Part 13

Wilkinson is the best authority pertaining to Egyptian armies. The highest authority in relation to the construction of an army is Polybius, contemporary with Scipio, when Roman discipline was most perfect. The eighth chapter of Livy is also very much prized. Salmasius and Lepsius wrote learned treatises. Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, Dion Cassius, Pliny, and Caesar reveal incidentally much that we wish to know, the last giving us the liveliest idea of the military habits and tactics of the Romans. Gibbon gives some important facts. The subject of ancient machines is treated by Folard's Commentary attached to his translation of Polybius. Josephus describes with great vividness the siege of Jerusalem. Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities is full of details in everything pertaining to the weapons, the armor, the military engines, the rewards and punishments of the soldiers. The articles "Exercitus," in Smith's Dictionary, and "Army," in the Encyclopedia Britannica, give a practical summary of the best writers.

CICERO.

106-43 B.C.

ROMAN LITERATURE.

Marcus Tullius Cicero is one of the great lights of history, because his genius and influence were directed to the conservation of what was most precious in civilization among the cultivated nations of antiquity.

He was not a warrior, like so many of the Roman Senators, but his excellence was higher than that of a conqueror. "He was doomed, by his literary genius, to an immortality," and was confessedly the most prominent figure in the political history of his time, next to Caesar and Pompey. His influence was greater than his power, reaching down to our time; and if his character had faults, let us remember that he was stained by no crimes and vices, in an age of violence and wickedness. Until lately he has received almost unmixed praise. The Fathers of the Church revered him. To Erasmus, as well as to Jerome and Augustine, he was an oracle.

In presenting this immortal benefactor, I have no novelties to show. Novelties are for those who seek to upturn the verdicts of past ages by offering something new, rather than what is true.

Cicero was born B.C. 106, in the little suburban town of Arpinum, about fifty miles from Rome,--the town which produced Marius. The period of his birth was one of marked national prosperity. Great military roads were built, which were a marvel of engineering skill; canals were dug; sails whitened the sea; commerce was prosperous; the arts of Greece were introduced, and its literature also; elegant villas lined the shores of the Mediterranean; pictures and statues were indefinitely multiplied,--everything indicated an increase of wealth and culture. With these triumphs of art and science and literature, we are compelled to notice likewise a decline in morals. Money had become the god which everybody worshipped. Religious life faded away; there was a general eclipse of faith. An Epicurean life produced an Epicurean philosophy. Pleasure-seeking was universal, and even revolting in the sports of the Amphitheatre. Sensualism became the convertible word for utilities. The Romans were thus rapidly "advancing" to a materialistic millennium,--an outward progress of wealth and industries, but an inward decline in "those virtues on which the strength of man is based," accompanied with seditions among the people, luxury and pride among the nobles, and usurpations on the part of successful generals,--when Cicero began his memorable career.

He was well-born, but not of noble ancestors. The great peculiarity of his youth was his precocity. He was an intellectual prodigy,--like Pitt, Macaulay, and Mill. Like them, he had a wonderful memory. He early mastered the Greek language; he wrote poetry, studied under eminent professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into the mazes of literature and philosophy. He was conscious of his marvellous gifts, and was, of course, ambitious of distinction.

There were only three ways at Rome in which a man could rise to eminence and power. One was by making money, like army contractors and merchants, such as the Equites, to whose ranks he belonged; the second was by military service; and the third by the law,--an honorable profession. Like Caesar, a few years younger than he, Cicero selected the law. But he was a new man,--not a patrician, as Caesar was,--and had few powerful friends. Hence his progress was not rapid in the way of clients. He was twenty-five years of age before he had a case. He was twenty-seven when he defended Roscius, which seems to have brought him into notice,--even as the fortune of Erskine was made in the Greenwich Hospital case and that of Daniel Webster in the case of Dartmouth College. To have defended Roscius against all the influence of Sulla, then the most powerful man in Rome, was considered bold and audacious. His fame for great logical power rests on his defence of Milo,--the admiration of all lawyers.

Cicero was not naturally robust. His figure was tall and spare, his neck long and slender, and his mouth anything but sensual. He looked more like an elegant scholar than a popular public speaker. Yet he was impetuous, ardent, and fiery, like Demosthenes, resorting to violent gesticulations. The health of such a young man could not stand the strain on his nervous system, and he was obliged to leave Rome for recreation; he therefore made the tour of Greece and Asia Minor, which every fashionable and cultivated man was supposed to do. Yet he did not abandon himself to the pleasures of cities more fascinating than Rome itself, but pursued his studies in rhetoric and philosophy under eminent masters, or "professors" as we should now call them. He remained abroad two years, returning when he was thirty years of age and settling down in his profession, taking at first but little part in politics. He married Terentia, with whom he lived happily for thirty years.

But the Roman lawyer was essentially a politician, looking ultimately to political office, since only through the great public offices could he enter the Senate,--the object of ambition to all distinguished Romans, as a seat in Parliament is the goal of an Englishman. The Roman lawyer did not receive fees, like modern lawyers, but derived his support from presents and legacies. When he became a political leader, a man of influence with the great, his presents were enormous. Cicero acknowledged, late in life, to have received what would now be equal to more than a million of dollars from legacies alone. The great political leaders and orators were the stipendiaries of Eastern princes and nobles who wanted favors from the Senate, and who knew as well how to reward such services as do the railway kings in our times.

Before Cicero, then, could be a Senator, he must pass through those great public offices which were in the gift of the people. The first step on the ladder of advancement was the office of quaestor, which entailed the duty of collecting revenues in one of the provinces. This office he was sufficiently influential to secure, being sent to Sicily, where he distinguished himself for his activity and integrity. At the end of a year he renewed his practice in the courts at Rome,--being hardly anything more than a mere lawyer for five years, when he was elected an Aedile, to whom the care of the public buildings was intrusted.

It was while he was aedile-elect that Cicero appeared as the public prosecutor of Verres. This was one of the great cases of antiquity, and the one from which the orator's public career fairly dates. His residence in Sicily had prepared him for this duty; and he secured the conviction of this great criminal, whose peculations and corruptions would amaze our modern New Yorkers and all the "rings" of our great cities combined. But the Praetor of Sicily was a provincial governor,--more like Warren Hastings than Tweed. For this public service Cicero gained more éclat than Burke did for his prosecution of Hastings; since Hastings, though a corrupt man, laid, after Clive, the foundation of the English empire in India, and was a man of immense talents,--greater than those of any who has since filled his place. Hence the nation screened Hastings. But Verres had no virtues and no great abilities; he was an outrageous public robber, and hoped, from his wealth and powerful connections, to purchase immunity for his crimes. In the hands of such an orator as Cicero he could not escape the penalty of the law, powerful as he was, even at Rome. This case placed Cicero above Hortensius, hitherto the leader of the Roman bar.

It was at this period that the extant correspondence of Cicero began, which is the best picture we have of the manners and habits of the Roman aristocracy at the time. History could scarcely spare those famous letters, especially to Atticus, in which also the private life and character of Cicero shine to the most advantage, revealing no vices, no treacheries,--only egotism, vanity, and vacillation, and a way that some have of speaking about people in private very differently from what they say in public, which looks like insincerity. In these letters Cicero appears as a very frank man, genial, hospitable, domestic, witty, whose society and conversation must have been delightful. In no modern correspondence do we see a higher perfection in the polished courtesies and urbanities of social life, with the alloy of vanity, irony, and discontent. But in these letters he also evinces a friendship which is immortal; and what is nobler than the capacity of friendship? In these he not only shines as a cultivated scholar, but as a great statesman and patriot, living for the good of his country, though not unmindful of the luxuries of home and the charms of country retirement, and those enjoyments which are ever associated with refined and favored life. We read here of pictures, books, medals, statues, curiosities of every kind, all of which adorned his various villas, as well as his magnificent palace on Mount Palatine, which cost him what would be equal in our money to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To keep up this town house, and some fifteen villas in different parts of Italy, and to feast the greatest nobles, like Pompey and Caesar, would imply that his income was enormous, much greater than that of any modern professional man. And yet he seems to have lived, like Bacon and our Webster, beyond his income, and was in debt the greater part of his life,--another flaw in his character; for I do not wish to paint him without faults, but only as a good as well as a great man, for his times. His private character was as lofty as that of Chatham or Canning,--if we could forget his vanity, which after all is not so offensive as the intellectual pride of Burke and Pitt, and of sundry other great lights who might be mentioned, conscious of their gifts and attainments. There is something very different in the egotism of a silly and self-seeking aristocrat from that of a great benefactor who has something to be proud of, and with whose private experiences the greatest national deeds are connected. I speak of this fault because it has been handled too severely by modern critics. What were the faults of Cicero, compared with those of Theodosius or Constantine, to say nothing of his contemporaries, like Caesar, before whom so much incense has been burned?

At the age of forty Cicero became Praetor, or Supreme Judge. This office, when it expired, entitled him to a provincial government,--the great ultimate ambition of a senator; since the administration of a province, even for a single year, usually secured an enormous fortune. But this tempting offer he resigned, since he felt he could not be spared from Rome in such a crisis of public affairs, when the fortunate generals were grasping power and the demagogues were almost preparing the way for despotism. Some might say he was a far-sighted and ambitious statesman, who could not afford to weaken his chances of being made Consul by absence from the capital.

This great office, the consulship, the highest in the gift of the people,--which gave supreme executive control,--was rarely conferred, although elective, upon any but senators of ancient family and enormous wealth. It was as difficult for a "new man" to reach this dignity, under an aristocratic Constitution, as for a commoner a hundred years ago to become prime minister of England. Transcendent talents and services scarcely sufficed. Only generals who had won great military fame, or the highest of the nobles, stood much chance. For a lawyer to aim at the highest office in the State, without a great family to back him, would have been deemed as audacious as for such a man as Burke to aspire to a seat in the cabinet during the reign of George III. A lawyer at Rome, like a lawyer in London, might become a lord chancellor or praetor, but not easily a prime minister: he would be defeated by aristocratic influence and jealousies. Although the people had the right of election, they voted at the dictation of those who had money and power. Yet Cicero obtained the consulship, probably with the aid of senators, which he justly regarded as a great triumph. It was a very unusual thing. It was more marvellous than for a Jew to reign in Great Britain, or, like Mordecai, in the court of a Persian king.

The most distinguished service of Cicero as consul was to ferret out the conspiracy of Catiline. Now, this traitor belonged to the very highest rank in a Senate of nobles; he was like an ancient duke in the British House of Peers. It was no easy thing for a plebeian consul to bring to justice so great a culprit. He was more formidable than Essex in the reign of Elizabeth, or Bassompierre in the time of Richelieu. He was a man of profligate life, but of marked ability and boundless ambition. He had a band of numerous and faithful followers, armed and desperate. He was also one of those oily and aristocratic demagogues who bewitch the people,--not, as in our times, by sophistries, but by flatteries. He was as debauched as Mirabeau, but without his patriotism, though like him he aimed to overturn the Constitution by allying himself with the democracy. The people, whom he despised, he gained by his money and promises; and he had powerful confederates of his own rank, so that he was on the point of deluging Rome with blood, his aim being nothing less than the extermination of the Senate and the magistrates by assassination, and a general division of the public treasure, with personal assumption of public power.

But all his schemes were foiled by Cicero, who added unwearied activity to extraordinary penetration. For this great and signal service Cicero received the highest tribute the State could render. He was called the savior of his country; and he succeeded in staving off for a time the fall of his country's liberties. It was a mournful sight to him to see the ascendency which demagogues had already gained, since it betokened the approaching destruction of the Constitution, which, good or bad, was dear to him, and which as an aristocrat he sought to conserve.

Cicero's evil star was not Catiline, but Clodius,--another aristocratic demagogue whose crimes he exposed, although he failed to bring him to justice. Clodius was shielded by his powerful connections; and he was, besides, a popular favorite, as well as a petted scion of one of the greatest families. Clodius showed his hostility to Cicero, and sought revenge by artfully causing the people to pass or revive a law that whoever had inflicted capital punishment on a citizen without a trial should be banished. This seemed to the people to be a protection to their liberties. Now Cicero, when consul, had executed some of the conspirators associated with Catiline, for which he was called the savior of his country. But by the law which was now passed or revived by the influence of Clodius, Cicero was himself a culprit, and it would seem that all the influence of the Senate and his friends could not prevent his exile. He appealed to his friend Pompey, but Pompey turned a deaf ear; and also to Caesar, but Caesar was then outside the walls of the city in command of an army. In fact, both these generals wished him out of the way, although they equally admired and feared him; for each of them was bent on being the supreme ruler of Rome.

So it was permitted for the most illustrious patriot which Rome then held to go into exile. What a comment on the demoralization of the times! Here was the best, the most gifted, and the most accomplished man of the Republic,--a man who had rendered invaluable and acknowledged services, that man of consular dignity and one of the leaders of the Senate,--sent into inglorious banishment, on a mere technicality and for an act which saved the State. And the "magnanimous" Caesar and the "illustrious" Pompey allowed him to go! Where was salvation to a Republic which banished its savior, and for having saved it? The heart sickens over such a fact, although it occurred two thousand years ago. When the citizens of Rome saw that great man depart mournfully from among them, and to all appearance forever, for having rescued them from violence and slaughter, and by their own act,--they ought to have known that the days of the Republic were numbered. But this only a few far-seeing patriots felt. And not only was Cicero banished, but his palace was burned and his villas confiscated. He was not only disgraced, but ruined; he was an exile and a pauper. What a fall! What an unmerited treatment!

Very few people conceive what a dreadful punishment it was in Greece and Rome to be banished; or, as the formula went, "to be interdicted from fire and water,"--the sacred fire of the hearth, the lustral water which served for sacrifices. The exile was deprived of these by being forced to extinguish the hearth-fire,--the elemental, fundamental religion of a Greek and Roman. "He could not, deprived of this, hold property; having no longer a worship, he had no longer a family. He ceased to be a husband and father; his sons were no longer in his power, his wife was no longer his wife, and when he died he had not the right to be buried in the tombs of his ancestors."

Is it to be wondered at that even so good and great a man as Cicero should bitterly feel his disgrace and misfortunes? Is it surprising that, philosopher as he was, he should have given way to grief and despondency. He would have been more than human not to have lost his spirits and his hopes. How natural were grief and despair, in such complicated miseries, especially to a religious man! Chrysostom could support his exile with dignity; for Christianity had abolished the superstitions of Greece and Rome as to household gods. Cicero could not: he was not great enough for such a martyrdom. It is true we should have esteemed him higher, had he accepted his fate with resignation: no man should yield to despair. Had he been as old as Socrates, and had he accomplished his mission, possibly he would have shown more equanimity. But his work was not yet done. He was cut off in his prime and in the midst of usefulness from his home, his religion, his family, his honor, and his influence; he was utterly ruined. I think the critics make too much of the grief and misery of Cicero in his banishment. We may be disappointed that Cicero was not equal to his circumstances; but we need not be hard on him. My surprise is, not that he was overwhelmed with grief, but that he did not attempt to drown his grief in books and literature. His sole relief was in pathetic and unmanly letters.

The great injustice of this punishment naturally produced a reaction. Nor could the Romans afford to lose the services of their greatest orator. They also craved the excitement of his speeches, more thrilling and delightful than the performance of any actor. So he was recalled. Cicero ought to have anticipated this; it seems, however, he had that unfortunate temperament which favors alternate depression and exhilaration of spirits, without measure or reason.

His return was a triumph,--a grand ovation, an unbounded tribute to his vanity. His palace was rebuilt at the expense of the State, and his property was restored. His popularity was regained. In fact, his influence was never lost; and, because it was so great, his enemies wished him out of the way. He was one of the few who retain influence after they have lost power.

The excess of his joy on his restoration to home and friends and property and fame and position, was as great as the excess of his grief in his short exile. But this is a defect in temperament, in his mental constitution, rather than a flaw in his character. We could have wished more placidity and equanimity; but to condemn him because he was not great in everything is unjust.

On his return to Rome Cicero resumed his practice in the courts with greater devotion than ever. He was now past fifty years of age, in the prime of his strength and in the height of his forensic fame. But, notwithstanding his success and honors, his life was saddened by the growing dissensions between Caesar and Pompey, the decline of public spirit, and the approaching fall of the institutions in which he gloried. It was clear that one or the other of these fortunate generals would soon become the master of the Roman world, and that liberty was about to perish. His eloquence now became sad; he sings the death-song of departing glories; he wails his Jeremiads over the demoralization which was sweeping away not merely liberty, but religion, and extinguishing faith in the world. To console himself he retired to one of his beautiful villas and wrote that immortal essay, "De Oratore," which has come down to us entire. His literary genius now blazed equally with his public speeches in the Forum and in the Senate. Literature was his solace and amusement, not a source of profit, or probably of contemporary fame. He wrote treatises on the same principles that he talked with friends, or that Fra Angelico painted pictures. He renewed his attempts in poetry, but failed. His poetry is in the transcendent rhythm of his prose compositions, like that of Madame de Staël, and Macaulay, and Rousseau.

But he was dragged from his literary and forensic life to accept the office of a governor of a province. It was forced upon him,--an honor to him without a charm. Had he been venal and unscrupulous, he would have seized it with avidity. He was too conscientious to enrich himself by public corruption, as other Senators did, and unless he could accumulate a fortune the command of a distant province was an honorable exile. He was fifty-six years of age when he became Proconsul of Cilicia, an Eastern province; and all historians have united in praising his proconsulate for its justice, its integrity, and its ability. He committed no extortions, and returned home, when his term of office expired, as poor as when he went. One of the highest praises which can be given to a public man who has chances of enriching himself is, that he remains poor. When a member of Congress, known not to be worth ten thousand dollars, returns to his home worth one hundred thousand dollars, the public have an instinct that he has, somehow or other, been untrue to himself and his country. When a great man returns home from Washington poorer than when he went, his influence is apt to survive his power; and this perpetuated influence is the highest glory of a public man,--the glory of Jefferson, of Hamilton, of Washington, like the voice of Gladstone during his retirement. Now Cicero had pre-eminently this influence as long as he lived; and it was ever exerted for the good of his country. Had his country been free, he would have died in honor. But his country was enslaved, and his voice was drowned, and he had to pay the penalty of speaking the truth about those unscrupulous men who usurped authority.