The Life of Cicero. Volume II.

His journey homeward is made remarkable by letters to Tiro, his slave and secretary. Tiro was taken ill, and Cicero was obliged to leave him at Patræ, in Greece. Whence he had come to Cicero we do not know, or when; but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice before the days of the Cilician government, as we find that on his arrival at Brundisium he writes to Atticus respecting him as a person whom Atticus had not much known.122 But his affection for Tiro is very warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are charming. He is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what captain he sails. He is not to hurry. The doctor is to be consulted and well paid. Cicero himself writes various letters to various persons, in order to secure that attention which Tiro could not have insured unless so assisted.

Early in January Cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because of his still unsettled triumph, and Cæsar crossed the little river which divided his province from the Roman territory. The 4th of January is the date given for the former small event. For the latter I have seen no precise day named. I presume that it was after the 6th, as on that day the Senate appointed Domitian as his successor in his province. On this being done, the two Tribunes, Antony and Cassius, hurried off to Cæsar, and Cæsar then probably crossed the stream. Cicero was appointed to a command in Campania – that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph.

His doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit; but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? The effect had been to take all power out of his hand. Cæsar had given him up. Pompey could not do so, but we can imagine how willing Pompey would have been that he should have remained in Cilicia. He had been sent there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. If he would only have remained and plundered! If he would only have remained there and have been honest – so that he would be out of the way! But here he was – back in Italy, an honest, upright man! No one so utterly unlike the usual Roman, so lost amid the self-seekers of Rome, so unnecessarily clean-handed, could be found! Cato was honest, foolishly honest for his time; but with Cato it was not so difficult to deal as with Cicero. We can imagine Cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely unreasonable. Cicero was all alive to what was going on in the world, but still was honest! In the mean time he remained in the neighborhood of Naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to Tiro, writing to Atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so well – because he has told us. In one of his letters to Atticus at this time he is sadly in earnest. He will die with Pompey in Italy, but what can he do by leaving it? He has his "lictors" with him still. Oh, those dreadful lictors! His friendship for Cnæus! His fear of having to join himself with the coming tyrant! "Oh that you would assist me with your counsel!"123 He writes again, and describes the condition of Pompey – of Pompey who had been Magnus. "See how prostrate he is. He has neither courage, counsel, men, nor industry! Put aside those things; look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns, his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy! * * * Cæsar in pursuit of Pompey! Oh, sad! * * * Will he kill him?" he exclaims. Then, still to Atticus, he defends himself. He will die for Pompey, but he does not believe that he can do any good either to Pompey or to the Republic by a base flight. Then there is another cause for staying in Italy as to which he cannot write. This was Terentia's conduct. At the end of one of his letters he tells Atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which Atticus had sent to him. In another he speaks of a Greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain Dionysius, and he boils over with anger. His letters to Atticus about the Greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time, because they show his eagerness. "I never knew anything more ungrateful; and there is nothing worse than ingratitude."124

He heaps his scorn upon Pompey: "It is true, indeed, that I said that it was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. I would indeed. But of what Pompey was it that I so spoke? Was it of this one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will fly?"125 He writes again the same day: "Pompey had fostered Cæsar, and then had feared him. He had left the city; he had lost Picenum by his own fault, he had betaken himself to Apulia! Then he went into Greece, leaving us in the dark as to his plans!" He excuses a letter of his own to Cæsar. He had written to Cæsar in terms which might be pleasing to the great man. He had told Cæsar of Cæsar's admirable wisdom. Was it not better so? He was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all the people, if only those of Pompey might also be read aloud. Then follow copies of a correspondence between him and Pompey. In the last he declares126 that "when he had written from Canusium he had not dreamed that Pompey was about to cross the sea. He had known that Pompey had intended to treat for peace – for peace even under unjust conditions – but he had never thought that Pompey was meditating a retreat out of Italy." He argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. Pompey had been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself against Cæsar. He had failed, and had slipped away, leaving a man here and there to stand up for the Republic. Pompey was willing to risk nothing for Rome. It had come to pass at last that he was being taught Cæsarism by Cæsar, and when he died was more imperial than his master.

At this time Cicero's eyes were bad. "Mihi molestior lippitudo erat etiam quam ante fuerat." And again, "Lippitudinis meæ signum tibi sit librarii manus." But we may doubt whether any great men have lived so long with so little to tease them as to their health. And yet the amount of work he got through was great. He must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. When we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. Throughout his life his hours were early, but they must also have been late. Of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. When he was abroad during his exile, or in Cilicia during his government, he could not have had his books with him. That Cæsar should have been Cæsar, or Pompey Pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as that Cicero should have been Cicero. Then comes that letter of which I spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the Getæ, the Armenians, and the men of Colchis. "Shall I, the savior of the city, assist to bring down upon that city those hordes of foreign men? Shall I deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who is no more than mortal?"127 It was Pompey as to whom he then asked the question. For Pompey's sake am I to let in these crowds? We have been told, indeed, by Mr. Froude that the man was Cæsar, and that Cicero wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death!

"Now, if ever, think what we shall do," he says. "A Roman army sits round Pompey and makes him a prisoner within valley and rampart – and shall we live? The city stands; the Prætors give the law, the Ædiles keep up the games, good men look to their principal and their interest. Shall I remain sitting here? Shall I rush hither and thither madly, and implore the credit of the towns? Men of substance will not follow me. The revolutionists will arrest me. Is there any end to this misery? People will point at me and say, 'How wise he was not to go with him.' I was not wise. Of his victory I never wished to be the comrade – yet now I do of his sorrow."128

b. c. 49, ætat. 58.

Pompey had crossed the sea from Brundisium, and Cæsar had retreated across Italy to Capua. As he was journeying he saw Cicero, and asked him to go to Rome. This Cicero refused, and Cæsar passed on. "I must then use other counsels," said Cæsar, thus leaving him for the last time before the coming battle. Cicero went on to Arpinum, and there heard the nightingales. From that moment he resolved. He had not thought it possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail against Cæsar's advice; but he had done so. He had feared that Cæsar would overcome him; but when the moment came he was strong against even Cæsar. He gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of him. He was going after Pompey, not for the sake of Pompey, not for the sake of the Republic, but for loyalty. He was going because Atticus had told him to go. But as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. He writes to Atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew. The one is good by nature, and has not yet gone astray. The other, the elder and his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence, and has openly adopted evil ways. In other words, he has become Cæsarian – for a reward.129 The young Quintus has shown himself to be very false. Cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life that this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. Then Curio comes the way, and there is a most interesting conversation. It seems that Curio, who is fond of Cicero, tells him everything; but Cicero, who doubts him, lets him pass on. Then Cælius writes to him. Cælius implores him, for the sake of his children, to bear in mind what he is doing. He tells him much of Cæsar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become Cæsarian; at any rate to betake himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and quieter days should come. But Cælius, though it had suited Cicero to know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. He did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded Cicero. To Cælius it was play – play in which a man might be beaten, or banished, or slaughtered; but it was a game in which men were fighting each for himself. That there should be a duty in the matter, beyond that, was inexplicable to Cælius. And his children, too – his anger against young Quintus and his forgiveness of Marcus! He thinks that Quintus had been purchased by a large bribe on Cæsar's side, and is thankful that it is no worse with him. What can have been worse to a young man than to have been open to such payment? Antony is frequently on the scene, and already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. And then Cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. Servius Sulpicius comes to him weeping. For Servius, who is timid and lachrymose, everything has gone astray. And then there is that Dionysius who had plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier master. At the last comes the news of his Tullia's child's birth. She is brought to bed of a son. He cannot, however, wait to see how the son thrives. From the midst of enemies, and with spies around him, he starts. There is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from on board the ship at Caieta, sending them many loves and many careful messages, and then he is off.

It was now the 11th of June, the third day before the ides, b. c. 49, and we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. When he reached the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. He had given his all to place himself along with Pompey in the republican quarters, and when there the republicans were unwilling to welcome him. Pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to be able to say hereafter that he had not come.

Of what occurred to Cicero during the great battle which led to the solution of the Roman question we know little or nothing. We hear that Cicero was absent, sick at Dyrrachium, but there are none of those tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. We hear, indeed, from other sources, very full accounts of the fighting – how Cæsar was nearly conquered, how Pompey might have prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way, how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how, in the very presence of his wife, he was murdered at last at the mouth of the Nile by the combined energies of a Roman and a Greek.

We can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the Pharsalus where the two armies met, and the victory remained with Cæsar. Then there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the congratulations and self-applause of the victors. In all Cicero's letters there is not a word of it. There was terrible suffering before it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but nowhere do we find any record of what took place. There is no mourning for Pompey, no turning to Cæsar as the conqueror. Petra has been lost, and Pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign.

b. c. 48, ætat. 59.

Cicero, we know, spent the time at Dyrrachium close to which the battle of Petra was fought, and went from thence to Corcyra. There invitation was made to him, as the senior consular officer present, to take the command of the beaten army, but that he declined. We are informed that he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. We can imagine that it was so – that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he should have been somewhat roughly told that it behooved him to take the lead and to come forth as the new commander; that there should be a time at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he should doubt, and, after more or less of reticence, pass on. Young Pompey would have it so. What name would be so good to bind together the opponents of Cæsar as that of Cicero? But Cicero would not be led. It seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time; that he had been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true to Pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that Pompey was gone. We can well imagine that there should be no man less able to fight against Cæsar, though there was none whose name might be so serviceable to use as that of Cicero. At any rate, as far as we are concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. He wrote not a word to any of the friends whom Pompey had left behind him, but returned to Italy dispirited, silent, and unhappy. He had indeed met many men since the battle of the Pharsalus, but to none of whom we are conversant had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign.

Here we part from Pompey, who ran from the fighting-ground of Macedonia to meet his doom in the roads of Alexandria. Never had man risen so high in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. He was born in the same year with Cicero, but had come up quicker into the management of the world's affairs, so as to have received something from his equals of that which was due to age. Habit had given him that ease of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his compeers the deference which was due not to his age but to his experience. When Cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to fight against Sulla, Pompey had already won his spurs, in spite of Sulla but by means of Sulla. Men in these modern days learn, as they grow old in public life, to carry themselves with indifference among the backslidings of the world. In reading the life of Cicero, we see that it was so then. When defending Amerinus, we find the same character of man as was he who afterward took Milo's part. There is the same readiness, the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation; but there is not the same indifference as to results. With Amerinus it is as though all the world depended on it; with Milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the outside world believe it. When Pompey triumphed, 70 b. c., and was made Consul for the second time, he was already old in glory – when Cicero had not as yet spoken those two orations against Verres which had made the speaking of another impossible. Pompey, we may say, had never been young. Cicero was never old. There was no moment in his life in which Cicero was not able to laugh with the Curios and the Cæliuses behind the back of the great man. There was no moment in which Pompey could have done so. He who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by idle and luxurious young men of the day. Cicero did not live for many years beyond Pompey, but I doubt whether he did not know infinitely more of men. To Pompey it had been given to rule them; but to Cicero to live with them.

Chapter VI

AFTER THE BATTLE

b. c. 48, ætat. 59.

In the autumn of this year Cicero had himself landed at Brundisium. He remained nearly a year at Brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how sad and how long must have been the days with him. He had no country when he reached the nearest Italian port; it was all Cæsar's, and Cæsar was his enemy. There had been a struggle for the masterdom between two men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom Cicero had not ranged himself. He had known how it would be. All the Getæ, and the men of Colchis, and the Armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those who preferred the delicacies of Baiæ to the work of the Forum, all who had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all those whom Cæsar was determined either to drive out of Italy or keep there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. We already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them and with Cæsar. On Cæsar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no Scæva and of no Crastinus on Pompey's side. Men change their nature under such leading as was that of Cæsar. The inferior men become heroic by contact with the hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood dabbled down upon a fair cloth. Who that has eyes to see can look back upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the stern man passes on without a ruffled face, after ordering the right hands of those who had fought at Uxellodunum to be chopped off at the wrist, in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for their country?

There are men – or have been, from time to time, in all ages of the world – let loose, as it were, by the hand of God to stop the iniquities of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities. They have come and done their work, and have died, leaving behind them the foul smell of destruction. An Augustus followed Cæsar, and him Tiberius, and so on to a Nero. It was necessary that men should suffer much before they were brought back to own their condition. But they who can see a Cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming – not for himself but for the world around him – and can lend their tongues, their pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been touched by the supremacy of human suffering.

It must have been a sorry time with him at Brundisium. He had to stay there waiting till Cæsar's pleasure had been made known to him, and Cæsar was thinking of other things. Cæsar was away in Egypt and the East, encountering perils at Alexandria which, if all be true that we have heard, imply that he had lived to be past fear. Grant that a man has to live as Cæsar did, and it will be well that he should be past fear. At any rate he did not think of Cicero, or thinking of him felt that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he had made. Cicero did brood – not exactly in silence – over the things that fate had done for him and for his country. For himself, he was living in Italy, and yet could not venture to betake himself to one of the eighteen villas which, as Middleton tells us, he had studded about the country for his pastime. There were those at Tusculum, Antium, Astura, Arpinum – at Formiæ, at Cumæ, at Puteoli, and at Pompeii. Those who tell us of Cicero's poverty are surely wandering, carried away by their erroneous notions of what were a Roman nobleman's ideas as to money. At no period of his life do we find Cicero not doing what he was minded to do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had allowed himself in any respect to break the law. It has been argued that he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments, because he says that he wanted money. It was natural that he should occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. The incoming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. A man here and there might attend to his money, as did Atticus. Cicero did not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for relief. But he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. Is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? We are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his villas, though in the hurry-scurry of Roman affairs it did now and again become necessary for him to apply to Atticus for accommodation. Let us think what must have been Cæsar's demands for money. Of these we hear nothing, because he was too wise to have an Atticus to whom he wrote everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be treasured for the curiosity of after-ages.

To be hopeful and then tremulous; to be eager after success and then desponding; to have believed readily every good and then, as readily, evil; to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have turned round and declared how he had been deceived; to have been very angry and then to have forgiven – this seems to have been Cicero's nature. Verres, Catiline, Clodius, Piso, and Vatinius seem to have caused his wrath; but was there one of them against whom, though he did not forgive him, his anger did not die out? Then, at last, he was moved to an internecine fight with Antony. Is there any one who has read the story which we are going to tell who will not agree with us that, if after Mutina Octavius had thought fit to repudiate Antony and to follow Cicero's counsels, Antony would not have been spared?

Nothing angers me so much in describing Cicero as the assertion that he was a coward. It has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes cowardice. He did not care to fight; but are all men cowards who do not care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking? He saw that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he did not see it. When men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled, and Cæsar and Pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest danger does not consist in fighting. A man's tongue makes enemies more bitter than his sword. But Cicero, when the time came, never shirked his foe. Whether it was Verres or Catiline, or Clodius or Antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. At moments such as that there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave.

His friendship for Pompey is perhaps, of all the strong feelings of his life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse. For myself I can see why it was so; but I cannot do that without acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. Had he risen above Pompey, he would have been great indeed; for I look upon it as certain that he did see that Pompey was as untrue to the Republic as Cæsar. He saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all times that Pompey was false. Cæsar was not false. Cæsar was an open foe. I doubt whether Pompey ever saw enough to be open. He never realized to himself more than men. He never rose to measures – much less to the reason for them. When Cæsar had talked him over, and had induced him to form the Triumvirate, Pompey's politics were gone. Cicero never blanched. Whether, full of new hopes, he attacked Chrysogonus with all the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or, with the settled purpose of his life, he accused Verres in the teeth of the coming Consul Hortensius; whether in driving out Catiline, or in defending Milo; whether, even, in standing up before Cæsar for Marcellus, or in his final onslaught upon Antony, his purpose was still the same. As time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went down into the arena and fought the beasts at Ephesus. Alas, it is so with mankind! Who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? And who can fight them but after some fashion of their own? He was fighting beasts at Ephesus when he was defending Milo. He was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest! It was impossible. These men would not be just, and yet he must use them. Milo and Cælius and Curio were his friends. He knew them to be bad, but he could not throw off from him all that were bad men. If by these means he could win his way to something that might be good, he would pardon their evil. As we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character becomes tarnished, and that his high feelings are blunted by the party which he takes and the men with whom he associates.