Part 52

[194] I believe that I have translated this correctly. I suppose that Plutarch means to say, that if Cæsar had been accused as a member of the conspiracy, he would have been acquitted, and the conspirators would have had a chance of escaping also. There was no chance of securing the condemnation of the conspirators and involving Cæsar in their fate. On the contrary, if Cæsar was accused, all might escape. It was better, therefore, not to touch him. Kaltwasser has made the passage unintelligible. The explanation of Coraës, as corrected by Schäfer, is right.

[195] Sallustius (_Bell. Cat._ c. 51, &c.) states Cæsar's proposal to have been the confiscation of the property of the conspirators and their perpetual confinement in the chief municipia of Italy, and that the Senate should make a declaration that any man who proposed to set them at liberty, or to mitigate their punishment, should be considered an enemy of the State. Cicero (_In Catilin._ iv. 5) states the opinion of Cæsar to the same effect. Cæsar had urged the illegality of condemning Roman citizens to death without a trial, and this was provided by a Lex Sempronia of C. Gracchus. But Cicero replies that Cææar's measure was as severe.

[196] The speech which he delivered on the occasion is the fourth oration against Catiline. Some critics maintain that it is not genuine. Drumann, who maintains that it is, has a long note on the subject (_Tullii_, p. 512).

[197] Plutarch likens the feelings of the youth at the sight of the prisoners being led to execution to the solemn ceremonies of initiation in some mysterious rites. The conspirators were taken to the only prison that Rome then had, the Tullianum, where they were strangled. Five men were put to death. Nine had been condemned to death, but four had escaped being seized. Appian (_Civil Wars_, ii. 6) seems to say that Cicero saw the men put to death. If he did not see the execution, we may safely assume that he took care to see that the men really were dead. Their bodies were delivered to their kinsfolk for interment.

[198] Antonius did not command in the battle. He was ill, or pretended to be ill. His legatus, Petreius, an able officer, commanded the troops. The battle was fought early in B.C. 62, probably near Pistoria (Pistoia) in Etruria. It was a bloody struggle, hand to hand, and the loss on the victorious side was great. Dion says that Antonius sent the head of Catilina to Rome. According to Roman usage, he was entitled to the honour of the victory, because Petreius was his inferior officer.

[199] Metellus Nepos and the other tribunes began to exercise their functions on the tenth of December. The consuls began to exercise their functions on the first of January. The oath that Cicero had to swear was, that he had obeyed the laws. He alludes to the oath that he did swear on the last day of December on giving up his office, in a letter to Q. Metellus Celer, the brother of Nepos (_Ad Diversos_, v. 2), and in his oration against Piso, c. 3. Manutius (_Comment. in_ Cic. Ep. _Ad Divers._ v. 2) shows that Bestia was a tribune during Cicero's consulship, and as he had gone out of office on the ninth of December he could not have acted with Metellus on the thirty-first of December.

As to Metellus Nepos, see the Life of Cato, c. 20.

[200] It is said that this does not occur in the extant letters of Cicero.

[201] In the beginning of his treatise De Officiis, which is addressed to his son, then at Athens (B.C. 44), Cicero speaks of the youth having then been a year under the instruction of Kratippus. Kratippus was a native of Mitylene, and he was living there when Pompeius touched at the island after the battle of Pharsalia (Life of Pompeius, c. 75). Cicero's son was attached to his master, and in an extant letter to Tiro (Cic. _Ad Diversos_, xvii. 21) he expresses his affection for him. Kratippus was more than a philosopher: he was a pleasant companion, and perhaps young Cicero liked his table-talk as much as his philosophy.

[202] He is mentioned by Cicero in his Letters to Atticus (xiv. 16, 18, and xv. 16).

[203] Cicero, in the letter to Tiro (xvi. 21) above referred to, says that Gorgias was useful to him in his declamatory exercises, but he had dismissed him in obedience to his father's positive command.

[204] It does not appear which of the Munatii this was.

[205] Crassus could not well misunderstand the Stoical doctrine, but he appears to have purposely expressed himself as if the Stoics considered "rich" and "good" as convertible terms. Cicero's repartee implies that "good" is the more comprehensive term: Crassus therefore was not "good," because he was "rich."

[206] This is a frigid joke. Axius in Greek ([Greek: axios]) signifies "worthy;" and Cicero's words literally translated are, he is "worthy of Crassus," if we take Axius as a Greek word. They can also mean, he is "Axius son of Crassus." The wit lay in associating the name of Axius and Crassus; but the joke is only made duller by the explanation.

A Roman Senator named Axius is mentioned by Cicero (_Ad Attic._ iii. 15, and elsewhere).

[207] See the Life of Crassus, c. 16.

[208] L. Gellius Publicola was consul with Cn. Cornelius Lentulus, B.C. 72.

[209] It is uncertain who this man was. The allusion to the hole in his ear signifies that his ears were bored to carry pendants or earrings after the fashion of some nations at that time. Cicero meant to imply that he was not of genuine Italian stock. Juvenal alludes to a man's foreign origin being shown by his ears being bored, in the following terms:--

"----quamvis Natus ad Euphratem, molles quod in aure fenestræ Arguerint, licet ipse neges."

_Sat._ i. 103, and the note of Heinrichs.

[210] Publius Sextius or Sestius was the name of a tribunus plebis who exerted himself to accomplish the recall of Cicero. There is extant an oration of Cicero entitled Pro P. Sestio, in defence of Publius, who was tried in the year after Cicero's return on a charge of raising a tumult (de vi) at the popular meeting in which Cicero's recall was proposed. Cicero speaks of the acquittal of Publius in a letter to his brother Quintus (ii. 4).

[211] This obscure man's name is also incorrectly written.

[212] See the Life of Cato, c. 29.

[213] Kaltwasser conjectures that the name should be Manius Aquilius, who acted as Proconsul in the Servile war in Sicily B.C. 100. In B.C. 88 he conducted the war against Mithridates in Asia. He fell into the hands of Mithridates, who put him to death.

But this cannot be the person meant by Plutarch, who evidently means a person who may be called a contemporary of Cicero. A certain M. Aquinius is mentioned in the Book on the African War (_De Bell. Afric._ 57).

[214] Adrastus, king of Argos, gave his two daughters in marriage to Tydeus and Polynices, both of whom were exiles from their native country.

[215] L. Aurelius Cotta was consul B.C. 65, and censor B.C. 64, the year in which Cicero was elected consul. In his prætorship, B.C. 70, he proposed the Lex Aurelia, which determined that the judices for public trials should be chosen from the Senators, Equites and Tribuni Ærarii. Notwithstanding this joke, Cotta was a friend of Cicero, and Cicero often speaks in high terms of praise of him.

[216] It is uncertain who this Voconius was. The verse, which is apparently from some Greek tragedian, is conjectured to allude to Laius, who begat OEdipus contrary to the advice of the oracle of Apollo.

[217] Cicero means that he had acted as a public crier (præco). Such persons were often of servile descent.

[218] See the life of Sulla, c. 34. The Roman word "Proscriptio" means putting up a public notice, as a sale and the like. The term was also applied to the public notices, now commonly called proscriptions, by which Sulla and the Triumviri declared the heads of their enemies and their property to be forfeited. (See the Life of Sulla, c. 81, and the notes.) This saying of Cicero had both truth and point.

[219] This story of the intrigue of Clodius is told in the Life of Cæsar, c. 9.

[220] There is something wanting in the Greek text; but the meaning is not obscure. See the note of Sintenis.

[221] Of course on the day on which Clodius pretended that he was not at Rome. Kaltwasser has inserted the words "on that day;" but they are not in the original.

[222] So it is in the MSS., though it should probably be Tertia. A confusion may easily have arisen between the name Terentia, which has already been mentioned in this chapter, and the name Tertia (third), though the wife of Q. Marcius Rex is said to have been the oldest of the three sisters. Quadranteria is a misprint for Quadrantaria. This lady was the wife of Q. Metellus Celer, and was suspected of poisoning him. Cicero vents unbounded abuse upon her; and he also preserved the name Quadrantaria (_Or. Pro Cælio_, c. 26). The Roman word Quadrans, a fourth, signified a fourth part of a Roman as, and was a small copper coin. The way in which one of her lovers is reported to have paid her in copper coin seems to have circulated in Rome as a good practical joke.

[223] See the Life of Cæsar, c. 10, and the notes.

[224] The number twenty-five agrees with the common text in Cicero's Letter to Atticus (i. 16): the other number in the common text of Cicero is thirty-one. See the note in the Variorum edition.

[225] Clodius was tribunus plebis in B.C. 58. The consuls of the year were L. Calpurnius Piso, the father of Calpurnia, Cæsar's wife, and Aulus Gabinius, a tool of Pompeius.

[226] Dion Cassius (38, c. 15) says that Cæsar proposed to Cicero to go to Gaul with him; and Cicero, in a letter to Atticus (i. 19), speaks of Cæsar's proposal to him to go as his legatus. It is difficult to imagine that Cæsar made such a proposal, or at least that he seriously intended to take Cicero with him. He would have been merely an incumbrance.

[227] Read "as in a public calamity." Cicero speaks of this affair in his oration for Cn. Plancius, c. 35; in the latter part of which oration he speaks at some length of the circumstances that attended his going into exile.

[228] This was C. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, the first husband of Tullia. She was his wife at least as early as B.C. 63, and she was his widow before the end of B.C. 57.

[229] Cicero, in the oration which he subsequently spoke against this Piso, gives (c. 6) a strange account of his reception by Piso.

Cato and Hortensius advised Cicero to go (Dion Cassius, 38, c. 17).

[230] Compare Cicero _De Legibus_, ii. 17, ed. Bakius; and _Ad Attic._ vii. 3. Cicero left Rome in the month of March, B.C. 58.

[231] Cicero, in a letter to Atticus (iii. 4) says that he was required to move four hundred Roman miles from the city. Compare Dion Cassius, 38, c. 17.

[232] Cicero received the news of his sentence when he was near Vibo, a town in the country of the Brutii, now Bivona, on the gulf of Sta. Eufemia. He had written to Atticus (iii. 3) to meet him at Vibo, but his next letter informed Atticus that he had set out to Brundusium. Cicero names the person, Sica, who had shown him hospitality near Vibo. Plutarch calls him [Greek: Ouibios Sikelos anêr], as if he had mistaken the name Sica.

[233] Cicero mentions this circumstance in his oration for Cn. Plancius, c. 40 (ed. Wunder, and the Notes). He was well received by the municipia which lay between Vibo and Brundusium. He did not enter the city of Brundusium, but lodged in the gardens of M. Lænus Flaccus.

[234] Cicero did not remain at Dyrrachium. His movements are described in his own letters, and in his oration for Cn. Plancius. He went to Thessalonica in Macedonia, where Plancius then was in the capacity of quæstor to L. Apuleius, Prætor of Macedonia. He reached Thessalonica on the 23rd of May (x. Kal. Jun.), and there is a letter extant addressed to Atticus (ii. 8), which is dated from Thessalonica on the 29th of May (Dat. iiii. Kal. Jun. Thessalonicæ).

[235] His unmanly lamentations are recorded in his own letters and in his own speech for Cn. Plancius, c. 42.

[236] Cicero was not a practical philosopher. Like most persons who have been much engaged in public life, he lived in the opinion of others. He did not follow the maxim of the Emperor Antoninus, who bids us "Look within; for within is the source of good, and it sends up a continuous stream to those who will always dig there" (vii. 59). Cicero did not reverence his own soul, but he placed his happiness "in the opinion of others" (i. 6). Perhaps however he was not weaker than most active politicians, whose letters would be as dolorous and lachrymose as his, if they were banished to a distant colony.

[237] This is not obscure, if it is properly considered, and it contains a serious truth. A man must view things as they are, and he must not take his notions of them from the affects of the many. "Things touch not the soul, but they are out of it, and passive; perturbations come only from the opinion that is within a man" (M. Antoninus, iv. 3).

The philosophic emperor and the unphilosophic statesman were very different persons. The emperor both preached and practised. The statesman showed his feebleness by his arrogance in prosperity and his abjectness in adversity.

[238] These proceedings are described by Cicero in his oration (_Pro Domo_, c. 24). The marble columns were removed from his house on the Palatine to the premises of the father-in-law of the consul Piso, in the presence of the people. Gabinius, the other consul, who was Cicero's neighbour at Tusculum, removed to his own land the stock that was on Cicero's estate and the ornaments of the house, and even the trees.

[239] In B.C. 57, P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos were consuls. Cicero alludes to the disturbance which preceded his recall in his oration for P. Sextius, c. 35: "Caedem in foro maximam faciunt, universique destrictis gladiis et cruentis in omnibus fori partibus fratrem meum, virum optimum, fortissimum, meique amantissimum oculis quaerebant, voce poscebant." Cicero adds that his brother being driven from the Rostra lay down in the Comitium, and protected himself "with the bodies of slaves and freedmen;" by which Cicero seems to mean that his slaves and freedmen kept watch over him till he made his escape at night. Plutarch appears to have misunderstood the passage or to have had some other authority. In this dreadful tumult "the Tiber was filled with the dead bodies of the citizens, the drains were choaked, and the blood was wiped up from the Forum with sponges." This looks somewhat like rhetorical embellishment.

[240] Cicero in a letter to Atticus (iv. 2) gives an account of the compensation which he received. The valuation of his house at Rome (superficies aedium) was fixed at HS. vicies, or two million sesterces. He seems not to have objected to this, but he complains of the valuation of his Tusculanum and Formianum.

[241] In the seventeenth month according to Clinton (_Fasti Hellen._ B.C. 57). The passage that Plutarch refers to is in the Oration to the Senate after his return (c. 15): "Cum me vestra auctoritas arcessierit, Populus Romanus revocarit, Respublica implorarit, Italia cuncta paene suis humeris reportarit."

[242] See the Life of Cato, c. 40, and Dion Cassius, 39, c. 21.

[243] Clodius was killed B.C. 52, the year in which Pompeius was chosen sole consul. Cicero's speech for Milo is extant, or at least a speech which he wrote after the trial. Milo was condemned and went an exile to Massilia. His property was sold and it went cheap. Cicero was under some suspicion of being a purchaser; but the matter is quite unintelligible (Drumann, _Annii_, p. 49, and the references). There could be no reason why Cicero should write in such obscure terms to Atticus, if his conduct in this matter was fair.

[244] Crassus perished B.C. 54. See the Life of Crassus.

[245] His province also comprehended Pisidia, Pamphylia, and Cyprus. The proconsulship of Cicero was in B.C. 51, though he had been consul in B.C. 63. Cicero went to Cilicia against his will (_Ad Diversos_, iii. 2). Pompeius had got the Senate (B.C. 52) to pass an order that no person should hold a province within five years after being consul or prætor. This was aimed at Cæsar, if he should get a second consulship. Pompeius also wished to have Cicero out of the way, and the provinces were to be supplied with governors from among those who did not come within the terms of the new rule: and Cicero was one of them (Cicero, _Ad Diversos_, iii. 2; _Ad Attic._ vi. 6).

[246] He was the third Cappadocian king of this name. This unlucky king was a debtor of Cn. Pompeius and M. Junius Brutus, the most distinguished Roman money-lender of his day (Cicero, _Ad Attic._ vi. 1-3). Both Pompeius and Brutus were pressing the king for money. Deiotarus also sent to Ariobarzanes to try to get some money out of him for Brutus. The king's answer was that he had none, and Cicero says that he believed he told the truth, for that no country was in a more impoverished state and nobody more beggared than the king. Cicero dunned the king continually with letters, but he was not particularly well pleased with his commission (_Ad Attic._ vi. 2). The end was that the king provided for the payment of about one hundred talents to Brutus during Cicero's year of government. He had promised Pompeius two hundred in six months, which, as a judicious commentator remarks, is not worth so much as a security for one hundred. These money doings of the supposed patriot Brutus should be well examined by those who still retain an opinion of the virtues of this Republican hero.

[247] There seems no reason to doubt that Cicero's administration of his province was just and mild. Plutarch has apparently derived some of the facts here mentioned from Cicero himself (_Ad Attic._ vi. 2): "Aditus autem ad me minime provinciales; nihil per cubicularium: ante lucem inambulabam domi, ut olim candidatus."

[248] Cicero's exploits were such as would not have been recorded, if he had not been his own historian. In a letter to Cato (_Ad Diversos_, xv. 4), he gives a pretty full account of his operations; and he asks Cato to use his influence to get him the honour of a Supplicatio or Public Thanksgiving. Cato's short reply, which he says is longer than his letters usually are, is a model in its way.

[249] So it is in Plutarch's text: it may be the blunder of Plutarch, or the blunder of his copyists. The true name is M. Cælius (Cic. _Ad Diversos_, ii. 11), who was curule ædile B.C. 51. The saying about the panthers is in this letter of Cicero, who had set the panther-hunters to work.

Cicero returned to Rome in B.C. 50. He mentions (_Ad Attic._ vi. 7) his intention to call at Rhodes.

[250] The events of this chapter, which belong to B.C. 49, are told at length in the Lives of Pompeius and Cæsar. Cicero's irresolution is well marked in his own letters; in one of which (_Ad Attic._ viii. 7, referred to by Kaltwasser) he says:--"Ego quem fugiam habeo, quem sequar non habeo."

There are no letters extant of Trebatius to the purport which Plutarch states, but Cæsar wrote to Cicero and begged him to stay at Rome. Cicero (_Ad Attic._ ix. 16) has given a copy of Cæsar's letter; and a copy of another letter from Cæsar (_Ad Attic._ x. 8), in which he urges Cicero to keep quiet. There seems to be no doubt that Trebatius had been employed by Cæsar to write to Cicero and speak to him about remaining neutral at least. Cicero had an interview with Cæsar at Formiæ, after Cæsar's return from Brundusium (_Ad Atticum_, ix. 18, 19; _Ad Diversos_, iv. 1). The letter last referred to is addressed to Servius Sulpicius.

[251] L. Domitius Ahenobarbus. See the Life of Cæsar, c. 34.

[252] See the Life of Pompeius, c. 37, notes.

[253] Smart sayings are not generally improved by explanation, and they ought not to require it. Cicero apparently meant to say that it was as absurd to talk of men being dispirited after a victory, as if one were to say that Cæsar's friends disliked him.

[254] After defeating Pharnaces Cæsar landed in Italy, in September, B.C. 47, of the unreformed calendar. Cicero had received a letter from Cæsar before Cæsar's arrival in Italy. The letter was written in Egypt (Cicero, _Ad Diversos_, xiv. 23; _Pro Q. Ligario_, c. 3). Compare Dion Cassius, 46, c. 12, 22, as to the conduct of Cicero to Cæsar. Before the end of the year Cicero was in Rome.

[255] It is difficult to see what was the resemblance between Perikles and Cicero. Theramenes was somewhat more like him, for he tried to be on more sides than one, and met with the usual fate of such people. He was one of the so-called Thirty Tyrants of Athens, and he was sacrificed by his colleagues.

[256] The speech of Cicero is extant. The allusion of Plutarch is particularly to the third chapter.

[257] Cicero in a letter to L. Papirius Pætus (_Ad Diversos_, ix. 18) alludes to his occupations at Tusculum. He compares himself to Dionysius, who after being driven from Syracuse is said to have opened a school at Corinth. Cicero's literary activity after B.C. 47 is the most remarkable passage in his life. He required to be doing something.

[258] The allusion is to the story of Laertes in the Odyssey, i. 190, and xxiv. 226.

[259] She was divorced some time in B.C. 46. The latest extant letter to Terentia is dated on the first of October, B.C. 47, from Venusia. Cicero was then on his road from Brundusium to Tusculanum. He orders his wife to have everything ready for him; some friends would probably be with him, and they might stay some time. The bath was to be got ready, and eatables, and everything else. A gentleman would write a more civil letter to his housekeeper.

In a letter to Cn. Plancius (_Ad Diversos_, ix. 14), who congratulates Cicero on his new marriage, he says that nothing would have induced him to take such a step at such a time, if he had not found on his return his domestic affairs even worse than public affairs. According to his own account he was hardly safe in his own house, and it was necessary to strengthen himself by new alliances against the perfidy of old ones. Terentia may have been a bad housekeeper, and her temper was not the sweetest. She could not have any feeling for her husband except contempt, and he repaid it by getting rid of her. Cicero had to repay the Dos of Terentia, but she never got it back, so far as we can learn.

It is not known what was the age of Terentia when she was divorced, but she could not be young. Yet there are stories of her marrying Sallustius, the historian, and after him Messala Corvinus, but the authority for these marriages is weak. She is said to have attained the age of one hundred and three. Terentia had a large property of her own. There is no imputation on her character, which, for those times, is much in her favour. She had courage in danger and firmness of purpose, both of which her husband wanted. "Her husband," says Drumann, "who always looked for and needed some support, must often have acted under her influence: for him it was a fortunate thing to have such a woman by his side, and a scandal that he put her away."