unprincipled man. On the other hand, Cicero was a novus homo, a champion of the Equites (though without being an enemy of the senatorial order), and had had an unusually clean record in his office as well as in the Forum. Thus the cause of Cicero's ambition was, at the same time, the cause of good government against both the worthless and debauched members of the senatorial order on the one hand, and the dregs of the people on the other. It was also the cause of the great middle class against the patricians and the official nobility, who were so entrenched in power that for many years no novus homo had been elected consul. The success of Cicero unquestionably prolonged the existence of the already doomed republic. Antonius, the less dangerous of his two rivals, was elected as his colleague.

Cicero had now reached the goal for which he had striven from his earliest youth. His administration is famous for the overthrow of the Catilinarian conspiracy, which has cast into obscurity all his other consular acts. These, however, were of such a character, in relation to the needs of the times, as to be unimportant. By birth an eques, but by virtue of his offices a member of the senatorial order, Cicero had always been eager to reconcile and unite these, the two upper classes in Roman society and politics.2 He failed to see that the real needs of the commonwealth, as well as its real strength, centred in the interests of the common people. His association with Pompey, and his own rise in official rank, made him incline more and more to the side of the Senate, and he seems to have thought it his mission to restore that body, now thoroughly effete, to its former purity and political importance. The minor acts of his administration were dictated by such sentiments as these,

1 See p. 50, below.

3

2 On the strife between the Senate and the Equites, see p. lxv.

3 Such were his opposition to the agrarian law proposed by the tribune Rullus, his support of the Lex Roscia, which gave the equites fourteen rows of seats in the theatre, and his laws against bribery at elections.

and are significant only as illustrating his character and opinions.

The history of Catiline's conspiracy is given in the Introduction to the four Orations against Catiline,' and need not be repeated here. The conspirators were completely thwarted, and five of them were, in accordance with a resolution of the Senate, put to death by the consul without a trial. This victory was the climax of Cicero's career, and he always regarded it as one of the greatest of human achievements. In fact, however, it marked the beginning of his downfall.

IV.

CONSULSHIP TO BANISHMENT (B.C. 63-58).

The execution of the conspirators without the forms of law was a blunder, and grievously did Cicero answer for it. He had distinctly violated the constitution, and thus he had laid himself open to the attacks of his enemies. At the end of his consulate, one of the tribunes, Q. Metellus Nepos, prevented him from making the customary speech to the people " because he had put to death Roman citizens without a trial." The next year, when he was defending P. Sulla, the accuser (L. Torquatus) upbraided him as a tyrant, "the third foreign king of Rome." A year later P. Clodius 2 began to speak of him in the same terms. Clodius, indeed, continued to pursue him till he accomplished his banishment and the confiscation of his property. Almost the whole time from his consulship till the year of his banishment was spent in seeking support against his enemies. He attached himself more closely to Pompey, and pleaded causes of all kinds to win friends, but his efforts were useless.

In B.C. 60 Roman politics took a turn extremely unfavorable to Cicero. Pompey, who on his return from the East had been

1 See pp. 98, 113, 126, 141, below.

2 For the character of Clodius, see p. 169, below.

unfairly treated by the extreme senatorial party, allied himself with the democratic leaders, Cæsar and Crassus, in a coalition often called the First Triumvirate. As a result, the Senate became for a time almost powerless, and everything was in the hands of the popular party. The next year, Cæsar, as consul, procured the passage of an iniquitous law for dividing the fertile and populous territory of Campania among needy citizens of Rome. Cicero refused to serve on the board appointed to execute this law. Thus he not only exasperated the mob, but brought down upon himself the resentment of the triumvirs, who, though two of them, Cæsar and Pompey, still professed to be his personal friends, refused to protect him against the attacks of his enemies. Accordingly, in B.C. 58, Clodius, then tribune,1 brought forward a law that whoever had put to death a Roman citizen, without trial, "should be denied the use of fire and water" (the Roman formula for banishment). This bill was obviously aimed at Cicero's action in the case of the Catilinarians. Cicero at once took alarm, and after appealing in vain to the consuls of the year, L. Calpurnius Piso and A. Gabinius, as well as to Pompey, left Rome about March 20, just as the affair was coming to blows. Immediately after his departure, Clodius procured the passage of a special bill against him, forbidding him, by name, the use of fire or water anywhere within four hundred miles of Italy. At the same time his house on the Palatine and his Tusculan3 villa were pillaged and destroyed by a mob. Upon receiving news of these proceedings, Cicero prepared to leave Italy altogether. He embarked from Brundisium, April 29, and arrived at Thessa

1 In order to be eligible for this office, Clodius, by birth a patrician, had procured his adoption into a plebeian family. His express purpose in the whole transaction was to accomplish the ruin of Cicero. For the cause of his animosity, see note on Defence of Milo, sect. 13 (p. 176, 1. 14). 2 See note on Cat. i., sect. I, p. 99, 1. 4.

8 Cf. note on Plunder of Syracuse, sect. 12, p. 54, l. 27.

lonica on the 23d of May.' Here he remained as the guest of his friend Plancius, then quæstor of Macedonia, until November, when he removed to Dyrrachium. His friends at Rome were constantly agitating for his recall, but without success.

The next year, however, B.C. 57, it suited the designs of Pompey, then once more inclining to the senatorial party, to allow his return. His influence with the nobility as well as with the equestrian order, was a point to be secured in the great game of politics. On the 1st of January, the consul L. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther brought forward a bill for his recall. This was vetoed by a tribune. Other attempts were made by his friends, which resulted only in riot and disorder. Finally, partly through the efforts of T. Annius Milo, who met. the violence of Clodius with opposing violence, partly through the partisanship of Pompey and the Senate, which brought to the city the citizens of the Municipia and the Italian colonies ("the country members "), a law was passed, Aug. 4, B.C. 57, revoking the decree of exile. Cicero arrived in Rome September 4. His journey through Italy was like a continuous triumphal procession, and to his exalted imagination, freedom, which had departed with him, was now returned to Rome. But in fact his restoration had been merely a piece of selfish policy on the part of the great leaders. He remained the most consummate rhetorician of all time, but his prominence in the state was gone forever. He had never been a statesman, and now he had not the chance to be even a politician.

1 For the exact chronology of Cicero's flight, see C. L. Smith, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, VII. 65 ff.

2 See p. liii.

V. FROM CICERO'S RECALL TO THE BREAKING OUT OF THE CIVIL WAR (B.C. 56-49).

Upon his return he delivered two famous speeches1 (one in the Senate and one before the people), in which he thanked the state for restoring him, and lauded Pompey to the skies. The "triumvirs" were still all-powerful at Rome, and Cicero, like the rest, was forced to conform to their wishes and designs. In this same year he proposed a measure which gave Pompey extraordinary powers over the provincial grain market, for the purpose of securing the city against scarcity of provisions. Next year (B.C. 56) he spoke strongly in favor of continuing Caesar's proconsular authority in Gaul. With Crassus, the third "triumvir," Cicero had never been on good terms, but, at the request of the other two triumvirs, he became reconciled with him in B.C. 55, shortly before the latter set out on his fatal expedition against the Parthians.

During these years, becoming less and less important in politics, Cicero began to devote himself more to literature, and wrote the De Oratore, the Republic, and the treatise De Legibus. He also continued his activity at the bar on his own behalf and that of his friends, as well as at the request of the powerful leaders. He secured the restoration of his property, and defended Sestius, who had been active in his recall. Toward the end of this period he also defended Milo for the murder of Clodius. His defence of Gabinius and Vatinius (B.C. 54), creatures of Pompey and Cæsar respectively, was less honorable to him; but he was hardly a free agent in these matters. "I am distressed," he writes to his brother Quintus, "I am

4

1 Post Reditum: i. (in Senatu); ii. (ad Quirites).

2 See the oration De Consularibus Provinciis.

3 Pro Domo Sua (B.C. 57).

4 Pro P. Sestio, on a charge of assault (B.C. 56).

5 B.C. 52.

For the circumstances, see pp. 169, 170, below.