menu_book Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of Cicero and the Fall of the Roman Republic by J. L. Strachan Davidson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 Cicero's Ideal Party 63-60 BC The fortunes of Catiline had been watched with interest from the other side of the Aegean Sea. Pompey saw clearly what a marvelous piece of good fortune the folly of the revolutionaries

was preparing for him, and in order to take advantage of it, he sent one of his lieutenants, Metellus Nepos, to Rome in time for the Tribuneian elections in 63 BC. It was hoped that Catiline might make sufficient head against the government to alarm all classes, and Metellus as tribune was to seize the opportunity to carry by general assent a decree calling upon Pompey to return to Italy with his army and save the state from the anarchists. Plutarch tells us that Cato,

who had just set forth on a journey, met Nepos and his retinue entering the gates of Rome. Cato guessed that mischief was afoot, and in order to frustrate it, he turned his horse's head and appeared as a rival candidate for the tribunate. Both Cato and Metellus were elected and entered on office on the 10th of December in the year 63 BC. If Catiline had succeeded better, and if the government had shown itself incapable of dealing with the conspiracy, Cato's opposition

would have gone for very little, and a prize such as man, never won before, would have been within Pompey's grasp. Without serious danger, and without breach of duty or loyalty, he would have stepped at once into the position of savior of society. He would have been a Sula without guilt or bloodshed, claiming from the gratitude of his fellow citizens that deference which a despot has to extort by force. Neither the jealous nobles nor the baffled revolutionaries could have refused to recognize

his preeminence and to accord him that place of acknowledged chief and protector of a free state to which he aspired. Such were the prospects of Pompey during the October and November of the year 63 BC. His hopes were rudely shattered by the knowns of December. The conspiracy in the city was crushed and Catiline's army had melted away. The Dignus Vidici Notus had been disentangled by other hands and the Deus Ex Machina had missed the opportunity for his appearance. Metellus Nepos

proposed indeed that his patron should be given the command against Catiline, but his tribuneship had begun five days too late. His arguments had lost their force now that Catiline's power was maimed. His only recourse was to exaggerate as far as possible whatever elements of discontent and disorder were still available. Amongst these was the dispute whether the action of Cicero have been legally justified or not, might not a state of affairs in which citizens could be put

to death without trial be represented as calling for the intervention of the second Sula? If Pompey could no longer be summoned to save the state from the anarchy of Catiline, might not the tyranny of Cicero serve, for want of a better, as an available pretext? With this object, Nepos took the first opportunity of entering a formal protest against the executions. When Cicero laid down his consulship on the last day of December, he prepared to address, as was the custom, a parting speech to

the people. Metellus, by virtue of his sacrosanct power as tribune, interrupted him, declaring that he who had deprived Roman citizens of their right to plead in their own defense to the people, should not be allowed to speak to the people himself. He forbade him therefore to do more than to take the oath prescribed by law. Cicero affected compliance and advanced to take the oath. Then lifting up his voice so as to be heard by the assembled multitude, he swore,

This city and commonwealth have been preserved from destruction by me. The unexpected appeal called forth a ready response from his audience. The whole assembly shouted assent and swore along with him. The humiliation which Metellus had intended for Cicero was thus turned into a triumph, and attacks which the tribune made on him in the Senate on the following days were likewise repelled with vigor. Nevertheless, the incident was calculated

to cause him grave uneasiness. The hostility of Metellus Nepos might, insofar as he alone was concerned be viewed with indifference, but the menace implied in the action of Pompey's agent was in the highest degree alarming. The agent, at least, clearly thought that the loss of the opportunity of intervening as the supporter of law and order would make no difference in Pompey's action, except that he would now come as the ally of the revolution instead of its suppressor.

Pompey's power as the commander of the only efficient army was so great that the fortunes of the Commonwealth hinged on his will and the sole hope of the constitutionalists lay in his keeping true to his honor and obedient to the law. Cicero's anxiety was increased by a letter received somewhat later from Pompey, which was very cold in tone and contained no word of congratulation on the achievements of his consulship. Pompey's annoyance may easily be

understood, and the only strange thing is that Cicero does not seem to have perceived how inevitable it was that Pompey should feel displeased. If Catiline had been in Pompey's pay, he could not have served him better than by the untimely attempt at revolution. If Cicero had been Pompey's deadliest enemy, he could not have done more to thwart his action and frustrate his hopes. If Cicero had made a false step, if he had not parried Catiline's attempts to assassinate him,

if he had fled from the post of danger and called for Pompey's assistance, if he had only allowed matters to drift until riot and massacre began in Rome, Pompey's course would have been easy and dignified, duty and interest would have pointed in the same direction. But now for the first time in Pompey's life, fortune conspicuously failed him, and he was called upon to decide between the sacrifice of his cherished hopes and the sacrifice of his conscience. The temptation

was strong, and Pompey wavered and waited, hoping that chance would serve him once more. Meantime, Metellus continued his machinations in the city. In spite of the defeat and death of Catiline, he still pressed his proposal that Pompey should be summoned to restore order, and in these efforts, he was encouraged and supported by Caesar, who was now Praetor. Caesar certainly did not wish any such decree to be really carried, but he saw that the proposal

could not be forced through, and he wished by every means to embitter the relations between Pompey and the Senate, thus averting the one combination, which would have been fatal to all revolutionary schemes. Cato steadily interposed his veto on the proposals of his colleague, and Metellus and Caesar persevered with inflammatory speeches and riotous assemblies. The disorder grew to such an extent that the Senate passed decrees, which under whatever form,

for on this point we have conflicting statements. Prohibited Caesar and Metellus from the exercise of their magisterial functions. Caesar, after a show of resistance, submitted and shut himself up in his own house, and the Senate soon afterwards relieved him from his disabilities. Metellus declared that he was under stress of violence and fled for protection to Pompey's camp. Cicero's brilliant success as consul had raised him at once to a place amongst the foremost

statesmen of Rome. Cato made the first use of his new power as tribune to summon an assembly in which amidst the applause of the multitude, he saluted Cicero as the father of his country. The precedent was followed in later days in favor of the emperors, and the appellation came to be an official title. When Cicero retired from office and took his seat among the consulars at the beginning of the year 62 BC, the new consuls asked his opinion first in their consultation of

the Senate. His principles and line of policy are to be explained by the changes in the relation of parties which had occurred during the last seven years. The bond between the equestrian order and the Democrats, who were equally hostile to the Constitution of Sula, had naturally been loosened by their joint victory. The Knights had now recovered their place in the jury courts and their seats in the theater, and had for the present no special grievance against the Senate.

The barrier of aristocratic exclusiveness had been forced by Cicero's election to the consulship, and everything tended towards a reconciliation between the First and the Second Order in the state. This new union was further cemented by a common fear of the revolutionary designs of Catiline. The Roman knights could feel no sympathy with the party, which had favored men who conspired to abolish debt and to wage war on capital. Hence, it was natural and proper that Cicero and the

equestrian party, of which he was one of the acknowledged chiefs, should be on the side of the Constitution when the Great Crisis came. The consul who had risen from the ranks defended the state from revolution as vigorously as the proudest aristocrat could have done, and his success was largely owing to the staunchness with which the equestrian order stood by its leader and by the Senate. To consolidate and perpetuate the harmony between the orders thus attained was the dream of

Cicero's politics, the good cause, as he often calls it. His ideal party was to include the moderate men of both orders, and their combination was to present a firm barrier against revolution. As the equestrian order contained not only the great capitalists of Rome, but the men of wealth and local importance in the country towns, this Concordia Ordinum implied the Consencio Italiae, on which the statesmen from Arpinum naturally laid great stress. But no union of parties in

Rome could be sufficient unless accompanied by a reconciliation between the civil and the military power. To accomplish this, Cicero was anxious to secure Pompey as the leader of his coalition. Seriously, as he had crossed the path of his chosen hero, his own loyalty towards him remained unshaken. He marked him out as the man fit to play the part of Scipio, the soldier chief of a free state, and alongside him, Cicero hoped to fill the place of Lelius, the man of peace, of eloquence,

and of learning, who could supplement the qualities of the military leader. This apportionment of functions was suggested in a letter which Cicero wrote to Pompey in reply to the one which had caused him so much uneasiness early in the year. Cicero's letter is naturally severe in tone, and he refers not without dignity to his own services, to Pompey in the past. It is my great satisfaction to be conscious that I have not failed in supporting my friends,

and if on any occasion these fail to support me in turn, I am well content that the balance of obligations conferred should rest with me. Of one thing I feel sure, that if the zeal which I have always shown in your service proves an insufficient link to bind us the one to the other, yet nevertheless the interests of the state will draw and unite us together. When you have made yourself acquainted with the truth in the case, you will readily allow me, as scarcely less than Laelius,

to be associated both as a political ally and as a friend with you who are so much greater than Africanus. The failure of Cicero's good cause is the story which we have to trace of the politics of the ensuing years, but it may be well to attempt, once for all, to arrive at a judgment on the practicability of his ideal. The problem presented to Rome was one which had never been solved in the ancient world. Free states there had been, and great empires, but the two had always

proved mutually exclusive. The question then, which pressed for solution, was this? How can a free state be at the same time a conquering and governing state? How can an empire be organized without the sacrifice of political liberty? In the absence of representative government, the sole forms of free state known to the ancients were the Confederation, an organization which common sense at once discarded as too loose and inefficient for the purpose, and the city-state

as had been elaborated by Greek politicians and political philosophers. To the mind of all Roman statesmen, excepting perhaps Augustus, liberty and the city-state were inextricably bound up together, and under these conditions, the task of uniting liberty and empire was in truth an insuperable labor. Caesar's failure to perform it was at least as conspicuous as that of Cicero and Cato. It is to Caesar's credit that he saw that the empire must be maintained and organized at whatever

sacrifice, but his plan of organizing it was simply to throw up in despair the problem which he was called to solve. He reverted to the method of primitive despotism, that crude and long discredited form of government by which Egypt, Assyria, and Persia had ruled and degraded vast populations. He renounced all the political inheritance of the civilized West and all the glorious hopes and ideals with which Greece and Rome had enriched the world. To these hopes and

ideals, Cicero clung, and unhappily he clung at the same time to the use of the very imperfect machinery which Greece had invented for the fashioning of political liberty and order. A state great and powerful, as Rome had now become, had really outgrown the forms adapted to the government of a city. These forms supplied no means by which the collective will of the great body of Roman citizens could find a regular and peaceful expression. They afforded no effective

machinery for making the provincial administration work in due harmony and subordination to the central government, or for bringing home to the central government itself any sense of responsibility, whether towards citizens or subjects. The Senate was too weak when it had to deal with the details of government throughout the empire, or to defend the civilized world by military force, and at the same time, to keep the soldiers and their commanders in order. It was too

strong, whenever for the sake of its own interests, it chose to ignore or to defy public opinion at home. The rectification of abuses, which with better arrangements, might have been accomplished by a change of ministry, was possible under this perverse system only at the cost of revolution. Cicero seems to have been unconscious of these defects. He never saw that, if the free state was to survive, it must invent a fresh machinery of government. He looked on the forces which

destroyed the Republic as the devices of wicked men breaking into the system, whereas the system was, in truth, largely responsible for the mischief. He assumed that the traditional powers and methods recognized in the Constitution of Rome were absolute and immutable, and that all his combinations must be within the lines thus prescribed for him. These limitations preclude any of those radical reforms, which alone could have permanently saved Rome from her fatal

revolution, but as a temporary expedient, staving off the evil day for that generation at least, and giving time for the Republic to work out its problems and remodel its institutions. Cicero's policy seems to have been far superior to that of any other statesman of his time. If the great disaster of the military despotism was to be avoided, it was necessary that Senate and Knights should compose their differences once for all and show a united front to the enemy.

Still more necessary was it that Pompey should be attached to the constitution and diverted from any alliance with the revolutionary party. To accomplish this, Cicero was for frankly conceding to Pompey the exceptional position which he claimed as the first man in the state, and was quite content himself to act as Pompey's lieutenant and co-adjutor. For the success of any such combination, it was needful that all the parties with which he had to

work should have shared Cicero's insight into the dangers of the time and his willingness to make sacrifices to meet them, but Cicero failed in his efforts to bring this conviction home to his contemporaries. Nobles alike, and men of business, preferred their private interests and animosity and prejudices to the pursuit of a sane and consistent policy, and Pompey, the leader of Cicero's choice, was by no means equal to the difficult and delicate part which he had to play.

The most obvious and pressing danger to liberty was, however, for the moment, averted. With the outraged tribune in his camp, Pompey was furnished with the same sort of pretext for armed rebellion as that of which Caesar availed himself when he crossed the Rubicon 13 years later. Of the action of Caesar, Plutarch pithily remarks that Caesar was far too sensible a man to have gone to war to redress the wrongs of the tribunes if he had not made up his mind for war on other grounds.

The same may be said of Pompey on the earlier occasion. The real question, which he had to decide, was whether the object of his own policy could be attained by espousing the tribune's quarrel. If the prize for which Pompey was seeking had been the same which Caesar afterwards won, if Pompey had desired to found a despotism for himself on the ruins of Roman liberty, then unquestionably success was within his grasp. The Republic had an able general in Lucullus,

but it had no troops fit to oppose to Pompey's veterans. He was tempted to advance to a field on which victory was certain, but he knew that such a victory would cause the destruction of all the elements of Republican liberty. It would leave him no choice but to rule the Romans by the domination of naked force, and it would imply the renunciation of his own noble ambition to be the chief citizen of a free state. From such a crime, Pompey shrank. If he had been a man

a frank and generous disposition, he would have instantly rejected the very idea of such a treason with horror and indignation. But this was not in the nature of Pompey. He spent the greater part of the year 62 in loitering on the homeward road, brooding over the ruin of his hopes of the year before, watching for the chance of making his power felt in some less odious way, and all the while dallying with the temptation to turn his arms against his country. Throughout these months,

Pompey preserved a gloomy silence, and the Roman world waited in suspense for his decision. At length, towards the end of the year, the dictates of honor and of conscience triumphed over those of ambition. Perhaps the prospect which Cicero's letter had held out to him may have influenced him in some degree for good. For Cicero, writing on the 1st of January, 61 BC, says, I have good evidence that Pompey is most friendly to me. A few days before this letter was

written, Pompey had landed in Italy. His mind was now made up and he resolved to give striking evidence of his loyalty and to remove at once all apprehension of civil war. As soon as he landed at Brundisium, he disbanded his troops and proceeded to Rome with a small escort. So far, Pompey's action was straightforward and decisive. He put away from himself all possibility of appealing to unlawful force and threw himself unreservedly for support on the goodwill of his fellow citizens,

the only rightful basis of authority. Unhappily, his capacity for a plain and vigorous policy seems to have been exhausted by this single good action. He fell back on his pitiful habit of silence and reserve, never perceiving that the statesman, who tries to refrain from committing himself on the main political issues of the time, must of necessity become impotent and ridiculous. The natural and logical sequence to the dispersion of Pompey's army was a frank union with the

constitutionalists, and this implied a clear and unmistakable approval of the action of the government in the matter of Catiline. But for this, Cicero looked in vain. During the month of December 62 BC, another question had arisen in Rome, petty enough in itself, but destined to have serious consequences. A young patrician named Publius Clodius was caught, disguised as a woman, invading the mysteries of the good goddess whose privacy was polluted by the presence of any male

at her worship the sacrifices were performed in the house of caesar who was praetor for the year and in pursuit of an intrigue with caesar's wife clodius thrust himself into the company of and matrons caesar divorced his wife and declined to stir further in the business but the matter could not rest there. The virgins performed afresh the ceremonies whose virtue had been impaired. The pontiffs declared that sacrilege had been committed, and it followed that the state must

purge itself from the impiety by the punishment of the offender. After discussions in the Senate, the consuls were instructed to bring a bill before the people, constituting a court for his trial. A tribune, Fufius, proposed in Clodius's interest a rival scheme, which differed from that of the Senate by providing that the jury should be chosen by lot, whereas the consular bill directed the praetor to select the jurymen. This was the condition of affairs when Pompey arrived early

in February before the gates of Rome, and the world eagerly awaited his utterances on all these burning questions. Cicero gives a graphic account of his first appearances before the people and the senate. I have already told you what Pompey's first speech was like, with no comfort for the wretched, too unsubstantial to please the disloyal, unsatisfactory to the comfortable classes, and with not sufficient firmness for honest men. And so it fell flat. Not long after,

at the instigation of the consul Piso, that paltry fellow, Fufius the Tribune, again put Pompey forward. The scene of this was the Flamonian circus on a market day with a large attendance. He questioned him as to whether he approved of a praetor selecting the jurors who were to sit as that praetor's court. This being the arrangement proposed by the Senate in the case of Clodius. Then Pompey replied very much,

He said that the authority of the Senate weighed heavily with him on all occasions, and had always done so, and so on at great length. Next, the consul, Messala, asked Pompey in the Senate, what was his opinion regarding the sacrilege and regarding the bill that had been proposed. He replied by praising in general terms all the decrees of that house,

and as he sat down again beside me, he remarked, I suppose I have said enough on your business as well. It is not surprising that this hesitation and inability to speak his mind should have produced a bad impression on Pompey's contemporaries. The desire to keep things open and the weak love of silence and reserve could only be indulged in at the expense of his reputation for honesty and straightforwardness. It is of no avail that a man has been seen to make great sacrifices on

occasion to the cause of duty, if his daily bearing contradicts the idea of his sincerity. Cicero was strongly provoked with Pompey's conduct and expressed his vexation in no measured language to his friend. There is no courtesy, no candor in him, no sense of honor in politics, nothing high-minded or vigorous or straightforward. On the other hand, the leading optimates were much to blame in not exerting themselves to win Pompey. Whenever he made

advances, they were coldly received. Pompey showed what he wished when he proposed a series of matrimonial alliances which would have united him closely with Cato. Cato rejected his overtures and soon afterwards saw cause to exalt in his short-sighted way over his own prudence, Pompey spent money too freely at the elections of 61 BC in order to secure the return of his partisan, Aphrianus, as consul. I should have shared in the ill fame of this, said Cato,

if I had allied myself to Pompey by marriage. Plutarch, who is our authority for the story, very sensibly adds. However, if we are to judge by the event, Cato made a fatal error in rejecting the alliance and leaving Pompey to turn to Caesar and contract a marriage which, by uniting the forces of the two, nearly ruined Rome and actually destroyed the constitution. None of these things would have happened if Cato had not taken fright at the small faults of Pompey and so allowed him

to commit the greatest of all in building up the power of another. Meanwhile, the business of Clodius had entered on a fresh phase. Hortensius, who was one of the prominent supporters of the bill, fearing that it would be vetoed at last by Fufius, suggested that it might be well to paralyze his opposition by accepting Fufius's own bill as a substitute. The guilt of Clodius, he thought, was so manifest that no jury, however constituted, could fail to find a true verdict on

the question of fact. He would cut Clodius's throat, he protested, even with a leaden sword. Accordingly, the experiment was tried. The consuls withdrew their bill and that of Fufius was carried unopposed. When the jury came to be empaneled, it was manifest that the lot had fallen unluckily. The challenges of the accused cleared out the best men, while those of the prosecutor could make little impression on the mass of indifferent characters whose names had come

from the ballot box. There never was a more rascally lot collected round a gaming table. Claudius's defense was an alibi. He produced witnesses to swear that he was never near Caesar's house that night, but was 50 miles away at Interomna. Unfortunately, Cicero had happened to meet him in Rome only three hours before, and he earned Clodius's deadly hatred by coming forward in disproof of the alibi. At first, it seemed as if the jury were going to decide

according to the facts. When Cicero came forward to give his evidence and the partisans of Clodius hooted and attempted to mob him. The jurors rose as one man and interposed their persons for his protection. They protested likewise against the coercion of the court by Clodius's rabble and applied to the Senate for an armed guard, which was immediately granted. Hortensius was triumphant and all the world believed that a verdict of guilty was inevitable. But a powerful factor

had been left out of consideration. Crasis was the richest man in Rome, and though he loved his money dearly, he loved power and influence still more, and was ready to spend freely when a political object was in view. He had lately become security to Caesar's creditors for 200,000 pounds in order to enable him to get safely out of Rome and to take up his command in Spain. It had doubtless been settled between the two that Clodius would be useful to them in the future

and that he must be saved at all costs. Crasis accordingly paid down an enormous sum of money and in the course of two days bought the votes of a majority of the jury. The acquittal was a heavy blow to the hopes of the constitutional party. The scandal was so notorious that it seemed to proclaim the hopelessness of orderly government and pure justice in Rome. That settlement, Cicero writes, which you used to ascribe to my policy and I to providence, which seemed firmly

established by the union of all loyal citizens and by the events of my consulship, has now, I must tell you, crumbled beneath our feet, unless heaven takes pity on us, all through this single verdict, if indeed one can call it a verdict, that thirty men, as worthless and base as you could find in our state, should take money to outrage all law and all right, and that when every man, and let alone men, every beast in Rome, knows that a thing was done, Thalna and Plautus

and Spungia and Riff Raff of that sort should decide that it was not done. The scandal gave rise to some neat epigrams. They did not trust you on your oath, Clodius said, taunting Cicero. Twenty-five of them, was the retort, did trust me, and the other thirty-one certainly did not trust you, for they got their money down beforehand. In the same vein was the remark of Catalyst to a juror. What made you ask us for a guard? Were you afraid that your pocket would be lightened as you went

home from the court? It may be presumed that Pompey was disgusted with the shameless perversion of justice for which the democratic leaders were responsible. At any rate, we find constant evidence in the letters of the months which follow that Pompey was now anxious to be on good terms with the constitutionalists and that more especially he was drawing towards Cicero. He never frankly gives up his clumsy reticence, but it melts gradually away and he finds hard

at last to commit himself to a definite approval of the acts of Cicero's consulship. In the following December, Cicero writes to Atticus, However, since you're friends, that is the equestrian order, seem unsteady, another road to safety is, as I hope, being laid. I cannot speak fully of it by letter, but I will indicate what I mean. I am on very intimate terms with Pompey. I perceive what you will say. Yes, I will be cautious where caution is needed, and I will write again to you more at

length about my political projects. On the 1st of February, he says, Meanwhile, you cannot find a single true statesman, no, nor the ghost of one. One man might be if he chose, my friend, for I wish you to understand that he is very much so, Pompey. But he only stares in silence on his lap, studying the pattern of that triumphal robe of his. Crasis will not say a word to hazard his popularity. For the rest, you know them. They are so stupid that they think that the state may founder

and yet that their fishponds will be safe. The single man who cares for the public good is Cato and he brings to the work principle and honesty, but as it seems to me, very little judgment or sense. Next month, Cicero gives to his friend a fuller explanation of the political situation and of his own relations to Pompey. Ever since his consulship, he has never ceased to act in politics with the same great aims and worthily to maintain the dignity

then achieved. But the acquittal of Clodius, the weakness of the equestrian order, and the jealousy of the nobles. All made me feel that I must look out for some stronger forces and more trustworthy defenses. My first concern was with Pompey. He had held his tongue far too long, but I brought him round to a proper state of mind, so that, speaking in the Senate on several occasions, he ascribed the preservation of the empire and the peace of the world to my action. Again in May we find,

In your observations on affairs of state, you argue like a true friend and a man of sense, and what you say is really not far away from my own sentiments. I quite agree with you that I must not flinch from my post of honor, and that I must not enlist under the banner of any other, but must effect a junction at the head of my own forces. It is true, likewise, that the person you name has no breadth or greatness of policy, and that he is too much inclined to truckle to the mob.

But for all that, it is of some use, for the quiet of my own life, and of infinitely greater use for the state, that the blows aimed at me by bad citizens should be parried. And this I accomplished when I strengthened the wavering resolution of a man with such a position, such influence, and such interest, and brought him to frustrate the hopes of the disloyal by recording his approval of my action. Unhappily, though Cicero was so far successful in winning Pompey

towards the side of the Senate, he failed, as we shall see just now, in inducing the senatorial party, frankly, to meet Pompey's advances. Pompey's position throughout these months was full of anxiety and annoyance. He had pledged his word to his soldiers that their services against Mithridates should be recompensed by grants of land, for the purpose of which ample means were provided by the revenues with which his conquests had enriched the Roman treasury, but his efforts

to get the necessary decrees passed had hitherto been unavailing. Another vexation was that the Senate refused to confirm the settlement of Asia, which Pompey had made before his departure. All the affairs of the provinces of the East, with the adjacent free cities and client kingdoms, had been regulated and organized by Pompey, and he now wished that his arrangements should be sanctioned en bloc. The Senate refused to do this and insisted that each detail should be reviewed

and voted on separately. Thus Pompey was exposed at every point to a galling and wearisome opposition. His own proceedings showed, as usual, clumsiness and want of tact. By a lavish expenditure of money, he succeeded in thrusting in one of his adherents, Afrianus, as consul for the year 60 BC, but Afrianus was disliked by everyone and was quite incapable of serving his master effectively. He is such an absolute non-entity, writes Cicero, that he does not know what he has bought.

And again, he conducts himself in such a way that his office is not so much a consulship as a blot on the reputation of our great one. The other consul was Metellus Seller, the brother of Cicero's old opponent, Nepos. Seller has left record of what manner of man he was in a curiously insolent letter which he addressed to Cicero at the time of the dispute with his brother, a letter which Cicero answered with admirable spirit and temper. If we may trust Cicero's

judgment, Seller was not a bad man at bottom and meant well by his country, but he must have been a very stupid and wrong-headed politician. He now set himself in violent opposition to Pompey and thwarted all his efforts to provide for his soldiers. This object had been undertaken by Flavius, one of the tribunes for the year 60 BC, who proposed in Pompey's interest an agrarian law. Cicero acted in a wise and statesmanlike manner. He suggested amendments in the proposal to make

it more workable and then gave the measure his support. In the month of March, he writes, The chief political news is that an agrarian law is being vigorously pushed by the Tribune Flavius, backed by Pompey. Nothing in it is popular except its backer. Out of this bill, with full assent of the meeting, I cut all the clauses which infringed on vested interests. I exempted all the land which had been public property in the tribunship of Tiberius Gracchus.

I confirmed Sula's grantees in their holdings and left in full possession the people of Volterra and Aratium, whose land Sula had confiscated but never parceled out. One principle of the bill, however, I accepted, namely that land for distribution should be purchased out of the windfall which the treasury will have in the income to be derived during the next five years from the newly acquired sources of revenue. But the Senate sets itself in opposition to the principle

of any agrarian law whatever, under the idea that some new power for Pompey is designed. Pompey on his side puts all his energies into carrying the bill. The struggle over this question was enlivened by a ludicrous episode. The consul Metellus carried his obstruction to lengths which Flavius considered unfair. The tribune thereupon by virtue of his sacred and inviolable office personally laid hands on the consul as on one guilty of contempt and dragged him off to prison.

It would have been easy for Metellus to appeal to another tribune to grant him protection, but he preferred the cheap martyrdom with which his adversary provided him. Metellus then sat in his prison, but he issued from thence a summons to the Senate to assemble there. Not to be baffled, the Tribune placed his bench across the prison door, and his own sacrosanct person settled on the bench, thus setting an insuperable barrier between the Senators and the Consul within.

The fathers of the state, thus beaten off in front, made an attack on the rear, and began pulling down the back wall of the prison to get at their consul. When the farce had reached this point, Pompey sent word in hot haste to his tribune that he had better let Metellus out. Under the effect of these ridiculous proceedings, the agrarian project began to fall flat. The nobles delighted in the discomfiture of Pompey and gloried in their own outrageous

folly. The demands of Pompey were at this time exceedingly moderate. The loyalty and good faith, which he had shown in disbanding his army, might fairly claim liberal and friendly treatment. And the constitutionalists were bound in honor to see that Pompey did not lose by his respect for the constitution. Common sense, too, might have shown them that by a little conciliatory action on their part, they could now win over the great soldier to the service of the senate.

and that here lay the only hope of averting the danger which threatened. A fair chance of respite was now offered them, and but for their folly in rejecting it, Horus would not have had to date from this year the motum ex metello consule quivicum, which destroyed the Roman Republic. Cato, Hortensius, and Lucullus were blind to their own plainest interests, and their action at this crisis compels us to recognize that they had none of the instincts of statesmen.

A petty jealousy of Pompey seemed to dominate all their conduct. They strove to make him feel that in renouncing the rule of the sword, he had laid himself at their mercy. Thus they drove him to unconstitutional methods which were destined to ruin himself and them alike. The Republic had experienced a heavy loss by the death of Cthulhuus in the latter part of the year 61 BC, and since then Cicero stood alone in recommending a sane policy. I am acting, he writes, and will act,

so as not to incur the reproach that my old achievement was only the outcome of chance, my honest men of whom you speak, and that Sparta, in which as we say my lot is cast, shall not only never be deserted by me, but if I am deserted by them, I shall remain firm by my own principles. At the same time, I wish you to understand that since the death of Cthulhuus, I am holding on this most excellent way alone, without escort and without companionship.

Pompey was kept aloof by the obstinacy and ingratitude of the nobles, and this was in itself sufficient to spoil the hopes which Cicero had entertained for his good cause. But in yet another quarter, the good cause was perilously shaken. In these same months, the harmony of the orders, the union between Senate and Knights, which Cicero had taken such pains to realize, showed signs of dissolution. The scandal of the acquittal of Clodius had drawn attention to the

corruption of the law courts, and Cato and others pressed for vigorous measures against all jurors who had taken bribes. But as two-thirds of the jurors were now not of senatorial rank, such measures could not be carried through without infringing the cherished immunities of the Roman knights. At the same time, the knights had another quarrel with the senate because it refused to give them the consideration which they held to be their due in the arrangement

of their contracts with the state. In both cases, Cicero would have humored the equestrian order, but he pleaded its cause in vain. We first hear of these jars in the letter of December, 61 BC. Here we are living in a political condition that is precarious, pitiful, and unstable. For as I fancy you must have heard, our friends the Knights are all but alienated from the Senate. In the first place, they are deeply offended that a bill has been introduced on the recommendation of the Senate, providing that all persons who have received bribes as jurors shall be put on their trial.

It happened by accident that I was not in the House when that decree was carried, and I perceived that the equestrian order was offended, though silent. So I took an opportunity to lecture the Senate and did it so far as I can judge with much force. The claim of my clients was hardly a reputable one, but I urged it at length and in a dignified tone. Now we have on our hands another whim of the Knights, which is hard to put up with. However, I have not only put up with it, but made the best of it I could for them.

The company, which farmed the province of Asia from the censors, complained that they have been too eager in their bidding and have contracted to pay too high a figure. They demand therefore that the bargain shall be cancelled. I am the chief among their backers, or rather I should say the second, for Craces was the man who egged them on to make the demand. It is an awkward business, and such a confession of their own want of caution is

discreditable enough. But there is every fear that, if their petition is rejected, they will sever themselves entirely from the Senate. I have risen to the emergency as best I could, and managed that they should have a full House and a friendly hearing, and I made long speeches on the 1st and 2nd of December concerning the dignity and union of the orders. The business is not settled, but the feeling of the Senate has been clearly shown. Only one Speaker opposed us,

Metellus the Consul-Elect. There was another to come, our hero Cato, but the debate had been adjourned before his turn was reached. Thus I stand firm by our plans and principles, and maintain so far as I can the union of the orders, which was cemented by my exertions. Cato's opposition proved serious, and it was conducted in a singularly provoking manner. Cato was a master of the art of parliamentary obstruction, and was able by means of long speeches and irreverent objections

to put off indefinitely the decision of the House. For two good months, writes Cicero in a subsequent letter, he has been harrying the unhappy tax farmers who used to be his best friends and he will not allow the Senate to give an answer to their petition so we on our side are obliged to obstruct all other business until an answer has been given to the tax farmers. Such were the causes of discord which broke up Cicero's ideal party. The precious months, during which it was still

possible that a union should be consolidated between Pompey, the Senate, and the equestrian order, were fast passing away. Cicero alone, of Roman statesmen, saw what was to be aimed at. But he had preached in vain, and now the man was at hand, who was to take advantage of the confusions of the situation, and organize the conflicting forces for his own purposes. in a letter written early in June we find a casual remark that Caesar is expected in two days time

for the last year and a half he had been away in his Spanish governorship and his return marks the beginning of the revolution in the same letter we get a lively sketch of the situation just before Caesar's arrival and of the hopes and fears which Cicero entertained at the moment you chide me gently about my intimacy with Pompey. Now I would not have you think that I am leagued with him in order to get protection for myself, but the position of affairs is such that if any difference

arose between him and me, it would inevitably produce serious disturbances in the state. Against this mischief I have provided, not by swerving from my own honorable policy, but by inducing him to amend his ways and renounce some of his popularity hunting vagaries. What now, if Caesar likewise, who has a marvelous fair wind in his sails just now, can be brought round by me to a better mind? Shall I have done any great harm to the state?

Why, if no one were envious of me, if all supported me as they ought to do, even then, a treatment which should restore the unsound members of the commonwealth would be preferable to heroic surgery. But now, when the knights, whom I once posted with you as their chief and standard bearer on the slopes of the capital, when the knights, I say, have deserted the senate, and when our chief men think that they are in the seventh heaven, if they have bearded mullets in

their fishponds, who will come to feed out of their hands, do you not think that I gain a point? if I bring it about, that those who could injure me should not wish to do so? As for our friend Cato, who cannot be fonder of him than I am, at the same time, with the very best intentions, and in all good faith, he sometimes does mischief to the state, for he makes his proposals as if he were speaking in Plato's Republic, instead of in Romulus's gutter.

What can be fairer than that every man should be put on his trial, who has taken a bribe for his verdict. Such was Cato's proposal, and the Senate agreed. So the Knights declare war against the House, not against me, for I protested. What could be more barefaced than the tax farmers repudiating their bargain? For all that, we had better have put up with the loss for the sake of keeping the goodwill of the order. Cato resisted and gained his point. And so now when we have a

consul, shut up in prison, and riot continually afoot. Not a finger has been stirred to help by those who used to throng to the defense of the constitution whenever I or my immediate successors in the consulship called for their assistance. With this quotation, we leave the politics and parties of Rome for a moment to turn to other matters which are wanting to complete the picture of Cicero's life during the years following his consulship. In the next chapter, we shall find

what use Caesar made of the political material which lay awaiting his return. Only two of Cicero's extant speeches belonged to this period. The suppression of Catiline's conspiracy had been followed up during the year 62 BC by prosecutions directed against his accomplices. Cicero mentions the names of several who were condemned by the juries and driven into exile. Bargunteus, Laica, Servius Sulla, Cornelius, and Altronius. Altronius, along with Publius Sulla, had been unseated for

bribery after the consular elections in the year 66 BC, and he lay under suspicion of having a hand in the supposed first conspiracy of Catiline in the years 66 and 65 BC. His companion, Publius Sulla, was now brought to the bar on charges connected with both conspiracies and Cicero came forward in his defense. Leaving Hortensius to deal with the first part of the case, he contented himself with rebutting the assertion that Sulla had taken any part in the conspiracy of the year 63 BC.

On this point, Cicero was able to speak from his own knowledge, and his exculpation of Sulla was decisive with the jury. The other speech is of a very different type. The Greek poet Arceus, Cicero's earliest tutor, was accused of having improperly usurped the Roman citizenship at the time of the Social War, 27 years before, and an inquisition was now held into his title. Cicero appeared, as in duty bound, to speak on behalf of his old friend and teacher. He passed lightly over the technical objections urged against his clients' rights, and dwelt by

preference on his great fame and merit as a man of letters, whose poems, like those of Ennius, had preserved the record of the martial deeds of Rome. For if anyone thinks that more glory is reaped when actions are enshrined in Latin poetry than in Greek, he is much mistaken, for the Greek is read in all parts of the world. The Latin is confined to the bounds of its own country, which are narrow by comparison. In pleading this cause,

Cicero begs to be allowed to deviate from the beaten track of forensic practice, and to speak freely of the glories and delights of literature, and of the benefits which he himself owes it. He expounds here at the bar of a law court, the doctrine which we find so frequently laid down, in his treatises on the art of rhetoric, that the orator must be not only a ready man, but a full man, and that wide reading and deep study are necessary for his perfection.

You ask me why I take such an extraordinary delight in this man. It is because he supplies me with a refuge, where my mind can recruit his powers after the din of the forum, and where my ears tired out with controversy may take some repose. Do you think that a man could find the thoughts to express day after day on such a variety of topics unless he cultivated his mind by study or that the mind could bear the strain unless these same studies supplied him with relaxation?

Cicero was clearly in no great anxiety about the verdict. The jury listened with pleasure to his literary disquisition and confirmed the citizenship of Arceus. Cicero's own writings at this time were chiefly directed to the history of his consulship. He composed a memoir of it in Latin and another in Greek, and he promises Atticus a poem on the same subject. Then I may not omit any form of self-adulation. A few very indifferent verses of the poem survive, amongst them the often quoted,

O fortunatum natum me consule romam. But the treatises in prose have been entirely lost. We possess, however, in Cicero's speeches and letters ample specimens of his utterances on the achievements of his consulship. He has undoubtedly injured his reputation by the undisguised fashion in which he glories over his own action. His consulship was, as Seneca remarked, Non sine cauce, sed sine fine laudatus. He spoiled a good thing by making too much of it,

and we get tired, as doubtless did Cicero's contemporaries, of the great knowns of December, with its inspirations of providence, and its glorious deed, and its eternal fame. If it be a deadly sin to be thoroughly pleased with one's own conduct and to express that pleasure unblushingly. Cicero must stand condemned. But two faults, of very different degrees of blackness, are liable to be confused under the common name of vanity or self-conceit. There are

men into whose souls the poison seems to have eaten deep. They are pompous, overweening, repellent. Their power of judgment and of action is impaired. They are obstinate because they are weak. They would rather perish than allow themselves to be in the wrong, and they delight in rejecting the counsels of common sense, merely to show their own greatness and independence. Sometimes, on the other hand, vanity is a mere superficial weakness, the accompaniment of a

light heart, a quick, sensitive temperament, an unsuspicious loquacity, and an innocent love of display. Carlisle has hit off the difference very happily, in the contrast which he draws between Boswell and his father. Old Achenleck had, if not the gay tail-spreading peacock vanity of his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious hissing vanity of the gander, a still more fatal species. Now Cicero's vanity is essentially of the innocuous and peacock-like kind. There is no

pompous reticence about him. If he happens to be pleased with himself, he blurts out his satisfaction with an almost childlike simplicity. If the laugh turns against him, he is not wounded or distressed, and on occasion he can make fun of himself with perfect grace and good humor. Nothing can be happier than the story, as told by Cicero, of his own expectations of fame from his Sicilian quaestorship and how he was disabused of them. This has been quoted in its place.

It is amusing to observe that when Cicero finds himself, four and twenty years later, again charged with the administration of a province. He has just the same admiration for the integrity of his own conduct and expresses that admiration with the like naivete and openness. In all my life, I never experience so much pleasure as I do in the contemplation of my own incorruptibility. It is not so much the credit I get for it, though that is immense, as the thing

itself which delights me. In a word, it was worthwhile coming out here. I did not do myself justice or recognize what I was capable of in this line. I do well to be puffed up. Nothing is more glorious. Just so with his literary compositions. The passages from my orations which you commend seemed to me, I assure you, very fine, but I did not venture to say so before. Now that they have your approval, I think them picked Attic every word. He is particularly pleased with his Greek

history of his consulship. I sent my memoir to Posidonius that he might use it as the foundation of a more eloquent treatise on the same subject, but he writes back to me from Rhodes that, when he read my book, far from being encouraged to write, he felt himself fairly warned off the ground. Now you see, I have disconfident the whole tribe of Greeks, and so the lot of them, who used to press me for material which they might work up, have ceased to pester me.

With the subject matter of his treatise, he is no less delighted, and it never occurs to him for a moment that he ought to conceal his delight. It is true that in requesting the historian, Luccaius, to take his consulship as the theme for a separate treatise, Cicero professes to beg humbly for his encomiums and pretends to hope that he will owe something to the favor of the writer beyond the simple requirements of historical truth. But this is merely an affected modesty,

suitable to this studied and elaborate letter, which he intended to serve as the model of the proper way of making such an application. In his heart of hearts, Cicero believed that neither Lucchaeus nor anyone else could praise his consulship above its deserts. This comes out clearly enough when he is writing to Atticus, with whom he has no disguise. After recounting the various records, in Greek and Latin, in verse and prose, which he composed on his conflict with

Catiline, he adds, Now pray don't object that I am blowing my own trumpet, for if there be any human action more glorious than mine, I am content that it should receive the mead of praise, and that I should incur blame for not having chosen the theme of my panegyric better, though in truth what I have written is not panegyric but sober history. And a little later, when Pompey has soiled his good name by his support of Caesar's illegalities, though Cicero

grieves over the defection of his old leader, he consoles himself with the consideration that the great rival of his own fame has thus effaced himself. Nay, that side of my nature, which is vainglorious and not indifferent to praise, for it is well to know one's own faults, is affected with a certain satisfaction, for the thought used to vex me that possibly, six hundred years hence, the services of our great Bashaw to the nation might appear more eminent than my own. Now I am

relieved from any such anxiety. Each reader will judge of these utterances according as his own temperament prompts. To me it seems difficult to regard very sternly, or to take as a matter for very serious condemnation, a weakness so frankly and simply displayed. Cicero's vanity and love of praise makes him less dignified, but they hardly make him less lovable. We have still to consider a few points connected with Cicero's private life at this period. In the year after

his consulship, he bought from Crasis a magnificent house on the Palatine and borrowed money freely from his friends for the purpose. His burden sat very lightly on him, and it seemed a capital joke that he who had so sternly resisted schemes of national bankruptcy should now be qualified to enlist under another Catiline. You must know, he says, that I am so deep in debt that I should be quite inclined to join a conspiracy if anyone would have me, but they all fight shy of me.

We hear little of Cicero's wife and children at this time, but much of his brother Quintus. Quintus was praetor in the year 61 BC, and it was at his bar that Cicero delivered the speech for Arceus. Towards the end of the year, he set out to take up the governorship of the province of Asia. He had wished his brother-in-law Atticus to accompany him as legate, but this Atticus declined, as he had always declined any participation in official life. Quintus considered himself

slighted at the refusal, and he was likewise deeply offended about other matters of which we have only obscure hints. It seems probable, however, that his wife Pomponia had stirred up ill will between her husband and her brother. For Marcus Cicero writes, Where the blame for this mischief lies, I can guess more easily than I can write it, for I am afraid lest in accusing my kinsfolk I should be hard on yours, for I judge that the

breach, if it were not caused by those of his own household, might at any rate easily have been healed by them. Cicero labored anxiously to reconcile his brother and his friend, both equally dear to him. All my hopes of allaying this irritation, he writes to Atticus, are placed in your kindliness, for if you hold with me that the tempers of the best men are often easily excited, and again as easily quieted down, and that this mobility and fluidity,

if I may so speak, is often the characteristic of a kindly nature, and which is the main point of all, that we ought to bear with whatever we find in each other, that is inconsiderate, or faulty, or aggressive. I hope and believe that this unpleasantness may easily be got over. I beseech you to do this, for to me, who love you dearly, it is all in all that there should be no one of mine who dislikes you or is disliked by you. I have seen, and seen to the bottom, your tender interest

in all my varying fortunes. Often and often I have found your congratulations on my success, sweet to me, and your support in my hours of anxiety, most cheering. Now when you are absent, it is not only that I miss your counsel, which none can give so well, but likewise the interchange of talk, which is sweeter with you than with anyone. I feel the void especially, where shall I say especially? In my calling as a statesman, which does not admit of a moment's neglect,

or in my labors at the bar, which I once undertook to help me rise and which I must now keep up to win influence for the support of my position, or lastly in my home circle. In all these, and the more so since my brother has left, I long for your presence and conversation. You and I have hitherto been too delicate to utter all these feelings, but now their expression seems to be called for by that part of your letter, in which you strive to clear yourself from all reproaches, and to

justify yourself and your conduct. This letter was written in December 61 BC. In the following February, he refers again to the same topic. My chief want at present is a man with whom to share all my anxieties, who loves me and has sense, and with whom I can talk without pretense or reserve or concealment. For my brother, the most open and loving soul in the world, is gone. Metellus is not a man, but just a desert island. Shore and sky and utter desolation. And you, who have so often by

your talk and your counsel, taken off the burden of my care and disquietude. You who are used to be my ally in the affairs of state, and the confidant of my private concerns, and the partner of all my talk and all my projects. Where are you? I am so lonely that my only solace is the time I spend with my wife and my girl and my sweet little Cicero. For as for all these fine friendships of interest and fashion, they have their glitter before the world, but nothing solid to carry

home with me. And so when my reception rooms are thronged each morning and I go down to the forum, marshaled by troops of friends. Out of all the crowd, I find no one to whom I can utter a joke with freedom, or breathe a sigh in confidence. Thus I wait for you, and long for you. Nay, more. Now I summon you to my side, for there are many troubles and anxieties, of which I think I can rid my bosom, if I might only pour them into your ear in the course of a single walk.

It is pleasant to know that Atticus was not dull to the affection so heartily lavished on him, and that no cloud was suffered to come between the friends. The answer of Atticus was all that Cicero could desire. I am glad, Cicero writes in reply, that you understand the value which I set on you, and I am beyond measure rejoiced that in those matters in which our family has, as it seems to me, treated you ungently and inconsiderately. You have acted with such patience, and I esteem

this as the sign of a perfect affection and of a large-hearted wisdom. You write about the matter with such gentleness, such reasonableness, such delicacy, and such kindliness, that far from having occasion to urge you further, I can only say that I could never have looked for so much placability and tenderness from you or from anyone in the world. I think that the most suitable course will be to drop the subject altogether for the present. When we meet, we can, if desirable,

talk the matter over together. End of chapter six.