LIFE OF CICERO. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO ranks as the first prose writer in Roman literature, and in fame as the second orator of the world. His public life, lasting nearly forty years, covers the entire period from Sulla's dictatorship to the fall of the Republic; and for all this time his orations are by far the most important and interesting documents that exist. The events of Cicero's life, so far as they are necessary to an understanding of his career as orator and statesman, are these. He was born B. C. 106-the same year with Pompey, and six years before Julius Cæsar — at Arpinum, a town in the Volscian territory, about fifty miles east of Rome, the birthplace also of Caius Marius. His father, a wealthy citizen of equestrian rank, removed to the capital in order to give his sons, Marcus and Quintus, the best education possible. Here the young Cicero studied law with the great jurist, Quintus Mucius Scævola, the augur, and, after his death, with his yet more distinguished kinsman of the same name; and was intimate with the eminent orators Lucius Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius, grandfather of the triumvir. He studied rhetoric and philosophy with the best Greek teachers; and from the poet Archias in particular, whom he afterwards defended in one of his most graceful orations, he derived that taste for literature which distinguished him among all the public men of his day. Cicero arrived at manhood just at the time when the fearful civil convulsions were beginning, which ended only with the overthrow of the Republic. He served a short campaign in the Social War (B. c. 89); but remained in obscurity through the horrors of the civil war that followed, devoting himself to his private studies. He appears to have welcomed the triumph of Sulla (B. C. 82) as an earnest of order and good government; but was soon disgusted with the despotic rule of the dictator, and placed himself in that attitude of moderate opposition to the oligarchy to which he was, on the whole, faithful through life. No person dared oppose Sulla in any political measure; but in the administration of justice even the tyrant was obliged, for decency's sake, to listen to words of truth and boldness. The defence of Roscius, Cicero's first public oration (B. c. 80), may rank, in a political point of view, with Erskine's defence of Hardy, or the judicial eloquence of the Duc de Berryer in the time of Napoleon III. Of its results the orator himself says, that "it received such commendation, that there was no case which did not seem worthy of his advocacy." (Brut. § 312.) After this brilliant success, Cicero spent two years in travel and study in Greece and Asia. Then returning to Rome, he held (B. c. 75) the office of Quæstor, which made him a member of the Senate. This office he exercised in the western half of Sicily. Meantime the political dissensions, which had been suspended during the rule of Sulla, broke out afresh. A democratic agitation began, which continued steadily increasing, till it culminated thirty years later in another civil war. Sulla's aristocratic constitution was repealed in the consulship of Pompey and Crassus (B. C. 70), by the restoring of judicial power to the middle class (equites). In this year Cicero conducted the celebrated impeachment of Verres, in which he gained the signal success of forcing that corrupt ex-magistrate into exile, without waiting the result of the trial. The legislation of this year identified Pompey with the popular party; and Cicero attached himself to the interests of that ambitious and successful general, giving him timely aid in the speech for the Manilian Law-in obtaining the command against Mithridates in the East. The same year (B. C. 66) Cicero held the prætorship, having been curule ædile three years before; and he was carried, partly by his own preeminent merits, partly by the wave of moderate reform, into the consulship (B. c. 63), at the age of forty-three. Cicero was now at the highest point of his success and fame, the recognized head of a moderate party, which aimed to preserve the old institutions of the State, while tempering them with a more liberal policy. But he lacked the qualities of a successful political leader. He was vain, hesitating, lacking self-control, decision, and dignity of character. As a 66 new man," he never had the full confidence of the senatorial families; while his tastes were too much shaped by his Greek training, his mind too delicately organized, his ambition too much controlled by sentiment and theory, we may say, by the sense of right, — to give him a hold upon the crowd that filled the Forum and carried the Comitia. The leading act of his administration the suppression of Catiline's Conspiracy-had, by the illegal death of the conspirators, made him the object of marked hostility to the popular party. The democratic movement became too strong for his feeble grasp, and developed into a destructive radicalism, headed by unscrupulous gamblers and demagogues, which had its natural sequence in civil war and imperialism. was Five years after his consulship (B. c. 58, the same year with Cæsar's first campaign in Gaul), Cicero was forced into exile. Though he was recalled the following year, with every mark of honor, it was to find orderly government almost at an end. The magnificent defence of Milo-a speech which, as it now stands, was never delivered his last protest against the reign of force that daily became more imminent in Rome. The two following years he served as Proconsul in Cilicia, and returned, with the complimentary title of imperator, to find all things ripe for civil war. Pompey, both because he hated Cæsar, and because there was no one else to take the place, drifted into the position of leader and general of the conservative party. With great misgiving and reluctance, after trying in vain his efforts as reconciler, Cicero joined that party in the fatal campaign of Pharsalia (B. c. 48). When Pompey was dead, and the senatorial party finally crushed, Cicero submitted, with apparent good will, to the dictatorship of Cæsar, whose personal friend he had always claimed to be. But his letters show him at this time disappointed, peevish, jealous, and weak. It was, however, the period of his greatest industry and fertility as a writer. A long succession of dialogues and treatises attests his efforts to distract his mind from the miseries of his political failure and defeat. After the death of Cæsar, which he perhaps witnessed with his own eyes, at any rate rejoiced at,*he appeared once more in public life, the standardbearer in the brave battle waged by the Senate against Mark Antony. During this struggle he was a warm partisan of Brutus and Cassius, "the liberators." He proclaimed openly his satisfaction at Cæsar's death; hoped to win the confidence of the young Cæsar Octavianus (afterwards Augustus); and took part against Antony, as a public enemy, in the celebrated orations called Philippics. When the cause was lost by the treachery of Octavianus, when he and Lepidus joined Antony, and their triumvirate was victorious, Cicero was one of the first victims marked for proscription. He was murdered near his Formian villa, on the road between Rome and Naples, in December, B. c. 43, at the age of sixty-three. The following list gives the titles and subjects of all of Cicero's orations (excepting fragments) which have survived: : B. C. 81. Pro P. QUINCTIO: Defence of Quinctius in a prosecution by Sex. Nævius, to recover the profits of a partnership in some land in Gaul, inherited from his brother, C. Quinctius. B. c. 80. Pro SEX. ROSCIO AMERINO: Defence of Roscius on a charge of parricide brought by Erucius as professional prosecutor, at the instigation of Chrysogonus. * Quid mihi attulerit ista domini mutatio, præter lætitiam quam oculis cepi justo interitu tyranni?- Ad Att., xiv. 14. |