The Life of Cicero. Volume II.

I will quote a few words from Mr. Froude's Cæsar: "If Cæsar came to Rome as Consul, the Senate knew too well what it might expect;" and then he adds, "Cicero had for some time seen what was coming."64 As to these assertions I quite agree with Mr. Froude; but I think that he has read wrongly both the history of the time and the character of the man when he goes on to state that "Cicero preferred characteristically to be out of the way at the moment when he expected that the storm should break, and had accepted the government of Cilicia and Cyprus." All the known details of Cicero's life up to the period of his government of Cilicia, during his government, and after his return from that province, prove that he was characteristically wedded to a life in Rome. This he declared by his distaste to that employment and his impatience of return while he was absent. Nothing, I should say, could be more certain than that he went to Cilicia in obedience to new legal enactments which he could not avoid, but which, as they acted upon himself, were odious to him. Mr. Froude tells us that he held the government but for two years.65 The period of these provincial governments had of late much varied. The acknowledged legal duration was for one year. They had been stretched by the governing party to three, as in the case of Verres in Sicily; to five, as with Pompey for his Spanish government; to ten for Cæsar in Gaul. This had been done with the view of increasing the opportunities for plunder and power, but had been efficacious of good in enabling governors to carry out work for which one year would not have sufficed. It may be a question whether Cicero as Proconsul in Cilicia deserved blame for curtailing the period of his services to the Empire, or praise for abstaining from plunder and power; but the fact is that he remained in his province not two years but exactly one;66 and that he escaped from it with all the alacrity which we may presume to be expected by a prisoner when the bars of his jail have been opened for him. Whether we blame him or praise him, we can hardly refrain from feeling that his impatience was grotesque. There certainly was no desire on Cicero's part either to go to Cilicia or to remain there, and of all his feelings that which prompted him never to be far absent from Rome was the most characteristic of the man.

Among various laws which Pompey had caused to be passed in the previous year, b. c. 52, and which had been enacted with views personal to himself and his own political views, had been one "de jure magistratuum" – as to the way in which the magistrates of the Empire should be selected. Among other clauses it contained one which declared that no Prætor and no Consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of office. It would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive of the old system of the Republic this new law would have been, had the new law and the old system attempted to live together. The Proprætor would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the province or for the Consulship, and no consular governor would have been eligible for a province till after his fiftieth year. But at this time Pompey was both consul and governor, and Cæsar was governor for ten years with special exemption from another clause in the war which would otherwise have forbidden him to stand again for the Consulship during his absence.67 The law was wanted probably only for the moment; but it had the effect of forcing Cicero out of Rome. As there would naturally come from it a dearth of candidates for the provinces it was further decreed by the Senate that the ex-Prætors and ex-Consuls who had not yet served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of government. In compliance with this order, and probably as a specially intended consequence of it, Cicero was compelled to go to Cilicia. Mr. Froude has said that "he preferred characteristically to be out of the way." I have here given what I think to be the more probable cause of his undertaking the government of Cilicia.

b. c. 51, ætat. 56.

In April of this year Cicero before he started wrote the first of a series of letters which he addressed to Appius Claudius, who was his predecessor in the province. This Appius was the brother of the Publius Clodius whom we have known for the last two or three years as Cicero's pest and persecutor; but he addresses Appius as though they were dear friends: "Since it has come to pass, in opposition to all my wishes and to my expectations, that I must take in hand the government of a province, I have this one consolation in my various troubles – that no better friend to yourself than I am could follow you, and that I could take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the business pleasant to me than you will be."68 And then he goes on: "You perceive that, in accordance with the decree of the Senate, the province has to be occupied." His next letter on the subject was written to Atticus while he was still in Italy, but when he had started on his journey. "In your farewell to me," he says, "I have seen the nature of your love to me. I know well what is my own for you. It must, then, be your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of ours should be prolonged beyond one year."69 Then he goes on to tell the story of a scene that had occurred at Arcanum, a house belonging to his brother Quintus, at which he had stopped on the road for a family farewell. Pomponia was there, the wife of Quintus and the sister to Atticus. There were a few words between the husband and the wife as to the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved with much Christian perversity of temper. "Alas," says Quintus to his brother, "you see what it is that I have to suffer every day!" Knowing as we all do how great were the powers of the Roman paterfamilias, and how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should have thought that an ex-Prætor might have managed his home more comfortably; but ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make themselves disagreeable in all ages.

I doubt whether we have any testimony whatever as to Cicero's provincial government, except that which comes from himself and which is confined to the letters written by him at the time.70 Nevertheless, we have a clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters which he then wrote. The truth of his account of himself has never been questioned. He draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity, and his own power of administration which is the more astonishing, because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other governors. We have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malefactors, till we are taught to acknowledge that, in the low condition to which Roman nature had fallen, it was useless to expect any other conduct from a Roman governor; and then he gives us the account of how a man did govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest, clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. That man was himself; and he gives this account of himself, as it were, without a blush! He tells the story of himself, not as though it was remarkable! That other governors should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them, and draw the blood from their veins for drink; but that Cicero should not condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered, seems to Cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from him! A wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character; but surely the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more wonderful. "The conduct of Cicero in his command was meritorious," says De Quincey. "His short career as Proconsul in Cilicia had procured for him well-merited honor," says Dean Merivale.71 "He had managed his province well; no one ever suspected Cicero of being corrupt or unjust," says Mr. Froude, who had, however, said (some pages before) that Cicero was "thinking as usual of himself first, and his duty afterward."72 Dio Cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of Cicero's life, says not a word of his Cilician government, from which we may, at any rate, argue that no stories detrimental to Cicero as a Proconsul had come in the way of Dio Cassius. I have confirmed what I have said as to this episode in Cicero's life by the corroborating testimony of writers who have not been generally favorable in their views of his character. Nevertheless, we have no testimony but his own as to what Cicero did in Cilicia.73

It has never occurred to any reader of Cicero's letters to doubt a line in which he has spoken directly of his own conduct. His letters have often been used against himself, but in a different manner. He has been judged to give true testimony against himself, but not false testimony in his own favor. His own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant – and sometimes as implying much more that the writer intended. A word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. He has been injured, not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having them too well credited where they have been misunderstood. It is at any rate the fact that his own account of his own proconsular doings has been accepted in full, and that the present reader may be encouraged to believe what extracts I may give to him by the fact that all other readers before him have believed them.

From his villa at Cumæ on his journey he wrote to Atticus in high spirits. Hortensius had been to see him – his old rival, his old predecessor in the glory of the Forum – Hortensius, whom he was fated never to see again. His only request to Hortensius had been that he should assist in taking care that he, Cicero, should not be required to stay above one year in his province. Atticus is to help him also; and another friend, Furnius, who may probably be the Tribune for the next year, has been canvassed for the same object. In a further letter from Beneventum he alludes to a third marriage for his daughter Tullia, but seems to be aware that, as he is leaving Italy, he cannot interfere in that matter himself. He writes again from Venusia, saying that he purports to see Pompey at Tarentum before he starts, and gives special instructions to Atticus as to the payment of a debt which is due by him to Cæsar. He has borrowed money of Cæsar, and is specially anxious that the debt should be settled. In another letter from Tarentum he presses the same matter. He is anxious to be relieved from the obligation.74

From Athens he wrote again to his friend a letter which is chiefly remarkable as telling us something of the quarrel between Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who was one of the Consuls for the year, and Cæsar, who was still absent in Gaul. This Marcellus, and others of his family who succeeded him in his office, were hotly opposed to Cæsar, belonging to that party of the State to which Cicero was attached, and to which Pompey was returning.75 It seems to have been the desire of the Consul not only to injure but to insult Cæsar. He had endeavored to get a decree of the Senate for recalling Cæsar at once, but had succeeded only in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following year – when Cæsar would naturally return. But to show how little was his regard to Cæsar, he caused to be flogged in Rome a citizen from one of those towns of Cisalpine Gaul to which Cæsar had assumed to give the privilege of Roman citizenship. The man was present as a delegate from his town, Novocomum76– the present Como – in furtherance of the colony's claims, and the Consul had the man flogged to show thereby that he was not a Roman. Marcellus was punished for his insolence by banishment, inflicted by Cæsar when Cæsar was powerful. We shall learn before long how Cicero made an oration in his favor; but, in the letter written from Athens, he blames Marcellus much for flogging the man.77 "Fight in my behalf," he says, in the course of this letter; "for if my government be prolonged, I shall fail and become mean." The idea of absence from Rome is intolerable to him. From Athens also he wrote to his young friend Cælius, from whom he had requested information as to what was going on in Rome. But Cælius has to be again instructed as to the nature of the subjects which are to be regarded as interesting. "What! – do you think that I have asked you to send me stories of gladiators, law-court adjournments, and the pilferings of Christus – trash that no one would think of mentioning to me if I were in Rome?"78 But he does not finish his letter to Cælius without begging Cælius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. Cælius troubles him much afterward by renewed requests for Cilician panthers wanted for Ædilian shows. Cicero becomes very sea-sick on his journey, and then reaches Ephesus, in Asia Minor, dating his arrival there on the five hundred and sixtieth day from the battle of Bovilla, showing how much the contest as to Milo still clung to his thoughts.79 Ephesus was not in his province, but at Ephesus all the magistrates came out to do him honor, as though he had come among them as their governor. "Now has arrived," he says, "the time to justify all those declarations which I have made as to my own conduct; but I trust I can practise the lessons which I have learned from you." Atticus, in his full admiration of his friend's character, had doubtless said much to encourage and to instigate the virtue which it was Cicero's purpose to employ. We have none of the words ever written by Atticus to Cicero, but we have light enough to show us that the one friend was keenly alive to the honor of the other, and thoroughly appreciated its beauty. "Do not let me be more than a year away," he exclaims; "do not let even another month be added.80 Then there is a letter from Cælius praying for panthers.81 In passing through the province of Asia to his own province, he declares that the people everywhere receive him well. "My coming," he says, "has cost no man a shilling."82 His whole staff has now joined him except one Tullius, whom he speaks of as a friend of Atticus, but afterward tells us he had come to him from Titinius. Then he again enjoins Atticus to have that money paid to Cæsar. From Tralles, still in the province of Asia, he writes to Appius, the outgoing governor, a letter full of courtesies, and expressing an anxious desire for a meeting. He had offered before to go by any route which might suit Appius, but Appius, as appears afterward, was anxious for anything rather than to encounter the new governor within the province he was leaving.83

On 31st July he reached Laodicea, within his own boundaries, having started on his journey on 10th May, and found all people glad to see him; but the little details of his office harass him sadly. "The action of my mind, which you know so well, cannot find space enough. All work worthy of my industry is at an end. I have to preside at Laodicea while some Plotius is giving judgment at Rome. * * * And then am I not regretting at every moment the life of Rome – the Forum, the city itself, my own house? Am I not always regretting you? I will endeavor to bear it for a year; but if it be prolonged, then it will be all over with me. * * * You ask me how I am getting on. I am spending a fortune in carrying out this grand advice of yours. I like it hugely; but when the time comes for paying you your debts I shall have to renew the bill. * * * To make me do such work as this is putting a saddle upon a cow" – cutting a block with a razor, as we should say – "clearly I am not made for it; but I will bear it, so that it be only for one year."84

From Laodicea, a town in Phrygia, he went west to Synnada. His province, known as Cilicia, contained the districts named on the map of Asia Minor as Phrygia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, part of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and the island of Cyprus. He soon found that his predecessors had ruined the people. "Know that I have come into a province utterly and forever destroyed," he says to Atticus.85 "We hear only of taxes that cannot be paid, of men's chattels sold on all sides, of the groans from the cities, of lamentations, of horrors such as some wild beast might have produced rather than a human being. There is no room for question. Every man is tired of his life; and yet some relief is given now, because of me, and by my officers, and by my lieutenants. No expense is imposed on any one. We do not take even the hay which is allowed by the Julian law – not even the wood. Four beds to lie on is all we accept, and a roof over our heads. In many places not even that, for we live in our tents. Enormous crowds therefore come to us, and return, as it were, to life through the justice and moderation of your Cicero. Appius, when he knew that I was come, ran away to Tarsus, the farthest point of the province." What a picture we have here of the state of a Roman dependency under a normal Roman governor, and of the good which a man could do who was able to abstain from plunder! In his next letter his pride expresses itself so loudly that we have to remember that this man, after all, is writing only his own secret thoughts to his bosom friend. "If I can get away from this quickly, the honors which will accrue to me from my justice will be all the greater, as happened to Scævola, who was governor in Asia only for nine months."86 Then again he declares how Appius had escaped into the farthest corner of the province – to Tarsus – when he knew that Cicero was coming.

He writes again to Appius, complaining. "When I compare my conduct to yours," he says, "I own that I much prefer my own."87 He had taken every pains to meet Appius in a manner convenient to him, but had been deceived on every side. Appius had, in a way unusual among Roman governors, carried on his authority in remote parts of the province, although he had known of his successor's arrival. Cicero assures him that he is quite indifferent to this. If Appius will relieve him of one month's labor out of the twelve he will be delighted. But why has Appius taken away three of the fullest cohorts, seeing that in the entire province the number of soldiers left has been so small? But he assures Appius that, as he makes his journey, neither good nor bad shall hear evil spoken by him of his predecessor. "But as for you, you seem to have given to the dishonest reasons for thinking badly of me." Then he describes the exact course he means to take in his further journey, thus giving Appius full facility for avoiding him.

From Cybistra, in Cappadocia, he writes official letters to Caius Marcellus, who had been just chosen Consul, the brother of Marcus the existing Consul; to an older Caius Marcellus, who was their father, a colleague of his own in the College of Augurs, and to Marcus the existing Consul, with his congratulations, also to Æmilius Paulus, who had also been elected Consul for the next year. He writes, also, a despatch to the Consuls, to the Prætors, to the Tribunes, and to the Senate, giving them a statement as to affairs in the province. These are interesting, rather as showing the way in which these things were done, than by their own details. When he reaches Cilicia proper he writes them another despatch, telling them that the Parthians had come across the Euphrates. He writes as Wellington may have done from Torres Vedras. He bids them look after the safety of their Eastern dominions. Though they are too late in doing this, yet better now than never.88 "You know," he says, "with what sort of an army you have supported me here; and you know also that I have undertaken this duty not in blind folly, but because in respect for the Republic I have not liked to refuse. * * * As for our allies here in the province, because our rule here has been so severe and injurious, they are either too weak to help us, or so embittered against us that we dare not trust them."

Then there is a long letter to Appius,89 respecting the embassy which was to be sent from the province to Rome, to carry the praises of the departing governor and declare his excellence as a Proconsul! This was quite the usual thing to do! The worse the governor the more necessary the embassy; and such was the terror inspired even by a departing Roman, and such the servility of the allies – even of those who were about to escape from him – that these embassies were a matter of course. There had been a Sicilian embassy to praise Verres. Appius had complained as though Cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be allowed for its expenses. He rebukes Appius for bringing the charge against him.

The series of letters written this year by Cælius to Cicero is very interesting as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other than Ciceronian. We have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters ten or twelve from Brutus, if those attributed to him were really written by him; ten or twelve from Decimus Brutus, and an equal number from Plancus; but these were written in the stirring moments of the last struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. We have a few from Quintus, but not of special interest unless we are to consider that treatise on the duties of a candidate as a letter. But these from Cælius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from Cicero himself. There are seventeen. They are scattered over three or four years, but most of them refer to the period of Cicero's provincial government.

The marvel to me is that Cælius should have adopted a style so near akin to that of his master in literature. Scholars who have studied the words can probably tell us of deficiencies in language; but the easy, graphic tone is to my ear Ciceronian. Tiro, who was slave, secretary, freedman, and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters, and have done something toward producing their literary excellence. The subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have produced in Cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments; but Cælius does communicate much of the political news from Rome. In one letter, written in October of this year, he declares what the Senate has decreed as to the recall of Cæsar from Gaul, and gives the words of the enactments made, with the names subscribed to them of the promoters – and also the names of the Tribunes who had endeavored to oppose them.90 The purport of these decrees I have mentioned before. The object was to recall Cæsar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it would mean nothing; but Cælius specially declares that the intention of recalling Cæsar was agreeable to Pompey, whereby we may know that the pact of the Triumvirate was already at an end. In another letter he speaks of the coming of the Parthians, and of Cicero's inability to fight with them because of the inadequate number of soldiers intrusted to him. Had there been a real Roman army, then Cælius would have been afraid, he says, for his friend's life. As it is, he fears only for his reputation, lest men should speak ill of him for not fighting, when to fight was beyond his power.91 The language here is so pretty that I am tempted to think that Tiro must have had a hand in it. At Rome, we must remember, the tidings as to Crassus were as yet uncertain. We cannot, however, doubt that Cælius was in truth attached to Cicero.

But Cicero was forced to fight, not altogether unwillingly – not with the Parthians, but with tribes which were revolting from Roman authority because of the Parthian success. "It has turned out as you wished it," he says to Cælius – "a job just sufficient to give me a small coronet of laurel." Hearing that men had risen in the Taurus range of mountains, which divided his province from that of Syria, in which Bibulus was now governor, he had taken such an army as he was able to collect to the Amanus, a mountain belonging to that range, and was now writing from his camp at Pindenissum, a place beyond his own province. Joking at his own soldiering, he tells Cælius that he had astonished those around him by his prowess. "Is this he whom we used to know in the city? Is this our talkative Senator? You can understand the things they said.92 * * * When I got to the Amanus I was glad enough to find our friend Cassius had beaten back the real Parthians from Antioch." But Cicero claims to have done some gallant things: "I have harassed those men of Amanus who are always troubling us. Many I have killed; some I have taken; the rest are dispersed. I came suddenly upon their strongholds, and have got possession of them. I was called 'Imperator' at the river Issus." It is hardly necessary to explain, yet once again, that this title belonged properly to no commander till it had been accorded to him by his own soldiers on the field of battle.93 He reminds Cælius that it was on the Issus that Alexander had conquered Darius. Then he had sat down before Pindenissum with all the machinery of a siege – with the turrets, covered ways, and ramparts. He had not as yet quite taken the town. When he had done so, he would send home his official account of it all; but the Parthians may yet come, and there may be danger. "Therefore, O my Rufus" – he was Cælius Rufus – "see that I am not left here, lest, as you suspect, things should go badly with me." There is a mixture in all this of earnestness and of drollery, of boasting and of laughing at what he was doing, which is inimitable in its reality. His next letter is to his other young friend, Curio, who has just been elected Tribune. He gives much advice to Curio, who certainly always needed it.94 He carries on the joke when he tells Atticus that the "people of Pindenissum have surrendered." "Who the mischief are these Pindenissians? you will say. I have not even heard the name before. What would you have? I cannot make an Ætolia out of Cilicia. With such an army as this do you expect me to do things like a Macedonicus?95 * * * I had my camp on the Issus, where Alexander had his – a better soldier no doubt than you or I. I really have made a name for myself in Syria. Then up comes Bibulus, determined to be as good as I am; but he loses his whole cohort." The failure made by Bibulus at soldiering is quite as much to him as his own success. Then he goes back to Laodicea, leaving the army in winter-quarters, under the command of his brother Quintus.