Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic/Chapter 10

by James Leigh Strachan-Davidson

Layout 2

CHAPTER X.

CICERO AS PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR. TIRO. CÆLIUS.
ROME ON THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR.

51-50 B.C.

ICERO accepted the governorship of a province unwillingly, and was most desirous that his 51 B.C.command should not be prolonged beyond a single year. He felt that this was not the work for which he was best fitted. "They have clapped a saddle on the ox,"^[1] he says. The political situation at home was fearfully critical, and it distressed him to be away from the centre of events at such a time. Cilicia and its concerns seemed petty, as lying outside of the main current of grave interests and anxious counsels at Rome. "I cannot tell you," he writes to Atticus,^[2] "how I burn with desire for the city, and how hard I find it to put up with all this paltry insipid business."

Cicero feels, however, that his character is at stake; "the principles which I have professed for so many years will now be put to the test of practice."^[3] He is most anxious about the behaviour of his lieutenants, the insolence of whose manners to the provincials disgusts him.^[4] He is able, however, to give them a good character, so far as actions are concerned. "Thus far," he writes on his journey,^[5] "I have no reason to find fault with any of my suite. They seem to recognise what ground I have taken and on what terms I allow them to come with me. They really regulate their conduct, as my reputation demands. For the future, if it be true that 'like master, like man,' they will certainly persevere; for I mean them to see no act of mine which can give them an excuse for misbehaving. If that proves insufficient, I must try stronger measures."

One of the worst features of the rule of Republican Rome in her provinces was its want of continuity. The power of the governor was so arbitrary that all depended on the accident of his personal character. Cicero entered on a province "simply July 31, 51 B.C.wrecked and ruined for good and all"^[6] by his predecessor. The wounds which Appius Claudius had inflicted "stared him in the face and could not be concealed."^[7] Cicero at once set about reversing many of his iniquitous measures, but was careful to screen his reputation as much as possible.^[8] This did not save him from many bitter reproaches from his predecessor, which he answered with good-tempered but spirited vindications of his action. It was like a change of doctors, he remarks to Atticus;^[9] Appius had adopted a lowering treatment, and was vexed to see Cicero feeding the patient up again.

A Roman province was a unity, merely as the Persian Empire was a unity, in the sense that it all had one master. If we look at its internal organisation, a province is rather an aggregate of isolated commonwealths. Every acre of ground is part of the territory of some State, and each State has its own laws, its own courts of justice, its own treasury, and its own power of self-taxation. Super-imposed on these, but not substituted for them, comes the Roman administration of public order and defence, of justice, and of imperial finance.

The first thing which Cicero did for his subjects was to allow them to settle all their own controversies in their own courts. In Sicily, as we learn from the speech against Verres, this was a right guaranteed by the constitution of the province; but in Cilicia the extent of interference by the Roman authority appears to have been at the discretion of the governor. Cicero seemed to be giving away a profitable privilege and the Greeks hailed his indulgence "as if he had restored them independence."^[10] In cases where Roman citizens were concerned, the native courts had no jurisdiction, and these still came before the governor or his deputy. Cicero in his edict,^[11] while adopting the ordinances which his old instructor Scævola had instituted in his governorship of Asia, forty-three years before, for the regulation of inheritance and debt, and for suits between the tax-farmers and the subjects, announced that in other matters he should follow the rules laid down in the edict of the praetor at Rome. This observance helps us to see how Roman law and Roman methods of procedure were gradually extended among the subject peoples.

We are not informed what was the nature of the imperial taxes in Cilicia. It appears, however, that the tax-farmers had to deal, not with individuals, but with the communities; for these communities were deeply in debt to them, and had to stave off the evil day by entering into special agreements, by which exorbitant interest was often charged on the arrears. Cicero found that from the first foundation of the province such agreements had been held to be exempt from the general rule, which limited the rate of interest to 12 per cent. He hit upon a happy compromise;^[12] naming a tolerably easy term for payment, he ordained that for all debts discharged before that day he would allow only the legal rate of interest; if the term were exceeded, then the letter of the bond was to be exacted. But this method would be fruitless, unless some means were found of replenishing the exhausted treasuries of the subject States. Cicero adopted a twofold means of relief. In the first place he stopped absolutely the drain on the yearly income which had been occasioned by the illegal exactions of his predecessors. The burden of these may be guessed from the fact^[13] that the island of Cyprus alone had been compelled to pay Appius two hundred Attic talents (£50,000) under the threat that otherwise he would billet his troops upon them. Secondly^[14] Cicero looked into the local budgets of the States, and found that the Greek magistrates had been in the habit of systematically robbing the exchequers. The proconsul does not seem to have felt much scruple in compounding the felony. He made the defaulters disgorge all that they had embezzled for the last ten years, under promise that no further proceedings should be taken against them. By these means enough was realised to pay off all the arrears due to the tax-farmers, who were beginning to be seriously alarmed about their money. "For this," he says, "I have become as dear to them as the apple of their eye." With Cicero's views as to the "harmony of the orders," it was very necessary that he should be on good terms with the tax-farmers. They submitted, we find, with a good grace to the cutting off of their usurious interest, and Cicero' repaid them, "full measure and running over with complimentary speeches and invitations to dinner." He sums up his relations with them in answer to Atticus' inquiries"—I pet them, and show them attentions, I make much of them in the way of praise and compliments; I take good care that they do not oppress any one."^[15]

The revenue of the local exchequers came partly from lands which were the property of the subject republics. We find an impudent request from Cælius (to which of course Cicero did not listen for a moment) on behalf of a friend who farmed some such land, and who wished not to be obliged to pay his rent.^[16] This source of revenue, however, seems barely to have sufficed for the ordinary local expenses. The sums which the communities had to pay in bribes to the Roman governor were raised by a direct tax on land and income, called "tributum." Sometimes they were obliged to anticipate their revenue, by selling the right to collect these rates for a lump sum to a tax-farmer, and then they were driven to impose on themselves a fresh contribution, which Cicero characterises to Appius^[17] as "that most oppressive burden, which you know full well, of the poll-tax and the door-tax." All such taxes were levied by the authority of the local senates and magistrates, though of course the Roman governor could practically compel their imposition.^[18]

To avoid these extremities, Cicero was anxious that his subjects should not involve themselves in unnecessary expenses, and on this ground he ordered that they should not without his permission vote sums for complimentary embassies to Rome in laudation of his predecessor. He would "praise any," he said,^[19] "who undertook such a mission at his own cost; he would allow the expenses if modest, but would disallow them if excessive." Appius wrote very angrily about this, and Cicero permitted the embassies in some cases where a majority of the local senate was in favour of the vote.^[20] He appears likewise to have withdrawn an objection which he had raised on grounds of economy to the erection of some sort of public building in honour of Appius.^[21] Cicero felt himself bound to prove the sincerity of his reconciliation with the brother of Publius Clodius by doing all that he reasonably could for him; and he was further stimulated by the knowledge that, before the trial of Appius for his misdoing was over, he would very likely hear that Dolabella, Appius' accuser at Rome, had become his own son-in-law. Cicero had left the choice of Tullia's new husband to herself and her mother, and Dolabella was in fact the man whom they chose. Cicero, notwithstanding his full knowledge of the enormities of his predecessor, publicly complimented and favoured him, "not so as to offend against my own good name, but still with all good-will towards him."^[22] Apart from personal reasons this conduct was necessary in the interests of his subjects. Pompey was expected to take command against the Parthians, and Pompey's son was lately married to Appius Claudius' daughter. Cicero would have done the Cilicians an ill turn by embroiling them with Appius, and of this they were fully conscious. They were anxious to stand well with their late oppressor, and eager to render him thanks for having harried them. Thus the corrupt judge was tenderly treated while his decrees were reversed, a process which we find going on as late as March in the year 50 B.C. "If Appius, as Brutus' letters indicate, is grateful to me, I am glad to hear it. For all that, this very day, which is dawning as I write, will be largely spent in cancelling unjust arrangements and decisions of his."^[23] Such were the necessities of Roman politics.

It would have been well if the demands on a proconsul had been limited to the salving over of past iniquities. It required no little firmness to resist the appeals of friends at home to perpetrate all manner of fresh injustice on their behalf. "When any one applies to you," Cicero writes^[24] to Atticus, "unless you feel quite sure that it is something which I can grant, pray give an absolute denial." One specimen of such applications will be sufficient. A certain Scaptius, armed with strong letters of introduction from Marcus Brutus, applied to Cicero for an appointment as prefect in Cyprus, where he was owed money by the State of Salamis. Cicero refused absolutely on two grounds: in the first place he would never give such an office to any one who was trading in his province; secondly, Scaptius had already shown how he understood the functions of prefect. He had been entrusted by Appius with a troop of horse which he had employed to blockade the Senate of Salamis in their council-chamber, until five of them had actually died of starvation. It had been one of Cicero's first acts peremptorily to order the horsemen out of the island. Scaptius was in reality the agent of Brutus, who held a Salaminian bond bearing interest at forty-eight per cent. This loan, having been contracted at Rome, was contrary to a Gabinian law of the year 67 B.C., and was only legalised by special decree of the Roman Senate. Cicero, when the case came before him, decided that this legalisation must be interpreted as subject to his own general edict, which limited interest to twelve per cent. The Salaminians tendered principal and interest at this rate; they said they were paying it out of Cicero's pocket, for the amount was less than what they were accustomed to pay in presents to the governor. Scaptius refused to accept the money; and it is the one great blot on Cicero's administration, that he put pressure on the Salaminians not to insist on their right to deposit the money in a temple, in which case interest would have ceased to run. Cicero gave judgment that the Salaminians had made a legal tender;^[25] but he knew that as the business was not fully wound up, it would be possible for his successor to set that judgment aside. It is painful to have to record that Brutus complained bitterly when the horsemen of his agent were ordered to leave Cyprus, and that Atticus urged his friend to support Scaptius. We can only hope that, when they wrote, neither of them had full knowledge of what Scaptius had done. Cicero writes pages of explanation and excuse, excuse not for his weak compliance about the deposit of the money, but for his having defended the cause of the subjects against the interests of the influential Roman. Well may he say,^[26] "If I did anything of the sort, how should I ever dare to look again on the pages of that book of mine^[27] which you commend? Nay, my dear Atticus, you have shown yourself in this matter too much, far too much, a friend to Brutus, and too little, I fear, a friend to me."

Whether or not Cicero satisfied the public opinion of Roman society, as to the services which it expected from a proconsul, he earned at least the hearty gratitude of his subjects. He refused, however, all forms of compliment which would have involved the smallest expenditure. "I am no burden to any of the provincials," he writes to Atticus,^[28] "though perhaps I am to you when I tell you such long tales about my doings. Bear with me, I pray you, for it is your counsels that I have been following."

Without any unworthy proceedings, Cicero was able to save a considerable sum out of his legal allowances. The principal source of revenue was the corn which the governor might requisition for his table at a price fixed by the Senate, and payable by the Roman Treasury. The amount of corn was far greater than that actually needed for the proconsul's consumption, and when, as this year in Cilicia, famine prices were ruling, the burden of supplying the corn was willingly commuted for a sum of money. We learn from the speech against Verres^[29] that gains from this source might be accepted by honourable men, and that a great difference on either side between the price fixed by the Senate and that actually ruling in the market was a piece of luck of which almost every governor took advantage. In Cicero's case we find that by the end of the year £22,000 stood to his credit on deposit at Ephesus;^[30] most of the money was, however, lent by him to Pompey, and swept away into the bottomless gulf of expenditure for the Civil War.

The proconsul was not only supreme judge and administrator in his province, but likewise commander-in-chief of its army of 51 B.C.occupation. Cicero found himself with a force miserably insufficient both in quantity and quality and with the danger of a Parthian invasion on his hands. With the aid of the native kings of Cappadocia and Galatia he made a tolerable demonstration on the eastern frontier of his province. Meantime the Parthians, who had over-run the neighbouring province of Syria, were defeated by Cassius the lieutenant of Bibulus, and retired across the Euphrates. All the world expected them back again the next spring, but dissensions at home kept them quiet in the year 50 B.C., and Cicero was able to leave his province to his quæstor in August without anxiety on this account.

After the departure of the Parthians in the autumn of 51 B.C. Cicero employed his troops in putting down some of the wild hill-tribes who infested the frontier region of Mount Amanus. In his private letters Cicero does not take his military exploits very seriously. "I am thinking," he writes to Pætus,^[31] "of having a bit of a fleet on my coasts; they say that is the very best mode of resisting Parthian cavalry." To Atticus he notes how at Issus he has occupied the site of Alexander's camp"—a general of a different kidney from you and me";^[32] and his crowning success is described in words^[33] which show that he estimated it at its true rate. "On the morning of the Saturnalia^[34] the Pindenissitæ surrendered to me, fifty-seven days after our first attack. 'Who, the mischief,' you say 'are these Pindenissitæ of yours? Who are they? I never heard the name before.' Well, is that my fault? Can I make Cilicia into an Ætolia or Macedonia?" Cicero's campaign was in truth a mere border expedition; but it was well managed and successful. Quintus was acting as his brother's lieutenant, and he was, as we have seen, a skilful and experienced officer.

Cicero's troops gave him the greeting with which a victorious army used to salute its general. Roman commander-in-chief was always addressed by his own soldiers as "Imperator,"^[35] but custom forbade him to use the title himself or to accept it from civilians, unless it had been first stamped on him by such a public and universal acclamation from the troops. From the moment of this greeting, Cicero was iustified in wreathing the fasces of his lictors with laurel, and in signing "Imperator" after his name in all formal letters.. The next step in the recognition of his success would be for the Senate to decree a Thanksgiving on account of it, and this again would naturally lead up to a triumph. The Thanksgiving was voted in spite of the opposition of Cato, who, however, proposed an alternative motion, giving thanks not to the gods but to Cicero for the wisdom and purity of his administration as governor. He likewise wrote to Cicero an elaborate explanation and apology for the line he had taken.^[36] Cæsar wrote with warm congratulations, and exulted over Cato's untimely scrupulosity, which he hoped would cause ill-will between him and Cicero. Cicero seems at first to have been quite satisfied with Cato. "His amendment," he writes to Atticus,^[37] "was more honourable to me than if he had voted me all the triumphs in the world. . . . Then he was one of the witnesses who registered the decree, and he has written me a most gratifying letter about his own amendment." Later on, when Cato had supported the claims of Bibulus to a Thanksgiving, because his lieutenant had driven the Parthians from his province, Cicero's tone changed. "Cato," he says,^[38] "was disgustingly ill-natured to me; he bore testimony to my purity, justice, kindliness, and good faith, which I did not require, and refused that which I asked for."

On his journey homeward from his province Cicero was obliged to leave behind him at Patræ: his freedman Tiro, who was attacked by a dangerous illness. Cicero was always a kind and generous master to his dependents, and for Tiro in particular he had a sincere and tender affection. "I beseech you, my dear Tiro," he writes on this occasion,^[39] "spare no expense in all that relates to your health. I have written to Curius to let you have any sum you may mention. I think it will be well to make a present to the physician to render him the more attentive. The obligations which you have conferred on me are countless, in my home and in the Forum, at Rome and in my province; they extend alike to my public and my private concerns, to my studies and to my writings. But I shall esteem it the greatest of all if you let me see you again, as I trust I shall, in good health. I think that your best plan, if you are sufficiently recovered, will be to come home with Mescinius the quæstor. He is a kindly man, and seemed to have a liking for you. But then, my dear Tiro, I wish you to be careful not only about your health but about the dangers of the passage. I would not have you hurry on any account. My sole anxiety is to have you safe and sound."

The society of the ancient world was founded on slavery, and in attempting to reconstruct the picture we cannot afford to neglect the background. At this epoch we already find traces of that secret power exercised by the slaves and freedmen of the leading statesmen, which grew to so scandalous a height under the Empire. We have seen in the first chapter the odious domination of Sulla's freedman, Chrysogonus. The first Cæsar was too strong a man to allow himself to be governed by his servants, but of the dependents of Pompey we hear only too much. Plutarch tells us^[40] an entertaining story of Cato's experiences in Syria during the Mithridatic War. On approaching the city of Antioch Cato found that the population had turned out in festal attire with white robes and crowns and music. He naturally supposed that this greeting was intended for the Roman officer, and he scolded those of his escort who had been sent before to make preparations, because they had not stopped the display. But at this moment a venerable man, bearing a wand and appearing to be the marshal of the procession, advanced, and, without so much as saluting Cato, inquired whether he had seen Demetrius on the road, and at what hour he might be expected. The procession had indeed been organised to do honour to Pompey's freedman.

Quintus Cicero had a confidential servant named Statius, and Pomponia, Quintus' wife, who was something of a domestic tyrant, was very jealous of this Statius. Cicero gives an amusing picture of the family to Pomponia's brother Atticus.^[41] "When we arrived, Quintus said in the kindest way in the world, 'Pomponia, do you invite the women, and I will see after the lads'; nothing could be more pleasant, to my judgment, and that not only in the words but in the tone and manner. But she, in my presence, replied: 'I am a stranger in this house'; and all because Statius had been sent beforehand to get ready some breakfast for us. 'See,' says Quintus to me, 'what I have to submit to every day.'" Quintus Cicero was a man of choleric and blustering temper in the outside world, but he was meek as a lamb at home. The poor husband rebelled at last and divorced Pomponia, but even here he could not act on his own account, but must needs make Statius the confidant of his plans. A letter of his freedman on this matter fell into the hands of his son and caused some unpleasantness. Quintus would never marry again; he had learnt, he declared, to appreciate the blessing of going to sleep without a curtain lecture.^[42] When Quintus Cicero was governor of Asia, Statius appears to have acted as his vicegerent. Official rescripts and injunctions were brought to him ready written out; Statius looked through them, and if he said it was all right his master affixed his seal. It was about this time that Statius was manumitted, against the advice of Marcus Cicero, who was much vexed at his brother's neglect of his counsels. He writes to Quintus afterwards^[43]: "I confess that it displeased me to hear that he has more influence with you than is consonant with the gravity of your time of life, or with the prudence which your high station demands. You cannot think how many persons came to beg it as a favour from me, that I would say a good word for them with Statius; or how often in the freedom of conversation Statius himself came out with 'I did not approve of this,' 'I warned him,' 'I persuaded him,' 'I deterred him.' Now however great his faithfulness in these matters (which I quite accept on your judgment), yet for the world to see a slave or freedman in such favour is far from dignified." Quintus revenged himself very neatly for his brother's sermonising. When the time comes for Tiro to be manumitted, Quintus writes^[44] expressing great pleasure that Tiro, "who is so much superior to the station in which he was born, will by your act be raised from being a slave to be our friend," and he adds that he knows what a treasure is a faithful freedman from his own experience of Statius.

Tiro was beloved by the whole family. Quintus writes to him in the most cordial tone; he scolds him, if he is remiss in correspondence, and tells him that he will have to employ his old master to plead his cause, and that it will require all Cicero's eloquence to get him acquitted.^[45] Young Marcus, Cicero's son, is likewise very affectionate in his expressions. There is a pleasant letter^[46] from the lad in which he banters Tiro about his purchase of a farm: "You will have to give up all your fine city ways. You have become a country Roman. I see you as large as life, and very charming you look buying implements, consulting with the bailiff, and keeping the seeds you have saved from dessert in your great-coat pocket."

To Cicero himself Tiro was, as he says, invaluable. He was his secretary who, by means of a sort of shorthand which he invented, could keep pace while his master dictated,^[47] or, if need were, decipher his handwriting when the ordinary copyists were at fault,^[48] his critic who could correct slips of the pen or of memory;^[49] the constant aid in all his literary work. "I am most anxious to have you with me,"^[50] writes Cicero on the occasion of another sickness, "but I am afraid of the journey for you. . . . Remember that a relapse owing to any imprudence after so severe an attack may have serious consequences. My studies, or I should say our studies, have been quite languishing for want of you, but the letter which Acastus has just brought has made them look up a little. Rufus is here very brisk and cheerful. Fie wanted to hear something of my composition, but I told him that my books were dumb in your absence." It is pleasant to read of the master's concern when his postman arrives with only a message from Tiro who is too weak to put pen to paper, and to learn from a postscript that a second carrier has come while Cicero is writing, and that the invalid has summoned up strength to scrawl a few lines nevertheless, "with the letters all tottering";^[51] and that Cicero is sending a nurse and a cook to aid in his convalescence.

Tiro had, during his master's lifetime, formed a plan of making a collection of his letters. Cicero jokes with him about it, and says that he believes Tiro wants to have his own included in the collection.^[52] He seems, however, seriously to have approved the notion, for in the year before his death he writes to Atticus:^[53] "There is no collection of my letters, but Tiro has about seventy, besides a few still to come from you. Before they are published, I must read them through and correct them." We may be thankful indeed that this plan was never carried out. Tiro, notwithstanding his feeble health, lived to a good old age, and devoted the rest of his life to the pious task of collecting and publishing the works of his beloved master and friend. Instead of the seventy and odd letters, carefully edited and altered, which Cicero would have allowed to posterity, Tiro has preserved over eight hundred and fifty, and these he has treated as a sacred trust, and has kept them absolutely untampered with, so that we read them to-day just as they came from his master's pen.

Cicero landed at Brundisium on the twenty-third of November, 50 B.C., having been absent from Italy not quite a year and a half. The interval 50 B.C.had been occupied with a long series of intrigues and proposals for compromise regarding Cæsar's claim to retain his province and army, until he should enter on his second consulship at the beginning of the year 48 B.C. Cæsar's opponents wished that there should be an interval between his proconsulship and his consulship, and it is pretty certain that they meant to use the interval, during which he would be unshielded by office, to bring him to trial for his illegal acts, when consul ten years before.^[54] Of this controversy it will be sufficient to say that Cæsar appears to have had no legal ground for resisting supersession at any time after March 1, 49 B.C., when his ten years' governorship would expire; but that a successor could not have been sent out to take his place until the end of that year, had not the rules for the appointment of provincial governors been purposely altered by Pompey during his sole consulship in 52 B.C. (see above, p. 289). Thus Cæsar was practically cheated of an expectation, which under the old rules of succession he had a full right to entertain.^[55] The true cause of quarrel of course lay deeper. Cæsar had acquired so strong a position that, if he were again consul, he would be practically master of the State, and he had given such abundant evidence of his unscrupulousness that the constitutionalists had good grounds for supposing that he would use his power to destroy the Republic. With the help of Pompey, they now thought themselves strong enough to prevent this; Cæsar with a juster appreciation believed that the chances of war were in his favour. Thus both sides were strongly inclined to fight, and the proposals for compromise were not so much serious attempts at a tolerable settlement, as contrivances of each party to put the other in the wrong and to toss to and fro the responsibility for breaking the peace.

When Cicero left Italy for his province in June, 51, he seems to have recognised that the Republic ran some danger from Cæsar, but not that there was the prospect of actual armed attack. He pictures Cæsar as consul in Rome and attempting all sorts of revolutionary measures, but believes that the presence of Pompey will be sufficient to hold him in check. Thus he strongly objects to a notion which Pompey was entertaining at the time, that he should retire to his Spanish province.^[56] On his outward journey (May, 51 B.C.) Cicero visited Pompey, and at his request passed some days at his Tarentine villa. "I consented willingly," he writes to Atticus,^[57] "for I shall hear much excellent discourse on affairs of State, and likewise get valuable hints May, 51 B.C.for my provincial business." A few days later he writes,^[58] "I am just leaving that admirable man, who is fully prepared for resistance to all that we have to fear." In contrast to this grave and sententious approval, it is worth while to note the observations of the irreverent Cælius:^[59] "If you have come across Pompey, as you hoped you would, pray write me what impression he made on you, what he said to you, and what sort of intentions he manifested; for his habit is to say one thing and mean another, and yet not to have wit enough to conceal what his real purpose is."

Cicero, during the whole of his year in Cilicia, seems to have remained under the same illusion as to the nature of the danger that was to be apprehended, and his Roman correspondents did little to enlighten him. Atticus with strange self-deception writes to him^[60] about the end of the year 51, that all his hopes of peace and quiet are placed on Pompey, and Cicero in answer expresses his full agreement. Even as late as June, 50, on the news of the desertion of the cause by Curio and the consul Paullus, who were both bought by Cæsar, Cicero writes to Atticus,^[61] "not that I fear any danger, while Pompey stands firm, or even while he sits quiet, if only his health be spared." The first dear statement that Civil War is impending comes in the month of September from Cicero's keen-witted correspondent Cælius. "Unless," he writes,^[62] one or other of them is shipped off to the Parthian war, I see that a mighty conflict is at hand, which must be decided by cold steel. Both the champions are full of determination and amply equipped. If we were not the stake which is being played for, this would be a grand and delicious spectacle that Fortune is preparing for us."

Men were slowly ranging themselves on the one side or the other, under the influence of motives as various as their characters. "Pompey," writes Cælius,^[63] "will have the Senate and the jurors, Cæsar all who are in peril or whose outlook is bad." Suetonius^[64] tells us that Cæsar had spared no money and no pains to provide himself with partisans against the day of conflict. "All those who were in his suite, and a large portion of the Senate besides, were bound to him by loans without interest, or at very light charges. Men of other ranks who visited him, either with or without invitation, at his headquarters, were gratified by handsome donations, which were extended even to the freedmen and slaves of each, according as they had influence with their patron or master. Further he was the sole resort of debtors and persons threatened with prosecution and of spendthrift youths; only to those who lay under accusations too serious or a weight of embarassment and profligacy too great for him to be able to assist them, he would say outright, 'The only thing for you is a Civil War.'" Some, such as Curio and Paullus, who were able to give really valuable assistance, sold their services for enormous sums of money. Cælius too, it is hinted,^[65] was found to be in possession of unlikely resources at this moment of crisis. He was not the man to serve any cause for nothing, if he could see his way to be paid for following it; but even apart from money, the creed which he professes with signal effrontery to Cicero would naturally carry Cælius into Caesar's camp. "One consideration," he says,^[66] "will not, I think, escape you; namely, that in civil strife, so long as the contest is waged with the weapons of peace, we ought to follow the more honourable cause, but when it comes to camps and armies, then the stronger, and one should esteem that the better side which is the safer." As he adds immediately afterwards that Cæsar's army is incomparably the better of the two, there can be little doubt to which side he is inclined to give or sell his services.

The name of Marcus Cælius Rufus calls up the image of strange and striking personalities, and of all the pleasures and the passions in which Roman society revelled on the brink of the Civil War. It reminds us of his stormy loves with Clodia, the "Juno of the great eyes," the glorious "Lesbia" who broke the heart of Catullus, while she inspired him with the passion which has made his verse immortal, and of the bitter and tearful reproaches which Catullus addresses to the friend who has supplanted him; then of Cælius' deadly quarrel with this terrible mistress, of the charge of poisoning which Lesbia brought against him, and of Cicero's tremendous onslaught on her, while he defended Cælius at the bar, and took revenge at the same time for her share in the wrong, which her brother, Publius Clodius, had inflicted on Cicero himself. "It would seem," writes Mr. Tyrrell, "that Cælius ultimately escaped both from her love and her hatred after a long struggle; but we question if he ever forgot her." We might dwell on Cælius' daring but unchastened eloquence, his keenness of political insight, his able administration as ædile, his charming letters to Cicero, his recklessness, his unscrupulous cynicism, and finally on his insane attempts at revolution and his miserable end during the Civil War; all these make up together one of the most interesting episodes of the last age of the Roman Republic. But another biography, or better still a historical romance,^[67] would be needed to do justice to Cælius, Clodia, and Catullus. We have here to do with the stern realities of politics and of war, which underlay the genius and the wantonness of that brilliant society.

The situation of Cicero on his return to Italy in 5o B.C. was necessarily one of peculiar anxiety. He had embraced the friendship of Cæsar in order to please Pompey, and he never seems to have contemplated the possibility of having to choose between the two. He lays his difficulty with all frankness before his friend in a letter written from Athens in October.^[68] "I adjure you, bring to bear all the affection you have for me, and all the sagacity in which I know not your equal, bring them all I say to the task of considering my whole position. For I seem to see such a conflict impending—unless the same Providence which extricated us better than we dared to hope from the Parthian war should again take pity on the State—such a conflict, I say, as the world has never witnessed before. Well, that is a peril I share with the rest, and I do not bid you think of that. It is my own personal problem which I beg you to solve. You see that by your advice I have linked myself to each of them. . . . I have succeeded, and that by constant observances, in making myself a prime friend of both. For my calculation was that, while allied with Pompey, I should never be forced to act against the right, and that in supporting Cæsar I should never find myself in collision with Pompey; so firmly were the two bound together. And now, as you prove to me and as I see, a death-struggle between the two is at hand. . . . What am I to do? I do not mean in the last extremity; for if it comes to war, I see well enough that it is better to be conquered along with Pompey, than to conquer with Cæsar; but what of the questions which I shall find open on my arrival? Whether Cæsar is to be allowed to stand for the consulship in his absence? And whether he must dismiss his army?"

On all the questions at issue Cicero feels that gross blunders have been made. It is too late now to think of defending the commonwealth against Cæsar in his strength. "That cause," he writes, "has nothing wanting to it except a cause." Since it has come to this, he feels that "there is no ship for him, except that one which has Pompey at the helm,"^[69] but that he will privately use his influence with Pompey for peace. This resolution is recorded on the 6th of December. In a letter to Tiro^[70] six weeks later Cicero sums up his proceedings. "For my own part, since I drew near to the city, I have been incessantly planning and speaking and acting for peace; but a strange madness has possessed not only bad men, but even those who are esteemed good, so that all desire to fight, while I cry out in vain that nothing is more wretched than a civil war."

Thus by a strange irony of fate that union of Pompey and the Optimates, which had been the dream of Cicero's politics, realised itself now, when it was too late, and under circumstances which moved him to despair.

After stormy discussions during the first days of the new year, the Senate on the 7th of January met the persistent veto of Cæsar's tribunes by the proclamation of martial law. The tribunes fled 49 B.C.away, as Metellus Nepos had done thirteen years before (see p. 170) to their master's camp. Cæsar had now the pretext for which he had been waiting. He appealed to the legion which he had with him at Ravenna, and led his advanced guard at once across the river Rubicon, the frontier of his province. "The die was cast," and the Civil War had begun.

---

1. Ad Att., v., 15, 3.
2. Ad Att., v., 11, 1.
3. Ad Att., v., 13, 1.
4. Ad Att., v., 10, 3.
5. Ad Att., v., 11, 5.
6. Ad Att., v., 16, 2.
7. Ad Att., v., 15, 2.
8. Ad Att., v., 17, 6.
9. Ad Att., vi., 1, 2.
10. Ad Att., vi., 2, 4.
11. Ad Att., vi., 1, 15.
12. Ad Att., vi., 1, 16.
13. Ad Att., v., 21, 7.
14. Ad Att., vi., 2, 5.
15. Ad Att., vi, 1, 16.
16. Ad Fam., viii., 9, 4.
17. Ad Fam., ii., 8, 5.
18. In Verrem, iii., 42, 100.
19. Ad Fam., iii., 8, 3.
20. Ad Fam., iii., 10, 6.
21. Ad Fam., iii., 7, 2.
22. Ad Att., vi., 2, 10.
23. Ad Att., vi., 1, 2.
24. Ad Att., v., 21, 5.
25. Ad Att., vi., 1, 7. "Igitur meo decreto soluta res Scaptio stat."
26. Ad Att., vi., 2, 9.
27. I.e., his picture of the ideal statesman in the De Republica; see above, p. 294.
28. Ad Att., v., 21, 7.
29. In Verrem, iii., 93, 217.
30. Ad Fam., v., 20, 9.
31. Ad Fam., ix., 25, 1.
32. Ad Att., v., 20, 3.
33. Ad Att., v., 20, 1.
34. December 17th. Owing to the neglect of the pontiffs to give notice of intercalary months, the Roman Calendar was much out of reckoning at this time. The 17th of December in 51 B.C. would, according to the season of the year, be the 10th of November. We find that winter came on after Cicero's departure, but his brother whom he left in command in this district was snowed up.
35. See Smith's Dict. Ant. (2d edition) ad voc.
36. Ad Fam., xv., 5.
37. Ad Att., vii., 1, 7.
38. Ad Att., vii., 2, 7.
39. Ad Fam., xvi., 4, 2.
40. Plutarch, Cato Minor, 13.
41. Ad Att., v., 1, 3.
42. Ad Att., xiv., 13, 5.
43. Ad Q. F., i., 2, 3.
44. Ad Fam., xvi., 16.
45. Ad Fam., xvi., 26, 1.
46. Ad Fam., xvi., 21, 7.
47. Ad Att., xiii., 25, 3.
48. Ad Fam., xvi., 22, 1.
49. Ad Fam., xvi., 17.
50. Ad Fam., xvi., 10.
51. Ad Fam., xvi., 15, 2.
52. Ad Fam., xvi., 17.
53. Ad Att., xvi., 5, 5.
54. Seutonius, Jul., 30.
55. The whole question is admirably discussed by Mommsen in a monograph, entitled Rechts-frage zwischen Cæsar und den Senat.
56. Ad Att., v., 11, 3.
57. Ad Att., v., 6, 1.
58. Ad Att., v., 7.
59. Ad Fam., viii., 1, 3.
60. Ad Att., vi., 1, 11.
61. Ad Att., vi., 3, 4.
62. Ad Fam., viii., 14, 4.
63. Ad Fam., viii., 14, 3.
64. Suet., Jul., 27.
65. Ad Att., vii., 3, 6.
66. Ad Fam., viii., 14, 3.
67. This suggestion is borrowed from Messrs. Tyrrell & Purser who have included a charming paper on Cælius in the third volume of their edition of the Letters. There is also a very interesting account of him in Boissier, Ciceron et ses Amis.
68. Ad Att., vii., 1, 2.
69. Ad Att., vii., 3, 5.
70. Ad Fam., xvi., 12, 2.