Z37 



CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. 



CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. 



23 } 



moment he resolved to stick close to the forum, and to live 

 perpetually in the view of his countrymen. 



Pompey was at this time carrying on the war against Sertorius in 

 Spain. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, soon after died, leaving the 

 strange legacy of his kingdom to the Romans ; and the King o: 

 Pontus, ever ready to avail himself of the dissensions of the Romans, 

 and justified on the present occasion by the Bithynian intrigue, 

 renewed his hostilities by a double invasion of Bithynia and Asia. 

 The two consuls, Lucullus and Cotta, were both sent to oppose him , 

 and while the arms of Rome were thus employed in the different 

 extremities of the empire, a still more alarming war (B.C. 73) broke 

 out at home, which, originating with some gladiators, led to an 

 extensive insurrection of the slaves, and under the able conduct ol 

 Spartacus threatened the very existence of the state. During this 

 turbulent period Cicero persevered in a close attendance upon the 

 forum, though none of the speeches which he then delivered have 

 been preserved, excepting those which relate to the prosecution 

 against Verres. Peducaeus had been succeeded, after one year's 

 government of Sicily, by Sacerdos, and he, after the same interval, by 

 Verres; for it was a principle of Roman policy to give to as many as 

 possible a share in the plunder of the provinces ; though occasionally 

 superior influence, not the merit of the individual, led to a con- 

 tinuance of his government for two or even three years. Such was 

 the case with Verres, who during three years made the Sicilians feel 

 all those evils in their worst form which the Roman principles of pro- 

 vincial administration in bad bands were so well calculated to produce. 

 Cicero had many difficulties to overcome in his endeavours to subject 

 the criminal to the punishment of his crimes. In the first place the 

 judices (jury), under the law of Sulla, would consist exclusively of 

 teuntor* ; that is, of those who had a direct interest in protecting 

 provincial mal-adminiatration. Moreover, at the very outset there 

 started up a rival in one Ccecilius, who had been quaestor under Verres, 

 and claimed a preference to Cicero in the task of impeaching him. A 

 previous suit, technically called a divinatio, was necessary to decide 

 between the rival prosecutors. Cicero succeeded in convincing the 

 jury that his opponent's object was, to use another technical term, pre- 

 raricatio, that is, to screen the criminal by a sham prosecution. This 

 previous point being settled in his favour, he made a voyage to Sicily to 

 examine witnesses and collect facts to support the indictment, taking 

 his cousin Lucius Cicero to assist him. Fifty days were spent in their 

 progress through the island, in which he had to encounter the oppo- 

 sition of the new praetor Metellus, who was endeavouring, with many 

 of the leading men at home, to defeat the prosecution. On his return 

 to Rome he found it necessary to guard against all the arts of delay 

 which interest or money could procure for the purpose of postponing 

 the trial to the next year, when Hortenstus and Metellus were to be 

 consuls, and Metellus's brother one of the praetors, in which character 

 he might have presided as judge on the trial. Cicero was induced 

 therefore to waive the privilege of employing twenty days in the 

 accusation ; and a single speech on the 5th of August, followed by 

 an examination of his witnesses and the production of documentary 

 evidence, produced an impression so unfavourable to Verres that even 

 his advocate Hortcnsiua was abashed, and Verres went forthwith into 

 exile. 



The five other speeches against Verres, in which Cicero enters into 

 the details of his charges, were never actually spoken, if we may 

 believe the commentator upon these orations who passes under the 

 name of Asconius but were written subsequently at his leisure, 

 partly perhaps to substantiate his charges before the public, but still 

 more as specimens of what he could do in the character of an accuser, 

 which he did not often sustain. 



Though a verdict was given against Verres by the jury of senators, 

 yet the past misconduct of that order in their judicial capacity had 

 been EO glaring that the public indignation called for the election of 

 censors, whose office had slept for some years ; and the magistrates so 

 appointed erased from the roll of the senate sixty-four of that body, 

 expressly on the ground of judicial corruption. To remedy the evil 

 for the future a new law was passed, at the suggestion of the praetor 

 Aurelins Cotta, hence called the lex Aurelia, by which the equites 

 (knights) and certain of the commoners (trioant nrarii) were asso- 

 ciated with the senators in the constitution of public juries. It was 

 subsequent to the enactment of this law that Cicero made the speeches 

 in defence of Q. Roscius, M. Fonteius, and A. Ctecina. The first of 

 these was the celebrated actor, whose name has since become pro- 

 verbial. The suit grew out of a compensation which had been made 

 for the death of a slave, whom Roscius bad educated in his own 

 profession. M. Fonteius was the object of a prosecution for extortion 

 and peculation (de repetundit) in the province of Qallia Transalpine, 

 and must have been guilty, if we may judge from the fragments of 

 bis advocate's speech which have come down to us. The cause of 

 Ciecina was of a private nature, and turned entirely upon dry points 

 of law. The sedileship of Cicero (B.C. 69) had little of that magni- 

 ficence which was so commonly displayed in this office, but it gave the 

 Sicilians an opportunity of showing their gratitude to the prosecutor 

 of Verre, by supplies for the public festivals. After an interval of 

 two years, Cicero entered upon the office of praetor (B.c. 66), and it 

 fell opportunely to bis lot to preside in the court of extortion a court 

 especially provided against that ordinary offence in the administration 



of the provinces. The year of Cicero's praetorship was marked by the 

 conviction of Licinius Macer, in opposition to the influence of his 

 kinsman Crassus. But the most remarkable event in his prsetorship 

 was the passing of the Mauilian law, by which the command of the 

 war against Mithridates was transferred to Pompey, whose claims 

 Cicero supported in a speech which still remains. It was in this year 

 too that he defended Cluentius. This speech likewise exists, and gives 

 a sad spectacle of the uncertainty of life and property at this period. 

 Before the close of his praetorship he betrothed his daughter Tullia, 

 who could not have been more than ten years old, to C. Piso Frugi. 

 She was at present his only child, for his son Marcus was not born 

 until the middle of the following year, which was also the birth-year 

 of Horace. 



On the expiration of his office he declined the government of a 

 province, which was the usual reward of that magistracy, preferring 

 to employ his best efforts at home towards the attainment at the 

 proper period of the consular office. This was perhaps his chief 

 object in undertaking the defence of C. Cornelius, the tribune of the 

 preceding year, against a charge of treason, which was supported by 

 the whole influence of the aristocracy. The guilt of Cornelius con- 

 sisted in his energetic and successful support of the law against 

 bribery in elections, called the Lex Acilia-Calpurnia. Cicero pub- 

 lished two orations spoken in this cause, the loss of which is the more 

 to be regretted as they were reckoned amongst the most finished of 

 his compositions, both by others and by himself. The return of 

 Atticus from Athens at this time was most opportune to his friend 

 Cicero, who looked upon the following year (B.O. 64) as the most 

 critical in his life ; and Atticus being intimately connected with the 

 influential men of the aristocratic party, could give essential assist- 

 ance to a new man, as the phrase was, against six candidates, two of 

 whom were of patrician blood, while the fathers or ancestors of all 

 had already filled public magistracies. Cicero's father just lived to 

 witness the election of his son to the highest office in the state. 



From this point the life of Cicero is the history of the times. Of 

 the orations he made in the year of his consulate he has himself given 

 a list in a letter to Atticus. 



On the kalends of January, immediately upon his assuming the con- 

 sular robes, he attacked a tribune, P. Servilius Rullus, who had a few 

 days before given notice of an Agrarian law. Of this speech, which 

 was addressed to the senate, there exists a considerable fragment, 

 and enough to show that Cicero was already prepared to attach him- 

 self to the aristocratic party, whereas up to this time his political life 

 had been of an opposite complexion. His panegyrist, Middleton, 

 seems to acknowledge the change, and attributes his past conduct to 

 that necessity by which the candidates for office were forced, in the 

 subordinate magistracies, to practise all the arts of popularity, and to 

 look forward to the consulship as the end of this subjection. Before 

 the people indeed, to whom he. addressed two speeches upon the same 

 subject, Cicero still wore the popular mask ; and while he expressed 

 his approbation of the principle of Agrarian laws, and pronounced a 

 panegyric on the two Gracchi, he artfully opposed the particular law 

 in question on the ground that the bill of Rullus created commissioners 

 with despotic powers that might endanger the liberties of Rome, and 

 he prevailed upon one of the other tribunes to put his veto upon the 

 bill. In the defence of Rabirius, who was charged with the murder of 

 the tribune Saturninus three-and-thirty years before, he goes so far as 

 bo maintain the right of the senate to place Rome in a state of siege, 

 if we may borrow a modern term, or, in other words, to suspend all 

 the laws which protect the lives of citizens ; yet in the same speech he 

 endeavours to curry favour with the people by heaping the highest 

 praises on their favourite Marius. Rabirius had already been con- 

 victed by the judges appointed to investigate the charge, but appealed, 

 as the law allowed him, to the people, who accordingly assembled in 

 the Field of Mars to hear the appeal While the trial was proceeding, 

 it was observed that the flag upon the Jauiculum on the other side of 

 the Tiber was lowered. This of necessity broke up the assembly, 

 according to an old law which was made when the limits of the 

 Roman empire extended only a few miles from the city, and was 

 ntended to protect the citizens from beiug surprised by the enemy. 

 The object of this law had long passed away, but Roman superstition 

 still maintained the useless ceremony, and the aristocratic party 

 employed it on the present occasion in the hands of Metellus the 

 praetor to annul the proceedings of justice. The orations in which 

 IB defended Otho against the populace, who were enraged at his law 

 'or setting apart special seats in the theatre for the order of the 

 mights, and that in which he opposed the restoration of their civil 

 rights to the sons of those who had been proscribed by Sulla, were 

 also delivered this year, but nothing remains of them. Of the con- 

 spiracy against Catiline, and the several speeches which were mads by 

 Jicero in relation to him, it is unnecessary to say more than will be 

 bund under the head CATrLiNA. 



Two other causes, in which Cicero's services as an advocate were 

 called forth during this year, were those in which he defended C. 

 ?alpurnius Piso, the consul of B.o. 67, and L. Murena, the consul 

 elect. The oration in defence of Piso is not extant, but it appears 

 ;hat the prosecution was for extortion in his government of Cisalpine 

 Jaul, and was maintained at the instance of Caesar. Cicero, in a 

 speech made on a subsequent occasion, seems to admit the guilt of 



