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 THE LIFE 
 
 MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, 
 
 J. F. ROLLINGS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE " LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.' 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG, 73, CHEAPSIDE. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIX.
 
 CY11US R. EDMONDS, ESQ. 
 us Volume 
 
 IS INSCRIBED, WITH SENTIMENTS OF SINCERE RESPECT AND FSTFEM, 
 BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND, 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE Life of Cicero, by Dr. Conyers Middleton, has 
 long enjoyed an extensive and well-merited circulation. 
 To the classical scholar, affording, as it does, a continued 
 commentary upon the text, in the shape of copious notes, 
 carefully transcribed from the works of the Orator, in 
 addition to treating upon the minutest particulars of his 
 history then known, and containing a mass of information 
 derived from almost every available source with respect to 
 the leading events of his time, it must always prove a 
 valuable aid towards a thorough acquaintance with one of 
 the most interesting periods. Other and no less obvious 
 merits, notwithstanding the slight drawback presented 
 in its decided and extravagant partiality, might easily be 
 specified. With all its excellences, however, it is a 
 work more suited, from its elaborate character, to the 
 learned than either to the general reader, or to the 
 student who may be desirous of making himself acquainted 
 with the leading events in the Life of Cicero, without 
 possessing leisure or curiosity sufficient to enter into the 
 more extensive field of inquiry presented by the labours 
 of Middleton. It has been believed, therefore, that a 
 work in a somewhat more popular form, but still 
 conveying such information, by means of notes and 
 references, as might prove of utility to those entering 
 upon this department of ancient literature, without 
 wearying his attention, would not be unacceptable to a
 
 Till PREFACE. 
 
 considerable part of the reading public. The name of 
 Cicero himself and the universal admiration with which 
 his genius has been regarded in all ages the importance 
 of the sera in which he flourished, and the prominent part 
 enacted by him in some of its most striking scenes, 
 appeared to bring his life fairly within the range of sub- 
 jects intended to be illustrated by the series of works con- 
 stituting the " Family Library." 
 
 In preparing the present volume, the well-known 
 history compiled by Fabricius, and the Fasti Hellenici 
 of Mr. Fynes Clinton, have been taken as the best, as 
 well as the most comprehensive, guides for the succession 
 and order of events. The assistance afforded by the 
 classical historians, and the remarks of various commen- 
 tators, has not been neglected, and it will be seen that 
 the recent discoveries of Maio have furnished a feAv, by 
 no means unimportant, particulars. At the same time, 
 wherever it has been found necessary, the Life of 
 Cicero by Middleton has been respectfully consulted, as 
 well as the notes of Melmoth to his excellent translation 
 of Cicero's Epistles. So ample and easily accessible, 
 however, arc the materials for a biography such as the 
 present, that any credit on the score of research is entirely 
 out of the question. Nor does the Author, in the least 
 degree, pretend to such a merit : his principal labour, in 
 this instance, has necessarily consisted in selection, not in 
 discovery rather in compressing the immense stock of 
 materials at hand, than in indulging the ambition, in his 
 case wholly unwarrantable, of adding information which 
 the curiosity of the most eniinent and unwearied scholars 
 has for ages failed to detect. 
 
 It remains but to advert to the reasons for which the 
 four orations known as the Prima and Secunda, Post Re- 
 ditum, Pro Domo Sua, and De Haruspicum Responsioni- 
 bus, upon which so much controversial ingenuity and so 
 much amusing wit have been employed, have been cited 
 as authentic documents. It may be remarked, then, that
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 until the dazzling commentary of Bentley upon the 
 false epistles of Phalaris had excited in writers of less 
 acuteness the perilous ambition of following in his track, 
 the genuineness of these speeches was never for a moment 
 douhted ; and that although the learning of Markland, 
 in the early part of the last century, was ably employed 
 in endeavouring to destroy their authority, the judgment 
 of Gesner was not long afterwards strenuously given in 
 their favour, and that of Ernesti so confidently esta- 
 blished upon the same side of the question, as to ensure 
 their admission, without the least apparent scruple, into 
 his valuable edition of Cicero's works. The daring 
 scepticism of Wolf, from which nothing seemed at one 
 time destined to be sacred, revived the controversy, but 
 invested it with no greater degree of certainty. It is 
 true, indeed, that his views have been supported by some 
 of the most able critics of recent times, and among them 
 by those whose judgment with respect to the pro- 
 ductions of Cicero would be entitled to implicit deference, 
 were it unbalanced by that of others of equal erudition, 
 and possessed by a less evident desire of innovation. 
 But it is equally true, on the other hand, that Lemaire, 
 whose judicious remarks should be read by all interested 
 in the dispute, has lately added his name to that of former 
 believers in the authenticity of the doubted orations. At 
 the same time the recent discovery by which the speech 
 for Marcellus has been vindicated from the suspicion so 
 long thrown upon it, may be considered a valuable com- 
 mentary upon the confidence to be placed in the specious 
 unbelief of later times when opposed to the less dif- 
 ficult credence of antiquity. Under all circumstances, 
 while the learned are still equally divided, and like the 
 contending armies in some of the campaigns managed 
 according to rules of war now obsolete, seem, after a 
 succession of skirmishes and encounters more or less 
 obstinate, to be returning to the same ground which 
 they respectively occupied at the commencement of the
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 affray ; while the most able editors among the moderns 
 severally discover and bear willing witness to the too great 
 self-confidence and boldness displayed by their immediate 
 predecessors* ; it appears the safest as well as most pru- 
 dent course to fall back upon authorities who, with far 
 better means of pronouncing upon the point in question 
 than we can possibly acquire, and with no inducement to 
 abuse them for the purpose of misleading, have left us 
 a testimony which, after the lapse of so many centuries, 
 it, must seem almost preposterous to attempt to shake, 
 were we provided with much more formidable means 
 than those which we really possess, for the purpose. 
 
 Leicester, September 4, 1839. 
 
 * " Minore utinam judieii volubilitate et audacia praeditum 
 creasset rerutn domina natura," is the wish of Orelle, in remarking 
 upon the acknowledged genius and erudition of Schiitz. See the 
 Preface of the former.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Birth and parentage of Cicero His education and early in- 
 dications of talent He attends the lectures of the poet Archias 
 and applies to the study of Poetry Assumes the toga virilis 
 Commences the study of civil law Serves in the Marsic 
 War under C. Porupeius Strabo and Cor. Sylla Contests 
 between the latter general and Marius Cicero attends the lec- 
 tures of Philo the Academician and Molo the Rhetorician 
 Return of Sylla to Rome and proscription of the Marian party 
 First speech of Cicero in defence of Publius Quintius 
 Oration for Roscius of Ameria Cicero resolves upon visiting 
 Greece Arrives at Athens Is initiated into the Eleusinian 
 mysteries Passes into Asia, and devotes himself to rhetoric 
 He returns to Rome after two years' absence Undertakes 
 the cause of Roscius the comedian Is elected to the quses- 
 torship His marriage with Terentia . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Conduct of Cicero in his Quscstorship He discovers the 
 Tomb of Archimedes Delivers a farewell Oration at the 
 Expiration of his Office, to the People of LilybsDiim He em- 
 barks for Italy, and arrives at Puteoli Spends five years in 
 pleading private Causes Resolves to stand for the ./Edileship, 
 and is returned to the Office Commencement of the prosecu- 
 tion against Verres History of the Administration of that 
 Magistrate Oration against Caecilius Cicero sails a second 
 time to Sicily Returns to Rome, and delivers his first 
 Oration against Verres, who withdraws into Banishment 
 He defends Marcus Fonteius and Aulus Cecina Dedication 
 of the Capitol by Quintus Catulus . . .27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Election of Cicero to the Prsetorship His Impartiality in the 
 Trial of Licinius Macer Orations for Cluentius and Fun- 
 danius Speech in Defence of the Mauilian Law Manilius is 
 impeached before Cicero for Peculation First Letters to At-
 
 XU CONTEXTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ticus Conspiracy against the Consuls Torquatus and Cotta 
 Oration of Cicero for Puhlius Cornelius Consulate of Lucius 
 Julius Caesar and C. Marcius Figulus Cicero prepares to sue 
 for the Consulship Meditates the Defence of Catiline 
 Delivers his Oration "in Toga Candida" He is elected 
 Consul Origin and Progress of the Catilinarian Conspiracy 
 Cicero defends Quintus Gallius . . . .59 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Consulate of Cicero He opposes the Agrarian Law of 
 Rullus Appeases the Tumults in consequence of the thea- 
 trical Law of Roscius Otho Defends Rabirius His Oration 
 " De Proscriptorum Liberis " Progress of the Catilinaiian 
 Conspiracy The Senate assembled by Cicero to debate upon 
 the subject Decree in consequence The Conspirator Man- 
 lius sets out for Fsesulae Attempt to assassinate Cicero He 
 assembles the Senate at the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and 
 delivers his first Oration against Catiline, who departs in 
 consequence from Rome Second Catilinarian Oration The 
 Praetor Lentulus carries on the Conspiracy in the Capital 
 Cicero undertakes the Cause of Licinius Muraena in opposition 
 to Cato Conference of the Conspirators with the Ambas- 
 sadors of the Allobroges, who divulge the Plot Arrest of 
 Lentulus and his Companions Meeting of the Senate in the 
 Temple of Concord Third Catilinarian Oration Debate 
 respecting the punishment of the Conspirators Speeches of 
 Caesar and Cato Fourth Catilinarian Oration Execution of 
 Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius and Coeparius Ho- 
 nours conferred upon Cicero His Vanity Campaign against 
 Catiline, who is defeated and slain at the Battle of Pistoria . 84 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Domestic Dissensions at Rome between the Aristocracy, 
 and the popular Party under Julius Caesar and the Tribune 
 Metellus Letter of Cicero to Pompey Oration for Publius 
 Sylla Cicero removes from his Residence on the Palatine Hill 
 to the House of Livius Drusus Violation of the Rites of the 
 Bona Dea by Publius Clodius Disputes occasioned by his 
 Impeachment Pompey returns from his Mithridatic Expe- 
 dition to Rome Meeting in the Flaminian Circus Trial of 
 Clodius, who is acquitted Evidence of Cicero on the occasion 
 Speech for the Poet Archias Third Triumph of Pompey . 134
 
 CONTENTS. X1U 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Consulate of Lucius Afranius and Mctcllus Color Coa- 
 lition of Pouipey with Clodius First Triumvirate Cha- 
 racters of its Members Cicero composes in retirement his 
 History of his Consulship Julius Caesar and Calpurnius 
 Bibulus returned Consuls Agrarian Law of the former He 
 is opposed by Cato Adoption of Clodius into the Plebeian 
 Family of Publius Fonteius Oration of Cicero for Flaccus 
 Clodius elected Tribune Decline of the Influence of Poinpey 
 Caesar offers a Commission to Cicero, as his Lieutenant, in 
 the Gallic War Letter of Cicero to his Brother Quiutus in 
 Asia Acts brought forward by Clodius at the commence- 
 ment of his Tribuneship His Law against the arbitrary In- 
 fliction of Capital Punishment passed by an Assembly of 
 the People Distress of Cicero He applies for Protection 
 to Pompey without effect, and prepares to retire into Exile 
 Expressions of Public Opinion in his Favour He withdraws 
 from Rome . . . . . .164 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Cicero forbidden to enter Sicily by the Praetor Caius Vir- 
 gilius He receives Intelligence at Vibn of the Decrees 
 sanctioning his Exile His Estates are plundered, and his 
 House at Rome rased to the ground by Clodius Cato is 
 sent on a Foreign Commission to Cyprus Cicero at Taren- 
 tum He proceeds to Brand usium and embarks for Epirus 
 Repairs to Thessalonica Letters to Terentia, and to Atti- 
 cus Riots excited by Clodius at Rome His Attack upon 
 Quintus Cicero and the Tribunes in the Foruui Milo arms 
 a Body of Gladiators against him Skirmishes between the two 
 Parties Decree of the Senate summoning all Freemen in the 
 Interests of Cicero to Rome He is recalled Sets out from 
 Epirus and disembarks at Brundusium, where he is met by 
 his daughter Tullia His Triumphant' Progress through Italy, 
 und Favourable Reception at the Capital . . 197 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Oration of Cicero in the Senate after his Return Tumults 
 raised by Clodius Oration "Pro Domo sua" Attack of 
 Clodius upon the Houses of Cicero and Milo Clodius elected 
 jEdile Speech of Cicero " De Rege Alexandrine" Milo 
 impeached by Clodius for illegal Violence Cicero defends
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Publius Sextius Interrogation against Vatinius Oration 
 " De Haruspicum Responsionibus" Cicero tears down the 
 Tablets in the Capitol, containing the Decree relating to his 
 Banishment Oration respecting the Consular Provinces 
 Marriage of Tullia and Crassipes Speeches for Balbus and 
 Caelius Letter of Cicero to Lucius Lucceius Second Con- 
 sulate of Ponipeyand Crassus Oration of Cicero against Piso 
 His Letter to Marius respecting the Dedication of the 
 Pompeian Theatre Cicero writes his Treatise " De Oratore" 
 Departure of Crassus for his Parthian Expedition . 224 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Consulate of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius 
 Claudius Pulcher Cicero commences his Treatise " De 
 Republica" Defends Vatinius and Scaurus Orations for 
 Plancius, Gabinius, and Rabirius Letters to Trebatius and 
 Quintus Cicero, respecting the Britannic Expedition of Caesar 
 Disturbances at Rome Triumph of Pontinus Creation 
 of Interreges Consulate of Calvinus and Messala Canvass 
 of Milo, Scipio, Hypsaeus, and Clodius Tumults in conse- 
 quence Oration on the Debts of Milo Clodius is slain by 
 the Followers of the latter at Bovillae Insurrection at Rome 
 Pompey declared sole Consul His New Acts Impeach- 
 ment of Milo Oration of Cicero in his Defence Milo retires 
 to Marseilles Prosecutions against the Clodian Faction- 
 Cicero composes his Dialogue '' De Legibus" He is ap- 
 pointed to the Proconsulship of Cilicia, and sets out for his 
 Province . . . . . . 263 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Jealousies between Pompey and Csesar Cicero at Athens 
 - He arrives at Epbesus, and proceeds to Laodicea Disin- 
 terestedness of Cicero -Invasion of Syria by the Parthians, 
 wbo besiege Caius Cassius in Antioch Cicero encamps at 
 Cybistra His Despatch to the Senate, giving an Account of his 
 Interview with Ariobarzanes His Operations at Amanus 
 Letter to Atticus To the Senate and People To Marcus 
 Cato Reply of the latter Disingenuousness of Cicero with 
 respect to Appius His Justice towards the Salaminians 
 Equitable Character of his Government Cicero at Tarsus 
 He prepares to return to Italy Lands at the Peiraeus 
 Arrives at Brundusium, and proceeds towards Rome . 307
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Progress of the Dissensions between the rival Factions at 
 Rome The Consul Marcellus delivers his Sword to Pompey 
 Interview between Pompey and Cicero Cicero enters 
 Rome Ultimate Decree of the Senate Flight of the Tri- 
 bunes Antony and Cassius Caesar crosses the Rubicon 
 Pompey withdraws with the Senatorian Party from Rome 
 Alarming Progress of his Adversaries Corfinium besieged 
 Cicero declines to join Pompey, who retreats to Brundusium, 
 and embarks for Greece Vacillation of Cicero His Interview 
 with Caesar Correspondence with Antony and Ccelius 
 Cicero embarks for Dyrrachium His arrival in the Camp 
 of Pompey Caesar lands at Pharsalus Is unsuccessful in 
 his Attack upon Pompey's Entrenchments, and retreats into 
 Thessaly Battle of Pharsalia The Command of the Pom- 
 peian Party offered to Cicero, who declines it Cato sails to 
 Africa Cicero returns to Brundusium . . 345 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Cicero receives News of the Death of Pompey The Party 
 of the Senate revives Cato and Labienus in Africa Regret 
 of Cicero on Account of his late Policy He is commanded 
 by Antony to leave Italy Conduct of Quintus Cicero 
 Arrival of Caesar at Brundusium Cicero sets out to meet 
 him His Reception He returns to Rome Caesar sets out 
 for Africa Treatises " De Partitione Oratorica" and " De 
 Claris Oratoribus" Cicero divorces Terentia, and marries his 
 second Wife Publilia Triumph of Caesar His absolute 
 Authority Cicero composes his " Cato," which is answered 
 by Caesar And his " Orator" Orations for Marcellus and 
 Ligarius Death of Tullia Cicero retires to Astura Letter 
 of Servius Sulpicius Literary Occupations of Cicero He 
 composes his " Hortensius," "Academics," and "Tusculan 
 Disputations" He divorces Publilia Caesar returns from his 
 Expedition to Spain Speech for Deiotarus Visit of Caesar to 
 Cicero Consulate of Caninius Rebilus . . 387 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Preparations of Caesar for his Parthian Expedition Con- 
 spiracy of Brutus and Cassius Assassination of Caesar Cicero 
 joins the Conspirators in the Capitol Apparent Reconciliation 
 of the two Parties Funeral of Caesar Insurrection excited 
 by Antony The Conspirators fly from Rome Corres- 
 pondence between Antony and Cicero Octavius Caesar arrives
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 in Italy He visits Cicero His Quarrel with Antony Letter 
 of Brutus and Cassias Cicero, deterred from attending the 
 Proceedings of the Senate, resolves to return to Greece 
 Council of the Conspirators at Autium Philosophical Works 
 composed by Cicero in his retirement He embarks at Pompeii 
 Ariives at Velia, and lands at Syracuse Determines on 
 returning His Interview with Brutus at Velia Ire arrives 
 at Rome First Philippic Reply of Antony Second Phi- 
 lippic Antony sets out for Brundusium Octavius advances 
 upon Rome Return of Antony Revolt of the fourth and 
 Martial Legions Antony marches into Cisalpine Gaul 
 Third and Fourth Philippics Cicero composes his last 
 Treatise, " De Officiis " . 427 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Consulate of Hirtius and Pansa Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh 
 Philippics Departure of the Ambassadors of the Senate for 
 the Camp of Antony Eighth and Ninth Philippics Suc- 
 cesses of Brutus in Macedonia Tenth Philippic Death of 
 Caius Trebonius Dolabella declared a Public Enemy 
 Twelfth Philippic General Posture of Affairs in the Pro- 
 vinces The Consul Pansa marches into Gaul Letter of 
 Antony to Hirtius and Octavius Lepidus writes to the 
 Senate Thirteenth Philippic Pansa attempts to effect a 
 Junction with the army of Hirtius Battle of Forum Gallo- 
 rum Antony retreats to his Lines before Mutina Four- 
 teenth Philippic Antony attacked in his Entrenchments 
 and defeated Death of Hirtius Antony raises the siege of 
 Mutina, and retreats towards the Alps Successes of the Party 
 of the Senate under Cassius in Syria . . . 478 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Death of the Consul Pansa Coolness of Octavius towards 
 the Cause of the Senate Letters of Marcus Brutus and 
 Lepidus to Cicero Lepidus revolts to Antony, and is declared 
 a Public Enemy Outuvius advances to Rome, and is returned 
 Consul Universal Defection of the Armies in the Western 
 Provinces Second Triumvirate and Proscription of the Re- 
 publican Party Cicero flies to Astura Death of his Brother 
 and Nephew He lands near Caieta Is overtaken and slain 
 by Popilius Lamas Insults offered to his Remains Remarks 
 on his Character Philosophical Writings Correspondence 
 aud Eloquence . . . . . .511
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE OF CICERO 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and parentage of Cicero His education and early indications 
 of talent He attends the lectures of the poet Archias and applies 
 to the study of Poetry Assumes the toga virilis Commences 
 the study of civil law Serves in the Mai sic War under C. 
 Pompeius Strabo and Cor. Sylla Contests between the latter 
 general and Marius Cicero attends the lectures of Philo the Aca- - 
 demician and Molo the Rhetorician Return of Sylla to Rome 
 and proscription of the Marian party First speech of Cicero iu 
 defence ofPublius Quintius Oration for Roscius of Amelia 
 Cicero resolves upon visiting Greece Arrives at Athens Is ini- 
 tiated into the Eleusinian mysteries Passes into Asia, and de- 
 votes himself to rhetoric He returns to Rome after two years' 
 absence Undertakes the cause of Roscius the comedian Is 
 elected to the quacstorship His marriage with Terentia. 
 
 THE small town of Arpinum, in the territory of the 
 Volsci, has acquired a remarkable celebrity in con- 
 nexion with the ancient history of Rome, and conse- 
 quently with that of the world, as the birthplace of 
 two individuals, both destined to attain in after life the 
 highest honours of the state and a conspicuous name 
 in the annals of their country, although by the exer- 
 cise of widely different qualities. Here, amidst cir- 
 cumstances of poverty and obscurity strangely con- 
 trasting with the condition of power which he 
 afterwards reached, the ambitious and vindictive 
 Marine entered upon an existence, whose tenour was
 
 2 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 subsequently to be recorded in characters of blood. 
 Here also, about fifty years after that event, six hun- 
 dred and forty-eight* from the building of Rome, and a 
 hundred and six before the Christian era, during the 
 consulate of Quintus Servilius Coepio and Caius Ati- 
 lius Serranus,t the birth of Marcus Tullius Cicero 
 conferred upon his native place a claim to the notice 
 and respect of posterity, far exceeding that which the 
 most splendid military achievements or the most suc- 
 cessfully prosecuted career of ambition could bestow. 
 Whether the family of Cicero was of mean or of 
 noble extraction, is a point which has been left, to a 
 certain extent, undecided, by the conflicting statements 
 of his panegyrists and his calumniators. The addi- 
 tional lustre which the statements of the latter, one of 
 whom even asserts that he was the son of a fuller, 
 would, if correct, have shed upon his memory, cannot, 
 however, be claimed for him on the best evidence ; 
 which, certainly will not allow him to be reckoned 
 among the number of those, whose talents have been 
 exerted under the disadvantages of what is usually 
 termed inferior birth, or limited circumstances. He 
 himself speaks of his father as a person with suffi- 
 ciently flourishing means to be able to devote a consi- 
 derable portion of his time to literary pursuits ; and 
 Plutarch has stated, that he was entitled, according 
 to common tradition, to claim a descent in a direct line 
 from Tullus Attius, one of the most renowned of the 
 ancient Yolscian kings. The family of his mother 
 Helvia is generally admitted to have been noble, and 
 her property considerable. His first name, Marcus, 
 had been borne both by his father and grandfather, 
 
 * Six hundred and forty-seven, according to tbe common compu- 
 tation, which is supported by the authority of the Capitoline Mar- 
 bles. The chronology of Varro, which is also that of the " Fasti Hel- 
 lenici," has been adopted throughout the present volume. 
 
 f On the third day of the nones of January, (January 3) as ho 
 himself states Ad Attic, viii. 5. Ad urbem iii Nonas natali inco.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 3 
 
 and was therefore, bestowed upon him as the firstborn 
 of a third generation in compliance with accepted usage. 
 The appellation of Tullius, the distinguishing title of 
 his family, is supposed to have had a meaning 
 analogous to " running streams " or " rivers ;" and the 
 position of their estate between the Fibrenus and 
 the Liris, may, possibly, have given rise to its adop- 
 tion. The surname, Cicero, derived from a Latin sub- 
 stantive signifying a vetch, (like those of the Pisones, 
 Fabii and Lentuli from peas, beans, and lentils,) 
 may be attributed to the skill shown by some of 
 his forefathers in one particular branch of agricul- 
 ture, an art which the ancients, as it is well known, 
 considered among the noblest of occupations. In . 
 consequence of the qualification afforded by their 
 property, both the father of the orator and Cicero 
 himself were enabled to take rank with the equestrian 
 order, as the earlier heads of their family had done 
 before them. The prouder appellation introductory to 
 it, that of a Roman citizen, was shared with the rest of 
 the natives of Arpinum ; on whom, after their town 
 had been first wrested from the Volsci by the Sam- 
 nites, and, at a later period, subdued by the powerful 
 arms to which both these nations were compelled to 
 yield, the title, accompanied with an admission into 
 the Cornelian tribe, was bestowed, either as a mark of 
 respect to the general martial character of the people, 
 or, as is more probable, a bribe to ensure their future 
 submission. . 
 
 The estate on which Cicero was born, has been 
 already represented as being situated at the conflu- 
 ence of the Fibrenus and Liris ; the latter a river 
 which has acquired an independent renown from the 
 beautiful description of Horace*. In his philosophi- 
 cal works, composed at a period when the toil^ 
 
 * rura quse Liris quieta 
 
 Mordet aqua, taciturnus atnnis. T 
 
 2 and
 
 4 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 anxieties of an active life had, probably, enhanced its 
 natural beauties in his eyes, he touchingly alludes to 
 it with all the interest which the reminiscences of 
 infancy are usually found to excite, and that fondness 
 instinctive to human nature, for scenes, which have 
 witnessed what has proved to most the brightest and 
 least troubled period of their existence. The oak of 
 fAjpimim still flourishes in the recollection of the 
 lovers of classic literature, and the grassy island 
 planted with poplars, and deriving a pleasant fresh- 
 ness from the streams which it divides, is inseparable 
 from our recollections of the acute and polished dia- 
 logue maintained, whether in reality or in fiction, 
 upon its shores. Near this spot his infancy and 
 early childhood were spent under the care of parents 
 who seem to have been in all respects qualified for 
 their important duties. As a sister of his mother 
 was married to C. Aculeo, a wealthy Roman of the 
 equestrian order, who was on the most intimate 
 terms with the celebrated orator L. Crassus, it was 
 afterwards deemed advisable by his father to remove 
 with him to Rome, where he for some time enjoyed 
 all the advantages of education possessed by the sons 
 of Aculeo ; being educated together with his cousins 
 by masters who had been recommended by Crassus, 
 and upon a plan which the orator himself had fur- 
 nished. Plutarch, with his usual fondness for omens, 
 has recorded a supernatural intimation conveyed 
 to his nurse, during his childhood, that his future 
 career would be attended with honours, which the 
 most sanguine among his relations could hardly 
 have anticipated. But a more rational prognostic of 
 his after greatness was displayed by his rapid and 
 astonishing advances in every department of study, 
 when his father, for the benefit of more public instruc- 
 tion, placed him for a short time in one of the 
 larger schools of Rome. If his biographer is to be
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. O 
 
 believed, it was then no uncommon occurrence for 
 the parents of the other pupils to frequent the 
 place in which his precocious talents were daily ex- 
 hibited, in order to ascertain, by actual observation, 
 the truth of the reports they had heard respecting 
 his extensive attainments and singular powers of ap- 
 prehension and memory. His attention was particu- 
 larly directed to the acquisition of the Greek language, 
 which had become not only a valuable accomplish- 
 ment but almost a necessary attainment, since the 
 establishment of the Roman power in Eastern Eu- 
 rope and Asia, to men who might probably be called 
 to fill official stations in those countries. The poet 
 Archias having arrived at the house of Lucullus in 
 Rome, when he was about five years of age, and com- 
 menced a course of instruction in rhetoric and general 
 literature, Cicero was eventually placed under his 
 care, although he states that he was inclined to pre- 
 fer the lessons of L. Plotius, an eminent grammarian 
 and rhetorician, whose pupils were introduced to an 
 acquaintance with the arts he professed through the 
 more popular medium of the Latin tongue. To 
 Archias, with whom he was afterwards united 
 by sentiments of personal friendship and regard, he 
 has acknowledged that he was entirely indebted 
 for that acute perception of the beauties of imagi- 
 native literature, and refined poetic taste, discern- 
 ible throughout his writings. The pupil lived to 
 return the obligation. Like many other preceptors, 
 Archias is remembered for little more than his con- 
 nexion with the most distinguished of his scholars, 
 and although, at one time, eminent for compositions 
 which were admired and celebrated throughout Asia, 
 Greece, and Italy, now owes his principal fame to the 
 reflected light of that imperishable oration, in which 
 the talents of the advocate were equalledby his disinte- 
 restedness, and the splendour of the eloquence by which
 
 6 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 it was characterised was not more striking than the 
 gratitude by which it was prompted and adorned. 
 
 Cicero appears to have continued under the care 
 of Archias until his sixteenth year, bestowing con- 
 siderable pains upon the study of poetry, in which 
 he was at all times ambitious of excelling, and to his 
 success in the prosecution of which he frequently 
 alludes, with a complacency hardly warranted by the 
 opinions entertained upon the subject by most of the 
 critics who have commented upon his writings. His 
 earliest production was entitled " Glaucus Pontius," 
 and was still extant in the days of Plutarch, who 
 affirms that in consequence of this, and subsequent 
 works of equal merit, he was considered not only the 
 greatest orator, but also the first poet of Rome. He 
 afterwards translated the "Phaenomena" of Aratus, 
 and, besides a poem called "Marius," which his friend 
 the augur Scsevala pronounced to be immortal, thus 
 proving himself to be little of an adept in his own pro- 
 fession* ; and another entitled " Leimon," recorded 
 the principal events of his consulate in the heroic mea- 
 sure. A few fragments of these productions are all by 
 which we are now able to judge of his skill in metri- 
 cal composition, or to form any opinion of the justice of 
 the famous sarcasm of the Roman satirist f, who, 
 however, probably intended his allusion to extend 
 no further than to the single line against which it 
 was expressly directed. When compared with the 
 polished verse of the Augustan age, that of Cicero 
 certainly appears rugged and inharmonious; but if 
 viewed at the same time with that of Ennius and 
 other early writers, or even with the somewhat more 
 melodious lines of his contemporary Lucretius*, we 
 
 * Eaque, ut ait Scsevola de fratris mei Mario, 
 
 Canescet saclis innumerabilibus. DE LEGIBUS I. 
 f Antoni gladios potuit contemnere si sio 
 
 Omnia dixisset. JUT. X, 
 J Born A. U. C. 659. Fasti Hellenic!, iii. 136.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 7 
 
 shall perhaps arrive at the opinion, that, to ho equit- 
 able, our censure must hecome more general. By the 
 superior beauty and harmony of his prose works, 
 Cicero, whose case is far from being without a paral- 
 lel, has himself proved the greatest enemy to his own 
 reputation as a poet. These, in consequence of the 
 mingled grace and purity, the beauty of the thoughts, 
 and the nameless refinements for which they are 
 remarkable, must at all times be considered as the 
 best standard of the Roman tongue. On his poetry 
 no such eulogy, assuredly, can be passed ; but it does 
 not, therefore, follow, as some have assumed, that it 
 was either frivolous or contemptible. 
 
 The age of sixteen was an important epoch in the 
 life of a Roman, as it Avas generally the period at 
 which the " toga virilis," or manly dress, was for the 
 first time publicly worn in the Forum, or in other 
 words, at which it was deemed advisable to enter 
 upon the active duties of a citizen. Cicero performed 
 this ceremony in the consulate of Lucius Marcus 
 Philippus, and Sextus Julius Ceesar, and immediately 
 attached himself to the study of the civil law with 
 indefatigable industry. His director and guide in 
 this pursuit was Quintus Mutius Scsevola, the Augur, 
 an eminent pleader and statesman, who had honour- 
 ably filled the consular office, as well as most of the 
 inferior dignities of the state; from whose side he 
 describes himself as seldom having been absent during 
 his daily attendances in the Forum. On the death of 
 Mutius, which happened about ten years afterwards, 
 he became the intimate friend as well as the pupil of 
 his brother Quintus Scaevola, who was also a senator 
 of consular dignity, then in possession of the office of 
 pontifex or high-priest, and enjoying a reputation 
 little inferior to that of the augur, as a master of the 
 intricacies of Roman law. But his attention was 
 not occupied by the disputes and pleadings of the
 
 8 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Forum alone. During his more leisure hours, he 
 was diligently employed in poetical pursuits, and in 
 translating into Latin the most celebrated speeches 
 of the Greek orators, and particularly those of 
 Demosthenes; thus early endeavouring to imbue him- 
 self with the spirit of the mighty Athenian, whom 
 he always proposed to his imagination as the model 
 of excellence, and whom the testimony of all suc- 
 ceeding ages declares yet unequalled in the combina- 
 tion and due arrangement of the various qualities, 
 which constitute the great and powerful speaker. 
 
 Italy was at this time convulsed by the Marsic, or, 
 as it is sometimes called, the Social War, which arose 
 from an almost general rebellion of the inferior states 
 against the people of Rome. The former had long 
 been compelled to increase the armies of their ambi- 
 tious lords or allies with the flower of their popula- 
 tion, and justly complained, that while their towns 
 were drained of their inhabitants to extend the 
 foreign conquests of the ruling city, they were stu- 
 diously excluded from any participation in the 
 advantages enjoyed by those born within its walls, 
 or included within its municipal pale. They, there- 
 fore, demanded in return for the important services 
 they had rendered, an admission to the full title, rights, 
 and privileges of Roman citizens ; and after they had 
 been many times flattered with the hope of obtaining 
 their wish by the aid of the leaders of the liberal 
 party, and as often disappointed by the intrigues of 
 those opposed to the measure, at length resolved upon 
 the ultimate expedient of an appeal to arms. The 
 war which ensued has been but imperfectly recorded 
 by the Roman historians, who were, doubtless, un- 
 willing to enter into any lengthened details respect- 
 ing a contest which, while it continued, was doubt- 
 fully maintained, and terminated very differently from 
 most of those in which the state had hitherto
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 9 
 
 embarked ; inasmuch as the rights contended for by 
 the allied cities were at length reluctantly yielded to 
 most, and finally to all ; the honour of Rome having 
 been first, to save appearances, satisfied by a sub- 
 mission in all probability but conditional. The 
 Marsians, Samnites, and Lucanians, old and re- 
 doubted enemies, who had lost nothing of their 
 ancient courage, while they had added much to their 
 discipline by their service beside the Roman legions, 
 were foremost in the ranks of the revolters, and more 
 than one consular army was driven before them in a 
 contest, which gave ample exercise to the talents of 
 Sylla, Marius, and Pompeius Strabo, the father of 
 the celebrated Pompey, and during which, although 
 it raged but for two years, no less than three hun- 
 dred thousand men are said to have perished on the 
 field of battle. 
 
 Cicero was an eye-witness to some of the principal 
 events of the Marsic war ; since, although he at no 
 time entertained much inclination for a military life, 
 the custom of his nation almost imperatively required 
 him to have made some essay in arms, before fully em- 
 barking in those pursuits more congenial both to his 
 intellectual and moral temperament, which he had se- 
 lected as his road to the civic honours, hitherto almost 
 exclusively sought by eminence in the armies of the 
 republic. He accordingly served for some months 
 as a volunteer, first under the orders of Cn. Pompeius 
 Strabo, and subsequently in the camp of Sylla; and 
 has recorded his presence at a conference between the 
 former general and the Samnite leader, Vettius 
 Scato, (by whom the Consul Rutilius had been de- 
 feated in the preceding year,) when, on being 
 asked by the brother of Pompey, with whom he had 
 once been on terms of intimacy, by what title he 
 wished to be saluted, the Samnite uttered the well 
 known courteous reply, " As your friend by choice
 
 10 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 your enemy by necessity alone *." He was also in 
 close attendance upon Sylla, when that chief, encou- 
 raged by the advice of the haruspex Posthumius, 
 stormed the strong camp of the Samnites beneath the 
 walls of the town of Nola f . But there is little doubt 
 that he was not slow in seizing an early opportunity of 
 retiring from the scenes of tumult and mortal contention, 
 to his favourite pursuits. Before the conclusion of the 
 Marsic war, he seems to have become once more a 
 constant frequenter of the Forum, earnestly studying 
 the style and address of the principal orators of the 
 time, and especially that of the tribune Sulpicius, 
 then famous for his eloquence and advocacy of the 
 interests of Marius ; and subsequently for his un- 
 timely death in the struggle which ended in the exile 
 of his patron. 
 
 The seeds, indeed, which gave birth to that 
 frightful civil contention, as yet unsurpassed in 
 atrocity by the darkest annals of civil discord, after 
 having long been ripening, were now on the point 
 of producing the terrible series of convulsions by 
 which Italy was shaken to its centre, and the freedom 
 of Rome, if not irrecoverably lost, paralysed as by 
 the first stroke of a disease which may be lingering 
 in duration, but must ultimately prove mortal. The 
 Mithridatic war had become serious enough to call 
 for the conduct of the most able commander in the 
 service of the republic, and the post of honour was 
 an object of fierce dispute between the partisans of 
 the equally sanguinary and tyrannical leaders of the 
 popular and aristocratic factions in Rome. The first 
 appointment of Sylla to the command was revoked 
 by the exertions of Sulpicius in favour of Marius ; but 
 the return to the city of the former, at the head of 
 his legions, who had not yet embarked for Asia, 
 
 * Philipp. xii. 12. t De Divinatione, I. 33.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 11 
 
 produced an almost immediate dispersion of his op- 
 ponents, and the hasty flight of their leader ; whose 
 concealment in the marshes of Minturnas, and 
 striking comment pronounced upon the emptiness 
 and vanity of human amhition over the ruins of 
 Carthage, as consequences of this retreat, must be 
 fresh in the recollection of every reader. While the 
 civil tempest was thus, for a short time, allayed, 
 Cicero still continued in Rome, blending his legal 
 studies with the less severe pursuit of philosophy. 
 Philo, a pupil of Clitomachus, and one of the most 
 successful advocates of the doctrines of the Academy, 
 having fled from Asia into Italy, from fear of the 
 cruelties of Mithridates, and opened a school at Rome, 
 was soon attended by a numerous crowd of auditors, 
 and, among others, by Cicero; although apparently 
 without his imbibing many of the opinions of the 
 philosopher, since he was strongly attached in early 
 life to the tenets of the sect of Epicurus, into which 
 he had been inducted by Phgedrus, the first of his 
 preceptors in studies of this nature *. 
 
 But the tranquillity which allowed the city leisure 
 to discuss or listen to the doctrines of such teachers or 
 their opponents, was of no continued duration. In a 
 few months the consuls, Octavius and Cinna, having 
 passed from secret jealousy and enmity to open dis- 
 sension, Cinna was driven by force from the city, 
 and immediately levying an army against his colleague, 
 sent an invitation to Marius to return to Italy to 
 take its command. His summons was obeyed 
 without hesitation, and after the two generals had 
 proved completely successful in their first operations, 
 and for some time closely blockaded Rome from 
 the hill of the Janiculum, the terrified citizens, 
 
 * a Phsedro,qui nobis cum pueri essemus valde ut philosophus 
 
 probabatur. (Ad Div. xiii. 1.) He afterwards attended the lectures 
 of the same philosopher at Athens.
 
 12 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 after the death of Octavius, who was openly 
 murdered by the emissaries of Cinna, at length passed 
 a law to repeal the sentence by which Marius had 
 been driven into exile, and threw open their gates to 
 receive him. The horrors of proscription immediately 
 ensued. Every partisan of Sylla, who was possessed 
 of sufficient riches to excite the cupidity of the victo- 
 rious faction, or who had displayed enough of zeal in 
 his cause to have made him a marked object of 
 resentment, was at once mercilessly put to death. 
 The streets of Rome flowed with the blood of its 
 most distinguished inhabitants ; the hand of the 
 slave was armed against the life of his master ; that 
 of the son against his parent, and the public roads 
 were crowded with terrified fugitives seeking a place 
 of refuge, or with assassins following eagerly upon 
 the traces of their flight. In the course of this pro- 
 tracted massacre Quintus Catulus, the colleague of 
 Marius in his glorious campaign against the Cimbri, 
 with many senators, and several individuals of prae- 
 torian together with some of consular rank, met with 
 an untimely death. The celebrated orator Marcus 
 Ai.tonius, the grandfather of the voluptuous and 
 sanguinary triumvir, who had been doomed by the 
 enmity of Cinna, was also among the number of the 
 slain. Cicero (whose own escape, as an adherent of 
 Sylla, is somewhat remarkable) may easily be 
 supposed to have been a spectator when the head 
 of this eminent statesman was exposed to the popu- 
 lace from the Rostra. At such an hour, while 
 his ardent and ambitious spirit was fired by the bright 
 course of honour before him, the shadow of presenti- 
 ment was little likely to overcast his imagination, or 
 the thought to intrude itself, that, after a similar 
 career of distinction on his own part with that 
 pursued by the illustrious individual whose remains 
 were presented as a ghastly spectacle before him, the
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 13 
 
 same terrible method of indicating the fate which 
 had befallen himself, should one day attract the horror 
 and amazement of the gazing multitude of Rome. 
 
 During the short period of comparative quiet 
 which followed the return of Marius, the attention of 
 Cicero continued engrossed with legal and lite- 
 rary studies. His own account of the manner in 
 which every faculty of his mind was constantly 
 devoted to the acquisition of excellence as a pleader, 
 is a remarkable lesson of unremitting and unwearied 
 industry. He had now an opportunity, of which he 
 eagerly availed himself, of hearing Milo the Rhodian, 
 the most esteemed teacher of eloquence of the time, 
 and under the influence of his addresses began the 
 earliest of his original works, his Treatise on Rheto- 
 rical Invention. Without any direct reference to 
 this, which he probably considered as but an amuse- 
 ment during the intervals of more severe exertion, he 
 has given the following description of his occupations 
 during the period in question, in his treatise, composed 
 long afterwards, upon Illustrious Orators : " For the 
 space of three years the city continued free from civil 
 convulsions, at which time, in consequence of the 
 death, departure, or exile of our best speakers, for 
 even Marcus Crassus and the two Lentuli, young as 
 they were, had withdrawn themselves, Hortensius 
 enjoyed the reputation of being the most able pleader; 
 Antistius continued to rise daily in public estima- 
 tion ; Piso spoke frequently ; Pomponius less often ; 
 Carbo but rarely, and Philippus merely on one or 
 two occasions. I, for my part, .during the whole 
 time, was employed night and day in the diligent 
 prosecution of studies of every description. I was 
 then under the direction of Diodotus the stoic, who, 
 after a long residence with me, and an intercourse of 
 the closest kind, lately died under my roof, by whom 
 I was exercised as well in other branches of learning
 
 14 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 as most carefully in the dialectic art, which may be 
 considered as it were a more close and comprehensive 
 kind of eloquence, and without which you yourself, 
 Brutus, have come to the decided opinion, that you 
 could never have acquired that happy style of elocu- 
 tion, which is esteemed as a free and unfettered 
 logic. Yet to this tutor, and to his many and diver- 
 sified subjects of instruction, I was still not so much 
 devoted as to suffer a single day to pass by without 
 its usual oratorical exercises. I therefore declaimed 
 continually on given subjects with Marcus Piso or 
 Quintus Pompeius, or some other friend, sometimes 
 in Latin, but more often in Greek ; either influ- 
 enced by this reason, that the Greek language, by 
 which we are supplied with a greater scope of orna-- 
 ment, gives, by being frequently spoken, a similar 
 excellence to our Latin discourse ; or because it was 
 only by using their tongue that I could either be 
 instructed or corrected by the Greeks, those best of 
 all teachers*." This passage is one from which the 
 man of genius may learn humility, and the less 
 splendidly endowed confidence. If it gives additional 
 confirmation to the general truism, that the brightest 
 talents must prove of little comparative use without 
 earnest and frequent cultivation, it points out, at the 
 same time, the very large share which industry and 
 practice bore in the production of those masterly ora- 
 tions of Cicero, which, in common with others of the 
 most eminent speakers, may have been too often re- 
 garded as the mere results of a natural aptitude or 
 intensity of feeling, drawing all its powers of rich and 
 varied expression from the impulse of the moment. 
 
 The return of Sylla to Italy from the Mithri- 
 datic war, in the year of the city six hundred and 
 seventy-one, renewed, with increased violence and 
 horrors, the contention between the aristocratic and 
 
 * De Claris Omtoribus, cap. xc.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 15 
 
 popular factions. The former were now in tlieir 
 turn victorious. The consuls, Norbanus and Marius 
 the younger, were completely defeated in the first en- 
 gagement, and this advantage proved only an omen 
 of the singular train of successes which followed it. 
 In every quarter the Marian leaders were routed by 
 the lieutenants of Sylla, and that general having, in 
 a last and desperate engagement, dispersed the army 
 of the Samnite Telesinus, who encountered him almost 
 at the gates of Rome, approached the city in triumph. 
 The cruelties exercised a short time before by the fol- 
 lowers of Marius upon their adversaries, were nowre- 
 paid in a similar manner, but with a dreadful increase 
 in the number of victims; including both those who 
 had deserved the resentment of the conqueror, and an 
 immense crowd of innocent persons, whose property, 
 as in the former proscription, was a sufficient 
 crime to ensure their destruction. At the instant of 
 the entrance of Sylla into Rome, six thousand pri- 
 soners were massacred at once, and many more sa- 
 crificed by his soldiers, before he condescended to set 
 a limit to their fury by a particular proscription. 
 His first list of the proscribed contained eighty names, 
 his second two hundred and twenty, and his third as 
 many more. Carbo, the brother of the consul, and 
 Publius Antistius, the father-in -law of Pompey, both 
 orators'of the highest reputation, fell amidst the gene- 
 ral massacre, and the pontifex Maximus, Quintus 
 Scaevola, the aged friend and preceptor of Cicero, 
 was barbarously murdered in the very vestibule 
 of the temple of Vesta. The life of the latter was 
 indeed in no respect endangered by the return of 
 Sylla to Italy, but this event is by no means to be 
 passed over in his history; if for no other reason, as 
 one in which three individuals, afterwards intimately 
 connected with his fortunes, were deeply though dif- 
 ferently concerned. Marcus Crassus and Pompey,
 
 16 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 two of the members of the first triumvirate, were 
 both entrusted with armies levied to maintain the 
 cause ofthe Dictator and actively employed in his 
 service. The third, and afterwards the most cele- 
 brated in this eventful coalition, C. Julius Caesar, as 
 one of the Marian faction, was saved from the resent- 
 ment of Sylla with the utmost difficulty, and it was 
 not until he had been wearied out by the intercessions 
 of some of the most respectable of his own followers, 
 that the tyrant, with a reluctance which he openly 
 expressed, consented to preserve from the sword of 
 his executioners a life, of the future character of 
 which he seems to have had a full and distinct con- 
 ception ; since he granted the pardon of Caesar with 
 the memorable observation, that, in so doing, he had 
 preserved from destruction one who contained within 
 him the seeds of many a Marius. 
 
 The despotism of Sylla, frightful and oppressive as 
 it in the first instance proved, produced, by the very 
 severity by which it was attended, one good effect ; 
 since the opposite party were so effectually dis- 
 mayed by the power and fierceness of their terrible 
 enemy, as to be little inclined to provoke him by 
 continuing a useless show of resistance. The state 
 was, therefore, in a singularly short time restored 
 to tranquillity, and the Forum of Rome once more 
 crowded with pleaders, who had long absented them- 
 selves from it, either from a regard to their own per- 
 sonal safety, or from an anticipation, which seems to 
 have been almost general, that the civil constitution was 
 on the point of being totally disorganised and laid in 
 ruins by the prevalent tumults and excesses. It was 
 now that Cicero, who had hitherto attended the 
 courts of justice as a spectator and student of the 
 merits of causes, began at length to acquaint him- 
 self beforehand with their leading points, for the 
 purpose of appearing in the character of an advocate.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 17 
 
 It may be reasonably supposed that lie had, in some 
 measure, distinguished himself in this capacity before 
 the delivery of his first recorded oration, which, on 
 the best evidence, seems to have been his speech in 
 behalf of Publius Quintius, pronounced in the pre- 
 sence of C. Aquillius Gallus and three .assessors, in 
 the year of Rome six hundred and seventy -three, and 
 consequently in the twenty-sixth year of his age. 
 The cavise was one of some intricacy, and had excited 
 considerable interest, especially as Hortensius, then 
 considered the first pleader in Rome, was engaged in 
 behalf of the plaintiff S. Nsevius. The latter had 
 brought an action against P. Quintius as next of kin, 
 upon a partnership account witli his brother Cains, 
 lately deceased, and either by the neglect of the de- 
 fendant in appearing to his recognisance, or by false 
 representations to the praetor Burrienus, had obtained 
 judgment against the property of Quintius, which, 
 after being thirty days in possession of it, he pro~ 
 ceeded to advertise for sale. The auction was pre- 
 vented by Alphenus, the friend of Quintius, who 
 applied to the praetor Dolabella for a writ to stay 
 further proceedings until the return of Quintius, who 
 was then absent in Gaul. The order, after an appeal 
 had been made to the tribunes upon the subject, 
 was granted on recognisances, and the dispute re- 
 mained in abeyance until some months after the 
 return of Quintius to Rome, when it was renewed by 
 Naevius, and at length brought to formal trial, before 
 commissioners appointed by Dolabella to hear both 
 parties by their advocates and to pronounce final 
 judgment. The readiness with which Cicero under- 
 took the cause of the defendant, and the zeal which 
 he displayed in. its support, while Nsevius, in addition 
 to the aid received from Hortensius, was known to be 
 countenanced by most of the magistracy, was his first 
 step to popular favour. But his defence of Quintius
 
 18 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 was completely thrown into the shade the following 
 year by the oration, still extant, for Sextus Roscius of 
 Ameria, in supporting whose cause, (the first of those 
 called "public" which he was induced to advocate,) he 
 boldly entered the judicial field against the dictator 
 Sylla himself. The features of the case were as 
 follows : Sextus Roscius, residing in the municipal 
 town of Ameria, a person of the equestrian order, pos- 
 sessed of considerable landed property, and distin- 
 guished for his zeal in the cause of the aristocratic 
 faction, having visited Rome while the proscription 
 of Sylla was at its height, was, some time afterwards, 
 waylaid and murdered near the Palatine baths, as he 
 was returning from a supper to which he had been 
 invited, the assassins as soon as they had effected their 
 object, escaping detection by a hasty flight. In the 
 course of a few days, to the general astonishment of all 
 acquainted with his principles and recent conduct, 
 his name was discovered in the list of the proscribed. 
 His estates, as forfeited property, were accordingly 
 sold and purchased, at a price far below their real value, 
 by Chrysogonus the favourite freedman of Sylla. 
 The strongest.suspicions were excited, on this occasion, 
 of an infamous collusion between two Roscii of 
 Ameria, Magnus and Capito, who were known to 
 have been at enmity with the deceased, and Chryso- 
 gonus ; little doubt being entertained that the former 
 were either actually or indirectly concerned in the 
 commission of the murder, and the latter at least 
 an accessory after the fact, by adding, without the 
 knowledge of Sylla, the name of Sextus Roscius to 
 the list of proscription, that he might have an oppor- 
 tunity of purchasing his estates at his own price. 
 The opinions entertained upon the subject received 
 ample warrant from the circumstance, that although 
 Chrysogonus was the purchaser, possession was 
 taken of the property, in his name, by one of the sus-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 19 
 
 pected Roscii, while the other was presented with 
 three excellent farms, constituting part of the for- 
 feited estate, as his share of the plunder. The son 
 of the murdered knight, who bore his father's name, 
 after being pitilessly ejected from his domain, and re- 
 duced to the utmost want and wretchedness by these 
 iniquitous proceedings, became so general an object 
 of compassion to his fellow citizens, that a depu- 
 tation was, in a short time, sent from Ameria to 
 acquaint Sylla with the conduct of his favourite. 
 Chrysogonus, alarmed at the prospect of detection 
 and open exposure, contrived to avert the threatened 
 danger for the time, by amusing the friends of Sextus 
 Roscius with promises of a speedy restitution of the 
 property and compensation for the injury in which 
 lie had been instrumental ; but on finding, at length, 
 that he could no longer hope to effect any thing by 
 delay, placed himself on the offensive, and, with an 
 audacity only equalled by the wickedness by which 
 it was prompted, accused Sextus, by means of Eru- 
 cius, one of his adherents, of being the real perpetra- 
 tor of the murder of his father. The unhappy object 
 of his villany, in addition to being deprived of every 
 part of his possessions, and reduced to depend upon 
 the charity of one of his relatives for shelter and 
 sustenance, was thus in imminent danger of losing 
 his life also by a false charge of parricide. The cause 
 was brought before the tribunal of the praetor Fan- 
 nius, and attracted universal attention from its sin- 
 gularly interesting character ; but notwithstanding 
 the presence of the noblest and most honourable 
 citizens of Rome, notwithstanding the generally un- 
 derstood innocence of the accused and the base- 
 ness of the prosecutors, so great was the terror 
 inspired by the name of Sylla, and so extensively 
 felt the danger of provoking him, by a public op- 
 position to the agents of his minion, that it seemed 
 c2
 
 20 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 at first highly probable, that a second murder, under 
 the mask of a legal process, would be added to that 
 of which they were on good ground supposed to have 
 been already guilty. The defendant, a man of sim- 
 ple manners and habits, whose life had been, for the 
 most part, spent in the seclusion of the country, and 
 devoted chiefly to agricultural pursuits, and who might 
 therefore be presumed to be wholly unacquainted 
 with the forms of law, was on the point of learning 
 by painful experience, that the justice of his cause 
 would be of little avail for his preservation, in conse- 
 quence of his inability, amidst the crowd of advo- 
 cates around him, to find one willing to speak in his 
 favour, when Cicero came forward in his defence, 
 with a boldness and disinterestedness, which would 
 have ensured respect for an oration of far less ability 
 than that actually delivered hi behalf of his oppressed 
 and desponding client. His dextrous use and power- 
 ful statement of all the points of circumstantial evi- 
 dence in favour of the defendant, his counter-insinu- 
 ations, upon the same evidence, against the prosecutors 
 themselves, as the persons most obviously implicated 
 in the crime, his fearless statement of the general 
 infamy of their lives, and his cutting sarcasms against 
 the rapacious favourite, speedily turned the scale in 
 favonr of the party aggrieved. Roscius was acquitted 
 by the verdict of the judges, and Cicero rose at once, 
 in the estimation of the public, to a level with the 
 most gifted and most experienced among his many 
 competitors for forensic honours. Yet it is a sufficient 
 comment upon the character of the times, that so far 
 from obtaining the restitution of the property so un- 
 justly wrested from him, Roscius seems to have been 
 considered in the highest degree fortunate in escaping 
 with life ; while the orator by whom his accusers had 
 been triumphantly refuted, was strongly suspected 
 of having formed his subsequent determination of retir-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 21 
 
 ing for a short time from Italy, from a dread of the 
 resentment of Sylla, on account of his ready inter- 
 ference for the preservation of one whom the freedman 
 of the tyrant had marked for destruction. 
 
 This resolution, whether owing to any such ap- 
 prehension or not, was deferred until the following 
 year, and before it was carried into effect he had 
 gained additional distinction by his pleadings in several 
 less important causes, as well as more especially in 
 one arising from the disputed freedom of an inhabitant 
 of Arretium ; in the conduct of which he was suc- 
 cessfully opposed to the eminent advocate Cotta, and 
 again ventured to appear in open opposition to the 
 well known sentiments of Sylla, who had exerted 
 himself, by every means, to prevent the privileges of 
 Roman citizenship from becoming general through- 
 out Italy. He then prepared for his journey to 
 Greece ; in mentioning his motives for which he has 
 made no allusion whatever to any more cogent rea- 
 son than a regard for the state of his health, which had 
 become in some measure, impaired by his late unin- 
 termitted exertions. " I was at that time," he 
 observes, "remarkable for a slender and feeble body, 
 as well as for a long and spare neck ; personal ap- 
 pearances which are supposed to indicate a life held 
 upon a precarious tenure, if connected with any 
 severe labour or constant exercise of the lungs. My 
 friends were the more anxious on my account, because 
 in all my pleadings I declaimed without either gra- 
 dation or variety of tone, at the full pitch of my voice 
 and with great vehemence of action. When, there- 
 fore, I was strenuously advised by these, as well as 
 by my physicians, to abandon the legal profession, I 
 was determined to encounter danger in any shape, 
 rather than forego the long wished object of my 
 ambition renown as an eloquent speaker. But 
 when I considered, that by a more subdued and mo-
 
 22 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 derate intonation, and by changing the whole cha- 
 racter of my declamation, I should, while I attained 
 the art of speaking in a more temperate manner, at 
 the same time avoid the danger with which my life 
 was threatened, I determined upon a journey to Asia 
 the better to effect this desirable alteration. I therefore 
 left Rome, after having been employed there for two 
 years as a pleader, and at a time when my name had 
 already become well known in its Forum *." 
 
 Athens, no less celebrated for the illustrious cha- 
 racters, by whom it has from time to time been visited, 
 than by the names which it has itself contributed to 
 swell the records of fame, was the first city which 
 received the ablest rival of its own finished school of 
 eloquence, after his departure from the Italian coast. 
 The terrible sack of the place by Sylla, a short time 
 before, had proved but a temporary interruption to 
 those studies in which, after the loss of all its politi- 
 cal influence, it continued, for many centuries, more 
 enviably pre-eminent. The Porch, the Academy, 
 the Lyceum, and the Gymnasium celebrated as 
 the haunt of the Cynic School, were thronged 
 with philosophers of all nations and sects, and the 
 banks of the Ilissus and fragrant slopes of Hymettus 
 were the daily scenes of those abstruse disquisitions, 
 which, whatever opinion may be entertained of 
 their merits on other considerations, must for 
 ever claim respect, from the strength and magnifi- 
 cence of the language in which they have been 
 invested, as well as from the intellectual acuteness 
 and subtlety which they display. Cicero continued 
 at Athens for six months, commencing from this pe- 
 riod of his life his intimate acquaintance and friend- 
 ship with the celebrated Titus Pomponius, better 
 known by the surname of Atticus, who had been 
 his fellow-student in boyhood ; to whieh posterity is 
 
 * De Clar. Orator., cap. xci.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 23 
 
 indebted for so much of his invaluable correspondence. 
 He also attended the lectures of the most eminent 
 philosophers residing in the city ; among whom the 
 names of the Epicureans Phaedrus and Zeno, and the 
 Academic or Stoic Antiochus of Ascalon, have been 
 particularly mentioned. He at the same time fre- 
 quently exercised himself in oratory under the direc- 
 tions of Demetrius of Syria, of whose abilities as a 
 rhetorician he has spoken in high terms. From 
 Athens he proceeded to Asia, having first upon his 
 way been solemnly initiated at Eleusis in those 
 celebrated mysteries, respecting which so much has 
 been written, and so little is apparently understood. 
 His time in Asia was employed, as the greater part 
 of his previous life had been, in the uninterrupted 
 pursuit of that oratorical excellence which, whether 
 at home or abroad, was the object perpetually pre- 
 sented to the dreams of his ambition. In a few 
 months he had left scarcely a city of that then cele- 
 brated region unvisited, and during his progress was 
 attended constantly by professors of acknowledged 
 merit, whom he had prevailed upon to accompany 
 him as his instructors in rhetoric ; including Menippus . 
 of Stratonice, whom he terms the ablest of Asiatic 
 orators, Dionysius of Magnesia, .ZEschylus of Cnidos, 
 and Xenocles of Adramyttium, all enjoying an 
 honourable reputation in their respective cities. He 
 then sailed for Rhodes, where he had once more an 
 opportunity of benefiting by the tuition of his for- 
 mer master Molo, to whom he confesses his obligations 
 for checking the too great exuberance of fancy, 
 for which his early speeches had been remarkable, 
 and which was a fault rather likely to be increased 
 than diminished by his late attention to the Asiatic 
 school of oratory. His biographer Plutarch has men- 
 tioned, that after declaiming on one occasion before 
 this master, when all the by-standers had been
 
 24 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 astonished with his performance, and had followed 
 the concluding periods of his oration with enthusi- 
 astic and frequently renewed expressions of applause, 
 Molo sat for some time silent and apparently occu- 
 pied with a train of melancholy thoughts, and on 
 being asked by his pupil, with some slight appearance 
 of dissatisfaction, why he made no comments either 
 of praise or censure on the occasion, replied to the 
 following effect : " It is not, Cicero, that insensibility 
 to the proofs of your abilities which you have just 
 given has any connexion with my silence. These, in- 
 deed, are worthy of all the commendation which has 
 been bestowed upon them, but alas for the reputation 
 of Greece ! But little was left to her to boast, and 
 even the last of her claims to reputation, her emi- 
 nence in learning and eloquence, is now also, I per- 
 ceive, on the point of being transferred to Rome." 
 
 After two years' absence in Greece and Asia, 
 Cicero determined upon returning to Italy, since he 
 had now obtained all the advantages contemplated in 
 his travels. His constitution had become more robust ; 
 his powers of enduring fatigue were greatly increased 
 by frequent practice ; lie had acquired that mastery 
 over his voice by which he was always afterwards en- 
 abled to modulate and restrain it within bounds; and, 
 by his intercourse with the various masters through 
 whose courses of instruction he had passed, he had 
 not only improved his general style, but gained a far 
 greater scope and variety of expression than he could 
 have attained by studying the peculiar excellences 
 of any one preceptor. If he had ever feared the 
 power of Sylla, all apprehensions on that subject 
 were removed by the death of the dictator, while he 
 was still at Athens, under such circumstances of misery 
 as are sometimes permitted to render the last moments 
 of the persecutor and the oppressor strange and ter- 
 rible warnings to those whose belief in a retributive
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 25 
 
 Providence may have been weakened by their pre- 
 vious prosperity. In his journey homeward through 
 Greece, he is said to have consulted the oracle of 
 Apollo at Delphi upon the best means of obtaining 
 future honour and reputation, and to have received 
 in reply the advice to make his own natural judg- 
 ment, and not the will or favour of the multitude, the 
 guide of his public actions. The writer who has 
 mentioned this circumstance, adds, that he was 
 so far influenced by the answer of the Pythoness, 
 as for some time after his arrival in Rome to 
 avoid notice, and cautiously to refrain from paying 
 court to the people by the usual methods then pursued 
 to ensure their favour. But the accoimt is far from 
 probable, or if he was, indeed, at any time under the 
 influence of such an admonition, it must have been 
 for a period of singularly short continuance. In the 
 year following his return to Italy, we again find him 
 constant in his attendance at the Forum, and care- 
 fully adding the last requisite to his excellence as an 
 orator, by correcting all the faults of his action under 
 the directions of JEsop and Roscius ; the former the 
 most celebrated tragic actor of his time, as the latter 
 was confessedly the first in comedy. He shortly 
 afterwards had an opportunity of repaying the in- 
 structions of Roscius, by appearing as his advocate 
 in an action brought against him by Caius Fannius 
 Cherea for the recovery of an alleged debt. The suit 
 was of a somewhat complicated character, arising 
 from a dispute respecting the money paid as com- 
 pensation by the murderers of a slave, in whom both 
 Roscius and Cherea possessed equal rights. It is to 
 be regretted, that the oration spoken by Cicero on 
 this occasion is imperfect. Yet enough is extant to 
 provoke a smile at the singular difference between 
 the observances in a Roman court of justice on such 
 occasions, and the more equitable methods of pro-
 
 26 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 cedure adopted in similar processes at the present 
 time. The grossest personal vituperations against the 
 plaintiff, mingled with arguments against the validity 
 of his claims drawn from his features and aspect, with 
 direct and open flattery to the presiding judge, are 
 at least strangely inconsistent with modern ideas of 
 the proper duties and privileges of an advocate. 
 Such, however, were some of the commonest features 
 in the pleadings once heard in the Forum of polished 
 Rome, and for such the oration for Sextus Roscius, 
 without any great display of the beauties of rhetoric, 
 is sufficiently distinguished. 
 
 In the same year which witnessed his advocacy of 
 the cause of Roscius the Comedian, Cicero first pre- 
 sented himself as a candidate for office, by publicly 
 averring his intention of standing for the quaestorship. 
 This determination was made while the orator Cotta 
 was canvassing for the consulship, and Hortensius for 
 the dignity of aedile. All three were successful ; but the 
 election of Cicero was remarkable for the readiness with 
 which the tribes united in returning him, before all his 
 competitors, to the desired appointment. He was now 
 in the thirty-first year of his age, the earliest period 
 at which, according to the existing regulations, 
 a Roman citizen was considered eligible to the lowest 
 honour in the power of the people to bestow. By 
 recent legacies, his estate had been increased suf- 
 ficiently to exceed the senatorial census, which was 
 then fixed at eight hundred sestertia, or considerably 
 more than six thousand pounds sterling. His mar- 
 riage with his first wife, Terentia, which took place 
 before his election, made no inconsiderable addition 
 to his income, if Plutarch's statement is correct, that 
 she brought to her husband a fortune of one hundred 
 and twenty thousand denarii. This union, however, 
 proved by no means one of the happiest events in the 
 orator's life. Terentia, whose family must have been
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO, 27 
 
 of rank, since one of her sisters was a vestal virgin, 
 seems to have been a woman of haughty, jealous, 
 and imperious temperament, and, after many years of 
 domestic bickerings, was at length separated from her 
 husband ; who is proved on unquestionable evidence, 
 amidst all his subsequent honours and distinctions, 
 his mastery over the passions of multitudes, his 
 political influence and literary renown, too often to 
 have wanted the simplest but richest source of 
 enjoyment the solace and comfort afforded by a 
 peaceful home. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Conduct of Cicero in his Quoestorship He discovers the Tomb of 
 Archimedes Delivers a farewell Oration at the Expiration of 
 his Office to the People of Lilybsoum He embarks for Italy, 
 arrives at Pnteoli Spends five years in pleading private Causes 
 Resolves to stand for the TEdileship, and is returned to the 
 Office Commencement of the prosecution against Verres 
 History of the Administration of that Magistrate Oration 
 against Csecilius Cicero sails a second time to Sicily Returns 
 to Rome, and delivers his first Oration against Verres, who 
 withdraws into Banishment He defends Marcus Fonteius and 
 Aulus Cecina Dedication of the Capitol by Quintus Catulus. 
 
 THE quaestorship in the ancient republic was an 
 office which involved in it considerable authority and 
 no small share of responsibility. As the circumstance 
 of having been appointed to the honour gave the right 
 of admission to the senate, and as it afforded a fair 
 field for the exhibition of those qualities which were 
 likely to constitute, in the eye of the public, claims 
 for still higher dignities, it was anxiously sought by 
 all young aspirants to political eminence. At home 
 the duties of this magistracy involved the care of 
 the treasury, and the receipt and expenditure of the 
 public revenue ; abroad, the payment of the troops, 
 and the collection of the tributes and imposts exacted 
 from the different nations which had submitted to
 
 28 THE LIFE OF CICERO." 
 
 the Roman arms. The provinces of the several 
 quaestors were assigned to each by lot at the general 
 election, and by this method of distribution, Cicero 
 was commissioned to accompany the praetor Pedu- 
 caeus, on whom the government of the island of 
 Sicily had been conferred in a similar manner. This 
 province was considered extensive enough to require 
 the presence of more than a single quaestor, and two 
 were accordingly appointed to it ; the one being sta- 
 tioned at Syracuse and the other at Lilybaeum. The 
 latter city was allotted as his residence to Cicero, who 
 found it, at first, a difficult task to exercise his public 
 functions in such a manner as to avoid giving offence 
 to the people among whom he had been stationed. 
 Sicily, whose abundant harvests, ever since its con- 
 quest by the Romans, had contributed so much 
 towards the sustenance of the crowded population of 
 Latium, as to acquire for it the title of the principal 
 " granary of the republic," was at that season required 
 to export far more than its usual supply of corn, in 
 consequence of a late general scarcity in Italy. One- 
 tenth of the whole produce of the island, which was 
 exactly the tribute paid to its ancient kings, con- 
 stituted, under ordinary circumstances, the amount 
 of its annual contribution to the Roman government, 
 and when this demand was exceeded, a certain sum 
 was granted from the treasury as a compensation 
 for the additional grain required, although it may be 
 supposed that the amount of the remuneration was 
 fixed, rather by the relative positions of the two 
 nations, than by any general principles of equity. 
 Owing to the strictness and impartiality with which 
 he fulfilled his duties to the State in his superinten- 
 dence of this unpopular exaction, Cicero was, at first, 
 viewed with considerable suspicion and dislike by 
 the Sicilians, but his general affability and courtesy, 
 his willingness to listen to every grievance, and his
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 29 
 
 readiness to redress it, joined to his unimpeachable 
 integrity and neglect of his personal interests, in an 
 office which afforded but too many opportunities for 
 injustice and extortion, speedily changed the tide of 
 public opinion in his favour. With a confidence 
 possibly prompted by no small degree of vanity, but 
 by a vanity which, if not well founded, would at once 
 have issued in open exposure and disgrace, he after- 
 wards publicly boasted, that no one in similar cir- 
 cumstances had ever behaved more obligingly or 
 with higher reputation than himself* ; and it is 
 evident that the public of Sicily were impressed, to a 
 considerable extent, with the same opinion, since they 
 not only decreed, in acknowledgment of his merits, 
 such honours to be paid him as no previous quaestor 
 had ever received, but continued on terms of the most 
 friendly intercourse with him long after the expiration 
 of his year of office. Beyond the honourable fulfil- 
 ment of the duties which had devolved upon him, his 
 residence in Sicily was remarkable for few events of 
 moment. Plutarch, however, has related, that he 
 found an opportunity of ingratiating himself at this 
 time with some of the leading families of Rome, by 
 successfully defending a number of young men con- 
 nected with them, who had been sent as prisoners to 
 the praetor at Syracuse, charged with certain offences 
 against military discipline. It is also not unworthy 
 of notice, that he was the means of pointing out to 
 the Syracusans the monument of their great country- 
 man Archimedes, the site of which had been long 
 forgotten. His own account of his discovery of the 
 neglected sepulchre of the Newton of antiquity, is 
 given in the fifth book of the Tusculan Questions, 
 and he seems to have taken an honest pride in 
 recording the circumstances. " The tomb of Archi- 
 
 * Non vereor ne quis audeat dicere, ullius in Sicilia qusesturam 
 aut gratiorem aut clariorem fuisse, &c Pro Plancio, xxvi.
 
 30 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 medes," he observes, " which was altogether unknown 
 to the Syracusans, who even denied that it had any 
 existence, and completely surrounded and overgrown 
 with wild shrubs and briars, was by my means once 
 more revealed to them during my quaestorship in 
 Sicily. I retained in my memory certain verses 
 which, as I had understood, were inscribed upon the 
 monument, indicating that the figures of a sphere and 
 cylinder were placed above it. When, therefore, 
 after a long and tedious search, (for there are an 
 immense number of sepulchres near the gates looking 
 towards Agrigentum*,) I at length perceived a 
 small pillar, scarcely rising above the rank vegetation 
 around it, and bearing these figures, 1 immediately 
 remarked to the chief persons of Syracuse, who were 
 in my company, that I thought I had found what I 
 had been seeking. A number of persons were imme- 
 diately sent with scythes and bill-hooks to clear the 
 spot ; and as soon as a path was opened we advanced 
 towards the base of the pillar opposite to us. The 
 inscription was then obvious, although the con- 
 cluding words of the verses were half obliterated by 
 decay. Thus the most illustrious, and at one time 
 the most learned city of Greece, would have been igno- 
 rant of the tomb of the most subtle and acute-minded 
 of its sons, had not an individual of Arpinum indi- 
 cated where it was to be foundt." This discovery 
 was made during a general tour of the island which 
 Cicero undertook previous to his departure from 
 Sicily. On his return to Lilybzeum, from whence 
 he shortly afterwards embarked for Italy, he deli- 
 vered a farewell oration to the people, of which but 
 a few words, quoted by a later author, are extant. 
 On this occasion it appears, that the strongest assur- 
 
 * Or the gates near the quarter of Achradina, the former reading 
 Agragianas, having been recently suspected to be a corruption 
 of Achradinas. t Tuscul. Qusest., V. xxiii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 31 
 
 ances of mutual regard were exchanged between the 
 speaker and the assembled multitude whom he had 
 convened, and that Cicero made, at the same time, a 
 general promise of his best services in favour of the 
 (Sicilians, if they should at any time think proper to 
 demand them. From the zeal he had shown in 
 executing his official duties, the high reputation he 
 had attained throughout Sicily, and the great benefit 
 his exertions had conferred upon the people of Rome, 
 by supplying their necessities in a time of general 
 apprehension of want, he had flattered himself that his 
 name was now scarcely less celebrated at home than 
 abroad, and that all Italy was already filled with his 
 praises, and ready to do honour to his disinterestedness 
 and probity. But his anticipations were destined to 
 receive a mortifying check on his arrival at Puteoli in 
 Campania, of which he has given a pleasant account in 
 his oration for Plancius, delivered at a time, when, after 
 having filled with honour the highest offices of the State, 
 he might mention with complacency the first rebuke 
 sustained by his early ambition. This town was 
 then filled with a concourse of idlers of the higher ranks 
 from Rome, who had resorted thither for the benefit 
 of its mineral waters, and Cicero, shortly after his 
 landing, on meeting with a former acquaintance was 
 surprised, instead of the congratulations on his return 
 from Sicily, or the compliments on his condvict there, 
 which he had naturally expected, to be asked, how 
 long ago he had left Rome and what was the latest 
 news in the metropolis. Indignant at this instance of 
 ignoranceon a subject which, to himself at least, seemed 
 of the highest importance, he replied with an air of 
 offended dignity, that so far from having lately visited 
 Rome he was then but just returned from his province. 
 " True, from Africa I believe," was the observation 
 of his companion ; and this second pro of of the limited 
 range of his reputation was not rendered much more
 
 32 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 agreeable by the intervention of a third party, who, 
 willing to correct the ignorance of the other, and to 
 prove to Cicero that he, at least, was acquainted with 
 the place which had been the scene of the execution of 
 the duties of his first appointment, observed with 
 marks of surprise, " How ! is it possible that you can 
 be ignorant that our friend here was lately prastor of 
 Syracuse ?" The observation of the orator upon this 
 circumstance is just and pertinent : " I know not, ye 
 Judges," he adds, after giving an account of the 
 transaction, "whether my disappointment was not of 
 greater service to me than if I had met with universal 
 congratulations. For as soon as I perceived the peo- 
 ple of Rome were indeed dull of hearing, but possessed 
 of acute and observant eyes, I ceased to consider in 
 what manner my reputation might best appeal to the 
 former sense, and took care that they should have 
 opportunities of regarding me daily. I therefore 
 lived entirely in the public gaze. I kept close to the 
 duties of the Forum, and on no occasion was a denial 
 from my porter, or even the necessary refreshment of 
 sleep, a means of sending a single citizen who had 
 sought an interview with me unsatisfied from my 
 door*." 
 
 Amidst the diligent exercise of such means to ensure 
 popularity, and in the advocacy of many causes of im- 
 portance, thepleadings in which have, without excep- 
 tion, perished, five years passed away ;t the least im- 
 portant perhaps in the life of the orator, but far from 
 destitute of events affecting, to no trivial extent, the 
 interests of his country. During this interval Rome 
 
 * Pro Plancio, xxvii. 
 
 f* To this period may possibly be referred the orations for Marcus 
 Tullius and Lucius Varenus, passages from which are quoted by 
 Priscian and Quintilian. Additions have lately been made to the 
 fragments of the oration for Tullius, who seems to have been im- 
 peached under a charge of illegal violence, by the discoveries of 
 Angelo Maio.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 33 
 
 was agitated by violent efforts on the part of the sup- 
 porters of the popular interests, to rescind the acts 
 lately passed by Sylla in favour of the aristocracy, 
 and more especially to procure the restoration of the 
 tribunitial power; a mighty engine either of good 
 or evil, according to the character of those by whom 
 it was wielded, which the dictator had done his 
 utmost to neutralise, as well by circumscribing its 
 exercise in other respects, as by passing a law, that 
 whosoever had once borne the office of tribune of the 
 people should be ineligible to any higher magistracy. 
 Yet amidst the prevalence of furious and constant 
 dissensions at home, the arms of the republic abroad 
 were, during the same period, crowned with their usual 
 success, and her already enormous dominion increased 
 on all sides by the swords of her victorious legions. 
 In Spain the last adherents of the Marian faction, 
 who under the generalship of Sertorius, probably the 
 ablest leader of his time, had long defied the united 
 force of Metellus and Pompey, were, after his assassi- 
 nation by Perpenna, effectually dissipated or destroyed. " 
 In the East the power of Mithridates was completely 
 broken by Lucullus, who after raising the siege of 
 Cyzicus, and wresting one province after another 
 from the hands of his antagonist, concluded his career 
 of conquest by compelling the most formidable enemy 
 to Roman ambition since the days of Hannibal, 
 to relinquish his hold upon Asia, and to take 
 refuge in the inmost parts of the kingdom of Pon- 
 tus. These advantages were somewhat counter- 
 balanced by the Servile War excited by Spartacus; 
 but this also, after the regular forces of the Common- 
 wealth had been several times shamefully beaten by 
 an undisciplined multitude, whose sense of injuries 
 or dread of future severities stood them in the stead 
 of more efficient training and military skill, was at 
 length brought to a conclusion by the victory of Marcus
 
 34 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Crassus in Lucania, and the destruction of those who 
 had escaped from the field by the army of Pompey, 
 which encountered them as they were on" their march 
 towards the Alps. Both these generals, in reward 
 for their eminent services, were made consuls, in the 
 year after the suppression of the revolt ; and the vanity 
 of Pompey, besides an express decree of the Senate 
 by which he was allowed to enter upon the consulate 
 before passing through the subordinate offices, was 
 additionally gratified by a triumph for his success in 
 Spain ; the second he had obtained while yet a simple 
 Roman knight. It was in the consulate of Pompey 
 and Crassus (A. u. c. 684) that Cicero, since the 
 usual interval had elapsed from his quaestorship, 
 after which it was lawful to aspire to the higher dig- 
 nities, presented himself to the people as candidate for 
 the office of curule eedile, and had again the satisfac- 
 tion of being first returned at the election. 
 
 Those who held this magistracy, the lowest in the 
 state which entitled its possessors to the appellation 
 ' of noble, a distinction which also descended to their 
 posterity, were, as its name imports, entrusted prin- 
 cipally with the superintendence of the public build- 
 ings at Rome. They were also required to preside in 
 the markets, and to ascertain that none of the weights 
 and measures used there fell below the legal standard. 
 But the principal and the most onerous part of their 
 office consisted in the direction of the public games 
 and shows. The aediles were originally two in 
 number ; but two more, distinguished by the name 
 of curule tediles, from the ivory seat they were 
 privileged to use, were afterwards annually chosen, at 
 first from the ranks of the aristocracy alone, but 
 subsequently from the patricians, or plebeians, indif- 
 ferently. In what manner the office of these differed 
 from that of the others, termed, by way of distinction, 
 plebeian a?diles, is yet to be ascertained. It has
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 35 
 
 been conjectured, that whatever might have been 
 originally the separation of their duties, they were at a 
 later period completely blended ; the two first elected 
 assuming the more honourable title, but acting in 
 all respects in common with their fellows. As the 
 populace of Rome, in earlier as well as in more recent 
 times, were so inordinately fond of spectacles as to 
 render the gratification of their ruling taste an 
 expeditious and certain road to their favour, it be- 
 came an object of ambition with successive agdiles to 
 exceed all who had gone before them in the pomp and 
 magnificence of the shows which they were authorised 
 to exhibit. The most distant provinces were conse- 
 quently ransacked by their agents for strange or 
 unknown animals, and crowds of furious beasts trans- 
 ported to Rome for the hunts and combats of the 
 arena. Troops of gladiators were purchased, at 
 enormous prices, to contribute by mutual slaughter 
 to the brutal pleasures of the populace, and theatrical 
 exhibitions prepared at a cost which renders perfectly 
 insignificant the most ingenious efforts of modern 
 extravagance and luxury. As a proof of this it 
 may be mentioned, that when Julias Caesar was 
 elected to the sedileship, he exhibited three hundred 
 and twenty pair of gladiators *, and that the whole 
 apparatus of the arena, furnished on the occasion, 
 was formed of solid silver. But the aedileship of 
 M. Scaurus, some years before, had placed it out 
 of the power of the wealthiest citizen to surpass him 
 in lavish expenditure. This magistrate exhibited no 
 less than a hundred and fifty panthers at once at a 
 public entertainment ; and the theatre which he caused 
 to be erected for dramatic representations, although its 
 dimensions and decorations are matters of grave 
 history, reminds the reader of the wildest of Arabian 
 fictions. This stupendous edifice was capable of con- 
 
 * Plutarch, in Cses. 
 D 2
 
 36 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 taining eighty thousand spectators* . The stage 
 front displayed three hundred and sixty columns 
 disposed in three tiers, of which the lowest were 
 thirty-eight feet high. The entablatures which they 
 supported were severally composed of marble, of 
 glass, and of beams richly gilded. Three thousand 
 brazen figures, disposed between the columns, formed 
 the temporary ornaments of the majestic erection, 
 which, from its vastness and beauty, must have ap- 
 peared to the astonished spectators, on their first 
 admission, as a splendid architectural vision. The 
 additional expense incurred for the dresses of the 
 actors and chorusses, the valuable paintings, and 
 other decorations, must have been almost beyond 
 computation ; since we are informed, that when 
 what was left of them had been removed to the 
 Tusculan villa of Scaurus, and that edifice had been 
 wilfully set on fire by his slaves, the loss, in such 
 articles alone, was estimated at more than eight hun- 
 dred thousand pounds sterling. It is needless to state, 
 that in an office sometimes involving expenditure like 
 this, the most extensive private fortunes were speedily 
 swallowed up, and overwhelming debts incurred. 
 Those, however, who were at so much pains and 
 cost to entertain the multitude, were far from being 
 disinterested in their prodigality. The aedileship 
 was regarded merely as an introduction, if popu-" 
 larly filled, to the dignities of prjetor and consul, and 
 the prospect of obtaining a province, in either of these 
 capacities, was considered sufficient to justify any 
 outlay ; since an ample remuneration might then be 
 expected at the expense of the unhappy subjects of 
 the empire, upon whom the burthen of entertaining 
 their conquerors ultimately fell. It was on the 
 strength of such a contingency, that Julius Caesar, 
 before being elected to any public office, contracted 
 
 Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. cap. 24.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 37 
 
 a debt of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, 
 which he had contrived to increase to nearly a mil- 
 lion before setting out after his proetorship for his 
 province of Spain. If Cicero has given an impartial 
 account of his own conduct during his sedileship, it 
 was neither distinguished by profuse liberality, nor 
 by parsimonious meanness, but regulated entirely by 
 the extent of the resources at his command *. While 
 yet, however, canvassing for the office, and some time 
 before the assembly of the people at which he was elect- 
 ed, he was called vipon to take the leading part in 
 the celebrated prosecution of Vcrres; a cause in every- 
 way suited both to the display of his genius and the 
 best qualities of his disposition, and in which he had 
 the fortune to be again opposed to Hortensius, his 
 predecessor in civic honours as well as in oratorical 
 reputation, but whom he was destined after a short 
 time to surpass in both. 
 
 The condition of Sicily at this time might be 
 cited, as an additional example to the many, widely 
 known and strikingly recorded, of the mutability of 
 empires, and that rapid transition from a state of pros- 
 perity and vigour to one of weakness and decay, to 
 which the most flourishing nations have often been 
 subject. The country which had once defied the arms 
 of Athens and of Carthage, when both were at the 
 zenith of their reputation, the birth-place of Gelon 
 and Hermocrates, of the Hieros and the Dionysii, 
 and crowded with numerous cities, each worthy of 
 being the capital of a great nation, was now reduced 
 to such a condition of abject slavery beneath the 
 Roman yoke, as scarcely to resist, even by murmurs, 
 the most atrocious acts of injustice and oppression 
 practised upon it by successive governors, whose 
 avarice it was periodically obliged to satisfy. Among 
 these, the name of Caius Verres has obtained an 
 
 * De Officiis, Kb. ii. cap. 17.
 
 38 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 infamous celebrity, as well from his exceeding all 
 others in his tyrannical and sanguinary administra- 
 tion, as from his having been at length exposed, owing 
 to a combination of circumstances anything but 
 frequent in the history of the provincial policy of 
 Rome, to a punishment, which, light and trifling as 
 it must appear when compared with his measureless 
 rapacity and inordinate wickedness, most of those 
 resembling him in guilt were fortunate enough to 
 escape. The oppression of this magistrate during his 
 foreign prastorship were so intolerable, and his ex- 
 tortion exercised on so unsparing a scale, as to surpass 
 the powers of endurance possessed even by the 
 Sicilians themselves, and to induce them to seek 
 retribution through the expensive and generally fruit- 
 less method of a public prosecution. How far their 
 resentment was justified may be seen from a slight 
 sketch of the proceedings of Verres in Sicily, extracted 
 from the orations of Cicero against him, which afford 
 but too trustworthy a commentary upon the kind of 
 treatment experienced in his day by the conquered 
 provinces at the hands of Rome ; treatment, it may 
 be observed, which there is no reason to suppose, 
 from the writings of her historians, not to mention 
 those of her satirists and moralists, to have been un- 
 altered at succeeding periods of her oppressive despotism . 
 Immediately on the arrival of this " vulture magis- 
 trate," (to use a term which Cicero has applied to 
 another character possessed of similar propensities) in 
 his province, Dio of Halesa, a man of considerable note 
 and property, was cited before him, to answer respect- 
 ing an estate bequeathed tohis family, on the condition 
 of a certain number of statues being erected in the 
 market-place of the town from part of the proceeds. In 
 defaultof compliance with this requisition, theproperty 
 was liable to be forfeited and to be assigned to the 
 maintenance of the worship of Yenus Erycina. The
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 39 
 
 statues in question had been carefully placed as direct- 
 ed by the will, but Verres, with the hope of securing 
 a considerable bribe to himself, as an inducement to 
 stop further proceedings, procured a person of infamous 
 character to appear in behalf of the Goddess and to 
 prosecute Dio for the estate, on the ground that he 
 had neglected to comply with the injunctions of the 
 testator. The cause was decided in favour of the 
 defendant, but not until he had secured the sentence 
 of the judge in his behalf, by a present of about nine 
 thousand pounds in money, a valuable breed of mares, 
 and all the costly plate and furniture contained in 
 his house. Verres upon a similar pretext extorted an 
 enormous sum from the two brothers Sosippus and 
 Epicrates of Agyra, after they had been twenty years 
 in quiet possession of the inheritance left them by their 
 father, and both were at once reduced to poverty by 
 the exaction. Heraclius the son of Hiero, and the 
 richest of the Syracusans, who had also been enjoin- 
 ed by a will, by which he inherited an immense estate, 
 to erect a number of statues in the public palaestra, 
 and who had faithfully fulfilled the injunction, was 
 sued on the same ground of prosecution, by persons 
 excited by the praetor, and vainly attempted to 
 rescue his possessions by flight ; since the whole, 
 including a multitude of slaves, Corinthian ves- 
 sels, and embroidered coverlets of immense value, was 
 declared to be forfeited to the public : a specious sen- 
 tence, which did not prevent the greater part of the 
 precious articles enumerated from finding their way 
 into the house of the dignitary who had passed it. 
 Epicrates of Bidis, whose only crime was his great 
 wealth, was the next victim. By a false accusation of 
 forgery, he was soon obliged to abandon his domains 
 and take refuge at Rome, leaving Verres and his 
 accusers to divide the plunder between them. But 
 the most atrocious instance of injustice was exhibited
 
 40 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 in the case of Sopater the Halycyensian, who after 
 being indicted for a capital offence before the former 
 prsetor Caius Sacerdos had been honourably acquitted. 
 He was nevertheless cited by Verres, in defiance of 
 the judgment of his predecessor, to appear at Syracuse, 
 and answer once more to the former charge. While 
 in prison in that city, he was visited by Timarchides, 
 one of the praetor's agents, who did not scruple to 
 hint to him, that it would be most to his interest, in- 
 stead of trusting to his innocence, to compound the mat- 
 ter by a handsome sum. By extraordinary exertion 
 among his friends, the accused, who now plainly saw 
 to what he had to trust, collected a considerable 
 gratuity, which he duly paid to Timarchides, confi- 
 dently expecting that his acquittal and release would 
 speedily follow in due course. He soon afterwards, 
 however, received to his astonishment an intimation, 
 through the same medium, that what he had advanced 
 was wholly insufficient ; that the prosecutor had of- 
 fered a much higher bribe, and that unless he could 
 exceed it, he must prepare himself for the worst. 
 Indignant at this infamous attempt at further extor- 
 tion, or despairing of being able to satisfy the increasing 
 rapacity of Verres, Sopater indignantly broke off the 
 negotiation, and positively refusing to make the 
 slightest additional advance, defied his accusers to do 
 their worst. He soon had occasion to repent of 
 his rashness. The praetor seized an opportunity, when 
 he had craftily managed to rid himself of the presence 
 of the other judges, to summon Sopater to his bar, 
 and after hastily listening to the evidence against 
 him, notwithstanding the absence of his counsel, 
 who had withdrawn, refusing to enter upon the 
 defence unless before a full court ; and notwithstand- 
 ing the vehement supplications and appeals of Sopater 
 himself, who adjured him in the name of the Gods 
 and of all mankind, at least to grant him a fair and
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 41 
 
 impartial trial conducted according to the usual forms, 
 proceeded to adjudge him guilty and to condemn him 
 on the capital charge. 
 
 To this system of judicial robbery was added one of 
 indiscriminate pillage, unblushingly carried on without 
 any attempt to justify or even to conceal it. The 
 temples of the Gods were despoiled of their most 
 costly ornaments, and the most finished works of 
 art, the property of communities or of individuals, 
 either surrendered to the praetor, in compliance with 
 his importunate requests, or openly seized by him, if 
 the more gentle methods of appropriation proved 
 unavailing. Pamphilus of Lilybantm having in his 
 possession a silver ewer of great weight and exquisite 
 workmanship, one of the master-pieces of Boethm* 
 acelebrated Carthaginian sculptor, which had descend- 
 ed to him from his ancestors, was forced to part with 
 it, without the slightest hope of compensation, at the 
 demand of Verres, and was but too happy to preserve 
 a pair of cups, which had also been ordered to be 
 brought for his inspection, by bribing two of his con- 
 fidants to assure him, that they were of inferior 
 execution and altogether unworthy a place in the 
 collection of a connoisseur. Diodorus of Melita, who 
 attempted to preserve two chalices richly chased by 
 the hands of Mentor, which Verres had hinted a 
 wish to see, by prudently withdrawing with them 
 from Sicily, was immediately impeached, by his 
 detestable instruments, of a crime of which he was 
 altogether innocent. This attempt to recal him how- 
 ever entirely failed. Diodorus having repaired to Rome, 
 represented to his patrons and friends in that city the 
 manner in which he had been treated in such strong 
 terms, that letters were despatched to Verres warning 
 him of the danger to which he was exposing himself. 
 The prosecution was therefore reluctantly dropped, 
 but Diodorus was only able to preserve his plate by
 
 42 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 a voluntary exile of three years' duration. The young 
 Antiochus, king of Syria, was more successfully en- 
 trapped and despoiled, in consequence of his youth 
 and simplicity. This prince, on his return from Rome, 
 whither he had proceeded, in company with hisbrother, 
 to urge in person his claims upon Egypt, was sump- 
 tuously banqueted by the praetor, who exhibited 
 every thing of rarity and value which he possessed 
 for his entertainment. Antiochus was not slow in 
 returning the compliment, and heedlessly displayed, 
 in his turn, a number of precious vessels, which his 
 guest secretly formed the resolution of making his 
 own without further delay. Among these were seve- 
 ral cups of solid gold richly adorned with gems, and 
 a wine chalice which was composed of a single jewel 
 of inestimable price, all far exceeding the richest ves- 
 sels which the avarice of Verres had hitherto been 
 able to accumulate. On the morning succeeding the 
 entertainment, therefore, he sent to borrow the whole, 
 on the pretence of showing them as patterns to his 
 own engravers. The king, little acquainted with his 
 character, at once politely granted the request. The 
 pra?tor, however, had, at the same time, much richer 
 spoil in view. He had heard of a sumptuous cande- 
 labrum possessed by Antiochus, composed of massive 
 gold, encrusted with jewels, and finished in the most 
 elaborate style of art, which the king had taken to 
 Rome with the intention of dedicating it in the temple 
 of Jupiter Capitolinus, but finding the building yet 
 unfinished had determined upon carrying back with 
 him into Syria, until the place should be ready for its 
 reception. Although the possession of this costly 
 offering was endeavoured to be kept secret, Yerres 
 was, by some means, informed of it, and as soon as he 
 had obtained possession of the other valuables, re- 
 quested that he might be indulged with a sight of 
 this also. It was accordingly forwarded under the
 
 THE LIFE OP CICEKO. 43 
 
 care of the servants of Antioclms, and as soon as it 
 was uncovered excited the most rapturous exclama- 
 tions of delight on the part of the preetor, who 
 affirming that one day would be wholly insufficient 
 for a full appreciation of its beauties, desired the 
 servants, as they were on the point of returning with 
 it to Antiochus, to leave it under his care for a short 
 time, that he might examine it more at leisure. 
 Several days past, but the king heard nothing more of 
 his candelabrum. His servants were then ordered to 
 request that it might be restored, but were twice sent 
 away without effecting their object. Antiochus, 
 therefore, determined upon seeking its restitution in 
 person, when he was astounded by a direct solicita- 
 tion on the part of the prrctor, that he would allow 
 him to retain the candelabrum as a present. It was 
 to no purpose that he pleaded his inability to comply 
 with this impudent demand, on the ground, that it 
 was impossible to divert an offering, already dedicated 
 in intention as an ornament to the temple of Jupiter, 
 from the purpose to which it was consecrated. Verres 
 .proceeded from entreaties to threats, and, finding these 
 ineffectual, at last brought the conference to an end, 
 by peremptorily ordering the king to leave his pro- 
 vince be fore sunset, asserting with the utmost effrontery, 
 that he had discovered it to be in imminent danger of 
 being invaded by a piratical armament despatched 
 from Syria for the purpose. To this there was but 
 one method of reply. Antiochus instantly pro- 
 ceeded from the palace of Verres to the Forum of 
 Syracuse, and there, in an oration frequently interrupt- 
 ed by tears, having made public all the circumstances 
 of the transaction, called upon the whole multitude 
 to witness, that while he took little account of the 
 robbery committed upon his own property, he solemnly 
 and openly consecrated, in the sight of all men and in 
 the name of all the Gods, the candelabrum retained by
 
 44 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Verres to the service for which it was originally 
 destined. After this ineffectual exposure of the in- 
 justice of his plunderer, he immediately embarked and 
 set sail for his own dominions.* 
 
 Such were some of the most notorious instances of 
 avarice and oppression by which the prsetorship of 
 Verres was distinguished. But crimes of a much 
 deeper dye formed a part of the long list of charges 
 against him. Unbounded as his covetousness might 
 appear, it was completely thrown into the shade by 
 his cruelty. It was frequently his custom when any 
 vessel, laden with a rich freight, arrived in the Sicilian 
 ports, to seize it, under the pretext of its being manned 
 by the adherents of Sertorius.t The cargoes, of course, 
 were confiscated to the praetor's use. But the wretched 
 crews, many of whom were Roman citizens, were 
 effectually precluded from the possibility of appealing 
 against him at a future time, by being hurried into those 
 frightful dungeons, the quarries or Latomiae of Syra- 
 cuse, and there secretly strangled without the formality 
 of a trial. One of these intended victims, Caius Gavius, 
 having been so fortunate as to escape and make his 
 way to Messana, with the intention of crossing over 
 into Italy, was imprudent enough in his premature con- 
 fidence of being beyond the reach of his persecutor, to 
 threaten the retribution of a final impeachment at 
 Rome, for the unjust imprisonment of one of its 
 citizens. For this he was secretly denounced to the 
 magistrates of Messana, who, as companions in his 
 villanies, were wholly in the interests of Verres, and 
 immediately apprehended by their command. It hap- 
 pened, unfortunately for the fugitive, that the praetor 
 arrived the same day at Messana, and was at once 
 made acquainted witli his apprehension and its cause. 
 Infuriated by the information, and the prospect of the 
 danger he had narrowly avoided, the official tyrant 
 hastened into the Forum andsummoning Gavius before 
 * In Verrem, v. xxvii. -j- In Verr. vi. xxviii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 45 
 
 him, accused him of being a spy, and without strength- 
 ening his accusation by the testimony of a single wit- 
 ness, ordered him, as such, to be instantly scourged 
 and crucified. It was to no purpose that the miser- 
 able sufferer repeatedly exclaimed, in arrest of judgment, 
 and while enduring the ignominy and torture of the 
 first part of his punishment, that he was a Roman 
 citizen and could bring satisfactory evidence of the 
 fact.* The whole of the frightful sentence was re- 
 morselessly executed upon him, and, by a horrible 
 refinement of cruelty, the cross to which he was 
 attached was erected upon the sea-shore in full sight 
 of the Italian coast, that, amidst his dying agonies, 
 he might be tormented with the sight of the place 
 of refuge which he had flattered himself with reach- 
 ing, and from which, had he once gained it, he might 
 safely have defied the hatred and power of Verres to 
 injure him further. 
 
 As the whole of the Mediterranean at that time 
 swarmed with pirates, who were sufficiently nu- 
 merous to man regular fleets and to form the popu- 
 lation of considerable cities, it was customary for the 
 Roman prsetors in Sicily to fit out a number of ves- 
 sels against them annually, at the expense of the mari- 
 time towns. But Verres, who never lost an opportu- 
 nity of sacrificing the public welfare to his own 
 private interests, contrived to render this force com- 
 pletely inefficient. Several towns were allowed to 
 compound for the ships they were required to furnish ; 
 
 * By the Porcian law, passed A. u. c. 455, it was declared un- 
 lawful to bind, scourge, or put to death any Roman citizen, unless 
 by the sentence of a general assembly of the people, to which he 
 was at all times entitled to appeal. But the enactment of Porcius 
 only revived the more ancient statute of Valerius Publicola to the 
 same effect ; and Cicero speaks of the privilege as possessed even in 
 the time of the ancient kings ; "Provocationem autem etiam aregibus 
 fuisse declarant pontificii libri, significant nostri etiaru augnrales.'' 
 De Republica, lib. ii. cap. 31.
 
 46 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 all among the crews of those actually sent, who could 
 purchase an exemption from personal service, were in- 
 vited to doso, and large sums, which should have been 
 expended in equipping and provisioning the armament, 
 were diverted by the praetor to his own use. The con- 
 sequence was, that the vessels were but half manned 
 and totally unfit to encounter a vigilant and well 
 provided enemy. At the time appointed for their 
 putting to sea, Verres, instead of being present to 
 superintend their departure, was indulging himself in 
 a luxurious retirement near the fountain of Arethusa ; 
 and it was not until the seven galleys under the com- 
 mand of Cleomenes, which composed j or rather repre- 
 sented, the Sicilian fleet, were standing out of the 
 mouth of the harbour of Syracuse, that he at length 
 made his appearance on the shore, effeminately clad, 
 according to the celebrated picture drawn of him by 
 Cicero, in a purple cloak, with an under vest reach- 
 ing nearly to the ground, instead of the usual military 
 garb, with slippers on his feet, and leaning on the 
 shoulder of one of his courtesans. After the force, 
 which had departed under such unwarlike auspices, 
 had made the promontory and port of Pachynus in 
 a voyage of five days, (at the end of which, the sailors 
 were so distressed with hunger, in consequence of the 
 failure of the provisions on board, as to be obliged to 
 collect the roots of the wild palms for their sustenance,) 
 news was suddenly brought to the admiral Cleo- * 
 menes, that the piratical force of which he was in 
 quest was anchored in the adjoining harbour of 
 Edissa. An instant and disgraceful flight was the 
 result. The admiral, hastily slipping his cables and 
 hoisting all sail, was in a short time out of sight. 
 The other galleys, whose captains had prepared for 
 battle and would have readily offered it, had they not 
 considered themselves bound to imitate his example, 
 followed more slowly. Two of them were, in consc-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 47 
 
 
 
 quence, speedily overtaken and captured, with all on 
 board, by the pirates, and the rest, after rejoining 
 Cleoriienes, who had made good his way to Helorus, 
 were so closely pressed, that their crews had only time 
 to escape to the shore, before they were boarded by 
 the pursuers, w r ho, after removing every thing of value 
 from them, committed the whole, including the galley 
 of Cleomenes, a vessel of four banks of oars, to the 
 flames. But the disgrace inflicted upon the Roman 
 government did not end here. ITeracleo, the captain 
 of the piratical force, confident that nothing was 
 now left to oppose him, sailed on the next day for 
 the port of Syracuse, from which the conflagration of 
 the fleet of Cleomenes had been distinctly seen, with 
 four light vessels ; and while Verres, still stupified 
 from the effect of the excesses of the previous night, 
 was assailed by universal clamours and insults, 
 coolly cruised round the harbour at bis leisure ; 
 knowing, adds the indignant orator by whom 
 tbe circumstance has been recorded, that if he 
 did not visit a place so worthy of his curiosity during 
 the prsetorship of Verres, he would, assuredly, never 
 find another opportunity of doing so.* 
 
 Little as he liad hitherto appeared to esteem his 
 own reputation, Verres was now obliged, by the tem- 
 pest of reproaches and complaints which was raised 
 in all directions against him, to make some attempts 
 to exculpate himself from the blame attached to an 
 enterprise, the failure of which every one attributed 
 to his incapacity and avarice. But this could only 
 be done by the sacrifice of others less guilty than him- 
 self. Cleomenes, who had been first to set the example 
 of cowardice, was too valuable an instrument towards 
 his own exculpation, to be included in the list of his 
 victims. He, therefore, prevailed upon him by threats 
 to assert, that the ships had been fully manned and 
 amply supplied with every necessary. The other 
 * In Verr. vi. xxxvi.
 
 48 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 commanders who had escaped, and who were young 
 men of the highest rank in Syracuse, were then, by 
 his orders, thrown into chains and condemned, as 
 having traitorously surrendered their ships to the 
 pirates, Cleoinenes himself being shameless enough 
 to take his seat beside Verres on the tribunal when 
 sentence of death was passed upon them. It was in 
 vain that their parents and friends used every means 
 to soften the cruel disposition of the praetor, who had 
 too valuable interests at stake, on this occasion, to 
 be accessible to the ordinary method of bribery. 
 Although many of the former passed whole nights at 
 the threshold of the public prison, entreating at least 
 to be allowed to take a last farewell of their unhappy 
 relatives, this favour was only to be purchased at a 
 high price, and an equally extravagant sum was re- 
 quired, for the speedy despatch of the criminals, by 
 the executioner, who threatened, if his demand was 
 not complied with, to compel them to pass through 
 protracted sufferings before their death, instead of 
 terminating their existence by a single blow. , 
 
 A short time before this occurrence, the crew of a 
 vessel, the piratical character of which was no mat- 
 ter of doubt, had been taken near Megaris, and 
 brought into Syracuse as captives. The people, who 
 had often seen the severity of Verres mercilessly 
 exercised upon the guiltless, expected that he would 
 certainly not allow those who were actually ctilpable 
 to escape. But they were little acquainted with the 
 full baseness of character possessed by their iniquitous 
 governor. All the youthful and able-bodied among 
 the criminals were presented as slaves to his friends, 
 instead of being brought to condign punishment. 
 The captain of the vessel was remanded to secret 
 confinement, in the hope that he might offer an extra- 
 vagant bribe for the preservation of his life. A few 
 of the more aged or less prepossessing in appearance
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO-. 49 
 
 among the pirates were publicly put to death ; but 
 since the people, as yet unsatisfied, were loud in 
 demanding the punishment of the whole, Yerres 
 ordered a number of Roman citizens, who had long 
 been confined in his dungeons, to be led forth with 
 their heads and faces carefully muffled, that their 
 features might not be recognised, and, rejoicing 
 in the opportunity of ridding himself of all further 
 anxiety on their account, caused them to be barba- 
 rously executed in the place of the real culprits. 
 
 Against this enormous criminal, it might have 
 been expected that the efforts of Cicero would be 
 seconded by the horror and indignation of all ranks 
 and classes at Rome, and that the general voice of 
 humanity would be raised to insist upon the condemna- 
 tion of an individual who had so repeatedly and un- 
 blushingly violated every one of its laws. Whatever 
 might have been the feelings of the common people 
 iipon the subject, however, Yerres fcmnd a numerous 
 and powerful party among the patricians, ready to 
 stand forth in his defence. He had been heard to 
 boast, that he should be very well satisfied to expend 
 the proceeds of two years of spoliation in defeating the 
 ends of justice, provided he were allowed to retain for 
 himself the profits of the third. The result proved that 
 no efforts of the higher orders in his favour were un- 
 purchaseable. Hortensius, though almost on the 
 point of being declared consul elect, assumed the 
 title and offices of his patron and partisan, and a 
 crowd of the distinguished nobility followed his 
 example. Such was, at this time, the disgraceful 
 countenance afforded by the most eminent in dignity 
 and title to a monster of injustice when threatened 
 with the punishment due to his guilt ! the most sar- 
 castic commentary upon which is to be found in the 
 pleadings of Cicero in this cause, who asserts that the 
 people of the subject provinces had actually formed
 
 50 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the design of petitioning for a repeal of the existing 
 law against extortion on the part of the Roman 
 magistrates. " And there can be no doubt," he argues, 
 " that they would be greatly benefited by the change. 
 For, in that case, the governors sent into the pro- 
 vinces would be content to plunder only to a sufficient 
 extent to accumulate immense fortunes for them- 
 selves. At present they are obliged, in addition to 
 this, to acquire enough to serve as bribes for their 
 future judges at home." 
 
 The first difficulty thrown in the way of the pro- 
 secution was the appearance of a rival advocate. 
 The ambassadors from Sicily, after laying their 
 grounds of complaint before Cicero, had reminded him 
 of his promise made at Lilybaeum, on the expiration of 
 his quasstorship, of exerting his abilities and influence 
 in their favour, if these should at any future time be 
 needed, and earnestly entreated him to fulfil his 
 agreement by taking the lead in the proceedings against 
 their late oppressor. But, before entering on the im- 
 peachment, he was opposed by QuintusCsecilius Niger, 
 a Sicilian by descent, who had recently filled the office 
 of quaestor to Verres, and who, although he pretended 
 to act as his accuser, inconsequence of certain injuries 
 received at his hands, was more than suspected of 
 having been bribed by him to dispute the prosecution 
 with Cicero, and, if successful, to ruin the cause of 
 the Sicilians by managing it in a manner best suited 
 to the interests of the defendant. This first plan, 
 however ingeniously devised, completely failed. The 
 oration of Cicero against the claims and pretensions 
 of Caecilius, still extant, and which is of the kind to 
 which the Romans gave the technical name of 
 " Divinatio," left his antagonist without a prospect 
 of success, and he was accordingly appointed to arraign 
 the official conduct of the ex-praator according to the 
 usual form*. For the purpose of collecting the 
 
 * Dr. Middleton, following Asconius, states, that the " Divinatio
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 51 
 
 requisite evidence, he paid a second visit to Sicily. 
 Here he was at once presented with the most pal- 
 pable proofs of the misery and want induced by 
 the pernicious government of Verres. The fer- 
 tile districts of .ZEtna, Agyra, and Leoutiurn, 
 which he had left, four years before, waving witli 
 harvests, or glowing with the richest vintages, pre- 
 sented the aspect of wild and melancholy wastes ; 
 being as completely desolated by the hand of civil 
 tyranny, as if they had been the theatre of a pro- 
 tracted and destructive war *. " On every side," 
 says the orator, " the fields appeared to mourn the los* 
 of their former tenants, and to implore the hand of the 
 cultivator; and in the midst of the most productive 
 part of Sicily, I looked for Sicily in vain T." After 
 spending fifty days in the several cities, where he 
 diligently employed himself in examining witnesses 
 and selecting the best supported cases of oppression 
 from an innumerable list of charges, he again re- 
 turned to Rome, laden with additional honours by 
 the people whose injuries he had undertaken to 
 avenge, to bring the cause of Verres to a speedy issue. 
 It was now the policy of the friends of the accused 
 to defer the trial until the early part of the ensuing 
 year, when many of them would be in office, and 
 the places vacated by several of the present judges 
 filled by others, upon whom the expedient of bribery 
 
 in Ceecilium" was pronounced by Cicero after his election to tlie 
 aedileship. That this could not have been the case may easily be 
 proved. The first oration against Verres, as appears from a passage 
 hi the speech itself, was delivered on the 5th of August, " Nona; 
 sunt hodie Sextiles, hora non& convenire ccepistis." In Verr. i. 10 ; 
 and in this Cicero states, that the comitia were only just over - 
 " His diebus paucis comitiis consularibus factis." Yet, fifty day's 
 were spent after the Divinatio in collecting evidence in Sicily. See 
 " Fasti Hellenic!," iii. 167. 
 
 * In Verr. iv. 18. 
 
 t Campus Leontiiuis sic erat deforrais atque horridus, ut in viler- 
 liuiii Siciliae parte Sicilian! qusererernua. Ibid. 
 E'2
 
 52 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 might be tried with a more favourable result. It 
 was also imagined that L. Metellus, at the time prastor 
 elect of Sicily, who was known to favour the interests 
 of Verres, would then be able to terrify the Sicilians 
 into a total abandonment, or but a feeble prosecution 
 of their claims to justice. But the prudence and 
 activity of Cicero disappointed all these expectations. 
 Instead of employing a hundred and ten days, the 
 space he had at first demanded, in his investigations 
 in Sicily, he had, as has been seen, made all the 
 necessary preparations in less than half the time ; 
 and finding, at the commencement of the trial, that 
 the partisans of Verres were indulging themselves with, 
 the hope that the cause would be opened by long 
 speeches on the part of the rival advocates ; by which 
 means the intervention of the public games and holi- 
 days would have transferred the proceedings for ulti- 
 mate decision to the tribunal of a different prtetor, he 
 determined upon adopting the plan of bringing for- 
 ward the evidence at once, without any lengthened 
 introduction or comment, and relying for success oil 
 the weight of the testimony of his witnesses alone. 
 Of the noble series of orations, therefore, which are 
 published under the title of his " Pleadings against 
 Verres," the first alone was actually delivered 
 before Marcus Glabrio, the presiding magistrate. 
 Hortensius finding that he had only witnesses to cross- 
 examine, and that he wasprecluded from the possibility 
 of delaying the cause by frivolous objections and pro- 
 tracted replies, abandoned the defence as hopeless ; 
 and Verres, well knowing, from the mass of evidence 
 arrayed againt him, what must inevitably be the 
 sentence of his judges, withdrew into voluntary exile. 
 The fine laid upon his estate by the estimation of 
 Cicero, fell far short of what had been anticipated, and, 
 indeed, of what his accuser himself had originally 
 proposed ; and there is some difficulty in accounting
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 53 
 
 for this after display of leniency. Pie was not, 
 however, suffered to escape that fate which, either 
 sooner or later, is generally found to overtake the 
 shedder of innocent blood. After many years of 
 comparative penury, induced by his extravagance, in 
 which he is said to have been relieved by his former 
 prosecutor, he was proscribed by Mark Antony for 
 some of the works of art still in his possession, which 
 he had acquired during his praetorship in Sicily, and 
 soon afterwards assassinated by the ready agents of 
 the triumvir. 
 
 The orations of Cicero in the cause of Verres, ex- 
 clusive of the opening speech against Ca;cilius, are 
 six in number, and each may be considered a model 
 of impassioned and indignant eloquence. That en- 
 titled " De Signis," on the subject of the spoliations 
 committed by Verres in regard to works of art, has 
 been often deservedly admired ; but the sixth, " De 
 Suppliciis," or respecting the unjust punishments 
 inflicted by the praetor, passages from which are to 
 be found in almost every work yet published upon 
 oratory, rises far above the rest in dignity, energy, 
 and pathos. The narration of the death of Gavius, 
 with all its aggravated circumstances of horror 
 the unjust condemnation of the criminal his useless 
 appeals to his Roman citizenship the indignities 
 inflicted upon him before his execution, and his 
 agonising death within view of the Italian shore, is 
 sufficiently known, and cannot but be considered is 
 well entitled to the commendations hitherto bestowed 
 upon it. But descriptions, equally affecting, abound 
 throughout the whole speech ; which Cicero never 
 exceeded, in the particular merits for which it is 
 famous, even when his reputation was at its height. 
 The noblest figures are so thickly scattered through- 
 out it, that it would be difficult to select a page from 
 which the art of rhetoric might not receive some new
 
 54 TflE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 and appropriate illustration ; and, notwithstanding 
 the well-authenticated fact of its never having been 
 really spoken, so strong is the delusion of the art 
 with which it has been composed, that it is almost 
 impossible to believe it to have been anything but the 
 extemporaneous effusion of an anger and pity armed 
 with extraordinary energy of utterance by the 
 singular magnitude of the offences and injuries to 
 which these feelings owed their birth, and supplying 
 the speaker with expressions, which appear to mount 
 just as the excited feelings of his audience might 
 have been expected to demand successive additions 
 to their vividness and strength. Nor is the power of 
 fervid accusation and blighting sarcasm contained in 
 this, and in all the other orations upon the same 
 subject, less remarkable ; under which, if he had been 
 hardy enough to abide his trial to its conclusion, the 
 convicted criminal must have stood forth as a with- 
 ered and abhorred object of popular scorn and exe- 
 cration *. 
 
 1 * Not to dwell upon tbe famous description of Verre* in hi* 
 dissolute seclusion at the springs of Arethusa, and his appearance 
 at the departure of the Sicilian armament " Stetit soleatus po- 
 puli Romani praetor," &c. it would be difficult to exceed in satiric 
 point the less commonly quoted account of his winter retirement 
 at Syracuse, and summer progress through the various cities under 
 his government. " In the first place," says his accuser, " hear how 
 easy this illustrious personage, rendered, by exercise of reason and dis- 
 cretion, the labour of moving from one spot to another, which is of 
 the greatest importance in all military operations, and especially 
 needful in the province of Sicily. During the winter season he took 
 care to provide an honourable refuge against the severity of frosts and 
 the force of rains and tempests, by selecting as his abode the city of 
 Syracuse, which is blessed by Nature with so favourable a situation, 
 and so pure an atmosphere, as to give authority to the saying, that 
 no day was ever known to pass there, however dark and stormy, 
 dating which the sun was not visible at some hour ; and in this 
 retreat the illustrious general spent his winter months in such a 
 manner as seldom to be seen, I will not say beyond his threshold, 
 but even out of his bed wasting equally the contracted days and
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 55 
 
 There can be no doubt that the rhetorical abilities 
 of Cicero were considered as, at least, equal to those 
 possessed by the most illustrious pleaders who had 
 yet graced the Roman Forum, in consequence of 
 these splendid exhibitions of talent. It is, how- 
 ever, evident, that his exertions against Verre.s 
 were far from ensuring him any favour on the part 
 of the nobility. From certain expressions, in his 
 first speech in the cause, it may be inferred that his 
 life was actually threatened, and all but attempted, 
 though the agency of some of the more powerful parti- 
 sans of the accused prtetor, while he was on his way 
 from Sicily. And, unquestionably, the haughty indig- 
 nation of the Scipios and Metelli might be expected to 
 
 lengthened nights in revelry and licentiousness. When, however, * 
 the spring made its appearance, and the commencement of this 
 season was signified to him, not by the breathings of Favonius, or 
 the sight of any star, since it was only when his attention was 
 attracted by the first full-blown rose presented to him, that he con- 
 jectured the spring to have actually begun he at length summoned 
 resolution enough to devote himself to his toilsome and fatiguing 
 journeys, in which he afforded so remarkable an example of 
 activity and endurance, as never to be seen even on horseback. 
 For, after the manner of the Bithynian kings, he was carried in a 
 litter borne by eight attendants, reclining on a pillow composed of 
 the transparent muslin of Melite, stuffed with roses, with a garland 
 of the same flowers upon his head, another round his neck, and 
 holding in his hand a reticule, also filled with roses, made of the 
 finest lawn, and embroidered with minute spots, which he frequently 
 applied to his nostrils. After reaching in this guise the place of his 
 destination, he was carried in the same litter, without alighting, to 
 his very bedchamber. Thither assembled the Sicilian magistrates, 
 as well as the Roman knights ; and in this shameful retirement, as 
 you have heard from many witnesses, causes were secretly heard, 
 the decisions in which were afterwards reversed openly. After 
 thus spending a short time in giving sentences, according to the 
 sums offered him by way of bribe, rather than from any regard to the 
 justice of the case, his remaining hours were devoted to intoxication 
 and sensuality." (In Ver. ii. cap. vi. 11.) It would be easy to adduce 
 similar instances, did the limits, to which a popular work is neces- 
 sarily restricted permit, or were not the ablest orations injured by 
 the citation of unconnected passages.
 
 56 THE LIFE OP CICERO, 
 
 be aroused, to no limited extent, by the boldness of one 
 who was not yet even entitled to the contemptuous 
 appellation of " a new man," in attempting to drag 
 to merited justice the culprit whom they were bent 
 upon defending. Another cause for the hatred of the 
 upper ranks must have existed in his style of com- 
 ment upon one of the most important concessions 
 lately made to the nobility. The privilege of con- 
 stituting the " judices" or jury in criminal trials, after 
 long fluctuating between the knights and senators, 
 was, during the dictatorship of Sylla, at length 
 determinately assigned to the latter. The middle 
 classes clamoured fiercely for the repeal of this enact- 
 ment, and the restoration of their judicial functions 
 to the equestrian order, and Cicero was far from 
 appearing at this time to controvert the propriety of 
 the alteration. At all events, he holds forth the 
 general feeling upon the subject as a salutary warning 
 to those in office to perform their duties with an 
 impartiality widely inconsistent with the general 
 practices of the corrupt aristocracy of the time. 
 
 By whatever signs of dissatisfaction on the part of 
 the rich and the powerful he might have been met, he 
 proceeded, undismayed at their manifestation, and 
 only ambitious of rising to further distinctions by 
 honest and equitable means, to pass through the year 
 of his sedileship in such a manner as greatly to in- 
 crease his popularity with the middle and lower orders 
 of Rome. The Sicilians, grateful for his late exer- 
 tions, supplied him gratuitously with abundant stores 
 of corn, which, instead of making them a source of 
 private emolument to himself, he immediately trans- 
 ferred to the public stock, and by this means effected 
 a considerable reduction in the general price of pro- 
 visions. The public games in honour of Ceres, 
 Bacchus, and Libera, as well as of Flora, and those 
 known "as the " Ludi Romani," consecrated to Ju-
 
 THE LITE OP CIt'ERO. 57 
 
 piter, Juno, and Minerva, the presiding divinities of 
 the Capitol, all of which he has mentioned as incxim- 
 bent upon him to regulate, were performed in the 
 usual manner under his direction; and this year of 
 his life is only further distinguished by his appear- 
 ance for the defendants in two causes of considerable 
 note. Marcus Fonteius, who had been for three years 
 prsetor of Gaul, was, on his return to Rome, im- 
 peached for various acts of misconduct in his pro- 
 vince : Induciomarus, chief of the Treviri, bein<r his 
 
 ' o 
 
 principal accuser, and Marcus Plaetorius the advo- 
 cate entrusted with his impeachment. We are yet 
 in possession of a considerable fragment of the speech 
 of Cicero in his behalf, and there is too much reason 
 to believe, from the line of argument adopted in it, 
 that the accusations against Fonteius were, as usual 
 in such cases, well founded. The oration for Aulus 
 Cecina, the next in succession, delivered respecting 
 the right possessed by his client to a certain farm, 
 from the occupancy of which he had been prohibited 
 by main force, beyond a display of considerable 
 subtlety on the part of the advocate, possesses 
 b;it little interest. Before the former of these 
 causes was brought to trial the law of Aurelius 
 Cotta began to take effect, by which it was ordained, 
 thatthe"judices"should for the future be chosen from 
 the senatorian and equestrian orders, with the addition 
 of the ferarian tribunes. - The commons had also by 
 this time recovered no small degree of power, by the 
 restitution of their original privileges to the tribunes 
 of thepeople, whose authority had been for some time 
 rendered, to a great extent, inefficient by the acts of 
 Sylla. This alteration was produced by the exertions 
 of Pompey, whose interest then consisted in paying 
 court to the popular party, although, at a subsequent 
 period, he thought it necessary to -make an essential 
 change in his policy.
 
 53 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 In the general history of his country the period of 
 the sedileship of Cicero is noted for the dedication of 
 the new buildings of the Capitol, which had been 
 burned by an accidental conflagration about five years 
 before. The ceremony was performed by Quintus 
 Catulus with extraordinary magnificence. Sylla, 
 who had superintended the. erection of this superb 
 pile, the roof of which was overlaid with gold, at a 
 cost of twelve thousand talents, or nearly two millions 
 of pounds sterling, had complained upon his death- 
 bed, that the presiding at its consecration was the 
 only thing wanting to complete the uniform course 
 of good fortune by which his life had been distin- 
 guished. It may be doubted, however, whether Sylla 
 himself could have performed the ceremony with more 
 lavish pomp than was displayed on the occasion. 
 Pliny has particularly mentioned an instance of novel 
 extravagance, in the introduction of an immense 
 purple awning, extensive enough to shelter the whole 
 assembled populace from the heat of the sun. Such 
 incidental illustrations of the luxury of the times, 
 scattered throughout the writings of ancient authors, 
 although not intended directly to illustrate the subject, 
 throw no small light upon the causes of those civil 
 commotions by which the commonwealth had lately 
 been distracted, and to which it was soon again to 
 be exposed. A nobility lavishing vast fortunes 
 upon the entertainment of a single day a people 
 wholly engrossed by the expectation or enjoyment of 
 such amusements, and so long as they were afforded, 
 careless by whom, or from what sources, they were 
 provided ; surely, if all other causes were wanting, 
 we need not look much further than these to discover 
 the fertile occasions of a violence and anarchy neces- 
 sarily terminating at length in the most frightful 
 form of despotism.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICEUO. 59 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Election of Cicero to the Prsetorsliip His Impartiality in the Trial 
 of Licinius Macer Orations for Cluentius arid Fundanius 
 Speech in Defence of the Manili in Law Munilius is impeached 
 before Cicero for Peculation First Letters to Atticus Conspi- 
 racy against the Consuls Torquatus and Cotta Oration of Cicero 
 for Publius Cornelius Consulate of Lucius Julius Caesar and 
 C. Marcius Figulus Cicero prepares to sue for the Consulship 
 Meditates the Defence of Catiline Delivers his Ora- 
 tion "in Toga Candida" He is elected Consul Origin and 
 Progress of the Catilinarian Conspiracy Cicero defends Quiutits 
 Gallius. 
 
 THE popularity which Cicero had acquired during 
 his sedileship was sufficiently shown to be undimi- 
 nished,when, two years afterwards, he offered himself 
 as candidate for the dignity of prastor. His talents 
 and his readiness to exert them for the benefit of his 
 fellow-citizens, had, by this time, caused him to be 
 held in such general estimation, that his house upon 
 the Palatine Hill, the same which had been occupied 
 by his father on his first removal to Rome, was daily 
 frequented by as numerous a multitude as thronged 
 to the levees of Pompey and Crassus. The former 
 did not think it unbecoming his dignity to court him 
 openly by every mark of respect, and to the influence 
 of this powerful ally he doubtless owed much of tho 
 facility with which his election was carried. Of the 
 eightprsetors chosen he was returned the first by allthe 
 centuries ; but as he speaks, in one of his earlier epistles 
 to Atticus, in terms far from commendatory of his 
 competitors for office, this honour must be con- 
 sidered as, in no small respect, qualified by accompa- 
 nying circumstances. The time of the election had, 
 indeed, been delayed in consequence of malpractices 
 on the part of those who were seeking for the higher
 
 60 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 magistracies, which had become so notorious, that it 
 was considered necessary to take extraordinary steps 
 against them by the introduction of the Calpurnian 
 law, ordaining that whoever should beguilty of bribery 
 or corruption, in any shape, while canvassing the 
 people, should not only be heavily fined, but declared 
 incapable of holding office, or taking his seat in the 
 senate. The enactment caused considerable commo- 
 tion, but so necessary did it appear, from existing 
 circumstances, that the senators determined that no 
 magistrates for the ensuing year should be chosen until 
 it had assumed the form of a binding statute. 
 In the early ages of the republic, justice was ad- 
 ministered by two praetors alone, whose tribunals, 
 distinguished by the simple insignia of a spear and 
 sword, planted upright before them, were publicly 
 erected in the Forum. The first of these magistrates, 
 the " praetor urbanus," decided disputes between the 
 citizens ; the second, or " prsetor peregrinus," those 
 in which one or both of the parties might happen to 
 be foreigners. But as the population of Rome and 
 the extent of the Empire increased fresh praetors 
 were, from time to time, created. During the dic- 
 tatorship of Sylla, and for some years afterwards, 
 eight were annually elected, six of whom, while the 
 civil actions were determined by two of their num- 
 ber as before, took cognizance of criminal charges, 
 classed under as many heads and entitled " questiones 
 perpetuas ;" as the jurisdiction in each belonged exclu- 
 sively to a particular prastor throughout the year of 
 his office. The division was as follows : I. Cases 
 involving extortion. II. Bribery and corruption. 
 III. Crimes against the majesty of the state or 
 eases of treason. IV. Peculation. V. Forgery; 
 and VI. Murders committed either by force or by 
 poison. In the assignment of these subjects by lot 
 according to thQ usual custom, Cicero was appointed
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 61 
 
 to the office of presiding at trials under the first head. 
 His conduct under the high trust which his country- 
 men had now devolved upon him is mentioned as 
 remarkable for justice and impartiality, of which an 
 instance was given in the cause of Licinius Macer, a 
 person of praetorian dignity who was accused before 
 him soon after his entering upon office. The de- 
 fendant in this action was so confident of his influ- 
 ence with the judges, and in the support of Crassu?, 
 with whom he was on terms of intimacy, that on the 
 day of trial he laid aside the usual mourning dres.- 
 worn by persons in such circumstances, and returned 
 home from the Forum in great state and amidst a 
 multitude of his friends, as if he had been certain of 
 his acquittal. But the cause was so equitably man- 
 aged by Cicero, that the judges, attending solely to 
 the evidence they had heard, unanimously gave sen- 
 tence against him ; a verdict which proved fatal, if the 
 ancient historians are to be believed, to the accused, 
 who is recorded,on the receipt of the intelligence from 
 his patron Crassus, to have taken immediately to his 
 bed, and to have died, a short time afterwards, from 
 the effects of grief and disappointment. In his fifth 
 epistle to Atticus, Cicero asserts that his decision in 
 this cause was productive of singular and incredible 
 goodwill towards him on the part of the people; and 
 that he had gained more advantage, by his impar- 
 tiality on the occasion, than could have accrued to him 
 by the favour of the accused if he had acquitted him. 
 This brief, but expressive remark, may lend mate- 
 rial assistance towards a due appreciation of the 
 kind of justice administered in those ancient courts, 
 which have sometimes been mentioned in terms of un- 
 merited eulogy,since we not only find by it an unbiassed 
 decision recorded as a subject of popular wonder and 
 applause, but that even the magistrate who had deli- 
 vered it, could not contemplate without some compla-
 
 62 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 cency, the probability of not being a loser by giving 
 sentence according to his own convictions respecting 
 the merits of the cause. 
 
 As his office of prsetor by no means precluded him 
 from occasionally exercising his former functions as 
 advocate, he appeared this year for the defendants in 
 more than one remarkable trial; delivering among 
 others, the subjects of which are unknown, his oration 
 for Aulus Cluentius A vitus, who was accused of poi- 
 soning his father-in-law Oppianicus. The principal 
 agent in directing the prosecution of Cluentius was his 
 own mother Sassia, a woman whom Cicero paints in the 
 darkest colours, and whose deceased husband Oppi- 
 anicus had, some years before, been actually indicted 
 for an attempt to poison the defendant Cluentius. The 
 speech of Cicero in his behalf, though not in his best 
 style, has always been considered a highly finished 
 specimen of eloquence. The pleadings in the case of 
 Marcus Fundauius, which are also attributed to the 
 year of the prsetorship of Cicero, are unfortunately 
 to be numbered with those of which scarcely more 
 than the titles are extant. 
 
 These had been preceded by the famous speech 
 upon the Manilian law, the first which Cicero deli- 
 vered to the people publicly from the rostra. Pom- 
 pey, after being armed with the extensive powers con- 
 ferred upon him by the statute of Gabinius, (by which 
 he was empowered to fit out five hundred galleys 
 and raise an army of a hundred and twenty-five 
 thousand men against the pirates in the Medi- 
 terranean, in addition to possessing absolute authority 
 over all places within fifty miles of the coast,) had made 
 such good use of the extraordinary means placed in 
 his hands, as within forty days of his appointment 
 to have completely cleared the sea' of the swarms 
 of marauding vessels which had so long infested 
 it ; compelling such of the pirates as escaped the pur-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 63 
 
 suit of his squadrons, to betake themselves for refuge 
 to their strongholds in Crete and Cilicia, where they 
 were speedily besieged by the Roman land forces 
 and reduced to extremities. But in the East the 
 war against Mithridates, which had been nearly 
 
 O ' 
 
 brought to a conclusion by the abilities of Lucullus, 
 had once more assumed an unfavourable aspect. 
 Caius Triarius, who had been appointed by that 
 general, while preparing to return to Rome, to the 
 chief command, until the arrival of his successor 
 Acilius Glabrio, had been suddenly attacked by 
 the enemy, and utterly routed with the loss of a 
 hundred and fifty centurions, twenty-four tribunes, 
 and common soldiers in proportion, besides that of 
 his camp, which was taken and plundered by the 
 victors. The people at Rome, discouraged by this 
 severe and unexpected check, which reminded them of 
 former defeats from the same able and still active 
 antagonist, began to turn their eyes upon Pompey as 
 the only person fit to be entrusted with the completion 
 of the war, and their sentiments upon the subject 
 were further confirmed by the news, that the army 
 in the East, on receiving intelligence that Glabrio had 
 been appointed to command them, had absolutely 
 refused to follow him, and that he had consequently 
 been obliged to stop short in Bithynia. At this 
 juncture, therefore, the tribune Manilius, desirous of 
 securing the favour of a powerful patron and gra- 
 tifying the popular inclination, brought forward a 
 law, proposing that the whole of the provinces of 
 Bithynia, Phrygia, 'Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, 
 Cilicia, Colchis, and the lesser Armenia, with the 
 forces lately employed in the piratical war, in addi- 
 tion to those lately under the command of Lucullus, 
 should be placed, with the full power of directing all 
 future hostilities against Mithridates, in the hands of 
 Pompey.
 
 64 THE LIFE OP CICERO; 
 
 It was the ordinary custom, when any new act 
 was proposed to the people, to expose it for three suc- 
 cessive market days, in the Forum, that all might 
 have an opportunity of inspecting it, before being 
 called to determine by their votes upon its accept- 
 ance or rejection. On such occasions, those who 
 were distiuguished by the previous or present posses- 
 sion of the higher magistracies, for no others, witli 
 the exception of the tribunes, were allowed, unless by 
 express permission, to ascend the rostra, harangued 
 the multitude either for or against the intended 
 statute. The law of Manilius met with vehement 
 opposition from the greater part of the nobility, and 
 more especially from Quintus Catulus and Horten- 
 sius, who placed themselves foremost in the ranks of 
 its most determined opponents ; the former honestly 
 representing the danger of entrusting a power equal 
 to that which Sylla had scarcely attained after years 
 of opposition and bloodshed to any individual, how- 
 ever gifted or distinguished ; the latter more speciously 
 concealing the real grounds of his opposition by the 
 argument, that the safety of Pompey was too valu- 
 able to be exposed, except on occasion of the most 
 pressing necessities of the state.* Cicero successfully 
 combated the arguments of both, and was the 
 principal means of procuring the passing of the law ; 
 which Pompey, according to Plutarch, pretended 
 to deplore, on receiving intelligence of its confirma- 
 tion by the people, complaining that it placed too 
 great a burden upon one already oppressed with the 
 weight and responsibility of the charges committed 
 to him. In his oration for the adoption of the Bill 
 of Manilius, Cicero gives a powerful description 
 of the magnitude and importance of the contest with 
 Mithridates, andof the manner in which it hadbeen con- 
 ducted by Lucullus, of whom he speaks in terms of the 
 warmest commendation. He then proceeds to define 
 * Pro Lege Manilla, xx.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 65 
 
 the qualities requisite to constitute a general of the 
 first order, under the several heads of military skill, 
 conduct, authority, and good fortune, and proves 
 each to be possessed by Pompey in the highest de- 
 gree. The latter part of his address is devoted to 
 answering and confuting the objections urged by 
 Catulus and Hortensius. The whole speech is highly 
 wrought, but, notwithstanding its polish and elabo- 
 rate elegance, must for ever offend, by the character 
 of servile adulation to the then popular idol which 
 . pervades it throughout. The incense of flattery has 
 seldom been more profusely or less disguisedly 
 offered, than in this instance of the degradation of 
 genius to an ambition, which was afterwards found 
 to be as incapable of appreciating, as it was of de- 
 serving the sacrifice. 
 
 Manilius, towards the end of the year in which he 
 had carried his celebrated law, was, probably in con- 
 sequence of the resentment of the nobility, assailed 
 by a charge of extortion, and cited before the tri- 
 bunal of Cicero to answer it. In taking cognizance 
 of this cause, instead of assigning to the accused the 
 usual period of ten days, for the preparation of his 
 defence, Cicero allowed him, to the general astonish- 
 ment, but one. For this apparent rigour he was forth- 
 with cited by the tribunes togive an explanation of his 
 conduct before an assembly of the people, and was re- 
 ceived on his appearance with marks of strong disap- 
 probation. But the popular indignation soon subsided 
 on his proceeding to account for his supposed severity. 
 He informed those present, that at the time when he 
 received the accusation of Manilius, his office as praetor 
 was within two days of expiring, and that he had there- 
 fore determined upoabringingonthe trial immediately, 
 in preference to suffering it to be transferred to another 
 magistrate, from whom the defendant might not meet 
 with so favourable a hearing as from himself. His 
 excuse was considered as perfectly satisfactory, but the 
 f
 
 66 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 people were not contented until they had induced him 
 to promise, that he would himself undertake to appear 
 as advocate in behalf of Manilius, whose intended trial 
 had been prevented by the intervention of the tribunes. 
 Such is the account given of the circumstance by 
 Plutarch. The historian Dio, after stating that 
 Cicero was really influenced by a dislike to Manilius 
 in curtailing the time allotted for his defence, and 
 only saved from the severe censure of the popular 
 assembly, before which he had been cited, by the 
 promise above-mentioned, adds, that the hearing of 
 the cause was prevented by the tumults raised in con- 
 sequence of the consular elections of the year, when 
 Autronius Paetus and Publius Cornelius Sylla, who 
 had been already appointed to the office, were impeached 
 for corruption by Lucius Cotta and Lucius Torquatus, 
 two of the unsuccessful candidates, and, being found 
 guilty, were compelled to give up the honour to their 
 accusers*. The story, in whatever way related, will 
 hardly appear to contribute much evidence in favour 
 of the strict impartiality of Cicero ; with respect to 
 whose speech on this occasion, we are only informed, 
 that it abounded in censures of the ambition of 
 the aristocracy, and of all who were envious of the 
 growing power of Pompey. With the exception 
 of these events, his prastorship seems not to have 
 been remarkable for any occurrence of moment. 
 It has been stated, however, that amidst the nu- 
 merous claims to his attention, he still found 
 leisure, while invested with this magistracy, to fre- 
 quent the school of M. Antonius Gnipho, a rheto- 
 
 * As a fragment of the oration of Cicero in defence of Manilius 
 is quoted by Nonius, and as Asconius Pedi.inus lias stated that the 
 accused was actually condemned in default of his personal appear- . 
 ance to answer the indictment preferred against him, the testimony 
 of Dio upon the subject may be regarded with suspicion. To recon- 
 cile the assertion of Asconius with the existence of the oration, it 
 has been conjectured that the latter, although prepared in anticipa- 
 tion of the trial, was never actually pronounced in a court of justice.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 67 
 
 rician of considerable note. Such an attendance may 
 easily be conjectured to have been given, rather with 
 a view of patronising and recommending the pre- 
 ceptor*, than with any hope of procuring much addi- 
 tional instruction in an art of which he was himself, 
 at the time, the most finished master in Rome. 
 
 From the period of Cicero's election to the prastor- 
 ship, alight begins to be thrown upon his actions and 
 character, which would be vainly sought in the partial 
 or mistaken testimony of contemporary or subsequent 
 authors. This is to be found in his ample corre- 
 spondence, than which a more valuable gift has never 
 descended to subsequent ages amidst the multiplied 
 treasures of antiquity. Although none of his letters 
 to his other friends and acquaintance can be certainly 
 proved to have been written prior to his consulship, we 
 have eleven of his epistles to Atticus, of which one of 
 the earliest mentions his intention of standing for the 
 praetorshipt. Several among these contain commis- 
 sions for procuring certain statues from Athens, for the 
 purpose of ornamenting his Tusculan villaj. In one 
 
 * Middleton, Life of Cicero, 8vo, p. 85. 
 
 } Ad Attic, lib. i. 11. It should be mentioned, however, that 
 the date of this epistle has been a subject of much difference of 
 opinion, and that it has been thought, by some of the most eminent 
 critics, to refer to his canvass for the consulate. 
 
 t Among them' are particularly specified, several figures of Mercury 
 (probably terminal) of Pentelic marble, with bronze heads ; a num- 
 ber of Megaric statues, which seem to have been recommended to 
 him in high terms by Atticus, and others of the kinds termed 
 Hennathenae and Hermeraclae, or joint figures of Hercules and 
 Minerva, or Hercules and Mercury. He also orders mouldings of 
 figures, which were perhaps to be executed in terra cotta, for the 
 ceiling of his atrium, and two embossed covers for his wells. He 
 appears at the same time to have contemplated purchasing, at a future 
 opportunity, a considerable part of the library of Atticus, since he 
 requests him not to part with it, even if he should find a ready 
 bidder, as he is carefully laying by all his earnings, with a view to 
 procure this means of solace for his old age. His anxiety to obtain 
 the statues, by the quickest means and at the earliest period 
 F 2
 
 68 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 he laments the death of his cousin Lucius*, and in 
 another mentions the decease of his father, without, 
 however, making the slightest comment upon the 
 eventf. We learn in addition, that, about this time, 
 his daughter Tullia was betrothed to Caius Piso, the 
 son of Lucius Frugi^, and that his family was in- 
 creased by the birth of an infant son. Allusions 
 are also made to certain differences between his brother 
 Quintus and Pomponia, the wife of the latter, and sister 
 of Atticus; but these seem to have speedily ended in 
 their reconciliation, chiefly by means of his intervention . 
 In his anxiety to make every effort for the acquisi- 
 tion of the consulate, he declined the province which he 
 might have obtained at the end of his office as praetor, 
 determining to spend the whole of the two years next 
 ensuing in strengthening his interest with all classes, 
 and in diligently canvassing for the highest honour in 
 the power of his countrymen to bestow. The times, 
 however, were not such as to promise a very tranquil 
 enjoyment of the dignity, since they were already 
 pregnant with those causes of dissatisfaction and law- 
 less outrage, which ultimately issued in the conspiracy 
 of Catiline. That daring and licentious profligate 
 having just returned from his province of Africa, 
 for the purpose of presenting himself for the con- 
 sulship, and being deprived of all hopes of success 
 by an impeachment for illegal extortion, preferred 
 against him by Publius Clodius, a person of as aban- 
 doned principles as himself, formed, in conjunction with 
 Publius Autronius and Cneius Piso||, a design of 
 
 possible, is sufficiently amusing, and in the true spirit of a collector, 
 while his powers of appreciating art seem at least upon a level with 
 those possessed by connoisseurs in general. 
 
 * Ad Attic, lib. i. 5. t Ad Attic, i. 6. 
 
 * Ad Attic, i. 3. Ad Aitic. i. 2. 
 
 || Sallust and Livy add the name of Pub. Sylla, -who was after- 
 wards defended against the charge by Cicero and Hortensius, and 
 Suetonius affirms that both Czesai 4 and Ciassus were concerned 
 in the conspiracy. He even relates that Csnsar was to have given 
 the signal for the assassination by letting his robe drop from his
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 69 
 
 assassinating the consuls, Torquatus and Cotta, in 
 the Capitol, on the very day of their entrance upon 
 their office. In consequence of the plot being sus- 
 pected, the conspirators deferred attempting to carry 
 it into effect until the month of February, by which 
 timethey had added a considerable number of senators 
 to the list of their intended victims ; but the prema- 
 ture eagerness of Catiline, who gave the sign to his 
 accomplices in front of the senate-house before they 
 were fully prepared to obey it, caused the failure of 
 this second attempt at the destruction of their oppo- 
 nents*. It is remarkable, that although the true 
 character of Catiline must, assuredly long before this, 
 have been well known to him, Cicero notwithstanding- 
 entertained the design of appearing as his advocate in 
 the prosecution hanging over his head. As Clodius, 
 who conducted it, was induced to drop all further pro- 
 ceedings, by bribery, the cause was never brought to 
 trial ; yet in his correspondence with Atticus, the 
 orator expressly affirms, that he is sincerely meditat- 
 ing his defencet, that the judges appointed are pre- 
 cisely those whom he could have wished, and that 
 he hopes if the accused should be acquitted, to have 
 his intimacy and support during their joint efforts for 
 the consulate. His pleadings in favour of Publius 
 Cornelius, who had been charged with treason in con- 
 sequence of his persisting to read a bill he had brought 
 forward before the people, in spite of the tribunitial 
 negative placed upon it by his colleague in office, Ser- 
 vilius Globulus, may be easily believed to have been 
 
 shoulder, and was nly deterred from doing so by the unexpected 
 absence of Crassus, who, on the very eve of its execution, repented 
 of the part he had taken in the design. JULIUS, cap. ix. 
 
 * Sallust Bell. Cat. cap. xviii. 
 
 f-Hoc terapore Catilinam competitorem nostrum defendere cogi- 
 tamus. Judices habemus quos voluimus, summa accusatoris 
 voluntate. Spero si absolutus erit conjunctionetn ilium nobis fore 
 in ratione petitionis. Ad Attic, i. 2.
 
 70 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 delivered for a worthier object, and in a much moro 
 reputable cause. The defence pronounced by Cicero in 
 this case, in which Hortensius, Catulus, and several 
 others of the chief nobility of Rome, appeared as wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution, lasted four days, and was 
 afterwards published in the form of two orations of 
 considerable length. These have been mentioned in 
 terms of high praise by Quintilian*, but whether his 
 commendation was fully deserved or not, it is now 
 impossible to judge, since, with the exception of a few 
 unimportant and unconnected sentences, both have 
 long been considered as having irrecoverably perished. 
 In his poem upon his consulship, as well as in his 
 orations, Cicero has taken the pains of commemo- 
 rating the close of the year of the chief magistracy 
 of Torquatus and Cotta, as remarkable for many 
 prognostics which indicated the desperate and atro- 
 cious designs then preparing against the state by 
 Catiline and his accomplices ; and he has been 
 strictly followedt, in his leaning towards the mar- 
 vellous and supernatural on this occasion, by Plutarch 
 as well as Dio Cassius. According to these seve- 
 ral authorities, thunders and apparitions, seconded by 
 Etruscan prophecies and the mystic warnings of 
 diviners, formed an appropriately solemn introduction 
 to the plan of domestic treason, unsparing rapine and 
 indiscriminate massacre, which was shortly to be dis- 
 closed and frustrated. As a matter of authentic 
 history, however, perhaps not altogether devoid of in- 
 terest, it may be observed, that at the time in question 
 the Capitol, with its newly erected buildings, seems 
 to have been visited with one of those tremendous 
 storms, by which it was on several occasions materi- 
 ally injured. Several brazen statues were struck down 
 by the lightning ; the tablets of the same metal, on 
 which some of the ancient laws of Rome were engraved, 
 
 * Instil. Orator, lib. v. f Plut. in Cic.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 71 
 
 partially fused, so that the inscriptions upon them 
 were rendered illegible ; and the figures of Romulus 
 and Remus, with the legendary wolf, struck to the 
 earth, the latter leaving the traces of its feet, which 
 were entirely melted by the flash, upon the sup- 
 porting pedestal*. 
 
 With this ominous preface commenced the consul- 
 ship of Lucius Julius Caesar and Caius Marciua 
 Figulus ; a year celebrated not only in connection 
 with the destinies of Cicero, in whose life it formed 
 a memorable epoch, but as one of the highest import- 
 ance in the history of his country. As he had now 
 reached the age of forty-three years, at which he was 
 allowed by law to present himself as an aspirant to 
 the consular office, he assumed the dress and labours 
 of a candidate for that honour, in suing for which, he 
 had to oppose the exertions of no less than six com- 
 petitors, viz. : Sulpicius Galba, Sergius Catiline, 
 Caius Antonius, Cassius Longinus, Quintus Corni- 
 ficius, and Licinius Sacerdos. Among these, Antonius 
 and Catiline, who appear to have made common 
 cause against the rest, conducted their canvass with 
 such open and unblushing bribery, that the senate 
 thought it necessary, by additional penalties, to 
 strengthen the law against corruption. The tri- 
 bune Orestinus, however, who was probably in 
 the interest of the parties, interposed his authority 
 to prevent the amended statute from passing, and it 
 was on the occasion of this interference, that Cicero 
 delivered the speech called by the critics " The Ora- 
 tion in the white toga;" in allusion to the dress which 
 he at that time wore, in compliance with general 
 custom. In this oration he seems, (judging from the 
 
 * De Divinatione, lib. i. cap. 1 2. 
 
 " Nunc ea Torqviato qiiae quondam et consule Cotta," &c. 
 See also Chiltle Harold, Canto iv. stanza 88, *' And thou, the 
 thunder-stricken nurse of Rome," &c. with the accompanying note.
 
 72 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 few passages which remain of it,) forgetting his former 
 resolution of acting as his advocate, to have assailed 
 Catiline as well as his confederate Antonius, with 
 a strength of language from which the infamy of their 
 characters might easily have been deduced, were it 
 intimated only by the disjointed sentences of the in- 
 vective which have reached us. The former is openly 
 reproached for his murders, during the proscription of 
 Sylla, and his notorious misconduct at home and in 
 Africa ; while Antonius is reminded, in forcible terms, 
 of his extortions and oppressions in Achaia, for which 
 he had been formerly impeached. The election of 
 both, is characterised by the expressive metaphor of 
 two daggers unsheathed at once against the safety of 
 the commonwealth. * In this image there was more 
 truth than either the orator or his auditory might at 
 the time imagine. The famous plot laid by Catiline 
 against the existing constitution and the lives of its 
 principal supporters, was, in fact, now fast maturing, 
 and although strictprecautionshad beenusedto prevent 
 any suspicion of its existence, was not so closely kept 
 secret, but that some faint intimations of its character 
 had become matter of general conversation ; chiefly 
 through the means of Fulvia, the mistress of Quintus 
 Curius, one of the most rash and heedless of the parties 
 engaged in it ; who, although she suppressed the 
 names of her authorities, made no scruple of men- 
 tioning the general tenour of what she had heard to 
 her acquaintancet. 
 
 In consequence of the undefined fear which, by this 
 means, was spread among the nobility, (who, aware 
 of some secret danger to themselves, although ig- 
 norant of its extent and the quarter from which it 
 might be expected, forgot, in their desire to place a 
 trustworthy person at the helm of government, 
 the comparatively obscure origin of Cicero,) his 
 
 *Oratio in Toga Candida sub fin. -f- Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xxiii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 73 
 
 election was triumphantly carried, amidst the ac- 
 clamations, as he tells us, of all classes and order*. 
 Antonius was appointed his colleague, an honour 
 which Catiline missed by the votes of but a few 
 centuries. The plans of the conspirators sustained a 
 serious check by the result of this election, which 
 they had confidently reckoned, by the influence of 
 Marcus Crassus and Julius Caesar, who were equally 
 opposed to Cicero, would end in his utter disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 Although the minutest circumstances connected 
 with its progress and termination have long been a 
 matter of common history, it may seem not irrelevant, 
 in a life of one whose name is intimately connected 
 with it, to enter at this opportunity somewhat 
 more at length into the objects of the plot which has 
 been alluded to : a design so infamous in character 
 so rash in conduct and so desperate in its proposed 
 results, as might have provoked and justified the scep- 
 ticism of succeeding generations, had not every essen- 
 tial point been confirmed by the united testimony of 
 two writers, attached during their lives to directly 
 opposite parties ; the first, a principal actor in its detec- 
 tion and punishment ; the other, an eye-witness of the 
 event, who would have possessed ample means for 
 successfully impeaching the veracity of his political 
 opponent, had it failed in any particular, and would 
 have been but too happy to do so, if he had been fur- 
 nished with the opportunity. 
 
 The miseries suffered by the people of Italy during 
 the contests between Marius and Sylla, were by no 
 means the only evils engendered by those times of 
 terror and commotion. During the vigorous dictator- 
 ship of the latter, his firm and uncompromising 
 policy, which suffered no violence to exist but such as 
 directly promoted his own interest, kept the fiery 
 spirits, by whose assistance he had mounted to ab-
 
 74 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 solute and irresponsible dominion, in some degree of 
 subjection. But at his death, vast numbers of those 
 who had composed the strength of his armies were 
 left without hope of further emolument or distinc- 
 tion. Most among them having learned to acquire 
 a taste for Eastern luxury and profusion in the cam- 
 paigns against Mithridates, had afterwards found 
 ample means for gratifying it at the expense of their 
 countrymen. The wealth which had been obtained 
 by their violence, however, was speedily exhausted 
 by their extravagance ; and with every propensity to 
 vicious indulgence unabated by their want of suf- 
 -ficient resources for satisfying it, they gloomily 
 watched for the appearance of a leader possessed 
 of a spirit like that of their old commander, or 
 a favourable opportunity for renewing the civil 
 discords which had formerly issued so much to 
 their benefit. By a policy, moreover, of exceed- 
 ingly questionable utility, so far as the interests of the 
 state were concerned, although, no doubt, prompted 
 by the soundest appreciation of his own advantage 
 on the part of the dictator, instead of being suffered 
 to disperse, when their services were no longer re- 
 quired, and to lose some of their lawless habits by 
 contact with persons actively engaged in the peaceful 
 occupations of civil life, they had been distributed in 
 large bodies, under the name of military colonies, in 
 different parts of Italy ; where they had full opportu- 
 nity of comparing among themselves, their present 
 condition of inactivity and comparative privation, 
 with the stirring and dissolute life they had for- 
 merly led, and of strengthening each other's resolu- 
 tions to seize the earliest opportunity of starting on 
 a fresh career of outrage and spoliation. Nor were 
 these the only elements of which the brooding tem- 
 pest was composed. Many of the nobility of Rome, 
 inured under Sylla to every kind of excess, and accus-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 75 
 
 tomed, in their earliest years, to the careless habits and 
 reckless profligacy of a military life, had been unable 
 to return, after the hazardous game on which they 
 had entered was decided in their favour, to the more 
 restricted course of pleasure warranted by the extent 
 of their hereditary estates, but, plunging headlong 
 into every kind of lavish expenditure, had incurred 
 enormous debts, which they had not the remotest 
 prospect of being able to pay, unless by the oppor- 
 tunity of rapine afforded by a new revolution. 
 With bloodshed and cruelty, in their worst shape, 
 they had been too extensively acquainted during 
 the former contention and its attendant proscriptions 
 to shrink from any such means of repairing their 
 ruined fortunes, provided they appeared the readiest 
 for effecting the desired object. There only wanted 
 a fitting person to bring together and arrange far 
 action such apt materials for an intestine convulsion of 
 the most formidable nature, and by the unhappy 
 complexion of the times, and the tendency of exist- 
 ing causes to produce the most astounding forms of 
 depravity, the character required was not long in 
 appearing. 
 
 After the description of the mind and person of 
 Sergius Catiline, so vividly and powerfully traced 
 by Sallust, it would be presumption to use, in al- 
 luding, to the same subject, any other words than 
 those, by which the genius of this writer has 
 rendered both immortal in the recollection of after 
 ages. His portraiture of the most abandoned and 
 flagitious traitor of that, or perhaps of any time, is, 
 indeed, so well known, that it needs but the mention 
 of the name of Catiline, to place before us the ghastly 
 countenance, haggard expression, and unequal gait 
 of the victim of his own unbridled passions, con- 
 stantly haunted by the furies of remorse, and only 
 gaining relief from recollections of past enormities, by
 
 76 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 the feverish excitement caused by the meditation of 
 crimes yet to come. Nor can a single stroke be added 
 to that impressive delineation, with which all are 
 acquainted, of a disposition at once subtle, versatile, 
 and daring ; of a covetousness in acquiring the pro- 
 perty of others, only equalled by the profusion and ex- 
 travagance which marked the thoughtless waste of its 
 own possessions ; of an ambition vast and unbounded, 
 without the restraint of a single virtue to preclude 
 its exercise, or of the slightest prudence to prevent 
 its open display; and, lastly, of an eloquence per- 
 fectly adapted to seduce and mislead, united to bodily 
 powers capable of incredible exertion, and a patience 
 of fatigue, want, and privations, when such should 
 be rendered necessary, as extraordinary as all the 
 other features in the character of its lawless possessor. 
 Without attempting to enlarge upon a picture not 
 often equalled by historians or biographers, it may 
 be remarked that Catiline was descended from a 
 family often distinguished by civic honours, and con- 
 sidered one of the noblest in Rome. His earliest 
 initiation into the vices for which he was afterwards 
 notorious, was effected during the convulsions attend- 
 ing the elevation of Sylla to the dictatorship, in whoso 
 cause he distinguished himself as a. violent and re- 
 morseless partisan. The first crime laid to his charge 
 is the murder of his own brother, whose name he 
 afterwards persuaded Sylla to insert in the list of the 
 proscribed. His sister's husband, a Roman knight 
 attached to no party, and remarkable for his mild 
 and amiable disposition, is also recorded as having 
 fallen, at the same time, by his hand. His assassin- 
 ation of Marcus Marius Gratidianus, a most estimable 
 person, and nearly related to the famous chief Caius 
 Marius, was marked by circumstances of singular 
 horror and impiety. This unfortunate Roman having 
 been placed in the proscribed list by Sylla, Catiline
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 77 
 
 undertook to perform the task of his execution. Ac- 
 cordingly, having entered the house of his victim, and 
 exercised upon him the utmost inventions of insult, he 
 at length finished his sufferings by striking off his 
 head; which he carried, streaming with blood, through 
 the public streets to the tribunal of Sylla in the 
 Forum, coolly proceeding afterwards, to the disgust 
 and indignation of all present, to wash his hands in 
 the lustra! water which stood before the temple of 
 Apollo in the neighbourhood. An action of almost 
 incredible enormity succeeded. On the death of his 
 wife, having formed an attachment to Aurelia Ores- 
 tilla, a woman of great beauty, but infamous for her 
 conduct, and finding that strong objections were 
 made by her to a marriage with him, on the ground 
 that she was in fear of being obnoxious to his son, 
 who had nearly reached the age of manhood, he is 
 said summarily to have removed this obstacle to his 
 nuptials by poison. His conduct, while praetor in 
 Africa, has been already noticed as having subjected 
 him to a prosecution on his return to Rome, in con- 
 sequence of which he was obliged to withdraw from 
 the list of candidates for the year. From this time 
 lie appears to have commenced that studious course 
 of corrupting the younger branches of the Roman 
 nobility, by pursuing which he was speedily sur- 
 rounded by a band of followers, whose daring, under 
 his instructions, was soon rendered equal to their 
 licentiousness. The effeminate dress and bearing of 
 these wretched profligates has been well described by 
 Cicero, but they were far from being the least for- 
 midable of the enemies he had to encounter. Their 
 features, though carefully adorned with paint 
 and composed to an expression of elegant inanity, 
 were not unfrequently darkened by the scowl of the 
 assassin; and their long flowing vests, reaching, in 
 defiance of prescribed custom, to their wrists and 
 ancles, concealed not unfrequently the dagger, which
 
 78 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 was promptly and unsparingly used on the slightest 
 provocation. In addition to these, whoever was 
 enslaved by vices which he had no means of gra- 
 tifying, or rendered desperate by the consequences 
 of former extravagance; those who were appre- 
 hensive of punishment for past offences, or who 
 wished to commit them in future without any such 
 cause of dread, together with the ambitious and the 
 discontented of all classes, found in Catiline a ready 
 adviser and a friend. To the sensual he lent him- 
 self, as a ready instrument in their excesses ; for the 
 necessitous he procured money, or the forbearance of 
 their creditors; towards such as were desirous of 
 public honours he promised all his interest and 
 influence, neither of which was inconsiderable ; 
 while to all he held out the prospect of a general act 
 of insolvency, a proscription of the richest citizens, 
 and the speedy diversion of every office of trust and 
 emolument, which he represented as monopolised by 
 a haughty and tyrannical aristocracy, to the service 
 and exaltation of his own personal adherents. 
 
 The conspiracy of Catiline was not one of the 
 people, since we find that the lower orders of Rome 
 were not only panic-struck at its disclosure, but 
 enthusiastic in their gratitude, when the danger it 
 seemed to threaten was averted. Neither was it one 
 of the nobility, as these were, to a great extent, the 
 victims marked out by it for destruction. It appears 
 to have recognised no great principle, nor to have 
 contemplated any single object beyond the satisfying 
 of the passions of the moment, and the transfer 
 of power to the hands of a faction who would have 
 used it, to the utmost extent, simply as a means of 
 plunder, and for the summary removal of those who 
 had hitherto stood in the way of their possessing it. 
 From such trivial incentives was a revolution, of the 
 most tremendous kind, deliberately planned and 
 entered upon, in a city, where the long familiarity of
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 79 
 
 its inhabitants with all the different shapes of internal 
 discord can alone account for the apparent disparity 
 between the cause and its effects. Dark and revolt- 
 ing as were the means by. which it was proposed to 
 be carried into execution, it numbered among its 
 promoters several of the noblest names of the state. 
 Suspicion, with perhaps some reasonable ground at 
 the time, ventured to point out those of Marcus 
 Crassus and Julius Ctesar. That of Cains Antonius, 
 the colleague of Cicero, as well as of his nephew, 
 afterwards the triumvir, was more openly added. 
 From what we know of all four, the charge, however 
 serious, does not appear by any means incredible. 
 The connivance of Crassus has been accounted for by 
 his jealousy of the extraordinary honours lately con- 
 ferred upon Pompey, and his hope of easily making 
 himself the chief person in the state, in the absence 
 of his rival, if the designs of Catiline succeeded*. 
 But although, like those mentioned with him, as 
 well as others among the nobility, he might have 
 secretly excited or encouraged the conspirators, 
 it is certain that he was too cautious to implicate 
 himself in the consequences of their failure, by 
 such a close connexion with them as might place 
 him in the position of a direct accomplice. Those 
 of senatorial rank, who were prevented by no 
 such fears from distinguishing themselves as active 
 leaders in the plot, were, in addition to Catiline, 
 Publius Lentulus, surnamed Sura, a patrician, who 
 had formerly held the office of consul t, but having 
 been expelled by the censors from the senate on ac- 
 count of his infamous character, was endeavouring 
 to regain his former station by the usual course of 
 
 * Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xxvii. 
 
 t In conjunction with Cneius Aufidius Orestes, A. u. c. 683. 
 Lentulus was at this time married to Julia, the widow of Marcus 
 AntoniuR, surnamed Cretensis, and mother of Mark Antony. Hence 
 the first cause of the hatred of the latter, who had been carefully 
 educated in the politics of his step-father, towards Cicero.
 
 80 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 public honours, and was actually praetor when the 
 conspiracy broke out ; Publius Autronius, who had 
 been the colleague of Cicero in the quasstorship ; 
 Cassius Longinus, who has been before named as an 
 unsuccessful candidate for the consulship ; Caius 
 Cethegus and Servius Cornelius Sylla, both members 
 of the noble house of the Cornelii; Lucius Vargun- 
 teius, Marcus Portius Lseca, Lucius Bestia, and 
 Quiritus Curius. The equestrian order was repre- 
 sented by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, Lucius Statilius, 
 Publius Gabinius Capito, and Caius Cornelius. 
 Besides those whose exertions were principally con- 
 fined to the capital, several persons occupying high 
 stations in the colonies and municipal towns, were 
 engaged to advance the cause of the confederacy. 
 Cneius Piso, who had been engaged in the design of 
 assassinating the consuls of the former year, would 
 have been one of its most serviceable members, had 
 he not been despatched by the senate, in their desire 
 to remove so mischievous a citizen to a distance, into 
 Spain ; where, fortunately for his countrymen, he was 
 set upon and slain by an armed escort of the natives 
 to which he had entrusted himself, in consequence of 
 his cruelty and extortion*. 
 
 The first convention of this audacious band took 
 place, according to Sallust, on the calends of Junet, 
 in the year of the city six hundred and ninety, while 
 Caesar and Figulus were yet consuls, and consequently 
 before the comitia or popular assemblies had been held 
 for creating the public officers of the ensuing yearj. 
 The meeting was held in a private apartment of the 
 
 " Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xix. This historian, however, mentions 
 that, iu the opinion of some, he had been assassinated by the orders 
 of Pompey. 
 
 f The Calends, from an old word, signifying to proclaim or 
 call, from the circumstance of their being, in ancient times, publicly 
 announced by the priests to the people, were, as it is well known, 
 invariably the first day of the month. 
 
 $ Among the Romans, the great officers of the state were often
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 81 
 
 house of Catiline, whose speech on opening their de- 
 liberations, although in all probability fictitious like 
 most of those recorded by the ancient historians, has 
 been given at length by the writer cited above. We 
 are informed by the same authority, that the obli- 
 gation to secrecy, impressed upon all present by 
 the most solemn oaths, was said to have been ren- 
 dered still more binding by the horrible ceremony of 
 handing round a goblet of human, blood, which the 
 assembly tasted in succession*. Dio Cassius, an 
 historian of less weight, has even gone so far as to 
 affirm, that Catiline sacrificed a boy upon the occa- 
 sion, and after the oath of mutual fidelity had been re- 
 peated by the confederates over his entrails, actually 
 partook of them, in conjunction with his companions t. 
 The design of his first council was to inflame the 
 conspirators by a representation of the unbounde* 
 wealth and luxury enjoyed by one part of the com- 
 munity, while others were suffering all the extremities 
 of want, and to represent the condition to which they 
 had reduced themselves as one of miserable slavery, 
 while that which they hoped speedily to realise was 
 disguised by the specious name of freedom. He 
 
 chosen some months before actually entering upon the exercise of 
 their several duties. This regulation was adopted in order that 
 ample time might be given for inquiring whether they had been 
 elected without the employment of undue influence, whether all 
 the legal forms had been observed, or, lastly, whether their return 
 had been sanctioned by the auspices which were carefully 
 taken at the time, and in which the occurrence of a single 
 unfavourable omen, or the false report of one on the part of 
 the augurs, (a stratagem not unfreqtiently employed against a 
 candidate not in the favour of the nobility,) was sufficient to 
 render the whole ceremony void. In the earlier periods of the- 
 republic the comitia were held in the January or February pre- 
 ceding the March in which the consuls entered upon their office, 
 but in later times, when the ceremony of their inauguration was 
 performed on the first of January, late in the July or August of 
 the preceding year. 
 
 * Sallust. Catilina, xxii. -f- Dio. xxxvii. 30. 
 
 G
 
 82 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 then enlarged upon the facilities afforded by the 
 present juncture for a bold attempt against the 
 existing government, representing that multitudes 
 were dissatisfied with their condition, and only wait- 
 ing for an opportunity for altering it ; that one of 
 his friends was at the head of an army in Spain, and 
 another in Mauritania; while the main strength of 
 the Roman forces was absent with Pompey, on an 
 expedition of great difficulty and doubtful issue. 
 He finally exhorted them to use all their influence 
 for securing his return as consul in the ensuing elec- 
 tion, as the first and most important step towards 
 their success, after which it would be easy to debate 
 upon the means of turning the advantage they had 
 gained to the best account in forwarding the grand 
 design of the conspiracy. 
 
 But when the consular comitia, instead of termi- 
 nating in the advancement of Catiline to the honour 
 he had contemplated, had elevated to the post of 
 chief magistrate a man whom he well knew to be 
 totally opposed to his principles, and incapable of 
 being brought over to his design either by bribery 
 or intimidation, he began, under the influence of dis- 
 appointment at his repulse, to make preparations for 
 the general rising, which he had reserved as his last 
 expedient, in case the renewed attempt which he in- 
 tended to make for the consulate in the following year 
 should, like the first, prove unsuccessful. With this 
 view he began to send arms and money, procured 
 either by his own credit or that of his friends, to 
 several towns of Italy which he had fixed upon as 
 the focal points of the insurrection ; and more espe- 
 cially to Fcesulse in Etruria, where Manlius, once an 
 officer in the army of Sylla, and one of his most 
 trusty associates, was already exciting and organ- 
 ising an extensive revolt among the common people. 
 He, at the same time, redoubled his efforts to add to
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 83 
 
 the number of his partisans in the city, enlisting daily 
 among them such as were most burthened with 
 debt, and resti'icting his exertions by no regard to sex ; 
 since, according to Sallust, he intended to employ 
 his female allies in the service of inducing the slaves 
 to aid him, if necessary, in the design of firing the 
 city, which he had begun to contemplate, as well as 
 in gaining over their husbands to his cause, or 
 insidiously affording him an opportunity for destroy- 
 ing them if they should prove refractory. 
 
 In the midst of these preparations Antonius and 
 Cicero, differing as widely as possible in policy, 
 character, and intentions, entered upon the consular 
 office. The year of their election, however, must not 
 be dismissed without mentioning, that, towards its 
 close, Cicero is supposed to have delivered his oration 
 in defence of Quintus Gallius ; who had been accused 
 of bribery and corruption in canvassing for the pras- 
 torship, in consequence of his having, previously to 
 the comitia, exhibited a gladiatoral show to the people. 
 All that we know further respecting this cause is, 
 that the prosecutor was Marcus Calidius, whose man- 
 ner of conducting it Cicero has cited, in his " Brutus," 
 as an instance of the advantage of action and energy 
 in public speaking. The plaintiff it appears, among 
 other accusations, asserted that Gallius had at- 
 tempted his life by poison, but produced his charge 
 and its proofs, which were sufficiently strong, in so 
 languid a manner, and in so unimpassioned a voice, 
 that his opponent availed himself of them in man- 
 aging the defence, and argued, that it was impossi- 
 ble that an assassination could have been really 
 attempted, of which the person who pretended to have 
 been marked as the victim could speak with so lit- 
 tle emotion*. This was, certainly, turning to some 
 purpose the acknowledged connexion between ertio- 
 
 * DC Clur. Orator. Ixxx.
 
 84 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 tion and expression, but it was, at the least, a singular 
 way of answering direct evidence. The idea, more- 
 over, could not be considered entitled even to the 
 merit of originality, since it is to be found in a passage 
 in the life of Demosthenes, well known to every clas- 
 sical reader. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Consulate of Cicero He opposes the Agrarian Law of Rullus 
 Appeases the Tumults, in consequence of the theatrical Law 
 of Roscius Otho Defends Rabirius His Oration " De Pro- 
 scriptorum Liberia " Progress of the Catilinaiian Conspiracy 
 The Senate assembled by Cicero to debate upon the subject 
 Decree in consequence The Conspirator Manlius sets out for 
 Faesulac Attempt to assassinate Cicero He assembles the Senate 
 at the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and delivers bis first Oration 
 against Catiline, who departs in consequence from Rome Second 
 (Jatilinarian Oration The Praetor Lentulus carries on the Con- 
 spiracy in the capital Cicero undertakes the Cause of Licinius 
 Mnraena in opposition to Cato Conference of the Conspirators 
 with the Ambassadors of the Allobroges, who divulge the Plot 
 Arrest of Lentulus and his Companions Meeting of the Senate in 
 the Temple of Concord Third Catilinariau Oration Debate re- 
 specting the punishment of the Conspirators Speeches of Caesar 
 and Cato Fourth Catilinarian Oration Execution of Lentulus, 
 Cethegns, Statilius, Gabinius and Cceparius Honours conferred 
 upon Cicero His Vanity Campaign agaiust Catiline, who is 
 defeated and slain at the Battle of Pistoria. 
 
 THE words addressed by the new consul in the 
 senate house to the tribunes of the people, after he 
 had performed the customary inaugural rites in the 
 temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, contained no exag- 
 geration of the difficulties by which his office was 
 surrounded. " You have delivered a State into my 
 hands," he remarked, " disquieted by suspicions, 
 vacillating under the influence of doubts and fears, 
 and violently agitated by your seditious laws 
 and harangues ; you have inspired the worthless 
 with hope, and the excellent with dread ; while 
 you have removed all confidence from the Forum,
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 85 
 
 and all dignity from the Government."* This 
 unpromising picture of affairs was drawn, not in 
 consequence of the more secret conspiracy which was 
 meditating against the state, but under the influence 
 of the indignation excited by the Agrarian law of the 
 tribune Rullus, which Cicero was obliged strenuously 
 to combat on the very threshold of his consulate, and 
 which, if carried, might have spared Catiline and his 
 accomplices at least some part of the labour of their 
 attempt to subvert the constitution by open force. 
 
 The law to which allusion was made in such un- 
 favourable terms, although, from the subjects it em- 
 braced, entitled to be classed with those called by 
 a general name " Agrarian,'' was very different 
 from the wise and equitable acts formerly proposed 
 by the Gracchi and others, the true character of 
 which, we are now enabled by the genius of Niebuhr 
 to comprehend somewhat better than formerly. Ac- 
 cording to the proposed statute of Rullus, ten com- 
 missioners were to be chosen by seventeen tribes, to be 
 selected by lot out of the thirty-five, with unlimited 
 powers for the execution of the commission with which 
 they were to be charged during the next five years. 
 These were empowered to sell all the territories in fo- 
 reign countries which, subsequently to the consulate of 
 Cor. Sylla and Q. Pompeius Rufust had, by conquest 
 or otherwise, been added to the dominions of Rome, as 
 well as a great part of the lands belonging to the state 
 in Italy ; to determine what should be considered pub- 
 lic and what private property throughout the empire, 
 and to convert one into the other, as should seem expedi- 
 ent ; to place a heavy tax;}; upon all the lands held 
 by Roman tributaries, and to lease out at their plea- 
 sure, in the districts where they were situated, all the 
 revenues derivable from such sources ; although this 
 
 * De Lege Agraria, i. cap. 8. )- A. u. c. 665. 
 
 J De Lege Agraria, i. cap. 4.
 
 86 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 ceremony had hitherto been invariably performed by 
 the censors in the Forum, and in full sight of the 
 assembled people*. With the money thus raised, 
 which was to be increased by all the property lately 
 gained by general officers serving in the army, (Pom- 
 pey alone being excep ted,) whether reckoned under the 
 head of presents from the provincials, donations 
 from the state, or the ordinary spoils of wart, and 
 not yet expended on public buildings, or placed at 
 the service of the commonwealth, it was proposed to 
 purchase certain districts in Italy to be divided among 
 the people, who were to be conducted as colonists 
 into such places as the decemvirs should afterwards 
 think fit ; Capua and the country around it being 
 especially pointed out as a suitable spot for the loca- 
 tion of five thousand citizens, who were each to receive 
 ten acres of land. The last clause directed, that all 
 estates and possessions publicly granted, sold, or 
 assigned to any persons since the consulship of 
 Marius and Carbo, should be considered rightfully 
 and inalienably to belong to the parties who held 
 them at the time. This addition was made for the 
 especial benefit of those who had become purchasers 
 of the property of the victims to Sylla's proscriptions, 
 which that tyrant had ordered to be put up to sale, 
 and which had consequently been obtained at low 
 prices by his adherents, the only persons likely to bid 
 for it. The titles of these were now every day liable 
 to be called in question, since the Marian faction was 
 once more beginning to rise into repute, and it was, 
 therefore, with no ill founded expectation of enlisting 
 their interests on his side of the question, that Rul - 
 lus had introduced the recognition of their claims into 
 his act. 
 
 * De Lege Agraria, ii. cap. 2 ) . 
 
 j* Auruin, argentum, ex prseda, ex mnnubiis, ex coronario, ad 
 quoscumque pervenit, &c. Ibid. xxii.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 87 
 
 The orations delivered by Cicero on the Agrarian 
 law appear to have been four in number. The 
 first of these is imperfect ; the second and third 
 are yet entire ; but the fourth has completely perished. 
 In haranguing the Senate on the occasion, he no 
 doubt found an audience, for the most part, perfectly 
 disposed to assent to the truth of his arguments ; but 
 his address to the people in the Forum, upon the same 
 subject, must have required the utmost skill and 
 ingenuity to ensure a patient hearing from the 
 multitude, who had been dazzled by the specious 
 promises of Rullus, and the apparent benefits to be 
 conferred upon themselves by his proposed regula- 
 tions. Both are exhibited, in the highest degree, in 
 the address which has come down to us as that by 
 which he defeated the designs of the ambitious tribune, 
 who was, unquestionably, contemplating little less 
 than dictatorial power for himself and those who 
 might be associated with him in his efforts to 
 obtain it, in the character of Agrarian decemvirs. 
 The introductory sentences, in which the orator re- 
 turns thanks to the people for the distinguished honour 
 they had conferred upon him, in electing him to an 
 office in which the nobility had, for the most part, 
 hitherto proudly entrenched themselves,* to the exclu- 
 sion of those of. inferior birth, notwithstanding the 
 absence of any claims of his own on the score of 
 ancestry, are inimitably modest and elegant. He is 
 especially careful not to offend the prejudices of his 
 hearers by any expressions of disrespect directed 
 against Agrarian laws in general, and speaks in terms 
 of profound veneration of Tiberius and Cains Grac- 
 chus, whom he terms renowned and devoted patriots. 
 After thus soothing his auditory into attention, he 
 attacks in succession the various clauses in the 
 law of Rullus, which he triumphantly proves to be 
 
 * Locum quern nobilitas prsesidiis firmatum, atque oirmi ratione 
 obviillatum tenebat, DC Lege Agraria, ii. cap. J,
 
 88 THE LIFE OP CICEftO. 
 
 arbitrary, capricious, and ill defined ; calculated to 
 confer unbounded authority upon a few individuals, 
 but in the highest degree dangerous to the state, 
 and detrimental to the best interests of its citizens. 
 Above all, he attempts to excite their fears of the 
 rivalry of Capua, if increased by so formidable an 
 addition to its inhabitants ; and points to the insecure 
 tenure on which all property must be held, if subjected 
 entirely to the disposition of a board of rapacious 
 commissioners ; as well as to the danger which must 
 threaten Rome ; when Rullus, by virtue of the autho- 
 rity vested in him by his own law, might at any 
 time, if it should so please him, seize and fortify the 
 Janiculum itself, as a post from whence to exercise 
 at pleasure his power over the city, which would, 
 by such a step, be placed at his mercy. The result 
 of these arguments, in proposing which he was 
 surrounded and supported by the majority of the 
 Senate, was such as indicated a due appreciation of 
 their force, not only on the part of the assembly, but of 
 Rullus himself ; since the tribune was unable to make 
 any answer at the time, and, after a few attempts to 
 weaken the impression made by the eloquence of 
 Cicero by private insinuations against his disinterest- 
 edness, which were also neutralised by two brief and 
 supplementary orations, consented at length to with- 
 draw his mischievous statute. 
 
 Another instance of the power which his long 
 established character and reputation had now enabled 
 him to exercise over the passions of the multitude, 
 was shown on the occasion of the tumults raised by 
 the theatrical law of Roscius Otho. The people, 
 indignant at the separation made by this bill between 
 themselves and the equestrian order at the exhibition 
 of dramatic entertainments, had, on the appearance of 
 its author at a public spectacle, received him with 
 groans and hisses, mingled with loud and general 
 execrations. The knights, on the contrary, who re-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 89 
 
 gavdcd him in the light of their benefactor, were 
 equally forward in their expressions of applause, and 
 the general uproar would have probably terminated 
 in open violence and bloodshed, had not the consul 
 made his appearance at the very crisis of the disturb- 
 ance, and desired the infuriated multitude to follow 
 him into the temple of Bellona, where he pronounced 
 a long and able discourse, commenting in severe terms 
 upon their turbulence, and reproaching them for 
 the barbarous indications they had given of their 
 want of all taste, when the first actor of his day, the 
 famous Roscius, was unable to be heard, in conse- 
 quence of their absurd dissensions. From the charac- 
 ter given of this oration, it seems to have been one of 
 which the loss cannot be sufficiently regretted*. Its 
 effect upon the people was such, that their inclination 
 to interrupt the exhibition was not only quelled, but 
 succeeded by a feeling of so opposite a character, that 
 on returning with the consul to the theatre, they 
 displayed their willingness to acquiesce from that 
 time in the law of Otho, by vying with the knights 
 themselves in their testimonies of approbation. 
 Although there may have been many more import- 
 ant, there is no more singular instance of the power 
 of eloquence upon record than this, on which the 
 biographers of Cicero are fond of commenting, as 
 having suggested to Virgil the beautiful lines, de- 
 scriptive of such an interposition and its results, in 
 the opening part of the first book of the ./Eneid. 
 
 His next consular oration, according to his own 
 enunlerationt, was that in defence of Gains Rabirius, 
 who was accused of the murder of the tribune Satur- 
 ninus,an event which had happened more than thirty- 
 six years before. Saturninus, having himself been 
 
 * A single passage is all that remains. 
 
 -f- Ad Attic, lib. ii. ep. 1. quarta pro Rabirio, quinta de proscrip- 
 torum liberis. Dr. Middleton has reversed the order.
 
 90 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 instrumental in the assassination of Caius Memmius, 
 who, as competitor for the consulate, stood in the 
 way of the election of Glaucias, one of his friends, 
 was forced with several of his adherents to take refuge 
 in the Capitol, where he was besieged by Caius 
 Marius, and being reduced to extremity, from the 
 want of water, was obliged to surrender. The mul- 
 titude, little regarding the conditions on which he had 
 given himself up to Marius, broke into the building 
 in which he was confined, and put him to death, 
 together with Glaucias, and Labienus, another of his 
 party. Saturninus fell by an unknown hand, but it 
 was said, that Rabirius had openly carried his head 
 about the streets of Rome, and exhibited this re- 
 volting trophy of the success of his party at differ- 
 ent private entertainments. Notwithstanding the 
 number of years which had elapsed since the trans- 
 action, Rabirius was now cited in his old age by 
 Titus Labienus, the nephew of the individual of the 
 same name, who had fallen in company with Satur- 
 ninus, to answer for a crime inexpiable in the eyes of 
 the majority of his countrymen; the assassination of 
 a tribune, while yet invested with the sacred dignity 
 of his office. The two judges appointed by the prtetor, 
 although the choice should have been left to the 
 people, were Julius and Lucius Caesar, both bitter 
 enemies of the accused, and the former, a short time 
 before, actively instrumental in exciting Labienus to 
 take upon himself the prosecution. Before such a 
 tribunal, the cause could be attended but with 
 one result. Rabirius, although aided by all the elo- 
 quence of Hortensius, who appeared as his advocate, 
 was eagerly and precipitately condemned, but the 
 ulterior resource still remained of an appeal to the 
 people. This he without hesitation adopted ; yet, 
 so successful were the means which had been taken 
 to inflame the public mind against him, and so vio-
 
 ' THE LIFE OP CICERO. 91 
 
 lent, for the moment, the general prejudice in favour 
 of his accuser, that he would certainly have been 
 condemned, but for the adoption of an ultimate ex- 
 pedient to ensure his safety. During all assemblies 
 of the people in ancient times, it was deemed ex- 
 pedient to keep an ensign flying on the Janiculum, 
 a hill which commanded an extensive view of Home, 
 that the approach of an enemy, if it should happen 
 to occur while the citizens were engaged in giving 
 their votes, might he immediately signified to the 
 meeting. The custom was continued long after all 
 necessity for it had ceased, and although the delibe- 
 rations of the masters of one half of the inhabited 
 world were in little danger of being interrupted by a 
 sudden call to arms, the lowering of the ensign on 
 the Janiculum was at any time sufficient to put an 
 intant stop to their assemblies. The centuries were 
 already assembled in the Campus Martins, and it was 
 sufficiently evident, from the expressions and votes 
 of the excited crowd, that the condemnation of 
 Rabirius would be carried by a considerable majority, 
 when Metellus Celer, who enjoyed the joint .offices 
 of praetor and augur, made his way to the hill, and 
 commanding the ensign to be struck, rendered all 
 further proceedings on that day illegal. It has been 
 conjectured, that the subsequent interposition of the 
 Senate, by which the decree of his judges against 
 Rabirius was formally reversed before it was pos- 
 sible to summon a second assembly, was the means 
 of delivering the accused from a capital prosecution, 
 which threatened, if carried out, to be attended with 
 the most alarming consequences. 
 
 But although thus deprived of the power of ob- 
 taining a conviction on his first impeachment, the 
 expedient still remained open to Labienus of endea- 
 vouring to impose a heavy fine for general miscon- 
 duct upon the adversary who had escaped the more
 
 92 fHE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 serious attempt against his safety. For this purpose 
 the people were once more convened to deliberate 
 upon the conduct of Rabirius, and on the day ap- 
 pointed for the trial, Cicero descended in state into 
 the Forum as advocate for the accused *. The 
 defence was limited by Labienus, in virtue of his 
 tribunitial office, to half an hour, yet, comparatively 
 reduced as it must by this means have been, it has 
 not been able to escape further curtailments by the 
 hand of time, although the peroration, supposed 
 until lately to have perished, has been again restored 
 to light by the researches of modern industry. The 
 cause, which was ostensibly private, nevertheless 
 embraced a great public question, and Cicero seems 
 to have been duly impressed with its importance, not 
 only by the expression of his convictions to that 
 effect, but by copying, in the introductory part of his 
 speech, the majestic style of the exordium of the Crown 
 Oration of Demosthenes, an imitation which a pro- 
 
 * Until within the last few years it was generally supposed, that 
 the defence of Rabirius was pronounced on the occasion of his 
 appearing before the public in answer to the capital charge of 
 Labienus. But Niebuhr, by whose exertions the concluding part 
 of the oration, together with an additional fragment of the speech 
 for Fonteius has been added to the extant writings of Cicero, con- 
 tends, in opposition to the authority of Dio, that it was delivered 
 to ward off from Iris client the consequences of the process called 
 " Multae irrogatio," by which Labienus, being baffled in the prose- 
 cution which endangered the life of Rabiiius, directed his attempt 
 against his estates; since it was forbidden by a fundamental principle 
 of Roman jurisprudence to assail, by the same proceedings, the pro- 
 perty and the person of any individual. The learned author and 
 supporter of this opinion cites, from an ancient commentary upon 
 Cicero's oration against Clodius and Curio, the case of P. Claudius 
 as a parallel instance, who, after the loss of the Roman fleet off 
 Drepanum, was capitally impeached before the people by the tribunes 
 Villius and Fundanius, and the trial being interrupted by a sud len 
 storm, was afterwards subjected to the "Multse irrogatio," and heavily 
 fined in consequence. See "M. T. Ciceronis Orationum pro M. 
 Fouteio et pro C. Rabirio Fragmenta," &c. Romae, 1820.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 93 
 
 cess of the highest moment could alone have justified. 
 In the defence pronounced in his behalf, which is 
 principally employed in a consideration of the murder 
 of Saturninus, Rabirius is clearly vindicated both 
 by the orders and authority of the Senate, and the 
 example of others, far above him in rank, whose 
 conduct had never been arraigned for a moment or 
 threatened by the shadow of an impeachment ; and 
 it appears likely, although but a partial light is shed 
 by history upon the subject, that owing to the 
 representations of his advocate, he was as successful 
 in evading the second impeachment of Labienus, as he 
 had been in escaping the consequences of the capital 
 charge previously brought against him by the tribune. 
 The defence of Rabirius was succeeded by the 
 oration to the people, known as " that concerning the 
 children of the proscribed." This was characterised 
 by a subservience to the law of expediency rather than 
 of justice. By one of the despotic acts of Sylla, the 
 punishment which he inflicted upon the lives and es- 
 tates of his opponents was extended in a measure to the 
 next generation, since their sons were expressly de- 
 clared to be ineligible to any public office. Under the 
 influence of Julius Cassar, who had dared, by many 
 public actions, to avow his respect for the memory of 
 Marius and his intentions to elevate his party once 
 more to power, an attempt was now made to repeal 
 this unjust and vindictive edict. Cicero, however, 
 interposed his authority and his eloquence against 
 any alteration ; softening the odium he was likely to 
 incur by acknowledging the cruelty of the act of 
 Sylla, biit, at the same time, arguing that the safety 
 of the state would, under existing circumstances, be 
 exposed to imminent hazard by a change of the 
 existing. law. Of this oration we know little more 
 than that it was spoken, and produced the intended 
 result. It was not until a later period that the
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 children of those who had fallen in the cause of 
 Marius were restored to all the privileges once pos- 
 sessed by their fathers. 
 
 The consular comitia were now drawing on, and 
 the attention of all men was directed with feverish 
 interest to their result. The friends of Catiline were 
 again exerting themselves to the utmost in their 
 renewed attempts to secure his election, but their 
 expectations had been recently somewhat damped 
 by the loss of one of their principal supporters. This 
 was effected chiefly by the policy of Cicero, who 
 had succeeded in wholly withdrawing Antonius from 
 their interests. In exercise of the Sempronian law, 
 the Senate had fixed upon Gaul and Macedonia as 
 the two consular provinces, and on their assignment 
 by the usual method, the fortune of the lot had given 
 the former to Antonius, a result exceedingly likely 
 to add to his other causes of disaffection, since it 
 was in every respect inferior to Macedonia. But 
 Cicero offering, in the first instance, to relinquish the 
 rich province assigned to himself in his favour *, and 
 subsequently declaring in an assembly of the people, 
 and notwithstanding their remonstrances against his 
 resolution, that he had determined upon refusing every 
 foreign appointment for the present t, so won upon 
 his colleague by his generosity and disinterestedness, 
 that from that time he showed every disposition 
 to act entirely in accordance with his directions'^:. 
 Antonius, indeed, with a lucrative post in prospect, 
 was no longer disposed, as formerly, to lend himself 
 to projects for disturbing the existing state of the 
 constitution. A further attempt to impede the pro- 
 ceedings of the Catilinarian party, with all which 
 
 * In L. Pisonern, cap. ii ; Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xxvi. 
 
 f In the oration " In Provincia deponenda," mentioned by 
 Cicero, Ad Attic, lib. ii. 1, -but of which there now remains no 
 vestige. J Plutarch, in Cic.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 95 
 
 Cicero was well acquainted through Fulvia, whom 
 he had been so fortunate as to gain over to act as his 
 informant in the early part of the year* , was his 
 procuring by an express law the penalty of ten years, 
 exile to be added to those already passed against 
 the use of undue influence in canvassing for office. 
 Checked by this obstacle in the course of bribery 
 they were openly pursuing, the conspirators, now 
 emboldened by the presence of numbers of their 
 accomplices, who had flocked into Rome to lend 
 their support to Catiline, made no secret of their 
 intention of assassinating the consul, with several 
 others of his party, at the ensuing comitia, which 
 seem to have been appointed for the twentieth day of 
 October. At the same time their preparations for a 
 revolt throughout Italy were every hour becoming 
 a matter of greater notoriety. 
 
 In the dead of the night preceding the day imme- 
 diately before that of the election, three senators of 
 the highest rank, Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus, 
 and Metellus Scipio, presented themselves at the 
 house of Cicero, to whom, although he had retired 
 to rest, they requested immediate admittance. They 
 brought with them an anonymous intimation of an 
 intended massacre of the nobility, contained in a 
 letter which had been left at the residence of Crassus, 
 late in the same evening, by a person unknown, in 
 which, after the nature of the threatening danger had 
 been pointed out, he was earnestly requested to 
 ensure his safety by immediate flight. This mys- 
 teiious epistle was accompanied by several others 
 directed to different senators, which Crassus, terrified 
 by the contents of that addressed to himself, had not 
 ventured to open. After an anxious deliberation, it 
 was determined to convoke the senate the next day, 
 and, in the presence of the assembly, to deliver the 
 
 * Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xxvi.
 
 96 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 remaining letters to those for whom they were in- 
 tended, that their purport might be generally known. 
 The resolve was carried into practice, and as soon as 
 the senators, wholly ignorant of the purpose for 
 which they were summoned, had been hastily called 
 together, the consul commanded the letters in question 
 to be brought in and distributed according to their 
 respective addresses. It was then found that each 
 gave the same account of the plot, and as soon as the 
 subject had been fairly brought under discussion, 
 fresh evidence was not wanting to confirm the gene- 
 ral suspicion. The senate accordingly decreed that 
 the consular comitia should be postponed, and that 
 the following day, on which it had been determined 
 that they should be held, should be devoted to the 
 further investigation of the alarming information 
 communicated to them. To what extent they were 
 informed of the particulars of the contemplated insur- 
 rection, either at their first or second meeting, is uncer- 
 tain, since, upon many important points in regard to 
 the Catilinarian conspiracy, different accounts have 
 been left by authorities considered, for the most part, 
 unquestionable. It is evident, however, that enough 
 was revealed to spread a general alarm among all 
 present, and to implicate Catiline in a treasonable 
 attempt of the most serious description. His answer, 
 founded upon his confidence of success, when inter- 
 rogated by Cicero upon the subject *, was sufficiently 
 expressive of his fierce and insolent character. A 
 few days before, when threatened by Marcus Cato 
 with an impeachment, he had answered, " that any 
 fire kindled for the purpose of injuring him, should be 
 extinguished, not by water, but by the general ruin." 
 He now boldly asserted, that the state was composed 
 of two distinct bodies, the first reduced to an extreme 
 degree of debility, and with a head which was 
 
 * Pro Mmaeua, cap. ii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 97 
 
 equally afflicted with infirmity ; the second, fresh and 
 vigorous, but as yet destitute of a head suitable to it. 
 The latter, he further ventured to state, had conferred 
 so many favours upon him, that, from henceforth, the 
 want should never be felt while he remained alive. 
 An answer which partook so much of the character 
 of a defiance, was not calculated to leave those to 
 whom it was addressed in any doubt as to the course 
 which it was incumbent upon them to pursue. They 
 immediately had recourse to that decree which, 
 simply worded as it was, placed a terrible power 
 in the hands of the chief magistrates, and was never 
 passed but on the eve of some signal convulsion, by 
 unanimously resolving, that the consuls should be de- 
 sired to take care that the commonwealth received 
 no injury *. By this edict, the liberty of levying 
 armies and carrying on war, and of Tising any 
 methods which might appear fitting to keep both the 
 citizens and the allies m a state of subordination to 
 the laws, was unreservedly, and without limitation 
 of any kind, entrusted to their hands. Thus armed 
 and invested with dictatorial authority, Cicero pro- 
 ceeded to hold the consular comitia. In order to 
 protect himself from the threatened attempts upon 
 his life, he took care to be surrounded by a numerous 
 and well-appointed guard, and adopted the precaution 
 of attending the Campus Martins in a coat of mail, 
 which he did not neglect to exhibit fully in the eyes 
 of the people, by throwing back his robe when he 
 addressed them ; thus signifying the peril to which he 
 was exposed in ensuring the continuance of the public 
 tranquillity. By the use of these and similar expe^ 
 dients, a great multitude, who had hitherto remained 
 neuter, were induced to give their votes against 
 
 * Sallust places the passing of the decree, " Darent operam," 
 &c., something later ; but there is no doubt that >t wag issued on 
 the occasion referred to above. 
 
 H
 
 98 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Catiline, whose third and last attempt upon the con- 
 sulate was at length frustrated by the election of Decius 
 Silanus and Lucius Licinius Mursena. 
 
 The conspirators, driven to a state of anger ap- 
 proaching to frenzy by the signal defeat they had sus- 
 tained, now began to set themselves in earnest about 
 their final project of an insurrection. Catiline, without 
 any further delay, instructed his favourite adherent 
 Manlius, who was then in Rome, to return to Faesulfe, 
 with instructions to take up arms on the instant of 
 his arrival. Septimius of Camerinum, another of his 
 band, was sent into the district of Picenum upon a 
 similar errand, and Caius Julius into Apulia. He 
 himself was no longer at any trouble to conceal, by 
 the slightest precaution, his meditated attempt against 
 the life of the consul ; publicly displaying, in con- 
 temptuous opposition to the existing law, the weapon 
 with which he went at all times provided for the 
 purpose. Everything announced that the danger, 
 which had been so long brooding, was fast drawing 
 towards its crisis. A few days only had elapsed 
 when Lucius Saenius produced letters in the senate, 
 conveying the intelligence that the revolt had openly 
 burst out under Manlius in Etruria. Others affirmed 
 that musters were being made in various parts of 
 Italy, and that a second Servile War might forthwith 
 be expected, since a rising of the slaves was on the 
 point of taking place at Capua and in Apulia. To 
 meet the reported demonstrations in these several 
 quarters, Quintus Marcius Rex, who, fortunately for 
 the state, had just returned from his province of 
 Cilicia, and was lying with a small army before the 
 gates of Rome in expectation of a triumph, was 
 ordered to direct the march of his troops immediately 
 upon Fgesulse. Quintus Metellus, who was also 
 anticipating a similar honour, as the reward of his 
 late successes against the pirates in Crete, was sent in
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 99 
 
 all haste into Apulia ; the praetor Rufus to Capua, 
 and Metellus Celer to Picenum. At the same time 
 it was decreed that a strong force should be kept 
 constantly stationed on the Palatine Hill, and that 
 the city should be watched night and day by guards 
 under the orders of the inferior magistrates, ap- 
 pointed to their different stations by Cicero, who 
 had assumed the protection of Rome as his especial 
 duty. Then ensued the scene depicted by Sallust, 
 in that brief yet comprehensive description in 
 which every touch shows the hand of a master, of 
 a vast multitude suddenly hurried from the state 
 of festivity and thoughtless enjoyment, engendered 
 by a tranquillity of long duration, into a con- 
 dition of general distrust, confusion, and dismay ; 
 in which the whole city wore a troubled and un- 
 certain aspect between peace and war ; and when 
 every man became an object of suspicion to his 
 neighbour, and was himself in turn apprehensive 
 of all whom he met. In the uncertainty which 
 prevailed as to the magnitude of the peril, the 
 fears of each individual were the only standard 
 by which it was estimated : while reports, adapted 
 only to the credulity of Terror, were rapidly circulated 
 and eagerly received, and derived apparent confirma- 
 tion from the armed preparation making on all sides 
 to repress the first appearance of commotion. The 
 women of Rome, above all, increased the spreading 
 panic by their outcries and lamentations, bewailing 
 their own fate and that of their children, imploring, 
 with piteous tones and gestures, the aid of their gods, 
 or giving way to expressions which betokened an 
 utter despair of their own safety, as well as that of 
 the commonwealth at large. 
 
 Catiline, who, like the exciting genius of the tem- 
 pest, had surveyed the increase of the public confusion 
 and consternation with stern satisfaction, uninfluenced, 
 
 H2
 
 100 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 and far less diverted from his purpose, by the tokens of 
 distress around him, now thinking his presence no longer 
 necessary in the city, summoned, on the evening of the 
 sixth of November, a meeting of the conspirators, to 
 receive his parting directions at the house of Porcius 
 Laeca. On the first of the month he had made a secret 
 attempt by night, to possess himself of Praeneste, a 
 town distant about twenty miles from Rome, but 
 owing to the activity of the consul had found it so 
 well guarded, that he was obliged to retire without 
 effecting his object. Convinced, therefore, that in 
 quitting Rome while Cicero was still alive, he must 
 leave behind him a most formidable and efficient 
 obstacle to his plans, he assured his accomplices, 
 that he was only deterred by the circumstance of his 
 having hitherto failed in all his attempts to destroy 
 the consul, from immediately joining the standard of 
 the revolters in Etruria, and advancing from thence 
 to cover their projected insurrection and massacre in 
 the city. Two of the most determined of those 
 present, Caius Cornelius and L. Vargunteius, the 
 former a senator and the latter of the equestrian 
 order, excited by this representation, at once volun- 
 teered to take upon themselves the office of the 
 assassination of Cicero, and promised, under pretence 
 of paying their respects to him early on the following 
 morning, to despatch him in his own house. The 
 final preparations were then made for carrying out 
 the details of the terrible plan on which they had 
 now universally determined. The city, it was 
 resolved, should be fired in several places at once, 
 that the murders of those whom they had selected 
 for death might be the more easily perpetrated, in the 
 confusion which might naturally be expected to fol- 
 low. Several districts were apportioned to different 
 incendiaries, and Cassius appointed to the office of 
 superintending them, as well as of cutting off all who
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. lOl 
 
 might seem inclined to exert themselves in stopping 
 the conflagration. The execution of the massacre, 
 which was to include every member of the Senate not 
 of their party, as well as all of whatever rank who 
 were designated by the name of their enemies, with 
 the exception of the sons of Pompey, intended to be 
 reserved as hostages for the future forbearance of 
 their father, was entrusted to Cethegus. The praetor 
 Lentulus was to take upon himself the general 
 management of affairs until the arrival of Catiline. 
 After this arrangement the assembly separated, con- 
 fident that the next day would be distinguished by 
 the death of their most dreaded opponent, and the 
 removal of the only impediment, of a serious character, 
 to the successful execution of their design. 
 
 The meeting had no sooner dispersed than Fulvia, 
 acquainted by Curius with all that had passed, hast- 
 ened to the house of Cicero, to apprise him of the 
 resolutions of the conspirators, and the danger to 
 himself which the following morning would infallibly 
 bring with it. The consul was sufficiently impressed 
 with the truth of her report, to take every possible 
 means to ensure his safety. His residence was 
 quickly filled with guards, and provided with the 
 means of resisting a sudden attack ; and his porter 
 received instructions, if Cornelius and Vargunteius 
 demanded admittance to him, peremptorily to re- 
 fuse it. The value of the information he had 
 received at this important juncture was speedily 
 manifested. AV^ith the first appearance of dawn the 
 assassins presented themselves at his gate, fully pre- 
 pared for their attempt, and urgently demanded an 
 interview with him, on pretence of having intelligence 
 of the highest moment to communicate ; nor were 
 they satisfied with the denial which was at once 
 given to them, according to the directions of Cicero, 
 but continued for a long time to persist in their applica-
 
 102 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 tion, and were not finally repulsed without giving 
 vent to their anger and disappointment by the 
 most "violent and abusive expressions. Apparently 
 this desperate action had the effect of convincing 
 Cicero that the circumstances of his position were no 
 longer such as to be trifled with. He immediately 
 sent a summons to the Senate to meet on the follow- 
 ing day in the temple of Jupiter Stator ; a building 
 already consecrated to recollections of the deliverance 
 of the state at a crisis of imminent peril, and soon to 
 acquire, by the deliberations about to take place 
 within it, an additional claim to the respect of the 
 citizens on a similar ground. 
 
 Although with the usual sensitive apprehension of 
 guilt he might have anticipated that the assembly, 
 thus hurriedly convened, had been called together in 
 consequence of some further discovery respecting his 
 conspiracy, Catiline, with that audacious intrepi- 
 dity which distinguished him to the last, ventured to 
 present himself before the consul amidst the other 
 senators, intending, as he himself gave out, openly to 
 vindicate himself from the groundless charges and 
 suspicions of which he had lately been the object. 
 He was not long, however, without receiving a strik- 
 ing testimony of the estimation in which he was 
 beginning to be held. As if his very vicinity had 
 been pestilential, all whom he encountered shrank from 
 him in disgust, and the benches near the spot where 
 he had seated himself, were speedily left vacant by 
 those who had before occupied them. After he had 
 been thus separated as a mark for the eloquence 
 which was gathering its thunders against him, Cicero, 
 amidst the profound awe and silence of his auditory, 
 commenced that magnificent oration, which may 
 yet proudly challenge competition in its expression 
 of just and vehement indignation its concentrated 
 force its rapid accumulation of overwhelming evi-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 103 
 
 dence and its judicious arrangement of every par- 
 ticle of it so as to tell with the most powerful effect. 
 The exordium, startling, yet majestic in the highest 
 sense, fully prepares the reader for an oratorical 
 exertion of first-rate excellence, and this expectation 
 is gratified long before its close. To all present 
 acquainted only with the general nature of the plot, 
 it must have had the effect of the sudden glare of 
 lightning which lights up to the traveller, ter- 
 rified and bewildered by surrounding darkness, the 
 full extent of the precipice on the verge of which he 
 stands. To the culprit himself, exposing as it does 
 not only the excesses of his former life, but the 
 minutest particulars of his intended project of revo* 
 lution and bloodshed, narrated with all the accom- 
 panying circumstances of time and place, it must 
 have sounded as the denunciation of a superior being, 
 possessed with the power of reading his most secret 
 thoughts, or as if his inmost conscience had been 
 suddenly gifted with a voice to plead, trumpet- 
 tongued, and in the face of all mankind, against him. 
 It affords a striking comment upon the eminently 
 critical position of the state at the time, as well as of 
 the extreme jealousy with which the exercise of any 
 extraordinary power possessed by their magistrates 
 was watched by the people of Rome, that the object 
 of this wonderful invective is not to ensure, as might 
 be expected, the instant seizure, trial, and punish- 
 ment of the unmasked conspirator, (whom the orator 
 describes as sitting with consummate effrontery in 
 the presence of authorities who ought long ago to 
 have ordered him to be led to execution, and regard- 
 ing with murderous glances those whom he had 
 appointed to destruction,) but simply to induce him, 
 after the exposure of his design, to retire from the 
 city, and join the rebels assembling under his di- 
 rections in Etruria. This is almost the sole drift
 
 104 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 and tenour of the profuse, genius and unwearied 
 strength of language characterising the first Catili- 
 narian oration. Yet, although its object may appear 
 trifling compared with the means taken to effect it, 
 it was a trifle upon which depended the fate of Rome. 
 In the scarcity of direct and positive testimony 
 respecting a conspiracy of such importance, and con- 
 nected with such eminent names, if Cicero had ordered 
 its chief contriver to be apprehended, the whole plot 
 might have been disbelieved ; but by driving him from 
 the city into the arms of Manlius, he compelled him at 
 once to assume a character against which no one could 
 deny the propriety of using extreme means of defence; 
 while the associates whom he left behind, might be 
 expected to be paralysed by the public exposure of 
 all the secrets of their confederacy. Catiline, who 
 at this trying moment adopted with ready prudence 
 the only means of defence left to him, did not at- 
 tempt, when his accuser had resumed his seat, 
 to answer the oration of the consul by a formal 
 reply ; but assuming a deportment of the lowest 
 humility, with downcast looks and a suppliant voice 
 began earnestly to entreat the senators not to give a 
 rash and hasty credit to the charges brought against 
 him, or to think it possible, that one of their own 
 order, and descended from a family which had con- 
 ferred the most important benefits upon the people 
 of Rome, could have any interest in the destruction 
 of the city, while even Marcus Tullius, an adven- 
 titious citizen, was labouring to preserve it*. This 
 appeal, whatever might have been the manner witli 
 which it was accompanied, contained a deep and 
 cutting sarcasm against Cicero, whose birth at Ar- 
 pinum and undistinguished ancestry were thus 
 pointedly alluded to. But in that great assembly 
 it did not find a single voice to second it, and 
 Catiline, on proceeding to indulge in still severer 
 * Suilust. Bell. Cat. tap. xxxi.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 105 
 
 expressions against the consul, was interrupted by a 
 general uproar of indignation. The cries of traitor 
 and parricide resounded in all directions ; and the 
 object of this tumultuous outcry, being saluted 
 wherever he turned with expressions of execration 
 and abhorrence, at length rose again to the proud 
 and haughty bearing which was natural to him, 
 and hurling back upon his clamorous assailants the 
 threat, that since they refused him a hearing, 
 aud appeared determined upon his destruction, he 
 would neither perish unresistingly nor alone, sternly 
 departed from the senate-house. On arriving at 
 his own residence and devoting his attention for a 
 short time to a hurried meditation upon the course 
 best to pursue, he resolved to put in practice his deter- 
 mination of joining Manlius, before the forces levying 
 under the praetors Rufus and Metellus Celer shoxild 
 be ready to take the field. Accordingly, having sum- 
 moned and armed a body of servants and retainers, 
 amounting, according to Plutarch, to three hundred in 
 number, and having given additional instructions to 
 Lentulus and the other chiefs of the conspiracy, to 
 lose no opportunity that might present itself for en- 
 suring the assassination of Cicero, or hastening for- 
 ward the other preparations in hand, that they might 
 be ready to co-operate with him on his return to Rome 
 with his army, he marched out of the city on the 
 ensuing midnight, taking his course along the Aure- 
 lian way. On his road he sent letters to some of 
 the principal nobility, pretending that he was on the 
 point of retiring to a voluntary exile at Marseilles, 
 preferring, although innocent of any crime, rather to 
 yield to the violence of his enemies, than to endanger 
 the peace of the state by resisting it. On reaching the 
 territory of Arretium he spent a few days at the house 
 of Caius Flaminius, for the purpose of sowing the 
 seeds of revolt in the neighbourhood, and from thence
 
 106 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 wrote to QuintusCatulus at Rome, signifying, in terms 
 not very difficult to be -understood, his real intentions, 
 and commending his wife Orestilla to his care. After 
 this, deeming allfurtherdisguiseuselessor unnecessary, 
 he proceeded, with the fasces openly borne before him, 
 and accompanied by all the other emblems of procon- 
 sular dignity, to the camp of Manlius at Ftesulae. 
 
 Catiline was no sooner known to have quitted 
 the city, than Cicero summoned a general assem- 
 bly of the people to meet in the Forum, intending 
 to vindicate himself from reports which were already 
 becoming prevalent, that he had hurried a Roman 
 citizen into exile by an arbitrary exertion of au- 
 thority, and without the concurrence of the senate. 
 In the oration which he then delivered, the second of 
 those spoken on the subject of the Catilinarian con- 
 spiracy, he successfully vindicated his late conduct, 
 and explained to the people the reason why, instead 
 of ordering his arrest, he had been induced to 
 connive at the escape of the dangerous enemy to the 
 public welfare, who had just quitted the city. The 
 speech has also an especial reference to those who 
 had been left behind to carry on the plot, of whom 
 it was natural to suppose there would be several pre- 
 sent in the assemb'fy. Upon such, after separating 
 them from many who had not yet reached the same, 
 grade in infamy as themselves, in a pointed descrip- 
 tion of the several classes of persons who plight be 
 expected to look favourably upon the designs of Ca- 
 tiline, or whohad already enlisted under his banners, he 
 pours an overwhelming torrent of obloquy and con- 
 tempt ; assuring them, as he had assured their leader 
 upon a previous day, that he was well acquainted 
 with every movement and design on their part ; and 
 requesting them, while the road remained still open, 
 to follow the example set them by Catiline, and to 
 free the city from their hated and pernicious presence.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 107 
 
 The rest of his address was well calculated to encourage 
 the citizens to the fullest confidence in the resources 
 possessed by the state for their protection, and the 
 prudence of those to whose management they were 
 entrusted. The seditious are warned at its conclu- 
 sion, with severe solemnity, not to tempt too far a 
 leniency which must have its limits, while there were 
 yet in Rome such means of coercion as weapons and 
 fetters, as well as persons ready to employ them ; and 
 the better disposed members of the community re- 
 quested to second the efforts of their magistrates, 
 by continued vigilance against a danger which, 
 although detected, was yet far from being removed. 
 The fearlessness and spirit shown by the consul in 
 this harangue, were ably seconded by several acts 
 subsequently passed by the legislature. On the 
 receipt of the intelligence that Catiline had arrived in 
 the camp of Manlius, he was promptly declared a 
 public enemy. By the same edict a 'day was appointed, 
 before which his adherents were commanded to lay 
 down their arms, on penalty of being exempted from 
 an intended amnesty, which was meant to include 
 all among them who were not chargeable with capital 
 offences. An additional levy of troops was ordered 
 to be set on foot, for the purpose of increasing the army 
 v of the consul Antonius, with which he was directed 
 to set out, as soon as possible, in pursuit of Catiline. 
 The guards appointed to watch the city were at 
 the same time increased, and its guardianship, as 
 before, committed to the hands of Cicero. Among 
 these decrees it has been recorded, that the second 
 proved wholly ineffectual. Not a single individual 
 among the revolters in the camp of Catiline was 
 induced to desert his standard ; and so far were the 
 symptoms of insurrection from being suppressed by 
 the promised amnesty, that serious movements began 
 to take place in both the Gauls, as well as inPicenum,
 
 108 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Bruttium, and Apulia, which were with difficulty 
 checked for the moment by the praetors Muraena and 
 Celer. Still less were the conspirators in the city 
 itself diverted from the employment of every means of 
 fulfilling the directions left them by their commander. 
 Although an ample reward, with a full pardon, had 
 twice beenoffered by the senate to any freeman, and 
 half the same sum, together with his freedom, to any 
 one of servile condition, who would give such evi- 
 dence respecting the plot as might bring those 
 engaged in it to condign punishment, no one had as 
 yet appeared willing to stand forward as witness or 
 informer against his companions. Lentulus, encou- 
 raged by this appearance of unshaken fidelity on the 
 part of his followers, hesitated no longer to fix the 
 time for the eruption of his project of incendiarism 
 and murder, which he appointed to take place in the 
 course of the ensuing Saturnalia, when the festivities 
 in which the city would be engaged would present a 
 favourable opportunity for carrying it into execution. 
 Statilius and Gabinius were directed to lend then: 
 assistance to Cassius in firing the city in twelve 
 places at once ; and Cethegus, whose ferocious thirst 
 for bloodshed had ill brooked the repeated postpone- 
 ments of the insurrection, eagerly demanded and 
 obtained the charge of besetting the house of Cicero, 
 and giving, by his murder, the signal for the com- 
 mencement of the intended massacre. Torches and 
 other combustibles, for beginning and spreading the 
 conflagration, were collected in abundance, and an 
 immense quantity of javelins, swords, and daggers, 
 newly furbished and sharpened, deposited in the 
 house of Cethegus in readiness for immediate use. 
 While such were the preparations of the conspirators, 
 the public attention was, for a short time, diverted to 
 subjects very different from those which had lately 
 attracted it, by the impeachment of the newly-elected
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 109 
 
 consul Mursena, on the part of Sulpitius his late compe- 
 titor, a jurist of the first eminence, backed by Marcus 
 Portius Cato, for the employment of bribery at the 
 recent election. The cause employed the talents of 
 the most skilful advocates of the day, Hortensius, 
 Marcus Crassus, and Cicero, being all three engaged 
 in the defence, which was eminently successful. 
 
 With respect to the oration for Mursena, we are 
 told that Cicero, fired with the ambition of excelling 
 Hortensius, at that time his greatest and, indeed, 
 only rival, devoted himself so studiously and anxiously 
 to its preparation as to allow himself scarcely any 
 sleep during the interval before the trial, and that 
 when he appeared in court he was so exhausted by 
 his application, that his speech was pronounced with 
 a feebleness and difficulty which seemed to leave the 
 palm to Hortensius. No such weakness unquestion- 
 ably is discoverable in so much of the oration aa 
 remains, which is fortunately the greater part. The 
 impeachment itself affords a curious proof of the 
 desultory nature of accusations in the Roman courts. 
 Mursena was charged with bribery exercised in con- 
 tradiction to the Calpurnian law ; yet two other 
 counts were added specifying reasons why his 
 election should be considered invalid, the one stating 
 that his competitor Sulpitius had, in all respects, a 
 better claim to the office, and the other, that Mursena 
 had given himself up to luxury in Asia, where he 
 had actually been known to dance ! The latter 
 objection, ludicrous as it may appear at present, 
 was one of a formidable character in the days of 
 Cicero, who, so far from making any attempt to 
 palliate it, declares it to be an infamous libel upon 
 the character of his client, and defends him by .the 
 general proposition, that no person, unless he were 
 actually mad or intoxicated, neither of which alle - 
 gations had been brought against Muraena, could by any
 
 110 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 possibility be guilty of so gross an act of indecorum. 
 For the rest, the defence, with all its spirit and ele- 
 gance, is little less rambling than the accusation. That 
 part, however, in which Cicero, entrenching himself 
 behind the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, batters 
 his Stoical opponent and the solemn absurdities of 
 his school, has not only its polished irony, but its 
 fitness for the occasion, to recommend it. It was 
 foreseen that the character of Cato, the model of rigid 
 censoriousness, and therefore considered the only 
 living representative of the ancient Roman virtue, 
 would add no small weight to his side of the question, 
 little as it might be connected with the merits of the 
 cause. The orator, therefore, had no unimportant 
 purpose in view, while stepping out of his way to 
 render the precepts of the Stoics as ridiculous as 
 possible in the eyes of the judges, and no one who 
 reads those parts of the oration for Muraena in 
 which Cato is alluded to, can doubt of his having 
 thoroughly effected it. 
 
 But the terminating scenes of the Catilinarian con- 
 spiracy soon recalled the thoughts of the population 
 of Rome, to matters of graver import than forensic- 
 disputes involving the tenets of the rival sects of the 
 Porch and the Academy. Hitherto the conspirators 
 under Lentulus had acted with all the cautiousness 
 which their perilous undertaking demanded. At an 
 unfortunate moment for themselves, and when almost 
 on the eve of the execution of their attempt, they 
 were laid, by a single false step, entirely at the 
 mercy of their vigilant adversaries. There happened 
 at that time to be in Rome a deputation from the 
 Allobroges, a warlike and powerful people of Gaul, 
 who had been sent to complain of the avarice of the 
 magistrates placed over them, and who were living, 
 until their mission there should be completed, under 
 the protection of Quintus Fabius Sauga, the public host
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. Ill 
 
 and patron of their nation. Lentulus and his ac- 
 complices were induced to think this a favourable 
 opportunity of adding a Gallic war to the Italian 
 insurrection, and commissioned Umbrenus, one of their 
 company, who had spent some time in Gaul and was 
 well acquainted with several of the princes of that 
 country, to sound them upon the subject. The first 
 interview bet ween the parties took place in the Forum, 
 and Umbrenus was easily led to imagine, that the de- 
 puties would be as ready to fall in with his proposal 
 as he could desire, since on his holding out to them 
 the possibility of relief from their oppressions, they 
 besought him to take pity upon their wretched con- 
 dition, by pointing out the means of bettering it, 
 and assured him of their readiness to encounter any 
 difficulty or danger for the accomplishment of so 
 desirable an object. But when Umbrenus, having 
 conducted them to a house near the Forum, and 
 summoned Gabinius to join him to give an appear- 
 ance of greater weight to the conference, proceeded 
 to lay before them the plan of the conspiracy and 
 the names of those engaged in it, the Allobroges 
 began to be daunted by the dangerous nature of 
 the remedy proposed for their acceptance, and on 
 their return home, after a long hesitation as to 
 the course of action which would be most to their 
 own interest, determined upon laying all that had 
 been communicated to them before their patron 
 Sanga, by whom it was speedily conveyed to Cicero. 
 The consul, rejoiced to find that the long-wished-for 
 opportunity was at length opening upon him, directed 
 the Gauls, by every means in their power, to induce 
 the conspirators to believe that they were ready to 
 act in compliance with their commands, but to insist 
 that all the advantages which they were instructed 
 to stipulate for, in behalf of their nation, should be 
 promised under the hand and seal of Lentulus and
 
 112 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the rest, who might be of sufficient note to give such 
 credentials a character of respectability and importance. 
 Little suspecting the use which was to be made of 
 such missives, the leaders of the plot fell at once 
 into the snare laid for them. Letters containing the 
 promise of ample rewards for the assistance expected 
 to their cause from this new quarter, were written to 
 the chief magistrates of the Allobroges by Lentulus, 
 Cethegus, and Statilius, and consigned to the care of 
 the deputies as they were on the point of leaving 
 Rome. Titus Volturcius of Crotona was, moreover, 
 instructed to accompany them to the camp of Catiline, 
 with whom it was deemed expedient that the ambas- 
 sadors should have an interview before returning 
 home, and charged by Lentulus with an epistle to 
 that commander, which urged him to pursue a bold 
 and strenuous course, and suggested the propriety of 
 his making use of persons of all conditions to re- 
 cruit his armies. The same envoy was also desired to 
 communicate to him, by a verbal message, that all 
 necessary preparations were finished at Rome, and 
 that his friends were anxiously in expectation of his 
 approach towards the capital. 
 
 Cicero had now within his grasp the means of pos- 
 sessing himself of the full evidence for crushing the 
 heads of a faction, which, while the tangible proofs 
 of its designs were, to a certain extent, deficient, had 
 continued to threaten his own destruction and that 
 of the state with impunity. On the afternoon before 
 the night appointed for the departure of the Allobro- 
 ges, he commissioned the praetors Flaccus and Pon- 
 tinus with a body of chosen soldiers, to place them- 
 selves in ambush at the Milvian bridge, by which 
 the ambassadors were obliged to cross the Tiber to 
 enter upon the Flaminian way, and sent to the same 
 spot a number of young men from the prsefecturate 
 of Reate, on whose fidelity he could rely with perfect
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 113 
 
 confidence. The praetors arrived at their appointed 
 post as the evening began to draw in, and havinp 
 planted their guards at both ends of the bridge in 
 such a manner as to escape casual observation, awaited 
 the approach of the ambassadors and their train. 
 Until about two hours after midnight, their watch 
 was maintained without interruption, but at that 
 time the parties whom they expected at length made 
 their appearance, and were proceeding to defile over 
 the bridge, when the soldiers placed in ambush on 
 either bank of the river, rising at the same moment 
 with loud shouts, summoned them instantly to sur- 
 render. A slight confusion ensued, which was but 
 momentary in its duration. The Gauls, who quickly 
 understood the Mature of the interruption, yielded 
 themselves without opposition, and Volturcius, who 
 had at first unsheathed his sword for the purpose 
 of making a desperate resistance, on finding that 
 his efforts were not likely to be seconded by a single 
 person in his company, gave up his weapon to the 
 praetors, and consented to become their prisoner. 
 All were conducted back to Rome, and the despatches 
 seized upon the Allobroges as well as upon the per- 
 son of Volturcius transmitted, before day-break, to 
 Cicero, who lost not a moment in summoning some of 
 the chief senators to his house, to deliberate upon the 
 discovery, and the use to be made of it. Several of 
 those who were present at this council advised that the 
 letters should be immediately opened, anticipating the 
 possibility of their containing nothing of public im- 
 portance, but Cicero, who was well aware of their 
 general tenor, determined upon preserving the seals 
 entire, until he should have an opportunity of read- 
 ing them, for the first time, before a full senate, which 
 it was agreed should be convened upon the following- 
 day. In the meantime messengers were sent to 
 Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, and Quintus
 
 114 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Cceparius of Terracina, desiring them without delay 
 to attend the consul at his house upon important 
 business. Coeparius, suspecting the reason for which 
 his presence was required, endeavoured, instead of com- 
 plying with the command, to secure himself by flight, 
 but was quickly overtaken and brought back by a party 
 who had left the city in pursuit of him. The rest, on 
 presenting themselves at the house of Cicero, were suc- 
 cessively arrested and placed in secure keeping. The 
 praetor Caius Statilius was then despatched to the 
 house of Cethegus to search for the arms deposited in 
 it, and speedily brought away the whole magazine of 
 weapons provided for the approaching insurrection. 
 
 The temple of Concord, the place appointed for 
 the meeting of the Senate, which on this important 
 occasion was crowded to excess, presented on the open- 
 ing of the business of the day, a solemn and imposing 
 spectacle. The members were no sooner seated than 
 Cicero entered, leading by the hand Lentulus in his 
 full dress as praetor, since it would have been con- 
 sidered an indignity for any one lower in rank than 
 himself to lay the least public restraint upon his per- 
 son. Theother prisoners folio wed closely guarded. Vol- 
 turcius was then introduced in a state of the greatest 
 agitation, in consequence of the terror occasioned by his 
 recent seizure, and the contemplation of the dangerous 
 predicament in which he stood. His replies were at 
 first vague and unsatisfactory, but on being informed 
 that the public faith would be pledged for his pardon 
 and safety, on condition of his bearing evidence against 
 his companions, he consented to give upon the spot a 
 full and distinct account of as much of the conspiracy 
 as he had been made acquainted with. The ambas- 
 sadors of the Allobroges were next examined, and con- 
 firmed the testimony of the preceding witness, dis- 
 closing the promises of assistance given them under 
 oath by the principal conspirators ; and adding, that
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 115 
 
 Lucius Cassius had enjoined them to be particular in 
 raising and sending across the Alps as great a body 
 of Gallic cavalry as possible, since there would be no 
 want of infantry in the armies of the insurgents. 
 They also stated that Lentulus had assured them, from 
 the Sibylline books and responses of the haru- 
 spices, that he was the third of the Cornelian family 
 who was destined to arrive at despotic power in 
 Rome, two of the Cornelii, China and Sylla, having 
 already preceded him in that condition of hazardous 
 exaltation"* ; and that his reliance upon the accom- 
 plishment of the prediction was strengthened by other 
 prophecies on the part of the diviners, importing that 
 the present year, which was the twentieth from the 
 burning of the Capitol, would be rendered famous by 
 the destruction of the city and empire of Rome. 
 
 After this evidence had been heard, the senators 
 proceeded to the examination of the letters found 
 upon the Allobroges. Cethegus was first shown his 
 seal, and acknowledged it. The thread of the epistle 
 which it secured was then cut by Cicerot, and the 
 contents made public, after which the criminal, who 
 had at first assumed a resolute bearing, and accounted 
 for the arms in his house by asserting, that he had 
 always been known to be curious in collecting a choice 
 armoury, was unable to utter a word further in his 
 defence. Statilius, on finding his handwriting brought 
 .against him in a similar manner, also freely confessed 
 his guilt. Lentulus acknowledged by a careless nod 
 of assent his seal, which bore the head of his 
 grandfather, the famous Lentulus, who had distin- 
 guished himself as the opponent of Gracchus; but after 
 the -whole evidence in his case had been heard, rose in 
 the place where he was yet seated in his senatorial . 
 character, and began severely to cross examine Voltur- 
 
 * In Catilinam, iii. 4 ; Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xlvii. 
 t In Catilinam, iii. 5. 
 
 12
 
 116 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 cius and the other witnesses. This lasted until he 
 was asked by them in his turn, whether he had never 
 made any mention of the prophecies respecting him- 
 self contained in the Sibylline books, when, to the 
 surprise of all present, instead of denying the fact, as 
 he might easily have done, he suddenly lost his pre- 
 sence of mind, became confused and admitted the 
 charge. The letter written in his own hand to Cati- 
 line* was then desired by A r olturcius to be produced, 
 and completed his confusion ; nor did he make any 
 attempt at his vindication after this direct and palpa- 
 ble proof of his treason. Gabinius was the last 
 brought forward, and although he at first strenuously 
 denied all that had been advanced by the Gauls, 
 his confession was speedily added to those of the rest. 
 As soon as the investigation was concluded, Lentulus 
 was commanded, by an universal vote of the senate, 
 to abdicate the office of pra?tor, and having been pub- 
 licly divested of his robes, was committed to the cus- 
 tody of Publius Lentulus, surnamed Spinther, at that 
 time asdile. Cethegus was entrusted to the guardian- 
 ship of Quintus Cornificius, and Statilius to that of 
 Julius Caesar, then praetor elect. Gabinius was ap- 
 pointed to be kept in the house of Marcus Crassus, and 
 Cceparius in the residence of the senator Cneius Teren- 
 tius. The assembly next passed a vote of thanks to 
 Cicero, as the preserver of his country, couched in the 
 
 * The words of this letter are somewhat differently given by 
 Cicero and Sallust. The former, however, in his speech to the people, 
 (In Cat. iii.) in which it is to be found, probably quoted from memory 
 only, while Sallust, no doubt, had an opportunity of inspecting the 
 original document, of which he professes to give an actual copy. 
 According to the latter author, it was expressed as follows : " Who 
 I am, you will know from the messenger whom I have sent. Re- 
 flect upon the desperate situation in which you are placed ; and, 
 remember your character as a man. Consider what your critical 
 circumstances require, and seek assistance from all even from the 
 lowest." Sallust. Bell. Cat. cap. xliv.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 117 
 
 most honourable and flattering terms; and further 
 ordered, that the ceremony entitled a supplication, or 
 public thanksgiving, should be solemnly performed iu 
 acknowledgment of the merit of the consul, as one 
 who had preserved the city from conflagration, its 
 inhabitants from massacre, and the whole of Italy 
 from the desolation and horrors of a general war. 
 The latter decree was intended and considered as an 
 extraordinary mark of respect, since it was the first 
 time that such an honour had been conferred upon 
 any magistrate wearing the dress of peace. To- 
 wards the evening of the same day, Cicero delivered 
 his third Catilinarian oration to the people from the 
 rostra, in which most of the particulars relative to the 
 detection cf the conspiracy were recited; the ap- 
 proaching punishment of those chiefly concerned in it 
 darkly hinted at ; the interposition of the Gods, and 
 more especially of the Capitoline Jupiter, claimed as 
 having been exerted in a manner palpably miracu- 
 lous for the preservation of Rome ; and the citizens 
 exhorted to abandon all their fears, and devote them- 
 selves with their families, in obedience to the edict 
 of the senate, to the joyful commemoration of their 
 signal deliverance.* 
 
 * Some parts of this oration are singularly indicative either of 
 superstition on the part of Cicero himself, or of his knowledge of the 
 most effectual way of availing himself of such a feeling on the part 
 of his auditors. He alludes to meteoric phenomena in the heavens, 
 tempests, and earthquakes, during his consulate, as plainly prognos- 
 ticating the danger which the state hail just escaped, and dwells 
 upon another trivial coincidence, with an appearance of triumphant 
 confidence. The statue of Jupiter in the Capitol having, among 
 others, been struck down by lightning in the consulate of Torquatus 
 and Cotta, the Etrurian diviners had directed that another of much 
 larger dimensions should be erected, and placed in a position con- 
 trary to that of the former, so as to face the east and look down 
 upon the Forum and the Curia, or senate-house, below. The erection 
 of this statue had been undertaken by the former consuls, but had, 
 from various causes, hecn delayed until the very morning of the full 
 discovery of the conspiracy, when it was raised to its pedestal pre-
 
 118 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Amidst the plaudits of the multitude and escorted 
 by an immense crowd, Cicero retired from the Forum 
 to the house of one of his friends, to pass a night of 
 watchfulness and anxious deliberation upon the course 
 which it would be expedient to adopt with respect 
 to the conspirators then in custody. On the one 
 hand, he was apprehensive if he exercised towards 
 them the full severity which their crimes had deserved, 
 that he might at a future day fall a victim to a revul- 
 sion of popular feeling, under which his conduct, how- 
 ever applauded at a crisis of danger, might be regarded 
 as cruel and arbitrary ; while if he suffered criminals 
 of so daring a character to escape with their lives, he 
 was confident that his own would be sooner or later 
 the penalty of his too great leniency or timidity. 
 A message from his wife Terentia is said to have 
 determined him towards the more vigorous course. 
 The residence of Cicero was, on that evening, the 
 scene of those hidden rites performed by the Roman 
 women in honour of the mysterious personage called 
 the Bona Dea, during the celebration of which no 
 one of the other sex was allowed to cross the threshold 
 of the house in which they were offered. The sacri- 
 fices usual at these solemnities had, we are informed, 
 been made, and the ashes upon the altar were thought 
 to be extinguished, when those who were present 
 were astonished and dismayed, by the sudden bursting 
 forth of a flame of extraordinary extent and brilliancy 
 from the embers. The vestal virgins, however, who 
 were presiding at the ceremony, one of whom was 
 the sister of Terentia, took upon themselves to give a 
 favourable interpretation to the omen, and desired 
 that Cicero might be immediately informed, that 
 whatever design he was at that time meditating 
 
 cisely at the moment at which Lentulus and his companions were 
 being let! through the Forum to their trial. This circumstance is 
 dwelt upon as an infallible token of Divine favour.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 119 
 
 might be boldly pursued, as it was manifestly de- 
 clared by such a sign to be in accordance with the will 
 of the Gods. 
 
 This story, of whatever amount of credit it may be 
 thought worthy, is related by Plutarch ; who adds 
 that Terentia, at all times ready to take more than a 
 befitting part in directing the political conduct of her 
 husband, used her full influence on this occasion to 
 excite him to the utmost severity towards the conspi- 
 rators, and that her efforts were warmly seconded by 
 his brother Quintus Cicero and Publius Nigidius, 
 one of his friends, in whose judgment he was accus- 
 tomed to place great confidence. 
 
 Without pronouncing upon the motives by which 
 these advpcates of extreme measures were influenced, 
 it is certain that the occurrences of the following day 
 amply demonstrated the necessity of taking some 
 decisive step with respect to the prisoners. The 
 senate having met to determine upon the rewards to 
 be given to those, by whose evidence the plot had 
 chiefly been brought to light, Lucius Tarquinius, who 
 had been seized by the common people as he was on 
 the point of quitting the city, on suspicion of his 
 being one of the emissaries of Catiline, was brought 
 before the house, and after being interrogated, under 
 a public promise of pardon if he should reveal the 
 truth, added intelligence of the most startling nature 
 to the other details of the conspiracy, in which his 
 evidence precisely corresponded with that before given 
 by Volturcius. He stated, that he had been commis- 
 sioned by no less a person than Marcus Crassus, to 
 convey a message to Catiline, exhorting him not to 
 be discouraged by the arrest of Lentulus and his con- 
 federates, but to consider that there was now an 
 additional necessity for his accelerating his march 
 upon Rome, that he might revive the spirits of his 
 adherents, and rescue his friends from danger. The
 
 120 THE Lira: OF CICERO. 
 
 senators were confounded at the disclosure, but they 
 did not dare to carry their inquiries further, and 
 resolved rather to leave the participation of Crassus 
 in the design in uncertainty, than to provoke so 
 powerful a citizen openly to act against them by 
 giving credit to their informant*. They, therefore, 
 adopted the prudent policy of decreeing, that the 
 testimony of Tarquinius appeared unfounded and 
 calumnious, and that he should be committed to 
 prison until he thought proper to confess by whose 
 instigation he had been induced to invent the mani- 
 fest falsehoods to which he had given utterance. 
 But, at the same time, reports of an attempt being 
 in preparation, on the part of the inferior members of 
 the conspiracy, to rescue their leaders from confine- 
 ment, began hourly to become more prevalent, and 
 to receive stronger confirmation. It was ascertained, 
 that Cethegus had sent messages to his slaves and 
 retainers, encouraging them to take arms and assault 
 the house of Cornificius, and several of the friends 
 and freedmen of Lentulus were discovered to have 
 offered liberal rewards to many among the artisans 
 and lower orders of Rome, to induce them to break 
 out into an immediate revolt in his favour. Cicero, 
 therefore, convinced that any means of suppressing 
 the threatened violence must, to be effectual, be put 
 in practice immediately, having suffered another 
 night alone to intervene, summoned, on the nones of 
 
 "Sallnst. Bell. Cat. cap. xlviii. If Cicero has made no mention 
 of this transaction in his speeches, there can be little difficulty in 
 accounting for his silence upon the subject. The historian who has 
 recorded it adds, that the consul was himself suspected of being the 
 secret author of the charge, with the intention of terrifying Cratsus 
 into a total abandonment of the conspiracy, and even that he had 
 himself openly heard Crassus affirm as much at a later period. This, 
 however, must be considered as at the best but ex parte evidence. 
 The real extent to which Crassus was concerned in the designs of 
 Catiline, must always remain a matter of doubt and obscurity.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 121 
 
 December (the fifth of the month), a full senate in 
 the temple of Concord, and laid before them the 
 momentous question, " What it was their pleasure 
 to decree with respect to those who had lately been 
 delivered into custody ?" The debate which ensued 
 is well known to every reader of Sallust ; for who, 
 after having been once acquainted with his writings, 
 can have forgotten the account of its striking vicis- 
 situdes and impressive result, left us, as perhaps the 
 most carefully finished specimen of his varied powers, 
 by that nervous and energetic historian ? Decius 
 Silanus, as consul elect, being first asked his opinion 
 concerning the treatment of the prisoners, as well as 
 of their accomplices, Cassius *, Furius, Umbrenus, 
 and Annius, who had not yet been apprehended, if 
 they should hereafter be taken, gave his vote unre- 
 servedly for the infliction of capital punishment. 
 Several senators followed his example, until the first 
 indication of an opinion opposed to the extreme 
 severity advised by Silanus, was given by Tiberius 
 Nero, grandfather of the crafty and tyrannic emperor, 
 who recommended that the prisoners should be de- 
 tained in confinement until the complete suppression 
 of the revolt of Catiline, when the subject might 
 again more advantageously be brought before the 
 senate. The next speaker was Caius Julius Casar, 
 the main substance of whose oration, for the words 
 are pregnant with the ordinary and characteristic 
 style of the writer, has been recorded by Sallust. 
 
 Whether the dream of ambition which this highly- 
 gifted and aspiring character afterwards endeavoured 
 to realise, was yet anything more than a dazzling 
 and indefinite phantasy ; or whether he had already 
 determined upon the general tenor of his future 
 career, and adopted the resolution of leaving no op- 
 
 * Lucius Cassius had left the city, as we learn from Sallust, 
 immediately before the departure of the Allobroges.
 
 122 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 portunity unimproved for advocating what might 
 appear the interest of the popular cause against the 
 aristocratic faction, until he had sufficiently wasted the 
 power of the latter to have nothing to fear from a 
 competitor or an opponent in his advance to absolute 
 dominion, is of course uncertain. It is sufficiently 
 known, however, that at this moment he was the 
 subject of no common dislike to the nobility, and 
 most strongly suspected of seconding, by encourage- 
 ment of every kind which fell short of compromising 
 his own safety, any attempt which might be formed 
 against the existing government. Two of his most 
 bitter enemies, Quintus Catulus and Caius Piso, (the 
 former of whom had unsuccessfully contested the 
 high priesthood with him, while the latter had been 
 forced to appear by his means in the character of de- 
 fendant in a prosecution for misconduct during his 
 government of Hither Spain,) had endeavoured at this 
 crisis to effect his ruin, by earnestly entreating Cicero 
 to allow a false accusation of participating in all the 
 designs of Catiline to be brought against him by 
 means of the Allobroges*. This nefarious proposition 
 was firmly rejected ; but although Caesar was thus 
 saved from the peril of a criminal accusation, his life 
 had, but two days before, been nearly ended by themore 
 open violence of the opposite party ; since, as he was 
 leaving the senate-house, several of the young patri- 
 cians who formed a voluntary guard around the 
 person of Cicero, encircled him, with bitter terms of 
 hatred, and brandished weapons which they would 
 have been ready to stain with his blood, on the least 
 look or sign on the part of the consul which could 
 be construed into an expression of assent. Upon 
 his cool and fearless temperament, however, such a 
 hazard, or the prospect of its recurrence, was likely 
 to make but little impression. He now stood fov- 
 
 * Sallust. Bell. Catilin. xlix.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 123 
 
 ward with an amendment to the proposition of 
 Silamis, advising that, instead of being consigned to 
 the hands of the executioner, the conspirators should 
 be condemned to perpetual imprisonment in different 
 municipal towns ; and that whoever should at a 
 future time endeavour to influence the senate or the 
 people to mitigate their sentence, or make any motion 
 on their behalf, should be declared an enemy to the 
 commonwealth and to the general safety. Nor were 
 specious arguments, brought forward with consum- 
 mate skill, wanting to" support his opinion. Without 
 attempting to deny that the criminals had merited 
 the infliction of the severest penalty that could be 
 devised, he hinted at the danger to which such a 
 precedent might expose the state at some future 
 period, when, however justifiable and meritorious in 
 the present instance, it might be made use of to 
 cover the most terrible despotism. He reminded 
 those present of the necessity of subduing all private 
 feelings of resentment while sitting in judgment 
 upon their fellow-citizens, adding, that in proportion 
 to the external dignity which they individually, or as 
 a body, possessed, would be the general expectation 
 of strict impartiality in their decision. He instanced 
 various occasions on which the Roman people, al- 
 though provoked by repeated injuries on the part of 
 hostile nations, had, in the moment of victory, 
 inclined to the side of mercy, from a consideration of 
 what was due to the national character, rather than 
 of what was deserved by their enemies. He endea- 
 voured, moreover, to show, that even should it be 
 resolved to listen to the demands of justice alone, 
 and inflict the most terrible punishment upon the 
 condemned, that recommended by Silanus could by 
 no means be considered as such. Death, he argued, 
 in perfect accordance with the tenets of the Epicu- 
 rean school of philosophy, then fashionable, was no 
 more than a full release from the miseries incidental
 
 124 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 to human life a limit beyond which there was no 
 further place for the exercise of passions or sensations 
 of any kind. 
 
 The speech of Caesar, which was followed by the 
 accession of several members to the more merciful 
 view of the question, drew forth from Cicero his 
 fourth and last oration on the subject of the con- 
 spiracy of Catiline. This, although it purported to 
 be an impartial examination of the two opinions 
 proposed, must have left no doubt on the mind of 
 any one present as to the course which the consul 
 intended to advise. The vivid colours with which 
 the atrocity of the design and the still critical con- 
 dition of the state are depicted the frequent allu- 
 sions to the attempts of the conspirators upon his 
 own life, and the pathetic recommendation of his 
 family, in the event of any accident happening to 
 himself, to the care of the republic the difficulties 
 placed in the way of the plan of Julius Ctesar and 
 the hints that all preparations had been made public 
 for the execution of that advocated by Silanus, 
 without any danger of disturbing the public peace, 
 are indications of his real sentiments, which could 
 never for a moment have been intended to be' mis- 
 taken. Yet the eloquence of the speaker was too 
 indirect, for so important an occasion, to be effectual. 
 Qiiintus Cicero, in company with many other 
 senators, declared himself in favour of the advice 
 given by Caesar, and Silanus himself intimated his 
 intention of abandoning his original motion. The 
 lives of the conspirators would certainly, for that 
 time at least, have been saved, had it not been for 
 the efforts of Lutatius Catulus, and, above all, for the 
 stern and ironical address of Marcus Porcius Cato, 
 which, like that of Caesar, has been preserved, and 
 probably in some measure supplied, by Sal lust. 
 Amidst the icy glitter of its stoical rhetoric, there is 
 an absence of all feeling, which appears strangely
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 125 
 
 revolting after the specious gentleness and humanity 
 of the address of Caesar, and a proud and obtrusive 
 cer seriousness only likely to produce the effect of 
 offending most of his auditors. As it was, the 
 whole was in perfect accordance with the sentiments 
 of the sect of which he was considered the ornament. 
 Compassion was assigned no place in the list of 
 virtues recommended by Zeno and his followers, nor 
 were their doctrines particularly calculated to produce 
 the grace of personal humility. But there is at the 
 same time a plain sense and fearlessness apparent in 
 the arguments by which the speaker is represented 
 as supporting his view of the existing emergency ; 
 and a strength in his representations of the necessity 
 incumbent upon his countrymen to pursue the most 
 vigorous and decisive line of action, while the sword 
 of Catiline was at their very throats, and his follow- 
 ers ready to pxirsue to the utmost any opportunity 
 of advantage afforded by their vacillation and weak- 
 ness, admirably calculated to produce the intended 
 impression upon the great body of senators who were 
 yet undecided, and which, as we are told, actually 
 brought many back to their first resolutions, who had 
 been led away by the milder sentiments of Caesar. 
 The balance was now completely turned, and it was 
 at length decreed by a majority of the senate, in the 
 words of Cato, that those who had meditated the 
 destruction of the city by fire and sword, and had 
 been convicted of this treasonable design, and of 
 many others, by the evidence of the Allobroges, as 
 well as by their own confession, should be visited 
 with the extreme penalty of the law, according to 
 ancient custom.* 
 
 Although it was late in the day before this decree 
 was passed, Cicero, to whom its execution was in- 
 trusted, was resolved not to suffer another night to 
 intervene before carrying it into effect. After sending 
 * Sallust. Bell. Cat. lii.
 
 126 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 instructions to the officers of justice, to make all the 
 necessary preparations, he repaired with his guard.?, 
 and a great number of the principal senators, to the 
 house in which Lentulus was confined, and having 
 demanded him from his keepers, conducted him from 
 the Palatine Mount through the Forum to the 
 public prison. In this building, about twelve feet 
 under ground, was a noisome and frightful dungeon, 
 called the Tullianum, from one of the ancient kings 
 of Rome by whom it was supposed to have been 
 built, with massive walls of stone, and a vaulted 
 roof of the same material, which was seldom visited 
 by a ray of light from without, the only means of 
 access to it being by a trap -door in the ceiling*. 
 Within its dismal precincts Lentulus was expected 
 by the public executioners, and on being let down- 
 into it in the usual manner, was immediately seized 
 and strangled. Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, and 
 Coeparius having been successively conducted to the 
 same spot by the praetors, were put to death in a 
 similar way. 
 
 While this terrible exhibition of public justice was 
 in progress, the people of Rome having gathered in 
 immense crowds along the ways which led towards the 
 prison, looked on in awe and silence, as at the perform- 
 ance of some mysterious ceremony on the part of the 
 aristocracy, which they but partially understood 
 and in which they were but indirectly concerned t. 
 The consul, on leaving the prison with his escort, 
 had again to pass through the multitude, and observ- 
 ing certain persons among them whom he suspected 
 
 * This dungeon is Btill exhibited at Rome, beneath the church 
 of San Pietro in Vincole, but considerable alterations h.ive been 
 made in it since the time of Cicero. " The modern door," says 
 Eustace, " was opened through the side wall, when the place was 
 converted into a chapel in honour of St. Peter, who is supposed to 
 have been confined in it. Notwithstanding the change, it has still a 
 most appalling aspect." 
 
 t Plutarch in Cic.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 127 
 
 of forming part of the band of conspirators, called to 
 them with a loud voice, and informed them, \vith 
 the usual periphrasis to which the ancients had 
 recourse when speaking on the ominous subject of 
 mortality, that their companions had ceased to exist. 
 This announcement on the part of Cicero drew forth 
 repeated shouts of approbation from the bystanders, 
 and on his further progress homeward he had no 
 reason to complain of any signs of indifference on 
 the part of his countrymen, or of any deficiency 
 in their external indications of deep and enthu- 
 siastic gratitude. It was now night, but every 
 house by which he was expected to pass was illu- 
 minated by lamps and torches placed at the doors, 
 while the roofs were crowded with the Roman 
 women, who held forth their lights from the para- 
 pets as he passed, and saluted him as the preserver 
 of the city, and the guardian of their own lives 
 and those of their children. Fresh honours were 
 not long in being added. Most of the municipal 
 towns in Italy, as soon as intelligence w r as brought 
 of the suppression of the plot, passed decrees in 
 which the patriotism of the consul was eulogised in 
 the highest terms of praise. The people of Capua 
 enacted that his statue, richly gilded, should be 
 forthwith erected in their city, and that he should 
 be declared their perpetual and only patron. Lucius 
 Gellius asserted in presence of the senate, that he was 
 justly entitled to the gift of a civic crown on the part 
 of the republic. Catulus, in a full assembly of that 
 order, hailed him with the proud and unexampled 
 appellation of Father of his Country* ; and when 
 
 * The classical reader need hardly be reminded of the beautiful 
 lines upon this subject by the greatest of satirists, ancient or modem. 
 Hie novus Avpinas, ignobilis, et modo Romse 
 Munidpalis Equcs, galeatum point ubique 
 1'rsesidium attonitis et in omni gente laborut. . 
 Tantum igitur reuros intra toga contulit illi 
 Nooiinis et tituli, quantum uon Leucade, quantum
 
 128 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Cato, in a speech to the people abounding with his 
 praises, alluded to him by this title, it was repeatedly 
 confirmed with loud and continued plaudits on the 
 part of the multitude. Such, while the minds of 
 men were under the influence of recent events, were 
 the rewards of the consistent and certainly, after all 
 deductions have been made, noble and patriotic course 
 which he had recently pursued for the preservation of 
 the commonwealth. But the first feeling of satis- 
 faction at having escaped so imminent a danger was 
 scarcely over, when the necessary reaction began. 
 The nobility, although they had been perfectly willing 
 that Cicero should take the post of peril and respon- 
 sibility, when their own Jives and possessions were 
 threatened, were not likely to forgive one whom they 
 scornfully designated a new man, for having inflicted 
 0*1 ignominious death upon scions of the illustrious 
 house of the Cornelii. Among the commons also 
 there were many who regarded the late exercise of 
 power on the part of the consul, as a violation of the 
 Porcian law, and consequently as a serious in- 
 fringement upon the existing constitution. The 
 undetected participators in the conspiracy had 
 more serious grounds for their dislike of the per- 
 son by whose instrumentality their design had 
 
 Thessaliae campis Octavius abstulit udo 
 Csedibus assiduia gladio. Sed Roma PARENTEM 
 Roma PATREM PATRICE Ciceroncm libera dixit. 
 
 Juv. Sat. viii. 
 
 Yes he, poor Arpine of no rank at home, 
 And made, and hardly made, a Knight at Rome, 
 Secured the trembling town, placed a firm guard 
 In every street, and toil'd in every ward 
 And thus within the walls in peace obtain'd 
 More fame, more honour, than Augustus gain'd 
 At Actium orPhilippi from a flood 
 Of patriot gore, and sword still drench'd with blood ; 
 For Rome, free Rome, hail'd him with loud acclaim 
 The Father of his Country glorious name. 
 
 GIFFORD'S translation.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 129 
 
 been foiled, and their leaders sentenced to con- 
 dign punishment. All these were united into a party 
 acting under Caesar as their principal, and encou- 
 raged in their discontent against Cicero by the tri- 
 bunes, whose policy it invariably was, after ascertain- 
 ing its direction and bias, to place themselves at the 
 head of every popular movement. A sufficient proof 
 of the disposition of the latter magistrates to offer him 
 every molestation in their power, was shown at the 
 termination of his office, when it was customary for 
 the consuls to take a public oath that, during the year 
 of their authority, they had done nothing contrary to 
 the laws. The opportunity was generally taken to 
 add an address to the people on the most remarkable 
 events of their magistracy. When Cicero, who ap- 
 prehensive of some disturbances on the occasion had 
 thought it necessary to summon Publius Sextius with 
 an army from Capua to preserve peace in the city, 
 made his appearance in the Forum, and was about to 
 commence his oration to the citizens, the newly 
 elected tribune, Quintus Metellus Nepos, who had 
 placed his chair upon the rostra for the purpose of 
 inflicting this public indignity upon him, perempto- 
 rily commanded him to forbear, and to confine him- 
 self to the usual oath. The "ingenuity of Cicero 
 found a ready way of turning the restriction to his 
 advantage, and instead of making an elaborate speech 
 upon his consulship, of compressing all he had intended 
 to say into a small compass; since, in the place of 
 the customary formula, he swore, that in his year of 
 office he had preserved both the city and the empire 
 from total ruin. Thunders of assent on the part of 
 the assembly, who were conscious of his not having 
 exaggerated his services, expressed the general testi- 
 mony of his countrymen to the justice of this striking 
 and unexpected declaration, and Cicero was once more 
 escorted home by an admiring and applauding crowd,
 
 130 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Yet much of the advantage he might have derived 
 from the recollection of his eminent merits, was 
 weakened or lost by the repetition of the same self- 
 eulogy on less justifiable occasions. His auditors 
 grew weary of discourses, of which the extent of 
 their obligations to the speaker was the constant 
 burden, and his best friends were at last offended by 
 a vanity, which seemed only to increase in its de- 
 mands, in proportion as attempts were made to 
 gratify it. The tribute which he exacted, he was, in- 
 deed, at all times ready to render in his turn. It 
 has been observed, and the observation is confirmed 
 by almost every page of his writings, that there was 
 nothing of a monopolising spirit in his eagerness for 
 praise, since he seldom lost an opportunity of men- 
 tioning, with even more than due honour, those among 
 his contemporaries, whose talents or virtue he had 
 reason to respect. But if it be true that he had, at all 
 times, sufficient candour to allow, and to point out, 
 the merits of others, it must at the same time be 
 conceded, that no man ever seems to have been pos- 
 sessed of a more sensitive and overweening con- 
 sciousness of his own. 
 
 It remains briefly to advert to the termination of 
 the career of the desperate adventurer, who now a 
 declared outlaw and enemy to the state, and deprived 
 of all hope of succour from his friends at Home, con- 
 tinued, nevertheless, to maintain in Etruria a bold 
 front against the dangers which threatened him on 
 every side. Before the news of the execution of 
 Leutulus and the rest of the conspirators arrived, he 
 had managed to collect a sufficient number of adhe- 
 rents to form two legions, the ordinary strength of 
 a consular army, and might have raised a far more 
 imposing force, had he not constantly rejected the 
 assistance of the fugitive slaves, who flocked to him in 
 crowds, disdaining to allow the contest on which he 
 had entered to assume the character of a Servile War.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 131 
 
 The resolution of his partisans was the most formid- 
 able feature in his army, since not more than a fourth 
 part of it were furnished with the weapons employed 
 by the legionary soldiery, the rest contenting them- 
 selves with such ill-fashioned darts and slender lances 
 as were used in hunting by the rustic population of 
 Italy, or, in default of these, with stakes sharpened at 
 the end. Yet, with the ill-provided throng under 
 his command he contrived, after entering the defiles 
 of the Apennines, for some time to baffle and elude 
 the forces of the state, and would not have hesitated 
 to advance upon the capital, had not the intelligence 
 of the suppression of the conspiracy, causing numer- 
 ous desertions among his followers, and convincing 
 him that all was lost in that quarter, induced him to 
 change his first design to a strenuous attempt at 
 exciting an insurrection in Cisalpine Gaul. With 
 this resolution he pursued his road among the moun- 
 tains, hoping, by rapid movements and forced-marches, 
 to escape the pursuit of the consul Antonius, who, 
 with an army much exceeding his own in number, and 
 perfectly equipped for service, followed with all haste 
 upon his rear. But in this expectation he was fated 
 to encounter a bitter disappointment. The prastor 
 Metellus Celer, who had been stationed in Picenum 
 at the head of three legions, conjecturing what must 
 necessarily be his operations, had in the meantime 
 hastily decamped, and having moved along the eastern 
 side of the Apennines towards the defiles by which 
 the insurgents were expected to enter Gaul, was now 
 lying at the foot of the hills, with the intention of 
 intercepting them on their descent to the level 
 country. Catiline, thus enclosed between two armies, 
 and seeing no possibility of escape, turned at length, 
 like the hunted wolf, upon his pursuers, and preferring 
 to encounter the force acting under Antonius, although 
 considerably larger than .that of Metellus, from a faint 
 
 K2
 
 132 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 expectation that the consular general, from the recollec- 
 tion of past friendship, and, perhaps, of companionship 
 in guilt, might prove a more favourable or a less 
 active antagonist, offered him battle in an advan- 
 tageous position near the town of Pistoria. As the 
 cohorts of the republic came in sight, under the 
 command of the legate Petreius, (since Antonius 
 pleading an indisposition, which was strongly sus- 
 pected of being feigned, declined to appear in the 
 field,) he made a last speech to his men, breathing his 
 usual fiery and determined sentiments, and exhorting 
 all about him to prefer, if unsuccessful, an honourable 
 death to the more ignominious fate which would in- 
 fallibly be inflicted upon them if they were taken. 
 After this, having sent away every horse from his 
 lines, that all might be exposed to the same danger, 
 he made his final dispositions, and taking his station 
 with the most elevated of his adherents, beside his 
 favourite silver eagle, which had once witnessed the 
 Cimbric triumphs of Marius, firmly awaited the 
 charge of the enemy*. The conflict which ensued was 
 in the highest degree severe and desperate. The 
 armies encountered without the usual preliminary 
 interchange of missiles, being determined to bring the 
 decision of the affair, as soon as possible, to close com- 
 bat at the sword's point ; and the ground was at 
 first manfully disputed, neither party for some time 
 yielding a single foot to their opponents. But the 
 utmost valour of the insurgents necessarily proved, at 
 length, unavailing against an enemy who combated 
 them with equal courage, and an overwhelming supe- 
 riority of strength. Petreius led his praetorian cohort 
 against them in front, and vigorous attacks being, at the 
 same moment, made uponboth their flanks, the success 
 of the battle was no longer doubtful. Manlius, who 
 commanded their right wing, fell among the first 
 slain. The rest were successively cut off", defending 
 * Sallust. Bell. CatO^ix.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 133 
 
 themselves obstinately to the last, and, for the most 
 part, covering with their bodies the exact spot upon 
 which they had commenced the engagement. Not a 
 single free-born citizen was taken alive of the whole 
 number present. Catiline himself, as soon as he per- 
 ceived the fortune of the day finally determined, 
 rushing desperately into the midst of his enemies, 
 met at length with the death of which he was in 
 search by an unknown hand. He was found, after the 
 battle, lying far in advance of his own front, amidst 
 a group of the carcasses of his enemies, still faintly 
 breathing, and exhibiting in his latest moments the 
 ferocity of aspect for which, during his life, he had 
 been noted. The insurrection which had struck so 
 much terror into the people of Rome, was thus ended 
 by a single engagement ; but the victorious army 
 had little reason to rejoice at its issue, since the 
 flower of the troops of Antonius were either left upon 
 the field or disabled by severe wounds. The num- 
 ber of those slain on the part of the conquerors, is 
 not precisely known, but the loss of the vanquished 
 was reckoned at three thousand. Antonius, imme- 
 diately after the battle, sent the head of Catiline to 
 Rome, and on the reception of this token of success 
 the citizens laid aside the mourning garb they had 
 assumed at the commencement of the conspiracy, and 
 decreed a second public thanksgiving to the gods for 
 the removal of the threatened danger. Of the con- 
 spirators who were not present at the battle of Pis- 
 toria, or who had escaped from it by flight, many 
 were afterwards taken and executed. Several were 
 also betrayed to the senate by Lucius Vettius, one of 
 their number, who, on being apprehended, turned 
 evidence against the rest. Cassius, Laeca, Vargun- 
 teius, Autronius, with others who had been most 
 conspicuous in the conspiracy, were banished ; a 
 few tried and acquitted ; and many others, whom 
 Vettius was preparing to denounce, saved by the in-
 
 134 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 tervention of the senators ; who, either distrusting the 
 veracity of the informer, or apprehensive of his impli- 
 cating more than it would be safe to prosecute, 
 silenced him by a hint that they were beginning to be 
 weary of his disclosures, which he at once understood 
 and obeved. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Domestic Dissensions at Rome between the Aristocracy, and the 
 popular Party under Julius Caesar and the Tribune Metellus 
 Letter of Cicero to Pompey Oration for Publius Sylla Cicero 
 removes from his Residence on the Palatine Hill to the House of 
 Livius Drusus Violation of the Rites of the Bona Dea by 
 Publius Clodius Disputes occasioned by his Impeachment 
 Pompey returns from his Mithridatic Expedition to Rome 
 Meeting in the Flaminian Circus Trial of Clodius, who is ac- 
 quitted Evidence of Cicero on the occasion Speech for the 
 Poet Archias Third Triumph of Pompey. 
 
 ROME, although freed from the more serious perils 
 which had lately environed it, by the suppression of 
 Catiline's insurrection in Etruria, still continued, like 
 the troubled sea after the tempest has subsided, to be 
 agitated by various less violent commotions the 
 effects, in the estimation of most, of the turbulent 
 crisis through which it had lately passed, but, in 
 the eyes of more prudent observers, the signs also of 
 convulsions, equally serious, to come. Cassar, who 
 had now entered upon his praetorship, and who was 
 in close league with the tribune Metellus, the most 
 active instrument of the popular party, continued 
 from this time more openly his endeavours to lower 
 Cicero, of whose reputation he had become in the 
 highest degree jealous, in the estimation of his coun- 
 trymen. It was probably at his suggestion, that 
 Metellus, in an address to the people in the early 
 part of the year, accused the late consul of having 
 acted in opposition to the laws, by inflicting death 
 upon the five conspirators recently executed without
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 135 
 
 any regular form of trial. That as much was as- 
 serted, \ve may be confident upon the authority of 
 Cicero ; who also mentions, that in answer to the 
 harangue of the tribune, lie was induced to write, 
 and possibly to deliver, an oration in defence of his 
 conduct.* Whether tin's was the same alluded to by 
 Plutarch in his life of Crassus, as the oration upon 
 his consulate, or whether he published under that 
 title the speech which he had been prohibited by 
 Metellus frbm delivering to the citizens, seems un- 
 certain, as there exists no positive evidence upon the 
 subject. The attack upon Cicero was followed by 
 one directed against Catulus by Caesar in person, 
 who, in his capacity of praetor, summoned that emi' 
 nent senator to appear at his tribunal, on a charge of 
 having embezzled the public money while presid- 
 ing over the erection of the Capitol. Catulus had 
 brought this show of hostility upon himself, by^ his 
 zealous speech against Cassar in the senate-house 
 during the debate on the subject of the punishment 
 of the conspirators, as well as by his ready aid in 
 furthering all the designs of Cicero upon that oc- 
 casion. The senate, however, espoused his cause so 
 warmly, that the prosecution was allowed to drop. 
 Caesar and Metellus on this shifted their ground, and 
 being still determined to try all means of lowering 
 the influence of the aristocracy, prepared a law which 
 the tribune proposed to the people for their accept- 
 ance, enacting, that Pompey should be recalled with 
 his army from the Mithridatic war, which was on 
 the eve of expiring, to assist in restoring the state to 
 tranquillity. The most violent opposition was made 
 
 * Ad Attic, i. 13. The passage in the twelfth epistle of the 
 second book of his letters to Atticus, which has been sometimes 
 supposed to bear reference to this orntion, is considered by the 
 best authorities to allude to that afterwards pronounced against 
 Clodius and Curio.
 
 136 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 by the senate to this edict the instant it was brought 
 forward, and the greater part of the patricians as- 
 sumed a mourning habit, apprehending nothing less 
 than absolute despotism on the part of a commander 
 who would thus be virtually created supreme arbiter 
 of the fortunes of the commonwealth. Cato, at that 
 time tribune of the people, notwithstanding the en- 
 treaties of his friends and relatives, stood forward at 
 the first reading of the bill, to place his absolute 
 negative upon it. The attempt was made with con- 
 siderable danger to himself, since Csesar and Metellus 
 had occupied the temple of Castor as a post of 
 vantage with a strong body of armed men, and 
 crowded the steps of the building with a company of 
 gladiators, for the purpose of preventing, or speedily 
 silencing, the opposition which they expected. Yet, 
 notwithstanding these formidable preparations, Cato, 
 as soon as Metellus began to read his proposed law, 
 sternly ordered him to be silent, and on finding this 
 interposition ineffectual, forcibly wrested it from his 
 hand. Metellus, thus interrupted, endeavoured to 
 pronounce his edict from memory, but in this he was 
 also prevented by Minutius Thermus, one of his col- 
 leagues in the interest of Cato, who placed his hand 
 before his mouth. A considerable number of the 
 people, at the same time, struck with a feeling of 
 respect for the undaunted courage with which 
 Metellus was opposed, began loudly to signify their 
 approbation. A scene of tumult and uproar suc- 
 ceeded. On a sign given by Metellus, his gladiators 
 and armed partisans pouring down upon the citizens, 
 speedily drove the crowd before them, and Cato, who 
 was for some time exposed to a shower of sticks and 
 stones, might have sustained serious injury had he 
 not been rescued by Mtmena the consul, against 
 whose election he had so strenuously exerted himself. 
 The latter, now forgetful of their recent enmity, on
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 137 
 
 finding all remonstrances in his behalf unattended 
 to, covered him for some time with his gown from 
 the fury of his assailants, and at length raising him 
 in his arms, carried him into the temple of Castor, 
 while Metellus finding the field clear, resumed the 
 reading of his hill to his own faction. But the op- 
 posite party, who had only retired far enough from 
 the scene of action to rally and reassume some ap- 
 pearance of order, quickly returning with loud 
 shouts, the favourers of the bill, who imagined that 
 their adversaries had now provided themselves with 
 weapons, and were fully prepared for a conflict of a 
 more serious kind than they had before sustained, 
 fled in their turn from the Forum, and Metellus 
 seeing that he was totally deserted by his former 
 supporters, was obliged to follow their example. He 
 was prevented from making a second attempt to 
 enforce his act by the authority of the senate, who, 
 by an express decree, determined that it was con- 
 trary to all law, and replete with danger to the 
 existing government, and that it was therefore in- 
 cumbent upon all good citizens to resist it to the 
 utmost. Yet, although thus baffled, he was far 
 from being disconcerted, and being xinable to ingra- 
 tiate himself further with Pompey by any additional 
 attempts to extend his authority at Rome, he resolved 
 to present himself before him in the character of one 
 whose interests had suffered by a too warm espousal 
 of his cause, hoping by this means to secure, for the 
 future, no inconsiderable share of his favour and 
 protection. In pursuance of his design, he first 
 summoned an assembly of the people, and having 
 endeavoured to inflame them against Cato and the 
 aristocratic party by a bitter and malignant speech, 
 set off for Asia to lay his complaints and represent- 
 ations of all he had endured before the general, of 
 whose interests he had been the uninvited advocate.
 
 138 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 It is not improbable tbat be endeavoured at tbe same 
 time to work upon the jealousy of Pompey, by 
 representing Cicero to bim as a most formidable 
 rival in tbe popular estimation, and, in consequence 
 of his recent services to the state, all but absolute at 
 Rome. This is the most obvious method of ac- 
 counting for the fact, that in his despatches to the 
 senate after the discovery of the Catilinarian plot, 
 in which he informed them of the termination of the 
 Mithridatic war, as well as in his private letters to 
 Cicero, Pompey made no allusion whatever to the 
 conduct of the late consul in bis office, or to tbe 
 honours bestowed upon him. His silence on the 
 subject drew from Cicero an epistle still extant, 
 which is far from uninteresting, as throwing consider- 
 able light upon his character, and exhibiting to the 
 fullest extent the acute sensitiveness with respect to 
 the praise and censure of others, for which be was 
 through life remarkable ; and which, if it proved 
 at times a transient means of enjoyment, was the 
 source from which he more frequently derived the" 
 most painful and mortifying feelings of disappoint- 
 ment. Its contents are as follows : 
 
 " MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO TO CNEIUS POMPEIUS THE 
 GREAT, IMPERATOR "'. 
 
 " From your late despatches, I have, in common 
 with tbe rest of my countrymen, derived inexpressible 
 satisfaction and delight, since you afford us in these 
 such hopes of a speedy peace as, from a confidence 
 founded on your singular abilities, I had always en- 
 couraged others to entertain. Be assured of this, 
 however, that those persons who having been once 
 your enemies, have recently assumed the character of 
 your friends, are in a state of the greatest pertur- 
 bation and dejection, finding themselves totally dis- 
 
 * Ad Diversos, v. 7.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 139 
 
 appointed in the sanguine expectations they had 
 indulged *. As for the letter to myself, although it 
 contained but few expressions of good-will towards 
 me, I was still able to derive from it no small degree 
 of pleasure. For in nothing am I more delighted 
 than in the consciousness of having performed good 
 offices for others ; to which, if no suitable return of 
 gratitude is made, I am well contented that the 
 surplus of obligation conferred should be on my side. 
 Of this I entertain no doubt, that if my utmost efforts 
 to promote your advantage prove but a feeble bond 
 of friendship between us, the interests of the republic 
 will be the means of making us intimate with each 
 other, and of preserving our union when once esta- 
 blished. In order that you may not remain in 
 ignorance as to what I thought deficient in your 
 letter, I will mention it at once and without disguise, 
 as the frankness of my own character, and my friend- 
 ship with yourself, appear to demand. I have done 
 that on which I thought I had some reason to expect 
 your congratulations, both on the ground of our close 
 acquaintance, and of your regard for the interests of 
 the republic ; these however you have totally omitted, 
 fearing, as I suppose, that you might give offence to 
 some one by any allusion to the subject. Yet, know 
 that the actions we have performed for the pre- 
 servation of our country have been approved and 
 admired by the whole world, and have been, more- 
 over, so far distinguished for prudence and greatness 
 
 * Reference has been supposed by some commentators to be 
 made in this obscure passage to Lucullus, who might naturally be 
 expected to feel some jealousy at the success of Pompey in a com- 
 mand of which he himself had been deprived. Others imagine, 
 and with greater appearance of reason, that Ctesar is alluded to, 
 who, although he had recently affected a willingness to forward the 
 interests of Pompey, contemplated with real dissatisfaction the in- 
 crease of dignity and reputation likely to accrue to him from his 
 subversion of the power of Mithridates.
 
 140 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of mind, that on your return you will not object, 
 although far greater than Africanus, to be joined 
 both in public duties and private friendship with 
 one not, I trust, much inferior to Ltelius *. Fare- 
 well." 
 
 The letter of Cicero to Pompey is not the only 
 one for which subsequent ages have been indebted to 
 the intrigues of Metellus. There is extant an angry 
 epistle from his brother Metellus Celer, then go- 
 vernor of Cisalpine Gaul, complaining to Cicero of 
 public ridicule, which he accuses him of having 
 thrown upon himself, as well as of severity towards 
 his relatives ; and impugning the equity of the Senate 
 in some of their late proceedings t. The answer, 
 which has also been fortunately preserved, is a manly 
 vindication from these charges, and a dignified account 
 of the provocation given at different times by the 
 tribune, and the manner in which they had been 
 met. It appears to have been satisfactory, and 
 to have entirely restored the friendship, which had 
 suffered a partial interruption. 
 
 After being the principal agent in the detection and 
 punishment of the most active among those concerned 
 in the attempts of Catiline, Cicero now took upon him- 
 self the office of defending one who was in imminent 
 danger of being condemned as a subordinate member 
 of the conspiracy. Servius Cornelius Sylla, a nephew 
 of the famous dictator, whose guilt as one of the 
 principal directors of the late plot was sufficiently 
 evident, had been sentenced to banishment for the 
 part he had taken in that transaction. His brother 
 Publius, formerly consul elect with Autronius, but 
 who had been hindered, as has been before mentioned, 
 
 * The famous friend of Scipio Africanus. 
 
 f It had been proposed to deprive Metellus Nepos of his tribu- 
 nitial office, and the motion would have been earned but for the 
 interference of Cato.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICEKO. 141 
 
 from entering upon office by a prosecution for bribery, 
 was shortly after impeached by Lucius Torquatus, a 
 son of the consul of that name, on two separate 
 grounds of indictment the first, an alleged partici- 
 pation in the design of Autronius to assassinate his 
 father; the second, the share he was supposed to 
 have taken in the more dangerous and extensive 
 scheme projected by Catiline. His vindication from 
 the former impeachment was undertaken by Horten- 
 sius, who succeeded in obtaining a verdict in his 
 favour. Cicero then stood forward as his advocate 
 on the next count, and delivered in his behalf the 
 somewhat lengthened and diffuse oration, which is 
 welt known to all students of his writings. Tor- 
 quatus, it appears, had endeavoured in his accusation, 
 to lessen the impression which the circumstance of 
 so redoubted an antagonist having undertaken the 
 cause of Sylla might be supposed to make, by insinu- 
 ations and open personalities against Cicero, whom 
 he designated by the title of despot and king names, 
 in the estimation of the times, the most odious he 
 could bestow, and of which he was well aware what 
 would probably be the effect in Roman ears. His 
 opponent, however, was not slow in seizing the oppor- 
 tunity thus afforded, of making his own actions a 
 principal subject of his discourse, on pretence of 
 defending himself against the unjust attack of Tor- 
 quatus, and we have consequently all the imagery 
 which had told so well in his denunciations against 
 Catiline, of a blazing city, reeking with the blood of 
 its inhabitants, the terrors of virgins and matrons, 
 the unsheathed weapons of remorseless murderers, 
 and the pillage and profanation of temples and 
 shrines*, reproduced with evident complacency. 
 Yet he clears himself with happy ingenuity of thought 
 and language from the charge of cruelty which had 
 lately been brought against him. " Why," he asks, 
 
 * Pro Sulla, vi.
 
 142 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 " should it excite your wonder, that in this cause I 
 appear for the defendant in conjunction with those 
 advocates, in common with whom I refused to under- 
 take the cause of the other conspirators, unless, 
 indeed, you are determined to suppose me stern and 
 inhuman above all others, and imbued with a singular 
 spirit of fierceness and cruelty. If on account of my 
 late actions you are inclined to think my whole life 
 characterised by these qualities, great, Torquatus, is 
 your error. Nature endued me at birth with a dis- 
 position inclined to mercy ; by my country's voice I 
 have been called upon to exercise severity ; but that 
 I should be cruel was in accordance with the designs 
 neither of nature nor of my country. My own incli- 
 nation and will have now taken from me even that 
 external mask of sternness and vehemence which the 
 republic, during the late perilous crisis, required me 
 to assume. The latter exacted rigour on my part 
 for a moment ; the former ordained that pity and 
 gentleness should be the ruling motives of my general 
 conduct*." Nor was his refutation of the assertion 
 that he was assuming the prerogatives of monarchy, 
 less effectual. " If," he asks, " after the benefits I 
 have conferred upon the state, I demanded no other 
 reward for my exertions from the Roman Senate and 
 people, but an honourable rest and retirement, who 
 would be unwilling to grant it ? And in this case, 
 what attraction could their offices of honour and 
 power their provinces their triumphs and their 
 other means of distinction and glory possess for me, 
 while enjoying the higher privilege of contemplating, 
 in a state of quiet and tranquillity, a city preserved 
 by my efforts from destruction ? But what if I 
 demand not even this if the industry and solicitude 
 on their behalf, for which I have always been dis- 
 tinguished ; if my services, my exertions, my nights 
 of watchfulness, .ire still at the command of my 
 * Pro Sulla, cap. iii.
 
 TIIE LIFE OP CICERO. 143 
 
 friends, and readily offered to all ; if neither my 
 acquaintance have to regret the loss of my assistance 
 in the Forum, nor my country that of my counsels 
 in the senate-house ; if my good wishes as well as 
 my best efforts, my mind and ears as well as my 
 house, are free to every applicant ; if not a moment of 
 leisure is left me even for recalling to mind and 
 meditating upon what I have accomplished for the 
 general safety is such a condition, in which I cannot 
 find a single person willing to act as my substitute, 
 to be termed kingly authority ? Far from me, after 
 this, must be the remotest suspicion of affecting abso- 
 lute power." 
 
 Through the able pleadings of his advocates, Publius 
 Sylla*, although his innocence could scarcely be con- 
 sidered as thoroughly proved, escaped the sentence of 
 banishment passed upon his brother, as well as upon 
 Autronius, Lasca, and the other less fortunate mem- 
 bers of the conspiracy. A circumstance is related in 
 connexion with his trial which, if true, reflects no 
 small dishonour upon Cicero. Hitherto the orator, 
 with a noble disinterestedness, had refused every 
 offer of fee or reward for his services in the Forum. 
 He was now. however, with the intention of relin- 
 quishing the family mansion, in which he had 
 hitherto resided, in favour of his brother Quintus, 
 in treaty for a house close to his own on the Palatine 
 Hill, which had been built in a costly and magnificent 
 style for the tribune LiviusDrusus t. This edifice was 
 
 * Sallust, writing some years after, ranks him among the con- 
 spirators who assembled at the house of M. Porcius Lacca, at the 
 very commencement of the plot. Sallust. Bell. Oat. cap. xvii. 
 
 -f- Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the people, was one of the 
 most active promoters of the claims of the Italian states, in their 
 famous attempt to gain the privilege of Roman citizens. With 
 respect to the house in question, he is said to have replied to the 
 architect, who promised to build it in such a manner as to secure 
 the greatest privacy to its occupant " Rather construct it so that the
 
 144 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 one of the most conspicuous in the whole city, look- 
 ing down upon the Forum, and adjoining the portico 
 which Catulus, the colleague of Marius, had built 
 from the spoils acquired in the Cimbric war. Marcus 
 Crassus, to whom it belonged, demanded for it the 
 enormous sum of thirty-five hundred thousand ses- 
 terces, or nearly thirty thousand pounds ; and although 
 Cicero was bent upon the purchase, his correspon- 
 dence shows that he was reduced to great difficulties 
 to procure the necessary funds*. In his perplexity 
 he is said to have applied to P. Sylla, and to have 
 received a considerable loan from him on condition of 
 appearing in his defence on his approaching trial. It 
 is added, that when publicly charged with having 
 borrowed money from a person under impeachment, 
 for the purpose of securing the residence in question 
 to himself, he strenuously denied both the receipt of 
 the loan and his intention of making any offer for 
 the house ; and that being afterwards accused in the 
 senate for his duplicity when he had actually concluded 
 the bargain, he endeavoured to turn the whole 
 matter into a jest, by laughingly asserting, that those 
 must be indeed persons of weak understanding who 
 could imagine that it would be the part of a prudent 
 or cautious man, when he had resolved upon effect- 
 
 whole world may witness my most private actions." After a warm 
 debate in the senate, from which he returned encircled by an 
 immense multitude, he was stabbed as he crossed his own threshold 
 by an assassin, who left the knife with which he had inflicted the fatal 
 wound in his side. Cicero asserts that the name of the murderer 
 was Quintus Varius. This event, which, in' fact, was the signal for 
 the Social War, occurred A. u. c. 663. 
 
 * In his epistle to Sextius (Ad Divers, v. 7,) he intimates that he 
 has been obliged to borrow the money at six per cent., and has 
 considerably involved himself in consequence. His pressing 
 demands upon Antonius, mentioned Ad Attic, i. 12, in which he satir- 
 iees his former colleague under the title of the Trojan Lady, and 
 complains bitterly of his evasive answers, probably originated in his. 
 necessitiess on thi occasion.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 145 
 
 ing a purchase, to raise competitors for it by openly 
 publishing his intentions*. 
 
 The oration for Sylla preceded but by a short time 
 an event which, however trivial it might appear in 
 its nature, drew upon it the general attention of the 
 people of Rome, and was not without producing 
 important effects upon the lives of two of its most 
 distinguished citizens. Publius Clodius, a patrician 
 of the noble house of the Claudii, which for a long 
 series of generations was noted for the unamiable 
 qualities of its memberst, was a young man of 
 considerable abilities and eloquence, and endued with 
 most of the external qualities requisite to ensure an 
 extensive popularity among the less temperate and 
 judicious classes of the republic. But these per- 
 sonal advantages were disgraced by the most aban- 
 doned recklessness of all principle, an audacious 
 libertinism, unsurpassed by that of the worst cha- 
 racters who had hitherto disgraced the annals of 
 
 * liKpivovtijTOt, inquit, homines estis, quuin ignoratis prudentis 
 et cauti patris familias esse quod emere velit emturum sese negare 
 
 propter competitores AULUS GELLIUS, Noctes Attica, lib. xii. 12. 
 
 Dr. Middlcton doubts the truth of the story, which he thinks must 
 have been obtained from some spurious collection of the facetious 
 sayings of Cicero, and certainly the character of Aulus Gellius, as 
 an accurate narrator of facts, does not go far to establish its credit. 
 Melmoth, however, in bis translation of Cicero's letters, observes, 
 without prejudice and with justice : " As every reader of taste and 
 learning must wish well to the moral character of so invaluable a 
 writer as Cicero, one cannot but regret that neither his own general 
 regard to truth, nor the plea of his ingenious advocate, seems 
 sufficient to discredit this piece of secret history." 
 
 f Sueton. in Tiber, i.^-who, not to mention the Claudian 
 line of the Caesars, cites the names of the licentious decemvir, of 
 Claudius Drusus, and Claudius Pulcher, the unsuccessful com- 
 mander of the Roman fleet. The wish of the sister of the latter, 
 that her brother was alive to lose another battle, when her litter 
 was impeded by the multitude of Rome, is well known. Tacitus 
 also, (Annal.i.4,) speaks ofthe"vetus atque insita Claudia familioe 
 superbia." 
 
 L
 
 146 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Rome, and a selfishness and low cunning which, for 
 the most part, effectually hindered their possessor from 
 following his vicious propensities to an extent suffi- 
 cient to endanger his personal safety, although within 
 this limit no restraint, either in puhlic or in private, 
 was ever affected to be placed upon their indulgence. 
 Such a character, if once engaged against them, was 
 likely to prove a far more dangerous opponent to the 
 liberties of his country than Catiline; as the assailant 
 who works his way towards the object of attack by 
 the covert process of mining, is more to be dreaded 
 than the one who at once rushes forward heedlessly 
 to the assault. By constant professions of devoted- 
 ness to the popular interests he had now been raised 
 to the office of qu?estor, and in that capacity was, of 
 course, entitled to a seat in the senate. To Cicero 
 he had long been an especial object of dislike, not 
 only from his general conduct, but from the part 
 he had taken in the impeachment of Fabia Terentia, 
 sister-in-law of the orator, and one of the vestal 
 virgins, whom he had accused of infidelity to her 
 vows, and an improper intimacy with Catiline. 
 Fabia, on the very verge of condemnation and its ter- 
 rible consequences, was saved, principally by means of 
 Cato, who, with all his stern coldness and inflexibility, 
 was never an agent, or even an unconcerned spectator, 
 of injustice, although exercised towards an enemy; 
 and Clodius, to avoid the odium raised against him 
 on account of his unfounded accusation, had been 
 obliged to withdraw for some time from the city. 
 On his return a partial reconciliation with Cicero 
 was effected, and in the suppression of the Catilina- 
 rian conspiracy he took an active part in supporting 
 the consul, placing himself in the ranks of the young 
 nobility who formed a guard about his person. He, 
 at the same time, was constant in paying his court to 
 Caesar, but the future dictator had little reason to be
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 147 
 
 proud of the connexion, since Clodius studiously 
 availed himself of the opportunities afforded by his 
 acquaintance with him, to endeavour to divert the 
 affections of his wife Pompeia from her husband, an 
 attempt in which there is every reason to believe that 
 he was successful. It was during the celebration of the 
 mysterious rites of the Bona Dea in the house of Caasar, 
 at which Pompeia was presiding, and while all wit- 
 nesses but those of the female sex were supposed to 
 have withdrawn from the spot, in compliance with 
 the established custom, that Clodius, having received 
 a secret summons to take advantage of the occasion 
 to pay one of his clandestine visits, was discovered 
 lurking, in the disguise of a female musician, within 
 the forbidden precincts by one of the maid-servants 
 of Aurelia, the mother of Caesar, who immediately 
 gave notice of this daring intrusion on the solemni- 
 ties of the night. A cry of horror and indignation 
 was raised by all the assembled matrons at the intel- 
 ligence ; the religious symbols were at once con- 
 cealed ; and Clodius was forcibly expelled from the 
 house with every expression of disgust and indigna- 
 tion. The whole city was speedily acquainted with 
 what, in the estimation of most of its inhabitants, was 
 an atrocious and unpardonable act of sacrilege, and in- 
 sisted loudly upon its punishment. The senator Cor- 
 nificius accordingly made a motion, that the matter 
 should be referred to the pontifical college for their 
 decision, as to whether it was of sufficient importance 
 to be the subject of a bill to be submitted to the people, 
 ordaining that Clodius should be brought to his trial, 
 before a general assembly of the citizens. On their 
 unanimous answer in the affirmative, the consul Mar- 
 cus Piso, much against his inclination*, was ordered 
 to bring forward the information and the proposed 
 edict in the usual form. But the decree was strongly 
 Ad Attic, i. 13. 
 L2
 
 143 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 opposed by the tribune Fufius Caleims,-whom Clodius 
 had attached to his party, and on the day ap- 
 pointed for the assembly, the enclosed spaces in 
 which the centuries gave their votes were surrounded 
 by a number of his partisans, including several of the 
 former favourers of Catiline, encouraged by the con- 
 sul Piso and headed by Caius Curio, afterwards well 
 known for his zeal in the cause of Cassar, a volup- 
 tuary of notorious character and a bosom friend of 
 the accused. By their means it was contrived, that 
 only such tablets should be presented to the peo- 
 ple as were inscribed with negative characters*. It 
 consequently appeared that the decision of the 
 meeting was against the law, and Fufius, who had en- 
 deavoured to substitute a trial before the prsetors, and 
 chosen judges whom it would not be impossible to 
 bribe, or to overawe, for one before a general conven- 
 tion of citizens, imagined that he should now be able 
 to carry his point. Cato, however, seconded by Hor- 
 tensius, Favonius, and several of the nobility, after 
 indulging in a severe harangue against Piso for his 
 unfair practices, put an end by his interference to the 
 proceedings of the day. The senate firmly adhered to 
 their first resolution, and all things seemed to promise 
 a struggle of no ordinary violence and of some continu- 
 ance between the Clodian faction and their opponents. 
 In the midst of these disputes, Pompey having re- 
 turned with his victorious army from Asia, landed at 
 Brnndusium. His first proceedings on reaching 
 
 * Tabuiseadministrabanturitautnulladaretur " Utirogas." Ad 
 Attic, i. 14. The Roman citizens, when called upon to deliver their 
 votes upon any subject laid before them, passed by centuries into 
 certain inclosuies, called ovilia onepta, over bridges " pontes," at 
 the end of which each person was presented with two tablets, the one 
 inscribed with tlieinitiallettersof the words Uti roffas," Beit as you 
 will,'' the other with the letter A for Antiquo, or ''I am opposed to 
 any innovation." One of these was thrown by each voter inio the 
 cista or chest placed to receive it, and the majority of tablets for or 
 against the measure were taken as the opinion of the wholccentury. 
 See Adam's Roman Antiquities, 8vo., p. 85.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 149 
 
 Italy were watched with considerable anxiety, since 
 it was suspected that he would immediately march 
 with his whole force upon Rome, where the posture 
 of affairs was such that he would have had but little 
 difficulty in raising himself, with the assistance of the 
 redoubted veterans who followed his standards, to 
 absolute power, if such had been his intention. It is 
 questionable, however, with all his ambition and 
 selfishness, his love of authority, and jealousy of its 
 exercise by others, whether despotic dominion, at the 
 expense of the mm of the constitution, was ever the 
 subject of his thoughts. From whatever motive, 
 the liberties of his country, although laid defenceless 
 in his path, were for this time spared. His troops 
 were no sooner disembarked, than they were ordered 
 to disperse, and wait at their respective homes his 
 orders for reassembling under the walls of Rome to 
 adorn the triumph of which he was in expectation. 
 He himself, with but the ordinary retinue of a pro- 
 consul, pursued his way leisurely to the capital, in 
 the suburbs of which he took vip his quarters, until 
 the senate should have come to a determination with 
 respect to the honours he was soliciting. The 
 public were not slow in testifying their sense of his 
 moderation ; but the unanimity of all ranks in lavish- 
 ing every expression of adulation upon him, was not 
 solely to be ascribed to their appreciation of the for- 
 bearance he had exhibited, since, amidst the factions 
 into which the state was beginning every day more 
 distinctly to break up, the partisans of each were 
 anxious to secure the support of so able a patron. 
 By a refined flattery, the meetings of the senate and 
 assemblies of the people were frequently, to do him 
 honour, held at this time without the walls, and the 
 Flaminian circus* was ordinarily the spot selected for 
 the latter purpose. It was in this building that the 
 
 * In the eighth region of the city, and near the Campua Murtius .
 
 150 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 scene took place which has been described by Cicero 
 with so much amusing self-complacency, and which 
 forms the subject of his fourteenth epistle to Atticus. 
 " I fear," he writes, " it would look like affectation* 
 on my part to inform you of the multiplicity of my pre- 
 sent engagements, yet my attention has been latterly 
 so distracted, as scarcely to allow me leisure even for 
 this short epistle. The time I devote to it has, in 
 fact, been snatched from affairs of the greatest mo- 
 ment. Of the nature of Pompey' s first address, I 
 have already informed you: an oration without 
 comfort to the wretched without weight to the 
 wicked unpleasant to the great undignified in the 
 estimation of the good ; so cold and insipid was its 
 character. Immediately after it, Fufius, that most 
 frivolous tribune of the people, at the instigation of 
 the consul, introduced Pompey to the assembly. This 
 took place in the Flaminian circus, which, as it hap- 
 pened to be a market day t, was crowded to excess. 
 The first question proposed to him was, whether he 
 was of opinion that the judges should be appointed 
 by the praetor, and by whose counsel the said praetor 
 was to be directed. This was meant of the sacrilege 
 of Clodius, which had been appointed to be tried by 
 the senate. Pompey in reply made a speech of the 
 most aristocratic tendency, answering, and at some 
 length, that the authority of the senate appeared to 
 him, as it had ever done, on all points of the greatest 
 
 * Vereor ne putidum sit. The very happy rendering of Melmotli. 
 
 f " Erat in eo ipso loco nundinarum Travfiyvpis." In more 
 .ancient times, not only were assemblies of the people forbidden to 
 be held on the nundlnce or market days, but the courts of justice 
 also strictly closed. By the Hortensian law it was afterwards 
 enacted that the prcetors should continue to sit on these days, that 
 justice might be more conveniently rendered to the country people 
 who, on such occasions, came with their produce in great numbers to 
 Rome. This innovation having been made, the regulation re- 
 specting assemblies of the people was less strictly attended to.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 151 
 
 possible weight and importance. He was subse- 
 quently asked by the consul Messala in full senate, 
 what he-thought of the sacrilege and the bill which 
 had been promulgated upon that subject. His answer 
 was a general eulogy upon all the late proceedings 
 of the senators ; and as he sat down at its conclusion, 
 he observed to me that, in his own opinion, he had 
 now satisfactorily replied in relation to these matters. 
 Crassus observing that the applause which followed 
 was given to Pompey on the supposition that the 
 approbation he had expressed was meant to apply to 
 my consulate, then rose, and in the most honourable 
 terms commented upon my conduct in that office, 
 even going so far as to say, that it was owing to me 
 that he was still a senator and citizen; that he 
 owed both life and liberty to my exertions ; and that 
 as often as he beheld his wife, his home, and his 
 country, he was presented with evidences of his 
 obligations towards me. Not to dwell upon^this 
 subject, the whole of that scene of fire and bloodshed 
 which I have been accustomed in different ways to 
 describe (and you well know my style of colouring*) 
 in those orations of which you are the supreme Aris- 
 tarchus, he drew with the utmost force and dignity 
 of expression. I was sitting next to Pompey, and 
 plainly saw that he was moved by what had been 
 said, either because he saw that Crassus thought it 
 worth while to cultivate a friendship which he him- 
 self had neglected, or that my actions had been such 
 as to render the senate willing auditors of my praises : 
 praises too, be it observed, from a person who was 
 under the less obligation to me, inasmuch as he him- 
 self had hitherto been generally treated with slight 
 amidst my commendations of his rival. This day has 
 placed me on the most amicable terms with Crassus. 
 
 * In the original \TjKvQovs, the small vases in -which artists 
 were accustomed to keep their colours.
 
 132 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 From Pompey, moreover, I pretended willingly to 
 receive the compliments which he openly paid me, 
 whatever might have teen his secret sentiments. 
 But as for myself, ye Gods ! in what a manner did 
 I display my powers before my new auditor. If 
 ever harmonious periods well turned expressions 
 profound conception and skilful arrangement have 
 suggested themselves to me, it was on this occasion ; 
 in a word, I drew forth shouts of applause. This 
 was the argument of my discourse : the dignified 
 conduct of the senate the unanimity of the eques- 
 trian order the general tranquillity of Italy the 
 extinction of the remains of the conspiracy the ease 
 and plenty now enjoyed. You know with what 
 pomp of language I am accustomed to treat these 
 topics. I' need say no more, as the clamorous 
 approbation I excited must, ere this, have reached 
 your ears *." 
 
 The senate continued for some time still occupied 
 by the consideration of the sacrilege of Clodius, which 
 they were fully resolved, notwithstanding all oppo- 
 sition from without, to make the subject of a trial 
 before the people. On a fresh motion being made 
 upon the subject, although Clodius had recourse to 
 the most abject supplications to prevent it, it was 
 determined by a majority, nearly in the proportion of 
 four hundred to sixteen, that no business should be 
 entered upon until the necessary bill should be passed. 
 On the other hand, the accused, assisted by Curio, 
 used every means to excite the sympathy of his 
 faction, by frequent harangues against the severity of 
 the senators. The favourers of both parties, from 
 angry words and threats, were proceeding to more 
 
 * Ad Attic, l.xiv. Atticus, who had been in Rome duringCicero's 
 consulate, returned to Greece immediately after its conclusion. 
 The letter of Cicero, recommending him to Antonius, at this time 
 proconsul of Macedonia, is still preserved.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 153 
 
 palpable demonstrations of violence, when Hortensius, 
 fearful of the consequences, interfered with all his 
 influence to obtain the middle expedient of a trial 
 before the praetor. The guilt of Clodius was so notori- 
 ous, that it seemed indifferent what means were taken 
 to bring about his condemnation, and it was openly 
 stated, in the proverbial form of expression then com- 
 monly in use, that even a leaden sword would be suf- 
 ficient to destroy him *. His adversaries, however, 
 were not fortunate in their anticipations. No sooner 
 were the judges appointed, than they were assailed by 
 bribery of the most open description, and in a shape 
 sufficiently manifesting the prevalence of general de- 
 moralisation to a most astonishing extent, if they 
 have not been calumniated by Cicero. The evidence, 
 moreover, at the trial itself, was far more favourable 
 than had been anticipated, since Caesar, who was ex- 
 pected to prove the most formidable witness on the 
 side of the prosecution, appeared the least willing to 
 make any representation which might lead to a con- 
 viction. Immediately after the occurrence on which 
 the indictment was founded, he had, indeed, sent a 
 bill of divorce to his wife, but when called upon to 
 give his open testimony in the cause, he replied, to 
 the utter astonishment of all present, that he was 
 not conscious of having sustained any injury at the 
 hands of Clodius. On being asked why, if such 
 were the case, he had formally divorced Pompeia, he 
 made the well known reply, that the fair fame of the 
 wife of Caesar should not only be unsullied by actual 
 guilt, but uninjured by the slightest shade of sus- 
 picion. The answer had little to recommend it to 
 admiration. Clodius, with a numerous and audacious 
 faction at his back, was too useful an instrument in 
 furthering his aspiring projects, not to be propitiated 
 at any expense ; and there can be no doubt that the 
 
 Ad Attic, i. 16.
 
 154 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 feeling of injury on the part of the dishonoured hus- 
 band was, on this occasion, readily sacrificed to the 
 absorbing principle of ambition. Cicero was more 
 honest in his evidence, although to the detriment of 
 his own interests. Clodius had confidently relied 
 upon being able to establish an alibi, and produced 
 witnesses who, notwithstanding the testimony both 
 of Aurelia and of Julia, the sister of Caesar, as to his 
 presence at the mysteries, confidently swore that he 
 was on that day at Interamna *. This daring per- 
 jury, however, if it could have been believed for a 
 moment, was rendered unavailing by the counter 
 testimony of Cicero, who made oath in his turn, that 
 Clodius had, on the morning of the day in question, 
 paid him a visit in his house on the Palatine Hill. 
 The process, notwithstanding, terminated in favour 
 of the accused, since, of the fifty-six judges, twenty- 
 five alone had the honesty to give sentence against 
 him. The rest presented their tablets inscribed with 
 the character of acquittal t. Fully conscious, how- 
 ever, of the danger into which he had been brought 
 by the unbiassed evidence given in the cause by 
 Cicero, Clodius left the court with a feeling of mortal 
 hatred against bun, which from that hour to the day 
 of his own death was unremoved, and immediately 
 
 * About eighty miles from the city. 
 
 f- In accordance with the general principle recognised at Rome as 
 well as Athens, of passing judgment by ballot, each of the " Judices" 
 was supplied before the trial with three tablets severally inscribed 
 with the letters A, C, and NL, for Absolvo, " I acquit," Con- 
 demno, " I condemn," and Non liquet, " There is not sufficient 
 evidence." One of these, in the same manner as at elections, or 
 the passing of laws by the people, was thrown by the "Judices" into a 
 box or urn, and the praetor on ascertaining, by counting them over, 
 the preponderance of favourable or unfavourable opinions, was 
 enabled to give judgment accordingly. Plutarch states that at the 
 trial of Clodius, the "Judices" erased the letters on their tablets ; an 
 expedient which was sometimes adopted when there was a hazard 
 of offending one of two powerful parties.
 
 THE LTPE OP CICERO. 155 
 
 commenced the series of persecutions against him, the 
 effects of which were severely felt hefore long by the 
 object of their unwearied exercise. In every assem- 
 bly of the people he took means to display the 
 conduct of the late consul, in his suppression of the 
 conspiracy of Catiline, in the worst light, and frequent 
 verbal encounters seem to have taken place upon the 
 subject * between Cicero and his malicious detractor, 
 whose attacks in the senate were answered by a 
 powerful oration against his own character and that 
 of Curio, which is lost f, and certain witticisms, not 
 remarkable for their point or polish, which Cicero 
 in his correspondence has preserved. These, if their 
 merit in other respects is not so obvious, afford, 
 at least, a curious evidence of the extent to which 
 personalities were allowed among those whom ima- 
 gination, and sometimes history, is accustomed to 
 picture as the dignified and majestic counsellors 
 presiding over the destinies of Rome. 
 
 Towards the close of the consulate of Marcus Piso 
 and Valerius Messala, the famous cause of Aulus 
 Licinius Archias was pleaded before Quintus Cicero J, 
 who at that time held the office of praetor at Rome 
 previously to his obtaining the province of Asia, 
 where he continued for the next three years. Archiaa 
 
 * Ad Attic, i. 16. Cum enim ille ad condones fugisset, &c. 
 " For when Clodius had recourse to his popular assemblies, and 
 there made a wicked use of my name, immortal Gods ! what en- 
 counters did I sustain ! What a slaughter did I make ! With what 
 fury did I charge Piso, Curio, and that whole band ! How warmly 
 did I inveigh against the corruption of the old and the intemperance 
 of the young. Often, indeed, did I wish for you, not only as the 
 director of my conduct, but as the spectator of my conquests." 
 Melmoth. 
 
 f A few fragments, with an anonymous commentary, have been 
 lately discovered and published by Angelo Maio. The oration seems 
 to have been replete with biting irony. 
 
 J This interesting fact has been ascertained by an ancient com- 
 mentary upon the oration for Archias, which is among the valuable 
 discoveries effected by the learning and industry of Maio.
 
 156 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 was a native of Antioch, celebrated for his poetical 
 talents, which had recommended him to some of the 
 most distinguished families of Rome, and his name 
 has already occurred in this narration as, in earlier 
 days, the honoured and esteemed instructor of Cicero. 
 A few years before the law of the tribunes Silvanus 
 and Carbo had been passed *, ordaining that all 
 strangers enrolled as citizens by the confederate states 
 should be considered entitled to the privilege of 
 Romans, provided they possessed a habitation in 
 Italy at the time, and gave in their claim to the 
 praetor within sixty days after the date of the edict, 
 he had obtained, by the patronage of Lucullus, and 
 the general sense entertained of his merits t, the 
 freedom of Heraclea in Lucania, by virtue of which 
 he had hitherto passed as a Roman citizen. But the 
 public records of the Heracleans were destroyed in 
 the Social AVar, and, in the deficiency of this evi- 
 dence, he was accused under the Papian law, pro- 
 viding against the assumption of the rights of 
 citizenship by persons unduly qualified. The pro- 
 secutor Gratius founded his indictment upon the 
 several propositions, that he had never been enrolled 
 as a member of their state by the Heracleans, or if 
 so, that he had neither possessed a residence in Italy, 
 nor given in his name within the time appointed to 
 the praetor. Cicero, who readily presented him- 
 self as his advocate, bestowing comparatively little 
 attention upon the refutation of the two latter counts, 
 devoted his principal efforts to establishing by wit- 
 nesses from Heraclea, as well as by the evidence of 
 
 * A. u. c. 664. 
 
 f It has been generally believed, that the merits of Archias as a 
 poet were greatly exaggerated both by Cicero and his contem- 
 poraries in general. Yet, as this opinion is founded only upon the 
 character of a few epigrams in the Anthology, the subject, to say 
 the least of it, is yet open to doubt.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 157 
 
 Lucullus, the fact of his having been formerly pre- 
 sented with the freedom of the place. He then pro- 
 ceeded to argue, that even if Archias was not at the 
 time a citizen of Rome, he richly deserved, by his 
 genius and attainments, to be reckoned as one. 
 
 If we had only been acquainted with the general 
 features of this cause, and if the pleadings of Cicero 
 in connexion with it had altogether perished, ima- 
 gination might have suggested the genius of the ad- 
 vocate as likely to have been roused to no ordinary 
 exertion of its powers, on a subject so much in uni- 
 son both with his taste and feelings. Nor would the 
 supposition have been erroneous. The oration for 
 the poet Archias is one of the most noble tributes 
 ever paid to literature by eloquence; harmonious and 
 seductive, like all other productions of the accom- 
 plished speaker by whom it was delivered, by the 
 singular grace of its style, but possessing, indepen- 
 dently of these extrinsic ornaments, the higher recom- 
 mendation of being but an echo to the true feelings of 
 the orator, and of illustrating a topic which would 
 have given dignity to a less imposing, and interest 
 to a far less skilfully arranged discourse. Amidst 
 the turmoil and bustle of the Forum, and before a 
 crowd of auditors for the most part accustomed only 
 to the cramped arguments and conventional idioms 
 of litigation, it must at least have been produced un- 
 der the double advantages of novelty and contrast, 
 characteristics which seldom fail of ensuring admira- 
 tion under judicious management ; and Cicero himself, 
 whose literary fame will at all times rival, if indeed 
 it is not thought to surpass, his oratorical reputation, 
 seems, in the midst of the feverish course of ambition 
 he was now pursuing, to have seized with avidity the 
 opportunity of showing that his best affections were 
 still fixed upon the more calm delights afforded by 
 those studies which he has so beautifully described ;
 
 158 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 as the sufferer in a calenture is said to have constantly 
 before his eyes, the fresh pastures and cooling streams, 
 from which he is unavoidably debarred. To make 
 mention of any particular parts of this highly finished 
 and perfectly tuned discourse, would be almost to reflect 
 upon others which are equally deserving of praise. Yet 
 few will be unwilling to recal to mind the passages in 
 which he defends his own attachment to pursuits far 
 too rare among many of the eminent men of his time, 
 and eulogises the whole circle of sciences, affirming 
 that all are connected by a common bond, with a re- 
 servation in favour of poetry, which he characterises 
 as a divine afflatus, distinct in its nature and unat- 
 tainable by the ordinary methods of intellectual 
 exertion. " Rocks and deserts," continues the pleader, 
 " find an answer to the human voice even ferocious 
 beasts are influenced and arrested by the sound of 
 song; and shall we, who have been the subjects of the 
 best instructions, remain insensible to the numbers of 
 poets ? The people of Colophon give out that Homer 
 was a native of their city. The Chians prefer the same 
 claim the Salaminians appeal against both in favour 
 of their own island and those of Smyrna confidently 
 point to the temple erected to his honour, as an evi- 
 dence superior to all. Many other cities are fiercely 
 at issue on this subject of contention. Can we, the 
 while such disputes are raised respecting a foreign 
 poet long since dead, reject one yet living, and our 
 own both by his own inclination and the authority 
 of the laws ; one, too, who has devoted all his studies 
 and the full force of his genius to raising and ren- 
 dering celebrated the glory of the Roman name ?"* 
 
 * Pro Archia, viii. ix. Archias, as it may be ascertained from the 
 following part of this oration, imitating the example of Ennius and 
 other metrical annalists, had written in verse the history of the Cim- 
 bric War, by which he was recommended to the favour of Marius, 
 and subsequently the campaigns of Lucullus against Mithridates, 
 which ensured him another powerful patron. It seems to have been
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 159 
 
 This latter argument had, in all probability, a much 
 greater influence in determining the question to the 
 advantage of Archias, than all the evidence produced 
 in his favour ; but by whatever arts his eloquence 
 was principally enforced, the orator had not the mor- 
 tification of finding it to be ineffectual, since it ap- 
 pears that his client was, for the future, allowed to 
 remain in possession of the privileges to which he 
 laid claim, without further opposition. 
 
 In the autumn of this year Pompey enjoyed his 
 third and most splendid triumph over Mithridates, 
 the celebration of which occurred on the twenty- 
 ninth day of September. The day appointed, being 
 also that of his birth, was considered particularly 
 appropriate for the ceremony, which, from its 
 magnificence and imposing circumstances formed, 
 for some time before and after its occurrence, the 
 absorbing topic of conversation at Rome. On the 
 two former occasions he had triumphed over Europe 
 and Africa. The addition of Asia now constituted 
 him, in the eyes of his admirers the conqueror of 
 the whole world; although, with our acquaintance 
 with the immense regions which lay alike beyond his 
 knowledge and his grasp, we may be inclined to smile 
 at the appellation, and he was consequently compared 
 not only to Alexander, but to the more ancient heroes 
 and divinities Bacchus and Hercules. As one day 
 was found wholly insufficient for the pageant, it was 
 extended to the end of the next, and during the whole 
 of that time the eyes of the spectators were dazzled 
 with successive exhibitions of the gorgeous trophies, 
 
 common indeed for all the generals of that age to be attended by an 
 historical laureate, the person who fulfilled the office for Pompey 
 being Theophanes of Mitylene. Cicero, apparently little imagining 
 that his own writings vvould prove his best monument in the eyes 
 of posterity, mentions, that Archias had also begun to celebrate 
 his own consulship, and seems nervously anxious that the poem on 
 the subject should be completed.
 
 160 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 won by the army of the East, or by the more sub- 
 stantial riches which were on the point of being trans- 
 ferred to the public coffers. The territory subdued 
 was with pompous brevity described in the temple 
 of Minerva, afterwards built from a part of the 
 spoils, as the whole region situated between the 
 Meeotic lake and the Red sea, but in the procession 
 the conqueror condescended to enter more into detail, 
 describing himself as having subjected by force of 
 arms, after his suppression of the pirates who had in- 
 fested the Mediterranean sea, the countries of Asia, 
 Pontus, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, 
 Syria, Scythia, Judaea, Albania, Iberia, the island of 
 Crete and the district inhabited by the Bastarnae, as 
 well as having overcome the two powerful monarchs 
 Mithridates and Tigranes ; thus finishing with glory 
 a war of thirty years' duration, and making the pro- 
 vince of Asia, which had been hitherto the extremity, 
 now only the centre of the Roman dominions. One 
 thousand eight hundred cities and fortresses were said 
 to have been reduced, eight hundred and forty-six 
 galleys burned or taken, and two millions of enemies 
 routed, slain, or made prisoners in the field. Among 
 the captives was Aristobulus king of Judaea, the re- 
 presentative of the violated sanctity of the Holy City; 
 a manifest sign of the departure of the Divine pro- 
 tection from which had been exhibited by the pre- 
 sence of the heathen general in the most sacred part 
 of its temple, after he had stormed its ramparts, and 
 deluged its courts with the blood of their defenders. 
 Zozime, wife of the king of Armenia, and Tigranes 
 his son, with the wife and children of the latter, the 
 sister of Mithridates and her five sons, the chiefs of 
 the pirates, and the hostages of the Iberians and 
 Commageni, were also led in bonds before his 
 chariot. The most rare productions of Asia, including 
 the ebony tree of India and the famous balsam plant
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 161 
 
 of Syria, gave variety and increased interest to the 
 spectacle, amidst piles of armour collected from 
 fields of battle, and models of towns acquired by 
 capitulation or assault. The wealth, both in coined 
 money, bullion, and jewels, displayed, introductory to 
 its being deposited in the treasury, was such as 
 might excite doubts of the accuracy of the historians 
 by whom it has been mentioned, were it not at 
 th\e same time remembered, that the riches thus 
 acquired had been accumulating for years under the 
 grasping tyranny of the despotic princes from whom 
 they had been wrested, and that the effect of Roman 
 conquests was generally such as to leave the countries 
 which had dared to offer an ineffectual resistance, drain- 
 ed, to the very utmost, of their resources. To descend to 
 particulars, some of which may be thought to have 
 exhibited a semi-barbaric taste on the part of the 
 conquerors, there was carried in the procession a bust of 
 the triumphant general entirely encrusted with pearls*, 
 a mountain of solid gold encircled by a vine of the same 
 metal, and covered with chased figures of stags, lions, 
 and fruits of different descriptions, a golden moon 
 thirty pounds in weight, thirty-three crowns of 
 pearls, three statues in gold of Mars, Minerva, and 
 Apollo, a chess-board and counters made from two 
 large gems (probably crystal) three feet wide and 
 four long, and several golden cups, vessels, and couches, 
 richly adorned with costly jewelry, among which 
 were borne several of those chalices termed myrrhine, 
 formed from materials now altogether unknown, but 
 so much valued for their beauty as sometimes to be 
 bought at the rate of three hundred talents each. In 
 
 * Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvii. 6, who makes bitter complaints against 
 this luxurious and extravagant use of a gem which had hitherto 
 constituted the ornament of females only. " E margaritis, Mnjrue, 
 tam prodiga re et feminis reperta, quam gerere te fas non sit, hinc 
 fieri tuos vultus," &c. &c. 
 
 M
 
 162 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 addition to this lavish display of precious materials, 
 the abundance of which might well sustain a com- 
 parison with the golden harvest reaped in after ages 
 from the virgin soil of Mexico and Peru by the 
 soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, the sum of twenty 
 thousand talents* was added to the public funds, 
 after a reward of fifteen hundred denarii had been 
 bestowed upon each common soldier, and one pro- 
 portionably greater upon the officers. It was further 
 ascertained, by the tablets presented to the gaze 
 of the populace, that the revenues of the state, 
 which had hitherto amounted to but fifty millions 
 of denarii, were increased by the late conquests to 
 eighty-five millions. 
 
 Such were the circumstances of a pageant which has 
 been ostentatiously recorded as surpassing all before it 
 in splendour, and indicating, to a greater extent than 
 any that had preceded it, the irresistible force of the 
 armies of Rome and . the military genius of their 
 leader. Yet the star of the general, who formed 
 on the occasion the principal object of attraction to 
 the enthusiastic and applauding multitudet the envy 
 
 * About three millions three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, 
 t No English reader can be displeased at being reminded of the 
 
 description, in reference to Pompey's triumphs, placed by Shak- 
 
 speare in the mouth of the tribune Marullus. 
 
 You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! 
 
 O, you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, 
 
 Knew you not Pompey 1 Many a time and oft 
 
 Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, 
 
 To lowers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, 
 
 Your infants in your arms, and there have sat 
 
 The live-long day, with patient expectation, 
 
 To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome : 
 
 And when you saw his chariot but appear, 
 
 Have you not made an universal shout, 
 
 That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, 
 
 To hear the replication of your sounds, 
 
 Made in her concave shores ? &c. 
 
 Jul. CCBS. Act i. sc. I .
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 163 
 
 of the aspiring the wonder of the weak and the 
 idol of the timid, who saw in his elevation a sufficient 
 guarantee for their own safety and that of the 
 republic, seems to have culminated upon this day, 
 in which every kind of incense was offered to his 
 vanity. From henceforth his career was to be cha- 
 racterised, with but few exceptions, by a series of 
 mortifications and perplexities, by a daily decrease of 
 reputation, and a hopeless struggle against a rival 
 possessed of a genius far superior to his own, ending 
 in a downfall disastrous and terrible, in proportion 
 to the greatness of which it formed the instructive 
 termination. The party, however, to which he 
 owed his ultimate ruin were at the present time dis- 
 posed to consider him as their friend the senate 
 and aristocracy, although unable to see what inten- 
 tions were concealed beneath the mask which his 
 cold and artful policy had assumed, were willing to 
 court his favour by every show of outward deference ; 
 and the rival who was destined, at a period yet to come, 
 to hurl him to the dust, was only beginning to prepare 
 himself for the dazzling career allotted to him, by a 
 temporary command in a distant province. At this 
 moment, as Sallust has remarked of Marius upon a 
 similar occasion, the hopes, the expectations, and the 
 desires of his countrymen, were fixed upon himself 
 alone. 
 
 M2
 
 164 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Consulate of Lucius Afranius and Metellus Celer Coalition 
 of Pompey with Clodius First Triumvirate Characters of its 
 Members Cicero composes in retirement bis History of his 
 Consulship Julius Caesar and Calpurnius Bihulus returned 
 Consuls Agrarian Law of the former He is opposed by Cato 
 Adoption of Clodius into the Plebeian Family of Publius Fon- 
 teius Oration of Cicero for Flaccus Clodius elected Tribune 
 Decline of the Influence of Pompey Caesar offers a Commission 
 to Cicero, as his Lieutenant, in the Gallic War Letter of Cicero 
 to his Brother Quintus in Asia Acts brought forward by Clo- 
 dius at the commencement of his Tribuneship His Law against 
 the arbitrary Infliction of Capital Punishment passed by an 
 Assembly of the People Distress of Cicero He applies for 
 Protection to Pompey without effect, and prepares to retire into 
 Exile Expressions of Public Opinion in his Favour He with- 
 draws from Rome. 
 
 THE first exertion of power on the part of Pompey, 
 after his return to Rome, was his procuring the 
 consulship for Lucius Afranius, a candidate of the 
 meanest order of intellect and principle, and only 
 remarkable for his servile devotion to the interests of 
 the patron by whose influence the honour was con- 
 ferred upon him. The election, according to the 
 then prevalent custom, was distinguished by the most 
 unblushing corruption, the purchase-money being 
 distributed to the voters by the agents of Pompey in 
 open day, and in full sight of the citizens. The 
 better disposed part of the community, however, 
 derived some comfort from the character of Quintus 
 Metellus Celer, the colleague of Afranius, who had 
 on many occasions exhibited himself as a true 
 patriot and well-wisher to the interests of his country. 
 His constancy, in the early part of his magistracy, 
 was put to a severe test. The tribune Flavius, having 
 brought forward an Agrarian law, dividing certain 
 lands of Italy among the soldiers of Pompey and the
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 165 
 
 commons of Rome, Mctellus, on opposing it to the 
 utmost of his power, was committed to prison by 
 Flavins, and when the greater part of the Senate 
 attempted to accompany the consul to his confine- 
 ment, the tribune, having placed his chair before 
 the prison door, peremptorily forbade their approach. 
 Such facts confound the jurist who attempts 
 accurately to analyse the constitution of Rome. 
 They might, at the same time, lead any one 
 entering upon this field of historical research to 
 deny the possibility of the existence of any govern- 
 ment administered by powers so diametrically opposed 
 and so ill defined in their extent and limits, were it 
 not remembered that the anomalous authority of the 
 tribunitial office, if not neutralised by the existence 
 of different opinions among the body of men invested 
 with it, as was frequently the case, was at all times 
 almost entirely directed by the public opinion, to which 
 it owed its existence, and of which it was the mere 
 instrument. The indignation of the citizens was so 
 strongly expressed on this occasion, that Flavins was 
 speedily obliged to release the magistrate he had 
 insulted, whose reputation was in consequence raised 
 to a still higher pitch. Cicero spoke upon the Agra- 
 rian law of Flavius* cautiously and ambiguously, as 
 was necesary on so delicate a subject, the more 
 especially as the bill was backed by the authority of 
 Pompey. In consequence of his proposals of making 
 certain alterations and exceptions which would make 
 it necessary to re-model it to a great extent, and of 
 the intervention of more important subjects of consi- 
 deration, it appears that the bill was ultimately aban- 
 doned. 
 
 In order to ensure the election of Afranius, Pompey, 
 as the only means of securing the interest of the 
 party acting under his influence, had been obliged to 
 
 * Ad Attic, i. 12.
 
 166 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 enter into a partial coalition with Clodius, although 
 he had for some time affected in public so close an 
 intimacy with his rival, as to be jestingly designated 
 among the multitude by the name of Cneius Cicero*. 
 He was received with open arms by the turbulent 
 faction with whose movements he thus began to be 
 identified, but soon found himself prized by his new 
 allies, as all must expect to be who act as traitors to 
 their own convictions and principles, from the hope 
 of self-aggrandisement. Encouraged by his support, 
 and by his own growing importance among his par- 
 tisans, Clodius now openly aimed at the tribuneship, 
 and began, in conjunction with Herenniust, who was 
 himself tribune of the people at the time, to agitate the 
 plan which he afterwards carried into effect, of causing 
 himself to be adopted into a plebeian family, for the 
 purpose of rendering himself eligible to the office. 
 
 The consequences of such a step to Cicero might 
 easily have been foreseen, but no attempt was made 
 on his part to avert them, by concessions to his 
 enemy. On the contrary, he seems to have taken 
 every opportunity of provoking him, by the exercise 
 of that sarcastic wit which he was never able to 
 restrain, with whatever mischievous results to him- 
 self it might appear likely to be attended J. The 
 
 * Ad Attic, lib. i. 16. f Ad Attic, i. 19. 
 
 | An instance of this is given, Ad Attic, ii. 1. Ille antem 
 non simulat, sed plane tribunus plebis fieri cupit, &c. " As to Clodius 
 he now solicits, without any mask, for the tribuneship of the peo- 
 ple. When the matter came before the senate I confounded the 
 fellow, censured his inconstancy in standing for the tribuneship of 
 Rome, when, but the other day, he declared, in Sicily, he would 
 stand for the aedileship. I said that we had no real reason to be 
 alarmed, since he would, in the character of a plebeian, have no 
 more opportunity for distressing his country than the patricians, 
 whose example he followed under my consulship. In the next 
 place, having understood that he had bJoasted in an assembly of the 
 people of having come to Rome in seven days from the straits of 
 Sicily, and that he had entered the city by night to prevent the crowd
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 167 
 
 increasing power of Clodius was not the only gloomy 
 prognostic by which the political horizon at Rome 
 was at this time darkened. At home the state was 
 again agitated by disputes between the senate and 
 the equestrian order, partly on account of the real or 
 imputed mal-adrninistration by the latter of the 
 public revenues, of which they were the farmers, and 
 partly on account of the partiality shown by the 
 judges in the recent case of Clodius. The common 
 people, on the other hand, looked suspiciously upon 
 both, and, under the guidance of unprincipled leaders, 
 who maintained their ascendancy over them by 
 flattering their most extravagant desires, were ready 
 for any overt act of violence, which might lead to 
 the perplexity of the ruling orders. Abroad appear- 
 ances were such as daily to threaten the beginning of 
 a Gallic war, a word at all times unmusical to 
 Roman ears ; since the Helvetii were known to be 
 making preparations for the expedition in which 
 they were afterwards discomfited by the genius of 
 Caesar, while the Sequani and the ^Edui were rising 
 in arms to oppose them. On all sides the elements 
 of discord lay thickly scattered, and only required tin- 
 direction and arrangement of minds sufficiently 
 powerful and determined to discharge their fury in a 
 tempest of terrible strength and duration, upon a 
 state ill qualified, from the effects of still recent dis- 
 turbances, to withstand the shock. 
 
 who were to come out to meet him, I said there was nothing 
 strange in a man's coming in seven days from Sicily to Rome, 
 when, in three hours, he could come and go from Rome to Inter- 
 amna ; that it was not the first time he had entered the city by 
 night; and that nobody hy going out to meet him had obstructed 
 his approach when they ought to have done it most." Melmolh. 
 The pun, however, contained in the last clause, ' ; non esse ittim 
 obviam, ne turn quidem, cum iri maxime debuit," has hardly been 
 clearly translated, and is, perhaps, untranslateable. "Had placed 
 themselves in his way," will, perhaps, convey in some measure the 
 double meaning of the writer.
 
 163 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 From this year, in fact, is generally dated the com- 
 mencement of that well known and fatal struggle, 
 which, after a long series of alternations, marked by 
 the desolation both of Italy and its tributary pro- 
 vinces ; the sacrifice of thousands of lives, including 
 many of the noblest and best of the age ; the annihi- 
 lation of most of the established forms of the consti- 
 tution ; and, what was worse, of the little principle 
 which remained amongst its members, ended by 
 precipitating the state into the most frightful condi- 
 tion of government recorded in the pages of authentic 
 history. Like many other contentions, the last to 
 which the Republic was exposed, originated in a 
 secret league and compact between its most powerful 
 citizens. Similar combinations for the purposes of 
 self-aggrandisement might have taken place before, 
 with comparatively little injury to the constitution ; 
 but the name of THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE warns the 
 student of the annals of Rome to prepare to bid farewell 
 to that outward form and semblance of liberty, which, 
 to whatever extent the reality might have been absent, 
 had, up to this time, continued to haunt the ruins of 
 the more equitable institutions of preceding periods, 
 and, from henceforth, to look for nothing but the 
 exhibition of arbitrary power, either on its ascendant 
 or fully established, with its pretensions as well as 
 its exercise, its continuance no less than its origin, 
 based only upon the aid and countenance of military 
 force. Yet, as the rise of so stupendous a fabric was 
 majestic and imposing, so neither was its decline 
 without dignity, nor its ruin unaccompanied by cir- 
 cumstances well calculated to insure the attention 
 and interest of all ages. In almost every particular 
 the stern principle of impartial retribution may 
 clearly be traced. The sword which had made so 
 many regions desolate, and so many cities tenantless, 
 was now for years to be red with civil slaughter ; and
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 169 
 
 the hands, which had so long been employed in 
 forging chains for subject kingdoms, on the point of 
 being yielded to the manacles of domestic tyranny 
 and oppression. The fierce soldiery who had been 
 employed as the instruments of effecting conquest 
 and spoliation abroad, were themselves about to 
 rivet and render indissoluble the yoke of degrad- 
 ing bondage at home ; and the title of Roman, 
 hitherto a sound of distinction and terror in three 
 quarters of the globe, was soon to signify the 
 meanest and most abject of slaves, whose pos- 
 sessions and very existence depended upon the mood 
 of a gloomy misanthrope, a brutal sensualist, or 
 even of a capricious maniac, unfortunately invested 
 with the substance, as well as the ensigns of imperial 
 power. 
 
 These results, if they had been predicted, would 
 probably have been considered as on a level with the 
 wildest and most improbable creations of imagination, 
 at the time when Ctesar, having returned from his 
 province of Spain, entered, in conjunction with Crassus 
 and Pompey, into the short-lived confederacy pro- 
 ductive of such disastrous consequences to themselves, 
 as well as to the liberties of their country. The 
 motives actuating each have been briefly yet expres- 
 sively stated by an ancient writer, who has asserted 
 that the object of the first was to acquire power, 
 that of the second to retain, and that of the third to 
 increase 'it. Thus influenced, the parties to this 
 dangerous conspiracy agreed to lay aside their mutual 
 jealousies, and to devote all their efforts to the pro- 
 motion of each other's interests. No office of conse- 
 quence was to be allowed to be conferred upon any 
 individual without their sanction, nor any rival to 
 stand opposed to the advancement of one without 
 drawing upon himself the resentment of the rest. 
 The very terms of the coalition argued its speedy
 
 170 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 dissolution ; yet on whatever basis it might have been 
 arranged, but one issue could have been expected 
 from the characters of those of whom it was com- 
 posed, and the ends to which it was intended to be 
 subservient. 
 
 If an attempt were made accurately, to delineate 
 the principal actors in the first part of that drama, 
 of which Pharsalia, Philippi, and Actium were sub- 
 sequent scenes, the powers of the biographer or 
 historian might, perhaps, hardly be considered taxed 
 to any great degree of exertion in placing the promi- 
 nent qualities either of Pompey or of Crassus before 
 his readers. The former appears to have been ren- 
 dered great at least as much by favourable circum- 
 stances as by his own talents. His military exploits 
 were indeed considerable, but with the resources 
 entrusted to his hands he could scarcely have effected 
 less ; and his highest praise may be expressed by the 
 assertion, that he never acted below them. The 
 army, to the command of which he succeeded in 
 early youth, had been thoroughly trained and disci- 
 plined by his father Strabo, a general of no . light 
 merit, and was, probably, in all points superior to 
 the ill united troops of the Marian faction; who fought 
 under all the dispiriting impressions produced by the 
 want of a suitable leader to supply the place of their 
 celebrated chief, and the consciousness that they were 
 engaged in a sinking cause. His campaigns in Spain 
 proved that he was no match for Sertorius, (who, 
 indeed, seems only to have required a more extensive 
 field for the display of his talents, to rank with the 
 first generals of antiquity,) since, until the as- 
 sassination of that celebrated partisan by Perpenna, 
 the event of the war continued to waver in the 
 balance, notwithstanding all the advantages possessed 
 by the forces of the senate. With the prodigious 
 armament placed under his command, bearing with
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 171 
 
 it the flower of the military force of Rome, it was no 
 difficult matter to sweep the Mediterranean of the 
 marauding squadrons by which it was infested; and 
 the effeminate Asiatics, led into the field by Mithri- 
 dates and Tigranes, seem, under the effect produced 
 by the previous victories of Lucullus, and their own 
 cowardice, to have subsequently offered only such a 
 resistance as might have shamed even the victors 
 themselves to encounter. The praise of readiness, 
 of celerity, and of great personal daring, cannot, 
 indeed, be denied him, nor the power of acquiring 
 the confidence of those under his command ; but in 
 none of his operations do we distinguish that exten- 
 sive power of combination, that almost intuitive 
 perception of the designs of his antagonist, with that 
 aptitude in making arrangements for encountering 
 and obviating unfavourable contingencies long before 
 their occurrence, which render a mastery in the art 
 of war, mischievous as, in most cases, it may be, one of 
 the most difficult of human attainments. His judg- 
 ment, although in general sufficiently shrewd and 
 piercing on those points in which his interests were con- 
 cerned, does not appear to have been of the highest 
 order, nor his moral qualities such as to dazzle and en- 
 sure the admiration of his countrymen. Above all, he 
 seems to have been deficient in the most essential art 
 towards ensuring success as a popular leader the 
 art of disguising the profound selfishness on which such 
 a character is too often based, and which, certainly, 
 formed a prominent feature of his own. His eloquence 
 appears not to have risen much above the level of 
 that possessed by almost every Roman ; and his 
 stately frigidity of manner, producing the necessary 
 disadvantage with which it is accompanied to all 
 who indulge in such a carriage, of speedily reducing 
 the affection of those best disposed towards them to 
 the same temperature, may also be considered as
 
 172 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 auguring a consciousness of the want of those higher 
 intellectual resources, which, being sufficient in 
 themselves to excite and to keep alive the wonder of 
 others, enable their possessor to dispense with any 
 outward assumption of superiority. Crassus, although 
 inferior to Pompey in the extent and lustre of his 
 services, as well as his abilities for war, and unsur- 
 rounded by the splendour of foreign conquests and 
 triumphs, was yet his superior in some respects, and 
 his equal in many more. In the field he had proved 
 himself at least an officer superior to any of those 
 who had been sent before him with the command 
 against Spartacus. At the bar he was known as an 
 eminent pleader, thoroughly acquainted with the 
 theory and practice of the then existing system of 
 jurisprudence, and endeared to a numerous class of 
 citizens, as well by his readiness to undertake the 
 cause of the poorest who claimed his assistance, as by 
 the general affability of his deportment. His immense 
 wealth, at the same time, ensured him the command 
 over thousands among the necessitous, towards whom 
 he acted, probably from interested motives, as a con- 
 siderate and liberal creditor. He was not unversed 
 in the study of philosophy and literature himself, nor 
 incapable of valuing it in others; yet, his inordinate 
 and insatiable avarice was sufficient to have obscured 
 a far greater number of good qualities than he at any 
 time possessed, and rendered those to which he could 
 actually lay claim, often insufficient to shield him 
 from the contempt and dislike of his countrymen. It 
 was this vice, which producing, when indulged by 
 him, as disastrous effects as ambition in the case of 
 other men, caused him to countenance, if he did not 
 aid, the first designs of Catiline ; to conspire after- 
 wards, with more dangerous confederates, against the 
 freedom of Rome ; and, finally, to stain the sands of 
 Parthia with the blood of nearly seven legions, and to
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 173 
 
 add the fasces of a Roman proconsul to the trophies 
 of the Arsacidse. 
 
 But rising far above botli his compeers, the third 
 and greatest member of the first triumvirate presents 
 a character which it would require no limited skill in 
 moral analysis to appreciate, and no ordinary power 
 of language accurately to define. The consummate 
 general the accomplished writer the ardent lover 
 of literature and philosophy, blending 
 
 " The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword," 
 
 to a greater extent than any one occupying a similar 
 station in ancient or modern times generous alike 
 in friendship and enmity devoid neither of the 
 gentler affections, nor of the refinements of perfect 
 courtesy possessed of an eloquence, which, if he 
 had not been a contemporary of Cicero, would have 
 ensured him the reputation of being the first orator 
 of his age, and of a wit, in which, if he had often 
 allowed himself to exercise it, he would have been 
 left without a rival with a genius as versatile as it 
 was various ; and capable of turning from the most 
 abstruse subject of investigation, or from the produc- 
 tion of those models of military history, which are 
 unfortunately the only remaining monuments of its 
 power, to the lighter task of humorous and satiric 
 composition, with equal readiness and success the 
 idol of his soldiers in the field, and no less beloved 
 by the lower orders at home with unbounded power 
 of application to business, yet no unwillingness, if 
 fitting opportunities were offered, to enter into the 
 amusements, and sometimes the prevalent dissipation 
 of the time, and to win those to his interest by a 
 companionship in pleasure, whom he was unable to 
 gain by more direct means such, in general terms, 
 was the fated and gifted individual who now began 
 to attract the gaze of his countrymen, like the bright
 
 174 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 but eccentric luminary which was chosen by his 
 successors as his emblem, but portending, much more 
 truly than any such fancied harbinger of coming mis- 
 chief, disorder, bloodshed, and ruin to the nation 
 over which his baleful influence was extended. More 
 recent times may have exhibited his equal in the 
 management of armed masses, the .disposition of 
 battles, and the rapid and skilful movements by 
 which victories are both ensured and improved ; 
 and although we are without very specific data for 
 judging upon the subject, we may also easily imagine 
 that he has not been without a rival in his mastery 
 over popular assemblies, and in bending to his own 
 interests the wills and inclinations of men ; but a 
 character combining his military abilities with his 
 talent as a political leader, his skill in debate, his 
 literary attainments, his winning manners, his pro- 
 found judgment, and ready address, is to be sought, 
 if ever destined to exist, among the actors in ages 
 yet to come. Notwithstanding the calamitous effect, 
 moreover, of the ambition by which his better qua- 
 lities were obscured, his unhesitating sacrifice of 
 all considerations, but such as were likely to lead 
 to his advance to despotic power, the misery of 
 which he was the direct inflictor in his own time, 
 and the still greater amount of after wretchedness of 
 which he was more remotely the agent, he has 
 succeeded better than any equally unprincipled con- 
 queror and destroyer of his species, in ensuring the 
 regard and sympathy of succeeding generations. His 
 clemency, his generosity, and magnanimity towards 
 those who survived his attempt upon absolute 
 dominion and its success, have effaced, to a great 
 extent, the recollection of the thousands who perished 
 in the previous struggle*, and amidst the blaze of 
 
 * Montesquieu, (Grandeur et Decadence dcs Romains, chap, x.) 
 observes, with uiore shrewdness than charity, on this subject :
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 175 
 
 his splendid endowments, the horrors by which their 
 exhibition was accompanied have been almost, if not 
 altogether, forgotten. 
 
 It is remarkable that all the members of the 
 first triumvirate were, in the more early part 
 of their aspiring career, rivals for the favour of 
 the common people. Remote from these stood 
 the party of the senators and patricians, the Catuli, 
 Hortensii, and other members of noble houses, 
 rallied by the iron integrity and stoical patriotism of 
 their leader Cato, and presenting a firm front to the 
 innovations with which they were threatened, and 
 the daily defections of many of their own body to 
 the opposite cause. This was the faction to which 
 Pompey afterwards had recourse, and which, as the 
 former partisan of Sylla, he should never have de- 
 serted to contest the pre-eminence with his rival on 
 ground exclusively the property of the latter ; since 
 Caesar, besides his claim upon their affections derived 
 from his relationship to their well remembered leader, 
 had won the regards of the Marian, or popular fac- 
 tion, by boldly re-erecting, at the hazard of his own 
 personal safety, the trophies over the Cimbri which 
 Sylla had ordered to be thrown down, and by bring- 
 ing to a severe reckoning, while prsetor, the most 
 active agents in the cruelties of the ferocious dicta- 
 tor. Cicero, although sounded by the emissaries of 
 Caasar, with a view to ascertaining the possibility of 
 inducing him to accede to an alliance with himself 
 and his new colleagues, studiously kept aloof from 
 every party ; either led by his vanity into a fear of 
 compromising his own high standing in the republic, 
 
 " Cesar pardonna a tout le monde ; mais H ne seuible que la mode- 
 ration que 1'on montre apres qu'on a tout usurpe ne merite pas de 
 grandes louanges." The example is at least one which lias not been 
 very frequently followed, and it \vould have been quite as easy, 
 and far more safe, to have imitated the conduct of Sylla, when 
 possessed of the same power.
 
 176 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 by acting in any other character than that of the 
 principal in whatever he was engaged*, or from an 
 insight into the pernicious tendency of all such com- 
 binations. During the consulate of Metellus and 
 Afranius, and in the early part of the succeeding 
 year, his letters indicate that he passed a considerable 
 part of his time at his villas near Antium, Arpinum, 
 Pompeii, and Formiae, employed principally in the 
 composition .of the history of his consulship in the 
 Greek language, and in celebrating the same event 
 in Latin verse. After sending the formert, with his 
 consular orations, on which he had bestowed his final 
 corrections, to his friend Atticus, who had also, on 
 his part, finished a work on this inexhaustible sub- 
 ject, for his opinion, he transmitted it to Posidonius* 
 of Rhodes, a philosopher whose answer sufficiently 
 proves that he was a true member of the compli- 
 mentary school of criticism. In one of his epistles, 
 written from Rome, he endeavours to compose a 
 difference which had arisen between Atticus and his 
 
 * Shakspeare, whose knowledge of mankind seems to have 
 amounted to little less than absolute intuition, in the very limited 
 notice he has bestowed upon Cicero, has seized at once upon this 
 most characteristic feature in his disposition, in the scene in which 
 the conspiracy against Caesar is formed. 
 
 Cassius. But what of Cicero ? shall we leave him out ? 
 
 Casca. Let us not leave him out. 
 
 Cinna . No, by no means . 
 
 Metellus. O let us have him ; for his silver hairs 
 Will, purchase us a good opinion, 
 And buy men's voices to commend our deeds. 
 It shall be said, his judgment ruled our hands, 
 Our youths and wildness shall no wit appear, 
 But all be buried in his gravity. 
 
 Brutus. O name him not, let us not break with him, 
 For he will never follow any thing 
 That other men begin. 
 
 Julius Cues. Act 2, Scene 1 . 
 
 f Ad Attic, i. 20, ii. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 177 
 
 brother Quintus*. In another, lie complains bitterly 
 of the indifference of the great body of the patricians to 
 subjects of vital importance to the well-being of the 
 state, and represents them, no doubt with strict regard 
 to truth, as paying far more attention to stocking their 
 fish-pondst, and teaching their mullets to feed from 
 their hands, than to their duties as statesmen. In a 
 third, written from AntiumJ, a place of retirement 
 in which he seems to be luxuriating in his temporary 
 freedom from public anxieties, and giving himself up 
 to a state of listless enjoyment, he expresses a desire 
 
 * Ad Attic, i. 17. The difference in question appears to have 
 arisen from the refusal of Atticus to accompany Quintus Cicero, 
 into his province of Asia, as his legate. The whole of the beauti- 
 ful letter upon the subject is well worthy perusal, as one of the 
 inost finished compositions in the epistolary writings of Cicero. 
 One passage, "vidienim, vidi penitusque perspcxi," which breathes 
 the very spirit of friendship, although it is impossible to do justice 
 to the original, has been elegantly translated by Mel moth. 
 " Amidst the various vicissitudes of my life, I have witnessed, be- 
 lieve me I have witnessed, your joys and anxieties for me. Often 
 have your kind compliments upon my success added to my pleasure ; 
 often have your consolations in my trouble taken from iny pain. But 
 now, while you are absent, irreparable is my loss, not only for your 
 excellent ad vice, but for those entertainments which your conversation 
 afforded me. Need 'I notice to you the state of public affairs? a 
 subject in which I can never permit myself to be remiss. Need I 
 mention my employments in the Forum ? to which I have been 
 hitherto led in my pursuit of public honours, and which I now 
 pursue, that I may maintain the dignity to which they have raised 
 me. Need I mention my domestic concerns ? in which I was so 
 much at a loss, both before and after the departure of my brother, 
 for you and your advice. In short, it is incompatible with my 
 toil, with my rest, with my business, with my pleasure, with my 
 affairs in the Forum, with my affairs in the family, with my public, 
 with my private concerns, that I should be longer without your 
 endearing counsels, your highly valued conversations." 
 
 t" Ad Attic, i. 1. The extravagance of the Roman nobility, in 
 this respect, is sufficiently known. The piscina, or fish-ponds, were 
 often large salt-water lakes, formed and stocked at immense expense. 
 See Pliny Hist. Nat. ix. Ixxix Ixxxii. 
 
 J Ad Attic, ii. 5. 
 
 Ad Attic, ii. 4. Sic enim sum complcxus otiiiui, ut ab eo 
 N
 
 178 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 to visit Egypt at some future time, and relieve him- 
 self, by an absence from his country, from the disgust 
 occasioned by his contemplation of the existing state 
 of public affairs. Yet he quotes the language of 
 Hector in the Iliad*, expressing his shame of the 
 censure of his countrymen, and above all, that of 
 Cato, whom he represents as his Polydamas, if he 
 should forsake his post at so important a crisis ; and 
 asks : " What, in such a case, would be the opinion 
 of historians, with respect to my conduct, six hundred 
 years hence ?" In most of hisepistles Clodius is assailed 
 with an earnestness, which indicates that uncompro- 
 mising enemy to have become no trifling object of 
 dread. He mentions, also, his having projected a 
 geographical work, which he probably never com- 
 pleted. "With these exceptions, his correspondence, 
 until his return to Rome in the summer of the 
 year 694 A. u. c., possesses little attraction. 
 
 According to his previous arrangement with Pom- 
 pey and Crassus, Caesar now stood for the consulship. 
 With the support of two such aids, his success was 
 little less than certain. He was accompanied by both 
 to the place of election, and his return was effected 
 without further trouble. But the senate had suffi- 
 cient interest left to ensure at the same time the ap- 
 pointment of Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, a patrician 
 entirely devoted to their interests. Between magis- 
 trates so opposite in their sentiments, it was not 
 
 divelli non queam, &c. *' I aui grown so fond of the leisure I enjoy 
 that I cannot without violence he separated from it. 1 therefore 
 amuse myself with my books, of which I have a great number at 
 Antium, or I count the waves, for the season is too tempestuous for 
 fishing, and I have no inclination to write." Melmoth. 
 * Iliad, vi. 442. 'Ai8s'o//ai Tpwas Kul TpaaSas e\Ke(nire7rAous, &c. 
 How would the sons of Troy in arms renown'd, 
 And Troy's proud dames whose garments sweep the ground, 
 Attaint the lustre of my former name, 
 Should Hector basely quit the field of fame Pope.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 179 
 
 to be expected that there could be any long con- 
 tinuance of harmony ; and the Roman public were 
 speedily called upon to witness their contentions. 
 Caesar entered upon his office, resolved upon making- 
 use of the ordinary methods of conciliating the popu- 
 lace, and speedily brought forward an Agrarian law, 
 and a bill for a distribution of corn, as an earnest of 
 his intentions in their favour. Cato, according to his 
 custom, opposed it in conjunction witli Bibulus, and 
 the dispute rose to such a pitch, that Caesar at length, 
 by an unwarrantable exertion of power, ordered 
 his inflexible opponent to prison. With his usual 
 dignity, Cato arose and obeyed the mandate without 
 remonstrance, being followed in mournful silence by 
 great numbers of the senate. The expedient, how- 
 ever, which seemed likely to produce so little effect, 
 was not carried fully into execution, since Caesar, who 
 had a sufficient sense of justice left to be ashamed of his 
 conduct, and was besides conscious that his reputation 
 was not likely to be increased by it, ordered one of the 
 tribunes to interfere in behalf of Cato, and to rescue 
 him from the hands of the officers, to whose custody 
 he had been entrusted, before he should reach the 
 place of confinement. At a subsequent assembly of the 
 people, the conduct of the triumvirate was equally 
 arbitrary. On this occasion, Caesar presenting him- 
 self openly between Pompey and Crassus, inquired 
 of both in the presence of the multitude, whether 
 they were disposed to think favourably of his new 
 laws, and on being answered in the affirmative, fur- 
 ther asked of Pompey, whether in the event of his being- 
 prevented from carrying them out, he would come 
 to his assistance, and received for reply the assurance 
 that he would not only hasten to his relief, but that 
 against those who assailed him with the sword, he 
 would interpose both sword and shield. This was no 
 idle threat, since when the last assembly was held 
 N 2
 
 ISO THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 to ascertain the public decision with respect to his 
 laws, the Forum was filled by Pompey with a crowd 
 of armed retainers, who on the appearance of Bibulus 
 accompanied by Lucullus and Cato, loaded them 
 with insult, and after contemptuously breaking the 
 fasces of the unpopular consul, drove both himself 
 and his train from the spot. The Agrarian bill, 
 which related to the division of certain lands in 
 Campania, was then passed without further oppo- 
 sition. The nobility, for the most part, dismayed 
 and dispirited by these outward indications of a 
 coalition which boded no good to themselves, were 
 by the last stroke now almost entirely deterred from 
 the feeble resistance they had lately been encouraged 
 by Cato to maintain ; being apparently deprived of 
 all hope that the union against them would prove but 
 transient, by the marriage of Julia, the daughter of 
 Caesar, to Pompey, who had some time before, with 
 sufficient cause, divorced his former wife Mucia, the 
 sister of Metellus Celer. 
 
 The final adoption of Clodius into the plebeian fa- 
 mily of Publius Fonteius, after it had been long de- 
 layed, was another ill omen to the aristocracy. Csesar, 
 nowthe great agent in every public event of importance, 
 is said to have been the principal promoter of this also, 
 provoked by certain reflections upon the character of 
 the times, which had fallen from Cicero in a public 
 court of justice while speaking in favour of his 
 former colleague Caius Antonius. This noted cha- 
 racter conducting himself in his province of Mace- 
 donia much as he had done at Rome, was, on his 
 return, impeached and condemned to banishment, 
 and it was in endeavouring to mitigate the general 
 odium against him, that Cicero made use of terms 
 which those who reported them to Ceesar repre- 
 sented as intended to convey a censure upon himself*. 
 
 * Pro Domo sua, xvi.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 181 
 
 His part was taken upon the instant, and it is said 
 that within three hours after the obnoxious words 
 had been uttered, all preparations were made for the 
 adoption of Clodius, which was effected the same 
 day, by the ceremony called " Arrogatio*." This 
 consisted in summoning a general assembly of the 
 thirty curiae, into which the citizens resident in Rome 
 were divided, and submitting to their pleasure, whe- 
 ther the person wishing to be transferred into another 
 family should be allowed the privilege he desired. 
 The auspices were at the same time carefully taken 
 by the pontifices ; and it is recorded to the no small 
 disgrace of Pompey that, on this occasion, he assisted 
 in making the necessary observations. A terrible 
 adversary was thus let loose against Cicero, since 
 Clodius, the moment he found himself free from the 
 trammels of his patrician descent, began to exert 
 himself with the utmost diligence to secure his return 
 as tribune of the people at the approaching comitia, 
 and the immediate consequences of his attaining such 
 a position it was not difficult to conjecture, as well 
 from his well known character, as from the threats 
 of vengeance to which he had long accustomed him- 
 self openly to give utterance. 
 
 Whatever his real feelings of apprehension might 
 be, Cicero pretended perfect indifference to this serious 
 demonstration against him in a quarter from which 
 everything was to be dreaded. Without giving 
 himself the trouble to divert the tempest by taking 
 an active part in public affairs, or endeavouring to 
 enlist a party in his defence, he seems to have rested 
 
 * The form of the Arrogatio may be found in Aulus Gelliu*, 
 Nodes Attica:, v. 19. The ceremony was only used when the 
 person to be adopted was of age, and his own master. In the 
 case of minors, the transfer from one family to another, which 
 was then termed " adoptio" or "adoptatio," was performed before 
 the prsctor, and was preceded by emancipation performed in the 
 usual manner, " per ses et libram."
 
 182 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 secure in the protection of Pompey, with whom he 
 now endeavoured to unite himself still more closely, 
 and from whom he seems to have received the strongest 
 assurances of assistance if it should be required. He 
 was, however, far from being idle in the Forum, as 
 is proved by his defence of Flaccus, who was accused 
 by Decimus Lselius of extortion in the province of 
 Asia, in which he had acted as propraetor. From 
 this oration we learn, that he had also, in the former 
 part of the year, twice spoken in a prior cause, that 
 of Aulus Thermus, and that his client was acquitted 
 in consequence of his exertions and eloquence. His 
 speech in behalf of Flaccus is remarkable for little 
 else than the ingenuity with which he attempts to 
 invalidate the testimony of the Asiatic Greeks by an 
 attack upon the veracity of their race indiscrimi- 
 nately, and upon their own branch of it in particular. 
 To modern readers one count in the indictment 
 against the proprietor, charging him with having 
 forbidden the exportation of gold by the Jews of his 
 province to the temple at Jerusalem, cannot be indif- 
 ferent. The orator, in his vainglorious confidence in 
 the stability of his own nation, and his pride in the 
 recent conquest of Pompey, takes the opportunity, 
 when treating upon this subject of accusation, of ap- 
 pealing to the event of war as having determined the 
 relatiA T e power of the Jewish and Roman religions. 
 The whole system of the former he designates, with 
 the usual careless contempt of his nation with respect to 
 a matter on which they had never deigned to make 
 inquiries, a barbarous superstition; and observes, 
 with grave sarcasm, that the fact of its residence 
 having been conquered and enslaved, was a sufficient 
 proof of the degree of favour in which it was held by 
 the immortal Gods*. Flaccus having been instru- 
 mental as praetor in the seizure of the Allobroges at 
 
 * Pro Flaccoj xviii.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 183 
 
 the Milvian bridge during the Catilinarian conspi- 
 racy, the opportunity was of course not suffered to 
 escape by Cicero of introducing, by way of an apo- 
 strophe *, his usual description of the threatened 
 horrors of the conflagration and massacre from which 
 the state had been delivered by his activity. He at 
 the same time expressed, in no ambiguous terms, his 
 own perfect consciousness of the tempest which was 
 about to burst upon his head in consequence of the 
 part he had taken on that occasion t. 
 
 The indications of its approach were by this time 
 sufficiently numerous to be obvious to an observer 
 far less clear-sighted than himself. Bibulus having in 
 despair abandoned the course he had at first pursued, 
 and left, after a feeble opposition, the field entirely to 
 his antagonists, Clodius, by the interest of Caesar, 
 was borne on the full tide of a faction now completely 
 triumphant, to the office of which he had so long- 
 been ambitious, and declared, to the dread and dis- 
 satisfaction of the uninfected part of the community, 
 tribune elect. The consular comitia were equally 
 unfavourable to the true interests of the state, since 
 they ended in the return of Aulus Gabinius and 
 Lucius Calpurnius Piso, two candidates of as aban- 
 doned a character as ever aspired to the honour. 
 Pompey, who had hitherto been little behind Cajsar 
 in obsequiousness to the seditious partisans of Clodius 
 . and Curio, now began bitterly to repent of the false 
 step he had taken, on finding himself, instead of 
 meeting with the honours he had expected, led about 
 in triumph by the faction to whom he had made so 
 many sacrifices, and publicly exhibited as a trophy 
 of its success. He had not even the consolation of 
 
 * O nox ilia ! quse psene seternas huic urbi tenebras attulisti, &c. 
 Pro Flacco, xli. 
 
 ) At nox ilia quam iste est dies consecutus, fausta huic uvbi, 
 miserum me, metuo ne funesta nobis. Pro Flacco, xli.
 
 184 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 securing the popularity of which he was ambitious 
 in return for his concessions. At a public show of 
 gladiators, of which he was himself the exhibitor, he 
 was hissed by the whole assembly *. And at the 
 dramatic performances of the Apollinarian games, the 
 tragedian Diphilus was compelled, amidst an uproar 
 of applause, to repeat over and over again every 
 passage which could be construed as containing an 
 insinuation against him. Cicero, on whose authority 
 these particulars are stated, adds in a subsequent 
 letter to Atticus : " Our friend, once utterly unaccus- 
 tomed to disgrace, encountered, wherever he moved, 
 by eulogies, and embarked on a sea of glory, now 
 wretched in appearance, and thoroughly broken in 
 spirit, knows not on which side to turn his advance 
 is impeded by a precipice, and to retreat would be 
 full of danger and uncertainty. The good he has 
 rendered his enemies, and even the wicked are far 
 from being his friends. Such is the tenderness of my 
 disposition, that I could not refrain from tears when, 
 on the eighth" day before the calends of August, I 
 observed him haranguing the people respecting the 
 edicts of Bibulus. How humbled and degraded was 
 the man who was once accustomed to appear with 
 such circumstances of grandeur in that very place, 
 welcomed by the enthusiastic affection of the people, 
 and the favourable opinions of all. How little did 
 he appear pleased with himself, not to mention the 
 displeasure which he excited among his auditors : 
 an unworthy spectacle, grateful perhaps to Crassus, 
 but painful to every one else ; since he who was now 
 compelled to descend from the starry height of his 
 ambition, instead of gently falling, appeared to have 
 been violently hurled from the firmament. As for 
 myself, if Apelles had beheld his Venus, or Proto- 
 genes his famoiis Jalysus, defiled with mud, his feel- 
 
 * Ad Attic, ii. 19.
 
 THE LIFK OP CICERO. 185 
 
 ings could not have been more acute than mine, on 
 seeing one upon whom I had formerly lavished 
 the most glowing colours, and the most artful 
 touches of my eloquence, thus suddenly disfigured *." 
 Pompey probably owed this sudden burst of unpopu- 
 larity, (which, however, notwithstanding Cicero's re- 
 presentation of its universality, seems to have been 
 principally confined to the upper and middle ranks,) 
 as well to the suspicions of the real nature of the 
 triumvirate which now began to be prevalent, as to his 
 opposition of the edicts of Bibulus ; who, from his re- 
 tirement, had issued a protest against the Agrarian 
 law, which he asserted to have been passed under 
 unfavourable auspices, and had ordered the consular 
 comitia to take place later in the year than usual. 
 The result was a partial reaction in favour of the 
 aristocracy, but this was neither of any great extent 
 nor of long continuance f . 
 
 Caesar after gaining his victory over Cicero, did 
 not, by whatever motives he might have been 
 actuated, seem at first willing to leave him to its 
 full consequences. By virtue of a law brought 
 forward by the tribune Vatinius, he had been 
 invested with the government of the two Gauls 
 and Illyricum for five years, and entrusted with the 
 command of four legions, as the necessary contingent 
 for maintaining peace in his province. He now, from 
 
 *' * Ad Attic, ii. 21. 
 
 f- It was at this time that Caesar was also suspected of having 
 contrived a kind of mock plot for the purpose of raising the decay- 
 ing credit of the triumvirate, having for its pretended object the 
 assassination of Pompey. The principal agent employed in it was 
 Vettius, already known as ap informer upon a large scale after the 
 Catilinarian conspiracy. The persons endeavoured to he implicated 
 were the younger Curio, Quintus Coapio, Brutus, and Lentulus, 
 son of the pontiff. (Ad Attic, ii. 24.) Vettius, however, failed in 
 substantiating his charges, and was soon afterwards found dead in 
 prison, having been either strangled, or poisoned, according to the 
 popular reports, by the secret orders of Caesar.
 
 186 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 a feeling of generosity*, as Cicero seems to have be- 
 lieved, or rather, as it is far more likely, from a wish 
 to secure himself from all future apprehensions of op- 
 position from so gifted an antagonist, by reducing him 
 to the station of a dependant, offered to take him as 
 his lieutenant into his government, and, by thus with- 
 drawing him from the city, to secure him from the 
 resentment of Clodius. Cicero, however, thought it 
 best to decline the offer, still resting upon the remem- 
 brance of his former services, his interest with the 
 senatet, and, above all, the favour of Pompey. To 
 the latter support, indeed, he seems to have clung 
 with a pertinacity little short of infatuation, although 
 he was not without as much ground for it, as might 
 be comprehended in the solemn asseverations of his 
 pretended patron. In one of his letters written about 
 this time to Atticus, he observes : "I am on the 
 highest terms of friendship and affection with Pompey. 
 -Do you really believe this ? you may ask. I do, for 
 I am thoroughly persuaded of his sincerity. Clodius 
 continues his threats and denunciations, but Pompey 
 affirms that there is no danger ; he even swears that 
 he will sacrifice his own life rather than allow me to 
 sustain any injury:" and again, in another epistle + 
 t o the same friend : " Clodius, at first designing 
 an attempt upon the government, which is gene- 
 rally detested, after a more mature consideration of 
 the resources and military strength at its command, 
 has now turned all his fury upon me, threatening 
 me with open violence, as well as a public indictment. 
 Pompey, however, has pleaded my cause with him 
 most strenuously, representing, as he has himself in- 
 formed me, (and I have no other testimony on the 
 subject than his own,) that he should be liable to a 
 charge of the basest perfidy and iniquity, if he allowed 
 any danger to overtake me, from a man whom he 
 
 * Ad Attic, ii. 19. f Ibid. J Ad Attic, ii. 20.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 187 
 
 had himself provided with arms, by assisting him in 
 his adoption into the plebeian order ; reminding 
 Clodius that he had received a promise both from 
 himself and Appius not to offer me any molestation, 
 and assuring him, that if it were broken, he would 
 so act as to let the whole world see that he consi- 
 dered nothing as having a claim of longer standing 
 upon him than his friendship with me. Clodius, ac- 
 cording to his representation, after he had added much 
 more upon the subject, although he at first expressed 
 himself as one unconvinced, was at length induced to 
 give him his hand, and declare that he would do no- 
 thing contrary to his inclinations. But for all this I 
 do not find that he has ceased from his usual expres- 
 sions of hostility, neither, had he done so, should I 
 have given him credit for sincerity, or in any respect 
 relaxed in my preparations for defence. Such is my 
 present conduct, that the good will of the public, and 
 consequently my resources for the straggle, areincreas- 
 ing daily. My house is thronged with visitants, and 
 crowds of people run to meet me in the streets the 
 recollections of my consulate are reviving the great- 
 est zeal is shown in my cause; and I am so far 
 buoyed up by my hopes, as sometimes to think that 
 I have no reason to decline the approaching combat*." 
 In his reliance for safety upon the assistance of his 
 friends, the memory of his past services, and the jus- 
 tice of his quarrel, he was alike doomed to disap- 
 pointment. There is but too much reason for sup- 
 posing, that Pompey, so far from being willing to 
 hazard any thing in his favour, was actually betray- 
 ing him to his persevering enemy. Csesar, offended 
 at his refusal of the commission offered him, and 
 determined, since he could not take him abroad in 
 his company, not to leave him behind to counteract 
 his designs at Rome, is believed to have strenuously 
 * Ad Attic, ii. 22.
 
 188 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 urged on Clodius to the attack he was meditating ; 
 and although he was induced, by the prospect of an 
 unpleasant inquiry into some parts of his late conduct 
 which was on the point of being instituted, to with - 
 draw into the suburbs, under the pretence of com- 
 pleting his levies and making preparations for imme- 
 diately setting out for his province, he is suspected of 
 having purposely delayed his departure from Rome, 
 until the result of the present movements of his agent 
 should be determined. In the mean time, Cicero, 
 amidst his anxious preparations against Clodius, found 
 sufficient leisure for the production of that inimitable 
 epistle to his brother Quintus, on the extension of his 
 government of Asia to the close of another year, by 
 which it is difficult to say whether his claims to the 
 first rank as a philosopher, a moralist, or a statesman, 
 are best and most fully confirmed. Without any 
 unnecessary flourish of rhetoric, the beauty and apt- 
 ness of expression habitual to his compositions are 
 observable in every paragraph; but the mere excel- 
 lencies of language shrink into insignificance, while 
 the reader is continually led on to a higher point of 
 admiration, by the nobility of sentiment, the sound- 
 ness of judgment, and the grandeur of principle 
 which it uninterruptedly exhibits. No point of im- 
 portance in the administration of a province is left 
 without comment, in this brief but comprehensive 
 manual of government, in which the just and incon- 
 trovertible proposition is fully acknowledged, that 
 power, wherever surrendered to any individual, is 
 given merely in trust, and as an instrument of in- 
 creasing, not the means of enjoyment of one, but the 
 happiness of all. Even the right of taxation 
 assumed by the Roman government, instead of being 
 claimed on the ground of conquest, is represented as 
 based on the safeguard afforded by its protection from 
 the capricious tyranny which formerly disgraced the
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 189 
 
 annals of Asia, and the security held out by its 
 victorious arms from more barbarous invaders. The 
 sophistry contained in this argument, which has 
 been preserved to much later times, is, indeed, easily 
 overthrown; but it must be acknowledged to be the 
 sophistry of an age considerably advanced towards a 
 due appreciation of the great principles of equity, and 
 no longer daring to trifle with the considerations of 
 right and wrong in the brutal exultation of its 
 superiority in .physical strength. The affectionate 
 earnestness and sobriety for which the epistle is re- 
 markable, are not among its least interesting features, 
 nor the absence of all flattery from its honest yet 
 friendly exhortations; since Quintus, although due 
 praise is bestowed upon the rest of his conduct, is 
 freely and unhesitatingly warned against that irrita- 
 bility, which, although accompanied with much 
 which was excellent, seems in him to have been a 
 frequent failing. No advice is spared in cautioning 
 him on the subject of this important defect, and the 
 remarks as to the best means of overcoming his hasty 
 temperament, are distinguished by the soundest prac- 
 tical sense*. Quintus is finally exhorted by every 
 
 * The counsel given is as follows : " It is not now my object 
 suddenly to root out a fixed habit, an undertaking difficult at all 
 times, whatever be the disposition, and, more especially, at an age 
 like ours. This, however, is my advice, that if you cannot altogether 
 avoid this failing, (and I know tiiat the action of passion is sometimes 
 too rapid upon the mind to allow of the anticipation or prevention 
 of reason,) you will, at least, make preparations against it before- 
 hand, and daily meditate upon the propriety and necessity of 
 restraining it, reflecting, that at the moment when your mind is 
 most excited, it is most important to refrain from giving utterance 
 to your feelings ; a virtue which appears to me not less than never 
 being conscious of the emotion in question. The latter, as it is the 
 property of a sober, is also, at times, that of a mere sluggish dispo- 
 sition ; but to moderate both one's sentiments and their expression 
 when angry, or, what is more, to keep absolute silence, and to hold 
 under one's control both indignation and disappointment, although 
 it does not reach the height of absolute wisdom, makes, at least, no 
 mean advances towards it." Ad Quint, i. 1.
 
 190 . THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 argument likely to have weight with his own con- 
 sciousness of the importance of the duties required of 
 him, or with his regard for his reputation, to be 
 studious in his endeavours to render the last year of 
 his administration still more conspicuous for benefits 
 conferred upon his province, than the two which had 
 preceded it. "Let it be the object, I beseech you," 
 concludes his correspondent, "of your most strenuous 
 and unremitted exertions, since Asia maybe considered 
 as a vast theatre crowded with spectators of the most 
 refined judgment, and so constructed, that whatever 
 is spoken there, finds an immediate echo at Rome, 
 not only to appear worthy of such a stage and such 
 an audience, but to make both seem inferior to the 
 display of your merits. It is my earnest prayer and 
 exhortation, that, following the example of the best 
 poets and performers, you will be most anxious, as 
 the close of your office draws on, to make the third 
 year of your administration, like the third act of a 
 drama the most perfect and best deserving of admir- 
 ation. And this you will easily accomplish, if, in 
 imagination, you depict me, whose single approbation 1 
 am confident you value above that of all the world be- 
 sides, as constantly at your side, and taking an anxious 
 interest in everything you do or say." 
 
 The attention of Rome was now earnestly fixed 
 upon the opening scenes of the tribuneship of Clodius. 
 Without disguise, and without hesitation, this fearless 
 innovator brought forward, in rapid succession, four 
 acts, each involving a considerable change, and two of 
 them alterations of great importance in the govern- 
 ment. A gratuitous distribution of corn to the 
 people a prohibition of the ceremony of taking the 
 auspices at the meeting of assemblies of the people, a 
 custom which might almost be considered the key- 
 stone of their power to the aristocratic party* a 
 
 * This wasprovMed by the Lex JElia de Comitiis, which, as well
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 191 
 
 limitation of the authority of the censors, by forbid- 
 ding either of them to place a mark of ignominy 
 upon any one without the concurrence of his col- 
 league, or to inflict this punishment upon citizens who 
 had not been formally accused before them, and con- 
 demned after a fair trial and, lastly, the restoration 
 of a number of corrupt guilds, or civic fraternities, 
 which had been abolished by the senate, for the pur- 
 pose of instituting others in their place, were the prin- 
 cipal subjects embraced by these first enactments; in 
 which, with the exception of the last, there does not ap- 
 pear much deserving of very serious censure, although 
 they were no doubt intended to bo introductory to the 
 blow which was to effect the ruin of Cicero. His next 
 movement was to propose decreeing the provinces of 
 Syria, Babylonia, and Persia, with the power of com- 
 mencing a Parthian war, which would have afforded an 
 extensive field for peculation and plunder, to Gabinius; 
 and Macedonia, with Achaia, Thessaly, and Bceotia, 
 to Piso. All things being now ready for his ulterior 
 design the triumviri having been alienated from the 
 object of his resentment the senate terrified into 
 inaction the favour of the consuls secured by pros- 
 pect of the rich provinces held out to them and the 
 
 as the Lex Fufia, Clodius, either at this time, or shortly afterwards, 
 formally repealed. The former, brought forward by the consul 
 Quintus jElius Foetus, A.U.C. 587, not only decreed, that the oc- 
 currence of an unfavourable omen, if reported by a magistrate, 
 should be sufficient to stop the proceedings of the assemblies, but 
 that the intercession, although without the assignment of a reason, 
 of any magistrate of equal rank with the one who was picsiding, or 
 even of a tribune, should have the same effect. The Lex Fufia, 
 A.U.C. 618, limited the number of days on which laws were 
 previously allowed to be passed. Dio (xxxviii. 13,) relates that 
 Cicero had at first resolved to oppose the acts, and for that purpose 
 had cng.iged the tribune Ninius to place his veto upon them ; but 
 that he was prevented by the arcifices of Clodius, who protested 
 that he had no ulterior design ngainst him in bringing them forward. 
 No allusion to the circumstance, however, is to be found where it 
 might be most expected, in the correspondence of Cicero himself.
 
 192 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 common people devoted to their leaders by the laws 
 proposed for their benefit, Clodius at length promul- 
 gated his famous act, that whosoever was proved to 
 have put to death a Roman citizen without form of 
 law, should be interdicted from fire and water, or, in 
 other words, permanently banished from Italy. 
 
 Although Cicero might have been supposed by 
 this time to be fully armed against an event which 
 he had long contemplated as possible, and latterly, as 
 exceedingly likely to happen, the appearance of the 
 statute in question, sesms to have fallen upon him like 
 a thunderbolt. His fortitude, his philosophy, his 
 sense of his own dignity, almost his very reason, 
 forsook him at once. Stunned by the sense of 
 calamity, borne down by apprehension, and, in the 
 extremity of his distress, not knowing to whom to 
 appeal, he was now subject to all the bitterness and 
 anguish, which that individual may be supposed to 
 experience, who has neither courage to defy misfor- 
 tune, nor patience to endure it. In his humiliation 
 he, however, was far from being deserted. No less 
 than twenty thousand of the patrician and equestrian 
 order, headed by Publius the son of Crassus, an army 
 of suppliants who might have been changed into one 
 of effective defenders, if they had been possessed of a 
 resolute leader, at once assumed the garb of mourning. 
 A vast number of these assembled in the Capitol, and 
 resolved to send a formal deputation from thence to 
 appeal to the senate in his favour. At a meeting of 
 that assembly held in the temple of Concord, the whole 
 order entreated Gabinius, with tears and vehement 
 supplications, to interpose in his behalf, and on receiv- 
 ing in reply nothing but contemptuous answers and 
 sarcastic remarks, resolved, on the motion of the tribune 
 Ninius, and in spite of the prohibition of the consuls, 
 at least to testify their sympathy with the subject of 
 their useless intercession, by putting on mourning vests.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 193 
 
 Many among the knights and middle ranks even 
 gave indications that they we re ready to arm, and resist 
 the passing of the law hy open force. But Cicero, who 
 had been advised hy Cato, and Ilortensms, as well 
 as Atticus, \vho had lately joined him at Home, to 
 submit to all extremities rather than convulse the 
 state by a contest, mischievous under any circum- 
 stances, but rendered entirely hopeless by the pre- 
 sence of the legions forming under the command of 
 Caesar in the suburbs, chose rather to continue his 
 efforts to soften his adversaries by supplications and 
 submissions. In accordance witli this plan, he con- 
 descended, with his son-in-law, to wait upon the 
 consul Piso, and humbly to entreat him to exert 
 himself in his behalf with his colleague and the 
 people ; but in this application he was compelled to 
 submit to a mortifying repulse. He was informed 
 that Gabinius, who was in the most necessitous cir- 
 cumstances, from which he could only hope to extri- 
 cate himself by the government of some lucrative 
 province, having no expectation of any such appoint - 
 ment from the senate, was obliged to unite himself 
 in close alliance with Clodius ; and Piso further 
 added, that, for his own part, he was obliged to yield 
 in many respects to his partner in office, as Cicero, 
 during his consulate, had formerly done to Antonius; 
 that there was no need, in the present instance, of the 
 patronage of any individual, but that every one 
 ought to take care of himself, and must submit to 
 stand or fall by his own merits*. 
 
 * Cicero, (In Pis. vi. ) who had good reason to remember the in- 
 terview, and who did not spare Piso on account of the reminiscences 
 connected with it afterwards, has drawn a most undignified picture 
 of the consul on this occasion, stating that he found him in one of 
 the lowest haunts of Rome, in which he had spent the previous 
 night in drinking, with slippers on his feet and his head muffled up. 
 He also sneeringl}- relates, that Piso, as an excuce for his situation, 
 informed him, that on account of his ill health he was obliged to 
 O
 
 194 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 The general assembly for determining the law of 
 Clodius respecting the arbitrary infliction of capital 
 punjshment, was at length convened in the Flaminian 
 Circus. The tribune, according to Cicero, had art- 
 fully summoned to the spot the most zealous of the 
 partisans of Cicero, under pretence of compelling them 
 to give an account of their late conduct. No sooner had 
 they appeared, however, than the banditti who sur- 
 rounded him, and who had been previously instructed 
 how to act, first saluted them with a shower of stones 
 and then fell upon them with drawn swords, severely 
 wounding many, and compelling the rest to a preci- 
 pitate flight. Hortensius, who was among the 
 fugitives, was nearly killed in the tumult, and 
 Vibienus, a senator, either slain upon the spot, or 
 carried mortally injured off the ground. After this 
 seasonable intimation of his superior strength, Clo- 
 dius opened the business of the meeting by asking 
 the sentiments of the consuls upon the subject of his 
 act. Gabinius answered, that he had always utterly 
 disapproved of putting citizens to death without trial, 
 and Piso, that he was averse to every instance of 
 cruelty. Caesar, who by the selection of the place of 
 meeting was privileged to be present, on being next 
 desired to express his opinion, stated that his views 
 on the subject of capital punishment were already 
 sufficiently known ; that he approved of the statute, if 
 intended to possess a prospective force, but that he was 
 unwilling to consent to any ex post facto law, bearing- 
 reference to an event on which it was now superfluous 
 to legislate. On receiving this declaration, which, 
 while it was apparently neutral, gave, in reality, no 
 small weight to passing the edict, the centuries pro- 
 ceeded to their votes, and the requisition of Clodius 
 speedily received the stamp of the popular assent. The 
 
 have recourse to -wine medicinally, and bitterly inveighs against 
 him for keeping him standing, during the conference, in the filthy 
 den to 'which he had been introduced.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 195 
 
 law, however, was as yet only general, and Cicero, if 
 he had thought proper, might still have waited for its 
 result in the shape of a particular indictment, after 
 which there would have been ample time to forestall 
 an unfavourable sentence by voluntary exile. Accord- 
 ingly he seems to have hesitated for some days 
 between hope and despair, at one time entertaining the 
 resolution of lingering to the last, in the expectation 
 of some change in the sentiments of the community ; 
 at another so far prostrated by the melancholy pro- 
 spect before him, as to entertain serious thoughts of 
 self-destruction. With his usual train of mournful 
 attendants, and with the squalid aspect and disor- 
 dered dress which he imagined suitable to his situ- 
 ation, he continued to appear in public, endeavouring, 
 by these outward signs of distress, to move his country- 
 men to compassion ; and, to add to his mortification, 
 being frequently obliged to encounter the stones as 
 well as the taunts of Clodius and his faction, who 
 were parading the streets in insolent triumph. His 
 chief reliance was still upon Pompey ; and finding that 
 his supposed protector, who had now withdrawn to 
 his Alban villa, pretending fear of a design upon his life 
 of which he had received secret intimation, made no 
 demonstration of interfering in his favour, although 
 he had been appealed to upon the subject by the 
 chief persons among the nobility, he resolved upon 
 ascertaining how much he had to hope from that 
 quarter by a personal interview. He had sufficient 
 reason to be convinced, by the result of the conference, 
 how little the promises made to him by his faithless 
 patron, a few weeks before, were to be relied upon. 
 Although he prostrated himself at the feet of Pompey, 
 and earnestly entreated him, at this perilous juncture, 
 to fulfil the engagements into which he had entered for 
 his safety, he was scarcely desired to rise, and was 
 simply met by the reply, that nothing could be done 
 o2
 
 196 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 for him contrary to the will of Caesar*. His friends 
 had been, in the mean time, busy in making a second 
 appeal to the consuls, but Piso again assured them 
 that neither he nor his son-in-law Cassart could 
 venture to oppose Clodius, while Gabinius treated 
 their intercession with his usual insolence. 
 
 All expectation of succour being now at an end ; 
 his submission having but tended to degrade him in 
 the eyes of others, and perhaps in his own ; and the 
 only alternative to ensure his remaining being that 
 of plunging Rome into confusion and bloodshed ; he at 
 length summoned firmness enough to tear himself 
 from a city whose aspect was connected with so many 
 pleasing recollections, of which he had been declared 
 the father and preserver, and where he left every-* 
 thing dear to one of his temperament honour, 
 applause, distinction, the arena in which his elo- 
 quence had so often been exercised the place of 
 council, in which his opinions had been so earnestly 
 sought and so reverently received the crowds over 
 whom, in the pride of genius, he had delighted to 
 exert his influence, his retainers, his friends, and 
 those who were connected with him by yet dearer ties. 
 His last public act before his departure was to ascend 
 the Capitoline Hill, looking down upon his favourite 
 Forum, with a small image of the tutelary Goddess 
 of Wisdom, which he had long kept in his house 
 with great reverence, in his arms, in order solemnly to 
 consecrate it in the temple at the summit, with 
 this inscription, TO MINERVA THE PROTECTRESS OF 
 ROME. He then returned to his house, and after wait- 
 ing until nightfall, left the city in company with an 
 immense concourse of his friends, who intended to accom - 
 
 * Ad Attic, x. 4. 
 
 f Cesar had lately married his secoiid wife.Calpurnia, the daughter 
 of Piso.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 197 
 
 pany him on his road toa distance of two days' journey. 
 Regretted by all the good, and lamented by the only 
 party whose approbation was worth possessing; 
 retiring, moreover, under circumstances from which 
 the least gifted with foresight might have augured 
 his recal at no distant period ; he carried with him 
 into exile every alleviation of such a misfortune, 
 except that firmness of spirit which was worth the 
 whole, and without which no form of consolation 
 could be availing. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Cicero forbidden to enter Sicily by the Prastnr Cains Virgilius 
 He receives Intelligence at Vibn of the Decrees sanctioning his 
 Exile His Estates are plundered, and his House at Rome 
 rased to the ground by Clodius- Cato is sent on a Foreign 
 Commission to Cyprus Cicero at Tarentum He proceeds to 
 Brundnsiuin and embarks for Kpirus Repairs to Thessaloni- 
 ca Letters to Terentia, and to Atticus Riots excited by 
 Clodius at Rome His Attack upon Quintns Cicero and the 
 Tribunes in the Forum Milo arms a Body of Gladiators against 
 him Skirmishes between the Two Parties Decree of the 
 Senate summoning all Freemen in the Interests of Cicero to 
 Rome He is recalled Sets out from Epirus and disembarks at 
 Brundusium, where he is met by his daughter Tullia His 
 Triumphant Progress through Italy, and Favourable Reception at 
 the Capital. 
 
 SICILY, where, from the recollection of his past 
 services, he naturally expected to find a welcome 
 reception and a secure retreat, was the place which 
 Cicero first selected as the scene of his banishment, and 
 towards which, after leaving the capital, he pro- 
 ceeded by slow journeys. He is supposed, on conclu- 
 sive evidence, to have quitted Rome towards the 
 end of the month of March A. u. c. 696 * ; and 
 early in April to have reached Naryx, an ancient 
 
 * This is rendered almost certain by the fact, that Caosar, who, 
 by his own account, hindered the Heh'etii from making their ap-
 
 198 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 city of the Locrians in Magna Graecia. That the 
 feelings of despair were yet strong upon him is mani- 
 fest from his epistle to Atticus, written from this 
 place, which affords a lamentable testimony to his 
 weakness, and utter prostration of mind : 
 
 " Cicero sends health to Atticus. I wish I may 
 see the day when I shall have reason to thank you 
 for having induced me to spare my own life. At 
 the present moment, bitterly, my friend, do I repent 
 of that resolution. Hasten immediately, I entreat 
 you, to meet me at Vibo, whither, for many reasons, 
 I have determined upon journeying. If you join me 
 there, we may consult together upon the future steps 
 to be taken with respect to my retreat. If you do 
 not comply with my request, I shall find it difficult 
 to account for your absence. But I confidently 
 expect you will not disappoint my expectations*." 
 
 From Naryx his next removal was towards the 
 city mentioned in his letter, which was situated in 
 Lucania, and near the sea-coast. In its vicinity he 
 was entertained for a short time at the farm of Sica, 
 according to his own account, or according to that 
 of Plutarch, at a house assigned him by a Sicilian 
 named Vibiust, on whom he had formerly conferred 
 many marks of kindness. Bnt while waiting for 
 an opportunity of embarking for Sicily, he was met 
 by a notice from Caius Virgilius, then preetor of the 
 island, that he would by no means suffer him to set 
 foot in his province. This was an instance of in- 
 
 pointed movement, which was to have commenced the 5th of the 
 Kalends of April, (the 26th of March,) in this year ; and who, 
 after eight days' journey, reached his province time enough to 
 appoint a meeting with their chiefs for the 13th of the ensuing 
 month, did not quit Rome until Cicero had departed from the city. 
 -De Bello Gall. lib. i. ; Fasti Hellenic!, iii. p. 185. 
 
 * Ad Attic, iii. 3. 
 
 f It is not impossible to reconcile the Uvo statement?. These 
 persons might have been his hosts in succssion.
 
 ^ TOE LIFE OP CICERO. 199 
 
 gratitude which he had not expected, since Virgilius 
 had on former occasions been laid under repeated 
 obligations by his patronage and assistance. 
 
 He now hesitated between the p>ojects of em- 
 barking at Brundusium for Greece, or retiring to the 
 island of Malta ; and while meditating upon these 
 different plans, received the news of his sentence, 
 and its subsequent extension. 
 
 Clodius, on being informed of his departure from 
 the city, had not lost a moment in following up the 
 opportunity afforded by his flight, which he con- 
 strued as an acknowledgment of his weakness, and 
 that of his party, for framing, on the base of his 
 late edict, a particular rogation or law, which he 
 expected would permanently prevent the possibility 
 of a return of his adversary to disquiet him at Rome. 
 The decree proposed on this subject to the people, 
 which he found no difficulty in carrying, seems to have 
 been nearly as follows : 
 
 " Whereas Marcus Tullius Cicero has, without hear- 
 ing or form of trial, put to death certain Roman 
 citizens, and for that purpose forged the decree and 
 authority of the senate ; be it with your will and 
 command, Quirites, that he be interdicted from the 
 use of fire and water ; that no one presume to har- 
 bour or receive him on pain of death ; and that 
 whosoever shall make any motion, give any vote, or 
 assist in any way whatever towards his return, shall 
 be considered a public enemy, unless those whom 
 Cicero has unjustly deprived of life be previously 
 recalled from the dead*." 
 
 This edict, however severe and arbitrary, was not 
 sufficient to satisfy the hatred of Clodius. An addi- 
 tional clause extended the interdiction to all places 
 within four hundred miles of Italy, and ordained 
 that the goods of Cicero should be exposed to public 
 auction. An indiscriminate spoliation of his property 
 * Pro Domo sua.
 
 200 THE LIFE OP CICERO. ^ 
 
 was, upon this signal, immediately commenced. 
 Clodius, after stripping it of every thing valuable, set 
 fire to his noble house upon the Palatine Mount, and 
 consecrated part of the site, on which he afterwards 
 erected a temple to Liberty. The villas which 
 Cicero had taken so much pain to embellish, and 
 where he had collected so many exquisite works of 
 art, were in the same manner successively plundered 
 and set on fire. In the appropriation of the spoils 
 derived from these sources, the two consuls appear 
 to have come in for the lion's share. The marble 
 columns of his Palatine house were bestowed upon 
 the father-in -law of Piso*. The rich furniture of his 
 country-seat at Tusculum, and even the very trees in 
 the orchards, were carried off, by the command of 
 Gabinius. His wife Terentia was forcibly dragged 
 from the temple of Vesta, in which she had taken 
 sanctuary, by order of Clodius, on pretence of ex- 
 amining her as to the amount of the effects of her 
 husbandt. The tribune even endeavoured to get 
 possession of the person of her son, with an intention 
 of putting him to death, and would have effected 
 his purpose, had not the child been carefully con- 
 cealed from the effects of his malice|. Amidst these 
 infamous proceedings, the consuls, now further 
 elated by the grant of the provinces of which they 
 were in expectation, celebrated their triumph with 
 the most indecent revelry. The real motives by 
 which they had been influenced, and the true party 
 to which they belonged, began plainly to appear. 
 Piso, thrown off his guard by the exultation of 
 success, openly boasted of his relationship to Cethe- 
 gus ; and Gabinius, not to be behind his colleague, 
 asserted, with equal affrontery, that he had always 
 been on the most friendly terms with Catiline. 
 
 * Pro Dom. xxiv. } Ad Diversos, xiv. 2. 
 
 t Pro Dom. xxiii. Pro Dom. xxiv. ; Pro Sextio, xxiv.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 201 
 
 Cato, the only man whose courage, authority, and 
 independent spirit, seemed likely to oppose a barrier 
 to the proceedings of these licentious anarchists, was 
 shortly afterwards, by a refined stroke of policy on 
 the part of Clodius, removed to a distance by a 
 public appointment*. Ptolemy, king of Cyprus, 
 having formerly refused to advance a sum of money 
 for his ransom when he had been captured by the 
 pirates near his coasts, he now eagerly availed him- 
 self of the short-lived power placed in his hands by 
 his influence with the multitude, to avenge himself 
 upon that monarch, and, at the same time, to remove 
 the most stubborn of his opponents from his path, 
 by procuring for him the office of reducing Cyprus 
 to a Roman province. In an interview with Cato 
 upon this subject, he endeavoured to represent him- 
 self as conferring a great favour upon him by the 
 commission, for which he assured him he had received 
 many applications. Cato, without being deceived 
 as to his real object, or appearing to be so, upbraided 
 him, with his usual severity, for his past conduct, 
 and ended by positively refusing to accept the office 
 proposed to him. " It is indifferent, " said his auda- 
 cious visitor ; " if it suits not with your pleasure to 
 go, it is perfectly suitable with mine to compel you." 
 And immediately, having recourse to one of his 
 popular assemblies, he procured the iniquitous 
 decree, wresting the island from the monarch to 
 
 * Plutarch, whose accuracy with respect to dates is never greatly 
 to he relied upon, seems to represent, in his life of Cato, that he 
 had left Rome to fulfil his commission at Cyprus before the dc- 
 .parture of Cicero from it. Yet it is much more likely that he 
 continued in the city for some time after that event. " M. Cato 
 etiain cum de&perasset aliquid auctoritate sua profici posse, tamen 
 voce ipsa ac dolore pugnavit, et post meum discessum iis Pisonem 
 verhis, flens meum et rcipublirac casuni, vexavit, ut ilium hominem 
 perditissimum et impndentissimum pcene jam provincise poeniteret. 
 See also Fasti Hellenic!, vol. hi. p. 184.
 
 202 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 whom it belonged, and conferring the task of Set- 
 tling it in its new condition upon Cato, who was 
 obliged forthwith to sail upon his obnoxious errand. 
 
 Cicero was now pursuing his way towards Brun- 
 dusium. On the 1 Ith of April he was at Thurium, 
 and on the 18th at Tarentum. On the 8th of. that 
 month he wrote to Atticus, dating his letter from the 
 confines of Lucania, in a strain which showed that 
 his sense of his misfortune was in no respect abated. 
 A second letter, in which he explains the reason of 
 his having quitted Vibo before his proposed inter- 
 view with Atticus, is equally desponding : " Attri- 
 bute it not " he writes, " to any inconstancy of 
 purpose, but to my present miseries, that I have 
 suddenly departed from Vibo, where I had directed 
 you to meet me. I have received the sentence of my 
 utter destruction, in which I find the alterations I 
 had been led to expect, prohibiting me from appear- 
 ing within four hundred miles of Italy. Finding, 
 therefore, that it was not allowed me to proceed to 
 Vibo, I immediately determined upon setting out 
 for Brundusium, in order to reach that place before 
 the day of passing the law*, both that I might avert 
 the destruction of my host Sica, and because the 
 island of Malta is within the proscribed distance. 
 Hasten to overtake me, if indeed I can find a recep- 
 tion where I am going. I have hitherto received 
 nothing but kind invitations, but I shudder at the 
 future. Great is my regret, my Pomponius, that I 
 have not ended my existence. That I have refrained 
 from doing so, has been chiefly owing to your 
 influence. But of this more when we meet. Only, 
 delay not to comet." 
 
 At Brundusium, as well as on his way thither, 
 he was treated, notwithstanding the edict against 
 
 * It will be remembered that a certain time always intervened 
 between the promulgation and the passing of a law. 
 t Ad Attic, iii. 4.
 
 TIlE LIFE OF CICERO. 203 
 
 receiving him with such marks of respect as 
 might have rendered almost any one but him- 
 self proud of a misfortune in which multitudes ap- 
 peared to sympathise. On his arrival at the above 
 city, he seems to have been in considerable doubt 
 as to his- future course. Athens or its neighbour- 
 hood would, no doubt, have been selected as the 
 most desirable place of resort ; but that part of 
 Greece was the residence of several persons who 
 had been banished from Home for their share in the 
 conspiracy of Catiline, and whose vicinity naturally 
 appeared replete with peril to the chief agent in pro- 
 curing their exile. Macedonia and the adjacent districts 
 would shortly be thronged with the soldiery of the 
 consul Piso, who had been appointed to that pro- 
 vince, and at their hands nothing was to be expected 
 but insult and violence. In this perplexity, he seems 
 at one time to have thought of retiring to Cyzicum 
 in the Propontis ; but he was probably diverted 
 from this intention by his friend Atticus, who wrote 
 to him with the offer of a residence in Epirus, which 
 was so situated as, if necessary, to be convertible 
 into a strong post of defence. Apparently still hesi- 
 tating in his choice of a retreat, he took leave of his 
 friend Marcus Lenius Flaccus, in whose country-seat 
 without the walls he had been entertained thirteen 
 days, and after writing a piteous letter to Terentia, 
 embarked for Dyrrachium *, on the last day of 
 April. He was encountered, according to Plutarch, 
 by a violent storm on his passage, which forced his 
 vessel to put back into the harbour of Brundusium ; 
 but on putting out to sea a second time, he was suc- 
 cessful in reaching the destined port. On the instant 
 of his landing, if credit is to be given to the same 
 biographer, the country was shaken by an earth- . 
 quake ; a convulsion of nature, which, as it was 
 always supposed to indicate extensive changes, 
 * Now Durazzo.
 
 204 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 was interpreted by the hai-uspices of the place as por- 
 tending his speedy restoration to his country. His 
 own mind, indeed, seems at the time to have been 
 sufficiently inclined to superstitious impressions ; since 
 he has recorded in his treatise on Divination a 
 remarkable dream, which, occurring during his wan- 
 derings prior to his departure from Italy, made 
 sufficient impression upon him to be long after- 
 wards remembered. He imagined, we are informed, 
 while resting on his way through Lucania, in 
 a small village in the district of Atina, that in- 
 dulging his melancholy thoughts in a wild and 
 desolate region, he was suddenly met by Caius 
 Marius with his fasces entwined with laurel, who, 
 courteously accosting him, inquired the reason of his 
 downcast looks and melancholy aspect ; and that on 
 being informed of the cause, the visionary hero 
 taking him by the hand, and exhorting him to be 
 of good courage, commanded his nearest lictor to lead 
 him into his sepulchre, where he informed him he 
 would find a place of safety. On awaking from sleep, 
 he states that he communicated his dream to his 
 friend Sallustius, who, although unable to give 
 any particular interpretation to it, did not doubt 
 that it was one of good omen. He himself, 
 when the senate afterwards passed their decree for 
 his recall in the temple called the monument of 
 Marius, was, for a moment, staggered at the coin- 
 cidence, although, at a subsequent period, the good 
 sense of the philosopher was able to refer such phe- 
 nomena to their true source. The story, however 
 little deserving attention in other respects, may 
 not appear, as its truth can hardly be questioned, 
 unworthy of notice to the psychologist who is 
 collecting facts for the elucidation of any theory in 
 explanation of what have justly been called the dis- 
 eases of sleep. 
 
 Cicero received at Dyrrachium the news that his
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 205 
 
 brother Quintus was on his return from his province 
 of Asia, and passing from Ephesus to Athens, 
 either by a direct voyage, or through the northern 
 parts of Greece. He had by this time made 
 up his *nind, at the invitation of his friend Cneius 
 Plancius, quaestor of Macedonia, who hastened to 
 assure him that he would find a safe refuge under 
 his protection, to take up his residence for a time at 
 Thessalonica. Towards this city he was accordingly 
 conducted with a moderate attendance by Plancius, 
 and reached the place of his destination on the 21st of 
 May. Although he had appointed his brother to meet 
 him at this place, the interview was prevented ; since 
 Quintus was at this time in great haste to make the 
 best of his way to Rome, in consequence of rumours 
 which had reached him, that it was intended to im- 
 peach him for alleged violence in his government ; 
 and Cicero, as the time of his expected arrival 
 drew nigh, seems to have been unable to endure the 
 sight of so near a relative in his present circum- 
 stances of affliction. Many of his succeeding letters to 
 Atticus, and one to Terentia, are dated from Thessa- 
 lonica, where he remained till the end of November, 
 when we find that he again left it in order to return 
 to Dyrrachium. What was the state of his feelings 
 during the whole of this time may be conjectured 
 from the following letter, which, however, is but 
 one of several, distinguished by the same character of 
 thought and expression. 
 
 " CICERO TO HIS BELOVED TERENTIA. 
 
 " I have received three letters from Aristocritus, 
 which I have almost obliterated with my tears. 
 I am tormented with the deepest anguish, my 
 Terentia, nor do my own sorrows affect me more 
 than yours find those of your children. Most 
 wretched as you deem yourself I am more so, 
 since although our present calamities are common 
 to both of us, the fault which has induced them is
 
 205 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 entirely mine. It was my duty to have avoided 
 the storm by the commission offered me, or to have 
 withstood it by all means in my power, or to 
 have perished nobly in the attempt. Nothing could 
 have been more productive of misery nothmg more 
 unworthy of my character nothing more disgraceful 
 than the course I have actually pursued. My sense of 
 grief therefore is fully equalled bymyfeelingsof shame, 
 while I blush to think how little activity and courage 
 I have shown in the cause of my inestimable wife and 
 my beloved offspring. Day and night your pitiable 
 condition, your sorrow and your ill state of health 
 are before my eyes ; yet is there still a faint glimmer- 
 ing of hope afforded us. Our enemies are many 
 those who are jealous of us almost innumerable, 
 and though to expel me was a difficult task, it is an 
 easy matter to prevent my return. But as long as 
 you are preserved from despair I will not fail in my 
 part, lest if every attempt should be abortive, the 
 fault may appear to rest with me. As to your anx- 
 iety for my safety, this, believe me, is most easily 
 ensured ; since even my enemies might wish me to 
 live amidst my present miseries. Nevertheless, I will 
 carefully obey all your injunctions on this head. I 
 have written to thank those, to whom you desired me 
 to express my acknowledgments, having entrusted 
 the letters to Dexippus, and have mentioned you as 
 the channel through which I have been informed of 
 their kind offices. I am perfectly aware of those 
 which our Piso is constantly performing towards us, 
 and, indeed, they are the general topic of conversation. 
 The Gods grant that I may one day again enjoy the 
 presence of such a son-in-law, as well on your ac- 
 count as that of our children. My only hope now 
 rests with the new tribunes, and with their actions 
 at the very beginning of their office, for if they suf- 
 fer the business to cool all is over. For this reason 
 I have sent back Aristocritus without delay, that you
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 207 
 
 may give me an account of their earliest proceedings 
 and plan of conduct, although I ha,ve also sent Dex- 
 ippus word to return immediately, and have written 
 to my brother to request him to send off frequent 
 expresses. It is with this view, moreover, that I am 
 at Dyrrachium at the present moment, that I may re- 
 ceive intelligence of what is going forward at the 
 earliest opportunity ; nor is my safety at all perilled 
 in my present residence, since this state has always 
 found in me a protector. On the first intimation of 
 the approach of enemies, I shall withdraw into 
 Epirus. 
 
 " In reply to your offer of joining me if it should 
 be my wish, it is my desire, considering how great a 
 part of the weighty affairs now before us is sustained 
 by you, that you should still continue at Rome. If 
 you are successful it will be my part to visit you, but 
 if not I need add no more. From your first, or at 
 most, your second letter, I shall be able to determine 
 what is to be done. Only be particular in writing 
 upon every point most fully, although I ought now 
 rather to expect some decisive result than an ac- 
 count of the steps taken towards it. Be careful of 
 your health, and believe that you are still, as you ever 
 have been, the dearest object of my affections. 
 Farewell, my Terentia, whom my imagination yet 
 represents as before me. At this idea I am un- 
 nerved and overpowered by my tears. Once more, 
 farewell." Dated from Dyrrachium, Nov. 0th*. 
 
 To Atticus, who, although he had neglected to join 
 him in, his exile, probably from the conviction that 
 he could serve his cause much better in the capital 
 
 * His other letters to Terentia from Thessalonica and Dyrrachium 
 condole with her on the violence exercised towards her, speak in 
 the highest terms of acknowledgement of the conduct of hisson-in-law 
 Piso, and are chiefly taken up, besides his lamentations, with do- 
 mestic affairs, and advice with respect to an estate belonging to her- 
 self, which Terentia had,entertained an intention of selling.
 
 208 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 than in Macedonia, had generously advanced him 
 a considerable sum of money, accompanying the 
 loan with a remonstrance on the singular weakness 
 lie had shown under his misfortunes, he writes in a 
 letter of an earlier date : " As to the frequent and se- 
 vere reproofs in which you indulge with respect to 
 what you term my infirmity of mind, is there, let me 
 ask you, a single evil, however great, which is not 
 comprehended in my calamity:.? Did ever man fall 
 from so honoured a condition, in so good a cause, 
 endued with such resources of genius, of prudence, of 
 popular favour, and protected ostensibly by such firm 
 safeguards extended towards him by all the good? 
 Can I forget what I have been or cease o feel what 
 I am ? of what estimation of what glory of what 
 children of what favours of fortune of what a 
 brother I am deprived ? The latter, (and mark, I 
 request you, a new shape of misery,) although 
 still esteeming him, as I have always done, more 
 dear to me than my own existence, I have shunned 
 and purposely avoided meeting, both to spare my- 
 self the pain of beholding his grief and wretchedness, 
 and of being exposed as a spectacle of ruin and de- 
 basement to one who had left me at the height of 
 prosperity and glory. Am I then, let me"" inquire, 
 to be blamed for being thus keenly susceptible of my 
 distresses ? should I not rather be deemed as culpable 
 for not retaining the advantages I have enumerated, 
 (which I might easily have done, had there not been 
 those within my own walls who were conspiring my 
 destruction,) as for still surviving what I have lost ? 
 Thus much I have written that you may rather con- 
 sole me in future, according to your wonted kind- 
 ness, than deem me worthy of upbraiding or reproof. 
 I am the more brief, both because I am prevented by 
 my sorrow from adding more, and because I expect 
 news from Rome of more importance than anything
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 209 
 
 I have to communicate. As soon as this arrives, I 
 will give you more certain intelligence respecting my 
 designs. Continue to write, as fully as possible, 
 that I maybe ignorant of nothing*." Dated at Thes- 
 salonica the 18th of June. 
 
 While Cicero continued to indulge his unmanly 
 grief in Macedonia, his friends at Rome were exert- 
 ing themselves not only with ready voices, but with 
 courageous hearts and prompt hands, for his recal. 
 The insolence and arrogance of Clodius, daily rising 
 to a higher pitch, soon became insufferable to all but 
 the desperate band acting immediately under his 
 command. Pompey, already disgusted at his pre- 
 sumption, was soon warned to stand upon his own 
 defence by a direct attack on the part of his late 
 ally. Tigranes, son of the Armenian king, whom he 
 had brought to Rome to adorn his triumph, and who 
 
 * The weakness of Cicero during his exile, seems to have con- 
 founded most of the writers who have mentioned the subject. Dio 
 Cassius, in particular, is so scandalised at it, that he has gone out of 
 his way to introduce in the middle of his grave narrative an imaginary 
 dialogue hetween the orator and Philiscus, an Athenian philosopher, 
 extending over several pages, in which the sententious eidolon reads a 
 lecture upon fortitude, &c. &c. worthy of Epictetus himself. Lord 
 Bolingbroke, whose egregious and overweening conceit was, no doubt, 
 highly delighted with an opportunity of contrasting his own con- 
 duct, under similar circumstances, with that of one whom he resem- 
 bled in little else than in vanity, has, in his sickly dilution of Seneca, 
 (Letters on Exile) dwelt largely, and with no small pomp, upon the 
 subject, after the followrhg fashion. "When virtue has steeled the 
 mind on every side, we are invulnerable on every side ; but Achilles 
 was wounded in the heel : the least part overlooked or neglected may 
 expose us to receive a mortal blow. Reason cannot obtain the abso- 
 lute dominion over our souls by one victory. Vice has many re- 
 serves which must be beaten, many strongholds which must be forced, 
 and we may be found of proof in many trials, without being so in all. 
 We may resist the severest, and yield to the weakest attacks of 
 fortune. We may have got the better of avarice, the most epidemi- 
 cal disease of the mind, and yet be slaves to ambition. We may 
 have purged our souls of the fear of death, and yet some other fear 
 may venture to lurk behind. This was the case of Cicero." There 
 is much more to the same effect.
 
 210 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 was yet detained in a kind of honourable custody in 
 the house of the prastor Flavius, in the expectation 
 that a large ransom would be offered for his release, 
 was seized by the emissaries of Clodius, and brought 
 into the presence of the tribune, who, without deign- 
 ing to consult with Pompey upon the subject, took 
 upon himself to offer him his liberty on his promise 
 to advance a stipulated sum*. The agreement was 
 quickly concluded, and Tigranes, with equal haste, 
 despatched with an armed escort from the city. 
 Flavius, on gaining information of the manner in 
 which his prisoner had been disposed of, lost no time 
 in attempting his recovery, and having summoned a 
 number of his retainers and several of the faction 
 known to be opposed to Clodius, set off in eager 
 pursuit. About four miles from Rome he overtook 
 the party of whom he was in search, and having 
 peremptorily summoned them to surrender Tigranes 
 into his hands, received a direct refusal. Swords 
 were immediately unsheathed on both sides, and a 
 fierce encounter ensued, in which many lives were 
 lost. But the followers of Flavius were at length 
 completely routed, and forced to fly in all directions, 
 leaving the spot covered with their dead ; among 
 whom was Marcus Papirius, a wealthy Roman 
 knight, and an intimate friend of Pompey. Flavius 
 himself re-entered the city without a single at- 
 tendant, and closely followed by the" victors to the very 
 gates. 
 
 Pompey, deeply mortified by this instance of con- 
 tempt shown towards him, which, however, he does 
 not seem to have dared openly to resent at the 
 time, is said to have formed a resolution at once of 
 making every effort to reverse the banishment of 
 Cicero, and his determination on that head was, no 
 doubt, subsequently quickened by the discovery, 
 * Dio Cassius, xxxviii.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 211 
 
 whether real or pretended, of a plot against his life, 
 in which a slave of Clodius was represented as 
 having been the principal agent. In the senate a 
 similar disposition had been shown on many occa- 
 sions. The business of the state was frequently 
 interrupted by loud clamours on the part of Cicero's 
 friends, demanding a reconsideration of the sentence 
 against him, and as early as the first day of the June 
 following his departure, a decree had passed the 
 whole house for laying the question of his recal 
 before the people. This, when brought forward by 
 the tribune Lucius Mummius, was prevented from re- 
 ceiving the popular assent by the prohibition of his 
 colleague ^Elius Ligus. Fresh attempts, however, 
 were continually made to obviate the effect of this in- 
 terference. On the 29th of October, eight tribunes out 
 of the ten promulgated a law for the return of Cicero, 
 which was seconded by Publius Lentulus, the consul 
 elect, and the creation of officers for the ensuing year 
 was such as to hold out the highest prospects in his 
 favour; since among the new tribunes were Annius 
 Milo and Publius Sextius, two of his most devoted 
 friends, and the rest, almost without exception, 
 were known to entertain the best dispositions towards 
 him. The city was soon after freed from the pre- 
 sence of the consuls Gabinius and Piso, who departed 
 for their respective provinces, and, in some measure, 
 from the pernicious influence of Clodius by the ex- 
 piration of his tribunitial office, which closed on the 
 J Oth of December. During almost the whole of this 
 year Rome had been in a state of tumult. The opera- 
 tions of the patrician party had been ably conducted 
 by Quintus Cicero, who on his approach to the city, 
 was met by a crowd entreating him, with tears and 
 lamentations, to take upon himself the guidance of 
 their movements. Pompey, on the other hand, in 
 consequence of the middle course he had latterly 
 p. 2
 
 212 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 deemed it advisable to pursue, had been almost 
 reduced to insignificance in the struggle. He was 
 several times grossly insulted by the mob *, and once 
 closely blockaded in his own house by a detachment 
 of the Clodian faction, who were not dispersed with- 
 out considerable violence. In the affray which took 
 place on this occasion, the consuls chose different 
 sides, Gabinius taking upon himself the command of 
 those who assembled for the relief of Pompey, and 
 Piso aiding and abetting the rioters to the utmost of 
 his power. Although the contest was fortunately 
 bloodless, the two parties seem to have fought with 
 hearty good-will, Piso, especially, maintaining his 
 ground with obstinate valour, until his fasces were 
 all broken, and the overwhelming numbers of his op- 
 ponents rendered further resistance useless. 
 
 At the very commencement of the consulate of 
 Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, and Quintus Metellus 
 Nepost, and immediately after the performance of the 
 customary rites in the Capitol, the former of these 
 magistrates declared in full senate, that he would 
 enter upon no other question before that connected 
 with the repeal of the law against Cicero had been 
 disposed of. Lucius Cotta, the principal of the 
 senatorian order, proposed its instant abrogation, as 
 passed in a manner contrary to all existing forms and 
 customs ; but Pompey was still of opinion that the 
 judgment of the commons should be added to that of 
 
 * Plutarch states that, among other insults, Clodius, after 
 Pompey had resisted his prosecution of some of his intimate friends, 
 ascended an eminence within view of the latter, accompanied by a 
 number of his profligate associates, and put the following questions 
 in succession : Who is the licentious lord of Rome? Who is it 
 that is unworthy of the name of a man? Who is it that scratches 
 his head with one finger (a mark of refined coxcombry) ? " Upon 
 this," he continues, " his creatures, like a chorus instructed in their 
 parts, upon his shaking his gown, answered aloud to every question 
 Poinpey." 
 
 f A.U.C. 697.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 213 
 
 the nobility. The necessary act would have been 
 brought forward on the same day, but for the inter- 
 ference of the tribune Atilius, who requested the 
 delay of a few hours to deliberate upon the subject. 
 His authority, however, on mature consideration, 
 was not interposed, and, after the usual interval, 
 the bill was finally subjected to the decision of the 
 people on the 25th day of January. 
 
 But if Clodius and his party had by this time dis- 
 covered that their cause was fast declining in the 
 estimation of the public, they were not the less 
 determined not to relinquish the field to their adver- 
 saries without a last and desperate effort. They were 
 still strong in numbers, in union, and in resolution, 
 and having every reason to dread the effects of the 
 bill under consideration, they were resolved to leave 
 no means, however lawless, untried for its preven- 
 tion. As the important day approached, Clodius 
 hired a formidable band of gladiators, under 
 pretence of employing them in the shows of his 
 aedileship, an honour for which he was at the time a 
 candidate, and borrowed from his brother Appius a 
 second company, which was on the point of being 
 exhibited at the funeral rites of one of his near rela- 
 tions. These manifest preparations for violence gave, 
 as might have been expected, an immediate alarm to 
 his opponents, who began to assume arms in their 
 turn. On the evening preceding the meeting of the 
 people, matters wore an increasingly angry aspect, 
 and it was evident that another of those internal con- 
 vulsions, of which the records of the city afforded 
 but too many instances, was at hand. Before day- 
 break on the following morning, the tribune Fabri- 
 cius, who had warmly espoused the cause of Cicero, 
 took possession of the rostra with a strong guard. 
 Clodius, however, as much on the alert as himself, 
 had previously posted his gladiators in all the avenues
 
 214 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 leading to the Forum, and thus having precluded, as 
 he imagined, the possibility of the arrival of fresh 
 succours to the assistance of the enemy, fell furiously 
 upon the guards of Fahricius with his well-trained 
 swordsmen, and, after a determined resistance, com- 
 pelled those who survived the murderous encounter 
 to fly. A second party, on coming up under the 
 command of the tribunes Cispius and Sextius, was 
 attacked in a similar manner, and speedily routed ; 
 Sextius himself being so severely wounded, after he 
 had retreated into the temple of Castor, which 
 was stormed by the Clodian party, that he was 
 left for dead. At the same time the victorious 
 gladiators sought on all sides, with reeking weapons, 
 for Quintus Cicero, who had presented himself at 
 the rostra in company with Fabricius, and the 
 object of their pursuit was only able to escape their 
 fury by flying into the Comitium, where, as they 
 approached, he concealed himself beneath a heap of 
 dead bodies, and in the glimmering light by which 
 the forms of the slain were rendered but indistinctly 
 visible, fortunately escaped detection.* The supposed 
 death of Sextius, a tribune of the people, and, conse- 
 quently, one whom it was sacrilege to injure, struck 
 the victors with a momentary consternation. Clodius, 
 however, fertile in expedients, resolved upon making 
 the odium equal on both sides, by murdering in cold 
 blood one of his own tribunes, in order to charge the 
 opposite faction with his death. The person selected 
 for the victim was Xumerius Quinctius, an individual 
 of obscure birth and little influence, who, to please 
 the multitude, had assumed the surname of Gracchus, 
 and the gladiators were, consequently, desired to 
 ssek him out and despatch him. But Quinctius, who 
 was far from being destitute of quickness and cun- 
 ning, on gaining some hint of the manner in which 
 * Pio Sextio, xxvi.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 215 
 
 his services were likely to be rewarded by his friends, 
 lost no time in adopting the readiest means at hand of 
 preserving his life, and hastily muffling himself in a 
 long travelling -cloak, and placing a basket, snatched 
 from a countryman, upon his head, he passed in this 
 disguise through the midst of his intended assassins, 
 who, on all sides, were loudly calling his name*. 
 Sextius was, however, by this time discovered to be 
 still alive, and, as if the circumstance had conferred 
 upon them full licence for renewing every kind of out- 
 rage with impunity, the rioters immediately began their 
 work of violence afresh. Among other daring actions, 
 Clodius set fire with his own hands to the temple of 
 the Nymphs, involving in the conflagration of the 
 building a number of public records. He then pro- 
 ceeded to attack the houses of Annius Milo, and of 
 the prsetorCaecilius; but here his mad career was for 
 the present stopped. The garrisons within defended 
 themselves with such resolution, that the assailants 
 were at length compelled to draw off in confusion, 
 and in a sally made upon them while retiring, several 
 of the gladiators were taken prisoners. 
 
 Day closed upon this disgraceful spectacle of tumult, 
 singular for the indifference, on the part of the public 
 authorities, with which it was allowed to be main- 
 tained ; and still more so, for the impunity after- 
 wards enjoyed by those who had been actively 
 engaged in it. The slaughter was fully in proportion 
 to the bitterness of feeling with which the parties had 
 met. The Tiber, if Cicero's assertion is not a rhetorical 
 exaggeration, and even the common sewers, were filled 
 with the bodies of the slain, and in the Forum the 
 blood was wiped up with sponges. " Never," says the 
 orator," were such heaps of corpses piled in our streets, 
 since the memorable day of the contest between Octa- 
 
 * Pro Sextio, xxxviii.
 
 216 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 vius and Cinna*. Yet, all efforts to bring to justice 
 those who had thus disturbed the public peace were 
 unavailing, and Clodius was still suffered to parade 
 the streets with his gladiators, unresisted. Milo, 
 indeed, had the boldness to impeach him for the 
 attack upon his house, but the consul Metellus, the 
 praetor Appius, and the tribune Atilius, forbade, by 
 their edicts, either plaintiff or defendant to appear in 
 the cause. Atilius even set at liberty the gladiators 
 whom Milo had taken and committed to the public 
 prison, while the canvass of Clodius for the asdileship 
 still went on, and was in no way injured by his late ex- 
 cesses. Such a state of things, while there was yet a se- 
 nate, and a general who had enjoyed three triumphs, in 
 Rome, may appear almost inconceivable ; yet, recent 
 history can furnish an instance still more astounding, 
 of a mighty city giving up, day by day, to an insig- 
 nificant body of men, whom a tithe of its population 
 would be more than sufficient to annihilate without a 
 struggle, the lives and fortunes of its inhabitants, to 
 be disposed of without restraint or limitation. The 
 tyranny of Clodius might, and in all probability 
 would, have proceeded to still more extravagant 
 lengths, had there not been a man opposed to him, 
 gifted with courage equal to his own, and ready to 
 encounter him, since the laws were silent, with his 
 own weapons. 
 
 There happened to be at this time a troop of gladi- 
 ators on sale, together with a body of those slaves 
 termed bestiarii, who were trained to the perilous art 
 of encountering wild beasts in the amphitheatre. 
 These were secretly purchased by Milo, who com- 
 missioned a friend to appear for him in the transac- 
 tion, lest he should be anticipated or outbidden by 
 any of the agents of his rival. Having thus procured 
 
 * Caedein vero tantam, tantos acervos corporum extrudes, nisi 
 forte illo Ciunano atque Octaviano die, quis unquatn in foro vidit ? 
 Pro Sextio, xxxvi,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 217 
 
 a force as skilful in the use of their weapons as the 
 band under Clodius, and added to it the survivors of 
 a late gladiatorial show, presented by the gediles 
 Pomponius and Cosconius, he lost no time, after he 
 had armed them to the teeth, in producing them at 
 every fitting opportunity, in opposition to the fol- 
 lowers of the ex-tribune. A succession of obstinate, 
 and by no means bloodless skirmishes, was now con- 
 stantly exhibited in all parts of the city. The Forum 
 constantly resounded with the clashing swords of the 
 combatants, and the shrieks of the terrified crowds en- 
 deavouring to escape from the scene of commotion ; 
 while those who had an opportunity of beholding it at 
 a safe distance looked on, and enjoyed a sight so much 
 resembling that which they had been accustomed to 
 contemplate at their public games ; where rivers of 
 blood continually flowing for their amusement, had 
 long made them indifferent to the exhibition of any 
 kind of violent death, in which they were not them- 
 selves likely to act the part of victims. Several 
 weeks passed away after the first tumult, by which 
 the law in favour of Cicero had been prevented from 
 passing, disgraced by almost daily conflicts between 
 the two factions ; but the popularity of Clodius con- 
 tinued progressively to decline, until he was so much 
 an object of the general dislike, that, when he pre- 
 sented himself in the amphitheatre, the hiss with 
 which he was received, was loud enough to startle 
 the horses of the gladiators in the arena, and the 
 expressions of disapprobation so frequent and bitter, 
 that he was at last obliged to reach his seat by a 
 secret passage beneath the benches, which, from that 
 circumstance, was wittily called the "Appian way*." 
 At length appeared the conclusive decree of the 
 
 * Pro Sextio, lix. This circumstance, however, is mentioned as 
 occurring after the passing of the decree of the senate, in the Monu- 
 ment of Marius, by which the return of Cicero was ultimately 
 determined.
 
 218 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 senate, commanding those who wished well to the 
 interests of the state, throughout the whole of Italy, 
 to repair to the capital, and lend their assistance 
 towards carrying the act for the return of Cicero. 
 It had been preceded by two edicts of less consequence 
 upon the same subject, the one returning thanks 
 to the cities which had afforded him a refuge in his 
 exile, the other enjoining the Roman officers in the 
 provinces through which he might pass, to take 
 every precaution for ensuring his safety. No sooner 
 was the decree issued, than the roads leading to the 
 city were thronged with multitudes, eager to testify 
 their cheerful obedience to the mandate. Every 
 state contributed to swell the tide of voters, which, 
 for many successive days, continued to pour in at the 
 several gates of Rome from different quarters, and the 
 senate had soon at their disposal a majority sufficient 
 to overwhelm every appearance of opposition. At a 
 meeting of that assembly, held in the temple erected 
 to Honour and Virtue by Caius Marius, where four 
 hundred and seventeen members, besides the ma- 
 gistrates, were present, it was determined, at all 
 hazards, to repeal the law of Clodius. This resolu- 
 tion was taken, while the people were engaged in 
 witnessing the games exhibited by Lentulus in the 
 neighbouring theatre, to which the senators repaired 
 as soon as the business of the day was finished. On 
 their entrance, they were received by the audience, 
 who were speedily made acquainted with the issue 
 of their deliberations, with loud and continued 
 bursts of applause ; and when the consul appeared 
 in his place, the assembly, rising in a body and 
 stretching their hands towards him, returned him 
 thanks for the part he had taken and so strenuously 
 maintained. During the remainder of the perform- 
 ance, the subject of which happened to be the 
 Telamon of Accius, repeated shouts were uttered
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 219 
 
 whenever the tragedian ^sopus, who performed the 
 principal part in the piece, (that of the banished 
 prince,) uttered a sentence which might he considered 
 as bearing any reference to Cicero. Such passages*, 
 from the very subject of the drama, were necessarily of 
 frequent occurrence, and the actor made considerable 
 additions to them, by introducing in several instances 
 slight alterations of his own, with a view to falling 
 in as much as possible with the present state of 
 the popular feeling. At an after representation of 
 the Brutus of the same dramatist, while passing a 
 eulogy upon the great patriot as the preserver of his 
 country, he ventured to substitute the name of Tullius 
 for that of Brutus, and received in recompense the 
 unbounded applause of the multitude. 
 
 On the day following this manifestation of the 
 public opinion, the senate again met in the temple 
 dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on the 
 Capitoline hill, and after speeches highly honourable 
 to Cicero had been delivered by the consul Lentulusf, 
 Pompey, Publius Servilius, and Lucius Gellius, it 
 was determined, in compliance with the wish both 
 of the citizens resident in Rome, and of those who 
 had lately arrived from the municipal towns, that 
 no further delay should take place in laying the 
 proposed hill before the people ; that the ceremony 
 
 * Several of these are given in the oration for Sextius, Ivi. 
 Ivii. 
 
 f The other consul, Qnintus Ceei.ilius Metellus Nepos, who, 
 when trib-ine of the people, had been violently opposed to Cicero, 
 had in the previous assembly , in consequence of an energetic appeal 
 made to him by Publius Servilius, who adjured him by his illus- 
 trious ancestry to lay aside his enmity at this important crisis, 
 expressed himself not unfavourably inclined towards the abrogation 
 of the law of Ciodius. This called forth the letter of acknow- 
 ledgment, (Ad Diversos, v. 4,) in whicli Cicero terms his speech 
 *' mitissima oratio,'' and requests his future kind offices. It was 
 to this, also, that Metellus was indebted for his title of " vir egregiua 
 tvere Metellus." Pro Si-xtio, Ixii.
 
 220 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of taking the auspices should be dispensed with upon 
 the occasion, and that unless the question was satis- 
 factorily settled in five days, Cicero should be con- 
 sidered restored to all his former dignities. Thanks 
 were at the same time voted to those citizens who 
 had come from a distance to second the authority 
 and wishes of the Senate. 
 
 Clodius alone, with undaunted resolution, con- 
 tinued his opposition. His mock assemblies were 
 still convened, and his gladiators undisbanded. In 
 the senate, although he was the only person who 
 ventured to utter a dissentient voice, he, notwith- 
 standing, remonstrated loudly against the present 
 proceedings, and when the people finally met on 
 the 4th of August to give their sanction to the law 
 in the Campus Martius, made a public oration 
 against it. But his interposition was wholly inef- 
 fectual. The assembly, one of the most imposing 
 ever witnessed at Rome, consisting of an immense 
 multitude of all ranks and ages, and in fact compris- 
 ing almost every person* in the city who had a vote 
 to bestow, was successively addressed by Pompey 
 and other orators of the highest rank and influence 
 in favour of the decree ; and when the question was 
 subjected to the decision of the ballot, it was found 
 that not a single century was excepted from the 
 general opinion in its favour. 
 
 Cicero had continued for several months at 
 Dyrrachium, awaiting the final issue of the move- 
 ments in his behalf with feverish impatience. His 
 letters written to Atticus from that city represent 
 him as continuing to fluctuate between hope and 
 despair ; elated by the slightest event which seemed 
 to promise his recal, and sunk into the deepest de- 
 jection at every new delayt. On receiving informa- 
 
 * Post Red. in Sen. xi. 
 
 t Ad Attic, iii. 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 221 
 
 tion, however, from his brother Quintus of the 
 final decree of the senate in his behalf, he was 
 resolved npon not waiting for its confirmation by the 
 people, deeming it a less evil, as he has stated, to risk 
 his life, than to be wanting to this opportunity of 
 revisiting his country. Actuated by this determi- 
 nation, he embarked at Dyrrachium almost at the 
 very hour in which the edict promulgated for his 
 return received the sanction of the centuries ; and 
 after a quick and prosperous passage, arrived on the 
 day following (August 5) off Brundusium, where 
 he immediately landed. This day he triumphantly 
 records as being the anniversary of the foundation 
 of the city which had now received him, and of the 
 dedication of the temple of Safety at Rome, as well 
 as the birth-day of his daughter Tullia, who pre- 
 sented herself to him on his landing. Every thing, 
 indeed, seems to have been viewed by him through the 
 exultation naturally indulged at the moment ; yet 
 the apothegm so often expressed by the ancient poets 
 that from the brightest source of human felicity, there 
 rises that which must always give a taste of bitterness 
 to the spring, was not without its illustration on the 
 occasion ; since the mourning weeds of his daughter, 
 who had but a short time before been deprived of 
 her husband Piso, must certainly have reminded 
 the orator of the absence of the familiar face of 
 one, who would have been the foremost in hailing 
 his return, and whose unremitting exertions in his 
 cause, while absent from his country, he could now 
 never hope to repay*. With this exception, not a 
 cloud appears to have overcast the inspiring prospect 
 spread before him, in the enjoyment of which he 
 appears to have indulged with all the abandonment 
 to its delusions, of which his ardent and sensitive 
 
 * Piso ille gencr incus cui fructum pietatis suae neque ex me 
 neque a populo Romano ferre licuit. Pro Sextio xxxi.
 
 222 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 temperament was capable. On the third day from his 
 landing, he was acquainted by Quintus of the result 
 of the late comitia, and soon after leaving the house 
 of his friend Lenius Flaccus, of whose hospitality he 
 had partaken with feelings widely different from 
 those with which he had sought a shelter under his 
 roof on a former occasion, he set out on his return 
 to Rome, the highest honours which the magis- 
 trates of Brundusium could invent having been 
 lavished upon him previously to his departure. 
 From this point his progress resembled a continued 
 pageant. As he pursued his journey leisurely along 
 the Appian way, halting for a short time at Naples, 
 Capua, Sinuessa, Minturnae, Formiae, Terracina, and 
 lastly at Aricia*, every town and village near the line 
 of his route seemed emptied of its inhabitants, so 
 dense and numerous were the multitudes who 
 hastened from every side to greet him. " I was borne," 
 he afterwards observed, " to Rome on the shoulders of 
 Italyt ;" and the figure was probablyno exaggeration. 
 Wherever he approached, the way was lined with spec- 
 tators of all ages and sexes. A total cessation from 
 business took place in the different cities, and public 
 embassies were sent from many to compliment him on 
 his restoration to his country. Festive entertainments, 
 thanksgivings to the gods, rejoicings and congratula- 
 tions, were the constant results of his appearance. As 
 he drew near to Rome, on the 4th day of September, 
 still higher honours awaited him. At some distance 
 
 * The first stage from Rome. Hor. Sat. i. 5. 
 
 " Egressum nwgria me. excepit Aricia Roma," &c. 
 
 It is now called La Riccia. Respecting the Appian road at 
 this place, Eustace observes : " The immense foundations of tho 
 Via Appia, formed of vr.st blocks of stone, rising from the old 
 town up the side of tbe hill, in general about twenty-four feet in 
 breadth, and sometimes about sixty feet in elevation, are perhaps 
 one of the most striking monuments that remain of Roman enter- 
 prise and workmanship." 
 
 f Post reditum in Sen. XT.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 223 
 
 from the walls, he was met by the whole body of 
 the senate, with the magistrates at their head, and 
 escorted by them into the city, which he entered at 
 the Capene gate*. Here a sight of the most imposing 
 kind presented itself. The steps of the two neighbour- 
 ing temples, those of Mars and the Muses, and the 
 whole length of the street as far as the eye could reach, 
 as well as the porticoes and house-tops, presented one 
 dense mass of human beings, who rent the air with 
 their shouts at the first glimpse of the procession by 
 which he was accompanied. The same spectacle 
 was exhibited along the whole way to the Capitol ; 
 every house and building, the whole area of the 
 Forum, and the temples by which it was surrounded, 
 being crowded to excess, and resounding with the 
 enthusiastic acclamations of their occupants. Amidst 
 this delirium of public excitement, Cicero ascended 
 the steps which led to the temple of Jupiter Optimus 
 Maximus, the path of triumph trodden by a hundred 
 conquerors, but now pursued by one who was en- 
 joying a victory which was far more glorious, 
 although bloodless and uncelebrated by the dazzling 
 insignia of military parade, than any of which it had 
 hitherto been the place of commemoration, the 
 victory of genius and patriotism over prejudice, in- 
 gratitude, and factious violence. After performing 
 his devotions in the shrines at its summit, and 
 especially before that of the Goddess to whom he 
 had commended himself at his departure from Rome, 
 he retired to the house appointed for his residence, 
 accompanied to its threshold by the same illustrious 
 train, and again saluted on his way thither by the 
 unabated applause of his fellow citizens. 
 
 Ad Attic, iv. 1.
 
 224 THE LIFE OF CICEItO. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Oration of Cicero in the Senate after his Return Tumults 
 raised by Clodius Oration "Pro Domo sua" Attack ofClo- 
 dius upon the Houses of Cicero and Milo Clodius elected .^Edile 
 Speech of Cicero " De Rege Alexandrine" Milo impeached 
 by Clodius for illegal Violence Cicero defends Publius Sextius 
 Interrogation against Vatinius Oration " De Haruspicum Re- 
 sponsionibus" Cicero tears down the Tablets in the Capitol, 
 containing the Decree relating to his Banishment Oration 
 respecting the Consular Provinces Marriage of Tullia and 
 Crassipes Speeches for Balbus and Caelius Letter of Cicero to 
 Lucius Lucceius Second Consulate of Ponipey and Crassus 
 Oration of Cicero against Piso His Letter to Marina respecting 
 the Dedication of the Pompeian Theatre Cicero writes his 
 Treatise " De Oratore" 'Departure of Crassus for his Parthian 
 Expedition. 
 
 ON the day after his return to Rome, Cicero took 
 his seat in the senate, which was crowded to excess by 
 a numerous assembly, eagerly anticipating a renewal 
 of the enjoyment they had so often experienced from 
 the exhibition of his extraordinary powers of elo- 
 quence. In his opening speech, which was necessarily 
 to a great degree complimentary, there could have 
 been little to disappoint his audience, if there was 
 nothing in it to exceed their expectations*. The 
 consuls, praetors, and tribunes of the people, who had 
 been instrumental in his recal, are severally thanked 
 by name, and the other members of the house collec- 
 tively ; the usual incense is offered to Pompey, who 
 is declared in valour, glory, and the performance of 
 great exploits, far above all who had preceded him of 
 whatever age or nation, while Lentulus is lauded 
 literally to the heavens, since the orator, setting no 
 
 * A subsequent speech was afterwards delivered to the people, 
 at an assembly convoked by the consuls. This is the "Oratio 
 Secunda post Reditum," which in some editions has been placed 
 before that to the senate.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 225 
 
 bounds to his gratitude, terms him his parent and 
 the guardian deity of his being, fortunes, present 
 reputation, and future fame. But while he is thus 
 careful to manifest his sense of the kind offices of his 
 friends, he is by no means forgetful, on the other 
 hand, of those to whose exertions he had owed his 
 exile and the spoliation of his 'property. Gabinius 
 and Piso are especially selected as the objects of his 
 sarcastic invectives ; and although the censure hurled 
 against them is only preparatory to fiercer declama- 
 tions upon the same subject, it is such as to leave 
 little to be desired on the score of bitterness. The 
 prudence of this kind of oratory might fairly be 
 questioned, but Cicero was well aware that he had 
 not returned home to lay aside his armour, or to take 
 his share in the management of a republic in the 
 enjoyment of the blessings of internal peace. If, 
 indeed, he had indulged in any respect in this delu- 
 sive hope, it would speedily have been dispelled by 
 the conduct of Clodius immediately after his return. 
 The senate, who had been for some months hindered, 
 by the successive commotions on a question which 
 had long engrossed the attention and interest of 
 all ranks, from attending to any other business of 
 importance, were now assailed by the murmurs of 
 the people on the subject of a prevailing scarcity of 
 corn, which had been, in a great measure, caused by 
 the universal rush to the capital, in consequence of 
 the late edict.* Clodius, equally ready to create or 
 to foster any feeling of dissatisfaction, presuming 
 upon the ill-feeling which began to be expressed, 
 having sent a number of his emissaries to endeavour 
 to fan the popular discontent into a flame, armed 
 his gladiators anew, and placed them under the 
 guidance of Marcus Lollius and Marcus Sergius, two 
 of the most desperate of his associates, with orders to 
 beset the senate in the temple of Concord. On their 
 
 * Ad Attic, iv. 1. 
 Q
 
 226 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 way meeting with the consul Metellus and his train, 
 these ruffians, without hesitation, assaulted him with a 
 shower of stones*, by which Metellus himself was 
 wounded, and his attendants compelled to fly from 
 the spot. Encouraged by the impunity with which 
 this attack was suffered to pass, they proceeded, on 
 learning that the meeting of the senate had been 
 adjourned to the Capitol for its better security, to 
 invest that place of assembly as well. The people of 
 Rome, however, who were at length convinced that 
 their interests would be ill served by these out- 
 rages, displayed on this occasion a proper regard for 
 the continuance of the peace of the city, and muster- 
 ing in vast crowds attacked the band of Clodius with 
 such spirit as speedily to compel them to raise the 
 siege. Cicero, on hearing of the tumult, lost no time 
 in endeavouring to pacify it. The multitudes who sur- 
 rounded the senate-- house were already loudly calling 
 for him by name, but when he appeared and proposed 
 as a remedy for the present distress, that Pompey 
 should for five years be invested with authority to 
 make regulations respecting the supply of provisions, 
 the expressions of approbation were unbounded. The 
 very name of this hitherto fortunate leader seemed to 
 be a sufficient security for the prosperous manage- 
 ment of any undertaking in which he was concerned. 
 The resolution thus proposed was soon after, notwith- 
 standing the opposition of several of the senators, 
 converted into a law. Fifteen deputies were appointed 
 at the same time, at the request of Pompey, to assist 
 him in carrying it into effect. Among these Cicero 
 was the first chosent, but he appears to have only 
 
 * Missiles of this kind seem to have been ordinarily resorted to 
 by the Roman crowds. Cicero, at least, in his speech for Sextius, 
 speaks of " lapidationes" in a manner which implies that they were 
 of no unfrequcnt occurrence. " Atqui vis in foro versata est? cer'.c ; 
 quandoenim major? lapidationes persaepe vidimus ; non ita saepe, ;<<! 
 niinium sa-pe gladios." Pro Sextio, xxxvi. f- Ad Attic, iv. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 227 
 
 provisionally accepted the commission, which he sub- 
 sequently resigned in favour of his brother Quintus. 
 
 His attention was at the time sufficiently occupied 
 by his efforts to obtain some compensation for the 
 property of which he had been despoiled, and more 
 especially to procure the restitution of the site on 
 which his Palatine house had formerly stood. As 
 this spot, however, had been solemnly dedicated to 
 the service of religion, and was actually occupied by 
 the temple which Clodius had caused to be erected 
 upon it, the question of its re-assignment to its 
 original owner was viewed as one of no small import- 
 ance and of considerable delicacy. The subject was 
 first brought before the senate, who referred it to the 
 pontifical college to determine whether the consecra- 
 tion had been made in due form ; ordaining that if the 
 answer of the priests should authorise the proceeding, 
 the consuls should be ordered, after making an esti- 
 mate of the expense, to replace the building which 
 had been destroyed at the public cost. Before the 
 assembled pontifices, therefore, on the last day of 
 September*, Cicero delivered the eloquent address, in 
 consequence of which the ceremony performed by 
 Clodius was declared to be invalid. The oration was 
 devoted, for the most part, to prove the illegality of 
 the adoption of the late tribune into the plebeian 
 order, and, by a necessary consequence, the nullity of 
 every public act he had performed during his year of 
 office. The sentence of banishment passed upon 
 himself naturally fell under the consideration of the 
 orator at the same time, and was easily shown to 
 have been deficient on all points. The conduct of 
 Clodius and his faction came in for its usual share of 
 irony and invective. Of the merits of this speech, how- 
 ever obvious, the student of the writings of Cicero will 
 
 * Diximus apud Pontifices priclie Cal. Octobres. Ad Attic. 
 iv.2. f Pro Douio su&.
 
 228 THE LIFE OF CICERO. , 
 
 perhaps not be inclined to form so high an opinion as 
 its author, who seems to have considered it almost the 
 best of his productions; and this, unless another instance 
 of the want of power so common in genius of forming 
 a right estimate of its own productions, may be con- 
 sidered a plausible argument against the authenticity 
 of the disputed oration extant under the title " Pro 
 Domo sua." Yet the trenchant power of its wit, and 
 the nervous energy of many of its passages, must at 
 all times command admiration, and the peroration, as 
 in most of the speeches of Cicero, is a striking specimen 
 of majestic eloquence. The pontifi ces, convinced by its 
 arguments, or overpowered by its rhetoric, were easily 
 induced to decree that the consuls might proceed to 
 rebuild the house of the orator without any reli- 
 gious scruples, and the sum of two millions of ses- 
 terces* was, after some delays in the senate, in 
 consequence of the clamours of Clodius and the inter- 
 position of Atilius Serranus, at length voted for the 
 purpose. The loss sustained by the injuries done to 
 the villas at Tusculum and Formiae, for which com- 
 pensation was also to be made at the public expense, 
 was estimated at the respective sums of five hundred 
 thousand sesterces t for the former, and two hundred 
 and fifty thousand for the latter place; a remuneration 
 which Cicero seems to have considered as very far 
 from satisfactory, arid much below the real value of 
 the property destroyed J. 
 
 The demolition of his house upon the Palatine hill, 
 was not the only mischief which Clodius had, with 
 perfect impunity, effected in the same quarter. The 
 noble portico of Catulus, built from the spoils of the 
 Cimbric war, had been also unceremoniously levelled 
 with the ground, that it might not present, by the 
 difference of the style of its architecture, a contrast 
 unfavourable to the new temple of Liberty erected in 
 * 16,000/. f 4000/. I Ad Attic, iv. .2.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 229 
 
 its neighbourhood. This was also to be replaced at 
 the cost of the people. But, while the workmen were 
 employed in its re-erection, as well as upon the other 
 new buildings close beside it, which were already 
 raised to the roof, Clodius, who had been for some 
 time busying himself in endeavouring to excite the 
 populace to a fresh disturbance, made his appearance, 
 on the 3d of November, with an armed band, and, by 
 his desperate attack, speedily compelled the busy 
 multitude before him to desist from their labour. 
 The unfinished walls, thus abandoned, were soon 
 reduced to a heap of ruins, but not contented with 
 their destruction, Clodius next turned his attention to 
 the neighbouring house of Quintus Cicero ; which was 
 first battered by the stones of his followers, and soon 
 afterwards fired by the lighted brands showered 
 without intermission upon it. A few days after- 
 wards, Cicero himself was met in the A 7 ia Sacra by 
 the same furious company who had perpetrated this 
 outrage, and, without a moment's hesitation, assailed 
 by their missiles, and threatened, by the swords and 
 bludgeons with which they were armed, in so serious 
 a manner, that he was obliged to take refuge, in order 
 to save his life, in the neighbouring court-yard of 
 Tertius Damio. On the 12th day of November the 
 rioters again made their appearance, and commenced a 
 regular assault with sword and buckler, upon the resi- 
 dence of Milo, situated on Mount Germalus, which 
 they continued to invest the whole of the day, making 
 repeated efforts to carry it by storm, or to set it on fire 
 by means of the burning torches hurled against it. 
 On this occasion Clodius himself having taken his 
 post in the house of Publius Sylla, into which he had 
 effected a forcible entrance, directed from thence, in 
 person, the operations of his adherents. But the issue 
 
 * Armatis honiinibus, ante diem tertium Nonas Novenibres 
 oxpulsi suut fabri de arta nostia, &c. Ad Attic, iv. 3.
 
 230 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of the contest was far from being in his favour, since 
 Quintus Flaccus, at the head of a resolute body of 
 well-armed retainers, making at length a furious sally 
 upon the assailants, succeeded in repulsing them after 
 a severe slaughter, in which the most distinguished 
 members of the Clodian party were left on the ground, 
 and in which the chief promoter of the fray would 
 have met with the fate he had so often tempted, had 
 he not escaped the search of the victors by a hasty 
 concealment. This defeat produced a considerable 
 diminution of his strength, although it proved no 
 check upon his insolence. The senate, provoked 
 beyond their usual power of endurance, by the late 
 repeated excesses, decreed that those who had been 
 guilty of them, should be indicted under the law 
 respecting illegal violence, and that the election of 
 aediles should be deferred until they had been called 
 upon to account for their conduct. As it was a 
 standing law in the constitution, that no magistrate 
 should be impeached while actually in office, Clodius 
 had been encouraged by the prospect of his speedy 
 return to the dignity for which he was a candidate, 
 and the hope of immunity from punishment for a 
 year to come, in braving the public authorities, and, 
 even under the express prohibition of the decree, and 
 in open defiance of the senate, persisted, with the 
 aid of the consul Metellus, in his endeavours to hold 
 the comitia. But the fortune of his opponent was 
 now in its turn upon the ascendant. Milo had 
 openly declared that no aediles should be chosen, 
 under any circumstances, until the consulate of Me- 
 tellus should expire ; and fully redeemed his pledge, 
 by occupying the different places appointed for the 
 assemblies of the people with an armed force, and by 
 declaring on every occasion, in his capacity of tribune, 
 that the auspices were unfavourable to the meeting. 
 For several weeks the city was kept in an uproar
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 231 
 
 by the contentions of the two parties, and it was not 
 until the January following, when the consuls Cor- 
 nelius Lentulus Marcellinus, and Lucius Marcius 
 Philippus, had for some days entered upon their office, 
 that Clodius, whose well known extravagance pro- 
 bably induced the people to expect some extraordinary 
 magnificence in the games which should be entrusted 
 to his management, was at length elected curuleaedile*. 
 At the commencement of this year Cicero delivered 
 in the senate- house, his speech on the restoration of 
 the king of Egypt to his dominions. Ptolemy, sur- 
 named Auletes, the father of the celebrated Cleopatra, 
 having provoked the hatred of his subjects by re- 
 peated acts of oppression and tyranny, was at length 
 driven from his kingdom by a general insurrection, 
 and forced to apply to the Roman senate for assist- 
 ance, offering, as a bribe to induce them to interfere 
 in his favour, to hold all the territory he might 
 regain in acknowledgment of their sovereignty. His 
 subjects, who, on a false report of his death, had 
 placed his daughter Berenice upon the thronet, on 
 
 * Cicero at the close of the year A. u.c. 697, was, for a short time, 
 at his Tusculan villa, a? appears from his epistle to Gallus, (Ad 
 Diversos, vii. 26,) in which he states that he had retired from Rome 
 for a few days, in consequence of a temporary indisposition. He 
 accounts for his illness as follows : " You will wonder, perhaps, 
 what excesses I have been guilty of, to bring upon myself this dis- 
 order. I must inform you that I owe it to the frugal regulations of 
 the sumptuary laws. The products of the earth being excepted out 
 of the provisions of that act, our elegant eaters, in order to bring 
 vegetables into fashion, have found out a method of dressing them 
 in so high a taste, that nothing can be more palatable. It was 
 immediately after having eaten freely of a dish of this sort, at the 
 inauguration feast of Lentulus, that 1 was seized with an illness 
 which has never left me till this day. Thus you see that I, who 
 have withstood all the temptations that the noblest lampreys and 
 oysters could throw in my way, have at last been overpowered by 
 paltry beets and mallows." Melmoth. The law alluded to is 
 probably the Lex Licinia Sumptuaria, passed A. u.c. 687, which, 
 though it allowed but a certain quantity of meat to be served up at 
 entertainments, left the vegetables to be supplied ad libitum, 
 
 f Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. xxxix.
 
 232 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 receiving intelligence of his appeal, despatched in 
 haste an embassy, consisting of a hundred deputies, 
 to entreat the senate not to listen to it ; but of 
 these, several were assassinated by his directions, 
 either on their journey, or soon after their arrival at 
 Rome : the rest he contrived to win over to his 
 interests, either by bribes or by promises. Odious 
 as his cause was, Pompey was, nevertheless, inclined 
 to lend him his full support, in the probable expecta- 
 tion of being entrusted with the commission of rein- 
 stating him in his dominions, and several long and 
 anxious debates took place, in consequence, upon the 
 subject. But the tide of public opinion ran strongly 
 against the exiled prince, partly on account of 
 his well-known tyrannical disposition, but more 
 especially from the pretended discovery of an oracle 
 in the Sibylline books, by the tribune Marcus Cato, 
 who was fiercely opposed to his restoration, by 
 which the Romans were cautioned, in awful and 
 mysterious language, against any expedition equipped 
 from their city for the purpose of aiding a king of 
 Egypt in the recovery of his crown. Cicero, who 
 appears to have been less scrupulous of offending 
 against the voice of justice than against that of pro- 
 phecy, and who, moreover, was anxious to secure 
 the command of the expedition to Egypt for his 
 friend Lentulus, at the time proconsul of Cilicia, 
 attempted, with the assistance of Lucullus and Hor- 
 tensius, to procure the adoption of a middle course, 
 which, though fully as iniquitous as that already 
 contemplated, would, at least, lie beyond the scope 
 of the oracular denunciation. He, therefore, pro- 
 posed, in his address to the senate*, that, instead 
 
 * Brief frigments of this oration (De Rege Alexandrine), together 
 with an ancient commentary, as it is supposed, of Asconins, have 
 been discovered by Maio, in the Ambrosian library of Milan, and 
 aie to be found in the latest editions of Cicero's works. They are, 
 however, wholly unimportant.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 233 
 
 of sending an armed force directly from the city under 
 Pompey, or any other general, the governor of Ci- 
 licia should be appointed to march into Egypt with 
 the troops stationed in his province, and aid in the 
 reduction of the revolted kingdom to the authority of 
 its former sovereign. The faction of Pompey resisted 
 this proposal with all their strength, and Crassus 
 added his voice against it, advising, no douht with 
 the view of being himself included in the commission, 
 that the office of restoring Ptolemy should be en- 
 trusted not to one general, but to three ; while 
 another party under Bibulus, equally sensitive to 
 their own advantage, clamoured for the appointment 
 of as many civil commissioners, in the place of men 
 invested with a military command. Owing to the 
 divisions among its supporters in the senate, the 
 feeling of disapprobation towards it among the mem- 
 bers of that body, and the unanimous cry against 
 the measure from the more equitable, or rather 
 the more superstitious multitude without, the plan 
 of interference was at length obliged to be drop- 
 ped, and the Egyptian monarch forced to remain for 
 some time longer without his ancestral throne ; 
 although he was afterwards, to the grief and indig- 
 nation of his subjects, reinstated in it, in considera- 
 tion of a bribe of ten thousand talents, by Gabinius, 
 proconsul of Syria. 
 
 Clodius, elated with his recent election, by which 
 he had gained the very point of vantage from which 
 his adversary was forced to descend, was now busy in 
 carrying forward an impeachment of Milo for illegal 
 violence ; founding with measureless assurance his 
 accusation on the very ground upon which he him- 
 self ought long before to have been condemned ;- 
 the employment of armed gladiators against peace- 
 ful citizens, and the creating of tumults to the hind- 
 rance of the comitia. A fresh succession of disturb-
 
 234 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 ances ensued on this question which shook the city to 
 its centre. Milo, though supported by the counte- 
 nance of Pompey, Crassus, and Cicero, was, neverthe- 
 less, compelled, on two occasions, to appear to the 
 charge brought against him, and each time the vio- 
 lence of the partisans both of himself and his rival 
 threatened the most serious consequences. On the 
 second day appointed for his trial, Pompey was se- 
 lected as the especial object of the abuse of the opposite 
 mob. After he had delivered a speech of three hours, 
 duration in defence of Milo, Clodius rose to reply, 
 but was so exasperated and annoyed by the invectives 
 and cutting sarcasms vociferated against him, that 
 instead of proceeding with his address, he had re- 
 course to his favourite system of annoyance, and, ac- 
 cording to his usual manner, began a series of ques- 
 tions to his retainers : " Who is it that procures 
 laws to destroy the people by famine ? Who is it 
 that wishes to be sent to Alexandria ?" to all of which 
 his followers responded by shouting in chorus the 
 name of " Pompey." His concluding interrogation, 
 however, " Whom is it the will of the people to 
 send upon the expedition ?" was answered in a dif- 
 ferent manner, since, with one accord, the Clodians 
 returned for reply repeated cries of " Crassus." 
 Whatever effect the previous insults might have pro- 
 duced, this at once told to the quick upon the jea- 
 lousy and ambition of Pompey, and had nearly 
 produced an open rupture between himself and his 
 wealthy confederate, since he shortly afterwards ut- 
 tered, at an assembly of the senate held in the temple 
 of Apollo, hints of his intention to stand upon his 
 defence, and not to be murdered as Scipio Africanus 
 had been by Carbo. He even proposed to Cicero, 
 whether sincerely or not, to enter into an agreement 
 with him for their mutual safety, pretending a plot 
 against his life, encouraged by Crassus, and calling in
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 235 
 
 a number of his retainers from the country for his 
 better security. But his immediate answer to Clo- 
 dius was, an encouragement to his followers to fall 
 without ceremony upon the adverse party and drive 
 them from the field. He was at once understood and 
 obeyed, and after a spirited skirmish, in which their 
 leader was ejected summarily from the rostra, the 
 Clodians were thoroughly beaten and dispersed. The 
 prosecution of Milo was, as the result, probably al- 
 lowed to drop, since, although mention is made after 
 this, of repeated adjournments of his trial, there is 
 no account extant of its issue. 
 
 The oration for Publius Sextius, was delivered 
 during the heat of these commotions * : a noblo 
 monument of eloquence, and, perhaps, one of the most 
 free, among the numerous compositions of Cicero, 
 froin their besetting fault, a too great display of the 
 merely mechanical graces of the rhetorician. As Sex- 
 tius was impeached under the Lutatian law respect- 
 ing violence, for the part he had acted when tribune, 
 in seconding the attempts of Fabricius to maintain the 
 forum and rostra against the attacks of Clodius, the 
 orator had an opportunity of commenting upon the 
 causes of his own banishment, the manner in which 
 it had been effected, and the whole series of events 
 occurring during the consulate of Gabinius and Piso. 
 The remembrance of his exile, seems fortunately to 
 have deprived him of some portion of the egotism 
 in which he had been formerly accustomed to in- 
 dulge, and to have exorcised the shades of Cati- 
 line, Lentulus, and Cethegus, which were formerly 
 allowed to flit through his orations. His mention 
 of himself is, in all respects, dignified and unoffend- 
 ing. But against the two consuls under whose ad- 
 ministration he had suffered so severely, he expends 
 
 * Sextius was acquitted on the 13th of March. Ad Quintum, 
 ii. 4.
 
 236 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 his whole powers of vehement declamation and studied 
 irony ; and these twin harpies of the republic are 
 represented for the reprobation of posterity, not only 
 in all the disgraceful minutise of their moral charac- 
 ters, but in the most finished details of outward form 
 and feature, which we still see before us as perfectly 
 as if they had been preserved by the skill of the 
 most accomplished artist. Yet, although the orator 
 sarcastically dwells on the fopperies and excesses of 
 Gabinius, his curled hair arranged tier above tier*, 
 his unguents, and dissolute glances, he reserves his 
 happiest powers of description for his colleague, whom 
 he paints as mimicking the ancient worthies of the 
 republic with his profusion of beard, his uncombed 
 hair, his sordid toga, his solemn countenance, severe 
 looks, and contracted eye-brow, on which, as on 
 the shoulders of Atlas, the whole interests of the 
 state might be thought to restt. Nor has he 
 shown less ability in depicting with most vivid 
 colours the several scenes which occurred in Rome 
 during his exile, and at the moment of his return ; the 
 miserable condition of the state torn by anarchy and 
 faction, the insolent despotism of Clodius, the frays 
 and tumults which accompanied his factious violence, 
 the sudden revulsion of feeling in favour of his own 
 recall, and the exultation jind triumph with which all 
 Italy arose to do homage on his return to the patriot 
 who had been compelled to forsake his country 
 in a moment of weakness and infatuation. Indepen- 
 dently of other considerations, the oration for Sextius 
 will long continue to be prized, as the best account 
 of the occurrences of a year far from being the least 
 remarkable in the annals of Rome. But were it less 
 
 * Alter, unguentis affluens, calamistrata coma, despiciens, con- 
 sciens stuprorum, &c. Pro Sextio, viii. 
 
 f- Nam quod ego de supercilio dicam ? quod turn liominibus non 
 Bupereilium Bed pignus reipublicae videbatur, &c Ibid.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO 237 
 
 interesting as an historical document, its intrinsic 
 merits could never fail of inducing in the student of 
 ancient literature, a feeling of satisfaction at its 
 escape from the fate which has overtaken so many 
 other models of reasoning and eloquence, the pro- 
 duction of the same exalted intellect. Sextius, how- 
 ever, as we find, was not wholly indehted to it for 
 his acquittal*, since, in this cause, the pleadings of 
 Cicero had been preceded by a masterly defence, 
 prepared by the long practised skill and abilities of 
 Hortensiust. 
 
 The same occasion gave birth to the oration, 
 or as it is generally called, the " Interrogation " 
 against Vatinius. The latter, who had borne the 
 offices of quaestor and tribune of the people, and had 
 long rendered himself obnoxious to Cicero by his 
 devotion to the Clodian faction, had appeared as a 
 witness for the prosecution in the cause of Sextius, 
 and was consequently exposed to the severe cross- 
 examination of the counsel for the defendant. This, 
 in the form of a long succession of questions, to 
 which Vatinius neither had the power, nor pro- 
 bably the inclination to answer, constitutes the 
 whole of the above mentioned oration, which is 
 chiefly remarkable for its pungent satire ; its leading 
 object being to render ridiculous and contemptible 
 theindividual against whom it was pronounced, a work 
 which, if the character given of Vatinius has not 
 been distorted by the malevolence of party spirit and 
 political animosity, appears to have been essentially 
 one of supererogation ; but which, Cicero tells us, 
 was performed in such a manner as to deserve 
 the applause both of gods and menj. We find 
 from his letters, that while the cause of Sextius 
 
 * Ad Quintum,ii. 4. f Pro Sextio, vi. 
 
 J Valinium arbitratu nustro concidimus, 'dis homiuibusquo 
 plauderitibus. Ad Quiutuin, ii. 4.
 
 238 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 was in progress, he also undertook the defence of 
 Lucius Bestia, accused of corrupt practices in can- 
 vassing for office. This oration is entirely lost. It 
 was followed by one induced by a renewed attack on 
 the part of Clodius, whose ill-feeling towards him 
 was not likely to be diminished by the late storm of 
 impassioned censure directed against himself, and 
 under circumstances sufficiently elucidatory of the 
 character of the times. 
 
 The attention of the haruspices at Rome had of 
 late been called to the serious consideration of certain 
 ominous portents, on which their opinion was re- 
 quested by the senate*. The heavens had been, 
 as it was reported, illumined by a strange and daz- 
 zling meteor, which traversed them from north to 
 south. A wolf had been seen to enter the gates of 
 the city, and to wander through its streets, contrary 
 to the usual cautious habits of those animals of 
 prey. A shrine of Juno on the Alban mount, 
 which had hitherto faced the east, had turned 
 suddenly towards the north ; several citizens had 
 been struck with lightning ; and, in the vicinity of 
 Rome, strange and horrible noises were said to have 
 been heard, resembling the uproar of encountering 
 armies, and the clanging weapons of subterranean 
 hostst. The persons consulted on the causes of these 
 supposed tokens of the displeasure of the gods, 
 answered, that the public games had been negligently 
 performed and polluted ; that places consecrated to 
 the service of religion had been considered as pro- 
 fane ; that those who had worn the character of 
 suppliants had been basely murdered, contrary botli 
 to law and to equity ; that rites of the most ancient 
 
 * De Haruspicum Responsionibus, x. Dio Cassius, xxxix. 
 
 f- The true cause of this phenomenon was, no doubt, the earth- 
 quake mentioned in the oration on the subject as having lately 
 taken place in the Picenum.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICEKO. 239 
 
 and mysterious kind had been imperfectly celebrated 
 and desecrated, and that the sanctity of the most 
 solemn oaths had been disregarded. Jupiter, Saturn, 
 Neptune, and Tellus, were declared to be the divini- 
 ties to whom it was necessary that expiation should 
 be made ; and they were said to warn the state by 
 these fearful tokens, against such divisions among 
 the nobility and leading persons of the state, as 
 must infallibly lead to disgrace abroad and ruin at 
 home. On this vague reply, Clodius based a long 
 oration, intended to show that the rebuilding of 
 Cicero's house, on ground expressly consecrated to 
 religious purposes, was one of the events alluded to 
 as having provoked the resentment of the deities ; 
 and Cicero, on the following day, made his reply in 
 the senate-house. After successfully parrying both 
 the assertions and insinuations of his adversary, he 
 endeavoured, in his turn, to bring, not a part, but the 
 whole, of the reply of the haruspices to bear upon 
 the Clodian faction, and to prove them equally 
 guilty under each of its separate counts. 1. By a 
 late interruption of the Megalesian games, and the 
 introduction of persons of servile condition into the 
 theatre at their celebration*. 2. By the occupation on 
 the part of Clodius of the house of Quintus Seius, 
 whom, after an ineffectual attempt to gain his resi- 
 
 * The Megalesian games, in honour of the goddesses Ceres and 
 Cybele, were annually performed at Rome with the utmost ex- 
 pense and magnificence, on the 4th and 9th of April, in the Circus 
 Maximus. The classical reader will remember the beautiful allusion 
 made to them by Juvenal at the close of his eleventh satire. 
 Previous to their celebration, all who were not freemen were com- 
 manded to depart from the spot. Clodius, however, in the year 
 of his aedileship, while presiding over these entertainments, intro- 
 duced an immense number of slaves into the theatre. A tumult 
 arose in consequence, which was quelled with great difficulty by 
 the consul Lentulus Marcellinus ; but, on a second occasion, the 
 Clodian mob actually drove all the other spectators from the 
 place, and kept possession of it for themselves.
 
 240 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 dence by purchase, he was said to have caused to be 
 poisoned ; and by the demolition of a shrine, and 
 several altars within its precincts*. 3. By the 
 murder of Theodosius, a native of Chios, while em- 
 ployed on an embassy to Romet, a deed in which 
 Clodius had the reputation of having been the prin- 
 cipal actor ; and the assassination, by order of Piso, 
 of PlatorJ, a citizen of Orestis in Macedonia, who 
 had been sent by his countrymen to Thessalonica, on 
 a public mission to the proconsul ; and 4. By the 
 late violation of the rites of the Bona Dea, and the 
 perjury of the judges who had acquitted the criminal 
 plainly guilty of that notorious sacrilege. The danger 
 of dissention among the principal persons of the state, 
 the orator demonstrated to be only avoidable by the 
 suppression of the insolence of the individual to 
 whom all the disturbances which had lately happened, 
 and in consequence of which the commonwealth was 
 now tottering on the verge of ruin, were plainly 
 attributable. After this speech, we do not find that 
 Clodius ventured again to interfere with respect to 
 Cicero's Palatine house, which, as well as that 
 erecting for his brother, is mentioned, in his letters to 
 Quintus, as now rapidly rising from its ruins in a 
 style of surpassing magnificence. Contentions upon 
 other subjects, however, between these two bitter 
 enemies were not wanting. Notwithstanding the 
 universal assent of the people to his return, the decrees 
 respecting the banishment of Cicero were still fixed up 
 in the Capitol. In order, therefore, to abolish this 
 last remaining testimony of his disgrace, he ascended 
 thither in company with Milo, and several of the 
 tribunes ; and having torn down the brazen tablets 
 on which the obnoxious acts were engraved, w;is 
 
 O ' 
 
 * De Haruspicum Respousionituis. xii. 
 t Id. xiv. J Id. xxi. Ad Quiiitum, ii. 3, 4.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 241 
 
 carrying them oft' in triumph, when Clodius, having 
 hastened to the spot with his brother Caius, at that 
 time praetor, forced him to abandon his design. 
 But a second attempt, while Clodius Avas absent 
 from the city, was more successful, since Cicero was 
 enabled, without interruption, to remove the tablets 
 to his own house. A warm dispute was afterwards 
 raised in the senate upon the subject ; Clodius 
 making loud complaints against the illegal violence 
 which he pretended had been used, while even Cato, 
 who had now returned from executing his commis- 
 sion at Cyprus, took part against Cicero, who de- 
 fended his conduct by the argument of which he 
 had several times before availed himself, that all the 
 acts procured by the instrumentality of his adversary 
 during his tribunate, were necessarily void, in con- 
 sequence of the illegality of his adoption into the 
 plebeian order. 
 
 His reputation among the people was, at this 
 time, by no means raised by the part he had lat- 
 terly taken in forwarding the views of the trium- 
 virate, A motion which he had made for re- 
 considering the .Agrarian act of Cassar respecting 
 the distribution of the lands of Campania was 
 suffered to drop, on a remonstrance from Pom- 
 pey, who, previous to his departure to Africa, 
 for the purchase of corn in the prevailing scarcity, 
 had been summoned to an interview with Caesar 
 at Lucca, in which the latter engaged him to use 
 all his influence with Cicero, to prevent his carry- 
 ing his opposition any farther*. In the debates 
 respecting the assignment of the consular pro- 
 vinces for the ensuing year, according to the Sem- 
 pronian law, the wavering in his policy was not less 
 obvious. His speech upon the subject, while strenu- 
 * Caesar had been informed of Cicero's opposition in a previous 
 interview with Crassus, which took place at Ravenna.
 
 242 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 ously recommending that Gabinius and Piso should, 
 without delay, be summoned home from Syria and 
 Macedonia, was replete with arguments for continuing 
 Ceesar in the government of the two Gauls, contrary 
 to the opinions of the party with which he had 
 hitherto sided. In it he eloquently sets forth the 
 danger which had at all times threatened the state 
 from the different Gallic nations, and the unexampled 
 display of valour and conduct by which they had 
 been lately not only "prevented from crossing the 
 barrier of the Alps, but actually subjected to the 
 Roman arms, after a succession of dazzling cam- 
 paigns, carried on in the heart of their own country, 
 and against the fiercest among their tribes*. The 
 abilities of Ceesar are mentioned in terms of the 
 highest panegyric : his former enmity towards him- 
 self the orator treats with singular gentleness ; 
 professing, with apparent generosity, to sacrifice all 
 considerations of a private nature to his regard for 
 the general interests of the commonwealth. But it 
 is unfortunately out of the power of his readers to 
 give him credit for more than the partial influence of 
 any such feeling. In advocating in this instance the 
 cause of Ceesar, he was guided by two motives. The 
 first was his hatred of Piso and Gabinius, and his in- 
 dignation at the conduct they were at present pursuing 
 in the countries entrusted to their government. If 
 Caesar were recalled from either or both of the Gauls, 
 it was by no means unlikely that these would be 
 selected as consular provinces for the ensuing year, 
 in which case Macedonia and Syria, instead of 
 being assigned to the new consuls at the expiration 
 of their office, as Cicero had intended, would in all 
 probability be still suffered to continue under the 
 sway of their present oppressors. His second reason 
 is clearly explained in his letters to the pro- consul 
 * De Provinciis Consular] bus, xiii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 243 
 
 Lentulus, and it cannot be said to be one which 
 reflects the highest credit upon his integrity. 
 Disgusted with the pride and arrogance of the 
 purely aristocratical party, who seem to have been 
 constantly reminded of his inferior birth by their 
 jealousy of the late honours with which his return 
 had been accompanied, and, at the same time, des- 
 pairing of making any effectual opposition to the 
 confederacy, among the members of which all the 
 power of the state was now divided, he was now 
 evidently inclined to place himself at the entire dis- 
 posal of the triumvirate, and more especially of 
 Pompey, to whom his correspondence professes 
 a complete devotedness. Nor was the voice of 
 interest altogether silent, or without its share in 
 inducing the change. " As to your inquiry con- 
 cerning the state of public affairs," writes the yield- 
 ing patriot, in giving an account of the issue of the 
 late debates upon the consular provinces, " our 
 differences of opinion are the greatest possible, but the 
 combatants are unequally matched. For those who 
 are already the strongest in wealth, arms, and po- 
 litical power*, have risen to still more extensive 
 influence by the folly and inconsistencies of their 
 adversaries. They have, therefore, with but slight 
 opposition, obtained from the senate that which ^they 
 are well aware they could never have gained from 
 the people without a serious convulsion ; for both the 
 money demanded by Caesar for the pay of his army 
 has been voted to him, and the power of choosing 
 ten lieutenants, while it has been easily effected that 
 no successor should be sent into his province as ap- 
 pointed by the regulations of the Sempronian law. 
 I do not write at length upon this subject, since the 
 present condition of the republic is far from meeting 
 with my approbation ; my sole object is to remind 
 * An allusion to the triumvirate. 
 R2
 
 244 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 you of a lesson which, although devoted to philosophy 
 from my childhood, I have acquired less by study 
 than by painful experience, but which I hope you 
 will learn in a milder school than that of adversity ; 
 namely, that, in consulting our honour, we should 
 neither entirely lose sight of our own interests *, nor 
 wholly devote ourselves to the latter, at the sacrifice 
 of honour." 
 
 From the -same letter, as well as from others of 
 about the same date, it is ascertained that at this 
 period he was engaged in forming an alliance between 
 his daughter Tullia and Furius Crassipes t, a Roman 
 of high birth and considerable property, as well as 
 by the nuptial festivities of his friend Atticus, who 
 had recently celebrated his marriage with Pilia. The 
 happiness of Cicero received no accession from his 
 new family connexion, since a coldness soon took 
 place between Crassipes and Tullia, which ended in 
 a formal divorce. Other vexations do not seem to have 
 been wanting to embitter his peace vexations of 
 such a kind as were not to be precluded from crossing 
 his threshold, or from darkening his domestic hearth. 
 To these he frequently alludes, although in guarded ex- 
 pressions ; but it is evident that the causes of the discords, 
 which afterwards separated him from his own wife, 
 were now fast increasing in number, and constantly 
 
 * Ad Di versos, i. 7. The word "interests" is perhaps the best 
 translation of the very delicate and significant term salutis in this 
 passage. Melmoth, in his notes to the epistle, has justly expressed 
 a severe censure of the disingenuousness of Cicero, who, in his 
 oration for Balbus, lays public claim to the honour of being the 
 foremost to advocate the very concessions of which he complains in 
 his letter to Lentulus : " Harum ego sententiarum et princeps et 
 auclor fui." 
 
 f Tullia was affianced to Crassipes on the fourth day of April, 
 and the entertainment, termed the " sponsalia," in celebration of 
 the event given on the sixth of the same month. " Dederam ad te 
 literas, Tulliam nostram Crassipedi prid. Non. April, esse despon- 
 satam." (Ad Quintum, ii. 5.) " Advin. Id. Apr. sponsalia Crassipedi 
 prsebui." Ad Quintum, ii. 6.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 245 
 
 exerting a more depressing influence upon his peace 
 and spirits. 
 
 It is not easy to affix the exact date to his 
 orations for Coelius and Balbus, although both are 
 undoubtedly to be referred to the consulate of Phi- 
 lippus and Marcellinus. Balbus was a native of 
 Gades in Spain, upon whom Potnpey, in return for 
 his services during the war against Sertorius, had 
 conferred the freedom of the city. His right to the 
 honour was, however, impugned by one of his fellow 
 citizens, and the cause was ultimately referred to the 
 tribunal of a Roman praetor. Considering the talent 
 and authority arrayed on the side of the defendant, 
 there is nothing to excite wonder in the determination 
 of the question in his favour, since Pompey, Crassus, 
 and Cicero appeared in succession in his behalf. 
 The oration of the last yet remains to testify against 
 its author, by the excess of its flattery towards the 
 idol on whom so much of the incense of his noble 
 genius was wasted. The speech of Pompey is eulo- 
 gised as surpassing all which he had yet heard in 
 acumen, profundity, dignity, elegance, and a thorough 
 acquaintance with the laws and precedents *. Over 
 and above the fulsome adulation, moreover, which 
 pollutes the introductory passages of this oration, there 
 is a fatal position in it, the doctrine of which there is 
 but too much reason to believe Pompey to have been 
 sufficiently ready to acknowledge, but which both 
 himself and his panegyrist lived to repent the 
 assumption, that what had been done by so great 
 and renowned a character, must necessarily and 
 inevitably be lawful. It was such assertions as these 
 that familiarised to the ears of the Roman people, 
 long before its arrival, the despotic power which was 
 hastening with rapid strides towards them, although 
 under a form little suspected, and still less dreaded. 
 * Pro L. Cornelio Balbo, i.
 
 246 THE LIFE OF CICEKO. 
 
 In the defence of Marcus Coelius, while there is 
 perhaps less to blame in point of principle, there is at 
 the same time more to admire in consideration of the 
 rhetorical excellences of the oration. Coelius, a Roman 
 knight of habits which, even by the representation of 
 his advocate, seem to have been sufficiently dissolute, 
 was accused by Atratinus, a citizen whose father he 
 had formerly impeached of crimes of the most atro- 
 cious character. He was asserted to have procured the 
 murder of Dion, one of the late ambassadors sent to 
 Rome from Alexandria, and to have borrowed from 
 Clodia, the sister of the sedile, with whom he was at 
 the time living in guilty intercourse, a sum of money 
 for the purpose of hiring the assassins. Of this loan, 
 when it was redemanded, he was said to have refused 
 the payment, and to have added to his other delin- 
 quencies the enormity of an attempt to poison the 
 lender by the instrumentality of her own servants. In 
 these charges, which were chiefly instigated by Clodia, 
 from some cause of disgust given by her paramour, 
 there was a character of personal malevolence obvi- 
 ous enough to render the whole improbable in the eyes 
 of impartial judges. The opportunity of increasing and 
 strengthening this impression would not have been 
 neglected by a much less acute pleader than Cicero, and 
 he has availed himself of it to the full. At the same 
 time, under the avowed influence of a wish to spare 
 the character of Clodia, as much as might be con- 
 sistent with the interests of his client, he indulges 
 his hostility to her family and name by a withering 
 exposure of her vices. His expedient of summoning 
 the shade of the blind old censor Appius Claudius, 
 to upbraid the unworthy daughter of his once glorious 
 house, and cite in her ears the virtues of her female 
 ancestry, is a master-stroke of fanciful satire. Of 
 the other parts of the speech, in which he attempts 
 to throw a gloss over the dissolute habits of the ac-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 247 
 
 cused, the advocate is much more to be commended 
 than the moralist. These passages will long furnish 
 a standing evidence of the extent to which ho- 
 nour and dishonour, temperance and excess, were 
 confounded, altered, or substituted for each other at 
 will in Roman society, by a rule of conduct, which was 
 subject to any amplification as well as restriction in 
 its definitions; and considered cither binding or not, as 
 the philosophic pride of abstinence, or the Epicurean 
 sentiment of indulgence, predominated in the minds 
 of its expositors *. Ccelius was acquitted by the 
 general sentence of his judges of the charges brought 
 against him, not more probably in consequence of 
 the exertions of his defenders t than of the impru- 
 dence of his enemies, who, in attempting his ruin, had 
 overlooked the common danger of proving too much. 
 If it were necessary to produce a document which 
 to a greater extent than any in existence would throw 
 light upon the besetting weakness of Cicero, the 
 celebrated letter to Lucceius ^, referable to this stage 
 of his history, might be selected for the purpose. Of 
 his eagerness to enlist the services of men of talent 
 for the celebration of his consulate, instances have 
 been already seen. But in his epistle to the historian 
 
 * Dr. Middleton's criticism upon tlie oration for Ccelius is sin- 
 gularly marked by the partiality of the biographer: "In this 
 speech Cicero treats the character and gallantries of Clodia, and 
 the gaieties and licentiousness of youth with such a vivacity of wit 
 and humour, that makes it one of the most entertaining which he 
 lias left to us." The vivacity is at least of a most questionable 
 character. 
 
 f Marcus Crassus, as well as Cicero, was engaged as advocate 
 in the cause. 
 
 J Ad Diversos, v. 12. In the chronological arrangement of 
 Sch'utz, this epistle is placed between the fifth and sixth letters of 
 the fourth book of the correspondence of Cicero with Atticus, 
 a date ascertained by the mention made of it by the writer him- 
 self: (Ad Attic, iv. 6'.) " Epistolam Lucceio nunc qtiarn misi," 
 &c.
 
 248 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 in question, his morbid appetite for fame transcends 
 all moderation, and hurries him into a degree of 
 meanness, which may be proclaimed almost unparal- 
 leled, and which, if incontrovertible evidence of it 
 did not exist, would certainly be pronounced incre- 
 dible. The first part of it, and it is unnecessary to 
 quote the whole in corroboration of this disgraceful 
 truth, is as follows : 
 
 " MARCUS CICERO WISHES HEALTH TO LUCIUS LUC- 
 CEIUS, THE SON OF QUINTUS. 
 
 " I have frequently intended to converse witli you 
 on the subject of this letter, but a certain almost 
 rustic modesty has hitherto restrained me from pro- 
 posing in person what I can, with less scruple, 
 request at this distance ; for a letter spares the con- 
 fusion of a blush. I will own then that I am inflamed 
 with an incredible, yet, as I believe, by no means a 
 culpable desire of being rendered celebrated and illus- 
 trious by your writings, and although you have more 
 than once given me assurance of your intending me 
 that honour, yet I hope you will excuse my impa- 
 tience of seeing that design executed. I had always, 
 indeed, conceived a high expectation of your per- 
 formances in this kind ; but the specimen I have 
 lately seen of them, is so far superior to all I had 
 figured in my imagination, that it has fired me with 
 the most ardent desire of being immediately distin- 
 
 fuished in your glorious annals. It is my ambition, 
 confess, not only to live for ever in the praises of 
 future ages, but to have the present satisfaction like- 
 wise of seeing myself stand approved in the authori- 
 tative records of my ingenious friend. I am sensible, 
 at the same time, that your thoughts are already 
 deeply engaged in the prosecution of your original 
 design. But, as I perceive you have almost com- 
 pleted your account of the Italic and Marian civil
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 249 
 
 wars, and remember you proposed to carry on the 
 remainder of our history in a regular series, I cannot 
 forbear recommending it to your consideration, 
 whether it would be best to weave the relation of 
 Catiline's conspiracy into the general texture of your 
 performance, or cast it into a distinct work. It is 
 certain several of the Greek historians will justify 
 you in this latter method. Thus, Callisthenes wrote 
 a narrative of the siege of Troy, as both Timams and 
 Polybius did of the Pyrrhic and Xumantine wars, in 
 so many detached pieces from their larger histories. 
 As to the honour that will arise to me, it will be 
 much the same, I must own, upon whichever scheme 
 you may determine to proceed ; but I shall receive 
 so much the earlier gratification of my wishes, if, 
 instead of waiting till you regularly advance to that 
 period of our annals, you should enter upon it by this 
 method of anticipation. Besides, by keeping your mind 
 attentive to one principal scene and character, you 
 will treat your subject, I am persuaded, so much the 
 more in detail, as well as embellish it with higher 
 graces. I must acknowledge it is not extremely 
 modest thus to impose a task upon you which your 
 occupations may well justify you in refusing; and 
 then to add a further request, that you would honour 
 my actions with your applause, an honour which, 
 perhaps after all, you may not think they greatly 
 deserve. However, when a man has once trans- 
 gressed the bounds of decency, it is in vain to recede, 
 and his wisest way is to push on boldly in the same 
 confident course to the end of his purpose. I will 
 venture then earnestly to entreat you not to confine 
 yourself to the strict laws of history *, but to give a 
 
 * The original is still more forcible : " Itaque te plane 
 etiam atque etiam rogo, ut et ornes ea vehementius etiam 
 quam fortasse sends, et in eo leges historiae negligas ; gratiam- 
 que illam, de qua suavissime quodam in prooemio scripsisti, ea si
 
 250 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 greater latitude to your encomiums than possibly you 
 may think my actions can claim. I remember, in- 
 deed, you declare in one of your very elegant prefaces, 
 that you are as inflexible to all the pleas of affection 
 as Xenophon represents Hercules to have been to 
 those of pleasure. Let me hope, nevertheless, if 
 friendship should too strongly recommend my actions 
 to your approbation, you will not reject her generous 
 partiality, but give somewhat more to affection than 
 rigorous truth can justly demand. 
 
 " If I should prevail upon you to fall in with my 
 proposal, you will find the subject, I persuade my- 
 self, not unworthy of your genius and your eloquence. 
 The entire period, from the rise of Catiline's con- 
 spiracy to my return from banishment, will furnish, 
 I should imagine, a moderate volume. It will supply 
 you likewise with a noble occasion of displaying 
 your judgment on politics, by laying open the source 
 of these civil disorders, and pointing out their proper 
 remedies, as well as by giving your reason for ap- 
 proving or condemning the treachery or perfidious- 
 ness of those who laid their ungenerous snares for my 
 destruction. I will add, too, that this period of my 
 life will furnish you with numberless incidents, which 
 cannot but draw the reader's attention in a very 
 agreeable manner ; as nothing is more amusing to 
 the mind than to contemplate the various vicissitudes 
 of fortune : and though they were far, it is true, 
 from being acceptable in experience, they cannot fail 
 of giving me much entertainment in description, as 
 there is an inexpressible satisfaction in reflecting, at 
 
 me tibi vehenientius commendabit, ne aspernere." In his fervour 
 of supplication, he beseeches the historian, without disguise, again 
 and again, to employ a much more elaborate and ornamental 
 panegyric, upon his consulate than his own conscience might suggest 
 that it deserved, and leave behind him on this occasion the ordinary 
 laws of history, i. e., sobriety and truth.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 251 
 
 one's ease, on distresses we have formerly suffered. 
 There is something, likewise, in that compassion 
 which arises from reading an account of the misfor- 
 tunes which have attended others, that casts a most 
 agreeable melancholy on the mind. Who can peruse 
 the relation of the last moments of Epaminondas at 
 the battle of Mantinca, without finding- himself 
 touched with a pleasing commiseration ? That glo- 
 rious chief, you may remember, would not suffer 
 the dart to be drawn out of his side, till he was in- 
 formed that his shield was safe from the hands of 
 his enemies ; and all his concern, amidst the anguish 
 of his wound, was to die with glory. What can be 
 more interesting, also, than the account of the flight 
 and death of Themistocles ? The truth, if it is a 
 mere narrative of general facts, affords little more 
 entertainment to the reader than he might find in 
 perusing one of your public registers ; whereas, in 
 the history of any extraordinary person, our fear 
 and hope, our joy and sorrow, our astonishment and 
 expectation, are each of them engaged by turns. 
 And if the final result of all should be concluded 
 with some remarkable catastrophe, the mind of the 
 reader is filled with the highest possible gratifica- 
 tion. For these reasons, I am the more desirous of 
 persuading you to separate my story from the general 
 thread of your narrative, and work it up into a 
 detached performance, as indeed it will exhibit a 
 great variety of the most interesting and affecting 
 scenes*." 
 
 Caesar having returned to Lucca towards the close 
 of the year A. tr. c. 698, was joined in that town by 
 Pompey and Crassus, together with a number of the 
 Roman nobility, who flocked thither to pay their 
 court tg the victorious general, in the hope of se- 
 curing, by an early place in his esteem, some sub- 
 
 * Melmoth's Letters of Cicero.
 
 252 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 stantial benefit to themselves from his daily increas- 
 ing influence in the state. At the councils of the 
 triumvirate which ensued, it was determined that 
 the two Gauls should be secured to Caesar for 
 five years longer, and that Pompey and Crassus 
 should enjoy the consulate for the year following ; 
 after which the government of Spain, for the space 
 of five years, was to be entrusted to the former, 
 and that of Syria, with the power of conducting a 
 war against Parthia, to the latter. Upon this agree- 
 ment, the confederates separated ; Crassus and 
 Pompey returning to prosecute their ambitious 
 designs at Rome, while Cassar proceeded to make 
 his preparations for a campaign more memorable 
 than any which he has recorded in the eyes of an 
 English reader, inasmuch as it terminated by exhi- 
 biting the eagles of his legions, for the first time, 
 to the gaze of the wild defenders of the coast of 
 Britain, and of convincing his adventurous troops 
 of the actual position of an island, the very existence 
 of which had been to that time considered a matter 
 of very considerable doubt*. 
 
 The resolution of the triumvirs to obtain the con- 
 sulate for two of their own body was not taken until 
 after the usual time of holding the comitia had 
 passed, and was in a great measure prompted by the 
 appearance of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus as a 
 candidate ; who, with singular boldness, did not 
 attempt to disguise his confident expectation of being 
 elected to the office, or the use he intended to make 
 of it ; openly giving out that one of his first steps 
 after his return would be to rescind the recent acts of 
 Caesar. So great, however, was the general dread 
 of the triumvirate, that he was suftered to stand 
 alone in his opposition to the powers by wljpm the 
 whole machinery of the government was regulated, 
 * Plutarch in Cses. ; Suetonius, Jul. xxv.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 253 
 
 not a single individual presenting himself as his 
 fellow candidate. The tribune Marcus Cato, more- 
 over, exerted the whole of his authority against him, 
 and by frequently forbidding the comitia, brought 
 the year to a close without any election whatever of 
 public officers. An interregnum therefore ensued for 
 some months, as a consequence of which, Crassus and 
 Pompey, who had before neglected to profess them- 
 selves candidates in opposition to Domitius within 
 the time prescribed by law, were enabled to stand 
 for the honour to which he was aspiring, and were 
 with little difficulty returned*. Porcius Cato, at 
 the same time, appeared as candidate for the prsetor- 
 ship ; but after the election had been frequently de- 
 layed by the new consuls, was ultimately repulsed, 
 the infamous Vatinius being elected in his stead. 
 The stoical patriot was, however, by no means de- 
 terred from exercising his censure on all occasions 
 upon the policy of the triumvirate ; and when the 
 motion respecting the extension of the. period of 
 Caesar's government in Gaul, and the assignment of 
 Spain and Syria to his colleagues, came before the 
 senate, opposed it so warmly, that he was com- 
 mitted to prison by the tribune Caius Treboniust. 
 
 Piso, the proconsul of Macedonia, had, in the 
 meantime, as well as Gabinius, received his recal, 
 and was obliged, however reluctantly, to obey the 
 summons. He reached Rome shortly after, but was 
 so conscious of the opinion prevalent with respect 
 to his misconduct in his province, that on reaching 
 the gates of the city, he commanded his lictors to 
 remove the laurel from their fasces, and retired to 
 his house with as small a retinue, and in as unosten- 
 tatious a manner as possible, attempting by this 
 means to avoid attracting the notice of the populace. 
 
 * Dio Cassius, xxxix. 
 
 t Liv. Epit. cv. ; Fasti Hellenici, iii. 1 88.
 
 254 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 It had been well for him if he had continued to make 
 use of the same precautions against publicity. But a 
 few days afterwards he was incautious enough, in his 
 vexation at being removed from a government in 
 which he had promised himself a long licence for plun- 
 der, to indulge in a series of splenetic assertions against 
 Cicero, in which he charged him with having effect- 
 ed his recall from envious and malicious motives. 
 The reply to his accusation was one of the severest 
 invectives ever hurled against corruption and guilt 
 by the genius of the terrible antagonist he had pro- 
 voked. Cicero had been probably long lying in 
 wait for this opportunity, which nothing but the 
 most complete infatuation on the part of Piso could 
 have afforded him, and opened the whole stores of 
 his hoarded detestation to strengthen and embitter 
 his eloquence on the occasion. His speech is not 
 the deliberate and stern reproof of one whom length 
 of time has disarmed of personal resentment, while 
 it has left unimpaired his conviction of the guilt 
 and worthlessness of the object of his censure. If 
 Piso had only the day before driven the orator into 
 banishment, fired his house, and insulted his family, 
 he could not have been assailed by the object of his 
 persecution with a more startling burst of energetic 
 indignation than that elicited by his remarks ; which 
 resembles, in fierceness* and vehemence, the sudden 
 
 * A perfect vocabulary of Latin abuse might be procured from 
 the oration against Piso. Among other appellations, he is termed 
 importuna bellua, furcifer, coenum, Epicure noster ex hara pro- 
 ducte non ex schola (our friend Epicurus here, not from the school 
 but the sty,) carnifex, immanissimum ac foedissimum monstrum, 
 vulturius provinciae imperator, vorago reipublicse, furia, pestis et 
 labes, bustum reipublicse, scelus, tenebrae, sordes, lutum, &c. &c. 
 The pseudo-philosophic aspect of the ex-consul is coarsely, yet 
 most vividly, depictured : " You have crept into honours," ex- 
 claims the orator, " by the madness of men, and recommended 
 by the smoky busts of your ancestors, which you resemble in
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 255 
 
 outbreak and descent of an Alpine torrent, in a 
 moment prostrating, surmounting, or bearing before 
 it every obstacle which might be expected to im- 
 pede the rush of its excited waters. The speaker 
 does not omit the opportunity of descanting upon the 
 glories of his own consulship in comparison with the 
 former administration of his enemy. He draws a 
 most frightful picture of the misery of the provinces 
 presided over by Piso and his recent colleague ; 
 and concludes, after bringing in rapid succession be- 
 fore the eyes of his auditors the once noble cities and 
 districts upon which the subject of his denunciations 
 had been suffered to exercise his cruelties and extor- 
 tions at pleasure, amidst a blaze of impassioned 
 rhetoric, in which the words, prompted by his 
 glowing imagination, seem to crowd upon him almost 
 too fast for expression*. 
 
 Cicero had been summoned to this hostile encoun- 
 ter, from the delightful retirement of his villa near 
 Puteoli, at a season when the seductive coast in its 
 neighbourhood had assumed its most beautiful aspect. 
 Here he had lately been giving himself up to the 
 indulgence of a brief interval of leisure, devoted to a 
 
 nothing but colour." And again, ''When produced before the 
 assembly, and asked your opinion respecting my consulship, you 
 reply, respectable authority as you are, with one eyebrow elevated 
 to your forehead, and the other brought to a level with your chin, 
 that you were never a friend to cruelty !" Gabinius is treated with 
 equal severity. Saltatrix tonsa, gurges, concinnus helluo, are 
 some of the mildest appellations bestowed upon him. 
 
 * The beauty, power, and dignity of the final paragraph could 
 scarcely be transferred into any other language. " Nunquam ego 
 sanguinem expetivi tuum nunquam illud extremum, quod posset 
 esse iraprobis et probis commune, supplicium legis et judicii sed 
 abjectum, contemptum, despectum a ceteris a leipso desperatunt 
 et relictum circumspectantem omnia quicquid increpuisset 
 pertimescentem diffidenlem tuis rebus sine voce sine libertate 
 
 sine ulla specie consular! ; horrentem, treinentem, adulantem 
 
 omucs, videre te volui. Vidi," &c. In Pisonem, xli.
 
 256 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 studious examination of the library of Faustus the 
 son of Sylla; one of the best in Italy, and supposed to 
 have been chiefly acquired by his father, during the 
 course of his spoliations pursued in Greece, after his 
 sanguinary asssault and capture of Athens. " I 
 would rather," he writes to Atticus at this time, 
 " occupy the little seat which you have fixed under 
 your bust of Aristotle, than the curule chair of our 
 highest magistrates, and enjoy my friendly walk 
 with you, than with him whom I am now obliged 
 to make my associate*." He probably alluded to 
 Pompey, with whom, during a short residence of 
 the latter at his villa near Cumee, he appears to 
 have exchanged visits. But the writer, if sincere, 
 little knew his own heart. To him, as to every 
 other statesman infected with the fever of ambi- 
 tion, retirement, however accompanied with the 
 delights of literature, unless at the same time afford- 
 ing an opportunity for contemplating recent triumphs 
 or meditating upon fresh means to attract the popu - 
 lar gaze, was, as his exile might have taught himself^ 
 and has taught every inquirer into his character, 
 a state of unqualified wretchedness. Soon after his 
 return to Rome, and within a few days of the delivery 
 of the oration against Piso, he was a witness of the 
 magnificent games exhibited by Pompey at the 
 dedication of his theatre. Of all the entertainments 
 yet exhibited in that city, this appears to have been 
 the most costly and imposing. Hitherto all buildings 
 reared for the exhibition of dramatic entertainments 
 had been mere temporary erections. That recently 
 finished, however, was of hewn stone, and spacious 
 enough to contain at least forty thousand spectators'^. 
 
 * Ad Attic, iv. 10. 
 
 -|- Plin. Nat. Hist, xxxvi. 247. A few vestiges of this structure, 
 wliich Tertullian calls an " arx turpitudiuum," and probably with 
 abundant reason, yet remain.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 257 
 
 In order to avoid the scandal of the expenditure of 
 the enormous sums required for its completion upon 
 the simple purposes of amusement, the stupendous 
 edifice was dedicated as a temple to Venus Victrix, 
 whose shrine, of elaborate workmanship, surmounted 
 the whole, so that the marble benches on which the 
 spectators were seated, appeared, from below, like 
 steps leading to the sanctuary of the goddess. A 
 senate-house was erected close beside it, that the 
 members of the great council of the state might be able 
 to repair at once from the transaction of more serious 
 business to the enjoyment of the public spectacles, to- 
 gether with a basilica for the administration of justice, 
 and porticoes for the protection of the people in unfa- 
 vourable weather. An innumerable host of statues, ac- 
 cording to the prevailing custom of the time, were em- 
 ployed in ornamenting these buildings, and the refined 
 judgment of Atticus was respectfully consulted in their 
 distribution. In a letter to Marcus Marius, Cicero gives 
 a full account of the nature of the shows exhibited at 
 the consecration of the whole : " Our late entertain- 
 ments," he writes, " although of the most costly 
 description, would hardly have suited your taste, if I 
 may judge of it by the character of my own. For, in 
 the first place, those performers, who ought long ago 
 to have bid farewell to the stage for the sake of their 
 own credit, have been, merely by way of compliment, 
 brought forward anew. Your old favourite ^Esopus 
 acquitted himself in such a manner, that all men 
 were perfectly willing to grant him his dismissal from 
 service. At the commencement of his oath, and on 
 coming to the words, ' If knowingly I deceive,' his 
 voice utterly failed. Why should I mention the 
 other spectacles ? They were such as you have 
 long been acquainted with, without even the at- 
 traction which those produced at far less expense 
 usually possess. The contemplation of their extra-
 
 258 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 vagance was enough to destroy all enjoyment 
 extravagance which, I have no doubt, you are not 
 sorry to have missed. For what amusement could the 
 six hundred mules introduced in the " Clytemnestra," 
 or the three thousand warriors in the Trojan horse, or, 
 in short, the variety of arms both of infantry and 
 cavalry, in any kind of combat be supposed to convey? 
 means, I allow, of attracting the wonder of the 
 multitude, but which, to you, must have been totally 
 destitute of interest. If, indeed, you have all this 
 time been devoting yourself to listening to the read- 
 ings of Protogenes, supposing only that you have not 
 employed him on my orations, you have assuredly 
 received no inconsiderable degree of pleasure, and more 
 than any among us. For, I presume, you do not 
 regret the loss either of the Oscan or Grecian plays, 
 since you may, at anytime, seethe former performed 
 in our own senate*, and the Greeks you so thoroughly 
 detest, that you will not even visit your country-seat 
 by the Grecian road. Neither can I for a moment 
 think that you lament your absence from the contests 
 of the athlete, since you despise even those of our 
 gladiators ; and, indeed, even Pompey himself ac- 
 knowledges that he has wasted xipon the former both 
 his oil and his labour. 
 
 " I have yet to mention the hunts, which lasted for 
 five days, and were, I must allow, magnificent enough. 
 Yet, what delight can be imparted to a polished 
 mind, when a feeble mortal is torn to pieces by an 
 animal of enormous strength, or a noble beast is 
 transfixed with the spear of its pursuer ? Even if 
 these sights were worth beholding, they are such as 
 you must have often witnessed. I, for my part, who 
 was a looker on, was unable to discover any novelty 
 
 * A biting sarcasm against the aristocratic order. The Osci 
 were an ancient people of Italy, famous for the scurrilous and licen- 
 tious character of their farces.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 259 
 
 in the exhibition. The last day was entirely devoted 
 to the elephants, in the massacre of which, if there 
 was something to excite the wonder of the vulgar, 
 there was little to give them any pleasure. Nay, 
 there was even a certain sense of commiseration pre- 
 valent after the entertainment, arid a very general 
 opinion that the creatures, thus destroyed, must be 
 in some way closely connected in their faculties 
 \vih the human race*. 
 
 " That I may not appear to you to have been, 
 during these festivities, not only at the height of 
 felicity, but in the enjoyment of perfect freedom, 
 know that I have almost caused my own death, by 
 my exertions in favour of your friend GallusCaninius. 
 If I had to deal with people as willing to dismiss me 
 from service as they appear to be with regard to 
 .^Esopus, most willingly would I forswear my art, 
 and spend the rest of my days in company with 
 yourself and those who most resemble you. Weary 
 and disgusted as I was long ago, when fewer years 
 and greater ambition excited me to exertion, and 
 when I still possessed the liberty of declining the 
 defence of all whom I was unwilling to aid, I am 
 
 * Either seventeen or twenty of these noble animals were in- 
 humanly put to death on the occasion. Pliny has given an affecting 
 account of the scene. The hunters, it appears, were Gsetulians, 
 armed with African bucklers and slender spears, which they used as 
 javelins. The elephants, as soon as the attack upon them was 
 commenced, ran around the arena, making violent attempts to 
 escape, to the great consternation of the spectators, although they 
 were guarded by a massive raihvork of iron, and on finding their 
 attempts hopeless, turned to the people uttering hideous sounds, in- 
 dicative of their despair, which were so perfectly intelligible, that 
 the whole multitude arose with tears in their eyes, and forgetful of 
 the efforts of Pompey for their amusement, uttered curses upon 
 him for his cruelty. (Nat. Hist. viii. 67.) Yet, the praise of 
 humanity is not to be conceded to a Roman crowd for this transient 
 emotion, the effect of novelty alone. The sufferings of their owu 
 species, under similar circumstances, would, assuredly, have teen 
 utterly disregarded. 
 
 s2
 
 260 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 now reduced to the lowest condition of discourage- 
 ment. No single advantage do I anticipate from my 
 present labours, and the protection, even of my ene- 
 mies, I am now obliged to undertake at the request of 
 those to whom I am under obligations*." The last 
 hint, which may be considered as the voice of expiring 
 independence, a voice which expressed itself more fully 
 in some of his subsequent epistles, manifestly indi- 
 cates the extent to which Cicero was now entangled 
 by the trammels of the triumvirate. His time, for 
 some months afterwards, does not seem to have been 
 much occupied by public business. It is certain that 
 a great portion of it was devoted to his celebrated 
 work " De Oratore," which was finished before the 
 close of the yeart. Of this beautiful dialogue, sup- 
 posed to have been commenced beneath the spreading 
 planes of TusculumJ, between Crassus, Antonius, 
 Cotta, Sulpicius, and others, who had constituted, in 
 the preceding generation, a bright constellation of 
 talent in the Roman forum, the matter is too various 
 to allow of a formal analysis. It may be sufficient 
 to state, that it appears in every respect worthy of 
 the distinguished orators from whpm it is supposed 
 to emanate, and not less so of the great master whose 
 sentiments it really embodies. On the different 
 styles of pleading pursued by the ablest orators at 
 the Roman bar, the forensic wit and subtlety of anti- 
 quity, or rather upon the general principles of legal 
 reasoning and rhetoric, which are peculiar to no 
 period, nor limited to any place, it must always be 
 considered as a treatise of inestimable value. 
 
 At whichever of his villas this elaborate essay was 
 
 * Ad Diversos, vii. 1. t Fasti Hellenici, iii. 189. 
 
 J The fondness of the Romans for this majestic tree is well 
 known. The earth about its roots was frequently moistened, in 
 order to increase its growth, with the most generous wines, and its 
 leaves selected as the appropriate crown of the fabled Genius of their 
 city and people.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 261 
 
 composed, Cicero had returned from thence to the 
 capital some time before the year had expired, as is 
 manifest from his own words. He had thus an 
 opportunity of being reconciled to Crassus, with 
 whom he had latterly been on indifferent terms, before 
 the triumvir had yet set out from Rome for his pro- 
 vince of Syria. The reconciliation was brought about 
 by means of Publius, the son of Crassus, whom, 
 with one of the noblest armies ever ranged beneath 
 the standard of the republic, his avaricious parent 
 was on the point of leading to a speedy and unsparing 
 destruction on the distant wastes of Mesopotamia ; 
 and it is a circumstance not unworthy of record, that 
 Crassus and Cicero, who had so often defended the 
 same causes in the forum, and stemmed together the 
 tide of debate in the senate-house, supped together in 
 the gardens of Crassipes, the son-in-law of the latter, 
 situated upon the banks of the Tiber, immediately 
 before the departure of the devoted general upon his 
 calamitous expedition, so that the orator describes him 
 as having almost set out from his own hearth to com- 
 mence hostilities against the Parthians *. Cicero 
 immediately afterwards leaving Rome, had reached 
 hisTusculan villa on the 15th of Novembert, and was 
 in the enjoyment of its tranquil retirement, while the 
 legions of Crassus were leaving the city under the im- 
 pressive circumstances mentioned in the graphic nar- 
 rative of Plutarch. As the Parthian war was purely 
 aggressive, it was looked upon with unfavourable 
 
 * Crassus, ut quasi testata populo Romano esset nostra gratia, 
 poene a ineis Laribus in provinciam est profectus. Nam cum niilii 
 condixisset, ceenavit apud me, in mei generi Crassipedis hortis. 
 Ad Di versos, i. 9. 
 
 f He seems, however, to have again revisited the metropolis before 
 the 14th of December, in order to be present at the marriage of 
 Milo and Fausta, the daughter of Sylla : " Romse a. d. Calend. 
 volumuB esse : quid dico, volumus? iiuuiu vero cogimur. Mi* 
 lonis nuptise," &c. Ad Attic, iv. 13.
 
 262 THE LIFE OF CICEKO. 
 
 eyes by the majority of the public, who were disgusted 
 with the ambition and covetousness which prompted 
 a man, now in the sixtieth year of his age, to com- 
 mence a contest of great difficulty and uncertain 
 success, solely with a view to his own aggrandise- 
 ment. The general discontent found a voice in the 
 tribune Ateius, who threatened to interpose his ne- 
 gative on the occasion to prevent Crassus from leaving 
 the city, and the departing leader was obliged, in order 
 to avoid a serious tumult, to request Pompey to escort 
 him to a short distance without the walls of Rome. 
 But he did not by this means escape an interruption, 
 which even to a modern reader does not appear void 
 of a solemn and awful character. Ateius, it is related, 
 had erected a small altar near the gate through which 
 Crassus was obliged to pass, and on the approach of 
 his train stood forward in the midst of the street, 
 and forbade him, by his authority as tribune, to pro- 
 ceed. But on finding his interposition only treated 
 with silent contempt, he is said, as if possessed 
 by some malignant genius, to have taken his 
 station by his altar, and 'after having kindled a censer 
 from its flame and sprinkled incense upon it, to have in- 
 voked, with horrible imprecations, certain mysterious 
 gods whoso names it was unlawful publicly to pro- 
 nounce, and to have deliberately devoted Crassus and 
 his whole army to destruction. The procession was 
 then allowed to proceed, but there is no doubt that the 
 appalling ceremony just performed sank deeply into 
 the minds of the troops, and possibly into that of their 
 commander, and contributed in some degree to their 
 subsequent discomfiture. The recollection of Flami- 
 nius, who, in former times, had left the city inau- 
 spiciously to command at the fatal battle of Thrasy- 
 mene, might easily appear a parallel case. Crassus, 
 however, pursued his way to Brundusium ; while, on 
 the news of the approaching tempest, Ctesiphon and
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 263 
 
 Seleucia poured forth their tremendous archers 
 towards the banks of the Euphrates, prepared to take 
 fearful vengeance on their invaders as soon as they 
 should appear, and to inflict upon the eldest of the 
 ambitious fraternity who had so remorselessly sacri- 
 ficed the peace of mankind to their private interests, 
 the violent end which not one of them was destined 
 to escape. 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Consulate of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius 
 Pulcher Cicero commences his Treatise " De Rcpublica" De- 
 fends Vatinius and Scuurus Orations for Plancius, Gabinius, and 
 Rabirius Letters to Trebatius and (,'uintus Cicero, respecting 
 the Britannic Expedition of Caesar Disturbances at Rome 
 Triumph of Pontinus Creation of Interreges Consulate of 
 Calvinus and Messala Canvass of Milo, Scipio, Hypsaeus, and 
 Clodius Tumults in consequence Oration on the Debts of 
 Milo Clodius is slain by the Followers of the latter at Bovillre 
 Insurrection at Rome Pompey declared sole Consul His 
 New Acts Impeachment of Milo Oration of Cicero in his 
 Defence Milo retires to Marseilles Prosecutions against the 
 Clodian Faction Cicero composes his Dialogue '' De Legibus" 
 He is appointed to the Proconsulship of Cilicia, and sets out 
 for his Province. 
 
 IN the early part of the consulate of Lucius Do- 
 mitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher,* 
 which followed that of Pompey and Crassus,and while 
 the last-mentioned general was yet in Italy, some 
 attempts appear to have been made in the senate to 
 effect his recall, which were rendered ineffectual by 
 the misplaced zeal of his friends. Cicero, at least, in 
 a letter addressed to him which is yet extant, speaks 
 of having defended him to the utmost of his ability, 
 both against the consuls for the year and several in- 
 dividuals of consular rank, in a late debate respecting 
 
 * A. u. c. 700.
 
 264 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 his command. The letter is replete with the warmest 
 expressions of interest in his welfare ; and the writer 
 requests that it may not be considered in the light of 
 an ordinary epistle, but as a formal treaty of strict 
 and lasting alliance * . He also speaks in the 
 highest terms of Publius Crassus, whom he repre- 
 sents as having from his childhood reverenced and 
 regarded him as a second parent. From all the 
 incidental notices in history of this highly accom- 
 plished and noble- spirited youth, whose unhappy 
 death Plutarch has described in his most able manner, 
 it does not appear that among the many thousands 
 who fell in consequence of the folly and infatuation of 
 his father, Rome had to lament any citizen more 
 deserving the regret of his countrymen. 
 
 Nearly at the same time was probably written the 
 epistle of Cicero to Julius Cassart, at that time in 
 Gaul, and preparing for his second expedition into 
 Britain, recommending his friend Trebatiusj to his 
 notice. The departure from Italy of his brother 
 Quintus, who had accepted the office of legate under 
 the same commander, took place soon afterwards, and 
 was followed by the retirement of Cicero for a short 
 time to his villas near Cumae and Pompeii, where, 
 during this interval of leisure, he devoted himself to the 
 composition of his elegant treatise " De Republica," 
 towards which his attention was devoted for a great 
 part of the year. The design of the work, in which 
 
 * Ad Diversos, v. 8. t lbid - 
 
 J The " docte Trebate" of Horace, to whom lie has addressed 
 the second satire of his second book. Trebatius was a person of 
 considerable eminence at the Roman bar. 
 
 Commenced soon after vi. of the Ides of May (10th), and 
 before the Kalends of June (1st). The work, which was originally 
 intended to consist of nine, was subsequently written in six books, 
 and published some time before the month of May, A. u. c. 703, 
 B. c. 51 , as appears by the letter of Ccelins. (Ad Diversos, viii. 1 ; 
 Fasti Hellenici, iii. 191.) That it was begun at the marine villa 
 near Cuniw, may be inferred from the letter to Quintus, (Lib.ii. 14.)
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 265 
 
 the characters, Scipio Africanus, Tubero, Laelius, 
 Mummius, &c., are represented as drawn, during a 
 conversation in the gardens of the former respecting 
 the atmospheric phenomenon of two suns which had 
 been lately witnessed, to a discussion respecting 
 the best form of a national government, was to 
 exhibit the excellence of the Roman constitution 
 in its best estate, as well as to represent its first 
 origin, the steps by which it had advanced to maturity, 
 and the eventful circumstances, after having been 
 long tried by which, it finally rose triumphant, and 
 perfected by the dangerous ordeal. With all its 
 merits it is much to be regretted that this beautifully 
 worded treatise is far from throwing that light upon 
 the early history of Rome, which might have been 
 expected from the talents of its author. Cicero 
 seems to have given implicit credence to the com- 
 mon legends, current in his own and at a much 
 later time, respecting the infancy of the Roman state ; 
 and incredible as the assertion would, until very 
 recently, have appeared, it is nevertheless true, that by 
 the more philosophic and accurate investigations of 
 modern times, the most youthful student of history, 
 removed by the space of nearly twenty centuries 
 
 Scribebam ilia quae dixeram, c. " I was then employed upon 
 the political treatise of which I had made mention, a weighty, to 
 speak the truth, and comprehensive work. If it turns out according 
 to my design, my trouble will be well bestowed. If not, I have 
 but to cast it into the sea, which at this moment forms part of the 
 prospect before me, and to turn my attention to something else, for 
 to be unemployed is not in my nature." Of this famous treatise 
 we have to lament the almost entire loss of the fourth, fifth, and 
 sixth books, a few insignificant fragments of which alone, if we except 
 the Somnium Scipionis, are embedded, like portions of primary 
 rocks in more recent strata, in the works of Lactantius, Nonius } 
 Augustin, &c. Owing to the researches of Angelo Maio, however, 
 almost the whole of the first, the greater part of the second, and 
 considerable remains of the third book are yet preserved for the 
 curiosity and instruction of succeeding ages.
 
 266 THE LIFE OF CICEBO. 
 
 from the time of Cicero, possesses a more extensive 
 knowledge of the true nature of the early constitution 
 of Rome, than the greatest of her sages and philoso- 
 phers could acquire, while her power and renown 
 were in their zenith. The reader will, perhaps, hardly 
 need to be reminded, that the highly imaginative and 
 philosophic " Dream of Scipio," one of the most 
 noble fragments of antiquity, and not excelled by any 
 thing even in the flowing and magnificent composi- 
 tions of Plato, formed originally part of the conclud- 
 ing book of Cicero's Republic. 
 
 In the midst of such, pursuits he was recalled to 
 the metropolis, where he spent a great part of the 
 summer, engaged in a variety of causes, which, if of 
 no great importance in themselves, were sufficient for 
 some time to occupy the whole of his attention. 
 Among these we find mentioned in his letters a dispute 
 between the corporation of Reate and the people of 
 Interamna, who had widened the outlet of the Lake 
 Velinus into the Nar, to the great detriment of their 
 neighbours, by increasing the drainage to the plain of 
 Rosia. At Reate, which he calls an Italian Tempe, 
 this cause was pleaded before the consul Appius and 
 ten commissioners, and determined in sufficient time 
 to allow the orator to be again at Rome before the 
 conclusion of the Apollinarian games * ; on appear- 
 ing at which, he states that he was received with 
 loud applause by the assembled multitude. His 
 defence of Messius, one of the lieutenants of Caesar, 
 who had been recalled from Gaul to take his trial, 
 succeeded, and was followed by that of Drusus, 
 Yatiniust, and ^Emilius Scaurus; the first accused 
 under the law against what was termed prevarica- 
 
 * Celebrated on the 5th of July. 
 
 f Drusus and Vatinius were defended on the same day, as 
 appears from Ep. ad Quint, ii. 16, towards the end of July or in the 
 
 beginning of August.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 267 
 
 tion, or betraying the interests of a client ; the second 
 of extortion, exercised in the province of Sardinia ; 
 and the third of bribery and corruption. All of 
 these were acquitted, but the pleadings in the several 
 causes have perished, with the exception of part of 
 the oration for Scaurus, which is among the dis- 
 coveries lately made in the Ambrosian library, and a 
 few detached sentences of little interest quoted by 
 commentators""". The defence of Vatinius brought no 
 small scandal upon his advocate, since Cicero had 
 made him the mark of his most vehement censure no 
 long time before ; but it is yet to a great extent 
 doubtful, whether the convictions or the principles 
 of the orator were proved to have been altered by 
 his undertaking the protection of his former adver- 
 sary, his pleadings on the subject being almost en- 
 tirely lost. 
 
 In a letter to Lentulus, of much greater length 
 than integrity would have demanded for its defence, 
 he attempts to explain this inconsistency, as well 
 as the singular fact of his having not only lately 
 appeared in the character of counsel for Vatinius, but 
 even as a witness in his favour. The hollowness of his 
 excuses, however, is greatly to be suspected, and the 
 true motive for his conduct but too likely to be 
 found in his wish to rise in the esteem of Caesar, of 
 whose ambition Vatinius had long been the abandoned 
 instrument. Nor can the careless levity which is 
 exhibited in the only remaining passage of his speech 
 in the cause, on a point of vital consequence to his 
 own honour, be considered in any other light than as 
 tarnishing his character, by any but his most devoted 
 panegyrists. His subserviency to the designs of 
 the triumvirs, already complete, was, in fact, now 
 
 * Judgment was given in the case of Scaimis, according to 
 Asconius, on the 1 1 th of September. See Schutz, Adnotationes in 
 Ciceronis, Frag. p. 230.
 
 268 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 called daily to display itself more openly, espe- 
 cially by the master spirit of that confederacy, 
 who having long ago found out his most vulnerable 
 point, continued with singular dexterity to avail him- 
 self of it. His vanity was first flattered by the extra- 
 ordinary honours and attentions bestowed by Caesar 
 on his brother Quintus, and afterwards by com- 
 munications to himself, couched in the most respect- 
 ful and friendly terms. " I imagine," he writes to 
 Atticus about this time, " by letters from my brother 
 Quintus, that he is now in Britain. I am extremely 
 uneasy till I hear from him. There is, however, one 
 point at least which I have gained. From clear 
 and repeated intimations, I learn I am on the most 
 affectionate and amicable terms with Caesar." 
 
 The defence of Plancius appears to have followed 
 that of Scaurus *, and is a highly creditable record of 
 the gratitude of Cicero towards one who had for- 
 merly befriended him in a season of distress. While 
 Plancius was quaestor of Macedonia in the memorable 
 period of his exile, he had found at Thessalonica, 
 under the protection and countenance of this generous 
 friend, a safe and honourable place of retreat, with 
 every act of kindness which could tend to soothe 
 him under the pressure of his misfortune, or enliven 
 the despondency by which his troubled spirit was 
 overcast. It was now in his power to return the 
 obligation, and he was not wanting to the oppor- 
 tunity. Plancius, after being elected to the office of 
 aedile, was accused by Marcus Juventius Laterensis, 
 an unsuccessful candidate, of undue influence and 
 bribery during his canvass, and of forming associa- 
 tions for the purpose of carrying his election by the 
 same unfair means, contrary to the enactments of the 
 Licinian law. By the exertions of Cicero, however, 
 the accusation, which was one of the most serious 
 * Ad Quintum, iii. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 269 
 
 kind, was rendered ineffectual. The speech delivered 
 on the occasion yet remains, and does honour not 
 only to the talents of the advocate, but to the 
 sentiments of the man. It had the further merit of 
 having been delivered after recent conduct on the 
 part of Plancius, not altogether correspondent with 
 his former friendship. Yet, in the recollection of 
 Cicero, the obligations conferred upon him in his exile 
 seem alone to have found a place. All other con- 
 siderations were either really or ostensibly neglected 
 in his conduct of the defence, in which it is not impos- 
 sible that his own self-distrust, and the fear of allow- 
 ing any late causes of estrangement to operate to the 
 disadvantage of his client, had a considerable share 
 in producing the exceeding zeal for the interests and 
 honour of his client, which is conspicuous through 
 the whole oration. His subsequent pleadings in 
 favour of his old enemy Gabinius, cannot be con- 
 sidered as equally worthy of commendation. That 
 unjust and rapacious oppressor, on the instant of 
 his return from his province of Syria, was fiercely 
 assailed by a host of prosecutors, who were eagerly 
 watching the moment of his arrival at Rome to 
 commence a series of legal processes against him. 
 He had no sooner entered the city, therefore, 
 which he did with all imaginable privacy, although 
 he had shortly before boasted his intention of de- 
 manding a triumph from the senate, than he was 
 impeached on three several grounds : first, for offences 
 against the majesty of the state, or, in other terms, 
 for high treason, in daring, with the assistance of the 
 troops entrusted to his command, to re-establish 
 Ptolemy king of Egypt in his dominions, contrary 
 to all religion and the public degree against it, and 
 for quitting, for that purpose, the province under his 
 government, which was thus exposed to the inroads 
 of numerous and dangerous enemies ; secondly, for
 
 270 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 plunder and spoliation committed by him in Syria 
 and elsewhere ; and, thirdly, for the common offence 
 of bribery and corruption, a charge which now seems 
 to have constituted part of almost every indictment. 
 At his trial upon the first of these counts, in which he 
 was acquitted, Cicero appeared against him as a wit- 
 ness ; on his appearance to answer to the third, as his 
 strenuous advocate. For an explanation of such a re- 
 markable contradiction in conduct, we need seek no 
 other evidence than his own. The interference of Pom- 
 pey was sufficient to render him the defender of the 
 very criminal against whose character he had formerly 
 hurled every epithet of abhorrence which his ima- 
 gination could supply ; respecting whose liability to 
 his censure, in its most powerful shape, no doubt 
 seems to have existed ; and of whom he speaks in 
 terms of unmeasured disgust and contempt, even at 
 the very moment while he appears to have been medi- 
 tating his rescue from the laws which he had so shame- 
 lessly and repeatedly violated. The eulogists of Cicero 
 have sometimes urged his appearance in behalf of 
 Gabinius as a proof of his placable and forgiving dis- 
 position. On the testimony of his correspondence, it 
 may much more safely be received as a fresh instance 
 of his servile submission to the ruling powers. Nor 
 does he himself seem to have been inclined to consider 
 this part of his conduct in the same light as some of 
 his admirers. " There is no republic no senate 
 no justice no dignity in any of us," is his compre- 
 hensive and candid avowal ; and humiliating as the 
 confession is, the practical commentary upon it would 
 hardly justify us, so far as Cicero is concerned, in an 
 attempt either to contradict it or to limit its mean- 
 ing. Yet the integrity of the judges before whom 
 Gabinius was tried was greater than that of his new 
 advocate, and with whatever eloquence the oration 
 in his defence, which has since perished, might have
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 271 
 
 been replete, it was insufficient to counteract the 
 stubborn evidence of the facts urged against him. 
 
 The last cause in which Cicero was engaged during 
 this year of almost unremitting exertion, was that of 
 Gains Rabirius Posthumus; a member of the eques- 
 trian order, accused under the Julian law against 
 extortion by Caius Memmius, as well as of treason 
 against the republic. Rabirius was supposed to 
 have received the sums advanced by Ptolemy to 
 Gabinius for the services of the proconsul in effecting 
 his restoration, and to have strenuously counselled the 
 employment of the Roman troops on that expedition. 
 It was, at least, well known that he had resided in 
 Alexandria as the agent of the king in the collection 
 of his taxes, and that, during his stay in the city, he 
 had assumed the Egyptian habit. The defence was 
 grounded, first, upon the assumption that the Julian 
 law did not extend to the equestrian order; and, 
 secondly, on the fact of Rabirius having advanced 
 considerable sums of money towards defraying the 
 expenses of Ptolemy at Rome, which, it was repre- 
 sented, rendered his residence at Alexandria necessary 
 for the recovery of the debt. In pursuing this line 
 of argument, Cicero was exposed to the heaviest 
 censures of the counsel for the prosecution, who 
 openly accused him of acting entirely by the direction 
 of Pompey, and at variance with the dictates of his 
 own conscience. His answer to the charge, taking 
 credit for generosity towards those who had once 
 acted in the most bitter spirit of opposition towards 
 him, and asserting that he felt no compunction in 
 acting upon the maxim, that enmities should be 
 mortal and friendships indissoluble, is much more 
 remarkable for point and speciousness than for 
 sincerity *. 
 
 His letters, written during the brief opportunities 
 * Pro Rabirio Posthumo, xii.
 
 272 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 which presented themselves for corresponding with 
 his friends amidst the labour and excitement necessa- 
 rily attendant upon the management of so many im- 
 portant causes, contain frequent and interesting refer- 
 ences to Caesar's second invasion of Britain, as well as 
 to his present relations with that leader. To Caius 
 Trehatius he writes in a manner which shows, that 
 the tempestuous charge of the British warriors and 
 their novel method of fighting, which had been duly 
 reported at Rome since the termination of the first 
 campaign in the island, were subjects of consider- 
 able apprehension to those who had friends engaged 
 in the expedition. " Take care *," he suggests half 
 jocosely, " that, with those habits of caution of 
 yours, which you have learned to exercise in other 
 matters, you do not fall into an ambush of the ene- 
 mies' charioteers ; and since I have begun to quote 
 from the Medea, let this passage be constantly in 
 your mind : That he possesses wisdom to little pur- 
 pose, who is not wise for himelf." To his brother 
 Quintus he writes soon afterwards t : "How de- 
 lightful was your late epistle respecting Britain ! I 
 feared the ocean, I feared the hostile coast. What 
 yet remains before you, I am far from despising, 
 although it appears to me to hold out a prospect of 
 hope, rather than apprehension." To Trebatius, 
 who had been left behind in Gaul on the sailing of 
 the invading armament, he addresses himself in a 
 style of polished and playful satire on the circum- 
 stance j. "I have perused your epistle," he ob- 
 serves, "from which, I understand, that you are 
 considered a thorough lawyer by our friend Caesar . 
 
 * Ad Diversos, vii. 7. 
 
 f- Ad Quint, ii. 16. It will be seen, that the chronology of 
 Schiitz has been followed in the references to these epistles. 
 
 J Ad Diversos, vii. 10. 
 
 " Ergo, no soldier, and therefore left behind ;" such, at least 
 seems to be the point of the allusion.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 273 
 
 You have reason to congratulate yourself on being 
 quartered in a country where your knowledge ap- 
 pears something considerable. But had you passed 
 over into Britain ; in all that immense island, 
 you would, most assuredly, have looked in vain for 
 one more learned in the law than yourself. To con- 
 tinue the jesting strain in which I have begun : I 
 must confess myself rather envious of your being vo- 
 luntarily summoned by Caesar to an audience, while no 
 one else dares to hope for such a mark of favour ; not 
 from any pride on his part, but from the multiplicity 
 of his engagements. Yet in the whole of your let- 
 ter you have mentioned nothing of your private 
 concerns, which are, I protest to you, a subject of no 
 less interest to me than my own. I very much fear 
 you will find your winter- quarters sufficiently chilly, 
 and therefore advise you, in common with your 
 friends Mucius and Manilius, to be careful in main- 
 taining a blazing hearth, the more especially as you 
 do not possess a very extensive military wardrobe*, 
 although we hear that you have at present work 
 enough to keep you warm without the help of addi- 
 tional clothing. The intelligence would have greatly 
 alarmed me for your safety, did I not know that you 
 were much more cautious in warfare, than in your 
 pleadings. This much, at least, I deduce from the 
 fact, that fond as you are of swimming, you have 
 shown no inclination to peril yourself upon the ocean, 
 and as little to witness a real battle of charioteers, 
 whereas, at Rome, we could never contrive to cheat 
 you of a single exhibition of mounted gladiators f." 
 
 * Melmoth's translation is somewhat different. Trcbatius was 
 at this time quartered at Samarobriva, the modern Amiens. 
 
 fin the original "andabatse." By way of exciting the brutal 
 merriment of the Roman mobs, the gladiators known by this name 
 are said to have engaged in mortal combat mounted on horseback, 
 and blindfold.
 
 274 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 In a following letter to his brother Qujjrtus*, he 
 states : " I now come to the subject of your epistles, 
 of which I received several while at Arpinum, since 
 no less than three were delivered to me in one day, 
 all of them, as it seems, despatched by you at the 
 same time. You mention the exceeding attachment 
 of Caesar to myself. Continue sedulously to culti- 
 vate his friendship. I, for my part, shall exercise 
 myself in every possible way to advance his interests. 
 As to your assertion, that you are daily rising in his 
 favour, I receive the intelligence with a joy which 
 will be equal in duration to my own existence. Con- 
 cerning the operations in Britain, I am, it seems, to 
 understand that there is nothing to dread, nor any- 
 thing to afford a subject of congratulation. Your 
 fourth letter, dated from that island, the ninth of 
 August, was delivered to me on the thirteenth of 
 September. There was little of novelty in it besides 
 the mention of your tragedy of Erigone, upon which, 
 if I receive it from Appius, I will shortly let you 
 know my opinion. I have no doubt that I shall be 
 much gratified by it. While folding up this commu- 
 nication, I have received fresh despatches written on 
 the twenty-second of August, that is, within twenty 
 days after their date. Unhappy subject of trouble 
 that I am ! What grief have I felt from the endear- 
 ing letter of Cassar ! But precisely in proportion to 
 the pleasure which I received from the delightful 
 expressions of his friendship, was my sorrow on ac- 
 count of his misfortune." The allusion in this sentence 
 was probably to the recent death of Julia, the wife of 
 Pompey and daughter of Caesar, in child-bed ; an 
 event equally calamitous to her husband, her pa- 
 rent, and her country, and to which the letter in 
 qiiestion most probably referred. 
 
 * Ad Quintum, iii. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 275 
 
 The departure of Caesar from the island in which 
 he had only succeeded in establishing, after the 
 expenditure of so much blood and treasure upon its 
 reduction, a mere nominal and momentary submission 
 to his arms, is also not without a place in the same 
 rich and varied correspondence. In the second epistle 
 of the third book of his letters to his brother Quintus, 
 lie says : " Caesar forwarded a despatch to me from 
 Britain, on the first of September, which I received 
 on the twenty-eighth of the same month. His 
 intelligence respecting the late operations in the island 
 is satisfactory enough. He desires me to feel no surprise 
 at not hearing from you, since you were not with him 
 daring his march towards the coast. To this letter I 
 have made no reply, not even for the purpose of con- 
 gratulation, out of respect to his late affliction." And 
 afterwards, in a letter to Atticus : " I am informed 
 by my brother Quintus of almost incredible instances of 
 Csesar's affection towards me, and this is confirmed 
 by the most flattering letters from Caesar himself. 
 The end of the expedition to Britain is confidently 
 expected, for it is certain that our footing in the 
 country is now secured by the most astonishing for- 
 tifications*. This, also, is certain, that there is not 
 
 * Melmoth rentiers the passage : " We are impatient for tlie 
 event of the Britannic expedition. All we know for certain is, 
 that the island is fortified with amazing rocks." Yet, with all due 
 respect to that elegant scholar, it may be observed, that his transla- 
 tion is scarcely warranted by the connexion of the sense in the original. 
 The words of Cicero are, "Britannici belli eventus expectatur. Con- 
 stat enim aditus insulas esse munitos mirifiris molibus." No notice, 
 therefore, is taken of an important particle. There can belittle doubt, 
 that, by the " mirificse moles" are to be understood the works for the 
 protection of his fleet and army which are mentioned by Caesar : 
 (De Bello Gall. v. 11.) " Ipse etsi res erat multce operce et laboris, 
 tanien commodissimum esse statuit omnes naves subduci et cum 
 castiis una munitione conjungi. In his rebus circiter dies x. con- 
 sumit, n<? uocturnis quidem temporibus ad laborem militum inter- 
 missis. Subdnctis navibus castrisque egregie munitis," &c. Such
 
 276 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 a single particle of silver in the island*, nor any hope 
 of booty, unless in the way of slaves, and of these you 
 will not expect, I presume, any skilled in letters or 
 music." He subsequently writes : " I received on the 
 twenty- fourth of Octobert, letters from Ca3sar,and my 
 brother Quintus, dated the twenty-sixth of Septem- 
 ber. The British war is finished, since hostages 
 have been given by the natives, and the payment of 
 a sum of money commanded ; but nothing has been 
 acquired in the shape of booty. They were then on 
 the point of embarking their men." 
 
 This is the last mention made of the operations of the 
 Romans in Britain by Cicero; and, although repeated- 
 ly quoted, and very generally known, the remarks of 
 Dr. Middleton upon the contemptuous character of his 
 general observations upon the country, are so elo- 
 quent and forcible, as to leave no excuse for their 
 omission. " From the railleries of this kind on the 
 barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help 
 reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of 
 kingdoms. How Rome, once the mistress of the 
 world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies 
 
 words would not have been applied by a general like Caesar, accustom- 
 ed to fortifications upon a most stupendous scale, to any litjlit under- 
 taking,and an impregnable post having been thus secured for the recep- 
 tion of supplies, as wellas a strong basis for operations, the subjugation 
 of the island would be considered as a matter of course in the eyes 
 of a Roman. Dr. Middleton's translation appears nearer the 
 truth : " We are in suspense about the British war ; it is certain, 
 that the access to the island is strongly fortified," &c. As to the 
 works themselves, they have, probably, long since been buried 
 under the waves of the British Channel. 
 
 * Similar information is conveyed in a prior letter to Trebatiu . 
 (Ad Diversoa, vii. 7) : " I hear that there is neither gold nor silver 
 in Britain ; if this is the case, I would advise you, as soon as possible, 
 to seize one of their chariots and hasten back to us." The mineral 
 productions of Britain were better understood in the time of Tacitus : 
 " Ftrt Britannia aurum et argentum, et alia ruetalla pretium 
 victorisc.'' Vita Agric. xii. 
 
 f Fasti Hellenic), iii. 190.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 277 
 
 sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty, enslaved by 
 the most cruel, as well as most contemptible of 
 tyrants, superstition, and religious imposture; while 
 this remote country, anciently the jest and con- 
 tempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy 
 seat of .liberty, plenty, and letters, flourishing in all 
 the arts and refinements of civil life : yet running 
 perhaps the same course which Rome itself had run 
 before it, from virtuous industry to wealth, from 
 wealth to luxury, from luxury to an impatience of 
 discipline and corruption of morals ; till, by a total 
 degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for 
 destruction, it falls a prey, at last, to some hardy 
 oppressor, and, with the loss of liberty, losing every 
 thing else that is valuable, sinks gradually again into 
 its original barbarism." Yet, there seems little reason 
 to indulge an apprehension of the occurrence of any 
 such contingency as the writer of this justly admired 
 passage seems to have contemplated. The peculiar 
 reasons for the past decline and present destitution of 
 Rome., are sufficiently numerous to be obvious to the 
 most superficial observer. If no empire can a 
 second time rise to the same lordly height of domin- 
 ion, none is assuredly destined again to sink so low ; 
 and to augur a similar fate to nations which are daily 
 becoming more thoroughly leavened by a vitality, 
 which that haughty power, even when called to act 
 the part of tutoress of the world, could neither 
 acknowledge nor appreciate ; while, moreover, that 
 darkness by which alone despotism can be estab- 
 lished or perpetuated is every day rolled back to a 
 greater distance, by the increase of intellectual and re- 
 ligious light, would be to assign to negative principles 
 a force which they neither claim nor possess. It is 
 only when one part of the earth, and that not the 
 most powerful, is far advanced in civilisation and 
 wealth before the rest, that its luxury becomes
 
 278 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 dangerous to itself. It is only when held by a single 
 hand that the torch of refinement is liable to be 
 struck to the earth and extinguished. The tendency 
 of society is now permanently to advance, not to 
 retrograde ; rather to raise the decayed states of 
 antiquity to a condition far preferable to that of their 
 once boasted greatness, than to add others to the list 
 of the fallen ; and if the existence of a republic of 
 enlightened nations, considering themselves in the 
 light of pledges for each other's safety, and conscious 
 that an injury done to one must infallibly induce the 
 detriment of all the rest, was a phenomenon unknown 
 to the earlier ages of the world, it is one which may 
 certainly be expected to present itself before the his- 
 tory of many more generations is to be added to the 
 records of the past. 
 
 A poem in honour of Caesar by Cicero*, and a de- 
 scription in verse, by hisbrother, of the principal events 
 of the British expeditiont, both of which are men- 
 tioned in his correspondence, and seem to have been 
 finished at about the same period, would have been 
 invaluable treasures if they had been preserved to 
 modern times. The latter, amidst the dangers and 
 fatigues of the service in which he was engaged, 
 seems not to have lost a moment which could be 
 devoted to his favourite studies ; since he is recorded 
 as having Completed four tragedies, probably transla- 
 tions, in sixteen daysj ; a truly marvellous facility of 
 composition. Cicero seems, on his part, to have 
 been led to similar pursuits, by the vain hope of 
 dispelling the sense of lost independence and present 
 subjection, by ardently devoting himself to studies 
 wholly unconnected with public affairs ; but the ob- 
 trusive feeling does not appear to have been banished 
 by the charm of letters, and his epistles continue to 
 lament the subservience to his powerful friends or 
 Ad Quint, ii. 1 6. f Ad Quint, iii. 1. Ad Quint, iii. 6.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 279 
 
 masters, by which his self-esteem, it is to be feared, 
 was at least as much wounded as his patriotism. 
 He also alludes to a resolution he had formed of 
 accepting the commission of legate under Pompey in 
 Spain, lately offered to him, in which he was suffi- 
 ciently in earnest to fix the day of his departure 
 from Rome. The interference of Caesar, however, 
 who was endeavouring to detach him from the inter- 
 ests of his rival by means of his brother Quintus, 
 had the effect of inducing him to decline the 
 appointment. 
 
 In the exercise of that easy credulity by which 
 he was made a dupe by the artifices of powerful 
 flatterers almost to the latest hour of his life, he 
 exclaims on this occasion to Atticus : " Observe 
 the closeness of my most endearing friendship with 
 Caesar ; for I am delighted to boast of having pre- 
 served at least one plank amidst the general wreck 
 of my fortunes. Ye Gods ! what especial marks of 
 honour and dignity, what favour does he bestow 
 upon our Quintus. If I were myself commander-in- 
 chief, I could do no more. Ca?sar, as I am informed 
 by his letters, allows him the full power of selecting 
 his own winter-quarters for his legion*. Is it pos- 
 sible that you can refrain from loving such a man ? 
 Whom, let me ask, of the opposite faction will you 
 find like himt ?" While Cicero was thus surrender- 
 ing his better judgment to the dictates of his vanity, 
 Rome was the scene of occurrences which were not 
 without their influence in leading the minds of 
 men to the contemplation of absolute authority 
 lodged in the hands of a single individual, as 
 a remedy for the intestine disorders by which the 
 
 * Compare Csesar De Bello Gall. v. 24, unam (legionem) in 
 Morinos ducendam C. Fabio legato dedit ; alteram in Ncrvios Q. 
 Ciceroni. 
 
 t Ad Attic, iv. 18.
 
 280 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 peace of the city had been for years interrupted, and 
 to which there now seemed no prospect of a termina- 
 tion. Instances of the most flagitious corruption were 
 daily brought to light. The four new candidates 
 for the consulship, Memmius, Domitius, Scaurus, 
 and Messala, vied with each other in open and ex- 
 travagant bribery. The spirit of party rose to a 
 furious pitch ; and the tribunes of the people, after 
 hindering the comitia from taking place up to the 
 time of relinquishing their office, left it with the 
 election of the magistrates yet undecided. During the 
 interregnum, the city was witness to a novel scene of 
 contention, in the form of a triumphal entry disputed 
 at the sword's-point. Cains Pontinus, who had 
 reduced the Allobroges to submission, was the 
 officer who, for the first time since the foundation 
 of Rome, had to fight his way to the Capitol on 
 such an occasion, and to mingle the horrors of actual 
 warfare with the pomp of its mimic pageantry. 
 After patiently waiting for five years in the suburbs 
 in expectation of a triumph, which was refused him 
 by the senate, he was enabled at length to establish 
 a title to the honour, by virtue of a law from the 
 people. The result was an attempt on the part of 
 the opposite faction to impede him by. force of arms, 
 and its repulse by the resolution of the armed ad- 
 herents by whom he was accompanied. 
 
 Amidst such commotions, a dictatorship was fre- 
 quently mentioned, and pronounced to be the only 
 means of saving the state from destruction. Pompey 
 was pointed out by the party who had raised the cry 
 as the fittest person to be elected to the office, and, 
 according to Cicero, expressed no unwillingness to 
 accept it. For more than six months longer, the 
 return of the chief magistrates continued to be 
 postponed, the new tribunes acting with the same 
 firmness or obstinacy as their predecessors ; with the
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 281 
 
 design of ultimately forcing tlic dictatorship of 
 Pompey upon the people, a measure which they 
 more than once formally proposed. During the 
 whole of this period of confusion, the usual expedient 
 was adopted, of creating from the patrician body a 
 fresh " interrex " every five days, that there might 
 be some public authority under whose .auspices the 
 comitia might be held, if suffered to proceed. By 
 the advice of the late tribune Marcus Cato, it w T as at 
 length deemed fitting to put a stop to the existing 
 disturbances ; and Ciieius Domitius Calvinus and 
 Marcus Valerius Messala, after being elected con- 
 suls, were allowed peaceably to enter upon their 
 office. Their magistracy was long remembered for 
 the intelligence which arrived, not long after its 
 commencement, of the terrible blow inflicted upon the 
 power arid reputation of Rome, in the disastrous 
 rout of Crassus and his army l>y Surena, the lieu- 
 tenant of Orodes, king of Parthia. Besides the 
 loss of the unfortunate commander in this ill-advised 
 expedition, and his son Publius, who fell by the 
 hand of his armour-bearer, to avoid the captivity 
 which threatened him, the commonwealth had to 
 lament that of thirty thousand of its best troops, either 
 killed or taken prisoners*, and the ignominious flight 
 of as many more who were driven back in scattered 
 bodies upon* the Euphrates, with a horror of the Par- 
 thian arrows which long continued insurmountable t. 
 No such disgrace had fallen upon the Roman legions 
 since the days of Cannae and Thrasymene ; but the 
 extent of the calamity was not to be measured by the 
 number of those who had fallen in the field, or the 
 
 * Plutarch, in Crass. 
 
 f Crassus is supposed to have been defeated some time in the 
 month of June, in the year A. u. c. 701, B.C. 53, on the fifth of 
 the Ides (the 9th) , according to Ovid. See Fasti Hellenic!, 
 iii. 192.
 
 282 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 degree to which the prowess of the conquered 
 fell, as a necessary consequence, in the estimation 
 of surrounding nations. By the death of Cras- 
 sus a rupture between the surviving members of 
 the triumvirate, the way to which had been partly 
 prepared by the decease of Julia the wife of Poinpey, 
 was rendered certain. Each saw from henceforth but 
 a single rival in his advance to absolute power. The 
 policy of Crassus, which might be considered as 
 that of the more wealthy and pacific members of 
 the community, had no longer a representative or an 
 advocate of sufficient weight to impose a check upon 
 the fierce spirits who severally espoused the interests 
 of two leaders, nearly equal in military reputation and 
 actual strength; and with the removal of the last 
 restraint which prevented the secret jealousies of the 
 opposite parties from bursting out into actual hosti- 
 lities, occasions were not slow in occurring to tempt 
 their long suppressed violence into furious and unlimit- 
 ed action. One of the less important consequences of 
 the defeat of the Romans in Parthia was the admission 
 of Cicero into the augural priesthood, in which a 
 vacancy had occurred by the fall of Publius Crassus. 
 He was opposed in his canvass by the tribune Cains 
 Hirrus, but the efforts of his competitor were seen 
 from the beginning to be hopeless, and on the nomi- 
 nation of Pompey and Hortensius, backed by the 
 universal approbation of the whole college*, he was 
 elected to an honour reserved, for the most part, for 
 the most eminent among the aristocracy alone, and 
 considered one of the most important dignities of 
 the state. 
 
 If the consular elections which ended in the return 
 
 * The College of Augurs consisted of fifteen members, who held 
 the dignity of a priesthood for life, unalienahle by any crime or 
 misconduct. The augurs were at this time chosen by the people. 
 It was, however, necessary that each candidate should be nomi- 
 nated by two persons already belonging to the body.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 283 
 
 of Calvmus and Messala had been scenes of pernicious 
 excitement from the prevalence of the madness of 
 party, the attempts which were made under their 
 auspices in the ensuing autumn to return magistrates 
 for the following year, far exceeded them in the 
 outrages committed by the rival factions. Three 
 candidates, Annius Milo, Metellus Scipio, and Plau- 
 tius Hypsaeus, presented themselves for the consul- 
 ship, while the notorious Clodius avowed his intention 
 of standing for the office of praetor. Clodius, at 
 the same time, bent all his efforts to frustrate the 
 canvass of Milo, and took the same means to prevent 
 his election to which he had so often had recourse 
 before. The comitia were interrupted by the violence 
 of his armed partisans, and after the consuls had been 
 seriously injured by stones hurled at them in the 
 tumult*, the assembly was dissolved in confusion. 
 Neither the bribery, however, which was carried 
 forward on a scale of insane extravagance, nor the 
 violence by which it was accompanied and covered, 
 was confined to one party. Milo, who had already 
 wasted three estates upon the exhibition of games 
 and gladiatorial combats to the people, prepared, 
 under the frenzy naturally engendered to a greater or 
 less degree by the prospect or occurrence of a con- 
 tested election, to lavish a sum equal to about a 
 quarter of a million of pounds sterling t on an enter- 
 
 * Cicero de JErc alieno Milords. 
 
 f 85e jj.a.ivera.1 ovic ir* aveKTias qui ludos II. S. ccc. comparet. 
 (Ad Quintum, iii. 9.) Mention is also made of the extensive prepa- 
 rations of Milo for his games in the preceding epistle, (iii. 8.J As 
 this was written not long after the eighth of the calends of 
 December, the exhibition probably took place in the spring of the 
 subsequent year, 701, before the election of the consuls, and con- 
 sequently before Milo was professedly a candidate for the consulate 
 the next year. The intentions of those who were determined upon 
 standing for that honour were generally known long prior to the 
 commencement of their canvass. It may be observed, that with
 
 284 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 tainment, the magnificence of which he hoped would 
 place him far above all his rivals in the favour of his 
 fellow-citizens. He had, however, a formidable com- 
 petitor in Hypsaeus, who having once served Pompey 
 in the capacity of quaestor, and at all times devoted 
 himself to his interests, was backed by the full 
 influence of that popular leader. The year having 
 terminated without the possibility of holding the 
 comitia without interruption, the expedient of cre- 
 ating interreges was again proposed, but was unable 
 to be effected, in consequence of the furious dis- 
 putes which took place upon the subject. Cicero, 
 on whom Milo had conferred so many obligations, 
 although he appears to have been absent from Rome 
 during some part of the year, devoting himself to 
 literature, and deriving his principal enjoyments from 
 the retirement of his villas and the society of his 
 youthful son and nephew, was by no means an uncon- 
 cerned spectator of the contests carried on at Rome. 
 Independently of his gratitude, his own fears prompted 
 him to take a deep interest in the success of his friend, 
 since the rival candidates, Hypsasus and Scipio, were 
 wholly under the influence of Clodius. His epistle 
 to his friend Curio, on the return of the latter from 
 Asia, shows with what spirit he was mingling, at 
 the time of its date, in the disputes which were agi- 
 
 the letter in which mention is made of the extravagant entertain- 
 ments of Milo closes, to the regret of all interested in this period 
 of history, the correspondence of Cicero with Quiutus. Whatever 
 his occasional disingenuousness to others might be, to his brother 
 he always seems to express the genuine convictions of his judgment, 
 and the undisguised feelings of his heart. Yet even this means of 
 communicating his real thoughts seems, in his last letter, about to 
 be circumscribed by his timid subjection to the existing authorities. 
 " How cautious," he writes in the epistle referred to, " I wish you 
 to be in writing, conjecture from this, that I do not even com- 
 municate to you my sentiments respecting the existing disturbances, 
 lest this letter, if intercepted, should give offence to the mind of 
 some one." Ad Quintum, iii. 9.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO." 285 
 
 tating the capital. " I li#vc centred," he assorts, 
 " all my energies, labours, anxieties, every effort of 
 my industry, and every device of my mind, my whole 
 soul, in a word, upon the return of Milo to the con- 
 sulship, and have come to the conviction that I ought 
 to exert myself in such a manner as to obtain not 
 only the satisfaction of having performed my duty, 
 but the praise of piety. Nor do I think that his 
 own safety and fortunes ever appeared of greater con- 
 sequence in the eyes of any individual, than the 
 honour of that man in mine, with whose efforts my 
 interests are wholly embarked. We have in our favour 
 the best wishes of the good, secured by his conduct 
 in his tribunate, (that is, as I hope you will readily 
 understand, by his exertions in my behalf) those of 
 the common people, gained by the magnificence of 
 his public shows and the liberality of his disposition 
 those of the youth and the more active and influential 
 in our elections, by the expectation of their benefiting 
 in turn from his well-known influence and activity 
 on such occasions lastly, my own suffrage and inte- 
 rest, which, if no very powerful assistance, is at least 
 deserved, and justly conferred ; I may also add, 
 on that account, perhaps likely to be not without its 
 weight with the public. . All we require is a leader 
 and adviser, who, like a skilful pilot, may show us 
 how to avail ourselves of these favourable blasts ; and 
 were we to have the power of selecting one from all 
 mankind, I know not whom we could compare in 
 aptitude for this office with yourself*." But his 
 exertions in favour of his friend were not limited to 
 requesting the assistance of others in his behalf. In 
 the beginning of the year ensuing, A.u.c. 702t, he 
 
 * Ad Diversos, ii. 6. 
 
 f Patet autetn ex ipso argumento quo anno dicta sit IIEEC causa, 
 nempe anno U.C. DCCII., quo item annoet Clodius deinceps occisus 
 est. Angel. Mains in Oral, de Mr. al. Mil.
 
 286 THE LIFE OF CICERO^ 
 
 delivered in the senate-house his oration respecting 
 t-he debts of Milo; a speech, of which a few sentences, 
 with an ancient commentary upon them, have been 
 latterly discovered, but which, until brought to light 
 by the researches of the able and industrious scholar 
 by whom so considerable a portion of the philo- 
 sophic works of Cicero has been rescued from 
 oblivion, was not even suspected to have had 
 an existence. By the mutilated argument to this 
 oration it appears that Milo, in an assembly of 
 the senate convened for the purpose of inter- 
 fering to prevent the scandalous violence of Clo- 
 dius and his faction, was assailed by his adversary 
 in a bitter speech, accusing him of having made a 
 false return of his debts*, and glancing at Cicero, in 
 terms far from unintelligible, as his grand aider and 
 abetter in this fraud, as well as in the course of 
 bribery which he was charged with pursuing. What 
 effect the reply of the orator, who instantly rose to 
 repel the accusation, produced, it is impossible to 
 conjecture, since no notice is taken of this circum- 
 stance by ancient historians ; but judging from the 
 scattered phrases of the invective which yet remain, 
 it was behind none of the former speeches against the 
 same pertinacious opponent, in descriptions of his 
 well-known profligacy, for the purpose of holding up 
 the errors of his former life to abhorrence. 
 
 The contest upon which so much time, expense, 
 talent, and perseverance had been employed, was des- 
 
 * Milo, it appears, gave in the whole amount of his liabilities at 
 "sestertium sexagies,"or six millions of sestertii, nearly 50, 000^. 
 Argument, ad Oral. deJEr. alien. Mil. Pliny, however, (Nat. 
 Hist, xxxvi.24,) states that he owed no less than " sestertium sep- 
 tiugenties," or seventy millions of sestertii, about ofiO.OOO/., which he 
 considers, as he well might, " inter prodigia humani animi." From 
 the same author we find that his antagonist, Clodius, was not much 
 behind him in extravagance, since he inhabited a house purchased 
 at "sestertium centies et quadragies octies," nearly fifteen millions 
 of sestertii, or 120,000/.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 287 
 
 tined to terminate in a manner very little expected by 
 any of the parties engaged in it. AVhile the disturbance, 
 excited by the factions of the rival candidates, was 
 yet at its height, and while the whole city resounded 
 with the noisy enthusiasm of their respective follow- 
 ers, or witli the more serious uproar of their by no 
 means bloodless skirmishes, Milo departed from 
 Rome, on the afternoon of the 20th of January, in- 
 tending to pay a short visit to Lanuvium, a small 
 town in Latium, about sixteen miles from Rome, of 
 which he was the dictator, or chief magistrate. His 
 wife Fausta and his friend Marcus Fusius were seated 
 beside him in his chariot, while a long train of 
 mounted attendants followed, together with a few 
 gladiators, among whom were Birria and Eudamus, 
 two champions well known in the arena. As this 
 imposing band was slowly defiling along the Appian 
 way, it was met at a short distance from the village 
 of Bovillse, and near a small shrine dedicated to the 
 Bona Dea, by Clodius, who was returning on horse- 
 back from Aricia, accompanied by C. Cassinius 
 Schola, a Roman knight, two of the plebeian 
 order, P. Pomponius and Caius Clodius, and about 
 thirty servants, mounted like himself and armed with 
 swords. As the two companies endeavoured to pass 
 each other, some confusion was naturally occasioned, 
 which ended in a quarrel between the rearmost of 
 both sides, in which the gladiators of Milo took a 
 conspicuous part. Clodius, obeying the impulse of 
 his captious and haughty disposition, immediately 
 turned at the sounds of dispute, and riding towards 
 Milo's party, began to make use of threatening lan- 
 guage towards Birria, to which the exasperated gla- 
 diator replied in the manner of his savage profession, by 
 a thrust of his weapon, which took effect in the shoul- 
 der of his reviler. Clodius was immediately carried 
 into a tavern by the road side, and his followers, un-
 
 288 THE LIFE OF CICERO^. 
 
 sheathing their swords, commenced a desperate attack 
 upon the retainers of Milo, which soon increased to a 
 general combat. Fiercely as this was maintained for a 
 short time, the Clodians were soon borne down by 
 the superiority of numbers, and either slain out- 
 right, or forced, after receiving severe wounds, to fly 
 into the nearest places of concealment. Milo, then, 
 under the equal excitement of passion and apprehen- 
 sion, being well aware that the escape of Clodius, 
 under existing circumstances, was infinitely more to 
 be dreaded than his death, commanded him to 
 be torn from the house which had afforded him 
 a temporary refuge, and despatched without mercy. 
 His orders were executed almost as soon as pro- 
 nounced, and the wretched exciter of so many civil 
 broils, now fated to perish by the same means of 
 destruction which he had often used against others, 
 was dragged forth into the road and pierced with 
 repeated wounds*. The body w^as suffered tore- 
 main for some time unremoved, and exposed to the 
 wonder and curiosity of passing travellers, until it 
 was recognised by Sextus Tsedius, a Roman knight, 
 on his return from the country to the city, who, after 
 causing his attendants to raise it from the ground 
 and place it in his own chariot, sent it forward under 
 
 * Eleven servants of Clodius are said to have fallen in the 
 affray, as well as the landlord of the tavern, who was murdered 
 either in attempting his rescue, or by the ferocity of MilVs gladia- 
 tors, who, in the excitement of their fury, were little likely to dis- 
 criminate between an adversary and an inoffensive spectator. Mr. 
 Eustace, speaking of the scene of this memorable encounter, says, 
 " On the side of the hill, on or near the site of the ancient Bovillae, 
 stands a tavern, the very same, if we may credit tradition, into 
 which Clodius retired when wounded, and from which he was drag, 
 ged by Milo's attendants. Near the gate of Albano, on the side of 
 the road, rises an ancient tomb, the Sepulchre, as it is called by 
 the people, of Ascanius, but in the opinion of antiquaries, that of 
 Clodius himself. It is entirely stripped of its ornaments and exter- 
 nal coating, and has no other claim to the traveller's attention than 
 its antiquity." Classical Tour, vol. i. p. 436.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 289 
 
 their care to Rome. About nightfall, the news of 
 what had happened pervaded the capital, and was 
 corroborated by the arrival of the corpse of Clodius, 
 which was immediately exposed, naked and bleeding, 
 in the atrium of his house to the public view, and at- 
 tended by Fulvia his widow ; who, like one of the 
 tragic Furies, with dishevelled hair and maniac ges- 
 tures, mingled the wild lamentations which she ut- 
 tered over the body with imprecations against the 
 murderers of her husband, and appeals for vengeance 
 directed to the surrounding crowd. From every 
 quarter of Rome immense multitudes continued, 
 throughout the ensuing night, to flock to the spot, 
 and by day-break, the dense assemblage of human 
 beings had increased to a frightful extent ; several 
 persons, and among them one of senatorial rank, 
 being crushed to death amidst the fluctuations of the 
 densely compacted mass. Amidst the general com- 
 motion, the tribunes Munatius Plancus and Pom- 
 peius Rufus made their appearance, and advised 
 that the body of Clodius should be borne, exposed 
 as it was, from the Palatine hill, on which his house 
 was situated, into the forum ; where, as soon as it 
 was deposited on the rostra, the angry passions of the 
 multitude were raised to uncontrollable fury by in- 
 flammatory harangues delivered by both magistrates 
 in succession. At the instigation of Sextus Clodius, 
 the brother of the deceased, a funeral pile was 
 constructed beneath the porch of the neighbouring 
 curia, or senate-house, of seats, tables, and public re- 
 cords brought hastily together. This, when kindled, 
 necessarily involved the conflagration of the whole 
 building ; and the adjoining basilica of Porcius, an 
 erection of great beauty, catching fire from the burn- 
 ing edifice close beside it, was soon afterwards enve- 
 loped in flames, the heat of which was so intense as 
 finally to drive the tribunes from the rostra. After
 
 290 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 this opening act of the insurrection, the multitude 
 poured in different directions to storm the houses of 
 Milo and of Marcus Lepidus, the latter of whom 
 had just been created interrex ; but they were sa- 
 luted at the instant of their first desperate onset by 
 the inmates of both, who had received sufficient 
 warning of their approach, with a flight of arrows from 
 the roofs, delivered so rapidly, and with such certain 
 aim, as to compel them first to slacken, and soon after 
 to abandon their assault altogether. Having been 
 repulsed at these separate points of attack, they again 
 united, and with the fasces, snatched from the tem- 
 ple of Libitina, borne before them, proceeded first to 
 the houses of Scipio and Hypseeus, and afterwards to 
 the gardens of Pompey, with loud clamours for the 
 immediate creation of a consul or a dictator. From 
 this moment, however, the popular excitement, having 
 exhausted itself in violent efforts, without a fixed ob- 
 ject or a sustaining cause, began to abate almost as 
 rapidly as it had risen. A reaction even showed 
 itself, caused by the indignation of an immense num- 
 ber of the citizens at the late destruction of the public 
 buildings, and by the close of the same day appear- 
 ances were so much more in his favour, that Milo, who 
 had at first meditated withdrawing into voluntary 
 exile, had sufficient courage to re-enter the city, where, 
 on the following morning, he was again seen in the 
 white robe of the candidate, distributing his largesses 
 among the citizens. He was even produced shortly 
 afterwards, by the tribunes Coalius and Canianus at a 
 public assembly, and vindicated by them in set 
 speeches, which were received without any marks of 
 disapprobation. The excesses of the different factions 
 of the aspirants for the consulate continued, in the 
 mean time, unabated; until it was at length de f er' 
 mined by the senate to issue the final decree, that 
 the interrex, in conjunction with Cneius Pompey and
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 291 
 
 the tribunes of the people, should take care that the 
 commonwealth received no detriment. A momentary 
 calm was produced by this decisive step, and by the 
 terror of the levies which instantly took place through- 
 out Italy to enforce it ; and at the first moment at 
 which there was a prospect of justice being adminis- 
 tered as before, two Clodii, both bearing the prse- 
 nomen of Appius, the nephews of the late Publius 
 Clodius, demanded that the slaves of Milo should be 
 given up to torture, according to the detestable regu- 
 lations of Roman jurisprudence, that information 
 might be gained from them for the foundation of a 
 criminal information against their master. Milo, 
 however, in apprehension of such a movement, 
 had taken the customary method of eluding it, by 
 previously manumitting all the attendants in his 
 train on the day of the death of Clodius, avowedly 
 under an impulse of gratitude for the preservation of 
 his life by their means. The friends of Milo, Ccelius 
 and Canianus, at the same time retorted, by demand- 
 ing, in their turn, that the households of Hypsseus 
 and Quintus Metellus, together with all the slaves 
 of Clodius who had survived their encounter with 
 those of Milo, should be put to the question ; to 
 ascertain whether the deceased had not met his end 
 in pursuance of a design against the life of his rival, 
 deliberately planned and attempted to be carried into 
 effect. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when Pompey, by 
 the general resolution of the senate, was elected on 
 the 7th of February sole consul by the interrex Ser- 
 gius Sulpicius, and entered with promptitude on the 
 duties of his office. His first step was to produce 
 two. laws to the people, the one bearing especial 
 reference to the acts of violence which had lately 
 been witnessed in Rome and its vicinity; and 
 the other to the open bribery which had disgraced 
 u 2
 
 292 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the existing contest for the consulate. By both, the 
 judicial proceedings in the case of any one accused of 
 either of the offences against which they were di- 
 rected, were rendered much more summary than was 
 usual, since but three days were allowed for the pro- 
 duction of witnesses, and five hours for the speeches of 
 theadvocatesengaged in the prosecution or the defence. 
 These new acts, which were violently opposed by 
 the tribune Marcus Ccelius, were no sooner passed, 
 than the accusation of Milo was confidently expected 
 as a consequence. Pompey, indeed, was believed to 
 have projected them for the sole purpose of effecting 
 his ruin, by which the consulate would necessarily 
 be left open to Hypsaeus; and his whole conduct was 
 such, as greatly to strengthen the suspicion. Under 
 pretence of dreading the open violence of Milo, he 
 retired to his gardens, which were surrounded by a 
 strong body of military kept constantly under arms, 
 and, on one occasion, held a meeting of the senate in 
 the portico of his private residence, as if he had been 
 apprehensive of a design of forcibly interrupting its 
 deliberations. Fresh charges, wholly unfounded, 
 were constantly brought forward in the senate and in 
 the assemblies of the people by the partisans of Scipio 
 and Hypsaaus against the rival faction ; and after the 
 public mind had by every art been inflamed against 
 them, a qusesitor or instigator of consular rank was 
 proposed, by another law of Pompey, to be appointed 
 for the purpose of taking cognisance of the offences 
 mentioned in his recent statutes. Lucius Domitius 
 Ahenobarbus was selected to fill this office by the 
 general voice expressed at the comitia, and, imme- 
 ately after his return, was met by an application to 
 fix a day for the trial of Milo ; who was impeached 
 by the two Clodii for illegal violence, by Quintus 
 Petulcius and Lucius Cornificius for bribery, and by 
 Publius Fulvius Neratus for aiding, contrary to the
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 293 
 
 law upon the subject, in the formation of combina- 
 tions, or committees, for the support of his interests 
 at the consular elections. With some difficulty the 
 accused obtained the postponement of the two latter 
 charges until the more serious indictment should be 
 disposed of, and with cool intrepidity began to make 
 preparations for his defence; using none of the means 
 generally adopted by persons in similar circum-,. 
 stances, to move the compassion of the multitude, by 
 wearing his hair long and in disorder, or assuming a 
 sordid vest. His principal difficulty was to find an 
 advocate of sufficient courage to encounter the rising 
 storm of obloquy which threatened any one who 
 should profess the intention of undertaking his cause. 
 On this point, however, his perplexity was speedily 
 removed, by the offer of the most able assistance 
 which the whole Roman bar of that or any age could 
 have afforded him. Notwithstanding the frowns of 
 Pompey, and the clamorous threats of the Clodiaii 
 faction notwithstanding the open display of the 
 weapons of the adherents of the opposite candidates 
 for the consulate, and the prospect of future as well as 
 present peril (since the tribune Plancus threatened 
 to impeach him, if he did not desist from his under- 
 taking, as the accomplice and confederate of Milo) 
 Cicero, nobly forgetful of his immediate interests, 
 and equally disregarding the displeasure of his pa- 
 trons, the advice of his party, and even the sugges- 
 tions of his natural timidity, pressed forward to the 
 side of the friend who, on former occasions, had done 
 him such effectual service, and proffered his aid in 
 taking the principal management of the proceedings 
 for his defence. 
 
 Since the commonwealth of Rome had possessed a 
 name and an existence, no trial had ever excited such 
 intense interest as that now at hand. The whole of 
 Italy had been agitated by the spirit of party, for
 
 294 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 which the capital had afforded the great focus of 
 action, and so extensive was the participation in the 
 feeling which had prompted the late disturbances, so 
 general the apprehension that they were only pre- 
 paratory to much more serious results, that even 
 Caesar paused in the midst of the levies he was 
 making for the further prosecution of his victorious 
 career in Gaul ; doubtful whether the disturbances at 
 Rome would not call for the advance of his legions 
 in that direction, to ensure the public tranquillity *. 
 On the very first day of the proceedings, the fury of 
 the Clodian party broke out in a manner in the highest 
 degree alarming. The leading witness examined for 
 the prosecution was Cassinius Schola, who had in his 
 evidence endeavoured, as much as possible, to exag- 
 gerate the violence of the adherents of Milo, and 
 added numerous circumstances of gratuitous atrocity 
 to the death of their victim. Marcus Marcellus 
 then rose to cross-examine him in behalf of the defen- 
 dant, but was received with such a tempest of yells, 
 execrations, and threats, that, in the immediate ap- 
 prehension of being torn to pieces by the multitude, 
 he hastened to take refuge upon the very tribunal of 
 Domitius. These disorderly proceedings were, how- 
 ever, promptly remedied by Pompey, who, on the next 
 day, presented himself in the forum with a sufficient 
 guard to impose some degree of restraint upon the 
 conduct of the surrounding crowd. The trial was 
 now suffered to proceed without interruption. Se- 
 
 * Caesar, ut coustituerat, in Italiam ad conveutus agendos pro- 
 fisciscitur : ubi cognoscit de P. Clodii csede ; de senat usque 
 consulto certior tact us, ut omnes Italiae juniores conjurarent, delee- 
 tum tola provincia habere instituit. 
 
 His rebus in Italiam Caesari nuntiatis, quum jam ille virtute 
 Cn. Pompeii urbanas res in cornmodiorem statum pervcnisse intel- 
 ligeret, in Galliam Transalpinani profeetus est. This was pre- 
 paratory to the famous campaign against Vercingetorex. De Bello 
 Gall. vii. 17 ; Fasti Hellenic!, iii. 192.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 295 
 
 veral witnesses from Bovillas were produced, who 
 testified to the main circumstances in the murder of 
 Clodius. The vestal virgins were brought forward 
 to give evidence that an unknown female had pre- 
 sented herself before them with a votive offering on 
 the part of Milo for the death of his adversary, and 
 the case for the prosecution was closed by the testi- 
 mony of Fulvia, whose tears and lamentations made a 
 deep impression upon the sympathies of the assembly. 
 As in the course of the ensuing day it was im- 
 perative upon the advocates on both sides to finish 
 their pleadings, and upon the judges to give their 
 decision, the tribune Munatius, before the populace 
 began to disperse, addressed them in a set speech, 
 desiring them to be punctual in their attendance on 
 the following morning, and not to suffer the accused 
 to escape by any repugnance in expressing their feel- 
 ings of just grief and resentment. In consequence 
 of this harangue, which was followed by other 
 indications of an approaching tumult, Pompey, in 
 the course of the night, took possession with his 
 soldiers of all the approaches to the forum, and 
 planted strong guards in every temple and public 
 building from which a view of it might be obtained. 
 His own tribunal he caused to be erected in a con- 
 spicuous place in front of the aerarium, or treasury, 
 and ordered a chosen detachment to be drawn up 
 around it. With the dawn of day the whole of 
 Rome was in motion, and hastening towards the 
 place of trial. Every shop was closed, every kind 
 of business suspended, and but one feeling of intense 
 anxiety and eager expectation pervaded the immense 
 population poured forth to witness the decision of 
 the famous cause which had so long occupied their 
 attention. As the selection of fresh judges, in the 
 place of those who had presided during the produc- 
 tion of the evidence, went forward by the ordinary
 
 296 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 method of drawing lots, a dead silence sank upon 
 the forum and its countless occupants, amidst 
 which the elder Appius Clodius, Marcus Antonius, 
 and Valerius Nepos*, spoke in succession, for the 
 space of two hours, on the side of the prosecution. 
 Cicero then rose to reply. From the importance of 
 the question, the magnitude of the interests at 
 stake, the dignity and number of his auditors, and 
 his own well-known sentiments of deep hatred towards 
 Clodius, and friendship for the individual accused of 
 his assassination, it was anticipated that his genius 
 was now about to shine forth in a mannerwhich would 
 surpass, in brilliancy and effect, every previous ex- 
 hibition of its resources. The public expectation, 
 however, experienced a singular disappointment. 
 Cicero had been conveyed by his attendants to the 
 forum in a close litter, with a design to avoid the 
 sight of any object which could tend to discompose 
 his mind on an occasion when his highest efforts 
 would be requisite. But when, on descending from 
 this conveyance, he was saluted with the hoarse 
 murmurs and uproar of the Clodian party, when 
 he beheld the dense multitude before him waving 
 like an agitated sea with the violence of its emo- 
 tions, every eminence around him glittering with 
 the arms of Pompey's troops, and, high above all, the 
 presiding general, seated on his tribunal amidst the 
 imposing insignia of Roman dignity, and surrounded 
 by the full pomp of banners and military ensigns, 
 theheartof theoratoris said to have utterly sunk within 
 him, beneath the influence of that baneful timidity 
 which had darkened the genius of his great Athenian 
 prototype on an occasion of equal moment ; and than 
 which the prompt imagination and ready voice of 
 
 * Asconii Argumentum orationis pro Annio Milone : from 
 which most of the preceding particulars, relative to the death of 
 Clodius and impeachment of Milo, are taken.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 297 
 
 eloquence have not a more subtle or a more powerful 
 foe to encounter. In the commencement of his 
 pleadings he is described, by his own testimony as 
 well as that of others, as having always exhibited 
 a considerable degree of nervoxis trepidation ; but 
 at this momentous crisis, the feeling amounted to 
 an almost entire forgetfulness of the arrangement of 
 his arguments, and the graces of language with 
 which he had intended to invest them. His speech 
 was, in consequence, comparatively feeble and unim- 
 pressive, and very different from that masterly 
 oration so well known under the name of the De- 
 fence of Annius Milo. Had it, however, been delivered 
 as it at the present moment exists, and with every 
 advantage which the most finished action and utter- 
 ance of the speaker could have given to its majestic 
 periods, the event of the trial would probably not 
 have been different. Milo was condemned by a 
 considerable majority of his judges* ; and, following 
 
 * By the existing law on the subject, (the Lex Aurelia Judi- 
 ciaria,) the judges were at this time selected from the senators, 
 eqnites, and aerarian tribunes ; the latter of whom were officers 
 appointed to give out the money for the payment of the armies, 
 and always chosen from among the plebeians. The three orders 
 were therefore represented, though not equally ; since of the 
 eighty-one judges appointed at the trial of Milo, twenty-eight were of 
 the. senatorial!, twenty-seven of the equestrian, and twenty-six of the 
 plebeian degree. Before sentence was passed, both plaintiff and 
 defendant had the liberty of challenging and withdrawing five indi- 
 viduals from each order. This, of course, left fifty-one for the 
 ultimate decision of the cause. The numbers of those who voted 
 for the acquittal and condemnation of Milo are given as follows by 
 Asconius. FOR THE ACCUSED. AGAINST. 
 
 Senators, 6 12 
 
 Equites, 4 13 
 
 jErarian tribunes, 3 13 
 
 13 + 38 = 51. 
 
 Majority against Milo, 25. 
 
 It is also recorded, on the same authority, that the speech of Cicero 
 was delivered on the 3d of the Ides of April (llth).
 
 298 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the usual custom of his countrymen, prevented their 
 sentence by retiring into voluntary exile. He is re- 
 corded to have borne his misfortune with singular 
 equanimity and cheerfulness ; qualities of his disposi- 
 tion which have been most probably long familiar to 
 the reader, through the medium of the common tradi- 
 tion, that when furnished by Cicero with a finished and 
 correct copy of the speech intended for his defence, 
 he merely observed after perusing it : " It is for- 
 tunate for me that this oration was never actually 
 spoken; for had it once been delivered, I should 
 have been prevented from enjoying the flavour of 
 these excellent mullets at Marseilles*." His close 
 connection with Cicero, and the prominent part he 
 for a short time played in the history of his country, 
 may be considered as justifying some degree of 
 curiosity as to the latter part of his career. On 
 this head, however, the testimonies of historians are 
 by no means diffuse, and in some respects contra- 
 dictory. That he afterwards returned to Italy, and 
 that he met with his death from the blow of a 
 stone under the walls of a foi tress he was besieging, 
 while exerting himself in support of the cause of 
 Pompey against Ceesar, (having been induced to 
 take part against the latter, on account of his 
 omitting him alone from a general summons to all 
 exiles to repair home,) appears certain. The town 
 of Compsa, in the territory of the Hirpini, has been 
 mentioned by one writer as the spot before which he 
 fell ; but a far better authority asserts that the place 
 in question was Cosa, a strong citadel of Lucaniat, 
 situated in the Ager Thurinus. 
 
 * \4ftav fin 4v TVXTI avriji tyfVfTo, rb fj.ii TavO' OVTUI Kal iv rip 
 $iKo.(TTripi(a A.fx"*? 1 ' "' " "XP & v TOiavras iv Ty Mao-ffa\iq rpiy\as 
 iaQifiv thrfp TITOIOVTOV aire\f\6yriTo. Dio, Hist. Rom. xl. 
 
 f llle (Caelius) clam nuntiis ad Milonem missis, qui Clodio 
 interfecto a nomine erat damnatus, atque eo in Italiain evocato, 
 sibi conjunxit.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 299 
 
 Without considering how far the usual laws of 
 criticism on such subjects are to be applied to a 
 speech which must be considered rather as a testi- 
 mony of what the orator might have done, than of what 
 he actually performed, it may be observed, that on 
 the intrinsic merits of the famous defence of Milo, 
 there never has been, and probably never will be, 
 more than a single opinion. For condensed argu- 
 ment, clearness of arrangement, the power of appre- 
 ciating and bringing to bear upon the point to be 
 established the slightest incidents, and of seizing 
 upon and amplifying every shadow of inference 
 which might lead to the advantage of the accused, 
 as well as for the felicitous adaptation of the most 
 suitable words to the soundest reasoning, it is un- 
 surpassed even in the compass of the only writings 
 of antiquity where a rivalry of its excellences 
 might be looked for, the writings of Cicero him- 
 self. The design of the advocate is to establish a 
 counter-accusation, and to prove that the death of 
 Clddius was not the effect of a casual meeting, but 
 the result of a deeply-laid plan on his own part for 
 the murder of Milo ; and the skill with which his 
 design is w T orked out is truly remarkable. His gra- 
 phic and picturesque description of all the circum- 
 stances calculated to exempt his client from the sus- 
 picion of a premeditated attack, the mixed train by 
 
 Interim Milo, ditnissis circum municipia literis, ea quse faceret 
 jussu atque imperio facere Pompeii quos ex sere alieno laborare 
 arbitrabatur solicitabat. Apud quos cum proficere nihil posset, 
 quibusdam ergastulis solutis Cosam in agro Turino oppugnare 
 coepit. E6 quum a Q. Psedio prat ore cum legione * * * 
 lapide ictus esset ex muro periit. Caesar de Bello Civ. iii. 22. 
 This event, according to Pliny, 1 (Nat. Hist. ii. 57,) liad been 
 prognosticated a year before by a sbower of wool. A still more 
 remarkable deviation, however, from the laws of nature is gravely 
 recorded, by the same writer, as having taken place during the trial 
 of Milo, a storm of burnt bricks.
 
 300 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 which he was accompanied, the presence of his 
 wife Fausta, her female attendants and choristers, 
 the cumbrous character of the vehicle in which he 
 was seated, together with that of the dress which he 
 wore, and which had nearly cost him his life when 
 called upon to defend himself against the sudden attack 
 of his intended assassins, (although these points of 
 advantage might demand no extraordinary genius for 
 their discovery,) has been often and deservedly 
 praised, as well as the skilful opposition to these par- 
 ticulars of the arms and light equipment of the well- 
 mounted troop of Clodius, equally provided for offence 
 and for flight, his sudden and apparently uncalled for 
 departure from Rome to Aricia his equally sudden 
 return, and his suspicious deviation from the road to 
 visit the villa of Pompey*. The unfavourable con- 
 clusion which might have been drawn from the actual 
 issue of the combat, is also ably eluded. " If," says 
 the orator, " it be asked why, while in possession of all 
 these advantages, the party of Clodius was actually 
 worsted in the encounter, I reply: because it does 
 not always happen that the traveller is slain by the 
 hand of the robber, but the robber, occasionally, by 
 that of the traveller : because, moreover, Clodius, 
 although assaulting with every previous preparation 
 one wholly unaware of his approach, fell with all the 
 
 * Res loquitur, judices, ipsa ; quae semper valet plnrimum. Si 
 haec non gesta audiretis sed picta videretis ; tamen apparebit, uter 
 esset insidiator, uter nihil cogitaret mali cutn alter velieretur in rheda 
 penulatus, unk sederet uxor. Quid horum non impeditissimum ? 
 vestitus, an vehiculum, an comes ? quid minus prompttim ad pugnam, 
 cum penulaiiretitus, rhedaimpedhus, uxore pane constrictus esset ? 
 Videte nunc ilium, primum degredientem e villa subito ; cur? 
 
 Quid ergo erat ? mora et tergiversatio ; dum hie veniret, locum 
 relinquere uoluit. Pro Milone, xx.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 301 
 
 weakness and timidity of a woman into the hands of 
 brave men. Add to this the power of accident add 
 the uncertain issue of every contest, and the impartial 
 arbitration of battle, by which the vanquished and 
 prostrate foe often strikes to the earth the victor 
 while indulging in the exultation of success, and in 
 the very act of collecting the spoil add, finally, 
 the imprudence of the well-feasted and half- intoxi- 
 cated leader of the band ; who having left behind 
 him, as he imagined, his enemy cut off from all 
 chance of escape, thought nothing of the escort which 
 followed in the rear, until having fallen among them 
 while fired with resentment, and wdiolly despairing 
 of the safety of their master, he was suddenly in- 
 volved in the just retribution which faithful servants 
 naturally exacted for that master's life." Nor in an 
 inferior style is the beautiful appeal to the Alban 
 heights, so long consecrated to the religious service 
 of the Latins*, and to the desecrated shrines which 
 had borne witness to the extensive worship presented 
 in ancient times upon the spot, with the design of en- 
 listing the superstitious feelings of his audience in his 
 favour, while he represents in vivid colours the awful 
 Jupiter Latiaris, and the whole host of minor divini- 
 ties, (whose solemn groves and altars, grey with the 
 moss of centuries, Clodius had sacrilegiously over- 
 thrown for the foundations of his villa,) aslooking down 
 with complacency upon his danger, and rejoicing in his 
 
 * Vos enim jam, Albani tumuli atquc luci, vos,inquam, imploro 
 atque tester ! vosque Albanorum stratse arse, sacrorum populi 
 Roman! sociae et aequales, quas ille prseceps amentia, cassis pros- 
 tratisque sanctissimis lucis, substructionum insanis molibus oppres- 
 serat. Vestras turn arse, vestrse religiones viguerunt, vestra vis 
 valuit, quana ille omni seel ere polluerat. Tuque ex tuo edito monte, 
 Latiaris sancte Jupiter, cujus ille lucus, neniora, finesque saepe omni 
 nefario stupro et scelere maculiirat, aliquando ad eum puniendum 
 oculos aperuisti. Vobis illse, vobis, vestro in conspectu, scrap, sed 
 justse tamen et debitse prenas, solutae sunt. Pro Milone, xxxii.
 
 302 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 late but well-merited punishment. The testimony 
 extracted by the question from the slaves of Clodius, 
 is also confuted in a manner which might have been 
 expected to destroy for the time to come, from the 
 criminal code of Rome, that absurd, monstrous, and 
 appalling method of inquiry ; in reference to which 
 we learn incidentally from the speech of the orator, 
 that the household of the deceased had been kept for 
 a hundred days past in close and solitary confinement, 
 and brought forth from time to time in a building 
 called in mockery the hall of Liberty, to be subject 
 to fresh torments, till depositions should be ob- 
 tained from them satisfactory to the relations of 
 Clodius. If any fault is to be found in an address 
 possessed of so many merits, it must be with the 
 peroration. To a modern taste, the prosopopoeia of an 
 individual uttering the most patriotic sentiments 
 through the medium of his advocate, while the per- 
 son represented is known to have stood quietly by, 
 listening to the formal representation of his own 
 thoughts and resolutions, must appear too theatrical 
 and artificial to be effective. But if this observation 
 be thought hypercritical, it will at least be allowed 
 that the idea, even if unexceptionable in the first 
 instance, has been drawn out and enlarged upon to 
 an extent, which materially impairs the general 
 strength of the oration. 
 
 The impeachment of Milo was succeeded by that 
 of his friend Marcus Saufeius, accused of being one 
 of the most active in exciting the train of Milo to 
 storm the house at Bo villas in which Clodius had 
 taken refuge. In this cause Cicero again presented 
 himself against the Clodian faction, as counsel for the 
 accused, in conjunction with the tribune Coelius, and 
 had the satisfaction of finding his efforts crowned 
 with better success ; since Saufeius, although twice 
 brought to trial on different accounts, was on both
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 303 
 
 occasions acquitted. The new law was then directed 
 against the opposite party, and Sextrfe Clodius having 
 been impeached for the prominent part he had taken 
 in directing the late excesses at the tumultuous funeral 
 of his relative, was, to the great satisfaction of the bet- 
 ter disposed amongthe citizens, in his turn found guilty. 
 Scipio and Hypsseus were then accused under the late 
 act against bribery. The former was rescued by the 
 interposition of Pompey, who requested of the senate, 
 as an especial act of favour, that they would allow 
 him to be exempted from prosecution ; and crowned 
 this singular manifestation of partiality by marrying 
 his daughter Cornelia, and declaring him his colleague 
 in the consulate during the remaining months of the 
 year. Hypsams, who had only past claims upon his 
 favour to produce, was left to experience the full 
 rigour of justice. The next subjects of impeachment 
 were selected from the Clodian party. The tribunes 
 Plancus and Bursa, who had been amongst its most 
 active and mischievous supporters, were summoned 
 to prepare for their trial the moment their office had 
 expired, the former being accused by Cralius, and the 
 latter by Cicero. Both were condemned to exile, 
 although Bursa was defended by all the influence, as 
 well as the countenance of Pompey, who appeared in 
 person as his advocate. 
 
 At the brief seasons of relaxation afforded during 
 these proceedings, Cicero, whose rest was only 
 change of intellectual exertion, is believed to have com- 
 posed his treatise " De Legibus." The scene of this 
 dialogue, in which the speakers are Cicero, his brother 
 Quintus, and his friend Atticus, is laid by the still 
 and sequestered waters of the Liris* and Fibrenus, 
 
 * " The reader who delights in classical appellations, will be 
 pleased to hear that this river still bears its ancient name, till it 
 passes the city of Sora; that the Fibrenus (still so called) falls into 
 it a little below that city, and continues to encircle the little island
 
 304 . THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 beside the walls endeared to the writer as the former 
 residence of his ancestors*, and the whole work seems 
 to reflect the calm and subdued beauty of the quiet 
 autumnal season in which it was probably composed. 
 The ultimate principles of one of the sublimest studies 
 which can engage the attention of the human mind ; 
 those of a science which is entrusted, to a far greater 
 extent than any other, with the most important tem- 
 poral interests of mankind on the slightest devia- 
 tion of whose balance depends the happiness or misery of 
 thousands ; and which bases its principles and grounds 
 its appeal upon one of the imperishable attributes of 
 Deity itself, are the subject of this striking speci- 
 men of the kind of investigations to which many of the 
 great and wise of antiquity devoted the moments won 
 from the more harassing pursuits and engagements of 
 public life. Three books alone remain of the six ori- 
 ginally composed. The first two are devoted to the 
 introduction of the inquiry, and the establishment of 
 the great rules by which the practice of jurisprudence 
 
 on which Cicero lays the scene of his second dialogue ' De Legibus,' 
 and describes with so much eloquence. I must add, that Arpi- 
 mm>, also in the vicinity of the Fibrenus, still retains its name, enno- 
 bled by the birth of that most illustrious Roman." Classical Tour, 
 vol. ii. 470. 
 
 * With what harmony and justness of expression is this feeling 
 described! "Marcus. Ego verocum licet plures dies abesse, praeser- 
 tim hoc tempore anni, et amo2nitatem hancet salubritatem sequor; 
 raro autem licet. Sed niuiirum me alia quoque causa delectat quae 
 te nou attingit ita. Atticus. Quae tandem ista causa est? Marcus. 
 Quia, si verum dicimus, haec est mea et hujus fratris mei, germana 
 patria : hinc enim orti stirpe antiquissima suinus ; htc sacra, hie 
 genus, et majorum multa vestigia. Quid plura? Hanc vides villam, 
 ut nunc quidem est, latius aediticatam patris nostri studio ; qui cum 
 esset in fir in a valetudine, hie fcr6 aetatem egit in literis. Sed hoc 
 ipso in loco, cum avus viveret, et antique more parva esset villa, 
 ut ilia Curiana in Sabinis, me scito esse natum. Quare inest nescio 
 quid, et latetin animo, acsensu meo, quo me plus hie locus fortasse 
 delectet ; siquidem etiam elle sapientissimus vir, Ithacam ut videret, 
 immortalitatem scribitur repudiasse." De Legibus, ii. 2.
 
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 305 
 
 should at all times be directed*. The third treats of 
 the duties of the Roman magistracy as at that time 
 constituted, and the wisdom which had prompted 
 the creation, and decided upon the provinces of the 
 several members, of that body. The three following, 
 which, had they yet existed, must, from the nature 
 of their contents, comprising the opinion of Cicero as 
 to the best objects, forms, and pro visions of legal enact- 
 ments, and his judgment respecting the established 
 code of his own country, have been far more valuable 
 than those which contain the mere exordium and first 
 entrance upon his plan, have unhappily perished. 
 
 His attention to literary pursuits was, however, 
 now about to be interrupted by a necessity, which 
 called him to a scene of life hitherto wholly untried ; 
 and compelled him to exchange the scenes he had 
 just been describing with so intense a perception of 
 their influence, for a temporary residence in a distant 
 country. By one of the provisions of Pompey's laws 
 against bribery it was ordained, that no praetor or 
 consul should, from henceforth, be appointed to any 
 province, until five years had elapsed from the expi- 
 ration of his office. The provision in itself was cer- 
 tainly wise and salutary, since it was calculated to 
 prevent, by postponing the enjoyment of the prize 
 which was the real object of dispute among those 
 who sued for the higher magistracies at Rome, the 
 inordinate eagerness and unbounded corruption which 
 attended such contests, and the thoughtless extrava- 
 gance which, for the most part, preceded them. It 
 was, however, at the same time, sufficiently partial, 
 since Pompey was allowed to retain his government 
 
 The definition of justice, clearing it from abstract and intangible 
 speculations, and referring it immediately to its only intelligible 
 source, the will of a sovereign and peifect Being, is at once noble and 
 correct. "Quamobrem lex vera atque princeps, apta ad jnbendum 
 etad vetandum, ratio et recta sumnii Jovis." Do Legibus, ii. 4. 
 X
 
 306 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of Spain, and Caesar that of the Gauls. In conse- 
 quence of this regulation, Cicero, since the appoint- 
 ments of fresh magistrates to the provinces were to be 
 filled from persons who had some time previously 
 enjoyed the consular dignity, was forced to accept the 
 government of Cilicia, a charge for which there is 
 little doubt that he entertained a hearty aversion. 
 Yet, as on this occasion he was convinced of the pro- 
 priety of sacrificing his own feelings to the general 
 good, he did not hesitate to comply with the com- 
 mand of the senate. A force of two legions, which 
 at that time might have amounted to twelve thousand 
 men, together with about twelve hundred cavalry, 
 was, by a separate edict, placed under his care for the 
 protection of the province, which, besides Cilicia Pro- 
 per, included the neighbouring countries of Pisidia and 
 Pamphylia, the island of Cyprus, and the three dioceses 
 or districts of Synnada, Cibyra and Apamea. After 
 obtaining this decree and making such preparations as 
 were necessary, he quitted Rome in the beginning of 
 May, A. c. c. 703, and in the consulate of Servius 
 Sulpicius Rufus and Marcus Claudius Marcellus ; 
 having previously written, according to usual custom, 
 a complimentary letter to Appius Pulcher, his pre- 
 decessor in the government of Cilicia, which is pre- 
 served among his correspondence, informing him of 
 the resolution of the senate, and requesting his good 
 offices towards lessening the difficulties which he na- 
 turally expected to encounter at his first entrance 
 upon the duties of his appointment. He was accom- 
 panied by his brother Quintus, who had been 
 allowed to act as his lieutenant, as well as by 
 his son Marcus, his nephew Quintus, and his sister- 
 in-law Pomponia; and pursuing his journey by way 
 of Arpinum, Aquinum, and Pompeii*, to Cuma?, 
 
 * From his villa near Pompeii, lie wrote the epistle to Atticus, 
 (v. 1,) in which he gives a curious, but by no means agreeable, ]>ic-
 
 THE. LIFE OF CICERO. 307 
 
 was there met by his friend and rival in eloquence, 
 Hortensius, who took an affectionate farewell of him, 
 and received his parting injunctions to use every 
 means in his power to prevent his government from 
 being continued to him for a longer time than the 
 ordinary space of a year. From thence he proceeded 
 through Beneventum * to Tarentumt, where he ar- 
 rived on the 18th of May, and spent three days in the 
 company of Pompey, who was then on a visit to the 
 place. On the 20th of the same month, he set out 
 for Brundusium. At this port he had determined to 
 embark for Greece, but contrary winds J for some 
 time prevented him from putting to sea ; and he has 
 mentioned an additional cause of delay, in the absence 
 of his legate Pontinus, the well known conqueror of 
 the Allobroges, on whose military skill he appears to 
 have placed the greatest reliance. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Jealousies between Pompey and Caesar Cicero at Athens He 
 nrrives at Ephesus, and proceeds to Laodicea Disinterestedness 
 of Cicero Invasion of Syria by the Parthians, who besiege 
 'Caius Cassius in Antioch Cicero encamps at Cybistra His 
 Despatch to the Senate, giving Account of his Interview with 
 Ariobarzanes His Operations at Amanus Letter to Atticus 
 To the Senate and People To Marcus Cato Reply of the 
 latter Disingenuousness of Cicero with respect to Appius 
 His Justice towards the Salaminians Equitable Character of 
 liis Government Cicero at Tarsus He prepares to return to. 
 Italy Lands at the Peiraeus Arrives at Brundusium, and pro- 
 ceeds towards Rome. 
 
 BY the death of Clodius the attention of men, 
 which had been occupied almost during the whole of 
 
 ture of a matrimonial dispute between Quintus and Pomponia ; from 
 which it appears, that whatever might be the disposition of the Ro- 
 man matrons in general, the latter, like Cicero's own wife Terentia, 
 was by no means the meekest of women. 
 
 * Ad Attic, v. 4. t Ibid. J Ibid. 
 
 x 2
 
 308 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 his political career by his noisy and turbulent efforts 
 against the peace of society, was now at liberty to be 
 diverted to other intimations of discord, which having 
 long continued to rise, in comparative silence, from a 
 more distant quarter, had been hitherto disregarded 
 amidst the scenes of tumult and confusion daily exhi- 
 bited in the metropolis ; and which although, like the 
 minute clouds which are said, in tropical climates, to 
 rise before the most tremendous tempests, they might 
 have at first appeared of little importance, were not 
 on that account the less fearful prognostics of evil. 
 
 Since the death of Julia, and more especially after 
 the marriage of Pompey with a daughter of the family 
 of the Cornelii, the already existing causes of jealousy 
 between Caesar and his late son-in-law had continued 
 rapidly and constantly to increase. The lustre of 
 six successful campaigns in Gaul had at length 
 opened the. eyes of the latter to the fact, that he had 
 imprudently contributed to raise to eminence a leader 
 whose military genius was likely to eclipse his own ; 
 and, with this conviction, came the no less painful 
 reflection, that although it would have been a task 
 of little difficulty to suppress so formidable a rival at 
 the outset of his career, the attempt, if now made, 
 must be one involving much exertion, considerable 
 time, and no small degree of precaution. While 
 Pompey had been confidently reposing on the strength 
 of his past services at Rome, too well contented with 
 the universal homage paid to him to take any steps 
 to increase it, Ctesar, under the appearance of yield- 
 ing to him as his superior, and only enjoying the 
 important position he occupied in the state by his 
 favour, had been with consummate prudence turn- 
 ing every circumstance in his situation into a 
 means of future advantage. By his constant wars 
 in Gaul, a province considered too poor to be worthy 
 the ambition of either of his confederates, he had,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 309 
 
 by dint of incessant service, formed an army of 
 veterans inured to toil and danger to an extent never 
 before witnessed. The strong passes of the Alps, an 
 incalculable advantage either towards the success of 
 offensive or defensive operations, were in his hands ; 
 and the possession of Cisalpine Gaul enabled him to 
 advance his troops within a formidable vicinity to 
 the city without passing in any degree beyond the 
 bounds of his legitimate authority. He had, besides, 
 by a special law, been exempted from either giving up 
 his command, or presenting himself in person at 
 Rome, if he should think fit to sue for the consulate, 
 and the important concession, as well as dangerous 
 precedent, was not likely to be lost sight of in 
 the future calculations of his ambition. This was 
 clearly seen when certain attempts were made 
 by a considerable party in the senate to dis- 
 lodge him from his advantageous post, by proposing 
 to send successors into the provinces under his com- 
 mand. His adherents in the capital had influence 
 enough to make the question a subject of long and 
 protracted debate ; but the transfer of numerous 
 cohorts to the Italian side of the Alps, on the first 
 intelligence of the discussion, was a movement which 
 promised little for his obedience to any command 
 which might be ultimately issued for his recal. 
 Pompey, who was perhaps the chief actor in what was 
 probably intended at first only as an experiment 
 upon the temper and resolution of his rival, still con- 
 tinued to wear the mask of moderation, and even, to 
 a certain extent, of friendship towards him, by pre- 
 tending occasionally to interpose in his behalf. But, 
 notwithstanding this politic bearing, it was possible 
 for all to discover, that between himself and his more 
 daring and subtle competitor for dominion there was 
 but an unsubstantial bond of union a hollow truce 
 which would be unscrupulously broken the moment
 
 310 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 its violation promised to conduce to the advantage of 
 either. 
 
 While the minds of men at Rome were occu- 
 pied with forebodings originating from these and 
 similar considerations, the waters of the Ionian sea 
 were studded with the sails of the squadron con- 
 veying Cicero and his escort towards the coast of 
 Epirus, the first stage of his foreign destination. On 
 the 15th of June he arrived (little anticipating the 
 the celehrity which the spot was afterwards destined 
 to acquire) at Actium, after having landed on his 
 passage at Corcyra. Here the peril then thought 
 to attend an attempt to double the dreaded rock 
 of Leucate, appears to have determined him to 
 perform the greater part of the rest of his journey to 
 Athens by land. He reached that city on the 25th 
 of June, and remained there ten days in the house of 
 Aristus, a celebrated professor of the doctrines of the 
 Academy, indulging in those philosophic disputations 
 in which he was at all times delighted to engage, as 
 well as in the contemplation of those unrivalled works 
 of art, towards which the gaze of man was never yet 
 turned without admiration, and which at that period 
 were yet fresh with the impress of a beauty since 
 softened into a less commanding, though perhaps no 
 less powerful expression, by the mellowing hand of 
 a partial decay. At Athens he was joined by Pon- 
 tinus, and from thence wrote, at the instigation of the 
 principal Epicureans, his letter to Caius Memmius*, at 
 that time at Mitylene, dissuading him from following 
 out his intention of building upon the spot yet occupied 
 by the remains of the unpretending dwelling and school 
 of the great founder of the sect of the Garden, which 
 had been granted him by a decree of the Areopagus. 
 
 He set sail from the port of Peiraeus on the 6th day 
 of June, with a squadron of Rhodian, Mitylenian, and 
 * Ad Diveisos, xiii. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 311 
 
 other vessels numerous enough to constitute a respect- 
 able armament, and passing by Ceos and Gyarus, the 
 latter not yet peopled with the host of exiles who after- 
 wards crowded its rocks, was carried by a brisk galo 
 to Delos, where he remained for a short time wind- 
 bound ; and, as it appears, in no very good -humour 
 with the flat-bottomed craft of Rhodes, which he 
 represents as wholly incompetent to brave the heavy 
 swell of the .ZEgean. 
 
 On the 2 2nd of June, or, as he has expressed it, 
 five hundred and sixty days from the battle of 
 Bovillae *, he reached the coast of Asia, and landed 
 at Ephesus, having previously touched at Samos t. 
 He was received at his arrival in a manner which 
 testified the extent and character of his reputation in 
 that quarter. Multitudes had already poured into 
 Ephesus from the neighbouring districts, influenced by 
 the desire of beholding one whose wisdom and genius 
 had ensured him the highest place as a statesman and 
 philosopher, even in the estimation of distant nations, 
 and now, on the first news of his approach, hastened 
 to meet him with the same marks of respect which 
 they would have shown to the actual praetor of the 
 province. He records, with an honourable satis- 
 faction, that these indications of esteem were not 
 abused, as in too many cases, by any instance of ex- 
 tortion on his part, inasmuch as his journey to the 
 Cilician frontier was not attended with the slightest 
 expense to a single individual J. On the last day of 
 July he was at Laodicea , after passing through the 
 city of Tralles, and might now be considered fairly 
 within the limits of his government. His letters 
 to Atticus, from both these cities, as well as 
 from Ephesus, are replete with expressions of 
 disgust at the prospect of the employment before 
 him, with repinings for the more extensive theatre 
 
 * Ad Attic, v. 13. f Ibid. J Ibid. Ibid.
 
 312 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 for his abilities presented by the metropolis, and with 
 urgent requests to his friend to do everything in his 
 power to prevent the prolongation of his office, of the 
 commencement of which he requests him to take ac- 
 curate note, in order to move for his recal at the 
 earliest opportunity *. 
 
 It has been observed, by a writer equally distin- 
 guished by the acuteness of his judgment and the 
 elegance of his language, that if the principle of 
 liberty and due adjustment of power, by which alone 
 liberty is constituted, prevailed in the heart of 
 the Roman empire, the extremities of that mighty 
 system were subjected to a tyranny of the worst 
 possible descriptiont. Numerous proofs of this have 
 
 * Per fortunas! quoniam Romse manes, primum illud praefulci 
 atque prsemuni quseso, ut simus annui ; ne intercaletur quidem. Ad 
 Attic, v. 13. In provincia mea fore me putabam Cal. Sextilibus. 
 Ex eft die, si me arms, irapatrriyfi.a, tviavffiov commoveto. v. 14. 
 Laodiceam veni pridie Cal. Sextiles : ex hoc die clavum anni 
 movebis. v. 15. 
 
 f- Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix. The most prominent evils of 
 the Roman system of government abroad are, according to the cus- 
 tom of this great writer, summed up in a few words, but with 
 masterly comprehension. "Pendant que Rome ne domina que dans 
 1'Italie, les peuples furent gouvernes comme d s confederes. On 
 suivoit les loix de chaque republique. Mais lorsqu'elle conquit 
 plus loin, que le sennt n'eut pas imunediatemeiit 1'ceil sur les pro- 
 vinces, que les magistrals qui etoient a Rome ne purent plus gou- 
 verner 1'empire, il fallut envoyer des preteurs et des proconsuls. 
 Pour lors cette hannonie des trois pouvoirs ne fut plus. Ceux 
 qu'on envoyoit avoient une puissance qui reunissoit celle de toutes 
 les magistratures romaines; que dU-jc? celle mfime du peuple. 
 C'etoient des magistrats despotiques, qui convenoient beaucoup a 
 1'eloiguemenl des lieux oii ils etoient envoyes. Us exercoienl les 
 trois pouvoirs ; ila Etoient, si j'ose meservirdece terme, les bachas 
 de la republique. 
 
 " Nous avons dit ailleurs que le me'ine magistral dans la repub- 
 lique doit avoir la puissance executrice, civile, et militaire. Cela 
 fait qu'une republique qui conquiert, lie peut guere communi- 
 quer son gouvernement et regir 1'etat conquis selon la forme de sa 
 constitution. En effet le magistral qu'elle envoye pour gouvernfer 
 ayant la puissance executrice, civile, et militaire, il faut bien qu'il
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 313 
 
 been already given in the present brief and necessarily 
 limited history ; but were no evidence produced of 
 the fact, it might easily be inferred from a simple 
 consideration of the form of the provincial govern- 
 ment exercised by the Romans. Cilicia, like too 
 many other districts subjected to their despotism, 
 had, when Cicero entered upon its management, 
 been reduced to a deplorable condition of misery by 
 the unprincipled oppression of a succession of rapa- 
 cious magistrates, each eager to glean sufficient from 
 the little left by his predecessors to enable him to 
 spend the rest of his life in luxurious enjoyment ; 
 and by the avarice and dishonesty of the principal 
 farmers of the revenue, who, residing for the most part 
 at Rome, entrusted the task of collecting it to sub- 
 agents of the vilest character, generally conferring the 
 appointment on the highest bidder, and, provided their 
 own profits were secured, caring little by whom, or 
 to what extent, the effects of their extortion might be 
 felt. The apprehension of a war with a formidable 
 neighbour was an additional ingredient in the suf- 
 ferings of the country thus internally harassed and 
 oppressed. The Parthians, exulting in their recent 
 successes, were already pushing their advanced 
 bodies across the Euphrates, and desolating, by 
 means of their formidable cavalry, all the regions 
 which bordered the opposite bank. It was hourly 
 anticipated that the invaders would make their 
 appearance in some one of the districts entrusted to 
 the government of Cicero ; yet to defend his province 
 from an enemy which had defeated one of the most 
 potent armies ever sent by the republic into the 
 field, he h'ad at his disposal but the two legions, and 
 
 ait ausai la puissance legislative ; car, qui est-ce qui feroit des loix 
 sans lui ? 11 faut aussi qu'il ait la puissance de juger; car qui 
 est-ce qui jugeroit independamraent de lui ? II faut done que le 
 gouverneur qu'elle envo) e ait les trois pouvoirs ; comme cela fut 
 dans les provinces romaines." Liv. xi. chap. 20.
 
 314 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 a small body of horse, originally voted him by the 
 senate, to which he had in vain endeavoured to 
 procure an addition, by applications made to that 
 assembly while he was yet at Brundusium ; and 
 even of this force, he afterwards complained that 
 three entire cohorts were wanting*. He was, how- 
 ever, able to rely upon a considerable body of aiix- 
 iliaries from his province, and the whole army of 
 Deiotarus, king of Galatia, a firm friend and ally of the 
 Roman people. A letter written at this time to Atti- 
 cus gives a striking picture of the unpromising aspect 
 of affairs in Cilicia generally, as well as of the condition 
 in which it had been left by his predecessor Appius. 
 
 " CICERO SENDS HEALTH TO ATTICUS. 
 
 " Although the messengers charged with the des- 
 patches of the farmers of the revenue were setting 
 out for Rome while I was yet on my progress, I 
 have contrived to snatch a brief opportunity to pre- 
 vent the danger of your imagining that I have been 
 unmindful of your injunctions, and have, therefore, 
 sat down on the public road, briefly to mention a 
 few particulars upon a subject which ought properly 
 to be treated at a much greater length. Know then, 
 that on the last day of July I arrived in a province 
 reduced to the last condition of suffering, and all 
 but ruined beyond recovery, in which my arrival 
 had been most anxiously expected. Having re- 
 mained for three days at Laodicea, as many at 
 Apamea, and for the same space of time at Synnada, 
 I have heard nothing in these several cities but pro- 
 
 * See, on this subject, the letter of M. Coelius to Cicero. (Ad Di- 
 versos, viii. 5.) "Nunc si Parthus movet aliquid sciouonmcdiocrem 
 fore contentionem : tuus porro exercitus vix unum saltum tueri po- 
 test.'' The observation which follows is in perfect accordance with 
 the experience of all times : "Hanc autem nemo ducit rationcm ; 
 sed crania desiderantur ab eo (tanquam nihil denegatum sit ei quo 
 minus quam paratissimus esset) qui publico uegotio prsepositua est."
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 315 
 
 testations on the part of the inhabitants of their utter 
 inability to pay the existing capitation-tax; com- 
 plaints that every possession belonging to them had 
 been sold ; groans and lamentations on the part of 
 public bodies ; and relations of such acts of mon- 
 strous oppression, as would more become a ferocious 
 brute than a human being. The people, in short, 
 are weary of their very existence. Yet, in the 
 depth of their wretchedness, they have derived some 
 little solace from the circumstance that no contribu- 
 tion whatever is exacted from them, either for my- 
 self, my legates, my quaastor, or any one of my 
 attendants. Be it known to you, also, that I de- 
 mand neither provender for my horses, nor firewood, 
 nor any thing allowed by the Julian law* ; with the 
 single exception, that I require to be supplied by 
 my hosts with four beds and a lodging nay, some- 
 times not even this, since I occasionally am satisfied 
 with the shelter of my tent. In consequence of such 
 unexpected conduct, incredible multitudes throng to 
 meet me, from the open country, the villages, and 
 the neighbouring houses. My arrival seems every- 
 where to inspire a fresh life ; so much have the 
 justice, the disinterestedness, and the clemency of 
 your friend Cicero surpassed the anticipation of all. 
 Appius, on the first news of my approach, thought 
 proper to retire to the remotest part of the province, 
 that is, as far as Tarsus, where he continues to dis- 
 pense justice. We have no news of the Parthians, 
 yet some persons who arrived at my quarters a short 
 time ago, brought intelligence that a party of our 
 horse had been cut off by these barbarians. Bibulust 
 
 * The Lex Julia de Repetundis, passed in the first consulate of 
 Julius Caesar, A. u. c. 695, against exaction on the part of foreign 
 magistrates. This law contained more than a hundred eparate 
 counts ; but little is known of the extent of the restrictions im- 
 posed by it. See Ernesti Index Legum in Cic. 
 f The new proconsul of Syria.
 
 316 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 does not seem to have yet dreamt of making his ap- 
 pearance in his government. This has been ac- 
 counted for by a design which is imputed to him of 
 quitting it so much the later. I am hastening 
 towards my camp, from which I am at present dis- 
 tant two days' journey." 
 
 The Roman and auxiliary force collected by the 
 order of Cicero was at this time stationed near the 
 city of Iconium, in Lycaonia. Here, as soon as their 
 general had arrived and reviewed his troops, he re- 
 ceived the unwelcome news from Antiochus, king of 
 Commagene, that the Parthians had crossed the 
 Euphrates in force ; and the intelligence was shortly 
 afterwards confirmed by an express despatched by 
 one of the petty princes in alliance with Rome, 
 commanding a district beyond Mount Taurus, stating, 
 that the principal strength of the enemy consisted in 
 cavalry, and that Pacorus, the son of Orodes, was 
 at their head. Little defence was made against the 
 first burst of the invaders, the few Roman out- 
 posts in their road retreating successively before 
 them, until they had penetrated far enough into 
 Syria to invest Antioch, where Caius Cassius, 
 afterwards the celebrated conspirator against Julius 
 Csesar, was at that time stationed in garrison with 
 the principal wrecks of the army of Crassus, having 
 accompanied its ill-starred leader on his expedition 
 as quaestor, and afterwards conducted the retreat of 
 the Romans thus far, with consummate skill. Before 
 the direction which the Parthian army had taken was 
 fully known, Cicero, imagining that Cilicia was 
 their object, hastened to take post in Cappado-- 
 cia, through which his province was most vulnerable ; 
 and having advanced as far as the town of Cybis- 
 tra, entrenched himself, in constant expectation of 
 their appearance. His son and nephew, the younger 
 Marcus and Quintus Cicero, were at the same time
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 317 
 
 entrusted to the care of Deiotarus, and escorted by 
 him into his kingdom, whore, as in a place of greater 
 safety, it was intended that they should remain as 
 long as the Roman army continued to keep the field. 
 While encamped in this position, he was visited by 
 Ariobarzanes, who had been declared, after the 
 assassination of his father by his own subjects, king 
 of Cappadocia by the Roman senate, and entrusted 
 to the especial care of the proconsul of the neighbour- 
 ing province. The objects and issue of the journey 
 of this prince, as well as the operations which had 
 preceded it, are thus detailed in the public despatch 
 of Cicero on the occasion* : 
 
 " MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, THE SON OP MARCUS, 
 PROCONSUL, WISHES PUBLIC PROSPERITY TO THE 
 CONSULS, PRJETORS, TRIBUNES OF THE PEOPLE, 
 AND SENATE. 
 
 " After I had arrived in my government on the 
 last day of July, having been unable to reach it 
 sooner on account of the difficulties and delays which 
 occurred during my voyage, and the bad condition of 
 the public roads, I judged it most consistent with my 
 duty, as well as most to the advantage of the repub- 
 lic, to make the necessary preparations for placing 
 the military force of the province on as efficient a 
 footing as possible. As soon as I had accomplished 
 this, more by my own care and diligence than by the 
 employment of any abundance of means at my com- 
 mand, I determined, since messengers and letters 
 were arriving almost daily with intelligence respect- 
 ing the irruption of the Parthians into Syria, upon 
 directing my march through Lycaonia, Isauria, and 
 Cappadocia ; it being strongly suspected that the in- 
 vaders, if they thould resolve upon abandoning Syria, 
 and entering my province, would direct their course 
 Ad Diversos, xv. 2.
 
 318 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 through Cappadocia, the quarter in which it was 
 most exposed. Having, accordingly, advanced 
 through the regions of the above district which 
 border upon Cilicia, I pitched my camp near Cybis- 
 tra, (a town situated close to Mount Taurus,) both 
 that Artavasdes, the king of Armenia, whatever 
 might be his disposition towards us, might know that 
 an army of the Roman people was close to his confines, 
 and that I might act in conjunction with Deiotarus, 
 a prince influenced by a feeling of the utmost fidelity 
 and friendship towards our commonwealth, whose 
 counsels, as well as the resources at his disposal, 
 were likely to prove of great service to the state. 
 
 " While I was encamped at this place, after having 
 sent my cavalry into Cilicia, that the news of my 
 approach, when announced among the cities in that 
 direction, might confirm the inhabitants in their alle- 
 giance, and that I might have early intelligence of 
 what was going forward in Syria, I imagined that 
 the three days during which I continued stationary 
 might be devoted to the performance of an important 
 and necessary service. For since I had been enjoined 
 by your authority ' to protect king Ariobarzanes, 
 surnamed the " Pious and well-disposed to Rome*," 
 to keep inviolate the safety of that monarch as well as 
 his kingdom, and to act as a guardian both to himself 
 and his kingdom;' and since you had also added, ' that 
 the safety of the same king was an object of great 
 concern to the senate and people,' a compliment never 
 yet decreed to any princes 'by our Order, I considered 
 it my duty to convey the expression of your opinion 
 to Ariobarzanes, and promise him my protection, 
 amity, and ready services; that he might, understand- 
 ing the interest you had evinced for his own welfare 
 
 * Euseben et Philorbomscum. Both these titles arc yet to be 
 seen on ancient medals of Ariobarzanes, which are inscribed with 
 the legend APIOBAPZANOT2 ET2EBOT2 *IAOpnMAIOT.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 319 
 
 and the peace of his kingdom, inform me if he had 
 any occasion for our assistance. 
 
 " After I had made a communication to this effect 
 to the king in presence of my council, he, at the 
 commencement of his reply, expressed his obligation 
 in the strongest terms, as indeed was incumbent upon 
 him, to yourselves in the first place, and afterwards to 
 me; saying that it appeared a great and most honour- 
 able distinction that the senate and people of Rome 
 had so deeply concerned themselves in his welfare, 
 while it was also evident how entirely he might rely 
 upon my expressions of friendship and the influence 
 of the authority of your commendation, from the 
 diligence I had already shown in advancing his inte- 
 rests. He, at the same time, to my great satisfaction, 
 gave rne to understand that he neither knew of, nor 
 even suspected the existence of any secret designs 
 either against his life or his regal authority. When 
 I had congratulated him on this point, and expressed 
 my joy at the intelligence, and finally exhorted him 
 to remember the calamitous death of his father, to be 
 vigilant in providing the means of self-defence, and to 
 take, in pursuance with the advice of the senate, 
 every means for the preservation of his safety, he took 
 leave of me, and departed to the town of Cybistra. 
 
 " On the day following he came once more into our 
 camp, in company with his brother Ariarathres, and 
 attended by several aged friends of his father, and 
 with great signs of agitation and many tears, while 
 his brother fully participated in his emotion, began to 
 implore my assistance, on the strength of my pro- 
 mises and your recommendation. While I was won- 
 dering what sudden change of circumstances had 
 induced this distress, he informed me that decided 
 evidences of a dangerous conspiracy, which up to the 
 present moment had been concealed, had been just 
 laid before him ; that those acquainted with it had
 
 320 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 hitherto suppressed their information under the influ- 
 ence of fear, but in reliance upon my protection had 
 now boldly revealed all the knowledge they possessed 
 upon the subject. He moreover stated that his 
 brother, who possessed the greatest affection towards 
 him, had informed him of a circumstance, which the in- 
 formant referred to also acknowledged in my presence, 
 namely, that he had been sounded by the confederates 
 to ascertain how far his ambition of reigning in the 
 place of Ariobarzanes might be relied upon, and as- 
 sured that such an event could never take place while 
 the latter remained alive ; although, from a feeling of 
 apprehension, he had never yet denounced those con- 
 cerned in the plot. When he had finished speaking, 
 I again advised the king to take every precaution for 
 ensuring his security, and exhorted those friends about 
 him, whose fidelity had been approved by the judgment 
 of his father and grandfather, to defend, instructed by 
 the terrible example of the murder of the former 
 monarch, the life of his son by all the means of pro- 
 tection in their hands. But when Ariobarzanes 
 proceeded to request that I would supply him with a 
 guard of cavalry and infantry from my own army, 
 although I had not only the power, but was even laid 
 under the obligation of doing so by the tenor of 
 your decree, I did not think proper to comply with 
 the demand, inasmuch as the interests of the republic 
 required, in consequence of daily despatches I conti- 
 nued to receive from Syria, that I should advance 
 with my whole force to the confines of Cilicia; and as, 
 moreover, since the conspiracy was laid open, it 
 appeared to me that the king no longer needed the 
 assistance of the Roman arms, but could defend himself 
 by his own strength. I was therefore contented with 
 advising him to make his own preservation his first 
 lesson in the art of government, to use his absolute 
 authority against those who were convicted of plotting
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 321 
 
 against him, to punish those who had deserved seve- 
 rity, and to set the rest free from apprehension, to 
 use finally the safeguard afforded hy my army, rather 
 as the means of preventing than of suppressing a 
 revolt, while I at the same time assured him, that as 
 soon as the decree of the senate in his favour was 
 known, all would understand that I should, whenever 
 it might be necessary, he ready to afford him assist- 
 ance in compliance with your injunctions. Having 
 restored his confidence by such arguments, I decamped 
 from the spot, departing from Cappadocia with the 
 impression that, owing to your wise regulations, and 
 by an almost incredible and divinely afforded acci- 
 dent, my approach had freed from the peril of a for- 
 midable plot a monarch whom you had voluntarily 
 dignified with the most honourable title, commended 
 to my especial care, and decreed to be the subject of 
 your most anxious concern. The contents of this 
 despatch I consider far from superfluous, that you 
 may understand how great has been your prudence 
 and foresight in taking precautions against an event 
 which has all but actually happened, and that you 
 may be assured on my part, that I have beheld those 
 signs of virtue, fidelity and regard towards you in 
 Ariobarzanes as to justify all the interest you have 
 manifested in his defence and preservation." 
 
 On the receipt of more accurate intelligence respect- 
 ing the direction taken by theParthians, Cicero, think- 
 ing that Cappadocia was not likely to be threatened by 
 their movements, resolved upon shifting his position 
 to the frontiers of Cilicia, and accordingly decamping 
 from Cybistra, led his army towards the ridge of 
 Amanus, which seems to have been inhabited by a 
 fierce and hardy race, whom Plutarch describes as 
 maintaining the character for dishonesty, for which 
 their nation was proverbial, by a regularly organised 
 system of pillage against their neighbours. Yet their
 
 322 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 undaunted and long-continued efforts to preserve the 
 last spark of independence unquenched among their 
 almost inaccessible rocks, is a circumstance which must 
 excite some degree of sympathy for their ruin, and 
 might perhaps render necessary, if it did not justify, 
 the 'predacious habits for which they were notori- 
 ous. Against these, since the Parthians were ascer- 
 tained to be still far distant, Cicero decided upon 
 turning his arms, and his account of his operations 
 in this quarter, contained in a letter to Atticus, is as 
 follows : 
 
 " CICERO TO ATTICUS, &C. 
 
 " Early on the morning of the feast of the Satur- 
 nalia, I received the surrender of the Pindenissians, on 
 the forty-seventh day after the commencement of the 
 siege. The Pindenissians! you will exclaim ; who the 
 plague are these ? for I never yet heard their name. 
 What can I do to explain it ? Is it in my power to turn 
 Cilicia into ^Etolia and Macedonia* ? Be assured of 
 this, however, that with such an army as mine, no 
 such glorious exploits, as have been performed in these 
 countries, could be effected here. This you will 
 understand from the brief abstract of my proceedings 
 which I now send you, availing myself of the per- 
 mission contained in your last letter. 
 
 " In what way I approached Ephesus you already 
 know : since you have congratulated me on that day 
 of triumphant popularity, than which nothing in the 
 course of my life has given me greater delight. From 
 thence, after receiving wonderful tokens of respect in 
 the different cities through which I passed, I reached 
 
 * Saturnalibus mane se milii Pindenissae dedidcrunt, septimo et 
 quadragesimo die postquam oppugnare cos cocpimus. Qui, maluin ! 
 isti Pindenissa ? quisunt? inquies; nomen audivi nanquam. Quid 
 cjo faciam ? potui Giliciam -Stoliam aut Macedonian! reddere ? 
 Ad Attic, v. 20.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 823 
 
 Laodicea on the last day of July. Having- remained 
 there two days, I constituted during that time tho 
 one object of admiration in that city; and, by my 
 assurances of regard for the people, succeeded in 
 eradicating the recollection of all former injuries. I 
 afterwards halted at Apamea for five days, under 
 the same circumstances ; for three days at Synnada, 
 five at Philomelum, and ten at Iconium. Nothing 
 could bo more just, nothing more gentle, nothing 
 more dignified, than my jurisdiction in these places. 
 From Iconium I proceeded to my camp, which I 
 reached on the 26th of August, and, four days after- 
 wards, held a general review of my army. From 
 this position, since intelligence of a serious character 
 had been received concerning the Parthians, I ad- 
 vanced towards Cilicia, by that part of Cappadocia 
 which borders upon it, with the design that the 
 Armenian king, Artavasdcs, as well as the Par- 
 thians themselves, might understand that the road 
 through Cappadocia was closed against them. After 
 I had remained for five days in rny quarters near 
 Cybistra, I was informed that the Parthian army 
 was at a considerable distance from that way of en- 
 trance into Cappadocia, and appeared rather to 
 threaten Cilicia. I, therefore, led my forces in all 
 haste into the latter province, through the defiles of 
 Mount Taurus. I reached Tarsus on the 6th of 
 October, from whence I proceeded to Am anus a 
 mountain ridge which divides Cilicia from Syria, 
 pouring its streams into both districts, and, at that 
 time, crowded with our perpetual enemies, of whom 
 we slew great numbers on the 13th of October. We 
 also took, and laid in ashes, some of their strong- 
 holds, although secured by formidable defences, by 
 the advance of Pontinus against them during the 
 night, which I seconded in person on the following 
 morning. For this I was saluted with the title of 
 y 2
 
 324 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Imperator*. I then encamped for a short time on 
 the very spot, in the neighbourhood of Issus, which 
 was formerly occupied by Alexander, a general by 
 many degrees superior to either of us. Having re- 
 mained there five days, and completely ravaged and 
 desolated Am anus, we withdrew our forces. You 
 know that there exists a certain feeling termed panic, 
 or vague and groundless apprehension in wart. By 
 the news of my approach fresh confidence was given 
 to Cassius, who was blockaded in Antioch, and a 
 general terror inspired among the Parthians. They, 
 therefore, resolved upon raising the siege; and Cas- 
 sius, sallying out and falling upon them during their 
 retreat, succeeded in gaining a signal victory. In 
 the rout which followed, Osaces the Parthian gene- 
 ral, a leader of great authority, received a wound of 
 which he died a few days afterwards. My reputa- 
 tion was, in consequence, raised to the greatest height 
 in Syria. 
 
 " Bibulus in the meantime arrived, and influenced, 
 as I believe, by the ambition of being upon a level, 
 with me in the empty honour I had just acquired, 
 began to seek for easily acquired laurels on that same 
 
 * This salutation, conferred by the Roman armies in the earlier 
 wars of the republic upon their generals only after the most deci- 
 sive successes, appears in the time of Cicero to have been bestowed 
 on much less important occasions. Appian, who, however, flou- 
 rished at a much later period, asserts that in his day, the title was 
 never given to any commander unless ten thousand of the enemy 
 had perished in the field. To be saluted Imperator was considered 
 as introductory to the honour of a triumph. 
 
 f- " Scis enim dici quaedam irdi'tKa, dici item ra Kevavov iroAe- 
 ftov," a passage of some ambiguity in its application, and which 
 Melrnoth does not seem to have very clearly rendered by "There 
 are beings which, though empty phantoms, appearing in the field 
 of battle, spread fear and consternation." The allusion on the 
 part of Cicero is no doubt to the panic terror caused to the invading 
 army by the intelligence of his approach, which mny have really 
 decided the campaign in favour of the Romans.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 325 
 
 ridge of Mount Amanus. He lost, however, the 
 whole of his first cohort, Asinius Dento, a centurion 
 of the first rank and great reputation, several 
 other officers of the same division, and Sextus Luci- 
 lius, a military tribune, and the son of a man of 
 great wealth and dignity. This, it must be owned, 
 was an awkward defeat, whether we consider the 
 actual mischief inflicted by it, or the juncture at 
 which it happened. 
 
 " I then surrounded, with a regular line of circum- 
 vallation, the town of Pindenissum, which had 
 always been considered as the strongest and most 
 capable of defence of all the strongholds of the Elcu- 
 thero-Cilicians ; and, having raised against it an 
 immense embankment and tower, and assailed it 
 with a great number of engines and hosts of archers, 
 I succeeded in my attempt after excessive labour, 
 extensive preparations, and many wounds received, 
 although with little actual loss to the army. Truly, 
 a joyful Saturnalia! I have given up to the soldiers 
 the whole of the booty, with the exception of the 
 horses. The captives were sold on the 19th of 
 December; and, while I write this letter on my 
 tribunal, the money paid for {hem already amounts 
 to twelve millions of sesterces. I have consigned 
 to my brother Quintus the charge of conducting 
 the army into winter- quarters in a district yet 
 somewhat unsettled, and have returned myself to 
 Laodicea*." 
 
 A somewhat more minute account of the transac- 
 tions at Amanus is given by him in a letter to 
 Marcus Cato, which is additionally curious from 
 the attempts made in it to flatter the rigid stoic 
 into an acquiescence in any honour which the senate 
 might decree to him, in acknowledgment of his recent 
 Successes. The following are extracts from the epistle. 
 * Ad Attic, v. 20.
 
 326 TUB LIFE Of CICEftO. 
 
 " Having been informed by several messengers and 
 epistles that a strong force of Parthians and Arabians 
 had advanced as far as the city of Antioch, and that 
 a considerable body of their cavalry, which had pe- 
 netrated into Cilicia, had been cut to pieces by some 
 advanced troops of my own horse, and the praetorian 
 cohort stationed in garrison at Epiphania, I hastened 
 by forced marches towards Amanus, since I plainly 
 perceived that the Parthians, after being checked on 
 the side of Cappadocia, would not long be distant 
 from the Cilician frontier. On arriving at this post 
 I was given to understand that the enemy had raised 
 the siege of Antioch, and that Bibulus was now in 
 that city. On this, I immediately sent word to 
 Deiotarus, who was on his march to join me with a 
 numerous and efficient army both of horse and foot, 
 and, in fact, all the force he could muster, that I saw 
 no longer any reason for withdrawing him from his 
 kingdom ; promising that I would give him instant 
 information, by letters and envoys of the occurrence 
 of anything new. 
 
 " And since I had advanced thus far, with the 
 intention of rendering assistance to either province if 
 circumstances should demand it, I determined, under 
 the conviction that it would much conduce to the tran- 
 quillity of both, to prevent the occupants of the ridge 
 of Amanus from again disturbing them, by removing 
 from thence those ancient and inveterate enemies to 
 our nation. Pretending, therefore, a retreat from the 
 mountain towards a different part of Cilicia, and, pro- 
 ceeding one day's march as if in pursuance of this 
 design, I pitched my camp at Epiphania on the 12th of 
 October ; and on the evening of the same day, having 
 made a counter-march, with my army entirely dis- 
 encumbered of its baggage, returned towards my 
 former station with so much expedition, that, before 
 the morning began to break, I was again stationed
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO, 327 
 
 on the ascent to the heights. Having made the ne- 
 cessary dispositions, and retained my brother Quin- 
 tns to act with myself, while I assigned the command 
 of another detachment to Cains Pontinus, my lien- 
 tenant, and of a third to Marcus Anncius and Lucius 
 Tullius, we made a general attack upon the enemy, 
 who, for the most part, little expected onr approach, 
 and were either taken, prisoners or killed upon the 
 spot, being precluded from the possibility of flight. 
 Pontinus, who commanded in that direction, then 
 assaulted and took by storm Erana, which was more 
 like a city than a village, as being the chief town on 
 the Amanns, together with Sepyra and Commoris. 
 These places were not captured without a desperate 
 defence on the part of the inhabitants, the several 
 assaults continuing from day-break until the tenth 
 hour. A great multitude of the enemy were slain, 
 and six forts taken : several more were set on fire and 
 consumed. After these operations I remained en- 
 camped at the foot of Arnamis for four days longer, 
 near the altars of Alexander""', devoting the whole of 
 that time to the destruction of the remaining villages 
 and crops on that part of the mountain included 
 within my province. I then led my forces to Pin- 
 dcnissum, a city of JElenthero-Cilicia, which, since it 
 was built in a strong and commanding situation, and 
 inhabited by those who had never yet yielded obedi- 
 ence even to their own kings ; who had, moreover, 
 afforded a free refuge to fugitives, and were anxiously 
 expecting the arrival of the Parthians, I judged it 
 necessary to the credit of our empire to reduce ; and 
 to punish the insolence of those within its walls, 
 that the spirit of others ill-disposed towards us might 
 be the more easily subdued. I, therefore, surrounded 
 the place with a ditch and rampart, and having 
 
 The three a'.tavs erected by Alexander to Jupiter, Minerva, and 
 cules, on the memorable plains of Issus, to commemorate his 
 victory over Dnrius.
 
 328 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 closely straitened it by six forts, in addition to a 
 strongly entrenched camp, I made my approaches 
 towards it by means of embankments, vinea?, and 
 moveable towers. I also employed against it military 
 engines of all descriptions, and a strong body of 
 archers, and after great personal exertions, although 
 without the least trouble or expense to our allies, 
 brought my undertaking to a favourable issue on the 
 fifty-seventh day of the siege ; since the inhabitants, 
 after almost every quarter of the place had either 
 been set on fire or laid in ruins, were compelled to 
 surrender at discretion. The Tiburani, a neighbour- 
 ing tribe, equally daring and unprincipled, agreed to 
 give hostages for their good conduct on receiving in- 
 telligence of the fall of Pindenissum. I was, there- 
 fore, enabled to send my army into winter-quarters, 
 and consigned it to my brother Quintus, to be sta- 
 tioned in those villages which had just been captured, 
 or which were not yet reduced to perfect obedience. 
 
 " And now I have to request you to believe, that 
 supposing any motion be made on this subject in the 
 senate, I shall think it my highest glory if any 
 honour awarded to myself is supported by your ap- 
 probation. And although I am aware that men of 
 the utmost dignity and influence are accustomed both 
 to receive and to offer requests of this nature, I 
 think that you ought rather to be reminded of past 
 professions, than exposed to fresh entreaties. Let me 
 recall to your recollection the fact of your having on 
 very many occasions distinguished me in the most 
 flattering manner by your vote. In your speeches, 
 moreover, both before the senate and the people, you 
 have literally exalted me to the very heavens by 
 commendations. And such is my opinion of the 
 influence of your words, that by one single expres- 
 sion in my favour, I have always conceived myself 
 elevated to the highest point of dignity which it was 
 possible for me to reach.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERCf. 329 
 
 " I remember too that when, on a former occasion, 
 you opposed the supplication about to be decreed to 
 a most illustrious and deserving individual, you 
 asserted that you would willingly support the motion, 
 if the honour were proposed for the conduct of the 
 same person in the city during his consulate. You 
 also assented to the supplication decreed to myself 
 while holding only a civil office, and not granted, as to 
 many, for the successful management of a war, but, 
 as to no one before my time, for the actual preserva- 
 tion of the state. I will not dwell upon your readi- 
 ness to share with me the envy, the perils, the storms, 
 which have hitherto attended my public career, and 
 which I bear you witness, you would have encoun- 
 tered to a much greater extent, if I could have been 
 prevailed upon to allow it; or, finally, upon your gene- 
 rosity in considering my greatest enemy your own, 
 and even expressing your approbation of his death in 
 the senate during the proceedings in the case of Milo, 
 that I might fully understand the nature and extent 
 of your regard towards me. On the other hand, and 
 I mention this not as any benefit conferred upon you, 
 but rather as an evidence of my real conviction and 
 judgment, I have not been contented with silently 
 admiring your eminent virtues, (for what man is 
 there who does not do this ?) but in every oration, 
 and every vote ; in all my pleadings, in my writings, 
 Latin as well as Greek, in every kind of literature, 
 in short, in which I have at any time engaged, I 
 have mentioned you as superior not only to every one 
 whom .1 have hitherto seen, but to all of whom I 
 have ever heard. 
 
 " You will, perhaps, ask what can be the reason of 
 my valuing at so high a rate a trifling mark of 
 honour on the part of the senate, I will deal with 
 you frankly on this point, as becomes that community 
 of feelings and of duties which exists between us, our 
 own sincere friendship, and the good understanding
 
 330 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 mutually cultivated by our fathers. If there ever 
 yet existed a person unambitious by nature, and still 
 more so by the exercise of reason and philosophy, of the 
 empty praises of the multitude, I am that individual. 
 Of this my consulate is a witness, during which, as 
 indeed during all the rest of my life, although 
 I followed, as I confess, that path which leads to 
 true renown, I yet considered that glory, abstractedly 
 and in itself, ought never to be an object of pursuit. 
 Thus influenced, I refused the government of a valu- 
 able province, and gave up the certain prospect of a 
 triumph, nor did I make any efforts to obtain the 
 office of augur, although, as I believe you are of 
 opinion, I might at that time have easily obtained it. 
 After the injustice, however, which followed, in- 
 justice which you are accustomed to designate as a 
 calamity to the state, and which I consider to have 
 been no misfortune to myself, but rather a subject 
 for boasting I was desirous that the favourable 
 opinion entertained with respect to me by the senate 
 and people of Rome, should be manifested by the 
 most creditable and substantial marks cf their esteem. 
 I, therefore, resolved to stand for the augurship 
 which I had previously neglected", and am, more- 
 over, at the present moment, ambitious of the dis- 
 tinction by which the senate are accustomed to reward 
 military conduct, of which I was once equally re- 
 gardless. That you would second my wishes on 
 this point, therefore, to which I am prompted by a 
 strong desire of healing the wound inflicted by the 
 injustice I have just alluded to, is now my earnest 
 request ; for having promised a short time since not 
 to prefer any entreaty to you upon the subject, I am 
 now obliged to revoke my resolution. Yet, my 
 appeal is founded on the supposition that these trifling 
 exploits of mine will not appear worthless, but much 
 surpassing those for which many other persons have 
 obtained similar honours from the senate*
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 331 
 
 " I think I have observed a disposition in yon, (and 
 you know with what attention I am accustomed to 
 listen to your opinions,) to consider not so much the 
 military talents and operations of generals, as their 
 moral qualities and the general tenor of their lives, 
 whenever the question of bestowing or withholding 
 public honours has been the subject of debate. Now, 
 if you consider my conduct, you will find that, with a 
 very weak army to counteract the apprehension of a 
 most formidable war, I have made justice and absti- 
 nence from oppression the most efficient safeguards of 
 my authority. Relying upon these aids, I have 
 effected that which no force consisting of armed 
 legions could have enabled me to accomplish ; creating 
 in our allies the most friendly dispositions towards us, 
 instead of marked aversion ; and bringing back the 
 minds of those who were wavering, under the expec- 
 tation of a speedy change, to their former state of 
 affection towards the established government*." 
 
 The application to Cato was accompanied by 
 letters to the consuls .ZEmilius Paulust and Claudius 
 Marcellus^, in which the same request presented to 
 Cato, with so much elaborate flattery, was preferred 
 with little less earnestness. The vanity of the writer 
 was gratified by the public supplication he had en- 
 deavoured to obtain for his successes, but it does not 
 appear that Cato was induced by his entreaties or 
 compliments to interest himself very earnestly in his 
 favour. It is at least certain that he did not at first 
 vote for the supplication, although he afterwards 
 caused his name to be inserted in the decree by which 
 it was enjoined. His reply to the appeal of Cicero is 
 yet extant, and deserves record as containing the only 
 authenticated words which the philosopher of Utica 
 has bequeathed to the notice of after ages. 
 
 * Ad Di versos, xv. 4. f- AJ Di versos, xv. 13. 
 
 Ad Diversos, xv. 10
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 " MARCUS CATO TO MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, 
 IMPERATOR*. 
 
 " Th<at feeling which my regard for the state, and 
 my personal friendship for yourself, render it in- 
 cumbent upon me to entertain on the present occasion, 
 I most willingly indulge, and rejoice to find that you 
 have displayed in a military capacity abroad, and 
 with undiminished energy, the same virtue, integrity, 
 and industry, which, in affairs of the greatest mo- 
 ment, you were accustomed to exhibit in your civil 
 offices at home. All that I could do, therefore, in 
 consistency with my own judgment when called upon 
 to deliver my opinion, I have done, by making 
 honourable mention of your able defence of your 
 province by your disinterested conduct and wise 
 regulations, of your preservation of Ariobarzanes as 
 well as his kingdom, and your re-establishment of 
 the affections of our allies in favour of our empire. 
 I rejoice that the supplication has been decreed, if, 
 indeed, you on your part are willing that we should 
 acknowledge our obligations to the gods, for successes 
 in which Chance has had no share, but in which the 
 interests of the republic have been advanced entirely 
 by your prudence and forbearance. If, however, you 
 imagine that a supplication is a necessary preliminary 
 to a triumph, and on that account alone are willing 
 that Fortune should receive our praises rather than 
 yourself, I would remind you that one distinction 
 does not necessarily involve the other, and that it is 
 far more honourable for the senate to judge that a 
 province has been preserved by the gentleness and 
 blameless conduct of a general, than by an armed 
 force, or by the favour of the gods ; and this I declared 
 openly, when called to deliver my sentiments. I 
 have written to you at this length, contrary to my 
 usual custom, to induce you to believe, (as it is my 
 
 * Ad Diversos, xv, 5.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 333 
 
 anxious desire you should,) that although I proposed 
 and desired what appeared most consistent with your 
 true honour and dignity, I am rejoiced that what 
 was most in accordance with your wishes has been 
 determined upon. Farewell ! Continue your regards 
 towards me, and still maintain towards our allies and 
 our republic the impartial justice and diligence which 
 you have begun to exhibit." 
 
 "With the retreat of the Parthians from Antioch, 
 the more serious apprehensions of danger from these 
 terrible invaders were in a great measure dissipated ; 
 yet continued rumours of their again crossing the 
 Euphrates did not allow Cilicia to depart from the 
 military attitude it had assumed, during the whole 
 of the ensuing summer. The cessation of the neces- 
 sity for prompt and vigorous action in the field was 
 not accompanied by a freedom, on the part of Cicero, 
 from numerous minor anxieties and difficulties which 
 required a dextrous and delicate management. He 
 was not on good terms with his predecessor, Appius, 
 who, as it has been already seen, instead of advancing 
 to meet him and formally resigning the government 
 into his hands, had continued to exercise a separate 
 authority in a remote part of the province, where it 
 was impossible for Cicero to reach him within the 
 thirty days prescribed by the Cornelian law, as the 
 longest interval between the arrival of a proconsul in 
 his government, and the departure of the magistrate 
 whom he had succeeded. With some difficulty, 
 Appius was made conscious of the little reason which 
 existed for his unfriendly conduct; but his reconcilia- 
 tion with Cicero had scarcely been effected, when a 
 fresh cause of distrust arose on account of an im- 
 peachment brought against him as soon as he returned 
 to Rome, by Dolabella, who was on the point of 
 marrying Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, after her 
 separation, probably by a divorce, from her second
 
 334 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 husband Crassipes. Cicero appears on the face of 
 some of his epistles to have been much concerned at 
 these proceedings, and to have taken much more 
 pains to avert the suspicions of the accused from 
 falling upon himself as an agent in the prosecution, 
 than Appius deserved. He has done so, indeed, at 
 no small expense to his own reputation for sincerity, 
 since, although in his correspondence with Atticus 
 he depicts the oppressions of the late governor of 
 Cilicia as almost beyond belief, he possessed dissi- 
 mujation enough to intimate to the same individual, 
 in a letter upon the subject of his impeachment"'", 
 the highest respect and admiration for his character, 
 and astonishment at the accusations of Dolabella, 
 whom he designates a rash and ungrateful young 
 man. In another epistle, acknowledging the receipt 
 of the intelligence of the acquittal of Appius on the 
 charge of mal-administration in his government, his 
 aft'ected joy is still more vehemently expressed: 
 " While I was encamped," he writest, " on the banks 
 of the Pyramus, I received two letters from you, 
 which w r ere forwarded to me by Quintus Servilius 
 Tarso, one of them dated on the nones of April, the 
 other undated, and as it appeared to me more recently 
 written. I will, therefore, first answer the former, 
 in which you inform me of your acquittal under the 
 accusation of mismanagement of your authority in 
 your late province. Of this event I had already been 
 made acquainted by various means of intelligence ; 
 since the verdict was the universal topic of conversa- 
 tion, not from any expectation that it would have been 
 otherwise, but because nothing conducing to the fur- 
 ther glory of men already illustrious, is ever suffered to 
 remain in obscurity ; yet your letter much increased 
 my delight, not only because it was more exact and 
 
 * Ad Di versos, iii. 10. Cum est ad nos allatum de temeritato 
 eorum, qui tibi negotium facesserent, &c. f Ad Diversos, iii. 1 1 .
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 335 
 
 copious in its details than common discourse, but 
 because I seemed to have a better opportunity for 
 offering my congratulations after a communication 
 under your own hand. In imagination, therefore, I 
 embraced you, although absent, and, imprinting 
 kisses upon your epistle, indulged in a feeling of 
 self-satisfaction and rejoicing on my own account ; 
 for the testimony of approval just awarded by the 
 people, the senate, and the judges, to your genius, 
 industry, and virtue, (although I am perhaps only 
 indulging my own vanity, by supposing that I have 
 any share of such qualities,) seemed in some measure 
 to be bestowed upon myself also. Nor did I so much 
 wonder at the glorious issue of your trial, as at the de- 
 pravity of those who had appeared as your enemies." 
 " Cicero himself," says Melmoth, in his notes upon 
 the epistle of which the above extract is a part and 
 it is at all times satisfactory to turn to the just and 
 impartial opinions of this able translator " will fur- 
 nish the most proper comment upon this passage. 
 For in a letter to Atticus, written not many months 
 before the present, he describes the conduct of Appius 
 in Cilicia, in terms which show that he was far from 
 being unjustly arraigned by Dolabella. He repre- 
 sents him as having spread desolation through the 
 province by fire and sword ; as having left nothing 
 behind him which he could possibly carry away ; 
 and as having suffered his officers to commit all sorts 
 of violences which lust and avarice could suggest. 
 ' And I am going,' says he, ' this very morning to 
 repeal some of his iniquitous edicts.' It is pleasant 
 to observe, upon some occasions, the different colours 
 in which the same character is painted by different 
 hands ; but one has not so frequently the opportunity 
 of hearing the same conduct thus abused and thus ap- 
 plauded by the same man, and almost too in the same 
 breath." Such censure, it must be confessed, is but 
 too well supported by other passages of the epistles
 
 336 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of Cicero ; and it is no part of the biographer to 
 reveal only the best qualities of the subject of his 
 history. Yet, in the midst of the most flagrant faults 
 and weaknesses which distinguished his exceedingly 
 unequal character, there are not wanting many bright 
 points to relieve the darker parts of the picture. In- 
 clined as he was to almost servile flattery, and some- 
 times tempted by the weakness of the moment into 
 disingenuousness, for which it is not intended to offer 
 an excuse, there were yet occasions in which he dis- 
 regarded all considerations but the simple one of 
 justice ; and, having to choose between the paths of 
 interest and integrity, promptly and unhesitatingly 
 made choice of the latter. A remarkable instance 
 of this was observable in his conduct with respect to 
 the public debts of the people of Cyprus. This once 
 flourishing and populous island was not slow in ex- 
 periencing the effects of its annexation to the terri- 
 tories of the republic, in the usual forms of misery 
 which generally followed fast on the track of Roman 
 conquest. Under the pretence of a composition for 
 the ordinary obligation to furnish winter-quarters 
 for the legions*, and various other pretexts, the 
 inhabitants were so loaded with imposts as to be 
 compelled to borrow money from the usurers at 
 Rome, at an exorbitant interest. They were, more- 
 over, during the administration of Appius, sub- 
 jected to the lawless violence of a strong body of 
 horse, headed by Marcus Scaptius and Publius 
 Matinius, who levied contributions at their pleasure ; 
 and, on one occasion, carried their atrocious injustice 
 so far as to keep in close confinement the senate of 
 Salamis, who had resisted some of their exactions, 
 until five among their number had perished with 
 hunger f. Cicero had no sooner entered his province 
 
 * The sum exacted from the Roman proconsuls from Cyprus, 
 under this head alone, amounted to 200 talents, or about 40,OOOA, 
 yearly. t Ad Attic, vi. 1, 2.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 837 
 
 than he was met by a deputation of the Salaminians, 
 complaining of this outrage, as we'll as of the serious 
 debt they had already incurred, amounting to about 
 twenty-three thousand pounds. Scaptius and his 
 cavalry were, by his order, immediately withdrawn, 
 while the enormous interest of forty-eight per cent.*, 
 charged upon their bonds by the Roman creditors, 
 was reduced to twelve, by an edict enjoining the 
 same rate of usance to be observed throughout the 
 province. In making this regulation Cicero had to 
 encounter the remonstrances of the famous Marcus 
 Brutus, who, although the title was ostensibly held 
 by Scaptius and Matinius, was the real creditor of the 
 Salaminians. His representations upon the subject 
 were backed by those of Atticus, who ventured, at 
 the same time, to intercede in behalf of Scaptius ; 
 requesting that, at least, some part of the force he 
 had formerly commanded might be restored to him, 
 
 * The legal interest allowed to be exacted at Rome was fixed, 
 by the earliest regulations upon the subject, at one per cent., and 
 any usurer convicted of demanding more was liable to make four- 
 fold restitution. Tacitus asserts that this was expressly provided 
 by the laws of the Twelve Tables: '' Vetus urbi fcenebre malum 
 et sedilionum discordiarunique uberrima causa : eoque cohibebntur 
 antiquis quoquc et iniuus corruptis moribus. Nam primo duode- 
 cim tabulis sanctum, ' Ne quis unciario foenere amplius exerceret.' " 
 Annul, vi. 16. Montesquieu {Esprit des Loix, xxii. 22.) 
 endeavours to prove that Tacitus has confounded with the Decem- 
 viral code the law of the tribunes Duilius and Alosnius, A.O.C. 398. 
 Niebuhr, however, hns thrown the weight of his authority, which 
 will, perhaps, be considered decisive, on the side of Tacitus. In 
 the consulate of Titus Manlius Torquatus and Caius Plautius, 
 A.U.C. 408, the rate of interest was reduced to one-half per cent., 
 and by a subsequent statute, brought forward by the tribune Genu- 
 cins, A.U.C. 413, abolished altogether. This law, however, as well 
 as those which had preceded it to prevent usurious interest, although 
 not formally repealed, soon fell into the condition of a dead letter. 
 (Brotier, Excurs. in Tacit. Annal. vi. 16.) The amount of inte- 
 rest which could be legally demanded in the provinces seems to 
 have varied with the judgment of the respective governors. 
 Z
 
 338 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 although it might be no more than fifty horse. To 
 both, however, Cicero returned an unqualified refusal, 
 and continued to persist in it, although his friendship 
 with Brutus was in danger of being brought to an 
 end by his firmness*. The readiness he had shown 
 in listening to the petition of the people of Cyprus, 
 was no solitary instance of leniency. " I wish," he 
 exclaims to Atticus, with an excusable feeling of 
 self-complacency, " you had been present at the 
 courts held here for settling the affairs of the several 
 dioceses, with the exception of those of Cilicia, from 
 the ides of February to the calends of May ; so 
 numerous were the cities wholly freed from the bur- 
 den of debt, so many those to whom it was greatly 
 
 * Several letters seem to have passed between Cicero and Bru- 
 tus on the question of the public debt of the city of Salamis, until 
 the latter, offended by the inflexibility of his friend, angrily dropped 
 the correspondence with reference to his unjust claims. " Brutus," 
 says Cicero, (Ad Attic, vi. 2.), "has given no reply at all; this, 
 however, you are not to divulge ; nor has he adverted to it in his 
 late letter respecting Appius, which has the appearance of reserve 
 and arrogance. This puts me in mind of what you often used to 
 repeat, ' Gavius did not extend to himself the contempt and hatred 
 which he professed to cherish towards haughty tyrants.' But this 
 manner of Brutus raises my mirth rather than my indignation, 
 though, to say the truth, he is too regardless what he writes, and to 
 whom he writes." Melmoth. The general reader may feel some 
 surprise at finding the part of a usurer, demanding nearly fifty per 
 cent, for his money, enacted by one who was afterwards the leading 
 patriot of his age. Nor does it coincide very exactly with the sen- 
 timent expressed in the beautiful words ascribed to him by Shak- 
 speare : 
 
 " For I can raise no money hy vile means : 
 By heaven ! I had rather coin my heart, 
 And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring 
 From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash 
 By any indirection." JULIUS CXSAR, Act iv., Scene 3. 
 There is, however, scarcely a character of that period whose re- 
 putation is not somewhat the worse for being viewed through the 
 medium of Cicero's letters. Both Brutus and Pompey had also 
 considerable claims upon Cappadocia, nnd its monarch ArioburzancF, 
 who was almost ruined by their extortions.
 
 THE LIFE OF CIEROv 339 
 
 alleviated. All of them being permitted to appeal to 
 their own laws and precedents, and being thus, in 
 fact, allowed the liberty of self-government, appeared 
 awakened to a new life. The method I adopted to 
 discharge, or, at any rate, to diminish, their debts 
 was twofold. In the first place, I took care that 
 my government should never be a source of expense 
 to any one among them, no, not by so much as the 
 smallest coin ; and, in making this assertion, I indulge 
 in no hyperbolical expression. In the next place, 
 having ascertained that peculations, on the part of 
 their own magistrates, had been carried on to an as- 
 tonishing extent, I summoned before me all who had 
 been in office for the last ten years, and obtained 
 from them a free confession of the fact. They were 
 consequently obliged, in order to avoid public ex- 
 posure, to return the sums they had severally em- 
 bezzled, and the people, who at the time seemed 
 wholly unable to discharge the debts of the last lus- 
 trum, were not only able to liquidate these on the 
 spot, but also the deficiencies of the term preceding*." 
 From the same letter it appears, that the urbanity 
 for which he was remarkable among his fellow-citi- 
 zens at Rome was exhibited unaltered towards his 
 provincial dependants, and that the habits of industry, 
 enforced upon him by the former necessity of fulfill- 
 ing a multiplicity of public engagements, remained 
 unimpaired amidst the tempt'ations to indulgence 
 held out by his distant appointment. " My au- 
 diences," he continues, " are by no means such as are 
 usually given by the governors of our provinces ; 
 nor does the way of access to me lie through my bed- 
 chamber. Before the dawn of day I am usually 
 walking in my house, as I used to do when a candi- 
 date for public honours. This procures me extensive 
 popularity, and requires no exertion on my part, 
 * Ad Attic, vi. 2, written from Laodicea. 
 
 z 2
 
 340 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 since I have long been inured to it by the hard ser- 
 vice of former times*." This representation has been 
 fully corroborated by Plutarch, who has added other 
 particulars of the gentle and disinterested administra- 
 tion of Cicero, of which he himself has made no men- 
 tion ; and, in quitting the consideration of his conduct 
 as governor of a province, a more favourable con- 
 clusion of any remarks upon the subject could 
 hardly be found, than the simple words in which 
 that historian enumerates its principal features : 
 " Cicero," he relates, " finding the Cilicians elated on 
 the miscarriage of the Romans in Parthia and the 
 commotions in Syria, brought them to order by the 
 gentleness of his government. He refused the pre- 
 sents which the neighbouring princes offered him ; 
 he excused the province from finding him a public 
 table, and daily entertained at his own charge per- 
 sons of honour and learning, not with magnificence 
 indeed, but with elegance and propriety. He had 
 no porter at his gate, nor did any man ever find him 
 in bed ; for he rose early in the morning, and kindly 
 received those who came to pay their court to him 
 either standing or walking before his door. We are 
 told that he never caused any man to be beaten with 
 rods, or to have his garments rent ; never gave op- 
 probrious language in his anger, nor added insult to 
 punishment. He recovered the public money, which 
 had been embezzled, and enriched the cities with it. 
 At the same time, he was satisfied if those who had 
 
 * The early habits of tlie Romans generally are well known. 
 Their levees were often held before day-break, and several letters 
 of Cicero appear to have been written by the light afforded by his 
 candelabrum while waiting for the appearance of dawn, and, with 
 it, the influx of his retainers. " I would have scribbled more," he 
 writes on one orcasion to Atticus, " hut the day is breaking, the 
 crowd breaks in, and Philogenes (his messenger) is in haste." 
 See also on this point the well-known passages, Hor. Sat. i. 1, and 
 Juvenal. Sat. v. 20.
 
 TIIE LIFE OP CICERO. 341 
 
 been guilty of such frauds made restitution, and fixed 
 no mark of infamy upon them*." 
 
 During the summer months, which still remained 
 to be spent before he could relinquish his appoint- 
 ment, the constant expectation of the approach of 
 the Parthians compelled him to be frequently en- 
 camped in the open field. The severe check, how- 
 ever, which these redoubted invaders had lately 
 received in the neighbouring province of Syria, still 
 confined them to the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 
 and the military career of Cicero was not destined to 
 afford him an opportunity of opposing his legionaries 
 to the iron sleet of the squadrons of Orodes. The 
 arms of his troops were, therefore, only exercised 
 against the beasts of prey by which the country was 
 infested ; and the zeal with which they entered into 
 the amusement of the chase, is expressed in one 
 of his epistles to his friend Marcus Ccelius, curule 
 <edile, in answer to an application for as many 
 wild beasts as could be procured, to adorn the shows 
 on the point of being exhibited at Rome. " I do 
 not," he says, " forget the panthers you desired, and 
 have given orders to the persons usually employed 
 in hunting them : but these animals are exceedingly 
 scarce with us. They take it so unkind, you must 
 know, that they should be the only creatures in my 
 province for whom any snares should be laid, that 
 they have withdrawn themselves from my govern- 
 ment, and are marched into Caria. However, the 
 huntsmen, and particularly honest Patiscus, are 
 making very diligent inquiry after their haunts, and 
 all the game they can meet with shall certainly be 
 yours ; but what the number will be is altogether 
 uncertain t." 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Cicero Langhorne's translation. 
 
 f" Melmotl). Coelius had at first written to request that Cicero 
 would exert his authority to engage the people of his province in the 
 chase of these animals. "1 believe," be writes, (Ad Diversos, viii. 9.)
 
 342 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 On the 5th of June, A. u. c. 704, Cicero had again 
 returned for a short time to Tarsus, making the ne- 
 cessary arrangement for his departure for Italy.* 
 Ever since his arrival in Cilicia, his efforts had been 
 continued without intermission to prevent the period 
 of his government from being extended beyond a single 
 year. One fresh reason, in addition to his original dis- 
 like to any foreign employment, he has himself can- 
 didly stated to have been, the consciousness that he 
 was unequal to the management of the serious war by 
 which the eastern provinces of Rome were at that time 
 threatened ; and the confession cannot be considered as 
 reflecting either upon his good sense or courage. His 
 friends at Rome were not behind in seconding and ac- 
 complishing his wishes on this point. After having 
 
 " I have reminded you of the panthers in almost every one of rny let- 
 ters : and surely you will not suffer Patiscus to be more liberal in this 
 article than yourself. He has made Cuiio a present of no less than 
 half a score. Great, therefore, will be your disgrace if you should 
 not send me a much larger number. In the meantime, Curio has 
 eiven me those he received from Patiscus, together with as many 
 more from Africa. As to yourself, if you can but charge your me. 
 mory with my request, yon may easily procure me as many of these 
 animals as you please. It is only sending for some of the Cy- 
 barite to hunt them, and issuing forth your orders likewise into 
 Pamphylia, where I am told they are taken in great abundance. 
 I am the more solicitous upon this article, as, I believe, my col- 
 league and I shall exhibit our games separately ; so that the whole 
 preparation of them must be upon myself." On this subject Cicero 
 remarks to Atticus (vi. 1), ' Callus has sent his freedman to me 
 with very pressing letters, but his request respecting the panthers, 
 and the contributions of the several states, was scandalous. I re- 
 plied that I was mortified by the public inattention to my govern- 
 ment, and that it was not known at Rome that I levied no money 
 on the public but to discharge the public debts. As to his request 
 respecting the panthers, I observed that it was not consistent with 
 my honour to compel the Cybaritee to hunt at the public expense." 
 Melmolh. It is probable from this passage that Cicero made, as 
 Dr. Middleton has conjectured, the necessary advances from his own 
 purse, to satisfy the demands of Coelius. If so, the circumstance 
 is a fresh evidence of the integrity of his conduct in his province. 
 * Tarsum venimus Nonis Juniis, &c. Ad Attic, vi. 14.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 343 
 
 followed the requisition, therefore, of the Julian law, 
 by leaving two copies of his public accounts to be 
 deposited in different cities performed a last act of 
 generosity by remitting to the public treasury, al- 
 though with, many expressions of disapprobation on 
 the part of his less disinterested followers, a sum not 
 falling short of eight hundred thousand pounds from 
 the allowance granted him for his expenses and com- 
 mitted the government of his province to the pro- 
 qua?stor Caius Coelius, until the arrival of his succes- 
 sor, he set out on his return home on the thirty-first 
 day of July, having selected the earliest moment pos- 
 sible for commencing his journey. For the benefit 
 of his son and nephew Quintus, the latter of whom 
 had lately assumed the manly robe, he had intended 
 to spend some time at Rhodes while on his way to 
 Athens *. Yet his stay there could not have been 
 of any long continuance, since, on the first of October, 
 he writes to Atticus of only then being on the point 
 of putting out to sea from Ephesus, with every pro- 
 spect of a tedious voyage from the prevalence of the 
 Etesian winds, and the clumsiness of the Rhodian 
 vessels t ; and on the 6th of the same month men- 
 tions his landing at the Peireeus J. It was on reach- 
 ing Rhodes that he was informed of the death 
 of the celebrated Hortensius, to whom he had long 
 been attached by a community of tastes and pursuits, 
 as well as by a long interchange of friendly offices. 
 On the fifteenth of October he was still at Athens, in 
 thehouse of his old friend Aristus ; on the second of 
 November at Patrge, and the sixth at Leucate on the 
 coast of Epirus. Having embarked at Actium, he 
 was detained by tempestuous winds at Cassiope, 
 a harbour in the island of Corcyra, until the twenty- 
 
 * Quiuto togam purain Liberalibus cogitabam dare, sic enim mau- 
 davit pater. Ad Attic, vi. 1. 
 
 The Liberalia, or feasts in honour of Bacchus, were celebrated xv. 
 Cal. April. (On the 18th of March). 
 
 f Ad Attic, vi. 8. . Ad Attic,, vi. 9,
 
 344 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 third day of the same month ; several of the vessels 
 which had accompanied him being sunk in their 
 attempts to proceed. The weather, however, having 
 by that time become more favourable, he was enabled, 
 with the assistance of a gentle breeze from the south, 
 to reach the port of Hydrous in Italy on the twenty- 
 fourth, and on the day following was off Brundu- 
 sium *. At Patraa he had been compelled to leave 
 behind him his favourite and confidential freedman 
 Gallius Tiro, who had been attacked by a dangerous 
 indisposition, and his letters to this faithful retainer 
 do credit to the friendly and benevolent feelings by 
 which his disposition was strongly characterised t. 
 Xo parent writing to a son, or brother to a brother, 
 could manifest greater interest than Cicero in his 
 epistles to one who had formerly been his slave, and 
 was still, in every sense, his dependant. At Brun- 
 dusium he was met, in the forum of the city imme- 
 diately after landing, by his wife Terentia, whom 
 he had previously summoned to join him, and in 
 her company proceeded by slow journeys to Rome, 
 indulging himself with considerable hopes of a tri- 
 umph, for the attainment of which honour he had 
 made every exertion in his power among the leading 
 persons in the capital, and maintaining by means of 
 his laurelled fasces and numerous escort all the ex- 
 ternal pomp which usually accompanied the return 
 of a victorious proconsul. 
 
 * Ad Di versos, xvi. 9 ; Fasti Hellenic!, iii. 195. Qui cupide pro- 
 fccti simt multi naufragia fecerunt. Nos eo die ccenati solvimus. 
 Inde Austro lenissimD, coelo sereno, node ilia et die postero in 
 Italiam ad Ilydruntcm ludibundi peryenimus, &c. See Also Ad 
 Attic, vii. 2. 
 
 f- Tiro had been brought up from his earliest infancy in the 
 family of Cicero, whose name he bore, and, like many of the 
 favourite domestics of the Romans, had been carefully educated. 
 He is supposed by some commentators to have first collected and 
 published the letters of Cicero. He also wrote a life of his patron. 
 Asconius spe;iks of him as a man of elegant mind, and no incon- 
 siderable proficiency in literature.
 
 TOE LIFE OP CICERO. 345 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Progress of the Dissensions between the rival Factions at Rome 
 The Consul M.ircellus delivers his Sword to Pompey Inter- 
 view between Pompey and Cicero Cicero enters Rome 
 Ultimate Decree of the Senate Flight of the Tribunes Antony 
 and Cassius Caesar crosses the Rubicon Pompey withdraws 
 with the Senatorial! Party from Rome Alarming Progress of his 
 Adversaries Corfmium besieged Cicero declines to join Pom- 
 pey, who retreats to Brundusium, and embarks for Greece Va- 
 cillation of Cicero His Interview with Casar Correspondence 
 with Antony and Coelius Cicero embarks for Dyrrachium 
 His arrival in the Camp of Pompey Caesar lands at Pharsalus 
 Is unsuccessful in his Attack upon Pompcy's Entrenchments, 
 and retreats into Thessaly Buttle of Pharsalia The Com- 
 mand of the Pompeian Party offered to Cicero, who declines 
 it Cato sails to Africa Cicero returns to Brundusium. 
 
 WHILE Cicero was employed in watching over the 
 peace of his province, and endeavouring by his just 
 and prudent regulations to administer relief to the 
 evils caused by the misrule of his predecessors, the 
 affairs of Italy had continued daily to assume a more 
 gloomy complexion, until, from the violence of the 
 two parties by whose rivalry the state was distracted, 
 they had at length assumed an aspect which pro- 
 mised the immediate commencement of a civil war. 
 Intimations of these constant changes for the worse, 
 had been, from time to time, conveyed to him by his 
 friends at Rome, but, until able to ascertain the truth 
 by actual observation, he seems .to have listened to 
 the forebodings of his correspondents, as he might 
 have done to the echoes of distant thunders, so far 
 remote as to justify a doubt as to the real character 
 of the sound. The long agitated proposal of the recal 
 of Caesar from his province, was still the subject of 
 contention on which the aristocratic and more popular 
 factions (the latter, now ably guided by the celo-
 
 346 THE LIFE OF CICERO* 
 
 brated Mark Antony and the younger Curio, who, 
 after being for some time a furious opponent of Caesar, 
 had been bribed into becoming his equally furious 
 partisan) continued to measure their strength, and 
 which they threatened ere long to decide by their 
 swords. After various preliminary contests, the 
 senate was twice divided upon the question in dif- 
 ferent forms; yet, although it was determined, chiefly 
 by the efforts of the friends of Caesar, that the order 
 to disarm should t not be confined to either of the 
 generals holding extraordinary appointments, but 
 that Pompey should also be required to dismiss the 
 forces under his command, the resolution, which met 
 with the enthusiastic approbation of the better dis- 
 posed among the people, who publicly crowned Curio 
 with flowers for the part he had taken in its support, 
 was suffered to remain unenforced. It was succeeded 
 by an order from the senate to Caesar, probably as 
 a trial of his present disposition, to send back a 
 legion which he had borrowed from Pompey, and 
 to detach another from his army to be employed in 
 Syria against the Parthians; both which commands 
 were at once complied with. Encouraged by this 
 appearance of submission, the consul Marcellus, 
 under the pretence of a rumour, no doubt excited by 
 his own party, that Caesar had passed the Alps in a 
 hostile manner, endeavoured to inflict a second blow 
 upon his power, by making a motion in an extraor- 
 dinary meeting of the senate, that the several states 
 of Italy should be ordered immediately to supply their 
 several contingents for the defence of the republic 
 against his aggressions. On this occasion, however, 
 Curio standing boldly forward in his defence, and 
 finding the majority of the senators likely to side 
 with the consul, put a stop to all further proceedings 
 by the interposition of his authority as tribune of the 
 people. Marcellus being thus compelled to dismiss
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 347 
 
 the senate without effecting his purpose, after utter- 
 ing the angry threat, that since his authority was 
 disregarded, he would transfer it into other hands, 
 proceeded with Lentulus, one of the consuls elect for 
 the ensuing year, to the gardens where Pompey 
 resided, and publicly presenting his sword, requested 
 him to employ it for the preservation of Italy, and 
 to take upon himself the command of the forces to be 
 raised for its protection. The answer of Pompey 
 was little less than a direct declaration of war against 
 his rival : " I accept the offer," he replied, " pro- 
 vided no better means can be adopted to ensure the 
 safety of the commonwealth." 
 
 The noisy denunciations of his enemies at Rome 
 were, for some time, heard by Ca?sar in silence. Ho 
 was not, however, the less likely on that account to 
 be ready to answer their summons to the field when- 
 ever his interests should require him to appear there. 
 By the election of his friend Antony and Quintus 
 Cassius, another of his most resolute adherents, into 
 the college of tribunes, he was furnished with two 
 powerful instruments for directing any popular move- 
 ments in the city in his favour. He himsejf was at 
 Ravenna, according to his usual custom of spending 
 the winter in Cisalpine Gaul; which province, to avoid 
 giving any alarm to the senate, was ostensibly fur- 
 nished with but a single veteran legion, the thirteenth. 
 But in and about the passes of the Alps were glit- 
 tering the standards of the twelfth legion, posted in 
 readiness to march to-iiis support at his earliest com- 
 mand ; and behind that rocky barrier lay cantoned, 
 with free communications, in a country completely 
 reduced by their prowess to a state of subjection, 
 and furnished with every requisite for effective ser- 
 vice, the veterans of seven severe campaigns; avail- 
 able either for a prompt advance into Italy, or for 
 preventing a junction of the Italian forces of Pompey
 
 348 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 with the powerful army acting under his lieutenants 
 in Spain. Thus circumstanced, and fully able to 
 appreciate all the advantages of his position, he was 
 contented with coolly watching from thence the 
 favourable opportunity for action, which he had truly 
 calculated the rashness of his adversaries would not 
 be long in affording, and beyond professing an inten- 
 tion of soon offering himself as consul for the new 
 year, making no overt movement to oppose their 
 demonstrations of hostility. 
 
 Meanwhile Cicero, whose attention was, at least, 
 as much excited by the prospect of the gaudy pageant 
 which he intended to solicit, as by the portentous 
 signs of intestine commotion around him, the exten- 
 sive and serious character of which he seems to have 
 begun to appreciate during his short stay in Greece, 
 was met by Pompey in his progress to the capital. 
 His high standing in the republic, his long acquired 
 reputation and splendid abilities, made him an object 
 well worth securing by either party, and the leaders 
 of both were not wanting in efforts to obtain, if pos- 
 sible, so illustrious a support. Caesar had written 
 to him while yet in Asia, congratulating him on his 
 exploits, and making severe comments upon the luke- 
 warmness of Cato in seconding the decree for a sup- 
 plication in his favour, while readily exerting him- 
 self to procure one of twenty days' continuance in 
 behalf of the proconsul Bibulus. He was not, how- 
 ever, able by this well-timed flattery, to deprive the 
 ranks of his antagonist of a long tried supporter ; 
 and if Cicero had not previously made up his mind 
 as to the course incumbent upon him to pursue, his 
 first interview with his former professed patron 
 would, probably, have determined his wavering reso- 
 lution. " On the fourth of December," he writes to 
 Atticus, " I was in company with Pompey. Our 
 conference lasted about two hours. He appeared
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 349 
 
 transported with joy at my return, exhorted me 
 strenuously to follow out my plan of supplicating 'for 
 a triumph, and requested that I would declare my- 
 self in his favour. He advised me not to take any 
 part in the debates in the senate until I had accom- 
 plished my object, lest I should offend some of the 
 tribunes by the delivery of my opinions, lie could 
 not, in short, have been more lavish of his friendly 
 counsel than he was on this occasion. In our con- 
 versation on public affairs, he spoke of a civil war as 
 an event no longer doubtful. He said that there was 
 no prospect of a reconciliation, since Caesar was 
 wholly alienated from him ; that he had reason to 
 suspect this before, but was now certain of it, 
 since Hirtius, who had formerly been on the most 
 intimate terms with him, had lately come to Rome 
 from Caesar without paying him a visit ; that he had 
 arrived on the evening of the 6th of December, and 
 after prevailing upon Balbus to appoint a meeting 
 with Scipio before daylight on the following morn- 
 ing, respecting the general subject of his mission, had 
 set off again in the middle of the night to join 
 Caesar. This he considered palpable evidence of 
 estrangement I add no more ; but that my whole 
 consolation is derived from the hope, that the man to 
 whom even his enemies are willing to concede a 
 second consulate, and whom Fortune has invested 
 with supreme power, will not be so insane as to peril 
 everything by his precipitation. But if he once 
 commences such a career, I fear more than I dare 
 commit to writing *." 
 
 A second interview appears from Cicero's letters to 
 have taken place between himself and Pompey some 
 days afterwards, on which the hostile intentions of the 
 latter were still more evidently revealed. Of this 
 meeting, he communicates the following particulars 
 * Ad Attic, vii. 4.
 
 350 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 to Atticus * : " Your conjecture that I should meet 
 with Pompey before I reached this place has proved 
 correct, since he overtook me at Lavernium on the 
 27th of December. We proceeded together toFormiae, 
 and conversed in private from the eighth hour till the 
 evening. You ask if there is any prospect of a peace : 
 so far as I can judge from Pompey's full and un- 
 equivocal expressions, I should say that there exists 
 not even a wish for it. For it is his opinion, that if 
 Caesar should be returned consul, even after dismiss- 
 ing his army, a destruction of the constitution would 
 be inevitably the consequence. He thinks, however, 
 that when he hears of the preparations making 
 against him, he will abandon his designs upon the 
 consulate, and prefer retaining his province and army. 
 He spoke with great contempt of any act of rash 
 aggression on the part of Caesar, and expressed the 
 greatest confidence in his own resources and those of 
 the republic ; and although the horrors of a civil war 
 were clearly arrayed before my imagination, I was 
 ' yet in some measure freed from anxiety while listen- 
 ing to the prudent remarks of so brave, experienced, 
 and influential a leader, on the greater perils of an 
 insincere peace. We had before us the speech de- 
 livered by Antony on the 23rd of December t, in 
 which he attacks the whole life of Pompey from his 
 boyhood, complains of his unjust condemnations, and 
 of the terror of his military despotism. While perusing 
 it, Pompey asked, ' What do you suppose will be the 
 conduct of this man, if he once obtains the supreme 
 authority in the state, when even his quaestor, a des- 
 titute and powerless individual, dares to express him- 
 self in such terms as these?' In short, he appeared 
 
 * Ad Attic, vii. 8. 
 
 f It will be remembered that the public speeches of the Romans, 
 at this time, were often regularly reported by short-hand writers. 
 An oration thus preserved, was termed Oratio ejccepla.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 351 
 
 not only not to desire a peace, but absolutely to 
 dread it." 
 
 On the 4th day of January, A. u. c. 705, and at 
 the commencement of the consulate of Claudius Mar- 
 eellus* and Cornelius Lentulus, Cicero having set out 
 from the Alban villa of Pompey, entered the suburbs 
 of Rome in the full pomp of office, amidst a distin- 
 guished escort, and welcomed by the most flattering 
 testimonies of popular regard. His arrival in the 
 city, however, took place at an unfortunate crisis for 
 the triumphal honours which he now intended to 
 set himself earnestly to solicit, being prompted in his 
 exertions to obtain this distinction by a similar ap- 
 plication on the part of Bibulus, who, although he 
 had never stirred beyond the walls of Antioch, while 
 the Parthians had continued to keep the field, was 
 yet, according to established usage, provided with a 
 fair claim to this token of public approbation by the 
 successes obtained, under his auspices, by his lieute- 
 nant Caius Cassius. 
 
 The assertion contained in a letter to Tiro from his 
 patron, that he had unexpectedly fallen into the 
 full flames of a war already ragingt,was unfortunately 
 but too well founded. A few days before his arrival, 
 and at the very entrance of the new consuls upon 
 their office, a letter from Caesar was laid before the 
 senate by Curio, and allowed, after considerable oppo- 
 sition, to be read in the house. In this, which 
 Cicero terms an angry and menacing epistle^, the 
 promise was reiterated that the writer would imme- 
 
 k * Three consuls of this name were elected, A.U.C. 703, 7 04, and 705. 
 
 f Ego ad urbem accessi prid. non. Januarias. Obviam tuihi sic 
 cst proditum ut nihil potest esse ornatius. Sed incidi in flanimatn 
 civilis discordise vel potius belli. Ad Diversos, xvi. 2, 
 
 J Amicus noster minaces ad senatuin ct acerbas literas misit, et 
 erat adhuc impudens qui exercitum ct provinciam invito sonata 
 toneret. Ibid. This is the epistle which Crcsar, when speaking of 
 it himself, mentions as containing his" lenissima postulata. 1 '
 
 352 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 diately comply with the command of the senate to 
 disband his army, provided Pompey was compelled 
 to follow his example; while it was at the same time 
 intimated, in no ambiguous terms, that if this means of 
 accommodation should be rejected, he would at once 
 march into Italy and vindicate by force the liberties 
 of his country. A long and tumultuous debate im- 
 mediately ensued, in which Lentulus the consul was 
 loud in his promises of supporting the senate if they 
 should determined to act with resolution in defence 
 of their authority ; and Metellus Scipio, after assert- 
 ing that Pompey (who was present at the time) 
 would not be wanting in his duty to the state if 
 seconded by his own Order, concluded by moving, 
 that a certain day should be appointed before which, 
 if the forces of Caesar were not disbanded, he should 
 be declared an enemy to the republic*. The division 
 on this motion was summarily cut short by the 
 intercession of the tribunes Antony and Quintus 
 Cassius; and after a renewed scene of violence, con- 
 fusion, invective, and uproar, the assembly was 
 compelled to dissolve itself without adopting any 
 determinate resolution. At a second meetino- how- 
 
 * -r 
 
 ever, on the seventh of January, without any regard 
 to the tribunitial authority, the senate was rashly pre- 
 cipitated, by the violence of the faction of Pompey, 
 into a series of enactments which might be considered 
 as so many resolutions of self-destruction. It was 
 ordained that successors should be immediately ap- 
 pointed to Caesar in his government ; that fresh 
 forces should be decreed to his rival ; and, finally, as 
 if the state had been threatened with a danger which 
 rendered a temporary suspension of the laws its only 
 defence, that the consuls, praetor, tribunes, and per- 
 sons invested with proconsular authority then present 
 in the city, should take immediate care that the 
 * Caesar, De Bello Civ. i. 5. ; Dio, xli.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 353 
 
 republic received no detriment*. The instant this 
 decree was passed, Antony and Cassius, probably not 
 without reason, considering themselves no longer safe 
 at Rome, fled with precipitation, in the disguise of 
 slaves and with hired equipages t, towards the quar- 
 ters of Caesar ; who was still at Ravenna, expecting, 
 as he has himself expressed it, with a hope that 
 matters would yet be amicably arranged if there 
 remained the least sense of justice among men, an 
 answer to his most moderate and gentle demands. 
 
 Every quarter of Rome now resounded with the 
 bustle of military preparation, the young and impe- 
 tuous patricians, and the ambitious of every age, 
 rushing eagerly into a contest of which they little- 
 anticipated the wasting character or the calamitous 
 issue. The mourning habit was publicly assumed by 
 the mass of the people, and strangely contrasted with 
 the splendid equipments of the rich and noble adhe- 
 rents of Pompey, who were taking arms in imposing 
 numbers. The whole of Italy was divided into 
 districts, which were assigned to different officers ; 
 Capua and the country in its neighbourhood being 
 appointed to Cicero!, who had repeatedly raised his 
 voice in vain to ensure the continuance of peace upon 
 any terms, and to deprecate the folly and misery of a 
 civil war, while emissaries were despatched in haste to 
 superintend the general levies carrying on in all direc- 
 tions by order of the senate. The provinces were dis- 
 posed of in a similar manner, without any reference to 
 the people, and, in some instances, to persons unentitled 
 to such appointments, either by the present or recent 
 session of office . Sicily was, in this manner, commit- 
 
 * Cwsar , De Bello Civ. i. 5. ; Dio, xli. 
 
 f- Plutarch, in Ant. 
 
 } Italise regiones descriptae sunt quam quisque partem tueretur. 
 NosCapuamsumsimus. Ad Diversos, xvi. 11. written on the 12th 
 of January. 
 
 Caesar, De Bello Civ. i. 6. 
 
 A A
 
 354 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 ted to Cato, Africa to Tubero, Syria to Scipio, and Cis- 
 alpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Consi- 
 derable sums were granted to Pompey from the public 
 treasury for the expenses of the war, and the spirits of 
 his followers elevated to a presumptuous confidence by 
 his public declaration, that he had already ten legions 
 fitfor service that he had butto stamp his foot to raise 
 a fresh army and that the troops of Caesar, already 
 on the point of breaking out into mutiny, might be 
 expected to desert his standard in great numbers as 
 soon as they reached the Italian side of the Alps. For 
 the latter assertion there was not the least ground, 
 and the former contained a gross exaggeration. 
 Pompey had greatly miscalculated the strength of his 
 influence, and the extent of the public feeling in his 
 favour. His resources, moreover, instead of being 
 concentrated for the emergency, were yet scattered 
 and unarranged, and long before he could avail him- 
 self of the power which he really possessed, a single 
 movement on the part of his enterprising antagonist 
 rendered his preparations almost useless, and made 
 the final result of the struggle all but a matter of 
 certainty. 
 
 Caesar had received at Ravenna full intelligence of 
 the resolutions passed against him by the senate, and 
 possessing, by means of his friends in the city, a 
 thorough acquaintance with the condition of the 
 faction of Pompey and the absence, at the moment, 
 of any force capable of opposing his march towards 
 Rome, was also well aware of the feeling of security 
 prevalent in the capital, founded on the impression 
 that until his army came up from Gaul, no movements 
 of a serious character were to be expected. Having, 
 therefore, assembled his thirteenth legion, laid before 
 them the late resolutions of the senate, and ascer- 
 tained, by their repeated asseverations of their 
 determination to defend from illegal violence the
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 355 
 
 persons of the tribunes and of their general, that 
 their assistance might be confidently relied upon, he 
 determined, without delay, upon the bold expedient 
 of surprising Ariminum, as the first indication of 
 his intention of at once assuming the offensive. 
 For this purpose he ordered what he considered a 
 sufficient number of his troops, armed only with 
 their swords, to proceed from Ravenna, and esta- 
 blish themselves, without bloodshed if possible, in the 
 place; which appears to have been, by a singular want 
 of precaution, as yet ungarrisoned. He himself, after 
 spending the day at an exhibition of gladiators, and 
 meeting a convivial party in the evening, as if no 
 resolution of consequence had at that time a place in 
 his thoughts, set out at nightfall to join his advanced 
 guard, having previously given directions to some of 
 his most confidential friends to meet him on his road. 
 His journey was little likely to be obstructed by the 
 arms of his enemies, but full in his path flowed the 
 famous stream of the Rubicon*; guarded by much 
 
 * La politique n'avoit point permis qu'il y eut des armies auprs 
 de Rome ; mais elle n'avoit pas souffert non plus quo 1'Italie fut 
 enticement dgarnie des troupes. Celafit qu'on tint de forces con- 
 siderables dans laGaule Cisalpine, c'est-k-dire dans le pays qui est 
 depuis le Rubicon, petit fleuve de la Romagne, jusqn'aux Alpes. 
 Mais pour assurer la ville de Rome centre ces troupes, on fit le 
 celebve senatus consulte, que Ton voit encore grave sur le 
 chemin de Rimini a Cesene, par lequel on devouoit aux dieux 
 infernaux, et Ton deelaroit sacrilege et parricide, quiconque, avee 
 une legion, avec une armec, ou avec une cohorte, passeroit le Ru- 
 bicon. MONTESQUIEU, Grandeur et Decadence des Remains, 
 chap. xi. It is much to be regretted that the curious monument 
 of antiquity alluded to has since almost, if not entirely, perished. 
 Eustace ( Classical Tow, vol. i. 145,) says, " About two miles from 
 Ceseua flows a stream called the Pisatello, supposed to be the ancient 
 Rubicon. There stood on the northern bank an obelisk, with the 
 decree of the senate and Roman people inscribed on its pedestal, 
 and two other inscriptions on its sides. The French destroyed this 
 obelisk. The slabs that formed the pedestal lay half buried in a 
 farmyard, about a hundred paces from the road, where we dug them 
 A A2
 
 356 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 more imposing defences than the array of military 
 force the most solemn and awful enactments of his 
 country the reverential regard of past generations, 
 the majesty of the Roman constitution and every 
 claim which a country possesses upon the forbearance 
 of her sons. Whether on reaching this celebrated 
 boundary of his province, he paused, as has generally 
 been represented, to indulge those reflections which the 
 solemnity and stillness of the hour,themidnight aspect 
 of the consecrated river, and the consciousness of the 
 important character of his daring resolve, were so 
 well calculated to inspire, it is not now necessary to 
 consider. It may, however, be observed, that if he 
 has made no mention of any such mental conflict in 
 his own Commentaries, few can be at a loss to supply 
 substantial motives for his silence. By day-break, 
 on the following morning, Ariminum was in. his 
 hands, and from this town, after being joined by the 
 tribunes Mark Antony and Cassius, and receiving a 
 private communication from Pompey, which seemed 
 
 up and placed them against the trunk of a tree." The reader need 
 scarcely be informed, that the identity of the Rubicon with the 
 Pisatello has been warmly disputed. Eustace, following D'Anvillc, 
 thinks the stream in question to have been the Fiumecino, a tribu- 
 tary to the latter, and has brought several ingenious arguments in 
 favour of Ins opinion and against the common supposition, that 
 Caesar passed the Rubicon by following the ^Emilian Way, and 
 crossing the bridge " ad Confluenteis." A Papal decree in 1756 
 determined the point in favour of the Lusa. The inscription once 
 legible upon the obelisk, and which may not be uninteresting to the 
 classical reader, is given by Fabricius, Antiq. Lib. iii. p. 37, as 
 follows : jvssr MANDATVV 
 
 p a 
 
 Cos. Imp. Trib. Miles, tiro, commilito, armate quisquis es, mani- 
 pularie, centurio, tunnarie, legionarie, hie sistito, vexillum sinito, 
 arma deponito : nee citra hunc amnem Rubiconem, signa, ductum, 
 commeatumve traducito. Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo advcrsus 
 praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto hostis p. R. ac si contra 
 patriam arma tulerit, penatesque e sacris penetralibus asportaverit, 
 s. p. Q. R. 
 
 Sanctio plebisciti Sve Consult!. 
 Ultra hos fines arma signa p'roferre liceat nemiui.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 357 
 
 to be introductory to an accommodation, he forwarded, 
 by Lucius Ccesar and the prastor Roscius, a letter to 
 the consuls, containing the terms on which he was 
 still willing to lay down his arms. These, if his 
 own report of them be correct, could not in justice 
 be considered either partial or exorbitant : since the 
 disbanding of the forces of both parties, the cessation 
 of the present hostile preparations, the departure of 
 Pompey for his province, and the restoration of their 
 former freedom to the popular assemblies, were the 
 principal points insisted upon.* 
 
 With the first intelligence of the passage of the 
 Rubicon, the senatorial party, as if Ccesar had been 
 already at the gates of Rome, began, under the influ- 
 ence of a panic, of which the history of their country 
 had afforded few similar examples, to fly in every 
 direction from the city ; apprehending a speedy re- 
 newal of the barbarities formerly exercised by Marius 
 upon their order. It then appeared, how little 
 reliance was to be placed either upon the army 
 which had been so readily promised for the enforc- 
 ing of the late peremptory resolutions, or upon any 
 benefit from the efforts of Pompey who, stunned and 
 confounded by the news of the bold movements of 
 his adversary, appears to have lost all presence of 
 mind at the moment when it was necessary to act 
 with the greatest promptitude. After hesitating for 
 a short time between his fears and his shame, he 
 now resolved to abandon the scheme of defending the 
 capital, and, with the consuls and the principal no- 
 bility, to retire to Capua, which he proposed to 
 make for the present his head-quarters and centre of 
 operations ; hoping that the levies in the south of 
 Italy would, before long, enable him to advance for 
 the recovery of his lost ground with an overwhelm- 
 ing superiority of numbers. Cicero, sorely against 
 his inclination, was obliged by this resolution to de- 
 * De Bello Civ. i. 9.
 
 358 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 part from Rome, which he quitted preceded by his 
 lictors, and with his fasces still entwined with laurel, 
 before day-break on the 20th of January*, after an 
 interview with Pompey, in which the terror and 
 vacillation of that unfortunate general were suffi- 
 ciently conspicuous t. During the stern tumult of 
 the debates which had preceded the outbreak of the 
 civil strife now actually commenced, his voice had 
 still been heard in demand of the triumph which he 
 considered due to him, until he was dissuaded from 
 interrupting the consideration of more .important 
 matters by the consul Lentulus, who promised that, 
 if he would suffer his claims to remain in abeyance 
 until the settlement of the present commotions, he 
 would be himself the first to propose the considera- 
 tion of the distinction of which he was ambitious to 
 the senate, and support his pretensions to it with all 
 his influence^. But with the determination of the 
 party of Pompey to abandon Rome ended all hope, 
 for the present, of directing the attention of the legisla- 
 ture to the subject, and the disappointment, although 
 his whole mind might have been expected to be en- 
 grossed by the great events passing around, was, no 
 doubt, acutely felt. 
 
 The messengers charged with the ultimatum of 
 Caesar found the two consuls, together with Pompey 
 and the leading members of the senate, at Theanum 
 in Apulia, on the twenty-fourth day of January. A 
 council was immediately called to deliberate npon his 
 proposal ; which it was at length resolved to answer, 
 by a message enjoining him immediately to abandon 
 
 * Subito consilium cepi, ut antequam luceret cxircm ; ne qui 
 conspectus fieret ant senno, lictoribus praesertim laureatis. (Ad 
 Attic, vii. 10). The exact date of this circumstance is ascertained 
 from his epistle, Ad Attic, ix. 10. Erat igitur in ea, quam x. Cal. 
 Februarii dederas hoc modo, &c. Hoc scribis post dieni quartum 
 quam ab urbe discessimus. 
 
 f- Vidi hominem xiv. Cal. Febr. plenum formidinis, illo ipso 
 die sensi quid ageret, &c. Ad Attic, ix, 9. 
 
 J Ad Diverges, xvi. 11.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 359 
 
 all the places of which he was in possession beyond the 
 boundaries of Cisalpine Gaul, and, having withdrawn 
 into his province, to submit the subject of dispute 
 to the arbitration of the great council of the state. 
 But the demand of the discontinuance of the levies 
 was wholly evaded, and no fixed day for the de- 
 parture of Pompey specified. Ctesar, therefore, af- 
 fected to consider the reply of the consuls as a mere 
 stratagem to gain further time; but it is likely that he 
 had never entertained the expectation, or, perhaps, the 
 wish, that the terms offered by him would meet with 
 a favourable reception. It is certain, notwithstand- 
 ing his intimations to the contrary*, that he had not 
 for a moment ceased to carry on his offensive opera- 
 tions with all diligence : having in the interval des- 
 patched Mark Antony, with five cohorts, to secure 
 Arretium, Curio to effect the reduction of Iguvium, 
 and, after gaining in person Pisaurum, Fanum, and 
 Ancona, proceeding to add Auximum to his conquests, 
 by the voluntary surrender of its inhabitants. 
 
 The news of these several events, arriving at Rome 
 in quick succession, with the additional report that 
 the advance of Caesar's cavalry was close at hand, 
 cleared the city in an incredibly short space of those 
 members of the senate who had ventured to remain 
 behind, with the lingering hope of a pacific deter- 
 mination of the existing differences. Lentulus, who, 
 as well as Marcellus, had been recalled from Capua 
 
 * De Bello Civ. i. 10, 11. It is quite evident from these chapters 
 that Caesar intended it to be believed by his readers, that he had 
 patiently waited at Ariminum for the answer of the consuls, with- 
 out advancing further southwards. At the same time, no fact can be 
 better established than his reduction of most or all of the towns men- 
 tioned above, before his reception of any reply. Cicero (Ad At- 
 tic, vii. 18.) mentions the surrender of Ancona as occurring some 
 days before the arrival of Luc. Caesar at Theanum^ and even (Ad 
 Diversos, xvi. 12.) as preceding his own departure from the city. 
 He adds: (Ad Attic, vii. 18.) Caesarem quidem L. Caesare cum 
 mandatis de pace misso, tamen aiunt acerrime delectum habere, loca 
 occupare, vincirc prccsidiis, Oh perditum latronem ! &c.
 
 360 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 on the 7th of February, to draw an additional sum 
 of money from the treasury for the benefit of Pom- 
 pey, and afterwards to take his departure from Rome 
 with the usual ceremonies of a consul proceeding 
 on an important military expedition, immediately 
 \vithdrewwithallhaste in company with his colleague, 
 leaving the sacrifices customary on such occasions un- 
 performed. Pompey, at the same time, retired fur- 
 ther into Apulia, where the two legions received 
 from Caesar were stationed ; disheartened with the 
 reluctance shown by the people of Campania to arm 
 in his favour, and, in his despair of being able to 
 maintain Italy, designing to transfer the war, as 
 soon as possible, into Greece. It is evident from 
 several letters written from Capua, Formiae, and 
 Cales, that Cicero fully penetrated into his design ; 
 and that, although it was perhaps now unavoidable, 
 he foresaw from the first its ruinous consequences. 
 His complaints against the weakness of Pompey, and 
 the timid policy of his adherents, who, including 
 Cato himself, were, at this time, shrinking before a 
 crisis which they had provoked, are long, bitter, and, 
 it is to be feared, well deserved. The movements of 
 his own party, after every allowance has been made 
 for the disadvantages under which they laboured, 
 must, at least, be allowed to have been characterised 
 by a singular degree of irresolution and confusion, 
 while the plans of their enemies were formed and 
 accomplished with a prudence and celerity which 
 ensured success to their most difficult operations. 
 Thus, while the consul Lentulus was alternately 
 arming and disarming the school of gladiators be- 
 longing to Caesar at Capua, and Pompey remaining 
 motionless, (although at the head of a sufficient num- 
 ber of faithful troops to materially harass his adver- 
 saries, even if he deemed it prudent to decline 
 meeting them in the field,) their active enemy was 
 overrunning the whole of Picenum without opposi-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 361 
 
 tion ; and, having driven Lentulus Spinther, at the 
 head of ten cohorts, from Asculum, and taken pos- 
 session of the town, was busily engaged, after detach- 
 ing Mark Antony to receive the surrender of Sulmo, 
 in making preparations for the siege of Corfinium. 
 Into this city Lucius Domitius, the new governor of 
 Cisalpine Gaul, having levied a force of twenty Mar- 
 sic and Pelignian cohorts for the defence of his 
 province, had thrown himself with the greater part 
 of his followers ; and having crowded the battlements 
 with his engines, and made every arrangement for a 
 resolute defence, despatched letters to Pompey, ad- 
 vising him to fall upon the communications of the 
 besiegers, and, while he himself kept them in play 
 in front, to hem them in between his army and the 
 walls of the town*. This advice, however prudent 
 it might have been in some respects, was not com- 
 plied with ; since Pompey, either too obstinately 
 resolved upon making Greece the theatre of the con- 
 test to waste his strength in any other quarter, or 
 distrusting, as he himself alleged, the inclinations of 
 the troops about him, instead of marching to the 
 support of Domitius, sent urgent and repeated in- 
 junctions to himt to abandon Corfinium, and to join 
 him with all speed at Luceria with the forces under 
 his command. He, at the same time, wrote to the 
 two consuls, who were observing the motions of 
 Caesar, to unite their army with his own; preparatory 
 to a retreat towards Brundusium, whither he had 
 already despatched fourteen cohorts for the purpose 
 of securing the harbour. Unfortunately for himself, 
 only one of these orders was complied with. Do- 
 mitius, with singular rashness, continued to linger 
 
 Csesar, De Bello Civ. i. 17. 
 
 f Quatnobrem etiani et etiam te rogo et hortor, (id quod non 
 destiti superioribus litcris a te petere,) ut primo quoque die Luce- 
 riam advenias. Etiam atque etiam te hortor, ut cum onini copi& 
 ad me quam primum venias. .
 
 362 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 in and about Corfinium, until, as Pompey had more 
 than once predicted*, he was fairly blockaded, and 
 precluded from all hope of escape by the army of 
 Csesar and the garrisons drawn by Curio from 
 Etruria and Umbria, and compelled to stand a siege 
 without the remotest prospect of relief. Corfinium 
 was surrendered seven days after the commencement 
 of active operations against it, and a loss inflicted 
 by its fall which sank the spirits of the Pompeian 
 faction to the lowest degree of despondency. Their 
 leader, on gaining information of its reduction, hastily 
 fell back from Luceria to Canusium, and from thence 
 to Brundusium, where he lost no time in embarking 
 a considerable division of his army, with the consuls at 
 their head ; remaining himself with twenty cohorts 
 to defend the town, until the return of his vessels 
 from the opposite coast, when it was his intention to 
 follow, with the rest of his forces, his first detachment 
 into Epirus. Caesar, however, whom Cicero terms 
 upon the occasion a prodigy of vigilance and activityt, 
 in the meantime advancing with incredible celerity 
 from Corfinium towards Apulia, through the districts 
 of the Ferentani and the Larinates, with six legions, 
 was not long in appearing before the place ; and, after 
 the failure of a renewed attempt to bring about a 
 peaceable negotiation, commenced, for the purpose of 
 
 * Quod veritus sum factum est ut Domitius implicaretur. 
 Quod putavi et prsemonui fit ut nee in prasentia committere tecum 
 pralium velit, ct omnibus copiis conductis implicet. See the letters 
 of Pompey to Domitius, and to Marcellus, and Lentulus, contained 
 in Ad Attic, viii. 12, which, like many others of the same period, 
 may be considered as models of military despatches, and are cer- 
 tainly unsurpassed, if indeed equalled, by any similar productions 
 of later date. 
 
 f- The expedition by which Caesar's movements were at this 
 characterised, seems to -have produced a general feeling of amaze- 
 ment, which is amusingly expressed by the earnest language of 
 Cicero. " Cum haec scribebam v. Cal. Pompcius jam Brundisium 
 venisse poterat. Sed hocrepas horribili vigilantia, edentate, dili- 
 geutia est.". Ad Attic, viii. 11.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 363 
 
 blocking up the harbour, the construction of the enor- 
 mous floating fortresses which he has described at 
 length in his Commentaries. Against these Pompey 
 was compelled to prepare additional means of protec- 
 tioninthe shape of his largest transports, provided with 
 towers and huge stages for the reception of the pon- 
 derous engines which supplied the place of artillery 
 in the armies of antiquity ; and for some days an un- 
 interrupted storm of missiles was poured both from 
 the sea and land defences of the town, and answered 
 with equal fierceness by the archers and slingers, as 
 well as the more powerful instruments of offence, of 
 the assailants. This continued until the return of 
 the fleet from the opposite coast, when Pompey, 
 having ordered his troops to embark with as much 
 secrecy as possible, intersected, while they were get- 
 ting on board, the several streets of Brundusium with 
 deep trenches, which were planted with sharp stakes 
 and covered with hurdles and loose earth. The 
 principal ways leading to the harbour he further 
 fortified with strong pointed beams, and placing a num- 
 ber of his light troops upon the ramparts to impose 
 upon the enemy till the last moment, repaired, after 
 seeing the whole squadron ready to weigh anchor, 
 on board his own galley, and stood out to sea shortly 
 after sunset*. The archers whom he had left behind 
 to man the walls, then leaving their posts, rushed 
 hastily towards the beach, where they were received 
 into the boats and vessels stationed for their reception ; 
 and the town being thus deserted, the soldiers of 
 Caesar, informed by signals on the part of the inhabit- 
 ants of what had happened, in a short time after- 
 wards planting their scaling ladders against the 
 walls, entered the place from several quarters ; being 
 enabled, by means of the same friendly intimations 
 
 * On the 15th of March. Liter* missae ante lucem a Lept& 
 Capua redditae sunt. Idib. Mart. Pompeium a Brundisio conscen- 
 disse. Ad Attic, ix. 14,
 
 364 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 by which they had been at first summoned to the 
 attempt, to avoid the mischievous impediments left 
 in the way by the retiring enemy*. Caesar would 
 have considered himself but too fortunate, if he had 
 been provided with the means of following his ad- 
 versaries immediately into Greece, and finishing the 
 war by a single blow. Being, however, wholly des- 
 titute of transports, he was obliged to content himself, 
 for the present, with giving orders for the immediate 
 collection of a fleet in the harbour of Brundusium ; 
 and deeming it expedient, since his principal enemy 
 had eluded his grasp, to lose no time in crippling his 
 resources in other quarters where they were most 
 considerable, he decided upon carrying his arms 
 without further delay into Spain, at that time held 
 by Afranius and Petreius, the lieutenants of Pompey, 
 at the head of five legions and a considerable 
 force of auxiliaries. In pursuance of this plan he re- 
 turned to Rome in haste, to raise the requisite funds 
 and to make the necessary preparations for the ap- 
 proaching campaign. 
 
 In the meantime, Cicero had continued in Cam- 
 pania, dispirited by the failure of his efforts to 
 effect a peace, disgusted with the precipitate retreat 
 of his party, and wavering more and more daily 
 in his former resolution to exert himself in the 
 cause of Pompey, after the determination of that 
 general to abandon Italy. At no period of his 
 life was his conduct distinguished by greater uncer- 
 tainty, and, it is to be feared in some instances, by 
 greater disingenuousness, than at this. Like the other 
 leaders on the same side, he had been summoned to 
 unite the force he might be able to collect with the 
 main army by two letters; the first, directing him 
 to advance towards Luceria, and the second, along 
 the Appian road to Brundusium t. To both he had 
 returned evasive answers ; pretending a willingness 
 Caesar. De Bello Civ. i. 28. f Ad Attic, viii. 2.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 365 
 
 to defend Terracina and the neighbouring coast, 
 while yet uninformed of the design of quitting Italy, 
 and afterwards expressing his belief that it would be 
 impossible to move from his position, since the coun- 
 try through which his march must be directed was 
 already in the hands of the enemy. His military 
 command had been, in fact, little more than nominal, 
 since he was altogether unprovided with funds for car- 
 rying on any extensive levies, and his inclination for 
 the service does not seem to have risen above the 
 level of his resources. There is great reason to be- 
 lieve, however, that his inaction, of which he after- 
 wards made a merit to the opposite party, was, to 
 a considerable extent, the result of a perception of his 
 own interests. It is, at least, evident, that the vision 
 of a triumph, which could now only be obtained 
 through the medium of Caesar, still floated before his 
 imagination, and it seems far from improbable, that 
 this means of gratifying his vanity had no incon- 
 siderable share in producing the feebleness and languor 
 with which he at first entered upon the duties devolved 
 upon him at Capua, and, finally, abandoned them alto- 
 gether*. It is, at the same time, certain that his conduct 
 was such as to lead the principal members of the fac- 
 tion of Csesar to view him in the light of a secret well- 
 wisher to their cause, while, in the camp of Pompey, 
 he was almost openly denounced as a traitor to the 
 principles which he had a short time before professed^ 
 Many temptations were, indeed, held out to induce 
 his quiet acquiescence in the unexpected success of 
 those who were opposed to the senate. His son-in-law 
 Dolabella and some of his most intimate friends 
 were strenuously exerting themselves in their service. 
 
 * Sit enim nobis amicus, quod incertum est, sed sit ; deferet 
 triumphum. Non accipere ne periculosum sit, an accipere invidio- 
 sum ad bonos. Ad Attic, viii. 3 ; a passage pregnant with mean- 
 ing, and highly important for the due appreciation of much of 
 Cicero's subsequent policy.
 
 366 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 His wife and daughter were yet at Rome, and in 
 danger of falling into the hands of the victor, when- 
 ever he should think fit to take possession of the 
 already conquered capital. Applications, in terms 
 flattering to his vanity, were constantly made to him 
 by Coelius, Balbus, and others, to induce him to offer 
 his assistance to their leader as a mediator between 
 the rival factions ; and Caesar himself, while on his 
 hasty march towards Brundusium, had written to 
 thank him for his late conduct, and to request him to 
 return to the metropolis, in order that he might avail 
 himself of his " wisdom, influence, and dignity" in 
 settling the affairs of the republic*. His letters to 
 Atticus, written almost daily at this crisis, exhibit a 
 singular picture of the distress of mind to which he 
 was reduced by the war between his feelings of inte- 
 rest and convictions of duty. All are full of the 
 severest censures of Pompey,and lamentations over the 
 lost prudence and constancy which had once distin- 
 guished his character. The failure of his own does not 
 seem to have occurred to him, although it must have 
 been obvious to every one else. With the view of still 
 possessing the means of joining his exiled Order, if 
 he should ultimately determine upon that course, he 
 had commanded two vessels to await his directions 
 the one stationed at Caieta, and the other at Brun- 
 dusiumt ; keeping as long as possible the means of 
 escape open either by the upper or by the lower sea. 
 Yet, with every facility for taking this decisive step, 
 he continued to hesitate, being neither willing to 
 incur the direct charge of apostacy, nor able to sum- 
 mon sufficient disinterestedness and courage to put 
 everything to the hazard, by sailing to increase the 
 number and influence of the adherents of Pompey ; 
 although he was painfully sensible that his vacilla- 
 tion was open to the most unfavourable interpreta- 
 tion, on the part of his late allies, and daily the sub- 
 * Ad Attic, ix. 6. f Ad Attic, viii. 3.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 367 
 
 ject of their harshest censure. While this state of feel- 
 ing is indicated in every page of his correspondence, 
 it is impossible to view his pompous expressions of 
 extravagant devotion towards the leader whom he 
 had recently forsaken, and whom he might yet have 
 materially assisted, in any other light than mere exag- 
 gerations simply dictated by his sense of the part 
 which it would have been most decorous for him to 
 act. In one epistle he writes in reference to Pompey : 
 " As in affairs of love any appearance of inelegance, 
 folly, or want of neatness, is apt to alienate us from 
 the object of our affections, my devotion to him was 
 for a while suspended by the meanness and disgrace- 
 ful character of his flight ; not a single action having 
 been performed by him, at that time, which mani- 
 fested that he was deserving of my companionship 
 in his retreat. Now, however, my fondness again 
 breaks forth, and I find myself unable to endure the 
 loss of his society. Neither books, nor literature, 
 nor philosophy, affords me any relief in my distress. 
 Night and day my gaze is fixed upon the sea, over 
 which, like the bird alluded to by Plato, I long to 
 direct my flight*." His expressions on receiving 
 news of the preparations making against Brundu- 
 sium are in a similar strain : " At this juncture, 
 my friend, I earnestly entreat you to advise me to 
 the best of your ability what course to pursue. An 
 army of Romans besieges Cneius Pompey blockades 
 him \vith trench and rampart prohibits him from 
 the means of flight. And do we still exist ? Docs 
 the city of Rome yet stand ? Do her praetors con- 
 tinue to distribute justice ? Her aediles to exhibit 
 their games ? Her men of substance to lay out their 
 money at interest ? Nay, do I myself sit still ? 
 Shall I not rather madly rush forth, and excite the 
 people of the municipal towns to insurrection ? Alas ! 
 Ad Attic, ix. 10. ; Ibid. ix. J2.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 the well-disposed will not follow me; the unprin- 
 cipled will deride me ; the revolutionary party, who 
 are not only well-armed but victorious, will restrain 
 me by force. What, then, is your opinion ? What 
 your advice respecting the end of this most miserable 
 existence? Now, indeed, am I grieved and tor- 
 mented, since some may imagine that I have been 
 prudent and fortunate in my resolution of remaining 
 behind. How different are my own sentiments! for 
 never have I so much wished to share the successes 
 of my friend, as to be a partaker of his calamities*." 
 These are the words of the rhetorician, not of the 
 devoted adherent of the man who tells us elsewhere 
 that, in his doubts as to the exact course which it 
 was incumbent upon him to pursue in this season of 
 perplexity, he amused himself with declaiming on 
 both sides of the question in Greek and Latin t, 
 rather than of one, who in the integrity of his pur- 
 pose could well afford to dispense with the ingenuity 
 of sophistic arguments, either for the satisfaction of 
 his own conscience, or the defence of his actions from 
 the censure of others. While he was indulging his 
 pathetic laments for the absence of Pompey, the sea 
 was open to him, and the sails of the galleys provided 
 for his flight already fluttering loose in the wind; and 
 after the state of distraction and doubt, which he has 
 described as almost prompting him desperately to 
 exert his eloquence to excite Italy to a rebellion, we 
 find that he quietly subsided into a condition of utter 
 inactivity, by which, without ensuring the favour of 
 the opposite party, he for a time completely lost the 
 respect of his own. 
 
 By the efforts of the friends of both, an interview 
 was appointed between Caesar and Cicero, while the 
 
 * Ad Attic, ix. 2. 
 
 f The subjects of some of these theses are given, Ad Attic, ix. 4., 
 El fj.fferfov \v rrj TrarpiSi rvpa.vVfvovti.fVTi, &c. &c. &c.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 369 
 
 former was on his way from Brundusium to Rome. 
 From a complimentary correspondence which had 
 lately passed between them, it was anticipated that 
 this might terminate in their permanent union ; 
 but whether Cicero was nerved on the occasion to 
 more than ordinary constancy, by the conviction that 
 his character for independence was now completely 
 at stake and must be permanently affected by his 
 conduct, or whether Ctesar was not sufficiently 
 deferential in manner, and remiss in promising the 
 triumphal honours which it was probably expected 
 he would have offered, it is certain, that any addi- 
 tional feeling of friendship, on either side, was far 
 from being engendered by the meeting. Cicero has 
 given an account of the conversation which took 
 place, and his letter to Atticus in which it is re- 
 corded is well deserving attention *. " I have com- 
 plied," he writes, " in both respects with your advice ; 
 for my discourse with Ca?sar was of such a nature 
 as rather to induce him to feel respect than gratitude 
 towards me; while I remained firm in my resolu- 
 lution of not returning to the city. Yet, in my 
 expectation that he would easily be persuaded to give 
 his assent, I was utterly deceived. Never have I 
 seen a person less pliable. He affirmed, that if I 
 refused to come, his conduct would appear to be con- 
 demned by my absence, and that others would be 
 induced to show the same reluctance. I answered, 
 that my own case was peculiar. After a long dis- 
 cussion he exclaimed : ' Well, then, come for the 
 purpose of negociating a peace for us !' ' May I do so,' 
 I inquired, 'on my own terms T 'Do you suppose,' he 
 asked in reply, ' that I should venture to prescribe 
 them to you ?' ' This, then,' I continued, 'will be the 
 course I shall pursue : First, I will endeavour to pro- 
 cure a decree of the senate to forbid forces from being 
 * Ad Attic, ix. 18. 
 B B
 
 370 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 conveyed into Spain or Greece. In the next place, 
 I will draw a pathetic description of the condition of 
 Pompey.' 'Such subjects,' he answered, ' I will never 
 allow to be mentioned.' ' So I thought,' I rejoined, 
 4 and for that very reason refuse to come, because I 
 have no other course but to absent myself altogether, 
 or to speak on these points, and on many others upon 
 which I should find it impossible to keep silence.' 
 Our interview ended by his requesting me, as if 
 seeking a means of escape from the argument, to take 
 further time for deliberation. This there was no 
 refusing, and on these terms we separated. From 
 all that passed, I believe I am no favourite with 
 Caesar. I have, however, the approbation of my 
 own conscience, a feeling to which I have long 
 been a stranger. For the rest, ye gods ! what cha- 
 racters are those about him. What a fiendish- 
 looking band, to use an expression of your own *. 
 Among others I observed Eros, the son of Celer. 
 How desperate does his cause appear ! How aban- 
 doned his followers ! Here the son of Servius there 
 the son of Titinius ; the whole multitude, in short, 
 who lately blockaded Pompey, in all six legions. 
 The daring and vigilance of the man are astonishing; 
 I foresee no end of our calamities. 
 
 " Aid me, I beseech you, with your best advice 
 in the present emergency, for the crisis has now 
 arrived. I had, however, almost forgotten his last 
 most offensive expression, namely, that if he were 
 precluded from making use of my counsels, he would 
 have recourse to those of others ; and, in fact, descend 
 to any expedient he might deem necessary. 
 
 " ' You have seen, then,' you will remark, ' the 
 
 man to be just as I had described him.' I have ; and 
 
 have lamented over the confirmation of your previous 
 
 opinion. For this, and for every other suitable feeling, 
 
 * Qui comitatus ! qnse, ut soles dicere, vtKvia I
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 371 
 
 you will give me full credit. I have nothing further to 
 add, but that on parting, he pursued his journey to 
 Pedum, while I set out on my return to Arpinum." 
 From the moment of his interview with Caesar, 
 the resolution of Cicero to withdraw from Italy ap- 
 pears to have gained additional strength. lie was, 
 however, still detained, first, by his intention of 
 investing his son with the manly gown, and, sub- 
 sequently, as the summer was drawing near, by his 
 reluctance to put to sea until there should be an 
 almost certain prospect of a favourable navigation. 
 While he, therefore, yet remained in his brother's house 
 near Minturna?, to which he had retired for the sake 
 of greater privacy, watching anxiously, as he states, 
 for the arrival of the swallows as the signal for his 
 departure*, Caesar having disposed everything accord- 
 ing to his wishes at Rome, and procured, in spite of 
 the fruitless opposition of the tribune Metellus, an 
 enormous sum from the public treasury for carrying 
 on the war, proceeded to wrest the province of Spain 
 from the hands of the Pompeian faction. But, while 
 on his march, he thought it necessary, in consequence 
 of a report which had reached his ears of the pre- 
 parations of Cicero for his departure, to leave strict 
 orders with his officers not to suffer any person of 
 rank to quit the Italian ports without especial permis- 
 sion ; at the same time despatching an epistle, in which 
 he endeavoured to alter the determination which had 
 been intimated to him, in the following terms : 
 
 " CJESAR, IMPER ATOR, TO CICERO, IMPERATOR f. 
 
 " Although well assured that I have no reason to 
 suspect you of any rash or imprudent design, I have, 
 notwithstanding, been induced by a very prevalent 
 rumour to request you, by every kind feeling which 
 exists between us, not to think of repairing to a party 
 
 * Ad Attic, x. 2. f lbid - 8 - 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 now involved in ruin, and which you had determined 
 not to join while its resources were still unim- 
 paired. For, by so doing, you will inflict a serious 
 blow upon our friendship, while you entirely neglect 
 your own interests ; since you will appear, by your de- 
 parture, not to be seeking a more prosperous fortune, 
 (inasmuch as fortune has invariably declared itself in 
 my favour,) nor to assist the cause you formerly 
 espoused, (for this remainsthesameas when yoii refused 
 to aid it with your counsels,) but rather to condemn 
 some part of my late conduct, by this means wound- 
 ing my feelings in the severest manner possible. 
 By all the rights of friendship, therefore, I entreat 
 you to be better advised. What, let me in con- 
 clusion ask, can be more suitable to the character of 
 a virtuous and peaceable man, or of a good citizen, 
 than studiously to avoid taking any part in civil 
 commotions ; from which I may also hint, that many 
 who would otherwise have been induced to take part 
 in them, have been deterred by the simple consider- 
 ation of their own danger ? After you have reflected 
 upon the evidence of my intentions afforded by my 
 whole life, and on the impartiality of the friendship 
 which prompts this opinion, you will find no course 
 more safe or more honourable to yourself, than to 
 refrain from contention in every form. Dated on the 
 road, this 16th day of April." 
 
 The letter of Caesar was received almost at the 
 same time with one from Antony to a similar effect. 
 This unblushing profligate Cicero has described as at 
 the time parading in insolent triumph through the 
 different towns in his chariot drawn by tame lions, 
 accompanied by his mistress, the actress Cytheris*, 
 as well as his wife, and followed by a train of car- 
 riages filled witlx the abandoned companions of his 
 sensuality. He had been commissioned by Caesar to 
 ~~. 10; Ibid.x7T3.7
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 373 
 
 command the troops left in Italy during his absence, 
 and was now on his way towards Misenum, probably 
 with the intention of appointing proper agents to 
 watch the adjacent coast. His epistle, which little 
 resembles that of the assassin to his future victim, is 
 thus worded : 
 
 "ANTONY, TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE AND PROPRIETOR, 
 WISHES HEALTH TO CICERO, IMPERATOR. 
 
 " Unless my friendship towards you were excessive, 
 and much greater than you imagine, I should feel no 
 apprehension from the rumours which are current 
 respecting your intentions especially since I consider 
 them without foundation. But because my attach- 
 ment is unbounded, I cannot dissemble the truth, that 
 even false reports have great weight with me when 
 you are the subject of them. It is surely not to be 
 believed that you are meditating to retire beyond 
 the sea, regarding as you do your son-in-law Dola- 
 bella, and your daughter Tullia, that most exemplary 
 woman ; and being yourself held in so much esteem 
 by all of us, whose concern, I swear to you, for your 
 dignity and honour, is greater if any thing than your 
 own. I could not, however, suppose it to be my part 
 as a friend, to be indifferent respecting the discourse 
 even of the worthless, especially considering the delicate 
 part imposed upon me by our late differences which 
 were the effect rather of rny jealousy than of any in- 
 jury of which I had to complain. For I wish you to 
 be persuaded, that no one is dearer to me than your- 
 self, with the exception of my beloved Caesar, and 
 that I am also convinced, that Ceesar reckons Marcus 
 Cicero among his most valuable friends. 
 
 " Therefore, my dear Cicero, I beseech you, on 
 the one hand, to let matters remain as they are, and 
 to disregard the friendship of a man who first in- 
 flicted an injury, that he might have an opportunity 
 of conferring a benefit ; and, on the other, not to
 
 374 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 fly from one who, even if he felt no affection for you, 
 (which is altogether impossible,) would still earnestly 
 desire you to continue in safety and honour. I have 
 sent to you, as a particular mark of esteem, my most 
 intimate friend Calpurnius, that you may know my 
 anxiety concerning your safety and dignity." 
 
 From his friend Coelius, who was on the point of 
 setting out with Caesar for Spain, he also received 
 advice well calculated to act upon his timid tempera- 
 ment. The latter, after expressing the utmost con- 
 cern at his determination of abandoning his country, 
 proceeds to warn him to the following effect* : 
 
 " I earnestly entreat and conjure you, Cicero, by 
 your fortunes and your children, not to take any re- 
 solution unfavourable to your welfare and safety. 
 For I call gods and men, as well as our friendship, 
 to witness, that my predictions and warnings are 
 founded on no rash and hasty conclusion ; but that 
 the intelligence I convey is the result of a personal 
 interview with Caesar, in which I ascertained from 
 himself the plan he is determined to pursue, if victo- 
 rious. If you think that he will retain his former cle- 
 mency and moderation in dismissing his enemies, and 
 proposing terms of peace, you are greatly mistaken. 
 His designs, as well as his expressions, are character- 
 ised by nothing but fierceness and severity. He has 
 set out from the city highly enraged with the senate, 
 on account of the late intercessions. I solemnly 
 assure you, there will be hereafter no opportunity of 
 deprecating his resentment. If, therefore, your 
 only son, your family, your expectations for the 
 future, are of any value to you ; if I myself, or that 
 excellent man your son-in-law, continue an object 
 of your regard, it is your duty not to throw us into 
 such a condition of suffering or perplexity, that we 
 shall be compelled either to execrate and abandon 
 the cause, in the ascendency of which our only se- 
 * Ad Diverges, viii. 16.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 375 
 
 curity consists, or by desiring its success, necessarily 
 to indulge an impious wish against your safety. 
 
 " Consider, in fine, how much blame you have 
 already incurred by your hesitation and delay. 
 Surely it would be the extreme of folly to act against 
 Caesar when victorious, after making no hostile 
 movement against him, as long as the contest con- 
 tinued undecided; and to join a party now consist- 
 ing of fugitives, which you avoided, while still offer- 
 ing resistance. Beware, lest while ashamed of not 
 having fully acted the part of a man of rank, you 
 end by adopting that course which is least worthy 
 of one. But if you will not follow the whole of this 
 advice, at least let me prevail upon you to wait 
 until you hear the result of our operations in Spain, 
 which I predict will be ours as soon as Caesar arrives 
 in the country ; and what hope the opposite party 
 can entertain after its loss I know not. What can be 
 your own design, moreover, in joining yourself to those 
 whose cause is utterly desperate, I am equally at a 
 loss to conjecture." Such representations might na- 
 turally have been expected to produce the effect in- 
 tended by the writer upon an individual of greater 
 constancy and resolution than Cicero. But it 
 appears that his mind was preoccupied by terrors, 
 which more than counterbalanced his dread of 
 Cassar's wrath on account of his departure. He 
 had latterly begun to listen to the report, that the 
 return of the army acting against the lieutenants of 
 Pompey in Spain would be a signal for a general 
 proscription and massacre, which it would be impos- 
 sible for their leader to prevent, even if he should 
 desire it. Under the impression*, therefore, that he 
 was choosing the least imminent of two dangers, 
 
 * It has also been conjectured that certain rumours of the 
 defeat of Csesar's army in Spain might have induced him to deter- 
 mine to join the army of Pompey immediately. This, however, is 
 mere surmise.
 
 376 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 lie continued his preparations for his flight, which he 
 intended should be shared by his son and nephew 
 Qnintus; the latter of whom had given him, as well 
 as his own father, considerable anxiety by a rash and 
 ill-advised journey to Caesar, which ending without 
 the production of any benefit to himself, had 
 threatened seriously to compromise his nearest rela- 
 tions It was, however, no longer an easy matter to 
 elude the vigilance of Antony, who was yet in his 
 neighbourhood, and strictly observing, according to 
 his instructions, all means of egress from Italy by 
 the Tuscan sea. To him Cicero at first applied, 
 under the avowed, and possibly the sincere, intention 
 of proceeding to Malta, and there, as in a neutral 
 territory, awaiting the issue of the war. The reply 
 of the tribune, which is complimented with the 
 title of a display of drunken insolence*, shows 
 how soon this ready agent of a daring faction 
 could drop the mask of urbanity and politeness, 
 when his inclinations were thwarted, and assume 
 the stern and authoritative tones of the imperious 
 soldier, regarding nothing but the will of his 
 superior in command. " How consistent with sin- 
 cerity," he ironically commences, " is the plan you 
 propose ! He who wishes to remain neutral con- 
 tinues in his own country. He who abandons it 
 makes himself instantly a partisan. I, however, am 
 not the person to determine who is licensed to depart, 
 and who must be compelled to remain. My duty, 
 according to the wish of Caesar, is to suffer no indi- 
 vidual whatever to retire from Italy. It is of little 
 consequence, therefore, whether I approve of your 
 conduct or not, since I am not instructed to make 
 any concession in your favour. My opinion is, that 
 you should communicate with Caesar himself, and 
 prefer your request to him. I doubt not that you 
 will obtain it, especially since you promise to do it 
 * Vide quam ad hsec irapoiviKcas, &c Ad Attic, x. 10.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 377 
 
 in such a manner as to show your continued regard 
 for the friendship between us" 
 
 A reply couched in such unambiguous terms left 
 no ground for doubt that any attempt to effect what 
 the commission of Anton v was expressly intended 
 to guard against, would be opposed by open force. 
 There now, therefore, remained but the expedient of 
 a secret escape, which Cicero \\as not slow to adopt. 
 " You see," he observes by way of comment upon 
 the above letter, " what a genuine Spartan scroll I 
 have received. I will, however, yet contrive ef- 
 fectually to overreach my correspondent*." In fol- 
 lowing out this resolution, he set out shortly after- 
 wards from Cumae for his villa near Pompeii, as if 
 he had been induced to despair of being able to quit 
 Italy ; and finding that Antony, as he had expected, 
 was induced by his movements to believe that he 
 had now made up his mind to obey the prohibition 
 of Caesar, completed without molestation all arrange- 
 ments for his voyage. While thus employed, he 
 was visited by a deputation from the inhabitants of 
 Pompeii, and from the centurions of three cohorts 
 stationed there in garrison, offering, if he would 
 undertake to place himself at their head, to surrender 
 the town into his hands, and to commence an imme- 
 diate insurrection against Ctesar. Although, how- 
 ever, he had just before mentioned to Atticus an 
 intention of following the example of Ccelius Caldust, 
 (who had distinguished himself by his efforts to excite 
 the people of Italy against Sylla,) expressing, at the 
 same time, an opinion that, from the. growing disaf- 
 fection among the troops, a most favourable oppor- 
 tunity had now presented itself for erecting the 
 standard of revolt, he was far from being the person 
 seriously to intend placing himself at the head of 
 any such movement ; nor, indeed, considering the 
 
 * EL>bes o-Kvrd\riv AOKCWIK^J'. Omnino excipiam hominem. 
 Ad Attic, x. 10. t Ad Attic - x - 12-
 
 378 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 slight prospect of success it held out, could he justly 
 be blamed for declining an undertaking so desperate. 
 He, therefore, left his villa at day-break, on the fol- 
 lowing rooming, for the purpose of avoiding a meet- 
 ing with the deputation ; proceeding towards Formia?, 
 where he was still prevented for some time, by the 
 prevalent calm, from embarking. On the 8th 
 of June, having at length obtained weather suitable 
 for his sailing, and received intelligence just before 
 quitting Formiae of the birth of a grandchild, he 
 went on board the vessel he had procured to convey 
 him into Greece, in company with his brother, his 
 son, and nephew ; and from thence wrote a farewell 
 letter to Terentia, informing her of his recovery 
 from a sudden and severe indisposition, and desiring 
 her to offer the usual sacrifices in his stead to vscu- 
 lapius and Apollo*. Of his subsequent voyage to the 
 coast of Epirus, or the time of his landing there, we 
 have no account, his letters to Atticus and to his 
 other friends, for several ensuing months, not form- 
 ing part of his extant correspondence. 
 
 He found at Dyrrachium the principal supporters 
 of the cause of Pompey, formidable both in numbers 
 and resources, in the dignity of their titles, and 
 the influence of their names, but still beset by all the 
 faults which had from the first distinguished their 
 party, presumption and arrogance the want of 
 unanimity in council and in action and a jealousy 
 of each other, which effectually prevented any great 
 and simultaneous exertion for the common benefit. 
 This alone can Account, and it is amply sufficient for 
 the purpose, for the astonishing supineness witli 
 which their leader, although with a now numerous 
 army and a fleet of five hundred galleys at his com- 
 mand, in addition to possessing all the resources 
 which the East could supply, suffered his lieutenants 
 to be beaten in detail, and one province after another 
 * Ad Diversos, xiv. 8.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICF.RO. 379 
 
 lost, without a single effort on his part to turn the 
 tide of victory, now running strongly in favour of 
 his rival. In immediate attendance upon his per- 
 son might be seen Cato, with his melancholy 
 aspect, long hair, and sordid vest, in token of his 
 sorrow for the distractions under which his country 
 was suffering ; Labienus, formerly the favourite 
 lieutenant of Caesar, but who had deserted him at the 
 very commencement of the war ; Marcus Brutus and 
 Caius Cassius, the future avengers of the cause, the 
 ruin of which they were unable to avert ; Bibulus, 
 who had been the colleague of Ca>sar in his first 
 consulate; Caius Marcellus, Lentulus Spinther, and 
 a sufficient number of general officers, to constitute an 
 entire senate. With the fiery and impetuous youth, who 
 represented in arms the haughty aristocracy of Rome, 
 were mingled the gorgeous retinues of the princes 
 of Cappadocia, Syria, and Galatia, the fierce and re- 
 doubted horsemen of Thessaly and Thrace, the practised 
 archers of Crete, and the hardy mariners of Corcyra, 
 Athens, and Egypt. Amidst this motley crowd, 
 the arrival of Cicero, although by Pompey himself he 
 was received with studied respect, does not seem to 
 have drawn forth extraordinary marks of appro- 
 bation ; and it is stated by Plutarch, that Cato in 
 private severely censured him for quitting Italy, 
 where alone his services could now be of use to 
 Pompey, (by the exertion of his influence with the 
 Caesarian faction, or, if necessary, by opposing them 
 in the popular assemblies,) for a field of action in 
 which he was never intended by natural or acquired 
 habits to be conspicuous. It is further affirmed, that 
 although he brought a considerable sum of money for 
 the use of the army, he was not rewarded by being 
 appointed to any commission of consequence*, and that 
 
 * He himself states that he constantly declined every commission 
 offered to him : " Ipse ftigi adhuc omnc munns, eo magis qnod
 
 380 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 he, before long, rendered himself an object of no com- 
 mon dislike to the vehement spirits about him, by 
 his moderate and conciliatory counsels; which were so 
 frequently urged, as to compel Pompey at length ex- 
 pressly to desire him to refrain from again introducing 
 the mention of a peace into the general deliberations. 
 For some months the senatorian leaders had ample 
 opportunity for carrying on their preparations, and 
 training their forces, which now amounted to nine 
 legions of infantry, besides an immense host of auxi- 
 liaries, and seven thousand cavalry, without any 
 prospect of an interruption on the part of their 
 antagonist. But towards the close of the year, 
 Caesar having returned victorious from Spain, and 
 secured at the comitia, over which he presided as 
 dictator, the return of himself and Publius Servilius, 
 as consuls, began, undeterred by the tempests of win- 
 ter, to make the necessary arrangements for transport- 
 ing his army from Italy to the shores of Greece. 
 He himself, the moment after he had performed the 
 usual inaugural ceremonies, set out for Brundusium ; 
 where, on the 4th day of January, A. u. c. 706, he 
 embarked, with twenty thousand infantry and six 
 hundred horse, and having fortunately escaped the 
 far superior fleet of the enemy, consisting of a hundred 
 vessels of war, (which, under Bibulus, was lying in 
 the harbours of Corcyra, prevented from putting to 
 sea by the terrors of the season,) succeeded in landing 
 his army at Pharsalus in Epirus ; equally regardless 
 of the weakness of his convoy, which amounted to 
 but twelve armed galleys, and the terrors of the iron- 
 bound coast, lying beneath the thunder-stricken 
 heights of the Acroceraunian mountains*. It does 
 
 itanihil poterat agi ut rnihi et meis rebus aptum esset. Ad Attic. 
 xi. 4. Written from the camp at Dyrrachium, and, as it is evident, 
 shortly after the repulse of Caesar. 
 
 *Casar, De Bello Civ. Hi. c. 6.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 381 
 
 not fall within the scope of the present work to enter 
 at length upon the particulars of the celebrated cam- 
 paign which followed. Tlie demonstrations of the 
 two armies upon the Apsus and the Haliacmon, the 
 various projects on either side for the preservation or 
 interruption of the means of communication with 
 Italy the gigantic works raised by the contending 
 generals in the neighbourhood of Dyrrachium, and 
 the subsequent masterly movements of both in an 
 intricate war of detachments for the occupation or 
 defence of important positions, would be more suit- 
 ably described in a life of Caesar than of Cicero. Of 
 most of these the latter was probably an eye-witness ; 
 and in some instances perhaps actively engaged in 
 the operations of the army to which he was attached. 
 In his character of Imperator, he might have been 
 entrusted to defend some part of the famous lines 
 extending for the distance of fifteen miles, and 
 strengthened by twenty-four forts, by which Pompey 
 opposed the still more astonishing works of circum- 
 vallation thrown up by his antagonist. He might 
 also have been one among the combatants in the 
 sternly contested action, in which Caesar suffering, for 
 the first time, a serious and almost fatal repulse, in 
 an attempt to force the entrenchments of Pompey, 
 was only saved from rnin by the hesitation of the 
 victor, and compelled, after a loss of two thousand of 
 his best troops and thirty standards, to abandon the 
 whole of the fortifications on which he had bestowed 
 so much time and labour, and to commence his 
 retreat into Thessaly*. The picture, however, drawn 
 of him at this period by his ancient biographer, is 
 anything but that of a zealous and enterprising officer. 
 He is said, probably under the influence of disappoint- 
 ment at not finding his services appreciated to the 
 extent which he had expected, to have made no 
 * Dio, xli. Ctesar, De~Bdio Civ. iii. 67.
 
 382 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 secret of his repenting his voyage to Epirus, and while 
 wandering about the camp with a solemn expression 
 of countenance, as well as when summoned to attend 
 the general councils, to have amused himself with a 
 succession of keen and petulant witticisms against the 
 general plan of the campaign*. Yet he appears, at 
 least, to have acted in many instances the part of a 
 sound and judicious adviser, whose plans, if they had 
 been followed, would have saved Pompey from the 
 ruin into which he was soon afterwards precipitated ; 
 since he was one of the few who strenuously advised 
 him to protract the war by every means possible ; 
 and, while availing himself of his unquestionable 
 superiority by sea for the purpose of precluding the 
 enemy from the possibility of receiving supplies 
 from Italy, to reduce his strength by degrees, with- 
 out allowing him any opportunity of retrieving his 
 fortune by coming to a decisive engagement^. Such 
 
 * " Some of Cicero's sayings on this occasion are preserved by 
 different writers. When Poinpey put him in mind of his coming so 
 late to them, 'How can I come late,' said he, ' when I found nothing 
 in readiness among you?' And upon Pompey's asking him sarcasti- 
 cally where his son-in-law Dolabella was : ' He is with your father- 
 in-law,' replied he. To a person newly arrived from Italy, and 
 informing them of a strong report at Rome that Pompey was blocked 
 up by Caesar: 'And you sailed thither, therefore,' said lie, 'that you 
 might see it with your own eyes.' And even after their defeat, 
 when Nonnius was exhorting them to courage, because there were 
 seven eagles left in Pompey 'scamp, ' You encourage well,' said he, 
 ' if we were to fight with jackdaws.' By the frequency of these 
 splenetic jokes, he is said to have provoked Pompey so far as to tell 
 him, ' I wish that you would go over to the other side that you may 
 begin to fear us.' Vide Macrob. Saturn, ii. 3. ; Plut. in Cic. i." 
 Middleton's Life of Cicero, p. 434. 
 
 f- Thesame plan is suggested by Calais, who had n'ow deserted the 
 cause of Caesar, and was preparing to excite the useless insurrection in 
 the course of which he lost his life, in his epistle to Cicero: Ad 
 Diversos, lib. viii. 17. Quod istic facitis, &c. " What are you doing 
 on the other side of the water ? Ai-e you imprudently waiting to give 
 the enemy battle? What Pompey's forces may be, I kuow not;
 
 THE LIFE OF CICEUO. 383 
 
 opinions, impatiently listened to before by the impetu- 
 ous nobility, who were loudly clamouring for battle, 
 were treated with the utmost contempt, after what 
 they were pleased to term the victory of Dyrra- 
 chium and the flight of Cassar. An immediate 
 pursuit was consequently decided upon, and after 
 leaving Cicero, who was as much deterred by ill- 
 humour as by the weak state of his health* from accom- 
 panying him, together with Cato and Marcus Varro, to 
 defend his camp, with fifteen cohorts, Pompey set out 
 with the rest of his army for the plains of Thessaly. 
 The infatuation and folly which had hitherto dis- 
 tinguished the conduct of his principal adherents 
 continued to influence them to the last. Under 
 the same overweening estimation of their own 
 prowess, which prompted them, on the eve of 
 battle, to dispute among themselves for the offices 
 of Cassar, while that admirable strategist was yet 
 in arms before them and calmly preparing for their 
 destruction ; as well as to entwine their tents with 
 laurel and ivy, in anticipation of the easy determina- 
 tion in their favour of a contest which many among 
 them were destined never to survive, they were not long 
 in hurrying, by taunts and sarcasms, their leader into 
 an engagement perhaps the least called for among the 
 many which have been unnecessarily delivered. The 
 armies encountered on the banks of the river Enipeus, 
 near the town of Pharsalus, on the ninth day of 
 August t, on a fair and open field, with little advan- 
 
 but Caesar's I am sure are accustomed to action, and inured to all 
 the hardships of the most severe campaigns. " Melmoth. 
 Coelius was subsequently slain by the soldiers of Caesar, at Thurii 
 in Lucania. His principal motive for deserting his former paity 
 seems to have been his jealousy of Trebonius, whom Ctesar had 
 entrusted with the management of the affairs of the city, during his 
 absence, in preference to himself. 
 
 * Me conficit solicitude, ex qua etiam summa iufirmitas corporis, 
 &c. Ad Attic, xi. 5 (From the Camp.) 
 
 )" v. Id. Sextil. A.U.C. 706 in reality the beginning of June,
 
 384 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 tage of position on either side, but with an immense 
 superiority of numbers in favour of Pompey, .whose 
 force was more than double that of his opponent. 
 The result is familiar to all in the slightest degree 
 acquainted with general history. The vainglorious 
 chivalry who had been so forward to provoke the 
 conflict were routed at its very commencement, and 
 by their flight leaving the archers and slingers, whom 
 they were intended to support, at the mercy of the 
 enemy, and the flank of their own army exposed to the 
 terrible charge of the veterans by whom they had 
 been repulsed, determined irretrievably the fate of 
 the day. In a short time the general, who had 
 hitherto enjoyed the reputation of being invincible, 
 was doomed to experience the bitterness of a defeat, 
 from which he was well aware there was no prospect 
 of recovery, and after seeing the only part of his army 
 which offered a determined resistance cut to pieces 
 or dispersed, and his camp stormed by the impetuous 
 conquerors, was compelled to fly, with but thirty 
 horse, to Larissa*; too much confounded by the 
 greatness of his misfortune to make a "single attempt 
 to rally the wreck of his scattered forces. Of an 
 army of forty-five thousand combatants which he 
 had that morning arrayed against his adversary, 
 fifteen thousand were slain, either during the conflict 
 or in the subsequent pursuit, and more than twenty- 
 four thousand taken prisoners ; while the whole of the 
 wealth collected in his camp, the baggage of the 
 soldiers, one hundred and eighty standards, and nine 
 eagles fell into the hands of the victors, whose whole 
 loss did not amount to more than two hundred men. 
 These results, however, were but trivial, compared 
 
 since the Roman calendar was at this period somewhat more than 
 two months in advance of the real date. It is singular that the 
 day on which the famous battle of Pharsalia was fought is ascer- 
 tained only on slight evidence. See Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii.'p. 1 98 ; 
 and Appendix, 570. 
 
 * Ceesar, De Bello Civ. iii. 9C. t Ibid. 99.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 385 
 
 with the more remote advantages which might be 
 expected to follow so decided a blow. The sovereignty 
 of the whole Roman world was the real prize so 
 rashly staked and so cheaply won at the memorable 
 conflict of Pharsalia. 
 
 We learn from Cicero* that the first intelligence 
 of the overwhelming disaster which had overtaken 
 the arms of Pompey, was brought into the camp at 
 Dyrrachium by Titus Labienus, who had been pre- 
 sent at the late engagement, and an eye-witness to 
 the rout which he reported. The news was speedily 
 confirmed by a host of fugitives who began to flock 
 into the place ; among whom was the younger Pompey, 
 with Marcus Cicero, who had been sent by his father 
 with the army into Thessaly, and had been conspicu- 
 ous during the campaign for activity and courage. 
 It is recorded, that at a hurried council of war held 
 to determine upon their future proceedings, the chief 
 command was formally offered to Cicero, as the first 
 among them in dignity and age, by the assembled 
 officers of his party, and that on his prompt refusal 
 Pompey and his friends unsheathing their swords, 
 and branding him with the title of traitor, would 
 have slain him on the spot had he not been rescued 
 from their fury by the interposition of Catot. His 
 rejection of an appointment so fraught with danger to 
 himself, and so evidently useless to the cause, may easily 
 be believed, and certainly cannot but be considered as 
 reflecting credit upon his discretion. The hurried con- 
 sultation at which it might have been pronounced 
 ended in no other resolution but that of an im- 
 mediate embarkation for Italy, which took place 
 under convoy of a Rhodian squadron, amidst 
 
 * See De Divinatione, i. 32, where the circumstance is men- 
 tioned by Quintus Cicero, in confirmation of a curious instance of 
 presentiment. 
 
 f- Plutarch, in Cic. 
 
 C C
 
 386 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 general confusion; the roads from the encampment 
 being covered with immense quantities of corn 
 thrown out from the granaries, to prevent its 
 being of use to the enemy, and the sea reddened with 
 the flames of a numerous fleet of transports which had 
 been set on fire by the retreating soldiery. The fleet 
 at first stood over to Corcyra, where Cato being re- 
 solved to sail for Africa, gave to all who chose to 
 withdraw and submit themselves to Caesar a free op- 
 portunity for retiring. This he again offered at Patraj, 
 in the gulf of Corinth, whither, after the desertion of 
 the Rhodian vessels, he directed his diminished fleet. 
 An almost general break up of thePompeian party was 
 theconsequence; andamong the numbers who preferred 
 the chance of a reconciliation with Caesar to the more 
 threatening perils of the war into w T hieh Cato was 
 hastening, with the calm and settled resolution of not 
 surviving its unsuccessful termination, was Cicero, 
 who, after taking at Corcyra a farewell, destined 
 to be final, of his more determined friend and 
 companion, directed his course towards Brundusium. 
 Here he resolved to await the return of Caesar to 
 Italy, hopeless of a favourable result to any attempt 
 to revive the sinking liberties, of his country, and 
 almost reconciled, by the scene he had lately wit- 
 nessed, to any settled form of government, which should 
 supersede the horrors of civil bloodshed, and put a 
 stop to the miseries, compared with which the exer- 
 cise of despotism itself seemed a less formidable evil.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 387 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Cicero receives News of the Death of Pompey The Party of the 
 Senate revives Cato and Labienus in Africa Rctrret of Cicero 
 on Account of his late Policy He is commanded by Antony to 
 leave Italy Conduct of Quintus Cicero Arrival of Caesar at 
 Brundusium Cicero sets out to meet him His Reception. 
 He returns to Rome Caesar sets out for Africa T realises 
 " De Parti tione OratoricS." and " De Claris Oratoribus" 
 Cicero divorces Terentia, and marries his second Wife Publilia 
 Triumph of Caesar His absolute Authority Cicero composes 
 his " Cato," which is answered by Cossar And his " Orator" 
 Orations for Marcellus and Ligarius Death of Tullia Cicero 
 retires to Astura Letter of Servius Sulpicius Literary Occu- 
 pations of Cicero He composes his Hortensi us, Academics, and 
 Tusculan Disputations He divorces Publilia Caesar returns 
 from his Expedition to Spain Speech for Deiotarus Visit of 
 Caesar to Cicero Consulate of Caninius llebilus. 
 
 ALMOST the first intelligence which Cicero received 
 at Brundusium was the news of the assassination of 
 Pompey in Egypt. His lament on the occasion was 
 briefly pronounced. " I never entertained any doubt 
 respecting the death of Pompey. For so general 
 was the opinion of the desperate nature of his cause 
 among all princes and people, that I imagined 
 wherever he directed his flight, this must necessarily 
 be the result. Yet I cannot but grieve at his fate. 
 For I knew him to be an individual of dignity, tem- 
 perance, and integrity*." Such, after all but deifying 
 him in his orations, and expressing in his epistles the 
 truest and most faithful attachment to his person, was 
 the cold and formal comment pronounced by his 
 once enthusiastic panegyrist upon the untimely end 
 of the conqueror of Mithridates. The perplexity and 
 distress of mind, however, under which Cicero was 
 labouring at the time, might, perhaps, be pleaded as 
 * Ad Attic, xi. 6. 
 
 c C 2
 
 388 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 some excuse for his dwelling so briefly upon the 
 calamities of others. He had no sooner set foot on 
 the Italian coast, than he began to repent of his late 
 determination of abandoning the relics of the party 
 of Pompey, before he had received an assurance of 
 being again received into the favour of Ca?sar. It 
 was speedily known, moreover, that the whole pro- 
 vince of Africa was now entirely at the disposal of 
 the representatives of the senate. The defeat, on the 
 part of Juba king of Mauritania, of Curio the lieu- 
 tenant of Caesar, and former correspondent of Cicero, 
 by which a powerful force was completely annihi- 
 lated, and their leader driven to suicide, had previ- 
 ously given some relief in that quarter to the long 
 series of reverses which had hitherto attended the 
 constitutional cause. This was followed by the 
 arrival at Utica of Scipio and Labienus at the head 
 of the wrecks of the army of Pharsalia, and soon 
 afterwards by that of Cato with his devoted band, after 
 a march through the sands of the desert of Barca, 
 undertaken with singiilar daring, and executed with 
 unshaken resolution. By the exertions of these and 
 other officers of rank, a formidable host was once 
 more drawn together, and thoroughly equipped for 
 service ; and since Caesar was known to be engaged 
 in a difficult and dangerous conflict with Ptolemy, 
 king of Egypt, which held out little promise of an 
 early termination, it was fully expected that Italy 
 would be immediately invaded, and possibly overrun 
 by his adversaries before he could return to its rescue. 
 While, therefore, there was a reasonable prospect that 
 the cause he had abandoned as hopeless, might, after 
 so singular and unexpected a revival, even prove 
 victorious in the end, Cicero, with his keen sus- 
 ceptibility to censure, was doomed to hear nothing 
 but severe comments upon his whole conduct during 
 the war, and the opinion openly expressed, that he
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 389 
 
 would have much better consulted his reputation by 
 assisting with his counsels in the deliberations of the 
 senate at Utica. With a vanity singularly consist- 
 ent with his former exhibitions of the same weak- 
 ness, he still retained about him the appendages of 
 his proconsular dignity, although there was the 
 greatest danger of exciting by this means the resent- 
 ment and jealousy of the soldiers in the service of 
 Csesar ; of whose violence he was under such serious 
 apprehensions when approaching Brundusium, as to 
 be induced to command his lictors to lay aside their 
 axes and mingle with the crowd *. Yet the desire 
 of retaining these evidences of his pretensions to dis- 
 tinction to the last, seems to have determined him to 
 decline the advice of Atticus, recommending his 
 return to Hornet, where he would have been better 
 able to ensure the interference of the friends of Caesar 
 in his favour, an object to which he was now devot- 
 ing himself with the greatest earnestness. , Even his 
 stay in Apulia, however, was not ensured without 
 an unpleasant sacrifice of the character of neutrality, 
 which he at present wished to assume. On the arrival 
 of the news of the battle of Pharsalia at Rome, the 
 citizens having shown their exultation at the event 
 by tearing down the statues of Sylla and Pompey, 
 proceeded tumultuously to pass a serus of laws con- 
 ferring the most extravagant powers upon the com- 
 mander, who, by his recent successes, had now be- 
 come the popular idol. He was declared consul for 
 five years in succession, and dictator for the year 
 next ensuing. The power of making peace or war 
 was unreservedly entrusted to his hands, as well as 
 the right of presiding at the general assemblies ; while 
 his person was rendered sacred by the additional 
 dignity of the tribunitial office for life. These honours 
 
 * Ad Attic, xi. 6. -J- Propius acceilere ut voles 
 
 quomodo sine lectoribus quos populus dedit possum ? Ibid.
 
 390 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 were willingly accepted by Ca?sar, \vho was made ac- 
 quainted while in Egypt with the decrees of the people 
 in his favour. His first exercise of his authority was 
 to create Antony his master of the horse, and to this 
 able functionary, who was carefully guarding Italy, in 
 which he had established an entirely military govern- 
 ment, he at the same time sent orders, under the 
 impression that Cato and Metellus, with other mem- 
 bers of the same party, had retired in that direction, 
 to suffer no one to land on any part of the coast with- 
 out his especial permission. In consequence of this 
 command, Antony was compelled to write to Cicero, 
 inclosing a copy of the letter of Ca?sar, and entreating 
 him to retire without delay from Bnmdusium, using 
 many expressions of civility, but, at the same time, 
 assuring him, that his instructions were unconditional 
 and imperative*. Cicero, in answer, despatched his 
 friend Lucius Lamia to represent that Caesar had 
 expressly desired Dolabella to write to him, advis- 
 ing his return to Italy, and Antony was so far con- 
 vinced of the truth of the assertion, as to exempt him 
 by name from the restrictive edict which he forth- 
 with published: " Which," observes Cicero, "I was 
 exceedingly unwilling that he should do, for the 
 same object might have been effected equally well 
 without the express mention of any individual t." 
 And there is no doubt that he had good reason for 
 his reluctance to the straightforward proceeding of 
 Antony. Such an especial notice might hereafter be 
 interpreted as an open declaration of his intimacy 
 with the prevailing party, and be made use of as 
 evidence, greatly to his disadvantage, if any unfore- 
 seen circumstances should, at a future time, place the 
 fortune of the senate upon the ascendant, and reverse 
 the positions at present respectively held by its friends 
 and enemies. 
 
 * Ad Attic, xi. 7. t U-"l-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 391 
 
 His domestic affairs and connexions were cause* 
 of little less anxiety than the political course he had 
 lately been pursuing. His son-in-law Dolabella, 
 greatly to his dissatisfaction, was distinguishing him- 
 self at Rome by the most violent conduct ; and 
 having followed the example of the notorious Clo - 
 dius in passing, by the ceremony of adoption, from a 
 patrician to a plebeian family, in order to obtain the 
 tribuneship, was paying his court to the populace 
 by the ordinary method of proposing and urging 
 forward a general act of insolvency in the midst of 
 tumult and bloodshed. The conduct of Dolabella to 
 his wife was, at the same time, fast hastening on 
 the divorce which took place shortly afterwards with 
 the consent of both parties. Besides allowing her, 
 after receiving in two instalments from Cicero the 
 greater part of a considerable portion which con- 
 stituted her dowry, to suffer considerable privations, 
 the consequences of his profusion and extravagance, 
 he had added the severest slight which it was pos- 
 sible for him to inflict, by his open connexion with 
 Metella, the wife of Lentulus, and was, notwith- 
 standing, expecting from his father-in-law, who was 
 at the time no stranger to pecuniary difficulties *, 
 the remainder of her marriage portion. The health 
 of Tullia was also beginning visibly to decline, and 
 her meeting with her father, some months after 
 his arrival in Italy t, from this, as well as from other 
 causes, appears but to have contributed to the dis*- 
 tress of both. To these sources of uneasiness was 
 added the real or apparent indifference of Terentia 
 to the welfare of her husband, and her neglecting 
 to visit him during the whole time of his stay at 
 
 ; * Ad Attic, xi. 25. 
 
 f This meeting took place at Brundusium, June 12, A.U c. 707. 
 (Ad Attic, xi. 1 7.) Tullia mea ad me venit pridie Idus Junias.w 
 Sue also, Ad Diversos, xiv. 17.
 
 392 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Brundusium, as well as the conduct of his brother 
 Quintus. from whom he now suffered the affliction 
 of a serious estrangement. Quintus Cicero, instead 
 of returning into Italy after the battle of Phar- 
 salia, had preferred remaining at Patroe in Achaia, 
 where, in his disgust at the unsuccessful issue of the 
 war and apprehension of its probable consequences 
 to himself, he constantly indulged in bitter invectives 
 against the relative by whose advice he had been 
 principally induced to side with the party of Pompey ; 
 which were daily conveyed to the ears of the party 
 against whom they were directed, by the usual chan- 
 nel of common friends. Not satisfied with this de- 
 monstration of estrangement, he even sent forward his 
 son toEphesus,to meet Caesar on his return from Alex- 
 andria, charged with letters exculpatory of his own 
 conduct and full of representations to the disadvantage 
 of his brother Marcus. The younger Quintus was 
 no less violent in his abuse of his uncle, and it was 
 evident that both himself and his father, by repre- 
 senting Cicero as their chief adviser, intended to 
 make the sacrifice of his credit with the victor, the 
 means of establishing their own*. It had been well 
 for the reputation of all parties mentioned in it, and 
 no less for that of its author, if most of the corres- 
 pondence with Atticus, during the years A.U.C. 705 
 and 707, had perished ; so striking are the pictures 
 contained in it of the weakness, timidity, and irre- 
 solution, as well as the general selfishness, induced 
 
 * Ad Attic, xi. 10. in which he states, that his friend Te- 
 rentius had seen Quintus Cicero the younger at Ephesus, when 
 the latter h:;d shown him a long oration which he was prepaiing to 
 deliver against his uncle, in the presence of Caesar. Cicero had the 
 more reason to complain of this conduct, as he had written to 
 Coesar a short time before expressly to exculpate the elder Quintus 
 from the ch.rge of having in any measure contributed to his uniting 
 himself with the party of Pompey. This letter he quotes verba- 
 tim. Ad Attic, xi. 12.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 393 
 
 by the distracted character of the times. Almost 
 every page is pregnant with apprehensions and re- 
 grets, with the morbid repinings and useless laments 
 of Cicero over his imprudence in bringing himself 
 into a situation in which, to use his own words, no- 
 thing but the success of a cause to which he had 
 always been averse could prove of service to his inte- 
 rests. Neither the constant assurances of the friends of 
 Caesar, nor the numerous recent instances of clemency 
 on the part of that leader, nor even the circumstance 
 of his having forwarded the late letter of Quintus 
 Cicero to Rome, with express directions that it should 
 be shown to the person it was m^ant to injure, proved 
 sufficient to relieve the disquietude of mind under 
 which he continued to labour; finding a fresh cause 
 for alarm in every new rumour, and looking with 
 suspicion on each instance of forbearance towards the 
 members of his party as an additional proof of some 
 ulterior design against them, which, at present, it 
 was not thought prudent to reveal *. 
 
 He was at length relieved from this state of un- 
 certainty and dread by a letter from Caesar himself, 
 containing the most friendly expressions t, and even 
 
 * Amonor the letters written from Brundusium is one to the 
 celebrated Caius Cassius, (Ad Diverges, xv. 15.) requesting his ad- 
 vice and opinion as to the writer's present condition, and claiming the 
 merit of a common policy with him in his late resolution of aban- 
 doning further resistance. The place assigned to this letter by the ar- 
 rangement of Sch'utz is between Ad Attic, xi.24 and Ad Attic. xi. 20. 
 Cassius had been appointed by Pompey to command a considerable 
 fleet of Syrian and Phoenician vessels, which he afterwards surren- 
 dered to Caesar, in the mouth of the Cydnns, where he had stationed 
 his squadron in the hope of finding an opportunity of assassinating 
 the latter, on his arrival in the river. His sudden submission, 
 instead of following out this design, naturally brought upon him the 
 charge of treachery and cowardice from his own party. 
 
 f Redditae mihi tandem sunt a Caesare literae satis libcrales ; et 
 ipse opinione celerius venturus esse dicitur. Ad Diversos, xiv. 23. 
 The following inscription is given by Fabricius, Antiq. Mon., lib. 
 iii., and asserted to have been found at Viterbo, in Etruria: 
 C. Julius Caesar, M. Tullium Ciceronem, ob egregias ejus virtutes,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 allowing him still to exhibit those coveted ensigns 
 of dignity his laurelled fasces and proconsular reti- 
 nue for as long a time as he should deem it expe- 
 dient to retain them. A personal interview shortly 
 afterwards completed the reconciliation thus begun. 
 After finishing the Alexandrine war, and dissipating, 
 in a brief summer campaign of five days' continuance, 
 the formidable rebellion of Pharnaces of Pontus, 
 Caesar suddenly landed in the month of September, 
 A.U.C. 707, at Tarentum; deceiving, in the quick- 
 ness of his return, the expectations both of friends 
 and enemies. On the news of his approach towards 
 Brundusium, Cicero, who had at first intended to send 
 forward his son, in company with Cneius Sallustius, 
 to meet him, at length summoned courage enough to set 
 out for that purpose in person. He has not himself left 
 any particular account of the manner in which he was 
 received, but the deficiency is supplied by Plutarch ; 
 who states^ that although he commenced his journey 
 with some shame and reluctance at the thought of try- 
 ing how he stood in the opinion of a victorious enemy, 
 before so many witnesses, he soon discovered that he 
 had no occasion to say or do anything beneath his 
 dignity. Caesar, writes the same historian, no sooner 
 saw him at some considerable distance advancing 
 before the rest, than he dismounted and ran to em- 
 brace him, after which he went on discoursing with 
 him alone for many furlongs*. The result of this 
 conference seems to have been his immediate return 
 towards Rome, amidst the splendid train collected, 
 during his progress, about the returning dictator ; 
 since, on the first day of October, he writes to Te- 
 rentia from Venusium, informing her of his intention 
 of being at his Tusculan villa by the seventh or eighth 
 day of the month, and requesting her to see that his 
 
 gingularcs anirai tlotes per totum orbem, nostris armis virtute que 
 perdomitum salvum et incoluiuem cssejubemus. 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Cicero Langhorne's translation.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 395 
 
 baths are in proper order, and every preparation 
 made for the accommodation of a numerous company 
 of guests *. The stay of Caesar in the capital was of 
 no long continuance, since the African war almost 
 immediately summoned him to a new scene of action. 
 Remaining in the capital, therefore, only long enough 
 to appoint Marcus Brutus, although a short time 
 before in arms against him at Pharsalia, to the 
 government of Cisalpine Gaul to invest Servius 
 Sulpicius with that of Achaiat and to make such 
 arrangements as seemed necessary for ensuring the 
 peace of Italy during his absence, he completed his 
 preparations for the approaching campaign with so 
 much celerity, that by the middle of December he 
 was at Lilybfeum in Sicily ; with his tent pitched 
 upon the beach, and six legions encamped around 
 him, prepared to embark with the first favourable 
 wind. On the twenty-seventh day of the same 
 month his galleys were in full sail for the coast of 
 Africa, which he safely reached after a prosperous 
 voyage of four days' continuance, and having landed 
 his forces without impediment, opened his memorable 
 campaign against Scipio, Juba, and the enduring phi- 
 losopher of Utica, by an immediate advance upon 
 the city of AdrymetumJ. 
 
 Being now, in some measure, freed from the causes 
 of disquietude which had lately absorbed his atten- 
 tion and weighed heavily upon his spirits, Cicero 
 devoted the interval of suspense, during which Rome 
 and her tributary provinces aw^aited the termination 
 of the struggle maintained by the yet unfailing deter- 
 mination of her exiled nobility amidst the burning 
 and arid wastes of Zeugitana, to his favourite pur- 
 suits of literature and philosophy ; occasionally, for 
 the sake of greater seclusion, removing from the 
 capital to his villas in its vicinity. This opportunity 
 
 * Ad Divcrsos, xiv. 20. -f- Ibid vi. 16. 
 
 j Hirtius, De Bcllo Africano, cap. iii.
 
 396 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 of retirement and study produced his two trea- 
 tises, " De Partitione Oratorica" and "De Claris Ora- 
 toribus ;" the first a clear and well-digested, though 
 somewhat formal, dialogue between himself and his 
 son Marcus, for whose use it was chiefly intended; and 
 the second an invaluable comment upon the charac- 
 ters and excellences of the chief Greek and Roman 
 orators, intended as a supplementary book to his 
 former work " De Oratore." This dialogue is also 
 known by the name of Brutus, from the circum- 
 stance of that distinguished personage being one of 
 the speakers introduced in it. Its various merits 
 both of thought and expression its eloquent, al- 
 though half-suppressed, laments over the ruined con- 
 dition of the republic its delicate, impartial, and 
 well-deserved criticism upon the oratory and writings 
 of Csesar and, above all, the many curious particu- 
 lars to be obtained from this source alone respecting 
 the great worthies of the Roman bar, must always 
 ensure for it a high place in the regards of the stu- 
 dent either of classic or of general literature. 
 
 His divorce from Terentia occurred in the midst 
 of these intellectual occupations. The cause which 
 he alleged for the separation was, the neglect she had 
 shown towards him during his continuance in Greece 
 and at Brundusium, and her general inattention to 
 the management of his pecuniary affairs. This, 
 however, was, in all probability, but a pretext for a 
 step which had been meditated long before. The 
 temper of Terentia, at all times haughty and impe- 
 rious, was not likely to have lost anything of its 
 original asperity with the increase of years ; and 
 Cicero, with all his merits and general amiability of 
 disposition, appears to have possessed that nervous 
 and querulous temperament, which has sometimes a 
 more irritating effect upon those who are in the daily 
 habit of encountering it, than much greater faults of 
 character. His conduct in thus parting, in the de-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 397 
 
 clineof life*, from one to whom he had so long been 
 united, on such trifling grounds of complaint, and 
 with such little compunction, was the subject of gene- 
 ral censure ; which was anything but lessened by his 
 marriage shortly afterwards with Publilia a young, 
 beautiful and wealthy heiress towards whom he had 
 been appointed to act in the capacity of guardian. His 
 new connexion, however, into which he is supposed 
 to have been principally drawn by the dazzling 
 inducement offered by the fortune of Publilia, proved, 
 as might have been anticipated, but a source of un- 
 happiness, and was but of brief continuance. Te- 
 rentia, for whom the sympathy of her age might 
 naturally have been excited, does not appear to have 
 been greatly afflicted by the event ; since she was 
 afterwards successively married to Sallust the histo- 
 rian, Messala Corvinus, and Yibius Eufus, and 
 attained the advanced age of one hundred and three 
 years. Her last husband is said to have proposed for 
 her hand from a simple love of curiosities, and to have 
 boasted, after obtaining it, that he now possessed two 
 things which had belonged to the two greatest men of 
 the age before him the wife of Cicero and the chair 
 in which Caesar was slain. 
 
 By the beginning of summer Caesar had finished 
 his African expedition. The battle of Thapsus had 
 at one blow completely paralysed the republic in 
 that quarter. Utica had surrendered, drawing after 
 it the whole of the adjacent province. Numidia had 
 given in its submission, and the great leaders of the 
 army of the senate, Cato, Petreius, Scipio, Afranius, 
 and Juba, had severally fallen by their own swords 
 or by those of the victors. The subjugation of Spain 
 alone remained, where the emissaries of the two sons 
 of Pompey were exerting themselves to excite a 
 general revolt, and had already enlisted a consider - 
 
 * Cicero was at this time iii the sixty-first year of his age.
 
 393 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 able force for the support of their enterprise. But, 
 before transferring his conquering arms to a new field 
 of operations, Csesar again returned to Rome, to enjoy 
 the fruits of his late conquests, and to receive the 
 flattery of his countrymen in the shape of fresh and un- 
 precedented honours. His dictatorship was extended 
 for ten years. He was declared magister morum, or 
 master of the morals of the people, a title hitherto 
 unknown. Four different triumphs were granted 
 him within a month, for his successes in Gaul, Egypt, 
 Pontus, and Africa, in which he had the presump- 
 tion to exhibit the effigies of several of the noblest 
 senators who had fallen in opposing him ; and, to 
 crown the whole, a gilded car was placed near the 
 image of Jupiter in the capitol, in which was erected 
 his statue, standing upon a globe, with an inscrip- 
 tion adding the appellation of demigod to his name*. 
 Thus tempted by the abject submission of a people 
 who were rushing headlong into slavery, he entered 
 at once upon the full exercise of despotic authority 
 the crime less of the individual than of the commu- 
 nity of the one who exercises, than of the many 
 who provoke and endure it. Without even using 
 the outward formality of consulting the senate upon 
 any of the foreign relations of the state, he took upon 
 himself the whole management of this branch of the 
 government concluding treaties, entering into alli- 
 ances, and imposing tributes, with reference to no- 
 thing but his own sovereign will and discretion. He 
 even (with a reliance upon their passive acquiescence 
 which nothing but the most contemptuous opinion of 
 their spirit and condition could have justified) trans- 
 mitted to distant nations decrees ostensibly passed 
 by their consent, but with the nature of which 
 they were utterly unacquainted. " Do you think," 
 inquires Cicero, in a letter to Papirius Psetust, 
 * Dio, xlvi. f Ad Diversos, ix. 15.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. S99 
 
 " that the decrees of the senate would be fewer if I 
 were at Naples ? Even while I am at Rome, and 
 in close attendance upon the forum, these edicts are 
 drawn up in the house of our friend. "NY hen, indeed, 
 it enters his head, my name is set down as if con- 
 cerned in preparing them, and I was informed some time 
 ago that a decree was carried into Syria and Arme- 
 nia of which I was said to bo the proposer, when no 
 mention of the subject had ever been heard at Rome. 
 Think not that I am in jest in making this repre- 
 sentation. Letters have been brought to me from 
 princes living in the remotest parts of the earth, 
 expressing their gratitude towards me for procuring 
 for them the confirmation of their titles from the 
 senate and the people ; whereas I was at the time 
 ignorant, not only that they had been saluted kings, 
 but even that they had ever had an existence." 
 
 His confidence in his own security was, however, not 
 without its good effect in allowing Caesar to lay aside 
 much of that jealousy which is unavoidably atten- 
 dant upon authority, when its possessor is anxious of 
 holding it upon any uncertain tenure ; and having 
 fully satisfied himself that he had obtained a firm 
 hold of the substance of power, he was the less 
 anxious respecting its outward appendages, in the 
 shape of perfect respect to his person or opinions. 
 It was, indeed, part of the consummate policy of this 
 able usurper, while attacking by every description 
 both of force and stratagem the very citadel of free- 
 dom, to leave for some time its mere external defences 
 to all appearance unimpared. This was sufficiently 
 shown when Cicero, after the death of the great 
 upholder of the quarrel of the republic at Utica, 
 (whose end every reader of his works must smile at 
 finding him propose to himself the possibility of his 
 imitating, at a fitting time and opportunity*,) pro- 
 * Csoteri <iuidem , Pompeius, Lentulus, tuus Scipio, Afranius, fcede
 
 400 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 duced his elaborate and unfortunately long-lost 
 " Cato" a carefully wrought eulogium upon the 
 virtues and conduct of the unyielding patriot whose 
 name it bore. The performance was not only re- 
 ceived without resentment, but even with complaisance, 
 by the dictator, who, perhaps not unwilling to show 
 his power of encountering the first writer of his age 
 with his own weapons, proposed to himself the task 
 of answering it; which be afterwards accomplished in 
 his work called " Anti-Cato." From the Jittle we 
 know of the character of this much-regretted treatise, 
 the invective to which it was devoted, besides being 
 necessarily rendered revolting by assailing an enemy 
 no longer in existence, seems not to have been desti- 
 tute of the coarseness and violence which distinguished 
 all similar productions of that period*. It seems, 
 however, at the same time, to have contained passages 
 of delicate and elegant compliment to the living, 
 which showed that its author was capable of attaining 
 . to a politeness and forbearance in controversy, which 
 few who had once entered upon such a dispute would 
 have been inclined to show to the panegyrist of a 
 deceased adversary, when his life and fortunes were 
 entirely at their disposal. 
 
 Cicero was mentioned throughout the production 
 in terms of the greatest respect by his imperial oppo- 
 nent, and likened, with many eulogies upon his 
 
 pcrierint. At Cato praeclarti. Jam istuc quidem cum volumus 
 licebit. Ad Diverse*, ix. 18. 
 
 * Plutarch mentions that one of the extravagant and alsurd 
 accusations brought against Cato by Caesar set forth, that from a 
 feeling of avarice he had passed the ashes of his brother Caepio, to 
 whom he was tenderly attached, through a sieve, for the purpose 
 of obtaining any melted gold which might have been mixed with 
 them. The other charges probably partook largely of the same 
 character. The " Anti-Cato" seems to have been written in two 
 books, as we gather from various passages in ancient authors. It 
 w;is, however, not published until just before the return of Casar 
 from hit Spanish campaign.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 401 
 
 actions as well as his abilities, to Pericles and Thera- 
 menes of Athens. The latter compliment seems to 
 have been the dictate rather of the political than of 
 the literary judgment of Caesar, since he could have 
 seen but little in common between the rich and 
 exuberant genius of the Roman orator and the simple 
 nervousness and concentrated energy of the two 
 great luminaries of the Attic assemblies, to whom he 
 was thus compared*. At the same time it deserves 
 also to be recorded, as a further proof of the desire 
 of the conqueror to conciliate those lately opposed to 
 him, that although Cicero, who seems to have been 
 always better able to modify his conduct than his 
 conversation to existing circumstances, had ventured 
 
 
 
 upon some of his trenchant jests and sarcasms respect- 
 ing the present condition of the state, in addition to 
 indulging in a general freedom of discourse, which 
 induced his friends seriously to warn him of the pro- 
 bable consequences t, no signs of disapprobation were 
 shown towards him byCsesar; who being at the time, 
 amidst other more important occupations, busily 
 employed in making a compilation of facetias and 
 apophthegms, was systematically acquainted with 
 every fresh witticism uttered at Rome, and had 
 already inserted many of Cicero's best known sayings 
 in the collection. 
 
 To the " Cato " succeeded the " Orator " or treatise 
 on perfect oratory^, dedicated also to Marcus Brutus, 
 and a worthy conclusion to the preceding series of 
 
 * The character of the oratory of Theramenes, although none of 
 liis works were extant in the time of Cicero, may be inferred from 
 De Oratore, ii. 22. Consecuti ?nt hos Critias, Theramenes, 
 Lysias Omnes etiam turn retinebant ilium Periclis succum ; sed 
 erant paulo uberiore filo. The foundation of the mo~e ornamental 
 and more truly rhetorical school is attributed to Isocrates. 
 
 f Ad Diversos, ix. 1C. 
 
 I luque hoc sum aggressus statim "Catone" absoluto. 
 Orator, c;vp. x. 
 
 D D
 
 402 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 works upon the same subject. As the rules of all 
 art are of universal application, this masterly per- 
 formance, and indeed the whole of the rhetorical dis- 
 quisitions of which it forms a portion, may be safely 
 considered to the present hour the best and surest 
 guide to excellence, which those ambitious of mov- 
 ing the passions of their fellow men by eloquence, 
 aspiring to a character above that of mere declama- 
 tion, could select for their direction. 
 
 To enter into a detailed examination of their 
 merits, besides requiring a space far more consider- 
 able than could be allotted to the purpose in the 
 present work, would demand higher powers of criti- 
 cism than any to which a simple narrator of facts 
 dares to pretend. Their due appreciation, moreover, 
 can be reached alone by the study of the noble tongue 
 in which they were originally written. For although 
 some general idea might be formed, through the 
 medium of translation, of the nature and arrange- 
 ment of the subjects of discourse, and of the argu- 
 ments adduced in their elucidation, what terms, 
 distinct in sound though identical in meaning, could 
 convey the mingled grace and energy, the united 
 beauty and perspicuity of the language, in which 
 these are preserved ? language which, in its majestic 
 simplicity and harmonious flow, resembles the tenour 
 of some mighty and unruffled river, whose depth 
 may be inferred from its very clearness, and whose 
 murmurs are the blended tones of melody and 
 strength. 
 
 The oratorical powers of Cicero, which had been 
 long suffered to remain dormant, were about the 
 same time again put forth in his speech in favour of 
 Marccllus, delivered in despite of his determination 
 of preserving an obstinate silence on all public affairs 
 during the continuance of the present form of govern- 
 ment. The name of Marcus Claudius Marcellus is
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 403 
 
 known in history as that of one of the most active 
 agents in promoting the civil war. Throughout the 
 whole army of Pompey, Caesar had not a more bitter 
 enemy, or a more determined opponent. After the 
 battle of Pharsalia, having declined to follow the 
 remains of the vanquished party to Africa, and dis- 
 daining to apply to his prosperous foe for pardon, he 
 had retired to Mitylene in the isle of Lesbos ; where 
 he devoted his time to literary pursuits with a calm- 
 ness and constancy, which elicited the admiration 
 and were recorded by the friendship of Marcus Brutus, 
 who visited him in his retirement. His friends at 
 Home, however, were not possessed of the same indif- 
 ference with regard to his recal as himself, and at a 
 general meeting of the senate, when Caius Marcellus 
 had preferred at the feet of Caesar an earnest request 
 for the forgiveness of his brother, the whole assem- 
 bly arose, and advancing in the posture of suppli- 
 cants, with extended hands and importunate solicita- 
 tions seconded the request. Caesar, moved by the 
 unexpected appeal, was at length won to the side of 
 clemency, and in return received a glowing eulogium 
 from the lips of Cicero. The glance of modern criti- 
 cism has affected to discover in the speech received 
 as that for Marcellus, indications of a later period 
 and of a less powerful hand. Recent discoveries, 
 however, seem to establish at least very considerable 
 parts of it as genuine, and, judging from these, it 
 is scarcely too harsh a criticism to affirm, that it 
 is not more distinguished by grace of language than 
 by a spirit of unnecessary adulation. Something 
 may be allowed to the impulse of gratitude ; some- 
 thing to the ignorance of Cicero respecting the ulte- 
 rior designs of Caesar, and a lingering hope that he 
 might yet be induced to restore the republic ; yet, 
 as the oration was delivered in a place where the 
 vacant seats, once occupied by many of his friends, 
 D D 2
 
 404 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 must have reminded the speaker of the sword yet 
 red with their blood; and where, without any great 
 stretch of the imagination, he might have imagined 
 the stern shade of Cato rebuking his weakness by its 
 silent presence, his vivid epithets of approbation seem, 
 at least, strangely misplaced, and his finished flattery 
 ill in accordance with recent recollections and present 
 circumstances. 
 
 Somewhat similar in subject, although less marked 
 by the faults of the preceding address, was the speech 
 in favour of Quintus Ligarius, who, like Marcellus, 
 was at the time living in exile, in consequence of the 
 part he had taken against Caesar in Africa. His two 
 brothers, who had taken arms on the opposite side, 
 had been urgent for his recal, and seemed not un- 
 likely to prevail ; when Quintus Tubcro, instigated 
 by a feeling of enmity of long standing, formally 
 accused him of having shown more than an ordinary 
 violence in favour of the senate. The result of this 
 charge is related by Plutarch as follows : " When 
 Quintus Ligarius was impeached on the ground of his 
 having been among Caesar's enemies, and Cicero had 
 undertaken his cause, Caesar is reported to have ob- 
 served : ' Why should we not indulge ourselves on 
 this occasion with the pleasure of hearing Cicero 
 plead, since it is manifest, on the clearest evidence, 
 that the accused is guilty of all that has been urged 
 against him ?' But when the orator commenced his 
 speech in a manner to excite general emotion, and, as 
 it proceeded, introduced the most powerful as well 
 as beautiful appeals to the passions of his audience ; 
 it was clearly seen, by his frequent changes of coun- 
 tenance, how greatly Caesar was moved, until at 
 length, on the speaker alluding to the battle of Phar- 
 salia, he was so violently agitated as to tremble from 
 head to foot, and let drop the papers which he was 
 holding in his hand. Being completely vanquished,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 405 
 
 therefore, by the force of eloquence, he dismissed the 
 accusntion against Ligarius." Such are the words 
 of Plutarch, and his account may possibly be correct. 
 Yet, in the oration for Ligarius, ingenious, plausible, 
 and judicious as it unquestionably is, there appear 
 but few passages calculated to excite any extraor- 
 dinary emotions in the auditors none, certainly, of 
 such profound pathos as to blanch the cheek, or un- 
 nerve the frame of the chieftain upon the judgment 
 seat. It contains neither expressions of sympathy 
 with the living, nor a funeral lament over the illus- 
 trious dead ; and where Pharsalia is mentioned, it is 
 without any reference to all that was ruined and 
 blighted on that disastrous field. Nor are the 
 attempts made to gn.in credit for it on the ground of 
 its excessive freedom greatly supported by the evi- 
 dence of the speech itself. Its chief merit of the 
 kind is to bo found in a forcible protest contained in 
 it against the appellation of wickedness, as connected 
 with the faction of Pompey. " Do you, then, 
 Tubero," exclaims the orator, " term the conduct of 
 Ligarius wicked ? Under what pretext ? for never 
 yet has that cause been distinguished by such a 
 name. Some may designate it error some fear ; 
 those who distinguish it by a severer appellation, un- 
 reasonable expectation selfishness hatred obsti- 
 nacy those who give it the harshest title of all 
 rashness ; but wickedness, no one has yet termed 
 it but yourself. To me, indeed, it appears, if the 
 proper and true name be sought for our misfortunes 
 that a certain fatal and calamitous influence has 
 overtaken us, and occupied the minds of men before 
 they were aware of its approach; so that no one 
 should wonder that human counsels have been over- 
 come by divine necessity. Let us be called unhappy, 
 although, under such a conqueror, it is impossible 
 that we should be so. I speak not, however, of such
 
 406 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 of us as survive, but rather of those who have perished. 
 Ambitious, resentful, obstinate, they may have been ; 
 but be it allowed to the deceased Pompey, and to many 
 others who fell with him, to be free from the charge 
 of wickedness, of madness, and of parricide *." Such 
 is one of the boldest attempts at liberty in the whole 
 oration, an attempt simply to prove, that in osten- 
 sibly defending the ancient constitution, the followers 
 of Pompey were not to be considered exactly in the 
 light of criminals. Considering the part which Cicero 
 had acted in the late disputes, it was surely hardly 
 possible for him to say less ; and that he contented 
 himself with saying so little, and qualifying that little 
 with abundant praise of the individual to whom it 
 might prove unpalatable, would be more surprising 
 than the slight indications of courage contained in it, 
 did not the general spirit of servile adulation which 
 characterised the times cause anything, but the most 
 extravagant expression of this degrading sentiment, 
 to assume the stamp and title of freedom. 
 
 Towards the winter of the same year, which, 
 besides the ordinary intercalary months often inserted, 
 was increased by the addition of two others t, in con- 
 sequence of the reformation of the Roman calendar, 
 just completed with the assistance of the astronomer 
 Sosigenes of Alexandria, by the great, and all but 
 universal genius, now placed at the helm of the state, 
 
 * Pro Ligario, vi. Dr. Middleton's comment upon the oration 
 is as follows : " The merit of this speech is too well known to be 
 enlarged upon here. Those who read it will find no reason to 
 charge Cicero with flattery, but the free spirit which it breathes in 
 the face of that power to which it was suing for mercy, must give a 
 fresh idea of the art of the speaker, who could deliver such bold 
 truths without offence, as well as of the generosity of the judge, 
 who heard them, not only with patience, but with approbation." 
 This is the elegant exaggeration of a learned but prejudiced 
 biographer. 
 
 t In all by the insertion of ninety days. See Fasti Hellenic!, 
 iii. 202.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 407 
 
 Cassar was summoned into Spain to conduct his final 
 expedition against the sons of Pompcy. With the 
 .year ensuing, A.U.C. 709, commenced his fourth con- 
 sulate, which he filled without the assistance of a 
 colleague, and the third period of his dictatorship, 
 during which he declared Marcus TEmilius Lepidus 
 his master of the horse. He took with him Quintus, 
 the nephew of Cicero, and it was with difficulty that 
 Marcus, the son of the orator, was prevented from 
 engaging in the same service. Cicero, however, who, 
 with all his expressions of respect for Caasar, had 
 strenuously and consistently rejected every oppor- 
 tunity and offer of holding any employment under 
 him, was resolved that no active support should be 
 given to what he yet considered the cause of usurpa- 
 tion by so near a relative; and persuaded his son, by 
 the promise of an establishment in every way suited to 
 his rank*, to retire to Athens, and devote his atten- 
 tion for the present to the study of philosophy under 
 the guidance of its then most eminent professors, and 
 more especially of Chrysippus, the leader of the 
 school of the Peripatetics. This arrangement had 
 scarcely been made and complied with, when the 
 sudden death of Tullia in child-birth took place at 
 Rome, and in the house of Dolabella, (then serving 
 with the army of Caesar in Spain t,) which, not- 
 withstanding her late divorce, a step too much 
 in accordance with the wishes of both parties to 
 have been productive of any ill-feeling on either 
 side, she had still continued to occupy. The blow 
 fell with astounding effect upon her parent; who, 
 strong in natural affection, and long accustomed to 
 regard her, from her excellent moral character and 
 high intellectual endowments, as the flower and hope 
 of his house, saw her snatched away in the meridian 
 of life, at a time when his own declining years were 
 * Ad Attic, xii. 32, ) Ad Diveruos, ix. 11.
 
 408 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 beginning to make increasingly valuable the solace 
 and relief afforded by her society*. Utterly prostrated 
 by the unexpected event, and shunning in his anguish 
 the sight and converse of his dearest friends, he 
 retired at once from Home to the house of Atticus ; 
 where he endeavoured to find refuge from the pur- 
 suing sense of his overwhelming calamity in his 
 favourite studies. This retreat, however, appearing 
 too little secluded, he soon afterwards withdrew to 
 his seat on the small island of Astura near Antiuvn, 
 situated in the midst of a wild and romantic country; 
 where, in that luxurious abandonment to sorrow 
 which obstinately seeks such aspects of external 
 nature as are most calculated to promote and ad- 
 minister to its indulgence, he spent his time in 
 mournful laments and useless meditations upon the 
 good which had departed from him, amidst the mur- 
 murs of the surrounding forests, or the melancholy 
 plunging of the waves upon the deserted shore. 
 " In this solitude t," he writes to his friend Atticus, 
 " I am freed from every kind of intercourse with 
 mankind, and withdrawing early in the morning to 
 the shelter of some dense and tangled wood, I quit 
 not my retreat till the appearance of the shadows. of 
 evening. Next to yourself, nothing is so dear to me 
 as seclusion, where my only communication is with 
 literature ; yet, how often is this interrupted by my 
 tears, which I resist, indeed, to the utmost of my 
 power, but am not yet equal to the task of fully 
 repressing them." Still, in his sorrow on this occa- 
 sion, there was nothing of an abject character. His 
 expressions of grief, unlike those uttered during his 
 exile, are, however forcible, at least manly, and often 
 not undignified, and indicate that, amidst the sorrow 
 
 * Tulliii, at the time of her death, was little more than thirty 
 years of age. 
 
 f Ad Attic, xii. 1-5.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 409 
 
 occasioned by his bereavement, he was rather desirous 
 of restraining the full expression of his feelings, than 
 of sacrificing to the vanity of amplifying them in the 
 eyes of his friends by any ill-placed pomp of senti- 
 ment or language. 
 
 The news of his misfortune drew forth letters of 
 consolation from all quarters. The most celebrated 
 philosophers were ready with such comfort as their 
 several tenets could supply, and the voice of private 
 friendship was exerted to soothe his wounded spirit 
 with the ready language of regret and condolence. The 
 historian Lucius Lucceius* Caesar from the tumult 
 and bustle of his camp near Hispalis in Spain t 
 Marcus Brutus from Cisalpine Gaul J, andServiusSul- 
 picius from his government in Greece, severally wrote 
 to assure him of their sympathy, and exhort him to 
 fortitude under his loss. The epistle of the last is 
 still extant ; a composition replete with beauty and 
 eloquence, but, at the same time, a mournful comment 
 upon the creed which saw beyond the burning pile 
 and the sepulchral urn little either to wish or to 
 deprecate, to dread or to desire ; nothing of that 
 dawning hope and glorious expectation by which the 
 most ignorant cottager is now able to commit to its 
 secluded resting-place the past dwelling of suffering, 
 and the future residence of immortality ; rejoicing in 
 a source of comfort once hidden from the wisdom of 
 sages, and unpurchaseable by the wealth of kings. 
 The following is a translation of this celebrated 
 letter : 
 
 * Ad Di versos, v. 13, 14. 
 
 f Ad Attic, xiii. 20. A Csesare literas accepi consolatorias 
 datas prid. Cul. Maias Hispali Consequently, after the battle of 
 Munda, which appears to have been fought on the 17th of March, 
 A. u. c. 709. Cneius Pompey the younger was slain ou the 12di of 
 April in the same year. 
 
 { Ad Attic, xii. 13. Ad Diversos, iv. 5.
 
 410 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 " SERVIUS SULPICIUS TO MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. 
 
 " Great and severe was my sorrow, as indeed the 
 occasion demanded, on my receiving the intelligence 
 of the death of your daughter Tullia, which I con- 
 sidered as a calamity common to us both; and had I 
 been at this time in Rome, I should neither have 
 been wanting in my attempts personally to console 
 you, nor shrunk from openly declaring the full extent 
 of my grief in your presence. Since, however, this 
 is denied me ; although I am aware that the office 
 which has devolved upon me must necessarily be 
 one of grief and bitterness, (since in all cases those 
 friends and relations whose duty it is to undertake 
 it, being afflicted, to a certain extent, with the same 
 sorrow as the chief sufferer, and unable to perform 
 it without tears, appear themselves rather to need 
 comfort than able to bestow it where most required,) 
 I have, notwithstanding, determined briefly to lay 
 before you such motives to resignation as have oc- 
 curred to me ; not from any belief that they have 
 escaped your own reflections, but imagining that 
 your full perception of their force may hitherto have 
 been hindered by the violence of your emotions. 
 
 " What feature is there in the present calamity 
 which has fallen upon your house to justify your 
 excess of sorrow ? Consider the manner in which 
 fortune has hitherto dealt with us all, and that every- 
 thing has 1 been torn from us that possesses an equal 
 claim upon our affections with our children our 
 country, our honour, our several dignities, and public 
 employments. By this one additional misfortune 
 what increase has our former wretchedness sus- 
 tained ? Or how is it, that minds so greatly exer- 
 cised by reverses previously endured, do not grow 
 callous, and learn to regard less seriously every kind 
 of ill ? How often must you have come to this con-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 411 
 
 elusion, as I myself have frequently done, that, in 
 such times as the present, those have not been most 
 hardly treated who have been permitted tranquilly 
 to pass from life to death ! 
 
 " What prospect, moreover, was there which could 
 strongly attach her whom we lament, to existence? 
 what event what anticipation what beloved solace, 
 or object of affection ? Shall we mention the hope 
 of spending her life in union with some one of our 
 noble youth ? Truly these are fitting personages 
 from whom, consistently with your dignity, you 
 could select a son-in-law worthy of your confidence 
 in entrusting him with the happiness of your child- 
 ren. Was it the possibility of becoming the mother 
 of a family, whose prosperity might prove a future 
 motive for rejoicing who might enjoy independently 
 the property transmitted to them by their parents 
 who might aspire in succession to the various honours 
 of the state in succession, and use their liberty to ad- 
 vance the interests of their friends? What amon^ these 
 
 O 
 
 several objects has not been snatched away before the 
 existence of the possibility of its being bestowed? 
 Yet, for all this, you will perhaps urge the loss of our 
 offspring is an evil. Granted. It is, however, one 
 of greater magnitude to suffer what we are all called 
 upon to endure. One reflection, which has conveyed 
 no small consolation to my own feelings, I am anxious 
 to communicate, under the impression that it may 
 also tend to soften the violence of your grief. On 
 my return from Asia, while I was sailing from 
 .fligina towards Megara, I began to direct my gaze 
 towards the regions which lay around my course. 
 Behind me was TEgina, before me Megara, Piraeus 
 on the right hand, Corinth on the left cities, which 
 though once in the highest condition of prosperity 
 and glory, now present but the spectacle of fallen 
 grandeur and decay. Upon this, I could not forbear
 
 412 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 from indulging such meditations as these : ' Aks! 
 frail and insignificant as we are, can it excite a sense 
 of murmuring in our minds if one of our number, 
 necessarily doomed to a brief existence, has perished 
 either by a natural or violent death, while in one 
 spot of the earth the lifeless remains of so many cities 
 lie publicly exposed to our view ! Is not this, Ser- 
 vius, sufficient to induce you to limit your desires, 
 and to prompt the recollection that you are mortal?' 
 Believe me, I was not lightly comforted by this 
 consideration. Place, then, a spectacle of a similar 
 nature before your own eyes. While so many of our 
 most illustrious citizens have been destroyed by one 
 blow while our empire has suffered so considerable 
 a diminution while every province has been shaken 
 as if by the shock of an earthquake is it fit to give 
 way to extreme emotion for the loss of the fleeting 
 breath of one feeble woman, who, if she had not died 
 at the present time, must have done so within a few 
 years, by the very condition of humanity with which 
 she was invested at her birth ? 
 
 " Let me advise you, however, to call off your 
 mind even from these contemplations, salutary as 
 they are, and to increase in their stead such reflec- 
 tions as are suitable to the dignity of your station 
 that your daughter lived as long as life was desirable 
 that, during her stay among us, we possessed a 
 country which was yet free that she had the felicity 
 of seeing her parent raised successively to the offices 
 of praetor, consul, and augur was wedded to hus- 
 bands chosen from the noblest families had full ex- 
 perience of every blessing and perished at the same 
 moment with our sinking state. In all this, what 
 single ground of complaint against fortune is pre- 
 sented either to her or to yourself ? Forget not, in 
 short, the name you bear, nor the former precepts 
 and admonitions you have been accustomed to bestow
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 413 
 
 upon your friends : neither follow the example of 
 those unskilful physicians, who, while professing a 
 knowledge of medicine with regard to the diseases of 
 thjir patients, are wholly ignorant of the means of 
 l.eiling their own; but rather apply to yourself and 
 to your own distresses the remedies which, in the 
 case of others, you have been accustomed to prescribe. 
 
 " There is no shape of grief which length of time 
 has not a tendency to soften and diminish ; but 
 surely it is disgraceful to await the effect of this lin- 
 gering process, and to forbear meeting your calamity 
 with the arms which your wisdom might supply. 
 If, indeed, there exists any power of perception even 
 after death, so great was the love of your child 
 towards you, so strong her affection for all her rela- 
 tives, that I am confident such a course would be far 
 from being consistent with her own wishes. Yield, 
 then, thus far to the deceased to your remaining 
 friends, who sympathise with you in your sorrow 
 to your country, that it may still, if opportunity be 
 afforded, profit by your assistance and counsels. In 
 conclusion, since we are sunk so low by our misfor- 
 tunes as to be compelled to submit to the existing 
 condition of affairs, act not in such a manner as to 
 induce others to believe that you are not so much 
 lamenting your daughter as the present condition of 
 the state, and the ascendancy of the victorious party. 
 
 " I am ashamed to write more fully upon this sub- 
 ject, lest I should appear to entertain a distrust of 
 your prudence. With one single suggestion more I 
 will conclude my epistle. We have, on former occa- 
 sions, seen you nobly play your part in prosperity, 
 and obtain the greatest credit for your conduct while 
 thus circumstanced. Let us now be convinced that 
 you are equally able to sustain adversity, and that it 
 does not appear to you a more heavy burden than it 
 ought ; lest, with all your virtues, this one of patient
 
 414 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 submission should alone appear to be wanting. "With 
 respect to my own affairs and the condition of the 
 province, I will send you the necessary intelligence 
 when I have reason to believe your mind is more 
 composed. Farewell*." 
 
 As it is not in the nature of men to measure their 
 griefs by the estimate of others, the reply of Cicero 
 to the philosophical arguments of his friend claims 
 especial indulgence for his abandonment to his sorrow 
 on the usual plea of being distinguished from others 
 by the peculiar nature of his calamity t. He cites 
 the most remarkable instances of similar misfortunes 
 sustained by the honoured and renowned of his nation 
 as lessened by alleviating circumstances, by which 
 the loss sustained by himself was unaccompanied, 
 and pathetically laments the extinction of his last 
 hope, after his dignity, honour, and independence, 
 had successively perished. We find from his other 
 letters, that he was intent upon perpetuating the 
 memory of his daughter by a splendid temple to be 
 erected to her honour, as well as by the ceremony of 
 a solemn apotheosis : " For," he observes, in excuse 
 for this determination, " if the offspring of Cadmus, 
 Amphitryon, and Tyndarus, were thought fit to be 
 exalted to the heavens, the same honour ought 
 certainly to be paid to my deceased child. This, 
 then, I will take due care to effect, most excel- 
 lent and accomplished among women, and, with 
 the approbation of the gods themselves, to whose 
 society thou art already admitted, consecrate thce to 
 the regard and veneration of all mortals +." After 
 hesitating, however, for some time, in the choice of 
 an appropriate site, for which he seems first to have 
 fixed upon certain gardens beyond the Tiber, with a 
 
 * Ad Diversos, iv. 5. t I'>'d- ' v - 6. 
 
 t This passage is contained in a fragment of the treatise " DC 
 Consolatione, 1 ' afterwards quoted and thus preserved by Lactantius.
 
 T1IE LIFE OF CICERO. 415 
 
 view to its greater publicity, and afterwards, by the 
 advice of Atticus, upon the ground near some one 
 of his own villas, he was probably induced, from 
 motives now unknown, to lay aside his intention 
 altogether; although he had already proceeded so far 
 in its execution as to contract with a sculptor of 
 Chios for a number of pillars of the costly marble of 
 that island, and to determine both upon the architect 
 and the design of the edifice '"' . But a far more honour- 
 able monument than the most elaborate skill either 
 of the architect or of the sculptor could have pro- 
 duced, was raised to the memory of Tullia by the 
 genius of her parent, whose treatise upon Consola- 
 tion, once regarded among the best of his works, was 
 written shortly after her death the result of many 
 of the hours of wakefulness, during which, although 
 the violence of his grief was able to banish sleep from 
 his couch, it was unpossessed of the power whol'y 
 to divert his active and unwearied intellect from 
 study. In this treatise, whatever arguments tending 
 to encourage the exercise of fortitude under suffering 
 had been propounded by the most esteemed philoso- 
 phers, were collected, and, no doubt, adorned to the 
 utmost, by the judgment and imagination of the great 
 mind which devoted itself to the task of their selec- 
 tion. The hand of time, however, which has, in too 
 many instances, made no distinction between the dif- 
 ferent means adopted for preserving the recollection of 
 faded generations, confounding, in the general wreck, 
 the eulogies of the eloquent and the reasonings of 
 the wise with the more perishable witness of brass 
 and marble, has left but few fragments of this care- 
 fully finished work to indicate the considerations by 
 which its author endeavoured to inspire in the breasts 
 of others the firmness to which his own was a stranger. 
 Its general character seems to have been such as to 
 ~~* Ad Attic, xii. 18, 19 ; xii. 36.
 
 416 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 ensure it a frequent perusal among the early Fathers 
 of the Christian church, but of its particular claims 
 to their approbation we are little better acquainted 
 than with the actual spot in which were deposited 
 the ashes of the Roman matron, the remembrance of 
 whose decease it was intended to perpetuate. This 
 was not the only production to which the temporary 
 retirement of Cicero from more active life, after the 
 death of his daughter, was devoted. His work enti- 
 tled " Hortensius" was soon afterwards published ; a 
 disquisition doomed to the same fate with his treatise 
 upon Consolation, and respecting which nothing 
 more is certain than it consisted of an imaginary dia- 
 logue between Cicero and his great predecessor in 
 honour and reputation, in which the pursuits of phi- 
 losophy were defended by the former. His next 
 labour was the composition of his Academic Ques- 
 tions, which, after they had been originally written 
 in two books, bearing the names of Cato and Lu- 
 cullus, he subsequently enlarged to four, and inscribed 
 to his friend Marcus Terentius Yarro*, in an epistle, 
 still remaining, of exceeding finish and elegance. 
 Upon these dissertations also the envious power of 
 age has been but too successfully exerted; since the 
 commencement of the first book, like the still exist- 
 ing porch of some magnificent edifice long sunk in 
 ruin, alone exists as the undisputed representative of 
 the beauty of the series of Dialogues to which it was 
 formerly introductory ; the Lucullus generally ap- 
 pended to it, although the labour of no doubtful 
 hand, being unquestionably the second book of the 
 original Academics, and never having constituted 
 part of the work in its improved form. We learn 
 
 * The celebrated author of the treatises " De Re Rustira'' and 
 " De Lingua Latina," the latter of which was dedicated to Cicero. 
 Several letters to this famous individual are to be found in Cicero's 
 miscellaneous correspondence. Ad Diversos, ix. I 8.
 
 LIFE OP CICERO. 417 
 
 from tliis, and from other evidence, that in these fan- 
 cied discussions, the scene of which was laid at the 
 villa of Cicero in the neighbourhood of Cumte, tho 
 task of defending the principles of Arcesilaus and 
 Carneades, (the founders of the Middle and New Aca- 
 demy,) and more especially those of the latter, was 
 assigned to Cicero, and that of opposing them to 
 Varro the third speaker, Atticus, acting as mode- 
 rator between the disputants. We may also infer, 
 that in the destruction of the remaining books we 
 have to regret a perfect description and history of the 
 various shades of opinion into which the schools of 
 Greece, since philosophy possessed a name, had been 
 divided. The " Academics" were succeeded by the 
 famous and long-contemplated inquiry, " De Finibus 
 Bonorum et Malorum," or, in the words of its author, 
 " concerning the ultimate principle by which the wis- 
 dom of man is to be guided for the attainment of 
 happiness, and those objects to which nature directs 
 its efforts as the greatest of blessings, or shuns with 
 aversion as the most serious of ills *." This majestic 
 subject of argument is pursued through five books, 
 addressed to Marcus Brutus, of harmonious and elo- 
 quent reasoning. In the first and second the doc- 
 trines of Epicurus are, with the display of great 
 ingenuity and imagination, defended by their advo- 
 cate Triarius, and disproved by the superior argu- 
 ments and nobler philosophy of Cicero. The third 
 and fourth are devoted to the consideration of the 
 principles of Zeno's philosophy, in a discussion which 
 is described as having originated in an accidental 
 meeting between Cicero and Cato in the library of 
 Lucullus, and in which the maxims of the Porch, 
 notwithstanding the powerful defence set up by the 
 Stoic, are proved to be equally untenable with those 
 of the Garden. The fifth contains an explanation of 
 * Ue Finibus, lib. 5. cap. 4. 
 E E
 
 4 18 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 the philosophy of the Old Academy and of the earlier 
 Peripatetics*, in the person of Marcus Piso, before 
 an audience consisting of Atticus, the elder Marcus, 
 and Quintus Cicero, and their cousin Lucius, con- 
 vened at Athens on the appropriate spott, rendered 
 famous by the teaching of the most illustrious of the 
 pupils of Socrates, and by that immortal language in 
 which the noblest of the writers of Greece has arrayed 
 the sentiments of the first among her sages. 
 
 The short space of time in which these several 
 performances (each apparently demanding at least as 
 much attention and study as was probably bestowed 
 upon the whole) were designed, entered upon, and 
 completed, must excite surprise, even in an age in 
 which instances of power of rapid composition, united 
 with corresponding industry in literary pursuits, are 
 by no means unfrequent. To the works already 
 me ntioned, however, are yet to be added five books 
 of Tusculan Disputations, and a panegyric upon 
 Porcia, the sister of Marcus Cato, which were written 
 during the same period of retirement. The latter 
 is entirely lost. The Tusculan Questions, which still 
 remain entire, are devoted to various moral subjects 
 the contempt of death the endurance of pain 
 the means of sustaining and alleviating sorrow the 
 power of moderating all passions and the sufficiency 
 of virtue to ensure happiness. They are perhaps the 
 least pleasing of the ethical dialogues of Cicero 
 whether the soil from which so luxurious a produce 
 had recently arisen had now become more limited in 
 its fertility ; or whether, in contemplating the more 
 
 * in qua non ii soli numcrantur qui Academici vocantur, 
 Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Grantor, caeterique, sed etiam Peri- 
 patetic! -veteres, quorum princeps Aristoteles; quern, excepto Pla- 
 tone, baud scio an rectd dixerim principem philosophorum. De 
 Finibus, v. 3. 
 
 f Cum autem vcnissemus in Academiae non sine causa nobi- 
 litata spatia, &c.~De Fiiiibus, v. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 419 
 
 common questions upon which the day-spring of 
 Revelation and the borrowed light of Philosophy have 
 alike been shed, the torch of the latter to us natu- 
 rally seems " to pale its ineffectual fires," and, like 
 the same imperfect means of guidance exhibited 
 amidst the glories of noon, but to insult the brightness 
 which it is incapable of augmenting. 
 
 The divorce of Cicero from his recently espoused wife 
 Publilia, was not long in following the decease of his 
 daughter. Themost common reasongiven for this event 
 ascribes it to the indifference, and even satisfaction, 
 shown by the youthful bride upon the loss lately sus- 
 tained by her husband. Without having recourse, how- 
 ever, to any less obvious explanation, it is not necessary 
 to look further than to the disparity of years, tastes, 
 and, in all probability, of disposition, in the parties to 
 this ill-judged union, to find ample cause for its speedy 
 dissolution. From the scattered hints which may be 
 collected from the letters of Cicero to Atticus, it does 
 not appear that Publilia was wanting to her duties ; 
 since she is described as having earnestly requested 
 to be allowed to share his solitude, and to have met 
 with a direct refusal*. On his causes of complaint the 
 writer is altogether silent. The facilities of a Roman 
 divorce, indeed, spared him the necessity of alleging 
 any weighty reason for the separation ; while the 
 almost daily occurrence of this extreme remedy for 
 domestic discord, enabled him to dispense with the 
 trouble of justifying a step, which the slightest dimi- 
 nution of affection, the merest shadow of distrust, or 
 
 * Publilia ad me scripsit, matrem suam cum Publilio loqui ad 
 me cum illo venturam, et se unil, si ego paterer. Orat multis et 
 supplicibus verbis ut liceat, et ut sibi rescribaui. Ad Attic, xii. 
 32. This does not look much like the conduct of a wife destitute 
 of affection. Yet he afterwards asserts that the letter had been 
 dictated by a third party : apparebat enim illas literas non csse 
 ipsius. 
 
 E E 2
 
 420 THE LIFE OF CICERO, 
 
 even the desire of novelty and the inclinations of 
 caprice, were considered amply to warrant. 
 
 Ctesar, having employed the summer in suppressing 
 the last feeble show of resistance to his authority 
 in Spain, after his decisive defeat of the army of 
 Cneius Pompey, arrived in Rome in the month of 
 September; where, after divesting himself of the 
 consulate, he conferred the honour, for the three 
 remaining months of the year, upon Quintus Fabius 
 Maximus and Caius Trebonius. His triumph over 
 the sons of Pompey and their adherents followed 
 shortly after. This pageant, although in the highest 
 degree magnificent, was witnessed in sullen silence 
 by the greater part of the population of Rome ; who, 
 having at length opened their eyes to the real nature 
 of the policy of their late favourite, had seen in the 
 havoc of Munda the extinction of their last hope 
 of the re-establishment of the republic, and now 
 regarded the pomp which surrounded the returning 
 conqueror, as a commemoration of his success, not so 
 much over the opposing arms of his political adver- 
 saries, as over the whole constitution of the state. 
 " The people," says Cicero, in answer to a letter of 
 Atticus giving a detailed account of the procession, 
 " have behaved nobly in withholding their plaudits, 
 even from the image of Victory, in consideration of 
 the evil company in which it was exhibited*." At a 
 previous celebration of the Circensian games a similar 
 token of disapprobation had been given, when the 
 statue of the dictator was borne in procession witli 
 those of the divinities generally exhibited on such 
 occasions. Unwarned, however, by these signs, that 
 he had already reached the limit beyond which it 
 would be no longer safe to tempt the patience of his 
 fellow citizens, and imprudently imagining that little 
 was now to be apprehended from a party which no 
 * Ad Attic, xiii. 44.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 421 
 
 longer possessed the ability to meet him in the field, 
 he began without further reserve to assume all the 
 insignia of kingly authority, in addition to its sub- 
 stantial prerogatives, which he had long usurped. 
 Anything short of this would probably have been sub- 
 mitted to with patience, but as the minds of men are, 
 by a singular inconsistency, generally more excited 
 by the symbols than the substance of tyranny, this 
 conduct at once unsheathed against him the daggers, 
 against which the veteran bands by whom he was 
 surrounded could afford him no protection, nor his 
 splendid military talents any means of escape. The 
 best blood of Rome he had been suffered to shed with 
 impunity her laAvs and liberties had been yielded at 
 his demand but his laurel wreath and regal buskins, 
 the armed Venus upon his signet, and the guards in 
 attendance upon his person, (crimes inexpiable in 
 the eyes of his countrymen but by the death of the 
 offender,) were not long in bringing upon his vanity 
 that fate, which his ambition had hitherto been able 
 to shun, and might probably, with common prudence, 
 long have avoided. Of this, however, there was at 
 present no indication. The senate, with more than 
 passive servility, continued to load him with fresh 
 honours*, and to suffer their ranks to be swelled 
 
 * Among the privileges, in addition to that of heing ranked with 
 the gods, by this time conferred upon him by the senate, the fol- 
 lowing are some of the most remarkable : he was allowed to take 
 precedence of all other magistrates constantly to wear his tri- 
 umphal ornaments, and to be seated in public in a gilded chair to 
 have his fasces on all occasions bound with laurel to occupy a 
 place of distinction at the public games and to bear the title of 
 Father of his Country. His birthday was observed as an anniver- 
 sary his statues were erected in all the towns of Italy, adorned 
 with the civic and obsidionary crowns and his robes ordered to be 
 made after the fashion of those of the ancient kings the title of 
 the Julian Jove was decreed to him a college of flamens appointed 
 to celebrate the rites dedicated to his honour a temple erected for 
 his worship in connexion with that of the goddess of Clemency,
 
 422 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 without remonstrance by his lowest dependants. He 
 was allowed, in defiance of all precedent, to create no 
 less than fourteen praetors and forty quaestors for a 
 single year, and to confer the titles " consular" and 
 " praetorian" upon individuals who had never filled 
 a public office. His nomination of himself together 
 with Mark Antony as consuls for the year following, 
 was also received with all marks of applause, and 
 everything seemed to promise an entire submission 
 to his will, at the period, which there is every reason 
 to believe he had already fixed upon for openly 
 assuming the crown, and with it the full title of 
 king. While he was thus daily borne forward by 
 the full tide of adulation from one distinction to 
 another, Cicero, who had returned to Rome soon 
 after his triumphal entry, was employed to plead 
 before him the cause of Deiotarus, once king of the 
 Lesser Armenia, and still sovereign of some parts of 
 Galatia. After having approved himself for many 
 years a firm friend to the Romans during their wars 
 in Asia, and having been complimented by the senate 
 in return by a confirmation of his regal honours, and 
 presented with considerable additions to his territory, 
 this monarch had taken arms during the civil war 
 in behalf of his former benefactor Pompey, and in 
 addition to supplying him with an auxiliary force*, 
 had himself been present at the battle of Pharsalia. 
 The resentment of Caesar was naturally excited by his 
 conduct, and after the defeat of Pharnaces, Deiotarus, 
 although he had taken the field against the Pontic 
 rebelf, was nevertheless deprived by the conqueror 
 of the whole of his Armenian and the greater portion 
 
 and Antony declared his high-priest. To these instances of syco- 
 phancy, which it would be difficult to exceed by any reference to 
 the annals of the empire, at least as many more might be added. 
 See Dio, xliv. 
 
 * Caesar, De Bello Civ. iii. 4. Appian, De Bell. Civil, iii. 
 
 f Pro Rege Deiotaro, v. ; Hirtius, De Bello Alex. Ixxrii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 423 
 
 of his Galatian possessions. Caesnr was, however, 
 magnificently entertained by him before his departure 
 from Asia*, and all former causes of enmity seemed 
 to have been forgotten by both parties, when Castor, 
 the grandson of the Galatian monarch, with whom he 
 had been long at variance, determined upon an insi- 
 dious plan for effecting his ruin. Having bribed 
 Phidippus, the medical attendant of the king, to 
 second his design, he despatched him to Rome, to 
 accuse Deiotarus of having entertained an intention 
 of assassinating his imperial guest during his visit to 
 his palace in Galatia. While formerly under the dis- 
 pleasure of Caesar, Deiotarus had been defended at 
 Nicaea in Bithynia, before the tribunal of that general, 
 by Marcus Brutust ; who on the occasion pleaded with 
 a force and determination which seem to have sunk 
 deeply into the mind of his auditor, and to have given 
 him his first perception of that firmness of character in 
 the speaker, which was afterwards destined to prove 
 fatal to himself. In his defence against the second 
 charge he was aided by the talents of Cicero, to whom 
 he had formerly acted as a faithful and strenuous ally 
 during his Cilician campaign. The cause was heard 
 at Rome in the private house of Caesar, who was 
 sufficiently moved by the oratory of the advocate 
 
 * Pro Dciotaro, iii. 
 
 "h Ad Attic, xiv. 1: " Magni refert, hie quid velit; sed quidquid 
 volet valde volet," is recorded as the comment of Cfcsar, after the 
 speech of Brutus. Respecting both the time and place at which this 
 oration was delivered, considerable difference of opinion has existed. 
 Dr. Middleton thinks that it was spoken at Nicsea, on the coast of 
 Liguria, on the return of Caesar from Spain ; that is, but a short 
 time before the oration of Cicero in the same cause. Mr. Clinton, 
 however, refers it to the capital of Bithjnia, and to the year 
 B.C. 47. See Fasti Hellenici. The very observation of Csesar 
 renders the latter opinion almost certain, since he would hardly 
 at a much later period have delivered himself to this effect, respect- 
 ing one, with whose character he must at the time have been 
 thoroughly acquainted.
 
 424 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 for the defendant to defer giving judgment until he 
 should himself arrive in Asia, in the course of the 
 expedition against the Parthians which he was then, 
 meditating. The speech to which Deiotarus owed 
 this delay, and to which he was indebted for the 
 preservation of what remained of his dominions, is 
 still extant, and though comparatively brief, is replete 
 with excellences; resembling some one of those beau- 
 tiful cameos produced by the unerring genius of ancient 
 art, in which, although the hand of the workman has 
 been confined to a space comprised by narrow limits, 
 every form connected with the subject is as perfect, as 
 if it were a diminished reflection of an image struck 
 out by the chisel in the full proportions of life. 
 
 Towards the close of this year Cicero received a 
 visit from the dictator while on his way to Baias, of 
 which he has left a graphic description : " Ctesar," he 
 relates, " having arrived on the evening of the second 
 day of the Saturnalia* at the house of Philippus, the 
 villa was so crowded with his soldiers that there 
 was scarcely room for himself to sup. His retinue 
 could not have been less than two thousand men. The 
 intelligence of this threw me into no small perplexity 
 as to what I was to do with such a host on the day 
 following ; but Barba Cassius came kindly to my 
 relief by appointing me a guard. The tents were there- 
 fore pitched in the fields, and the troops kept from 
 coming near my house. Caesar staid with Philippus 
 on the third of the Saturnalia t till the seventh hour, 
 being denied to all visitors, as he was, I believe, 
 engaged in inspecting accounts with Balbus. He 
 afterwards bathed, and listened to the verses respect- 
 ing Mamurra J, without changing countenance. After 
 
 * December 18. t December 19. 
 
 | A native of Formiae and president of the board of works to 
 Caesar in Gaul, famous for his wealth and luxury, and the especial 
 object of the satire of the poet Catullus. See Pliny, xxxvi. 17.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 425 
 
 this he was anointed, sat down to supper*, and ate 
 and drank freely, as well he might, since his enter- 
 tainment was carefully and delicately prepared; nor 
 was this all, for the feast was seasoned with free and 
 agreeable conversation. His retinue were entertained 
 at three separate tables. Nothing was wanting to 
 his freedmen of lower rank and slaves. As to the 
 freedmen of the higher order, they were even feasted 
 with elegance. Not to enlarge upon this subject, I 
 enacted the host as became me. Yet, he is not the 
 kind of guest to whom one would feel inclined to 
 say, * Favour me, I entreat you, with a second visit 
 on your return.' We conversed upon no very serious 
 topics, but much upon literature. To conclude, he 
 was perfectly at his ease, and seemed highly gratified. 
 He told me he meant to spend one day at Puteoli, 
 and the next at Baiae. You have now an account of 
 this dreaded entertainment, which, however, has 
 proved in the issue anything but disagreeable. I 
 intend to remain here a short time, and then to pro- 
 ceed to Tusculanum. As Ctesar passed the villa of 
 Dolabella, his troops marched close to his horse, 
 both on the right and left, although they used the 
 precaution nowhere else. This information I re- 
 ceived from Niciast." 
 
 On the last day of the same year, the consul 
 Fabius Maximus having died suddenly, Caius Cani- 
 nius Rebilus was elected, shortly after noon, to the 
 office by Caesar, although his dignity necessarily 
 expired on the succeeding midnight. The indigna- 
 tion of Rome was excited to the utmost by this new 
 instance of wanton contempt for all established au- 
 
 * Ad Attic, xiii, 52. Unctus est, accubuit, efneriK-hv agebat. 
 This revolting custom seems to have been almost as fashionable in 
 the days of Cicero as in those of Vitellius, and only considered a 
 sign of good-fellowship. 
 
 t Ibid.
 
 426 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 thority, and many bitter jests were lavished upon the 
 less than ephemeral honour which had been conferred 
 with such little deference to popular opinion. Cicero 
 was not behind-hand with his wonted tribute of irony 
 to an event so well calculated to justify it. " Our 
 dictator," he observes to his friend Curius, " after 
 taking the auspices for an election by the tribes, held 
 one by the centuries, and returned, at the seventh 
 hour, a consul who was to exercise his authority till 
 the Calends of January, which commenced with the 
 following morning. Know, therefore, that not one 
 individual among us dined during the whole time 
 that Caninius was consul. Nor was there a single 
 crime perpetrated during the same period, since our 
 consul was endued with such marvellous vigilance 
 as never to sleep while invested with his office. This 
 state of things may. perhaps, excite your laughter ; 
 were you on the spot, however, you would have 
 greater reason to weep*." For such lamentation there 
 existed at the time more cause than the writer 
 probably apprehended. The famous Ides of March 
 the flight of the advocates of freedom from the city 
 the temporary ascendancy of Antony to the power 
 of the deceased dictator, and the appearance upon 
 the stage of a more selfish, subtle, and deadly foe to 
 Roman liberty than Cassar, in his worst state, had 
 ever proved, were events destined to be revealed by 
 the year, the commencement of which announced the 
 close of the consulship of Caninius. 
 
 * Ad Diversos, vii. 30.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 427 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Preparations of Czesar for his Parthian Expedition Conspiracy of 
 Brutus and Cassius Assassination of C'sesar Cicero joins the 
 Conspirators in the Capitol Apparent Reconciliation of the two 
 Parties Funeral of Caesar Insurrection excited by Antony 
 The Conspirators fly from Rome Correspondence between 
 Antony and Cicero Octavius Ctesar arrives in Italy He visits 
 Cicero His Quarrel with Antony Letter of Brutus and Cassius 
 Cicero, deterred from attending the Proceedings of the Senate, 
 resolves to return to Greece Council of the Conspirators at An- 
 tium Philosophical Works composed by Cicero in his retirement 
 He embarks at Pompeii Arrives at Velia, and lands at Syra- 
 cuse Determines on returning His Interview with Brutus at 
 Velia He arrives at Rome First Philippic Reply of Antony 
 Second Philippic Antony sets out for Brundusium Octavius 
 advances upon Rome Return of Antony Revolt of the fourth 
 and Martial Legions Antony marches into Cisalpine Gaul 
 Third and fourth Philippics Cicero composes bis last Treatise 
 "DeOfficiis." 
 
 THE East, where alone, amidst the general sub- 
 mission of all other regions against which they had 
 been directed, there still remained a powerful barrier 
 against the arms of Rome, in the warlike Empire, 
 whose temples were decorated with the standards of 
 her legions, and whose fields exhibited the humili- 
 ating spectacle of numbers of her captive veterans 
 compelled to labour in the condition of slaves, was 
 now the quarter to which the general expectation 
 was directed ; in the prospect of its affording a field 
 for the exertion of those martial talents, on which 
 victory had seemed hitherto to wait as a ready 
 attendant wherever they had been exercised. All 
 things appeared to promise the speedy commencement 
 of a war, which, having for its object the avenging of 
 the death of Crassus, might be expected to prove 
 unparalleled in the history of the world in magni- 
 tude and importance in the greatness, power, and
 
 428 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 reputation of the principal nations engaged in it, as 
 well as in the number of their subsidiaries and allies. 
 On the one side, the formidable bands, trained by 
 civil discord, the most terrible, but most efficient, 
 nurse of military prowess and enterprise, and by 
 their previous services in Gaul and Britain, as well 
 as by their campaigns in Macedonia, Egypt, Africa, 
 and Spain, to a state of efficiency unequalled at any 
 period of the history of their country, and headed by 
 commanders exceeding in ability all whose names 
 had yet occurred in the long records of Roman con- 
 querors, appeared to render the success of the in- 
 vading force an issue closely bordering upon certainty. 
 On the other hand, the appalling aspect of Parthian 
 warfare, the active horseman with his unerring 
 shafts yet sternly occupying the path, red with the 
 blood of Crassus and his baffled host, the sterile 
 wastes beyond the Euphrates, and the difficulties of 
 a march through a country, every furlong of which 
 was likely to be disputed by an enemy, who might 
 be repulsed, but could scarcely be defeated, were 
 circumstances which might have justified a temporary 
 apprehension in the minds of the most sanguine ; and 
 induced the least timorous to abandon all expect- 
 ation of an easy triumph over so redoubted an 
 adversary, provided with such effectual means of 
 defence. To his preparations for this long-planned 
 expedition, Caesar, whose dreams were perhaps oc- 
 cupied by the conquests of Bacchus and Alexander, 
 by the spicy forests and teeming plains of India by 
 anything, certainly, rather than the frowning circle 
 of unrelenting enemies by which he was shortly to be 
 surrounded, and the gleaming daggers about to be 
 dyed in his blood, bent all the resources of his ver- 
 satile genius all the energies of his resolute mind. 
 That lie contemplated an absence, in whatever di- 
 rection he might turn his arms, of no short duration,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 429 
 
 was evident, from his appointment of the Roman 
 magistrates for two years ; Aulus Ilirtius and Caius 
 Pansa being destined to succeed himself and Antony, 
 the consuls of the current year, and Decimus Brutus 
 and Cneius Plancus to follow next in succession. 
 His own office as consul he intended, before setting 
 out on his projected expedition, to confer upon 
 Dolabella, greatly to the displeasure of Antony ; who 
 having no inclination for such a colleague, with 
 whom he was at the time at such fierce and open 
 variance, as to have accused him of a design upon 
 the life of the dictator, had threatened, notwith- 
 standing the risk he ran of incurring the displeasure 
 of Caesar, to interrupt the election whenever it might 
 be appointed to take place. Having, as he fondly 
 imagined, secured domestic tranquillity by a general 
 indemnity, and having already sent forward seven- 
 teen legions and ten thousand cavalry into Mace- 
 donia, nothing remained to delay his setting out for 
 the purpose of directing their march towards the 
 Euphrates, but the absence of the regal title with 
 which he was desirous of being invested, before en- 
 tering upon the gigantic plan of operations which he 
 meditated. At the feast of the Lupercal, the well- 
 known attempt of Mark Antony was made, in pre- 
 sence of the whole assembled people of Rome, to 
 force upon his acceptance the diadem, which he 
 affected, with unsuccessful duplicity, to decline ; re- 
 ceiving in return for his refusal, as well as for his 
 previous declaration that his title was Ccesar and 
 not king, much to his mortification, the unex- 
 pected applause of the gathered multitude. A few 
 days afterwards, the tribunes Marullus and Caese- 
 tius, having taken off the crown placed upon his 
 statue in the rostra, and committed to prison those 
 who had been guilty of this overt act of treason 
 against the majesty of the republic, were deposed
 
 430 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 from their magistracy, and expelled from the senate, 
 in return for their officious interference with the 
 ambitious designs of the dictator. It was finally 
 projected that, at the next meeting of the senate, 
 Cotta, one of the quindecemviri or guardians of the 
 Sibylline books, should declare, on the strength of 
 certain prophecies contained in those pretended 
 oracles, that the Parthian empire was destined to 
 be overthrown only by a king*. To this assembly, 
 therefore, the friends of the dictator looked forward 
 with confidence, as the period from which the govern- 
 ment, long republican in nothing but name, would 
 be openly declared to have passed into the condition 
 of an absolute Monarchy his enemies, as the crisis 
 Avhen, if ever, the blow must be struck for the vin- 
 dication of their country's freedom. 
 
 The conspiracy long projected against him, and 
 precipitated by the late demonstrations of his real 
 intentions, was now so far matured that a favourable 
 place and opportunity were alone expected for car- 
 rying it into effect. The members of the plot already 
 amounted to more than sixty in number, comprising 
 many whose lives had been spared by the clemency 
 of the dictator, and some whom he had loaded with 
 benefits. The names of those among them who took 
 the lead in their deliberations, were Marcus Brutus 
 and Caius Cassius, both of them, at the time, 
 invested by the friendship of Ccesar with the pras- 
 torian dignity, and afterwards summoned from the 
 seat of judgment to act a prominent part in his assas- 
 sination ; Quintus Ligarius, Tullius Cimber, Deci- 
 mus Brutus, Caius Trebonius, and Caius Casca. By 
 these, and the rest who were privy to the design, 
 several meetings had been held for the purpose of 
 determining the spot upon which their purpose should 
 be executed. The Campus Martins, during the time 
 * Dio, xliv. Suetonius, Jul. 79.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 431 
 
 of the comitia the Via Sacra and the entrance into 
 the theatre, had been severally mentioned, and the 
 advantages towards the success of the design pos- 
 sessed by each discussed*. But when it was known 
 that a senate had been summoned to meet on the Ides 
 of March in the Curia, close to Pompey's theatre, all 
 difference of opinion was at an end, so exactly did the 
 opportunity appear to be suited to their daring pur- 
 pose. All preparations, therefore, having been made, 
 the conspirators waited in resolute composure for the 
 moment appointed for the perpetration of a deed, the 
 guilt of which could only be lightened by a consider- 
 ation of the desperate condition of the state ; or vindi- 
 cated, after its perpetration, by the most stainless inte- 
 grity in the lives of those engaged in its perpetration. 
 
 Cicero was no party either directly or indirectly 
 to the conspiracy against the life of Csesar; his well- 
 known hesitation and timidity, his tendency to raise 
 objections and to suggest difficulties, being viewed as 
 sufficient reasons for excluding him from all partici- 
 pation in so dangerous a secret. We find from his 
 letters that he had been admitted no long time before 
 to an interview with the dictator, in which the latter 
 repaid, by an elegant compliment, (no doubt intended 
 to reach his ears,) a short delay to which he had 
 been subjected in the ante-chamber leading to the 
 hall of audience t : " Can I doubt," said the cour- 
 teous usurper, " of my being held in general odium, 
 when Marcus Cicero is kept sitting without, and 
 denied access to me at his pleasure ? If to any one, 
 I should, at least, be at all times easy of access to 
 him ; yet, I doubt not, that he regards me with the 
 most bitter hatred." Of his meeting about the same 
 time with Cleopatra, the famous queen of Egypt, 
 then on a visit to Caesar, (whom she intended to 
 accompany on his Parthian expedition,) and residing 
 
 * Suetonius in J. Casare, cap. Ixxx. } Ad Attic, xiv. 1.
 
 432 TUB LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 in his gardens upon the Tiher, the orator speaks in 
 very different terms. Accustomed to all the forms 
 of Eastern servility, this crowned minion of succes- 
 sive conquerors seems to have treated the noble 
 Romans admitted to her presence as the mere de- 
 pendants of her paramour, and to have expected from 
 them the same deference which she exacted from the 
 titled slaves of her own court. Cicero, however, 
 appears to have had especial cause of resentment 
 against her, on account of her want of liberality 
 towards him, in return for services rendered towards 
 her while residing at Rome, the nature of which is 
 not very clearly explained. " The queen," he ob- 
 serves, subsequently writing to Atticus, "is an 
 object of my thorough detestation. Ammonius, 
 who pledged himself for the performance of her un- 
 dertaking, knows that I have good reason for my 
 displeasure. Her promises, however, were only such 
 as were perfectly consistent with my dignity and 
 character as a man of letters, nor should I be ashamed 
 to proclaim them from the rostra. As to the haugh- 
 tiness shown by the queen herself while she was 
 living in the gardens beyond the Tiber, I cannot 
 recall it to mind without the strongest feelings of 
 resentment. I will, therefore, have nothing to do 
 with such a set, who seem to think that I possess 
 neither soul nor spirit *." 
 
 The particulars of the famous action for which the 
 Ides of March will ever be memorable in history, are 
 too well known to justify more than the most casual 
 notice. After the imminent danger of the discovery 
 of the whole plot after, according to the credu- 
 lous historians of later periods t, the most awful 
 
 * Ad Attic, xv. 15. 
 
 t Dio, xliv. Plutarch, in Cic. See also the beautiful passage 
 in Hamlet, Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 " In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 
 A little ere the mightiest Julius fell," &c.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 433 
 
 warnings of a supernatural character days of unac- 
 countable darkness, and nights replete with horror 
 after the many chances of escape, which almost seem 
 to have been presented to the intended victim and 
 urged upon his notice by a friendly power, desirous 
 of counteracting the decrees of destiny the blow 
 was at length struck, by which the most illustrious 
 of aspirants to arbitrary dominion was offered, amidst 
 circumstances of singular theatric pomp, like a 
 crowned and devoted sacrifice, to the insulted liberty 
 of Rome. Cicero, although wholly unsuspicious of 
 the design, witnessed, as he tells us, witli feelings of 
 the highest satisfaction the tragic end of the con- 
 queror, upon whom his praises had been so profusely 
 lavished. The instant Caesar had breathed his last 
 at the base of Pompey's statue, Brutus, amidst the 
 general panic and flight of those of the senate unac- 
 quainted with the extent or the object of the con- 
 spiracy, w T aving his reeking weapon, called loudly upon 
 the orator by name, and congratulated him upon .the 
 recovery of his country's freedom. The exclamation 
 was, unfortunately, premature. By an imprudent 
 clemency on the part of Marcus Brutus, against 
 which Cicero bitterly inveighs in his epistles, and 
 which, he states, would never have been shown if 
 his opinion had been consulted *, Antony, who had 
 been at first destined to share the fate of his imperial 
 colleague, was suffered to escape. Just before the 
 assassination of Caesar he had been drawn aside by 
 Trebonius, under a pretence of consulting him upon 
 
 * Ad Divcrsos, xii. 4. (to C. Cassius) Vellern Idibus Martiis 
 me ad coenam invitasses ; rcliqniarum nihil fuisset. Nunc me 
 reliquiae vestrse exercent, et quidem, prater cseteros me. "Oh! that 
 you had invited me to that glorious feast you exhibited on the ide* 
 of March ! Be assured I would have suffered none of it to have 
 gone off untouched. Whereas, the part you have spared occasions 
 me, above all others, more trouble than you can well imagine."- 
 Mcfmoth. See also Ad Diversos, x. 8. 
 F F
 
 434 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 private business, to the porch of the senate-house, 
 and, after its perpetration, was unmolested in his 
 flight, amidst the rest of the terrified multitude, 
 which, after divesting himself of his consular robes, 
 he effected with the greatest precipitation, directing 
 his course to the house of a neighbouring friend, 
 where, for the purpose of better concealment, he 
 hastily arrayed himself in the habit of a slave. By 
 this means was preserved a politic and resolute leader 
 for the ensuing war, and a name to act as a rallying 
 word to the scattered Caesarian faction, who other- 
 wise might have passively submitted to the change 
 induced by the death of their chief. Still, however, 
 if Cicero, now unquestionably the first man in Rome 
 in dignity and reputation, had boldly responded to 
 the call of his country speaking by the voice of 
 Brutus, and presented himself for the purpose of 
 assuming the helm of the state, or of finishing by 
 his impassioned eloquence the revolution begun by 
 the courage of the republican party, there is every 
 reason to believe, that the calamitous reaction, by 
 which all that had been ventured and performed in 
 the cause of liberty was rendered ineffectual, might 
 have been avoided. Contenting himself with his 
 usual middle course, and suffering the moment at 
 which his interference would have been irresistible to 
 escape without improvement, all his after constancy 
 and self-devotion were unable to avert the conse- 
 quences of his ill-timed hesitation. As for the con- 
 spirators themselves, beyond the grand object of their 
 design' they seem to have projected no ulterior plan 
 to secure the results of their hardihood, nor to have 
 prepared any extraordinary means to place their own 
 persons beyond the reach of danger. The only force 
 at their immediate command consisted of a band of 
 gladiators belonging to Decimus Brutus, which, 
 before the meeting of the senate, he had posted in 
 the adjoining theatre, pretending to be about to ex-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 435 
 
 hibit them to the people *. These were immediately 
 sent forward to occupy the capitol, while Brutus and 
 Cassius, at the head of their company, to whom 
 several senators who had taken no part in their pro- 
 ceedings had now added themselves, from an ambi- 
 tion of sharing in the praise likely to be gained by 
 their success, proceeded to traverse the forum, and 
 several of the principal streets of Rome, brandishing 
 their blood-stained swords, and loudly inviting the 
 people to rise for the vindication of their freedom. 
 This call was very little heeded, since the citizens, 
 seized with a general panic, caused by a rumour, 
 originating among the fugitives from the senate-- 
 house, that nothing less than a general massacre was 
 intended, had now closely barricaded themselves 
 within their houses, leaving all the usual places of 
 public resort silent and deserted. Discouraged by 
 this appearance of apathy, and dreading the inter- 
 ference of numbers of the veterans of Caesar, who 
 were at the time residing in the city in expectation 
 of the grants of land which had been promised them at 
 their dismissal from service, as well as of an armed 
 legion which was quartered in the suburbs under 
 Lepidus, in readiness to set out for Spain, the con- 
 federated senators determined upon withdrawing to 
 the stronghold in their hands, and there awaiting 
 the result of their late terrible exploit. Cicero, 
 whose name they had frequently proclaimed during 
 their progress, as sanctioning their enterprise by his 
 approbation, joined them in the capitol, and was at 
 once admitted to that place in their deliberations, 
 which his rank and talents deserved. 
 
 In the meantime, the leaders of the opposite fac- 
 tion were suffering under the influence of a terror 
 which prevented them from making use of the 
 resources in their hands, being ignorant whether the 
 * Appian, De Bello Civil, ii. 
 F F 2
 
 436 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 death of Caesar was to be considered as the act of 
 the whole senate, and whether the conspiracy which 
 had thus suddenly broken out was not aided and sup- 
 ported by the great mass of the citizens, and backed 
 by a force which it would be folly to resist. 
 
 While both parties thus stood aloof, from mutual 
 feelings of apprehension, the inhabitants of Rome, 
 finding that no injury was intended to their property 
 or their persons, began again to issue from their 
 houses, and to collect in the usual places of assembly. 
 China, the son of the Marian chief of that name, 
 was the first who ventured to harangue them in 
 favour of the conspirators. Being at the time in- 
 vested with the dignity of prsetor, he publicly stripped 
 his gown from his shoulders, declaring that he would 
 no longer submit to wear the badges of a usurper ; * 
 and proposed that those who had been instrumental 
 in the death of Ca?sar, should be immediately invited 
 to descend from their advantageous post, with the 
 assurance of a safe-conduct. This motion was 
 seconded by Dolabella, who next appeared in public, 
 invested with the full insignia of consul, having 
 audaciously assumed the office with the first infor- 
 mation of the fall of Ca?sar. The consent of the 
 people having been obtained, Brutus and Cassius 
 ventured to leave the capitol, and address the mul- 
 titude ; and were heard with respect, although with 
 little appearance of enthusiasm in their cause. They 
 were, however, too cautious to entrust their safety 
 to any thing short of the most unequivocal appro- 
 bation of their countrymen ; and, after concluding 
 their respective harangues, returned again to the 
 capitol, to communicate the result of their observa- 
 tions to their friends. ^ 
 
 On the following day, Antony had regained suffi- 
 cient confidence to quit his retirement, and to re- 
 assuine the ensigns of his dignity. Endowed with 
 
 * Appian, De Bello Civil, ii
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 437 
 
 ;i consummate craft, only equalled by his daring 
 courage and abandoned libertinism, his first object 
 was to ascertain the existing state of popular opinion, 
 and the full extent of the strength possessed by the 
 assertors of freedom, before venturing to commit 
 himself by any decided steps cither for or against 
 them. His expressions and conduct were accordingly 
 marked by so much moderation, that a friendly 
 communication was opened with him by the con- 
 spirators, in opposition to the urgent advice of Cicero ; 
 who, aware of his real sentiments,' and of the per- 
 fidiousness of his character, repeatedly warned them 
 in vain of the consequences of trusting to any of his 
 promises or engagements, which he represented as 
 likely to be observed only as long as there remained 
 any thing to be dreaded from their violation*. 
 After several conferences, it was agreed, that a meet- 
 ing of the senate should be forthwith summoned, to 
 debate upon the present condition of the republic, 
 and the members of both parties indiscriminately 
 invited to attend it. Antony, however, employed, 
 as Cicero had anticipated, the interval, in acts of the 
 most prompt and masterly policy towards securing 
 and augmenting his power and influence. One of 
 his first steps was to place a guard over the enor- 
 mous treasure, amounting to about six millions ster- 
 ling, which had been deposited by the late dictator 
 in the temple of Ops. He next, by means of his 
 interest with Calpurnia, secured the will and papers 
 of Cassar. Lepidus, with his legion, was then ad- 
 mitted into the city, and suffered, after occupying 
 the principal streets with detached bodies of soldiery, 
 to establish his head-quarters in the forum ; where 
 
 * Dicebam illis in capitolio liberatoribus nostris, cum me ad to 
 vcllent ul ad defendcndam reinpublicam te adhortarer ; quoad 
 metueres omnia te protnissurutn, sirnul ac timere destsses similem 
 te futurum tui, Philipp. ii, 35,
 
 438 THE LIFE OP CICEKO. 
 
 he began to inveigh fiercely against the assassins of 
 his patron, whose death he at the same time openly 
 and pathetically lamented. Having thus contrived 
 to place himself in a somewhat more commanding 
 position than at first, Antony waited, without anxiety 
 as to its results, the meeting of the senate, on which 
 the destinies of the empire to a great extent mani- 
 festly depended. This famous assembly was held 
 at daybreak, on the 18th of March, in the temple of 
 Tellus. It was then determined, partly by the 
 influence of Dolabella, who was apprehensive of 
 being stripped of his lately assumed magistracy, but 
 principally through the able policy of his colleague, 
 that every act and appointment of Caesar should be 
 confirmed, and his grants of land to his veterans 
 fully ratified. A general act of amnesty was added, 
 by which all prosecutions against the parties con- 
 cerned in his death were expressly forbidden. The 
 latter step was warmly advocated by Cicero, who 
 took a prominent part in the debate, although he 
 seems to have been well aware of the pernicious con- 
 sequences of the preceding resolutions, which he has 
 in all probability been erroneously represented as 
 seconding*. On the same day, Marcus Brutus 
 harangued the assembled multitude from the steps of 
 the capitol in a speech vindicatory of the conduct 
 of his party, which was received with general 
 applause ; and on the day following, the decree of 
 the senate having been fully confirmed by an assembly 
 of the people, the conspirators, after the son of An- 
 tony had been placed in their hands as a hostage for 
 their security, consented to descend from their com- 
 manding post. They were received with all outward 
 demonstrations of confidence and amity, and after 
 
 * Quid enim miserius qua.ni ea nos tueri, propter quse ilium 
 oderamus? Etiamnc cousules et tribunes plebis in biennium, quos 
 ille voluit, &c. Ad Attic, xiv. 6. Comp. Dio, xliv.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 439 
 
 the mutual exchange of civilities, Cassius \vas invited 
 to a splendid entertainment at the house of Antony, 
 and Brutus, at that of Lepidus. All external ap- 
 pearances indicated the firm and peaceful re-establish- 
 ment of the constitution. Beneath these outward 
 indications of concord, however, lav, on the part 
 of the Ctesarean faction, broken promises, violated 
 faith, and an ambition eager to break through the 
 hollow truce, to which its hypocrisy had only 
 stooped, in the hope of finding a more easy prey in 
 its unsuspicious victims. 
 
 One of the greatest acts of imprudence committed 
 at the late meeting of the senate was the concession 
 of a public funeral to the victim of their resentment. 
 Antony having previously published the will of 
 Caesar, the legacies contained in which of a largess 
 to each of the inferior citizens, and the assignment of 
 his gardens on the Tyber to their use, were well 
 calculated to excite their sympathies for the fate of 
 the donor, resolved upon subjecting their feelings to 
 a further test on the day appointed for solemnising 
 the final obsequies of the dictator. On this occasion, 
 the pile on which his body was to be consumed 
 having been first erected in the Campus Martius, 
 near the tomb of his daughter Julia, the corpse 
 was brought with imposing pomp into the forum, 
 accompanied by an effigy, on which every wound 
 inflicted upon it was accurately depicted. Here, 
 amidst the melancholy strains of a band of mu- 
 sicians, skilfully adapted to excite the compassion 
 upon which he intended to work, Antony, who had 
 been permitted to pronounce the funeral oration, 
 commenced that admirable address contained in the 
 pages of Dio,* the purport of which is far better 
 known through its condensed, and, it need scarcely 
 be added, much improved transcript by the great 
 monarch of dramatic literature ; concluding by ex- 
 *. Hist. Rom. xliv.
 
 440 THE LIFE OF ClCEKO. 
 
 hibiting first the robe of the deceased, rent by the 
 daggers of his assassins, and deeply dyed with his 
 blood ; and finally, the ghastly image which repre- 
 sented his mangled remains. The multitude, excited 
 to frenzy by the eloquence of the speaker, no less 
 than by the artful means he had adopted for heighten- 
 ing its effect, gave testimony, by a general tumult, to 
 the power of Antony as an orator. The corpse of 
 Caesar was burned upon the spot by means of a pile 
 hastily constructed of materials collected from the 
 vicinity, and honoured by the oblations of the Roman 
 matrons, as well as of their husbands, who threw into 
 the flames their most precious ornaments and fur- 
 niture, and continued to supply the fire with fresh fuel 
 for several successive days. But the excitement of 
 the populace did not stop with this extravagant but 
 harmless expression of their regrets. A luckless 
 Roman who happened to bear the name of Cinna, 
 being mistaken for the late praetor, was torn to pieces 
 in the first transport of their indignation, and the 
 houses of Brutus and Cassius assaulted with a fury 
 which was only disappointed by the most deter- 
 mined resolution of their inmates. Terrified by 
 this sudden outbreak of popular resentment, and con- 
 firmed in their impression that Rome was no longer 
 to be regarded as a place in which their lives were 
 secure, by the representations of Antony, who assured 
 them, on the request of Decimus Brutus for a public 
 guard, that he could not answer for the extent to 
 which the violence of the soldiers or of the multitude 
 might be carried in their present state of exaspera- 
 tion, the principal individuals engaged in the late 
 conspiracy began severally to quit the capital. Tre- 
 bonius privately set out for his province of Asia ; 
 Decimus Brutus for Cisalpine Gaul ; and Tullius 
 Cimber for Bithynia. Marcus Brutus at the same 
 time retired to the neighbourhood of Lanuvium, and
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 441 
 
 was accompanied in his retreat by Cassius. Cicero was 
 not long in following this example ; and once more 
 despairing of the fortunes of his country, withdrew 
 to lament in the seclusion of his villas that inevi- 
 table ruin of the constitution, which he plainly saw 
 approaching. 
 
 It was no part of the policy of Antony, however, 
 yet to drive the republicans to extremities, or to 
 allow their chiefs an opportunity of kindling a war 
 in the distant provinces, while there remained a 
 chance of lulling them into a security, of which he 
 might avail himself, suddenly to oppress them nearer 
 home. No sooner had Brutus and Cassius departed 
 from Rome, than content with the result of his 
 experiment upon the public mind, he set himself in 
 earnest to put a stop to the existing tumults by a 
 prompt and vigorous course of action. He then 
 invited the fugitives to return to the city, and con- 
 ducted his negotiations with them with so much art, 
 
 
 
 as to induce them to determine upon awaiting the 
 result of a second meeting of the senate, to be held on 
 the 1st of June, for the purpose of discussing such 
 questions relative to the settling of the state, as still 
 remained undecided. He himself resolved, as before, 
 to employ the interval to his own advantage, by 
 making a progress through Campania, among the 
 settlements of the veterans of Caesar, with the design 
 of sounding their inclinations, and attaching them 
 by liberal promises to his interests. As soon as he 
 had set out to 'carry this intention into effect, his 
 colleague Dolabella, whom he had left behind at 
 Home, began to exercise his authority in favour of 
 the republican party by a bolder course of conduct 
 than he had hitherto dared to pursue. A number of 
 the members of the Csesarean faction, consisting 
 chiefly of foreigners and persons of servile condition, 
 continuing their endeavours to keep alive the recent
 
 442 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 disturbances, by tumultuously assembling round the 
 spot where the body of Caesar had been burned, he 
 hastily apprehended their ringleaders, and having put 
 them to death by crucifixion, or precipitation from 
 the Tarpeian rock, proceeded to demolish the column 
 of Numidic marble erected to the memory of the 
 dictator by his admirers, with the imposing inscrip- 
 tion, " To the Parent of his Country ; " at which 
 the most ignorant of the population of the capital 
 had, for sometime past, been accustomed to offer their 
 devotions, and to decide their disputes, as if in the 
 presence of a local deity. The spirits of the repub- 
 licans were once more raised by these proceedings to 
 a fallacious confidence. The letter of Cicero to Dola- 
 bella upon the occasion yet remains, in which he 
 speaks of his patriotism and courage in the warmest 
 terms of eulogy ; and his correspondence with 
 Atticus at the same period shows how much reliance 
 he was disposed to place in this instance of severity 
 against some of the least culpable, as well as least 
 dangerous, partisans of arbitrary authority. " Our 
 friend Brutus," he writes, " might now, in my 
 opinion, walk through the fornm with a crown of 
 gold upon his head, without molestation ; for who 
 would dare to injure him with the prospect of the 
 rock or the cross before his eyes, especially since the 
 late punishments were inflicted amidst such general 
 tokens of approbation and applause on the part of 
 the lower orders*." 
 
 Under the pretence of what was called a free lega- 
 tion, a kind of fictitious employment in the public 
 service, conferring neither honour nor emolument, 
 but which gave those who held it the liberty of 
 absenting themselves from the meetings of the senate, 
 Cicero had determined, before the death of Caesar, 
 upon proceeding to Greece, to superintend the studies 
 * Ad Altic. xiv. 10.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 443 
 
 of his son, who was still residing at Athens*. The 
 execution of this plan was now delayed for some 
 time ; during which he continued to waver in his 
 determination, apparently intending to shape his 
 conduct hy that of the other memhers of his party, 
 or by the resolutions which might pass the senate at 
 their next meeting. The interval was employed in 
 frequent interviews and communications with the 
 most influential persons of both parties, including 
 Matius, Hirtius, Pansa, and others of the more 
 respectable friends of the dictator. With Antony 
 himself he was on sufficient terms of outward civility, 
 as appears by his correspondence. That subtle de- 
 signer, pretending the utmost deference for his opi- 
 nions, had written to request his consent to the recal 
 of Sextus Clodius froni banishment, representing 
 that Caesar had previously acceded to his wishes on 
 this subject, but stating that he was unwilling to carry 
 out even the design of his late patron, if it should 
 prove in opposition to the inclinations of Cicero. This 
 .manifest hypocrisy it is to be regretted that the 
 orator condescended to repay in the same coin. The 
 commencement of his reply, in which he testifies the 
 greatest readiness to accede to a request which he 
 had no means of resisting, is thus worded : " There 
 exists one reason why I should have preferred a per- 
 sonal interview on the subject of your letter to any 
 communication in writing. In the former case, you 
 might have perceived my strong attachment and 
 friendship towards you expressed not only by my 
 words, but in my very countenance and looks, or, 
 to use a common expression, engraven on my very 
 brow. For although I have always been induced to 
 regard you with esteem, first on account of the 
 strong interest you have shown in my welfare, and 
 subsequently in consequence of the actual benefits I 
 * Ad Attic, xiv. 13.
 
 444 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 have received at your hands, your public conduct at 
 this important crisis has so far endeared you to my 
 affections,- that no individual at the present time 
 occupies a higher place in them than yourself." 
 It is not likely that either of these practised diplo- 
 matists was for a moment imposed upon by the com- 
 plimentary professions of his opponent, or induced in 
 the slightest degree to relax the wariness with which 
 he regarded the movements of the adverse party. 
 To Cicero Antony seems from the first to have been 
 an object of the strongest dislike and suspicion, and 
 that the feeling was reciprocal may be inferred, as 
 well from other circumstances, as from the connexion 
 by marriage of the latter with Fulvia, the widow of 
 the notorious Clodius, who was not of a disposition 
 to suffer the malignant enmity of her husband to rest 
 for want of fresh excitement, under the recollection 
 of her ancient causes of resentment against his able 
 adversary. 
 
 During these deep laid movements on both sides, 
 the theatre of action was silently occupied by one, 
 who, contenting himself at first almost with the 
 character of a mere spectator, was destined ultimately 
 to exercise the most important influence upon the 
 fortunes of his country, and, by his superior cunning 
 and duplicity, to carry off the prize for which much 
 nobler disputants were contending. The name of 
 Octavius, at a later period, happily for the world, 
 almost effaced by the lustre surrounding the title of 
 Augustus, stands recorded as that of an individual who, 
 by a singular inversion of the laws of moral develop- 
 ment, possessed in youth all the faults usually attend- 
 ant upon a vicious age, its selfishness, its deceit, its 
 unimpassioned, but not the less terrible, cruelty, 
 and inflexible obduracy of purpose in resentment ; 
 to exhibit in his matured and declining years many of 
 the more generous qualities which, if at all possessed,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 445 
 
 are, for the most part, shown at an earlier period of 
 life. He was the son of Caius Octavius, who had 
 reached the dignity of the prtetorship of Macedonia, 
 and of Atia the niece of Ca?sar, and was consequently 
 the great-nephew of the dictator, hy whom he had been 
 left heir to his name and the greater part of his pro- 
 perty. His mother was at this time residing in Italy 
 after her second marriage with Marcius Philippus, 
 a Roman of consular rank and of singular integrity 
 of character*. Octavius himself, after making his 
 first campaign against the sons of Pompey, had been 
 sent to Apollonia in Epirus,t to pursue his studies for 
 a short time in that city, and to await there the 
 arrival of the dictator on his way to commence his 
 Parthian expedition, in which it was intended that 
 he should accompany him in the capacity of his 
 master of the horse. On receiving intelligence of the 
 death of Ceesar, and of the purport of his will, he de- 
 cided, after a short deliberation with his friends, upon 
 setting out immediately for Italy ; and landing near 
 Brundusium, was welcomed by the soldiers stationed 
 there in garrison with such honours as they imagined 
 due to the representative of their deceased general. 
 From thence he proceeded by slow journeys towards 
 Rome, receiving, wherever he passed, the greatest 
 marks of respect and attachment from the veterans 
 of his uncle, who came in crowds to meet him on 
 his way. At the house of Philippus, near Cumae, 
 where he was met by his mother Atia, he was pre- 
 sented by his friends Hirtius and Pansa, the consuls 
 elect, to Cicero, and the introduction to each other 
 of these two eminent characters, the one now about 
 to close his distinguished career, and the other just 
 entering upon the course of ambition, which he 
 was but too successful in pursuing, was followed by 
 mutual visits and every indication of intimate friend- 
 * Suetonius, in Octav. iv. ) Ibid. viii.
 
 44G THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 ship. At their first interview, the boyish politician 
 seems to have had no difficulty in imposing, by his 
 apparent moderation, on the grey-headed statesman, 
 whose penetration into his motives it was his interest 
 to elude; since we find the latter inhis letters describing 
 him as perfectly ready to follow his counsels*; which 
 were, no doubt, in accordance with those of Atia 
 and Philippus, both of whom advised the fut\:re 
 emperor to content himself with his private inhe- 
 ritance, and to make no effort to possess himself of his 
 uncle's honours. But Cicero was not long deceived ; 
 and further opportunities of studying the character of 
 his new acquaintance seem to have filled him with the 
 greatest disquietude and apprehension with regard to 
 his ultimate policy and conduct: " Octavius," he 
 writes, " is still residing near us, and treats me with 
 singular respect and friendship. By his own attend- 
 ants he is saluted by the title of Caesar t, a name which 
 Philippus never gives him; nor, indeed, do I. A 
 good citizen I am confident he can never prove, when 
 there are so many about him who threaten the de- 
 struction of our friends, and represent the existing 
 state of affairs as intolerable. What then will be 
 the result when tho boy arrives at Rome, where our 
 deliverers, even now, cannot be considered in safety ? 
 Happy they may indeed be, in the consciousness of the 
 glorious action they have performed ; but our cause-. 
 if I mistake not, will be totally ruined. It is for 
 this reason that I am anxious to retire abroad, 
 where I may have no further intercourse with these 
 Pelopida? J." 
 
 As the day appointed for the meeting of the senate 
 
 * Modo vcnit Octavius et quidcni in proxiiuam villain, milii 
 totus deditus. Ad Attic, xir. 11. 
 
 f The Lex Curiata, by which Octavius was formally adopted 
 into the family of the Cscsars, was not passed till the following 
 year. Ad Attic, xiv. 12.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 447 
 
 approached, the efforts of Antony were redoubled to 
 secure the means of overawing the assembly into an 
 acquiescence with such measures as he intended to 
 lay before them. By his possession of the papers of 
 Csesar, he was enabled to bring- forward whatever 
 regulations he pleased, as among those acts of the dic- 
 tator, which they had absurdly declared to have all 
 the force of laws. Forged grants and directions for the 
 sale of the public lands, concessions of the freedom of 
 the state to foreign princes and people, on the payment 
 of immense sums to himself or to Fulvia, and bribes 
 to those whom he thoxight it necessary to gain over to 
 his interests, were accordingly multiplied, in w T anton 
 contempt of the common sense of mankind*. The 
 aid of Lepidus had been secured by the gift of the 
 office of the high-priesthood, vacant by the death of 
 Csesar, as well as by an alliance with the family of 
 Antony by a marriage with one of his daughters. 
 Dolabella was gained over by the promise of the 
 rich province of Syria, which had been destined by 
 Caesar to Caius Cassius at the close of his praetor- 
 ship, and by allowing him, for the purpose of liqui- 
 dating his debts, a portion of the treasure in the temple 
 of Ops ; which Antony now proceeded, without 
 further hesitation, to remove and convert to his own 
 purposest, as well as a separate fund, constituting 
 a great part of the private fortune of the dictator, 
 which had been entrusted to his care by Calpurnia. 
 
 * By one of these fictitious acts, the whole of the inhabitants of 
 the island of Sicily were admitted to the freedom of the city. 
 (Ad Attic, xiv. 12). Ecce autern Antonius, grandi pecunia ac- 
 cepta,finxitlegemadictatore comitiis latam,quaSiculi civesRomani ; 
 cujus reivivo illo mentio nulla. By a similar instrument, all his 
 former dominions were restored to Deiotarus. " It is true," says 
 Cicero, " commenting upon this circumstance, that there is nothing 
 which he does not deserve, but not through the interest of Fulvia." 
 Deiotarus is said to have undertaken to pay the sum of nearly 
 80,OOOA for the edict fabricated in his behalf, 
 f Ad Attic, xiv. 14.
 
 448 THE LIFE OF CICEUO. 
 
 Crowds of veteran soldiers were at the same time 
 summoned into the city for the purpose of overawing 
 the senate by their presence. Alarmed by these pro- 
 ceedings, the republican leaders thought it necessary, 
 before risking their safety at Rome, to ascertain from 
 Antony his real intentions, and accordingly for- 
 warded to him an epistle, which is preserved among 
 the letters of Cicero, to the following effect : 
 
 " BRUTUS AND CASSIUS, PR^TORS, TO MARK ANTONY, 
 CONSUL. 
 
 " Were we not persuaded of your honourable and 
 friendly feelings towards us, we should not have 
 addressed to you the present communication, which, 
 under the feelings for which we give you credit, yon 
 will, no doubt, take in good part. We are informed 
 by letters, that great multitudes of veteran soldiers 
 have already assembled at Rome, and that many 
 more are expected to arrive on the first of June in 
 the city. We should be acting unlike ourselves did 
 we entertain either doubt or fear respecting your 
 intentions. But, assuredly, since we have in a mea- 
 sure placed ourselves in your power by dismissing, at 
 your suggestion, our adherents who came to us from 
 the municipal towns, not only by our open edict, but 
 by our private letters, we may consider ourselves as 
 worthy to be admitted to your councils, especially in 
 such matters as particularly concern our interests. 
 It is our request, therefore, that you would make us 
 further acquainted with your designs respecting us, 
 and whether it is your real opinion that we can be 
 safe amidst such throngs of veteran troops, who, as 
 we hear, are already contemplating the re-erection of 
 the altar raised to the memory of Cfesar*, a pro- 
 
 " The pillar thrown down hy Dolabella. Dio, as well as the 
 writers of the above epistle, terms it an altar, from the circum- 
 stance of sacrifices being offered before it to the divinity of the 
 dictator.
 
 T1IE LIFE OF CICERO. 449 
 
 ceeding which no one could desire or approve who 
 has the slightest regard for our safety and honour. 
 
 " It has plainly appeared from the event, that 
 we have from the very beginning had no other object in 
 view than the public tranquillity. No one can de- 
 ceive us but yourself, and such a design your 
 virtue and integrity, we are confident, will never allow 
 you to entertain ; yet, that you possess the power we 
 do not deny, since we have hitherto implicitly trusted, 
 as we intend for the future to trust, to your honour. Our 
 friends, however, entertain the greatest apprehensions 
 concerning us, since, well as they are assured of 
 your sincerity, they cannot but recollect that a crowd 
 of veterans may much more easily be impelled to 
 acts of violence hy some other individual, than re- 
 strained by yourself. We request that you will 
 return us a full and satisfactory answer. The pre- 
 text that the troops have been ordered to meet at 
 Home, because it is your purpose to propose, during 
 the month of June, certain resolutions in their favour, 
 is, in the highest degree, trifling and frivolous. As 
 you are well aware that it is no intention of ours 
 to frustrate your wishes, from whom else can you 
 expect any opposition ? No one can suppose that 
 by our precautions we show ourselves too much 
 attached to life, when it is evident that no misfortune 
 can, at the present crisis, happen to us without 
 involving the confusion of the state, arid destruction 
 
 ^ 
 
 of the constitution*. 
 
 It does not appear that to these representations any 
 satisfactory reply was made on the part of Antony. 
 It is certain that his preparations for occupying the 
 capital with an overwhelming force of soldiery, pre- 
 viously to the calends of June, were in no respect 
 relaxed in consequence of the remonstrance he had 
 received. So alarming indeed was the aspect of affairs 
 * Ad Diversos, xi. 2. 
 G G
 
 450 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 in Rome as the day of meeting drew near, that many 
 of the senators who were residing at a distance deter- 
 mined upon delaying their journey to the city, while 
 others hastily retired from it into the country. 
 Cicero, who had set out with the intention of being 
 at Tusculanum on the twenty-sixth of May, and of 
 proceeding from thence to assist at the opening of the 
 senate, received, as he approached the capital, such 
 warnings respecting the threatening conduct of the 
 troops mustered there, and of Antony himself, as 
 inclined him to turn back and abandon his resolution. 
 In this conduct he was but imitating that of the rest of 
 his party : Brutus and Cassius, with the other friends 
 to the ancient constitution, contenting themselves with 
 remaining at a distance. Even Hirtius and Pansa, 
 although consuls elect, and representatives of the 
 more moderate or temporising class of politicians, 
 were so far terrified for their safety as to resolve 
 upon absenting them selves for the present from Rome. 
 Having thus obtained, with little trouble, the very 
 object of which he was desirous, Antony proceeded, 
 with a senate entirely devoted to him, to pass a 
 series of decrees ; each of which had a tendency to 
 diminish the strength of those most opposed to his 
 ambitious projects. Both Brutus and Cassius were 
 stripped of their governments, Syria being transferred, 
 as a proconsular province, to Dolabella, andMacedonia 
 to Antony himself, together with the command of the 
 army assembled by Csesar for the Parthian war; his 
 first use of which, as it was conjectured from certain 
 hints which he had dropped, would be to drive De- 
 cimus Brutus from Cisalpine Gaul. As a compen- 
 sation for the more honourable offices of which they 
 had thus summarily been deprived, Cassius was 
 appointed to the inspection of the supplies of corn 
 from Sicily, and Brutus invested with a similar com- 
 mission with respect to Asia. Both were considered
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. " 451 
 
 as direct insults, and resented as such ; nor was the 
 indignation of the parties subjected to these slights 
 allayed by the subsequent decree, "which appointed 
 the inferior province of Crete to Brutus, and that of 
 Gyrene to his colleague. Disgusted at these pro- 
 ceedings, and induced, by the general apathy and 
 irresolution he saw around him, to consider the 
 establishment of a second despotism in Rome, more 
 galling than the first, as an unavoidable evil, Cicero 
 now wrote both to Antony and Dolabella to request 
 leave to retire into Greece by virtue of an honorary 
 legation. The latter, no doubt well pleased at the 
 prospect of his departure, courteously replied by 
 appointing him his own lieutenant for Syria, a com- 
 mission which enabled him to extend indefinitely the 
 term of his absence from Italy. Upon this he deter- 
 mined immediately to act, and at once commenced 
 his preparations for a voyage across the Ionian sea. 
 Before setting out, however, he was present at a 
 general council of the republican party, convoked at 
 Antium to deliberate upon the steps necessary to be 
 taken with respect to the late decrees of the senate. 
 The principal persons assembled were Favonius, Cas- 
 sius, and Brutus, with the wives of the two latter, Ter- 
 tulla and the famous Portia, together with Servilia the 
 mother of Brutus; a woman celebrated as the former 
 mistress of the great dictator, as well as from the cir- 
 cumstance of her having given birth to the principal 
 conspirator against his life. At this meeting the fiery 
 spirit of Cassius broke out in a stern and haughty 
 refusal to accept the commission which had been lately 
 offered him*, contrary to the advice of most of those 
 present; nor were bitter reflections wanting upon his 
 
 * Hoc loco, fortibus sane oculis, Cassius (Martetn spirare diceres) 
 se in Siciliam non iturutn. " Egone ut bcnificium accepisse in con- 
 tumeM?" A masterly picture, in few words, of this fierce, but fur 
 from disinterested republican. Ad Attic, xv. 11. 
 G G 2
 
 452 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 part on the previous weakness and uncertainty which 
 had characterised the movements of the upholders of 
 the cause of liberty, the principal blame of which he 
 laid, whether justly or unjustly, upon Decimus Brutus. 
 Nothing* of consequence, how r ever, beyond the dis- 
 suading Marcus Brutus from venturing to exhibit 
 his praetorian games at Rome in person, seems to 
 have been resolved upon to remedy the former impru- 
 dences of which all were now fully sensible, and the 
 meeting broke up leaving Cicero more desponding 
 than ever with respect to the condition of the state ; 
 which he compares to a vessel not only shattered by 
 the tempest, but actually broken to pieces and strew- 
 ing the waves with its fragments*. 
 
 On his return from Antium to his Tusculan villa, 
 he was rejoiced by the intelligence of a change 
 lately effected in the politics of his nephew Quintus ; 
 who, after having been long considered one of the 
 most zealous of the adherents of Antony, had refused 
 to be accessory to a plan for seizing upon some strong- 
 hold and proclaiming him dictatort, and had passed 
 over, in disgust at his inordinate ambition, to the 
 party of Brutus, to whom Cicero, on being convinced 
 by his protestations and conduct, of his sincerity in 
 the adoption of his new principles, subsequently pre- 
 sented him as a valuable acquisition to the cause. At 
 Tusculanum he received, while making his last pre- 
 parations for his journey, a farewell visit from Atticus, 
 and seems to have been much moved at parting from 
 this long-tried friend ; who, but for the selfishness 
 and indolence encouraged by his Epicurean principles, 
 failings which Cicero does not appear to have had, at 
 all times, philosophy enough to condemn, might have 
 occupied an honourable station among the most emi- 
 nent men of his age, and obtained that reputation by 
 
 * Ad Attic, xv. 11. 
 
 -|- Ad Attic, xv. 21, 22 ; xvi. 1 ; xxi 1.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 453 
 
 the exercise of his own abilities, for which he has been 
 indebted almost entirely to the genius of his distin- 
 guished correspondent. The intimate acquaintance 
 of both on this occasion with the perilous condition of 
 the republic, the troubled aspect of affairs, and the 
 uncertainty of their again meeting, when so many 
 causes were in active operation to prevent it, threw a 
 prophetic melancholy and undefined foreboding around 
 a separation, the pain of which does not seem to have 
 been repaid by any subsequent interview. 
 
 During the interval between the death of Ca?sar 
 and his departure from Italy, were produced some of 
 the noblest of those philosophical disputations, which, 
 if the name of Cicero were unknown as that of the 
 greatest orator of his country, would have secured 
 him an immortality as by far the most eminent 
 among her moral writers. The first of these was his 
 celebrated treatise upon " Old Age;" a work which 
 can never be named without reverence, as hallowing, 
 by all the charms of imaginative eloquence, that 
 period of mortal existence, which it is impossible to 
 contemplate without interest and reverence, whether 
 it is viewed in relation to the past or to the future, 
 to its experience or to its expectations. The singu- 
 larly judicious adaptation of the style to the subject, 
 although a secondary merit, is one which is conspi- 
 cuous throughout the whole performance. Clear, 
 harmonious, and majestic, it is, at the same time, as 
 beautifully subdued as the light of a tranquil sunset, 
 which lingers around the solemn proportions of some 
 mighty edifice, sanctified by the recollections of ages, 
 and slowly yielding to the hand of an imperceptible 
 decay. It need scarcely be stated, that in this treatise 
 it is attempted to show, that many of the evils commonly 
 ascribed to age, have been falsely ascribed to it, by 
 the arguments of the principal speaker, Cato the elder; 
 who is represented as discoursing upon the subject with
 
 454 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 his youthful auditors, Scipio and Lselius*. The 
 work probably next in date was the dialogue entitled 
 " De Amicitia," or " Laelius," respecting the delights 
 and advantages of friendship, intended, as it is said, 
 by Cicero as a sedative to the angry passions of his 
 contemporaries; but which, if the representation is 
 well founded, notwithstanding the numerous beauties 
 which render it a worthy companion to the disserta- 
 tion preceding it, was as little likely to produce 
 its intended effect, as the strains of an exquisitely 
 modulated instrument to be heard amidst the hoarse 
 tumult and uproar of battle. This graceful composition 
 (which, as well as the " De Senectute," was inscribed 
 to Atticus) was followed by the famous inquiry, " De 
 Natura Deorum," dedicated to Marcus Brutus. In 
 the discussion of the exalted subject thus designated, 
 (which extends through three books,) the practical 
 infidelity of tho Epicureans, and their whole system 
 of idle divinities, and warring or uniting atoms, 
 maintained by Caius Velleius, one of the most cele- 
 brated of the school to which he belonged, are over- 
 thrown by Caius Cotta, an Academic of equal cele- 
 brity. The second contains the opinions of the Stoics 
 upon the same subject as explained by Lucius Balbus, 
 and, after an attempt to explain the strange panthe- 
 istic idolatry of the sect of Zeno, concludes with 
 
 * That the " De Senectute" was written previously to the 
 " De Divinatione,'' and before the middle of May in this year, 
 may be inferred from the second book of the latter treatise and from 
 Ad Attic, xiv. 21. Yet how melancholy is the comment of Cicero 
 upon his own philosophy, in the epistle from which this fact is ascer- 
 tained ! Legeiulus mihi s<ppius est " Cato Major" ad te missus. 
 Amaiiorem enini me senectus facit : stomachor omnia. Sed mihi 
 quidem fiefiturat- Vidcrint juvenes. " I ought frequently to pe- 
 ruse the work entitled ' Cato Major,' which I sent to you as an 
 antidote to that petulance and fretfulness which I perceive to grow 
 vith my years. Everything discomposes me. My life is now 
 drawing to a close, and I relinquish the business and pleasures of 
 the world to the young who succeed me." Melmoth,
 
 TUE LIFE OF CICERO. 455 
 
 several chapters of continuous and sublime eloquence 
 upon the manifest signs of providence and benevo- 
 lence inscribed upon the face of external nature; 
 which might be admitted into any modern work 
 upon natural theology, without depreciating its cha- 
 racter, or weakening its tendency*. In the third, 
 Cotta, in the usual spirit of his school, without hazard- 
 ing any affirmation of his own, attempts to bring- 
 forward a number of ingenious doubts and difficulties 
 against the system of Balbus, which was, indeed, in 
 most respects sufficiently vulnerable. In this man- 
 ner the contest is described as ending. The consider- 
 
 O 
 
 ation of the nature of the Divine essence led, not 
 unnaturally, to the dissertation " De Divinatione," 
 in which all the arguments both for and against 
 the doctrine of the prediction of future events, by 
 the observation of omens, &c., are produced by 
 Cicero and his brother Quintus, in a conversation 
 supposed to take place in the Tusculan villa of 
 the former ; who, somewhat inconsistently with 
 his office of augur, and with considerably more 
 common sense than honesty, impugns the Stoical 
 opinion of the validity of prognostics of various kindst. 
 This treatise, which may be considered among the 
 most curious and entertaining relics of antiquity, 
 presents, in one part, an additional point of interest, 
 by exhibiting the only remaining fragment of Cicero's 
 poem of " Marius," which he represents his brother 
 as quoting to himself, as in his former treatise 
 
 * Sec De Natuii Deor. ii. 39 67. 
 
 f This difficulty is surmounted with amusing candour in the 
 twelfth chapter of the second book : Ut ordinr ab haruspiciua, 
 quam ego reipublicae causa, communisque religionis colendam 
 censeo ; sed soli sumus, &c. Although the orator plainly indicates 
 tluit he believes the whole art of which he was a professor to be a 
 palpable imposture, he thinks that, for state reasons, it ought to be 
 encouraged ; and, doubtless, to convey no small honour to those 
 qualified by the higher powers to practise it.
 
 456 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 he had placed several long passages of his own 
 translation from Aratus in the mouth of Balhus. 
 His work " De Fato," which has unfortunately 
 reached us in an extremely dilapidated condition, 
 closed his essays on a series of subjects of a loftier 
 and more mysterious order than any he had hitherto 
 attempted to investigate ; and in some of which we 
 may observe, perhaps, the highest efforts of the human 
 mind to obtain a correct apprehension of the Divine 
 Nature without the guidance of Revelation. Cicero 
 and his guest Hirtius are the speakers represented 
 as maintaining the conversation, constituting the 
 treatise concerning Fate, the scene of which is laid 
 at the marine villa belonodnor to the latter, beau- 
 
 
 
 tifully situated near Puteoli, and which he was accus- 
 tomed to designate his Academy. " The spot," says 
 Eustace, " the speakers both fated to perish in so 
 short a time, during the contests they both foresaw 
 and endeavoured in vain to avert were circumstances 
 which give a peculiar interest to this dialogue, and 
 increase our regret that it has not reached us in a less 
 mutilated state." The observation is no less just 
 than elegant. The dialogue " De Fato," however, so 
 far as may be judged from as much of it as is still 
 preserved, however interesting from its adventitious 
 claims to attention, can scarcely be regarded as one 
 of the ablest productions of Cicero. The acute quali- 
 ties of the dialectician, rather than the lofty specu- 
 lations of the moralist, are brought to bear upon 
 a discussion, in which logic is vainly called in to 
 measure with its puny span a subject, the full com- 
 prehension of which must be reserved for the matured 
 and expanded intellect of a more perfect state of ex- 
 istence. From the evidence of his own writings we 
 learn that the above productions constituted but a 
 part of the literary labours of Cicero during the 
 spring and summer of the memorable year distin-
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 4.)7 
 
 guished by the assassination of Ccesar. A secret his- 
 tory of his own times, and a discourse upon Glory, 
 in two books, were completed previous to his quit- 
 ting Italy""", and his last and ablest ethical work, the 
 " I)e Officiis," projected and commenced by the same 
 unwearied genius, which may also, during this inter- 
 val of leisure, have been employed upon a translation 
 of the Timseus of Plato, of which one or two con- 
 siderable fragments still remain. 
 
 Having completed all arrangements for his voyage, 
 he embarked at Pompeii on board a small galley 
 of ten oars, being attended by two other vessels 
 of the same size, and set sail with the intention 
 of again directing his course along the Italian shore 
 as far as Rhegium, from whence he had resolved 
 upon crossing the Ionian sea, in preference to the 
 usual route from Brundusium to Dyrrachium. 
 He left behind him, at anchor off the coast of Cam- 
 pania, a strong fleet under Brutus and Cassius, who 
 
 * Of this work Dr. Middleton observes in one of his notes : 
 " The treatise here mentioned on Glory, which he sent soon after 
 to Atticus and published in two books, was actually preserved and 
 subsisting long after the invention of printing, yet happened to 
 perish unhappily for want of being produced into light by the help 
 of that admirable art. Raimundus Superantius made a present of 
 it to Petrarch, who, as he tells the story in one of his epistles, lent 
 it to his schoolmaster, who, being old and poor, pawned it for the 
 relief of his necessities into some unknown hand, whence Petrarch 
 could never recover it, upon the old man's death. About two cen- 
 turies after, it appeared to have been in the possession of Bernardus 
 Justinianus, and was mentioned in the catalogue of his books, which 
 he bequeathed to a monastery of nuns; but, when it could not be 
 found in that monastery after the strictest search, it was generally 
 believed that Petrus Alcyonius, who was physician to that house, 
 and had the free use of the library, had stolen it, and, after tran- 
 scribing as much of it as he could, had destroyed the original for 
 fear of discovery ; it being observed by the critics that, in his book 
 ' De Exilio,' there were many bright passages, not well connected 
 with the rest of the work, which seemed to be above his taste and 
 genius. 1 '
 
 458 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 had been waiting for some time for intelligence re- 
 specting the expression of opinion on the part of the 
 Roman people at the Apollinarian games, celebrated 
 on the 3d of July, in the name of the former. The 
 applause with which they were received appears to 
 have renewed the confidence of the republican party, 
 and to have contributed in no slight degree towards 
 the resolution of Cicero to spend but a few months 
 in Greece, and, if possible, to be at Rome at the 
 commencement of the consulate of Hirtius and Pansa. 
 With a reluctance, therefore, strongly expressed in one 
 of his letters, at being torn from his favourite pursuits, 
 and induced to encounter a voyage, for which there 
 no longer seemed to exist any necessity in the shape 
 of danger to himself, he continued slowly to sail along 
 the western coast of Italy, with his thoughts still 
 fixed upon the delightful retirement of his villas and 
 the society of Atticus*. On the 19th of July he 
 had reached Velia, from whence he wrote to his 
 friend Trebatius, who was a native of the town, 
 desiring him to expect his return before winter, and 
 advising him not to dispose of his villa upon the 
 Hales, the beautiful situation of which, as well as 
 the recollections attached to it, since it had once be- 
 longed to the noble family of the Papirii, appears to 
 have attracted his admiration t. Upon weighing 
 anchor from this place he commenced, for the benefit 
 
 * Mehercule, mi Attici,ssepe mecum % oevp 65bs troirt fiuvarai 
 cur ego tecumnon sum Pcurocellos Italia:, villulus ineas, non video? 
 Sed id satis superque tecum me uon esse ; quid fugientem ? peiiculum 
 ne? Id nunc quidem, nisi fallor, nullum est. Ad Attic, xvi. C. 
 " But indeed, my dearest Atticus, I often put the question, of 
 what avail will this voyage prove to me ? Why am I not with my 
 Atticus ? Why lose sight of my lovely villas, the most beautiful of 
 Italy ? But enough and too much of this. Why, my Atticus, 
 am I not with thee ? What do I fly ? Danger '.' If I mistake 
 not, the danger is at present over." Melmoth. 
 f Ad Diversos, vii. 20.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. ' 459 
 
 of the same friend, as well as for his own amuse- 
 ment during his voyage, his work upon the plan of 
 the Topics of Aristotle, which he afterwards for- 
 warded to him from Rhegium*, having had no 
 further assistance in completing it, than such as his 
 own recollection of the writings of the philosopher of 
 Stagira could supply. After passing through the 
 straits of Sicily, he had reached the city of Syra- 
 cuse on the ] st of Augustt ; from whence, after 
 remaining in the city but a single day, he again set 
 sail for the port and promontory of Leucopetra, in 
 the territory of the Bruttii. On the 1 6th of August, 
 having probably been delayed by contrary winds, 
 he was standing out into the main sea for the island 
 of Corcyra, when, after proceeding for about thirty- 
 six miles, a strong southern gale suddenly arising 
 drove him back to Leucopetra, where he was induced 
 to take up his residence in the house of his friend 
 Valerius, until the weather should become more 
 favourable for his voyage. This trifling incident was 
 fated to have a most important effect upon his 
 future destiny. At Leucopetra he was visited by a 
 number of the principalinhabitants of the neighbouring 
 city of Ilhegium, many of whom had just returned 
 from Rome. By these he was informed of an unex- 
 pected revolution of opinion in the capital in favour 
 of Brutus and Cassius ; that both had issued circular 
 letters, requesting their friends to hasten thither on 
 the kalends of September,! when it was believed 
 that Antony would be induced to make such con- 
 cessions as would be agreeable to all parties ; and 
 that his own conduct was generally blamed in 
 neglecting the state at so important a crisis. In 
 
 * Ad Diversos, vii. 19. 
 t Ad Attin. xvi. 7. Philip, i. 3. 
 
 J The ordinary meetings of the senate took place on the kalends, 
 nones, and ides of every month.
 
 460 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 consequence of this intelligence, his intention to 
 pursue his voyage to Greece was immediately 
 dropped, and the resolution substituted for it of re- 
 pairing without delay to Rome. On the 17th of 
 August, again retracing his course, lie had once 
 more made the harbour at Velia, and immediately 
 after his landing received a visit from Marcus 
 Brutus, whose fleet was now lying in the mouth of 
 the Hales. The result of his conference with this 
 distinguished personage, who, after warmly applaud- 
 ing his change of ptirpose, communicated to him an 
 angry manifesto and epistle lately issued against 
 himself and Cassius, with their joint reply*, was such 
 
 * The following is a translation of this document, which is pre- 
 ierved among the Familiar Epistles of Cicero : 
 
 " BRUTUS AND CASSIUS, PRJETORS, TO ANTONY, CONSUL. 
 
 " We have perused your letter, which, like the manifesto pre- 
 ceding it, is filled with threats and reproaches, and hy no means 
 such a communication as it hecomes you to address to us. We 
 have never given you any provocation, Antony, nor could we have 
 conceived that it would appear to you at all surprising, if in our 
 puhlic and honourable capacity as praetors, we thought it fit, hy 
 our edict, to present our demands to the consul. If you are in- 
 dignant at such a proceeding, allow us in our turn to regret, that 
 the subject of our request has not been conceded to us in our cha- 
 racter as friends. We are wiling to give you credit for honesty 
 in denying that you have ever charged us with holding levies, ex- 
 torting contributions, endeavouring to gain over the soldiery here to 
 our interests, or sending missives abroad for the same purpose, 
 actions which we also unequivocally disavow. Yet we cannot but 
 wonder, that while keeping silence upon these points, you have 
 preserved so little restraint over your resentment, as to reproach us 
 for the part we have taken in the death of Cajsar. 
 
 " We leave it for yourself to consider in what light we ought to 
 consider the fact, that it is not allowed the praetors to give up 
 part of their rights for the sake of the freedom and tranquillity of 
 the state, without being threatened by the consul with an appeal to 
 arms. In confidence in such means of intimidation, be assured that 
 you will be disappointed. To alter our opinions at the prospect of 
 danger we consider neither suitable nor becoming to our character,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 461 
 
 as to convince him that much of the favourable in- 
 telligence he had received at Leucopetra was mere 
 exaggeration, and that whoever presented himself at 
 Home, with the intention of opposing Antony, had 
 still, owino 1 to the cowardice of the senate and the 
 
 ' O 
 
 presence of the military, a perilous path to pursue. 
 His determination, however, of returning to the city 
 was still unaltered ; and, after taking a final leave of 
 the friend whom he was soon to have the melancholy 
 honour of preceding as a sacrifice to the cause of that 
 sinking freedom which received its last blow upon 
 the plains of Philippi, he leisurely resumed his 
 journey, which terminated at the gates of Rome on 
 the last day of August. His approach to the city 
 was no sooner known, than crowds of the principal 
 inhabitants, as on former occasions, came forth to 
 meet him ; and so great was the concourse around 
 the doors of his house after his arrival, that a whole 
 day was spent in receiving and replying to the 
 compliments of those who presented themselves to 
 
 nor should Antony attempt to subject those to an arbitrary autho- 
 rity by whose assistance he is at present free. 
 
 " If other inducements were prompting us to the expedient of a 
 civil war, your letters would have little effect to prevent it. 
 With freemen threats must be utterly ineffectual. You are per- 
 fectly correct, however, in your opinion that no one shall compel 
 us to such a course, and it is possibly under this conviction, that you 
 have resorted to menaces, in order that the determination of our 
 judgment might appear the result of our timidity. 
 
 " It is our sincere desire that you may occupy a great and 
 honourable station in a free state, nor will we by any means invite 
 your enmity. We cannot, however, but value our own freedom 
 at a higher rate than your friendship. Consider attentively what 
 you are undertaking, and what strength you possess for the attain- 
 ment of your object ; nor let the length of Caesar's life be so much 
 the subject of your reflections as the short duration of his reign. 
 We pray the gods that your designs may be salutary both for your 
 own interests and those of the state ; if otherwise, however, that 
 provided the honour and welfare of the constitution be uninjured, 
 they may be as little injurious to yourself as possible. 
 
 " August the 4.th."
 
 402 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 congratulate him upon his presence at a juncture so 
 important for the interests of his country. 
 
 The power of Antony had been for some time 
 considerably shaken by a rival, -whom, much as he 
 had at first been inclined to despise him, he had now 
 learned to fear as well as to respect. By the exer- 
 cise of similar determination, united with a prudence 
 far greater than could have been expected from his 
 years, the young Octavius had rapidly risen into an 
 estimation at least equal to his own, among the 
 class of men whom he regarded as his principal 
 supporters. Immediately after his arrival at Rome, 
 the heir and nephew of Caesar was produced by the 
 tribunes at a general assembly of the people, and 
 received with extraordinary marks of popular favour. 
 Soon afterwards, having first presented himself 
 before the praetor Caius Antonius, to declare his 
 acceptance of the inheritance which had recently 
 devolved upon him, he repaired to the gardens of 
 Pompey, at that time the residence of Antony, who 
 had taken no notice whatever of his arrival ; and 
 after having been kept waiting a sufficient time to 
 allow him to infer that his visit was anything but 
 acceptable, he was finally admitted into the presence 
 of the consul. Although Antony might have been 
 in some measure acquainted with his character by 
 previous rumour, it can hardly be doubted that he 
 was astonished and confounded by the display of 
 courage, self-confidence, and cool assumption exhi- 
 bited on this occasion by his boyish visitant. With- 
 out any deference to his age or station, Octavius, as 
 if he had at once been placed in the same relation to 
 him as his uncle the dictator, commenced a review 
 of his conduct since the death of Caesar, commend- 
 ing in the tone of a superior his policy in opposing 
 the thanks intended to have been offered by the 
 senate to the conspirators, and his subsequent inter-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 463 
 
 fcrcncc to wrest the provinces of Macedonia and 
 Syria from the hands of Brutus and Cassius, but 
 blaming him in strong terms for still allowing them 
 to hold any public appointments, but above all for 
 suffering Decimus Brutus to establish himself with 
 an armed force in Cisalpine Gaul. lie then de- 
 manded the treasure which had lately been removed 
 from the temple of Ops, in order that he might 
 immediately pay to the citizens of Home the sum, to 
 which they were entitled under the will of Caesar. 
 The anger of Antony, already suppressed with diffi- 
 culty, while listening to the stripling, who ventured 
 to beard him to his face with expressions of censure 
 directed against his late policy, blazed forth at the 
 last demand, with which he had no longer the 
 power, and still less the will, to comply. He in- 
 dignantly reminded Octavius that it was owing to 
 his exertions alone that the body of his uncle had not 
 been dragged through the streets of Rome as that of 
 a public criminal, or any inheritance whatever de- 
 livered from confiscation, and suffered to descend to 
 his relations. The funds which Caesar had left in 
 the treasury he represented as being likely to prove 
 due to the state, in consequence of his extensive 
 diversions of the public money to his own use on 
 different occasions, and refused, until the accounts 
 of the dictator had been regularly examined, to part 
 with any portion of the sum which he had secured 
 On these terms, which, to the cost of their contem- 
 poraries, were destined not to prove permanent, the 
 parties to this unpromising conference separated. 
 Octavius, without showing the slightest embarrass- 
 ment at the repulse he had received, began, under 
 the pretence of regard for the honour of his deceased 
 relative, and of sympathy with the lower orders 
 of Rome under their disappointment, to expose his 
 own effects to sale, for the purpose of paying part of
 
 464 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the legacies bequeathed by his uncle. He had, 
 moreover, the boldness to exhibit the shows and 
 games which Caesar had promised to the people, 
 in commemoration of his victories, but which his 
 sudden death had prevented him from superintend- 
 ing. Having thus secured the affection of multitudes 
 among the populace, he next proceeded to imitate 
 the example recently set by Antony, by making a 
 progress among the veteran colonies, and bribing 
 them to the support of his interests by present 
 largesses and still more liberal promises. Nor was 
 he the only enemy against whom Antony was now 
 called to make head. At a meeting of the senate, 
 Lucius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, a character 
 already well known in connexion with the earlier 
 history of Cicero, had ventured to deliver a speech 
 replete with observations to his discredit, as well as 
 with sentiments favourable to the cause of liberty. 
 It was the information of this appearance of a new 
 ally among the senatorian ranks, whom he probably 
 considered as representing a considerable part among 
 his order, which had exercised no small influence in 
 inducing Cicero to present himself at Rome, as now 
 rendered the most appropriate field in which he 
 could exert his abilities for the benefit of his party. 
 
 It has not often happened, although in the case of 
 Octavius already cited, we have, to a certain extent, an 
 instance of this kind of inconsistency, that the general 
 moral temperament induced by youth and confirmed 
 through a series of after years, has been suddenly altered 
 in the evening of life so far as to assume a totally oppo- 
 site character. Still more rare are the instances in which 
 timidity and caution, after generally distinguishing 
 the conduct of an individual until the period of ad- 
 vancing age, have been substituted for firmness and 
 courage, qualities to which from the instinct of expe- 
 rience it is almost necessarily opposed. The history
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 465 
 
 of Cicero -presents a singular exception to the general 
 rule. Though weak and irresolute on many previous 
 occasions, when it was required of him to exert 
 himself in the face of danger ; from the moment 
 of his return to Rome with the view of opposing 
 Antony, there is no faltering of purpose no vacilla- 
 tion no repenting, or shrinking from his determina- 
 tion to be traced in his political conduct. Having, 
 finally, thrown himself into the breach, with the 
 resolve of defending it to the last, he was now not 
 to be driven from it by the actual occurrence of 
 any of the perils which he appears to have both pre- 
 viously calculated upon, and learned to contemn ; but 
 entered at once upon the duty he had undertaken 
 with a vigour which must have astonished his ambi- 
 tious opponent ; who could assuredly have expected 
 no such display of self-denying patriotism from 
 any previous acquaintance with his disposition. 
 On the first day of September, having ascertained 
 that the only business to be brought before the senate 
 at their assembling was the framing of an enactment 
 for assigning divine honours to Cassar, he absented 
 himself on the plea of fatigue and indisposition, the 
 consequence of his late journey an excuse which so 
 exasperated Antony, who had particularly invited* 
 him to attend, and easily interpreted his answer in 
 its true sense, that he openly threatened in full senate 
 to pull down his house about his ears, at the head of 
 a body of workmen, as a fit punishment for his con- 
 tumacy*. This outrageous conduct elicited from 
 Cicero on the day following, when Antony in his 
 turn was absent, the admirable oration known as the 
 first of his " Philippics t" the commencing peal of 
 that oratorical tempest which continued from this 
 
 * Philipp. v. 7. 
 
 f- So called from their resemblance in point of severity to die 
 famous orations of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon. The 
 title which they have retained to the present day, notwithstanding 
 
 ii n
 
 466 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 moment to rage almost uninterruptedly, until the 
 murderous swords of the triumvirate arrested the 
 hand by which it had been so fearlessly directed. 
 This speech, however, is rather a warning than an 
 invective. The orator complaining in it of the violence 
 threatened by Antony on the previous day protests 
 against the honours just decreed to Caesar returns 
 thanks to Piso for the spirited avowal of his senti- 
 ments, delivered a month before mentions the abuse 
 of Caesar's acts and the plunder of the temple of Ops 
 and reminds the present consuls of the melancholy 
 end which had attended the dictator, as a lesson upon 
 the superior advantages held out by the exercise of a 
 just and equitable government when compared with 
 those of a lawless and arbitrary despotism. He 
 entreats them, in conclusion, to attend to the numerous 
 explicit declarations lately given by the Roman people 
 of dislike to their proceedings, and approbation of the 
 conduct of those who had opposed them and ends by 
 asserting his determination of freely uttering his opin- 
 ions upon all subjects connected with the interest of 
 the state, if it should be still permitted him to do so, 
 without compromising his own safety as well as that 
 of his auditors ; but, if otherwise, of reserving, not for 
 himself, but for the future exigences of his country, a 
 life almost sufficiently extended for the glory of its 
 possessor. 
 
 The effect of this address, which Cicero had the 
 mortification of finding unseconded by the rest of the 
 senators, whom he terms an assembly of slaves re- 
 lieved by the presence of but a single freeman*, was 
 such as to raise the resentment of Antony to an 
 excess of fury. He immediately, by his authority, 
 
 the attempt to substitute that of" Antonian Orations " appears to 
 have been first given them in jest by Cicero, ia a letter to Marcus 
 Brutus : "Jam concedo ut vel Philippici vocentur, quod tu qua- 
 dani epistola jocans scripsisti." Epis. 2], from Urutus to Cicero, 
 * Ad Diversos, xii. 25, (to Cornifidus).
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 467 
 
 adjourned the senate to the 19th of September, and 
 employed himself during the interval in composing 
 and reciting at the villa of Scipio, near Tibur, a speech 
 containing the most bitter and scandalous vitupera- 
 tions directed against the whole life and character of 
 Cicero*. This was duly delivered on the assembling 
 of the senate on the day appointed, in the temple 
 of Concord ; when the appearance of a strong armed 
 force in attendance upon the consul confirmed the 
 suspicions previously entertained, that it had been 
 by no means his intention to answer his adver- 
 sary by words alone. By the entreaties of his 
 friends, who were firmly persuaded of the existence 
 of a design against his life, Cicero was induced, 
 although greatly against his inclination, to absent 
 himself on this occasion also ; and, on receiving intel- 
 ligence of the import of the oration of Antony and 
 of the conduct which had accompanied it, to withdraw 
 from the neighbourhood of Rome to his villas near 
 Naples, where he composed his reply that mag- 
 nificent invective entitled the second Philippic, which 
 has received the title of " divine" from a writer in no 
 respect inclined to overrate its literary merits. In 
 this glowing manifesto of patriotic indignation against 
 successful guilt, which flashes from beginning to end 
 like a fiery torrent of sarcasm, scorn, and terrible 
 detestation, the previous career, from his very boy- 
 hood, of the portentous example of wickedness whom 
 it was intended to expose and to punish, is arraigned 
 and portrayed in the most vivid, though occasion- 
 ally not the most delicate, colours. The orator touches 
 upon his licentious youth his expedition, at the 
 head of the Roman cavalry, into Egypt under Gabi- 
 nius his mal-administration of office during his 
 quaestorship and his efforts, during his tribunate, to 
 bring on the civil war, of which he asserts him to have 
 been as much the cause as Helen in ancient times, of 
 * Philipp. v. 7. 
 H II 2
 
 468 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 the expedition against Troy. He draws an unsparing 
 pictureof his disgusting sensuality and tyrannic violence 
 while left at the head of affairs in Italy, during the 
 absence of Caesar accuses him of being the foremost 
 in arms against the cause of the republic at Phar- 
 salia, and of exercising the most atrocious cruelties 
 upon those who had escaped the shock of battle on 
 that day of devastation assails his conduct on the 
 Lupercalia his diversion of the funds of Cassar to 
 his own purposes his manifold forgeries of acts 
 his instrumentality in procuring divine honours 
 to be paid to the memory of the dictator and con- 
 cludes, amidst a dazzling display of animated elo- 
 quence, with a touching allusion to his own deter- 
 mination : " I have defended the constitution in my 
 youth : I will not abandon it in my age. I have 
 despised the swords of Catiline : I will not shrink in 
 terror from yours. Freely rather will I offer my 
 own person to the extremest hazard, if the liberty of 
 the state appear likely to be revived by the sacrifice. 
 If twenty years ago I asserted in this very temple, 
 that death could not happen immaturely to an indi- 
 vidual of consular dignity, how much less so to one 
 far advanced in years ? For my own part, Conscript 
 Fathers, when I consider the actions which I have 
 performed, and the honours with which they have 
 been rewarded, the termination of life appears to me 
 an object less of dread than of desire. Two wishes 
 alone remain to occupy my attention first, that, iu 
 my dying moments, I may leave the Roman people 
 free, the greatest blessing which can be conferred by 
 the immortal gods the second, that each individual 
 may speedily receive the recompense which his con- 
 duct towards our republic deserves." To the reader 
 of the second Philippic it excites little wonder, con- 
 sidering the poignant expressions of hostility with 
 which it is replete, to learn that from the moment 
 of its publication, that dark and unslumbering vcn-
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 469 
 
 geance to which he at last fella sacrifice was unalter- 
 ably sealed against its author ; but few are free from 
 a feeling of disappointment at finding, that, as in the 
 case of the best of the orations against Verres, not- 
 withstanding its references to an attentive auditory, 
 and to an adversary pale with rage and trembling 
 with conflicting emotions*, it was never really de- 
 livered; being only circulated in the shape of a political 
 pamphlet towards the close of autumn, when the 
 absence of Antony from Koine appeared, in some 
 respects, to lessen the danger of his resentment. 
 
 Shortly after the composition of this oration, of 
 which copies were forwarded to both, Brutus and 
 Cassius finally determined upon quitting Italy for 
 the provinces of Syria and Macedonia; in which, not- 
 withstanding the late decrees to the contrary, they 
 were now resolved to establish themselves by force of 
 arms. They were induced to adopt this course in 
 consequence of a fresh disagreement between Antony 
 and Octavius, which threatened speedily to terminate 
 in an obstinate war ; imagining, unfortunately for 
 themselves and for the state, that their most prudent 
 plan would be to leave, for the present, the field of 
 contention open to the rival representatives of the 
 Caesarian faction, in order to fall afterwards, with 
 united forces carefully trained and organised, upon 
 the exhausted victor. A late application of Octavius 
 for the tribunate had been indirectly opposed by an 
 edict of Antony, and the heir of Cassar was accused 
 of having in return hired a body of assassins to mur- 
 der the consul in his own house. Whether this was 
 a false plot, prepared with the view of throwing odium 
 upon the object of his jealousy, or a real attempt 
 upon his life, which seems far from improbable, 
 Antony soon afterwards set out for Brundusiumt, 
 
 * Philipp. ii. 34. 
 
 t On the 9th of October. See Ad Diversosxii. 23. 
 Cornificius.
 
 470 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 where four legions, constituting a part of the army once 
 intended for Caesar's Parthian expedition, had already 
 arrived, intending at the head of this threatening 
 force speedily to return to Rome ; and having over- 
 powered all resistance to his authority in that quarter, 
 to expel Decimus Brutus from his province, which, 
 by a fresh alteration, in defiance of the authority of 
 the senate, he had caused to be assigned to himself in 
 the place of Macedonia, at an assembly of the people 
 composed almost entirely of his partisans. On his ap- 
 proach towards Brundusium he was received without 
 the walls by the troops who had lately disembarked 
 with all military honours, but, after this single mark of 
 respect, found the legions, from which he had expected 
 a clamorous welcome, disposed to maintain an ominous 
 reserve, until they had heard what terms were pro- 
 posed for the assistance of their swords in removing 
 the obstacles in his way to absolute power. When, 
 in the usual harangue with which a Roman general 
 was accustomed to address his soldiers after his arrival 
 in their camp, he mentioned his intention of presenting 
 each man, in the prospect of hi& future services, with 
 four hundred sestertii*, a sum amounting only to 
 three or four pounds sterling, a general tumult, ac- 
 companied with pointed expressions of derision, 
 testified the disappointment of the legionaries at a 
 promise which fell so far short of their expectations. 
 On his proceeding to reproach them for their inso- 
 lence, he was still further exasperated to observe 
 most of the cohorts composing three of the legions 
 present, headed by their officers, begin to defile in 
 regular order from the ground before he had finished 
 his address. This appearance of a mutinous spirit was 
 followed by a frightful specimen of his vindictive 
 temper. Ordering about three hundred centurions and 
 privates, whom he suspected of having been especially 
 instrumental in exciting the disaffection of the rest, to 
 *~Dio, xlv.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 471 
 
 be instantly arrested, he stood looking sternly on 
 while they were successively massacred before his 
 eyes. His wife Fulvia is also recorded to have been 
 present at the fearful spectacle, and to have inspected 
 the executions with such eager curiosity, that her 
 garments were deeply stained with the blood of the 
 dying. This cruelty, however, was productive of little 
 advantage to his cause. Although, on his subsequent 
 attempt to offer a satisfactory explanation of his 
 conduct to his soldiers, the donation which he had at 
 first proffered was received, and the new officers he 
 had appointed to command them for the present 
 obeyed, the seeds of disaffection were only smothered 
 for a short time, to break out afterwards in a more 
 serious revolt. The three legions which had suffered 
 so severely for their discontent, were ordered to pro- 
 ceed along the coast of the Adriatic towards Ari- 
 minum. With the one remaining, and that composed 
 of the Gallic soldiers, known by the military so- 
 briquet of the Alaudas"*, or Larks, (from the plumes 
 upon their helmets being disposed in such a manner 
 as to resemble, in some measure, the crests of these 
 birds,) together with a considerable body of chosen 
 cavalry, he again repaired to Rome. 
 
 Octavius had not in the mean time been idle. By 
 dint of lavish donations, amounting, in some instances, 
 to no less than sixteen pounds sterling per man, he 
 had attracted to his standards all the veterans from 
 Casilinum, Calatia, Capua, and other military settle- 
 ments. In most of his movements he now pretended to 
 
 * Philipp. iii, 2 ; Dio, xlv. 
 
 } Originally raised by Julius Cwsar, who afterwards conferred 
 upon all the soldiers who constituted it the freedom of the city. 
 From this legion Antony, to ingratiate himself with the army, had 
 selected a number of persons to act as judges conjointly with 
 the knights and senators. " In judice spectari el fortuna de.bet et 
 dignitas." Non qusero, inquit, ista : addo etiam judices manipu- 
 lares ex legioue Alaudarum Phil. i. 9. See, also, Ad Attic, xvi. 
 8 ; Plin. Hist. Nat. xi. 37 ; and Sueton. in Jul. Cses. 24.
 
 472 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 be guided by Cicero, who, however, does not seem 
 to have been more than half deceived by this outward 
 show of deference. In several of his letters to Atticus 
 he mentions communications in which his advice 
 had been demanded, as to whether it would be more 
 advantageous to make an attempt to stop the. march 
 of Antony at Capua with the three thousand veterans 
 who had assumed arms against him, or to advance 
 them at once towards Rome*. " I have letters every 
 day," he asserts on one occasion, " from Octavianns, 
 requesting me to exert myself in his cause, to join 
 him at Capua, and a second time to preserve the 
 state from destruction. He intends to advance imme- 
 diately upon Rome. In his present, no less than in 
 his past conduct, he shows vigour enough. Yet, 
 after all, he is a mere boy. He counsels the as- 
 sembling of a senate immediately. Who would 
 attend it? or who, if he did attend, in the present 
 uncertainty of affairs would run the risk of dis- 
 pleasing Antony ? By the calends of January he 
 may be strong enough to protect us, or before that 
 time the contest may be finished. The youth is 
 wonderfully in favour among the municipal towns. 
 While on his way into Samnium he stopped at Gales 
 and Theanum. The numbers who met him there, 
 and the marks of encouragement he received, were 
 quite astonishing. Could you have thought it pos- 
 sible ? To me this will be an additional induce- 
 ment to be at Rome much sooner than I had in- 
 tended, t" 
 
 Both parties were now in full march for the capital. 
 Octavius having first arrived, was allowed to secure 
 the temple of Castor and Pollux, and to harangue the 
 multitude assembled in the area before it, being first 
 formally introduced to them by the tribunes; but hav- 
 ing offended the military stationed in the city by too 
 direct an avowal of his respect for the civil authority, 
 
 * Ad Attic, xvi. 8, 9~ f Ad Attic, xvi. 11.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 473 
 
 and too violent a declaration against Antony, ho was 
 not only unsuccessful in gaining fresh recruits, but 
 even deserted by many who had already declared for 
 him. Antony soon afterwards appeared beneath the 
 walls, and being also admitted into the city, pro- 
 ceeded, after having quartered his cavalry in the 
 suburbs, towards his house, with an imposing body- 
 guard ; and by virtue of his office issued an imme- 
 diate summons for the senate to assemble on the 
 twenty-fourth of September, declaring, that whosoever 
 should absent himself on that day, should be con- 
 sidered accessory to a plot which he pretended to 
 have recently discovered, against his own life, and the 
 safety of the commonwealth. As he had lately ful- 
 minated several opprobrious edicts against Octavius, 
 whom he designated by the title of Spartacus*, it 
 was imagined that it was his intention to take 
 severe measures against his rival, who had, in the 
 mean time, after ordering fresh levies to be made in 
 Etruria, prudently retired to Alba ; as well as against 
 Quintus Cicero the younger, who was violently 
 assailed in the same proclamations as the intended 
 murderer both of his father and unclet ; a distinction 
 which he probably owed to a promise, afterwards 
 more openly expressed, of formally bringing the 
 consul to account before the people for his spoliation 
 of the temple of Ops. Antony, however, after ad- 
 journing the proposed meeting from the twenty- 
 fourth to the twenty-eighth of the month, was pre- 
 vented from carrying any of his intended designs into 
 effect on that occasion by unexpected and alarming 
 intelligence, which produced an immediate change in 
 his position and prospects. While he was in the 
 very act of entering the porch of the senate-house he 
 was met by especial messengers, who informed him 
 that the Fourth and Martial legions, constituting part 
 of the force which had suffered from his fury at 
 * PhilippTlii. 8. ~f Ibid. 7.
 
 474 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 Brundusium, had revolted, and strongly fortified 
 themselves at Alba, after openly declaring in favour 
 of Octavius. The news thus communicated induced 
 him, after a hurried meeting of the senate, at which 
 nothing of consequence was determined, to change on 
 the same evening his consular robes for a military 
 habit, and, at the head of the two legions which yet 
 remained firm to his interests, to advance hastily 
 towards Alba, in the hope of finding the mutineers who 
 occupied it sufficiently off their guard to enable him 
 to surprise their post by a vigorous assault. He 
 was, however, received, on his attempting to carry his 
 purpose into effect, by such a tempest of missiles, as 
 speedily induced him to withdraw his troops in con- 
 fusion*. Disheartened by his useless effort, he con- 
 tinued, for a few days afterwards, inactively encamped 
 at Tibur, chiefly with the design of calling in his de- 
 tached parties before setting out for Cisalpine Gaul ; 
 towards which province he had now resolved upon 
 directing his march, hoping, by immediately entering 
 upon active operations, to prevent the spirit of dis- 
 affection from spreading further amongst his sol- 
 diery. The citizens of Rome, being wholly ignorant 
 of his intentions, had, in the mean time, remained 
 in hourly apprehension of his return, and a general 
 joy was diffused through the city, when it was at 
 length ascertained that he had struck his tents, and 
 was apparently marching in the direction of Ari- 
 minum. Octavius, still pretending an entire sub- 
 servience to the authority of the senate, but regarded, 
 notwithstanding, with well-grounded distrust of his 
 inclination towards them, shortly afterwards reported 
 that he had now nearly completed an army of five 
 legions, and that he had also sent a message to 
 Decimus Brutus, desiring him to stand his ground 
 resolutely in Gaul until he should be able to come 
 up to his assistance. Cicero, at the same time, 
 * Appian. De Bell. Civil, iii.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 475 
 
 learning that the city was now entirely free from the 
 soldiers of his adversary, ventured to appear again at 
 Rome, to which we find, from his epistles, that he 
 returned on the ninth of Decemher* ; and on the 
 nineteenth of the same month t, at an assembly of 
 the senate summoned by the tribunes of the people, 
 (in which a manifesto of Decimus Brutus was pro- 
 duced, complaining of the invasion of his province,) 
 delivered his third Philippic, immediately followed 
 by the fourth, which was pronounced from the rostra 
 before the Roman people. The principal intention of 
 the orator in the former of these speeches is to praise 
 the conduct of Octavius, (who was at the time present, 
 and had distinguished himself by an harangue in 
 favour of Brutus,) and to recommend that all his late 
 actions should be sanctioned by public authority. Ho 
 advises also that the most prompt and rigorous mea- 
 sures should be at once taken against the individual 
 who had recently threatened the destruction of the 
 state that their respective provinces of Further and 
 Hither Gaul, should be decreed to Decimus Brutus 
 and Plancus, their present governors, for another year 
 that the public thanks and promises of reward should 
 be given to the Martial and fourth legions, and to 
 Egnatuleius, the commander of the latter, for their 
 eminent services and that the consuls elect, Hirtius 
 and Pansa, should be instructed to take measures for 
 the safe assembling of the senate on the calends of 
 January next ensuing, and to make a fresh motion 
 to that meeting at its first assembling upon the sub- 
 jects which had just been brought under discussion. 
 In his speech to the people he gives an account of the 
 decrees which had just been passed at his suggestion, 
 and adds the most powerful denunciations against 
 
 * Ad JJivcrsos xi. 5. An epistle to Decimus Brutus, in which 
 he exhorts him, by the most earnest and eloquent adjurations, to 
 remain firm in his opposition to Antony, representing the occupa- 
 tion of Gaul by the latter as the last blow to the liberties of Rome. 
 
 f- Ad Diversos xi. C, addressed to the same individual.
 
 476 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Antony, as one fully equal to Catiline in wickedness, 
 although inferior to him in ability and promptitude, 
 already in effect declared a public enemy, and des- 
 tined by evident omens, and other infallible signs of 
 divine displeasure, to a speedy downfall*. 
 
 These orations closed the public efforts of Cicero 
 during one of the most laborious years in his active 
 existence. Shortly after they were delivered, Octa- 
 vius, decamping from Alba, set his forces -in motion 
 upon the track of Antony, for the purpose of hanging 
 upon his rear and watching his movements, until the 
 arrival of the expected reinforcements under Hirtius 
 and Pansa. The Roman sword was, in the mean 
 time, already reddened with kindred blood in Cisalpine 
 Gaul. Decimus Brutus, after having sent repeated 
 messages to Antony, demanding the purport of his pre- 
 sence in arms in his province, and having only received 
 orders in return immediately to abandon it to the 
 governor appointed by the people, either finding 
 himself unable to oppose the invaders in the field, or 
 being unwilling to hazard a general engagement until 
 the forces under Octavius and the Roman consuls 
 should enable him to give battle with an overpower- 
 ing superiority of numbers, had thrown himself, with 
 two legions, into Mutina ; to which Antony, having 
 previously secured the towns of Bononia and Cla- 
 terna, began to lay fierce and earnest siege; neglecting 
 none of the means of attack then visually employed 
 against fortified towns, and adding to each the full 
 impulse of his hardy and enterprising genius. To 
 this city the eyes of men were accordingly directed, 
 as to a stage where the liberties of Rome, which had 
 latterly been in so hazardous a state of fluctuation, 
 must be recovered or ruined by the first success of 
 either of the parties hastening to action. 
 
 During the time of Cicero's retirement in order to 
 avoid the violence of Antony, a great part of his 
 * Pnilipp. iv. 4 } 6.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 477 
 
 leisure was employed in the production of his "Para- 
 doxes" a number of theses devoted to investigating 
 the less common principles of the Stoical philosophy, 
 and in finishing the last and most admirable of his 
 moral works, his imperishable treatise upon the 
 whole circle of the duties of social life, generally 
 known as the "De Ofiiciis," composed in three books, 
 and dedicated to his son Marcus, for whose use it was 
 principally intended, and who was at the time devoting 
 his attention to philosophy under Cratippus, of Mity- 
 lene*. The beauty, both of the conception and 
 execution in this celebrated dissertation the exalted 
 character of its views of the virtues of benevolence and 
 justice its true appreciation of as much of the laws 
 of moral obligation as lies within the grasp of reason, 
 and the comparative purity of the system of conduct 
 which it enjoins, have never yet been regarded by the 
 wisest without approbation or by the best without 
 esteem; and have sometimes caused it to be considered 
 by its ardent admirers almost as the faint reflex of that 
 sun of Revelation which was now rapidly approaching 
 the horizon. Whatever may be the opinion of its 
 moral character, however, its merits in a literary 
 point of view cannot easily be exaggerated. On the 
 whole, indeed, it is a composition which is fully 
 worthy of being the closing work of Cicero the final 
 legacy of the most illustrious of Romans, in the elo- 
 quence of the closet as well as that of the senate and 
 the forum, to a far from unlettered age the last link 
 in that golden chain of works, rich with the wealth of 
 imagination, and stamped with the vital impress of 
 free and vigorous thought ; the general tenor and 
 effect of which, owing to the consummate skill of 
 the writer, continue, long after a familiarity with 
 their details may have ceased, to dwell, like some old 
 but unforgotten melody, upon the mind and remem- 
 brance of their readers. 
 
 "^De OffidTs~7.T
 
 478 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Consulate of Hirtius and Pansa Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Phi- 
 lippics Departure of the Ambassadors of the Senate for the 
 Camp of Antony Eighth and Ninth Philippics Successes of 
 Brutus in Macedonia Tenth Philippic Death of Caius-Trebo- 
 nius Dolabella declared a public Enemy Twelfth Philippic 
 General Posture of Affairs iu the Provinces The Consul 
 Pansa inarches into Gaul Letter of Antony to Hirtius and 
 Octavius Lepidus writes to the Senate Thirteenth Philippic 
 Pansa attempts to effect a Junction with the Army of Hirtius 
 Battle of Forum Gallorum Antony retreats to his Lines before 
 Mutina Fourteenth Philippic Antony attacked in bis En- 
 trenchments and defeated Death of Hirtius Antony raises the 
 Siege of Mutina and retreats towards the Alps Successes of the 
 Party of the Senate under Cassius, in Syria. 
 
 ON the arrival of the calends of January of the 
 year 711, a year in which the annals of Rome 
 display the last of the series of her presiding ma- 
 gistrates freely elected, in the names of Hirtius 
 and Pansa, the new consuls having performed the 
 usual sacrifices proceeded, in the midst of a full atten- 
 dance of senators convened in the Capitol*, to lay 
 before them the general condition of the republic, 
 and more particularly to invite the expression of their 
 opinion respecting the conduct of Antony in laying 
 siege to Mutina, as well as on the subject of the 
 rewards which had been decreed in the preceding 
 month, to Octavius, Decimus Brutus, and the soldiers 
 of the fourth and Martial legions. These points of 
 discussion were introduced by both the consuls in 
 formal orations, declaratory of their intention of sup- 
 porting the liberties of their country to the last, 
 against all opponents, and exhorting their audience 
 to exhibit a similar display of constancy. Quintus 
 Fufius Calenus, the father-in-law of Pansa, who had, 
 by the nomination of Caesar, been elected four years 
 previously, to the consulate, a senator known to be 
 
 * Appian. De Bell. Civil, iii.; Dio, xlv.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 479 
 
 in the interests of Antony, was then, in the usual 
 form, desired to pronounce his opinion, and to the 
 indignation, although not to the surprise of the 
 constitutional party, instead of aiding them with 
 his influence, advocated the more moderate course of 
 sending ambassadors to Cisalpine Gaul, to admonish 
 the late consul to relinquish his arms and submit to 
 the authority of the senate. His motion was sup- 
 ported by Piso and by several other speakers*, wlfo 
 argued that it would be a palpable act of injustice to- 
 declare any man a public enemy without giving him 
 an opportunity either of defending or explaining his 
 conduct. This line of reasoning called forth from 
 Cicero another splendid exhibition of oratorical 
 power, in the speech entitled the fifth Philippic ; in 
 which, with admirable force and justice of demon- 
 stration, he shows the inconsistency and madness of 
 temporising at so dangerous a juncture, and of de- 
 grading the majesty of the Roman senate and people 
 by any further communications with one whom their 
 former resolutions had placed in the condition of a 
 public enemy. He briefly, but with singular elo- 
 quence, recapitulates the whole of the illegal actions 
 of Antony since the death of Cassar, and strenuously 
 advises that, on such evidence of his hostility to his 
 country, instead of sending ambassadors to allow him 
 further time for pursuing his traitorous designs, it 
 should be declared that a serious rebellion was in 
 existence, and that all good citizens should be re- 
 quired, laying aside their ordinary occupations, to 
 take arms against the adversary of the cause of free- 
 dom. From this subject he passes on to the public 
 honours to be decreed to Marcus Lepidus, for his late 
 services in conciliating Sextus Pompey to the repub- 
 lic, and to Decimus Brutus, now, according to the 
 disposition of Cagsar, consul elect, as well as to Octa- 
 * Dio (lib. xlv.) has given a long, but evidently spurious, account 
 of this debate.
 
 480 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 vius, for their late conduct. Asa recompense to the 
 first, he proposes a vote of thanks and a gilded eques- 
 trian statue in the rostra to the second, a general ac- 
 knowledgment of his services to thestate to the third, 
 whom he terms a divine youth providentially sent by 
 some superior power to the rescue of his countrymen, 
 and raises above Cneius Pompey in his early exhibition 
 of the qualities of a general and patriotic statesman, 
 the more solid rewards specified in the following 
 proposed decree: " Whereas Cains Caesar, the son 
 of Caius, pontifex and proprietor, has, at a perilous 
 crisis of the republic, excited and levied a veteran 
 force to defend the liberty of the Roman people; and, 
 whereas, the Martial and fourth legions, under the 
 guidance, and at the suggestion of the said Caius 
 Caesar, with the most perfect unanimity and greatest 
 zeal towards the republic, have defended, and still do 
 defend the liberty of the people of Rome ; and, 
 whereas, the said Caius Caesar, propraetor, has lately 
 set out to the assistance of the province of Gaul, 
 and has placed at the disposal of the Roman people 
 a force consisting of horse, archers, and elephants, 
 serving under his command, and has upheld the 
 safety and dignity of his country in a time of extreme 
 danger; may it, therefore, please the senate, that 
 Caius Caesar, the son of Caius, be from henceforth 
 vested with the dignity of pontifex, propraetor, and 
 senator, and vote in the place and capacity of praetor ; 
 and that, in standing for any magistracy, he be re- 
 garded in the same light as if he had been actually 
 praetor the year before*." He then employs all his 
 ingenuity in panegyrising Octavius, and, with human 
 blindness to the future, engages for his sincerity in 
 his attachment to the republic. Nothing can exem- 
 plify a stronger confidence than his assertion upon 
 this subject : " I will even dare," lie exclaims, 
 " Conscript Fathers, to pledge my own credit and 
 
 * Philipp. v. J7.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 481 
 
 honour to yourselves, and to the people of Rome, 
 (which, unless under dread of compulsion, I should, 
 under other circumstances, never venture to do, from 
 fear of incurring the accusation of rashness), and on 
 this security, promise, undertake, and declare, that 
 the same character which he now possesses as a 
 citizen, Caius Caesar will at all times constantly main- 
 tain ; and continue to the end in every respect such as 
 we could wish and desire him to be." The oration 
 ends with recommending that Lucius Egnatuleius 
 should also he allowed to stand for office three years 
 before the legal age, and appoints liberal rewards, 
 consisting of exemption from future service, and 
 grants of land and money, to the veterans who had 
 assembled at the summons of Octavius, and to the 
 lately revolted legions*. The honours proposed by 
 Cicero in his fifth Philippic were readily conceded by 
 his audience, but so great was the difference of opinion 
 upon the more important question of sending ambas- 
 sadors to Antony, that three whole days were con- 
 sumed in warm debates upon the subject, during 
 which Cicero has been represented as malignantly 
 assailed by his opponent Calenus, in a speech at least 
 equal to any of his own in sarcastic bitternesst. The 
 original motion was at length carried, in consequence 
 of the intercession of Selvius the tribune, in favour of 
 the Antonian party ; and it was decreed that three 
 ambassadors, Lucius Piso, Lucius Philippus, and Ser- 
 vius Sulpicius, should be despatched without delay 
 into Gaul, to command Antony, on the authority of 
 the senate, instantly to raise the siege of Mutina, and 
 to convey .to Brutus the sense entertained by his 
 fellow-citizens of his courage and merits. While the 
 deliberations preceding this resolution were going- 
 forward, the population of Rome, assembling in 
 immense multitudes in the forum, anxiously awaited 
 the event, and as soon as the senate was known to 
 
 *Philipp7v. J9. . f Dio, xlv. 
 
 I I
 
 482 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 have broken up, called with one voice upon Cicero to 
 give them an account of the result of the meeting 
 from the rostra. This was accordingly done, after he 
 had been introduced to the assembly by the tribune 
 Apuleius, in the speech which stands the sixth in 
 order among the Philippics, containing an avowal of 
 his conviction that Antony would never concede to 
 the demands of the ambassadors, and exhorting his 
 countrymen to prepare for the war which was no 
 longer avoidable. It concludes with an energetic 
 exhortation to his auditory to exert themselves, at 
 this imminent crisis, for the liberty decreed to them 
 by the gods, (who had placed all the rest of the earth 
 in subjection to their authority,) as their national 
 inheritance; and either to conquer in the impending 
 struggle, or prefer the last extremities to that servi- 
 tude to which other nations might submit, but which 
 the orator proudly declares to be incompatible with 
 the destinies of the Roman people*. Nearly to the 
 same eftect was his oration before the senators, when 
 they were consulted by the consuls soon afterwards 
 on certain questions respecting the Appian-way and 
 the coinage, and by one of the tribunes of the people 
 relative to the office of the Luperci. On this occasion 
 Cicero, when asked his opinion, availed himself of 
 the usual privilege, which allowed every member of 
 the national council, if he thought it necessary, to 
 depart from the subject immediately under consider- 
 ation and to introduce his opinion upon other ques- 
 tions affecting the general interests, by labouring, 
 with the whole force of his eloquence, to counteract 
 the endeavours of the friends of Antony ; who were 
 recommending a peace with him on any conditions, 
 as at least preferable to the horrors of civil discord 
 with which the state was threatened. Antony, in 
 connexion with his brother Lucius, is again alluded 
 to in such opprobrious terms as might well have 
 
 * Philipp. vi. 7.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 483 
 
 given additional edge to his resentment against his 
 unwearied accuser. He is described as a foul and per- 
 nicious monster, whom it would be madness on the part 
 of the hunter to suffer to escape when fairly caught 
 and entangled inhis snares, while his brother is branded 
 with the appellation of a common gladiator ; " which 
 word (says Cicero) I use not in any figurative sense, 
 but as those are accustomed to employ it who deliver 
 themselves in plain and unadorned Latin*." The orator 
 closes his speech by exhorting the consul Pansa not 
 to suffer the military resources in his hands to remain 
 idle, and briefly assents, with respect to the subjects 
 of discussion, to an opinion expressed by Servilius. 
 
 The tempest of war was in the meantime fast 
 thickening around the walls of Mutina. Octavius 
 Csesar, at no period of his life particularly adapt- 
 ed for the office of a general, and strongly suspected, 
 on many occasions, of actual cowardice, after directing 
 the march of his legions across the Apennines, and 
 advancing as far as Forum Cornelii, on the road from 
 Ariminum to the besieged city, had there awaited 
 the arrival of additional reinforcements, without 
 making any attempts to impede the progress of the 
 besiegers in the erection of the enormous works, 
 under protection of which they continued to batter 
 the ramparts occupied by Decimus Brutus and his 
 resolute garrison. On the arrival of Hirtius, how- 
 ever, who having obtained the commission of acting 
 in Gaul by lot, had set out from Rome in the beginning 
 of the year at the head of two fresh legions, a vigor- 
 ous attack was immediately ordered by that expe- 
 rienced scholar of Caesar upon the outposts of the 
 enemy, as a result of which Antony was speedily 
 dispossessed of the strong position of Claterna, with 
 
 * Lucius Antonius was said while in Asia to have assumed the 
 arms of a mirmillo, and in that character to have barbarously mur- 
 dered one of his intimate companions, whom he had compelled to 
 encounter him in single combat. Philipp. vii. 6.
 
 484 THE LIFE OP CICEItO. 
 
 the loss of several of his cavalry in the action*. 
 Hirtius would probably have pushed his successes 
 still farther, had he not been advised by Cicero, 
 with whom he was in constant communication, to 
 hazard nothing until he should be joined by his 
 colleague Pansa, who was vigorously carrying on 
 additional levies, with the intention of hastening as 
 soon as possible to his assistance. As it was, his 
 presence compelled Antony to divide his forces, and 
 leaving a part to continue the operations commenced 
 against Mutina, to take post with the rest at Bononia, 
 to observe the motions of the consular army. While 
 the three leaders were thus watching eacli other's pro- 
 ceedings, Philippus and Piso (the third ambassador, 
 Servius Sulpicius, having diedsuddenly upon the road) 
 arrived at the camp of Antony, as bearers of the com- 
 mands of the senate, and were received with great 
 courtesy ; being freely allowed to proceed as far as 
 Mutina, and to inspect at their leisure the formidable 
 approaches making against the city. As Cicero had 
 anticipated and predicted, however, their journey, in 
 all its material points, proved wholly ineffectual. 
 So far from laying down his arms unconditionally, 
 Antony continued daily to storm with all his batter- 
 ing engines against the walls of Mutina before their 
 eyest ; and, in reply to the peremptory order he had 
 received, notified as the only terms on which he was 
 willing to listen to a treaty for a single moment, a 
 confirmation of all the grants which he had made in 
 conjunction with Dolabella, during their joint consul- 
 ship, as well as of the acts which he had latterly pro- 
 duced, as authorised by the papers of Csesar in his 
 possession. He farther insisted that no inquiry should 
 be made with respect to the treasure which he had 
 .seized in the temple of Ops ; and that he should he- 
 allowed to retain possession for five years to come of 
 the province of Gallia Comata, or Gaul beyond the 
 * Pnilipp. viii. 2. t Philipp. viii. ~.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 485 
 
 Alps, with a force of six legions, partly to be sup- 
 plied from the army of Decirnus Brutus, as well as to 
 continue in arms as long as Brutus and Cassius should 
 retain any military command*. On such conditions 
 he promised to suspend his advances against Mutina, 
 and to relinquish his claims upon Cisalpine Gaul. 
 
 The receipt of these insolent propositions, when 
 made public by the ambassadors after their return 
 to the city in the beginning of the month of February, 
 excited a general feeling of indignation. Yet, at a 
 senate convened by Pansa to deliberate upon the 
 steps to l>e next pursued, Calenus and his faction had 
 interest enough to soften many of the resolutions pro- 
 posed by the party of Cicero, and wholly to frustrate 
 others. The Avar, which the latter urged the assem- 
 bly to declare to be then raging against the state, 
 was altered to the milder designation of a " tumult." 
 
 O 
 
 Antony, instead of being proclaimed an open enemy 
 to his country, was simply designated its adversary 
 or opponent ; and a general prohibition, brought for- 
 ward to prevent all well-wishers to the republic from 
 holding from henceforth any communication w T ith him 
 in person, was met by an exception in favour of his 
 lieutenant Varius Cotyla, then present, and atten- 
 tively observing, as well as taking notes of the 
 progress of the debate. The main point, however, 
 to which the constitutionalists had directed their 
 efforts, a resolution that the military habit should 
 immediately be assumed by the citizens, was carried 
 with little difficulty. This day's proceedings are 
 commemorated by Cicero in his eighth Philippic, 
 addressed to the senate on the following morning, 
 in which the resolutions already passed, and the 
 moderate conduct of Piso and Philippus in their 
 late embassy, are commented upon with indignant 
 severity, and the additional clauses proposed, that 
 Antony's adherents should be invited, by an unre- 
 * Philipp. viii. 9.
 
 486 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 stricted promise of pardon, to. return to their duty 
 by the 15th of March, and that with the exception 
 of Varius Cotyla, whosoever should in the meantime 
 pass over to his camp should be declared an enemy 
 to the constitution, and dealt with accordingly*. 
 
 After the settlement of these more important ques- 
 tions, the senate proceeded, on the motion of Pansa, 
 to consider the public honours to be decreed to 
 Servius Sulpicius, who, by his death in his late 
 capacity of ambassador, was considered by his friends 
 as having in some sort sacrificed himself in the 
 service of his country. Publius Servilius having, in 
 reference to this question, proposed the erection of 
 a sepulchre at the expense of the nation, without 
 the usual accompaniment of a statue in the rostra, 
 arguing that the latter was generally reserved for those 
 who had fallen by actual violence when invested 
 with the sacred character of envoys, was answered 
 by Cicero in a brief oration, of which the principal 
 object is to prove, that since Sulpicius had persisted, 
 while labouring under a dangerous disease, in ful- 
 filling the duties of the office enjoined upon him, 
 his death, thus accelerated by his self-devotion, could 
 scarcely be considered an ordinary casualty; and that 
 he was therefore entitled to the fullest marks of 
 respect paid on former occasions to citizens who had 
 perished while in the fulfilment of a similar office. 
 We learn incidentally, from a writer of much later 
 date, that the arguments of Cicero in behalf of his 
 deceased friend were successful ; since a brazen statue 
 of Sulpicius is described as existing, in the third 
 century, on the rostra of Augustust, the result, 
 doubtless, of the oration recommending its erection to 
 the senate, which is still extant under the title of the 
 ninth Philippic. 
 
 * Philipp. viii. 11. 
 
 f- Pomponius de Origin? Juris, quoted by Miinutius in his 
 argument to the oration.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 487 
 
 The tenth of these famous speeches owed its origin 
 to the receipt of despatches from Marcus Brutus in 
 Macedonia, conveying the most favourable intelli- 
 gence respecting the prospects of the party of the 
 senate in that province. Brutus, immediately on his 
 arrival at Athens in the preceding year, had sum- 
 moned most of the young Roman nobility then 
 pursuing their studies in the city to join his councils ; 
 and easily induced them, by his persuasions, actively 
 to espouse the cause of liberty. He had then, after 
 being aided with all the resources at the command of 
 the proconsul Hortensius, taken the field with so much 
 vigour against Caius Antonius, who had been des- 
 patched by his brother to secure the government against 
 the republic, as to compel him, after abandoning all his 
 other posts, to retire to Apollonia with but seven cohorts 
 remaining of his whole army. Of this Brutus now 
 gave notice to the consuls, adding at the same time 
 the highest commendations of his active assistants, 
 Hortensius and Marcus Cicero ; the latter of whom, 
 relinquishing at the first landing of Brutus the 
 schools of the philosophers, and the society of 
 Cratippus, for active service under his command, 
 had been appointed by him to the command of his 
 cavalry, and had already distinguished himself by 
 making prisoners a whole legion under the orders of 
 Piso, the legate of Antony*. Brutus also stated that 
 Vatinius had opened the gates of Dyrrachium at his 
 summons; that the greater part of the enemy's horse 
 had come over to his party; that Caius Antonius might 
 shortly be expected to be compelled to surrender at dis- 
 cretion ; and that as the general result of such a splen- 
 did series of successes, the whole of Macedonia and 
 Illyricum, with the rest of Greece, was entirely at the 
 disposal, and occupied by the troops, of the senate. 
 
 * To this circumstance his parent exultingly alludes in his tenth 
 Philippic : Legio quam L. Piso ducebat, legatus Antonii, Ciceroni 
 se filio meo tradidit.
 
 488 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Pansa lost no time in summoning that assembly to 
 receive this welcome information, in commemoration 
 of which a noble paean* was uttered by the great 
 ornament of their deliberations, now confident of the 
 ultimate victory of the cause which he had under- 
 taken, and congratulating himself upon the vigorous 
 and resolute character of his former counsels. 
 After bestowing a highly- wrought panegyric upon 
 Brutus, vehemently censuring Calenus for his ill 
 affection to wards so eminent a patriot, demonstrating 
 the serious evils which would have arisen from the 
 possession of Greece by the partisans of Antony, 
 and proving that nothing was to be dreaded from any 
 extraordinary powers which might be conferred upon 
 the late victors in that country, the orator brought 
 forward as an improvement upon a decree proposed 
 by Calenus, one of his own, which was readily 
 adopted, confirming Brutus in his title of proconsul ; 
 empowering him to defend and keep possession of 
 Illyricum, Macedonia, and the whole of Greece ; to 
 retain the full force at present under his command; 
 and to raise such sums as might appear necessary 
 for its maintenance, either from the ordinary sources 
 of revenue, or the strength of the public credit. 
 Thanks were also given in this decree for his eminent 
 services to the proconsul Hortensius, who was at 
 the same time desired to hold the province of Mace- 
 donia until his successor should be appointed by 
 the senate. 
 
 The satisfaction generally felt at Rome on account 
 of the prosperity which had attended the arms of 
 Brutus in Greece, was soon afterwards damped by 
 Tinwelcome news from Asia ; where Caius Tre- 
 
 * In what beauty of language is this list of triumphs summed 
 up! Tenet igitur populus Romanus Macedonian! ; tenet Illyricum ; 
 tuetur Graciam ; nostrse sunt legiones ; nostra levis arrnatura ; 
 noster equitatus, maximeque noster est Brutus, semperque noster, 
 cum sua excellentissima virtute reipublicse natus, turn fato quodam 
 paterni maternique generis et noniinis. Philipp. x. 6.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 489 
 
 bonius, one of the most active conspirators against 
 Caesar, and the only one among them of consular rank 
 had established himself; occupying with a strong 
 garrison the city of Smyrna, and maintaining a 
 beneficial communication with Cassias, now in pos- 
 session of almost the whole of Syria, with an army 
 which, by recent additions, and the defection of a 
 considerable force, while on its march from Egypt 
 to receive the orders of Antony's late colleagiie in 
 the consulship, amounted to twelve whole legions. 
 Dolabella, to whom the province had been decreed 
 by the opposite faction, and who had been sent out 
 towards the end of his consulship to expel Cassius 
 from it by force, had entered, while marching past 
 the walls of Smyrna, into a conference with Tre- 
 bonius, held without the gates ; at which expres- 
 sions of respect, salutations, and even friendly em- 
 braces, took place between the two leaders ; and the 
 soldiers of Dolabella, although they were not suffered 
 to enter the town, were freely supplied with pro- 
 visions by the troops who composed the garrison. 
 This kindness was but ill repaid. Dolabella, on set- 
 ting out from Smyrna with the intention, as he gave 
 out, of pursuing his way towards Ephesus, into 
 which Trebonius had promised that he should be 
 peacefully received on condition of his retiring from 
 Smyrna, only continued his course in that direction as 
 long as he was followed by a party of horse which 
 Trebonius had commanded to observe his motions for 
 some distance. These had no sooner retired, than 
 hastily counter-marching his army, he again ap- 
 proached, under cover of night, the city which he 
 had left a few hours previously; and finding the 
 ramparts, as he had expected, only guarded by a 
 few careless sentinels, carried it at once by escalade. 
 Trebonius, who had retired to rest, without any sus- 
 picion of danger at hand, was seized in his chamber, 
 and hurried before his remorseless captor; who,
 
 490 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 after exposing him to the most excruciating tortures 
 for two days, to force from him a confession of the 
 amount of the public money in his hands and the 
 places where it was deposited, commanded him at 
 length to be strangled, his head to be fixed upon a 
 spear and exhibited to the people, and his mangled 
 remains, after being openly dragged through the 
 streets, to be thrown into the sea*. This was the 
 first noble blood offered by his vindictive avengers to 
 the memory of Csesar a fearful omen of the tide of 
 slaughter by which it was to be followed. The in- 
 telligence of the manner in which it had been shed 
 excited the senate at Rome, who were speedily con- 
 voked to deliberate upon the subject, to declare 
 Dolabella, on the motion of Calenus, a public enemy, 
 and to sentence his estates to immediate confiscation. 
 It was also determined at once to dispossess him of 
 Asia by force of arms ; but the appointment of a 
 general to the office was the subject of long and 
 dubious discussion ; the friends of Antony, on the 
 one part, being anxious that the present consuls 
 should be directed to take the war under their own 
 management, with Syria and Asia as their provinces, 
 in the hope that their leader would thus be left com- 
 paratively unmolested in Cisalpine Gaul ; while a 
 second party advised that Publius Serviljus should be 
 entrusted with the task of avenging Trebonius, and 
 for that purpose immediately despatched to the East, 
 with an especial commission. Cicero, in his oration 
 upon the subject, (the eleventh Philippic,) advocated . 
 a course altogether different ; and after touching in 
 glowing and elevated language upon the death of 
 Trebonius as that of a glorious martyr in the cause 
 of freedom, and warning his audience of the cru- 
 elties which might be expected from the rest of the 
 Antonian faction, after this terrible act of one of 
 the most eminent of their leaders, advised that, by 
 
 * Dio, xlrii. Philipp. xi. 2.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 491 
 
 an especial decree, the government of Syria, Asia, 
 Bithynia, and Pontus, and the command of the war 
 to be waged against Dolabclla should be entrusted 
 to Caius Cassius ; the superior advantages afforded 
 by whose position and resources for speedily over- 
 powering the enemies of his country in the Eastern 
 provinces, he demonstrated by the most clear and 
 convincing arguments, It does not appear, however, 
 that this decree was ever passed, since, in a letter to 
 Cassius, giving him an account of his exertions in 
 his behalf, Cicero represents it as opposed by Pansa, 
 (who was ambitious of obtaining the command for 
 himself,) botli in the senate and at a subsequent 
 assembly of the people'", in which the orator warmly 
 advocated the same plan. 
 
 As the consulate of Antony and Dolabella was 
 drawing towards its close, the statue of Minerva, 
 which Cicero had consecrated in the Capitol on the 
 evening of his exile, and again removed from 
 thence to his house on the first moment of his return, 
 had been suddenly thrown down and shattered to 
 pieces by a violent tempestt. This, in token of their 
 esteem and respect, was now ordered, as may be 
 gathered from a letter to his friend Cornificius, by a 
 particular resolution of the senate upon the eigh- 
 teenth of March |, to be restored at the public 
 expense. The fact, recorded amidst events of much 
 graver consequence, is sufficiently characteristic of 
 the spirit of the age, and it was precisely of the 
 kind likely to be regarded by his countrymen, after 
 the death of Cicero, as having prognosticated his 
 approaching end. In such a light it was certainly 
 not considered by the orator, whose power and in- 
 
 * Ad Diversos, xii. 7. t Dio. xlv. 
 
 J Ad Diversos, xii. 25. The festival of the Quinquatria, a (lay- 
 especially devoted to the honours of the goddess : Quinquatribus 
 frequenti senatu causam tuarn egi non invita Minerva. Eo ipso 
 die senatus decrevit ut Minerva nostra custos urbis, quam turbo 
 - dejecerat, restitueretur.
 
 492 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 fluence had now risen to a height not hitherto 
 exceeded in his most exalted state of dignity, and 
 who might be well encouraged, by the expected issue 
 of the events in which he had of late been a principal 
 actor, to anticipate, instead of the calamitous fate 
 reserved for him, more ample honours from the grati- 
 tude of his countrymen than any by which he had 
 yet been distinguished. 
 
 The garrison of Mutina, weakened by the constant 
 assaults directed against them, and prevented by the 
 judicious dispositions of Antony from receiving the 
 least supplies of men or of provisions from their 
 friends without, were now reduced to the last ex- 
 tremity. Their spirits had been for some time kept 
 up by intimations of the vicinity of the army sent 
 for their relief, conveyed by lights hoisted to the 
 tops of lofty trees, (which, as the surrounding country 
 was perfectly level, were easily seen at night from 
 the ramparts,) and afterwards by the more direct 
 communications afforded by expert divers ; who un- 
 dertook by swimming down the river to convey to 
 its destination any intelligence which it might be 
 thought requisite to forward to the town, engraved 
 on metal plates. The historian Pliny adds, that 
 when this method of intercourse was stopped by nets 
 drawn across the stream, letters were still, for some 
 time, sent by Brutus into the camp of the consul 
 attached to the feet of carrier-pigeons*. By these 
 means, the desperate condition of the besieged was 
 known at Rome ; and although the indomitable reso- 
 lution of the garrison and its commander was fully 
 appreciated, the intelligence was expected almost 
 
 * " Quin et internuntiae in rebus magnis fure, epistolas annexas 
 earum pedibua obsidione Mutinensi in castra consulum Decitno 
 Bruto rnittente." The succeeding comment is characteristic of 
 the style of this quaint but elegant writer: " Quid vallum et 
 vigil obsidio, atque etiam vetia amne pisetenta, profu6re Antonio, 
 per coelum eunte nuntio ?" Nat. Hist. x. 53.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 493 
 
 hourly that the town had been carried by the assail- 
 ants, and Brutus subjected to the fate of Trebonius. 
 Under the influence of this apprehension, it was pro- 
 posed by the consul Pansa, that a second embassy 
 should be sent to negociate a peace with Antony. 
 Many members of the senate seconded the motion, 
 and added their advice, that Publius Servilius and 
 Cicero should be charged with the commission. The 
 latter, influenced by whatever motives, so far from 
 making any objection to the plan, even expressed 
 his willingness to act in the capacity assigned to 
 him. But a night of reflection convinced him 
 that he could neither, consistently with his own 
 safety, nor with the interests of the republic, appear 
 in the presence of Antony, and that any negociation 
 would now tend but to lessen the dignity of the 
 senate without a chance of producing any other effect 
 than of increasing the insolence of their enemy*. His 
 change of opinion, and determination to decline the 
 embassy which he had incautiously accepted, were 
 accordingly expressed the next day in his twelfth 
 Philippic ; in which, blended with his usual thunders 
 against the leader in arms against the state, he gave 
 convincing reasons for suspending the proposed mis- 
 sion, or, at least, for exempting himself from under- 
 taking it. The project was accordingly dismissed ; 
 but, as it was necessary to make an immediate 
 attempt in some shape for the rescue of Decimus 
 Brutus, it was finally determined that Pansa should 
 hasten at the v head of four legions which were quar- 
 tered in the suburbs, and eager for active service, to 
 effect a junction with his colleague Hirtius, and 
 oblige Antony, either at once to raise the siege of 
 Mutina, or to hazard, with every prospect of dis- 
 comfiture, a general action with the troops of the 
 republic. 
 
 Pansa seems to have set out upon his expedition 
 * Pbilipp. xii. 2.
 
 494 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 towards the end of the month of March*, leaving 
 Cicero to manage affairs at Rome during his absence. 
 The indefatigable industry and versatile mind of this 
 eminent statesman, now formally acknowledged the 
 head of the party whose movements he had so long- 
 directed, were never exerted with greater activity 
 than at the present important juncture ; as may be 
 judged from as much of his correspondence as is left 
 with the principal generals tinder arms for the pre- 
 servation of the commonwealth, exhorting, encourag- 
 ing, and inducing each, by every possible argument, 
 strenuously to maintain the part he had under- 
 taken obviating objections allaying jealousies, 
 and holding out the promise of ample and certain 
 rewards. That a clear idea may be formed of the 
 resources upon which the senate and their opponents 
 at this time relied, and of the prospects and condition 
 of both, it may be as well to cast a general glance 
 upon the position of the contending parties, both in 
 Italy and its dependent provinces. 
 
 In the East Caius Cassius, at the head of a pow- 
 erful fleet and army which had placed itself under 
 his -command, and aided by Lentulus, who had been 
 sent with an extraordinary commission into Asia, 
 was pursuing that career of victory against Dolabella 
 which his eminent military talents and thorough 
 knowledge of the country in which he was acting 
 were so likely to ensure. In Macedonia the war 
 was completely at an end. Caius Antonius, after 
 his retreat to Apollonia, on gaining information of the 
 advance of Brutus to invest the place, had thought 
 it expedient to withdraw to Buthrotum; but having 
 been attacked on his march by a detachment of the 
 enemy, and weakened by the loss of three of the seven 
 cohorts he commanded, he was completely routed in 
 
 * See the letter of Cicero to Plancus, (Ad Diversos,-x. 10,) dated 
 the third of the calends of April, (the 30th of March,) in which he 
 speaks of hoth the consuls as being absent from the city.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 495 
 
 a second engagement with a division headed by the 
 younger Marcus Cicero, and compelled to surrender 
 himself prisoner. A letter, ascribed to Brutus, is 
 preserved requesting the advice of Cicero as to the 
 conduct to be pursued towards the captive, and speak- 
 ing, in such high terms of the services rendered by his 
 son, as must have been especially gratifying to the 
 parent to whom the commendation was addressed: 
 " Your son," he writes, " does so much to deserve 
 my approbation by his industry, patience, unwearied 
 exertions, magnanimity, and, in short, by the zealous 
 performance of every duty, as to induce me to believe 
 that he constantly bears in mind the father to whom 
 he owes his birth. Since, therefore, he is already so 
 far the object of your affection that no representations 
 of mine can increase your regard towards him, con- 
 cede thus far to my judgment, as to believe that he 
 will have no occasion to have recourse to your renown 
 in order to attain to his father's honours*." In the 
 same epistle he complains of both the want of men 
 and money to preserve his recent conquests. To this 
 Cicero replies evasively, by stating the opinion of 
 Pansa, that all the levies that could be raised would 
 be required by the exigencies of the state in Italy, 
 where he seems justly to think that a blow decisive 
 of the fortunes of the republic must speedily be 
 struckt. In this letter he also advises thatC. Antonius 
 should be strictly guarded until the fate of Mutina 
 and its governor should be known. But in other 
 epistles of later date the doctrine of severity towards 
 the vanquished, to which the mild and benevolent 
 disposition of M. Brutus was utterly averse, is 
 strongly urged $ ; and it is not obscurely intimated, 
 
 * Ad Brut. xxi. Dated from Dyrraehiuni, April 1st, and 
 received by Cicero at Rome on the eighth of the same month. 
 
 t Ad Brut. xxii. 
 
 J This dangerous policy is thus expressed : " Veliementer a te 
 Brute dissentio ; nee clementiae tuse concedo, sed salutaris severitas
 
 496 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 that the extreme penalty of their rebellion against 
 the state, if inflicted upon any of the family of 
 Antony, would be far from meeting with the disappro- 
 bation of the citizens of Rome. The answer to this 
 suggestion, on the part of Brutus, is a noble and manly 
 vindication of the course he had pursued, and, to his 
 eternal honour, contains a direct refusal to be accessory 
 to the death of one whom, after having granted him 
 his life as a prisoner of war, he was now compelled, in 
 common justice and humanity, to reserve for the future 
 judgment of the senate and Roman people*. 
 
 The province of Africa was held by Quintus Cor- 
 nificius, an old friend and correspondent of Cicero, and 
 sufficiently attached to the cause, which he afterwards 
 sealed with his blood, to leave the senate no reason 
 for apprehending any opposition to their commands 
 from a country under his government. In the Far- 
 ther Spain the polished and accomplished Asinius 
 Pollio, immortalised in the pages of Horace and 
 Virgil, maintained at least that appearance of sub- 
 mission to the established authorities, which is 
 expressed in his admirably worded letter to Cicero 
 from Corduba, dated the sixteenth of March, of this 
 year; in which he gives as the reason of his delay, 
 the impossibility of advancing into Italy while all 
 the passes of the Alps were guarded by the soldiers 
 
 vincit inanem speciem clementiae. Quod si clementes esse volumus 
 nunquam deerunt bella wivilia." Ad Brut. iii. ; and again, if 
 the epistle be genuine, Ad Brut, xxiii. " Neque dissolutum a te 
 quidquam homines expectant neque crudele. Hujus rei moderatio 
 focilis est, ut in duces vehemens sit, in milites liberalis." To 
 the admirers of the character of Cicero, these passages will appear 
 among the strongest evidences against the authenticity of the letters 
 to M. Brntus. If really from his pen, the writer could little have 
 anticipated the use soon afterwards made of such maxims against 
 himself. 
 
 * Ad Brut. iv. The whole of this beautiful epistle, written 
 after the intelligence of the relief of Mutina, is well worthy 
 attention.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 497 
 
 of Lepidus. The latter, to whom the province of 
 Hither Spain had been assigned by Julius Caesar with 
 a force of no less than seven leo-ions, after suspending 
 
 1 11* ... 
 
 his inarch to his government on receiving information 
 of the commencement of hostilities in Italy, Avas now 
 slowly retracing his steps through the territory of 
 Narbonne, yet undetermined as to the party which 
 it would be most to his interest to espouse. He had 
 received in ungracious silence the honours lately 
 decreed to him by the senate for his successful interfer- 
 ence to bring about a reconciliation of Sextus Pompey 
 with the state, and was viewed, both from this sign 
 of disaffection, and from his well-known want of 
 principle, with equal suspicion and dislike by the 
 republicans. Transalpine Gaul was held by the 
 consul elect, Lucius Plancus, with an army consisting 
 of five legions and a multitude of auxiliary troops, 
 fully equipped for immediate service. This comman- 
 der, after long hesitating to make any active movement 
 or open declaration of attachment to the party of the 
 constitution, had been at length gained over, by the 
 powerful persuasions contained in several letters of 
 Cicero, still remaining, to declare for the senate. His 
 public communication to that effect to the consuls, 
 prastors, tribunes, and senate, was received soon after 
 the departure of Pansa from Rome, and afforded 
 universal joy from the prospect it held out of the 
 accession of so important an increase to the force 
 already at their disposal, and the assurances con- 
 tained in it, that all the cities in the province under 
 the command of the writer were perfectly disposed 
 to second him in his exertions to maintain their 
 national liberties, which they seemed to consider as 
 identified with the cause of Roman freedom*. 
 
 In Italy, the march of Pansa across the Apennines 
 towards Cisalpine Gaul, and the prospect of an imme- 
 
 * Ad Diversos, x. 8. 
 K K
 
 493 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 cliate engagement with the army of Antony, as soon 
 as he should have united his troops with those of 
 Hirtius and Octavius, still further excited the hopes 
 and anticipations of certain success among the friends 
 of liberty. Beyond this, however, nothing had 
 been effected towards the delivery of Decimus Brutus 
 from his perilous situation. The relieving armies 
 were yet stationed at Forum Cornelii and Claterna, 
 separated from the division covering the siege of 
 Mutina, and commanded by Antony in person, by 
 the streams of the Rhenus and Lavinius ; while the 
 most desperate efforts were constantly made to 
 win the town, now exposed to the extremities of 
 privation in consequence of the tedious blockade it 
 had undergone, by various methods of assault. The 
 whole strength of Antony, however, was not com- 
 prised in the army stationed about Mutina, since two 
 legions in his service, under the orders of Ventidius, 
 were lying in the Picenum ; whither they had re- 
 treated after the abandonment of a design of suddenly 
 entering Rome, and carrying off the principal mem- 
 bers of the senatorial party, with Cicero at their 
 head*, and were now securely posted in such a man- 
 ner as completely to command the Flaminian way. 
 
 While such was the general condition of the re- 
 public at home and abroad, a letter was received at 
 Rome, which had been forwarded by Antony from 
 his lines near Mutina to Octavius and Hirtius, and, 
 after perusal, transmitted by them without delay to 
 the senate. This contained an address to the two 
 commanders, intended to excite in both a feeling of 
 disaffection towards the cause for which they were in 
 arms ; and, as singularly expressive of the mingled 
 daring and subtlety of the future triumvir, (who, like 
 the Spartan monarch of old, was never indisposed 
 to eke out the lion's skin with that of the fox,) 
 * Appian. De Bellis Civil, iii.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 499 
 
 it seems not unworthy of consideration. The epistle, 
 of which the very superscription was intended to 
 appear characteristic of military bluntness, may be 
 thus translated : 
 
 " ANTONY TO IIIRTIUS AND C/ESAU. 
 
 " The intelligence of the death of Trebonius has 
 given me no less joy than sorrow, since I could not but 
 exult on hearing that a villain had made some atone- 
 ment by such an end to the ashes of a most illustrious 
 individual, and that Divine justice had displayed itself 
 even within the short compass of a year, by actu- 
 ally accomplished, as well as in threatened, vengeance 
 against the crime of parricide. Deeply, however, 
 must I lament that Dolabella has been declared a 
 public enemy, for his punishment of an assassin, and 
 that the life of the son of a low buffoon has appeared 
 dearer to the Roman people than that of Caius Ceesar, 
 the parent of his country. But more painful to me 
 still is the reflection that you, Aulus Hirtius, loaded 
 with the benefits of Cassar, and raised by him to a 
 condition so exalted as to make you an object of 
 wonder to yourself, and that you, boy, who owe 
 everything to his name, should have exerted your- 
 self to the utmost that Dolabella might appear 
 justly condemned ; that a secret murderer should 
 be freed from the perils of a siege, and that Brutus 
 and Cassius should be invested with unlimited 
 power. Doubtless you are inclined to view the 
 present state of affairs as the past was once re- 
 garded. The camp of Pompey you term the senate. 
 The vanquished Cicero is considered your general. 
 You have strengthened Macedonia with arms, and 
 transferred Africa to the twice-captured Varus ; 
 despatched Cassius into Syria; suffered Cascato enjoy 
 the tribunate ; deprived the Luperci of the revenues 
 assigned them by Ca?sar ; abolished the colonies of 
 K K 2
 
 500 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 veterans, established both by the people and the senate ; 
 promised to restore to the people of Marseilles all of 
 which they have been deprived by right of war; 
 despised the regulation that no Pompeian can hold 
 office during life, fixed by the Hirtian law ; sup- 
 plied Brutus with the money of Apuleius ; com- 
 mended the execution of Poatus and Menedemus, the 
 friends of Caesar, and gifted by him with the freedom 
 of the city; and neglected the injuries of Theopompus, 
 compelled by Trebonius to fly despoiled and exiled 
 to Alexandria. You behold without resentment in 
 your camp Sergius Galba, girded with the same 
 dagger with which he slew Caesar ; have collected 
 forces composed of my own soldiery or of veteran troops, 
 as if for the destruction of Caesar's murderers, and 
 led them on, unaware of your designs, to endanger 
 the lives of their own quaestor, or general, or fellow- 
 soldiers. What, in short, have you not done or 
 approved or what more could Pompey himself do, 
 were he recalled to life ? To crown all, you refuse to 
 listen to overtures of peace, unless I allow Decimus 
 Brutus to escape, or supply him with provisions. 
 Reflect whether such conduct is likely to please those 
 veterans who are yet uncorrupted, since, as for your- 
 selves, you have been purchased by the poisoned gifts 
 and flatteries of your enemies. But you come, you will 
 say, to assist the troops whom I am besieging. I 
 have no wish to prevent their being saved, and suf- 
 fered to depart in whatever direction yon think fit, 
 provided they leave their general to perish as he has 
 deserved. You inform me that mention of peace has 
 been made in the senate, and that five persons of 
 consular dignity are appointed as ambassadors to 
 effect it. It is difficult to believe that those who 
 drove me to extremities, after I had offered the most 
 equitable conditions, and intended to remit some part 
 even of these, can act in any respect with moderation
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 501 
 
 or humanity ; nor is it very likely that the same 
 persons who have declared Dolabella a public enemy, 
 on account of his most righteous act, will feel inclined 
 to spare me, who profess myself a sharer in his senti- 
 ments. Consider, therefore, whether it is more useful 
 to your party, or more creditable to those enlisted for 
 its support, to avenge the death of Trebonius or that of 
 Caesar ; whether it is more equitable that we should 
 be at mortal contention to effect the revival of the 
 cause of Pompey, so often destroyed, or unite to 
 prevent ourselves from becoming the sport of our 
 enemies, who are sure to be the gainers by the death 
 of any one of us as a result of our disputes: although 
 fortune has hitherto interfered to prevent the spectacle 
 of two armies, belonging to the same party, fighting, 
 like rival gladiators, to please Cicero, the master of 
 the show ; who has been so far fortunate as to deceive 
 you with the same specious artifices* with which he 
 once boasted of having deluded Caesar. For my 
 own part, my resolution is already taken, neither to 
 submit to insult offered to myself or to my friends ; 
 nor to desert the party which once incurred the 
 hatred of Pompey; nor to suffer the veterans to be 
 ejected from their settlements, or dragged one by one 
 to torture ; nor to prove false to the faith which I 
 have plighted to Dolabella; nor to violate my alliance 
 with Lepidus, that most religious individual t^ nor 
 to betray Plancus, the participator of my counsels. 
 If the immortal gods assist me, as I confidently hope 
 they will, in following out these upright sentiments, 
 
 * In the original " elegantiis," an affected phrase which it is 
 difficult to translate by an appropriate term, and which Cicero does 
 not suffer to escape in his comments upon the sentences of the 
 epistle seriatim. 
 
 f- " Piissimi hominis." No one can forget the concentrated force 
 of irony with which Cicero falls upon this title : Tu porro ne pios 
 quidem sed piissimos quaeris ; et quod verbum omnino nullum in 
 iinguA. Latinfr est, id propter tuam divinam pietatein novutn 
 inUucis, Philipp. xiii. 19.
 
 0'02 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 life will be pleasing. If, however, a different fate 
 awaits me, I can at least enjoy, by anticipation, the 
 punishments which will afterwards fall upon your- 
 selves. For if the Pompeian faction, although van- 
 quished., behave themselves with so much insolence, 
 it will be for you to experience what their conduct 
 will be when victorious. My ultimate decision is 
 this to endure and forgive the injuries inflicted upon 
 me by my own friends, if they, on their part, are dis- 
 posed to bury them in oblivion, or to add their efforts 
 to mine in avenging the death of Caesar. It is not 
 my opinion that any ambassadors will be sent ; 
 when they arrive I shall be better acquainted with 
 what they have to propose." 
 
 This epistle, so well calculated to injure tlie repub- 
 lican cause, either by influenciag the minds of those 
 to whom it was addressed with a feeling of dislike 
 towards their political allies, or by exciting, when* 
 made public, a sense of jealousy and distrust of their 
 sincerity among the members of the senatorian party 
 was received almost simultaneously with a despatch 
 from Lepidus, earnestly recommending the adoption, of 
 pacific measures*. The communication was only re- 
 garded as a fresh evidence of his disaffection, and at 
 a meeting of the senate, convened to take it into con- 
 sideration, it was easily carried, at the suggestion of 
 Servilius, that, after being coolly thanked for his. 
 unwelcome interference, under pretence of reconciling 
 the prevailing discords, he should be requested to. 
 suffer, for the future, the senate (whose firm opinion 
 it was that no peace could be made until Antony 
 should disband his forces) to take what steps they 
 might think proper in reference to the disputes agi- 
 tating the state. On this occasion Cicero delivered his 
 thirteenth oration against Antony, with a view of sup- 
 porting the opinion of Servilius, and of moving, in 
 * Philipp. xiii. 4,
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 50L> 
 
 addition, that the offer of assistance, which had been 
 recently received from Sextus Pompey, should be ac- 
 cepted with expressions of public gratitude. His argu- 
 ments against all overtures of peace with hisenemy were 
 supported by a perusal of the late letter of Antony 
 to Octavius and Hirtius, the examination of which, 
 almost word by word, with a view of exposing the 
 writer to the scorn and hatred of the audience, con- 
 stitutes the greater part of the speech. Although 
 the subject might appear to hold out no very extended 
 field for the exhibition of his talents, it must be con- 
 ceded that, among the several invectives of Cicero of 
 which Antony is the subject, this is only surpassed 
 by the second in vivid power and energy. Every 
 sentence is brilliant with genius, but it is the brilli- 
 ance of lightning, which consumes while it dazzles. 
 The keenness of its finely-tempered and almost ex- 
 haustless sarcasm, its remorseless but not undignified 
 irony, its uninterrupted and unerring wit, (which the 
 reader is apt to think no moral panoply of indifference 
 or effrontery could have repelled,) certainly leave it 
 unsurpassed by any production of the kind either in 
 Greek or Roman literature ; and those who seek for 
 a model of denouncing, convicting, and avenging 
 eloquence, need not look much beyond this masterly, 
 but hitherto strangely neglected, oration. 
 
 The peace of Antony, however, was far less likely 
 to be disquieted by this burst of indignant rhetoric 
 than by the intelligence, conveyed to him shortly 
 afterwards, that the consul Pansa was already in 
 communication with his colleague, and that the two 
 generals might be expected speedily to unite their 
 armies. To facilitate this desirable object Hirtius 
 had despatched the whole of the Martial legton and 
 two praetorian cohorts, on the night preceding the 
 fifteenth of April, to secure the march of the expected 
 force to his camp, and to act as its advanced guard OH
 
 504 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 the way thither. This detachment, after proceeding 
 some miles without molestation, fell in with the 
 legions of which it was in quest, near Bononia, and 
 being safely united with them, began to lead the 
 way towards the head- quarters of Hirtius and 
 Octavius ; now established much nearer to Mutina, 
 in consequence of a succession of skirmishes, by 
 which the outposts of the besieging army had been 
 driven in, and compelled to take up positions disposed 
 over a space, much less extensive than the ground 
 which they had formerly occupied. Antony, in the 
 mean time, duly informed of the vicinity of Pansa, 
 and fully sensible of the importance of preventing, if 
 possible, his union with Hirtius, while he was at the 
 same time unaware of the movement of the Martial 
 legion to support him, drew out from his lines, on 
 the same night, the second and thirty-fifth legions, 
 with two praetorian cohorts, a strong body of evocati*, 
 and a multitude of light horse and infantry ; deeming 
 this force amply sufficient to overpower the four 
 legions of recently levied recruits, which alone he ex- 
 pected to encounter. On reaching the village of Forum 
 Gallorum, situated on the ^Emilian way, between 
 Bononia and Mutina, he concealed his legions behind 
 the houses and the broken ground in their vicinity. 
 His light cavalry and irregular troops, among whom 
 were a considerable number of Moorish horse, were 
 scattered in detached parties in front, separated from 
 the heavy infantry by a narrow pass, bordered on 
 each side by thickets and marshes. In this position 
 he leisurely awaited the arrival of the consular 
 troops, who at length made their appearance ; the 
 
 * The " Evocati" were veteran soldiers, who, after having retired 
 from the service, were again induced to take arms on any pressing 
 emergency, or by the request of some favourite leader. They were 
 considered entitled to peculiar privileges, not being subjected to any 
 of the ordinary labours imposed upon the legionaries.
 
 TUB LIFE OP CICERO. 505 
 
 Martial legion and the praetorian cohorts, which had 
 accompanied it, forming the van, and the rest fol- 
 lowing at a short distance, in an extended line of 
 march. On the first sight of Antony's irregular 
 troops, the leading division of the army of Pansa, 
 regardless of the restraints attempted to be placed 
 upon their impetuosity by their officers, rushed furl-- 
 ouslyforward to the encounter, and finding theenemy, 
 in pursuance of instructions previously received, 
 give way before them after but a feeble show of 
 resistance, hurried through the pass in pursuit, and 
 continued their disorderly progress until they were 
 checked by the sight of the threatening array of the 
 columns composing the heavy-armed infantry of An- 
 tony; which, having been drawn out from their 
 ambush, and formed in front of the village during 
 this tumultuous skirmish, suddenly appeared amidst 
 the cloud of fugitives, bearing rapidly down upon their 
 adversaries in order of battle. The Martial legion and 
 the praetorians, composing together but twelve cohorts, 
 were consequently alone able to deploy, (the two 
 legions immediately following, although sent in all 
 haste by Pansa to their support, being yet at some 
 distance,) when they were exposed to the terrible 
 shock of the enemy's line. The contest was, notwith- 
 standing, for some time more fiercely maintained than 
 might have been expected from the disparity of the 
 numbers engaged. On the right Antony's thirty-fifth 
 legion was manfully met and driven back for more than 
 five hundred paces by eight cohorts of the Martial 
 legion, under Sergius Galba. The praetorian cohort 
 of Octavius, stationed on the ^milian way, and 
 forming the centre of its own force, distinguished 
 itself also by a desperate resistance, but the left 
 wing being oiitflanked and completely overthrown 
 by its opponents, while the cavalry of Antony began 
 to pour round in that direction and to threaten the
 
 506 - THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 whole rear, it was deemed advisable to order an 
 immediate retreat. This was, however, effected in 
 some confusion, and the panic spreading among the 
 legions behind, a general flight of the whole army 
 at length ensued, which was not stopped until the 
 camp, from which they had set out in the morning, 
 received the vanquished multitudes, who were fol- 
 lowed to its very gates by their pursuers. It was 
 during this disorderly rout that Pansa, endeavouring 
 to rally his broken columns, was struck down amidst 
 the tumult, and having received several severe wounds, 
 was with difficulty carried off the field by his atten- 
 dants to Bononia. Not contented with his first ad- 
 vantage, Antony, on coming up to the entrenchments 
 within which his enemies had taken refuge, gave 
 instant orders for carrying them by assault. In this 
 rash attempt, however, he was completely repulsed, 
 and having met with the same ill success in several 
 repeated attacks, he was at length obliged to draw 
 off his forces, having wasted much valuable time, and 
 no inconsiderable number of his troops, to no purpose. 
 Meanwhile the consul Hirtius, on gaining intelli- 
 gence of what was going forward, had, in his turn, 
 drawn out twenty veteran cohorts composing the 
 seventh and fourth legions, and advancing at the head 
 of these to Forum Gallorum, had taken up the very 
 same ground occupied by Antony in the morning, 
 with the intention of intercepting his retreat, The 
 victorious army, returning from its assaults upon the 
 camp of Pansa, was thus assailed while labouring 
 under disadvantages precisely similar to those which 
 had conduced to the rout of its opponents a few 
 hours before, and being, moreover, fatigued with its 
 recent exertions, was, after a short resistance, borne 
 back, and driven in all directions before the veterans 
 of Hirtius. Antony, finding his utmost endeavours 
 to re-form his flying legions unavailing, made the
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 507 
 
 best of his way with his cavalry to his lines before 
 Mutina, which he reached two hours before midnight. 
 He left in the hands of the enemy two eagles 
 and sixty standards, and the flower of his forces 
 either slain or disabled, on the ground over which he 
 had on the same day alternately passed as a victor 
 and a fugitive. With the exception of those of the 
 Martial legion and the praetorian cohorts, who fell in 
 the first encounter, the loss of the consular armies 
 was but trifling*. 
 
 This was the first battle of Mutina, the intelli- 
 gence of which, having arrived with the usual exag- 
 gerations at Rome five days after its occurrence, 
 caused so general a feeling of exultation in the city, 
 that the house of Cicero was surrounded by an 
 immense multitude, who insisted upon his conducting 
 them in solemn procession to the Capitol, and after- 
 wards giving a public account of the victory from 
 the rostra. He was then escorted home amidst 
 general acclamations and enthusiastic expressions of 
 regard. On the day following t Marcus Cornutus, 
 the prsetor urbanus, having summoned a senate to 
 deliberate upon the subject of the despatches he had 
 just received, it was proposed by Servilius, after the 
 usual recommendation of a public thanksgiving, that, 
 since the imminent danger which had lately threat- 
 ened the state might now be considered as, in a great 
 measure, past, the citizens should lay aside the 
 military habit, and assume the ordinary dress of 
 peace. This motion was followed by the fourteenth 
 Philippic of Cicero, which, containing no ordinary 
 beauties of language, possesses an additional interest 
 as the last of his extant orations. After advising 
 the postponement of the laying aside the military 
 
 * See the letter of Galba to Cicero, giving a full account of the 
 engagement. Ad Di versos, x. 30. 
 
 f The twenty-first of April, the day before the Vinalia.
 
 508 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 dress, until there existed no prospect of a necessity 
 for again assuming it, he powerfully argues in this 
 speech for the necessity then existing, more strongly 
 than ever, of declaring Antony a public enemy; both 
 for the justification of those who had lately been in- 
 strumental in the destruction of his followers, and in 
 order to avoid the palpable inconsistency which would 
 be manifested in decreeing a public thanksgiving for 
 the defeat of a leader who had not yet been placed 
 under the ban of the republic. He mentions a late 
 defence of himself by the tribune Apuleius, when, 
 after the prevalence of an unfavourable rumour re- 
 specting the operations before Mutina, he had been 
 accused, by a confederation formed by the partisans of 
 Antony for the especial purpose of his destruction, 
 of an intention of illegally assuming the consular 
 fasces.* He dwells in terms of eloquent eulogy upon 
 the conduct of the fourth and Martial legions, touches 
 in a strain of lofty pathos upon the fate of those who 
 had fallen, and ends by recommending a public mo- 
 nument in honour of the slain, a supplication to the 
 gods, of fifty days' continuance, in acknowledgment of 
 the recent victory, and the thanks of the nation to 
 Hirtius, Pansa, and Octavius; the latter of whom he 
 proposes to designate by the title of imperator, with 
 much undeserved commendation of his valour in 
 beating off a division of the enemy who had at- 
 tempted to surprise his camp, while his colleagues 
 were engaged with Antony at Forum Gallorum. 
 
 The second battle of Mutina took place a few days 
 after the first, and seemed firmly to establish the 
 power of the senate, and to complete the ruin of An- 
 tony. Octavius and Hirtius, conscious of the weak- 
 ened condition of the garrison of Mutina, and the 
 impossibility of its holding out much longer without 
 some means of relief, and, at the same time, as it may 
 * Philipp. xiv. 6.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 509 
 
 be naturally inferred, flushed with the recollection of 
 their recent success, at length resolved upon the hold 
 expedient of assailing the besieging army in their 
 entrenchments. After one or two days of prepara- 
 tory manoeuvring, Antony, provoked hy repeated 
 feints of attacks upon various quarters, was induced 
 to draw out the principal part of his troops, and 
 fairly to offer battle before his lines. In the engage- 
 ment which followed he sustained a defeat much 
 more serious then the first. With the legion which 
 he had arrayed againt Hirtius he was compelled, 
 after a severe struggle, to fly from the open field to 
 the shelter of his works ; while, at the same time, 
 Decimus Brutus, seizing the opportunity, and furi- 
 ously sallying out at the head of his garrison, swept 
 from their position the division which had been left 
 to keep in check any movement from the town. The 
 victors, pursuing their success, were unimpeded even 
 by the ditch and rampart protecting the camp of the 
 besiegers ; of which they would have gained full pos- 
 session, after carrying it by storm, had not Hirtius, 
 bravely fighting at the head of the assailants, been 
 killed in the heat of the conflict close to the tent of 
 Antony*, together with Pontius Aquila, one of those 
 most deeply implicated in the conspiracy against Julius 
 Caesar. By the confusion caused by the fall of the 
 consul, and by the neglect or inability of Octavius to 
 make the proper disposition to keep possession of the 
 ground which he had gained, Antony was enabled to 
 recover his lines. His army was, however, so terribly 
 shattered by the severe loss it had suffered, that, des- 
 pairing of making any impression upon Mutina, he 
 resolved at once to abandon the siege, and decamping 
 in the night commenced his retreat, by forced marches, 
 towards the Alps, in the hope of receiving assistance 
 from the army of Lepidus, which was lying on the 
 other side of that mountain boundary. 
 
 * Appian, De Bellis Civil, iii.
 
 510 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 At no long interval from the occurrence of this 
 fresh success, the representatives of the Caesarian 
 party in the East were reduced to the last extremi- 
 ties by the talents and courage of Caius Cassius. 
 After several skirmishes by land, and one or two 
 severe engagements by sea, in an attempt to trans- 
 port his army into Macedonia, Dolabella, having 
 failed in a plan for surprising the city of Antioch, 
 was compelled to take refuge in Laodicea; where 
 his navy being annihilated before his eyes, and 
 all means of escape precluded by the forces with 
 which Cassius had invested the place, he put an end, 
 by the sword of one of his attendants, to a life pol- 
 luted by every species of villany and licentiousness. 
 This last event was not, indeed, known at Rome until 
 some time after the raising of the siege of Mutina ; 
 but the general tenor of the operations in Syria was 
 before ascertained to be such, as to leave no doubt of a 
 favourable termination to the contest with Dolabella. 
 Thus, in every quarter, success seemed to smile upon 
 the arms of the republic. It was, however, but a 
 transitory gleam of triumph. The highest point of 
 prosperity had now been gained ; and, little as it was 
 expected, the change was already begun, by which 
 disappointments and disasters alone were from hence- 
 forth to attend the cause of Roman liberty, in its 
 rapid progress from a delusive state of temporary 
 vigour to utter and hopeless ruin.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICEUO. 511 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Death of the Consul Pansa Coolness of Octavius towards the Cause 
 of the Senate Letters of Marcus Brutus and Lepidus to Cicero 
 Lepidus revolts to Antony, and is declared a Public Enemy 
 Octavius advances to Rome, and is returned Consul Universal 
 Defection of the Armies in the Western Provinces Second 
 Triumvirate and Proscription of the Republican Party Cicero 
 flies to Astura Death of his Brother and Nephew He lands 
 near Caieta Is overtaken and slain by Popilius Lamas Insults 
 offered to his Remains Remarks on his Character Philoso- 
 phical Writings Correspondence And Eloquence. 
 
 ANTONY, after decamping from Mutina, was for 
 two days suffered to continue his march unpursued ; 
 since Decimus Brutus, although he had plainly per- 
 ceived, on the morning after the commencement of 
 his retreat, the works before the town unoccupied 
 by their customary guards, and the space once covered 
 with the tents of his adversaries again vacant, did 
 not dare, with the slender force at his command, to 
 venture from his stronghold, until he had received 
 certain intelligence that the siege was fairly raised. 
 Octavius, on his part, also, from reasons unexplained, 
 remained inactive in his camp, without either sending 
 out parties to harass the rear of the retiring enemy, 
 or even availing himself, for many hours, of the 
 opportunity of opening a communication with the 
 garrison of Mutina. Pansa, in the meantime, from 
 the effect of the wounds he had received in the first 
 engagement at Forum Gallorum, was lying at the 
 point of death in Bononia. It was extensively be- 
 lieved at an after period, when the conduct of Octa- 
 vius had given an apparent sanction to the report, 
 that just before he expired, the consul had solicited 
 a secret interview with the young Ccesar, in which 
 he earnestly warned him against placing any confi-
 
 512 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 dence in the senate ; assuring him, at the same time, 
 that it was their intention to flatter him only as long 
 as he might be serviceable in opposing the ambition 
 of Antony, but that his destruction might be consi- 
 dered as sealed at the first moment when that re- 
 doubted leader had ceased to be the object of their 
 terror *. The story was, no doubt, wholly without 
 foundation, and forged either by Octavius, or by his 
 partisans, to justify his treacherous abandonment of 
 the cause he had at first advocated. No greater 
 credit, however, on the other hand, appears to be due 
 to a charge, propagated with equal industry by his 
 enemies, that he had caused Hirtiusto be assassinated, 
 in the heat and confusion of battle, by the swords of 
 his own soldiers, and bribed Glyco, the physician of 
 Pansa, to pour poison into his wounds, which were 
 not at first believed to be mortal t. But it is on all 
 hands agreed, that from henceforth his adherence 
 to the cause of the senate might be considered as 
 merely nominal, and that he directly refused, 
 when strenuously urged to commence his march 
 without delay, to accompany Decimus Brutus across 
 the Apennines ; suffering that leader to continue the 
 pursuit with no other troops than the wasted garri- 
 son acting under his direction, and such recruits as 
 he could hastily add to their number. To this cir- 
 cumstance Brutus, in one of his letters to Cicero, 
 attributes, with every appearance of justice, the 
 escape of the common enemy from his hands; assert- 
 ing, that if he had but been seconded, in any respect, 
 by Octavius, it would probably have been in his 
 power to finish the war without another stroke j. 
 
 * Appian. De Bellis Civil, iv. 
 
 f- Tacit. Annal. i. 10. Sueton. in August, xi. 
 
 : " Quod si me Coesar audissct atque Apenninum transisset, in 
 tantas angustias Antomum compulissem, ut inopi& potius quam ferro 
 interficcretur." Ad Diversos. xi. 10. Dated from the camp of Bruin?,
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 513 
 
 As it was, Antony, pursuing his way to the fens of 
 Sabata *, on the Ligurian coast, a position from which 
 it was vain to attempt dislodging him by force, was 
 there joined by Ventidius, with the two legions which 
 he commanded ; and after making an effort to sur- 
 prise Pollentia, which was prevented by the vigilant 
 enemy, still hanging with stern perseverance on his 
 rear, prepared to follow out his design of crossing the 
 Alps without further delay. 
 
 To the interests of the senate the deaths of Hirtius 
 and Pansa were productive of serious detriment ; as 
 by these events the republic was deprived of two 
 able officers, who, had they lived, would probably 
 have kept the troops in their allegiance ; while the 
 whole of the force under those generals was thrown 
 into the hands of Octavius, and the consulate exposed 
 as an irresistible bait to his ambition. Their first 
 step was to decree him the honour of an ovation for 
 his services, an exceedingly politic distinction ; 
 since, in order to enjoy it, it would be incumbent 
 upon him to disband his army, before entering 
 Rome. They then proceeded to bestow extraordi- 
 nary marks of their respect upon Decimus Brutus, 
 who, by the arrangement of Julius Ceesar, was now 
 entitled to the vacant consulship, declaring him 
 general of all their forces both in Italy and Gaul. 
 Nothing more imprudent than this decree could well 
 be imagined. From the moment it was issued, the 
 future course of Octavius, which might yet have been 
 altered by a different policy, was determined. Passing 
 at once from the lukewarm allegiance, induced by 
 the prospects opening before him after the siege of 
 Mutina, to a state of open hostility, under pretence 
 
 near Dertona, May 5. In this epistle it is also stated, that Antony, 
 in order to recruit his forces, had broken open all the prisons on his 
 route. 
 
 * Ad Diversos, xi. 10. 
 
 L I,
 
 514 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 that he had at length discovered the real sentiments 
 of the republican party towards him, he now began 
 to manifest a direct disobedience to their orders ; not 
 only refusing to part with one of the legions of Pansa, 
 which Decimus Brutus had demanded, but by in- 
 ducing both the Fourth and Martial legions, as well as 
 the whole of his own army, to receive no orders but 
 such as he himself thought fit to issue. The senti- 
 ments of Cicero towards him at this time are not 
 very clearly to be ascertained ; his correspondence 
 with Atticus, for so considerable a portion of his life 
 the surest guide to his real thoughts and feelings, 
 having now forsaken the historian*. There is extant, 
 however, a letter, although of doubtful authenticity^, 
 addressed to Atticus by Marcus Brutus, which 
 makes severe mention of the forwardness of their 
 mutual friend in decreeing fresh honours to Octavius, 
 as well as one to Cicero himself, censuring him, in no 
 gentle terms, for a request preferred to the same indi- 
 
 * The last letter to Atticus is found in the received chronolo- 
 gical arrangement before Ad Diversos, xi. 5. If this he its true 
 place, it was probably written some time in the month of Novem- 
 ber, in the consulate of Antony and Dolabclla (710), certainly 
 before the 20th day of December in the same year. See Ad 
 Diversos, xi. 6. 
 
 f- As the credit long given to the whole series of epistles between 
 Cicero and Marcus Brutus has been in more recent times, to a 
 considerable extent, shaken by a number of able critics, some apology 
 may be thought necessary for the citation of any part of their con- 
 tents. Yet, it will be remembered, that although attacked by 
 Tunstal and the English scholars of his party, and considered as 
 spurious by Sohiitz and Qrelle, they have been readily admitted 
 as genuine by Ernesti, and are once mone to be found in their 
 place in the beautiful edition of Cicero edited by Lemaire. The 
 testimony of Gesner, although apparently only based on the de- 
 fence of these letters by Dr. Midilleton, is also decidedly in their 
 favour : " De epistolis ad Brutum longior fabula, disputatio im- 
 peditior est, a me quidern non ita excussa et exquisita, ut abscisse 
 pronuntiare audeam, nisi quod sufficere mihi hactenus vidtbatur 
 Middlctoniana defensio, ut nova opera ne valde quidern opus sit."
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 515 
 
 vidual respecting the safety of the writer, in which 
 the free spirit of the inclign;mt patriot breathes from 
 every sentence : " Reconsider your own words," he 
 indignantly remonstrates, " and dare, if you can, 
 deny that they are precisely those of one completely 
 subservient to the will of a despotic master. You 
 write to Octavius, that there is one thing which is 
 expected and demanded of him, namely, that it may 
 be his pleasure, that those whom all good men as 
 well as the Roman people hold in the highest esti- 
 mation may continue in safety. What, if it is not ? 
 Shall we be the less safe on that account ? If so, far 
 better were peril, than safety from such a source. I, 
 however, cannot bring myself to think that the gods 
 are so far averse to the well-being of the people of 
 Rome, as to render it necessary that Octavius should 
 be entreated for the safety of a single citizen, far less 
 for that of the liberators of the whole earth; for I 
 take pleasure, as well I may, in speaking thus 
 proudly of myself to one, who seems to be ignorant 
 both of what he ought to fear for his friends, and 
 whom he ought to petition for favours. Can you, 
 Cicero, acknowledge that Octavius possesses so ex- 
 tensive a power, and remain his friend ? or, if I am 
 still dear to you, can you wish me to appear at 
 Rome, when, in order to remain there, I must first 
 be recommended to the favour of a boy? What 
 reason is there for your bestowing thanks upon him, 
 if he is still to be entreated for our safety ? Or is this 
 to be accounted a benefit, that he prefers your sup- 
 plications to be addressed to himself rather than to 
 Antony? To one exacting vengeance for despotic 
 power as exercised by another, and not himself a 
 successor to the same despotism, who would ever 
 think of preferring the request, that he would assentto 
 the preservation of the benefactors of the republic* ?" 
 Ad Brut. Epist. xvi. 
 L L 2
 
 516 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 From these and similar passages, if they are to be 
 considered genuine evidence, there seems too much 
 reason to believe that Cicero was again falling into 
 his old fault of flattering the powerful, and con- 
 tributing to the presumptuous ambition of a youth 
 in whom, by the exercise of his ordinary sagacity, 
 he might have already discovered one to be guarded 
 against by the friends to the constitution, with far 
 greater precautions than those employed against 
 Antony. It is probable, also, that he was in no 
 slight degree led into subservience to the designs of 
 Octavius by the title of " Father," at this time 
 usually bestowed upon him by his pretended pupil 
 in state affairs, as well as by a continued show of 
 deference to his opinions. By some authors it is 
 stated, that he was additionally amused by a project 
 thrown out by Octavius of being united with himself 
 in an application for the consulship, and that the 
 success of the artifice was afterwards made a subject 
 of boasting by its inventor. That his elevation a 
 second time to the highest dignity of the state wag 
 confidently expected, and that the rumour was so 
 general as to reach the provinces, appears from a 
 letter of Marcus Brutus, congratulating himself upon 
 the firm re-establishment of the republic as the 
 natural consequence of such an event*. All partici- 
 pation in the design of raising Octavius to the same 
 honour, however, Cicero, or perhaps his imitator, in 
 return explicitly denies ; asserting, that he had not 
 only strenuously advised the abandonment of so 
 extraordinary and dangerous an application in his 
 private letters, but openly and vehemently denounced 
 it in the senate, where the palpable ambition which 
 had prompted the attempt was so justly appreciated, 
 that not a single magistrate, tribune, or private 
 member of the assembly, could be found to make the 
 * Ad Brut. Epist. iv.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 517 
 
 necessary motion for bringing it formally under 
 consideration*. 
 
 In the mean time, Antony, closely followed by 
 Decimus Brutus, (who, although in consequence of 
 the accession of the new levies lately serving under 
 Pansa he was now at the head of seven legions, still 
 considered himself too weak to hazard a general 
 engagement with the veterans of his antagonist and 
 those of Vcntidius united,) was continuing his me- 
 morable retreat across the Alps, in order to place his 
 forces in communication with those of Lepidus. 
 During this hazardous and all but desperate march, 
 miseries the most appalling were endured both by 
 himself and his army, with astonishing intrepidity 
 and unwavering constancy. The only provision 
 yielded by the less wild and barren defiles which 
 they threaded, consisting of unpalatable herbs and 
 roots, was eagerly devoured ; and when this wretched 
 means of sustenance had failed, the troops were com- 
 pelled to allay their hunger with the pounded bark 
 of trees, and the flesh of whatever creatures chance 
 had thrown in their way, however disgusting to the 
 sight t. After suffering, however, all the extremi- 
 
 * Ad Brut. Epist. x. 
 
 t Plutarch, in Anton. See, also, the powerful description of 
 Shakspeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act i. sc. iv. 
 
 Antony, 
 
 Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thon once 
 Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st 
 Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel 
 Did Famine follow ; whom thou fought'st against, 
 Though daintily brought up, with patience more 
 Than savages could suffer 
 
 Thy palate then did deign. 
 
 The roughest berry on the rudest hedge ; 
 Yea, like a stag, when snow the pasture sheets, 
 The bark of trees thou browsed'st ; on the Alps, 
 It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh, 
 Which some did die to look on. And all this
 
 518 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 ties of cold and famine, they at length arrived ; by a 
 toilsome and painful descent into Gaul, at Forum 
 Julii, on the 15th of May, where their fortitude was 
 rewarded with abundance and comfort, in quarters 
 established near the entrenchments of Lepidtis, from 
 which they were only separated by the little river 
 Argenteus. While Antony was yet moving towards 
 him from Italy, Plancus, excited by the earnest 
 exhortations of Cicero to destroy him in his present 
 condition of weakness and destitution, had advanced 
 his legions towards the Isara, for the purpose of acting 
 in conjunction with Decimus Brutus immediately after 
 the arrival of the latter in Gaul. Being, however, 
 summoned by Lepidus to join him, he had aban- 
 doned his first plan, and hastening to the support of 
 that general, was now directing his march towards 
 Forum Voconii, having first thrown a fortified bridge 
 over the Isara to afford a free passage to Brutus. In 
 this state of affairs, Lepidus, whether with the in- 
 tention of amusing the. senate as long as possible, or 
 really desirous, up to the present moment, of sup- 
 porting their cause, wrote to Cicero as follows : 
 
 " MARCUS LEPIDUS, IMPERATOR, AND PONTIFEX MAXI- 
 MUS, WISHES PUBLIC PROSPERITY TO MARCUS 
 TULLIUS CICERO. 
 
 " Having received intelligence that Antony, after 
 having sent forward Lucius Antonius with a party 
 of his cavalry, was approaching my province with his 
 forces, I decided upon moving my army from the con- 
 fluence of the Rhone and Arar, with the determination 
 of preventing them. I therefore advanced, by marches 
 continued without interruption, to Forum Voconii, 
 and have encamped beyond the town, on the banks 
 
 (It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,) 
 Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek 
 So much as lank'd not.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 519 
 
 of the Argenteus, exactly opposite the lines of 
 Antony. Publius Ventidius, with his three legions, 
 has joined him, and established his camp somewhat 
 higher up the river than mine. Antony had before 
 this under his command the whole of the second, and 
 a multitude of soldiers from other legions, although 
 without their arms. His cavalry is considerable, 
 since this part of his force escaped unbroken from 
 the field. 
 
 " Several both of his horse and foot have already 
 come over to our camp, and his strength is diminish- 
 ing daily. Silanus and Calleo have deserted from him. 
 Although highly offended at their having joined him 
 contrary to my desire, I have, in order to maintain 
 my character for clemency, and in consideration of 
 our intimate acquaintance, inflicted no punishment 
 upon them. I do not, however, suffer them to be 
 in my camp, or to take upon them any command. 
 
 " As to the present war, I shall neither be wanting 
 in my duty to the senate nor to the republic, and I will 
 take care to make you acquainted with all my future 
 proceedings. Although we have hitherto been rivals 
 in our attempts to confer benefits upon each other, 
 I doubt not that in so extensive and unexpected a 
 commotion of the state, some accusations unworthy 
 of my character have been brought against me by 
 my calumniators in your hearing, which, from your 
 zeal for the interests of the republic, may have made 
 an unfavourable impression upon your mind. I am 
 informed, however, by my agents, that you have 
 received all intelligence of this kind with little appear- 
 ance of being moved by it, and that you have shown 
 a disposition not to give credence rashly to any such 
 reports. This conduct of yours has justly given me 
 the highest gratification. I have not, at the same 
 time, forgotten those former exertions on your 
 part, the results of your friendship, to increase my
 
 520 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 public honours, of which the recollection will ever 
 remain engraven on my heart. 
 
 " I earnestly entreat you, my dear Cicero, if you 
 have hitherto considered my conduct and exertions 
 in my public employments such as not to disgrace 
 my name, to expect from me a similar, or even more 
 devoted course of action for the time to come ; and to 
 believe, that in proportion to the benefits you have 
 already conferred upon me, are your inducements 
 now to defend me with all yeur authority and 
 influence. Farewell*. 
 
 "From my Camp at Pons Argenteus." 
 
 This letter was dated on the twenty- second day of 
 May. On the twenty-ninth of the same month, the 
 soldiers of Lepidus were included in a common camp 
 with those of the enemy of the senate. Antony, 
 after he had carefully sounded the inclinations of the 
 army stationed opposite to him, by means of his 
 emissaries, and received in return the information 
 that he had only to present himself in person to 
 receive its submission, on making his appearance 
 before the lines in a mourning habit, and with all the 
 external signs of deep distress, was hailed with 
 clamorous enthusiasm by the crowds who collected 
 upon the ramparts to listen to his harangue. En- 
 couraged by a reception so confirmatory of what he 
 had previously heard, he ventured on the following 
 morning to cross the river at the head of his forces, 
 and was without further delay admitted into their 
 camp by those of Lepidus, who levelled a great part of 
 its defences to give him a readier entrance. It is 
 uncertain to what extent the general of the revolting 
 army was concerned in its defection. Plutarch 
 affirms t that he had on the day preceding put a 
 stop to the speech of Antony, by ordering all his 
 trumpets to sound ; and Plancus relates, in his letter 
 * Ad Diverges, x. 34. f Plutarch, in Anton.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 521 
 
 to Cicero *, giving an account of the transaction, 
 that while addressing his soldiers from his tribunal, 
 in order to exhort them to continue in thoir allegiance, 
 he was interrupted by repeated shouts, to the effect 
 that they were determined to hazard their lives no 
 longer in defence of either of the parties between 
 which the state was divided that the loss of two 
 consuls and an immense multitude of Romans, with 
 the condemnation as public enemies, and confiscation 
 of the goods of others, was an ample sacrifice to the 
 unnatural contest in which they were attempted to 
 be involved that they had, therefore, resolved upon 
 an immediate and lasting peace, and intended, so far 
 as their own neutrality could conduce to so desirable 
 a result, to ensure it. But the same correspondent 
 intimates, that this circumstance was far from ex- 
 culpating their leader from the guilt of deliberate 
 treason, since from the first appearance of the mutiny 
 he had taken no steps to prevent it, and positively 
 countermanded his former directions to Plancus to 
 effect an immediate junction with his legions. 
 Lepidus, however, whose estates were yet at the 
 mercy of the senate, imagining that it would be most 
 to his interest to induce them to believe, as long as 
 possible, that his recent conduct had been the effect 
 of compulsion, forwarded the following despatch in 
 his own vindication : 
 
 " MARCUS LEPIDUS IMPERATOR, AND PONTIPEX MAXI- 
 MUS, WISHES HEALTH TO THE SENATE, ROMAN 
 PEOPLE, AND COMMONS. 
 
 " I call gods and men, Conscript Fathers, to bear 
 witness to the sincere and constant affection I have 
 always entertained towards the republic, and to my 
 preference of the common safety and freedom, to 
 every other consideration. Of this I should have 
 * Ad Diversos, x. 2 1 .
 
 522 THE LIFE OF CICEHO. 
 
 had, in a short time, an opportunity of convincing 
 you, had not fortune wrested from me the means of 
 executing my designs. For my whole army have 
 acted in accordance with their usual sentiments with 
 respect to the preservation of their fellow-country- 
 men, having manifested their inclinations by a general 
 mutiny, and compelled me, to speak the truth, to 
 undertake to maintain the safety of this great body 
 of Roman citizens. Upon this question I entreat and 
 conjure you, Conscript Fathers, to lay aside all pri- 
 vate resentments, and to consult the general welfare ; 
 nor to consider the present instance of compassion, 
 shown amidst civil commotions by myself and my 
 forces, in the light of a crime. If, moreover, you 
 should be induced to act in such a manner, as to 
 show your regard for the security and dignity of all 
 parties, you will take the most prudent course, both 
 for the advancement of your own interests, and those 
 of the state. Given from my camp at Pons Argen- 
 teus, May 30th *." 
 
 Lepidus, notwithstanding his attempt to soften the 
 displeasure of the party he had now openly forsaken, 
 was declared a public enemy, at an assembly of the 
 senate held on the 30th day of June. His estates 
 were, at the same time, ordered to be confiscated, and 
 the gilded statue, lately erected to his honour, to be 
 ignominiously demolished ; although the opportunity 
 of returning to their allegiance, under the shelter of 
 a free pardon, was yet offered* to himself and his 
 adherents, until the first day of the following Sep- 
 tember. In their prompt and vigorous decree against 
 him, the senate were encouraged by the appearance 
 of unshaken fidelity still maintained by Plancus. 
 This officer, after sending immediate information of 
 the defection of Lepidus, had promptly fallen back 
 across the Isara, and having broken down the bridge 
 
 * Ad Diversos, x. 35.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 523 
 
 which he had lately thrown over the river, had suc- 
 ceeded in effecting a junction with the legions of 
 Decimus Brutus *, which were by this time concen- 
 trated after their arrival in Gaul. Thus posted, he 
 still promised, with the aid of the imposing reinforce- 
 ments he had just received and the strong natural 
 means of defence in his front, to give Antony and his 
 colleague ample employment, until the army of Octa- 
 vius, the march of which he pressed hy earnest and 
 repeated letters, should come up to his assistance t. 
 Alarmed at the recent change of affairs, Cicero, who 
 still continued to keep his post without shrinking 
 at the helm of state, now redoubled, on his part, the 
 requests he had recently begun to prefer to Brutus 
 and Cassius, to transport their troops into Italy, in 
 order to counterbalance the increasing strength of 
 the party disaffected to the republic |. It may be 
 doubted, whether either of these generals possessed 
 the power of complying with the demand ; but no 
 question can exist as to the soundness of the policy 
 by which it was dictated. 
 
 Although the senate, fully sensible of their former 
 error in policy, had endeavoured to pacify the selfish 
 pride of Octavius, by assigning him the commission 
 of defending the frontiers of Italy against Antony 
 and Lepidus, the concession was made too late to 
 obviate the effect of their former decree in favour of 
 Decimus Brutus. So far from being disposed to 
 
 * Ad Diversos, xi. 15. 
 
 -\- Veniat Caesar cum copiis quas habet fh-missimas, &c. (Ad 
 Diversos, x. 23.) Nihil destiti eum (,vc. Cacsarem) literis hortari, 
 neque ille iutermisit affirmare se sine mora venturum. Ad Divers. 
 x. 24. 
 
 J Itaque optamus ut quam primum te in ItaM videamus. 
 Retnpublicam nos habere arbitrabimnr si vos habebimus. (Ad 
 Diversos, xii. 10. to Cains Cassius). Persuade tibi igitur in teet in 
 Bruto tuo ease omnia ; vos expectari ; Brutum quidem jam jamque. 
 Ibid.
 
 524 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 prevent the approach of any force acting against them, 
 he was at this time in actual correspondence with 
 their enemies. His alienation from Cicero he did 
 not scruple openly to confess, assigning as the reason 
 that the latter had often contemptuously termed him 
 a boy, and asserted that the policy of the senate 
 towards him should be to flatter, to elevate, and, 
 finally, to destroy him *. Information of this was 
 conveyed to Cicero, by way of warning, in a letter 
 from Decimus Brutus, who added that he was in- 
 debted for his knowledge of the fact to Labeo Segu- 
 lius, who had just reached him, after an interview 
 with Caesar ; and whom he strongly suspected of 
 having himself played the part of informant, with 
 respect to the obnoxious words which were the sub- 
 ject of complaint. Cicero was, in the same epistle, 
 cautioned against the resentment of the veterans, who 
 were described as strongly exasperated at his con- 
 duct. " May the gods confound that Segulius," 
 writes the orator in reply, " the greatest of villains, 
 past, present, or to come. Do you suppose he has 
 communicated this calumny to you, or to Caesar 
 alone ? There is not a being with whom he has any 
 intercourse, who has not heard the very same words 
 from his lips. I, however, esteem you, my dear 
 Brutus, as I ought, for acquainting me with the cir- 
 cumstance, frivolous and contemptible as it is. As 
 to Segulius, I am well content to allow him to pro- 
 pagate his slanders unheeded, since all he seeks by 
 it is to repair his ruined fortunes." The intelli- 
 gence respecting his unpopularity among the vete- 
 rans, which had arisen from the absence of the names 
 of Octavius and Brutus in a commission for dividing 
 certain lands among them, he treats in a style of 
 similar indifference t. 
 
 * Laudandum juvenem, ornanduro, tollendum. Ad Divers, xi. '20, 
 f Ad Di versos, xi. 21.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 525 
 
 These ready instruments of a crafty leader, how- 
 ever, encouraged by the secret instructions of their 
 commander, began every day to assume a more im- 
 perious bearing, and to exercise a greater influence 
 in the management of the state. After numerous 
 messages between the senate and the army iipon the 
 frontier, on the subject of their claims to past arrears, 
 in which threatening on the one side, and bribery on 
 the other, had been extensively tried without effect, 
 a deputation, consisting of forty centurions and 
 two hundred private soldiers, appeared at Rome 
 from the camp, to demand, as the readiest method 
 of composing all differences, the honour of the con- 
 sulship for Octavius. The senate, with whom they 
 were admitted to repeated interviews, and who had 
 yet enough of the old Roman spirit remaining among 
 them to feel in the highest degree indignant at this 
 insolent demand, attempted to gain time by the 
 proposed expedient of immediately sending a deputa- 
 tion of their own, ostensibly for the purpose of settling 
 part of the claims of the soldiery upon the state, but 
 with the real intention of inducing them, by liberal 
 promises, to desert their present general. The rude 
 veterans, however, easily saw through the project, 
 and resented it accordingly. One of them is said to 
 have answered the proposition of the assembly by 
 significantly pointing to the hilt of his dagger ; and 
 another to have exclaimed, while resuming his sword 
 at the door of the house, " If you do not think 
 fit to confer the consulate upon Octavius, this shall." 
 " Nay," exclaimed Cicero, who was present, and 
 listened to the threat, " if this is the style of your 
 entreaty, you cannot fail of being heard. *" The 
 sxibject, however, was speedily found to afford little 
 room for jesting. Octavius, on receiving information 
 of the hesitation of the senate in deciding with 
 
 * Dio Cassius, xlvi.
 
 526 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 respect to his claim, at once raising his camp, began 
 to advance upon the capital, and meeting on his 
 road the commissioners sent to treat with his 
 army, took no other notice of them than to command 
 them on their peril not to impede his march. A 
 slight hope of resistance was for a shoi-t time afforded 
 to the republicans in Rome by the arrival of two 
 legions from foreign service in Africa ; but these also 
 being seized with the general contagion, it was 
 determined to endeavour to deprecate the resentment 
 of Caesar, by yielding to him the honour which he 
 demanded. He was therefore elected consul imme- 
 diately after his arrival in the city, in conjunction 
 with Quintus Pedius, and without the least mention 
 having been made of Cicero ; who is said to have re- 
 quested an interview with him, and to have received 
 the reproach that he was full late in the offer of his 
 services*. The new magistrate was then solemnly 
 adopted in the usual form into the family of the 
 Cassars, and soon afterwards again set out for Gaul ; 
 but not until he had given a manifest indication of 
 the line of policy he was about to adopt, by procur- 
 ing a repeal of the decree recently passed against 
 Dolabella, and instigating his colleague Pedius to 
 propose the law afterwards known by his name, 
 ordaining that immediate inquiry should be made 
 into the death of Julius Caesar, and his assassins 
 formally brought to trial. In the proceedings insti- 
 tuted by virtue of this statute, Brutus and Cassius, 
 with a number of their confederates, were publicly 
 cited, and, in default of their appearance to the sum- 
 mons, condemned by a majority of their judges. 
 
 These were severe blows to the party of the repub- 
 lic ; but still more disastrous events were to follow. 
 In Italy and the western provinces, their cause, 
 already shaken by the defection of Lepidus, now 
 * Appian. De Bellis Civil, iv.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 527 
 
 went rapidly to ruin. In Transalpine Gaul, Plan- 
 cus, although he had a short time hefore assured 
 Cicero of his resolve to submit to any extremity, and 
 even to encounter death itself, rather than abandon 
 the principles for which he was contending*, was 
 induced to listen to the overtures of Antony and 
 Lepidus, and finally to join them with his whole 
 army. The desertion of Asinius Pollio in Spain 
 followed, by which three legions more were lost to 
 the service of the senate. Decimus Brutus, being 
 thus left to cope single-handed with immensely 
 superior numbers, was speedily obliged to quit the 
 field, and to set out for Illyricum, with the inten=- 
 tion of adding his force, consisting of ten nominal 
 legions, to that of Marcus Brutus. But almost the 
 whole of his army, six legions of which consisted of 
 raw levies, totally unacquainted with severe service, 
 having melted away from his standard, he was at 
 length compelled to disband the few who remained, 
 and to retire in disguise to Aquileia, where, having 
 been taken prisoner by a predatory tribe of Gauls, 
 by whose chief his person was recognised, he was 
 soon afterwards put to death, in consequence of 
 orders received from the head-quarters of Antonyt. 
 
 Such was the first scene in the terrible drama of 
 retaliation now about to be exhibited. The armies 
 of Octavius, Lepidus, and Antony, were soon after, 
 as a conclusion to the negotiations which had been 
 long secretly carried on between the three generals, 
 concentrated once more in the neighbourhood of 
 Mutina ; the passes of the Alps having been left 
 freely open by Octavius for the descent of his recent 
 adversaries to the conference which they had pro- 
 posed, preliminaries to which were speedily and 
 
 * Nee depugriare si occasio tulerit, nee obsideri si necesse 
 t'uerit, nee moii si casus incident, pro vobis paratior fuit quisquam. 
 Ad Diverges, x. 21. 
 
 f Appiau. De Bellis Civil, iv. ; Dio Cassius, xlvi.
 
 528 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 easily adjusted. The place of meeting was a small 
 island in the middle of the river Rhenus, upon either 
 shore of which five legions were drawn up in order 
 of battle, each detachment guarding the access to a 
 bridge communicating with the island from its own 
 side of the stream. Lepidus was the first who 
 crossed over ; and having ascertained that no ambush 
 had been laid either by Antony or Octavius against 
 the life of his rival, gave notice to the two leaders 
 that they might approach the spot with safety*. 
 The feeling of suspicion was nevertheless so strongly 
 impressed upon all parties, that their first action 
 upon meeting was to search each other's persons for 
 concealed weapons. Their deliberations were then, 
 without farther delay, directed to the. formation of 
 the celebrated league, known as the SECOND TRIUM- 
 VIRATE, by which the whole power of nominating 
 magistrates, conferring honours, and assigning pro- 
 vinces, was quietly assumed as the first step to the 
 military despotism they were on the point of esta- 
 blishing. The government of Spain, with the con- 
 sulship during the ensuing year, was then surrendered 
 to Lepidus ; that of the Gauls appointed to Antony ; 
 and Africa, with the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, 
 appointed, as his share of the spoil, to Octavius. The 
 war with Brutus andCassius next came under conside- 
 ration ; and it was resolved that Octavius and Antony 
 should be jointly entrusted with the command against 
 them, while Lepidus should be invested with the go- 
 vernment of the city during the absence of his colleagues. 
 The announcement of these several arrangements was 
 received with loud applause by the troops who lined 
 the banks of the river ; and to whom it was farther 
 communicated, that a dismissal from service and 
 large distributions of land should constitute their 
 certain recompense at the conclusion of the war. 
 After this opening business of the confederacy, in 
 
 * Appian. De Bellis Civil, iv.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 529 
 
 which the marriage of Octavius with the daughter 
 of Fulvia also formed an article, as an additional 
 means of conducing to a union of interests, the 
 more terrible subject of deliberation which has ren- 
 dered this diabolical council a subject of execration 
 in all ages was brought under notice ; and in the 
 space of three days, the vindictive recollection of the 
 triumvirs had supplied a list of no less than three 
 hundred senators, and two thousand of the equestrian 
 order, with numbers of inferior rank, as the first 
 victims to the proscription which they intended to 
 set on foot immediately on their arrival in Rome. 
 In the selection of these, considerable differences at 
 first arose. Cicero, whom the eager hatred of An- 
 tony had at once destined to the swords of his fol- 
 lowers, was protected, according to tradition, for two 
 days by the reluctance of Octavius to consign him to 
 destruction ; which was only overcome by the offer 
 of Antony to barter the blood of his own uncle 
 Lucius, an object of especial enmity to the youthful 
 murderer, for that of the great orator by whom his 
 character had been so effectually consigned to undying 
 infamy. Lepidus, at the same time, consented, for 
 the gratification of both, that his brother Lucius 
 Paulus should be placed among the ranks of those 
 doomed to indiscriminate slaughter. The whole of 
 this inhuman plan it was not deemed advisable at first 
 openly to publish. Yet, in their impatient thirst 
 for bloodshed, the triumvirs could not refrain from 
 selecting seventeen individuals as immediate sacrifices 
 to their resentment, and sending forward their most 
 trusty emissaries to commence the massacre by 
 their deaths. Having then ratified their union by 
 the most solemn oaths, the generals separated ; and 
 placing themselves at the head of their respective 
 armies, commenced their ominous march towards 
 Rome. 
 
 M M
 
 530 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 The arrival of the murderers commissioned to seek 
 out the first objects of destruction, and the immediate 
 assassination of four among the number, threw the 
 whole city into a frightful state of apprehension and 
 dismay; the greater part of its inhabitants know- 
 ing neither the extent of the intended vengeance, nor 
 the class of persons upon whom it was chiefly des- 
 tined to fall. In the desperation occasioned by the 
 consciousness of their conduct having been such as to 
 make them marked subjects of the dislike or sus- 
 picion of the triumvirate, several among the repub- 
 licans endeavoured to defend themselves by the wild 
 expedient of firing the city ; and it was with the 
 utmost difficulty that the consul Pedius, who was 
 present in all quarters successively during this night of 
 terrible confusion, succeeded in preventing a general 
 conflagration. In order to pacify the fears of several 
 of those whose terror had nearly been productive 
 of such disastrous consequences to their fellow- 
 citizens, he, on the ensuing morning, published the 
 seventeen names he had received from the trium- 
 virs, with the open assurance that nothing was 
 to be dreaded by any not comprised in this first 
 revealed evidence of the ferocious intentions of the 
 victorious leaders. Pedius did not live to see the 
 declaration, which he perhaps believed to be correct, 
 verified; his own death taking place before sunset 
 on the same day, in consequence, as it was generally 
 supposed, of the effect produced by the exertions and 
 alarm of the preceding night upon a constitution 
 already probably impaired by age or previous disease. 
 The hopes inspired by his assertion of the limited 
 character of the vengeance of Antony and his col- 
 leagues were soon frustrated by the arrival of the 
 triumvirs, who having gloomily entered Rome in 
 succession, and crowded all the public edifices with 
 the arms and standards of their soldiers, lost no time
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 531 
 
 in exposing to general view, with a preamble full of 
 moderation, and excuses under the plea of urgent 
 necessity, the long catalogue of the condemned, which 
 they had conjointly made out upon the hanks of the 
 Rhenus*, in which melancholy list the names of 
 Marcus Cicero, his son, brother, and nephew, stood 
 foremost. The scenes which ensued have been de- 
 picted with frightful fidelity by the pen of Appian. 
 Of all the situations of terror to which human beings 
 could be exposed, none, in the amount of suffering 
 inflicted, could possibly exceed this, in which a man's 
 own dependants and household were armed against 
 him by the hope of enormous rewardst, and the 
 dearest objects of his affection viewed, in consequence 
 of the natural instinct of self-preservation, with a 
 distrust which, to the disgrace of human nature, 
 proved too often well founded. Masters were seen 
 prostrate at the feet of their slaves, on whose slightest 
 word their lives now depended, entreating compassion 
 and connivance at their escape, but uncomforted by 
 any assurances, which, to be efficacious, required an 
 incorruptible fidelity on the part of multitudes. 
 In every part of Italy exiles of the highest rank were 
 flying, in mean disguises, to what they imagined the 
 most obscure places of concealment, from which 
 numbers were every day dragged, and brutally mas- 
 sacred, often before the eyes of their families who 
 had accompanied them in their retreat. All the 
 appalling pictures, in short, of horror, anguish, de- 
 spair, and unrelenting cruelty, which had distin- 
 
 * The first part of the Bill of Proscription is given at length by 
 Appian, De Bellis Civ. iv. 
 
 j* Twenty-five thousand Attic drachmas were promised for the 
 head of any person proscribed, if the assassin was a freeman, ten 
 thousand drachmas and liberty, if a slave. The Attic drachma 
 nearly corresponds in value with the Latin denarius, which word it 
 is frequently used to translate by the Greek historians, being worth 
 about &d. 
 
 M M 2
 
 532 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 guished former proscriptions, were again exhibited 
 in this, with the addition of new circumstances of 
 terror, in consequence of the enlarged scale on which 
 the murders authorised by it were carried on ; while, 
 like those by which it had been preceded, it was, at 
 the same time, not unrelieved by instances of the most 
 heroic fidelity and devotion. 
 
 Cicero and his brother Quintus are recorded to 
 have been at the Tusculan villa of the former, when 
 information was brought of the late proceedings of 
 the triumvirate, and of the imminent peril to which 
 the lives of both were exposed. Their first resolution 
 was to take flight immediately to Astura, where 
 they expected to find a vessel in which they might 
 be conveyed to Epirus, and placed under protection 
 of the army of Marcus Brutus. They accordingly 
 set out on their mournful, journey, the last look of 
 the orator being now cast upon that delightful retreat, 
 adorned by the profuse beauties of nature, and rich 
 with the divine treasures of art, in which, encom- 
 passed by all the external circumstances which could 
 render existence desirable, he had spent so many days 
 of tranquil converse with friends worthy of his inti- 
 macy so many nights devoted to the seductive 
 speculations of his beloved philosophy. The brothers, 
 as we are told by Plutarch, were conveyed in separate 
 litters, and had frequent conferences on the way, the 
 result of which was a determination on the part of 
 Quintus, who was wholly unprovided with the neces- 
 sary funds for his voyage, and found Cicero himself 
 equally destitute, to return towards Rome, and endea- 
 vour to procure a sufficient sum to defray the expenses 
 of his passage to Greece. He therefore ordered his 
 attendants to turn back, after a parting with his 
 brother replete with anguish to both, in consequence 
 of a presentiment, amply justified by present circum- 
 stances, that they were never destined to meet again.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 33 
 
 A few days afterwards, the house in which Quintus 
 had taken refuge, and where he had been joined by 
 his son, was surrounded by the relentless instruments 
 of the triumvirate. The young man was instantly 
 seized, but the place of his father's concealment long 
 escaped the most diligent search of the assassins. 
 They therefore proposed putting their captive to " the 
 question," in order to extort from him the requisite 
 information. But in the closing scene of his life the 
 younger Quintus displayed a constancy and affection 
 which could not altogether have been expected from 
 the character drawn of him in the letters of his uncle. 
 Amidst the agony of the severest tortures which the 
 ingenuity of his captors could devise, he persisted 
 with undiminished resolution in refusing to reveal 
 the secret upon which the life of his parent depended, 
 until the latter, who was within hearing of the groans 
 of the sufferer, being unable any longer to endure the 
 trial to which his feelings were subjected, suddenly 
 rushed from his concealment, and presented himself 
 before the executioners.* A fresh contest of affection 
 then arose between the father and son, as to which 
 should be spared the additional pang inflicted by the 
 sight of the death of the other, and this dispute con- 
 tinued until cut short by the soldiery, who, impatient 
 for the expected reward, consented to behead them 
 apart and at the same moment. Thus perished 
 Quintus Cicero, an individual of no inconsiderable 
 repute in the literary history of his times, and whose 
 extant treatise " Respecting the Canvass for the Con- 
 sulate," shows him to have been far from disgracing 
 the name he bore by any deficiency in intellectual 
 attainments, but whose principal fame is derived 
 from the lustre shed upon his memory through the 
 medium of the immortal works of his brother. 
 
 In the mean time Marcus Cicero had been con- 
 veyed by his attendants to Astura, where, finding a 
 * Dio Cassius, xlvii.
 
 534 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 ship ready to set sail, and receiving no tidings of 
 Quintus, he at length embarked, and coasted along 
 the Latian shore with a favourable wind as far as 
 CircEeum. At this place, although the mariners 
 professed their willingness to stand out to sea imme- 
 diately, a step which in all probability would have 
 saved his life, he resolved to land, and, his request to 
 that effect having been complied with, was conveyed 
 some distance in the direction of Rome. By what- 
 ever cause this change of resolution was produced, 
 whether by his distaste for navigation, or some faint 
 hope of being yet protected by Caesar, it was quickly 
 changed for the feeling of despair which, during this 
 brief journey, seems to have sunk with permanent 
 and settled darkness upon his mind. After proceed- 
 ing about a hundred furlongs, therefore, he desired 
 his servants to return towards Circaaum, where 
 he passed a dreadful night of misery and distrac- 
 tion ; revolving, among other frenzied resolutions of 
 revenge against the false friend by whom he had been 
 deceived and betrayed, a plan of again setting out for 
 Rome and stabbing himself upon the hearth of 
 Octavius, and in the presence of his household gods, 
 with the view of bringing down an awful and certain 
 retribution upon the head of the cold-hearted assenter 
 to his murder. As day dawned, on the morning 
 following this feverish interval of mental agony, he 
 desired the crew of the vessel which had borne him 
 to Circaeum to make for Caieta, and set him on shore 
 near his villas situated upon the coast. Such a 
 step amounted to little less than virtual suicide ; 
 since, on the first intimation of his proscription, 
 numbers of eager expectants of the rich reward 
 promised by Antony for his head had started from 
 Rome to beset his best known places of resort, and 
 the winding shores of Baiae, as well as the vine- 
 covered hills of Formiae, were already echoing to the 
 trumpets of the soldiery of the triumvirate, in keen
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 535 
 
 quest of the valuable prize which might be con- 
 cealed in the neighbourhood. A short sail brought 
 him to his place of destination, from which, accord- 
 ing both to Appiau* and to Plutarch, whose super- 
 stitious credulity at least generally shows itself in 
 such a manner as greatly to heighten the effect of 
 his picturesque narrations, he was warned by a 
 singular omen. The story is of so marvellous a 
 character as to render it the more prudent course to 
 allow the biographer to tell it in his own words. 
 " There w r as a temple of Apollo," he relates, " on 
 that coast, from which a flight of crows came with 
 great noise towards Cicero's vessel as it was making 
 land. They perched on both sides the sailyard, 
 where sqme sat croaking and others pecking the 
 ends of the ropes. All looked upon this as an ill 
 omen, yet Cicero went on shore, and, entering his 
 house, sat down to repose himself. In the mean 
 time a number of the crows settled in the chamber 
 window, and croaked in the most doleful manner. 
 One of them even entered in, and alighting on his 
 bed, attempted with its beak to draw off the clothes 
 with which he had covered his face. On sight of 
 this, the servants began to reproach themselves. 
 Shall we, said they, remain to be spectators of our* 
 master's murder ? Shall we not protect him, so 
 innocent, and so great a sufferer as he is, when the 
 brute creatures give him marks of care and attention ? 
 Then, partly by entreaty, and partly by force, they 
 got him into his litter and carried him towards the 
 sea t." 
 
 Thus far Plutarch. Without soliciting credence, 
 however, for any of the supernatural features of his 
 narration, there does not appear any reason for dis- 
 trusting the account given of the remaining part of 
 the tragedy by the same narrator ; in which he is 
 
 * De Bellis Civil, ir. 
 f Plutarch's Life of Cicero, Langhorne's translation.
 
 538 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 more or less corroborated by the testimony of other 
 writers. The servants of Cicero, whose real ground 
 of alarm was, no doubt, the intelligence of the vicinity 
 of a party of the military, had no sooner quitted it, 
 making their way in all haste to the sea-shore, when 
 the agents of Antony arrived, headed by Herennius, 
 a centurion, and the tribune Popilius Laenas, whom 
 Cicero is related to have formerly defended from a 
 charge of parricide ; and bursting open the doors of 
 the house which had been barricaded against them, 
 to the best of their ability, by the domestics within, 
 imperiously demanded in what direction the fugitives 
 had retreated. The necessary information having been 
 procured from a slave named Philologus, if Plutarch 
 is correct, or if Appian is in preference to be believed, 
 from a former retainer of Clodius, who now gratified 
 a long cherished hatred towards the orator by 
 eagerly pointing out the path by which he had been 
 conveyed from the villa, they lost not a moment in 
 commencing the pursuit, and were not long in dis- 
 covering the retinue of their victim ; who were at the 
 'time passing down a retired avenue which led through 
 a close and tangled wood to the beach. The approach 
 of the assassins was not unnoticed by Cicero, who, 
 commanding his servants to set down his litter, and 
 to refrain from the useless resistance which they 
 seemed inclined to offer, prepared with firmness and 
 dignity to meet the fate which he plainly perceived 
 to be unavoidable. When Popilius and his band 
 approached the spot, he regarded them for soma time 
 with a fixed and melancholy look, placing his left 
 hand upon his chin, his usual attitude when engaged 
 in deep thought. His features, haggard with care 
 and anxiety, his disordered hair and dress, united 
 with the patient fortitude with which he appeared 
 ready to encounter the death they were commissioned 
 to inflict, and, probably, the contrast which his 
 present appearance presented to the circumstances
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 537 
 
 of outward pomp and splendour under which they 
 had last beheld him, produced at the moment so 
 powerful a feeling of commiseration among his 
 assassins, as to induce them to turn aside their faces, 
 while Popilius, the only one unmoved among the 
 company, after Cicero had calmly stretched forth his 
 head and neck from the litter and commanded him 
 to perform his office, unrelentingly inflicted the fatal 
 stroke*. His hands were then cut off by Herennius, 
 and, together with his head, exultingly conveyed by 
 the principal agent in his death to Antony, while his 
 attendants interred his body in a grave hastily dug 
 upon the spott. Popilius, on reaching Rome, found 
 
 * Appian, as a circumstance of additional horror, in his narrative 
 of the transaction asserts that his head was rather sawn than struck 
 off, by the unskilful ness of the executioner: " -rpls timr\-i](Ta<av 
 kal ^KSiairpi^iav virb oireipios." De Bellis Civilibus, iii. 
 
 f The following remarks are made hy Eustace with respect to the 
 tomb still indicated by tradition as that of Cicero, and on the sup- 
 posed scene of his death : 
 
 "But neither the mausoleum of Plancus, nor the towers of Gaieta, 
 neither the wondrous tales of Homer, nor the majestic verses of 
 Virgil, shed so much glory and interest on these coasts as the 
 Fortnian villa and tomb of Cicero. That Cicero had a villa here, 
 and that it lay about a mile from the shore, history informs us, and 
 at that very distance on the left of the road, the attentive traveller 
 will observe the remains of ancient walls, scattered over the fields 
 and half covered with vines, olives, and hedges. These shapeless 
 heaps tradition points out as the ruins of Cicero's Formian villa. 
 Again, history assures us that he was overtaken and beheaded in the 
 walks of a grove that lay between his villa and the sea. On the 
 opposite side of the road, rises, stripped of its decorations, and indeed 
 of its very shape, a sort of obelisk in two stories, and this disfigured 
 pile the same tradition reveres as his mausoleum, raised on the 
 very spot where he was butchered, and where his faithful attendants 
 immediately interred his headless trunk. Lower down and nearer 
 the sea, or rather hanging over its waves, are several vaults and 
 galleries, which are supposed to have been part of the Villa Inferior, 
 as that which I have described above was called Villa Superior. It 
 is a pity that excavations are not made, (and with what success 
 might they not be made all along this interesting coast !) to give 
 curiosity some chance of acquiring greater evidence. Of the fate
 
 
 
 538 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 Antony seated in state upon the tribunal in the 
 Forum, and being unable to approach him, in conse- 
 quence of the dense multitude by which he was 
 surrounded, intimated the performance of his mis- 
 sion by shaking aloft the gory relics of which he 
 was the bearer, in full view of his employer ; 
 who is said to have received them with inhuman 
 satisfaction, and, after rewarding Popilius with an 
 honorary crown, in addition to an almost incredibly 
 extravagant sum in money, to have ordered them to 
 be conveyed to his house^ where he further feasted 
 his long-cherished hatred, by contemplating them at 
 his leisure while reclining amidst his friends at his 
 table. They were afterwards carried to Fulvia, and 
 that monstrous anomaly in the history of her sex, 
 
 of Cicero's remains we know nothing, as history is silent with 
 regard to his obsequies and sepulture. It does not seem prohable 
 that during Antony's life the most zealous friend would have dared 
 to erect a monument to the memory of his most active and deadly 
 enemy, and after that triumvir's death, Augustus seems to have 
 concealed his sentiments, if favourable to Cicero, with so much 
 care and success, that his very nephews did not venture to read 
 that illustrious Roman's works in his presence. Before the death 
 of Augustus the personal and affectionate interest inspired by 
 affinity or friendship had probably subsided, and few survived the 
 emperor who could possibly have enjoyed the happiness of an 
 intimate and familiar acquaintance with Cicero ; fewer still could 
 have had any particular and urgent motive to step forward from the 
 crowd and pay the long neglected honours to his memory. But 
 notwithstanding these reasons, and the silence of history upon the 
 subject, yet, as his son escaped the proscription, and, when the rage 
 f civil war had given way to the tranquil domination of Augustus, 
 was restored to his country and to his rank, it is possible he may 
 have raised a monument to the memory of a father so affectionate to 
 him and so illustrious in the eyes of the public. As long, there- 
 fore, as popular belief or tradition, however uncertain, attaches the 
 name of Cicero to these ruins, and as long as ever credulity can 
 believe that the one has been his residence and the other his tomb, 
 so long will every traveller who values liberty and reveres genius, 
 visit them with interest and hang over them, though nearly reduced 
 to a heap of rubbish, with delight." Classical Tour, ii. 28.
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 539 
 
 with a Tindictive malice unsatisfied by the death of 
 the illustrious statesman in whom both her former 
 and present husband had found so inflexible an op- 
 ponent, is recorded, after having forced open the 
 lifeless jaws, to have drawn forth and repeatedly 
 pierced the tongue with a bodkin which she took 
 from her hair, accompanying the action with bitter 
 and unseemly insults and reproaches *. The man- 
 gled remains of the orator were then returned to 
 Antony, who commanded them to be exposed upon 
 the rostra, from which his eloquence had so often 
 delighted the gathered population of Rome, beside a 
 statue of Popilius, surmounted with an inscription 
 in which the murderer boldly avowed his late deed, 
 and boasted of its perpetration t. According to the 
 best authority, that of his freedman Tiro, the death 
 of Cicero took place on the seventh of the ides of 
 December 'J ; when he wanted, by the computation of 
 the Roman calendar, but twenty-seven days of com- 
 pleting his sixty-fourth year. He left but a single 
 representative of his name, his son Marcus; who was 
 afterwards so much in favour with Augustus Caesar, 
 as to be associated with him in the consulship. At 
 a later period, and when the reminiscences of the 
 campaign of Actium had supervened to modify his 
 former opinion of the Philippics, that emperor is said 
 to have done justice to the patriot whom, in his 
 youth, he had abandoned to the vengeance of Antony; 
 since, on a certain occasion, finding one of his grand- 
 sons reading a treatise of Cicero, which, on being 
 discovered, he endeavoured to conceal under his 
 
 fown, he returned it after he had taken it out of the 
 ands of the youthful student, and perused almost 
 the whole of it as he stood, with the observation, 
 " My child, this was an eloquent man, and a true 
 lover of his country ." 
 
 * Dio, xlvii. f Ibid. 
 
 J December the 7th. See Fasti Hellenici. Plutarch in Cic.
 
 540 THE LIFE OF CICERO/ 
 
 Such, in general terms, and in reference to his 
 more public life, after all deductions have been made 
 on the score of his weakness, his irresolution, and 
 his occasional duplicity, is the character which must 
 be assigned, upon an attentive study of his conduct, 
 to this distinguished individual ; whose name is one 
 of the household words of history, and whose genius, 
 notwithstanding the vast change which has passed 
 over literature since the period in which he flourished, 
 may be considered as naturalised in every part of the 
 civilised earth. That he was from his earliest youth 
 attached to what appeared to him the cause of free- 
 dom, and that his whole policy, when invested with 
 the powers of office, tended to support it, admits of 
 little doubt in the mind of any one acquainted with 
 his eventful career. It was for this purpose that he 
 endeavoured, during his consulate, to unite the sena- 
 torian and equestrian orders into a powerful barrier 
 against the encroachments of the popular faction, 
 in which with prophetic sagacity he saw, as thfe 
 result of a natural reaction, the establishment of the 
 monstrous despotism, in which the sun of the republic 
 was destined to set. It was with this view also that, 
 while almost the whole of his order were furiously 
 rushing into a war with Caesar, he protested, con- 
 trary to the opinion of the party with which he was 
 united, against their disastrous resolution ; justly 
 apprehending the same fatal consequences to the 
 republic, on the banners of whichever side Victory 
 might ultimately alight. To what extent he was 
 prepared on every occasion to sacrifice his safety, 
 reputation, or property, in the support of his prin- 
 ciples, is another question. Yet, the suppression of 
 the conspiracy of Catiline was a task which required 
 at least as much boldness and self-devotion as policy; 
 and in his subsequent attempts to arrest the Caesarian 
 faction with their leader Antony, in which we find 
 him organising and directing the whole resources of
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 541 
 
 the empire against the enemy of reviving liberty, a 
 spirit of noble and heroic resolution blazes forth, 
 which is worthy of comparison with the most 
 striking instances of magnanimity recorded in the 
 annals of Rome. In his policy at this crisis he was 
 well aware that failure implied nothing less than 
 total ruin and destruction to himself; yet we do not 
 find that, in casting the die upon which his destiny 
 depended, his hand for a moment trembled ; or that, 
 having once taken the step by which he was tho- 
 roughly aware that his life was staked in connexion 
 with the independence of his country, he felt the 
 least inclination to recal it, although he might, at 
 times, have deeply desponded of its favourable 
 issue. 
 
 The inordinate vanity, which formed the pre- 
 dominant defect in his disposition, may, undoubtedly, 
 be considered as having been at times a serviceable 
 ally, in enabling him to act with promptitude and 
 firmness; when, but for this support, his patriotism 
 would perhaps have been effectually disarmed by his 
 constitutional timidity, and his constancy subdued 
 into inaction by the voice of that self-preservation to 
 which he was, for the most part, too much inclined 
 to listen. While the eyes of his countrymen were 
 fixed upon him, and their applauses ringing in his 
 ears ; while, as in the case of the revolution threat- 
 ened by Catiline, he was called to the chief post of 
 honour, as well as of peril ; or as, when encountering 
 a foe much more terrible than Catiline, he was ac- 
 knowledged and flattered as the leading spirit of his 
 party; entrusted to correspond with the leaders 
 of armies stationed in the distant provinces, and 
 addressed by them in return, as the principal repre- 
 sentative of the insulted majesty of the constitution, 
 his courage was found not unequal to the task, which 
 his regard for the interests of his country might, in
 
 542 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 the first instance, have induced him to undertake. In 
 the prospect of a triumph he was not unwilling to 
 expose himself to peril on the heights of Amanus, 
 and, with the same glittering reward as a lure, he 
 would probably have stood his ground against the 
 shafts of the Parthians, had fortune thrown him in 
 the way of their invading host. But when called 
 upon to descend from this proud pre-eminence, and 
 to exchange the character of a principal for that of 
 an ally; when, as in 'the instance of the fierce struggle 
 between Pompey and Caesar for supremacy, he was 
 able to add but little to the actual strength of either 
 party, and was likely to be rewarded with applause 
 in proportion ; his inherent weakness, overcome for 
 a short time by the powerful stimulant of received 
 or expected approbation, again returned, and his 
 conduct was marked by all the shades of vacillation 
 and timidity too often by those of their natural 
 consequences, insincerity and actual deceit. 
 
 If we pursue the investigation of his character 
 from public into private life, we shall find it as, to 
 a certain extent, those of the best, whose histories 
 have been faithfully recorded, even while under the 
 influence of holier inducements and the guidance of 
 a diviner light, a mixture of merits and defects ; a 
 " mingled yarn " of various and contradictory hues. 
 As a father, his conduct towards his children was 
 unimpeachable ; towards his dependants there is 
 every reason for believing that his demeanour was 
 distinguished for affability, kindness, and benevo- 
 lence ; the evidence in favour of his disinterestedness 
 during his foreign magistracy is unexceptionable ; 
 but whether in his relations as a husband he was 
 more deserving of blame or sympathy, cannot accu- 
 rately be determined. In such differences as arose 
 between himself and his brother, or nephew, he ap- 
 pears to have resembled the aggrieved far more than
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 543 
 
 the offending party. His friendship with Atticus 
 was uninterrupted to the last ; and his correspondence 
 proves that he was on terms of familiar intimacy with 
 the most esteemed and exalted of his own age. His 
 ready patronage of genius has been commemorated 
 by the grateful strains of Catullus ; who may easily 
 be imagined to have been by no means a solitary 
 object of his generosity. His hospitality is also de- 
 scribed as exercised upon the most liberal scale ; and 
 his doors are said to have been thrown freely open to 
 men of letters, no distinction being made between 
 foreigners and his own countrymen ; so that his villas 
 frequently resembled the schools of philosophy at 
 Athens, from the number and celebrity of the guests 
 by whom they were crowded. His propensity to 
 flatter the powerful, his undisguised avidity for the 
 applause of those about him, his disregard of truth 
 to obtain it, with one or two instances of what 
 strangely resembles actual dishonesty, which, though 
 unnoticed by Middleton, have not escaped the glance 
 of less prejudiced observers, must be mentioned as 
 the principal defects in this otherwise not unfavour- 
 able picture. 
 
 With his excellences or his deficiencies, his vir- 
 tues or failings, posterity would, at the present time, 
 be little concerned, were it not in the exercise of that 
 curiosity by which nothing connected with the career 
 of genius is considered trivial or uninteresting. It is to 
 his singular mental acquirements alone, that his name 
 owes the proud distinction it has for ages obtained ; 
 and in consequence of which the minutest accidents 
 in his life have been long considered fit subjects of 
 the investigation of the most accomplished erudition. 
 In pronouncing, however, upon the exact nature of 
 his talents, an impartial judge would, no doubt, 
 decide them to have been rather of the imitative than 
 of the inventive cast ; more capable of clothing the
 
 544 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 thoughts of others in appropriate language, than of 
 giving birth to fresh and original conceptions, by any 
 innate powers of their own. In this respect, indeed, 
 his philosophical works rather resemble a highly- 
 cultivated and well-ordered garden, glowing with 
 numberless exotics, and breathing the fragrance of 
 distant lands, than the free and interminable expanse 
 of hill and vale, replete with the untransferred muni- 
 ficence of nature, and giving testimony of its vigorous 
 fertility by a produce of wild and luxurious growth. 
 His imagination is not like that of Plato, struggling 
 every moment with the self-imposed shackles of 
 logical restraint, and eager to soar into the regions of 
 the sublimest speculation, but at all times subservient 
 to the rein of reason ; and his powers of ethical dis- 
 quisition seem to turn more readily to the task of 
 reducing to practice principles already recognised, 
 than of searching in the dark recesses of moral truth 
 for springs of action hitherto unknown, or of tracing 
 to their origin those of uncertain nature or of latent 
 source. Much of this may, indeed, be traced to the 
 prevailing character which distinguished the litera- 
 ture common in his acre. Almost all that human 
 
 
 
 ingenuity could invent, in the way of hypothesis 
 with respect to moral phenomena, had long been 
 presented in the several schools devoted to their study; 
 and at this time the intellect of mankind seems to 
 have been rather inclined to repose upon what had 
 been already accomplished, than to enter upon any 
 course of untried enquiry. Like all subjects, more- 
 over, (with but a single reservation, standing in no 
 need of being specified,) which have fixed in their 
 turns the attention of the human mind, the beautiful 
 science of ethics, so long predominant in the estima- 
 tion of antiquity, had at this time begim to show 
 symptoms of following the common law of mutability 
 and decay. The light in which, during its increase,
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 545 
 
 the powers of Solon and Socrates had delighted to 
 bask, was gleaming with a setting radiance ; the 
 groves of the Academy already displayed the " sere 
 and yellow leaf;" and Philosophy, with much of the 
 practical wisdom, had also assumed somewhat of the 
 infirmities of age its sobriety and cautiousness its 
 diminished energy its less certain aspect, and irre- 
 solute step. 
 
 In passing from the more serious to the lighter 
 productions of Cicero, and devoting our attention to 
 his familiar correspondence, the singular versatility 
 of his talents, and the extensive range of his acquire- 
 ments, are no less easily discoverable. Learning, in 
 its most graceful and least ceremonious guise wit 
 which sparkles with unwearied brilliancy and an 
 elegance of expression widely remote from the florid 
 affectation prevalent at a later period, leave but little 
 to be desired in these models, no less of the Latin 
 tongue, than of the epistolary style in general. 
 Viewed as transcripts of the writer's feelings and 
 opinions, and as fixing and perpetuating many of 
 those more minute shades of character *, which the 
 historian is no more capable of exhibiting in his 
 general narrative, than the artist of transferring to 
 his canvass the flying lights and shadows which 
 traverse the landscape he attempts to delineate, they 
 can scarcely be too highly valued. As authentic 
 
 * Voltaire's opinion upon the letters of Cicero, is thus ex- 
 pressed : " II semble que pour bien juger les hommes publics, on 
 pourrait s'en rapporter aux monumens secrets et non suspects qui 
 restent d'eux, comme les lettres dans lesquelles ils ouvrent leur 
 cur k leurs amis, mais c'est dans les lettres de Ciceron que ses 
 admirateurs et ses detracteurs trouvent egalement les preuves de 
 leurs loges et de leurs censures. Tout cela prouve combien il eat 
 difficile et peut-6tre inutile de chercher la verit dans les details de 
 1'histoire." Notwithstanding the point of this observation, it must 
 be considered but as one among the many instances of undue attach- 
 ment to brilliant paradox, for which all the writings of Voltairo are 
 remarkable. 
 
 N N
 
 546 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 evidence with respect to the events of a most mo- 
 mentous era, they rise into still greater importance. 
 Nearly nine hundred letters, by far the greater por- 
 tion from the pen of the orator himself, but among 
 which are to be found original communications from 
 Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Brutus, Cassius, Trebonius, 
 Sulpicius, Pollio, and many other master spirits of 
 their generation, constitute a series of trustworthy 
 documents, to which no other period of ancient his- 
 tory, and few in that of modern nations, can furnish 
 a parallel. By means of these the council chambers 
 and hearths of the warriors and statesmen, whose 
 sentiments they record, become easily accessible and 
 familiar ground. The writers themselves, no longer 
 invested with the pomp of epic grandeur, or viewed 
 as " giants of mighty bone and high emprise," shrink 
 from their legendary dimensions, and stand before 
 us with all the ordinary passions and follies of huma- 
 nity distinctly revealed. The mouldering urn, and 
 the solitary mound, give up their included dust to 
 consistency and life. The busy scenes exhibited in 
 the streets or provinces of imperial Rome, while in 
 the zenith of its power, again arise like gorgeous 
 visions produced by the spell of the necromancer ; and 
 so vivid is the picture thus presented of the drama, 
 in which those, upon whose tombs the suns of nearly 
 twenty centuries have gone down, were the principal 
 actors, that we are reminded by it of the fabled 
 city of Eastern Romance ; in which, although ages 
 have passed, since its name and the cause of its de- 
 struction ceased to have a place in the memory of 
 man, the traveller may perceive, within its silent 
 dwellings, or occupying its long-deserted ways, a 
 numerous population, whose marble forms yet retain 
 the attitude and expression in which they were over- 
 taken by the same mysterious agency ; and are still 
 apparently engaged in the stirring employments of 
 active existence.
 
 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 547 
 
 The observations, which have been already made, 
 with regard to the philosophical writings of the first of 
 Roman moralists, may also be considered, to a great 
 extent, applicable to his oratory ; which bears much 
 the same relation to that of his celebrated model 
 Demosthenes, as the principal Latin Epic to the Iliad 
 of Homer. Singularly adapted to impress or to per- 
 suade ; of faultless elegance ; and not unfrequently 
 arrayed with irresistible strength, it is still, for the 
 most part, inferior in free and natural power, as well 
 as in lofty and successful daring, to that by which 
 the Athenian endeavoured to rouse the slumbering 
 energies of his countrymen against the insidious 
 policy of the Macedonian oppressor. The presence 
 of art is perceptible in the modulation of almost every 
 cadence, in the structure of every climax and anti- 
 thesis ; and, with all his oratorical excellences, the 
 Roman frequently falls short of the highest that of 
 uniting simplicity of means with beauty of effect, 
 and of leading captive the minds of his readers, by 
 an unostentatious force. If perfect in harmonious 
 arrangement, moreover, this minor excellence is some- 
 times gained at the expense of a higher merit. The 
 sublimity the nervousness the concentration of ex- 
 pression which in the orations of Demosthenes make 
 such effectual way to the feelings, are much more 
 rarely exhibited in those of his rival in renown ; 
 which reflecting to our imagination the character of 
 the locality in which they were composed, seem ob- 
 viously to have been meditated rather beside the 
 sunny porticoes and whispering woods of Tusculum, 
 than amidst the hoarse dashing of the waves upon the 
 moles of the Peiraeus, or the tumult of billows updli 
 the Sunian shore. It may be added, that the great 
 principles to which the orator of Athens so largely 
 and successfully has recourse, were evidently more 
 partially appreciated by Cicero, whose forensic habits
 
 548 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 
 
 seem to have somewhat limited, as was natural, his 
 views as an enlightened statesman, and to have in- 
 duced him constantly to regard in connexion witli 
 party, what ought to have been considered in rela- 
 tion to the whole human race. In the hands of 
 Demosthenes, the cause of Athens is the cause of 
 freedom, of civilisation, of mankind at large ; the 
 voice of the orator appeals to sentiments as universal 
 as the elements, and as constant as the laws of their 
 operation. With Cicero, the cause of liberty is too 
 often that of the senate and aristocracy of Rome ; 
 the re-establishment of which would not have 
 relieved the provinces, groaning under the weight of 
 her intolerable exactions, from a single impost, or 
 stopped for a moment the march of her victorious 
 legions, on their way to fresh conquests. The former 
 history of his country, again, supplied the Greek with 
 a lofty imagery, from which the Latin was necessarily 
 debarred. The glories of the time when Athens stood 
 forth as the champion of every sacred principle, in 
 her memorable contest with the servile ignorance and 
 barbaric force of the Persian monarchs, shed a con- 
 stant lustre upon his energetic exhortations ; and the 
 reminiscences of that illustrious era in the history of 
 the world, throng around him at his lightest sum- 
 mons. To the Roman no such resources were avail- 
 able. From the earliest period of her existence, Rome 
 had been the oppressor, not the deliverer, of nations ; 
 those who had fallen around her standards, had fallen 
 in the attempt to rivet the yoke upon such as had 
 never known its weight, not to raise it from the necks 
 of the enthralled; and had Cicero wished, at any time, 
 to imitate the sublime enthusiasm of the great master 
 of his art, who swears by the memory of those who 
 were the foremost to peril themselves upon the plains 
 of Marathon, the whole series of metrical annals at 
 his command, as well as the legendary books of the
 
 THE LIFE OP CICERO. 549 
 
 ministers of his religion, would have been searched in 
 vain for a parallel to the cited precedent. 
 
 Yet whatever the place which various tastes and 
 differing judgment may assign to Cicero among 
 the leading spirits of Antiquity, that he is entitled 
 to rank with the greatest in intellect of former 
 times, admits of no controversy. Nor will his claims 
 upon the gratitude of later generations be easily 
 controverted, or speedily forgotten. That the revival 
 of the study of his writings in the Middle Ages, did 
 much to refine the minds of men to whom they were, 
 with almost a pardonable exclusiveness, presented ; 
 and to induce those habits of candid inquiry, and 
 thorough investigation, from which such extensive 
 benefits are derived to the present hour, and will, in 
 all probability, continue to flow till the end of time, 
 may possibly be considered no mean reason for re- 
 garding his memory with respect. That his produc- 
 tions enlivened, to a great extent, the gloom and 
 tedium of monastic solitude, when few other re- 
 sources were available for the purpose, and in those 
 Gothic piles whose external beauty constituted the 
 only lingering reminiscence of genius, tended, in some 
 measure, to nourish the intellectual life which was 
 stagnating and corrupting amidst circumstances so 
 unfavourable to its continuance, may be mentioned 
 as a minor demand upon our regard ; as well as the 
 pleasure which the stores of his eloquence have long 
 afforded to the rising generation of Europe, no less 
 than of regions traversed in his day by " rivers 
 unknown to song," and whose wastes were as far 
 beyond the dreams as they were beyond the reach of 
 Roman conquests. In his own country, the recollec- 
 tion of his name occurs almost at every step, in a 
 land thickly strown with mementoes of departed 
 greatness. The stupendous political fabric, to the 
 maintenance of which his life was devoted, and which
 
 550 THE LIFE OF CICERO. 
 
 in his works is fondly characterised as eternal, has 
 long ceased to exist ; but the green shores of Cam- 
 pania, and the wooded crests of the Alban hills, are 
 yet consecrated to his honour. On that formerly 
 imperious Metropolis, the queen and arbitress of the 
 earth, the signs of ruin are deeply engraven. The 
 gilded roofs of the Capitol, once shining like a ma- 
 jestic diadem above the city which they adorned, 
 have for ages crumbled into dust ; the stately priest, 
 with the attendant virgin, ascends the hundred steps 
 to the shrines of his fabled gods no more ; the grass 
 waves rank in the deserted Forum, and the shattered 
 and time-worn column speaks alone of those mag- 
 nificent edifices inscribed to Concord, or the Thun- 
 dering Jove, in which assembled senates once sat to 
 deliberate on the destinies of subject kings ; yet the 
 voice of the orator still seems. to dwell upon the ear 
 of the traveller 
 
 " And still the eloquent air breathes, burns of Cicero." 
 
 Such is the exalted power of Intelligence, the dis- 
 tinguishing prerogative of Mind; the survivor of 
 violence the victor of decay unaltered by the lapse 
 of successive generations ; and while the features of 
 the material world, no less than the monuments 
 reared by the hands of its fleeting inhabitants, exhibit 
 marks of change, continuing to wear its first aspect 
 of fresh and imperishable beauty. 
 
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