæsar's to cæsar. the palace is the emperor's, the churches are the bishop's."--_ep._ . this argument, which is true at all times, was much more convincing in an age like the primitive, before men had begun to deny that christ had left a visible representative of himself in his church. if there was a body to whom the concerns of religion were intrusted, there could be no doubt it was that over which ambrose presided. it had been there planted ever since milan became christian, its ministers were descended from the apostles, and it was the legitimate trustee of the sacred property. but in our day men have been taught to doubt whether there _is_ one apostolic church, though it is mentioned in the creed: nay, it is grievous to say, clergymen have sometimes forgotten, sometimes made light of their own privileges. accordingly, when a question arises now about the spoliation of the church, we are obliged to betake ourselves to the rules of _national_ law; we appeal to precedents, or we urge the civil consequences of the measure, or we use other arguments, which, good as they may be, are too refined to be very popular. ambrose rested his resistance on grounds which the people understood at once, and recognized as irrefragable. they felt that he was only refusing to surrender a trust. they rose in a body, and thronged the palace gates. a company of soldiers was sent to disperse them; and a riot was on the point of ensuing, when the ministers of the court became alarmed, and despatched ambrose to appease the tumult, with the pledge that no further attempt should be made on the possessions of the church. now some reader will here interrupt the narrative, perhaps, with something of an indignant burst about connecting the cause of religion with mobs and outbreaks. to whom i would reply, that the multitude of men is always rude and intemperate, and needs restraint,--religion does not make them so. but being so, it is better they should be zealous about religion, and repressed by religion, as in this case, than flow and ebb again under the irrational influences of this world. a mob, indeed, is always wayward and faithless; but it is a good sign when it is susceptible of the hopes and fears of the world to come. is it not probable that, when religion is thus a popular subject, it may penetrate, soften, or stimulate hearts which otherwise would know nothing of its power? however, this is not, properly speaking, my present point, which is to show how a church may be in "favour with all the people" without any subserviency to them. to return to our history. . justina, failing to intimidate, made various underhand attempts to remove the champion of orthodoxy. she endeavoured to raise the people against him. failing in this object, next, by scattering promises of place and promotion, she set on foot various projects to seize him in church, and carry him off into banishment. one man went so far as to take lodgings near the church, and had a carriage in readiness, in order to avail himself of any opportunity which offered to convey him away. but none of these attempts succeeded. this was in the month of march; as easter drew on, more vigorous steps were taken by the court. on april th, the friday before palm sunday, the demand of a church for the arians was renewed; the pledges which the government had given, that no further steps should be taken in the matter, being perhaps evaded by changing the church which was demanded. ambrose was now asked for the new or roman basilica, which was within the walls, and larger than the portian. it was dedicated to the apostles, and (i may add, for the sake of the antiquarian,) was built in the form of a cross. when the bishop refused in the same language as before, the imperial minister returned to the demand of the portian church; but the people interfering, and being clamorous against the proposal, he was obliged to retire to the palace to report how matters stood. on palm sunday, after the lessons and sermon were over in the basilica, in which he officiated, ambrose was engaged in teaching the creed to the candidates for baptism, who, as was customary, had been catechized during lent, and were to be admitted into the church on the night before easter-day. news was brought him that the officers of the court had taken possession of the portian church, and were arranging the imperial hangings in token of its being confiscated to the emperor; on the other hand, that the people were flocking thither. ambrose continued the service of the day; but, when he was in the midst of the celebration of the eucharistical rite, a second message came that one of the arian priests was in the hands of the populace. "on this news (he says, writing to his sister,) i could not keep from shedding many bitter tears, and, while i made oblation, i prayed god's protection that no blood might be shed in the church's quarrel: or if so, that it might be mine, and that not for my people only, but for those heretics."--_ep._ . at the same time he despatched some of his clergy to the spot, who had influence enough to rescue the unfortunate man from the mob. though ambrose so far seems to have been supported only by a popular movement, yet the proceedings of the following week showed that he had also the great mass of respectable citizens on his side. the imprudent measures of the court, in punishing those whom it considered its enemies, disclosed to the world their number and importance. the tradesmen of the city were fined two hundred pounds of gold, and many were thrown into prison. all the officers, moreover, and place-men of the courts of justice, were ordered to keep in-doors during the continuance of the disorders; and men of higher rank were menaced with severe consequences, unless the basilica were surrendered. such were the acts by which the imperial court solemnized passion week. at length a fresh interview was sought with ambrose, which shall be described in his own words:-- "i had a meeting with the counts and tribunes, who urged me to give up the basilica without delay, on the ground that the emperor was but acting on his undoubted rights, as possessing sovereign power over all things. i made answer, that if he asked me for what was my own--for instance, my estate, my money, or the like--i would make no opposition: though, to tell the truth, all that was mine was the property of the poor; but that he had no sovereignty over things sacred. if my patrimony is demanded, seize upon it; my person, here i am. would you take to prison or to death? i go with pleasure. far be it from me to entrench myself within the circle of a multitude, or to clasp the altar in supplication for my life; rather i will be a sacrifice for the altar's sake. "in good truth, when i heard that soldiers were sent to take possession of the basilica, i was horrified at the prospect of bloodshed, which might issue in ruin to the whole city. i prayed god that i might not survive the destruction, which might ensue, of such a place, nay, of italy itself. i shrank from the odium of having occasioned slaughter, and would sooner have given my own throat to the knife.... i was ordered to calm the people. i replied, that all i could do was not to inflame them; but god alone could appease them. for myself, if i appeared to have instigated them, it was the duty of the government to proceed against me, or to banish me. upon this they left me." ambrose spent the rest of palm sunday in the same basilica in which he had been officiating in the morning: at night he went to his own house, that the civil power might have the opportunity of arresting him, if it was thought advisable. . the attempt to gain the portian seems now to have been dropped; but on the wednesday troops were marched before day-break to take possession of the new church, which was within the walls. ambrose, upon the news of this fresh movement, used the weapons of an apostle. he did not seek to disturb them in their possession; but, attending service at his own church, he was content with threatening the soldiers with a sentence of excommunication. meanwhile the new church, where the soldiers were posted, began to fill with a larger congregation than it ever contained before the persecution. ambrose was requested to go thither, but, desirous of drawing the people away from the scene of imperial tyranny, lest a riot should ensue, he remained where he was, and began a comment on the lesson of the day, which was from the book of job. first, he commended them for the christian patience and resignation with which they had hitherto borne their trial, which indeed was, on the whole, surprising, if we consider the inflammable nature of a multitude. "we petition your majesty," they said to the emperor; "we use no force, we feel no fear, but we petition." it is common in the leader of a multitude to profess peaceableness, but very unusual for the multitude itself to persevere in doing so. ambrose went on to observe, that both they and he had in their way been tempted, as job was, by the powers of evil. for himself, his peculiar trial had lain in the reflection that the extraordinary measures of the government, the movements of the gothic guards, the fines of the tradesmen, the various sufferings of the faithful, all arose from, as it might be called, his obstinacy in not yielding to what seemed an overwhelming necessity, and giving the basilica to the arians. yet he felt that to do so would be to peril his soul; so that the request was but the voice of the tempter, as he spoke in job's wife, to make him "say a word against god, and die," to betray his trust, and incur the sentence of spiritual death. before this time the soldiers who had been sent to the new church, from dread of the threat of excommunication, had declared against the sacrilege, and joined his own congregation; and now the news came that the royal hangings had been taken down. soon after, as he was continuing his address to the people, a fresh message came to him from the court to ask him whether he had an intention of domineering over his sovereign? ambrose, in answer, showed the pains he had taken to be obedient to the emperor's will, and to hinder disturbance: then he added:-- "priests have by old right bestowed sovereignty, never assumed it; and it is a common saying, that sovereigns have coveted the priesthood more than priests the sovereignty. christ hid himself, lest he should be made a king. yes! we have a dominion of our own. the dominion of the priest lies in his helplessness, as it is said, 'when i am weak, then am i strong.'" and so ended the dispute for a time. on good friday the court gave way; the guards were ordered from the basilica, and the fines were remitted. i end for the present with the view which ambrose took of the prospect before him:-- "thus the matter rests; i wish i could say, has ended: but the emperor's words are of that angry sort which shows that a more severe contest is in store. he says i domineer, or worse than domineer. he implied this when his ministers were entreating him, on the petition of the soldiers, to attend church. 'should ambrose bid you,' he made answer, 'doubtless you would give me to him in chains.' i leave you to judge what these words promise. persons present were all shocked at hearing them; but there are parties who exasperate him." footnotes: [ ] vid. _british magazine_, , etc. and froude's remains, part ii, vol. ii. § . _ambrose and valentinian._ . in the opposition which ambrose made to the arians, as already related, there is no appearance of his appealing to any law of the empire in justification of his refusal to surrender the basilica to them. he rested it upon the simple basis of the divine law, a commonsense argument which there was no evading. "the basilica has been made over to christ; the church is his trustee; i am its ruler. i dare not alienate the lord's property. he who does so, does it at his peril." indeed, he elsewhere expressly repudiates the principle of dependence in this matter on human law. "law," he says, "has not brought the church together, but the faith of christ." however, justina determined to have human law on her side. she persuaded her son to make it a capital offence in any one, either publicly or privately, even by petition, to interfere with the assemblies of the arians; a provision which admitted a fair, and might also bear, and did in fact receive, a most tyrannical interpretation. benevolus, the secretary of state, from whose office the edict was to proceed, refused to draw it up, and resigned his place; but of course others less scrupulous were easily found to succeed him. at length it was promulgated on the st of january of the next year, a.d. , and a fresh attempt soon followed on the part of the court to get possession of the portian basilica, which was without the walls. the line of conduct which ambrose had adopted remained equally clear and straight, whether before or after the promulgation of this edict. it was his duty to use all the means which christ has given the church to prevent the profanation of the basilica. but soon a new question arose for his determination. an imperial message was brought to him to retire from the city at once, with any friends who chose to attend him. it is not certain whether this was intended as an absolute command, or (as his words rather imply) a recommendation on the part of government to save themselves the odium, and him the suffering, of public and more severe proceedings. even if it were the former, it does not appear that a christian bishop, so circumstanced, need obey it; for what was it but in other words to say, "depart from the basilica, and leave it to us?"--the very order which he had already withstood. the words of scripture, which bid christians, if persecuted in one city, flee to another, are evidently, from the form of them, a discretionary rule, grounded on the expediency of each occasion, as it arises. a mere threat is not a persecution, nor is a command; and though we are bound to obey our civil rulers, the welfare of the church has a prior claim upon our obedience. other bishops took the same view of the case with ambrose; and, accordingly, he determined to stay in milan till removed by main force, or cut off by violence. . the reader shall hear his own words in a sermon which he delivered upon the occasion:-- "i see that you are under a sudden and unusual excitement," he said, "and are turning your eyes on me. what can be the reason of this? is it that you saw or heard that an imperial message had been brought to me by the tribunes desiring me to depart hence whither i would, and to take with me all who would follow me? what! did you fear that i would desert the church, and, for fear of my life, abandon you? yet you might have attended to my answer. i said that i could not, for an instant, entertain the thought of deserting the church, in that i feared the lord of all more than the emperor of the day: in truth that, should force hurry me off, it would be my body, not my mind, that was got rid of; that, should he act in the way of kingly power, i was prepared to suffer after the manner of a priest. "why, then, are you thus disturbed? i will never leave you of my own will; but if compelled, i may not resist. i shall still have the power of sorrowing, of weeping, of uttering laments: when weapons, soldiers, goths, too, assail me, tears are my weapons, for such are the defences of a priest. in any other way i neither ought to resist, nor can; but as to retiring and deserting the church, this is not like me; and for this reason, lest i seem to do so from dread of some heavier punishment. ye yourselves know that it is my wont to submit to our rulers, but not to make concessions to them; to present myself readily to legal punishment, and not to fear what is in preparation. "a proposal was made to me to deliver up at once the church plate. i made answer, that i was ready to give anything that was my own, farm or house, gold or silver; but that i could withdraw no property from god's temple, nor surrender what was put into my hands, not to surrender, but to keep safely. besides, that i had a care for the emperor's well-being; since it was as little safe for him to receive as for me to surrender: let him bear with the words of a free-spoken priest, for his own good, and shrink from doing wrong to his lord. "you recollect to-day's lesson about holy naboth and his vineyard. the king asked him to make it over to him, as a ground, not for vines, but for common pot-herbs. what was his answer? 'god forbid i should give to thee the inheritance of my fathers!' the king was saddened when another's property was justly denied him; but he was beguiled by a woman's counsel. naboth shed his blood rather than give up his vines. shall he refuse his own vineyard, and we surrender the church of christ? "what contumacy, then, was there in my answer? i did but say at the interview, 'god forbid i should surrender christ's heritage!' i added, 'the heritage of our fathers;' yes, of our dionysius, who died in exile for the faith's sake, of eustorgius the confessor, of myrocles, and of all the other faithful bishops back. i answered as a priest: let the emperor act as an emperor; he shall rob me of my life sooner than of my fidelity. "in what respect was my answer other than respectful? does the emperor wish to tax us? i make no opposition. the church lands pay taxes. does he require our lands? he has power to claim them; we will not prevent him. the contributions of the people will suffice for the poor. let not our enemies take offence at our lands; they may away with them, if it please the emperor; not that i give them, but i make no opposition. do they seek my gold? i can truly say, silver and gold i seek not. but they take offence at my raising contributions. nor have i any great fear of the charge. i confess i have stipendiaries; they are the poor of christ's flock; a treasure which i am well used in amassing. may this at all times be my offence, to exact contributions for the poor. and if they accuse me of defending myself by means of them, i am far from denying, i court the charge. the poor _are_ my defenders, but it is by their prayers. blind though they be, lame, feeble, and aged, yet they have a strength greater than that of the stoutest warriors. in a word, gifts made to them are a claim upon the lord; as it is written, 'he who giveth to the poor, lendeth to god;' but a military guard oftentimes has no title to divine grace. "they say, too, that the people are misled by the verses of my hymns. i frankly confess this also. truly those hymns have in them a high strain above all other influence. for can any strain have more of influence than the confession of the holy trinity, which is proclaimed day by day by the voice of the whole people? each is eager to rival his fellows in confessing, as he well knows how, in sacred verses, his faith in father, son, and holy spirit. thus all are made teachers, who else were scarce equal to being scholars. "no one can deny that in what we say we pay to our sovereign due honour. what indeed can do him higher honour than to style him a son of the church? in saying this, we are loyal to him without sinning against god. for the emperor is within the church, but not over the church; and a religious sovereign seeks, not rejects, the church's aid. this is our doctrine, modestly avowed, but insisted on without wavering. though they threaten fire, or the sword, or transportation, we, christ's poor servants, have learned not to fear. and to the fearless nothing is frightful; as scripture says, 'their blows are like the arrows of a child.'"--_serm. contr. auxent._ . mention is made in this extract of the psalmody which ambrose adopted about this time. the history of its introduction is curiously connected with the subject before us, and interesting, inasmuch as this was the beginning of a change in the style of church music, which spread over the west, and continues even among ourselves to this day; it is as follows;-- soldiers had been sent, as in the former year, to surround his church, in order to prevent the catholic service there; but being themselves christians, and afraid of excommunication, they went so far as to allow the people to enter, but would not let them leave the building. this was not so great an inconvenience to them as might appear at first sight: for the early basilicas were not unlike the heathen temples, or our own collegiate chapels, that is, part of a range of buildings, which contained the lodgings of the ecclesiastics, and formed a fortress in themselves, which could easily be fortified from within or blockaded from without. accordingly, the people remained shut up within the sacred precincts for some days, and the bishop with them. there seems to have been a notion, too, that he was to be seized for exile, or put to death; and they naturally kept about him to "see the end," to suffer with him or for him, according as their tempers and principles led them. some went so far as to barricade the doors of the basilica;[ ] nor could ambrose prevent this proceeding, unnecessary as it was, because of the good feelings of the soldiery towards them, and indeed impracticable in such completeness as might be sufficient for security. some persons may think that ambrose ought to have used his utmost influence against it, whereas in his sermon to the people he merely insists on its uselessness, and urges the propriety of looking simply to god, and not at all to such expedients, for deliverance. it must be recollected, however, that he and his people in no sense drew the sword from its sheath; he confined himself to passive resistance. he had violated no law; the church's property was sought by a tyrant: without using any violence, he took possession of that which he was bound to defend with his life. he placed himself upon the sacred territory, and bade them take it and him together, after st. laurence's pattern, who submitted to be burned rather than deliver up the goods with which he had been intrusted for the sake of the poor. however, it was evidently a very uncomfortable state of things for a christian bishop, who might seem to be responsible for all the consequences, yet was without control over them. a riot might commence any moment, which it would not be in his power to arrest. under these circumstances, with admirable presence of mind, he contrived to keep the people quiet, and to direct their minds to higher objects than those around them, by psalmody. sacred chanting had been one especial way in which the catholics of antioch had kept alive, in arian times, the spirit of orthodoxy. and from the first a peculiar kind of singing--the antiphonal or responsorial, answering to our cathedral chanting--had been used in honour of the sacred doctrine which heresy assailed. ignatius, the disciple of st. peter, was reported to have introduced the practice into the church of antioch, in the doxology to the trinity. flavian, afterwards bishop of that see, revived it during the arian usurpation, to the great edification and encouragement of the oppressed catholics. chrysostom used it in the vigils at constantinople, in opposition to the same heretical party; and similar vigils had been established by basil in the monasteries of cappadocia. the assembled multitude, confined day and night within the gates of the basilica, were in the situation of a monastic body without its discipline, and ambrose rightly considered that the novelty and solemnity of the oriental chants, in praise of the blessed trinity, would both interest and sober them during the dangerous temptation to which they were now exposed. the expedient had even more successful results than the bishop anticipated; the soldiers were affected by the music, and took part in it; and, as we hear nothing more of the blockade, we must suppose that it thus ended, the government being obliged to overlook what it could not prevent. it may be interesting to the reader to see augustine's notice of this occurrence, and the effect of the psalmody upon himself, at the time of his baptism. "the pious populace (he says in his confessions) was keeping vigils in the church prepared to die, o lord, with their bishop, thy servant. there was my mother, thy handmaid, surpassing others in anxiety and watching, and making prayers her life. "i, uninfluenced as yet by the fire of thy spirit, was roused however by the terror and agitation of the city. then it was that hymns and psalms, after the oriental rite, were introduced, lest the spirits of the flock should fail under the wearisome delay."--_confess._ ix. . in the same passage, speaking of his baptism, he says:-- "how many tears i shed during the performance of thy hymns and chants, keenly affected by the notes of thy melodious church! my ears drank up those sounds, and they distilled into my heart as sacred truths, and overflowed thence again in pious emotion, and gushed forth into tears, and i was happy in them."--_ibid._ . elsewhere he says:-- "sometimes, from over-jealousy, i would entirely put from me and from the church the melodies of the sweet chants which we use in the psalter, lest our ears seduce us; and the way of athanasius, bishop of alexandria, seems the safer, who, as i have often heard, made the reader chant with so slight a change of note, that it was more like speaking than singing. and yet when i call to mind the tears i shed when i heard the chants of thy church in the infancy of my recovered faith, and reflect that at this time i am affected, not by the mere music, but by the subject, brought out, as it is, by clear voices and appropriate tune, then, in turn, i confess how useful is the practice."--_confess._ x. . such was the influence of the ambrosian chants when first introduced at milan by the great bishop whose name they bear; there they are in use still, in all the majestic austerity which gave them their original power, and a great part of the western church uses that modification of them which pope gregory introduced at rome in the beginning of the seventh century. . ambrose implies, in the sermon from which extracts were given above, that a persecution, reaching even to the infliction of bodily sufferings, was at this time exercised upon the bishops of the exarchate. certainly he himself was all along in imminent peril of his life, or of sudden removal from milan. however, he made it a point to frequent the public places and religious meetings as usual; and indeed it appears that he was as safe there as at home, for he narrowly escaped assassination from a hired ruffian of the empress's, who made his way to his bed-chamber for the purpose. magical arts were also practised against him, as a more secret and certain method of ensuring his destruction. i ought to have mentioned, before this, the challenge sent to him by the arian bishop to dispute publicly with him on the sacred doctrine in controversy; but was unwilling to interrupt the narrative of the contest about the basilica. i will here translate portions of a letter sent by him, on the occasion, to the emperor. "to the most gracious emperor and most happy augustus valentinian, ambrosius bishop,-- "dalmatius, tribune and notary, has come to me, at your majesty's desire, as he assures me, to require me to choose umpires, as auxentius[ ] has done on his part. not that he informed me who they were that had already been named; but merely said that the dispute was to take place in the consistory, in your majesty's presence, as final arbitrator of it. "i trust my answer will prove sufficient. no one should call me contumacious, if i insist on what your father, of blessed memory, not only sanctioned by word of mouth, but even by a law:--that in cases of faith, or of ecclesiastics, the judges should be neither inferior in function nor separate in jurisdiction--thus the rescript runs; in other words, he would have priests decide about priests. and this extended even to the case of allegations of wrong conduct. "when was it you ever heard, most gracious emperor, that in a question of faith laymen should be judges of a bishop? what! have courtly manners so bent our backs, that we have forgotten the rights of the priesthood, that i should of myself put into another's hands what god has bestowed upon me? once grant that a layman may set a bishop right, and see what will follow. the layman in consequence discusses, while the bishop listens; and the bishop is the pupil of the layman. yet, whether we turn to scripture or to history, who will venture to deny that in a question of faith, in a question, i say, of faith, it has ever been the bishop's business to judge the christian emperor, not the emperor's to judge the bishop? "when, through god's blessing, you live to be old, then you will know what to think of the fidelity of that bishop who places the rights of the priesthood at the mercy of laymen. your father, who arrived, through god's blessing, at maturer years, was in the habit of saying, 'i have no right to judge between bishops;' but now your majesty says, 'i ought to judge.' he, even though baptized into christ's body, thought himself unequal to the burden of such a judgment; your majesty, who still have to earn a title to the sacrament, claims to judge in a matter of faith, though you are a stranger to the sacrament to which that faith belongs. "but ambrose is not of such value, that he must degrade the priesthood for his own well-being. one man's life is not so precious as the dignity of all those bishops who have advised me thus to write; and who suggested that auxentius might be choosing some heathen perhaps or jew, whose permission to decide about christ would be a permission to triumph over him. what would pleasure them but blasphemies against him? what would satisfy them but the impious denial of his divinity--agreeing, as they do, full well with the arian, who pronounces christ to be a creature with the ready concurrence of jews and heathens? "i would have come to your majesty's court, to offer these remarks in your presence; but neither my bishops nor my people would let me; for they said that, when matters of faith were discussed in the church, this should be in the presence of the people. "i could have wished your majesty had not told me to betake myself to exile somewhere. i was abroad every day; no one guarded me. i was at the mercy of all the world; you should have secured my departure to a place of your own choosing. now the priests say to me, 'there is little difference between voluntarily leaving and betraying the altar of christ; for when you leave, you betray it.' "may it please your majesty graciously to accept this my declining to appear in the imperial court. i am not practised in attending it, except in your behalf; nor have i the skill to strive for victory within the palace, as neither knowing, nor caring to know, its secrets."--_ep._ . the reader will observe an allusion in the last sentence of this defence to a service ambrose had rendered the emperor and his mother, upon the murder of gratian; when, at the request of justina, he undertook the difficult embassy to the usurper maximus, and was the means of preserving the peace of italy. this maximus now interfered to defend him against the parties whom he had on a former occasion defended against maximus; but other and more remarkable occurrences interposed in his behalf, which shall be mentioned in the next section. footnotes: [ ] vid. [ ] kings vi. . [ ] the arian bishop, who had lately come from the east to milan, had taken the name of auxentius, the heretical predecessor of ambrose. § . _ambrose and the martyrs._ . a termination was at length put to the persecution of the church of milan by an occurrence of a very different nature from any which take place in these days. and since such events as i am to mention do not occur now, we are apt to argue, not very logically, that they did not occur then. i conceive this to be the main objection which will be felt against the following narrative. miracles never took place then, because we do not see reason to believe that they take place now. but it should be recollected, that if there are no miracles at present, neither are there at present any martyrs. might we not as cogently argue that no martyrdoms took place then, because no martyrdoms take place now? and might not st. ambrose and his brethren have as reasonably disbelieved the possible existence of parsonages and pony carriages in the nineteenth century, as we the existence of martyrs and miracles in the primitive age? perhaps miracles and martyrs go together. now the account which is to follow does indeed relate to miracles, but then it relates to martyrs also. another objection which may be more reasonably urged against the narrative is this: that in the fourth century there were many miraculous tales which even fathers of the church believed, but which no one of any way of thinking believes now. it will be argued, that because some miracles are alleged which did not really take place, that therefore none which are alleged took place either. but i am disposed to reason just the contrary way. pretences to revelation make it probable that there is a true revelation; pretences to miracles make it probable that there are real ones; falsehood is the mockery of truth; false christs argue a true christ; a shadow implies a substance. if it be replied that the scripture miracles are these true miracles, and that it is they, and none other but they, none after them, which suggested the counterfeit; i ask in turn, if so, what becomes of the original objection, that _no_ miracles are true, because some are false? if this be so, the scripture miracles are to be believed as little as those after them; and this is the very plea which infidels have urged. no; it is not reasonable to limit the scope of an argument according to the exigency of our particular conclusions; we have no leave to apply the argument _for_ miracles only to the first century, and that _against_ miracles only to the fourth. if forgery in some miracles proves forgery in all, this tells against the first as well as against the fourth century; if forgery in some argues truth in others, this avails for the fourth as well as for the first. and i will add, that even credulousness on other occasions does not necessarily disqualify a person's evidence for a particular alleged miracle; for the sight of one true miracle could not but dispose a man to believe others readily, nay, too readily, that is, would make him what is called credulous. now let these remarks be kept in mind while i go on to describe the alleged occurrence which has led to them. i know of no direct objection to it in particular, viewed in itself; the main objections are such antecedent considerations as i have been noticing. on original] but if elisha's bones restored a dead man to life, i know of no antecedent reason why the relics of gervasius and protasius should not, as in the instance to be considered, have given sight to the blind. . the circumstances were these:--st. ambrose, at the juncture of affairs which i have described in the foregoing pages, was proceeding to the dedication of a certain church at milan, which remains there to this day, with the name of "st. ambrose the greater;" and was urged by the people to bury relics of martyrs under the altar, as he had lately done in the case of the basilica of the apostles. this was according to the usage of those times, desirous thereby both of honouring those who had braved death for christ's sake, and of hallowing religious places with the mortal instruments of their triumph. ambrose in consequence gave orders to open the ground in the church of st. nabor, as a spot likely to have been the burying-place of martyrs during the heathen persecutions. augustine, who was in milan at the time, alleges that ambrose was directed in his search by a dream. ambrose himself is evidently reserved on the subject in his letter to his sister, though he was accustomed to make her his confidant in his ecclesiastical proceedings; he only speaks of his heart having burnt within him in presage of what was to happen. the digging commenced, and in due time two skeletons were discovered, of great size, perfect, and disposed in an orderly way; the head of each, however, separated from the body, and a quantity of blood about. that they were the remains of martyrs, none could reasonably doubt; and their names were ascertained to be gervasius and protasius; how, it does not appear, but certainly it was not so alleged on any traditionary information or for any popular object, since they proved to be quite new names to the church of the day, though some elderly men at length recollected hearing them in former years. nor is it wonderful that these saints should have been forgotten, considering the number of the apostolic martyrs, among whom gervasius and protasius appear to have a place. it seems to have been usual in that day to verify the genuineness of relics by bringing some of the _energumeni_, or possessed with devils, to them. such afflicted persons were present with st. ambrose during the search; and, before the service for exorcism commenced, one of them gave the well-known signs of horror and distress which were customarily excited by the presence of what had been the tabernacle of divine grace. the skeletons were raised and transported to the neighbouring church of st. fausta. the next day, june th, on which they were to be conveyed to their destination, a vast concourse of people attended the procession. this was the moment chosen by divine providence to give, as it were, signal to his church, that, though years passed on, he was still what he had been from the beginning, a living and a faithful god, wonder-working as in the lifetime of the apostles, and true to his word as spoken by his prophets unto a thousand generations. there was in milan a man of middle age, well known in the place, by name severus, who, having become blind, had given up his trade, and was now supported by charitable persons. being told the cause of the shoutings in the streets, he persuaded his guide to lead him to the sacred relics. he came near; he touched the cloth which covered them; and he regained his sight immediately. this relation deserves our special notice from its distinct miraculousness and its circumstantial character; but numerous other miracles are stated to have followed. various diseases were cured and demoniacs dispossessed by the touch of the holy bodies or their envelopments. . now for the evidence on which the whole matter rests. our witnesses are three: st. augustine, st. ambrose, and paulinus, the secretary of the latter, who after his death addressed a short memoir of his life to the former. . st. augustine, in three separate passages in his works, two of which shall here be quoted, gives his testimony. first, in his city of god, in an enumeration of miracles which had taken place since the apostles' time. he begins with that which he himself had witnessed in the city of st. ambrose:-- "the miracle," he says, "which occurred at milan, while i was there, when a blind man gained sight, was of a kind to come to the knowledge of many, because the city is large, and the emperor was there at the time, and it was wrought with the witness of a vast multitude, who had come together to the bodies of the martyrs protasius and gervasius; which, being at the time concealed and altogether unknown, were discovered on the revelation of a dream to ambrose the bishop; upon which that blind man was released from his former darkness, and saw the day."--xxii. . and next in his sermon upon the feast-day of the two martyrs:-- "we are celebrating, my brethren, the day on which, by ambrose the bishop, that man of god, there was discovered, precious in the sight of the lord, the death of his saints; of which so great glory of the martyrs, then accruing, even i was a witness. i was there, i was at milan, i know the miracles which were done, god attesting to the precious death of his saints; that by those miracles henceforth, not in the lord's sight only, but in the sight of men also, that death might be precious. a blind man, perfectly well known to the whole city, was restored to sight; he ran, he caused himself to be brought near, he returned without a guide. we have not yet heard of his death; perhaps he is still alive. in the very church where their bodies are, he has vowed his whole life to religious service. we rejoiced in his restoration, we left him in service."--_serm._ . _vid._ also . the third passage will be found in the ninth book of st. augustine's confessions, and adds to the foregoing extracts the important fact that the miracle was the cause of justina's relinquishing her persecution of the catholics. . now let us proceed to the evidence of st ambrose, as contained in the sermons which he preached upon the occasion. in the former of the two he speaks as follows of the miracles wrought by the relics:-- "ye know, nay, ye have yourselves seen, many cleansed from evil spirits, and numbers loosed from their infirmities, on laying their hands on the garment of the saints. ye see renewed the miracles of the old time, when, through the advent of the lord jesus, a fuller grace poured itself upon the earth; ye see most men healed by the very shadow of the sacred bodies. how many are the napkins which pass to and fro! what anxiety for garments which are laid upon the most holy relics, and made salutary by their very touch! it is an object with all to reach even to the extreme border, and he who reaches it will be made whole. thanks be to thee, lord jesus, for awakening for us at this time the spirits of the holy martyrs, when thy church needs greater guardianship. let all understand the sort of champions i ask for--those who may act as champions, not as assailants. and such have i gained for you, my religious people, such as benefit all, and harm none. such defenders i solicit, such soldiers i possess, not the world's soldiers, but soldiers of christ. i fear not that such will give offence; because the higher is their guardianship, the less exceptionable is it also. nay, for them even who grudge me the martyrs, do i desire the martyrs' protection. so let them come and see my body-guard; i own i have such arms about me. 'these put their trust in chariots and these in horses; but we will glory in the name of the lord our god.' "elisæus, as the course of holy scripture tells us, when hemmed in by the syrian army, said to his frightened servant, by way of calming him, 'there are more that are for us than are against us.' and to prove this, he begged that gehazi's eyes might be opened; upon which the latter saw innumerable hosts of angels present to the prophet. we, though we cannot see them, yet are sensible of them. our eyes were held as long as the bodies of the saints lay hid in their graves. the lord has opened our eyes: we have seen those aids by which we have often been defended. we had not the sight of these, yet we had the possession. and so, as though the lord said to us in our alarm, 'behold what martyrs i have given you!' in like manner our eyes are unclosed, and we see the glory of the lord, manifested, as once in their passion, so now in their power. we have got clear, my brethren, of no slight disgrace; we had patrons, yet we knew it not. we have found this one thing, in which we have the advantage of our forefathers--they lost the knowledge of these holy martyrs, and we have obtained it. "bring the victorious victims to the spot where is christ the sacrifice. but he upon the altar, who suffered for all; they under it, who were redeemed by his passion. i had intended this spot for myself, for it is fitting that where the priest had been used to offer, there he should repose; but i yield the right side to the sacred victims; that spot was due to the martyrs. therefore let us bury the hallowed relics, and introduce them into a fitting home; and celebrate the whole day with sincere devotion."--_ep._ . in his latter sermon, preached the following day, he pursues the subject:-- "this your celebration they are jealous of, who are wont to be; and, being jealous of it, they hate the cause of it, and are extravagant enough to deny the merits of those martyrs, whose works the very devils confess. nor is it wonderful; it commonly happens that unbelievers who deny are less bearable than the devil who confesses. for the devil said, 'jesus, son of the living son, why hast thou come to torment us before the time?' and, whereas the jews heard this, yet they were the very men to deny the son of god. and now ye have heard the evil spirits crying out, and confessing to the martyrs, that they cannot bear their pains, and saying, 'why are ye come to torment us so heavily?' and the arians say, 'they are not martyrs, nor can they torment the devil, nor dispossess any one;' while the torments of the evil spirits are evidenced by their own voice, and the benefits of the martyrs by the recovery of the healed, and the tokens of the dispossessed. "the arians say, 'these are not real torments of evil spirits, but they are pretended and counterfeit.' i have heard of many things pretended, but no one ever could succeed in feigning himself a devil. how is it we see them in such distress when the hand is laid on them? what room is here for fraud? what suspicion of imposture? "they deny that the blind received sight; but he does not deny that he was cured. he says, 'i see, who afore saw not.' he says, 'i ceased to be blind,' and he evidences it by the fact. they deny the benefit, who cannot deny the fact. the man is well known; employed as he was, before his affliction, in a public trade, severus his name, a butcher his business: he had given it up when this misfortune befell him. he refers to the testimony of men whose charities were supporting him; he summons them as evidence of his present visitation, who were witnesses and judges of his blindness. he cries out that, on his touching the hem of the martyrs' garment, which covered the relics, his sight was restored to him. we read in the gospel, that when the jews saw the cure of the blind man, they sought the testimony of the parents. ask others, if you distrust me; ask persons unconnected with him, if you think that his parents would take a side. the obstinacy of these arians is more hateful than that of the jews. when the latter doubted, at least they inquired of the parents; these inquire secretly, deny openly, as giving credit to the fact, but denying the author."--_ibid._ . we may corroborate the evidence of those two fathers with that of paulinus, who was secretary to st. ambrose, and wrote his life, about a.d. . "about the same time," he says, "the holy martyrs protasius and gervasius revealed themselves to god's priest. they lay in the basilica, where, at present, are the bodies of the martyrs nabor and felix; while, however, the holy martyrs nabor and felix had crowds to visit them, as well the names as the graves of the martyrs protasius and gervasius were unknown; so that all who wished to come to the rails which protected the graves of the martyrs nabor and felix, were used to walk on the graves of the others. but when the bodies of the holy martyrs were raised and placed on litters, thereupon many possessions of the devil were detected. moreover, a blind man, by name severus, who up to this day performs religious service in the basilica called ambrosian, into which the bodies of the martyrs have been translated, when he had touched the garment of the martyrs, forthwith received sight. moreover, bodies possessed by unclean spirits were restored, and with all blessedness returned home. and by means of these benefits of the martyrs, while the faith of the catholic church made increase, by so much did arian misbelief decline."--§ . . now i want to know what reason is there for stumbling at the above narrative, which will not throw uncertainty upon the very fact that there was such a bishop as ambrose, or such an empress as justina, or such a heresy as the arian, or any church at all in milan. let us consider some of the circumstances under which it comes to us. . we have the concordant evidence of three distinct witnesses, of whom at least two were on the spot when the alleged miracles were wrought, one writing at the time, another some years afterwards in a distant country. and the third, writing after an interval of twenty-six years, agrees minutely with the evidence of the two former, not adding to the miraculous narrative, as is the manner of those who lose their delicate care for exactness in their admiration of the things and persons of whom they speak. . the miracle was wrought in public, on a person well known, on one who continued to live in the place where it was professedly wrought, and who, by devoting himself to the service of the martyrs who were the instruments of his cure, was a continual memorial of the mercy which he professed to have received, and challenged inquiry into it, and refutation if that were possible. . ambrose, one of our informants, publicly appealed, at the time when the occurrence took place, to the general belief, claimed it for the miracle, and that in a sermon which is still extant. . he made his statement in the presence of bitter and most powerful enemies, who were much concerned, and very able to expose the fraud, if there was one; who did, as might be expected, deny the hand of god in the matter; but who, for all that appears, did nothing but deny what they could not consistently confess, without ceasing to be what they were. . a great and practical impression was made upon the popular mind in consequence of the alleged miracles: or, in the words of an historian, whose very vocation it is to disbelieve them, "their effect on the minds of the people was rapid and irresistible; and the feeble sovereign of italy found himself unable to contend with the favourite of heaven."[ ] . and so powerfully did all this press upon the court, that, as the last words of this extract intimate, the persecution was given up, and the catholics left in quiet possession of the churches. on the whole, then, are we not in the following dilemma? if the miracle did not take place, then st. ambrose and st. augustine, men of name, said they had ascertained a fact which they did not ascertain, and said it in the face of enemies, with an appeal to a whole city, and that continued during a quarter of a century. what instrument of refutation shall we devise against a case like this, neither so violently _à priori_ as to supersede the testimony of evangelists, nor so fastidious of evidence as to imperil tacitus or cæsar? on the other hand, if the miracle did take place, a certain measure of authority, more or less, surely must thereby attach to st. ambrose--to his doctrine and his life, to his ecclesiastical principles and proceedings, to the church itself of the fourth century, of which he is one main pillar. the miracle gives a certain sanction to three things at once, to the catholic doctrine of the trinity, to the church's resistance of the civil power, and to the commemoration of saints and martyrs. * * * * * does it give any sanction to protestantism and its adherents? shall we accept it or not? shall we retreat, or shall we advance? shall we relapse into scepticism upon all subjects, or sacrifice our deep-rooted prejudices? shall we give up our knowledge of times past altogether, or endure to gain a knowledge which we think we have already--the knowledge of divine truth? footnotes: [ ] gibbon, hist. ch. . chapter ii. what says vincent of lerins? . it is pretty clear that most persons of this day will be disposed to wonder at the earnestness shown by the early bishops of the church in their defence of the catholic faith. athanasius, hilary, basil, gregory, and ambrose resisted the spread of arianism at the risk of their lives. yet their repeated protests and efforts were all about what? the man of the world will answer, "strifes of words, perverse disputings, curious questions, which do not tend to advance what ought to be the one end of all religion, peace and love. this is what comes of insisting on orthodoxy; putting the whole world into a fever!" _tantum religio potuit_, etc., as the epicurean poet says. such certainly is the phenomenon which we have to contemplate: theirs was a state of mind seldom experienced, and little understood, in this day; however, for that reason, it is at least interesting to the antiquarian, even were it not a sound and christian state also. the highest end of church union, to which the mass of educated men now look, is quiet and unanimity; as if the church were not built upon faith, and truth really the first object of the christian's efforts, peace but the second. the one idea which statesmen, and lawyers, and journalists, and men of letters have of a clergyman is, that he is by profession "a man of peace:" and if he has occasion to denounce, or to resist, or to protest, a cry is raised, "o how disgraceful in a minister of peace!" the church is thought invaluable as a promoter of good order and sobriety; but is regarded as nothing more. far be it from me to seem to disparage what is really one of her high functions; but still a part of her duty will never be tantamount to the whole of it. at present the _beau ideal_ of a clergyman in the eyes of many is a "reverend gentleman," who has a large family, and "administers spiritual consolation." now i make bold to say, that confessorship for the catholic faith is one part of the duty of christian ministers, nay, and christian laymen too. yet, in this day, if at any time there is any difference in matters of doctrine between christians, the first and last wish--the one sovereign object--of so-called judicious men, is to hush it up. no matter what the difference is about; _that_ is thought so little to the purpose, that your well-judging men will not even take the trouble to inquire what it is. it may be, for what they know, a question of theism or atheism; but they will not admit, whatever it is, that it can be more than secondary to the preservation of a good understanding between christians. they think, whatever it is, it may safely be postponed for future consideration--that things will right themselves--the one pressing object being to present a bold and extended front to our external enemies, to prevent the outward fabric of the church from being weakened by dissensions, and insulted by those who witness them. surely the church exists, in an especial way, for the sake of the faith committed to her keeping. but our practical men forget there may be remedies worse than the disease; that latent heresy may be worse than a contest of "party;" and, in their treatment of the church, they fulfil the satirist's well-known line:-- "propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." no wonder they do so, when they have been so long accustomed to merge the church in the nation, and to talk of "protestantism" in the abstract as synonymous with true religion; to consider that the characteristic merit of our church is its "tolerance," as they call it, and that its greatest misfortune is the exposure to the world of those antagonistic principles and views which are really at work within it. but talking of exposure, what a scandal it was in st. peter to exert his apostolical powers on ananias; and in st. john, to threaten diotrephes! what an exposure in st. paul to tell the corinthians he had "a rod" for them, were they disobedient! one should have thought, indeed, that weapons were committed to the church for use as well as for show; but the present age apparently holds otherwise, considering that the church is then most primitive, when it neither cares for the faith itself, nor uses the divinely ordained means by which it is to be guarded. now, to people who acquiesce in this view, i know well that ambrose or augustine has not more of authority than an english non-juror; still, to those who do not acquiesce in it, it may be some little comfort, some encouragement, some satisfaction, to see that they themselves are not the first persons in the world who have felt and judged of religion in that particular way which is now in disrepute. . however, some persons will allow, perhaps, that doctrinal truth ought to be maintained, and that the clergy ought to maintain it; but then they will urge that we should not make the path of truth too narrow; that it is a royal and a broad highway by which we travel heavenward, whereas it has been the one object of theologians, in every age, to encroach upon it, till at length it has become scarcely broad enough for two to walk abreast in. and moreover, it will be objected, that over-exactness was the very fault of the fourth and fifth centuries in particular, which refined upon the doctrines of the holy trinity and our lord's incarnation, till the way of life became like that razor's edge, which is said in the koran to be drawn high over the place of punishment, and must be traversed by every one at the end of the world. now i cannot possibly deny, however disadvantageous it may be to their reputation, that the fathers do represent the way of faith as narrow, nay, even as being the more excellent and the more royal for that very narrowness. such is orthodoxy certainly; but here it is obvious to ask whether this very characteristic of it may not possibly be rather an argument for, than against, its divine origin. certain it is, that such nicety, as it is called, is not unknown to other religious dispensations, creeds, and covenants, besides that which the primitive church identified with christianity. nor is it a paradox to maintain that the whole system of religion, natural as well as revealed, is full of similar appointments. as to the subject of ethics, even a heathen philosopher tells us, that virtue consists in a mean--that is, in a point between indefinitely-extending extremes; "men being in one way good, and many ways bad." the same principle, again, is seen in the revealed system of spiritual communications; the grant of grace and privilege depending on positive ordinances, simple and definite--on the use of a little water, the utterance of a few words, the imposition of hands, and the like; which, it will perhaps be granted, are really essential to the conveyance of spiritual blessings, yet are confessedly as formal and technical as any creed can be represented to be. in a word, such technicality is involved in the very idea of a _means_, which may even be defined to be a something appointed, at god's inscrutable pleasure, as the necessary condition of something else; and the simple question before us is, merely the _matter of fact_, viz., whether any doctrine _is_ set forth by revelation as necessary to be believed _in order_ to salvation? antecedent difficulty in the question there is none; or rather, the probability is in favour of there being some necessary doctrine, from the analogy of the other parts of religion. the question is simply about the matter of fact. this analogy is perspicuously expressed in one of the sermons of st. leo:--"not only," he says, "in the exercise of virtue and the observance of the commandments, but also in the path of faith, strait and difficult is the way which leads to life; and it requires great pains, and involves great risks, to walk without stumbling along the one footway of sound doctrine, amid the uncertain opinions and the plausible untruths of the unskilful, and to escape all peril of mistake when the toils of error are on every side."--_serm._ . st. gregory nazianzen says the same thing:--"we have bid farewell to contentious deviations of doctrine, and compensations on either side, neither sabellianizing nor arianizing. these are the sports of the evil one, who is a bad arbiter of our matters. but we, pacing along the middle and royal way, _in which also the essence of the virtues lies_, in the judgment of the learned, believe in father, son, and holy ghost."--_orat._ . on the whole, then, i see nothing very strange either in orthodoxy lying in what at first sight appears like subtle and minute exactness of doctrine, or in its being our duty to contend even to confessorship for such exactness. whether it be thus exact, and whether the exactness of ambrose, leo, or gregory be the true and revealed exactness, is quite another question: all i say is, that it is no great difficulty to believe that it may be what they say it is, both as to its truth and as to its importance. . but now supposing the question is asked, are ambrose, leo, and gregory right? and is our church right in maintaining with them the athanasian doctrine on those sacred points to which it relates, and condemning those who hold otherwise? what answer is to be given? i answer by asking in turn, supposing any one inquired how we know that ambrose, leo, or gregory was right and our church right, in receiving st. paul's epistles, what answer we should make? the answer would be, that it is a matter of history that the apostle wrote those letters which are ascribed to him. and what is meant by its being a matter of history? why, that it has ever been so believed, so declared, so recorded, so acted on, from the first down to this day; that there is no assignable point of time when it was not believed, no assignable point at which the belief was introduced; that the records of past ages fade away and vanish _in_ the belief; that in proportion as past ages speak at all, they speak in one way, and only fail to bear a witness, when they fail to have a voice. what stronger testimony can we have of a past fact? now evidence such as this have we for the catholic doctrines which ambrose, leo, or gregory maintained; they have never and nowhere _not_ been maintained; or in other words, wherever we know anything positive of ancient times and places, there we are told of these doctrines also. as far as the records of history extend, they include these doctrines as avowed always, everywhere, and by all. this is the great canon of the _quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_, which saves us from the misery of having to find out the truth for ourselves from scripture on our independent and private judgment. he who gave scripture, also gave us the interpretation of scripture; and he gave the one and the other gift in the same way, by the testimony of past ages, as matter of historical knowledge, or as it is sometimes called, by tradition. we receive the catholic doctrines as we receive the canon of scripture, because, as our article expresses it, "_of their authority" there "was never any doubt in the church_." we receive them on catholic tradition, and therefore they are called catholic doctrines. and that they are catholic, is a proof that they are apostolic; they never could have been universally received in the church, unless they had had their origin in the origin of the church, unless they had been made the foundation of the church by its founders. as the separate successions of bishops in various countries have but one common origin, the apostles, so what has been handed down through these separate successions comes from that one origin. the apostolic college is the only point in which all the lines converge, and from which they spring. private traditions, wandering unconnected traditions, are of no authority, but permanent, recognised, public, definite, intelligible, multiplied, concordant testimonies to one and the same doctrine, bring with them an overwhelming evidence of apostolical origin. we ground the claims of orthodoxy on no powers of reasoning, however great, on the credit of no names, however imposing, but on an external fact, on an argument the same as that by which we prove the genuineness and authority of the four gospels. the unanimous tradition of all the churches to certain articles of faith is surely an irresistible evidence, more trustworthy far than that of witnesses to certain facts in a court of law, by how much the testimony of a number is more cogent than the testimony of two or three. that this really is the ground on which the narrow line of orthodoxy was maintained in ancient times, is plain from an inspection of the writings of the very men who maintained it, ambrose, leo, and gregory, or athanasius and hilary, and the rest, who set forth its catholic character in more ways than it is possible here to instance or even explain. . however, in order to give the general reader some idea of the state of the case, i will make some copious extracts from the famous tract of vincent of lerins on heresy, written in a.d. , immediately after the third ecumenical council, held against nestorius. the author was originally a layman, and by profession a soldier. in after life he became a monk and took orders. lerins, the site of his monastery, is one of the small islands off the south coast of france. he first states what the principle is he would maintain, and the circumstances under which he maintains it; and if his principle is reasonable and valuable in itself, so does it come to us with great weight under the circumstances which he tells us led him to his exposition of it:[ ] "inquiring often," he says, "with great desire and attention, of very many excellent, holy, and learned men, how and by what means i might assuredly, and as it were by some general and ordinary way, discern the true catholic faith from false and wicked heresy; to this question i had usually this answer from them all, that whether i or any other desired to find out the fraud of heretics, daily springing up, and to escape their snares, and to continue in a sound faith himself safe and sound, that he ought, by two ways, by god's assistance, to defend and preserve his faith; that is, first, by the authority of the law of god; secondly, by the tradition of the catholic church."--_ch._ . it will be observed he is speaking of the _mode_ in which an _individual_ is to seek and attain the truth; and it will be observed also, as the revered bishop jebb has pointed out, that he is allowing[ ] and sanctioning the use of personal inquiry. he proceeds:-- "here some man, perhaps, may ask, seeing the canon of the scripture is perfect, and most abundantly of itself sufficient for all things, what need we join unto it the authority of the church's understanding and interpretation? the reason is this, because the scripture being of itself so deep and profound, all men do not understand it in one and the same sense, but divers men diversely, this man and that man, this way and that way, expound and interpret the sayings thereof, so that to one's thinking, 'so many men, so many opinions' almost may be gathered out of them: for novatian expoundeth it one way, photinus another; sabellius after this sort, donatus after that; arius, eunomius, macedonius will have this exposition, apollinaris and priscilian will have that; jovinian, pelagius, celestius, gather this sense, and, to conclude, nestorius findeth out that; and therefore very necessary it is for the avoiding of so great windings and turnings, of errors so various, that the line of expounding the prophets and apostles be directed and drawn, according to the rule of the ecclesiastical and catholic sense. "again, within the catholic church itself we are greatly to consider that we hold that which hath been believed _everywhere_, _always_, and _of all men_: for that is truly and properly _catholic_ (as the very force and nature of the word doth declare) which comprehendeth all things in general after an universal manner, and that shall we do if we follow _universality, antiquity, consent_. universality shall we follow thus, if we profess that one faith to be true which the whole church throughout the world acknowledgeth and confesseth. antiquity shall we follow, if we depart not any whit from those senses which it is plain that our holy elders and fathers generally held. consent shall we likewise follow, if in this very antiquity itself we hold the definitions and opinions of all, or at any rate almost all, the priests and doctors together."--_ch._ , . it is sometimes said, that what is called orthodoxy or catholicism is only the opinion of one or two fathers--- fallible men, however able they might be, or persuasive--who created a theology, and imposed it on their generation, and thereby superseded scriptural truth and the real gospel. let us see how vincent treats such individual teachers, however highly gifted. he is speaking in the opening sentence of the judaizers of the time of st. paul:-- "when, therefore, such kind of men, wandering up and down through provinces and cities to set their errors to sale, came also unto the galatians, and these, after they had heard them, were delighted with the filthy drugs of heretical novelty, loathing the truth, and casting up again the heavenly manna of the apostolic and catholic doctrine: the authority of his apostolic office so puts itself forth as to decree very severely in this sort. 'but although (quoth he) we or an angel from heaven evangelize unto you beside that which we have evangelized, be he anathema.'[ ] what meaneth this that he saith, 'but although we?' why did he not rather say, 'but although i?' that is to say, although peter, although andrew, although john, yea, finally, although the whole company of the apostles, evangelize unto you otherwise than we have evangelized, be he accursed. a terrible censure, in that for maintaining the possession of the first faith, he spared not himself, nor any other of the apostles! but this is a small matter: 'although an angel from heaven (quoth he) evangelize unto you, beside that which i have evangelized, be he anathema,' he was not contented for keeping the faith once delivered to make mention of man's weak nature, unless also he included those excellent creatures the angels.... but peradventure he uttered those words slightly, and cast them forth rather of human affection than decreed them by divine direction. god forbid: for it followeth, and that urged with great earnestness of repeated inculcation, 'as i have foretold you (quoth he), and now again i tell you, if anybody evangelize unto you beside that which you have received, be he anathema.' he said not, if any man preach unto you beside that which you have received, let him be blessed, let him be commended, let him be received, but let him be _anathema_, that is, separated, thrust out, excluded, lest the cruel infection of one sheep with his poisoned company corrupt the sound flock of christ."--_ch._ and . . here, then, is a point of doctrine which must be carefully insisted on. the fathers are primarily to be considered as _witnesses_, not as _authorities_. they are witnesses of an existing state of things, and their treatises are, as it were, _histories_,--teaching us, in the first instance, matters of fact, not of opinion. whatever they themselves might be, whether deeply or poorly taught in christian faith and love, they speak, not their own thoughts, but the received views of their respective ages. the especial value of their works lies in their opening upon us a state of the church which else we should have no notion of. we read in their writings a great number of high and glorious principles and acts, and our first thought thereupon is, "all this must have had an existence somewhere or other in those times. these very men, indeed, may be merely speaking by rote, and not understand what they say; but it matters not to the profit of their writings what they were themselves." it matters not to the profit of their writings, nor again to the authority resulting from them; for the _times_ in which they wrote of course _are_ of authority, though the fathers themselves may have none. tertullian or eusebius may be nothing more than bare witnesses; yet so much as this they have a claim to be considered. this is even the strict protestant view. we are not obliged to take the fathers as _authorities_, only as _witnesses_. charity, i suppose, and piety will prompt the christian student to go further, and to believe that men who laboured so unremittingly, and suffered so severely in the cause of the gospel, really did possess some little portion of that earnest love of the truth which they professed, and were enlightened by that influence for which they prayed; but i am stating the strict protestant doctrine, the great polemical principle ever to be borne in mind, that the fathers are to be adduced in controversy merely as testimonies to an existing state of things, not as authorities. at the same time, no candid protestant will be loth to admit, that the state of things to which they bear witness, _is_, as i have already said, a most grave and conclusive authority in guiding us in those particulars of our duty about which scripture is silent; succeeding, as it does, so very close upon the age of the apostles. thus much i claim of consistent protestants, and thus much i grant to them. gregory and the rest may have been but nominal christians. athanasius himself may have been very dark in all points of doctrine, in spite of his twenty years' exile and his innumerable perils by sea and land; the noble ambrose, a high and dry churchman; and basil, a mere monk. i do not dispute these points; though i claim "the right of private judgment," so far as to have my own very definite opinion in the matter, which i keep to myself. . such being the plain teaching of the fathers, and such the duty of following it, vincentius proceeds to speak of the misery of doubting and change:-- "which being so, he is a true and genuine catholic that loveth the truth of god, the church, the body of christ; that preferreth nothing before the religion of god; nothing before the catholic faith; not any man's authority, not love, not wit, not eloquence, not philosophy; but contemning all these things, and in faith abiding fixed and stable, whatsoever he knoweth the catholic church universally in old times to have holden, that only he purposeth with himself to hold and believe; but whatsoever doctrine, new and not before heard of, such an one shall perceive to be afterwards brought in of some one man, beside all or contrary to all the saints, let him know that doctrine doth not pertain to religion, but rather to temptation, especially being instructed with the sayings of the blessed apostle st. paul. for this is that which he writeth in his first epistle to the corinthians: 'there must (quoth he) be heresies also, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.' ... "o the miserable state of [waverers]! with what seas of cares, with what storms, are they tossed! for now at one time, as the wind driveth them, they are carried away headlong in error; at another time, coming again to themselves, they are beaten back like contrary waves; sometime with rash presumption they allow such things as seem uncertain, at another time of pusillanimity they are in fear even about those things which are certain; doubtful which way to take, which way to return, what to desire, what to avoid, what to hold, what to let go; which misery and affliction of a wavering and unsettled heart, were they wise, is as a medicine of god's mercy towards them. "which being so, oftentimes calling to mind and remembering the selfsame thing, i cannot sufficiently marvel at the great madness of some men, at so great impiety of their blinded hearts, lastly, at so great a licentious desire of error, that they be not content with the rule of faith once delivered us, and received from our ancestors, but do every day search and seek for new doctrine, ever desirous to add to, to change, and to take away something from, religion; as though that were not the doctrine of god, which it is enough to have once revealed, but rather man's institution, which cannot but by continual amendment (or rather correction) be perfected."--_ch._ , . . then he takes a text, and handles it as a modern preacher might do. his text is this:-- "o timothy, keep the _depositum_, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of falsely-called knowledge, which certain professing have erred about the faith." he dwells successively upon _timothy_, on the _deposit_, on _avoiding_, on _profane_, and on _novelties_. first, _timothy_ and the "_deposit_:"-- "who at this day is timothy, but either generally the whole church, or especially the whole body of prelates, who ought either themselves to have a sound knowledge of divine religion, or who ought to infuse it into others? what is meant by _keep the deposit_? keep it (quoth he) for fear of thieves, for danger of enemies, lest when men be asleep, they oversow cockle among that good seed of wheat, which the son of man hath sowed in his field. 'keep (quoth he) the deposit.' what is meant by this deposit? that is, that which is committed to thee, not that which is invented of thee; that which thou hast received, not that which thou hast devised; a thing not of wit, but of learning; not of private assumption, but of public tradition; a thing brought to thee, not brought forth of thee; wherein thou must not be an author, but a keeper; not a beginner, but a follower; not a leader, but an observer. keep the deposit. preserve the talent of the catholic faith safe and undiminished; that which is committed to thee, let that remain with thee, and that deliver. thou hast received gold, render then gold; i will not have one thing for another; do not for gold render either impudently lead, or craftily brass; i will, not the show, but the very nature of gold itself. o timothy, o priest, o teacher, o doctor, if god's gift hath made thee meet and sufficient by thy wit, exercise, and learning, be the beseleel of the spiritual tabernacle, engrave the precious stones of god's doctrine, faithfully set them, wisely adorn them, give them brightness, give them grace, give them beauty. that which men before believed obscurely, let them by thy exposition understand more clearly. let posterity rejoice for coming to the understanding of that by thy means, which antiquity without that understanding had in veneration. yet for all this, in such sort deliver the same things which thou hast learned, that albeit thou teachest after a new manner yet thou never teach new things." next, "_avoiding_:"-- "'o timothy (quoth he), keep the deposit, avoid profane novelties of words.' avoid (quoth he) as a viper, as a scorpion, as a basilisk, lest they infect thee not only by touching, but also with their very eyes and breath. what is meant by _avoid_?[ ] that is, not so much as to eat with any such. what importeth this _avoid_? 'if any man (quoth he) come unto you, and bring not this doctrine,'[ ] what doctrine but the catholic and universal, and that which, with incorrupt tradition of the truth, hath continued one and the selfsame, through all successions of times, and that which shall continue for ever and ever? what then? 'receive him not (quoth he) into the house, nor say god speed; for he that saith unto him god speed, communicateth with his wicked works." then, "_profane_:"-- "'profane novelties of words' (quoth he); what is _profane_? those which have no holiness in them, nought of religion, wholly external to the sanctuary of the church, which is the temple of god. 'profane novelties of words (quoth he), of words, that is, novelties of doctrines, novelties of things, novelties of opinions, contrary to old usage, contrary to antiquity, which if we receive, of necessity the faith of our blessed ancestors, either all, or a great part of it, must be overthrown; the faithful people of all ages and times, all holy saints, all the chaste, all the continent, all the virgins, all the clergy, the deacons, the priests, so many thousands of confessors, so great armies of martyrs, so many famous and populous cities and commonwealths, so many islands, provinces, kings, tribes, kingdoms, nations; to conclude, almost now the whole world, incorporated by the catholic faith to christ their head, must needs be said, so many hundreds of years, to have been ignorant, to have erred, to have blasphemed, to have believed they knew not what." lastly, "_novelties_:"-- "'avoid (quoth he) profane _novelties_ of words,' to receive and follow which was never the custom of catholics, but always of heretics. and, to say truth, what heresy hath ever burst forth, but under the name of some certain man, in some certain place, and at some certain time? who ever set up any heresy, but first divided himself from the consent of the universality and antiquity of the catholic church? which to be true, examples do plainly prove. for who ever before that profane pelagius presumed so much of man's free will, that he thought not the grace of god necessary to aid it in every particular good act? who ever before his monstrous disciple celestius denied all mankind to be bound with the guilt of adam's transgression? who ever before sacrilegious arius durst rend in pieces the unity of trinity? who ever before wicked sabellius durst confound the trinity of unity? who ever before cruel novatian affirmed god to be merciless, in that he had rather the death of a sinner than that he should return and live? who ever before simon magus, durst affirm that god our creator was the author of evil, that is, of our wickedness, impieties, and crimes; because god (as he said) so with his own hands made man's very nature, that by a certain proper motion and impulse of an enforced will, it can do nothing else, desire nothing else, but to sin. such examples are infinite, which for brevity-sake i omit, by all which, notwithstanding, it appeareth plainly and clearly enough, that it is, as it were, a custom and law in all heresies, ever to take great pleasure in profane novelties, to loath the decrees of our forefathers, and to make shipwreck of faith, by oppositions of falsely-called knowledge; contrariwise that this is usually proper to all catholics, to keep those things which the holy fathers have left, and committed to their charge, to condemn profane novelties, and, as the apostle hath said, and again forewarned, 'if any man shall preach otherwise than that which is received,' to anathematize him."--_ch._ - . from these extracts, which are but specimens of the whole tract, i come to the conclusion that vincent was a very sorry protestant. footnotes: [ ] the oxford translation of is used in the following extracts. [ ] [he allows of it in the _absence_ at the time of the church's authoritative declaration concerning the particular question in debate. he would say, "there was no need of any ecumenical council to condemn nestorius; he was condemned by scripture and tradition already."-- .] [ ] gal. i. . [ ] cor. v. . [ ] john , . chapter iii. what says the history of apollinaris? in the judgment of the early church, the path of doctrinal truth is narrow; but, in the judgment of the world in all ages, it is so broad as to be no path at all. this i have said above; also, that the maintenance of the faith is considered by the world to be a strife of words, perverse disputings, curious questionings, and unprofitable technicality, though by the fathers it is considered necessary to salvation. what they call heresy, the man of the world thinks just as true as what they call orthodoxy, and only then wrong when pertinaciously insisted on by its advocates, as the early fathers insisted on orthodoxy. now do, or do not, protestants here take part with the world in disliking, in abjuring doctrinal propositions and articles, such as the early church fought for? certainly they do. well, then, if they thus differ from the church of the fathers, how can they fancy that the early church was protestant? in the treatise i have been quoting, vincent gives us various instances of heresiarchs, and tells us what he thinks about them. among others, he speaks of apollinaris and his fall; nor can we have a better instance than that of apollinaris of the grave distress and deep commiseration with which the early fathers regarded those whom the present protestant world thinks very good kind of men, only fanciful and speculative, with some twist or hobby of their own. apollinaris, better than any one else, will make us understand what was thought of the guilt of heresy in times which came next to the apostolic, because the man was so great, and his characteristic heresy was so small. the charges against origen have a manifest breadth and width to support them; nestorius, on the other hand, had no high personal merits to speak for him; but apollinaris, after a life of laborious service in the cause of religion, did but suffer himself to teach that the divine intelligence in our lord superseded the necessity of his having any other, any human intellect; and for this apparently small error, he was condemned. of course it was not small really; for one error leads to another, and did eventually in his case; but to all appearance it was small, yet it was promptly and sternly denounced and branded by east and west; would it be so ruthlessly smitten by protestants now? a brief sketch of his history, and of the conduct of the church towards him, may not be out of place in the experiments i am making with a view of determining the relation in which modern protestantism stands towards primitive christianity. . his father, who bore the same name, was a native of alexandria, by profession a grammarian or schoolmaster; who, passing from berytus to the syrian laodicea, married and settled there, and eventually rose to the presbyterate in the church of that city. apollinaris, the son, had been born there in the early part of the fourth century, and was educated for the profession of rhetoric. after a season of suspense, as to the ultimate destination of his talents, he resolved on dedicating them to the service of the church; and, after being admitted into reader's orders, he began to distinguish himself by his opposition to philosophical infidelity. his work against porphyry, the most valuable and elaborate of his writings, was extended to as many as thirty books. during the reign of julian, when the christian schools were shut up, and the christian youth were debarred from the use of the classics, the two apollinares, father and son, exerted themselves to supply the inconvenience thence resulting from their own resources. they wrote heroical pieces, odes, tragedies, and dialogues, after the style of homer and plato, and other standard authors, upon christian subjects; and the younger, who is the subject of this chapter, wrote and dedicated to julian a refutation of paganism, on grounds of reason. nor did he confine himself to the mere external defence of the gospel, or the preparatory training of its disciples. his expositions on scripture were the most numerous of his works; he especially excelled in eliciting and illustrating its sacred meaning, and he had sufficient acquaintance with the hebrew to enable him to translate or comment on the original text. there was scarcely a controversy of the age, prolific as it was in heresies, into which he did not enter. he wrote against the arians, eunomians, macedonians, and manichees; against origen and marcellus; and in defence of the millenarians. portions of these doctrinal writings are still extant, and display a vigour and elegance of style not inferior to any writer of his day. such a man seemed to be raised up providentially for the church's defence in an evil day; and for awhile he might be said resolutely and nobly to fulfil his divinely appointed destiny. the church of laodicea, with the other cities of syria, was at the time in arian possession; when the great athanasius passed through on his return to egypt, after his second exile (a.d. ), apollinaris communicated with him, and was in consequence put out of the church by the bishop in possession. on the death of constantius (a.d. ), the catholic cause prevailed; and apollinaris was consecrated to that see, or to that in asia minor which bears the same name. . such was the station, such the reputation of apollinaris, at the date of the council thereupon held at alexandria, a.d. , for settling the disorders of the church; and yet, in the proceedings of this celebrated assembly, the first intimation occurs of the existence of that doctrinal error by which he has been since known in history, though it is not there connected with his name. the troubles under julian succeeded, and diverted the minds of all parties to other objects. the infant heresy slept till about the year ; when it gives us evidence of its existence in the appearance of a number of persons, scattered about syria and greece, who professed it in one form or other, and by the solemn meeting of a council in the former country, in which its distinctive tenets were condemned. we find that even at this date it had run into those logical consequences which make even a little error a great one; still the name of apollinaris is not connected with them. the council, as i have said, was held in syria, but the heresy which occasioned it had already, it seems, extended into greece; for a communication, which the there assembled bishops addressed to athanasius on the subject, elicited from him a letter, still extant, addressed to epictetus, bishop of corinth, who had also written to him upon it. this letter, whether from tenderness to apollinaris, or from difficulty in bringing the heresy home to him, still does not mention his name. another work written by athanasius against the heresy, at the very end of his life, with the keenness and richness of thought which distinguish his writings generally, is equally silent; as are two letters to friends about the same date, which touch more or less on the theological points in question. all these treatises seem to be forced from the writer, and are characterized by considerable energy of expression: as if the catholics addressed were really perplexed with the novel statements of doctrine, and doubtful how athanasius would meet them, or at least required his authority before pronouncing upon them; and, on the other hand, as if athanasius himself were fearful of conniving at them, whatever private reasons he might have for wishing to pass them over. yet there is nothing in the history or documents of the times to lead one to suppose that more than a general suspicion attached to apollinaris; and, if we may believe his own statement, athanasius died in persuasion of his orthodoxy. a letter is extant, written by apollinaris on this subject, in which he speaks of the kind intercourse he had with the patriarch of alexandria, and of their agreement in faith, as acknowledged by athanasius himself. he claims him as his master, and at the same time slightly hints that there had been points to settle between them, in which he himself had given way. in another, written to an egyptian bishop, he seems to refer to the very epistle to epictetus noticed above, expressing his approbation of it. it is known, moreover, that athanasius gave the usual letters of introduction to timotheus, apollinaris's intimate friend, and afterwards the most extravagant teacher of his sect, on his going to the western bishops, and that, on the ground of his controversial talents against the arians. athanasius died in a.d. or ; and that bereavement of the church was followed, among its calamities, by the open avowal of heresy on the part of apollinaris. in a letter already referred to, he claims athanasius as agreeing with him, and then proceeds to profess one of the very tenets against which athanasius had written. in saying this, i have no intention of accusing so considerable a man of that disingenuousness which is almost the characteristic mark of heresy. it was natural that athanasius should have exercised an influence over his mind; and it was as natural that, when his fellow-champion was taken to his rest, he should have found himself able to breathe more freely, yet have been unwilling to own it. while indulging in the speculations of a private judgment, he might still endeavour to persuade himself that he was not outstepping the teaching of the catholic church. on the other hand, it appears that the ecclesiastical authorities of the day, even when he professed his heresy, were for awhile incredulous about the fact, from their recollection of his former services and his tried orthodoxy, and from the hope that he was but carried on into verbal extravagances by his opposition to arianism. thus they were as unwilling to impute to him heresy, as he to confess it. nay, even when he had lost shame, attacked the catholics with violence, and formed his disciples into a sect, not even then was he himself publicly animadverted on, though his creed was anathematized. his first condemnation was at rome, several years after athanasius's death, in company with timotheus, his disciple. in the records of the general council of constantinople, several years later, his sect is mentioned as existing, with directions how to receive back into the church those who applied for reconciliation. he outlived this council about ten years; his sect lasted only twenty years beyond him; but in that short time it had split into three distinct denominations, of various degrees of heterodoxy, and is said to have fallen more or less into the errors of judaism. . if this is a faithful account of the conduct of the church towards apollinaris, no one can accuse its rulers of treating him with haste or harshness; still they accompanied their tenderness towards him personally with a conscientious observance of their duties to the catholic faith, to which our protestants are simply dead. who now in england, except very high churchmen, would dream of putting a man out of the church for what would be called a mere speculative or metaphysical opinion? why could not apollinaris be a "spiritual man," have "a justifying faith," "apprehend" our lord's merits, have "a personal interest in redemption," be in possession of "experimental religion," and be able to recount his "experiences," though he had some vagaries of his own about the nature of our lord's soul? but such ideas did not approve themselves to christians of the fourth century, who followed up the anathemas of holy church with their own hearty adhesion to them. epiphanius speaks thus mournfully:-- "that aged and venerable man, who was ever so singularly dear to us, and to the holy father, athanasius, of blessed memory, and to all orthodox men, apollinaris, of laodicea, he it was who originated and propagated this doctrine. and at first, when we were assured of it by some of his disciples, we disbelieved that such a man could admit such an error into his path, and patiently waited in hope, till we might ascertain the state of the case. for we argued that his youths, who came to us, not entering into the profound views of so learned and clear-minded a master, had invented these statements of themselves, not gained them from him. for there were many points in which those who came to us were at variance with each other: some of them ventured to say that christ had brought down his body from above (and this strange theory, admitted into the mind, developed itself into worse notions); others of them denied that christ had taken a soul; and some ventured to say that christ's body was consubstantial with the godhead, and thereby caused great confusion in the east"--_hær._ lxxvii. . he proceeds afterwards:-- "full of distress became our life at that time, that between brethren so exemplary as the forementioned, a quarrel should at all have arisen, that the enemy of man might work divisions among us. and great, my brethren, is the mischief done to the mind from such a cause. for were no question ever raised on the subject, the matter would be most simple (for what gain has accrued to the world from such novel doctrine, or what benefit to the church? rather has it not been an injury, as causing hatred and dissension?): but when the question was raised, it became formidable; it did not tend to good; for whether a man disallows this particular point, or even the slightest, still it is a denial. for we must not, even in a trivial matter, turn aside from the path of truth. no one of the ancients ever maintained it--prophet, or apostle, or evangelist, or commentator--down to these our times, when this so perplexing doctrine proceeded from that most learned man aforesaid. his was a mind of no common cultivation; first in the preliminaries of literature in greek education, then as a master of dialectics and argumentation. moreover, he was most grave in his whole life, and reckoned among the very first of those who ever deserved the love of the orthodox, and so continued till his maintenance of this doctrine. nay, he had undergone banishment for not submitting to the arians;--but why enlarge on it? it afflicted us much, and gave us a sorrowful time, as is the wont of our enemy."--_ibid._ . st. basil once got into trouble from a supposed intimacy with apollinaris. he had written one letter to him on an indifferent matter, in , when he himself was as yet a layman, and apollinaris orthodox and scarcely in orders. this was magnified by his opponent eustathius into a correspondence and intercommunion between the archbishop and heresiarch. as in reality basil knew very little even of his works, the description which the following passages give is valuable, as being, in fact, a sort of popular opinion about apollinaris, more than an individual judgment. basil wrote the former of the two in defence of himself; in the latter, other errors of apollinaris are mentioned, besides those to which i have had occasion to allude, for, as i have said, errors seldom are found single. "for myself," says basil, "i never indeed considered apollinaris as an enemy; nay, there are respects in which i reverence him; however, i did not so connect myself with him as to make myself answerable for his alleged faults, considering, too, that i have a complaint of my own against him, on reading some of his compositions. i hear, indeed, that he is become the most copious of all writers; yet i have fallen in with but few of his works, for i have not leisure to search into such, and besides, i do not easily form the acquaintance of recent writers, being hindered by bodily health from continuing even the study of inspired scripture laboriously, and as is fitting."--_ep._ , § . the other passage runs thus:-- "after eustathius comes apollinaris; he, too, no slight disturber of the church; for, having a facility in writing and a tongue which served him on every subject, he has filled the world with his compositions, despising the warning, 'beware of making many books,' because in the many are many faults. for how is it possible, in much speaking, to escape sin?"--_ep._ , § . and then he goes on to mention some of the various gross errors, to which by that time he seemed to be committed. lastly, let us hear vincent of lerins about him:-- "great was the heat and great the perplexity which apollinaris created in the minds of his auditory, when the authority of the church drew them one way, and the influence of their teacher drew them the other, so that, wavering and hesitating between the two, they could not decide which was to be chosen. you will say, he ought at once to have been put aside; yes, but he was so great a man, that his word carried with it an extraordinary credence. who indeed was his superior in acumen, in long practice, in view of doctrine? as to the number of his volumes against heresies, i will but mention as a specimen of them that great and noble work of his against porphyry, in not less than thirty books, with its vast collection of arguments. he would have been among the master-builders of the church, had not the profane lust of heretical curiosity incited him to strike out something new, to pollute withal his labours throughout with the taint of leprosy, so that his teaching was rather a temptation to the church than an edification."--_ch._ . it is a solemn and pregnant fact, that two of the most zealous and forward of athanasius's companions in the good fight against arianism, marcellus and apollinaris, fell away into heresies of their own; nor did the church spare them, for all their past services. "let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall"[missing a "."?] "alas, my brother! round thy tomb, in sorrow kneeling, and in fear, we read the pastor's doom, who speaks and will not hear. "the gray-haired saint may fail at last, the surest guide a wanderer prove; death only binds us fast to the bright shore of love." chapter iv. and what say jovinian and his companions? . vincentius wrote in the early part of the fifth century, that is, three good centuries and more after the death of st. john; accordingly, we sometimes hear it said that, true though it be, that the catholic system, as we anglicans maintain it, existed at that time, nevertheless it was a system quite foreign to the pure gospel, though introduced at a very early age; a system of pagan or jewish origin, which crept in unawares, and was established on the ruins of the apostolic faith by the episcopal confederation, which mainly depended on it for its own maintenance. in other words, it is considered by some persons to be a system of priestcraft, destructive of christian liberty. now, it is no paradox to say that _this_ would be a sufficient answer to such a speculation, were there no other, viz., that no answer _can_ be made to it. i say, supposing it could not be answered at all, that fact would be a fair answer. all discussion must have data to go upon; without data, neither one party can dispute nor the other. if i maintained there were negroes in the moon, i should like to know how these same philosophers would answer me. of course they would not attempt it: they would confess they had no grounds for denying it, only they would add, that i had no grounds for asserting it. they would not prove that i was wrong, but call upon me to prove that i was right. they would consider such a mode of talking idle and childish, and unworthy the consideration of a serious man; else, there would be no end of speculation, no hope of certainty and unanimity in anything. is a man to be allowed to say what he will, and bring no reasons for it? even if his hypothesis fitted into the facts of the case, still it would be but an hypothesis, and might be met, perhaps, in the course of time, by another hypothesis, presenting as satisfactory a solution of them. but if it would not be necessarily true, though it were adequate, much less is it entitled to consideration before it is proved to be adequate--before it is actually reconciled with the facts of the case; and when another hypothesis has, from the beginning, been in the possession of the field. from the first it has been believed that the catholic system is apostolic; convincing reasons must be brought against this belief, and in favour of another, before that other is to be preferred to it. now the new and gratuitous hypothesis in question does not appear, when examined, even to harmonize with the facts of the case. one mode of dealing with it is this:--take a large view of the faith of christians during the centuries before constantine established their religion. is there any family likeness in it to protestantism? look at it, as existing during that period in different countries, and is it not one and the same, and a reiteration of itself, as well as singularly unlike reformed christianity? hermas with his visions, ignatius with his dogmatism, irenæus with his praise of tradition and of the roman see, clement with his allegory and mysticism, cyprian with his "out of the church is no salvation," and methodius with his praise of virginity, all of them writers between the first and fourth centuries, and witnesses of the faith of rome, africa, gaul, asia minor, syria, and egypt, certainly do not represent the opinions of luther and calvin. they stretch over the whole of christendom; they are consistent with each other; they coalesce into one religion; but it is not the religion of the reformation. when we ask, "where was your church before luther?" protestants answer, "where were you this morning before you washed your face?" but, if protestants can clean themselves into the likeness of cyprian or irenæus, they must scrub very hard, and have well-nigh learned the art of washing the blackamoor white. . if the church system be not apostolic, it must, some time or other, have been introduced, and then comes the question, when? we maintain that the known circumstances of the previous history are such as to preclude the possibility of any time being assigned, ever so close upon the apostles, at which the church system did not exist. not only cannot a time be shown when the free-and-easy system now in fashion did generally exist, but no time can be shown in which it can be colourably maintained that the church system was brought in. it will be said, of course, that the church system was gradually introduced. i do not say there have never been introductions of any kind; but let us see what they amount to here. select for yourself your doctrine, or your ordinance, which you say was introduced, and try to give the history of its introduction. hypothetical that history will be, of course; but we will not scruple at that;--we will only ask one thing, that it should cut clean between the real facts of the case, though it bring none in its favour; but it will not be able to do even this. the rise of the doctrine of the holy trinity, of the usage of baptizing infants, of the eucharistic offering, of the episcopal prerogatives, do what one will, can hardly be made short of apostolical times. this is not the place to prove all this; but so fully is it felt to be so, by those who are determined not to admit these portions of catholicism, that in their despair of drawing the line between the first and following centuries, they make up their minds to intrude into the first, and boldly pursue their supposed error into the very presence of some apostle or evangelist. thus st. john is sometimes made the voluntary or involuntary originator of some portions of our creed. dr. priestley, i believe, conjectures that his amanuensis played him false, as regards his teaching upon the sacred doctrine which that philosopher opposed. others take exceptions to st. luke, because he tells us of the "handkerchiefs, or aprons," which "were brought from st. paul's body" for the cure of diseases. others have gone a step further, and have said, "not paul, but jesus." infidel, socinian, and protestant, agree in assailing the apostles, rather than submitting to the church. . let our protestant friends go to what quarter of christendom they will, let them hunt among heretics or schismatics, into gnosticism outside the church, or arianism within it, still they will find no hint or vestige anywhere of that system which they are now pleased to call scriptural. granting that catholicism be a corruption, is it possible that it should be a corruption springing up everywhere at once? is it conceivable that at least no opponent should have retained any remnant of the system it supplanted?--that no tradition of primitive purity should remain in any part of christendom?--that no protest, or controversy, should have been raised, as a monument against the victorious error? this argument, conclusive against modern socinianism, is still more cogent and striking when directed against puritanism. at least, there _were_ divines in those early days who denied the sacred doctrine which socinianism also disowns, though commonly they did not profess to do so on authority of tradition; but who ever heard of erastians, supralapsarians, independents, sacramentarians, and the like, before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? it would be too bold to go to prove a negative: i can only say that i do not know in what quarter to search for the representatives, in the early church, of that "bible religion," as it is called, which is now so much in favour. at first sight, one is tempted to say that all errors come over and over again; that this and that notion now in vogue has been refuted in times past. this is indeed a general truth--nay, for what i know, these same bold speculatists will bring it even as an argument for their not being in error, that antiquity says nothing at all, good or bad, about their opinions. i cannot answer for the extent to which they will throw the _onus probandi_ on us; but i protest--be it for us, or be it against us--i cannot find this very religion of theirs in ancient times, whether in friend or foe, jew or pagan, montanist or novatian; though i find surely enough, and in plenty, the general characteristics, which are conspicuous in their philosophy, of self-will, eccentricity, and love of paradox. so far from it, that if we wish to find the rudiments of the catholic system clearly laid down in writing, those who are accounted least orthodox will prove as liberal in their information about it as the strictest churchman. we can endure even the heretics better than our opponents can endure the apostles. tertullian, though a montanist, gives no sort of encouragement to the so-called bible christians of this day; rather he would be the object of their decided abhorrence and disgust. origen is not a whit more of a protestant, though he, if any, ought, from the circumstances of his history, to be a witness against us. it is averred that the alleged revolution of doctrine and ritual was introduced by the influence of the episcopal system; well, here is a victim of episcopacy, brought forward by our opponents as such. here is a man who was persecuted by his bishop, and driven out of his country; and whose name after his death has been dishonourably mentioned, both by councils and fathers. he surely was not in the episcopal conspiracy, at least; and perchance may give the latitudinarian, the anabaptist, the erastian, and the utilitarian, some countenance. far from it; he is as high and as keen, as removed from softness and mawkishness, as ascetic and as reverential, as any bishop among them. he is as superstitious (as men now talk), as fanatical, as formal, as athanasius or augustine. certainly, there seems something providential in the place which origen holds in the early church, considering the direction which theories about it are now taking; and much might be said on that subject. take another instance:--there was, in the fourth century, a party of divines who were ecclesiastically opposed to the line of theologians, whose principles had been, and were afterwards, dominant in the church, such as athanasius, jerome, and epiphanius; i mean, for instance, eusebius, cyril of jerusalem, and others who were more or less connected with the semi-arians. if, then, we see that in all points, as regards the sacraments and sacramentals, the church and its ministers, the form of worship, and other religious duties of christians, eusebius and cyril agree entirely with the most orthodox of their contemporaries, with those by party and country most separated from them, we have a proof that that system, whatever it turns out to be, was received before their time--_i.e._ before the establishment of christianity under constantine; in other words, that we must look for the gradual corruption of the church, if it is to be found, not when wealth pampered it, and power and peace brought its distant portions together, but while it was yet poor, humble, and persecuted, in those times which are commonly considered pure and primitive. again, the genius of arianism, as a party and a doctrine, was to discard antiquity and mystery; that is, to resist and expose what is commonly called priestcraft. in proportion, then, as cyril and eusebius partook of that spirit, so far would they be in their own cast of mind indisposed to the catholic system, both considered in itself and as being imposed on them. now, have the writers in question any leaning or tenderness for the theology of luther and calvin? rather they are as unconscious of its existence as of modern chemistry or astronomy. that faith is a closing with divine mercy, not a submission to a divine announcement, that justification and sanctification are distinct, that good works do not benefit the christian, that the church is not christ's ordinance and instrument, and that heresy and dissent are not necessarily and intrinsically evil: notions such as these they do not oppose, simply because to all appearance they never heard of them. to take a single passage, which first occurs, in which eusebius, one of the theologians in question, gives us his notion of the catholic church:-- "these attempts," he says, speaking of the arts of the enemy, "did not long avail him, truth ever consolidating itself, and, as time went on, shining into broader day. for while the devices of adversaries were extinguished at once, confuted by their very activity,--one heresy after another presenting its own novelty, the former specimens ever dissolving and wasting variously in manifold and multiform shapes,--the brightness of the catholic and only true church went forward increasing and enlarging, yet ever in the same things and in the same way, beaming on the whole race of greeks and barbarians with the awfulness, and simplicity, and nobleness, and sobriety, and purity of its divine polity and philosophy. thus the calumny against our whole creed died with its day, and there continued alone our discipline, sovereign among all, and acknowledged to be pre-eminent in awfulness and sobriety, in its divine and philosophical doctrines; so that no one of this day dares to cast any base reproach upon our faith, nor any such calumny such as it was once customary for our enemies to use."--_hist._ iv. . or to take a passage on a different subject, which almost comes first to hand, from st. cyril, another of this school of divines:-- "only be of good cheer, only work, only strive cheerfully; for nothing is lost. every prayer of thine, every psalm thou singest is recorded; every alms-deed, every fast is recorded; every marriage duly observed is recorded; continence kept for god's sake is recorded; but the first crowns in record are those of virginity and purity; and thou shalt shine as an angel. but as thou hast gladly listened to the good things, listen without shrinking to the contrary. every covetous deed of thine is recorded; every fleshly deed, every perjury, every blasphemy, every sorcery, every theft, every murder. all these things are henceforth recorded, if thou do these after baptism; for thy former deeds are blotted out."--_cat._ xv. . cyril and eusebius, i conceive, do not serve at all better than origen to show that faith is a feeling, that it makes a man independent of the church, and is efficacious apart from baptism or works. i do not know any ancient divines of whom more can be made. . where, then, is primitive protestantism to be found? there is one chance for it, not in the second and third centuries, but in the fourth; i mean in the history of aerius, jovinian, and vigilantius,--men who may be called, by some sort of analogy, the luther, calvin, and zwingle, of the fourth century. and they have been so considered both by protestants and by their opponents, so covetous, after all, of precedent are innovators, so prepared are catholics to believe that there is nothing new under the sun. let me, then, briefly state the history and tenets of these three religionists. . aerius was an intimate friend of eustathius, bishop of sebaste, in armenia, whose name has already occurred above. both had embraced a monastic life; and both were arians in creed. eustathius, being raised to the episcopate, ordained his friend presbyter, and set him over the almshouse or hospital of the see. a quarrel followed, from whatever cause; aerius left his post, and accused eustathius of covetousness, as it would appear, unjustly. next he collected a large number of persons of both sexes in the open country, where they braved the severe weather of that climate. a congregation implies a creed, and aerius founded or formed his own on the following points: . that there was no difference between bishop and presbyter. . that it was judaical to observe easter, because christ is our passover. . that it was useless, or rather mischievous, to name the dead in prayer, or to give alms for them. . that fasting was judaical, and a yoke of bondage. if it be right to fast, he added, each should choose his own day; for instance, sunday rather than wednesday and friday: while passion week he spent in feasting and merriment. and this is pretty nearly all we know of aerius, who flourished between a.d. and . . jovinian was a roman monk, and was condemned, first by siricius at rome, then by st. ambrose and other bishops at milan, about a.d. . he taught, . that eating with thanksgiving was just as good as fasting. . that, _cæteris paribus_, celibacy, widowhood, and marriage, were on a level in the baptized. . that there was no difference of rewards hereafter for those who had preserved their baptism; and, . that those who had been baptized with full faith could not fall; if they did, they had been baptized, like simon magus, only with water. he persuaded persons of both sexes at rome, who had for years led a single life, to desert it. the emperor honorius had him transported to an island on the coast of dalmatia; he died in the beginning of the fifth century. . vigilantius was a priest of gaul or spain, and flourished just at the time jovinian died: he taught, . that those who reverenced relics were idolaters; . that continence and celibacy were wrong, as leading to the worst scandals; . that lighting candles in churches during the day, in honour of the martyrs, was wrong, as being a heathen rite; . that apostles and martyrs had no presence at their tombs; . that it was useless to pray for the dead; . that it was better to keep wealth and practice habitual charity, than to strip one's-self of one's property once for all; and . that it was wrong to retire into the desert. this is what we learn of these three (so-called) reformers, from the writings of epiphanius and jerome. now you may say, "what can we require more than this? here we have, at the time of a great catastrophe, scriptural truth come down to us in the burning matter which melted and preserved it, in the persecuting language of epiphanius and jerome. when corruptions began to press themselves on the notice of christians, here you find three witnesses raising their distinct and solemn protest in different parts of the church, independently of each other, in gaul, in italy, and in asia minor, against prayers for the dead, veneration of relics, candles in the day-time, the merit of celibacy, the need of fasting, the observance of days, difference in future rewards, the defectibility of the regenerate, and the divine origin of episcopacy. here is pure and scriptural protestantism." such is the phenomenon on which a few remarks are now to be offered. . . i observe then, first, that this case so presented to us, does not answer the purpose required. the doctrine of these three protestants, if i am to be forced into calling them so, is, after all, but negative. we know what they protested _against_, not what they protested _for_. we do not know what the system of doctrine and ritual was which they substituted for the catholic, or whether they had any such. though they differed from the ancients, there is no proof that they agreed with the moderns. parties which differ from a common third, do not necessarily agree with each other; from two negative propositions nothing is inferred. for instance, the moral temper and doctrinal character of the sixteenth century is best symbolized by its views about faith and justification, to which i have already referred, and upon the duty of each individual man drawing his own creed from the scriptures. this is its positive shape, as far as it may be considered positive at all. now does any one mean to maintain that aerius, jovinian, or vigilantius, held justification by faith only in the sense of john wesley, or of john newton? did they consider that baptism was a thing of nought; that faith did everything; that faith was trust, and the perfection of faith assurance; that it consisted in believing that "i am pardoned;" and that works might be left to themselves, to come as they might, as being _necessary_ fruits of faith, without our trouble? did they know anything of the "apprehensive" power of faith, or of man's proneness to consider his imperfect services, done in and by grace, as adequate to purchase eternal life? there is no proof they did. let then these three protesters be ever so cogent an argument against the catholic creed, this does not bring them a whit nearer to the protestant; though in fact there is nothing to show that their protest was founded on historical grounds, or on any argument deeper than such existing instances of superstition and scandal in detail as are sure to accumulate round revelation. further, even if a modern wished, he would not be able to put up with even the negative creed of these primitive protesters, whatever his particular persuasion might be. their protest suits no sect whatever of this day. it is either too narrow or too liberal. the episcopalian, as he is styled, will not go along with aerius's notions about bishops; nor will the lutheran subscribe to the final perseverance of the saints; nor will the strict calvinist allow that all fasting is judaical; nor will the baptist admit the efficacy of baptism: one man will wonder why none of the three protested against the existence of the church itself; another that none of them denied the received doctrine of penance; a third that all three let pass the received doctrine of the eucharist. their protestations are either too much or too little for any one of their present admirers. there is no one of any of the denominations of this day but will think them wrong in some points or other; that is all we know about them; but if we all think them wrong on some points, is that a good reason why we should take them as an authority on others? or, again, do we wish to fix upon what _can_ be detected in their creed of a positive character, and distinct from their protests? we happen to be told what it was in the case of one of them. aerius was an arian; does this mend matters? is there any agreement at all between him and luther here? if aerius is an authority against bishops, or against set fasts, why is he not an authority against the creed of st. athanasius? . what has been last said leads to a further remark. i observe, then, that if two or three men in the fourth century are sufficient, against the general voice of the church, to disprove one doctrine, then still more are two or three of an earlier century able to disprove another. why should protesters in century four be more entitled to a hearing than protesters in century three? now it so happens, that as aerius, jovinian, and vigilantius in the fourth protested against austerities, so did praxeas, noetus, and sabellius in the third protest against the catholic or athanasian doctrine of the holy trinity. a much stronger case surely could be made out in favour of the latter protest than of the former. noetus was of asia minor, praxeas taught in rome, sabellius in africa. nay, we read that in the latter country their doctrine prevailed among the common people, then and at an earlier date, to a very great extent, and that the true faith was hardly preached in the churches. . again, the only value of the protest of these three men would be, of course, that they _represented_ others; that they were exponents of a state of opinion which prevailed either in their day or before them, and which was in the way to be overpowered by the popular corruptions. what are aerius and jovinian to me as individuals? they are worth nothing, unless they can be considered as organs and witnesses of an expiring cause. now, it does not appear that they themselves had any notion that they were speaking in behalf of any one, living or dead, besides themselves. they argued against prayers for the departed from reason, and against celibacy, hopeless as the case might seem, from scripture. they ridiculed one usage, and showed the ill consequence of another. all this might be very cogent in itself, but it was the conduct of men who stood by themselves and were conscious of it. if jovinian had known of writers of the second and third centuries holding the same views, jovinian would have been as prompt to quote them as lutherans are to quote jovinian. the protest of these men shows that certain usages undeniably existed in the fourth century; it does not prove that they did not exist also in the first, second, and third. and how does the fact of their living in the fourth century prove there were protestants in the first? what we are looking for is a church of primitive heretics, of baptists and independents of the apostolic age, and we must not be put off with the dark and fallible protests of the nicene era. far different is the tone of epiphanius in his answer to aerius:-- "if one need refer," he says, speaking of fasting, "to the constitution of the apostles, why did they there determine the fourth and sixth day to be ever a fast, except pentecost? and concerning the six days of the pascha, why do they order us to take nothing at all but bread, salt, and water?... which of these parties is the rather correct? this deceived man, who is now among us, and is still alive, or they who were witnesses before us, possessing before our time the tradition in the church, and they having received it from their fathers, and those very fathers again having learned it from those who lived before them?... the church has received it, and it is unanimously confessed in the whole world, before aerius and aerians were born."--_hær._ , § . . once more, there is this very observable fact in the case of each of the three, that their respective protests seem to have arisen from some personal motive. certainly what happens to a man's self often brings a thing home to his mind more forcibly, makes him contemplate it steadily, and leads to a successful investigation into its merits. yet still, where we know personal feelings to exist in the maintenance of any doctrine, we look more narrowly at the proof for ourselves; thinking it not impossible that the parties may have made up their minds on grounds short of reason. it is natural to feel distrust of controversialists, who, to all appearance, would not have been earnest against a doctrine or practice, except that it galled themselves. now it so happens that each of these three reformers lies open to this imputation. aerius is expressly declared by epiphanius to have been eustathius's competitor for the see of sebaste, and to have been disgusted at failing. _he_ is the preacher against bishops. jovinian was bound by a monastic vow, and _he_ protests against fasting and coarse raiment. vigilantius was a priest; and, therefore, _he_ disapproves the celibacy of the clergy. no opinion at all is here ventured in favour of clerical celibacy; still it is remarkable that in the latter, as in the two former cases, private feeling and public protest should have gone together. . these distinct considerations are surely quite sufficient to take away our interest in these three reformers. these men are not an historical clue to a lost primitive creed, more than origen or tertullian; and much less do they afford any support to the creed of those moderns who would fain shelter themselves behind them. that there were abuses in the church then, as at all times, no one, i suppose, will deny. there may have been extreme opinions and extreme acts, pride and pomp in certain bishops, over-honour paid to saints, fraud in the production of relics, extravagance in praising celibacy, formality in fasting; and such errors would justify a protest, which the catholic fathers themselves are not slow to make; but they would not justify that utter reprobation of relics, of celibacy, and of fasting, of episcopacy, of prayers for the dead, and of the doctrine of defectibility, which these men avowed--avowed without the warrant of the first ages--on grounds of private reason, under the influence of personal feeling, and with the accompaniment of but a suspicious orthodoxy. it does certainly look as if our search after protestantism in antiquity would turn out a simple failure;--whatever primitive christianity was or was not, it was not the religion of luther. i shall think so, until i find ignatius and aerius, in spite of their differences about bishops, agreeing in his doctrine of justification; until irenæus and jovinian, though at daggers drawn about baptism, shall yet declare scripture to be the sole rule of faith; until cyprian and vigilantius, however at variance about the merit of virginity, uphold in common the sacred right and duty of private judgment. chapter v. and what do the apostolical canons say? . such, then, is the testimony borne in various ways by origen, eusebius, and cyril, by aerius, jovinian, and vigilantius, to the immemorial reception among christians of those doctrines and practices which the private judgment of this age considers to be unscriptural. i have been going about from one page to another of the records of those early times, prying and extravagating beyond the beaten paths of orthodoxy, for the chance of detecting some sort of testimony in favour of our opponents. with this object i have fallen upon the writers aforesaid; and, since they have been more or less accused of heterodoxy, i thought there was at least a chance of their subserving the cause of protestantism, which the catholic fathers certainly do not subserve; but they, though differing from each other most materially, and some of them differing from the church, do not any one of them approximate to the tone or language of the movement of . every additional instance of this kind does but go indirectly to corroborate the testimony of the catholic church. it is natural and becoming in all of us to make a brave struggle for life; but i do not think it will avail the protestant who attempts it in the medium of ecclesiastical history. he will find himself in an element in which he cannot breathe. the problem before him is to draw a line between the periods of purity and alleged corruption, such, as to have all the apostles on one side, and all the fathers on the other; which may insinuate and meander through the dove-tailings and inosculations of historical facts, and cut clean between st. john and st ignatius, st. paul and st. clement; to take up a position within the shelter of the book of acts, yet safe from the range of all other extant documents besides, and at any rate, whether he succeeds or not, so much he must grant, that if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what it found in the church, before cock-crowing; so that "when they rose in the morning" her true seed "were all dead corpses"--nay, dead and buried--and without grave-stone. "the waters went over them; there was not one of them left; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters." strange antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of israel!--then the enemy was drowned, and "israel saw them dead upon the sea-shore." but now, it would seem, water proceeded as a flood "out of the serpent's mouth," and covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead bodies "lay in the streets of the great city." let him take which of his doctrines he will,--his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition; his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or of the visible church; or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider how far antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it. no; he must allow that the alleged deluge has done its work; yes, and has in turn disappeared itself; it has been swallowed up in the earth, mercilessly as itself was merciless. . representations such as these have been met by saying that the extant records of primitive christianity are scanty, and that, _for what we know_, what is not extant, had it survived, would have told a different tale. but the hypothesis that history _might_ contain facts which it does _not_ contain, is no positive evidence for the truth of those facts; and this is the present question; what is the _positive_ evidence that the church ever believed or taught a gospel substantially different from that which her extant documents contain? all the evidence that is extant, be it much or be it little, is on our side: protestants have none. is none better than some? scarcity of records--granting for argument's sake there is scarcity--may be taken to account for protestants having no evidence; it will not account for our having some, for our having all that is to be had; it cannot become a positive evidence in their behalf. that records are few, does not show that they are of none account. accordingly, protestants had better let alone facts; they are wisest when they maintain that the apostolic system of the church was certainly lost;--lost, when they know not, how they know not, without assignable instruments, but by a great revolution lost--of _that_ there can be no doubt; and then challenge us to prove it was not so. "prove," they seem to say, "if you can, that the real and very truth is not so entirely hid in primitive history as to leave not a particle of evidence betraying it. this is the very thing which misleads you, that all the arguments are in your favour. is it not possible that an error has got the place of the truth, and has destroyed all the evidence but what witnesses on its side? is it not possible that all the churches should everywhere have given up and stifled the scheme of doctrine they received from the apostles, and have substituted another for it? of course it is; it is plain to common sense it may be so. well, we say, what _may be_, _is_; this is our great principle: we say that the apostles considered episcopacy an indifferent matter, though ignatius says it is essential. we say that the table is not an altar, though ignatius says it is. we say there is no priest's office under the gospel, though clement affirms it. we say that baptism is not an enlightening, though justin takes it for granted. we say that heresy is scarcely a misfortune, though ignatius accounts it a deadly sin; and all this, because it is our right, and our duty, to interpret scripture in our own way. we uphold the pure unmutilated scripture; the bible, and the bible only, is the religion of protestants; the bible and our own sense of the bible. we claim a sort of parliamentary privilege to interpret laws in our own way, and not to suffer an appeal to any court beyond ourselves. we know, and we view it with consternation, that all antiquity runs counter to our interpretation; and therefore, alas, the church was corrupt from _very_ early times indeed. but mind, we hold all this in a truly catholic spirit, not in bigotry. we allow in others the right of private judgment, and confess that we, as others, are fallible men. we confess facts are against us; we do but claim the liberty of theorizing in spite of them. far be it from us to say that we are certainly right; we only say that the whole early church was certainly wrong. we do not impose our belief on any one; we only say that those who take the contrary side are papists, firebrands, persecutors, madmen, zealots, bigots, and an insult to the nineteenth century." to such an argument, i am aware, it avails little to oppose historical evidence, of whatever kind. it sets out by protesting against all evidence, however early and consistent, as the testimony of fallible men; yet at least, the imagination is affected by an array of facts; and i am not unwilling to appeal to the imagination of those who refuse to let me address their reason. with this view i have been inquiring into certain early works, which, or the authors of which, were held in suspicion, or even condemned by the ruling authorities of the day, to see if any vestige of an hypothetical protestantism could be discovered in them; and, since they make no sign, i will now interrogate a very different class of witnesses. the consent of fathers is one kind of testimony to apostolical truth; the protest of heretics is another; now i will come, thirdly, to received usage. to give an instance of the last mentioned argument, i shall appeal to the apostolical canons, though a reference to them will involve me in an inquiry, interesting indeed to the student, but somewhat dry to the general reader. . these canons, well known to antiquity, were at one time supposed to be, strictly speaking, apostolical, and published before a.d. . on the other hand, it has been contended that they are later than a.d. , and the work of some heretics. our own divines take a middle course, considering them as published before a.d. , having been digested by catholic authorities in the course of the two preceding centuries, or at the end of the second, and received and used in most parts of christendom. this judgment has since been acquiesced in by the theological world, so far as this--to suppose the matter and the enactments of the canons to be of the highest antiquity, even though the edition which we possess was not published so early as bishop beveridge, for instance, supposes. at the same time it is acknowledged by all parties, that they, as well as some other early documents, have suffered from interpolation, and perhaps by an heretical hand. they are in number eighty-five,[ ] of which the first fifty are considered of superior authority to the remaining thirty-five. what has been conjectured to be their origin will explain the distinction. it was the custom of the early church, as is well known, to settle in council such points in her discipline, ordinances, and worship, as the apostles had not prescribed in scripture, as the occasion arose, after the pattern of their own proceedings in the fifteenth chapter of the acts; and this, as far as might be, after their unwritten directions, or after their practice, or at least, after their mind, or as it is called in scripture, their "minding" or "spirit." thus she decided upon the question of easter, upon that of heretical baptism, and the like. and, after that same precedent in the acts, she recorded her decisions in formal decrees, and "delivered them for to keep" through the cities in which her members were found. the canons in question are supposed to be some of these decrees, of which, first and nearest to the apostles' times, or in the time of their immediate successors, were published fifty; and in the following age, thirty-five more, which had been enacted in the interval. they claim, then, to be, first, the recorded judgment of great portions of the ante-nicene church, chiefly in the eastern provinces, upon certain matters in dispute, and to be of authority so far as that church may be considered a representative of the mind of the apostles; next, they profess to embody in themselves positive decisions and injunctions of the apostles, though without clearly discriminating how much is thus directly apostolical, and how much not. i will here attempt to state some of the considerations which show both their antiquity and their authority, and will afterwards use them for the purpose which has led me to mention them. . . in the first place, it would seem quite certain that, as, on the one hand, councils were held in the primitive church, so, on the other, those councils enacted certain canons. when, then, a collection presents itself professing to consist of the ante-nicene canons, there is nothing at all to startle us; it only professes to set before us that which we know anyhow must have existed. we may conjecture, if we please, that the fact that there were canons may have suggested and encouraged a counterfeit. certainly; but though the fact that there were canons will account for a counterfeit, it will not account for those original canons being lost; on the contrary, what is known to have once existed as a rule of conduct, is likely to continue in existence, except under particular circumstances. which of the two this existing collection is, the genuine or the counterfeit, must depend on other considerations; but if these considerations be in favour of its genuineness, then this antecedent probability will be an important confirmation. canons, i say, must have existed, whether these be the real ones or no; and the circumstance that there were real ones existing must have tended to make it difficult to substitute others. it would be no easy thing in our own church to pass off another set of articles for the thirty-nine, and to obliterate the genuine. canons are public property, and have to be acted upon by large bodies. accordingly, as might be expected, the nicene council, when enacting canons of its own, refers to certain canons as already existing, and speaks of them in that familiar and indirect way which would be natural under the circumstances, just as we speak of our rubrics or articles. the fathers of that council mention certain descriptions of persons whom "_the canon_ admits into holy orders;" they determine that a certain rule shall be in force, "according to the canon which says so and so;" they speak of a transgression of the canon, and proceed to explain and enforce it. nor is the nicene the only council which recognizes the existence of certain canons, or rules, by which the church was at that time bound. the councils of antioch, gangra, constantinople, and carthage, in the same century, do so likewise; so do individual fathers, alexander, athanasius, basil, julius, and others. now here we have lighted upon an important circumstance, whatever becomes of the particular collection of canons before us. it seems that at the nicene council, only two centuries and a quarter after st. john's death, about the distance of time at which we live from the hampton court conference, all christendom confessed that from time immemorial it had been guided by certain ecclesiastical rules, which it considered of authority, which it did not ascribe to any particular persons or synods (a sign of great antiquity), and which writers of the day assigned to the apostles. i suppose we know pretty well, at this day, what the customs of our church have been since james the first's time, or since the reformation; and if respectable writers at present were to state some of them,--for instance, that it is and has been the rule of our church that the king should name the bishops, that convocation should not sit without his leave, or that easter should be kept according to the roman rule,--we should think foreigners very unreasonable who doubted their word. now, in the case before us, we find the church catholic, the first time it had ever met together since the apostles' days, speaking as a matter of course of the rules to which it had ever been accustomed to defer. if we knew no more than this, and did not know what the rules were; or if, knowing what they were, we yet decided, as we well might, that the particular rules are not of continual obligation; still, the very circumstance that there _were_ rules from time immemorial would be a great fact in the history of christianity. but we do know, from the works of the fathers, the _subjects_ of these canons, and that to the number of thirty or forty of them; so that we might form a code, as far as it goes, of primitive discipline, quite independent of the particular collection which is under discussion. however, it is remarkable that all of these thirty or forty are found in this collection, being altogether nearly half the whole number, so that the only question is, whether the rest are of that value which we know belongs to a great proportion of them. it is worth noticing, that _no_ ecclesiastical canon is mentioned in the historical documents of the primitive era which is not found in this collection, for it shows that, whoever compiled it, the work was done with considerable care. the opponents to its genuineness bring, indeed, several exceptions, as they wish to consider them; but these admit of so satisfactory an explanation as to illustrate the proverb, that _exceptio probat regulam_. before going on to consider the whole collection, let us see in what terms the ancient writers speak of those particular canons to which they actually refer. ( .) athanasius speaks as follows:--"canons and forms," he says, when describing the extraordinary violences of the arians, "were not given to the churches in this day, but were _handed down_ from our fathers well and securely. nor, again, has the faith had its beginning in this day, but has passed on even to us from the lord through his disciples. rouse yourselves, then, my brethren, to prevent that from perishing unawares in the present day _which has been observed in the churches from ancient times down to us_, and ourselves from incurring a responsibility in what has been intrusted to us."--_ep. encycl._ . it is remarkable, in this extract, that st. athanasius accurately distinguishes between the faith which came from christ, and the canons received from the fathers of old time: which is just the distinction which our divines are accustomed to make. ( ) again: the arians, by simoniacal dealings with the civil power, had placed gregory in the see of alexandria. athanasius observes upon this:--"such conduct is both _a violation of the ecclesiastical canons_, and forces the heathen to blaspheme, as if appointments were made, not by divine ordinance, but by merchandise and secular influence."--_ibid._ . ( ) arsenius, bishop of hypsela, who had been involved in the meletian[ ] schism, and had acted in a hostile way towards athanasius, at length reconciled himself to the church. in his letter to athanasius he promises "to be obedient to _the ecclesiastical canon_, according to ancient usage, and never to put forth any regulation, whether about bishops or any other public ecclesiastical matter, without the sanction of his metropolitan, but to _submit to all the established canons_."--_apol. contr. arian._ . ( ) in like manner, st. basil, after speaking of certain crimes for which a deacon should be reduced to lay communion, proceeds, "_for it is an ancient canon_, that they who lose their degree should be subjected to this kind of punishment only."--_ep._ . again: "_the canon_ altogether excludes from the ministry those who have been twice married." ( ) when arius and his abettors were excommunicated by alexander of alexandria, they betook themselves to palestine, and were re-admitted into the church by the bishops of that country. on this, alexander observes as follows:--"a very heavy imputation, doubtless, lies upon such of my brethren as have ventured on this act, in that it is _a violation of the apostolical canon_."--_theod. hist._ i. . ( ) when eusebius declined being translated from the see of cæsarea to antioch, constantine complimented him on his "observance of the commandments of god, _the apostolical canon_, and the rule of the church,"--_vit. constant._ iii. ,--which last seems to mean the regulation passed at nicæa. ( ) in like manner, julius, bishop of rome, speaks of a violation of "_the apostles' canons_;" and a council held at constantinople, a.d. , which was attended by gregory nyssen, amphilochius, and flavian, of a determination of "_the apostolical canons_." it will be observed that in some of these instances the canons are spoken of in the plural, when the particular infraction which occasions their mention relates only to one of them. this shows they were collected into a code, if, indeed, that need be proved; for, in truth, that various canons should exist, and be in force, and yet not be put together, is just as unlikely as that no collection should be made of the statutes passed in a session of parliament. with this historical information about the existence, authority, and subject-matter of certain canons in the church from time immemorial, we should come to many anti-protestant conclusions, even if the particular code we possess turned out to have no intrinsic authority. and now let us see how the matter stands on this point as regards this code of eighty-five canons. . . if this collection existed _as_ a collection in the time of the above writers and councils, then, considering they allude to nearly half its canons, and that no canons are anywhere producible which are not in it, and that they do seem to allude to a collection, and that no other collection is producible, we certainly could not avoid the conclusion that they referred to _it_, and that, therefore, in quoting parts of it they sanction the whole. if no book is to be accounted genuine except such parts of it as happen to be expressly cited by other writers,--if it may not be regarded as a whole, and what is actually cited made to bear up and carry with it what is not cited,--no ancient book extant can be proved to be genuine. we believe virgil's Ã�neid to be virgil's, because we know he wrote an Ã�neid, and because particular passages which we find in it, and in no other book, are contained, under the name of virgil, in subsequent writers or in criticisms, or in accounts of it. we do not divide it into rhapsodies, _because_ it only exists in fragments in the testimony of later literature. for the same reason, if the canons before us can be shown to have existed as one book in athanasius's time, it is natural to conceive that they are the very book to which he and others refer. all depends on this. if the collection was made after his time, of course he referred to some other; but if it existed in his time, it is more natural to suppose that there was one collection than two distinct ones, so similar, especially since history is silent about there being two. however, i conceive it is not worth while to insist upon so early a formation of the existing collection. whether it existed in athanasius's time, or was formed afterwards, and formed by friend or foe, heretic or catholic, seems to me immaterial, as i shall by-and-by show. first, however, i will state, as candidly as i can, the arguments for and against its antiquity _as_ a collection. now there can be no doubt that the early canons were formed into one body; moreover, certain early writers speak of them under the name of "the apostles' canons," and "apostolical canons." so far i have already said. now, certain collectors of canons, of a.d. (more or less) , and they no common authorities, also speak of "the apostolical canons," and incorporate them into their own larger collections; and these which they speak of are the very body of canons which we now possess under the name. we know it, for the digest of these collectors is preserved. no reason can be assigned why they should not be speaking of the _same_ collection which gregory nyssen and amphilochius speak of, who lived a century and a half before them; no reason, again, why nyssen and amphilochius should not mean the same as athanasius and julius, who lived fifty to seventy years earlier than themselves. the writers of a.d. might be just as certain that they and st. athanasius quoted the same work, as we, at this day, that our copy of it is the same as beveridge's, pearson's, or ussher's. the authorities at the specified date (a.d. ) are three--dionysius exiguus, john of antioch, patriarch of constantinople, and the emperor justinian. the learning of justinian is well known, not to mention that he speaks the opinion of the ecclesiastical lawyers of his age. as to john of antioch and dionysius, since their names are not so familiar to most of us, it may be advisable to say thus much--that john had been a lawyer, and was well versed both in civil and ecclesiastical matters,--hence he has the title of scholasticus; while dionysius is the framer of the christian era, as we still reckon it. they both made collections of the canons of the church, the latter in latin, and they both include the apostolical canons, as we have them, in their editions; with this difference, however (which does not at present concern us), that dionysius published but the first fifty, while john of antioch enumerates the whole eighty-five. such is the main argument for the existence of our collection at the end of the third century; viz., that, whereas _a_ collection of apostolic canons is acknowledged at that date, _this_ collection is acknowledged by competent authorities to be that apostolic record at the end of the fifth. however, when we inspect the language which dionysius uses concerning them, in his prefatory epistle, we shall find something which requires explanation. his words are these, addressed to stephen, bishop of salona:--"we have, in the first place, translated from the greek what are called the canons of the apostles; _which, as we wish to apprise your holiness, have not gained an easy credit from very many persons_. at the same time, some of the decrees of the [roman] pontiffs, at a later date, seem to be taken from these very canons." here dionysius must only mean, that they were not received as apostolic; for that they were received, or at least nearly half of them, is, as i have said, an historical fact, whatever becomes of the collection as a collection. he must mean that a claim had been advanced that they were to be received as part of the apostolic _depositum_; and he must be denying that they had more than _ecclesiastical_ authority. the distinction between divine and ecclesiastical injunctions requires little explanation: the latter are imposed by the church for the sake of decency and order, as a matter of expedience, safety, propriety, or piety. such is the rule among ourselves, that dissenting teachers conforming must remain silent three years before they can be ordained; or that a certain form of prayer should be prescribed for universal use in public service. on the other hand, the appointment of the sacraments is apostolic and divine. so, again, that no one can be a bishop unless consecrated by a bishop, is apostolic; that three bishops are necessary in consecration, is ecclesiastical; and, though ordinarily an imperative rule, yet, under circumstances, admits of dispensation. or again, it has, for instance, in this day been debated whether the sanctification of the lord's-day is a divine or an ecclesiastical appointment. dionysius, then, in the above extract, means nothing more than to deny that the apostles enacted these canons; or, again, that they enacted them _as_ apostles; and he goes on to say that the popes had acknowledged the _ecclesiastical_ authority of some of them by embodying them in their decrees. at the same time, his language certainly seems to show as much as this, and it is confirmed by that of other writers, that the latin church, though using them separately as authority, did not receive them as a collection with the implicit deference which they met with in the east; indeed, the last thirty-five, though two of them were cited at nicæa, and one at constantinople, a.d. , seem to have been in inferior account. the canons of the general councils took their place, and the decrees of the popes. . this, then, seems to be the state of the case as regards the collection or edition of canons, whether fifty or eighty-five, which is under consideration. speaking, not of the canons themselves, but of this particular edition of them, i thus conclude about it--that, whether it was made at the end of the third century, or later, there is no sufficient proof that it was strictly of authority; but that it is not very material that it should be proved to be of authority, nay, or even to have been made in early times. give us the canons themselves, and we shall be able to prove the point for which i am adducing them, even though they were not at first formed into a collection. they are, one by one, witnesses to us of a state of things. indeed, it must be confessed, that probability is against this collection having ever been regarded as an authority by the ancient church. it was an _anonymous_ collection; and, as being anonymous, seemed to have no claim upon christians. they would consider that a collection or body of canons could only be imposed by a _council_; and since the council could not be produced which imposed this in particular, they had no reason to admit it. they might have been in the practice of acting upon this canon, and that, and the third, and so on to the eighty-fifth, from time immemorial, and that as canons, not as mere customs, and might confess the obligation of each: and yet might say, "we never looked upon them as a _code_," which should be something complete and limited to itself. the true sanction of each was the immemorial observance of each, not its place in the collection, which implied a competent framer. moreover, in proportion as general councils were held, and enacted canons, so did the vague title of mere usage, without definite sanction, become less influential, and the ancient canons fell into disregard. and what made this still more natural was the circumstance that the nicene council did re-enact a considerable number of those which it found existing. it substituted then a definite authority, which, in after ages, would be much more intelligible than what would have by that time become a mere matter of obscure antiquity. nor did it tend to restore their authority, when their advocates, feeling the difficulty of their case, referred the collection to the apostles themselves: first, because this assertion could not be maintained; next, because, if it could, it would have seemingly deprived the church of the privilege of making canons. it would have made those usages divine which had ever been accounted only ecclesiastical. it would have raised the question whether, under such circumstances, the church had more right to add to the code of really apostolic canons than to scripture; discipline, as well as doctrine, would have been given by direct revelation, and have been included in the fundamentals of religion. if, however, all this be so, it follows that we are not at liberty to argue, from one part of this collection having been received, that therefore every other was also; as if it were one authoritative work. no number of individual canons being proved to be of the first age will tend to prove that the remainder are of the same. it is true; and i do not think it worth while to contest the point. for argument-sake i will grant that the bond, which ties them into one, is not of the most trustworthy and authoritative description, and will proceed to show that even those canons which are not formally quoted by early writers ought to be received as the rules of the ante-nicene church, independently of their being found in one compilation. . . i have already said that nearly half of the canons, as they stand in the collection, are quoted as canons by early writers, and thus placed beyond all question, as remains of the ante-nicene period: the following arguments may be offered in behalf of the rest:-- ( ) they are otherwise known to express _usages_ or _opinions_ of the ante-nicene centuries. the simple question is, whether they had been reflected on, recognized, converted into principles, enacted, obeyed; whether they were the unconscious and unanimous result of the one christian spirit[ ] in every place, or were formal determinations from authority claiming obedience. this being the case, there is very little worth disputing about; for (whether we regard them as being religious practices or as religious antiquities) if uniform custom was in favour of them, it does not matter whether they were enacted or not. if they were not, their universal observance is a still greater evidence of their extreme antiquity, which, in that case, can be hardly short of the apostolic age; and we shall refer to them in the existing collection, merely for the sake of convenience, as being brought together in a short compass. nay, a still more serious conclusion will follow, from supposing them not to be enactments--much more serious than any i am disposed to draw. if it be maintained that these observances, though such, did not arise from injunctions on the part of the church, then, it might be argued, the church has no power over them. as not having imposed, she cannot abrogate, suspend, or modify them. they must be referred to a higher source, even to the inspired apostles; and their authority is not ecclesiastical, but divine. we are almost forced, then, to consider them as enactments, even when they are not recognized by ancient writers as such, lest we should increase the authority of some of them more than seems consistent with their subject-matter. again, if such canons as are not appealed to by ancient writers are nevertheless allowed to have been really enacted, on the ground of our finding historically that usage corresponds to them; it may so be that others, about which the usage is not so clearly known, are real canons also. there is a _chance_ of their being genuine; for why, in drawing the line, should we decide by the mere accident of the usage admitting or not admitting of clear historical proof? ( ) again, all these canons, or at least the first fifty, are composed in uniform style; there is no reason, as far as the internal evidence goes, why one should be more primitive than another, and many, we know, were certainly in force as canons from the earliest times. ( ) this argument becomes much more cogent when we consider _what_ that style is. it carries with it evident marks of primitive simplicity, some of which i shall instance. the first remark which would be made on reading them relates to their brevity, the breadth of the rules which they lay down, and their plain and unartificial mode of stating them. an instance of this, among others which might be taken, is supplied by a comparison of the th of them with one of a number of canons passed at antioch by a council held a. d. , and apparently using the apostolical canons as a basis for its own. the following, read with the words in brackets, agrees, with but slight exceptions, with the antiochene canon, and, without them, with the apostolical:-- "all who come [to church] and hear the [holy] scriptures read, but do not remain to prayer [with the people,] and [refuse] the holy communion [of the eucharist, these] must be put out of the church, as disorderly, [until, by confession, and by showing fruits of penitence, and by entreaty, they are able to gain forgiveness."] ( ) now this contrast, if pursued, will serve to illustrate the antiquity of the apostolical canons in several ways, besides the evidence deducible from the simplicity of their structure. thus the word "metropolitan" is introduced into the thirty-fifth canon of antioch; no such word occurs in the apostolical canon from which it is apparently formed. there it is simply said, "the principal bishop;" or, literally, the primus. this accords with the historical fact, that the word metropolitan was not introduced till the fourth century. the same remark might be made on the word "province," which occurs in the canon of antioch, not in the other. this contrast is strikingly brought out in two other canons, which correspond in the two collections. both treat of the possessions of the church; but the apostolical canon says simply, "the interests of the church," "the goods of the church;" but the antiochene, composed after christianity had been acknowledged by the civil power, speaks of "the revenue of the church," and "the produce of the land." again, when attempts have been made to show that certain words are contained in the canons before us which were not in use in the ante-nicene times, they have in every case failed in the result, which surely may be considered as a positive evidence in favour of their genuineness. for instance, the word "clergy," for the ministerial body, which is found in the apostolical canons, is also used by origen, tertullian, and cyprian. the word "reader," for an inferior order in the clergy, is used by cornelius, bishop of rome; nay, by justin martyr. "altar," which is used in the canons, is the only word used for the lord's table by st. cyprian, and, before him, by tertullian and ignatius. "sacrifice" and "oblation," for the consecrated elements, found in the canons, are also found in clement of rome, justin irenæus, and tertullian. this negative evidence of genuineness extends to other points, and surely is of no inconsiderable weight. we know how difficult it is so to word a forgery as to avoid all detection from incongruities of time, place, and the like. a forgery, indeed, it is hardly possible to suppose this collection to be, both because great part of it is known to be genuine, and because no assignable object would be answered by it; but let us imagine the compiler hastily took up with erroneous traditions, or recent enactments, and joined them to the rest. is it possible to conceive, under such circumstances, that there would be no anachronisms or other means of detection? and if there are none such, and much more if the compiler, who lived perhaps as early as the fourth century, found none such (supposing we may assume him willing and qualified to judge of them), nay, if dionysius exiguus found none such, what reasons have we for denying that they are the produce of those early times to which they claim to belong? yet so it is; neither rite, nor heresy, nor observance, nor phrase, is found in them which is foreign to the ante-nicene period. indeed, the only reason one or two persons have thrown suspicion on them has been an unwillingness on their part to admit episcopacy, which the canons assert; a necessity which led the same parties to deny the genuineness of st. ignatius' epistles.[ ] ( ) i will make one more remark:--first, these canons come to us, not from rome, but from the east, and were in a great measure neglected, or at least superseded in the church, after constantine's day, especially in the west, where rome had sway; these do not embody what are called "romish corruptions." next, there is ground for suspecting that the collection or edition which we have was made by heretics, probably arians, though they have not meddled with the main contents of them. thus, while the neglect of them in later times separates them from romanism, the assent of the arians is a second witness, in addition to their recognition by the first centuries, in evidence of their apostolical origin. those first centuries observe them; contemporary heretics respect them; only later and corrupt times pass them by. may they not be taken as a fair portrait, as far as they go, of the doctrines and customs of primitive christianity? . i do wish out-and-out protestants would seriously lay to heart where they stand when they would write a history of christianity. are there any traces of luther before luther? is there anything to show that what they call the religion of the bible was ever professed by any persons, christians, jews, or heathen? again, are there any traces in history of a process of change in christian belief and practice, so serious, or so violent, as to answer to the notion of a great corruption or perversion of the primitive religion? was there ever a time, what was the time, when christianity was not that which protestants protest against, as if formal, unspiritual, self-righteous, superstitious, and unevangelic? if that time cannot be pointed out, is not "the religion of protestants" a matter, not of past historical fact, but of modern private judgment? have they anything to say in defence of their idea of the christianity of the first centuries, except that that view of it is necessary to their being protestants. "christians," they seem to say, "_must_ have been in those early times different from what the record of those times shows them to have been, and they must, as time went on, have fallen from that faith and that worship which they had at first, though history is quite silent on the subject, _or else_ protestantism, which is the apple of our eye, is not true. we are driven to hypothetical facts, or else we cannot reconcile with each other phenomena so discordant as those which are presented by ancient times and our own. we claim to substitute _à priori_ reasoning for historical investigation, by the right of self-defence and the duty of self-preservation." i have urged this point in various ways, and now i am showing the light which the canons of the apostles throw upon it. there is no reasonable doubt that they represent to us, on the whole, and as far as they go, the outward face of christianity in the first centuries;--now will the protestant venture to say that he recognizes in it any likeness of his own religion? first, let him consider what is conveyed in the very idea of ecclesiastical canons? this: that christians could not worship according to their fancy, but must think and pray by rule, by a set of rules issuing from a body of men, the bishops, over whom the laity had no power whatever. if any men at any time have been priest-ridden, such was the condition of those early christians. and then again, what becomes of the protestant's watchword, "the bible, the whole bible, and nothing but the bible," if a set of canons might lawfully be placed upon their shoulders, as if a second rule of faith, to the utter exclusion of all free-and-easy religion? and what room was there for private judgment, if they had to obey the bidding of certain fallible men? and what is to be done with the great principle, "unity, not uniformity," if canons are to be recognized, which command uniformity as well as unity? so much at first sight; but when we go on to examine what these canons actually contain, their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of protestantism becomes still more patent. i will set down some instances in proof of this. thus, we gather from the canons the following facts about primitive christianity:--viz., that, . there was a hierarchy of ordained ministers, consisting of the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons. . their names were entered on a formal roll or catalogue. . there were inferior orders, such as readers and chanters. . those who had entered into the sacred orders might not afterwards marry. . there were local dioceses, each ruled by a bishop. . to him and him only was committed the care of souls in his diocese. . each bishop confined himself to his own diocese. . no secular influence was allowed to interfere with the appointment of bishops. . the bishops formed one legislative body, and met in council twice a year, for the consideration of dogmatic questions and points in controversy. . one of them had the precedence over the rest, and took the lead; and, as the priests and people in each diocese obeyed their bishop, so in more general matters the bishops deferred to their primus. . easter and pentecost were great feasts, and certain other days feasts also. there was a lent fast; also a fast on easter eve; and on wednesdays and fridays. . the state of celibacy was recognized. . places of worship were holy. . there was in their churches an altar, and an altar service. . there was a sacrifice in their worship, of which the materials were bread and wine. . there were oblations also of fruits of the earth, in connection with the sacrifice. . there were gold and silver vessels in the rite, and these were consecrated. . there were sacred lamps, fed with olive oil, and incense during the holy rite. . baptism was administered in the name of father, son, and holy ghost. . excommunication was inflicted on christians who disgraced their profession. . no one might pray, even in private, with excommunicated persons, except at the cost of being excommunicated himself. . no one might pray with heretics, or enter their churches, or acknowledge their baptism, or priesthood. . these rules furnish us with large portions, and the more important, of the outline of the religion of their times; and are not only definitive in themselves, but give us the means of completing those parts of it which are not found in them. considered, then, as a living body, the primitive christian community was distinguished by its high sacerdotal, ceremonial, mystical character. which among modern religious bodies was it like? was it like the wesleyans? was it like the society of friends? was it like the scotch kirk? was it like any protestant denomination at all? fancy any model protestant of this day in a state of things so different from his own! with his religious societies for the church, with his committees, boards, and platforms instead of bishops, his _record_ and _patriot_ newspapers instead of councils, his concerts for prayer instead of anathemas on heresy and schism, his spoutings at public meetings for exorcisms, his fourths of october for festivals of the martyrs, his glorious memories for commemorations of the dead, his niggard vestry allowances for gold and silver vessels, his gas and stoves for wax and oil, his denunciations of self-righteousness for fasting and celibacy, and his exercise of private judgment for submission to authority--would he have a chance of finding himself at home in a christianity such as this? is it his own christianity? * * * * * i end, then, as i began:--if protestantism is another name for christianity, then the martyrs and bishops of the early church, the men who taught the nations, the men who converted the roman empire, had themselves to be taught, themselves to be converted. shall we side with the first age of christianity, or with the last? footnotes: [ ] this account is for the most part taken from bishops beveridge and pearson. [ ] the egyptian meletius, from which this schism has its name, must not be confounded with meletius of antioch. [ ] the [greek: ekklêsiastikon phronêma]. [ ] vid. the parallel case of the ignatian epistles in the author's essays, vol. i, p. . note on p. . lately the relics of st. ambrose have been discovered in his church at milan, as were the relics of st. gervasius and st. protasius several years since. on this subject i received a month since a letter from a friend, who passed through milan, and saw the sacred remains. i will quote a portion of his letter to me:-- "_sept. , ._ "i am amazed at the favour which was shown me yesterday at the church of st. ambrogio. i was accidentally allowed to be present at a private exposition of the relics of st. ambrose and the saints gervasius and protasius. i have seen complete every bone in st. ambrose's body. there were present a great many of the clergy, three _medici_, and father secchi, who was there on account of his great knowledge of the catacombs, to testify to the age, etc., of the remains. it was not quite in chance, for i wanted to go to milan, solely to venerate st. ambrose once more, and to thank him for all the blessings i have had as a catholic and a priest, since the day that i said mass over his body. the churches were shut when i arrived; so i got up early next morning and went off to the ambrosian. i knelt down before the high altar, and thought of all that had happened since you and i were there, twenty-six years ago. as i was kneeling, a cleric came out; so i asked him to let me into the _scurolo_, which was boarded up all round for repairs. he took me there, but he said: 'st. ambrose is not here; he is above; do you wish to see him?' he took me round through the corretti into a large room, where, on a large table, surrounded by ecclesiastics and medical men, were three skeletons. the two were of immense size, and very much alike, and bore the marks of a violent death; their age was determined to be about twenty-six years. when i entered the room, father secchi was examining the marks of martyrdom on them. their throats had been cut with great violence, and the neck vertebræ were injured on the inside. the _pomum adami_ had been broken, or was not there; i forget which. this bone was quite perfect in st. ambrose; his body was wholly uninjured; the lower jaw (which was broken in one of the two martyrs) was wholly uninjured in him, beautifully formed, and every tooth, but one molar in the lower jaw, quite perfect and white and regular. his face had been long, thin, and oval, with a high arched forehead. his bones were nearly white; those of the other two were very dark. his fingers long and very delicate; his bones were a marked contrast to those of the two martyrs. "the finding, i was told, was thus:--in the ninth century the bishop of milan translated the relics of st. ambrose, which till then had laid side by side with the martyrs in one great stone coffin of two compartments, st. gervase being, according to the account, nearest to st. ambrose. he removed st. ambrose from this coffin into the great porphyry urn which we both saw in the _scurolo_; leaving the martyrs where they were. in the martyrs' coffin was opened, and one compartment was found empty, except a single bone, the right-ankle bone, which lay by itself in that empty compartment. this was sent to the pope as all that remained of st. ambrose; in the other compartment were the two skeletons complete. st. ambrose's urn was not opened till the other day, when it was removed from its place for the alterations. the bones were found perfect all but the ankle bone. they then sent for it to rome, and the president of the seminary showed me how it fitted exactly in its place, having been separated from it for nine centuries. "the government seems very desirous to make a handsome restoration of the whole chapel, and the new shrine will be completed by may next." thus far my friend's letter. i have not been able in such historical works as are at my command to find notice of archbishop angelbert's transferring st. ambrose's body from the large coffin of the martyrs to the porphyry urn which has been traditionally pointed out as the receptacle of the saint, and in which he was recently found. that the body, however, recently disinterred actually was once in the coffin of the martyrs is evidenced by its right-ankle bone being found there. another curious confirmation arises from my friend's remark about the missing tooth, when compared with the following passage from ughelli, ital. sacr. t. iv. col. :-- "archbishop angelbert was most devout to the church of st. ambrose, and erected a golden altar in it, at the cost of , gold pieces. the occasion of this gift is told us by galvaneus, among others, in his catalogue, when he is speaking of angelbert. his words are these:--'angelbert was archbishop for thirty-five years, from a.d. , and out of devotion he extracted a tooth from the mouth of st. ambrose, and placed it in his [episcopal] ring. one day the tooth fell out from the ring; and, on the archbishop causing a thorough search to be made for it, an old woman appeared to him, saying, "you will find the tooth in the place from which you took it." on hearing this, the archbishop betook himself to the body of st. ambrose, and found it in the mouth of the blessed ambrose. then, to make it impossible for anything in future [or anything else, de cætero] to be taken from his body, he hid it under ground, and caused to be made the golden altar of st. ambrose, etc. castellionæus in his antiquities of milan (apud burman. antiqu. ital. t. , part . col. ) tells us that the archbishop lost his relic "as he was going in his pontifical vestments to the church of st. lawrence on palm sunday. he found he had lost it in the way thither, for, on taking off his gloves, he saw it was gone." it would seem from my friend's letter that either the archbishop took away the tooth a second time, or the miracle of its restoration did not take place. it should be added that the place in which angelbert hid the sacred relics was so well known, that in the twelfth century cardinal bernard, bishop of parma, was allowed to see and venerate them,--vid. puricelli's ambros. basil. descriptio. c. and c. , ap. burman. thesaur. antiqu. ital. t. , part . that st. ambrose was buried in his own church, called even from the time of his death the "ambrosian," and the church where he had placed the bones of the two martyrs, gervasius and protasius, by the side of whom he proposed to have his own body placed, is plain from his own words and those of paulinus his secretary. * * * * * for the controversy on the subject vid. castellion. _ubi supra._ the end * * * * * the aberdeen university press limited. * * * * * 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table of god_ rockliff (e.) _an experiment in history teaching_ rose (v.) _studies on the gospels_ russell (m.) _among the blessed_ ---- ---- _at home with god_ ---- ---- _the three sisters of lord russell of killowen_ ruville (a. von) _back to holy church_ ---- ---- _humility the true talisman_ ryder (i.) _essays_ scannell (t. b.) _the priest's studies_ schwertner (t.) _st. raymond of pennafort_ serbati (a.) _theodicy_ sheehan (p. a.) _blindness of dr. gray_ ---- ---- _early essays and lectures_ ---- ---- _glenanaar_ ---- ---- _lisheen_ ---- ---- '_lost angel of a ruined paradise_' ---- ---- _luke delmege_ ---- ---- _parerga_ ---- ---- _the queen's fillet_ ---- ---- _the intellectuals_ smith (s. f.) _the instruction of converts_ stonyhurst philosophical series stuart (j. e.) _the education of catholic girls_ thurston (h.) _lent and holy week_ ---- ---- _the christian calendar_ vacandard (e.) _the inquisition_ walker (l. j.) _theories of knowledge_ ward (b.) _dawn of the catholic revival in england_ ---- ---- _eve of catholic emancipation_ ---- (m.) _st. bernardine of siena_ ---- (wilfrid) _aubrey de vere, a memoir_ ---- ---- _life of cardinal newman_ , ---- ---- _ten personal studies_ ---- ---- _the life of cardinal wiseman_ ---- (mrs. wilfrid) _great possessions_ ---- ---- _one poor scruple_ ---- ---- _out of due time_ ---- ---- _the job secretary_ ---- ---- _the light behind_ westminster library (the) wiseman (cardinal) life, by wilfrid ward wyatt-davies (e.) _history of england for catholic schools_ ---- ---- _outlines of british history_ none proofreaders _ancient classics for english readers_ edited by the rev. w. lucas collins, m.a. cicero by the rev. w. lucas collins, m.a. author of 'etoniana', 'the public schools', etc. i have to acknowledge my obligations to mr. forsyth's well-known 'life of cicero', especially as a guide to the biographical materials which abound in his orations and letters. mr. long's scholarly volumes have also been found useful. for the translations, such as they are, i am responsible. if i could have met with any which seemed to me more satisfactory, i would gladly have adopted them. w.l.c. contents. i. biographical--early life and education, ii. public career--impeachment of verres, iii. the consulship and catiline, iv. exile and return, v. cicero and caesar, vi. cicero and antony, vii. character as politician and orator, viii. minor characteristics, ix. cicero's correspondence, x. essays on 'old age' and 'friendship', xi. cicero's philosophy, xii. cicero's religion. cicero. chapter i. early life and education. when we speak, in the language of our title-page, of the 'ancient classics', we must remember that the word 'ancient' is to be taken with a considerable difference, in one sense. ancient all the greek and roman authors are, as dated comparatively with our modern era. but as to the antique character of their writings, there is often a difference which is not merely one of date. the poetry of homer and hesiod is ancient, as having been sung and written when the society in which the authors lived, and to which they addressed themselves, was in its comparative infancy. the chronicles of herodotus are ancient, partly from their subject-matter and partly from their primitive style. but in this sense there are ancient authors belonging to every nation which has a literature of its own. viewed in this light, the history of thucydides, the letters and orations of cicero, are not ancient at all. bede, and chaucer, and matthew of paris, and froissart, are far more redolent of antiquity. the several books which make up what we call the bible are all ancient, no doubt; but even between the chronicles of the kings of israel and the epistles of st. paul there is a far wider real interval than the mere lapse of centuries. in one respect, the times of cicero, in spite of their complicated politics, should have more interest for a modern reader than most of what is called ancient history. forget the date but for a moment, and there is scarcely anything ancient about them. the scenes and actors are modern--terribly modern; far more so than the middle ages of christendom. between the times of our own plantagenets and georges, for instance, there is a far wider gap, in all but years, than between the consulships of caesar and napoleon. the habits of life, the ways of thinking, the family affections, the tastes of the romans of cicero's day, were in many respects wonderfully like our own; the political jealousies and rivalries have repeated themselves again and again in the last two or three centuries of europe: their code of political honour and morality, debased as it was, was not much lower than that which was held by some great statesmen a generation or two before us. let us be thankful if the most frightful of their vices were the exclusive shame of paganism. it was in an old but humble country-house, neat the town of arpinum, under the volscian hills, that marcus tullius cicero was born, one hundred and six years before the christian era. the family was of ancient 'equestrian'[ ] dignity, but as none of its members had hitherto borne any office of state, it did not rank as 'noble'. his grandfather and his father had borne the same three names--the last an inheritance from some forgotten ancestor, who had either been successful in the cultivation of vetches (_cicer_), or, as less complimentary traditions said, had a wart of that shape upon his nose. the grandfather was still living when the little cicero was born; a stout old conservative, who had successfully resisted the attempt to introduce vote by ballot into his native town, and hated the greeks (who were just then coming into fashion) as heartily as his english representative, fifty years ago, might have hated a frenchman. "the more greek a man knew", he protested, "the greater rascal he turned out". the father was a man of quiet habits, taking no part even in local politics, given to books, and to the enlargement and improvement of the old family house, which, up to his time, seems not to have been more than a modest grange. the situation (on a small island formed by the little river fibrenus[ ]) was beautiful and romantic; and the love for it, which grew up with the young cicero as a child, he never lost in the busy days of his manhood. it was in his eyes, he said, what ithaca was to ulysses, "a rough, wild nurse-land, but whose crops are men". [footnote : the _equites_ were originally those who served in the roman cavalry; but latterly all citizens came to be reckoned in the class who had a certain property qualification, and who could prove free descent up to their grandfather.] [footnote : now known as il fiume della posta. fragments of cicero's villa are thought to have been discovered built into the walls of the deserted convent of san dominico. the ruin known as 'cicero's tower' has probably no connection with him.] there was an aptness in the quotation; for at arpinum, a few years before, was born that caius marius, seven times consul of rome, who had at least the virtue of manhood in him, if he had few besides. but the quiet country gentleman was ambitious for his son. cicero's father, like horace's, determined to give him the best education in his power; and of course the best education was to be found in rome, and the best teachers there were greeks. so to rome young marcus was taken in due time, with his younger brother quintus. they lodged with their uncle-in-law, aculeo, a lawyer of some distinction, who had a house in rather a fashionable quarter of the city, and moved in good society; and the two boys attended the greek lectures with their town cousins. greek was as necessary a part of a roman gentleman's education in those days as latin and french are with us now; like latin, it was the key to literature (for the romans had as yet, it must be remembered, nothing worth calling literature of their own); and, like french, it was the language of refinement and the play of polished society. let us hope that by this time the good old grandfather was gathered peacefully into his urn; it might have broken his heart to have seen how enthusiastically his grandson marcus threw himself into this newfangled study; and one of those letters of his riper years, stuffed full of greek terms and phrases even to affectation, would have drawn anything but blessings from the old gentleman if he had lived to hear them read. young cicero went through the regular curriculum--grammar, rhetoric, and the greek poets and historians. like many other youthful geniuses, he wrote a good deal of poetry of his own, which his friends, as was natural, thought very highly of at the time, and of which he himself retained the same good opinion to the end of his life, as would have been natural to few men except cicero. but his more important studies began after he had assumed the 'white gown' which marked the emergence of the young roman from boyhood into more responsible life--at sixteen years of age. he then entered on a special education for the bar. it could scarcely be called a profession, for an advocate's practice at rome was gratuitous; but it was the best training for public life;--it was the ready means, to an able and eloquent man, of gaining that popular influence which would secure his election in due course to the great magistracies which formed the successive steps to political power. the mode of studying law at rome bore a very considerable resemblance to the preparation for the english bar. our modern law-student purchases his admission to the chambers of some special pleader or conveyancer, where he is supposed to learn his future business by copying precedents and answering cases, and he also attends the public lectures at the inns of court. so at rome the young aspirant was to be found (but at a much earlier hour than would suit the temple or lincoln's inn) in the open hall of some great jurist's house, listening to his opinions given to the throng of clients who crowded there every morning; while his more zealous pupils would accompany him in his stroll in the forum, and attend his pleadings in the courts or his speeches on the rostra, either taking down upon their tablets, or storing in their memories, his _dicta_ upon legal questions.[ ] in such wise cicero became the pupil of mucius scaevola, whose house was called "the oracle of rome"--scarcely ever leaving his side, as he himself expresses it; and after that great lawyer's death, attaching himself in much the same way to a younger cousin of the same name and scarcely less reputation. besides this, to arm himself at all points for his proposed career, he read logic with diodotus the stoic, studied the action of esop and roscius--then the stars of the roman stage--declaimed aloud like demosthenes in private, made copious notes, practised translation in order to form a written style, and read hard day and night. he trained severely as an intellectual athlete; and if none of his contemporaries attained such splendid success, perhaps none worked so hard for it. he made use, too, of certain special advantages which were open to him--little appreciated, or at least seldom acknowledged, by the men of his day--the society and conversation of elegant and accomplished women. in scaevola's domestic circle, where the mother, the daughters, and the grand-daughters successively seem to have been such charming talkers that language found new graces from their lips, the young advocate learnt some of his not least valuable lessons. "it makes no little difference", said he in his riper years, "what style of expression one becomes familiar with in the associations of daily life". it was another point of resemblance between the age of cicero and the times in which we live--the influence of the "queens of society", whether for good or evil. [footnote : these _dicta_, or 'opinions', of the great jurists, acquired a sort of legal validity in the roman law-courts, like 'cases' with us.] but no man could be completely educated for a public career at rome until he had been a soldier. by what must seem to us a mistake in the republican system--a mistake which we have seen made more than once in the late american war--high political offices were necessarily combined with military command. the highest minister of state, consul or praetor, however hopelessly civilian in tastes and antecedents, might be sent to conduct a campaign in italy or abroad at a few hours' notice. if a man was a heaven-born general, all went well; if not, he had usually a chance of learning in the school of defeat. it was desirable, at all events, that he should have seen what war was in his youth. young cicero served his first campaign, at the age of eighteen, under the father of a man whom he was to know only too well in after life--pompey the great--and in the division of the army which was commanded by sylla as lieutenant-general. he bore arms only for a year or two, and probably saw no very arduous service, or we should certainly have beard of it from himself; and he never was in camp again until he took the chief command, thirty-seven years afterwards, as pro-consul in cilicia. he was at rome, leading a quiet student-life--happily for himself, too young to be forced or tempted into an active part--during the bloody feuds between sylla and the younger marius. he seems to have made his first appearance as an advocate when he was about twenty-five, in some suit of which we know nothing. two years afterwards he undertook his first defence of a prisoner on a capital charge, and secured by his eloquence the acquittal of sextus roscius on an accusation of having murdered his father. the charge appears to have been a mere conspiracy, wholly unsupported by evidence; but the accuser was a favourite with sylla, whose power was all but absolute; and the innocence of the accused was a very insufficient protection before a roman jury of those days. what kind of considerations, besides the merits of the case and the rhetoric of counsel, did usually sway these tribunals, we shall see hereafter. in consequence of this decided success, briefs came in upon the young pleader almost too quickly. like many other successful orators, he had to combat some natural deficiencies; he had inherited from his father a somewhat delicate constitution; his lungs were not powerful, and his voice required careful management; and the loud declamation and vehement action which he had adopted from his models--and which were necessary conditions of success in the large arena in which a roman advocate had to plead--he found very hard work. he left rome for a while, and retired for rest and change to athens. the six months which he spent there, though busy and studious, must have been very pleasant ones. to one like cicero, athens was at once classic and holy ground. it combined all those associations and attractions which we might now expect to find in a visit to the capitals of greece and of italy, and a pilgrimage to jerusalem. poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, religion--all, to his eyes, had their cradle there. it was the home of all that was literature to him; and there, too, were the great eleusinian mysteries--which are mysteries still, but which contained under their veil whatever faith in the invisible and eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan. there can be little doubt but that cicero took this opportunity of initiation. his brother quintus and one of his cousins were with him at athens; and in that city he also renewed his acquaintance with an old school-fellow, titus pomponius, who lived so long in the city, and became so thoroughly athenian in his tastes and habits, that he is better known to us, as he was to his contemporaries, by the surname of atticus, which was given him half in jest, than by his more sonorous roman name. it is to the accidental circumstance of atticus remaining so long a voluntary exile from rome, and to the correspondence which was maintained between the two friends, with occasional intervals, for something like four-and-twenty years, that we are indebted for a more thorough insight into the character of cicero than we have as to any other of the great minds of antiquity; nearly four hundred of his letters to atticus, written in all the familiar confidence of private friendship by a man by no means reticent as to his personal feelings, having been preserved to us. atticus's replies are lost; it is said that he was prudent enough, after his friend's unhappy death, to reclaim and destroy them. they would perhaps have told us, in his case, not very much that we care to know beyond what we know already. rich, luxurious, with elegant tastes and easy morality--a true epicurean, as he boasted himself to be--atticus had nevertheless a kind heart and an open hand. he has generally been called selfish, somewhat unfairly; at least his selfishness never took the form of indifference or unkindness to others. in one sense he was a truer philosopher than cicero: for he seems to have acted through life on that maxim of socrates which his friend professed to approve, but certainly never followed,--that "a wise man kept out of public business". his vocation was certainly not patriotism; but the worldly wisdom which kept well with men of all political colours, and eschewed the wretched intrigues and bloody feuds of rome, stands out in no unfavourable contrast with the conduct of many of her _soi-disant_ patriots. if he declined to take a side himself, men of all parties resorted to him in their adversity; and the man who befriended the younger marius in his exile, protected the widow of antony, gave shelter on his estates to the victims of the triumvirate's proscription, and was always ready to offer his friend cicero both his house and his purse whenever the political horizon clouded round him,--this man was surely as good a citizen as the noisiest clamourer for "liberty" in the forum, or the readiest hand with the dagger. he kept his life and his property safe through all those years of peril and proscription, with less sacrifice of principle than many who had made louder professions, and died--by a singular act of voluntary starvation, to make short work with an incurable disease--at a ripe old age; a godless epicurean, no doubt, but not the worst of them. we must return to cicero, and deal somewhat briefly with the next few years of his life. he extended his foreign tour for two years, visiting the chief cities of asia minor, remaining for a short time at rhodes to take lessons once more from his old tutor molo the rhetorician, and everywhere availing himself of the lectures of the most renowned greek professors, to correct and improve his own style of composition and delivery. soon after his return to rome, he married. of the character of his wife terentia very different views have been taken. she appears to have written to him very kindly during his long forced absences. her letters have not reached us; but in all her husband's replies she is mentioned in terms of apparently the most sincere affection. he calls her repeatedly his "darling"--"the delight of his eyes"--"the best of mothers;" yet he procured a divorce from her, for no distinctly assigned reason, after a married life of thirty years, during which we find no trace of any serious domestic unhappiness. the imputations on her honour made by plutarch, and repeated by others, seem utterly without foundation; and cicero's own share in the transaction is not improved by the fact of his taking another wife as soon as possible--a ward of his own, an almost girl, with whom he did not live a year before a second divorce released him. terentia is said also to have had an imperious temper; but the only ground for this assertion seems to have been that she quarrelled occasionally with her sister-in-law pomponia, sister of atticus and wife of quintus cicero; and since pomponia, by her own brother's account, showed her temper very disagreeably to her husband, the feud between the ladies was more likely to have been her fault than terentia's. but the very low notion of the marriage relations entertained by both the later greeks and romans helps to throw some light upon a proceeding which would otherwise seem very mysterious. terentia, as is pretty plain from the hints in her husband's letters, was not a good manager in money matters; there is room for suspicion that she was not even an honest one in his absence, and was "making a purse" for herself; she had thus failed in one of the only two qualifications which, according to demosthenes--an authority who ranked very high in cicero's eyes--were essential in a wife, to be "a faithful house-guardian" and "a fruitful mother". she did not die of a broken heart; she lived to be , and, according to dio cassius, to have three more husbands. divorces were easy enough at rome, and had the lady been a rich widow, there might be nothing so improbable in this latter part of the story, though she was fifty years old at the date of this first divorce.[ ] [footnote : cato, who is the favourite impersonation of all the moral virtues of his age, divorced his wife--to oblige a friend!] chapter ii. public career.--impeachment of verres. increasing reputation as a brilliant and successful pleader, and the social influence which this brought with it, secured the rapid succession of cicero to the highest public offices. soon after his marriage he was elected quaestor--the first step on the official ladder--which, as he already possessed the necessary property qualification, gave him a seat in the senate for life. the aedileship and praetorship followed subsequently, each as early, in point of age, as it could legally be held.[ ] his practice as an advocate suffered no interruption, except that his quaestorship involved his spending a year in sicily. the praetor who was appointed to the government of that province[ ] had under him two quaestors, who were a kind of comptrollers of the exchequer; and cicero was appointed to the western district, having his headquarters at lilybaeum. in the administration of his office there he showed himself a thorough man of business. there was a dearth of corn at rome that year, and sicily was the great granary of the empire. the energetic measures which the new quaestor took fully met the emergency. he was liberal to the tenants of the state, courteous and accessible to all, upright in his administration, and, above all, he kept his hands clean from bribes and peculation. the provincials were as much astonished as delighted: for rome was not in the habit of sending them such officers. they invented honours for him such as had never been bestowed on any minister before. [footnote : the quaestors (of whom there were at this time twenty) acted under the senate as state treasurers. the consul or other officer who commanded in chief during a campaign would be accompanied by one of them as paymaster-general. the aediles, who were four in number, had the care of all public buildings, markets, roads, and the state property generally. they had also the superintendence of the national festivals and public games. the duties of the praetors, of whom there were eight, were principally judicial. the two seniors, called the 'city' and 'foreign' respectively, corresponded roughly to our home and foreign secretaries. these were all gradual steps to the office of consul.] [footnote : the provinces of rome, in their relation to the mother-state of italy, may be best compared with our own government of india, or such of our crown colonies as have no representative assembly. they had each their governor or lieutenant-governor, who must have been an ex-minister of rome: a man who had been consul went out with the rank of "pro-consul",--one who had been praetor with the rank of "pro-praetor". these held office for one or two years, and had the power of life and death within their respective jurisdictions. they had under them one or more officers who bore the title of quaestor, who collected the taxes and had the general management of the revenues of the province. the provinces at this time were sicily, sardinia with corsica, spain and gaul (each in two divisions); greece, divided into macedonia and achaia (the morea); asia, syria, cilicia, bithynia, cyprus, and africa in four divisions. others were added afterwards, under the empire.] no wonder the young official's head (he was not much over thirty) was somewhat turned. "i thought", he said, in one of his speeches afterwards--introducing with a quiet humour, and with all a practised orator's skill, one of those personal anecdotes which relieve a long speech--"i thought in my heart, at the time, that the people at rome must be talking of nothing but my quaestorship". and he goes on to tell his audience how he was undeceived. "the people of sicily had devised for me unprecedented honours. so i left the island in a state of great elation, thinking that the roman people would at once offer me everything without my seeking. but when i was leaving my province, and on my road home, i happened to land at puteoli just at the time when a good many of our most fashionable people are accustomed to resort to that neighbourhood. i very nearly collapsed, gentlemen, when a man asked me what day i had left rome, and whether there was any news stirring? when i made answer that i was returning from my province--'oh! yes, to be sure', said he; 'africa, i believe?' 'no', said i to him, considerably annoyed and disgusted; 'from sicily'. then somebody else, with the air of a man who knew all about it, said to him--'what! don't you know that he was quaestor at _syracuse_?' [it was at lilybaeum--quite a different district.] no need to make a long story of it; i swallowed my indignation, and made as though i, like the rest, had come there for the waters. but i am not sure, gentlemen, whether that scene did not do me more good than if everybody then and there had publicly congratulated me. for after i had thus found out that the people of rome have somewhat deaf ears, but very keen and sharp eyes, i left off cogitating what people would hear about me; i took care that thenceforth they should see me before them every day: i lived in their sight, i stuck close to the forum; the porter at my gate refused no man admittance--my very sleep was never allowed to be a plea against an audience".[ ] [footnote : defence of plancius, c. , .] did we not say that cicero was modern, not ancient? have we not here the original of that cambridge senior wrangler, who, happening to enter a london theatre at the same moment with the king, bowed all round with a gratified embarrassment, thinking that the audience rose and cheered at _him_? it was while he held the office of aedile that he made his first appearance as public prosecutor, and brought to justice the most important criminal of the day. verres, late praetor in sicily, was charged with high crimes and misdemeanours in his government. the grand scale of his offences, and the absorbing interest of the trial, have led to his case being quoted as an obvious parallel to that of warren hastings, though with much injustice to the latter, so far as it may seem to imply any comparison of moral character. this verres, the corrupt son of a corrupt father, had during his three years' rule heaped on the unhappy province every evil which tyranny and rapacity could inflict. he had found it prosperous and contented: he left it exhausted and smarting under its wrongs. he met his impeachment now with considerable confidence. the gains of his first year of office were sufficient, he said, for himself; the second had been for his friends; the third produced more than enough to bribe a jury. the trials at rome took place in the forum--the open space, of nearly five acres, lying between the capitoline and palatine hills. it was the city market-place, but it was also the place where the population assembled for any public meeting, political or other--where the idle citizen strolled to meet his friends and hear the gossip of the day, and where the man of business made his appointments. courts for the administration of justice--magnificent halls, called _basilicae_--had by this time been erected on the north and south sides, and in these the ordinary trials took place; but for state trials the open forum was itself the court. one end of the wide area was raised on a somewhat higher level--a kind of daïs on a large scale--and was separated from the rest by the rostra, a sort of stage from which the orators spoke. it was here that the trials were held. a temporary tribunal for the presiding officer, with accommodation for counsel, witnesses, and jury, was erected in the open air; and the scene may perhaps best be pictured by imagining the principal square in some large town fitted up with open hustings on a large scale for an old-fashioned county election, by no means omitting the intense popular excitement and mob violence appropriate to such occasions. temples of the gods and other public buildings overlooked the area, and the steps of these, on any occasion of great excitement, would be crowded by those who were anxious to see at least, if they could not hear. verres, as a state criminal, would be tried before a special commission, and by a jury composed at this time entirely from the senatorial order, chosen by lot (with a limited right of challenge reserved to both parties) from a panel made out every year by the praetor. this magistrate, who was a kind of minister of justice, usually presided on such occasions, occupying the curule chair, which was one of the well-known privileges of high office at rome. but his office was rather that of the modern chairman who keeps order at a public meeting than that of a judge. judge, in our sense of the word, there was none; the jury were the judges both of law and fact. they were, in short, the recognised assessors of the praetor, in whose hands the administration of justice was supposed to lie. the law, too, was of a highly flexible character, and the appeals of the advocates were rather to the passions and feelings of the jurors than to the legal points of the case. cicero himself attached comparatively little weight to this branch of his profession;--"busy as i am", he says in one of his speeches, "i could make myself lawyer enough in three days". the jurors gave each their vote by ballot,--'guilty', 'not guilty', or (as in the scotch courts) 'not proven',--and the majority carried the verdict. but such trials as that of verres were much more like an impeachment before the house of commons than a calm judicial inquiry. the men who would have to try a defendant of his class would be, in very few cases, honest and impartial weighers of the evidence. their large number (varying from fifty to seventy) weakened the sense of individual responsibility, and laid them more open to the appeal of the advocates to their political passions. most of them would come into court prejudiced in some degree by the interests of party; many would be hot partisans. cicero, in his treatise on 'oratory', explains clearly for the pleader's guidance the nature of the tribunals to which he had to appeal. "men are influenced in their verdicts much more by prejudice or favour, or greed of gain, or anger, or indignation, or pleasure, or hope or fear, or by misapprehension, or by some excitement of their feelings, than either by the facts of the case, or by established precedents, or by any rules or principles whatever either of law or equity". verres was supported by some of the most powerful families at rome. peculation on the part of governors of provinces had become almost a recognised principle: many of those who held offices of state either had done, or were waiting their turn to do, much the same as the present defendant; and every effort had been made by his friends either to put off the trial indefinitely, or to turn it into a sham by procuring the appointment of a private friend and creature of his own as public prosecutor. on the other hand, the sicilian families, whom he had wronged and outraged, had their share of influence also at rome, and there was a growing impatience of the insolence and rapacity of the old governing houses, of whose worst qualities the ex-governor of sicily was a fair type. there were many reasons which would lead cicero to take up such a cause energetically. it was a great opening for him in what we may call his profession: his former connection with the government of sicily gave him a personal interest in the cause of the province; and, above all, the prosecution of a state offender of such importance was a lift at once into the foremost ranks of political life. he spared no pains to get up his case thoroughly. he went all over the island collecting evidence; and his old popularity there did him good service in the work. there was, indeed, evidence enough against the late governor. the reckless gratification of his avarice and his passions had seldom satisfied him, without the addition of some bitter insult to the sufferers. but there was even a more atrocious feature in the case, of which cicero did not fail to make good use in his appeal to a roman jury. many of the unhappy victims had the roman franchise. the torture of an unfortunate sicilian might be turned into a jest by a clever advocate for the defence, and regarded by a philosophic jury with less than the cold compassion with which we regard the sufferings of the lower animals; but "to scourge a man that was a roman and uncondemned", even in the far-off province of judea, was a thought which, a century later, made the officers of the great empire, at its pitch of power, tremble before a wandering teacher who bore the despised name of christian. no one can possibly tell the tale so well as cicero himself; and the passage from his speech for the prosecution is an admirable specimen both of his power of pathetic narrative and scathing denunciation, "how shall i speak of publius gavius, a citizen of consa? with what powers of voice, with what force of language, with what sufficient indignation of soul, can i tell the tale? indignation, at least, will not fail me: the more must i strive that in this my pleading the other requisites may be made to meet the gravity of the subject, the intensity of my feeling. for the accusation is such that, when it was first laid before me, i did not think to make use of it; though i knew it to be perfectly true, i did not think it would be credible.--how shall i now proceed?--when i have already been speaking for so many hours on one subject--his atrocious cruelty; when i have exhausted upon other points well-nigh all the powers of language such as alone is suited to that man's crimes;--when i have taken no precaution to secure your attention by any variety in my charges against him,--in what fashion can i now speak on a charge of this importance? i think there is one way--one course, and only one, left for me to take. i will place the facts before you; and they have in themselves such weight, that no eloquence--i will not say of mine, for i have none--but of any man's, is needed to excite your feelings. "this gavius of consa, of whom i speak, had been among the crowds of roman citizens who had been thrown into prison under that man. somehow he had made his escape out of the quarries,[ ] and had got to messana; and when he saw italy and the towers of rhegium now so close to him, and out of the horror and shadow of death felt himself breathe with a new life as he scented once more the fresh air of liberty and the laws, he began to talk at messana, and to complain that he, a roman citizen, had been put in irons--that he was going straight to rome--that he would be ready there for verres on his arrival. [footnote : this was one of the state prisons at syracuse, so called, said to have been constructed by the tyrant dionysius. they were the quarries from which the stone was dug for building the city, and had been converted to their present purpose. cicero, who no doubt had seen the one in question, describes it as sunk to an immense depth in the solid rock. there was no roof; and the unhappy prisoners were exposed there "to the sun by day and to the rain and frosts by night". in these places the survivors of the unfortunate athenian expedition against syracuse were confined, and died in great numbers.] "the wretched man little knew that he might as well have talked in this fashion in the governor's palace before his very face, as at messana. for, as i told you before, this city he had selected for himself as the accomplice in his crimes, the receiver of his stolen goods, the confidant of all his wickedness. so gavius is brought at once before the city magistrates; and, as it so chanced, on that very day verres himself came to messana. the case is reported to him; that there is a certain roman citizen who complained of having been put into the quarries at syracuse; that as he was just going on board ship, and was uttering threats--really too atrocious--against verres, they had detained him, and kept him in custody, that the governor himself might decide about him as should seem to him good. verres thanks the gentlemen, and extols their goodwill and zeal for his interests. he himself, burning with rage and malice, comes down to the court. his eyes flashed fire; cruelty was written on every line of his face. all present watched anxiously to see to what lengths he meant to go, or what steps he would take; when suddenly he ordered the prisoner to be dragged forth, and to be stripped and bound in the open forum, and the rods to be got ready at once. the unhappy man cried out that he was a roman citizen--that he had the municipal franchise of consa--that he had served in a campaign with lucius pretius, a distinguished roman knight, now engaged in business at panormus, from whom verres might ascertain the truth of his statement. then that man replies that he has discovered that he, gavius, has been sent into sicily as a spy by the ringleaders of the runaway slaves; of which charge there was neither witness nor trace of any kind, or even suspicion in any man's mind. then he ordered the man to be scourged severely all over his body. yes--a roman citizen was cut to pieces with rods in the open forum at messana, gentlemen; and as the punishment went on, no word, no groan of the wretched man, in all his anguish, was heard amid the sound of the lashes, but this cry,--'i am a roman citizen!' by such protest of citizenship he thought he could at least save himself from anything like blows--could escape the indignity of personal torture. but not only did he fail in thus deprecating the insult of the lash, but when he redoubled his entreaties and his appeal to the name of rome, a cross--yes, i say, a cross--was ordered for that most unfortunate and ill-fated man, who had never yet beheld such an abuse of a governor's power. "o name of liberty, sweet to our ears! o rights of citizenship, in which we glory! o laws of porcius and sempronius! o privilege of the tribune, long and sorely regretted, and at last restored to the people of rome! has it all come to this, that a roman citizen in a province of the roman people--in a federal town--is to be bound and beaten with rods in the forum by a man who only holds those rods and axes--those awful emblems--by grace of that same people of rome? what shall i say of the fact that fire, and red-hot plates, and other tortures were applied? even if his agonised entreaties and pitiable cries did not check you, were you not moved by the tears and groans which burst from the roman citizens who were present at the scene? did you dare to drag to the cross any man who claimed to be a citizen of rome?--i did not intend, gentlemen, in my former pleading, to press this case so strongly--i did not indeed; for you saw yourselves how the public feeling was already embittered against the defendant by indignation, and hate, and dread of a common peril". he then proceeds to prove by witnesses the facts of the case and the falsehood of the charge against gavius of having been a spy. "however", he goes on to say, addressing himself now to verres, "we will grant, if you please, that your suspicions on this point, if false, were honestly entertained". "you did not know who the man was; you suspected him of being a spy. i do not ask the grounds of your suspicion. i impeach you on your own evidence. he said he was a roman citizen. had you yourself, verres, been seized and led out to execution, in persia, say, or in the farthest indies, what other cry or protest could you raise but that you were a roman citizen? and if you, a stranger there among strangers, in the hands of barbarians, amongst men who dwell in the farthest and remotest regions of the earth, would have found protection in the name of your city, known and renowned in every nation under heaven, could the victim whom you were dragging to the cross, be he who he might--and you did not know who he was--when he declared he was a citizen of rome, could he obtain from you, a roman magistrate, by the mere mention and claim of citizenship, not only no reprieve, but not even a brief respite from death? "men of neither rank nor wealth, of humble birth and station, sail the seas; they touch at some spot they never saw before, where they are neither personally known to those whom they visit, nor can always find any to vouch for their nationality. but in this single fact of their citizenship they feel they shall be safe, not only with our own governors, who are held in check by the terror of the laws and of public opinion--not only among those who share that citizenship of rome, and who are united with them by community of language, of laws, and of many things besides--but go where they may, this, they think, will be their safe guard. take away this confidence, destroy this safeguard for our roman citizens--once establish the principle that there is no protection in the words, 'i am a citizen of rome'--that praetor or other magistrate may with impunity sentence to what punishment he will a man who says he is a roman citizen, merely because somebody does not know it for a fact; and at once, by admitting such a defence, you are shutting up against our roman citizens all our provinces, all foreign states, despotic or independent--all the whole world, in short, which has ever lain open to our national enterprise beyond all". he turns again to verres. "but why talk of gavius? as though it were gavius on whom you were wreaking a private vengeance, instead of rather waging war against the very name and rights of roman citizenship. you showed yourself an enemy, i say, not to the individual man, but to the common cause of liberty. for what meant it that, when the authorities of messana, according to their usual custom, would have erected the cross behind their city on the pompeian road, you ordered it to be set up on the side that looked toward the strait? nay, and added this--which you cannot deny, which you said openly in the hearing of all--that you chose that spot for this reason, that as he had called himself a roman citizen, he might be able, from his cross of punishment, to see in the distance his country and his home! and so, gentlemen, that cross was the only one, since messana was a city, that was ever erected on that spot. a point which commanded a view of italy was chosen by the defendant for the express reason that the dying sufferer, in his last agony and torment, might see how the rights of the slave and the freeman were separated by that narrow streak of sea; that italy might look upon a son of hers suffering the capital penalty reserved for slaves alone. "it is a crime to put a citizen of rome in bonds; it is an atrocity to scourge him; to put him to death is well-nigh parricide; what shall i say it is to crucify him?--language has no word by which i may designate such an enormity. yet with all this yon man was not content. 'let him look', said he, 'towards his country; let him die in full sight of freedom and the laws'. it was not gavius; it was not a single victim, unknown to fame, a mere individual roman citizen; it was the common cause of liberty, the common rights of citizenship, which you there outraged and put to a shameful death". but in order to judge of the thrilling effect of such passages upon a roman jury, they must be read in the grand periods of the oration itself, to which no translation into a language so different in idiom and rhythm as english is from latin can possibly do justice. the fruitless appeal made by the unhappy citizen to the outraged majesty of rome, and the indignant demand for vengeance which the great orator founds upon it--proclaiming the recognised principle that, in every quarter of the world, the humblest wanderer who could say he was a roman citizen should find protection in the name--will be always remembered as having supplied lord palmerston with one of his most telling illustrations. but this great speech of cicero's--perhaps the most magnificent piece of declamation in any language--though written and preserved to us was never spoken. the whole of the pleadings in the case, which extend to some length, were composed for the occasion, no doubt, in substance, and we have to thank cicero for publishing them afterwards in full. but verres only waited to hear the brief opening speech of his prosecutor; he did not dare to challenge a verdict, but allowing judgment to go by default, withdrew to marseilles soon after the trial opened. he lived there, undisturbed in the enjoyment of his plunder, long enough to see the fall and assassination of his great accuser, but only (as it is said) to share his fate soon afterwards as one of the victims of antony's proscription. of his guilt there can be no question; his fear to face a court in which he had many friends is sufficient presumptive evidence of it; but we must hesitate in assuming the deepness of its dye from the terrible invectives of cicero. no sensible person will form an opinion upon the real merits of a case, even in an english court of justice now, entirely from the speech of the counsel for the prosecution. and if we were to go back a century or two, to the state trials of those days, we know that to form our estimate of a prisoner's guilt from such data only would be doing him a gross injustice. we have only to remember the exclamation of warren hastings himself, whose trial, as has been said, has so many points of resemblance with that of verres, when burke sat down after the torrent of eloquence which he had hurled against the accused in his opening speech for the prosecution;--"i thought myself for the moment", said hastings, "the guiltiest man in england". the result of this trial was to raise cicero at once to the leadership--if so modern an expression may be used--of the roman bar. up to this time the position had been held by hortensius, the counsel for verres, whom cicero himself calls "the king of the courts". he was eight years the senior of cicero in age, and many more professionally, for he is said to have made his first public speech at nineteen. he had the advantage of the most extraordinary memory, a musical voice, and a rich flow of language: but cicero more than implies that he was not above bribing a jury. it was not more disgraceful in those days than bribing a voter in our own. the two men were very unlike in one respect; hortensius was a fop and an exquisite (he is said to have brought an action against a colleague for disarranging the folds of his gown), while cicero's vanity was quite of another kind. after verres's trial, the two advocates were frequently engaged together in the same cause and on the same side: but hortensius seems quietly to have abdicated his forensic sovereignty before the rising fame of his younger rival. they became, ostensibly at least, personal friends. what jealousy there was between them, strange to say, seems always to have been on the side of cicero, who could not be convinced of the friendly feeling which, on hortensius's part, there seems no reason to doubt. after his rival's death, however, cicero did full justice to his merits and his eloquence, and even inscribed to his memory a treatise on 'glory', which has been lost. chapter iii. the consulship and catiline. there was no check as yet in cicero's career. it had been a steady course of fame and success, honestly earned and well deserved; and it was soon to culminate in that great civil triumph which earned for him the proud title of _pater patriae_--the father of his country. it was a phrase which the orator himself had invented; and it is possible that, with all his natural self-complacency, he might have felt a little uncomfortable under the compliment, when he remembered on whom he had originally bestowed it--upon that caius marius, whose death in his bed at a good old age, after being seven times consul, he afterwards uses as an argument, in the mouth of one of his imaginary disputants, against the existence of an overruling providence. in the prime of his manhood he reached the great object of a roman's ambition--he became virtually prime minister of the republic: for he was elected, by acclamation rather than by vote, the first of the two consuls for the year, and his colleague, caius antonius (who had beaten the third candidate, the notorious catiline, by a few votes only) was a man who valued his office chiefly for its opportunities of peculation, and whom cicero knew how to manage. it is true that this high dignity--so jealous were the old republican principles of individual power--would last only for a year; but that year was to be a most eventful one, both for cicero and for rome. the terrible days of marius and sylla had passed, only to leave behind a taste for blood and licence amongst the corrupt aristocracy and turbulent commons. there were men amongst the younger nobles quite ready to risk their lives in the struggle for absolute power; and the mob was ready to follow whatever leader was bold enough to bid highest for their support. it is impossible here to do much more than glance at the well-known story of catiline's conspiracy. it was the attempt of an able and desperate man to make himself and his partisans masters of rome by a bloody revolution. catiline was a member of a noble but impoverished family, who had borne arms under sylla, and had served an early apprenticeship in bloodshed under that unscrupulous leader. cicero has described his character in terms which probably are not unfair, because the portrait was drawn by him, in the course of his defence of a young friend who had been too much connected with catiline, for the distinct purpose of showing the popular qualities which had dazzled and attracted so many of the youth of rome. "he had about him very many of, i can hardly say the visible tokens, but the adumbrations of the highest qualities. there was in his character that which tempted him to indulge the worst passions, but also that which spurred him to energy and hard work. licentious appetites burnt fiercely within him, but there was also a strong love of active military service. i believe that there never lived on earth such a monster of inconsistency,--such a compound of opposite tastes and passions brought into conflict with each other. who at one time was a greater favourite with our most illustrious men? who was a closer intimate with our very basest? who could be more greedy of money than he was? who could lavish it more profusely? there were these marvellous qualities in the man,--he made friends so universally, he retained them by his obliging ways, he was ready to share what he had with them all, to help them at their need with his money, his influence, his personal exertions--not stopping short of the most audacious crime, if there was need of it. he could change his very nature, and rule himself by circumstances, and turn and bend in any direction. he lived soberly with the serious, he was a boon companion with the gay; grave with the elders, merry with the young; reckless among the desperate, profligate with the depraved. with a nature so complex and many-sided, he not only collected round him wicked and desperate characters from all quarters of the world, but he also attracted many brave and good men by his simulation of virtue. it would have been impossible for him to have organised that atrocious attack upon the commonwealth, unless that fierce outgrowth of depraved passions had rested on some under-stratum of agreeable qualities and powers of endurance". born in the same year with cicero, his unsuccessful rival for the consulship, and hating him with the implacable hatred with which a bad, ambitious, and able man hates an opponent who is his superior in ability and popularity as well as character, catiline seems to have felt, as his revolutionary plot ripened, that between the new consul and himself the fates of rome must choose. he had gathered round him a band of profligate young nobles, deep in debt like himself, and of needy and unscrupulous adventurers of all classes. he had partisans who were collecting and drilling troops for him in several parts of italy. the programme was assassination, abolition of debts, confiscation of property: so little of novelty is there in revolutionary principles. the first plan had been to murder the consuls of the year before, and seize the government. it had failed through his own impatience. he now hired assassins against cicero, choosing the opportunity of the election of the incoming consuls, which always took place some time before their entrance on office. but the plot was discovered, and the election was put off. when it did take place, cicero appeared in the meeting, wearing somewhat ostentatiously a corslet of bright steel, to show that he knew his danger; and catiline's partisans found the place of meeting already occupied by a strong force of the younger citizens of the middle class, who had armed themselves for the consul's protection. the election passed off quietly, and catiline was again rejected. a second time he tried assassination, and it failed--so watchful and well informed was the intended victim. and now cicero, perhaps, was roused to a consciousness that one or other must fall; for in the unusually determined measures which he took in the suppression of the conspiracy, the mixture of personal alarm with patriotic indignation is very perceptible. by a fortunate chance, the whole plan of the conspirators was betrayed. rebel camps had been formed not only in italy, but in spain and mauritania: rome was to be set on fire, the slaves to be armed, criminals let loose, the friends of order to be put out of the way. the consul called a meeting of the senate in the temple of jupiter stator, a strong position on the palatine hill, and denounced the plot in all its details, naming even the very day fixed for the outbreak. the arch-conspirator had the audacity to be present, and cicero addressed him personally in the eloquent invective which has come to us as his "first oration against catiline". his object was to drive his enemy from the city to the camp of his partisans, and thus to bring matters at once to a crisis for which he now felt himself prepared. this daily state of public insecurity and personal danger had lasted too long, he said: "therefore, let these conspirators at once take their side; let them separate themselves from honest citizens, and gather themselves together somewhere else; let them put a wall between us, as i have often said. let us have them no longer thus plotting the assassination of a consul in his own house, overawing our courts of justice with armed bands, besieging the senate-house with drawn swords, collecting their incendiary stores to burn our city. let us at last be able to read plainly in every roman's face whether he be loyal to his country or no. i may promise you this, gentlemen of the senate--there shall be no lack of diligence on the part of your consuls; there will be, i trust, no lack of dignity and firmness on your own, of spirit amongst the roman knights, of unanimity amongst all honest men, but that when catiline has once gone from us, everything will be not only discovered and brought into the light of day, but also crushed,--ay, and punished. under such auspices, i bid you, catiline. go forth to wage your impious and unhallowed war.--go, to the salvation of the state, to your own overthrow and destruction, to the ruin of all who have joined you in your great wickedness and treason. and thou, great jupiter, whose worship romulus founded here coeval with our city;--whom we call truly the 'stay'[ ] of our capital and our empire; thou wilt protect thine own altars and the temples of thy kindred gods, the walls and roof-trees of our homes, the lives and fortunes of our citizens, from yon man and his accomplices. these enemies of all good men, invaders of their country, plunderers of italy, linked together in a mutual bond of crime and an alliance of villany, thou wilt surely, visit with an everlasting punishment, living and dead'". [footnote : 'stator'.] catiline's courage did not fail him. he had been sitting alone--for, all the other senators had shrunk away from the bench of which he had taken possession. he rose, and in reply to cicero, in a forced tone of humility protested his innocence. he tried also another point. was he,--a man of ancient and noble family;--to be hastily condemned by his fellow-nobles on the word of this 'foreigner', as he contemptuously called cicero--this _parvenu_ from arpinum? but the appeal failed; his voice was drowned in the cries of 'traitor' which arose on all sides, and with threats and curses, vowing that since he was driven to desperation he would involve all rome in his ruin, he rushed out of the senate-house. at dead of night he left the city, and joined the insurgent camp at faesulae. when the thunders of cicero's eloquence had driven catiline from the senate-house, and forced him to join his fellow-traitors, and so put himself in the position of levying open war against the state, it remained to deal with those influential conspirators who had been detected and seized within the city walls. in three subsequent speeches in the senate he justified the course he had taken in allowing catiline to escape, exposed further particulars of the conspiracy, and urged the adoption of strong measures to crush it out within the city. even now, not all cicero's eloquence, nor all the efforts of our imagination to realise, as men realised it then, the imminence of the public danger, can reconcile the summary process adopted by the consul with our english notions of calm and deliberate justice. of the guilt of the men there was no doubt; most of them even admitted it. but there was no formal trial; and a few hours after a vote of death had been passed upon them in a hesitating senate, lentulus and cethegus, two members of that august body, with three of their companions in guilt, were brought from their separate places of confinement, with some degree of secrecy (as appears from different writers), carried down into the gloomy prison-vaults of the tullianum,[ ] and there quietly strangled, by the sole authority of the consul. unquestionably they deserved death, if ever political criminals deserved it: the lives and liberties of good citizens were in danger; it was necessary to strike deep and strike swiftly at a conspiracy which extended no man knew how widely, and in which men like julius caesar and crassus were strongly suspected of being engaged. the consuls had been armed with extra-constitutional powers, conveyed by special resolution of the senate in the comprehensive formula that they "were to look to it that the state suffered no damage". still, without going so far as to call this unexampled proceeding, as the german critic mommsen does, "an act of the most brutal tyranny", it is easy to understand how mr. forsyth, bringing a calm and dispassionate legal judgment to bear upon the case, finds it impossible to reconcile it with our ideas of dignified and even-handed justice.[ ] it was the hasty instinct of self-preservation, the act of a weak government uncertain of its very friends, under the influence of terror--a terror for which, no doubt, there were abundant grounds. when cicero stood on the prison steps, where he had waited to receive the report of those who were making sure work with the prisoners within, and announced their fate to the assembled crowd below in the single word "_vixerunt_" (a euphemism which we can only weakly translate into "they have lived their life"), no doubt he felt that he and the republic held theirs from that moment by a firmer tenure; no doubt very many of those who heard him felt that they could breathe again, now that the grasp of catiline's assassins was, for the moment at all events, off their throats; and the crowd who followed the consul home were sincere enough when they hailed such a vigorous avenger as the 'father of his country'. but none the less it was that which politicians have called worse than a crime--it was a political blunder; and cicero came to find it so in after years; though--partly from his immense self-appreciation, and partly from an honest determination to stand by his act and deed in all its consequences--he never suffered the shadow of such a confession to appear in his most intimate correspondence. he claimed for himself ever afterwards the sole glory of having saved the state by such prompt and decided action; and in this he was fully borne out by the facts: justifiable or unjustifiable, the act was his; and there were burning hearts at rome which dared not speak out against the popular consul, but set it down to his sole account against the day of retribution. [footnote : a state dungeon, said to have been built in the reign of servius tullius. it was twelve feet under ground. executions often took place there, and the bodies of the criminals were afterwards thrown down the gemonian steps (which were close at hand) into the forum, for the people to see.] [footnote : life of cicero, p. .] for the present, however, all went successfully. the boldness of the consul's measures cowed the disaffected, and confirmed the timid and wavering. his colleague antonius--himself by no means to be depended on at this crisis, having but lately formed a coalition with catiline as against cicero in the election for consuls--had, by judicious management, been got away from rome to take the command against the rebel army in etruria. he did not, indeed, engage in the campaign actively in person, having just now a fit of the gout, either real or pretended; but his lieutenant-general was an old soldier who cared chiefly for his duty, and catiline's band--reckless and desperate men who had gathered to his camp from all motives and from all quarters--were at length brought to bay, and died fighting hard to the last. scarcely a man of them, except the slaves and robbers who had swelled their ranks, either escaped or was made prisoner. catiline's body--easily recognised by his remarkable height--was found, still breathing, lying far in advance of his followers, surrounded by the dead bodies of the roman legionaries--for the loss on the side of the republic had been very severe. the last that remained to him of the many noble qualities which had marked his earlier years was a desperate personal courage. for the month that yet remained of his consulship, cicero was the foremost man in rome--and, as a consequence, in the whole world. nobles and commons vied in doing honour to the saviour of the state. catulus and cato--men from whose lips words of honour came with a double weight--saluted him publicly by that memorable title of _pater patriae_; and not only the capital, but most of the provincial towns of italy, voted him some public testimony of his unrivalled services. no man had a more profound appreciation of those services than the great orator himself. it is possible that other men have felt quite as vain of their own exploits, and on far less grounds; but surely no man ever paraded his self-complacency like cicero. his vanity was indeed a thing to marvel at rather than to smile at, because it was the vanity of so able a man. other great men have been either too really great to entertain the feeling, or have been wise enough to keep it to themselves. but to cicero it must have been one of the enjoyments of his life. he harped upon his consulship in season and out of season, in his letters, in his judicial pleadings, in his public speeches (and we may be sure in his conversation), until one would think his friends must have hated the subject even more than his enemies. he wrote accounts of it in prose and verse, in latin and greek--and, no doubt, only limited them to those languages because they were the only ones he knew. the well-known line which provoked the ridicule of critics like juvenal and quintilian, because of the unlucky jingle peculiarly unpleasant to a roman ear: "o fortunatam natam me consule romam!" expresses the sentiment which--rhyme or no rhyme, reason or no reason--he was continually repeating in some form or other to himself and to every one who would listen. his consulship closed in glory; but on his very last day of office there was a warning voice raised amidst the triumph, which might have opened his eyes--perhaps it did--to the troubles which were to come. he stood up in the rostra to make the usual address to the people on laying down his authority. metellus nepos had been newly elected one of the tribunes: it was his office to guard jealously all the rights and privileges of the roman commons. influenced, it is said, by caesar--possibly himself an undiscovered partisan of catiline--he dealt a blow at the retiring consul under cover of a discharge of duty. as cicero was about to speak, he interposed a tribune's 'veto'; no man should be heard, he said, who _had put roman citizens to death without a trial_. there was consternation in the forum. cicero could not dispute what was a perfectly legal exercise of the tribune's power; only, in a few emphatic words which he seized the opportunity of adding to the usual formal oath on quitting office, he protested that his act had saved rome. the people shouted in answer, "thou hast said true!" and cicero went home a private citizen, but with that hearty tribute from his grateful countrymen ringing pleasantly in his ears. but the bitter words of metellus were yet to be echoed by his enemies again and again, until that fickle popular voice took them up, and howled them after the once popular consul. let us follow him for a while into private life; a pleasanter companionship for us, we confess, than the unstable glories of the political arena at rome. in his family and social relations, the great orator wins from us an amount of personal interest and sympathy which he fails sometimes to command in his career as a statesman. at forty-five years of age he has become a very wealthy man--has bought for something like £ , a noble mansion on the palatine hill; and besides the old-fashioned family seat near arpinum--now become his own by his father's death--he has built, or enlarged, or bought as they stood, villas at antium, at formiae, at pompeii, at cumae, at puteoli, and at half-a-dozen other places, besides the one favourite spot of all, which was to him almost what abbotsford was to scott, the home which it was the delight of his life to embellish--his country-house among the pleasant hills of tusculum.[ ] it had once belonged to sulla, and was about twelve miles from rome. in that beloved building and its arrangements he indulged, as an ample purse allowed him, not only a highly-cultivated taste, but in some respects almost a whimsical fancy. "a mere cottage", he himself terms it in one place; but this was when he was deprecating accusations of extravagance which were brought against him, and we all understand something of the pride which in such matters "apes humility". he would have it on the plan of the academia at athens, with its _palaestra_ and open colonnade, where, as he tells us, he could walk and discuss politics or philosophy with his friends. greek taste and design were as fashionable among the romans of that day as the louis quatorze style was with our grandfathers. but its grand feature was a library, and its most valued furniture was books. without books, he said, a house was but a body without a soul. he entertained for these treasures not only the calm love of a reader, but the passion of a bibliophile; he was particular about his bindings, and admired the gay colours of the covers in which the precious manuscripts were kept as well as the more intellectual beauties within. he had clever greek slaves employed from time to time in making copies of all such works as were not to be readily purchased. he could walk across, too, as he tells us, to his neighbour's, the young lucullus, a kind of ward of his, and borrow from the library of that splendid mansion any book he wanted. his friend atticus collected for him everywhere--manuscripts, paintings, statuary; though for sculpture he professes not to care much, except for such subjects as might form appropriate decorations for his _palaestra_ and his library. very pleasant must have been the days spent together by the two friends--so alike in their private tastes and habits, so far apart in their chosen course of life--when they met there in the brief holidays which cicero stole from the law-courts and the forum, and sauntered in the shady walks, or lounged in the cool library, in that home of lettered ease, where the busy lawyer and politician declared that he forgot for a while all the toils and vexations of public life. [footnote : near the modern town of frascati. but there is no certainty as to the site of cicero's villa.] he had his little annoyances, however, even in these happy hours of retirement. morning calls were an infliction to which a country gentleman was liable in ancient italy as in modern england. a man like cicero was very good company, and somewhat of a lion besides; and country neighbours, wherever he set up his rest, insisted on bestowing their tediousness on him. his villa at formiae, his favourite residence next to tusculum, was, he protested, more like a public hall. most of his visitors, indeed, had the consideration not to trouble him after ten or eleven in the forenoon (fashionable calls in those days began uncomfortably early); but there were one or two, especially his next-door neighbour, arrius, and a friend's friend, named sebosus, who were in and out at all hours: the former had an unfortunate taste for philosophical discussion, and was postponing his return to rome (he was good enough to say) from day to day in order to enjoy these long mornings in cicero's conversation. such are the doleful complaints in two or three of the letters to atticus; but, like all such complaints, they were probably only half in earnest: popularity, even at a watering-place, was not very unpleasant, and the writer doubtless knew how to practise the social philosophy which he recommends to others, and took his place cheerfully and pleasantly in the society which he found about him--not despising his honest neighbours because they had not all adorned a consulship or saved a state. there were times when cicero fancied that this rural life, with all its refinements of wealth and taste and literary leisure, was better worth living than the public life of the capital. his friends and his books, he said, were the company most congenial to him; "politics might go to the dogs;" to count the waves as they rolled on the beach was happiness; he "had rather be mayor of antium than consul at rome"; "rather sit in his own library with atticus in their favourite seat under the bust of aristotle than in the curule chair". it is true that these longings for retirement usually followed some political defeat or mortification; that his natural sphere, the only life in which he could be really happy, was in the keen excitement of party warfare--the glorious battle-field of the senate and the forum. the true key-note of his mind is to be found in these words to his friend coelius: "cling to the city, my friend, and live in her light: all employment abroad, as i have felt from my earliest manhood, is obscure and petty for those who have abilities to make them famous at rome". yet the other strain had nothing in it of affectation, or hypocrisy: it was the schoolboy escaped from work, thoroughly enjoying his holiday, and fancying that nothing would be so delightful as to have holidays always. in this, again, there was a similarity between cicero's taste and that of horace. the poet loved his sabine farm and all its rural delights--after his fashion; and perhaps thought honestly that he loved it more than he really did. above all, he loved to write about it. with that fancy, half-real, perhaps, and half-affected, for pastoral simplicity, which has always marked a state of over-luxurious civilisation, he protests to himself that there is nothing like the country. but perhaps horace discharges a sly jest at himself, in a sort of aside to his readers, in the person of alphius, the rich city money-lender, who is made to utter that pretty apostrophe to rural happiness: "happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled, who, living simply, like our sires of old, tills the few acres which his father tilled, vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold". martin's 'horace' and who, after thus expatiating for some stanzas on the charms of the country, calls in all his money one week in order to settle there, and puts it all out again (no doubt at higher interest) the week after. "_o rus, quando to aspiciam_!" has been the cry of public men before and since cicero's day, to whom, as to the great roman, banishment from political life, and condemnation to perpetual leisure, would have been a sentence that would have crushed their very souls. he was very happy at this time in his family. his wife and he loved one another with an honest affection; anything more would have been out of the natural course of things in roman society at any date, and even so much as this was become a notable exception in these later days. it is paying a high honour to the character of cicero and his household--and from all evidence that has come down to us it may be paid with truth--that even in those evil times it might have presented the original of what virgil drew as almost a fancy picture, or one to be realised only in some happy retirement into which the civilised vices of the capital had never penetrated-- "where loving children climb to reach a kiss-- a home of chaste delights and wedded bliss.[ ]" his little daughter, tullia, or tulliola, which was her pet name (the roman diminutives being formed somewhat more elegantly than ours, by adding a syllable instead of cutting short), was the delight of his heart in his earlier letters to atticus he is constantly making some affectionate mention of her--sending her love, or some playful message which his friend would understand. she had been happily married (though she was then but thirteen at the most) the year before his consulship; but the affectionate intercourse between father and daughter was never interrupted until her early death. his only son, marcus, born after a considerable interval, who succeeded to tullia's place as a household pet, is made also occasionally to send some childish word of remembrance to his father's old friend: "cicero the little sends his compliments to titus the athenian"--"cicero the philosopher salutes titus the politician.[ ]" these messages are written in greek at the end of the letters. abeken thinks that in the originals they might have been added in the little cicero's own hand, "to show that he had begun greek;" "a conjecture", says mr. merivale, "too pleasant not to be readily admitted". the boy gave his father some trouble in after life. he served with some credit as an officer of cavalry under pompey in greece, or at least got into no trouble there. some years after, he wished to take service in spain, under caesar, against the sons of pompey; but the father did not approve of this change of side. he persuaded him to go to athens to study instead, allowing him what both atticus and himself thought a very liberal income--not sufficient, however, for him to keep a horse, which cicero held to be an unnecessary luxury. probably the young cavalry officer might not have been of the same opinion; at any rate, he got into more trouble among the philosophers than he did in the army. he spent a great deal more than his allowance, and one of the professors, whose lectures he attended, had the credit of helping him to spend it. the young man must have shared the kindly disposition of his father. he wrote a confidential letter to tiro, the old family servant, showing very good feeling, and promising reformation. it is doubtful how far the promise was kept. he rose, however, subsequently to place and power under augustus, but died without issue; and, so far at least as history knows them, the line of the ciceros was extinct. it had flashed into fame with the great orator, and died out with him. [footnote : "interia dulces pendent circum oscula nati; casta pudicitiam servat domus".--georg. ii. .] [footnote : see 'letters to atticus', ii. , ; merivale's translation of abeken's 'cicero in seinen briefen', p. .] all cicero's biographers have found considerable difficulty in tracing, at all satisfactorily, the sources of the magnificent fortune which must have been required to keep up, and to embellish in accordance with so luxurious a taste, so many residences in all parts of the country. true, these expenses often led cicero into debt and difficulties; but what he borrowed from his friends he seems always to have repaid, so that the money must have come in from some quarter or other. his patrimony at arpinum would not appear to have been large; he got only some £ or £ dowry with terentia; and we find no hint of his making money by any commercial speculations, as some roman gentlemen did. on the other hand, it is the barest justice to him to say that his hands were clean from those ill-gotten gains which made the fortunes of many of the wealthiest public men at rome, who were criminals in only a less degree than verres--peculation, extortion, and downright robbery in the unfortunate provinces which they were sent out to govern. such opportunities lay as ready to his grasp as to other men's, but he steadily eschewed them. his declining the tempting prize of a provincial government, which was his right on the expiration of his praetorship, may fairly be attributed to his having in view the higher object of the consulship, to secure which, by an early and persistent canvass, he felt it necessary to remain in rome. but he again waived the right when his consulship was over; and when, some years afterwards, he went unwillingly as pro-consul to cilicia, his administration there, as before in his lower office in sicily, was marked by a probity and honesty quite exceptional in a roman governor. his emoluments, confined strictly within the legal bounds, would be only moderate, and, whatever they were, came too late in his life to be any explanation of his earlier expenditure. he received many valuable legacies, at different times, from personal friends or grateful clients who died childless (be it remembered how the barrenness of the marriage union had become then, at rome, as it is said to be in some countries now, the reproach of a sensual and effete aristocracy); he boasts himself, in one of his 'philippics', that he had received from this source above £ , . mr. forsyth also notices the large presents that were made by foreign kings and states to conciliate the support and advocacy of the leading men at rome--"we can hardly call them bribes, for in many cases the relation of patron and client was avowedly established between a foreign state and some influential roman: and it became his duty, as of course it was his interest, to defend it in the senate and before the people". in this way, he thinks, cicero held "retainers" from dyrrachium; and, he might have added, from sicily. the great orator's own boast was, that he never took anything for his services as an advocate; and, indeed, such payments were forbidden by law.[ ] but with all respect for cicero's material honesty, one learns from his letters, unfortunately, not to put implicit confidence in him when he is in a boasting vein; and he might not look upon voluntary gifts, after a cause was decided, in the light of payment. paetus, one of his clients, gave him a valuable library of books; and one cannot believe that this was a solitary instance of the quiet evasion of the cincian law, or that there were not other transactions of the same nature which never found their way into any letter of cicero's that was likely to come down to us. [footnote : the principle passed, like so many others, from the old roman law into our own, so that to this very day, a barrister's fees, being considered in the nature of an _honorarium_, or voluntary present made to him for his services, are not recoverable by law.] chapter iv. his exile and return. we must return to rome. cicero had never left it but for his short occasional holiday. though no longer in office, the ex-consul was still one of the foremost public men, and his late dignity gave him important precedence in the senate. he was soon to be brought into contact, and more or less into opposition, with the two great chiefs of parties in whose feuds he became at length so fatally involved. pompey and caesar were both gradually becoming formidable, and both had ambitious plans of their own, totally inconsistent with any remnant of republican liberty--plans which cicero more or less suspected, and of that suspicion they were probably both aware. both, by their successful campaigns, had not only acquired fame and honours, but a far more dangerous influence--an influence which was to overwhelm all others hereafter--in the affection of their legions. pompey was still absent in spain, but soon to return from his long war against mithridates, to enjoy the most splendid triumph ever seen at rome, and to take the lead of the oligarchical party just so long and so far as they would help him to the power he coveted. the enemies whom cicero had made by his strong measures in the matter of the catilinarian conspiracy now took advantage of pompey's name and popularity to make an attack upon him. the tribune metellus, constant to his old party watchword, moved in the senate that the successful general, upon whom all expectations were centred, should be recalled to rome with his army "to restore the violated constitution". all knew against whom the motion was aimed, and what the violation of the constitution meant; it was the putting citizens to death without a trial. the measure was not passed, though caesar, jealous of cicero even more than of pompey, lent himself to the attempt. but the blow fell on cicero at last from a very different quarter, and from the mere private grudge of a determined and unprincipled man. publius clodius, a young man of noble family, once a friend and supporter of cicero against catiline, but who had already made himself notorious for the most abandoned profligacy, was detected, in a woman's dress, at the celebration of the rites of the bona dea--a kind of religious freemasonry amongst the roman ladies, the mysteries of which are very little known, and probably would in any case be best left without explanation. but for a man to have been present at them was a sacrilege hitherto unheard of, and which was held to lay the whole city under the just wrath of the offended goddess. the celebration had been held in the house of caesar, as praetor, under the presidency of his wife pompeia; and it was said that the object of the young profligate was an intrigue with that lady. the circumstances are not favourable to the suspicion; but caesar divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark that "caesar's wife must not be even suspected". for this crime--unpardonable even in that corrupt society, when crimes of far deeper dye passed almost unreproved--clodius was, after some delay, brought to public trial. the defence set up was an _alibi_, and cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it: he had met and spoken with clodius in rome that very evening. the evidence was clear enough, but the jury had been tampered with by clodius and his friends; liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought to bear upon the majority of them, and he escaped conviction by a few votes. but he never forgave the part which cicero had taken against him; and from that time forth the latter found a new, unscrupulous, indefatigable enemy, of whose services his old opponents gladly availed themselves. cicero himself for some time underrated this new danger. he lost no opportunity of taunting the unconvicted criminal in the bitterest terms in the senate, and of exchanging with him--very much to the detriment of his own character and dignity, in our modern eyes--the coarsest jests when they met in the street. but the temptation to a jest, of whatever kind, was always irresistible to cicero: it was a weakness for which he more than once paid dearly, for they were remembered against him when be had forgotten them. meanwhile clodius--a sort of milder catiline, not without many popular qualities--had got himself elected tribune; degrading himself formally from his own order of nobles for that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the commons. the powers of the office were formidable for all purposes of obstruction and attack; clodius had taken pains to ingratiate himself with all classes; and the consuls of the year were men of infamous character, for whom he had, found a successful means of bribery by the promise of getting a special law passed to secure them the choice of the richest provincial governments--those coveted fields of plunder--of which they would otherwise have had to take their chance by lot. when all was ripe for his revenge, he brought before the people in full assembly the following bill of pains and penalties:--"be it enacted, that whoever has put to death a roman citizen uncondemned in due form of trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water". such was the legal form of words which implied banishment from rome, outlawry, and social excommunication. every man knew against whom the motion was levelled. it was carried--carried in spite of the indignation of all honest men in rome, in spite of all cicero's humiliating efforts to obtain its rejection. it was in vain that he put on mourning, as was the custom with those who were impeached of public crimes, and went about the streets thus silently imploring the pity of his fellow-citizens. in vain the whole of his own equestrian order, and in fact, as he declares, "all honest men" (it was his favourite term for men of his own party); adopted the same dress to show their sympathy, and twenty thousand youths of good family--all in mourning--accompanied him through the city. the senate even met and passed a resolution that their whole house should put on mourning too. but gabinius, one of the consuls, at once called a public meeting, and warned the people not to make the mistake of thinking that the senate was rome. in vain, also, was any personal appeal which cicero could make to the only two men who might have had influence enough to sway the popular vote. he was ostensibly on good terms both with pompey and caesar; in fact, he made it his policy so to be. he foresaw that on their future course would probably depend the fate of rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps honestly, that he could make them "better citizens". but he trusted neither; and both saw in him an obstacle to their own ambition. caesar now looked on coldly, not altogether sorry at the turn which affairs had taken, and faintly suggested that perhaps some "milder measure" might serve to meet the case. from pompey cicero had a right to look for some active support; indeed, such had been promised in case of need. he threw himself at his feet with prayers and tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain; and he anticipated the execution of that disgraceful edict by a voluntary withdrawal into exile. piso, one of the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he might "save rome" a second time. his property was at once confiscated; his villas at tusculum and at formiae were plundered and laid waste, the consuls claiming the lion's share of the spoil; and clodius, with his armed mob, set fire to the noble house on the palatine, razed it to the ground, and erected on the site a temple to--_liberty_! cicero had friends who strongly urged him to defy the edict; to remain at rome, and call on all good citizens to arm in his defence. modern historians very generally have assumed that, if he could have made up his mind to such a course, it would probably have been successful. he was to rely, we suppose, upon those "twenty thousand roman youths "--rather a broken reed to trust to (remembering what those young gallants were), with caesar against him, now at the head of his legions just outside the gates of rome. he himself seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest and most business-like manner; though, with our modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has more of the ludicrous than the sublime. the sensible and practical atticus convinced him that such a solution of his difficulties would be the greatest possible mistake--a mistake, moreover, which could never be rectified. but almost any course would have become him better than that which he chose. had he remained and faced clodius and his bravos manfully--or had he turned his back upon rome for ever, and shaken the dust off his feet against the ungrateful city, and become a noble pensioner upon atticus at buthrotum--he would have died a greater man. he wandered from place to place sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyalty marks their names with honour in that false and evil generation--sica, and flaccus, and plancius--bemoaning himself like a woman,--"too blinded with tears to write", "loathing the light of day". atticus thought he was going mad. it is not pleasant to dwell upon this miserable weakness of a great mind, which cicero's most eager eulogists admit, and which his detractors have not failed to make the most of. nor is it easy to find excuse for him, but we will give him all the benefit of mr. forsyth's defence: "seldom has misfortune so crushed a noble spirit, and never, perhaps, has the 'bitter bread of banishment' seemed more bitter to any one than to him. we must remember that the love of country was a passion with the ancients to a degree which it is now difficult to realise, and exile from it even for a time was felt to be an intolerable evil. the nearest approach to such a feeling was perhaps that of some favourite under an european monarchy, when, frowned upon by his sovereign, he was hurled from place and power, and banished from the court. the change to cicero was indeed tremendous. not only was he an exile from rome, the scene of all his hopes, his glories, his triumphs, but he was under the ban of an outlaw. if found within a certain distance from the capital, he must die, and it was death to any one to give him food or shelter. his property was destroyed, his family was penniless, and the people whom he had so faithfully served were the authors of his ruin. all this may be urged in his behalf, but still it would have been only consistent with roman fortitude to have shown that he possessed something of the spirit of the fallen archangel".[ ] [footnote : forsyth's life of cicero, p. .] his exile lasted nearly a year and a half. long before that time there had come a reaction in his favour. the new consuls were well disposed towards him; clodius's insolence had already disgusted pompey; caesar was absent with his legions in gaul; his own friends, who had all along been active in his favour (though in his querulous mood he accused them of apathy) took advantage of the change, his generous rival hortensius being amongst the most active; and all the frantic violence of clodius and his party served only to delay for a while the return which they could not prevent. a motion for his recall was carried at last by an immense majority. cicero had one remarkable ally on that occasion. on one of the days when the senate was known to be discussing his recall, the 'andromache' of ennius was being played in the theatre. the popular actor esop, whose name has come down to us in conjunction with that of roscius, was playing the principal character. the great orator had been his pupil, and was evidently regarded by him as a personal friend. with all the force of his consummate art, he threw into andromache's lament for her absent father his own feelings for cicero. the words in the part were strikingly appropriate, and he did not hesitate to insert a phrase or two of his own when he came to speak of the man "who with a constant mind upheld the state, stood on the people's side in perilous times, ne'er reeked of his own life, nor spared himself". so significant and empathetic were his tone and gesture as he addressed himself pointedly to his roman audience, that they recalled him, and, amid a storm of plaudits, made him repeat the passage. he added to it the words--which were not set down for him-- "best of all friends in direst strait of war!" and the applause was redoubled. the actor drew courage from his success. when, as the play went on, he came to speak the words-- "and you--you let him live a banished man-- see him driven forth and hunted from your gates!" he pointed to the nobles, knights, and commons, as they sat in their respective seats in the crowded rows before him, his own voice broke with grief, and the tears even more than the applause of the whole audience bore witness alike to their feelings towards the exile, and the dramatic power of the actor. "he pleaded my cause before the roman people", says cicero (for it is he that tells the story), "with far more weight of eloquence than i could have pleaded for myself".[ ] [footnote : defence of sestius, c. , &c.] he had been visited with a remarkable dream, while staying with one of his friends in italy, during the earlier days of his exile, which he now recalled with some interest. he tells us this story also himself, though he puts it into the mouth of another speaker, in his dialogue on "divination". if few were so fond of introducing personal anecdotes into every place where he could find room for them, fewer still could tell them so well. "i had lain awake a great part of the night, and at last towards dawn had begun to sleep soundly and heavily. i had given orders to my attendant that, in this case, though we had to start that very morning, strict silence should be kept, and that i was on no account to be disturbed; when about seven o'clock i awoke, and told him my dream. i thought i was wandering alone in some solitary place, when caius marius appeared to me, with his fasces bound with laurel, and asked why i was so sad? and when i answered that i had been driven from my country, he caught my hand, bade me be of good cheer, and put me under the guidance of his own lictor to lead me to his monument; there, he said, i should find my deliverance". so indeed it had turned out. the temple dedicated to honour and virtue, in which the senate sat when they passed the first resolution for cicero's recall, was known as the "monument of marius". there is no need to doubt the perfect good faith of the story which he tells, and it may be set down as one of the earliest authenticated instances of a dream coming true. but if dreams are fashioned out of our waking imaginations, it is easy to believe that the fortunes of his great townsman marius, and the scenes in the senate at rome, were continually present to the exile's thoughts. his return was a triumphal progress. he landed at brundusium on his daughter's birthday. she had only just lost her husband piso, who had gallantly maintained her father's cause throughout, but she was the first to welcome him with tears of joy which overmastered her sorrow. he was careful to lose no chance of making his return impressive. he took his way to rome with the slow march of a conqueror. the journey which horace made easily in twelve days, occupied cicero twenty-four. but he chose not the shortest but the most public route, through naples, capua, minturnae, terracina, and aricia. let him tell the story of his own reception. if he tells it (as he does more than once) with an undisguised pride, it is a pride with which it is impossible not to sympathise. he boasted afterwards that he had been "carried back to rome on the shoulders of italy;" and plutarch says it was a boast he had good right to make. "who does not know what my return home was like? how the people of brundusium held out to me, as i might say, the right hand of welcome on behalf of all my native land? from thence to rome my progress was like a march of all italy. there was no district, no town, corporation, or colony, from which a public deputation was not sent to congratulate me. why need i speak of my arrival at each place? how the people crowded the streets in the towns; how they flocked in from the country--fathers of families with wives and children? how can i describe those days, when all kept holiday, as though it were some high festival of the immortal gods, in joy for my safe return? that single day was to me like immortality; when i returned to my own city, when i saw the senate and the population of all ranks come forth to greet me, when rome herself looked as though she had wrenched herself from her foundations to rush to embrace her preserver. for she received me in such sort, that not only all sexes, ages, and callings, men and women, of every rank and degree, but even the very walls, the houses, the temples, seemed to share the universal joy". the senate in a body came out to receive him on the appian road; a gilded chariot waited for him at the city gates; the lower class of citizens crowded the steps of the temples to see him as he passed; and so he rode, escorted by troops of friends, more than a conqueror, to the capitol. his exultation was naturally as intense as his despair had been. he made two of his most florid speeches (if indeed they be his, which is doubtful), one in the senate and another to the people assembled in the forum, in which he congratulated himself on his return, and rome on having regained her most illustrious citizen. it is a curious note of the temper and logical capacities of the mob, in all ages of the world alike, that within a few hours of their applauding to the echo this speech of cicero's, clodius succeeded in exciting them to a serious riot by appealing to the ruinous price of corn as one of the results of the exile's return. for nearly four years more, though unable to shake cicero's recovered position in the state--for he was now supported by pompey--clodius and his partisans, backed by a strong force of trained gladiators in their pay, kept rome in a state of anarchy which is almost inexplicable. it was more than suspected that crassus, now utterly estranged from pompey, supplied out of his enormous wealth the means of keeping on foot this lawless agitation. elections were overawed, meetings of the senate interrupted, assassinations threatened and attempted. already men began to look to military rule, and to think a good cause none the worse for being backed by "strong battalions". things were fast tending to the point where pompey and caesar, trusty allies as yet in profession and appearance, deadly rivals at heart, hoped to step in with their veteran legions. even cicero, the man of peace and constitutional statesman, felt comfort in the thought that this final argument could be resorted to by his own party. but clodius's mob-government, at any rate, was to be put an end to somewhat suddenly. milo, now one of the candidates for the consulship, a man of determined and unscrupulous character, had turned his own weapons against him, and maintained an opposition patrol of hired gladiators and wild-beast fighters. the senate quite approved, if they did not openly sanction, this irregular championship of their order. the two parties walked the streets of rome like the capulets and montagues at verona; and it was said that milo had been heard to swear that he would rid the city of clodius if he ever got the chance. it came at last, in a casual meeting on the appian road, near bovillae. a scuffle began between their retainers, and clodius was killed--his friends said, murdered. the excitement at rome was intense: the dead body was carried and laid publicly on the rostra. riots ensued; milo was obliged to fly, and renounce his hopes of power; and the senate, intimidated, named pompey--not indeed "dictator", for the name had become almost as hateful as that of king--but sole consul, for the safety of the state. cicero had resumed his practice as an advocate, and was now called upon to defend milo. but pompey, either from some private grudge, or in order to win favour with the populace, determined that milo should be convicted. the jury were overawed by his presence in person at the trial, and by the occupation by armed soldiers of all the avenues of the court under colour of keeping order. it was really as great an outrage upon the free administration of justice as the presence of a regiment of soldiers at the entrance to westminster hall would be at a modern trial for high treason or sedition. cicero affected to see in pompey's legionaries nothing more than the maintainers of the peace of the city. but he knew better; and the fine passage in the opening of his speech for the defence, as it has come down to us, is at once a magnificent piece of irony, and a vindication of the rights of counsel. "although i am conscious, gentlemen, that it is a disgrace to me to show fear when i stand here to plead in behalf of one of the bravest of men;--and especially does such weakness ill become me, that when milo himself is far more anxious about the safety of the state than about his own, i should be unable to bring to his defence the like magnanimous spirit;--yet this strange scene and strangely constituted court does terrify my eyes, for, turn them where i will, i look in vain for the ancient customs of the forum, and the old style of public trials. for your tribunal to-day is girt with no such audience as was wont; this is no ordinary crowd that hems us in. yon guards whom you see on duty in front of all the temples, though set to prevent violence, yet still do a sort of violence to the pleader; since in the forum and the count of justice, though the military force which surrounds us be wholesome and needful, yet we cannot even be thus freed from apprehension without looking with some apprehension on the means. and if i thought they were set there in hostile array against milo, i would yield to circumstances, gentlemen, and feel there was no room for the pleader amidst such a display of weapons. but i am encouraged by the advice of a man of great wisdom and justice--of pompey, who surely would not think it compatible with that justice, after committing a prisoner to the verdict of a jury, then to hand him over to the swords of his soldiers; nor consonant with his wisdom to arm the violent passions of a mob with the authority of the state. therefore those weapons, those officers and men, proclaim to us not peril but protection; they encourage us to be not only undisturbed but confident; they promise me not only support in pleading for the defence, but silence for it to be listened to. as to the rest of the audience, so far as it is composed of peaceful citizens, all, i know, are on our side; nor is there any single man among all those crowds whom you see occupying every point from which a glimpse of this court can be gained, looking on in anxious expectation of the result of this trial, who, while he approves the boldness of the defendant, does not also feel that the fate of himself, his children, and his country, hangs upon the issue of to-day". after an elaborate argument to prove that the slaying of clodius by milo was in self-defence, or, at the worst, that it was a fate which he well deserved as a public enemy, he closes his speech with a peroration, the pathos of which has always been admired: "i would it had been the will of heaven--if i may say so with all reverence for my country, for i fear lest my duty to my client may make me say what is disloyal towards her--i would that publius clodius were not only alive, but that he were praetor, consul, dictator even, before my eyes had seen this sight! but what says milo? he speaks like a brave man, and a man whom it is your duty to protect--'not so--by no means', says he. 'clodius has met the doom he well deserved: i am ready, if it must be so, to meet that which i do not deserve'. ... but i must stop; i can no longer speak for tears; and tears are an argument which he would scorn for his defence. i entreat you, i adjure you, ye who sit here in judgment, that in your verdict you dare to give utterance to what i know you feel". but the appeal was in vain, or rather, as far as we can ascertain, was never made,--at least in such powerful terms as those in which we read it. the great advocate was wholly unmanned by the scene before him, grew nervous, and broke down utterly in his speech for the defence. this presence of a military force under the orders of pompey--the man in whom he saw, as he hoped, the good genius of rome--overawed and disturbed him. the speech which we read is almost certainly not that which he delivered, but, as in the previous case of verres, the finished and elaborate composition of his calmer hours. milo was convicted by a large majority; in fact, there can be little doubt but that he was legally guilty, however political expediency might, in the eyes of cicero and his party, have justified his deed. cato sat on the jury, and did all he could to insure an acquittal, showing openly his voting-paper to his fellow jurors, with that scorn of the "liberty of silence" which he shared with cicero. milo escaped any worse penalty by at once going into voluntary banishment at marseilles. but he showed more practical philosophy than his advocate; for when he read the speech in his exile, he is said to have declared that "it was fortunate for him it was not spoken, or he should never have known the flavour of the red mullet of marseilles". the removal of clodius was a deliverance upon which cicero never ceased to congratulate himself. that "battle of bovillae", as he terms it, became an era in his mental records of only less significance than his consulship. his own public life continued to be honourable and successful. he was elected into the college of augurs, an honour which he had long coveted; and he was appointed to the government of cilicia. this latter was a greatness literally "thrust upon him", and which he would gladly have declined, for it took him away in these eventful days from his beloved rome; and to these grand opportunities for enriching himself he was, as has been said, honourably indifferent. the appointment to a distant province was, in fact, to a man like cicero, little better than an honourable form of exile: it was like conferring on a man who had been, and might hope one day to be again, prime minister of england, the governor-generalship of bombay. one consolation he found on reaching his new government--that even in the farthest wilds of cilicia there were people who had heard of "the consul who saved rome". and again the astonished provincials marvelled at a governor who looked upon them as having rights of their own, and neither robbed nor ill-used them. he made a little war, too, upon some troublesome hill-tribes (intrusting the command chiefly to his brother quintus, who had served with distinction under caesar in gaul), and gained a victory which his legions thought of sufficient importance to salute him with the honoured title of "imperator". such military honours are especially flattering to men who, like cicero, are naturally and essentially civilians; and to cicero's vanity they were doubly delightful. unluckily they led him to entertain hopes of the further glory of a triumph; and this, but for the revolution which followed, he might possibly have obtained. as it was, the only result was his parading about with him everywhere, from town to town, for months after his return, the lictors with laurelled fasces, which betokened that a triumph was claimed--a pompous incumbrance, which became, as he confessed, a grand subject for evil-disposed jesters, and a considerable inconvenience to himself. chapter v. cicero and caesar. the future master of rome was now coming home, after nearly ten years' absence, at the head of the victorious legions with which he had struck terror into the germans, overrun all spain, left his mark upon britain, and "pacified" gaul. but cicero, in common with most of the senatorial party, failed to see in julius caesar the great man that he was. he hesitated a little--caesar would gladly have had his support, and made him fair offers; but when the rubicon was crossed, he threw in his lot with pompey. he was certainly influenced in part by personal attachment: pompey seems to have exercised a degree of fascination over his weakness. he knew pompey's indecision of character, and confessed that caesar was "a prodigy of energy;" but though the former showed little liking for him, he clung to him nevertheless. he foreboded that, let the contest end which way it would, "the result would certainly be a despotism". he foresaw that pompey's real designs were as dangerous to the liberties of rome as any of which caesar could be suspected. "_sullaturit animus_", he says of him in one of his letters, coining a verb to put his idea strongly--"he wants to be like sulla". and it was no more than the truth. he found out afterwards, as he tells atticus, that proscription-lists of all caesar's adherents had been prepared by pompey and his partisans, and that his old friend's name figured as one of the victims. only this makes it possible to forgive him for the little feeling that he showed when he heard of pompey's own miserable end. cicero's conduct and motives at this eventful crisis have been discussed over and over again. it may be questioned whether at this date we are in any position to pass more than a very cautious and general judgment upon them. we want all the "state papers" and political correspondence of the day--not cicero's letters only, but those of caesar and pompey and lentulus, and much information besides that was never trusted to pen or paper--in order to lay down with any accuracy the course which a really unselfish patriot could have taken. but there seems little reason to accuse cicero of double-dealing or trimming in the worst sense. his policy was unquestionably, from first to last, a policy of expedients. but expediency is, and must be more or less, the watchword of a statesman. if he would practically serve his country, he must do to some extent what cicero professed to do--make friends with those in power. "_sic vivitur_"--"so goes the world;" "_tempori serviendum est_"--"we must bend to circumstances"--these are not the noblest mottoes, but they are acted upon continually by the most respectable men in public and private life, who do not open their hearts to their friends so unreservedly as cicero does to his friend atticus. it seemed to him a choice between pompey and caesar; and he probably hoped to be able so far to influence the former, as to preserve some shadow of a constitution for rome. what he saw in those "dregs of a republic",[ ] as he himself calls it, that was worth preserving;--how any honest despotism could seem to him more to be dreaded than that prostituted liberty,--this is harder to comprehend. the remark of abeken seems to go very near the truth--"his devotion to the commonwealth was grounded not so much upon his conviction of its actual merits, as of its fitness for the display of his own abilities". [footnote : "faex romuli".] but that commonwealth was past saving even in name. within two months of his having been declared a public enemy, all italy was at caesar's feet. before another year was past, the battle of pharsalia had been fought, and the great pompey lay a headless corpse on the sea-shore in egypt. it was suggested to cicero, who had hitherto remained constant to the fortunes of his party, and was then in their camp at dyrrachium, that he should take the chief command, but he had the sense to decline; and though men called him "traitor", and drew their swords upon him, he withdrew from a cause which he saw was lost, and returned to italy, though not to rome. the meeting between him and caesar, which came at last, set at rest any personal apprehensions from that quarter. cicero does not appear to have made any dishonourable submission, and the conqueror's behaviour was nobly forgetful of the past. they gradually became on almost friendly terms. the orator paid the dictator compliments in the senate, and found that, in private society, his favourite jokes were repeated to the great man, and were highly appreciated. with such little successes he was obliged now to be content. he had again taken up his residence in rome; but his political occupation was gone, and his active mind had leisure to employ itself in some of his literary works. it was at this time that the blow fell upon him which prostrated him for the time, as his exile had done, and under which he claims our far more natural sympathy. his dear daughter tullia--again married, but unhappily, and just divorced--died at his tusculan villa. their loving intercourse had undergone no change from her childhood, and his grief was for a while inconsolable. he shut himself up for thirty days. the letters of condolence from well-meaning friends were to him--as they so often are--as the speeches of the three comforters to job. he turned in vain, as he pathetically says, to philosophy for consolation. it was at this time that he wrote two of his philosophical treatises, known to us as 'the true ends of life',[ ] and the 'tusculan disputations', of which more will be said hereafter. in this latter, which he named from his favourite country-house, he addressed himself to the subjects which suited best with his own sorrowful mood under his recent bereavement. how men might learn to shake off the terrors of death--nay, to look upon it rather as a release from pain and evil; how pain, mental and bodily, may best be borne; how we may moderate our passions; and, lastly, whether the practice of virtue be not all-sufficient for our happiness. [footnote : 'de finibus bonorum et malorum'--a title hard to translate.] a philosopher does not always find in himself a ready pupil. it was hardly so in cicero's case. his arguments were incontrovertible; but he found them fail him sadly in their practical application to life. he never could shake off from himself that dread of death which he felt in a degree unusually vivid for a roman. he sought his own happiness afterwards, as he had done before, rather in the exciting struggle of public life than in the special cultivation of any form of virtue; and he did not even find the remedy for his present domestic sorrow in any of those general moral reflections which philosophy, christian as well as pagan, is so ready to produce upon such occasions; which are all so undeniable, and all so utterly unendurable to the mourner. cicero found his consolation, or that diversion of thought which so mercifully serves the purpose of consolation, where most men of active minds like his seek for it and find it--in hard work. the literary effort of writing and completing the works which have been just mentioned probably did more to soothe his mind than all the arguments which they contained. he resumed his practice as an advocate so far as to plead a cause before caesar, now ruling as dictator at rome--the last cause, as events happened, that he was ever to plead. it was a cause of no great importance--a defence of deiotarus, titulary king of armenia, who was accused of having entertained designs against the life of caesar while entertaining him as a guest in his palace. the dictator reserved his judgment until he should have made his campaign against the parthians. that more convenient season never came: for before the spring campaign could open, the fatal "ides of march" cut short caesar's triumphs and his life. chapter vi. cicero and antony. it remained for cicero yet to take a part in one more great national struggle--the last for rome and for himself. no doubt there was some grandeur in the cause which he once more so vigorously espoused--the recovery of the liberties of rome. but all the thunders of cicero's eloquence, and all the admiration of modern historians and poets, fail to enlist our hearty sympathies with the assassins of caesar. that "consecration of the dagger" to the cause of liberty has been the fruitful parent of too much evil ever since to make its use anything but hateful. that cicero was among the actual conspirators is probably not true, though his enemies strongly asserted it. but at least he gloried in the deed when done, and was eager to claim all the honours of a tyrannicide. nay, he went farther than the actual conspirators, in words at least; it is curious to find him so careful to disclaim complicity in the act. "would that you had invited me to that banquet on the ides of march! there would then have been no leavings from the feast",--he writes to cassius. he would have had their daggers turned on antony, at all events, as well as on caesar. he wishes that "the gods may damn caesar after he is dead;" professing on this occasion a belief in a future retribution, on which at other times he was sceptical. it is but right to remember all this, when the popular tide turned, and he himself came to be denounced to political vengeance. the levity with which he continually speaks of the assassination of caesar--a man who had never treated _him_, at any rate, with anything but a noble forbearance--is a blot on cicero's character which his warmest apologists admit. the bloody deed in the capitol was done--a deed which was to turn out almost what goethe called it--"the most absurd that ever was committed". the great dictator who lay there alone, a "bleeding piece of earth", deserted by the very men who had sought of late to crown him, was perhaps rome's fittest master; certainly not the worst of the many with whom a personal ambition took the place of principle. three slaves took up the dead body of their master, and carried it home to his house. poor wretches! they knew nothing about liberty or the constitution; they had little to hope, and probably little to fear; they had only a humble duty to do, and did it. but when we read of them, and of that freedman who, not long before, sat by the dead body of pompey till he could scrape together wreck from the shore to light some sort of poor funeral-pile, we return with a shudder of disgust to those "noble romans" who occupy at this time the foreground of history. caesar had been removed, but it is plain that brutus and cassius and their party had neither the ability nor the energy to make any real use of their bloody triumph. cicero soon lost all hope of seeing in them the liberators of his country, or of being able to guide himself the revolution which he hoped he had seen begun. "we have been freed", he writes to atticus, "but we are not free". "we have struck down the tyrant, but the tyranny survives". antony, in fact, had taken the place of caesar as master of rome--a change in all respects for the worse. he had surrounded himself with guards; had obtained authority from the senate to carry out all decrees and orders left by the late dictator; and when he could not find, amongst caesar's memoranda, materials to serve his purpose, he did not hesitate to forge them. cicero had no power, and might be in personal danger, for antony knew his sentiments as to state matters generally, and more particularly towards himself. rome was no longer any place for him, and he soon left it--this time a voluntary exile. he wandered from place to place, and tried as before to find interest and consolation in philosophy. it was now that he wrote his charming essays on 'friendship' and on 'old age', and completed his work 'on the nature of the gods', and that on 'divination'. his treatise 'de officiis' (a kind of pagan 'whole duty of man') is also of this date, as well as some smaller philosophical works which have been lost. he professed himself hopeless of his country's future, and disgusted with political life, and spoke of going to end his days at athens. but, as before and always, his heart was in the forum at rome. political life was really the only atmosphere in which he felt himself breathe vigorously. unquestionably he had also an earnest patriotism, which would have drawn him back to his country's side at any time when he believed that she had need of his help. he was told that he was needed there now; that there was a prospect of matters going better for the cause of liberty; that antony was coming to terms of some kind with the party of brutus,--and he returned. for a short while these latter days brought with them a gleam of triumph almost as bright as that which had marked the overthrow of catiline's conspiracy. again, on his arrival at rome, crowds rushed to meet him with compliments and congratulations, as they had done some thirteen years before. and in so far as his last days were spent in resisting to the utmost the basest of all rome's bad men, they were to him greater than any triumph. thenceforth it was a fight to the death between him and antony; so long as antony lived, there could be no liberty for rome. cicero left it to his enemy to make the first attack. it soon came. two days after his return, antony spoke vehemently in the senate against him, on the occasion of moving a resolution to the effect that divine honours should be paid to caesar. cicero had purposely stayed away, pleading fatigue after his journey; really, because such a proposition was odious to him. antony denounced him as a coward and a traitor, and threatened to send men to pull down his house about his head--that house which had once before been pulled down, and rebuilt for him by his remorseful fellow-citizens. cicero went down to the senate the following day, and there delivered a well-prepared speech, the first of those fourteen which are known to us as his 'philippics'--a name which he seems first to have given to them in jest, in remembrance of those which his favourite model demosthenes had delivered at athens against philip of macedon. he defended his own conduct, reviewed in strong but moderate terms the whole policy of antony, and warned him--still ostensibly as a friend--against the fate of caesar. the speaker was not unconscious what his own might possibly be. "i have already, senators, reaped fruit enough from my return home, in that i have had the opportunity to speak words which, whatever may betide, will remain in evidence of my constancy in my duty, and you have listened to me with much kindness and attention. and this privilege i will use so often as i may without peril to you and to myself; when i cannot, i will be careful of myself, not so much for my own sake as for the sake of my country. for me, the life that i have lived seems already well-nigh long enough, whether i look at my years or my honours; what little span may yet be added to it should be your gain and the state's far more than my own". antony was not in the house when cicero spoke; he had gone down to his villa at tibur. there he remained for a fortnight, brooding over his reply--taking lessons, it was said, from professors in the art of rhetorical self-defence. at last he came to rome and answered his opponent. his speech has not reached us; but we know that it contained the old charges of having put roman citizens to death without trial in the case of the abettors of catiline, and of having instigated milo to the assassination of clodias. antony added a new charge--that of complicity with the murderers of caesar. above all, he laughed at cicero's old attempts as a poet; a mode of attack which, if not so alarming, was at least as irritating as the rest. cicero was not present--he dreaded personal violence; for antony, like pompey at the trial of milo, had planted an armed guard of his own men outside and inside the senate-house. before cicero had nerved himself to reply, antony had left rome to put himself at the head of his legions, and the two never met again. the reply, when it came, was the terrible second philippic; never spoken, however, but only handed about in manuscript to admiring friends. there is little doubt, as mr. long observes, that antony had also some friend kind enough to send him a copy; and if we may trust the roman poet juvenal, who is at least as likely to have been well informed upon the subject as any modern historian, this composition eventually cost the orator his life. it is not difficult to understand the bitter vindictiveness of antony. cicero had been not merely a political opponent; he had attacked his private character (which presented abundant grounds for such attack) with all the venom of his eloquence. he had said, indeed, in the first of these powerful orations, that he had never taken this line. "if i have abused his private life and character, i have no right to complain if he is my enemy: but if i have only followed my usual custom, which i have ever maintained in public life,--i mean, if i have only spoken my opinion on public questions freely,--then, in the first place, i protest against his being angry with me at all: or, if this be too much to expect, i demand that he should be angry with me only as with a fellow-citizen". if there had been any sort of reticence on this point hitherto on the part of cicero, he made up for it in this second speech. nothing can equal its bitter personality, except perhaps its rhetorical power. he begins the attack by declaring that he will not tell all he knows--"in order that, if we have to do battle again hereafter, i may come always fresh-armed to the attack; an advantage which the multiplicity of that man's crimes and vices gives me in large measure". then he proceeds: "would you like us, then, to examine into your course of life from boyhood? i conclude you would. do you remember that before you put on the robe of manhood, you were a bankrupt? that was my father's fault, you will say. i grant it--it is a defence that speaks volumes for your feelings as a son. it was your own shamelessness, however, that made you take your seat in the stalls of honourable knights, whereas by law there is a fixed place for bankrupts, even when they have become so by fortune's fault, and not their own. you put on the robe which was to mark your manhood,--on your person it became the flaunting gear of a harlot". it is not desirable to follow the orator through some of his accusations; when he had to lash a man whom he held to be a criminal, he did not much care where or how he struck. he even breaks off himself--after saying a good deal. "there are some things, which even a decent enemy hesitates to speak of.... mark, then, his subsequent course of life, which i will trace as rapidly as i can. for though these things are better known to you than even to me, yet i ask you to hear me with attention--as indeed you do; for it is right that in such cases men's feelings should be roused not merely by the knowledge of the facts, but by calling them back to their remembrance; though we must dash at once, i believe, into the middle of his history, lest we should be too long in getting to the end". the peroration is noble and dignified, in the orator's best style. he still supposes himself addressing his enemy. he has warned antony that caesar's fate may be his: and he is not unconscious of the peril in which his own life may stand. "but do you look to yourself--i will tell you how it stands with me. i defended the commonwealth when i was young--i will not desert it now i am old. i despised the swords of catiline--i am not likely to tremble before yours. nay, i shall lay my life down gladly, if the liberty of rome can be secured by my death, so that this suffering nation may at last bring to the birth that which it his long been breeding.[ ] if, twenty years ago, i declared in this house that death could never be said to have come before its time to a man who had been consul of rome, with how much more truth, at my age, may i say it now! to me indeed, gentlemen of the senate, death may well be a thing to be even desired, when i have done what i have done and reaped the honours i have reaped. only two wishes i have,--the one, that at my death i may leave the roman people free--the immortal gods can give me no greater boon than this; the other, that every citizen may meet with such reward as his conduct towards the state may have deserved". [footnote : _i.e._, the making away with antony.] the publication of this unspoken speech raised for the time an enthusiasm against antony, whom cicero now openly declared to be an enemy to the state. he hurled against him philippic after philippic. the appeal at the end of that which comes the sixth in order is eloquent enough. "the time is come at last, fellow-citizens; somewhat too late, indeed, for the dignity of the people of rome, but at least the crisis is so ripe, that it cannot now be deferred an instant longer. we have had one calamity sent upon us, as i may say, by fate, which we bore with--in such sort as it might be borne. if another befalls us now, it will be one of our own choosing. that this roman people should serve any master, when the gods above have willed us to be the masters of the world, is a crime in the sight of heaven. the question hangs now on its last issue. the struggle is for our liberties. you must either conquer, romans,--and this, assuredly, with such patriotism and such unanimity as i see here, you must do, or you must endure anything and everything rather than be slaves. other nations may endure the yoke of slavery, but the birthright of the people of rome is liberty". antony had left rome, and thrown himself, like catiline, into the arms of his soldiers, in his province of cisalpine gaul. there he maintained himself in defiance of the senate, who at last, urged by cicero, declared him a public enemy. caesar octavianus (great-nephew of julius) offered his services to the state, and with some hesitation they were accepted. the last struggle was begun. intelligence soon arrived that antony had been defeated at mutina by the two last consuls of the republic, hirtius and pansa. the news was dashed, indeed, afterwards by the further announcement that both consuls had died of their wounds. but it was in the height of the first exultation that cicero addressed to the senate his fourteenth philippic--the last oration which he was ever to make. for the moment, he found himself once more the foremost man at rome. crowds of roaring patriots had surrounded his house that morning, escorted him in triumph up to the capitol, and back to his own house, as they had done in the days of his early glory. young caesar, who had paid him much personal deference, was professing himself a patriot; the commonwealth was safe again--and cicero almost thought that he again himself had saved it. but rome now belonged to those who had the legions. it had come to that: and when antony succeeded in joining interests with octavianus (afterwards miscalled augustus)--"the boy", as both cicero and antony called him--a boy in years as yet, but premature in craft and falsehood--who had come "to claim his inheritance", and succeeded in rousing in the old veterans of his uncle the desire to take vengeance a on his murderers, the fate of the republic and of cicero was sealed. it was on a little eyot formed by the river reno, near bologna, that antony, young caesar, and lepidus (the nominal third in what is known as the second triumvirate) met to arrange among themselves the division of power, and what they held to be necessary, to the securing it for the future--the proscription of their several enemies. no private affections or interests were to be allowed to interfere with this merciless arrangement. if lepidus would give up his brother, antony would surrender an obnoxious uncle. octavianus made a cheaper sacrifice in cicero, whom antony, we may be sure, with those terrible philippics ringing in his ears, demanded with an eager vengeance. all was soon amicably settled; the proscription-lists were made out, and the triumvirate occupied rome. cicero and his brother--whose name was known to be also on the fatal roll--heard of it while they were together at the tusculan villa. both took immediate measures to escape. but quintus had to return to rome to get money for their flight, and, as it would appear, to fetch his son. the emissaries of the triumvirate were sent to search the house: the father had hid himself, but the son was seized, and refusing to give any information, was put to the torture. his father heard his cries of agony, came forth from his hiding-place, and asked only to be put to death first. the son in his turn made the same request, and the assassins were so far merciful that they killed both at once. cicero himself might yet have escaped, but for some thing of his old indecision. he had gone on board a small vessel with the intention of joining brutus in macedonia, when he suddenly changed his mind, and insisted on being put on shore again. he wandered about, half-resolving (for the third) time on suicide. he would go to rome, stab himself on the altar-hearth in young caesar's house, and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the traitor. the accounts of these last hours of his life are, unfortunately, somewhat contradictory, and none of the authorities to be entirely depended on; abeken has made a careful attempt to harmonise them, which it will be best here to follow. urged by the prayers of his slaves, the faithful adherents of a kind master, he once more embarked, and once more (appian says, from sea-sickness, which he never could endure) landed near caieta, where be had a seaside villa. either there, or, as other accounts say, at his house at formiae, he laid himself down to pass the night, and wait for death. "let me die", said he, "in my own country, which i have so often saved". but again the faithful slaves aroused him, forced him into a litter, and hurried him down through the woods to the sea-shore--for the assassins were in hot pursuit of him. they found his house shut up; but some traitor showed them a short cut by which to overtake the fugitive. as he lay reading (it is said), even during these anxious moments, a play of his favourite euripides, every line of whom he used to declare contained some maxim worth remembering, he heard their steps approaching, and ordered the litter to be set down. he looked out, and recognised at the head of the party an officer named laenas, whom he had once successfully defended on a capital charge; but he saw no gratitude or mercy in the face, though there were others of the band who covered their eyes for pity, when they saw the dishevelled grey hair and pale worn features of the great roman (he was within a month of sixty-four). he turned from laenas to the centurion, one herennius, and said, "strike, old soldier, if you understand your trade!" at the third blow--by one or other of those officers, for both claimed the evil honour--his head was severed. they carried it straight to antony, where he sat on the seat of justice in the forum, and demanded the offered reward. the triumvir, in his joy, paid it some ten times over. he sent the bloody trophy to his wife; and the roman jezebel spat in the dead face, and ran her bodkin through the tongue which had spoken those bold and bitter truths against her false husband. the great orator fulfilled, almost in the very letter, the words which, treating of the liberty of the pleader, he had put into the mouth of crassus--"you must cut out this tongue, if you would check my free speech: nay, even then, my very breathing should protest against your lust for power". the head, by antony's order, was then nailed upon the rostra, to speak there, more eloquently than ever the living lips had spoken, of the dead liberty of rome. chapter vii. character as a politician and an orator. cicero shared very largely in the feeling which is common to all men of ambition and energy,--a desire to stand well not only with their own generation, but with posterity. it is a feeling natural to every man who knows that his name and acts must necessarily become historical. if it is more than usually patent in cicero's case, it is only because in his letters to atticus we have more than usual access to the inmost heart of the writer; for surely such a thoroughly confidential correspondence has never been published before or since. "what will history say of me six hundred years hence?" he asks, unbosoming himself in this sort to his friend. more than thrice the six hundred years have passed, and, in cicero's case, history has hardly yet made up its mind. he has been lauded and abused, from his own times down to the present, in terms as extravagant as are to be found in the most passionate of his own orations; both his accusers and his champions have caught the trick of his rhetorical exaggeration more easily than his eloquence. modern german critics like drumann and mommsen have attacked him with hardly less bitterness, though with more decency, than the historian dio cassius, who lived so near his own times. bishop middleton, on the other hand, in those pleasant and comprehensive volumes which are still to this day the great storehouse of materials for cicero's biography, is as blind to his faults as though he were himself delivering a panegyric in the rostra at rome. perhaps it is the partiality of the learned bishop's view which has produced a reaction in the minds of sceptical german scholars, and of some modern writers of our own. it is impossible not to sympathise in some degree with that athenian who was tired of always hearing aristides extolled as "the just;" and there was certainly a strong temptation to critics to pick holes in a man's character who was perpetually, during his lifetime and for eighteen centuries after his death, having a trumpet sounded before him to announce him as the prince of patriots as well as philosophers; worthy indeed, as erasmus thought, to be canonised as a saint of the catholic church, but for the single drawback of his not having been a christian. on one point some of his eulogists seem manifestly unfair. they say that the circumstances under which we form our judgment of the man are exceptional in this--that we happen to possess in his case all this mass of private and confidential letters (there are nearly eight hundred of his own which have come down to us), giving us an insight into his private motives, his secret jealousies, and hopes, and fears, and ambitions, of which in the case of other men we have no such revelation. it is quite true; but his advocates forget that it is from the very same pages which reveal his weaknesses, that they draw their real knowledge of many of those characteristics which they most admire--his sincere love for his country, his kindness of heart, his amiability in all his domestic relations. it is true that we cannot look into the private letters of caesar, or pompey, or brutus, as we can into cicero's; but it is not so certain that if we could, our estimate of their characters would be lowered. we might discover, in their cases as in his, many traces of what seems insincerity, timidity, a desire to sail with the stream; we might find that the views which they expressed in public were not always those which they entertained in private; but we might also find an inner current of kindness, and benevolence, and tenderness of heart, for which the world gives them little credit. one enthusiastic advocate, wieland, goes so far as to wish that this kind of evidence could, in the case of such a man as cicero, have been "cooked", to use a modern phrase: that we could have had only a judicious selection from this too truthful mass, of correspondence; that his secretary, tiro, or some judicious friend, had destroyed the whole packet of letters in which the great roman bemoaned himself, during his exile from rome, to his wife, to his brother, and to atticus. the partisan method of writing history, though often practised, has seldom been so boldly professed. but it cannot be denied, that if we know too much of cicero to judge him merely by his public life, as we are obliged to do with so many heroes of history, we also know far too little of those stormy times in which he lived, to pronounce too strongly upon his behaviour in such difficult circumstances. the true relations between the various parties at rome, as we have tried to sketch them, are confessedly puzzling even to the careful student. and without a thorough understanding of these, it is impossible to decide, with any hope of fairness, upon cicero's conduct as a patriot and a politician. his character was full of conflicting elements, like the times in which he lived, and was necessarily in a great degree moulded by them. the egotism which shows itself so plainly alike in his public speeches and in his private writings, more than once made him personal enemies, and brought him into trouble, though it was combined with great kindness of heart and consideration for others. he saw the right clearly, and desired to follow it, but his good intentions were too often frustrated by a want of firmness and decision. his desire to keep well with men of all parties, so long as it seemed possible (and this not so much from the desire of self-aggrandisement, as from a hope through their aid to serve the commonwealth) laid him open on more than one occasion to the charge of insincerity. there is one comprehensive quality which may be said to lave been wanting in his nature, which clouded his many excellences, led him continually into false positions, and even in his delightful letters excites in the reader, from time to time, an impatient feeling of contempt. he wanted manliness. it was a quality which was fast dying out, in his day, among even the best of the luxurious and corrupt aristocracy of rome. it was perhaps but little missed in his character by those of his contemporaries who knew and loved him best. but without that quality, to an english mind, it is hard to recognise in any man, however brilliant and amiable, the true philosopher or hero. the views which this great roman politician held upon the vexed question of the ballot did not differ materially from those of his worthy grandfather before-mentioned.[ ] the ballot was popular at rome,--for many reasons, some of them not the most creditable to the characters of the voters; and because it was popular, cicero speaks of it occasionally, in his forensic speeches, with a cautious praise; but of his real estimate of it there can be no kind of doubt. "i am of the same opinion now", he writes to his brother, "that ever i was; there is nothing like the open suffrage of the lips". so in one of his speeches, he uses even stronger language: "the ballot", he says, "enables men to open their faces, and to cover up their thoughts; it gives them licence to promise whatever they are asked, and at the same time to do whatever they please". mr. grote once quoted a phrase of cicero's, applied to the voting-papers of his day, as a testimony in favour of this mode of secret suffrage--grand words, and wholly untranslatable into anything like corresponding english--"_tabella vindex tacitae libertatis_"--"the tablet which secures the liberty of silence". but knowing so well as cicero did what was the ordinary character of roman jurors and roman voters, and how often this "liberty of silence" was a liberty to take a bribe and to vote the other way, one can almost fancy that we see upon his lips, as he utters the sounding phrase, that playful curve of irony which is said to have been their characteristic expression.[ ] mr. grote forgot, too, as was well pointed out by a writer in the 'quarterly review',[ ] that in the very next sentence the orator is proud to boast that he himself was not so elected to office, but "by the living voices" of his fellow-citizens. [footnote : see p. .] [footnote : no bust, coin, or gem is known which bears any genuine likeness of cicero. there are several existing which purport to be such, but all are more or less apocryphal.] [footnote : quart. rev., lxi. .] the character of his eloquence may be understood in some degree by the few extracts which have been given from his public speeches; always remembering how many of its charms are necessarily lost by losing the actual language in which his thoughts were clothed. we have lost perhaps nearly as much in another way, in that we can only read the great orator instead of listening to him. yet it is possible, after all, that this loss to us is not so great as it might seem. some of his best speeches, as we know--those, for instance, against verres and in defence of milo--were written in the closet, and never spoken at all; and most of the others were reshaped and polished for publication. nor is it certain that his declamation, which some of his roman rivals found fault with as savouring too much of the florid oriental type, would have been agreeable to our colder english taste. he looked upon gesture and action as essential elements of the orator's power, and had studied them carefully from the artists of the theatre. there can be no doubt that we have his own views on this point in the words which he has put into the mouth of his "brutus", in the treatise on oratory which bears that name. he protests against the "attic coldness" of style which, he says, would soon empty the benches of their occupants. he would have the action and bearing of the speaker to be such that even the distant spectator, too far off to hear, should "know that there was a roscius on the stage". he would have found a french audience in this respect more sympathetic than an english one.[ ] his own highly nervous temperament would certainly tend to excited action. the speaker, who, as we are told, "shuddered visibly over his whole body when he first began to speak", was almost sure, as he warmed to his work, to throw himself into it with a passionate energy. [footnote : our speakers certainly fall into the other extreme. the british orator's style of gesticulation may still be recognised, _mutatis mutandis_, in addison's humorous sketch of a century ago: "you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. a deaf man would think that he was cheapening a beaver, when he is talking perhaps of the fate of the british nation".] he has put on record his own ideas of the qualifications and the duties of the public speaker, whether in the senate or at the bar, in three continuous treatises on the subject, entitled respectively, 'on oratory', 'brutus', and 'the orator', as well as in some other works of which we have only fragments remaining. with the first of these works, which he inscribed to his brother, he was himself exceedingly well satisfied, and it perhaps remains still the ablest, as it was the first, attempt to reduce eloquence to a science. the second is a critical sketch of the great orators of rome: and in the third we have cicero's view of what the perfect orator should be. his ideal is a high one, and a true one; that he should not be the mere rhetorician, any more than the mere technical lawyer or keen partisan, but the man of perfect education and perfect taste, who can speak on all subjects, out of the fulness of his mind, "with variety and copiousness". although, as has been already said, he appears to have attached but little value to a knowledge of the technicalities of law, in other respects his preparation for his work was of the most careful kind; if we may assume, as we probably may, that it is his own experience which, in his treatise on oratory, he puts into the mouth of marcus antonius, one of his greatest predecessors at the roman bar. "it is my habit to have every client explain to me personally his own case; to allow no one else to be present, that so he may speak more freely. then i take the opponent's side, while i make him plead his own cause, and bring forward whatever arguments he can think of. then, when he is gone, i take upon myself, with as much impartiality as i can, three different characters--my own, my opponent's, and that of the jury. whatever point seems likely to help the case rather than injure it, this i decide must be brought forward; when i see that anything is likely to do more harm than good, i reject and throw it aside altogether. so i gain this,--that i think over first what i mean to say, and speak afterwards; while a good many pleaders, relying on their abilities, try to do both at once".[ ] [footnote : de oratore, ii. , .] he reads a useful lesson to young and zealous advocates in the same treatise--that sometimes it may be wise not to touch at all in reply upon a point which makes against your client, and to which you have no real answer; and that it is even more important to say nothing which may injure your case, than to omit something which might possibly serve it. a maxim which some modern barristers (and some preachers also) might do well to bear in mind. yet he did not scorn to use what may almost be called the tricks of his art, if he thought they would help to secure him a verdict. the outward and visible appeal to the feelings seems to have been as effective in the roman forum as with a british jury. cicero would have his client stand by his side dressed in mourning, with hair dishevelled, and in tears, when he meant to make a pathetic appeal to the compassion of the jurors; or a family group would be arranged, as circumstances allowed,--the wife and children, the mother and sisters, or the aged father, if presentable, would be introduced in open court to create a sensation at the right moment. he had tears apparently as ready at his command as an eloquent and well-known english attorney-general. nay, the tears seem to have been marked down, as it were, upon his brief. "my feelings prevent my saying more", he declares in his defence of publius sylla. "i weep while i make the appeal"--"i cannot go on for tears"--he repeats towards the close of that fine oration in behalf of milo--the speech that never was spoken. such phrases remind us of the story told of a french preacher, whose manuscripts were found to have marginal stage directions: "here take out your handkerchief;"--"here cry--if possible". but such were held to be the legitimate adjuncts of roman oratory, and it is quite possible to conceive that the advocate, like more than one modern tragedian who could be named, entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the part that the tears flowed quite naturally. a far less legitimate weapon of oratory--offensive and not defensive--was the bitter and coarse personality in which he so frequently indulged. its use was held perfectly lawful in the roman forum, whether in political debate or in judicial pleadings, and it was sure to be highly relished by a mixed audience. there is no reason to suppose that cicero had recourse to it in any unusual degree; but employ it he did, and most unscrupulously. it was not only private character that he attacked, as in the case of antony and clodius, but even personal defects or peculiarities were made the subject of bitter ridicule. he did not hesitate to season his harangue by a sarcasm on the cast in the prosecutor's eye, or the wen on the defendant's neck, and to direct the attention of the court to these points, as though they were corroborative evidence of a moral deformity. the most conspicuous instance of this practice of his is in the invective which he launched in the senate against piso, who had made a speech reflecting upon him. referring to cicero's exile, he had made that sore subject doubly sore by declaring that it was not cicero's unpopularity, so much as his unfortunate propensity to bad verse, which had been the cause of it. a jingling line of his to the effect that "the gown wins grander triumphs than the sword"[ ] had been thought to be pointed against the recent victories of pompey, and to have provoked him to use his influence to get rid of the author. but this annotation of cicero's poetry had not been piso's only offence. he had been consul at the time of the exile, and had given vent, it may be remembered, to the witticism that the "saviour of rome" might save the city a second time by his absence. cicero was not the man to forget it. the beginning of his attack on piso is lost, but there is quite enough remaining. piso was of a swarthy complexion, approaching probably to the negro type. "beast"--is the term by which cicero addresses him. "beast! there is no mistaking the evidence of that slave-like hue, those bristly cheeks, those discoloured fangs. your eyes, your brows, your face, your whole aspect, are the tacit index to your soul".[ ] [footnote : "cedant arma togae, concedat laurea linguae".] [footnote : such flowers of eloquence are not encouraged at the modern bar. but they were common enough, even in the english law-courts, in former times. mr. attorney-general coke's language to raleigh at his trial--"thou viper!"--comes quite up to cicero's. perhaps the irish house of parliament, while it existed, furnished the choicest modern specimens of this style of oratory. mr. o'flanagan, in his 'lives of the lord chancellors of ireland', tells us that a member for galway, attacking an opponent when he knew that his sister was present during the debate, denounced the whole family--"from the toothless old hag that is now grinning in the gallery, to the white-livered scoundrel that is shivering on the floor".] it is not possible, within the compass of these pages, to give even the briefest account of more than a few of the many causes (they are twenty-four in number) in which the speeches made by cicero, either for the prosecution or the defence, have been preserved to us. some of them have more attraction for the english reader than others, either from the facts of the case being more interesting or more easily understood, or from their affording more opportunity for the display of the speaker's powers. mr. fox had an intense admiration for the speech in defence of caelius. the opinion of one who was no mean orator himself, on his great roman predecessor, may be worth quoting: "argumentative contention is not what he excels in; and he is never, i think, so happy as when he has an opportunity of exhibiting a mixture of philosophy and pleasantry, and especially when he can interpose anecdotes and references to the authority of the eminent characters in the history of his own country. no man appears, indeed, to have had such a real respect for authority as he; and therefore when he speaks on that subject he is always natural and earnest".[ ] [footnote : letter to g. wakefield--correspondence, p. .] there is anecdote and pleasantry enough in this particular oration; but the scandals of roman society of that day, into which the defence of caelius was obliged to enter, are not the most edifying subject for any readers. caelius was a young man of "equestrian" rank, who had been a kind of ward of cicero's, and must have given him a good deal of trouble by his profligate habits, if the guardianship was anything more than nominal. but in this particular case the accusation brought against him--of trying to murder an ambassador from egypt by means of hired assassins, and then to poison the lady who had lent him the money to bribe them with--was probably untrue. clodia, the lady in question, was the worthy sister of the notorious clodius, and bore as evil a reputation as it was possible for a woman to bear in the corrupt society of rome--which is saying a great deal. she is the real mover in the case, though another enemy of caelius, the son of a man whom he had himself brought to trial for bribery, was the ostensible prosecutor. cicero, therefore, throughout the whole of his speech, aims the bitter shafts of his wit and eloquence at clodia. his brilliant invectives against this lady, who was, as he pointedly said, "not only noble but notorious", are not desirable to quote. but the opening of the speech is in the advocate's best style. the trial, it seems, took place on a public holiday, when it was not usual to take any cause unless it were of pressing importance. "if any spectator be here present, gentlemen, who knows nothing of our laws, our courts of justice, or our national customs, he will not fail to wonder what can be the atrocious nature of this case, that on a day of national festival and public holiday like this, when all other business in the forum is suspended, this single trial should be going on; and he will entertain no doubt but that the accused is charged with a crime of such enormity, that if it were not at once taken cognisance of, the constitution itself would be in peril. and if he heard that there was a law which enjoined that in the case of seditious and disloyal citizens who should take up arms to attack the senate-house, or use violence against the magistrates, or levy war against the commonwealth, inquisition into the matter should be made at once, on the very day;--he would not find fault with such a law: he would only ask the nature of the charge. but when he heard that it was no such atrocious crime, no treasonable attempt, no violent outrage, which formed the subject of this trial, but that a young man of brilliant abilities, hard-working in public life, and of popular character, was here accused by the son of a man whom he had himself once prosecuted, and was still prosecuting, and that all a bad woman's wealth and influence was being used against him,--he might take no exception to the filial zeal of atratinus; but he would surely say that woman's infamous revenge should be baffled and punished.... i can excuse atratinus; as to the other parties, they deserve neither excuse nor forbearance". it was a strange story, the case for the prosecution, especially as regarded the alleged attempt to poison clodia. the poison was given to a friend of caelius, he was to give it to some slaves of clodia whom he was to meet at certain baths frequented by her, and they were in some way to administer it. but the slaves betrayed the secret; and the lady employed certain gay and profligate young men, who were hangers-on of her own, to conceal themselves somewhere in the baths, and pounce upon caelius's emissary with the poison in his possession. but this scheme was said to have failed. clodia's detectives had rushed from their place of concealment too soon, and the bearer of the poison escaped. the counsel for the prisoner makes a great point of this. "why, 'tis the catastrophe of a stage-play--nay, of a burlesque; when no more artistic solution of the plot can be invented, the hero escapes, the bell rings, and--the curtain falls! for i ask why, when licinius was there trembling, hesitating, retreating, trying to escape--why that lady's body-guard let him go out of their hands? were they afraid lest, so many against one, such stout champions against a single helpless man, frightened as he was and fierce as they were, they could not master him? i should like exceedingly to see them, those curled and scented youths, the bosom-friends of this rich and noble lady; those stout men-at-arms who were posted by their she-captain in this ambuscade in the baths. and i should like to ask them how they hid themselves, and where? a bath?--why, it must rather have been a trojan horse, which bore within its womb this band of invincible heroes who went to war for a woman! i would make them answer this question,--why they, being so many and so brave, did not either seize this slight stripling, whom you see before you, where he stood, or overtake him when he fled? they will hardly be able to explain themselves, i fancy, if they get into that witness-box, however clever and witty they may be at the banquet,--nay, even eloquent occasionally, no doubt, over their wine. but the air of a court of justice is somewhat different from that of the banquet-hall; the benches of this court are not like the couches of a supper-table; the array of this jury presents a different spectacle from a company of revellers; nay, the broad glare of sunshine is harder to face than the glitter of the lamps. if they venture into it, i shall have to strip them of their pretty conceits and fools' gear. but, if they will be ruled by me, they will betake themselves to another trade, win favour in another quarter, flaunt themselves elsewhere than in this court. let them carry their brave looks to their lady there; let them lord it at her expense, cling to her, lie at her feet, be her slaves; only let them make no attempt upon the life and honour of an innocent man". the satellites of clodia could scarcely have felt comfortable under this withering fire of sarcasm. the speaker concluded with an apology--much required--for his client's faults, as those of a young man, and a promise on his behalf--on the faith of an advocate--that he would behave better for the future. he wound up the whole with a point of sensational rhetoric which was common, as has been said, to the roman bar as to our own--an appeal to the jurymen as fathers. he pointed to the aged father of the defendant, leaning in the most approved attitude upon the shoulder of his son. either this, or the want of evidence, or the eloquence of the pleader, had its due effect. caelius was triumphantly acquitted; and it is a proof that the young man was not wholly graceless, that he rose afterwards to high public office, and never forgot his obligations to his eloquent counsel, to whom he continued a stanch friend. he must have had good abilities, for he was honoured with frequent letters from cicero when the latter was governor of cilicia. he kept up some of his extravagant tastes; for when he was aedile (which involved the taking upon him the expense of certain gladiatorial and wild-beast exhibitions), he wrote to beg his friend to send him out of his province some panthers for his show. cicero complied with the request, and took the opportunity, so characteristic of him, of lauding his own administration of cilicia, and making a kind of pun at the same time. "i have given orders to the hunters to see about the panthers; but panthers are very scarce, and the few there are complain, people say, that in the whole province there are no traps laid for anybody but for them". catching and skinning the unfortunate provincials, which had been a favourite sport with governors like verres, had been quite done away with in cilicia, we are to understand, under cicero's rule. his defence of ligarius, who was impeached of treason against the state in the person of caesar, as having borne arms against him in his african campaign, has also been deservedly admired. there was some courage in cicero's undertaking his defence; as a known partisan of pompey, he was treading on dangerous and delicate ground. caesar was dictator at the time; and the case seems to have been tried before him as the sole judicial authority, without pretence of the intervention of anything like a jury. the defence--if defence it may be called--is a remarkable instance of the common appeal, not to the merits of the case, but to the feelings of the court. after making out what case he could for his client, the advocate as it were throws up his brief, and rests upon the clemency of the judge. caesar himself, it must be remembered, had begun public life, like cicero, as a pleader: and, in the opinion of some competent judges, such as tacitus and quintilian, had bid fair to be a close rival. "i have pleaded many causes, caesar--some, indeed, in association with yourself, while your public career spared you to the courts; but surely i never yet used language of this sort,--'pardon him, sirs, he has offended: he has made a false step: he did not think to do it; he never will again'. this is language we use to a father. to the court it must be,--'he did not do it: he never contemplated it: the evidence is false; the charge is fabricated'. if you tell me you sit but as the judge of the fact in this case, caesar,--if you ask me where and when he served against you,--i am silent; i will not now dwell on the extenuating circumstances, which even before a judicial tribunal might have their weight. we take this course before a judge, but i am here pleading to a father. 'i have erred--i have done wrong, i am sorry: i take refuge in your clemency; i ask forgiveness for my fault; i pray you, pardon me'.... there is nothing so popular, believe me, sir, as kindness; of all your many virtues none wins men's admiration and their love like mercy. in nothing do men reach so near the gods, as when they can give life and safety to mankind. fortune has given you nothing more glorious than the power, your own nature can supply nothing more noble than the will, to spare and pardon wherever you can. the case perhaps demands a longer advocacy--your gracious disposition feels it too long already. so i make an end, preferring for my cause that you should argue with your own heart, than that i or any other should argue with you. i will urge nothing more than this,--the grace which you shall extend to my client in his absence, will be felt as a boon by all here present". the great conqueror was, it is said, visibly affected by the appeal, and ligarius was pardoned. chapter viii. minor characteristics. not content with his triumphs in prose, cicero had always an ambition--to be a poet. of his attempts in this way we have only some imperfect fragments, scattered here and there through his other works, too scanty to form any judgment upon. his poetical ability is apt to be unfairly measured by two lines which his opponents were very fond of quoting and laughing at, and which for that reason have become the best known. but it is obvious that if wordsworth or tennyson were to be judged solely by a line or two picked out by an unfavourable reviewer--say from 'peter bell' or from the early version of the 'miller's daughter'--posterity would have a very mistaken appreciation of their merits. plutarch and the younger pliny, who had seen more of cicero's poetry than we have, thought highly of it. so he did himself; but so it was his nature to think of most of his own performances; and such an estimate is common to other authors besides cicero, though few announce it so openly. montaigne takes him to task for this, with more wit, perhaps, than fairness. "it is no great fault to write poor verses; but it is a fault not to be able to see how unworthy such poor verses were of his reputation". voltaire, on the other hand, who was perhaps as good a judge, thought there was "nothing more beautiful" than some of the fragments of his poem on 'marius', who was the ideal hero of his youth. perhaps the very fact, however, of none of his poems having been preserved, is some argument that such poetic gift as he had was rather facility than genius. he wrote, besides this poem on 'marius', a 'history of my consulship', and a 'history of my own times', in verse, and some translations from homer. he had no notion of what other men called relaxation: he found his own relaxation in a change of work. he excuses himself in one of his orations for this strange taste, as it would seem to the indolent and luxurious roman nobles with whom he was so unequally yoked. "who after all shall blame me, or who has any right to be angry with me, if the time which is not grudged to others for managing their private business, for attending public games and festivals, for pleasures of any other kind,--nay, even for very rest of mind and body,--the time which others give to convivial meetings, to the gaming-table, to the tennis-court,--this much i take for myself, for the resumption of my favourite studies?" in this indefatigable appetite for work of all kinds, he reminds us of no modern politician so much as of sir george cornewall lewis; yet he would not have altogether agreed with him in thinking that life would be very tolerable if it were not for its amusements. he was, as we have seen, of a naturally social disposition. "i like a dinner-party", he says in a letter to one of his friends; "where i can say just what comes uppermost, and turn my sighs and sorrows into a hearty laugh. i doubt whether you are much better yourself, when you can laugh as you did even at a philosopher. when the man asked--'whether anybody wanted to know anything?' you said you had been wanting to know all day when it would be dinner-time. the fellow expected you to say you wanted to know how many worlds there were, or something of that kind".[ ] [footnote : these professional philosophers, at literary dinner-parties, offered to discuss and answer any question propounded by the company.] he is said to have been a great laugher. indeed, he confesses honestly that the sense of humour was very powerful with him--"i am wonderfully taken by anything comic", he writes to one of his friends. he reckons humour also as a useful ally to the orator. "a happy jest or facetious turn is not only pleasant, but also highly useful occasionally;" but he adds that this is an accomplishment which must come naturally, and cannot be taught under any possible system.[ ] there is at least sufficient evidence that he was much given to making jokes, and some of them which have come down to us would imply that a roman audience was not very critical on this point. there is an air of gravity about all courts of justice which probably makes a very faint amount of jocularity hailed as a relief. even in an english law-court, a joke from the bar, much more from the bench, does not need to be of any remarkable brilliancy in order to be secure of raising a laugh; and we may fairly suppose that the same was the case at rome. cicero's jokes were frequently nothing more than puns, which it would be impossible, even if it were worth while, to reproduce to an english ear. perhaps the best, or at all events the most intelligible, is his retort to hortensius during the trial of verres. the latter was said to have feed his counsel out of his sicilian spoils--especially, there was a figure of a sphinx, of some artistic value, which had found its way from the house of the ex-governor into that of hortensius. cicero was putting a witness through a cross-examination of which his opponent could not see the bearing. "i do not understand all this", said hortensius; "i am no hand at solving riddles". "that is strange, too", rejoined cicero, "when you have a sphinx at home". in the same trial he condescended, in the midst of that burning eloquence of which we have spoken, to make two puns on the defendant's name. the word "_verres_" had two meanings in the old latin tongue: it signified a "boar-pig", and also a "broom" or "sweeping-brush". one of verres's friends, who either was or had the reputation of being a jew, had tried to get the management of the prosecution out of cicero's hands. "what has a jew to do with _pork_?" asked the orator. speaking, in the course of the same trial, of the way in which the governor had made "requisitions" of all the most valuable works of art throughout the island, "the broom", said he, "swept clean". he did not disdain the comic element in poetry more than in prose; for we find in quinitilian [ ] a quotation from a punning epigram in some collection of such trifles which in his time bore cicero's name. tiro is said to have collected and published three volumes of his master's good things after his death; but if they were not better than those which have come down to us, as contained in his other writings, there has been no great loss to literature in tiro's 'ciceroniana'. he knew one secret at least of a successful humourist in society: for it is to him that we owe the first authoritative enunciation of a rule which is universally admitted--"that a jest never has so good an effect as when it is uttered with a serious countenance". [footnote : de orat. ii. .] [footnote : 'libellus jocularis', quint. viii. .] cicero had a wonderful admiration for the greeks. "i am not ashamed to confess", he writes to his brother, "especially since my life and career have been such that no suspicion of indolence or want of energy can rest upon me, that all my own attainments are due to those studies and those accomplishments which have been handed down to us in the literary treasures and the philosophical systems of the greeks". it was no mere rhetorical outburst, when in his defence of valerius flaccus, accused like verres, whether truly or falsely, of corrupt administration in his province, he thus introduced the deputation from athens and lacedaemon who appeared as witnesses to the character of his client. "athenians are here to-day, amongst whom civilisation, learning, religion, agriculture, public law and justice, had their birth, and whence they have been disseminated over all the world: for the possession of whose city, on account of its exceeding beauty, even gods are said to have contended: which is of such antiquity, that she is said to have bred her citizens within herself, and the same soil is termed at once their mother, their nurse, and their country: whose importance and influence is such that the name of greece, though it has lost much of its weight and power, still holds its place by virtue of the renown of this single city". he had forgotten, perhaps, as an orator is allowed to forget, that in the very same speech, when his object was to discredit the accusers of his client, he had said, what was very commonly said of the greeks at rome, that they were a nation of liars. there were excellent men among them, he allowed--thinking at the moment of the counter-evidence which he had ready for the defendant--but he goes on to make this sweeping declaration: "i will say this of the whole race of the greeks: i grant them literary genius, i grant them skill in various accomplishments, i do not deny them elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any other high qualities they may claim i make no objection: but the sacred obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that nation has never regarded".[ ] [footnote : defence of val. flaccus, c. .] there was a certain proverb, he went on to say, "lend me your evidence", implying--"and you shall have mine when you want it;" a greek proverb, of course, and men knew these three words of greek who knew no greek besides. what he loved in the greeks, then, was rather the grandeur of their literature and the charm of their social qualities (a strict regard for truth is, unhappily, no indispensable ingredient in this last); he had no respect whatever for their national character. the orator was influenced, perhaps, most of all by his intense reverence for the athenian demosthenes, whom, as a master in his art, he imitated and well-nigh worshipped. the appreciation of his own powers which every able man has, and of which cicero had at least his share, fades into humility when he comes to speak of his great model. "absolutely perfect", he calls him in one place; and again in another, "what i have attempted, demosthenes has achieved". yet he felt also at times, when the fervour of genius was strong within him, that there was an ideal of eloquence enshrined in his own inmost mind, "which i can _feel_", he says, "but which i never knew to exist in any man". he could not only write greek as a scholar, but seems to have spoken it with considerable ease and fluency; for on one occasion he made a speech in that language, a condescension which some of his friends thought derogatory to the dignity of a roman. from the greeks he learnt to appreciate art. how far his taste was really cultivated in this respect is difficult for us to judge. some passages in his letters to atticus might lead us to suspect that, as disraeli concludes, he was rather a collector than a real lover of art. his appeals to his friend to buy up for him everything and anything, and his surrender of himself entirely to atticus's judgment in such purchases, do not bespeak a highly critical taste. in a letter to another friend, he seems to say that he only bought statuary as "furniture" for the gymnasium at his country-seat; and he complains that four figures of bacchanals, which this friend had just bought for him, had cost more than he would care to give for all the statues that ever were made. on the other hand, when he comes to deal with verres's wholesale plunder of paintings and statues in sicily, he talks about the several works with considerable enthusiasm. either he really understood his subject, or, like an able advocate, he had thoroughly got up his brief. but the art-notices which are scattered through his works show a considerable acquaintance with the artist-world of his day. he tells us, in his own admirable style, the story of zeuxis, and the selection which he made from all the beauties of crotona, in order to combine their several points of perfection in his portrait of helen; he refers more than once, and always in language which implies an appreciation of the artist, to the works of phidias, especially that which is said to have cost him his life--the shield of minerva; and he discusses, though it is but by way of illustration, the comparative points of merit in the statues of calamis, and myron, and polycletus, and in the paintings of the earlier schools of zeuxis, polygnotus, and timanthes, with their four primitive colours, as compared with the more finished schools of protogenes and apelles. chapter ix. cicero's correspondence. i. atticus. it seems wonderful how, in the midst of all his work, cicero found time to keep up such a voluminous correspondence. something like eight hundred of his letters still remain to us, and there were whole volumes of them long preserved which are now lost,[ ] to say nothing of the very many which may never have been thought worth preserving. the secret lay in his wonderful energy and activity. we find him writing letters before day-break, during the service of his meals, on his journeys, and dictating them to an amanuensis as he walked up and down to take needful exercise. [footnote : collections of his letters to caesar, brutus, cornelius nepos the historian, hirtius, pansa, and to his son, are known to have existed.] his correspondents were of almost all varieties of position and character, from caesar and pompey, the great men of the day, down to his domestic servant and secretary, tiro. amongst them were rich and ease-loving epicureans like atticus and paetus, and even men of pleasure like caelius: grave stoics like cato, eager patriots like brutus and cassius, authors such as cornelius nepos and lucceius the historians, varro the grammarian, and metius the poet; men who dabbled with literature in a gentleman-like way, like hirtius and appius, and the accomplished literary critic and patron of the day--himself of no mean reputation as poet, orator, and historian--caius asinius pollio. cicero's versatile powers found no difficulty in suiting the contents of his own letters to the various tastes and interests of his friends. sometimes he sends to his correspondent what was in fact a political journal of the day--rather one-sided, it must be confessed, as all political journals are, but furnishing us with items of intelligence which throw light, as nothing else can, on the history of those latter days of the republic. sometimes he jots down the mere gossip of his last dinner-party; sometimes he notices the speculations of the last new theorist in philosophy, or discusses with a literary friend some philological question--the latter being a study in which he was very fond of dabbling, though with little success, for the science of language was as yet unknown. his chief correspondent, as has been said, was his old school-fellow and constant friend through life, pomponius atticus. the letters addressed to him which still remain to us cover a period of twenty-four years, with a few occasional interruptions, and the correspondence only ceased with cicero's death. the athenianised roman, though he had deliberately withdrawn himself from the distracting factions of his native city, which he seldom revisited, kept on the best terms with the leaders of all parties, and seems to have taken a very lively interest, though merely in the character of a looker-on, in the political events which crowded so fast upon each other during the fifty years of his voluntary expatriation. cicero's letters were to him what an english newspaper would be now to an english gentleman who for his own reasons preferred to reside in paris, without forswearing his national interests and sympathies. at times, when cicero was more at leisure, and when messengers were handy (for we have to remember that there was nothing like our modern post), cicero would despatch one of these letters to atticus daily. we have nearly four hundred of them in all. they are continually garnished, even to the point of affectation, with greek quotations and phrases, partly perhaps in compliment to his friend's athenian tastes, and partly from the writer's own passion for the language. so much reference has been made to them throughout the previous biographical sketch,--for they supply us with some of the most important materials for cicero's life and times,--that it may be sufficient to give in this place two or three of the shorter as specimens of the collection. one which describes a visit which he received from julius caesar, already dictator, in his country-house near puteoli, is interesting, as affording a glimpse behind the scenes in those momentous days when no one knew exactly whether the great captain was to turn out a patriot or a conspirator against the liberties of rome. "to think that i should have had such a tremendous visitor! but never mind; for all went off very pleasantly. but when he arrived at philippus's house[ ] on the evening of the second day of the saturnalia, the place was so full of soldiers that they could hardly find a spare table for caesar himself to dine at. there were two thousand men. really i was in a state of perplexity as to what was to be done next day: but barba cassius came to my aid,--he supplied me with a guard. they pitched their tents in the grounds, and the house was protected. he stayed with philippus until one o'clock on the third day of the saturnalia, and would see no one. going over accounts, i suppose, with balbus. then he walked on the sea-shore. after two he had a bath: then he listened to some verses on mamurra, without moving a muscle of his countenance: then dressed,[ ] and sat down to dinner. he had taken a precautionary emetic, and therefore ate and drank heartily and unrestrainedly. we had, i assure you, a very good dinner, and well served; and not only that, but 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul'[ ] besides. his suite were abundantly supplied at three other tables: the freedmen of lower rank, and even the slaves, were well taken care of. the higher class had really an elegant entertainment. well, no need to make a long story; we found we were both 'flesh and blood'. still he is not the kind of guest to whom you would say--'now do, pray, take us in your way on your return'. once is enough. we had no conversation on business, but a good deal of literary talk. in short, he seemed to be much pleased, and to enjoy himself. he said he should stay one day at puteoli, and another at baiae. so here you have an account of this visit, or rather quartering of troops upon me, which i disliked the thoughts of, but which really, as i have said, gave me no annoyance. i shall stay here a little longer, then go to my house at tusculum. when caesar passed dolabella's villa, all the troops formed up on the right and left of his horse, which they did nowhere else.[ ] i heard that from nicias". [footnote : this was close to cicero's villa, on the coast.] [footnote : literally, "he got himself oiled". the emetic was a disgusting practice of roman _bon vivants_ who were afraid of indigestion.] [footnote : the verse which cicero quotes from lucilius is fairly equivalent to this.] [footnote : probably by way of salute; or possibly as a precaution.] in the following, he is anticipating a visit from his friend, and from the lady to whom he is betrothed. "i had a delightful visit from cincius on the th of january, before daylight. for he told me that you were in italy, and that he was going to send off some messengers to you, and would not let them go without a letter from me. not that i have much to write about (especially when you are all but here), except to assure you that i am anticipating your arrival with the greatest delight. therefore fly to me, to show your own affection, and to see what affection i bear you. other matters when we meet. i have written this in a hurry. as soon as ever you arrive, bring all your people to my house. you will gratify me very much by coming. you will see how wonderfully well tyrrannio has arranged my books, the remains of which are much better than i had thought. and i should be very glad if you could send me a couple of your library clerks whom tyrrannio could make use of as binders, and to help him in other ways; and tell them to bring some parchment to make indices--syllabuses, i believe you greeks call them. but this only if quite convenient to you. but, at any rate, be sure you come yourself, if you can make any stay in our parts, and bring pilia with you, for that is but fair, and tullia wishes it much. upon my word you have bought a very fine place. i hear that your gladiators fight capitally. if you had cared to hire them out, you might have cleared your expenses at these two last public shows. but we can talk about this hereafter. be sure to come; and do your best about the clerks, if you love me". the roman gentleman of elegant and accomplished tastes, keeping a troop of private gladiators, and thinking of hiring them out, to our notions, is a curious combination of character; but the taste was not essentially more brutal than the prize-ring and the cock-fights of the last century. ii. paetus. another of cicero's favourite correspondents was papirius paetus, who seems to have lived at home at ease, and taken little part in the political tumults of his day. like atticus, he was an epicurean, and thought more of the pleasures of life than of its cares and duties. yet cicero evidently took great pleasure in his society, and his letters to him are written in the same familiar and genial tone as those to his old school-fellow. some of them throw a pleasant light upon the social habits of the day. cicero had had some friends staying with him at his country-seat at tusculum, to whom, he says, he had been giving lessons in oratory. dolabella, his son-in-law, and hirtius, the future consul, were among them. "they are my scholars in declamation, and i am theirs in dinner-eating; for i conclude you have heard (you seem to hear everything) that they come to me to declaim, and i go to them for dinners. 'tis all very well for you to swear that you cannot entertain me in such grand fashion as i am used to, but it is of use.... better be victimised by your friend than by your debtors, as you have been. after all, i don't require such a banquet as leaves a great waste behind it; a little will do, only handsomely served and well cooked. i remember your telling me about a dinner of phamea's--well, it need not be such a late affair as that, nor so grand in other respects; nay, if you persist in giving me one of your mother's old family dinners, i can stand even that. my new reputation for good living has reached you, i find, before my arrival, and you are alarmed at it; but, pray, put no trust in your ante-courses--i have given up that altogether. i used to spoil my appetite, i remember, upon your oil and sliced sausages.... one expense i really shall put you to; i must have my warm bath. my other habits, i assure you, are quite unaltered; all the rest is joke". paetus seems to answer him with the same good-humoured badinage. balbus, the governor of africa, had been to see him, he says, and _he_ had been content with such humble fare as he feared cicero might despise. so much, at least, we may gather from cicero's answer. "satirical as ever, i see. you say balbus was content with very modest fare. you seem to insinuate that when grandees are so moderate, much more ought a poor ex-consul like myself so to be. you don't know that i fished it all out of your visitor himself, for he came straight to my house on his landing. the very first words i said to him were, 'how did you get on with our friend paetus?' he swore he had never been better entertained. if this referred to the charms of your conversation, remember, i shall be quite as appreciative a listener as balbus; but if it meant the good things on the table, i must beg you will not treat us men of eloquence worse than you do a 'lisper'".[ ] [footnote : one of cicero's puns. balbus means 'lisper'.] they carry on this banter through several letters. cicero regrets that he has been unable as yet to pay his threatened visit, when his friend would have seen what advances he had made in gastronomic science. he was able now to eat through the whole bill of fare--"from the eggs to the _roti_". "i [stoic that used to be] have gone over with my whole forces into the camp of epicurus. you will have to do with a man who can eat, and who knows what's what. you know how conceited we late learners are, as the proverb says. you will have to unlearn those little 'plain dinners' and makeshifts of yours. we have made such advances in the art, that we have been venturing to invite, more than once, your friends verrius and camillus (what elegant and fastidious gentlemen they are!). but see how audacious we are getting! i have even given hirtius a dinner--but without a peacock. my cook could imitate nothing in his entertainments except the hot soup". then he hears that his friend is in bed with the gout. "i am extremely sorry to hear it, as in duty bound; still, i am quite determined to come, that i may see you, and pay my visit,--yes, and have my dinner: for i suppose your cook has not got the gout as well". such were the playful epistles of a busy man. but even in some of these lightest effusions we see the cares of the statesman showing through. here is a portion of a later letter to the same friend. "i am very much concerned to hear you have given up going out to dinner; for it is depriving yourself of a great source of enjoyment and gratification. then, again, i am afraid--for it is as well to speak honestly--lest you should unlearn certain old habits of yours, and forget to give your own little dinners. for if formerly, when you had good examples to imitate, you were still not much of a proficient in that way, how can i suppose you will get on now? spurina, indeed, when i mentioned the thing to him, and explained your previous habits, proved to demonstration that there would be danger to the highest interests of the state if you did not return to your old ways in the spring. but indeed, my good paetus, i advise you, joking apart, to associate with good fellows, and pleasant fellows, and men who are fond of you. there is nothing better worth having in life, nothing that makes life more happy.... see how i employ philosophy to reconcile you to dinner-parties. take care of your health; and that you will best do by going out to dinner.... but don't imagine, as you love me, that because i write jestingly i have thrown off all anxiety about public affairs. be assured, my dear paetus, that i seek nothing and care for nothing, night or day, but how my country may be kept safe and free. i omit no opportunity of advising, planning, or acting. i feel in my heart that if in securing this i have to lay down my life, i shall have ended it well and honourably". iii. his brother quintus. between marcus cicero and his younger brother quintus there existed a very sincere and cordial affection--somewhat warmer, perhaps, on the side of the elder, inasmuch as his wealth and position enabled him rather to confer than to receive kindnesses; the rule in such cases being (so cynical philosophers tell us) that the affection is lessened rather than increased by the feeling of obligation. he almost adopted the younger quintus, his nephew, and had him educated with his own son; and the two cousins received their earlier training together in one or other of marcus cicero's country-houses under a clever greek freedman of his, who was an excellent scholar, and--what was less usual amongst his countrymen, unless cicero's estimate of them does them great injustice--a very honest man, but, as the two boys complained, terribly passionate. cicero himself, however, was the head tutor--an office for which, as he modestly writes, his greek studies fully qualified him. quintus cicero behaved ill to his brother after the battle of pharsalia, making what seem to have been very unjust accusations against him in order to pay court to caesar; but they soon became friends again. twenty-nine of the elder cicero's letters to his brother remain, written in terms of remarkable kindness and affection, which go far to vindicate the roman character from a charge which has sometimes been brought against it of coldness in these family relationships. few modern brothers, probably, would write to each other in such terms as these: "afraid lest your letters bother me? i wish you would bother me, and re-bother me, and talk to me and at me; for what can give me more pleasure? i swear that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his own last poem with more delight than i do what you write to me about matters public or private, town or country. here now is a letter from you full of pleasant matter, but with this dash of the disagreeable in it, that you have been afraid--nay, are even now afraid--of being troublesome to me. i could quarrel with you about it, if that were not a sin. but if i have reason to suspect anything of that sort again, i can only say that i shall always be afraid lest, when we are together, i may be troublesome to you". or take, again, the pathetic apology which he makes for having avoided an interview with quintus in those first days of his exile when he was so thoroughly unmanned: "my brother, my brother, my brother! did you really fear that i was angry, because i sent off the slaves without any letter to you? and did you even think that i was unwilling to see you? i angry with you? could i possibly be angry with you?... when i miss you, it is not a brother only that i miss. to me you have always been the pleasantest of companions, a son in dutiful affection, a father in counsel. what pleasure ever had i without you, or you without me?" quintus had accompanied caesar on his expedition into britain as one of his lieutenants, and seems to have written home to his brother some notices of the country; to which the latter, towards the end of his reply, makes this allusion: "how delighted i was to get your letter from britain! i had been afraid of the voyage across, afraid of the rock-bound coast of the island. the other dangers of such a campaign i do not mean to despise, but in these there is more to hope than to fear, and i have been rather anxiously expecting the result than in any real alarm about it. i see you have a capital subject to write about. what novel scenery, what natural curiosities and remarkable places, what strange tribes and strange customs, what a campaign, and what a commander you have to describe! i will willingly help you in the points you request, and i will send you the verses you ask for--though it is sending 'an owl to athens',[ ] i know". [footnote : a greek proverb, equivalent to our 'coals to newcastle'.] in another letter he says, "only give me britain to paint with your colours and my own pencil". but either the britons of those days did not, after all, seem to afford sufficient interest for poem or history, or for some other reason this joint literary undertaking, which seems once to have been contemplated, was never carried out, and we have missed what would beyond doubt have been a highly interesting volume of sketches in britain by the brothers cicero. quintus was a poet, as well as his brother--nay, a better poet, in the latter's estimation, or at least he was polite enough to say so more than once. in quantity, at least, if not in quality, the younger must have been a formidable rival, for he wrote, as appears from one of these letters, four tragedies in fifteen days--possibly translations only from the greek. one of the most remarkable of all cicero's letters, and perhaps that which does him most credit both as a man and a statesman, is one which he wrote to his brother, who was at the time governor of asia. indeed, it is much more than a letter; it is rather a grave and carefully weighed paper of instructions on the duties of such a position. it is full of sound practical sense, and lofty principles of statesmanship--very different from the principles which too commonly ruled the conduct of roman governors abroad. the province which had fallen to the lot of quintus cicero was one of the richest belonging to the empire, and which presented the greatest temptations and the greatest facilities for the abuse of power to selfish purposes. though called asia, it consisted only of the late kingdom of pergamus, and had come under the dominion of rome, not by conquest, as was the case with most of the provinces, but by way of legacy from attalus, the last of its kings; who, after murdering most of his own relations, had named the roman people as his heirs. the seat of government was at ephesus. the population was of a very mixed character, consisting partly of true asiatics, and partly of asiatic greeks, the descendants of the old colonists, and containing also a large roman element--merchants who were there for purposes of trade, many of them bankers and money-lenders, and speculators who farmed the imperial taxes, and were by no means scrupulous in the matter of fleecing the provincials. these latter--the 'publicani', as they were termed--might prove very dangerous enemies to any too zealous reformer. if the roman governor there really wished to do his duty, what with the combined servility and double-dealing of the orientals, the proverbial lying of the greeks, and the grasping injustice of the roman officials, he had a very difficult part to play. how quintus had been playing it is not quite clear. his brother, in this admirable letter, assumes that he had done all that was right, and urges him to maintain the same course. but the advice would hardly have been needed if all had gone well hitherto. "you will find little trouble in holding your subordinates in check, if you can but keep a check upon yourself. so long as you resist gain, and pleasure, and all other temptations, as i am sure you do, i cannot fancy there will be any danger of your not being able to check a dishonest merchant or an extortionate collector. for even the greeks, when they see you living thus, will look upon you as some hero from their old annals, or some supernatural being from heaven, come down into their province. "i write thus, not to urge you so to act, but that you may congratulate yourself upon having so acted, now and heretofore. for it is a glorious thing for a man to have held a government for three years in asia, in such sort that neither statue, nor painting, nor work of art of any kind, nor any temptations of wealth or beauty (in all which temptations your province abounds) could draw you from the strictest integrity and self-control: that your official progresses should have been no cause of dread to the inhabitants, that none should be impoverished by your requisitions, none terrified at the news of your approach;--but that you should have brought with you, wherever you came, the most hearty rejoicings, public and private, inasmuch as every town saw in you a protector and not a tyrant--every family received you as a guest, not as a plunderer. "but in these points, as experience has by this time taught you, it is not enough for you to have these virtues yourself, but you must look to it carefully, that in this guardianship of the province not you alone, but every officer under you, discharges his duty to our subjects, to our fellow-citizens, and to the state.... if any of your subordinates seem grasping for his own interest, you may venture to bear with him so long as he merely neglects the rules by which he ought to be personally bound; never so far as to allow him to abuse for his own gain the power with which you have intrusted him to maintain the dignity of his office. for i do not think it well, especially since the customs of official life incline so much of late to laxity and corrupt influence, that you should scrutinise too closely every abuse, or criticise too strictly every one of your officers, but rather place trust in each in proportion as you feel confidence in his integrity. "for those whom the state has assigned you as companions and assistants in public business, you are answerable only within the limits i have just laid down; but for those whom you have chosen to associate with yourself as members of your private establishment and personal suite, you will be held responsible not only for all they do, but for all they say.... "your ears should be supposed to hear only what you publicly listen to, not to be open to every secret and false whisper for the sake of private gain. your official seal should be not as a mere common tool, but as though it were yourself; not the instrument of other men's wills, but the evidence of your own. your officers should be the agents of your clemency, not of their own caprice; and the rods and axes which they bear should be the emblems of your dignity, not merely of your power. in short, the whole province should feel that the persons, the families, the reputation, and the fortunes of all over whom you rule, are held by you very precious. let it be well understood that you will hold that man as much your enemy who gives a bribe, if it comes to your knowledge, as the man who receives it. but no one will offer bribes, if this be once made clear, that those who pretend to have influence of this kind with you have no power, after all, to gain any favour for others at your hands. * * * * * "let such, then, be the foundations of your dignity;--first, integrity and self-control on your own part; a becoming behaviour on the part of all about you; a very careful and circumspect selection of your intimates, whether greeks or provincials; a grave and firm discipline maintained throughout your household. for if such conduct befits us in our private and everyday relations, it becomes well-nigh godlike in a government of such extent, in a state of morals so depraved, and in a province which presents so many temptations. such a line of conduct and such rules will alone enable you to uphold that severity in your decisions and decrees which you have employed in some cases, and by which we have incurred (and i cannot regret it) the jealousy of certain interested parties.... you may safely use the utmost strictness in the administration of justice, so long as it is not capricious or partial, but maintained at the same level for all. yet it will be of little use that your own decisions be just and carefully weighed, unless the same course be pursued by all to whom you delegate any portion of your judicial authority. such firmness and dignity must be employed as may not only be above partiality, but above the suspicion of it. to this must be added readiness to give audience, calmness in deciding, care in weighing the merits of the case and in satisfying the claims of the parties". yet he advises that justice should be tempered with leniency. "if such moderation be popular at rome, where there is so much self-assertion, such unbridled freedom, so much licence allowed to all men;--where there are so many courts of appeal open, so many means of help, where the people have so much power and the senate so much authority; how grateful beyond measure will moderation be in the governor of asia, a province where all that vast number of our fellow-citizens and subjects, all those numerous states and cities, hang upon one man's nod! where there is no appeal to the tribune, no remedy at law, no senate, no popular assembly. wherefore it should be the aim of a great man, and one noble by nature and trained by education and liberal studies, so to behave himself in the exercise of that absolute power, as that they over whom he presides should never have cause to wish for any authority other than his". iv. tiro. of all cicero's correspondence, his letters to tiro supply the most convincing evidence of his natural kindness of heart. tiro was a slave; but this must be taken with some explanation. the slaves in a household like cicero's would vary in position from the lowest menial to the important major-domo and the confidential secretary. tiro was of this higher class. he had probably been born and brought up in the service, like eliezer in the household of abraham, and had become, like him, the trusted agent of his master and the friend of the whole family. he was evidently a person of considerable ability and accomplishments, acting as literary amanuensis, and indeed in some sort as a domestic critic, to his busy master. he had accompanied him to his government in cilicia, and on the return home had been taken ill, and obliged to be left behind at patrae. and this is cicero's affectionate letter to him, written from leucas (santa maura) the day afterwards: "i thought i could have borne the separation from you better, but it is plainly impossible; and although it is of great importance to the honours which i am expecting[ ] that i should get to rome as soon as possible, yet i feel i made a great mistake in leaving you behind. but as it seemed to be your wish not to make the voyage until your health was restored, i approved your decision. nor do i think otherwise now, if you are still of the same opinion. but if hereafter, when you are able to eat as usual, you think you can follow me here, it is for you to decide. i sent mario to you, telling him either to join me with you as soon as possible, or, if you are delayed, to come back here at once. but be assured of this, that if it can be so without risk to your health, there is nothing i wish so much as to have you with me. only, if you feel it necessary for your recovery to stay a little longer at patrae, there is nothing i wish so much as for you to get well. if you sail at once, you will catch us at leucas. but if you want to get well first, take care to secure pleasant companions, fine weather, and a good ship. mind this, my good tiro, if you love me--let neither mario's visit nor this letter hurry you. by doing what is best for your own health, you will be best obeying my directions. consider these points with your usual good sense. i miss you very much; but then i love you, and my affection makes me wish to see you well, just as my want of you makes me long to see you as soon as possible. but the first point is the most important. above all, therefore, take care to get well: of all your innumerable services to me, this will be the most acceptable". [footnote : the triumph for the victory gained under his nominal command over the hill-tribes in cilicia, during his governorship of that province (p. ).] cicero writes to him continually during his own journey homewards with the most thoughtful kindness, begs that he will be cautious as to what vessel he sails in, and recommends specially one very careful captain. he has left a horse and a mule ready for him when he lands at brundusium. then he hears that tiro had been foolish enough to go to a concert, or something of the kind, before he was strong, for which he mildly reproves him. he has written to the physician to spare no care or pains, and to charge, apparently, what he pleases. several of his letters to his friend atticus, at this date, speak in the most anxious and affectionate terms of the serious illness of this faithful servant. just as he and his party are starting from leucas, they send a note "from cicero and his son, and quintus the elder and younger, to their best and kindest tiro". then from rome comes a letter in the name of the whole family, wife and daughter included: "marcus tullius cicero, and cicero the younger, and terentia, and tullia, and brother quintus, and quintus's son, to tiro send greeting. "although i miss your able and willing service every moment, still it is not on my own account so much as yours that i am sorry you are not well. but as your illness has now taken the form of a quartan fever (for so curius writes), i hope, if you take care of yourself, you will soon be stronger. only be sure, if you have any kindness for me, not to trouble yourself about anything else just now, except how to get well as soon as may be. i am quite aware how much you regret not being with me; but everything will go right if you get well. i would not have you hurry, or undergo the annoyance of sea-sickness while you are weak, or risk a sea-voyage in winter". then he tells him all the news from rome; how there had been quite an ovation on his arrival there; how caesar was (he thought) growing dangerous to the state; and how his own coveted "triumph" was still postponed. "all this", he says, "i thought you would like to know". then he concludes: "over and over again, i beg you to take care to get well, and to send me a letter whenever you have an opportunity. farewell, again and again". tiro got well, and outlived his kind master, who, very soon after this, presented him with his freedom. it is to him that we are said to be indebted for the preservation and publication of cicero's correspondence. he wrote, also, a biography of him, which plutarch had seen, and of which he probably made use in his own 'life of cicero', but which has not come down to us. there was another of his household for whom cicero had the same affection. this was sositheus, also a slave, but a man, like tiro, of some considerable education, whom he employed as his reader. his death affected cicero quite as the loss of a friend. indeed, his anxiety is such, that his roman dignity is almost ashamed of it. "i grieve", he says, "more than i ought for a mere slave". just as one might now apologise for making too much fuss about a favourite dog; for the slave was looked upon in scarcely a higher light in civilised rome. they spoke of him in the neuter gender, as a chattel; and it was gravely discussed, in case of danger in a storm at sea, which it would be right first to cast overboard to lighten the ship, a valuable horse or an indifferent slave. hortensius, the rival advocate who has been mentioned, a man of more luxurious habits and less kindly spirit than cicero, who was said to feed the pet lampreys in his stews much better than he did his slaves, and to have shed tears at the death of one of these ugly favourites, would have probably laughed at cicero's concern for sositheus and tiro. but indeed every glimpse of this kind which cicero's correspondence affords us gives token of a kindly heart, and makes us long to know something more. some have suspected him of a want of filial affection, owing to a somewhat abrupt and curt announcement in a letter to atticus of his father's death; and his stanch defenders propose to adopt, with madvig, the reading, _discessit_--"left us", instead of _decessit_--"died". there really seems no occasion. unless atticus knew the father intimately, there was no need to dilate upon the old man's death; and cicero mentions subsequently, in terms quite as brief, the marriage of his daughter and the birth of his son--events in which we are assured he felt deeply interested. if any further explanation of this seeming coldness be required, the following remarks of mr. forsyth are apposite and true: "the truth is, that what we call _sentiment_ was almost unknown to the ancient romans, in whose writings it would be as vain to look for it as to look for traces of gothic architecture amongst classic ruins. and this is something more than a mere illustration. it suggests a reason for the absence. romance and sentiment came from the dark forests of the north, when scandinavia and germany poured forth their hordes to subdue and people the roman empire. the life of a citizen of the republic of rome was essentially a public life. the love of country was there carried to an extravagant length, and was paramount to, and almost swallowed up, the private and social affections. the state was everything, the individual comparatively nothing. in one of the letters of the emperor marcus aurelius to fronto, there is a passage in which he says that the roman language had no word corresponding with the greek [greek: philostorgia],--the affectionate love for parents and children. upon this niebuhr remarks that the feeling was 'not a roman one; but cicero possessed it in a degree which few romans could comprehend, and hence he was laughed at for the grief which he felt at the death of his daughter tullia'". chapter x. essays on 'old age' and 'friendship' the treatise on 'old age', which is thrown into the form of a dialogue, is said to have been suggested by the opening of plato's 'republic', in which cephalus touches so pleasantly on the enjoyments peculiar to that time of life. so far as light and graceful treatment of his subject goes, the roman essayist at least does not fall short of his model. montaigne said of it, that "it made one long to grow old";[ ] but montaigne was a frenchman, and such sentiment was quite in his way. the dialogue, whether it produce this effect on many readers or not, is very pleasant reading: and when we remember that the author wrote it when he was exactly in his grand climacteric, and addressed it to his friend atticus, who was within a year of the same age, we get that element of personal interest which makes all writings of the kind more attractive. the argument in defence of the paradox that it is a good thing to grow old, proceeds upon the only possible ground, the theory of compensations. it is put into the mouth of cato the censor, who had died about a century before, and who is introduced as giving a kind of lecture on the subject to his young friends scipio and laelius, in his eighty-fourth year. he was certainly a remarkable example in his own case of its being possible to grow old gracefully and usefully, if, as he tells us, he was at that age still able to take part in the debates in the senate, was busy collecting materials for the early history of rome, had quite lately begun the study of greek, could enjoy a country dinner-party, and had been thinking of taking lessons in playing on the lyre. [footnote : "il donne l'appetit de vieiller".] he states four reasons why old age is so commonly considered miserable. first, it unfits us for active employment; secondly, it weakens the bodily strength; thirdly, it deprives us of nearly all pleasures; fourthly and lastly, it is drawing near death. as to the first, the old senator argues very fairly that very much of the more important business of life is not only transacted by old men, but in point of fact, as is confessed by the very name and composition of the roman senate, it is thought safest to intrust it to the elders in the state. the pilot at the helm may not be able to climb the mast and run up and down the deck like the younger sailor, but he steers none the worse for being old. he quotes some well-known examples of this from roman annals; examples which might be matched by obvious instances in modern english history. the defence which he makes of old age against the second charge--loss of muscular vigour--is rather more of the nature of special pleading. he says little more than that mere muscular strength, after all, is not much wanted for our happiness: that there are always comparative degrees of strength; and that an old man need no more make himself unhappy because he has not the strength of a young man, than the latter does because he has not the strength of a bull or an elephant. it was very well for the great wrestler milo to be able to carry an ox round the arena on his shoulders; but, on the whole, a man does not often want to walk about with a bullock on his back. the old are said, too, to lose their memory. cato thinks they can remember pretty well all that they care to remember. they are not apt to forget who owes them money; and "i never knew an old man forget", he says, "where he had buried his gold". then as to the pleasures of the senses, which age undoubtedly diminishes our power of enjoying. "this", says cato, "is really a privilege, not a deprivation; to be delivered from the yoke of such tyrants as our passions--to feel that we have 'got our discharge' from such a warfare--is a blessing for which men ought rather to be grateful to their advancing years". and the respect and authority which is by general consent conceded to old age, is a pleasure more than equivalent to the vanished pleasures of youth. there is one consideration which the author has not placed amongst his four chief disadvantages of growing old,--which, however, he did not forget, for he notices it incidentally in the dialogue,--the feeling that we are growing less agreeable to our friends, that our company is less sought after, and that we are, in short, becoming rather ciphers in society. this, in a condition of high civilisation, is really perhaps felt by most of us as the hardest to bear of all the ills to which old age is liable. we should not care so much about the younger generation rising up and making us look old, if we did not feel that they are "pushing us from our stools". cato admits that he had heard some old men complain that "they were now neglected by those who had once courted their society", and he quotes a passage from the comic poet caecilius "this is the bitterest pang in growing old,-- to feel that we grow hateful to our fellows". but he dismisses the question briefly in his own case by observing with some complacency that he does not think his young friends find _his_ company disagreeable--an assertion which scipio and laelius, who occasionally take part in the dialogue, are far too well bred to contradict. he remarks also, sensibly enough, that though some old persons are no doubt considered disagreeable company, this is in great measure their own fault: that testiness and ill-nature (qualities which, as he observes, do not usually improve with age) are always disagreeable, and that such persons attributed to their advancing years what was in truth the consequence of their unamiable tempers. it is not all wine which turns sour with age, nor yet all tempers; much depends on the original quality. the old censor lays down some maxims which, like the preceding, have served as texts for a good many modern writers, and may be found expanded, diluted, or strengthened, in the essays of addison and johnson, and in many of their followers of less repute. "i never could assent", says cato, "to that ancient and much-bepraised proverb,--that 'you must become an old man early, if you wish to be an old man long'". yet it was a maxim which was very much acted upon by modern englishmen a generation or two back. it was then thought almost a moral duty to retire into old age, and to assume all its disabilities as well as its privileges, after sixty years or even earlier. at present the world sides with cato, and rushes perhaps into the other extreme; for any line at which old age now begins would be hard to trace either in dress or deportment. "we must resist old age, and fight against it as a disease". strong words from the old roman; but, undoubtedly, so long as we stop short of the attempt to affect juvenility, cato is right. we should keep ourselves as young as possible. he speaks shrewd sense, again, when he says--"as i like to see a young man who has something old about him, so i like to see an old man in whom there remains something of the youth: and he who follows this maxim may become an old man in body, but never in heart". "what a blessing it is", says southey, "to have a boy's heart!" do we not all know these charming old people, to whom the young take almost as heartily as to their own equals in age, who are the favourite consultees in all amusements, the confidants in all troubles? cato is made to place a great part of his own enjoyment, in these latter years of his, in the cultivation of his farm and garden (he had written, we must remember, a treatise 'de re rustica',--a kind of roman 'book of the farm', which we have still remaining). he is enthusiastic in his description of the pleasures of a country gentleman's life, and, like a good farmer, as no doubt he was, becomes eloquent upon the grand subject of manures. gardening is a pursuit which he holds in equal honour--that "purest of human pleasures", as bacon calls it. on the subject of the country life generally he confesses an inclination to become garrulous--the one failing which he admits may be fairly laid to the charge of old age. the picture of the way of living of a roman gentleman-farmer, as he draws it, must have presented a strong contrast with the artificial city-life of rome. "where the master of the house is a good and careful manager, his wine-cellar, his oil-stores, his larder, are always well stocked; there is a fulness throughout the whole establishment; pigs, kids, lambs, poultry, milk, cheese, honey,--all are in abundance. the produce of the garden is always equal, as our country-folk say, to a double course. and all these good things acquire a second relish from the voluntary labours of fowling and the chase. what need to dwell upon the charm of the green fields, the well-ordered plantations, the beauty of the vineyards and olive-groves? in short, nothing can be more luxuriant in produce, or more delightful to the eye, than a well-cultivated estate; and, to the enjoyment of this, old age is so far from being any hindrance, that it rather invites and allures us to such pursuits". he has no patience with what has been called the despondency of old age--the feeling, natural enough at that time of life, but not desirable to be encouraged, that there is no longer any room for hope or promise in the future which gives so much of its interest to the present. he will not listen to the poet when he says again-- "he plants the tree that shall not see the fruit" the answer which he would make has been often put into other and more elaborate language, but has a simple grandeur of its own. "if any should ask the aged cultivator for whom he plants, let him not hesitate to make this reply,--'for the immortal gods, who, as they willed me to inherit these possessions from my forefathers, so would have me hand them on to those that shall come after'". the old roman had not the horror of country society which so many civilised englishmen either have or affect. "i like a talk", he says, "over a cup of wine". "even when i am down at my sabine estate, i daily make one at a party of my country neighbours, and we prolong our conversation very frequently far into the night". the words are put into cato's mouth, but the voice is the well-known voice of cicero. we find him here, as in his letters, persuading himself into the belief that the secret of happiness is to be found in the retirement of the country. and his genial and social nature beams through it all. we are reminded of his half-serious complaints to atticus of his importunate visitors at formiae, the dinner-parties which he was, as we say now, "obliged to go to", and which he so evidently enjoyed.[ ] [footnote : "a clergyman was complaining of the want of society in the country where he lived, and said, 'they talk of _runts_' (i.e., young cows). 'sir', said mr. salusbury, 'mr. johnson would learn to talk of runts;' meaning that i was a man who would make the most of my situation, whatever it was".--boswell's life. cicero was like dr. johnson.] he is careful, however, to remind his readers that old age, to be really either happy or venerable, must not be the old age of the mere voluptuary or the debauchee; that the grey head, in order to be, even in his pagan sense, "a crown of glory", must have been "found in the way of righteousness". shakespeare might have learned from cicero in these points the moral which he puts into the mouth of his adam-- "therefore mine age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly". it is a miserable old age, says the roman, which is obliged to appeal to its grey hairs as its only claim to the respect of its juniors. "neither hoar hairs nor wrinkles can arrogate reverence as their right. it is the life whose opening years have been honourably spent which reaps the reward of reverence at its close". in discussing the last of the evils which accompany old age, the near approach of death, cicero rises to something higher than his usual level. his cato will not have death to be an evil at all; it is to him the escaping from "the prison of the body",--the "getting the sight of land at last after a long voyage, and coming into port". nay, he does not admit that death is death. "i have never been able to persuade myself"; he says, quoting the words of cyrus in xenophon, "that our spirits were alive while they were in these mortal bodies, and died only when they departed out of them; or that the spirit then only becomes void of sense when it escapes from a senseless body; but that rather when freed from all admixture of corporality, it is pure and uncontaminated, then it most truly has sense". "i am fully persuaded", he says to his young listeners, "that your two fathers, my old and dearly-loved friends, are living now, and living that life which only is worthy to be so called". and he winds up the dialogue with the very beautiful apostrophe, one of the last utterances of the philosopher's heart, well known, yet not too well known to be here quoted: "it likes me not to mourn over departing life, as many men, and men of learning, have done. nor can i regret that i have lived, since i have so lived that i may trust i was not born in vain; and i depart out of life as out of a temporary lodging, not as out of my home. for nature has given it to us as an inn to tarry at by the way, not as a place to abide in. o glorious day! when i shall set out to join that blessed company and assembly of disembodied spirits, and quit this crowd and rabble of life! for i shall go my way, not only to those great men of whom i spoke, but to my own son cato, than whom was never better man born, nor more full of dutiful affection; whose body i laid on the funeral pile--an office he should rather have done for me.[ ] but his spirit has never left me; it still looks fondly back upon me, though it has gone assuredly into those abodes where he knew that i myself should follow. and this my great loss i seemed to bear with calmness; not that i bore it undisturbed, but that i still consoled myself with the thought that the separation between us could not be for long. and if i err in this--in that i believe the spirits of men to be immortal--i err willingly; nor would i have this mistaken belief of mine uprooted so long as i shall live. but if, after i am dead, i shall have no consciousness, as some curious philosophers assert, then i am not afraid of dead philosophers laughing at my mistake". [footnote : burke touches the same key in speaking of his son; "i live in an inverted order. they who ought to have succeeded me have gone before me: they who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors".] * * * * * the essay on 'friendship' is dedicated by the author to atticus--an appropriate recognition, as he says, of the long and intimate friendship which had existed between themselves. it is thrown, like the other, into the form of a dialogue. the principal speaker here is one of the listeners in the former case--laelius, surnamed the wise--who is introduced as receiving a visit from his two sons-in-law, fannius and scaevola (the great lawyer before mentioned), soon after the sudden death of his great friend, the younger scipio africanus. laelius takes the occasion, at the request of the young men, to give them his views and opinions on the subject of friendship generally. this essay is perhaps more original than that upon 'old age', but certainly is not so attractive to a modern reader. its great merit is the grace and polish of the language; but the arguments brought forward to prove what an excellent thing it is for a man to have good friends, and plenty of them, in this world, and the rules for his behaviour towards them, seem to us somewhat trite and commonplace, whatever might have been their effect upon a roman reader. cicero is indebted to the greek philosophers for the main outlines of his theory of friendship, though his acquaintance with the works of plato and aristotle was probably exceedingly superficial. he holds, with them, that man is a social animal; that "we are so constituted by nature that there must be some degree of association between us all, growing closer in proportion as we are brought into more intimate relations one with another". so that the social bond is a matter of instinct, not of calculation; not a cold commercial contract of profit and loss, of giving and receiving, but the fulfilment of one of the yearnings of our nature. here he is in full accordance with the teaching of aristotle, who, of all the various kinds of friendship to which he allows the common name, pronounces that which is founded merely upon interest--upon mutual interchange, by tacit agreement, of certain benefits--to be the least worthy of such a designation. friendship is defined by cicero to be "the perfect accord upon all questions, religious and social, together with mutual goodwill and affection". this "perfect accord", it must be confessed, is a very large requirement. he follows his greek masters again in holding that true friendship can exist only amongst the good; that, in fact, all friendship must assume that there is something good and lovable in the person towards whom the feeling is entertained it may occasionally be a mistaken assumption; the good quality we think we see in our friend may have no existence save in our own partial imagination; but the existence of the counterfeit is an incontestable evidence of the true original. and the greatest attraction, and therefore the truest friendships, will always be of the good towards the good. he admits, however, the notorious fact, that good persons are sometimes disagreeable; and he confesses that we have a right to seek in our friends amiability as well as moral excellence. "sweetness", he says--anticipating, as all these ancients so provokingly do, some of our most modern popular philosophers--"sweetness, both in language and in manner, is a very powerful attraction in the formation of friendships". he is by no means of the same opinion as sisyphus in lord lytton's 'tale of miletus'-- "now, then, i know thou really art my friend,-- none but true friends choose such unpleasant words". he admits that it is the office of a friend to tell unpleasant truths sometimes; but there should be a certain amount of this indispensable "sweetness" to temper the bitterness of the advice. there are some friends who are continually reminding you of what they have done for you--"a disgusting set of people verily they are", says our author. and there are others who are always thinking themselves slighted; "in which case there is generally something of which they are conscious in themselves, as laying them open to contemptuous treatment". cicero's own character displays itself in this short treatise. here, as everywhere, he is the politician. he shows a true appreciation of the duties and the qualifications of a true friend; but his own thoughts are running upon political friendships. just as when, in many of his letters, he talks about "all honest men", he means "our party"; so here, when he talks of friends, he cannot help showing that it was of the essence of friendship, in his view, to hold the same political opinions, and that one great use of friends was that a man should not be isolated, as he had sometimes feared he was, in his political course. when he puts forward the old instances of coriolanus and gracchus, and discusses the question whether their "friends" were or were not bound to aid them in their treasonable designs against the state, he was surely thinking of the factions of his own times, and the troublesome brotherhoods which had gathered round catiline and clodius. be this as it may, the advice which he makes laelius give to his younger relatives is good for all ages, modern or ancient: "there is nothing in this world more valuable than friendship". "next to the immediate blessing and providence of almighty god", lord clarendon was often heard to say, "i owe all the little i know, and the little good that is in me, to the friendships and conversation i have still been used to, of the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age". chapter xi. cicero's philosophy. 'the true ends of life'.[ ] philosophy was to the roman what religion is to me. it professed to answer, so far as it might be answered pilate's question, "what is truth?" or to teach men, as cicero described it, "the knowledge of things human and divine". hence the philosopher invests his subject with all attributes of dignity. to him philosophy brings all blessings in her train. she is the guide of life, the medicine for his sorrows, "the fountain-head of all perfect eloquence--the mother of all good deeds and good words". he invokes with affectionate reverence the great name of socrates--the sage who had "first drawn wisdom down from heaven". [footnote : 'de finibus bonorum et malorum'.] no man ever approached his subject more richly laden with philosophic lore than cicero. snatching every leisure moment that he could from a busy life, he devotes it to the study of the great minds of former ages. indeed, he held this study to be the duty of the perfect orator; a knowledge of the human mind was one of his essential qualifications. nor could he conceive of real eloquence without it; for his definition of eloquence is, "wisdom speaking fluently".[ ] but such studies were also suited to his own natural tastes. and as years passed on, and he grew weary of civil discords and was harassed by domestic troubles, the great orator turns his back upon the noisy city, and takes his parchments of plato and aristotle to be the friends of his councils and the companions of his solitude, seeking by their light to discover truth, which democritus had declared to be buried in the depths of the sea. [footnote : "copiose loquens sapientia".] yet, after all, he professes to do little more than translate. so conscious is he that it is to greece that rome is indebted for all her literature, and so conscious, also, on the part of his countrymen, of what he terms "an arrogant disdain for everything national", that he apologises to his readers for writing for the million in their mother-tongue. yet he is not content, as he says, to be "a mere interpreter". he thought that by an eclectic process--adopting and rearranging such of the doctrines of his greek masters as approved themselves to his own judgment--he might make his own work a substitute for theirs. his ambition is to achieve what he might well regard as the hardest of tasks--a popular treatise on philosophy; and he has certainly succeeded. he makes no pretence to originality; all he can do is, as he expresses it, "to array plato in a latin dress", and "present this stranger from beyond the seas with the freedom of his native, city". and so this treatise on the ends of life--a grave question even to the most careless thinker--is, from the nature of the case, both dramatic and rhetorical. representatives of the two great schools of philosophy--the stoics and epicureans--plead and counter-plead in his pages, each in their turn; and their arguments are based on principles broad and universal enough to be valid even now. for now, as then, men are inevitably separated into two classes--amiable men of ease, who guide their conduct by the rudder-strings of pleasure--who for the most part "leave the world" (as has been finely said) "in the world's debt, having consumed much and produced nothing";[ ] or, on the other hand, zealous men of duty, "who scorn delights and live laborious days", and act according to the dictates of their honour or their conscience. in practice, if not in theory, a man must be either stoic or epicurean. [footnote : lord derby.] each school, in this dialogue, is allowed to plead its own cause. "listen" (says the epicurean) "to the voice of nature that bids you pursue pleasure, and do not be misled by that vulgar conception of pleasure as mere sensual enjoyment; our opponents misrepresent us when they say that we advocate this as the highest good; we hold, on the contrary, that men often obtain the greatest pleasure by neglecting this baser kind. your highest instances of martyrdom--of decii devoting themselves for their country, of consuls putting their sons to death to preserve discipline--are not disinterested acts of sacrifice, but the choice of a present pain in order to procure a future pleasure. vice is but ignorance of real enjoyment. temperance alone can bring peace of mind; and the wicked, even if they escape public censure, 'are racked night and day by the anxieties sent upon them by the immortal gods'. we do not, in this, contradict your stoic; we, too, affirm that only the wise man is really happy. happiness is as impossible for a mind distracted by passions, as for a city divided by contending factions. the terrors of death haunt the guilty wretch, 'who finds out too late that he has devoted himself to money or power or glory to no purpose'. but the wise man's life is unalloyed happiness. rejoicing in a clear conscience, 'he remembers the past with gratitude, enjoys the blessings of the present, and disregards the future'. thus the moral to be drawn is that which horace (himself, as he expresses it, 'one of the litter of epicurus') impresses on his fair friend leuconöe: 'strain your wine, and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more? in the moment of our talking envious time has slipped away. seize the present, trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may'". passing on to the second book of the treatise, we hear the advocate of the counter-doctrine. why, exclaims the stoic, introduce pleasure to the councils of virtue? why uphold a theory so dangerous in practice? your epicurean soon turns epicure, and a class of men start up who have never seen the sun rise or set, who squander fortunes on cooks and perfumers, on costly plate and gorgeous rooms, and ransack sea and land for delicacies to supply their feasts. epicurus gives his disciples a dangerous discretion in their choice. there is no harm in luxury (he tells us) provided it be free from inordinate desires. but who is to fix the limit to such vague concessions? nay, more, he degrades men to the level of the brute creation. in his view, there is nothing admirable beyond this pleasure--no sensation or emotion of the mind, no soundness or health of body. and what is this pleasure which he makes of such high account? how short-lived while it lasts! how ignoble when we recall it afterwards! but even the common feeling and sentiments of men condemn so selfish a doctrine. we are naturally led to uphold truth and abhor deceit, to admire regulus in his tortures, and to despise a lifetime of inglorious ease. and then follows a passage which echoes the stirring lines of scott-- "sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! to all the sensual world proclaim, one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name". do not then (concludes the stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. we were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. the heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men. the opening scene in the third book is as lively and dramatic as (what was no doubt the writer's model) the introduction of a platonic dialogue. cicero has walked across from his tusculan villa to borrow some manuscripts from the well-stocked library of his young friend lucullus[ ]--a youth whose high promise was sadly cut short, for he was killed at philippi, when he was not more than twenty-three. there, "gorging himself with books", cicero finds marcus cato--a stoic of the stoics--who expounds in a high tone the principles of his sect. [footnote : see p. .] honour he declares to be the rule, and "life according to nature" the end of man's existence. and wrong and injustice are more really contrary to this nature than either death, or poverty, or bodily suffering, or any other outward evil.[ ] stoics and peripatetics are agreed at least on one point--that bodily pleasures fade into nothing before the splendours of virtue, and that to compare the two is like holding a candle against the sunlight, or setting a drop of brine against the waves of the ocean. your epicurean would have each man live in selfish isolation, engrossed in his private pleasures and pursuits. we, on the other hand, maintain that "divine providence has appointed the world to be a common city for men and gods", and each one of us to be a part of this vast social system. and thus every man has his lot and place in life, and should take for his guidance those golden rules of ancient times--"obey god; know thyself; shun excess". then, rising to enthusiasm, the philosopher concludes: "who cannot but admire the incredible beauty of such a system of morality? what character in history or in fiction can be grander or more consistent than the 'wise man' of the stoics? all the riches and glory of the world are his, for he alone can make a right use of all things. he is 'free', though he be bound by chains; 'rich', though in the midst of poverty; 'beautiful', for the mind is fairer than the body; 'a king', for, unlike the tyrants of the world, he is lord of himself; 'happy', for he has no need of solon's warning to 'wait till the end', since a life virtuously spent is a perpetual happiness". [footnote : so bishop butler, in the preface to his sermons upon 'human nature', says they were "intended to explain what is meant by the nature of man, when it is said that virtue consists in following, and vice in deviating from it".] in the fourth book, cicero himself proceeds to vindicate the wisdom of the ancients--the old academic school of socrates and his pupils--against what he considers the novelties of stoicism. all that the stoics have said has been said a hundred times before by plato and aristotle, but in nobler language. they merely "pick out the thorns" and "lay bare the bones" of previous systems, using newfangled terms and misty arguments with a "vainglorious parade". their fine talk about citizens of the world and the ideal wise man is rather poetry than philosophy. they rightly connect happiness with virtue, and virtue with wisdom; but so did aristotle some centuries before them. but their great fault (says cicero) is, that they ignore the practical side of life. so broad is the line which they draw between the "wise" and "foolish", that they would deny to plato himself the possession of wisdom. they take no account of the thousand circumstances which go to form our happiness. to a spiritual being, virtue _might_ be the chief good; but in actual life our physical is closely bound up with our mental enjoyment, and pain is one of those stern facts before which all theories are powerless. again, by their fondness for paradox, they reduce all offences to the same dead level. it is, in their eyes, as impious to beat a slave as to beat a parent: because, as they say, "nothing can be _more_ virtuous than virtue,--nothing _more_ vicious than vice". and lastly, this stubbornness of opinion affects their personal character. they too often degenerate into austere critics and bitter partisans, and go far to banish from among us love, friendship, gratitude, and all the fair humanities of life. the fifth book carries us back some twenty years, when we find cicero once more at athens, taking his afternoon walk among the deserted groves of the academy. with him are his brother quintus, his cousin lucius, and his friends piso and atticus. the scene, with its historic associations, irresistibly carries their minds back to those illustrious spirits who had once made the place their own. among these trees plato himself had walked; under the shadow of that porch zeno had lectured to his disciples;[ ] yonder quintus points out the "white peak of colonus", described by sophocles in "those sweetest lines;" while glistening on the horizon were the waves of the phaleric harbour, which demosthenes, cicero's own great prototype, had outvoiced with the thunder of his declamation. so countless, indeed, are the memories of the past called up by the genius of the place, that (as one of the friends remarks) "wherever we plant our feet, we tread upon some history". then piso, speaking at cicero's request, begs his friends to turn from the degenerate thinkers of their own day to those giants of philosophy, from whose writings all liberal learning, all history, and all elegance of language may be derived. more than all, they should turn to the leader of the peripatetics, aristotle, who seemed (like lord bacon after him) to have taken all knowledge as his portion. from these, if from no other source, we may learn the secret of a happy life. but first we must settle what this 'chief good' is--this end and object of our efforts--and not be carried to and fro, like ships without a steersman, by every blast of doctrine. [footnote : the stoics took their name from the 'stoa', or portico in the academy, where they _sat_ at lecture, as the peripatetics (the school of aristotle) from the little knot of listeners who followed their master as he _walked_. epicurus's school were known as the philosophers of 'the garden', from the place where he taught. the 'old academy' were the disciples of plato; the 'new academy' (to whose tenets cicero inclined) revived the great principle of socrates--of affirming nothing.] if epicurus was wrong in placing happiness "in corporal pleasure and in careless ease", no less wrong are they who say that "honour" requires pleasure to be added to it, since they thus make honour itself dishonourable. and again, to say with others that happiness is tranquillity of mind, is simply to beg the question. putting, then, all such theories aside, we bring the argument to a practical issue. self-preservation is the first great principle of nature; and so strong is this instinctive love of life both among men and animals, that we see even the iron-hearted stoic shrink from the actual pangs of a voluntary death. then comes the question, what _is_ this nature that is so precious to each of us? clearly it is compounded of body and mind, each with many virtues of its own; but as the mind should rule the body, so reason, as the dominant faculty, should rule the mind. virtue itself is only "the perfection of this reason", and, call it what you will, genius or intellect is something divine. furthermore, there is in man a gradual progress of reason, growing with his growth until it has reached perfection. even in the infant there are "as it were sparks of virtue"--half-unconscious principles of love and gratitude; and these germs bear fruit, as the child develops into the man. we have also an instinct which attracts us towards the pursuit of wisdom; such is the true meaning of the sirens' voices in the odyssey, says the philosopher, quoting from the poet of all time: "turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay; since never pilgrim to these regions came, but heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, and in his joy passed on, with ampler mind".[ ] it is wisdom, not pleasure, which they offer. hence it is that men devote their days and nights to literature, without a thought of any gain that may accrue from it; and philosophers paint the serene delights of a life of contemplation in the islands of the blest. [footnote : odyss. xii. (worsley).] again, our minds can never rest. "desire for action grows with us;" and in action of some sort, be it politics or science, life (if it is to be life at all) must be passed by each of us. even the gambler must ply the dice-box, and the man of pleasure seek excitement in society. but in the true life of action, still the ruling principle should be honour. such, in brief, is piso's (or rather cicero's) vindication of the old masters of philosophy. before they leave the place, cicero fires a parting shot at the stoic paradox that the 'wise man' is always happy. how. he pertinently asks, can one in sickness and poverty, blind, or childless, in exile or in torture, be possibly called happy, except by a monstrous perversion of language?[ ] [footnote : in a little treatise called "paradoxes", cicero discusses six of these scholastic quibbles of the stoics.] here, somewhat abruptly, the dialogue closes; and cicero pronounces no judgment of his own, but leaves the great question almost as perplexed as when he started the discussion. but, of the two antagonistic theories, he leans rather to the stoic than to the epicurean. self-sacrifice and honour seem, to his view, to present a higher ideal than pleasure or expediency. ii. 'academic questions'. fragments of two editions of this work have come down to us; for almost before the first copy had reached the hands of his friend atticus, to whom it was sent, cicero had rewritten the whole on an enlarged scale. the first book (as we have it now) is dedicated to varro, a noble patron of art and literature. in his villa at cumae were spacious porticoes and gardens, and a library with galleries and cabinets open to all comers. here, on a terrace looking seawards, cicero, atticus, and varro himself pass a long afternoon in discussing the relative merits of the old and new academies; and hence we get the title of the work. varro takes the lion's share of the first dialogue, and shows how from the "vast and varied genius of plato" both academics and peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it related to morals, to nature, or to logic. stoicism receives a passing notice, as also does what varro considers the heresy of theophrastus, who strips virtue of all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends upon it. the second book is dedicated to another illustrious name, the elder lucullus, not long deceased--half-statesman, half-dilettante, "with almost as divine a memory for facts", says cicero, with something of envy, "as hortensius had for words". this time it is at his villa, near tusculum, amidst scenery perhaps even now the loveliest of all italian landscapes, that the philosophic dialogue takes place. lucullus condemns the scepticism of the new academy--those reactionists against the dogmatism of past times, who disbelieve their very eyesight. if (he says) we reject the testimony of the senses, there is neither body, nor truth, nor argument, nor anything certain left us. these perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our belief. cicero ingeniously defends this scepticism, which was, in fact, the bent of his own mind. after all, what is our eyesight worth? the ship sailing across the bay yonder seems to move, but to the sailors it is the shore that recedes from their view. even the sun, "which mathematicians affirm to be eighteen times larger than the earth, looks but a foot in diameter". and as it is with these things, so it is with all knowledge. bold indeed must be the man who can define the point at which belief passes into certainty. even the "fine frenzy" of the poet, his pictures of gods and heroes, are as lifelike to himself and to his hearers as though he actually saw them: "see how apollo, fair-haired god, draws in and bends his golden bow, while on the left fair dian waves her torch". no--we are sure of nothing; and we are happy if, like socrates, we only know this--that we know nothing. then, as if in irony, or partly influenced perhaps by the advocate's love of arguing the case both ways, cicero demolishes that grand argument of design which elsewhere he so carefully constructs,[ ] and reasons in the very language of materialism--"you assert that all the universe could not have been so ingeniously made without some godlike wisdom, the majesty of which you trace down even to the perfection of bees and ants. why, then, did the deity, when he made everything for the sake of man, make such a variety (for instance) of venomous reptiles? your divine soul is a fiction; it is better to imagine that creation is the result of the laws of nature, and so release the deity from a great deal of hard work, and me from fear; for which of us, when he thinks that he is an object of divine care, can help feeling an awe of the divine power day and night? but we do not understand even our own bodies; how, then, can we have an eyesight so piercing as to penetrate the mysteries of heaven and earth?" [footnote : see p. .] the treatise, however, is but a disappointing fragment, and the argument is incomplete. iii. the 'tusculan disputations'. the scene of this dialogue is cicero's villa at tusculum. there, in his long gallery, he walks and discusses with his friends the vexed questions of morality. was death an evil? was the soul immortal? how could a man best bear pain and the other miseries of life? was virtue any guarantee for happiness? then, as now, death was the great problem of humanity--"to die and go we know not where". the old belief in elysium and tartarus had died away; as cicero himself boldly puts it in another place, such things were no longer even old wives' fables. either death brought an absolute unconsciousness, or the soul soared into space. "_lex non poena mors_"--"death is a law, not a penalty"--was the ancient saying. it was, as it were, the close of a banquet or the fall of the curtain. "while we are, death is not; when death has come, we are not". cicero brings forward the testimony of past ages to prove that death is not a mere annihilation. man cannot perish utterly. heroes are deified; and the spirits of the dead return to us in visions of the night. somehow or other (he says) there clings to our minds a certain presage of future ages; and so we plant, that our children may reap; we toil, that others may enter into our labours; and it is this life after death, the desire to live in men's mouths for ever, which inspires the patriot and the martyr. fame to the roman, even more than to us, was "the last infirmity of noble minds". it was so in a special degree to cicero. the instinctive sense of immortality, he argues, is strong within us; and as, in the words of the english poet, "our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting", so also in death, the roman said, though in other words: "our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither". believe not then, says cicero, those old wives' tales, those poetic legends, the terrors of a material hell, of the joys of a sensual paradise. rather hold with plato that the soul is an eternal principle of life, which has neither beginning nor end of existence; for if it were not so, heaven and earth would be overset, and all nature would stand at gaze. "men say they cannot conceive or comprehend what the soul can be, distinct from the body. as if, forsooth, they could comprehend what it is, when it is _in_ the body,--its conformation, its magnitude, or its position there.... to me, when i consider the nature of the soul, there is far more difficulty and obscurity in forming a conception of what the soul is while in the body,--in a dwelling where it seems so little at home,--than of what it will be when it has escaped into the free atmosphere of heaven, which seems its natural abode".[ ] and as the poet seems to us inspired, as the gifts of memory and eloquence seem divine, so is the soul itself, in its simple essence, a god dwelling in the breast of each of us. what else can be this power which enables us to recollect the past, to foresee the future, to understand the present? [footnote : i. c. .] there follows a passage on the argument from design which anticipates that fine saying of voltaire--"si dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer; mais toute la nature crie qu'il existe". "the heavens", says even the heathen philosopher, "declare the glory of god". look on the sun and the stars; look on the alternation of the seasons, and the changes of day and night; look again at the earth bringing forth her fruits for the use of men; the multitude of cattle; and man himself, made as it were to contemplate and adore the heavens and the gods. look on all these things, and doubt not that there is some being, though you see him not, who has created and presides over the world. "imitate, therefore, the end of socrates; who, with the fatal cup in his hands, spoke with the serenity of one not forced to die, but, as it were, ascending into heaven; for he thought that the souls of men, when they left the body, went by different roads; those polluted by vice and unclean living took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the gods; while those who had kept themselves pure, and on earth had taken a divine life as their model, found it easy to return to those beings from whence they came". or learn a lesson from the swans, who, with a prophetic instinct, leave this world with joy and singing. yet do not anticipate the time of death, "for the deity forbids us to depart hence without his summons; but, on just cause given (as to socrates and cato), gladly should we exchange our darkness for that light, and, like men not breaking prison but released by the law, leave our chains with joy, as having been discharged by god". the feeling of these ancients with regard to suicide, we must here remember, was very different from our own. there was no distinct idea of the sanctity of life; no social stigma and consequent suffering were brought on the family of the suicide. stoic and epicurean philosophers alike upheld it as a lawful remedy against the pangs of disease, the dotage of old age, or the caprices of a tyrant. every man might, they contended, choose his own route on the last great journey, and sleep well, when he grew wearied out with life's fitful fever. the door was always open (said epictetus) when the play palled on the senses. you should quit the stage with dignity, nor drain the flask to the dregs. some philosophers, it is true, protested against it as a mere device of cowardice to avoid pain, and as a failure in our duties as good citizens. cicero, in one of his latest works, again quotes with approval the opinion of pythagoras, that "no man should abandon his post in life without the orders of the great commander". but at rome suicide had been glorified by a long roll of illustrious names, and the protest was made in vain. but why, continues cicero, why add to the miseries of life by brooding over death? is life to any of us such unmixed pleasure even while it lasts? which of us can tell whether he be taken away from good or from evil? as our birth is but "a sleep and a forgetting", so our death may be but a second sleep, as lasting as endymion's. why then call it wretched, even if we die before our natural time? nature has lent us life, without fixing the day of payment; and uncertainty is one of the conditions of its tenure. compare our longest life with eternity, and it is as short-lived as that of those ephemeral insects whose life is measured by a summer day; and "who, when the sun sets, have reached old age". let us, then, base our happiness on strength of mind, on a contempt of earthly pleasures, and on the strict observance of virtue. let us recall the last noble words of socrates to his judges. "the death", said he, "to which you condemn me, i count a gain rather than a loss. either it is a dreamless sleep that knows no waking, or it carries me where i may converse with the spirits of the illustrious dead. _i_ go to death, _you_ to life; but which of us is going the better way, god only knows". no man, then, dies too soon who has run a course of perfect virtue; for glory follows like a shadow in the wake of such a life. welcome death, therefore, as a blessed deliverance from evil, sent by the special favour of the gods, who thus bring us safely across a sea of troubles to an eternal haven. the second topic which cicero and his friends discuss is, the endurance of pain. is it an unmixed evil? can anything console the sufferer? cicero at once condemns the sophistry of epicurus. the wise man cannot pretend indifference to pain; it is enough that he endure it with courage, since, beyond all question, it is sharp, bitter, and hard to bear. and what is this courage? partly excitement, partly the impulse of honour or of shame, partly the habituation which steels the endurance of the gladiator. keep, therefore--this is the conclusion--stern restraint over the feminine elements of your soul, and learn not only to despise the attacks of pain, but also "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". from physical, the discussion naturally passes to mental, suffering. for grief, as well as for pain, he prescribes the remedy of the stoics--_aequanimitas_--"a calm serenity of mind". the wise man, ever serene and composed, is moved neither by pain or sorrow, by fear or desire. he is equally undisturbed by the malice of enemies or the inconstancy of fortune. but what consolation can we bring to ease the pain of the epicurean? "put a nosegay to his nostrils--burn perfumes before him--crown him with roses and woodbine"! but perfumes and garlands can do little in such case; pleasures may divert, but they can scarcely console. again, the cyrenaics bring at the best but job's comfort. no man will bear his misfortunes the more lightly by bethinking himself that they are unavoidable--that others have suffered before him--that pain is part and parcel of the ills which flesh is heir to. why grieve at all? why feed your misfortune by dwelling on it? plunge rather into active life and forget it, remembering that excessive lamentation over the trivial accidents of humanity is alike unmanly and unnecessary. and as it is with grief, so it is with envy, lust, anger, and those other "perturbations of the mind" which the stoic zeno rightly declares to be "repugnant to reason and nature". from such disquietudes it is the wise man who is free. the fifth and last book discusses the great question, is virtue of itself sufficient to make life happy? the bold conclusion is, that it is sufficient. cicero is not content with the timid qualifications adopted by the school of the peripatetics, who say one moment that external advantages and worldly prosperity are nothing, and then again admit that, though man may be happy without them, he is happier with them,--which is making the real happiness imperfect after all. men differ in their views of life. as in the great olympic games, the throng are attracted, some by desire of gain, some by the crown of wild olive, some merely by the spectacle; so, in the race of life, we are all slaves to some ruling idea, it may be glory, or money, or wisdom. but they alone can be pronounced happy whose minds are like some tranquil sea--"alarmed by no fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no lusts, enervated by no relaxing pleasures,--and such serenity virtue alone can produce". these 'disputations' have always been highly admired. but their popularity was greater in times when cicero's greek originals were less read or understood. erasmus carried his admiration of this treatise to enthusiasm. "i cannot doubt", he says, "but that the mind from which such teaching flowed was inspired in some sort by divinity". iv. the treatise 'on moral duties'. the treatise 'de officiis', known as cicero's 'offices, to which we pass next, is addressed by the author to his son, while studying at athens under cratippus; possibly in imitation of aristotle, who inscribed his ethics to his son nicomachus. it is a treatise on the duties of a gentleman--"the noblest present", says a modern writer, "ever made by parent to a child".[ ] written in a far higher tone than lord chesterfield's letters, though treating of the same subject, it proposes and answers multifarious questions which must occur continually to the modern christian as well as to the ancient philosopher. "what makes an action right or wrong? what is a duty? what is expediency? how shall i learn to choose between my principles and my interests? and lastly (a point of casuistry which must sometimes perplex the strictest conscience), of two 'things honest',[ ] which is most so?" [footnote : kelsall.] [footnote : the english "honesty" and "honour" alike fail to convey the full force of the latin _honestus_. the word expresses a progress of thought from comeliness and grace of person to a noble and graceful character--all whose works are done in honesty and honour.] the key-note of his discourse throughout is honour; and the word seems to carry with it that magic force which burke attributed to chivalry--"the unbought grace of life--the nurse of heroic sentiment and manly enterprise". _noblesse oblige_,--and there is no state of life, says cicero, without its obligations. in their due discharge consists all the nobility, and in their neglect all the disgrace, of character. there should be no selfish devotion to private interests. we are born not for ourselves only, but for our kindred and fatherland. we owe duties not only to those who have benefited but to those who have wronged us. we should render to all their due; and justice is due even to the lowest of mankind: what, for instance (he says with a hardness which jars upon our better feelings), can be lower than a slave? honour is that "unbought grace" which adds a lustre to every action. in society it produces courtesy of manners; in business, under the form of truth, it establishes public credit. again, as equity, it smooths the harsh features of the law. in war it produces that moderation and good faith between contending armies which are the surest basis of a lasting peace. and so in honour are centred the elements of all the virtues--wisdom and justice, fortitude and temperance; and "if", he says, reproducing the noble words of plato, as applied by him to wisdom, "this 'honour' could but be seen in her full beauty by mortal eyes, the whole world would fall in love with her". such is the general spirit of this treatise, of which only the briefest sketch can be given in these pages. cicero bases honour on our inherent excellence of nature, paying the same noble tribute to humanity as kant some centuries after: "on earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind". truth is a law of our nature. man is only "lower than the angels"; and to him belong prerogatives which mark him off from the brute creation--the faculties of reason and discernment, the sense of beauty, and the love of law and order. and from this arises that fellow--feeling which, in one sense, "makes the whole world kin"--the spirit of terence's famous line, which cicero notices (applauded on its recitation, as augustin tells us, by the cheers of the entire audience in the theatre)-- "homo sum--humani nihil a me alienum puto:" [ ] for (he continues) "all men by nature love one another, and desire an intercourse of words and action". hence spring the family affections, friendship, and social ties; hence also that general love of combination, which forms a striking feature of the present age, resulting in clubs, trades-unions, companies, and generally in what mr. carlyle terms "swarmery". [footnote : "i am a man--i hold that nothing which concerns mankind can be matter of unconcern to me".] next to truth, justice is the great duty of mankind. cicero at once condemns "communism" in matters of property. ancient immemorial seizure, conquest, or compact, may give a title; but "no man can say that he has anything his own by a right of nature". injustice springs from avarice or ambition, the thirst of riches or of empire, and is the more dangerous as it appears in the more exalted spirits, causing a dissolution of all ties and obligations. and here he takes occasion to instance "that late most shameless attempt of caesar's to make himself master of rome". there is, besides, an injustice of omission. you may wrong your neighbour by seeing him wronged without interfering. cicero takes the opportunity of protesting strongly against the selfish policy of those lovers of ease and peace, who, "from a desire of furthering their own interests, or else from a churlish temper, profess that they mind nobody's business but their own, in order that they may seem to be men of strict integrity and to injure none", and thus shrink from taking their part in "the fellowship of life". he would have had small patience with our modern doctrine of non-intervention and neutrality in nations any more than in men. such conduct arises (he says) from the false logic with which men cheat their conscience; arguing reversely, that whatever is the best policy is--honesty. there are two ways, it must be remembered, in which one man may injure another--force and fraud; but as the lion is a nobler creature than the fox, so open violence seems less odious than secret villany. no character is so justly hateful as "a rogue in grain, veneered with sanctimonious theory". nations have their obligations as well as individuals, and war has its laws as well as peace. the struggle should be carried on in a generous temper, and not in the spirit of extermination, when "it has sometimes seemed a question between two hostile nations, not which should remain a conqueror, but which should remain a nation at all". no mean part of justice consists in liberality, and this, too, has its duties. it is an important question, how, and when, and to whom, we should give? it is possible to be generous at another person's expense: it is possible to injure the recipient by mistimed liberality; or to ruin one's fortune by open house and prodigal hospitality. a great man's bounty (as he says in another place) should be a common sanctuary for the needy. "to ransom captives and enrich the meaner folk is a nobler form of generosity than providing wild beasts or shows of gladiators to amuse the mob". charity should begin at home; for relations and friends hold the first place in our affections; but the circle of our good deeds is not to be narrowed by the ties of blood, or sect, or party, and "our country comprehends the endearments of all". we should act in the spirit of the ancient law--"thou shalt keep no man from the running stream, or from lighting his torch at thy hearth". our liberality should be really liberal,--like that charity which jeremy taylor describes as "friendship to all the world". another component principle of this honour is courage, or "greatness of soul", which (continues cicero) has been well defined by the stoics as "a virtue contending for justice and honesty"; and its noblest form is a generous contempt for ordinary objects of ambition, not "from a vain or fantastic humour, but from solid principles of reason". the lowest and commoner form of courage is the mere animal virtue of the fighting-cock. but a character should not only be excellent,--it should be graceful. in gesture and deportment men should strive to acquire that dignified grace of manners "which adds as it were a lustre to our lives". they should avoid affectation and eccentricity; "not to care a farthing what people think of us is a sign not so much of pride as of immodesty". the want of tact--the saying and doing things at the wrong time and place--produces the same discord in society as a false note in music; and harmony of character is of more consequence than harmony of sounds. there is a grace in words as well as in conduct: we should avoid unseasonable jests, "and not lard our talk with greek quotations".[ ] [footnote : this last precept cicero must have considered did not apply to letter-writing, otherwise he was a notorious offender against his own rule.] in the path of life, each should follow the bent of his own genius, so far as it is innocent-- "honour and shame from no condition rise; act well your part--there all the honour lies". nothing is so difficult (says cicero) as the choice of a profession, inasmuch as "the choice has commonly to be made when the judgment is weakest". some tread in their father's steps, others beat out a fresh line of their own; and (he adds, perhaps not without a personal reference) this is generally the case with those born of mean parents, who propose to carve their own way in the world. but the _parvenu_ of arpinum--the 'new man', as aristocratic jealousy always loved to call him--is by no means insensible to the true honours of ancestry. "the noblest inheritance", he says, "that can ever be left by a father to his son, far excelling that of lands and houses, is the fame of his virtues and glorious actions"; and saddest of all sights is that of a noble house dragged through the mire by some degenerate descendant, so as to be a by-word among the populace,--"which may" (he concludes) "be justly said of but too many in our times". the roman's view of the comparative dignity of professions and occupations is interesting, because his prejudices (if they be prejudices) have so long maintained their ground amongst us moderns. tax-gatherers and usurers are as unpopular now as ever--the latter very deservedly so. retail trade is despicable, we are told, and "all mechanics are by their profession mean". especially such trades as minister to mere appetite or luxury--butchers, fishmongers, and cooks; perfumers, dancers, and suchlike. but medicine, architecture, education, farming, and even wholesale business, especially importation and exportation, are the professions of a gentleman. "but if the merchant, satisfied with his profits, shall leave the seas and from the harbour step into a landed estate, such a man seems justly deserving of praise". we seem to be reading the verdict of modern english society delivered by anticipation two thousand years ago. the section ends with earnest advice to all, that they should put their principles into practice. "the deepest knowledge of nature is but a poor and imperfect business", unless it proceeds into action. as justice consists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society among men,--as "greatness of soul itself, if it be isolated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of uncouth churlishness",--so it is each citizen's duty to leave his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place in public life, if the times demand it, "though he be able to number the stars and measure out the world". the same practical vein is continued in the next book. what, after all, are a man's real interests? what line of conduct will best advance the main end of his life? generally, men make the fatal mistake of assuming that honour must always clash with their interests, while in reality, says cicero, "they would obtain their ends best, not by knavery and underhand dealing, but by justice and integrity". the right is identical with the expedient. "the way to secure the favour of the gods is by upright dealing; and next to the gods, nothing contributes so much to men's happiness as men themselves". it is labour and co-operation which have given us all the goods which we possess. since, then, man is the best friend to man, and also his most formidable enemy, an important question to be discussed is the secret of influence and popularity--the art of winning men's affections. for to govern by bribes or by force is not really to govern at all; and no obedience based on fear can be lasting--"no force of power can bear up long against a current of public hate". adventurers who ride rough-shod over law (he is thinking again of caesar) have but a short-lived reign; and "liberty, when she has been chained up a while, bites harder when let loose than if she had never been chained at all".[ ] most happy was that just and moderate government of rome in earlier times, when she was "the port and refuge for princes and nations in their hour of need". three requisites go to form that popular character which has a just influence over others; we must win men's love, we must deserve their confidence, and we must inspire them with an admiration for our abilities. the shortest and most direct road to real influence is that which socrates recommends--"for a man to be that which he wishes men to take him for".[ ] [footnote : it is curious to note how, throughout the whole of this argument, cicero, whether consciously or unconsciously, works upon the principle that the highest life is the political life, and that the highest object a man can set before him is the obtaining, by legitimate means, influence and authority amongst his fellow-citizens.] [footnote : "not being less but more than all the gentleness he seemed to be". --tennyson: 'in memoriam'.] then follow some maxims which show how thoroughly conservative was the policy of our philosopher. the security of property he holds to be the security of the state. there must be no playing with vested rights, no unequal taxation, no attempt to bring all things to a level, no cancelling of debts and redistribution of land (he is thinking of the baits held out by catiline), none of those traditional devices for winning favour with the people, which tend to destroy that social concord and unity which make a common wealth. "what reason is there", he asks, "why, when i have bought, built, repaired, and laid out much money, another shall come and enjoy the fruits of it?" and as a man should be careful of the interests of the social body, so he should be of his own. but cicero feels that in descending to such questions he is somewhat losing sight of his dignity as a moralist. "you will find all this thoroughly discussed", he says to his son, "in xenophon's economics--a book which, when i was just your age, i translated from the greek into latin". [one wonders whether young marcus took the hint.] "and if you want instruction in money matters, there are gentlemen sitting on the exchange who will teach you much better than the philosophers". the last book opens with a saying of the elder cato's, which cicero much admires, though he says modestly that he was never able in his own case quite to realise it--"i am never less idle than when i am idle, and never less alone than when alone". retirement and solitude are excellent things, cicero always declares; generally contriving at the same time to make it plain, as he does here, that his own heart is in the world of public life. but at least it gives him time for writing. he "has written more in this short time, since the fall of the commonwealth, than in all the years during which it stood". he here resolves the question, if honour and interest seem to clash, which is to give way? or rather, it has been resolved already; if the right be always the expedient, the opposition is seeming, not real. he puts a great many questions of casuistry, but it all amounts to this: the good man keeps his oath, "though it were to his own hindrance". but it is never to his hindrance; for a violation of his conscience would be the greatest hindrance of all. in this treatise, more than in any of his other philosophical works, cicero inclines to the teaching of the stoics. in the others, he is rather the seeker after truth than the maintainer of a system. his is the critical eclecticism of the 'new academy'--the spirit so prevalent in our own day, which fights against the shackles of dogmatism. and with all his respect for the nobler side of stoicism, he is fully alive to its defects; though it was not given to him to see, as milton saw after him, the point wherein that great system really failed--the "philosophic pride" which was the besetting sin of all disciples in the school, from cato to seneca: "ignorant of themselves, of god much more, * * * * * much of the soul they talk, but all awry; and in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves all glory arrogate,--to god give none; rather accuse him under usual names, fortune, or fate, as one regardless quite of mortal things".[ ] [footnote : paradise regained.] yet, in spite of this, such men were as the salt of the earth in a corrupt age; and as we find, throughout the more modern pages of history, great preachers denouncing wickedness in high places,--bourdaloue and massillon pouring their eloquence into the heedless ears of louis xiv, and his courtiers--sherlock and tillotson declaiming from the pulpit in such stirring accents that "even the indolent charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious buckingham forgot to sneer"[ ]--so, too, do we find these "monks of heathendom", as the stoics have been not unfairly called, protesting in their day against that selfish profligacy which was fast sapping all morality in the roman empire. no doubt (as mr. lecky takes care to tell us), their high principles were not always consistent with their practice (alas! whose are?); cato may have ill-used his slaves, sallust may have been rapacious, and seneca wanting in personal courage. yet it was surely something to have set up a noble ideal, though they might not attain to it themselves, and in "that hideous carnival of vice" to have kept themselves, so far as they might, unspotted from the world. certain it is that no other ancient sect ever came so near the light of revelation. passages from seneca, from epictetus, from marcus aurelius, sound even now like fragments of the inspired writings. the unknown god, whom they ignorantly worshipped as the soul or reason of the world, is--in spite of milton's strictures--the beginning and the end of their philosophy. let us listen for a moment to their language. "prayer should be only for the good". "men should act according to the spirit, and not according to the letter of their faith". "wouldest thou propitiate the gods? be good: he has worshipped them sufficiently who has imitated them". it was from a stoic poet, aratus, that st. paul quoted the great truth which was the rational argument against idolatry--"for we are also his offspring, and" (so the original passage concludes) "we alone possess a voice, which is the image of reason". it is in another poet of the same school that we find what are perhaps the noblest lines in all latin poetry. persius concludes his satire on the common hypocrisy of those prayers and offerings to the gods which were but a service of the lips and hands, in words of which an english rendering may give the sense but not the beauty: "nay, then, let us offer to the gods that which the debauched sons of great messala can never bring on their broad chargers,--a soul wherein the laws of god and man are blended,--a heart pure to its inmost depths,--a breast ingrained with a noble sense of honour. let me but bring these with me to the altar, and i care not though my offering be a handful of corn". with these grand words, fit precursors of a purer creed to come, we may take our leave of the stoics, remarking how thoroughly, even in their majestic egotism, they represented the moral force of the nation among whom they flourished; a nation, says a modern preacher, "whose legendary and historic heroes could thrust their hand into the flame, and see it consumed without a nerve shrinking; or come from captivity on parole, advise their countrymen against a peace, and then go back to torture and certain death; or devote themselves by solemn self-sacrifice like the decii. the world must bow before such men; for, unconsciously, here was a form of the spirit of the cross-self-surrender, unconquerable fidelity to duty, sacrifice for others".[ ] [footnote : macaulay.] [footnote : f.w. robertson, sermons, i. .] portions of three treatises by cicero upon political philosophy have come down to us: . i de republica'; a dialogue on government, founded chiefly on the 'republic' of plato: . 'de legibus'; a discussion on law in the abstract, and on national systems of legislation . 'de jure civili'; of which last only a few fragments exist. his historical works have all perished. chapter xii. cicero's religion. it is difficult to separate cicero's religion from his philosophy. in both he was a sceptic, but in the better sense of the word. his search after truth was in no sneering or incredulous spirit, but in that of a reverent inquirer. we must remember, in justice to him, that an earnest-minded man in his day could hardly take higher ground than that of the sceptic. the old polytheism was dying out in everything but in name, and there was nothing to take its place. his religious belief, so far as we can gather it, was rather negative than positive. in the speculative treatise which he has left us, 'on the nature of the gods', he examines all the current creeds of the day, but leaves his own quite undefined. the treatise takes the form, like the rest, of an imaginary conversation. this is supposed to have taken place at the house of aurelius cotta, then pontifex maximus--an office which answered nearly to that of minister of religion. the other speakers are balbus, velleius, and cicero himself,--who acts, however, rather in the character of moderator than of disputant. the debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical dialogues, between the different schools. velleius first sets forth the doctrine of his master epicurus; speaking about the gods, says one of his opponents, with as much apparent intimate knowledge "as if he had just come straight down from heaven". all the speculations of previous philosophers--which he reviews one after the other--are, he assures the company, palpable errors. the popular mythology is a mere collection of fables. plato and the stoics, with their soul of the world and their pervading providence, are entirely wrong; the disciples of epicurus alone are right. there are gods; that much, the universal belief of mankind in all ages sufficiently establishes. but that they should be the laborious beings which the common systems of theology would make them,--that they should employ themselves in the manufacture of worlds,--is manifestly absurd. some of this argument is ingenious. "what should induce the deity to perform the functions of an aedile, to light up and decorate the world? if it was to supply better accommodation for himself, then he must have dwelt of choice, up to that time, in the darkness of a dungeon. if such improvements gave him pleasure, why should he have chosen to be without them so long?" no--the gods are immortal and happy beings; and these very attributes imply that they should be wholly free from the cares of business--exempt from labour, as from pain and death. they are in human form, but of an ethereal and subtile essence, incapable of our passions or desires. happy in their own perfect wisdom and virtue, they "sit beside their nectar, careless of mankind". cotta--speaking in behalf of the new academy--controverts these views. be these your gods, epicurus, as well say there are no gods at all. what reverence, what love, or what fear can men have of beings who neither wish them, nor can work them, good or ill? is idleness the divinest life? "why, 'tis the very heaven of schoolboys; yet the schoolboys, on their holiday, employ themselves in games". nay, he concludes, what the stoic posidonius said of your master epicurus is true--"he believed there were no gods, and what he said about their nature he said only to avoid popular odium". he could not believe that the deity has the outward shape of a man, without any solid essence; that he has all the members of a man, without the power to use them; that he is a shadowy transparent being, who shows no favour and confers no benefits on any, cares for nothing and does nothing; this is to allow his existence of the gods in word, but to deny it in fact. velleius compliments his opponent on his clever argument, but desires that balbus would state his views upon the question. the stoic consents; and, at some length, proceeds to prove (what neither disputant has at all denied) the existence of divine beings of some kind. universal belief, well-authenticated instances of their appearance to men, and of the fulfilment of prophecies and omens, are all evidences of their existence. he dwells much, too, on the argument from design, of which so much use has been made by modern theologians. he furnishes paley with the idea for his well-known illustration of the man who finds a watch; "when we see a dial or a water-clock, we believe that the hour is shown thereon by art, and not by chance".[ ] he gives also an illustration from the poet attius, which from a poetical imagination has since become an historical incident; the shepherds who see the ship argo approaching take the new monster for a thing of life, as the mexicans regarded the ships of cortes. much more, he argues, does the harmonious order of the world bespeak an intelligence within. but his conclusion is that the universe itself is the deity; or that the deity is the animating spirit of the universe; and that the popular mythology, which gives one god to the earth, one to the sea, one to fire, and so on, is in fact a distorted version of this truth. the very form of the universe--the sphere--is the most perfect of all forms, and therefore suited to embody the divine. [footnote : de nat. deor. ii. . paley's nat. theol. ch. i.] then cotta--who though, as pontifex, he is a national priest by vocation, is of that sect in philosophy which makes doubt its creed--resumes his objections. he is no better satisfied with the tenets of the stoics than with those of the epicureans. he believes that there are gods; but, coming to the discussion as a dispassionate and philosophical observer, he finds such proofs as are offered of their existence insufficient. but this third book is fragmentary, and the continuity of cotta's argument is broken by considerable gaps in all the manuscripts. there is a curious tradition, that these portions were carefully torn out by the early christians, because they might prove too formidable weapons in the hands of unbelievers. cotta professes throughout only to raise his objections in the hope that they may be refuted; but his whole reasoning is destructive of any belief in an overruling providence. he confesses himself puzzled by that insoluble mystery--the existence of evil in a world created and ruled by a beneficent power. the gods have given man reason, it is said; but man abuses the gift to evil ends. "this is the fault", you say, "of men, not of the gods. as though the physician should complain of the virulence of the disease, or the pilot of the fury of the tempest! though these are but mortal men, even in them it would seem ridiculous. who would have asked your help, we should answer, if these difficulties had not arisen? may we not argue still more strongly in the case of the gods? the fault, you say, lies in the vices of men. but you should have given men such a rational faculty as would exclude the possibility of such crimes". he sees, as david did, "the ungodly in prosperity". the laws of heaven are mocked, crimes are committed, and "the thunders of olympian jove are silent". he quotes, as it would always be easy to quote, examples of this from all history: the most telling and original, perhaps, is the retort of diagoras, who was called the atheist, when they showed him in the temple at samothrace the votive tablets (as they may be seen in some foreign churches now) offered by those shipwrecked seamen who had been saved from drowning. "lo, thou that deniest a providence, behold here how many have been saved by prayer to the gods!" "yea", was his reply; "but where are those commemorated who were drowned?" the dialogue ends with no resolution of the difficulties, and no conclusion as to the points in question. cicero, who is the narrator of the imaginary conference, gives it as his opinion that the arguments of the stoic seemed to him to have "the greater probability". it was the great tenet of the school which he most affected, that probability was the nearest approach that man could make to speculative truth. "we are not among those", he says, "to whom there seems to be no such thing as truth; but we say that all truths have some falsehoods attached to them which have so strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no certain note of distinction which can determine our judgment and assent. the consequence of which is that there are many things probable; and although they are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise man governs his life thereby".[ ] it remained for one of our ablest and most philosophical christian writers to prove that in such matters probability was practically equivalent to demonstration.[ ] cicero's own form of scepticism in religious matters is perhaps very nearly expressed in the striking anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the mouth of the epicurean. [footnote : de nat. deor. i. .] [footnote : "to us, probability is the very guide of life".--introd. to butler's analogy.] "if you ask me what the deity is, or what his nature and attributes are, i should follow the example of simonides, who, when the tyrant hiero proposed to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. when the king, on the next day, required from him the answer, simonides requested two days more; and when he went on continually asking double the time, instead of giving any answer, hiero in amazement demanded of him the reason. 'because', replied he, 'the longer i meditate on the question, the more obscure does it appear'".[ ] [footnote : de nat. deor. i. .] the position of cicero as a statesman, and also as a member of the college of augurs, no doubt checked any strong expression of opinion on his part as to the forms of popular worship and many particulars of popular belief. in the treatise which he intended as in some sort a sequel to this dialogue on the 'nature of the gods'--that upon 'divination'--he states the arguments for and against the national belief in omens, auguries, dreams, and such intimations of the divine will.[ ] he puts the defence of the system in the mouth of his brother quintus, and takes himself the destructive side of the argument: but whether this was meant to give his own real views on the subject, we cannot be so certain. the course of argument employed on both sides would rather lead to the conclusion that the writer's opinion was very much that which johnson delivered as to the reality of ghosts--"all argument is against it, but all belief is for it". [footnote : there is a third treatise, 'de fato', apparently a continuation of the series, of which only a portion has reached us. it is a discussion of the difficult questions of fate and free-will.] with regard to the great questions of the soul's immortality, and a state of future rewards and punishments, it would be quite possible to gather from cicero's writings passages expressive of entirely contradictory views. the bent of his mind, as has been sufficiently shown, was towards doubt, and still more towards discussion; and possibly his opinions were not so entirely in a state of flux as the remains of his writings seem to show. in a future state of some kind he must certainly have believed--that is, with such belief as he would have considered the subject-matter to admit of--as a strong probability. in a speculative fragment which has come down to us, known as 'scipio's dream', we seem to have the creed of the man rather than the speculations of the philosopher. scipio africanus the elder appears in a dream to the younger who bore his name (his grandson by adoption). he shows him a vision of heaven; bids him listen to the music of the spheres, which, as they move in their order, "by a modulation of high and low sounds", give forth that harmony which men have in some poor sort reduced to notation. he bids him look down upon the earth, contracted to a mere speck in the distance, and draws a lesson of the poverty of all mere earthly fame and glory. "for all those who have preserved, or aided, or benefited their country, there is a fixed and definite place in heaven, where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of everlasting life". but "the souls of those who have given themselves up to the pleasures of sense, and made themselves, as it were, the servants of these,--who at the bidding of the lusts which wait upon pleasure have violated the laws of gods and men,--they, when they escape from the body, flit still around the earth, and never attain to these abodes but after many ages of wandering". we may gather that his creed admitted a valhalla for the hero and the patriot, and a long process of expiation for the wicked. there is a curious passage preserved by st. augustin from that one of cicero's works which he most admired--the lost treatise on 'glory'--which seems to show that so far from being a materialist, he held the body to be a sort of purgatory for the soul. "the mistakes and the sufferings of human life make me think sometimes that those ancient seers, or interpreters of the secrets of heaven and the counsels of the divine mind, had some glimpse of the truth, when they said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for some sins committed in a former life; and that the idea is true which we find in aristotle, that we are suffering some such punishment as theirs of old, who fell into the hands of those etruscan bandits, and were put to death with a studied cruelty; their living bodies being tied to dead bodies, face to face, in closest possible conjunction: that so our souls are coupled to our bodies, united like the living with the dead". but whatever might have been the theological side, if one may so express it, of cicero's religion, the moral aphorisms which meet us here and there in his works have often in them a teaching which comes near the tone of christian ethics. the words of petrarch are hardly too strong--"you would fancy sometimes it was not a pagan philosopher but a christian apostle who was speaking".[ ] these are but a few out of many which might be quoted: "strive ever for the truth, and so reckon as that not thou art mortal, but only this thy body, for thou art not that which this outward form of thine shows forth, but each man's mind, that is the real man--not the shape which can be traced with the finger".[ ] "yea, rather, they live who have escaped from the bonds of their flesh as from a prison-house". "follow after justice and duty; such a life is the path to heaven, and into yon assembly of those who have once lived, and now, released from the body, dwell in that place". where, in any other heathen writer, shall we find such noble words as those which close the apostrophe in the tusculans?--"one single day well spent, and in accordance with thy precepts, were better to be chosen than an immortality of sin!"[ ] he is addressing himself, it is true, to philosophy; but his philosophy is here little less than the wisdom of scripture: and the spiritual aspiration is the same--only uttered under greater difficulties--as that of the psalmist when he exclaims, "one day in thy courts is better than a thousand!" we may or may not adopt erasmus's view of his inspiration--or rather, inspiration is a word which has more than one definition, and this would depend upon which definition we take; but we may well sympathise with the old scholar when he says--"i feel a better man for reading cicero". [footnote : "interdum non paganum philosophum, sed apostolum loqui putes".] [footnote : 'the dream of scipio'.] [footnote : tusc., v. .] end of cicero the life of cicero by anthony trollope _in two volumes_ vol. i. new york harper & brothers, franklin square contents of volume i. chapter i. page introduction. chapter ii. his education. chapter iii. the condition of rome. chapter iv. his early pleadings.--sextus roscius amerinus.--his income. chapter v. cicero as quÆstor. chapter vi. verres. chapter vii. cicero as Ædile and prÆtor. chapter viii. cicero as consul. chapter ix. catiline. chapter x. cicero after his consulship. chapter xi. the triumvirate. chapter xii. his exile. * * * * * appendices. appendix a. appendix b. appendix c. appendix d. appendix e. the life of cicero. chapter i. _introduction._ i am conscious of a certain audacity in thus attempting to give a further life of cicero which i feel i may probably fail in justifying by any new information; and on this account the enterprise, though it has been long considered, has been postponed, so that it may be left for those who come after me to burn or publish, as they may think proper; or, should it appear during my life, i may have become callous, through age, to criticism. the project of my work was anterior to the life by mr. forsyth, and was first suggested to me as i was reviewing the earlier volumes of dean merivale's history of the romans under the empire. in an article on the dean's work, prepared for one of the magazines of the day, i inserted an apology for the character of cicero, which was found to be too long as an episode, and was discarded by me, not without regret. from that time the subject has grown in my estimation till it has reached its present dimensions. i may say with truth that my book has sprung from love of the man, and from a heartfelt admiration of his virtues and his conduct, as well as of his gifts. i must acknowledge that in discussing his character with men of letters, as i have been prone to do, i have found none quite to agree with me. his intellect they have admitted, and his industry; but his patriotism they have doubted, his sincerity they have disputed, and his courage they have denied. it might have become me to have been silenced by their verdict; but i have rather been instigated to appeal to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. it is not only that cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. all this has been already so said of him by other biographers. plutarch, who is as familiar to us as though he had been english, and middleton, who thoroughly loved his subject, and latterly mr. forsyth, who has struggled to be honest to him, might have sufficed as telling us so much as that. but there was a humanity in cicero, a something almost of christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. to have loved his neighbor as himself before the teaching of christ was much for a man to achieve; and that he did this is what i claim for cicero, and hope to bring home to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes about roman times. it has been the habit of some latter writers, who have left to cicero his literary honors, to rob him of those which had been accorded to him as a politician. macaulay, expressing his surprise at the fecundity of cicero, and then passing on to the praise of the philippics as senatorial speeches, says of him that he seems to have been at the head of the "minds of the second order." we cannot judge of the classification without knowing how many of the great men of the world are to be included in the first rank. but macaulay probably intended to express an opinion that cicero was inferior because he himself had never dominated others as marius had done, and sylla, and pompey, and cæsar, and augustus. but what if cicero was ambitious for the good of others, while these men had desired power only for themselves? dean merivale says that cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a similar sneer another clergyman, sydney smith, ridiculed a tory prime-minister because he was true to his wife. there is nothing so open to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved. and the dean declares that cicero himself was not, except once or twice, and for a "moment only, a real power in the state." men who usurped authority, such as those i have named, were the "real powers," and it was in opposition to such usurpation that cicero was always urgent. mr. forsyth, who, as i have said, strives to be impartial, tells us that "the chief fault of cicero's moral character was a want of sincerity." absence of sincerity there was not. deficiency of sincerity there was. who among men has been free from such blame since history and the lives of men were first written? it will be my object to show that though less than godlike in that gift, by comparison with other men around him he was sincere, as he was also self-denying; which, if the two virtues be well examined, will indicate the same phase of character. but of all modern writers mr. froude has been the hardest to cicero. his sketch of the life of cæsar is one prolonged censure on that of cicero. our historian, with all that glory of language for which he is so remarkable, has covered the poor orator with obloquy. there is no period in cicero's life so touching, i think, as that during which he was hesitating whether, in the service of the republic, it did or did not behoove him to join pompey before the battle of pharsalia. at this time he wrote to his friend atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his friendship for pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity. as to a passage in one of those, mr. froude says "that cicero had lately spoken of cæsar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the state." "it has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the readiest means of ending it,"[ ] says mr. froude. the "it has been seen" refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates certain words written by cicero to atticus.[ ] "he considered it a disgrace to them that cæsar was alive." that is his translation; and in his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his literary brother of two thousand years before. "why did not somebody kill him?" the latin words themselves are added in a note, "cum vivere ipsum turpe sit nobis."[ ] hot indignation has so carried the translator away that he has missed the very sense of cicero's language. "when even to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" that is what cicero meant. mr. froude in a preceding passage gives us another passage from a letter to atticus,[ ] "cæsar was mortal."[ ] so much is an intended translation. then mr. froude tells us how cicero had "hailed cæsar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "we read the words with sorrow and yet with pity." but cicero had never dreamed of cæsar's murder. the words of the passage are as follows: "hunc primum mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "i bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side." all the latter authorities have, i believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this man" to be pompey. i should say that this was proved by the gist of the whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his life--did i not know that former learned editors have supposed cæsar to have been meant. but whether cæsar or pompey, there is nothing in it to do with murder. it is a question--cicero is saying to his friend--of the stability of the republic. when a matter so great is considered, how is a man to trouble himself as to an individual who may die any day, or cease from any accident to be of weight? cicero was speaking of the effect of this or that step on his own part. am i, he says, for the sake of pompey to bring down hordes of barbarians on my own country, sacrificing the republic for the sake of a friend who is here to-day and may be gone to-morrow? or for the sake of an enemy, if the reader thinks that the "hunc" refers to cæsar. the argument is the same. am i to consider an individual when the republic is at stake? mr. froude tells us that he reads "the words with sorrow and yet with pity." so would every one, i think, sympathizing with the patriot's doubts as to his leader, as to his party, and as to his country. mr. froude does so because he gathers from them that cicero is premeditating the murder of cæsar! it is natural that a man should be judged out of his own mouth. a man who speaks much, and so speaks that his words shall be listened to and read, will be so judged. but it is not too much to demand that when a man's character is at stake his own words shall be thoroughly sifted before they are used against him. the writer of the biographical notice in the encyclopedia britannica on cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of cæsar and pompey against the liberties of rome, he was open to be bought. the augurship would have bought him. "so pitiful," says the biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth!" with no more sententious language was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. and on what evidence? we should have known nothing of the bribe and the corruption but for a few playful words in a letter from cicero himself to atticus. he is writing from one of his villas to his friend in rome, and asks for the news of the day: who are to be the new consuls? who is to have the vacant augurship? ah, says he, they might have caught even me with that bait;[ ] as he said on another occasion that he was so much in debt as to be fit for a rebel; and again, as i shall have to explain just now, that he was like to be called in question under the cincian law because of a present of books! this was just at the point of his life when he was declining all offers of public service--of public service for which his soul longed--because they were made to him by cæsar. it was then that the "vigintiviratus" was refused, which quintilian mentions to his honor. it was then that he refused to be cæsar's lieutenant. it was then that he might have been fourth with cæsar, and pompey, and crassus, had he not felt himself bound not to serve against the republic. and yet the biographer does not hesitate to load him with infamy because of a playful word in a letter half jocose and half pathetic to his friend. if a man's deeds be always honest, surely he should not be accused of dishonesty on the strength of some light word spoken in the confidence of familiar intercourse. the light words are taken to be grave because they meet the modern critic's eye clothed in the majesty of a dead language; and thus it comes to pass that their very meaning is misunderstood. my friend mr. collins speaks, in his charming little volume on cicero, of "quiet evasions" of the cincian law,[ ] and tells us that we are taught by cicero's letters not to trust cicero's words when he was in a boasting vein. what has the one thing to do with the other? he names no quiet evasions. mr. collins makes a surmise, by which the character of cicero for honesty is impugned--without evidence. the anonymous biographer altogether misinterprets cicero. mr. froude charges cicero with anticipation of murder, grounding his charge on words which he has not taken the trouble to understand. cicero is accused on the strength of his own private letters. it is because we have not the private letters of other persons that they are not so accused. the courtesies of the world exact, i will not say demand, certain deviations from straightforward expression; and these are made most often in private conversations and in private correspondence. cicero complies with the ways of the world; but his epistles are no longer private, and he is therefore subjected to charges of falsehood. it is because cicero's letters, written altogether for privacy, have been found worthy to be made public that such accusations have been made. when the injustice of these critics strikes me, i almost wish that cicero's letters had not been preserved. as i have referred to the evidence of those who have, in these latter days, spoken against cicero, i will endeavor to place before the reader the testimony of his character which was given by writers, chiefly of his own nation, who dealt with his name for the hundred and fifty years after his death--from the time of augustus down to that of adrian--a period much given to literature, in which the name of a politician and a man of literature would assuredly be much discussed. readers will see in what language he was spoken of by those who came after him. i trust they will believe that if i knew of testimony on the other side, of records adverse to the man, i would give them. the first passage to which i will allude does not bear cicero's name; and it may be that i am wrong in assuming honor to cicero from a passage in poetry, itself so famous, in which no direct allusion is made to himself. but the idea that virgil in the following lines refers to the manner in which cicero soothed the multitude who rose to destroy the theatre when the knights took their front seats in accordance with otho's law, does not originate with me. i give the lines as translated by dryden, with the original in a note.[ ] "as when in tumults rise the ignoble crowd, mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud; and stones and brands in rattling volleys fly, and all the rustic arms that fury can supply; if then some grave and pious man appear, they hush their noise, and lend a listening ear; he soothes with sober words their angry mood, and quenches their innate desire of blood." this, if it be not intended for a portrait of cicero on that occasion, exactly describes his position and his success. we have a fragment of cornelius nepos, the biographer of the augustan age, declaring that at cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the republic had lost the most.[ ] livy declared of him only, that he would be the best writer of latin prose who was most like to cicero.[ ] velleius paterculus, who wrote in the time of tiberius, speaks of cicero's achievements with the highest honor. "at this period," he says, "lived marcus cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his life."[ ] valerius maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving character.[ ] perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from the pen of pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of cicero i will quote only a few words, as i shall refer to it more at length when speaking of his consulship. "hail thou," says pliny, "who first among men was called the father of your country."[ ] martial, in one of his distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of cicero's writing he may fancy that he is travelling with cicero himself.[ ] lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how cicero dared to speak of peace in the camp of pharsalia. the reader may think that cicero should have said nothing of the kind, but lucan mentions him with all honor.[ ] not tacitus, as i think, but some author whose essay de oratoribus was written about the time of tacitus, and whose work has come to us with the name of tacitus, has told us of cicero that he was a master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[ ] everybody remembers the passage in juvenal, "sed roma parentem roma patrem patriæ ciceronem libera dixit." "rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his country."[ ] even plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of jealousy when speaking of cicero, declares that he verified the prediction of plato, "that every state would be delivered from its calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and justice in one person."[ ] the praises of quintilian as to the man are so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters, that i would have omitted to mention them here were it not that they will help to declare what was the general opinion as to cicero at the time in which it was written. he has been speaking of demosthenes,[ ] and then goes on: "nor in regard to cicero do i see that he ever failed in the duty of a good citizen. there is in evidence of this the splendor of his consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his refusal of office under cæsar,[ ] the firmness of his mind on the civil wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came heavily on him in his old age. on all these occasions he did the best he could for the republic." florus, who wrote after the twelve cæsars, in the time of trajan and of adrian, whose rapid summary of roman events can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how catiline's conspiracy was crushed by the authority of cicero and cato in opposition to that of cæsar.[ ] then, when he has passed in a few short chapters over all the intervening history of the roman empire, he relates, in pathetic words, the death of cicero. "it was the custom in rome to put up on the rostra the heads of those who had been slain; but now the city was not able to restrain its tears when the head of cicero was seen there, upon the spot from which the citizens had so often listened to his words."[ ] such is the testimony given to this man by the writers who may be supposed to have known most of him as having been nearest to his time. they all wrote after him. sallust, who was certainly his enemy, wrote of him in his lifetime, but never wrote in his dispraise. it is evident that public opinion forbade him to do so. sallust is never warm in cicero's praise, as were those subsequent authors whose words i have quoted, and has been made subject to reproach for envy, for having passed too lightly over cicero's doings and words in his account of catiline's conspiracy; but what he did say was to cicero's credit. men had heard of the danger, and therefore, says sallust,[ ] "they conceived the idea of intrusting the consulship to cicero. for before that the nobles were envious, and thought that the consulship would be polluted if it were conferred on a _novus homo_, however distinguished. but when danger came, envy and pride had to give way." he afterward declares that cicero made a speech against catiline most brilliant, and at the same time useful to the republic. this was lukewarm praise, but coming from sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as eloquent as any eulogy. there is extant a passage attributed to sallust full of virulent abuse of cicero, but no one now imagines that sallust wrote it. it is called the declamation of sallust against cicero, and bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. it suited some one to forge pretended invectives between sallust and cicero, and is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to dio cassius a foundation for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator.[ ] dio cassius was a greek who wrote in the reign of alexander severus, more than two centuries and a half after the death of cicero, and he no doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. what was the special cause of jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own language.[ ] among other absurdities dio cassius says of cicero that in his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was younger. now i ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, i will say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country; having shown, as i profess that i have shown, that his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old republic but by the minions of the empire; having found that no charge was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am i not justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown their authority? their authority they have always found in his own words. it is on his own evidence against himself that they have depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises. when we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations of his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! he is a coward to the critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel the true meaning of his own words. if we had only known his acts and not his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of verres, with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the time of catiline, how he joined pompey in macedonia from a sense of sheer duty, how he defied antony when to defy antony was probable death--then we should not call him a coward! it is out of his own mouth that he is condemned. then surely his words should be understood. queen christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that "cicero was the only coward that was capable of great actions." the queen of sweden, whose sentences are never worth very much, has known her history well enough to have learned that cicero's acts were noble, but has not understood the meaning of words sufficiently to extract from cicero's own expressions their true bearing. the bravest of us all, if he is in high place, has to doubt much before he can know what true courage will demand of him; and these doubts the man of words will express, if there be given to him an _alter ego_ such as cicero had in atticus. in reference to the biography of mr forsyth i must, in justice both to him and to cicero, quote one passage from the work: "let those who, like de quincey,[ ] mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of cicero, and are so lavish in praise of cæsar, recollect that cæsar never was troubled by a conscience." here it is that we find that advance almost to christianity of which i have spoken, and that superiority of mind being which makes cicero the most fit to be loved of all the romans. it is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all belief in a future life. why should a man do right if it be not for a reward here or hereafter? why should anything be right--or wrong? the stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could conquer all his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy, and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim. the school had many scholars, but probably never a believer. the normal greek or roman might be deterred by the law, which means fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which means ignominy. he might recognize the fact that comfort would combine itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. in this there was little need of a conscience--hardly, perhaps, room for it. but when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity, and intellect would give--as it did to sylla, to cæsar, and to augustus--then there was nothing to restrain the men. there was to such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. his cruelty or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with him. or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience. with the man of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. in his sometimes doubtful wanderings after political wisdom--in those mental mazes which have been called insincerity--we shall see him, if we look well into his doings, struggling to find whether, in searching for what was his duty, he should go to this side or to that. might he best hope a return to that state of things which he thought good for his country by adhering to cæsar or to pompey? we see the workings of his conscience, and, as we remember that scipio's dream of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth, within him a recognition of a future life. in discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. we are attracted by salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of the coast would certainly be shown to us. and so it will, if we accept the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. but to say that a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers, that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. he who so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "he has lied! he has lied!" how often in our own political contests do we hear the cry with a note of triumph! and if he have, how often has he told the truth? and if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in that matter to throw a stone at him? and if he have, do we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? in his stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. it is by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be a liar or no. to expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn its setting. and there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the common eye. the man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. it may be that an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. we do not want a clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in the atmosphere. it may be found that for the work of the world, the coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though none is so important, as that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen--instruments strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden impressions, may be the best. that it is which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. but the same man may, at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the circumstances of the occasion may affect him. at one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him. "fiat justitia, ruat c[oe]lum." "si fractus illabatur orbis impavidum ferient ruinæ." at another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. he will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with the next best. he must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. in obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "rem si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." in judging of such a character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray. in judging of cicero, such a hard and fast line has too generally been used. he was a man singularly sensitive to all influences. it must be admitted that he was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on which statesmen have generally been made to work. he had none of the fixed purpose of cæsar, or the unflinching principle of cato. they were men cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. they suffered from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something better than this world, fears of something worse, which make cicero so like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. it is because he has so little like a roman that he is of all the romans the most attractive. still there may be doubt whether, with all the intricacies of his character, his career was such as to justify a further biography at this distance of time. "what's hecuba to him, or he to hecuba?" asks hamlet, when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare recital of an old story by an itinerant player. what is cicero to us of the nineteenth century that we should care so much for him as to read yet another book? nevertheless, hamlet was moved because the tale was well told. there is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still--if the story could only be written of him as it is felt! the difficulty lies in that, and not in the nature of the story. the period of cicero's life was the very turning-point of civilization and government in the history of the world. at that period of time the world, as we know it, was rome. greece had sunk. the macedonian empire had been destroyed. the kingdoms of the east--whether conquered, or even when conquering, as was parthia for awhile--were barbaric, outside the circle of cultivation, and to be brought into it only by the arms and influence of rome. during cæsar's career gaul was conquered; and britain, with what was known of germany, supposed to be partly conquered. the subjugation of africa and spain was all but completed. letters, too, had been or were being introduced. cicero's use of language was so perfect that it seems to us to have been almost necessarily the result of a long established art of latin literature. but, in truth, he is the earliest of the prose writers of his country with whose works we are familiar. excepting varro, who was born but ten years before him, no earlier latin prose writer has left more than a name to us; and the one work by which varro is at all known, the de re rustica, was written after cicero's death. lucretius, whose language we regard as almost archaic, so unlike is it to that of virgil or horace, was born eight years after cicero. in a great degree cicero formed the latin language--or produced that manipulation of it which has made it so graceful in prose, and so powerful a vehicle of thought. that which he took from any latin writer he took from terence. and it was then, just then, that there arose in rome that unpremeditated change in its form of government which resulted in the self-assumed dictatorship of cæsar, and the usurpation of the empire by augustus. the old rome had had kings. then the name and the power became odious--the name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. the kings were abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name of a republic, with its annual magistrates--at first its two consuls, then its prætors and others, and occasionally a dictator, as some current event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a certain purpose. the republic was no republic, as we understand the word; nor did it ever become so, though their was always going on a perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people, in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to the outside class. but so little was as yet understood of liberty that, as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the magistrates of the state, he became also one of the oligarchical faction. there was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called republic--but still a contest for power. this became so continued that a foreign war was at times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of the state, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each against the other. it is probably the case that the invasion of the gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second punic war, threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of rome, provided the republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence. then came marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and sylla, as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which, as one prevailed or the other, rome was mastered. how marius died, and sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our purpose--except in this, that cicero saw sylla's proscriptions, and made his first essay into public life hot with anger at the dictator's tyranny. it occurs to us as we read the history of rome, beginning with the early consuls and going to the death of cæsar and of cicero, and the accomplished despotism of augustus, that the republic could not have been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving. we are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the roman form of government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. but it had been successful. it had made a great people, and had produced a wide-spread civilization. roman citizenship was to those outside the one thing the most worthy to be obtained. that career which led the great romans up from the state of quæstor to the Ædile's, prætor's, and consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of provincial government, was held to be the highest then open to the ambition of man. the kings of greece, and of the east, and of africa were supposed to be inferior in their very rank to a roman proconsul, and this greatness was carried on with a semblance of liberty, and was compatible with a belief in the majesty of the roman citizen. when cicero began his work, consuls, prætors, Ædiles, and quæstors were still chosen by the votes of the citizens. there was bribery, no doubt, and intimidation, and a resort to those dirty arts of canvassing with which we english have been so familiar; but in cicero's time the male free inhabitants of rome did generally carry the candidates to whom they attached themselves. the salt of their republican theory was not as yet altogether washed out from their practice. the love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern races did not exist in the time of cicero. the idea never seems to have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. half the inhabitants of rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that it never occurred to a roman that slaves, as a body, should be manumitted. the slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. they were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally. nor was it repugnant to the roman theory of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. that boon was to be reserved for the roman citizen, and for him only. it had become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories. the glory was kept not altogether for rome, but for romans. thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. with genuine patriotism cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he did at the close of sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form of government maintained. there should still be two consuls in rome, whose annual election would guard the state against regal dominion. and there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better class--the "optimates," as he called them--as would preserve the city from democracy and revolution. no man ever trusted more entirely to popular opinion than cicero, or was more anxious for aristocratic authority. but neither in one direction nor the other did he look for personal aggrandizement, beyond that which might come to him in accordance with the law and in subjection to the old form of government. it is because he was in truth patriotic, because his dreams of a republic were noble dreams, because he was intent on doing good in public affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of rome and of romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the state" that his memory is still worth recording. added to this was the intellect and the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. and then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the romance of his story into the region of personal sympathy. as we are moved by the aspirations and sufferings of a hero in a tragedy, so are we stirred by the efforts, the fortune, and at last the fall of this man. there is a picturesqueness about the life of cicero which is wanting in the stories of marius or sylla, of pompey, or even of cæsar--a picturesqueness which is produced in great part by these very doubtings which have been counted against him as insincerity. his hands were clean when the hands of all around him were defiled by greed. how infinitely cicero must have risen above his time when he could have clean hands! a man in our days will keep himself clean from leprosy because to be a leper is to be despised by those around him. advancing wisdom has taught us that such leprosy is bad, and public opinion coerces us. there is something too, we must suppose, in the lessons of christianity. or it may be that the man of our day, with all these advantages, does not keep himself clean--that so many go astray that public opinion shall almost seem to tremble in the balance. even with us this and that abomination becomes allowable because so many do it. with the romans, in the time of cicero, greed, feeding itself on usury, rapine, and dishonesty, was so fully the recognized condition of life that its indulgence entailed no disgrace. but cicero, with eyes within him which saw farther than the eyes of other men, perceived the baseness of the stain. it has been said also of him that he was not altogether free from reproach. it has been suggested that he accepted payment for his services as an advocate, any such payment being illegal. the accusation is founded on the knowledge that other advocates allowed themselves to be paid, and on the belief that cicero could not have lived as he did without an income from that source. and then there is a story told of him that, though he did much at a certain period of his life to repress the usury, and to excite at the same time the enmity of a powerful friend, he might have done more. as we go on, the stories of these things will be told; but the very nature of the allegations against him prove how high he soared in honesty above the manners of his day. in discussing the character of the men, little is thought of the robberies of sylla, the borrowings of cæsar, the money-lending of brutus, or the accumulated wealth of crassus. to plunder a province, to drive usury to the verge of personal slavery, to accept bribes for perjured judgment, to take illegal fees for services supposed to be gratuitous, was so much the custom of the noble romans that we hardly hate his dishonest greed when displayed in its ordinary course. but because cicero's honesty was abnormal, we are first surprised, and then, suspecting little deviations, rise up in wrath against him, because in the midst of roman profligacy he was not altogether a puritan in his money matters. cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman, an advocate, and a man of letters. as the combination of such pursuits is common in our own days, so also was it in his. cæsar added them all to the great work of his life as a soldier. but it was given to cicero to take a part in all those political struggles, from the resignation of sylla to the first rising of the young octavius, which were made on behalf of the republic, and were ended by its downfall. his political life contains the story of the conversion of rome from republican to imperial rule; and rome was then the world. could there have been no augustus, no nero, and then no trajan, all europe would have been different. cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an augustus or a nero, or the need of a trajan; and as we read of them we feel that, had success been possible, he would have succeeded. as an advocate he was unsurpassed. from him came the feeling--whether it be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client, should give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit, but also all his sympathy. to me it is marvellous, and interesting rather than beautiful, to see how completely cicero can put off his own identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he has taken the charge. it must, however, be borne in mind that in old rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private work of the man. in the speeches best known to us cicero was working as a public man for public objects, and the ardor, i may say the fury, of his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public aspirations. the orations which have come to us in three sets, some of them published only but never spoken--those against verres, against catiline, and the philippics against antony--were all of this nature, though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one individual. of these i will speak in their turn; but i mention them here in order that i may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry into cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the objects of the man. he wished, no doubt, to shine, as does the barrister of to-day: he wished to rise; he wished, if you will, to make his fortune, not by the taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher influence by the authority of his name. no doubt he undertook this and the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause, and, when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the good cause. there seems to be special accusation made against him on this head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work without pay threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that was not in itself upright. with us the advocate does this notoriously for his fee. cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some political object of the moment, or in maintenance of a friendship which was politically important. i say nothing against the modern practice. this would not be the place for such an argument. nor do i say that, by rules of absolute right and wrong, cicero was right; but he was as right, at any rate, as the modern barrister. and in reaching the high-minded conditions under which he worked, he had only the light of his own genius to guide him. when compare the clothing of the savage race with our own, their beads and woad and straw and fibres with our own petticoats and pantaloons, we acknowledge the progress of civilization and the growth of machinery. it is not a wonderful thing to us that an african prince should not be as perfectly dressed as a young man in piccadilly. but, when we make a comparison of morals between our own time and a period before christ, we seem to forget that more should be expected from us than from those who lived two thousand years ago. there are some of those pleadings, speeches made by cicero on behalf of or against an accused party, from which we may learn more of roman life than from any other source left to us. much we may gather from terence, much from horace, something from juvenal. there is hardly, indeed, a latin author from which an attentive reader may not pick up some detail of roman customs. cicero's letters are themselves very prolific. but the pretty things of the poets are not quite facts, nor are the bitter things of the satirist; and though a man's letters to his friend may be true, such letters as come to us will have been the products of the greater minds, and will have come from a small and special class. i fear that the newgate calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of living then prevailing than the letters of lady mary w. montagu or of horace walpole. from the orations against verres we learn how the people of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them; and from those spoken in defence of sextus amerinus and aulus cluentius, we gather something of the horrors of roman life--not in rome, indeed, but within the limits of roman citizenship. it is, however, as a man of letters that cicero will be held in the highest esteem. it has been his good-fortune to have a great part of what he wrote preserved for future ages. his works have not perished, as have those of his contemporaries, varro and hortensius. but this has been due to two causes, which were independent of fortune. he himself believed in their value, and took measures for their protection; and those who lived in his own time, and in the immediately succeeding ages, entertained the same belief and took the same care. livy said that, to write latin well, the writer should write it like cicero; and quintilian, the first of latin critics, repeated to us what livy had asserted.[ ] there is a sweetness of language about cicero which runs into the very sound; so that passages read aright would, by their very cadences, charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. eulogy never was so happy as his. eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison with invective. cicero's abuse is awful. let the reader curious in such matters turn to the diatribes against vatinius, one of cæsar's creatures, and to that against the unfortunate proconsul piso; or to his attacks on gabinius, who was consul together with piso in the year of cicero's banishment. there are wonderful morsels in the philippics dealing with antony's private character; but the words which he uses against gabinius and piso beat all that i know elsewhere in the science of invective. junius could not approach him; and even macaulay, though he has, in certain passages, been very bitter, has not allowed himself the latitude which roman taste and roman manners permitted to cicero. it may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. but shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a boswell to paint his daily portrait. the man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. what there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. for myself i have never regretted those details of shakspeare's life which a boswell of the time might have given us. but cicero's personality as a man of letters seems especially to require elucidation. his letters lose their chief charm if the character of the man be not known, and the incidents of his life. his essays on rhetoric--the written lessons which he has left on the art of oratory--are a running commentary on his own career as an orator. most of his speeches require for their understanding a knowledge of the circumstances of his life. the treatises which we know as his philosophy--works which have been most wrongly represented by being grouped under that name--can only be read with advantage by the light of his own experience. there are two separate classes of his so-called philosophy, in describing which the word philosophy, if it be used at all, must be made to bear two different senses. he handles in one set of treatises, not, i think, with his happiest efforts, the teaching of the old greek schools. such are the tusculan disquisitions, the academics, and the de finibus. from reading these, without reference to the idiosyncrasies of the writer, the student would be led to believe that cicero himself was a philosopher after that sort. but he was, in truth, the last of men to lend his ears "to those budge doctors of the stoic fur." cicero was a man thoroughly human in all his strength and all his weakness. to sit apart from the world and be happy amid scorn, poverty, and obscurity, with a mess of cabbage and a crust, absolutely contented with abstract virtue, has probably been given to no man; but of none has it been less within the reach than of cicero. to him ginger was always hot in the mouth, whether it was the spice of politics, or of social delight, or of intellectual enterprise. when in his deep sorrow at the death of his daughter, when for a time the republic was dead to him, and public and private life were equally black, he craved employment. then he took down his greek manuscripts and amused himself as best he might by writing this way or that. it was a matter on which his intellect could work and his energies be employed, though the theory of his life was in no way concerned in it. such was one class of his philosophy. the other consisted of a code of morals which he created for himself by his own convictions, formed on the world around him, and which displayed itself in essays, such as those de officiis--on the duties of life; de senectute, de amicitia--on old age and friendship, and the like, which were not only intended for use, but are of use to any man or woman who will study them up to this day. there are others, treatises on law and on government and religion, which have all been lumped together, for the misguidance of school-boys, under the name of cicero's philosophy. but they, be they of one class or the other, require an understanding of the man's character before they can be enjoyed. for these reasons i think that there are incidents in the life, the character, and the work of cicero which ought to make his biography interesting. his story is fraught with energy, with success, with pathos, and with tragedy. and then it is the story of a man human as men are now. no child of rome ever better loved his country, but no child of rome was ever so little like a roman. arms and battles were to him abominable, as they are to us. but arms and battles were the delight of romans. he was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which he declared his feeling: "cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea linguæ." but the thing said was thoroughly good, and the better because the opinion was addressed to men among whom the glory of arms was still in ascendant over the achievements of intellectual enterprise. the greatest men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond their time--seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have hitherto been hidden from the crowd. such was columbus when he made his way across the western ocean; such were galileo and bacon; such was pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. such also was cicero. it is not given to the age in which such men live to know them. could their age even recognize them, they would not overstep their age as they do. looking back at him now, we can see how like a christian was the man--so like, that in essentials we can hardly see the difference. he could love another as himself--as nearly as a man may do; and he taught such love as a doctrine.[ ] he believed in the existence of one supreme god.[ ] he believed that man would rise again and live forever in some heaven.[ ] i am conscious that i cannot much promote this view of cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works--words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be understood. but i may perhaps succeed in explaining to a reader what it is that i hope to do in the following pages, and why it is that i undertake a work which must be laborious, and for which many will think that there is no remaining need. i would not have it thought that, because i have so spoken of cicero's aspirations and convictions, i intend to put him forth as a faultless personage in history. he was much too human to be perfect. those who love the cold attitude of indifference may sing of cato as perfect. cicero was ambitious, and often unscrupulous in his ambition. he was a loving husband and a loving father; but at the end of his life he could quarrel with his old wife irrecoverably, and could idolize his daughter, while he ruined his son by indulgence. he was very great while he spoke of his country, which he did so often; but he was almost as little when he spoke of himself--which he did as often. in money-matters he was honest--for the times in which he lived, wonderfully honest; but in words he was not always equally trustworthy. he could flatter where he did not love. i admit that it was so, though i will not admit without a protest that the word insincere should be applied to him as describing his character generally. he was so much more sincere than others that the protest is needed. if a man stand but five feet eleven inches in his shoes, shall he be called a pygmy? and yet to declare that he measures full six feet would be untrue. cicero was a busybody. were there anything to do, he wished to do it, let it be what it might. "cedant arma togæ." if anything was written on his heart, it was that. yet he loved the idea of leading an army, and panted for a military triumph. letters and literary life were dear to him, and yet he liked to think that he could live on equal terms with the young bloods of rome, such as c[oe]lius. as far as i can judge, he cared nothing for luxurious eating and drinking, and yet he wished to be reckoned among the gormands and gourmets of his times. he was so little like the "budge doctors of the stoic fur," of whom it was his delight to write when he had nothing else to do, that he could not bear any touch of adversity with equanimity. the stoic requires to be hardened against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." it is his profession to be indifferent to the "whips and scorns of time." no man was less hardened, or more subject to suffering from scorns and whips. there be those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. cicero did not. whether of his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he spoke openly, as he did of all things. it has not been the way of heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men as we live with them. what a man he would have been for london life! how he would have enjoyed his club, picking up the news of the day from all lips, while he seemed to give it to all ears! how popular he would have been at the carlton, and how men would have listened to him while every great or little crisis was discussed! how supreme he would have sat on the treasury bench, or how unanswerable, how fatal, how joyous, when attacking the government from the opposite seats! how crowded would have been his rack with invitations to dinner! how delighted would have been the middle-aged countesses of the time to hold with him mild intellectual flirtations--and the girls of the period, how proud to get his autograph, how much prouder to have touched the lips of the great orator with theirs! how the pages of the magazines would have run over with little essays from his pen! "have you seen our cicero's paper on agriculture? that lucky fellow, editor ----, got him to do it last month!" "of course you have read cicero's article on the soul. the bishops don't know which way to turn." "so the political article in the _quarterly_ is cicero's?" "of course you know the art-criticism in the _times_ this year is tully's doing?" but that would probably be a bounce. and then what letters he would write! with the penny-post instead of travelling messengers at his command, and pen instead of wax and sticks, or perhaps with an instrument-writer and a private secretary, he would have answered all questions and solved all difficulties. he would have so abounded with intellectual fertility that men would not have known whether most to admire his powers of expression or to deprecate his want of reticence. there will necessarily be much to be said of cicero's writings in the following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as well as the politician. in doing this, there arises a difficulty as to the sequence in which his works should be taken. it will hardly suit the purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or separately as to their subjects. the speeches and the letters clearly require the former treatment as applying each to the very moment of time at which they were either spoken or written. his treatises, whether on rhetoric or on the greek philosophy, or on government, or on morals, can best be taken apart as belonging in a very small degree, if at all, to the period in which they were written. i will therefore endeavor to introduce the orations and letters as the periods may suit, and to treat of his essays afterward by themselves. a few words i must say as to the roman names i have used in my narrative. there is a difficulty in this respect, because the practice of my boyhood has partially changed itself. pompey used to be pompey without a blush. now with an erudite english writer he is generally pompeius. the denizens of africa--the "nigger" world--have had, i think, something to do with this. but with no erudite english writer is terence terentius, or virgil virgilius, or horace horatius. were i to speak of livius, the erudite english listener would think that i alluded to an old author long prior to our dear historian. and though we now talk of sulla instead of sylla, we hardly venture on antonius instead of antony. considering all this, i have thought it better to cling to the sounds which have ever been familiar to myself; and as i talk of virgil and of horace and ovid freely and without fear, so shall i speak also of pompey and of antony and of catiline. in regard to sulla, the change has been so complete that i must allow the old name to have re-established itself altogether. it has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of which i am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting down from the building of rome, a.u.c., or "anno urbis conditæ," and back from the birth of christ, which we english mark by the letters b.c., before christ. in dealing with cicero, writers (both french and english) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning his doings or sayings to the year of his age. there is again a fourth mode, common among the romans, of indicating the special years by naming the consuls, or one of them. "o nata mecum consule manlio," horace says, when addressing his cask of wine. that was, indeed, the official mode of indicating a date, and may probably be taken as showing how strong the impression in the roman mind was of the succession of their consuls. in the following pages i will use generally the date b.c., which, though perhaps less simple than the a.u.c., gives to the mind of the modern reader a clearer idea of the juxtaposition of events. the reader will surely know that christ was born in the reign of augustus, and crucified in that of tiberius; but he will not perhaps know, without the trouble of some calculation, how far removed from the period of christ was the year a.u.c., in which cicero was born. to this i will add on the margin the year of cicero's life. he was nearly sixty-four when he died. i shall, therefore, call that year his sixty-third year. chapter ii. _his education._ at arpinum, on the river liris, a little stream which has been made to sound sweetly in our ears by horace,[ ] in a villa residence near the town, marcus tullius cicero was born, years before christ, on the d of january, according to the calendar then in use. pompey the great was born in the same year. arpinum was a state which had been admitted into roman citizenship, lying between rome and capua, just within that portion of italy which was till the other day called the kingdom of naples. the district from which he came is noted, also, as having given birth to marius. cicero was of an equestrian family, which means as much as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a gentleman and nothing more. an "eques" or knight in cicero's time became so, or might become so, by being in possession of a certain income. the title conferred no nobility. the plebeian, it will be understood, could not become patrician, though he might become noble--as cicero did. the patrician must have been born so--must have sprung from the purple of certain fixed families.[ ] cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the senators because of his service among the high magistrates of the republic. as none of his family had served before him, he was "novus homo," a new man, and therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. a man was noble who could reckon a consul, a prætor, or an Ædile among his ancestors. such was not the case with cicero. as he filled all these offices, his son was noble--as were his son's sons and grandsons, if such there were. it was common to romans to have three names, and our cicero had three. marcus, which was similar in its use to the christian name of one of us, had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his son. this, called the prænomen, was conferred on the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. there was but a limited choice of such names among the romans, so that an initial letter will generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended. a. stands for aulus, p. for publius, m. generally for marcus, c. for caius, though there was a cneus also. the nomen, tullius, was that of the family. of this family of tullius to which cicero belonged we know no details. plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he had been descended from a prince who had governed the volsci. we do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a fuller. there can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the best education which rome or greece afforded. the third name or cognomen, that of cicero, belonged to a branch of the family of tullius. this third name had generally its origin, as do so many of our surnames, in some specialty of place, or trade, or chance circumstance. it was said that an ancestor had been called cicero from "cicer," a vetch, because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable. it is more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of vetches. be that as it may, the name had been well established before the orator's time. cicero's mother was one helvia, of whom we are told that she was well-born and rich. cicero himself never alludes to her--as neither, if i remember rightly, did horace to his mother, though he speaks so frequently of his father. helvia's younger son, quintus, tells a story of his mother in a letter, which has been, by chance, preserved among those written by our cicero. she was in the habit of sealing up the empty wine-jars, as well as those which were full, so that a jar emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known. this is told in a letter to tiro, a favorite slave belonging to marcus, of whom we shall hear often in the course of our work. as the old lady sealed up the jars, though they contained no wine, so must tiro write letters, though he has nothing to say in them. this kind of argument, taken from the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents, could be only used to a dear and familiar friend. such was tiro, though still a slave, to the two brothers. roman life admitted of such friendships, though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his life and death were at the master's disposal. this is nearly all that is known of cicero's father and mother, or of his old home. there is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid great attention to the education of his sons--if, in the case of marcus, any evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his life. at a very early age, probably when he was eight--in the year which produced julius cæsar--he was sent to rome, and there was devoted to studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life. middleton says that the father lived in rome with his son, and argues from this that he was a man of large means. but cicero gives no authority for this. it is more probable that he lived at the house of one aculeo, who had married his mother's sister, and had sons with whom cicero was educated. stories are told of his precocious talents and performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable men--not unfrequently from their own mouths. it is said of him that he was intimate with the two great advocates of the time, lucius crassus and marcus antonius the orator, the grandfather of cicero's future enemy, whom we know as marc antony. cicero speaks of them both as though he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth. he tells us anecdotes of them;[ ] how they were both accustomed to conceal their knowledge of greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they were anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to have contented themselves simply with roman words and roman thoughts. but the intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt to feel that he has enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and heard him, and perhaps been taken by the hand. he himself gives in very plain language an account of his own studies when he was seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. he speaks of the orators of that day[ ]: "when i was above all things anxious to listen to these men, the banishment of cotta was a great sorrow to me. i was passionately intent on hearing those who were left, daily writing, reading, and making notes. nor was i content only with practice in the art of speaking. in the following year varius had to go, condemned by his own enactment; and at this time, in working at the civil law, i gave much of my time to quintus scævola, the son of publius, who, though he took no pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave great assistance to students. the year after, when sulla and pompey were consuls, i learned what oratory really means by listening to publius sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. it was then that philo, the chief of the academy, with other leading philosophers of athens, had been put to flight by the war with mithridates, and had come to rome. to him i devoted myself entirely, stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the greek philosophy. but in that, though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed. in that year sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of our greatest orators, quintus catulus, marcus antonius, and caius julius, were cruelly killed." this was the time of the civil war between marius and sulla. "in the same year i took lessons from molo the rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." in the next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with diodatus the stoic, who afterward lived with him, and died in his house. here we have an authentic description of the manner in which cicero passed his time as a youth at rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives. nothing in it, however, is more remarkable than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the greek philosophers, his clear common sense quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion. but before these days of real study had come upon him he had given himself up to juvenile poetry. he is said to have written a poem called pontius glaucus when he was fourteen years old. this was no doubt a translation from the greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and many portions of his prose treatises.[ ] plutarch tells us that the poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time, when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in rome." the english translators of plutarch tell us that their author was an indifferent judge of latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he praised cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the opinion of juvenal." but juvenal has given no opinion of cicero's poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism, and declared that cicero would never have had his head cut off had his philippics been of the same nature.[ ] the evidence of quintus mucius scævola as to cicero's poetry was perhaps better, as he had the means, at any rate, of reading it. he believed that the marius, a poem written by cicero in praise of his great fellow-townsman, would live to posterity forever. the story of the old man's prophecy comes to us, no doubt, from cicero himself, and is put into the mouth of his brother;[ ] but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted. the glaucus was a translation from the greek done by a boy, probably as a boy's lesson it is not uncommon that such exercises should be treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original compositions. lord brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing english essays, and even tales of fiction.[ ] "i find one of these," he says, "has survived the waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition i was guilty of at the age of thirteen. my tale was entitled 'memnon, or human wisdom,' and is as follows." then we have a fair translation of voltaire's romance, "memnon," or "la sagesse humaine." the old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography, had altogether forgotten his voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! nothing so absurd as that is told of cicero by himself or on his behalf. it may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to cicero's poetry generally. but little of it remains to us, and by that little it has been admitted that he has not achieved the name of a great poet; but what he did was too great in extent and too good in its nature to be passed over altogether without notice. it has been his fate to be rather ridiculed than read as a maker of verses, and that ridicule has come from two lines which i have already quoted. the longest piece which we have is from the phænomena of aratus, which he translated from the greek when he was eighteen years old, and which describes the heavenly bodies. it is known to us best by the extracts from it given by the author himself in his treatise, de naturâ deorum. it must be owned that it is not pleasant reading. but translated poetry seldom is pleasant, and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of eighteen. the marius was written two years after this, and we have a passage from it, quoted by the author in his de divinatione, containing some fine lines. it tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent. cicero took it, no doubt (not translated it, however), from the passage in the iliad, lib, xii, , which has been rendered by pope with less than his usual fire, and by lord derby with no peculiar charm. virgil has reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words. his version has been translated by dryden, but better, perhaps, by christopher pitt. voltaire has translated cicero's lines with great power, and shelley has reproduced the same idea at much greater length in the first canto of the revolt of islam, taking it probably from cicero, but, if not, from voltaire.[ ] i venture to think that, of the nine versions, cicero's is the best, and that it is the most melodious piece of latin poetry we have up to that date. twenty-seven years afterward, when lucretius was probably at work on his great poem, cicero wrote an account of his consulship in verse. of this we have fifty or sixty lines, in which the author describes the heavenly warnings which were given as to the affairs of his own consular year. the story is not a happy one, but the lines are harmonious. it is often worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen. to trace our melody from chaucer to tennyson is matter of interest to us all. of cicero as a poet we may say that he found latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. now, as we go on with the orator's life and prose works, we need not return to his poetry. the names of many masters have been given to us as those under whom cicero's education was carried on. among others he is supposed, at a very early age, to have been confided to archias. archias was a greek, born at antioch, who devoted himself to letters, and, if we are to believe what cicero says, when speaking as an advocate, excelled all his rivals of the day. like many other educated greeks, he made his way to rome, and was received as one of the household of lucullus, with whom he travelled, accompanying him even to the wars. he became a citizen of rome--so cicero assures us--and cicero's tutor. what cicero owed to him we do not know, but to cicero archias owed immortality. his claim to citizenship was disputed; and cicero, pleading on his behalf, made one of those shorter speeches which are perfect in melody, in taste, and in language. there is a passage in which speaking on behalf of so excellent a professor in the art, he sings the praises of literature generally. i know no words written in praise of books more persuasive or more valuable. "other recreations," he says, "do not belong to all seasons nor to all ages, nor to all places. these pursuits nourish our youth and delight our old age. they adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a solace to our troubles. they charm us at home, and they are not in our way when we are abroad. they go to bed with us. they travel about with us. they accompany us as we escape into the country."[ ] archias probably did something for him in directing his taste, and has been rewarded thus richly. as to other lessons, we know that he was instructed in law by scævola, and he has told us that he listened to crassus and antony. at sixteen he went through the ceremony of putting off his boy's dress, the toga prætexta, and appearing in the toga virilis before the prætor, thus assuming his right to go about a man's business. at sixteen the work of education was _not_ finished--no more than it is with us when a lad at oxford becomes "of age" at twenty-one; nor was he put beyond his father's power, the "patria potestas," from which no age availed to liberate a son; but, nevertheless, it was a very joyful ceremony, and was duly performed by cicero in the midst of his studies with scævola. at eighteen he joined the army. that doctrine of the division of labor which now, with us, runs through and dominates all pursuits, had not as yet been made plain to the minds of men at rome by the political economists of the day. it was well that a man should know something of many things--that he should especially, if he intended to be a leader of men, be both soldier and orator. to rise to be consul, having first been quæstor, Ædile, and prætor, was the path of glory. it had been the special duty of the consuls of rome, since the establishment of consular government, to lead the armies of the republic. a portion of the duty devolved upon the prætors, as wars became more numerous; and latterly the commanders were attended by quæstors. the governors of the provinces, proconsuls, or proprætors with proconsular authority, always combined military with civil authority. the art of war was, therefore, a necessary part of the education of a man intended to rise in the service of the state. cicero, though, in his endeavor to follow his own tastes, he made a strong effort to keep himself free from such work, and to remain at rome instead of being sent abroad as a governor, had at last to go where fighting was in some degree necessary, and, in the saddest phase of his life, appeared in italy with his lictors, demanding the honors of a triumph. in anticipation of such a career, no doubt under the advice of his friends, he now went out to see, if not a battle, something, at any rate, of war. it has already been said how the citizenship of rome was conferred on some of the small italian states around, and not on others. hence, of course, arose jealousy, which was increased by the feeling on the part of those excluded that they were called to furnish soldiers to rome, as well as those who were included. then there was formed a combination of italian cities, sworn to remedy the injury thus inflicted on them. their purpose was to fight rome in order that they might achieve roman citizenship; and hence arose the first civil war which distracted the empire. pompeius strabo, father of pompey the great, was then consul (b.c. ), and cicero was sent out to see the campaign under him. marius and sulla, the two romans who were destined soon to bathe rome in blood, had not yet quarrelled, though they had been brought to hate each other--marius by jealousy, and sulla by rivalry. in this war they both served under the consuls, and cicero served with sulla. we know nothing of his doings in that campaign. there are no tidings even of a misfortune such as that which happened to horace when he went out to fight, and came home from the battle-field "relicta non bene parmula." rome trampled on the rebellious cities, and in the end admitted them to citizenship. but probably the most important, certainly the most notorious, result of the italian war, was the deep antagonism of marius and sulla. sulla had made himself conspicuous by his fortune on the occasion, whereas marius, who had become the great soldier of the republic, and had been six times consul, failed to gather fresh laurels. rome was falling into that state of anarchy which was the cause of all the glory and all the disgrace of cicero's life, and was open to the dominion of any soldier whose grasp might be the least scrupulous and the strongest. marius, after a series of romantic adventures with which we must not connect ourselves here, was triumphant only just before his death, while sulla went off with his army, pillaged athens, plundered asia minor generally, and made terms with mithridates, though he did not conquer him. with the purport, no doubt, of conquering mithridates, but perhaps with the stronger object of getting him out of rome, the army had been intrusted to him, with the consent of the marian faction. then came those three years, when sulla was in the east and marius dead, of which cicero speaks as a period of peace, in which a student was able to study in rome. "triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[ ] these must have been the years , , and before christ, when cicero was twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three years old; and it was this period, in truth, of which he speaks, and not of earlier years, when he tells us of his studies with philo, and molo, and diodatus. precocious as he was in literature, writing one poem--or translating it--when he was fourteen, and another when he was eighteen, he was by no means in a hurry to commence the work of his life. he is said also to have written a treatise on military tactics when he was nineteen; which again, no doubt, means that he had exercised himself by translating such an essay from the greek. this, happily, does not remain. but we have four books, rhetoricorum ad c. herennium, and two books de inventione, attributed to his twentieth and twenty-first years, which are published with his works, and commence the series. of all that we have from him, they are perhaps the least worth reading; but as they are, or were, among his recognized writings, a word shall be said of them in their proper place. the success of the education of cicero probably became a commonplace among latin school-masters and latin writers. in the dialogue de oratoribus, attributed to tacitus, the story of it is given by messala when he is praising the orators of the earlier age. "we know well," says messala, "that book of cicero which is called brutus, in the latter part of which he describes to us the beginning and the progress of his own eloquence, and, as it were, the bringing up on which it was founded. he tells us that he had learned civil law under q. mutius scævola; that he had exhausted the realm of philosophy--learning that of the academy under philo, and that of the stoics under diodatus; that, not content with these treatises, he had travelled through greece and asia, so as to embrace the whole world of art. and thus it had come about that in the works of cicero no knowledge is wanting--neither of music, nor of grammar, nor any other liberal accomplishment. he understood the subtilty of logic, the purpose of ethics, the effects and causes of things." then the speaker goes on to explain what may be expected from study such as that. "thus it is, my good friends--thus, that from the acquirement of many arts, and from a general knowledge of all things, eloquence that is truly admirable is created in its full force; for the power and capacity of an orator need not be hemmed in, as are those of other callings, by certain narrow bounds; but that man is the true orator who is able to speak on all subjects with dignity and grace, so as to persuade those who listen, and to delight them, in a manner suited to the nature of the subject in hand and the convenience of the time."[ ] we might fancy that we were reading words from cicero himself! then the speaker in this imaginary conversation goes on to tell us how far matters had derogated in his time, pointing out at the same time that the evils which he deplores had shown themselves even before cicero, but had been put down, as far as the law could put them down, by its interference. he is speaking of those schools of rhetoric in which greek professors of the art gave lessons for money, which were evil in their nature, and not, as it appears, efficacious even for the purpose in hand. "but now," continues messala, "our very boys are brought into the schools of those lecturers who are called 'rhetores,' who had sprung up before cicero, to the displeasure of our ancestors, as is evident from the fact that when crassus and domitius were censors they were ordered to shut up their school of impudence, as cicero calls it. our boys, as i was going to say, are taken to these lecture-rooms, in which it is hard to say whether the atmosphere of the place, or the lads they are thrown among, or the nature of the lessons taught, are the most injurious. in the place itself there is neither discipline nor respect. all who go there are equally ignorant. the boys among the boys, the lads among the lads, utter and listen to just what words they please. their very exercises are, for the most part, useless. two kinds are in vogue with these 'rhetores,' called 'suasoriæ' and 'controversiæ,'" tending, we may perhaps say, to persuade or to refute. "of these, the 'suasoriæ,' as being the lighter and requiring less of experience, are given to the little boys, the 'controversiæ' to the bigger lads. but--oh heavens, what they are--what miserable compositions!" then he tells us the subjects selected. rape, incest, and other horrors are subjected to the lads for their declamation, in order that they may learn to be orators. messala then explains that in those latter days--his days, that is--under the rule of despotic princes, truly large subjects are not allowed to be discussed in public--confessing, however, that those large subjects, though they afford fine opportunities to orators, are not beneficial to the state at large. but it was thus, he says, that cicero became what he was, who would not have grown into favor had he defended only p. quintius and archias, and had had nothing to do with catiline, or milo, or verres, or antony--showing, by-the-way, how great was the reputation of that speech, pro milone, with which we shall have to deal farther on. the treatise becomes somewhat confused, a portion of it having probably been lost. from whose mouth the last words are supposed to come is not apparent. it ends with a rhapsody in favor of imperial government--suitable, indeed, to the time of domitian, but very unlike tacitus. while, however, it praises despotism, it declares that only by the evils which despotism had quelled could eloquence be maintained. "our country, indeed, while it was astray in its government; while it tore itself to pieces by parties and quarrels and discord; while there was no peace in the forum, no agreement in the senate, no moderation on the judgment-seat, no reverence for letters, no control among the magistrates, boasted, no doubt, a stronger eloquence." from what we are thus told of cicero, not what we hear from himself, we are able to form an idea of the nature of his education. with his mind fixed from his early days on the ambition of doing something noble with himself, he gave himself up to all kinds of learning. it was macaulay, i think, who said of him that the idea of conquering the "omne scibile,"--the understanding of all things within the reach of human intellect--was before his eyes as it was before those of bacon. the special preparation which was, in cicero's time, employed for students at the bar is also described in the treatise from which i have quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very opposite of that afforded by the "rhetores." "among ourselves, the youth who was intended to achieve eloquence in the forum, when already trained at home and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by his father or his friends to that orator who might then be considered to be the leading man in the city. it became his daily work to follow that man, to accompany him, to be conversant with all his speeches, whether in the courts of law or at public meetings, so that he might learn, if i might say so, to fight in the very thick of the throng." it was thus that cicero studied his art. a few lines farther down, the pseudo-tacitus tells us that crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a brief against carbo; that cæsar did so in his twenty-first against dolabella; and pollio, in his twenty-second year, against cato.[ ] in this precocity cicero did not imitate crassus, or show an example to the romans who followed him. he was twenty-six when he pleaded his first cause. sulla had then succeeded in crushing the marian faction, and the sullan proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over. sulla had been declared dictator, and had proclaimed that there should be no more selections for death. the republic was supposed to be restored. "recuperata republica * * * tum primum nos ad causas et privatas et publicas adire c[oe]pimus,"[ ] "the republic having been restored, i then first applied myself to pleadings, both private and public." of cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair judgment. marius had been his townsman; sulla had been his captain. but the one thing dear to him was the republic--what he thought to be the republic. he was neither marian nor sullan. the turbulence in which so much noble blood had flowed--the "crudelis interitus oratorum," the crushing out of the old legalized form of government--was abominable to him. it was his hope, no doubt his expectation, that these old forms should be restored in all their power. there seemed to be more probability of this--there was more probability of it--on the side of sulla than the other. on sulla's side was pompey, the then rising man, who, being of the same age with cicero, had already pushed himself into prominence, who was surnamed the great, and who "triumphed" during these very two years in which cicero began his career; who through cicero's whole life was his bugbear, his stumbling-block, and his mistake. but on that side were the "optimates," the men who, if they did not lead, ought to lead the republic; those who, if they were not respectable, ought to be so; those who, if they did not love their country, ought to love it. if there was a hope, it was with them. the old state of things--that oligarchy which has been called a republic--had made rome what it was; had produced power, civilization, art, and literature. it had enabled such a one as cicero was himself to aspire to lead, though he had been humbly born, and had come to rome from an untried provincial family. to him the republic--as he fancied that it had been, as he fancied that it might be--was all that was good, all that was gracious, all that was beneficent. on sulla's side lay what chance there was of returning to the old ways. when sulla was declared dictator, it was presumed that the republic was restored. but not on this account should it be supposed that cicero regarded the proscriptions of sulla with favor, or that he was otherwise than shocked by the wholesale robberies for which the proscription paved the way. this is a matter with which it will be necessary to deal more fully when we come in our next chapter to the first speeches made by cicero; in the very first of which, as i place them, he attacks the sullan robberies with an audacity which, when we remember that sulla was still in power, rescues, at any rate, in regard to this period of his life, the character of the orator from that charge of cowardice which has been imputed to him. it is necessary here, in this chapter devoted to the education of cicero, to allude to his two first speeches, because that education was not completed till afterward--so that they may be regarded as experiments, or trials, as it were, of his force and sufficiency. "not content with these teachers"--teachers who had come to rome from greece and asia--"he had travelled through greece and asia, so as to embrace the whole world of art." these words, quoted a few pages back from the treatise attributed to tacitus, refer to a passage in the brutus in which cicero makes a statement to that effect. "when i reached athens,[ ] i passed six months with antiochus, by far the best known and most erudite of the teachers of the old academy, and with him, as my great authority and master, i renewed that study of philosophy which i had never abandoned--which from my boyhood i had followed with always increasing success. at the same time i practised oratory laboriously with demetrius syrus, also at athens, a well-known and by no means incapable master of the art of speaking. after that i wandered over all asia, and came across the best orators there, with whom i practised, enjoying their willing assistance." there is more of it, which need not be repeated verbatim, giving the names of those who aided him in asia: menippus of stratonice--who, he says, was sweet enough to have belonged himself to athens--with dionysius of magnesia, with [oe]schilus of cnidos, and with xenocles of adramyttium. then at rhodes he came across his old friend molo, and applied himself again to the teaching of his former master. quintilian explains to us how this was done with a purpose, so that the young orator, when he had made a first attempt with his half-fledged wings in the courts, might go back to his masters for awhile[ ]. he was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. it has been suggested that he did so in fear of the resentment of sulla, with whose favorites and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly. there is no reason for alleging this, except that sulla was powerful, that sulla was blood-thirsty, and that sulla must have been offended. this kind of argument is often used. it is supposed to be natural, or at least probable, that in a certain position a man should have been a coward or a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and in the presumption thus raised the accusation is brought against him. "fearing sulla's resentment," plutarch says, "he travelled into greece, and gave out that the recovery of his health was the motive." there is no evidence that such was his reason for travelling; and, as middleton says in his behalf, it is certain that he "continued for a year after this in rome without any apprehension of danger." it is best to take a man's own account of his own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for doubting the statement made. it is thus that cicero himself speaks of his journey: "now," he says, still in his brutus[ ], "as you wish to know what i am--not simply what mark i may have on my body from my birth, or with what surroundings of childhood i was brought up--i will include some details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. at this time i was thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow--a habit and form of body which is supposed to be adverse to long life; and those who loved me thought the more of this, because i had taken to speaking without relaxation, without recreation with all the powers of my voice, and with much muscular action. when my friends and the doctors desired me to give up speaking, i resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an orator, i would face any danger. but when it occurred to me that by lowering my voice, by changing my method of speaking, i might avoid the danger, and at the same time learn to speak with more elegance, i accepted that as a reason for going into asia, so that i might study how to change my mode of elocution. thus, when i had been two years at work upon causes, and when my name was already well known in the forum, i took my departure, and left rome." during the six months that he was at athens he renewed an early acquaintance with one who was destined to become the most faithful, and certainly the best known, of his friends. this was titus pomponius, known to the world as that atticus to whom were addressed something more than half the large body of letters which were written by cicero, and which have remained for our use.[ ] he seems to have lived much with atticus, who was occupied with similar studies, though with altogether different results. atticus applied himself to the practices of the epicurean school, and did in truth become "epicuri de grege porcus." to enjoy life, to amass a fortune, to keep himself free from all turmoils of war or state, to make the best of the times, whether they were bad or good, without any attempt on his part to mend them--this was the philosophy of titus pomponius, who was called atticus because athens, full of art and literature, easy, unenergetic, and luxurious, was dear to him. to this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, cicero was altogether opposed. he studied in all the schools--among the platonists, the stoics, even with the epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise them--proclaiming himself to belong to the new academy, or younger school of platonists, but in truth drawing no system of morals or rule of life from any of them. to him, and also to atticus, no doubt, these pursuits afforded an intellectual pastime. atticus found himself able to justify to himself the bent of his disposition by the name of a philosopher, and therefore became an epicurean. cicero could in no way justify to himself any deviation from the energy of public life, from its utility, from its ambition, from its loves, or from its hatred; and from the greek philosophers whom he named of this or the other school, received only some assistance in that handling of so-called philosophy which became the chief amusement of his future life. this was well understood by the latin authors who wrote of cicero after his own time. quintilian, speaking of cicero and brutus as writers of philosophy, says of the latter, "suffecit ponderi rerum; scias enim sentire quæ dicit."[ ]--"he was equal to the weight of the subject, for you feel that he believes what he writes." he leaves the inference, of course, that cicero wrote on such matters only for the exercise of his ingenuity, as a school-boy writes. when at athens, cicero was initiated into the eleusinian mysteries--as to which mr. collins, in his little volume on cicero, in the ancient classics for english readers, says that they "contained under this veil whatever faith in the invisible and eternal rested in the mind of an enlightened pagan." in this mr. collins is fully justified by what cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by early christian writers. they were to those pious but somewhat prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[ ] but cicero declares in his dialogue with atticus, de legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine gifts which your athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia,'" by which aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new life. nor have we received from them only the means of living with satisfaction, but also of dying with a better hope as to the future."[ ] of what took place with cicero and atticus at their introduction to the eleusinian mysteries we know nothing. but it can hardly be that, with such memories running in his mind after thirty years, expressed in such language to the very friend who had then been his companion, they should not have been accepted by him as indicating the commencement of some great line of thought. the two doctrines which seem to mark most clearly the difference between the men whom we regard, the one as a pagan and the other as a christian, are the belief in a future life and the duty of doing well by our neighbors. here they are both indicated, the former in plain language, and the latter in that assurance of the softening of the barbarity of uncivilized life, "quibus ex agresti immanique vita exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus." of the inner life of cicero at this moment--how he ate, how he drank, with what accompaniment of slaves he lived, how he was dressed, and how lodged--we know very little; but we are told enough to be aware that he could not have travelled, as he did in greece and asia, without great expense. his brother quintus was with him, so that cost, if not double, was greatly increased. antiochus, demetrius syrus, molo, menippus, and the others did not give him their services for nothing. these were gentlemen of whom we know that they were anxious to carry their wares to the best market. and then he seems to have been welcomed wherever he went, as though travelling in some sort "en prince." no doubt he had brought with him the best introductions which rome could afford; but even with them a generous allowance must have been necessary, and this must have come from his father's pocket. as we go on, a question will arise as to cicero's income and the sources whence it came. he asserts of himself that he was never paid for his services at the bar. to receive such payment was illegal, but was usual. he claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at any rate, from the fault of having broken the law. he has not been believed. there is no evidence to convict him of falsehood, but he has not been believed, because there have not been found palpable sources of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know to have been incident to the life he led. but we do not know what were his father's means. seeing the nature of the education given to the lad, of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from his earliest days, of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it, of the advantages which costly travel afforded him, i think we have reason to suppose that the old cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at arpinum was no humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment. chapter iii. _the condition of rome._ it is far from my intention to write a history of rome during the ciceronian period. were i to attempt such a work, i should have to include the doings of sertorius in spain, of lucullus and pompey in the east, cæsar's ten years in gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of marseilles to the final battles of thapsus and munda. with very many of the great events which the period includes cicero took but slight concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of the state, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. but he was a public man who concerned himself personally with rome rather than with the roman empire. home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him. to cæsar's great deeds in gaul we should have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother quintus been among cæsar's officers, and his young friend trebatius been confided by himself to cæsar's care. of pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the war. of the proconsular governments throughout the roman empire we should not learn much from cicero, were it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a roman governor, and by the narratives of cicero's own rule in cilicia, how excellent. the history of the time has been written for modern readers by merivale and mommsen, with great research and truth as to facts, but, as i think with some strong feeling. now mr. froude has followed with his cæsar, which might well have been called anti-cicero. all these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying, the successful soldier, have, i think, dealt hardly with cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. with the great facts of the roman empire as they gradually formed themselves from the fall of carthage, when the empire began,[ ] to the establishment of augustus, when it was consummated, i do not pretend to deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the life of cicero. but in order that i may, if possible, show the condition of his mind toward the republic--that i may explain what it was that he hoped and why he hoped it--i must go back and relate in a few words what it was that marius and sulla had done for rome. of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned were comprised within the early years of cicero's life. marius, indeed, was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow-townsman was born, and had become a distinguished soldier, and, though born of humble parents, had pushed himself to the consulate. his quarrel with sulla had probably commenced, springing from jealousy as to deeds done in the jugurthine war. but it is not matter of much moment, now that marius had proved himself to be a good and hardy soldier, excepting in this, that, by making himself a soldier in early life, he enabled himself in his latter years to become the master of rome. sulla, too, was born thirty-two years before cicero--a patrician of the bluest blood--and having gone, as we say, into public life, and having been elected quæstor, became a soldier by dint of office, as a man with us may become head of the admiralty. as quæstor he was sent to join marius in africa a few months before cicero was born. into his hands, as it happened, not into those of marius, jugurtha was surrendered by his father-in-law, bocchus, who thought thus to curry favor with the romans. thence came those internecine feuds, in which, some twenty-five years later, all rome was lying butchered. the cause of quarrelling between these two men, the jealousies which grew in the heart of the elder, from the renewed successes of the younger, are not much to us now; but the condition to which rome had been brought, when two such men could scramble for the city, and each cut the throats of the relatives, friends, and presumed allies of the other, has to be inquired into by those who would understand what rome had been, what it was, and what it was necessarily to become. when cicero was of an age to begin to think of these things, and had put on the "toga virilis," and girt himself with a sword to fight under the father of pompey for the power of rome against the italian allies who were demanding citizenship, the quarrel was in truth rising to its bitterness. marius and sulla were on the same side in that war. but marius had then not only been consul, but had been six times consul; and he had beaten the teutons and the cimbrians, by whom romans had feared that all italy would be occupied. what was not within the power of such a leader of soldiers? and what else but a leader of soldiers could prevail when italy and rome, but for such a general, had been at the mercy of barbaric hordes, and when they had been compelled to make that general six times consul? marius seems to have been no politician. he became a soldier and then a general; and because he was great as a soldier and general, the affairs of the state fell into his hands with very little effort. in the old days of rome military power had been needed for defence, and successful defence had of course produced aggressive masterhood and increased territory. when hannibal, while he was still lingering in italy, had been circumvented by the appearance of scipio in africa and the romans had tasted the increased magnificence of external conquest, the desire for foreign domination became stronger than that of native rule. from that time arms were in the ascendant rather than policy. up to that time a consul had to become a general, because it was his business to look after the welfare of the state. after that time a man became a consul in order that he might be a general. the toga was made to give way to the sword, and the noise of the forum to the trumpets. we, looking back now, can see that it must have been so, and we are prone to fancy that a wise man looking forward then might have read the future. in the days of marius there was probably no man so wise. cæsar was the first to see it. cicero would have seen it, but that the idea was so odious to him that he could not acknowledge to himself that it need be so. his life was one struggle against the coming evil--against the time in which brute force was to be made to dominate intellect and civilization. his "cedant arma togæ" was a scream, an impotent scream, against all that sulla had done or cæsar was about to do. the mischief had been effected years before his time, and had gone too far ahead to be arrested even by his tongue. only, in considering these things, let us confess that cicero saw what was good and what was evil, though he was mistaken in believing that the good was still within reach. marius in his way was a cæsar--as a soldier, undoubtedly a very efficient cæsar--having that great gift of ruling his own appetites which enables those who possess it to conquer the appetites of others. it may be doubted whether his quickness in stopping and overcoming the two great hordes from the north, the teutons and the cimbrians, was not equal in strategy to anything that cæsar accomplished in gaul. it is probable that cæsar learned much of his tactics from studying the man[oe]uvres of marius. but marius was only a general. though he became hot in roman politics, audacious and confident, knowing how to use and how to disregard various weapons of political power as they had been handed down by tradition and law, the "vetoes" and the auguries, and the official dignities, he used them, or disregarded them, in quest only of power for himself. he was able to perceive how vain was law in such a period as that in which he lived; and that, having risen by force of arms, he must by force of arms keep his place or lose his life. with him, at least, there was no idea of roman liberty, little probably of roman glory, except so far as military glory and military power go together. sulla was a man endowed with a much keener insight into the political condition of the world around him. to make a dash for power, as a dog might do, and keep it in his clutch as a dog would, was enough for marius. sulla could see something of future events. he could understand that, by reducing men around him to a low level, he could make fast his own power over them, and that he could best do this by cutting off the heads of all who stood a little higher than their neighbors. he might thus produce tranquillity, and security to himself and others. some glimmer of an idea of an augustan rule was present to him; and with the view of producing it, he re-established many of the usages of the republic, not reproducing the liberty but the forms of liberty. it seems to have been his idea that a sullan party might rule the empire by adherence to these forms. i doubt if marius had any fixed idea of government. to get the better of his enemies, and then to grind them into powder under his feet, to seize rank and power and riches, and then to enjoy them, to sate his lust with blood and money and women, at last even with wine, and to feed his revenge by remembering the hard things which he was made to endure during the period of his overthrow--this seems to have been enough for marius.[ ] with sulla there was understanding that the empire must be ruled, and that the old ways would be best if they could be made compatible with the newly-concentrated power. the immediate effect upon rome, either from one or from the other, was nearly the same. in the year b.c. marius occupied himself in slaughtering the sullan party--during which, however, sulla escaped from rome to the army of which he was selected as general, and proceeded to athens and the east with the object of conquering mithridates; for, during these personal contests, the command of this expedition had been the chief bone of contention among them. marius, who was by age unfitted, desired to obtain it in order that sulla might not have it. in the next year, b.c., marius died, being then consul for the seventh time. sulla was away in the east, and did not return till b.c. in the interval was that period of peace, fit for study, of which cicero afterward spoke. "triennium fere fuit urbs sine armis."[ ] cicero was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and must well have understood, from his remembrance of the marian massacres, what it was to have the city embroiled by arms. it was not that men were fighting, but that they were simply being killed at the pleasure of the slaughterer. then sulla came back, b.c., when cicero was twenty-four; and if marius had scourged the city with rods, he scourged it with scorpions. it was the city, in truth, that was scourged, and not simply the hostile faction. sulla began by proscribing citizens declaring that he had included in his list all that he remembered, and that those forgotten should be added on another day. the numbers were gradually raised to , ! nor did this merely mean that those named should be caught and killed by some miscalled officers of justice.[ ] all the public was armed against the wretched, and any who should protect them were also doomed to death. this, however, might have been comparatively inefficacious to inflict the amount of punishment intended by sulla. men generally do not specially desire to imbrue their hands in the blood of other men. unless strong hatred be at work, the ordinary man, even the ordinary roman, will hardly rise up and slaughter another for the sake of the employment. but if lucre be added to blood, then blood can be made to flow copiously. this was what sulla did. not only was the victim's life proscribed, but his property was proscribed also; and the man who busied himself in carrying out the great butcher's business assiduously, ardently, and unintermittingly, was rewarded by the property so obtained. two talents[ ] was to be the fee for mere assassination; but the man who knew how to carry on well the work of an informer could earn many talents. it was thus that fortunes were made in the last days of sulla. it was not only those who were named for killing. they were but the firstlings of the flock--the few victims selected before the real workmen understood how valuable a trade proscription and confiscation might be made. plutarch tells us how a quiet gentleman walking, as was his custom, in the forum, one who took no part in politics, saw his own name one day on the list. he had an alban villa, and at once knew that his villa had been his ruin. he had hardly read the list, and had made his exclamation, before he was slaughtered. such was the massacre of sulla, coming with an interval of two or three years after those of marius, between which was the blessed time in which rome was without arms. in the time of marius, cicero was too young, and of no sufficient importance, on account of his birth or parentage, to fear anything. nor is it probable that marius would have turned against his townsmen. when sulla's turn came, cicero, though not absolutely connected with the dictator, was, so to say, on his side in politics. in going back even to this period we may use the terms liberals and conservatives for describing the two parties. marius was for the people; that is to say, he was opposed to the rule of the oligarchy, dispersed the senate, and loved to feel that his own feet were on the necks of the nobility. of liberty, or rights, or popular institutions he recked nothing; but not the less was he supposed to be on the people's side. sulla, on the other hand, had been born a patrician, and affected to preserve the old traditions of oligarchic rule; and, indeed, though he took all the power of the state into his own hands, he did restore, and for a time preserve, these old traditions. it must be presumed that there was at his heart something of love for old rome. the proscriptions began toward the end of the year b.c., and were continued through eight or nine fearful months--up to the beginning of june, b.c. a day was fixed at which there should be no more slaughtering--no more slaughtering, that is, without special order in each case, and no more confiscation--except such as might be judged necessary by those who had not as yet collected their prey from past victims. then sulla, as dictator, set himself to work to reorganize the old laws. there should still be consuls and prætors, but with restricted powers, lessened almost down to nothing. it seems hard to gather what was exactly the dictator's scheme as the future depositary of power when he should himself have left the scene. he did increase the privileges of the senate; but thinking of the senate of rome as he must have thought of it, esteeming those old men as lowly as he must have esteemed them, he could hardly have intended that imperial power should be maintained by dividing it among them. he certainly contemplated no follower to himself, no heir to his power, as cæsar did. when he had been practically dictator about three years--though he did not continue the use of the objectionable name--he resigned his rule and walked down, as it were, from his throne into private life. i know nothing in history more remarkable than sulla's resignation; and yet the writers who have dealt with his name give no explanation of it. plutarch, his biographer, expresses wonder that he should have been willing to descend to private life, and that he who made so many enemies should have been able to do so with security. cicero says nothing of it. he had probably left rome before it occurred, and did not return till after sulla's death. it seems to have been accepted as being in no especial way remarkable.[ ] at his own demand, the plenary power of dictator had been given to him--power to do all as he liked, without reference either to the senate or to the people, and with an added proviso that he should keep it as long as he thought fit, and lay it down when it pleased him. he did lay it down, flattering himself, probably, that, as he had done his work, he would walk out from his dictatorship like some camillus of old. there had been no dictator in rome for more than a century and a quarter--not since the time of hannibal's great victories; and the old dictatorships lasted but for a few months or weeks, after which the dictator, having accomplished the special task, threw up his office. sulla now affected to do the same; and rome, after the interval of three years, accepted the resignation in the old spirit. it was natural to them, though only by tradition, that a dictator should resign--so natural that it required no special wonder. the salt of the roman constitution was gone, but the remembrance of the savor of it was still sweet to the minds of the romans. it seems certain that no attempt was made to injure sulla when he ceased to be nominally at the head of the army, but it is probable that he did not so completely divest himself of power as to be without protection. in the year after his abdication he died, at the age of sixty-one, apparently strong as regards general health, but, if plutarch's story be true, affected with a terrible cutaneous disease. modern writers have spoken of sulla as though they would fain have praised him if they dared, because, in spite of his demoniac cruelty, he recognized the expediency of bringing the affairs of the republic again into order. middleton calls him the "only man in history in whom the odium of the most barbarous cruelties was extinguished by the glory of his great acts." mommsen, laying the blame of the proscriptions on the head of the oligarchy, speaks of sulla as being either a sword or a pen in the service of the state, as a sword or a pen would be required, and declares that, in regard to the total "absence of political selfishness--although it is true in this respect only--sulla deserves to be named side by side with washington."[ ] to us at present who are endeavoring to investigate the sources and the nature of cicero's character, the attributes of this man would be but of little moment, were it not that cicero was probably cicero because sulla had been sulla. horrid as the proscriptions and confiscations were to cicero--and his opinion of them was expressed plainly enough when it was dangerous to express them[ ]--still it was apparent to him that the cause of order (what we may call the best chance for the republic) lay with the senate and with the old traditions and laws of rome, in the re-establishment of which sulla had employed himself. of these institutions mommsen speaks with a disdain which we now cannot but feel to be justified. "on the roman oligarchy of this period," he says "no judgment can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything connected with it, the sullan constitution is involved in that condemnation."[ ] we have to admit that the salt had gone out from it, and that there was no longer left any savor by which it could be preserved. but the german historian seems to err somewhat in this, as have also some modern english historians, that they have not sufficiently seen that the men of the day had not the means of knowing all that they, the historians, know. sulla and his senate thought that by massacring the marian faction they had restored everything to an equilibrium. sulla himself seems to have believed that when the thing was accomplished rome would go on, and grow in power and prosperity as she had grown, without other reforms than those which he had initiated. there can be no doubt that many of the best in rome--the best in morals, the best in patriotism, and the best in erudition--did think that, with the old forms, the old virtue would come back. pompey thought so, and cicero. cato thought so, and brutus. cæsar, when he came to think about it, thought the reverse. but even now to us, looking back with so many things made clear to us, with all the convictions which prolonged success produces, it is doubtful whether some other milder change--some such change as cicero would have advocated--might not have prevented the tyranny of augustus, the mysteries of tiberius, the freaks of caligula, the folly of claudius, and the madness of nero. it is an uphill task, that of advocating the cause of a man who has failed. the cæsars of the world are they who make interesting stories. that cicero failed in the great purpose of his life has to be acknowledged. he had studied the history of his country, and was aware that hitherto the world had produced nothing so great as roman power; and he knew that rome had produced true patriotism. her consuls, her censors, her tribunes, and her generals had, as a rule, been true to rome, serving their country, at any rate till of late years, rather than themselves. and he believed that liberty had existed in rome, though nowhere else. it would be well if we could realize the idea of liberty which cicero entertained. liberty was very dear to him--dear to him not only as enjoying it himself, but as a privilege for the enjoyment of others. but it was only the liberty of a few. half the population of the roman cities were slaves, and in cicero's time the freedom of the city, which he regarded as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small proportion of the population of italy. it was the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was anxious. that a sicilian should be free under a roman proconsul, as a roman citizen was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine. the idea of cosmopolitan freedom--an idea which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now--had not as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to do to others as we would that they should do to us. it required christ to father that idea; and cicero, though he was nearer to christianity than any who had yet existed, had not reached it. but this liberty, though it was but of a few, was so dear to him that he spent his life in an endeavor to preserve it. the kings had been expelled from rome because they had trampled on liberty. then came the republic, which we know to have been at its best no more than an oligarchy; but still it was founded on the idea that everything should be done by the votes of the free people. for many years everything was done by the votes of the free people. under what inducements they had voted is another question. clients were subject to their patrons, and voted as they were told. we have heard of that even in england, where many of us still think that such a way of voting is far from objectionable. perhaps compulsion was sometimes used--a sort of "rattening" by which large bodies were driven to the poll to carry this or the other measure. simple eloquence prevailed with some, and with others flattery. then corruption became rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery more or less overt. this was bad, of course. every freeman should have given a vote according to his conscience. but in what country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been achieved? though voting in england has not always been pure, we have not wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal rule. nor did cicero. he knew that much was bad, and had himself seen many things that were very evil. he had lived through the dominations of marius and sulla, and had seen the old practices of roman government brought down to the pretence of traditional forms. but still, so he thought, there was life left in the old forms, if they could be revivified by patriotism, labor, and intelligence. it was the best that he could imagine for the state--infinitely better than the chance of falling into the bloody hands of one marius and one sulla after another. mommsen tells us that nothing could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical government into which rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with mommsen, because we have seen what followed. but that cicero, living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things, should not, i think, cause us to doubt either cicero's wisdom or his patriotism. i cannot but think that, had i been a roman of those days, i should have preferred cicero, with his memories of the past, to cæsar, with his ambition for the future. looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great rome was--infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything else which the world has produced. it came to pass that "urbis et orbis" was not a false boast. gradually growing from the little nest of robbers established on the banks of the tiber, the people of rome learned how to spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule, while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of other people had produced. to do this, there must have been not only courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. but yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of rome. when did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? when was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling? not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the rome of the kings claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city. and from the time of their expulsion, rome, though she was rising in power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time that the day of her destruction had come upon her. not when brennus was at rome with his gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the expulsion of the kings, could rome be said to have been great; nor when, fifty or sixty years afterward, the roman army--the only army which rome then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the caudine forks and pass under the samnite yoke. then, when the samnite wars were ended, and rome was mistress in italy--mistress, after all, of no more than southern italy--the punic wars began. it could hardly have been during that long contest with carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that the palmy days of rome were at their best. hannibal seems always to be the master. trebia, thrasymene and cannæ, year after year, threaten complete destruction to the state. then comes the great scipio; and no doubt, if we must mark an era of roman greatness, it would be that of the battle of zama and the submission of carthage, years before christ. but with scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition; and in the macedonian and greek wars that follow, though the arm of rome is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is already the glamour of her decline in virtue. her dealings with antiochus, with pyrrhus, and with the achæans, though successful, were hardly glorious. then came the two gracchi, and the reader begins to doubt whether the glory of the republic is not already over. they demanded impossible reforms, by means as illegal as they were impossible, and were both killed in popular riots. the war with jugurtha followed, in which the romans were for years unsuccessful, and during which german hordes from the north rushed into gaul and destroyed an army of , romans. this brings us to marius and to sulla, of whom we have already spoken, and to that period of roman politics which the german historian describes as being open to no judgment "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." but, in truth, the history of every people and every nation will be subject to the same criticism, if it be regarded with the same severity. in all that man has done as yet in the way of government, the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. the period of queen elizabeth was very great to us; yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! but for a storm at sea, we might have been subjected to spain. by what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies were we governed through the reigns of james i. and charles i.! what periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! how little glorious was the reign of charles ii.! how full of danger that of william! how mean those of the four georges, with the dishonesty of ministers such as walpole and newcastle! and to-day, are there not many who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on us "save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation?" we are a great nation, and the present threatenings are probably vain. nevertheless, the seeds of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices--so manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with certainty. but cicero, not having the advantage of distance, having simply in his mind the knowledge of the greatness which had been achieved, and in his heart a true love for the country which had achieved it, and which was his own, encouraged himself to think that the good might be recovered and the bad eliminated. marius and sulla--pompey also, toward the end of his career, if i can read his character rightly--cæsar, and of course augustus, being all destitute of scruple, strove to acquire, each for himself, the power which the weak hands of the senate were unable to grasp. however much, or however little, the country of itself might have been to any of them, it seemed good to him, whether for the country's sake or for his own, that the rule should be in his own hands. each had the opportunity, and each used it, or tried to use it. with cicero there is always present the longing to restore the power to the old constitutional possessors of it. so much is admitted, even by his bitter enemies; and i am sometimes at a loss whether to wonder most that a man of letters, dead two thousand years ago, should have enemies so bitter or a friend so keenly in earnest about him as i am. cicero was aware quite as well as any who lived then, if he did not see the matter clearer even than any others, that there was much that was rotten in the state. men who had been murderers on behalf of marius, and then others who had murdered on behalf of sulla--among whom that catiline, of whom we have to speak presently, had been one--were not apt to settle themselves down as quiet citizens. the laws had been set aside. even the law courts had been closed. sulla had been law, and the closets of his favorites had been the law courts. senators had been cowed and obedient. the tribunes had only been mock tribunes. rome, when cicero began his public life, was still trembling. the consuls of the day were men chosen at sulla's command. the army was sulla's army. the courts were now again opened by sulla's permission. the day fixed by sulla when murderers might no longer murder--or, at any rate, should not be paid for murdering--had arrived. there was not, one would say, much hope for good things. but sulla had reproduced the signs of order, and the best hope lay in that direction. consuls, prætors, quæstors, Ædiles, even tribunes, were still there. perhaps it might be given to him, to cicero, to strengthen the hands of such officers. at any rate, there was no better course open to him by which he could serve his country. the heaviest accusation brought against cicero charges him with being insincere to the various men with whom he was brought in contact in carrying out the purpose of his life, and he has also been accused of having changed his purpose. it has been alleged that, having begun life as a democrat, he went over to the aristocracy as soon as he had secured his high office of state. as we go on, it will be my object to show that he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means, whether, for instance, he was ready to serve cæsar or to oppose him, he was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity of his purpose. i think that i can remember, even in great britain, even in the days of queen victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but friendly words. with us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. in rome expediency governed everything. all i claim for cicero is, that he was more sincere than others around him. chapter iv. _his early pleadings.--sextus roscius amerinus.--his income._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we now come to the beginning of the work of cicero's life. this at first consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a successful barrister in our time. we do not know with absolute certainty even in what year cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. it may probably have been in b.c., when he was twenty-five, or in his twenty-sixth year. of the pleadings of which we know the particulars, that in the defence of sextus roscius amerinus, which took place undoubtedly in the year b.c., ætat twenty-seven, was probably the earliest. as to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also one for publius quintius, which has generally been printed first among the orator's works. it has, however, i think, been made clear that that spoken for sextus roscius came before it. it is certain that there had been others before either of them. in that for sextus he says that he had never spoken before in any public cause,[ ] such as was the accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[ ] no doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. that of these two the defence of sextus roscius came first, is also to be found in his own words. more than once, in pleading for quintius, he speaks of the proscriptions and confiscations of sulla as evils then some time past. these were brought nominally to a close in june, ; but it has been supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken in that very year. this seems to have been impossible. "i am most unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[ ] when the tone of the two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for sextus roscius was spoken the first. it was, as i have said, spoken in his twenty-seventh year, b.c. , the year after the proscription lists had been closed, when sulla was still dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority. as to such violation of sulla's own enactment, cicero excuses the dictator in this very speech, likening him to great jove the thunderer. even "jupiter optimus maximus," as he is whose nod the heavens, the earth, and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. if so, how can we wonder that sulla, who has to rule the state, to govern, in fact, the world, should not be able himself to see to everything? jove probably found it convenient not to see many things. such must certainly have been the case with sulla. i will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story of sextus roscius of ameria at some length, because it is in itself a tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because, in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has produced; and also, i will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light upon the condition of rome at the time. our hair is made to stand on end when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a state as this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to die. we come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the bloody wreath of sulla as he triumphed on his marian foes, not the cruel persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such ruthless deeds--those attendant villanies for which the jupiter optimus maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. if in history we can ever get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always more interesting than any account of the great facts, however grand. the kalends of june had been fixed by sulla as the day on which the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. in the september following an old gentleman named sextus roscius was murdered in the streets of rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by two slaves. by whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. he was a man of reputation, well acquainted with the metelluses and messalas of the day, and passing rich. his name had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of sulla's friends. he was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. though there was at that time much money in rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money. immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or divided, probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom, as with every rich roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided. as to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. had the name of sextus roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it should have been so. jupiter optimus maximus could not see everything, and great advantages were taken. we must only suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their way. they could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. at any rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed. old roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that he lived always in the country at ameria, looking after his father's farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from ameria something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the time.[ ] as we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him comes from his own advocate. cicero would probably say much which, though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. cicero describes him as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple, unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. he was now accused of having murdered his father. the accusation was conducted by one erucius, who in his opening speech--the speech made before that by cicero--had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. then cicero reminds him, and the judges, and the court how greatly agriculture had been honored in the old days, when consuls were taken from the ploughs. the imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have been a consul at any time--one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. erucius had declared of him that he never took part in any festivity. cicero uses this to show that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. old roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in rome--the one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. he, however, had died, and our roscius--sextus roscius amerinus, as he came to be called when he was made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down in the country. the accusation would probably not have been made, had he not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible. why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence as to guilt? that is the first question which presents itself. this son received no benefit from his father's death. he had in fact been absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and not to himself. they had been taken, and divided; taken by persons called "sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. such men in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our roscius. cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. there were two other rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named titus; titus roscius magnus, who sojourned in rome, and who seems to have exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the proscriptions, and titus roscius capito, who, when at home, lived at ameria, but of whom cicero tells us that he had become an apt pupil of the other during this affair. they had got large shares, but they shared also with one chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of sulla, who did the dirty work for jupiter optimus maximus when jupiter optimus maximus had not time to do it himself. we presume that chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. as to capito, the apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for himself. again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from cicero, who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. how instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite know. there was no system of attorneys. but the story was probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way prepared for him. that which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the case might seem to require. it has to be understood of cicero that he possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration; in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the same thing in our own enlightened days. but cicero, even as a young man, knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be disproved. the accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser, and which was subject to cross-examination. cicero would have no opportunity of producing evidence. he was thus exempted from the necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all disproved. i think we may take it for granted that the property of the murdered man was divided as he tells us. if that was so, why should any accusation have been made? our sextus seems to have been too much crushed by the dangers of his position to have attempted to get back any part of his father's wealth. he had betaken himself to the protection of a certain noble lady, one metella, whose family had been his father's friends, and by her and her friends the defence was no doubt managed. "you have my farms," he is made to say by his advocate; "i live on the charity of another. i abandon everything because i am placid by nature, and because it must be so. my house, which is closed to me, is open to you: i endure it. you have possessed yourself of my whole establishment; i have not one single slave. i suffer all this, and feel that i must suffer it. what do you want more? why do you persecute me further? in what do you think that i shall hurt you? how do i interfere with you? in what do i oppose you? is it your wish to kill a man for the sake of plunder? you have your plunder. if for the sake of hatred, what hatred can you feel against him of whose land you have taken possession before you had even known him?"[ ] of all this, which is the advocate's appeal to pity, we may believe as little as we please. cicero is addressing the judge, and desires only an acquittal. but the argument shows that no overt act in quest of restitution had as yet been made. nevertheless, chrysogonus feared such action, and had arranged with the two tituses that something should be done to prevent it. what are we to think of the condition of a city in which not only could a man be murdered for his wealth walking home from supper--that, indeed, might happen in london if there existed the means of getting at the man's money when the man was dead--but in which such a plot could be concerted in order that the robbery might be consummated? "we have murdered the man and taken his money under the false plea that his goods had been confiscated. friends, we find, are interfering--these metellas and metelluses, probably. there is a son who is the natural heir. let us say that he killed his own father. the courts of law, which have only just been reopened since the dear days of proscription, disorder, and confiscation, will hardly yet be alert enough to acquit a man in opposition to the dictator's favorite. let us get him convicted, and, as a parricide, sewed up alive in a bag and thrown into the river"--as some of us have perhaps seen cats drowned, for such was the punishment--"and then he at least will not disturb us." it must have thus been that the plot was arranged. it was a plot so foul that nothing could be fouler; but not the less was it carried out persistently with the knowledge and the assistance of many. erucius, the accuser, who seems to have been put forward on the part of chrysogonus, asserted that the man had caused his father to be murdered because of hatred. the father was going to disinherit the son, and therefore the son murdered the father. in this there might have been some probability, had there been any evidence of such an intention on the father's part. but there was none. cicero declares that the father had never thought of disinheriting his son. there had been no quarrel, no hatred. this had been assumed as a reason--falsely. there was in fact no cause for such a deed; nor was it possible that the son should have done it. the father was killed in rome when, as was evident, the son was fifty miles off. he never left his farm. erucius, the accuser, had said, and had said truly, that rome was full of murderers.[ ] but who was the most likely to have employed such a person: this rough husbandman, who had no intercourse with rome, who knew no one there, who knew little of roman ways, who had nothing to get by the murder when committed, or they who had long been concerned with murderers, who knew rome, and who were now found to have the property in their hands? the two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed, surely they might tell something? here there comes out incidentally the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might be extracted. this is spoken of with no horror by cicero, nor, as far as i can remember, by other roman writers. it was regarded as an established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court of law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances. this was so common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty. we hear, indeed, of slaves having their liberty given them in order that, being free, they may not be forced by torture to tell the truth;[ ] but had the cruelty been of the nature described by scott in "old mortality," when the poor preacher's limbs were mangled, i think we should have heard more of it. nor was the torture always applied, but only when the expected evidence was not otherwise forth-coming. cicero explains, in the little dialogue given below, how the thing was carried on.[ ] "you had better tell the truth now, my friend: was it so and so?" the slave knows that, if he says it was so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but that, if he will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking. and yet the evidence went for what it was worth. in this case of roscius there had certainly been two slaves present; but cicero, who, as counsel for the defence, could call no witnesses, had not the power to bring them into court; nor could slaves have been made to give evidence against their masters. these slaves, who had belonged to the murdered man, were now the property either of chrysogonus or of the two tituses. there was no getting at their evidence but by permission of their masters, and this was withheld. cicero demands that they shall be produced, knowing that the demand will have no effect. "the man here," he says, pointing to the accused, "asks for it, prays for it. what will you do in this case? why do you refuse?"[ ] by this time the reader is brought to feel that the accused person cannot possibly have been guilty; and if the reader, how much more the hearer? then cicero goes on to show who in truth were guilty. "doubt now if you can, judges, by whom roscius was killed: whether by him who, by his father's death, is plunged into poverty and trouble--who is forbidden even to investigate the truth--or by those who are afraid of real evidence, who themselves possess the plunder, who live in the midst of murder, and on the proceeds of murder."[ ] then he addresses one of the tituses, titus magnus, who seems to have been sitting in the court, and who is rebuked for his impudence in doing so: "who can doubt who was the murderer--you who have got all the plunder, or this man who has lost everything? but if it be added to this that you were a pauper before--that you have been known as a greedy fellow, as a dare-devil, as the avowed enemy of him who has been killed--then need one ask what has brought you to do such a deed as this?"[ ] he next tells what took place, as far as it was known, immediately after the murder. the man had been killed coming home from supper, in september, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the fact was known in ameria before dawn. travelling was not then very quick; but a messenger, one mallius glaucia, a man on very close terms with titus magnus, was sent down at once in a light gig to travel through the night and take the information to titus capito why was all this hurry? how did glaucia hear of the murder so quickly? what cause to travel all through the night? why was it necessary that capito should know all about it at once? "i cannot think," says cicero, "only that i see that capito has got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered man owned!" but capito is to be produced as a witness, and cicero gives us to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have to undergo. in all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions as to facts of which he has no evidence. when that hurried messenger was sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. the two real contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they intended such a course. it had been conceived that when the man was dead and his goods seized, the fear of sulla's favorite, the still customary dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to shrink from inquiry. hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods taken, even if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance with sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to endure; but this poor wretch, sextus, had friends in rome--friends who were friends of sulla--of whom chrysogonus and the tituses had probably not bethought themselves. when it came to pass that more stir was made than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary. but, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, chrysogonus must be sought. sulla was then at volaterra, in etruria perhaps miles north-west from rome, and with him was his favorite chrysogonus. in four days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither, and, so cicero states, by the same messenger--by glaucia--who had taken it to ameria. chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods, and from this cicero implies that chrysogonus and the two tituses were in partnership. but it seems that when the fact of the death of old roscius was known at ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and the most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with horror, determined to send a deputation to sulla. something of what was being done with their townsman's property was probably known, and there seems to have been a desire for justice. ten townsmen were chosen to go to sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into the matter. here, again, we are very much in the dark, because this very capito, to whom these farms were allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. the great object was to keep sulla himself in the dark, and this capito managed to do by the aid of chrysogonus. none of the ten were allowed to see sulla. they are hoaxed into believing that chrysogonus himself will look to it, and so they go back to ameria, having achieved nothing. we are tempted to believe that the deputation was a false deputation, each of whom probably had his little share, so that in this way there might be an appearance of justice. if it was so, cicero has not chosen to tell that part of the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason for omitting it. so far the matter had gone with the tituses, and with chrysogonus who had got his lion's share. our poor roscius, the victim, did at first abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. we cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that he had lived a wretched life during all the murders of the sullan proscriptions. but in his abject misery he had found his way up among the great friends of his family at rome, and had there been charged with the parricide, because chrysogonus and the tituses began to be afraid of what these great friends might do. this is the story as cicero has been able to tell it in his speech. beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. whether he got back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us. whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell those two tituses or chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been no one to inform us. the matter was of little importance in rome, where murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common incidents of every-day life. history would have meddled with nothing so ordinary had not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a man so great a master of his language that it has been worth the while of ages to perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. but the story, as a story of roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to history in explaining the condition of things which sulla had produced. the attack upon chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been offensive to sulla, though sulla is by name absolved from immediate blame. chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying words so bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--sulla's judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "putting aside sextus roscius," he says, "i demand, first of all, why the goods of an esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while defending sulla's enemies? it is against those only that the law is made. then i demand why they were sold when the legal day for such sales had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[ ] then he gives us a picture of chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "you have seen him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims along the forum"--he, a freedman, with a crowd of roman citizens at his heels, that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to none--"the only happy man of the day, the only one with any power in his hands."[ ] this trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried before a full bench of judges. of these the number would be uncertain, but they were probably above fifty. the prætor of the day--the prætor to whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided, and the judges all sat round him. their duty seems to have consisted in listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. each judge could vote[ ] "guilty," "acquitted," or "not proven," as they do in scotland. they were, in fact, jurymen rather than judges. it does not seem that any amount of legal lore was looked for specially in the judges, who at different periods had been taken from various orders of the citizens, but who at this moment, by a special law enacted by sulla, were selected only from the senators. we have ample evidence that at this period the judges in rome were most corrupt. they were tainted by a double corruption: that of standing by their order instead of standing by the public--each man among them feeling that his turn to be accused might come--and that also of taking direct bribes. cicero on various occasions--on this, for instance, and notably in the trial of verres, to which we shall come soon--felt very strongly that his only means of getting a true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them into temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. if a trial could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing to create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract admiration, and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the judgment would, as a matter of course, be bought. in such a case as this of sextus roscius, the poor wretch would be condemned, sewed up in his bag, and thrown into the sea, a portion of the plunder would be divided among the judges, and nothing further would be said about it. but if an orator could achieve for himself such a reputation that the world would come and listen to him, if he could so speak that rome should be made to talk about the trial, then might the judges be frightened into a true verdict. it may be understood, therefore, of what importance it was to obtain the services of a cicero, or of a hortensius, who was unrivalled at the roman bar when cicero began to plead. there were three special modes of oratory in which cicero displayed his powers. he spoke either before the judges--a large body of judges who sat collected round the prætor, as in the case of sextus roscius--or in cases of civil law before a single judge, selected by the prætor, who sat with an assessor, as in the case of roscius the actor, which shall be mentioned just now. this was the recognized work of his life, in which he was engaged, at any rate, in his earlier years; or he spoke to the populace, in what was called the concio, or assembly of the people--speeches made before a crowd called together for a special purpose, as were the second and third orations against catiline; or in the senate, in which a political rather than a judicial sentence was sought from the votes of the senators. there was a fourth mode of address, which in the days of the emperors became common, when the advocate spoke "ad principem;" that is, to the emperor himself, or to some ruler acting for him as sole judge. it was thus that cicero pleaded before cæsar for ligarius and for king deiotarus, in the latter years of his life. in each of these a separate manner and a distinct line had to be adopted, in all of which he seems to have been equally happy, and equally powerful. in judging of his speeches, we are bound to remember that they were not probably uttered with their words arranged as we read them. some of those we have were never spoken at all, as was the case with the five last verrene orations, and with the second, by far the longest of the philippics. some, as was specially the case with the defence of milo, the language of which is perhaps as perfect as that of any oration which has reached us from ancient or modern days, were only spoken in part; so that that which we read bears but small relation to that which was heard. all were probably retouched for publication.[ ] that words so perfect in their construction should have flowed from a man's mouth, often with but little preparation, we cannot conceive. but we know from the evidence of the day, and from the character which remained of him through after roman ages, how great was the immediate effect of his oratory. we can imagine him, in this case of sextus roscius, standing out in the open air in the forum, with the movable furniture of the court around him, the seats on which the judges sat with the prætor in the midst of them, all senators in their white robes, with broad purple borders. there too were seated, we may suppose on lower benches, the friends of the accused and the supporters of the accusation, and around, at the back of the orator, was such a crowd as he by the character of his eloquence may have drawn to the spot. cicero was still a young man; but his name had made itself known and we can imagine that some tidings had got abroad as to the bold words which would be spoken in reference to sulla and chrysogonus. the scene must have been very different from that of one of our dingy courts, in which the ermine is made splendid only by the purity and learning of the man who wears it. in rome all exterior gifts were there. cicero knew how to use them, so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant should not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity. quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they should dress themselves[ ] and hold their togas--changing the folds of the garment so as to suit the different parts of the speech--how they should move their arms, and hold their heads, and turn their necks; even how they should comb their hair when they came to stand in public and plead at the bar. all these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years rolled on, had come down to him from days before cicero; but he always refers to cicero as though his were the palmy days of roman eloquence. we can well believe that cicero had studied many of these arts by his twenty-seventh year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop it--how to make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair, and yet not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the personal graces which were at his command. sextus roscius amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, i think, more attractive than most novels. we know that cicero pleaded other causes before he went to greece in the year b.c., especially those for publius quintius, of which we have his speech, and that for a lady of arretium, in which he defended her right to be regarded as a free woman of that city. in this speech he again attacked sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the dictator; and again cicero was successful. this is not extant. then he started on his travels, as to which i have already spoken. while he was absent sulla died, and the condition of the republic during his absence was anything but hopeful. lepidus was consul during these two years, than whom no weaker officer ever held rule in rome--or rebelled against rome; and sertorius, who was in truth a great man, was in arms against rome in spain, as a rebel, though he was in truth struggling to create a new roman power, which should be purer than that existing in italy. what cicero thought of the condition of his country at this time we have no means of knowing. if he then wrote letters, they have not been preserved. his spoken words speak plainly enough of the condition of the courts of law, and let us know how resolved he was to oppose himself to their iniquities. a young man may devote himself to politics with as much ardor as a senior, but he cannot do so if he be intent on a profession. it is only when his business is so well grasped by him as to sit easily on him, that he is able to undertake the second occupation. there is a rumor that cicero, when he returned home from greece, thought for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he was called greek and sophist in ridicule. it is not, however, to be believed that he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed for his own career. it will become evident as we go on with his life, that this so-called philosophy of the greeks was never to him a matter of more than interesting inquiry. a full, active, human life, in which he might achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by intelligence, erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might serve his country, his order, and his friends--just such a life as our leading men propose to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this is what cicero had determined to achieve from his earliest years, and it was not likely that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic of greek philosophers. that the logic even of the academy was false to him we have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings. there is a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at delphi as to his future career, and that on being told that he must look to his own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large, he determined to abandon the honors of the republic. that he should have talked among the young men of the day of his philosophic investigations till they laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may be probable, but it cannot have been that he ever thought of giving up the bar. in the year of his return to rome, when he was thirty, he married terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good fortune, and that her sister was one of the vestal virgins.[ ] her nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule, chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no mean pursuits. as to the more important question of terentia's fortune there has never been a doubt. plutarch, however, does not make it out to have been very great, assuming a sum which was equal to about £ of our money. he tells us at the same time that cicero's own fortune was less than £ . but in both of these statements, plutarch, who was forced to take his facts where he could get them, and was not very particular in his authority, probably erred. the early education of cicero, and the care taken to provide him with all that money could purchase, is, i think, conclusive of his father's wealth; and the mode of life adopted by cicero shows that at no period did he think it necessary to live as men do live with small incomes. we shall find, as we go on, that he spent his money freely, as men did at rome who had the command of large means. we are aware that he was often in debt. we find that from his letters. but he owed money not as a needy man does, but as one who is speculative, sanguine, and quite confident of his own resources. the management of incomes was not so fixed a thing then as it is with us now. speculation was even more rampant, and rising men were willing and were able to become indebted for enormous sums, having no security to offer but the promise of their future career. cæsar's debts during various times of his life were proverbial. he is said to have owed over £ , before he reached his first step in the public employment. cicero rushed into no such danger as this. we know, indeed, that when the time came to him for public expenditure on a great scale, as, for instance, when he was filling the office of Ædile, he kept within bounds, and he did not lavish money which he did not possess. we know also that he refrained, altogether refrained, from the iniquitous habits of making large fortunes which were open to the great politicians of the republic. to be quæstor that he might be Ædile, Ædile that he might be prætor and consul, and prætor and consul that he might rob a province--pillage sicily, spain, or asia, and then at last come back a rich man, rich enough to cope with all his creditors, and to bribe the judges should he be accused for his misdeeds--these were the usual steps to take by enterprising romans toward power, wealth, and enjoyment. but it will be observed, in this sequence of circumstances, the robbery of the province was essential to success. this was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to have become an immortal fact in history. the instance of verres will be narrated in the next chapter but one. something of moderation was more general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. a proconsul might rob a great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with him a score of provincial deputies to laud his goodness before the citizens at home. but cicero robbed not at all. even they who have been most hard upon his name, accusing him of insincerity and sometimes of want of patriotism, because his roman mode of declaring himself without reserve in his letters has been perpetuated for us by the excellence of their language, even they have acknowledged that he kept his hands studiously clean in the service of his country, when to have clean hands was so peculiar as to be regarded as absurd. there were other means in which a noble roman might make money, and might do so without leaving the city. an orator might be paid for his services as an advocate. cicero, had such a trade been opened to him, might have made almost any sum to which his imagination could have stretched itself. such a trade was carried on to a very great extent. it was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "lex cincia de muneribus," passed more than a century before cicero began his pleadings.[ ] but the law had become a dead letter in the majority of cases. there can be no doubt that hortensius, the predecessor and great rival of cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment. indeed, the myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more practicable in rome than it has been found to be in england, where every barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. that the "lex cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be allowed by us all. services for which no regular payment can be exacted will always cost more than those which have a defined price. but cicero would not break the law. it has been hinted rather than stated that he, like other orators of the day, had his price. he himself tells us that he took nothing; and no instance has been adduced that he had ever done so. he is free enough in accusing hortensius of having accepted a beautiful statuette, an ivory sphinx of great value. what he knew of hortensius, hortensius would have known of him, had it been there to know; and what hortensius or others had heard would certainly have been told. as far as we can learn, there is no ground for accusing cicero of taking fees or presents beyond the probability that he would do so. i think we are justified in believing that he did not do so, because those who watched his conduct closely found no opportunity of exposing him. that he was paid by different allied states for undertaking their protection in the senate, is probable, such having been a custom not illegal. we know that he was specially charged with the affairs of dyrrachium, and had probably amicable relations with other allied communities. this, however, must have been later in life, when his name was sufficiently high to insure the value of his services, and when he was a senator. noble romans also--noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the little cares of trade--were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury. we shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of brutus--that brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a par with cato in purity. to lend money to citizens, or more profitably to allied states and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the ordinary resource of a roman nobleman in quest of revenue. the allied city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble roman, who had plundered it as proconsul or governor, would escape from its immediate embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble roman, who would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal. cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise de officiis, an essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade and usury. when he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.[ ] the doctrine, however, has always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and was practised by all romans who aspired to be considered among the upper classes. that other and certainly baser means of making money by usury was, however, only too common. crassus, the noted rich man of rome in cæsar's day, who was one of the first triumvirate, and who perished ignominiously in parthia, was known to have gathered much of his wealth by such means. but against this cicero is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping. "first of all," he says, "these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers of custom and lenders of money on usury."[ ] again, we are entitled to say that cicero did not condescend to enrich himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so, the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have reached our ears. nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. his rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. his dear friend atticus did not so govern his conduct, or brutus, who, when he wrote the de officiis, was only less dear to him than atticus. but cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. we learn from his letter that he owned house-property in rome to a considerable extent, having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. he inherited also the family house at arpinum. he makes it a matter for boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies nearly £ , (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great income, and one common with romans of high position.[ ] of the extent of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. but we do know that he lived always as a rich man--as one who regards such a condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was often in debt, as was customary with noble romans, he could always write about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and intelligence. he was as might be some english marquis, who, though up to his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the luxuries befitting a marquis. though we have no authority to tell us how his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his life. of that condition we have ample evidence. he commenced his career as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled himself in rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest honors of the republic, he did so with the means of living like a nobleman. but the point on which it is most necessary to insist is this: that while so many--i may almost say all around him in his own order--were unscrupulous as to their means of getting money, he kept his hands clean. the practice then was much as it is now. a gentleman in our days is supposed to have his hands clean; but there has got abroad among us a feeling that, only let a man rise high enough, soil will not stick to him. to rob is base; but if you rob enough, robbery will become heroism, or, at any rate, magnificence. with cæsar his debts have been accounted happy audacity; his pillage of gaul and spain, and of rome also, have indicated only the success of the great general; his cruelty, which in cold-blooded efficiency has equalled if not exceeded the blood-thirstiness of any other tyrant, has been called clemency.[ ] i do not mean to draw a parallel between cæsar and cicero. no two men could have been more different in their natures or in their career. but the one has been lauded because he was unscrupulous, and the other has incurred reproach because, at every turn and twist in his life, scruples dominated him. i do not say that he always did what he thought to be right. a man who doubts much can never do that. the thing that was right to him in the thinking became wrong to him in the doing. that from which he has shrunk as evil when it was within his grasp, takes the color of good when it has been beyond his reach. cicero had not the stuff in him to rule the rome and the romans of his period; but he was a man whose hands were free from all stain, either of blood or money; and for so much let him, at any rate, have the credit. between the return of cicero to rome in b.c. and his election as quæstor in , in which period he married terentia, he made various speeches in different causes, of which only one remains to us, or rather, a small part of one. this is notable as having been spoken in behalf of that roscius, the great comic actor, whose name has become familiar to us on account of his excellence, almost as have those of garrick, of siddons, and of talma. it was a pleading as to the value of a slave, and the amount of pecuniary responsibility attaching to roscius on account of the slave, who had been murdered when in his charge. as to the murder, no question is made. the slave was valuable, and the injury done to his master was a matter of importance. he, having been a slave, could have no stronger a claim for an injury done to himself than would a dog or a horse. the slave, whose name was panurge--a name which has since been made famous as having been borrowed by rabelais, probably from this occurrence, and given to his demon of mischief--showed aptitude for acting, and was therefore valuable. then one flavius killed him; why or how we do not know; and, having killed him, settled with roscius for the injury by giving him a small farm. but roscius had only borrowed or hired the man from one chærea--or was in partnership with chærea as to the man--and on that account paid something out of the value of the farm for the loss incurred; but the owner was not satisfied, and after a lapse of time made a further claim. hence arose the action, in pleading which cicero was successful. in the fragment we have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which cicero had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for publius quintius, who was the brother-in-law of roscius. "he is such an actor," says cicero, "that there is none other on the stage worthy to be seen; and such a man that among men he is the last that should have become an actor."[ ] the orator's praise of the actor is not of much importance. had not roscius been great in his profession, his name would not have come down to later ages. nor is it now matter of great interest that the actor should have been highly praised as a man by his advocate; but it is something for us to know that the stage was generally held in such low repute as to make it seem to be a pity that a good man should have taken himself to such a calling. in the year b.c. cicero became father of a daughter, whom we shall know as tullia--who, as she grew up, became the one person whom he loved best in all the world--and was elected quæstor. cicero tells us of himself that in the preceding year he had solicited the quæstorship, when cotta was candidate for the consulship and hortensius for the prætorship. there are in the dialogue de claris oratoribus--which has had the name of brutus always given to it--some passages in which the orator tells us more of himself than in any other of his works. i will annex a translation of a small portion because of its intrinsic interest; but i will relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long either for insertion in the text or for a note.[ ] chapter v. _cicero as quÆstor._ cicero was elected quæstor in his thirtieth year, b.c. . he was then nearly thirty-one. his predecessors and rivals at the bar, cotta and hortensius, were elected consul and prætor, respectively, in the same year. to become quæstor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the roman advocate who purposed to make his fortune by serving the state. to act as quæstor in his thirty-second year, Ædile in his thirty-seventh, prætor in his forty-first, and consul in his forty-fourth year, was to achieve, in the earliest succession allowed by law, all the great offices of trust, power, and future emolument. the great reward of proconsular rapine did not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable instances in which a proprætor with proconsular authority could make a large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with verres, and though Ædiles, and even quæstors, could find pickings. it was therefore a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. cicero lost none. as he himself tells us in the passage to which i have referred in the last chapter, and which is to be found in the appendix, he gained the good-will of men--that is, of free romans who had the suffrage, and who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[ ] putting his hand strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of those luxuries to which romans of his day were so wont to give way, he earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best. he was "novus homo"--a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as yet filled high office in the state. against such there was a strong prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like to see the good things of the republic dispersed among an increased number of hands. the power of voting was common to all roman male citizens; but the power of influencing the electors had passed very much into the hands of the rich. the admiration which cicero had determined to elicit would not go very far, unless it could be produced in a very high degree. a verres could get himself made prætor; a lepidus some years since could receive the consulship; or now an antony, or almost a catiline. the candidate would borrow money on the security of his own audacity, and would thus succeed--perhaps with some minor gifts of eloquence, if he could achieve them. with all this, the borrowing and the spending of money, that is, with direct bribery, cicero would have nothing to do; but of the art of canvassing--that art by which he could at the moment make himself beloved by the citizens who had a vote to give--he was a profound master. there is a short treatise, de petitione consulatus, on canvassing for the consulship, of which mention may be made here, because all the tricks of the trade were as essential to him, when looking to be quæstor, as when he afterward desired to be consul, and because the political doings of his life will hurry us on too quickly in the days of his consulship to admit of our referring to these lessons. this little piece, of which we have only a fragment, is supposed to have been addressed to cicero by his brother quintus, giving fraternal advice as to the then coming great occasion. the critics say that it was retouched by the orator himself. the reader who has studied cicero's style will think that the retouching went to a great extent, or that the two brothers were very like each other in their power of expression. the first piece of advice was no doubt always in cicero's mind, not only when he looked for office, but whenever he addressed a meeting of his fellow-citizens. "bethink yourself what is this republic; what it is you seek to be in it, and who you are that seek it. as you go down daily to the forum, turn the answer to this in your mind: 'novus sum; consulatum peto; roma est'--'i am a man of an untried family. it is the consulship that i seek. it is rome in which i seek it.'" though the condition of rome was bad, still to him the republic was the greatest thing in the world, and to be consul in that republic the highest honor which the world could give. there is nobility in that, but there is very much that is ignoble in the means of canvassing which are advocated. i cannot say that they are as yet too ignoble for our modern use here in england, but they are too ignoble to be acknowledged by our candidates themselves, or by their brothers on their behalf. cicero, not having progressed far enough in modern civilization to have studied the beauty of truth, is held to be false and hypocritical. we who know so much more than he did, and have the doctrine of truth at our fingers' ends, are wise enough to declare nothing of our own shortcomings, but to attribute such malpractices only to others. "it is a good thing to be thought worthy of the rank we seek by those who are in possession of it." make yourself out to be an aristocrat, he means. "canvass them, and cotton to them. make them believe that in matters of politics you have always been with the aristocracy, never with the mob;" that if "you have at all spoken a word in public to tickle the people, you have done so for the sake of gaining pompey." as to this, it is necessary to understand pompey's peculiar popularity at the moment, both with the liberals and with the conservatives. "above all, see that you have with you the 'jeunesse dorée.' they carry so much! there are many with you already. take care that they shall know how much you think of them." he is especially desired to make known to the public the iniquities of catiline, his opponent, as to whom quintus says that, though he has lately been acquitted in regard to his speculations in africa, he has had to bribe the judges so highly that he is now as poor as they were before they got their plunder. at every word we read we are tempted to agree with mommsen that on the roman oligarchy of the period no judgment can be passed save one, "of inexorable condemnation."[ ] "remember," says quintus, "that your candidature is very strong in that kind of friendship which has been created by your pleadings. take care that each of those friends shall know what special business is allotted to him on the occasion; and as you have not troubled any of them yet, make them understand that you have reserved for the present moment the payment of their debts." this is all very well; but the next direction mingles so much of business with its truth, that no one but machiavelli or quintus cicero could have expressed it in words. "men," says quintus, "are induced to struggle for us in these canvassings by three motives--by memory of kindness done, by the hope of kindness to come, and by community of political conviction. you must see how you are to catch each of these. small favors will induce a man to canvass for you; and they who owe their safety to your pleadings, for there are many such, are aware that if they do not stand by you now they will be regarded by all the world as sorry fellows. nevertheless, they should be made to feel that, as they are indebted to you, you will be glad to have an opportunity of becoming indebted to them. but as to those on whom you have a hold only by hope--a class of men very much more numerous, and likely to be very much more active--they are the men whom you should make to understand that your assistance will be always at their command." how severe, how difficult was the work of canvassing in rome, we learn from these lessons. it was the very essence of a great roman's life that he should live in public; and to such an extent was this carried that we wonder how such a man as cicero found time for the real work of his life. the roman patron was expected to have a levee every morning early in his own house, and was wont, when he went down into the forum, to be attended by a crowd of parasites. this had become so much a matter of course that a public man would have felt himself deserted had he been left alone either at home or abroad. rome was full of idlers--of men who got their bread by the favors of the great, who lounged through their lives--political quidnuncs, who made canvassing a trade--men without a conviction, but who believed in the ascendency of this or the other leader, and were ready to fawn or to fight in the streets, as there might be need. these were the quirites of the day--men who were in truth fattened on the leavings of the plunder which was extracted from the allies; for it was the case now that a roman was content to live on the industry of those whom his father had conquered. they would still fight in the legions; but the work of rome was done by slaves, and the wealth of rome was robbed from the provinces. hence it came about that there was a numerous class, to whom the name "assectatores" was given, who of course became specially prominent at elections. quintus divides all such followers into three kinds, and gives instructions as to the special treatment to be applied to each. "there are those who come to pay their respects to you at your own house"--"salutatores" they were called; "then those who go down with you into the forum"--"deductores;" "and after these the third, the class of constant followers"--"assectatores," as they were specially named. "as to the first, who are the least in consequence, and who, according to our present ways of living, come in great numbers, you should take care to let them know that their doing even so much as this is much esteemed by you. let them perceive that you note it when they come, and say as much to their friends, who will repeat your words. tell themselves often if it be possible. in this way men, when there are many candidates, will observe that there is one who has his eyes open to these courtesies, and they will give themselves heart and soul to him, neglecting all others. and mind you, when you find that a man does but pretend, do not let him perceive that you have perceived it. should any one wish to excuse himself, thinking that he is suspected of indifference, swear that you have never doubted him, nor had occasion to doubt. "as to the work of the 'deductores,' who go out with you--as it is much more severe than that of those who merely come to pay their compliments, let them understand that you feel it to be so, and, as far as possible, be ready to go into town with them at fixed hours." quintus here means that the "deductores" are not to be kept waiting for the patron longer than can be helped. "the attendance of a daily crowd in taking you down to the forum gives a great show of character and dignity. "then come the band of followers which accompanies you diligently wherever you go. as to those who do this without special obligation, take care that they should know how much you think of them. from those who owe it to you as a duty, exact it rigorously. see that they who can come themselves do come themselves, and that they who cannot, send others in their places." what an idea does this give as to the labor of a candidate in rome! i can imagine it to be worse even than the canvassing of an english borough, which to a man of spirit and honor is the most degrading of all existing employments not held to be absolutely disgraceful. quintus then goes on from the special management of friends to the general work of canvassing. "it requires the remembering of men's names"--"nomenclationem," a happy word we do not possess--"flattery, diligence, sweetness of temper, good report, and a high standing in the republic. let it be seen that you have been at the trouble to remember people, and practise yourself to it so that the power may increase with you. there is nothing so alluring to the citizen as that. if there be a softness which you have not by nature, so affect it that it shall seem to be your own naturally. you have indeed a way with you which is not unbecoming to a good-natured man; but you must caress men--which is in truth vile and sordid at other times, but is absolutely necessary at elections. it is no doubt a mean thing to flatter some low fellow, but when it is necessary to make a friend it can be pardoned. a candidate must do it, whose face and look and tongue should be made to suit those he has to meet. what perseverance means i need not tell you. the word itself explains itself. as a matter of course, you shall not leave the city; but it is not enough for you to stick to your work in rome and in the forum. you must seek out the voters and canvass them separately; and take care that no one shall ask from another what it is that you want from him. let it have been solicited by yourself, and often solicited." quintus seems to have understood the business well, and the elder brother no doubt profited by the younger brother's care. it was so they did it at rome. that men should have gone through all this in search of plunder and wealth does not strike us as being marvellous, or even out of place. a vile object justifies vile means. but there were some at rome who had it in their hearts really to serve their country, and with whom it was at the same time a matter of conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly or dishonorably enrich themselves. there was still a grain of salt left. but even this could not make itself available for useful purpose without having recourse to tricks such as these! [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in his proper year cicero became quæstor, and had assigned to him by lot the duty of looking after the western division of sicily. for sicily, though but one province as regarded general condition, being under one governor with proconsular authority, retained separate modes of government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to rome, especially in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not been conquered from the carthaginians.[ ] cicero was quartered at lilybæum, on the west, whereas the other quæstor was placed at syracuse, in the east. there were at that time twenty quæstors elected annually, some of whom remained in rome; but most of the number were stationed about the empire, there being always one as assistant to each proconsul. when a consul took the field with an army, he always had a quæstor with him. this had become the case so generally that the quæstor became, as it were, something between a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a governor. the arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer than that of mere official life; so that a quæstor has been called a proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence and attachment that a son entertains for his father. but to cicero, and to young quæstors in general, the great attraction of the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a quæstor was a senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be degraded by misconduct. gradually it had come to pass that the senate was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the admission into the senate of the popularly elected magistrates. there were in the time of cicero between and members of this body. the numbers down to the time of sulla had been increased or made up by direct selection by the old kings, or by the censors, or by some dictator, such as was sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by julius cæsar. the years between sulla's dictatorship and that of cæsar were but thirty--from to b.c. these, however, were the years in which cicero dreamed that the republic could be re-established by means of an honest senate, which senate was then to be kept alive by the constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of magistrates who had been chosen by the people. tacitus tells us that it was with this object that sulla had increased the number of quæstors.[ ] cicero's hopes--his futile hopes of what an honest senate might be made to do--still ran high, although at the very time in which he was elected quæstor he was aware that the judges, then elected from the senate, were so corrupt that their judgment could not be trusted. of this popular mode of filling the senate he speaks afterward in his treatise de legibus. "from those who have acted as magistrates the senate is composed--a measure altogether in the popular interest, as no one can now reach the highest rank"--namely, the senate--"except by the votes of the people, all power of selecting having been taken away from the censors."[ ] in his pleadings for p. sextus he makes the same boast as to old times, not with absolute accuracy, as far as we can understand the old constitution, but with the same passionate ardor as to the body. "romans, when they could no longer endure the rule of kings, created annual magistrates, but after such fashion that the council of the senate was set over the republic for its guidance. senators were chosen for that work by the entire people, and the entrance to that order was opened to the virtue and to the industry of the citizens at large."[ ] when defending cluentius, he expatiates on the glorious privileges of the roman senate. "its high place, its authority, its splendor at home, its name and fame abroad, the purple robe, the ivory chair, the appanage of office, the fasces, the army with its command, the government of the provinces!"[ ] on that splendor "apud exteras gentes," he expatiates in one of his attacks upon verres.[ ] from all this will be seen cicero's idea of the chamber into which he had made his way as soon as he had been chosen quæstor. in this matter, which was the pivot on which his whole life turned--the character, namely, of the roman senate--it cannot but be observed that he was wont to blow both hot and cold. it was his nature to do so, not from any aptitude for deceit, but because he was sanguine and vacillating--because he now aspired and now despaired. he blew hot and cold in regard to the senate, because at times he would feel it to be what it was--composed, for the most part, of men who were time-serving and corrupt, willing to sell themselves for a price to any buyer; and then, again, at times he would think of the senate as endowed with all those privileges which he names, and would dream that under his influence it would become what it should be--such a senate as he believed it to have been in its old palmy days. his praise of the senate, his description of what it should be and might be, i have given. to the other side of the picture we shall come soon, when i shall have to show how, at the trial of verres, he declared before the judges themselves how terrible had been the corruption of the judgment-seat in rome since, by sulla's enactment, it had been occupied only by the senators. one passage i will give now, in order that the reader may see by the juxtaposition of the words that he could denounce the senate as loudly as he would vaunt its privileges. in the column on the left hand in the note i quote the words with which, in the first pleading against verres, he declared "that every base and iniquitous thing done on the judgment-seat during the ten years since the power of judging had been transferred to the senate should be not only denounced by him, but also proved;" and in that on the right i will repeat the noble phrases which he afterward used in the speech for cluentius when he chose to speak well of the order.[ ] it was on the senate that they who wished well for rome must depend--on the senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among the people; on a body which should be at the same time august and popular--as far removed on the one side from the tyranny of individuals as on the other from the violence of the mob; but on a senate freed from its corruption and dirt, on a body of noble romans, fitted by their individual character and high rank to rule and to control their fellow-citizens. this was cicero's idea, and this the state of things which he endeavored to achieve. no doubt he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own example might do more in producing this than is given to men to achieve by such means. no doubt there was conceit in this--conceit and perhaps, vanity. it has to be admitted that cicero always exaggerated his own powers. but the ambition was great, the purpose noble, and the course of his whole life was such as to bring no disgrace on his aspirations. he did not thunder against the judges for taking bribes, and then plunder a province himself. he did not speak grandly of the duty of a patron to his clients, and then open his hands to illicit payments. he did not call upon the senate for high duty, and then devote himself to luxury and pleasure. he had a _beau ideal_ of the manner in which a roman senator should live and work, and he endeavored to work and live up to that ideal. there was no period after his consulship in which he was not aware of his own failure. nevertheless, with constant labor, but with intermittent struggles, he went on, till, at the end, in the last fiery year of his existence, he taught himself again to think that even yet there was a chance. how he struggled, and in struggling perished, we shall see by-and-by. what cicero did as quæstor in sicily we have no means of knowing. his correspondence does not go back so far. that he was very active, and active for good, we have two testimonies, one of which is serious, convincing, and most important as an episode in his life. the other consists simply of a good story, told by himself of himself; not intended at all for his own glorification, but still carrying with it a certain weight. as to the first: cicero was quæstor in lilybæum in the thirty-second year of his life. in the thirty-seventh year he was elected Ædile, and was then called upon by the sicilians to attack verres on their behalf. verres was said to have carried off from sicily plunder to the amount of nearly £ , ,[ ] after a misrule of three years' duration. all sicily was ruined. beyond its pecuniary losses, its sufferings had been excruciating; but not till the end had come of a governor's proconsular authority could the almost hopeless chance of a criminal accusation against the tyrant be attempted. the tyrant would certainly have many friends in rome. the injured provincials would probably have none of great mark. a man because he had been quæstor was not, necessarily, one having influence, unless he belonged to some great family. this was not the case with cicero. but he had made for himself such a character during his year of office that the sicilians declared that, if they could trust themselves to any man at rome, it would be to their former quæstor. it had been a part of his duty to see that the proper supply of corn was collected in the island and sent to rome. a great portion of the bread eaten in rome was grown in sicily, and much of it was supplied in the shape of a tax. it was the hateful practice of rome to extract the means of living from her colonies, so as to spare her own laborers. to this, hard as it was, the sicilians were well used. they knew the amount required of them by law, and were glad enough when they could be quit in payment of the dues which the law required; but they were seldom blessed by such moderation on the part of their rulers. to what extent this special tax could be stretched we shall see when we come to the details of the trial of verres. it is no doubt only from cicero's own words that we learn that, though he sent to rome plenteous supplies, he was just to the dealer, liberal to the pawns, and forbearing to the allies generally; and that when he took his departure they paid him honors hitherto unheard of.[ ] but i think we may take it for granted that this statement is true; firstly, because it has never been contradicted; and then from the fact that the sicilians all came to him in the day of their distress. as to the little story to which i have alluded, it has been told so often since cicero told it himself, that i am almost ashamed to repeat it. it is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close an insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. in his speech for plancius[ ] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from sicily after his quæstorship, he found himself at puteoli just at the season when the fashion from rome betook itself to that delightful resort. he was full of what he had done--how he had supplied rome with corn, but had done so without injury to the sicilians, how honestly he had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city the citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. then at puteoli he met two acquaintances. "ah," says one to him, "when did you leave rome? what news have you brought?" cicero, drawing his head up, as we can see him, replied that he had just returned from his province. "of course, just back from africa," said the other. "not so," said cicero, bridling in anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it himself--"but from sicily." then the other lounger, a fellow who pretended to know everything, put in his word. "do you not know that our cicero has been quæstor at syracuse?" the reader will remember that he had been quæstor in the other division of the island, at lilybæum. "there was no use in thinking any more about it," says cicero. "i gave up being angry and determined to be like any one else, just one at the waters." yes, he had been very conceited, and well understood his own fault of character in that respect; but he would not have shown his conceit in that matter had he not resolved to do his duty in a manner uncommon then among quæstors, and been conscious that he had done it. perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own words, if his real words be in our possession. in doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself. but the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of the man whose character he is investigating. a reader will not be judicious who imagines that what a man says of his own praises must be false, or that all which can be drawn from his own words in his own dispraise must be true. if a man praise himself for honor, probity, industry, and patriotism, he will at any rate show that these virtues are dear to him, unless the course of his life has proved him to be altogether a hypocrite in such utterances. it has not been presumed that cicero was a hypocrite in these utterances. he was honest and industrious; he did appreciate honor and love his country. so much is acknowledged; and yet it is supposed that what good he has told us of himself is false. if a man doubt of himself constantly; if in his most private intercourse and closest familiar utterances he admit occasionally his own human weakness; if he find himself to have failed at certain moments, and says so, the very feelings that have produced such confessions are proof that the highest points which have not been attained have been seen and valued. a man will not sorrowfully regret that he has won only a second place, or a third, unless he be alive to the glory of the first. but cicero's acknowledgments have all been taken as proof against himself. all manner of evil is argued against him from his own words, when an ill meaning can be attached to them; but when he speaks of his great aspirations, he is ridiculed for bombast and vanity. on the strength of some perhaps unconsidered expression, in a letter to atticus, he is condemned for treachery, whereas the sentences in which he has thoughtfully declared the purposes of his very soul are counted as clap-traps. no one has been so frequently condemned out of his mouth as cicero, and naturally. in these modern days we have contemporary records as to prominent persons. of the characters of those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. what insight have we into the personality of alexander the great, or what insight had plutarch, who wrote about him? as to samuel johnson, we seem to know every turn of his mind, having had a boswell. alexander had no boswell. but here is a man belonging to those past ages of which i speak who was his own boswell, and after such a fashion that, since letters were invented, no records have ever been written in language more clear or more attractive. it is natural that we should judge out of his own mouth one who left so many more words behind him than did any one else, particularly one who left words so pleasant to read. and all that he wrote was after some fashion about himself. his letters, like all letters, are personal to himself. his speeches are words coming out of his own mouth about affairs in which he was personally engaged and interested. his rhetoric consists of lessons given by himself about his own art, founded on his own experience, and on his own observation of others. his so-called philosophy gives us the workings of his own mind. no one has ever told the world so much about another person as cicero has told the world about cicero. boswell pales before him as a chronicler of minutiæ. it may be a matter of small interest now to the bulk of readers to be intimately acquainted with a roman who was never one of the world's conquerors. it may be well for those who desire to know simply the facts of the world's history, to dismiss as unnecessary the aspirations of one who lived so long ago. but if it be worth while to discuss the man's character, it must be worth while to learn the truth about it. "oh that mine adversary had written a book!" who does not understand the truth of these words! it is always out of a man's mouth that you may most surely condemn him. cicero wrote many books, and all about himself. he has been honored very highly. middleton, in the preface to his own biography, which, with all its charms, has become a bye-word for eulogy, quotes the opinion of erasmus, who tells us that he loves the writings of the man "not only for the divine felicity of his style, but for the sanctity of his heart and morals." this was the effect left on the mind of an accurate thinker and most just man. but then also has cicero been spoken of with the bitterest scorn. from dio cassius, who wrote two hundred and twenty years after christ, down to mr. froude, whose cæsar has just been published, he has had such hard things said of him by men who have judged him out of his own mouth, that the reader does not know how to reconcile what he now reads with the opinion of men of letters who lived and wrote in the century next after his death--with the testimony of such a man as erasmus, and with the hearty praises of his biographer, middleton. the sanctity of his heart and morals! it was thus that erasmus was struck in reading his works. it is a feeling of that kind, i profess, that has induced me to take this work in hand--a feeling produced altogether by the study of his own words. it has seemed to be that he has loved men so well, has been so anxious for the true, has been so capable of honesty when dishonesty was common among all around him, has been so jealous in the cause of good government, has been so hopeful when there has been but little ground for hope, as to have deserved a reputation for sanctity of heart and morals. of the speeches made by cicero as advocate after his quæstorship, and before those made in the accusation of verres, we have the fragment only of the second of two spoken in defence of marcus tullius decula, whom we may suppose to have been distantly connected with his family. he does not avow any relationship. "what," he says, in opening his argument, "does it become me, a tullius, to do for this other tullius, a man not only my friend, but my namesake?" it was a matter of no great importance, as it was addressed to judges not so called, but to "recuperatores," judges chosen by the prætor, and who acted in lighter cases. chapter vi. _verres._ there are six episodes, or, as i may say, divisions in the life of cicero to which special interest attaches itself. the first is the accusation against verres, in which he drove the miscreant howling out of the city. the second is his consulship, in which he drove catiline out of the city, and caused certain other conspirators who were joined with the arch rebel to be killed, either legally or illegally. the third was his exile, in which he himself was driven out of rome. the fourth was a driving out, too, though of a more honorable kind, when he was compelled, much against his will, to undertake the government of a province. the fifth was cæsar's passing of the rubicon, the battle of pharsalia, and his subsequent adherence to cæsar. the last was his internecine combat with antony, which produced the philippics, and that memorable series of letters in which he strove to stir into flames the expiring embers of the republic. the literary work with which we are acquainted is spread, but spread very unequally, over his whole life. i have already told the story of sextus roscius amerinus, having taken it from his own words. from that time onward he wrote continually; but the fervid stream of his eloquence came forth from him with unrivalled rapidity in the twenty last miserable months of his life. we have now come to the first of those episodes, and i have to tell the way in which cicero struggled with verres, and how he conquered him. in b.c. verres was prætor in rome. at that period of the republic there were eight prætors elected annually, two of whom remained in the city, whereas the others were employed abroad, generally with the armies of the empire. in the next year, b.c., verres went in due course to sicily with proconsular or proprætorial authority, having the government assigned to him for twelve months. this was usual and constitutional, but it was not unusual, even if unconstitutional, that this period should be prolonged. in the case of verres it was prolonged, so that he should hold the office for three years. he had gone through the other offices of the state, having been quæstor in asia and Ædile afterward in rome, to the great misfortune of all who were subjected to his handling, as we shall learn by-and-by. the facts are mentioned here to show that the great offices of the republic were open to such a man as verres. they were in fact more open to such a candidate than they would be to one less iniquitous--to an honest man or a scrupulous one, or to one partially honest, or not altogether unscrupulous. if you send a dog into a wood to get truffles, you will endeavor to find one that will tear up as many truffles as possible. a proconsular robber did not rob only for himself; he robbed more or less for all rome. verres boasted that with his three years of rule he could bring enough home to bribe all the judges, secure all the best advocates, and live in splendid opulence for the rest of his life. what a dog he was to send into a wood for truffles! to such a condition as this had rome fallen when the deputies from sicily came to complain of their late governor, and to obtain the services of cicero in seeking for whatever reparation might be possible. verres had carried on his plunder during the years , , b.c. during this time cicero had been engaged sedulously as an advocate in rome. we know the names of some of the cases in which he was engaged--those, for instance, for publius oppius, who, having been quæstor in bithynia, was accused by his proconsul of having endeavored to rob the soldiers of their dues. we are told that the poor province suffered greatly under these two officers, who were always quarrelling as to a division of their plunder. in this case the senior officer accused the younger, and the younger, by cicero's aid, was acquitted. quintilian more than once refers to the speech made for oppius. cicero also defended varenus, who was charged with having murdered his brother, and one caius mustius, of whom we only know that he was a farmer of taxes. he was advocate also for sthenius, a sicilian, who was accused before the tribunes by verres. we shall hear of sthenius again among the victims in sicily. the special charge in this case was that, having been condemned by verres as prætor in sicily, he had run away to rome, which was illegal. he was, however, acquitted. of these speeches we have only some short fragments, which have been quoted by authors whose works have come down to us, such as quintilian; by which we know, at any rate, that cicero's writings had been so far carefully preserved, and that they were commonly read in those days. i will translate here the concluding words of a short paper written by m. du rozoir in reference to cicero's life at this period: "the assiduity of our orator at the bar had obtained for him a high degree of favor among the people, because they had seen how strictly he had observed that cincian law which forbade advocates to take either money or presents for then pleadings--which law, however, the advocates of the day generally did not scruple to neglect."[ ] it is a good thing to be honest when honesty is in vogue; but to be honest when honesty is out of fashion is magnificent. in the affair with verres, there are two matters to interest the reader--indeed, to instruct the reader--if the story were sufficiently well told. the iniquity of verres is the first--which is of so extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his avarice and lust. as the victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can allow ourselves to be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's resources and the singular iniquity of his schemes. then we are brought face to face with the barefaced corruption of the roman judges--a corruption which, however, became a regular trade, if not ennobled, made, at any rate, aristocratic by the birth, wealth high names, and senatorial rank of the robbers. sulla, for certain state purposes--which consisted in the maintenance of the oligarchy--had transferred the privileges of sitting on the judgment-seat from the equites, or knights, to the senators. from among the latter a considerable number--thirty, perhaps, or forty, or even fifty--were appointed to sit with the prætor to hear criminal cases of importance, and by their votes, which were recorded on tablets, the accused person was acquitted or condemned. to be acquitted by the most profuse corruption entailed no disgrace on him who was tried, and often but little on the judges who tried him. in cicero's time the practice, with all its chances, had come to be well understood. the provincial governors, with their quæstors and lieutenants, were chosen from the high aristocracy, which also supplied the judges. the judges themselves had been employed, or hoped to be employed, in similar lucrative service. the leading advocates belonged to the same class. if the proconsular thief, when he had made his bag, would divide the spoil with some semblance of equity among his brethren, nothing could be more convenient. the provinces were so large, and the greek spirit of commercial enterprise which prevailed in them so lively, that there was room for plunder ample, at any rate, for a generation or two. the republic boasted that, in its love of pure justice, it had provided by certain laws for the protection of its allied subjects against any possible faults of administration on the part of its own officers. if any injury were done to a province, or a city, or even to an individual, the province, or city, or individual could bring its grievance to the ivory chair of the prætor in rome and demand redress; and there had been cases not a few in which a delinquent officer had been condemned to banishment. much, indeed, was necessary before the scheme as it was found to exist by verres could work itself into perfection. verres felt that in his time everything had been done for security as well as splendor. he would have all the great officers of state on his side. the sicilians, if he could manage the case as he thought it might be managed, would not have a leg to stand upon. there was many a trick within his power before they could succeed in making good even their standing before the prætor. it was in this condition of things that cicero bethought himself that he might at one blow break through the corruption of the judgment-seat, and this he determined to do by subjecting the judges to the light of public opinion. if verres could be tried under a bushel, as it were, in the dark, as many others had been tried, so that little or nothing should be said about the trial in the city at large, then there would be no danger for the judges. it could only be by shaming them, by making them understand that rome would become too hot to hold them, that they could be brought to give a verdict against the accused. this it was that cicero determined to effect, and did effect. and we see throughout the whole pleadings that he was concerned in the matter not only for the sicilians, or against verres. could something be done for the sake of rome, for the sake of the republic, to redeem the courts of justice from the obloquy which was attached to them? might it be possible for a man so to address himself not only to the judgment-seat, but to all rome, as to do away with this iniquity once and forever? could he so fill the minds of the citizens generally with horror at such proceedings as to make them earnest in demanding reform? hortensius, the great advocate of the day, was not only engaged on behalf of verres, but he was already chosen as consul for the next year. metellus, who was elected prætor for the next year, was hot in defence of verres. indeed, there were three metelluses among the friends of the accused, who had also on his side the scipio of the day. the aristocracy of rome was altogether on the side of verres, as was natural. but if cicero might succeed at all in this which he meditated, the very greatness of his opponents would help him. when it was known that he was to be pitted against hortensius as an advocate, and that he intended to defy hortensius as the coming consul, then surely rome would be awake to the occasion; and if rome could be made to awake herself, then would this beautiful scheme of wealth from provincial plunder be brought to an end. i will first speak of the work of the judges, and of the attempts made to hinder cicero in the business he had undertaken. then i will endeavor to tell something of the story of verres and his doings. the subject divides itself naturally in this way. there are extant seven so-called orations about verres, of which the two first apply to the manner in which the case should be brought before the courts. these two were really spoken, and were so effective that verres--or probably hortensius, on his behalf--was frightened into silence. verres pleaded guilty, as we should say, which, in accordance with the usages of the court, he was enabled to do by retiring and going into voluntary banishment. this he did, sooner than stand his ground and listen to the narration of his iniquities as it would be given by cicero in the full speech--the "perpetua oratio"--which would follow the examination of the witnesses. what the orator said before the examination of the witnesses was very short. he had to husband his time, as it was a part of the grand scheme of hortensius to get adjournment after adjournment because of certain sacred rites and games, during the celebration of which the courts could not sit. all this was arranged for in the scheme; but cicero, in order that he might baffle the schemers, got through his preliminary work as quickly as possible, saying all that he had to say about the manner of the trial, about the judges, about the scheme, but dilating very little on the iniquities of the criminal. but having thus succeeded, having gained his cause in a great measure by the unexpected quickness of his operations, then he told his story. then was made that "perpetua oratio" by which we have learned the extent to which a roman governor could go on desolating a people who were intrusted to his protection. this full narration is divided into five parts, each devoted to a separate class of iniquity. these were never spoken, though they appear in the form of speeches. they would have been spoken, if required, in answer to the defence made by hortensius on behalf of verres after the hearing of the evidence. but the defence broke down altogether, in the fashion thus described by cicero himself. "in that one hour in which i spoke"--this was the speech which we designate as the actio prima contra verrem, the first pleading made against verres, to which we shall come just now--"i took away all hope of bribing the judges from the accused--from this brazen-faced, rich, dissolute, and abandoned man. on the first day of the trial, on the mere calling of the names of the witnesses, the people of rome were able to perceive that if this criminal were absolved, then there could be no chance for the republic. on the second day his friends and advocates had not only lost all hope of gaining their cause, but all relish for going on with it. the third day so paralyzed the man himself that he had to bethink himself not what sort of reply he could make, but how he could escape the necessity of replying by pretending to be ill."[ ] it was in this way that the trial was brought to an end. but we must go back to the beginning. when an accusation was to be made against some great roman of the day on account of illegal public misdoings, as was to be made now against verres, the conduct of the case, which would require probably great labor and expense, and would give scope for the display of oratorical excellence, was regarded as a task in which a young aspirant to public favor might obtain honor and by which he might make himself known to the people. it had, therefore, come to pass that there might be two or more accusers anxious to undertake the work, and to show themselves off as solicitous on behalf of injured innocence, or desirous of laboring in the service of the republic. when this was the case, a court of judges was called upon to decide whether this man or that other was most fit to perform the work in hand. such a trial was called "divinatio," because the judges had to get their lights in the matter as best they could without the assistance of witnesses--by some process of divination--with the aid of the gods, as it might be. cicero's first speech in the matter of verres is called in quintum cæcilium divinatio, because one cæcilius came forward to take the case away from him. here was a part of the scheme laid by hortensius. to deal with cicero in such a matter would no doubt be awkward. his purpose, his diligence, his skill, his eloquence, his honesty were known. there must be a trial. so much was acknowledged; but if the conduct of it could be relegated to a man who was dishonest, or who had no skill, no fitness, no special desire for success, then the little scheme could be carried through in that way. so cæcilius was put forward as cicero's competitor, and our first speech is that made by cicero to prove his own superiority to that of his rival. whether cæcilius was or was not hired to break down in his assumed duty as accuser, we do not know. the biographers have agreed to say that such was the case,[ ] grounding their assertion, no doubt, on extreme probability. but i doubt whether there is any evidence as to this. cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct manner which he would have used had he been able to prove it. the sicilians, at any rate, said that it was so. as to the incompetency of the man, there was probably no doubt, and it might be quite as serviceable to have an incompetent as a dishonest accuser. cæcilius himself had declared that no one could be so fit as himself for the work. he knew sicily well, having been born there. he had been quæstor there with verres, and had been able to watch the governor's doings. no doubt there was--or had been in more pious days--a feeling that a quæstor should never turn against the proconsul under whom he had served, and to whom he had held the position almost of a son.[ ] but there was less of that feeling now than heretofore. verres had quarrelled with his quæstor. oppius was called on to defend himself against the proconsul with whom he had served. no one could know the doings of the governor of a province as well as his own quæstor; and, therefore, so said cæcilius, he would be the preferable accuser. as to his hatred of the man, there could be no doubt as to that. everybody knew that they had quarrelled. the purpose, no doubt, was to give some colorable excuse to the judges for rescuing verres, the great paymaster, from the fangs of cicero. cicero's speech on the occasion--which, as speeches went in those days, was very short--is a model of sagacity and courage. he had to plead his own fitness, the unfitness of his adversary, and the wishes in the matter of the sicilians. this had to be done with no halting phrases. it was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men that, with the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better advocate of the two. we may imagine that there was not a judge there, not a roman present, who was not well aware of that before the orator began. it was needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them should be declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to betray the sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man. when cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own party, not a consul, a prætor, an Ædile, or a quæstor, not a judge, not a senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that verres with his plunder should escape. their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it. but if he could speak winged words--words that should fly all over rome, that might fly also among subject nations--then would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the scheme. "when," he says, "i had served as quæstor in sicily, and had left the province after such a fashion that all the sicilians had a grateful memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom they relied much, they felt that i might be a bulwark to them in their need. these sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in public bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence. 'the time has come,' they say, 'not that i should look after the interest of this or that man, but that i should protect the very life and well-being of the whole province.' i am inclined by my sense of duty, by the faith which i owe them, by my pity for them, by the example of all good romans before me, by the custom of the republic, by the old constitution, to undertake this task, not as pertaining to my own interests, but to those of my close friends."[ ] that was his own reason for undertaking the case. then he reminds the judges of what the roman people wished--the people who had felt with dismay the injury inflicted upon them by sulla's withdrawal of all power from the tribunes, and by the putting the whole authority of the bench into the hands of the senators. "the roman people, much as they have been made to suffer, regret nothing of that they have lost so much as the strength and majesty of the old judges. it is with the desire of having them back that they demand for the tribunes their former power. it is this misconduct of the present judges that has caused them to ask for another class of men for the judgment-seat. by the fault and to the shame of the judges of to-day, the censor's authority, which has hitherto always been regarded as odious and stern, even that is now requested by the people."[ ] then he goes on to show that, if justice is intended, this case will be put into the hands of him whom the sicilians have themselves chosen. had the sicilians said that they were unwilling to trust their affairs to cæcilius because they had not known him, but were willing to trust him, cicero, whom they did know, would not even that have been reasonable enough of itself? but the sicilians had known both of them, had known cæcilius almost as well as cicero, and had expressed themselves clearly. much as they desired to have cicero, they were as anxious not to have cæcilius. even had they held their tongues about this, everybody would have known it; but they had been far from holding their tongues. "yet you offer yourself to these most unwilling clients," he says, turning to cæcilius. "yet you are ready to plead in a cause that does not belong to you! yet you would defend those who would rather have no defender than such a one as you!"[ ] then he attacks hortensius, the advocate for verres. "let him not think that, if i am to be employed here, the judges can be bribed without infinite danger to all concerned. in undertaking this cause of the sicilians, i undertake also the cause of the people of rome at large. it is not only that one wretched sinner should be crushed, which is what the sicilians want, but that this terrible injustice should be stopped altogether, in compliance with the wishes of the people."[ ] when we remember how this was spoken, in the presence of those very judges, in the presence of hortensius himself, in reliance only on the public opinion which he was to create by his own words, we cannot but acknowledge that it is very fine. after that he again turns upon cæcilius. "learn from me," he says, "how many things are expected from him who undertakes the accusation of another. if there be one of those qualities in you, i will give up to you all that you ask."[ ] cæcilius was probably even now in alliance with verres. he himself, when quæstor, had robbed the people in the collection of the corn dues, and was unable therefore to include that matter in his accusation. "you can bring no charge against him on this head, lest it be seen that you were a partner with him in the business."[ ] he ridicules him as to his personal insufficiency. "what, cæcilius! as to those practices of the profession without which an action such as this cannot be carried on, do you think that there is nothing in them? need there be no skill in the business, no habit of speaking, no familiarity with the forum, with the judgment-seats, and the laws?"[ ] "i know well how difficult the ground is. let me advise you to look into yourself, and to see whether you are able to do that kind of thing. have you got voice for it, prudence, memory, wit? are you able to expose the life of verres, as it must be done, to divide it into parts and make everything clear? in doing all this, though nature should have assisted you"--as it has not at all, is of course implied--"if from your earliest childhood you had been imbued with letters; if you had learned greek at athens instead of at lilybæum--latin in rome instead of in sicily--still would it not be a task beyond your strength to undertake such a case, so widely thought of, to complete it by your industry, and then to grasp it in your memory; to make it plain by your eloquence, and to support it with voice and strength sufficient? 'have i these gifts,' you will ask. would that i had! but from my childhood i have done all that i could to attain them."[ ] cicero makes his points so well that i would fain go through the whole speech, were it not that a similar reason might induce me to give abridgments of all his speeches. it may not be that the readers of these orations will always sympathize with the orator in the matter which he has in hand--though his power over words is so great as to carry the reader with him very generally, even at this distance of time--but the neatness with which the weapon is used, the effectiveness of the thrust for the purpose intended, the certainty with which the nail is hit on the head--never with an expenditure of unnecessary force, but always with the exact strength wanted for the purpose--these are the characteristics of cicero's speeches which carry the reader on with a delight which he will want to share with others, as a man when he has heard a good story instantly wishes to tell it again. and with cicero we are charmed by the modernness, by the tone of to-day, which his language takes. the rapid way in which he runs from scorn to pity, from pity to anger, from anger to public zeal, and then instantly to irony and ridicule, implies a lightness of touch which, not unreasonably, surprises us as having endured for so many hundred years. that poetry should remain to us, even lines so vapid as some of those in which ovid sung of love, seems to be more natural, because verses, though they be light, must have been labored. but these words spoken by cicero seem almost to ring in our ears as having come to us direct from a man's lips. we see the anger gathering on the brow of hortensius, followed by a look of acknowledged defeat. we see the startled attention of the judges as they began to feel that in this case they must depart from their intended purpose. we can understand how cæcilius cowered, and found consolation in being relieved from his task. we can fancy how verres suffered--verres whom no shame could have touched--when all his bribes were becoming inefficient under the hands of the orator. cicero was chosen for the task, and then the real work began. the work as he did it was certainly beyond the strength of any ordinary advocate. it was necessary that he should proceed to sicily to obtain the evidence which was to be collected over the whole island. he must rate up, too, all the previous details of the life of this robber. he must be thoroughly prepared to meet the schemers on every point. he asked for a hundred and ten days for the purpose of getting up his case, but he took only fifty. we must imagine that, as he became more thoroughly versed in the intrigues of his adversaries, new lights came upon him. were he to use the whole time allotted to him, or even half the time, and then make such an exposition of the criminal as he would delight to do were he to indulge himself with that "perpetua oratio" of which we hear, then the trial would be protracted till the coming of certain public games, during which the courts would not sit. there seem to have been three sets of games in his way--a special set for this year, to be given by pompey, which were to last fifteen days; then the ludi romani, which were continued for nine days. soon after that would come the games in honor of victory--so soon that an adjournment over them would be obtained as a matter of course. in this way the trial would be thrown over into the next year, when hortensius and one metellus would be consuls, and another metellus would be the prætor, controlling the judgment-seats. glabrio was the prætor for this present year. in glabrio cicero could put some trust. with hortensius and the two metelluses in power, verres would be as good as acquitted. cicero, therefore, had to be on the alert, so that in this unexpected way, by sacrificing his own grand opportunity for a speech, he might conquer the schemers. we hear how he went to sicily in a little boat from an unknown port, so as to escape the dangers contrived for him by the friends of verres.[ ] if it could be arranged that the clever advocate should be kidnapped by a pirate, what a pleasant way would that be of putting an end to these abominable reforms! let them get rid of cicero, if only for a time, and the plunder might still be divided. against all this he had to provide. when in sicily he travelled sometimes on foot, for the sake of caution--never with the retinue to which he was entitled as a roman senator. as a roman senator he might have demanded free entertainment at any town he entered, at great cost to the town. but from all this he abstained, and hurried back to rome with his evidence so quickly that he was able to produce it before the judges, so as to save the adjournments which he feared. verres retired from the trial, pleading guilty, after hearing the evidence. of the witnesses and of the manner in which they told the story, we have no account. the second speech which we have--the divinatio, or speech against cæcilius, having been the first--is called the actio prima contra verrem--"the first process against verres." this is almost entirely confined to an exhortation to the judges. cicero had made up his mind to make no speech about verres till after the trial should be over. there would not be the requisite time. the evidence he must bring forward. and he would so appall these corrupt judges that they should not dare to acquit the accused. this actio prima contains the words in which he did appall the judges. as we read them, we pity the judges. there were fourteen, whose names we know. that there may have been many more is probable. there was the prætor urbanus of the day, glabrio. with him were metellus, one of the prætors for the next year, and cæsonius, who, with cicero himself, was Ædile designate. there were three tribunes of the people and two military tribunes. there was a servilius, a catulus, a marcellus. whom among these he suspected we can hardly say. certainly he suspected metellus. to servilius[ ] he paid an ornate compliment in one of the written orations published after the trial was over, from whence we may suppose that he was well inclined toward him. of glabrio he spoke well. the body, as a body, was of such a nature that he found it necessary to appall them. it is thus that he begins: "not by human wisdom, o ye judges, but by chance, and by the aid, as it were, of the gods themselves, an event has come to pass by which the hatred now felt for your order, and the infamy attached to the judgment seat, may be appeased; for an opinion has gone abroad, disgraceful to the republic, full of danger to yourselves--which is in the mouths of all men not only here in rome but through all nations--that by these courts as they are now constituted, a man, if he be only rich enough, will never be condemned, though he be ever so guilty." what an exordium with which to begin a forensic pleading before a bench of judges composed of prætors, Ædiles, and coming consuls! and this at a time, too, when men's minds were still full of sulla's power; when some were thinking that they too might be sullas; while the idea was still strong that a few nobles ought to rule the roman empire for their own advantage and their own luxury! what words to address to a metellus, a catulus, and a marcellus! i have brought before you such a wretch, he goes on to say, that by a just judgment upon him you can recover your favor with the people of rome, and your credit with other nations. "this is a trial in which you, indeed, will have to judge this man who is accused, but in which also the roman people will have to judge you. by what is done to him will be determined whether a man who is guilty, and at the same time rich, can possibly be condemned in rome.[ ]if the matter goes amiss here, all men will declare, not that better men should be selected out of your order, which would be impossible, but that another order of citizens must be named from which to select the judges."[ ] this short speech was made. the witnesses were examined during nine days; then hortensius, with hardly a struggle at a reply, gave way, and verres stood condemned by his own verdict. when the trial was over, and verres had consented to go into exile, and to pay whatever fine was demanded, the "perpetua oratio" which cicero thought good to make on the matter was published to the world. it is written as though it was to have been spoken, with counterfeit tricks of oratory--with some tricks so well done in the first part of it as to have made one think that, when these special words were prepared, he must have intended to speak them. it has been agreed, however, that such was not the case. it consists of a narration of the villainies of verres, and is divided into what have been called five different speeches, to which the following appellations are given: de prætura urbana, in which we are told what verres did when he was city prætor, and very many things also which he did before he came to that office, de jurisdictione siciliensi, in which is described his conduct as a roman magistrate on the island; de re frumentaria, setting forth the abomination of his exactions in regard to the corn tax; de signis, detailing the robberies he perpetuated in regard to statues and other ornaments; and de suppliciis, giving an account of the murders he committed and the tortures he inflicted. a question is sometimes mooted in conversation whether or no the general happiness of the world has been improved by increasing civilization when the reader finds from these stories, as told by a leading roman of the day, how men were treated under the roman oligarchy--not only greek allies but romans also--i think he will be inclined to answer the question in favour of civilization. i can only give a few of the many little histories which have been preserved for us in this actio secunda; but perhaps these few may suffice to show how a great roman officer could demean himself in his government. of the doings of verres before he went to sicily i will select two. it became his duty on one occasion--a job which he seems to have sought for purpose of rapine--to go to lampsacus, a town in asia, as lieutenant, or legate, for dolabella, who then had command in asia. lampsacus was on the hellespont, an allied town of specially good repute. here he is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a roman officer, at the house of a citizen named janitor. but he heard that another citizen, one philodamus, had a beautiful daughter--an article with which we must suppose that janitor was not equally well supplied. verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his creature rubrius shall be quartered at the house of philodamus. philodamus, who from his rank was entitled to be burdened only with the presence of leading romans, grumbles at this; but, having grumbled, consents, and having consented, does the best to make his house comfortable. he gives a great supper, at which the romans eat and drink, and purposely create a tumult. verres, we understand, was not there. the intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. in the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the romans get the worst of it. at last one of verres's lictors--absolutely a roman lictor--is killed, and the woman is not carried off. the man at least bore the outward signs of a lictor, but, according to cicero, was in the pay of verres as his pimp. so far verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the father who could protect his own house even against romans, begins to feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. so far the lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon avenges his failure. he induces dolabella, his chief, to have philodamus and his son carried off to laodicea, and there tried before nero, the then proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. they are tried at laodicea before nero, verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are condemned. then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as cicero says, very sad for all asia to behold. all this had been done some years ago; and, nevertheless, verres had been chosen prætor, and sent to sicily to govern the sicilians. when verres was prætor at rome--the year before he was sent to sicily--it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he found it, to see that a certain temple of castor in the city was given up in proper condition by the executors of a defunct citizen who had taken a contract for keeping it in repair. this man, whose name had been junius, left a son, who was a junius also under age, with a large fortune in charge of various trustees, tutors, as they were called, whose duty it was to protect the heir's interests. verres, knowing of old that no property was so easily preyed on as that of a minor, sees at once that something may be done with the temple of castor. the heir took oath, and to the extent of his property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair. but verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more than usually good order. there is not a scratch on the roof of which he can make use. nothing has been allowed to go astray. then "one of his dogs"--for he had boasted to his friend ligur that he always went about with dogs to search out his game for him--suggested that some of the columns were out of the perpendicular. verres does not know what this means; but the dog explains. all columns are, in fact, by strict measurement, more or less out of the perpendicular, as we are told that all eyes squint a little, though we do not see that they squint. but as columns ought to be perpendicular, here was a matter on which he might go to work. he does go to work. the trustees knowing their man--knowing also that in the present condition of rome it was impossible to escape from an unjust prætor without paying largely--went to his mistress and endeavored to settle the matter with her. here we have an amusing picture of the way in which the affairs of the city were carried on in that lady's establishment; how she had her levee, took her bribes, and drove a lucrative trade. doing, however, no good with her, the trustees settled with an agent to pay verres two hundred thousand sesterces to drop the affair. this was something under £ . but verres repudiated the arrangement with scorn. he could do much better than that with such a temple and such a minor. he puts the repairs up to auction; and refusing a bid from the trustees themselves--the very persons who are the most interested in getting the work done, if there were work to do--has it knocked down to himself for five hundred and sixty thousand sesterces, or about £ .[ ] then we are told how he had the pretended work done by the putting up of a rough crane. no real work is done, no new stones are brought, no money is spent. that is the way in which verres filled his office as prætor urbanus; but it does not seem that any public notice is taken of his iniquities as long as he confined himself to little jobs such as this. then we come to the affairs of sicily--and the long list of robberies is commenced by which that province was made desolate. it seems that nothing gave so grand a scope to the greed of a public functionary who was at the same time governor and judge as disputed wills. it was not necessary that any of the persons concerned should dispute the will among them. given the facts that a man had died and left property behind him, then verres would find means to drag the heir into court, and either frighten him into payment of a bribe or else rob him of his inheritance. before he left rome for the province he heard that a large fortune had been left to one dio on condition that he should put up certain statues in the market-place.[ ] it was not uncommon for a man to desire the reputation of adorning his own city, but to choose that the expense should be borne by his heir rather than by himself. failing to put up the statues, the heir was required to pay a fine to venus erycina--to enrich, that is, the worship of that goddess, who had a favorite temple under mount eryx. the statues had been duly erected. but, nevertheless, here there was an opening. so verres goes to work, and in the name of venus brings an action against dio. the verdict is given, not in favor of venus but in favor of verres. this manner of paying honor to the gods, and especially to venus, was common in sicily. two sons[ ] received a fortune from their father, with a condition that, if some special thing were not done, a fine should be paid to venus. the man had been dead twenty years ago. but "the dogs" which the prætor kept were very sharp, and, distant as was the time, found out the clause. action is taken against the two sons, who indeed gain their case; but they gain it by a bribe so enormous that they are ruined men. there was one heraclius,[ ] the son of hiero, a nobleman of syracuse, who received a legacy amounting to , , sesterces--we will say £ , --from a relative, also a heraclius. he had, too, a house full of handsome silver plate, silk and hangings, and valuable slaves. a man, "dives equom, dives pictai vestis et auri." verres heard, of course. he had by this time taken some sicilian dogs into his service, men of syracuse, and had learned from them that there was a clause in the will of the elder heraclius that certain statues should be put up in the gymnasium of the city. they undertake to bring forward servants of the gymnasium who should say that the statues were never properly erected. cicero tells us how verres went to work, now in this court, now in that, breaking all the laws as to sicilian jurisdiction, but still proceeding under the pretence of law, till he got everything out of the wretch--not only all the legacies from heraclius, but every shilling, and every article left to the man by his father. there is a pretence of giving some of the money to the town of syracuse; but for himself he takes all the valuables, the corinthian vases, the purple hangings, what slaves he chooses. then everything else is sold by auction. how he divided the spoil with the syracusans, and then quarrelled with them, and how he lied as to the share taken by himself, will all be found in cicero's narrative. heraclius was of course ruined. for the stories of epicrates and sopater i must refer the reader to the oration. in that of sopater there is the peculiarity that verres managed to get paid by everybody all round. the story of sthenius is so interesting that i cannot pass it by. sthenius was a man of wealth and high standing, living at therma in sicily, with whom verres often took up his abode; for, as governor, he travelled much about the island, always in pursuit of plunder. sthenius had had his house full of beautiful things. of all these verres possessed himself--some by begging, some by demanding, and some by absolute robbery. sthenius, grieved as he was to find himself pillaged, bore all this. the man was roman prætor, and injuries such as these had to be endured. at therma, however, in the public place of the city, there were some beautiful statues. for these verres longed, and desired his host to get them for him. sthenius declared that this was impossible. the statues had, under peculiar circumstances, been recovered by scipio africanus from carthage, and been restored by the roman general to the sicilians, from whom they had been taken, and had been erected at therma. there was a peculiarly beautiful figure of stesichorus, the poet, as an old man bent double, with a book in his hand--a very glorious work of art; and there was a goat--in bronze probably--as to which cicero is at the pains of telling us that even he, unskilled as he was in such matters, could see its charms. no one had sharper eyes for such pretty ornaments than cicero, or a more decided taste for them. but as hortensius, his rival and opponent in this case, had taken a marble sphinx from verres, he thought it expedient to show how superior he was to such matters. there was probably something of joke in this, as his predilections would no doubt be known to those he was addressing.[ ] in the matter sthenius was incorruptible, and not even the prætor could carry them away without his aid. cicero, who is very warm in praise of sthenius, declares that "here at last verres had found one town, the only one in the world, from which he was unable to carry away something of the public property by force, or stealth, or open command, or favor."[ ] the governor was so disgusted with this that he abandoned sthenius, leaving the house which he had plundered of everything, and betook himself to that of one agathinus, who had a beautiful daughter, callidama, who, with her husband, dorotheus, lived with her father they were enemies of sthenius, and we are given to understand that verres ingratiated himself with them partly for the sake of callidama, who seems very quickly to have been given up to him,[ ] and partly that he might instigate them to bring actions against sthenius. this is done with great success; so that sthenius is forced to run away, and betake himself, winter as it was, across the seas to rome. it has already been told that when he was at rome an action was brought against him by verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which cicero defended him, and in which he was acquitted. in the teeth of his acquittal, verres persecuted the man by every form of law which came to his hands as prætor, but always in opposition to the law. there is an audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open contempt of the laws which it was his special duty to carry out, making us feel how confident he was that he could carry everything before him in rome by means of his money. by robbery and concealing his robberies, by selling his judgments in such a way that he should maintain some reticence by ordinary precaution, he might have made much money, as other governors had done. but he resolved that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly, and then, when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale. as to shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among romans. before he comes to the story of sthenius, cicero makes a grandly ironical appeal to the bench before him: "yes, o judges, keep this man; keep him in the state! spare him, preserve him so that he, too, may sit with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with impartiality, advise us, as a senator, what may be best for us as to peace and war! not that we need trouble ourselves as to his senatorial duties. his authority would be nothing. when would he dare, or when would he care, to come among us? unless it might be in the idle month of february, when would a man so idle, so debauched, show himself in the senate-house? let him come and show himself. let him advise us to attack the cretans; to pronounce the greeks of byzantium free; to declare ptolemy king.[ ] let him speak and vote as hortensius may direct. this will have but little effect upon our lives or our property. but beyond this there is something we must look to; something that would be distrusted; something that every good man has to fear! if by chance this man should escape out of our hands, he would have to sit there upon that bench and be a judge. he would be called upon to pronounce on the lives of a roman citizen. he would be the right-hand officer in the army of this man here,[ ] of this man who is striving to be the lord and ruler of our judgment-seats. the people of rome at least refuse this! this at least cannot be endured!" the third of these narratives tells us how verres managed in his province that provision of corn for the use of rome, the collection of which made the possession of sicily so important to the romans. he begins with telling his readers--as he does too frequently--how great and peculiar is the task he has undertaken; and he uses an argument of which we cannot but admit the truth, though we doubt whether any modern advocate would dare to put it forward. we must remember, however, that romans were not accustomed to be shamefaced in praising themselves. what cicero says of himself all others said also of themselves; only cicero could say it better than others. he reminds us that he who accuses another of any crime is bound to be especially free from that crime himself. "would you charge any one as a thief? you must be clear from any suspicion of even desiring another man's property. have you brought a man up for malice or cruelty? take care that you be not found hard-hearted. have you called a man a seducer or an adulterer? be sure that your own life shows no trace of such vices. whatever you would punish in another, that you must avoid yourself. a public accuser would be intolerable, or even a caviller, who should inveigh against sins for which he himself is called in question. but in this man i find all wickednesses combined. there is no lust, no iniquity, no shamelessness of which his life does not supply with ample evidence." the nature of the difficulty to which cicero is thus subjected is visible enough. as verres is all that is bad, so must he, as accuser, be all that is good; which is more, we should say, than any man would choose to declare of himself! but he is equal to the occasion. "in regard to this man, o judges, i lay down for myself the law as i have stated it. i must so live that i must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the very opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as to that arrogance and impudence which you see in him." then he shows how opposite he is to verres at any rate, in impudence! "i am not sorry to see," he goes on to say, "that that life which has always been the life of my own choosing, has now been made a necessity to me by the law which i have laid down for myself."[ ] mr. pecksniff spoke of himself in the same way, but no one, i think, believed him. cicero probably was believed. but the most wonderful thing is, that his manner of life justified what he said of himself. when others of his own order were abandoned to lust, iniquity, and shamelessness, he lived in purity, with clean hands, doing good as far as was in his power to those around him. a laugh will be raised at his expense in regard to that assertion of his that, even in the matter of arrogance, his conduct should be the opposite of that of verres. but this will come because i have failed to interpret accurately the meaning of those words, "oris oculorumque illa contumacia ac superbia quam videtis." verres, as we can understand, had carried himself during the trial with a bragging, brazen, bold face, determined to show no shame as to his own doings. it is in this, which was a matter of manner and taste, that cicero declares that he will be the man's opposite as well as in conduct. as to the ordinary boastings, by which it has to be acknowledged that cicero sometimes disgusts his readers, it will be impossible for us to receive a just idea of his character without remembering that it was the custom of a roman to boast. we wait to have good things said of us, or are supposed to wait. the roman said them of himself. the "veni, vidi, vici" was the ordinary mode of expression in those times, and in earlier times among the greeks.[ ] this is distasteful to us; and it will probably be distasteful to those who come after us, two or three hundred years hence, that this or that british statesman should have made himself an earl or a knight of the garter. now it is thought by many to be proper enough. it will shock men in future days that great peers or rich commoners should have bargained for ribbons and lieutenancies and titles. now it is the way of the time. though virtue and vice may be said to remain the same from all time to all time, the latitudes allowed and the deviations encouraged in this or the other age must be considered before the character of a man can be discovered. the boastings of cicero have been preserved for us. we have to bethink ourselves that his words are years old. there is such a touch of humanity in them, such a feeling of latter-day civilization and almost of christianity, that we are apt to condemn what remains in them of paganism, as though they were uttered yesterday. when we come to the coarseness of his attacks, his descriptions of piso by-and-by, his abuse of gabinius, and his invectives against antony; when we read his altered opinions, as shown in the period of cæsar's dominion, his flattery of cæsar when in power, and his exultations when cæsar has been killed; when we find that he could be coarse in his language and a bully, and servile--for it has all to be admitted--we have to reflect under what circumstances, under what surroundings, and for what object were used the words which displease us. speaking before the full court at this trial, he dared to say he knew how to live as a man and to carry himself as a gentleman. as men and gentlemen were then, he was justified. the description of verres's rapacity in regard to the corn tax is long and complex, and need hardly be followed at length, unless by those who desire to know how the iniquity of such a one could make the most of an imposition which was in itself very bad, and pile up the burden till the poor province was unable to bear it. there were three kinds of imposition as to corn. the first, called the "decumanum," was simply a tithe. the producers through the island had to furnish rome with a tenth of their produce, and it was the prætor's duty, or rather that of the quæstor under the prætor, to see that the tithe was collected. how verres saw to this himself, and how he treated the sicilian husbandmen in regard to the tithe, is so told that we are obliged to give the man credit for an infinite fertility of resources. then there is the "emptum," or corn bought for the use of rome, of which there were two kinds. a second tithe had to be furnished at a price fixed by the roman senate, which price was considered to be below that of its real value, and then , bushels were purchased, or nominally purchased, at a price which was also fixed by the senate, but which was nearer to the real value. three sesterces a bushel for the first and four for the last, were the prices fixed at this time. for making these payments vast sums of money were remitted to verres, of which the accounts were so kept that it was hard to say whether any found its way into the hands of the farmers who undoubtedly furnished the corn. the third corn tax was the "æstimatum." this consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to be supplied to the prætor for the use of his governmental establishment--to be supplied either in grain or in money. what such a one as verres would do with his, the reader may conceive. all this was of vital importance to rome. sicily and africa were the granaries from which rome was supplied with its bread. to get supplies from a province was necessary. rich men have servants in order that they may live at ease themselves. so it was with the romans to whom the provinces acted as servants. it was necessary to have a sharp agent, some proconsul or proprætor; but when there came one so sharp as verres, all power of recreating supplies would for a time be destroyed. even cicero boasted that in a time of great scarcity, he, being then quæstor in sicily, had sent extraordinary store of corn over to the city.[ ] but he had so done it as to satisfy all who were concerned. verres, in his corn dealings with the sicilians, had a certain friend, companion, and minister--one of his favorite dogs, perhaps we may call him--named apronius, whom cicero specially describes. the description i must give, because it is so powerful; because it shows us how one man could in those days speak of another in open court before all the world; because it affords us an instance of the intensity of hatred which the orator could throw into his words; but i must hide it in the original language, as i could not translate it without offence.[ ] then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the verrine orations the most amusing. the greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call art. we are much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, partly from love of such things, partly from pride in ornamenting our houses so as to excite the admiration of others, partly from a feeling that money so invested is not badly placed with a view to future returns. all these feelings operated with the greeks to a much greater extent. investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them. money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of losing it. the greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and prudent. from this it had come to pass that, as they made their way about the world--to the cities which they established round the mediterranean--they collected in their new homes great store of ornamental wealth. this was done with much profusion at syracuse, a greek city in sicily, and spread from them over the whole island. the temples of the gods were filled with the works of the great greek artists, and every man of note had his gallery. that verres, hog as he is described to have been, had a passion for these things, is manifest to us. he came to his death at last in defence of some favorite images. he had returned to rome by means of cæsar's amnesty, and marc antony had him murdered because he would not surrender some treasures of art. when we read the de signis--about statues--we are led to imagine that the search after these things was the chief object of the man throughout his three years of office--as we have before been made to suppose that all his mind and time had been devoted to the cheating of the sicilians in the matter of corn. but though verres loved these trinkets, it was not altogether for himself that he sought them. only one third of his plunder was for himself. senators, judges, advocates, consuls, and prætors could be bribed with articles of _vertu_ as well as with money. there are eleven separate stories told of these robberies. i will give very shortly the details of one or two. there was one marcus heius, a rich citizen of messana, in whose house verres took great delight. messana itself was very useful to him, and the mamertines, as the people of messana were called were his best friends in all sicily: for he made messana the depot of his plunder, and there he caused to be built at the expense of the government an enormous ship called the _cybea_,[ ] in which his treasures were carried out of the island. he therefore specially favored messana, and the district of messana was supposed to have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in sicily. but this man heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were preserved four specially beautiful images. there was a cupid by praxiteles, and a bronze hercules by myro, and two can[oe]phræ by polycletus. these were treasures which all the world came to see, and which were open to be seen by all the world. these verres took away, and caused accounts to be forged in which it was made to appear that he had bought them for trifling sums. it seems that some forced assent had been obtained from heius as to the transaction. now there was a plan in vogue for making things pleasant for a proconsul retiring from his government, in accordance with which a deputation would proceed from the province to rome to declare how well and kindly the proconsul had behaved in his government. the allies, even when they had been, as it were, skinned alive by their governor, were constrained to send their deputations. deputations were got up in sicily from messana and syracuse, and with the others from messana came this man heius. heius did not wish to tell about his statues; but he was asked questions, and was forced to answer. cicero informs us how it all took place. "he was a man," he said--this is what cicero tells us that heius said--"who was well esteemed in his own country, and would wish you"--you judges--"to think well of his religious spirit and of his personal dignity. he had come here to praise verres because he had been required to do so by his fellow-citizens. he, however, had never kept things for sale in his own house; and had he been left to himself, nothing would have induced him to part with the sacred images which had been left to him by his ancestors as the ornaments of his own chapel.[ ] nevertheless, he had come to praise verres, and would have held his tongue had it been possible." cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies committed by verres in syracuse, especially from the temples of the gods; and he begins his account of the syracusan iniquities by drawing a parallel between two romans whose names were well known in that city: marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and verres, who had been sent to govern it in peace. marcellus had saved the lives of the syracusans; verres had made the forum to run with their blood. the harbor which had held its own against marcellus, as we may read in our livy, had been wilfully opened by verres to cilician pirates. this syracuse which had been so carefully preserved by its roman conqueror, the most beautiful of all the greek cities on the face of the earth--so beautiful that marcellus had spared to it all its public ornaments--had been stripped bare by verres. there was the temple of minerva from which he had taken all the pictures. there were doors to this temple of such beauty that books had been written about them. he stripped the ivory ornaments from them, and the golden balls with which they had been made splendid. he tore off from them the head of the gorgon and carried it away, leaving them to be rude doors, goth that he was! and he took the sappho from the prytaneum, the work of silanion! a thing of such beauty that no other man can have the like of it in his own private house; yet verres has it--a man hardly fit to carry such a work of art as a burden, not possess it as a treasure of his own. "what, too!" he says, "have you not stolen pæan from the temple of Æsculapius--a statue so remarkable for its beauty, so well-known for the worship attached to it, that all the world has been wont to visit it? what! has not the image of aristæus been taken by you from the temple of bacchus? have you not even stolen the statue of jupiter imperator, so sacred in the eyes of all men--that jupiter which the greeks call ourios? you have not hesitated to rob the temple of proserpine of the lovely head in parian marble."[ ] then cicero speaks of the worship due to all these gods as though he himself believed in their godhead. as he had begun this chapter with the mamertines of messana, so he ends it with an address to them. "it is well that you should come, you alone out of all the provinces, and praise verres here in rome. but what can you say for him? was it not your duty to have built a ship for the republic? you have built none such, but have constructed a huge private transport-vessel for verres. have you not been exempted from your tax on corn? have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military recruits? have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods? they will have to confess, these mamertines, that many a ship laden with his spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship which they built for him!" in the de suppliciis--the treatise about punishments, as the last division of this process is called--cicero tells the world how verres exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies. the stories, indeed, are very dreadful. it is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose. but that which strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a roman citizen, and the audacity with which the roman proconsul disregarded that sanctity. "cives romanus" is cicero's cry from the beginning to the end. no doubt he is addressing himself to romans, and seeking popularity, as he always did. but, nevertheless, the demands made upon the outside world at large by the glory of that appellation are astonishing, even when put forward on such an occasion as this. one gavius escapes from a prison in syracuse, and, making his way to messana, foolishly boasts that he would be soon over in italy, out of the way of prætor verres and his cruelties. verres, unfortunately, is in messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the mamertines, what gavius was saying. he at once orders gavius to be flogged in public. "cives romanus sum!" exclaims gavius, no doubt truly. it suits verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate slave. the poor wretch still cries "cives romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal. whereupon verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has the man crucified in sight of italy, so that he shall be able to see the country of which he is so proud. whether he had done anything to deserve crucifixion, or flogging, or punishment at all, we are not told. the accusation against verres is not for crucifying the man, but for crucifying the roman. it is on this occasion that cicero uses the words which have become proverbial as to the iniquity of this proceeding.[ ] during the telling of this story he explains this doctrine, claiming for the roman citizen, all the world over, some such protection as freemasons are supposed to give each other, whether known or unknown. "men of straw," he says, "of no special birth, go about the world. they resort to places they have never seen before, where they know none, and none know them. here, trusting to their claim solely, they feel themselves to be safe--not only where our magistrates are to be found, who are bound both by law and by opinion, not only among other roman citizens who speak their language and follow the same customs, but abroad, over the whole world, they find this to be sufficient protection."[ ] then he goes on to say that if any prætor may at his will put aside this sanctity, all the provinces, all the kingdoms, all the free states, all the world abroad, will very soon lose the feeling. but the most remarkable story is that told of a certain pirate captain. verres had been remiss in regard to the pirates--very cowardly, indeed, if we are to believe cicero. piracy in the mediterranean was at that time a terrible drawback to trade--that piracy that a year or two afterward pompey was effectual in destroying. a governor in sicily had, among other special duties, to keep a sharp lookout for the pirates. this verres omitted so entirely that these scourges of the sea soon learned that they might do almost as they pleased on the sicilian coasts. but it came to pass that on one day a pirate vessel fell by accident into the hands of the governor's officers. it was not taken, cicero says, but was so overladen that it was picked up almost sinking.[ ] it was found to be full of fine, handsome men, of silver both plated and coined, and precious stuffs. though not "taken," it was "found," and carried into syracuse. syracuse is full of the news, and the first demand is that the pirates, according to roman custom, shall all be killed. but this does not suit verres. the slave-markets of the roman empire are open, and there are men among the pirates whom it will suit him better to sell than to kill. there are six musicians, "symphoniacos homines," whom he sends as a present to a friend at rome. but the people of syracuse are very much in earnest. they are too sharp to be put off with pretences, and they count the number of slaughtered pirates. there are only some useless, weak, ugly old fellows beheaded from day to day; and being well aware how many men it must have taken to row and manage such a vessel, they demand that the full crew shall be brought to the block. "there is nothing in victory more sweet," says cicero, "no evidence more sure, than to see those whom you did fear, but have now got the better of, brought out to tortures or death."[ ] verres is so much frightened by the resolution of the citizens that he does not dare to neglect their wishes. there are lying in the prisons of syracuse a lot of prisoners, roman citizens, of whom he is glad to rid himself. he has them brought out, with their heads wrapped up so that they shall not be known, and has them beheaded instead of the pirates! a great deal is said, too, about the pirate captain--the arch-pirate, as he is called. there seems to have been some money dealings personally between him and verres, on account of which verres kept him hidden. at any rate, the arch-pirate was saved. "in such a manner this celebrated victory is managed.[ ] the pirate ship is taken, and the chief pirate is allowed to escape. the musicians are sent to rome. the men who are good-looking and young are taken to the prætor's house. as many roman citizens as will fill their places are carried out as public enemies, and are tortured and killed! all the gold and silver and precious stuffs are made a prize of by verres!" such are the accusations brought against this wonderful man--the truth of which has, i think, on the whole been admitted. the picture of roman life which it displays is wonderful, that such atrocities should have been possible; and equally so of provincial subjection, that such cruelties should have been endured. but in it all the greatest wonder is that there should have risen up a man so determined to take the part of the weak against the strong with no reward before him, apparently with no other prospect than that of making himself odious to the party to which he belonged. cicero was not a gracchus, anxious to throw himself into the arms of the people; he was an oligarch by conviction, born to oligarchy, bred to it, convinced that by it alone could the roman republic be preserved. but he was convinced also that unless these oligarchs could be made to do their duty the republic could not stand. therefore it was that he dared to defy his own brethren, and to make the acquittal of verres an impossibility. i should be inclined to think that the day on which hortensius threw up the sponge, and verres submitted to banishment and fine, was the happiest in the orator's life. verres was made to pay a fine which was very insufficient for his crimes, and then to retire into comfortable exile. from this he returned to rome when the roman exiles were amnestied, and was shortly afterward murdered by antony, as has been told before. chapter vii. _cicero as Ædile and prÆtor._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the year after the trial of verres was that of cicero's Ædileship. we know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office, but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the people. he did not spend much money for their amusements, although it was the custom of Ædiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the prætorship from the people, he was three times elected as first prætor in all the comitia--three separate elections having been rendered necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. to all the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year--the first year possible in accordance with his age--and was elected first in honor, the first as prætor, and then the first as consul. this, no doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing which his brother quintus is said to have drawn out, and which i have quoted; but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the people. the candidates, for the most part, were the candidates for the aristocracy. they were put forward with the idea that thus might the aristocratic rule of rome be best maintained. their elections were carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent to the proceeding. whether it might be a verres, or an antony, or a hortensius, they took the money that was going. they allowed themselves to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. but every now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to the voting pens--ovilia--with a purpose of their own. when such a candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. such had been marius, and such had been the great pompey, and such was cicero. the two former were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their victories. cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. he could afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his Ædileship, as had been common with Ædiles, because he was able to achieve his popularity in another way. it was the chief duty of the Ædiles to look after the town generally--to see to the temples of the gods, to take care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the streets, and to the supply of water. the markets were under them, and the police, and the recurrent festivals. an active man, with common-sense, such as was cicero, no doubt did his duty as Ædile well. he kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. we have left to us the part of one speech and the whole of another spoken during this period. the former was in favor of fonteius, whom the gauls prosecuted for plundering them as proprætor, and the latter is a civil case on behalf of cæcina, addressed to the "recuperatores," as had been that for marcus tullius. the speech for fonteius is remarkable as being as hard against the provincial gauls as his speech against verres had been favorable to the sicilians. but the gauls were barbarians, whereas the sicilians were greeks. and it should be always remembered that cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an advocate require to be taken with many grains of salt. nothing that these wretched gauls could say against a roman citizen ought to be accepted in evidence! "all the romans," he says, "who have been in the province wish well to fonteius. would you rather believe these gauls--led by what feeling? by the opinion of men! is the opinion, then, of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow-citizens, or is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? would you prefer, then, unknown men to known--dishonest men to honest--foreigners to your own countrymen--greedy men to those who come before you for nothing--men of no religion to those who fear the gods--those who hate the empire and the name of rome to allies and citizens who are good and faithful?"[ ] in every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his own case was weak; and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the judges we are sure that fonteius was guilty. he tells the judges that the poor mother of the accused man has no other support than this son, and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of vesta, who, being a vestal virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. when we read such arguments as these, we are sure that fonteius had misused the gauls. we believe that he was acquitted, because we are told that he bought a house in rome soon afterward; but we feel that he escaped by the too great influence of his advocate. we are driven to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition, may not do evil instead of good. a man with such a tongue as that of cicero will make the listener believe almost whatever he will; and the advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood. in his profession alone it is considered honorable to be a bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause. cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of hypocrisy in consequence. there is a passage in one of the dialogues, de oratore, which has been continually quoted against him because the word "fibs" has been used with approval. the orator is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white lies--"mendaciunculis."[ ] the advice does not indeed refer to facts, or to evidence, or to arguments. it goes no farther than to suggest that amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in order that the story may be good. such "mendaciuncula" are in the mouth of every diner-out in london, and we may pity the dinner-parties at which they are not used. reference is made to them now because the use of the word by cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his falsehood. you shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that he is only thirty-six inches. you know very well that he is more than four feet high. that will be a "mendaciunculum," according to cicero. the phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little fibs of cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him as an advocate. they have been only the garnishing of his drolleries. as an advocate, he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of our own day.[ ] that he was not paid, and that our english barristers are paid for the work they do, makes, i think, no difference either in the innocency or the falseness of the practice. i cannot but believe that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man of honor to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make others believe that which he does not believe himself. such is not the state of things now in london, nor was it at rome in cicero's time. there are touches of eloquence in the plea for fonteius, but the reader will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate gauls. in the year following that of cicero's Ædileship were written the first of his epistles which have come to us. he was then not yet thirty-nine years old--b.c. --and during that year and the next seven were written eleven letters, all to atticus. those to his other friends--ad familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them; ad diversos, they are commonly called now--began only with the close of his consular year. how it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which were written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free correspondents, cannot be said with certainty. it has probably been occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. of the nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. i am not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of cornelius nepos that he who has read his letters to atticus will not lack much of the history of those days.[ ] a man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. but if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography. with a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, i think, been enough. from them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have been made visible. we know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die. but i wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength. if they are singularly transparent as to the man--opening, especially to atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom friend--they must be taken as being more honestly true. to regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. nor, i think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. when with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. if one of us were to lose his all--as cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile--i think it might well be that he should for a time be unmanned; but he would either not write, or, in writing, would hide much of his feelings. on losing his tullia, some father of to-day would keep it all in his heart, would not maunder out his sorrows. even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words. whether this be for good or for evil i will not say, but it is so. cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear. he said everything that there was within him--being in this, i should say, quite as unlike to other romans of the day as he was to ourselves. in the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters--not from cicero--written to cicero by his brother, by decimus brutus, by plancus, and others. it will, i think, be admitted that their tone is quite different from that used by himself. there are none, indeed, from atticus--none written under terms of such easy friendship as prevailed when many were written by cicero himself. it will probably be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his correspondent was peculiar to him. if this be so, he should surely have the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance. the reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the man is to be read in the little sly things he said to atticus, but that the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as unfair to himself as he is to cicero. in reading the entire correspondence--the letters from cicero either to atticus or to others--it has to be remembered that in the ordinary arrangement of them made by grævius[ ] they are often incorrectly paced in regard to chronology. in subsequent times efforts have been made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be read. the letters to atticus and those ad diversos have generally been published separately. for the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they may perhaps be best read in that way. the tone of them is different. the great bulk of the correspondence is political, or quasi-political. the manner is much more familiar, much less severe--though not on that account indicating less seriousness--in those written to atticus than in the others. with one or two signal exceptions, those to atticus are better worth reading. the character of the writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the facts of cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written. it has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him who wrote them.[ ] [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year after his Ædileship. in the first he tells his friend of the death of his cousin, lucius cicero, who had travelled with him into sicily, and alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between pomponia, the sister of atticus, and her husband, quintus cicero--our cicero's brother. marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of him. that quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the republic. but he was arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar characteristic of his brother. "when i found him to be in the wrong," says cicero, in his first letter, "i wrote to him as to a brother whom i loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom i was bound to tell of his fault." as is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for the purchase of statues for his tusculan villa, of which we now hear for the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, terentia, sends her love, though she is suffering from the gout. tullia also, the dear little tullia, "deliciæ nostræ,"[ ]sends her love. in the next, he says how a certain house which atticus had intended to purchase had been secured by fonteius for , sesterces--something over £ , taking the sesterce at _d_. this no doubt was part of the plunder which fonteius had taken from the gauls. quintus is getting on better with his wife. then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that year on the eighth day before the kalends of december--on the th of november. some question as to the date of the old man's death had probably been asked. he gives further commissions as to statues, and declares of his tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there. in the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one cincius £ on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "all my prospect of enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." these were the letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be Ædile. from the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable from the continued commissions given by cicero to atticus for statues. statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his tusculanum. should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to decorate another that he has, the formianum, near caieta. he wants whatever atticus may think proper for his "palæstra" and "gymnasium." atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and cicero engages to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the money. he reserves, he says, all his little comings-in, "vindemiolas"--what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the country might get a little income from her spare butter--in order that he may have books as a resource for his old age. again, he bids atticus not to be afraid but what he, cicero, will be able to buy them some day--which if he can do he will be richer than crassus, and will envy no one his mansions or his lawns. he also declares that he has betrothed tullia, then ten years old, to caius piso, son of lucius piso frugi. the proposed marriage, which after three years of betrothal was duly solemnized, was considered to be in all respects desirable. cicero thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to calpurnius piso, one of the consuls of that year. so far everything was going well with our orator. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] he was then candidate for the prætorship, and was elected first, as has been already said. it was in that year, too that a law was passed in rome, at the instance of one gabinius, a tribune, authorizing pompey to exterminate the pirates in the mediterranean, and giving him almost unlimited power for this object. pompey was not, indeed, named in this law. a single general, one who had been consul, was to be approved by the senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore. he was to select as his own officers a hitherto unheard-of number, all of senatorial rank. it was well understood when the law was worded that pompey alone could fill the place. the senate opposed the scheme with all its power, although, seven years before, it had acknowledged the necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. but jealousies prevailed, and the senate was afraid of pompey. gabinius, however, carried his law by the votes of the people, and pompey was appointed. nothing tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in rome at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce was almost destroyed. sulla had re-established the outside show of a strong government--a government which was strong enough to enable rich men to live securely in rome; but he had done nothing to consolidate the empire. even lucullus in the east had only partially succeeded, leaving mithridates still to be dealt with by pompey. of what nature was the government of the provinces under sulla's aristocracy we learn from the trials of verres, and of fonteius, and of catiline. the mediterranean swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had nothing to fear from the hands of the romans. plutarch declares to us--no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been admitted by subsequent writers--how great was the horror of these depredations.[ ] it is marvellous to us now that this should have been allowed--marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance that verres had found it worth his while to sacrifice roman citizens in their place. pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his money, and cleared the mediterranean in forty days, as plutarch says. floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the romans, and not a pirate left on the seas.[ ] in the history of rome at this time we find men of mark whose characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear. of marius and of sulla we have a defined idea. cæsar, with his imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success, comes home to us. cicero, i think, we certainly may understand. catiline, cato, antony, and brutus have left their portraits with us. of pompey i must acknowledge for myself that i have but a vague conception. his wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little power of his own! he was not determined and venomous as was marius; not cold-blooded and ruthless as was sulla; certainly not confident as was cæsar; not humane as was cicero; not passionate as catiline; not stoic as was cato; not reckless as was antony, nor wedded to the idea of an oligarchy as was brutus. success came in his way, and he found it--found it again and again, till fortune seemed to have adopted him. success lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must be a sulla whether he would or no.[ ] but he could not endure the idea of a rival sulla. i doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to fight for the empire of the republic, had he not perceived that that empire would fall into cæsar's hands did he not grasp it himself. it would have satisfied him to let things go, while the citizens called him "magnus," and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he would, if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. cæsar did force it on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. he must have understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a roman legion and of roman auxiliaries. he had destroyed sertorius in spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honor of putting an end to the servile war when spartacus, the leader of the slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. he must have appreciated at its utmost the meaning of those words, "cives romanus." he was a handsome man, with good health, patient of labor, not given to luxury, reticent, i should say ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity; a man able to express but unable to feel friendship; with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second-rate attributes at their best; a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed beneath the heel of such a man as cæsar, and as certain to leave such a one as cicero in the lurch. it is necessary that the reader should attempt to realize to himself the personal characteristics of pompey, as from this time forward cicero's political life--and his life now became altogether political--was governed by that of pompey. that this was the case to a great extent is certain--to a sad extent, i think. the two men were of the same age; but pompey had become a general among soldiers before cicero had ceased to be a pupil among advocates. as cicero was making his way toward the front, pompey was already the first among romans. he had been consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down the pirates. in some sort the mantle of sulla had fallen upon him. he was the leader of what we may call the conservative party. if, which i doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. such had been the forms in rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that oligarch. pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit. for any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, i think, look in vain to that pompey whom history has handed down to us. but, of all matters which interested cicero, the governance of men interested him the most. how should the great rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? how should rome be ruled so that romans might be the masters of the world, in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms--as by valor, so by virtue? he, too, was an oligarch by strongest conviction. his mind could conceive nothing better than consuls, prætors, censors, tribunes, and the rest of it; with, however, the stipulation that the consuls and the prætors should be honest men. the condition was no doubt an impossible one; but this he did not or would not see. pompey himself was fairly honest. up to this time he had shown no egregious lust for personal power. his hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. he was the leader of the conservative party. the "optimates," or "boni," as cicero indifferently calls them--meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order--believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him. the senate did not want another sulla; and yet it was sulla who had reinstated the senate. the senate would have hindered pompey, if it could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his command against mithridates. but he, nevertheless, was naturally their head, as came to be seen plainly when, seventeen years afterward, cæsar passed the rubicon, and cicero in his heart acknowledged pompey as his political leader while pompey lived. this, i think, was the case to a sad extent, as pompey was incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which cicero demanded. as we go on we shall find that the worst episodes in cicero's political career were created by his doubting adherence to a leader whom he bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker to the end. then came cicero's prætorship. in the time of cicero there were eight prætors, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in the provinces. the "prætor urbanus" was confined to the city, and was regarded as the first in authority. this was the office filled by cicero. his duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or judges for special causes. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cicero at this time, when he and pompey were forty or forty-one, believed thoroughly in pompey. when the great general was still away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the mithridatic war. lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. his own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and glabrio, a later consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. it was essential that something should be done, and one manilius, a tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration pro lege manilia, proposed to the people that pompey should have the command. then cicero first entered, as we may say, on political life. though he had been quæstor and Ædile, and was now prætor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. he had had his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges, which, in the condition of rome, was certainly a political question of great moment. but this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. now, for the first time, he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. this speech is the oration pro lego manilia. this he explains in his first words. hitherto his addresses had been to the judges--judices; now it is to the people--quirites: "although, quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds--although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the noblest for speech--nevertheless, not my own will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which i have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory which is open to any good man." it is only necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in question, that this command was given to pompey in opposition to the senate. as to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. it is one of those choice morsels of polished latinity which have given to cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have, perhaps, made him the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. i have sometimes attempted to make a short list of his _chefs d'[oe]uvre_--of his tidbits, as i must say, if i am bound to express myself in english. the list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible; but, whenever the attempt has been made, this short oration in its integrity has always been included in it. my space hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but i will give in an appendix[ ] two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in latin. i almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom latin is unknown. i venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible i have found it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. as to the beauty of the language i shall probably find no opponent. but a serious attack has been made on cicero's character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on pompey with a view of securing the great general's assistance in his candidature for the consulship. even middleton repeats this accusation, and only faintly repels it. m. du rozoir, the french critic, declares that "in the whole oration there is not a word which was not dictated to cicero the prætor by his desire to become consul, and that his own elevation was in his thoughts all through, and not that of pompey." the matter would be one to us but of little moment, were it not that cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in pompey. pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. he had done infinitely valuable service to the state. he had already crushed the pirates. there was good ground for believing that in his hands the roman arms would be more efficacious against mithridates than in those of any other general. all that cicero says on this head, whatever might have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true. a man desirous of rising in the service of his country of course adheres to his party. that cicero was wrong in supposing that the republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed i admit; but i will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. in our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood because by that zeal he has also strengthened his own hands. how shall a patriot do the work of his country unless he be in high place? and how shall he achieve that place except by co-operation with those whom he trusts? they who have blamed cicero for speaking on behalf of pompey on this occasion, seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life. one other remarkable oration cicero made during his prætorship--that, namely, in defence of aulus cluentius habitus. as it is the longest, so is it the most intricate, and on account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all his speeches. but there are none perhaps which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps i should say the possibilities, of life among the romans of that day. the accusation against roscius amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances. the iniquities of verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life. that any man should have lived as did oppianicus, or any woman as did sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by juvenal a hundred and fifty years later. cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude. we must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity. the story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in italy during the latter days of the republic. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] in the year after he was prætor--in the first of the two years between his prætorship and consulship, b.c. --he made a speech in defence of one caius cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case occupied four days. this, with our interminable "causes célèbres," does not seem much to us, but cicero's own speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two parts. this cornelius had been tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused his power when in office. he had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the senate; especially by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. cicero's speeches are not extant. we have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them, which were preserved by asconius,[ ] a commentator on certain of cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that these cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against verres, or almost as those spoken against catiline. cicero defended cornelius, who was attacked by the senate--by the rich men who desired office and the government of provinces. the law proposed for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such means: it was mitigated, but was still admitted by cicero to be too rigorous. the rancor of the senate against cornelius seems to have been due to this attempt; but the illegality with which he was charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by him--for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been usurped by the senate. caius cornelius seems to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but--as had been the gracchi--ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the senate. a second tribune, in the interest of the senate, attempted to exercise an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him, by inhibiting the publication or reading of the proposed law. the person whose duty it was to read it was stopped; then cornelius pushed aside the inferior officer, and read it himself. there was much violence, and the men who brought the accusation about cornelius--two brothers named cominii--had to hide themselves, and saved their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses. this took place when cicero was standing for the prætorship, and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile impossible to carry on the election. in the year after his prætorship cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made. the matter seems to have been one of vital interest in rome. the contest on the part of the senate was for all that made public life dear to such a body. not to bribe--not to be able to lay out money in order that money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold--would be to them to cease to be aristocrats. the struggles made by the gracchi, by livius drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an honest republic. such were the struggles made by cicero himself; though there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be effected, not by depriving the senate of its power, but by teaching the senate to use it honestly. we can sympathize with the idea, but we are driven to acknowledge that it was futile. though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of them prefixed by asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to readers. they were extant in the time of quintilian, who speaks of them with the highest praise.[ ] cicero himself selects certain passages out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[ ] thus showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. we know from asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital interest. we have two letters from cicero written in the year after his prætorship, both to atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable competition for the consulship; the second informs his friend that a son is born to him--he being then forty-two years old--and that he is thinking to undertake the defence of catiline, who was to be accused of peculation as proprætor in africa. "should he be acquitted," says cicero, "i should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my canvass. if he should be convicted, i shall be able to bear that too." there were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would be chosen. it would be much to cicero "to run," as our phrase goes, with the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed. catiline, in spite of his then notorious character--in the teeth of the evils of his government in africa--was, from his birth, his connections, and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. it was open to cicero to defend catiline as he had defended fonteius, and we know from his own words that he thought of doing so. but he did not; nor did cicero join himself with catiline in the canvassing. it is probable that the nature of catiline's character and intentions were now becoming clearer from day to day. catiline was tried and acquitted, having, it is said, bribed the judges. chapter viii. _cicero as consul._ hitherto everything had succeeded with cicero. his fortune and his fame had gone hand-in-hand. the good-will of the citizens had been accorded to him on all possible occasions. he had risen surely, if not quickly, to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, hortensius. on no memorable occasion had he been beaten. if now and then he had failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some matter in which, as he had said to atticus in speaking of his contemplated defence of catiline, he was not called on to break his heart if he were beaten. we may imagine that his life had been as happy up to this point as a man's life may be. he had married well. children had been born to him, who were the source of infinite delight. he had provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. friends were thick around him. his industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. the citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. now at the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual honor, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer, and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment trusted. then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes; and after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one misery after another--one trouble on the head of another trouble--so cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the romans, almost wonders that he condescended to live. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] he was chosen consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous acclamation of the citizens. what was the exact manner of doing this we can hardly now understand. the consuls were elected by ballot, wooden tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose; but cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people.[ ] he had stood with six competitors. of these it is only necessary to mention two, as by them only was cicero's life affected, and as out of the six, only they seem to have come prominently forward during the canvassing. these were catiline the conspirator, as we shall have to call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and caius antonius, one of the sons of marc antony, the great orator of the preceding age, and uncle of the marc antony with whom we are all so well acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to the end of this work. cicero was so easily the first that it may be said of him that he walked over the course. whether this was achieved by the machiavellian arts which his brother quintus taught in his treatise de petitione consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may be a matter of doubt. as far as we can judge from the signs which remain to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. he had robbed none, and had been cruel to no one. he had already abandoned the profit of provincial government--to which he was by custom entitled after the lapse of his year's duty as prætor--in order that he might remain in rome among the people. though one of the senate himself--and full of the glory of the senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the verrine orations which i have quoted--he had generally pleaded on the popular side. such was his cleverness, that even when on the unpopular side--as he may be supposed to have been when defending fonteius--he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. we cannot doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his election, that he had made himself beloved but, nevertheless, he omitted none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take. he made his electioneering speech "in toga candida"--in a white robe, as candidates did, and were thence so called. it has not come down to us, nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected from the notes which asconius wrote upon it. it was full of personal abuse of antony and catiline, his competitors. such was the practice of rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. we shall have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task. when we come to the language in which cicero spoke of clodius, his enemy, of piso and gabinius, the consuls who allowed him to be banished, and of marc antony, his last great opponent--the nephew of the man who was now his colleague--we shall have very much of it. it must again be pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been preserved and that cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been more foul mouthed than his rivals. we can easily imagine that he was more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his words the meaning which he intended them to convey. antony was chosen as cicero's colleague. it seems, from such evidence as we are able to get on the subject, that cicero trusted antony no better than he did catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide et impera"--separate your enemies and you will get the better of them, which was no doubt known as well then as now--he soon determined to use antony as his ally against catiline, who was presumed to reckon antony among his fellow-conspirators. sallust puts into the mouth of catiline a declaration to this effect,[ ] and cicero did use antony for the purpose. the story of catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story of cicero's consulship, that i may be justified in hurrying over the other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must be told. though catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole year, it was not till october that the affairs in which we shall have to interest ourselves commenced. of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the great roman officers of state we know very little; perhaps i might better say that we know nothing. men, in their own diaries, when they keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. a prime-minister with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was cicero with his friend atticus, would hardly say when he went to the treasury chambers or what he did when he got there. we may imagine that to a cabinet minister even a cabinet council would, after many sittings, become a matter of course. a leading barrister would hardly leave behind him a record of his work in chambers. it has thus come to pass that, though we can picture to ourselves a cicero before the judges, or addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his consular work. we cannot but suppose that there must have been an office with many clerks. there must have been heavy daily work. the whole operation of government was under the consul's charge, and to cicero, with a catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually heavy. how he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives and red tape, i cannot make manifest to myself. i can imagine that there must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading romans, but beyond that i cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life of a consul. in the old days the consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do the fighting. when there was an enemy here, or an enemy there, the consul was bound to hurry off with his army, north or south, to different parts of italy. but gradually this system became impracticable. distances became too great, as the empire extended itself beyond the bounds of italy, to admit of the absence of the consuls. wars prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which was soon to take place in gaul under cæsar. the consuls remained at home, and generals were sent out with proconsular authority. this had become so certainly the case, that cicero on becoming consul had no fear of being called on to fight the enemies of his country. there was much fighting then in course of being done by pompey in the east; but this would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it might be in sending out necessary supplies. the consul's work, however, was severe enough. we find from his own words, in a letter to atticus written in the year but one after his consulship, b.c., that as consul he made twelve public addresses. each of them must have been a work of labor, requiring a full mastery over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in their polished perfection from the generality of parliamentary speeches to which we are accustomed. the getting up of his cases must have taken great time. letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. writing must have been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft wax. an advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself. we have heard how cicero made his way over to sicily, creeping in a little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might get up the evidence against verres. in defending aulus cluentius when he was prætor, cicero must have found the work to have been immense. in preparing the attack upon catiline it seems that every witness was brought to himself. there were four catiline speeches made in the year of his consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by him. he mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made in the year of his consulship. i imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with those which have come to us--which were, as we may say, prepared for the press by tiro, his slave and secretary. we have evidence as to some of them, especially as to the second catiline oration, that time did not admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of the circumstances to which it alludes. it needs must have been extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed to give him. how the words may have been taken down in such a case we do not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed, though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as is that with us.[ ] the words which we read were probably much polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not know. what we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced, and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince and charm us. of these twelve consular speeches cicero gives a special account to his friend. "i will send you," he says, "the speechlings[ ] which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which i have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. it was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen of yours in those orations which he called his philippics. in these he brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking, so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more statesman-like. so i have done with these speeches of mine which may be called 'consulares,'" as having been made not only in his consular year but also with something of consular dignity. "of these, one, on the new land laws proposed, was spoken in the senate on the kalends of january. the second, on the same subject, to the people. the third was respecting otho's law.[ ] the fourth was in defence of rabirius.[ ] the fifth was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property and their rank under sulla's proscription.[ ] the sixth was an address to the people, and explained why i renounced my provincial government.[ ] the seventh drove catiline out of the city. the eighth was addressed to the people the day after catiline fled. the ninth was again spoken to the people, on the day on which the allobroges gave their evidence. then, again, the tenth was addressed to the senate on the fifth of december"--also respecting catiline. "there are also two short supplementary speeches on the agrarian war. you shall have the whole body of them. as what i write and what i do are equally interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my doings and all my sayings." it is not to be supposed that in this list are contained all the speeches which he made in his consular year, but those only which he made as consul--those to which he was desirous of adding something of the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the weight attached to his pleadings as a lawyer. as an advocate, consul though he was, he continued to perform his work; from whence we learn that no state dignity was so high as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of defending his friends. hortensius, when consul elect, had undertaken to defend verres. cicero defended murena when he was consul. he defended c. calpurnius piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, i think, known.[ ] of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. of his pleading for murena we have, if not the whole, the material part, and, though nobody cares very much for murena now, the oration is very amusing. it was made toward the end of the year, on the th of november, after the second catiline oration, and before the third, at the very moment in which cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on which he intended to convict catiline's fellow-conspirators. as i read it i am carried away by wonder, rather than admiration, at the energy of the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to master the details necessary for the trial of murena. early in the year cicero had caused a law to be passed--which, after him, was called the lex tullia--increasing the stringency of the enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. his intention had probably been to hinder catiline, who was again about to become a candidate. but murena, who was elected, was supposed to have been caught in the meshes of the net, and also silanus, the other consul designate. cato, the man of stern nature, the great stoic of the day, was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against some one, and not very sorry to attack murena with weapons provided from the armory of murena's friend, cicero. silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to cato, was allowed to pass unmolested. sulpicius, who was one of the disappointed candidates, cato, and postumius were the accusers. hortensius, crassus, and cicero were combined together for the defence of murena. but as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we feel that, unlike those roman trials generally, this was carried on without any acrimony on either side. i think it must have been that cato wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been arranged that murena was to be acquitted. murena was accused, among other things, of dancing! greeks might dance, as we hear from cornelius nepos,[ ] but for a roman consul it would be disgraceful in the highest extreme. a lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. sallust tells us of sempronia--who was, indeed, a very bad female if all that he says of her be true--that she danced more elegantly than became an honest woman.[ ] she was the wife of a consul. but a male roman of high standing might not dance at all. cicero defends his friend by showing how impossible it was--how monstrous the idea. "no man would dance unless drunk or mad." nevertheless, i imagine that murena had danced. cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing cato for his stoicism, and uses it delightfully. horace was not more happy when, in defence of aristippus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men.[ ] "there was one zeno," cicero says, "who laid down laws. no wise man would forgive any fault. no man worthy of the name of man would allow himself to be pitiful. wise men are beautiful, even though deformed; rich though penniless; kings though they be slaves. we who are not wise are mere exiles, runagates, enemies of our country, and madmen. any fault is an unpardonable crime. to kill an old cock, if you do not want it, is as bad as to murder your father!"[ ] and these doctrines, he goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk about, this man cato absolutely believes, and tries to live by them. i shall have to refer back to this when i speak of cicero's philosophy more at length; but his common-sense crops up continually in the expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a man's life, in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane things which the philosophers professed to teach their pupils. he turns to cato and asks him questions, which he answers himself with his own philosophy: "would you pardon nothing? well, yes; but not all things. would you do nothing for friendship? sometimes, unless duty should stand in the way. would you never be moved to pity? i would maintain my habit of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. it is good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall have prevailed with you." in all this the humanity of our cicero, as opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a cato or the abominable vice of a verres, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what christ has taught us. but the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the lawyers. it must be understood that cicero did not pride himself on being a lawyer. he was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. in truth, he did understand the law, being a man of deep research, who inquired into everything. as legal points had been raised, he thus addresses sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who had been a candidate for the consulship, and who was his own intimate friend: "i must put you out of your conceit," he says; "it was your other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws--your moderation, your wisdom, your justice--which, in my opinion, made you worthy of being loved. i will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not thus you made yourself worthy of the consulship.[ ] that power of eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which has so often availed in raising a man to the consulship, is able by its words to move the minds of the senate and the people and the judges.[ ] but in such a poor science as that of law what honor can there be? its details are taken up with mere words and fragments of words.[ ] they forget all equity in points of law, and stick to the mere letter."[ ] he goes through a presumed scene of chicanery, which, consul as he was, he must have acted before the judges and the people, no doubt to the extreme delight of them all. at last he says, "full as i am of business, if you raise my wrath i will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days."[ ] from these and many other passages in cicero's writings and speeches, and also from quintilian, we learn that a roman advocate was by no means the same as an english barrister. the science which he was supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in effective language. it no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in getting up the details of his story--what we may call the evidence--but he looked elsewhere, to men of another profession, for his law. the "juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. in this trial of murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. when he is telling sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "the greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. all our empire, all our republic, is defended and made strong by them."[ ] it was thus that the advocate could speak! this comes from the man who always took glory to himself in declaring that the "toga" was superior to helmet and shield. he had already declared that they erred who thought that they were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law courts.[ ] he knew how to defend his friend murena, who was a soldier, and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against his friend sulpicius, the lawyer. but in truth few men understood the roman law better than did cicero. but we must go back to that agrarian law respecting which, as he tells us, four of his consular speeches were made. this had been brought forward by rullus, one of the tribunes, toward the end of the last year. the tribunes came into office in december, whereas at this period of the republic the consuls were in power only on and from january st. cicero, who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. it was, to his thinking, altogether revolutionary. we have the words of many of the clauses; and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize what would have been its effect, i think we are entitled to say that it was intended to subvert all property. property, speaking of it generally, cannot be destroyed the land remains, and the combined results of man's industry are too numerous, too large, and too lasting to become a wholesale prey to man's anger or madness. even the elements when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. a deluge is wanted--or that crash of doom which, whether it is to come or not, is believed by the world to be very distant. but it is within human power to destroy possession, and redistribute the goods which industry, avarice, or perhaps injustice has congregated. they who own property are in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors. the spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. but with the romans political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. a subversion of property had to a great extent taken place no later than in sulla's time. how this had been effected the story of the property of roscius amerinus has explained to us. under sulla's enactments no man with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich ornaments, was safe. property had been made to change hands recklessly, ruthlessly, violently, by the illegal application of a law promulgated by a single individual, who, however, had himself been instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things which he approved. rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction. the ostensible purpose was something as follows: as the roman people had by their valor and wisdom achieved for rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won; whereas, in fact, the sweets of victory fell to the lot only of a few aristocrats. for the reform of this evil it should be enacted that all public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels, should be sold, and with the proceeds other lands should be bought fit for the use of roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to have it. it was specially suggested that the rich country called the campania--that in which naples now stands with its adjacent isles--should be bought up and given over to a great roman colony. for the purpose of carrying out this law ten magistrates should be appointed, with plenipotentiary power both as to buying and selling. there were many underplots in this. no one need sell unless he chose to sell; but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that of sulla's proscriptions. the present possessors were in daily fear of dispossession, by some new law made with the object of restoring their property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. these would be very glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so doubtful; and these were the men whom the "decemviri," or ten magistrates, would be anxious to assist. we are told that the father-in-law of rullus himself had made a large acquisition by his use of sulla's proscriptions. and then there would be the instantaneous selling of the vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the roman state. when so much land would be thrown into the market it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might choose to favor. we can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would have been altogether changed by the measure. the "decemviri" were to have plenary power for ten years. all the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold, or put up to market. everything supposed to belong to the roman state was to be sold in every province, for the sake of collecting together a huge sum of money, which was to be divided in the shape of land among the poorer romans. whatever may have been the private intentions of rullus, whether good or bad, it is evident, even at this distance of time, that a redistribution of property was intended which can only be described as a general subversion. to this the new consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say, patriotically. the intense interest which cicero threw into his work is as manifest in these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the catiline conspiracy. he ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his own character and intellect. he condescends, on the other hand, to a virulence of personal abuse against rullus which, though it is to our taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a man should not have undertaken such a work. he is describing the way in which the bill was first introduced: "our tribunes at last enter upon their office. the harangue to be made by rullus is especially expected. he is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry himself with an air of special audacity. when he was only tribune elect he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different step. we all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[ ] in rome men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law. no description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. the picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all rome, could not but be effective. it has been supposed that cicero was insulting the tribune because he was dirty. not so. he was ridiculing rullus because rullus had dared to go about in mourning--"sordidatus"--on behalf of his country. but the tone in which cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. it is so grand as to make us feel that a consul of rome, who had the cares of rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the senate and to the people. there are the two important orations--that spoken first in the senate, and then the speech to the people from which i have already quoted the passage personal to rullus. in both of them he declares his own idea of a consul, and of himself as consul. he has been speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the state, and then proceeds: "but i pass by what i have to say on that matter and reserve it for the people. i speak now of the danger which menaces our safety and our liberty. for what will there be left to us untouched in the republic, what will remain of your authority and freedom, when rullus, and those whom you fear much more than rullus,[ ] with this band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of rome, laden with gold and silver, shall have seized on capua and all the cities round? to all this, senators"--patres conscripti he calls them--"i will oppose what power i have. as long as i am consul i will not suffer them to carry out their designs against the republic. "but you, rullus, and those who are with you, have been mistaken grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the people in your attempts to subvert the republic in opposition to a consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend i call upon you, i invite you to meet me in the assembly. let us have the people of rome as a judge between us. let us look round and see what it is that the people really desire. we shall find that there is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease. you have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies." (it must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his consulship) "the wicked you have filled with hope, the good with fear. you have robbed the forum of loyalty and the republic of dignity. but now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of the consul has been heard by the people--when he shall have made it plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enroll itself, no bands collect themselves; that there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal 'decemvirs,' no second rome, no other centre of rule but this; that while i am consul there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease--do you suppose that i shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law? shall i, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens when i shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your tribunes of the people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the roman people? shall i fear--i who have determined to be consul after that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom, reaching to ask nothing for myself which any tribune could object to have given to me?"[ ] this was to the senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the people. he begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom of the great officers of state, who have enjoyed the right of having in their houses the busts and images of their ancestors, in their first speech to the people to join with thanks for the favors done to themselves some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers. [ ] he, however, could do nothing of the kind: he had no such right: none in his family had achieved such dignity. to speak of himself might seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. therefore would he restrain himself, but would still say something, so that he might acknowledge what he had received. then he would leave it for them to judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him. "it is long ago--almost beyond the memory of us now here--since you last made a new man consul.[ ] that high office the nobles had reserved for themselves, and defended it, as it were, with ramparts. you have secured it for me, so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy of it. nor have you only made me a consul, much as that is, but you have done so in such a fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so treated, and no new man--'novus ante me nemo.' i have, if you will think of it, been the only new man who has stood for the consulship in the first year in which it was legal, and who has got it." then he goes on to remind them, in words which i have quoted before, that they had elected him by their unanimous voices. all this, he says, had been very grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that he might labor on their behalf. that such labor was severe, he declares. the consulship itself must be defended. his period of consulship to any consul must be a year of grave responsibility, but more so to him than to any other. to him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give no kind advice. to him, should he be overtasked, they would give no assistance. but the first thing he would look for should be their good opinion. to declare now, before the people, that he would exercise his office for the good of the people was his natural duty. but in that place, in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the senate itself, on the very first day of his consulship, he had declared the same thing--"popularem me futurum esse consulem."[ ] the course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. he desired, certainly, to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power of the aristocracy. he still believed, as we cannot believe now, that there was a residuum of good in the senate sufficient to blossom forth into new powers of honest government. when speaking to the oligarchs in the senate of rullus and his land law, it was easy enough to carry them with him. that a consul should oppose a tribune who was coming forward with a "lex agraria" in his hands, as the latest disciple of the gracchi, was not out of the common order of things. another consul would either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering, as antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have called it--as might have been the case with the cottas, lepiduses and pisos of preceding years. but cicero determined to oppose the demagogue tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than he. he succeeded, and rullus with his agrarian law was sent back into darkness. i regard the second speech against rullus as the _ne plus ultra_, the very _beau ideal_ of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government. i cannot finish this chapter, in which i have attempted to describe the lesser operations of cicero's consulship, without again alluding to the picture drawn by virgil of a great man quelling the storms of a seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his words.[ ] the poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. when the knights, during cicero's consulship essayed to take their privileged places in the public theatre, in accordance with a law passed by roscius otho a few years earlier (b.c. ), the founder of the obnoxious law himself entered the building. the people, enraged against a man who had interfered with them and their pleasures, and who had brought them, as it were under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and began to break everything that came to hand. "tum pietate gravem!" the consul was sent for. he called on the people to follow him out of the theatre to the temple of bellona, and there addressed to them that wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in good-humor with otho himself. "iste regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet." i have spoken of pliny's eulogy as to the great consul's doings of the year. the passage is short and i will translate it:[ ] "but, marcus tullius, how shall i reconcile it to myself to be silent as to you, or by what special glory shall i best declare your excellence? how better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the whole nation, and to the achievements of your consulship as a specimen of your entire life? at your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. at your persuasion they pardoned otho his law and bore with good-humor the difference of the seats assigned to them. at your prayer the children of the proscribed forbore from demanding their rights of citizenship. catiline was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. it was you who silenced[ ] m. antony. hail, thou who wert first addressed as the father of your country--the first who, in the garb of peace, hast deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence." this was grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his death, by one who had no peculiar sympathies with him other than those created by literary affinity. none of cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his consulship. chapter ix _catiline._ to wash the blackamoor white has been the favorite task of some modern historians. to find a paradox in character is a relief to the investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried paths, or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier writers. tiberius and even nero have been praised. the memories of our early years have been shocked by instructions to regard richard iii. and henry viii. as great and scrupulous kings. the devil may have been painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men, who will not accept the verdict of the majority, have been much exercised to put the matter right. we are now told that catiline was a popular hero; that, though he might have wished to murder cicero, he was, in accordance with the practice of his days, not much to be blamed for that; and that he was simply the follower of the gracchi, and the forerunner of cæsar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of rome.[ ] in this there is much that is true. murder was common. he who had seen the sullan proscriptions, as both catiline and cicero had done, might well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in these days. even cicero, who of all the romans was the most humane--even he, no doubt, would have been well contented that catiline should have been destroyed by the people.[ ] even he was the cause, as we shall see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom catiline left behind him in the city--an execution of which the legality is at any rate very doubtful. but in judging even of bloodshed we have to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. our consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness force this upon us. we cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered cæsar as we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant; nor can we deal as heavily with the murderers of cæsar as we would have done then with catilinarian conspirators in rome, had catiline's conspiracy succeeded. and so, too, in acknowledging that catiline was the outcome of the gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for cæsar, we must again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to sympathize with him, because there was much in them worthy of praise and honor. that the gracchi were seditious no historian has, i think, denied. they were willing to use the usages and laws of the republic where those usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the usages and laws ran counter to them. in the reforms or changes which they attempted they were undoubtedly rebels; but no reader comes across the tale of the death, first of one and then of the other, without a regret. it has to be owned that they were murdered in tumults which they themselves had occasioned. but they were honest and patriotic. history has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport of relieving their fellow-countrymen from what they believed to be the tyranny of oligarchs. the republic even in their time had become too rotten to be saved; but the world has not the less given them the credit for a desire to do good; and the names of the two brothers, rebels as they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. cæsar, on the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. he too was opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could save the republic by any struggles after freedom. his mind was not given to patriotism of that sort--not to memories, not to associations. even laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. to his thinking, probably even in his early days, the state of rome required a master. its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any one to take who could take them--for any one to hold who could hold them. mr. beesly, the last defender of catiline, has stated that very little was known in rome of cæsar till the time of catiline's conspiracy, and in that i agree with him. he possessed high family rank, and had been quæstor and Ædile; but it was only from this year out that his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into things. it may be that he had previously been in league with catiline--that he was in league with him till the time came for the great attempt. the evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it was so. rome had been the prey of many conspiracies. the dominion of marius and the dominion of sulla had been effected by conspiracies. no doubt the opinion was strong with many that both cæsar and crassus, the rich man, were concerned with catiline. but cæsar was very far-seeing, and, if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the time was not found to be opportune. but from first to last he always was opposed to the oligarchy. the various steps from the gracchi to him were as those which had to be made from the girondists to napoleon. catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were danton and robespierre steps. the continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in power. but as robespierre was vile and low, whereas vergniaud was honest and napoleon great, so was it with catiline between the gracchi and cæsar. there is, to my thinking, no excuse for catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even though he were a necessary step, between the gracchi and cæsar. i regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. history very often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth, on the finding of new facts. records have been brought to light which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together. but to imagine that a man may have been good who has lain under the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb rather than to assist history. of catiline we at least know that he headed a sedition in rome in the year of cicero's consulship; that he left the city suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of pistoia fighting against the generals of the republic, and that he left certain accomplices in rome who were put to death by an edict of the senate. so much i think is certain to the most truculent doubter. from his contemporaries, sallust and cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character. they have left to us denunciations of the man which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have made him a stock character, and have dramatized him as a fiend. voltaire has described him as calling upon his fellow-conspirators to murder cicero and cato, and to burn the city. ben jonson makes catiline kill a slave and mix his blood, to be drained by his friends. "there cannot be a fitter drink to make this sanction in." the friends of catiline will say that this shows no evidence against the man. none, certainly; but it is a continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since catiline's time. in his own age cicero and sallust, who were opposed in all their political views, combined to speak ill of him. in the next, virgil makes him as suffering his punishment in hell.[ ] in the next, velleius paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom cicero had banished.[ ] juvenal makes various allusions to him, but all in the same spirit. juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was presenting.[ ] valerius maximus, who wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very severe on catiline.[ ] florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after the conspiracy, gives us of catiline the same personal story as that told both by sallust and cicero: "debauchery, in the first place; and then the poverty which that had produced; and then the opportunity of the time, because the roman armies were in distant lands, induced catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country."[ ] mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of cicero, declares that catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. his villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."[ ] all this is no evidence. cicero and sallust may possibly have combined to lie about catiline. other roman writers may have followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed the roman writers. it is possible that the world may have been wrong as to a period of roman history with which it has thought itself to be well acquainted; but the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they have come down to it. the writers of the ages since have combined to speak of cicero with respect and admiration. they have combined, also, to speak of catiline with abhorrence. they have agreed, also, to treat those other rebels, the gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition, a sweet savor, as i have said, attaches itself to their names. for myself, i am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel assured that i shall do no injustice in speaking of catiline as all who have written about him hitherto have spoken of him i cannot consent to the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have concerning him.[ ] two strong points have been made for catiline in mr. beesly's defence. his ancestors had been consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a later date "were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their sweaty nightcaps." that scorn against the people should be expressed by the aristocrat casca was well supposed by shakspeare; but how did a liberal of the present day bring himself to do honor to his hero by such allusions? in truth, however, the glory of ancient blood and the disgrace attaching to the signs of labor are ideas seldom relinquished even by democratic minds. a howard is nowhere lovelier than in america, or a sweaty nightcap less relished. we are then reminded how catiline died fighting, with the wounds all in front; and are told that the "world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause, be that cause what it will; but for catiline none!" i think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. to die readily when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the poorest of mankind. the romans could generally do it, and so can the chinese. a zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilization than chinese or zulus. to encounter death, or the danger of death, for the sake of duty--when the choice is there; but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or, better still, to security which shall bring with it self-abasement--that is grand. when i hear that a man "rushed into the field and, foremost fighting, fell," if there have been no adequate occasion, i think him a fool. if it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was catiline's case, i recognize him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. that catiline was constitutionally a brave man no one has denied. rush, the murderer, was one of the bravest men of whom i remember to have heard. what credit is due to rush is due to catiline. what we believe to be the story of catiline's life is this: in sulla's time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in carrying out the dictator's proscriptions and in running through whatever means he had. there are fearful stories told of him as to murdering his own son and other relatives; as to which mr. beesly is no doubt right in saying that such tales were too lightly told in rome to deserve implicit confidence. to serve a purpose any one would say anything of any enemy. very marvellous qualities are attributed to him--as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able and willing to bear all bodily hardships. he probably had been engaged in murders--as how should a man not have been so who had served under sulla during the dictatorship? he had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery, when all young aristocrats were so allured. he had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. in reading of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. that he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and, above all, foreigners to be plundered, we may take, i think, as proved. in spite of his vices, or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. that such a one should become a prætor and a governor was natural. he went to africa with proconsular authority, and of course fleeced the africans. it was as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing time. he came back intent, as was natural also, on being a consul, and of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. but there came a spoke in his wheel--the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the province. while under accusation for provincial robbery he could not come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career. it is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the time--the ins and outs of family quarrels. clodius--the clodius who was afterward cicero's notorious enemy and the victim of milo's fury--became the accuser of catiline on behalf of the africans. though clodius was much the younger, they were men of the same class. it may be possible that clodius was appointed to the work--as it had been intended that cæcilius should be appointed at the prosecution of verres--in order to assure not the conviction but the acquittal of the guilty man. the historians and biographers say that clodius was at last bought by a bribe, and that he betrayed the africans after that fashion. it may be that such bribery was arranged from the first. our interest in that trial lies in the fact that cicero no doubt intended, from political motives, to defend catiline. it has been said that he did do so. as far as we know, he abandoned the intention. we have no trace of his speech, and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have been mentioned.[ ] but there was _no_ reason why he should not have done so. he defended fonteius, and i am quite willing to own that he knew fonteius to have been a robber. when i look at the practice of our own times, i find that thieves and rebels are defended by honorable advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to their own opinions. it suited cicero to do the same. if i were detected in a plot for blowing up a cabinet council, i do not doubt but that i should get the late attorney-general to defend me.[ ] but catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for the consulship of the next year, b.c. . p. sulla and autronius were elected--that sulla to whose subsequent defence i have just referred in this note--but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, torquatus and cotta, were elected in their place. in this way three men standing on high before their countrymen--one having been debarred from standing for the consulship, and the other two having been robbed of their prize even when it was within their grasp--not unnaturally became traitors at heart. almost as naturally they came together and conspired. why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his recognized profession in living upon the subject nations? their conduct had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common. however, the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is known as the first catiline conspiracy. the reader must bear in mind that i am now telling the story of catiline, and going back to a period of two years before cicero's consulship, which was b.c. . how during that year cicero successfully defended murena when cato endeavored to rob him of his coming consulship, has been already told. it may be that murena's hands were no cleaner than those of sulla and autronius, and that they lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended murena. at this time, when the two appointed consuls were rejected, cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. he had been quæstor, Ædile, and prætor, filling those administrative offices to the best of his ability. he had, he says, hardly heard of the first conspiracy.[ ] that what he says is true, is, i think, proved by the absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches or fragments of speeches that are extant. but that there was such a conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, catiline, sulla, and autronius, were leaders in it. what would interest us, if only we could have the truth, is whether cæsar and crassus were joined in it. it is necessary again to consider the condition of the republic. to us a conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspirer lives seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do evil which all good men should oppose. we have the happy conspiracy in which washington became the military leader, and the french revolution, which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing frenchmen from the condition of serfdom. at home we have our own conspiracy against the stuart royalty, which had also noble results. the gracchi had attempted to effect something of the same kind at rome; but the moral condition of the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained. conspiracy! oh yes. as long as there was anything to get, of course he who had not got it would conspire against him who had. there had been conspiracies for and against marius, for and against cinna, for and against sulla. there was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which such rivalry produced. these were the motive causes for conspiracies; not whether romans should be free but whether a sulla or a cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province. cæsar at this time had not done much in the roman world except fall greatly into debt. knowing, as we do know now, his immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt but at the age he had now reached, thirty-five, b.c. , he had considered deeply his prospects in life. there is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being a great soldier. that came to him by pure accident, some years afterward. to be quæstor, prætor, and consul, and catch what was going, seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary debt. that he would have been a verres, or a fonteius, or a catiline, we certainly are not entitled to think. over whatever people he might have come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom, he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye, fixed upon future results. at this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. there were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were rising into great repute; they were pompey, cicero, and catiline. there were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the dirt around; and they were undoubtedly the first romans of the day. catiline was determined that he too would be among the first romans of the day; but his hands had never been clean. which was the better way for such a one as cæsar to go? to have had pompey under his feet, or cicero, must have then seemed to cæsar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in different ways, have his feet on both. with catiline the chance of success might be better. crassus he had already compassed. crassus was like m. poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition. if cæsar joined the plot we can well understand that crassus should have gone with him. we have all but sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority insufficient for declaring it. that sallust, in his short account of the first conspiracy, should not have implicated cæsar was a matter of course,[ ] as he wrote altogether in cæsar's interest. that cicero should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. he did not wish to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy. throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. he had to pass over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. it is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the republic would be horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the crown: there were too many of them for horror. if cæsar and crassus could be got to keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add them to his list of enemies. livy is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy intended to restore the ejected consuls, and to kill the consuls who had been established in their place. but the book in which this was written is lost, and we have only the epitome, or heading of the book, of which we know that it was not written by livy.[ ] suetonius, who got his story not improbably from livy, tells us that cæsar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with crassus;[ ] and he goes on to say that cicero, writing subsequently to one axius, declared that "cæsar had attempted in his consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to grasp in his Ædileship" the year in question. there is, however, no such letter extant. asconius, who, as i have said before, wrote in the time of tiberius, declares that cicero in his lost oration, "in toga candida," accused crassus of having been the author of the conspiracy. such is the information we have; and if we elect to believe that cæsar was then joined with catiline, we must be guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence.[ ] as i have said before, conspiracies had been very rife. to cæsar it was no doubt becoming manifest that the republic, with its oligarchs, must fall. subsequently it did fall, and he was--i will not say the conspirator, nor will i judge the question by saying that he was the traitor; but the man of power who, having the legions of the republic in his hands, used them against the republic. i can well understand that he should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of catiline, and then have backed out of it when he found he could not trust those who were joined with him. this conspiracy failed. one man omitted to give a signal at one time, and another at another. the senate was to have been slaughtered; the two consuls, cotta and torquatus, murdered, and the two ex-consuls, sulla and autronius, replaced. though all the details seem to have been known to the consuls, catiline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for the punishment of the conspirators. the second conspiracy was attempted in the consulship of cicero, b.c. , two years after the first. catiline had struggled for the consulship, and had failed. again there would be no province, no plunder, no power. this interference, as it must have seemed to him, with his peculiar privileges, had all come from cicero. cicero was the busybody who was attempting to stop the order of things which had, to his thinking, been specially ordained by all the gods for the sustenance of one so well born, and at the same time so poor, as himself. there was a vulgar meddling about it--all coming from the violent virtue of a consul whose father had been a nobody at arpinum--which was well calculated to drive catiline into madness. so he went to work and got together in rome a body of men as discontented and almost as nobly born as himself, and in the country north of rome an army of rebels, and began his operations with very little secrecy. in all the story the most remarkable feature is the openness with which many of the details of the conspiracy were carried on. the existence of the rebel army was known; it was known that catiline was the leader; the causes of his disaffection were known; his comrades in guilt were known when any special act was intended, such as might be the murder of the consul or the firing of the city, secret plots were concocted in abundance. but the grand fact of a wide-spread conspiracy could go naked in rome, and not even a cicero dare to meddle with it. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] as to this second conspiracy, the conspiracy with which sallust and cicero have made us so well acquainted, there is no sufficient ground for asserting that cæsar was concerned in it.[ ] that he was greatly concerned in the treatment of the conspirators there is no doubt. he had probably learned to appreciate the rage, the madness, the impotence of catiline at their proper worth. he too, i think, must have looked upon cicero as a meddling, over-virtuous busybody; as did even pompey when he returned from the east. what practical use could there be in such a man at such a time--in one who really believed in honesty, who thought of liberty and the republic, and imagined that he could set the world right by talking? such must have been the feeling of cæsar, who had both experience and foresight to tell him that rome wanted and must have a master. he probably had patriotism enough to feel that he, if he could acquire the mastership, would do something beyond robbery--would not satisfy himself with cutting the throats of all his enemies, and feeding his supporters with the property of his opponents. but cicero was impracticable--unless, indeed, he could be so flattered as to be made useful. it was thus, i think, that cæsar regarded cicero, and thus that he induced pompey to regard him. but now, in the year of his consulship, cicero had really talked himself into power, and for this year his virtue must be allowed to have its full way. he did so much in this year, was so really efficacious in restraining for a time the greed and violence of the aristocracy, that it is not surprising that he was taught to believe in himself. there were, too, enough of others anxious for the republic to bolster him up in his own belief. there was that cornelius in whose defence cicero made the two great speeches which have been unfortunately lost, and there was cato, and up to this time there was pompey, as cicero thought. cicero, till he found himself candidate for the consulship, had contented himself with undertaking separate cases, in which, no doubt, politics were concerned, but which were not exclusively political. he had advocated the employment of pompey in the east, and had defended cornelius. he was well acquainted with the history of the republic; but he had probably never asked himself the question whether it was in mortal peril, and if so, whether it might possibly be saved. in his consulship he did do so; and, seeing less of the republic than we can see now, told himself that it was possible. the stories told to us of catiline's conspiracy by sallust and by cicero are so little conflicting that we can trust them both. trusting them both, we are justified in believing that we know the truth. we are here concerned only with the part which cicero took. nothing, i think, which cicero says is contradicted by sallust, though of much that cicero certainly did sallust is silent. sallust damns him, but only by faint praise. we may, therefore, take the account of the plot as given by cicero himself as verified: indeed, i am not aware that any of cicero's facts have been questioned. sallust declares that catiline's attempt was popular in rome generally.[ ] this, i think, must be taken as showing simply that revolution and conspiracy were in themselves popular: that, as a condition of things around him such as existed in rome, a plotter of state plots should be able to collect a body of followers, was a thing of course; that there were many citizens who would not work, and who expected to live in luxury on public or private plunder, is certain. when the conspiracy was first announced in the senate, catiline had an army collected; but we have no proof that the hearts of the inhabitants of rome generally were with the conspirators. on the other hand, we have proof, in the unparalleled devotion shown by the citizens to cicero after the conspiracy was quelled, that their hearts were with him. the populace, fond of change, liked a disturbance; but there is nothing to show that catiline was ever beloved as had been the gracchi, and other tribunes of the people who came after them. catiline, in the autumn of the year b.c. , had arranged the outside circumstances of his conspiracy, knowing that he would, for the third time, be unsuccessful in his canvass for the consulship. that cicero with other senators should be murdered seems to have been their first object, and that then the consulship should be seized by force. on the st of october cicero made his first report to the senate as to the conspiracy, and called upon catiline for his answer. it was then that catiline made his famous reply: "that the republic had two bodies, of which one was weak and had a bad head"--meaning the aristocracy, with cicero as its chief--"and the other strong, but without any head," meaning the people; "but that as for himself, so well had the people deserved of him, that as long as he lived a head should be forth-coming."[ ] then, at that sitting, the senate decreed, in the usual formula, "that the consuls were to take care that the republic did not suffer."[ ] on the d of october, the new consuls, silanus and murena, were elected. on the d, catiline was regularly accused of conspiracy by paulus lepidus, a young nobleman, in conformity with a law which had been enacted fifty-five years earlier, "de vi publica," as to violence applied to the state. two days afterward it was officially reported that manlius--or mallius, as he seems to have been generally called--catiline's lieutenant, had openly taken up arms in etruria. the th had been fixed by the conspirators for the murder of cicero and the other senators. that all this was to be, and was so arranged by catiline, had been declared in the senate by cicero himself on that day when catiline told them of the two bodies and the two heads. cicero, with his intelligence, ingenuity, and industry, had learned every detail. there was one curius among the conspirators, a fair specimen of the young roman nobleman of the day, who told it all to his mistress fulvia, and she carried the information to the consul. it is all narrated with fair dramatic accuracy in ben jonson's dull play, though he has attributed to cæsar a share in the plot, for doing which he had no authority. cicero, on that sitting in the senate, had been specially anxious to make catiline understand that he knew privately every circumstance of the plot. throughout the whole conspiracy his object was not to take catiline, but to drive him out of rome. if the people could be stirred up to kill him in their wrath, that might be well; in that way there might be an end of all the trouble. but if that did not come to pass, then it would be best to make the city unbearable to the conspirators. if they could be driven out, they must either take themselves to foreign parts and be dispersed, or must else fight and assuredly be conquered. cicero himself was never blood-thirsty, but the necessity was strong upon him of ridding the republic from these blood-thirsty men. the scheme for destroying cicero and the senators on the th of october had proved abortive. on the th of the next month a meeting was held in the house of one marcus porcius læca, at which a plot was arranged for the killing of cicero the next day--for the killing of cicero alone--he having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their path. two knights were told off for the service, named vargunteius and cornelius. these, after the roman fashion, were to make their way early on the following morning into the consul's bedroom for the ostensible purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they were to slay him. all this, however, was told to cicero, and the two knights, when they came, were refused admittance. if cicero had been a man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a wretched life at this period. as far as i can judge of his words and doings throughout his life, he was not harassed by constitutional timidity. he feared to disgrace his name, to lower his authority, to become small in the eyes of men, to make political mistakes, to do that which might turn against him. in much of this there was a falling off from that dignity which, if we do not often find it in a man, we can all of us imagine; but of personal dread as to his own skin, as to his own life, there was very little. at this time, when, as he knew well, many men with many weapons in their hands, men who were altogether unscrupulous, were in search for his blood he never seems to have trembled. but all rome trembled--even according to sallust. i have already shown how he declares in one part of his narrative that the common people as a body were with catiline, and have attempted to explain what was meant by that expression. in another, in an earlier chapter, he says "that the state," meaning the city, "was disturbed by all this, and its appearance changed.[ ] instead of the joy and ease which had lately prevailed, the effect of the long peace, a sudden sadness fell upon every one." i quote the passage because that other passage has been taken as proving the popularity of catiline. there can, i think, be no doubt that the population of rome was, as a body, afraid of catiline. the city was to be burnt down, the consuls and the senate were to be murdered, debts were to be wiped out, slaves were probably to be encouraged against their masters. the "permota civitas" and the "cuncta plebes," of which sallust speaks, mean that all the "householders" were disturbed, and that all the "roughs" were eager with revolutionary hopes. on the th of november, the day after that on which the consul was to have been murdered in his own house, he called a special meeting of the senate in the temple of jupiter stator. the senate in cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples. of these none had a higher reputation than that of the special jupiter who is held to have befriended romulus in his fight with the sabines. here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all english school-boys have known for its "quousque tandem abutere, catilina, patientia nostra." whether it be from the awe which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandly in my ears, or whether true critical judgment has since approved to me the real weight of the words, they certainly do contain for my intelligence an expression of almost divine indignation. then there follows a string of questions, which to translate would be vain, which to quote, for those who read the language, is surely unnecessary. it is said to have been a fault with cicero that in his speeches he runs too much into that vein of wrathful interrogation which undoubtedly palls upon us in english oratory when frequent resort is made to it. it seems to be too easy, and to contain too little of argument. it was this, probably, of which his contemporaries complained when they declared him to be florid, redundant, and asiatic in his style.[ ] this questioning runs through nearly the whole speech, but the reader cannot fail to acknowledge its efficacy in reference to the matter in hand. catiline was sitting there himself in the senate, and the questions were for the most part addressed to him. we can see him now, a man of large frame, with bold, glaring eyes, looking in his wrath as though he were hardly able to keep his hands from the consul's throat, even there in the senate. though he knew that this attack was to be made on him, he had stalked into the temple and seated himself in a place of honor, among the benches intended for those who had been consuls. when there, no one spoke to him, no one saluted him. the consular senators shrunk away, leaving their places of privilege. even his brother-conspirators, of whom many were present, did not dare to recognize him. lentulus was no doubt there, and cethegus, and two of the sullan family, and cassius longinus, and autronius, and læca, and curius. all of them were or had been conspirators in the same cause. cæsar was there too, and crassus. a fellow conspirator with catiline would probably be a senator. cicero knew them all. we cannot say that in this matter cæsar was guilty, but cicero, no doubt, felt that cæsar's heart was with catiline. it was his present task so to thunder with his eloquence that he should turn these bitter enemies into seeming friends--to drive catiline from out of the midst of them, so that it should seem that he had been expelled by those who were in truth his brother-conspirators; and this it was that he did. he declared the nature of the plot, and boldly said that, such being the facts, catiline deserved death. "if," he says, "i should order you to be taken and killed, believe me i should be blamed rather for my delay in doing so than for my cruelty." he spoke throughout as though all the power were in his own hands, either to strike or to forbear. but it was his object to drive him out and not to kill him. "go," he said; "that camp of yours and mallius, your lieutenant, are too long without you. take your friends with you. take them all. cleanse the city of your presence. when its walls are between you and me then i shall feel myself secure. among us here you may no longer stir yourself. i will not have it--i will not endure it. if i were to suffer you to be killed, your followers in the conspiracy would remain here; but if you go out, as i desire you, this cesspool of filth will drain itself off from out the city. do you hesitate to do at my command that which you would fain do yourself? the consul requires an enemy to depart from the city. do you ask me whether you are to go into exile? i do not order it; but if you ask my counsel, i advise it." exile was the severest punishment known by the roman law, as applicable to a citizen, and such a punishment it was in the power of no consul or other officer of state to inflict. though he had taken upon himself the duty of protecting the republic, still he could not condemn a citizen. it was to the moral effect of his words that he must trust: "non jubeo, sed si me consulis, suadeo." catiline heard him to the end, and then, muttering a curse, left the senate, and went out of the city. sallust tells us that he threatened to extinguish, in the midst of the general ruin he would create, the flames prepared for his own destruction. sallust, however, was not present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period of catiline's career. cicero tells us expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that catiline was struck dumb.[ ] of this first catiline oration sallust says, that "marcus tullius the consul, either fearing the presence of the man, or stirred to anger, made a brilliant speech, very useful to the republic."[ ] this, coming from an enemy, is stronger testimony to the truth of the story told by cicero, than would have been any vehement praise from the pen of a friend. catiline met some of his colleagues the same night. they were the very men who as senators had been present at his confusion, and to them he declared his purpose of going. there was nothing to be done in the city by him. the consul was not to be reached. catiline himself was too closely watched for personal action. he would join the army at fæsulæ and then return and burn the city. his friends, lentulus, cethegus, and the others, were to remain and be ready for fire and slaughter as soon as catiline with his army should appear before the walls. he went, and cicero had been so far successful. but these men, lentulus, cethegus, and the other senators, though they had not dared to sit near catiline in the senate, or to speak a word to him, went about their work zealously when evening had come. a report was spread among the people that the consul had taken upon himself to drive a citizen into exile. catiline, the ill-used catiline--catiline, the friend of the people, had, they said, gone to marseilles in order that he might escape the fury of the tyrant consul. in this we see the jealousy of romans as to the infliction of any punishment by an individual officer on a citizen. it was with a full knowledge of what was likely to come that cicero had ironically declared that he only advised the conspirator to go. the feeling was so strong that on the next morning he found himself compelled to address the people on the subject. then was uttered the second catiline oration, which was spoken in the open air to the citizens at large. here too there are words, among those with which he began his speech, almost as familiar to us as the "quousque tandem"--"abiit; excessit; evasit; erupit!" this catiline, says cicero, this pest of his country, raging in his madness, i have turned out of the city. if you like it better, i have expelled him by my very words. "he has departed. he has fled. he has gone out from among us. he has broken away!" "i have made this conspiracy plain to you all, as i said i would, unless indeed there may be some one here who does not believe that the friends of catiline will do the same as catiline would have done. but there is no time now for soft measures. we have to be strong-handed. there is one thing i will do for these men. let them too go out, so that catiline shall not pine for them. i will show them the road. he has gone by the via aurelia. if they will hurry they may catch him before night." he implies by this that the story about marseilles was false. then he speaks with irony of himself as that violent consul who could drive citizens into exile by the very breath of his mouth. "ego vehemens ille consul qui verbo cives in exsilium ejicio." so he goes on, in truth defending himself, but leading them with him to take part in the accusation which he intends to bring against the chief conspirators who remain in the city. if they too will go, they may go unscathed; if they choose to remain, let them look to themselves. through it all we can see there is but one thing that he fears--that he shall be driven by the exigencies of the occasion to take some steps which shall afterward be judged not to have been strictly legal, and which shall put him into the power of his enemies when the day of his ascendency shall have passed away. it crops out repeatedly in these speeches.[ ] he seems to be aware that some over-strong measure will be forced upon him for which he alone will be held responsible. if he can only avoid that, he will fear nothing else; if he cannot avoid it, he will encounter even that danger. his foresight was wonderfully accurate. the strong hand was used, and the punishment came upon him, not from his enemies but from his friends, almost to the bursting of his heart. though the senate had decreed that the consuls were to see that the republic should take no harm, and though it was presumed that extraordinary power was thereby conferred, it is evident that no power was conferred of inflicting punishment. antony, as cicero's colleague, was nothing. the authority, the responsibility, the action were, and were intended, to remain with cicero. he could not legally banish any one. it was only too evident that there must be much slaughter. there was the army of rebels with which it would be necessary to fight. let them go, these rebels within the city, and either join the army and get themselves killed, or else disappear, whither they would, among the provinces. the object of this second catiline oration, spoken to the people, was to convince the remaining conspirators that they had better go, and to teach the citizens generally that in giving such counsel he was "banishing" no one. as far as the citizens were concerned he was successful; but he did not induce the friends of catiline to follow their chief. this took place on the th of november. after the oration the senate met again, and declared catiline and mallius to be public enemies. twenty-four days elapsed before the third speech was spoken--twenty-four days during which rome must have been in a state of very great fever. cicero was actively engaged in unravelling the plots the details of which were still being carried on within the city; but nevertheless he made that speech for murena before the judicial bench of which i gave an account in the last chapter, and also probably another for piso, of which we have nothing left. we cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases. it was only on october st that murena had been elected consul; and yet on the th of november cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery. there is an ease, a playfulness, a softness, a drollery about this speech which appears to be almost incompatible with the stern, absorbing realities and great personal dangers in the midst of which he was placed; but the agility of his mind was such that there appears to have been no difficulty to him in these rapid changes. on the same day, the th of november, when cicero was defending murena, the plot was being carried on at the house of a certain roman lady named sempronia. it was she of whom sallust said that she danced better than became an honest woman. if we can believe sallust, she was steeped in luxury and vice. at her house a most vile project was hatched for introducing into rome rome's bitterest foreign foes. there were in the city at this time certain delegates from a people called the allobroges, who inhabited the lower part of savoy. the allobroges were of gaulish race. they were warlike, angry, and at the present moment peculiarly discontented with rome. there had been certain injuries, either real or presumed, respecting which these delegates had been sent to the city. there they had been delayed, and fobbed off with official replies which gave no satisfaction, and were supposed to be ready to do any evil possible to the republic. what if they could be got to go back suddenly to their homes, and bring a legion of red-haired gauls to assist the conspirators in burning down rome? a deputation from the delegates came to sempronia's house and there met the conspirators--lentulus and others. they entered freely into the project; but having, as was usual with foreign embassies at rome, a patron or peculiar friend of their own among the aristocracy, one fabius sanga by name, they thought it well to consult him.[ ] sanga, as a matter of course, told everything to our astute consul. then the matter was arranged with more than all the craft of a modern inspector of police. the allobroges were instructed to lend themselves to the device, stipulating, however, that they should have a written signed authority which they could show to their rulers at home. the written signed documents were given to them. with certain conspirators to help them out of the city they were sent upon their way. at a bridge over the tiber they were stopped by cicero's emissaries. there was a feigned fight, but no blood was shed; and the ambassadors with their letters were brought home to the consul. we are astonished at the marvellous folly of these conspirators, so that we could hardly have believed the story had it not been told alike by cicero and by sallust, and had not allusion to the details been common among later writers.[ ] the ambassadors were taken at the milvian bridge early on the morning of the d of december, and in the course of that day cicero sent for the leaders of the conspiracy to come to him. lentulus, who was then prætor, cethegus, gabinius, and statilius all obeyed the summons. they did not know what had occurred, and probably thought that their best hope of safety lay in compliance. cæparius was also sent for, but he for the moment escaped--in vain; for before two days were over he had been taken and put to death with the others. cicero again called the senate together, and entered the meeting leading the guilty prætor by the hand. here the offenders were examined and practically acknowledged their guilt. the proofs against them were so convincing that they could not deny it. there were the signatures of some; arms were found hidden in the house of another. the senate decreed that the men should be kept in durance till some decision as to their fate should have been pronounced. each of them was then given in custody to some noble roman of the day. lentulus the prætor was confided to the keeping of a censor, cethegus to cornificius, statilius to cæsar, gabinius to crassus, and cæparius, who had not fled very far before he was taken, to one terentius. we can imagine how willingly would crassus and cæsar have let their men go, had they dared. but cicero was in the ascendant. cæsar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour had not yet come for putting an end to the effete republic, and to have perceived also that catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work, must bide his time, and for the moment obey. that he was inclined to favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could befriend them only in accordance with the law. the allobroges were rewarded. the prætors in the city who had assisted cicero were thanked. to cicero himself a supplication was decreed. a supplication was, in its origin, a thanksgiving to the gods on account of a victory, but had come to be an honor shown to the general who had gained the victory. in this case it was simply a means of adding glory to cicero, and was peculiar, as hitherto the reward had only been conferred for military service.[ ] remembering that, we can understand what at the time must have been the feeling in rome as to the benefits conferred by the activity and patriotism of the consul. on the evening of the same day, the d of december, cicero again addressed the people, explaining to them what he had done, and what he had before explained in the senate. this was the third catiline speech, and for rapid narrative is perhaps surpassed by nothing that he ever spoke. he explains again the motives by which he had been actuated; and in doing so extols the courage, the sagacity, the activity of catiline, while he ridicules the folly and the fury of the others.[ ] had catiline remained, he says, we should have been forced to fight with him here in the city; but with lentulus the sleepy, and cassius the fat, and cethegus the mad, it has been comparatively easy to deal. it was on this account that he had got rid of him, knowing that their presence would do no harm. then he reminds the people of all that the gods have done for them, and addresses them in language which makes one feel that they did believe in their gods. it is one instance, one out of many which history and experience afford us, in which an honest and a good man has endeavored to use for salutary purposes a faith in which he has not himself participated. does the bishop of to-day, when he calls upon his clergy to pray for fine weather, believe that the almighty will change the ordained seasons, and cause his causes to be inoperative because farmers are anxious for their hay or for their wheat? but he feels that when men are in trouble it is well that they should hold communion with the powers of heaven. so much also cicero believed, and therefore spoke as he did on this occasion. as to his own religious views, i shall say something in a future chapter. then in a passage most beautiful for its language, though it is hardly in accordance with our idea of the manner in which a man should speak of himself, he explains his own ambition: "for all which, my fellow-countrymen, i ask for no other recompense, no ornament or honor, no monument but that this day may live in your memories. it is within your breasts that i would garner and keep fresh my triumph, my glory, the trophies of my exploits. no silent, voiceless statue, nothing which can be bestowed upon the worthless, can give me delight. only by your remembrance can my fortunes be nurtured--by your good words, by the records which you shall cause to be written, can they be strengthened and perpetuated. i do think that this day, the memory of which, i trust, may be eternal, will be famous in history because the city has been preserved, and because my consulship has been glorious."[ ] he ends the paragraph by an allusion to pompey, admitting pompey to a brotherhood of patriotism and praise. we shall see how pompey repaid him. how many things must have been astir in his mind when he spoke those words of pompey! in the next sentence he tells the people of his own danger. he has taken care of their safety; it is for them to take care of his.[ ] but they, these quirites, these roman citizens, these masters of the world, by whom everything was supposed to be governed, could take care of no one; certainly not of themselves, as certainly not of another. they could only vote, now this way and now that, as somebody might tell them, or more probably as somebody might pay them. pompey was coming home, and would soon be the favorite. cicero must have felt that he had deserved much of pompey, but was by no means sure that the debt of gratitude would be paid. now we come to the fourth or last catiline oration, which was made to the senate, convened on the th of december with the purpose of deciding the fate of the leading conspirators who were held in custody. we learn to what purport were three of the speeches made during this debate--those of cæsar and of cato and of cicero. the first two are given to us by sallust, but we can hardly think that we have the exact words. the cæsarean spirit which induced sallust to ignore altogether the words of cicero would have induced him to give his own representation of the other two, even though we were to suppose that he had been able to have them taken down by short-hand writers--cicero's words, we have no doubt, with such polishing as may have been added to the short-hand writers' notes by tiro, his slave and secretary. the three are compatible each with the other, and we are entitled to believe that we know the line of argument used by the three orators. silanus, one of the consuls elect, began the debate by counselling death. we may take it for granted that he had been persuaded by cicero to make this proposition. during the discussion he trembled at the consequences, and declared himself for an adjournment of their decision till they should have dealt with catiline. murena, the other consul elect, and catulus, the prince of the senate,[ ] spoke for death. tiberius nero, grandfather of tiberius the emperor, made that proposition for adjournment to which silanus gave way. then--or i should rather say in the course of the debate, for we do not know who else may have spoken--cæsar got up and made his proposition. his purpose was to save the victims, but he knew well that, with such a spirit abroad as that existing in the senate and the city, he could only do so not by absolving but by condemning. wicked as these men might be, abominably wicked it was, he said, for the senate to think of their own dignity rather than of the enormity of the crime. as they could not, he suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime, it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt with by the ordinary laws. it was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the idea that as senators they had no power of death. he did not dare to tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the danger skilfully before their eyes. "their crimes," he says again, "deserve worse than any torture you can inflict. but men generally recollect what comes last. when the punishment is severe, men will remember the severity rather than the crime." he argues all this extremely well. the speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words be the words of sallust or of cæsar. we may doubt, indeed, whether the general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the senators when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the lex porcia, by which the power of punishing a roman citizen, even under the laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. he ended by proposing that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate town. this would, i believe, have been quite as illegal as the death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. the senate, or the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their liberty, and compensated them for their property. cicero was determined that the men should die. they had not obeyed him by leaving the city, and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live also. he fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. he replied to cæsar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that death was necessary. for himself he had been told of his danger; "but if a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one who had reached the honors of the consulship it could not be premature; to no wise man could it be a misery." though his brother, though his wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "do you," he says, "conscript fathers, look to the safety of the republic. these are not the gracchi, nor saturninus, who are brought to you for judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death, but who still were not unpatriotic. these men had sworn to burn the city, to slay the senate, to force catiline upon you as a ruler. the proofs of this are in your own hands. it was for me, as your consul, to bring the facts before you. now it is for you, at once, before night, to decide what shall be done. the conspirators are very many; it is not only with these few that you are dealing. on whatever you decide, decide quickly. cæsar tells you of the sempronian law[ ]--the law, namely, forbidding the death of a roman citizen--but can he be regarded as a citizen who has been found in arms against the city?" then there is a fling at cæsar's assumed clemency, showing us that cæsar had already endeavored to make capital out of that virtue which he displayed afterward so signally at alesia and uxellodunum. then again he speaks of himself in words so grand that it is impossible but to sympathize with him: "let scipio's name be glorious--he by whose wisdom and valor hannibal was forced out of italy. let africanus be praised loudly, who destroyed carthage and numantia, the two cities which were most hostile to rome. let paulus be regarded as great--he whose triumph that great king perses adorned. let marius be held in undying honor, who twice saved italy from foreign yoke. let pompey be praised above all, whose noble deeds are as wide as the sun's course. perhaps among them there may be a spot, too, for me; unless, indeed, to win provinces to which we may take ourselves in exile is more than to guard that city to which the conquerors of provinces may return in safety." the last words of the orator also are fine: "therefore, conscript fathers, decide wisely and without fear. your own safety, and that of your wives and children, that of your hearths and altars, the temples of your gods, the homes contained in your city, your liberty, the welfare of italy and of the whole republic are at stake. it is for you to decide. in me you have a consul who will obey your decrees, and will see that they be made to prevail while the breath of life remains to him." cato then spoke advocating death, and the senate decreed that the men should die. cicero himself led lentulus down to the vaulted prison below, in which executioners were ready for the work, and the other four men were made to follow. a few minutes afterward, in the gleaming of the evening, when cicero was being led home by the applauding multitude, he was asked after the fate of the conspirators. he answered them but by one word "vixerunt"--there is said to have been a superstition with the romans as to all mention of death--"they have lived their lives." as to what was being done outside rome with the army of conspirators in etruria, it is not necessary for the biographer of cicero to say much. catiline fought, and died fighting. the conspiracy was then over. on the st of december cicero retired from his office, and catiline fell at the battle of pistoia on the th of january following, b.c. . a roman historian writing in the reign of tiberius has thought it worth his while to remind us that a great glory was added to cicero's consular year by the birth of augustus--him who afterward became augustus cæsar.[ ] had a roman been living now, he might be excused for saying that it was an honor to augustus to have been born in the year of cicero's consulship. chapter x. _cicero after his consulship._ the idea that the great consul had done illegally in putting citizens to death was not allowed to lie dormant even for a day. it must be remembered that a decree of the senate had no power as a law. the laws could be altered, or even a new law made, only by the people. such was the constitution of the republic. further on, when cicero will appeal as, in fact, on trial for the offence so alleged to have been committed, i shall have to discuss the matter; but the point was raised against him, even in the moment of his triumph, as he was leaving the consulship. the reiteration of his self-praise had created for him many enemies. it had turned friends against him, and had driven men even of his own party to ask themselves whether all this virtue was to be endured. when a man assumes to be more just than his neighbors there will be many ways found of throwing in a shell against him. it was customary for a consul when he vacated his office to make some valedictory speech. cicero was probably expected to take full advantage of the opportunity. from other words which have come from him, on other occasions but on the same subject, it would not be difficult to compose such a speech as he might have spoken. but there were those who were already sick of hearing him say that rome had been saved by his intelligence and courage. we can imagine what cæsar might have said among his friends of the expediency of putting down this self-laudatory consul. as it was, metellus nepos, one of the tribunes, forbade the retiring officer to do more than take the oath usual on leaving office, because he had illegally inflicted death upon roman citizens. metellus, as tribune, had the power of stopping any official proceeding. we hear from cicero himself that he was quite equal to the occasion. he swore, on the spur of the moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the form common to consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during his consulship rome had been saved by his work alone.[ ] we have the story only as it is told by cicero himself, who avers that the people accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[ ] that it was so we may, i think, take as true. there can be no doubt as to cicero's popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that metellus was acting in agreement with cæsar, and also in accord with the understood feelings of pompey, who was absent with his army in the east. this tribune had been till lately an officer under pompey, and went into office together with cæsar, who in that year became prætor. this, probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward formed the first triumvirate, b.c. . it was certainly now, in the year succeeding the consulship of cicero, that cæsar, as prætor, began his great career. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] it becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old forms of the republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to exercise power in rome or within the roman empire must obtain it and keep it by illegal means. he had probably adhered to catiline's first conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. it is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. when the conspiracy had been crushed by cicero, he had given his full assent to the crushing of it. we have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. but, through it all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. not that cicero was to him the same as cato, who with his stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless. cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist. it is in this light that cæsar seems to have regarded cicero as time went on; admiring him, liking him, willing to act with him if it might be possible, but not the less determined to put down all the attempts at patriotic republican virtue in which the orator delighted to indulge. mr. forsyth expresses an opinion that cæsar, till he crossed the rubicon after his ten years' fighting in gaul, had entertained no settled plan of overthrowing the constitution. probably not; nor even then. it may be doubted whether cæsar ever spoke to himself of overthrowing the constitution. he came gradually to see that power and wealth were to be obtained by violent action, and only by violent action. he had before him the examples of marius and sulla, both of whom had enjoyed power and had died in their beds. there was the example, also, of others who, walking unwarily in those perilous times, had been banished as was verres, or killed as was catiline. we can easily understand that he, with his great genius, should have acknowledged the need both of courage and caution. both were exercised when he consented to be absent from rome, and almost from italy, during the ten years of the gallic wars. but this, i think, is certain, that from the time in which his name appears prominent--from the period, namely, of the catiline conspiracy--he had determined not to overthrow the constitution, but so to carry himself, amid the great affairs of the day, as not to be overthrown himself. of what nature was the intercourse between him and pompey when pompey was still absent in the east we do not know; but we can hardly doubt that some understanding had begun to exist. of this cicero was probably aware. pompey was the man whom cicero chose to regard as his party-leader, not having himself been inured to the actual politics of rome early enough in life to put himself forward as the leader of his party. it had been necessary for him, as a "novus homo," to come forward and work as an advocate, and then as an administrative officer of the state, before he took up with politics. that this was so i have shown by quoting the opening words of his speech pro lege manilia. proud as he was of the doings of his consulship, he was still too new to his work to think that thus he could claim to stand first. nor did his ambition lead him in that direction. he desired personal praise rather than personal power. when in the last catiline oration to the people he speaks of the great men of the republic--of the two scipios, and of paulus Æmilius and of marius--he adds the name of pompey to these names; or gives, rather, to pompey greater glory than to any of them; "anteponatur omnibus pompeius." this was but a few days before metellus as tribune had stopped him in his speech--at the instigation, probably, of cæsar, and in furtherance of pompey's views. pompey and cæsar could agree, at any rate, in this--that they did not want such a one as cicero to interfere with them. all of which cicero himself perceived. the specially rich province of macedonia, which would have been his had he chosen to take it on quitting the consulship, he made over to antony--no doubt as a bribe, as with us one statesman may resign a special office to another to keep that other from kicking over the traces. then gaul became his province, as allotted--cisalpine gaul, as northern italy was then called; a province less rich in plunder and pay than macedonia. but cicero wanted no province, and had contrived that this should be confided to metellus celer, the brother of nepos, who, having been prætor when he himself was consul, was entitled to a government. this too was a political bribe. if courtesy to cæsar, if provinces given up here and there to antonys and metelluses, if flattery lavished on pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids. it all availed nothing. from this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery. the source of this was that pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all other romans. the first extant letter written by cicero after his consulship was addressed to pompey.[ ] pompey was still in the east, but had completed his campaigns against mithridates successfully. cicero begins by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his letter. then he tells the victorious general that there were some in rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories. it is supposed that he alluded here to cæsar; but, if so, he probably misunderstood the alliance which was already being formed between cæsar and pompey. after that comes the real object of the epistle. he had received letters from pompey congratulating him in very cold language as to the glories of his consulship. he had expected much more than that from the friend for whom he had done so much. still, he thanks his friend, explaining that the satisfaction really necessary to him was the feeling that he had behaved well to his friend. if his friend were less friendly to him in return, then would the balance of friendship be on his side. if pompey were not bound to him, cicero, by personal gratitude, still would he be bound by necessary co-operation in the service of the republic. but, lest pompey should misunderstand him, he declares that he had expected warmer language in reference to his consulship, which he believes to have been withheld by pompey lest offence should be given to some third person. by this he means cæsar, and those who were now joining themselves to cæsar. then he goes on to warn him as to the future: "nevertheless, when you return, you will find that my actions have been of such a nature that, even though you may loom larger than scipio, i shall be found worthy to be accepted as your lælius."[ ] infinite care had been given to the writing of this letter, and sharp had been the heart-burnings which dictated it. it was only by asserting that he, on his own part, was satisfied with his own fidelity as a friend, that cicero could express his dissatisfaction at pompey's coldness. it was only by continuing to lavish upon pompey such flattery as was contained in the reference to scipio, in which a touch of subtle irony is mixed with the flattery, that he could explain the nature of the praise which had, he thought, been due to himself. there is something that would have been abject in the nature of these expressions, had it not been roman in the excess of the adulation. but there is courage in the letter, too, when he tells his correspondent what he believes to have been the cause of the coldness of which he complains: "quod verere ne cujus animum offenderes"--"because you fear lest you should give offence to some one." but let me tell you, he goes on to say, that my consulship has been of such a nature that you, scipio, as you are, must admit me as your friend. in these words we find a key to the whole of cicero's connection with the man whom he recognizes as his political leader. he was always dissatisfied with pompey; always accusing pompey in his heart of ingratitude and insincerity; frequently speaking to atticus with bitter truth of the man's selfishness and incapacity, even of his cruelty and want of patriotism; nicknaming him because of his absurdities; declaring of him that he was minded to be a second sulla; but still clinging to him as the political friend and leader whom he was bound to follow. in their earlier years, when he could have known personally but little of pompey, because pompey was generally absent from rome, he had taken it into his head to love the man. he had been called "magnus;" he had been made consul long before the proper time; he had been successful on behalf of the republic, and so far patriotic. he had hitherto adhered to the fame of the republic. at any rate, cicero had accepted him, and could never afterward bring himself to be disloyal to the leader with whom he had professed to act. but the feeling evinced in this letter was carried on to the end. he had been, he was, he would be, true to his political connection with pompey; but of pompey's personal character to himself he had nothing but complaints to make. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we have two other letters written by cicero in this year, the first of which is in answer to one from metellus celer to him, also extant. metellus wrote to complain of the ill-treatment which he thought he had received from cicero in the senate, and from the senate generally. cicero writes back at much greater length to defend himself, and to prove that he had behaved as a most obliging friend to his correspondent, though he had received a gross affront from his correspondent's brother nepos. nepos had prevented him in that matter of the speech. it is hardly necessary to go into the question of this quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in rome. there was a counterplot going on at the moment--a plot on the behalf of the aristocracy for bringing back pompey to rome, not only with glory but with power, probably originating in a feeling that pompey would be a more congenial master than cicero. it was suggested that as pompey had been found good in all state emergencies--for putting down the pirates, for instance, and for conquering mithridates--he would be the man to contend in arms with catiline. catiline was killed before the matter could be brought to an issue, but still the conspiracy went on, based on the jealousy which was felt in regard to cicero. this man, who had declared so often that he had served his country, and who really had crushed the catilinarians by his industry and readiness, might, after all, be coming forward as another sulla, and looking to make himself master by dint of his virtues and his eloquence. the hopelessness of the condition of the republic may be recognized in the increasing conspiracies which were hatched on every side. metellus nepos was sent home from asia in aid of the conspiracy, and got himself made tribune, and stopped cicero's speech. in conjunction with cæsar, who was prætor, he proposed his new law for the calling of pompey to their aid. then there was a fracas between him and cæsar on the one side and cato on the other, in which cato at last was so far victorious that both cæsar and metellus were stopped in the performance of their official duties. cæsar was soon reinstated, but metellus nepos returned to pompey in the east, and nothing came of the conspiracy. it is only noticed here as evidence of the feeling which existed as to cicero in rome, and as explaining the irritation on both sides indicated in the correspondence between cicero and metellus celer, the brother of nepos,[ ] whom cicero had procured the government of gaul. the third letter from cicero in this year was to sextius, who was then acting as quæstor--or proquæstor, as cicero calls him--with antony as proconsul in macedonia. it is specially interesting as telling us that the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in rome from crassus for a sum amounting to about £ , of our money. there was probably no private mansion in rome of greater pretension. it had been owned by livius drusus, the tribune--a man of colossal fortune, as we are told by mommsen--who was murdered at the door of it thirty years before. it afterward passed into the hands of crassus the rich, and now became the property of cicero. we shall hear how it was destroyed during his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how restored to cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. the history of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of cicero's two successors in it, censorinus and statilius.[ ] it is interesting to know the sort of house which cicero felt to be suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his circumstances were. in making this purchase he is supposed to have abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. hence we may argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly circumstances. nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter to sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion--so much so that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any conspiracy. hence has come to us a story through aulus gellius, the compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that cicero was fain to borrow this money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor so conferred. aulus gellius collected his stories two centuries afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting. there is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any contemporary. in this letter to sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount he wanted at six per cent--twelve being the ordinary rate--and gives as a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to the state. very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed, but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in the midst of such wealth as prevailed at rome, had practised so widely and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must surely have taken money for his services. he himself has asserted that he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he spoke the truth. had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have heard of it from nearer witnesses than aulus gellius, if, as aulus gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. but because he tells his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! it will be found that all the stones most injurious to cicero's reputation have been produced in the same manner. his own words have been misinterpreted--either the purport of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke--and then accusations have been founded on them.[ ] another charge of dishonest practice was about this time made against cicero without a grain of evidence, though indeed the accusations so made, and insisted upon, apparently from a feeling that cicero cannot surely have been altogether clean when all others were so dirty, are too numerous to receive from each reader's judgment that indignant denial to which each is entitled. the biographer cannot but fear that when so much mud has been thrown some will stick, and therefore almost hesitates to tell of the mud, believing that no stain of this kind has been in truth deserved. it seems that antony, cicero's colleague in the consulship, who became proconsul in macedonia, had undertaken to pay some money to cicero. why the money was to be paid we do not know, but there are allusions in cicero's letters to atticus to one teucris (a trojan woman), and it seems that antony was designated by the nickname. teucris is very slow at paying his money, and cicero is in want of it. but perhaps it will be as well not to push the matter. he, antony, is to be tried for provincial peculation, and cicero declares that the case is so bad that he cannot defend his late colleague. hence have arisen two different suspicions: one that antony had agreed to make over to cicero a share of the macedonian plunder in requital of cicero's courtesy in giving up the province which had been allotted to himself; the second, that antony was to pay cicero for defending him. as to the former, cicero himself alludes to such a report as being common in macedonia, and as having been used by antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. but this has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the ground because of the second accusation. but in support of that there is no word of evidence,[ ] whereas the tenor of the story as told by cicero himself is against it. is it likely, would it be possible, that cicero should have begun his letter to atticus by complaining that he could not get from antony money wanted for a peculiar purpose--it was wanted for his new house--and have gone on in the same letter to say that this might be as well, after all, as he did not intend to perform the service for which the money was to be paid? the reader will remember that the accusation is based solely on cicero's own statement that antony was negligent in paying to him money that had been promised. in all these accusations the evidence against cicero, such as it is, is brought exclusively from cicero's own words. cicero did afterward defend this antony, as we learn from his speech pro domo suâ; but his change of purpose in that respect has nothing to do with the argument. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] we have two speeches extant made this year: one on behalf of p. sulla, nephew to the dictator; the other for archias the greek scholar and poet, who had been cicero's tutor and now claimed to be a citizen of rome. i have already given an extract from this letter, as showing the charm of words with which cicero could recommend the pursuit of literature to his hearers. the whole oration is a beautiful morsel of latinity, in which, however, strength of argument is lacking. cicero declares of archias that he was so eminent in literature that, if not a roman citizen, he ought to be made one. the result is not known, but the literary world believes that the citizenship was accorded to him.[ ] the speech on behalf of sulla was more important, but still not of much importance. this sulla, as may be remembered, had been chosen as consul with autronius, two years before the consulship of cicero, and he had then after his election been deposed for bribery, as had also autronius. l. aurelius cotta and l. manlius torquatus had been elected in their places. it has also been already explained that the two rejected consuls had on this account joined catiline in his first conspiracy. there can be no doubt that whether as consuls or as rejected consuls, and on that account conspirators, their purpose was to use their position as aristocrats for robbing the state. they were of the number of those to whom no other purpose was any longer possible. then there came catiline's second conspiracy--the conspiracy which cicero had crushed--and there naturally rose the question whether from time to time this or the other noble roman should not be accused of having joined it. many noble romans had no doubt joined besides those who had fallen fighting, or who had been executed in the dungeons. accusations became very rife. one vettius accused cæsar, the prætor; but cæsar, with that potentiality which was peculiar to him, caused vettius to be put into prison instead of going to prison himself. many were convicted and banished; among them porcius læca, vargunteius, servius sulla, the brother of him of whom we are now speaking, and autronius his colleague. in the trial of these men cicero took no part. he was specially invited by autronius, who was an old school-fellow, to defend him, but he refused; indeed, he gave evidence against autronius at the trial. but this publius sulla he did defend, and defended successfully. he was joined in the case with hortensius, and declared that as to the matter of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was concerned with political matters of that date.[ ] he, cicero, had known nothing about them. the part of the oration which most interests us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat unwisely made against himself personally by young torquatus, the son of him who had been raised to the consulship in the place of p. sulla. torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and had come from the municipality of arpinum, and had taunted him with being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in regard to lentulus and the other conspirators. he answers this very finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young torquatus, whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "do not," he says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely in the senate, to think more of services due to the people than of favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many. if this be king-like, then i confess that i am a king." sulla was acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he had been part and parcel with catiline in the conspiracy. it is trusted that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity and eloquence. at the end of this year, b.c. , there occurred a fracas in rome which was of itself but of little consequence to rome, and would have been of none to cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest trouble. this was the affair of clodius and of the mysteries of the bona dea, and i should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it would have been made to spring from some other source had that source not sufficed. i shall have to tell how it came to pass that cicero was sent into exile by means of the misconduct of clodius; but i shall have to show also that the misconduct of clodius was but the tool which was used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of cicero. this clodius, a young man of noble family and of debauched manners, as was usual with young men of noble families, dressed himself up as a woman, and made his way in among the ladies as they were performing certain religious rites in honor of the bona dea, or goddess cybele, a matron goddess so chaste in her manners that no male was admitted into her presence. it was specially understood that nothing appertaining to a man was to be seen on the occasion, not even the portrait of one; and it may possibly have been the case that clodius effected his entrance among the worshipping matrons on this occasion simply because his doing so was an outrage, and therefore exciting. another reason was alleged. the rites in question were annually held, now in the house of this matron and then of that, and during the occasion the very master of the house was excluded from his own premises. they were now being performed under the auspices of pompeia, the wife of julius cæsar, the daughter of one quintus pompeius, and it was alleged that clodius came among the women worshippers for the sake of carrying on an intrigue with cæsar's wife. this was highly improbable, as mr. forsyth has pointed out to us, and the idea was possibly used simply as an excuse to cæsar for divorcing a wife of whom he was weary. at any rate, when the scandal got abroad, he did divorce pompeia, alleging that it did not suit cæsar to have his wife suspected. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the story became known through the city, and early in january cicero wrote to atticus, telling him the facts: "you have probably heard that publius clodius, the son of appius, has been taken dressed in a woman's clothes in the house of caius cæsar, where sacrifice was being made for the people, and that he escaped by the aid of a female slave. you will be sorry to hear that it has given rise to a great scandal."[ ] a few days afterward cicero speaks of it again to atticus at greater length, and we learn that the matter had been taken up by the magistrates with the view of punishing clodius. cicero writes without any strong feeling of his own, explaining to his friend that he had been at first a very lycurgus in the affair, but that he is now tamed down.[ ] then there is a third letter in which cicero is indignant because certain men of whom he disapproves, the consul piso among the number[ ] are anxious to save this wicked young nobleman from the punishment due to him; whereas others of whom he approves cato among the number, are desirous of seeing justice done. but it was no affair special to cicero. shortly afterward he writes again to atticus as to the result of the trial--for a trial did take place--and explains to his friend how justice had failed. atticus had asked him how it had come to pass that he, cicero, had not exerted himself as he usually did.[ ] this letter, though there is matter enough in it of a serious kind, yet jests with the clodian affair so continually as to make us feel that he attributed no importance to it as regarded himself. he had exerted himself till hortensius made a mistake as to the selection of the judges. after that he had himself given evidence. an attempt was made to prove an alibi, but cicero came forward to swear that he had seen clodius on the very day in question. there had, too, been an exchange of repartee in the senate between himself and clodius after the acquittal, of which he gives the details to his correspondent with considerable self-satisfaction. the passage does not enhance our idea of the dignity of the senate, or of the power of roman raillery. it was known that clodius had been saved by the wholesale bribery of a large number of the judges. there had been twenty-five for condemning against thirty-one for acquittal.[ ] cicero in the catiline affair had used a phrase with frequency by which he boasted that he had "found out" this and "found out" that--"comperisse omnia." clodius, in the discussion before the trial, throws this in his teeth: "comperisse omnia criminabatur." this gave rise to ill-feeling, and hurt cicero much worse than the dishonor done to the bona dea. as for that, we may say that he and the senate and the judges cared personally very little, although there was no doubt a feeling that it was wise to awe men's minds by the preservation of religious respect. cicero had cared but little about the trial; but as he had been able to give evidence he had appeared as a witness, and enmity sprung from the words which were spoken both on one side and on the other. clodius was acquitted, which concerns us not at all, and concerns rome very little; but things had so come to pass at the trial that cicero had been very bitter, and that clodius had become his enemy. when a man was wanted, three years afterward, to take the lead in persecuting cicero, clodius was ready for the occasion. while the expediency of putting clodius on his trial was being discussed, pompey had returned from the east, and taken up his residence outside the city, because he was awaiting his triumph. the general, to whom it was given to march through the city with triumphal glory, was bound to make his first entrance after his victories with all his triumphal appendages, as though he was at that moment returning from the war with all his warlike spoils around him. the usage had obtained the strength of law, but the general was not on that account debarred from city employment during the interval. the city must be taken out to him instead of his coming into the city. pompey was so great on his return from his mithridatic victories that the senate went out to sit with him in the suburbs, as he could not sit with it within the walls. we find him taking part in these clodian discussions. cicero at once writes of him to athens with evident dissatisfaction. when questioned about clodius, pompey had answered with the grand air of aristocrat. crassus on this occasion, between whom and cicero there was never much friendship, took occasion to belaud the late great consul on account of his catiline successes. pompey, we are told, did not bear this well.[ ] crassus had probably intended to produce some such effect. then cicero had spoken in answer to the remarks of crassus, very glibly, no doubt, and had done his best to "show off" before pompey, his new listener.[ ] more than six years had passed since pompey could have heard him, and then cicero's voice had not become potential in the senate. cicero had praised pompey with all the eloquence in his power. "anteponatur omnibus pompeius," he had said, in the last catiline oration to the senate; and pompey, though he had not heard the words spoken, knew very well what had been said. such oratory was never lost upon those whom it most concerned the orator to make acquainted with it. but in return for all this praise, for that manilian oration which had helped to send him to the east, for continual loyalty, pompey had replied to cicero with coldness. he would now let pompey know what was his standing in rome. "if ever," he says to atticus, "i was strong with my grand rhythm, with my quick rhetorical passages, with enthusiasm, and with logic, i was so now. oh, the noise that i made on the occasion! you know what my voice can do. i need say no more about it, as surely you must have heard me away there in epirus." the reader, i trust, will have already a sufficiently vivid idea of cicero's character to understand the mingling of triumph and badinage, with a spark of disappointment, which is here expressed. "this pompey, though i have so true to him, has not thought much of me--of me, the great consul who saved rome! he has now heard what even crassus has been forced to say about me. he shall hear me too, me myself, and perhaps he will then know better." it was thus that cicero's mind was at work while he was turning his loud periods. pompey was sitting next to him listening, by no means admiring his admirer as that admirer expected to be admired. cicero had probably said to himself that they two together, pompey and cicero, might suffice to preserve the republic. pompey, not thinking much of the republic, was probably telling himself that he wanted no brother near the throne. when of two men the first thinks himself equal to the second, the second will generally feel himself to be superior to the first. pompey would have liked cicero better if his periods had not been so round nor his voice so powerful. not that pompey was distinctly desirous of any throne. his position at the moment was peculiar. he had brought back his victorious army from the east to brundisium, and had then disbanded his legions. i will quote here the opening words from one of mommsen's chapters:[ ] "when pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes toward home, he found, for the second time, the diadem at his feet." he says farther on, explaining why pompey did not lift the diadem: "the very peculiar temperament of pompeius naturally turned once more the scale. he was one of those men who are capable, it may be, of a crime, but not of insubordination." and again: "while in the capital all was preparation for receiving the new monarch, news came that pompeius, when barely landed at brundisium, had broken up his legions, and with a small escort had entered his journey to the capital. if it is a piece of good-fortune to gain a crown without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favor and every gift in vain." i must say here that, while i acknowledge the german historian's research and knowledge without any reserve, i cannot accept his deductions as to character. i do not believe that pompey found any diadem at his feet, or thought of any diadem, nor, according to my reading of roman history, had marius or had sulla; nor did cæsar. the first who thought of that perpetual rule--a rule to be perpetuated during the ruler's life, and to be handed down to his successors--was augustus. marius, violent, self-seeking, and uncontrollable, had tumbled into supreme power; and, had he not died, would have held it as long as he could, because it pleased his ambition for the moment. sulla, with a purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old roman idea of a temporary dictatorship. the old roman horror of a king was present to these romans, even after they had become kings. pompey, no doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the east thought that by his deeds he was first, easily first. whether consul year after year, as marius had been, or dictator, as sulla had been, or imperator, with a running command over all the romans, it was his idea still to adhere to the forms of the republic. mommsen, foreseeing--if an historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in the past--that a master was to come for the roman empire, and giving all his sympathies to the cæsarean idea, despises pompey because pompey would not pick up the diadem. no such idea ever entered pompey's head. after a while he "sullaturized"--was desirous of copying sulla--to use an excellent word which cicero coined. when he was successfully opposed by those whom he had thought inferior to himself, when he found that cæsar had got the better of him, and that a stronger body of romans went with cæsar than with him, then proscriptions, murder, confiscations, and the seizing of dictatorial power presented themselves to his angry mind, but of permanent despotic power there was, i think, no thought, nor, as far as i can read the records, had such an idea been fixed in cæsar's bosom. to carry on the old trade of prætor, consul, proconsul, and imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in the scramble, was, i think, cæsar's purpose. the rest grew upon him. as shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre, composed some lear or tempest--that has lived and will live forever, because of the genius which was unknown to himself--so did cæsar, by his genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. a much longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than a fact from their practice. this should be proved to us by our own loyalty to the word "monarch," when nothing can be farther removed from a monarchy than our own commonwealth. from those first breaches in republican practice which the historian florus dates back to the siege of numantia,[ ] b.c. , down far into the reign of augustus, it took a century and a quarter to make the people understand that there was no longer a republican form of government, and to produce a leader who could himself see that there was room for a despot. pompey had his triumph; but the same aristocratic airs which had annoyed cicero had offended others. he was shorn of his honors. only two days were allowed for his processions. he was irritated, jealous, and no doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem. cæsar saw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since called the first triumvirate. [sidenote: b.c. , , ætat. , .] the two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites. two discourses were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now lost--that, namely, to the people against metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had intended to say when metellus stopped him from speaking at the expiration of his consulship; the second, against clodius and curio, in the senate, in reference to the discreditable clodian affair. the fragments which we have of this contain those asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to atticus, and are not either instructive or amusing. but we learn from these fragments that clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he afterward carried out, to the great detriment of cicero's happiness. of the speeches extant on behalf of archias and p. sulla i have spoken already. we know of no others made during this period. we have one letter besides this to atticus, addressed to antony, his former colleague, which, like many of his letters, was written solely for the sake of popularity. during these years he lived no doubt splendidly as one of the great men of the greatest city in the world. he had his magnificent new mansion in rome, and his various villas, which were already becoming noted for their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. not only had he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in taking his brother quintus up with him. in the second of the two years, b.c. , quintus had been sent out as governor or proprætor to asia, having then nothing higher to reach than the consulship, which, however, he never attained. this step in the life of quintus has become famous by a letter which the elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter. so far all things seemed to have gone well with cicero. he was high in esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. but the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping him. he had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their malice. chapter xi. _the triumvirate._ [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] i know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal, as the first triumvirate. every school-boy, almost every school-girl, knows that there was a first triumvirate, and that it was a political combination made by three great romans of the day, julius cæsar, pompey the great, and crassus the rich, for managing rome among them. beyond this they know little, because there is little to know. that it was a conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as that of catiline, or guy faux, or napoleon iii., they do not know generally, because cæsar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent and heroic. but of the method in which this triumvirate was constructed, who has an idea? how was it first suggested, where, and by whom? what was it that the conspirators combined to do? there was no purpose of wholesale murder like that of catiline for destroying the senate, and of guy faux for blowing up the house of lords. there was no plot arranged for silencing a body of legislators like that of napoleon. in these scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for provinces and plunder, let us help each other. if we can manage to stick fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder. that, said with a wink by one of the triumvirate--cæsar, let us say--and assented to with a nod by pompey and crassus, was sufficient for the construction of such a conspiracy as that which i presume to have been hatched when the first triumvirate was formed.[ ] mommsen, who never speaks of a triumvirate under that name, except in his index,[ ] where he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the first triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having been made in (b.c. ) the year before the consulship of pompey and crassus. with that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with the life of cicero rather than with roman history, except to say that cæsar, who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had no personal hand in that of . though he had spent his early years in "harassing the aristocracy," as dean merivale tells us, he had not been of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with pompey and crassus. when this first triumvirate was formed, as the modern world generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and the great military leaders, as mommsen with greater, but not with perfect, accuracy describes it, cæsar no doubt had at his fingers' ends the history of past years. "the idea naturally occurred," says mommsen, "whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats, with their ally, crassus, on the one side, and pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. for pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."[ ] the democracy here means cæsar. cæsar during his whole life had been learning that no good could come to any one from an effete senate, or from republican forms which had lost all their salt. democracy was in vogue with him; not, as i think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal lord--the study of politics had never then reached to that height--but because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three, should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be more worthy than others. he had no conscience in the matter. money was to him nothing. another man's money was the same as his own--or better, if he could get hold of it. that doctrine taught by cicero that men are "ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. blood was to him nothing. a friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead. blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. pleasure was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible. to pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a friend's wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. but nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. of courage he had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then act as though there were none. nothing was wrong to him but what was injudicious. he could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would think it folly not to do so if to do so were expedient.[ ] in this coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people. therefore mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." crassus is called the ally of the democrats. it will be enough for us here to know that crassus had achieved his position in the senate by his enormous wealth, and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to cæsar, that he was admitted into the league. by means of his wealth he had risen to power and had conquered and killed spartacus, of the honor and glory of which pompey robbed him. then he had been made consul. when cæsar had gone as proprætor to spain, crassus had found the money. now cæsar had come back, and was hand and glove with crassus. when the division of the spoil came, some years afterward--the spoil won by the triumvirate--when cæsar had half perfected his grand achievements in gaul, and crassus had as yet been only a second time consul, he got himself to be sent into syria, that by conquering the parthians he might make himself equal to cæsar. we know how he and his son perished there, each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a roman--that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy--by destroying himself. than the life of crassus nothing could be more contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "for pompeius," says mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." as events turned out it became so, because cæsar was the stronger man of the two; but it is intelligible that at that time pompey should have felt that he could not lord it over the senate, as he wished to do, without aid from the democratic party. he had no well-defined views, but he wished to be the first man in rome. he regarded himself as still greatly superior to cæsar, who as yet had been no more than prætor, and at this time was being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same moment be in the city, as candidate for the consulship, and out of the city waiting for his triumph. pompey had triumphed three times, had been consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious east and west, and was called "magnus." he did not as yet fear to be overshadowed by cæsar.[ ] cicero was his bugbear. mommsen i believe to be right in eschewing the word "triumvirate." i know no mention of it by any roman writer as applied to this conspiracy, though tacitus, suetonius, and florus call by that name the later coalition of octavius, antony, and lepidus. the langhornes, in translating plutarch's life of crassus, speak of the triumvirate; but plutarch himself says that cæsar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the three men.[ ] paterculus and suetonius[ ] explain very clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term. there was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been used has been so far appropriate. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] cicero was the bugbear to them all. that he might have been one of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of the time can doubt. had he so chosen he might again have been a "real power in the state;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the republic. i do not wish it to be supposed that cicero received the overtures made to him with horror. conspiracies were too common for horror; and these conspirators were all our cicero's friends in one sense, though in another they might be his opponents. we may imagine that at first crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that pompey would fain have stood aloof in his jealousy. but cæsar knew that it was well to have cicero, if cicero was to be had. it was not only his eloquence which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no roman living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which his character had been founded. how valuable may character be made, if it can be employed under such conditions! to be believed because of your truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat; to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! the temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their naked ugliness. they certainly were not so presented to cicero by cæsar and his associates. the bait was held out to him, as it is daily to others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and powerful almost to persuade. give us the advantage of your character, and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. though our line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into it you will see that it is expedient. what other course is there? how else shall any wreck of the republic be preserved? would you be another cato, useless and impractical? join us, and save rome to some purpose. we can understand that in such way was the lure held out to cicero, as it has been to many a politician since. but when the politician takes the office offered to him--and the pay, though it be but that of a lord of the treasury--he must vote with his party. that cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time throw in his lot with cæsar and pompey is certain. to be of real use--not to be impractical, as was cato--to save his country and rise honestly in power and glory--not to be too straitlaced, not over-scrupulous--giving and taking a little, so that he might work to good purpose with others in harness--that was his idea of duty as a roman. to serve in accord with pompey was the first dream of his political life, and now pompey was in accord with cæsar. it was natural that he should doubt--natural that he should express his doubts. who should receive them but atticus, that "alter ego?" cicero doubted whether he should cling to pompey--as he did in every phase of his political life, till pompey had perished at the mouth of the nile. but at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as i think he always did. he tells his friend that cæsar had sent his confidential messenger, balbus, to sound him. the present question is whether he shall resist a certain agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by both pompey and cæsar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at his country villas, or boldly stay at rome and oppose the law. cæsar assures him that if he will come over to them, cæsar will be always true to him and pompey, and will do his best to bring crassus into the same frame of mind. then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue to him: "closest friendship with pompey--with cæsar also, should he wish it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. but that conclusion moves me to which i came in my third book."[ ] then he repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own consulship. the lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "should i doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of calliope, given to this third book of his. then he adds a line of homer, very excellent for the occasion:[ ] "no augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "but," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays. your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." and so the doubts are settled. now came on the question of the tribuneship of clodius, in reference to which i will quote a passage out of middleton, because the phrase which he uses exactly explains the purposes of cæsar and pompey. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] "clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself on cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose. his project was to get himself chosen tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people. but as all patricians were incapable of the tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a plebeian by the pretence of an adoption into a plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people. this case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms--wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions--so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than clodius. cæsar was at the bottom of it, and pompey secretly favored it--not that they intended to ruin cicero, but to keep him only under the lash--and if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet, and let clodius loose upon him."[ ] this, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in rome at this conjunction of affairs. it had been found impossible to draw cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. if he would live quietly at his antian or tusculan villa, amid his books and writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne with, even though he talked so much of his own consulate. but if he would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into the net, then he must be dealt with. cæsar seems to have respected cicero always, and even to have liked him; but he was not minded to put up with a "friend" in rome who from day to day abused all his projects. in defending antony, the macedonian proconsul who was condemned, cicero made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. cæsar, we are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused clodius to be accepted as a plebeian. in all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of mommsen's verdict on rome, which i have already quoted more than once: "on the roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." how had it come to pass that cæsar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether for good or for evil? cicero's description of what took place is as follows:[ ] "about the sixth hour of the day, when i was defending my colleague antony in court, i took occasion to complain of certain things which were being done in the republic, and which i thought to be injurious to my poor client. some dishonest persons carried my words to men in power"--meaning cæsar and pompey--"not, indeed, my own words, but words very different from mine. at the ninth hour on that very same day, you, clodius, were accepted as a plebeian." cæsar, having been given to understand that cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was determined not to put up with it. suetonius tells the same story with admirable simplicity. of suetonius it must be said that, if he had no sympathy for a patriot such as cicero, neither had he any desire to represent in rosy colors the despotism of a cæsar. he tells his stories simply as he has heard them. "cicero," says suetonius,[ ] "having at some trial complained of the state of the times, cæsar, on the very same day, at the ninth hour, passed clodius over from the patrician to the plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." how did it come to pass that cæsar, who, though consul at the time, had no recognized power of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? because the republic had come to the condition which the german historian has described. the conspiracy between cæsar and his subordinates had not been made for nothing. the reader will require to know why clodius should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have been fatal to cicero. the story has been partly told in the passage from middleton. a patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not be a tribune of the people. from the commencement of the tribunate, that office had been reserved for the plebeians. but a tribune had a power of introducing laws which exceeded that of any senator or any other official. "they had acquired the right," we are told in smith's dictionary of greek and roman antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia tributa, or to the senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the state;" and as matters stood at this time, no one tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. when such proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their votes whether it should or should not be law. the present object was to have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to cicero, which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. this could be best done by a tribune of the people. no other adequate tribune could be found--no plebeian so incensed against cicero as to be willing to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected. therefore it was that clodius was so anxious to be degraded. no patrician could become a tribune of the people; but a patrician might be adopted by a plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of his father--would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a son. for doing this in any case a law had to be passed--or, in other words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. but many conditions were necessary. the father intending to adopt must have no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a fitting age to personate a son--at any rate, must be younger than the father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly intended. all these conditions were broken. the pretended father, fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than clodius. the great claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the tribunate by a fraud. it was required by the general law that the sacred college should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. yet clodius was adopted, made a plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as tribune. in reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. if cæsar, who was already becoming a tyrant in his consulship, chose to make use of this means of silencing cicero, why not force clodius into the tribunate without so false and degrading a ceremony? but if, as was no doubt the case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? it requires no conjurer to tell us the reason. the outside hulls and husks remain when the rich fruit has gone. it was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of cicero's life consisted. there could have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the republic, when rome had been governed as it was during the consulship of cæsar; but cicero could still hope, though faintly, and still buoy himself up with remembrances of his own year of office. in carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as tribune, i have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which clodius entertained for cicero. this originated in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the bona dea, and led to the means for achieving cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. in the year b.c., when metellus celer and afranius were consuls, clodius was tried for insulting the bona dea, and the since so-called triumvirate was instituted. it has already been shown that cicero, not without many doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the forces that were so united. he seems to have passed the greater portion of this year in rome. one letter only was written from the country, to atticus, from his tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. he spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as to which, though he dreaded the coming together of cæsar and pompey and crassus--those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so detrimental to all who were concerned in them--he foresaw as yet but little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. he was by no means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote, and do not regret what we have lost. he composed a memoir of his consulate in greek, which he sent to atticus with an allusion to his own use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in that matter. atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in greek, on the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the road. he candidly tells atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas posidonius, the great greek critic of rhodes who had been invited by him, cicero, to read the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his correspondent's performance.[ ] he also wrote three books of a poem on his consulate, and sent them to atticus; of which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[ ] and four or five other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by quintilian, "o fortunatum natam me consule romam"--unless, indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the orator's, m. guéroult. previous to these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the prognostics of aratus. this is the second part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the phænomena, having been turned into latin verse by him when he was eighteen. of the prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by priscian, and a passage repeated by the author, also in his de divinatione. i think that cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. this is a long letter, full of advice, to his brother quintus, who had gone out in the previous year to govern the province of asia as proprætor. we may say that good advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could not have been given. it has been suggested that it was written as a companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which quintus composed for his brother's service when standing for his consulship. but i cannot admit the analogy. the composition attributed to quintus contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the state. this letter is adapted not only to the special position of quintus, but to the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that while the one brother praises the other, justly praises him, as i believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable, it points out faults--faults which will become fatal, if not amended--in language which is not only strong but unanswerable. the style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of cicero's letters generally--so as to suggest to the reader that it must have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the correspondent. hence has come the comparison between this and the treatise de petitione consulatus. i think that the gravity of the occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of style. cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own staff and to other romans around him; for quintus cicero, though he had been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious by the ordinary roman propensity to plunder his province "what is it that is required of you as a governor?"[ ] asks cicero. "that men should not be frightened by your journeys hither and thither--that they should not be eaten up by your extravagance--that they should not be disturbed by your coming among them--that there should be joy at your approach; when each city should think that its guardian angel, not a cruel master, had come upon it--when each house should feel that it entertained not a robber but a friend. practice has made you perfect in this. but it is not enough that you should exercise those good offices yourself, but that you should take care that every one of those who come with you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province, for the citizen of rome, and for the republic." i wish that i could give the letter entire--both in english, that all readers might know how grand are the precepts taught, and in latin, that they who understand the language might appreciate the beauty of the words--but i do not dare to fill my pages at such length. a little farther on he gives his idea of the duty of all those who have power over others--even over the dumb animals.[ ] "to me it seems that the duty of those in authority over others consists in making those who are under them as happy as the nature of things will allow. every one knows that you have acted on this principle since you first went to asia." this, i fear, must be taken as flattery, intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "this is not only his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle, that he should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the position of master!" let the reader look into this, and ask himself what precepts of christianity have ever surpassed it. then he points out that which he describes as the one great difficulty in the career of a roman provincial governor.[ ] the collectors of taxes, or "publicani," were of the equestrian order. this business of farming the taxes had been their rich privilege for at any rate more than a century, and as cicero says, farther on in his letter, it was impossible not to know with what hardship the greek allies would be treated by them when so many stories were current of their cruelty even in italy. were quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he would make them hostile not only to the republic but to himself also, and also to his brother marcus; for they were of the equestrian order, and specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. he implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the greeks to be submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. after all, where would the greeks of asia be if they had no roman master to afford them protection? he leaves the matter in the hands of his brother, with advice that he should do the best he can on one side and on the other. if possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be restrained; but let the ally be taught to understand that there may be usage in the world worse even than roman taxation. it would be hardly worth our while to allude to this part of cicero's advice, did it not give an insight into the mode in which rome taxed her subject people. after this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake of which we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "there is one thing," he says, "which i will never cease to din into your ears, because i could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting. all who come to us here"--all who come to rome from asia, that is--"when they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that you fail in temper. it is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have risen to the dignity of command." he will not, he goes on to say, trouble his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on the subject of anger; he is sure that quintus is well acquainted with all that. but is it not a pity, when all men say that nothing could be pleasanter than quintus cicero when in a good-humor, the same quintus should allow himself to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners should be regretted by all around him? "i cannot assert," he goes on to say, "that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change all that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have grown within him; yet i must tell you that if you cannot eschew this evil altogether--if you cannot protect yourself against the feeling of anger, yet you should prepare yourself to be ready for it when it comes, so that, when your very soul within you is hot with it, your tongue, at any rate, may be restrained." then toward the end of the letter there is a fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "since chance has thrown into my way the duties of official life in rome, and into yours that of administrating provincial government, if i, in the performance of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may be equally efficient." how grand, from an elder brother to a younger! "and remember this, that you and i have not to strive after some excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that which has been already won. if i should find myself in anything divided from you, i should desire no further advance in life. unless your deeds and your words go on all-fours with mine, i should feel that i had achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and i have encountered together." the brother at last was found to be a poor, envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety. but up to this time marcus was prepared to believe all good of quintus; and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see, with his brother's son, and with his own. in this he failed. he lived to know that he had failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. it was not, however, added to his misery to live to learn how little his son was to do to maintain the honor of his family. i find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in which i had read this epistle, "probably the most beautiful letter ever written." reading it again subsequently, i added another note, "the language altogether different from that of his ordinary letters." i do not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise or the more careful criticism. the letter was from the man's heart--true, affectionate, and full of anxious, brotherly duty--but written in studied language, befitting, as cicero thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] the year following was that of cæsar's first consulship, which he held in conjunction with bibulus, a man who was altogether opposed to him in thought, in character, and in action. so hostile were these two great officers to each other that the one attempted to undo whatever the other did. bibulus was elected by bribery, on behalf of the senate, in order that he might be a counterpoise to cæsar. but cæsar now was not only cæsar: he was cæsar, pompey, and crassus united, with all their dependents, all their clients, all their greedy hangers-on. to give this compact something of the strength of family union, pompey, who was now nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage cæsar's daughter julia, who was a quarter of a century his junior. but pompey was a man who could endear himself to women, and the opinion seems to be general that had not julia died in childbirth the friendship between the men would have been more lasting. but for cæsar's purposes the duration of this year and the next was enough. bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow of a consul, when opposed to such an enemy. he tried to use all the old forms of the republic with the object of stopping cæsar in his career; but cæsar only ridiculed him; and pompey, though we can imagine that he did not laugh much, did as cæsar would have him. bibulus was an augur, and observed the heavens when political man[oe]uvres were going on which he wished to stop. this was the old roman system for using religion as a drag upon progressive movements. no work of state could be carried on if the heavens were declared to be unpropitious; and an augur could always say that the heavens were unpropitious if he pleased. this was the recognized constitutional mode of obstruction, and was quite in accord with the feelings of the people. pompey alone, or crassus with him, would certainly have submitted to an augur; but cæsar was above augurs. whatever he chose to have carried he carried, with what approach he could to constitutional usage, but with whatever departure from constitutional usage he found to be necessary. what was the condition of the people of rome at the time it is difficult to learn from the conflicting statements of historians. that cicero had till lately been popular we know. we are told that bibulus was popular when he opposed cæsar. of personal popularity up to this time i doubt whether cæsar had achieved much. yet we learn that, when bibulus with cato and lucullus endeavored to carry out their constitutional threats, they were dragged and knocked about, and one of them nearly killed. of the illegality of cæsar's proceedings there can be no doubt. "the tribunitian veto was interposed; cæsar contented himself with disregarding it."[ ] this is quoted from the german historian, who intends to leave an impression that cæsar was great and wise in all that he did; and who tells us also of the "obstinate, weak creature bibulus," and of "the dogmatical fool cato." i doubt whether there was anything of true popular ferment, or that there was any commotion except that which was made by the "roughs" who had attached themselves for pay to cæsar or to pompey, or to crassus, or, as it might be, to bibulus and the other leaders. the violence did not amount to more than "nearly" killing this man or the other. some roman street fights were no doubt more bloody--as for instance that in which, seven years afterward, clodius was slaughtered by milo--but the blood was made to flow, not by the people, but by hired bravoes. the roman citizens of the day were, i think, very quiescent. neither pride nor misery stirred them much. cæsar, perceiving this, was aware that he might disregard bibulus and his auguries so long as he had a band of ruffians around him sufficient for the purposes of the hour. it was in order that he might thus prevail that the coalition had been made with pompey and crassus. his colleague bibulus, seeing how matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a farce of consular enactments. cæsar carried all his purposes, and the people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and talking of julius and cæsar as the two consuls of the year. it was in this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his irregular command in gaul. he was to be proconsul, not for one year, with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established period of five. he was to have the great province of cisalpine gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call italy, from the foot of the alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of florence. to this transalpine gaul was afterward added. the province so named, possessed at the time by the romans, was called "narbonensis," a country comparatively insignificant, running from the alps to the pyrenees along the mediterranean. the gaul or gallia of which cæsar speaks when, in the opening words of his commentary, he tells us that it was divided into three parts, was altogether beyond the roman province which was assigned to him. cæsar, when he undertook his government, can hardly have dreamed of subjecting to roman rule the vast territories which were then known as gallia, beyond the frontiers of the empire, and which we now call france. but he caused himself to be supported by an enormous army. there were stationed three legions on the italian side of the alps, and one on the other. these were all to be under his command for five years certain, and amounted to a force of not less than thirty thousand men. "as no troops could constitutionally be stationed in italy proper, the commander of the legions of northern italy and gaul," says mommsen, "dominated at the same time italy and rome for the next five years; and he who was master for five years was master for life."[ ] [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] such was the condition of rome during the second year of the triumvirate, in which cæsar was consul and prepared the way for the powers which he afterward exercised. cicero would not come to his call; and therefore, as we are told, clodius was let loose upon him. as he would not come to cæsar's call, it was necessary that he should be suppressed, and clodius, notwithstanding all constitutional difficulties--nay, impossibilities--was made tribune of the people. things had now so far advanced with a cæsar that a cicero who would not come to his call must be disposed of after some fashion. till we have thought much of it, often of it, till we have looked thoroughly into it, we find ourselves tempted to marvel at cicero's blindness. surely a man so gifted must have known enough of the state of rome to have been aware that there was no room left for one honest, patriotic, constitutional politician. was it not plain to him that if, "natus ad justitiam," he could not bring himself to serve with those who were intent on discarding the republic, he had better retire among his books, his busts, and his literary luxuries, and leave the government of the country to those who understood its people? and we are the more prone to say and to think all this because the man himself continually said it, and continually thought it. in one of the letters written early in the year[ ] to atticus from his villa at antium he declares very plainly how it is with him; and this, too, in a letter written in good-humor, not in a despondent frame of mind, in which he is able pleasantly to ridicule his enemy clodius, who it seems had expressed a wish to go on an embassy to tigranes, king of armenia. "do not think," he says, "that i am complaining of all this because i myself am desirous of being engaged in public affairs. even while it was mine to sit at the helm i was tired of the work; but now, when i am in truth driven out of the ship, when the rudder has not been thrown down but seized out of my hands, how should i take a pleasure in looking from the shore at the wrecks which these other pilots have made?" but the study of human nature tells us, and all experience, that men are unable to fathom their own desires, and fail to govern themselves by the wisdom which is at their fingers' ends. the retiring prime-minister cannot but hanker after the seals and the ribbons and the titles of office, even though his soul be able to rise above considerations of emolument, and there will creep into a man's mind an idea that, though reform of abuses from other sources may be impossible, if he were there once more the evil could at least be mitigated, might possibly be cured. so it was during this period of his life with cicero. he did believe that political justice exercised by himself, with such assistance as his eloquence would obtain for it, might be efficacious for preserving the republic, in spite of cæsar, and of pompey, and of crassus. he did not yet believe that these men would consent to such an outrage as his banishment. it must have been incredible to him that pompey should assent to it. when the blow came, it crushed him for the time. but he retricked his beams and struggled on to the end, as we shall see if we follow his life to the close. such was the intended purpose of the degradation of clodius. this, however, was not at once declared. it was said that clodius as tribune intended rather to oppose cæsar than to assist him. he at any rate chose that cicero should so believe and sent curio, a young man to whom cicero was attached, to visit the orator at his villa at antium and to declare these friendly purposes. according to the story told by cicero,[ ] clodius was prepared to oppose the triumvirate; and the other young men of rome, the _jeunesse dorée_, of which both curio and clodius were members, were said to be equally hostile to cæsar, pompey, and crassus, whose doings in opposition to the constitution were already evident enough; so that it suited cicero to believe that the rising aristocracy of rome would oppose them. but the aristocracy of rome, whether old or young, cared for nothing but its fish-ponds and its amusements. cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of rome, among his various villas--at tusculanum, at antium, and at formiæ. the purport of all his letters at this period is the same--to complain of the condition of the republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend pompey. though there be much of despondency in his tone, there is enough also of high spirit to make us feel that his literary aspirations are not out of place, though mingled with his political wailing. the time will soon come when his trust even in literature will fail him for a while. early in the year he declares that he would like to accept a mission to egypt, offered to him by cæsar and pompey, partly in order that he might for a while be quit of rome, and partly that romans might feel how ill they could do without him. he then uses for the first time, as far as i am aware, a line from the iliad,[ ] which is repeated by him again and again, in part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on him by his own high character among his fellow-citizens. "i would go to egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that i fear what the men of troy, and the trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would say of me." and what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the optimates," say? and what would cato say, whose opinion is more to me than that of them all? and how would history tell the story in future ages? but he would like to go to egypt, and he will wait and see. then, after various questions to atticus, comes that great one as to the augurship, of which so much has been made by cicero's enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possim." a few lines above he had been speaking of another lure, that of the mission to egypt. he discusses that with his friend, and then goes on in his half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing to catch me." nothing caught him. he was steadfast all through, accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his integrity or his honor could be soiled. that it was so was well known to history in the time of quintilian, whose testimony as to the "repudiatus vigintiviratus"--his refusal of a place among the twenty commissioners--has been already quoted.[ ] and yet biographers have written of him as of one willing to sell his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth, for a "pitiful bribe;" not that he did do so, not that he attempted to do it, but because in a half-joking letter to the friend of his bosom he tells his friend which way his tastes lay![ ] he had been thinking of writing a book on geography, and consulted atticus on the subject; but in one of his letters he tells his friend that he had abandoned the idea. the subject was too dull; and if he took one side in a dispute that was existing, he would be sure to fall under the lash of the critics on the other. he is enjoying his leisure at antium, and thinks it a much better place than rome. if the weather will not let him catch fish, at any rate he can count the waves. in all these letters cicero asks questions about his money and his private affairs; about the mending of a wall, perhaps, and adds something about his wife or daughter or son. he is going from antium to formiæ, but must return to antium by a certain date because tullia wants to see the games. then again he alludes to clodius. pompey had made a compact with clodius--so at least cicero had heard--that he, clodius, if elected for the tribunate, would do nothing to injure cicero. the assurance of such a compact had no doubt been spread about for the quieting of cicero; but no such compact had been intended to be kept, unless cicero would be amenable, would take some of the good things offered to him, or at any rate hold his peace. but cicero affects to hope that no such agreement may be kept. he is always nicknaming pompey, who during his eastern campaign had taken jerusalem, and who now parodies the africanus, the asiaticus, and the macedonicus of the scipios and metelluses. "if that hierosolymarian candidate for popularity does not keep his word with me, i shall be delighted. if that be his return for my speeches on his behalf"--the anteponatur omnibus pompeius, for instance--"i will play him such a turn of another kind that he shall remember it."[ ] he begins to know what the "triumvirate" is doing with the republic, but has not yet brought himself to suspect the blow that is to fall on himself. "they are going along very gayly," he says, "and do not make as much noise as one would have expected."[ ] if cato had been more on the alert, things would not have gone so quickly; but the dishonesty of others, who have allowed all the laws to be ignored, has been worse than cato. if we used to feel that the senate took too much on itself, what shall we say when that power has been transferred, not to the people, but to three utterly unscrupulous men? "they can make whom they will consuls, whom they will tribunes--so that they may hide the very goitre of vatinius under a priest's robe." for himself, cicero says, he will be contented to remain with his books, if only clodius will allow him; if not, he will defend himself.[ ] as for his country, he has done more for his country than has even been desired of him; and he thinks it to be better to leave the helm in the hands of pilots, however incompetent, than himself to steer when passengers are so thankless. then we find that he robs poor tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because it will be beneath his dignity to appear at them. he is always very anxious for his friend's letters, depending on them for news and for amusement. "my messenger will return at once," he says, in one; "therefore, though you are coming yourself very soon, send me a heavy letter, full not only of news but of your own ideas."[ ] in another: "cicero the little sends greeting," he says, in greek, "to titus the athenian"--that is, to titus pomponius atticus. the greek letters were probably traced by the child at his father's knee as cicero held the pen or the stylus. in another letter he declares that there, at formiæ, pompey's name of magnus is no more esteemed than that of dives belonging to crassus. in the next he calls pompey sampsiceramus. we learn from josephus that there was a lady afterward in the east in the time of vitellius, who was daughter of sampsigeramus, king of the emesi. it might probably be a royal family name.[ ] in choosing the absurd title, he is again laughing at his party leader. pompey had probably boasted of his doings with the sampsiceramus of the day and the priests of jerusalem. "when this sampsiceramus of ours finds how ill he is spoken of, he will rush headlong into revolution." he complains that he can do nothing at formiæ because of the visitors. no english poet was ever so interviewed by american admirers. they came at all hours, in numbers sufficient to fill a temple, let alone a gentleman's house. how can he write anything requiring leisure in such a condition as this? nevertheless he will attempt something. he goes on criticising all that is done in rome, especially what is done by pompey, who no doubt was vacillating sadly between cæsar, to whom he was bound, and bibulus, the other consul, to whom he ought to have been bound, as being naturally on the aristocratic side. he cannot for a moment keep his pen from public matters; nor, on the other hand, can he refrain from declaring that he will apply himself wholly, undividedly, to his literature. "therefore, oh my titus, let me settle down to these glorious occupations, and return to that which, if i had been wise, i never should have left."[ ] a day or two afterward, writing from the same place, he asks what arabarches is saying of him. arabarches is another name for pompey--this arabian chieftain. in the early summer of this year cicero returned to rome, probably in time to see atticus, who was then about to leave the city for his estates in epirus. we have a letter written by him to his friend on the journey, telling us that cæsar had made him two distinct offers, evidently with the view of getting rid of him, but in such a manner as would be gratifying to cicero himself.[ ] cæsar asks him to go with him to gaul as his lieutenant, or, if that will not suit him, to accept a "free legation for the sake of paying a vow." this latter was a kind of job by which roman senators got themselves sent forth on their private travels with all the appanages of a senator travelling on public business. we have his argument as to both. elsewhere he objects to a "libera legatio" as being a job.[ ] here he only points out that, though it enforce his absence from rome at a time disagreeable to him--just when his brother quintus would return--it would not give him the protection which he needs. though he were travelling about the world as a senator on some pretended embassy, he would still be open to the attacks of clodius. he would necessarily be absent, or he would not be in enjoyment of his privilege, but by his very absence he would find his position weakened; whereas, as cæsar's appointed lieutenant, he need not leave the city at once, and in that position he would be quite safe against all that clodius or other enemies could do to him.[ ] no indictment could be made against a roman while he was in the employment of the state. it must be remembered, too, on judging of these overtures, that both the one and the other--and indeed all the offers then made to him--were deemed to be highly honorable, as rome then existed. "the free legation"--the "libera legatio voti causa"--had no reference to parties. it was a job, no doubt, and, in the hands of the ordinary roman aristocrat, likely to be very onerous to the provincials among whom the privileged senator might travel; but it entailed no party adhesion. in this case it was intended only to guarantee the absence of a man who might be troublesome in rome. the other was the offer of genuine work in which politics were not at all concerned. such a position was accepted by quintus, our cicero's brother, and in performance of the duties which fell to him he incurred terrible danger, having been nearly destroyed by the gauls in his winter quarters among the nervii. labienus, who was cæsar's right-hand man in gaul, was of the same politics as cicero--so much so that when cæsar rebelled against the republic, labienus, true to the republic, would no longer fight on cæsar's side. it was open to cicero, without disloyalty, to accept the offer made to him; but with an insight into what was coming, of which he himself was hardly conscious, he could not bring himself to accept offers which in themselves were alluring, but which would seem in future times to have implied on his part an assent to the breaking up of the republic. [greek: aideomai trôas kai trôadas elkesipeplous.] what will be said of me in history by my citizens if i now do simply that which may best suit my own happiness? had he done so, pliny and the others would not have spoken of him as they have spoken, and it would not have been worth the while of modern lovers of cæsarism to write books against the one patriot of his age. during the remainder of this year, b.c. , cicero was at rome, and seems gradually to have become aware that a personal attack was to be made upon him. at the close of a long and remarkable letter written to his brother quintus in november, he explains the state of his own mind, showing us, who have now before us the future which was hidden from him, how greatly mistaken he was as to the results which were to be expected. he had been telling his brother how nearly cato had been murdered for calling pompey, in public, a dictator. then he goes on to describe his own condition.[ ] "you may see from this what is the state of the republic. as far as i am concerned, it seems that friends will not be wanting to defend me. they offer themselves in a wonderful way, and promise assistance. i feel great hope and still greater spirit--hope, which tells me that we shall be victors in the struggle; spirit, which bids me fear no casualty in the present state of public affairs."[ ] but the matter stands in this way: "if he"--that is, clodius--"should indict me in court, all italy would come to my defence, so that i should be acquitted with honor. should he attack me with open violence, i should have, i think, not only my own party but the world at large to stand by me. all men promise me their friends, their clients, their freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. our old body of aristocrats"--cato, bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. if any of these have heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of these kings"--the triumvirs. "pompey promises everything, and so does cæsar, whom i only trust so far as i can see them." even the triumvirs promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in pompey's honesty is all but gone. "the coming tribunes are my friends. the consuls of next year promise well." he was wofully mistaken. "we have excellent prætors, citizens alive to their duty. domitius, nigidius, memmius, and lentulus are specially trustworthy. the others are good men. you may therefore pluck up your courage and be confident." from this we perceive that he had already formed the idea that he might perhaps be required to fight for his position as a roman citizen; and it seems also that he understood the cause of the coming conflict. the intention was that he should be driven out of rome by personal enmity. nothing is said in any of these letters of the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that excuse was to be. he was to be charged by the patrician tribune with having put roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. but there arises at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified in what he, as consul, had done to lentulus and the others. would clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would cæsar assist clodius? or would pompey who still loomed to his eyes as the larger of the two men? he had ever been the friend of pompey, and pompey had promised him all manner of assistance; but he knew already that pompey would turn upon him. that rome should turn upon him--rome which he had preserved from the torches of catiline's conspirators--that he could not bring himself to believe! we must not pass over this long letter to quintus without observing that through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's mind becomes apparent. the severity of his administration had given offence. his punishments had been cruel. his letters had been rash, and his language violent. in short, we gather from the brother's testimony that quintus cicero was very ill-fitted to be the civil governor of a province. the only work which we have from cicero belonging to this year, except his letters, is the speech, or part of the speech, he made for lucius valerius flaccus. flaccus had been prætor when cicero was consul, and had done good service, in the eyes of his superior officers, in the matter of the catiline conspiracy. he had then gone to asia as governor, and, after the roman manner, had fleeced the province. that this was so there is no doubt. after his return he was accused, was defended by cicero, and was acquitted. macrobius tells us that cicero, by the happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though he was manifestly guilty. he adds also that cicero took care not to allow the joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[ ] there are parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently amusing even to us. he is very hard upon the greeks of asia, the class from which the witnesses against flaccus were taken. we know here in england that a spaniel, a wife, and a walnut-tree may be beaten with advantage. cicero says that in asia there is a proverb that a phrygian may be improved in the same way. "fiat experimentum in corpore vili." it is declared through asia that you should take a carian for your experiment. the "last of the mysians" is the well-known asiatic term for the lowest type of humanity. look through all the comedies, you will find the leading slave is a lydian. then he turns to these poor asiatics, and asks them whether any one can be expected to think well of them, when such is their own testimony of themselves! he attacks the jew, and speaks of the jewish religion as a superstition worthy in itself of no consideration. pompey had spared the gold in the temple of jerusalem, because he thought it wise to respect the religious prejudices of the people; but the gods themselves had shown, by subjecting the jews to the romans, how little the gods had regarded these idolatrous worshippers! such were the arguments used; and they prevailed with the judges--or jury, we should rather call them--to whom they were addressed. chapter xii. _his exile._ we now come to that period of cicero's life in which, by common consent of all who have hitherto written of him, he is supposed to have shown himself as least worthy of his high name. middleton, who certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns him. "it cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in the republic." morabin, the french biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its injustice and its follies. "cicéron était trop plein de son malheur pour donner entrée à de nouvelles espérances," he says. "il avait supporté ce malheur avec peu de courage," says another frenchman, m. du rozoir, in introducing us to the speeches which cicero made on his return. dean merivale declares that "he marred the grace of the concession in the eyes of posterity"--alluding to the concession made to popular feeling by his voluntary departure from rome, as will hereafter be described--"by the unmanly lamentations with which he accompanied it." mommsen, with a want of insight into character wonderful in an author who has so closely studied the history of the period, speaks of his exile as a punishment inflicted on a "man notoriously timid, and belonging to the class of political weather-cocks." "we now come," says mr. forsyth, "to the most melancholy period of cicero's life, melancholy not so much from its nature and the extent of the misfortunes which overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was thrown." mr. froude, as might be expected, uses language stronger than that of others, and tells us that "he retired to macedonia to pour out his sorrows and his resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman." we have to admit that modern historians and biographers have been united in accusing cicero of want of manliness during his exile. i propose--not, indeed, to wash the blackamoor white--but to show, if i can, that he was as white as others might be expected to have been in similar circumstances. we are, i think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of our country who have suffered either justly or unjustly under the laws. our annals are bloody, and many such have had to meet their death. they have done so generally with becoming manliness. even though they may have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been made green because they have fallen like brave men. sir thomas more, who was no rebel, died well, and crowned a good life by his manner of leaving it. thomas cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint. lady jane grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to the others. cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. the earl of essex, and raleigh, and strafford, and strafford's master showed no fear when the fatal moment came. in reading the fate of each, we sympathize with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. but there is, i think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to carry himself honorably as that in which he has to leave it. "venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus." no doubting now can be of avail. no moment is left for the display of conduct beyond this, which requires only decorum and a free use of the pulses to become in some degree glorious. the wretch from the lowest dregs of the people can achieve it with a halter round his neck. cicero had that moment also to face; and when it came he was as brave as the best englishman of them all. but of those i have named no one had an atticus to whom it had been the privilege of his life to open his very soul, in language so charming as to make it worth posterity's while to read it, to study it, to sift it, and to criticise it. wolsey made many plaints in his misery, but they have reached us in such forms of grace that they do not disparage him; but then he too had no atticus. shaftesbury and bolingbroke were dismissed ministers and doomed to live in exile, the latter for many years, and felt, no doubt, strongly their removal from the glare of public life to obscurity. we hear no complaint from them which can justify some future critic in saying that their wails were unworthy of a woman; but neither of them was capable of telling an atticus the thoughts of his mind as they rose. what other public man ever had an atticus to whom, in the sorrows which the ingratitude of friends had brought upon him, he could disclose every throb of his heart? i think that we are often at a loss, in our efforts at appreciation of character, and in the expressions of our opinion respecting it, to realize the meaning of courage and manliness. that sententious swedish queen, one of whose foolish maxims i have quoted, has said that cicero, though a coward, was capable of great actions, because she did not know what a coward was. to doubt--to tremble with anxiety--to vacillate hither and thither between this course and the other as to which may be the better--to complain within one's own breast that this or that thing has been an injustice--to hesitate within one's self, not quite knowing which way honor may require us to go--to be indignant even at fancied wrongs--to rise in wrath against another, and then, before the hour has passed, to turn that wrath against one's self--that is not to be a coward. to know what duty requires, and then to be deterred by fear of results--that is to be a coward; but the man of many scruples may be the greatest hero of them all. let the law of things be declared clearly so that the doubting mind shall no longer doubt, so that scruples may be laid at rest, so that the sense of justice may be satisfied--and he of whom i speak shall be ready to meet the world in arms against him. there are men, very useful in their way, who shall never doubt at all, but shall be ready, as the bull is ready, to encounter any obstacles that there may be before them. i will not say but that for the coarse purposes of the world they may not be the most efficacious, but i will not admit that they are therefore the bravest. the bull, who has no imagination to tell him what the obstacle may do to him, is not brave. he is brave who, fully understanding the potentiality of the obstacle, shall, for a sufficient purpose, move against it. this cicero always did. he braved the murderous anger of sulla when, as a young man, he thought it well to stop the greed of sulla's minions. he trusted himself amid the dangers prepared for him, when it was necessary that with extraordinary speed he should get together the evidence needed for the prosecution of verres. he was firm against all that catiline attempted for his destruction, and had courage enough for the responsibility when he thought it expedient to doom the friends of catiline to death. in defending milo, whether the cause were good or bad, he did not blench.[ ] he joined the republican army in macedonia though he distrusted pompey and his companions. when he thought that there was a hope for the republic, he sprung at antony with all the courage of a tigress protecting her young; and when all had failed and was rotten around him, when the republic had so fallen that he knew it to be gone--then he was able to give his neck to the swordsman with all the apparent indifference of life which was displayed by those countrymen of our own whom i have named. but why did he write so piteously when he was driven into exile? why, at any rate, did he turn upon his chosen friend and scold him, as though that friend had not done enough for friendship? why did he talk of suicide as though by that he might find the easiest way of escape? i hold it to be natural that a man should wail to himself under a sense, not simply of misfortune, but of misfortune coming to him from the injustice of others, and specially from the ingratitude of friends. afflictions which come to us from natural causes, such as sickness and physical pain, or from some chance such as the loss of our money by the breaking of a bank, an heroic man will bear without even inward complainings. but a sense of wrong done to him by friends will stir him, not by the misery inflicted, but because of the injustice; and that which he says to himself he will say to his wife, if his wife be to him a second self, or to his friend, if he have one so dear to him. the testimony by which the writers i have named have been led to treat cicero so severely has been found in the letters which he wrote during his exile; and of these letters all but one were addressed either to atticus or to his wife or to his brother.[ ] twenty-seven of them were to atticus. before he accepted a voluntary exile, as the best solution of the difficulty in which he was placed--for it was voluntary at first, as will be seen--he applied to the consul piso for aid, and for the same purpose visited pompey. so far he was a suppliant, but this he did in conformity with roman usage. in asking favor of a man in power there was held to be no disgrace, even though the favor asked were one improper to be granted, which was not the case with cicero. and he went about the forum in mourning--"sordidatus"--as was the custom with men on their trial. we cannot doubt that in each of these cases he acted with the advice of his friends. his conduct and his words after his return from exile betray exultation rather than despondency. it is from the letters which he wrote to atticus that he has been judged--from words boiling with indignation that such a one as he should have been surrendered by the rome that he had saved, by those friends to whom he had been so true to be trampled on by such a one as clodius! when a man has written words intended for the public ear, it is fair that he should bear the brunt of them, be it what it may. he has intended them for public effect, and if they are used against him he should not complain. but here the secret murmurings of the man's soul were sent forth to his choicest friend, with no idea that from them would he be judged by the "historians to come in years,"[ ] of whose good word he thought so much. "quid vero historiæ de nobis ad annos dc. prædicarint!" he says, to atticus. how is it that from them, after years, the merivales, mommsens, and froudes condemn their great brother in letters whose lightest utterances have been found worthy of so long a life! is there not an injustice in falling upon a man's private words, words when written intended only for privacy, and making them the basis of an accusation in which an illustrious man shall be arraigned forever as a coward? it is said that he was unjust even to atticus, accusing even atticus of lukewarmness. what if he did so--for an hour? is that an affair of ours? did atticus quarrel with him? let any reader of these words who has lived long enough to have an old friend, ask himself whether there has never been a moment of anger in his heart--of anger of which he has soon learned to recognize the injustice? he may not have written his anger, but then, perhaps, he has not had the pen of a cicero. let those who rebuke the unmanliness of cicero's wailings remember what were his sufferings. the story has yet to be told, but i may in rough words describe their nature. everything was to be taken from him: all that he had--his houses, his books, his pleasant gardens, his busts and pictures, his wide retinue of slaves, and possessions lordly as are those of our dukes and earls. he was driven out from italy and so driven that no place of delight could be open to him. sicily, where he had friends, athens, where he might have lived, were closed against him. he had to look where to live, and did live for a while on money borrowed from his friends. all the cherished occupations of his life were over for him--the law courts, the forum, the senate, and the crowded meetings of roman citizens hanging on his words. the circumstances of his exile separated him from his wife and children, so that he was alone. all this was assured to him for life, as far as roman law could assure it. let us think of the condition of some great and serviceable englishman in similar circumstances. let us suppose that sir robert peel had been impeached, and forced by some iniquitous sentence to live beyond the pale of civilization: that the houses at whitehall gardens and at drayton had been confiscated, dismantled, and levelled to the ground, and his rents and revenues made over to his enemies; that everything should have been done to destroy him by the country he had served, except the act of taking away that life which would thus have been made a burden to him. would not his case have been more piteous, a source of more righteous indignation, than that even of the mores or raleighs? he suffered under invectives in the house of commons, and we sympathized with him; but if some clodius of the day could have done this to him, should we have thought the worse of him had he opened his wounds to his wife, or to his brother, or to his friend of friends? had cicero put an end to his life in his exile, as he thought of doing, he would have been a second cato to admiring posterity, and some lucan with rolling verses would have told us narratives of his valor. the judges of to-day look back to his half-formed purposes in this direction as being an added evidence of the weakness of the man; but had he let himself blood and have perished in his bath, he would have been thought to have escaped from life as honorably as did junius brutus it is because he dared to live on that we are taught to think so little of him,--because he had antedated christianity so far as to feel when the moment came that such an escape was, in truth, unmanly. he doubted, and when the deed had not been done he expressed regret that he had allowed himself to live. but he did not do it,--as cato would have done, or brutus. it may be as well here to combat, in as few words as possible, the assertions which have been made that cicero, having begun life as a democrat, discarded his colors as soon as he had received from the people those honors for which he had sought popularity. they who have said so have taken their idea from the fact that, in much of his early forensic work, he spoke against the aristocratic party. he attacked sulla, through his favorite chrysogonus, in his defence of roscius amerinus. he afterward defended a woman of arretium in the spirit of antagonism to sulla. his accusation of verres was made on the same side in politics, and was carried on in opposition to hortensius and the oligarchs. he defended the tribune caius cornelius. then, when he became consul, he devoted himself to the destruction of catiline, who was joined with many, perhaps with cæsar's sympathy, in the conspiracy for the overthrow of the republic. cæsar soon became the leader of the democracy,--became rather what mommsen describes as "democracy" itself; and as cicero had defended the senate from catiline, and had refused to attach himself to cæsar, he is supposed to have turned from the political ideas of his youth, and to have become a conservative when conservative ideas suited his ambition. i will not accept the excuse put forward on his behalf, that the early speeches were made on the side of democracy because the exigencies of the occasion required him to so devote his energies as an advocate. no doubt he was an advocate, as are our barristers of to-day, and, as an advocate, supported this side or that; but we shall be wrong if we suppose that the roman "patronus" supplied his services under such inducements. with us a man goes into the profession of the law with the intention of making money, and takes the cases right and left, unless there be special circumstances which may debar him from doing so with honor. it is a point of etiquette with him to give his assistance, in turn, as he may be called on; so much so, that leading men are not unfrequently employed on one side simply that they may not be employed on the other side. it should not be urged on the part of cicero that, so actuated, he defended amerinus, a case in which he took part against the aristocrats, or defended publius sulla, in doing which he appeared on the side of the aristocracy. such a defence of his conduct would be misleading, and might be confuted. it would be confuted by those who suppose him to have been "notoriously a political trimmer," as mommsen has[ ] called him; or a "deserter," as he was described by dio cassius and by the pseudo-sallust,[ ] by showing that in fact he took up causes under the influence of strong personal motives such as rarely govern an english barrister. these motives were in many cases partly political; but they operated in such a manner as to give no guide to his political views. in defending sulla's nephew he was moved, as far as we know, solely by private motives. in defending amerinus he may be said to have attacked sulla. his object was to stamp out the still burning embers of sulla's cruelty; but not the less was he wedded to sulla's general views as to the restoration of the authority of the senate. in his early speeches, especially in that spoken against verres, he denounces the corruption of the senatorial judges; but at that very period of his life he again and again expresses his own belief in the glory and majesty of the senate. in accusing verres he accused the general corruption of rome's provincial governors; and as they were always past-consuls or past-prætors, and had been the elite of the aristocracy, he may be said so far to have taken the part of a democrat; but he had done so only so far as he had found himself bound by a sense of duty to put a stop to corruption. the venality of the judges and the rapacity of governors had been fit objects for his eloquence; but i deny that he can be fairly charged with having tampered with democracy because he had thus used his eloquence on behalf of the people. he was no doubt stirred by other political motives less praiseworthy, though submitted to in accordance with the practice and the known usages of rome. he had undertaken to speak for catiline when catiline was accused of corruption on his return from africa, knowing that catiline had been guilty. he did not do so; but the intention, for our present purpose, is the same as the doing. to have defended catiline would have assisted him in his operations as a candidate for the consulship. catiline was a bad subject for a defence--as was fonteius, whom he certainly did defend--and catiline was a democrat. but cicero, had he defended catiline, would not have done so as holding out his hand to democracy. cicero, when, in the pro lege manilia, he for the first time addressed the people, certainly spoke in opposition to the wishes of the senate in proposing that pompey should have the command of the mithridatic war; but his views were not democratic. it has been said that this was done because pompey could help him to the consulship. to me it seems that he had already declared to himself that among leading men in rome pompey was the one to whom the republic would look with the most security as a bulwark, and that on that account he had resolved to bind himself to pompey in some political marriage. be that as it may, there was no tampering with democracy in the speech pro lege manilia. of all the extant orations made by him before his consulship, the attentive reader will sympathize the least with that of fonteius. after his scathing onslaught on verres for provincial plunder, he defended the plunderer of the gauls, and held up the suffering allies of rome to ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. this he did simply as an advocate, without political motive of any kind--in the days in which he was supposed to be currying favor with democracy--governed by private friendship, looking forward, probably, to some friendly office in return, as was customary. it was thus that afterward he defended antony, his colleague in the consulship, whom he knew to have been a corrupt governor. autronius had been a party to catiline's conspiracy, and autronius had been cicero's school-fellow; but cicero, for some reserved reason with which we are not acquainted, refused to plead for autronius. there is, i maintain, no ground for suggesting that cicero had shown by his speeches before his consulship any party adherence. the declaration which he made after his consulship, in the speech for sulla, that up to the time of catiline's first conspiracy forensic duties had not allowed him to devote himself to party politics, is entitled to belief: we know, indeed, that it was so. as quæstor, as Ædile, and as prætor, he did not interfere in the political questions of rome, except in demanding justice from judges and purity from governors. when he became consul then he became a politician, and after that there was certainly no vacillation in his views. critics say that he surrendered himself to cæsar when cæsar became master. we shall come to that hereafter; but the accusation with which i am dealing now is that which charges him with having abandoned the democratic memories of his youth as soon as he had enveloped himself with the consular purple. there had been no democratic promises, and there was no change when he became consul. in truth, cicero's political convictions were the same from the beginning to the end of his career, with a consistency which is by no means usual in politicians; for though, before his consulship, he had not taken up politics as a business he had entertained certain political views, as do all men who live in public. from the first to the last we may best describe him by the word we have now in use, as a conservative. the government of rome had been an oligarchy for many years, though much had been done by the citizens to reduce the thraldom which an oligarchy is sure to exact. to that oligarchy cicero was bound by all the convictions, by all the practices, and by all the prejudices of his life. when he speaks of a republic he speaks of a people and of an empire governed by an oligarchy; he speaks of a power to be kept in the hands of a few--for the benefit of the few, and of the many if it might be--but at any rate in the hands of a few. that those few should be so select as to admit of no new-comers among them, would probably have been a portion of his political creed, had he not been himself a "novus homo." as he was the first of his family to storm the barrier of the fortress, he had been forced to depend much on popular opinion; but not on that account had there been any dealings between him and democracy. that the empire should be governed according to the old oligarchical forms which had been in use for more than four centuries, and had created the power of rome--that was his political creed. that consuls, censors, and senators might go on to the end of time with no diminution of their dignity, but with great increase of justice and honor and truth among them--that was his political aspiration. they had made rome what it was, and he knew and could imagine nothing better; and, odious as an oligarchy is seen to be under the strong light of experience to which prolonged ages has subjected it, the aspiration on his part was noble. he has been wrongly accused of deserting "that democracy with which he had flirted in his youth." there had been no democracy in his youth, though there had existed such a condition in the time of the gracchi. there was none in his youth and none in his age. that which has been wrongly called democracy was conspiracy--not a conspiracy of democrats such as led to our commonwealth, or to the american independence, or to the french revolution; but conspiracy of a few nobles for the better assurance of the plunder, and the power, and the high places of the empire. of any tendency toward democracy no man has been less justly accused than cicero, unless it might be cæsar. to cæsar we must accord the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical forms was impracticable this cicero did not see. he thought that the wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were curable. it is attributed to cæsar that he conceived the grand idea of establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and therefore beneficent, ruler. i think he saw no farther than that he, by strategy, management, and courage might become this ruler, whether beneficent or the reverse. but here i think that it becomes the writer, whether he be historian, biographer, or fill whatever meaner position he may in literature, to declare that no beneficence can accompany such a form of government. for all temporary sleekness, for metropolitan comfort and fatness, the bill has to be paid sooner or later in ignorance, poverty, and oppression. with an oligarchy there will be other, perhaps graver, faults; but with an oligarchy there will be salt, though it be among a few. there will be a cicero now and again--or at least a cato. from the dead, stagnant level of personal despotism there can be no rising to life till corruption paralyzes the hands of power, and the fabric falls by its own decay of this no proof can be found in the world's history so manifest as that taught by the roman empire. i think it is made clear by a study of cicero's life and works, up to the period of his exile, that an adhesion to the old forms of the roman government was his guiding principle. i am sure that they who follow me to the close of his career will acknowledge that after his exile he lived for this principle, and that he died for it. "respublica," the republic, was the one word which to his ear contained a political charm. it was the shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being. the word constitution is nearly as potent with us. but it is essential that the reader of roman history and roman biography should understand that the appellation had in it, for all roman ears, a thoroughly conservative meaning. among those who at cicero's period dealt with politics in rome--all of whom, no doubt, spoke of the republic as the vessel of state which was to be defended by all persons--there were four classes. these were they who simply desired the plunder of the state--the catilines, the sullas of the day, and the antonys; men such as verres had been, and fonteius, and autronius. the other three can be best typified each by one man. there was cæsar, who knew that the republic was gone, past all hope. there was cato--"the dogmatical fool cato" as mommsen calls him, perhaps with some lack of the historian's dignity--who was true to the republic, who could not bend an inch, and was thus as detrimental to any hope of reconstruction as a catiline or a cæsar. cicero was of the fourth class, believing in the republic, intent on saving it, imbued amid all his doubts with a conviction that if the "optimates" or "boni"--the leading men of the party--would be true to themselves, consuls, censors, and senate would still suffice to rule the world; but prepared to give and take with those who were opposed to him. it was his idea that political integrity should keep its own hands clean, but should wink at much dirt in the world at large. nothing, he saw, could be done by catonic rigor. we can see now that ciceronic compromises were, and must have been, equally ineffective. the patient was past cure. but in seeking the truth as to cicero, we have to perceive that amid all his doubts, frequently in despondency, sometimes overwhelmed by the misery and hopelessness of his condition, he did hold fast by this idea to the end. the frequent expressions made to atticus in opposition to this belief are to be taken as the murmurs of his mind at the moment; as you shall hear a man swear that all is gone, and see him tear his hair, and shall yet know that there is a deep fund of hope within his bosom. it was the ingratitude of his political friends, his "boni" and his "optimates," of pompey as their head, which tried him the sorest; but he was always forgiving them, forgiving pompey as the head of them, because he knew that, were he to be severed from them, then the political world must be closed to him altogether. of cicero's strength or cicero's weakness pompey seems to have known nothing. he was no judge of men. cæsar measured him with a great approach to accuracy. cæsar knew him to be the best roman of his day; one who, if he could be brought over to serve in cæsarean ranks, would be invaluable--because of his honesty, his eloquence, and his capability; but he knew him as one who must be silenced if he were not brought to serve on the cæsarean side. such a man, however, might be silenced for a while--taught to perceive that his efforts were vain--and then brought into favor by further overtures, and made of use. personally he was pleasant to cæsar, who had taste enough to know that he was a man worthy of all personal dignity. but cæsar was not, i think, quite accurate in his estimation, having allowed himself to believe at the last that cicero's energy on behalf of the republic had been quelled. [sidenote: b.c. , ætat. .] now we will go back to the story of cicero's exile. gradually during the preceding year he had learned that clodius was preparing to attack him, and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the triumvirate. that he could be made safe by the justice either of the people or by that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have occurred to him. he knew the people and he knew the courts too well. pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was cicero's idea. to him pompey was the greatest political power as yet extant in rome; but he was beginning to believe that pompey would be untrue to him. when he had sent to pompey a long account of the grand doings of his consulship, pompey had replied with faintest praises. he had rejected the overtures of the triumvirate. in the last letter to atticus in the year before, written in august,[ ] he had declared that the republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this pass--meaning the triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men around him. there is a letter to his brother written in november, the next letter in the collection, in which he says that pompey and cæsar promise him everything. with the exception of two letters of introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to atticus from the first scene of his exile. when the new year commenced, clodius was tribune of the people, and immediately was active. piso and gabinius were consuls. piso was kinsman to piso frugi, who had married cicero's daughter,[ ]and was expected to befriend cicero at this crisis. but clodius procured the allotment of syria and macedonia to the two consuls by the popular vote. they were provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a consul to know that the prey which should come to him as proconsul should be worthy of his grasp. they were, therefore, ready to support the tribune in what he proposed to do. it was necessary to cicero's enemies that there should be some law by which cicero might be condemned. it would not be within the power of clodius, even with the triumvirate at his back, to drive the man out of rome and out of italy, without an alleged cause. though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. now there was a matter as to which cicero was open to attack. as consul he had caused certain roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the teeth of a law which enacted that no roman citizen should be condemned to die except by a direct vote of the people. it had certainly become a maxim of the constitution of the republic that a citizen should not be made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. the valerian, the porcian, and the sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect. now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of lentulus and the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in rome in the affair of catiline. their death had been decreed by the senate, and the decree of the senate had been carried out by cicero; but no decree of the senate had the power of a law. in spite of that decree the old law was in force; and no appeal to the people had been allowed to lentulus. but there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been supposed to override the valerian and porcian laws. in certain emergencies the senate would call upon the consuls to see that the republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such moments the consuls were invested with an authority above all law. cicero had been thus strengthened when, as consul, he had struggled with catiline; but it was an open question, as cicero himself very well knew. in the year of his consulship--the very year in which lentulus and the others had been strangled--he had defended rabirius, who was then accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. rabirius was charged with having slaughtered the tribune saturninus by consular authority, the consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the republic, as cicero had been ordered. rabirius probably had not killed saturninus, nor did any one now care whether he had done so or not. the trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of cæsar, who caused himself to be selected by the prætor as one of the two judges for the occasion;[ ] and cæsar's object as notoriously was to lessen the authority of the senate, and to support the democratic interest. both cicero and hortensius defended rabirius, but he was condemned by cæsar, and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. in this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been an admixture of violence and law. we must, i think, acknowledge that there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against lentulus. it had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority for the protection of the commonwealth, but it cannot be alleged that there was such an emergency, when the full senate had had time to debate on the fate of the catiline criminals. both from cæsar's words as reported by sallust, and from cicero's as given to us by himself, we are aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in the minds of senators at the moment. but, though law was loved at rome, all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on with monstrous illegality. consuls consulted the heavens falsely; tribunes used their veto violently; judges accepted bribes openly; the votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. in the trial and escape of rabirius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to vindicate them. clodius had now become a tribune by the means of certain legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. in the conduct of the affair against catiline cicero seems to have been actuated by pure patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage; but he knew that in destroying lentulus and cethegus he subjected himself to certain dangers. he had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object in view. as long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was at that moment, he would no doubt be safe; but it was not given to any one to be for long the darling of the roman people. cicero had become so by using an eloquence to which the romans were peculiarly susceptible; but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them. since cicero's consulship he had done nothing to offend the people, except to remain occasionally out of their sight; but he had lost the brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so. in discussing popularity in rome we have to remember of what elements it was formed. we hear that this or that man was potent at some special time by the assistance coming to him from the popular voice. there was in rome a vast population of idle men, who had been trained by their city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support, and who did, in truth, live on their citizenship. of "panem et circenses" we have all heard, and know that eleemosynary bread and the public amusements of the day supplied the material and æsthetic wants of many romans. but men so fed and so amused were sure to need further occupations. they became attached to certain friends, to certain patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. this they gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed from them, till it became notorious in rome that a great party man might best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. this was the meaning of that saying of crassus, that a man could not be considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. a popular vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid. there had been street fighting of the kind when cicero had defended caius cornelius, in the year after his prætorship; there had been fighting of the kind when rabirius had been condemned in his consulship. we shall learn by-and-by to what extent such fighting prevailed when clodius was killed by milo's body-guard. at the period of which we are now writing, when clodius was intent on pursuing cicero to his ruin, it was a question with cicero himself whether he would not trust to a certain faction in rome to fight for him, and so to protect him. though his popularity was on the wane--that general popularity which, we may presume, had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his language--there still remained to him that other popularity which consisted, in truth, of the trained bands employed by the "boni" and the "optimates," and which might be used, if need were, in opposition to trained bands on the other side. the bill first proposed by clodius to the people with the object of destroying cicero did not mention cicero, nor, in truth, refer to him. it purported to enact that he who had caused to be executed any roman citizen not duly condemned to death, should himself be deprived of the privilege of water or fire.[ ] this condemned no suggested malefactor to death; but, in accordance with roman law, made it impossible that any roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for this withholding of fire and water. the penalty intended was banishment; but by this enactment no individual would be banished. cicero, however, at once took the suggestion to himself, and put himself into mourning, as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. he went about the streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection; and clodius also caused himself to be so accompanied. there came thus to be a question which might prevail should there be a general fight. the senate was, as a body, on cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the triumvirate. cæsar no doubt had resolved that cicero should be made to go, and cæsar was lord of the triumvirate. on behalf of cicero there was a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who were still true to him; and they, too, all went into the usual public mourning, evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his accusers. the bitterness of clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter had been cicero's tongue. when the affair of the bona dea had taken place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and the great consul. cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and well ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he found them to be witty as well as clever. this very clodius had been in his good books till the affair of the bona dea. but now the tribune's hatred was internecine. i have hitherto said nothing, and need say but little, of a certain disreputable lady named clodia. she was the sister of clodius and the wife of metellus celer. she was accused by public voice in rome of living in incest with her brother, and of poisoning her husband. cicero calls her afterward, in his defence of cælius, "amica omnium." she had the nickname of quadrantaria[ ] given to her, because she frequented the public baths, at which the charge was a farthing. it must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was the lesbia who inspired the muse of catullus. it was rumored in rome that she had endeavored to set her cap at cicero. cicero in his raillery had not spared the lady. to speak publicly the grossest evil of women was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the romans. our sense of chivalry, as well as decency, is disgusted by the language used by horace to women who once to him were young and pretty, but have become old and ugly. the venom of cicero's abuse of clodia annoys us, and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the romans. it is necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between clodius and cicero, till clodius was killed in a street row. it has been presumed that cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly that the new law was intended against himself, and in taking upon himself the outward signs of a man under affliction. "the resolution," says middleton, "of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate, and helped to precipitate his ruin." he was sensible of his error when too late, and oft reproaches atticus that, being a stander-by, and less heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such blunders. and he quotes the words written to atticus: "here my judgment first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. we were blind, blind i say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the populace. * * * i handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies, while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you, who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by no personal fears."[ ] but the reader should study the entire letter, and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true purport. this the reader must do before he can understand cicero's state of mind when writing it, or his relation to atticus; or the thoughts which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of atticus, he resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. the censure to which atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address to himself. after reminding atticus of the sort of advice which should have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "you will forgive me this," he says. "i blame myself more than i do you; but i look to you as a second self, and i make you a sharer with me of my own folly." i take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in which he had to decide whether he would remain in rome and fight it out, or run before his enemies. but in writing the letter afterward his mind was as much disturbed as when he did fly. i am inclined, therefore, to think that middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating moods he blamed himself. how the battle might have gone had he remained, we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt which had been made to destroy him. in this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the senate to rescue him. it was proposed to them that they all as a body should go into mourning on his behalf; indeed, the senate passed a vote to this effect, but were prevented by the two consuls from carrying it out. as to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. some recommended that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by street-fighting should it be necessary. in doing this he would acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in rome--a condition of things to which many had given in their adherence, but with which cicero would surely have been the last to comply. he himself, in his despair, thought for a time that the old roman mode of escape would be preferable, and that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide. atticus and others dissuaded him from this, and recommended him to fly. among these cato and hortensius have both been named. to this advice he at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have been given. lawlessness, which had been rampant in rome before, had, under the triumvirate, become almost lawful. it was cæsar's intention to carry out his will with such compliance with the forms of the republic as might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they did not suit him. the banishment of cicero was one of the last steps taken by cæsar before he left rome for his campaigns in gaul. he was already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. he had endeavored to buy cicero, but had failed. having failed, he had determined to be rid of him. clodius was but his tool, as were pompey and the two consuls. had cicero endeavored to support himself by violence in rome, his contest would, in fact have been with cæsar. cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to piso the consul, and to pompey. gabinius, the other consul, had already declared his purpose to the senate, but piso was bound to him by family ties. he himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against this piso, the manner of the meeting between him and rome's chief officer. piso told him--so at least cicero declared in the senate, and we have heard of no contradiction--that gabinius was so driven by debts as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he himself, piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with gabinius; that any application to the consuls was useless, and that every one must look after himself.[ ] concerning his appeal to pompey two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true. plutarch says that when cicero had travelled out from rome to pompey's alban villa, pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him. plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. the other account is based on cicero's assertion that he did see pompey on this occasion. nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a letter to atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. the story founded on that letter declares that cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in cæsar's hands. this narrative is, i think, due to a misinterpretation of cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them. he is describing pompey when cæsar after his gallic wars had crossed the rubicon, and the two late triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the east--were in arms against each other. "alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[ ] cæsar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "alter is qui nos sibi quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "that other one," he continues--meaning pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days gone by would not even lift me when i lay at his feet, and told me that he could do nothing but as cæsar wished it." this little supposed detail of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has surely been missed. the prostration of which he spoke, from which pompey would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was not a prostration of the body. i hold it to have been impossible that cicero should have assumed such an attitude before pompey, or that he would so have written to atticus had he done so. it would have been neither roman nor ciceronian, as displayed by cicero to pompey. he had gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt reminded him of those promises of assistance which pompey had so often made. then pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him, with too much truth, that cæsar's will was everything. again, we have to remember that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondents as cicero and atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they were written and in which they were received. i cannot imagine that, in describing to atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years after it had taken place, cicero had intended it to be understood that he had really grovelled in the dust. toward the end of march he started from rome, intending to take refuge among his friends in sicily. on the same day clodius brought in a bill directed against cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the people, "ut marco tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should be illegal to supply cicero with fire and water. the law when passed forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. it is evident, from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not, that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who had driven cicero to his exile. they who refused him succor did do so not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest cæsar and pompey would be offended. it did not last long, and during the short period of his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. we are told that he was afraid to go to athens, because at athens lived that autronius whom he had refused to defend. autronius had been convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a catilinarian conspirator, had been in truth on cæsar's side. nor were geographical facts sufficiently established to tell cicero what places were and what were not without the forbidden circle. he sojourned first at vibo, in the extreme south of italy, intending to pass from thence into sicily. it was there that he learned that a certain distance had been prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the proconsular governor of the island would not receive him, fearing cæsar. then he came north from vibo to brundisium, that being the port by which travellers generally went from italy to the east. he had determined to leave his family in rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together. and there were money difficulties in which atticus helped him.[ ] atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of an uncle. we do not know of what nature were the money arrangements made by cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his exile were very great. there was a thorough disruption of his property, for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether to atone. but this sat lightly on cicero's heart. pecuniary losses never weighed heavily with him. as he journeyed back from vibo to brundisium friends were very kind to him, in spite of the law. toward the end of the speech which he made five years afterward on behalf of his friend c. plancius he explains the debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in his exile had been very great. he commences his story of the goodness of plancius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to brundisium, and the hospitality of his friend flavius, who had received him at his house in the neighborhood of that town, and had placed him safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to dyrrachium. there were many schemes running in his head at this time. at one period he had resolved to pass through macedonia into asia, and to remain for a while at cyzicum. this idea he expresses in a letter to his wife written from brundisium. then he goes, wailing no doubt, but in words which to me seem very natural as coming from a husband in such a condition: "o me perditum, o me afflictum;"[ ] exclamations which it is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from himself rather than to his own personal sufferings. "how am i to ask you to come to me?" he says; "you a woman, ill in health, worn out in body and in spirit. i cannot ask you! must i then live without you? it must be so, i think. if there be any hope of my return, it is you must look to it, you that must strengthen it; but if, as i fear, the thing is done, then come to me. if i can have you i shall not be altogether destroyed." no doubt these are wailings; but is a man unmanly because he so wails to the wife of his bosom? other humans have written prettily about women: it was common for romans to do so. catullus desires from lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of night or the sands of libya. horace swears that he would perish for chloe if chloe might be left alive. "when i am dying," says tibullus to delia, "may i be gazing at you; may my last grasp hold your hand." propertius tells cynthia that she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life. "whether he be sad with his friends or happy, cynthia does it all." the language in each case is perfect; but what other roman was there of whom we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? ovid in his letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but there is no passion expressed in anything that ovid wrote. clodius, as soon as the enactment against cicero became law, caused it be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. the criminal's property was confiscated. the house on the palatine hill was destroyed, and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack of buyers. his choicest treasures were carried away by the consuls themselves. piso, who had lived near him in rome, got for himself and for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. the country villas were also destroyed, and gabinius, who had a country house close by cicero's tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the garden. he tells the story of the greed and enmity of the consuls in the speech he made after his return, pro domo sua,[ ] pleading for the restitution of his household property. "my house on the palatine was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. in the mean time the consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been catiline's friend, the other that cethegus had been his cousin." by this he implies that the conspiracy which during his consulship had been so odious to rome was now, in these days of the triumvirate, again in favor among roman aristocrats. he went across from brundisium to dyrrachium, and from thence to thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by plancius, who was quæstor in these parts, and who came down to dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. this was the plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so. plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present consul piso had already been appointed. thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet cicero lived there with plancius for some months. the letters from cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though i have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a roman. perhaps i am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than roman fortitude. we remember the story of the spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. i think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of parental authority; but that he told his sister afterward how he had been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his chosen chum. such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence either of sagacity or of courage. roman fortitude was but a suit of armor to be worn on state occasions. if we come across a warrior with his crested helmet and his sword and his spear, we see, no doubt, an impressive object. if we could find him in his night-shirt, the same man would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. chance has given us cicero in his night-shirt. the linen is of such fine texture that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a garment--such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody is then brought in to look at us. there is one most touching letter written from thessalonica to his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of pain than of service. "mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. the words in english would hardly give all the pathos. "did you think that i did not write because i am angry, or that i did not wish to see you? i angry with you! but i could not endure to be seen by you. you would not have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[ ] then he heaps blame on his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. in this letter he throws great blame upon hortensius, whom together with pompey he accuses of betraying him. what truth there may have been in this accusation as to hortensius we have no means of saying. he couples pompey in the same charge, and as to pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. pompey had been untrue to his promises because of his bond with cæsar. it is probable that hortensius had failed to put himself forward on cicero's behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. cicero and hortensius were friends afterward, but so were cicero and pompey. cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. it did not suit his purposes to retain his enmities. had there been a possibility of reconciling antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the philippics, he would have availed himself of it. cicero at one time intended to go to buthrotum in epirus, where atticus possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. he remained at thessalonica till november, and then returned to dyrrachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his recall. there seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in rome that the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and cæsar had gone to his provinces. we can well imagine that when he had once left rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. then pompey and clodius soon quarrelled. pompey, without cæsar to direct him, found the arrogance of the patrician tribune insupportable. we hear of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of roman history as it was played at this time. together with cicero, it had been necessary to cæsar's projects that cato also should be got out of rome; and this had been managed by means of clodius, who had a bill passed for the honorable employment of cato on state purposes in cyprus. cato had found himself obliged to go. it was as though our prime-minister had got parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the opposition to asiatic turkey for six months there was an attempt, or an alleged attempt, of clodius to have pompey murdered; and there was street-fighting, so that pompey was besieged, or pretended to be besieged, in his own house. "we might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says mommsen, speaking of the state of rome when cæsar was gone, cicero banished, and pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[ ] there was, at any rate, quarrelling between clodius and pompey, in the course of which pompey was induced to consent to cicero's return. then clodius took upon himself, in revenge, to turn against the triumvirate altogether, and to repudiate even cæsar himself. but it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to which cæsar, when he heard the details in gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with pompey. he had achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the assistance of crassus, whose wealth, and of pompey, whose authority, stood highest in rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for either of them. there is a little story which must be repeated, as against cicero, in reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all records of his life. were i to omit the little story, it would seem as though i shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his credit. he had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been severe upon the elder curio; so it is supposed; but it matters little who was the object or what the subject. this had got wind in rome, as such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a mischief with the curios and the friends of the curios. the authorship was only matter of gossip. could it not be denied? "as it is written," says cicero, "in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it not be shown not to have been mine?"[ ] had cicero possessed all the christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the expression of such a wish. as it is, the enemies of cicero must make the most of it. his friends, i think, will look upon it leniently. continued efforts were made among cicero's friends at rome to bring him back, with which he was not altogether contented. he argues the matter repeatedly with atticus, not always in the best temper. his friends at rome were, he thought, doing the matter amiss: they would fail, and he would still have to finish his days abroad. atticus, in his way to epirus, visits him at dyrrachium, and he is sure that atticus would not have left rome but that the affair was hopeless. the reader of the correspondence is certainly led to the belief that atticus must have been the most patient of friends; but he feels, at the same time, that atticus would not have been patient had not cicero been affectionate and true. the consuls for the new year were lentulus and metellus nepos. the former was cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned his enmity. clodius was no longer tribune, and pompey had been brought to yield. the senate were all but unanimous. but there was still life in clodius and his party; and day dragged itself after day, and month after month, while cicero still lingered at dyrrachium, waiting till a bill should have been passed by the people. pompey, who was never whole-hearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people would be necessary. the bill at last was voted, on the th of august, and cicero, who knew well what was being done at rome, passed over from dyrrachium to brundisium on the same day, having been a year and four months absent from rome. during the year b.c. , up to the time of his return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us--two very short notes to atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come over on the authority of a decree of the senate, without waiting for a law. in the second he falls again into despair, declaring that everything is over. in the third he asks metellus for his aid, telling the consul that unless it be given soon the man for whom it is asked will no longer be living to receive it. metellus did give the aid very cordially. it has been remarked that cicero did nothing for literature during his banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches; and it has been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. it should, however, be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. as to his essays, including what we call his philosophy and his rhetoric, they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was, in all that he produced, to refer to the writings of others. he translates and he quotes, and he makes constant use of the arguments and illustrations of those who have gone before him. he was a man who rarely worked without the use of a library. when i think how impossible it would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of cicero's life without a crowd of books within reach of my hand, i can easily understand why cicero was silent at thessalonica and dyrrachium. it has been remarked also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with the style of his happier days." i will not for a moment put my judgment in such a matter in opposition to that of mr. tyrrell--but i should myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of cicero's letters varies constantly, being very different when used to atticus, or to his brother, or to lighter friends such as poetus and trebatius; and very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his letters to decimus brutus, cassius brutus, and plancus. to be correct in familiar letters is not to charm. a studied negligence is needed to make such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer. his sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. i have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief. appendices to volume i. appendix a. (_see_ ch. ii., note [ ]) _the battle of the eagle and the serpent._ homer, iliad, lib. xii, : [greek: hoi rh' eti mermêrizon ephestaotes para taphrôi. ornis gar sphin epêlthe perêsemenai memaôsin, aietos upsipetês ep' aristera laon eergôn, phoinêenta drakonta pherôn onuchessi pelôron, zôon et' aspaironta; kai oupô lêtheto charmês. kopse gar auton echonta kata stêthos para deirên, idnôtheis opisô; ho d' apo ethen êke chamaze, algêsas odunêisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homilôi; autos de klanxas peteto pnoêis anemoio.] pope's translation of the passage, book xii, : "a signal omen stopp'd the passing host, the martial fury in their wonder lost. jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; a bleeding serpent, of enormous size, his talons trussed; alive, and curling round, he stung the bird, whose throat received the wound. mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, in airy circles wings his painful way, floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries. amid the host the fallen serpent lies. they, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, and jove's portent with beating hearts behold." lord derby's iliad, book xii, : "for this i read the future, if indeed to us, about to cross, this sign from heaven was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd: a soaring eagle, bearing in his claws a dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue, alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home, nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey." cicero's telling of the story: "hic jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles, arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu, ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem. quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans, jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores, abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda; seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus." voltaire's translation: "tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre, blessé par un serpent élancé de la terre; il s'envole, il entraîne au séjour azuré l'ennemi tortueux dont il est entouré. le sang tombe des airs. il déchire, il dévore le reptile acharné qui le combat encore; il le perce, il le tient sous ses ongles vainqueurs; par cent coups redoublés il venge ses douleurs. le monstre, en expirant, se débat, se replie; il exhale en poisons les restes de sa vie; et l'aigle, tout sanglant, fier et victorieux, le rejette en fureur, et plane au haut des cieux." virgil's version, Æneid, lib. xi., : "utque volans alte raptum quum fulva draconem fert aquila, implicuitque pedes, atque unguibus hæsit saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat, arrectisque horret squamis, et sibilat ore, arduus insurgens. illa haud minus urget obunco luctantem rostro; simul æthera verberat alis." dryden's translation from virgil's Æneid, book xi.: "so stoops the yellow eagle from on high, and bears a speckled serpent through the sky; fastening his crooked talons on the prey, the prisoner hisses through the liquid way; resists the royal hawk, and though opprest, she fights in volumes, and erects her crest. turn'd to her foe, she stiffens every scale, and shoots her forky tongue, and whisks her threatening tail. against the victor all defence is weak. th' imperial bird still plies her with his beak: he tears her bowels, and her breast he gores, then claps his pinions, and securely soars." pitt's translation, book xi.: "as when th' imperial eagle soars on high, and bears some speckled serpent through the sky, while her sharp talons gripe the bleeding prey, in many a fold her curling volumes play, her starting brazen scales with horror rise, the sanguine flames flash dreadful from her eyes she writhes, and hisses at her foe, in vain, who wins at ease the wide ærial plain, with her strong hooky beak the captive plies, and bears the struggling prey triumphant through the skies." shelley's version of the battle, the revolt of islam, canto i.: "for in the air do i behold indeed an eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight, and now relaxing its impetuous flight, before the ærial rock on which i stood the eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, and hung with lingering wings over the flood, and startled with its yells the wide air's solitude "a shaft of light upon its wings descended, and every golden feather gleamed therein-- feather and scale inextricably blended the serpent's mailed and many-colored skin shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within by many a swollen and knotted fold, and high and far, the neck receding lithe and thin, sustained a crested head, which warily shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye. "around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling, with clang of wings and scream, the eagle sailed incessantly--sometimes on high concealing its lessening orbs, sometimes, as if it failed, drooped through the air, and still it shrieked and wailed, and casting back its eager head, with beak and talon unremittingly assailed the wreathed serpent, who did ever seek upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak "what life, what power was kindled, and arose within the sphere of that appalling fray! for, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes, a vapor like the sea's suspended spray hung gathered; in the void air, far away, floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, where'er the eagle's talons made their way, like sparks into the darkness; as they sweep, blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep. "swift chances in that combat--many a check, and many a change--a dark and wild turmoil; sometimes the snake around his enemy's neck locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, until the eagle, faint with pain and toil, remitted his strong flight, and near the sea languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil his adversary, who then reared on high his red and burning crest, radiant with victory. "then on the white edge of the bursting surge, where they had sunk together, would the snake relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge the wind with his wild writhings; for, to break that chain of torment, the vast bird would shake the strength of his unconquerable wings as in despair, and with his sinewy neck dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings, then soar--as swift as smoke from a volcano springs. "wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength, thus long, but unprevailing--the event of that portentous fight appeared at length. until the lamp of day was almost spent it had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, hung high that mighty serpent, and at last fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, with clang of wings and scream, the eagle past, heavily borne away on the exhausted blast." i have repudiated the adverse criticism on cicero's poetry which has been attributed to juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of renown as a classic. in the treatise de oratoribus, attributed to tacitus, and generally published with his works by him--a treatise commenced, probably, in the last year of vespasian's reign, and completed only in that of domitian--cicero as a poet is spoken of with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his recognized desert. "for cæsar," he says, "and brutus made verses, and sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than cicero, but with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that they had done so." this must be taken for what it is worth. the treatise, let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is charming in language and feeling. it is a dialogue after the manner of cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the subjects in hand. but it is, no doubt, the case that those two unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in rome when there was a party anxious to put down cicero. appendix b. (_see_ ch. iv., note [ ]) from the brutus--ca. xcii., xciii. "there were at that time two orators, cotta and hortensius, who towered above all others, and incited me to rival them. the first spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily, expressing his ideas in appropriate language. the other was magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, brutus, when he was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions. i then resolved that hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because i felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age. i observed that when they were in the same causes, those for canuleius and for our consular dolabella, though cotta was the senior counsel, hortensius took the lead. a large gathering of men and the noise of the forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and loud. the year after my return from asia i undertook the charge of causes that were honorable, and in that year i was seeking to be quæstor, cotta to be consul, and hortensius to be prætor. then for a year i served as quæstor in sicily. cotta, after his consulship, went as governor into gaul, and then hortensius was, and was considered to be, first at the bar. when i had been back from sicily twelve months i began to find that whatever there was within me had come to such perfection as it might attain. i feel that i am speaking too much of myself, but it is done, not that you may be made to own my ability or my eloquence--which is far from my thoughts--but that you may see how great was my toil and my industry. then, when i had been employed for nearly five years in many cases, and was accounted a leading advocate, i specially concerned myself in conducting the great cause on behalf of sicily--the trial of verres--when i and hortensius were Ædile and consul designate. "but as this discussion of ours is intended to produce not a mere catalogue of orators, but some true lessons of oratory, let us see what there was in hortensius that we must blame. when he was out of his consulship, seeing that among past consuls there was no one on a par with him, and thinking but little of those who were below consular rank, he became idle in his work to which from boyhood he had devoted himself, and chose to live in the midst of his wealth, as he thought a happier life--certainly an easier one. the first two or three years took off something from him. as the gradual decay of a picture will be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at large, so was it with his decay. from day to day he became more and more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. but for myself i never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. passing over many things in the year after i was Ædile, i will come to that in which i was elected first prætor, to the great delight of the public generally; for i had gained the good-will of men, partly by my attention to the causes which i undertook, but specially by a certain new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which i spoke." cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter, to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. it is easy for us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for which he had been celebrated, is of value. appendix c. (_see_ ch. vi., note [ ]) there was still prevailing in rome at this time a strong feeling that a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. we are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its stability gone the existence of a verres is proof that it was so; but still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. we know how conquering rome caught the taste for them from conquered greece. "græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti latio." [ ] cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge of art. two years afterward, in a letter to atticus, giving him instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not without a feeling of shame. "nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[ ]--"though you will help me, others i know will blame me." the same feeling is expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by horace when he declares, as cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies: "gems, marbles, ivory, tuscan statuettes, pictures, gold plate, gætulian coverlets, there are who have not. one there is, i trow, who cares not greatly if he has or no."[ ] many years afterward, in the time of tiberius, velleius paterculus says the same when he is telling how ignorant mummius was of sculpture, who, when he had taken corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to replace them. "you will not doubt, however," the historian says, "that it would have been better for the republic to remain ignorant of these corinthian gems than to understand them as well as it does now. that rudeness befitted the public honor better than our present taste."[ ] cicero understood well enough, with one side of his intelligence, that as the longing for these things grew in the minds of rich men, as the leading romans of the day became devoted to luxury rather than to work, the ground on which the republic stood must be sapped. a marcellus or a scipio had taken glory in ornamenting the city. a verres or even an hortensius--even a cicero--was desirous of beautiful things for his own house. but still, with the other side of his intelligence, he saw that a perfect citizen might appreciate art, and yet do his duty, might appreciate art, and yet save his country. what he did not see was, that the temptations of luxury, though compatible with virtue, are antagonistic to it. the camel may be made to go through the eye of the needle--but it is difficult. appendix d. (_see_ ch. vii., note [ ]) pro lege manilia--ca. x., xvi. "utinam, quirites, virorum fortium, atque innocentium copiam tantam haberetis, ut hæc vobis deliberatio difficilis esset, quemnam potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello præficiendum putaretis! nunc vero cum sit unus cn. pompeius, qui non modo eorum hominum, qui nunc sunt, gloriam, sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam virtute superarit; quæ res est, quæ cujusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere posset? ego enim sic existimo, in summo imperatore quatuor has res inesse oportere, scientiam rei militaris, virtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem. quis igitur hoc homine scientior umquam aut fuit, aut esse debuit? qui e ludo, atque pueritiæ disciplina, bello maximo atque acerrimis hostibus, ad patris exercitum atque in militiæ disciplinam profectus est? qui extrema pueritia miles fuit summi imperatoris? ineunte adolescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator? qui sæpius cum hoste conflixit, quam quisquam cum inimico concertavit? plura bella gessit, quam cæteri legerunt? plures provincias confecit, quam alii concupiverunt? cujus adolescentia ad scientiam rei militaris non alienis præceptis, sed suis imperiis; non offensionibus belli, sed victoriis; non stipendiis, sed triumphis est erudita? quod denique genus belli esse potest, in quo illum non exercuerit fortuna reipublicæ? civile; africanum; transalpinum; hispaniense; mistum ex civitatibus atque ex bellicosissimis nationibus servile; navale bellum, varia et diversa genera, et bellorum et hostium, non solum gesta ab hoc uno, sed etiam confecta, nullam rem esse declarant, in usu militari positam, quæ hojus viri scientiam fugere posset. * * * * * "quare cum et bellum ita necessarium sit, ut negligi non possit; ita magnum, ut accuratissime sit administrandum; et cum ei imperatorem præficere possitis, in quo sit eximia belli scientia, singularis virtus, clarissima auctoritas, egregia fortuna; dubitabitis, quirites, quin hoc tantum boni, quod vobis a diis immortalibus oblatum et datum est, in rempublicam conservandam atque amplificandam conferatis?" * * * * * "i could wish, quirites, that there was open to you so large a choice of men capable at the same time, and honest, that you might find a difficulty in deciding who might best be selected for command in a war so momentous as this. but now when pompey alone has surpassed in achievements not only those who live, but all of whom we have read in history, what is there to make any one hesitate in the matter? in my opinion there are four qualities to be desired in a general--military knowledge, valor, authority, and fortune. but whoever was or was ever wanted to be more skilled than this man, who, taken fresh from school and from the lessons of his boyhood, was subjected to the discipline of his father's army during one of our severest wars, when our enemies were strong against us? in his earliest youth he served under our greatest general. as years went on he was himself in command over a large army. he has been more frequent in fighting than others in quarrelling. few have read of so many battles as he has fought. he has conquered more provinces than others have desired to pillage. he learned the art of war not from written precepts, but by his own practice; not from reverses, but from victories. he does not count his campaigns, but the triumphs which he has won. what nature of warfare is there in which the republic has not used his services? think of our civil war[ ]--of our african war[ ]--of our war on the other side of the alps[ ]--of our spanish wars[ ]--of our servile war[ ]--which was carried on by the energies of so many mighty people--and this maritime war.[ ] how many enemies had we, how various were our contests! they were all not only carried through by this one man, but brought to an end so gloriously as to show that there is nothing in the practice of warfare which has escaped his knowledge. * * * * * "seeing, therefore, that this war cannot be neglected; that its importance demands the utmost care in its administration; that it requires a general in whom should be found sure military science, manifest valor, conspicuous authority, and pre-eminent good fortune--do you doubt, quirites, but that you should use the great blessing which the gods have given you for the preservation and glory of the republic?" * * * * * on reading, however, the piece over again, i almost doubt whether there be any passages in it which should be selected as superior to others. appendix e. (_see_ ch. xi., note [ ]) _lucan, liber i._ "o male concordes, nimiaque cupidine cæci, quid miscere juvat vires orbemque tenere in medio." "temporis angusti mansit concordia discors, paxque fuit non sponte ducum. nam sola futuri crassus erat belli medius mora. qualiter undas qui secat, et geminum gracilis mare separat isthmos, nec patitur conferre fretum; si terra recedat, ionium Ægæo frangat mare. sic, ubi sæva arma ducum dirimens, miserando funere crassus assyrias latio maculavit sanguine carras." "dividitur ferro regnum; populique potentis, quæ mare, quæ terras, quæ totum possidet orbem, non cepit fortuna duos." "tu nova ne veteres obscurent acta triumphos, et victis cedat piratica laurea gallis, magne, times; te jam series, ususque laborum erigit, impatiensque loci fortuna secundi. nec quemquam jam ferre potest cæsarve priorem, pompeiusve parem. quis justius induit arma, scire nefas; magno se judice quisque tuetur, victrix causa deis placuit sed victa, catoni.[ ] nec coiere pares; alter vergentibus annis in senium, longoque togæ tranquillior usu dedidicit jam pace ducem; famæque petitor multa dare in vulgas; totus popularibus auris impelli, plausuque sui gaudere theatri; nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunæ. stat magni nominis umbra." "sed non in cæsare tantum nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus stare loco; solusque pudor non vincere bello. acer et indomitus; quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, ferre manum, et nunquam te merando parcere ferro; successus urgere suos; instare favori numinis."--lucan, lib. i. * * * * * "o men so ill-fitted to agree, o men blind with greed, of what service can it be that you should join your powers, and possess the world between you?" "for a short time the ill-sorted compact lasted, and there was a peace which each of them abhorred. crassus alone stood between the others, hindering for a while the coming war--as an isthmus separates two waters and forbids sea to meet sea. if the morsel of land gives way, the ionian waves and the Ægean dash themselves in foam against each other. so was it with the arms of the two chiefs when crassus fell, and drenched the assyrian carræ with roman blood." "then the possession of the empire was put to the arbitration of the sword. the fortunes of a people which possessed sea and earth and the whole world, were not sufficient for two men." "you, magnus, you, pompeius, fear lest newer deeds than yours should make dull your old triumphs, and the scattering of the pirates should be as nothing to the conquering of gaul. the practice of many wars has so exalted you, o cæsar, that you cannot put up with a second place. cæsar will endure no superior; but pompey will have no equal. whose cause was the better the poet dares not inquire! each will have his own advocate in history. on the side of the conqueror the gods ranged themselves. cato has chosen to follow the conquered. "but surely the men were not equal. the one in declining years, who had already changed his arms for the garb of peace, had unlearned the general in the statesman--had become wont to talk to the people, to devote himself to harangues, and to love the applause of his own theatre. he has not cared to renew his strength, trusting to his old fortune. there remains of him but the shadow of his great name." "the name of cæsar does not loom so large; nor is his character as a general so high. but there is a spirit which can content itself with no achievements; there is but one feeling of shame--that of not conquering; a man determined, not to be controlled, taking his arms wherever lust of conquest or anger may call him; a man never sparing the sword, creating all things from his own good-fortune trusting always the favors of the gods." [ ] froude's cæsar, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ad att., lib. xiii., . [ ] ad att., lib. ix., . [ ] froude, p. . [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possum." [ ] the cincian law, of which i shall have to speak again, forbade roman advocates to take any payment for their services. cicero expressly declares that he has always obeyed that law. he accused others of disobeying it, as, for instance, hortensius. but no contemporary has accused him. mr. collins refers to some books which had been given to cicero by his friend p[oe]tus. they are mentioned in a letter to atticus, lib. i., ; and cicero, joking, says that he has consulted cincius--perhaps some descendant of him who made the law years before--as to the legality of accepting the present. but we have no reason for supposing that he had ever acted as an advocate for p[oe]tus. [ ] virgil, Æneid, i., : "ac, veluti magno in populo quum sæpe coorta est seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus; jamque faces, et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat: tum, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant; iste regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet." [ ] the author is saying that a history from cicero would have been invaluable, and the words are "interitu ejus utrum respublica an historia magis doleat." [ ] quintilian tells us this, lib. ii., c. . the passage of livy is not extant. the commentators suppose it to have been taken from a letter to his son. [ ] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., c. . [ ] valerius maximus, lib. iv., c. ; . [ ] pliny, hist. nat., lib. vii., xxxi., . [ ] martial, lib. xiv., . [ ] lucan, lib. vii., : "cunctorum voces romani maximus auctor tullius eloquii, cujus sub jure togaque pacificas sævus tremuit catilina secures, pertulit iratus bellis, cum rostra forumque optaret passus tam longa silentia miles addidit invalidæ robur facundia causæ." [ ] tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx. [ ] juvenal, viii., . [ ] demosthenes and cicero compared. [ ] quintilian, xii., . [ ] "repudiatus vigintiviratus." he refused a position of official value rendered vacant by the death of one cosconius. see letters to atticus, , . [ ] florus, lib. iv., . in a letter from essex to foulke greville, the writing of which has been attributed to bacon by mr. spedding, florus is said simply to have epitomized livy (life, vol. ii., p. ). in this i think that bacon has shorn him of his honors. [ ] florus, lib. iv., . [ ] sallust, catilinaria, xxiii. [ ] i will add the concluding passage from the pseudo declamation, in order that the reader may see the nature of the words which were put into sallust's mouth: "quos tyrannos appellabas, eorum nunc potentiæ faves; qui tibi ante optumates videbantur, eosdem nunc dementes ac furiosos vocas; vatinii caussam agis, de sextio male existumas; bibulum petulantissumis verbis lædis, laudas cæsarem; quem maxume odisti, ei maxume obsequeris. aliud stans, aliud sedens, de republica sentis; his maledicis, illos odisti; levissume transfuga, neque in hac, neque illa parte fidem habes." hence dio cassius declared that cicero had been called a turncoat. [greek: kai automalos ônomazeto.] [ ] dio cassius, lib. xlvi., : [greek: pros hên kai autên toiautas epistolas grapheis hoias an grapseien anêr skôptolês athuroglôrros ... kai proseti kai to stoma autou diaballein epecheirêse tosautê aselgeia kai akatharsia para panta ton bion chrômenos hôste mêde tôn sungenestatôn apechesthai, alla tên te gunaika proagôgeuein kai tên thugatera moicheuein.] [ ] as it happens, de quincey specially calls cicero a man of conscience. "cicero is one of the very few pagan statesmen who can be described as a thoroughly conscientious man," he says. the purport of his illogical essay on cicero is no doubt thoroughly hostile to the man. it is chiefly worth reading on account of the amusing virulence with which middleton, the biographer, is attacked. [ ] quintilian, lib. ii., c. . [ ] de finibus, lib. v., ca. xxii.: "nemo est igitur, qui non hanc affectionem animi probet atque laudet." [ ] de rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius." tusc. quest., lib. i., ca. xxx.: "vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus." [ ] de rep., lib. vi., ca. vii.: "certum esse in c[oe]lo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur." [ ] hor., lib. i., ode xxii., "non rura quæ; liris quieta mordet aqua taciturnus amnis." [ ] such was the presumed condition of things at rome. by the passing of a special law a plebeian might, and occasionally did, become patrician. the patricians had so nearly died out in the time of julius cæsar that he introduced fifty new families by the lex cassia. [ ] de orat., lib. ii., ca. . [ ] brutus, ca. lxxxix. [ ] it should be remembered that in latin literature it was the recognized practice of authors to borrow wholesale from the greek, and that no charge of plagiarism attended such borrowing. virgil, in taking thoughts and language from homer, was simply supposed to have shown his judgment in accommodating greek delights to roman ears and roman intellects. the idea as to literary larceny is of later date, and has grown up with personal claims for originality and with copyright. shakspeare did not acknowledge whence he took his plots, because it was unnecessary. now, if a writer borrow a tale from the french, it is held that he ought at least to owe the obligation, or perhaps even pay for it. [ ] juvenal, sat. x., , "o fortunatam natam me consule romam! antoni gladios potuit contemnere, si sic omnia dixisset." [ ] de leg., lib. i., ca. . [ ] life and times of henry lord brougham, written by himself, vol. i., p. . [ ] i give the nine versions to which i allude in an appendix a, at the end of this volume, so that those curious in such matters may compare the words in which the same picture has been drawn by various hands. [ ] pro archia, ca. vii. [ ] brutus, ca. xc. [ ] tacitus, de oratoribus, xxx. [ ] quintilian, lib. xii., c. vi., who wrote about the same time as this essayist, tells us of these three instances of early oratory, not, however, specifying the exact age in either case. he also reminds us that demosthenes pleaded when he was a boy, and that augustus at the age of twelve made a public harangue in honor of his grandmother. [ ] brutus, ca. xc. [ ] brutus, xci. [ ] quintilian, lib. xii., vi.: "quum jam clarum meruisset inter patronos, qui tum erant, nomen, in asiam navigavit, seque et aliis sine dubio eloquentiæ ac sapientiæ magistris, sed præcipue tamen apollonio moloni, quem romæ quoque audierat, rhodi rursus formandum ac velut recognendum dedit." [ ] brutus, xci. [ ] the total correspondence contains letters, of which were written to cicero, were written by cicero to atticus, and by cicero to his friends in general. we have no letters from atticus to cicero. [ ] quintilian, lib. x., ca. . [ ] clemens of alexandria, in his exhortation to the gentiles, is very severe upon the iniquities of these rites. "all evil be to him," he says, "who brought them into fashion, whether it was dardanus, or eetion the thracian, or midas the phrygian." the old story which he repeats as to ceres and proserpine may have been true, but he was altogether ignorant of the changes which the common-sense of centuries had produced. [ ] de legibus, lib. ii., c. xiv. [ ] it was then that the foreign empire commenced, in ruling which the simplicity and truth of purpose and patriotism of the republic were lost. [ ] the reverses of fortune to which marius was subjected, how he was buried up to his neck in the mud, hiding in the marshes of minturnæ, how he would have been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his eyes; how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among the ruins of carthage--all which things happened to him while he was running from the partisans of sulla--are among the picturesque episodes of history. there is a tragedy called the _wounds of civil war_, written by lodge, who was born some eight years before shakspeare, in which the story of marius is told with some exquisite poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions. the gaul who is hired to kill marius, but is frightened by his eyes, talks bad french mingled with bad english, and calls on jesus in his horror! [ ] brutus, ca. xc. [ ] florus tells us that there were senators and knights, but that any one was allowed to kill just whom he would. "quis autem illos potest computare quos in urbe passim quisquis voluit occidit" (lib. iii., ca. ). [ ] about £ _s._ in smith's dictionary of greek and roman antiquities the attic talent is given as being worth £ _s._ mommsen quotes the price as , denarii, which would amount to about the same sum. [ ] suetonius speaks of his death. florus mentions the proscriptions and abdication. velleius paterculus is eloquent in describing the horrors of the massacres and confiscation. dio cassius refers again and again to the sullan cruelty. but none of them give a reason for the abdication of sulla. [ ] vol. iii., p. . i quote from mr. dickson's translation, as i do not read german. [ ] in defending roscius amerinus, while sulla was still in power, he speaks of the sullan massacres as "pugna cannensis," a slaughter as foul, as disgraceful, as bloody as had been the defeat at cannæ. [ ] mommsen, vol. iii., p. . [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxi.: "quod antea causam publicam nullam dixerim." he says also in the brutus, ca. xc., "itaque prima causa publica, pro sex. roscio dicta." by "publica causa" he means a criminal accusation in distinction from a civil action. [ ] pro publio quintio, ca. i.: "quod mihi consuevit in ceteris causis esse adjumento, id quoque in hac causa deficit." [ ] pro publio quintio, ca. xxi.: "nolo eam rem commemorando renovare, cujus omnino rei memoriam omnem tolli funditus ac deleri arbitror oportere." [ ] pro roscio, ca. xlix. cicero says of him that he would be sure to suppose that anything would have been done according to law of which he should be told that it was done by sulla's order. "putat homo imperitus morum, agricola et rusticus, ista omnia, quæ vos per sullam gesta esse dicitis, more, lege, jure gentium facta." [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. . [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxix.: "ejusmodi tempus erat, inquit, ut homines vulgo impune occiderentur." [ ] pro t. a. milone, ca. xxi.: "cur igitur cos manumisit? metuebat scilicit ne indicarent; ne dolorem perferre non possent." [ ] pro t. a. milone, ca. xxii.: "heus tu, ruscio, verbi gratia, cave sis mentiaris. clodius insidias fecit miloni? fecit. certa crux. nullas fecit. sperata libertas." [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. xxviii. [ ] ibid. [ ] ibid., ca. xxxi. [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. xlv. [ ] pro sexto roscio, ca. xlvi. the whole picture of chrysogonus, of his house, of his luxuries, and his vanity, is too long for quotation, but is worth referring to by those who wish to see how bold and how brilliant cicero could be. [ ] they put in tablets of wax, on which they recorded their judgment by inscribing letter, c, a, or nl--condemno, absolvo, or non liquet--intending to show that the means of coming to a decision did not seem to be sufficient. [ ] quintilian tells us, lib. x., ca. vii., that cicero's speeches as they had come to his day had been abridged--by which he probably means only arranged--by tiro, his slave and secretary and friend. "nam ciceronis ad præsens modo tempus aptatos libertus tiro contraxit." [ ] quintilian, lib. xi., ca. iii.: "nam et toga, et calecus, et capillus, tam nimia cura, quam negligentia, sunt reprehendenda." * * * "sinistrum brachium eo usque allevandum est, ut quasi normalem illum angulum faciat." quint., lib. xii., ca. x., "ne hirta toga sit;" don't let the toga be rumpled; "non serica:" the silk here interdicted was the silk of effeminacy, not that silk of authority of which our barristers are proud. "ne intonsum caput; non in gradus atque annulos comptum." it would take too much space were i to give here all the lessons taught by this professor of deportment as to the wearing of the toga. [ ] a doubt has been raised whether he was not married when he went to greece, as otherwise his daughter would seem to have become a wife earlier than is probable. the date, however, has been generally given as it is stated here. [ ] tacitus, annal., xi., , says, "qua cavetur antiquitus, ne quis, ob causam orandam, pecuniam donumve accipiat." [ ] de off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "sordidi etiam putandi, qui mercantur a mercatoribus, quod statim vendant. nihil enim proficiunt, nisi admodum mentiantur." [ ] de off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "primum improbantur ii quæstus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum ut f[oe]neratorum." the portitores were inferior collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports, who are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their dealings with the public. [ ] philipp., - . [ ] let any who doubt this statement refer to the fate of the inhabitants of alesia and uxellodunum. cæsar did not slay or torture for the sake of cruelty, but was never deterred by humanity when expediency seemed to him to require victims. men and women, old and young, many or few, they were sacrificed without remorse if his purpose required it. [ ] pro pub. quintio, ca. xxv. [ ] see appendix b, brutus, ca. xcii., xciii. [ ] brutus, ca. xciii.: "animos hominum ad me dicendi novitate converteram." [ ] it must be remembered that this advice was actually given when cicero subsequently became a candidate for the consulship, but it is mentioned here as showing the manner in which were sought the great offices of state. [ ] cicero speaks of sicily as divided into two provinces, "quæstores utriusque provinciæ." there was, however, but one prætor or proconsul. but the island had been taken by the romans at two different times. lilybæum and the west was obtained from the carthaginians at the end of the first punic war, whereas, syracuse was conquered by marcellus and occupied during the second punic war. [ ] tacitus, ann., lib. xi., ca. xxii.: "post, lege sullæ, viginti creati supplendo senatui, cui judicia tradiderat." [ ] de legibus, iii., xii. [ ] pro p. sexto, lxv. [ ] pro cluentio, lvi. [ ] contra verrem, act. iv., ca. xi.: "ecquæ civitas est, non modo in provinciis nostris, verum etiam in ultimis nationibus, aut tam potens, aut tam libera, aut etiam am immanis ac barbara; rex denique ecquis est, qui senatorem populi romani tecto ac domo non invitet?" [ ] contra verrem, act. i., ca. xiii.: "omnia non modo commemorabuntur, sed etiam, expositis certis rebus, agentur, quæ inter decem annos, posteaquam judicia ad senatum translata sunt, in rebus judicandis nefarie flagitioseque facta sunt." pro cluentio, lvi.: "locus, auctoritas, domi splendor, apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia, toga prætexta, sella curulis, insignia, fasces, exercitus, imperia, provincia." [ ] contra verrem, act. i., ca. xviii.: "quadringenties sestertium ex sicilia contra leges abstulisse." in smith's dictionary of grecian and roman antiquities we are told that a thousand sesterces is equal in our money to £ _s._ _d._ of the estimated amount of this plunder we shall have to speak again. [ ] pro plancio, xxvi. [ ] pro plancio, xxvi. [ ] m. du rozoir was a french critic, and was joined with m. guéroult and m. de guerle in translating and annotating the orations of cicero for m. panckoucke's edition of the latin classics. [ ] in verrem actio secunda, lib. i., vii. [ ] plutarch says that cæcilius was an emancipated slave, and a jew, which could not have been true, as he was a roman senator. [ ] de oratore, lib. ii., c. xlix. the feeling is beautifully expressed in the words put into the mouth of antony in the discussion on the charms and attributes of eloquence: "qui mihi in liberum loco more majorum esse deberet." [ ] in q. cæc. divinatio, ca. ii. [ ] divinatio, ca. iii. [ ] ibid., ca. vi. [ ] ibid., ca. viii. [ ] divinatio, ca. ix. [ ] ibid., ca. xi. [ ] ibid. [ ] ibid., ca. xii. [ ] actio secunda, lib. ii., xl. he is speaking of sthenius, and the illegality of certain proceedings on the part of verres against him. "if an accused man could be condemned in the absence of the accuser, do you think that i would have gone in a little boat from vibo to velia, among all the dangers prepared for me by your fugitive slaves and pirates, when i had to hurry at the peril of my life, knowing that you would escape if i were not present to the day?" [ ] actio secunda, l. xxi. [ ] in verrem, actio prima, xvi. [ ] in verrem, actio prima, xvi. [ ] we are to understand that the purchaser at the auction having named the sum for which he would do the work, the estate of the minor, who was responsible for the condition of the temple, was saddled with that amount. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., vii. [ ] ibid., ix. [ ] ibid., lib. ii., xiv. [ ] see appendix c. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., ca. xxxvi. [ ] ibid. "una nox intercesserat, quam iste dorotheum sic diligebat, ut diceres, omnia inter eos esse communia."--wife and all. "iste" always means verres in these narratives. [ ] these were burning political questions of the moment. it was as though an advocate of our days should desire some disgraced member of parliament to go down to the house and assist the government in protecting turkey in asia and invading zululand. [ ] "sit in ejus exercitu signifer." the "ejus" was hortensius, the coming consul, too whom cicero intended to be considered as pointing. for the passage, see in verrem, actio secunda, lib. ii., xxxi. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iii., . [ ] "exegi monumentum ære perennius," said horace, gloriously. "sum pius Æneas" is virgil's expression, put into the mouth of his hero. "ipse menaleas," said virgil himself. homer and sophocles introduce their heroes with self-sounded trumpetings: [greek: eim' odysseus daertiadês hos pasi doloisi anthrôpoisi melô, kai meu kleos ouranon ikei.] odyssey, book ix., and . [greek: ho pasi kleinos oidipous kaloumenos.] [oe]dipus tyrannus, . [ ] pro plancio, xxvi.: "frumenti in summa caritate maximum numerum miseram; negotiatoribus comis, mercatoribus justus, municipibus liberalis, sociis abstinens, omnibus eram visus in omni officio diligentissimus." [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iii., ix.: "is erit apronius ille; qui, ut ipse non solum vita, sed etiam corpore atque ore significat, immensa aliqua vorago est ac gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. hunc in omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in impuris conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque habebat morum similitudo conjunctionem atque concordiam, ut apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac barbarus, isti uni commodus ac disertus videretur; ut quem omnes odissent neque videre vellent sine eo iste esse non posset; ut quum alii ne conviviis quidem iisdem quibus apronius, hic iisdem etiam poculis uteretur, postremo, ut, odor apronii teterrimus oris et corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne bestiæ quidem ferre possent, uni isti suavis et jucundus videretur. ille erat in tribunali proximus; in cubiculo socius; in convivio dominus, ac tum maxime, quum, accubante prætextato prætoris filio, in convivio saltare nudus c[oe]perat." [ ] a great deal is said of the _cybea_ in this and the last speech. the money expended on it was passed through the accounts as though the ship had been built for the defence of the island from pirates, but it was intended solely for the depository of the governor's plunder. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iv., vii. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. iv., lvii. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., lxvi.: "facinus est vinciri civem romanum; scelus verberari; prope parricidium necari; quid dicam in crucem tollere!" [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., lxv. [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., xx.: "onere suo plane captam atque depressam." [ ] in verrem, actio secunda, lib. v., xxvi. [ ] ibid., xxviii. [ ] pro fonteio, xiii. [ ] de oratore, lib. ii., lix.: "perspicitis, hoc genus quam sit facetum, quam elegans, quam oratorium, sive habeas vere, quod narrare possis, quod tamen, est mendaciunculis aspergendum, sive fingas." either invent a story, or if you have an old one, add on something so as to make it really funny. is there a parson, a bishop, an archbishop, who, if he have any sense of humor about him, does not do the same? [ ] cicero, pro cluentio, l., explains very clearly his own idea as to his own speeches as an advocate, and may be accepted, perhaps, as explaining the ideas of barristers of to-day. "he errs," he says, "who thinks that he gets my own opinions in speeches made in law courts; such speeches are what the special cases require, and are not to be taken as coming from the advocate as his own." [ ] when the question is discussed, we are forced rather to wonder how many of the great historical doings of the time are not mentioned, or are mentioned very slightly, in cicero's letters. of pompey's treatment of the pirates, and of his battling in the east, little or nothing is said, nothing of cæsar's doings in spain. mention is made of cæsar's great operations in gaul only in reference to the lieutenancy of cicero's brother quintus, and to the employment of his young friend trebatius. nothing is said of the manner of cæsar's coming into rome after passing the rubicon; nothing of the manner of fighting at dyrrachium and pharsalia; very little of the death of pompey; nothing of cæsar's delay in egypt. the letters deal with cicero's personal doings and thoughts, and with the politics of rome as a city. the passage to which allusion is made occurs in the life of atticus, ca. xvi: "quæ qui legat non multum desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum." [ ] jean george greefe was a german, who spent his life as a professor at leyden, and, among other classical labors, arranged and edited the letters of cicero. he died in . [ ] it must be explained, however, that continued research and increased knowledge have caused the order of the letters, and the dates assigned to them, to be altered from time to time; and, though much has been done to achieve accuracy, more remains to be done. in my references to the letters i at first gave them, both to the arrangement made by grævius and to the numbers assigned in the edition i am using; but i have found that the numbers would only mislead, as no numbering has been yet adopted as fixed. arbitrary and even fantastic as is the arrangement of grævius, it is better to confine myself to that because it has been acknowledged, and will enable my readers to find the letters if they wish to do so. should mr. tyrrell continue and complete his edition of the correspondence, he will go far to achieve the desired accuracy. a second volume has appeared since this work of mine has been in the press. [ ] the peculiarities of cicero's character are nowhere so clearly legible as in his dealings with and words about his daughter. there is an effusion of love, and then of sorrow when she dies, which is un-roman, almost feminine, but very touching. [ ] i annex a passage from our well known english translation: "the power of the pirates had its foundation in cilicia. their progress was the more dangerous, because at first it had been but little noticed. in the mithridatic war they assumed new confidence and courage, on account of some services which they had rendered the king. after this, the romans being engaged in civil war at the very gates of their capital, the sea was left unguarded, and the pirates by degrees attempted higher things--not only attacking ships, but islands and maritime towns. many persons distinguished for their wealth, birth and capacity embarked with them, and assisted in their depredations, as if their employment had been worthy the ambition of men of honor. they had in various places arsenals, ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. their fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength, in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany. music resounded, and drunken revels were exhibited on every coast. here generals were made prisoners; and there the cities which the pirates had seized upon were paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the roman power. the number of their galleys amounted to a thousand, and the cities taken to four hundred." the passage is taken from the life of pompey. [ ] florus, lib. iii., : "an felicitatem, quod ne una cuidam navis amissa est; an vero perpetuitatem, quod amplius piratæ non fuerunt." [ ] of the singular trust placed in pompey there are very many proofs in the history of rome at this period, but none, perhaps, clearer than the exception made in this favor in the wording of laws. in the agrarian law proposed by the tribune rullus, and opposed by cicero when he was consul, there is a clause commanding all generals under the republic to account for the spoils taken by them in war. but there is a special exemption in favor of pompey. "pompeius exceptus esto." it is as though no tribune dared to propose a law affecting pompey. [ ] see appendix d. [ ] asconius pedianus was a grammarian who lived in the reign of tiberius, and whose commentaries on cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are very useful in explaining to us the meaning of the orator. we have his notes on these two cornelian orations and some others, especially on that of pro milone. there are also commentaries on some of the verrine orations--not by asconius, but from the pen of some writer now called pseudo-asconius, having been long supposed to have come from asconius. they, too, go far to elucidate much which would otherwise be dark to us. [ ] quint., lib. viii., . the critic is explaining the effect of ornament in oratory--of that beauty of language which with the people has more effect than argument--and he breaks forth himself into perhaps the most eloquent passage in the whole institute: "cicero, in pleading for cornelius, fought with arms which were as splendid as they were strong. it was not simply by putting the facts before the judges, by talking usefully, in good language and clearly, that he succeeded in forcing the roman people to acknowledge by their voices and by their hands their admiration; it was the grandeur of his words, their magnificence, their beauty, their dignity, which produced that outburst." [ ] orator., lxvii. and lxx. [ ] de lege agraria, ii., : "meis comitiis non tabellam, vindicem tacitæ libertatis, sed vocem vivam præ vobis, indicem vestrarum erga me voluntatum ac studiorum tulistis. itaque me * * * una voce universus populus romanus consulem declaravit." [ ] sall., conj. catilinaria, xxi.: "petere consulatum c. antonium, quem sibi collegam fore speraret, hominem et familiarem, et omnibus necessitudinibus circumventum." sallust would no doubt have put anything into catiline's mouth which would suit his own purpose; but it was necessary for his purpose that he should confine himself to credibilities. [ ] cicero himself tells us that many short-hand writers were sent by him--"plures librarii," as he calls them--to take down the words of the agrarian law which rullus proposed. de lege agra., ii., . pliny, quintilian, and martial speak of these men as notarii. martial explains the nature of their business: "currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis; nondum lingua suum, dextra peregit opus."--xiv., . [ ]ad att., ii., . "oratiunculas," he calls them. it would seem here that he pretends to have preserved these speeches only at the request of some admiring young friends. demosthenes, of course, was the "fellow-citizen," so called in badinage, because atticus, deserting rome, lived much at athens. [ ] this speech, which has been lost, was addressed to the people with the view of reconciling them to a law in accordance with which the equites were entitled to special seats in the theatre. it was altogether successful. [ ] this, which is extant, was spoken in defence of an old man who was accused of a political homicide thirty-seven years before--of having killed, that is, saturninus the tribune. cicero was unsuccessful, but rabirius was saved by the common subterfuge of an interposition of omens. there are some very fine passages in this oration. [ ] this has been lost. cicero, though he acknowledged the iniquity of sulla's proscriptions, showed that their effects could not now be reversed without further revolutions. he gained his point on this occasion. [ ] this has been lost. cicero, in accordance with the practice of the time, was entitled to the government of a province when ceasing to be consul. the rich province of macedonia fell to him by lot, but he made it over to his colleague antony, thus purchasing, if not antony's co-operation, at any rate his quiescence, in regard to catiline. he also made over the province of gaul, which then fell to his lot, to metellus, not wishing to leave the city. all this had to be explained to the people. [ ] it will be seen that he also defended rabirius in his consular year, but had thought fit to include that among his consular speeches. some doubt has been thrown, especially by mr. tyrrell, on the genuineness of cicero's letter giving the list of his "oratiunculas consulares," because the speeches pro murena and pro pisone are omitted, and as containing some "rather un-ciceronian expressions." my respect for mr. tyrrell's scholarship and judgment is so great that i hardly dare to express an opinion contrary to his; but i should be sorry to exclude a letter so ciceronian in its feeling. and if we are to have liberty to exclude without evidence, where are we to stop? [ ] corn. nepo., epaminondas, i.: "we know that with us" (romans) "music is foreign to the employments of a great man. to dance would amount to a vice. but these things among the greeks are not only pleasant but praiseworthy." [ ] conj. catilinaria, xxv. [ ] horace, epis. i., xvii.: "si sciret regibus uti fastidiret olus qui me notat." [ ] pro murena, xxix. [ ] pro murena, x. this sulpicius was afterward consul with m. marcellus, and in the days of the philippics was sent as one of a deputation to antony. he died while on the journey. he is said to have been a man of excellent character, and a thorough-going conservative. [ ] pro murena, xi. [ ] ibid., xi. [ ] ibid., xii. [ ] ibid., xiii. [ ] ibid., xi. [ ] pro cluentio, . [ ] de lege agraria, ii., . [ ] he alludes here to his own colleague antony, whom through his whole year of office he had to watch lest the second consul should join the enemies whom he fears--should support rullus or go over to catiline. with this view, choosing the lesser of the two evils, he bribes antony with the government of macedonia. [ ] de lege agraria, i., and . [ ] the "jus imaginis" belonged to those whose ancestors was counted an Ædile, a prætor, or a consul. the descendants of such officers were entitled to have these images, whether in bronze, or marble, or wax, carried at the funerals of their friends. [ ] forty years since, marius who was also "novus homo," and also, singularly enough, from arpinum, had been made consul, but not with the glorious circumstances as now detailed by cicero. [ ] de lege agraria, ii., , , and . [ ] see introduction. [ ] pliny the elder, hist. nat., lib. vii., ca. xxxi. [ ] the word is "proscripsisti," "you proscribed him." for the proper understanding of this, the bearing of cicero toward antony during the whole period of the philippics must be considered. [ ] catiline, by mr. beesly. fortnightly review, . [ ] pro murena, xxv.: "quem omnino vivum illinc exire non oportuerat." i think we must conclude from this that cicero had almost expected that his attack upon the conspirators, in his first catiline oration, would have the effect of causing him to be killed. [ ] Æneid, viii., : "te, catilina, minaci pendentem scopulo." [ ] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., xxxiv. [ ] juvenal, sat. ii., : "catilina cethegum!" could such a one as catiline answer such a one as cethegus? sat. viii., : "arma tamen vos nocturna et flammas domibus templisque parastis." catiline, in spite of his noble blood, had endeavored to burn the city. sat. xiv., : "catilinam quocunque in populo videas." it is hard to find a good man, but it is easy enough to put your hand anywhere on a catiline. [ ] val maximus, lib. v., viii., ; lib. ix., , ; lib. ix., xi., . [ ] florus, lib. iv. [ ] mommsen's history of rome, book v., chap v. [ ] i feel myself constrained here to allude to the treatment given to catiline by dean merivale in his little work on the two roman triumvirates. the dean's sympathies are very near akin to those of mr. beesly, but he values too highly his own historical judgment to allow it to run on all fours with mr. beesly's sympathies. "the real designs," he says, "of the infamous catiline and his associates must indeed always remain shrouded in mystery. * * * nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there really was, and that the very existence of the commonwealth was for a moment seriously imperilled." it would certainly be unreasonable to doubt it. but the dean, though he calls catiline infamous, and acknowledges the conspiracy, nevertheless give us ample proof of his sympathy with the conspirators, or rather of his strong feeling against cicero. speaking of catiline at a certain moment, he says that he "was not yet hunted down." he speaks of the "upstart cicero," and plainly shows us that his heart is with the side which had been cæsar's. whether conspiracy or no conspiracy, whether with or without wholesale murder and rapine, a single master with a strong hand was the one remedy needed for rome! the reader must understand that cicero's one object in public life was to resist that lesson. [ ] asconius, "in toga candida," reports that fenestella, a writer of the time of augustus, had declared that cicero had defended catiline; but asconius gives his reasons for disbelieving the story. [ ] cicero, however, declares that he has made a difference between traitors to their country and other criminals. pro p. sulla, ca. iii.: "verum etiam quædam contagio sceleris, si defendas eum, quem obstrictum esse patriæ parricidio suspicere." further on in the same oration, ca. vi., he explains that he had refused to defend autronius because he had known autronius to be a conspirator against his country. i cannot admit the truth of the argument in which mr. forsyth defends the practice of the english bar in this respect, and in doing so presses hard upon cicero. "at rome," he says, "it was different. the advocate there was conceived to have a much wider discretion than we allow." neither in rome nor in england has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. what an english barrister may do, there was no reason that a roman advocate should not do, in regard to simple criminality. cicero himself has explained in the passage i have quoted how the roman practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. he has stated also that he knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend catiline on the score of provincial peculations. no writer has been heavy on hortensius for defending verres, but only because he took bribes from verres. [ ] publius cornelius sulla, and publius autronius p[oe]tus. [ ] pro p. sulla, iv. he declares that he had known nothing of the first conspiracy and gives the reason: "quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram, quod mea me ambitio et forensis labor ab omni illa cogitatione abstrahebat." [ ] sallust, catilinaria, xviii. [ ] livy, epitome, lib. ci. [ ] suetonius, j. cæsar, ix. [ ] mommsen, book v., ca. v., says of cæsar and crassus as to this period, "that this notorious action corresponds with striking exactness to the secret action which this report ascribes to them." by which he means to imply that they probably were concerned in the plot. [ ] sallust tells us, catilinaria, xlix., that cicero was instigated by special enemies of cæsar to include cæsar in the accusation, but refused to mix himself up in so great a crime. crassus also was accused, but probably wrongfully. sallust declares that an attempt was made to murder cæsar as he left the senate. there was probably some quarrel and hustling, but no more. [ ] sallust, catilinaria, xxxvii.: "omnino cuncta plebes, novarum rerum studio, catilinæ incepta probabat." by the words "novarum rerum studio"--by a love of revolution--we can understand the kind of popularity which sallust intended to express. [ ] pro murena, xxv. [ ] "darent operam consules ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat." [ ] catilinaria, xxxi. [ ] quintilian, lib. xii., : "quem tamen et suorum homines temporum incessere audebant, ut tumidiorem, et asianum, et redundantem." [ ] orator., xxxvii.: "a nobis homo audacissimus catilina in senatu accusatus obmutuit." [ ] catilinaria, xxxi. [ ] in the first of them to the senate, chap. ix., he declares this to catiline himself: "si mea voce perterritus ire in exsilium animum induxeris, quanta tempestas invidiæ nobis, si minus in præsens tempus, recenti memoria scelerum tuorum, at in posteritatem impendeat." he goes on to declare that he will endure all that, if by so doing he can save the republic. "sed est mihi tanti; dummodo ista privata sit calamitas, et a reipublicæ periculis sejungatur." [ ] sallust, catilinaria, xli.: "itaque q. fabio sangæ cujus patrocinio civitas plurimum utebatur rem omnem uti cognoverant aperiunt." [ ] horace, epo. xvi., : "novisque rebus infidelis allobrox." the unhappy savoyard has from this line been known through ages as a conspirator, false even to his fellow-conspirators. juvenal, vii., : "rufum qui toties ciceronem allobroga dixit." some rufus, acting as advocate, had thought to put down cicero by calling him an allobrogian. [ ] the words in which this honor was conferred he himself repeats: "quod urbem incendiis, cæde cives, italiam bello liberassem"--"because i had rescued the city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and italy from war." [ ] it is necessary in all oratory to read something between the lines. it is allowed to the speaker to produce effect by diminishing and exaggerating. i think we should detract something from the praises bestowed on catiline's military virtues. the bigger catiline could be made to appear, the greater would be the honor of having driven him out of the city. [ ] in catilinam, iii., xi. [ ] in catilinam, ibid., xii.: "ne mihi noceant vestrum est providere." [ ] "prince of the senate" was an honorary title, conferred on some man of mark as a dignity--at this period on some ex-consul; it conferred no power. cicero, the consul who had convened the senate, called on the speakers as he thought fit. [ ] cæsar, according to sallust, had referred to the lex porcia. cicero alludes, and makes cæsar allude, to the lex sempronia. the porcian law, as we are told by livy, was passed b.c. , and forbade that a roman should be scourged or put to death. the lex sempronia was introduced by c. gracchus, and enacted that the life of a citizen should not be taken without the voice of the citizens. [ ] velleius paterculus, xxxvi.: "consulatui ciceronis non mediocre adjecit decus natus eo anno divus augustus." [ ] in pisonem, iii.: "sine ulla dubitatione juravi rempublicam atque hanc urbem mea unius opera esse salvam." [ ] dio cassius tells the same story, lib. xxxvii., ca. , but he adds that cicero was more hated than ever because of the oath he took: [greek: kai ho men kai ek toutou poly mallon emisêthê.] [ ] it is the only letter given in the collection as having been addressed direct to pompey. in two letters written some years later to atticus, b.c. , lib. viii., , and lib. viii., , he sends copies of a correspondence between himself and pompey and two of the pompeian generals. [ ] lib. v., . it is hardly necessary to explain that the younger scipio and lælius were as famous for their friendship as pylades and orestes. the "virtus scipiadæ et mitis sapientia læli" have been made famous to us all by horace. [ ] these two brothers, neither of whom was remarkable for great qualities, though they were both to be consuls, were the last known of the great family of the metelli, a branch of the "gens cæcilia." among them had been many who had achieved great names for themselves in roman history, on account of the territories added to the springing roman empire by their victories. there had been a macedonicus, a numidicus, a balearicus, and a creticus. it is of the first that velleius paterculus sings the glory--lib. i., ca. xi., and the elder pliny repeats the story, hist. nat., vii., --that of his having been carried to the grave by four sons, of whom at the time of his death three had been consuls, one had been a prætor, two had enjoyed triumphal honors, and one had been censor. in looking through the consular list of cicero's lifetime, i find that there were no less than seven taken from the family of the metelli. these two brothers, metellus nepos and celer, again became friends to cicero; nepos, who had stopped his speech and assisted in forcing him into exile, having assisted as consul in obtaining his recall from exile. it is very difficult to follow the twistings and turnings of roman friendships at this period. [ ] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. paterculus tells us how, when the architect offered to build the house so as to hide its interior from the gaze of the world, drusus desired the man so to construct it that all the world might see what he was doing. [ ] it may be worth while to give a translation of the anecdote as told by aulus gellius, and to point out that the authors intention was to show what a clever fellow cicero was. cicero did defend p. sulla this year; but whence came the story of the money borrowed from sulla we do not know. "it is a trick of rhetoric craftily to confess charges made, so as not to come within the reach of the law. so that, if anything base be alleged which cannot be denied, you may turn it aside with a joke, and make it a matter of laughter rather than of disgrace, as it is written that cicero did when, with a drolling word, he made little of a charge which he could not deny. for when he was anxious to buy a house on the palatine hill, and had not the ready money, he quietly borrowed from p. sulla--who was then about to stand his trial, 'sestertium viciens'--twenty million sesterces. when that became known, before the purchase was made, and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the money from a client, then cicero, instigated by the unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that he was going to buy the house. but when he had bought it and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the price of the article against himself."--noctes atticæ, xii., . aulus gellius though he tells us that the story was written, does not tell us where he read it. [ ] i must say this, "pace" mr. tyrrell, who, in his note on the letter to atticus, lib. i., , attempts to show that some bargain for such professional fee had been made. regarding mr. tyrrell as a critic always fair, and almost always satisfactory, i am sorry to have to differ from him; but it seems to me that he, too, has been carried away by the feeling that in defending a man's character it is best to give up some point. [ ] i have been amused at finding a discourse, eloquent and most enthusiastic, in praise of cicero and especially of this oration, spoken by m. guéroult at the college of france in june, . the worst literary faults laid to the charge of cicero, if committed by him--which m. guéroult thinks to be doubtful--had been committed even by voltaire and racine! the learned frenchman, with whom i altogether sympathize, rises to an ecstasy of violent admiration, and this at the very moment in which waterloo was being fought. but in truth the great doings of the world do not much affect individual life. we should play our whist at the clubs though the battle of dorking were being fought. [ ] pro p. sulla, iv.: "scis me * * * illorum expertem temporum et sermonum fuisse; credo, quod nondum penitus in republica versabar, quod nondum ad propositum mihi finem honoris perveneram. * * * quis ergo intererat vestris consiliis? omnes hi, quos vides huic adesse et in primis q. hortensius." [ ] ad att., lib. i., . [ ] ad att., lib. i., . [ ] ibid., i., . [ ]ibid., i., : "vis scire quomodo minus quam soleam præliatus sum." [ ] "you have bought a fine house," said clodius. "there would be more in what you say if you could accuse me of buying judges," replied cicero. "the judges would not trust you on your oath," said clodius, referring to the alibi by which he had escaped in opposition to cicero's oath. "yes," replied cicero, "twenty-five trusted me; but not one of the thirty-one would trust you without having his bribe paid beforehand." [ ] ad att., i., : "proxime pompeium sedebam. intellexi hominem moveri." [ ] ibid.: "quo modo [greek: eneperpereusamên], novo auditori pompeio." [ ] mommsen, book v., chap. vi. this probably has been taken from the statement of paterculus, lib. ii., : "quippe plerique non sine exercitu venturum in urbem adfirmabant, et libertati publicæ statuturum arbitrio suo modum. quo magis hoc homines timuerant, eo gratior civilis tanti imperatoris reditus fuit." no doubt there was a dread among many of pompey coming back as sulla had come: not from indications to be found in the character of pompey, but because sulla had done so. [ ] florus, lib. ii., xix. having described to us the siege of numantia, he goes on "hactenus populus romanus pulcher, egregius, pius, sanctus atque magnificus. reliqua seculi, ut grandia æque, ita vel magis turbida et f[oe]da." [ ] we have not pollio's poem on the conspiracy, but we have horace's record of pollio's poem: motum ex metello consule civicum, bellique causas et vitia, et modos, ludumque fortunæ, gravesque principum amicitias, et arma nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus, periculosæ plenum opus aleæ, tractas, et incedis per ignes suppositos cineri doloso.--odes, lib. ii., . [ ] the german index appeared--very much after the original work--as late as . [ ] mommsen, lib. v., chap. vi. i cannot admit that mommsen is strictly accurate, as cæsar had no real idea of democracy. he desired to be the head of the oligarchs, and, as such, to ingratiate himself with the people. [ ] for the character of cæsar generally i would refer readers to suetonius, whose life of the great man is, to my thinking, more graphic than any that has been written since. for his anecdotes there is little or no evidence. his facts are not all historical. his knowledge was very much less accurate than that of modern writers who have had the benefit of research and comparison. but there was enough of history, of biography, and of tradition to enable him to form a true idea of the man. he himself as a narrator was neither specially friendly nor specially hostile. he has told what was believed at the time, and he has drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all that we have learned since. [ ] by no one has the character and object of the triumvirate been so well described as by lucan, who, bombastic as he is, still manages to bring home to the reader the ideas as to persons and events which he wishes to convey. i have ventured to give in an appendix, e, the passages referred to, with such a translation in prose as i have been able to produce. it will be found at the end of this volume. [ ] plutarch--crassus: [greek: kai synestêsen ek tôn triôn ischyn amachon.] [ ] velleius paterculus, lib. ii., : "hoc igitur consule, inter eum et cn. pompeium et m. crassum inita potentiæ societas, quæ urbi orbique terrarum, nec minus diverso quoque tempore ipsis exitiabilis fuit." suetonius, julius cæsar, xix., "societatem cum utroque iniit." officers called triumviri were quite common, as were quinqueviri and decemviri. livy speaks of a "triumviratus"--or rather two such offices exercised by one man--ix., . we remember, too, that wretch whom horace gibbeted, epod. iv.: "sectus flagellis hic triumviralibus." but the word, though in common use, was not applied to this conspiracy. [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "is affirmabat, illum omnibus in rebus meo et pompeii consilio usurum, daturumque operam, ut cum pompeio crassum conjungeret. hic sunt hæc. conjunctio mihi summa cum pompeio; si placet etiam cum cæsare; reditus in gratiam cum inimicis, pax cum multitudine; senectulis otium. sed me [greek: katakleis] mea illa commovet, quæ est in libro iii. "interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventæ quosque adeo consul virtute, animoque petisti, hos retine, atque, auge famam laudesque bonorum." [ ] homer, iliad, lib. xii., : [greek: eis oiônos aristos amynesthai peri patrês.] [ ] middleton's life of cicero, vol. i., p. . [ ] pro domo sua, xvi. this was an oration, as the reader will soon learn more at length, in which the orator pleaded for the restoration of his town mansion after his return from exile. it has, however, been doubted whether the speech as we have it was ever made by cicero. [ ] suetonius, julius cæsar, xx. [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "quid quæris?" says cicero. "conturbavi græcam nationem"--"i have put all greece into a flutter." [ ] de divinatione, lib. i. [ ] ad quin. fratrem, lib. i., : "non itineribus tuis perterreri homines? non sumptu exhauriri? non adventu commoveri? esse, quocumque veneris, et publice et privatim maximam lætitiam; quum urbs custodem non tyrannum; domus hospitem non expilatorem, recipisse videatur? his autem in rebus jam te usus ipse profecto erudivit nequaquam satis esse, ipsum hasce habere virtutis, sed esse circumspiciendum diligentur, ut in hac custodia provinciæ non te unum, sed omnes ministros imperii tui, sociis, et civibus, et reipublicæ præstare videare." [ ] ad quin. fratrem, lib. i., : "ac mihi quidem videntur huc omnia esse referenda iis qui præsunt aliis; ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio sint quam beatissimi, quod tibi et esse antiquissimum et ab initio fuisse, ut primum asiam attigisti, constante fama atque omnium sermone celebratum est. est autem non modo ejus, qui sociis et civibus, sed etiam ejus qui servis, qui mutis pecudibus præsit, eorum quibus præsit commodis utilitatique servire." [ ] "hæc est una in toto imperio tuo difficultas." [ ] mommsen, book v., ca. . [ ] mommsen, vol. v., ca. vi. [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "atque hæc, sin velim existimes, non me abs te [greek: kata to praktikon] quærere, quod gestiat animus aliquid agere in republica. jam pridem gubernare me tædebat, etiam quum licebat." [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "scito curionem adolescentem venisse ad me salutatum. valde ejus sermo de publio cum tuis litteris congruebat, ipse vero mirandum in modum reges odisse superbos. peræque narrabat incensam esse juventutem, neque ferre hæc posse." the "reges superbos" were cæsar and pompey. [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : [greek: aideomai trôas kai trôadas helkesipeplous].--il., vi., . "i fear what mrs. grundy would say of me," is mr. tyrrell's homely version. cicero's mind soared, i think, higher when he brought the words of hector to his service than does the ordinary reference to our old familiar critic. [ ] quint., xii., . [ ] enc. britannica on cicero. [ ] ad att., lib. ii., . [ ] ibid.: "festive, mihi crede, et minore sonitu, quam putaram, orbis hic in republica est conversus." "orbis hic," this round body of three is the triumvirate. [ ] we cannot but think of the threat horace made, sat., lib. ii., : "at ille qui me commorit, melius non tangere! clamo, flebit, et insignis tota cantabitur urbe." [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "da ponderosam aliquam epistolam." [ ] josephus, lib. xviii., ca. . [ ] ad att., lib. ii., . [ ] ad att., lib. ii., : "a cæsare valde liberaliter invitor in legationem illam, sibi ut sim legatus; atque etiam libera legatio voti causa datur." [ ] de legibus, lib. iii., ca. viii.: "jam illud apertum prefecto est nihil esse turpius, quam quenquam legari nisi republica causa." [ ] it may be seen from this how anxious cæsar was to secure his silence, and yet how determined not to screen him unless he could secure his silence. [ ] ad quintum, lib. i., . [ ] of this last sentence i have taken a translation given by mr. tyrrell, who has introduced a special reading of the original which the sense seems to justify. [ ] macrobius, saturnalia, lib. ii., ca. i.: we are told that cicero had been called the consular buffoon. "and i," says macrobius, "if it would not be too long, could relate how by his jokes he has brought off the most guilty criminals." then he tells the story of lucius flaccus. [ ] see the evidence of asconius on this point, as to which cicero's conduct has been much mistaken. we shall come to milo's trial before long. [ ] the statement is made by mr. tyrrell in his biographical introduction to the epistles. [ ] the years, or anni dc., is used to signify unlimited futurity. [ ] mommsen's history, book v., ca. v. [ ] [greek: automalos ônomazeto] is the phrase of dio cassius. "levissume transfuga" is the translation made by the author of the "declamatio in ciceronem." if i might venture on a slang phrase, i should say that [greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own hook." but no man was ever more loyal as a political adherent than cicero. [ ] ad att., ii., . [ ] we do not know when the marriage took place, or any of the circumstances; but we are aware that when tullia came, in the following year, b.c. , to meet her father at brundisium, she was a widow. [ ] suetonius, julius cæsar, xii.: "subornavit etiam qui c. rabirio perduellionis diem diceret." [ ] "qui civem romanum indemnatum perimisset, ei aqua at igni interdiceretur." [ ] plutarch tells us of this sobriquet, but gives another reason for it, equally injurious to the lady's reputation. [ ] ad att., lib. iii., . [ ] in pisonem, vi. [ ] ad att., lib. x., . [ ] we are told by cornelius nepos, in his life of atticus, that when cicero fled from his country atticus advanced to him two hundred and fifty sesterces, or about £ . i doubt, however, whether the flight here referred to was not that early visit to athens which cicero was supposed to have made in his fear of sulla. [ ] ad fam., lib. xiv., iv.: "tullius to his terentia, and to his young tullia, and to his cicero," meaning his boy. [ ] pro domo sua, xxiv. [ ] ad quin. fra., , . [ ] the reader who wishes to understand with what anarchy the largest city in the world might still exist, should turn to chapter viii. of book v. of mommsen's history. [ ] ad att., lib. iii., . [ ] horace, epis., lib. ii., . [ ] ad att., lib. i., . [ ] horace, epis., lib. ii., . the translation is conington's. [ ] vell. pat., lib. i., xiii. [ ] "civile;" when sulla, with pompey under him, was fighting with young marius and cinna. [ ] "africanum;" when he had fought with domitius, the son-in-law of cinna, and with hiarbas. [ ] "transalpinum;" during his march through gaul into spain. [ ] "hispaniense;" in which he conquered sertorius. [ ] "servile;" the war with spartacus, with the slaves and gladiators. [ ] "navale bellum;" the war with the pirates. [ ] for the full understanding of this oft-quoted line the reader should make himself acquainted with cato's march across libya after the death of pompey, as told by lucan in his th book. end of volume i.