The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1

Well, then, to begin with: I was not called upon to speak first, and the pacifier of the Allobroges79 was preferred to me, and though this met with some murmurs of disapprobation from the senate, I was not sorry it was done. For I am thereby freed from any obligation to shew respect to an ill-conditioned man, and am at liberty to support my position in the Republic in spite of him. Besides, the second place has a dignity almost equal to that of princeps senatus, and does not put one under too much of an obligation to the consul. The third called on was Catulus; the fourth, if you want to go still farther, Hortensius. The consul himself80 is a man of a small and ill-regulated mind, a mere buffoon of that splenetic kind which raises a laugh even in the absence of wit: it is his face rather than his facetiousness81 that causes merriment: he takes practically no part in public business, and is quite alienated from the Optimates. You need expect no service to the state from him, for he has not the will to do any, nor fear any damage, for he hasn't the courage to inflict it. His colleague, however, treats me with great distinction, and is also a zealous supporter of the loyalist party. For the present their disagreement has not come to much; but I fear that this taint may spread farther. For I suppose you have heard that when the state function was being performed in Cæsar's house a man in woman's dress got in,82 and that the Vestals having performed the rite again, mention was made of the matter in the senate by Q. Cornificius—he was the first, so don't think that it was one of us consulars—and that on the matter being referred by a decree of the senate to the [Virgins and] pontifices, they decided that a sacrilege had been committed: that then, on a farther decree of the senate, the consuls published a bill: and that Cæsar divorced his wife. On this question Piso, from friendship for P. Clodius, is doing his best to get the bill promulgated by himself (though in accordance with a decree of the senate and on a point of religion) rejected. Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager. In short, I fear that between the indifference of the loyalists and the support of the disloyal it may be the cause of great evils to the Republic. However, your great friend83—do you know whom I mean?—of whom you said in your letter that, "not venturing to blame me, he was beginning to be complimentary," is now to all appearance exceedingly fond of me, embraces me, loves and praises me in public, while in secret (though unable to disguise it) he is jealous of me. No good-breeding, no straightforwardness, no political morality, no distinction, no courage, no liberality! But on these points I will write to you more minutely at another time; for in the first place I am not yet quite sure about them, and in the next place I dare not intrust a letter on such weighty matters to such a casual nobody's son as this messenger.

The prætors have not yet drawn their lots for the provinces. The matter remains just where you left it. The description of the scenery of Misenum and Puteoli which you ask for I will include in my speech.84 I had already noticed the mistake in the date, 3rd of December. The points in my speeches which you praise, believe me, I liked very much myself, but did not venture to say so before. Now, however, as they have received your approval, I think them much more "Attic" than ever. To the speech in answer to Metellus85 I have made some additions. The book shall be sent you, since affection for me gives you a taste for rhetoric. What news have I for you? Let me see. Oh, yes! The consul Messalla has bought Antonius's house for 3,400 sestertia (about £27,200). What is that to me? you will say. Why, thus much. The price has convinced people that I made no bad bargain, and they begin to understand that in making a purchase a man may properly use his friends' means to get what suits his position. The Teucris affair drags on, yet I have hopes. Pray settle the business you have in hand. You shall have a more outspoken letter soon.

27 January, in the consulship of M. Messalla and M. Piso.

XIX (a i, 14)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)

Rome, 13 February

b.c. 61, æt. 45

I fear it may seem affectation to tell you how occupied I have been; but I am so distracted with business that I have only just found time for this short letter, and that has been stolen from the most urgent engagements. I have already described to you Pompey's first public speech—it did not please the poor, nor satisfy the disloyal, nor find favour with the wealthy, nor appear sound to the loyalists; accordingly, he is down in the world.86 Presently, on the instigation of the consul Piso, that most insignificant of tribunes, Fufius, brought Pompey on to the platform. The meeting was in the circus Flaminius, and there was in the same place that day a crowd of market people—a kind of tiers état.87 He asked him to say whether he approved of the jurymen being selected by the prætor, to form a panel for the prætor himself to employ. That was the regulation made by the senate in the matter of Clodius's sacrilege. Thereupon Pompey made a highly "aristocratic" speech, and replied (and at great length) that in all matters the authority of the senate was of the greatest weight in his eyes and had always been so. Later on the consul Messalla in the senate asked Pompey his opinion as to the sacrilege and the bill that had been published. His speech in the senate amounted to a general commendation of all decrees of the house, and when he sat down he said to me, "I think my answer covers your case also."88 When Crassus observed that Pompey had got a cheer from the idea in men's minds that he approved my consulship, he rose also to his feet and delivered a speech in the most complimentary terms on my consulship, going so far as to say that he owed it to me that he was still a senator, a citizen, nay, a free man; and that he never beheld wife, home, or country without beholding the fruits of my conduct. In short: that whole topic, which I am wont to paint in various colours in my speeches (of which you are the Aristarchus), the fire, the sword—you know my paint-pots—he elaborated to the highest pitch. I was sitting next to Pompey. I noticed that he was agitated, either at Crassus earning the gratitude which he had himself neglected, or to think that my achievements were, after all, of such magnitude that the senate was so glad to hear them praised, especially by a man who was the less under an obligation to praise me, because in everything I ever wrote89 my praise of Pompey was practically a reflexion on him. This day has brought me very close to Crassus, and yet in spite of all I accepted with pleasure any compliment—open or covert—from Pompey. But as for my own speech, good heavens! how I did "put it on" for the benefit of my new auditor Pompey! If I ever did bring every art into play, I did then—period, transition, enthymeme, deduction—everything. In short, I was cheered to the echo. For the subject of my speech was the dignity of the senate, its harmony with the equites, the unanimity of Italy, the dying embers of the conspiracy, the fall in prices, the establishment of peace. You know my thunder when these are my themes. It was so loud, in fact, that I may cut short my description, as I think you must have heard it even in Epirus. The state of things at Rome is this: the senate is a perfect Areopagus. You cannot conceive anything firmer, more grave, or more high-spirited. For when the day came for proposing the bill in accordance with the vote of the senate, a crowd of our dandies with their chin-tufts assembled, all the Catiline set, with Curio's girlish son at their head, and implored the people to reject it. Moreover, Piso the consul, who formally introduced the bill, spoke against it. Clodius's hired ruffians had filled up the entrances to the voting boxes. The voting tickets were so manipulated that no "ayes" were distributed. Hereupon imagine Cato hurrying to the rostra, delivering an admirable invective against the consul, if we can call that an "invective" which was really a speech of the utmost weight and authority, and in fact containing the most salutary advice. He is followed to the same effect by your friend Hortensius, and many loyalists besides, among whom, however, the contribution of Favonius was conspicuous. By this rally of the Optimates the comitia is dissolved, the senate summoned. On the question being put in a full house—in spite of the opposition of Piso, and in spite of Clodius throwing himself at the feet of the senators one after the other—that the consuls should exhort the people to pass the bill, about fifteen voted with Curio, who was against any decree being passed; on the other side there were fully four hundred. So the vote passed. The tribune Fufius then gave in.90 Clodius delivered some wretched speeches to the people, in which he bestowed some injurious epithets on Lucullus, Hortensius, C. Piso, and the consul Messalla; me he only charged with having "discovered" everything.91 In regard to the assignation of provinces to the prætors, the hearing legations, and other business, the senate voted that nothing should be brought before it till the bill had been brought before the people. There's the state of things at Rome for you. Yet pray listen to this one thing more which has surpassed my hopes. Messalla is a superlatively good consul, courageous, firm, painstaking; he praises, shows attachment to, and imitates me. That other one (Piso) is the less mischievous because of one vice—he is lazy, sleepy, unbusiness-like, an utter fainéant, but in intention he is so disaffected that he has begun to loathe Pompey since he made the speech in which some praise was bestowed on the senate. Accordingly, he has alienated all the loyalists to a remarkable degree. And his action is not dictated by love for Clodius more than by a taste for a profligate policy and a profligate party. But he has nobody among the magistrates like himself, with the single exception of the tribune Fufius. The tribunes are excellent, and in Cornutus we have a quasi-Cato. Can I say more?

Now to return to private matters. "Teucris" has fulfilled her promise.92 Pray execute the commission you undertook. My brother Quintus, who purchased the remaining three-fourths of the house in the Argiletum for 725 sestertia (about £5,800), is now trying to sell his Tusculan property, in order to purchase, if he can, the town house of Pacilius. Make it up with Lucceius! I see that he is all agog to stand for the consulship. I will do my best. Be careful to let me know exactly how you are, where you are, and how your business goes on.

13 February.

XX (a i, 15)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)

Rome, 15 March

b.c. 61, æt. 45

You have heard that my dearest brother Quintus has got Asia; for I do not doubt that rumour has conveyed the news to you quicker than a letter from any of us. Now then, considering how desirous of a good reputation he and I have ever been, and how unusually Philhellenic we are and have the reputation of being, and considering how many there are whose enmity we have incurred for the sake of the Republic, "call to mind all your valour,"93 to secure us the praise and affection of all concerned. I will write at greater length to you on these points in the letter which I shall give to Quintus himself.94 Please let me know what you have done about the business I confided to you, and also in your own affair; for I have had no letter from you since you left Brundisium. I am very anxious to hear how you are.

15 March.

XXI (a i, 16)

TO ATTICUS

Rome (May)

b.c. 61, æt. 45

You ask me what has happened about the trial, the result of which was so contrary to the general expectation, and at the same time you want to know how I came to make a worse fight of it than usual. I will answer the last first, after the manner of Homer.95 The fact is that, so long as I had to defend the authority of the senate,96 I battled with such gallantry and vigour that there were shouts of applause and crowds round me in the house ringing with my praise. Nay, if you ever thought that I shewed courage in political business, you certainly would have admired my conduct in that cause. For when the culprit had betaken himself to public meetings, and had made an invidious use of my name, immortal gods! What battles! What havoc! What sallies I made upon Piso, Curio, on the whole of that set! How I fell upon the old men for their instability, on the young for their profligacy! Again and again, so help me heaven! I regretted your absence not only as the supporter of my policy, but as the spectator also of my admirable fighting. However, when Hortensius hit on the idea of a law as to the sacrilege being proposed by the tribune Fufius, in which there was no difference from the bill of the consul except as to the kind of jurymen—on that point, however, the whole question turned—and got it carried by sheer fighting, because he had persuaded himself and others that he could not get an acquittal no matter who were the jurymen, I drew in my sails, seeing the neediness of the jurors, and gave no evidence beyond what was so notorious and well attested that I could not omit it.97 Therefore, if you ask the reason of the acquittal—to return at length to the former of the two questions—it was entirely the poverty and low character of the jury. But that this was possible was entirely the result of Hortensius's policy. In his alarm lest Fufius should veto the law which was to be proposed in virtue of a senatorial decree, he failed to see that it was better that the culprit should be left under a cloud of disgrace and dishonour than that he should be trusted to the discretion of a weak jury. But in his passionate resentment he hastened to bring the case into court, saying that a leaden sword was good enough to cut his throat. But if you want to know the history of the trial, with its incredible verdict, it was such that Hortensius's policy is now blamed by other people after the event, though I disapproved of it from the first. When the rejection of jurors had taken place, amidst loud cheers and counter-cheers—the accuser like a strict censor rejecting the most worthless, the defendant like a kind-hearted trainer of gladiators all the best—as soon as the jury had taken their seats, the loyalists at once began to feel distrust. There never was a seedier lot round a table in a gambling hell. Senators under a cloud, equites out at elbows, tribunes who were not so much made of money as "collectors" of it, according to their official title.98 However, there were a few honest men in the panel, whom he had been unable to drive off it by rejection, and they took their seats among their uncongenial comrades with gloomy looks and signs of emotion, and were keenly disgusted at having to rub elbows with such rascals. Hereupon, as question after question was referred to the panel in the preliminary proceedings, the severity of the decisions passes belief: there was no disagreement in voting, the defendant carried none of his points, while the accuser got even more than he asked. He was triumphant. Need I say more? Hortensius would have it that he was the only one of us who had seen the truth. There was not a man who did not think it impossible for him to stand his trial without being condemned a thousand times over. Farther, when I was produced as a witness, I suppose you have been told how the shouts of Clodius's supporters were answered by the jury rising to their feet to gather round me, and openly to offer their throats to P. Clodius in my defence. This seemed to me a greater compliment than the well-known occasion when your fellow citizens99 stopped Xenocrates from taking an oath in the witness-box, or when, upon the accounts of Metellus Numidicus100 being as usual handed round, a Roman jury refused to look at them. The compliment paid me, I repeat, was much greater. Accordingly, as the jurymen were protecting me as the mainstay of the country, it was by their voices that the defendant was overwhelmed, and with him all his advocates suffered a crushing blow. Next day my house was visited by as great a throng as that which escorted me home when I laid down the consulship. Our eminent Areopagites then exclaimed that they would not come into court unless a guard was assigned them. The question was put to the whole panel: there was only one vote against the need of a guard. The question is brought before the senate: the decree is passed in the most solemn and laudatory terms: the jurymen are complimented: the magistrates are commissioned to carry it out: no one thought that the fellow would venture on a defence. "Tell me, ye Muses, now how first the fire befell!"101 You know Bald-head, the Nanneian millionaire,102 that panegyrist of mine, whose complimentary oration I have already mentioned to you in a letter. In two days' time, by the agency of a single slave, and one, too, from a school of gladiators, he settled the whole business—he summoned them to an interview, made a promise, offered security, paid money down. Still farther, good heavens, what a scandal! even favours from certain ladies, and introductions to young men of rank, were thrown in as a kind of pourboire to some of the jurors. Accordingly, with the loyalists holding completely aloof, with the forum full of slaves, twenty-five jurors were yet found so courageous that, though at the risk of their lives, they preferred even death to producing universal ruin. There were thirty-one who were more influenced by famine than fame. On seeing one of these latter Catulus said to him, "Why did you ask us for a guard? Did you fear being robbed of the money?" There you have, as briefly as I could put it, the nature of the trial and the cause of the acquittal.

Next you want to know the present state of public affairs and of my own. That settlement of the Republic—firmly established by my wisdom, as you thought, as I thought by God's—which seemed fixed on a sure foundation by the unanimity of all loyalists and the influence of my consulship—that I assure you, unless some God take compassion on us, has by this one verdict escaped from our grasp: if "verdict" it is to be called, when thirty of the most worthless and dissolute fellows in Rome for a paltry sum of money obliterate every principle of law and justice, and when that which every man—I had almost said every animal—knows to have taken place, a Thalna, a Plautus, and a Spongia, and other scum of that sort decide not to have taken place. However, to console you as to the state of the Republic, rascaldom is not as cheerful and exultant in its victory as the disloyal hoped after the infliction of such a wound upon the Republic. For they fully expected that when religion, morality, the honour of juries, and the prestige of the senate had sustained such a crushing fall, victorious profligacy and lawless lust would openly exact vengeance from all the best men for the mortification which the strictness of my consulship had branded in upon all the worst. And it is once more I—for I do not feel as if I were boasting vaingloriously when speaking of myself to you, especially in a letter not intended to be read by others—it was I once more, I say, who revived the fainting spirits of the loyalists, cheering and encouraging each personally. Moreover, by my denunciations and invectives against those corrupt jurors I left none of the favourers and supporters of that victory a word to say for themselves. I gave the consul Piso no rest anywhere, I got him deprived of Syria, which had been already plighted to him, I revived the fainting spirit of the senate and recalled it to its former severity. I overwhelmed Clodius in the senate to his face, both in a set speech, very weighty and serious, and also in an interchange of repartees, of which I append a specimen for your delectation. The rest lose all point and grace without the excitement of the contest, or, as you Greeks call it, the ἀγών. Well, at the meeting of the senate on the 15th of May, being called on for my opinion, I spoke at considerable length on the high interests of the Republic, and brought in the following passage by a happy inspiration: "Do not, Fathers, regard yourselves as fallen utterly, do not faint, because you have received one blow. The wound is one which I cannot disguise, but which I yet feel sure should not be regarded with extreme fear: to fear would shew us to be the greatest of cowards, to ignore it the greatest of fools. Lentulus was twice acquitted, so was Catiline, a third such criminal has now been let loose by jurors upon the Republic. You are mistaken, Clodius: it is not for the city but for the prison that the jurors have reserved you, and their intention was not to retain you in the state, but to deprive you of the privilege of exile. Wherefore, Fathers, rouse up all your courage, hold fast to your high calling. There still remains in the Republic the old unanimity of the loyalists: their feelings have been outraged, their resolution has not been weakened: no fresh mischief has been done, only what was actually existing has been discovered. In the trial of one profligate many like him have been detected."—But what am I about? I have copied almost a speech into a letter. I return to the duel of words. Up gets our dandified young gentleman, and throws in my teeth my having been at Baiæ. It wasn't true, but what did that matter to him? "It is as though you were to say," replied I, "that I had been in disguise!" "What business," quoth he, "has an Arpinate with hot baths?" "Say that to your patron," said I, "who coveted the watering-place of an Arpinate."103 For you know about the marine villa. "How long," said he, "are we to put up with this king?" "Do you mention a king," quoth I, "when Rex104 made no mention of you?" He, you know, had swallowed the inheritance of Rex in anticipation. "You have bought a house," says he. "You would think that he said," quoth I, "you have bought a jury." "They didn't trust you on your oath," said he. "Yes," said I, "twenty-five jurors did trust me, thirty-one didn't trust you, for they took care to get their money beforehand." Here he was overpowered by a burst of applause and broke down without a word to say.

My own position is this: with the loyalists I hold the same place as when you left town, with the tagrag and bobtail of the city I hold a much better one than at your departure. For it does me no harm that my evidence appears not to have availed. Envy has been let blood without causing pain, and even more so from the fact that all the supporters of that flagitious proceeding confess that a perfectly notorious fact has been hushed up by bribing the jury. Besides, the wretched starveling mob, the blood-sucker of the treasury, imagines me to be high in the favour of Magnus—and indeed we have been mutually united by frequent pleasant intercourse to such an extent, that our friends the boon companions of the conspiracy, the young chin-tufts, speak of him in ordinary conversation as Gnæus Cicero. Accordingly, both in the circus and at the gladiatorial games, I received a remarkable ovation without a single cat-call. There is at present a lively anticipation of the elections, in which, contrary to everybody's wishes, our friend Magnus is pushing the claims of Aulus's son;105 and in that matter his weapons are neither his prestige nor his popularity, but those by which Philip said that any fortress could be taken—if only an ass laden with gold could make its way up into it. Farthermore, that precious consul, playing as it were second fiddle to Pompey,106 is said to have undertaken the business and to have bribery agents at his house, which I don't believe. But two decrees have already passed the house of an unpopular character, because they are thought to be directed against the consul on the demand of Cato and Domitius107—one that search should be allowed in magistrates' houses, and a second, that all who had bribery agents in their houses were guilty of treason. The tribune Lurco also, having entered on his office irregularly in view of the Ælian law, has been relieved from the provisions both of the Ælian and Fufian laws, in order to enable him to propose his law on bribery, which he promulgated with correct auspices though a cripple.108 Accordingly, the comitia have been postponed to the 27th of July. There is this novelty in his bill, that a man who has promised money among the tribes, but not paid it, is not liable, but, if he has paid, he is liable for life to pay 3,000 sesterces to each tribe. I remarked that P. Clodius had obeyed this law by anticipation, for he was accustomed to promise, and not pay. But observe! Don't you see that the consulship of which we thought so much, which Curio used of old to call an apotheosis, if this Afranius is elected, will become a mere farce and mockery? Therefore I think one should play the philosopher, as you in fact do, and not care a straw for your consulships!