The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1

The Consulship, b.c. 63.

For the momentous year of the consulship we have no letters. His brother Quintus was in Rome as candidate and then prætor-designate; Atticus was also in Rome; and the business, as well as the dignity of a consul, were against anything like ordinary correspondence. Of the earlier part of the consulship we have little record. The speeches against Rullus were delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty definitely to a policy as to the ager publicus—which was, to his disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in b.c. 59—but they do not shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his consulship took a very definite line against the populares. Not only did he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by Cæsar of the assassination of Saturninus, and address the people against offering violence to L. Roscius on account of the unpopular lex theatralis,6 but he even resisted the restoration to their civil rights of the sons of the men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly on the ground of the necessity of maintaining the established order, though he knew and confessed the justice of the proposal.7

The Conspiracy of Catiline.

Any movement, therefore, on the side of the popular party had now his opposition with which to reckon. He professes to have known very early in his year of office that some more than usually dangerous movement was in contemplation. We cannot well decide from the violent denunciation of Catiline contained—to judge from extant fragments—in the speech in toga candida, how far Cicero was really acquainted with any definite designs of his. Roman orators indulged in a violence of language so alien from modern ideas and habits, that it is difficult to draw definite conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that Catiline had in a secret meeting before the elections of b.c. 64, professed an intention of going all lengths in a revolutionary programme and, if that was the case, Cicero would be sure to have had some secret information on the subject. But his hands were partly tied by the fact that the comitia had given him a colleague—C. Antonius—deeply implicated in Catiline's policy, whatever it was. Pompey, whom he regarded as the champion of law and order, was in the East: and Catiline's candidature—and it was supposed his policy also—had had the almost open support of the richest man in Rome, M. Licinius Crassus, and of the most influential man of the populares, C. Iulius Cæsar. In the house of one or the other of them, indeed, the meeting at which Catiline first unfolded his purposes was believed to have been held. Still Catiline had not been guilty of any overt act which enabled Cicero to attack him. He had, indeed, been informed, on very questionable authority, that Catiline had made a plot to assassinate him while holding the elections, and he made a considerable parade of taking precautions for his safety—letting it be seen that he wore a cuirass under his toga, and causing his house to be guarded by the younger members of his party. The elections, according to Plutarch, had at least been once postponed from the ordinary time in July, though this has been denied.8 At any rate it was not till they had taken place and Catiline had been once more rejected, that any definite step is alleged to have been taken by him, such as Cicero could lay hold of to attack him. On the 20th of October, in the senate, Cicero made a speech warning the Fathers of the impending danger, and on the 21st called upon Catiline for an explanation in their presence. But, after all, even the famous meeting of the 5th of November, in the house of M. Porcius Læca, betrayed to Cicero by Fulvia, the mistress of Q. Curius, would not have sufficed as grounds for the denunciation of the first extant speech against Catiline (7th of November), if it had not been for something else. For some months past there had been rumours of risings in various parts of Italy; but by the beginning of November it was known that C. Manlius (or Mallius) had collected a band of desperadoes near Fæsulæ, and, having established there a camp on the 27th of October, meant to advance on Rome. Manlius had been a centurion in Sulla's army, and had received an allotment of confiscated land in Etruria; but, like others, had failed to prosper. The movement was one born of discontent with embarrassments which were mostly brought about by extravagance or incompetence. But the rapidity with which Manlius was able to gather a formidable force round him seems to shew that there were genuine grievances also affecting the agricultural classes in Etruria generally. At any rate there was now no doubt that a formidable disturbance was brewing; the senate voted that there was a tumultus, authorized the raising of troops, and named commanders in the several districts affected. It was complicity in this rising that Cicero now sought to establish against Catiline and his partisans in Rome. The report of the meeting in the house of Læca gave him the pretext for his first step—a fiery denunciation of Catiline in the senate on the 7th of November. Catiline left Rome, joined the camp of Manlius, and assumed the ensigns of imperium. That he was allowed thus to leave the city is a proof that Cicero had as yet no information enabling him to act at once. It was the right of every citizen to avoid standing a trial by going into exile. Catiline was now under notice of prosecution for vis, and when leaving Rome he professed to be going to Marseilles, which had the ius exilii. But when it was known that he had stopped short at Fæsulæ, the senate at once declared both him and Manlius hostes, and authorized the consuls to proceed against them. The expedition was intrusted to Antonius, in spite of his known sympathy with Catiline, while Cicero was retained with special powers to protect the city. The result is too well known to be more than glanced at here. Catiline's partisans were detected by letters confided to certain envoys of the Allobroges, which were held to convict them of the guilt of treason, as instigating Catiline to march on Rome, and the senate of the Allobroges to assist the invasion by sending cavalry to Fæsulæ.

Execution of the conspirators, December, b.c. 63. Its legal grounds and consequences.

The decree of the senate, videant consules, etc., had come to be considered as reviving the full imperium of the consul, and investing him with the power of life and death over all citizens. Cicero acted on this (questionable) constitutional doctrine. He endeavoured, indeed, to shelter himself under the authority of a senatorial vote. But the senate never had the power to try or condemn a citizen. It could only record its advice to the consul. The whole legal responsibility for the condemnation and death of the conspirators, arrested in consequence of these letters, rested on the consul. To our moral judgment as to Cicero's conduct it is of primary importance to determine whether or not these men were guilty: to his legal and constitutional position it matters not at all. Nor was that point ever raised against him. The whole question turns on whether the doctrine was true that the senatus consultum ultimum gave the consul the right of inflicting death upon citizens without trial, i.e., without appeal to the people, on the analogy of the dictator seditionis sedandæ causa, thus practically defeating that most ancient and cherished safeguard of Roman liberty, the ius provocationis. The precedents were few, and scarcely such as would appeal to popular approval. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus had been ex post facto approved by the senate in b.c. 133-2. In the case of Gaius Gracchus, in b.c. 121, the senate had voted uti consul Opimius rempublicam defenderet, and in virtue of that the consul had authorized the killing of Gaius and his friends: thus for the first time exercising imperium sine provocatione. Opimius had been impeached after his year of office, but acquitted, which the senate might claim as a confirmation of the right, in spite of the lex of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed the right of provocatio in all cases. In b.c. 100 the tribune Saturninus and the prætor Glaucia were arrested in consequence of a similar decree, which this time joined the other magistrates to the consuls as authorized to protect the Republic: their death, however, was an act of violence on the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned by Cæsar's condemnation of Rabirius, as duovir capitalis, but to a certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the people. In b.c. 88 and 83 this decree of the senate was again passed, in the first case in favour of Sulla against the tribune Sulpicius, who was in consequence put to death; and in the second case in favour of the consuls (partisans of Marius) against the followers of Sulla. Again in b.c. 77 the decree was passed in consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to Sardinia and died there.

In every case but one this decree had been passed against the popular party. The only legal sanction given to the exercise of the imperium sine provocatione was the acquittal of the consul Opimius in b.c. 120. But the jury which tried that case probably consisted entirely of senators, who would not stultify their own proceedings by condemning him. To rely upon such precedents required either great boldness (never a characteristic of Cicero), or the most profound conviction of the essential righteousness of the measure, and the clearest assurance that the safety of the state—the supreme law—justified the breach of every constitutional principle. Cicero was not left long in doubt as to whether there would be any to question his proceeding. On the last day of the year, when about to address the people, as was customary, on laying down his consulship, the tribune Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos forbade him to speak, on the express ground that he "had put citizens to death uncondemned"—quod cives indemnatos necavisset. Cicero consoled himself with taking the required oath as to having observed the laws, with an additional declaration that he had "saved the state." Nevertheless, he must have felt deeply annoyed and alarmed at the action of Metellus, for he had been a legatus of Pompey, and was supposed to represent his views, and it was upon the approbation and support of Pompey, now on the eve of his return from the East, that Cicero particularly reckoned.

Letters after b.c. 63.

The letters in our collection now recommence. The first of the year (b.c. 62) is one addressed to Pompey, expressing some discontent at the qualified manner in which he had written on recent events, and affirming his own conviction that he had acted in the best interests of the state and with universal approval. But indeed the whole correspondence to the end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this subject directly or indirectly. His quarrel with Metellus Nepos brought upon him a remonstrance from the latter's brother (or cousin), Metellus Celer (Letters XIII, XIV), and when the correspondence for b.c. 61 opens, we find him already on the eve of the quarrel with Publius Clodius which was to bring upon him the exile of b.c. 58.

Publius Clodius Pulcher.

P. Clodius Pulcher was an extreme instance of a character not uncommon among the nobility in the last age of the Republic. Of high birth, and possessed of no small amount of ability and energy, he belonged by origin and connexion to the Optimates; but he regarded politics as a game to be played for his personal aggrandizement, and public office as a means of replenishing a purse drained by boundless extravagance and self-indulgence. His record had been bad. He had accompanied his brother-in-law Lucullus, or had joined his staff, in the war with Mithridates, and had helped to excite a mutiny in his army in revenge for some fancied slight. He had then gone to Cilicia, where another brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was proprætor, and while commanding a fleet under him had fallen into the hands of pirates, and when freed from them had gone—apparently in a private capacity—to Antioch, where he again excited a mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against the Arabians (b.c. 70-65). On his return to Rome he attempted to make himself conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted a bribe to withdraw. In b.c. 64, on the staff of the governor of Gallia Narbonensis, he is accused of having enriched himself with plunder. For a time after that he was still acting as a member of the party of the Optimates; seems to have supported Cicero during the Catiline conspiracy; and in b.c. 62 stood for the quæstorship and was elected. His violation of the mysteries was alleged to have been committed in December of that year, and before he could go to the province allotted to him as quæstor in Sicily he had to stand a trial for sacrilege. Such an offence—penetrating in disguise into the house of the Pontifex Maximus, when his wife was engaged in the secret rites of the Bona Dea—would place him under a curse, and not only prevent his entering upon his quæstorship, but would disfranchise and politically ruin him. Clodius would seem not to have been a person of sufficient character or importance to make this trial a political event. But not only had he powerful backers, but his opponents also, by proposing an innovation in the manner of selecting the jurors for trying him, had managed to give a spurious political importance to the case. One of the most brilliant of the early letters (XV, p. 37) gives us a graphic picture of the trial. Clodius was acquitted and went to his province, but returned in b.c. 60, apparently prepared for a change of parties. Cicero and he had quarrelled over the trial. He had said sarcastic things about the sacred consulship, and Cicero had retaliated by bitter speeches in the senate, and by giving evidence at the trial of having seen Clodius in Rome three hours before he professed to have been at Interamna, on the day of the alleged sacrilege. It is perhaps possible that his alibi may have been true in substance, for he may have been well out of Rome on his way to Interamna after seeing Cicero. But, however that may be, he nourished a grudge against Cicero, which he presently had an opportunity of satisfying. The year of his return to Rome from Sicily (b.c. 60) was the same as that of Cæsar's return from Spain. Pompey—who had returned the year[Pg xxviii] before—was at enmity with the senate on account of the difficulties raised to the confirmation of his acta and the allotments for his veterans. Cæsar had a grievance because of the difficulties put in the way of his triumph. The two coalesced, taking in the millionaire Crassus, to form a triumvirate or coalition of three, with a view to getting measures they desired passed, and offices for themselves or their partisans. This was a great blow to Cicero, who clung feverously to Pompey as a political leader, but could not follow him in a coalition with Cæsar: for he knew that the object of it was a series of measures of which he heartily disapproved. His hope of seeing Pompey coming to act as acknowledged leader of the Optimates was dashed to the ground. He could not make up his mind wholly to abandon him, or, on the other hand, to cut himself adrift from the party of Optimates, to whose policy he had so deeply committed himself. Clodius was troubled by no such scruples. Perhaps Cæsar had given him substantial reasons for his change of policy. At any rate, from this time forward he acts as an extreme popularis—much too extreme, as it turned out, for Pompey's taste. As a patrician his next step in the official ladder would naturally have been the ædileship. But that peaceful office did not suit his present purpose. The tribuneship would give him the right to bring forward measures in the comitia tributa, such as he desired to pass, and would in particular give him the opportunity of attacking Cicero. The difficulty was that to become tribune he must cease to be a patrician. He could only do that by being adopted into a plebeian gens. He had a plebeian ready to do it in b.c. 59. But for a man who was sui iuris to be adopted required a formal meeting of the old comitia curiata, and such a meeting required the presence of an augur, as well as some kind of sanction of the pontifices. Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, and Pompey was a member of the college of augurs. Their influence would be sufficient to secure or prevent this being done. Their consent was, it appears, for a time withheld. But Cæsar was going to Gaul at the end of his consulship, and desired to have as few powerful enemies at Rome during his absence as possible. Still he had a personal feeling for Cicero, and when it was known that one of Clodius's objects in seeking to become a plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Cæsar offered him two chances of honourable retreat—first as one of the commissioners to administer his land law, and again as one of his legati in Gaul. But Cicero would not accept the first, because he was vehemently opposed to the law itself: nor the second, because he had no taste for provincial business, even supposing the proconsul to be to his liking; and because he could not believe that P. Clodius would venture to attack him, or would succeed if he did. Cæsar's consulship of b.c. 59 roused his worst fears for the Republic; and, though he thought little of the statesmanship or good sense of Cæsar's hostile colleague Bibulus, he was thoroughly disgusted with the policy of the triumvirs, with the contemptuous treatment of the senate, with the high-handed disregard of the auspices—by means of which Bibulus tried to invalidate the laws and other acta of Cæsar—and with the armed forces which Pompey brought into the campus, nominally to keep order, but really to overawe the comitia, and secure the passing of Cæsar's laws. Nor was it in his nature to conceal his feelings. Speaking early in the year in defence of his former colleague, C. Antonius, accused of maiestas for his conduct in Macedonia, he expressed in no doubtful terms his view of the political situation. Within a few hours the words were reported to the triumvirs, and all formalities were promptly gone through for the adoption of Clodius. Cæsar himself presided at the comitia curiata, Pompey attended as augur, and the thing was done in a few minutes. Even then Cicero does not appear to have been alarmed, or to have been fully aware of what the object of Publius was. While on his usual spring visit to his seaside villas in April (b.c. 59), he expressed surprise at hearing from the young Curio that Clodius was a candidate for the tribuneship (vol. i., p. 99). His surprise no doubt was more or less assumed: he must have understood that Clodius's object in the adoption was the tribunate, and must have had many uneasy reflexions as to the use which he would make of the office when he got it. Indeed there was not very much doubt about it, for Publius openly avowed his intentions. We have accordingly numerous references, in the letters to Atticus, to Cicero's doubts about the course he ought to adopt. Should he accept Cæsar's offer of a legation in Gaul, or a free and votive legation? Should he stay in Rome and fight it out? The latter course was the one on which he was still resolved in July, when Clodius had been, or was on the point of being, elected tribune (p. 110). He afterwards wavered (p. 113), but was encouraged by the belief that all the "orders" were favourable to him, and were becoming alienated from the triumvirs (pp. 117, 119), especially after the affair of Vettius (pp. 122-124), and by the friendly disposition of many of the colleagues of Clodius in the tribuneship. With such feelings of confidence and courage the letters of b.c. 59 come to an end.

The Exile, April, b.c. 58—August, b.c. 57.

The correspondence only opens again in April of b.c. 58, when the worst has happened. Clodius entered upon his tribuneship on the 10th of December, b.c. 59, and lost little time in proposing a law to the comitia for the trial of any magistrate guilty of putting citizens to death without trial (qui cives indemnatos necavisset). The wording of the law thus left it open to plead that it applied only to such act as occurred after its enactment, for the pluperfect necavisset in the dependent clause answers to the future perfect in a direct one. And this was the interpretation that Cæsar, while approving the law itself, desired to put upon it.9 He again offered Cicero a legation in Gaul, but would do nothing for him if he stayed in Rome; while Pompey, who had been profuse in promises of protection, either avoided seeing Cicero, or treated his abject entreaties with cold disdain.10 Every citizen, by a humane custom at Rome, had the right of avoiding a prosecution by quitting the city and residing in some town which had the ius exilii. It is this course that we find Cicero already entered upon when the correspondence of the year begins. In the letters of this year of exile he continually reproaches himself with not having stayed and even supported the law, in full confidence that it could not be applied to himself. He attributes his having taken the less courageous course to the advice of his friends, who were actuated by jealousy and a desire to get rid of him. Even Atticus he thinks was timid, at the best, in advising his retirement. It is the only occasion in all the correspondence in which the least cloud seems to have rested on the perfect friendship of the two men. Atticus does not appear to have shewn any annoyance at the querulous remarks of his friend. He steadily continued to write, giving information and advice, and made no difficulty in supplying his friend with money. During Cicero's absence Atticus became still more wealthy than before by inheriting the estates of his cross-grained uncle Cæcilius. But he was always careful as to the investment of his money and he would not, perhaps, have been so ready to trust Cicero, had he not felt confidence in the ultimate recovery of his civil status. Still his confidence was peculiarly welcome at a time which would have been otherwise one of great pressure. For Clodius had followed up Cicero's retirement with the usual lex in regard to persons leaving Rome to avoid a trial—a prohibition "of fire and water" within a fixed distance from Italy, which involved the confiscation of all his property in Italy. His villas were dismantled, his town house pulled down, and a vote of the people obtained by Clodius for the consecration of its site as a templum dedicated to Liberty, and a scheme was formed and the work actually commenced for occupying part of it by an extension of an existing porticus or colonnade (the porticus Catuli) to contain a statue of Liberty. That this consecration was regular is shewn by the pleas by which it was afterwards sought to reverse it.11 When Cicero was recalled the question came before the pontifices, who decided that the consecration was not valid unless it had been done by the "order of the people." It could not be denied on the face of it that there had been such an order. Cicero was obliged to resort to the plea that Clodius's adoption had been irregular and invalid, that therefore he was not legally a tribune, and could not take an order of the people. Finally, the senate seems to have decided that its restoration to Cicero was part of the general restitutio in integrum voted by the comitia centuriata; and a sum of money was assigned to him for the rebuilding of the house. Clodius refused to recognize the validity of this decree of the senate, and attempted by violence to interrupt the workmen engaged on the house. We have a lively picture of this in Letter XCI (vol. i., pp. 194-196).

Letters of the Exile (Letters LV-LXXXVIII).

The letters from Cicero as an exile are painful reading for those who entertain a regard for his character. It was not unnatural, indeed, that he should feel it grievously. He had so completely convinced himself of the extraordinary value of his services to the state, of the importance of his position in Roman politics, and of the view that the Optimates would take of the necessity of retaining him, that to see himself treated like a fraudulent or unsuccessful provincial governor, of no importance to anyone but himself, was a bitter blow to his self-esteem. The actual loss was immense. His only means were now the amount of money he had been able to take with him, or was able to borrow. All was gone except such property as his wife retained in her own right. He was a dependent upon her, instead of being her support and the master of his own household. The services of freedmen—readily rendered when he was prosperous—would now be a matter of favour and personal attachment, which was not always sufficient to retain them. The "life and light" of the city, in which no man ever took a more eager interest and delight, were closed to him. He was cut off from his family, and from familiar intercourse with friends, on both of which he was much dependent for personal happiness. Lastly, wherever he lived, he lived, as it were, on sufferance, no longer an object of respect as a statesman, or the source of help to others by his eloquence. But, disagreeable as all this was to a man of Cicero's sensitive vanity, there was something still worse. Even in towns which were the legal distance from Italy he could not safely stay, if they were within the jurisdiction of one of his personal enemies, or contained other exiles, who owed him an ill turn. He was protected by no law, and more than one instance of such a man's falling a victim to an enemy's dagger is recorded. Cicero's first idea was to go to Malta: but Malta was for some purposes in the jurisdiction of the governor of[Pg xxxiii] Sicily, and the governor of Sicily (C. Vergilius12) objected to his passing through Sicily or staying at Malta. We have no reason for supposing Vergilius personally hostile to Cicero, but he may have thought that Cicero's services to the Sicilians in the case of Verres would have called out some expression of feeling on their part in his favour, which would have been awkward for a Roman governor. Cicero therefore crossed to Epirus, and travelled down the Egnatian road to Thessalonica. This was the official capital of the province of Macedonia, and the quæstor in Macedonia, Gnæus Plancius, met Cicero at Dyrrachium, invited him to fix his residence there with him, and accompanied him on his journey. Here he stayed till November in a state of anxiety and distress, faithfully reflected in his letters, waiting to hear how far the elections for b.c. 57 would result in putting his friends in office, and watching for any political changes that would favour his recall: but prepared to go still farther to Cyzicus, if the incoming governor, L. Calpurnius Piso, who, as consul in b.c. 58 with Gabinius, had shewn decided animus against him, should still retain that feeling in Macedonia. Events, however, in Rome during the summer and autumn of b.c. 58 gave him better hopes. Clodius, by his violent proceedings, as well as by his legislation, had alienated Pompey, and caused him to favour Cicero's recall. Of the new consuls Lentulus was his friend, and Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos (who as tribune in b.c. 63-62 had prevented his speech when laying down his consulship) consented to waive all opposition. A majority of the new tribunes were also favourable to him, especially P. Sestius and T. Annius Milo; and in spite of constant ups and downs in his feelings of confidence, he had on the whole concluded that his recall was certain to take place. Towards the end of November he therefore travelled back to Dyrrachium, a libera civitas in which he had many friends, and where he thought he might be safe, and from which he could cross to Italy as soon as he heard of the law for his recall having been passed. Here, however, he was kept waiting through many months of anxiety. Clodius had managed to make his recall as difficult as possible. He had, while tribune, obtained an order from the people forbidding the consuls to bring the subject before the senate, and Piso and Gabinius had during their year of office pleaded that law as a bar to introducing the question.