CHAPTER X B.C. 43, I.T. 64 What other letters from Cicero we possess were written almost exclusively with the view of keeping the army together and continuing the contest against Antony. There are among them a few introductory letters of little or no interest, and these military dispatches, though of importance as showing the eager nature of the man, seem as we read them to be foreign to his nature. He does not understand war, and devotes himself to instigating men to defend the republic, of whom we suspect that they were not in the least affected by the words they received from him. The correspondence as to this period of his life consists of his letters to the generals and of theirs to him. There are nearly as many of the ones as of the other, and the reader is often inclined to doubt whether Cicero be writing to Plancas or Plancas to Cicero. He remained at Rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among the official workshops of the state, writing letters, scraping together money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amidst a crowd of hopeless, doubting, disheartened senators whom he still kept together by his eloquence as republicans, though each was eager to escape. But who can be made consuls in the place of Pancer and Hirtius? Octavian, who had not left Italy after the battle of Mutina, was determined to be one, but the senate, probably under the guidance of Cicero, for a time would not have him. There was a rumour that Cicero had been elected, or is said to have been such a rumour. Our authority for it comes from that correspondence with Marcus Brutus on the authenticity of which we do not trust, and the date of which we do not know. When I had already written my letter I heard that you had been made consul. When that is done I shall believe that we shall have a true republic, and one supported by its own strength. But probably neither was the rumour true, nor the fact that there was such a rumour. It was not thus that Octavian meant to play his part. He had been passed over by Cicero when a general against Antony was needed. Decimus had been used, and Hirtius and Pancer had been employed, as though they had been themselves strong as were the consuls of old. So they were to Cicero, in whose ears the very name of consul had in it a resonance of the magnificence of Rome. Octavian thought that Pancer and Hirtius were but Caesar's creatures, who at Caesar's death had turned against him. But even they had been preferred to him. In those days he was very quick to learn. He had been with the army and with Caesar's soldiers, and was soon instructed in the steps which it was wise that he should take. He put aside, as with a sweep of his hand, all the legal impediments to his holding the consulship. Talk to him of age. He had already heard that word boy too often. He would show them what a boy would do. He would let them understand that there need be no necessity for him to canvas, to sue for the consulship cap in hand, to have mourning levies and to no men's names, as had been done by Cicero. His uncle had not gone through those forms when he had wanted the consulship. Octavian sent a military order by a band of officers who, marching into the senate, demanded the office. When the old men hesitated, one Cornelius, a centurion, showed them his sword and declared that by means of that should his general be elected consul. The Greek biographers and historians, Plutarch, Dio, and Appian, say that he was minded to make Cicero his fellow consul, promising to be guided by him in everything, but it could hardly have been so with the feelings which were then hot against Cicero and Octavian's bosom. Dio Cassius is worthy of little credit as to this period, and Appian, less so, and less when supported by Lassan authority, and we find that Plutarch inserts stories with that freedom which writers use who do not suppose that others coming after them will have wider sources of information than their own. Octavian marched into Rome with his legions, and had himself chosen consul in conjunction with Quintius Pedius, who had also been one of the co-heirs to Caesar's will. This happened in September. Previous to this Cicero had sent to Africa for troops, but the troops when they came all took part with the young Caesar. A story is told which appears to have been true, and to have assisted in creating that enmity which at last induced Octavian to assent to Cicero's death. He was told that Cicero had said that the young man was to be praised, and rewarded, and elevated. The last word, tollendum, has a double meaning—might be elevated to the skies, or to the gallows. In English, if meaning the latter, we should say that such a man must be put out of the way. Decimus Brutus told this to Cicero as having been repeated by Cigulius, and Cicero answers him heaping all maledictions upon Cigulius. But he does not deny the words, or their intention, and though he is angry, he is angry half in joke.  No one can conceive that he meant to imply that young Caesar should be murdered. Let us reward him, but for the moment let us be rid of him. And then, too, he had in the same sentence called him a boy. As far as evidence goes, we know that the words were spoken. We can trust the letter from Decimus to Cicero, and the answer from Cicero to Decimus. And we know that, a short time afterwards, Octavian, sitting in the island near Bologna with Antony, consented that Cicero's name should be inserted in the fatal list as one of those doomed to be murdered. In the meantime, Lepidus had taken his troops over to Antony, and Polio joined them soon afterwards with his from Spain. After that it was hardly to be expected that Plancus should hesitate. There has always been a doubt whether Plancus should or should not be regarded as a traitor. He held out longer than the others, and is supposed to have been true in those assurances which he made to Cicero of republican fervor. Why was he bound to obey Cicero, who was then at Rome, sending out his order without official authority? While the consuls had been alive he could obey the consuls, and at the consul's death he could for a while follow the spirit of their instructions. But as that spirit died away he found himself without orders other than Cicero's. In this condition was it not better for him to go with the other generals of the empire rather than to perish with a falling party. In addition to this it will happen at such a time that the soldiers themselves have a will of their own. With them the name of Caesar was still powerful, and to their thinking Antony was fighting on dead Caesar's side. When we read the history of this year the fact becomes clear that out of Rome Caesar's name was more powerful than Cicero's eloquence. Governed by such circumstances, driven by events which he could not control, Plancus has the merit of having been the last among the doubtful generals to desert the calls which Cicero had at heart. Cicero's and Brutus in the east were still collecting legions for the Battle of Philippi. With that we shall have no trouble here. In the west Plancus found himself bound to follow the others, and to join Antony and Lepidus in spite of the protestations he had made. To those who read Cicero's letters of this year the question must often arise whether Plancus was a true man. I have made his excuse to the reader with all that I can say in his favour. The memory of the man is, however, unpleasant to me. Decimus, when he found himself thus alone, endeavoured to force his way with his army along the northern shore of the Adriatic, so as to join Marcus Brutus in Macedonia. To him, as one of those who had slain the Caesar, no power was left of deserting. He was doomed unless he were victorious. He was deserted by his soldiers who left him in batches, and at last was taken alive when wandering through the country, and sent dead to Antony. Marcus Brutus and Cassius seemed to have turned a deaf ear to all Cicero's entreaties that they should come to his rescue. Cicero, in his last known letter, which, however, was written as far back as in July, is very eager with Cassius, only attempts are heard of your army very great in themselves, but we expect to hear of deeds. Everything can be grander or more noble than yourself, and therefore it is that we are longing for you here in Rome. Believe me that everything depends on you and Brutus, that we are waiting for both of you, for Brutus we are waiting constantly. This was after Lepidus had gone, but while Plancus was supposed to be as yet true, or rather not yet false. He did no doubt write letters to Brutus urging him in the same way. Alas! Alas! It was his final effort made for the Republic. In September Octavian marched into Rome as a conqueror, at the head of those troops from Africa which had been sent as a last resource to help the Republicans. Then we may imagine that Cicero recognized the fact that there was left nothing further for which to struggle. The Republic was done, his dream was over, and he could only die. Brutus and Cassius might still carry on the contest, but Rome had now fallen a second time in spite of his efforts, and all hope must have fled from him. When Caesar had conquered at Varsalia, and on his return from the east had graciously met him at Brindisium, and had generously accorded to him permission to live under the shadow of his throne, the time for him must have been full of bitterness. But he had not then quite realized the meaning of a tyrant's throne. He had not seen how willingly the people would submit themselves, how little they cared about their liberty. Nor had he as yet learned the nature of military despotism. Rome had lived through Sulla's time, and the Republic had been again established. It might live through Caesar's period of command. When Caesar had come to him and supped with him, as a prince with one of his subjects, his misery had been great. Still there was a hope, though he knew not from whence. Those other younger men had felt as he had felt, and Caesar had fallen. To his eyes it was as though some god had interfered to restore to him a Roman, his ancient form of government. Caesar was now dead, and all would be right, only that Antony was left alive. There was need for another struggle, before consuls, pritals, and ediles could be elected in due order, and when he found that the struggle was to be made under his auspices, he girded up his loins and was again happy. No man can be unhappy who is pouring out his indignation in torrents, and is drinking in the applause of his audience. Every hard word hurled at Antony, and every note of praise heard in return was evidence to him of his own power. He did believe, while the Philippics were going on, that he was stirring up a mighty power to arouse itself and claim its proper dominion over the world. There were moments between in which he may have been faint-hearted, in which he may have doubted as to young Caesar, in which he feared that Pansa might escape from him, or that decimus would fall before relief could reach him. But action lent a pleasantness, and a grace to it all. It is sweet to fight with the hope of victory. But now, when young Caesar had marched into Rome with his legions, and was doubtless prepared to join himself to Antony, there was no longer anything for Cicero to do in this world. It is said, but not as I think on good authority, that Cicero went out to meet Caesar, and if to meet him, then also to congratulate him. Appian tells us that in the Senate Cicero hastened to congratulate Caesar, assuring him how anxious he had been to secure the consulship for him, and how active. Caesar smiled, and said that Cicero had perhaps been a little late in his friendship. Diocasius only remarks that Caesar was created consul by the people in the regular way, two consuls having been chosen, and adds that the matter was one of great glory to Caesar, seeing that he had obtained the consulship at an unusually early age. But as I have said above, their testimony for many reasons is to be doubted. Each wrote in the interest of the Caesars, and in dealing with the period before the Empire seems only to have been anxious to make out some connected story which should suit the Emperor's views. Young Caesar left Rome still with the avowed purpose of proceeding against Antony, as against one declared by the Senate to be an enemy. But the purpose was only avowed. Messengers followed him on the road, informing him that the ban had been removed, and he was then at liberty to meet his friend on friendly terms. Antony had sent word to him that it was not so much his duty as young Caesars to avenge the death of his uncle, and that unless he would assist him, he, Antony, would take his legions and join Brutus and Cassius. I prefer to believe with Mr. Forsythe that Cicero had retired with his brother Quintus to one of his villas. Plutarch tells us that he went to his Tusculan retreat, and that on receiving news of the proscriptions he determined to remove to Astura on the seaside in order that he might be ready to escape into Macedonia. In the meantime, having caused a law to be passed by Pidius, condemning all the conspirators to death, went northwards to meet Antony and Lepidus at Bononia, the Bologna of today. Here it was necessary that the terms of the compact should be settled by which the spoils of the world should be divided among them, and here they met, these three men, in a small river island remote from the world, where, as it is supposed, each might think himself secure from the other. Antony and Lepidus were men old in craft, Antony in middle life and Lepidus somewhat older. Caesar was just twenty-one. But from all that we have been able to gather as to that meeting he was fully able to hold his own with his elders. What each claimed as his share in the empire is not so much matter of history as the blood which each demanded. But Paterculus says that the death warrants which were then signed were all arranged in opposition to Caesar. But Paterculus wrote as the servant of Tiberius, and had been the servant of Augustus. It was his object to tell the story as much in favour of Augustus as it could be told. It is said that, debating among themselves the murders which each desired for his own security, young Caesar, on the third day only, gave up Cicero to the vengeance of Antony. It may have been so. It is impossible that we should have a record of what took place from day to day on that island. But we do know that there Cicero's death was pronounced, and to that doom young Caesar assented. It did not occur to them, as it would have done to Julius Caesar at such a time, that it would be better that they should show their mercy than their hatred. This prescription was made by hatred and not by fear. It was not Brutus and Cathius against whom it was directed, the common enemies of the three triumvirary. Sulla had attempted to stamp out a whole faction, and so far succeeded as to strike dumb with awe the remainder. But here the bargain of death was made by each against the other's friends. Your brother shall go, said Antony to Lepidus. If so, your uncle also, said Lepidus to Antony. So the one gave up his brother, and the other his uncle, to indulge the private spleen of his partner. And Cicero must go to appease both. As it happened, though Cicero's fate was spoken, the two others escaped their doom. Nothing so bad was done in those days, says Pataculus. That Caesar should have been compelled to doom anyone to death, or that such a one as Cicero should have been doomed by any. Footnote. Veleus Pataculus, book two sixty-six, nihil tam indignum illotempore fuit, quam quod out Caesar ali quem proscribire coactus est, aut abulo chicero proscriptus est. Middleton thinks, and perhaps with fair reason, that Caesar's objection was feigned, and that his delay was made for show. A slight change in quoting the above passage unintentionally made favours his view, or that Cicero should have been proscribed by him, he says, turning illot into illot. The meaning of the passage seems to be that it was sad that Caesar should have been forced to yield, or that anyone should have been there to force him. As far as Caesar is concerned, it is palliative rather than condemnatory. Suetonius, indeed, declares that, though Augustus for a time resisted the prescription, having once taken it in hand, he pursued it more bloodily than the others. It is said that the list, when completed, contained the names of three hundred senators and two thousand knights, but their fate was for a time besponed, and most of them ultimately escaped. We have no word of their deaths, as would have been the case had they all fallen. Seventeen were names for instant execution, and against these their doom went forth. We can understand that Cicero's name should have been the first on the list. We are told that when the news reached Rome, the whole city was struck with horror. During the speaking of the Philippics, the Republican party had been strong, and Cicero had been held in favour. The soldiers had still clung to the memory of Caesar, but the men of Mark in the city, those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the fish-ponders generally, had thought that now Caesar was dead, and especially as Antony had left Rome, their safest course would be to join the Republic. They had done so, and had found their mistake.  All Rome was in such a tumult of horror and dismay, that Perius, the new consul, was frightened out of his life by the clumber. The story goes that he ran about the town, trying to give comfort, assuring one and another that he had not been included in the lists, till, as the result of it all, he himself, when the morning came, died from the exertion and excitement. There is, extant, a letter addressed to Octavian, supposed to have been written by Cicero, and sometimes printed among his works, which, if written by him, must have been composed about this time. It no doubt was a forgery and probably of a much later date, but it serves to show what were the feelings presumed to have been in Cicero's bosom at the time. It is full of abuse of Antony and of Young Caesar. I can well imagine that such might have been Cicero's thoughts, as he remembered the praise with which he had laden the young man's name, how he had decreed to him most unusual honours, and voted statues for him. It had all been done in order that the republic might be preserved, but had all been done in vain. It must have distressed him sorely at this time, as he reflected how much eulogy he had wasted, to be sneered at by the boy when he came back to Rome to assume the consulship, and to be told with a laugh that he had been a little late in his welcome. And to hear that the boy had decreed his death in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus. This was all that Rome could do for him at the end, for him who had so loved her, suffered so much for her, and been so valiant on her behalf. Are you not a little late to welcome me as one of my friends? the boy had said, when Cicero had bowed and smiled to him. Then the next tidings that reached him contained news that he was condemned. Was this the youth of whom he had declared since the year began, that he knew well all the boy's sentiments, that nothing was dearer to the lad than the Republic, nothing more reverent than the dignity of the Senate? Was it for this that he had bade the Senate fear nothing as to young Octavian, but always still look for better and greater things? Was it for this that he had pledged his faith for him with such confident words? I promise for him, I become his surety, I engage myself, conscript fathers, that Caeser Caesar will always be such a citizen as he has shown himself to-day. And thus the young man had redeemed his tutors' pledges on his behalf. A little late to welcome me, eh? his pupil had said to him, and had agreed that he should be murdered. But as I have said, the story of that speech rests on doubtful authority. Had not Cicero too rejoiced at the uncle's murder? And having done so, was he not bound to endure the enmity he had provoked? He had not indeed killed Caesar, or been aware that he was to be killed. But still it must be said of him that, having expressed his satisfaction at what had been done, he had identified himself with those who had killed him, and must share their fate. The slaying of a tyrant was almost by law enjoined upon Romans, was at any rate regarded as a virtue rather than a crime. There of course arises the question, who is to decide whether a man be a tyrant? And the idea being radically wrong becomes enveloped in difficulty out of which there is no escape. But there remains as a fact the existence of the feeling which was at the time held to have justified Brutus and also Cicero. A man has to inquire of his own heart with what amount of criminality he can accuse the Cicero of the day or the young Augustus. Can any one say that Cicero was base to have rejoiced that Caesar had been killed? Can any one not regard with horror the young consul as he sat there in the privacy of the island with Antony on one side and Lepidus on the other, and then in the first days of his youth, with the down just coming on his cheeks, sent forth his edict for slaughtering the old friend of the Republic? Side note, B.C. 43, I. T. 64. It is supposed that Cicero left Rome in company with his brother Quintus, and that at first they went to Tusculum. There was no bar to their escaping from Italy had they so chosen, and probably such was their intention as soon as tidings reached them of the prescription. It is pleasant to think that they should again have become friends before they died. In truth Marcus the Elder was responsible for his brother's fate. Quintus had foreseen the sun rising in the political horizon, and had made his adoration accordingly. He with others of his class had shown himself ready to bow down before Caesar. With his brother's assent he had become Caesar's lieutenant in Gaul, such employment being in conformity with the practice of the Republic. When Caesar had returned, and the question as to power arose at once between Caesar and Pompey, Quintus, who had then been with his brother in Cilicia, was restrained by the influence of Marcus. But after Farsalia the influence of Marcus was on the wane. We remember how young Quintus had broken away and had joined Caesar's party. He had sunk so low that he had become Antony's right hand. In that direction lay money, luxury, and all those good things which the Government of the day had to offer. Cicero was so much in Caesar's eyes that Caesar despised the Elder and the younger Quintus for deserting their great relative, and would hardly have them. The influence of the brother and the uncle sat heavily on them. The shame of being Caesarean while he was Pompeian, the shame of siding with Antony while he sided with the Republic, had been too great for them. While he was speaking his Philippics they could not but be enthusiastic on the same side, and now, when he was prescribed, they were both prescribed with him. As the story goes, Quintus returned from Tusculum to Rome to seek provision for their journey to Macedonia. There met his son, and they both died gallantly. Antony's hirelings came upon the two together, or nearly together, and finding the son first put him to the torture, so to learn from him the place of his father's concealment. Then the father hearing his son's screams rushed out to his aid, and the two perished together. But this story also comes to us from Greek sources, and must be taken for what it is worth. Marcus, alone in his litter, travelled through the country to his seaside villa at Astura. Then he went on to Formiae, sick with doubt, not knowing whether to stay and die, or encounter the winter sea in such boat as was provided for him. Should he seek the uncomfortable refuge of Brutus's army? We can remember his bitter exclamations as to the miseries of camp life. He did go on board, but was brought back by the winds, and his servants could not persuade him to make another attempt. Plutarch tells us that he was minded to go to Rome to force his way into Young Caesar's house and there to stab himself, but that he was deterred from this melodramatic death by the fear of torture. The story only shows how great had been the attention given to every detail of his last moments, and what the people in Rome had learned to say of them. The same remark applies to Plutarch's tale as to the presuming crows who pecked at the cordage of his sails when his boat was turned to go back to the land, and afterwards with their beaks strove to drag the bed-clothes from off him when he lay waiting his fate the night before the murderers came to him. He was being carried down from his villa at Formiae to the seaside when Antony's emissaries came upon him in his litter. There seemed to have been two of them, both soldiers and officers in the pair of Antony, Popilius Lainas and Herenius. They overtook him in the wood through which paths ran from the villa down to the seashore. On arriving at the house they had not found Cisro, but were put upon his track by a freedman who had belonged to Quintus named Philologus. He could hardly have done a kinder act than to show the men the way how they might quickly release Cisro from his agony. They went down to the end of the wood, and there met the slaves bearing the litter. The men were willing to fight for their master, but Cisro, bidding them put down the chair, stretched out his neck and received his death-blow. Antony had given special orders to his servants. They were to bring Cisro's head and his hands, the hands which had written the Philippics, and the tongue which had spoken them, and his order was obeyed to the letter. Cisro was nearly sixty-four when he died, his birthday being on the third of January following. It would be hardly worth our while to delay ourselves for a moment with the horrors of Antony's conduct and those of his wife, Fulvia, the widow of Claudius and the wife of Antony. Were it not that we may see what were the manners to which a great Roman lady had descended in those days in which the Republic was brought to an end? On the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while Fulvia especially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. That is the story of Cisro's death as it has been generally told. We are told also that Rome heard the news and saw the sight with ill-suppressed lamentation. We can easily believe that it should have been so. I have endeavoured as I have gone on with my work to compare him to an Englishman of the present day, but there is no comparing English eloquence to his, or the ravished ears of a Roman audience to the pleasure taken in listening to our great orators. The world has become too impatient for oratory, and then our northern senses cannot appreciate the melody of sounds as did the finer organs of the Roman people. We require truth and justice and common sense from those who address us, and get much more out of our public speeches than did the old Italians. We have taught ourselves to speak so that we may be believed, or have come near to it. A Roman audience did not much care, I fancy, whether the words spoken were true. But it was indispensable that they should be sweet, and sweet they always were.  But no words had ever been so sweet as those of Cicero. I even, with my obtuse ears, can find myself sometimes lifted by them into a world of melody little as I know of their pronunciation and their tone. And with the upper classes, those who read, his literature had become almost as divine as his speech. He had come to be the one man who could express himself in perfect language. As in the next age the eclogs of Virgil and the oads of Horace became dear to all the educated classes because of the charm of their expression, so in their time I fancy had become the language of Cicero. It is not surprising that men should have wept when they saw that ghastly face staring out at them from the rostra and the protruding tongue and the outstretched hands. The marvel is that, seeing it, they should still have borne with Antony. That which Cicero has produced in literature is, as a rule admitted to be excellent, but his character as a man has been held to be tarnished by three faults, dishonesty, cowardice, and insincerity. As to the first I have denied it altogether, and my denial is now submitted to the reader for his judgment. It seems to have been brought against him not in order to make him appear guilty, but because it has appeared to be impossible that when others were so deeply in fault he should have been innocent. That he should have taken no illicit rewards, that he should not have submitted to be feed, but that he should have kept his hands clean, while all around him were grasping at everything, taking money, selling their aid for stipulated payments, grinding, miserable creditors, has been too much for men to believe. I will not take my readers back over the cases brought against him, but will ask them to ask themselves whether there is one supported by evidence fit to go before a jury. The accusations have been made by men clean-handed themselves, but does them it has appeared unreasonable to believe that a Roman oligarch of those days should be an honest gentleman. As to his cowardice, I feel more doubt as to my power of carrying my readers with me, though no doubt as to Cicero's courage. Cowardice in a man is abominable. But what is cowardice, and what courage? It is a matter in which so many errors are made. Hansel is so apt to shine like gold and dazzle the sight. In one of the earlier chapters of this book, when speaking of Catiline, I have referred to the remarks of a contemporary writer. The world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause. All wounded in front is quoted by this author from Salast. Not a man taken alive, Catiline himself gasping out his life ringed around with corpses of his friends. That is given as a picture of a brave man dying for his cause who should excite our admiration even though his cause were bad. In the previous lines we have an intended portrait of Cicero, who, thinking no doubt that he had done a good day's work for his patrons, declined to run himself into more danger. Here is one story told of courage and another of fear. That is paused for a moment and regard the facts. Catiline, when hunted to the last gasp, faced his enemy and died fighting like a man, or a bull. Who is there that cannot do so much as that? For a shilling or eighteen pence a day we can get an army of brave men who will face an enemy and die if death should come. It is not a great thing, nor a rare for a man in battle not to run away. With regard to Cicero the allegation is that he would not be allowed to be bribed to accuse Caesar and thus incur danger. The accusation which is thus brought against him is borrowed from Salist and is no doubt false, but I take it in the spirit in which it is made. Cicero feared to accuse Caesar lest he should find himself enveloped through Caesar's means in fresh danger. Grant that he did so. Was he wrong at such a moment to save his life for the Republic and for himself? His object was to banish Catiline and not to catch in his net every existing conspirator. He could stop the conspiracy by securing a few and might drive many into arms by endeavouring to encircle all. Was this cowardice? During all those days he had to live with his life in his hands passing about among conspirators who he knew were sworn to kill him, and in the midst of his danger he could walk and talk and think like a man. It was the same when he went down into the court to plead for Milo with the gladiators of Claudius and the soldiery of Pompey equally adverse to him. It was the same when he uttered Philippic after Philippic in the presence of Antony's friends. True courage to my thinking consists not in facing an unavoidable danger. Any man worthy of the name can do that. The felon that will be hung to-morrow shall walk up to the scaffold and seem ready to surrender the life he cannot save. But he who, with the blood running hot through his veins, with a full desire of life at his heart, with high aspirations as to the future, with everything around him to make him happy, love and friendship and pleasant work, when he can willingly imperil all because duty requires it, he is brave. Of such a nature was Cicero's courage. As to the third charge, that of insincerity, I would ask of my readers to rethink themselves how few men are sincere now. How near have we approached to the beauty of truth with all Christ's teaching to guide us? Not by any means close, though we are nearer to it than the Romans were in Cicero's days. At any rate we have learned to love it dearly, though we may not practice it entirely. He also had learned to love it, but not yet to practice it quite so well as we do. When it shall be said of men truly that they are thoroughly sincere, then the millennium will have come. We flatter and love to be flattered. Cicero flattered men and loved it better. We are fond of praise and all but ask for it. Cicero was fond of it and did ask for it. But when truth was demanded from him, truth was there. Was Cicero sincere to his party? Was he sincere to his friends? Was he sincere to his family? Was he sincere to his dependents? Did he offer to help and not help? Did he ever desert his ship when he had engaged himself to serve? I think not. He would ask one man to praise him to another, and that is not sincere. He would apply for eulogy to the historian of his day, and that is not sincere. He would speak ill or well of a man before the judge, according as he was his client or his adversary, and that, perhaps, is not sincere, but I know few in history on whose positive sincerity in a cause his adherents could rest with greater security. Look at his whole life with Pompey, as to which we see his little insecurities of the moment because we have his letters to Atticus. But he was true to his political idea of a Pompey, long after that Pompey had faded from his dreams. For twenty years we have every thought of his heart, and because the feelings of one moment vary from those of another, we call him insincere. What if we had Pompey's thoughts, and Caesar's? Would they be less so? Could Caesar have told us all his feelings? Cicero was insincere, I cannot say otherwise, but he was so much more sincere than other Romans, as to make me feel that when writing his life, I have been dealing with the character of one who might have been a modern gentleman. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XI. It is well known that Cicero's works are divided into four main parts. There are the rhetoric, the orations, the epistles, and the philosophy. There is a fifth part indeed, the poetry, but of that there is not much, and of the little we have, but little is esteemed. There are not many, I fear, who think that Cicero has deserved well of his country by his poetry. His prose works have been divided as I have stated them. Of these, two portents have been dealt with already, as far as I am able to deal with them. Of the orations and epistles I have spoken as I have gone on with my task, because the matter there treated has been available for the purposes of biography. The other two, the rhetoric and the philosophy, have been distinct from the author's life. Footnote. In the following list I have divided the latter, making the moral essays separate from the philosophy. They might have been good or bad, and his life would have been still the same. Therefore it is necessary to divide them from his life, and to speak of them separately. They are the work of his silent chamber, as the others were the enthusiastic outpourings of his daily spirit, or the elaborated arguments of his public career. Who has left behind him so widely spread a breadth of literature? Who has made so many efforts, and has so well succeeded in them all? I do not know that it has ever been given to any one man to run up and down the strings of knowledge, and touch them all, as though each had been his peculiar study, as Cicero has done. His rhetoric has been always made to come first, because upon the whole it was first written. It may be as well here to give a list of his main works with their dates, premising, however, that we by no means in that way get over the difficulty as to time, even in cases as to which we are sure of our facts. A treatise may have been commenced, and then put by, or may have been written some time previously to publication, or it may be, as were those which are called the Academica, that it was remodeled and altered in its shape and form. The Academica were written at the instance of Atticus. We now have the altered edition of a fragment of the first book, and the original of the second book. In this manner there have come discrepancies, which nearly break the heart of him who would fain make his list clear. But here on the whole is presented to the reader with fair accuracy, a list of the works of Cicero independent of that continual but ever-changing current of his thought, which came welling out from him daily in his speeches and its letters. Again, however, we must remember that here are omitted all those which are either wholly lost, or have come to us only in fragments too abruptly broken for the purposes of continuous study. Of these I will not even attempt to give the names, though when we remember some of the subjects, the De Gloria, the De Re Militari, he could not go into the army for a month or two without writing a book about it. The De Aguris, the De Philosophia, the De Suis Temporibus, the De Suis Consilis, the De Eure Civili, and the De Universo. We may well ask ourselves what were the subjects on which he did not write. In addition to these, much that has come to us has been extracted, as it were unwillingly, from palimpsests, and is, from that and from other causes, fragmentary. We have indeed only fragments of the essays de Repubblica, de Legibus, de Natura de Orum, de Divinazione, and de Fatto, in addition to the Académica. The list of the works of which it is my purpose to give some shortest possible account in the following chapters is as follows. Readers note there follows a table with titles of the works in the left-hand column, in the central column Nature of the Work, and in the right-hand column the date of publication. An asterisk, dagger, or double-dagger identifies each work as rhetoric, philosophy, or moral essays. Retoricum ad Caeum Herennium Four books, giving lessons in rhetoric, supposed to have been written not by Cicero, but by one Cornificius. Footnote I have given here those treatises which are always printed among the works of Cicero. Rhetoric, BC 8786, Eitat 20 and 21 De Inventione, four books, giving lessons in rhetoric, supposed to have been translated from the Greek, two out of four have come to us. Rhetoric, BC 8786, Eitat 20 and 21 De Oratorre, three dialogues in three books, supposed to have been held under a plain tree in the garden at Tusculum belonging to Crassus, forty years before, in which are laid down instructions for the making of an orator. Rhetoric, BC 55, Eitat 52 De Republica, six political discussions, supposed to have been held seventy-five years before the date at which they were written, on the best mode of governance. We have but a fragment of them. Moral Essays, BC 53, Eitat 54 De Legibus, three out of six books, as to the best laws for governings of the Republic. They are carried on between Atticus, Quintus and Marcus. They are supposed to have been written, BC 52, Eitat 55, but were not published till after his death. Moral Essays, BC 52, Eitat 55. De Optimo Genere Oratorum, a preface to the translation of the speeches of Iscunis and of Demosthenes for and against Ctesiphon in the matter of the Golden Crown. Rhetoric, BC 52, Eitat 55 De Partitione Oratoria, instructions by questions and answers, supposed to have been given to his son in Greek on the art of speaking in public. Rhetoric, BC 46, Eitat 61. The Academica Treatises, in which he deals with the various phases of philosophy taught by the Academy. It has been altered, and we have only a part of the first book of the altered portion, and the second part of the treatise before it was altered. In its altered form it is addressed to Devarro. De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. A treatise in five books, in the form of dialogues, as to the results to be looked for in inquiries as to what is good and what is evil, it is addressed to Brutus. Philosophy. BC 54, Eitat 62. Brutus, or De Clare Soratoribus. A treatise on the most perfect orators of past times. It is addressed to Brutus, and has in a peculiar manner always been called by his name. Rhetoric. BC 45, Eitat 62. Orator. A treatise addressed to Brutus to show what the perfect orator should be. Rhetoric. BC 45, Eitat 62. Esculanae Disputaciones, or the Tuscalan Inquiries, supposed to have been held with certain friends in his Tuscalan villa as to contempt of death and pain and sorrow, as to conquering the passions and the happiness to be derived from virtue. They are addressed to Brutus. Philosophy. BC 45, Eitat 62. De Natura de Oro. Three books addressed to Brutus. Velaeus, Balbus and Cotter discuss the relative merits of the Epicurean, Stoic and academic schools. Philosophy. BC 54, Eitat 63. De Divinazione. He discusses with his brother Quintus the property of the gods to divine, or rather to enable men to read prophecies. It is a continuation of a former work. Philosophy. BC 44, Eitat 63. De Fatto, the part only of a book on destiny. Philosophy. BC 44, Eitat 63. The Topica. A so-called translation from Aristotle. It is addressed to Tribatius. Rhetoric. BC 44, Eitat 63. De Senectute. A treatise on old age. Addressed to Atticus and called Cato Major. Moral Essays. BC 44, Eitat 63. De Amichitia. A treatise on friendship. Addressed also to Atticus and called Lilius. Moral Essays. BC 44, Eitat 63. To his son, treating of the moral duties of life, containing three books, one on honesty, two on expediency, three comparing honesty and expediency. BC 44, Eitat 63. It is to be observed from this list that for thirty years of his life, Cicero was silent in regard to literature, for those thirty years in which the best fruits of a man's exertion are expected from him. Indeed, we may say that for the first fifty-two years of his life he wrote nothing but letters and speeches. Of the two treatises with which the list is headed, the first in all probability did not come from his pen, and the second is no more than a lad's translation from a Greek author. As to the work of translation it must be understood that the Greek and Latin languages did not stand in reference to each other as they do now to modern readers. We translate in order that the pearls hidden under a foreign language may be conveyed to those who do not read it, and admit when we are so concerned that none can truly drink the fresh water from a fountain so handled. The Romans in translating from the Greek, thinking nothing of literary excellence, felt that they were bringing Greek thought into a form of language in which it could be thus made useful. There was no value for the words, but only for the thing to be found in it. Thence it has come that no acknowledgment is made. We, moderns, confess that we are translating, and hardly assume for ourselves the third rate literary place, when, on the other hand, we find the unexpressed thought floating about the world, we take it, and we make it our own when we put it into a book. The originality is regarded as being in the language, not in the thought. But to the Roman when he found the thought floating about the world in the Greek character, it was free for him to adopt it and to make it his own. Cicero had he done in these days with this treatise, as I have suggested, would have been guilty of gross plagiarism, but there was nothing of the kind known then. This must be continually remembered in reading his essays. We will find large portions of them taken from the Greek without acknowledgment. Often it shall be so, because it suits him to contradict an assertion, or to show that it has been allowed to lead to false conclusions. This general liberty of translation has been so frequently taken by the Latin poets, by Virgil and Horace, let us say, as being those best known, that they have been regarded by some as no more than translations. To them to have been translators of Homer or of Pindar and Stesichorus, and to have put into Latin language ideas which were noble, was a work as worthy of praise as that of inventing, and it must be added that the forms they have used have been perfect in their kind. There has been no need to them for close translation, they have found the idea, and their object has been to present it to their readers in the best possible language. She who has worked amidst the bonds of modern translation well knows how difficult it has been with him. There is not much in the treatise De Invenzione to arrest us. We should say, from reading it, that the matter it contains is too good for the production of a use of twenty-one, but that the language in which it is written is not peculiarly fine. The writer intended to continue it, or wrote as though he did, and therefore we may imagine that it has come to us from some larger source. It is full of standing cases, or examples of the law courts, which are brought up to show the way in which these things are handled. We can imagine that a Roman youth should be practised in such matters, but we cannot imagine that the same youth should have sort of them all, and remembered them all, and should have been able to describe them. The following is an example. A certain man on his journey encountered a traveller going to make a purchase, having with him a sum of money. They chatted along the road together, and as happens on such occasions they became intimate. They went to the same inn, where they supped, and said that they would sleep together. Having supped, they went to bed. When the landlord, for this was told, after it had all been found out, and he had been taken for another offence, having perceived that one man had money, in the middle of the night, knowing how sound they would sleep from fatigue, crept up to them, and having taken out of its scabbard the sword of him that was without the money, as it lay by his side, he killed the other man, put back the sword, and then went to his bed. But he whose sword had been used rose long before daylight, and called loudly to his companion. Finding that the man slumbered too heavily to be stirred, he took himself and his sword, and the other things he had brought away with him, and started alone. But the landlord soon raised the hue and cry, a man has been killed, and with some of the guests followed him who had gone off. They took the man on the road, and dragged his sword out of its sheath, which they found all bloody. They carried him back to the city, and he was accused. In this cause there is the declaration of the crime alleged, you killed the man, there is the defence, I did not kill him, thence arises the issue, the question to be judged is one of conjecture, did he kill him? We may judge from the story that the case was not one which had occurred in life, but had been made up. The truculent landlord creeping in and finding that everything was as he wished it, and the moneyless man going off in the dark, leaving his dead bed-fellow behind him, as the landlord had intended that he should, form all the incidents of a stock-piece for rehearsal rather than the occurrence of a true murder. The same may be said of other examples adduced, here as afterwards by Quintillion. They are well-known cases, and had probably been handed down from one student to another. They tell us more of the manners of the people, than of the rudiments of their law. From this may be seen the nature of the work. From thence we skip over thirty years, and come at once to B.C. 55. The days of the triumvirate had come, and the quarrel with Claudius, of Cicero's exile, and his return, together with the speeches which he had made in the agony of his anger against his enemies. And all this had taken place since those Halcyon days in which he had risen on the voices of his countrymen to bequistor, edile, praetor, and consul. He had first succeeded as a public man, and then, having been found too honest, he had failed. There can be no doubt that he had failed, because he had been too honest. I must have told the story of his political life badly, if I have not shown that Caesar had retired from the assault because Cicero was consul, but had retired only as a man does who steps back in order that his next spring forward may be made with more avail. He chose well the time for his next attack, and Cicero was driven to decide between three things. He must be Caesarean, or must be quiet, or he must go. He would not be Caesarean. He certainly could not be quiet, and he went. The immediate effect of his banishment was on him so great that he could not employ himself. But he returned to Rome, and with too evident a reliance on a short-lived popularity, he endeavoured to replace himself in men's eyes. But it must have been clear to him that he had struggled in vain. Then he looked back upon his art, his oratory, and told himself that as the life of a man of action was no longer open to him, he could make for himself a greater career as a man of letters. He could do so. He has done so. But I doubt whether he had ever confirmed purpose as to the future. Had some grand consular career been open to him, had it been given to him to do by means of the law, what Caesar did by ignoring the law, this life of him would not have been written. There would at any rate have been no need of these last chapters to show how indomitable was the energy and how excellent the skill of him who could write such books, because he had nothing else to do. The Deoratory is a work in three divisions addressed to his brother Quintus, in which it has undoubtedly been Caesarean's object to convince the world that an orator's employment is the highest of all those given to a man to follow. And this he does by showing that in all the masses which an orator is called upon to touch, there is nothing which he cannot adorn by the possession of some virtue or some knowledge. To us in these days he seems to put the cart before the horse, and to fail from the very beginning by reason of the fact that the orator in his eloquence need never tell the truth. It is in the power of man so to praise constancy, let us say, as to make it appear of all things the best. But he who sings the praise of it may be the most inconstant of mankind, and may know that he is deceiving his hearers as to his own opinions, at any rate as to his own practice. The virtue should come first, and then the speech respecting it. Pro seems to imply that if the speech be there, the virtue may be assumed. But it has to be acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to the perfect orator, that it is here, as it has been in all the inquirers after the tocalon. We must recognise the fact that the Romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the Greeks, and having described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up towards it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should it ever be attained. It is so in the deoratory, as to which we must begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not to be found in any house of commons. No conservative and no liberal need fear that he will be put out of court by the coming of this perfectly eloquent man. But this Cicero of whom we are speaking has been he who has been most often quoted for his perfections. The running after an impossible hero throws a damp over the whole search, when no one can expect to find the thing sought for, who can seek diligently. By degrees the ambitious student becomes aware that it is impossible, and is then carried on by a desire to see how he is to win a second or a third place, if so much may be accorded to him. In his inquiries he will find that the Cicero, if he looked to Quintilian or Tacitus, or the Crassus, if he looked to Cicero, is so set before him as the true model, and with that he may be content. The deoratory is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as I think, the pleasantest to read. It was followed after ten years by the Brutus, or Declaris oratoribus, and then by the Orator. But in all of them he charms us rather by his example, than instructs us by his precepts. He will never make us believe, for instance, that a man who talks well will on that account be better than a man who thinks well. But he does make us believe that a man who talks as Cicero knew how to do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words when listening to them is no longer possible is a great delight. Having done that he has no doubt carried his object. He was too much a man of the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself. Oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself with the Romans the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of fighting. Literature had not as yet assumed its place. It needed Cicero himself to do that for her. It required the writing of such an essay as this to show by the fact of its existence that Cicero the writer stood quite as high as Cicero the orator. And then the written words remain when the sounds have died away. We believe that Cicero spoke divinely. We can form for ourselves some idea of the rhythm of his periods. Of the words in which Cicero spoke of himself as a speaker, we have the entire charm. Boccaccio, when he takes his queen into a grassy meadow and seats her in the midst of her ladies, and makes her and them and their admirers tell their stories, seems to have given rise to the ideas which Cicero has used when introducing his Roman orators, lying under a plain tree in the garden at Tusculum, and there discussing rhetoric. So much nearer to us appear the times of Cicero, with all the light that has been thrown upon them by their own importance than does the middle of the fourteenth century in the same country. But the practice in this, as in all matters of social life, was borrowed from the Greeks, or perhaps rather the pretense of the practice. We can hardly believe that Romans of an advanced age would so have arranged themselves for the sake of conversation. It was a manner of bringing men together which had its attraction for the mind's eye, and Cicero, whose keen imagination represented to him the pleasantness of the picture, has used the form of narrative with great effect. He causes Crassus and Antony to meet in the garden of Crassus at Tusculum, and thither he brings on the first day old Mucius Skyvilla, the auger, and Sulpicius and Cotter, two rising orators of the period. On the second day Skyvilla is supposed to be too fatigued to renew the intellectual contest, and he retires. But one Caesar comes in, with Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and the conversation is renewed. Crassus and Antony carry it on in chief, but Crassus has the leading voice. Caesar, who must have been the wag among barristers of his day, undertakes to give examples of that attic salt by which the profundity of the law-courts is supposed to have been relieved. The third conversation takes place on the afternoon of the second day, when they had refreshed themselves with sleep. Though Crassus, we are specially told, had given himself up to the charms of no mid-day siesta, his mind had been full of the greatness of the task before him, but he will show neither fatigue nor anxiety. The art, the apparent ease with which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without exertion, are admirable. It is as though they were sitting by running water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. They remove themselves to the wood a little further from the house, and there they listen to the eloquence of Crassus. Cotter and Sulpigius only hear and assent, or imply a modified dissent in doubting words. It is Crassus who insists that the orator shall be omniscient, and Antony who is supposed to contest the point with him. But they differ in the sweetest language, and each, though he holds his own, does it with a deference that is more convincing than any assertion. It may be as well perhaps to let it be understood that Crassus and Caesar are only related by distant family ties, or perhaps only by ties of adoption, to the two of the first triumvirate whose names they bear, whereas Antony was the grandfather of that Cleopatra's lover against whom the Philippics were hurled. No one, as I have said before, will read these conversations for the sake of the argument they contain, but they are and will be studied as containing in the most appropriate language a thousand sayings respecting the art of speech. No power of speaking well can belong to any butch to him who knows the subjects on which he has to speak. A fact which seems so clear that no one need be troubled with stating it, were it not that men sin against it every day. How great the undertaking to put yourself forward among a crowd of men as being the fittest of all there to be heard on some great subject! Though all men shall gnash their teeth, I will declare that the little book of the twelve tables surpasses in authority and usefulness all the treatises of all the philosophers. Here speaks the Cicero of the Forum, and not that Cicero who amused himself among the philosophers. Let him keep his books of philosophy for some tusculem idleness such as this of ours, lest when he shall have to speak of justice he must go to Plato and borrow from him who when he had to express him in these things created in his books some new utopia. For in truth, though Cicero deals much, as we shall see by and by, with the philosophers, and has written whole treatises for the sake of bringing Greek modes of thought among the Romans, he loved the affairs of the world too well to trust them to philosophy. There has been some talk of old age, and Antony, before the evening has come, clears his view. So far do I differ from you, he says, that not only do I not think that any relief in age is to be found in the crowd of them who may come to me for advice, but I look to its solitude as a harbour. You indeed may fear it, but to me it will be most welcome. Then Cicero begins the second book, with the renewal of the assertion as to oratory generally, not putting the words into the mouth of any of his party, but declaring it as his own belief. This is the purpose of this present treatise, and of the present time, to declare that no one has been able to excel in eloquence, not merely without capacity for speaking, but also without acquired knowledge of all kinds. But Antony professes himself of another opinion. How can that be when Crassus and I often plead opposite causes, and when one of us can only say the truth? Or how can it be possible when each of us must take the cause as it comes to him? Then again he bursts into praise of the historian, as though in opposition to Crassus. How worthy of an orator's eulogy is the writing of history, whether greatest in the flood of its narrative or in its variety? I do not know that we have ever treated it separately, but it is there always before our eyes. For who does not know that the first law of the historian is that he must not dare to say what is false, the next that he must not dare to suppress what is true? We wonder when Cicero was writing this whether he remembered his request to Luccheus made now two years ago. He gives a piece of advice to young advocates, apologising indeed for thinking it necessary, that he has found it to be necessary, and he gives it. Let me teach this to them all. When they intend to plead, let them first study their causes. It is not only here that we find that the advice which is useful now was wanted then. Read your cases. The admonition was wanted in Rome as it has been since in London. But the great mistake of the whole doctrine creeps out at every page as we go on, and disproves the idea on which the De oratorae is founded. All Cicero's treatises on the subject, and Quintillions, and those of the Pseudotacitus, and of the first Greek from which they have come, fall to the ground as soon as we are told that it must be the purport of the orator to turn the mind of those who hear him, either to the right or to the left, in accordance with the drift of the cause. The mind rejects the idea that it can be the part of a perfect man to make another believe that which he believes to be false. If it be necessary that an orator should do so, then must the orator be imperfect. We have the same lesson taught throughout. It is the great gift of the orator, says Antony, to turn the judge's mind so that he shall hate or love, shall fear or hope, shall rejoice or grieve, or desire to pity, or desire to punish. No doubt it is a great power, all that is said as to eloquence is true. It may be necessary that to obtain the use of it you shall educate yourself with more precision than for any other purpose, but there will be the danger that they who have fitted the dagger to the hand will use it. It cannot be right to make another man believe that which you think to be false. In the use of railery and eloquence the Roman seems to have been very backward, so much so that it is only by the examples given of it by themselves as examples that we learn that it existed. They can appall us by the cruelty which they denounce, they can melt us by their appeals to our pity, they can terrify, they can horrify, they can fill us with fear or hope, with anger, with despair or with rage, but they cannot cause us to laugh. Their attempts at a joke amuse us because we recognise the attempt. Here Caesar is put forward to give us the benefit of his wit. We are lost in surprise when we find how miserable are his jokes, and take a pride in finding that in one line we are the masters of the Romans. I will give an instance, and I pick it out as the best among those selected by Cicero.  Enius returns the visit, and Nazca hallows out from the window that he is not within. Not within, says Enius, don't I know your voice? Upon which Nazca replies, you are an impudent fellow. I had the grace to believe your maid, and now you will not believe me myself. How this got into a law-case we did not know. It is told, however, just as I have told it. But there are enough of them here to make a small Joe Miller, and yet in the midst of language that is almost divine in its expressions, they are given as having been worthy of all attention. The third book is commenced by the finest passage in the whole treatise. Cicero remembers that Crassus is dead, and then tells the story of his death. And Antony is dead, and the Caesars. The three last had fallen in the Marian massacres. There is but little now in the circumstances of their death to excite our tears. Who knows ought of that Crassus, or of that Antony, or of those Caesars? But Cicero so tells it in his pretended narrative, as almost to make us weep.  But no Roman has dared to tell us of it, as Cicero has told the story of those others. Augustus had done his work too well, and it was much during his reign that Romans, who could make themselves heard, should dare to hold their tongues. It would be useless in me here to attempt to give any notion of the laws as to speech which Cicero lays down. For myself I do not take them as laws, feeling that the interval of time has been too great to permit laws to remain as such. No orator could, I feel sure, form himself on Cicero's ideas. But the sweetness of the language is so great as to convince us that he at any rate knew how to use language as no one has done since. But there is a building up of words, and a turning of them round, and a nice rendering. There is the opposing and the loosening, there is the avoiding, the holding back, and the sudden exclamation, and the dropping of the voice. And the taking an argument from the case at large, and bringing it to bear on a single point, and the proof, and the propositions together. And there is the leave given, and then a doubting, and an expression of surprise. There is the counting up, the setting right, the utter destruction, the continuation, the breaking off, the pretense, the answer made to oneself, the change of names, the disjoining and rejoining of things, the relation, the retreat, and the curtailing. Who can translate all these things, when Quintilian himself has been feigned to acknowledge that he has attempted, and has failed to handle them in fitting language? And then, at last, there comes that most lovely end to these most charming discourses. This out-em de rebus sol me ile admonuit, ut breuio essem, cui ipse jam pracipitans, me quoque hack pracipitem paine e volvere coegit. These words are so charming in their rhythm that I will not rob them of their beauty by translation. The setting sun requires me also to go to rest. That is their simple meaning. At the end of the book he introduces a compliment to Hortensius, who, during his life, had been his great rival, and who was still living when the Deoratore was written. End of Chapter 11, Part 1 Chapter 11, Part 2 of The Life of Cicero, Volume 2. This is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life of Cicero, Volume 2, by Anthony Trollop. Chapter 11, Cicero's Rhetoric, Part 2. The next on the list is the De Optima Genere Oratorum, a preliminary treatise written as a preface to a translation made by himself on the speeches of Eskinis and Demosthenes against Ctesiphon in the matter of the Golden Crown. We have not the translations, but we have his reasons for translating them, namely that he might enable readers only of Latin to judge how far Eskinis and Demosthenes had deserved either of them, the title of Optimos Orator. For they had spoken against each other with the most bitter abuse, and each spokesman was struggling for the suppression of the other. Each was speaking with the knowledge that if vanquished he would have to pay heavily in his person and his pocket. He gives the palm to neither, but he tells his readers that the attic mode of speaking is gone, of which indeed the glory is known, but the nature unknown. But he explains that he has not translated the two pieces verbatim as an interpreter, but in the spirit as an orator, using the same figures, the same forms, the same strengths of ideas. We have to acknowledge that we do not see how in this way he can have done ought towards answering the question De Optimo Genere Oratorum, but he may perhaps have done something to prove that he himself, in his oratory, had preserved the best known Grecian forms. The De Patisione Oratoria Dialogus follows, of which we have already spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year of his life. It was the year in which he had divorced Terentia, and had been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. But he was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these instructions in the form of questions and answers, on the art of speaking. We next come to the Brutus, or Declares Oratoribus, a dialogue supposed to have been held between Brutus, Atticus, and Cicero himself. He is a continuation of the three books De Oratore. He there describes what is essential to the character of the Optimus Orator. He here looks after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and bringing before the reader's eyes all Greek and Roman orators, till he comes down to Cicero. I cannot but say that the feeling is left with the reader that the Orator Optimus has been reached at last in Cicero's mind. We must remark in the first place that he has chosen for his friend to whom to address his peace, one whom he has only known late in life. It was when he went to Cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years old, that he was thrown by Atticus into close relations with Brutus. Now he has, next to Atticus, become his most chosen friend. His three next treatises, the Orator, the Tuscalan Disputations, and the De Natura Deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of Brutus. And yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less likely to be brought together by their political ambition, the one compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing that things were evil and contented to accept those that were the least so. The other, strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were bad. And Brutus, too, had told Cicero that his lessons in oratory were not to his taste. There was something about Cicero which enabled him to endure such rebukes, while there was ought worthy of praise in the man who rebuked him, and it was to this something that his devotion was paid. We know that Brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed of a Roman nobleman, and we know also that Cicero was not. Cicero could keep his hands clean, with thousands around him, and with thousands going into the pockets of other men. He could see the vice of Brutus, but he did not hate it. He must have borne, too, with something from Atticus of the same kind. The truth seems to me that to Cicero there was no horror as to greediness, except to greed in himself. He could hate it for himself, and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing or rackets or the turf. But he must have known that Brutus had made himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his heart in consequence. In no other way can I explain to myself the feeling of subservience to Brutus which Cicero so generally expresses. It exists in none other of his relations of life. Political subservience there is to Pompey, but he can laugh at Pompey, and did not dedicate to him his treatises de Repubblica or de Legibus. To Appius Claudius he was very courteous. He thought badly of Appius, but hardly worse than he ought to have done of Brutus. Of Celius he was fond of Curio, of Tribartius. To Pytus he was attached to Suplicius and Marcellus, but to none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to Brutus. I could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that the Ipsissima verba have not probably come to us. But I cannot say that the name of Brutus does not stand there written in imperishable letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. If this be so, Brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of Cicero. All ages since have felt it, and Shakespeare has told us that Brutus is an honorable man. There is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise. Cicero in it tells us of Cato and of Marcellus, and therefore we must suppose that it was written when they were alive. Indeed he so compares Caesar and Marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been alive. But Cato and Marcellus died B.C. 46, and how then could the treatise have been written in B.C. 45? It should, however, be remembered that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. But the time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the discourse. He begins by telling us how he had grieved when on his return from Cilicia he had heard that Hortensius was dead. Hortensius had brought him into the College of Orgas, and had there stood to him in the place of a parent. And he had lamented Hortensius also on behalf of Rome. Hortensius had gone. Then he goes on to say that as he was thinking of these things while walking in his portico, Brutus had come to him and Pomponius Atticus. He says how pleasantly they greeted each other, and then gradually they go on till Atticus asks him to renew the story he had before been telling. In truth, Pomponius, he says, I remember it right well, for then it was that I had heard Deutyrus, that truest and best of kings, defended by our Brutus here. Deutyrus was that eastern king whose defence by Cicero himself I have mentioned when speaking of his pleadings before Caesar. Then he rushes off into his subject and discusses at length his favourite idea. It must still be remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of lessons in oratory. There is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this treatise. Cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his lessons. He says of eloquence that she is the companion of peace and the associate of ease. He tells us of Cato that he had read a hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had found them all replete with bright words and with great matter. And yet no one in his days read Cato's speeches. This, of course, was Cato the Elder. Then we hear how Demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything. It was the first thing, the second, and the third. For there is nothing like it to penetrate into the minds of the audience, to teach them, to turn them, and to form them till the orator shall be made to appear exactly that which he wishes to be thought. The man who listens to one who is an orator believes what he hears. He thinks everything to be true. He approves of all. No doubt. In his power of describing the orator and his work, Cicero is perfect. But he does not describe the man doing that which he is bound to do by his duty. He tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates, which certainly is true. Thereon he comes to Caesar, and praises him very highly. But here Brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the commentaries, and found them to be bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture. They are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. Then he names Ortencius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic. But he reserves his greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy which he is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases so as to show that he himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made himself, in truth, the best orator of them all. Perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of the touch. It is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. If read without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind the impression that, though now and again there had come upon him the memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the state, to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent, nevertheless it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone well with him. He writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at his heart. No one would have thought that in his very year he was perplexed in his private affairs even to the putting away of his wife, that Caesar had made good his ground, and having become dictator last year had for the third time become consul, that he knew himself to be living as a favour by Caesar's pleasure. Caesaro seems to have written his bootes, as one might write who was well at ease. Let a man have taught himself ought, and have acquired the love of letters. It is easy for him, then, we might say, to carry on his work. What is it to him that politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? He has not gone into that arena, and fought, and bled there, nor needy do so. Though things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger, none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame. But with Cicero on every morning as he rose he must have remembered Pompey, and have thought of Caesar. And though Caesar was courteous to him, the courtesy of a ruler is hard to be born by him who himself has ruled. Caesar was consul, and Cicero who remembered how majestically he had walked when a few years since he was consul by the real votes of the people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people. Must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close, in its very final words, he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine that something has been lost, or that more might have been added. The last of these works is the orator. We have passed in review the De Oratori and the Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus. We have now to consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece of the three. Such seems to have become the general idea of those scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. He himself says that there are in all five books. There are the three De Oratori. The fourth is called the Brutus, and the fifth, the Orator. In some manuscripts this work has a second title, the Optimo Genere di Kendi, as though the five books should run on in a sequence, the three first being on Oratory in general, the fourth as to famous Orators, while the last concluding work is on the best mode of Oratory. Readers who may wish to carry these in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from Eskenes and Demosthenes. The purport here is to show how may that hitherto unknown hero of romance be produced, the perfect orator. Here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain discursive treatment of his subject which enables him to run hither and thither while he always pleases us whatever attitude he may assume, whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. But here, in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his discourse. He distinguishes three styles of eloquence, the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties to perform. He must learn what on any subject he has to say. He must place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. He explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that eloquence depends wholly on eloquence. He teaches us that the philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his ideas of eloquence, but that he alone does so, who can, amidst the heat and work of the forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. Then he teaches us how each of the three styles should be treated, the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and shows us how to vary them. He informs us what laws we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what metaphors. He then considers the words we should use, and makes us understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of sound. In this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a Roman, had to deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than our British is, and I am not sure that we can follow him with rapture into all the mysteries of the Pian, the Dachmias, and the Dachorias. What he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder the elaborate study given to it, but I doubt whether we here do not read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be removing ourselves further from the more wholesome pursuits of our lives. There are again delightful morsels here. He tells us, for instance, that he who has created a beautiful thing must have beauty in his soul, a charming idea as to which we do not stop to inquire whether it be true or not. He gives us a most excellent caution against storing up good sayings and using them from the storehouse of our memory. Let him avoid these studied things, not made at the moment but brought from the closet. Then he rises into a grand description of the perfect orator. But that third man is he, rich, abundant, dignified and instructed, in whom there is a divine strength. This is he whose fullness and culture of speech the nations have admired and whose eloquence has been allowed to prevail over the people. Then will the orator make himself felt more abundantly, then will he rule their minds and turn their hearts, then will he do with them as he would wish. But in the teeth of all this it did not please Brutus himself. When I wrote to him, he said to Atticus, in obedience to his wishes, de optimo genera di kendi, he sent word both to you and me, that that which pleased me did not satisfy him. Let every man kiss his own wife, says Cicero in his letter, in the next words to those which we have quoted, and we cannot but love the man for being able to joke when he is telling of the rebuff he has received. It must have been an additional pang to him that he for whom he had written his book should receive it with stern rebuke. At last we come to the topica, the last instructions which Cicero gives on the subject of oratory. The Romans seem to have esteemed much the lessons which are here conveyed, but for us it has but little attraction. He himself declares it to have been a translation from Aristotle, but declares also that the translation has been made from memory. He has been at sea, he says in the first chapter, and has there performed his task, and has sent it as soon as it has been done. There is something in this which is unintelligible to us. He has translated a treatise of Aristotle from memory, that is without having the original before him, and he has done this at sea on his intended journey to Greece. I do not believe that Cicero has been false in so writing. The work has been done for his young friend Travarseus, who had often asked it, and was much too clever when he had received it not to recognise its worth. But Cicero has, in accordance with his memory, reduced to his own form Aristotle's idea as to invention in logic. Aristotle's work is, I am informed, in eight books. Here is a bagatelle in twenty-five pages. There is an audacity in the performance, especially in the doing-it-on-board ship. But we must remember that he had spent his life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down, with all the rapidity of a practised professor, the doctrines on the matter which he wished to teach Travarseus. This later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher or statesman, may look for his arguments. That they should have been of any great use to Travarseus in the course of his long life as Attorney General about the Court of Augustus, I cannot believe. I do not know that he rose to special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor. Nor do I think that oratory or the powers of persuasion can be so brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. And here they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. It is for modern readers perhaps the least interesting of all Cicero's works. There is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of the immense amount of attention which in the Roman educated world was paid to the science of speaking, to bring his arguments to bear at the proper moment, to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the minds of men, to know when the sympathies may be expected, and when demanded, when the feelings may be trusted, and when they have been too blunted to be of service, to perceive from an instinctive outlook into those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate, and when melting—this was the business of a Roman orator. And this was to be achieved only by a careful study of the character of men. It depended in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on education. How he might please the multitude, this was everything to him. It was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic world in London we have been told that men ought not to attempt. They do attempt it, but they fail, through the innate honesty which there is in the hearts of men. In Italy in Cicero's time they attempted it, and did not fail. But we can see what were the results. The attention which Roman orators paid to their voices was as serious and demanded the same restraint as the occupations of the present athlete. We are inclined to doubt whether too much of life is not devoted to the purpose. It could not be done but by a people so greedy of the admiration as to feel that all other things should be abandoned by those who desire to excel. The actor of today will do it, but it is his business to act, and if he so applies himself to his profession as to succeed he has achieved his object. But oratory in the law court, as in Parliament or in addressing the public, is only the means of imbuing the minds of others with the ideas which the speaker wishes to implant there. To have those ideas and to have the desire to teach them to others is more to him than the power of well expressing them. To know the law is better than to talk of knowing it. But with the Romans so great was the desire to shine that the reality was lost in its appearance, and so prone were the people to indulge in the delight of their senses that they would sacrifice a thing for a sound and preferred lies in perfect language to truth in halting syllables. This feeling had sunk deep into Cicero's heart when he was a youth and has given to his character the only stain which it has he would be patriotic. To love his country was the first duty of a Roman. He would be honest so much was indispensable to his personal dignity. But he must so charm his countrymen with his voice as to make them feel while they listen to him that some god addressed them. In this way he became permeated by the love of praise till it was death to him not to be before the lamps. The perfect orator is, we may say, a person neither desired nor desirable. We, who are the multitude of the world and have been born to hold our tongues and use our brains, would not put up with him were he to show himself. But it was not so in Cicero's time, and this was the way he took to sing the praises of his own profession and to magnify his own glory. He speaks of that profession in language so excellent as to make us who read his words believe that there was more in it than it did in truth hold. But there was much in it and the more so as the performers reacted upon their audience. The delicacy of the powers of expression had become so great that the powers of listening and distinguishing had become great also. As the instruments became fine so did the ears which were to receive their music. Cicero and Quintilian after him tell us this. The latter, in speaking of the nature of the voice, gives us a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to attempt to translate. It flexibilities, it clara, it obtusa, spiritus etiam longior brevioreque. Footnote Quintilian book 11.3. The translations of these epithets are open, obscure, full, thin, light, rough, shortened, lengthened, harsh, pliable, clear, clouded. End of footnote. And the remarkable thing was that every Roman who listened would understand what the orator intended and would know too and would tell him of it if by error he had fallen into some cadence which was not exactly right. To the modes of raising the voice which are usually divided into three, the high or treble, the low or bass, and that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor, many others are added. There are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes, the quicker and the slower. It seems little to us who know that we can speak or whisper, hammer our words together or draw them out, but then every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. No wonder that Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the strength of a body had to be matured lest the voice should fall to a sick, womanly weakness like that of a eunuch. This must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continents, by the easy digestion of the food, which means moderation, and the jaws must be free so that the words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator, Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the words themselves. In all this we find that Quintilian only follows his master too closely. The hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of the foot, the single step or many steps, every motion of the body agreeing with the words from his mouth are all described. He attributes this to Antony, but only because, as he thinks of it, some movement of Antony's has recurred to his memory. To make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which Cicero valued, not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him to be so. This it was in Cicero's time to be the optimus orator. Since Cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct of men.  The progress which the best among us have made, Cicero in fact achieved. But he had not acquired that theoretic aversion to a lie, which is the first feeling in the bosom of a man who is the first feeling in the bosom of a modern gentleman. Therefore it was that he still busied himself with finding the optimus orator.