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CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. 



CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. 



242 



college of priests discharged the ground from the claims of religion, 

 the consuls should make a contract for rebuilding the house. The 

 pontifical college was accordingly summoned to hear the cause on the 

 last day of September, and Cicero personally addressed them in a 

 speech which he himself considered one of his happiest efforts, and 

 which he thought it a duty to place as a specimen of eloquence in the 

 hands of the Roman youth. The speech however, which now occupies 

 a place among his works under the title ' Pro Domo sua apud Pon- 

 tifices,' as well as those bearing the names of ' De Haruspicum 

 Response, post Reditum in Seuatu,' and ' Ad Quirites post Reditum,' 

 all professing to have been delivered during this year, have been 

 pronounced by the ablest critics to be spurious. The college gave a 

 verdict in terms somewhat evasive; but the senate concluded the 

 matter by a distinct vote in Cicero's favour, and the consuls imme- 

 diately put the decree in execution by estimating the damage which 

 had been done to Cicero's property. In this estimate his villas near 

 Tusculum and Formise were included. But the estimation was far 

 below what Cicero thought himself entitled to, and he attributed this 

 injustice to tlie jealousy of the aristocracy, who, as they had formerly 

 clipped his wings, so were now unwilling that they should grow again. 

 Scarcely had the house upon the Palatine begun to rise, when a mob, 

 instigated, according to Cicero, by Clodius, attacked the workmen, and 

 afterwards set fire to the adjoining house, in which his brother Quintus 

 lived. This riot was only one of many which at this time disgraced 

 the city. Milo, as well as Clodius, had his armed bands, and was 

 avowedly seeking for an opportunity of murdering Clodius; while 

 Cicero himself appears as a party in a forcible attack upon the Capitol 

 for the purpose of destroying or carrying off the brazen tablets on 

 which the law of his exile had been engraved. One of those who 

 took an active part in the disturbances was P. Sextius, who in his 

 tribunate had been instrumental in the restoration of Cicero. He was 

 brought to trial for these disturbances the following year, when Cicero, 

 in gratitude, undertook his defence, and obtained au acquittal ; and, 

 not satisfied with a mere verdict, he the next day made a furious 

 attack in the senate upon a senator, Vatinius, who had been one of the 

 chief witnesses against Sextius. Cicero was less fortunate in his 

 defence of L. Calpurnius Bestia, who was prosecuted about the same 

 time for bribery in the last election of praetors. In the same year he 

 gratified his powerful friends Pompey and Caesar by appearing as the 

 advocate of L. Cornelius Balbus, a native of Gades, who had received 

 the citizenship of Rome. The legality of his franchise was the subject- 

 matter of the trial. It is somewhat strange to find Cicero so closely 

 allied as he was at this time with Caesar, on whom he had showered 

 his abuse on nearly every occasion ; but the fact and the disgrace of it 

 are acknowledged by himself repeatedly in his letters to his friend 

 Atticus. " It is a bitter pill," says he, " and I have been long swallow- 

 ing it, but farewell now to honour and patriotism." There exist two 

 other speeches delivered by him during the same year : one of these 

 was in the senate, on the annual debate about the appointments to 

 the provinces, and he employed the opportunity thus afforded in a 

 furious attack on the private lives and public conduct of Piso and 

 Qabinius, who had been the consuls at the time of his exile, and had 

 assisted his enemy Clodius, and recommended their recall from the 

 provinces they were then governing. He concluded his harangue by 

 defending his alliance with Caesar. The other speech just referred to 

 was made in defence of Ciclius, a man who by his open profligacy and 

 unprincipled conduct was notorious even among his countrymen. He 

 was charged with the crime of procuring the murder of an ambassador 

 from Alexandria, and also of attempting to poison a sister of Clodius. 

 Caelius was acquitted, and lived for many years on most intimate terms 

 with Cicero ; indeed the letters that passed between them constitute a 

 whole book in hU miscellaneous correspondence. On the return of 

 Piso from his government of Macedonia, at the beginning of the 

 following year, he complained of the attack which had been made 

 upon him by Cicero in the debate about the provinces. Cicero replied 

 to him in another invective, more violent than the former. One would 

 hope that the speech purporting to have been spoken on this occasion 

 was not genuine ; for if it is, no one can read it without awarding to 

 Cicero the prize among orators for coarseness and personality ; and in 

 fact ho takes credit to himself, in his treatise on the perfect orator 

 (' De Oratore '), for his invective powers. 



In the spring of the following year be commenced the treatise on 

 politics (' Ue Republica '), the loss of which the learned had long 

 regretted, when Angelo Maio, in 1823, discovered a considerable 



1 portion of it iu the Vatican library. The manuscript, which is of 

 parchment, contained a treatise on the Psalms, in a small distinct 

 character ; but Maio perceived underneath traces of a larger type, in 

 which he soon recognised the style of Cicero, and the matter, nay even 

 the title of the ' Ue Republica.' But to return to the narrative, the 

 greater part of the year B.C. 54 was employed by Cicero in his usual 

 occupation of defending the accused. "Not a day passes," says he, 

 in a letter to hU brother, " without my appearing in defence of some 

 one." Among otherf, he defended Messius, one of Caesar's lieutenants, 

 who was summoned from Gaul to take his trial ; then Drusus, who 

 was accused of prevarication, or undertaking a cause with the intention 

 of betraying it; after that, Vatinius, the last year's praetor, and 

 .Kinilius Scaurus, one of the consular candidates at the time, who was 

 accused of peculation iu the province of Sardinia ; about the same time 



likewise his old friend Cn. Plancius, who had received him so gene- 

 rously in his exile, and being now chosen sodile, was accused by n 

 disappointed competitor of bribery and corruption. All these were, 

 as usual, acquitted ; but the orations are lost, excepting the one which 

 he delivered iu favour of Plancius, and a considerable fragment of 

 that for Scaurus. This fragment is another of the discoveries of Maio, 

 who found it in the year 1814, with some other fragments of Cicero's 

 orations, in the Ambrosian library at Milan. As was the case with the 

 ' De Republica,' the text of Cicero had been obliterated as much as 

 possible from the parchment to make room for the Latin poem of 

 the Christian writer Sedulius. Cicero's undertaking the defence of 

 Vatinius, who had been always intimately allied with Cfcsar, and on 

 that account had on more than one occasion been the object of 

 Cicero's abuse, his personal deformity being a favourite topic of raillery 

 with the orator, at once surprised and offended the aristocratic party. 

 They did not conceal from him their disgust, and Cicero found it 

 necessary to make what defence he could of his political tergiversation 

 in a long and ably written letter to his friend Lentulus Spinther, who 

 was then governor of Cilicia (' Ad Fam.' i., 9). The compliment of an 

 epic poem addressed to Caesar was another proof of the change in his 

 political views ; but a still more decisive piece of evidence is furnished 

 by his conduct in relation to Gabinius, who returned at this time from 

 his government of Syria, and was immediately overwhelmed with 

 public prosecutions. Cicero had not forgotten that Gabinius, as one 

 of the consuls at the time of his exile, had supported his enemy 

 Clodius ; and he had openly avowed his opinion of his crimes in Syria 

 crimes, too, which, if we may believe Cicero, included murder, pecu- 

 lation, and treason, in every form ; but he was willing to sacrifice both 

 his public and his private feelings at the intercession of Pompey. In 

 the first trial he was called as a witness against Gabinius, but had the 

 prudence to put his evidence in such a form as to give the highest 

 satisfaction to the accused. In the second he became still bolder, and 

 appeared as his advocate, but was unable to save him from conviction, 

 fine, and banishment The speech delivered by Cicero is not extant, 

 and probably was never published. There is preserved however the 

 speech made by him on the trial of C. Rabirius Postumus, which was 

 an appendix to that of Gabinius. The whole estate of the latter had 

 proved insufficient to answer the damages in which he had been cast ; 

 and the Roman law, in such a case, gave the right of following any 

 money illegally obtained to the parties into whose hands it had passed. 

 Rabirius had acted at Alexandria as the agent of Gabinius with Ptole- 

 maeus, and in that capacity was said to have received part of the ten 

 thousand talents which the king had paid the Roman general as the 

 price of his services. As this trial followed closely upon the pre- 

 ceding, and was so intimately connected with it, the prosecutors 

 could not spare the opportunity of rallying Cicero for the part 

 which he had acted. In the end of the year Cicero consented to be 

 one of Pompey's lieutenants in Spain, and was preparing to set out 

 thither, when he was induced to abandon the appointment, on per- 

 ceiving from his brother's letters, who was at that time serving in Gallia, 

 that such a step would probably give umbrage to Caesar, for the recent 

 death of Julia had already broken the chief link which held Caesar and 

 Pompey together. At the beginning of the following year, news 

 was received of the death of Crassus and his son Publius, with the 

 total defeat of his army by the Parthians. By the death of young 

 C'rassus a place became vacant in the college of augurs, for which 

 Cicero declared himself a candidate, and being nominated by Pompey 

 and Hortensius, was chosen with the unanimous approbation of the 

 whole college. This appointment had been for some years the 

 highest object of Cicero's ambition ; and the addition to his dignity 

 was of service to him at this time, as ho was putting forth all his 

 influence to further the election of his friend Milo to the consulate. 

 The constant disturbances in the city prevented the comitia from 

 being held until the year was closed, and in the middle of January 

 the murder of Clodius by one of Milo's gladiators, in the presence, 

 and at the command too, of his master, placed Milo in a different 

 position. The fury of the people at the death of their favourite 

 broke ont in the most violent excesses, which were only aggra- 

 vated by the endeavours of Milo's powerful friends to screen him 

 from punishment. These disturbances were at last quieted by the 

 appointment of Pompey to the consulship, who was armed too with 

 extraordinary powers by the senate, and finally Milo was brought 

 to trial, condemned in spite of Cicero's eloquence, and banished from 

 Italy. Cicero is said to have been so alarmed on the occasion, by 

 the presence of the military whom Pompey had stationed around the 

 court to prevent any violence, that his usual powers failed him ; and 

 indeed the speech which is found among his works, under the title 

 of the defence of Milo, is very far from being that which he 

 actually delivered. In the two trials of Saufeius, one of Milo's confi- 

 dants, which grew out of the same affair, Cicero was more successful ; 

 and he had soon after some amends for the loss of his friend in the 

 condemnation of two of the tribunes, who had been their common 

 enemies, for the part they had taken in the late commotions. One of 

 these, T. Munatius Plancus, Cicero himself prosecuted, which is the 

 only exception, besides that of Verres, to the principle which he laid 

 down for himself of never acting the part of an accuser. It appears 

 to have been sood after the death of Clodius that Cicero wrote his 

 treatise 'On Laws' ('Do Legibus'), three books of which are still 



