Part 13 (1/2)

(who was accused of electoral corruption when candidate for the praetors.h.i.+p) but unsuccessfully; and also P. s.e.xtius, [35] on a charge of bribery and illegal violence, in which he was supported by Hortensius.

Soon after we find him in the country in correspondence with Lucceius, on the subject of the history of his consuls.h.i.+p; but he soon returned to Rome and before the year ended delivered his fine speech on the consular provinces, [36] in which he opposed the curtailment of Caesar's command in Gaul; and also that on behalf of Coelius, [37] a lively and elegant oration which has been quoted to prove that Cicero was indifferent to purity of morals, because he palliates as an advocate and a friend the youthful indiscretions of his client.

In 55 B.C. he pleaded the cause of Caninius Gallus, [38] in a successful speech now lost, and attacked the ex-consul Piso [39] (who had long roused his resentment) in terms of the most unmeasured and unworthy invective.

Towards the close of the year he completed his great treatise, _De Oratore_, the most finished and faultless of all his compositions; and so active was his mind at this epoch, that he offered to write a treatise on Britain, if Quintus, who had been there with Caesar, would furnish him with the materials. His own poems, _de Consulatu_ and _de Temporibus suis_ had been completed before this, and, as we learn from the letters, were highly approved by Caesar. Next year (54 B.C.) he defended Plancius [40]

and Scaurus, [41] the former of which orations is still extant; and later on, Rabirius Postumus, [42] who was accused, probably with justice, of extortion. This year had witnessed another change in Cicero's policy; he had transferred his allegiance from Pompey to Caesar. In 52 B.C. occurred the celebrated trial of Milo for the murder of Clodius, in which Cicero, who appeared for the defendant, was hampered by the presence of Pompey's armed retainers, and made but a poor speech; the magnificent and exhaustive oratorical display that we possess [43] having been written after Milo's condemnation and sent to him in his exile at Ma.r.s.eilles, where he received it with sarcastic praise. At the close of this year Cicero was appointed to the government of the province of Cilicia, where he conducted himself with an integrity and moderation little known to Roman pro-consuls, and returned in 50 B.C. scarcely richer than he had set out.

During the following years Cicero played a subordinate part. In the great convulsions that were shaking the state men of a different sort were required; men who possessed the first requisite for the statesman, the one thing that Cicero lacked, firmness. Had Cicero been as firm as he was clear-sighted, he might have headed the statesmans.h.i.+p of Rome. But while he saw the drift of affairs he had not courage to act upon his insight; he allowed himself to be made the tool, now of Pompey, now of Caesar, till both were tired of him. ”I wish,” said Pompey, when Cicero joined him in Epirus, ”that Cicero would go over to the other side; perhaps he would then be afraid of us.” The only speeches we possess of this period were delivered subsequently to the victorious entry of Caesar, and exhibit a prudent but most unworthy adulation. That for Marcellus [44] (46 B.C.) was uttered in the senate, and from its gross flattery of the dictator was long supposed to be spurious; the others on behalf of Ligarius [45] and King Deiotarus [46] are in a scarcely more elevated strain. Cicero was neither satisfied with himself nor with the world; he remained for the most time in retirement, and devoted his energies to other literary labours. But his absence had proved his value. No sooner is Caesar dead than he appears once more at the head of the state, and surpa.s.ses all his former efforts in the final contest waged with the brutal and unscrupulous Antony. On the history of this eventful period we shall not touch, but merely notice the fourteen glorious orations called _Philippicae_ [47]

(after those of Demosthenes), with which as by a bright halo he encircled the closing period of his life.

The first was delivered in the senate (2d September, 44 B.C.) and in it Cicero, who had been persuaded by Brutus, most fortunately for his glory, to return to Rome, excuses his long absence from affairs, and complains with great boldness of Antony's threatening att.i.tude. This roused the anger of his opponent, who delivered a fierce invective upon Cicero, to which the latter replied by that tremendous outburst of mingled imprecation, abuse, self-justification, and exalted patriotism, which is known as the Second Philippic. This was not published until Antony had left Rome; but it is composed as if it had been delivered immediately after the speech which provoked it. Never in all the history of eloquence has a traitor been so terribly denounced, an enemy so mercilessly scourged. It has always been considered by critics as Cicero's crowning masterpiece. The other Philippics, some of which were uttered in the senate, while others were extempore harangues before the people, were delivered in quick succession between December 44 B.C. and April 43 B.C.

They cost the orator his life. When Antony and Octavius entered Rome together, and each sacrificed his friends to the other's bloodthirsty vengeance, Cicero was surrendered by Octavius to Antony's minions. He was apprised of the danger, and for a while thought of escaping, but n.o.bler thoughts prevailed, and he determined to meet his fate, and seal by death a life devoted to his country. The end is well-known; on the 7th of December he was murdered by Popillius Laenas, a man whom he had often befriended, and his head and hands sent to Antony, who nailed them to the rostra, in mockery of the immortal eloquence of which that spot had so often been the scene, and which was now for ever hushed, leaving to posterity the bitter reflection that Freedom had perished, and with her Eloquence, her legitimate and n.o.blest child.

The works of this many-sided genius may be cla.s.sed under three chief divisions, on each of which we shall offer a few critical remarks; his Orations, his Philosophical and Rhetorical Treatises, and his Correspondence.

Cicero was above all things an Orator. To be the greatest orator of Rome, the equal of Demosthenes, was his supreme desire, and to it all other studies were made subservient. Poetry, history, law, philosophy, were regarded by him only as so many qualifications without which an orator could not be perfect. He could not conceive a great orator except as a great man, nor a good orator except as a good man. The integrity of his public conduct, the purity of his private life, wonderful if contrasted with the standard of those around him, arose in no small degree from the proud consciousness that he who was at the head of Roman eloquence must lead in all respects a higher life than other men. The cherished theory of Quintilian, that a perfect orator would be the best man that earth could produce, is really but a restatement of Cicero's firm belief. His highest faculties, his entire nature, conspired to develop the powers of eloquence that glowed within him; and though to us his philosophical treatises or his letters may be more refres.h.i.+ng or full of richer interest than his speeches, yet it is by these that his great fame has been mainly acquired, and it is these which beyond comparison best display his genius.

Of the eighty or thereabouts which he is known to have composed, fifty- nine are in whole or in part preserved. They enable us to form a complete estimate of his excellences and defects, for they belong to almost every department of eloquence. Some, as we have seen, are deliberative, others judicial, others descriptive, others personal; and while in the two latter cla.s.ses his talents are n.o.bly conspicuous, the first is as ill-adapted as the second is pre-eminently suitable to his special gifts. As pleader for an accused person, Cicero cannot, we may say _could_ not, be surpa.s.sed. It was this exercise of his talent that gave him the deepest pleasure, and sometimes, as he says with n.o.ble pride, seemed to lift him almost above the privileges of humanity; for to help the weak, to save the accused from death, is a work worthy of the G.o.ds. In invective, notwithstanding his splendid anger against Catiline, Antony, and Piso, he does not appear at his happiest; and the reason is not far to seek. It has often been laid to his reproach that he corresponded and even held friendly intercourse with men whom he holds up at another time to the execration of mankind.

Catiline, Antony, Clodius, not to mention other less notorious criminals, had all had friendly relations with him. And even at the very time of his most indignant speeches, we know from his confidential correspondence that he often meditated advances towards the men concerned, which showed at least an indulgent att.i.tude. The truth is, that his character was all sympathy, he had so many points of contact with every human being, he was so full of human feeling, that he could in a moment put himself into each man's position and draw out whatever plea or excuse his conduct admitted.

It was not his nature to feel anger long; it evaporates almost in the speaking; he soon returns to the kind and charitable construction which, except for reasons of argument, he was always the foremost to a.s.sume. No man who lived was ever more forgiving. And it is this, and not moral blindness or indifference, which explains the glaring inconsistencies of his relations to others. It will follow from this that he was pre- eminently fitted for the oratory of panegyric. And beyond doubt he has succeeded in this difficult department better than any other orator, ancient or modern. Whether he praises his country, its religion, its laws, its citizens, its senate, or its individual magistrates, he does it with enthusiasm, a splendour, a geniality, and an inconceivable richness of felicitous expression which make us love the man as much as we admire his genius. [48]

And here we do not find that apparent want of conviction that so painfully jars on the impression of reality which is the first testimony to an orator's worth. When he praises, he praises with all his heart. When he raises the strain of moral indignation we can almost always beneath the orator's enthusiasm detect the rhetorician's art. We shall have occasion to notice in a future page the distressing loss of power which at a later period this affectation of moral sentiment involved. In Cicero it does not intrude upon the surface, it is only remotely present in the background, and to the Romans themselves no doubt appeared an excellence rather than a defect. Nevertheless, if we compare Cicero with Demosthenes in this respect, we shall at once acknowledge the decisive superiority of the latter, not only in his never pretending to take a lofty tone when he is simply abusing an enemy, but in his immeasurably deeper earnestness when a question of patriotism or moral right calls out his highest powers. Cicero has always an array of common-places ready for any subject; every case which he argues can be shown to involve such issues as the belief in a divine providence, the loyalty to patriotic tradition, the maintenance of the const.i.tution, or the sanct.i.ty of family life; and on these well-worn themes he dilates with a magnificent prodigality of pathetic ornament which, while it lends splendour to his style, contrasts most unfavourably with the curt, business-like, and strictly relevant arguments of Demosthenes.

For deliberative eloquence it has been already said that Cicero was not well fitted, since on great questions of state it is not so much the orator's fire or even his arguments that move as the authority which attaches to his person. And in this lofty source of influence Cicero was deficient. It was not by his fiery invective, or his impressive pictures of the peril of the state, that the senate was persuaded to condemn the Catilinarian conspirators to death without a trial; it was the stern authoritative accents of Cato that settled their wavering resolution.

Cicero was always applauded; men like Cra.s.sus, Pompey, or Caesar, were followed.

Even in his own special department of judicial eloquence Cicero's mind was not able to cope with the great principles of law. Such fundamental questions as ”Whether law may be set aside for the purpose of saving the state?” ”How far an illegal action which has had good results is justifiable?” questions which concern the statesman and philosopher as much as the jurist, he meets with a superficial and merely popular treatment. Without any firm basis of opinion, either philosophical like Cato's, personal like Caesar's, or traditional like that of the senate, he was compelled to judge questions by the results which he could foresee at the moment, and by the floating popular standard to which, as an advocate, he had naturally turned.

But while denying to Cicero the highest legal attributes, we must not forget that the jury before whom he pleaded demanded eloquence rather than profound knowledge. The orations to which they were accustomed were laid out according to a fixed rhetorical plan, the plan proposed in the treatise to Herennius and in Cicero's own youthful work, the _De Inventione_. There is the introduction, containing the preliminary statement of the case, and the ethical proof; the body of the speech, the argument, and the peroration addressing itself to the pa.s.sions of the judge. No better instance is found of this systematic treatment than the speech for Milo, [49] declared by native critics to be faultless, and of which, for the sake of ill.u.s.tration, we give a succinct a.n.a.lysis. It must be remembered that he has a bad case. He commences with a few introductory remarks intended to recommend himself and conciliate his judges, dilating on the special causes which make his address less confident than usual, and claiming their indulgence for it. He then answers certain _a priori_ objections likely to be offered, as that no homicide deserves to live, which is refuted by the legal permission to kill in self-defence; that Milo's act had already been condemned by the senate, which is refuted by the fact that a majority of senators praised it; that Pompey had decided the question of law, which is refuted by his permitting a trial at all, which he would not have done unless a legal defence could be entertained.

The objections answered, and a special compliment having been judiciously paid to the presiding judge, he proceeds to the _Expositio_, or statement of facts. In this particular case they were by no means advantageous; consequently, Cicero shows his art by cloaking them in an involved narration which, while apparently plausible, is in reality based on a suppression of truth. Having rapidly disposed of these, he proceeds to sketch the line of defence with its several successive arguments. He declares himself about to prove that so far from being the aggressor, Milo did but defend himself against a plot laid by Clodius. As this was quite a new light to the jury, their minds must be prepared for it by persuasive grounds of probability. He first shows that Clodius had strong reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to be rid of Milo, Milo on the contrary had still stronger ones for not wis.h.i.+ng to be rid of Clodius; he next shows that Clodius's life and character had been such as to make a.s.sa.s.sination a natural act for him to commit, while Milo on the contrary had always refused to commit violence, though he had many times had the power to do so; next, that time and place and circ.u.mstances favoured Clodius, but were altogether against Milo, some plausible objections notwithstanding, which he states with consummate art, and then proceeds to demolish; next, that the indifference of the accused to the crimes laid to his charge is surely incompatible with guilt; and lastly, that even if his innocence could not be proved, as it most certainly can, still he might take credit to himself for having done the state a service by destroying one of its worst enemies. And then, in the peroration that follows, he rouses the pa.s.sions of the judges by a glowing picture of Clodius's guilt, balanced by an equally glowing one of Milo's virtues; he shows that Providence itself had intervened to bring the sinful career of Clodius to an end, and sanctified Milo by making him its instrument, and he concludes with a brilliant avowal of love and admiration for his client, for whose loss, if he is to be condemned, nothing can ever console him. But the judges will not condemn him; they will follow in the path pointed out by heaven, and restore a faithful citizen to that country which longs for his service.--Had Cicero but had the courage to deliver this speech, there can be scarcely any doubt what the result would have been. Neither senate, nor judges, nor people, ever could resist, or ever tried to resist, the impa.s.sioned eloquence of their great orator.

In the above speech the argumentative and ethical portions are highly elaborated, but the descriptive and personal are, comparatively speaking, absent. Yet in nothing is Cicero more conspicuous than in his clear and lifelike descriptions. His portraits are photographic. Whether he describes the money-loving Chaerea with his shaven eye-brows and head reeking with cunning and malice; [50] or the insolent Verres, lolling on a litter with eight bearers, like an Asiatic despot, stretched on a bed of rose-leaves; [51] or Vatinius, darting forward to speak, his eyes starting from his head, his neck swollen, and his muscles rigid; [52] or the Gaulish and Greek witnesses, of whom the former swagger erect across the forum, [53] the latter chatter and gesticulate without ever looking up; [54] we see in each case the master's powerful hand. Other descriptions are longer and more ambitious; the confusion of the Catilinarian conspirators after detection; [55] the character of Catiline; [56] the debauchery of Antony in Varro's villa; [57] the scourging and crucifixion of Gavius; [58] the grim old Censor Appius frowning on Clodia his degenerate descendent; [59] the tissue of monstrous crime which fills page after page of the _Cluentius_. [60] These are pictures for all time; they combine the poet's eye with the stern spirit of the moralist. His power of description is equalled by the readiness of his wit. Raillery, banter, sarcasm, jest, irony light and grave, the whole artillery of wit, is always at his command; and though to our taste many of his jokes are coa.r.s.e, others dull, and others unfair or in bad taste, yet the Romans were never tired of extolling them. These are varied with digressions of a graver cast: philosophical sentiments, patriotic allusions, gentle moralisings, and rare gems of ancient legend, succeed each other in the kaleidoscope of his s.h.i.+fting fancy, whose combinations may appear irregular, but are generally bound together by chains of the most delicate art.

His chief faults are exaggeration, vanity, and an inordinate love of words. The former is at once a conscious rhetorical artifice, and an unconscious effect of his vehement and excitable temperament. It probably did not deceive his hearers any more than it deceives us. His vanity is more deplorable; and the only palliation it admits is the fact that it is a defect which rarely goes with a bad heart. Had Cicero been less vain, he might have been more ambitious; as it was, his ridiculous self-conceit injured no one but himself. His wordiness is of all his faults the most seductive and the most conspicuous, and procured for him even in his lifetime the epithet of _Asiatic_. He himself was sensible that his periods were overloaded. As has been well said, he leaves nothing to the imagination. [61] Later critics strongly censured him, and both Tacitus and Quintilian think it necessary to a.s.sert his pre-eminence. His wealth of ill.u.s.tration chokes the idea, as creepers choke the forest tree; both are beautiful and bright with flowers, but both injure what they adorn.

Nevertheless, if we are to judge his oratory by its effect on those for whom it was intended, and to whom it was addressed; as the vehement, gorgeous, impa.s.sioned utterance of an Italian speaking to Italians his countrymen, whom he knew, whom he charmed, whom he mastered; we shall not be able to refuse him a place as equal to the greatest of those whose eloquence has swayed the destinies of the world.

We now turn to consider Cicero as a Philosopher, in which character he was allowed to be the greatest teacher that Rome ever had, and has descended through the Middle Ages to our own time with his authority, indeed, shaken, but his popularity scarcely diminished. We must first observe that philosophy formed no part of his inner and real life. It was only when inactivity in public affairs was forced upon him that he devoted himself to its pursuit. During the agitation of the first triumvirate, he composed the _De Republica_ and _De Legibus_, and during Caesar's dictators.h.i.+p and the consuls.h.i.+p of Antony, he matured the great works of his old age. But the moment he was able to return with honour to his post, he threw aside philosophy, and devoted himself to politics, thus clearly proving that he regarded it as a solace for leisure or a refuge from misfortune, rather than as the serious business of life. The system that would alone be suitable to such a character would be a sober scepticism, for scepticism in thought corresponds exactly to vacillation in conduct. But though his mind inclined to scepticism, he had aspirations far higher than his intellect or his conduct could attain; in his n.o.blest moments he half rises to the grand Stoic ideal of a self-sufficient and all-wise virtue.

But he cannot maintain himself at that height, and in general he takes the view of the Academy that all truth is but a question of more or less probability.

To understand the philosophy of Cicero, it is necessary to remember both his own mental training, and the condition of those for whom he wrote. He himself regarded philosophy as food for eloquence, as one of the chief ingredients of a perfect orator. And his own mind, which by nature and practice had been cast in the oratorical mould, naturally leaned to that system which best admitted of presenting truth under the form of two competing rhetorical demonstrations. His readers, too, would be most attracted by this form of truth. He did not write for the original thinkers, the Catos, the Varros, and the Scaevolas; [62]

he wrote for the great ma.s.s of intelligent men, men of the world, whom he wished to interest in the lofty problems of which philosophy treats. He therefore above all things strove to make philosophy eloquent. He read for this purpose Plato, Aristotle, and almost all the great masters who ruled the schools in his day; but being on a level with his age and not above it, he naturally turned rather to the thinkers nearest his own time, whose clearer treatment also made them most easily understood. These were chiefly Epicureans, Stoics, and Academicians; and from the different _placita_ of these schools he selected such views as harmonised with his own prepossessions, but neither chained himself down to any special doctrine, nor endeavoured to force any doctrine of his own upon others. In some of his more popular works, as those on political science and on moral duties, [63] he does not employ any strictness of method; but in his more systematic treatises he both recognises and strives to attain a regular process of investigation. We see this in the _Topica_, the _De Finibus_, and the _Tusculanae Disputationes_, in all of which he was greatly a.s.sisted by the Academic point of view which strove to reconcile philosophy with the dictates of common sense. A purely speculative ideal such as that of Aristotle or Plato had already ceased to be propounded even by the Greek systems; and Roman philosophy carried to a much more thorough development the practical tendency of the later Greek schools. In the _Hortensius_, a work unfortunately lost, which he intended to be the introduction to his great philosophical course, he removed the current objections to the study, and showed philosophy to be the only comforter in affliction and the true guide of life. The pursuit of virtue, therefore, being the proper end of wisdom, such speculations only should be pursued as are within the sphere of human knowledge. Nevertheless he is inconsistent with his own programme, for he extends his investigations far beyond the limits of ethics into the loftiest problems which can exercise the human mind. Carried away by the enthusiasm which he has caught from the great Greek sages, he a.s.serts in one place [64] that the search for divine truth is preferable even to the duties of practical life; but that is an isolated statement. His strong Roman instinct calls him back to recognise the paramount claims of daily life; and he is nowhere more himself than when he declares that every one would leave philosophy to take care of herself at the first summons of duty. [65] This subordination of the theoretical to the practical led him to confuse in a rhetorical presentation the several parts of philosophy, and it seeks and finds its justification to a great extent in the endless disputes in which in every department of thought the three chief schools were involved. Physics (as the term was understood in his day) seemed to him the most mysterious and doubtful portion of the whole. A knowledge of the body and its properties is difficult enough; how much more unattainable is a knowledge of such ent.i.ties as the Deity and the soul! Those who p.r.o.nounce absolutely on points like these involve themselves in the most inextricable contradictions. While they declare as certainties things that obviously differ in the general credence they meet with, they forget that certainty does not admit of degrees, whereas probability does. How much more reasonable therefore to regard such questions as coming within the sphere of the probable, and varying between the highest and the lowest degrees of probability. [66]

In his moral theory Cicero shows greater decision. He is unwavering in his repudiation of the Epicurean view that virtue and pleasure are one, [67]

and generally adheres to that of the other schools, who here agree in declaring that virtue consists in following nature. [68] But here occurs the difficulty as to what place is to be a.s.signed to external goods. At one time he inclines to the lofty view of the Stoic that virtue is in itself sufficient for happiness; at another, struck by its inapplicability to practical life, he thinks this less true than the Peripatetic theory, which takes account of external circ.u.mstances, and though considering them as inappreciable when weighed in the balance against virtue, nevertheless admits that within certain limits they are necessary to a complete life.

Thus it appears that both in physics and morals he doubted the reality of the great abstract conceptions of reason, and came back to the presentations of sense as at all events the most indisputably probable.

This would lead us to infer that he rested upon the senses as the ultimate criterion of truth. But if he adopts them as a criterion at all, he does so with great reservations. He allows the senses indeed the power of judging between sweet and bitter, near and distant, and the like, but he never allows them to determine what is good and what is evil. [69] And similarly he allows the intellect the power of judgment on genera and species, but he does not deny that it sometimes spins out problems which it is wholly unable to solve. [70] Since therefore neither the senses nor the intellect are capable of supplying an infallible criterion, we must reject the Stoic doctrine that there are certain sensations so forcible as to produce an irresistible conviction of their truth. For these philosophers ascribe the full possession of this conviction to the sage alone, and he is not, nor can he be, one of the generality of mankind.

Hence Cicero, who writes for these, gives his opinion that there are certain sensuous impressions in which from their permanence and force a man may safely trust, though he cannot a.s.sert them to be absolutely true.

[71] This liberal and popular doctrine he is aware will be undermined by the absolute scepticism of the New Academy; [72] but he is willing to risk this, and to put his view forward as the best possible approximation to truth.