Beacon Lights of History, Volume III - John Lord
He was not a warrior, like so many of the Roman Senators, but his
excellence was higher than that of a conqueror. "He was doomed, by his
literary genius, to an immortality," and was confessedly the most
prominent figure in the political history of his time, next to Caesar
and Pompey. His influence was greater than his power, reaching down to
our time; and if his character had faults, let us remember that he was
stained by no crimes and vices, in an age of violence and wickedness.
Until lately he has received almost unmixed praise. The Fathers of the
Church revered him. To Erasmus, as well as to Jerome and Augustine, he
was an oracle.
In presenting this immortal benefactor, I have no novelties to show.
Novelties are for those who seek to upturn the verdicts of past ages by
offering something new, rather than what is true.
Cicero was born B.C. 106, in the little suburban town of Arpinum, about
fifty miles from Rome,--the town which produced Marius. The period of
his birth was one of marked national prosperity. Great military roads
were built, which were a marvel of engineering skill; canals were dug;
sails whitened the sea; commerce was prosperous; the arts of Greece were
introduced, and its literature also; elegant villas lined the shores of
the Mediterranean; pictures and statues were indefinitely
multiplied,--everything indicated an increase of wealth and culture.
With these triumphs of art and science and literature, we are compelled
to notice likewise a decline in morals. Money had become the god which
everybody worshipped. Religious life faded away; there was a general
eclipse of faith. An Epicurean life produced an Epicurean philosophy.
Pleasure-seeking was universal, and even revolting in the sports of the
Amphitheatre. Sensualism became the convertible word for utilities. The
Romans were thus rapidly "advancing" to a materialistic millennium,--an
outward progress of wealth and industries, but an inward decline in
"those virtues on which the strength of man is based," accompanied with
seditions among the people, luxury and pride among the nobles, and
usurpations on the part of successful generals,--when Cicero began his
memorable career.
He was well-born, but not of noble ancestors. The great peculiarity of
his youth was his precocity. He was an intellectual prodigy,--like Pitt,
Macaulay, and Mill. Like them, he had a wonderful memory. He early
mastered the Greek language; he wrote poetry, studied under eminent
professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different
orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into
the mazes of literature and philosophy. He was conscious of his
marvellous gifts, and was, of course, ambitious of distinction.
There were only three ways at Rome in which a man could rise to eminence
and power. One was by making money, like army contractors and merchants,
such as the Equites, to whose ranks he belonged; the second was by
military service; and the third by the law,--an honorable profession.
Like Caesar, a few years younger than he, Cicero selected the law. But
he was a _new man_,--not a patrician, as Caesar was,--and had few
powerful friends. Hence his progress was not rapid in the way of
clients. He was twenty-five years of age before he had a case. He was
twenty-seven when he defended Roscius, which seems to have brought him
into notice,--even as the fortune of Erskine was made in the Greenwich
Hospital case and that of Daniel Webster in the case of Dartmouth
College. To have defended Roscius against all the influence of Sulla,
then the most powerful man in Rome, was considered bold and audacious.
His fame for great logical power rests on his defence of Milo,--the
admiration of all lawyers.
Cicero was not naturally robust. His figure was tall and spare, his neck
long and slender, and his mouth anything but sensual. He looked more
like an elegant scholar than a popular public speaker. Yet he was
impetuous, ardent, and fiery, like Demosthenes, resorting to violent
gesticulations. The health of such a young man could not stand the
strain on his nervous system, and he was obliged to leave Rome for
recreation; he therefore made the tour of Greece and Asia Minor, which
every fashionable and cultivated man was supposed to do. Yet he did not
abandon himself to the pleasures of cities more fascinating than Rome
itself, but pursued his studies in rhetoric and philosophy under eminent
masters, or "professors" as we should now call them. He remained abroad
two years, returning when he was thirty years of age and settling down
in his profession, taking at first but little part in politics. He
married Terentia, with whom he lived happily for thirty years.
But the Roman lawyer was essentially a politician, looking ultimately to
political office, since only through the great public offices could he
enter the Senate,--the object of ambition to all distinguished Romans,
as a seat in Parliament is the goal of an Englishman. The Roman lawyer
did not receive fees, like modern lawyers, but derived his support from
presents and legacies. When he became a political leader, a man of
influence with the great, his presents were enormous. Cicero
acknowledged, late in life, to have received what would now be equal to
more than a million of dollars from legacies alone. The great political
leaders and orators were the stipendiaries of Eastern princes and nobles
who wanted favors from the Senate, and who knew as well how to reward
such services as do the railway kings in our times.
Before Cicero, then, could be a Senator, he must pass through those
great public offices which were in the gift of the people. The first
step on the ladder of advancement was the office of quaestor, which
entailed the duty of collecting revenues in one of the provinces. This
office he was sufficiently influential to secure, being sent to Sicily,
where he distinguished himself for his activity and integrity. At the
end of a year he renewed his practice in the courts at Rome,--being
hardly anything more than a mere lawyer for five years, when he was
elected an Aedile, to whom the care of the public buildings was
intrusted.
It was while he was aedile-elect that Cicero appeared as the public
prosecutor of Verres. This was one of the great cases of antiquity, and
the one from which the orator's public career fairly dates. His
residence in Sicily had prepared him for this duty; and he secured the
conviction of this great criminal, whose peculations and corruptions
would amaze our modern New Yorkers and all the "rings" of our great
cities combined. But the Praetor of Sicily was a provincial
governor,--more like Warren Hastings than Tweed. For this public service
Cicero gained more _eclat_ than Burke did for his prosecution of
Hastings; since Hastings, though a corrupt man, laid, after Clive, the
foundation of the English empire in India, and was a man of immense
talents,--greater than those of any who has since filled his place.
Hence the nation screened Hastings. But Verres had no virtues and no
great abilities; he was an outrageous public robber, and hoped, from his
wealth and powerful connections, to purchase immunity for his crimes. In
the hands of such an orator as Cicero he could not escape the penalty of
the law, powerful as he was, even at Rome. This case placed Cicero above
Hortensius, hitherto the leader of the Roman bar.
It was at this period that the extant correspondence of Cicero began,
which is the best picture we have of the manners and habits of the Roman
aristocracy at the time. History could scarcely spare those famous
letters, especially to Atticus, in which also the private life and
character of Cicero shine to the most advantage, revealing no vices, no
treacheries,--only egotism, vanity, and vacillation, and a way that some
have of speaking about people in private very differently from what they
say in public, which looks like insincerity. In these letters Cicero
appears as a very frank man, genial, hospitable, domestic, witty, whose
society and conversation must have been delightful. In no modern
correspondence do we see a higher perfection in the polished courtesies
and urbanities of social life, with the alloy of vanity, irony, and
discontent. But in these letters he also evinces a friendship which is
immortal; and what is nobler than the capacity of friendship? In these
he not only shines as a cultivated scholar, but as a great statesman and
patriot, living for the good of his country, though not unmindful of the
luxuries of home and the charms of country retirement, and those
enjoyments which are ever associated with refined and favored life. We
read here of pictures, books, medals, statues, curiosities of every
kind, all of which adorned his various villas, as well as his
magnificent palace on Mount Palatine, which cost him what would be equal
in our money to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To keep up this
town house, and some fifteen villas in different parts of Italy, and to
feast the greatest nobles, like Pompey and Caesar, would imply that his
income was enormous, much greater than that of any modern professional
man. And yet he seems to have lived, like Bacon and our Webster, beyond
his income, and was in debt the greater part of his life,--another flaw
in his character; for I do not wish to paint him without faults, but
only as a good as well as a great man, for his times. His private
character was as lofty as that of Chatham or Canning,--if we could
forget his vanity, which after all is not so offensive as the
intellectual pride of Burke and Pitt, and of sundry other great lights
who might be mentioned, conscious of their gifts and attainments. There
is something very different in the egotism of a silly and self-seeking
aristocrat from that of a great benefactor who has something to be proud
of, and with whose private experiences the greatest national deeds are
connected. I speak of this fault because it has been handled too
severely by modern critics. What were the faults of Cicero, compared
with those of Theodosius or Constantine, to say nothing of his
contemporaries, like Caesar, before whom so much incense has
been burned?
At the age of forty Cicero became Praetor, or Supreme Judge. This
office, when it expired, entitled him to a provincial government,--the
great ultimate ambition of a senator; since the administration of a
province, even for a single year, usually secured an enormous fortune.
But this tempting offer he resigned, since he felt he could not be
spared from Rome in such a crisis of public affairs, when the fortunate
generals were grasping power and the demagogues were almost preparing
the way for despotism. Some might say he was a far-sighted and ambitious
statesman, who could not afford to weaken his chances of being made
Consul by absence from the capital.
This great office, the consulship, the highest in the gift of the
people,--which gave supreme executive control,--was rarely conferred,
although elective, upon any but senators of ancient family and enormous
wealth. It was as difficult for a "new man" to reach this dignity, under
an aristocratic Constitution, as for a commoner a hundred years ago to
become prime minister of England. Transcendent talents and services
scarcely sufficed. Only generals who had won great military fame, or the
highest of the nobles, stood much chance. For a lawyer to aim at the
highest office in the State, without a great family to back him, would
have been deemed as audacious as for such a man as Burke to aspire to a
seat in the cabinet during the reign of George III. A lawyer at Rome,
like a lawyer in London, might become a lord chancellor or praetor, but
not easily a prime minister: he would be defeated by aristocratic
influence and jealousies. Although the people had the right of election,
they voted at the dictation of those who had money and power. Yet Cicero
obtained the consulship, probably with the aid of senators, which he
justly regarded as a great triumph. It was a very unusual thing. It was
more marvellous than for a Jew to reign in Great Britain, or, like
Mordecai, in the court of a Persian king.
The most distinguished service of Cicero as consul was to ferret out the
conspiracy of Catiline. Now, this traitor belonged to the very highest
rank in a Senate of nobles; he was like an ancient duke in the British
House of Peers. It was no easy thing for a plebeian consul to bring to
justice so great a culprit. He was more formidable than Essex in the
reign of Elizabeth, or Bassompierre in the time of Richelieu. He was a
man of profligate life, but of marked ability and boundless ambition. He
had a band of numerous and faithful followers, armed and desperate. He
was also one of those oily and aristocratic demagogues who bewitch the
people,--not, as in our times, by sophistries, but by flatteries. He was
as debauched as Mirabeau, but without his patriotism, though like him he
aimed to overturn the Constitution by allying himself with the
democracy. The people, whom he despised, he gained by his money and
promises; and he had powerful confederates of his own rank, so that he
was on the point of deluging Rome with blood, his aim being nothing less
than the extermination of the Senate and the magistrates by
assassination, and a general division of the public treasure, with
personal assumption of public power.
But all his schemes were foiled by Cicero, who added unwearied activity
to extraordinary penetration. For this great and signal service Cicero
received the highest tribute the State could render. He was called the
savior of his country; and he succeeded in staving off for a time the
fall of his country's liberties. It was a mournful sight to him to see
the ascendency which demagogues had already gained, since it betokened
the approaching destruction of the Constitution, which, good or bad, was
dear to him, and which as an aristocrat he sought to conserve.
Cicero's evil star was not Catiline, but Clodius,--another aristocratic
demagogue whose crimes he exposed, although he failed to bring him to
justice. Clodius was shielded by his powerful connections; and he was,
besides, a popular favorite, as well as a petted scion of one of the
greatest families. Clodius showed his hostility to Cicero, and sought
revenge by artfully causing the people to pass or revive a law that
whoever had inflicted capital punishment on a citizen without a trial
should be banished. This seemed to the people to be a protection to
their liberties. Now Cicero, when consul, had executed some of the
conspirators associated with Catiline, for which he was called the
savior of his country. But by the law which was now passed or revived by
the influence of Clodius, Cicero was himself a culprit, and it would
seem that all the influence of the Senate and his friends could not
prevent his exile. He appealed to his friend Pompey, but Pompey turned a
deaf ear; and also to Caesar, but Caesar was then outside the walls of
the city in command of an army. In fact, both these generals wished him
out of the way, although they equally admired and feared him; for each
of them was bent on being the supreme ruler of Rome.
So it was permitted for the most illustrious patriot which Rome then
held to go into exile. What a comment on the demoralization of the
times! Here was the best, the most gifted, and the most accomplished man
of the Republic,--a man who had rendered invaluable and acknowledged
services, that man of consular dignity and one of the leaders of the
Senate,--sent into inglorious banishment, on a mere technicality and for
an act which saved the State. And the "magnanimous" Caesar and the
"illustrious" Pompey allowed him to go! Where was salvation to a
Republic which banished its savior, and for having saved it? The heart
sickens over such a fact, although it occurred two thousand years ago.
When the citizens of Rome saw that great man depart mournfully from
among them, and to all appearance forever, for having rescued them from
violence and slaughter, and by their own act,--they ought to have known
that the days of the Republic were numbered. But this only a few
far-seeing patriots felt. And not only was Cicero banished, but his
palace was burned and his villas confiscated. He was not only disgraced,
but ruined; he was an exile and a pauper. What a fall! What an unmerited
treatment!
Very few people conceive what a dreadful punishment it was in Greece and
Rome to be banished; or, as the formula went, "to be interdicted from
fire and water,"--the sacred fire of the hearth, the lustral water which
served for sacrifices. The exile was deprived of these by being forced
to extinguish the hearth-fire,--the elemental, fundamental religion of a
Greek and Roman. "He could not, deprived of this, hold property; having
no longer a worship, he had no longer a family. He ceased to be a
husband and father; his sons were no longer in his power, his wife was
no longer his wife, and when he died he had not the right to be buried
in the tombs of his ancestors." [4]
[Footnote 4: Coulanges: Ancient City.]
Is it to be wondered at that even so good and great a man as Cicero
should bitterly feel his disgrace and misfortunes? Is it surprising
that, philosopher as he was, he should have given way to grief and
despondency. He would have been more than human not to have lost his
spirits and his hopes. How natural were grief and despair, in such
complicated miseries, especially to a religious man! Chrysostom could
support _his_ exile with dignity; for Christianity had abolished the
superstitions of Greece and Rome as to household gods. Cicero could not:
he was not great enough for such a martyrdom. It is true we should have
esteemed him higher, had he accepted his fate with resignation: no man
should yield to despair. Had he been as old as Socrates, and had he
accomplished his mission, possibly he would have shown more equanimity.
But his work was not yet done. He was cut off in his prime and in the
midst of usefulness from his home, his religion, his family, his honor,
and his influence; he was utterly ruined. I think the critics make too
much of the grief and misery of Cicero in his banishment. We may be
disappointed that Cicero was not equal to his circumstances; but we need
not be hard on him. My surprise is, not that he was overwhelmed with
grief, but that he did not attempt to drown his grief in books and
literature. His sole relief was in pathetic and unmanly letters.
The great injustice of this punishment naturally produced a reaction.
Nor could the Romans afford to lose the services of their greatest
orator. They also craved the excitement of his speeches, more thrilling
and delightful than the performance of any actor. So he was recalled.
Cicero ought to have anticipated this; it seems, however, he had that
unfortunate temperament which favors alternate depression and
exhilaration of spirits, without measure or reason.
His return was a triumph,--a grand ovation, an unbounded tribute to his
vanity. His palace was rebuilt at the expense of the State, and his
property was restored. His popularity was regained. In fact, his
influence was never lost; and, because it was so great, his enemies
wished him out of the way. He was one of the few who retain influence
after they have lost power.
The excess of his joy on his restoration to home and friends and
property and fame and position, was as great as the excess of his grief
in his short exile. But this is a defect in temperament, in his mental
constitution, rather than a flaw in his character. We could have wished
more placidity and equanimity; but to condemn him because he was not
great in everything is unjust.
On his return to Rome Cicero resumed his practice in the courts with
greater devotion than ever. He was now past fifty years of age, in the
prime of his strength and in the height of his forensic fame. But,
notwithstanding his success and honors, his life was saddened by the
growing dissensions between Caesar and Pompey, the decline of public
spirit, and the approaching fall of the institutions in which he
gloried. It was clear that one or the other of these fortunate generals
would soon become the master of the Roman world, and that liberty was
about to perish. His eloquence now became sad; he sings the death-song
of departing glories; he wails his Jeremiads over the demoralization
which was sweeping away not merely liberty, but religion, and
extinguishing faith in the world. To console himself he retired to one
of his beautiful villas and wrote that immortal essay, "De Oratore,"
which has come down to us entire. His literary genius now blazed equally
with his public speeches in the Forum and in the Senate. Literature was
his solace and amusement, not a source of profit, or probably of
contemporary fame. He wrote treatises on the same principles that he
talked with friends, or that Fra Angelico painted pictures. He renewed
his attempts in poetry, but failed. His poetry is in the transcendent
rhythm of his prose compositions, like that of Madame de Stael, and
Macaulay, and Rousseau.
But he was dragged from his literary and forensic life to accept the
office of a governor of a province. It was forced upon him,--an honor to
him without a charm. Had he been venal and unscrupulous, he would have
seized it with avidity. He was too conscientious to enrich himself by
public corruption, as other Senators did, and unless he could accumulate
a fortune the command of a distant province was an honorable exile. He
was fifty-six years of age when he became Proconsul of Cilicia, an
Eastern province; and all historians have united in praising his
proconsulate for its justice, its integrity, and its ability. He
committed no extortions, and returned home, when his term of office
expired, as poor as when he went. One of the highest praises which can
be given to a public man who has chances of enriching himself is, that
he remains poor. When a member of Congress, known not to be worth ten
thousand dollars, returns to his home worth one hundred thousand
dollars, the public have an instinct that he has, somehow or other, been
untrue to himself and his country. When a great man returns home from
Washington poorer than when he went, his influence is apt to survive his
power; and this perpetuated influence is the highest glory of a public
man,--the glory of Jefferson, of Hamilton, of Washington, like the voice
of Gladstone during his retirement. Now Cicero had pre-eminently this
influence as long as he lived; and it was ever exerted for the good of
his country. Had his country been free, he would have died in honor. But
his country was enslaved, and his voice was drowned, and he had to pay
the penalty of speaking the truth about those unscrupulous men who
usurped authority.
On his return to Rome the state of public affairs was most alarming.
Caesar and Pompey were in antagonism. He must choose between them, and
he distrusted both. Caesar was the more able, accomplished, and
magnanimous, but he was the more unscrupulous and dangerous. He had
ventured to cross the Rubicon,--the first general who ever dared thus
openly to assail his country's liberties. Pompey was pompous, overrated,
and proud, and had been fortunate in the East. But then he sided with
the Constitutional authorities,--that is, with the Senate,--so far as
his ambition allowed. So Cicero took his side feebly, reluctantly, as
the least of the evils he had to choose, but not without vacillation,
which is one of the popular charges against him. "His distraction almost
took the form of insanity." "His inconsistency was an incoherence."
Never did a more wretched man than Cicero resort to Pompey's camp, where
he remained until his cause was lost. He returned, after the battle of
Pharsalia, a suppliant at the feet of Caesar, the conqueror. This, to
me, is one of his weakest acts. It would have been more lofty and heroic
to have perished in the camp of Pompey's sons.
In the midst of these public misfortunes which saddened his soul, his
private miseries began. He was now prematurely an old man, under sixty
years of age, almost broken down with grief. His beloved daughter
Tullia, with whom his life was bound up, died; and he was divorced from
his wife Terentia,--a proceeding the cause of which remains a mystery.
Neither in his most confidential letters, nor in his conversations with
most intimate friends, does it appear that he ever unbosomed himself,
although he was the frankest and most social of men. In his impressive
silence he has set one of the noblest examples of a man afflicted with
domestic infelicities. He buries his conjugal troubles in eternal
silence; although he is forced to give vent to sorrows, so plaintive and
bitter that both friend and foe were constrained to pity. He expects no
sympathy, even at Rome, for the sundering of conjugal relations, and he
communicates no secrets. In his grief and sadness he does, however, a
most foolish thing: he marries a young lady one-third his age. She
accepted him for his name and rank; he sought her for her beauty, her
youth, and her fortune. This union of May with December was of course a
failure. Both parties were soon disenchanted and disappointed. Neither
party found happiness, only discontent and chagrin. The everlasting
incongruities of such a relation--he sixty and she nineteen--soon led to
another divorce. _He_ expected his young wife to mourn with him the loss
of his daughter Tullia. _She_ expected that her society and charms
would be a compensation for all that he had lost; yea, more, enough to
make him the most fortunate and happy of mortals. In truth, he was too
old a man to have married a young woman whatever were the inducements.
It was the great folly of his life; an illustration of the fact that, as
a general thing, the older a man grows the greater fool he becomes, so
far as women are concerned; a folly that disgraced and humiliated the
two wisest and greatest men who ever sat on the Jewish throne.