Part 11 (2/2)
Happy it would have been for Cicero, and happy for Rome, had he persevered in the course which he now seemed really to have chosen. Cicero and Caesar united might have restored the authority of the laws, punished corruption and misgovernment, made their country the mother as well as the mistress of the world; and the Republic, modified to suit the change of times, might have survived for many generations. But under such a modification, Cicero would have no longer been the first person in the Commonwealth. The talkers would have ceased to rule, and Cicero was a talker only. He could not bear to be subordinate. He was persuaded that he, and not Caesar, was the world's real great man; and so he held on, leaning now to one faction and now to another, waiting for the chance which was to put him at last in his true place. For the moment, however, he saved himself from the degradation into which the Senate precipitated itself. The arrangements at Lucca were the work of the army. The conservative majority refused to let the army dictate to them. Domitius intended still to be consul, let the army say what it pleased. Pompey and Cra.s.sus returned to Rome for the elections; the consuls for the year, Marcellinus and Philip, declined to take their names. The consuls and the Senate appealed to the a.s.sembly, the Senate marching into the Forum in state, as if calling on the genius of the nation to defend the outraged const.i.tution. In vain. The people would not listen. The consuls were groaned down. No genius of Rome presided in those meetings, but the genius of revolution in the person of Clodius. The senators were driven back into the Curia, and Clodius followed them there.
The officers forbade his entrance. Furious young aristocrats flew upon him, seized him, and would have murdered him in their rage. Clodius shrieked for help. His rascal followers rushed in with lighted torches, swearing to burn house and Senate if a hair of Clodius's head were hurt.
They bore their idol off in triumph; and the wretched senators sat gazing at each other, or storming at Pompey, and inquiring scornfully if he and Cra.s.sus intended to appoint themselves consuls. Pompey answered that they had no desire for office, but anarchy must be brought to an end.
Still the consuls of the year stubbornly refused to take the names of the Lucca nominees. The year ran out, and no election had been held. In such a difficulty, the const.i.tution had provided for the appointment of an _Interrex_ till fresh consuls could be chosen. Pompey and Cra.s.sus were then nominated, with a foregone conclusion. Domitius still persisted in standing; and, had it been safe to try the usual methods, the patricians would have occupied the voting-places as before with their retinues, and returned him by force. But young Publius Cra.s.sus was in Rome with thousands of Caesar's soldiers, who had come up to vote from the north of Italy. With these it was not safe to venture on a conflict, and the consuls.h.i.+ps fell as the Lucca conference had ordered.
[Sidenote: B.C. 55.]
The consent of the a.s.sembly to the other arrangements remained to be obtained. Caesar was to have five additional years in Gaul; Pompey and Cra.s.sus were to have Spain and Syria, also for five years each, as soon as their year of office should be over. The defenders of the const.i.tution fought to the last. Cato foamed on the Rostra. When the two hours allowed him to speak were expired, he refused to sit down, and was removed by a guard. The meeting was adjourned to the next day. Publius Gallus, another irreconcilable, pa.s.sed the night in the senate-house, that he might be in his place at dawn. Cato and Favonius were again at their posts. The familiar cry was raised that the signs of the sky were unfavorable. The excuse had ceased to be legal. The tribunes ordered the voting to go forward. The last resource was then tried. A riot began, but to no purpose. The aristocrats and their clients were beaten back, and the several commands were ratified. As the people were dispersing, their opponents rallied back, filled the Forum, and were voting Caesar's recall, when Pompey came on them and swept them out. Gallus was carried off covered with blood; and, to prevent further question, the vote for Caesar was taken a second time.
The immediate future was thus a.s.sured. Time had been obtained for the completion of the work in Gaul. Pompey dedicated a new theatre, and delighted the mob with games and races. Five hundred lions were consumed in five days of combat. As a special novelty eighteen elephants were made to fight with soldiers; and, as a yet more extraordinary phenomenon, the sanguinary Roman spectators showed signs of compunction at their sufferings. The poor beasts were quiet and harmless. When wounded with the lances, they turned away, threw up their trunks, and trotted round the circus, crying, as if in protest against wanton cruelty. The story went that they were half human; that they had been seduced on board the African transports by a promise that they should not be ill-used, and they were supposed to be appealing to the G.o.ds.[23]Cicero alludes to the scene in a letter to one of his friends. Mentioning Pompey's exhibitions with evident contempt, he adds: ”There remained the hunts, which lasted five days. All say that they were very fine. But what pleasure can a sensible person find in seeing a clumsy performer torn by a wild beast, or a n.o.ble animal pierced with a hunting-spear? The last day was given to the elephants; not interesting to me, however delightful to the rabble. A certain pity was felt for them, as if the elephants had some affinity with man.” [24]
[1] _ To Atticus_, ii. 16.
[2] ”Conservatores Reipublicae.”--_Pro s.e.xtio_.
[3] Mommsen.
[4] ”Omnia sunt mea culpa commissa, qui ab his me amari putabam qui invidebant: eos non sequebar qui petebant.”--_Ad Familiares_, xiv. 1. ”Nullum est meum peccatum nisi quod iis credidi a quibus nefas putabam esse me decipi.... Intimus proximus familiarissimus quisque aut sibi pertimuit aut mihi invidit.”--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_, i. 4.
[5] ”Meministis tum, judices, corporibus civium Tiberim compleri, cloacas referciri, e foro spongiis effingi sanguinem.... Caedem tantam, tantos acervos corporum extruetos, nisi forte illo Cinnano atque Octaviano die, quis unquam in foro vidit?”--_Oratio prov P. s.e.xtio_, x.x.xv. 36.
[6] _Ad Quirites post Reditum_.
[7] ”Ejus vir Catilina.”
[8] ”c.u.m in Circo Flaminio non a tribuno plebis consul in concionem sed a latrone archipirata productus esset, primum processit qua auctoritate vir. Vini, somni, stupri plenus, madenti coma, gravibus oculis, fluentibus buccis, pressa voce et temulenta, quod in cives indemnatos esset animadversum, id sibi dixit gravis auctor vehementissime displicere.”--_Post Reditum in Senatu_, 6.
[9] Cicero could never leave Gabinius and Piso alone. Again and again he returned upon them railing like a fishwife. In his oration for s.e.xtius he scoffed at Gabinius's pomatum and curled hair, and taunted him with unmentionable sins; but he specially entertained himself with his description of Piso:
”For Piso!” he said: ”O G.o.ds, how unwashed, how stern he looked--a pillar of antiquity, like one of the old bearded consuls; his dress plain plebeian purple, his hair tangled, his brow a very pledge for the Commonwealth! Such solemnity in his eye, such wrinkling of his forehead, that you would have said the State was resting on his head like the sky on Atlas. Here we thought we had a refuge. Here was the man to oppose the filth of Gabinius; his very face would be enough.
People congratulated us on having one friend to save us from the tribune. Alas! I was deceived,” etc. etc.
Piso afterward called Cicero to account in the Senate, and brought out a still more choice explosion of invectives. Beast, filth, polluted monster, and such like, were the lightest of the names which Cicero hurled back at one of the oldest members of the Roman aristocracy. A single specimen may serve to ill.u.s.trate the cataract of nastiness which he poured alike on Piso and Clodius and Gabinius: ”When all the good were hiding themselves in tears,” he said to Piso, ”when the temples were groaning and the very houses in the city were mourning (over my exile), you, heartless madman that you are, took up the cause of that pernicious animal, that clotted ma.s.s of incests and civil blood, of villanies intended and impurity of crimes committed[he was alluding to Clodius, who was in the Senate probably listening to him].
Need I speak of your feasting, your laughter, and handshakings--your drunken orgies with the filthy companions of your potations? Who in those days saw you ever sober, or doing anything that a citizen need not be ashamed of? While your colleague's house was sounding with songs and cymbals, and he himself was dancing naked at a supper-party [”c.u.mque ipse nudus in convivio saltaret,”] you, you coa.r.s.e glutton, with less taste for music, were lying in a stew of Greek boys and wine in a feast of the Centaurs and Lapithae, where one cannot say whether you drank most, or vomited most, or spilt most.”--_In L.
Pisonem_,10. The manners of the times do not excuse language of this kind, for there was probably not another member of the Senate who indulged in it. If Cicero was disliked and despised, he had his own tongue to thank for it.
[10] _To Atticus_, iv. 2.
[11] _To Atticus_, iv. 3.
[12] For the details of this story see Dion Ca.s.sius, lib. x.x.xix. capp.
12-16. Compare _Cicero ad Familiares_, lib. i. Epist. 1-2.
Curious subterranean influences seem to have been at work to save the Senate from the infamy of restoring Ptolemy. Verses were discovered in the Sibylline Books directing that if an Egyptian king came to Rome as a suppliant, he was to be entertained hospitably, but was to have no active help. Perhaps Cicero was concerned in this.
[13] _Ad Quintum Fratrem_, ii. 3.
[14] ”t.i.to Annio devota et const.i.tuta hostia esse videtur.”--_De Haruspic.u.m responsis_.
[15] Ibid.
[16] ”Otium c.u.m dignitate.”
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