Roman life in the days of Cicero Part 6

In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline Cato stood firmly by Cicero, supporting the proposition to put the conspirators to death in a powerful speech, the only speech of all that he made that was preserved.

This preservation was due to the forethought of Cicero, who put the fastest writers whom he could find to relieve each other in taking down the oration. This, it is interesting to be told, was the beginning of shorthand.

Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the republic; but he was much more uncompromising, more honest perhaps we may say, but certainly less discreet in putting his principles into action. He set himself to oppose the acc.u.mulation of power in the hands of Pompey and Caesar; but he lacked both dignity and prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, for instance, Caesar, returning from Spain, pet.i.tioned the Senate for permission to become a candidate for the consuls.h.i.+p without entering the city--to enter the city would have been to abandon his hopes of a triumph--Cato condescended to use the arts of obstruction in opposing him. He spoke till sunset against the proposition, and it failed by sheer lapse of time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar of course abandoned the empty honor, and secured the reality, all the more certainly because people felt that he had been hardly used. And so he continued to act, always seeking to do right, but always choosing the very worst way of doing it; anxious to serve his country, but always contriving to injure it. Even in that which, we may say, best became him in his life, in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment the Roman view of the morality of suicide), he was not doing his best for Rome.

Had he been willing to live (for Caesar was ready to spare him, as he was always ready to spare enemies who could not harm him), there was yet good for him to do; in his hasty impatience of what he disapproved, he preferred to deprive his country of its most honest citizen.

We must not omit a picture so characteristic of Roman life as the story of his last hours. The last army of the republic had been destroyed at Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Cato vainly endeavored to stir up the people of Utica, a town near Carthage, in which he had taken up his quarters; when they refused, he resolved to put an end to his life. A kinsman of Caesar, who was preparing to intercede with the conqueror for the lives of the vanquished leaders, begged Cato's help in revising his speech. "For you," he said, "I should think it no shame to clasp his hands and fall at his knees." "Were I willing to take my life at his hands," replied Cato, "I should go alone to ask it. But I refuse to live by the favor of a tyrant. Still, as there are three hundred others for whom you are to intercede, let us see what can be done with the speech." This business finished, he took an affectionate leave of his friend, commending to his good offices his son and his friends. On his son he laid a strict injunction not to meddle with public life. Such a part as was worthy of the name of Cato no man could take again; to take any other would be shameful. Then followed the bath, and after the bath, dinner, to which he had invited a number of friends, magistrates of the town. He sat at the meal, instead of reclining. This had been his custom ever since the fated day of Pharsalia. After dinner, over the wine, there was much learned talk, and this not other than cheerful in tone. But when the conversation happened to turn on one of the favorite maxims of the Stoics, "Only the good man is free; the bad are slaves," Cato expressed himself with an energy and even a fierceness that made the company suspect some terrible resolve. The melancholy silence that ensued warned the speaker that he had betrayed himself, and he hastened to remove the suspicion by talking on other topics. After dinner he took his customary walk, gave the necessary orders to the officers on guard, and then sought his chamber.

Here he took up the Phaedo, the famous dialogue in which Socrates, on the day when he is to drink the poison, discusses the immortality of the soul. He had almost finished the book, when, chancing to turn his eyes upwards, he perceived that his sword had been removed. His son had removed it while he sat at dinner. He called a slave and asked, "Who has taken my sword?" As the man said nothing, he resumed his book; but in the course of a few minutes, finding that search was not being made, he asked for the sword again. Another interval followed; and still it was not forthcoming. His anger was now roused. He vehemently reproached the slaves, and even struck one of them with his fist, which he injured by the blow. "My son and my slaves," he said, "are betraying me to the enemy." He would listen to no entreaties, "Am I a madman," he said, "that I am stripped of my arms? Are you going to bind my hands and give me up to Caesar? As for the sword I can do without it; I need but hold my breath or dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, and finding that the blade was straight and the edge perfect, said, "Now I am my own master." He then read the Phaedo again from beginning to end, and afterwards fell into so profound a sleep that persons standing outside the chamber heard his breathing. About midnight he sent for his physician and one of his freedmen. The freedman was commissioned to inquire whether his friends had set sail. The physician he asked to bind up his wounded hand, a request which his attendants heard with delight, as it seemed to indicate a resolve to live. He again sent to inquire about his friends and expressed his regret at the rough weather which they seemed likely to have. The birds were now beginning to twitter at the approach of dawn, and he fell into a short sleep. The freedman now returned with news that the harbor was quiet. When he found himself again alone, he stabbed himself with the sword, but the blow, dealt as it was by the wounded hand, was not fatal. He fell fainting on the couch, knocking down a counting board which stood near, and groaning.

His son with others rushed into the chamber, and the physician, finding that the wound was not mortal, proceeded to bind it up. Cato, recovering his consciousness, thrust the attendants aside, and tearing open the wound, expired.

If the end of Cato's life was its n.o.blest part it is still more true that the fame of Brutus rests on one memorable deed. He was known, indeed, as a young man of promise, with whose education special pains had been taken, and who had a genuine love for letters and learning. He was free, it would seem, from some of the vices of his age, but he had serious faults. Indeed the one transaction of his earlier life with which we happen to be well acquainted is very little to his credit. And this, again, is so characteristic of one side of Roman life that it should be told in some detail.

Brutus had married the daughter of a certain Appius Claudius, a kinsman of the notorious Clodius, and had accompanied his father-in-law to his province, Cilicia. He took the opportunity of increasing his means by lending money to the provincials. Lending money, it must be remembered, was not thought a discreditable occupation even for the very n.o.blest. To lend money upon interest was, indeed, the only way of making an investment, besides the buying of land, that was available to the Roman capitalist. But Brutus was more than a money-lender, he was an usurer; that is, he sought to extract an extravagantly high rate of interest from his debtors. And this greed brought him into collision with Cicero.

A certain Scaptius had been agent for Brutus in lending money to the town of Salamis in Cyprus. Under the government of Claudius, Scaptius had had every thing his own way. He had been appointed to a command in the town, had some cavalry at his disposal, and extorted from the inhabitants what terms he pleased, shutting up, it is told us, the Senate in their council-room till five of them perished of hunger.

Cicero heard of this monstrous deed as he was on his way to his province; he peremptorily refused the request of Scaptius for a renewal of his command, saying that he had resolved not to grant such posts to any person engaged in trading or money-lending. Still, for Brutus'

sake--and it was not for some time that it came out that Brutus was the princ.i.p.al--he would take care that the money should be paid. This the town was ready to do; but then came in the question of interest. An edict had been published that this should never exceed twelve per cent., or one per cent, monthly, that being the customary way of payment. But Scaptius pleaded his bond, which provided for four per cent, monthly, and pleaded also a special edict that regulations restraining interest were not to apply to Salamis. The town protested that they could not pay if such terms were exacted--terms which would double the princ.i.p.al.

They could not, they said, have met even the smaller claim, if it had not been for the liberality of the governor, who had declined the customary presents. Brutus was much vexed.

"Even when he asks me a favor," writes Cicero to Atticus, "there is always something arrogant and churlish: still he moves laughter more than anger."

When the civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, it was expected that Brutus would attach himself to the former. Pompey, who had put his father to death, he had no reason to love. But if he was unscrupulous in some things, in politics he had principles which he would not abandon, the strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side of which Cato approved was the side of the right. Pompey received his new adherent with astonishment and delight, rising from his chair to greet him. He spent most of his time in camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, the Greek historian of the Second Punic War. He pa.s.sed through the disastrous day of Pharsalia unhurt, Caesar having given special orders that his life was to be spared. After the battle, the conqueror not only pardoned him but treated him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for which, for a time at least, he seems not to have been ungrateful. But there were influences at work which he could not resist. There was his friends.h.i.+p with Ca.s.sius, who had a pa.s.sionate hatred against usurpers, the remembrance of how Cato had died sooner than submit himself to Caesar, and, not least, the a.s.sociation of his name, which he was not permitted to forget. The statue of the old patriot who had driven out the Tarquins was covered with such inscriptions as, "Brutus, would thou wert alive!"

and Brutus' own chair of office--he was praetor at the time--was found covered with papers on which were scribbled, "Brutus, thou sleepest,"

or, "A true Brutus art thou," and the like. How he slew Caesar I have told already; how he killed himself in despair after the second battle of Philippi may be read elsewhere.

Porcia, the daughter of Cato, was left a widow in 48 B.C., and married three years afterwards her cousin Brutus, who divorced his first wife Claudia in order to marry her. She inherited both the literary tastes and the opinions of her father, and she thought herself aggrieved when her husband seemed unwilling to confide his plans to her. Plutarch thus tells her story, his authority seeming to be a little biography which one of her sons by her first husband afterwards wrote of his step-father. "She wounded herself in the thigh with a knife such as barbers use for cutting the nails. The wound was deep, the loss of blood great, and the pain and fever that followed acute. Her husband was in the greatest distress, when his wife thus addressed him: 'Brutus, it was a daughter of Cato who became your wife, not merely to share your bed and board, but to be the partner of your adversity and your prosperity.

_You_ give me no cause to complain, but what proof can I give you of my affection if I may not bear with you your secret troubles. Women, I know, are weak creatures, ill fitted to keep secrets. Yet a good training and honest company may do much, and this, as Cato's daughter and wife to Brutus, I have had.' She then showed him the wound, and told him that she had inflicted it upon herself to prove her courage and constancy." For all this resolution she had something of a woman's weakness. When her husband had left the house on the day fixed for the a.s.sa.s.sination, she could not conceal her agitation. She eagerly inquired of all who entered how Brutus fared, and at last fainted in the hall of her house. In the midst of the business of the senate-house Brutus heard that his wife was dying.

Porcia was not with her husband during the campaigns that ended at Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible; possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the traditions of her life.

CHAPTER XIII.

A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE.

It was usual for a Roman statesman, after filling the office of praetor or consul, to undertake for a year or more the government of one of the provinces. These appointments were indeed the prizes of the profession of politics. The new governor had a magnificent outfit from the treasury. We hear of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds having been allowed for this purpose. Out of this something might easily be economized. Indeed we hear of one governor who left the whole of his allowance put out at interest in Rome. And in the province itself splendid gains might be, and indeed commonly were, got. Even Cicero, who, if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial government.

He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetors.h.i.+p and again after his consuls.h.i.+p. But the time came when it was forced upon him. Pompey in his third consuls.h.i.+p had procured the pa.s.sing of a law by which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.

Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus.

The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years before had cut to pieces the army of Cra.s.sus. Two legions, numbering twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the province, having attached to them between two and three thousand cavalry.

Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At c.u.mae he received a levee of visitors--a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum, where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the civil war, which was to break out in the year after Cicero's return, were already gathering. At Brundisium, the port of embarkation for the East, he was detained partly by indisposition, partly by having to wait for one of his officials for nearly a fortnight. He reached Actium, in north-western Greece, on the 15th of June. He would have liked to proceed thence by land, being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having in view the rounding of the formidable promontory Leucate; but there was a difficulty about his retinue, without which he could not maintain the state which became a governor _en route_ for his province. Eleven more days brought him to Athens. "So far," he writes from this place, "no expenditure of public or private money has been made on me or any of my retinue. I have convinced all my people that they must do their best for my character. So far all has gone admirably. The thing has been noticed, and is greatly praised by the Greeks." "Athens," he writes again, "delighted me much; the city with all its beauty, the great affection felt for you" (he is writing, it will be remembered, to Atticus, an old resident), "and the good feeling towards myself, much more, too, its philosophical studies." He was able before he left to do the people a service, rescuing from the hands of the builder the house of Epicurus, which the council of Areopagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as a modern town council, had doomed. Then he went on his way, grumbling at the hards.h.i.+ps of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the winds, at the smallness of the local vessels. He reached Ephesus on July 22nd, without being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and found a vast number of persons who had come to pay their respects to him. All this was pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious to get back to Rome.

Rome indeed to the ordinary Roman was--a few singular lovers of the country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted--as Paris is to the Parisian.

"Make it absolutely certain," he writes to Atticus, "that I am to be in office for a year only; that there is not to be even an intercalated month." From Ephesus he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the cities of his province, to Laodicea, which he reached July 31st, exactly three months after starting[8]. The distance, directly measured, may be reckoned at something less than a thousand miles.

[Footnote 8: Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for accomplis.h.i.+ng the journey.]

He seems to have found the province in a deplorable condition. "I staid," he writes, "three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, and as many at Synnas, and heard nothing except complaints that they could not pay the poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's property was sold; heard, I say, nothing but complaints and groans, and monstrous deeds which seemed to suit not a man but some horrid wild beast. Still it is some alleviation to these unhappy towns that they are put to no expense for me or for any of my followers. I will not receive the fodder which is my legal due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have accepted four beds and a roof over my head; often not even this, preferring to lodge in a tent. The consequence of all this is an incredible concourse of people from town and country anxious to see me. Good heavens! my very approach seems to make them revive, so completely do the justice, moderation, and clemency of your friend surpa.s.s all expectation." It must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccustomed to sound his own praises.

Usury was one of the chief causes of this widespread distress; and usury, as we have seen, was practiced even by Romans of good repute. We have seen an "honorable man," such as Brutus, exacting an interest of nearly fifty per cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of interest we do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he was ent.i.tled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such things went on under a governor who was really doing his best to be moderate and just, what was the condition of the provincials under ordinary rulers.

While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare." The whole army of this people was said to have crossed the Euphrates under the command of Pacorus, the king's son. The governor of Syria had not yet arrived. The second in command had shut himself up with all his troops in Antioch.

Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which bordered the least defensible side of Cilicia, and took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. Next came news that Antioch was besieged. On hearing this he broke up his camp, crossed the Taurus range by forced marches, and occupied the pa.s.ses into Syria. The Parthians raised the siege of Antioch, and suffered considerably at the hands of Ca.s.sius during their retreat.

Though Cicero never crossed swords with the Parthians, he found or contrived an opportunity of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself as a soldier. The independent mountaineers of the border were attacked and defeated; Cicero was saluted as "Imperator" on the field of battle by his soldiers, and had the satisfaction of occupying for some days the position which Alexander the Great had taken up before the battle of Issus. "And he," says Cicero, who always relates his military achievements with something like a smile on his face, "was a somewhat better general than either you or I." He next turned his arms against the Free Cilicians, investing in regular form with trenches, earthworks, catapults, and all the regular machinery of a siege, their stronghold Pindenissum. At the end of forty-seven days the place surrendered.

Cicero gave the plunder of the place to his host, reserving the horses only for public purposes. A considerable sum was realized by the sale of slaves. "Who in the world are these Pindenissi? who are they?" you will say. "I never heard the name." "Well, what can I do? I can't make Cilicia another Aetolia, or another Macedonia." The campaign was concluded about the middle of December, and the governor, handing over the army to his brother, made his way to Laodicea. From this place he writes to Atticus in language that seems to us self-glorious and boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. "I left Tarsus for Asia (the Roman province so called) on June 5th, followed by such admiration as I cannot express from the cities of Cilicia, and especially from the people of Tarsus. When I had crossed the Taurus there was a marvelous eagerness to see me in Asia as far as my districts extended. During six months of my government they had not received a single requisition from me, had not had a single person quartered upon them. Year after year before my time this part of the year had been turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities used to pay large sums of money not to have to find winter quarters for the soldiers. Cyprus paid more than 48,000 on this account; and from this island--I say it without exaggeration and in sober truth--not a single coin was levied while I was in power. In return for these benefits, benefits at which they are simply astonished. I will not allow any but verbal honors to be voted to me. Statues, temples, chariots of bronze, I forbid. In nothing do I make myself a trouble to the cities, though it is possible I do so to you, while I thus proclaim my own praises. Bear with me, if you love me. This is the rule which you would have had me follow. My journey through Asia had such results that even the famine--and than famine there is no more deplorable calamity--which then prevailed in the country (there had been no harvest) was an event for me to desire; for wherever I journeyed, without force, without the help of law, without reproaches, but my simple influence and expostulations, I prevailed upon the Greeks and Roman citizens, who had secreted the corn, to engage to convey a large quant.i.ty to the various tribes." He writes again: "I see that you are pleased with my moderation and self-restraint. You would be much more pleased if you were here. At the sessions which I held at Laodicea for all my districts, excepting Cilicia, from February 15th to May 1st, I effected a really marvelous work. Many cities were entirely freed from their debts, many greatly relieved, and all of them enjoying their own laws and courts, and so obtaining self-government received new life. There were two ways in which I gave them the opportunity of either throwing off or greatly lightening the burden of debt. First: they have been put to no expense under my rule--I do not exaggerate; I positively say that they have not to spend a farthing. Then again: the cities had been atrociously robbed by their own Greek magistrates. I myself questioned the men who had borne office during the last ten years. They confessed and, without being publicly disgraced, made rest.i.tution. In other respects my government, without being wanting in address, is marked by clemency and courtesy. There is none of the difficulty, so usual in the provinces, of approaching me; no introduction by a chamberlain. Before dawn I am on foot in my house, as I used to be in old days when I was a candidate for office. This is a great matter here and a popular, and to myself, from my old practice in it, has not yet been troublesome."

He had other less serious cares. One Caelius, who was good enough to keep him informed of what was happening at Rome, and whom we find filling his letters with an amusing mixture of politics, scandal, and gossip, makes a modest request for some panthers, which the governor of so wild a country would doubtless have no difficulty in procuring for him. He was a candidate for the office of aedile, and wanted the beasts for the show which he would have to exhibit. Cicero must not forget to look after them as soon as he hears of the election. "In nearly all my letters I have written to you about the panthers. It will be discreditable to you, that Patiscus should have sent to Curio ten panthers, and you not many times more. These ten Curio gave me, and ten others from Africa. If you will only remember to send for hunters from Cibyra, and also send letters to Pamphylia (for there, I understand, more are taken than elsewhere), you will succeed. I do beseech you look after this matter. You have only to give the orders. I have provided people to keep and transport the animals when once taken." The governor would not hear of imposing the charge of capturing the panthers on the hunters of the province. Still he would do his best to oblige his friend. "The matter of the panthers is being diligently attended to by the persons who are accustomed to hunt them; but there is a strange scarcity of them, and the few that there are complain grievously, saying that they are the only creatures in my province that are persecuted."

From Laodicea Cicero returned to Tarsus, the capital of his province, wound up the affairs of his government, appointed an acting governor, and started homewards early in August. On his way he paid a visit to Rhodes, wis.h.i.+ng to show to his son and nephew (they had accompanied him to his government) the famous school of eloquence in which he had himself studied. Here he heard with much regret of the death of Hortensius. He had seen the great orator's son at Laodicea, where he was amusing himself in the disreputable company of some gladiators, and had asked him to dinner for his father's sake, he says. His stay at Rhodes was probably of some duration, for he did not reach Ephesus till the first of October. A tedious pa.s.sage of fourteen days brought him to Athens. On his journey westwards Tiro, his confidential servant, was seized with illness, and had to be left behind at Patrae. Tiro was a slave, though afterwards set free by his master; but he was a man of great and varied accomplishments, and Cicero writes to him as he might to the very dearest of his friends. There is nothing stranger in all that we know of "Roman Life" than the presence in it of such men as Tiro. Nor is there any thing, we might even venture to say, quite like it elsewhere in the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America, mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint, of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro, man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends."

They are twenty-seven in number, or rather twenty-six, as the sixteenth of the series contains the congratulations and thanks which Quintus Cicero addresses to his brother on receiving the news that Tiro has received his freedom. "As to Tiro," he writes, "I protest, as I wish to see you, my dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and my dear Tullia, that you have done a thing that pleased me exceedingly in making a man who certainly was far above his mean condition a friend rather than a servant. Believe me, when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped for joy; I both thank and congratulate you. If the fidelity of my Statius gives me so much pleasure[9], how valuable in Tiro must be this same good quality with the additional and even superior advantages of culture, wit, and politeness? I have many very good reasons for loving you; and now there is this that you have told me, as indeed you were bound to tell me, this excellent piece of news. I saw all your heart in your letter."

[Footnote 9: See page 277.]

Cicero's letters to the invalid are at first very frequent. One is dated on the third, another on the fifth, and a third on the seventh of November; and on the eighth of the month there are no fewer than three, the first of them apparently in answer to a letter from Tiro. "I am variously affected by your letter--much troubled by the first page, a little comforted by the second. The result is that I now say, without hesitation, till you are quite strong, do not trust yourself to travel either by land of sea. I shall see you as soon as I wish if I see you quite restored." He goes on to criticise the doctor's prescriptions.

Soup was not the right thing to give to a dyspeptic patient. Tiro is not to spare any expense. Another fee to the doctor might make him more attentive. In another letter he regrets that the invalid had felt himself compelled to accept an invitation to a concert, and tells him that he had left a horse and mule for him at Brundisium. Then, after a brief notice of public affairs, he returns to the question of the voyage. "I must again ask you not to be rash in your traveling. Sailors, I observe, make too much haste to increase their profits. Be cautious, my dear Tiro. You have a wide and dangerous sea to traverse. If you can, come with Mescinius. He is wont to be careful in his voyages. If not with him, come with a person of distinction, who will have influence with the captain." In another letter he tells Tiro that he must revive his love of letters and learning. The physician thought that his mind was ill at ease; for this the best remedy was occupation. In another he writes: "I have received your letter with its shaky handwriting; no wonder, indeed, seeing how serious has been your illness. I send you Aegypta (probably a superior slave) to wait upon you, and a cook with him." Cicero could not have shown more affectionate care of a sick son.

Tiro is said to have written a life of his master. And we certainly owe to his care the preservation of his correspondence. His weak health did not prevent him from living to the age of a hundred and three.

Cicero pursued his homeward journey by slow stages, and it was not till November 25th that he reached Italy. His mind was distracted between two anxieties--the danger of civil war, which he perceived to be daily growing more imminent, and an anxious desire to have his military successes over the Cilician mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of a triumph. The honor of a public thanksgiving had already been voted to him; Cato, who opposed it on principle, having given him offense by so doing. A triumph was less easy to obtain, and indeed it seems to show a certain weakness in Cicero that he should have sought to obtain it for exploits of so very moderate a kind. However, he landed at Brundisium as a formal claimant for the honor. His lictors had their fasces (bundles of rods inclosing an ax) wreathed with bay leaves, as was the custom with the victorious general who hoped to obtain this distinction.

Pompey, with whom he had a long interview, encouraged him to hope for it, and promised his support. It was not till January 4th that he reached the capital. The look of affairs was growing darker and darker, but he still clung to the hopes of a triumph, and would not dismiss his lictors with their ornaments, though he was heartily wearied of their company. Things went so far that a proposition was actually made in the Senate that the triumph should be granted; but the matter was postponed at the suggestion of one of the consuls, anxious, Cicero thinks, to make his own services more appreciated when the time should come. Before the end of January he seems to have given up his hopes. In a few more days he was fairly embarked on the tide of civil war.

CHAPTER XIV.

ATTICUS.

The name of Atticus has been mentioned more than once in the preceding chapters as a correspondent of Cicero. We have indeed more than five hundred letters addressed to him, extending over a period of almost five-and-twenty years. There are frequent intervals of silence--not a single letter, for instance, belongs to the year of the consuls.h.i.+p, the reason being that both the correspondents were in Rome. Sometimes, especially in the later years, they follow each other very closely. The last was written about a year before Cicero's death.

Atticus was one of those rare characters who contrive to live at peace with all men. The times were troublous beyond all measure; he had wealth and position; he kept up close friends.h.i.+p with men who were in the very thickest of the fight; he was ever ready with his sympathy and help for those who were vanquished; and yet he contrived to arouse no enmities; and after a life-long peace, interrupted only by one or two temporary alarms, died in a good old age.

Atticus was of what we should call a gentleman's family, and belonged by inheritance to the democratic party. But he early resolved to stand aloof from politics, and took an effectual means of carrying out his purpose by taking up his residence at Athens. With characteristic prudence he transferred the greater part of his property to investments in Greece. At Athens he became exceedingly popular. He lent money at easy rates to the munic.i.p.ality, and made liberal distributions of corn, giving as much as a bushel and a half to every needy citizen. He spoke Greek and Latin with equal ease and eloquence; and had, we are told, an unsurpa.s.sed gift for reciting poetry. Sulla, who, for all his savagery, had a cultivated taste, was charmed with the young man, and would have taken him in his train. "I beseech you," replied Atticus, "don't take me to fight against those in whose company, but that I left Italy, I might be fighting against you." After a residence of twenty-three years he returned to Rome, in the very year of Cicero's consuls.h.i.+p. At Rome he stood as much aloof from the turmoil of civil strife as he had stood at Athens. Office of every kind he steadily refused; he was under no obligations to any man, and therefore was not thought ungrateful by any.

The partisans of Caesar and of Pompey were content to receive help from his purse, and to see him resolutely neutral. He refused to join in a project of presenting what we should call a testimonial to the murderers of Caesar on behalf of the order of the knights; but he did not hesitate to relieve the necessities of the most conspicuous of them with a present of between three and four thousand pounds. When Antony was outlawed he protected his family; and Antony in return secured his life and property amidst the horrors of the second Proscription.

His biographer, Cornelius Nepos, has much to say of his moderation and temperate habits of life. He had no sumptuous country-house in the suburbs or at the sea-coast, but two farm-houses. He possessed, however, what seems to have been a very fine house (perhaps we should call it "castle," for Cicero speaks of it as a place capable of defense) in Epirus. It contained among other things a gallery of statues. A love of letters was one of his chief characteristics. His guests were not entertained with the performances of hired singers, but with readings from authors of repute. He had collected, indeed, a very large library.

All his slaves, down to the very meanest, were well educated, and he employed them to make copies.

Atticus married somewhat late in life. His only daughter was the first wife of Agrippa, the minister of Augustus, and his grand-daughter was married to Tiberius. Both of these ladies were divorced to make room for a consort of higher rank, who, curiously enough, was in both cases Julia, the infamous daughter of Augustus. Both, we may well believe, were regretted by their husbands.

Atticus died at the age of seventy-seven. He was afflicted with a disease which he believed to be incurable, and shortened his days by voluntary starvation.

It was to this correspondent, then, that Cicero confided for about a quarter of a century his cares and his wants. The two had been schoolfellows, and had probably renewed their acquaintance when Cicero visited Greece in search of health. Afterwards there came to be a family connection between them, Atticus' sister, Pomponia, marrying Cicero's younger brother, Quintus, not much, we gather from the letters, to the happiness of either of them. Cicero could not have had a better confidant. He was full of sympathy, and ready with his help; and he was at the same time sagacious and prudent in no common degree, an excellent man of business, and, thanks to the admirable coolness which enabled him to stand outside the turmoil of politics, an equally excellent adviser in politics.