Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER IV.

HIS EXILE AND RETURN.

We must return to Rome. Cicero had never left it but for his short occasional holiday. Though no longer in office, the ex-consul was still one of the foremost public men, and his late dignity gave him important precedence in the Senate. He was soon to be brought into contact, and more or less into opposition, with the two great chiefs of parties in whose feuds he became at length so fatally involved. Pompey and Caesar were both gradually becoming formidable, and both had ambitious plans of their own, totally inconsistent with any remnant of republican liberty--plans which Cicero more or less suspected, and of that suspicion they were probably both aware. Both, by their successful campaigns, had not only acquired fame and honours, but a far more dangerous influence--an influence which was to overwhelm all others hereafter--in the affection of their legions.

Pompey was still absent in Spain, but soon to return from his long war against Mithridates, to enjoy the most splendid triumph ever seen at Rome, and to take the lead of the oligarchical party just so long and so far as they would help him to the power he coveted. The enemies whom Cicero had made by his strong measures in the matter of the Catilinarian conspiracy now took advantage of Pompey's name and popularity to make an attack upon him. The tribune Metellus, constant to his old party watchword, moved in the Senate that the successful general, upon whom all expectations were centred, should be recalled to Rome with his army ”to restore the violated const.i.tution”. All knew against whom the motion was aimed, and what the violation of the const.i.tution meant; it was the putting citizens to death without a trial. The measure was not pa.s.sed, though Caesar, jealous of Cicero even more than of Pompey, lent himself to the attempt.

But the blow fell on Cicero at last from a very different quarter, and from the mere private grudge of a determined and unprincipled man. Publius Clodius, a young man of n.o.ble family, once a friend and supporter of Cicero against Catiline, but who had already made himself notorious for the most abandoned profligacy, was detected, in a woman's dress, at the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea--a kind of religious freemasonry amongst the Roman ladies, the mysteries of which are very little known, and probably would in any case be best left without explanation. But for a man to have been present at them was a sacrilege hitherto unheard of, and which was held to lay the whole city under the just wrath of the offended G.o.ddess. The celebration had been held in the house of Caesar, as praetor, under the presidency of his wife Pompeia; and it was said that the object of the young profligate was an intrigue with that lady. The circ.u.mstances are not favourable to the suspicion; but Caesar divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark that ”Caesar's wife must not be even suspected”. For this crime--unpardonable even in that corrupt society, when crimes of far deeper dye pa.s.sed almost unreproved--Clodius was, after some delay, brought to public trial. The defence set up was an _alibi_, and Cicero came forward as a witness to disprove it: he had met and spoken with Clodius in Rome that very evening. The evidence was clear enough, but the jury had been tampered with by Clodius and his friends; liberal bribery, and other corrupting influences of even a more disgraceful kind, had been successfully brought to bear upon the majority of them, and he escaped conviction by a few votes. But he never forgave the part which Cicero had taken against him; and from that time forth the latter found a new, unscrupulous, indefatigable enemy, of whose services his old opponents gladly availed themselves. Cicero himself for some time underrated this new danger. He lost no opportunity of taunting the unconvicted criminal in the bitterest terms in the Senate, and of exchanging with him--very much to the detriment of his own character and dignity, in our modern eyes--the coa.r.s.est jests when they met in the street. But the temptation to a jest, of whatever kind, was always irresistible to Cicero: it was a weakness for which he more than once paid dearly, for they were remembered against him when be had forgotten them.

Meanwhile Clodius--a sort of milder Catiline, not without many popular qualities--had got himself elected tribune; degrading himself formally from his own order of n.o.bles for that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the commons. The powers of the office were formidable for all purposes of obstruction and attack; Clodius had taken pains to ingratiate himself with all cla.s.ses; and the consuls of the year were men of infamous character, for whom he had, found a successful means of bribery by the promise of getting a special law pa.s.sed to secure them the choice of the richest provincial governments--those coveted fields of plunder--of which they would otherwise have had to take their chance by lot. When all was ripe for his revenge, he brought before the people in full a.s.sembly the following bill of pains and penalties:--”Be it enacted, that whoever has put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned in due form of trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water”. Such was the legal form of words which implied banishment from Rome, outlawry, and social excommunication. Every man knew against whom the motion was levelled. It was carried--carried in spite of the indignation of all honest men in Rome, in spite of all Cicero's humiliating efforts to obtain its rejection.

It was in vain that he put on mourning, as was the custom with those who were impeached of public crimes, and went about the streets thus silently imploring the pity of his fellow-citizens. In vain the whole of his own equestrian order, and in fact, as he declares, ”all honest men” (it was his favourite term for men of his own party); adopted the same dress to show their sympathy, and twenty thousand youths of good family--all in mourning--accompanied him through the city. The Senate even met and pa.s.sed a resolution that their whole house should put on mourning too. But Gabinius, one of the consuls, at once called a public meeting, and warned the people not to make the mistake of thinking that the Senate was Rome.

In vain, also, was any personal appeal which Cicero could make to the only two men who might have had influence enough to sway the popular vote. He was ostensibly on good terms both with Pompey and Caesar; in fact, he made it his policy so to be. He foresaw that on their future course would probably depend the fate of Rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps honestly, that he could make them ”better citizens”. But he trusted neither; and both saw in him an obstacle to their own ambition. Caesar now looked on coldly, not altogether sorry at the turn which affairs had taken, and faintly suggested that perhaps some ”milder measure” might serve to meet the case. From Pompey Cicero had a right to look for some active support; indeed, such had been promised in case of need. He threw himself at his feet with prayers and tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain; and he antic.i.p.ated the execution of that disgraceful edict by a voluntary withdrawal into exile. Piso, one of the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he might ”save Rome” a second time. His property was at once confiscated; his villas at Tusculum and at Formiae were plundered and laid waste, the consuls claiming the lion's share of the spoil; and Clodius, with his armed mob, set fire to the n.o.ble house on the Palatine, razed it to the ground, and erected on the site a temple to--_Liberty_!

Cicero had friends who strongly urged him to defy the edict; to remain at Rome, and call on all good citizens to arm in his defence. Modern historians very generally have a.s.sumed that, if he could have made up his mind to such a course, it would probably have been successful. He was to rely, we suppose, upon those ”twenty thousand Roman youths ”--rather a broken reed to trust to (remembering what those young gallants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head of his legions just outside the gates of Rome. He himself seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest and most business-like manner; though, with our modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has more of the ludicrous than the sublime. The sensible and practical Atticus convinced him that such a solution of his difficulties would be the greatest possible mistake--a mistake, moreover, which could never be rectified.

But almost any course would have become him better than that which he chose. Had he remained and faced Clodius and his bravos manfully--or had he turned his back upon Rome for ever, and shaken the dust off his feet against the ungrateful city, and become a n.o.ble pensioner upon Atticus at Buthrotum--he would have died a greater man. He wandered from place to place sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyalty marks their names with honour in that false and evil generation--Sica, and Flaccus, and Plancius--bemoaning himself like a woman,--”too blinded with tears to write”, ”loathing the light of day”. Atticus thought he was going mad. It is not pleasant to dwell upon this miserable weakness of a great mind, which Cicero's most eager eulogists admit, and which his detractors have not failed to make the most of. Nor is it easy to find excuse for him, but we will give him all the benefit of Mr. Forsyth's defence:

”Seldom has misfortune so crushed a n.o.ble spirit, and never, perhaps, has the 'bitter bread of banishment' seemed more bitter to any one than to him. We must remember that the love of country was a pa.s.sion with the ancients to a degree which it is now difficult to realise, and exile from it even for a time was felt to be an intolerable evil. The nearest approach to such a feeling was perhaps that of some favourite under an European monarchy, when, frowned upon by his sovereign, he was hurled from place and power, and banished from the court. The change to Cicero was indeed tremendous. Not only was he an exile from Rome, the scene of all his hopes, his glories, his triumphs, but he was under the ban of an outlaw. If found within a certain distance from the capital, he must die, and it was death to any one to give him food or shelter. His property was destroyed, his family was penniless, and the people whom he had so faithfully served were the authors of his ruin. All this may be urged in his behalf, but still it would have been only consistent with Roman fort.i.tude to have shown that he possessed something of the spirit of the fallen archangel”.[1]

[Footnote 1: Forsyth's Life of Cicero, p. 190.]

His exile lasted nearly a year and a half. Long before that time there had come a reaction in his favour. The new consuls were well disposed towards him; Clodius's insolence had already disgusted Pompey; Caesar was absent with his legions in Gaul; his own friends, who had all along been active in his favour (though in his querulous mood he accused them of apathy) took advantage of the change, his generous rival Hortensius being amongst the most active; and all the frantic violence of Clodius and his party served only to delay for a while the return which they could not prevent.

A motion for his recall was carried at last by an immense majority.

Cicero had one remarkable ally on that occasion. On one of the days when the Senate was known to be discussing his recall, the 'Andromache' of Ennius was being played in the theatre. The popular actor Esop, whose name has come down to us in conjunction with that of Roscius, was playing the princ.i.p.al character. The great orator had been his pupil, and was evidently regarded by him as a personal friend. With all the force of his consummate art, he threw into Andromache's lament for her absent father his own feelings for Cicero. The words in the part were strikingly appropriate, and he did not hesitate to insert a phrase or two of his own when he came to speak of the man

”Who with a constant mind upheld the state, Stood on the people's side in perilous times, Ne'er reeked of his own life, nor spared himself”.

So significant and empathetic were his tone and gesture as he addressed himself pointedly to his Roman audience, that they recalled him, and, amid a storm of plaudits, made him repeat the pa.s.sage. He added to it the words--which were not set down for him--

”Best of all friends in direst strait of war!”

and the applause was redoubled. The actor drew courage from his success.

When, as the play went on, he came to speak the words--

”And you--you let him live a banished man-- See him driven forth and hunted from your gates!”

he pointed to the n.o.bles, knights, and commons, as they sat in their respective seats in the crowded rows before him, his own voice broke with grief, and the tears even more than the applause of the whole audience bore witness alike to their feelings towards the exile, and the dramatic power of the actor. ”He pleaded my cause before the Roman people”, says Cicero (for it is he that tells the story), ”with far more weight of eloquence than I could have pleaded for myself”.[1]

[Footnote 1: Defence of Sestius, c. 56, &c.]

He had been visited with a remarkable dream, while staying with one of his friends in Italy, during the earlier days of his exile, which he now recalled with some interest. He tells us this story also himself, though he puts it into the mouth of another speaker, in his dialogue on ”Divination”. If few were so fond of introducing personal anecdotes into every place where he could find room for them, fewer still could tell them so well.

”I had lain awake a great part of the night, and at last towards dawn had begun to sleep soundly and heavily. I had given orders to my attendant that, in this case, though we had to start that very morning, strict silence should be kept, and that I was on no account to be disturbed; when about seven o'clock I awoke, and told him my dream. I thought I was wandering alone in some solitary place, when Caius Marius appeared to me, with his fasces bound with laurel, and asked why I was so sad? And when I answered that I had been driven from my country, he caught my hand, bade me be of good cheer, and put me under the guidance of his own lictor to lead me to his monument; there, he said, I should find my deliverance”.

So indeed it had turned out. The temple dedicated to Honour and Virtue, in which the Senate sat when they pa.s.sed the first resolution for Cicero's recall, was known as the ”Monument of Marius”. There is no need to doubt the perfect good faith of the story which he tells, and it may be set down as one of the earliest authenticated instances of a dream coming true.

But if dreams are fas.h.i.+oned out of our waking imaginations, it is easy to believe that the fortunes of his great townsman Marius, and the scenes in the Senate at Rome, were continually present to the exile's thoughts.

His return was a triumphal progress. He landed at Brundusium on his daughter's birthday. She had only just lost her husband Piso, who had gallantly maintained her father's cause throughout, but she was the first to welcome him with tears of joy which overmastered her sorrow. He was careful to lose no chance of making his return impressive. He took his way to Rome with the slow march of a conqueror. The journey which Horace made easily in twelve days, occupied Cicero twenty-four. But he chose not the shortest but the most public route, through Naples, Capua, Minturnae, Terracina, and Aricia.