CICKKO 



ri< HOKUM 



249 



voluntary exile. Cicero was now a nower in the 

 state, ninl hi- rise up tlie official laduer wan sure 

 and rapid : in (ki li.c. he waH pnvtor, and Hiip|M>rted 

 in a great political sjK'ech (I'm /.// .Mnmlm) the 

 appointment of 1'omiKjy to the conduct of the war 

 \\itli Mithiidaie-. which in fact curried with it the 

 supieme control of Asia and of tlie Kast. In 63 B.C., 

 at the age of forty-four, he was consul, the highest 

 dignity attainalile to a Koinaii ; in that memorable 

 \earhe foiled, by a Imld promptitude, tlie revolu 

 ticinary plot of Catiline, in which many distinguished 

 Romans Cuar, it WRH even .said, among them 

 were implicated. He was now at the height of his 

 lame; 'father of his country' he was actually 

 tailed ; for a brief space he was with all classes the 

 great man of the day. But the tide soon turned ; 

 ( 'icero might have saved the country, but in saving 

 it, it was said, he had violated the constitution, 

 according to which a Roman citizen could not be 

 capitally punished but bv the sentence of the 

 people in regular assembly. As it was, Roman 

 citizens guilty of complicity with Catiline had, at 

 Cicero's instigation, been put to death simply by 

 an order of the senate ; this, it was said, was a 

 dangerous precedent, and Cicero must be held 

 responsible for it. His bitter enemy, Clodius, 

 now tribune, pressed the charge against him in 

 inflammatory speeches specially addressed to the 

 lowest class ot citizens, and Cicero in despair left 

 Rome in 58 B.C., and took refuge at Thessalonica. 

 That same year saw 'the father of his country' con- 

 demned to exile by a vote of the Roman people, 

 and his house at Rome and his country houses at 

 Formia? and Tusculum plundered and ruined. 



But in those revolutionary days the events of 

 one year were reversed by those of the next ; in 

 57 B.C., with new consuls and new tribunes, the 

 people almost unanimously voted the recall of the 

 exile, and Cicero was welcomed back to Rome 

 amid an outburst of popular enthusiasm. But he 

 was no longer a power in the world of politics ; 

 he could not see his way clearly ; and he was so 

 nervously sensitive to the fluctuations of public 

 opinion that he could not decide between Pompey 

 and the aristocracy on one hand, and Civsar and 

 the new democracy on the other. His leanings 

 had hitherto been towards Pompey and the senate 

 and the old republic ; but as time went on he felt 

 that Pompey was a half-hearted man, who could 

 not be trusted, and that he would have ultimately 

 to succumb to his far abler and \nore far-sighted 

 rival, Ca'sar. The result was that he lost the 

 esteem of both parties, and came to be regarded as 

 a mere trimmer and time-server. There was all 

 that political indecision about him which may be 

 often observed in eminent lawyers and men of 

 letters. The age wanted strong men such as 

 Cajsar ; this Cicero certainly was not. He was 

 gentle, amiable, very clever, and highly cultivated, 

 but the last man in the world to succeed in politics. 



The later years of his life were spent chiefly 

 in pleading at the bar and in writing essays. In 

 52 B.C. he composed one of his finest speeches in 

 ( defence of Milo, who had killed Clodius in a riot, 

 ' and was then standing for the consulship: in this 

 he was acting quite against the wishes of Pompey. 

 In the following year (51-50 B.C.) he was in .Wa. 

 as governor of the province of Cilicia, and here the 

 best side of his character showed itself in his just 

 and sympathetic treatment of the provincials. In 

 49-48 B.C. he was with Pompey 's army in Greece 

 to fight for the old cause, of which, however, he 

 well-nigh despaired, and after the decisive battle of 

 Pharsalia, at which he was not present, he threw 

 himself on the conqueror's mercy. ( 'a-sar, who had 

 certainly nothing to fear from him, received him 

 kindly, and was a great friend to him from that 

 day ; but Cicero was not a happy man now that 



he could no longer make speeches in the senate or 

 in the courts; to all thin Cu*ar's victory hail for 

 the time at least put an end. In the years 46, 45, 

 and 44 B.C. he wrote most of his chief works on 

 rhetoric and philosophy, living in retirement and 

 brooding mournfully over hi griefs ami disappoint 

 raents. In 43 B.C., the year after Cuftar'g death, he 

 had once again the delight of having his eloquence 

 applauded by the senate. In that year his famous 

 speeches against Antony Philippics, as he called 

 tliem after the title of Demosthenes' orations 

 against Philip of Macedon were delivered. These 

 co-i him his life. As soon as Antony, Octavius 

 (afterwards the emperor Augustus), and Lepidus 

 had leagued themselves together in the so-called 

 triumvirate for the settlement of the state, they 

 followed the precedent of fonner revolutions and 

 published a proscription-list of their political 

 enemies. All such were outlawed and given up tx> 

 destruction. Cicero's name was in the fatal list. 

 Old and feeble, he fled to his villa at Formije, 

 pursued by the soldiers of Antony, and was over- 

 taken by them as he was being carried in a litter 

 down to the shore, where it had been his intention 

 to embark. With a calm courage, which (to quote 

 Macaulay's words) ' has half redeemed his fame,' he 

 put his head out of the litter and bade the murderers 

 strike. He died in the December of 43 B.C., in the 

 sixty-third year of his age. 



As an orator and a j>leader Cicero undoubtedly 

 stands in the first rank. Many of his speeches 

 have come down to us. Of these the most famous 

 and perhaps the finest are his speeches against Verres 

 and against Catiline. Eloquence in those days of 

 furious faction and revolution was a greater force 

 than it is with us. As a politician he failed 

 lecause he did not distinctly realise to himself that 

 the old republic, the government of the senate and 

 of the nobles, had l>een tried and had been found 

 wanting. He had not the courage to face the great 

 changes which he felt were impending. Pompey, 

 the champion of the old order, was not a leader to 

 whom he could look up with confidence. And so 

 he wavered, and half acquiesced in Cesar's triumph, 

 even though he suspected that with that triumph the 

 Rome which he had known and loved would pass 

 away. To us it is as an essayist and as the writer 

 of a multitude of letters to friends, full of miscel- 

 laneous information, that Cicero is particularly 

 attractive ; there is a gracefulness and refinement 

 and elevation of tone alnnit his writings which 

 cannot fail to incline the reader to say with 

 Erasmus, ' I feel a better man for reading Cicero.' 

 His essays on 'old age,' and 'on friendship,' his 

 De Officiis or ' whole duty of man,' are good and 

 pleasant reading such as we can all enioy ; and his 

 more abstruse writings on philosophy, his Tuseulan 

 disputations, his treatises on the ' nature of the 

 gods,' and on the 'true ends of human life' (De 

 Finuntt) t if they do not show any very original 

 thought, at least give us an insight into the teach- 

 ings of t,he ancient philosophical schools. 



The best edition of Cicero's works is by Baiter and 

 Kayser(1869), of his Epistles by Tyrrell ((> vols. 1X79-99); 

 and the best Cicero lexicon Merguet's (Jena, 1877-84). 

 See also works by Middleton (1741), Forsvth (1864), 

 Jeens (1880), Trollope (1880), Lucas Collins (1871), 

 Teuffel (1889), Weissenfels (1892), Strachan-Davidson 

 (1894), and Gaston Boissier (trans. 1897). 



Cicero'n^ (from Cicero, 'the orator' or 

 'speaker'), a name given by the Italians to the 

 guides who show travellers the antiquities of the 

 country. Cicerones are to be found of all degree- 

 of knowledge or respectability, from distinguished 

 local archaeologists to the humble Im/nais de place, 

 who, though quite indisj>ensa.ble on a first arrival, 

 is too often both incompetent and dishonest. 



Cicho'riuiii. See CHICORY and ENDIVE. 



