Chapter 7 of the Life of Cicero Volume 1. The year after the trial of Verri's was that of Cicero's edile ship. We know but little of him in the performance of the duties of this office, but we may gather that he performed them to the satisfaction of the people. He did not spend much money for their amusements, although it was the custom of ediles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion. And yet, when two years afterwards he solicited the pritorship from the people, he was three times elected as first praetor in all the committia, three separate elections having been rendered necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties. To all the offices, one after another, he was elected in his first year, the first year possible in accordance with his age, and was elected first in honour, the first as praetor, and then the first as consul. This, no doubt, was partly due to his compliance with those rules for canvassing which his brother Quintus is said to have drawn out, and which I have quoted, but it proves also the trust which was felt in him by the people. The candidates for the most part were the candidates for the aristocracy. They were put forward with the idea that thus might the aristocratic rule of Rome be best maintained. Their elections were carried on by bribery, and the people were for the most part indifferent to the proceeding. Whether it might be a Verri's, or an Antony, or a Hortensius, they took the money that was going. They allowed themselves to be delighted with the games, and they did as they were bid. But every now and then there came up a name which stirred them, and they went to the voting pens, or villia, with a purpose of their own. When such a candidate came forward, he was sure to be first. Such had been Marius, and such had been the great Pompey, and such was Cicero. The two former were men successful in war, who gained the voices of the people by their victories. Cicero gained them by what he did inside the city. He could afford not to run into debt and ruin himself during his edile-ship, as had been common with ediles, because he was able to achieve his popularity in another way. It was the chief duty of the ediles to look after the town generally, to see to the temples of the gods, to take care that houses did not tumble down, to look to the cleansing of the streets, and to the supply of water. The markets were under them, and the police, and the recurrent festivals. An active man with common sense, such as was Cicero, no doubt did his duty as edile well. He kept up his practice as an advocate during his years of office. We have left to us the part of one speech, and the whole of another, spoken during this period. The former was in favour of Fonteus, whom the Gauls prosecuted for plundering them as propritor, and the latter is a civil case on behalf of Chaiquina, addressed to the recuperatores as had been that for Marcus Tullius. The speech for Fonteus is remarkable as being as hard against the provincial Gauls, as his speech against Veres had been favourable to the Sicilians. But the Gauls were barbarians, whereas the Sicilians were Greeks. And it should be always remembered that Cicero spoke as an advocate, and that the praise and censure of an advocate required to be taken with many grains of salt. Nothing that these wretched Gauls could say against a Roman citizen, or to be accepted in evidence. All the Romans, he says, who have been in the province wish well to Fonteus. Would you rather believe these Gauls, led by what feeling? By the opinion of men. Is the opinion then of your enemies of greater weight than that of your fellow citizens? Or is it the greater credibility of the witnesses? Would you prefer then unknown men to known, dishonest men to honest, foreigners to your own countrymen, greedy men to those who come before you for nothing, men of no religion to those who fear the gods, those who hate the empire and the name of Rome, to allies and citizens who are good and faithful? In every word of this he begs the question so as to convince us that his own case was weak, and when he makes a final appeal to the pity of the judges, we are sure that Fonteus was guilty. He tells the judges that the poor mother of the accused man has now other support than this son, and that there is a sister, one of the virgins devoted to the service of Vesta, who, being a Vestal Virgin, cannot have sons of her own, and is therefore entitled to have her brother preserved for her. When we read such arguments as these we are sure that Fonteus had misused the Gauls. We believe that he was acquitted because we are told that he bought a house in Rome soon afterward, but we feel that he escaped by the two great influence of his advocate. We are driven to doubt whether the power over words which may be achieved by a man by means of natural gifts, practice, and erudition may not do evil instead of good. A man with such a tongue as that of Cicero will make the listener believe almost whatever he will, and the advocate is restrained by no horror of falsehood. In his profession alone it is considered honourable to be a bulwark to deception, and to make the worse appear the better cause. Cicero did so when the occasion seemed to him to require it, and has been accused of hypocrisy and consequence. There is a passage in one of the dialogues de Oratory, which has been continually quoted against him because the word fibs has been used with approval. The orator is told how it may become him to garnish his good story with little white lies, mendachionculis. The advice does not indeed refer to facts or to evidence or to arguments. It goes no farther than to suggest that amount of exaggeration which is used by every teller of a good story in order that the story may be good. Such mendachioncula are in the mouth of every diner out in London, and we may pity the dinner parties at which they are not used. Reference is made to them now because the use of the word by Cicero, having been misunderstood by some who have treated his name with severity, has been brought forward in proof of his falsehood. You shall tell a story about a very little man, and say that he is only thirty-six inches. You know very well that he is more than four feet high. That will be a mendachionculum, according to Cicero. The phrase has been passed on from one enemy to another, till the little fibs of Cicero's recommending have been supposed to be direct lies suggested by him to all advocates, and therefore continually used by him as an advocate. They have been only the garnishing of his droleries. As an advocate he was about as false and about as true as an advocate of our own day. That he was not paid, and that our English barristers are paid for the work they do, makes, I think, no difference, either in the innocencey or the falseness of the practice. I cannot but believe that, hereafter, an improved tone of general feeling will forbid a man of honour to use arguments which he thinks to be untrue, or to make others believe that which he does not believe himself. Such is not the state of things now in London, nor was it at Rome in Cicero's time. There are touches of eloquence in the plea for Fonteus, but the reader will probably agree with me that the orator was well aware that the late governor who was on his trial had misused those unfortunate ghouls. In the year following that of Cicero's edalship were written the first of his epistles which have come to us. He was then not yet thirty-nine years old, B. C. sixty-eight, and during that year and the next seven were written eleven letters, all to Atticus. Those two his other friends, ad familiares, as we have been accustomed to call them, ad diversos, as they are commonly called now, began only with the close of his consul a year. How it has come to pass that there have been preserved only those which are written after a period of life at which most men cease to be free correspondence cannot be said with certainty. It has probably been occasioned by the fact that he caused his letters to be preserved as soon as he himself perceived how great would be their value. Of the nature of their value it is hardly possible to speak too highly. I am not prepared indeed to agree with the often quoted assertion of Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not lack much of the history of those days. A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age. But if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography. With a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough. From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer, that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations have been made visible. We know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human. How he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small manoeuvres. How like a man he could be proud of his work and boast! How like a man he could despair and almost die! But I wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters, in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength. If they are singularly transparent as to the man, opening, especially to Atticus, the doors of his soul more completely than would even any girl of the nineteenth century when writing to her bosom friend, they must be taken as being more honestly true. To regard the aspirations as hypocritical, and only the meaner effusions of his mind as emblematic of the true man, is both unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth, who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all, as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile, I think it might well be that he should for a time be unmanned, but he would either not write, or in writing would hide much of his feelings. On losing his tulia, some father of today would keep it all in his heart, would not mourn out his sorrows. Even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled, which forbids the use of open words. Whether this be for good or evil, I will not say, but it is so. Cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear. He said everything that there was within him, being in this I should say quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to ourselves. In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters, not from Cicero, written to Cicero, by his brother, by Decimus Brutus, by Plancus, and others. It will, I think, be admitted that their tone is quite different from that used by himself. There are none indeed from Atticus, none written under terms of such easy friendship as prevailed when many were written by Cicero himself. It will probably be acknowledged that his manner of throwing himself open to his correspondent was peculiar to him. If this be so, he should surely have the advantage as well as the disadvantage of his own mode of utterance. The reader who allows himself to think that the true character of the man is to be read in the little sly things he said to Atticus, but that the nobler ideas were merely put forth to cajole the public, is as unfair to himself as he is to Cicero. In reading the entire correspondence, the letters from Cicero, either to Atticus or to others, it has to be remembered that in the ordinary arrangement of them made by Grivius they are often incorrectly placed in regard to chronology. In subsequent times efforts have been made to restore them to their proper position, and so they should be read. The letters to Atticus and those at diversos have generally been published separately. For the ordinary purpose of literary pleasure they may perhaps be best read that way. The tone of them is different. The great bulk of the correspondence is political or quasi-political. The manner is much more familiar, much less severe, though not on that account indicating less seriousness in those written to Atticus than in the others. With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are better worth reading. The character of the writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal, but for a general understanding of the facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him who wrote them. BC. 68, Eitat. 39 We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight in the year after his Edale ship. In the first he tells his friend of the death of his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into Sicily, and alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between Pomponia, the sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus Cicero, our Cicero's brother. Marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of him. That Quintus was a scholar and a man of parts, there can be no doubt, one, two who rose to high office in the Republic. But he was arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar characteristic of his brother. When I found him to be in the wrong, says Cicero in his first letter, I wrote to him as a brother whom I loved, but as to one younger than myself and whom I was bound to tell of his fault. As is usual with correspondence, half the letter is taken up with excuses for not writing sooner. Then he gives commissions for the purchase of statues for his Tusculin villa, of which we now hear for the first time, and tells his friend how his wife Terensia sends her love, though she is suffering from the gout. Tullia also, the dear little Tullia, deliqui nostri, sends her love. In the next he says how a certain house which Atticus has intended to purchase had been secured by Fontaeus for a hundred and thirty thousand cesterces, something over a thousand pounds taking the cestercy at Toppence. This no doubt was part of the plunder which Fontaeus had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that year on the eighth day before the Callens of December, on the twenty-fourth of November. Some question as to the date of the old man's death had probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to statues, and declares of his Tusculin villa that he is happy only when he is there. In the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one Quintius one hundred and seventy pounds on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives orders to his friend as to the buying of books. All my prospect of enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness. These were the letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be Edile. From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable from the continued commissions given by Cicero to Atticus for statues. Statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his Tusculinum. Should there be more than unneeded for that villa he will begin to decorate another that he has, the Formianum, Nicaeta. He wants whatever Atticus may think proper for his Palastra and Gymnasium. Atticus has a library or collection of maps for sale, and Cicero engages to buy them, though it seems that he has not at present quite got the money. He reserves, he says, all his little comings in, Windemiolas, what he might make by selling his grapes as a lady in the country might get a little income from her spare butter, in order that he may have books as a resource for his old age. Again he bids Atticus not to be afraid but what he, Cicero, will be able to buy them some day, which, if he can do, he will be richer than Crassus and will envy no one his mansions or his lawns. He also declares that he has betrothed Tullia, then ten years old, to Caius Piso, son of Lucius Piso Frugui. The proposed marriage, which after three years of betrosal was duly solemnised, was considered to be in all respects desirable. Cicero thought very highly of his son-in-law, who was related to Calpurnius Piso, one of the consuls of that year. So far everything was going well with our orator. Side note, BC 67, Eitat 40. He was then candidate for the pritorship, and was elected first, as has been already said. It was in that year, too, that a law was passed in Rome at the instance of one Gabinius, a tribune, authorising Pompey to exterminate the pirates in the Mediterranean, and giving him almost unlimited power for this object. Pompey was not indeed named in this law. A single general, one who had been consul, was to be approved by the senate, with exclusive command by sea and for fifty miles on shore. He was to select that his own officers are hitherto unheard of number, all of senatorial rank. It was well understood when the law was worded that Pompey alone could fill the place. The senate opposed the scheme with all its power, although seven years before it had acknowledged the necessity of some measure for extirpating the pirates. But jealousies prevailed, and the senate was afraid of Pompey. Gabinius, however, carried his law by the votes of the people, and Pompey was appointed. Everything tells us more clearly the wretched condition of things in Rome at this time than this infliction of pirates, under which their commerce was almost destroyed. Sulla had re-established the outside show of a strong government, a government which was strong enough to enable rich men to live securely in Rome, but he had done nothing to consolidate the empire. Even Leculus in the east had only partially succeeded, leaving Mithridates still to be dealt with by Pompey. Of what nature was the government of the provinces under Sulla's aristocracy, we learn from the trials of Veris, and of Fonteus, and of Catiline. The Mediterranean swarmed with pirates, who taught themselves to think that they had nothing to fear from the hands of the Romans. Plutarch declares to us, no doubt with fair accuracy, because the description has been admitted by subsequent writers, how great was the horror of these depredations. It is marvellous to us now that this should have been allowed, marvellous that pirates should reach such a pitch of importance that Veris had found it worth his while to sacrifice Roman citizens in their place. Pompey went forth with his officers, his fleets, and his money, and cleared the Mediterranean in forty days, as Plutarch says. Floras tells us that not a ship was lost by the Romans, and not a pirate left on the seas. In the history of Rome at this time we find men of Mark whose characters, as we read, become clear to us, or appear to become clear. Of Marius and of Sulla we have a defined idea. Caesar, with his imperturbable courage, absence of scruples, and assurance of success, comes home to us. Cicero, I think, we certainly may understand. Catiline, Cato, Antony, and Brutus have left their portraits with us. Of Pompey I must acknowledge for myself that I have but a vague conception. His wonderful successes seem to have been produced by so very little power of his own. He was not determined and venomous as was Marius, not cold-blooded and ruthless as was Sulla, certainly not confident as was Caesar, not humane as was Cicero, not passionate as Catiline, not stoic as was Cato, not reckless as was Antony, nor wedded to the idea of an oligarchy as was Brutus. Success came in his way, and he found it, found it again and again till fortune seemed to have adopted him. Success lifted him higher and higher, till at last it seemed to him that he must be a Sulla whether he would or no. But he could not endure the idea of a rival, Sulla. I doubt whether ambition would have prompted him to fight for the Empire of the Republic had he not perceived that that Empire would fall into Caesar's hands did he not grasp it himself. It would have satisfied him to let things go while the citizens called him Magnus and regarded him as the man who could do a great thing if he would if only no rivalship had been forced upon him. Caesar did force it on him, and then, as a matter of course, he fell. He must have understood warfare from his youth upward, knowing well the purposes of a Roman legion and of Roman auxiliaries. He had destroyed Sertorius in Spain, a man certainly greater than himself, and had achieved the honour of putting an end to the servile war when Spartacus, the leader of the slaves and gladiators, had already been killed. He must have appreciated at his utmost the meaning of those words Kiwes Romanus. He was a handsome man with good health, patient of labour, not given to luxury, reticent, I should say, ungenerous, and with a strong touch of vanity, a man able to express but unable to feel friendship, with none of the highest attributes of manhood, but with all the second rate attributes at their best, a capable, brave man, but one certain to fall crushed beneath the heel of such a man as Caesar, and as certain to leave such a one as Cicero in the lurch. It is necessary that the reader should attempt to realise to himself the personal characteristics of Pompey, as from this time forward Cicero's political life, and his life now became altogether political, was governed by that of Pompey. That this was the case to a great extent is certain, to a sad extent, I think. The two men were of the same age, but Pompey had become a general among soldiers, before Cicero had ceased to be a pupil among advocates. As Cicero was making his way towards the front, Pompey was already the first among Romans. He had been consul seven years before his proper time, and had lately, as we have seen, been invested with extraordinary powers in that matter of putting down the pirates. In some sort the mantle of Sulla had fallen upon him. He was the leader of what we make all the conservative party. If, which I doubt, the political governance of men was a matter of interest to him, he would have had them governed by oligarchical forms. Such had been the forms in Rome, in which, though the votes of the people were the source of all power, the votes hardly went further than the selection of this or that oligarch. Pompey no doubt felt the expediency of maintaining the old order of things, in the midst of which he had been born to high rank, and had achieved the topmost place either by fortune or by merit. For any heartfelt conviction as to what might be best for his country or his countrymen, in what way he might most surely use his power for the good of the citizens generally, we must, I think, look in vain to that Pompey whom history has handed down to us. But of all matters which interested Cicero, the governance of men interested him the most, how should the great Rome of his day rise to greater power than ever, and yet be as poor as in the days of her comparative insignificance? How should Rome be ruled, so that Romans might be the masters of the world in mental gifts as well as bodily strength, in arts as well as in arms, as by valour so by virtue? He too was an oligarch by strongest conviction. His mind could conceive nothing better than consuls, pritals, censors, tribunes and the rest of it, with, however, the stipulation that the consuls and the pritals should be honest men. The condition was no doubt an impossible one, but this he did not or would not see. Pompey himself was fairly honest. Up to this time he had shown no egregious lust for personal power. The hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party. The optimates, or bony, as Cicero indifferently calls them, meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order, believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide in him the power which the people gave him. The Senate did not want another Sulla, and yet it was Sulla who had reinstated the Senate. The Senate would have hindered Pompey if it could, from his command against the pirates, and again from his command against Mithridates. But he nevertheless was naturally there ahead, as came to be seen plainly, when, seventeen years afterward, Caesar passed the Rubicon, and Cicero in his heart acknowledged Pompey as his political leader while Pompey lived. This I think was the case to a sad extent, as Pompey was incapable of that patriotic enthusiasm which Cicero demanded. As we go on we shall find that the worst episodes in Cicero's political career were created by his doubting adherents to a leader whom he bitterly felt to be untrue to himself, and in whom his trust became weaker and weaker to the end. Then came Cicero's pritorship. In the time of Cicero there were eight Pritals, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in the provinces. The Pritor Urbanus was confined to the city, and was regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or judges for special causes. Sidenote, BC 66, Itat 41. Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were 40 or 41, believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great general was still away, winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the Mithridatic war. Loculus had been absent on that business nearly seven years, and though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied against him, and Glabrio, a later consul, who had been sent to take the command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a tribune, a man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity in the oration Pro Legge Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on political life. Though he had been quite store and edile, and was now pritore, he had taken apart only in executive administration. He had had his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of today might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. Now for the first time he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. This speech is the oration of Pro Legge Manilia. This he explained in his first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges, you decays. Now it is to the people, Querites. Although Querites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds, although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action, and the noblest for speech. Nevertheless not my own will indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory, which is open to any good man. It is only necessary for our purpose to say, in reference to the matter in question, that this command was given to Pompey, in opposition to the senate. As to the speech itself, it requires our attention on two points. It is one of those choice morsels of polished Latinity which have given to Cicero the highest rank among literary men, and have perhaps made him the greatest writer of prose which the world has produced. I have sometimes attempted to make a short list of his chef d'oeuvre, of his tidbits, as I must say, if I am bound to express myself in English. The list would never allow itself to be short, and so has become almost impossible. But whenever the attempt has been made, this short aeration in its integrity has always been included in it. My space hardly permits me to insert specimens of the author's style, but I will give in an appendix two brief extracts as specimens of the beauty of words in Latin. I almost fancy that if properly read they would have a grace about them even to the ears of those to whom Latin is unknown. I venture to attach to them in parallel columns my own translation, acknowledging in despair how impossible I have found it to catch anything of the rhythm of the author. As to the beauty of the language, I shall probably find no opponent. But a serious attack has been made on Cicero's character, because it has been supposed that his excessive praise was lavished on Pompey with a view of securing the great general's assistance in his candidature for the consulship. Even Middleton repeats this accusation, and only faintly repels it. Monsieur du Rozoire, the French critic, declares that, in the whole aeration there is not one word which was not dictated to Cicero the praetor by his desire to become consul, and that his own aeration was in his thoughts all through, and not that of Pompey. The matter would be one to us but of little moment. Were it not that Cicero's character for honesty as a politician depends on the truth or falsehood of his belief in Pompey? Pompey had been almost miraculously fortunate up to this period of his life's career. He had done infinitely valuable service to the state. He had already crushed the pirates. There was good ground for believing that in his hand the Roman arms would be more efficacious against Mithridates than in those of any other general. All that Cicero says on this head, whatever might have been his motive for saying it, was at any rate true. A man desirous of rising in the service of his country, of course, adheres to his party. That Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted. That in trusting to Pompey as a politician, he leaned on a frail reed, I admit. But I will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood, because by that zeal he has also strengthened his own hands. How shall a patriot do the work of his country, unless he be in high place? And how shall he achieve that place, except by cooperation with those whom he trusts? They who have blamed Cicero for speaking on behalf of Pompey on this occasion seem to me to ignore not only the necessities but the very virtues of political life. One other remarkable oration Cicero made during his pritorship, that namely in defence of Aulus Cluentius habitus. As it is the longest, so is it the most intricate and on account of various legal points the most difficult to follow of all his speeches. But there are none perhaps which tell us more of the condition, or perhaps I should say the possibilities, of life among the Romans of that day. The accusation against Roschius Amorinas was accompanied by horrible circumstances, the iniquities of various as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people were very terrible. But they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life, that any man should have lived as did Opianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by Juvenile a hundred and fifty years later. Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from very similitude. We must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity. The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged, but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during the latter days of the Republic. Side note, BC 65, Eitat 42. In the year after he was Pritil, in the first of the two years between his Pritoship and consulship, BC 65, he made a speech in defence of one Chios Cornelius, as to which we hear that the pleadings in the case occupied four days. This, with our interminable cause célèbre, does not seem much to us, but Cicero's own speech was so long that in publishing it he divided it into two parts. This Cornelius had been tribune in the year but one before, and was accused of having misused his power when in office. He had incurred the enmity of the aristocracy by attempts made on the popular side to restrain the conflict, especially by the stringency of a law proposed for stopping bribery at elections. Cicero's speeches are not extant. We have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them which were preserved by Asconius, a commentator on certain of Cicero's orations. But there is ground for supposing that these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against Veres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline. Cicero defended Cornelius, who was attacked by the senate, by the rich men who desired office and the government of provinces. The law proposed for the restriction of bribery at elections no doubt attempted to do more by the severity of its punishment than can be achieved by such means. It was mitigated, but was still admitted by Cicero to be too rigorous. The ranker of the senate against Cornelius seems to have been due to this attempt, but the illegality with which he was charged, and for which he was tried, had reference to another law suggested by him, for restoring to the people the right of pardon which had been usurped by the senate. Cicero's Cornelius seems to have been a man honest and eager in his purpose to save the republic from the greed of the oligarchs, but, as had been the Gracchi, ready in his eagerness to push his own authority too far in his attempt to restrain that of the senate. A second tribune, in the interest of the senate, attempted to exercise an authority which undoubtedly belonged to him by inhibiting the publication or reading of the proposed law. The person whose duty it was to read it was stopped, then Cornelius pushed aside the inferior officer and read it himself. There was much violence, and the men who brought the accusation about Cornelius, two brothers named Cominie, had to hide themselves, and save their lives by escaping over the roofs of the houses. This took place when Cicero was standing for the pritorship, and the confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for a while impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his pritorship Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made. The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The contest on the part of the senate was for all that made public life dear to such a body. Not to bribe, not to be able to lay out money in order that money might be returned tenfold, a hundredfold, would be to them to cease to be aristocrats. The struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius Drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this Cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an honest republic. Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself, though there was present always to him an idea with which in truth neither the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized that the reform could be affected not by depriving the senate of its power, but by teaching the senate to use it honestly. We can sympathize with the idea, but we are driven to acknowledge that it was futile. Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though they have been made intelligible to us by the argument or story of them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian, who speaks of them with the highest praise. Cicero himself selects certain passages out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm, thus showing the labour with which he composed them, polishing them by the exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. We know from Asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital interest. We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his pritorship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable competition for the consulship. The second informs his friend that a son is born to him, he being then forty-two years old, and that he is thinking to undertake the defence of Catterline, who was to be accused of peculation as pro-pritol in Africa. Should he be acquitted, says Cicero, I should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my canvas. If he should be convicted, I shall be able to bear that, too. There would be six or seven candidates, of whom, too, of course, would be chosen. It would be much to Cicero to run, as our phrase goes, with the one who among his competitors would be the most likely to succeed. Catterline, in spite of his then notorious character, in the teeth of the evils of his government in Africa, was, from his birth, from his connections and from his ability, supposed to have the best chance. It was open to Cicero to defend Catterline as he had defended Fonteus, and we know from his own words that he thought of doing so. But he did not. Nor did Cicero join himself with Catterline in the other thing. It is probable that the nature of Catterline's character and intentions were now becoming clearer from day to day. Catterline was tried and acquitted, having it is said, bribed the judges. CHAPTER VIII. Cicero as Consul Hitherto everything had succeeded with Cicero. His fortune and his fame had gone hand in hand. The good will of the citizens had been accorded to him on all possible occasions. He had risen surely, if not quickly, to the top of his profession, and had so placed himself there as to have torn the wreath from the brow of his predecessor and rival, Hortensius. On no memorable occasion had he been beaten. If now and then he had failed to win a cause in which he was interested, it was as to some matter in which, as he had said to Atticus in speaking of his contemplated defense of Catterline, he was not called on to break his heart if he were beaten. We may imagine that his life had been as happy up to this point as a man's life may be. He had married well, children had been born to him who were the source of infinite delight. He had provided himself with houses, marbles, books, and all the intellectual luxuries which well-used wealth could produce. Citizens were thick around him. His industry, his ability, and his honesty were acknowledged. The citizens had given him all that it was in their power to give. Now at the earliest possible day, with circumstances of much more than usual honour, he was put in the highest place which his country had to offer, and knew himself to be the one man in whom his country at this moment trusted. Then came the one twelve-month, the apex of his fortunes. And after that, for the twenty years that followed, there fell upon him one misery after another, one trouble on the head of another trouble, so cruelly that the reader, knowing the manner of the Romans, almost wonders that he condescended to live. Sidenote, BC 64, Eitat 43. He was chosen consul, we are told, not by the votes but by the unanimous acclamation of the citizens. What was the exact manner of doing this we can hardly now understand. The consuls were elected by ballot, wooden tickets having been distributed to the people for the purpose. But Cicero tells us that no voting tickets were used in his case, but that he was elected by the combined voice of the whole people. He had stood with six competitors. Of these it is only necessary to mention two, as by them only was Cicero's life affected, and as out of the six only they seem to have come prominently forward during the canvassing. These were Catiline, the conspirator, as we shall have to call him in dealing with his name in the next chapter, and Caus Antonius, one of the sons of Mark Antony, the great orator of the preceding age, and uncle of the Mark Antony with whom we are all so well acquainted, and with whom we shall have so much to do before we get to the end of this work. Cicero was so easily the first, that it may be said of him that he walked over the course. Whether this was achieved by the Machiavellian arts which his brother Quintus taught in his treatise De Petitioni Consulatus, or was attributable to his general popularity, may be a matter of doubt. As far as we can judge from the signs which remain to us of the public feeling of the period, it seems that he was at this time regarded with singular affection by his countrymen. He had robbed none and had been cruel to no one. He had already abandoned the profit of provincial government, to which he was by custom entitled after the lapse of his year's duty as praetor, in order that he might remain in Rome among the people. Though one of the senate himself, and full of the glory of the senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the very iterations which have quoted, he had generally pleaded on the popular side. Such was his cleverness that, even when on the unpopular side, as he may be supposed to have been when defending Phonteus, he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand. We cannot doubt, judging from the loud expression of the people's joy at his election, that he had made himself beloved. But nevertheless he omitted none of those cares which it was expected that a candidate should take. He made his electioneering speech in Togar Candida, in a white robe, as candidates did, and were then so called. It has not come down to us, nor do we regret it, judging from the extracts which have been collected from the notes which Asconius wrote upon it.  Such was the practice of Rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task. When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of Clodius, his enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the consuls who allowed him to be banished, and of Mark Antony, his last great opponent, the nephew of the man who was now his colleague, we shall have very much of it. It must again be pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been preserved, and that Cicero therefore must not be supposed to have been more foul-mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that he was more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his words the meaning which he intended them to convey. Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such evidence as we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted Antony no better than he did Catiline. But appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, divide it impera. Separate your enemies, and you will get the better of them, which was no doubt known as well then as now, he soon determined to use Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon Antony among his fellow conspirators. Salast puts into the mouth of Catiline a declaration to this effect, and Cicero did use Antony for the purpose. The story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story of Cicero's consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the other events of his year's rule, but still there is something that must be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole year, it was not till October that the affairs in which we shall have to interest ourselves commenced. Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the great Roman officers of the state, we know very little. Perhaps I might better say that we know nothing. Men in their own diaries, when they keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much of those daily doings which are a matter of routine to themselves, and are by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. A prime minister with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was Cicero with his friend Atticus, would hardly say when he went to the treasury chambers or what he did when he got there. We may imagine that to a cabinet minister even a cabinet council would, after many sittings, become a matter of course. A leading barrister would hardly leave behind him a record of his work in chambers. It has thus come to pass that though we can picture to ourselves a Cicero before the judges, or addressing the people from the rostra, or uttering his opinion in the senate, we know nothing of him as he sat in his office and did his consular work. We cannot but suppose that there must have been an office with many clerks. There must have been heavy daily work. The whole operation of government was under the consul's charge, and to Cicero, with a catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually heavy. How he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what writing table dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives and red tape, I cannot make manifest to myself. I can imagine that there must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading Romans, but beyond that I cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life of a consul. In the old days the consul used, as a matter of course, to go out and do the fighting. When there was an enemy here or an enemy there, the consul was bound to hurry off with his army north or south to different parts of Italy. But gradually this system became impracticable. Distances became too great as the empire extended itself beyond the bounds of Italy to admit of the absence of the consul's. Consuls prolonged themselves through many campaigns, as notably did that which was soon to take place in Gaul under Caesar. The consuls remained at home, and generals were sent out with proconsular authority. This had become so certainly the case that Cicero on becoming consul had no fear of being called on to fight the enemy's best country. There was much fighting then in course of being done by Pompey in the east, but this would give but little trouble to the great officers at home, unless it might be in sending out necessary supplies. The consul's work, however, was severe enough. We find from his own words, in a letter to Atticus written in the year but one after his consulship, sixty-one B.C., that as consul he made twelve public addresses. Each of them must have been a work of labour, requiring a full mastery over the subject in hand, and an arrangement of words very different in their polished perfection, from the generality of parliamentary speeches to which we are accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken great time. Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. Writing must have been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself. We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily, creeping in a little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might get up the evidence against various. In defending Aulus Cluentius when he was Pritor, Cicero must have found the work to have been immense. In preparing the attack upon Catiline it seems that every witness was brought to himself. There were four Catiline speeches made in the year of his consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by him. He mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made in the year of his consulship. I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with those which have come to us, which were, as we may say, prepared for the press by Tyro, his slave, and secretary. We have evidence, as to some of them, especially as to the second Catiline narration, that time did not admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of the circumstances to which it alludes. It needs must have been extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have suffice to give him. Now the words may have been taken down in such a case, we do not quite know, but we are aware that shorthand writers were employed, though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as is that with us. The words which we read were probably much polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not know. What we do know is that the words which she spoke moved, convinced, and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read, move, convince, and charm us. Of these twelve consular speeches Cicero gives a special account to his friend. I will send you, he says, the speech-lings which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which I have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. It was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow citizen of yours in those errations which he called his Philippics. In this way he brightened himself up and declared his Nici Prius way of speaking, so that he might achieve something more dignified, something more statesman-like. So I have done with these speeches of mine which may be called consulares, as having been made not only in his consular year but also with something of consular dignity. Of these one, on the new land-laws proposed, was spoken in the senate on the callons of January. The second on the same subject to the people. The third was respecting Otto's law. The fourth was in defence of Riberius. The fifth was in reference to the children of those who had lost their property and their rank under Sulla's prescription. The sixth was in address to the people and explained why I renounced my provincial government. The seventh drove Catiline out of the city. The eighth was address to the people the day after Catiline fled. The ninth was again spoken to the people on the day on which the alabroges gave their evidence. Then again the tenth was address to the senate on the fifth of December. Also respecting Catiline. There are also two short supplementary speeches on the agrarian war. You shall have the whole body of them. As what I write and what I do are equally interesting to you, you will gather from the same documents all my doings and all my sayings. It is not to be supposed that in this list I contained all the speeches which he made in his consul a year, but those only which he made as consul, those to which he was desirous of adding something of the dignity of statesmanship, something beyond the way to attach to his pleadings as a lawyer. As an advocate, consul though he was, he continued to perform his work. From whence we learned that no state dignity was so high, as to exempt an established pleader from the duty of defending his friends. Potentious when consul-elect had undertaken to defend various. Cicero defended Moreno when he was consul. He defended C. Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of pro-consula extortion, but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, I think, known. Of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. Of his pleading for Moreno we have, if not the whole, the material part, and though nobody cares very much from Moreno now, the oration is very amusing. It was made toward the end of the year, on the twentieth of November, after the second Catiline oration, and before the third, at the very moment in which Cicero was fully occupied with the evidence on which he intended to convict Catiline's fellow conspirators. As I read it, I am carried away by wonder rather than admiration, at the energy of the man who could at such a period of his life give up his time to master the details necessary for the trial of Moreno. Early in the year Cicero had caused law to be passed, which after him was called the lex tulia, increasing the stringency of the enactments against bribery on the part of consular candidates. His intention had probably been to hinder Catiline, who was again about to become a candidate. But Moreno, who was elected, was supposed to have been caught in the meshes of the net, and also Silanus, the other consul designate. Cato, the man of stern nature, the great stoic of the day, was delighted to have an opportunity of proceeding against someone, and not very sorry to attack Moreno, with weapons provided from the armory of Moreno's friend, Cicero. Silanus, however, who happened to be cousin to Cato, was allowed to pass, unmolested. Cisulpicius, who was one of the disappointed candidates, Cato and Postumius were the accusers. Otensius, Crassus, and Cicero were combined together for the defense of Moreno. But as we read the single pleading that has come to us, we feel that, unlike those Roman trials generally, this was carried on without any acrimony on either side. I think it must have been that Cato wished to have an opportunity of displaying his virtue, but it had been arranged that Moreno was to be acquitted. Moreno was accused, among other things, of dancing. Greeks might dance, as we hear from Cornelius Nepos, but our Roman consul it would be disgraceful in the highest extreme. A lady, indeed, might dance, but not much. Salast tells us of Sempronia, who was indeed a very bad female if all that he says of her be true, that she danced more elegantly than became an honest woman. She was the wife of a consul, but a male Roman of high standing might not dance at all. Cicero defends his friend by showing how impossible it was, how monstrous the idea. No man would dance unless drunk or mad. Nevertheless, I imagine that Moreno had danced. Cicero seizes an opportunity of quizzing Cato for his stoicism, and uses it delightfully. Horus was not more happy when, in defence of Aristipus, he declared that any philosopher would turn up his nose at cabbage if he could get himself asked to the tables of rich men. There was one Zeno, Cicero says, who laid down laws. No wise man would forgive any fault. No man worthy of the name of man would allow himself to be pitiful. Wise men are beautiful even though deformed, rich though penniless, kings though they be slaves. We who are not wise are mere exiles, runnigates, enemies of our country, and madmen. Any fault is an unpardonable crime. To kill an old cock, if you do not want it, is as bad as to murder your father. And these doctrines, he goes on to say, which are used by most of us merely as something to talk about, this man Cato absolutely believes and tries to live by them. I shall have to refer back to this when I speak of Cicero's philosophy more at length, but his common sense crops up continually in the expressions which he uses for defending the ordinary conditions of a man's life in opposition to that impossible superiority to mundane things which the philosophers profess to teach their pupils. He turns to Cato and asks him questions which he answers himself with his own philosophy. Would you pardon nothing? Well, yes, but not all things. Would you do nothing for friendship? Sometimes unless duty should stand in the way. Would you never be moved to pity? I would maintain my habit of sincerity, but something must no doubt be allowed to humanity. It is good to stick to your opinion, but only until some better opinion shall have prevailed with you. In all this the humanity of our Cicero, as opposed equally to the impossible virtue of a Cato, or the abominable vice of a Veriz, is in advance of his age, and reminds us of what Christ has taught us. But the best morsel in the whole oration is that in which he snubs the lawyers. It must be understood that Cicero did not pride himself on being a lawyer. He was an advocate, and if he wanted law there were those of an inferior grade to whom he could go to get it. In truth he did understand the law being a man of deep research who inquired into everything. As legal points had been raised he thus addresses Sulpicius, who seems to have affected a knowledge of jurisprudence, who had been a candidate for the consulship, and who was his own intimate friend. I must put you out of your conceit, he says. It was your other gifts, not a knowledge of the laws.  I will not say you threw away your time in studying law, but it was not thus you made yourself worthy of the consulship. That power of eloquence, majestic and full of dignity which is so often availed in raising man to the consulship, is able by its words to move the minds of the senate and the people and the judges. But in such a poor science as that of law, what honour can there be? Its details are taken up with mere words and fragments of words. They forget all equity in points of law, and stick to the mere letter. He goes through a presumed scene of chicanery, which, consul as he was, he must have acted before the judges and the people, no doubt the extreme delight of them all. At last he says, Full as I am of business, if you raise my wrath I will make myself a lawyer, and learn it all in three days. From these and many other passages in Cicero's writings and speeches, and also from Quintillion, we learn that a Roman advocate was by no means the same as an English barrister. The science which he was supposed to have learned was simply that of telling his story in effective language. It no doubt came to pass that he had much to do in getting up the details of his story, what we may call the evidence, but he looked elsewhere to men of another profession for his law. The Yuris consultus, or the Yuris peritus, was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much less importance than the patronus, or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this trial of Morena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. The greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire, all our republic is defended and made strong by them. It was thus that the advocate could speak. This comes from the man who always took glory to himself in declaring that the toga was superior to helmet and shield. He had already declared that they erred who thought that they were going to get his own private opinion in speeches made in law courts. He knew how to defend his friend Morena, who was a soldier, and in doing so could say very sharp things, though yet in joke, against his friend Sulpicius, the lawyer. But in truth, few men understood the Roman law better than did Cicero. But we must go back to that agrarian law, respecting which, as he tells us, four of his consular speeches were made. This had been brought forward by Rulus, one of the tribunes, towards the end of the last year. The tribunes came into office in December, whereas at this period of the Republic, the consuls were in power only on and from January the first. Cicero, who had been unable to get the particulars of the new law till it had been proclaimed, had but a few days to master its details. It was, to his thinking, altogether revolutionary. We have the words of many of the clauses, and though it is difficult at this distance of time to realize what would have been its effect, I think we are entitled to say that it was intended to subvert all property. Property, speaking of it generally, cannot be destroyed.  Even the elements when out of order can do but little toward perfecting destruction. A deluge is wanted, or that crash of doom, which, whether it is to come or not, is believed by the world to be very distant. But it is within human power to destroy possession and redistribute the goods which industry, avarice, or perhaps injustice, has congregated. They who own property are in these days so much stronger than those who have none, that an idea of any such redistribution does not create much alarm among the possessors. The spirit of communism does not prevail among people who have learned that it is, in truth, easier to earn than to steal. But with the Romans, political economy had naturally not advanced so far as with us. A subversion of property had, to a great extent, taken place no later than in Sulla's time. How this had been affected, the story of the property of Roscus Amorinas has explained to us. Under Sulla's enactments, no man with a house, with hoarded money, with a family of slaves, with rich ornaments, was safe. Property had been made to change hands recklessly, ruthlessly, violently by the illegal application of a law promulgated by a single individual who, however, had himself been instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things which he approved. Rulers, probably with other motives, was desirous of affecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction. The ostensible purpose was something as follows. As the Roman people had, by their valour and wisdom, achieved for Rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as Roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won, whereas, in fact, the suites of victory fell to the lot only of a few aristocrats. For the reform of this evil, it should be enacted that all public property which had been thus acquired, whether land or chattels, should be sold, and with the proceeds other land should be bought fit for the use of Roman citizens, and be given to those who would choose to have it. It was specially suggested that the rich country called the Campania, that in which Naples now stands with its adjacent aisles, should be bought up and given over to a great Roman colony. For the purpose of carrying out this law, ten magistrates should be appointed with plenty of potentially power but as to buying and selling. There were many underplots in this. No one needs sell unless he chose to sell, but at this moment much land was held by no other title than that of Sulla's prescriptions. The present possessors were in daily fear of dispossession by some new law made with the object of restoring their property to those who had been so cruelly robbed. These would be very glad to get any price in hand for land of which their tenure was so doubtful, and these were the men whom the Dechem Wiri or ten magistrates would be anxious to assist. We are told that the father-in-law of Rulis himself had made a large acquisition by his use of Sulla's prescriptions. And then there would be the instantaneous selling of vast districts obtained by conquest and now held by the Roman state. When so much land would be thrown into the market, it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the Dechem Wiri might choose to favour. We can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would have been altogether changed by the measure. The Dechem Wiri were to have plenary power for 10 years. All the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold or put up to market. Everything supposed to belong to the Roman state was to be sold in every province for the sake of collecting together a huge sum of money which was to be divided in the shape of land among the poorer Romans. Whatever may have been the private intentions of Rulis, whether good or bad, it is evident even at this distance of time that a redistribution of property was intended which can only be described as a general subversion. To this the new consul opposed himself vehemently, successfully, and we must need to say patriotically. The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as manifest in these agrarian errations as in those subsequently made as to the Catiline conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his own character and intellect. He condescends on the other hand to a virulence of personal abuse against Rulis which, though it is to our taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a man should not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in which the bill was first introduced. Our tribunes at last enter upon their office. The harangue to be made by Rulis is especially expected. He is the projector of the law and it was expected that he would carry himself with an air of special audacity. When he was only tribune-elect, he began to put on a different countenance to speak with a different voice, to walk with a different stop. We all saw how he appeared with soiled raiment with his person uncared for and foul with dirt with his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed. In Rome, men under afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in soiled garments so as to attract pity. And the meaning here is that Rulis went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor fellow-citizens who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law. No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all Rome could not but be effective. It has been supposed that Cicero was insulting the tribune because he was dirty, not so. He was ridiculing Rulis because Rulis had dared to go about in mourning, so did Atlus, on behalf of his country. But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. It is so grand as to make us feel that a consul of Rome who had the cares of Rome on his shoulders was entitled to declare his own greatness to the Senate and to the people. There are the two important orations that spoken first in the Senate and then the speech to the people from which I have already quoted the passage personal to Rulis. In both of them, he declares his own idea of a consul and of himself as consul. He has been speaking of the effect of the proposed law on the revenues of the state and then proceeds. But I pass by what I have to say on that matter and reserve it for the people. I speak now of the danger which menaces our safety and our liberty. For what will there be left to us untouched in the Republic? What will remain of your authority and freedom when Rulis, and those whom you fear much more than Rulis, with this band of ready knaves, with all the rascaldom of Rome laden with gold and silver shall have seized on Capua and all the cities round? To all this, Senators, patres conscripti, he calls them. I will oppose what power I have. As long as I am consul, I will not suffer them to carry out their designs against the Republic. But you, Rulis, and those who are with you, have been mistaken grievously in supposing that you will be regarded as friends of the people in your attempts to subvert the Republic in opposition to a consul who is known in very truth to be the people's friend.  I invite you to meet me in the assembly. Let us have the people of Rome as a judge between us. Let us look round and see what it is that the people really desire. We shall find that there is nothing so dear to them as peace and quietness and ease. You have handed over the city to me full of anxiety, depressed with fear, disturbed by these projected laws and seditious assemblies. It must be remembered that he had only on that very day begun his consulship.  But now, when in the midst of these troubles of mind and body, when in this great darkness the voice and the authority of the consul has been heard by the people, when he shall have made it plain that there is no cause for fear, that no strange army shall enrol itself, no bands collect themselves, that there shall be no new colonies, no sale of the revenue, no altered empire, no royal decembeirs, no second Rome, no other centre of rule but this, that while I am consul, there shall be perfect peace, perfect ease. Do you suppose that I shall dread the superior popularity of your new agrarian law? Shall I, do you think, be afraid to hold my own against you in an assembly of the citizens when I shall have exposed the iniquity of your designs, the fraud of this law, the plots which your tribunes of the people, popular as they think themselves, have contrived against the Roman people? Shall I fear? I who have determined to be consul after that fashion in which alone a man may do so in dignity and freedom, reaching to ask nothing for myself which any tribune could object to have given to me. This was to the Senate, but he is bolder still when he addresses the people. He begins by reminding them that it has always been the custom of the great officers of state who have enjoyed the right of having in their houses the busts and images of their ancestors in their first speech to the people to join with thanks for the favours done to themselves, some records of the noble deeds done by their forefathers. He, however, could do nothing of the kind. He had no such right. None in his family had achieved such dignity. To speak of himself might seem too proud, but to be silent would be ungrateful. Therefore, he would restrain himself but would still say something so that he might acknowledge what he had received. Then he would leave it for them to judge whether he had deserved what they had done for him. It is long ago, almost beyond the memory of us now here, since you last made a new man consul. That high office the nobles had reserved for themselves and defended it as it were with ramparts. You have secured it for me so that in future it shall be open to any who may be worthy of it. Nor have you only made me a consul much as that is. But you have done so in such fashion that but few among the old nobles have been so treated and no new man. No wuss ante me nemo. I have, if you will think of it, been the only new man who has stood for the consulship in the first year in which it was legal and who has got it. Then he goes on to remind them in words which I have quoted before, that they had elected him by their unanimous voices. All this, he says, had been very grateful to him, but he had quite understood that it had been done that he might labour on their behalf. That such labour was severe, he declares, the consulship itself must be defended. His period of consulship to any consul must be a year of grave responsibility but more so to him than to any other. To him, should he be in doubt, the great nobles would give no kind advice. To him, should he be over-tasked, they would give no assistance. But the first thing he would look for should be their good opinion. To declare now before the people that he would exercise his office for the good of the people was his natural duty. But in that place in which it was difficult to speak after such a fashion, in the Senate itself, on the very first day of his consulship, he had declared the same thing. Popularem me futurum esse consulem. The course he had to pursue was noble, but very difficult. He desired certainly to be recognized as a friend of the people, but he desired so to befriend them that he might support also at the same time the power of the aristocracy. He still believed, as we cannot believe now, that there was a residuum of good in the Senate sufficient to blossom forth into new powers of honest government. When speaking to the oligarchs in the Senate of Rulos and his land-law, it was easy enough to carry them with him. That a consul should oppose a tribune who was coming forward with a lexagraria in his hands as the latest disciple of the Gracchi was not out of the common order of things. Another consul would either have looked for popularity and increased power of plundering as Antony might have done, or have stuck to his order, as he would have called it, as might have been the case with the Cotters, Lepiduses and Pizos of preceding years, but Cicero determined to oppose the demagogue tribune by proving himself to the people to be more of a demagogue than he. He succeeded, and Rulos, with his agrarian law, was sent back into darkness. I regard the second speech against Rulos as the Naeplus Ultra, the very bow ideal of a political harangue to the people on the side of order and good government. I cannot finish this chapter in which I have attempted to describe the lesser operations of Cicero's consulship, without again alluding to the picture drawn by Virgil of a great man quelling the storms of seditious rising by the gravity of his presence and the weight of his words. The poet surely had in his memory some occasion in which had taken place this great triumph of character and intellect combined. When the Knights, during Cicero's consulship, essayed to take their privileged places in the public theatre, in accordance with the law passed by Roscoe's Otto a few years earlier, BC 68, the founder of the obnoxious law himself entered the building. The people enraged against a man who had interfered with them and their pleasures and who had brought them, as it were, under new restraints from the aristocracy, arose in a body and began to break everything that came to hand. Tom Pietate Gravem, the consul, was sent for. He called on the people to follow him out of the theatre to the temple of Bologna and there addressed to them that wonderful oration by which they were sent away, not only pacified, but in good humour with Otto himself. Iste regit dictis animus et pector amulquet. I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great consul's doings of the year. The passage is short and I will translate it. But Marcus Tullius, how shall I reconcile it to myself to be silent as to you? Or by what special glory shall I best declare your excellence? How better than by referring to the grand testimony given to you by the whole nation and to the achievements of your consulship as a specimen of your entire life? At your voice the tribes gave up their agrarian law, which was as the very bread in their mouths. At your persuasion they pardoned Otto his law and bore with good humour the difference of the seats assigned to them. At your prayer the children of the prescribed forebore from demanding their rights of citizenship. Catiline was put to flight by your skill and eloquence. It was you who silenced M. Anthony. Hail thou who were first addressed as the father of your country. The first who in the garb of peace has deserved a triumph and won the laurel wreath of eloquence. This was grand praise to be spoken of a man more than a hundred years after his death by one who had no particular sympathies with him other than those created by literary affinity. None of Cicero's letters have come to us from the year of his consulship. To wash the black or more white has been the favourite task of some modern historians. To find a paradox in character is a relief to the investigating mind which does not care to walk always in the well-tried paths or to follow the grooves made plain and uninteresting by earlier writers. Tiberius and even Nero have been praised. The memories of our early years have been shocked by instructions to regard Richard III and Henry VIII as great and scrupulous kings. The devil may have been painted blacker than he should be, and the minds of just men who will not accept the verdict of the majority have been much exercised to put them at a right. We are now told that Catiline was a popular hero, that, though he might have wished to murder Cicero, he was in accordance with the practice of his days not much to be blamed for that, and that he was simply the follower of the Gracchi and the forerunner of Caesar in his desire to oppose the oligarchy of Rome. In this there is much that is true—murder was common. He who had seen the sullen prescriptions as both Catiline and Cicero had done might well have learned to feel less scrupulous as to blood than we do in these days. Even Cicero, who was of all the Romans the most humane, even he, no doubt, would have been well contented that Catiline should have been destroyed by the people. Even he was the cause, as we shall see just now, of the execution of the leaders of the conspirators whom Catiline left behind him in the city—an execution of which the legality is at any rate very doubtful. But in judging even of bloodshed, we have to regard the circumstances of the time in the verdicts we give. Our consciousness of altered manners and of the growth of gentleness forces upon us. We cannot execrate the conspirators who murdered Caesar as we would do those who might now plot the death of a tyrant, nor can we deal as heavily with the murderers of Caesar as we would have done then with the Catilinarian conspirators in Rome had Catiline's conspiracy succeeded. And so, too, in acknowledging that Catiline was the outcome of the Gracchi, and to some extent the preparation for Caesar, we must again compare him with them, his motives and designs with theirs, before we can allow ourselves to sympathise with him, because there was much in them worthy of praise and honour. That the Gracchi were seditious, no historian has, I think, denied. They were willing to use the usages and laws of the Republic where those usages and laws assisted them, but as willing to act illegally when the usages and laws ran counter to them. In the reforms or changes which they attempted, they were undoubtedly rebels. But no reader comes across the tale of the death, the first of one and then of the other, without a regret. It has to be owned that they were murdered in two malts which they themselves had occasioned, but they were honest and patriotic. History has declared of them that their efforts were made with the real purport of relieving their fellow countrymen from what they believed to be the tyranny of oligarchs. The Republic, even in their time, had become too rotten to be saved, but the world has not the less given them the credit for a desire to do good, and the names of the two brothers, rebels as they were, have come down to us with a sweet savor about them. Caesar, on the other hand, was no doubt of the same political party. He, too, was opposed to the oligarchs, but it never occurred to him that he could save the Republic by any struggles after freedom. His mind was not given to patriotism of that sort, not to memories, not to associations. Even laws were nothing to him but as they might be useful. To his thinking, probably even in his early days, the State of Rome required a master. Its wealth, its pleasures, its soldiers, its power, were there for any one to take who could take them, for any one to hold who could hold them. Mr Beasley, the last defender of Catiline, has stated that very little was known in Rome of Caesar till the time of Catiline's conspiracy, and in that I agree with him. He possessed high family rank, and had been quite store and edile, but it was only from this year out that his name was much in men's mouths, and that he was learning to look into things. It may be that he had previously been in league with Catiline, that he was in league with him till the time came for the great attempt. The evidence, as far as it goes, seems to show that it was so. Rome had been the prey of many conspiracies, the dominion of Marius and the dominion of Sulla had been affected by conspiracies. No doubt the opinion was strong with many that both Caesar and Crassus, the rich man, were concerned with Catiline. But Caesar was very far seeing, and if such connection existed, knew how to withdraw from it when the time was not found to be opportune. But from first to last he always was opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps. The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in power. But as Robespierre was vile and low, whereas Verneur was honest and Napoleon great, so was it with Catiline between the Gracchi and Caesar. There is to my thinking no excuse for Catiline in the fact that he was a natural step, not even though he were a necessary step between the Gracchi and Caesar. I regard as futile the attempts which are made to rewrite history on the base of moral convictions and philosophical conclusion. History very often has been, and no doubt often again will be, rewritten, with good effect and in the service of truth on the founding of new facts. Records of roombrought delight which have hitherto been buried, and testimonies are compared with testimonies which have not before been seen together. But to imagine that a man may have been good, who has lain under the ban of all the historians, all the poets, and all the tellers of anecdotes, and then to declare such goodness simply in accordance with the dictates of a generous heart or a contradictory spirit, is to disturb rather than to assist history. Of Catiline we at least know that he headed a sedition in Rome in the year of Cicero's consulship, that he left the city suddenly, that he was killed in the neighbourhood of Pistoia fighting against the generals of the Republic, and that he left certain accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate. So much, I think, is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his contemporaries, Salast and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character. They have left to us denunciations of the man which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have made him a stock character, and have dramatised him as a fiend. Voltaire has described him as calling upon his fellow conspirators to murder Cicero and Cato, and to burn the city. Ben Johnson makes Catiline kill a slave and mix his blood to be drained by his friends. There cannot be a fitter drink to make this sanction in. The friends of Catiline will say that this shows no evidence against the man. None, certainly, but it is a continued expression of the feeling that has prevailed since Catiline's time. In his own age Cicero and Salas, who were opposed in all their political views, combined to speak ill of him.  In the next, Velaeus Paterculus speaks of him as the conspirator whom Cicero had banished. Juvenal makes various illusions to him, but all in the same spirit. Juvenal cared nothing for history, but used the names of well-known persons as illustrations of the idea which he was presenting. Velaeus Maximus, who wrote commendable little essays about all the virtues and all the vices, which he illustrated with the names of all the vicious and all the virtuous people he knew, is very severe on Catiline. Florus, who wrote two centuries and a half after the conspiracy, gives us of Catiline the same personal story as that told both by Salas and Cicero. Debauchery in the first place, and then the poverty which that had produced, and then the opportunity of the time, because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country. Momsson, who was certainly biased by no feeling in favour of Cicero, declares that Catiline in particular was one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villainies belonged to the criminal records, not to history. All this is no evidence. Cicero and Salas may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have followed them, and modern poets and modern historians may have followed the Roman writers. It is possible that the world may have been wrong as to a period of Roman history with which it has thought itself to be well acquainted. But the world now has nothing to go by but the facts as they have come down to it. The writers of the ages since have combined to speak of Cicero with respect and admiration. They have combined also to speak of Catiline with apporance. They have agreed also to treat those other rebels, the Gracchi, after such a fashion that, in spite of their sedition, a sweet saver, as I have said, attaches itself to their names. For myself, I am contented to take the opinion of the world, and feel assured that I shall do no injustice in speaking of Catiline as all who have written about him hitherto have spoken of him. I cannot consent to the building up of a noble patriot out of such materials as we have concerning him. Two strong points have been made for Catiline in Mr Beasley's defence. His ancestors had been consuls when the forefathers of patricians of a later date were clapping their chapped hands and throwing up their sweaty night-caps. That scorn against the people should be expressed by the aristocrat Casca was well-supposed by Shakespeare. But how did a liberal of the present day bring himself to do honour to his hero by such allusions? In truth, however, the glory of ancient blood, and the disgrace attaching to the signs of labour, our ideas seldom relinquished even by democratic minds. A howard is nowhere lovelier than in America, or a sweaty night-cap less relished. We are then reminded how Catiline died fighting, with the wounds all in front, and are told that the world has generally a generous word for the memory of a brave man dying for his cause, be that cause what it will, but for Catiline none. I think there is a mistake in the sentiment expressed here. To die resolutely when death must come is but a little thing, and is done daily by the poorest of mankind. The Romans could generally do it and so can the Chinese, as Zulu is quite equal to it, and people lower in civilisation than Chinese or Zulus. To encounter death or the danger of death for the sake of duty, when the choice is there, but duty and death are preferred to ignominious security, or better still to security which shall bring with itself a basement, that is grand. When I hear that a man rushed into the field and foremost fighting fell, if there had been no adequate occasion, I think him a fool. If it be that he has chosen to hurry on the necessary event, as was Catiline's case, I recognise him as having been endowed with certain physical attributes which are neither glorious nor disgraceful. That Catiline was constitutionally a brave man, no one has denied. Rush, the murderer, was one of the bravest men of whom I remember to have heard. What credit is due to Rush is due to Catiline. What we believe to be the story of Catiline's life is this. In Zulu's time he was engaged, as behooved a great nobleman of ancient blood, in carrying out the dictator's prescriptions, and in running through whatever means he had. There are fearful stories told of him as to murdering his own son and other relatives, as to which Mr Beasley is no doubt right in saying that such tales were too likely told in Rome to deserve implicit confidence. To serve a purpose any one would say anything of any enemy. Very marvellous qualities are attributed to him, as to having been at the same time steeped in luxury and yet able and willing to bear all bodily hardships. He probably had been engaged in murders, as how should a man not have been so who had served under Zulu during the dictatorship? He had probably allured some young aristocrats into debauchery when all young aristocrats were so allured. He had probably undergone some extremity of cold and hunger. In reading of these things the reader will know by instinct how much he may believe, and how much he should receive as mythic. That he was a fast young nobleman, brought up to know no scruples, to disregard blood, and to look upon his country as a milch cow from which a young nobleman might be fed with never-ending streams of rich cream in the shape of money to be borrowed, wealth to be snatched, and above all foreigners to be plundered, we may take, I think, as proved. In spite of his vices, or by aid of them, he rose in the service of his country. That such a one should become a prideful and a governor was natural. He went to Africa with pro-consular authority, and of course fleeced the Africans. It was as natural as that a flock of sheep should lose their wool at shearing-time. He came back, intent, as was natural also, on being a consul, and of carrying on the game of promotion and of plunder. But there came a spoke in his wheel, the not unusual spoke of an accusation from the province. While under accusation for provincial robbery, he could not come forward as a candidate, and thus he was stopped in his career. It is not possible now to unravel all the personal feuds of the time, the ins and outs of family quarrels. Claudius, the Claudius who was afterwards Cicero's notorious enemy, and the victim of Milo's fury, became the accuser of Catiline on behalf of the Africans, though Claudius was much the younger, they were men of the same class. It may be possible that Claudius was appointed to the work, as it had been intended that Caicilius should be appointed at the prosecution of Veres, in order to assure not the conviction, but the acquittal of the guilty man. The historians and biographers say that Claudius was at last bought by a bribe, and that he betrayed the Africans after that fashion. It may be that such bribery was arranged from the first. Our interest in that trial lies in the fact that Cicero no doubt intended from political motives to defend Catiline. It has been said that he did do so. As far as we know he abandoned the intention. We have no trace of his speech, and no allusion in history to an occurrence which would certainly have been mentioned. But there was no reason why he should not have done so. He defended Fontaeus, and I am quite willing to own that he knew Fontaeus to have been a robber. When I look at the practice of our own times I find that thieves and rebels are defended by honourable advocates, who do not scruple to take their briefs in opposition to their own opinions. It suited Cicero to do the same. If I were detected in a plot for blowing up a cabinet council, I did not doubt, but that I should get the late Attorney General to defend me. Footnote. Cicero, however, declares that he has made a difference between traitors to their country and other criminals. Pro P. Sulla, Chapter 3. Further on in the Samaritan, Chapter 6, he explains that he had refused to defend Atronius because he had known Atronius to be a conspirator against his country. I cannot admit the truth of the argument in which Mr. Forsythe defend the practice of the English bar in this respect, and in so doing presses hard upon Cicero. At Rome, he says, it was different. The advocate there was conceived to have a much wider discretion than we allow. Neither in Rome nor in England has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. What an English barrister may do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should not do in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has explained, in the passage I have quoted, how the Roman practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. He has stated also that he knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend Catiline on the score of Provincial Peculations. No writer has been heavy on Hortensius for defending Veres, but only because he took bribes from Veres. End of footnote. But Catiline, though he was acquitted, was balked in his candidature for the consulship of the next year, B.C. 65. P. Sulla and Atronius were elected—that Sulla to whose subsequent defence I have just referred in this note—but were ejected on the score of bribery, and two others, Tauquatus and Cotter, were elected in their place. In this way three men standing on high before their countrymen, one having been debarred from standing for the consulship, and the other two having been robbed of their prize even when it was within their grasp, not unnaturally became traitors at heart. Almost as naturally they came together and conspired. Why should they have been selected as victims, having only done that which every aristocrat did as a matter of course in following out his recognised profession in living upon the subject nations? Their conduct had probably been the same as that of others, or if more glaring, only so much so as is always the case with vices as they become more common. However the three men fell, and became the centre of a plot which is known as the first Catiline conspiracy. The reader must bear in mind that I am now telling the story of Catiline, and going back to a period of two years before Cicero's consulship, which was BC 63. How during that year Cicero successfully defended Morena when Cato endeavoured to rob him of his coming consulship, has already been told. It may be that Morena's hands were no cleaner than those of Sulla and Autronius, and that they lacked only the consular authority and forensic eloquence of the advocate who defended Morena. At this time when the two appointed consuls were rejected, Cicero had hardly as yet taken any part in public politics. He had been quite still, edile, and prideful, filling those administrative offices to the best of his ability. He had, he says, hardly heard of the first conspiracy. That what he says is true is, I think, proved by the absence of all allusion to it in his early letters, or in the speeches or fragments of speeches that are extant. But that there was such a conspiracy we cannot doubt, nor that the three men named, Catiline, Sulla, and Autronius, were leaders in it. What would interest us, if only we could have the truth, is whether Caesar and Crassus were joined in it. It is necessary again to consider the condition of the Republic. To us a conspiracy to subvert the government under which the conspire lives seems either a very terrible remedy for great evils, or an attempt to do evil which all good men should oppose. We have the happy conspiracy in which Washington became the military leader, and the French Revolution which, bloody as it was, succeeded in rescuing Frenchmen from the condition of serfdom. At home we have our own conspiracy against the Stuart royalty, which had also noble results. The Gracchi had attempted to effect something of the same kind at Rome, but the moral condition of the people had become so low that no real love of liberty remained. Conspiracy—oh yes, as long as there was anything to get, of course he who had not got it would conspire against him who had. There had been conspiracies for and against Marius, for and against Sina, for and against Sulla. There was a grasping for plunder, a thirst for power which meant luxury, a greed for blood which grew from the hatred which such rival reproduced. These were the motive causes for conspiracies, not whether Romans should be free, but whether a Sulla or a Cotta should be allowed to run riot in a province. Caesar at this time had not done much in the Roman world except fall greatly into debt. Knowing, as we know now, his immense intellectual capacity, we cannot doubt, but at the age he had now reached, thirty-five, B.C. sixty-five, he had considered deeply his prospects in life. There is no reason for supposing that he had conceived the idea of being a great soldier. That came to him by pure accident, some years afterwards. To be questor, praetor, and consul, and catch what was going, seems to have been the cause to him of having encountered extraordinary debt. That he would have been a Veris, or a Fonteus, or a Catiline, we are certainly not entitled to think. Over whatever people he might have come to reign, and in whatever way he might have procured his kingdom, he would have reigned with a far-seeing eye fixed upon future results. At this period he was looking out for a way to advance himself. There were three men, all just six years his senior, who had risen or were rising into great repute. They were Pompey, Cicero, and Catiline. There were two who were noted for having clean hands in the midst of all the dirt around, and they were undoubtedly the first Romans of the day. Catiline was determined that he too would be among the first Romans of the day, but his hands had never been clean. Which was the better way for such a one as Caesar to go? To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then seemed to Caesar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was like Monsieur Poirier in the play, a man who, having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition. If Caesar joined the plot we can well understand that Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority insufficient for declaring it. That Salast, in his short account of the first conspiracy, should not have implicated Caesar was a matter of course, as he wrote altogether in Caesar's interest. That Cicero should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy. Throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law with what smallest breach of it might be possible. But he was wise enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to pass over much, to make the best of the state of things as he found them. It is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the Republic would be horrible to him as would be to us a traitor against the Crown. There were too many of them for horror. If Caesar and Crassus could be got to keep themselves quiet he would be willing enough not to have to add them to his list of enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this conspiracy intended to restore the ejected consuls and to kill the consuls who had been established in their place. But the book in which this is written is lost and we have only the epitome or heading of the book of which we know that it was not written by Livy. Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus, and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius, declared that Caesar had attempted in his consulship to accomplish the dominion which he had intended to grasp in his Edale ship, the year in question. There is, however, no such letter extant. Asconius, who, as I have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in his lost oration in Togar Candida accused Crassus of having been the author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have, and if we elect to believe that Caesar was then joined with Catterline we must be guided by our ideas of probability rather than by evidence. As I have said before conspiracies had been very rife. To Caesar it was no doubt becoming manifest that the Republic, with its oligarchs, must fall. Subsequently it did fall, and he was, I will not say the conspirator, nor will I judge the question by saying that he was the traitor, but the man of power, who, having the legions of the Republic in his hands, used them against the Republic. I can well understand that he should have joined such a conspiracy as this first of Catterline, and then have backed out of it when he found that he could not trust those who were joined with him. The conspiracy failed. One man omitted to give a signal at one time and another at another. The Senate was to have been slaughtered. The two consuls, Cotter and Orquatus, murdered, and the two ex-consuls, Sulla and Artronius, replaced. Though all the details seemed to have been known to the consuls, Catterline was allowed to go free, nor were any steps taken for the punishment of the conspirators.