Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

pair formed were of an earnestness un- | The only means that remained of reaching common in human quarrel; for in the his object, if such means there were, lay campaign now opened to us we find a sequence and a systematic astuteness of attack which could have been evidenced only under the demoniacal influence of a master-passion.

in the extraordinary power of the great statesman, who was virtually monopolizing* the consulate of the year, while anxiously engaged in maturing his projected mastery over the republic. With all While looking forward to the means of Cæsar's love of letters, and natural admisatisfying this cherished vengeance, Clo- ration for the genius of Cicero, he could dius found that he was excluded by hier- not but see that the antecedents, no less archic rules, no less than by his repute, than the character, of that gifted statesfrom any early prospect of that consulate man invested him with a high and danwhich formed the principal depository of gerous importance in the complicated knot Roman power. He saw, however, that of Roman politics which then invited the the tribuneship, which in critical moments sword of another Alexander. As an exhad often coped with the higher magis- consul solemnly honored with the legal tracy in importance, and which, in the titles of "Father of his Country," and hands of bold politicians, had not unfre- "Second Founder of Rome," for the ability quently held in suspense the fortunes of with which he had saved the senate from the republic, might serve his purposes as the most dangerous crisis to which it had well, at the same time that he felt that it perhaps ever been exposed, Cicero was the was an office to which his ill repute and natural leader and oracle of that body; † the democratic tendencies forced on him and this all the more that, unlike Pompey, by his social position naturally invited him. he was known to have no interest save in Though open by law only to the plebeian the maintenance of its freedom and digorder, by which alone it was conferred, nity. Cæsar felt, too, that inferior to himClodius knew that, though disqualified as self only in strength of character, to Poma patrician, the desertion of his own caste, pey only in military influence and wealth, under the formalities of plebeian adoption, and to Cato only in the firmness that rewas not absolutely prohibited. But the sists alike influence and intimidation-if policy was novel and unseemly, and the wanting, in short, the high characteristics first step not without its difficulties. There that fit men to cope on easy terms with was no precedent of a patrician passing so the tragic emergencies which mark great singular a slur on his order. The rite of eras of state transformation, he was yet adoption, one of the most solemn in Ro- unquestionably superior to them all in man jurisprudence, required as a prelim- those qualities of learning, eloquence, virinary a favorable attestation from the Col- tue, and social amenity, which, in the inlege of Pontiffs, and could only take place tervals of civic broils, would enable him when no circumstances existed to imply to secure a preponderant influence for its bad faith. The plebeian father, accord- whatever leader he might choose to enroll ing to the law, ought to be childless; he under. Nor could the natural chief of the was required to be old enough for the honor Marian faction-the democratic faction of of the paternity which he was, in some Rome-while poising the question how sense, claiming; and finally he was to oc- such a man was to be dealt with, forget," cupy a position in the world that promised or perhaps even forgive, that the new inboth pecuniary advantage and civic distinc- truder on the Roman aristocracy had retion to the person over whom he was to re-cently spared him the exposure his share ceive, in their fullest extent, the important in the plot of Catiline merited, or that, in rights of Roman paternity. All these con- the angry discussions which that tragedy ditions, however, were, curiously enough, provoked, the orator's influence had saved wanting when Clodius came forward to his life, when menaced by the indignant abandon his order. His social condition (if we may believe his enemies) gave him but a scanty measure of even plebeian aid being consuls"-a jest considered so excellent that to choose from; and the consul, the un- it has reached us in nearly every narrative bearing happy husband of his sister, Clodia, pub-reference to the Triumvirate. licly proclaimed that he would sooner strangle him with his own hand than allow such a dishonor to be cast on the family tree.

Julio et Cæsare consulibus—“ Julius and Cæsar

Lucan lets us know that Pompey was never recognized as the full leader of the senatorial partyNon Magni partes, sed Magnus in partibus esse."Lib. v.

zeal of the knights and senators assembled | requests for his advice and aid, with the to vindicate constitutional order at the flattering assurance that for the future he cost, if necessary, of its own violation. wished to be guided by his wisdom and We are not surprised, however, that the experience; and we have the testimony of noble nature, which by all admission placed the orator, that it was his own virtue alone Cæsar above the smaller instincts of hu- that enabled him to withstand the efforts manity, urged him to try at first to secure that were at this time made to include him at any price, short of the great but as yet as a fourth member of the great confedeundeveloped project of his life, the friend- racy which menaced the liberty of his ship and aid of so powerful and accom- country. plished an auxiliary. The time, indeed, had now arrived when it was all-important for him to ascertain clearly what was to be the nature of their future relations. He had just freed himself from the crippling embarrassment of a debt said to be equivalent to several millions of our money; he was in the enjoyment of the high but temporary dignity of the consulate; his alliance and compact with Crassus and Pompey was soon to be sealed by the marriage of his daughter with the latter; and he was on the eve of betaking himself to those ten years of Gallic campaigns which were to give him the invincible army by whose aid he already calculated on placing the commonwealth at his discretion.

But the honest patriotism of Cicero, which had as yet learnt nothing from an influence, fear, that was subsequently to chill so much of its ardor, seemed anxious to show the world that it repelled with dignity every such alliance; and, in one of his forensic speeches, he took the trouble to digress into a severe rebuke of the magisterial illegalities with which Cæsar was haughtily distinguishing his consulate.

The first payment Cicero was formally expected to make for a sure protection against the further designs of Clodius, was the exercise of his influence with the senate to sanction the popular distribution of some extensive domains belonging to the state. The projected law was humiliating to the patrician order, and interfered with the public finances; it was held to be full of danger to the existing constitution; for it conflicted with the well-known policy of the senate, and might give the triumvirs, and especially Cæsar, a popularity that in bad times could be turned to the worst of uses. The duty, then, of Cicero, as a leader of the senate, was either to share the popularity of the act by handsomely supporting it, or to resist it to the death. He did neither. A single lesson had sufficed to inculcate on this elegant expositor of public morality the contemptible wisdom of a personal interest. Entering into a compromise, through which his neutrality was secured by a temporary retirement from public affairs, he betook himself to his beautiful villa near Antium; and we may gather the feelings with which the chagrined statesman entered on his retreat Cæsar brooked no more. He espoused from the avowal he makes to Atticus, that the forlorn suit of Clodius, and, three he was much more disposed to spend his hours later, every informality was glossed time in watching the ceaseless play of the over, every violation of law disregarded, sea-that glorious contrast to the littleness and the arch-enemy of the orator forced and impurity he had left behind him— into a position which opened to him the than in sitting down to any literary unhighest honors of the state. Marvelous as dertaking worthy his genius. Amid the was this new proof of Cæsar's great char-luxuries of the rustic repose which should acteristic celerity, in this instance it was have been so dear to him as a scholar and less a quality of the man than a calculation philosopher, nay, at the very moment that of the politician. If the provocation ex- he is eloquently praising the happiness of plained, the haste palliated, the unkind-the literary leisure it affords him, he takes ness; and the blow once struck which placed the proud senator at his mercy, he at once reverted to the friendly relations that had been customary between them. As consul presiding over the sittings of the senate, he took pains in collecting the votes to fix Cicero's precedency immediately after that of Pompey and Crassus: he conveyed to him by common friends

little pains to conceal the difficulty with which he bears the loss of that political excitement to which he had so long been accustomed. Yearning, with childish impatience, for the old aliment of his ever active vanity, he confesses that his chief hope and consolation is that the ungrateful Romans will be taught by his absence to value a citizen to whose worth satiety had made

quent friend, he palliated a refusal he would not forego, by the offer at intervals of posts which, if more dependent, were scarcely less noteworthy. One of these was a religious embassy to some remote temple, furnishing a senator, of consular authority, with an honorable motive for his absence from Rome. Another, more important, was a place in the "Commission of Twenty," who, by the arbitrary arrangements of Cæsar, were charged with the distribution of the Campanian lands among twenty thousand Roman families, three or four thousand of whom were emancipated slaves-an office which would have won him, with some personal security which he professed to disdain, an amount of ridicule and political odium he had no heart to incur. A third offer, less equivocal but more singular, and which curiously illustrates the watchful solicitude of Cæsar's policy in the important crisis we are investigating, was a lieutenancy in the Gallic campaign which Cæsar was about to undertake, and which, unsuited as it was to Cicero's character and pursuits, seems to have caused his virtue some effort to refuse. "It gives more security," he writes,

them indifferent. Pledging himself with more than dramatic caricature to think no more of the republic, he shows, the next moment, that he is ignorant of little, and uninterested in nothing that passes. In one of his letters he vents his bitterness on the assumed appointment of Clodius, as ambassador to the King of Armenia, admitting the position to be one that fell within his own views. In another he makes known his eager willingness to visit Egypt, with the mission of restoring its deposed king, Ptolemy Auletes; and in a third, with an imprudent zeal which forgets even the semblance of honor, he solicits his election to the augural chair, in which a vacancy had just been created by Clodia, or at least by the death of her husband, whom she was charged with killing. The position of augur was one of the highest dignity, gave still greater influence in the state, and had the additional recommendation of operating as a bill of indemnity for him who might attain to it. But though this was no trifling advantage to a sinking statesman, who felt that he might any day be brought to account for the illegal severities that formed the glory and danger of his consulate, it might palliate, but could not justify, the willingness" than the commission, and leaves me he showed to purchase it at a price which to all men, but most of all to him, ought to have been more costly than life or the highest dignities that can attend it. "I am theirs," he says, at the price of the augurship-wonder at my levity!" We may indeed wonder, and bewail as we wonder, at a levity so unpardonable in the master-genius of his time! It is just to own that the intrinsic honesty of so fine a nature felt all the degradation of the politician's cowardice; for he adds, with touching sadness," But why occupy myself about things I wish to renounce? Would to heaven that I had always the same thought! But now, that experience has taught me that all I looked on as most enviable in life is mere vanity, I am determined to think of nothing but literature." The very independence that made this important dignity so desirable to Cicero, But among the many obstacles that set against him the interest of Cæsar, who opposed Cæsar's artful scheme for overhad determined on protecting him as a mastering Cicero, the strongest probably creature, or ruining him as a political in- was the friendship and party affinities fluence, and was not likely to exchange which made the orator's safety the highthe assurance he held from his fears for est of interests to a man who, though the uncertain expectation he might found now subsiding into a colleague, had long on his gratitude. Sparing the pride, been the first, and was still a prevailing while neglecting the safety, of his elo-influence in Roman politics, "Pompey

[ocr errors]

more free in my movements. I do not refuse it, but can hardly feel that I should accept it." But though he adds that he has no notion of running away, and is even eager for the affray with which Clodius threatens him, the next letter of his we have in the series proves that his boastful confidence was but one of the rhetorical indulgences with which his weakness was accustomed to favor itself. Avowing a sad uncertainty as to what he desires or intends, yet feeling himself under the necessity of ultimately declining the safe dependence offered him by Cæsar, he confesses that he has no stomach for the contentions opened to him through his refusal, and in the utter misery of his position throws himself for sympathy and support on the obliging friend, Atticus, whom he is addressing.

[ocr errors]

more respectable members of the senate, saw with disgust, that he sanctioned Cæsar's violent invasions of the constitution, lent himself, as one of his instruments, in distributing the state domains, authorized as one of the augurs the adoption of Clodius, and at last, formally joining in the audacious plan of his colleagues to concentrate every power of the state in their own hands, had ratified the treasonable league by accepting Cæsar as his fatherin-law.

worthless not his friends.

And then what.

the Great." The exuberant genius of Cicero, won perhaps by the very defects of a character which promised less a master than an instrument or friend, had long delighted itself in doing honor to the pleasing mediocrity of the conqueror of the East; and his oratory, in several interesting conjunctures, had surrendered to him its splendid services with a prodigality almost worthy of Oriental serfage. But after the overthrow of Mithridates, followed by a long career of Asiatic glory and Roman influence, there came a time "Our celebrated friend," says Cicero, "so when Pompey was so heedless about insolent under censure, so eager for public adwhat his plebeian friend had done for miration, and so long living but in an atmoshim, that Cicero exclaimed, in the vexa- phere of glory, now bent in body and broken tion of soul which arises from the reäc-in spirit, knows not whither to betake himself. tion of friendships which are no longer He sees the onward course precipitous, with remembered but to repay service with return dubious; the good his enemies, the "The man secretly but visibly softness of character! I could not withhold wrongs, hates me; and there is nothing handsome, my tears when I saw him the other day defendor natural, or noble, or frank, or gener- ing himself against the edicts of Bibulus. He ous, in any of his relations with me, per- who hitherto, in that place, used to carry off sonal or political." Circumstances, how- every thing with so high a hand, amid the enever, which even then suggested caution thusiasm of the people, every body in his favor, to the man, who was not "better but how spiritless was he, even to servility, so more secret than Cæsar," had since so that not only all who saw him, but he himself, changed, that every day there was some It could only have given pleasure to Crassus, must have felt the ignominy! What a sight! sinister presage or other to awaken suseven among his enemies; for it seemed as picion that the great conqueror might though he had fallen headlong, rather than yet want in weakness the magnificent re- descended, from his elevation; and just as I sources he had been spurning in strength. can fancy the grief of an Apelles or Protogenes, Through the skill of Cæsar-bent, in if witnessing their Venus or Ialysus contumeevery hypothesis of alliance or hostility, liously treated at some great festival, so I can on rising by the ruin or degradation of not survey without emotion the sudden dishis cotemporaries*-people were already expended the utmost power of my art and honor which has befallen a picture on which I recognizing the brilliant contrast between richest colors of my imagination." the magnanimity of the new aspirant, and the petty arts that marked his felicitous rival; and the arrogant conqueror of the East-so long exercising an influence in the counsels of Rome, unparalleled in that republic and unsafe in any-was descending into insignificance, under the very shadow of a surname which, implying the contrary, was becoming the most stinging of sarcasms. While the people took a malignant pleasure in seizing every occasion of checking the influence and mocking the waning glory of the old favorite, his own personal friends, and the

'Nescia virtus

Stare loco, solusque pudor non vincere bello:
Acer et indomitus quo spes quoque ira vocâsset
Ferre manum, et nunquam temerando parcere ferro:
Successus urgere suos, instare favori
Numinis; impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti
Obstârat; gaudensque viam fecisse ruina.”
LUCAN, lib. i.

The formal aid which Pompey had given to the plans of Clodius was but one of several circumstances to suggest to the orator the worthlessness of a connection to which, with a dishonor rarely seen but in politics, both sides were still irresolutely clinging. The truth is, with every desire to be personally agreeable to Cicero, Pompey found himself in a position in which he was no longer the master of his own actions.

Alienated from the senate by his addiction to the populace, and from the populace by the superior arts of Cæsar,* the triumvirate became the necessity of his position as it was the policy of Cæsar's, and the vanity of that of Crassus; and

"Ex his quæ Pompeio conferebantur ornamenta, et majori invidiæ expositum, et magis eum molestum populo efficere studebat Cæsar, ut illius tanto maturius satietas caperet populum."-SUETONIUS.

he was reluctantly compelled to sacrifice character of the history that has reached the position of his friend-as Augustus, us, we are yet enabled to see enough to later, his life-to the fiendish exigencies prove at once the consciousness of his difof a compact which alone could perpetu- ficulties, and the firm, because clear-sightate the power he childishly idolized. It ed, ability with which he vanquished them. is possible, however, that this item in For a time Clodius was to be sent to Artheir bargain was not as definitively pre-menia, as ambassador. When that honordetermined as the parallel matter in the second triumvirate. The importance of Cicero was for the moment and relatively less prominent, the urgency of the crisis less pressing; and it suited the character as well as the policy of Cæsar to disarm a powerful enemy less by vulgar violence than by those seductive artifices of which he was so accomplished a master.

We may hence explain why it is we find Pompey repeating to Cicero, from time to time, the most positive assurances of security, which, given it may fairly be assumed in good faith, were just as surely falsified in fact.

able exile was declined with affected indignation, a succession of other impostures were set a-foot with semblances equally specious and illusive. Now Cæsar was understood to have quarreled with him past hopes of reconciliation; now he was disposed to dispute even the legality of the adoption; now he was decided on obstructing his election as tribune; now he was pressing on Cicero offices that guaranteed him against the results of such an election; and now, through his influ ence aiding Pompey's, Clodius is made in words to forswear a vengeance for which he was unceasingly preparing the mind of the populace.

At one time Cicero learns that Clodius had passed his word to Pompey to desist Nor do the arts of Cæsar appear to from his "persecutions; at another, have confined themselves to evasive exPompey solemnly affirms to him, "There planations or gracious overtures. The is no possible danger," and adds that, messenger of Atticus, reaching the pres"he would rather be killed himself, than ence of Cicero, finds that his letters have suffer the violence meditated to be done been lost on the way. A letter of Cicero, to him." In a later letter, Cicero writes: in response to a confidential communica"Pompey has had some talk with Clo- tion from Atticus, appears to have been dius, and, as he himself informs me, some equally unfortunate; and there can be very warm talk. Pompey told him that little doubt that, through the services of it would be a perfidy and baseness that mutual friends, and the other forms of eswould cover him with every possible infa-pionage which modern times would apmy, should he permit any injury to happear rather to have improved than inventpen to me through one in whose hands ed, this great man was thoroughly advis he had, in some sort, placed arms, by per- ed as to all he had to hope or fear from mitting his adoption; that he had received the character, counsels, or action of his elhis word of honor, and that of his brother oquent adversary. Appius, to the contrary; and that if any thing happened to violate it, he would take steps to show the world the price he placed upon my friendship. Clodius held out for a time, but at length, offering his hand, promised to do nothing against his wishes."

Having thus to deal with the rude and impatient vindictiveness of Clodius, the well-defined interests, if not sympathies, of Pompey, and the instinct of self-preservation of Cicero-so much at stake for each, and each a personage of the first order in influence-the difficulty for Cæsar was not small in carrying through a policy which, though conflicting so essentially with theirs, yet asked all their aid, several if not joint, for its success. Denied a full insight into his views by the fragmentary

The thoughts, the feelings, the behavior of Cicero during the twelve months that preluded the triumphant election of his vengeful foe, partook of the vagueness and uncertainty of the position which all these complications naturally made for him. All ear for every whisper of intelligence, and every whisper of intelligence mastering his faculties without deciding his understanding; stopping every wayfarer from Rome with eager question to possess himself of the vaguest incident or the most random surmise that favored the most doubtful of his hopes or the least reasonable of his expectations; receiving with extended arms every patrician spy who, like Curio, chose to purchase the honest confidence of his complaisant vanity by the pleasing falsehoods of a subtle

« AnteriorContinuar »