The Life of Cicero. Volume II.

Up to this moment Milo was no more guilty than Clodius, and neither of them, probably, guilty of more than their usual violence. Partisans on the two sides endeavored to show that each had prepared an ambush for the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. There is no evidence existing now as to this dragging out of Clodius that he might be murdered; but we know what was the general opinion of Rome at the time and we may conclude that it was right. The order probably was given by Milo – as it would have been given by Clodius in similar circumstances – at the spur of the moment, when Milo allowed his passion to get the better of his judgment.

The thirty servants of Clodius were either killed or had run away and hidden themselves, when a certain Senator, S. Tedius, coming that way, found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a litter deposited it in the dead man's house. Before nightfall the death of Clodius was known through the city, and the body was surrounded by a crowd of citizens of the lower order and of slaves. With them was Fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the people to sympathy. On the morrow there was an increased crowd, among whom were Senators and Tribunes, and the body was carried out into the Forum, and the people were harangued by the Tribunes as to the horror of the deed that had been done. From thence the body was borne into the neighboring Senate-house56 by the crowd, under the leading of Sextus Clodius, a cousin of the dead man. Here it was burnt with a great fire fed with the desks and benches, and even with the books and archives which were stored there. Not only was the Senate-house destroyed by the flames, but a temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was attacked, and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The Consuls' fasces had been put away in one of the temples – that of Venus Libitina: these the people seized and carried to the house of Pompey, declaring that he should be Dictator, and he alone Consul, mingling anarchy with a marvellous reverence for legal forms.

But there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of the Senate-house, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy for Clodius, so that Milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off, came back to Rome and renewed his canvass, distributing bribes to all the citizens – "millia assuum" – perhaps something over ten pounds to every man. Both he and Cælius harangued the people, and declared that Clodius had begun the fray. But no Consuls could be elected while the city was in such a state, and Pompey, having been desired to protect the Republic in the usual form, collected troops from all Italy. Preparations were made for trying Milo, and the friends of each party demanded that the slaves of the other party should be put to the torture and examined as witnesses; but every possible impediment and legal quibble was used by the advocates on either side. Hortensius, who was engaged for Milo, declared that Milo's slaves had all been made free men and could not be touched. Stories were told backward and forward of the cruelty and violence on each side. Milo made an offer to Pompey to abandon his canvass in favor of Hypsæus, if Pompey would accept this as a compromise. Pompey answered, with the assumed dignity that was common to him, that he was not the Roman people, and that it was not for him to interfere.

It was then that Pompey was created sole Consul at the instigation of Bibulus. He immediately caused a new law to be passed for the management of the trial which was coming on, and when he was opposed in this by Cælius, declared that if necessary he would carry his purpose by force of arms. Pretending to be afraid of Milo's violence, he remained at home, and on one occasion dismissed the Senate. Afterward, when Milo entered the Senate, he was accused by a Senator present of having come thither with arms hidden beneath his toga; whereupon he lifted his toga and showed that there were none. Asconius tells us that upon this Cicero declared that all the other charges made against the accused were equally false. This is the first word of Cicero's known to us in the matter.

Two or three men declared that because they had been present at the death of Clodius they had been kidnapped and kept close prisoners by Milo; and the story, whether true or false, did Milo much harm. It seems that Milo became again very odious to the people, and that their hatred was for the time extended to Cicero as Milo's friend and proposed advocate. Pompey seems to have shared the feeling, and to have declared that violence was contemplated against himself. "But such was Cicero's constancy," says Asconius, "that neither the alienation of the people nor the suspicions of Pompey, no fear of what might befall himself at the trial, no dread of the arms which were used openly against Milo, could hinder him from going on with the defence, although it was within his power to avoid the quarrel with the people and to renew his friendship for Pompey by abstaining from it." Domitius Ænobarbus was chosen as President, and the others elected as judges were, we are told, equally good men. Milo was accused both of violence and bribery, but was able to arrange that the former case should be tried first. The method of the trial is explained. Fifty-one judges or jurymen were at last chosen. Schola was the first witness examined, and he exaggerated as best he could the horror of the murder. When Marcellus, as advocate for Milo, began to examine Schola, the people were so violent that the President was forced to protect Marcellus by taking him within the barrier of the judges' seats. Milo also was obliged to demand protection within the court. Pompey, then sitting at the Treasury, and frightened by the clamor, declared that he himself would come down with troops on the next day. After the hearing of the evidence the Tribune Munatius Plancus harangued the people, and begged them to come in great numbers on the morrow so that Milo might not be allowed to escape. On the following day, which was the 11th of April, all the taverns were shut. Pompey filled the Forum and every approach to it with his soldiers. He himself remained seated at the Treasury as before, surrounded by a picked body of men. At the trial on this day, when three of the advocates against Milo had spoken – Appius, Marc Antony, and Valerius Nepos – Cicero stood up to defend the criminal. Brutus had prepared an oration declaring that the killing of Clodius was in itself a good deed, and praiseworthy on behalf of the Republic; but to this speech Cicero refused his consent, arguing that a man could not legally be killed simply because his death was to be desired, and Brutus's speech was not spoken. Witnesses had declared that Milo had lain in wait for Clodius. This Cicero alleged to be false, contending that Clodius had lain in wait for Milo, and he endeavored to make this point and no other. "But it is proved," says Asconius, "that neither of the men had any design of violence on that day; that they met by chance, and that the killing of Clodius had come from the quarrelling of the slaves. It was well known that each had often threatened the death of the other. Milo's slaves had no doubt been much more numerous than those of Clodius when the meeting took place; but those of Clodius had been very much better prepared for fighting. When Cicero began to address the judges, the partisans of Clodius could not be induced to abstain from riot even by fear of the soldiery; so that he was unable to speak with his accustomed firmness."

Such is the account as given by Asconius, who goes on to tell us that out of the fifty-one judges thirty-eight condemned Milo and only thirteen were for acquitting him. Milo, therefore, was condemned, and had to retire at once into exile at Marseilles.

It seems to have been acknowledged by the judges that Clodius had not been wounded at first by any connivance on the part of Milo; but they thought that Milo did direct that Clodius should be killed during the fight which the slaves had commenced among themselves. As far as we can take any interest in the matter we must suppose that it was so; but we are forced to agree with Brutus that the killing of Clodius was in itself a good deed done – and we have to acknowledge at the same time that the killing of Milo would have been as good. Though we may doubt as to the manner in which Clodius was killed, there are points in the matter as to which we may be quite assured. Milo was condemned, not for killing Clodius, but because he was opposed at the moment to the line of politics which Pompey thought would be most conducive to his own interests. Milo was condemned, and the death of the wretched Clodius avenged, because Pompey had desired Hypsæus to be Consul and Milo had dared to stand in his way. An audience was refused to Cicero, not from any sympathy with Clodius, but because it suited Pompey that Milo should be condemned. Could Cicero have spoken the words which afterward were published, the jury might have hesitated and the criminal might have been acquitted. Cæsar was absent, and Pompey found himself again lifted into supreme power – for a moment. Though no one in Rome had insulted Pompey as Clodius had done, though no one had so fought for Pompey as Cicero had done, still it suited Pompey to avenge Clodius and to punish Cicero for having taken Milo's part in regard to the consulship. Milo, after his condemnation for the death of Clodius, was condemned in three subsequent trials, one following the other almost instantly, for bribery, for secret conspiracy, and again for violence in the city. He was absent, but there was no difficulty in obtaining his conviction. When he was gone one Saufeius, a friend of his, who had been with him during the tumult, was put upon his trial for his share in the death of Clodius. He at any rate was known to have been guilty in the matter. He had been leader of the party who attacked the tavern, had killed the tavern-keeper, and had dragged out Clodius to execution. But Saufeius was twice acquitted. Had there been any hope of law-abiding tranquillity in Rome, it might have been well that Clodius should be killed and Milo banished. As it was, neither the death of the one nor the banishment of the other could avail anything. The pity of it was – the pity – that such a one as Cicero, a man with such intellect, such ambition, such sympathies, and such patriotism, should have been brought to fight on such an arena.

b. c. 52, ætat. 55.

We have in this story a graphic and most astounding picture of the Rome of the day. No Consuls had been or could be elected, and the system by which "interreges" had been enabled to superintend the election of their successors in lieu of the Consuls of the expiring year had broken down. Pompey had been made sole Consul in an informal manner, and had taken upon himself all the authority of a Dictator in levying troops. Power in Rome seems at the moment to have been shared between him and bands of gladiators, but he too had succeeded in arming himself, and as the Clodian faction was on his side, he was for a while supreme. For law by this time he could have but little reverence, having been partner with Cæsar in the so-called Triumvirate for the last eight years. But yet he had no aptitude for throwing the law altogether on one side, and making such a coup-de-main as was now and again within his power. Beyond Pompey there was at this time no power in Rome, except that of the gladiators, and the owners of the gladiators, who were each intent on making plunder out of the Empire. There were certain men, such as were Bibulus and Cato, who considered themselves to be "optimates" – leading citizens who believed in the Republic, and were no doubt anxious to maintain the established order of things – as we may imagine the dukes and earls are anxious in these days of ours. But they were impotent and bad men of business, and as a body were too closely wedded to their "fish ponds" – by which Cicero means their general luxuries and extravagances. In the bosoms of these men there was no doubt an eager desire to perpetuate a Republic which had done so much for them, and a courage sufficient for the doing of some great deed, if the great deed would come in their way. They went to Pharsalia, and Cato marched across the deserts of Libya. They slew Cæsar, and did some gallant fighting afterward; but they were like a rope of sand, and had among them no fitting leader and no high purpose.

Outside of these was Cicero, who certainly was not a fitting leader when fighting was necessary, and who as to politics in general was fitted rather by noble aspirations than supported by fixed purposes. We are driven to wonder that there should have been, at such a period and among such a people, aspirations so noble joined with so much vanity of expression. Among Romans he stands the highest, because of all Romans he was the least Roman. He had begun with high resolves, and had acted up to them. Among all the Quæstors, Ædiles, Prætors, and Consuls Rome had known, none had been better, none honester, none more patriotic. There had come up suddenly in those days a man imbued with the unwonted idea that it behooved him to do his duty to the State according to the best of his lights – no Cincinnatus, no Decius, no Camillus, no Scipio, no pretentious follower of those half-mythic heroes, no demigod struggling to walk across the stage of life enveloped in his toga and resolved to impose on all eyes by the assumption of a divine dignity, but one who at every turn was conscious of his human duty, and anxious to do it to the best of his human ability. He did it; and we have to acknowledge that the conceit of doing it overpowered him. He mistook the feeling of people around him, thinking that they too would be carried away by their admiration of his conduct. Up to the day on which he descended from his Consul's seat duty was paramount with him. Then gradually there came upon him the conviction that duty, though it had been paramount with him, did not weigh so very much with others. He had been lavish in his worship of Pompey, thinking that Pompey, whom he had believed in his youth to be the best of citizens, would of all men be the truest to the Republic. Pompey had deceived him, but he could not suddenly give up his idol. Gradually we see that there fell upon him a dread that the great Roman Republic was not the perfect institution which he had fancied. In his early days Chrysogonus had been base, and Verres, and Oppianicus, and Catiline; but still, to his idea, the body of the Roman Republic had been sound. But when he had gone out from his Consulship, with resolves strung too high that he would remain at Rome, despising provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the Republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there were no Romans such as he had conceived them to be. Then he fell away and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequalled intellect in attacking Piso, in praising himself, and in defending Milo. The glory of his active life was over when his Consulship was done – the glory was over, with the exception of that to come from his final struggle with Antony – but the work by which his immortality was to be achieved was yet before him. I think that after defending Milo he must have acknowledged to himself that all partisan fighting in Rome was mean, ignoble, and hollow. With the Senate-house and its archives burnt as a funeral pile for Clodius, and the Forum in which he had to plead lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by Cicero that the old Republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection. He had said so often to Atticus; but men say words in the despondency of the moment which they do not wish to have accepted as their established conviction. In such humor Cicero had written to his friend; but now it must have occurred to him that his petulant expressions were becoming only too true. When instigating Curio to canvass for Milo, and defending Milo as though it had been a good thing for a Roman nobleman to travel in the neighborhood of the city with an army at his heels, he must have ceased to believe even in himself as a Roman statesman.

In the oration which we possess – which we must teach ourselves to regard as altogether different from that which Cicero had been able to pronounce among Pompey's soldiers and the Clodian rabble – the reader is astonished by the magnificence of the language in which a case so bad in itself could be enveloped, and is made to feel that had he been on the jury, and had such an address been made to him, he would certainly have voted for an acquittal. The guilt or innocence of Milo as to the murder really turned on the point whether he did or did not direct that Clodius should be dragged out of the tavern and slain; but here in this oration three points are put forward, in each of which it was within the scope of the orator to make the jury believe that Clodius had in truth prepared an ambuscade, that Clodius was of all Romans the worst, and that Milo was loyal and true, and, in spite of a certain fierceness of disposition, a good citizen at heart. We agree with Milo, who declared, when banished, that he would never have been able to enjoy the fish of Marseilles had Cicero spoken in the Forum the speech which he afterward composed.

"I would not remind you," he says, "of Milo's Tribuneship, nor of all his service to the State, unless I could make plain to you as daylight the ambush which on that day was laid for him by his enemy. I will not pray you to forgive a crime simply because Milo has been a good citizen; nor, because the death of Clodius has been a blessing to us all, will I therefore ask you to regard it as a deed worthy of praise. But if the fact of the ambush be absolutely made evident, then I beseech you at any rate to grant that a man may lawfully defend himself from the arrogance and from the arms of his enemies."57 From this may be seen the nature of the arguments used. For the language the reader must turn to the original. That it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence of all critics – especially that of Milo when he was eating sardines in his exile, and of Quintilian when he was preparing his lessons on rhetoric. It seems that Cicero had been twitted with using something of a dominating tyranny in the Senate – which would hardly have been true, as the prevailing influence of the moment was that of Pompey – but he throws aside the insinuation very grandly. "Call it tyranny if you please – if you think it that, rather than some little authority which has grown from my services to the State, or some favor among good men because of my rank. Call it what you will, while I am able to use it for the defence of the good against the violence of the evil-minded."58 Then he describes the fashion in which these two men travelled on the occasion – the fashion of travelling as it suited him to describe it. "If you did not hear the details of the story, but could see simply a picture of all that occurred, would it not appear which of them had planned the attack, which of them was ignorant of all evil? One of them was seated in his carriage, clad in his cloak, and with his wife beside him. His garments, his clients, his companions all show how little prepared he was for fighting. Then, as to the other, why was he leaving his country-house so suddenly? Why should he do this so late in the evening? Why did he travel so slowly at this time of the year? He was going, he says, to Pompey's villa. Not that he might see Pompey, because he knew that Pompey was at Alsium. Did he want to see the villa? He had been there a thousand times. Why all this delay, and turning backward and forward? Because he would not leave the spot till Milo had come up. And now compare this ruffian's mode of travelling with that of Milo. It has been the constant custom with Clodius to have his wife with him, but now she was not there. He has always been in a carriage, but now he was on horseback. His young Greek sybarites have ever been with him, even when he went as far as Tuscany; on this occasion there were no such trifles in his company. Milo, with whom such companions were not usual, had his wife's singing-boys with him and a bevy of female slaves. Clodius, who usually never moved without a crowd of prostitutes at his heels, now had no one with him but men picked for this work in hand."59 What a picture we have here of the manner in which noble Romans were wont to move about the city and the suburbs! We may imagine that the singing-boys of Milo's wife were quite as bad as the Greek attendants in whom Clodius usually rejoiced. Then he asks a question as to Pompey full of beautiful irony. If Pompey could bring back Clodius from the dead – Pompey, who is so fond of him; Pompey, who is so powerful, so fortunate, so capable of all things; Pompey, who would be so glad to do it because of his love for the man – do you not know that on behalf of the Republic he would leave him down among the ghosts where he is?60 There is a delightful touch of satire in this when we remember how odious Clodius had been to Pompey in days not long gone by, and how insolent.

The oration is ended by histrionic effects in language which would have been marvellous had they ever been spoken, but which seem to be incredible to us when we know that they were arranged for publication when the affair was over. "O me wretched! O me unhappy!"61 But these attempts at translation are all vain. The student who wishes to understand what may be the effect of Latin words thrown into this choicest form should read the Milo.

We have very few letters from Cicero in this year – four only, I think, and they are of no special moment. In one of them he recommends Avianus to Titus Titius, a lieutenant then serving under Pompey.62 In this he is very anxious to induce Titius to let Avianus know all the good things that Cicero had said of him. In our times we sometimes send our letters of introduction open by the hands of the person introduced, so that he may himself read his own praise; but the Romans did not scruple to ask that this favor might be done for them. "Do me this favor, Titius, of being kind to Avianus; but do me also the greater favor of letting Avianus know that I have asked you." What Cicero did to Titius other noble Romans did in their communications with their friends in the provinces. In another letter to Marius he expresses his great joy at the condemnation of that Munatius Plancus who had been Tribune when Clodius was killed. Plancus had harangued the people, exciting them against Milo and against Cicero, and had led to the burning of the Senate-house and of the temple next door. For this Plancus could not be accused during his year of office, but he had been put upon his trial when that year was over. Pompey had done his best to save him, but in vain; and Cicero rejoices not only that the Tribune who had opposed him should be punished, but that Pompey should have been beaten, which he attributes altogether to the favor shown toward himself by the jury.63 He is aroused to true exultation that there should have been men on the bench who, having been chosen by Pompey in order that they might acquit this man, had dared to condemn him. Cicero had himself spoken against Plancus on the occasion. Sextus Clodius, who had been foremost among the rioters, was also condemned.

b. c. 52, ætat. 55.

This was the year in which Cæsar was so nearly conquered by the Gauls at Gergovia, and in which Vercingetorix, having shut himself up in Alesia, was overcome at last by the cruel strategy of the Romans. The brave Gaul, who had done his best to defend his country and had carried himself to the last with a fine gallantry, was kept by his conqueror six years in chains and then strangled amid the glories of that conqueror's triumph, a signal instance of the mercy which has been attributed to Cæsar as his special virtue. In this year, too, Cicero's dialogues with Atticus, De Legibus, were written. He seems to have disturbed his labors in the Forum with no other work.

Chapter IV

CILICIA

b. c. 51, ætat. 56.

We cannot but think that at this time the return of Cæsar was greatly feared at Rome by the party in the State to which Cicero belonged; and this party must now be understood as including Pompey. Pompey had been nominally Proconsul in Spain since the year of his second Consulship, conjointly with Crassus, b. c. 55, but had remained in Rome and had taken upon himself the management of Roman affairs, considering himself to be the master of the irregular powers which the Triumvirate had created; and of this party was also Cicero, with Cato, Bibulus, Brutus, and all those who were proud to call themselves "optimates." They were now presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to the character of the men. Cato and Brutus were thoroughly in earnest, not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the old spirit. Pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking that all must be well in Rome as long as he was possessed of high office, grand names, and the appanages of Dictatorship. Cicero, too, was anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. Something might perhaps be saved if these optimates could be aroused to some idea of their duty by the exercise of eloquence such as his own.